The wilderness and wetlands that would later become the city of Miami ignited a utopian aspiration in one woman’s imagination, the aspiration to create a metropolis in the subtropical marshland. Cleveland native Julia Tuttle, the original owner of the land upon which Miami was built, moved to the Biscayne Bay region after inheriting land from her father in the late 19th century. Recognizing the need for transportation, Tuttle convinced American tycoon Henry Flagler to expand his railroad to this part of Florida. Initially, he declined her requests, but when the orange groves in that area survived the winter of 1895 and the rest of the state’s citrus crop was destroyed, Flagler allegedly saw the economic potential in Miami. The landscape was transformed.

The genesis of this urban paradise is a historical narrative; a literary embodiment of a past experience. Solomon Graves (an alias of the artist Raul Mendez), asserts on his blog that “objects and stories belong to all of us, in the now and beyond.” In his enigmatic exhibition, The Society for the Preservation of Lost Things and Missing Time: Florida Arcane, the artist investigates methods of remembering, analyzing, and preserving the past. As the Society’s website states, “It is our Mission to Thwart the all too common Demise of Things./ Stories, Ideas, which may not fit History’s Master Narrative./ We crave the Archaic and Arcane, the Strange, the Paranormal…those Things imbued / with Magical Properties, the Folkloric, the Homemade, the Story-told, /the Other World-ly./Left-Field.” Need I say more? Florida Arcane, currently on view at the Miami-Dade Main Library, consists of objects, ephemera, archival materials, and other fragments from Florida’s past. The objects are combined with descriptive and imaginative tales, which reference notable figures in the early history of Florida, but have little to no historical fidelity. Mendez cleverly utilizes the venerable institution of the library, a venue for scholarly research, to bolster his exhibition design. A two dollar bill is inscribed with the unwritten rules amongst hermits and derelicts in the Florida Keys at the end of the 19th century. A collection of optical and aviation instruments once belonging to Jacqueline Cochran (a native Floridian), and other evidentiary relics are here as well.

The artist combines documentation and historical fiction in a series of color photographs depicting a concrete modernist structure curiously situated in the middle of a swamp (seen above on the left, click here for detail). The structure is described as Mr. J.E. Lummus’ Failed City in the Swamp. In the accompanying text, J.E. Lummus, an individual associated with building the City of Miami, is described as an eager entrepreneur, whose jealousy over Tuttle’s success with Miami drove his desire to erect “a world class city of industry and culture in the midst of a swamp” for himself. According to the story, the winter of 1895 halted construction, and plans were never resumed. In reality, the structure, which resembles an interstate overpass, is the Shark Valley observation tower located in Everglades National Park, as noted in the Miami Herald. The magical mixture of historical and apocryphal information infuses the dusty discipline of history with imagination and thought, offering valuable insights into our broader processes of cultural interpretation. A speculative and philosophical presentation, Florida Arcane is obscure and difficult, but simultaneously enjoyable and entertaining.

Merging documentation, fiction, and art, Florida Arcane prompts the perceptive viewer to question the construction of history and thus reality, both past and present. The curator deviates from established histories, igniting learning with imagination. At the opening reception on June 24th, Raul Mendez, a.k.a Solomon Graves, theatrically continued his mission to “destroy ideological darlings” while sitting at a desk in the exhibition area. His costumed presence, which now exists only as a photograph, reminds us that awareness of imagination is a principle, and potent, feature in the formation of reality. In the subjective space between his materials and information, Mendez invites the viewer to experience experience itself, rather than experiencing a description of reality.

At six o’clock on Saturday evening in SoHo, Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman made public their intent to fill the hole that Jeffrey Deitch’s trans-continental career move created in the world of New York art, which is no small undertaking. The two former directors of Deitch Projects opened a much anticipated new space at 104 Greene Street, aptly titled The Hole. The inaugural exhibition, Not Quite Open for Business, was directed by Taylor McKimens and showcases unfinished works by over twenty artists, including Nate Lowman and Rosson Crow.

