Garry Winogrand, SFMOMA

With SFMOMA closing for its expansing beginning in June, I have been trying to spend extra time there. While much of current programming is geared towards the impending closure, the current Garry Winogrand retrospective stands apart as a strong exhibition independent of the museum.

I have encountered Winogrand’s work often in photography exhibits, especially those featuring urban portraiture of the twentieth century, a subject that is often romanticized even in its most gritty portrayals. But his full body of work goes far beyond that as he document a great variety of people and places as he travelled the country. Portraiture tends to invite a very personal response, and that is the case with many of the pieces in this show, including the title image:

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[Garry Winogrand, Los Angeles, ca.1980–83; gelatin silver print; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.]

One’s eyes are immediately drawn to the subject, the straight lines of her dress and contrast with her hair the bright background. My initial take from the posters was “New York, 1970s” which added to my personal sense of identification with the subject, but the photograph is actually from Los Angeles in the 1980s, one of the last pieces chronologically (Winogrand died in 1984). However, there was no shortage of images from New York (especially from the 1960s) in the exhibition.

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[Garry Winogrand, New York, ca. 1960; gelatin silver print; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.]

475.1998
[Garry Winogrand, New York, 1961; gelatin silver print; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchase and gift of Barbara Schwartz in memory of Eugene M. Schwartz; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.]

These two contrasting pieces also invited self-identification as well as an appreciation of the details, sharp contrasts and sense of motion. They demonstrate the breadth of Winogrand’s subjects within the small geographical space of New York as well as his ability to make the different seem similar. As in much of his work, the subjects are not isolated, but part of the flow of people of the city. Arms and legs are naturally cut at the edges as figures in motion move out in and out of the frames.

Beyond the confines of the city, WIngrand’s images take on different moods in different settings, such as this stark image from a suburban neighborhood in Albuquerque.

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[Garry Winogrand, Albuquerque, 1957; gelatin silver print; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, purchase; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.]

The figures in this image, both young children, are a bit obscure, and the scene is cut in half with the partial house to the left and the desert landscape to the right. It is overall a bleaker image than the more exuberant urban photographs. Although the exhibition was separated into chronological and geographical sections, one can mentally juxtapose the city and desert image, and in doing so imagine the contrasting sounds and textures alongside the visuals.

There is also humor that radiates from many of his photographs, either intentionally or unintentionally.

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[Garry Winogrand, Park Avenue, New York, 1959; gelatin silver print; collection National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Patrons’ Permanent Fund; image courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco]

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[Garry Winogrand, New York, ca. 1969; posthumous digital reproduction from original negative; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.]

The final image New York, ca. 1969 is one of many images in the exhibition that were only printed posthumously. Winogrand left behind a vast trove of negatives that were never printed and more the 2,500 that were never developed. This was a unique aspect of the show, but one with complex issues:

“One reason that Winogrand is only now receiving the full retrospective treatment already devoted to peers of his era, including Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Robert Frank, is that any truly comprehensive consideration of his life’s work requires contending with the practical and ethical issues surrounding the vast archive he left behind,” says [Erin O’Toole, assistant curator of photography at SFMOMA]. “In the absence of explicit instructions from him regarding how he wanted his work to be handled after he was gone, its posthumous treatment has been the subject of ongoing debate and raises provocative questions about the creative process and its relationship to issues specific to the medium.”

It is unclear how the artist felt about these unpublished images in comparison to the ones he printed. Many of the later images from Los Angeles in the 1980s do have a somewhat more tired quality to them, though compositionally they do fit with his earlier work, with the somewhat off-center subjects and activity at the margins partially off frame.

Overall, it was a strong show and a unique opportunity to see Winogrand’s work separate from the context of his contemporaries from the 1960s and 1970s. The exhibition will remain at SFMOMA through June 2.

The Green Wood, an opera by David Samas

David Samas’ new multimedia opera The Green Wood premiered this Wednesday at Shotwell Studios. The piece, which featured Samas with Laurie Amat, Doug Carroll, Bob Marsh, Grace Renaud, Becky Robinson-Leviton and Jennifer Gwirtz combined visuals, music, inventions, words and dance into an immersive experience centered around the idea and experience of the forest.


[The Green Wood. Photo by Sam Ardrey.]

The Green Wood literally refers to the mixed-media installation that serves as the main set for the piece. It is a visual representation of the elements of the forest, but also serves as a primary musical instrument both through its main dendraphone structure as well as other attached sound-makers such as pine cones, courrugahorns and blocks. Indeed, the great majority of the sound-making in the piece comes from elements found in forests: seeds, stones, water, and primarily wood. These materials were not only in Samas’ many invented instruments but also in the traditional instruments used: cello, string bass and piano. There was also electronics integrated into the sonic fabric via microphones and loopers.


[David Samas and invented instruments. Photo by Sam Ardrey.]

The piece follows 24 hours in the life of a forest, moving from early morning hours through daytime to dusk and finally into late night. The lighting design and ambient sounds guide the audience through this framework. The music often followed the ambient sounds, such as the percussive playing during the early morning hours matching the insects and leaves, but also incorporated a variety of styles from traditional european folk music to throat singing to more esoteric. There was even a butoh piece featuring Bob Marsh in an elaborate tree costume.


[Bob Marsh as a tree. Photo by Sam Ardrey.]

The voices, traditional instruments and invented instruments blended well both acoustically and musically, a result of the strong musicianship in the ensemble and presumably a lot of rehearsal. I am familiar with Carroll, Marsh and Amat from numerous other performances, but this was my introduction to Samas’ range of vocal techniques which included throat singing as well as traditional Western practice. I also liked how well the looping was integrated acoustically, something I noticed particularly during the sections featuring throat singing and the pouring of water.


[Grace Renaud. Photo by Sam Ardrey.]

In many ways, however, the stars were the invented instruments in their visual and sonic variety. Different instruments were introduced as the piece unfolded, some were very polished and complex while others were incredibly simple, such as seeds poured onto ceramic plates.


[Becky Robinson-Leviton as the Nymph of the Flowers. Photo by Sam Ardrey.]

The performance sought to engage the audience beyond sight and sound with the use of incense made and the serving of a tea made from nettles and flowers. These were enhancements to the experience and not overbearing.


[Photo by Sam Ardrey.]

The was a dissonance between the text of the piece and the immersive and celebratory qualities of the music and visuals. It was dark at times, lamenting both environmental destruction and the dislocation of humans from natural habitats that nourish them. It is a challenge to make such topics not come across as didactic, but that could also be seen as part of the piece itself.

Overall, it was a great and unique performance, and it was well received by the audience on opening night. The show has performances tonight (Friday 3/22), tomorrow night (Saturday 3/23) and a Sunday matinee at Shotwell Studios. I recommend seeing it if you can.

By-product Becomes Product, Intersection for the Arts

Intersection of art and science is not uncommon in contemporary culture, or on the pages of this site. While this most often involves the integration of high technology (e.g., electronics and the Internet) into artistic pieces and practice, the current exhibition at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco takes a new look at a more basic technology, the manufactured materials used by many artists. The show, titled By-product Becomes Product, is a collaboration of lead artist Christine Lee with research engineer John F. Hunt at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Products Laboratory exploring the use of excess wood waste as a safer alternative to some of the toxic materials often used by artists.

Artists have made use of engineered wood products originally created for practical uses such as homebuilding and furniture manufacturing. Among these are plywood, particle board, oriented strand board (OSB) and medium density fiberboard (MDF). All of these have their positives and negatives, and among the negatives are the manufacturing processes, byproducts, and especially in the case of MDF toxic chemicals in the product itself. While a resident the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Lee worked with Hunt to develop a custom composite board made entirely from sawdust and paper fibers. A sample was available at the start of the exhibition:

Because the board was made entirely from waste material, it required no additional wood to be harvested. And because it does not include any adhesives or other additional chemicals, it is non-toxic for artists and viewers of the art. Finally, because it is made entirely from wood by-products, it is biodegradable, and the objects made from it will naturally decay and return to the environment. With this theme in mind, the boards were given to five additional artists to create new work for the exhibition. The results spanned a variety of conceptual and aesthetic styles, and crossed the boundaries between art and design. They were brought together into Intersection’s gallery space in an installation whose clean and spartan quality matched the texture of the material itself:

Russel Baldon’s Mutant Boxes perfectly balanced art and design, and was in many ways the most fun piece in the exhibition. Baldon used the composite material to fashion a series of exquisite corpse boxes featuring his own drawings. The drawings were fun, surreal, often comical or fantastic, and I found myself quite engrossed in playing with them.


[Russel Baldon, Mutant Boxes, 2013.]

