Structural Patterns

BLACK MIRROR / ESPEJO NEGRO: A Museum Installation by Pedro Lasch is one installation that I’d very much would like to see, unfortunately I doubt that I’ll be in Durham, North Carolina this year. Fortunately the press release that I received from Pedro represents the installation clearly enough to excite the imagination and leave a mental imprint.

Look carefully at the left side of the photograph below, from the black mirror a colonial Spanish face peers out to the indeginous idol and the viewer.

The pre-Columbian figures borrowed from the Nasher Museum collection have their backs turned to the museum audience as they peer into the black mirrors on the walls. Pedro Lasch describes the sculptures with their backs turned as “defiant”. Upon viewing the picture, I viewed them as defiant to the museum and museum goers who view these works out of context, stolen from their homes and delivered to static white walls and pedestals. The black mirror collapses the past and present with the embedded colonial portrait and the reflection of both the pre-Columbian figure and the viewer. However the exhibition is best described by Pedro, particularly as I haven’t seen the installation:

BLACK MIRROR/ESPEJO NEGRO: Artist Statement

Abstraction and Refusal

As we enter the room, black rectangular mirrors of different proportions dance in stark contrast to the white walls, calling attention to the structural aspects of the gallery. Facing each mirror, at different heights and depths, defiant pre-Columbian figures stand on pedestals, all of them turning their backs to the viewer. While their refusal may push us away, their reflections on the mirror pull us in. Even so, we find that it is impossible to see these figures’ faces without also encountering our own faces reflected in the same mirror. The dark flat surfaces of black glass transform images of sculptural bodies into ephemeral paintings, incorporating the viewer’s reflection, the environment and the ghostly images of yet another set of gazes, those of Spanish priests and conquistadores.

Mediation
The individual works that compose the overall sculptural installation are entitled _Black Mirror #2 through #12_, each pairing a Spanish painting of the Colonial period that emerges gradually from behind a dark sheet of glass with one or more pre-Columbian sculptures from different regions and periods. At the center we find _ Black Mirror #1_, the object that inspired the whole installation. It is an elegantly shaped obsidian disc from the museum’s permanent collection. I propose we use this black “rosetta stone” as a tool to decipher ancient Amerindian civilizations, as well as a window onto the wealth of contemporary indigenous civilizations and peoples across the American continent.

Tezcatlipoca and the Obsidian Journey In pre-Columbian America, as in many other cultures, black mirrors were commonly used for divination, the art of knowing past and future events, and for necromancy, the art of communicating with the dead. The Aztecs directly associated obsidian with Tezcatlipoca, the deadly god of war, sorcery and sexual transgression. Threatened by similar associations with sorcery and deviance, Pope John XXII banned the use of mirrors for any religious purpose in 1318. Yet centuries later, obsidian plates of all shapes and sizes would be introduced into Christian altars across Spain and its colonies, eventually becoming the surface on which artists, including Spanish baroque master Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, would paint saints and virgins.

Through the Claude Glass and into the Age of Surveillance
The Spanish Colonial works appearing in this installation can be seen as early examples of two key modern and contemporary forms of representation that resemble the obsidian black mirror: the ever-present photographic camera and the _Claude Mirror _ of 18th-century Europe. Named for atmospheric painter Claude Loraine, the Claude Mirror was a portable, convex tinted glass or mirror, which painters and photographers used to create their pictures. This optical device marked a shift to a new period, when ritual and magic gave way to scientific illusionism and Colonialist expansion. We no longer use black mirrors to speak with the dead, or to fix a gaze on objects that may last a little longer than we will. Yet little black eyes still hover all around us in the form of cameras placed in many public buildings and outdoor spaces. These black mirrors still act as go-betweens between the present and the absent, the visible and the invisible, the colonizer and the colonized.
– _Pedro Lasch_

Kara Tanaka’s “Crushed by the Hammer of the Sun” is simply cool and mesmerizing. Thursday afternoon I had some time to kill in the Lower East Side, so I stepped into Simon Preston Gallery on Broome Street where there is currently a two-person show featuring Marco Rios and Kara Tanaka. I was immediately drawn to a silver spinning disc on an exposed mechanized pedestal at the back of the gallery.

The first gallery had a few sculptures by Marco Rios: a giant yellow level leaning against a wall, a little elphin blue man holding his knees sitting in a corner sculpted from the anti-depressant drug Paxil and small non-descript metal pieces on shelves. The sort of work one expects to see in a gallery representing young artists who have been influenced by the likes of Charles Ray and Tom Freidman, really not very interesting or exciting, because we are so familiar with it and know it is merely contemporary art, not much more than objects that will hopefully be bought and sold…

But the spinning disc at the rear of the gallery isn’t clearly such a thing. It is a kinetic object that requires one to spend time with it, study it, and wonder what it is. That is until it stops spinning and one discovers it is a silver fabric on the exterior and tan, brown and pink fabrics on the inside that only become apparent as the mechanisim lifts the spinning disc of fabric and seperates the exterior and interior layers into an oblong UFO like shape. The beauty of the work isn’t that it is kinetic, but rather the manner in which it all comes together – a simple silver fabric being spun into a disc that immediately makes one think of a UFO, the use of speed and spinning disc helps to mesmerize the viewer. It’s a poetic work that doesn’t fall short of its title “Crushed by the Hammer of the Sun” which implies a heroic narrative. Of course it helps to walk into the gallery while it is in mid-spin and the material and shape are transforming, and then I had to watch it a second time.

Get great art at a low price and help fund the long-time running not for profit gallery Momenta Art in Brooklyn. ” momenta art presents its thirteenth annual benefit to support its ongoing mission to support the work of emerging and underrepresented artists.” The raffle tickets are $225 and there will also be work for auction. The benefit is at White Columns, Wednesday, May 21, 5-10PM, Auction: 5-6PM, Raffle: 7-9PM. Get details on the art work available.

This past week, I made my regular stop through Zwirner and was happy to encounter new work by Neo Rauch, one of my favorite contemporary painters. Rather than trying to describe the individual paintings documented here, I’ll list the general reasons that I’m drawing to Rauch’s work:

1. The heroic scale places the viewer into the painted environment, allowing one to enjoy the rich mixture of painting styles – moments of abastracion embedded within the general social realist setting.

2. The striking power of social realism interwoven with neoclassical depiction to create a displaced narrative. Displaced because various historical elements of varying Western periods are juxtopsed to allude to bourgeois revolutions, industrialization, socialism, the ideals of free time and creative engagement, fascism…

the rise of science, a depiction of German culture and human nature in general… The narratives are rich not only for their masterful use of paint, but because they trigger various learned histories with irrational creative nuances that bring to mind fatastic fables.

3. Technically – masterful use of paint and color, rich mixture of technical styles.

4. Lastly, I’ll repeat this point, employment of the fantastic that brings to mind old fables.

Neo Rauch at David Zwirner, May 12th through June 21st 2008

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Link to BLU

On Wednesday April 9th, I was fortunate to be invited by curator Karla Jasso to a small presentation by a group of Mexican artists at el Laboratrio Arte Alameda, the beautiful colonial church converted into a new media center in the Historic Center of Mexico City.

I had met a few of the people present at the meeting during my stay in Mexico City for Transitio_MX02 last fall, but I had only seen one or two works by the artist presenting that afternoon. I came away from the meeting impressed and excited by the work that I had seen. Some of the work reminded me of projects I saw coming out of Carnegie Mellon University in the 90s, but entirely re-contextualized by the environment and culture of Mexico.

For example Gilberto Esparza’s robotic urban parasite series recalled the work of Simon Penny, particularly projects such as Petit Mal or Sympathetic Sentience. As Simon puts it: “robotic artwork which is truly autonomous; which is nimble and has ‘charm’; that senses and explores architectural space and that pursues and reacts to people…” However Gilberto Esparza’s creations are the rougher, tougher, streetwise cousins of Penny’s works.

Inspired by the street vendors (ambulantes) of Mexico City, who set up a sidewalk shop and will take electricity from a near by electrical post to establish a cozy store with light, television and radio, Esparaza’s “Parasitos Urbanos” (Urban Parasites) use the electric cables for power and as a means of movement. Pictured below are mrñ (maraña), dblt (diablito – little devil), “clgd” (colgado – hanging). Each of these creatures feeds from the electric cables that they use as a mode of transportation, they emit sound and through a series of sensors react to their surroundings. Watch the linked videos to see them in action. As much as I like the hanging species, I think that my creatures exist with the trash – ppndr-s (pepenadores) live near the gutters amongst the trash, playing, moving objects about.

Ivan Puig also presented his work. I was most intrigued by a current collaborative project in which he is creating a vehicle that will drive along abandoned railroads throughout Mexico. The vehicle will document these regions that were once vital economic hubs, but have been left abandoned as the railroads are no longer in use. People will be able to virtually ride along these abandoned tracks in real time by login to the site that will present live streams from the vehicle. Ivan also presented a large scale sound installation that recycles old technology to create a series of instruments that people may interact with.

Also amongst the presenters was Laboratorio Curatorial 060, a curatorial collaborative group that addresses various social issues by programming thematic exhibitions that commission new works from artists.

Artist Ivan Abreu presented his poetic combination of conceptual and new media art. Amongst my favorite of Ivan’s recent works is a sound performance using a record made from ice with Mexico’s National Anthem pressed onto it. He plays the anthem on a record player, but as it plays the ice begins to crack and melt, the record breaks and the artist struggles to keep it together so that it will continue to play.

In the midst of globalization, real-time communication networks, and the structuring of artistic production into a market-based system from education to the museums and galleries, it’s difficult to find artistic production that isn’t influenced by 20th century Western avant garde movements. What I find striking and exciting are the regional nuances that contemporary art production incorporates or that the most creative element by the artist is the manner that ideas and production are transformed according to the reality at hand.

We live in a cultural collage, that is to say, that the world is an assemblage of histories, people, products that traverse the globe. Through the sharing of information and knowledge, once distinct lineages of production are no longer distinct to a particular time or place, so it’s interesting to see how this information is hybridized in different locales. I’m not saying that this is anything new, it’s just fun to see it in the new media landscape and to pay witness to it (perhaps it just means that I’m getting old).

Imagine being highly susceptible to hypnotism and electing to give yourself over to a series of trances investigating your subconscious.  When in your normal state you do not recall what you said or how you behaved during the hypnotic state, however emotionally you have undergone a transformation.  You now feel a sadness and may cry for no apparent reason.  These are a few of the sensations that Mexican artist Ale de la Puente experienced during a period of personal investigation with a Canadian hypnotist.

Ale traversed her past and her subconscious projection into her future.  She put herself in the trust of a hypnotist to experience and pay audience to the power of her subconscious (pay audience by watching the video documentation of her trance states).  Following this intense periods of hypnosis, Ale’s hypnotist proposed one more trance to offer her a gift.  Following the final trance, Ale experienced a week of incredible happiness.

This is the personal territory that has informed Ale de la Puente’s current installation at kbk arte contemporaneo, a gallery in Mexico City directed by Ubaldo Kramer.  Ale has created a visually rich landscape entirely made of confetti; more precisely a mountain scape of confetti formed through celebration.  By throwing a large amount of confetti about the room, eventually a series of mountains appeared.  She finalized the confetti-scape by placing specific colored confetti onto the shapes, creating a series of color plateaus.  The confetti composition is accompanied by a series of beautiful photos documenting the process.

Ale de la Puente at kbk arte contemporaneo, Mexico, D.F.

I’m too tired to comment much, but I’ve got lots of images accumulating without sharing. There’s been so much art in NYC lately that the work I shoot just ends up on my desktop. Here are a few from today:

I’ll never understand Murakami’s stuff – as long as people can’t ride it, what’s the point… well, other than making lots and lots of money. Takashi Murakami has a show at the Brooklyn Museum, I haven’t checked it out, but was briefly visually entertained by what’s in the lobby. Even the kids stare in awe, but it fades fast once they realized they can’t touch or ride the stuff… crazy eye candy.

Hopefully he’ll open an amusement park that hands out free acid upon entry.

Afterwards, I hiked it over to Wall Street to catch the tale end of Pia Lindeman’s Soapbox Event, where kids took turns outside of Federal Hall to get people’s attention and inspire participation.

And inside participants were given a nice new soapbox to stand on and exercise their freedom of speech. Assuming that there really wasn’t much of a point in addressing the ongoing wars that US citizens contribute to and allow to continue while hundreds of thousands of innocent people die along with several thousand US military… I complained about the dog shit and piss that litters the streets of NYC.

By the time I got there, most of the audience were the assistants, but given all the boxes on the floor, it was clear that there was lots of participation.  It seems as if the street would present a stronger venue.

And at the end of the afternoon, I made it to Martha Wilson’s exhibition at Mitchell Algus Gallery. On exhibit are a few of Martha’s early works, executed between 1971-74. It’s the work of a young woman, a feminist, a critical thinker that remains powerful today. The NY Times has an excellent review of the show.

Following my opening at Vox Populi on Friday, one person commented that sequences of my animation reminded her of the animations of Harry Smith. Not being familiar with Harry Smith, I searched for his work and discovered the animation above on YouTube, where several others are available.

Although technically I appreciate Smith’s strictly geometric abstractions, I’m much more drawn to this particular animation that presents figurative characters set against the geometric lights and shapes. It seems that his interest in anthropology presented Smith with a wide array of characters to draw from such as Buddhist deities. Considering the animation tools of the period, Smith’s films are inspiring in so far as the work of one man who was also a folk music archavist, sound artist and mystic.

My installation “On Transmitting Ideology” opened this past Friday at the artist run, Philadelphia gallery Vox Populi. The installation presents eleven wooden guns outfitted with radios broadcasting declarations on freedom and transformation in our society.

As I was listening to famous historical speeches concerning U.S. politics, I primarily became interested in the rhetoric that has established “Conservative” vs. “Liberal” ideology in the United States. Unfortunately due to the quality of sound of early 20th century speeches such as an excellent speech by Calvin Coolidge declaring the need for an imperial reach by the United States in the name of liberty, I narrowed the selection to speeches since the second half of the 20th century.

The broadcast is 18 minutes long and begins with the famous declaration by Barry Goldwater “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” The broadcast includes an excerpt from a debate between Buckley and Chomsky, and excerpts from speeches by Reagan, Martin Luther King, and Obama. For the most part I left the excerpts intact; it is only with King’s speech in opposition to the Vietnam War that I withdrew “Vietnam”, because his arguments against our intervention in Vietnam parallel all to well the current war in Iraq.

Pictured above, in the upper right corner of the gallery on a shelf sit a CD player connected to a miniFM transmitter. On each table are five hand-crafted wooden AK47s and Uzis (one is also mounted on the wall), each gun has an exposed pocket radio tuned to the transmitter.

The exhibition also features two recent video commissions that question the outcome of popular notions of freedom, liberty and the power of capital. “Arbol que nace torcido, nunca su rama enderece” (“Tree that is born twisted will never straighten”) is an animation created for the public commission “Carreta Nagua, Siglo 21” (2007) that tells a tale of immigration, aging and cultural and familial loss. Two aging television super heroes, Ultraman and El Chapulin Colorado take the voices of my parents as they look back upon their lives and consider the price of immigration. The video “El Rito Apasionado” (2007) (commissioned for 50,000 Beds) takes place in a hotel room where three Guevarrian Neo-Marxist Latino Terror Revolutionaries from Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico gather to prepare an act against the history of U.S. intervention.

“On Transmitting Ideology” will be open to the public Wednesday through Sunday noon – 6pm. For more information please contact Vox Populi: 215 238 1236