Jan Mancuska’s films, installations and stage performances are based on the reception and conception of space. The artist uses linguistic and figurative means to implement a reconfiguration of space, often connected to a fragmentary, dramaturgical, sometimes surreal or existentialistic narrative. A predominant theme in his choreographic concepts is movement; in visual, semantic, architectural and corporeal forms of expression it is articulated – and then dissolved. For his present show in Meyer Riegger gallery the artist created three new pieces, which shift between graphic art, text piece, sculpture, installation and film. Reconstruction, association and disassociation are perceptive techniques that connect and correlate the individual pieces.

In his installation Notion in Progress, Jan Mancuska outlines a description of space. The focal points of the work are the three words Cine, Mato and Graphy which the artist positioned in the room in various media and materials – a free-standing wooden sculpture, a wall projection and a floor graphic. Similar to a mind map, individual associative words branch out from this primary word structure, developing like a chain of terms – in this case physically along wires that span the room diagonally. The installation oscillates between the visibility and the immateriality of thoughts, which condense into fictive, cinematic sequences within the process of contemplating and reading.

The 16 mm film Postcatastrophic Story is presented on three projectors and causes the disassociation of a chronological order to become a constitutive part of the film image as well as the film narrative: The plot revolves around a news report shown from the viewpoint and basically from the memory of five protagonists. The subject is an insignificant catastrophe that occurred in an unspecified town, which one of the protagonists noticed in a newspaper. In the course of the film, which shows each scene looped in delay, the characters as well as the plot threads belonging to the individuals engage in a dialogue with one another.

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Julie Henson: To start with, I would love for you to talk about your practice. One of the things that I noticed when I first entered the gallery is that your work appears to be rooted in both technology and the creation of an image, which seem to be very important parts of your practice. If you could start by telling me a little bit about how you work and about creating images?

Jim Campbell: My background before I made electronic art was filmmaking, which is completely about making images, unlike a lot of people in new media who come from painting or from sculpture. So the image has been the most important thing to me.  In fact, even sometimes a little too much so, in that I do get complaints from friends who, for example, will say that since it has to plug I should show that it plugs in. I tend to really hide everything as much as I can and just leave the image. Obviously that changed with Exploded View (Birds).

So you aren’t asking about my background but my daily practice, right?

JH: Well, I am really interested in your process of creation more than anything else, because the work is so complex and, like you are saying, the way they are made is somewhat hidden. They become very wonderful and mysterious things to look at, and I find that really fascinating.

JC: Well there are two works here that come at it from a different perspective, one would be Exploded View (Birds) and the other would be Taxi Ride to Sarah’s Studio. Sometimes what I do, and Exploded View (Birds) is a good example, is that I will start with an idea for a technology, like taking my relatively 2D images, and really trying to come off the wall and just pull the image off or stretch it out. And so the idea for the technology was there before the image that was going to go on the display. That probably happens about half the time, where I will have a new technology and I will try a bunch of different things in it until I get something that makes sense. Sometimes it even takes a couple of years to come up with imagery that really matches the display. Up until that point they might be real works, I might sell them, I might display them, but they aren’t necessarily the perfect match with the technology. One of the things that I say to myself is that if I can do this with video, I should do it with video. There has to be a reason that I use this low-resolution technology to do each of these works.

I have been working with what I refer to as “the curtain works” for three years maybe, and I think Taxi Ride to Sarah’s Studio is a good example of a pathway to this work. If you look at the work a little more than just glance at it, you’ll see that it changes resolution as it goes across.  And all of the works up until this one were like the others – they reflected off the wall but they were still grids of consistent resolution. One of the things that this technology allows for, given how modular it is, is to change where the pixels are and allow for something other than the perfect X/Y grid. And that came together with another idea that I have had for many years, which is to do a work that somehow represents peripheral vision. And that is this work. It marries one idea that is more of a concept or structural idea with the technology that I have been playing with for three years.

JH: It is interesting that you say that, because one of the things that I kept coming back to is that the image rests somewhere in between the object and illusion. There is something about your creation of an image that becomes a play between the image and your physical space, and your physical limits of being able to perceive it. One thing that caught my attention in Taxi Ride to Sarah’s Studio and Market Street Pause was that they almost live as abstraction until they start moving, which I find really fascinating. How do you work with the play between movement and still image or image in space, which is something that I see in all the work?

