Jessica Meuninck-Ganger
Position / Opposition (detail)  2011 Artist book installation: drypoint, letterpress, etching & aquatint,
lithography and drawing on Thai mulberry paper & muslin  2,3m high X 1,2m X 10m (open)

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger
Position / Opposition
2 – 23 July 2011
Opening Saturday 2 July at 14:00

Opening address by Max Yela
(Head, Special Collections, UWM Libraries; Adjunct Associate Lecturer, UWM Department of Art & Information;
Adjunct Instructor, UWM School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA)

Preview by appointment
Exhibition catalogue available (on-line version via www.galleryaop.com)

Walkabout
Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Max Yela will conduct a public walkabout before the opening, at 11:00 on Saturday 2 June. All welcome!

Artist-printmakers
A special walkabout/information session will be held on Sunday 3 July at 14:00 for artist-printmakers

“Position/Opposition is an installation of over one hundred etchings and drawings assembled in a variety of presentation formats, including: a suite of six hanging print assemblages (45 x 66 cm), a large book (1.2 x 2.3 x 6 m – open); and one work from an edition of five artist’s books (maquette versions of the large book). Each work is a compound composition of expressive faces and hands that embody an emotive collaboration between two subjects. All of the prints on paper are participatory in nature and utilize the same subject imagery, but due to the ranging formats and scale, each depicts a unique conversation.” (Jessica  Meuninck-Ganger, 2011)

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger is a ‘context-provider’ (rather than a ‘content-provider’, in the words of British artist Peter Dunn) in this installation of prints, folios, and books that combine traditional processes of etching and lithography with new technologies, and incorporate the structural techniques of sculpture and book arts. She says: “I compose autobiographical memoirs that unfold like journal pages made for public view. An enthusiast of fine papers, prints and books a subjects, I am interested in people’s interactions with them as physical forms and conceptual spaces.”

Meuninck-Ganger’s work involves the creative orchestration of collaborative encounters and conversations well beyond the institution of the gallery. Her artist’s books are catalysts or surprisingly powerful transformations in the consciousness of their ‘readers’. The conversations they generate become an integral part of the work itself, which is collaboratively achieved.

Short biography
Jessica Meuninck-Ganger’s prints, artist’s books and large-scale mixed media works have been exhibited in museums and both experimental and commercial galleries regionally – near her home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – nationally in the US and internationally. Her works on paper and her artist’s books are included in several private and public collections, including the Weisman Museum of Art and the Target Corporation, and in contemporary publications, such as Richard Noyce’s recent book, ‘Printmaking Beyond the Edge’ (collaboration with Nathaniel Stern). She has received residencies and fellowships all over the world, and has instructed printmaking courses and workshops throughout various states in America. Jessica received her MFA in Studio Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2004 and is currently Head of Printmaking at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA.

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!

“Sorry Sessions” seems particularly timely and relevant given the newest release of documents by Wikileaks, and the denial of service attacks that happened soon after.  We originally decided to do an issue on Wikileaks after their last big document dump about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but when we started working on the issue the site was down for a couple of months, and so our issue became about that, or as we phrase it in our description of issue #6: “the inaccessability of information in the digital age”.

Totally worth checking out.

No 1: The Choreographed Accident

from Digital Arts Remote Lectures
….

I’m very excited to announce our very first Remote Lecture for 2010 by Marcelino Stuhmer based at the University of Wisconsin in Milwakee .

The Choreographed Accident: How painting survived the accident.

In this Remote Lecture Marcelino Struhmer will be speaking his expanded painting practice in three recent works.

“The metaphoric crossing between perception and hallucination occurs by means of the paraphernalia of painting, which is also that of recollection and re-cognition, as the recovery, to the senses, of what seemed to be forever beyond experience.” Paul de Man

“Mise-en-abyme”, a term coined by Andre Gide, which refers to the artistic trope of limitless reflection is akin to the physical experience of the carnival’s Mirror Maze. In my current extended painting practice, I wish the viewer to “enter into the work” and find themselves occupying a different parallel space, narrative, and time.  The spatial/architectural constructions in three recent installation projects deconstruct the cinema house into 1) a panoramic painting rotunda, 2) a funhouse mirror maze, and 3) a miniature architectural model of an apartment building in Warsaw.

In the broadest sense, the crisis of representation as seen in the history of painting provides me with a dynamic conceptual meeting point between material, process, and language. My recent installation work reconstructs or invents narratives of distant geographic, and temporal moments, allowing a collision of virtual ‘present-moments’ in an installation space designed specifically to stage these orchestrated time-collisions. I am currently working on a series of paintings, collages, and architectural models, which explores an intersection of image, film, painting, screen, and the history of theater design.

The Remote Lecture Series is a series of once a month lectures by people in different places across the world who are “beamed in” live (via the internet) to speak to a Johannesburg audience. We use available video conferencing technologies like Skype and iChat for the live lecture.  The point of these lectures is to inspire and uplift the discourses around art, new media and technology. We also stream the sessions live from Johannesburg.

Thursday 12th August 2010   -   South African Time 19:00 – Digital Arts Seminar Room, Digital Arts Convent Building. See here for directions – opposite the Wits School of Arts.  Also see calendar page…

Please note – GMT 17:00 for streaming.

Marcelino Stuhmer earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000. He has done residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, was a guest artist at Cittadellarte-Pistoletto Foundation in Biella, Italy, and was awarded a residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam where he received a two-year research fellowship.

His most recent installation project, The Choreographed Accident: Objects, Images and Artifacts from the Pawel Avorsky Museum, Warsaw which debuted at Jeune Creation 2009 in Paris, is now showing at the Wisconsin Triennial 2010, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. This conceptual film project tells the story of a British spy during the Cold War who smuggled illegal Jazz records into Poland.

Apart from numerous exhibitions in Europe and North America, Stuhmer has won a number of grants and prizes, including Best International Artist at the Arte Laguna 2009 International Art Prize Exhibition at the Venice Arsenalle in Venice, Italy, a Graduate Committee Research Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, the First Place Royal Prize for Painting in The Netherlands, a Mondrian International Publication and Exhibition Grant, a Community Artist Assistance Program Grant from Chicago, and a Joan Mitchell award in conjunction with an artist residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Painting and Drawing area of the Department of Visual Art at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

For more information please contact me directly on tegan (dot) bristow (at) wits (dot) ac (dot) za or 011 717 4604

I’m writing from the North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition in regards to our latest project, nbAUDIO 2011.  NbPac is currently holding an Open Call for Brooklyn-based sound artists.  We are inviting artists to propose an original sound installation that addresses the historical, social, and political atmosphere of North Brooklyn’s community. Additionally, we are asking the artists to identify a site in Williambsurg, Greenpoint or Bushwick, in which the piece would be installed.  Attached is more information about the open call, as well as a proposal form – the deadline for applications is Monday, August 30th and the selected artist will be notified on September 15th.

Taking place this spring, nbAUDIO 2011 will be the fourth project presented by the North Brooklyn Public Art Coalition since we formed in 2009.  Past projects include last summer’s kickoff with the India Street Mural Project when six local artists were chosen by an RFP process to create a series of site specific murals on India Street between West Street and the East River, celebrating Greenpoint’s rich history and the arts of North Brooklyn.  In December, we presented one of the largest site-specific public art installations ever to take place in McCarren Park with Jason Krugman’s Living Objects – three LED-lit sculptures taking on a human form.  Then last June we unveiled Amanda Browder’s Future Phenomena, a large-scale, fabric sculpture created by the community and blanketed the façade of a Greenpoint building from June 19-20, 2010.

more: http://nbpac.wordpress.com/

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!

Humorous and surprising, smart and provocative, Rethinking Curating: Art after New Media (MIT Press, 2010) jumps from opposing viewpoints to opposing personalities, from one arts trajectory to another. The entire book is a dialectic exercise: none of its problems or theories are solved or concluded, but are rather complicated through revelations around their origins, arguments and appropriations. Overall, the book adopts the collaborative style and hyperlinked approach of the media and practice it purports to rethink. In other words, it is not just the content of the book that asks us to rethink curating, but the reading itself; by the end, we are forced to digest and internalize the consistently problematized behaviors of the “media formerly known as new.”

Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham, co-editors of the CRUMB site and list (the Curatorial Resource for Upstart Media Bliss), have co-authored the book via email and on a Wiki, and assert outright that it is not a “theory book”; its structure instead “reflects the CRUMB approach to research, which discusses and analyzes the process of how things are done” (12). The sheer number of examples, citations, and first-person accounts in this nearly 350-page volume make it so that every time the trajectory coheres into a singular point or argument, it is then broken up again, into a constellation of ideas that make us rethink, again. We are issued challenge after challenge to our assumptions about media, our understandings of curatorial practice, and our opinions about the spaces in which we exhibit art. It is only after an exhaustive study of seemingly irreconcilable philosophies, practices and venues, the book implicitly argues, that we can begin to engage with what needs to be rethought, and how to do so.

Rethinking Curating makes three basic arguments. First, that one must approach a broad set of histories in trying to understand any given artwork, and “for new media art this set includes technological histories, which are essentially interdisciplinary and patchily documented” (283). Second, that such broad histories have led to the unique development of “critical vocabularies for the fluid and overlapping characteristics of new media art” (283). Cook and Graham reason that new media are best understood not as materials but as “behaviors” – participatory, performative or generative, for example. And third, that these behaviors demand a rethinking of curating, new modes of “looking at the production, exhibition, interpretation, and wider dissemination (including collection and conservation) of new media art” (1).

Read the whole article

We receive regular submissions from artists and art-groups from all over the world. Inviting us to feature and review their projects, whether they exist as works on the Internet, physical pieces in spaces and projects outdoors, or cultural events, workshops, conferences and publications.

We have an excellent and varied team of reviewers working with us. Yet, because we are receiving so many innovative and high quality projects to review, we are finding it hard to keep up. So, now we need even more reviewers.

We are interested exploring and promoting art engaged with aspects of ‘social change’ and its cultural contexts, as well as art using technology as part of its medium.

We welcome contributions from all kinds of writers – but would especially value bi-lingual reviewers who are able to introduce work created by artists in non-English-speaking cultures.

We are also interested in people who understand and know software art, social networks, live net art, live Internet tv, open source, tactical media, art blogs, net films, media art connected- self institutions, psychogeography, critical games, media art related exhibitions online and in spaces, and related conferences.

As a reviewer you will be asked to select from these works and contribute to the context of what is being created and write about its relevance. You will also have the option of seeking out and writing about other works that you personally think should be seen on Furtherfield.

If you possess knowledge and enthusiasm for any of these subjects, are able to write and communicate clearly;-) and are interested in being part of a explorative group, that is growing daily as an adventurous, networked and mult-platformed community in its own right, consisting of over 26,000 subscribers. And like us, are passionately and critically engaged in investigating the constant shifts and reinvention of art and its social contexts, and digitally related vista as we know it; we welcome you aboard…

contact – marc garrett: marc.garrett@furtherfield.org

Cover of Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art by Kate Mondloch

Kate Mondloch’s first book, Screens: Viewing Media Installation Art, is a welcome study of the cathode ray tubes, liquid crystal and plasma displays, and film, video and data projections that “pervade contemporary life” (xi). The author reminds us that screens are not just “illusionist windows” into other spaces or worlds, but also “physical, material entities [that] beckon, provoke, separate, and seduce” (xii). Most importantly, however, Mondloch’s approach is that of an art historian. She does not merely use art as a case study for media theory, but rather makes the contributions of artists her central focus in this, the first in-depth study of the space between bodies and screens in contemporary art.

Like Nicolas Bourriaud in his Relational Aesthetics, Mondloch begins in the gallery space, and is interested in creating a “discrete critical framework” (63) for a specific genre: what she calls “screen-reliant” art. Mondloch recognizes the import of “viewing subjects” engaging with “actual art objects” (xii – xiii) and attempts to apply a combination of post-structural theory and phenomenology to her study. Here she describes the relationships between virtual and actual, sign and material, involving the theories and philosophies of Lacan and Deleuze on the mirror stage and cinema, for example, but always including the screen’s inherent materiality in how art is experienced.

Chapter 1, “Interface Matters,” describes in detail Mondloch’s category of screen-reliant installation art, looking to the work of Paul Sharits and Michael Snow as examples of how artists of the 1960s were, for the first time, investigating the interface of the screen itself: “the multifarious physical and conceptual points at which the observing subject meets the media object” (2). Here she goes to great lengths to remember the differences between screenings of film, and screens in film and video installation. The latter are hybridized as spatial and temporal, akin to Minimalism in their approach to the body, but with the potential for entwined and confused narratives as the timeline of its materials unfold. Mondloch’s reading of Snow’s Two Sides to Every Story is especially poignant.

Read more…

“Bad at Sports is a weekly podcast produced in Chicago that features artists talking about art and the community that makes, reviews and critiques it. Shows are usually posted each weekend and can be listened to on any computer with an internet connection and speakers or headphones.”

This audio interview (available streaming from the site, or as a download to your computer or mp3 player) begins with Nathaniel Stern rapping a bit of Beastie Boys / Q-Tip, and quickly degrades to him lovingly poking fun at his dad. It’s actually a great interview, where you can hear some off the cuff chatting with Duncan MacKenzie about hektor.net, Distill Life, Compressionism, Wikipedia Art, Given Time, Doin’ my part to lighten the load, and more. It’s good fun, with lots of tangential stories and jokes, and many mentions of good friends and colleagues. Enjoy!

listen to interview on B@S

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.

Dear Friends,

As the end of the year draws near, we hope that you will support our many inspiring and innovative projects – Turbulence.org, Networked_Performance, Networked_Music_Review, Networked: a (networked_book) about (networked_art), Upgrade! Boston, Floating Points, Programmable Media, New American Radio – and the artists, scholars, and writers they support.

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Thanks for your generous support, and a Happy New Year to you all.

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New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.

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.