Saturday, September 12, 2009
T & A (Transgression & Art)
If read as the three figures interacting, the work really pushes the viewer’s moral boundaries…
I am pleased to say that my blogging hiatus—the result of a nasty cold at the busiest time of year on campus—is officially over. And now for an exhibition review…
Because over 70 works comprise the 30-year survey of Genesis Breyer P-orridge’s notorious art career, they are hung in close proximity to one another at Invisible-Exports in Manhattan’s Chinatown. As a result, my head couldn’t have been farther than a foot away from that of a gentleman viewer when I took in the first ‘beaver shot.’ Just then, I heard an authoritative-sounding “Very Dada” from behind. Actually, I would have gone with ‘very surreal.’ “Oh wait,” I realized, “the gallerist is referring to the artworks, not my extraordinarily awkward viewing experience.”
I incorrectly assumed that I had become desensitized to pornographic images after compiling a binder of pornography photocopies for a colleague last week, which I procured from the Sexual Representation Collection at the University of Toronto. Alas, I was a tad squeamish viewing the array of collage, photomontage and photographic works that appropriate pornography. I waited until I was on the train home with the list of works to give G.P-O (as s/he is known) due consideration. Even then, I kept wondering if my seatmate was eyeing the images with curiosity, and me with judgment. Although my art alludes to erotica for shock value, it seems that I can dish it out but not take it.
In my embarrassed state, I initially found the most accessible works to be the humourous ones. Some read like one-liners, such as mail art featuring a banana poking out of a man's pants, and a collage that combines a label for cock-flavored soup with predictable pornography. This is not to say that a one-liner cannot be successful, and given the childish humour associated with sexuality, it is extremely appropriate.
Once I poured over the list of works, I was actually more impressed by the ones revealing the artist’s dark sense of humour. Allow me to preface my reactions with some theory. As strange as it sounds, collage is a sexualized medium. Of surrealist and Dadaist collage, Lydenberg (1988) writes, “everything that is juxtaposed in collage…can ‘make love’; the procreative possibilities, therefore, are staggering”(280). Meanwhile, Derrida (as paraphrased by Ulmer, 1983) believes, “If the clipping is associated with ‘castration’…the montage or dissemination of the fragments thus collected in the new frame is associated with ‘invagination’ (collage/montage is a bisexual writing)” (90). If these quotations seem far-fetched, consider the following works by G.P.-O.
Untitled (mail art to Robert Delford Brown) (1977) superimposes a photograph of a woman performing felatio with a portrait of a man in a suit, conflating cropped penis and tie. What I love about this piece is the hint of a smile on his face, as if acknowledging the sexual act; the power reversal suggested by her dominance (both in size and because she is in colour while he is in black and white); and the contrast of his suit, a signifier of formality (read: public costume) with a private act.
Similarly, Education Sentimentale (mail art to Jean-Pierre Turnell) (1978) shows a young child whose arm morphs seamlessly into an arm and hand spreading the buttocks of a woman to display her genitals. Captivation is the reward if you can get past the disturbing combination of children and pornography in the same image—a common pairing in h/er oeuvre. For instance, a work of the same name and year as the Turnell piece juxtaposes a photograph of a woman masturbating in the foreground, with two children in the background. The children's downcast eyes mirror those of the woman, and hint at child sexuality, connoting the pleasure of looking at oneself during a sexual act but also implying shame. If read as the three figures interacting, the work really pushes the viewer’s moral boundaries by establishing the children as voyeurs.
The transgressive nature of the works should come as no surprise to those familiar with the artist. G.P-O is infamous for being called a ‘wrecker of civilization’ by the British art minister in the 70s because of the controversial exhibition, Prostitution. In recent years, G.P.-O made headlines for undergoing a remarkable process of collaborative plastic surgery with h/er late lover, performance artist Lady Jane Breyer, to resemble one another as much as possible.
