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.

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.

Richard Patterson emerged in London at Damien Hirst’s Freeze exhibition in 1988 as one of the YBA group. After moving to New York he eventually settled in Dallas. He is represented by Timothy Taylor Gallery in London and James Cohan Gallery in New York. He is known for paintings that combine imagery culled from popular culture and art history with painstaking detail. Combining car culture, soft porn, modernist design and the viscous seductions of paint, Patterson’s work often evokes both melancholy and desire. Here, Noah Simblist talks to him in his studio about his current paintings. They began by discussing the problems with working with appropriated imagery.

Richard Patterson: There’s so much shit to worry about. That’s what has sort of driven me to generate my own imagery rather than referencing other material because unlike in Germany where everything is seen as fair use, everywhere else it’s not. So it’s a very prohibitive time, you can’t visually comment on the world now in a satirical or ironic way without getting permission first. So, I got good enough in Photoshop where I started realizing that if you already know how to paint and draw you can actually generate stuff from scratch without sampling it.

Noah Simblist: The breasts in the Doge painting are from scratch?

RP: They are absolutely from scratch.

NS: Really?

RP: I decided to adorn these dancers with these slightly crazy, slightly cartoon breasts. And then Bellini’s Doge of Venice appears in the middle. There was a lot of power invested in this one person who is basically elected. I think of him as this benevolent type of prince. That’s not why I did it, but you know, he seems a little like the local collector Howard Rachofsky.

NS: The Doge of Dallas.

RP: The Doge of Dallas and all the breasts you know. These are my fake breasts.

NS: The Dallas fake breasts.

RP: These are the people that inhabit galleries. It’s also like Picasso. It’s the fear of impotence and death and the younger fertile woman you know. Also I think its ridiculous, it’s got a cartoony kind of dumbness to it.

NS: You have said that these paintings are not meant to be purely ironic like the way that Jeff Koons uses appropriated imagery for a sly commentary on contemporary life.

RP: Koons is all about irony. But, there is a melancholy and genuineness, a specific mood in some of my paintings that isn’t there in Koons. Koons is all about the tedious stuff about consumerism.

I think that the American understanding of irony is where you say, “I really like your new sweater…not” My understanding of irony is from English culture, which is entrenched with irony. If you had your country blown to bits in living memory or you parents memory and you’ve seen your country change…We used to have this massive empire and I was brought up to believe that there was still this kind of Great Brittania type shit and then it is so clearly dwindling. How can you not be ironic about the fact that Hitler bombed the shit out of your country. That gives you a kind of cultural irony that is so, English. English culture is shot through with being invaded and assimilating new cultures through its history and then developing a sense of humor about it.

NS: That’s interesting. What you’re talking about relates to our standard history about Dada and Surrealism that was about uncanny contradictory things being put in one place together. The idea of something that seems both funny and horrific at the same time was coming out of World War I or World War II, by people that were being confronted with the most bizarre circumstances. During the Blitz you’d see a burning building and abject destruction but people that lived next to that building still had to go about their daily lives by going to work, doing laundry and grocery shopping. So you have this kind of banal thing that is also epic at the same time.

RP: Well I think so much gets lost in translation and you know I think that there is a default setting that the Brits have that is so self-deprecating, self-questioning, self-doubting and America since 9/11 is going to be more ironic, and maybe intimate as well.

If I did a painting of whatever it was that I was painting – cartoon breasts or something – it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s what I wanted to see. In fact, it was often the opposite. I wasn’t painting Spice Girls because I thought Spice Girls were great. Some people say, “You sort of like the bikes and the tits right?” It’s a difficult question cause I do. The red one is a collectible bike that raced in Europe in the sixties and I do like them but the irony is for me to put them into paintings is incredibly bad.

NS: Does this connect to an idea of taste? Is every painting or every work an artist makes an expression of their taste? Similarly, like the curator acquiring something for their museum. Is that an expression of their taste? It seems like you’re saying the opposite. These aren’t just expressions of your own likes or dislikes.

RP: Yeah, taste is a real good thing to talk about cause it’s the most objective thing. It’s the thing that sounds most nebulous, maybe least important and maybe it’s the most important thing. Because in term of these images, not only are they reproduced very, very carefully, when it comes to actually painting them, but a huge amount of work has gone into trying to balance colors and compositions to make them. I mean they are quite classical; the reason I think it looks so weird is because it’s a very classical painting in an age that isn’t. So its difficult to find a context for them. It’s like to trying to talk about Schoenberg to the MTV generation.  Is it possible to paint a bright red Toyota Tacoma truck with these funny bulges, with wheel arches that are really quite ugly that Toyota described in their press release as “muscular bulges” that didn’t look like muscle at all; they looked like rolls of fat around someones middle.

NS: I read something recently about a coup within Toyota where the CEO who was  responsible for bringing out these big trucks and big SUV’s and replacing their traditional model of having smaller fuel efficient cars with these bigger things because it was feeding the American appetite was publicly chastised by Toyota’s grandson. They fell into a lot of the same problems that the American car makers did.  He publicly rebuked him for being greedy and too connected to the dirty obsession with power and size that Americans have and throwing away all the virtues that the company was founded on.

RP: I wrote a piece for Glenn Fuhrman’s show at the Flag Foundation in New York, about something connected to this. Glenn has the Back of the Dealership painting. The title was an obvious pun on paintings being back at the art dealership. But it was also genuine. I kept going back to the Toyota dealership on Sundays to take a look at the trucks when there was no one there. But there was always some salesman, who seemed to be on Sunday duty at the shop trying to sell you a truck and they never knew as much about the truck as I did. They’d tell you it was an eight cylinder truck and it was a six cylinder truck. They never seemed to know what they were talking about. And, then somehow oil was getting more expensive.

I was already locked into that syndrome and I was kind of aware of it and built credit by spending money I did not have just to be taken seriously in America. Politically you don’t have any power unless you’re in debt. So basically all money is debt, and if power is money you can say that power is debt. So owning one of these fucking trucks was contributing to the economy and it was also your license to be fully American. It was clearly fucked up. I think that’s why I wanted to move here. And now of course it’s going to look too obvious because its going to look like its about the economy. If it’s ironic, its going to be about trucks or the economy or something. But I was actually experiencing it as a foreign national in a slightly different way than probably ordinary Americans would.

Postscript: While the above excerpts from a conversation with Patterson covered the complex layering of conceptual tropes in his paintings, the discussion frequently turned to larger issues about living and working in a regional American city like Dallas. Patterson has taken a leading roll in recent years to bring his experiences of participating in an emerging art community in London – which in the mid-80’s was not the art center that it is today – to bear on Dallas. But he also continues to show his work internationally. Most recently he is participating in “Size Does Matter,” an exhibition curated by Shaquille O’Neal which opened on Feb 19 at The Flag Art Foundation in New York.

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.