Israeli designer Ron Arad’s massive undertaking at the Roundhouse, aptly titled Curtain Call, is at the height of the spectacular – a three-storey high circular curtain comprised of glowing amoeba-like silicon tubing which serves as fluid canvas for artists to work with. With a transparent sheath, the 360 degree screen, onto which videos are looped, can be viewed from the outside – but most do choose to push aside the swaying curtain and experience the work from within.

Ron Arad, Curtain Call, 2011. Installation at the Roundhouse. Credit Stephen White.

It is a stunning architectural structure – technologically magnificent and psychologically affective due to its vast size – but it is void of any prolonged engagement. However, it is interesting to see how artists have used this unique backdrop and translated their work through it. Shape and scale take front row here – the directionless circular structure of the screen requires a rethinking of the linear quality of video, and the enormous size forces the viewer into a land of giants.

Mat Collishaw, still image from Sordid Earth, 2011. Image courtesy of the Artist.

Mat Collishaw’s video Sordid Earth immerses you in an apocalyptic world of desire and decay. A digitally rendered vision of a dystopic future where decrepit, insect-ridden flowers blossom and dissolve amongst violent storms and unstoppable waterfalls. Collishaw’s world imperceptibly rotates around you, in a continuous cycle of life and death without a trace of human presence, making our microscopic existence disappear into nothingness.

David Shrigley, still image from Walker, 2011. Image courtesy of the Artist.

In David Shrigley’s animation Walker, a blank-eyed, hairy patched man wearing nothing but a pair of heavy boots stomps slowly around the circle with great effort, pausing only to grunt and groan. Translating Shrigley’s caustic depictions of flat, trivial characters onto a larger than life screen serves to intensify the acidic humour ever present in his works and give Shrigley’s ‘outsider art’ further dimension.

Christian Marclay, Pianorama in Ron Arad, Curtain Call, 2011. Image credit Stephen White.

The golden boy of Venice, Christian Marclay, has joined forced with experimental jazz pianist and often-collaborative partner, Steve Beresford to create Pianorama – an surround sound piano which Beresford appears to play from all angles. Marclay’s interest in music and splicing of video fragments are extended here into an endless instrument, surrealistically played by a multitude of giant hands reaching around you.

Ori Gersht, still from Offering, 2011. Image courtesy of the Artist.

In Ori Gersht’s Offering, the structure is exploited not only for its formal qualities, but is used as an integral part of the thematic approach of the work. A man begins to dress in a room, but it only slowly becomes clear what he is preparing for. His audience emerges on the opposite site, waiting in anticipation. We have entered a bullring, exposed to the intimate, individualistic side, removed from  the bloodshed and controversy – instead looking at the delicate preparations and directly into the eyes of the supporters who solemnly wait.

Ori Gersht, still from Offering, 2011. Image courtesy of the Artist.

How do you break down the linear structure of video and work with a screen that has no beginning and no end? With light, sound and video, these artists have used a giant canvas to explore and extend facets of their work – the dark, the humourous, the surrealist and the controversial – all within a great spectacle.

Jean Paul Goude. Maternity dress for Grace Jones, 1979.

My interest in Glenn Adamson’s work began in 2006 with his essay “Handy-Crafts: A Doctrine,” which is included in the anthology What Makes a Great Exhibition? In this essay, Adamson posed a question that was to become an encapsulation of his practice as a historian and curator: “When the climate is so militantly hostile to an intelligent handling of craft, how is a curator who is interested in craft to navigate the shoals?” His answer is disarmingly simple: “treat craft as a subject, not a category.”¹

Over the past decade, Adamson has been one of the few to investigate and re-envision craft from this wholly new position. He followed “Handy-Crafts” with the 2007 Thinking Through Craft, which argues that the supplementary status of craft is its very strength and that its position in the margin of art allows it space from which to provide a critique. Recognizing the absence of any standard for basic craft education, Adamson edited The Craft Reader in 2010, providing a foundational-level education in materiality, objecthood, and labor through the inclusion of essays by Karl Marx, William Morris, Annie Albers, and Lucy Lippard. I sat down with Adamson on April 1, 2011, just before he gave the keynote speech at the “Craft Forward” symposium hosted by the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Jayme Odgers and April Greiman. Cover, Wet Magazine (the Magazine for Gourmet Bathers), 1979.

