Eleanor Antin as Eleanora Antinova in Before the Revolution at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1979.

“At this moment, my iPad is totally f–ing me up,” said Eleanor Antin last Sunday at the Hammer Museum, in Act V of Before the Revolution, a remaking of her originally one-woman ballet. Act V was actually called “The Interruption,” because the performers were slated to stop performing and the artist to come up on stage and muse about meaning and ownership. The iPad f-up was not scripted, however; the machine really was interrupting the planned interruption. “There’s something here that says ‘undo or cancel,’” she announced. “I don’t want to do either.” She could’ve played it off and attempted to finish her monologue without the script, but, instead she waited until a technician and, I think, her son had made her screen functional again. Then she continued.

Before the Revolution was first performed in 1979, and Antin played all the roles–12 in total–with the help of life-size, two-dimensional Masonite dolls. It told of an imaginary black ballerina (Eleanora Antinova) dancing in Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and evoked the great hope that modern art could break down walls that, of course, never quite fell. Antinova, the talented black ballerina hopes to play the real, iconic roles, but is instead offered primitive ones (“For you we will re-stage Pocahontas,” Diaghilev says). Antin has always been interested in the self being more than just one thing, so, in 1974 when the modernist idea of the single identity still festered, impersonating a fictive character that couldn’t have existed felt radical.

Eleanor Antin as Eleanora Antinova in Before the Revolution at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1979.

Reactions to the original performance were apparently mixed.”I guess [people] wanted actors who were smooth and effortless, seamless, what they called professional,” Antin wrote in the program notes for the new Before the Revolution. This one, co-directed by Alexandro Segade of the collective My Barbarian, was, in some ways, seamless. It included a “professional” cast. Daniele Watts, who played Eleanor Antinova beautifully, has guested on network television. Matthew Henerson, who played Diaghilev, appeared in A Christmas Carol. They traveled across the stage and interacted with trained, practiced intentionality that isn’t often found in performances by artists who took “Theory and Practice” rather than, say, “Advanced Movement.”

Rehearsal for Eleanor Antin's Before the Revolution in 2012. Courtesy The Getty Research Institute.

But still, the whole program played out like an interruption, of history, of professionalism, of artistry, of expectations. It starts out with Antinova learning to curtsey, to defer to her audience while still upholding her veneer, then follows her as she tries to wrangles for real, “white” roles (but “we love you because you are black,” Diaghilev protests) and as she impersonates Marie Antoinette and tries to rewrite the history of another woman trapped in misunderstandings and circumstances beyond her control. It was the tone of the performance, though, that made all the difference. Antinova, who remains optimistic though less and less naive, never lets go of the idea that her enthusiasm could change the system (of the Ballets Russes). And Antin, who during her “Interruption” said that she was going to make this ballet, the one about the ever-misunderstood Marie Antoinette, “her ballet, my ballet and fill the stage with credit, my credit,” never lets go of the idea that a self could become a multitude that together takes back history.

Image: Scott Thorpe (left) and Brett MacFadden at the wrapping party for THE THING Quarterly, Issue 15: MacFadden and Thorpe.

A central tenet to emerge from Conceptual art in the 1960s was the perception of language as an object: a visual form of signification that requires us to negotiate its materiality in order to locate its meaning. In this process of negotiation, language was no different than any other artistic medium. The tactile quality of a page and typographical arrangement of text were recognized to be as active in creating meaning as the words printed on them. If reading was a set of physical gestures that unfolds linearly—left to right, top to bottom, from one page to the next—the interruption or reordering of any of these gestures led to a reconsideration and new consciousness of the act. In other words, language was set in motion, built, excavated, or incanted instead of written, and to read these texts was to experience them spatially.¹ The inheritance we’ve received from these investigations into language as object is an inherent understanding of the performative nature of reading and, concurrently, of a reader’s role as co-conspirator in creating meaning.

As art historian Gwen Allen notes in the introduction to her book Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art, beginning in the 1960s, art magazines went beyond their documentary purpose to become alternative sites that presented works of art. They placed the materiality of art and the materiality of language into congruous relationships and transformed those relationships into performative experiences. For example, 0 to 9, a mimeographed poetry magazine published by poet and performance artist Vito Acconci and poet Bernadette Mayer between 1967 and 1969, aspired to explore language as a visual, phonetic, and kinetic form and featured contributions from both poets and conceptual artists. The magazine’s issues featured pages densely covered in text or left nearly blank, typesetting that suggested motion across the page, and even, for the cover of Issue 5, a sheet of paper crumpled and then flattened again. Preceding his transition from poet to performer, Acconci made experiments with typography and layout, motivated by what he described as a restlessness with the page that compelled him into a state of action. (“I couldn’t be on the page any more. Language took me out onto the street. I was moving on the page, now I wanted to move on the sidewalk, on the street. I was more thinking of the street as a field of activity rather than the page.”²)

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Damien Hirst, "Isonicotinic Acid Ethyl Ester," 2010–11. Household gloss on canvas, 99 x 147 inches. Image courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

When Lady Macbeth said “Out, damn’d spot!” she was referring to stains of blood, not brightly-colored enamel paint, but I’m sure there are more than a few art critics out there who echo her thought this month. The reason? What to make of “Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings 1986–2011”, now on view at eleven Gagosian galleries worldwide.

The spots at Gagosian LA range from the size of a ladybug to the size of a car door, and the canvases stay proportional, meaning that huge spots live on huge canvases, and vice versa.  The enamel colors are glossy and bright and yet flat, to such an extent that at the opening, I had several conversations that followed the ‘why spend your time laboring over what a computer can do’ track.

Damien Hirst, "Cefaclor," 2009. Household gloss on canvas, 21 1/8 x 16 3/8 inches. Image courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

Perhaps the most unique perspective came from an art consultant, who professed his love for one painting in particular—a smaller piece in the second room that had actually been painted by Hirst (Hirst turned the labor of painting the spots over to his assistants in 1993). The spots on this canvas are slightly less uniform, the paint just a bit more uneven, and I swear you can see holes where the point of the compass bit in.

