Cable Griffith interviews
Whiting Tennis, who opens Friday night as part of Dimensional Invention at the Kirkland Arts Center, curated by Griffith.
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Wrong is right – the shock of the flaw
That old grade-school test question - Which of these does not belong? - offers a key to the aesthetics of the expressively hot, as opposed to the classically cool. The hint of crazy within the solid citizen, the blood in the water and the worm in the rose (mortal, guilty) move us in a way that visions of perfection rarely do. In honor of the flaw, a small survey of its recent, robust manifestations. Douglas Gordon Three Inches (Black) 1997 (image via) Susan Robb: Three from the last … [Read More...]
Recently in Seattle
If human history were underwater, Alwyn O'Brien's ceramic vessels could serve as the bleached bones of the Ancien Regime, the decorative drained and dead on a dark sea floor. 4 Descending Notes 2010 Manganese Clay and Glaze 9" x 7" x 5 1/2" Hand-rolled coils make her lacy vessels. Born past their prime, they are in their own weird way pristine. Story of Looking, 2010 Porcelain and glaze, Two Pieces 12 1/2" x 14" x 5" Following Thelonious Monk, she knows how to use the wrong … [Read More...]
Picasso’s flesh world
Collectors who hire experts to solve problems that don't exist till help arrives are responsible for the equivalent of bad face lifts on old masters. What the artists intended too frequently recedes under an abrasive cleaning or a deadening layer of varnish. Current practices discourage irreversible interventions. That means John Currin's work is a little safer than artists who preceded him, such as Picasso, although having the money to buy good advice doesn't guarantee it will be heeded. … [Read More...]
Welcome back, David Wojnarowicz
Nice to see David Wojnarowicz (wana-row-vitch) back in the news, making the monkeys dance. It's no surprise that the usual people want to use their deliberate misunderstanding of his work to rally their frightened base. It's also no surprise that the Smithsonian once again proves to be cowardly. Remember its Enola Gay exhibit from 1995? The examination of this country's use of the Atom Bomb started as scholarly and turned into a my-country-right-or-wrong cheering section, after suitable … [Read More...]
Image Transfer – Remix Culture at the Henry
Humans see, humans do: After the first horse drawn on the first cave and the first pot incised with a decorative line, everything became imitation. You don't need a weatherman to know which way that wind blows, or that in the contemporary period, it blows harder. In selecting the 12 artists featured in Image Transfer: Pictures in a Remix Culture, associate Henry curator Sara Krajewski looked for those whose engagements with image recycling make them visual mix masters of note, those who … [Read More...]
Give me a head with hair
Mequitta Ahuja Wriggle, oil on canvas, 41"X26" 2008. Could have been titled, Medusa takes a nap. Geoffrey Chadsey Welterweight, 2002 Watercolor pencil on rag vellum, tape 57" x 24" Another great Chadsey figure with flowing locks. (Not safe for work.) Lauren Grossman Behold 2003 Iron, wool, steel. 13"x21"x12" Rolls on casters. Mequitta Ahuja, again. Flowback, oil on canvas, 68"X51" 2008 … [Read More...]
Wynne Greenwood: Samuel Beckett meets borderline personality disorder
Update, 4/18: I changed this review to praise Greenwood more, adding to dry wit “perfect timing and sculptural use of language.” This piece grew on me in retrospect.
Wynne Greenwood can sing. The almost complete suppression of her singing is part of her performance at On the Boards, titled, Sister Taking A Nap.
The 40 30-minute piece (said 40 in the program notes) finds Greenwood’s character with not a lot to do. A friend calls. She says she needs a ride if she’s going out and adds that she can’t give directions to her sister’s apartment because she doesn’t know where it is, and her sister is sleeping.
Our heroine might go for a run but can’t find a pen to leave a note. (“Where are your pens? … Seriously.”) For a poet-sister not to have pens around is telling. Back to the heroine, who’s hungry. She says so several times. To no avail, she tries to wake her sleeping, former-poet sibling, who is a half-drawn, half-stuffed puppet prone on the floor.
Gina Young plays the role of Greenwood’s shadow. Since Greenwood is already her own shadow, Young pulls off a monumental act of self-suppression. She’s there, and she’s not. She holds a light, paints a plaster bird black (no need to say nevermore), chips away at Greenwood’s pink plaster suitcase, which, having no opening, doesn’t.
Greenwood’s lithe young thing is monumentally self-absorbed. She might as well be a potted plant, because she expects watering. This kind of person does not age well. As presented in Sister Taking A Nap, she’s a drain on everybody except the members of the audience, who respond to Greenwood’s dry wit, perfect timing and sculptural use of language.
Greenwood got her start in the music scene
in Olympia in the late 1990s, which is where she launched Tracy + the
Plastics. The group featured her and her sisters. If she has any sisters, they weren’t in the band.
A Russian joke comes to mind: Two Russians meet on the street, and one asks the other:
Is it true that you formed a musical group?
