Current Tendencies II: Artists from Milwaukee
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

10 Milwaukee artists at the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University
13th and Clybourn, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
August 24 – December 31, 2011
Opening reception, August 31, 6PM

Concert at Church of the Gesu with John Weissrock, September 14, 6PM
Panel Discussion with Meuninck-Ganger, Stern and others, October 6, 6PM
Lecture by Reginald Baylor and Mark Brautigam, November 9, 6PM

Current Tendencies II features 10 Milwaukee artists working in a variety of media, including photography, painting, drawing, printmaking, video and sculpture.  The exhibition presents many never-before-seen works, commissioned specifically for the Haggerty Museum.  Each artist was paired with a Marquette professor who wrote a reflection of the artist’s work based on the professor’s area of expertise, creating dialogue between artist and scholar and connecting philosophy, theology, political science, communications, etc., to the works in the exhibition.

The exhibition premieres 13 Views of a Journey (6 x 8 feet, see above detail), a new Distill Life installation by Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Nathaniel Stern. Here the artists mount large-scale and translucent prints to plexiglass and rear project video through them, creating “moving images on paper.” The 13 animated vignettes are played in random order behind fibrous and inky paper, making a dynamic and room-sized book art project. Says Philosophy Professor Melissa Shew, “This work is not about the artists, past and present; it is not about correctness in terms of history or technique; it is not about influence and deference…. this work concerns what is possible through collaboration, through layering and uncovering, film and print.”

Jessica and Nathaniel will also be part of a panel discussion at the museum on October 6 at 6 PM, with Will Pergl, Dr. Melissa Shew and Dr. Bonnie Brennen. Other artists featured in Current Tendencies II include Reginald Baylor, Mark Brautigam, Julian Correa, Lisa Hecht, Sharon Kerry-Harlan, Luc Leplae, Will Pergl, and Jordan Waraksa. Catalogs are available at the museum, or as a PDF download.

New Forms Festival: Public Domain
Vancouver, Canada

Nathaniel Stern and Scott Kildall, among others
Waldorf Hotel, Vancouver
1489 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC V5L 1S4, Canada
September 9-11, 2011

New Forms Festival 2011 delves into the theme of “Public Domain”, focusing on concepts of copyright art, public interactivity, media façades and relationships between public and private spaces. Utilizing the entire hotel premises, the festival will act as a creative hub, a laboratory for exploration and discovery. Throughout the festival, performances, video projects, workshops and installations will take place in the hotel rooms, various bars, spaces, hallways, outer walls and the back parking lot, including artists such as Antoine Schmitt, Negativland, Patrick Cruz, ARO, Lief Hall and Hart Snider.

Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern famously used Wikipedia as an artistic platform, creating a collaborative project that explores and challenges our understanding of how knowledge is formed and disseminated. For over a year they planned the initiation of Wikipedia Art, a socially generated artwork that exploits a feedback loop in Wikipedia’s citation mechanism. Here, a “word war” across blogs, interviews and the mainstream press, which involved Wikipedians, artists, journalists, lawyers and even the Wikimedia Foundation itself, continuously defined and transformed a work of art in much the same way that these categories define the discourses of the everyday. Their Wikipedia Art hotel room for the New Forms Festival plays with the kinds of parodoxical publicity needed to begin and sustain a Wikipedia page, and charts the inception, birth, life, death and resurrection of their work. It questions the authoritative role of Wikipedia, and reveals its fallibility whilst debating the control of, access to, and creation of, knowledge.

Transcode
Pretoria, South Africa

UNISA Gallery
University of South Africa
Kgorong Building, Ground floor
Preller & Ridge Street
Muckleneuk Ridge, Pretoria
September 7 – 30, 2011
Opening reception: September 7

Transcode: Dialogues Around Intermedia Practice, curated by Gwen Miller at the new UNISA (University of South Africa) Gallery, explores the space between digital and traditional work for contemporary, South African artist-researchers. It premieres new work by many artists, including Lawrence Lemaoana, Celia de Villiers, Frikkie Eksteen, Marcus Neustetter, Carolyn Parton, Churchill Madikida, Colleen Alborough, Minette Vári and Fabian Wargau, among others.