JC: One of the very first works like this that I made I tried to photograph, and about 98 of 100 pictures didn’t come out, because they were stills.  And what I quickly realized was that the way in which you perceive these images is through their movement. That is actually what that work is about. By freezing, the image goes to abstraction. It makes you aware of your relationship between perception and movement. Hopefully it freezes and goes into abstraction, but it is never really abstract because one can comprehend the image before it freezes. I have done a number of works, probably ten, that really deal with that relationship between perception, abstraction and movement. One of the ones that I think was successful was one of the first ones, around 2004, where I took an image of ocean waves moving and then gradually slowed it down until it stops completely over a 10 minute period. It starts out completely representational and ends up purely abstract. So it slowly goes from one to the other, and Market Street Pause is a more abrupt version of that. I am fascinated by how if you press pause in a video image that it stays an image, yet it in the low-resolution works, it actually becomes abstract when it pauses. This is really unique to low-resolution work.

JH: Yeah, it is a really affective way of recognizing the connection between what your brain realizes as image and what it understands as abstraction. That is the first thing that I noticed when I walked in the door, and you can really see this in Exploded View (Birds) and Taxi Ride to Sarah’s Studio. You started talking about it a little, but one thing I noticed was that a lot of the work has very different spaces, but they seem to be environments that the viewer relates to from a very observational or removed place. Can you talk about how you pick our imagery?

Market Street Pause (still), 2010. Courtesy of Hosfelt Gallery

JC: Yeah, I don’t think it is profound, but hopefully some of them become profound in terms of what I do with them.  And I say that because I am very limited (because what we were talking about in terms of the movement) in what I can shoot. The images have to be very simple in some ways and the backgrounds generally can’t be very complex because you just can’t tell what you are looking at otherwise. So I need to find these very simple images, and I use the figure a lot because the figure is an image that relates to what I call primal perception. And going back to what we were talking about in terms of movement, I believe that we perceive movement almost separately from detail and edges. I think movement is less analyzed as it’s interpreted, so these works get rid of the details, leaving open the more primitive pathways to one’s brain, and allow one to perceive things like isolated movement.

But, I think I drifted from your question.

JH: That’s ok, because this was something that I was really interested in to start with. In Exploded View (Birds) and Taxi Ride to Sarah’s Studio, the technology seems to be more apparent than it is in a lot of the other work. How do you feel about exposing the system?

JC: Like I was saying earlier, I tend to hide it as much as possible because it is really the image that I am interested in. But, I have done a couple of works that connect to Heisenberg, and for me, Taxi Ride to Sarah’s Studio does this because the display device is actually obscuring the image. The only way to look at the image is through the display device.

JH: I think that the same thing happens with Exploded View (Birds). Your ability to perceive the image is through this field or mask of lights. I find it really interesting that even as you walk around it, that the form maintains it shape. How did you find that technology to create an image in a special field?

JC: Most images that I would put in that display can’t be seen from the sides – they mostly go completely abstract. Because the birds are so small and the movement is so simple, you can see them from the side. So it is really about seeing it from the front. The image is exploded towards you by taking the LEDs and pulling them towards you. So when you look at it from far away, it looks flat – just like one of my  “normal” images. But, when you look at it from the side it becomes meaningless, which I like. It’s the same as we were talking about with movement. When you slow it down, it becomes abstract. In this case, as you walk around it, it becomes abstract.

And honestly, it was just an experiment. If I explode this image in this way, will anything be recognizable? Will we be able to tell what we are looking out, or will it just be a waste of my time? Honestly, that is what drives me to do a lot of these works. I am just really curious to know how it will turn out.

JH: With Taxi Ride to Sarah’s Studio, you were talking about the focus changing from the left to the right side, and I noticed that the piece actually curves off the wall. Does the change in focus come from the distance from the wall or in the image itself?

JC: It is actually in both. It is in the resolution of the image. So, it is very high resolution on the left side. It uses  50 pixels to define that side and on the right it is only 6 pixels. It is almost a 10:1 resolution change going across. It is not actually getting blurrier, it only changes resolution.

JH: That’s amazing, because it this goes right back to this relationship to your perception, and shows how little changes like that can actually make things come into view or show distance.

JC: The reason it moves away from the wall, and it is kind of a technical reason, is that the LEDs have a cone of light that come out of them. So when the LEDs are close together, they need have to be close to the wall to have their reflected light overlap. But on the far right end, where the cone hits the wall, it is much bigger, so the LEDs need to be further from the wall.

