Tom LaDuke, Run Generator, 2009. Graphite, glue, mirror, 6 x 19 x 9 1/2 inches

On Saturday, April 13, 2013, ten artists representing a range of painterly approaches and hailing from Los Angeles, New York, and the Bay Area gathered in San Francisco to take the pulse of a practice that is denigrated as often as it is celebrated. Linda Geary and James Gobel (the chair and associate chair, respectively, of California College of the Arts’ painting program) organized the symposium, which was attended by a large, enthusiastic audience, and introduced it with the stated intention to address issues of practice and theory as well as matters of material, form, and context that seem urgent in contemporary painting. They addressed neither the specter of Rosalind Krauss invoked by the title of the day’s proceedings nor the legitimation of painting after the advent of conceptualism, paving the way instead for an exemplary range of perspectives linking painting to both life and art. The subsequent ten-minute presentations by each of the invited artists set the stage for two roundtable discussions in which shared concerns and interests quickly coalesced.

Any unease caused by the prospect of one hundred minutes of painterly presentation was instantly dispelled by the Los Angeles–based practitioner Tom LaDuke’s high-octane, confessional exposé of the “humiliation” of painterly practice. With deadpan drollery, LaDuke raced through a gamut of concerns, from abject life to brutish death, presenting images of paintings that veered from the photorealistic to the abstract and of extraordinarily painstaking, lifelike sculptures. He candidly voiced the angst of striving to sustain a hermetic studio-based existence, of imbuing painting with conceptual and metaphysical validity, of being stuck with oneself and one’s compulsive behaviors, and of constantly seeking the means to short-circuiting one’s predilections in pursuit of an innovative artistic practice that retains urgency for both practitioner and viewer. In situating the development of his art directly alongside his life experiences, and in expressing doubt and desperation, LaDuke placed painting firmly at the center of a sentient artistic practice. In a way, he said it all.

Read the full article here.

Kyle Austin Dunn, Balled Up Color and Lines, 2013. Acrylic and enamel on polystyrene and PVC, 32 x 50 x 16 inches

Some of Kyle Austin Dunn’s artworks look sugary and delicious with factory-made colors. He rejects the colors of nature for the neon inventions of man, leaving me curious as to his relationship to the natural world. The paintings seems very California–a feeling of newness and plasticity, and the rainbowed/dayglow color palette and graphic quality is reminiscent of commercial culture, screenprinting, and street art. Dunn says he’s gotten that response before: “more specifically L.A.,” but he’s not sure why exactly. In response to his palette, he says “pure chroma is more abstract than earth tones or more subdued colors, and I’m drawn to that quality of it. It’s enigmatic in addition to being striking.”

Viewing his paintings, I assume the natural world must be uninteresting to him, but he replies, “It may be surprising to hear that the outdoors are my favorite place to be…perhaps it is that I try to avoid reproducing nature in any way because it is never as incredible as the real thing.” I think this is correct. His paintings are not about reproducing reality or real space.

“I think that I enjoy the landscape here as much as anything. Having grown up in a such a flat place, it’s inspiring to be on cliffs that overlook the Pacific, or nearby mountains that offer a view extending hundreds of miles into the distance. The landscape and weather in California change so drastically from place to place, prompting a lot of outdoor exploration for me personally. I’m always itching to see what’s around the corner of a hiking trail or down some unmarked dirt road. …where I live (which is the East Bay right now), there seem to be so many younger artists like myself, which definitely creates a sense of belonging and purpose.”

Kyle Austin Dunn, A Line and Its Body, 2012. Acrylic on canvas, 55 x 40 inches

Often pairing bright colors with neutrals, his expansive gray spaces feel like being next to the hull of a huge ship or concrete wall. A Line and Its Body is large and precise but feels very tender and humanized. Its bizarre forms remind me of playing a computer game with its simplified shapes, smooth edges and applied surface design.

His twisted pieces of metal remind me of Rauschenberg’s metal sculptures though the materials are new rather than found/recycled. His oversized paperclip reminds me of Oldenburg. He cites influences such as John Chamberlain, known for his crushed car sculptures. Dunn says Fred Sandback is a favorite; the influence of his minimal linear sculpture is clear.

Dunn playfully explores geometric and formal/spacial concerns, sometimes pulled together in disparate and awkward compositions. His paintings are completely imagined, fantastical, and explore formal concepts by way of geometric forms, many of which look unreal. His sculpture brings reality to the kinds of the spaces that he paints. Four Spaces is very much about space, but also has a sense of humor.

Kyle Austin Dunn, Four Spaces, 2012. Acrylic on canvas, 88 x 76 inches

The sculpture and paintings allow for two approaches to similar content. Dunn says “the sculpture and the painting feel very much the same thing to me. Things three dimensional are usually painted, and occupy space in ways that often mirror how forms do in two dimensions.” Looking at Studs, Dunn challenges the environment that the art inhabits.

Kyle Austin Dunn, Studs, 2012. Acrylic on wood and floor, 48 x 68 x 96 inches

Dunn makes art from his studio as a graduate fellow at the Headlands, north of San Francisco. He shares a home with his wife and friends in Berkeley and makes his living building custom furniture for clients around the Bay Area. He relishes in “the unique opportunity to travel between the bustling hyperactivity of San Francisco and soberingly calm environment of the Marin Headlands on a daily basis.” He recently completed his MFA at UC Davis.

Cunningham integrates live plants and plant materials into her installation, thereby creating a fantasy space where new narratives that afford agency to the exploited subject can be imagined and explored. I sat down with the artist to discuss some of the research behind the work and her opinions about gendered art making, formalist critique, subverting the concept of the Master, and human/plant relations.

Caitlin Cunningham, sophiajacob, 2013. Image courtesy of sophiajacob and the artist.

Elspeth Walker: This show is very involved with story: both seeking to develop its own, and critically investigating old stories that we have become accustomed to. Can you elucidate some of the research underlying the work?

Caitlin Cunningham: When I started looking into Gauguin I was pretty interested in using him as target practice for a lot of my angry energy about misogyny in general and particularly in art history. He may seem like a naively easy target, but there it is…

Besides some fascinating and mostly hideous stories I was reading about Gauguin himself, I came across others related to colonialism and romanticism, and then others more related to the perception of Tahiti that continues to be marketed to those of us in the US. I could go into the stories I was interested in [in] a pretty detailed way, but I’ll try to just list a couple of them with short descriptions.

1. The Mutiny on the Bounty
One of the most famous stories in British maritime history, retold by Hollywood three times in swashbuckling-adventure style, casting Marlon Brando and Mel Gibson in the role of the oppressed sailor. The original HMS Bounty’s mission was to collect breadfruit trees from Tahiti to use as a cheap food source for slaves in the Caribbean. As the story is commonly told, the ship’s supply of fresh water ran low when the mission became delayed by bad weather, causing the ship’s Captain [Bligh] to deny water to the crew in an effort to keep the breadfruit trees alive. Modern scholars dispute stories of the captain’s abusive behavior, but it lends romance and drama to the Hollywood version of the story. Fletcher Christian [Brando, Gibson] incited a mutiny, steering the revolting crew back to Tahiti to pick up six Tahitian women and six Tahitian men. The sailors divided a small island Pitcairn amongst the British sailors and each took a Tahitian “wife,” leaving nothing for the Tahitians and trading the Tahitian women as property.

The story has been embraced in the late nineteenth and twentieth century as an example of male freedom and adventure, freedom from oppressive governments, and sexual pleasure beneath a fantasy of palm trees. Just one of the many romantic stories of Tahiti that influenced Gauguin to apply and obtain a grant from the French Government in a stated effort promote the island through his art. Even in the nineteenth century, Tahiti did not have much in the way of natural resources to exploit outside of tourism.

Tragically, it was revealed in the 2000’s that the descendants of Fletcher Christian and his crew on Pitcairn have perpetuated a community on the island wherein for the past forty years nearly every girl has been raped and abused and nearly every man on the island has been an offender.

2. The Bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
In the 1960s, the French Government developed airports in Tahiti to move materials and personnel necessary for nuclear testing/bombing on islands in French-occupied Polynesia that took place from the 1960s to the 1990s. The developments and infrastructure changes have led to advanced environmental degradation due to increased tourism, cracks in atolls that leaked nuclear radiation, and nuclear fallout. Atolls and islands in French-occupied Polynesia were used for nuclear explosions up to 170s stronger than that of Hiroshima.

In 1985, the Greenpeace protest ship Rainbow Warrior prepared to sail to a small island in French-occupied Polynesia from a harbor in a peace zone in New Zealand, when they were inconspicuously bombed by French agents from beneath the ship. This was the first known sinking of a protest ship and was initially denied by the French Secret Service for months. As it stands now, Mururoa atoll (the site of much of the testing) is in danger of collapsing. When it does, it will release a great deal of radioactive material into the ocean in an uncontrollable way. It will also create a gigantic tsunami.

HMS Bounty 1960-2012, Digital print on vinyl, 47" x 38", 2013. Image courtesy of sophiajacob and the artist.

EW: Your work comes out of a repeated practice of blowing up people’s spots when they’re getting away with something. There’s something about destroying the masculine mystique as a young female artist, and perhaps proving that it’s actually not that hard to be a master—especially when you’re doing it by exploiting a silent subject. Can you say a bit more about how an awareness of gender fits into your practice?

CC: I am interested in gender and identity politics in general, in ongoing issues of the power imbalances involved. One facet of this is the continued colonizing of capitalism through domination and privilege. I recently started exploring ideas about the production of space from the Marxist sociologist Henri Lefebvre. According to Lefebvre, there are three triangulated aspects of space: perceived space (le perçu), a constructed physical, tangible, reality; conceived space (le conçu), a mental space of mappable proportions and measurements; and the more imaginative lived space (le vécu), which is experienced as combined tangible and imaginative reality, often revealed in art and literature.

EW: Do you think your work seeks to stage these kinds of imaginative spaces?

CC: I think any art exhibition in a gallery is involved with the third space (le vécu) that is both material and imaginative, as in the willful suspension of disbelief that the exhibit you enter will be distinctly different from the way the same space existed prior. This exhibit in particular is very concerned with conceived spaces—such as Tahiti, where I have never been but only vaguely recognize as a series of images and associations. I think it’s important to note that with colonization and capitalism there is always an application of the modernist grid.

EW: Let’s talk about Gauguin for a second. It’s often seductive to be simplistic about misogyny—to approach the matter like it’s some kind of two-sided battle between “misogynists” versus those of us who are “enlightened.” It’s tempting to read Gauguin as an isolated asshole wholly responsible for an exploitative movement of painting. But the colonialist impulse is pervasive and insidious and totally not “over.” What do you think about its contemporary ramifications? Tahiti Secrets lotion, for instance.[1]

CC: Yes, I think it is absolutely convenient to simplify culturally entrenched misogyny into two factions, and even more convenient to assume that it’s no longer relevant to our collective understanding of art history or the conception of genius. The enlightenment philosophers, romantics, and Rousseau in particular were pretty explicit in regarding the default state of a human to be white and male, relegating women to the “natural sphere”: that of motherhood, domesticity, and ignorance. By paying attention to any amount of advertising, this “natural sphere” notion is almost comically persistent. In the art world the term “woman artist” is still thrown around as if the qualifier is a necessity, similar to the tokenism inherent in the terms “Asian artist” or “gay artist.”

I like the name of the Victoria’s Secret lotion. It’s evident our culture will continue to exoticize Tahitian and indigenous people after centuries of colonialism, in this case from within the context of a company that capitalizes on patriarchal imperatives. It also relates to the embellished journal Gauguin released to market the work he made in Tahiti to a European audience, Noa Noa. The title translates to “fragrance,” in reference to the intoxicatingly pleasurable scent emanating from the bodies of Tahitians.

Teva Sylvain, Teva Sylvain postcard, paint, paper, plexiglass, 24" x 18", 2013. Image courtesy of sophiajacob and the artist.

EW: That anecdote about “body fragrance” brings me to another point: the embarrassingly evident staging of the Tahitian female as a kind of erotic freak under the guise of anthropology. There is a very established legacy of the “postcard” as an agent of colonialism. Postcards of native inhabitants of the colonies “in their element” were routinely sent home as trophies of bourgeois leisure, and as a way of perpetuating fantasy about other places (and “Other” subjects). Postcards are a really convenient tool of enfreakment because they silence and cage the subject for uninterrupted staring. Colonial postcards also effectively sanitize the “savage” subject into a palatable commodity for mass distribution/erotic consumption. Can you talk a bit about postcards as a device in your work?

CC: There are a lot of postcards on eBay of Tahitian women and girls that I found. One of the vestiges of colonialism is the portrayal of Tahitians as erotic playthings that are easily seduced and abandoned. Images from the fifties and sixties of very young-looking girls are selling for sixty dollars a card and are likely rising in value. I found a card from the well-established Tahitian postcard producer Teva Sylvain, who produces images of women in Tahitian regalia in idyllic island backdrops. Most of his models are not fully Tahitian because according to him, Western tourists want women to look more closely related to those their libido is accustomed to. The process of “[sanitizing] the ‘savage’ subject into a palatable commodity for mass distribution/erotic consumption” is pretty central to the career of Gauguin.

EW: Earlier you mentioned “target practice.” Can you identify an initial impulse behind making your work?

CC: Generally I work by pulling together a network of associations into physical form. Some of the associations are personal and some more relate to information I’m gathering. I also worked closely with the curators and with an electrical expert on this exhibit. I liked how Deirdre Smith [who runs contemporary art blog Experiential Surprise] referred to this way of working as “rhizomatic”—like the way a ginger plant grows.

EW: In considering the concept of “mastery” (often read in conjunction with concepts of masculinity and control) versus a kind of “primitive” object-making, can you say more about how you see success versus failure as fitting into the process of your work?

CC: One thing I was very conscious of doing was giving a specific voice to the internal authority figure that is generally present as a form of anxiety within my practice. The authoritarian voice in my head is an amalgam of various domineering and dismissive voices. I tried to imagine specifically that the voice of judgment was Gauguin himself, knowing him to be emotionally abusive and excited by humiliation, of women and of Van Gogh and others who loved him. Under the fantasy of his tutelage, the only response that I believed I could use to affirm my agency was to fall far short of his impenetrable genius as a painter, sculptor, and image producer. Consciously taking a submissive role in the production of my objects, I’d sort of hoped to incite some judgment of my effectiveness as an image-maker, forcing a critical voice maybe similar to what Gauguin or perhaps Georg Baselitz might use to degrade my work.

EW: How do you feel about the crude or even funny sculptural elements you created and how they’re informed by the natural beauty of the plants you use—or even by the clean specificity of the oversaturated CNN screen cap?

CC: I used the paint colors available to Gauguin according to this Eyewitness book I was looking at. Prussian blue with zinc white in particular are predominant in Gauguin’s depiction of various and mostly non-Tahitian idols. I also came across this color in the still of the sinking of the HMS Bounty ship [see installation view] as well as in the petals of the dyed blue orchid flowers. The ceramics were made in what I interpreted to be a more “savage” way, which would be considered “closer to nature” by Gauguin.

EW: You’ve been using live plants as well as chlorophyll-based paint in your work for a long time. Why?

CC: I became interested in using plants as ready-made forms and have since entered into closer inspection of plant-human interactions. I can’t say there is intentional anthropomorphism, but I do think there are issues of interspecies relations going on right now that are drastically important and are a constant source of depressing thoughts, lack of control, and also empathy.

EW: Can you say more about these depressing thoughts? The depression, anxiety, and failure you mention are really interesting to me, especially because the work came out looking so beautiful.

CC: I assume it’s pretty common to consume lots of Internet-news-related media and then ruminate on some depressing thoughts. Biologically, I don’t think our brains were meant to consider the gravity of events happening outside our immediate environment or changes that are likely to occur fifty years from now. I live a comfortable life, so I’m grateful it’s mostly just thoughts.

Caitlin Cunningham is on view through May 25th at sophiajacob, 510 W Franklin Street, Baltimore MD 21201.

Kim Kun Ju, Myth 1, 2007 (installation view), mixed media, 180 x 190 x 11 cm, 2007. Image: Courtesy of Taksu gallery.

New Waves, Korea in Taksu gallery is a show that seems to serve as a modest introduction to the broad field of contemporary Korean art, surveying the artistic output of three artists (Kim Kun Ju, Sang Taek Oh and Sung Chul Hong) working across a variety of media to highlight the fundamental issues of urban living such as desire, isolation and re-contextualisation. Kim, Sang and Sung share a common background; they were born in Korea but educated abroad in the West. Even their seemingly disparate artistic visions are perhaps more similar than they seem, championing the thoroughly (and the fashionable) postmodern notions of arbitrariness and disjointed narratives.

Mounted on a bright orange canvas, Kim Kun Ju’s Myth 1 (2007) comprises a myriad of reliefs or cut-outs of familiar shapes layered over each other in order to form a new, unrecognisable entity that hangs in three-dimensional space. As disparate as these elements are, like part-painting and part-sculpture, they coalesce with striking visual impact, a defamiliarised site in which multiple signs converge.

Sang Taek Oh, Closet 23 - 25, 150 x 95 cm each, photographic colour print on canvas, 2012. Image: Courtesy of Taksu gallery.

Clothes gently billow in the black, endless closet spaces of Sang Taek Oh’s photographic prints like still life portraits of the inanimate. But if traditional still life is an expressed fascination with the science of vision and the natural world, Sang’s painterly depiction of lavishly formal attire seems to eschew the natural in a bid to capture the constructed consumables.

Sung Chul Hong, String Hands 0338 , print on elastic string and steel frame, 150 x 100 x 14 cm, 2013. Image: Courtesy of Taksu gallery.

In Hong Sung Chul’s Strings Mirror series (2011-2013), pictures of parts of the human body are printed out on strings, then reconstructed on different levels to yield a three-dimensional-like image that remains nebulous to the eye. The illusory, or mirage effect created by the gap between the strings would mean that the ‘whole’ image is never fully revealed; consequently, it is only the viewer’s movement around the canvas that will bring different parts of the image into focus at varying standpoints. Intertwined hands in String hands 1365 (2011) look as though they are grasped in solidarity or struggling to get free from one another when observed from differing angles. It is in this manner that Hong’s works emphasise the subjectivity of human vision, where intangible ideas of entanglement seem more real than the tangible image.

New waves, Korea will be on show at Taksu Singapore until 29 May, 2013.

For contemporary art enthusiasts this scene is all too common. We are no longer shocked at the pile of rubble in the middle of a white-walled room; in fact we have grown quite accustomed to visiting these exhibits.

The work of Julio Le Parc on view at the Palais de Tokyo is nothing like this. Part of the exhibit Soleil Froid (Cold Sun), this grand assemblage of painting, sculpture and interactive multimedia by the Argentinian optical artist is a whimsical masterpiece. The show is a breath of fresh air and a treat to the senses. We enter the space through a maze of full length mirrors that hang from the ceiling and move with us as we make our way inside. From this entrance to the end, our sights are stimulated with color, pattern, texture, light, movement and sound. Some works are familiar such as Le Parc’s well-known tromp d’oeil black and white paintings of geometric shapes and lines, landmark pieces from the 1950s until today. The space is experimentally curated in an active and participatory way with a focus on the effects of the aesthetic. Viewers lay on a sofa to observe the light installation on the ceiling; some works respond to our movement as we approach them, and the final room invites us to touch, play and even box with Le Parc’s punching bags depicting societal caricatures.

The exhibit is not about the degradation of the planet nor the state of global politics. The black and white imagery is not a commentary on racial tension; it is just aesthetically interesting. One does not get the feeling that we should stare at Le Parc’s mirrors and search deep within ourselves, instead we are invited to play. Le Parc invites us to engage with what is directly in front of us, to actively notice our physical reactions to the work. While Le Parc himself has always been an activist of sorts and we do find some political references, they are not laden with heavy innuendo. Of course each viewer will receive the work differently, but they are most likely to walk away from this brilliant art-viewing experience elated and with a renewed appreciation for looking.

HELP DESK is where I answer your queries about making, exhibiting, finding, marketing, buying, selling–or any other activity related to–contemporary art. Submit your questions 100% anonymously here: http://bit.ly/132VchD. All submissions become the property of Daily Serving. Follow HELP DESK on twitter: @BeanGilsdorf

I’ve been meeting with a commercial gallery in my city for some time, and they’ve extended me an offer to come aboard. I’m excited about the idea of professional representation, having a platform to promote myself to a larger audience, and further opportunity for sale of work. I feel strongly about some of the work the gallery represents, but some of it is totally not my style, which is to say, artwork that favors more commercially viable subject matter or style at the cost of exercising any real dynamic or conceptual verve. How much should this influence my decision to join the gallery? I think deep down I’m afraid my work may be negatively evaluated against some of this work in question, and will affect my just-budding career moving forward. How crucial is it that a potential gallery fully affirm your conceptual ideal as an artist?

This is a great question, one which I am definitely not qualified to answer. Accordingly, I sent this query to a half-dozen represented artists and below are the replies I received.

Despite the fact that these artists are speaking from viewpoints all along the career continuum, their answers overlap considerably. They range from mid-career artists with New York and international representation plus several important museum shows, all the way to an artist in a second-tier city who has been represented for less than a year. I vowed to protect the identities of these artists in exchange for their candid replies, but I would like to thank them here for their thoughtful contributions.

-BG

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Lothar Hempel, installation view of "Cafe Kaputt" at Gio Marconi Gallery, 2009

This is a legitimate concern, but it’s only one among a number of questions an artist should consider when deciding to work with a gallery. It’s certainly important to feel as though your work and the gallery’s program are in sync, but that consideration exists in a nexus with other issues of equal or greater importance. First and foremost among these might be, do you like and respect the people running the gallery? Do you trust them, feel that they understand your work, and that they are both interested in and capable of promoting it in a way that will advance your career? Do you feel that they understand the business, and have done well for the other artists that they represent? Do you know any of those artists, or talked with them about how they feel their career is doing? Remember that you are entering into a business partnership with these people, possibly for an extended period of time. Do you have a clear sense of what your expectations and theirs are regarding this relationship?