Bean Gilsdorf: You’re putting together a show at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London on postmodernism, and I wonder if you could start by defining that term, because it’s so contentious.²

Glenn Adamson: The definition that we’ve been using—or the application of the term that we’ve been using—is that postmodernism is the proliferation of responses to the collapse of the modernist project. Rather than defining it positively, we’ve defined it as a phase of thinking and practice that occurs because the sometimes utopian or progressive practices and certainty of modernism—best known in architecture, but known in the other arts as well—collapses and you have something in its wake. That’s postmodernism. It’s very much a relational term, and it’s essentially based on the idea of freedom and difference. Modernism is like a transparent window, and it pretends to show you the world clearly, and postmodernism is like a shattered mirror, so it reflects yourself at yourself, but in fragments. It doesn’t necessarily pretend to truly show you anything; it’s simply a reflection of your own situation. That’s the long version; the short version is that postmodernism is what happens after modernism dies. What’s interesting, of course, is that modernism was revived in the 1990s. To some extent, it didn’t ever go away, because you always had modernist holdouts, but modernism again became the dominant style, and then you arguably have a kind of hybridization of various modernist and postmodernist motifs and approaches. But in any case, we’re thinking about postmodernism in the ’70s and ’80s, in that reactive, destructive way.

BG: In your previous craft projects and in your interest in craft, I am interested in your application of the term friction—where you identify a sense of working against something. Is that how you came to the idea of doing this project on postmodernism?

GA: The museum leadership pitched the idea to my cocurator Jane Pavitt and me, but it immediately appealed for exactly the reason you’re saying. I help edit The Journal of Modern Craft, which places modernism and craft in opposition. I’ve always thought of craft as something that is both produced by modernity and contests it. Postmodernism is the same thing, except with a very different structure.

Martine Bedin. Super Lamp, 1981. Photo: Christie's Images, Ltd.

BG: Do you tend to think in poles of opposition?

GA: Dialectically. It’s always about exposing a false opposition, or seeing how an opposition works, sometimes to create a synthesis and sometimes, possibly, to create further fragmentation as well. Marx thought that a real dialectic was one that was resolved. So he would say that if there was no possibility of resolution, you weren’t looking at a dialectic. But I think of opposition in postmodern terms, as leading to further fragmentation, or a rhizomatic, infinite cascade.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Andy Moon Wilson, Untitled, colored pencil on paper, 10in x 10in, 2010. Courtesy of Curator's Office.

Known for their visual intensity, both Simon Gouverneur and Andy Moon Wilson make an interesting pairing.  This micro gallery known as Curator’s Office displays two large paintings by Gouverneur surrounded by hundreds of smaller, rigorously drawn works on paper by Andy Moon Wilson.  Flat, yet vibrant color schemes and penetrating design motifs are characteristic of both artists’ work.  The pattern of vivid horizontal ziz-zag lines in Gouverneur’s Peyote II compliment the equally brilliant horizontal stripes of Moon Wilson’s Untitled.  Both artists’ intricate abstractions communicate an interest and knowledge of design even though their influences come from such different places.

Simon Gouverneur, Peyote II (detail), egg tempera, graphite, and acrylic on canvas, 48in x 48in, 1985, Courtesy of the Estate of Simon Gouverneur.

Simon Gouverneur refers to the I Ching, mandalas and Mayan and Aztec calendars as inspiration for his work, striving to attain something metaphysical. Andy Moon Wilson is more interested in visual intensity and how it communicates with historical and contemporary culture.  Gouverneur is on a spiritual quest whereas Moon Wilson prefers to expound on pattern, design and ornamentation and focuses more on the visceral than spiritual. Carpet designer by day, Andy Moon Wilson translates the algorithms he uses in designing carpets to paper and creates an infinite amount of linear compositions. Appealing to the opposite side of the brain, Simon Gouverneur’s work appeals to the romantic, holding secrets to past cultures and religions.