SOURCES:
Lydenberg, Robin. “Engendering Collage: Collaboration and Desire in Dada and Surrealism”. In Katherine Hoffman, Collage: Critical Views, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988, 271-286. Print.
Ulmer, Gregory L. “The Object of Post-criticism. In The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on Post-modern Culture”, Hal Foster, ed. Port Townsend, Washington: Bay Press, 1983, 83-110. Print.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Stripped, Uncensored
“Between the disco balls and the purple crepe paper lining the walls as an unconventional backdrop for artwork, it felt like this was the prom these gay men never had.”
“Just half a glass,” I cautioned. Only a trickle came out.
I can’t remember when the bartender winked at me. Maybe it was immediately before he turned away from me and revealed his Speedo, bent over to pick up a new bottle of wine, and flexed his biceps while uncorking the bottle. Or it could have been after he saw me awkwardly try to look away.
No, you haven’t stumbled onto a romantic fiction site. This is my account of Tuesday night’s release for Bruno Gmuender Books’ Stripped, Uncensored that I attended with our LGBTQ librarian, Sarah Van Gundy. When we arrived to the packed room at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in Chelsea, we were the only women there.
I realize that I don’t represent the target audience for the evening, but for what it’s worth, these are my impressions of the exhibition and party that showcased artists from the book.
The tone for the evening was established when each guest received an editioned postcard-size reproduction of a couple having a very good time, courtesy of the Center and NEXT magazine. The x-rated portions of the beautifully rendered work were covered with a paper slip. The work in general was heavy on sex, treading the line between art and porn. Clearly, it appealed to the gay male crowd (case in point: I had to move out of the way so an admirer could photograph an artist in front of his work). I won’t lie—the work made me blush, even though I volunteered to do two days of research in Canada last week on gay pornography and art for a colleague (one day was spent looking at no-holds-barred gay artists at the library and archives of the National Gallery and the other was spent perusing pornography at the Sexual Representation Collection at the University of Toronto).
Interestingly, although all of the work in Stripped, Uncensored was figurative, not all of the work was homoerotic. There were also quite a few facial portraits of men, such as haunting paintings by Michail Tsakountakis. Being privy to the sexual orientation of the artists caused me to see these works as equalizing in some way, as if purposefully deemphasizing sexuality and proclaiming ‘we’re all people.’ Or maybe they are more a celebration of pretty boys and I’ve missed the point. At any rate, it does raise the thorny issue of whether an artist’s sexual orientation (or biographical details in general) should be read into artwork.
All in all, the show didn’t take itself too seriously. Rather than coming off as thumbing its nose at the gallery world, it seemed to be about gay and artistic pride. Sales people wearing big ribbons made their way through the crowd, placing oversized red dots on the works that had sold. Bins of artwork were poured over by visitors in flea market fashion. Between the disco balls and the purple crepe paper lining the walls as an unconventional backdrop for artwork, it felt like this was the prom these gay men never had. (I am projecting because my prom date was Rick Telfer, who hadn’t yet come out. Although we had a grand time, I imagine he might have preferred to bring someone else. He went on to lobby for others to have that same right for high school prom: to read more about his activism, click here and for extensive background information, click here.)
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Maternity and artistry
"This blending of personal and professional selves underscores her argument against feminism and maternity being mutually exclusive..."
Liss’ unique writing style involves the interspersion of personal memories throughout the text. She recalls meeting an artist at a conference, for example, which segues to a memory of being away from her feverish infant son to attend the same conference. In a blog, this degree of self-disclosure would be unsurprising. In a scholarly book, it is surprising, and beyond that, it is refreshing. The separation of personal and professional selves in the academic world is possible, but it’s an illusion and not necessarily a helpful one. I realize that the notion of the personal being political is hardly novel, but I haven’t seen a book with this approach before so I was quite taken by it. Her assessment of artwork is still authoritative and well written, even if the reader is privy to details of her personal life. Especially in a book about mothering, why shouldn’t Liss include an entire chapter about the impact of her breast cancer on her relationship with her son? And why should a writer’s outlet for sentiment be restricted to a dedication page at the front of the book?
This blending of personal and professional selves underscores her argument against feminism and maternity being mutually exclusive, if one views feminism as not exclusively personal. Though unstated, it is clear she also feels maternity and artistry aren’t mutually exclusive. I remember watching an interview with Olga Korper in a gender studies class I took for pleasure at Nipissing University, in which the gallery director noted the challenges that motherhood places on studio output. Liss’ myriad examples of mothers making art provides a positive counterargument. Maybe the issue is quality and not quantity, because the work these women are making wouldn’t exist without their experience of being a parent. At any rate, Liss describes interesting examples of art from the 1970s onwards which range from documentary (women capturing the minutiae of their children’s development) to therapeutic (mothers working through the untimely death of their children). I like that she opens her book with an account of her student’s performance, evidence that she doesn’t restrict her roster of artists to the ‘usual suspects.’ This inclusivity strikes me as suitably feminist, although I am left wondering, is anyone focusing on artworks by men about the joys of parenting, assuming they exist?
Book cover added in 2020 via fair use/dealing. Source: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/feminist-art-and-the-maternal
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Boxing Gloves & Bustiers
"...video has become a mirror to a lot of artists." ~ Kate Gilmore
On Wednesday, the dentist asked me if I wanted to stick around for a root canal or book a later appointment. "Hmm," I thought. "Should I get my first root canal spontaneously or catch the next train downtown to see an exhibition curated by a colleague from SUNY Purchase?" The choice was simple: I was on the 3:58 train to Grand Central. It seemed that the cosmos was chastising me though: the first scene I watched in one of 14 videos made by women in Soho20's Boxing Gloves and Bustiers featured a large tooth used as a key.
Curator Kate Gilmore, who works on the same campus as me, was kind enough to agree to an interview. Here's what she had to say about the show.
Q-The title Boxing Gloves & Bustiers prepares the viewer for a show that is both girly and grrrly, if you will. Do you see the title as referring to a spectrum that a single woman might inhabit, to alter egos, or to something else entirely?
A-I actually did not come up with this title. It was a title that was already picked and I juried the show from a large group of people who sent in videos. That said, my impression is that this was a show about women who were very comfortable being women--both in terms of reflecting a stereotype of female sexuality as well as reflecting a non-stereotypical assumption of female sexuality.
Q-Artists like Ronnie Cramer and Jody Wood redefine our notions of acceptable female behavior with with their physically aggressive female protagonists. Cramer profiles a very dedicated female wrestler and Wood attacks women in public spaces in what feels like a spoof. What has the reaction been to works like these in the exhibition?
A-I think all the works in the exhibition have received great reactions, but I haven't been around on a daily basis to give you the detailed responses. I do, however, feel that these pieces in particular reflect a strong aggressiveness in the female characters, allowing the audience to view an unexpected reality. Especially, the Ronnie Cramer piece because this is a documentary project where these actions are really taking place as opposed to planned and "acted."
Q-Anybody can be a star these days, with YouTube profiles and reality television shows. Do you think the performative element of video, where you feel as if the artist is performing for you alone, is more prominent now as a result? I'm thinking of works like the one in which Valerie Garlick sings 'I've got you under my skin' while scratching her sunburned arm until the flakes are thrust at the would-be viewer, and of Katarina Riesing's 'Duet', in which she lip synchs 'Don't go breakin' my heart' while remaining indifferent to the bloodbath she's participating in, with a the-show-must-go-on kind of perkiness.
A-I think video has become a mirror to a lot of artists. Artists are using video as a very self-reflective tool--an inexpensive, relatively easy, fast medium to get their messages across and to create new forms of self-portraiture. Video and the simple means to put it out in the world allows artists to have a more immediate reaction to their work. Is this a result of YouTube or reality television, I'm not sure, but I think the moving image and the creation of that in a relatively simple and fast way is very attractive to a lot of contemporary artists.
