A Macrocosmic Zero is the title of Tivon Rice’s second solo exhibition at Lawrimore Project in Seattle, on view through March 27.  Rice is a new media artist whose tactile approach seeks to present video as an object of use, and to integrate the observer as participant.  The current exhibition fills the front room of the gallery, a windowless space with concrete floors.  It is lit by two bright plasma screens and fluorescent bulbs suspended vertically from  wooden scaffolding. The bulbs sweep on and off in patterned surges of blue-white with a series of clicks and gentle hums.  A motor turns on and a central camera pans the room.  As the camera goes over a screen and films an image produced a few moments ago, a slow feedback happens, layering and obscuring the present space where the viewer stands, and also the viewer if he has caught a glance at the camera lens.  Rice’s video system is performing it’s routine.

The whole set is programmed for a unique experience for each viewer—a lighting display that doesn’t repeat for 18 days, a delay between the live feed and playback, a robotic camera that responds to motion, and sound feedback that swells, but never explodes.  A “finished” or composite image runs at the back of the exhibition.  This view allows spectators to see who enters the gallery and how others interact with the work.

The use of lights is at least a pragmatic choice, a basic component in office buildings and modern living.  Their stark whiteness casts no “cinematic” shadow on its subjects, and in video perfection, imperfections of the subject are clearly and initially displayed.  Through layering “real” images, subjects become formal elements of flat light. The macroscopic view of this work is what is observable to the human eye, and as the title suggests, this view is fleeting. As the art progresses, it periodically interrupts what has been displayed to return to “zero.”  The art is the mechanical and sensory performance, rather than what is recorded.

Rice also presents four video portraits that act as sketches or versions of the installation.  A face is seen in each one that the viewer continues to look for and find through swirling frames of mutation.  A final piece, the smallest in the exhibit, is a CRT monitor taken out of television presenting a static image of the artist.  For the amount of time in its title Self Portrait (3 days, 2 months, 10 days), an image of the artist’s face was lit on a small monitor.  The result is a “pixel burn,” an image made by exploiting the weakness of the display.  As it stays lit all over to show its ghost, it is undergoing its own decay as long as it is displayed.

Exerpt from 3 Studies for a Portrait of Bronwyn Lewis, 2010

Tivon Rice lives and works in Seattle, WA where is pursuing a doctoral degree at University of Washington’s Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS).  He obtained his master’s degree from UW in 2006 and has been a Graduate Instructor there since 2007.  For his bachelor’s studies, he attended University of Colorado, graduating in 2000 with two degrees in Electronic Media and Sculpture.  He has had numerous solo exhibitions at galleries in the Pacific Northwest. His work is in private collections and his collaborative video of abstracted shaving cream with Jeffry Mitchell entitled Panda was acquired by the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle.  He has been in group exhibitions across the nation including the CUE Art Foundation in New York, and the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa.  His work was included in 1000 Days at the Scion Installation Space in Los Angeles, curated by DailyServing.

New York City’s Armory Arts Week, a highlight on the city’s annual cultural calendar, offered an array of arts-related events to the public last week (Mar. 2-7, 2010), drawing visitors from around the world to the city where art never sleeps. The Armory Show 2010 at Piers 92 and 94 featured 267 galleries from 31 countries. A large number of exhibitors showcased the works of a single artist, a divergence from the practice of displaying several artists at one fair. Patrons enjoyed the opportunity to absorb the work of the individual artist and develop a deeper understanding of the artist’s ideas and processes. Notable solo exhibits: Nicole Klagsbrun and David Zwirner (New York), Museum 52 (London | New York), and The Breeder (Athens, Greece).

Adam McEwen’s project, I Am Curious Yellow, radiated from Nicole Klagsbrun’s booth due to the artist’s boundless, but contemplative, use of the color yellow. McEwen chose to work with yellow because of the color’s ability to be vile and unpleasant, but also soothing and cheerful. His solo installation at Armory consisted of carefully selected objects placed alongside loaded imagery; jerry cans, a large yellow swastika, and several over-sized obituaries beneath glass, written for world champion runner Caster Semenya, were on display. Everything, even the carpet in the booth, was saturated in lemon yellow, with some white areas, and beaming in the bright lights of the fair.