Bear in mind that it’s generally unlikely that you will love all the gallery’s artists. If you like/respect/are excited by at least half the artists represented, that’s probably the best ratio you can hope for. A gallery is essentially a retail store, selling a very rarefied product to a capricious clientele. If the owners of the gallery make all their money solely from the gallery’s sales (as opposed to coming from a lot of money, or generating the bulk of their income from selling on the secondary market) they will almost certainly have to diversify their inventory, especially if they are based in a city without a strong collector base. While it is to be hoped (and should be expected) that a gallery “stands behind” every artist that they represent equally, the reality is also that there are some artists a gallery works with not because the work is especially cutting edge, but because the owners know they can move it and thereby pay their bills. (If you want a window into what this looks like, try watching the movie “Untitled,” which, while far from great, depicts some of these interior art world mechanisms at work). In other words, the presence of some artists will lend credibility and “edginess” to a gallery’s roster, while others may make sure the rent gets paid.

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Pay attention to how conceptually aware and involved the gallerists are. If they seem to be supportive of your practice and any risks you might take with your work, that could trump what other more commercial work they might represent to keep the lights on. However, if you feel that they could stifle your drive, or set limits to your work, or get in the way of what makes your art something you feel is conceptually brave and forward thinking, then you should re-evaluate the agreement and possibly very cordially end the conversation. It’s good to see these opportunities as steps toward something greater, and if you are given free reign and a platform of exposure, it could be very beneficial down the road. It is smart to be mindful of these decisions though, because if you find yourself hemmed in and next to work you don’t respect, that can only lead to artistic and professional frustration.

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Lothar Hempel, installation view of "Cafe Kaputt" at Gio Marconi Gallery, 2009

This topic has confronted me before—in general it’s a pretty common discussion amongst artists with commercial representation. Generally, galleries have to maintain a roster of artists that differ from each other in order to cater to a range of potential clients. So some artists on the roster may be considered more “commercial” or easily sold than others, or the artists may appear to be diverse and not necessarily relating to each other. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing—I’ve had several gallerists tell me that some of the artists they represent are considered the “bread and butter” ones—the ones that sell well and thus support the ability to show or represent the other artists who are less commercially viable but whose work the gallery wants to support for other reasons. Overall, you just want to make sure that the gallery you work with has a taste that you resonate with in general and that if push comes to shove, they can speak about your work in an enthusiastic way without you having to be there. Perhaps not all the artists in the roster are to your liking, but that is a common situation. If you think the gallery has BAD taste however, then by all means run in the opposite direction.

I have left a gallery before that I felt was not in line with my work, and it took a while to come to that decision because it was a very respectable blue-chip gallery. But in the end I wanted to work with a smaller, perhaps scrappier gallery because I felt their roster better reflected my own concerns of politics and social issues. There are definitely artists in the current gallery’s roster that I don’t care for, but I let that go because I know [the owner] works hard for me and represents me well.

I suggest that artists resolve this issue for themselves by asking several questions:

-Does the gallery you are considering seem to thoughtfully pick their roster of artists, or is it a hit-or-miss affair?

-Can the gallery understand what your work is about and represent it lucidly?

-Can you identify what the gallery’s “taste” is, and understand why they choose their artists?

-Will you cringe or feel embarrassed when asked who your gallery is?

-Do the other artists appear so “left field” that your peers will wonder why you are showing with them?

-Will it confuse clients as to why you are with that gallery?

-Do you feel comfortable showing up to the openings of the other gallery artists to support them and the gallery?

If this is all too much and you don’t feel enthusiastic, then it is best to wait for better representation to come along. If you are working hard and making good work, this is not your only shot at working with a gallery.

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Your work should actually not be similar in style to other artists showing with the gallery. The worst thing is a gallery that only shows one style. Good galleries will select a range of work, so that each artist’s practice speaks to a different potential audience. This is a common misconception among emerging artists, because you think that if you like the work at a given gallery, then that is where you should show. But again, better galleries will not choose two of the same, or similar thing. So chances are that if you like an artist they show because their work has a lot in common with yours, then that is probably not the right gallery for you.

Everyone has cold feet before joining their first gallery, because you know it will affect the way your work is framed and viewed and usually you are entrusting your work to someone you are just getting to know. It may be a gallery that is emerging, like you, and hasn’t been tested yet. It is only natural to be concerned with the reputation of the gallery, and that is wise. If the work is really poor, then you do have to consider whether you want to associate yourself with it, or that dealer. In fact it is more important to feel comfortable with the dealer one-on-one than to be buddy-buddy with the other artists. Do you trust the dealer? Do you like the way they speak about your work to others?

Every gallery has some artists that make money and others that earn street cred. Don’t worry if you are not the moneymaker in the bunch, and be thankful for those who are because they keep the gallery afloat and that includes you. Galleries do not generally have the money and power we assume they have. They are fragile institutions, and dealers work extremely hard under a lot of pressure. Never reveal to a dealer that you are not keen on the other artists they show. That is a real faux pas that could get you dropped from the gallery. Essentially it is none of your business, and if the dealer likes your work, why would you question their taste level?

If you believe in the gallerist as a solid, smart person with good business sense, then go with your gut and build your relationship. The artists they show who are not as good may eventually drop off, and better artists will be taken on. If you really feel in your gut that this is not the right fit, then it is worth it to wait. But if you pass up too many opportunities waiting for a better gallery to come along, it may not happen. Don’t be too picky or you might miss the boat. If your career takes off, and you are unhappy, you can leave the gallery and be picked up by someone else. It happens all the time. It may feel like a gamble, and it totally is. At some level you have to accept that you only have so much control and the rest is really out of your hands.

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Lothar Hempel, installation view of "Cafe Kaputt" at Gio Marconi Gallery, 2009

I love this question, but it is a bit complex. Right off the bat, I stumble over words like “commercially viable” and “conceptual verve.” Surely we have all encountered commercially viable work that has conceptual guts and intellectual rigor. So in order for this question to find an answer, I think we have to make some assumptions that this kind of pejorative delineation is common.

I enjoy a gallery that knows itself and can express itself as an idea or an ethic. Through months and years of exhibiting works and cultivating an audience, the gallery represents its characteristics as if it were a person. We recognize the gallery as intelligent, occasionally sly and provoking, has a sense of humor, etc. This is often at the hand of the gallery’s owner. The gallery should reflect the owner.

Any artist would be fortunate to be in the hands of a gallery whose ethic is transparent.  In other words, you and your work reflect those ethics, and in turn you are with the gallery because you fortify and enhance the characteristics of the gallery. And honestly, I think any great gallery makes very few exceptions in the presentation of its character. Despite the viable or conceptual differences between gallery artists, if there is an ethic that binds you together you should be in good shape. If that ethic is not there, I would think twice.

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And finally, in the interest of representing all possible ways to confront this dilemma, I include this dispatch from the kingdom of I Got Mine:

I honestly don’t have much to say about professional development issues of artists. I think artists should concentrate on their work and not spend all this energy on career strategy. Strong work will find its proper context over time. If your reader is courted by top-level New York galleries then her decision would carry some weight. In most other cases I think the whole issue is not so important.