Over 300 paintings – about a quarter of the entire series – will hang from Gagosian walls in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Hong Kong for the next thirty-or-so days. Those who plan to visit all the galleries can register for “The Complete Spot Challenge”. Present yourself and your photo ID at all eleven Gagosians while the paintings are still up, and receive a limited-edition spot print, “dedicated personally to you.” One nice touch: the print has not yet been created, so it really will be personalized for the winner.  One winner equals one print.  Ten winners equals ten prints.

Damien Hirst, "Betulin," 2005. Household gloss on canvas, 72 x 72 inches. Image courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

There are also two unmentioned challenges here. First, find something new to say about a series of repeated dots, and then, second, pick a side. The reviews vary, from “passé” to something along the lines of ‘enjoyable after you’ve moved past your initial reluctance’. To side with Hirst and Gagosian means you are pro-spectacle and (perhaps) dragging out the dying gasp of an over-inflated, lumbering beast of an art market. The other side is best represented by Christopher Knight at the Los Angeles Times, who wrote that it’s picture of the “new world order — abstract, interchangeable portraits of post-millennial trade.” The viewpoint I like best, however, comes from Blake Gopnik, at The Daily Beast, who insists that the eleven-gallery exhibition is actually the largest painting ever made, spread out across the globe like, well, a series of spots across a canvas.

Do with that what you will.

Whitney Lynn, Death Parties (2011) Plastic, glass, alcohol, chrome-laminated birch shelf, 21 x 36 x 6 in.

Bean Gilsdorf: How did this new body of work begin?

Whitney Lynn: It started with Southern Exposure in 2009, they had a show called “Bellwether” and they were asking artists to predict or envision the future. I was looking at the way in which do-it-yourself and sustainability movements overlap with survivalism. I started picking up these images about how to trap your own food, skin your own squirrels, eat your own rats, and those sorts of things. Then when I was doing a later project I was also thinking about containment, and I started thinking about trapping systems. I was not quite sure what I was going to do with all of it, and then there was the realization, oh, there’s a project here.

BG: Do you think of your work as post-apocalyptic? Has anyone ever framed your work that way?

WL: Maybe a little, with the survivalist stuff. I think there’s something kind of sinister about a lot of the pieces, but I think they’re funny.

BG: What are the general trends of your interests?

WL: The earlier works that were dealing with military were very autobiographical, and I was navigating my own personal history. Then things shifted, and I was thinking about how these intersections of politics or military are really interconnected into all kinds of aspects of life. That changed my focus, to see where those messy intersections or boundaries existed. For this particular show I was thinking about metaphors of traps and their relationship to sculpture.

Whitney Lynn, Prepared Position with Disturbance Ventilation and Luminous Signal (2010) Mixed media (furniture, cement, tv, fan) 7 x 8 x 4 feet

BG: Do you feel like that’s freeing, to get away from making autobiographical work?

WL: Well, it’s always connected. For me, it’s impossible to get away from some sort of personal thread. It’s extending from a different kind of autobiography. These traps are placed in a setting where there’s the possibility of a different kind of question: what’s the prey and what’s the bait, the lure? Part of the work is about futility—nothing’s ever going to be trapped with these. And that’s where I see some of the humor, too. It relates back to some of my earlier work…I made a bug-out location that would never actually survive anything. It was made for one person and had food supplies, but they were capers, so it was this empty gesture of preparation. And there were all these weapons that would never actually hurt you. It was all pretty pathetic. It was part of the question, “How can you prepare for the ultimate disaster when you don’t know what that is?”

Whitney Lynn, BOL (Bug-Out-Location) (2009) Mixed media installation with performance elements

BG: What’s next for you?

WL: One project that I’ve been doing on the side and that will probably come to the fore is street performance. I think that’s really a place of intersections and boundaries. My interest is in that area where street performance is performance art. I’ve been really obsessed with the Bush Man in Fisherman’s Wharf for along time, so I shot a video with him recently. I’m sure there will be a development that leads me back to the traps project.

BG: I can see the borders and boundaries that you’re flirting with in your work…some are more literal and explicit, like with the sculptures, and some are more subtle, just the feeling is there, but on the whole it creates a thread through the work.

WL: There’s something exciting about allowing that thread through the work, but to let it play itself out naturally. There can be these connections, but they don’t have to be calculated. For years I was like, “I make work that’s about intersections with military and political cultures,” and it was almost like I had written an artist statement and I didn’t want to write it again, and I’d better make things that fit into that. There was pressure to define myself, to say okay so I this is what I do, but I got tired of making fifteen different kinds of bunkers, that’s not all I think about. I was eliminating possibilities because I was stuck in the idea that my work needed to be concise.

Whitney Lynn, Trap no. 001 (2011) Acrylic, polished tree branch, 21 x 17 x 16 in.

BG: When you’re making the work, you’re so close to it. What feels like an enormous left-hand turn to you is, in reality, a slight detour to others. But you wonder how you’ll explain your decisions to the world.

WL: Right, yeah, and I think there’s something important about separating the making from the talking about it. I feel sometimes I have to justify what I’m doing before I even finish making and that can be disruptive. I try not to worry in advance how to articulate the work…it’s a matter of knowing that there’s a difference between the process and its final articulation.

BG: Sometimes you can frame the work loosely by saying that, for example, it’s about control: attempting to control the situation of a disaster, or the actions of another person or animal, or even the definition of an action on the street, where you decide if it’s performance art or not. And then in each new iteration of your work, you decide how it fits in—or not—to that broad category.

WL: I think a lot of the work is this attempt at control that is usurped, the rug gets pulled, in the face of all these systems, these attempts to corral, contain, or understand something. Where I find it interesting is where that’s not possible.

Whitney Lynn, Silver Equivalent (2011) Clay bricks, silver-plated steel nail, 7 x 14.5 x 23 in.

BG: Why did you title the show Sculptures Involontaires?

