American Contemporary Art (sept/oct 2008)

THE POLITICAL ISSUE September/October 2008

ART IN THE AGE OF BUSH

ART

DENVER

American Contemporary

MINNEAPOLIS

PHILADELPHIA

Bente Vold Klausen September 22 - November 1, 2008

Translations Gallery 855 Inca Street, Denver, CO 80204 303.629.0713

w w w . translationsgallery.com

Bente Vold Klausen, Shadows in Threatened Landscape detail

Eva Carter, Night Tide, oil on canvas, 72 x 66 inches

INTUITIVE RESPONSE a collection of recent paintings by Eva Carter September 26 - October 30

NOVEMBER SELECTION an exhibition of work by William M Halsey Eva Carter Karin Olah November 1 - 30

Eva Carter Gallery ___________________________ 132 East Bay Street Charleston South Carolina 843.722.0506 www.evacartergallery.com

David Graham

Goodyear, AZ, 2006

Almost Paradise September 19 - November 8, 2008 339 South 21st Street Philadelphia PA 19103 (NE corner of 21st & Pine sts) 1+ 215.731.1530 : www.Gallery339.com : [email protected] Tuesday – Saturday: 10 am – 6 pm . Sunday & Monday by appointment

F rom the E ditors

What is American Contemporary Art? a

fter covering fine art for over a decade, we recently decided to take on a larger canvas by launching this national contemporary art magazine. In a time of economic trouble and the decline of print media, this may seem like a counterintuitive decision. Nevertheless, we believe that a readership exists for a comprehensive, bi-monthly survey of the contemporary art world. Although no print publication can complete directly with the infinite space of the internet, we will provide a wide-ranging sampling of art from coast to coast and contextualize it with informative and thought-provoking articles, all in a medium suited to viewing a large number of images with ease. While one must wade through the deluge of information available online*, we pick out the best for you and provide it in a tactile format. This magazine will provide you with a first taste of art. The mechanical reproduction process, now using digital transmission and a high-speed printing press, allows thousands, even millions of people access to work that is typically created in a localized, concrete reality. The images included inside provide a preview of works that can best be viewed in person, at galleries, museums, and in one’s own collection. The magazine’s contents merely whet one’s appetite for further journeys in art, from exploring art online to attending exhibitions and art fairs, visiting galleries, and discussing works with friends. A quick flip through the 108 pages of this magazine offers over 100 images, each of which can serve as a starting point for further inquiry. (That’s not including the dozens of image-laden ads.) Informed readers can further build their comprehensive knowledge of contemporary art and the novice can become versed in its current state of affairs. For us, contemporary art describes works that break with fixed notions of art, that finds novel ways to present ideas and techniques. Paintings, installations, sculpture, multimedia, and transcendent forms will fill our pages, as will occasion forays into design, architecture, and the way that fine art is framed in popular media. Ultimately, though, we seek to ground ourselves in fine art and not let occasional digressions become distracting. Contemporary art is so often connected with New York City, and other international capitals of arts, bursting with hundreds of galleries. While recognizing these art meccas, we’ve also noticed dozens of galleries around the country that remain unheralded on the national stage. This magazine seeks to explore the art scenes in the largest markets but also those that often escape coverage.

In each issue, we begin with a concise overview of the institutional art world, entitled Up Front. In some cases, like this issue, one of our editors will examine the art market; in others we will look at important nationwide trends. The bulk of the section, however, is comprised of a survey of contemporary art museum exhibitions and a preview of forthcoming art fairs and events. Although museums are important to contemporary art, we focus the majority of our attention on art outside of formal institutions. Our Exhibitions section offers you the broadest overview of U.S. contemporary art galleries that can be found in a print publication. In this first issue and future ones, we will cover over fifty artists exhibiting at contemporary art galleries throughout country. We try to maintain geographic balance, while always making sure to give due coverage to the largest markets. Starting with the fourteen cities included in this issue, we intend to expand and increase our breadth in the future. Over the next few issues, we will introduce columns covering several markets. Filed by local correspondents, these ArtScope reports will give readers a sense of the art scenes in these cities. They will serve as a valuable resource for locals looking for the inside scoop and readers nationwide seeking to expand their knowledge of other markets. Look for our first columns in the next issue. Ultimately, we hope that the depth of this local reporting will match the overall breadth of our exhibition coverage. Our Artists section provides a more detailed look at individual artists. In these pages, we examine the artistic process; display portfolios of new work; present the stories of artists’ lives; and, occasionally, allow some to write about their own work. Sandwiched between these two sections, our feature stories will paint in broader strokes. Examining city art scenes, trends, artists, and occasionally using art to probe larger issues, these articles will often have greater ambitions and seek to place contemporary art in a larger context. Our ultimate goal is to provide a wider range of information and more visual stimuli than any other art publication. We will continue this mission in future issues with more extensive coverage of art in individual markets and other evolutions designed to make this magazine a vital and enjoyable resource. For now, enjoy this first issue. ACA We want your feedback: Email us at [email protected].

*Lest you think we are Luddites with a grudge against the internet, visit our website at acamagazine.com.

from the editors

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inside 18 In this Issue

THE POLITICAL ISSUE

ART IN THE AGE OF BUSH

Exhibitions

37 Directory 38 Philadelphia 42 New York 45 Los Angeles 48 San Francisco 49 Chicago 50 Washington, D.C. 51 Seattle 52 Denver 54 Minneapolis 55 Southwest 56 Southeast 87 From the Curator Artists

91 Nathan Fischer 92 Brian Scott 93 Mark Richards 94 Gwen Laine 95 David Eddington 96 Eva Carter 97 Karin Olah 98 Shelly Hearne 100 Ben Nighthorse Campbell

106 Parting Thoughts

MINNEAPOLIS

PHILADELPHIA

AMERICAN CONTEMPORARY

THE POLITICAL ISSUE

September/October 2008

Up Front

25 The Art Market 27 Museums 31 Art Events

ART

DENVER

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2008

Contemporary Art in Denver As Denver awaits its convention close-up, the city’s art scene has hit its stride. Twenty years after the vibrancy of the late 1980s, galleries from that era still remain on top, while new ones begin to emerge. Local writer Michael Paglia paints a portrait of a city that is quickly becoming a major contemporary art destination.

70 Minneapolis vs. Convention A series of exhibitions present a vision of America that contrasts with the one that will likely be presented at the Republican National Convention. From the government-sponsored art of the New Deal to Eero Saarinen’s architecture and shows about the present, Minneapolis confronts the right-wing revelry soon to occur in neighboring St. Paul. Tori Frankel has the story.

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Art in the Age of Bush The changing landscape of American culture is the theme of three exhibitions from across the country: a waterboarding installation at Coney Island and large-scale museum exhibitions in Miami Beach and Southern California. Eric Kalisher examines how the political realities of the past eight years have influenced artists’ conceptions of the American ideal.

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Inspired abstraction Washington, DC, the capital of American politics, provides the home base for Maggie Michael. Influenced by such notable artists as Joan Mitchell and Louise Bourgeois, she creates brilliant abstract paintings (see the cover). Tracey Hawkins explores Michael’s artistic journey and the effect of Washington on her work.

82 contents

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Accorsi Arts Associates ACME Fine Art Alpha Gallery Babcock Galleries Mark Borghi Fine Art Michael Borghi Fine Art Gary Bruder The Caldwell Gallery Simon Capstick-Dale Fine Art Valerie Carberry Gallery Conner • Rosenkranz DFN Gallery DJT Fine Art Elrick-Manley Fine Art Peter Fetterman Gallery David Findlay Jr. Fine Art Peter Findlay Gallery Fischbach Gallery Galeria Hafenrichter & Fluegel Gallery Henoch Gebert Contemporary Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts Grenning Gallery Stephen Haller Gallery Nancy Hoffman Gallery R. S. Johnson Fine Art David Klein Gallery Kraushaar Galleries Levis Fine Art Lost City Arts

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ART

FA I R

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1900

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CONTEMPORARY

Gregory Johnson, Natura Morte/Zen III, courtesy Stephen Haller Gallery

WYSIWYG James Hyde, Summer Kemick, Sungmi Lee, Avery McCarthy, Colin Montgomery, Paul Salveson September 13–October 18, 2008 Titled after the computing acronym for “what you see is what you get,” this exhibition examines abstract photography made through an interdisciplinary approach. It features six artists who are equally informed by music, sculpture, painting, graphic design and science as they are by the photography. Far from any notion of pure abstraction, the works in the exhibition are “dirtied” by other practices and disciplines, often making abstract what is found in the everyday. WYSIWYG is organized by Christopher Y. Lew

Above: James Hyde. GUSTING. 2007. Acrylic on digital print, acrylic on wood blocks. 20.5" x 30.5"

KRIZNA JAMA Michael E. Smith Ed Brown October 26 – November 29, 2008 JENNY JASKEY GALLERY / 969 N. 2ND STREET / PHILADELPHIA, PA 19123 / +1 (215) 543-6029 / [email protected]

I n T his I ssue EDITOR

Everything is political. This maxim is especially true during the months of the September and October, in the lead up to the 2008 presidential election. For the cities of Denver and Minneapolis/ St. Paul, the brunt of this will be felt in the final week of August and first of September. In picking these location, the two parties skipped over the fifteen largest metropolitan areas in the country and sought out emerging cities instead of established ones. We are following suit. Instead of New York, Los Angeles, or Boston, we too are setting our sights on the metropolitan hubs of Colorado and Minnesota. Just as the conventions will bring new awareness to the political identities of these cities, we hope to do the same for their art scenes. Michael Paglia traces the history of Denver’s contemporary art scene through the lens of some of its key players, while Tori Frankel looks at exhibitions in Minneapolis and how they confront the Republican National

THE POLITICAL ISSUE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2008

ART IN THE AGE OF BUSH

Eric Kalisher

PUBLISHER Richard Kalisher

Convention in St. Paul. In our Exhibitions section, we also focus on new shows in each city, from environmental art to the representations of the elephant. Politics don’t end in the convention cities. A trio of exhibitions, from opposite corners of the country, try to navigate political realities in post-9/11 America. Editor Eric Kalisher places them within a larger political context and examines the legacy of the Age of Bush. Washington, DC, the center of American politics, is the home of Maggie Michael (on the cover), whose artistic evolution is profiled by Tracey Hawkins. Expanded coverage of Philadelphia, home of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, rounds out this political issue. We devote additional pages to exhibitions in city often labeled as the birthplace of the nation. – The Editors

MINNEAPOLIS

Donovan Stanley

Design Jon Morrissey Monty Jorgensen

Photo & Copy Editor Jamie Dennison

Assistant Editors Khalil Khoury, Rachel Mann, Kate Merkel, Jill Ryeth

Contributing Editors Tracey Hawkins, Tori Frankel Jilliane Pierce, Emily Kindler Stephanie Kaston

Main Office 1550 Larimer St. #170 Denver, CO 80202

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DENVER

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Advertising On the Cover: Maggie Michael Squid, 2007. Acrylic latex, ink, enamel, oil on canvas, 30" x 24"

[email protected] Richard Kalisher (561) 542-6028

Letters [email protected]

Issue 1

September/October 2008 ©2008, ChromaView, Inc. Produced in association with R.K. Graphics. All rights reserved.

acamagazine.com 18

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up front

T he art mar k et

Despite Economic Woes, Art Continues Its Ascent by Donovan Stanley

T

he past year has not been kind to the economy. Not only have we seen the failure of an eighty-year-old investment bank, we have witnessed the first acrossthe-board decline in house values since the Great Depression. Nevertheless, while the primary asset of most Americans continues to lose value in most housing markets, the price of commodities has surged. Oil looks poised to stay above $100 per barrel after reaching an all-time high of just above $145. The art market similarly has set record prices this year. Since recovering from a long period of weakness ending in late 2003, art prices have continued to rise, setting records in 2007. In fact, according to the Art Market Report, it was only last year that the art prices broke the previous record, set back in 1990. Now that the drought has been over for nearly five years, some are fearful that recent economic trouble in the United States and Europe portend another downturn in the art market. Those projecting the worst have been defied by the numbers, however. Sotheby’s and Christie’s set records in the first half of the 2008, selling about $7 billion in art. Infused with new buyers and a greater diversity of nationalities among them, the auction houses have benefited from this globalization of wealth. While much of the prospects for art sales in the boom of the late 1980s hinged on buyers from a single country, Japan, today they are far more diffused around the world. According to reporting by the Financial Times, buyers from new economic powerhouses like China and India are rising in influence and compliment a surge in sales to energy-rich Russians, Middle-Easterners, and Brazilians. Not only are individuals boosting the market, but institutional sales to emerging economies are rapidly expanding. New museums from Abu Dhabi to Shanghai are looking to fill their collections and walls.

The Art Market Report also substantiated the rapid growth in the contemporary art market, in which prices for the top 100 artists have risen four-fold in the past three years. As a result of the large growth in buyers entering the art market, the prospects for contemporary art seem particularly bright. The reason is a simple matter of supply and demand. As the number of buyers increase, auction houses will be unable to procure enough modern and impressionist work to meet demand. Since these kind of works are limited by definition, contemporary art is expected to fill in the gap. This stands to benefit both auction houses and art galleries. Some expect contemporary art to dominate market within a decade. As a bellwether, many will look to Sotheby's Damien Hirst auction. The event includes 223 works by Hirst, including several from his “Natural History” series of animals in formaldehyde. The auction takes place on September 15 and 16. Look for it to exceed expectations. The prospects for U.S. art galleries are enhanced by the increased internationalization of buyers and bolstered by a stabilized local market. Although the housing downturn will affect large swaths of the country’s populations, it is least likely to affect those most inclined to buy art. While more conservative forms of art may take a hit, as some of the recently constructed McMansions move into foreclosure, contemporary art holds firmer ground. Such art typically generates a more sophisticated class of buyer as well as one with pretenses of establishing a notable collection. Money to spend will not be a problem, because the majority of such art buyers will be only superficially affected by economic downtown. Over the past decade, inequality in the U.S. has surged to such a point that an upper portion of the

population controls more money than at any time in eighty years. Those most likely to purchase high-priced art come from this income bracket. An additional factor makes it likely that art sales will increase. While doomsayers predict decline in the high-end auction circuit, the market for gallery art remains strong. As once-solid investments like real estate (both residential and commercial), stocks, and even hedge funds become more volatile, savvy investors will seek to diversify their holdings into items that defy weak exchange rates and risk. Purchasing paintings from emerging artists gives investors the potential to realize large gains without having to worry about systemic risk. When the auction houses experience heightened demand for contemporary works, sparked by the international community, they must find art to sell. Those in possession of desirable works stand to benefit. And there lies the opportunity for smart investors to realize a sizable return. Although times are troubling in the general economy, the art market continues to remain surprisingly strong. One letter published in the Financial Times back in May suggested that the art market always peaks during the initial decline of the general economy. This may be so, but as of now, we have see no definitive signs of a coming collapse. Instead, the widespread expansion of buyers in the global economy presages strong times for auction houses and galleries that can tap this market. In the U.S., those in major cities stand to benefit the most. But galleries in the interior of the country can benefit as well, if they can increase their exposure nationwide and internationally. Whether among the upper crust at home or the nouveau riche abroad, collectors want art. Such high demand bodes well. ACA

Up front: the art market

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up front

museums Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles

“Index: Conceptualism in California” [Aug 24 – Dec 15] often use ironic distance to probe gender roles, sexuality, and the construction of indentity in a media-saturated, corporatized culture. Not surprisingly, many of the creations transcend the boundaries between sculpture, painting, drawing, and performance.

Martin Kippenberger [Sept 21 – Jan 5, 2009]

This German artist, who died at age 44 in 1997, receives his first major retrospective in the United States in this ambitious, large scale exhibition, “The Problem Perspectives.”

Tapping the wealth of the museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition draws on the substantial holdings of work by artists who have lived and created in the Golden State. The evolution of conceptualism in the state is one of the main themes of the show, and it is visually represented by the more than 200 works from over 60 artists. Begun in the 1960s as a response to the pop and minimalist movements, conceptual art foregrounded ideas over objects by using language, repetition, and cultural references. As a result, it became an intellectually daring discipline that set out to critique mass culture and institutional dominance. This exhibition looks at the movement through a multi-generational lens that covers over 40 years. The proto-conceptualist works of Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner, and Edward Kienholz transition into those of John Baldessari, Guy de Cointet, Michael Ascher, Ed Ruscha, and other artists from the movement’s ascendancy. The exhibition is rounded out by work from the next generation, who have merged the movement with the strategies of pop, minimalist, and feminist art. These second-generation conceptionalists

From the mid-1970s onward, Kippenberger produced a complex and richly varied body of work, always focusing on the role of the artist in culture. He cast himself as everything from a publisher to an architect, and he produced work in diverse media: paintings, sculpture, works on paper, installations, multiples, photographs, posters, cards, and books. On the Horizon: The first major survey of Louise Bourgeois, currently featured at the Guggenheim Museum, arrives on October 26.

P.S.1. Contemporary Art Center New York “That Was Then...This Is Now” [through Sept 24] This group exhibition is inspired by the artistic and socio-political climate of the late 1960s, and features artists united by the desire to mobilize art as a means of change. Divided into three iconographic themes — Flags, Weapons, and Dreams — “That Was Then…This Is Now” places these representations as central to artists’ collective aspiration towards progress.

(top left) John Baldessari, Concerning Diachronic/Synchronic Time: Above, On, Under (with Mermaid), 1976, six black-and-white photographs, 28.75" x 27.75". (middle) Martin Kippenberger, The Happy End of Franz Kafka's "Amerika" at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1994, mixed media.

