a day like any other

While in New York LC, James and I went to New Museum on Bowery. I just found this on Document magazines weeklies section and was reminded about some of the interesting work I saw while we were there. There were two retrospectives on when we visited- the first of work by Brazilian Rivane Neuenschwander and the second of Brion Gysin's work. 

I found Neuenschwanders work interesting. It was process based and explorative featuring installation and video projection. I really enjoyed As mil e un noites posseveis (one thousand and one possible nights) and Arabian Moons, featuring images of hole punched paper arranged like the milkyway and a constantly streaming film projection with a hole punched in each frame. Her preoccupation with circles and passages of time is quite meditative. This tied in with her installation of hanging buckets, each with a hole in the base allowing drops of water to fall into buckets placed below. the pace of the drip echoed by the flick of an analogue clock. Her work also explored the age of surveilance, uncovering histories, and reforming memory.  

The most accessible piece was her installation downstairs called 'A day Like Any Other' which invited the viewer to participate. The room was filled with thousands of coloured ribbons hanging from the wall, each with a printed wish. The viewer was invited to exchange their own wish (written on paper) with a ribbon from the wall, to tie it around their wrist and leave it on until it came true. Neueschwander based this on a brazilian tradition in which people take their wishes to the church, reinventing it in the context of the museum. Though this installation was more light hearted than other areas of her work it was also rooted in ideas of the passing of time and act of wishing- a meditative thought. 

Brion Gysins work was interesting for its aesthetic but also for his association with William S Burroughs and the beat gen. I'd like to read some more about him and his life- a project for the future perhaps. 

Ghost Light Junky

I am very much looking forward to being on holiday and having the time to go and see some great art. New York City has been a haven for artists since the war caused mass exodus from Europe. Perhaps it isn't the ART CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE that it was in the second half of the 20th C, but NYC is still full of great art and living, working artists. I am definitely heading across the Brooklyn bridge to Williamsburg so I can get a look at Bill Saylor's new exhibition a the Journal Gallery. It opened this Wednesday and looks absolutely fantastic. I love the playfulness of his compositions. Images via OC. 

Ghost Light Junky | June 23rd — August 15th

The Journal Gallery

168 North 1st Street (at Bedford)

Ro/Lu

I have recently fallen deeply in love with Ro/Lu's divine aesthetic. They, from what I can gather, are an architecture/design team and blog a rich tapestry of art, design, architecture, culture and inspiration. I love their philosophical glance, which I guess is a way of saying that aesthetics are in the heart/eye/mind. I really loved their post about cyclist Eddy Merckx, that focused on the idea of determination against the odds. They also featured a series of works by Barbara and Michael Leisgen named memesis. It is absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful in its wild simplicity. Check it out. 

Queen Mum, Hurry up!

There is something so good about east London. Its like all those other decrepit come trendy areas in all cities around the world. The kids might be a bit poorer but they've got some good ideas about the world. Charlie Woolley is one of those kids, an artist who grew up out here, works, makes things and exhibits in the east. His images are startling- diptychs taken from various media sources and put together to create a new intent. They are aesthetically interesting, the colours of your phosphorescent youth and yet somehow sinister. Woolley was also a part of the Copenhagen radio project, where he took up a residency and ran a radio station for a month. I hope he has another exhibition soon so I can see this all in real life.

G L A M O R O U S

Art in Europe has been a little hit and miss. Some things which I have been dying to see turn out to be overrun with american tourists and screaming children. Other places, that i find after a bit of research, always turn out to be fantastic. Thats what happened today at the MACBA in downtown gothic Barcelona. Within the depths of the collection i found a little gem, Sanja Ivekovic. 

Sanja's works are dated. Her photographic compositions sit in a space which can be absoletely no other time period than 1975. As the protagonist of the story that she tells, she places her body at the centre of particular daily struggles. Alone these works would be interesting, but not particularly potent. They would look at issues of femininity, identity and also the social an political issues of being a woman, specifically in the 70's. What Sanja has done, however is put these photographs into dialogue with fashion advertising posters to create a void which sits between the hyper-reality of the ad and the realism of daily life.

Double life, a series of 62 pairs of these photographs draws on the paralels between how the media portrays us and how we really are. The void is very deep in places, but is also very shallow. The women portrayed in the advertisments are beautiful, posed and manipulated (in many ways). The activities that they are undertaking seem natural, that is until you juxtopose them with the image of Ivekovc, at which point you realise that they are plastic masquerading as flesh. 

The photos are posed too, they are a recreation of the posed model. How post modern, a recreation of a recreation of life and its hard to tell what is closer to reality (and indeed what is closer to art?). Somehow Ivekovic's photos have a freedom that the ad's don't have. There is a sense of life beyond the moment within her compositions. As if the weren't posed. The essay draws associations to the public vs the private, Sanja has let us into a private part of her life that the ad's can only falsely attempt to recreate. 

These images are glamorous. Maybe it is out of some kind of romantic nostagia for the recent past (the era in which my mum grew up). The advertisements themselves, of course, are supposed to glamorous- they are meant to make us desire what is is that the model has. The images of real life seem to draw me to a different place, the want to experience the culture of a time. Of an Artist in the 70's. 

The parallels between these pairings also draws the question of influence. Are the poses that the media has created poses that are supposed to represent femininity, or are they what has created it. The marketing department  (men?) has constructed ideas of femininity that through the relentless assault of imagery has lent to forming a culture of glamour. 

continuum of images

Tonight I went to a couple of exhibitions. The first one I went to was at Felt on Compton street called Margit Bruenner: Sieben Himmel.. A couple of years ago I did  workshop with Romanian artist Calin Dan which Margit also attended. The work she was doing back then looked into the "atmosphere" present within areas and space. Her new work follows on with the principles of exploring space in order to discover the atmosphere. This exhibition features video work of Margit moving through chosen space; barren, empty landscapes. Through these video works Margit evokes Antonioni's Landscape, the action is secondary to the landscape itself. Her images may seem unimportant but in actuality work towards creating an ‘environment’. Looking at her figure moving through the image we can, as in Antonioni's cinema, begin to read it for its layers, its archaeology [1]. The centre of the space was filled with a large trampoline, on which the video equipment sat. The trampoline took up the space, was disruptive to the gallery setting and felt in some way oppositional to the movement on the screens. But the Trampoline is not an art object, but an art remainder. In object used in creating another archaeology. On the walls of the gallery were covered in layers of tiny intricate scribblings. An exploration of the movement created through the addition of the trampoline. These drawings are also a remainder, a recording of the act of discovering layers of atmosphere.

 

The second exhibition was a large group show at the Queens theatre called Big. It was a production by Format and the 2% collective. It was really exciting to see such an enormous show put on involving so many artists across so many disciplines. The best thing was the number of people who showed up to support the event, the building was buzzing with an amazing atmosphere. The piece that caught my eye was a work by Mark Niehus, a local poet/artist. The piece involved an only desk, a wonderful typewriter and a poem on a single piece of paper (will load a photo later). The space that it was in was a large hall to the left of the entrance to the theatre. Surrounding were video pieces by a number of artists and central sat the desk with the single piece of paper stretching towards the towering ceiling. Just to the left sat another smaller desk with copies of a poem and a sign inviting viewers to take one home. The most important ideal of this exhibition is the way it embraces: the large number of quality artists, the exploration of concepts and also the invitation for the viewers participation. Well done to Format + 2%.

1.            Marks, L., A Deleuzian Politics of Hybrid Cinema. Screen, 1994. 35: p. 224.