 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
||||||
|
  Roots by Monica Araoz |
'22 To Watch': Updates from the Live Art Capital of the World '
22 To Watch': Updates from the Live Art Capital of the World By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin Last week, as music fans wearing Austin City Limits Festival wristbands and evacuees from the Texas coast crowded into the city, more than 100 people showed up at the Austin Museum of Art to hear four up-and-coming Austin artists talk about their work. The week before, 350 people turned out to hear another quartet from "New Art in Austin: 22 To Watch." When the exhibit launched in August, more than 1,300 hit the opening, some forced to line up on Congress Avenue before they could get in. So far, museum officials report, the exhibit has averaged about 200 visitors a day. True, those are not the kind of attendance numbers that compare to ACL or even a show at the Backyard. But "22 To Watch" isn't the visual art equivalent of supergroup Coldplay headlining ACL. The museum exhibit is the second triennial show of new work by emerging local artists. In other words, "22" is our house band, artistically speaking. And people are flocking to see it. Uphill from here Specifically, "22" presents a selective cross-section of early-career artists working in the greater Austin area. The curatorial team -- museum Executive Director Dana Friis-Hansen, curators Eva Buttacovoli and James Housefield along with Galveston Arts Center Director Clint Willour and Dallas Center Contemporary Art Director Joan Davidow -- considered 145 artists who work within a 50-mile radius of the state capital and who have never had a solo museum exhibit. From that pool, they culled the final selection based on their collective aesthetic judgment. So what does Austin art look like in 2005? Stylistically, it's smartly playful, technologically savvy, crafty, worldly and thoughtful. First, many of our latest generation of visual artists love to have fun in an intelligent way. Ledia Carroll gets clever with a maze of clear acrylic piping that winds out of the museum gallery, through a plate glass window and down into a lower fountain, then winds all the way back into the gallery, water circulating throughout. Second, Austin artists love technology, too. Zack Booth Simpson, for example, uses his own algorithms and a mass of computers, cameras and projectors to make a shadow projection system that has gallery-goers stepping on a cartoonish projection image of a pond, their footsteps setting off ripples of animated pond animals. Among the emerging gang of crafty ones is Heather Johnson, who takes a very traditional skill -- embroidery -- and stitches up detailed maps and blueprintlike urban diagrams of locations that are both everywhere and nowhere. Sterling Allen represents the other side of the crafty spectrum: the renaissance of drawing springing forth in Austin. His deftly executed freehand drawings, based on randomly found photographs, at first seem innocent -- until their menacing power pops out thanks to the strength of Allen's draftsmanship. And the worldly? With his enormous digital photos of unassuming streets scenes sliced into thin strips and installed as three-dimensional sculpture, South Korean native Young-Min Kang echoes how foreign-born artists are absorbing life in the U.S. and Austin in particular. Plenty of the artists in "22" are thoughtful. A standout is Samantha Krukowski, who contemplates the simple beauty of ultra-magnified soap bubbles morphing in a symphony of movement in an exquisite black-and-white short film that seems to reference everything from microbiology to geological processes to cosmological shiftings. Regional, universal Creative people have always pulled materials and inspiration from their immediate environment. They still do. However, much of the art you now find in Austin would also be at home in places such as New York, Los Angeles, London, Buenos Aires or Istanbul. Take the photographs of Michael Osborne. A San Antonio native in the University of Texas fine arts master's program, he creates vast, detailed photographs of deserted middle-of-the-night Texas urban landscapes. These are patently obvious Lone Star locales: there's a five-pointed Texas star emblazoned on a towering freeway fly-over; there's a single-copy box for this newspaper standing lonely under a street light. But their cerebral coolness and pristine finish reach far beyond predictable genres of Texas art. Osborne's monumental images really dovetail with the current international art trend toward massive photographs depicting stark and conceptual views of the built environment. Pakistan-born Alia Hasan-Kahn presents her own twist on regional references. She