The Flags section presents artists’ interpretations of the American flag and explores elements of nationality, patriotism, and iconography, as well as the debates invoked by these concepts. The Weapons section surveys tools used to impart violence, both literal and psychological. The Dreams section concludes with futureoriented and activist art.

up front: Museums

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up front

museums Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

“Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection” [Sept 10 – Jan 4, 2009]

If having just watched the fireworks (real and faked) during the Olympics Opening Ceremony from Beijing peaked your interest in all things Chinese, the Berkeley Art Museum has yet another fix. With their landmark exhibition, art lovers are offered a

unique look at four decades of Chinese culture and art. The exhibition includes 141 works by 96 artists and reveals the evolution of Chinese art as well as the radical changes in Chinese society from before the Cultural Revolution to the age of China as emerging economic powerhouse. Drawn from the collection of Uli Sigg, a Swiss collector who has built this impressive collection through his ties to China, the scope of this exhibition is unparalleled. In fact, it fills nine of the museum’s ten galleries. The survey begins in the 1970s, with examples of the socialist realism favored

during the Cultural Revolution. It moves on to illustrate the avant-garde movements of the 1980s and early 1990s, and also includes works by a generation of artists who have emerged following China’s social and political reforms of the past decade. Many of the works focus on Mao or the Cultural Revolution, as well as, somewhat later, Tiananmen Square. Others take on the rise of consumerism, the increasingly stark contrast between the urban and the rural, and the tensions between social unity and individual expression. Works range from paintings, drawing, and sculptures to photographs, video works, and installations. Featured artists include Ai Weiwei, Huang Yan, Liu Wei, Liu Xiaodong, Wang Du, Weng Fen, Xu Bing, Yue Minjun, Zhang Huan, and Zhang Xiaogang, as well as a number of artists still largely unknown outside of China.

Hischhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden DC “Black Box: Semiconductor” [through Dec 14] Artists Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt, aka Semiconductor, have collaborated since 1999 on various forms of “digital noise and computer anarchy”, including films, experimental DVDs, and multimedia performances. The London-based pair makes moving-image works that reveal our physical world in flux: cities in motion, shifting landscapes, and systems in chaos. They strive to transcend the constraints of time, scale, and natural forces and explore the world beyond human experience, questioning our very existence. Among the shorts featured in the Black Box is Magnetic Movie (2007), an eye-dazzling and awardwinning “documentary” created during the artists’ residency at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley. The secret lives of invisible magnetic fields are exposed as chaotic ever-changing geometries. VLF (very low frequency) audio recordings reveal recurrent “whistlers” produced by fleeting electrons, while space scientists describe their discoveries.

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“For Gordon Bunshaft” [Permanent] This new site-specific work by Dan Graham has been added to the Sculpture Garden. Situated next to a reflecting pool in the lowest level of the Garden, the triangular pavilion is constructed, on two sides, of twoway mirrors (one flat, one concave), and of

a Japanese-inspired, wood grid on the third. The piece provides a multiplicity of views and reflections, whether standing inside or out of the pavilion, and plays off many of the other sculptures that surround it.

(top left) Zhang Xiaogang, Red Child, 2005, oil on canvas; 78" x 120', Sigg Collection. (bottom right) Superconductor, still from Magnetic Movie, 2007.

up front

museums San Francisco Museum of Modern Art “Double Down” [Sept 18 – Jan 4, 2009]

Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami “Dark Continents” [Sept 26 – Nov 9]

The artists in “Dark Continents” invoke and challenge the suggested links between femininity and nature. Referencing historical moments in the work of Gauguin and related artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the exhibition questions the aesthetics of the “primitive” and “exotic” in modern art through a contemporary lens. “Dark Continents” includes sitespecific installations, large-scale wall murals, paintings, drawings, sculpture, video and collage. Featured are works by Ida Ekblad, Hadassah Emmerich, Naomi Fisher, Elke Krystufek, Marlene McCarty, Claudia and Julia Müller, and Paulina Olowska.

Las Vegas clearly has identity issues. Having reinvented itself many times over the years, the one time mob-dominated outpost of gritty glitter has been transformed into an international destination for family fun and shopping. Even today, the city continually alters itself through building demolitions that yield extravagant new resorts. As a result, Vegas remains an odd symbol in our cultural imagination. Simultaneous utopian and dystopia, it promises all but hints at the toll of overreaching. This exhibition presents a complex portrait of America’s fastest growing city through the juxtaposition of two recent films: Olivo Barbieri’s Las Vegas 05 and Stephen Dean’s No More Bets. Barbieri films Las Vegas from a helicopter,

using a tilt-focus lens that renders objects out of scale, transforming the city’s iconic landmarks into toy-like simulacra. Beginning in the desert and emphasizing the city’s isolation as well as its antipathy for empty spaces and blank surfaces, Barbieri’s camera travels along the outskirts of the city before arriving at its pulsating nerve center, the Las Vegas Strip. In No More Bets, Dean homes in on the luminous and colorful signs, screens, and surfaces that make up Las Vegas, abstracting the visual excess and revealing beautiful, unexpected patterns within the city’s semiotic jumble. The two works will be shown on opposing walls, sequentially.

Hammer Museum Tomma Abts

[through November 9]

Tomma Abts creates small, severe paintings that provide an intriguing antidote to the florid figuration that has dominated the contemporary painting discourse in the last decade. The exhibition includes fourteen paintings, all of them the same size (19.8 x 15 inches).

John Lautner

[through October 12]

This exhibition of the Southern Californian architect’s work, “Between Earth and Heaven,” features a design that is as visceral an experience as Lautner’s buildings themselves. Newly crafted large-scale models will give a sense of the internal spaces and scale of key projects, and digital animations

(top left) Olivo Barbieri, site specific LAS VEGAS 05, 2005, single-channel color video installation with audio, 13 min. Courtesy of Yancey Richardson Gallery. (right) Elke Kristufek, Still from A Film Called Wood, 2007, 50 min. Courtesy of Galerie Barbar Thumm.

will reveal Lautner’s construction processes. Surrounding this dramatic core will be a wealth of archival materials, including never-before-seen drawings, architectural renderings, study models and construction photographs, all of which will offer visitors insight into how the structures and spaces unfolded in Lautner’s mind and emerged physically in their settings.

up front: Museums

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up front

museums • New Museum of Contemporary Art “After Nature” [through Sept 21] An international and multigenerational group of artists depict a universe in which humankind is being eclipsed and a new ecological balance is sought. “A study of the present through a place in the future.”

“2008 Altoids Award” [through Oct 12] This biennial exploration of American emerging art honors four panel-selected artists. This year, Ei Arakawa, Lauren Kelley, Michael Patterson-Carver, and Michael Stickrod were chosen. Coming in October: Elizabeth Peyton & Mary Heilmann

• Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Sam Taylor-Wood [through Oct 5] Part of the British art movement that propelled artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, Taylor-Wood has since become renowned for manipulating photography, film, and video into compelling psychological portraits. A selection of 29 works from the mid1990s to the present is included. Among them are photographs of David Beckham asleep and Self Portrait Suspended, in which the artist appears weightless in mid air.

• Massachusetts MoCA Jenny Holzer [through Nov 16] Last chance to see the artist’s PROJECTIONS, a hypnotic interior light projection that fills up its massive gallery space. Holzer’s recent paintings, of formerly classified government documents, are in an adjoining gallery. [Also look for her show PROTECT PROTECT at MCA Chicago beginning on October 28.]

• The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Elizabeth Peyton [through Nov 16] A comprehensive exhibition of almost 50 photographs taken between 1994 and 2008, including portraits of friends and colleagues in the creative domain. [See also New Museum]

“Video A” [through Dec 7] Two video projects that map landscape from radical perspectives. In Jumping Nauman..., Miguel Soares uses Google Earth to “visit” all fifty-one places that artist Bruce Nauman exhibited his work in 2006. Letha Wilson’s 16 Possibilities for an 8 Minute Car Drive (Shelburne, Nova Scotia), meanwhile, depicts precisely what it’s title suggests.

• Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit “Broadcast” & “Becoming” [September 12 – December 21]

“Broadcast” explores ways in which artists since the late 1960s have engaged, critiqued, and inserted themselves into official channels of broadcast television and radio. “Becoming”, a collection of photographic works from the Wedge Collection, explores themes of black identity by artists from Canada, the United States, and throughout the African Diaspora. It offers a look at the evolving politics of representation and features historical as well as contemporary responses to the quesiton of identity.

• Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis Lutz Bacher & Aïda Ruilova [Sept 12 – Jan 4, 2009]

A site-specific, multi-channel video installation compliment other works from Lutz Bacher’s forty-year career. Also showing are Aïda Ruilova’s video works, which include horror film aesthetics and a jarring low-tech technique mixed with strong connections to experimental music.

• Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Jeff Koons [through Sept 21] This survey features the artist’s most iconic sculptures, including many works from the museum’s collection. Works from his time in Chicago during the 1970s are also included in a separate exhibition, Everything’s Here [through Oct 26], which also features artists who influenced him.

• The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Kara Walker [through Oct 19] The first full-scale American museum survey of the work of Kara Walker includes her signature cut-paper silhouettes, film animations, and over 100 works on paper. Her compositions play off stereotypes and grotesquely deconstruct plantation life in the antebellum American South to create a subverted vision of the past.

• Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Damien Hirst [through Dec 5] Exhibition of the museum’s holding of Hirst work, including The Last Supper (1999) series.

• Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego “Memory is Your Image of Perfection” [through November 30]

• Atlanta Contemporary Art Center Paul Shambroom [Oct 3 – Nov 30] “Picture Power”, a mid-career survey of this Minneapolis-based artist, examines his photographic work. Included is a series that looks at the democratic process through the lens of city council meetings. Nuclear and homeland security training sites are also explored.

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This exhibition calls attention to subjectivity of memory and how it allows individuals to create their own realities. The women artists featured in the show, motivated by a feminist disregard for established models, use the ambiguity of the photographic medium as expression of an individual viewport. Includes works by Eleanor Antin, Uta Barth, Andrea Bowers, Suzanne Lacy, Sharon Lockhart, Ana Machado, Yvonne Venegas, and others.

For more information, visit acamagazine.com.

up front

A rt events Prospect.1 New Orleans It’s not uncommon to see empty lots and will attend Prospect.1 New Orleans blank spaces in post-Katrina New Orleans. in its inaugural run. “The destruction in New Since the hurricane ravaged the city in August 2005, much of the reporting from the Orleans was of a pretty massive city has been related to the recovery effort, scale,” said Dan Cameron, the with gloomy descriptions of the problems Founding Director and Chief and struggles that the local population has Curator of Prospect.1 New Orleans. faced. Art, especially contemporary visual “Since I love New Orleans and art, is not something the national and really did want to be part of the international public associate with the “City recovery, I thought I had to come up with something really big.” that Care Forgot”. The idea came to Cameron But this will soon be changing. In November, 81 artists from more than 30 while meeting with local artists in early 2006. countries will descend Since then, the upon the Crescent City to Three Years After project has grown to a participate in Prospect.1 Katrina, New massive scale. Prospect.1 New Orleans, the largOrleans Hosts the New Orleans will last 11 est international contemLargest Biennial of weeks, November 1, 2008, porary art biennial ever International Art in through January 18, 2009. organized in the United US History. The planners predict the States. The emptiness still felt from a three-year-old wound will be filled with vibrant, creative, and authentic contemporary art, sure to dazzle locals, national, and international visitors alike. The event’s planners estimate more than 100,000 people

use of at least 100,000 square feet of exhibition space, which will incorporate several neighborhoods and utilize existing galleries and showrooms. Participating museums include the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) and the Contemporary Art Center (CAC). The program will also incorporate historic buildings, such as the U.S. Mint in the French Quarter and Battle Ground Baptist Church in St. Bernard Parish. The program will not only include new art, but it will also incorporate programs to help the local community. While the economic implications of hosting the event in New Orleans are yet to be explored, those involved hope the hospitality of the city will encourage the artists and patrons to recognize New Orleans as a cultural hub in

the United States. The event invites artists, art buyers, critics, collectors and enthusiasts to take part in this historic event, which will showcase the best of contemporary art. Cameron describes the participating artists as “the cream of the crop of contemporary art from all over the world.” – Stephanie Kaston For more details, visit prospectneworleans.org.

Art 20 New York City [Nov 7 - 10]

This art fair includes a significant amount of contemporary art and features such dealers as Hollis Taggart Galleries, David Klein Gallery, and Nancy Hoffman Gallery. It will be held at the Park Avenue Armory, with a preview on November 6 to benefit Planned Parenthood.

(top right) Gary Ruddell, Litany Against Fear #2, oil on canvas. Courtesy Gallery Henoch. (left) Marcia Myers, Frammento del Muro MMVIII-VI, fresco diptych on linen. Courtesy Gebert Contemporary. (bottom right) Bernar Venetl, 88.5 Arc x 8, 2006, steel. Courtesy David Klein Gallery.

up front: Art events

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up front

art events SOFA Chicago [Nov 7-9]

This year, the Sculpture Objects & Functional Art exposition celebrates its fifteenth anniversary. SOFA Chicago debuted fourteen years ago at the city’s Sheraton Hotel and Towers, with 58 exhibitors and 14,000 people attending. In 1995, it moved to Festival Hall at Chicago’s historic Navy Pier, where it remains today. Since then, this pioneering fair has grown steadily in its number of exhibitors, averaging approximately 100 galleries and dealers in recent years. Attendance has more than doubled. A record 35,000 people attended SOFA CHICAGO last year, and the fair was marked by brisk sales. Dealers from over 13 countries, including England, Ireland, Italy, France,

Denmark, Finland, China, Korea and Australia, join American blue-chip galleries to present dazzling contemporary glass art. The latest work from established artists like Lino Tagliapietra, Dale Chihuly, Ruth Duckworth and William Hunter are complimented by emerging artists. All of this draws large swaths of art advisors and collectors to this event. Mark Lyman, founder/director of SOFA CHICAGO and its sister show in New York, says that “More than ever, the sophisticated art community considers SOFA a vibrant and integral part of Chicago’s respected heritage of contemporary decorative arts and design.” The fair will also host special exhibitions and a lecture series. The Association of Israel’s Decorative Arts (AIDA), which last year organized the hugely popular Offering Reconciliation exhibit, will again present this year. Another special

exhibition will be devoted to the compelling, surreal glass art of Venetian artist Lucio Bubacco. A master of the historic “lume” glass technique, he draws from Greek, Roman, and Byzantine classic art, as well as medieval and renaissance theater and La Commedia dell’Arte, for inspiration. The SALON SOFA lecture series will feature top museum curators, professional art advisors, artists, collectors, interior designers, critics and art market journalists who will share their professional and personal experiences in the field.

A special preview gala will be held on the evening of November 6. For more details, visit sofaexpo.com.

USArists Philadelphia [Oct 17-19]

The seventeenth annual incarnation of this fair, one of the largest showcases of American artists, provides the opportunity for visitors to view and purchase 5,000 pieces of original art. Over 50 leading art galleries from across the U.S will be exhibiting. This vast selection in one location attracts institution and individuals adding to their collections. Exhibiting galleries include Adelson of New York, Papillon of West Hollywood, John H. Surovek of Palm Beach, Contessa of Cleveland, and Philadelphia-based Dolan/ Maxwell, among dozens of others. A preview gala will be held on October 16. For more details, visit usartists.org.

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(top left) Katherine Gray, Tabletopiaries, 2008, hand-blown recycled glassbased on topiary at Palace of Versailles, 23". Photo: P.J. Cybulski. Elliott Brown Gallery, Seattle, WA. (middle right) Jaroslava Brychtová and Stanislav Libensky, Blue Pyramid, 1993, cast glass, 32" x 47" x 10". Photo: Spencer Tsai. Barry Friedman Ltd, New York, NY. (above right) Shelley Thorstensen, Rhyme and Reason, 2005, lino, litho, screenprint, relief, and collagraph, ed. 10, 29.5" x 41.5". Dolan/Maxwell Gallery.

KEVIN ROBB

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Anemotive Kinetic, 8/08, Powder Coated SS, 7' Sphere, Height Negotiable

Featured Exhibitions

from Galleries Across the Country CHICAGO

PHILADELPHIA

38 Polly Apfelbaum at Locks 38 Jacob Lunderby & Time Tate at Pentimenti 39 Sica & Moe Brooker at Sande Webster 39 Matthias Pliessnig at Wexler 40 “WYSIWYG” at Jenny Jaskey 41 Alexis Serio at Bridgette Mayer 41 Donald Graham & Paul Cava at Gallery 339

49 Reena Saini Kallat at Walsh 49 “INDUSTRIA” at FLATFILE 49 Steve Hansen at Function+Art WASHINGTON DC

50 John Trevino at District Fine Arts 50 Nancy Scheinman at Heineman Myers

NEW YORK SEATTLE

42 Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison at Jack Shainman 42 Romare Bearden at DC Moore 43 Alexey Kallima & Jennifer Steinkamp at

51 Ted Fullerton at Foster/White 51 “A Matter of Memory” at McLeod Residence

Lehmann Maupin

43 Shigeru Oyatani at Kim Foster 44 Iran Do Espírito Santo at Sean Kelly 44 Jane Hammond at Galerie Lelong LOS ANGELES

DENVER

52 “Dialog: Denver” at Robischon 52 Jules Feiffer at Michel Mosko 53 “Assemblage and Recyclates” at Translations

45 Max Jansons & Elizabeth Tremante at 45 46 46 47 47

Christopher Grimes “Ultrasonic International III” at Mark Moore John Jurayj & Maria E. Piñeres at Walter Maciel Julian Hoeber at Blum & Poe Jody Zellen & “VF” at Fringe Abel Auer, Armin Krämer, & Dorota Jurczak at Michael Benevento

SAN FRANCISCO

MINNEAPOLIS

54 “Genus elephas” at Premier 54 “Party Party...” at Form+Content SOUTHWEST

55 Paul Shapiro at Zane Bennett 55 Hector Ruiz & David Kessler at Bentley SOUTHEAST

48 Roy Thurston & Anna Valentina Murch at Brian Gross

48 Emilio Lobato, Gwen Manfrin & Wynne Hayakawa at Andrea Schwartz

56 56 56 57

Todd Schroeder & Patrick Kelly at 2CarGarage John LaHuis & Daniel Florida at Naomi Silva A group show at Mason Murer James Rosati at Jerald Melberg

Compiled by Jill Ryeth, Khalil Khoury, and Rachel Mann.

