The Pulse people set aside a booth for Parsons MFA Fine Arts students to create a “reading room” for the fair located on Pier 40. Called “PULSE PAUSE”, the installation was curated by Jeffrey Walkowiak and included work by a number of artists who managed to make it one of the most interesting stops of the afternoon.
Even though, or perhaps because, it was almost fully camouflaged I was especially taken with the installation by one participant. The video stills shown above are from a small portable DVD player which the artist had completely painted over in yellow paint. Sadly, and uncharacteristically, I do hot have his name or the work’s title. Maybe one of my readers will be able to enlighten us.
Until I sat down to do this entry I was certain I had written it down somewhere after Brandon Nastanski had enlightened me. I do remember he said the artist was surprisingly only a first-year student. Nastanski had created the one-person “speakeasy” which attracted most of the media attention for the entry.
I can at least begin to describe what you are looking at: A young man, perhaps the artist himself, is seen standing directly in front of a fuzzy projection of a male-female couple having sex. The young man tries over and over to duplicate the various positions being enjoyed by the woman on the screen. The video is looped. It’s beguiling.
UPDATE: Jeffrey Walkowiak, the curator of the installation, tells me that the name of the artist is Matthew De Leon. It’s now included in the headline of this entry, but I’ve made no other editorial changes]
FURTHER UPDATE: Looking for something else in a search on my own site I just today [February 16, 2009] came across this web site of the artist.
Author: jameswagner
back in the world
As Barry reported here on Sunday during a quick foray out of the affected area with his laptop, our larger neighborhood was without any internet connection all weekend. Our contact with the outside world was restored late on Monday, but circumstances conspired to prevent my return to blogging until today.
I found the experience fairly excruciating even though I don’t have a livelihood dependent upon the net. I didn’t have my little silver friend for three whole days; I had no little speakers podium or picture outlet, and no way to reach those published by anyone else; no incoming or outgoing mail; maybe most important for someone as curious and information-hungry as me, no instant reference sources; and of course no news. The news blackout in particular made it feel like the arrival of a new dark age, especially since neither radio nor television is a part of my own or Barry’s life. I will say however that living with only a blank screen this past weekend was not without a silver lining: We were spared the obscenity of the all-pope/all-the-time broadcast media coverage (Barry peeked every so often and it seems Ratzinger had bought NY1) with which entertainment news smothered the city, and apparently much of the nation as well.
Before starting anything new I’m going to be dutiful and finish up my series of short posts on art spotted at the New York fairs late last month; I’ll be looking back at Pulse, Volta, Bridge and Disarmory.
Hiatus due to Road Runner Internet
No blogging from James until at least Monday. Road Runner knocked us off the internet Friday night, and they hope to give us a connection again by end of day Monday.
to hell and back with Ratzinger
Goya Inquisition Scene (1816) oil on panel 18″ x 28.75″ [three notes: beginning in the Middle Ages the Church had prescribed the conical hat, generally yellow, as a distinguishing mark for Jews; Jewish conversos were the principal concern of the Spanish Inquisition; from 1981 until 2005 Josef Ratzinger was head of the Vatican department formerly known as the Inquisition]
I just did a search from this site, and I see that there are already two pages listing my various posts on Josef Ratzinger. I was hoping he’d be dead before I’d have to do another or, even better, irretrievably compromised by some spectacular scandal. I really didn’t want to have to think about this man again, and I certainly wasn’t going to display another picture of that freaky face*. Virtually everything he stands for disgusts me.
Okay, except maybe the part about “peace”, but I know he doesn’t actually mean it and, like the Dalai Lama, he’s certainly not going to embarrass our own “infernal” warrior king while he’s over here. By the way, I also don’t anyone believe a word he says about freedom or democracy. I was raised a Catholic, educated by Augustinians and Jesuits and studied history as an undergraduate and graduate student for ten years. I can assure you that the Church establishment has never cared what form governments assume so long as church interests aren’t compromised. [cf. Eugenio Pacelli and Reichskonkordat]
Also this week, don’t expect any homilies on capital punishment from Ratzinger, who we are repeatedly reminded has a boundless respect for life. Might hurt the sensibilities of the former “Texecutionor”.