Nathaniel Stern’s new piece, static, is an enclosed installation of six looped films, where each is edited down through “thresholding” the audio: any time the volume goes above a set and very low amplitude, that section is completely removed, and the film jump cuts to the next (nearly) silent sequence. These are in a tight corridor with three body-sized and wall-to-wall projections on either side, spatially putting viewers “in quotes” as they inadvertently cast shadows into the stories around them. High-volume loudspeakers accompany each projection, creating a hum out of the minor background noise left behind in all six Best Picture-winning films: Apocalypse Now, Casablanca, Silence of the Lambs, On The Waterfront, The Godfather II and Midnight Cowboy. What we see or experience is reliant not only on the work’s rich-but-noiseless stasis and over-determined visual action, but also our familiarity with each film or filmic genre. The clips’ varied lengths, styles and narratives, all seen together, accent our collective, social relationships to archetypal stories and characters at large.

Also on exhibition is Stern’s well known interactive piece, stuttering, and several works from his Compressionism and Distill Life series (the latter with collaborator Jessica Meuninck-Ganger).

Out of the Suitcase
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger are also part of Out of the Suitcase: Works by Recent Recipients of the Mary L. Nohl Suitcase Awards, with their collaborative and solo print work. The exhibition is curated by Mark Lawson and Bruce Knackert in the Frederick Layton Gallery at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, on view now through October 8, and with an opening reception Thursday, September 8, at 6PM.

Other participating artists include: Nicole Brown, Matt Cipov, Michael Davidson, Chris Davis Benavides, Santiago Cucullu, Nicholas Grider, Karen Gunderman, Nicolas Lampert, Angela Laughingheart, Faythe Levine, Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg, Kimberly Miller, Will Pergl, John Ruebartsch, Val Schleicher, Sonja Thomsen, Christopher Willey and James Zwadlo.

I skipped a year, so it’s been 2 since I posted my surprisingly popular Tops of 2008: A Different Kind of Year in Review. Here, I go with four different Top 5 lists: The Top 5 people I newly met in 2010, The Top 5 people I’d like to meet because of what they did (or the work I saw from them) in 2010, The Top 5 exhibitions for me (what I found most enjoyable), and The Top 5 shows I wish I had seen, but didn’t. Hope you like it! Feel free to comment, leaving any things/people I missed but might (or should have) enjoy(ed)!

The Top 5 people I newly met in 2010:

1. Erin Manning + Brian Massumi. I know, although partnered, these are two very different people, and it’s probably wrong of me to put them together under one heading. But I met them together, have only seen them together, and it’s kind of fun, given that Brian has been an academic crush of mine for many years (one of the “like to meets” of 2008) and Erin is a new discovery who I am utterly enamored with. Both brilliant thinkers, both extremely generous spirits, both creative and funny and easy to hang with. I know I’ll be reading and citing and dialog-ing with them professionally for some time to come, and I hope our meeting is a long-time friendship in the making.
2. Mary Louise Schumacher at the Journal Sentinel. Mary Louise is part of a dying breed – a full-time arts critic at a daily newspaper. Not content to merely cover art in Milwaukee and its surrounds, Schumacher has gone to great efforts to put together a team of writers, both paid and volunteer, who engage with the community through her blog and regular print column. Like all good arts community-builders, she sees critics, artists, academics, gallerists and appreciators (extant or potential) as playing for the same team; but her courage and integrity in trying make shit happen with that? Very rare. ML: I owe you one martini.
3. Norah Zuniga Shaw (@ OSU, and Synchronous Objects, the project I met her through). A recipient of one of ISEA‘s commissions for 2010, Norah Zuniga Shaw is a brilliant artist and choreographer who studies, and asks us to re-examine, movement and stasis: in objects, ourselves, our surroundings, and more. If you’ll forgive the pun, her Synchronous Objects collaboration was very, um, moving. Also? Both she and her work are super fun.
4. Richard Grusin. The new Director of the Center for 21st Century Studies at UW-Milwaukee, author of this classic book and this new one, and fun to have a beer with. Honest and opinionated, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
5. Steven Sacks of Bitforms Gallery. A visionary in his approach to contemporary media art, the commercial gallery scene, and his blending of the two, several of my favorite artists working in digital domains show with Steven. Off the top of my head, I know he’s shown Yael Kanarek, Danny Rozin and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer this year, and currently has Daniel Canogar’s first NYC solo on exhibit.

Top 5 people I’d like to meet because of what they did (or the work I saw from them) in 2010:

1. Kate Mondloch, author of the book, Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art published by University of Minnesota Press. I wrote a very positive review of this book for Rhizome.
2. Joseph Delappe. Brilliant media artist with a long history of engaging with technology and the social practices it influences. One of very few contemporary practitioners I know of that can pull off conceptual mixed reality work that is both implicitly and explicitly political,, beautiful and smart. He will be moving to the “people I’ve met” list in 2012!
3. Richard Noyce, curator and writer, author of Critical Mass: Printmaking Beyond the Edge. We’re hosting him here at UWM in the Spring, another one from my list(!)….
4. Anna Münster, curator, artist, writer – finally got around to reading Materializing New Media, and was super impressed.
5. Patricia Briggs. My newest guilty pleasure is urban fantasy, and my favorite character from the genre is definitely the were-coyote (sort of, Briggs calls her a “walker”) and mechanic, Mery Thompson (ha, Volkswagen mechanic named Mercedes!). Although it’s unlikely I’d meet the former, it’s impossible I’ll meet the latter (being fictional and all), so Patricia makes the list.
6. BONUS PERSON: as of last night, December 10th, Bernie Sanders!

The Top 5 exhibitions for me (what I found most enjoyable):

1. ISEA 2010! The 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art in the RUHR Region of Germany was probably the highlight of my year. Great art, conference, music, conversations, new friends, food, beer and more. I’m totally on board for future ISEAs now as well (see, for example, my name here).
2. Theatrical Properties at Bitforms Gallery. Co-curated by Emily Bates and Laura Blereau, with brochure essay by Sarah Cook, this exhibition turned everyday objects into kinetic props for really interesting narratives. Totally loved it and the great brochure.
3. Claude Monet, Gagosian Gallery. His late work just blew me away. I wish the catalog didn’t cost three times as much as one of my students’ works. I wish I had seven of these (and now I don’t mean the catalogs).
4. Real Postcard Survey Project at the Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee. See what I wrote about it in the Journal Sentinel.
5. Passing Between. Yes, I know, it’s cheeky to include my own show. But I’m not putting it forward because I want to convince you of its brilliance. Rather, I want to reiterate how much I love working with Gallery AOP in Johannesburg and with Jessica Meuninck-Ganger, my collaborator in Milwaukee, as well as the brilliant folks who helped us produce the catalog and work: Nicole Ridgway with her essay, Sean Kafer and his video documentary, Michael Spzakowski and his music, Jeff Ganger and his design, and of course my former studio assistants for all their help: Jesse Egan, Garrett Gharibeh and Bryan Cera.

The Top 5 shows I wish I had seen, but didn’t

1. Colleen Alborough’s Balance at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg. A former student, good friend and great artist, Colleen’s show feels like it is both the culmination of years’ worth of work, as well as the beginning of a fantastic exploration of ideas and materials. Her work is smart, moving, and very well made.
2. #class. I never publicly commented on this. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve spoken to anyone about it, a fave of Jerry Saltz and an ongoing project with #rank. On the one hand, I am very very fond of artists trying to make a community, and make sense of how we engage with museums, the gallery scene, the public, etc. On the other, I tend to shy away from art about the art world – I just don’t find much of it that interesting. Often, however, I do like the work of Jennifer Dalton and Bill Powhida (the people behind this project), so I withheld judgment until now. And I’m glad I did; in fact I sometimes wish I had tried to be involved myself – it’s a great project. I’ll say I’m especially fond of the collaborators’ reflections on their work, and find many of the interviews and blog posts with and by them to be curious and provocative, personal and intelligent, funny and entertaining, and full of gems that critically analyze not just the art scene, but all the roles played in it, including their own.
3. William Kentridge’s Nose. I had the privelege of seeing much of William’s design work in progress for the Nose in his studio in South Africa; I also consulted on a derivative piece from his last opera for him; and I even saw the launch of the Nose print suite at David Krut in Joburg. But I’m yet to see one of the Kentridge performances myself! I find William to be smart, generous and thoughtful, as both artist and person – and his prolific work is brilliant. He’s kind of my hero. And so it pisses me off that I’m yet to see either of his operas.
4. Art Basel Miami. The work of Jennifer Dalton and Bill Powhida, and some chats with my friend Heather Warren-Crow (among others), have lead me to believe that Art Basel Miami is kind of insane. Paradoxically wonderful and horrible, commercial and interventionist, low-brow party wrapped in high-brow culture, I’m not interested in intervening or even participating – I just wanna go one year, and get drunk a lot.
5. David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly. Not a show in itself, and not new, but a bit of recent controversy in the press has made the public again aware of what I hear is a stunning and heartbreaking work.

I’m sure I missed plenty, but that’s what I have off the top of my head. Enjoy the holiday season!

Falling Still

Yevgeniya Kaganovich and Nathaniel Stern
UWM Art History Gallery
curated by Jennifer Johung
2 December – 16 December 2010
opening reception 2 December, 5 – 7 PM
the artists will be in attendance at the opening
the exhibition has an accompanying booklet with text by the curator

Falling Still utilizes 200 cement-cast feathers as individual pixels to create a larger image across 6 planes. Each of these sculptures has been hand-poured into molds of actual feathers, exhibiting finely detailed quills on one side, and flat concrete surfaces on the other. They hang from the ceiling via discrete fishing lines, swinging, twisting and turning as viewers move around the 8 x 15 x 4 foot installation area. From all perspectives but one, the work floats between 1-dimensional lines, 2-dimensional planes and 3-dimensional pixels. View it exactly perpendicular to its planes, and all the work’s elements cohere into a bit-mapped image of a body, leaping through the air. While Falling Still is itself suspended between movement and stasis, it also moves and arrests us. The installation directs us in and around incongruous objects, through an improbable image, and across multiple dimensions.

http://yevgeniyakaganovich.com
http://nathanielstern.com
http://johung.com

University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee Art History Gallery
154 Mitchell Hall
3203 North Downer Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53211
Mon – Thurs: 10am-4pm

The gallery is free, open to the public and handicap accessible.
For more information, contact Jennifer Johung, johung@uwm.edu

Yoan Capote (Cuba) at Jack Shainman. This show is not open yet, but we got a preview and chatted to Yoan for quite a while about the work. It’s fantastically smart and funny, and very well-made (a change from many object-based works in Chelsea as of late). 2D and 3D sculpture and object-based images. Do not miss it.

Alejandro Almanza Pereda at Magnan Metz. Wonderful sculpture and plant and light and image works all around. One or two duds, but mostly very exciting.

Eric Fertman at Susan Inglett Gallery. Again, well-made and funny objects, this time all in wood. Good and old friend Christopher Ulivo, a fantastic painter, is also with this gallery, and so I’ve been trying to go every time I’ve been in NYC over the last while; and I am never disappointed. Get this: Chris and I were in a Ska-Punk band together in 1995 (spelling and grammar on that MySpace page aside, “Stinky Pete” now works in the communications industry).

Airan Kang at Bryce Wolkowitz. Very smart and fun objects and sculptures about mediation, new and traditional, as well as an homage to and citation of many artists and art forms. We stayed and talked about the show for some time: lightning books!

There were a few other good shows (like Yael Kanarek at Bitforms), and some not so great (the much talked about Gagosian show; the sad thing is, it’s not horrible, but rather, not even worth talking about. Why are people doing so? Note: I did not mention the artist or link to the site….), but those above are the four I’d say are not to be missed in Chelsea, if you have some time….

New Work with Jessica Meuninck-Ganger! It’s a one-of-a-kind charcoal and pastel drawing on paper, permanently mounted to an LCD screen playing machinima video from Second Life. Part of the ongoing Distill Life series, the image tells only part of the story. The earth’s rotation in the video is a time lapse, with a moonset and sunset over 5 minutes, but the clouds and sea and rain (and blinking lights, etc) move in real time. Made especially for a group show with our gallery in South Africa, Gallery AOP, opening late October.

Switch & Signal
charcoal, pastel, LCD with machinima video
9 x 12 inches, 2010
Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Nathaniel Stern

Opening, Tuesday 3 August, 5:30 for 6pm
Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, 3 August to 18 September 2010

colleen alborough and Louis Khehla Maqhubela @ standard bank

Standard Bank Gallery
Corner Simmonds and Frederick Street, Johannesburg
Tel: 011 631-1889
Gallery hours: Mon-Fri, 08:00-16:30; Saturday, 09:00-13:00
The gallery is closed on Sundays and public holidays.
Admission free

compressionism.net

Just finished an overhaul of compressionism.net, and uploaded content, including works, press, documentaiton, etc. Look out for upcoming books and shows that feature the new work!

Some highlights in Chelsea:

• Monet at Gagosian – absolutely stunning. I wish the catalog was less than $100! Me wants.
• The New Grand Tour at Bryce Wolkowitz – works by “Suitman” – especially the one not on their site – were witty and fun.
• A brief tour of the LES printshop with Dusica Kirjakovic, a real sweetie. Saw some fun work by William Powhida and Steve Lambert (recent and/or current residents; dude, Lambert’s web site is nice – awesome wordpress hack!).

Hany Armanious at Foxy Productions

• Hany Armanious at Foxy productions – all diligently casted works to look like an “unfinished” show – clever, surprising, well-made.
• Two shows at Winkleman: Yevgeniy Fiks (his drawings are smart and meticulous) and Reflective Reflexion (curated by Joy Garnett). Also had a light catch up with the man himself, which reminded me both how great his book is and also how lucky I am in my current job and life.
• Jim Kempner Fine Art – some nice work, but I admit the highlight was that they were editing a new episode of The Madness of Art in the basement; I giggled, and told the two folks working in Final Cut that I was a fan.
• Ben Govker at PPOW made me laugh.
• Carsten Nicolai – if you don’t know his work, you really really should, especially the sound sculptures – at Pace.
• The show and a catch-up chat with the ladies at David Krut – I miss Johannesburg!
• MagnanMetz’s new space is AMAZING! Not a huge fan of the current show, but I commend them for doing it – it’s a bit risky and it’s really well curated. The aforementioned Sean Slemon is with them, as well as a few others I am a fan of. Watch these guys, for real.

Et Cetera 2009 - Gudjon Ketilsson and Gudrun Kristjansdottir at Luise Ross

• Gudjon Ketilsson and Gudrun Kristjansdottir at Luise Ross. I also chatted briefly with the lady herself, and she is a force to be reckoned with, I must say… This is a really solid show, and I highly recommend it. I was tempted to purchase one of the small drawings (and LOVED the installation of sand, above), but a family of three on an art professor’s salary, ah, you know how it is…

There were a few other works that made me happy throughout the day, especially some at The Drawing Center (though that’s not in Chelsea), but above are the ones that stand out to me most a day later. Lemme know if you hit any up and have any other thoughts on them.

PS Upcoming show at Bitforms looks AWESOME. Curated by Emily Bates and Laura Blereau (don’t know the former, think very highly of the latter), with brochure essay by Sarah Cook (of Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media, which I am currently reviewing for Rhizome). It opens on Thursday; I will be there and so will T.Whid of MTAA – come say hi and see great work!

Two in Wisconsin, and more!

It’s been a busy few months for Nathaniel Stern (me), and there’s more to come. My show with Jessica Meuninck-Ganger at Gallery AOP in Johannesburg has received critical acclaim in the Mail and Guardian and on Rhizome.org (among others), and the exhibition at Greylock Arts (extended for another two weeks – see documentation here) featured in the North Adams Transcript, and will be discussed at length in an upcoming episode of Bad at Sports. Current group shows, and openings in the next few weeks, also include other spaces in Chicago, Johannesburg, Hungary and Milwaukee. See my web site for more.

The big and exciting news is our homecoming: two solo shows of the Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meunink-Ganger collaborations open this week in Wisconsin – and the catalogue (with DVDs) from Gallery AOP will be available. You can see the cover of “Cue” in today’s Journal Sentinel for a feature and image.

Distill Life

Museum of Wisconsin Art
Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger
Wednesday 5 April 2010 – Saturday 8 May 2010

Opening Sunday 11 April 2010, 1:30 PM
Featuring a talk and demonstration by the artists at 2 PM

*

Print Press Play

Elaine Erickson Gallery
Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger
Thursday 8 April 2010 – Saturday 22 May 2010

Opening Thursday 8 April 2010, from 6 – 8 PM
Featuring a talk by the artists at 6:30 PM

*

About the work

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Nathaniel Stern approach both old and new media as form. In their “Distill Life” works, the artists permanently mount translucent prints and drawings directly on top of video screens, creating moving images on paper. They incorporate technologies and aesthetics from traditional printmaking – including woodblock, silk screen, etching, lithography, photogravure etc – with the technologies and aesthetics of contemporary digital, video and networked art, to explore images as multidimensional.

Meuninck-Ganger and Stern hack and tweak, shoot and print, appropriate and remix, edit and draw. Their juxtaposition of anachronistic and disparate methods, materials and content -print and video, paper and electronics, real and virtual – enables novel approaches to understanding each. The artists engage with subject matter ranging from historical portraiture to current events, from hyperreal landscapes to socially awkward moments. The works are surprising, wistful, enchanting, and seriously playful.

http://nathanielstern.com
http://jessicameuninck.com

In her review of the response show, #class, she writes of what she’s looking for in exploring the art world:

I’m a nerd. The reason I participate in the art world is to experience singular moments of great joy when in the presence of great beauty; whether that comes from an idea or the actual physical manifestation of beauty I could care less.

But that doesn’t happen much. So she goes on to say that sometimes the snarkiness she can find in art is enough to sustain her.

Anyway.

The review is a story of art about art and reveals in, I think, a compelling way how a young artist’s thinking about these sorts of things can evolve over time. Readers of this blog seem to appreciate art that comments on the medium itself and questioning the whole notion of where art needs to stop and the gallery or the viewer or the viewer of the viewer needs to begin. That’s why I think what Monnier has to say here is worth a read.

It’s also an interesting commentary on success, what that means and who the winners and losers are when someone in the art world takes off.

“This past month, Johannesburg’s AOP Gallery, a space devoted to works on paper, hosted the exhibition “Passing Between” which showcased the collaborative output between digital artist Nathaniel Stern and printmaker Jessica Meuninck-Ganger. At the outset, Stern and Meuninck-Ganger approached the collaboration as a chance to learn each other’s techniques. But they quickly chose to focus on their own strengths in a process they call [Distill Life]. For Stern, the move toward printmaking comes from a long interest in the technique. In recent work, he has engaged with an expanded form of digital print making, using a hacked portable scanner to produce densely patterned sequences of natural images, in a project called Compressionism. For “Passing Between,” Stern concentrated on using digital photo frames as a medium for displaying loops of video obtained through live filming, and sampled machinima taken from Second Life. Meuninck-Ganger responded to the framed video loops with an encyclopedic range of printmaking techniques from wood block to mono print, silkscreen, etching, and photogravure. In some cases, she printed or [drew] directly on the screens of the digital photo frames; in other cases, the prints were layered over the screens creating a delicate conjunction between the fibers of the paper medium and the illumination of the underlying video. In The Gallerist, a prominent New York art dealer is portrayed anxiously perched on a [raft] in [the] middle of a lithograph while below the surface of the paper machinima sharks circle him endlessly.”

“The effect is both magical and subtle. Jessica’s images often capture a static moment from the subject matter of the video in etching or ink. The pleasure offered by the composite images comes from the interplay between the stasis of the printed image and the temporal flow of the video, producing witty and sometimes fascinating results. In the diptych [Twin City] the 2009 tornado is represented with an animated twister from Second Life. Jessica’s lithograph shows a flying pig coming to rest momentarily in alignment with its outline before whirling back to the beginning of the looped tornado. In general, the artist’s subject matter is deliberately low-key and it presents samples from their lives as artists and young parents in Milwaukee and Johannesburg exploring moments of fun, awkwardness and good humor. However, the rich range of techniques and visual allusions layered over the works also references an entire history of contemporary art and print making, ranging from Hokusai to Velazquez.”

see the original article

“… The work is funny, pretty and accessible, but it’s also complicated, surprising, exceedingly well crafted and rewards a long-term relationship. That’s your cue to rush out and buy a piece, take it home and plug it in.”

“I’d better take a stab at describing the pieces in the gallery, although it would be easier all round if you checked out the video of the work on www.mg.co.za/stern. Basically, it’s a new-media mash-up. Paraphrasing the artists’ own description: they mount translucent prints and drawings on top of video screens, creating moving pictures on paper.”

“That doesn’t do justice to, for example, the mesmerising, joyful experience of watching insubstantial sharks endlessly circling The Gallerist. He’s depicted kneeling on some driftwood in the middle of the ocean while sketchy vultures hover ominously. And there’s a perfect beauty to The Great Oak, the central image of which is a drawing of a sturdy tree, already complicated by the digital echo of itself, counterpointed by ghostly figures leaping at its base.”

…

“So when you wander around the show at the misnamed Art on Paper, or if you’re lucky enough to have one of these works on your wall, you can choose. Do you just want to enjoy the playful nature of a piece such as Twin City — whoah! Here comes the flying cow again! — or do you want to meditate on the nature of the loop, which ‘without origin or telos … interweaves the work’s time with the spectator’s as rhythm rather than succession’?”

“I know, you’re a 21st-century art lover, so you want it all — profundity and plasticity, facile conversation piece and deep worth. Greedy. But with this work, you can have it all and, in true hypertextual style, leap from moment to moment, constantly recreating desire and satisfaction, in much the same way as the looped video constantly re-enacts the pleasure of watching.”

Read the entire article.

‘Dada South?’, curated by Roger van Wyk and Kathryn Smith presents a collision of artistic strategies and forms that reflect the impact of Dada; works conceived and enacted in the spirit of Dada, and which seek to question the conventions, values and function of art in a troubled society. The juxtaposition of works from South Africa and from abroad aims to examine the significance of non-western cultures in Dada practice. It also provides an opportunity to consider an alternative history of resistance in a culture of isolation and repression in South Africa, one that intersects with the canon of ‘resistance art’, but which deviates into forms that are less didactic, more eclectic and experimental.

On exhibition will be historical Dada works and publications by Marcel Duchamp, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Hannah Höch, Man Ray, Hans Richter and Sophie Täuber-Arp – all assembled for exhibition alongside works and objects by Jane Alexander, Walter Battiss, Willem Boshoff, Candice Breitz, Kendell Geers, Neil Goedhals, Wopko Jensma, Robin Rhode, Lucas Seage and Nathaniel Stern among many others.

The opening features a series of performances by Warrick Sony, Donna Kukama and Kemang wa Lehulere and the Iziko Museums Education and Public Programmes, among others.

12 December – 28 February

Gallery dedicated to book art opens in Brooklyn

Commercial venture shows growing popularity of the medium

By Andrew Goldstein | Web only
Published online 5 Oct 09 (Art Market)

Central Booking’s opening party

New york. In tune with a growing interest in print and book art, a new pop-up gallery has opened in Brooklyn’s DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) neighbourhood dedicated to the art form. Called Central Booking, the space is the brainchild of Maddy Rosenberg, a book artist and independent curator who has worked in the field for more than two decades, and hopes to further expose the versatility of the medium to the art world at large.

“My definition of the book is very expansive and inclusive,” says Rosenberg. “When an artist says they’re making a book, that’s my parameter.”

Read on.

The “American Furniture/Googled” exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum through Sunday is a surprisingly interesting show, even if only in its promise.

Little did I expect, when going to what I assumed to be a very tame gallery talk, to be engaged in a discussion about controversial topics surrounding knowledge and research. At first glance, the exhibition feels like little more than a post-curating gimmick: a bunch of slideshows about designers and furniture next to their 19th century counterparts.

But the show’s charming curator, Mel Buchanan – the museum’s relatively newly appointed assistant curator of 20th-Century Design – convinced me of at least one thing: Google gets people talking. As our small crowd at the Buchanan-led chat disputed issues of truth, power and silliness online, our interest exponentially increased. I’d definitely recommend the show; just be sure to bring a friend, or group, who likes debate.

Buchanan was given a tiny budget – even by non-museum exhibition standards – and told to use everyday technologies to access the MAM’s collection of furniture design circa the 1800s. She and her collaborators actually considered several ideas before settling on Google searches for their pieces as its starting point.

These throwaways included, among other things, a Wiki show, where museum-goers could contribute their own information and opinions for each object, and a Facebook show, where each piece got a profile and friends, and we could write on their virtual walls.

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