Look for expanded coverage of New Orleans and Miami in our next issue.

Featured exhibitions

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PHILADELPHIA Polly Apfelbaum Locks [Sept 2-30]

Polly Apfelbaum’s highly intricate fabric installations – works she describes as “fallen paintings” – burst with color and transcend their diverse antecedents. Comprised of hundreds of individual dyed fabric pieces, Apfelbaum’s installations reference modern art history, including poured works of the 1950s. With their vibrant, saturated colors, Apfelbaum’s works explore

boundaries between the nature of craft and the Pop design aesthetic. “Monochromes 2003-07” continues in this tradition. It brings together 4 large-scale floor works that have not been previously exhibited together, each of which presents a variation on flower imagery. Limited to a single color with the flowers outlined in black, these flower power works line the gallery wall’s perimeter and envelope the viewer like a cartoon garden brought to life. In addition, a series of the artist’s 20 x 24 inch Polaroid images of her flowers are on display.

Alexis Serio

Bridgette Mayer [Sept 2-27] This fourth solo show of Alexis Serio features small watercolors as well as medium-sized works on paper. Entitled “Stillness”, the exhibition represents a continuation of the emotional expressiveness that has always been central to Serio’s work. Evoking an overwhelming sense of vastness, exploration, and searching, her attention to the effect of light on a landscape permeates her work. With this series, the emotional intensity has increased. Tree branches intertwine and reach out together on small sections of subtle color, leaving the rest of the space open and vast. The watercolors, while small in size, depict breezy ranges and open valleys, conjuring up feelings of happiness, light, and complexity. “Stillness” is Serio’s past and present materialized and transferred beautifully to paper, color, and line.

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(top left) Polly Apfelbaum, installation Cartoon Garden, 2005. (center left) Apfelbaum, Orange Crush, 2007, synthetic fabric and dye, 158" x 126". (center right) Apfelbaum, Pink Crush, 2007, synthetic fabric and dye, 12' x 12'. (bottom left) Alexis Serio, Home-song, 2008, watercolor and graphite on paper, 3.75" x 5".

PHILADELPHIA David Graham & Paul Cava Gallery 339 [Sept 19 – Nov 8] For over thirty years, David Graham has traveled the United States, finding the absurdities that we have created in our landscape and of ourselves. His pictures capture this dichotomy of American culture, offering moments that are simultaneously ridiculous and inspiring. This exhibition features a selection of photographs from his newest book, Almost Paradise. The included images continue Graham’s pursuit of cultural identity, although a certain uneasiness has crept into the photographs. He documents the effects of Hurricane Katrina and other signs of decay in a once robust landscape. In these new pictures, we see that a seemingly boundless American optimism is both literally and figuratively running out of gas. “Heart of the Matter” features a selection of Paul Cava’s sensual, intricatelylayered compositions that incorporate original photography, found imagery, painting, and drawing. The way that Cava assembles images is akin to constructing verse or music. Working with a discrete, carefully selected vocabulary, he layers, inverts, and otherwise alters this collection of visual metaphors to open a universe of new possibilities. Within each of these, he

fluidly balances the tension between sumptuous romanticism and a fragmented, contemporary ambiguity. Yet, while complex and meticulously constructed, they seem remarkably natural and honest, as if they must have always existed. They are like sad, beautiful melodies that we know we have not heard, yet seem strangely familiar.

Matthias Pliessnig

Wexler [Sept 5 – Nov 1] For Matthias Pliessnig, designing and building gives rise to questions about the nature of furniture and wood. He tries to stay truer to the material by utilizing its the elastic possibilities. He also combines boat building techniques with those of furniture construction. Describing his work’s philosophy, he says, “For centuries, we’ve been subverting wood to our will; lumber mills and furniture factories spit out rectilinear shapes that fit nicely into trucks but have little to do with the inherent properties of the tree.” In his first solo show, Pliessniq demonstrates the potential of wood by shaping it in ways that foreground its underlying properties. (top right) Paul Cava, Belatage Blue. (middle right) David Graham, Goodyear, AZ. (bottom left) Matthias Pliessnig, Providence, 2008, stem bent oak, 132" x 80" x 36".

Featured exhibitions

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PHILADELPHIA

Sica & Moe Brooker Sande Webster

Sica’s oeuvre stretches over the past half century and, for forty of those years, she has been exhibiting at the Sande Webster Gallery. Her extensive world travels have been the most formative influence on her work. These experiences are the underpinning of her exhibition, “Around the World in 30 Works”. The people, daily life, music, and theater of each place she encounters inspire her life. In turn, personal observation of diverse cultures, ancient and contemporary, reveal itself in her art. Sica also has a deep reverence for the ritual of creating art every day. She finds freedom in repetition and continually discovers new forms within her established process. She creates prints, paper constructions, paintings, metal sculptures, and ceramics. The works on paper often utilize metallic surfaces allowing for inventive textures. Unique surfaces are achieved by a combination of relief, inking, and collage. [Sept 2-30]

Moe Brooker’s “I Come To Dance My Joy” features new paintings that are vibrant, exhilarating, and joyful. He paints with an established abstract vocabulary while pushing his surfaces to new heights. Using acrylic, encaustic and oil pastels, Brooker creates color harmonies that are embedded with a sense of time and space. The heavily layered pigments overlap and create a unique experience of space filled with movement and light. There is also a musical quality to his paintings that combine composition and improvisation. The resulting images range from quietly soulful to exuberantly passionate. Brooker’s work demonstrates his optimistic outlook on life. Such joie de vivre emanates from his paintings. [Oct 4 – Nov 4]

Jacob Lunderby & Tim Tate

Pentimenti Gallery [Sept 5 – Oct 18] Motion pictures, as well as the contemplation of social forces and possible alternative realities, are the motivating forces behind the work of Jacob Lunderby and Tim Tate. Lunderby will feature paintings in “The Smooth And The Striated”, and Tate will show 10 videos and sculptures in “Video Reliquaries, A Look Inside A Digital Mind”.

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(top center) Moe Brooker, I Come to Dance My Joy #3, mixed media on panel, 24" x 24". (middle) Sica, Aswan (from the Nile Paintings), oil on canvas, 38" x 44". (bottom left) Jacob Lunderby, Hangars, 2008, enamel pen, spray paint on panel, 30" x 40".

PHILADELPHIA “WYSIWYG”

Jenny Jaskey [Sept 9 – Oct 18] What you see is what you get. This group exhibition, organized by Christopher Y. Lew of P.S.1 Contemporary, examines abstract photography made through an inderdisciplinary approach. The six artists included in the show create work that is as

been taking pictures from her studio window. Rather than document urban space, her images capture the atmosphere and shadow play of New York’s gray winters. Spumes of steam merge with the overcast sky to produce near monochromes and road

informed by other media, such as sculpture and science, as they are by photography. Avoiding pure abstraction, the exhibited works are often “dirtied” by other practices and disciplinary, making the everyday into something abstract. James Hyde defies the flatness of photographic prints by making use of sculptural and painterly strategies. Hyde applies paint and attaches objects to photographs of scaffolding and other architectural forms, highlighting the rhythmic and musical qualities of the composition. Seemingly improvisatory, the aural and visual combine and recombine to synesthetic affect. Summer Kemick’s installation of snapshotsized prints made in her native Hawaii forms a cloud of vibrant color and textures. The arrangement of successive images suggests the drama of a narrative arc without any explicit meaning, stemming from a place of memory and ebullience. An artist who mainly works in sculpture and installation, Sungmi Lee has recently

markings form striated drawings. Avery McCarthy presents a series of black-andwhite contact prints called The Theory of Everything. Lifting scientific imagery from various online sources, McCarthy uses a systemic approach that finds equivalence among atoms, neurons, viruses, cosmic bodies, and mathematical models. Colin Montgomery’s photograph made specifically for the exhibition creates a network of foam and spray taken from images of a boat’s wake. Almost sculptural in form, the large-scale print alludes to both the microscopic and the cosmic. This broad vision is fitting for an age in which seemingly benign travel can have global climatic impact. Paul Salveson’s black-and-white photographs are informed by DIY ‘zines and role playing games. Salveson’s prints were made with the intention of being cheaply reproducible via desktop laser printers or photocopying machines where mid-tones are often abandoned for the high contrast grit of true black and white.

(left side) Sungmi Lee, White Air (triptych), 2006-8, edition 1/3, c-print on aluminum, 11" x 14". (right) James Hyde, Gusting, 2007, acrylic on digital print, wood blocks, 20.5" x 30.5".

Featured exhibitions

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NEW YORK Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison Jack Shainman [Oct 10 – Nov 8] In their first exhibition in New York in years, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison examine the contested legacy of science and technology as a vehicle for progress. Entitled “Counterpoint”, this work represents a new aesthetic for the artists, with the tightly closed narrative discarded in favor of abstraction and visual improvisation. Eschewing any type of resolution, and feeding ambiguity at every point, they provide insight into the failure of technology to fix our problems, offer concrete explanations, and create certainty about the world. Scenes of “hybridizing forces, swarming elements, and bleeding overabundance” emphasize the unpredictability of nature, further intensified by human

meddling. In contrast to their earlier staged photographic works, in this new work, the ParkeHarrisons use proportion and space that are more compositional than natural. They also blur movement and allow objects and persons to be juxtaposed in a kind of unfolding choreography. As a result, the visceral sensation of the work is heightened to a new level.

Jane Hammond

Galerie Lelong [Sept 4 – Oct 11] These new works by Jane Hammond merge photography and collage, yet hold true to the artist’s fascination with how meaning is constructed. Accompanied by the wit, careful attention to detail, and subtle audacity that are the artist’s hallmarks, Hammond recontextualizes found images into imagined scenarios that are unique and uncanny, yet oddly familiar. Although she previously worked on paintings that used a fixed vocabulary, she has been focused mainly on photography since 2004. The photographs employ the same inventiveness and irreverence as in her other works, yet in a medium associated with fact and the historical record. When, in Panchatantra, a nude bather poses happily in a stream alongside a long-tusked elephant, the image reads as tender, idyllic, and completely plausible. In Cabrito, the oddity of an anthropomorphized goat practicing archery in the mountains among sheep is offset by a sense of familiarity with the scenery and

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the harmony of the photograph’s formal elements. Also on view will be large “snapshot” works in which Hammond has collected vernacular portraits and inserted herself into each one, presenting the viewer with a panoramic album containing an array of identities.

[Hammond’s work is also being exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver and will be on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts beginning on Oct 1.]

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison: (top left) Red Tide, 2007, inkjet and acrylic on dibond, 50" x 60". (middle left) The Crossing, 2005, inkjet and acrylic on dibond, 46" x 60". (top right) Elegy, 2007, inkjet and acrylic on dibond, 60" x 91". (bottom right) Jane Hammond, Cabrito, 2007, selenium-toned silver gelatin print, 11" x 14". Galerie Lelong, New York.

NEW YORK Iran Do Espírito Santo

Sean Kelly [Sept 5 – Oct 18] In “Deposition,” Brazilian artist Iran do Espírito Santo’s new work is divided into two sections. En Passant, a sitespecific painting, includes simulated modulations of light on walls, depicted in various gradations of the color gray. As in past work, Espírito Santo succeeds in transforming the architectural space in which he works. The wall painting becomes a precise depiction of a photographic gray scale that combines natural light and a representation of

pictorial light, creating a conceptual interplay between the two. The second part of the exhibition includes two large granite sculptures, Desposition 1 and Desposition 2. Both are over-sized framed pictures in which the frame and the image are created from the same material. In blurring the line between the two, Espírito Santo has produced monumental sculpture that reference both functionality and design inside the tradition of Minimalism. Perception remains key to both works as he constantly deconstructs the experience of viewer.

Alexey Kallima & Jennifer Steinkamp Lehmann Maupin [Sept 4 – Oct 18] After twice being commissioned in recent years to create high-profile museum installations (first for the Denver Art Museum’s Libeskind-designed building, then for the Getty Museum’s Meier-deigned building), Jennifer Steinkamp presents a new series in New York. Entitled “Daisy Bell”, the installation explores the relationship between human creation and natural world. Like her previous work, it seeks to transform the gallery space into a unique environment. Its title refers to Bell Labs use of an IBM 704 to synthesize a popular nineteenth century song of the same name. This 1962 event was followed six years later by a more famous iteration of the song, by HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, during a poignant scene in which the computer’s “mind” is destroyed. Steinkamp’s installation is comprised of images of poisonous flowers that appear to cascade down the gallery walls.

Much like Bell Labs earlier experiment, Steinkamp links her artwork to the use of human innovation to recreate nature. [Bowery Location, 201 Chrystie] In his first solo gallery exhibition in New York, Alexey Kallima will present new work, including a site specific installation. A refugee from Grozny, Chechnya, Kallima fled to Moscow shortly after the Russian invasion in 1994. The turmoil of this experience is reflected (often directly) in his politicalcharged paintings and installations. Among the included work are a series of new, large scale paintings. Although his work often

(top left) Iran Do Espirito Santo, En Passant (detail), 2008. Photo: Mauro Restiffe. Photo courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. (bottom left) Jennifer Steinkamp, Daisy Bell, 2008. (bottom right) Alexey Kallima, to be titled, 2008, coal and sanguine on paper, 8.27" x 11.42".

uses an expressive language, he nonetheless references historical paintings. In such work, he probes the ongoing Russia/Chechen conflict and his own personal experiences as a refugee. A series entitled Chechnya’s Women’s Team of Parachute Jumping and Its Virtual Fans recalls the segregated teams that Kallima remembers from childhood. Even so, Kallima imagines an utopian world in his work, one in which ethnicity is not an all-encompassing reality. For his installation, Kallima will plaster the walls with political imagery from magazine and newspaper articles. [Chelsea location, 540 W 26th]

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NEW YORK Shigeru Oyatani

Kim Foster [Sept 4 – Oct 4] work through the accumulations of thin layers of oil paint. In many of these works, Oyatani carefully marks the surfaces with small strokes of imagery in bright hues, often against dark monochromatic expanses of architectural details. Representations of the natural as well as the constructed world collide until the viewer is able to reconcile the two by focusing on the details.  Oyatani’s work combines elements of abstraction and representation, pattern and grid, and surface and illusion. Upon close inspection, several layers begin to emerge, creating a space in which dimensions collapse into alternative realities.

Raised in Japan but having resided in New York for several years, Shigeru Oyatani creates hybrid works that bridge traditions Each and West. From selection of color, composition, and form to the subjects he chooses, his works blend the visual vocabularies of disparate cultures. This new exhibition, “Third Plane”, includes paintings that reflect this in their complex visual layering. Excavation is required to

Roman Bearden

DC Moore [Sept 4 – 27]

New York City is the star of twenty works by Romare Bearden (d. 1988). Entitled “City Lights”, the exhibition features expressive watercolors, some with paper collage, that capture the energy of the city. The highly charged compositions were painted between 1979 and 1986, including several of which were done for the opening credits of Gloria, John Cassavettes’ 1980 film. Bearden lived most of his life in New York, growing up in Harlem during its Renaissance and returning to the city after service in World War II and

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study in Paris. Known best for his collages of African American life, his New York paintings reflect some of the spirit of jazz culture; they burst with improvisation and even a sense of rhythm. He expresses the intensity of the urban environment through the interaction of colors hot and cool. Pink, oranges, yellows, and reds combine with greens, purple, and blues. Vivid skies dominate in several of the works, including a low hanging moon in New York, New York. In others, the skyline and its multitude of densely packed buildings contrast with lively street scenes filled with people. Untitled (Woman Leaning on a Chair), conversely, regulates the city to the role of backdrop for the nude in front of a window. Ultimately, while invoking a past era in which New York was a much different place, these works demonstrate the timelessness of the city as character. [Evening Light, a group exhibition, will run concurrently.]

(top center) Shigeru Oyatani, Natsu, 2008, oil on canvas, 24" x 24". Kim Foster Gallery (bottom left) Romare Bearden, From the Waterfront, 1981, watercolor, 13.88" x 19.5". DC Moore Gallery, New York. (bottom right) Romare Bearden, Narrow Sky Line, watercolor, 13.5" x 9.13". DC Moore Gallery, New York.

LOS ANGELES Max Janson & Elizabeth Tremante Christopher Grimes [Sept 5 – Oct 11]

Battling against the barrage of high-speed media in our culture, Max Jansons seeks to create a “slow and intimate experience”, bolstered by vintage techniques and classical ingredients. In this sense, he resembles a chef advocating slowfood in a world dominated by processed, fast food. But if Alice Waters can do it and succeed, so can he. Janson uses nature and antiquated objects as subjects and constructs his paintings with linen primed in lead, paint ground in aged oil, and pigments whose sources are extinct. By creating work inspired by daily life, he has aligned himself with historical American painters. Janson likes to “blur the distinction between the abstract and material world.” He also considers himself a painter of things.