When their originally planned exhibition fell through mere weeks before the scheduled opening, Grayson and Coleman decided to make the best of what others might deem an impossible situation. They solicited their artists to “Give us an incomplete piece…Give us a drawing that you just cant bring yourself to finish from your flat files. Put half your makeup on and give us most of a performance!” In a press release littered with intentional “typoos,” Grayson and Coleman clarify that this is not about the process of the artist, or the deliberate incompletion of work, but about “being caught with your pants down and your lipstick smudged and your armpits sweaty because you didn’t have time to take a shower before YOUR FIRST GALLERY SHOW.” A personal and self-deprecating tone replaced the more traditional formality of this document. The opening was a straightforward and unpretentious debut for Grayson and Coleman, making up in energy what it lacked in polish.

The unfinished theme pervades, and the space resembles a construction site overtaken by creatives. Painted scrap lumber, an industrial ladder, bare studs and unfinished sheetrock share the space with art. Works on paper are mounted with thumbtacks. A half painted logo contributes to the the display’s impromptu, work-in-progress quality, disarming the viewer and generating unlimited interest in future progress.

Not Quite Open for Business will remain on view until August 14th. As mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article written by Erica Orden, upcoming exhibitions include a solo show by Mat Brinkman and an installation by Kenny Scharf and the collective Dearraindrop. Other projects in the plans for The Hole include a book store in the back room of the gallery, Holey Books, and a dating service for artists, purportedly titled Hole Lotta Love. We’ll keep you posted.

Courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Photo credit: Zeno Zotti

A myth is a foundational narrative that may be based in truth or fiction but either way it tells a story of who we are. Thus self-consciousness is constructed by a shared narrative and helps us to give shape and even name our identity. If we think of identity in the usual terms of religion or nationalism, some examples of these mythological narratives include the King James Bible or the story of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree. But in the art world, there are strains of mythology that are built on identity formations like artist, curator, or critic.

Photo: Zeno Zotti

Maurizio Cattelan is notorious for using unabashedly bad-boy black humor to resist easy classifications of identity. He does so through imagery and institutions that are deeply tied to religion, nationalism and the art world. In his exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston, Is There Life Before Death, Cattelan has worked with the curator Franklin Sirmans to explode the distinctions between a number of categories. The exhibition includes art objects that are situated as “interventions” in the galleries of Byzantine, African and Surrealist art, culminating in a haunting set of works in dialogue with Arte Povera works from his native Italy. As a result the work is both art object and its context within the museum. In this sense Cattelan plays both artist and curator.

This blurring of boundaries is one of many attacks against authority that Cattelan perpetrates. But as Sirmans notes in the accompanying catalog, Cattelan has a long tradition of work in and out of normative roles. In addition to making sculpture and installations, Cattelan also worked on the publication Permanent Food and acted as curator for the Wrong Gallery and the 2006 Berlin Biennial along with curators Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick. This kind of interdisciplinary activity cuts against the grain of traditional divisions of labor in the art world. The myth of these divisions is based on the notion that artists are dumb mute expressionists who use innate talent to make objects that are interpreted by critics, bought by collectors and arranged by curators. By resisting this mythology, Cattelan capitalizes on the expansion of artistic practice by many artists of the twentieth century such as Duchamp and Warhol found in the Menil Collection.

Courtesy Kunsthaus Bregenz, Photo: Markus Tretter

But Cattelan also challenges more traditional mythologies such as Christianity. His Untitled, 2009, a taxidermied horse on its side with a wooden sign reading INRI staked in its flank, was placed in a dark gallery of dreamy Magritte paintings. This obviously references the Latin acronym inscribed on Jesus’ cross declaring him to be king of the Jews. But placed on a dead horse, a symbol of foolishness, what does this mean? In the Menil’s comment book there were some Christian visitors that were very much offended by this work, assuming that is was heretical along with Untitled, 2007, a sculpture of a woman face down and crucified in a shipping crate.

Photo: Hester + Hardaway, Houston

These gestures cause controversy because they rupture the fragile fabric of our expectations. When these Christian visitors walked into the Byzantine section of the Menil Collection they were looking for something old and true. They were expecting artifacts that would deliver on the promises of their identity’s myths. Instead they were confronted by a Trojan horse, an object that trafficked in similar iconography but proposed something less clear and concrete. This was the true heresy, for mythology cannot tolerate ambiguity and skepticism. Myths are made to describe truths and their reproductions and meant to reaffirm them. But artists like Cattelan use mythology along with the strategies of artistic, critical and curatorial practice to reveal that a story is only as good as its teller.