When I first received an invitation to the opening of Debt I must admit I was a little taken aback by the title. And, when I saw the two images that accompanied it, I was still a little confused at the connection between the title and the work. However, once I acquainted myself with the artists and their work, it became clear.  We all borrow elements from life.  Whether they are from past cultures, the works of living artists or aspects of contemporary society. We all owe a momentous debt to our surroundings.  But, unlike financial debt, this type of owing allows us to pay tribute to the things that have a profound effect on us, and find a way to further make them a part of our world.

Some interesting, albeit not really surprising, news: According to Calvin Tomkins’ profile of George Condo in this week’s New Yorker, Kanye West wanted the cover art for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy to get his album banned — because he wanted more publicity. From the feature:

“West came to Condo’s studio, where for several hours they listened to tapes of his music, and over the next few days Condo made eight or nine paintings. Two of them were portraits of West, one in extreme closeup, with mismatched eyes and four sets of teeth. Another showed his head, crowned and decapitated, placed sideways on a white slab, impaled by a sword. There was also a painting of a dyspeptic ballerina in a black tutu, a painting of the crown and the sword by themselves in a grassy landscape, and a lurid scene of a naked black man on a bed, straddled by a naked white female creature with fearsome features, wings, no arms, and a long, spotted tail. West chose that one.”

Condo’s mid-career survey exhibition, which will feature more than eighty paintings and sculptures, opens at the New Museum on January 26th. Let us know if you think any of his Kanye-commissioned covers (which are pictured after the jump, with commentary from Condo) should make the cut.

“That’s a good painting. She’s a kind of fragment, between a sphinx, a phoenix, a haunting ghost, a harpy. And then Kanye is also in some sort of strange 1970s burned-out back room of a Chicago blues club having a beer — so far away from the real Kanye West that it’s just a scream.”

“It’s sort of cubist, you know, this portrait with all these different dimensions to it. Like an African mask with almost a modern face. I wanted to get that feeling that he’s almost a Miles Davis-like guy.”

“His tragedy was a kind of exile that Kanye imposed upon himself. He was free from exile by having the cathartic moment in the image. He’s alive in the painting, you know what I mean? In a strange way it’s like, he opened his eyes.”

“We were hanging around one night, and we were listening to that tune ‘Runaway,’ and somehow Kanye grabbed onto that idea of the ballerina. He just said, ‘Hey man, I’d like to have a great ballerina painting.’ I thought of a ballerina toasting. You know, ‘let’s toast to the scumbags.’”

“[Kanye and I] talked about paintings in the early baroque era depicting religious figures, and wanted to push that out into the open in today’s world. It mirrors the ‘paranoid’ riff on one of the tracks.”

All images and quotes via Vulture.

We continue this week’s coverage with Rebekah Drysdale’s review of Rainbow City.

Art Basel Miami Beach invades the shores of Dade County each December, bringing its legion of satellite fairs, pop up shows, performances, and, of course, parties. The overwhelming amount of activity can create cultural conflict for those who strive to see it all; dissecting the extensive programming is a waste of time. This year, I spent less time perusing the booths at the Convention Center and worrying about which satellite fairs to attend. Instead, I opted to embrace whatever came my way. Traveling with friends helps assuage my own art fair anxieties.

I attended Design Miami/ for the first time, due to its new and imminent presence on the P-Lot of the Miami Beach Convention Center, directly behind Art Basel. As noted by the fair’s acting director, Wava Carpenter, “There’s something magical about placing high quality design in such close proximity to high quality art; it’ll make for a very interesting conversation about the nature, boundaries and overlap between them.” Carpenter’s comment transcends this immediate comparison.