“I paint to experience the pleasure of seeing and the pleasure of painting these things,” he says. “The exchange that exists within the work between the old and the new acts as a metaphor for the project and process of painting.” Although Elizabeth Tremante falls within the landscape painting traditions of observation drawings and studies of the natural world, she challenges the emphasis on panorama. Instead, she seeks to exploit abstractions of space, form, and color. In doing so, her work captures an intimate, active, and assertive depiction of the landscape – a stark contrast to the passive illustration typically associated with the method.

“Ultrasonic International III” Mark Moore [Sept 6 – Oct 25]

In this third installment of the gallery’s annual Ultrasonic International show, the theme is “back to basics” and it’s reflected in the title, “Elementary, My Dear Watson”. Explorations of the self dominate the work of the sixteen chosen artists. Their art creations are investigations of individual obsessions and

(top left) Elizabeth Tremante, Twilight, Spring Rain, 2007, oil on canvas, 48" x 48". (center left) Peter Lamb, Soldier, Spy, 2008, archival digital print on bibond, LED lights and acrylic, 78" x 48". (bottom right) Damien Deroubaix, Sans Titre (lion rouge), 2008, watercolor, ink, acrylic, and collage on paper, 59.1" x 78.7".

personal reflection. Featured are Anders Bojen & Kristoffer Orum, Brian Bosworth, Walpa D’Mark, Damien Deroubaix, Per Enoksson, Brian Getnick, Christine Gray, Philip Gurrey, Lia Halloran, Peter Lamb, Olivier Millagou, Jered Sprecher, Villeroy & Boch, and Matt Wardell.

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LOS ANGELES John Jurayj & Maria E. Piñeres Walter Maciel [Sept 6 – Oct 25]

Julian Hoeber

Blum & Poe [Sept 6 – Oct 18] This exhibition of new work, "All That is Solid Melts into Air", includes the Los Angelesbased artist's Op Art works on paper, as well as a series of bronze sculptures. This is his third solo show at Blue & Poe.

Patriarchy and its failures inhabit the space of John Jurayj’s show “Untitled (We Could Be Heroes)”. Jurayj continues to explore beauty and destruction within the same pictorial frame, employing imagery from the ongoing Lebanese conflict. Remembrance of traumas past are a dominant thread of his work, causing it to transcend generational and cultural boundaries. This show introduces a major new work, 15 Untitled Men, a series of gunpowder images that depict key power players of the Lebanese Civil War, including Yasser Arafat, Menachem Begin, Hafez alAssad and Pierre Gemayel. Scaled to the size of an embassy portrait, these “negative ghost images” – screened on mirrored stainless steel – posit a compressed Oedipal space of father, son and viewer. Violence is inscribed throughout on multiple levels of time, form, and image. It is represented as both a past event (the burning of the eyes on the initial digital images) and an ever-present future possibility (the potential explosiveness of the gunpowder surface). Opposite these images are a group of new paintings on colored mirrored plexiglas. Abstractions are mixed with scenes of destroyed buildings and night bombings. In fact, the introduction of mirrored plexiglas as “canvas” into the more traditional painting space implicates the viewer into historical

event. The installation as a whole quite literally explodes and collapses the platonic integrity of any one individual painting. Each work is in a continuous alteration by the viewer, the gallery, and the reflection of the other paintings. This heterogeneous approach suits a splintering, fragmented trail that meanders from the personal to the social and back. Libertango, a solo show of new work by Maria E. Pineres, takes on sexually charged themes by referencing a song of the same name by Grace Jones, in which a mysterious man lurks around at night in 1970s Paris. Continuing her traditional use of needlepoint as her medium, Piñeres explores color, pattern, and disposition of a single subject, a typical gay pin-up boy from that era. The nude portrait is presented in contrasting colors within complex backdrops, perhaps as a metaphor for the different experiences by the urban dweller in the song. Vibrant colors are used in a formulated format to compare and contrast the different poses of the subject. The works also draw reference to the commercial aspects of repeated imagery so central to Pop Art. Ultimately, Piñeres both reclaims the traditional use of needlepoint as an craft and presents a new format that allows for a dialogue within the context of contemporary art.

Cropped by Publisher. See full image at www.acamagazine.com.

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(clockwise from bottom right) Maria E. Piñeres, Gay Guy 3, 2008, cotton thread on metallic coated paper, 9" x 5 3/4". Julian Hoeber, Spiral and Splatter #2, 2008, graphite, ink, acrylic on paper, 42.5" x 53". Hoeber, Untitled, 2008, bronze, 9" x 8.5" x 16", photo: Joshua White. John Jurayj, Untitled (Elie Hobeika) from the “15 Untitled Men Series”, 2008, gunpowder and silkscreen on stainless steel, 30" x 24".

LOS ANGELES Jody Zellen

Fringe [Sept 6 – Oct 4] “The Blackest Spot”, an interactive installation by Jody Zellen, uses Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power as its point of departure. Canetti speaks of crowds as a mysterious and universal phenomenon whose density creates the “blackest spot”. Using images of crowds culled from the daily newspaper, Jody Zellen explores the representation of crowds and the myriad of reasons for public gatherings. Animated imagery, fragments of sounds from wellknown historical speeches, and drawing will transform the gallery space and place the viewer in the role of audience or speaker. As viewers interact with triggers strategically placed on the floor of the space, they will be able to choreograph their own experience. Alternating between contemplative quiet

and a cacophony of cheers, the many facets of public gatherings will be explored. Lewis Keller, an L.A. Based artist who combines

technology with simple structures, assisted Zellen by programming the electronics for this project.

[Concurrently, John Craig Freeman and Will Pappenheimer present “Virta-Flaneurazine (VF)”, a new drug that enhances the experience of Second Life, a 3-D virtual world. Through this Rhizome-supported convergence, they create an interactive, new media experience that transcends the boundaries of reality and art.]

Abel Auer, Armin Krämer, and Dorota Jurczak Michael Benevento [Sept 12 – Oct 22] Both Abel Auer and Armin Krämer use figures as well as landscapes influenced by a combination of Central European iconography and the vivid color schemes of the late1980s and early-1990s skater culture. In both their takes on landscape painting, a saturated palette brings to life rural and historical settings. These works owe little to traditional modes of representation and ignore the basic laws of perspective. Jurczak’s fantastical and nightmarish works merge influences from folklore and mythology, with inventions of her own imagination. Her etchings, often with an aged patina, belie their contemporary

origins, while her figures are predominantly indebted to Eastern European iconography and its rich tradition of Post-War illustration. In Jurczak’s menacing, imaginary scatological world, the cast of characters is comprised of anthropomorphized birds and spiders, along with bizarre human figures. Placed in both traumatic and humorous scenarios, these inhabitants reveal the nuances of life’s pleasures and pains. The overall effect resembles the playful world of children’s book illustrations, where botanical and architectural anachronisms co-exist in harmony.

(left) screenshot from Second Life, enhanced with "VF". (top right) Jody Zellen, installation view of "The Blackest Spot". (bottom right) Armin Krämer, Frau Mit Hut 1, oil on canvas, 27.5" x 19.7".

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SAN FRANCISCO Emilio Lobato III Andrea Schwartz

Gwen Manfrin and Wynne Hayakawa

Emilio Lobato’s solo exhibition, “Tomando Medida” (Taking Measure), refers not only to the process of producing geometric forms, but also to the constant self reflection so integral to the creative act. Lobato’s work has been inspired by both his rural upbringing and current urban existence. The combination of growing up on a family farm in Colorado and secluding himself daily in his studio have helped him realize how stark surroundings enable him to focus on the power of imagination and creation.

A two-person show in October combines recent work by Gwen Manfrin and Wynne Hayakawa. Manfrin’s portraits offer a chance encounter with the intimacy of the individual at any moment in time. The poses are often uncomfortably confrontational, reflecting the teenage angst experienced by many young girls. Hayakawa works from landscape, sketching and painting on paper. She nears complete abstraction in her large oil paintings, which maintain references to the light, colors, and forms of the outdoors.

[Sept 3 – Oct 3]

[Oct 7 – Nov 7]

Roy Thurston and Anna Valentina Murch Brian Gross [Sept 4 – Nov 1]

an extremely labor-intensive process. The ultimate result are sculptures with a purity that lends itself to contemplation by the viewer. As an environmental artist, Anna Valentina Murch considers the constant flux, fragility, and beauty of the natural environment through images created by light reflecting on water. Mostly known for her large-scale, public installation, she often works collaboratively with architects, engineers, and other artists. In such works, she draws inspiration from the history

and landscape surrounding the space of the installation and uses this to create an experience that incorporates light, water, and sound. In Dissolving, the Bay Area artist exhibits photographic prints that explore the ways in which environments are rendered when reflected in water. Images of plant life are shown disappearing, dissolving in the water. Her photographic investigations ask questions about the fragility of an organic world in which ice caps are melting and environmental changes threaten us all.

Los Angeles artist Roy Thurston, known for his minimal painted wall reliefs, opens a solo exhibition of new work comprised of metal or wood. In this collection, he investigates pure abstraction and phenomenological experience using subtle color shifts on three-dimensional planes. Although he considers himself a painter, much of his work has been on three-dimensional forms. Beginning in the 1970s, he painted on aluminum and other metals. Most recently, he has started milling the metal surfaces,

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(top center) Gwen Manfrin, There are Demons in These Days, 2008. (middle left) Roy Thurston, 2007-2, 2007, 17.25" x 6.06" x 1.5". (lower right) Anna Valentina Murch, Dissolving (0867), 2008, 40" x 25.7".

CHICAGO Reena Saini Kallat

“INDUSTRIA”

This solo show is the first in the U.S. for the Mumbai-based artist. Reena Saini Kallat’s works, all of which were created this year, confront the vulnerability of human existence. Synonym, a series of sculptural paintings, is composed of several hundred stamps with the names of people on them. While a close view reveals the lettered components, from afar the parts coalesce to form portraits. The stamps themselves have further significance, though, as upon them are names of missing persons, rendered in over twelve languages that represent the diversity of India. Not only does Kallat explore those lost or hidden in Indian society, she also looks at an external anxiety: the fragile and at times tense relationship between India and Pakistan. White Heat is a sculpture of an over-sized iron placed on a seemingly dysfunctional ironing board, while the iron itself is packed with weaponlike projections. The fabric waiting to be ironed is embroidered with the names of those who signed a petition of peace between the two countries along with multiple maps of disputed territories between the nations. Kallat’s work reveals much about the national psyche, in a society struggling with diverse identities and the potential for conflict both internal and external.

Not in my back yard! This familiar refrain of aggrieved suburbanites takes on new meaning in Ryan Zoghlin’s NIMBY, a series of photographs that explore homes located near large industrial elements. A sense of foreboding looms over the large images, but a sense of humor breaks the tension. The contrast between rustic dwelling and the behemoth of industry reinforces both elements. In addition to Zoghlin’s work, “INDUSTRIA” will also feature a series entitled, Energy, by Dimitre. These works were created as part of a project for Exelon, a Chicago energy company. A sculpture by Terrence Karpowicz rounds out the show. Composed of actual industrial items, the sculptures evoke the essence of industry. Karpowicz emphasizes the “tension at the point of contact between disparate materials.” Such tensions are present

Walsh [Sept 5 – Oct 11]

FLATFILE [Sept 5 – Oct 24] throughout this exhibition. [Two video works by localstyle, Fluid Mechanics Remix and Prick, will also be displayed.]

Steve Hansen

Function+Art [Sept 5 – Oct 16] In his new show, ceramist Steve Hansen transitions his theme from the selling of goods to the selling of ideological “truths”. He approaches Propaganda, the name of this new series and also its underlying concern, as if it were any other mythology, religion, or product. Filtering everything through a Pop Art lens, this new work takes iconography from actual propaganda posters from a variety of countries. In fact, Hansen noticed astounding parallels between the works produced by disparate countries, from Germany to Japan and Russia, even America. Foreground in most, according to Hansen, are appeals to the “fear of the Other”, an attempt “to demean the enemy” through exaggerated and stereotypical racial portrayals. The army, of course, is most often the desired beneficiary of popular support in these campaigns. Similarities not only exist between countries but also between state propaganda and what some might consider its capitalist successor, advertising. Hansen’s God of Commerce is also included in this exhibition, providing the viewer with

(above left) Reena Saini Kallat Synonym mixed media 88 x 84", (top right) Dimitre Electric Tower Photograph 18 x 22. (above right) Steve Hansen Lenin Tea Sculpture.

an unique opportunity for comparison and analysis between the commidification of state versus that of consumer goods. Much like Andy Warhol’s marketable images of Mao, which Hansen references as an antecedent, these series demonstrate the irony of competing ideologies within the same art object.

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W A S H I N G T O N, D.C . Nancy Scheinman

John Trevino

Heineman Myers [Oct 4 – Nov 8]

District Fine Arts [Sept 6 – Nov 8] “What Comes Next”, a new series of photographs by artist John Trevino, examines dreams and memory created as the residual of human interaction. His images build on this theme by documenting his friends, colleagues, and acquaintances wearing water polo caps customized by the artist. Worn on players’ heads during water polo matches, caps take the place of jerseys in other team sports. As a form, they represent striking juxtapositions in design, part helmet, part cartoon. This “tough sensitivity” also characterizes much of the sport itself, which can be quite brutal, yet at times exhibits the gracefulness of a ballet. Taken out of this context, Trevino transforms the caps and the wearers into a strange and mysterious collective force or team on the verge of some kind of unknown action. Captured against environments Trevino frequents around the city as part of his routine, the work becomes a meditation on those locations and the people in his life.

The narrative paintings of Nancy Scheinman incorporate a fascinating array of techniques, drawing from the ancient and modern, Eastern and Western. She also uses a wide variety of materials, such as hand-embossed and patented copper, antique tin, paper, bronze wire cloth, ceramic, canvas and gold leaf on wood panel. Scheinman’s exquisite collages resemble tapestries for their many rich textures, lustrous natural colors, and narrative qualities. “My work deals with the basic universal questions and feelings we all have about life,” she says. [The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards, a juried art competition, will also be hosted at Heineman Myers. The three honorees will be chosen from 15 finalists, among them Maggie Michael (see page 82) The exhibition runs Sept 3-27.]

[District Fine Arts will also present a special event, “Hit Me With Music!”, at a Bloomingdales location in Chevy Chase, MD. The group show, which runs from Sept 5 through Sept 14, will feature photographs by Leon Armour Jr. and Chester Simpson, as well as paintings by Leah Tinari.]

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(Left side from top) Nancy Scheinman: Unzip the Sky – Morning Light, Vermillion Clothes of Brocade Leaves, Hem of Sky Undone. (Right) John Trevino, Bill, 2008, pigment print.

SEATTLE

Ted Fullerton

Foster/White [Sept 3-19] In his new exhibition, “Godot Will Not Be Coming Today”, Ted Fullerton seeks to reach the boundaries of figural creation through painting and sculpture. This body of work, conceptually based on Samuel Beckett’s existentialist play Waiting For Godot, includes drawings that incite existentialist discourse. Fullerton sees existentialism as fundamentally humanist and uses this conception to propel his investigation of the figural and symbolic. Says Fullerton, “my imagery is symbolic and metaphoric by nature, usually associated

to or interpreted with myth that alludes to ‘dualism’ – or the personification of the force of nature as well as human nature – and this conceptual ideology addresses the notion of the reconciliation of opposites. The idea of ‘distinctiveness’ has also evolved within my work, allowing consideration for the breadth of existentialist positions.” His exploration of diverse media demonstrates just how compelling the human figure can be. Religious and mythical overtones coupled with Fullerton’s expressionistic brush strokes raise his figures into an ethereal realm.

“A Matter of Memory”

McLeod Residence [through Sept 27] Made up of several components, this exhibition focuses mainly on the work of Robert Zverina and Allison Kudla. Zverina’s contribution, memory (w)hole, explores the importance of tangible artifacts in an increasingly digital age, one in which information has become more ephemeral and history can be revised with just a few keystrokes. The title references George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel in which history is constantly being rewritten, with the old versions being tossed into the “memory hole” – an incinerator. Accordingly, memory (w)hole is a play on words that implies we inhabit a space between total recall and utter amnesia. Where one falls on that spectrum is a conscious choice. Zverina’s obsession with documenting life’s everyday details through video, writing, and photography puts him firmly towards one end. Included in this exhibition are short films that he shot on a digital pocket camera. Zverina carries his camera wherever he goes and shoots films daily, ranging from one to 30 seconds in length. He then selects the best clips, annotates them with descriptive keywords and logs the date, location, and subject of each micro-

documentary in a process he’s dubbed “autobioanthropolography”, a combination of autobiography and anthropology. His hope is that these vignettes combined with objective data will provide a useful glimpse at a subjective history of the early 21st century. In an adjacent parlor, Zverina will exhibit photographic prints and various artifacts. Allison Kudla will create an installation that will evolve over time. Decorative Growth

(top left) Ted Fullerton, Existence, Essense, 2008, oil on canvas, 60" x 48". (bottom right) Allison Kudla, Plant matter, detail, 2008.

Pattern is made of living plant matter that takes on the form of a man-made decorative pattern and explores a territory where human constructions are present in the genetic formations of living systems. Leaves are shaped by a digital image and suspended in square-tiled petri dishes that contain necessary nutrients to keep the plants alive. Viewers will witness subtle changes in color and texture over the duration of the exhibit.