Red76 is a multi-artist collective founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2000. The project they conceived for We have as much time as it takes was executed mainly by two of its members, Sam Gould and Gabriel Saloman. Counter-Culture as Pedagogy: Pop-Up Book Academy is a yearlong series of events that take place in a variety of venues. The latest edition of The Journal of Radical Shimming, available for free in the gallery, includes interviews and a counterculture index created for this exhibition. It will accompany the project’s next iteration at the Walker Art Center this summer. Learn more at www.red76.com.

Courtney Dailey: As practitioners whose work ex­ists primarily in the public realm, how do you create a situation to get the greatest amount of people engaged?

Sam Gould: We’ve developed methodologies over time for our publicly engaged, dialogical practices. There are basically four points: clear frames, horizontal space, generative action, and ephemeral distance. Clear frames develop a space that’s very familiar to people: they act as an entrance point; you’re on a con­struction site, you’re entering a bar, you’re going to a copy shop, or a restaurant. It may be the worst restaurant or the worst business that you’ve ever encountered but you understand what it is. Famil­iarity is key.

Nicole Cromartie: But your project for the Wattis, Counter-Culture as Pedagogy: Pop-Up Book Academy, 2010–1 is, by comparison, an unfamiliar, hybrid structure.

SG: I don’t think so. We talk about it as a traveling bookstore. So people are like, “Oh, it’s a bookstore,” but it’s actually a school. We arrange small classes, small sessions, where people RSVP to an open call that’s publicized through various means: word of mouth, flyers, and email. We control the frame through pub­licity, location, and topic.

Gabriel Saloman: I think it’s worth admitting that there’s a degree of fraud in that.

SG: Oh, yeah, it’s a total fraud. It’s a ruse.

GS: But once people are there, we’re not doing this thing where we told you it was going to be a candy house and now we’re going to put you in the oven. It’s not re­ally important that people get the exact experience that they came for. We invite you to this bookstore or construction site, and while we’re here, let’s talk. And it seems innocuous enough that people immerse themselves in it, because they already feel like it’s familiar. They don’t know that they’re par­ticipating until they already are.

SG: Once people get within this frame, we work to level or flatten our au­thority, and to allow them to make decisions through direct conver­sation. At the end of a project, we shouldn’t be there (though by necessity, we start out directing or facilitating). But through our ac­tions over time, we want to divest ourselves of that role; this is the horizontal space part.

Generative action stems from the feeling that I get in a particular situation, like at band practice or at a political rally. Things might be totally inspiring when you’re there, but the minute you leave that energized space, everything dies. So the idea of generative ac­tion is that the activity acts like a battery—it’s the power station that transforms the energy in a room into media, in the widest defini­tion of what media can be: from the Internet, to newspapers, to direct conversations between you and me, even to rumor or myth or disparaging commentary.

Ephemeral distance suggests that this is not the thing you’re after. We are trying to get people to internalize a situation, then trans­form it into their own thing. This conversation/publication/display is not the conclusion. Those are the four points: pedagogical tools that we use all the time.

GS: We create models for action rather than finished, complete ideas. And the intention is to create a proposi­tion that other people conclude. It’s turning the experience of the art situation into a commons over which we don’t claim owner­ship. That’s not to say we don’t have proprietary rights to certain things, and certainly we have privileges that other people aren’t going to have. A total horizontal­ity really couldn’t happen unless people took off and ran with it, without us.

SG: Unless people just felt direct au­thority, and decided: this is mine now. And if that happened, I’d be psyched.

CD: Many of your projects evolve and develop over the long-term, and in multiple places. How can viewers who might encounter the work just once understand your projects in their entirety?

SG: There is no entirety to the project; the project just keeps going. I talk about it in terms of literature: books don’t die. Just because Proust finally stopped writing Re­membrance of Things Past doesn’t mean that the work is over. The work is there as long as people are talking about it and engaging with it, which is a way that you can define any artwork.

GS: That also explains why we have a blog for every project, and pro­duce as much printed media as we possibly can. There are multiple ways that the work moves through the world and ways that the proj­ect can continue to be relevant. We cherish printed matter. Those objects become totemic devices that give us time travel; they give us an opportunity to exist simul­taneously in the past and in the present. They allow us to see not only the things that have changed, but the things that have cycled around.

NC: Your practice is not typically gallery-based, but for this exhibi­tion, you’ll have ephemera in the gallery. Why did you decide to do that?

SG: Because we’re punks. It’s funny to us: we fought so long to get out of the gallery and now we’ve reached a stage where people are asking us to come and do projects outside of the gallery. So, inevita­bly, in our contrarian way, we want to go in.

GS: The new taboo!

SG: The deeper answer is that it per­tains to the project. We’re focusing on moments that find their way into so-called mass culture. We can shine a light onto those objects that build up to create the domi­nant culture. We want to find a way to extrapolate and physicalize our discursive practices in the gallery and illuminate them. We get to say, “Look at this!”

GS: So often, we experience visual work on the Web. Now the gallery is becoming an analogue device. The gallery has more in common with a record player, a slide show.

CD: How does Red76 make work?

GS: Sam develops these initial projects and they expand, depending on what’s appropriate, who can say yes, and who we feel resonates with the project.

SG: There’s a big difference between someone who happens to be involved with one thing that we’re doing, and a real, holistic engagement. So much of what we do occurs “off-stage,” if you will, when we’re just hanging out. The work is based on the affections between all of these people—even feelings of disenfranchisement. There’s been a lot of disaffection and infighting, as in any collabora­tive project, but it’s always based on friendship.

We have as much time as it takes is on view from May 6 – July 31, 2010 at the CCA Wattis institute for Contemporary Arts. For more information see www.wattis.org.

The self-proclaimed “most important survey of contemporary art in the world ever” opened this week in at 350 West Broadway in SoHo, New York.  The Brucennial 2010 edition, titled “Miseducation,” is presented in a 5,000 square foot space temporarily donated by the real-estate mogul and art collector Aby Rosen and supposedly “brings together 420 artists from 911 countries working in 666 discrete disciplines.”  But who’s counting?  The creative art collective behind what is seen as a parody version of the Whitney Biennial is made up of five mysterious guys known as the Bruce High Quality Foundation.  Although the Foundation participated in the recent “1969″ exhibit at P.S.1, Brucennial remains the collective’s signature celebrated program since the founding of the event in 2008.

Focused on reshaping the art world via a more democratic and DIY approach, the Foundation places some of its more visible functions, like PR and the organization of exhibtions, into the artists hands.  Perhaps the result can best be described as a visual cacaphony.  The Brucennial’s rather lax entry standards (an email asked prospective participants to “either dredge something up or create something new…As fast and as loose as you like”) is a refreshing juxtaposition to the supposed stringent selection criteria of the Whiteny’s Biennial.  With a “sharing is caring” attitude and limited wall space artists move their pieces around in order to make room for new arrivals.  Neither first-come basis nor celebrity secures an artist a better spot, and emerging artists as well as blue chip artists (like Julian Schnabel) display their pieces side by side.  The title “Miseducation” and its press release offer insight into the Foundation’s desire to question the politics and institutional protectionism that seem to run the art world. However, one has to wonder how “lax”  and rebellious the event can remain with heavy-hitter curators Francesco Bonami and Vito Schnabel involved with curating the event.

The Brucenial 2010: Miseducation runs through April 4 at 350 West Broadway, SoHo, with projects also on view at Recess at 41 Grand Street.  The event also includes performances and a literary supplement.

Marilyn Minter, Crystal Swallow (2006), Promised gift of Jeanne and Michael Klein to The Blanton Museum at the University of Texas at Austin

Now showing through April 25^th at The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is the group exhibition Desire. Curated by Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Blanton curator of American and contemporary art and director of curatorial affairs, Desire features fifty works from an international grouping of contemporary artists working in a variety of media. The concept of the exhibition is to present the many ways artists have explored the notion of desire and its many facets within their work. The thought of this concept being visually displayed is tantalizing, yet, it is only with the multiple video works that the exhibition’s guard comes down. Isaac Julien’s Long Road to Mazatlán (1999), a video collaboration with the choreographer Javier de Frutos, is a stunning visualization of the yearning of two cowboys “dancing” around their mutual attraction and the stigma that often comes along with it.  Cauleen Smith’s Elsewhere, is a sensual film of a woman standing absolutely still while another person slowly unravels her sweater by a single thread.

