Capitalism Works For Me! True/False is included in the 2012 deCordova Biennial. The show will be up in Lincoln, MA from Jan 22nd – April 22nd. The sign will be at the museum, and we’ll be taking it to locations around Boston around late March through mid-April – details on those trips to be announced.
The 2012 deCordova Biennial is a survey exhibition focused on emphasizing the quality and variety of work rather than any single or overarching theme. Highlighting artists from across New England, the exhibition displays a diverse range of approaches to media and content. The exhibition is co-curated by deCordova Curator, Dina Deitsch and Independent Curator and former owner/director of the Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston, MA, Abigail Ross Goodman. The 2012 deCordova Biennial features 23 artists and collaboratives and will occupy almost the entirety of the Museum and beyond—reaching into the park, Boston, and nearby communities through several public, off-site projects.
For The 2012 deCordova Biennial Deitsch and Goodman invited Ian Berry, Curator, Tang Museum at Skidmore College; Richard Klein, Exhibitions Director, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum; and Denise Markonish, Curator, Mass MoCA to participate as Advisory Board contributors.
The 2012 deCordova Biennial will be accompanied by an 88-page, color catalogue featuring essays by the curators and a guest essay about public art by Gavin Kroeber.
Billboards and commercial messages dominate the public space like never before. But is a movement taking shape to reverse this trend?
In This Space Available, filmmaker Gwenaëlle Gobé says yes. Influenced by the writing of her father, Marc Gobé (Emotional Branding), this new director brings energy and urgency to stories of people around the world fighting to reclaim their public spaces from visual pollution.
From 240 hours of film, 160 interviews and visits to 11 countries on five continents, This Space Available charts a fascinating variety of struggles against unchecked advertising and suggests that more than aesthetics is at stake. If Jacques Attali once called noise pollution an act of violence, is visual pollution also such an act? Should we also consider, as one Mumbai resident says, “which classes of society can write their messages on the city and which classes of society are marginalized?”
Gobé offers a canny generational analysis of visual pollution, laying blame not just with the advertising juggernaut but also an entire generation of Baby Boomers, whose consumption-based culture has implicated them in the environmental fallout. She argues that it’s her generation, left to do the cleaning up, that is now leading the fight back.But the filmmaker also recognizes the history and politics behind this fight. Turning to such legislation as the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, Gobé shows how the enforcement of this landmark law, designed to regulate outdoor advertising on America’s roadways, has steadily eroded. And today, public space activist Jordan Seiler faces harsh penalties for covering illegal outdoor ads with art, while officials turn a blind eye to illegally erected billboards.
Still, the film strikes a hopeful tone. A standout interview features Gilberto Kassab, the popular mayor of Sao Paulo, who threw a stone into the quiet pond of the billboard industry by successfully banning outdoor media in his city – the eighth largest in the world. The move is not without precedent: Houston’s 1980 billboard ban was also a deliberate tactic to improve its flagging image, economic competitiveness, and quality of life.
In the end, This Space Available challenges audiences to recognize that aesthetics and beauty go hand in hand with responsibility. Gobé asks why brands continue to ally themselves with an industry that cuts down trees, hogs energy, and spends its profits in courts and statehouse lobbies, especially while younger consumers push for improved corporate citizenship? And is everyone equally to blame for enabling the spread of visual pollution, while other humble individuals show that it’s possible to reverse it?
The film navigates these issues without promoting a universal solution. Gobé instead weaves together stories reflecting diverse local responses to an increasingly global condition. This Space Available compels audiences to consider these stories long after the film ends, or at least to remember them each time we speed by a billboard.
Charlie James Gallery has been out on the road showing selected pieces at art fairs across the country. This month there are two to note and there will be some surprises at each.
“Capitalism Works for Me! True/False”
9ft x 20ft x 7ft
Just a few weeks after the Kickstarter campaign ended “Capitalism Works for Me! True/False” is up and touring Cleveland! Its home base will be SPACES and we’ll be taking it out on the down for the dates below.
More on the project will be posted soon. In the meantime, here’s the dates.
Cleveland Tour
Friday, August 26
Downtown Farmer’s Market at Public Square
Saturday, August 27
Open Air at Market Square
Beachland Ballroom
Dread Scott invited me to be a part of this exhibition at the Harlem Stage on Monday to celebrate the publishing of Bob Avakian’s new book. Dread says “times like these demand a joyous celebration of the possibility of a radically different future.” and I agree.
The show includes artwork by: Derrick Adams, Wafaa Bilal, Richard Duardo, Emory Douglas, Skylar Fein, Kyle Goen, Guerrilla Girls BroadBand, Steve Lambert, Wangechi Mutu, Dread Scott, SEN ONE UZN and Hank Willis Thomas.
“These artist span generations, work in different media, employ different conceptual and aesthetic strategies, come from different countries and show everywhere from major museums to street corners. The exhibit includes photography, screen prints, video and painting. Some of the works starkly confront a world scarred by war and oppression. Other works encourage viewers to imagine how it could be radically different.” –Dread Scott
I’ve been working away at 2 new pieces for If These Walls Could Talk a concurrent exhibition at Charlie James Gallery and Marine Art Salon. These are new signs that are lined with aluminum. I’ve wanted to use this technique for a year, but just now was able to get everything together to make it happen. I’m quite proud of how these new signs turned out. It was exhausting work but I can stand back and say “I can’t believe I actually made this.”
I will have photos up as soon as I can. In the meantime, please come (or send your friends) to these openings:
Santa Monica Reception
Saturday Feb 12, 2011 6-9pm <– I am flying out for this one Marine Art Salon, Santa Monica
False Documents and Other Illusions, looks at the various ways in which contemporary artists approach the idea of trompe l’oei, lillusion, or fooling the eye. It runs in conjunction with a traditional 19th-century trompe l’oeil painting show on view in another gallery called John Haberle: Master of Illusion.
Short Term Deviation: A Collaboration with Showpaper
September 23 – October 23, 2010
Opening event: Thursday, September 23, 6 – 10 pm
The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts | 323 West 39th Street 3rd Floor NY NY 10018
(212) 563 5855 | info@efanyc.org
Installations by: Catharine Ahearn, David Berezin, Grayson Cox, Charles Harlan, Steve Lambert, Francisco Marcial, Nadja Verena Marcin, George Pfau, Poster Company, Chris Rice, Borna Sammak.
Special four-part print series of Showpaper featuring new work from: Borden Capalino, Katja Mater, Arthur Ou, and Grant Willing,
Curators: Jie Liang Lin, Exhibition; Jesse Hlebo, Print Series and Zine Library
For up-to-date information on this project, check out the tumblr page.
EFA Project Space announces Short-Term Deviation. Beginning mid-September, this collaboration with the print publication Showpaper, is a month-long exhibition, publication, video and music event. Bringing the spirit of Showpaper—which crossbreeds music, art and D.I.Y. culture—to full incarnation, the gallery space will be transformed into a combination artist-crafted performance space, zine library, and video screening room.
Summer Open House Sunday July 11, Noon – 5PM
Headlands campus | Mess Hall Café Open | FREE Admission
Open House provides a once-in-a-season opportunity to interact with Headlands’ Summer 2010 AIRs, Affiliates, and Graduate Fellows. View works-in-progress in artists’ studios, witness performances and readings, and explore Headlands’ campus situated in a National Park.
Artists in Residence
Katie Faulkner, Dance / Choreography, California
Jeffrey Gibson, Painting, New York
Kevin Haworth, Writing, Ohio
Kühne / Klein, Visual, Switzerland
Steve Lambert, Interdisciplinary, New York
Richard Maloy, Visual, New Zealand
Farid Matuk, Writing, Texas
Mariele Neudecker, Installation, United Kingdom
Brooke Singer, Photography, New York
Allison Smith, Interdisciplinary, California
Ola Ståhl & Kajsa Thelin, Interdisciplinary, Sweden
Hadi Tabatabai, Visual, California
2010 – 2011 Graduate Fellows
Miguel Arzabe, Interdisciplinary, University of California, Berkeley
Johanna Barron, Visual, University of California, Davis
Luke Damiani, Sculpture, San Francisco Art Institute
Chris Fraser, Installation, Mills College
Jamil Hellu, Photography, Stanford University
Josef Jacques, Photography, California College of the Arts
Scott Polach, Photography / Mixed Media, San Francisco Art Institute
Tournesol Award, 2010 – 2011
Jack Leamy, Painting
Affiliate Artists, 2010
Sarah Barsness, Visual
Leo Bersamina, Visual
Colette Campbell-Jones, Visual
Christy Chan, Visual
Tyrone Davies, Visual
Christopher Gray, Visual
Robin Johnston, Visual
Julie Lara Kahn, Visual
Pawel Kruk, Film / Video
Helen Lee, Visual
Tucker Nichols, Visual
Megan Pruiett, Writing
Kristina Quinones, Painter
Sarah Rosenthal, Writing
Kimberly Rowe, Painter
James Sansing, Visual
Joshua Short, Visual
Wayne Smith, Visual / Music
Michele Theberge, Visual
Twenty-two contemporary artists were chosen to participate in Just Art 2010. The Exhibit is curated in four clusters of work, each representing one of four issues central to the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU)’s work in 2010: Censorship, Privacy and Surveillance, Immigration Reform and Reproductive Rights. Each artist created artwork speaking to one of these four issues. While the show is eclectic in media and style to please almost any visitor, each cluster is cohesive; held together by a common medium or theme.
Buy your Just Art 2010 tickets for the June 24 event here before they sell out!
EMMA GRAY: HollywoodMerchmART!
Curator Emma Gray will transform LACE’s storefront space into an artist-created souvenir shop. HollywoodMerchmART! aims to engage, confuse, and delight summer tourists on Hollywood Boulevard with works by both local and international artists. Ranging from postcards and maps to t-shirt and mini-sculptures, the store inventory draws inspiration from social-media and internet trends, as well as local objects found in nearby souvenir shops, thus speaking the language that is Hollywood. Prices will range from $1 to $200!
Participating artists: Emily Joyce, Ashley McPeek, Collective Field, Richard Lidinsky, Brian Bress, Carolina Caycedo, Matthieu Laurette, Anthony James, Max Maslansky, Micol Hebron, PLUS the LA Vajazzlers, Kathryn Garcia, Kirsten Stoltman, John Kilduff, John Knuth, Steve Lambert, John Bucklin, and Zoe Crosher.
In a brave attempt to multitask outside HollywoodMerchmART! John Kilduff of Letspainttv.com will jog on his treadmill on the Walk of Fame, while performing various mundane and creative activities (from eating chicken and blending drinks to painting portraits) for a modest fee. Kilduff will be performing on various occasions throughout the summer.
A text-themed group show at Park Life Gallery, San Francisco
June 11, 2010 through July 18, 2010 Opening Reception Friday, June 11th 2010. 7 – 10 pm.
This exhibition will showcase work by emerging and established artists who deal with semiotics and whose use of type and language is a reoccurring part of their artistic vernacular. The work in this exhibition will both conceptually driven, purely abstract, or may use type expressionistically.
Palling Around with Socialists: a group exhibition
June 5th – 26th, 2010
Opening reception: Saturday, June 5th, 7:00 – 10:00 pm
Cincinnati, OH—Since its inception, U·turn Art Space has sought to facilitate discourse towards imagining questions about the methods and practices of a functional society. In Palling Around with Socialists, a number of artists and the gallery collective have come together to curate an exhibition that questions the nature of an individual as an autonomous being or as a component to an equitable community. Our nation presently finds itself in a culture war, where language is traversing outside the bounds of denoted definitions: words like socialist, fascism, tsar and terror are volleyed around public debates. While different parties and groups fear a loss of personal freedoms, we may be at greater risk of misarticulating the perceived conflicts with which we are faced. Concerns about the nature of private property, authorship and current intersections between economics, ethics and philosophy will be raised through the work of Shinsuke Aso, Gabriel Boyce and Preston Link, Alton Falcone, David Horvitz, Justin Kemp, Steve Kemple, Julia Schwadron and Steve Lambert. The presented works continue to exercise aesthetic sensitivity, demonstrating a belief in form contributing to the advancement of concepts. Critically playful and directly engaging our community with optimistic, activist strategies, U·turn and these artists seek to contribute to a larger dialogue with art that presents unexpected viewpoints and makes note of abstractions that may expand upon or resituate current discussions about social responsibility, power and control.
“The question of social change and art becomes then a problem of discovering the manner in which a new content modifies the conventional manner of expression: the manner in which purely aesthetic changes, occasioned by social changes, modify content to accord with newer forms. But insofar as the formal change may be socially conditioned, we must distinguish between those social changes that operate on the artist directly and those that operate indirectly.” –Meyer Schapiro in his essay “Art and Social Change”
U·turn Art Space is located at 2159 Central Avenue in Brighton.
Gallery is free and open to the public, with street parking in front of the space and on nearby streets. Regular gallery hours are on Saturdays, 12-4 pm, and by appointment.
Exhibition opening: Thursday, June 10
Curators Talk: 5PM | Reception: 6-8PM
Breakfast with the Artists: Friday, June 11, 10AM-12PM Eyebeam 540 W. 21st St (btw 10th and 11th Aves.)
Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, in collaboration with Upgrade! NY and Not An Alternative, is pleased to presentRe:Group: Beyond Models of Consensus, an exhibition which examines models of participation and participation as a model in art and activism.
Re:Group proposes that with participation now a dominant paradigm, structuring social interaction, art, activism, the architecture of the city, and the economy, we are all integrated into participatory structures whether we want to be or not. The exhibition showcases work that subverts existing systems or envisions new alternatives to the ways in which individuals can take part, or choose not to take part, in social and cultural life.
Re:Group opens to the public on Thursday, June 10, 2010, with a curators talk at 5PM and a reception at 6-8PM. The curators talk will be moderated by Beryl Graham of UK-based new media curatorial research institute CRUMB.
Please note: The public opening is preceded by a benefit & private viewing on Tuesday, June 8, 6:30-9:30PM. For ticket information, visit eyebeam.org.
The opening week continues with a “Breakfast with the Artists” reception & talk on Friday, June 11, 10AM-12PM, moderated by Re:Group curators and featuring exhibiting artists Institute for Infinitely Small Things, Christopher Robbins, and Giana González.
Re:Group features work by thirteen artists, designers, hackers, activists, and collectives exploring both the potential and limitations of participation, networked collaboration, and distributed labor. From the “crowdsourced” projects Ten Thousand Cents and White Glove Tracking to the tactical media art of The Yes Men and Ubermorgen, from the urban interventions ofJohn Hawke and The Institute of Infinitely Small Things to the open platforms of Ushahidi and MakerBot – the exhibition represents a diverse range of critically and socially engaged work that rethinks the institutional practices within urban planning, civil engineering, transportation, industrial design and production, relief work, and the news media.
Re:Group will include a full complement of public programs, organized as part of Eyebeam’s annual Summer School program. Eyebeam Summer School offers a lively mix of master classes, free public lectures, hands-on workshops and skillshares, and youth programs. Visit eyebeam.org for a complete schedule of activities.
The exhibition not only presents completed work through gallery installations, but also functions as a platform for new collaborative work. Through workshops, master classes, and discussions led by the exhibiting artists, the processes and methodologies behind the work are opened up to gallery visitors and invited communities, providing an opportunity to extend and reinterpret the artists’ ideas in new and unexpected ways.
Re:Group: Beyond Models of Consensus is curated by Upgrade! NY, the New York node of the international network, Upgrade!, founded in 1999 by media artist Yael Kanarek. The curatorial team is Eyebeam program manager Paul Amitai,writer/activist, Marco Deseriis, Beka Economopoulos and Jason Jones of Not An Alternative, Eyebeam education coordinator Stephanie Pereira, and designer/educator Mushon Zer-Aviv.
Participating Artists:
John Ewing, Christopher Robbins & Carmen Montoya – Ghana Think Tank
Giana González – Hacking Couture
John Hawke – Mandatory Minimum: We Have Moved!
The Institute for Infinitely Small Things – Corporate Commands
Aaron Koblin and Takashi Kawashima -Ten Thousand Cents
Steve Lambert and Packard Jennings – Wish You Were Here: Postcards from our awesome future
MakerBot Industries – MakerBot
Christopher Robbins – Work Projects Administration 2010
Evan Roth and Ben Engebreth – White Glove Tracking
Subject sitting in darkened room is told to watch a dot of light and draw a record of its movement on paper. Dot is actually stationary. But to most normal people it seems to move around, describing a wandering, irregular track. Drawings curated by Marcel van Eeden, with Maria Forde, Johan Gustavsson, Steve Lambert, Charlie Roberts, Rebecca Shapiro, Nedko Solakov, Stephan van den Burg, Porous Walker May 29 – July 17, 2010
Opening Friday, May 28 from 6 – 8 pm
Statement from Barbara Seiler
Subject sitting in a darkened room is told to watch… is the first show in a series of annual drawing shows curated by an artist who works mainly in drawings himself. The series is opened by Marcel van Eeden, a Dutch artist living in Zurich, whose work consists mainly of drawings and who prefers the techniques and simple materials of drawing.
For almost all artists in the show drawing is an important part of their practice. Van Eeden selected them on almost only that criterion. The final decision of asking artists for the show was quite intuitive. Despite this vague starting-point there are strong relations between the works of the artists. It was only after the selection these similarities became clear.
One main character of most works is humor. Fun. But not only to be funny in a meaningless way. ‘I believe that with humor and sarcasm, I am touching on pretty serious matters,’ Nedko Solakov said once. Grown up in Bulgaria when it was still a communist country, Solakov learned to disguise his criticism. It is a strategy that still works.
The 70′s styled drawings of Porous Walker often show hilarious and especially juvenile, but at the same time melancholic sex jokes. Critique, on society or the art world, is also an important part of the work of Steve Lambert. But again, mixed with humor to make things stronger, human and bearable.
Johan Gustavsson likes to stress ugliness and the imperfect to show us a glimpse of the real world, beyond the humorless perfectness that can be seen in magazines or on tv. And with a slight turn, Stephan van den Burg wants us to see those mass media images in an other way. He uses them, but with some changes that put them into a different light.
Humor also plays an important role in the work of the last three artists, but they add another feature to it: a kind of folkloristic naivety. They use the language of ‘outsider artists’, but they are definitely not. Charlie Roberts shows some of his ‘short stories’, small comic like narratives, and Maria Forde made a comic about the role music played in her youth. Her etchings of country artists fit in this story. Rebecca Shapiro, an artist that lives in a house that only exists in the year 1945, uses images from old medical books for her embroideries, intended as a tragicomical collection of oddities.
It is a funny show.