McEwen has written pre-need obituaries for living celebrities before, employing traditional newspaper format with impressive impact (the artist used to write actual obituaries for London’s Daily Telegraph). Other past projects include his pencil on graph paper text message series. For these pieces, he copied the content and screen appearance of texts from his Nokia phone onto paper and presented the paper replicas of the digital missives in graphite frames.

Also in New York, The New Museum opened an exhibition curated by Jeff Koons on March 3rd, Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, which will remain on view until June 6, 2010. The New Museum, and others, offered discounts to visitors during Armory Arts Week.

Among several concurrent art fairs taking place throughout the city last week, Independent generated a great amount of intrigue. Founded by New York gallerist Elizabeth Dee and Dareen Flook of Hotel in London, and held at X Initiative in Chelsea, Independent presented 40 galleries and was less regimented than the Armory Show.  Independent’s website declares “Hybrid Forum Comes to New York for Art Fair Week.”

Artists Space (New York), Michael Werner Gallery (Berlin | New York), and mitterrand+sanz (Zurich), were among the participants whose collaboration and presence were requested via personal invitation from the founders. This not only differed from the exhibitor application process at the Armory Show, it suggested a re-evaluation of the art fair mode. Elizabeth Dee also had a booth at Armory for her gallery.

Strange Comfort, Brian Jungen’s exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), is as delightful as it is disquieting.  Jungen, who is part Northwest American Indian, transforms objects of American consumption into relics of tribal culture.  The result is transcendent hybrids that raise questions about the relationship between art, culture and commodity.

Six pieces from the Prototype for New Understanding series greet viewers entering the exhibit.  While these pieces appear to be authentic tribal headdresses displayed under glass vitrines, it is soon revealed that they are in fact made of Nike Air Jordans.  Because of this material transformation, the sculptures are in a state of constant becoming—at once creatures, masks, animals, shoes, and fantastical hybrids.  There is a confusion of body parts as plushy shoe openings become eyes, rubber-tipped toes become mouths, and thick fabric tongues become beaks.  The reassigning of parts designed for the anatomy of a foot to fit the anatomy of a face is as grotesque as it is wonderful.

Jungen ironically critiques the way marginalized cultures have been pillaged for their goods by Western colonialists.  He attacks commodity by making a triple-commodity—tribal relic, Nike shoes, and marketable art object. Jungen brings us further into his natural history museum of commodities with Shapeshifter, a huge whale skeleton made of white plastic chairs.

Side by side, the chairs become the sleek vertebrae and ribs of this immense animal.  Suspended several feet above its platform, the whale’s shadows are haunting and give it the believability of an extinct, magnificent sea creature.  Its empty body and ghostly shadows play foil to the recognizable lawn chairs that are its bones, for as much as we believe that this creature was once living in a faraway time, we know that it is part of our vernacular existence. 

Questioning our own knowledge, we wonder if this whale could have really existed, or is it a made up version of Western history?

The context of the NMAI lends another layer to Jungen’s work.  We are invited to view his sculptures as more than art.  In this context, they become American Indian artifacts.  By marrying seeming opposites, consumer and tribal cultures, Jungen proves that the treasures that fill the NMAI are not merely relics of a faraway past—they are the thoughtful products of a people that are part of contemporary society.  This assimilation into mainstream commodity culture, for better or worse, perhaps provides a “strange comfort,” for both seekers of these treasures, and also the people to whom they belong.

Brian Jungen’s Strange Comfort is on view October 16, 2009–August 8, 2010 at the NMAI on the National Mall, Washington, DC.