Amy Globus, Electric Sheep (2001 - 2002), Blanton Museum of Art, Purchase through the generosity of the 2004 Blanton Contemporary Circle

However, it is Amy Globus’s video installation Electric Sheep (2001-2002) that will make the viewer blush. Set to Emmy Lou Harris’ rendition of Neil Young’s, Wrecking Ball, a large octopus is filmed in slow motion as it makes its way from one confined space to another. While watching the piece the viewer is likely to feel all the accoutrements of desire simultaneously: longing, lust, sensuality, fantasy, rejection, sexual identity, passion, intimacy etc. Also not to be missed is Mads Lynnerup’s Untying a Shoe with an Erection (2003), a tongue-in-cheek performance of presumably a man untying his shoe with his penis. The exhibition is able to transcend being merely an exercise of artists implementing the theme of desire, perhaps a bit unwittingly, with the dominance of these video works. The question that lingers long after leaving the museum is exactly how much of a continued role visual media plays in defining our collective idea of desire.

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin, housed in a recently completed two building complex, is one of the foremost university art museums in the country. The museum’s collection is the largest and most comprehensive in Central Texas and comprises more than 18,000 works. It is recognized for its European paintings, modern and contemporary American and Latin American art, and an encyclopedic collection of prints and drawings.

With the title “Size Does Matter”  for his debut show as a curator, one has to wonder if Shaquille O’Neal is talking about the size of one’s wallet, connections, ego, or one’s preference to bra size.   With the opening of the show at Chelsea’s FLAG Art Foundation the famous basketball player, actor, and rapper can now add “art curator” to his ever-expanding resume of accomplishments.   The exhibition includes work by 39 different artists, or “artstars” to be more accurate, whose works explore the myriad ways that scale affects the perception of contemporary art.  The scale theme is extremely fitting: weighing 320 pounds and standing 7′1 atop his size 22 shoes, Shaquille O’Neal has described his own size as “monumental” and he has the ability to dwarf just about everyone in his presence.

O’Neal made sixty-six selections for the show, which features works ranging from the ginormous billboard-sized Andreas Gursky’s photograph Madonna I to the microscopic work of Willard Wigan.  It is rumored that the works were chosen from over 200 images that FLAG founder Glenn Fuhrman and director Stephanie Roach showed him over dinner after a game.  O’Neal has also admitted that he is a great friend of Donald Trump who has four or five Picassos on his plane that O’Neal likes to look at when flying with him.  And with that, viola, a curator is born.  Describing the process of picking the works to include in the show, O’Neal explains, “Art is a process of delivering or arranging elements that appeal to the emotions of a person looking at it.  It’s what you feel.  I picked those things because they were beautiful.”  With this criteria in mind it is not surprising that another theme of the show could be “half-naked women,” or “ginormous breasts,”  as pieces by Richard Patterson, Dr. Lakra, and Lisa Yuskavage graphically illustrate.  O’Neil also plays the role of the muse for the show inspiring works like Willard Wigan’s  Micro Shaq,  Mark Wagner’s Shaq by Marq and Peter Max’s Portrait of Shaquille O’ Neal. These pieces embrace the famous basketball player’s happy-go lucky attitude, goofy grin, and larger than life attitude.

“Size Does Matter” is on display from February 19, 2010-May 27, 2010 at the FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea. Shaquille O’Neil is best known as a center for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Cleveland’s controversial best-selling author James Fray, who has written extensively on art, has an accompanying book for O’Neal’s art show that features installation images and an essay.

On view until January 3, 2010 the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis presents its most ambitious group show since its grand opening six years ago. Curated by Anthony Huberman, For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there starts with the premise that art is not a code that needs cracking. Celebrating the experience of not-knowing and unlearning, the artists in this exhibition understand the world in speculative terms, eager to keep art separate from explanation. Embracing a spirit of curiosity, this show is dedicated to the playfulness of being in the dark.

Among the works included are Sarah Crowner’s re-insertion into circulation of the two issues of the 1917 journal The Blind Man (edited by Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, and Beatrice Wood), offering copies on sale at the museum’s front desk at the publication’s original cover price of 10 and 15 cents. Additionally, In search of an explanation of a painting, Marcel Broodthaers interviews his cat in a recording from 1970 in his Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles. Nashashibi/Skaer (Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer) contribute their 16mm film Flash in the Metropolitan (2006),  whereby the artists wander through the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the lights off, using a strobe light to briefly illuminate portions of small sculptural statues and vessels, as if the long story of the Metropolitan was reduced to a series of short poetic haikus.