WL: The legend goes that Brassaï was hanging out with Dali at a café, and Dali pulled a rolled-up ticket stub out of his pocket. A conversation ensued about how you could photograph anything and it becomes sculpture: ticket stubs, and chewing gum, and debris…photographed, they look like landscapes or unknown objects. Through the photograph anything can become unfamiliar and strange. I love that idea. I was looking at traps and seeing how traps are sculptures just by themselves. I started buying traps—someone tracking my Amazon purchases would be really scared of me!—I was getting them and seeing how they function, admiring the beautiful ingenuity of them, all this creative thought that is put into something so sinister. So there’s this involuntary way in which they are already sculptures. My work here functions as traps and as sculptures. I’m loosely pulling from that idea of context, that by changing the context you can re-look at the form.

Since 1949, Young Contemporaries, or the now-named Bloomberg New Contemporaries, has been presenting its view of the future of contemporary art, selecting recent graduates from art schools across the UK. This year, spread across the ICA in London, are 40 artists who span the genres of painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, conceptual art and performance. With the likes of the Chapman Brothers, Anish Kapoor and David Hockney included in past incarnations, there is always the hope that amongst the chosen, the next great British artist is lurking.

With no text to accompany the exhibition, the work must stand on its own merits. While I appreciate that the viewer is encouraged to form unbiased opinions based on the formal, aesthetic and narrative properties inherent in the work, I can’t help but think that we might be missing something, and that much of the work would benefit from further contextualisation – and perhaps a better hang. So what might the future hold?

Noel Hensey, Death is Here, 2009, c-type print on aluminium, 42 x 60 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

1. Death by Photography

Tucked away in a less-than stellar location on the stairwells is the work of two artists whose muted photographs capture constructed moments of intrigue. Noel Hensey’s Death is Here is an unsettling and eerie image in which the perfectly balanced, slick composition if offset by the unsettling, and perhaps prophetic, narrative that one envisions may play out in a suburban nightmare.

Ute Klein, Resonanzgeflecht # 8, 2009, lightjet C-type print on dibond, 35 x 36 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

2. Photographic Performance

Ute Klein’s photograph is more about performance than photography, exploring the spaces that bodies may occupy. The extreme corporal contact is both comforting and confining – the contorted poses of the performers intertwine two bodies to become one – calm and content from the interior and impenetrable from the outside.

David Ben White, Painting Pavilion 1, 2011, giclée print, 50 x 33 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

3. Structural Paintings

David Ben White’s Painting Pavilions balance the whimsical with intellectual thrust. Using haphazardly balanced paintings and furniture to construct interior architectural structures, White knocks painting from its privileged place of prestige. With the act of photographing these structures, painting is further kicked while it is down, reduced to common reproduction, and the ultimate decorative item for the home.

Katie Goodwin, Silent Landscape, 2010, HD video, 3 min. Courtesy of the artist and Bloomberg New Contemporaries.

4. The De-structuralisation of Cinema

Katie Goodwin’s self-destructive landscape brings unseen violence to the frontlines. The silent video,  based on filmed war footage, features a highly violent series of explosions in an soulless place. Freed from the characters and narratives which overshadow the cinematic landscape, our attention is drawn to the ubiquity of this destruction – constantly looked at, but never really seen.

5. Intangible Performance

One of the most affecting works in the exhibition has no visual reference. Throughout the spaces, the smell of perfume perfuses the air, growing stronger at times and then fading away. Without text, title, or attention, performance artist Leah Capaldi quietly hijacks your senses, playing on individual associations and the memories that scent draws out. Doused with an entire bottle of Chanel Allure perfume, Capaldi’s performers meander through the space and literally take over with their sickening smell. The allure of the perfume is nothing short of nauseating in its excess, as the rituals of beauty are taken to extremes.

This future smells of potential, and may turn out to be quite promising after all.

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Crepusculum, 2011. Photo from Video, 29:00 mins / ed. 5 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2011 Photo Jirí Hroník.

Comprising only a large installation at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Gabríela Friðriksdóttir’s Crepusculum – Latin for “twilight” or “dusk” – is a mixed-media, polyphonic, physical exploration of metaphysical structures that govern the human psyche, and speculates that an enigmatic and irrational system of signs, meanings and forms counterbalances the deceptively ordered exteriors of our existence.

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Crepusculum, 2011. Photo from Video, 29:00 mins / ed. 5 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2011 Photo Jirí Hroník.

Above all, it is an experiential and tactile show that prioritises evoking a multitude of emotions over engaging the intellect. A large, white spherical entity around which alchemic instruments are scattered sits on a pile of sand; music seems to leak out from all sides of the wall, surrounded by glass-protected ancient Icelandic calfskin parchments that record supernatural accounts of a medieval Scandinavian world inhabited by witches, trolls and dragons. The installation is populated with elemental components of the earth such as dust, dough, fire, blood, burlap and fur, but also overlaid with textures that are fur- or hair-roughened. An accompanying video bolsters the already-surreal installation as a narrator weaves a showy mythological universe with his droning words: a man guts slimy fish, a figure lithely unfolds itself out of clay “legs” and “helmet”, a figure wrapped in tattered cloths hikes laboriously across a sandy wasteland with another strapped to his back towards the self-same spherical entity.

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Crepusculum, 2011. Photo from Video, 29:00 mins / ed. 5 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2011 Photo Jirí Hroník.

Crepusculum’s allusive and mystical atmosphere appears to be as much a personal aesthetic journey as it is a collective memory of Iceland’s histories. Materially, the exhibition is about Friðriksdóttir’s continued creative experimentation with diverse materials and media that has been in part influenced by the breadth of Swiss/German Dieter Roth’s artistic processes and vocabulary. Friðriksdóttir’s starting point for Crepusculum is rooted in her own dreams – intangible tendrils of thoughts that bleed into each other are first allowed to drift unassisted into esoteric realms and subsequently thematically developed through a combination of simple sketches, sculpture and film. The overall effect is an imagistic universe comprising a choir of overlapping voices, an aggregate of signs and diverse earthy components, but it is hard to see beyond Crepusculum as an oracular endeavour to present nebulous connections to sexual psychology and pop culture while casting light on deconstructing traditional patterns of narratives located within Norse mythology .

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Crepusculum, 2011. Photo from Video, 29:00 mins / ed. 5 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2011 Photo Jirí Hroník.

But Crepusculum is also Friðriksdóttir’s personal re-imagination of a time in Iceland when folklore, gods and magic were fundamental tenets of existence, and where elaborate stories of creation were punctuated by moments of horror, melancholy and unquestioning didacticism. Augmenting her exhibition are twelfth century manuscripts and almanacs loaned from the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík for the first time; such is the reinforcement of the historical investment in Iceland’s national cultural heritage and the revelation of the intense grip that these traditions and mythology still have on twenty-first century Icelandic culture. Perhaps then, for Friðriksdóttir, this is simultaneously a profound ambassadorial undertaking on behalf of the Icelandic people, a cultural burden so complex that it could only be presented in ambivalent spaces as metaphysical considerations.

***

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir: Crepusculum will be on show at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt until January 8, 2012.

Eleanor Antin, “100 Boots,” 1971-73.

Alright, I’ll say it. A show that features conceptual art circa 1970 threatens to be dry. At the outset, you know you’ll be getting mostly documentation: photographic, video, film, and paper. Beyond the ordinary wall text, there will probably be artists’ statements explaining what was done while you weren’t looking. The typewriter, the mimeograph, and the camera will act as not-so-silent partners to the artists’ projects. “State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970” at the Orange County Museum of Art doesn’t escape these confines, but ends up offering you just a little bit more.

Bruce Nauman, “Studies for Holograms (Pinched Lips; Pulled Lower Lip; Pulled Neck; Pulled Cheeks; and Squeezed Lips),” 1970.

The show is divided into categories like “Mapping the Land,” “Politics,” “Public and Private Space,” and “Language and Wordplay.” As with previous shows I’ve seen at OCMA, these divisions hinder the overall experience. I found myself wishing that the curators had stuck to working chronologically or geographically, simply because most of the works are more interesting when viewed across categories, instead of in isolation. Bruce Nauman and Bonnie Sherk, for instance, would have made interesting counterpoints to each other; “State of Mind” includes Nauman’s Thighing (1967), Studies for Holograms (Pinched Lips; Pulled Lower Lip; Pulled Neck; Pulled Cheeks; and Squeezed Lips) (1970), and Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square (1967-68), to name a few, which pair nicely with Sherk’s Sitting Still series, where the artist photographs herself sitting in public locations usually used for passing through, like the Golden Gate Bridge or the corner of Mission and 20^th in San Francisco.

Bonnie Sherk, “Sitting Still II, Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco,” from the “Sitting Still Series,” 1971.

“State of Mind” will appeal to those in the know before it appeals to the general public—Tom Marioni’s Process Print (1969) failed to capture the attention of the dozens of school kids running around the day I visited, as did Chris Burden’s video piece, Documentation of Selected Works (1971-74), in which Burden talks about most of his iconic performance pieces (Bed, Shoot).  It’s one of the gems of the show, as are most of John Baldessari’s pieces, which show themselves to be not just humorous and playful, but—by the time you get to Voluble Luminist Painting for Max Kozloff (1966-68)—downright contrarian.

John Baldessari, “Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of Thirty-six Attempts),” 1973.

There is something for everyone, however; these same kids took delight in the hippie-looking, cut-out dudes featured in Allen Ruppersberg’s Al’s Grand Hotel (1971) and the animal intestines in Suzanne Lacy’s pieces. Also popular amongst the ten-year old crowd: sculptural works like Nauman’s Yellow Room (Triangular) (1973), Stephen Kalthenbach’s Raised Floor (1967/2011) and Robert Kinmont’s 8 Handstands (1969/2009)—one of which he performs at the edge of a cliff.

Robert Kinmont, “8 Natural Handstands,” 1969.

Kinmont’s piece touched me, too. The legacy left by conceptualism, California-based or otherwise, is pervasive, demanding and often unpleasurable.  Despite this, contemporary work that picks up conceptualism’s language is usually diluted and easy to overlook.  Concepts and actions that were once novel—if not out of bounds—are now familiar and trite. Walking into the main room of “State of Mind”—full of back-to-back projections, televisions, photographs, prints and paintings—after looking at Kinmont balancing at the edge of a cliff, offers just the faintest whiff of the energy of the moment.

“State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970” is on view at the Orange County Museum of Art through January 22, 2012 as part of Pacific Standard Time.

Teresa Margolles, Las Llaves de la Ciudad (detail), 2011. Performance and installation. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Rafael Burillo.

There have been several recent shows considering how art is affected by nationality. Maybe it’s a response to the generic aura found on the floors of art fairs. Disponible at the School of the Museum of the Fine Arts, Boston is a good example that asks what it means to be a Mexican artist. It’s an incomplete exhibition that deserves a books worth of supporting texts, but as a rough exploration of Mexico’s current potential, it’s lucid and descriptive.

The title is taken from Mexico’s empty billboards, advertising that they are not currently taken. Disponible is an ambiguous word, translating to available or changeable. Disponible partially functions as a metaphor for Mexico’s adjustable, compelling, and dynamic contemporary art scene. The title also slyly points to the sizable share of international art sales Mexican artists and galleries are generating (See: Kurimanzutto). After all, the billboards in question are a constant reminder to “the job creators” that they could be enhancing their brands right now.

The most interesting pieces included in Disponible display Mexico as more than a place for drug dealers and low-wage workers. Marcela Armas‘s video Ocupación shows her 2009 performance where she walks like she’s a car in the flow of traffic. She wears a backpack that has an air horn like a car would and she uses it when she has to wait in the string of traffic. The crush of congestion is something we all have insights into, yet can’t keep from happening. It’s a material reality for all seven billion of us.

Hector Zamora, White Noise – Shed 6 Installation (detail), 2011. Installation originally developed for the Auckland Arts Festival, New Zealand. Courtesy of the artist.