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DENVER

DIALOG: Denver

Robischon [through Sept 20] Presented in association with “Dialog: City – An Event Converging Art, Democracy and Digital Media,” this group exhibition of over 25 artists serves as a response to the Democratic National Convention. The diverse show focuses on various aspects of our experience. Harking back to past eras but also aiming at the present, Ann Hamilton’s spinning two-bell sousaphone plays a continuous recording of old, distorted military marches. Conversely, Daniel Peltz grounds his work in the media of today by investigating the global impact of political connections in the age of cell-phone

technology. His video project is constructed with a dedicated group of Japanese Barack Obama supporters who happen to reside in a city that shares a name with the candidate: Obama, Japan. Taking on the the language of politics more directly, Luke Dubois’ Hindsight is Always 20/20 utilizes an eyechart format to explore the linguistics of the presidency in American history. Words from State of the Union addresses appear arranged in descending order from the most frequently used to the least. Not surprisingly, “terror” dominates those of George W. Bush. Other highlights include DJ Spooky’s feature video “Terra Nove: The Antartica Suite” (shown offsite) and Lynn Hershman Leeso’s alter ego Synthia. Robischon has also commissioned a political placard design invitational, in which sixteen select Colorado artists with a history of presenting political subjects have been invited to each contribute a

uniquely-themed, original artwork for exhibition. These placards will later be exhibited at the “UnConvention” (see page 74), Minneapolis’ equivalent of “Dialog”. Among them is Sarah McKenzie’s Katrina Water Lines, which evokes queries and rage about the country’s reaction to the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina. Other artists address topics as far ranging as war, wasteful spending, the treatment of animals, and the cultural dissonance between Americans’ perception of themselves and those perceptions that people hold of them elsewhere.

Over forty prints, illustrations, and political cartoons of the Pulitzer-prize winning comic artist Jules Feiffer will be presented just in time for the Convention. Feiffer, whose syndicated cartoon ran for over 40 years in the Village Voice, has also been featured in the New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy, the Nation, and the New York Times. These cartoons weaved the social, political, and personal into a challenging and often hilarious mix. This unique sensibility can be found in his wideranging work. Feiffer has authored awardwinning children’s books and is currently working on a full-length animation feature for Sony Pictures. This will not be his first foray into film, as he wrote the screenplay for Carnal Knowledge, a film that starred not only Jack Nicholson but Art Garfunkle,

in addition to an Oscar-winning short, Munro, that took a critical view of military culture. In 1967, he received an Obie Award for his play Little Murders. Coincidentally, Feiffer even has a connection to Convention politics. He was a delegate at the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention, and much of his work comes from that explosive era. The talent and insight behind all of these pursuits makes itself clear in the works on display.

Jules Feiffer

Michele Mosko [through Nov 2]

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(top right) Ann Hamilton, Sousaphone, 2004. (middle right) Sarah McKenzie, Katrina Water Lines, 2008. (bottom left) Jules Feiffer, Admit It. You Miss Me., 2007, charcoal on paper, 8.5" x 14". (bottom right) Jules Feiffer, Obama, Ourbama., 2008, limited edition print, 15" x 11".

DENVER “Assemblage And Recyclates” Translations [through Sept 12]

Over the past few years, green culture has infiltrated everything. All kinds of commodities now have eco-friendly components, or campaigns associated with them. The trend has reached as far as wedding dresses and even caused a television network to devote an entire week to the environment. Fine art is on this bandwagon as well. Contemporary artists have resurrected the assemblage art form that dates back to Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, both of whom took found objects and combined them in unusual ways in their art. While some contemporary artists are pursuing this eco-friendly art route, others recycle materials that would otherwise be discarded, such as plastic, and use them to create art. These materials are called recyclates. “Assemblage and Recyclates” brings together these two strains in environmental art. Seven Colorado artists as well as one each from Los Angeles and Nashville are displaying their work around the time of Democratic National Convention. The greenthemed convention inspired Translations to show visitors the possibilities of ecofriendly art. Included in the exhibition are sixteen pieces of art created with materials that range from ordinary found objects such as metal, wood, glass, and plastic to unusual art materials, such as old maps and Tyvek, a synthetic material created by the DuPont Company.

All of the artists in the exhibition draw attention to their use of recycled materials using diverse artistic techniques and styles. For example, L.A. artist Joseph Shuldiner upcycles plastic grocery bags and tightly weaves them together in his Discarded Leaves. Leaf and flower shapes are cut out in the plastic bag weaving, which reflects Shuldiner’s exploration of the interplay between natural materials and human intervention in his work. Boulder, Colorado, artist Sara Goldenberg White stitches geometric shapes onto recycled plastic, creating an alternative quilt that explores color interaction and the altering of perceived space. The assemblages in the exhibition are especially interesting due to the unique qualities of the found objects. Nashville artist Adrienne Outlaw often finds an unusual

(top right) Adrienne Outlaw, Discontinued (after music box), 2005, found metal box, straight pins, paint, 5" x 7.5" x 4.75". (bottom left) Sara Goldenberg White, Perceiving Change, 2008, recycled plastic & thread, 39.5" x 38.5".

piece of metal that acts as a base for her work and then adds other types of metal to it. Discontinued (after music box) includes an old metal box as a base that she found in her one-hundred-year-old workplace building. Heavy straight pins are pierced through it and are visible through an opening. Colorado artist Leo Franco combines found wood and metal to create small geometric compositions in Line Phase and Prepared Piano: Hammer. Through their diversity of style and techniques, the artists have achieved their goal of using discarded objects to create pieces of art. In the process, they exhibit a wonderful exploration of the creative use of artistic materials and join into the broader eco-friendly social movement. – Kate Merkel

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MINNEAPOLIS Party Party in a Tweety Land b/w This Republic of Suffering Form + Content [through Oct 4] Curated by Camille Gage and Colleen Sheehy as part of the “UnConvention” (see page 74), this exhibition “contemplates the tensions between suffering and denial, grief and self-absorption, and uncovers real losses buried under the wreckage of a consumer and celebrity obsessed culture”. Using the structure of an old 45 rpm, the show has two sides. In the “A side” of the show, three exhibitions probe the way that media affects our lives. Christopher Baker’s video explores

the intense self-absorption that sometimes stems from internet life, while Philip Harder parodies advertising in his short film iRaq. The image of Britney Spears – recently having made a cameo in a John McCain ad – is dissected in Scott Seekins series of work about the decline of the American Empire. Images of another sort dominate the second half of the show. Jaron Childs’ This Republic of Suffering features paintings of anonymous, grieving subjects that he found through Google Images searches. In REQUIEM, Harriet Bart remembers the soldiers killed in Iraq through hanging paper scrolls that include the names of the more than 4,000 who have perished. Taking a look at an often forgotten part of society, Kristie Bretzkie captures the faces of homeless panhandlers and the diverse emotions they offer. Rounding out the show are two photo series by Xavier Tavera that cover both aspects of the exhibition. His “A” side photographs of raunchy rave culture contrast with his “B” side work on Latino families reenacting the passion of the Christ during Holy Week. In a world filled with human suffering, people are increasingly becoming numb to the plight of others. This exhibition goes a long way toward exposing the tragedies as well as examining our society’s coping methods.

“Genus elephas”

Premier [through Sept 19] In the spirit of the Republican National Convention, Premier Gallery will hold an exhibition devoted to original artwork inspired by or about the elephant, the iconic symbol of the party that will soon be invading the Twin Cities. Artists from across the Midwest submitted pieces for this exhibition, which will include a juried competition and award presentation during the convention.

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(clockwise from top right) Scott Seekins, I Thought I Heard Your Voice, 2008, oil on canvas, 20" x 20". Nick Legeros, The Thinker, bronze. Erika Fuentes, 624787, Acrylic. Jaron Childs, 2005-09-03T1617...image, 2006, oil on panel, 16.25" x 11.75".

SOUTHWEST

Paul Shapiro

Zane Bennett, Santa Fe [Sept 12 – Nov 8]

Throughout his career, Shapiro has explored various styles, from Modernist landscapes to abstraction. His process of painting is quite organic. “I want to leave the door open to the endless possibilities of my creative process, always embracing the realm of uncertainty,” says Shapiro. “I feel that art should function as an icon of the sublime, not a reinforcer of the mundane, so we may be reminded of beauty and what we are.” This exhibition is a survey of his abstract paintings from 1990 to 2008.

Hector Ruiz & David Kessler

Bentley, Scottsdale [Both exhibitions: Sept 4-30] Mexican and Kickapoo American artist, Hector Ruiz, presents “L’art m’emmerde j‘ai participe a cette expo”, a continuation of his series on miscegenation. Proposing the mixing of races as an opportunity to end racism and wars, he also recognize the fear many have toward this possible change and the effect it will have on our rituals and identities. Ruiz comes from a bicultural identity and grew up in a border state. As a result, he was at the forefront of changes in American culture; this is represented in his work. This exhibition brings together new works in various media, including painting, block prints, as well as bronze and handcarved sculpture.

(top right) Paul Shapiro, Iru, 1990, oil on canvas, 60" x 72". B Littled, 2008, wood, 33" x 11.5" x 4".

(bottom left) Hector Ruiz,

Exhibiting professionally for over 35 years, David Kessler creates hyper-realistic landscape paintings on aluminum that utilize the qualities of refracted light and its interaction with pigment. In painting on aluminum instead of canvas, Kessler uses wire brushes to abrade into the surface of the aluminum, creating a fluid, refracted light. The paint is airbrushed on in transparent layers, which allows the burnished areas of aluminum to act as highlights and merge seamlessly with paint to create dazzling images. This technique enhances the illusion of depth and space in the work, as the brushed aluminum highlights appear to move when the light changes.

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SOUTHEAST Mason Murer

Atlanta [Sept 26 – Nov 8] Group Show: Richard Estes, Gail Wegodsky, Susan Loeb, Honnie Goode, Liana Repass, James Way, Pam Moxley, and others.

Todd Schroeder and Patrick Kelly

2CarGarage, Savannah [Sept 19 – Oct 14] This current work from Todd Schroeder explores such existential ideas as the “eternal collapse of matter”. Instead of a world of expanding possibilities, he sees a reality that is caving in on itself. He uses mathematical concepts, such as the Fibonacci sequence and golden mean, to present these ideas. In this show, he has also incorporated graphic elements into his works. Yet, when words are present, they are often rendered

backwards or upside down to appear as objects like any other. Patrick Kelly’s work is an “intuitive rendering of a variety of planes and shapes” that often feature a progression of colors. According to the artist, his work typically “begins with a single gesture”, which he builds upon with instinctive brushstrokes that eventually connect each element of a painting.

Naomi Silva

Atlanta [Sept 12 – Oct 4] New works of abstract artist John LaHuis and new sculpture by Daniel Florida.

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(clockwise from top right) Todd Schroeder, Kick Ass. Patrick Kelly, Fracture. John LaHuis, If You Love Me, from "Take Me" series, mixed media on panel with resin and steel frame. Liana Repass, Untitled, pastel on paper.

SOUTHEAST James Rosati

Jerald Melberg, Charlotte [Sept 13 – Nov 1]

The artistic journey of James Rosati (1911-1988) was grounded in his time as violinist in the Pittsburgh String Symphony and as a sculptor for the Works Progress Administration. Moving to New York in the 1940s, he spent forty years on sculptures, producing a body of work of great significance. His abstract work drew on his experiences with the rhythms and fluidity of music. Connecting with and enhancing their surroundings, his large works always fit well in grand plazas. One of his famous sculptures, Ideogram (1972), was displayed between the World Trade Center towers in New York until the events of 9/11 destroyed it. The nearly twenty-four foot work welcomed visitors to the modern complex and was often photographed by tourists. Twenty years after his death, his work can be found in the National Gallery of Art, the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Hirschhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, among a myriad of others. This exhibition, “Simple Line, Complex Form” presents a survey of his sculpture as well as many of his works on paper. It is the most significant collection on display in several years.

James Rosati: (top left) Mansion 1, 1962, caen stone, 18.75" x 15.88" x 12.13". (above left) Untitled, 1968, stainless steel, 53.5" x 78" x 24". (above right) Untitled, 1970-8, painted aluminum, 23.5" x 59.75" x 29.5".

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David Nittmann T h e

F I N E

A R T

o f

W O O D T U R N I N G

“Acoma Noosphere” 25” diameter African Mahagony

Represented by

Santa Fe • 505-982-2403

davidnittmann.com

NYLA WITMORE PATHWAYS Exhibition & Sale November 7th - 26th

Tuscan Vineyard Glow (24x48) by Nyla Witmore

Patrons Art & Framing 127 West 10th Ave., Denver, CO 80204 (303) 321-5585 www.patronsart.net Hours: Wed. – Sat. 10:00 – 5:30

First Friday Gallery Walks Original Paintings by Local & Regional Artists

Quiet Passage 48X48

“12” 60X70

www.karenzhaynes.com

www.judycampbellart.com

Z

studio Denver, Colorado

In the Gallery...

AUGUST 23 – NOVEMBER 2, 2008 Opening Reception:

Saturday, September 13th, 6–9 pm 503 N. Lincoln Ave. • Loveland, CO 80537 (970) 962-2410 Tues, Wed, Fri 10-5 • Thurs 10-9 Sat 10-4 • Sun 12-4 Admission is free www.cityofloveland.org

Rome 1957 oil, 36” x 38”

Tsegi Overlook, Canyon de Chelly • Oil on Linen • 34" x 44" framed

208-A Ranchitos Road Taos, New Mexico 87571 575.758.9120

ALYCE FRANK

NEW LOOK: www.fenixgallery.com

ERIC BOYER

contemporary

Among contemporary sculptors working with wire mesh, Eric Boyer stands out for the beauty of his male and female figures and for the sophistication with which he explores a medium that consists as much in open, empty space as in the solid strands that contain it.

A SCENSION 45” x 24” x 6” STEEL WIRE MESH Photo: Addison Doty

Hunter Kirkland Contemporary 200-B Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501 phone 505.984.2111 fax 505.984.8111 www.hunterkirklandcontemporary.com

Contemporary Art in Denver: A Twenty Year Journey The Mile High Scene is Peaking at the Perfect Time by Michael Paglia

T

he eyes of the nation have been turned toward Denver lately. Not only will the 2008 Democratic National Convention be held here, but Colorado, in which Denver is the capitol, has emerged as one of a handful of key battleground states in this year’s presidential contest. Now it may be tempting to see these facts as being indicative of an increasingly heightened profile for the Mile High City (excuse the pun). Yet, there’s a pesky bit of trivia that would seem to undercut this tidy story: the Democrats convened here once before, way back in 1908, and at that time, too, Denver was a rising star among American cities. But during the intervening century, it’s been a rollercoaster ride of booms and busts. For anyone who was alive the last time – I’m sure there are a couple – this may be old news. For everyone else, though, there is something very new and exciting about Denver hitting the big time right at this moment. The last bust was in the 1980s, and that’s where this story of the city’s vibrant art scene begins. At that time, the metropolitan area was less than half its current size. Today, greater Denver now has close to 3 million residents, and in terms of art, this population boom has prompted a predictable proliferation of galleries, which now

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number over a hundred. But what has been unpredictable is that most of the today’s top contemporary galleries are essentially the same ones that were atop when the city last hit a nadir two decades ago. This roste r of longstanding venues includes Robischon Gallery, Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery, William Havu Gallery, and Carson/van Straaten Gallery, all of which were present in some form back then. These exhibition venues focus on national and international artists, but every one of them has also built

(top right) Clark Richert, A/C Kepler, acrylic on canvas. Rule Modern and Contemporary Gallery. (bottom right) Sue Simon, Cacophony, acrylic on canvas. Spark Gallery.

its reputation, in part, on the foundation of Colorado’s own homegrown talents. Robischon may be the city’s chief purveyor of contemporary Chinese art, but it also promotes the careers of locals like Jack Balas, Terry Maker, and Scott Chamberlin. Rule has a large contingent of modern masters, but in addition to ones from New York like Carl Andre, it promotes those at home as well, including Dale Chisman and Clark Richert. At Havu, regional favorites – Tracy and Sushe Felix, Amy Metier and Emilio Lobato – are among the regulars. Carson/van Straaten, the oldest of the group, features Jeff Wenzel and Homare Ikeda, both among the numerous established and respected Colorado artists whose work may be seen there. Many of these artists – just like the galleries that show them – trace their career origins back to the 1980s.

A few new venues have joined the top ranks, or at least aspire to do so. These are Plus Gallery, Walker Fine Art, and Space Gallery. These three also present a heterogeneous group of artists, alternating shows between out-of-towners and regional figures. Among the locals seen at these spots are Bruce Price and Andy Miller at Plus, Roland Bernier and Robert Delaney at Walker, and Michael Burnett and Ryan Anderson at Space. One venture on the immediate horizon that will surely also emerge as a top exhibition attraction is Gallery T, which is going to be run by Ron Judish, a respected name in Denver’s art establishment for the last quarter century. He’s hoping to

(top left) Jeff Wenzel, Burning Ground, mixed media on canvas, 49" x 60". Carson/van Straaten Gallery. (bottom right) Tracy Felix, Maroon Bells, oil on canvas. William Havu Gallery.

reassemble the stable from his closed Ron Judish Fine Arts, and he’s already snagged Emmett Culligan and Bill Stockman. In addition to the critical mass of galleries that have coalesced since eighties is the simultaneous founding of a set of alternative spaces. These places – Spark, Pirate, Edge and Core, among others – are run by the artists who show their works in them. Although they play only a supporting role to the larger community, some names are worth extra attention. Phil Bender, Mark Brasuell and Sue Simon not only mount shows in their respective co-ops but in museums, too. This thriving art scene may seem irrelevant to Denver’s new found fame based on politics. Yet, coincidentally, even before the city was selected to host the convention, events in Denver had begun to make news internationally – and it all started in the city’s art world. A museum building boom has been raging in recent years and started with the construction of an outrageous new building for the Denver Art Museum. Conceived by

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starchitect Daniel Libeskind, the Frederic C. Hamilton Building has been ridiculed as looking like the site of an airplane crash. Although ironic considering Libeskind designed the original Freedom Tower on the World Trade Center site, the description is not far off. The outlandish titanium-clad forms got Libeskind’s Hamilton into art and architecture magazines everywhere and thus put Denver on the art world map in a way that it had never been before. The freestanding

addition is just across the street from the museum’s main building, the equally flamboyant, iridescent glasstiled North Building, which was designed by Gio Ponti in the 1970s. With the opening of the Hamilton in 2006, there was a sea change in the art scene that was profoundly felt not only at the DAM, but in the rest of the city’s many exhibition-venues. The Denver Art Museum helped broadcast to a wide audience that the city had come of age, helping to put the town in the spotlight. Surely, the attention helped position Denver on the list of cities being considered for the DNC. At the same time that Denver was raising its profile, the Hamilton’s opening also sparked the continued expansion of the city’s visual arts infrastructure. In the fall of 2007, the Museum of Contemporary

Art/Denver cut the ribbon on their new building. Like their colleagues at the DAM, the powers-that-be at the MCA/Denver tapped an international architecture. In this case, London-based designer, David Adjaye fit the bill. But this is just the beginning. A huge new Colorado History Museum and a Clyfford Still Museum are both set to rise in the next couple of years on sites at either side of the Hamilton. The history of art in Denver can be traced back to the last decades of the nineteenth century—the DAM came online in 1893. Now, in the first years of the new millenium, there has been a major, qualitative change as the city increasingly becomes the unrivaled center of art in the Mountain Time Zone. And it could not have happened at a better time. While media will converge on Denver to cover politics, they will likely stumble upon its incredible art scene as well. ACA

Michael Paglia is the chief art writer for the Denver Westword.