This is Baldon’s first public exhibit featuring his drawings – most of his existing work is sculpture and furniture – but they look like the product of someone who is at ease with drawing. The images are clean and precise while maintaining a hand-drawn quality and a common sense a style among a diverse set of characters ranging from anthropomorphic cats to multi-tendriled space aliens. The idea to fashion the material into an object of play was a natural one for the artist, who started his work in his family’s wooden-toy business. It was also an opportunity to feel the material in the form of a finished piece, after touching the prototype board at the start of the exhibit.

Design was squarely the focus of Christine Lee’s own piece, Interwoven. This sculptural furniture piece is a prototype demonstrating the properties of the composite board in terms of strength and flexibility, and an effort that minimized wasted material and toxicity. But the geometric simplicity combined with the detail of the weave also makes it an aesthetically strong piece. It would certainly be at home at CatSynth HQ.


[Christine Lee, Interwoven, 2013.]

Imin Yeh adapted the new boards to an old artform, woodblock printing, in her conceptual installation Double Happiness. She used the composite board as a safe and more natural alternative to other materials used in contemporary woodblock printing. The result was a series of printed paper fruits that were assembled into a cart and crates, also made from the composite board. The scene evokes the wooden produce stands that can be seen around San Francisco:


[Imin Yeh, Double Happiness, 2012.]

The sculpture itself is intended to be a vending station, selling limited edition paper fruits as “organic, fresh, fine art.”

For feed/rest/nest, artist Barbara Holmes created a series of colorful bird houses arranged around the gallery’s spiral staircase.



[Barbara Holmes, feed/rest/nest, 2013.]

Aesthetically, the birdhouses themselves are reminiscent of California architecture of the mid-to-late 20th century. But they also serve a function of returning the materials, sawdust and paper fiber that were themselves by-products of trees removed from the natural environment back into the natural world. They provide habitat for birds, but also will naturally bio-degrade and be reabsorbed into the environment. Holmes intends to place the birdhouses into friends’ yards for habitation and will continue to track their use.

Like Imin Yeh, Julia Goodman used the composite board indirectly, is this case as a series of molds for cast paper. Her conceptual pieces FEMA 3 Step, Forgive and Forget, and Oversight embed words into the cast paper that recall the issues surrounding MDF and formaldehyde leakage in FEMA trailers after Hurricane Katrina. The issue of MDF had a personal dimension for Goodman, as she used MDF in her own art practice and was exposed to its toxic byproducts. She was drawn to the new materials promise as a non-toxic alternative for both art practice and for homes.

Among the artists in the exhibition Scott Oliver seemed to take the sustainability and minimization of waste to its furthest extreme. He used not only the composite boards, but the wooden crate that used to ship the raw material to him. The crate and boards were fashioned into a camper shell for the his Toyota pick-up, once again making an object that is both art and function at the same time. His title Tree, Crate, Camper Shell, Or, On the Way to Becoming Something Else suggests that the life cycle of the piece and its materials is not yet over. They started as trees, become crates and composite boards, but in the future the natural materials of the camper shell will decay and be returned to the environment.

The pieces in this exhibition demonstrate that Lee and Hunt’s new composite-board material has promise as a medium for art and design. They were all quite simple in both form and concept and attempted to relate directly to the themes of sustainability inherent in the material. It will be interesting too see if the material has a wider arrange of applications in more complex artworks in the future and ideas beyond these themes. That will clearly depend on its availability and the imagination of artists.

By-product Becomes Product will remain on display at Intersection for Arts through March 30.

Richard Bassett “Options”, Jack Fischer Gallery

I usually focus on modern and contemporary art’s ability to give the mind space away from emotion and shift focus to the textures, shapes, colors and concepts of the pieces themselves. Options, Richard Bassett’s current solo show at Jack Fischer Gallery, however, does not give the viewer that luxury. One is forced to make a choice between ironic detachment or complete emotional engagement.

Bassett has made several series of handmade needlepoint pillows over the years for various shows. It is an object and medium more associated with craft than fine art, something that while visually pleasing is more likely to be sat upon than gazed upon. Bassett subverted the expectations of pillows in previous exhibitions, depicting violent crimes such as convenience-store robberies. The series featured in this show is of cats and dogs, images that are quite common on pillows (indeed, I suspect many readers may have cat or dog pillows at home). But these are not the happy, tender, images of animals we are used to seeing in domestic decor, but rather photographs of abandoned or abused animals at shelters.


[Richard Bassett, SH_F_BL. 15″x15″x4″ wool, linen, and down, hand needle pointed, 2012. Image courtesy of Jack Fischer Gallery.]

In our culture, animals are bred for the purpose of serving human needs. Domesticated cats and dogs are dealt the difficult task of providing comfort and company, making them utterly vulnerable to human whim. This becomes especially clear when these animals end up in shelters.

Putting distressed animals or surveillance footage of crimes on pillows can seen as typically post-modern and ironic, and perhaps it ultimately is for the majority of people who view these pieces casually or critically. But for me, it is hard to look at the faces of the animals behind bars (especially the cats), and not feel a sense of empathy for them and thus a sense of pain and sadness. The images evoke feelings for the particular cats pictured, as well as for the plight of shelter animals in general.


[Richard Bassett, DSH_M_B/W. 15″x15″x4″ wool, linen, and down, hand needle pointed, 2011. Image courtesy of Jack Fischer Gallery.]

Adding to the poignancy of this show is the fact that Richard Bassett passed away days before it opened in early February. This was a sad loss for his family and friends, as well as his admirers in the arts community. It is hard not to view the exhibition in this context as a memorial and a retrospective. Interspersed among the needlepoint pillows of “Options” were several works on paper under the simple title “Drawings”. Among these drawings were images of enlarged braille supposedly depicting gay porn from the 1950s. I have no means to declare the artists’ intent in either these braille drawings or in the needlepoint images animals. But I feel that he is posthumously challenging me to do exactly that.

The exhibition will be on display at Jack Fischer Gallery through March 9. I encourage readers who enjoy art, or love companion animals, or both, to see it.

Taraneh Hemami, Resistance, Luggage Store Gallery

Through our Thursday-night experimental music series at the Luggage Store Gallery, I have seen quite a few art exhibits on the walls (and the floor, and the ceiling). The current exhibition, Resistance!, is notable for both its theme and its presentation, and worth an article of its own separate from our musical exploits.

Resistance, a solo exhibition of work by artist Taraneh Hemami, is about “the visual culture of protest.” More specifically, it presents a history of dissent in Iran and among the Iranian diaspora through reinterpretations of elements from the archive of the Iranian Students Association of Northern California (ISANC). Art shows about resistance and protest are a dime a dozen in these days after the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. This one is notable for being visually strong, with a very stylized and minimalist presentation that in some cases belies the violence of its subject.

This can be seen most clearly in Blood Curtain, in which a curtain of red beads hangs quietly in an empty corner of the gallery against monochromatic walls and curtains. It is at once beautiful and also uncomfortable with its obvious depiction of blood.


[Taraneh Hemami, Blood Curtain, 2013]

The curtain is made from 8mm glass beads and suggests a hand-crafted artifact, a theme that reappears throughout the exhibition. In Theory of Survival, portraits of martyrs from book covers are reproduced in glass frit on large panels, again in black and red. From a distance, the texture looks like carpeting, but when one looks closely the glass becomes apparent.


[Taraneh Hemami, Theory of Survival, 2010-2013]

More traditional craft can be seen a series of rugs that at first appear to be an elegant wall decoration but take on additional meaning when one realizes that these designs were from images of rugs created by prisoners. Other pieces were less subtle in their message, such as Notes from Evin Prison, named for the notorious Iranian prison that still appears in headlines today. Here, laser-cut metal is used to render both a harmless looking sign with the piece’s title as well a large and explicit figure in black and red being tortured. There were, however, more hopeful images as well. In People Power Revolution, the laser-cut metal forms depict throngs of revolutionaries. The main image of violence in this piece, a security guard being skewered, is almost cartoonish.


[Taraneh Hemami, People Power Revolution, 2013]

The prevalence of red among the pieces suggested an association with 20th century Communism in addition to blood and violence. The Communist motif was reinforced by the frequent appearance of five-pointed stars. I thought this was odd at first, because I was using the 1979 Iranian revolution and the recent protests against the Islamic regime as my reference. ISANC was actually active from 1960 to 1982, and thus its archives mostly predate the 1979 revolution and document earlier periods of resistance and protest when Leftists symbols would have been in wide use. Nonetheless, the images seemed like they could have been from the protests since 2009.

Resistance will be on display at the Luggage Store Gallery through February 28, with a closing reception that evening.