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.

This week’s column is accompanied by images from Wynne Greenwood‘s recent show “Peace In” at Lawrimore Project in Seattle.

Your counselor, hard at work.

Do you think that learning the technique of mediums before using them (instead of just doing something arbitrary with the medium) is stifling to creativity?

No, I don’t. Creativity isn’t arbitrary, it is direct imaginative action oriented toward a medium. The more you know, the more calculating and precise you can be (all while making it seem effortless). What is stifling to creativity is when the urge to create is stymied by a lack of knowledge. Stop complaining about your color theory homework—I promise it will stand you in good stead some day.

Wynne Greenwood, "Peace In" installation view

I have Asperger’s Syndrome. I’ve known this since I was very young, and was fortunate enough to have parents who helped me sort through it in the right way. It is very mild, and I don’t even really think much of it, however I’ve noticed that my behavior tends to color people’s opinion of my artwork. Sometimes I get the impression that they think I am some narrowly-focused-boy-wonder-type. I can’t say that this impression has hurt me – in fact, I believe it amplifies any interest in my work – however I’m not sure how I feel about being contextualized this way. Should I fight against this reputation I seem to be inadvertently building?

I wonder what you could possibly do to combat the impression you believe you are making. After all, you don’t know what conclusions people are actually coming to when you interact with them. You’re just guessing. But if you want to try to fight this assumption (yours and, potentially, your studio visitor’s) you’ll have to beat them to the punch. Maybe you could make a t-shirt that says, “I think that you think that I’m some kind of boy wonder, but I want to preemptively let you know that I’m not.” For brevity’s sake, on the back it could just say ASPERGER’S–you know, like a team jersey.

Wynne Greenwood, Head #2 with Pillar, 2012. Painted ceramic, dyed fabric, thread and foam, 48 x 24 x 24 inches

However, fashion’s not really my thing (see column lead picture, above) so in place of sartorial advice let’s get to the heart of this matter: the problem of how an artist controls her public image. Obviously, it’s necessary for the professional artist to have some information about herself out in the world (name, birthplace, education, and exhibitions are all basic resume items and statements often mention inspirations, etc.), but it’s funny how quickly this can get distorted or mischaracterized. Sometimes it seems that fact checking is passé: if someone gets a notion about who you are, and especially if it enlivens a story, there’s not much you can do. It’s no easy task to fight the rising tide of misinformation that gets circulated, especially when we live in a culture that fetishizes artists even as it undervalues them.

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Today from the DS Archives we venture not too far into the past to Sharon Lockhart’s exhibition of her film Lunch Break at the SF MoMA in 2011 and alert of of her new exhibition Double Tide, currently on view at Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló. In her new film, Lockhart continues her meditative observation of everyday events, this time focusing on one of the few female clam diggers working off the coast of Maine. Double Tide is on view May 11–September 2, 2012 .

The following article was originally published by Rob Marks on December 5, 2011: 

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art defies the normal boundary between landing and gallery at the entrance to the fourth floor space that houses Sharon Lockhart’s "Lunch Break," 2008. Photo: Saul Rosenfield, ©2011, with permission of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The stairway to the fourth floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art leads me directly toward a long, narrow, darkened space, at the end of which is the image of another, much longer, passageway. In that image, a concrete floor below and light fixtures above trace a trajectory toward infinity punctuated by pipes, wires, hoses, storage boxes, tools, and lockers. The scene is not monochrome—red, blue, yellow, orange, and green are common—nor is it dark, but the fluorescent lights, the faded floor, the absent windows, and the constrained path—no more than five feet wide—suggest that this as a place to travel through, not a place in which to settle. Read More »

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast
A weekly column by Catherine Wagley

Hunter S Thompson and George McGovern during the 1972 Presidential Campaign. Photo: CSU Archive.

Writer David Shields tells a story about being a kid and liking Hunter S. Thompson’s obnoxious gonzo journalism way better than Steinbeck and other more classic fiction writers. With Thompson, you were never sure how fictional a story was going to get and it was always possible the craziest stuff was real. The young Shields believed, I think, that Thompson was telling the truth about having had a conversation with the Richard Nixon while at an adjoining urinal, but Shields’ sister thought the story was bull. The siblings wrote to Thompson, who responded, saying the sister was right and Shields was “a pencil-necked geek.”

Mercedes emblem hanging outside MOCA's Geffen Contemporary during Transmission L.A.

“But still,” write Shields, “it was liberating to read a work open-ended enough that the thought could occur to you that some of this stuff had to be made up or, even better, you couldn’t quite tell.”

When, at MOCA’s 19-day Transmisision L.A.: AV Club festival, curated by Beastie Boy Mike D., I pulled back a black curtain and accidentally walked into a storage closet, I felt similarly liberated. I had just been in the flashy gallery where Mercedes Benz, which backed and co-organized the festival, had its new luxury coupe on display under flashing lights, and so the closet, which I thought for a moment was an art installation, felt refreshing. It didn’t matter that “exposing-the-hidden-infrastructure art” had been done before. It just mattered that the flashiness of the Mercedes was being contrasted by something more “real,” with ladders, and boxes, and little to no lighting. Then I saw the security guard shaking his head and walking toward me, and I knew what I had entered was not part of the art at all.