JH: It is interesting that it is a somewhat technical reason, because the shape actually mimics the sensation in the image – moving in the car. It is nice to hear that it is not only a visual tool to create an experience.

JC: Right. Well, they all go together. But in the experience of driving, as things get closer they come into your peripheral vision, which is blurry. So the technology actually reminded me of the sensation of riding in a car, and that’s why I chose this image.

JH: So since the work is so technically complex, how much of this work is made by you, or do you outsource it? How do you come across the technology?

JC: I am an engineer, so I still get trade magazines to to keep up with technology. A few media artists have told me that I cheat, because I know what I am doing in terms of the electrons moving around on the back of the board. I have three assistants plus contractors and vendors in Silicon Valley that build my circuit boards for the works. For example, for Fundamental Interval (Waves), it has nine circuit boards fabricated from my design. We take the nine and put them together in my studio to make it. But the fun part is when it is not a cookie cutter of something I have already done, like Taxi Ride to Sarah’s Studio. The ones I have made like this in the past, had all the strands made with the same distance between the lights, and for this one they are all different. There was no way to send it out to a fabricator to have it built. So the quirky ones and the prototypes, I definitely do in my studio.

I am working on a large-scale public art project for the San Diego Airport and so we are having all kinds of materials cut and tested for the studio, and then once we have them done, we will find a place to have this 1000-foot long sculpture fabricated.

JH: Well, what other projects do you have coming up?

JC: Beyond the project for the San Diego Airport, the most fun thing in the near future is that I am doing a large-scale version of Exploded View (Birds) in Madison Square Park in New York as part of their rotating public art program. Instead of LEDs, they will be light bulbs, and instead of one inch a part they will be eight inches apart, and instead of six feet wide it will be 50 feet wide, 20 feet high and 20 feet deep. I am really interested to see what it is going to look like because the equivalent of being ten feet away here will be 50 feet away there. There is a little nervousness that it will be too abstract and that you will really need to see it from three blocks away. I am also doing a an intermediate sized one in the lobby of the SFMOMA in 2011.

Jim Campbell’s work will be on view through June 19th, 2010 at Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco. In 2011, his work will also be on view at The National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen and the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki.

Closing next weekend at Regen Projects II in Los Angeles is new work by Catherine Opie. These photographs titled Twelve Miles to the Horizon document Opie’s trip on a container ship from Korea to Long Beach, capturing the sunrise and sunset across the ten days of the trip. Each image is composed with equal amount of water and sky, deliberately placing the viewer in the time and place documented in the image, allowing for both consistency in relation to the experience and variation in color and texture within the image. What remains is a sensation of solitude within this documented time and place, allowing the viewer to sense the duration of the work through these highly seductive and reductive photographs.

Although compositionally this body of work reflects her Icehouses (2001) and Surfer (2003) series, conceptually, these horizon photographs move in a different direction.  Although the series maintains both aesthetic consistency and variation as these earlier series did, what strikes more is the repetition of the action — a sensation of documenting time rather than just the beauty and stillness present in the earlier series. What remains in the viewer’s mind is the constraint embedded in the image, reaching more to the limitations present in her self portraits than to her more aesthetic and experiential photographs. These photographs allow the viewer to witness her self-imposed restrictions, revealing the decisions that created the series of images rather than just a documented experience. What remains are sensations of time and place, bound in a beautifully seductive series of photographs.
Catherine Opie received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1985 and her MFA from CalArts in 1988. She is currently a tenured professor at UCLA, and her work has been exhibited internationally. In 2008, she had a mid-career survey at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York — and the New York Times has a feature corresponding to the show. She has had solo exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis; Photographers’ Gallery, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. An exhibition of Opie’s football, surfer, and landscape photographs will open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in July 2010.

Now on view at SOFA gallery, a DIY space in the living room of an Austin apartment, is the work of Jeff DeGolier. This pairing is fitting since both the artist and gallery make due with what is on hand. DeGolier, who is based in Brooklyn, came to Austin for a week and harvested bric-a-brac from trash piles and swap meets. Day by day, he assembled a sculpture at the center of the room that runs from floor to ceiling. Hung on the walls are a few digital prints based on similar assemblage sculptures.

The sculpture starts with the ceiling fan that becomes a source of electricity for a faux hearth made of a painted tire and an illuminated white plastic bag as well as some small fans with flashing blue lights, typically used to trick out computers like low riders. Pompoms, plastic hangers and a mop head are also carefully assembled in a way that approaches a kind of ritualized fetish object for our American consumerist wasteland.

