Art as Authority

by Richard Gleaves

When I first started writing for Art as Authority four years ago, it looked like a serious attempt to bring intelligent and committed criticism to the San Diego art community.

But as is evident to anyone who's read this publication in the past 18 months or so, the editorial ambience has grown progressively more toxic, so I'm out of here.

I plan to continue writing art reviews, but will be sending them to Andrews Arts, if they'll have me.

Life's too short for negative rhetoric.

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Posted to Life with Art | Regards | San Diego

Critic as artist — A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

Critic as bootlick — Happiness is a warm puppy.

Critic as clown — The soul of a politician.

Critic as dinosaur — It's all good.

Critic as gadfly — Known to be extremely noisy during flight.

Critic as god — Lama sabachthani.

Critic as journalist — Human interest story.

Critic as monster — Click me.

Critic as player — The value added preposition.

Critic as scholar — You don't know anything until you write about it.

Critic as stylist — Clemency.

Critic as teacher — Socratics.

Critic as tipster — Check it out!

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Posted to Essays

from the press release

Editorial note: the author is one of the artists.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

from the press release






Defying Expectations: Contemporary Native American Art from the San Diego Region

Oceanside Museum of Art
July 11 – December 12
Reception July 10, 5 pm


Breaking stereotypes of Native American Art, Defying Expectations: Contemporary Native American Art from the San Diego Region examines the work of four contemporary Native American artists. Featured artists include James Luna, Gerald Clarke, Catherine Nelson-Rodriguez, and Raymond Lafferty.

The exhibition opens with a preview reception on Saturday, July 10 from 5:00-7:00 pm. Admission to the reception is $10, and free for OMA members. Following the reception at 7:00 pm will be a performance by James Luna, Native Stories: Basically Factual with Maurice Caldwell and Raymond Lafferty.

Reservations are $25, $20 for OMA members, and $10 for students with ID. Seating is limited, reservations are required and can be made by calling 760.435.3720. Performance is for mature audiences.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

from the press release






Intimate Views: West Coast Drawing

Oceanside Museum of Art
June 12 – August 13
Reception July 17, 2 pm


Drawing, in all its diversity, is an end, not just a means. Intimate Views: West Coast Drawing presents drawings with varied “intimate” subject matter in styles ranging from photorealism, to total abstraction, and expressionism. West Coast Drawing is a collective of artists that work to provide inspiration, artistic support, and career advancement for outstanding artists working in drawing media in the San Diego area. For this exhibition each member has given careful study to the concept of “Intimate Views” and has used drawing to create a work of art reflecting this interpretation.

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Posted to Openings & Events

Aside from being an unqualified success on its own terms, the most important takeaway from There Goes the Neighborhood is its revelation by example of how thoroughly exhausted the conventional forms are for community art events: the geographical containment on one street, the temporal isolation to a few hours, the bands on stage, the booths of art, ad nauseum. All this now looks done for — the sky's the limit.


David Krimmel talks about his urban wheat field during the Free Space walking tour of North Park.







Bombshell performs on the Bus. Sean Conway conducting.

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego | Works in art

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

from the flyer







There Goes the Neighborhood! is a four-day event that not only hopes to shed light on issues of art and its relationship to a specific community, but to also re-examine, through artistic interventions, some aspects of the neighborhood that are sometimes overlooked. There Goes the Neighborhood! has been organized by a group of artists, architects, and interested parties as a way to initiate a conversation about the dynamics of the neighborhood. Our intention, and why you are now reading this, is to include as many people in the discussion as possible. We hope to see to you there!

Please contact us with any questions or to RSVP for one of the workshops!

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"Thomas Kinkade is creating some of his most compelling imagery and the best art of his life, and we expect he will continue to do so for many more years,'' Frank Teruel, chief operating officer for the Kinkade family of companies, said in a prepared statement. "This is a positive step for Pacific Metro and the entire Kinkade group of companies.''

    — Kinkade manufacturing arm files for bankruptcy protection, San Jose Mercury News

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Posted to News

Drawing by Dennis commemorating the response she received upon barely beginning to express even the slightest reservations over Ed Ruscha.

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dwell
Paintings and photographs by Maura Vazakas.


Opening Reception
Thursday, June 3
5-10 pm

Sea Rocket Bistro
3382 30th Street
San Diego, CA

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

The Summer Salon Series

in partnership with Agitprop

Thursdays, May 27 - September 2
5-9 pm

The San Diego Museum of Art

Free after Museum admission.

Starting tonight, and every Thursday evening this summer, celebrate the legacy of Toulouse-Lautrec and his work in the salons of Paris at The Summer Salon Series. Explore the works of living contemporary artists as they perform and present their works inside and outside the Museum, participate in art-making activities, view the Museum's current exhibitions, and indulge in a cocktail at the cash bar.

Tonight's Summer Salon Series features Alida Cervantes, Josh Bellfy, Zac Monday, Eddie Miramontes, and Steve Willard.

For a complete list of featured artists at The Summer Salon Series, please visit our website.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

I have been told that museum visitors in general stand in front of art works for an average of 30 seconds. At MoMA, some have chosen to sit across from Marina for hours; one young woman sat for the entire length of a day’s performance, frustrating many others waiting their turn in line. Others have returned to sit multiple times. By rough estimate, visitors sit for an average of 20 minutes.

    — Arthur Danto on Marina Abramovic

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Posted to Works in art

The Orange County Museum of Art has announced the artists for the 2010 California Biennial:

David Adey, Agitprop, b.a.n.g. lab, Gil Blank, Nate Boyce, Luke Butler, Juan Capistran, Zoe Crosher, Brian Dick, Dru Donovan, Mari Eastman, Carlee Fernandez, Finishing School, Eve Fowler, Rebecca Goldfarb, Katy Grannan, Alexandra Grant, Sherin Guirguis, Drew Heitzler, Violet Hopkins, Alex Israel, Glenna Jennings, Barry MacGregor Johnston, Vishal Jugdeo, Stanya Kahn, Andy Kolar, Jennifer Locke, Los Angeles Urban Rangers, Tom Mueske, Tucker Nichols, Camilo Ontiveros, Nikki Pressley, Andy Ralph, Will Rogan, Paul Schiek, Taravat Talepasand, Wu Tsang, Zlatan Vukosavljevic, Nina Waisman, Flora Wiegmann, Allison Wiese, Lisa Williamson, David Wilson, Patrick Wilson, and John Zurier.

Key:

San Diego artist
San Diego artist also in Here Not There.

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Posted to News | San Diego

Hammer Museum


The Los Angeles art scene in mid-May.

Please enjoy,

Doug Simay

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Posted to Doug Simay's Best Picks

Agitprop is located behind an innocent-looking though slightly seedy convenience store on 2837 University Avenue in San Diego.

Or is it?

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves




Richard Gleaves


The signs have returned to San Diego, signaling that ritual pre-election period where free speech is allowed to tacitly override city regulations prohibiting the unauthorized appropriation of public space with brightly-colored messages... in a word, graffiti.

Not everyone, however, is taking it sitting down, as can be seen in the following excerpt from a Carmel Valley Community Planning Board document. What's most remarkable about this text is how similar the language is ("try to convince them they are better off staying out of this area") to descriptions of civic graffiti abatement efforts.

In 2004 I decided to investigate the sign system for esthetic potential. A day after the election, several signs in my neighborhood were appropriated, altered, and surreptitiously returned to the wild. Surprisingly, they stayed up for several weeks.

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Posted to Graffiti stories | San Diego

from the press release

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

from the press release and artist web sites




Christopher Kardambikis, Heracles and the Mask of Victory




Louis M Schmidt, Untitled (Crowd #1)



RECENT WORKS
by Christopher Kardambikis and Louis M Schmidt

Agitprop
Saturday, May 15, 7-10 pm (or so)

Christopher Kardambikis is currently pursuing his MFA at the University of California, San Diego and exploring an absurd mythology of the future through drawings, paintings, and books.

Louis M Schmidt is currently working on his MFA exhibition, which is a large show entitled There’s No Place Like No Place. It will run from June 8-11 at UCSD’s Visual Arts Facility (Main Gallery), with a closing reception on the evening of June 11.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

from the press release








Free Space is an installation that looks at disparate tactics for appropriating and reclaiming residual spaces in the urban landscape for both public and private use. Residual Spaces are interstices in the city that are abandoned, underutilized, leftover, liminal, and indeterminate. These spaces oscillate between public and private. Residual spaces take the form of alleys, parking lots, building recesses, window ledges, sidewalks, roof tops, fire escapes, blank facades etc.

As a starting point, Free Space focuses locally on the residual spaces of C Street in downtown San Diego. This installation uses video documentation, maps, duct tape and furniture to examine these tactics of appropriation.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves


The brand spanking new SDSU Downtown Gallery and relatively new Sushi Gallery share a number of spatial properties which belie their origins as architectural leftovers:

• Entries best characterized as down the hall and to your left
• Sight lines compromised by the intervention of skyscraper-grade structural columns into otherwise neutral spaces
• Wall loss due to large banks of pre-existing windows

I'm extremely grateful for the developers and arts professionals who put time and resources into realizing these spaces — given the economy and SD's perpetual Jersey-on-the-Pacific status in the visual arts, it's a marvel they're here at all, and I plan to visit early and often.

But now that they're here, the esthetic issue arises of how best to make use of such compromised spaces. And ways do indeed exist, as evidenced by the current shows in both spaces.

The SDSU show is an object lesson in what not to do: namely, attempt a conventional installation of large-scale work as if the space were a typical neutral gallery. The result in this case yields two Baldessari wedged between windows with insufficient whitespace to breathe, and a couple of Zittels contending with columns.

The current Sushi show, on the other hand, shows how to make it work: Leslie Nemour's relatively small-scale paintings have been installed in nonlinear clouds, directly engaging both the pronounced verticality of the Sushi space and its infamous corner column (hereby christened "Grimace Rock", in honor of a similar outcropping at Tourmaline Cove). The result in this case does exactly what is needed in such spaces: namely, reframe the architectural compromises as inflections which can be incorporated into the installation to achieve esthetic effects unavailable in a conventional gallery space.

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Posted to Essays | San Diego

from the press release


AGITPROP reading and performance series

Saturday, May 8, 7pm
AGITPROP


We hope you can join us this Saturday, May 8 at 7pm for a reading and performance by Rozalie Hirs, an interdisciplinary writer and musician from the Netherlands, and San Diego sound artist Cooper Baker.

Rozalie Hirs is a prolific interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates music, text and video. Her work has performed throughout Europe and the United States. Her three books of poetry are Locus (1998), Logos (2002) and Speling (2005, all Querido Publications). She also wrote the libretto for the opera The Cricket Recovers by Richard Ayres. Rozalie Hirs’ recent composition “Roseherte,” (2008) for full orchestra and electro-acoustic sounds was premiered by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and selected for the Toonzetters prize in 2009. Her electro-acoustic composition “Pulsars” (2006, 2007 rev.), commissioned by Café Sonore, VPRO Radio, Netherlands, received the distinction “Recommended work” at the 11th International Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music (IREM) in 2007. A CD, Pulsars, with electroacoustic music and text pieces by Rozalie Hirs will appear in 2010 as a co-production of Attacca records and Muziekcentrum Nederland. You can learn more about Rozalie Hirs’ work online at http://www.rozalie.com/.

Cooper Baker is a sound artist living in San Diego, California. He regularly plays experimental music at venues along the west coast and his artwork has been exhibited in galleries and publications throughout the United States and abroad. In addition to his own creative output, he provides other artists and companies with custom software and electronics as a creative technical consultant.

Originally from Los Angeles, he recently moved to San Diego to attend the University of California San Diego in pursuit of a computer music Ph.D. where he is studying with Miller Puckette, Tom Erbe, and F. Richard Moore. Prior to enrollment at UCSD he was a music faculty member at California Institute of the Arts where he also received his MFA in experimental composition and finished his BFA in music technology. While at CalArts he refined his artistic practice and began incorporating new and experimental electronic media in his artwork and music production, under the guidance of Morton Subotnick, Mark Trayle, and Barry Schrader.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

from the press release

L7: An installation of paintings by Leslie Nemour
May 4 – May 30, 2010

Reception: May 8, 6-9 pm

Sushi Performance & Visual Art
Gallery hours: Wednesday-Friday, 1-6 pm


Sushi presents L7, an installation of oil paintings by San Diego artist Leslie Nemour. Viewers enter Sushi’s intimate gallery to discover an immersive environment of dozens of luminous oil paintings hung from floor to ceiling in idiosyncratic arrangements.

Each painting is a representation of a television still, photographically captured by the artist who then translates the image once more into a painting. The paintings are mined from a wide cross section of popular, once popular, and unpopular television shows. Depicting disjointed movements, blurred boundaries, images between images, and other distortions, the works lend themselves to the paintings’ indecisive brush strokes and restless color.

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Robert Therrien, No Title (Blue Cloud), collection MCA San Diego

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Posted to Essays

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

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Posted to Openings & Events

by Richard Gleaves




RG discussing the show with Uncle Brian in Oscar Prinsen's art. Photo Lori Lipsman.

Part I

Family Matters is a series of multimedia events centered around a key curauteurial idea: the ineluctably social nature of what passes in our culture for art.

The event series — curated by visual artist and teacher Brian Goeltzenleuchter, and presented at Sushi — has included a music concert, film screening, panel discussion, and visual arts exhibition. The time-based events are now past, but the art remains on view at Sushi until April 24.

Why curauteurial? Because the themes and ideas embodied in Family Matters are part autobiography, and part prone to the same sorts of eccentric category slippages as the ones in Institutional Wellbeing, Goeltzenleuchter's 2009 show at the Oceanside Museum of Art.

In essence, for Family Matters Goeltzenleuchter the artist commandeered the role of Goeltzenleuchter the curator and assembled a meta-event with aspects unmistakably similar to Goeltzenleuchter the artist's own work: specifically, the deadpan proffering of a set of propositions purporting to explain the work, which in turn are subverted by a second set of propositions immanent in the work itself. The result is a semantic instability characteristic of the finest satire.

This quality is amplified by Goeltzenleuchter's presentation of self in everyday life: against type he radiates the same sort of earnest Boy Scout vibe as his crypto-archetype Jeff Koons, but minus Koons' signature smarm and plus an order-of-magnitude increase in the conceptual complexity of his work.

Which, in the case of Family Matters, consists wholly of the show's superstructure and support information, given that the primary information — songs sung and artwork shown — is the work of seven seriously good artists, at least four of whom are Goeltzenleuchter's colleagues or former students.

Continue reading "Family Matters" »

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

from the press release


The Garage Presents: Stories

Saturday, April 10, 2010
7:00pm - 9:00pm

Garage Gallery
4141 Alabama Street


In The Garage Presents: Stories, sometimes the words are drawn for us, sometimes we are asked to provide penned words to the image, and inevitably we bring the words we think we already know by heart to the picture that is written.

San Diego artist Richard Reyes exhibits Goldilocks and the Three Bears written in graphite illustrations to depict a story so iconic that the observer brings the requisite words to the images. We believe we know this story, but under Reyes’ guidance the story transforms.

In her Community Comix series, Tallahassee artist DeDe Harter creates public art, displayed in public bathrooms, allowing the observer to interpret her cartoons and asking them to write the dialogue with the pen she provides as a means of outreach and intervention through art. Harter provides a yet-unscripted Community Comix for this exhibit, and invites you to participate.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves







If your name is on this list, and you meet the residency requirements, you will be in Here Not There.

If your name is not on this list, and you have not already shown at MCA, then all bets are off.




Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
In addition to the historical information contained herein, this post contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ substantially from those referred to herein due to a number of factors, including but not limited to risks associated with: acts of grace and/or caprice on the part of MCA curatorial staff; lax enforcement of industry standards on the part of the director; costs incurred by Art as Authority in connection therewith, including potentially damaged relationships with customers and operators who may be impacted by association with the exhibitors or their intermediaries; our dependence on major customers and licensees; our dependence on third-party manufacturers and suppliers; our ability to maintain and improve operational efficiencies and nonprofitability; the development and deployment of the Art as Authority web site; the development and market acceptance of the IntelligentArt® remote sensing technology; foreign currency fluctuations; the Heisenberg uncertainty principle; strategic investments and transactions in social capital that we have or may pursue; as well as the other risks detailed from time to time in our posts, including the report on CCA dated September 24, 2009. Art as Authority undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement or risk factor, whether as a result of new information, future events, force majeure, or otherwise.

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Posted to Life with Art | Samizdat du jour | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Art Reviews | Openings & Events | San Diego

from the NY Times


The insurance industry uses the phrase “mysterious disappearance” to describe a missing item when the owner does not know how it vanished. This is not all that unusual if the missing item is an earring, but a painting by Marc Chagall? That was what happened to one collector who had had a Chagall painting displayed on his yacht.

In fact, it took the owners months to realize the painting was not on the wall. “The original had been replaced by a poor copy,” said Katja Zigerlig, assistant vice president of fine art, wine and jewelry insurance at Chartis Insurance. “The yacht had been to 30 different ports in the past year, changing crews, hosting charity events — there was no way to figure out the culprit.”

                 — Protect Your Art With More Than a Handshake

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Posted to Life with Art

In conjunction with the exhibit "Speed, Trash and Psych" by Zlatan Vukosavljevic Southwestern College Art Gallery presents:
Transformations: A Symposium on Installation Art

Wednesday, April 7, 2010
11:00 AM - 2:00 PM

Southwestern College Art Gallery

Join the Southwestern College Art Gallery for a symposium on installation art. Moderated by MCASD curator Lucia Sanroman, the symposium addresses the following questions:

• What is installation art?
• How has evolved since its Dadaist inception?
• Has it strayed from its subversive roots to become a form of popular cultural entertainment?
• How does the artwork engage the audience: as a passive, active or interactive spectator?

The panel includes the following artists, critics, and arts administrators:

Lucia Sanroman, Associate Curator, MCA, San Diego
Lynn Susholtz, Director, ART Produce Gallery
David White, Director, Agitprop
Kevin Freitas, Art as Authority
Zlatan Vukosavljevic, Artist
Chris Ferreria, Artist
Brian Dick, Artist, Artist
Marisol Rendon, Artist
Tony Allard, Artist
Anna O’Cain, Artist
Allison Weise, Artist
Wendell Kling, Artist

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

Saturday April 10th / 3–8 PM

Visual Arts Facility (VAF)
University of California, San Diego

Free weekend parking on campus.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

As part of Open Studios 2010, the UCSD Visual Arts Department will present its third annual graduate conference, Permanent Transition, featuring Okwui Enwezor as keynote speaker.

Saturday April 10th, 2010
Visual Arts Facility Seminar Room #366
UCSD Campus

Conference schedule

9:30 am Registration and Breakfast

10:00 am Panel 1: Flux
Matthew Rana, California College of the Arts
Eric Morrill, University of California, Irvine

11:15 am Coffee Break

11:30 am Panel 2: Reception
Elyse Mallouk, California College of the Arts
Rochelle LeGrandsawyer, University of California, Los Angeles

1:00 pm Lunch (provided by the conference)

2:00 pm Panel 3: Postcolonial Modernities
Holiday Powers, Cornell University
Courtney Thompson, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Andrew Weiner, University of California, Berkeley

3:45 pm Keynote Address: Okwui Enwezor

5:00 pm Closing and Reception

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

If art were judged by the company it keeps, much of the High Renaissance would go down the drain.

                 — Calvin Tomkins

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Posted to Life with Art

from the Landmark Theatres web site





Art of the Steal

Now playing
La Jolla Village Cinemas


In 1922 Dr. Albert C. Barnes created The Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, five miles outside of Philadelphia. His astounding collection of Post-Impressionist and early Modern art, intended to serve as an educational institution, includes 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos, 16 Modiglianis, and 7 Van Goghs.

Dr. Barnes deliberately built his Foundation away from the city and cultural elite who scorned his collection as "horrible, debased art." But tastes changed, and soon the very people who belittled Barnes wanted access to his collection. When Barnes died in 1951, he left control of his collection to Lincoln University, a small African-American college, with strict instructions that the paintings may never be removed.

More than fifty years later, a powerful group of moneyed interests have gone to court in a rancorous, Machiavellian attempt to take the art—recently valued at more than $25 billion—and move it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Movie web site

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

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Posted to Works in art

by Richard Gleaves


The five most intense hours I've ever spent in a museum were courtesy of Dan Flavin and the city of Chicago.

The sheer amount of work afforded sufficient time for the eye and mind to habituate to immersion in the ambient luminous flux. And it was only at that point that various small-scale epiphenomena began to assert themselves: color-mixing on the inter-bulb fixture surfaces, and best of all, long pinstripes of color on the bulbs themselves, products of reflection from the adjacent paired bulbs.

This was such an exciting discovery I promptly backtracked to the beginning of the show, starting over to re-see everything I'd seen but this time hunting for epiphenomena. My favorite was how the pinstripes engaged in subtle games of rock/paper/scissors, based (it seemed) not so much on the color wheel as on the relative outputs of the various bulb colors.

On seeing Robert Irwin's current show at Quint, I had to conclude he's been noticing the same things… no surprise, given that he taught me to look this way in the first place.

Irwin has made a career from site-responsive work, a practice that has over the years yielded periodic friction when the site in question was the product of another creative (Richard Meier and James Ingo Freed come to mind).

In his Quint show Irwin expands his notion of site to encompass art itself: the work on display can be described as Irwin-adjusted Flavins, with the evident — and entirely achieved — goal of expanding the range of epiphenomena generated by the original work. Here's a partial list of Irwin's adjustments:

• Selective use of lower-intensity bulbs in secondary colors

• Use of non-functioning bulbs which serve wholly as soft reflectors

• Dynamically configurable works (ask the front desk)

• Precision gallery lighting (best known from Irwin's disks)

I could similarly enumerate the resulting epiphenomena, but won't: why deprive people of the right to epiphanies of their own? Go, look. Then look harder.

You just may spot that rara avis of the visual realm: the elusive pinstripe shadow.

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

from the press release





Robert Irwin: Works in Progress
Quint Contemporary Art

Reception Friday, March 19, 6 - 8 pm
Show March 19 - May 1

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

Paper Airplane Festival
San Diego Air & Space Museum

Saturday, March 20, 11 am - 3 pm

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves


The work in Dave Ghilarducci's current show is extremely generative in its ability to assert questions about the artist's intention: whether it is to explore sound, motion, interactivity, or stochastics, any one of which is a topic sufficient in itself to sustain a career-length investigation.





A conversation with Ghilarducci at the opening revealed that for him all these are but means toward an end, which is to make work that is as accessible as possible to as wide an audience as possible. If a modality exists that he can exploit to engage a viewer, he will use it. And as a professionally-trained engineer Ghilarducci has the software and hardware chops to do so, far beyond the typical skill set of a professionally-trained artist (which he is not).

The central organizing metaphor behind Ghilarducci's work is the notion of conversation: in effect he is making machines that engage in abstract conversations. This positions his work somewhere between the wetware of Tino Sehgal and Maja Matarić’s work on social robots.

In response to Ghilarducci's stated goal of total accessibility, I asked if in essence that made his work a kind of Pop art. His response was swift and dismissive: he associates Pop with the work of Warhol and Lichtenstein, and doesn't want to see his own work so pigeon-holed.

This response itself is interesting, as it's consistent with a key property of Ghilarducci's work that makes it his own: namely, an unrelenting masculinity at a level hardly seen in contemporary art since early Matthew Barney. Historically, Pop has (among other things) been characterized as an effete and ironic rejoinder to the marked masculinity of Abstract Expressionism. Whereas Ghilarducci the person is quintessentially masculine: a quality that manifests in his work, which hews tightly to the gym-equipment esthetic of cold steel, industrial finish, and mil-spec joinery.

It's easy to imagine such works as ad hoc rickety (Tim Hawkinson) or bi-gendered (Sandra Doore), but they're not — they're tough as nails. It's this, combined with their propensity to communicate in odd and somewhat random ways, that makes them such a compelling spectacle, and — lest the artist recoil at the title above — not only worthy of their own branch in the tree of Pop, but fully potential of being something very else.

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

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Posted to Life with Art

from the press release





Nepotism and Other Character Flaws
FILM SCREENING & PANEL DISCUSSION
Friday, March 12th, 8 PM


Nepotism and Other Character Flaws is the title and sole requirement for this evening of artist-made films. Four artists from the Family Matters exhibition are charged by curator Brian Goeltzenleuchter to develop a film series comprised of "artists, friends, and/or colleagues to whom you owe something or from whom you want something." Extending the theme of "family matters" and opening the typically derogatory concept of nepotism up for debate, this evening promises lively discussion between audience and panelists.

Panelists include Lisa Hutton, Andrew Kaufman, Lauren Tyler Norby and Donna Stack

Film and video by Justin Beckman, Mike Celona, Andrew Filippone Jr, Kip Fulbeck, Preston Poe, and Chris Todd

This Film Screening is part of the FAMILY MATTERS exhibition series

Sushi GALLERY HOURS: Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, 1 pm to 6 pm

Special Price for our Electronic Friends: Tickets to the March 12th Nepotism and Other Character
Flaws screenings are two-for-one, or $7.50/general public and $5.00/members and students. Email us
with your reservation at info@sushiart.org

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 10:12 PM | Permalink
Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

March 11 – May 14
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 11, 6pm - 9pm
Free and open to the public
 
Woodbury School of Architecture
2212 Main Street
San Diego, Ca 92113
619-235-2900
www.woodbury.edu
www.telegraphart.com

Gallery Hours:  Mon-Fri / 9-5pm

Woodbury School of Architecture continues the 2010 series of exhibitions featuring work by local artist and designers.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 12:19 PM | Permalink
Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

RATTLE AND HUM

An installation by Dave Ghilarducci at ART Produce Gallery

March 13 - April 18
Opening Reception: Saturday March 13, 6-9pm

Rattle and Hum is an interactive, room sized installation. The viewer enters a narrow gallery to find what, at first glance, appears to be a postminimalist sculpture: Two identical steel cages, each containing an imposing rusted steel panel, are placed opposite each other. However, motion sensors, electronics and motors are embedded into the artwork, endowing it with the potential for kinetic and acoustic theatricality. When the viewer enters the installation, motion sensors gage the viewer’s position relative to both of the cages and commands motors to vibrate the rusted steel panels. These vibrations change in intensity and duration based on the movement of the viewer. Yet, as the viewer lingers in the installation, the vibrations begin to change with apparent randomness. As the viewer moves toward a cage, the intensity may wax or wane, and the opposite cage may or may not also do the same. Each time the viewer changes direction, the piece randomizes again. Ultimately, an indeterminate relationship between the viewer and the objects becomes the basis for a time- and motion-based spectacle for other viewers.

ART Produce Gallery
3139 University Ave.
San Diego, CA 92104
619.584.4448
www.artproducegallery.com
http://daveghilarducci.com
http://davewerld.com

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 12:16 PM | Permalink
Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Half-consciously, though, there is the more indigenous dream that the adventure is everything…

    — Kaprow, Happenings in the New York Scene

Last month Agitprop presented Coatlicue mi Amor, a performance by The Border Corps, a group of San Diego artists, musicians, and performers. In its density of information and feeling, Coatlicue was by far the most ambitious and successful event I've witnessed to date at Agitprop, and not by coincidence it's taken me a month to figure out how to write about it.

Billed as a happening, Coatlicue felt more closely positioned between traditional performance art and current trends in interactive theatre. Its hybrid nature made for a wild ride: rather than simply disappearing, the fourth wall seemed to be in constant motion throughout the Agitprop space, flying up, down, or inverting polarity as various scenes unfolded.

Throughout the fourth-wall gymnastics backstage remained overhead and crucial, as Border Corpsmen Armando de la Torre and Anthony Vasquez worked full-time through the performance spinning a dense web of real-time audio and video around performers Endy, Perry Vasquez, and Shondra Dawson.

The work was structured in three parts: the dreams of two vividly REM-state dreamers; a satirical review of recent and ongoing commercial crypto-genocides (the gods are more subtle these days); and a traditional Catholic liturgy recounting in lurid detail the historical genocide of the Island Carib people at the hands of conquistadores.

At this point I'd normally attempt a detailed description of these parts, but doing so would require more pages than could fit on this blog, and would only lead the reader further and further away from the intense theatricality engendered by the performance. Words fail me — you had to be there.

Never overplaying its hand (except perhaps in the topical Haiti references), the entire production displayed subtle signs of being well-thought-out to the n'th degree:

• The audience was materially encouraged (via an admission discount) to attend the performance with sketchbooks and pencils. The presence of sketchers sketching throughout the performance mere feet from the performers seemed to insert them into the story itself, as complicit documenters of historical phenomena.

• The climactic genocide liturgy was delivered directly to the artist-heavy audience, reframing them as members of the Church and so complicit participants in the recounted genocide. And so we are: you and I live where we live and how we live on the bones of a destroyed people. It's an old story, and not an uncommon one, but some old stories deserve regular retelling.

• Post-performance some remarkably good food was made available to the audience for free. Perhaps not by coincidence, most of it seemed to be round.
  

I know of several people who missed this event and regret it. Word is that a repeat performance may occur at Agitprop in the indefinite future — watch for it.

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

Two years at the San Francisco Art Institute (studying painting), one year in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

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Posted to News | Openings & Events

from the announcement


Thursday, March 4th

DAY OF ACTION

9.00 AM – 12.00 PM Breakfast at Sustainability Resource Center (next to PC Theater)

9.30 AM BSU Rally at Chancellor’s Complex

11.00 AM Faculty Press Conference at Cross Cultural Center,Comunidad Rm

11.30 AM Walkout/gather at Gilman Parking Structure

11.45 AM March to Geisel Library

12.00 – 3.00 PM Rally at Silent Tree (Library Walk)

including the Arts Collective, Sam Jung, Jake Blanc, Fnann Keflezighi, Mar Velez, Edwina Welch, Kuttin Kandy, Micah Cardenas, Yen Espiritu, Ivan Evans, K. Wayne Yang, Maria Tillmanns, Carolan Buckmaster, Matias Marin, L. Chase Smith, Krishna Sriram. And MCs: Chevelle Newell and Bryant Pena.

2.30 PM Buses leave for All San Diego Rally from Chancellor’s Complex

March begins at Centro Cultural de la Raza (Park & President’s Way) @ 3.30 PM

March Downtown to Governor’s Office (1350 Front Street)

· first-come-first-serve on buses
· travel to downtown also by Rt. 150 atGilman


In light of the recent events taking place on the UCSD campus, spurred by both the continued privatization of the University as well as the organization of racially derogatory events by some students and non-students, there will be a series of protests happening today on the UCSD campus and throughout San Diego. This is an invitation to join in.

Continue reading "OUR PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS" »

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Add a Comment (0)
Posted to News | Openings & Events | San Diego

from the press release

The San Diego artist and designer will share prototype studies for large sculpture at this one-night event.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 12:43 AM | Permalink
Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

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Posted to News

Saturday, February 27
6pm

Glashaus celebrates its one-year anniversary with art and music.

It houses Device Gallery and the studios of Greg Brotherton, Matt Devine, Michael James Armstrong, Michael Maas, and others.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 01:17 PM | Permalink
Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

OPEN LATE FOR THE FINAL WEEKEND!

11 AM - 7 PM Thursday, February 25
11 AM - 10 PM Saturday, February 27
11 AM - 10 PM Sunday, February 28


Folks who attended the opening said the show looked especially good at night, so here's the opportunity.

Meantime, Donovan herself will be giving a talk in the gallery Saturday afternoon at 2 PM. Note that the museum warns: "Space is extremely limited due to restricted gallery capacity. There are no advance tickets for this event. Entry will be on a first-come, first-served basis."

On that basis I'm skipping the talk, partly out of unwillingness to camp on the doorstep overnight, and mostly due to putting in a full day this Saturday at the sdspace4art community build.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Tijuana   —>  San Diego  —>  Los Angeles   —>  Madrid

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Posted to News

by Richard Gleaves







Anna Zappoli's show at the San DIego Art Institute ends this weekend. The show is remarkable in several dimensions:

• After a decade of cycling her paint between poles of superflat and superexpressive, the two come together here, perfectly integrated, and often on the same canvas. It no longer feels like two styles: just one, utterly, unique, signature. She owns it — it's hers.

• Color-wise the work is more cohesive than I remember from shows past: various flavors of black and red.

• The color cohesion is force-multiplied by the hanging of several works as de facto diptychs, a move that concentrates the show spatially while generating some striking contrasts not normally associated with the diptych format.
  

At this point I need to mention that the greatness of this show is due in no small part to an unadvertised collaboration: for this show Anna turned her work over to SDAI President & CEO Tim Field, who was solely responsible for the exhibition design (including those diptych pairings). The design is frighteningly perfect — it more than qualifies as an installation in and of itself.

One of the things I love about the art world is how crystalline talents can reside in eccentric and even ignoble containers. (Guy, take a bow.) In such cases I dig the art while giving its maker a moderate berth. And goodness knows I've had my run-in's with Tim: the very idea of an SDAI CEO makes me LOL.

But here's the thing: once upon a time I myself was a member of SDAI (Hi, my name is Richard and I'm…). That's where I got to know her work and Anna. And Tim was new on the scene back then, and the guy was there as an artist. And evidently still is: no doubt assisted by a Jack O'Brien-esque run of putting together a gazillion shows at SDAI, the guy has developed a major eye for designing clean-looking shows. Or in Anna's case, great ones.

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 01:34 PM | Permalink
Posted to Openings & Events

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Posted to Essays | Video

Paradoxes in Video


Saturday, February 6 @ 6 pm

Garage Gallery
4141 Alabama Street
San Diego, CA


Last September Garage posted an open call on the net requesting submissions for a video exhibition investigating "paradoxes within performance/performative actions that find their way into video/editing."

This Saturday Garage presents the work selected.

The screening is at 6 pm. Seating is limited — if you have a chair to bring, Larry would appreciate it.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

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Posted to Video

from the press release

How Many Billboards? Art In Stead


February 5 - March 12, 2010

Reception: Saturday, February 27, 1-5 pm

www.howmanybillboards.org


The MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House is pleased to announce its most ambitious project to date: How Many Billboards? Art In Stead. This large-scale urban exhibition debuts 21 newly commissioned art works for billboards in Los Angeles.

Participating artists:
Kenneth Anger / Michael Asher / Jennifer Bornstein / Eileen Cowin / Christina Fernandez / Ken Gonzales-Day / Renée Green / Kira Lynn Harris / John Knight / David Lamelas / Brandon Lattu / Daniel Joseph Martinez / Kori Newkirk / Yvonne Rainer / Martha Rosler with Josh Neufeld / Allen Ruppersberg / Allan Sekula / Susan Silton / Kerry Tribe / James Welling / lauren woods

Each artist has produced a work especially for this exhibition that responds to the medium of the billboard and interprets its role in the urban landscape. How Many Billboards? investigates art as an idea as well as art as a media for critical intervention.

Continue reading "How Many Billboards?" »

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Add a Comment (1)
Posted to Openings & Events

by Richard Gleaves







In the context of reviewing the current show at MOCA, ArtScene writer Mario Cutajar sidehands some acute insights for the benefit of artists, critics, and galleristas who find themselves unhappy with their current place in the world:

This imperative to ceaselessly produce stuff and fill ... large empty spaces ... is for me one of the most oppressive features of contemporary art…

I cannot help but think that this horror [of empty spaces] that drives artists to incessant production is the apprehension that the time of art is over. Duchamp announced as much with his ready-mades but we’ve pretended that those were just provocations. We’ve read Walter Benjamin on the death of the aura and technology’s reduction of art to distraction.

But the aura of the artwork, which was its connection to the sacred, couldn’t be allowed to evaporate because, strangely enough, art cannot be commodified without some remnant of the sacred remaining associated with it. The paradox is that we need art to have something like a “soul” in order to trade it at a price above what mere goods fetch.

The last purchase that art had on something resembling spirituality was through the much-abused notion of criticality. That too is now used up thanks to the postmodernist conflation of critique and complicity.

And despite attempts to reinvent the idea of community through subcultural affiliation, community would seem to require a foundation that exceeds the atomizing power of capital, which ceaselessly uproots and disperses people...

The larger question of what art’s purpose might be beyond amusing jaded rich people or contributing a veneer of [civic] sophistication ... will remain.

This should not be seen as a manifesto to commit identity suicide and take up volleyball, but rather as a call to think and think hard about all aspects of your practice, and then strive to ensure that none are based on the boatload of received ideas that pass these days for art.

One possible art centers on the idea of user experience — a kind of interactive participatory static theatre — which can be pursued in venues as large as the Jacobs building, or as small as a zine. In such a paradigm the traditional art object assumes the role of recyclable prop. But this is only one of many possible approaches: the important thing is to pursue a practice that actually fits with what's happening today in your life, in your society, on your planet.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Add a Comment (3)
Posted to Essays

by Richard Gleaves

1. Emerging artist definition: artist [sic] who are emerging with new, fresh ideas. This is not about the age of the artists or the exposure they have had, but what art they are creating now and in the past three to five years.

San Diego Visual Arts Network



2. "That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

Project Gutenberg

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Posted to Life with Art | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Today MOCA announced it would name gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch as its new museum director.

Other candidates for the position were believed to include Sotheby’s auctioneer Tobias Meyer and art fair impresario Samuel Keller.


Los Angeles Museum Chooses Deitch

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Posted to Life with Art | News

from the press release







PLASTIC FANTASTIC: Allison Renshaw

Oceanside Museum of Art
January 31 – June 20, 2010

Reception January 30, 5-7pm

OMA presents the first West Coast solo museum exhibition for San Diego artist Allison Renshaw.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Add a Comment (0)
Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves





The future of art publications? There's an app for that.

Specifically, one that integrates the following information in a single pocketable interface:

• Gallery map
• Directions
• Exhibition images
• Artist statements
• Event schedule
• Art reviews
• Discussion forums

Currently such apps are available only on the iPhone, which remains cost-prohibitive for many people. This, however, will change as smartphones with app stores quickly become the norm for all mobile phones and service plans.

At that point, once the costs have come down, this sort of app will be the art publication, on the strength of its ability to provide everything one needs to go out and look at art.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Add a Comment (1)
Posted to Life with Art | News

by Richard Gleaves

Fringe Theories (at Agitprop through January 9) is billed as "the work of five artists and scholars that thrive outside of traditional and accepted rules and boundaries."

What's most striking about the show as a whole is not its fringiness but rather an odd formal emphasis on oldness: old newsprint, old photos, old paintings, old sculpture. The work itself is recent, but — with the exception of Keith Engeron's modest deployment of corporate logos and Tony Allard's use of layered space — otherwise avoids the look and feel of contemporary art.

It's interesting to contemplate just why this is.

My first thought was that the curator (Katherine Sweetman) was asserting the notion of fringe theories as a historical phenomenon: a plausible hypothesis given how the 1960's engendered greater cultural weirdness (spoon bending, pyramid power, Kirlian auras) than we experience today, while in times pre-60's the absence of science-based consumer protection laws enabled entire socioeconomic classes of theory-pitching charlatans and mountebanks (Pirelli in Sweeney Todd).

A brief conversation with the curator dispelled this hypothesis: it turns out she wasn't aware of the thread of antiquity running through the show. But the thread was still there, and in need of explanation.

My second thought fit better: namely, that the curator was subconsciously mapping the notion of "fringe" to outsider art — though the artists themselves were not necessarily "outsider" — and that in doing so the formal baggage of outsider art was serving as a de facto constraint on the work selected for the show. Hence the virtual lack of contemporaneity, and the focus on traditional forms.

And what, pray tell, is the formal baggage of outsider art? Simple: the esthetic engine driving outsider art is the pairing of traditional form with eccentric content. The work must be recognizable as drawing or painting or sculpture. Only savvy professionals with insider credentials can adopt forms such as digging holes in the floor or cooking in the gallery — if an institutionalized schizophrenic were to try this, they'd get solitary, not a retrospective.

A few additional thoughts:

• The show copy implies that Noah Doely's ghost-story photographs overlay a contemporary sensibility on traditional techniques. In fact his images are straightforward (and beautifully executed) derivations from the historical genre of occult photography.

• Allard's newspaper installation was the sole work in the show to offer extended visual pleasure: wallowing in the information overload made me think of how often pigs look happy.

• Agitprop's gnarly upstairs corridor space finally met its match in the muscle-bound sculpture of DJ Brelje and Erich Winzer. I'm nearly certain that putting the very same objects in a white-cube space would gag me by their overstatement. Yet I'm equally certain that any white-cube art hung in this rustic environment would die a thousand deaths. Here the fit's perfect — Fringe Theories is worth seeing solely for this rare conjunction.
  

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 02:40 AM | Permalink | Add a Comment (2)
Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

The United States Postal Service caused an outcry last month when it decided to stop delivering letters addressed to “Santa Claus, North Pole.” It quickly reversed itself after members of Congress intervened. “We never wanted to spoil people’s Christmas,” an agency spokesman said.

Link

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves

Pronunciation: \ˌkän-təm-ˈplā-shən, -ˌtem-\
Function: noun
Date: 13th century

1 : concentration on spiritual things as a form of private devotion
2 : an act of considering with attention
3 : the act of regarding steadily

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Add a Comment (0)
Posted to Samizdat du jour

from the "press release"

SantaDiegoCon

Saturday December 19, 2009
12:00 pm - 12:00 am
Balboa Park fountain (starting location)

San Diego's SantaCon will be on Saturday, Dec 19th, beginning at high noon at the fountain in Balboa Park. We will start out with some reindeer games in the park, then proceed to raise merry hell throughout Hillcrest, North Park, City Heights... wherever Christmas cheer and excessive drinking drive us. Bring cash for cabs, buses, and booze. Bring bullhorns, presents, and coal. Bring your sweet, unsuspecting Santa friends. Bring Santa a shot. Be there.

www.fortheempire.info/santa.html

SPREAD THE WORD!


Editor's note: Art as Authority neither condones nor is liable for the effects of chemically-induced consciousness. The event should, however, make for excellent viewing.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 01:03 PM | Permalink
Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

YTPMV is a subgenre of YouTube Poop which uses the traditional YTP source material as a basis for composing original music.

Unlike the makers of classic music videos, YTPMV artists compose all aspects of their work: sound and image. They also take great pains to distinguish their work from the more popular AMV genre, which overlays pop songs with anime imagery.

YTPMV music itself hews closely to pop forms, but it's user-generated and (in the spirit of YouTube Poop) splats vast amounts of energy.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Add a Comment (1)
Posted to Essays | Works in art

by Richard Gleaves








The Fab Lab

4305 University Ave (approx. 4 lights east of I-15)
Suite 130 (on side of building on 43rd)
619.209.7440

www.thefablab.org


The Fab Lab is a non-profit community laboratory where members can use advanced digital design and fabrication tools to make almost anything. The Fab Lab in San Diego is one of thirty in the Global Fab Lab Network, and the only one on the West Coast.

Fab Lab is intended to serve people who have ideas but lack the tools necessary to realize them. It is a place where advanced technology is accessible, and where anyone can invent and execute an original design.

The Fab Lab offers access to and classes for the following tools:

• Laser cutter/etching
• CNC machine for large computer cutting
• 3D modeler
• Vinyl plotter
• Electronics building station
• Computer work stations

For information on December classes contact Katherine.roe@gmail.com

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Add a Comment (0)
Posted to News | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Last Friday I went to the Body Narratives opening at NTC Promenade in Point Loma, not so much for the art but to see how the show was put together by the five students in Mesa College's Museum Studies program who made it happen:

• Maria Bolivar
• Megan Daly
• James Johnson
• Kevin Kao
• Samantha Nessel

I spoke with Johnson and Nessel to get a sense of the thought processes that went into the exhibition design, and came away impressed. The thinking was solid, and the design reflected it: fresh use of diagonals in siting the room dividers, a central sweet spot for viewing two of the largest works, and partial visibility of additional works from the sweet spot to lead viewers into the rest of the show.

Johnson explained that exhibition design is one of the topics covered in Museum Studies, and noted that the program brings in experts (such as Michael Fields, lead exhibit designer for the San Diego Natural History Museum) to speak on various topics.

For me the interesting thing about the Museum Studies program is what its name doesn't convey: that the students are being trained not just as potential museum staff, but also as cultural entrepreneurs with all the skills necessary to make successful art shows from scratch.

They're scouting locations, finding artists, doing press releases, designing show cards, contacting newspapers, and signing contracts to secure the exhibition spaces. And they're getting this experience not from an MFA program but from a three-class certificate program at a regional community college. We can only benefit from having such people and programs around.

Program director Alessandra Moctezuma explained that in the past few years the program has moved the student-produced shows out of the Mesa College art gallery and into the community (such as the NTC Promenade space). This makes for a better learning experience for the students, not to mention more art shows around San Diego.

The program's final class places students as interns in local museums or galleries. Johnson is interested in the Mingei, while Nessel is hoping to work with Quint. I wish them the best, and look forward to seeing more shows from them in the future.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Add a Comment (2)
Posted to News | Regards | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves








International art blog ArtAsAuthority has just released a new device and web service for helping artists track their artwork. Called IntelligentArt, the device is embedded into the artwork itself, and keeps tabs on the work's temperature, location, and other vital signs — including who's looking at the work, what they're saying about it, or whether it's being stored in a closet.

AAA is currently running a one-year trial with 500 visual artists, tracking the status of their paintings, sculptures — and even performances.

We spoke with AAA innovation czar Kevin Freitas about IntelligentArt, and how AAA is tapping into the emerging trend called The Internet of Things. This is where everyday objects become connected to the Internet through sensors and wireless data links. In the case of AAA's IntelligentArt, it is powered by multiple sensors including light, motion, temperature, and remote videocam.

AAA's Freitas described the IntelligentArt device as a "quad-band world phone with data capabilities." Along with the device, IntelligentArt includes a web application which enables artists to actively track the status of their oeuvre from the convenience of their personal computer. Users can set up triggers, alerts, and notices — for example using GPS sensors to alert them when one of their works changes locations.

IntelligentArt users pay a single monthly fee of $15 for the browser-based web service and an unlimited number of tracking devices. Freitas noted that AAA worked with the American Association of Museums to get permission to use the product in their museums — the only such device to have permission from the AAM, he told us. AAA assembles the components for IntelligentArt from a collection of manufacturing partners, using AAA's design specifications.


Real-Time Decisions Based on Sensor Data

Freitas said IntelligentArt will enable artists to make real-time decisions much more easily. For example, if the webcam sensor data indicates that a collector (or one of their associates) is disparaging an artwork, the product enables users to transmit live audio responses through the device's embedded speaker system. Alternatively, users have the option of triggering the artwork's remote self-destruct mechanism.

The initial trial period targets museum-grade artists (for example, Roman DeSalvo), where things like security and knowing the vital signs of an artwork are very important. Also, Freitas highlighted that such artists can collaborate with their dealers on monitoring the sensor data, to ensure proper siting and maintenance of important work.

The trial with professional artists is designed to help them make the "last 20%" of the art lifecycle more efficient. After about a year of this trial, AAA will then launch the product globally as a generally available platform. Freitas expects it will be used by any artist wrestling with personal vision, investment management, control issues, and a buyer's market for art.

Freitas told us that he expects this type of sensor product to "mainstream over time as collectors become used to long-term interaction with artists through their artwork."

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Posted to News

by Richard Gleaves








Deth P. Sun is among the handful of Giant Robot artists (Souther Salazar, Saelee Oh, Ray Fong) who can make GR2 the sole reason for an LA art run.

Sun works in the school of illustration-flavored painting that is the house style of Giant Robot. What sets him apart from the cartoon crew is a melancholy poetry that's hard to put one's finger on, but utterly compelling to look at.

Sun lives in the Bay Area but grew up in San Diego, taking art classes at Patrick Henry High School from the gifted artist and teacher Tina Brown.

Normally I loathe articles that link national artists to local roots (Baldessari! Zittel! Go Padres!). But in this case it's useful for understanding the work, since Sun himself likes to throw in the occasional hometown callout, wherever home might be.

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Posted to Art Reviews

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Posted to Life with Art | News

by Richard Gleaves

Rothko's a must-see, but like Martin or Turrell you've got to show up in person — photos steal their soul.

Which brings us to American Artists from the Russian Empire — currently showing at the San Diego Museum of Art — and its promise of a Rothko experience to anyone who shows up.

The promise is false: the Rothkos at SDMA are entombed in glass which throws up a shiny reflective surface in front of the picture plane, obscuring the essential Rothko magic (which normally happens 1 to 100 feet behind the picture plane, virtually speaking).

So what to do? Go to SDMA for the Tchelitchews, two alarming exceptions in an otherwise staid show of period art.

Then art run to LA to see Collection: MOCA'S First Thirty Years — not only does it have more and better Rothkos, but they're crucially in the buff.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Add a Comment (1)
Posted to Essays | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Tara Donovan at MCASD is a perfect cognitive storm of work, site, and placement.

Of the many fascinating aspects of Donovan's work, perhaps most intriguing is the oblique relation between how it's promoted as visit-worthy, and how it works as art.

The hook is the novelty of a mass accumulation of everyday objects, while the actual esthetic engine is the work's deft exploitation of a bi-level figure/ground inversion:

• At the micro level the action centers on the play of light between or through the objects, rather than on the objects themselves.
  
• At the macro level the focus on large-scale bioform enables the work to engage (and thus appropriate) the rectilinearity of the containing museum spaces.
  

These levels are linked by the work's crucial dependency on formal properties of surface:

• Maximal scale/mass ratio (structural)
  
• Maximal permeability of light (visual)
  

Wallpaper, carpet ... but unlike any ever seen.

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

Rachel Rosenthal turns 83 today.

Or 4.5 billion.

Depending.

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Posted to News

from the press release

ART AFTER DARK: THE ZODIAC LOUNGE
Friday, November 20, 2009

What is your astrological sign? Find out at The Zodiac Lounge, Oceanside Museum of Art’s Art After Dark on Friday, November 20th from 7:00-10:00 p.m. Have your astrology, numerology and tarot cards read by Five Muses Entertainment or have Natasha Papousek of Crescent Moon Designs adorn you with a henna body art tattoo. Chris Brotzman will be spinning funky disco tribal Latin afro beats while video performance artist Megan Pogoda creates live video to his music on the façade of the museum. Inspired by all the creative energy you can make three dimensional figures in the sculpture center or hang out in the Kool lounge and experience Dave Ghilarducci’s Interactive Proverb Generator and site specific light and sound sculpture entitled "Pinholes in the Curtain of Night" that uses Morse code to communicate the twelve signs of the zodiac. Four art exhibitions will be on view, An American Dream: Gregg Jabs, Industrial Alchemy: John Zabrucky, San Diego NOW: Eight UCSD Visual Artists, and the Art of Les Perhacs. Guests will also have the chance to win Tim McCormick’s original oil painting The Stars with the opportunity drawing.

San Diego NOW: Eight UCSD Visual Artists

San Diego NOW: Eight UCSD Visual Artists presents artists from the MFA program at University of California, San Diego. The show was curated by Danielle Susalla, and features work by James Enos, Jesse Mockrin, Zac Monday, Omar Pimienta, Lesha Maria Rodriguez, Tim Schwartz, Julia Westerbeke, and Suzanne Wright.

A preview reception will be held on Friday, November 20th from 7 to 10 PM. Admission is $15 ($10 for OMA members) and includes, art, music, multimedia entertainment, art activities, food from Harney Sushi and Santino’s pizza, beer from Lost Abbey Brewery, and wine tasting from PRP Wine International.

Ticketless reservations are available by calling OMA at 760.435.3720. Or pay at the door the night of the event. Guests must be 21 or older.

An artists' forum moderated by UCSD professor Ernest Silva will be held on Thursday, December 3, from 7 to 9 PM. Meet the artists and learn about their methodologies, techniques, and the UCSD MFA program. The forum admission is $5 (free for OMA members).

OMA is located at 704 Pier View Way in downtown Oceanside, within walking distance of the Oceanside Transit Center and its Amtrak, Sprinter, and NCTD Coaster stops. Oceanside, California is half an hour north of San Diego.

Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 AM to 4 PM and Sunday 1 to 4 PM. General admission is $8, seniors 65 and over $5, students and active military free. For information on current exhibitions or other museum programs call 760-435-3720 or visit www.oma-online.org.

Continue reading "San Diego NOW & Art After Dark: The Zodiac Lounge" »

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

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Posted to News | Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Graffiti stories | News | San Diego

Monday, October 19, 7 p.m.
James S. Copley Auditorium
San Diego Museum of Art

$12 members/$15 nonmembers/$10 students

Artist and filmmaker Neil Kendricks leads a lecture/screening of three films by the hugely influential experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage.

So why pay and go when you can sit and click?

Because abstract Brakhage is less image than sound and light: and the sound's the clatter of celluloid, threading the sprockets on a hot machine.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego | Video

by Richard Gleaves

Nina Paley's feature-length animation Sita Sings the Blues is now part of free culture on the net.

It's available (in 10 parts) on YouTube, but life's too short to waste pure beauty on low res.

Instead, go to the Sita web site, download a high-res copy, and watch it. You'll be glad you did.

Then send the artist money as you see fit — it's easy.

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves






Brain-imaging studies of people evaluating anomalies, or working out unsettling dilemmas, show that activity in an area called the anterior cingulate cortex spikes significantly. The more activation is recorded, the greater the motivation or ability to seek and correct errors in the real world, a recent study suggests.

“The idea that we may be able to increase that motivation,” said Dr. Inzlicht, a co-author, “is very much worth investigating.”


How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect

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Posted to News

by Richard Gleaves

De Salvo's tree-branch networks at Quint serve as pods to his Caltrans mothership: a translation (and refinement) of public-art-scale technology down to the level of portable object.

The pods work beautifully, not just formally but as markers of de Salvo's progress in contemplating the role of mechanism in the world, a train of thought which seems to have evolved of late away from an affinity for per se mechanical ingenuity and towards an appreciation of general systems thinking... something we all need to do these days.

And how do they work formally? Let me count the ways:

• They lie flat on the wall, a move that — along with the studied avoidance of conventional branching structure — precludes a simplistic abstract-diorama reading.
• But not too flat: enough warpage exists to make the shadowplay pop, while suggesting (if not actually implying) that the works themselves are still settling in structurally.
• The small rectilinear bursts of the wood spline joints neatly punctuate the larger biomorphic forms they're embedded in (yielding a beautiful conceptual metaphor).
• The material semantics of the planed and finished wood radiates furniture yet is perceptually detached from furniture's archetypal corners and straight edges. The effect is pure Nakashima: a deft borrow.
• The original tree bark lines the finished edges of each branch, activating them like the neon lips of a Chihuly vase. Less borrow than extremely elegant design freebie.

This is a great show. Let's hope some curator pairs it with Ann Mudge's wireworks. One can dream.

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves








Until recently my exposure to anime had consisted primarily of a satisfying addiction to anything Miyazaki. But then I learned of Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime series written and directed by Hideaki Anno which spans 11 hours of television episodes and a concluding movie.

If Miyazaki's work embodies classical art cinema à la Kurosawa, NGE comes off as a kind of mad dog masterpiece which strains so hard at its genre seams that it finally bursts into something entirely one of a kind. (Think Wagner making Saturday morning cartoons.)

NGE themes include adolescent fantasy, rampant Christian symbolism, sex, opera, penguins, budget battles, gods, angels, robots, Nevada, domestic chores, death battles, clones, computers, mental illness, the United Nations, hubris, teen angst, global warming, bad parenting, mushroom clouds, beer, Antarctica, spies, aliens, poetry, human extinction, crotch shots, Tokyos, origin myths, psychoanalysis, the Dead Sea scrolls, Beethoven, global conspiracies, existentialism, homosexuality, watermelons, and more, all set in a plot line as elliptical and labyrinthine as any novel you've ever tackled, and laced throughout with a pervasive underlying sadness.

Anno, who clearly knows his art house, created such a compelling pop series that when in the final episodes he abruptly took the story in a 720-degree left turn, the resulting viewer uproar included not just blistering criticism, but death threats. Hence the concluding movie, End of Evangelion, which attempts to tie up various loose ends.

If you're willing to invest 12 hours in close-attention viewing — a task made considerably easier by the oft-beautiful imagery (Anno launched his career working for Miyazaki) — you'll come out with a pretty good handle on how far anime can be pushed as an art form. The general consensus on the net is polarized between WTF and "the most moving story I've ever experienced", which given the work is only to be expected.

The TV series and movie are available on Netflix, and can also be found (in 10-minute chunks) on YouTube.

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Posted to Works in art

by Richard Gleaves

Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate is arguably the most successful public sculpture in the United States today. It draws the same number of annual visitors as the Statue of Liberty and Vietnam Veterans Memorial, yet derives its appeal solely through aesthetic pleasure not historical content. In short, it's a people magnet.

Accounts of the work uniformly cite its mirrored surface as the active ingredient — which it is — but then settle for comparisons with funhouse mirrors or the joy of narcissism.

While it's true that the work's close-range perceptual narrative initially engages the viewer in mapping themselves in a nonstandard visual field, that convex surface does a curious and wonderful thing: it visually situates each viewer not only in the context of the transformed landscape, but also — and more crucially — in the context of all the fellow viewers of the sculpture.

The movement of those others animates the surface in a way that could never be achieved by a single viewer... and animation (in its core cinematic sense) is the foundational property of our popular art.

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Posted to Essays

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

After the debate over the 2009 San Diego Art Prize about what exactly is an emerging artist, it was fascinating to come across the very same debate taking place in a parallel universe.

Here are the relevant quotes:

After awarding Tony Kushner a record-breaking $200,000 for distinguished playwriting last fall, the Steinberg Trust suddenly realized there was a problem with its plan to present its other newly created award to two emerging playwrights this year. “What we immediately discovered was that we all described ‘emerging’ differently,” said Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public Theater in New York and a member of the selection committee. Some of his colleagues thought the prize, created by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, was geared towards writers just a year out of school, while others considered “emerging” to refer to a playwright in mid-career.

Defining “emerging playwright” turned out to be like grasping a handful of Jello. Committee members settled on the idea that a writer was still emerging five years after a first production, only to soon note that someone could still be emerging 10 years out, said Ms. [Polly K.] Carl.

Mr. Eustis joined Ms. Carl’s end of the spectrum. Though the final selections are “not identical to who I would have picked,” Mr. Eustis said, he too understands the rough financial circumstances that face even accomplished playwrights. “It wasn’t really bitter, but every one of us is acutely conscious of how hard a life these writers have,” he said. “We didn’t feel like we could give a prize on the basis of need, but what would burst out consistently was, ‘Do you know what this money could mean?’”

This year all three winners have been produced by at least one member of the advisory committee. To Mr. Eustis, such connections are inevitable, since they are in the business of producing promising playwrights. As he said, quoting another producer, “No conflict, no interest.”

Trust Tussles Over Playwright Award Eligibility

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Posted to News | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Harry Bertoia is best known for his Diamond Chair, one of the icons of Mid-Century modern design.

But Bertoia was also a sculptor, and beginning in the early 1960's he focused on sound sculpture to the extent that his sculpture evolved into instruments for making music, qualifying Bertoia as the plastic-arts obverse of Harry Partch (an American composer who in pursuit of his own music invented instruments so eccentric as to qualify as sculpture).

In 1970 Bertoia released a set of LPs containing original music he created playing his sculptures. The LPs — collectively titled Sonambient — anticipate by almost a decade both the sound and title of Brian Eno's highly-influential Ambient albums.

One of Bertoia's sound sculptures can be found in Chicago at the north end of Millennium Park, on the corner of East Randolph Street and North Columbus Drive.

The work in question exhibits far more sensitivity to site than the money-shot sculpture Chicago's famous for.

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Posted to Essays

September 12, 2009 – October 11th 2009

ART Produce Gallery
3139 University Ave.
San Diego CA. 92104

Agitprop moves into a new phase of agitation and propaganda by illustrating some of the work it has done in the past and asking you to participate in future projects by becoming part of a “brain trust”. This installation addresses issues of social economics, art markets, commodities trading, and community engagement.

In “Brain Trust”, Agitprop turns corporate and art world institutional conventions on their head as a method of generating support for projects based on connectivity and community at the scale of the neighborhood. “Brain Trust” asks people to become “investors” in Agitprop. Agitprop is a space in North Park which attempts to blur the lines between individual art practice, the Studio, the Gallery and the Neighborhood.

The Agitprop “Brain Trust” is established through “Brain Blocks”, an edition of 1000 sculptures which when purchased serve as “stock” in Agitprop. “Brain Blocks” simultaneously reference the art market, think tanks, commodities trading, and the “Cube” as an art historical sculptural form. Each sculpture consists of a 4¼ inch concrete cube with a surface pattern resembling the human brain.

Sculptural “shareholders” will become facilitators of Agitprop’s upcoming projects and will be asked in the future for feedback on these same projects. Past projects include the Agitprop space itself, literature readings, Art Tap Outs I & II (live critiques in the form of underground pugilism), artwork in empty storefronts, collaborations with other neighborhood entities, etc.

The initiation of Agitprop as a space, and subsequently the “Brain Trust” project, stems from an examination of and response to current art support structures. Contemporary practice tends toward two approaches to art distribution: art works presented as commodities by commercial galleries and dealers, or conversely as visual culture by universities and museums whose funding, when traced backwards, often leads to a corporate source. This exhibition asks the question “Is it possible to have a neighborhood art practice supported wholly by those who the practice serves?”

In addition to the “Brain Blocks” component of the exhibition, several single-day events are scheduled over the duration of the exhibition, including a walking tour of residual spaces in North Park, self-portrait photography sessions, free soup, and more. A calendar of events will be available at the exhibition, as well as in postings on the Agitprop blog.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

If you were wondering how one goes about launching something as big as an art fair, but in San Diego in the current economy, the answer is better magic through good design.

The BTB booth design, with its strong emphasis on diagonals and irregular booth spaces, resembled nothing less than a Menger sponge, creating the illusion of an infinite exhibition hall while fitting in a room the size of a medium theatre.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego | Video

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

While definitely sympatico with the "Juxtapoz" philosophy and aesthetic, we are by no means limited to lowbrow, pop surrealism or any other genre (in fact, the market seems to be getting a bit crowded with cute, big-eyed girls lost in ominous forests with cuddly animals and pop cultural references). That being said, if you're a traditional plein air master or water color diva, we're not the place for you. Other than that, it's game on.

              — From the gallery web site

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times writes fascinatingly of a new service offered by the Bank of America: turnkey art shows, precurated for convenience, and offered at little or no cost to cash-strapped museums.

Among the choice revelations:

• BofA's corporate art collection of more than 60,000 works was assembled not by collecting art but by collecting other banks with art collections.

• After considering selling off the collection, BofA realized they could make more money packaging it as art shows, which serve as effective marketing tools for creating new business.

• MOMA-level museums won't touch corporate shows unless the work is donated to the museum. Rationale: the space outranks the work, so showing the work in the space would increase the value of the work.

• Small regional museums, on the other hand, are embracing the corporate shows. Rationale: the work outranks the space, so showing the work in the space increases the value of the space. And in bad economic times the shows are lifesavers.
  

Tellingly, BofA initially hoped to place the shows in high-end museums, but eventually realized the smaller venues were their target demographic. Said a BofA spokesperson, “Smaller community museums with more need began to ask for our program. They just don’t have the deep pockets, and they don’t have the luxury of saying, ‘We don’t do corporate collections,’ nor do they frankly have the snobbery about it.”

And here's a quote from the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, which has one of the BofA shows scheduled for exhibition: “There are people in the art field who think that somehow businessmen are evil, and you shouldn’t deal with them, but they have no trouble taking their money. I’ve always thought that was the ultimate hypocrisy. You almost can’t do a contemporary art show without borrowing from some gallery, and those paintings are for sale."

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Posted to News

by Richard Gleaves






I.

I've been friends with Anna for easily fifteen years. She paints: canvas, wood, paper, flowerpots, construction walls, pretty much anything she can get her brushes on. She never stops.

The painting above is on bubblewrap: it's big, about five feet square. The first time I saw it I nearly jumped out of my shoes. The thing radiates light — the photo doesn't show this; no photo could.

Continue reading "Anna Zappoli Jenkins" »

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Posted to Essays | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Kudos to Camilo Ontiveros, who in 2007 was a San Diego Art Prize nominee, and in 2009 has a solo show at a major Los Angeles gallery with glowing reviews from Christopher Miles in the LA Weekly and Christopher Knight in the LA Times.

Ontiveros accomplished this remarkable ascent in two ways:

• Getting an MFA at UCLA
  
• Making beautiful complex work
  

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Posted to News

by Richard Gleaves

San Diego's Rancho Bernardo Inn is a top-end luxury resort distinguished by a PGA-level golf course, three pools, and a restaurant which boasts both molecular cuisine and a plug from America's greatest living food writer.

The Inn can now add another notch to its belt under the category of Marketing So Advanced It Qualifies as Museum-Grade Art. I'm referring to their current promotional offer entitled Survivor Package, which in its studied blurring of corporate practice, long-term global economic trends, cultural and institutional self-critique, subtextual subversiveness, and (not least) downright cheek makes it a worthy match of Brian Goeltzenleuchter's current show at OMA.

The deal is straightforward: from August 16 to 31 the Inn is offering rooms at the following rates:

• $219 standard luxury
  
• $199 without breakfast
  
• $179 without honor bar
  
• $159 without A/C or heat
  
• $139 without pillows
  
• $109 without sheets
  
• $89 without lights (except one bulb in bathroom)
  
• $59 without linens
  
• $39 without toiletries (BYOTP)
  
• $19 without bed (tent provided)
  

For more information (including a priceless photo of the tent) see today's Union-Tribune.

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

In his works on paper Joe Nyiri uses stencil, spray paint, broad line marker... all the tools of a state-of-the art graffitist. He works fast too, which gives his line a high-energy crackle rivalling the best taggers.

Nyiri has been teaching art for over fifty years.

The work below is part of a one-person show currently at the Taylor Library in Pacific Beach. Through September 4, which gives you many opportunities to not miss it.

Joe Nyiri at Taylor Library

                                                  Photos Mark-Elliott Lugo

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

2 days, 200 artists, 8000 visitors.

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Posted to San Diego | Video

by Richard Gleaves

This summer Southern Californians have a rare opportunity to see the work of Agnes Martin in numbers and variety far beyond the ones and twos typically offered by regional museums.

Martin is commonly labeled a minimalist, but her work differs so markedly from that of other artists so labeled that it exposes the term itself as semantically overextended to the degree of buzz.

Perhaps a better term for Martin is "low stimulus threshold", as a way of foregrounding the visual subtlety that is her trademark. A Martin painting whispers in a way that makes a Judd box or Flavin light shout: all the difference in the world.

Art can take a million paths up the mountain, but the art that interests me most is the kind which challenges viewers to see the water they're swimming in. We live in a consummate high-stimulus-threshold society (the planet Soundtrack), and as a result much easy art exists which parasitizes the spectacle while claiming to comment upon it. Martin, on the other hand, took the hard road of making an art of the radical act of quiet contemplation.

A caveat on making the journey to Newport Beach to see the show: the curators — apparently influenced by their own elevated stimulus thresholds — decided the work was so quiet they could stuff far too much of it into two smallish galleries without causing a stir. Bad move: it reflects poorly on the museum. Each large Martin deserves a room of its own.

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Posted to Art Reviews

by Richard Gleaves

Iz the Wiz — a writer who lived largely for sex in a can, and died largely of it, kidney and heart.

The NY Times obit mentions that Cooper and Chalfant's classic Subway Art was recently reissued by Chronicle Books. An art book's art book, this one's for the ages... check it out.

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Posted to Graffiti stories | News | Video

by Richard Gleaves

Speak, memory.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego | Video

by Richard Gleaves

Segment from Women Without Men

On June 18, the supremely talented filmmaker and photographer Shirin Neshat appeared at MCA San Diego to present her feature-length film/work-in-progress Women without Men.

The film, based on Shahrnush Parsipur’s magic realist novel, is set in 1953 Iran during a period of national political turmoil, and uses the deaths of three Iranian women to explore a host of social issues involving personal and political freedom.

During the post-performance conversation, Neshat and film curator Neil Kendricks spoke extensively about the work's prescience given current events in Iran. What neither of them knew was that two days later, on June 20, Neda Agha-Soltan would lose her life and become an instant world symbol of the current political turmoil.

As a result, Neshat's film — which is six years in the making — has been given the semiotic equivalent of a spin dry set on "hot". It will be interesting to see how this work-in-progress resolves now that life has told its story.

Neda, rest in peace.

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Posted to Life with Art | News | Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Performance at Balboa Park. June 13, 2009.

GMN Projects Presents: Throw the Shoe Event

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego | Video

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves

The current show at Quint is billed as an exhibition of San Diego's 50 top-tier contemporary artists, which immediately begs the usual question “1: Why X and not Y?”. Here there be dragons, so let's instead home in on "top-tier" and see how it holds up. Eleanor Antin, David Avalos, Robert Irwin, James Luna: they're not on the list, which effectively toasts “top-tier”. Nobody’s perfect — let’s hope they were invited.

Once past that, writing about a 50-artist group show is not unlike seeing one: disorienting, especially in where to start. The best way to make sense of it all is to frame the event not as an art show, but rather as a diverse (and crowded) ecosystem within which the players adopt various strategies to survive and thrive.

Continue reading "Homing In at Quint" »

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves




Allison Wiese, Woods (non-installation photo used in show announcement)

Conceptually, Wiese's wired networks of altered appropriated paintings are much richer than the work she's shown previously in San Diego. In particular, their use of archetypal semantic primitives — wiring, blinking red LEDs, traditional landscape paintings — goes a long way towards dispensing with the need for any supporting text (a tell-tale signature of weak conceptual work).

The LEDs multi-function gloriously: blinking red points of light are ubiquitous symbols of caution, most commonly signaling the threat of protection via car alarm, but also (thanks to Hollywood movie conventions) equally well-known for signaling the threat of imminent destruction via terrorist device.

These double readings interact with both the image and object properties of the appropriated landscape paintings, evoking with sheer mathematical elegance issues of art commoditization and avant-garde backlash, global urbanization and anti-globalization, society and environment, and various combinations thereof.

In short, the work is extremely strong, as are the shelves of small abstract mountain sculptures in the gallery's front room. But the show itself — and by "show" I mean not just the display of the objects but their categorization as collections of salable art — suffers from a serious flaw: certain key formal elements of the works as displayed turn out not to be intrinsic parts of the artwork, but rather extraneous elements intended to serve as display supports for the work.

Continue reading "Allison Wiese at Seminal Projects" »

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Phenomena

• In the past decade at least 20 different art museums have been without directors at any given time

• New directors are often recruited from other museums, creating new job vacancies

• Many sought-after museum director positions remain unfilled, some for as long as a year
  

Causes

• An unprecedented increase in the number of art museums

• A large number of museum directors reaching retirement age

• Little emphasis on succession planning by museum boards
  

Consequences

• Decreases in the average tenure of museum directors

• Increases in the time required to fill empty directorships

• Directors surfing the demand/supply asymmetry for prestige and higher pay
  

Source

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Posted to News | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves

May 22, 2009
6:30 — 9:30 PM

3139 First Ave
San Diego

GARAGES is a one-night exhibit of art, performance, spoken word, and experiments in five garage spaces in the Bankers Hill neighborhood of San Diego.

Artists

Tom McDermott
M.A.G.N.U.S. & THOR
Kelly Schnorr
The Illuminauts
Kevin Oberbauer
DJ Unwell
Chris Warr
Nathan Gulick
The San Diego Poetry Slam Team
James Gielow
and more...

For more information contact the curators Erica Overskei and Alexander Jarman.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 11:03 PM | Permalink
Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

In its current ad campaign BMW is working harder than ever to elevate its product by association with visual art.

But this begs the question of whether visual art wishes to be associated with fossil-fueled personal-transport dinosaurs on the verge of extinction.

Which in turn begs the further question of whether — in a global future of greater population, scarcer resources, man-made natural disasters, and the sustainable practices that will necessarily follow — visual art itself, at least as currently practiced, will go the way of the BMW.

How do we move toward a sustainable practice?

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Voices: Mapping the Hood
A Multimedia Interactive Collaborative Installation
May 17 — June 28
Art Produce Gallery

Opening Sunday May 17, 10 AM — 6 PM
In conjunction with the North Park Arts Festival

Envisioned as an interactive collage, the installation is a giant pop-up book which tells a story you can walk through and contribute to. The idea is to physically, metaphorically, and cognitively “Map the Hood” of North Park and City Heights with all our various collaborating partners, including architecture students, professional artists, children, teens, and community members.

Stone Paper Scissors, Eveoke Dance Theatre, TranscenDance Youth Arts Project, North Park Main Street, and the Cultural Worker have collaborated to create Art @ the Core: Building Community, with the goal of increasing access, engagement, and participation in the civic process through community cultural development.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 12:31 AM | Permalink
Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Seth Tegardine
Paintings, sculpture, and mixed media

May 16-30
Opening Saturday May 16, 6-9 PM

Art of Framing
3333 Adams Ave
www.theartofframing.net

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 11:34 PM | Permalink
Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

The work of San Diego’s top-tier contemporary artists hasn’t been seen in the same place at the same time since 1985, when the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art presented “A San Diego Exhibition: Forty-Two Emerging Artists.”

  — Quint Gallery promotional copy

Quint's low profile among the non-cognoscenti should prevent a recurrence of the grand community stink that was raised over that museum show: irate artists, impromptu salons des refusés, and coverage of the controversy in the local family paper.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Answer: the latter, as a factory cost-saving measure.

The technique of rotoscoping enables an animator not only to create animation from live-action film by tracing over individual film frames, but also to recycle existing animation by tracing over individual cells. The only costs incurred are for redrawing — the movement comes for free.

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves

Estimated value $5,000 to $10,000.

If you have any information regarding this artwork please call the San Diego Police Department at (619) 531-2000.

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Posted to Graffiti stories | News | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Tom Driscoll, oil on aluminum tubing

Richard Allen Morris, acrylic on canvas

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Posted to Regards | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

I picked this because it's the most beautiful clip in the world. And I think you'll enjoy it. How it relates to my work is something about being a low-budget director, and you just have an idea that you have to do that means nothing to the entire movie — that's totally ridiculous — but you have to do it.

  — Jason Sherry

He's sort of this archaeologist in terms of pop culture and movies.

  — Neil Kendricks

Sherry's work is described in the gallery press release as "audio-mechanical sculptures and photo/print collages," but a more elegant way to conceptualize the work is as "image and non-image collage."

Image collage is in essence technically trivial: scissors, glue, and a magazine suffice. But non-image collage — a turntable with a bicycle; a pump organ with a pile of magazines; a hair dryer with ... an image collage! — takes mechanical genius, and Sherry's got it.

A worthwhile reference point here is Tim Hawkinson, who deploys similar levels of genius toward the very different goal of realizing Rube Goldberg. Hawkinson celebrates mechanism, while Sherry works to achieve a seamless whole: the collage ideal.

Update: 4/24

Michele Guieu has posted video of the full conversation.

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Posted to Art Reviews | Openings & Events | San Diego | Video

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

... to sound art, which though technically not music can't help being so, given how music reigns as the supreme art form of electronic-age humanity.

Drawing from a national call for submissions, Garage Gallery (aka Larry Caveney) recently curated a high-quality one-hour set which played straight through in the darkened BYO chair garage space.

The eight works presented hit various points on the sound-to-music spectrum, depending on one's ears: the musicians in attendance said they heard everything as music.

That the musicians were there is due to the cryptic sagacity of CityBeat, which chose to list Garage's art show announcement as a music event. Wise move: the musicians were stoked, and said they'd be back.

Garage needs to consider doing this annually; otherwise, aside from the occasional Céleste Boursier-Mougenot or wind chime, the closest we get to sound art is SoundWalk, and that's up in Long Beach.

More, please!

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Nico Herbst

Saturday, April 4, 2009
2-8 PM
UCSD Campus

Fifty MFA candidates open their studios and invite the public to view their work. The artists will be present to discuss their practice. The event includes performances, film screenings, and symposia.

UCSD Open Studios is free and open to the public. For more information visit ucsdopenstudios.com.

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

MOCA's current show consists of two unequal parts:

• A large group show from the permanent collection, including works by Judd, Benglis, Chamberlain, and Rothko

• A retrospective of the conceptual artist Dan Graham
  

To anyone considering a visit with hungry eye or mind, consider yourself forewarned: the former makes the latter feel like a long string of late-night TV commercials (notwithstanding the occasional Glenn Branca score).

It's not every day — or decade, for that matter — that one can spend quality time in a roomful of Rothkos. For this, go.

But as for the half a museum of Graham, it left me in a state of anesthesia to a degree I've never before experienced from a major museum show. Out of profound respect for and affinity with conceptual art — good conceptual art — I'm considering a return trip to try and determine whether, as the museum claims, anyone's home.

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Posted to Art Reviews | Openings & Events

by Richard Gleaves

Where to be on a Saturday night?

• Post cards at Sushi

• Body talk

• The mid-Aztlanic
  

All look great, but no can do.

Decision regret — make your choice.

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Posted to San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Evolutionary Origins of Art and Aesthetics
A Free Public Symposium

@ The Salk Institute
March 20, 2009, 1-5 pm

Sponsored by the Salk/UCSD Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA)

• Rules and Constraints of Artistic Creation: The Neurobiologist Viewpoint. Jean-Pierre Changeux (Pasteur Institute).

• Art and Emotions. Antonio Damasio (USC).

• Art, Emotion and Romantic Love. Helen Fisher (Rutgers University).

• Neanderthal Art. Jean-Jaques Hublin (Max Planck Institute).

• Paleolithic Art. Randall White (New York University).

• Aesthetics in Bird Song and Human Development. Patricia Kuhl (University of Washington).

• The Emotional Power of Music. Isabelle Peretz (University of Montreal).

• A Critical Analysis of Claims for the Production of Art by other Animals. Daniel Povinelli (University of Louisiana).

• Aesthetic Universals and the Neurology of Art. Vilyanur S. Ramachandran (UCSD).
  

For more information contact:
Amy Patterson
(858) 246-0848
apatterson@ucsd.edu

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Posted to San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves

On May 22 the Las Vegas Art Museum will present Selections from The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States. The members opening preview will be on Thursday, May 21, from 5-7 PM.

On February 28 the Las Vegas Art Museum will close permanently.

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves

In 1970 a graffiti culture emerged in New York. Less than a decade later the cultural practice had become an urban fixture, public scourge, and (not least) a full-blown art movement which in its stylistic innovation rivaled anything in modern art history.

The rapid evolution of graffiti art followed from a specific set of circumstances:

• Ready access to the necessary technology
• A medium uniquely suited to reaching a large and diverse community
• A team of dedicated practitioners driven by social ambition
• A core set of aesthetic values shared by the practitioners

Such movements are easy to recognize in hindsight — but spotting them as they unfold can be a tricky proposition, for two reasons:

• The practice often remains hidden from or inaccessible to potential viewers.
• The esthetics employed are insufficiently mainstream to be acknowledged as art.

Fast-forward to 2009: graffiti is now a standard tool in the arsenal of corporate marketers. But what rough art lurks out there, waiting to be born?

The answer, it turns out, is on YouTube.

Continue reading "A World Not Unlike Our Own" »

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Posted to Essays | Works in art

by Richard Gleaves

The San Diego Museum of Art is laying off 23 people across all departments.

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has already laid off 13 people.

Wishing those affected the best of fortune, and a return to their place in our houses of art.

Link

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Posted to Life with Art | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to News

by Richard Gleaves

When I heard Ray at Night was being thrown to the cars, I thought maybe this was it. But by all accounts the show went off as big as ever: party, crowds, even art.

I hate Ray: for its circus carny atmosphere, for the way it denies contemplation its place in art, and for that supremely cheesy shop that shows that same tasteful oil of that same giant orange on that same damned wall for month after month after month after month after month.

I love Ray too, for the great art I've seen there (most in galleries long gone or off Broadway).

Gustaf Rooth is Ray, so I hate and love him too. And all of it — hate, love, absurd laughter, and sincere gratitude — is neatly encapsulated in the above video, wherein Rooth accepts his Academy award for Largest And Longest Art Event.

Mad props to you sir, in all your unspeakable glory. Continue!

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by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to News | Samizdat du jour

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves





Unaltered photo and headline from today's Yahoo News, demonstrating a longstanding American tradition of official disrespect towards lame-duck Presidents.

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Posted to News | Samizdat du jour

You don't have to be a Rockefeller to collect art... but to pull a Vogel you'll need a ticket to Manhattan and a time machine.

Link

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Posted to Life with Art | Video

by Richard Gleaves

Machine Project is a Los Angeles based non-profit arts organization, a storefront exhibition space, and purveyor of DIY workshops in the spirit of the Maker Faire.

LACMA is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the largest encyclopedic museum west of Chicago, and a patchwork complex of seven buildings ranging in style from 30's streamline moderne to Jetsons 60's to bad 80's to Wright-ian organic to bland contemporary. (Hold that thought.)

Machine Project at LACMA was a one-day event where MP took over the LACMA campus, inserting Machine esthetic into a museum setting to the tune of 55 artist projects.

Continue reading "Machine Project @ LACMA" »

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Posted to Art Reviews

by Richard Gleaves

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by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Life with Art | Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

The polemics in The Futurist Cookbook were followed by an elaborate account of some Futurist banquets. One of the more memorable of these Aeropranzi futuristi was a banquet for 300 people held on 18 December 1931 at the Hotel Negrino in Chiavari. Guests were delighted and terrified as they braced themselves to ingest dishes prepared by the famous cook Bulgheroni, who had come especially from Milan to this small Ligurian town to preside in the kitchen over the burial of pastasciutta.

Although the Futurists had advocated the abolition of eloquence and politics around the table, the guests nevertheless first had to sit through a lecture by Marinetti on the state of world Futurism. Afterward, the meal began with a flan of calf's head seated on a bed of pineapple, nuts, and dates, stuffed—oh, surprise!—with anchovies. Then, to cleanse the palate, Bulgheroni served a decollapalato (a pun on decollare, meaning "to get off the ground"), a lyrical concoction of meat broth sprinkled with champagne and liquor and decorated with rose petals.

The main dish was beef in carlinga (another aeronautic term, probably referring to a kind of Dutch oven), meatballs—whose composition was best left uninvestigated—placed over airplanes made out of bread crumbs. After a few more dishes the dessert, named eletricita atmosferische candite, arrived, consisting of colorful little cubes made of fake marble crowned with cotton candy that enclosed a sweetish paste containing ingredients only a long chemical analysis could disclose.

Not everybody made it to the end of the dinner.

  — Romy Galan, Ingestion/Anti-Pasta, Cabinet Magazine, Issue 10, Spring 2003

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves

Linguistics professor Ed Klima passed away on Sept. 25.

Best known for his research on the signed languages of the Deaf, Klima and co-researcher Ursula Bellugi showed that signed languages are the full equivalent of spoken languages, with detailed grammars expressed in a purely visuospatial modality — a notion with serious implications for the visual arts, and one yet to be explored.

Ed is less known as a teacher, and a great one. He taught an undergraduate poetics class which revealed both a love of poetry and a soul that radiated a highly-refined bohemian goodness. His bio shows him having spent a year in Paris during the 50's, and everything beneficent that one might imagine from such an experience seemed to have infused his soul.

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Posted to Life with Art | News

by Richard Gleaves


Scenes from Trolley Dances 2008 — click on image for larger version

Continue reading "Fugitive Art" »

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Link

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Posted to Graffiti stories | San Diego | Video

by Richard Gleaves





The Last Day (2001)

Eleanor Antin's show at the San Diego Museum of Art is currently the best in town, and maybe the best in the country.

Her large-scale staged photographs thoroughly master the vocabulary of classical painting — symbolism, allegory, posture, eye gaze — then redeploy it to address contemporary social and conceptual issues.

For instance, The Tragic Performance uses posture and gaze — and crucially the line of a shadow — to systematically enumerate the roles defined by the nexus of artwork, artist, and audience. How does one respond to Angels in America when HIV-positive? Or in love with someone who is? Or a connoisseur of theatre? Or a Kushner fan? Or a critic? The answers are all here, carefully encoded in a single image.

A curious omission in the show is its failure to include the image The Last Day in the photo series The Last Days of Pompeii. This series is Antin's historical remapping of the classic cautionary tale onto the carefree lifestyle of Southern California wealth, with the image in question depicting the apocalyptic aftermath.

The Last Days of Pompeii was shot at a home in the wealthy San Diego community of Rancho Santa Fe. Six years later wildfires burned through San Diego, destroying hundreds of homes in the region, including many in Rancho Santa Fe.

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 02:41 PM | Permalink
Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

New paintings by Maura Vazakas

Bread & Cie

Through September 30

Reception: September 5, 5:30-7:00 PM

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Posted to Openings & Events | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

A good hearty meal, all in one pill that can be carried in a vest pocket, is the dream of scientists of today, according to Hugh S. Cummings, surgeon general of the public health service. (Rock Valley Bee, August 17, 1923)

Whereas the visual arts of the past were strictly material (stone, canvas, paper, pigment), and those of the present increasingly electronic, expect the future arts to be biochemical in nature, as artists exploit advances in neuropsychopharmacology and the brain sciences to create well-defined aesthetic experiences with none of the undesirable side effects of today's primitive psychotropics.

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Posted to Life with Art

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Life with Art | News

by Richard Gleaves

San Diego photographer Scott B. Davis's current show at Hous Projects in NYC has received critical mention in the New Yorker and Village Voice.

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Posted to News

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Graffiti stories | Works in art

by Richard Gleaves

Site-specific cinema on 81 grain silos, par un des plus grands artistes de la galaxie.

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Posted to Graffiti stories | Video

by Richard Gleaves







The following is an annotated version of the July 31 issue of Night & Day, the weekly online arts section of the San Diego Union-Tribune. All text but the article category headings has been redacted.


POP MUSIC (lead article)
POP MUSIC
ON STAGE
AT THE MOVIES
AT THE MOVIES
NORTH COUNTY NIGHT & DAY (music)
NORTH COUNTY NIGHT & DAY (music)
EARTHLY MUSICAL MUSINGS BY GEORGE VARGA
POP MUSIC
POP MUSIC
POP MUSIC
ALBUM REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS
ALBUM REVIEWS
EVENTOS LATINOS (art, music)
OUT GOING (circus)
DINING GUIDE

Spun by Richard Gleaves at 11:57 AM | Permalink
Posted to Regards | San Diego

by Richard Gleaves

Photos Larry Caveney

In his book Beyond the Brillo Box, the critic Arthur Danto introduces the notion of comedies of similarity to describe the phenomenon of art critics grossly misreading radical artworks in their attempts to shoehorn them into known categories of art. As an example, Danto cites Hilton Kramer's critical dismissal of Eva Hesse's sculpture Metronomic Irregularity II as a derivative attempt to translate Jackson Pollock's drip paintings into a three-dimensional medium.

Which brings us to Larry Caveney's painted sculptures, now on display at the Expressive Arts Institute in Point Loma. There's no question that Caveney's work is formally rooted in Hesse's pioneering painting/sculpture hybrids, and little question that the work strongly evokes 3-D Pollocks.

Continue reading "Caveney manifolds" »

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Posted to Art Reviews | San Diego

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Posted to Works in art

by Richard Gleaves

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Posted to Samizdat du jour

by Richard Gleaves