Q-I found a number of the works difficult to stomach, like Yi Hsin Tzeng's in which buckets of paint are poured over a woman's head (it reminded me of waterboarding) and the one in which a naked woman is strapped to the underside of a table and awkwardly attempts to crawl around a room. Did you find the process of vetting the submissions to be taxing in this way? I imagine that it could have been overwhelming.
A-I really enjoyed jurying the show. Sure, there was a lot of work to look at--some good, some bad, some difficult, some easy, but, as an artist myself, it is great to see all these people working in interesting ways and trying to function within this theme. I appreciate work that is "hard to stomach," if it makes sense, is well executed, and fully expresses the theme at hand.
Q-With so many artists making their videos available online, do you feel that the role of the curator has changed when putting together a show of video art?
A-Maybe. I am not a "curator" per se. I have done a couple of curatorial projects, but I, in no way feel that I can give you a full answer to this. That said, as an artist who works in video, watching videos online is a very different experience than seeing them in an exhibition--watching work on flatscreens, projected, in installations, etc. If a curator is just looking to the Internet to put together video exhibitions, we might have a serious problem on our hands!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Stopping to smell the roses
“…I encountered a work in the A.I.R. exhibition that snapped me out of making snap judgements.”
The best time to traverse the Brooklyn Bridge is immediately after a thunderstorm. The temperature plummets and few people are out strolling, so you can cross in record time. On Sunday, I walked two-and-a-half hours from the lower east side to D.U.M.B.O. via the bridge and back again, to check out the new A.I.R. Gallery exhibition. Curated by gallery director (and alumna from my workplace, Purchase College !) Kat Griefen, tART @ A.I.R. features a diverse array of works from the tART collective, ranging from formalist to feminist. I was disappointed to learn that this group of artists is pronounced ‘tee-art’ rather than what I had mistakenly assumed: ‘tart’. The latter would be so cheeky (and I must admit, I have the convergence of feminism and baked goods on my mind because I’m about to make a shadow box of fibre cupcake sculptures for a Canadian fundraiser).
Just as I enjoy walking briskly in the city, I tend to breeze through galleries. It might be the result of having worked at a commercial gallery and observing gallerists and collectors make quick, intuitive decisions. During this time period, I visited the Art Gallery of Ontario with my friend Melanie and was amazed by the amount of time she spent with each piece, carefully considering all aspects. It made me aware of how ruthless I was. The problem is, my ‘speed viewing’ has made me somewhat resistant to media that demands a set amount of the viewer’s time, like video art and sound art. Interestingly, I encountered a work in the A.I.R. exhibition that snapped me out of making snap judgements. It made me realize that maybe art doesn’t demand time from the viewer so much as it rewards the viewer for investing an adequate amount of time. I am cognizant of the hypocrisy in my behaviour, as I sometimes include subtle contradictions in my work* and hope that viewers will take the time to notice. I want my own audience to work hard. Shouldn’t I be expected to do the same?
The work in question is Hvalreki (2009) by Rebecca Loyche. Allow me to describe the work as I encountered it: I put on the headphones and watched black and white footage of a woman signing in ASL as an impassioned male voice, perhaps a politician, played in the background, dominating the sound of crowds. The silent woman juxtaposed against the booming male voice was very effective indeed, from a feminist perspective. Not familiar with the language, I wasn’t inclined to keep the headphones on for long, but as I was about to disengage, the voice switched over to an impassioned female voice. Was it an opponent of the man? A colleague? Suddenly my assumptions had to make room for new possibilities. The work couldn’t necessarily be reduced to a male-female power dynamic at the woman’s disadvantage, at least not in the way I had imagined. I became curious about the work so I looked up Rebecca Loyche. She did a residency in Iceland where she joined the Women’s Emergency Government group and was inspired by protests, some of which are related to a shortage of information, piquing my interest as a librarian. When I researched the Women’s Emergency Government group, I read about their use of a pink dress to drape a political statue. Lesson learned. Pink dresses are the mainstay of my artwork. Who knows what I’ve overlooked in the past that is not only interesting in its own right but that could contribute to my own development as an artist?
After I left A.I.R., I made it a personal goal to be more open-minded about art that takes time to view. So far so good: only three days later, I went to a show of video art curated by Kate Gilmore. Stay tuned for more about that exhibition.
*In my Aberration sculpture series, I depict an abstracted cocoon, made of baby clothing and fabric, at various points in time. They appear to grow from left to right as they increase in size. There are more elements of embroidery on the clothing replicated on the outer surface of fabric, so it’s like the babies are developing new features or at least their existing features are becoming enhanced. I like to include a few anachronisms for good measure…bits of embroidery that suggest a reversal of time from left to right. I’m not trying to be difficult. Rather, I am responding to the tension of not knowing whether the cocooned forms are breaking free or becoming further bound.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
A stitch in time
“I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a panel discussion this much...”
This morning on the train, a woman complimented a friend on her blouse, which she explained had been custom made by a seamstress. “Oh!” her friend replied with delight. “I sew a lot of my own clothing!” It dawned on me that it has been years since I sewed my own clothing, even though I did it all the time in high school. Unlike my sister who followed patterns diligently and produced clothing that looked exactly like it should, I took liberties and reveled in the challenge of correcting my mistakes. There was something very satisfying about determining how all of the pieces fit together, and that’s probably where my interest in fibre sculpture really began. I made dresses with grommets, skirts with asymmetrical hems, and even a quilted skirt with a secret pouch to hide money in case I got pickpocketed at my first concert (Lollapalooza, if you’re wondering).
I learned to sew long before adolescence. My grandmother—or Grandma Saunders, as my sister and I called her—taught me to avoid sewing with a strand of thread longer than your arm, and my mother showed me how to sew on a steel machine attached to a clunky desk (from the era of televisions with wooden exteriors that resembled furniture). In high school, I befriended Joann Schelstraete, who is now a successful designer at Danier Leather but at the time she was still studying fashion design. Anyway, at some point shortly after she graduated, I think in my first year of university, we went to an exhibition about fashion at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, where there was a garment by a classmate of hers. It had lots of stitching, which I would call expressive rather than decorative. I can’t remember her name but I can tell you that a new world opened up to me when I saw it.
Wow, that turned out to be a longer reminiscence than I expected. Writing this has made me realize that I miss having different approaches to sewing, so I decided to sign up for a class (more on that in a moment). What I intended this blog post to focus on was last night’s panel discussion at Manhattan’s Center for Book Arts. Five artists discussed their work in the exhibition, Threads: Interweaving Textu[r]al Meaning, which was organized by Lois Morrison and Alex Campos.
After a dramatic introduction with thunder in the background, Iviva Olenick talked about her quirky journalistic embroideries that document her love life. I enjoyed her presentation so much that I signed up for her continuing education course this fall at the Pratt Institute, The Embroidered Art Journal: Embroidery as Narration and Illustration. (I have been meaning to take an embroidery class for several years so I am very excited, especially to find one with a focus on contemporary art). Next up was Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, whose lively discussion of the history of suturing—the focus of his screen printed book—was a real treat. Because I sew cocoon sculptures, I was pleased to learn that when an animal/organism ruptures from its constraints, it’s called a suture. And because my work is about clothing, the body and sewing, I also thought this observation was noteworthy: “[Through suturing,] we treat the fabric of our bodies with the same tools as we use to make the clothing we put on our bodies.” Following Jonathan’s talk was Meda and Veda Rives, twin sisters whose aptly named Mirror Image Press offers art that is as engaging as their identical twin-ness. Their largescale installations of handmade paper containing embedded thread evoke spiritual associations without being heavy-handed. Elise Wiener followed, captivating me with her realization, “Stitching in and of itself was beautiful,” which is evident in her undulating, colourful stitching on LPs from her youth. Her commitment to making a work of art each day for a year is inspiring. The night finished off with Tamar Stone, who stole my heart with her bed books. In these loose versions of books, each layer of the doll-sized bed sculptures—the blankets, sheets, pillows, and mattresses—contains embroidered stories about the lives of women based around beds, ranging from tales of midwifery to being locked in a bedroom for apparent insanity.
Thread is to me what paint is to painters. Hearing this panel made me think of something I wish I had addressed in an invited lecture on stitching as mark-making in a Sheridan College drawing class this past winter: there are so many reasons I use thread and not another medium, namely its ability to bind two things together, to be camouflaged through tiny stitches, to form an image through repeated stitches (i.e., embroidery), to create an expressive line by pooling, to create unexpected knotted masses, and to fray.
The show runs until September 12, 2009 and there will be a second panel discussion (featuring Patricia Dahlman, Tanya Hartman, Yoko Inoue, Vandana Jain, Heather Johnson and China Marks). I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a panel discussion this much, so I hope you will try to make it, especially since I’ll be out of town and won’t be able to see it myself.
To view images by the artists:
Iviva Olenick
Jonathan Fetter-Vorm
Meda and Veda Rives
Elise Wiener
Tamar Stone
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Gallery 2.0
“The work we probably should have seen coming, that was only a matter of time, is Colleen Asper’s seven-by-nine-foot painted replica of the Google search engine page.”
Internet art, of all media, seems like it should be the ultimate authority on contemporary cyber culture. This medium, which operates under a variety of names like net.art, uses the Internet as the intended venue for exhibition, as opposed to works of art that are represented through online documentation as more of an afterthought. Because Internet art has been addressing issues of authenticity related to authorship and appropriation for a while now, I had not expected the non-Internet artworks in Image Search (on view until July 31 at Chelsea’s P·P·O·W Gallery) to strike me as particularly innovative. I was mistaken. The group exhibition, which is about life in the age of the Internet, is very smart. For example, two artists take up the issue of collaborative authorship (or more cynically put, contested authorship): Aids-3D paid an online service in China to produce a painting for the show, and Jason Lazarus similarly made arrangements online for a message to be spray painted on the Palestinian side of the West Bank, which has been documented with a photograph.
At the library, I am currently making lesson plans to encourage the responsible evaluation and use of online images, so the appropriation of images is of special interest to me. Two of my favourite works in Image Search relate to this topic. Christoph Draeger has taken an image from Google Images of the mushroom cloud in Nagasaki and made an enlarged version as a puzzle with all pieces painted a suitably grim black. Negative space is formed by removing pieces that fragment the image, alluding to pixelation and also to the destruction of nuclear war. Equally impressive is Conrad Ventur’s video of Dolly Parton singing, taken from an anonymous online space. Projected through a rotating crystal, it too is fragmented, resulting in an ethereal image that recalls the unfixed nature of the Internet. It is also reminiscent of the disco-era aesthetic of photographic images morphing into one another.
The work we probably should have seen coming, that was only a matter of time, is Colleen Asper’s seven-by-nine-foot painted replica of the Google search engine page. The scale, formerly reserved for history paintings, highlights the veneration of Google as the preferred source of knowledge. With the artist’s name wittily entered in the search box, it also serves as a reminder that Google is the ultimate validation of the self, at least if the results are plentiful and favourable. This is an example of appropriation that I will definitely be showing students in library instruction sessions because it taps into our visual culture so effectively. In our library instruction sessions, we m don’t skirt around the existence of Google: we use it as a point of reference, as a means of comparison, and even as a complement to the library’s resources available by subscription only. If I could curate any piece into our exhibition spaces, I think Asper’s painting would be my top choice, as a gesture towards today’s youth about the library being a place of co-existence. I think the student population would absolutely love the painting. To view it, double click on the image in the third row down here. Just don’t reset your screen, thinking that you have accidentally been redirected to Google.
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