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.

Copyright of John Gerrard. Courtesy of the Thomas Dane Gallery.

The Thomas Dane Gallery in London presents an exhibition of new work by John Gerrard from 2009.  Sow Farm (near Libby, Oklahoma) depicts a particular instance of animal factory farming facilitated by a large computer-controlled complex devoid of human presence.  Lufkin (near Hugo, Colorado) presents an oil derrick in action.  Like related previous works such as Animated Scene, Sow Farm and Lufkin acknowledge the artificial and detrimental ways we manipulate the environment.  Effectively set in the visually bare plains of middle America, Gerrard underscores the alarming depletion of natural resources that supports our culture of consumption.

Copyright of John Gerrard. Courtesy of the Thomas Dane Gallery.

Gerrard’s technique is as compelling as his subject matter is relevant.  The artist builds upon traditions of painting, photography, cinema and sculpture while actually working with the video game technology Realtime 3D.  Like many contemporary artists working in complex new media, Gerrard develops the creative concept behind each work while relying upon specialists to help realize it.  The artist photographs each site from a complete 360 degree radius.  His production team in Vienna, led by long time collaborator and producer Werner Poetzelberger, then completes the work – turning the artist’s photographic stills into continuous, animated cinematic panning shots.  Complex details are accurately replicated at each site by 3D modeling, which is guided by topographical and satellite data.  It typically takes a few years to replicate each site over a particular period of actual time – showing changes in light, weather and season.

The end result – a subdued hyperrealism – hardly points to the immense efforts of its creation. Sow Farm (near Libby, Oklahoma) and Lufkin (near Hugo, Colorado) are shown throughout an entire 365 day year.  The work’s projection on a large-scale screen engulfs the viewer in a calm and contemplative viewing experience well suited to serious subject matter.

Copyright of John Gerrard. Courtesy of the Thomas Dane Gallery.

John Gerrard is represented by the Thomas Dane Gallery in London as well as the Simon Preston Gallery in New York City.  Gerrard lives and works in Dublin, Ireland – where he was born – and Vienna, Austria.  He received his BFA in Sculpture at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Drawing at the University of Oxford in 1997.  He earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000 and an MSc from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in 2001.

Following Daily Serving coverage of John Gerrard in February of 2009, Gerrard presented Animated Scene as a collateral project at the 53rd Venice Biennale.  Currently, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden houses the artist’s exhibition, Directions, which will remain through 31 May 2010.  In late March 2010, Gerrard’s public projection, Oil Stick Work, will open at the Canary Wharf underground station in London as part of London’s Art on the Underground Programme.

Copyright of John Gerrard. Courtesy of the Thomas Dane Gallery.

John Gerrard’s exhibition at the Thomas Dane Gallery – his first in London – opens 3 February and remains through 6 March 2010.

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.

At this year’s SCOPE Miami Contemporary Art Show, duo Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw present Sweat Shoppe, their multimedia performance group.  Situated in an open and inviting space outside of the booth environment, the Sweat Shoppe’s interactive installation space hosts local bands, DJs and live performances each day of the SCOPE Miami Art Show -  combining art, music and technology in an innovative and accessible way.  The performance aspect of Levy and Blake’s Sweat Shoppe showcases the artists’ creation dubbed ‘video painting’.  Video painting allows Levy and Blake to ‘paint’ video anywhere they choose – temporarily marking architectural surfaces with their video images.

In the context of SCOPE, visitors are given the opportunity to use rollers to video paint – revealing through each stroke a video image projected onto the wall.  Video painting was created by the artists through their own specially designed software used in combination with other elements such as light projection and roller paint implements rigged with a button that triggers LED.  It may be difficult to understand the technological complexities of Levy and Shaw’s video painting creation, but participating in the performance is simple.

SCOPE International Contemporary Art Show is a large, global contemporary art fair that supports innovation and work in new media.  SCOPE can also be found annually in New York, London, Basel and the Hamptons.  SCOPE Miami Art Show is on through 6 December 2009.

Ross Moreno

In its last week at Boots Contemporary Arts Space in St.Louis is the exhibition The 7th Annual Midwestern Assorted Produce Snuff Shorts Film Triennial. The group show consists of video and performance works by the artists Benjamin Bellas, Clinton King, Noelle Mason, Magdalen Wong, Justin Cooper and Ross Moreno, whom often collaborate under the curatorial moniker “i.e.”

