Structural Patterns

For his second solo-show at Sikkema Jenkins & CO., Mark Badford has created a series of large scale (approximatel 8′ x 12′) collage works. What I really enjoyed about these wall pieces is that they initially look like giant maps – intricate topographies of cities – and as one approaches them, tiny colorful details become apparent. Carefully looking at the works creates the effect of zooming in from an arial view to a street level view of a cityscape. According to the press release, these large scale rectangular collages are entirely made from found materials, materials that Mark gathers as he goes out into the city. In practice the works are commodified step children of the dadaist and situationist city expeditions – dérive – a “technique of locomtion without a goal.” However rather than drifting without motive, Bradford drifts through Los Angeles with the goal of gather materials to assemble precious art works.

As one studies the collages up close, the content appears to be primarily from comic books as Spider Man and Hellboy begin to pop out.

I’d love to know Marks process in creating these pieces. In studying them it looks as if he layered pages from comic books and magazines onto a large canvas and then topped it all off with reflective silver foam board. Once all the materials have settled down, he creates the topography with a router. Of course, I’m just guessing, I’d be surprised if this is his process because of how well the details show up in the final product.

There’s a much better image on the Sikkema Jenkins site, but here’s a detail:

As much as I enjoyed these large scale, attractive collages, in considering Mark’s work, I remembered what he did for inSite05 (a biennial-like exhibition that exits between San Diego and Tijuana) and recognized why I’m so drawing to work that exits in the public space and functions through a network of people.

With inSite05 Bradford organized the “Maleteros” project.  On the Tijuana side of the border, there are people who sell their service as bell boys for pedestrian border crossers.  These men will carry ones things from the point of entry to the nearest taxi for a small wage.  In collaboration with these guys and the Mexican border police, Mark organized these disparate workers into an institionalized version by giving them vests that would identify them as border bell boys and got them stations to place their hand carts and shopping carts.

Bradford’s “Maleteros” brings up all sorts of problems – is this a positive intervention, is it merely a brief imposition onto a foreign labor space by an artist for the length of an exhibition or does it propose a more organized system to a labor space that may be adopted or at least considered?  Either way such cultural work is adventurous for these reasons, by creating a situation in a social space, all sorts of consequences become possible and to me that is art.  I view this as art because it’s not a closed or individualistic process that ends as an object to be sold to a wealthy patron, rather it is an idea advanced into a situation with all sorts of possibilities.

Obsessing about the sun – it’s history, power, influence in relation to the history of the United States – Manifest Destiny, Native American genocide, slavery… has led Shuan O’Dell to create a series of drawings that are visually dynamic on view at Susan Inglett in Chelsea.

The drawings at once bring to mind a diverse set of aesthetics from Aztec codices to traditional U.S. quilts conveying Quaker imagery to geometric abstraction but O’Dell manages to meld these different visual elements into works that invite the viewer to attempt to follow a narrative. These are stories of travel, exploration and discovery.

As O’Dell considered his personal history with the sun. He asked others to write him with their very earliest memory of the sun. He then took these memories to create a sun drawing pictured below.

And in a small room at the rear of the gallery, O’Dell inserted a video of the ball of fire burning. It’s an incredible image, unfortunately it doesn’t work with the rest of the exhibition and I believe detracts from the drawings, because it leaves an odd punctuation. The show will remain open until March 15th.

I’ve been a fan of Guy Ben-Ner’s work since first seeing it, about three years ago at what I think was his first Postmaster’s show and with each new video my admiration grows. The latest video that I thoroughly enjoyed is titled “Stealing Beauty” shot entirely at IKEA show rooms with his family. As in his past videos, Ben-Ner works with his kids to create narratives that question or deconstruct elements of our society.