trains her lens on transit-oriented spots in Austin -- bus stations, airports, train depots -- and makes postcards of her photographs and pairs them with quotes from Muslim Austinites about their experiences (none are terrifically positive) traveling in the U.S. post-Sept. 11. Moreover, as Hasan-Kahn's inclusion in "22" illustrates, the demographic profile of artists in our region now reflects a new, 21st century diversity. Of the 22 artists in the current exhibit, only half were born in Texas. Four are foreign-born and raised. Though most have art degrees from a university somewhere in Texas, fully 40 percent were educated at universities in other states and countries. Hana Hillerova, a native of Prague, received master's degrees in both art and English in the Czech Republic before heading to the U.S., landing first in Northern California, then in Austin, where UT offered her a fellowship to attend the master's program. Since graduating in 2004, Hillerova has been the director of the Creative Research Laboratory, UT's off-campus exhibit space. A competitive downhill skier in her youth, the 30-year-old blonde Hillerova is supermodel tall and has a strong, angular face. Last year she received the outstanding female artist of the year award from the Austin Critics' Table. In "22," her large sculpture "Swarm" started with a collage, of which she took digital pictures. Then she manipulated trecreated them into a colorful, busy 3-D installation of painted cardboard and plastic that sprawls over the gallery floor. Gone are the days when artists only mingled with each other at the local bar. Like everybody else in the creative class, artists are wired to the world. "Artists are just as likely to find their tribe -- find the people who doing the same thing they do -- through the Internet as they are where they live," the 30-year-old Hillerova said over coffee recently. Even a native Austinite considers the definition of region -- and its influence -- in a new light. Born and raised in Austin, Candace Briceño left Austin in 1999 after getting her undergraduate degree in art education at UT and headed to the graduate program at the Art Institute of Chicago. "When I left, I thought anywhere was better than here," she said. Still lively after a full day teaching art at Dove Springs Middle School (her day job), the 33-year-old Briceño talked about her emergence as an artist, her brown eyes flashing. "And by the time I left I had dropped all my adjectives," she says. "I was ready to no longer be a Texas girl, a Latina girl." Three years later, master's degree in hand, she returned. Life in Chicago, like other big cities, required too much money and too many compromises for her to carve out adequate time and space to be an artist. Now, she has her own living and studio space on her family's rural property in Cedar Creek -- an ideal setting for an artist who draws inspiration from the natural world to create captivating fabric sculptures and collage-like paintings. "Austin felt like it had completely changed by the time I came back," she says. "There was so much going on art-wise, so much new energy, and connecting with it was within my reach. People were finally invested in making it work here." No boundaries Is it really surprising that Austin visual artists have moved beyond the longhorn and bluebonnet scenes of decades past, and the funky cowboy punk aesthetic ofthe 1980s? Or that artists find their own reasons to stay and work here? Not really. In its art as well as its music, Austin values diversity and democracy. While the city is known around the world for its singer-songwriters and roots rock bands, it has also given birth to a flamenco rock sextet (Del Castillo), a conceptual vaudeville-esque operatic band (Tuna Helpers) and a tango quartet (Tosca). Moreover, Austin's visual art eco-system is stronger than ever now. In addition to roughly 50 commercial art shops, the city has a vibrant roster of artist-run galleries that have become a scene unto themselves with their open studio tours, casual openings and experimental exhibits. And in the event- and competition-crazed contemporary art world, Austin has created its own unique buzz-makers. No sooner had the first "22" opened three years ago than everyone began speculating who would be in the next one. Earlier this year, five of the new artist-run galleries produced the "Texas Biennial," selecting 36 artists from 600 submissions and again sparking lots of chatter. Then there's the Arthouse Texas Prize: The Austin-based statewide organization launched its first biennial $30,000 award, the finalists for which were announced with much fanfare, and the Nov. 4 pronouncement of the winner is eagerly anticipated. That kind of buzz is carried by