The videos on display range from Noelle Mason’s large projection Bob and Weave, that features the artist slap-boxing a much larger male opponent that leaves her bloodied by bouts end, to Magdalen Wong’s and they lived well but we live better which documents the artist entering the translated phrase into the keypad of an ATM during a transaction in Greece.

At the opening there were two performances by artists Justin Cooper and Ross Moreno.  Moreno started the evening off with a bang; dressed in a rainbow clown wig, suspenders and a Speedo, he attempted to break the Guinness World Record for the “Most Balloon Animals Twisted in One Hour.” It became clear during the performance that Moreno was not prepared to accomplish his goal. He struggled to twist balloons into dogs, flowers and other unrecognizable forms. Balloons exploded and deflated flying across the gallery as a timer counted down the hour. At one point he gave up and stormed out, only to be coaxed back by a supportive audience. The tension and frustration built till finally Moreno completely defeated and extremely agitated unleashed his anger toward the spectators. “I twist for tips”, he yelled which made some members of the audience question whether they were supposed to actually tip him money for the performance.

(more…)

The curatorial conceit of Blueprint, a group exhibition at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, is that the work included somehow embodies a plan from which one could build something. None of these artists do this literally but in some sense the curator James Cope has included work that evokes generative possibilities is different ways.

Edward Setina has included a series of videos and sculpture that revolve around a figure in a white biker suit on all fours. The largest piece depicts this image projected onto a transparent plane. His anxious body twitches and retches, oscillating between fascination with and repulsion from the pool of his blood beneath him. In a clear ode to Narcissus and the struggle with one’s doppelganger reflection, this piece sees the self as the start of creation and ironically its demise. For once one looks at ones reflection, one is split between what once sees and what one knows.

Brian Fridge’s video installation includes images that resemble cellular forms that float around and smash into one another splitting into multiple forms. Each revolving orb is similar but it is their juxtaposition and collision that provides endless loops of reproduction.

Also included in the show are three objects by Amy Revier leaning against the wall that resemble arctic sleds. They are crafted in a way that is at once regal and refined, with a reduced humility that suggests some kind of ritual for an idealistic explorer, trudging her way across the tundra.

Finally, Paul Slocum’s work addresses both the histories of popular imagery and their dissemination as well as the way that they are made. Images of Heathcliff and the Skiing cat were created with a 3-D software called Blender. As Slocum explains,”a wire-frame model is formed in the computer, surfaces are defined, and then a final image is rendered by simulating the behavior of photons in reverse (tracing rays from the camera outward). These two cats were in a sense made based on a similar structure.”

Eric Zimmerman uses drawing, sculpture and the archive to explore the legacies of utopian concepts of architecture and geography. His most recent graphite drawings included in Texas Draws I – a recent exhibition at the Southwest School of Art and Craft – are large indexes of visual information that include Thomas Jefferson, butterfly specimens, and an atomic bomb crater in the New Mexico desert. These exquisitely crafted images are combined with oblique abstract constructions and texts like, “REMEMBER THAT NOWHERE CAN BE HERE,” taken from a letter from Roberto Matta to Gordon Matta-Clark. The result is a collage of information that serves as an atlas for his interests, making reconfigured source material the work itself. Taking this idea further into the realm of archive as art, Zimmerman created The Historian and The Astronomer V, a book featuring re-photographed photos, texts, and documents combined with an audio program and video on an iPod.

Other recent projects by Zimmerman include Observatory/Projector (Metropolis), a mashup model of modernist architecture which projects a constellation of glowing abstract form on the ceiling and walls around it. This combination of hard edged geometries of form, evocative of the Crystal Palace and Tatlin’s Monument to The Third International (both frequent subjects of Zimmerman’s drawings) and soft focused celestial space, has been shown at Art Palace in Austin. Two other pieces in this series were shown at Centro De Cultura de Nuevo, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and at the Austin Museum of Art.

Eric Zimmerman is an artist and writer who received his MFA from The University of Texas at Austin and a BFA from The Cleveland Institute of Art. His work was recently part of In Real Time, an ASDF Makes project, at Capricious Space in NYC and Golden Age in Chicago. In May of 2010 he will be in a two-person exhibition at Art Palace Gallery in Austin, TX with Los Angeles based artist Emilie Halpern.