Structural Patterns

Duke Riley’s Pigeon Coop was in use at the Florida Keys before gallery installation

Artist Duke Riley is a pigeon guy and for his recent project, he worked as a pigeon trainer in the Florida Keys. As the New York Times Article “Avian Artistry, With Smuggled Cigars” states “He started the training in Florida last year with 50 pigeons; 23 went on the first mission, this summer. Only 11 returned.” (The NY Times video is well worth watching.) The mission for the pigeons was a small political intervention… they served as documentarians or Cuban Cohiba cigar smugglers. Some of the pigeons carried small cameras that captured their travel between the Florida Keys and Cuba others travelled from Florida with empty harnesses to return with cigars.

Pigeon paintings by Duke Riley

The pigeon project’s artifacts are installed in the first gallery of MegnanMetz until 25 of January 2014, where you can see the pigeon coop with the pigeons still living in it, pigeon paintings, pigeon mosaics made from sea shells and videos that the pigeons made as well as other artifacts.

Pigeon paintings by Duke Riley

The second gallery presents documentation of a collaborative performance along the canals of Zhujiajiao in China that re-stages a legendary race of the Chinese zodiac. A projected wall video shows the race and along another wall are mounted animal masks that performers wore to represent the various creatures of the Chinese zodiac. On the wall opposite from the video is a large scale drawing capturing the legend of the Chinese zodiac.

Duke Riley’s masks from the Chinese zodiac

Chinese zodiac by Duke Riley

Chinese zodiac by Duke Riley

Chinese zodiac by Duke Riley

Alex Prager at Lehmann Maupin

Alex Prager employed a soundstage in Hollywood to create her latest set of works. Near the street entrance hang beautiful large scale color photographs and toward the back is an immersive three-channel video installation that the prints appear to be taken from. As the press release describes the video installation

the film opens with a series of confessional monologues in which characters from the crowd scenes poignantly relate their own stories and insights, such as childhood memories, recurring nightmares and personal revelations. Suddenly, the scene changes and an orchestra strikes as a sea of people flood into view. The iconic heroine then leads the viewer on a journey through the crowd wordlessly expressing a range of emotions including isolation, sadness, confusion, curiosity and anxiety. The juxtaposition of character monologues and the frenetic crowd scene poignantly illustrates that within a swirling sea of strangers, there are countless individual stories and unique experiences unfolding.

The concept is striking and the video could easily be longer by portraying more individuals in the beginning portion. In fact the small number of portraits at the beginning undermines the concept. I believe that commonly, individuals living in dense urban environments desire to peak into the lives of others. That is to have the opportunity to observe the day to day lives of ones neighbors or the person sitting across one in the subway. This has been a common motif in films as characters use binoculars or telescope to spy on the neighbors.

The power of bird’s eye view of a multitude of individuals flowing in a public space that is presented in the video would be enhanced if the viewer begins to identify individuals from the portraits.

Alex Prager at Lehmann Maupin

One other element that I’m critical off is the need to stylize the individuals in the video. The people in portraits were highly made up to the extent that they seem to represent stereotypes. This exaggeration reduces the gravitas that the work may otherwise carry. Perhaps by evoking stereotypes, the artist is reflecting on how mediated our lives are or that our lives are but a fiction.

A composition with photography, three.js and rotoscope animation

Through the BOMBLOG, I just launched a series of compositions titled “Helsinki Web Sketches” that combine photos that I took during a residency at HIAP with WebGL code using three.js, rotoscope animations and video. Interact with the pages and click through them to see the various sketches.

The Helsinki Web Sketches are designed for modern desktop browsers that support WebGL.

Click the water to continue in this Sketch

Claudia Wieser – a student graphic designer’s wet dream

At Hunter College’s Film & Media Studies program, I teach an introductory production course in visual communication in which I cover graphic design basics, image and text composition, typography basics as well as an introduction to data visualization… The course is a medley of current topics related to visual communication. One of the lectures focuses on layout and the use of the golden ratio in art, design and architecture. As Euclid described the golden ratio: “A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the less.” We look at examples dissected by Kimberly Elam in her book Geometry of Design. We apply shapes such as the pentagon, star pentagram, the Fibonacci spiral to historical graphics such as the work of the Stenberg Brothers…

Claudia Wieser

Since I cover this sort of material in teaching, I was struck by the work of Claudia Wieser upon entering her October 2013 exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Chelsea, NY. Generally, I prefer work that is socially and/or politically engaging, but these galleries presented such a beautiful twist on design elements that I found myself in a visual funhouse. Work is presented throughout the gallery on the walls and floor, not as individual pieces, but rather constellations that speak to one another. The individual elements to the exhibition are simple – geometric shapes cut into mirrors, tiles or wood, graphic elements layered on to classical Western art. She seems to effectively extract the geometric design formulas applied to traditional Western sculpture and painting and then reapply them as sculptural elements to create new visualizations.

Claudia Wieser design savvy installation

Claudia Wieser design savvy installation

Phil Collins puts together a good show! There’s not much to not enjoy in Phil Collins current exhibition at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. Walking into a gallery with two home trailers is always going to be visually engaging. And when you step into the trailers, there are salty potato chips and refreshments waiting for you, so that you may have a seat and enjoy programming from a television channel created by the artists – TUTBU.TV (I wish it actually existed online). Although I did not have the patience to watch the programming for very long, what I did see were entertaining vignettes that appeared to mock the usual television programming available and included a soft porn featuring what appeared to be 18th Century European aristocracy.