DEnver ARTIST HONORED The last remaining works of Mark Travis, a Denver painter whose life ended last December, will be shown at Space Gallery through October 11. In fall 2007, Travis originally planned to exhibit new work to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. His intention was to produce, over the course of the year, a politically motivated body of works. The fruition of this challenge, although inevitably unrealized, may lead viewers of this collection to a deeper understanding of the more complex nuances in Travis’ mark making, color composition, and figural abstraction. Those who knew Mark Travis in his life describe him as a “consummate painter”, an “artist’s artist”, or more succinctly, “the real deal”. Travis’ relationship with Denver galleries was at times strained due to his clear

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understanding that the trajectory of his own work and career conflicted with the systemic commodification innate to the art market. Travis lived the subsistent life of an artist, supporting himself on odd jobs and the sale of his art work. It is apt to say Travis was the epitome of the starving artist, the likes of which we see in the movies. Although his health had been wavering for years, it was a great shock to his friends and the local art community when a neighbor found Travis’ body in his studio this past December. Nearly nine months later, it is difficult to grasp the profundity of this loss both personally for his friends and colleagues and for the the art world. The striking significance of his abbreviated career hinted at the great pieces Travis had yet to create. This is a great opportunity to see what was lost.

(top left) Robert Delaney, Deer, painted steel. Walker Fine Art.

Minneapolis

confronts convention by Tori Frankel

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This year's election cycle allows commentators and citizens alike an opportunity to evoke parallels between today's America and versions of the country past. For some, the candidacy of Barack Obama reflects the wonder of the youngest elected U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, and the optimism of the early 1960s. Others of a similar ideological bent find the ascendancy of the Democratic Party, mixed with economic turmoil, to be a mirror of the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the coming of the New Deal. Both reflect a longing for an identity larger than just oneself, a link to the civic community. These liberal fantasies, however, are sternly confronted with a political environment that seems less receptive to their realization. In no place will this be more clear than at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, in early September. The Republicans will soon descend on the city for their convention. The country, meanwhile, struggles to navigate the wreckage of the past seven years. As the Republican party confronts the challenge of holding a convention in St. Paul, the other Twin city confronts the political landscape that Republican government and vision has wrought. Beginning in the summer and continuing through the Republican National Convention, Minneapolis galleries and museums have staged exhibitions that, in ways both indirect and overt, challenge the status quo. A city that has recently been listed as the “most livable” in the United States (by European magazine Monocle no less), situated in a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1972, may seem to clash with the party encroaching on its turf. Minneapolis'

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art scene, however, is more than up to the challenge of putting things in context. Two museum exhibitions resurrect images of past American triumphs, while more contemporary events take on the current reality by seeking new ideals to push the country in the direction of renewal. This year marks the 75th anniversary of one of the high points of the Democratic Party: the beginning of the New Deal and

presidency of FDR. That era, in a time of severe economic turmoil, revolutionized the concept of America by drastically expanding the role of the federal government and, as a result, the nation's collective responsibility. One of the consequences of this agenda was government funding of art through the

Public Works of Art Project and the WPAestablished Federal Art Project. In addition to artists under sponsorship, many others worked independently to capture the reality of the times. The official repository of works from this era is the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota. It holds over 1,000 works by over 200 artists and presented a selected of these for display this summer. Although much of the 1930s art could be labeled as social realist, artists actually created in diverse styles. Emphasis was placed on industrial accomplishments and the workers that produced them. But many images also focused on the downtrodden, attempting to highlight their strife while implying eventual rectification of their predicament. Government involvement, combined with the subject matter portrayed in this art, resulted in a sense of heightened national identity among Americans, an ideal that would see its fulfillment in the propaganda supporting the war effort in the 1940s. The spirit of that age remains relevant to the present. Although it quickly faded, the attacks of 9/11 provided an ephemeral moment of collective identity among Americans and much of the world. More recently, the country is faced with an economic crisis that many expect to be the worse since the Great Depression. The result could well be an expansion of collective control over the economy through government bailouts. In spite of these provocations toward a renewed sense of communal responsibility, the events of the Republican National Convention will assuredly envision an America that is

Eero Saarinen, Dulles International Airport Terminal, circa 1963. Photo: Balthazar Korab © Balthazar Korab Ltd.

different from the one projected by the New Deal. The era, of course, is anathema to a party that speaks most often of faith in the marketplace. And far from the patrician Roosevelt, recently successful Republican politicians have upheld the folksy everyman, an ideal associated more with rugged individualism than any collective concern. Another touchstone for Democrats is the overreaching aspirations of the Kennedy administration. Nearly fifty years ago, the JFK presidency pushed the United States toward the future through a mission to the moon and an emphasis on national responsibility. The attitude of this era, of possibilities tinged with an underlying fear of world annihilation, could also be found in the futuristic, space-age architecture of Eero Saarinen, which will be showcased after the convention by the Walker Art Center and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Although the architect died shortly after Kennedy entered office, his legacy endured as projects he designed continued through the mid1960s. In many ways, his work reflected the sense of progress as well as the fear of

the sublime. His famous Gateway Arch in St. Louis presents the enduring vision of American expansion and, therefore, the country's dominance. But it was his two famous airport structures, the main terminal at Dulles International Airport and the TWA terminal at JFK Airport, that express the possibility of a transcendent world in which progress succeeds indefinitely. Like the works from the New Deal, they uphold a sense of community identity linked with the universal culture of air travel. They underline the changing nature of the world. If New Deal works presented the ideal of surviving through community and the work of Saarinen pushed for blind hope in progress, the current state of America challenges both notions. The country today arguably lacks any sense of collective purpose. And while faith in progress never dies, we have reached a point in which a slight plurality of Americans feel things are getting worse. The Republicans are not solely to blame for these developments, but their status as the party in the White House makes them a symbol of the past

(top right) Eero Saarinen, TWA Terminal, circa 1962. Photo © Balthazar Korab Ltd. (above left) Berenice Abbott, Murray Hill Hotel: Spiral, 112 Park Avenue, Manhattan, 1935, gelatin silver print. (above right) Dorothea Lau, Workers - Five O'Clock, ca.1935-40, oil on canvas.

seven years, of mismanaged wars and incompetent disaster response. The promise of the post-9/11 American community never reached fruition. Instead, the country moved further on the path of partisanship, selfish individualism, and excessive consumption of resources. Although Saarinen's Dulles terminal outside of Washington, DC, was christened by Kennedy a year before the president's death, the forward-looking ideals of progress implicit in that structure were quickly overshadowed by assassinations, a treacherous war in Southeast Asia, and

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for artists to start a visual conversation composed in contemporary art. Featuring work in a variety of media, the most popular part of the exhibition was an exploded concrete sculpture by Brenda Ingersoll. Reminiscent of a World Trade Center tower, the sculpture evokes the sense of national unity that could have driven the country in a positive direction. Just as “Revisions” sought artist participation, “The UnConvention” seeks to involve the public. A non-partisan counterpoint to the Republican National Convention, “The UnConvention” will bring citizens together to promote an unscripted dialogue on important issues.

Encompassing many different events (see page 54 ), its overall effect is one of heightened civic involvement. “My Yard Our Message”, a online lawn-sign creation contest, features numerous calls to vote, as well as images that reflect upon America's standing in the world. One states when “when government lets us down, we must rise up”. Such a call for collective action against an ineffectual government reflects Thomas Jefferson's notion of democracy. The most enduring rebuttal to the convention, however, may end up being “The State of Things”, a giant ice sculpture of the word “Democracy” that will slowly melt during one day of the convention. The final two months before the presidential election give the country an opportunity for self-assessment. In Minneapolis, the modernist glory of Saarinen and the transcendent collective of New Deal art offer a look back at what America has been in the past. They also give insight into what is lacking today. A collective responsibility for this country, realized by something as simple as voting and as complex as providing for all citizens, was the important then and remains so now. ACA

internal strife at home. The America of 1970s was a place in which modernism slowly died and gave way to the post-modernism that has characterized much of the last thirty years. Forms became illusive. If the American identity was more secure in those past eras, today it has become something under constant consideration. As America undergoes changes in its composition and its status slips in the world, its identity is in need of redefinition. Over the summer in Minneapolis, an exhibition attempted to do just that. Susan Hensel Gallery presented “Revisions of the American Dream”, a showcase of thirteen nationally selected artists whose work examines the composition of the American ideal in today's age. Zach Pearl, the curator of the show, sought an “aesthetic call-to-arms”

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(top left) Brenda Ingersoll, 35.53, concrete with inset pennies. (bottom right) Nora Ligorano & Marshall Reese, The State of Things, sculpture in ice, 5' x 30'.

Art in the

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hese days, it is fashionable to declare the imminent fall of the American empire. Although many shrink from using such overt language, they still recognize the challenges of energy dependence, economic overextension, an emerging China and reemerging Russia, and the resultant decline in American influence. The impetus for this turnaround in the national narrative lies in the recent past. While the 1990s were a decade of American dominance, the attacks of 9/11 – “the barbarian invasions” as filmmaker Denys Arcand called them – begun an era of challenge to this unipolar position. As we approach the seventh anniversary of that shocking day, we can more readily measure what has been lost than what has been gained. Presidents are often identified in retrospect with certain eras of American history and the trends that became apparent during them. It remains doubtful that any

will ever be viewed with as much infamy as the one in which we currently live. Never before in the postwar era has the American ideal been so open to dispute. The changes that this country has witnessed over these last eight years are not confined to any single realm of the country, nor do they stem entirely from namesake of the era and his administration. More than anything, they signify the continuance of lost opportunities and the assertion of a reckless leadership. Government agencies have been devalued and politicized, just as the truth about war and the economy have been. Challenges at home and abroad have been met with diversions instead of confrontation. An America that was never asked to sacrifice – financially, physically, emotionally – after 9/11 has instead overindulged. Today, the country faces a financial crisis that stems in large part from the consumer-obsession of a nation that has long given up on any civic-minded, collective identity The butcher's bill has come due, and while pundits and best-seller tell-alls provide insight into this period, the best way to wade through the insanity is through unconventional means.

In assessing the Age of Bush, artists must ask how new realities should be presented and what imagery can best evoke them. Rectifying the present with past is a good

(top right) Helene Silverman, Poster - Freedom From War, 2008, archival ink-jet print, 20" x 16". (above left) Guillermo Kuitca, Poster, 2008, archival ink-jet print, 20" x 16". Both courtesy of The Wolfsonian at FIU.

by Eric Kalisher

way to begin to tackle these issues, and such a theme underpins an exhibition at the Wolfsonian. The museum, part of Florida International University in Miami Beach, invited over 60 artists to re-envision Norman Rockwell's “Four Freedoms” paintings for the present era. Rockwell's iconic images from 1943, based of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third inaugural address, visually presented freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. In “Thoughts on Democracy”, the exhibition resulting from the Wolfsonian's challenge, the artists collectively demonstrate the ways in which the American ideal has evolved over the past half century. Rockwell's depiction of freedom from fear has particularly relevance today. The poster featured a mother and father tucking their children into bed. Two artists take on this image directly by showing the result of fear in our own era. James Victor paints

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T

over the scene and creates one in which the mother and father mourn over a flagdraped coffin, likely housing a soldier killed in Iraq. In his alteration, Victor emphasizes an event that gets little attention – the media is banned from military funerals resulting from Iraq War deaths. Guillermo Kuitca similarly highlights the marginalization of civic concerns. He recasts Rockwell's image in the corner of an empty stage, free of any audience. The problem is not merely that the American ideal is in trouble, it is the apathy of the citizenry to such concerns. The Iraq War figures prominently in many other posters that address fear. The terror stoked by talk of “mushroom clouds” was, in fact, used by the government to launch the invasion of Iraq. In Helene Silverman's creation, the faces of the war stare back at the viewer, in a mosaic that includes the war dead with red, white, and blue superimposed over it, serving as a universal face. Its imagery evokes a politicized variation on a Rauschenberg or Johns creation and challenges us to confront both what the flag represents and what it has wrought. Fear is also the theme of Chaz Maviyane-Davies' contribution, a deconstruction of the color-coded terrorist alert symbol. Different languages are attached to each color. The safe level corresponds to “we the people” in English, while its Arabic equivalent is demarcated as a red alert. Fear of cultural pluralism is the

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enduring impression. As the war confronts us face-to-face, we must confront whether our own intolerance and marginalization of those abroad have contributed to it. The “global war of terror” is not the only brand created by the Bush administration. In recent years, freedom itself has been commodified as a product to be exported to the rest of the world. In his poster, George Mill presents “freedom” in a pretty advertisement, indistinguishable from those created on Madison Avenue. While we may see freedom as an irrevocable right, in this ad “certain restrictions apply”. The disclaimer underneath the ad image indicates that it

is “Subject to change without notice. The right of freedom is made available 'as is' and without warranty of any kind.” In a nation of mass consumption of throwaway products, perhaps freedom is just another among them, able to be discarded on a whim. In an economic reality in which citizens endure creditors who can change rates and charges without notice, perhaps government can similarly alter its compact with the people. Mills' disclaimer also sets clear limits on liability: “The right of Freedom may be exercised on the strict understanding that neither the Government nor its ministers, employees or agents shall be liable for losses of any kind.” Accountability, therefore, no longer exists. What will push Americans out of complacency and toward confrontation with the problems of the day. Adam Lewin's poster updates the freedoms, in exaggerated form, to today's realities. Freedom of speech may exist, but it has become increasingly restricted. A gagged man is taken away by police in image that demonstrates the quashing of protest. With an image of Nike shoes, freedom to worship is applied to faith in the market of goods. Freedom from want, meanwhile, has been transformed into freedom of excess, with a fattened individual sucking down McDonald's fast food. Finally, in the post-9/11 world, freedom from fear becomes state protection, in which the prevalence of security measures, including the security cameras pictured in Lewis's poster, become the only means to that end. Freedom of fear has moved away from the psychological state to the aggressively invasive measures that “protect” us from physical harm but not from fear itself. These posters make it clear that America is failing to live up to its ideal. Elliot Earls channels Liberty Leading the People, but recasts it as “Liberty Weeps”, with a baby Liberty distraught and seemingly calling for someone to take responsibility for her and, accordingly, the country's direction. The image provides a culmination of what has been lost in the Age of Bush. America has faced challenges in the past – from the internal division of the 1960s to economic turmoil in

(top left) Dan Van Clapp, Fountain of Carnage, assemblage fountain. Part of "Patriot Act" (above) Elliot Earls, Poster - Liberty Weeps, 2008, archival ink-jet print, 20" x 16". Courtesy of The Wolfsonian.

the 1970s and the culture wars of 1990s – but rarely has the America slipped so far in the mind of the world and many at home as well. If America is a shining beacon, its light has now dimmed. If it is once was morning in American, it now seems like dusk. A simple, to-the-point image by Wim Couvel, however, provides a call to action. Superimposed over a listing of the four freedoms is “Remember!” These freedoms will no longer be illusive if we forgo apathy and actively seek to restore the highest promise of them. By forgetting or neglecting, by denying the reality that confronts us – the baby liberty with tears in our eye – we make it impossible to leap toward the idealism that makes American the standard-bearer for the free world. We must take notice.