This space of assemblage, in which objects hang, pivot and tilt, is flattened and framed in the prints. Color is heightened and patterns emerge to quote the psychedelic without falling into the traps of its potential sentimentality. What holds this work in check is the intensity of its realism and directness combined with a quirky specificity of craft. Like many of the artists in the New Museum’s 2008 exhibition Unmonumental DeGolier dispenses with slick expensive production in favor of the quotidian, making this living room both extraordinary and accessible.

On view at the Art Institute of Chicago until May 23 is Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s work Always After (The Glass House).  Ovalle has gained international recognition for a diverse, conceptually rigorous body of work-both activist-inspired public art and studio-based objects-that consist of formally arresting, often technically complex, poetic meditations on aesthetics, nature, and modernity.

His 2006 work Always After (The Glass House) is the fifth installment in a series of film-based works—created between 2000 and 2006—that directly engage the architecture of Mies van der Rohe. The architect serves as a stage from which Manglano-Ovalle conducts a self-reflexive critique of prevailing notions of “failed modernity.” Despite the many broken promises of modernity, the artist has said, “So much has actually come to fruition….We do live in glass houses.” Shot entirely on location at Crown Hall, van der Rohe’s 1950 school of architecture at the IIT campus in Chicago, the film documents the 2005 ceremonial dedication of the building’s renovation during which the architect’s own grandson broke the windows with a sledgehammer. Manglano-Ovalle captured the entirety of the action and its aftermath on high-speed film, which when played back at normal speed, appears protracted. This combined with the decision to edit all direct indications of the original event from the final display-and an atmospheric soundtrack strategically intercut with periods of silence, resulted in a pared down, nearly abstract image. Panning close-ups show the crystalline shards of broken glass being pushed with a wide broom alongside the feet of anonymous passers-by. Lacking the specificity of context, viewers are left to interpret the scene for themselves.

Manglano-Ovalle has exhibited his work at acclaimed institutions both nationally and internationally.  Currently Manglano-Ovalle is presenting a new work at Documenta 12, Kassel, Germany (2007).  He is represented by Max Protetch Gallery, New York.

In 2009, Horowitz embarked on The Marc Horowitz Signature Series, for which he signed his name on a map of the United States and drove that route, stopping at 19 towns along the way. He documented these adventures in short webisodes. In Nampa, Idaho, Horowitz established the first Anonymous Semi-Nudist Colony (complete with complimentary jean shorts and ski masks). In Battle Mountain, Nevada, he pitched an idea to local politicians that involved changing the name of the town to something less pugnacious, suggesting the gentler alternative “Tender Pie Hill.” Other notable projects include Google Maps Road Trip and Talkshow 247.

In December 2009, Horowitz participated in a panel discussion as part of Art Basel Miami Beach’s Video Art Program, “Video Art and Mainstream Distribution,” curated by New York’s Creative Time. Short films from The Marc Horowitz Signature Series were shown prior to the discussion. DailyServing’s Rebekah Drysdale was able to ask him a few questions about his past projects and future pursuits during an interview conducted over Skype in December.

Rebekah Drysdale:  At your discussion in Miami, you mentioned you studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute after leaving the business world. Do you think the tools you are using now, such as YouTube and Google maps, are the new media for this generation of artists?

Marc Horowitz: I think so. Painting and drawing will never die, obviously, but with the advent of the internet and the accessibility of video and broadcasting, I think that there is going to be such an insurgence of artists using these media.

RD: Your work engages the public, but seems very personal as well. What is the most influential encounter you have had in the making of your films?

MH: Omigod, there are so many of them!

RD: Can you pick one or two?

MH: The most memorable project is probably one you have never seen before. It was one I did while at the Art Institute, called Free Ideas. I went down to the corner of Market and Powell streets in San Francisco, where they turn the cable car. There are all kinds of tourists and homeless people there, the Seven Galaxies guy, preaching about the end of the world, religious people, preaching about God, and then there was me. I had two blank white sandwich boards that I made. I was handing out blank sheets of paper saying “free ideas.” People were confused. Most of the business people didn’t want to deal with me. One guy came up to me and said I was doing God’s work, for whatever reason. Several tourists thought that I was always there and wanted to have their pictures taken with me. Homeless people wanted me to write letters to their family members, so we would, and when we were done, they wouldn’t have their address. Kids wanted to have paper airplane throwing contests. I honestly think that project was what got me started in most everything I’m doing now.

