Archives for October 2009

Gary Hill: I’ll show you the life of the mind

October 28, 2009 by Regina Hackett Leave a Comment

As he slammed himself into a wall, Gary Hill stuttered through his discourse on being and nothingness. After finishing Wall Piece in 2000, he was covered in bruises and could barely walk. His interest in theory he roots in sensation. Central for him is the idea of rupture. His focus is the seams and dislocations between sound, image, time and motion, between the real and the surreal.

Many aspire to their fusion, but Hill succeeds in giving thought a physical form. Consciousness comes from skin, eyes, mouths, brains
and hands; what sounds, motions and memories we make and why.

While the beauty of his work beguiles, its density frustrates. To
frustrate is to offend. Intellectuals are offensive in America. John Goodman spoke for his country as he lumbered down a burning
hallway in Barton Fink and roared, “I’ll
show you the life of the mind!”

With the thumps of Hill’s body scored to a strobe, Wall Piece is in Vortexhibition Polyphonica at the Henry Art Gallery. My review of the exhibit here. Erin Langner’s Peripheral Vision here.

Back to Goodman.

Al Columbia – bedbugs are back

October 28, 2009 by Regina Hackett Leave a Comment

Columbia opens at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery Nov. 7, celebrating the publication of PIM & FRANCIE.

Spike Mafford’s Days of the Dead

October 28, 2009 by Regina Hackett Leave a Comment

Born in Mexico City to painters Elizabeth Sandvig and Michael Spafford, Seattle photographer Spike Mafford has spent two decades documenting Dia de los Muertos in the country of his orgin.

What distinguishes these photos is not just his innate elegance but his intimacy. He knows the people in the costumes and some in the graves, has stayed up all night with them to drink, scatter marigolds and dance.

We dress up:

The church outside:

The bounty from the living earth:

So the blind might see:

The morning after:

Mafford’s Day of the Dead opens Oct. 28 at Gallery 110, along with Maylee Noah’s. Mafford also opens work from the same series Nov. 1 at Tether Design Gallery. He’s making 47 masks each priced at $47.

NOTE: Do not click on the continue-reading link on this post. There’s nothing there, but I can’t get rid of it.

Leda now, still with swan

October 28, 2009 by Regina Hackett 3 Comments

There are no facts to transcend in the tale of Leda and the Swan. There is only a sea of sliding signifiers. They touch without landing on power, sexual hunger, fertility, violation and cunning. With such a range of meanings in play, why did artists so long lean on the soft porn angle? Beginning in the 20th century, they were less inclined to do so.

Frank V. Hoffman in Chicago envisioned a dance, both parties flaunting their power, image undated but probably from the 1930s.

Ornament to Recycle the Pentagon

October 28, 2009 by Regina Hackett 2 Comments

Last year’s holiday tree at the White House had a ringer ornament.
Amid the usual patterned swirls was a call to impeach Bush. Its reverse
side was a salute to Jim McDermott, the Seattle congressman who’d signed a House resolution asking for the same thing.

Deborah Lawrence
didn’t sneak her orb onto the tree by cover of darkness. In order to
showcase the congressional districts, Laura Bush asked members of
Congress to pick artists to decorate an ornament for free. Of 435
districts, 370 participated, which means 65 congresspeople couldn’t or
didn’t bother to find artists willing to work for the thrill of it all.

Even though Rep. McDermott is the ornament’s hero, he didn’t seek the role. He asked 4Culture
to find an
artist, and 4Culture found Lawrence. As Lawrence is a straight-forward
political artist, the decision to give the Bush administration a little
grief on its way out was made there. (Free ornament download here.)

The orb in question hung on the White House tree till the Washington Post called attention to it. Then it disappeared, never to be seen (by Lawrence) again.

The snub is not her only honor. In 2008, she was tapped for a Pollock-Krasner. In 2006, she won a CityArtist Project Grant from 4Culture, and in 2005, she took home a grant from Creative Capital.

For
publicity, however, her brief appearance on the White House lawn
constitutes a career highlight. Keith Olbermann called her the “World’s
Second-Best Person” on Countdown. She and her ornament appeared Time
Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and
the Seattle PI, along with more than 300 other newspapers and media outlets and, said Lawrence, 297,000 blog postings.

This year she’s back with an Ornament to Recycle the Pentagon, created with Michael J. Derry.

Catherine Person Gallery is hosting a party for the Pentagon piece on Nov. 13, 6-8, featuring a short talk by the artists.