In a two-part show for Howard House in Seattle, Gretchen Bennett presents her own work in “Hello,” located in the front of the gallery, as well as curating “Supernature,” located in the center gallery. Bennett is best known for her interest in urban iconography and her downloadable and printable sticker series. For “Hello,” she chooses to re-examine through drawings the widespread imagery of the ill-fated lead singer of Nirvana, universal pop icon Kurt Cobain. Methodically and meticulously penciling line-by-line single video frames of her subject collected from YouTube, the artist presents colorful and luminous drawings of the drug-addled musician. By stopping motion and revealing the painstaking precision of her own hand, Bennett refreshes our view of the ubiquitous iconic image, giving us a more personal look at the star without becoming sentimental.

In the center gallery of Howard House is “Supernature”, curated by Bennett, which examines the notion of the perfect landscape in the works of Saul Chernick, Andrew Guenther, Matthew Day Jackson, Alexander Kantarovsky, Robert de Saint Phalle, Suzanne Walters, and Aaron Williams. Instead of presenting a romantic and idealistic view of the natural world, the artists assert the idea that the perfect landscape can be found in artificial or abandoned settings. The show is a collection of assembled topography in the form of paintings and installations which act as landmarks or “places” for the viewer to examine. In contemporary society, we become increasingly detached from the experience of authenticity or purity in the natural world. This mediated view of our world is not Nature, but Supernature, and can offer us a new kind of authenticity.

Gretchen Bennett received her M.F.A. from Rutgers in 2001 and has exhibited widely on both coasts. She has had a solo show at Amo Gallery in Washington, and has exhibited at PS122 Gallery in New York City.

The works in “Nina in Position”, the current group exhibition at Artists Space in SoHo, employ Walter Benjamin’s contention that “To live is to leave traces,” as a platform from which to examine the body and its environs. Curated by Jeffrey Uslip, the exhibition is made up of work that takes into consideration the ways in which artistic rituals, histories, and narratives are re-signified within contemporary visual culture. Artists in the exhibition include: Kelly Barrie, Justin Beal, Huma Bhabha, Anya Gallaccio, Wade Guyton, Barkley Hendricks, Roni Horn, Igloolik Isuma Productions, Mary Kelly, Charles Long, Michelle Lopez, Andrew Lord, Robert Mapplethorpe, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Jack Pierson, Michael Queenland, Marco Rios, Amanda Ross- Ho, Julia Scher, Haim Steinbach, Lisa Tan, Josh Tonsfeldt.

Although striving to challenge the parameters of genre, most of the work can be described as sculptural, or a hybrid of artistic disciplines that creates a “sculptural gesture.” Many of the artists like Michelle Lopez and Huma Bhabha have been recognized as “sculptors” in the past, and the artworks illustrate sculpture’s mercurial qualities by examining materiality, trantransience, and the process of making. Intergenerational and interracial, Nina in Position curatorial matrix places artworks in dialogue in order to identify how social, cultural, and geopolitical change occurs on a local level, as well as to articulate how methodologies, practices, and tolerance shape-shift over decades.

Art Basel Miami starts today at the Miami Beach Convention Center with an exclusive selection of 200 leading art galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and South Africa and will exhibit 20th and 21st century artworks by more than 2,000 artists. On show are exceptional pieces by both renowned artists and cutting-edge newcomers. Expect to see projects by emerging artists, new artworks, public art projects, performances video and sound art. If you missed this one you can plan to attend Art 39 Basel which takes place from June 4-8 2008 in Basel Switzerland.

Jon Huck

DS: Carrie, you were born and raised in the U.K. and came to the U.S. before high school. When did you develop an interest in contemporary art?

CS: When I was applying to graduate school, I drafted two essays: the quintessentially heart-felt (and cliched) one that answers your question and the academic one that has little to do with why I like art but has a lot to say about why I want to pursue it. I didn’t go with the heart-felt one for obviously (again cliched) reasons, but I think it might explain why I got in to the art business.

When I was a kid, in addition to being dragged to museums by both parents all the time, my father also used to drop my elder brother and I off at the Wallace Collection in London while he met with a client who lived nearby. Exploring the collection on our own meant that we had to come up with our own narratives for what we were looking at. At least, that’s what I did, and I think I’ve simply kept doing that: looking at things and trying to garner the story/message behind them.