Austin artists when they connect with their creative tribe. Many head regularly to the marquee events such as art fairs and biennial exhibits that are now so popular. In the past 18 months or so, Hillerova headed to the Art Chicago fair and Art Basel-Miami Beach, both hip happenings that attract hundreds of international dealers, collectors and artists. "In one weekend, I can meet dozens of people, and then easily stay in touch with them, " Hillerova says. Indeed, Hillerova considers herself as connected to her specific world-wide artistic tribe as she is to her art buddies in Austin. Like her, Briceño finds Austin not so circumscribed now by its own self-identifying adjectives. "If you work here, you don't have to be a 'regional' artist now." |
|
|
|
||
 She Holds Prisms and Birds and Sees Worlds by James Surls |
Three shows fall back in lines By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin Is the beauty of the line still alive and well in contemporary art? Three current gallery shows prove it is. Currently enjoying a celebration of his three-decade career, thanks to a major catalog published by University of Texas Press along with an exhibit at the University of Houston, renowned sculptor James Surls gets a mini-retrospective at Flatbed Press, which has produced prints by the East Texas native over the years. In giant woodcuts from the early 1990s, Surls' signature vigorous line -- the one so clearly seen in his wood and metal sculptures -- pops out dramatically: bold, sensuous, fluid and full of energy it sprawls energetically creating images that are part abstract, part depictions of simply outlined forms, such as hands and eyes or leaves and waves. The large woodcuts (some are more than 6 feet tall) and an etching portfolio Surls completed at Flatbed in 1998 are impressive (works on exhibit range from $800 to $8,500), but the three etchings he made this year astonish. In them, the master artist unleashes the full force of his linemaking artistry. Strong slashes, hairline loops, finepoint dots, exuberant squiggles overlap and layer in exquisite harmony. Making a solo appearance in Austin for the first time in several years, Helmut Barnett shows off new paintings and collages at Wally Workman Gallery. Though he regularly shows in Houston and Dallas with Gremillion Gallery, the German-born longtime Austinite hasn't offered a one-man show here since 2001 (that one at the now-closed Austin branch of Gremillion). Barnett's linemaking vacillates between the cool, orderly geometrical linearity found in his paper collages and large paintings and the much more active style found in his small acrylic paintings on paper. (Barnett's works go from $1,200 to $9,500.) As pleasingly cerebral as Barnett's collages and large works are, it's the small paintings that ask for a second look. Maybe it's because they veritably boogie. Unattached or disembodied forms -- cylinders, pyramids, cubes, disks, tubes and even what seem to be dolls' arms and legs -- toss around in a swirl of their own energy. It's hard to tell if these colorful cartoonish shapes are in midst of an explosion or implosion. And it's hard to determine if these animated forms menace or delight. Either way, Barnett imbues his small paintings with a vigor that attracts. Recent University of Texas graduate Eric Zimmerman nabbed attention when he was still a student. And he continues to do so in a solo exhibit at Slugfest Gallery. In small collages and etchings (priced from $100 to $145), Zimmerman charts an imaginary world, drawing architectural schematics and detailed but unlabeled plans for what can only be fantastical structures or places. Layering bits of topographical maps, clear colored paper and his own precise technical drawings -- or creating similar images in monotone etchings -- Zimmerman delightfully manipulates the power and authority of technically specific lines to his own whimsical use. And in doing so, demonstrates his command of the art of making lines. |
|
|
|
||
 Grand Opening by Eileen Maxson |
The Final Four By Robert Faires In just two weeks, Arthouse will hand out its first-ever Texas Prize, a historic award that, thanks to the $30,000 check attached, makes it the largest regional art award in the country. Since Sept. 9, Arthouse has been exhibiting works by the four finalists for the 2005 prize: Eileen Maxson, Robyn O'Neil, and Robert A. Pruitt, all of Houston; and Ludwig Schwarz of Dallas. In anticipation of the announcement of the prize winner on Nov. 4, the Chronicle spoke with the finalists about their work and the creation of it. "Arthouse Texas Prize 2005: Eileen Maxson, Robyn O'Neil, Robert A. Pruitt,
Ludwig Schwarz" is on view through Nov. 14 at the Jones Center for Contemporary Art, 700 Congress.
Eileen Maxson "I got an e-mail from [Arthouse director] Sue Graze asking me to call her, and I knew that I had been nominated, but when I called I thought that it was a mistake or something," recalls the 25-year-old Houston artist. "So I called her back, and she told me I was one of the finalists, and I was really surprised. And happy." Maxson works primarily in video, using images to challenge viewers' perceptions of the media. For the Arthouse exhibition, she developed a new video installation titled Grand Opening. "My original idea was something similar to an amusement park ride, having to do with movement of a line and the controlled experience of a ride. The things that I was interested in were theatrical design, like set design. When you go to Disney World or Disneyland, it's all kind of a set: fabricated and all the scaling is wrong -- I think it's seven-eighths scale. So that's something I incorporated into the piece. "The other thing that really influenced this work is the grand opening of the Texas-sized IKEA in Houston the first week of August 2004. When thinking about the idea of the Texas Prize, I started to think about what that means and also to incorporate how I see the landscape of Texas, which in Houston even more so than in Austin is strip malls. Where I grew up in the suburbs of Houston, every single building looks exactly like the building that I made in the gallery. With the IKEA opening, I saw some people camping by the side of the freeway, and what was interesting to me was what the setting is when you're between I-10 and a furniture store, but these people had real experiences, like a church service. They had a community that came out of this commercial experience. There are all these different dynamics that went into it, like the woman who won had camped out on the side of IKEA in August in Houston for eight days. And IKEA was really humane about it. They pumped power to people, so people had air conditioning and televisions and PlayStations and stuff like that. It wasn't like Hands on a Hard Body, where it was all about how much you could endure. A lot of these kids were from high school and didn't go anywhere for their summer vacation, so this was kind of their vacation, their way of doing something out of the ordinary. "Two things that I was thinking a lot about in the design process were the collapsing of three dimensions to two dimensions, like when you're looking at the front of the piece there's actual depth to it, you can walk into it, but on the sides it collapses into the wall, and if you stand on the side of the piece, you can't discern where the art ends and the wall begins. Also, I was thinking a lot about dream sequences and acceptance speeches, because, going back to the IKEA grand opening, the woman who won ended up giving this kind of impromptu acceptance speech for a television camera, thanking her family, and something about it seemed surreal, like it wasn't really happening, it was this dream she was having, so that's something I tried to achieve with the way you walk into the piece and the way it collapses is very dreamlike. When you walk into the window, though, you have to deal with this combination of a dream world, which is the piece, and the real world, which is outside the window. "Ultimately, it was the way that I envisioned it, but it was much more complicated than I thought it would be. I've done one other installation, but I don't have any building experience. I had a lot of help from the crew at Arthouse. A friend of mine was helping me the day we decided to use sheetrock. I had no idea how to do it. So that was kind of the process for the whole piece, coming up with an idea and not really knowing how to do it and solving the problems as you go." |
|
 As darkness falls ... by Robyn O'Neil |
Robyn O'Neil "I was stunned," says Robyn O'Neil of the moment she learned she was a Texas Prize finalist. "I immediately told myself to not get my hopes up because this is a tough competition and could be a little stressful if I focus on what the end result would be. I just decided to enjoy the ride." The 28-year-old is known for her large-scale drawings of mysterious snowy landscapes populated by tiny figures, one of which was selected for the Whitney's "2004 Biennial." Her work in the Arthouse exhibition includes two works that have not been exhibited in Texas. "My drawings simply take so long to make that we all knew there would be no way for me to create anything new for this show in the time frame allowed. These large-scale drawings take up to about six months. I was thankful to Arthouse for allowing me to show work that I had already made. "[Exhibition curator] Regine Basha and I talked it over and found two large drawings that had never had a place in Texas. One drawing had only been shown briefly in Palm Beach, Fla., and the other was a drawing I was working on while we were developing the Arthouse show. This drawing, As darkness falls on this heartless land, my brother holds tight my feeble hand, was about to be shown in my solo show in New York, and we knew not many people from Texas would see it, so we decided that after the show closed in New York, we would bring it home for a while. The timing was perfect. "[As darkness falls ...] definitely was a new direction [for me] conceptually. My work has a tendency to be melancholy and downcast. It is usually about isolation and an inability to connect. This piece is a diversion in that it is a celebration of goodness, kindness. The drawing is about forming relationships with others. You see men listening attentively and shaking hands, hugging. Everyone in the drawing is forming bonds and being appreciated for doing so. This was a big break for me in that I never felt comfortable showing the good side of life without showing the bad side next to it. This time, it just felt right to make the entire drawing, all 500 men, happy and connected. "I studied many different approaches to altarpiece painting, especially that of the Italian Renaissance. Many of them were triptychs, and some had up to nine panels. I just made hundreds of sketches of all of my options for making a multipaneled piece and slowly came up with what I thought of as a perfect size and shape. So, even though it originated with an art-historical reference, it ended up being based on my instincts of what makes an engaging shape. I wanted to make sure that the eye ended up in the upper portion of the center panel; I wanted the whole drawing to point to the part where the two trees are embracing. The shape I made up ended up doing exactly that. I will say it was the most time-consuming of anything I have ever made. Towards the end of the process I felt like I was close to both a physical and mental breakdown. It was definitely a love-hate relationship. "The inclusion of the smaller piece, And he shall leave his brethren to love that which is flawed and harmless, was a group decision as well. At first we figured the big ones would be fine on their own, but I am always making these smaller drawings as I make the big ones, so it seemed appropriate to show what the smaller size has to offer. They are almost like excerpted vignettes from the large work and have a way of pinpointing one small act rather than showing the multistoried narrative. It is important to see both approaches." |
|
 Do This in Remembrance of Me by Robert A. Pruitt |
Robert A. Pruitt Robert A. Pruitt is very surprised that his work has garnered the attention that it has, but he's happy about it. "Making art is what allows me to exist in my neighborhood as a historian or something like that." From his studio in Houston's Third Ward, Pruitt creates objects and images that expound on the black condition in America. For the Arthouse exhibition, he developed a new installation titled Do This in Remembrance of Me. "It's a communion table/DJ table. There are a couple of iPod minis back there, so people are invited to go back and mix and play the music that's on it. And the music that's on it is all music by dead rappers, so it's an altarpiece. "I do a lot with music, but this piece came out of a different situation, I guess. The Wu-Tang Clan member Ol' Dirty Bastard, when he passed away, I was really disappointed with some of the media coverage. People just treated him as a joke. I understand he was sort of a ridiculous character in the news and stuff like that, but at least allow the person respect when they die. I felt like there was no respect. And I was thinking about all these rappers that they do that to, and I wanted to have sort of a sufficient memorial for them. The first thing I thought of was the whole idea of communion, partaking of that person, so playing their music as partaking of what they left behind. "The altar is meant to reference Yoruban and Santerian altars, the sort of mix of Catholicism and African religions, but I'm no expert on any of that stuff. I just wanted to give the feel of that. A lot of the work I do makes references to African culture, and I always try to make that connection between African culture and African-American culture, even if it's indirect. I basically just picked stuff that I liked and that felt right, things that had some spiritual or reverential iconography to them, like the lamb. Cotton. Mud from the Mississippi. Wine. Hair. Recently I went to Tanzania, and I bought some of the sculptures there -- the mask, the headdress. "In using the music, I could have done it with just turntables, but I wanted to use technology that was really of the moment, because I feel like black folks have always existed in that in-between space, like holding on to really old beliefs and values and also being forced into the future and using new technology. Like hip-hop came from kids reinventing turntables. Creating new things has always been a part of our culture and also maintaining that link with the past. Or trying to. "Ol' Dirty Bastard was part of the Five Percent Nation. It's an offshoot of the Nation of Islam, and his music and Wu-Tang Clan were about that kind of spirituality, and if you listen to a lot of rap music, religion and spirituality are never very far from it. Black culture in general has always relied very heavily on spirituality, so for me the connection is sort of obvious. It's such a platform on which we exist. I do pieces that are sort of one-liners or jokes, they're pretty easy to decipher. But what's behind those are serious issues. To me, the way his death was treated is for me a serious issue about race and class. But I want people who come in to be able to read it and then go into the other levels of it. I've always stayed away from making work that was too thick or too heady, and I don't mean that it's not intellectual, because I think all the references and all the things that I'm talking about are very smart as issues and interesting. A lot of artists say this, but I want my mother to be able to come in and get the point of this. And if she doesn't get the point that I'm making, to find an opening into it." |
|
 Family Portrait by Ludwig Schwarz |
Ludwig Schwarz "I expected it," says Ludwig Schwarz about making the Texas Prize final four. The deadpan assertion is quickly followed by a joker's laugh, but the 41-year-old East Dallas conceptual artist insists that he "put a lot of work into the application process," making a video and writing music specifically for the jury. "I gave it my best shot, and my best shot was good enough. I'm thrilled." Schwarz's work is a theatrical blend of videos, music, paintings he has made himself and paintings of photographs, collages, and computer drawings that he has sent to a factory of academically trained artists in China. "They basically make paintings, a lot of copied paintings, you know, mostly masterworks from the 20th century, for hotels and whatnot. [I give them] an image and size specifications. The first time, [I got] four paintings just because I wanted to see what they looked like. And one was really great, it was the best gift I've ever received. It was a picture of a computer collage I made of a found photograph from the Fifties, a woman in high school, and it had a Photoshop smear on it, just a play on bad, formless trickery and for my own amusement, and some text and a mark on it, and it came back bang-on perfect. Weird, very weird. "Once I saw them, I decided to do a couple of large-scale paintings, and then I decided that I wanted to do a show in four places simultaneously and make an edition of four. I only found one space to do it, but I wanted them to exist, because I could tell that they're made by hand. It's kind of a play on the photographic process, the print process. They're not really the same. I have an edition here, and they look different. There are minor variations, yet they're all fairly accurate. It's kind of remarkable. When I got the four editions from this, I could barely afford to make small-size [versions], but I decided I'm going to do this project, because now is a good opportunity and I owe it to myself with this Arthouse thing, and why not? "[When I put it up originally] it was accompanied by this rock & roll stuff, a piece of music I wrote to match an odd time signature from the B-side, first song on a Yes album called Relayer, and the song is called "Sound Chaser." The whole piece is based on originality and interpretation. I come from an arts high school, and all my buddies are musicians, a lot of them really brilliant. I just recently discovered the beauty that is Yes, the weirdness of Yes, and I found Alan White to be a fantastic drummer, even though every drummer will say Bill Bruford is better. So I had my friend, who is a great drummer for a band called Spin Doctors and is a brilliant musician, interpret that whole drum section, and I wrote a different piece of music to it. So that became the backdrop to the opening. There was also a variation on the Law and Order theme, and a double loop of John Cage's 4'33" -- nine minutes, six seconds of silence. That's sort of when you go back to the paintings and realize that this is theatre, and then you back into this really loud ... "It's a kinetic space, it's theatre, so it's not like a pull-up-a-chair kind of an activity, unless you're in a museum show and you really enforce that. I always hated that when I go to a museum. I need quick hits and quick fixes and sweet and tender moments. "I love to paint, but painting is dead. Again. And you have to keep reminding yourself that it's dead again. And it's dead again. So I've never exhibited paintings, unless it's a group show. But showing paintings and having another element has always been fun. So the sweet moment would be it's only another object and it happens within real time, and that's the beauty of the activity. It's just another temporary state, and you go through it, and hopefully you have fun." |
|
|
|
||
 |
AMOA's Symposium on Austin Art: How Deep Is Our Love? By Rachel Koper With its "New Art in Austin: 22 To Watch" exhibition wrapping up this month, the Austin Museum of Art organized an epic symposium around this regional talent show. On Saturday, Oct. 15, a capacity crowd listened to 25 visual art professionals discuss Self Portrait: Austin Art in Local, National, and International Contexts. Keynote speaker Eleanor Heartney, art writer and contributing editor for Art in America, was extremely well-spoken, and her knowledge and rigor in addressing contemporary art was inspiring. "If you can't think of one earthly or rational reason for the object to exist, it must be art," she said. Among her other good lines: "What was the artists' intention? Did they richly succeed with their goals? Was it worth doing in the first place?" The day yielded several comments that were bravely spoken in this public forum and controversial enough to be discussed further. In the panel Austin Art in the Rear View Mirror: Reflecting on Our Past, Mark Smith of Flatbed Press said, "One factor that … I would love to see a group like this take on in a more serious way … is helping to create a more thoroughgoing critical dialogue. Now, we have more people who can think and write about art than we ever had, but where are they going to write about it?" He bemoaned the lack of support in area newspapers and noted that while coverage has grown through statewide art journals and online journals, "we still don't have a local set of organs of communication, where a critical dialogue can happen, and I think that's keyed into and would help grow all the things that we need." Later, arts advocate Arturo Palacios offered a homespun take on creating an arts patron: "To build a collector, a collector has to buy one piece, and after that they're good. If you buy one piece or get your friend to buy one piece for a hundred dollars at the next auction or whatever, it will be good for the long term." On the panel The Next Wave: Can We Abandon Geography, internationally renowned artist Teresa Hubbard observed the small percentage of painting in the "New Art in Austin" exhibition and wondered about the professional prospects for those artists working in video, photography, sculpture, installation, and performance-based works: "In the general art market, paintings still dominate in terms of sales revenues at around 90%. So as I look around this exhibition and all the potential it holds, I really have to wonder about the kind of odds for these kinds of artists with this kind of work. … I have to ask, and my question is very insistent for this community and the provincial power structures that exist here: How are you supporting, on a deep, long-term basis, this kind of development, this kind of artist, these kinds of artistic positions? How deep is your love?" To my utter shock and joy, artist, UT professor, and Arts Commission Chair Mel Ziegler said that the city's slogan, "keep Austin weird," was depressing, a comment reiterated later by Randy Jewart of Austin Green Art on the final topic, New Synergies: Looking Toward the Future (a panel from which Vincent Kitch, cultural arts program manager for the city of Austin, was noticeably absent). Overall, it was a positive day of critical dialogue and detailed discussions, with the educational staff of AMOA doing some important and amazingly open-minded community work. Too bad it only happens every three years. |
|
|
|
||
 To Disappear Enhances by Roni Horn |
Suspended Narratives By Rachel Koper Lora Reynolds Gallery has opened its first group show, "Suspended Narratives," a cleverly developed grouping of 18 artists curated by the energetic Maureen Mahony, who sought out artworks that had specifically obscure or hard-to-find meanings. The artists are mostly from New York or the East Coast, although Jason Singleton represents the local scene well with his shockingly personal photos, Lettin You Go. Mahony relies on clipped text or literary references for some of the suspense. David Lieske, Roni Horn, Fiona Banner, Douglas Gordon, Ed Ruscha, and Matthew Brannon actually use lettering in their work. Banner's piece, Times (1800 pt full stop), is simply a Styrofoam sphere sitting on the floor. Its title -- the font -- is a practical or utilitarian counterpoint to its superclean, minimal appearance. Horn's Key and Cue. No. 1209 -- To Disappear Enhances is an aluminum sculpture with vinyl lettering of the first lines of an Emily Dickinson poem. Another literary sculpture is by Sherrie Levine, who's known for referential works and is here inspired simultaneously by Gustave Flaubert's A Simple Soul and conceptual artist Jeff Koons in Loulou, a bronze sculpture of a parrot. By not spoon-feeding viewers the whole story, these artworks hover in the mind and crave categorization. Your mind wants to label all the seen images, and it does so quickly and without your consent. This quirk of perception is particularly well exemplified by Dike Blair's Untitled. A gouache and pencil on paper, it's primarily a minimal drawing of a window with some drops of water on it. The foggy picture plane is interrupted by a small, dark bump at the very bottom. Compositionally, it reminds me of Sterling Allen's interest in "amateur" photo framing devices. I immediately labeled the bump the top of a head. Mahony called it a "possible hedge." It operates like a Rorschach test first, then it lets you choose whether it's abstract or representational and if it's a painting or a drawing. It is deliciously unclear and yet familiar and mundane. Many of these artists fully intend to befuddle viewers and often do so humorously. Christian Marclay's video Telephones is a loop of folks answering "hello" endlessly, conversations that go nowhere. Gregory Crewdson burns down a house just to photograph it, then digitally adds in onlookers and other elements to create an epic David Lynchian streetscape; it's unclear what is happening in the complex photo. Clearly meant as miniature awareness-raiser, Tony Matelli's Constant Consciousness is a series of brass elements painted to look like squished-out cigarette butts. They were installed in a little array on the concrete floor, but at one point they were kicked into the cracks at the edge of the wall in an attempt by an Austin artist to "help clean up." The sculpture was rescued and replaced in its intended setting. This is a great chance to see a strong group of artists who don't exhibit in Austin often. |
|