The following article was origianally published on December 3, 2011 by Michelle Schultz:

Googling yourself can ultimately be a very dangerous, and addictive, thing to do. And with the automation of Google Alerts, this fundamentally narcissistic activity is even less guilt-ridden – just passively sit back and every tidbit of information about you uploaded into cyberspace is sent straight to your inbox. As I recently discovered, you can often find yourself in unexpected and somewhat cringeworthy contexts – however, John Smith has harnessed this power in his latest exhibition unusual Red cardigan at PEER, London, and compiled an engrossing exploration of digital identification, fanatical tributes and the inherent nature of the remake.

John Smith, The Girl Chewing Gum, 1976, video still. Courtesy of the artist.

The East London artist and filmmaker has developed quite a following – one of his earliest works, The Girl Chewing Gum (1976), is a simple, yet brilliant narrative film that has spawned a host of online imitations and tributes. Smith’s version shows a street corner in Dalston, where an omnipresent voice directs the characters on camera – however it very quickly becomes apparent that the voice-over is postscripted, thereby disrupting the chain of cause and effect, and conflating fact and fiction. Laced with his notorious dry wit and anecdotal eccentricities, Smith destabilises the documentary form through his narration, driving our perception of the events through language, and exposing the conditions which determine how we read an image. The humour implicit in Smith’s films is derived from the unapologetic juxtaposition of what we know, and what he tells us – the pronounced gaps between the two rendered as sarcasm.

The assortment of homages and bootlegged versions of The Girl Chewing Gum which Smith has compiled over the years are included here within the exhibition, and inspired the artist to revisit the video himself – if everyone else could remake the video, why shouldn’t Smith do the same? Returning to the same street corner he filmed 35 years earlier, Smith traced his earlier movements to create The Man Phoning Mum (1976/2011). Layering the new footage directly on top of the original, Smith blurs the past and present creating a jarring vision of how drastically things have changed, and yet, how some things still remain the same.

John Smith, The Man Phoning Mum, 1976/2011, video still. Courtesy of the artist and PEER, London. Photo: Chris Dorley-Brown.

These individuals featured in Smith’s films – the girl with her gum, the man on the phone – become unsuspecting subjects in the narrative construction, much like the recent object of Smith’s fascination…

John Smith, unusual Red cardigan, lightbox text. Courtesy of the artist and PEER, London.

Smith’s Sherlockian investigation began by trying to piece together digital clues and culminated in bidding, winning and receiving various items from serenporfor’s eBay collection. Now in the gallery,  juxtaposed with the girl chewing gum, they are relics of an individual unaware that their discarded possessions have been recuperated as art. What can they tell us about serenpofor? What can we learn about an individual through that which they toss away? I do believe that Smith’s investigation into this particular case is far from over…

John Smith, unusual Red cardigan, installation view at PEER, London, 2011. Photo: Chris Dorley-Brown.

However, let this be a lesson leaned – when you enter the digital world, you forfeit a certain level of control. The amount of information that can be gleaned online is alarming. But then again, your image can be co-opted simply when walking down the street. Quite literally, there is nowhere to hide. I wonder what serenpofor would think if she googled herself?

While Frieze New York has more exhibitors this year than last — around 190 to last year’s 180 — there’s still not enough room for everyone, and competition for entry was fierce. The second edition of the fair sees a reshuffling of galleries, with 60 joining for the first time, including heavyweights Marian Goodman, Peter Blum, and Luhring Augustine. Scads of others — including Friedrich Petzel, Maccarone, David Nolan, Nicole Klagsbrun, Michael Werner, and Experimenter (Calcutta) — dropped out. Whether due to fair exhaustion (“fairtigue”) or to simply not making the cut this time, the turnover is a reflection of the pressures dealers face in today’s art world.

Newcomers in the Focus section include New York’s Untitled, and dépendance from Brussels, while first-timers in the Frame section like Simone Subal from New York and Berlin’s Circus will present solo booths by Frank Heath and Sophie Bueno-Boutellier, respectively.

As for the more intriguing question of why galleries didn’t return — there are roughly 40 — the overwhelming explanation is exhaustion from the sheer number of fairs dealers now attend. “We couldn’t do Frieze and then [Art Basel] Hong Kong right afterwards,” said Gordon VeneKlasen, director of Michael Werner Gallery, “so we chose Hong Kong. It’s just not possible for us to do everything in the world.”

For some dealers, the decision was out of their control. “This year, very simply, I was not accepted,” said Nicole Klagsbrun, who applied before deciding a few months ago to close her Chelsea gallery after 30 years in the business.

Though her decision was motivated by chagrin over the “whole system,” which prioritizes fairs over gallery shows, Klagsbrun asserted that galleries need to stay in the art fair game to remain attractive to artists.

For younger galleries, the notion that entry to Frieze New York can make or break them instills a kind of panic. “They’ll get to do it one year, and then they won’t the next year, and they’ll feel like they’ve done something wrong,” said Phil Grauer of Canada Gallery, explaining his peers’ reactions to the fair’s modus operandi, in particular with respect to Frame, a section geared toward emerging galleries, those in business six years or less. “But it’s the fair rolling through the new young meat.”

While the Frame and Focus sections, which cost exhibitors less than the main section, are aimed at newer galleries, Grauer says the divisions have less to do with age than economics. “The main section is first class,” he said comparing it to airline seating. “Focus is business traveler — but it’s pretty much coach. Frame is like you’re running drugs for someone else. They let you in and then they kick you to the curb.”

-Rozalia Jovanovic, BLOUIN ARTINFO on Huff Post Arts & Culture

Klara (Klara Liden), 10 October, 2009, Berlin, colored pencil on paper. Photo courtesy of the artist and Michael Werner Gallery.

Finding my way around New York in spring, in addition to faces in the crowd, I see familiar friends in paintings. In her intensity, Klara, the recurring subject of Elizabeth Peyton’s latest exhibition at Michael Werner Gallery, eerily gazes out of the walls in a confounding way. I have followed Peyton’s work for years, so I know I have seen the angles of Klara’s face before. As I walk along the walls of the small, traditional space, it seems that Peyton has encapsulated that same uneasy instant before a face is assigned as friend or foreigner. The tone is one of apprehensive intimacy, like being caught walking in on a person’s very private conversation. In a style that is reminiscent of David Hockney’s 1970s figure drawings, Klara’s face is often carefully, precisely drawn. Klara’s androgynous features, short hair, and simple garb compound the peculiarity of her smoldering stare, and, as with much of Peyton’s work, if we didn’t know the gender of the subject, it could bend either way; the beauty in the work lies in its compounded sexual ambiguity.

Klara, 2012, Oil on aluminum veneered panel. Photo courtesy of the artist and Michael Werner Gallery.

Peyton is an artist for which I harbor mixed feelings. She is a lovely colourist, but her well-known portraits and still lifes can be consistently mediocre. It is telling that her works are often referred to as illustrations of modern life, which, fortunately for the works, portray particularly glittery bohemian celebrity subjects in a non-offensive style.  Perhaps the fact that she works primarily in small scale can also entice curators to show too many works instead of a selection of her strongest.

Applaudably, Michael Werner has culled an interesting and varied collection of Peyton’s works, none of which harbor the flatness of some of her well-circulated paintings, which can be heavy in paint and thin in complexity. Not to say her flatness isn’t useful. The often-compared-to Alex Katz successfully captures atmosphere in his figure works with simple lines and flat planes of colour, and Peyton comes close to this at times. What Michael Werner does is play on Peyton’s best strength: her ability to capture a sense of intimacy in her portraiture. These works are a bit more thoughtful than most, and as group, tell a particular story that is appropriate for the intimate and warm gallery space.

Klara, 2010, watercolor on paper. Photo courtesy of the artist and Michael Werner Gallery.

Though the subject is repeated again and again,  there is endless variation in style. In exception to the tortured stare of many of the works, there is a runny, watercolor sketch of Klara asleep in a cloud of soft hues. Watery, uncontrolled paint flows down the paper, echoing a hallucinatory dream state.

Wandering downtown, I run into Peyton’s familiar angular faces again in the West Village, at the artist’s second exhibition at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. The concrete-laden space is cavernous compared to Michael Werner’s gallery. Big, white space is always sexy, and the West Village itself is a great entry hall to the glamour that Peyton presents. The glass gallery doors lead me into a more familiar view of what Peyton has shown in the last few years. There is a cross-section of her work sprinkled along the walls: watercolor, acrylic, oil on paper, and this time, a variety of faces. These faces are familiar in that many are famous: singers, rock stars, artists, actors, and even the President. No one can deny the cool factor in Peyton’s work, and the sexy, hip gallery lends itself well to the overall character of her practice. Sadly, the small works get a bit lost in the massive space.

At the exhibition at Gavin Brown, Peyton has seemingly attempted to capture pivotal moments: opera singers in crescendo, rockers mid-head-bang, or the President and the First Lady in the throes of a kiss. Unfortunately, these critical moments are literally staged ones, and the artist seems only to capture that sense of phony emotion in moments that already feel cheaply wrought. She does much better in capturing the quiet atmosphere of banal moments, and continues to be successful painting her bread and butter: flowers and dazed rock stars. (Honestly.)

Elias Bender Ronnenfelt, 2013, oil on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist and Gavin Brown's Enterprise.

I do particularly like that in both shows Peyton repeatedly employs a certain push-and-pull effect, created by the detailed face surrounded by looser, sketchier lines of the subject’s clothing and background. Besides adding a sense of dynamism that moves the eye, the selective realism re-emphasizes the face’s psychological import during human interaction. Perhaps it is an overly obvious thought, but it is interesting in revealing Peyton’s concern with the potency of visual exchanges in relationships. After all, in the best of Peyton’s portraiture, the sitter always seems to intensely stare. Whether starting into space, gazing at the viewer, burning with desire, or lost in thought, that stare always implies connectedness or disconnectedness—reminding me of that same moment of discomfort when miscalculating unfamiliar faces on the street and accidentally catching a stranger in an all too intimate locked eye.

Elizabeth Peyton, Klara, at Michael Werner Gallery continues through Jun 15, 2013

Elizabeth Peyton at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise continues through May 13, 2013

Samson Young, "Biomechanics," 2013. Polypropylene paper, servo motor, 55 x 77 x 17 cm

This spring I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei to view The Innovationists, a show focused on new media art. The spectrum of technological works ranged from Ryota Kuwakubo‘s whimsical The Tenth Sentiment, which utilized a toy train’s LED headlight to project crisp then melting shadowscapes in a darkened room, and Samson Young‘s Dimension+, a floating spine-like structure of polypropylene paper, to Chris Honhim Cheung and the XEX GRP collective’s more dissonant and possibly migraine inducing Anadelta or Resonance Seed, an inverted triangle and hand wheel equipped with sensors that translated touch into flashes of light and sound.

Gregory Chatonsky, "Telefossiles I," sculpture and film installation, courtesy of Xpo Gallery and the artist

The museum’s second floor was dedicated to the works of Gregory Chatonsky, where his triptych, Telefossiles I, presented a post-apocalyptic earth after human extinction.

Chatonsky created the archaeological excavation on site to display eerie fossils from our time: laptop, gas tank, tub, fragments of machinery. Overhead, lamps illuminated sections of the gray, grainy blocks accompanied by footage of earth’s dead surface, ashen and cold, despairingly lunar. Telefossiles I relies on viewers to remember the present as past, and conjure a future where technological artifacts serve as the last testaments of life on earth.

Gregory Chatonsky, "Telefossiles I," sculpture and film installation, courtesy of Xpo Gallery and the artist

Gregory Chatonsky’s Dislocation VI, at the end of the collection, turned out to be a viewer favorite. On a weekday afternoon, every viewer on the second floor interacted with the EEG headgear and chair projection. The installation operated in two ways: concentration raised the chair image on the screen and mental relaxation or inattention caused it to fall. The installation guide suggested that I think of something like an apple. I tried thinking of a banana, but realized immediately that thinking “banana, banana, banana” and switching to a visualization of the fruit broke concentration; in short, these were two different thoughts. And because I was merely thinking of a banana and not a specific banana, concentration waned. The chair rose a little, and then fell. But when I visualized the furred ears of my dog, opaquely red in the sun, the chair shot up and exploded. In all, it took me about three or four minutes to learn how the technology and brain would work together.

Gregory Chatonsky, "Dislocation VI: The Attentions," 2012. Interactive nstallation, courtesy of Xpo Gallery and the artist

From Paris, Gregory Chatonsky wrote to me: “Beyond fantasies of reading the brain, the idea that we can correlate mental states and brain states, what interests me is how these helmets are changing our way of thinking. Technology does not describe reality, technology produces it.” He went on to explain that he has been intrigued with the conflicting states of attention and inattention, which the installation makes visual.

With Moore’s law, the exponentially accelerated rise of newer, smaller, and more powerful technologies every two years, Dislocation VI is an important reminder, perhaps, of the eventual integration of technology and the body. Chatonsky added, “It isn’t really the headset that reads the brain, but the brain that reads the headset.” This is also quite true, though, let’s hope that the outcome isn’t anything close to Telefossiles I.

Gregory Chatonsky, "Telefossiles I," sculpture and film installation, courtesy of Xpo Gallery and the artist

Seoul-based duo Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (YHCHI)–Young-Hae Chang and Marc Voge–recently served as artists in residence at the Kadist Art Foundation in San Francisco, and the resulting project is on view through May 12. The duo is presenting a project titled, Pacific Limn, which consists of a three-channel video that intertwines three narratives that focus on the United States, China, and Japan, respectively. The artists have used San Francisco as a hub for the fictional narrative, allowing the city to serve as a nexus for the conflicts or clichés residing in between the different geographic locations.

Each of the videos that comprise Pacific Limn combine an overlapping of text, jazz, and animations which incorporate slow-moving video or still image. The conflict between text, sound, and image in each video allows it to continually negate itself as the video plays. The resulting experience relies on one’s ability to interpret information through text and image simultaneously, placing the viewer in a position of uncertainty and mild mistrust as the images contradict or complicate the text on screen. This technique successfully targets the issues of cultural understanding and misinterpretation in the narratives of the the three videos, through an often-competing visual and written landscape.

The videos will be on view at Kadist through Sunday.

Georgia Sagri, "Diana Speaks with Animals Again," 2012, C-print. Courtesy of the artist, Central Fine, Miami and Melas Papadopoulos Gallery, Athens.

Diogenes, founder of the School of Cynics in ancient Greece, is considered by some to be the first anarchist. Critical of society’s beliefs and structures, which he regarded as oppressive and hypocritical, he espoused a philosophy of being close to nature by living as simply as one could. The fragmented stories that have survived depict him living in a large ceramic jar in the Athenian marketplace, eating onions and figs, and acting as a constant thorn in the side of the domineering Plato, whose abstract theories he despised.

The Greek–born artist Georgia Sagri—an early participant in the Occupy Wall Street movement who was cited by Time magazine as playing an influential role in shaping its philosophy—often mentions Diogenes when discussing her own work. “He represented a rupture of the academy, of the official language of thought,” she reflected in a recent phone interview I conducted with her. “To him, there was no inside or outside—he simply lived everywhere. And the Cynics didn’t just talk, they activated their philosophy. This territory of thought was abandoned in favor of the dominant rational discourse of Plato and Socrates, whose dialectic we still live with today.”

Georgia Sagri, "Working the no work/Travaillez je ne travaille pas/Δουλεύοντας τη μη δουλειά," Whitney Biennial 2012, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Courtesy of the artist and Melas Papadopoulos, Athens. Copyright Georgia Sagri. Photo: Paula Court

Sagri’s own feral practice—which encompasses performative events, video works, texts, and various forms of object-making—can be seen as a continuation of these ideas, albeit tuned to a much more complex world. The first time I encountered her work was at the 2012 Whitney Biennial, in which she was an exhibiting artist. Taking over a room on the fifth floor of the Whitney for the duration of the biennial, Sagri set about creating a living “book” centered around the theme of “working the no work” (Travailler Je ne travaille pas). The project, which took some inspiration from the May 1968 student protests in France, focused on the contemporary condition of labor in the capitalist marketplace and included a set/installation that Sagri had constructed along with various actions that took place in it. The book was never intended to be published, but rather consisted of everything that took place in the space.

The session that I saw was a sustained exercise in upending roles and expectations. An audience gathered, expecting a performance. Sagri however, refused the archetypal roles of performer/audience and instead insisted on having a participatory discussion with everyone in the room. Looking to her for guidance, audience members would ask her questions regarding her intentions; she gave them evasive answers, refusing to position herself as the maestro. It was a performance of no performance, a book of no book, and some soon left out of frustration. Others stayed and engaged in stimulating dialogue about forms of resistance, work/labor roles, and the false luxuries of capitalism.

Georgia Sagri, "Working the no work/Travaillez je ne travaille pas/Δουλεύοντας τη μη δουλειά," Whitney Biennial 2012, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Courtesy of the artist and Melas Papadopoulos, Athens. Copyright Georgia Sagri. Photo: Paula Court

Rejecting the standard roles and options on offer and choosing instead to probe the underlying spaces of possibility and inquiry is a central tenet of Sagri’s practice. Through performative actions as well as object-making, she marauds across media and ideology in an act of discursive insurgency: “Western culture always sets up dualities; with political issues like abortion or gay marriage, you have to be either for or against, and that only leads to a divided society. There are other ways to deal with these issues. I want to corrupt, to find new ways to communicate, new terminology. My terrain is the in-between spaces of momentary human interaction. Let’s go beyond the choices that are given to us, let’s generate other questions.”

Georgia Sagri’s Performance at the Whitney Biennial 2012, VernissageTV

One strategy that looms large in Sagri’s work is the occupation of co-opted space. Another performance that she did at the Whitney involved Sagri acting out various human motions sampled from the Internet, such as preening or running in place. These motions could have come from video games or instructional films or animated event simulations. Sagri also samples her own noises, such as a yelp or a cough repeated over and over, to make a rhythmic soundtrack. The result is something like a deejay mix or assemblage in which Sagri is both sampler and source, subject and object, player and game piece, as she mixes these emblems of cyber-alienation and automation and fashions them into something compelling and whole.

“There are no master actions,” Sagri remarks. “They come from places and networks that you don’t even know, affecting all of our lives. I mimic these images because I want to understand them, and how else can I do that if not through my body? You must participate in something to understand its effects. You must experience models of oppression for yourself—then you can empower yourself by doing it your own way.”

Georgia Sagri, "Different Faces," 2009-12, scratch ink on poster, installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Central Fine, Miami.

A recent exhibition at Central Fine in Miami continued to build on these ideas and strategies. In reference to Sagri’s heritage, the show was titled Diana Very Dog (abbreviated as DVD). According to Sagri, Diana—Roman goddess of animals and the hunt—is the symbolic arc that ties the show together. She represents a return to nature and a pre-philosophical state, much like that advocated by Diogenes, as well as the ability to communicate with all beings in their own languages. The show included photographs of a naked Sagri roaming the streets of Athens, crouching in front of buildings and walking between cars, looking like a jaguar in an urban jungle. In one image, she walks next to some Greek graffiti that roughly translates to “When government power gets out of control, society looks through a keyhole.”

The show also featured a set of Greek protest posters that Sagri had collected and covered with scratch-off coating like that found on lottery tickets. She used her own fingernails to scratch a haunting portrait—“of monsters, bureaucrats, rioters, youth, etc.”—into the coating of each poster. Rounding out the exhibition were a video of Sagri drawing a dog while simultaneously barking like one, and a large printout of a love letter she wrote in which “I” and “you” are constantly blended and confused.

Georgia Sagri, "Diana Very Dog," 2013, exhibition view. Courtesy of the artist, Central Fine, Miami and Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club, Miami

The DVD exhibition seemed to sift through the ruins of Greek culture, both ancient and contemporary, in search of points of activation, places where energy could be found again. It also sought, as Sagri always does, to transgress the boundaries that divide one medium from another, and one dialectical position from another; thus, posters become drawings and subjects become objects. “I am trying to find routes where I feel more connected, where I am more comfortable expressing my thoughts. Here, Diana is very dog—there is a movement of the senses, dogs are humans and humans are dogs, and you do not need to choose. All is everything.”

As part of the exhibition, Sagri presented another performance event in which she probed and exposed the effects of media saturation on contemporary human behavior. As in the Whitney performance, she engaged in repetitive actions and sampled her own sounds. This time, there was an added element of obsessive self-observation, as she used her computer’s camera to look at a projection of herself even as she performed her actions.

Georgia Sagri, “Diana Very Dog,” 2013, exhibition view. Courtesy of the artist, Central Fine, Miami and Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club, Miami

“This is the schizo condition of society,” Sagri explained. “We can’t do something without already knowing how it looks—we are constantly externalized, not embodied. We visualize so much while seeing nothing; we talk so much while saying nothing. It makes me think of Oedipus, who was only able to see after his eyes were put out.” As a finishing touch, Sagri encouraged the audience to document the performance with their cell phones, portions of which she will edit together to make another piece.

For various reasons, Sagri no longer actively identifies with the Occupy movement, which appears to be largely defunct following the brutal coordinated national crackdown of November 2011. For a while, it seemed to many that the leaderless occupation movement had succeeded in modeling new possibilities of being beyond the entrenched corruption and bankruptcy of our system. For a while, people showed up to camps and felt more embodied, more connected, and more alive than they had in a long time. For a while, the spaces in between the dominant discourse were getting some play. Now, however, the system appears to have won, as without sites to occupy and congregate, the energy of protest has dissipated.