After touring the Design Miami/ tent designed by Moorhead & Moorhead, I took the shuttle downtown, where I encountered FriendsWithYou‘s environmental installation Rainbow City, a idyllic realm of childhood sounds, imagery and attitudes. Inspired by the Hindu festival Holi, Rainbow City consisted of forty inflatable characters, ranging in height from ten to forty feet. Their simple geometric design, pleasing primary palette, and repetitive sonic elements awakened a juvenescent spirit within observers of any age.

It is important to move past analysis of accessibility of these fair(s) in order to enjoy the present experience, for there remains some intrinsic connection amongst it all. As FriendsWithYou states, “Rainbow City invites spectators to participate in a responsive environment, offering an opportunity to connect physically and psychologically with an energetic yet ephemeral setting.” After all, is this not what we are all here to do?

I am always interested in the fine line between design and art. The conversation usually erupts in pursed lipped dialogues that are wonderful in their tenuous confusion.  Designers and artists too often set up in one rigidly defined camp or another and fly flags proclaiming the value of the emotional emphasis of art or the pragmatic necessity of design. The ideologically large—but practically small—ravine separating the two is fiercely guarded and both worlds potentially (depending on the stringency of ones alliance) suffer for it.  The new work of German artist Sabrina Siedt is a lovely tightrope between the two worlds and one she walks with great elegance. Identifying herself as both a fashion photographer and conceptual artist, Siedt weaves the ideal bodies of her subjects with sculptural elements, the purpose of which is not immediately identifiable nor necessary.

Siedt says, “I connect values with the environmental material and create photos with an emotional language and absurd aspects.”  The photos are clearly influenced by and arguably benefit from Siedt’s training in fashion photography and while they come with editorial trademarks—contorted bodies, gravity defying hair and disjointed story lines—they ultimately read as a set of art works.

Siedt studied photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmun. She has exhibited at  Vernissa Ge KSK-Ausstellung in Bochum and at the Welten Am Fluss in Recklinghause.

Roy McMakin, My Slatback Chair with a Pair of Attached Chairs (2010)

Maybe it’s a case of seeing something a lot because I am hyper-interested—like when you suddenly notice that every other car on the freeway is a VW Jetta after you begin to drive one yourself—but I have been seeing a lot of design making its way into the fine art world of late. I’m talking about capital “D” Design, which for the purposes of this piece refers to furniture and other functional objects that also assume a glossy aesthetic that reach beyond pure functionality into the realm of art. Design is actually a process, but as a noun these days it is used to describe what we see when flipping through an issue of Dwell or the pages of the Design Within Reach catalog. Because even the great academic of our time, Wikipedia, can’t pin down a true definition, I can’t either in so many words. But I recognize that so-called fine art and design maintain separate identities (and followings) in large part.

I would be doing my Art History degree an injustice if I didn’t acknowledge that, yes, design has been an important player in the fine art world for a long time. What I’m seeing these days is in fact a resurgence of the Bauhaus-like interest in the coexistence of all arts, and a Meret Oppenheim-like playfulness in approaching the definitions of each genre. Still though, design hasn’t penetrated the white cube of the contemporary art gallery as much as painting or non-functional sculpture has over the years, until recently. As design makes its way into the exhibition scene, definition derives from context more than anything. Who among us hasn’t feared taking a seat at The Museum of Contemporary Art because we had doubts as to whether the bench was for resting upon or a part of the exhibition?

Roy McMakin A Wall Sculpture of a Drop Leaf Table (2010)

In his recent solo exhibition, In and On, at Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin, TX, artist Roy McMakin presented a body of work that dives head-on into the ever-murkening waters of design and fine art. McMakin, who is also a furniture designer (again, the artist’s bio requires a distinction between his trades), combines found objects of the minimalist and much celebrated Mid-Century Modern design traditions with his own sculpture work, essentially reassigning all components new roles, or stripping them entirely of their original intentions. A minimalist drop leaf table hangs on the wall as a purely visual object; a duo of Mid-Century chairs gets tacked to McMakin’s slatback chair to form a disjointed piece wherein the latter loses its functionality and all parts become simply “art.” Click here to listen to the artist discuss his work from a March 24th gallery talk.