Hector Zamora‘s White Noise- Shed 6 is an installation about the relationship between land and colonial rights in New Zealand. After England made New Zealand a colony, land rights were delineated by planting white flags on the borders of private property. Zamora planted 500 flags on a Aukland beach to begin a conversation on this issue and after one day was relegated by the Mayor to exhibiting his work on private property. There was no physical connection to public space after that. This public question was exiled to a private location, transforming his artwork from a sociable interaction into a private sculptural territory. The Mayor tried to exclude the public policy issues and transformed the work from an investigation of a very local, esoteric law to a universal and emblematic colonial critique. Exhibiting it in Boston reflects how it will be a displaced art piece, deported from its appropriate venue no matter where it’s displayed now.

Manuel Rocha Iturbide, I Play The Drums With Frequency (detail), 2007–11. Drum set, sound installation. Courtesy of the artist.

Manuel Rocha Iturbide‘s I Play Drums with Frequency, is the stand out work in Disponible. It’s the least politically formulaic, the most seductively mysterious, and best example of the ambiguity in the title of the show. Is begs the audience to confront their stereotypes about Mexican art. This inventive sound sculpture plays a drum set not with sticks, but with small speakers. A electronic soundtrack composed by Itrubide vibrates the set, and in turn the room. I want to be able to play with this sculpture. I want to put my own soundtracks into the speakers and hear the results. It is a discrete and a most salable object that would look great in an art fair. The noise would draw as much attention as the empty billboards do in a city. “Come buy me! I’m available!”

Disponible, on view at SMFA from September 13- November 19, 2011, was co-curated by Hou Hanru and Guillermo Santamarina for the San Francisco Art Institute. In includes Natalia Almada, Arturo Hernández Alcázar, Edgardo Aragón, Marcela Armas, Manuel Rocha Itrubide, Mauricio Limón, Teresa Margolles, and Hector Zamora

Installation of Heather and Ivan Morison's Dream Workshop; image courtesy of It's Our Playground

The Builders is a “living exhibition” that runs till 30 October 2011 at The Market Gallery, Glasgow, and unfolds from interventions by a group of artists working in sequence. Heather and Ivan Morison first list the materials and tools that form their dream workshop; Neal Beggs creates new works in the gallery for seven days using only what is found within the workshop, and Nick Evans displays these works in a final exhibition. The Builders is a project by Camille Le Houezec and Joey Villemont, also known collectively as It’s Our Playground (IOP).

Magdalen Chua: How did IOP come about, and do you have your individual artistic practices?

It’s Our Playground: We’ve never done curatorial courses and have been trained as artists, with our personal artistic practices. We see exhibitions as an artistic practice, not just reserved to a certain number of people trained to do exhibitions. In France, curatorial practice is not something often heard of, although some art schools are starting to have classes on curating.

We noticed that the exhibition, as a subject, was not part of our programme, and we turned our studio in the art school (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Bourges) into an exhibition space.

For every project we’ve done, as seen in The Builders, a work is produced. We really like to be surprised, and not just select works. As we both come from an artistic and not an institutional background, we prefer working with an artist, not just with his work.

Maybe there is a relationship with our own practice. Camille only produces work when there is the chance for it to be exhibited. We know that artists have to produce and want to work with them on it.

We have never approached an artist for one specific piece. It is always for a project, and the collaboration is always central to our practice. We want to find our own place in this process and do not want to be just spectators.

Heather and Ivan Morison's Dream Workshop; image courtesy of It's Our Playground

MC: Why are you called It’s Our Playground?

IOP: We see the exhibition space and gallery as our playground and there is a strong idea of playfulness in our work. This is not in a childish way or about doing ridiculous things. It is about a free approach without boundaries or constraints. When we started having our online projects, it changed the way people saw what IOP was about, as they could play with the way works were being displayed. Even in our personal work which is very serious, there is also irony. IOP will stop the day we don’t find it fun.

MC: Could you describe your residency and what parts of the residency were important in leading you towards The Builders.

IOP: We submitted our proposal to The Market Gallery in January this year. Our project focused on the socio-economic context and we wanted to prove that the cuts and lack of money was not a reason not to make good shows or good pieces of art, and not to be ambitious.

We started to think about what form art could take in this context, and about processes and performance as a cheap way to make art. We thought of inviting artists to live in the gallery through a living exhibition that would also reflect the contexts outside the gallery.

During the residency, we had mentors, Francis McKee and Sarah Lowdnes, whom we had exchanges with that brought a dynamic to our practice.

We also presented an exhibition on our website, The Survivors, the Explorers, the Builders, which were the sketches for The Builders, and a way to put the research into a certain form. This is the first time our online projects have led to something real.

Third day Neal Beggs is in The Builders, using the resources from Heather and Ivan Morison's Dream Workshop to create works; image courtesy of It's Our Playground

MC: How did your online projects begin and how are they a part of IOP?

IOP: The online projects started as a channel and place for both of us to work together, when Joey first came to Glasgow.

Once, Joey went to Frieze Art Fair and sent Camille 400 images to make a selection for an online exhibition. Called To the museum – curating Frieze Art Fair 2009, we played the curators for the fair, and the project was borne from a reflection on the way images of art appear online and how documentation seems to replace the work in our mind.

When Camille arrived in Glasgow, it was difficult to open a space and a website was a platform for projects. It was a way to curate internet images, texts, videos and give them a new life. From the beginning, we wanted something quite quick, and to have an exhibition every two weeks.

We contact the artists whose images we use, if they have a website, or email address, or through their galleries. We have also started inviting others to create online projects on It’s Our Playground.

MC: The phased nature of the exhibition, where one artist kicks off the building process which another artist continues, makes me think of collaboration but also constraints based on the parametres set by the preceding artist. What were your considerations for the exhibition?

IOP: Everyone in this project has different constraints. Heather and Ivan Morison had the constraints of the budget and space, while Neal has the constraints of the materials and seeing his work used by someone else.