“Stealing Beauty” features the traditional modern nuclear family unit. They go about regular daily activities, showering, sleeping, watching television, checking email, reading, washing dishes, sharing a meal, however throughout the 20 minute video is an ongoing discussion between the individuals. This is a discussion that primarily revolves around a lecture by Ben-Ner to his kids proclaiming the virtues of Capitalism:

“Private property creates borders… Some day this [the IKEA show room] will all be yours through inheritance… Love holds the family together and the family keeps the property from leaking out, family is like a big piggy bank,… Sharing is primitive… We evolved to rise on our feet and point at things to say this is mine. We freed our fingers to count…”

As the video proceeds there are traces of rebellion by the daughter, she questions if she is owned by her parents, she demands her freedom and at one point Ben-Ner grounds her. The video concludes with the reading of a Manifesto by the children… “Children of the world unite” calling children to claim what they want, to steal from parents, to claim their free will.

Although the water doesn’t flow from the sinks or shower head and the television and computer aren’t turned on, the family inhabits any number of IKEA show rooms as if everything functioned. They get into the beds, sit at the dinning room or in the living room and play out the script as shoppers walk by. At one point a woman peers into the video camera and pokes at it, someone behind the camera asks her to not touch the camera and re-positions it to focus on the co-opted stage.

The entire work is pieced together from any number of show rooms to the extent that a single exchange is assembled from various shoots. I left wondering if this was so, because they shot the video without permission and had to assemble the video from different IKEAs as they would be pulled from the show rooms. And indeed this is the case – it “was shot without permission at numerous IKEA stores around New York, Berlin and Tel Aviv.”

The dialogue doesn’t present any ground breaking ideas, however juxtaposing the script against the sets available at IKEA’s idealized show rooms is brilliant!

Growing up in the Mission (San Francisco, CA), my dad loved cruising Mission street on Friday and Saturday evenings when it was packed with lowriders and girls running from car to car, guys trying to prove who had the superior car. My brother and I were too young to really appreciate it. I found the bouncing cars entertaining for the first 10 minutes, but as cars inched along we’d be stuck between 25th and 26th Streets for nearly an hour, way too long for me. However, when I see an incredible lowrider, it reminds me of that period and evokes a bit of nostalgia. (This was before the SF police cracked down on cruising, the lowriders moved to Daly City at that point, early 80s.) The artists John Jota Leaños and Artemio Rodriquez have teamed up to create a beautifully painted lowrider with motifs indicative of today’s reality – motifs that point to war, disaster and death.

“The fully functioning mobile art installation includes four animations from the New Media Opera, Imperial Silence that plays on the LCD movie screen in the car as well as radio programs from ¡Radio Muerto!, a specially curated radio dial with content from dozens of artists, writers, youth, and everyday Californians.” Go to John’s site to check out the full description: El Muertorider.

An old friend from undergrad, Lara Miranda, has been re-creating biblical stories for film and they are crazy – violent, fanciful, and wicked – an excellent literal portrayal of the Bible.

Thus far  2 Kings 2:23 of “True Stories from the Bible” is the only passage available on YouTube from Dawn Burns Films.  I briefly spoke with Lara nearly a year ago and I remember her telling me that she was filming donkeys.  There are no donkeys in 2 Kings 2:23, so I imagine that she’s got more films in the works.

Meanwhile the literal interpretation of 2 Kings 2:23-24 (I copied the King James Version below) is a throw back of 60’s and 70’s low budget Biblical films.  It reminds me of the sort of films I would see in Catholic school as a child.  This moment in time, seems like an incredibly appropriate period to revisit this film genre, as these films portray the inherent violence of the Bible at a time of war and conflict in the “Holy Land”.

2 Kings 2:23-24 (the King James Version)

23And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

24And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

In the midst of being thrown out of my home by NYC and staying with friends and family, it took me a while to assemble some documentation of the recent commission I completed for a festival in Mexico City:
http://www.ambriente.com/carreta_nagua/

The animation “Arbol que nace torcido, nunca su rama enderece” (Tree that is born twisted, never straightens) is available online:
http://www.ambriente.com/carreta_nagua/animation.php
The animation is about 8 and a half minutes long and features El Chapulin Colorado and Ultraman discussing the effects of globalization, immigration and personal loss due to cultural transitions. The script is based on my parent’s current reality as they move back to Nicaragua after 45 years in San Francisco, CA. The animation was featured on a rickshaw as passengers were offered a tour of the colonial park Alameda Central in the historical center of Mexico City. The title of the project is “Carreta Nagua, Siglo 21”, a description of the project and explanation of the title is also available online as well as plenty of images:
http://www.ambriente.com/carreta_nagua/