Yes, a quartet.
How many members?
Three.
Who?
Me and my brother.
You have a brother?
No.
Tracy + the Plastics was Greenwood times three. When on stage, she fronted multiple video screens featuring her alter egos. Sometimes there was a video dog. Sometimes there were sculptures that turned into drums or hatched, like eggs, to offer tea with milk and honey.
There are legions of visual artists who’d like to be musicians and
musicians who boast about their art chops, but few are equally good at
both. Greenwood is the rare, real deal. She fused video and music with
performance stand-up: low-tech/high-concept, kick-butt, punk-tinged,
art-based rock ‘n roll.
Right now she really is alone, even though she’s working with Young. Keeping hope alive, she says she’s going to release another record. I can’t wait.
Bad At Sports on Sister Taking A Nap, here. By noon on Thursday, there will be audience reviews of the show, courtesy of Blog the Boards.
The unnautral helping hand of art
In droughts in Southern California, concerned homeowners paint their dead grass green.
For Michael Buitron and Manya Fox, a similar strategy became a critique. Instead of disguising a problem, they highlighted it. Buitron added plastic leaves to bare branches in his project, Four Los Angeles Parks. Fox flung a deep green tarp over a dead spot.
Then there’s SuttonBeresCuller, replacing nature with a madcap, Bladerunner zeal. Below, images from their portable park, fake island in the real Lake Washington and their green cave of a mini-mart, the last still in progress.
John Sutton, Ben Beres and Zac Culler are represented in Seattle by Lawrimore Project.
Baby please. I’m a trash can down on my knees.
Braille graffiti
Here’s a project from 2007 that deserves to be revived and spread, from Scott Wayne Indiana in Portland, Oregon.
(Click images to enlarge)
Two years earlier in Seattle, Spike Mafford made an attempt to connect with the blind in a photo exhibit at Francine Seders Gallery.
Twenty-five years before that, Buster Simpson mounted a series of Cherry tree branches along Pine Street, from the Pike Place Market to First Avenue. Along the underside were messages in Braille. It was part of Simpson’s failed campaign to save a Cherry tree from developers’ plans to remove it. After he lost, he used parts of the tree for a range of art projects, none of which are online. Late Simpson does not appear to value early Simpson. His Web site tracks only projects from 1989 onward.
Trophies – You are already a winner
From Hilarie M Sheets in the New York Times, a feature on Jean Shin’s elaborate trophy landscape at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, opening May 1. (Story here.)
Shin, who refashioned thousands of trophies, did not need to look far and wide for material. Trophies are everywhere.The cheap charm of pats on the back disguises the ruthless sorting of unregulated Capitalism.
Do-Ho Suh turned a mass of humanity into a trophy for an overlord.
Christian French turned his into a storefront shrine – buy your Buddhism here.
Sherry Markovitz recast a hunter’s prize as an emblem of the spiritual realm.
Nicola Vruwink made a trophy of herself. It’s herself she can’t get away from, with all the years of training in the art of feminine wiles. As Oscar Levant said years ago about Doris Day, “Nobody loves a fairy once she’s 40.”
How the material uses of cassette tape continue to unfold in our lives
To this post about Iri5’s portraits of musicians in cassette tape, here, I’d like to add Nicola Vruwink’s hanging masses of chaos theory. She’s doing Clyfford Still without paint, paint brush or palette knife. (Click to enlarge.)
Vruwink opens Saturday night at fluxco. Images from d.e.n. contemporary.
Our Vancouver problem
Jen Graves thinks Vancouver B.C.’s art scene tops Seattle’s, which is a very Seattle thing to maintain. As long as I’ve lived here, Seattle’s been expert at complaining about itself.
How real is the complaint this time? Are we San Jose to Vancouver’s San Francisco, or San Diego to Vancouver’s LA?
If cities could slouch down runways (their tallest buildings serving as hats) or duke it out in boxing rings (their criminals ready with sucker punches), then declaring a winner makes sense. I’d rather think about how Portland, Seattle and Vancouver complement each other than crown one queen for a day.
Since the issue is on the table, however, there are a few things Graves left out.
Street signs, continued
From Tom Chambers and Aline Smithson, Rough Road, at Wall Space Gallery. (Click image to enlarge)
Plastic bottles in the Venetian vein
Glass in the Venetian style is as common in Seattle as coffee. Dante Marioni used to blow a few each morning, like a pianist warming up with c-scales. Because they are common, their elaborate beauty offers the same pleasure as eating a whole coconut cake. Somewhere between the third and fourth piece, disgust lays waste to desire.
Shari Mendelson‘s Venetians are a restorative. She makes them by collaging bits of plastic bottles together with a glue gun. Who wouldn’t belly up to the bar for a drink in one of them?
(Click to enlarge)
She’s also expert in more ancient forms. Drop one and it will bounce.
She’s featured in Tikkunim: Jewish roots/Ecological Art at Howard House through May 2.