But the holy fiend is coming to New York again, and although both he and his office are increasingly irrelevant, apparently even to most Catholics, I just can’t maintain my blackout on the latest Ratzinger developments. I was struck by something I saw in the joint statement he and his D.C. host just issued. George Bush. Now there’s another pathetic excuse for an appointed ruler (so who’s using whom on this visit?). It seems they both wanted us to know how much they respect human rights and diversity. I’m used to these lies from the White House but I just couldn’t ignore it coming from our sanctimonious short-term visitor, since he’s never ignored me or many of my friends, or anyone else whose integrity and rights he regularly impugns. I’m talking about all queers and all women, just for starters, but you can certainly add anyone not of the strictest, doctrinally-acceptable religious persuasion (that is, his own).
There is one incident in particular in Ratzinger’s past, one which I cannot forget, one which was never disavowed. It’s a statment which continues to reflect this narrow, clueless disciplinarian’s real approach to the diversity of mankind rather than the “respect for his vast pluralistic society”, he affected yesterday in Washington. In 1992, during a period of particularly virulent antigay violence in the U.S., he authorized a Vatican proclamation which said that that when lesbians and gay men demand civil rights, “neither the Church nor society should be surprised when … irrational and violent reactions increase”.
Perfectly consistent with the Church’s traditional mode of addressing its own evils: Blame the victim.
Still we bleed, queers of every gender and our straight sisters as well, not least because of his vile ministry.
Josef Ratzinger arrives in New York on Friday. I’m sincerely hoping that at least some New Yorkers will know how to receive him properly.
*
although I’m not the first to notice that, on the other hand, his devoted personal secretary is pretty damn hot, even if this is way off subject (maybe)
[image from marxist.com]
ADDENDUM: [in the form of an appendix] For the complete text of a document describing queers as a “troubling moral and social phenomenon” and denying them a status from which they might argue for their rights, see the letter, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons” on this Vatican site. This is a document which Ratzinger had authored, as head of Roman curia office once known as the Holy Inquisition. It was published by his old boss Karol Wojtyła in 2003.
Al Qaeda has been running Washington
all Washington getting friendly with the boss
Ted Rall saw only part of the story when he described the shoddy construction of our bases in Iraq, with its fatal consequences for our military personnel. In a cartoon dated 4/14 he wrote: “No one is that inept. Haliburton is obviously working for Al Qaeda.”
I would go much further than Rall, altering that statement to read:
No one is that inept. Our entire government, the White House, Congress, even the Supreme Court, is obviously working for Al Qaeda.
The White House and Congress, by the leave of the Supreme Court, have together killed a million civilians and made refugees of five million more. Washington, with our approval, has laid waste the wealth, infrastructure and institutions of an ancient people and handed over those who survived to terrorists who had never before had access to their lands. It has bankrupted us all, as well as our children and our children’s children. It has blown through the accumulated capital of the world’s respect for our nation. It has totally distracted us from national and international problems which really have to be addressed. It has destroyed our liberties. It has mounted and maintained the most successful worldwide Islamic terrorist recruiting campaign ever imaginable. It has shut our doors to the contributions of both friends and strangers, and darkness has spread across a land and a people once spirited and open.
These are incredible accomplishments of which Al Qaeda could not have dreamed in a hundred years had our government not decided to cooperate with its agenda – and free of charge, it would appear.
They tell us the war is going to go on for a hundred years. I suppose we no longer need to ask why they haven’t found Osama.