Constraints are not bad, and in fact, create stimulating conditions. It is not about what you can’t do but about what you could do.

Similar to evolution and civilization, you have the first people coming on the island, explorers developing and the builders using what others have created. That is the process for the different levels of the show – bringing materials on the land, building it, and arranging it. In a sense, it could be interpreted as a satire on the world of art. There are people making artwork and those exhibiting it, but at the end it is a team of builders, as collaborators and part of a chain reaction.

Neal Beggs' Open Studio Day; image courtesy of It's Our Playground

MC: Why did you choose to work with these artists?

IOP: Heather and Ivan Morison’s works evoke the primitive and mysterious, and we were sure they would bring strong materials. We chose them to begin the exhibition as we knew that they were busy and the only thing we wanted was the list of materials indicative of their dream workshop, which was quite easy to get.

We knew Neal and trusted that he would respond to the project in a way that would surprise us, being efficient, dynamic and generous. He is also a survivor, and has climbed the Mont Blanc.

We invited Nick Evans because we have an appreciation for his work. He is an artist in Glasgow who has shown an interest in building and displaying exhibition furniture, paying strong attention to the plinth and wall drawings, as evident in his collaboration with Lotte Glob in the The Erratics at the Mackintosh Museum.

We also have in mind for this exhibition concept to travel to different places, with new builders and other artists.

This interview took place during the stage of the exhibition where Neal Beggs was creating works from Heather and Ivan Morison’s dream workshop, and I had the chance to speak to him.

First day with Nick Evans displaying works created by Neal Beggs; image courtesy of It's Our Playground

MC: What was your reaction when you heard about the project?

Neal Beggs: I just said yes, why not. Sounds like an interesting project and I was excited to play around with materials that I didn’t know what they would be before, and without the stress of thinking about what it is you would make.

Generally, when somebody suggests a project, unless there are warning signs, you do say yes, that sounds like good fun. People don’t ask you to do a project unless they think you are appropriate for what they have in mind.

Often artworks come into existence because of the opportunity, when a curator says I would like you to be in this exhibition. There is a sense that this project emphasizes that happenstance aspect, where we respond to the pragmatism of our context. I will be doing an open studio where I will talk about the works that are in progress.

Nick will take what I’ve done and do exactly what he wants with it. I’ve tried to make things in units. I have an idea of how I want to arrange it. Nick will arrange it in a totally different way, or he might not even want to use it.

Polar bear From the series: Iglooik / uit de serie: Iglooik, Canada, 2007 Courtesy Michael Hoppen, London / Londen Courtesy Vous Etes Ici, Amsterdam © Scarlett Hooft Graafland

It is on a rare occasion that I attend an exhibition and struggle to walk away from what is hanging on the walls, even with the allure of many excellent pubs outside. Scarlett Hooft Graafland’s Soft Horizons at the beautiful location of the Museum Huis Voor Fotografie Marseille in Amsterdam, stopped me in my tracks with a rich array of majestic landscapes and quirky installations, all captured in flawless photographs that have an underlining delicate humor. Creating the perfect recipe for an exhibition that is without doubt worthy of a visit.

Graaflands photography navigates the viewer through a wide array of places: in China, Bolivia, Northern Canada and Iceland. Each location capturing notions of reflection, peace and sincerity.  Even when the places are poles apart, Graffland teases out commonalities, exploring the effects of changing modern landscapes against the cultural and social traditions of the native inhabitants.

From the series: China / uit de serie: China, China, 2006 Courtesy Vous Etes Ici, Amsterdam Courtesy Michael Hoppen, London / Londen © Scarlett Hooft Graafland

The exhibition title Soft Horizons evokes ideas of ephemeral terrain that could just as easily be water, ice, salt, air, or even a mirage. The ethereal compositions all quietly express their malleable beauty, perfectly captured by Graafland. The installations are so well placed into the landscape that nature seems to become the artist, subtly highlighting its unique characteristics by using ordinary, everyday material: balloons, candy, rope, fishing line, spice, and lemonade. Animals and people, both real and unreal, are often seen participating in these images. Her understated props do not alter the landscape in any permanent way, and do nothing at all to detract from the impact of the powerful scenery. Without confusion, Graafland cleverly communicates a lighter playful side to her works, by expressing more human, ‘down to earth’ qualities when combining performance, installation and a camera.

Sweating Sweethearts 2 From the series: Salt Works / uit de serie: Salt Works, Bolivia, 2004 Courtesy Vous Etes Ici, Amsterdam Courtesy Michael Hoppen, London / Londen © Scarlett Hooft Graafland

In my view, the series of works created in the Bolivian salt flats, best express Graaflands strengths in creating something alluring out of a vast emptiness. She plays with this lifeless land, incorporating the Bolivia women, local foods, and machinery. Together they express a charming humor and limitless possibilities in this harsh and difficult climate. Displayed alongside Graaflands photographs was the only true installation in Soft Horizons. A carpet comprised of spices bought in a local Bolivian market, created a patchwork of color that penetrated through what would have otherwise been a never ending sea of blue and white.

Carpet Bolivia 2010 Courtesy Vous Etes Ici, Amsterdam Courtesy Michael Hoppen, London / Londen © Scarlett Hooft Graafland

In the end, the gallery closed, and I  had walk away from Bolivia, China, Iceland and Northern Canada. But now with the haunting images of Soft Horizons etched deeply into my mind, I can smile at the glorious composition while sipping my beer in the dark old pub around the corner.

Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont 2009, Under Blue Skies, In Golden Sunlight, All Spectators Have Eyes Riveted on Gallant No.306, Giclée Print on aluminum 95 x 180 cm, courtesy of the artists and Goddard de Fiddes

Stadium, the ten-year retrospective of collaborative duo Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, looks back on a body of work that investigates connections between nationalism, aesthetics and performance. While Gill and Mata Dupont primarily focus on Australian nationalism, their work has its genesis in the global cultural shifts – in particular the increasingly ring-wing politics – that occurred in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

Gill and Mata Dupont’s intensely ironic work has interrogated dominant icons of Australian identity, probing the characterization of Australian identity as masculine, native-born and white. In presenting serialized and ritualized celebrations of Australia’s ‘golden age’, the artists’ aesthetic of glamor and pageantry points to the constructed and mythologized nature of national identity. They reveal that official Australian identity has been formed by its exclusions, a point which they emphasize by drawing aesthetic parallels between Australia and the propaganda of totalitarian and fascist regimes.