This situation might appear discouraging, but only if one subscribes to Occupy as another dominant system. The real point of Occupy, after all, was to occupy oneself and one’s own actions, to keep seeking ways out of the status quo, and to find solidarity in community, in momentary interactions, and in history. Sagri says it best: “I don’t and I never affiliated with Occupy as a brand, work, or obligation but only as a self-empowerment and a movement, a social effort. I was an artist before and after Occupy and that’s more important to me.”

Georgia Sagri’s next project, an examination of disaster news reporting titled Standup Tragedy: Do You Think I’m Human?, will be included in “EXPO 1: New York,” a group show opening at MoMA P.S. 1 on May 12.

Carol Cheh is a writer and curator based in Los Angeles. She is the founder of Another Righteous Transfer!, a blog that explores LA’s performance art scene, and Word is a Virus, a monthly Art21 column exploring the intersection between the visual and literary arts. Her writing has appeared in LA Weekly, KCET Artbound, and East of Borneo, among other outlets. In January 2012, she organized #OccupyArt21, a two-week guest stint on the Art21 blog in which 10 artists contributed written works addressing the Occupy LA movement. Her curatorial projects have also included You Don’t Bring Me Flowers: An Evening of Re-Performances (PØST, 2010) and Signals: A Video Showcase (Orange County Museum of Art, 2008).

The following article was originally published on November 5, 2012 by Bean Gilsdorf:

Welcome to HELP DESK, where I answer your queries about making, exhibiting, finding, marketing, buying, selling–or any other activity related to–contemporary art. Together, we’ll sort through some of art’s thornier issues. Email helpdesk@dailyserving.com with your questions. All submissions remain strictly anonymous and become the property of Daily Serving. HELP DESK is co-sponsored by KQED.org.

“You’ve seen the pictures. You’ve read the tweets. New York City looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland along its waterfront. Among the many things New York City needs right now, clean up is one of them.” If you’re in the NYC area and able to help, Art Fag City has a list of places that need your assistance. Please check it out and lend a hand if you can!

An artist lecture certainly doesn’t have to be boring. The best ones leave the audience energized with a new appreciation of what it means to be an artist in a contemporary community. There are many ways to rock your presentation, and there really isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, so what follows are some general suggestions that you can tailor to your style and comfort level.

Isa Genzken, "Ground Zero" installation view at Hauser & Wirth London, 2008.

This first tip is non-negotiable: above all other considerations, practice is the key to success. Whether you are a veteran at the microphone or terrified of an audience, practice will make your talk go smoothly, so once you have your PowerPoint slides in order, take the time to run through your images and talk out loud about the work—even to an empty room. Just hearing your own voice will alert you to any gaps or flaws and you can tighten up your lecture considerably by running through it a couple of times before the actual presentation. You can also use these opportunities to time your talk—no matter how good the work is, everyone’s butt starts to hurt at around the 50-minute mark, so don’t go over the time you’ve been allotted.

Another factor to consider is your audience: you’ll want to adjust your talk in keeping with who will be listening. In this case, your information should be mainly geared toward the students, so find out if they are undergrads or grads and speak accordingly. I’m not suggesting that you dumb down your presentation, but if you’re a theory geek and plan to talk about Giorgio Agamben’s state of exception, be prepared to introduce these complex ideas to an audience that may not already be familiar (which, by the way, will lengthen your talking time). No one gets excited about a presentation they don’t understand, so if you know in advance whom your audience is you can customize the information to meet their needs.

Isa Genzken, White Horses, 2008. MDF, mirror foil, tape, spray-paint, colour print on paper, 38 7/8 x 31 3/8 x 3/4 inches

Stage presence can definitely help a lecture along. To begin: stand up straight, smile, look around the room, and look the audience in the eyes. If you’re nervous, learn some breathing techniques that will keep you focused enough to get through the first few minutes—after that, the fight-or-flight mechanism will have died down and you’ll be in the zone. Also, avoid being a cadaver at the podium; during your rehearsals try to practice some natural gestures that you might make, such as holding your hands apart to indicate size or pointing to a particular area in an image. If you are comfortable on stage, you may want to get out from behind the podium a few times, because movement is dynamic and creates energy. Finally, humor is an excellent strategy for livening up a lecture. If there’s a funny point you could make, by all means we in the audience want to hear it.

Since your job is to open up your practice, images of your influences can be great—if they’re truly related to your work in a tangible, expressible way. For example, let’s say you’re profoundly inspired by the work of Cindy Sherman, yet you make abstract paintings: you need to explain very clearly why you believe these two different bodies of work are connected. If your work is a response to another artist’s, or a continuation of a prior creative exploration, then talking about your influences can be very enlightening. But there’s a caveat: be careful that you’re not justifying your own work by trying to stand on the shoulders of other (likely famous) artists. Your work should rest on its own merits, and talking about influences should illuminate, not vindicate, your practice.

Isa Genzken, Abendmahl, 2008. Aluminum plate, mirror foil, spray-paint, tape, colour print on paper, 76 3/8 x 54 1/2 inches

One idea to consider for the Q&A is to not save it for the end. When possible, I explicitly open up my lecture to questions from the beginning, asking the audience to jump in at any point when they need clarification. This serves two functions: it allows people to ask questions before they forget them, and it can also break the ice on queries so that there’s not an awkward pause at the end of the lecture while everyone waits to see who will ask a question first. This opening-up strategy is not for everyone—it can derail a really tightly scripted talk, so this method may not work for you if you’re reading word-for-word from your notes—but if you’re comfortable enough to do your lecture from an outline, the odd interjected question can liven things up considerably.

One of the reasons that artists often shine during the post-talk Q&A is that they’re more or less done with the task at hand: they’re relieved, relaxed, and—after 45 minutes of talking—they’re in the swing of things. Take time to acknowledge your questioners by saying things like, “Thanks for asking that question,” or “That’s an important question.” If you don’t know the answer to a query, throw it out to the audience and open up a general discussion with something like: “I’m not sure what the right answer is, but I bet someone else in this room does.” If you’re greeted with a lengthening silence after your introducer announces that the floor is open for questions, don’t feel bad, just turn the tables on your audience and ask questions of them. With a little practice, you’ll learn to read each crowd and use strategies that will keep the presentation energetic right up to the final moment.

Finally, remember that being invited to give a lecture is a form of praise and respect. Start and end your talk by expressing your gratitude. Thank the audience for coming, and thank the specific people in the department who brought you there. Practice, smile, be confident—and break a leg!

Heather Rasmussen. Untitled. (Containeryard, Liverpool, UK, January 13, 2004, flipped) 2012

Falling from Great Heights, the current exhibition at the Stephen Cohen Gallery, takes its title from a quotation by the astronomer Carl Sagan that addresses the sublime and ineffable nature of the universe: “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the cosmos stir us—there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.”^I The three artists in the show, Siri Kaur, John Knuth, and Heather Rasmussen, each convey this sense of awe and wonder when confronted with the unknown and the unknowable. Interestingly, they all employ photography—a medium that is often considered to be objective—to create images that call into question the veracity of what they depict.

Siri Kaur’s selections from her series Half of the Whole (2010–13) align most literally with Sagan’s assertion. The first room of the gallery is hung salon-style with Kaur’s ethereal, abstract photographs that resemble various natural phenomena. Some of the images, which vary in size, contain patches of green, blue, and brown, suggesting views of the Earth from above, while others, in bright pink on white, recall microscopic views of the body’s interior.

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