We can start by having a discussion about how to define America. A forthcoming exhibition in Orange County, California, does just that. Entitled “Just How Does a Patriot Act?” and curated by Joella March, it includes works by nearly 30 artists, accompanied by performance art and poetry. Freedom of speech and the dialogue of ideas are two major underlying threads of this show. In the Age of Bush, though, what is dialogue but the airing of the oppositional viewpoint. The problem is not so much that the two sides aren't talking – although that is a problem – but that one side is being completely marginalized. That has been the Bush administration great political success and the country's great loss. While the citizenry is largely aware of the dictates from the White House, the official policy and government “propaganda”, those views rejected by administration often fail to filter through to the population. A vocal minority warned of distortions in the intelligence that supported the casus belli, and Ed Gramlich, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, was ignored when he warned about lax regulation of mortgages. The truth is out there, it just often fails to make it to the public in any widespread form. The exhibition's cri de ceour quotes Thomas Jefferson: “to dissent is patriotic.” The artists included live up to this mission by probing

subjects like the influence of money on U.S. policy and the hidden toll of the Iraq War. For too much of the world today, the image of America is similar to one created by Noah Breuer: two arms covered in dripping blood.. Up at the elbow, the blood begins to conform to two separate patterns enhanced by blue: the British and American flags. Although an extreme image, the idea that blood is on the hands on America and its transatlantic ally is an underlying reality of international dominance and invasions that yield tens of thousands of civilian deaths. This message is seconded in Dan Van Clapp's “Fountain of Carnage”, an assemblage fountain in which bloods pours our of a the muzzle of a gun. America's unwillingness to acknowledge this bloody reality, no matter the justness of the cause, is emphasized in the image. The influence of the Iraq War on the current American reality may not be so apparent to citizens who do not venture abroad and instead shield themselves in local concerns. For some, financial matters remain paramount. Ryan Broughman and Robin Clark examine American identity through the deconstruction of its primary currency: the greenback dollar. Broughman reshapes the dollar into a narrative of America in which war drives the American economy. Clark, on the other hand, culls

(top right) John Carr, War Is Peace, screenprint. (above right) Noah Breuer, Blood On Our Hands, silkscreen print. Both part of "Patriot Act"

images from the dollar to understand how the currency gains its power and identity. At the heart of both are the military-industrial complex, which offers world superiority and consumer comfort. The U.S. has been free of terrorist attacks over the last seven years. Some Americans, therefore, believe wars abroad bring peace home. This is a long-running theme in American history: military might makes the world safe for American. From World War II to Vietnam to Iraq, foreign

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conflicts are viewed as protection of the way of life that exists in the home front. John Carr make the link explicit in “War is Peace”, a screenprint that shows two peaceful Americans watching a nuclear light show. But conflict is not just something that protects American from attack. It is also something that enriches the population and helps build a complacent existence. The happy red, white, and blue-tinged couple titillated by the Bomb are the beneficiaries of the militaryindustrial economic boost. With weapons manufacturing, the U.S. expands both its military and economic prowess. It was this way in Cold War era and remains so today. The cost of complacency at home and aggressive military actions abroad is a lost of acceptance by the world and, more importantly, the loss of lives. Abstractly represented by Matthew Bryant are the “34,452 Civilians Killed in Iraq During 2006”. Sparing the viewer the pain of direct representation, the image nevertheless presents the immensity of the lost. Clayton Campbell takes on a different kind of death, the destruction of ideals. “After Abu Ghraib” manipulates the infamous images and makes them more palatable by diminishing the visceral horror that the originals evoked. By taking the edge out and sparing the victims, Campbell seeks to draw viewers into the abstract debate about the principles destroyed by the images existence – and the events that led to them.

While these shows in Florida and Southern California challenge the idea of American in 2008, a New York City exhibition provides the most horrible, Grand Guignol grotesque of the current era. Amid the summertime playfulness (real or nostalgically conjured) of Coney Island is the “Waterboarding Thrill Ride”. For some children and naïve individuals, the title may suggest boogieboarding down a watery slope and getting splashed. Appearances can be deceiving, though, as even the image of Spongebob Squarepants, adorned on the exterior of the rise, defies its playful roots with a “It Don't Gitmo Better!” caption displayed above the

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cartoon character. Noticing this phrase and its key reference to the Guantanamo Bay military detention camp, most will hopefully understand the dark side of this spectacle. If not, perhaps the image of an animatronic figure in black “waterboarding” another in orange, while it convulses, will send the message home. By inserting torture into the everyday, Steve Powers, the artist who created the installation, comments on the complex nature of America in the age of terrorism. It is not simply that such acts have been used by the United States government, but it's also the widespread acceptance of them. The television show 24 foregrounds torture in nearly every other episode. Government officials actually sited the show as inspiration for their actions, if not justification. This perverse and backward relationship between pop culture and policy is reflected in the “Ride”. Some experts feel that torture works best when those who use it know they are breaking the law. The theory maintains that, under threat of legal repercussion, these tactics would only be used in the most extreme cases (picture a ticking time bomb). Yet, the very word “waterboarding” seeks

to diminish the act of simulated drawing (that is, torture) into something less terrible, into something bureaucratic and routine. Correspondingly, Powers takes this further by placing “waterboarding” within the confines of a thrill ride, a fun event in which patrons receive a sadomasochistic pleasure. With this satirical rendering, euphemism has reached its extreme. Simulated drowning has gone from torture to fun ride in a mere eight years. An event of national tragedy has went from solemn occasion to an impetus to a false war to a grotesque precursor of American decline. These three exhibitions highlight what has been lost. In contrast to the political conventions that take will place in late August and early September and the campaigns that surround them, these art events look backward at the remnants. In both the Democratic and Republican conventions, we will probably see posturing about the future instead of confrontation with the past. No politician has won favor by looking backward, except in teary eyed nostalgia or while evoking blood-lust vengeance. But, in raising the toll of these past years, this art influences the cultural discourse and incites active minds to ponder this country. Assessment of what has gone wrong is an essential precursor to moving forward. ACA For a longer version of this article and more information about the exhibitions visit acamagazine.com

(top) Clayton Campbell, "After Abu Ghraib", digital print series. Part of "Patriot Act" (above right) Jacques Auger, Poster - Vote, 2008, archival ink-jet print, 20" x 16". Courtesy of The Wolfsonian.

Coney Island’s Newest Attraction:

Waterboarding On an overcast Sunday at Coney Island, artist Steve Powers could be found making repairs to the amusement park’s newest, most notorious addition, “Waterboarding Thrill Ride,” an art exhibition where plastic mannequins are used to simulate the controversial practice of waterboarding. Waterboarding is a procedure whereby a person is made to feel like he or she is drowning. The official US government position on it is that it is not a form of torture, though many people say that it is. Powers’ exhibit allows visitors a chance to observe a simulated waterboarding session by placing a dollar bill into a slot on the wall and watching as a hooded figure pours a pail of water onto the towel-covered face of a man in an orange jumpsuit, while music plays menacingly in the background. In contrast, Powers, cheerfully decked out in plaid shorts and a t-shirt and sporting a Cosmo Kramer ‘do, told us that the purpose of the exhibit was “just to get a reaction out of people.” An avid painter of “personal relationship stuff,” Powers had never built an art installation before. He said the spot was offered to him and that “it was the right thing in the right place at the right time.” Powers stated that he has no future plans to create other political installations, but

that “Waterboarding Thrill Ride” will be relocated to Manhattan in September and then eventually to Washington DC. Visitors walking by stopped to look at the exterior of the exhibit, many taking photos of the painting of Nickelodeon characters Spongebob Squarepants and Squidward. In the painting, Spongebob is lying on his back while Squidward pours water onto him and exclaims, “It don’t Gitmo better!” in a not-so-subtle allusion to tactics allegedly used at Guantanamo bay. Some peered through the single barred window to watch the exhibit below. The growing line of people to see the show peaked the curiosity of others, who waited for their turn. Many people walked away laughing. A gentleman wearing khaki shorts

Steve Powers, installation view "Waterboarding Thrill Ride".

Photos: Jillianne Pierce.

and aviator shades observed, “I saw an article about this in the New York Times. People are laughing. Do they understand?” Siblings James, Sarah and Patrick Hanlon were visiting from Chicago. When asked what they thought of the experience, all three of them laughed and said “It was funny.” James, 12, said it was funny because “it was awkward.” While admitting to only “kind of” knowing what the exhibit was about, his sister Sarah, 16, laughed because “it’s fake.”  Older brother Patrick, 20, explained “the government says it’s not torture, but clearly it is. And the Spongebob is even better,” he grinned. Jim Knipfel is a Brooklyn resident and a seasoned Coney Island visitor, though this was his first time visiting the exhibit. He said, “If you look at the history of Coney Island, it always reflected culture and ugly things in culture. People say this is shocking and disgusting and offensive, but this is being done to robots. I think it’s fantastic; maybe we’ll open a few eyes.” – Jillianne Pierce

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A Portrait in Inspired Abstraction by Tracey M. Hawkins

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Living the nation’s capital can be a bit challenging for any artist. For Maggie Michael, who has been based in the city for the last eight years, the stressful and difficult challenges of this period have played into her work. Although born and raised in Wisconsin, she lived and worked in San Francisco during the late 90s while she pursued an MA from San Francisco State. Her time living in Washington, D.C., where she moved to complete an MFA from American University, has influenced her creative career, but she has also been impacted and shaped by her two previous, decidedly different environments.

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During Michael’s early career years in the Midwest, she was drawn to and influenced by the powerful abstract gesturalism and

but that line must also include two vital American female artists. Post-Painterly Abstractionist Helen Frankenthaler’s

strong colors in the paintings of Chicagoborn American Abstract Expressionist Joan Mitchell. Michael’s viewers can trace a historical line of influence from her work back through Mitchell to the Abstract Expressionist paintings of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline,

wonderful fluidity and sensual compositions were another early influence on Michael. The less obvious influence on Michael’s early stylistic development, however, was Louise Bourgeois, whose unique sculptures and undeniably female perspective presented a new avenue to the young Michael, who even

Maggie Michael: (top right) in her studio (bottom left) Untitled, 2007, latex, enamel, spray paint, charcoal, ink, nails on canvas, 64" x 42".

while in high school grew tired of the more publicly celebrated male version of Abstract Expressionism. Michael professes that she responds more to sculpture than painting and often incorporates sculptural elements into her own gestural abstract paintings. While in San Francisco during graduate school, Michael’s experience of the radiant California landscape added its own layer of influence to her work. Living near the mountains, she absorbed the strong California environment and processed it into her painterly style. In Washington, she has been influenced by the political life of the capital. Her color palette has altered, as lately she has been painting in variations of black-white-grey

and red-white-blue.  While she does not restrict all of her paintings to these restrained color palettes, she does find the challenges of working within set limitations quite exciting. This brings to mind the work of another strong, female American modernist, poet Marianne Moore.  This reference feels appropriate, as Michael wants her work to be analogous to poetry, to embody an ephemeral way of thinking about and approaching things. In addition to the political impact Washington has asserted on Michael’s body of work, she has been afforded access to the city’s many wonderful institutions for study and research. Michael has been the recipient of a prestigious Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. This honor granted her access to the museums, collections, and curators of the Arthur M. Sackler and Freer Gallery of Art, where she has researched on Hindu Shiva and Vishnu sculptures, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture

Garden, where she has focused on historical and contemporary film. In her research, she has been particularly drawn to major themes of creation and destruction as well as passion, desire, and loss. These common themes of contrast and conflict are now a very strong presence in her current work. Maggie Michael’s work is currently on view in exhibits at Rule Gallery in Denver, CO; G Fine Art in Washington, D.C; The Lab in Lakewood, CO; and the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT. Next year, she will be exhibiting a new body of work at Pocket Utopia in Brooklyn, NY in May, where she may, in addition to her paintings, surprise her viewers with work in sculpture and/or film. ACA

Tracey M. Hawkins is a Professor of Art History at the Art Institute of Atlanta and a Contributing Editor to this magazine.

Maggie Michael, (top left) You Conquer Me, 2007-08, ink, latex, spray paint, enamel, vinyl stickers and nails through canvas, approx. 20" X 24". (bottom right) Cage, 2006, latex, ink, enamel, oil, charcoal on canvas, 60" X 40".

maggie michael

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17th Annual USArtists

American Fine Art Show October 17 – 19, 2008 Preview Gala Thursday, October 16 33rd Street Armory, Philadelphia

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John Evans, Gallery Henoch

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Pennsylvania Art Conservatory

Adelson Galleries

Forum Gallery

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Alexandre Gallery

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Godel & Co. Fine Art

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Blake Benton Fine Art Blue Heron Fine Art Brock & Co. Childs Gallery Clarke Gallery Contessa Gallery The Cooley Gallery David David Gallery Dixon-Hall Fine Art Dolan/Maxwell F.A.N. Gallery Dr. Tom Folk

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Menconi & Schoelkopf Fine Art, LLC

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from the curator

" a q ui estamos "

Organizing a Cuban Art Exhibition By F. Lennox campello

Several years ago, almost by accident, as a fundraiser for the Havana Hebrew Community Center, I co-curated an exhibition of Cuban art in the greater Washington, DC, area, putting together artists from Cuba with those from the Cuban diaspora around the world. It was a tremendously successful exhibition, both critically and commercially. Since then I have continued to develop my ties and relationship with many of those artists as well as new ones, and this new exhibition, “Aqui Estamos (Here We Are)”, to be held at H&F Fine Arts, is the last in an interesting series of Cuban art exhibitions that I have curated. In “Aqui Estamos”, I have put together the core of some of the artists whom I consider to be among the best of a leading group of contemporary Cuban artists. These artists, working mostly out of Havana, use their art not only as a means of expressing their plastic arts talents, but also as a powerful vehicle to deliver strong narrative issues, ideas, and concepts. Often, members of this brave group challenge in subtle ways the harsh realities of Cuban life, governed, as they have been for almost 50 years, by an iron-fisted dictatorship with little room for dissidence in any form or manner. Key among this talented group are the works of Sandra Ramos, a young and multitalented Havana painter, videographer, printmaker, installation artist and sculptor.

Adding to Ramos’ mixed media etchings and paintings in the exhibition, are the Santeria-inspired photographs of Marta Maria Perez Bravo, perhaps the leading Cuban photographer of her generation, and her younger compatriot Cirenaica Moreira, whose feminist and politically-driven work have been described as “woman as vagina dentata”. The paintings and digital prints of Aimee Garcia Marrero, almost exuberant in their technical skill, also add narrative scenarios to the mix. Cuban-born and Boston resident Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons is perhaps the most important Cuban artist in exile. As evidence, I point out that she has shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center, the Smithsonian, the Venice Biennale, and many other prestigious venues around the world. And last year the Indianapolis Museum

Sandra Ramos, Azrael, 2006, mixed media on canvas. Aimee Garcia Marrero, Aliento (Breath), oil on canvas. Cirenaica Moreira, La Libertad es una palabra enorme (Freedom is a Huge Word), gelatin silver print.

of Art hosted “Everything Is Separated by Water”, a mid-career retrospective of Campos-Pons’ paintings, sculptures, photos, and installations. These artists and others in this exhibition will show viewers a visual artistic roadmap of clues and signs, all deeply immersed in the Latin American tradition of narrative artwork. It is married to political and historical references as well as personal iconography. It is equally important as a significant and historical footprint of their birth nation’s history. The exhibition has an opening reception on November 1, 2008 from 5-8PM and runs through November 29. H&F Fine Arts is at located at 3311 Rhode Island Avenue in Mount Rainier, MD, just outside of Washington, DC.

from the curator

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ARTISTS

nathan fischer

Transformation in Bronze

When you first think of the alloy bronze, you typically think of a sculpture, carefully modeled in clay and then cast in a foundry. However, when contemporary artist Nathan Fischer thinks of bronze, his first inclination is “landscape.” It is that mental transformation that Fischer uses in his artwork, as he takes a medium typically used one way and converts it into bronze panels, much like canvases that collectors are eager to hang on their walls. Perhaps it’s not surprising that Nathan Fischer came to use bronze in his artwork, as he first learned the process of casting bronze sculpture at his father’s art foundry, the Monterey Sculpture Center. Working side by side with his father, himself an accomplished artist, he felt a closeness to the arts dating from his boyhood days in California. But it was the beauty of the coastline in Monterey, where the water transitioned from land and sky that prompted his love of the landscape. Capturing the varied way nature lights these elements are the focus of Fischer’s unusual artistic technique. Fischer starts by forming panels of a sheet of bronze. It must be cut, bent, soldered, and finished with detailed refining work before he can fully use it as a “canvas” for his artistic technique. By sanding and polishing the surface he creates underlying dimensions which are accentuated by welding, hammering and grinding the surface. It is with these minute angles at the surface that cause the light to bounce off the tiny little grinding lines that are then colored by applying various chemicals in different layers to the raw metal, sometimes while being heated with a torch. Obviously, his color palette is comprised largely of golds,

umbers, rusts and steel blues. While to some this might seem like a limited array of color, Fischer takes it as a personal challenge and so forms deep skies, rich horizons, and unusual vanishing points. “A lot of trial and error goes into each piece,” comments Fischer. “Sometimes I get lucky and finish a piece the first time... I love those days!” His work reflects why he is drawn to art as he believes it “speaks the universal language of the landscape,” which can be appreciated by all, whether you are a traditionalist or have a taste for the more contemporary. Indeed, some might even suggest that his work at times has an Asian feel, with large amounts of negative space, allowing the viewer to feel almost insignificant when compared to the vastness of the landscape. It is this minimalism that attracts the eye of the contemporary collector. A host of influences have shaped the way Nathan Fischer works. Initially, being surrounded by talented artists instilled in him an appreciation for art, design, and creativity. His inherent talent was shaped by his formal training, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Interior Design, with an emphasis in art history. In fact, Fischer still practices interior and architectural design throughout California even in the midst of his successful career as an artist. Of late, Fischer has been practicing “green art”. As such, he saves the dust from the bronze that is left from sanding his pieces and then he mixes the dust in with his paints. He then adds the chemicals used for his metal work to get organic tones and a natural patina effect with the paint. The result—waste free art! Fischer is compelled to create something natural and soothing, while at

Nathan Fischer: (top left) Layered, 2008, patina on bronze, 12" x 22". (bottom right) East to West, 2008, patina on bronze, 32.5" x 20".

the same time inheriting an industrial feel. The organic tone of Fischer’s work, fused with his medium results in art “with an edge.” And that edge comes from trusting the inherent randomness that comes with each piece. Fischer enjoys the fact that his work is totally unique. Having developed the process himself, no one does similar work which is why collectors respond so favorably to his art. With their contemporary flair, Fischer notes, “nothing beats completing a piece that turns out just as he imagines and hopes, especially when that piece also grabs the attention of someone else.” Indeed, once that happens, the transformation that Fisher strives for is complete. – Clark D. Olson Nathan Fischer is represented by Bonner David Galleries in Scottsdale, AZ. For more information, visit bonnerdavid.com.

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brian scott

The Process of Creating Art

Brian Scott’s Totem works are made of transparent or semi-opaque glass cast in aluminum. The color of the glass might be transparent, opalescent, amber, yellow, green, blue, aqua, violent, and/or red. His works range in height from sixteen inches to eleven feet tall. To begin his unique process, Scott makes molds in wet sand. He then impresses various textures along the dies of these molds. After this, he positions

large blocks of pristine glass in the sand forms. Aluminum, generally scrap metal from old cars, is next heated until it fluxes at 1200 degrees. He pours this molten metal into his prepared molds, and the heat from the aluminum crazes the glass, with different colors of glass fracturing to varying degrees. Scott finishes each Totem by grinding away the unwanted metal or adding solder.

Brian Scott’s work is represented by Coady Contemporary in Santa Fe, NM. For more information, visit coadycontemporary.com.

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Brian Scott: Totem series.

For more image information, visit acamagazine.com.

ARTISTS

MARK RICHARDS

A Look At Computers Past The evolution of the computer from room-size machine to PC, from symbol of American technical superiority to consumer good, is cataloged in Mark Richards’ Core Memory.

Core Memory began as a project for the Computer History Museum, located unsurprisingly in Mountain View, California, the home to Google and the heart of Silicon Valley. Over time, though, the undertaking became a larger, aesthetically grounded production, due to Richards’ knack for bridging technology with art.

Core Memory: A Visual Survey of Vintage Computer is available in hardcover from Chronicle Books. An exhibition of Richards’ photographs was also exhibited this summer at Etherton Gallery in Tucson, AZ.

Mark Richards: (top right) IBM System/360 Model 91 Console Tape Drives (from 1968). (middle left) U.S. Army/University of Pennsylvania, ENIAC [Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer] Computer (from 1946). (bottom right) U.S. Airforce/IBM, Western Electrics, SDC, SAGE [Semi-Automatic Ground Environment] (from 1961). All images copyright 2007.and courtesy of Etherton Gallery.

ARTISTs FOCUS

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ARTISTS

gwen laine

In Her Own Words

I make art that I often don’t fully understand until two or three years after I complete it. This is partially true of of my new installation, which I am calling “Passing Through.” A little more than three years ago, I began a new series of photographs, each of which involved constructing a scene in the small space of my dining room. Over the course of several months and after creating five images, I became lost. I struggled for some time trying to create the next image, but nothing worked. Finally, I gave up. I set the five work prints on a corner of my desk and went on to new work. One day this past summer, I was running late to meet a friend for lunch when the work prints caught my eye. I stopped to look through them and, at that moment, I knew what the next image would be. As I was sketching it, I realized why I had gotten lost three years earlier. All along, I had been creating installations that I was forcing into photographs. This newest idea had to be produced as an installation. Two things drive me to work photographically. The first is the control it gives me in the art making process, and the second is the desire to subvert that control. For this installation, I relied upon degrees of control and chance to create a work that changes over time. As an artist, I make certain decisions which give me control

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over my work. But in this work, one of my decisions was to employ materials over which I had limited control as time passed. I included images of hands in this work for two purposes. First, a photograph is primarily a record of reflected light at a particular moment in time, and when we look at them, we are looking backward through time. We know that each of these hands moved on the instant after the image was recorded, and that moment is gone forever. Yet here we stand, today, looking at that moment. Second, the images are a suggestion, an idea. Hands are often the tools through which our minds control our lives, but some degree of what occurs in our lives is due to chance, to circumstances beyond our control. I used Mylar in three forms for this installation, as each added photographic qualities to the work. The clear Mylar on which the images are printed allows for seeing through, or forward, as does the clear

Mylar of the bubble balloons. In the reflection of the silver Mylar balloons, you look back – at yourself or beyond. By filling the balloons with helium, I achieved momentary control over my installation. I determined the initial balance of the room, but I knew that the helium began escaping immediately and, ultimately, the balance of the work would be determined by something beyond my control. Viewers are the final chance component in the installation, serving as temporary visual elements as they are reflected in the balloons. Passing through the room, the air they displace jostles the images, causing them to rotate until the air stills. A bit like rolling dice, their final position will be determined by chance.

Gwen Laine is represented by Carson/van Straaten Gallery in Denver, CO. For more information, visit vanstraatengallery.com.

Gwen Laine, installation view of “Passing Through”, courtesy of van Straaten Gallery.

ARTISTS

DAVID EDDINGTON

Portfolio: “Bridges Over the L.A. River” British-born David Eddington has lived in Los Angeles for less than a decade, yet he has managed to discover one of the many forgotten facets of the city: the L.A. River and the many bridges the span it. The bridges were part of an ambitious attempt at urban planning as a means of establishing a city identity. In this series, Eddington partnered with the Los Angeles Conservancy to capture these unique structures, many of which are threatened with demolition or drastic reconfiguration. The way that he paints them recalls depictions of Europe’s grand monuments and evokes a similar sense of historical grandeur in a city that often neglects its past. David Eddington’s “Bridges Over the L.A. River” was featured at Frank Pictures Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. For more information, visit frankpicturesgallery.com.

David Eddington: (top right) Water Levels at 6th Street Viaduct, metallic acrylic on linen, 72" x 96". (above left) Macy Bridge, metallic acrylic on linen, 72" x 68". (above right) Blue View, metallic acrylic on linen, 50" x 45".

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ARTISTS

eva carter

Two Artists Find Inspiration in Their Charleston Setting Eva Carter works in a studio on the intercoastal waterway in Charleston, South Carolina. A spiritual connection can be drawn between her large abstract paintings and the ambiance of the natural environment. Like the mix of fresh and salt waters in Charleston Harbor, Carter’s expressionistic paintings commingle diverse life experiences, which include three distinctive stages in her life: her upbringing and education in rural Tennessee, her extensive travels into the desert southwest, and her mature life steeped in the tradition of the historic South. Although she doesn’t paint the literal landscape, her inspiration is charged by the idyllic setting of her Wadmalaw Island studio, where she watches the ebb and flow of intercoastal tides or the

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fading light on the watery horizon. There is a balance of energy and grace in Eva Carter’s paintings and it is that distinctive perspective that has won her national acclaim. “I paint for me, but the universal emotions translated to viewers are the connections that excite me. I don’t have a map when I begin the journey. I just step up to the canvas and let intuition tell me where my brush should travel,” she says. Her abstract expressionist paintings have been included in numerous exhibitions at gallery spaces, universities and colleges, corporate collections, as well as museums throughout the Southeast.

Eva Carter: (clockwise from top right) Passionate Venture, 2008, oil on canvas, 60" x 48"; Summer Song, 2008, oil on canvas, 36" x 48"; Night Tide, 2008, oil on canvas, 72" x 66".

ARTISTS

k arin olah

According to Karin Olah, her art falls into many categories. “It can be described as painting, collage age, or fiber art,” she says. Her work is also informed by “graffiti art, calligraphy and cursive handwriting, fashion, and language.” Olah works on canvas, linen, and paper, creating her signature collage paintings as a way to connect with America’s quilt making heritage. Using fabric, often antique textiles, the artist works in a manner that mimics the flow of paint from a brush. Intricately cut, placed, and pasted threads overlap one another and become the paintings’ stories. Much of the artist’s palette pairs historical Charleston colors with lush complementary tones selected

from her vast fabric collection. Translucent layers of cottons, silks, and linens blend with opaque calligraphic brushstrokes as graphite lines intersect the surface. Karin finishes many of the compositions with a dance of colorful encircling thread. Karin Olah’s style is a tangible patchwork of her experiences. From a smalltown upbringing in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, her interest in Amish quilts and textile traditions led her to study Fiber Art at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. For several years following art school, Karin managed a textile studio in New York City, developing colors and patterns for clients, including Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, and Peter Marino Interior Architects. Now applying her fabric know-how to the realm of painting, Karin finds her collage art featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions, as well as in several corporate collections. Karin is active in the visual art scene: curating and directing Eva Carter Gallery in Charleston. Her time in Charleston has been very influential

Karin Olah: (top) Artesanato, 2008, Fabric, gouache, acrylic, graphite on linen, 30" x 60". (bottom) Opus Unraveled, 2008, Fabric, gouache, acrylic, graphite on linen, 30" x 40".

to her work, though in an abstract sense. “In Charleston, when you drive over the bridge, you see a bird’s-eye-view; where local islands, rivers, and marshes spread out in the distance,” she says. “It’s a very flat perspective of colors - blue, silver, aqua, green, creamy whites and neutral tones. You see the sky mirrored in the waterways and you see loose threads of rivers circling the islands.” The city’s center also provides a vivid model. “Picturesque downtown is full of inspiring colors and subjects: pastel colored mansions, wrought ironwork, historic churches, palmetto trees, cobblestone alleys, and the deepest blue sky,” she adds. In general, the medium in which she works excites Olah: “I love the implications of working with textiles. There is something very intimate and domestic about it. My work is really an exploration of material and abstraction. It’s about many visual influences seen in my world as well as a history that came before it.” The work of both Eva Carter and Karin Olah can be found at Eva Carter Gallery, located at 132 E. Bay St. in Charleston, SC. For more information, visit evacartergallery.com.

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SHELLY HEARNE

An Emerging Colorado Colorist

Colorado artist Shelly Hearne consistently evolves. Originally working in pastels, Hearne’s organic style embraces her vision of the western landscape. Trees, mountains, and hills take on a new perspective and palette with angular horizons, stylized aspen groves, and dramatic skies. Now working in acrylic, Hearne’s mastery of color simply glows. The warmth of the panels captures the eye, the imagination, and the buyer all at once. Often likened to a stained glass window, Hearne’s work is at once bold and dramatic yet easy to live with. Her stylized trees and florals are enchanting, striking and exciting all at once. “As a form of communication, color is irreplaceable,” Hearne says from her Fort Collins, Colorado, studio. “The concept of color may be approached from several disciplines; perhaps the most versatile is art.” Her work is a collection of color and movement as well as expression of emotion and value. Her intent as an artist is to evoke an emotive response from the viewer.

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Shelly’s formal training is in interior design and perhaps that is why her collectors have embraced her work. She has a clear understanding of what her creative vision can make people feel. She intuitively knows what people like to enjoy on a daily basis. Hearne’s success can be measured by acceptance in both corporate and private collections throughout the west. The Marriott Hotel, Medical Center of the Rockies, Neenan Archistruction, Inc., and design professionals have placed Hearne’s work throughout public buildings. Private collectors throughout the United States and abroad have embraced Hearne’s work for its ease on the eye, bold structure and warm palette. “The detail of my subject matter is of less importance to me that its cast and movement. To capture the curvature of a calla lily is to enlighten the viewer to my own vision of a simple flower,” she says. Hearne draws inspiration from the work of Wolf Kahn and Georgia O’Keeffe. “My own personal style has evolved into a more representational one. My work is a simple communication of nature’s often complicated substance and vibrance,” she continues. Jim Benest, owner of The Collective Fine Art Gallery in Fort Collins, says, “Shelly’s work is universally accepted by men and women alike and that’s not always the case in the gallery world. A couple will enter the gallery, gasp at a piece, look at

each other and without saying a word, they break into a grin. That’s the emotional effect Shelly’s art has on people.” Hearne’s work is available as originals as well as finely made giclée reproductions on either archival watercolor paper and canvas. Editions are limited and quality is tightly controlled. In addition to The Collective Fine Art Gallery, Shelly Hearne is represented by Warrior’s Work and Best West Galleries in Hill City, South Dakota and the Bradley House in Boulder, Colorado. Hearne’s work has appeared in many invitational shows throughout the west including Vail, San Francisco, Denver, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Fort Collins. – Kathy Bauer

Shelly Hearne’s work can be seen at The Collective Fine Art Gallery at 109 South College Avenue in Fort Collins, CO. For more information phone the gallery at (970) 224-1231 or visit ShellyHearne.com.

Shelly Hearne: (top left) Colorado Morning, original acrylic. (bottom right) Petal Parquetry, original acrylic.

ARTISTS

B E N N I G H T H O R S E campbell

After the US Senate, a Flood of Inspiration Many people know Ben Nighthorse Campbell for the role he played as a United States Senator. He has earned himself much notoriety for his bipartisan political astuteness, western dress, signature ponytail, and Harley Davidson motorcycle. He was even quoted saying, “Neither George Washington nor Thomas Jefferson wore neckties. What’s good enough for the founding fathers of our country is certainly good enough for me.” He also made political history. He has been one of only three Native Americans to serve in the U.S. Senate, served as the only Native American during his tenure, and was the first in over 70 years. His influence on the political circuit was not just left to his heritage, Nighthorse Campbell passed more laws in the one hundred sixth Congress than any member of the U.S. Senate according to the congressional record. In fact, over his two Senate terms, he also passed more public laws than any previous U.S. Senator from Colorado. Finishing his term in 2005, Nighthorse Campbell moved on and began to walk a different path, one he started far before any political involvement. This path was one of an artist and designer, a creative side that was sparked by his father at an early age. Now standing at the forefront of contemporary Native American jewelry, Northern Cheyenne, Ben Nighthorse Campbell is a

leader and innovator once again with his contemporary designs and unmatched stone combinations. “I never wanted to take traditional Navajo designs, like many do, and turn it into something new,” Nighthorse Campbell said. “I wanted to draw from my own heritage, experiences and journeys to create contemporary designs, rich in culture.” Using only the highest quality of materials of 18kt gold, sterling silver and precious and semi–precious stones, Nighthorse Campbell often does not leave any side of his pieces untouched by design. He draws inspiration from a conversation he had with a fellow Native American. “You cannot see the full beauty of the mountain”, said Nighthorse Campbell speaking of this conversation. “Its beauty can only be appreciated by looking at the other side.”

With the thought that beauty is allencompassing and all around, he adds details, such as symbols reminiscent to ancient rock art, horses, bears and other animals, to the interiors and opposite sides of many of his pieces. Highly wearable, stylized gems, his jewelry breaks boundaries of Southwestern attire, often lending itself towards high fashion couture. With each new season new

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designs have debuted in both sterling silver and coveted 18kt gold. “Stress, long hours, and fatigue are killers of inspiration”, Nighthorse Campbell says of his years in public office, “I was getting creatively barren.” Today, he is still involved in public policy, representing American Indian tribes, municipalities, and corporations on a variety of Native American issues for the powerful Washington, DC firm of Holland & Knight. However, life has changed since he left the Senate. Restfully residing on his ranch high atop a Mesa in Southwestern Colorado, Nighthorse Campbell is moved by a flood of inspiration that has entered his mind, unlike any other time in his life. For more information on Ben Nighthorse and to see the complete Nighthorse collection, visit sorrelsky.com.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell: (bottom left) Hidden Horse Bracelet, 18kt gold, diamonds, turquoise, lapis. (center) Painted Mesa Bracelets, sterling silver, copper, brass, german silver. (top right) Diamond Totem Bracelet with Turquoise & Step Up Bracelet, turquoise, lapis, diamonds.

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parting thoughts

Art and Allegory By Christopher Church

a

ccording to Walter Benjamin, twentiethcentury theorist and cultural historian, “Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things.” Yet, what causes the ruinous nature of allegories, and why do they function as vestiges of something that was once whole? Perhaps, in the translation of thoughts into the images that represent them, allegories, by definition, befuddle or confuse reason. Such a translation inevitably results in a peculiar method of stating one thing while meaning another. How then are we supposed to understand a painting in which the latent content is shrouded? Without a referent for the signifier, one might assume that the allegorical painting functions as pure signifier, and, in the opinion of art critic Clement Greenberg, as modern art proper. However, one cannot detach the physical painting from its metaphysical content. In other words, one cannot sever the signifying connection. The modern artist challenges his or her audience to “decipher” his or her work. The more extreme the form, the bigger that challenge becomes. A painting by Pollock, for example, defies its onlooker to read a meaning into the image. Should the viewer see the work as nothing more than pigment upon canvas, pretty colors placed in an amusing pattern? Or is the painting far more

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cryptic? Is the meaning hidden somewhere among the brush strokes and dabs of paint—in the ruins of an idea which, once whole in the mind’s eye of the artist, lays shattered into pigmented fragments? Unfortunately, acknowledging the conundrum does not provide a rubric. Art critics and theorists alike remain at a loss. In allegory, one sees the breakdown of authorial control, of the authority of the author over his intended meaning. This disconnect displays the sheer materiality of the painting in general, but it muddles the conveyance of meaning. Nevertheless, the painting carries political, emotional, and intellectual impact, and the ability to generate meaning is in no way hampered. Rather, in allegory, what one loses is not meaning—for, in fact, one can argue that allegory multiplies meaning—but affixation. Like the ruins of an ancient civilization, one can only guess what each element “means”, and this guessing game attempts to assign to each signifier a particular referent. Yet, insofar as archaeologists disagree, so too do art theorists and critics. This consistent disagreement ensures that the game of guessing has no winner, no conclusion; by virtue of their allegorical nature, the works of modern and contemporary art remain suspended in time, space, and meaning. ACA

Christopher Church is a Ph.D candidate in history at the University of California at Berkeley. He studied art history in Paris.

Sculpture Objects & Functional Art Fairs SOFA CHICAGO 2008 November 7-9, Navy Pier SOFA NEW YORK 2009 April 16-19, Park Avenue Armory SOFA SANTA FE 2009 June 11-14, Santa Fe Convention Center

Information and tickets

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Dale Chihuly, Holsten Galleries Photo: Scott Mitchell Leen

SOFA CHICAGO 2009 November 6-8, Navy Pier