Another Bouncing Ball

Belly up to the art at Vermilion Gallery

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:19:04 -0800

On the same block of Seattle's Capitol Hill are two galleries that take chances while hedging their bets. Both Grey Gallery and Vermillion are also bars. If the art doesn't sell, the drinks will. Even in the current climate, however, the art tends to move more quickly than in Seattle's gallery hub in Pioneer Square.

Of the three artists showing currently at Vermillion, painter Ryan Molenkamp has almost sold out. With one exception, it's been a long time since that many red dots appeared in the Square.

If I were going to imagine a stage set for college professor's suburban interior in mid-20th Century America, I'd put one of Molenkamp's paintings over the sofa. The people who lived there would have loved high and loathed low. The abstraction they'd like best would be European, as the New York School would have seemed a trifle crude. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, showing up later in the decade, would not have qualified as artists at all. Yes to Satie, no to Chuck Berry.

Early in the 21st Century, Molenkamp's style of painting is most frequently found in Goodwill. What goes around comes around, but possibly because I remember the off-putting originals from my childhood, Molenkamp's updates are a problem I'm not equipped to solve. He's a better painter than the anonymous stereotype I have in my head, but that stereotype blocks my view.

Sharon Arnold weaves and cuts with a gentle hand. Because her work evokes more exuberant versions by others, the word that I couldn't push away is timid.

Here's Claude Zervas' version of an adding machine spitting out clouds, from 2002.

Cumulus, Receipt printer, computer, roll paper 48" x 48" x 48" variable

And here's Arnold's:

Detail:
Eva Hesse:

Arnold:

Again, I may not be the right person to look at Arnold's work. Art seen across a lifetime can be tea leaves clogging a drain. There are days when the only thing I say to myself is, I've seen that before.

On the other hand, I love Trevor Johnson's sculptures. He showed up in Seattle a couple of years ago as a potter without access to a kiln. To keep his hand in, he started to work with salvage. His blocks of Styrofoam have the monumentality of ancient homes carved into cliff faces in Chaco Canyon. The arena of his endeavor includes as models Judy Pfaff and Frank Stella. It's a tribute to Johnson that he doesn't disappear in the comparison.

Through Nov. 28.

Joseph Goldberg & Andrew Keating: Feathers

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:42:20 -0800

Joseph Goldberg

Andrew Keating

Kristen T. Ramirez: ALL-WAYS WARM

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:21:23 -0800

Seattle's Aurora Avenue and other gateways to marginalized blight have their own poet. Kristen T. Ramirez makes these no-exit avenues of cheap dreams new again. She mines the noisy collision of mid-20th Century textures, colors, styles and cultural contrasts found in America. Ranch-style gas stations, the curving arrows beckoning you in, the birds on phone wires, the invitations to eat cheap, sleep in easy reach of a TV and buy a beater car become a survivalist's manual for a people's art form.

Her collages are her signature, but not her only one. Advertising in other contexts becomes less benign.

Incised into bottles are messages pulled from the country's vast stash of cliches: Up and at 'em.

Ramirez's Ghosts of Commerce Past is at Grey Gallery through Dec. 5.

Warren Dykeman's bad boy boogaloo

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:21:34 -0800

The fluidity in Warren Dykeman's paintings does not come from his figures. They are stationary; the footwork belongs to the field. His paintings are about breath. Hanging in the colored air in front of men in hats and horses frozen mid-gallop, breath does not take the form of a comic-book thought bubble or speech. It is an exhale on the beat.

Nabokov spoiler alert

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:15:41 -0800

If you want to be surprised by the plot of Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark from 1938, skip the first two sentences.

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, German, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

Art is not plot. (Image via)

The Church of the Video Christ

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:50:45 -0800

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, with powder on my nose and makeup to hide my 4 o'clock shadow...

Joe Johnson, from Mega Churches, via

Kader Attia: slums of the Third World

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:50:23 -0800

Tract homes in America are cookie cut, but slums in the Third World are hand made.

Kader Attia's installation Kasbah is in Los de Arriba y Los de Abajo at Sala de Arte Publico Siqeiros in Mexico City, through Jan. 10.

Attia's piece reminds me of what David Hammons called negritude architecture.

I JUST LOVE THE HOUSES IN THE SOUTH, THE WAY THEY BUILT THEM. THAT NEGRITUDE ARCHITECTURE. I REALLY LOVE TO WATCH THE WAY BLACK PEOPLE MAKE THINGS, HOUSES OR MAGAZINE STANDS IN HARLEM, FOR INSTANCE. JUST THE WAY WE USE CARPENTRY. NOTHING FITS, BUT EVERYTHING WORKS. THE DOOR CLOSES, IT KEEPS THINGS FROM COMING THROUGH. BUT IT DOESN'T HAVE THAT NEATNESS ABOUT IT, THE WAY WHITE PEOPLE PUT THINGS TOGETHER; EVERYTHING IS A THIRTY-SECOND OF AN INCH OFF. (more)

Friday links - slam-dunk curation

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:50:25 -0800

Best of 3 has the best take on the news that Shaquille O'Neale will co-curate a show titled, Size Does Matter:

It would be so easy to just poke fun, or dismiss this as a publicity stunt. But you know what? The sun's shining, I'm feeling generous, and I'm going to say that maybe Shaquille O'Neale has a genuine interest in art and his co-curation of a show for the Flag Art Foundation is a mutually enjoyable and beneficial enterprise.

Titled 'Size Does Matter', the show has a line up of artists who I wouldn't kick out of the gallery for eating crackers, including Maurizio Cattelan, Chuck Close, Andreas Gursky, Jeff Koons and - of course - a big naked guy from Ron Mueck (on loan from the Hirshhorn). In an icing-on-the-PR-cake move, the catalogue features an essay by (in)famous author James Frey.

It is a stretch to think O'Neale would find anything to admire in a man who cowers in a corner. (Image via Hirshhorn) Museum publicity stunt? These are desperate times, Mrs. Lovett.

Carol Diehl has a roundup on her blog, which is suitably titled Art Vent, of critics going sexist-berserk. I've been reading on other blogs various snippets from Blake Gopnik's Washington Post review of Anne ~~Truit~~ Truitt, all making him sound goofy. But when Diehl called his piece "the most scathing and sexist writing I've ever encountered about an artist," I finally clicked over to the Post to read it.

Sexist? Not even a little bit. It's jaunty, and jaunty doesn't work if a few pushing-the-edge sentences are plucked from the whole. I found it insightful, especially this part:

When Jasper Johns and others had found the abstract in the ordinary, Truitt seems to find the everyday in the abstract -- a much stranger thing to do.

Knocking Blake Gopnik is the art bloggers' national sport. He has written a few things that made my eyes pop (Exhibit A here), but he startles not because he's a fool but because he's trying to enliven what his editors might well feel is the stale form of the art review.

Editors at newspapers rarely appreciate reviews. Gopnik is working to interest them in his, them and presumably other people who do not think of themselves as part of the art world. Anyone pushing a boundary is going to fail on occasion, but he does not fail Truitt.

As for Charlie Finch, whom Diehl also hangs in her gallery-of-shame for his sexist post on Triutt, also no. He's Truitt's son-in-law. (We know this because he titled his piece, "Mother-in-Law.") His point of view is personal and affectionate, ending with:

The Hirshhorn retrospective should vault her into a special pantheon of her own, one which she occupied in privacy during her own life and in public now that her work belongs to the world.

What a canine. Did Gloria Steinem march in vain? Women artists can't get a break. His fellow dog, Blake Gopnik, called Truitt a genius. It's a wonder women don't riot in the streets.

Sean Flood - Boston roots music

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:44:21 -0800

Sean Flood, 3 Deka, oil/canvas. With relatives living on all three floors and holy water in the parlor. I was born in Boston. Were it not for the restless mobility (and dread) of my parents, I might be there still, as I tend to bloom where I'm planted.

She who digs newspapers...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:59:58 -0800

has her own light. (Via)

Before I Die - Nicole Kenney & ks rives

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:06:43 -0800

Kenny and rives travel to ask a single question: What do you want to do before you die? They ask participants to write the answers on a Polaroid portrait, which they post on their Web site. (via)

This project and plenty like it owe a lot to Gilliam Wearing, and before her, to Jim Goldberg, neither of whom tends to make it to the credit line. Their ideas have spread beyond them, influencing even those who've never heard of them.