Sanford Biggers, Seen, 2009, Video still, Digital C-print, 30 x 40 in. Courtesy the Artist and Michael Klein Arts, New York

Currently on view at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum is a solo presentation of new work by internationally renowned, New York-based artist, Sanford Biggers. The work on view in the exhibition, entitled Moon Medicine, encompasses the breadth of Biggers’ practice. As he tells the SBCAF, “It is a thematic, multi-disciplinary exploration of past themes and new themes meant to broaden and complicate our read on American history.” In a recent video-recorded conversation between Biggers and CAF executive director, Miki Garcia, Biggers discusses his avoidance of artistic labels, such as “post black.” These labels are not rejected by the artist for the sake of radicalism but, rather, because he says that no matter how you mean it to sound, a label is always “predicated on there being an other.” Biggers further explains that he rejects labels even in his discussion of artistic medium, saying he’s “not interested in being a sculptor [or] a performance artist…I just make things.” Of his process, he says, “The more confused I am while making a piece now, the more successful it is to me regardless of what it ends up looking like.”

The recurring imagery of mandalas in Biggers’ work reflects a strong interest in Buddhism, the exploration of which is found in his past and current work. Biggers gained interest in the Buddhist tradition while living in Japan and traveling all over Asia years ago. Of the work he made upon returning to the US from Asia, Biggers says it became autobiographical in part—in the sense that he “fused some of what [he] had been studying and researching in terms of Buddhism, but also bringing in some things from my childhood, growing up in Los Angeles, and being a B-boy.”

Sanford Biggers, Constellation, 2009, Steel, Plexiglas, LED’s, Zoopoxy, cotton quilt, original printed cotton tile. Dimensions variable, Installation at Harvard University. Courtesy the Artist and Michael Klein Arts, New York, NY.

Biggers is a master of alluding labels, as we’ve learned, and the “elliptical” nature of his work (as Garcia refers to it), creates an open-ended dialog that spans a range of subjects from religious practices, to themes of racial tensions in the American South, to pop culture iconography. Moon Medicine will be on view through May 2, 2010.

Sanford Biggers lives and works in new York. He earned his BA at Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA and his MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL. He has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, including at Mary Goldman Gallery, Los Angeles; Tate Modern, London; Okinawa Museum, Okinawa, Japan; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the 2002 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Olafur Eliasson’s Multiple Shadow House opened Thursday, February 11th at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.  Eliasson, who has been described as “an ecstasy-inducing Danish-Icelandic artist,” has perfected the concept of smoke and mirror art that consistently wows its audience and draws crowds (including a Michael Bloomberg and numerous body guards).   The packed opening felt a bit like Disney World meets the hands-on section of a science museum; particularly because the exhibition involves the viewer in a collaborative creative process.  Opening attendees played obsessively with their color-split shadows on the wall, made shadow puppets with their hands and basically behaved as if this was the first time they had even seen light divided into color spectrums or their own corporeal outline for that matter.  This  behavior illustrates Eliasson’s emphasis on the visitor’s experience and his tendency to create work in which the potential lies in the exchange between the piece and the viewer.

Courtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

The first floor of the two-floor exhibit consists of clusters of rooms comprised of a simple wooden framework supporting large projection screens.  Each room allows for the viewer to stand in front of projected light, thus causing the light to fracture into colored shadows on the wall.  These projections, like much of Eliasson’s work, causes the viewer to re-examine even the most common familiarities, such as light, with renewed appreciation and wonder.  Eliasson is particularly interested in how we understand, see, and experience space. Multiple Shadow House does not disappoint on this level. The user negotiates and constructs his or her own surroundings while experiencing subtleties of color, thrill of participation, and magic of science.

The theme of perception of visual imagery and viewer involvement is continued upstairs in Intangible Afterimage Star (2008).  Six spotlights project geometrical forms in magenta, blue, yellow, green, magenta, and turquoise onto a wall, layering and intersecting.  As explained in the press release, “the intense projections fade in and out, and complimentary afterimages stay on the visitor’s retina and appear to multiply the color compositions.  As a result, the film is only partially produced by the spotlight’s projection; the rest is contributed by the viewer.”

Also upstairs is a stunning collection of what appear to be studies in color, sequences, and shape done in watercolor and pencil on paper.  Minimal and intimate, these stationary works are a refreshing change from the rest of the exhibition.  Configured in sequences, the watercolors use ellipses and circles as narrative exercises on the perception of space and movement.  Another piece, Colour Experiment no. 3, is a circular oil painting that at first glance appears to be a basic study in color or a large color wheel.  However, the painting is actually an expansion of the traditional model of a color wheel, wherein each of the 360 degrees is painted in one color and corresponds to its complementary afterimage located directly across from itself.