Fragonard

That being said, there’s an obvious flaw in my logic. My brother definitely wasn’t influenced the same way I was; while he likes the classics, he’s not a contemporary art lover. So really, god knows when or why I got into contemporary art. There’s no linear story I can come up with that explains it, but I can tell you that seeing Gerhard Richter’s retrospective at MOMA compelled me to apply to graduate school. I went to the show more times than I care to count and, on the umpteenth time, realized that if I was this interested in one artist’s show, maybe I should figure out how to look at art all the time.

DS: Just this year, you became the director of the James Harris Gallery. Are there any particular shows or artists that you have wanted to present since you took that position?

CS: I became director at JHG last month (I started out as the owner’s assistant). This was in fact the first month where both artists showing in the gallery — Scott Foldesi and Rashid Johnson — were people I brought to the attention of Jim, the owner of the gallery.

DS: Tell me about the current exhibition at the James Harris Gallery that features Rashid Johnson, and what was your role in bringing this artist to Seattle?

CS: It’s a pretty great story actually. In fact, Seattle’s PI art critic, Regina Hackett, wrote a little bit about how Rashid and I met on her blog. Jim, the owner of JHG, sent me to New York for the Armory Art Fairs in February, and, while I was there, my brother, Edward, who’s the associate creative director for a firm in New York, needed some help. He puts on concerts and events, and one of the nights that I was in Manhattan happened also to be an evening wherein he needed someone to work the VIP guest list for him. I resisted at first. After all, I was there for work and didn’t have much by way of time to help him out. But the prospect of a few extra dollars and some time in the proximity of my big brother were enough to sway me.

Later in the evening a huge group from Art on Paper magazine showed up and wanted to get in even though they were not on the list. I explained several times that there was nothing that I could do, thinking the whole time, “If only they knew what I really did, they’d laugh.” I mean, seriously, I subscribe to the magazine. But then one of them said, “What if one of us is a famous artist? Will that help get us in?” “Try me,” I curtly replied.

The rest, as they say, is history. Rashid said his name, and I said I loved his work (I’d actually spent some time in grad school writing about a portrait he did called “My Ex-wife as the Tragic Mulatto,” and he’d done a site-specific work in Seattle about a year before). So I gave him my card and hoped he’d get in touch. And he did. And once he did, I explained the whole story to Jim who immediately said that he also loved Rashid’s work, which meant that within weeks, we were all on the same page planning the current show.

DS: You have curated for both non-profit art spaces as well as commercial venues. What do you feel are the inherent limitations or benefits in working with spaces where profit is a driving component?

CS: You know, I think both have limitations. While the commercial gallery is restrained by having to think about what will sell, the non-profit is restrained by budgetary constraints. Sure, I can let artists at the Hedreen Gallery, the non-profit, do what they want in terms of ideas. I don’t have to think about conservation issues. And they can make site-specific work because they don’t have to think about creating a product that can be sold. That being said, however, they do have to produce work that doesn’t cost much to make, because I don’t have a big budget.

Eric Eley

On the other side of the coin, at James Harris Gallery, our production costs can be much higher, and so artists can think bigger. But they have to think bigger while also thinking about value. For example, if they are going to make a work that costs $6,000 to produce, we all have to be pretty sure the work will sell to someone for at least twice as much. While the commercial system feels a little more sticky than the non-profit (like it’s going to sully the art produced), it’s dictating no more than the non-profit. And really, neither are bad, per se. What I’m describing is simply the oldest system in the art book — PATRONAGE. Art only gets to keep getting made if there are patrons. That’s how the capitalist world works.

In a perfect world, artists would be able to make whatever they can dream up. But we all know it’s not a perfect world. If it were, there might not be so much art.

DS: If you had unlimited resources and connections, what kind of show would you like to put together, and which artists would be first on your list?

CS: Honestly, I would pull together a show in which Manet’s Olympia is juxtaposed against work that responds to that piece. I’ve been trying, for a long time, to digest just how influential that work actually has been on art production, and then when I saw Rashid’s White Girl, which pretty directly references Manet’s painting, I realized how interesting it would be to build a show that opens up our definitions of feminism. Instead of pulling together a show that starts with someone like Judy Chicago, I’d want to exhibit works that visually or conceptually resonate with Olympia, pieces like Sophie Calle’s “Take Care of Yourself” or Jill Magid’s “Evidence Locker”. I might even want to show all the reclining nudes that led up to Manet’s piece.