The tour and animation generated excellent discussion and lots of local press, primarily on television and is still on view at the museum – Laboratorio Arte Alameda – http://www.artealameda.inba.gob.mx/
So if you are in Mexico City, please stop by to see the exhibition. It’s an excellent exhibition that I discussed in my blog while in Mexico City:
TRANSITIO at Laboratorio Arte Alameda

I had a young crew of three boys to help me assemble the cart through the weekend. Saturday morning I took a trip with their boss, a Spaniard named Hector who runs a fabrication company that primarily does exhibition production for large media companies such as Sony, but prefers to do production for cultural institutions, they just don’t pay the bills. We drove to his shop with a couple of his employees to gather tools and materials. Returned to Laboratorio Arte-Alameda and immediately got to work. It was a late start and I only had the three guys that day and Sunday. By the late afternoon the cart began to take shape. We completed the basic structure, installed the bus chair and resolved a few questions. In the early evening it began to poor so we stopped to continue on Sunday.

Discussing the joining of the axle to the steel tubes that would make the primary structure.

Cleaning up the welds.

Friday, October 5th was the first day on getting started in assembling the physical component of my TRANSITIO commission for “impolis”, one of a series of curatorial components that make up TRANSITIO_MX02, the second installment of this new media festival in Mexico City.

I’m building a rickshaw that will tour people around a park in the historical center of Mexico City, Parque Alameda. As people take a ride on the rickshaw that I will pull, they will watch an animation that I’ve been creating over the last few months. Carreta Nagua is an old folk tale from Nicaragua, tale generally told to children when they refuse to go to sleep, because it’s a wagon (carreta) driven by death and pulled by two skeletal oxen, it makes a great deal of noise, as if chains were been dragged along the ground as it makes it way. When the Carreta Nagua arrives at ones home, the person is sure to die. It’s assumed that the tale, a very old tale shared amongst the indeginous people of Nicaragua, but also having many parallels throughout Latin America, is believed to have been established due to the slave carts driven by the Spaniards to take slaves to the mines. People taken by the carts would disappear, only to be seen again as corpses. The Spanish would take indeginous people to the mines to work, where they would wear away to die and be taken as corpses for burial. When indeginous people heard a cart, they would hide, the cart became a symbol of death.

The animation featured on the cart, on a panel that sits in front of the passenger is based on my parents. They left Nicaragua over 40 years ago, to work and establish a family and to give their children greater possibilities. Now they are returning to Nicaragua, but it’s an entirely different place than the one that they left. “La Carreta Nagua” is an allegory for the translocation of people, the leaving of ones culture, extended family, language – for greater means or opportunities / for economic reasons in a pancapitalist era. This is the personal or subjective or individual portion of globalization, not the corporate form of globalization, but the mass migration of populations due to highly subjective decisions by individuals.

So Friday was day one, when I was taken by Juan and Israel to “deshuesadores” – one translation might be skeleton cleaners, but really auto wreck dumps. The rickshaw needs an axle, tires, seats, a steel frame… all parts that can be found at an auto dump. I’d been concerned at how all this would come together, but it went smoother than I could have imagined. At our second stop we acquired nearly all the primary parts and at a fraction of the price that the curators had set aside for the project. One of my goals was to assemble this piece entirely from recycled parts and not to use new materials, so far so good. Here are a few shots documenting day one.

This auto wreck site revitalized an old bus as its office. To the right is the office and beyond is surplus of old and new cars and parts that can no longer function as designed.

I showed a kid working the site a few drawings, explained what we were building and asked for specific parts and he pulled out an ideal axle, a unit nearly ready to go that would be wide enough to seat two above. We bartered down the price by leaving the shocks that were on the axle. Every single piece has a value.

After we asked for seats, he showed us a few car seats, mostly bucket seats from recent cars, but they weren’t what I was looking for. I looked into the office and saw the bus seat near the backdoor and told the guys that were taking me around that that was what I was interested in and they said well, let them know. I did, they gave us a price, we haggled and we got it. Everything is for sale, event sections from the business office.

Their tire prices seemed high, so our driver suggested that we try a few tire repair places, such as the one below. Set up on a corner, one can pick up a new tire on the fly, such as the one below

After a day that started with a long and crowded metro ride and continued into several hours of driving around Mexico City in increasingly terrific traffic and haggling for car parts, I was taken by Antonio, the exhibition administrator who took car of all the public art permits to a very old taco place in the town center. Then we had a couple tequilas on his deck overlooking Mexico City’s downtown.

A view of Mexico City’s historical downtown from a 5th story deck

As an artist and professor, I try to make the rounds to the Chelsea galleries with each new round of exhibitions. However, over the years, I’ve narrowed the number of galleries that I stop through, because there are so many and for the most part I think that most of the work I see in Chelsea is really bad.

One of the galleries that I always try to stop by is David Zwirner, because the work presented there usually reflects my flavor for an ideal combination of content and execution. I generally see compelling work that is well done. And the current exhibition by Raymond Pettibon, “The Big Picture” is a great example of this.

Pettibon’s drawings are beautiful and exciting. They are the sort of drawings that make one want to draw, because they are full of energy, they tell a story, they pull the viewer in and they are topical. Through his drawings, Pettibon lays it out, this is the world that we live in and it’s fucked up.

On the other hand, Zwirner also shows bad stuff. Step out of Pettibon’s Big Picture, down the hall way to Chris Ofili and you’ll see Modernist junk. Incredibly boring work with a precious price tag.

Presentity by Kabir Carter was one of the most unique public art experiences that I’ve had in a very long time. This is primarily due to its honesty and subtleness. The project did not involve any spectacle, rather it was a highly private experience carried out in tourist center filled with activity.

A few weeks before the dates of the performance, Kabir emailed an invitation to be audience to Presentity. Eager to listen to Kabir’s work and spend time with the sound artist, I replied and he wrote back with a time and date and that I would receive a text with the exact location the day of the performance. It was all a bit mysterious.

On Saturday August 18th, I received the address – the back stairs of City Hall on Chambers. That afternoon I sat and waited for Kabir as firetrucks rushed by to the Deutsch Bank building where a fire exploded. There was one other guy who showed up and looked like an artist. Kabir showed up carrying three walki-talkis, he introduced us and we began to walk.

On Chambers we walked east, turned the corner at Centre Street and entered a very old subway elevator. We rode the elevator up and down twice, the first time with one other person, the second time, only the three of us and the performance began. Kabir manipulated the walki-talkis to create the electronic sound performance, we merely walked with him and listened as carefully as possible. We exited the elevator below ground, entered the subway station, walked through the tunnels, up the stairs and back onto Centre Street, walking adjacent to City Hall, listening carefully. Then crossed the street toward Pace University. Bent down to the ground to listen to the sounds resonating within the cavernous space below a steel grate.

Again we entered the subway, this time via a desolate subway entrance at the corner of Pace University, we walked through a long, empty subway tunnel. We exited the subway and the performance ended.

The walk and performance were a delicate intervention upon the City Hall area of New York City, I call it delicate because it was comprised of three individuals focused upon careful listening in a saturated space where focus is difficult to achieve.

I felt that the sound performance began a bit awkwardly, as if Kabir needed a bit of time to catch his rhythm. However the elevator was a highly successful tool for spatial transfer… I’m not sure how to put this. The elevator was very successful in creating the sensation that we were being taken to a different place, to a site within a site… to our own place, a private space shared between us three individuals but located within the City Hall Park area.

At first the most difficult element personally was negotiating between getting out of the way of pedestrian traffic and listening to the performance. But as we continued, the listening took presedence over the concern of allowing pedestrians by. Also as the performance continued the sound began to coalesce, there was meat to it, it sounded as a concert or performance and not merely noise trying to find its language.