Eliasson has cited the work of close friend Einar Thorstein, a philosopher, scientist, and engineer, as a constant source of his visual vocabulary.  He has found inspiration in Thorstein’s spatial ideas such as geodesic domes, fivefold symmetries, spiral spheres, towers and pavilions, the golden ratio, and kaleidoscopes.  Eliasson uses these concepts to create works like Multiple Shadow House which exist as experiences more than material objects.  Presented via transparent means of constructions, these experiences illustrate the nature of perception-based stimulation as well as the artist’s ability to manipulate the experience.

Current solo exhibitions for Eliasson include Olafur Eliasson: Your Chance Encounter at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan and Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia.

Each Sunday we reach deep into the DailyServing Archives to unearth an old feature that we think needs to see the light of day again. This week we found a video presentation by artist Josiah McElheny discussing the role of models as both sculpture and as direct tools of information sharing. If you have a favorite feature that you think should be published again, simply email us at info@dailyserving.com and include DS Archive in the subject line.

Originally Published on July 31, 2007

On March 22, artist Josiah McElheny presented a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City called “Artists and Models” to discuss his investigation of models and how they operate in relation to sculptural thought rather than direct function or information. McElheny is interested in the idea of a model as an “aesthetical utopia that could never be built.” In a 1929 conversation between sculptor Isamu Noguchi and architect Buckminster Fuller, the idea of an experimental environment containing no shadows was determined feasible if a totally reflective form was constructed in a completely reflective space. While never completely realized by Fuller or Noguchi, McElheny, who is known for working with glass, used this reflective principle to create a series of sculptural models, both large and small, called “Extended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction,” which contained a mirrored glass table with hand-blown mirrored glass objects placed directly onto the table. These works were eventually, over a period of about four years, extended into other works that illustrated the same principle through other environments and models. Many of these examples can be viewed currently at the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago in “Josiah McElheny: Cosmology, Design, and Landscape Part Two,” while other projects and ideas are discussed in season three of the ART:21 series.

Now at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Production Site reexamines the artist’s studio as subject, presenting work that documents, depicts, reconstructs, or otherwise invokes that space, revealing how the studio functions as a place where research, experimentation, production, and social activity intersect.

The exhibition reflects and addresses the pivotal role of the studio in artists’ practice while alluding to its enduring status in the popular imagination. The works that comprise Production Site include multi-channel video projections, photographic light-boxes and installations, and life-sized fabrications of artists’ studios — real and imagined — that either extol the virtues of the studio or problematize the preconceived and often highly romanticized notions associated with it. The exhibition provides the viewer with a look at how some of the most compelling artists of our time have demystified, remystified, and reconsidered this site within the physical and conjectured space of the work of art.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, February 9 and 10, Mumbai-based Nikhil Chopra performed Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing XI in the MCA galleries. Chopra brought the artist’s studio into the gallery using a variety of costumes and props, and wall drawings that he created during the performance. These will remain in the gallery as an installation for the duration of the Production Site exhibition. During his performance, Chopra assumed the fictional persona of a Victorian-era figure named Yog Raj Chitrakar, who is based loosely on his grandfather. His last name, Chitrikar, literally translates into picture- or mask-maker in Sanskrit. Chopra inhabited this character for the two days, changing into masculine and feminine costumes that challenge assumptions about race and gender. While performing, Chopra made drawings that reflect on Production Site, blackening the walls with his obsessive charcoal drawings to emphasize the studio as a place where an artist’s internal anxieties and struggles are confronted and resolved.

The exhibition is organized by MCA Curator Dominic Molon, and features the work of Nikhil Chopra, Deb Sokolow, Justin Cooper, Tacita Dean, Amanda Ross-Ho, William Kentridge, Andrea Zittel, Kerry James Marshall, Rodney Graham, Ryan Gander, Bruce Nauman, and John Neff.  Production Site is presented as part of Studio Chicago, a year-long collaborative project that focuses on the artist’s studio through October 2010.