Los Angeles artist Eric Yahnker opened the doors of his downtown studio to Beautiful/Decay and Visual Creatures to give our readers insight into his witty, iconic work that is layered with pop culture influences and the deconstruction of its icons. Eric discusses his career change from Journalism to art, his disdain for painting, and his love of Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Rodney Dangerfield.

Eric Yahnker Beautiful/Decay Studio Visit from Beautiful/Decay Magazine on Vimeo.

Yokohama Linework from 2005 is a point-of-view video (here projected on the floor) of a skateboard traveling through Yokohama. The line he traces through the city is like an abstract drawing. It’s a linear composition with no narrative, an urban outline functioning as a self-portrait. He alludes to his own personal interests outside of art in this and other early videos, creating a caricature of the internationally wandering extreme athlete.

Shaun Gladwell, Interceptor Surf Sequence 2009. All images courtesy Wadsworth Atheneum

Anytime an artist brings in their own hobbies, it seems we then have to call it a form of pop art. Gladwell does directly engage popular movies in his MADDESTMAXIMVS series (2005-2009). After recreating Max’s Interceptor, he filmed two almost identical videos of an black-clad anonymous outlaw surfing on the top of the moving car. These two parts of Surf Sequence, one shot on a clear day and the other in front of a storm, were filmed in slow-motion, elongating the activity and emphasizing the surrounding landscape. This leads the audience to consider both the action and the surrounding Australian landscape.

There is a remarkably different feeling in his Apologies 1-6. Instead of being the outlaw engaged in risky behavior seemingly for fun, the outlaw now is following truckers in the outback of Australia, removing and caressing the resulting roadkill. The kangaroos that he picks up immediately echo Joseph Beuys’s How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, but there is an additional layer here in that he is still portraying his Mad Max character. Is there a soft-side, an empathetic and socially liberal message in Mad Max that I don’t remember? The outlaw in Gladwell’s Apologies is an almost mushy, a gently affectionate human who spends time caring for these dead animals that have fallen at man’s mercenary hands.

Shaun Gladwell, Apologies 1-6, 2007-09

Gladwell is presumably carving out a space for the extreme sports enthusiast to have these feelings. Instead of just being a reactionary, everlasting man-child, Gladwell inserts an adult concern into this video game character stereotype. It would be impossible to simultaneously be a thinking person and a slave to the x-games formula of masculinity. Gladwell’s video still of a soldier balancing his gun on his hand allows another inquiry into masculinity. The pigeonholed roughneck is shown in a more casual playful note. Instead of considering the scars left behind by war, in the manner of Sophie Ristelhueber, Gladwell is offering up a quiet moment of humanity that looks foreign as a soldier.

The gun in this film still is similar to the prosthetic devices (skateboard, stilts, and crutches) in a trio of videos culled from his Pataphysical suite. These images of humans using tools to spin returns to his interest in extreme sports, but instead of placing the artist at center, he films hired performers to enact these physical actions.

Shaun Gladwell, Pacific Undertow Sequence (Bondi), 2010

His most most recent video on display, Pacific Undertow Sequence (Bondi) brings all these themes together. Gladwell sits on a surfboard, but something looks strange about this. What’s going on is that he is upside down, the sun is below him; the light is coming from the bottom to top, he has to lean down to get air, and the waves we see crashing are the undertow of each wave. Gladwell is engaged with an extreme sport again, but instead of being macho and powerful master of improbable motion, he is at the impulses of the tide. Underwater, unable to breath freely, his athleticism keeps him alive. There is another subtle symmetrical landscape with another single actor. Present again is his connection to the outdoors but it doesn’t function on a literal level, have a pedantic message to get across, or refer to a single device. It’s more physical and powerful than conceptual. Trying to sit still on a surf board might be his most vigorous work yet and his most understated.

Matrix 162, Shaun Gladwell is on display at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford CT from June 2- September 18, 2011

Bruce Nauman, Going Around the Corner Piece, 1970, © Coll. Centre Pompidou. Photo: Georges Meguerditchian

In the self-explanatory show entitled Video, an Art, a History 1965 – 2010, the history and evolution of the video art genre are recounted through 50 video works and installations, drawn from the collections of both the Singapore Art Museum and Centre Pompidou. Having developed in tandem with the apparatus of television and the analogue and then digital video cameras, video art’s reconfiguration of the politics of image-making and its ability to place the spectator as an indispensable agent in a work’s existence are significant tenets on which the exhibition is established. The infinitely widening scope and scale for the production and interpretation of (moving) images, the mode of their dissemination, and the documentation of performances (technical or otherwise), pose several key but general questions around which the works are grouped.

The pertinence of such questions however, falters in the collaborative effort that has shown up more differences than similarities. Reconciling the inventory of the Singapore Art Museum with the Centre Pompidou’s reveals the tentative forays into the processes of historicisation that are only beginning to develop in Southeast Asia and the inevitable rift in the standpoints of Western art and Southeast Asian art history. The Pompidou’s international collection stretches back 4 decades to the genesis of video art; the Singapore Art Museum’s inventory spans approximately a decade that really began with the Asian Financial Crisis (1997-8) and is focused on works produced in the surrounding geographical region. The wider ramifications of this collaboration go beyond an overwhelming inventory imbalance and the expanded visual vocabulary that video technology provides; indeed the emerging ideological differences become apparent when speculative comparison – the attempt at a comparative video-art history, should it even exist – inevitably sets in.

Pipilotti Rist, A la belle étoile (Under the Sky), 2007, © Coll. Centre Pompidou. Photo: Georges Meguerditchian.

The seeming futile effort of historicising video art in this instance, is thus mitigated by several thematic (and loosely chronological) focuses that ground the show: television critique, the representations of self, the documentation of performance, installation in space, landscape as metaphor, video-as fiction and the deconstruction of narratives.

If early efforts by video pioneers such as Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman and David Hall took the definition of an art object beyond its conventional parameters as a static entity produced for visual consumption, perhaps the greatest strength of video art triumphed in this show is the unprecedented potential of experiential interactivity between artist, installation and spectator. Peter Campus’ Interface (1972) invites the viewer to superimpose their reflection onto their projected image after which they simultaneously face 2 images of themselves – one of the video image and their reflection on the glass screen. The inherent sense of ego coupled with a measure of curiosity is a potent brew, particularly when facets of the multi-layered self are revealed in art. Like the literary Doppelgänger (the ghostly and sinister double), artists’ early efforts recognised the potential of video art in exploring the loss of existential reference in which the traditionally held view of the consecrated sense of self is destabilised. In Bruce Nauman’s Going around the Corner Piece (1972), the surveillance set-up is symmetrical and simple: perched in the corners in a white square-room are closed-circuit cameras and small TV monitors that capture visitor movements going around the corner of the enclosed space. The spectator’s image disappears from view as he/she rounds a corner; speeding up in an attempt to play catch-up with one’s image results in a unsuccessful tail-chasing endeavour – which is probably the glorious core and yet most vexing part of this work.

Peter Campus, Interface, 1972.

Departing from the investigative preoccupation with the apparatus and the monolithic hold that television had, video art had, by the 1980s, begun deconstructive strategies of memory and narratives, debunking on its way, stereotypes of sexuality, ethnicity and gender perpetuated by the very same mode. Nam June Paik’s semi-documentary Guadalcanal Requiem (1979) explores the subjectivity of memory through the deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of narratives, in a film that coalesces history, time, cultural memory and mythology on the site of one of World War II’s most devastating battles in the Solomon Islands. Surrealistic images of archival footage, interviews, Charlotte Moorman’s fragmented cello performances come together like a scratchy Hitchcock–Buñuel/Dali crossover. The haunting collage is often fraught with poignant tension and a sense of the macabre: interviewees with singular (or paltry) memories picking up where some have left off; Moorman playing a cello with a long palm leaf against a thunderous horizon, and at another time, performs concealed in a body bag.

Guadalcanal Requiem, Nam June Paik, 1979, © Nam June Paik Estate video still Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EIA) New York

A deconstructive approach to the moving image seemed to be video art’s trajectory from the 1990s into the early 21^st century, incorporating new developments of photo processing, digital editing and image layering in contemporary visual culture. Swiss conceptual artist Pipilotti Rist’s A la belle étoile (2007) moves between micro- and macrocosms on horizontal and vertical surfaces. As suggested by curator Christine Van Assche, such works operate on removing depth of field, redefining in the process, the spectator’s own rapport with space.

Despite the influence of the commercial mainstream, video art has nevertheless, retained its earlier forms: the performance documentary, mixed-media texts, or even the visual portrait. Such forms seem conceivably better suited to the preoccupation with art’s social purpose and its context of production that remain dominant traits in Asian-produced videos; perhaps most similar to the historical Western notions where art was produced within corresponding socio-political backgrounds. Just as Gustav Courbet’s post-romanticism was a rejection of academic and bourgeois juste milieu, much of Southeast Asian works are filled with the rhetoric of social change in which media artists show no desire to be unbound from their local cultural matrices. By continuing to invoke ties to tradition, incredibly varied configurations (or even fragments) of history that appear in Asian works at best, seem to read as disjointed narratives to the viewer unschooled in the intricacies of China’s tumultuous last few decades.

Yang Fudong, Backyard - Hey! Sun is rising, 2001.

Yang Fudong’s Backyard – Hey! Sun is Rising (2001) follows the Keatonesque slapstick antics of four young men enacting military rituals and traipsing around with swords, questioning the meaning of rituals in the wake of social changes. A richer meaning however, could be gleaned from Yang’s work if considered in the light of the communism’s wane, as well as in the historical traditions of Zen, martial arts and the aesthetic disciplines of poetry, painting and calligraphy – all of which are mirrored in aesthetic form and content in his videos. Like Yang’s disoriented characters who seem to seek penance in an environment marked by repression, The Propeller Group’s Uh… (2007) confronts Vietnam’s youth culture’s adaptations to the changing socio-cultural and political landscape through the symbolic use of graffiti, and the disorder and spontaneity it represents – the antithesis of Vietnam’s ordered socialist state.

Uh..., The Propeller Group, 2007, Singapore Art Museum Collection

Manet's Luncheon on the Grass and the Thai farmers, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Two Planets series, 2008, Singapore Art Museum collection

While Western artists like Pierre Huyghe and Issac Julien integrated mixed media installations with the spectacular and immersive experience of cinema, Asian filmmakers also tended to persist with the use of narrative (and at times, the meta-narrative) as a didactic strategy. In Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook’s The Two Planets Series (2008), Thai farmers – groups of people blithely oblivious to the cultural or economic baggage associated with canonical works of Western art history – talk about several cornerstones of modern European painting. Their discussions of Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass (1863), van Gogh’s The Siesta (1889-90) and Millet’s The Gleaners (1857) are artlessly literal, context-less and extremely humourous, with the constant comical tendency to drift towards off-topic situations. Straddling the diverse worlds of rural farming and art history, Rasdjarmrearnsook raises questions of socio-cultural context, the parameters of interpretation and appreciation, but stops short of suggesting that our efforts in basting together a coherent narrative and interpretation of art are vain but significant detractors from the lost pleasure of looking.

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Video, an Art, a History 1965 – 2010 is presented by the Singapore Art Museum and the Centre Pompidou, and runs through 18 September 2011.

Les Samouraïs , 2010 Single-channel video lightstands, painted wood, projector 3 min 36 sec, sound Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Vidal Cuglietta

One might be tempted to call Lisa Tan’s exhibition at Arthouse in Austin poetic. But what would this mean? It is spare, filled with layered and complex allusions, much like a poem. The imagistic lyricism of two finches in a cage; a lone man smoking as he stares out a window; flashes of barren mountain peaks; and a doctor’s stark appraisal of an aging body might suggest something more than prose as an apt metaphor. But regardless of the correct literary comparison, this exhibition is an aggregate of images – a series of artworks that collect around a few themes. One of the most evocative is the notion of the double.

Letters From Dr. Bamberger, 2001 - ongoing Annual post-physical letters 9 5/8” x 6 5/8 inches each Courtesy of the artist w/ special thanks to the University of Gothenburg, Valand School of Fine Arts

Much of the work is about relationships, both real and imagined, between two bodies. Letters From Dr.Bamberger is a project that Tan begun in 2001 when her boyfriend at the time went to the doctor. He received a letter from the doctor after his physical that summarized his health. Tan followed suit and also went to this doctor, shortly receiving her own letter. Year after year Tan and her romantic partner would go to the doctor and receive a letter that detailed their physical health. These letters, standing in for each of these years stand side by side, wrapping around the exhibition. They speak to the luxury of health insurance and the shifting of a body’s physicality over time. They also speak to the relationship between doctor and patient, which Tan originally compared to the teacher-student dynamic in graduate school when she began the piece ten years ago.

National Geographic, 2009 Double slide projection and printed text Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist

Another work is National Geographic (2009), which is composed of two slide projectors and a screen. Tan took her late father’s magazine collection and cut out all of the images of mountains and photographed them. She then photographed the image that was on the backside of the page. In the dual projections this back-to-back relationship is splayed out in such a way that we see side-by-side comparisons governed by chance.

Les Samouraïs , 2010 - Single-channel video lightstands, painted wood, projector 3 min 36 sec, sound Courtesy of the artist & Galerie Vidal Cuglietta, Brussels

Les Samouraïs (2010) is based on Jean-Piere Melville’s 1967 film Le Samourai. This film, which was remade by Jim Jarmusch in 1999 as Ghost Dog, tells the story of an assassin who lives in relative solitude with only a small caged bird for company. The finch in the original film died in a studio fire shortly before the film’s completion and Tan memorializes it by digitally adding a second bird into the film, complicating the film’s tragic sense of isolation.

In Search of the Forgotten, Letters from Mme de Forget to Eugenè Delacroix, 2010 Archival inkjet prints with chine-collé in artist’s frame 6.3 x 19.7 inches Edition of 2 Courtesy of the artist & Arthouse at the Jones Center

Finally, there are a series of prints that record the correspondence between the nineteenth century French artist Eugene Delecroix and his friend and lover Madame Forget. Tan was fascinated by the wonderful associations that the English pronunciation of this woman’s name evoked. Was she indeed forgotten? What was her true relationship with this great titan of Romanticism? Tan’s process involved research in France and New York but rather than looking for concrete truths as an historian might, the artist is content with the richly ambiguous and open suggestions of correspondence and parallel gestures of expression.

Courtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

The first floor of the two-floor exhibit consists of clusters of rooms comprised of a simple wooden framework supporting large projection screens.  Each room allows for the viewer to stand in front of projected light, thus causing the light to fracture into colored shadows on the wall.  These projections, like much of Eliasson’s work, causes the viewer to re-examine even the most common familiarities, such as light, with renewed appreciation and wonder.  Eliasson is particularly interested in how we understand, see, and experience space. Multiple Shadow House does not disappoint on this level. The user negotiates and constructs his or her own surroundings while experiencing subtleties of color, thrill of participation, and magic of science.

The theme of perception of visual imagery and viewer involvement is continued upstairs in Intangible Afterimage Star (2008).  Six spotlights project geometrical forms in magenta, blue, yellow, green, magenta, and turquoise onto a wall, layering and intersecting.  As explained in the press release, “the intense projections fade in and out, and complimentary afterimages stay on the visitor’s retina and appear to multiply the color compositions.  As a result, the film is only partially produced by the spotlight’s projection; the rest is contributed by the viewer.”

Also upstairs is a stunning collection of what appear to be studies in color, sequences, and shape done in watercolor and pencil on paper.  Minimal and intimate, these stationary works are a refreshing change from the rest of the exhibition.  Configured in sequences, the watercolors use ellipses and circles as narrative exercises on the perception of space and movement.  Another piece, Colour Experiment no. 3, is a circular oil painting that at first glance appears to be a basic study in color or a large color wheel.  However, the painting is actually an expansion of the traditional model of a color wheel, wherein each of the 360 degrees is painted in one color and corresponds to its complementary afterimage located directly across from itself.

Eliasson has cited the work of close friend Einar Thorstein, a philosopher, scientist, and engineer, as a constant source of his visual vocabulary.  He has found inspiration in Thorstein’s spatial ideas such as geodesic domes, fivefold symmetries, spiral spheres, towers and pavilions, the golden ratio, and kaleidoscopes.  Eliasson uses these concepts to create works like Multiple Shadow House which exist as experiences more than material objects.  Presented via transparent means of constructions, these experiences illustrate the nature of perception-based stimulation as well as the artist’s ability to manipulate the experience.

Current solo exhibitions for Eliasson include Olafur Eliasson: Your Chance Encounter at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan and Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia.

Best of 2009
Daniel Gordon: Portrait Studio
Originally published on April 1, 2009

Earlier this year, DailyServing.com visited NYC-based photographer Daniel Gordon at his studio in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Gordon is currently exhibiting in the MOMA: New Photography 2009 in New York City through January 11, 2010.

Daniel Gordon, Portrait Studio from sam fleischner on Vimeo.

Artist, Daniel Gordon, creates amazingly innovative, albeit low-tech photographs. His photos begin as cheaply printed internet-based images constructed into temporary sculptures which are re-photographed for their final presentation. The process resembles something from Frankenstein’s studio, as the artist assembles body parts and objects to reconfigure them in an endless cycle of creation. During a much anticipated visit, DailyServing.com had the pleasure to meet the artist in his Brooklyn-based studio to catch a rare glimpse of his unique process.

Pregnant, 40“ x 50”, C–Print 2008

Daniel Gordon graduated from Yale University School of Art in 2005 and has since exhibited with Zach Feuer Gallery in New York and Groeflin Maag in Basel and Zurich, Switzerland. The artist is currently presenting new work in the exhibition Portrait Studio with Groeflin Maag in Zurich, on view through April 10th. This year, Gordon was selected for the annual New Photography exhibition, opening this fall, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition will highlight a selection of only six young artists who each address the concept of image collection, assembly, and manipulation beginning in the studio or darkroom. For more information, check out Daniel’s previous feature on DailyServing.

Ross Moreno

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

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

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

In the second performance, Justin Cooper came out to a wild round of applause generated in part by a recording coming from speakers and by people in the crowd. Just as the host of a late night talk show or comedy club would give thanks and appreciations, Cooper encouraged the show of hands. This went on for five or six minutes till it became apparent that Cooper was becoming frustrated and annoyed that he was unable to proceed.  As the crowd began to catch on and more people started clapping, Cooper became irate, screaming at the crowd to stop, begging them to please shut up, which only caused more applause.  This felt like it could go on all night and certainly could have, till Cooper finally broke character, laughed and thanked the people in the gallery.

In perhaps the same spirit but to different effect, and making clear these artists’ approach to performance and video clear, is Clinton King’s untitled video of the artist performing magic tricks in front of a high-definition monitor that is simultaneously displaying a live feed of the action.  The effect is that of endless distorted feedback loop that deconstructs representational imagery into pure abstraction.  Through the editing process, the artist has left intact all of the movements of his hands preceding and following the illusions, but has removed the tricks themselves.

Having formed the i.e. project in 2004, the 6 artists involved maintain uneasy and provocative relationships, collaborative and otherwise, via regular exhibitions nationally and internationally.  Complicating matters is that the artists hail from locales as varied as New York, Tampa Bay, Chicago, and Hong Kong.  Previous exhibitions have been realized at Alogon Gallery, Chicago and 1a space, Hong Kong among others.

Artist Aaron Noble was recently profiled in an artist video produced by Osmosis TV and Beautiful/Decay Magazine. The artist creates a diverse range of works, all of which are centered on superhero comic imagery. His core practice involves large site-specific murals, some of which are several stories tall, however he also creates small works on paper and prints. The artist has created edition prints with Wingate Studio in New Hampshire. Noble is represented by Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York City and is currently exhibiting in the Beautiful/Decay A to Z exhibition at the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.

http://www.wingatestudio.com/” target=”_blank

Artist, Daniel Gordon, creates amazingly innovative, albeit low-tech photographs. His photos begin as cheaply printed internet-based images constructed into temporary sculptures which are re-photographed for their final presentation. The process resembles something from Frankenstein’s studio, as the artist assembles body parts and objects to reconfigure them in an endless cycle of creation. During a much anticipated visit, DailyServing.com had the pleasure to meet the artist in his Brooklyn-based studio to catch a rare glimpse of his unique process.

Daniel Gordon graduated from Yale University School of Art in 2005 and has since exhibited with Zach Feuer Gallery in New York and Groeflin Maag in Basel and Zurich, Switzerland. The artist is currently presenting new work in the exhibition Portrait Studio with Groeflin Maag in Zurich, on view through April 10th. This year, Gordon was selected for the annual New Photography exhibition, opening this fall, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition will highlight a selection of only six young artists who each address the concept of image collection, assembly, and manipulation beginning in the studio or darkroom. For more information, check out Daniel’s previous feature on DailyServing.

Los Angeles-based artist Robbie Conal has made a name for himself over the past several decades for his poignantly irreverent and ultra-humorous political posters featuring unforgettable one-liner jokes. The artist wittingly simplifies issues that surround political figures and delivers the work to a mass audience by creating reproductions of his painting, pasting the posters in cities throughout the country. His clever insight can be seen over countless paintings such as a rendering of Dick Cheney with bunny ears bearing the simple phrase ‘Enronergizer Bunny’ over a hot pink ground.

In his current series of work, the artist has begun to move away from his well-known political poster portraits and has been investigating other, equally clever, connections between popular culture and politics.

The artist recently exhibited a new painting in the retrospective exhibition Beautiful/Decay: A to Z, which opened at the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles last weekend. In addition, Conal recently teamed up with By Osmosis TV and Beautiful/Decay magazine to produce a short interview video that features the artist at work in his studio.

Gedi Sibony‘s current exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis features frugally elegant sculptures made from a span of mundane materials. Wittily titled My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms, this is Sibony’s first solo show in a museum. His tender brand of minimalism seems especially appropriate during an economic downturn; his work acknowledges the lyrical potential of things that are fairly unexceptional and gives them new cultural purpose (in W Magazine 2008 Art Issue, Sibony was quoted as saying of his materials, “I did something to these objects; they kept me company . . . I can’t help but look at them as something that reflects me”).

The museum’s chief curator, Anthony Huberman, who organized My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms, expresses his excitement about Sibony’s work in the above video (he is equally excited in the handful of accompanying videos viewable on the museum’s youtube page).

Sibony, who received a BA from Brown University in 1995 and an MFA from Columbia in 2000, participated in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and also appeared in last year’s Unmonumental at the New Museum. My Arms Are Tied continues through April 19th.

While in Miami earlier this month, DailyServing.com was fortunate enough to visit with artist TV Moore. Perhaps best known for his multi-media video installations, Moore was exhibiting APOCATOPIA (vol. 1) with Baer Ridgway Exhibitions at the Pulse Miami Art Fair. Moore splits his time between Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles, producing films, videos, and theatrical performances. Much of the artist’s work makes use of fragmented narratives, while blurring the line between constructed film and documentary footage. Moore received his MFA from CalArts in 2006, and since, he has exhibited in the Turin Triennale, the 16th Biennale of Sydney and the 2008 Busan Biennale in South Korea.

“You could lie on the floor and be completely losing yourself, time-wise and space-wise,” says curator Klaus Biesenbach of Pipilotti Rist‘s new video installation in the Museum of Modern Art‘s atrium. The installation, called Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), was commissioned by MoMA and has been in the works for two years. Pour Your Body Out, which officially opened to the public on November 19th, turns the space into an engrossing environment of video, sound, and objects. As the title suggests, Rist intends to immerse viewers’ bodies in a spatially opulent experience. In the above behind-the-scenes video, the artist discusses working in MoMA’s imposing atrium.

Rist, who is based in Zurich, originally studied at the Institute of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the School of Design in Basel. She has taught at UCLA and has exhibited at international galleries and museums, among them the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, the Centre Pompidou, Hauser & Wirth, and Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum. She participated in the 2005 Venice Biennale and MoMA already owns one of her best known video installations, Ever is Over All (1997). Rist has also worked extensively with the experimental music group Les Reines Prochaines. Pour Your Body Out remains on view through February 2, 2009.

Last weekend in Miami, DailyServing.com had the opportunity to speak with artist Rashid Johnson about his work on display with the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in the Nada Art Fair. Johnson has received much critical acclaim for his poetically potent works, which directly confront ideas of race, identity and culturally coded artifacts through sculpture, photography and installation. Johnson was recently included in the Rubell Family Collection exhibition 30 Americans, for which one of his photographs was used for the cover of the exhibition catalog. The artist gained notoriety early in his career through his participation in the exhibition Freestyle, curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem. This year, the artist traveled his new exhibition Sharpening My Oyster Knife to Magdeburger Kunstmuseum in Magdeburg, Germany, 404 arte contemporanea in Naples Italy and Moniquemeloche Gallery in Chicago.