implicit art

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30 May 2009 by nathaniel

CricketToes: Time Has Come for a Milwaukee Upgrade!

FEATURE on CricketToes: Time Has Come for a Milwaukee Upgrade!

Time Has Come for a Milwaukee Upgrade!

Upgrade! At a point in history when independent artists, collectives, galleries, and small arts organizations are struggling to see their way through this thickly choking economic smog, all the while acutely aware that the endeavors of some of their colleagues have been sadly lost forever, there are still a few discernible rays of hope in the form of a growing number of groups that place an emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration.

Locally, we’ve seen the establishment and continuing success of the creative/tech idea incubator Spreenkler and the foundation of the much anticipated artistic cross-pollinator RedLine Milwaukee, opening in July. In what may enable us to confidently call this a trend o’ our times, we can now happily welcome Upgrade! Milwaukee to our fair city by the Great Lake.

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22 May 2009 by nathaniel

Jimmy Wales talks Art and Wikipedia

Nice to see Jimbo talk about Art and Wikipedia. It’s worth a read if only to hear how carefully Wikipedia’s figure-head thinks and speaks in relation to notability and possibilities with arts coverage on Wikipedia. I agree with all of what he says (although it’s admittedly very noncommittal – so hard to disagree with), and wish most of the Wikipedia editors were as even-handed as he seems to be in this interview.

Link to part 1; link to part 2.

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22 May 2009 by nathaniel

features (Distill Life / Night Work)

Night Work / Distill Life sees a couple of blog features, namely on DVblog and Networked Performance. Thanks Jo and Michael! I must quote Michael, as he amuses me so:

Documentation of work of surpassing loveliness & smarts both, from Jessica Meuninck-Ganger
& Nathaniel Stern*** as they meld digital photo frames, printing and drawing into a hybrid form
which probably has no right to work but so does.
Says Nathaniel:
â€œThese works premiered at the Armoury Gallery in Milwaukee, on a show called Night Work.
Some will be at Elaine Erickson gallery in June, at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in July, and 10-15 from the series will be on a large show at Gallery AOP in Johannesburg in Jan/Feb 2010.

***â€The Nathaniel Stern?â€ I hear you gasp, â€œHe of the infamous Wikipedia Art affair?â€
None but, gentle viewer, none butâ€¦

DVblog actually has full resolution quicktimes of my documentation, if you want ’em. Working to confirm another show in Massachusetts for early next year as well, with a very exciting curator – more when I know the details.

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10 May 2009 by nathaniel

Night Work / Distill Life

Documentation of several pieces from Night Work, with printmaker Jessica Meuninck-Ganger, is now live.

Night Work, an exhibition featuring Milwaukee-based art professors and instructors at the artist-run Armoury Gallery, premiered my new body of collaborative works with printmaker Jessica Meuninck-Ganger. Playfully called â€œDistill Life,â€ this ongoing series of art objects combines hand-made works on paper with time-based video images looped on LCD screens.Â We first capture and edit video from real and virtual worlds, and download these files onto hacked digital photo frames. The liberated screens from these frames are then placed behind or embedded within prints, drawings and sculptures. Sometimes, we use a Sharpie and draw directly on the screen. Our intention is to incorporate technologies and aesthetics from traditional printmaking â€“ including Japanese woodblock and engraving circa the 1800s, present-day etching, stone lithography, photogravure etc â€“ with the technologies and aesthetics of contemporary digital, video and networked art, in order to create new forms.

See Night Work for more images and video.

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30 April 2009 by nathaniel

Deconstructing Wikipedia

Mary Louise Schumacher pens a great piece on Wikipedia Art in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, entitled Deconstructing Wikipedia. Snippet:

Two artists staged an art intervention within Wikipedia, turning the “free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit” into an art medium.

By making a sort of readymade art object from a Wikipedia page, Nathaniel Stern, of Milwaukee, and Scott Kildall, of San Francisco, have challenged the conventions of art in a way that doesn’t happen everyday.

The wikiwar that’s erupted is not unlike the outrage inspired by Marcel Duchamp‘s urinal or Andy Warhol‘s Brillo Boxes.

“Wikipedia Art” was, to the artists’ minds, both an artwork and a legitimate Wikipedia page.

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30 April 2009 by nathaniel

NYFA Current – Art News for artists and all those who support them

Great article on new directions in the art world – written by Hrag Vartanian, as coverage of aÂ Jerry Saltz lecture – in NYFA.

NYFA Current – Art News for artists and all those who support them
Moneyquote:

The new art world, he conjectured, will be something we won’t recognize, and will be dominated by names that we donâ€™t know today. This transformation may require new styles, approaches, and people rewriting the rules of art and how it is consumed. If the old art world order was controlled by the academy of insular curators and the decadent market hunger for polished trinkets, this brave new world is probably going to be something else entirely. Saltz, in his best American democratic rhetoric, seemed to advocate for an art world that embraces the plurality of the world and recognizes the importance of art beyond a financial investment. â€œThe problem with the art market,â€ Saltz said returning to the Titanic metaphor â€œwas that we were all in the same boat.â€ We can only hope that this future art world would probably look like a massive fleet of modest-sized ships, rather than one ill-fated luxury ocean liner.