Roy McMakin lives and works in Seattle, WA where he owns and operates Domestic Furniture. He earned his BA and MFA at the University of California, San Diego. His work has been exhibited widely, including at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York and Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR. He has been commissioned by The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle and The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, among other institutions.

Ray Tomlinson. @. 1971. Here displayed in ITC American Typewriter Medium, the closest approximation to the character used by a Model 33 Teletype in the early 1970s. Courtesy MoMA.

Days ago, the Museum of Modern Art‘s Department of Architecture and Design announced their acquisition of a new work into the collection. The piece is one that we of the age of email and Twitter know well—the @ symbol. Since the announcement, the Internet has been abuzz with the news, mostly because its implications reach far beyond the art and design world. It’s so familiar to us all. It’s either momentous or silly, depending on your personal view, but it can’t be denied that the acquisition marks a poignant point in the history of art, in that “It relies on the assumption that physical possession of an object as a requirement for an acquisition is no longer necessary,” as was stated by MoMA Department of Architecture and Design Senior Curator, Paola Antonelli, in her essay on the matter of the acquisition published on March 22, 2010 by MoMA.

In her essay, Antonelli explains the history of the @, and how it came to be valued as a piece important enough for the permanent collection at MoMA. Though the symbol “dates back to the sixth or seventh century,” it’s Ray Tomilson—creator of the first email system in 1971—who elevated it “to [be a] defining symbol of the computer age,” according to Antonelli. She goes on to defend the symbol as a design, saying, “Tomlinson performed a powerful act of design that not only forever changed the @ sign’s significance and function, but which also has become an important part of our identity in relationship and communication with others,” and that “His (unintended) role as a designer must be acknowledged and celebrated by the one collection—MoMA’s—that has always celebrated elegance, economy, intellectual transparency, and a sense of the possible future directions that are embedded in the arts of our time, the essence of modern.”

What do you think about the acquisition? You can always comment below, email us at info@dailyserving.com, or let us know on Twitter: @DAILYSERVING. (Get it? Basically you can’t escape the symbol, which is now a precious work of art. Something to consider when crafting your responses.)

One of the fathers and pioneers of the American Urban Art movement, born out of New York City’s late 70′s and early 80′s graffiti heyday is the legendary artist Futura. Opening this weekend in Los Angeles will be a four day event and exhibition featuring the artist and his new works in what will be the artists first ever solo show in LA, titled KRUNK. The exhibition, which was previous listed to be in an sercret location has been stated to be held in Downtown Los Angeles on the corner of 6th and Main.

Futura, also known as Furtura 2000, has developed an international career over the past 30 years working as a prolific artist, illustrator, graphic designer, and custom toy designer. He as worked with companies such as Phillie Blunt, Zoo York, and Nike.

The exhibition’s title Yo.n.I is derived from yoni, the Sanskrit word for “divine passage” or sacred space rooted in the worship of female creativity and sexual organ. With layers of visual metaphor, Mutu likes to force her viewers to question assumptions about race, gender, geography, history and beauty. Mutu received her BFA from Cooper Union, New York and her MFA from Yale University School of Art. The artist was born in Nairobi, Kenya and currently lives and works in New York City.

On view at the Whitney Museum of American Art through Feb 2008, artist Kara Walker will be showing “My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love”. The artist explores racism in the American psyche through large-scale silhouettes that tell a story as they spread from one end of a room to the other. Walker has created a repertoire of narratives in which she conflates fact and fiction to uncover the roots of racial and gender bias. Her imagery is haunted by sexuality, violence, and subjugation while depicting historical narratives of injury caused by the legacy of slavery. She’s been featured in Art21 and was in Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in The World, Artists and Entertainers in 2007. Walker received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She now lives in New York and is on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University.