There’s a photograph at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art right now, on the third floor of the Japanese Pavilion. The image shows a sleek photograph of a white woman’s perfectly made-up, fashion-ad ready face hanging on a red rack outside concrete buildings near an overgrown alley. It’s not of a closet, but I imagine photographer Daido Moriyama felt the way I did when he stumbled upon the scene in Tokyo last year: captivated by the co-mingling of what’s posed and polished –what’s clearly “art”– and what’s not.

Today’s feature is brought to you by our friends at Beautiful/Decay. Read below to find a recently released artist interview with Los Angeles-based painter Justin John Greene.

Los Angeles has always held a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans, but for most it exists in an almost fictional capacity.  Hollywood isn’t a real place – it’s a postcard, a huge sign on the side of a mountain bracketed with strategically placed palm tree silhouettes.  Certainly not a place to call home, but for artist Justin John Greene that’s exactly what it is.  Hollywood is a part of his heritage, and the work reflects that.  Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, Greene’s work is strongly imbued with the history of the most romanticized industry in American culture.

In his most recent solo show at Actual Size (an exhibition space he co-runs in the Chinatown gallery district of east L.A.) the influence of the film industry is in full focus.  You Oughta Be In Pictures is a comprehensive installation that utilizes painting, sculpture, and video to create a truly immersive experience for the viewer.  Installation may seem like a bit of a leap from Greene’s primarily two dimensional practice, but a closer look into the artist’s process bridges the gap seamlessly.  His work is a distinctly enjoyable blend of sly historical references, direct compositional tactics, and cleverly applied humor.  If you have the opportunity to see the work in person I strongly encourage you to do so.

View full interview

I used to have a secret garden. Even though it was technically communal (which slightly undermines the essence of secrecy) it was rarely visited by anyone and wildly overgrown. Especially in summer you could get lost between the ancient trees and unkept rosebushes and safely hide from the perils of the outside world. I occasionally invited someone around for a midnight picnic, and often spent lazy afternoons sitting on the grass with the creatures of my imagination, watching little bugs trying to climb into my tea. I thought that was what secret gardens were generally like, happy places of peaceful meditation. How horribly naive I was.

TENT in Rotterdam asked fifteen artists to think about the concept of a secret garden and make a work for their current exhibition. They interpreted the secret garden not just as a hideaway or a place of contemplation, imagination, mystery and beauty, but also a place of debauchery, derelict and danger. The secret garden is shown as a place that evokes sensuality – brilliantly depicted in the stylishly pornographic images by  Schilte en Portielje – or the deserted home of a cannibalistic tribe.

The secret element of these gardens is taken very literally by Diederik Klomberg, in the work Kura Di e Mente/Garden of the Mind, 2012, which consists of plant pots, mirrors and hallucinogenic drugs. This three-dimensional installation uses light effects to unveil a hidden breeding ground for mind-expanding experiences and shows the secret garden as the kind garden you find in attics and basements, and occasionally in newspapers after a police raid. It is, obviously, the kind of secret garden you’d expect to find in Rotterdam. In the same room is a video animation by Olphaert den Otter, entitled Drawn, 2012. It reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a friend, about a book in which bacteria are seen as the species at the top of the food chain which will eventually kill and survive all other living animals (my conversations with friends are generally quite cheerful). The hand-drawn video animation shows the slow, natural changes of a desertlike piece of land. There are some remnants of human presence – skulls and bones – but generally it shows the planet after human life has gone.

Another work worth mentioning is the spectacular installation by Guiseppe Licari, called Humus, for which the roots of several medium sized trees were cut off and attached to the ceiling. The lights in the room are dimmed, and walking around the room it feels like you’re underground, like a mole making it’s way through the soil. There is something sinister and exciting about being in the underbelly of the forest, surrounded by the roots of dead trees.

These gardens are fantastical places, literally gardens of the mind. They show the dungeons of the artist’s imagination, and make you walk through their nightmares and dreams. They’re brilliant for a thoughtful meander, but they’re not great places for cups of tea.

40,000 bottle rockets make for a lot of noise and a lot of glare. Especially when they come hurtling toward your face. On April 7, 2012, artist Cai Guo-Qiang — known for his gunpowder drawings and performative “explosion events” — opened Sky Ladder at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary location with just such an experience. Called Mystery Circle, the event was pure spectacle. Over a thousand people showed up to watch Guo-Qiang use the rockets to burn images of crop circles and a Byzantine alien onto MOCA’s side.

Danielle Sommer: This is your first West Coast exhibition?

Cai Guo-Qiang: The first solo exhibition on the West Coast.

DS: Did that influence how you conceived the work? Is there anything specific about Los Angeles or the Western U.S. involved?

CGT: So back in the mid-nineties, when I was about to move from Japan to the U.S., I had a friend who was the editor of a major art magazine who told me that the West Coast is the closest place to the universe in the world. There’s a lot of hi-tech development, and also the aerospace industry is here.

DS: You’ve said that the role of art is to provide a distance for people to see certain issues and certain events – and that that distance is necessary to find the meaning below the surface. What it is about art that creates that distance? What is the meaning below the surface of this work?

Crop Circles, computer rendering for the exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder, 2012, courtesy Cai Studio.

CGT: Because the exhibition is titled Sky Ladder, there is a sense of distance between humans on Earth, and the universe and outer space. It’s also a pictorial review of my art career and the past works and projects I’ve done through the years.  With the crop circle installation, it’s a reversal of the normal perspective, where we humans are looking from outer space onto Earth.

DS: You talked about your first rocket painting being a tiny canvas in your studio. Do you still have a studio practice? Do you do things that are just for your own eyes?

CGT: I still have a studio, but when I mentioned that I was working with that canvas thirty years ago, it was in my hometown in China. Of course, now my studio is located in New York, but it’s where I conceive ideas or make sketches. When it comes to using gunpowder, because you need a permit for that, we go out to Brookhaven and Long Island.

"Desire for Zero Gravity," 2012, gunpowder on canvas, 340.36 x 1066.8 cm (134 x 420 in.), commissioned by The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, photo by Joshua White, courtesy The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

DS: Jeffery Dietch said that he considers your work both spectacular and intimate.  How do you feel when you’re experiencing it?

CGT: A lot of times very anxious — very excited in anticipating the event. When that happens, I feel at one with the audience.

DS: We all jumped back together.

CGT: I got hit by a few rockets!

DS: I saw that!

CGT: You saw that?

DS: I did.

Sky Ladder is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, through July 30, 2012.

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.

This week’s column is illustrated with collages by Irina and Silviu Szekely.

Your financial counselor, hard at work.

My question is: how does an artist decide how much a certain piece is worth, monetarily?

One of the most difficult things to do is put a dollar value on your work. In the absence of a gallerist’s guiding hand and prior knowledge, you have to ask yourself all kinds of ancillary questions: where am I at in my career, is this object well-made, is it unique, what have I sold in the past? etc. Pricing your work means it’s time to be brutally honest about where you stand in your career vis à vis what the market will bear. It can be a tough call. Who—at least of the unrepresented among us—hasn’t sold a piece and then wished they had asked for more? Or wondered if unsold work might have had a buyer if it was offered for less?

This is just one more situation in which artists need to do their research. Start with the local galleries and art fairs and look at the prices of work that is similar to yours to get a range of values. This will help you create a basic list of prices, but don’t stop there because numbers aren’t the only part of the equation. Take a look at the resumes of the artists, too, as accomplishments make a difference in setting a price. If the paintings of an established mid-career artist with work in private and public collections sell for $30,000, and you’re fresh out of a BFA program, then your work is not going to sell for the same amount even if the size, medium, and style are comparable.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( framing, deframing and reframing of semi-accidental linkages ), 18 x 22. Image courtesy of the artists.

You’ll also need to consider what it takes to make your work and what kind of work you’re making. For example, take the economics of production into account. What do you spend on your materials? Likewise, if you’re selling framed work you need to account for the costs of matting and framing. The type of work you’re making also has a particular value. If the work is part of an edition, it’s valued less than an original. A print from an edition of three hundred is less expensive than one from an edition of five.

When you’ve accounted for as many variables as possible, give yourself a small range of prices that you think are acceptable and run them by an artist friend who understands the art market. If you have access to a sympathetic teacher or dealer, you could ask those folks, too. I find that bouncing a number off a neutral party can help me make a final decision. I also take into account the words of a former professor, who told me that his sales strategy was to price things on the lower end of the scale. “I’d rather have a slightly smaller check than store [my paintings] indefinitely,” he said, and this is yet another thing to consider when you’re trying to put a dollar value on your work.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( the amputated experience of Sir Coincidence Sobject ), 27 x 23 cm. Image courtesy of the artists.

I am a performance artist. I have had many invitations lately to show my work, but I am worried I won’t have enough money to pay for all of the travel and materials. Is there a way to get an ‘art loan’? What would you do? I’m right on the cusp of something. It is so much about freeness, but also, it’s crazy to be running on hot air.

The first thing I want to say is that if you’re receiving invitations to perform, you should be getting at least some financial support from the institutions and venues themselves. Have you written any emails along the lines of, “Thank you for your interest in my work. Here are the costs associated with my performance, including airfare to your city. Please let me know how you are going to fund this performance.”? Though I suspect that this is not a magical solution to your problem, I would love for your work to be supported by the venues that ask you to perform for them. That’s not going to happen if you don’t ask directly, and at least it gives you a place to start.

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