Their Heart of Gold Projects (2004-2008) restage images and themes derived from 20th century propaganda, passed through a filter of Hollywood musicals, glamor photography, competitive calisthenics and kitsch Australiana. At its most fundamental level, this body of work asserts that aesthetics and ideology are inextricably entwined. The series also responds to the widespread marginalization of women in heroic histories of nation. The story of Australia that’s celebrated is conspicuously masculine, populated by heroic types conquering an inhospitable landscape. Gill and Mata Dupont’s work recasts women in the role of these heroes; however, the cross-dressing, pirouetting, high camp antics of their heroines are far removed from the realities of the frontier and the battleground, pointing to the dangers of citing the past to garner support for the politics of the present.

Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont 2011, Ever Higher, Performance, Photograph by James Hensby, Courtesy the artists and Goddard de Fiddes

Drawing on Mata Dupont’s family heritage, recent work has reflected on Argentina’s ‘dirty wars’ of the 1970s and 80s. Their 2010 video work Gymnasium took inspiration from the work of Leni Riefenstahl to depict an acerbic celebration of Australian sportsmanship and nation, while their new site-specific performance Ever Higher sees a lone aerialist commanding a troupe of cheerleaders with eerily familiar phrases such as “Teamwork will set you free,” and “Blood and Honor! We are gonna…win!”

Gill and Mata Dupont’s practice over the past ten years has satirized and disarmed nationalism, but there continues to be a degree of discomfort in their work. Their devoted irony is central to the ambivalence of the work, which, for some, reads as sincere. However, the artists’ resistance to offering a clear moral stance in their work is actually key to its success as parody—because, for all its deceptive innocence, the work is indeed seductive, like all successful propaganda.

An uncredited photograph from the exhibition Pomaranczowa Alternatywa Happeningiem w Komunizm (Happening Against Communism by the Orange Alternative) at the Galeria Miedzynarodowego Centrum Kultury.

Some background: various political and economic factors plunged Poland into a period of deep decline around 1980, and on December 12, 1980 martial law was declared.  Both an immense buildup of Soviet military at the borders and the arrest of union members and intellectuals precipitated an economic sanction by the US and other nations.  Rapidly, Poland became a nation of fear and scarcity.  Working with the influences of the Surrealist and Dada movements, “Major” Waldemar Fydrych decided to take matters into his own hands.  As a former art history student at the University of Wroclaw, Fydrych had co-organized the Independent Students Union and a massive peace march as well as cooperatively publishing a student newspaper called Orange Alternative, so he was no stranger to both art and politics.  When he saw all the patches of white paint the government was using to cover anti-regime graffiti, he had an idea that eventually shaped itself into a revolution.  His goal was to protest the brutality and militarism of the regime without replacing one dogma for another by shouting political slogans or creating formal hierarchical structures.  From the moment he picked up a brush, Poland became a site for the absurd pushing against the militaristic.  Enter the dwarf.

An installation view of one room from the exhibition. The television in the corner plays a looped excerpt from Maria Zmara-Koczanowicz's "Majer or the Revolution of Dwarves." Photo: Bean Gilsdorf

The exhibition is dense with information, but it is presented in a charming and accessible fashion.  Most rooms include recreated ephemera from the many happenings, including flyers, t-shirts, banners, and costumes.  However, the videos are often the most engrossing because they include first-hand accounts and original films that documented the era.  Majer or the Revolution of Dwarves, directed by Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz in 1989, includes interviews and police/journalist footage of some of the key players and happenings across Poland.

Another room of the exhibition. Photo: Bean Gilsdorf

The absurdity and low comedy of the events and actions shines brightly across the decades, even in subtitled translation.  One video excerpt recounts a happening entitled Who’s Afraid of Toilet Paper? A man describes the action of giving away (extremely scarce) free toilet paper on the street, gleefully telling passersby to take two rolls, and he reenacts the recipients’ stunned and joyful surprise.  At another happening, protesters lampooned the military by dressing as soldiers and marching in the streets while carrying paper rifles or riding “tanks” made of bicycles and cardboard.  They chanted, “Nothing gives you fun like a machine gun!” and “Less condoms, more military exercises!”  It was silly, a caricature that turned a funhouse mirror to the brutally stark life lived under constant military and police presence.

A DIY dwarf photobooth with side-panel instructions from the exhibition. Photo: Bean Gilsdorf

The most affecting moments occur when the camera catches more than tomfoolery, when the frightening reality of 1980s Poland is glimpsed.  One video shows an apartment full of young people dressing in costumes in preparation for a protest.  A sunny young man adjusts his straw halo for the camera and says, “Wouldn’t it be a pity if they pulled us all in?” and the camera cuts to a view through the apartment window where a military vehicle sits waiting at the curb. Despite his broad smile, the flash of fear in the man’s eyes tells everything: what he risks, and how he feels about it.  Everything is at stake, he could lose it all in the time it takes to be put into the back of a van.  The tension is palpable, his bravery immense. It is precisely this sense of courage and conviction—and of the menace shimmering darkly just beneath the surface of ridiculous hijinks—that gives this exhibition its profundity and force.  One of the leaflets I read before exiting the gallery contained a final thought connecting this historical overview to our present situation: “Is the Orange Alternative spent after 30 years?  In the late 1980s Major Fydrych declared: the Orange Alternative will cease to exist when people no longer need it. So far it does still exist.”

Judy Chicago, "Car Hood," Sprayed acrylic lacquer on Corvair car hood. 42 15/16 x 49 3/16 x 4 5/16 in. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. © Judy Chicago. Photo: Donald Woodman

Pacific Standard Time, a nearly year-long paean to SoCal art history, has barely begun and, already, I’m experiencing PST fatigue. Funded by the Getty Institute and the result of at least a decade’s worth of scholarship by the Getty researchers and others, PST will include 60 or so exhibitions and more artists than you can count, all of whom were working between 1945-1980. Over 60 institutions are “partnering” with the Getty, which means SoCal galleries and museums will be ablaze in the glory of their own history for much of the foreseeable future. Shows have titles like Greetings from L.A.: Artists and Publics 1950–1980 or Best Kept Secret: UC Irvine and the Development of Contemporary Art, 1964-1971, mouthfuls that would be at home on textbook covers. The draw of the PST initiative is, of course, that some of the work on display will have barely been seen since it was made, and uncovering overlooked gems makes a canonized period of L.A. history feel open and alive again. However, even this draw exacerbates the fatigue. Obscure, surprising gems from the 1950, ‘60s or ‘70s will undoubtedly send you reeling back through history; you’ll want to learn more about the work’s making and reconsider its makers. And how will you ever get through 60-plus exhibitions that way?

One particular work that’s not obscure per se – it’s been reproduced in biographies and other SoCal histories –sent me back through archives and biographies. It’s Judy Chicago’s Car Hood, made in 1964 and scheduled to be on view at the Getty Center. You wouldn’t necessarily recognize it as hers at first. It acrylic lacquer on the hood of an actual Chevy and it looks more like something Billy Al Bengston or Craig Kauffman might have come up with: minimal, flat, metal, bold. But upon closer look, the feminist matron’s characteristically bodily—yes, vaginal—imagery presents itself in the form of a red and pink curve that drips downward. It’s car culture meets mother earth, and it’s also festive, far more folksy than anything Bengston might have done during that period.

Judy Chicago, "The Dinner Party," 1979. Installation.

Chicago, who still went by “Judy Gerowitz” at that point (she was “the first of several women to adopt pseudo-geographical surnames as Feminist gestures,” quipped critic Peter Plagens), made Car Hood around the time she participated in a show of hard-edge abstraction at L.A.’s Rolf Nelson gallery. Earlier the same year, she had enrolled in auto-body school. According to biographer Gail Levin, who also notes the car-painting instructor drove a lavender and candy-apple colored convertible, Chicago was the only women out of 250 students. She learned the craft, though, and after 8 weeks she could manipulate lacquer and spray paint on metal, which meant she too could achieve that “finish fetish” aesthetic the boys in SoCal were becoming known for. Her dabble into this traditionally male world would, seemingly came to an abrupt end when she moved to Fresno in 1970 to start the first Feminist Art Program, dropping all the masculine pretenses she’d adopted to get ahead in the ‘60s art world. After spearheading a number of other feminist ventures — most notably Womanhouse, the month long women-only, live-in  performance piece, and the Woman’s Building, an abandoned art school in downtown L.A. turned into space for women artists — she would begin The Dinner Party, the work for which she’s still most famous.

The team of assistants behind Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party"

Never before had I considered the slick, overly perfect glazed plates from The Dinner Party an offshoot of car culture. That they might be makes them even more compelling. A massive installation comprised of a triangular dinner table set for an entourage of female ground-breakers all downplayed by history’s canon, The Dinner Party has an explicit theatricality. Each plate is clearly inspired by female anatomy, and this can be overwhelming, even hard-hitting. But see it in light of the unapologetic kitsch of California custom cars and the absurd obsessiveness of the fetish finish aesthetic, and suddenly Chicago’s feminist opus becomes sunnier, a masterful mash-up that’s formal flair should celebrated as much as its message. Screw the institution; women can have fun too, it suggests. After all, the piece is supposed to be a party.

Mother Trust Superet Church's Prayer Garden

A mile and a half from where I live, close to downtown, there’s a strange treasure: a traditional white church with a tall steeple and prayer garden complete with a Jesus sculpture right next door. It looks like a place Anne of Green Gables might have gone to pray, except that the protestant Avonlea-worthy quaintness is turned upside down by a whole lot of neon. There’s a pink and purple neon sign above the church itself and a shooting neon rainbow above the Jesus in the garden. It would be gaudy it weren’t so grippingly uncanny, especially at night.

The Mother Trust Superet Church was founded in 1926 and purportedly combines a scientific study of light with Bible study. “Jesus’ Words were shining with and in a brilliancy of golden and purple Light,” reads the church’s website, which also alludes to the church’s belief in auras and reincarnation.

Asco, First Supper (After a Major Riot), 1974

I thought of Mother Trust and its weird spiritual whimsy Wednesday, when strolling through ASCO, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s soon-to-open exhibition of work by an under-exposed Chicano collective consisting of Gronk, Willie Herron, Harry Gamboa and Patssi Valdez. Active in L.A. in the 1970s and ‘80s and named after the Spanish word for nausea – as the story goes, one member of the group said “This gives me ASCO” after seeing a grating exhibition, and an idea for a new kind of art was born – the group had a lot to be nauseous about, including the war in Vietnam, which had killed a seemingly disproportionate number of young Chicano men.

The show largely includes video and photographic documentations of performances, one of which was the Stations of the Cross, performed in 1971 along Whittier Boulevard in L.A. A procession and a protest, the artists wore outlandish costumes (Gamboa was Pontius Pilate in a clown suit) and headed, with a large cross and skeleton in tow, toward the Marine Recruiting Station, where they would deliver the skeleton. Later, they interrupted a mass in Evergreen Cemetery and staged First Supper (After a Riot), dining on an island in the middle of a street  during rush hour. In these performances, they wore make-up and outlandish costumes—platform boots, or  home-made masks.

Asco, Asco Goes to the Universe, 1975

Always, ASCO looked reverently serious, no matter how riotous or disruptive they were being. Like the Superet church with its kitschy and over-the-top neon, their disruptions and eccentricities, even when motivated by disgust at the world around them, were full of conviction.