Clearly, I’ve not pinned down the specifics, but I know the show would be huge and would visually look at the way feminism really took shape and where it is today without focusing on the very specific feminist movement. I mean, seriously, that Rashid, a young black male, took the White Girl image and that it wasn’t a young woman who did it is a compelling thing. We should figure out what that’s about.

DS: Who are some of the curators out there you feel are pushing boundaries and organizing exhibitions that are as equally interesting as the work they contain?

CS: Matthew Higgs just might be my hero. Not only does he make really smart art, he curates really smart shows (now at White Columns) and has written more brilliant criticisms than I care to cite. Like I said — heroic.

Especially when you consider that I’ve been asked more times than I care to talk about whether or not I struggle with “conflicts of interest.” To them, I say that I’m hoping that the format’s changing and cite Higgs as someone who’s doing it all with no problem whatsoever. That’s not to say that we all don’t have to be careful. We do. I don’t show artists we represent at James Harris Gallery at my non-profit, and I never write about an artist I have shown. But really I think that people like Higgs and me, and indeed you, the people behind DailyServing, are carving out new positions in art. No longer does the critic just criticize. No longer does the curator just curate. No longer does the artist just make art (though you’ll never see me dipping into that side of things). We do it all. And honestly, I can say that each of my jobs makes me better at the other.

DS: Do you feel that the role of the curator should encompass a social responsibility to reach out and engage a particular community who is otherwise unwilling or uninterested to view art in a conventional space?

CS: Yes. One of the best things about the Hedreen Gallery at the Lee Center for the Arts is that the entire gallery can be seen from the street. As a converted car garage, the space has a window that spans the length of the gallery. In curating shows there, I try to always think about how to leverage this exposure, how to grab all those people who are driving by on any given day but not necessarily looking for an art experience.

So, for instance, with a show I did called :Screen Shots,” which was all video based, I’d lower the blinds during the day so that the work could be viewed only from inside the gallery and then, at about 4 p.m., we’d open the blinds so that the work could be seen running all night. Then during the day, the blinds would go down again. It was as if the work disappeared. And you know what? It worked. Many people commented that the only reason they came in to see the show was because they’d seen it at night first.

James Coupe

As a result of that success, I’ve been thinking lots about how I can curate the space so that the audience outside is engaged in the work. Which means I have to figure out how not to sequester the art experience to inside the gallery. Early next year, I’ll be testing out one possible model when Matt McCormick’s videos are shown in the space. His work will be projected on the main 40-foot wall of the gallery and will be just as easily, if not better, viewed from the street. To add to the experience, we’re exploring the idea of having the soundtrack play only outside of the gallery. That way, pedestrians won’t be able to avoid the art experience (while eyes can look away, ears can’t shut off). It should be pretty interesting. Now, I’ve just got to work out how to get people’s attention with non-video work.

DS: What are some of the qualities that you always seem to look for in a successful show?

CS: Simply, my biggest hope is that the art speaks for itself. That I don’t have to put up artists’ statements or curatorial texts to explain the work, but that the work engages the viewer without anyone telling them why it should.

DS: What advice do you tell emerging artists who are trying to reach curators and galleries or simply expand their audience? Do you feel there are any new and successful models for artists looking to reach a new and non-localized audience?

CS: In my opinion, which is different from many of the older curators out there, the worst thing you can do is send me slides. I don’t want to have to do work when I look at art, and slides are a lot of work. Not only do I have to get to a light box and squint to see details (I don’t have a slide projector), but when all is said and done, I have to send them back. Whereas, with websites or jpegs I can simply look at the work on my computer, decide how I feel about it and then either send you an email saying I’d like to see more or say that I’d like to do a studio visit. So, send jpegs. Curators like to look.

DS: Who are some of the Seattle-based artists you think are producing the most challenging work today?

CS: Challenging is an interesting word, as there are lots of people in town whose work I find really stunning, but challenging is a whole other issue.

Tivon Rice

I’d have to say that Claude Zervas has one of the most interesting aesthetics developing right now in town, and he and Tivon Rice share some sensibilities that will be exciting to watch develop as years go by. They are doing entirely different things, but I have a feeling that they are both capturing a zeitgeist that we will one day look back at and see the thread. And then there’s the entire DXARTS department at the UW who nobody in the art world is really sure what to make of, but who, I am sure, need to remain on our radars.

Claude Zervas