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15 April 2006 by nathaniel

Sanell Aggenbach @ art on paper

Sanell Aggenbach @ art on paper, Johannesburg:
"North by Northwest"

Not sure how many of you read the minimal text I wrote on Sanell Aggenbach from KKNK last year (see more on her here), but even then I was a bit gushy about what I saw. At Art on Paper, in Johannesburg, she’s exhibiting about four times the amount of work: expanded, refined and utterly remarkable. She cleverly and beautifully gifts us fantasies between text, sky, sea and laughter. Walking into AOP gallery is like swimming through the gut of a ship, with peep-holes out onto never-never land. A total must see….

Archives

14 April 2006 by nathaniel

satin bed

Double plate aquatint from yesterday at David Krut Workshop with Jill and Niall. Niall printed our screen (used to lay the hard ground) upside down, so it looks weird to me – as compared to my intended design – but we’re very happy with it (and I’m sure I’ll get used to it). We’re still proofing for a darker green…. The detail is from this image, of the same title (originally printed as lambda on metallic paper). Great day in the studio!

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12 April 2006 by nathaniel

Compressionist printmaking: a 500 year old digital performance and analog archive

final engraving with japanese paper process

Here’s one of the printmaking experiments I’ve been working on over at the David Krut Workshop (fun space; and cool to brag to my overseas friends that it’s who William Kentridge has always worked with for most of his prints). It’s a detail from this image (the Emmarentia Lilies triptych, originally printed on metallic paper), which I’ve then engraved by hand, and Jill (the awesome printer I am working with) went ahead and, after inking it up, added two layers of thin glued paper before pressing it. That process is called Chine-collé, and is what resulted in the varying colors behind the black ink. For more images, see Compressionism on my flickr. There’s also a lithograph / spit bite combo test I’ve been working on ("nude descension") posted to my kagablog page.

Compressionism is a digital performance and analog archive. In the current studies, I compress bodies, spaces and objects by traversing their surfaces with an image scanner, along varying 3-dimensional paths – literally, I glide, run, hover and swoop across windows, trees, or lilies while the scanner head is in motion. The resulting digital images, which are transfigured down to the size of a small piece of paper, are then re-stretched to their original size, sometimes cropped or colorized. The final prints ask us to ‘look again’ at the relations between subjects, objects, actions and perceptions. At present, I’m taking selections from a series of about 25 Compressionist lambda prints, and iteratively producing traditional (old’s cool!) prints in the form of lithographs, engravings, etchings, silk screens, spit bites, aquatints, and possibly more.

Archives

08 April 2006 by nathaniel

Turbulence and Gavin Jantjes

^{helen thorington of turbulence.org @ upgrade! johannesburg showing off net.art commissions: Shape of Song by Martin Wattenberg (that’s Jo Green on the far right, too)}

Yesterday was probably the most crowded and exciting, diverse and collaborative, Soiree / Upgrade! event Johannesburg has ever seen. There to hear a kind of biased history of net.art from turbulence, and to briefly learn about Gavin Jantjes’ plans for Trans Cape, the audience ranged from WSOA and Digital Arts students, to top-notch and rising-star artists; we had a full house! Most pleasing was the engaging and intellectual/curious dialogue that progressed, including potential collaborative links made between, not only our two presenters(!), but also most orgs and artists who wanted to be involved in future. Turb’s talk went through, among others, the following works (in chronological order, both historically and in their talk – from 1996 – 2006!):

^{helen thorington of turbulence.org @ upgrade! johannesburg showing off net.art commissions: SMS-Tokyo (Stop Motion Studies) by David Crawford}

turbulence.org – the net.art commissioning hub
networked_performance blog – Millions of visitors monthly, one of the best new media art blogs around
Grimm Tale: Chapter 7 and Grimm Tale: Chapter 10 – their first ever commissioned net.art, by my grad supervisor at ITP, Marianne Petit!
Snuff – early interactive java art that pulled content from live sites
FT2K – quirky "promise of a greater tomorrow" type net.art
Radio Stare – Beautiful, linear, non-narrative piece that pulled from live police frequency streams for its soundtrack; note that some technology on this piece is obsolete and therefore no longer working
Solitaire – random narrative constructions
Culture Map – clever mapping of how we surfed aol and yahoo! back in the day
Imprimatur – make a poster through the web, and print it offline
Shape of Song – beautiful and clever look at visualizations of popular and historical music
Secret Lives of Numbers – Golan Levin’s infamous work that charts the popularity/use of all numbers online – from zero to one million
Data Diaries – Cory Arcangel converts his RAM into video
SMS-Tokyo [1] [2] – gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous stop motion studies on subway trains in Tokyo
1 Year Performance Video – MTAA’s brilliant Sam Hsieh update that I have written about extensively on this site
<event> – slowed down and mediated news to "look at"
Tap Evol-The Setup – interactive, evolutionary visual applet that pulls from a database of tiny movies to produce odd moving imagery on the fly
IN Network – long distance relationship via a blog and podcast
Grafik Dynamo – live blog feeds creating a dynamic Lichtenstein-like panel comic strip; the images and text are a web zeitgeist!

And the list goes on… Discussion ranged from interrogations of performance, art and activism, to questions about access, influence, and surfing habits.

^{Gavin Jantjes presenting Trans Cape}

This was actually a great transition into Gavin’s presentation of his plans for what has come to be known as the kind of new mega-exhibition of South Africa, due up this September. From the sound of it, he’s very interested in focusing on the African diaspora, contemporary African art, education and involvement of local communities, and empowerment through knowledge and creativity. Keep up to date, here. More to come….

Archives

03 April 2006 by nathaniel

The Daily Chronicles

OK, so it’s about day 6 of no phone or internet (re: telkom sucks… Given my lifestyle, I feel like my legs have been cut off), and the Gods of Good Fortune have decided that to make up for those losses, they should also cut off my electricity.

I sh!t you not.

Sigh.

The life of a mediocre blogger can sometimes be Oh So Difficult. I’m taking an hour (or so) out of my morning now to do a bit of blog n’ surf catch-up from Colleen Alborough’s house (she’s away, but I can steal her wireless bandwidth). Thanks, Coll.

^{Jeff Koons and The New Jeff Koons}

Like most of the Joburg art scene, I hit up the Jeff Koons talk last Thursday (tho I had to leave early to see the OBGYN about the B-A-B-Y – 7 more weeks til my life changes forever!). A very inspired talk, with its high and low points and tidbits that made us all laugh or feel uncomfortable or just want to pick the artist’s brain. I think the most amazing part was just how calculated everything he said and did was. Here’s this super sweet ex-pornstar-art King of Kitsch wavering between being about acceptance and tolerance and asking the world for change, and talking about Golden Showers and Ass Pimples. His presentation was more like subversive performance art on a platter for a jaded art world that thinks it "knows him." Very clever chap, that Jeff.

^{Me and Jill Ross working on a Compressionist engraving and lithograph, respectively, at David Krut}

I spent most of Saturday morning, afternoon and night at David Krut, working with Richard Kilpert and Jill Ross on the next iteration of Compressionism. We’re taking some of the works I had printed as lambdas from the series, and turning them into more traditional prints. We started with a polyester plate to make line drawing versions of one of the works (Wet Calla Leaves, drawing here), and ‘that’s me in the corner’ working on a hand engraving of a detail from Emmarentia Lilies (part of a triptych). I’ll be sure to post some stuff to flickr and Rhizome when I have more than one edition done…

^{Bronwyn Lace in front of about 4000 origami for her Outlet exhibition in Pretoria}

Took a break from Krut in the late afternoon / early evening and head out to Pretoria to see Bronwyn Lace’s work at Outlet. A simple and beautiful exhibition that makes you feel small, I recommend hitting up that link there for some info on her work; we still await a guest blog from Bron on her show at KZNSA last month. Hint, Bron.

^{James Webb, Marcus Neustetter, Mikhael Subotzky}

I took most of Sunday off (worked on a proposal for Rhizome for a bit), but did hang out with Marcus Neustetter for an ice cream at Zoo Lake (plus ran a few art errands with him), so got to see James Webb and meet Mikhael Subotzky briefly, while they’re here. It made me feel like a super cool uber artist for about a minute. Mikhael agreed that his prints need frames.

Archives

28 March 2006 by nathaniel

the Jill Ross @ David Krut hook-up

jill ross in front of a colbert mashile print @ david krut

Been chillin’ wit JR and RK (Richard Kilpert) at David Krut’s studio as of late, working on translating some of the Compressionist images into more traditional prints – looking towards using things like silk screen, lithography, engraving and etching. You can check out one preliminary experiment over at the kagablog (I just started the occasional art post over there – thanks, Kags!). Am very excited about this work – RK and JR are inspired!

Gotta mention there’s some nice work by Colbert Mashile o’er thar (Krut) – and that his painting also sold for a ‘nice price’ at the Beeldspraak benefit auction. Worth a shout out or three. The pic is Jill in front of an unintentionally reflective (no pun intended) Mashile print….