Upstairs are two more projects, a series of private listening rooms that present a record player and shelves with 7″ records. I only listened to one, but the song is beautiful and the quality of sound inside the listening room is quite amazing. Below is a description of these audio listening rooms:

Within the upstairs main gallery, six specially designed listening booths house Collins’ most recent work, my heart’s in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand’s in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught, a project conceived in collaboration with guests of a survival station for the homeless in Cologne. There, Collins installed a phone booth with a free line that anyone could use for unlimited local and international calls on the agreement that the conversations would be recorded and then anonymized. The selected material was posted to a group of musicians, including David Sylvian, Scritti Politti, Lætitia Sadier, Maria Minerva and Damon & Naomi, among others, who used these recordings as source material to produce original songs presented here inside the booths as 7” vinyl records.

And perhaps my favorite piece is the video “Subculture: The Meaning of Style” although it fell short of initial expectation formed upon walking in due to the lack of narrative. When I first walked in, projected onto the wall were two young Asian men with shaved heads dressing against a backdrop of Buddhist wall paper. The clothes that the men are wearing are easily identified as skin-head clothing, but their faces look like young buddhist monks. I loved the juxtaposition and it appeared as if they were preparing to go somewhere and a narrative would ensue that would complicate the superimposition of popular British construct onto a non-Western community. Unfortunately, what followed was brief and no more than a series of gatherings of these skin-head Malaysians hanging out, entirely visual. Although one is left wondering who they are, why they choose this fashion style, do they understand its roots, how was it popularized in Malaysia… It’s great to have a piece generate these questions, but the work left me wanting more and feeling like it’s a bit empty and too easy… Perhaps that’s point.

Today, I attended Suzanne Lacy’s discussion regarding “Between the Door and the Street” which was interesting and would require its own post. Following the discussion, I went for a quick stroll through the museum and discovered Valerie Hegarty’s “Alternative Histories” – three installations in the period rooms. The Brooklyn Museum’s period rooms have always struck me as precious, spaces that remain intact for the visiting tourist to enjoy, so it was a real surprise to see that the museum would allow a contemporary artist to intervene upon these rooms. It’s particularly surprising as the installations are critical of the history portrayed in the period rooms. Valerie Hegarty tears away at the pristine nature of these rooms that reflect early U.S. Puritanism and a humble nobility, by presenting rooms that are in decay, crows or woodpeckers have entered the rooms and tear away at the objects. The rooms effectively bring to question the heroism of early U.S. history and remind us of the horror that early settlers brought to Native Americans and the natural landscape.

Today I met the artist Sharon Paz who is a fellow resident artist at Helsinki’s HIAP. Following our meeting, I watched a 2012 video work of hers and absolutely love it, check it out!

DISTRACTED DESTRUCTION, Sharon Paz, 2012 from Sharon Paz on Vimeo.

“Montecore’s” 2013, Multi-media assemblage with museum crate, 91.5″ x 69″ x 41″

I saw Alex Hubbard’s exhibition at Maccarone back in May, buy only now in mid-June do I have the time to consider what I saw. Hubbard took advantage of Maccarone’s size and multiple galleries to present two separate sets of work “Magical Ramón” and “The Five Bar Blues.”

I didn’t care for the work making up “Magical Ramón” and I particularly disliked the “bent paintings.” The bent paintings are solid colors of polyurethane hanging off the wall or laying on the ground. I could consider the formal qualities of these things… the colors, shapes and the fact that they are likely work intensive, but I consider them toxic and boring.

“The Five Bar Blues” on the other hand are brilliant! Meticulously constructed sections of life-size dive bars installed into shipping crates! The bars were filled with liquor. I asked the attendant of the sculptures were interactive, she said yes, and the friend I was with dived right into the Hennessy. Besides the brilliance of drinking stations fitted into art crates, each bar can only fit one person and is modeled after dive bars with iconic elements such as the steel black gate and blue neon or alternately the wooden saloon half doors with wood paneling interior and Budweiser sign and both with drop ceilings.

“Siegreid’s” 2013, Multi-media assemblage with museum crate, 91.5″ x 69″ x 41″

The fact that there is only space for one person evokes Hopper’s Nighthawks and a host of other impressions – bars that open at 6am where lonely people might spend the day and afternoon…

Over the years, I’ve known any number of artists who wish they owned a bar or hope to one day open up their own bar, Alex Hubbard has found a great alternative… build a little bar into a crate, stock it with liquor and place it in a gallery!

“Latimore’s” 2013, Multi-media assemblage with museum crate, 91.5″ x 69″ x 41″

“Siegfrid’s” 2013, Multi-media assemblage with museum crate, 91.5″ x 69″ x 41″

Last Saturday, I met with Keith Estiler and Edgar De La Vega of OBTRUSIV MAG to discuss art. They’ve put the interview on their Art & Culture column, the article is titled – Pricking the Public. Here’s the video:

I’m a big fan of Ward Shelley, particularly his performances, but equally love his brain maps. One example I just came across is “The History of Science Fiction, ver. 1: