photo dump, contained

So Greg Cook published a review of Contained today and I got some photos of the exhibition in order, so it's time for a photo dump. The exhibition comes down after this week, so if you've been sleeping Boston, go see it now.

Another gap

More accounting for myself after a long absence. I do have plans to get back to blogging soon, so if you are paying attention, now is the time.

Since my last mea culpa post, I finished traveling too much (Oct-2nd week of Jan, I was home about 1 week a month), wrote quite a few reviews for the Daily Serving, wrote a review for artsfuse about the new Americas wing, applied and was rejected from CMS at MIT, became a contributor for Art Writ and printeresting, and finalized/installed/feted my show at the BCA.

I plan on laying out a curator's thingy for that show soon-- including pictures etc. Briefly, knowing that I am biased, I love this show and I love all the artists in it. It seems to have been beneficial to the space, artists, and me, so I think we all win.

I'm writing some thoughts on internet nerdery, social media in the arts. I will likely post something about that soon.


Things you should see if you are near Boston-
Drawing with Code and Rachel Perry Welty at DeCordova
Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection at the PEM and Mirror of Holland: Drawings from the George and Maida Abrams Collection at the MFA.
All of the upcoming ICA exhibitions including the AR works (that the ICA approved, but doesn't seem to know how to advertise for or have even mentioned yet) during the Cyber Arts Festival.
Nathalie Miebach at Fuller Craft

If you are in NY, go see the amazing Lucy Lippard talk about Ghosts, the Daily News, and Prophecy: Critical Landscape Photography Thursday, April 7, 2011, 7 pm. She's the smartest art nerd I know and is we should all wish to be half as smart as her.
Feel free to ignore my dear friend the Museum Nerd who didn't like Mark Morisoe at the Artists Space. I wanted to see this show as it is an important part of the Boston School that the ICA cemented as a thing. (Also go to the Shellburne Thurber show at Bab's Gallery)

If you are in NJ, Kurt Schwitters: Color and Collage at Princeton should be worth your attention.

In bad news, 57 Delle is closed, MEME is closing (but has a great schedule over the next few months), Walker Contemporary/Anthony Greaney/Carroll and Sons are all moving. We have so few contemporary spaces, this is a big deal to me. Boston seems to always seems to be on the edge of slipping into a dark ages, now is no different.

Curator's Statement for Open Air @ The Nave Gallery

Open Air at The Nave Gallery in Somerville MA.
Artists:
Matthew Best
Nathalie Miebach
Carolyn Muskat
Ted Ollier
Jason Shoemaker

These five artists use the outdoors as inspiration without relying on the timeworn landscape tradition. Each has his/her own way of dealing with the outdoors. A quick description of each project:

Matthew Best's 2+ year suburban foraging project is a visual diary centered around food, life, death, and our insufficient attention to these concerns. Rejecting the clinical delivery of fruit and foods from around the globe, he restores the dependence on our immediate surroundings for nourishment.

Nathalie Miebach's sculptures weave together literal meteorological storms and personal emotional storms. These objects attach the external chaos surrounding us with our internal emotions. These are further developed by collaborating with the accomplished Elaine Rombola to create musical scores out of these storms.

Carolyn Muskat's sculptures revolve around the idea of top soil and ground cover. Buried below the ground we see is our history. Creating granular constructions from her own history she explores geological dimensions, humanizing the process and producing new ways of understanding old tropes.

Ted Ollier's photographs trick us into thinking that he has created a "zen like" calligraphic scroll. Instead, the asphalt patches in the road are brought to our attention in such a quiet and sly way that it is shocking to earnestly find meaning in such a humble object.

Jason Shoemaker's large narrative print of flying objects escaping the manufactured city fits in well with his allegories of roosting birds. These symbolic creatures move out into the wind, finding new roosts. Oddly, at the far end from the large and complicated city we find the impossible-- a man sitting on a horse that is standing in a boat.



Taken together, these works introduce original interpretations of the outdoors. Neither relying on outdated aesthetically motivated images of bucolic scenes nor currently stylish politically motivated "green" readings of our world they form a new modality in the landscape genre.

Each has found a new focal point that guides their work. Miebach, Best, and Ollier's work relies on some form of scientific method; primarily gathering data. Of course, the gathered data is used in divergent ways. Miebach's explosions of color and structured form demand a short book like 1971's Entropy and Art (PDF copy at link) by Arnheim. Her sculptures enthrall the viewer and reward continued study but escape simple explanations.

In contrast with Miebach, Best uses his data as object. Forming a hermeneutic circle, without the individual information from each day, the project is restricted and without understanding the end goal, any individual page is not intelligible. The viewer who possesses both the end goal and the details can project themselves into the project.

Ollier's photographs capture everyday objects from an impossibly impartial perspective. He illustrates his ideas with objective systems, and relies on these systems to provide the images for each piece. Even though he goes through a rigorously concrete process, the final images retreat from what could be entirely too literal and boring.

Shoemaker and Muskat both have overarching themes that strays into the allegorical. In Shoemaker's case, he seems to challenge his own world view with this print. It would be easy to read the work as a indictment of urban sprawl encroaching on the natural world, but his careful and sensitive depiction of both the city and birds who escape it should be read differently. Seen in his wider oeuvre, these birds need a place to rest and the city is where they return to at the end of the day.

Last, Muskat's two sculptures come from her long-standing exploration of the earth under our feet. She sees the top soil as the current chapter in world history. Beneath us, no matter where we stand are buried histories, with boundless narratives and connections. The way our life builds up is similar to how geologic formation are created, for example: from explosions, from wear, or from exposure to hardships. As we excavate the earth, we can do the same for our own self, and unearth hidden pains and triumphs.

In the end, these five artists are creating works that are part of wider dialog about who we are and what our surroundings say about us. From Anne Hamilton's explorations of site specificity, Kader Attia's questioning of location, to Fallen Fruit's various projects centering on fruit-- Open Air's artists may be creating new and previously unseen works, but they are also taking part in a wider conversation currently playing out in art today.

For some pictures see my Flickr.