RD: How did Free Ideas influence your later works?

MH: It was just taking such a simple idea as a blank sheet of paper and putting yourself out there in the world with that one element and then seeing what happens. I think that notion informed a lot of my projects after that. The Dinner Tour is the simple idea of dinner, at its least common denominator. Driving your signature across the United States is just a signature, something we use everyday. The Google Maps Road Trip was me and my friend wanting to take a simple road trip together, but not having the time or money, so we had to do it virtually.

RD: Tell me more about the experience and execution of the Google Maps Road Trip.

MH: The Google Maps Road Trip was a fascinating way of seeing America. It was also a really great way to get to know Peter (Baldes). In 2003, he e-mailed me saying I should have a blog. I had no idea who he was and why he was contacting me. Nevertheless, I immediately called him up because he put his phone number in the e-mail. We talked for a bit and he seemed nice enough, so we loosely kept in touch. I didn’t actually meet Peter in person until last year at a friend’s wedding. So all in all, we had only spent about twelve hours together in-real-life before we executed GMRT, and then we shared 40+ hours together “driving” across the country virtually. For me, it was like the Dinner Tour, except I got to know a single person, Peter, much more in depth.

The technical aspects of the project get a little complicated, but basically we left my house in LA and began driving together to Pete’s place in Richmond exclusively on Google Maps. For nine straight days, we “virtually drove” across the country by zooming in all the way on Google Maps and continuously pressing the Google Maps arrow keys eastward. We broadcast the entire experience live on googlemapsroadtrip.com. This meant that folks were able to not only see and hear us as we traveled, but also join us in a real-time chat room. Just think of it as an invitation for someone to hop in the backseat and ride along with us for part of the adventure.

RD: It sounds like your interaction with Peter during the Google Maps Road Trip was similar to what travel buddies may experience on a real cross country road trip. Do you think virtual travel will become more popular?

MH: Google Maps Road Trip is very lo-fi and basic. I would love to see it be implemented in schools. You could have an American fourth grade class travel around Europe, and (time zones permitting) they could travel with European students. They could go back and forth and talk about the things that are local to them. With the accessibility of Flickr photos, YouTube, and Panoramio (Google’s photo program), you can see all kinds of stuff you wouldn’t otherwise see. You can even bring up peoples’ live broadcasts while you are traveling. So, yeah I definitely think it is the start of something.

RD: In terms of your creative process, it seems that projects like The National Dinner Tour or the Marc Horowitz Signature Series would require much more planning than something live like the virtual road trip. Do you prefer to work with a plan or broadcast live?

MH: The Dinner Tour involved a serious amount of logistical planning more than anything else. Getting places on time, setting up dinner dates, etc. And I had no help. It was just a one man army. But that was a not-for-broadcast type of project. It was more experiential. Then I did the Signature Series, which was highly planned. A lot of it was written. We had to have all of the props, the locations secured, etc. It was a different way of working for me, but I really enjoyed it. Through all of the planning, there was still a lot of room for chance because we were doing the project in public, and in that way it felt very improvisational, like my previous works.

After that, I did Talkshow 247, where I broadcast myself live for three months, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week on talkshow247.com. This project about destroyed me. There was always a live audience chatting away, commenting on my every action. It made me feel like I constantly had to be entertaining an audience that wasn’t even physically there. I really just wanted to live my life, but it became addictive to look at the chat and see what the audience was saying, and then do things to make my life more exciting. I didn’t really like that. So, to answer the question, I would much rather do some more planned out projects in the future, like the Signature Series. That is the direction I want to head with these projects.

RD: What type of work do you show in galleries?

MH:  I had some shows in Europe that were mostly drawings and sculptures because it is really hard to sell video art. It’s almost impossible. At some point, you have to make a product if you want to make a living as an artist, which is weird, you know? I did a show in Italy, called More Better. In it, I had made a drawing on how to make a helicopter out of a disassembled brick house and GMC truck. Really futile stuff, like a remote control bearskin rug. I made a suit of armor out of kids’ shin guards that is designed for people with a fear of sharp objects who are on a budget. Also included was The Tragedy Car Series, drawings of cars dedicated to terrible moments in history. For example, The Titanic Car.  The drawings are interesting to me because I can really go way far out there, without actually having to execute these proposals. For a show I had at Nuke Gallery in Paris, I did a series called At Least You Don’t Have it This Bad. One of the drawings is a guy with circular saws for hands, and he’s trying to eat chicken McNuggets. That stuff is more fantasy-based. It’s really one big joke, they’re one liners. I like that.

RD: What are you working on now?

MH: I’m about to launch a new project called The Advice of Strangers. I’ve been working on it for about a year, but haven’t told anyone about it yet. Basically folks will be able to vote online on all my life decisions, small to large. Should I comfort the girl across from me who is crying? Do I tell my mom she should work out? Should I eat the noodle that fell on the floor that my roommate jokingly offered me? Should I start looking for a new place to live cause my landlord is an asshole? Do I move in with my girlfriend? Each decision will have a time constraint depending on the magnitude of the choice. And when the poll closes, I’ll post photo and/or video documentation of what happened as a result of the poll so people can see how their vote has effected my life.

The website for the project is www.theadviceofstrangers.com. If you are interested in participating, please check the site for the launch date.

RD: Your work certainly has a refreshingly witty appeal. Is there one last thing you would like DailyServing readers to know about you or your practice?

MH: A big component of my work is my blog, www.ineedtostopsoon.com. I am always posting fresh stuff there. Another thing that I am really into is Twitter. I’m so addicted to it. I’m using it as sort of a diary! You can follow me at www.twitter.com/marchorowitz.

LIKENESS is the current group exhibition at the Mattress Factory Museum of Installation Art that examines human depiction during a post-Warholian era in which new technology has played an influential role. It includes the work of artists Jim Campbell, Paul DeMarinis, Jonn Herschend, Nikki Lee, Joseph Mannino, Greta Pratt and Tony Oursler. Elaine A. King, who is a freelance critic and curator as well as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University teaching Art History/Theory/Museum Studies, has guest-curated the exhibition.

Among the offerings is Paul DeMarinis’ new work, Dust.  With this work DeMarinis explores facial similarities, pairs of faces, and the abstraction of images into the dust. DeMarinis presents a fragment of this collection of likeness-pairs, scanned sequentially into the light-memory of phosphorescent powder. After a few minutes of exposure to the projected image, the powder retains a faint green image of the two faces on its surface, something akin to the ‘latent image’ of photographic film or the veil of memory. Unlike photographic film, though, the image starts to distort. Propelled by low frequency sound vibrations, the powder starts to flow and dance, first distorting the faces and erasing their likeness, then distorting them into patterns of abstract light in motion, with form and beauty all its own.

On the other end of the spectrum is Jonn Herschend’s many-sided conceptual, Self Portrait as a PowerPoint Proposal for an Amusement Park Ride.  The installation is characterized by a strong sense of narrative, not strictly limited to straightforward vignettes or mimetic representation. In his complex self-portrait one finds a narrative that resembles fantasy, role-playing, fiction and a touch of reality. Herschend’s choice of subjects and materials contribute to the kind of story he opts to tell and show his audience.

Courtesy: Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo/ The Quiet in the Land, Laos/ the Artist

The Mizuma Art Gallery of Tokyo is showcasing artist Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s ongoing project Breathing is Free: 12,756.3 at Art Positions in Art Basel Miami Beach 2009.  This complex and meaningful project is a statement on the current condition of the refugee and, in Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s words, a ‘reflection and offering to the refugees whose lives are to run or to perish’.  As an artist with resources and a passport, Nguyen-Hatsushiba is part of the global elite, whose mobility effortlessly enables movement across national borders.  Through his step and sustained mental and physical discipline the artist physically embodies the desire and struggle of the powerless refugee that is on the move and longs, as the artist notes, ‘to be on “the other side” instead.’

The work is defined not only by Nguyen-Hatsushiba’s act of running, but by the deliberately plotted path the artist takes which crosses any national and ethnic divisions.  In his effort to run 12,756.3 miles – equivalent to the most direct circumference of the earth – Nguyen-Hatsushiba chooses urban areas with a history of forced displacement.  The artist has completed runs in places such as Geneva, Tokyo, Singapore, Manchester and Ho Chi Minh City.  The paths taken in each of these places forms a  shape – often organic – with metaphorical meaning.

Courtesy: Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo/ The Quiet in the Land, Laos/ the Artist.

On view in the Mizuma Art Gallery booth at Art Basel Miami Beach is video footage from a selection of Nguyen-Hatsushibi’s runs paired with ‘earth drawings’ or ‘running drawings’ which map his route from an aerial perspective.  These ‘drawings’ are actually lambda prints created by transposing GPS data of his movements onto aerial photographs of each of the cities chosen for the project.  These GPS transfer prints reveal the symbolic shapes formed by the path of his runs.

Nguyen-Hatsushibi’s film The Ground, the Root, and the Air:  The Passing of the Bodhi Tree from 2004-2007 (single channel video, 14 min, 30 sec) is also on view.  This video explores globalization and resulting loss of tradition in Luang Prabang, Laos.  The image of the runner, an empty stadium, the lantern, the Mekong River and the Bodhi tree serve as symbols of this economic change – as well as hope for the future.

Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba has shown internationally and can be found in important collections such as the Centre Pompidou and the Whitney Museum of American Art.  He received his BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.  Nguyen-Hatsushiba currently lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City.  His current project for Breathing is Free: 12,756.3 is set in Chicago.

Art Basel Miami Beach ends 6 December 2009.

Massimo Guerrera (2009) Meeting, Ink, pencil and acrylic on paper, 54" x 44"

After six years of operation, the artist-run Crawl Space Gallery in Seattle has decided to close its doors and end their impressive programming of exhibitions, residencies, public forums, publications, and experimental projects. The gallery is currently presenting Stranger Circumstances as their final exhibition. The show features Crawl Space artist in residency, Massimo Guerrera as well as artists Alana Riley, Ron Tran with performances during the opening by the Seattle-based artist collective PDL, featuring Jason Puccinelli, Jed Dunkerley and Greg Lundgren.

Alana Riley (2004) Stephan from the series Support System, C-print

As the press release mentions, “Stranger Circumstances, brings together artists who devise strategies to connect with people they would otherwise never encounter.” Resident artist Massimo Guerrera explores the methods in which people communicate using language, meditation, exertion and sharing by collaborating with strangers to create artworks through a variety of media. During his time at Crawl Space, the artist collaborated with a dozen participates to create what he calls “a living installation.”  Alana Riley documents short performative interactions with strangers. Her exhibited works involve the artist asking participants to either lie on top of her, placing their full body weight as they see fit, or allow her to carry them piggie-back throughout their workspace. Ron Tran documents strangers within close range to observe particular gestures and interactions. Whether through collaboration, perforative acts or documentation, each artist is using the uncontrolled actions of strangers as a cornerstone of their conceptual practice.

Stranger Circumstances is curated by Jennifer Campbell and will be on view through November 29th.

While contemporary technology has brought forth droves of artists and amateurs alike using digital means to create a photograph, Cassandra C Jones explores digital media without adding to a world over saturated with images. In her current solo show titled Send Me a Link, with Baer Ridgway Exhibitions in San Francisco, Jones recycles images found through internet research and recontextualizes them through still and animated digital collage, creating a sense of motion and depth through static imagery. By incorporating images that are repeatedly used in amateur and stock photography, Jones redefines the viewer’s relationship to the appropriated photo and creates a new understanding of the world’s bond to the ubiquitous image.

In this body of work, Jones constructs new assembled images from photos which would be considered cliche or mundane, due to the mass quantities existing in modern resources. For example, in Disco Girl and Car Fire, Jones demonstrates how the viewer is already linked to the visual symbols within each video. The appropriated images create new photos and videos without any direct manipulation, redefining the nature of collage through contemporary digital means. In the Lightning Drawings, Jones digitally overlays images of lightning strikes to create drawings, connecting the tools of drawing and photography. Similarly, Swarm and Iris expose the multiplicity in modern imagery through single figures being reconstructed to overlap creating pattern and depth. Each of these images allow the viewer to consider the individuality and multiplicity of the subject matter, revealing the repetitive and over saturated qualities of the modern photograph. The exhibition, Send Me a Link, not only demonstrates how easily photos and videos are shared socially through modern technology, but also gives a context for how we relate to these images in our daily lives.

Cassandra C Jones received her BFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco and received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Since, Jones has shown with Vanina Holasek Gallery in New York, the Northwest Film Center in Portland, Oregon, and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

Collette Blanchard Gallery, a relatively new space on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, recently opened an exhibition of new photographic prints by Los Angeles-based artist Sean Higgins. The exhibition, titled Difficulties with Interplanetary Travel, features eleven digitally altered images of different terrain, some celestial and some worldly, all of which construct a new unidentifiable reality. All Each image begins as documentation of an actual event or location, either taken from the artist or sourced from online archives. Higgins then begins a meticulous process of altering the image, bringing it to state that is positioned directly between science fiction and reality, a state that is found all too often in contemporary life. The images, which are presented in a square format just shy of four-foot, marry a sense of mystery with the familiar, luring the viewer in while opening up an endless array of questions centered on image authenticity.

Higgins recently completed an exhibition of similar prints with Ambach and Rice in Seattle and has also exhibited with LA Louver Gallery and Sixspace in Los Angeles. His current exhibition with Collette Blanchard was reviewed by the Danish publication, The Copenhagen Voice. Difficulties with Interplanetary Travel will be on view through July 31th.

Currently on view at Primo Marella Gallery in Milan, Singing Stars is a solo exhibition dedicated to young Chinese artist Gao Yu. Exhibiting outside of Asia for the first time, Gao Yu introduces us to a series of mixed-media works that represent some of the successful contemporary art from super modern China. 28-year-old Gao Yu exploits a cartoon-like imagery, and thus confirms the challenge brought by animation as an autonomous art form. He draws on ideas and forms from pop and teenage culture, comics, and fiction, offering a vivacious and at the same time bizarre reinterpretation of traditional Chinese icons. The artist’s characters–his favorite apparently being the panda and the lunar rabbit–inhabit a surreal, almost psychedelic place which is rendered through the application of distinct, and often resonant, acrylic colors. The works are indeed playful, vibrant and beautifully cheeky, but sometimes there is also a disturbing and grotesquely sinister halo to the innocent looking cartoon figures. It is precisely this combination of innocence and wickedness that takes the viewers to the realm of Japanese comic and animation–manga and anime–which Gao Yu obviously riffs on. And, as manga and anime inspired works from Japan have affirmed themselves in mainstream contemporary art–with Yoshitomo Nara, “pop art star” Takashi Murakami, but also Kaikai Kiki’s Chiho Aoshima and Aya Takano among others–Gao Yu has everything he needs to remain a top representative of the Chinese art circuit.

Born in Guizohou, China, in 1981, and currently living and working in Chongqing, Gao Yu graduated from Sichuan Fine Art Institute in 2003. With Chen Ke, Zhang Hui, Wei Jia, Han Yajuan, and Feng Zhengquan, Gao Yu is one of the most important members of the “cartoon generation”, a group of young artists who debuted with a show titled “A Cartoon Generation”, held in Beijing in 2005, and who are associated with the dynamic contemporary art scene of China.

Singing Stars will be on view at Primo Marella Gallery from April 4th 2009-May 23rd 2009.

Photographer and animator Cassandra C. Jones employs great technical precession with works such as her kaleidoscope-patterned collages. The series “Good Cheer” depicts appropriated images of cheerleaders meticulously reconstructed and digitally printed into ornate patterns. The artist has used the imagery to develop complex wallpapers that dissolve into marginally recognizable anthropomorphic forms when the viewer gains distance from the pattern.

Previously, Jones created short-looped animations that often consist of more than 1,250 images, collectively portraying simple and personal events along with other sporting activities. “Track and Field” is a series that the artist produced that investigated ideas of the athletic arena while producing stunningly ambiguous images by overlapping multiple photos. Jones attended the California College of Arts in Oakland, Calif., and received her MFA in photography and glass from the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn. The artist has exhibited “Rara Avis” at the Queens Annex in San Francisco, and participated in the Pulse Art Fair in New York with the Nathan Larramendy Gallery. In 2004, Jones received the Vira I. Heinz Endowment Fellowship awarded by the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.

Nashville-based photographer, painter and draftsman Chris Scarborough creates diverse works that references the archetypes of Japanese cartooning similar to Manga. The cultural concepts of cuteness and beauty mixed with the playful violence of Japanese cartoons all inform Scarborough’s imagery and process. While working in graphite, painting or the computer, the artist painstakingly renders his subjects with absolute precision. The artist’s drawings were recently featured in the Southern Edition of New American Paintings, and he has been featured this year in The Constructed Image at Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC. The artist has ongoing gallery representation with the Curator’s Office in Washington D.C., Foley Gallery in New York City, Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, and TAG in Nashville. Scarborough is a graduate from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and has been included in several publications such as ArtPapers and The Red Clay Survey.