Gillian Wearing, from Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say, 1992-93

Jim Goldberg, We are a very emotional and tight family, 1979

Recently in Seattle at a reputable space I saw a video in which the voices didn't match the subjects. Again, Gillian Wearing. Her 10-16 was at the Henry Gallery in 2003. Remember the only joke in Pulp Fiction? Catch up.

Wrinkles that matter

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:52:02 -0800

Heather Cook, 2008, via
The brothers Eli Hansen & Oscar Tuazon, Tent, 2008

Sympathy for soliders

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:25:32 -0800

In the art world, there's a remarkable outpouring of support for U.S. soldiers fighting on two fronts. Their government under Bush & Cheney lied its way into Iraq. Afghanistan was an afterthought. However justified a military response might have been for the latter, the result is a mess. Increasingly, the idea that there are better ways to win hearts and minds is gaining ground.

In the late 1960s, soldiers coming home from Vietnam rarely found anything but contempt from artists addressing the war. (He's the universal solider and he really is to blame.) Forty years later, anti-war sentiment among artists is as strong as it was then, but denunciations of soldiers are rare.

Below, a sample of what's out there, from the U.S. and beyond.

An-my Le, from 29 Palms, 2003-present. (Image via)

Eli Wright, from the Combat Paper Project, 2009

Jon Michael Turner, from the Combat Paper Project, 2008

Emily Prince, from her series, American Servicemen and Women Who Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Included by Robert Storr in his 2007 Venice Biennial.

Prince:

The numbers kept coming up in the daily reports. Five here, fourteen there, one day after another. And then the growing figure mounting over a thousand. Peripherally it was ever-present, but still only an abstraction. It was no longer enough to know how many. I needed to see pictures of them, to familiarize myself just a tiny bit more with what was happening far from my warm home. And it really isn't much. It too is a mere summary, just one more step beyond bare numbers.

Yet for me it is something. It means spending time with each one. It is looking into their eyes to see who is now gone. It is following the line of their brow and trying to perceive the expression there. It is a visual and visceral exploration of these individuals by way of their faces. It is my own eyes and my hand tracing out some very slight acquaintance with what's occurring.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, The Veterans' Project, 2009, ICA Boston

Wodiczko to Boston Globe art critic Sebastian Smee:

"The work I have made so far about veterans has been kind of 'out there.' I want this one to be more about 'in here,' '' he says, tapping his head.(more)

Eros Hoagland, from Soldiers Fighting Our War In Iraq, ongoing. Eros is the son of famed war photographer John Hoagland, who died in El Salvador in 1984. He was 36.The bullet that killed him was U.S. Army issued.

Newspapers with art critics: California shines

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:22:55 -0800

The two best art critics still employed by a U.S. newspaper who don't work for the New York Times are both in California: Christopher Knight at the LA Times and Kenneth Baker at the SF Chronicle.

There are no art critics on staff at daily newspapers in Seattle, Chicago, Miami, Dallas and Houston, among others. The admirable Douglas Britt works for the Houston Chronicle on contract. Even though he has the output of two staffers and has brought the paper back into the national discussion, the Chronicle has not said it will restore the position.

A newspaper art critic differs from colleagues at art magazines in one essential, and it's not that the former is less savvy than the latter, although that is frequently the case. A critic at the newspaper aspires to a general audience. The chance to hook somebody with a review who's flipping pages to get somewhere else is tantalizing.

Without newspapers, those accidents appear to be less likely to happen, but there is more depth and range in each separate field, with Web sites available to run on a constant scroll across the face of cell phones.

In that context, art coverage in Golden State newspapers remains golden.

Here's Knight on MoCA. As ever he's making the case for Los Angeles:

But this is not just a promotional treasure-house show. Installed chronologically by chief curator Paul Schimmel, it also tells a story -- although one that's rarely heard. The postwar rise of American art is paired with the simultaneous rise of Los Angeles, from shallow backwater to cultural powerhouse. (more)

Kenneth Baker is more detached. He makes his case artist by artist and doesn't care about regional positioning:

Support Suyama Space

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:56:43 -0800

By giving to and buying from Suyama Space's garage sale. Donated objects include fancy chairs, tables, china, fiesta ware, silver, architectural accessories, toys, tiles, textiles, art objects and antiques.

Drop off contributions at 2324 Second Ave. till Dec. 1. Need pick up? Call 206-256-0809. Sale Dec. 5, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Sample wares: