Art

Chakras and Homebrews at Performa 11

During my visit to New York, I had the opportunity to check out a few events from the Performa 11 biennial. I had a great experience, too years ago, and wanted to check out the final weekend. My time this year was quite limited, but I did have a chance to attend a few events.

The artistic highlight of my brief visit was a piece by Mika Rottenberg and Jon Kessler called SEVEN, which took place at Nicole Klagbrun Project in Chelsea. It was described as “a chakra sauna channeling chromatic body fluids from New York to Cradle of Humankind in Africa.” There are seven chakras, which correspond to areas of the bodies and states of being in Hindu and Buddhist traditions (you can look up tons of information on this if you’re curious), with an addition of colors of the spectrum in some recent practices, particularly in Western societies. The installation consisted of a full scale urban spa, with exercise area, working sauna and a lab with a bizarre combination of equipment and a technician who appeared to be running the show:

At the same time, the installation featured a video from an arid landscape in Africa. It is the combination of both the live installation and the video that becomes interesting. In the video, a succession of people in the African landscape extract cylindrical cores of mud from the parched ground. These are given to a local man in a small hut, which he then places into a bizarre looking contraption. When he turns it on, the core suddenly appears in the local lab in a similar looking piece of equipment. These are then placed in the sauna. Meanwhile, in New York, people take turns on an exercise bike, which both powers the sauna and helps the participant work up a sweat as they take turns moving from the bike to the sauna. The participants are assigned colors from the chakras/spectrum in succession, and their perspiration from the sauna generates a vial of “chakra juice” of that color, which is then collected.

This process repeats slowly for each of chakras, with the participants in Africa bringing the mud to the machine and the local participants generating the colored vials in the sauna. The synchronization between the installation, live performance and video is very well done, and does give the illusion that these events are happening together in real time through some process we don’t quite understand.

When all seven chakras are filled, the set is then sent back through the device to its counterpart in Africa in the video. At this point, the video completely takes over and we see the purpose of this ritual. If anything, the conclusion was perhaps the least convincing part of the piece, as it seemed a bit forced compared to the surrealism and illusion created by the synchronizing the video and live performance. But overall, it was a strong piece and I’m glad I made the trip over to the west side to see it.

Back at the Performa Hub in SOHO, I spent some time at the brew pub, where a variety of beers from local homebrewers were on tap.

I particularly liked a couple of spicy brews featuring chili, but there were also some great seasonal beers with pumpkin and cinnamon. In addition to the beer itself, it was an opportunity to interact with artists, the brewers and other visitors. Attending art events in New York can sometimes be a lonely affair, so it was a nice change of pace. In my haste to get to the next event, I misplaced my list of the beers (along with my copy of the Occupied Wall Street Journal I picked up earlier in Zuccotti Park), so I don’t have exact info to share with readers. If I find something online, I will update.

Overall, I did not get to see as much as I did in 2009, and it did not have the same abstract/modernist/future-retro vibe that it did two years ago, but overall it was a good experience and a good start to my week in New York.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Cat at Islais Creek

Islais Creek in San Francisco is a favorite photography spot of mine, and also home to an art studio complex featuring many metalwork sculptors. While walking outside of Islais Creek Studios, I encountered this gray cat.

It’s not the first time I have come across cats at Islais Creek Studios. Indeed, I posted about a cat I encountered there last year. It seems to be a natural environment for outdoor cats, lots of places hide in the industrial debris, and friendly people who leave food for them.

In the picture, we see the cat sitting near large metalwork sculptures by the artist David I McGraw. I like the abstract shapes and focus on single, and the fit well with the environment. And they go well with cats.

We participated in this year’s BlogBlast for Peace, which occurred yesterday. Cats have been quite prominent among the entries every year. You can see our peace globe here.

Weekend Cat Blogging #335 is hosted by Kashim, Othello and Salome at PaulChens FoodBlog?!

Carnival of the Cats #399 will be hosted this Sunday by Nikita and Elvira at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

San Francisco Open Studios at Art Explosion

San Francisco Open Studios has been going on all of October. I have live tweeting from my various studio visits each weekend using the hashtag #SFOS. But as both the month and Open Studios draws to a close, we look back and my own experience on the first weekend, showing my photography at Art Explosion and in the showcase at SOMArts.

The works were mostly drawn from the same set that I featured in the solo show at The Parts Room in Oakland in early September, include the “triptych” of the large red, blue and yellow pieces.

The show in Oakland was a great experience, the best visual arts show to date. And I learned a lot about hanging which I put to use for Open Studios. This was most true for the showcase at SOMArts, where I showed up fully equipped to have my piece perfectly centered and mounted in the allotted space. The tools and meticulous measuring and drilling of holes seemed to impress the staff at ArtSpan.

And the work paid off with the end result (though the camera distorts the leveling a bit).

During the preview party, I received numerous positive responses from visitors and various people in the arts community.

The response at the studio itself was also positive. There weren’t always a lot of people visiting, it came in waves throughout the weekend, but those who did come were quite engaged.


[Photo from Art Explosion Studios Facebook page.]

I received both positive and constructive feedback over the weekend. One thing that is clear is the strongest works are those, like the “triptych” that focus on details of the urban landscape, a particular shape or pattern or color. Those are also among the most rewarding to work on, so I will likely focus more on this in the future. I will probably continue to have humorous pieces as well. People of course loved the big orange cat. The doll was a lot more polarizing (see the most recent Wordless Wednesday for an example), with some people really liking it and others hating it.

In balance it was a good experience – it was also great to share it with the other artists in the studio. It was also nice to get it out of the way during the first week, and spend the rest of the month as a viewer rather than presenter. But I am left with a sense of “OK, what next?” in terms my visual-art work…

Weekend Cat Blogging #333: Works of Art

Luna contemplates the sculpture Pierced Screen by Joshua-Tree-based artist J Michael Smiley.

She has a good sense for how to contrast her natural shape against stark geometric lines. Actually, given our art and decor, she doesn’t have much choice in the matter.

I bring the outdoor sculptures inside every winter. This month has been rather volatile, ranging from a heatwave to violent rainstorms and now to more typical crisp autumn weather. We were caught completely by surprise with the storms, with both heavy rain and winds. A particularly strong gust of wind one of the outdoor sculptures crashing to the ground.

Fortunately, it was not damaged, perhaps a few scratches but nothing worse than usual wear and tear. I consider the rust sculpture more sensitive to rain, so that one came indoors for storage. Luna has been fascinated by it ever since.

I would like to clean it and fix the rust surface a bit, but I don’t have much expertise in this despite owning multiple rust sculptures.

Our friend Parker of Perfectly Parker has received some very sad news this past week. Our thoughts are with Parker and her family.

Weekend Cat Blogging #333 is hosted by Billy Sweetfeets.

Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging will be here for Hallowe’en next week!

Art Practical Year 3 Launch, with Music and Super-8 film

Today we look back at the launch party for Year 3 of Art Practical, an online magazine that documents and discusses Bay Area visual arts through reviews and analysis. The event took place at Fivepoints Arthouse. Upon entry, we were offered the opportunity to purchase a logo shot glass (which I did). During the evening, it was filled a few “Shotgun Shots” (Shutgun! being the title of their first issue for the year).

However, the highlight of the evening was in basement of Fivepoints, where artists/musicians Joshua Churchill and John Davis presented live experimental music set against a hand-solarized Super 8 film. It’s pretty rare these days to see actual Super 8 films, but it definitely added something to the piece. They images were purposefully grainy, and even more distorted as a result of the solarization and other treatments of the film – it reminded me of some of the effects on the Hipstamatic (see examples here and here), but on a much larger scale and with a richer depth of intensity and contrast.

Joshua Churchill sat in front of the screen and performed the live with electric guitar and an array of electronic effects. There were echoes, distortions, some elements that sounded like looping, and synthetic sounds from the combination of effects. There was a noisiness and graininess to the music that seemed to reflect the quality of the film. The overall effect was quite beautiful and evocative, and mesmerizing.

Through small slots in the ceiling, light poured in from the main floor gallery, creating a series of light streaks that worked both in concert and contrast with the images from the film and heightened the overall presentation. Even though the space was quite crowded, I found myself completely immersed in the visuals and sounds of the piece.

The piece would have been a great event to see on its own even without the party, but I am happy it was there otherwise I might have missed it. All in all, a great evening. And now Art Practical is already on its third issue of Year 3.

September Photography Show at The Parts Room, Oakland

As I prepare for tonight’s opening at Art Explosion Open Studios in San Francisco, I look back at the opening just two weeks ago at The Parts Room in Oakland.

The Parts Room is located in Classic Cars West in Oakland, a venue that, as the name implies, primarily deals in classic cars. Many of these cars are themselves works of art.

In the above picture, we see two of the cars in display with large-scale artworks by GETBIZI. I thought his pieces would particularly well in conjunction with the cars, sharing the brought colors, clean lines, and including California-style landscape that is synonymous with car culture. I also found the pieces by Optimist, which featured a combination of industrial elements such as shipping contains with modern Asian signage and imagery, fit well with the environment and with my own work.

The overall show in the main gallery was titled “Mechanic Arts”, with many of the artist relating to the “mechanical” or “industrial” theme in different ways. Mark Schroeder’s sculptures combined new and old technologies with wood, metal and light generators were sprinkled throughout the main room, sometimes on top of old barrels. Similarly, Nicole Bommarito’s constructions with Polaroid emulsions combine various vintage technologies. John Paul Marcelo and MoE were also featured with painting and large installations, respectively. The work of these artists shared a weathered look of older industrial products and processes, which fit well with the space but were in sharp contrast to clean and streamlined quality of the cars, and of the large panels from GETBIZI.

The Parts Room itself is a long and narrow space, which made for great opportunities to display both the large pieces as well as some of my iPhone Hipstamatic prints.


[click images to enlarge]

We actually spent quite a bit of time meticulously lining everything up to make use of the space. In addition to just getting everything straight, I wanted to emphasize the lines, geometry and industrial elements on the pieces, as well as the prominence in one color in several of the pieces.



[click images to enlarge]

Overall, the response to the show was quite positive, and it was great to see so many people come through and show an interest, particularly on the Oakland Art Murmur night.

Overall, this was undoubtedly my best visual art show to date. It was well attended, and I received lots of positive feedback. It was great to have such support from Rebecca Kerlin to make this show happen, and to have the time and space to put in the effort to make it come out well. I also learned a lot about how to be precise in hanging and presenting work – something which I plan to bring forward with me in future shows.

It was sad to have to dismantle the show after only a couple of weeks, but I needed many of them for Open Studios. I did try and re-create the triptych of the red, blue and yellow pieces, although with less space. We will see how it goes.