[image of a 16th-century woodcut illustrating the medieval christian fantasy, the “Witch’s Kiss”, from About.com]
Jana Gunstheimer with R�merapotheke at Scope
Jana Gunstheimer Reservat 2003 acrylic on linen 46.5″ x 69.75″ [work not at Scope]
I’m not sure that it should be necessary to mention it, even if it may be germane (no pun intended), but Jana Gunstheimer, described by her Swiss gallery R�merapotheke as an artist and ethnologist, was born in Zwickau, in what was then known as East Germany, or the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. In the years immediately following the precipitous disappearance of that communist state she studied painting in Leipzig. Today she lives in Jena, near Weimar. She’s known in Europe [and in Philadelphia {scroll down}] mostly for her beautiful black and white expressionist painting. We haven’t had nearly enough opportunity to see it on this side of the Atlantic.
Jana Gunstheimer [large detail of installation at Scope]
The image just above is of items from the artist’s physically very different body of work, “Heiligsprechung” [Canonization], a part of which was brought to Scope New York this year by R�merapotheke. No, the two framed watercolors don’t represent attempts to display divine stigmata, but are merely protestations of the negative, “ich tu dir nichts” [I did nothing to you] or “Ich pass auf dich auf” [I leave it to you]. Gunstheimer’s general conceit is described just below in a large excerpt from the press release for her current show at Filiale in Berlin. Note that “SBK” is the German-language acronym for her fictive Austrian department of government, “State Authority for National Heroes”.
SBK
State Authority for National Heroes
In 1976 Austria’s federal government was planning to set up a “canonization” authority as part of the celebration of 1000 years of the country’s existence (the process is known as “beatification” in the Roman Catholic church). After due examination, exceptional people would be granted access to high public esteem and entry in the annals of popular or national heroes.
However, the real reason for setting up such an authority was the prospect of high revenue in the form of voluntary payments by citizens. In fact the minimum costs of thorough examination of each application, expert appraisal, reimbursement of witness expenses, production of documentation, printing, decoration during the ceremonies and multiple fees and taxes were calculated at 80 000 shillings.
In the first year alone, the Authority received well in excess of 1000 applications. In many places, associations were formed to sponsor candidates of slender financial means and give the member of their community a chance of becoming an official popular hero.
As it happened, none of the applicants in the first year was deemed worthy of elevation to this rank. Indeed, in the next five years of the authority’s existence, only three candidates made the grade. Instead, the Authority’s examination revealed not only that applicants were not popular heroes, but that most had committed major or minor offences. Faithful to their obligation of disclosure, they had allowed the Authority access to all spheres of their lives.
Establishing the Authority was an ideal ploy for a government. Citizens pay large voluntary sums into government coffers and actually turn themselves in.
Last year she came to Chicago for her first show in the U.S.
She is known for her observation of and creative satire of the weaknesses within both German and Austrian society and culture, but at the Chicago Institute of Arts she made a very successful incursion into the frailties of our own. The Chicago Reader’s review described her project with a headline which reads like it might have been inspired by New York’s Daily News: “The upper classes take a dive in Jana Gunstheimer’s clever disaster scenario.“.
THE CENTRAL WALL in Jana Gunstheimer’s installation at the Art Institute features a large cutout of the Tribune’s logo accompanied by a giant, delicately executed silhouette of a dilapidated high-rise. The ominous headline is “Status L Phenomenon” — also the title of the exhibit. A stack of newspapers, which visitors may take with them, announces “Members of upper class affected by inexplicable phenomenon of lost status.” A smaller headline reads “Lake Point Tower plus two luxury villas suddenly replaced by affordable homes — Occupants seem different.”
Jana Gunstheimer [view of installation at Scope]
The image shown just above is of a stack of two editions of the artist’s newspaper, Massnahme. She plans a series of eight editions, each related to issues of unemployment. There will be an interval of two years between each, corresponding to the duration of the German government’s current program for people unable to find work. The Issue on the left was created for the Chicago show, and may in fact be an “extra”. The stack on the right is of copies of issue #1; its headlines describe, along with other stories, an experiment inside a “containment camp”.
I want to see more of Gunstheimer. If she can be so disturbed by, and address so well, the dark side of what we often perceive as the remarkable success stories of Germany and Austria I can’t begin to imagine what she could accomplish here in our benighted American homeland.
[image at the top from Galerie im Kunsthaus Essen]
UPDATE: D-L Alvarez has a review of Gunstheimer’s current Berlin show in the ArtCal Zine, and in his blog “Modern Art Notes” Tyler Green discusses the artist’s show at the Art Institute of Chicago, both items posted today, April 18.
Antti Laitinen with Nettie Horn at Scope
Antti Laitinen It’s My Island 2007 video [large detail of still from installation]
[edited sequence of video stills from the gallery site]
On the other side of the cultural Finland we know (or perhaps that of almost any other modern nation) there may be just a guy and his wilderness.
Over a period of three months Antti Laitinen filled and dragged one sandbag after another into the sea to make his own little island – and then he dragged them back. “It’s My Island”, the documentation of the 2007 construction project, was displayed at Scope by the London gallery Nettie Horn and shown in three video monitors, each actuated at a different moment.
The gallery describes the source of the artist’s remarkably engaging creativity
Antti Laitinens work shares some of the absurd seriousness of [the 1957 “Manila Rope” by the Finnish novelist Veijo Meri, a literary performance of body art]. Just as in Meris story, so in Laitinens works incongruity between an individuals performance and circumstances grow into a cultural metaphor. Many of Antti Laitinens work [sic] deal directly with fundamental issues of Finnish identity and cultural imagery, they are pictures of masculinity set in a context of nature and culture.
As I watched the video and later searched for more of this work and its contexts, I was reminded of the Sisyphean works of Brooklyn artist Dexter Buell.
[second, thumbnail image from nettiehorn.com]
Marcel Gähler with Römerapotheke at Scope
Marcel Gähler untitled 2008 watercolor on paper 60″ x 80.25″ [installation view]
Marcel Gähler untitled 2003 oil on wood 8″ x 10.25″
[installation view of six small oils]
Zurich’s Römerapotheke showed these and other paintings and drawings by Marcel Gähler inside its camp at Scope. They were among the most beautiful and terrifying things I say among all the paintings I encountered that week.
This excellent gallery‘s own text includes the note:
His painting drives us towards the limits of our perception. It makes it disconcertingly clear that seeing nothing does not imply that nothing is there.
Jared Lindsay Clark with ADA at Scope
Jared Lindsay Clark Nursery Rhyme Proposal ceramic cow, easterbunny, ghosts, plastic Casper, epoxies
Jared Lindsay Clark Ballerina ceramic ballerina, ducks, pelican, trick-or-treater ghost, cupids, epoxies
I love these little pieces. Jared Lindsay Clark’s small ceramic collage sculptures were a very special part of the booth of Richmond’s ADA Gallery at Scope. I can’t say enough however, no, literally, since the artist’s site uses flash and the gallery’s link to Clark just isn’t working. But I did find this blog which seems to belong to Clark. It has some more views of these pieces, images of more work from this series, and a lot more stuff from the artist and his friends.
I love Richmond. I haven’t been there in ages, but it’s getting harder to stay away.
Ernesto Burgos with Cynthia Broan at Scope
Ernesto Burgos Another Heart is Torn 2007 mixed media on paper 30″ x 22″
Ernesto Burgos Cross Eyed 2007 mixed media on paper 30″ x 22″
I somehow missed the show of work by Ernesto Burgos which Cynthia Broan showed in the project room this winter. Fortunately I was able to see a few drawings at Broan’s booth at Scope, but their quality only underscores my lost opportunity.
The three shows which ended January 19th were the last in her current, New York space. I already miss it.
[images from CynthiaBroan]