NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Closings (Bowery) 235

Closings (Bowery) 235, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

Found Art (Soho): Unmonumental 214

Found Art (Soho): Unmonumental 214, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

Found Art (Soho): Unmonumental 213

Found Art (Soho): Unmonumental 213, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

Blind Handshake: artwriting 1990-2008

 

ANNOUNCING the book signing and release party for David Humphrey’s long-awaited anthology of art writing, Blind Handshake, with introductions by Alexi Worth and Chris Kraus.

WHERE:

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.  

530 West 22nd Street
New York, NY

WHEN:

Wednesday, December 16th, 6 – 8 PM
Short reading at 7

Blind Handshake is published by Periscope Publishing and distributed by Prestel. Available at St. Mark's Books, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The art criticism of the painter David Humphrey merits an anthology. But neither Humphrey nor Periscope wanted to present his writing as archival documents from 1990 to 2008. We decided it would be more innovative to treat the texts as the starting point for a book that acknowledges and extends the connections between Humphrey s studio practice and his criticism. The outcome is Blind Handshake. It foregrounds the social life surrounding contemporary art the practices and gestures, the dialogues and monologues that determine its place in the world. Organized thematically, the book considers Coupling Dramas, Unknowable Others, Collective Solitudes, Prosthetic Selves, and Good Liars. Artists drawn into the action include Richard Prince, Chris Ofili, Lucien Freud, Mamma Anderson, Tony Oursler, John Currin, Mary Heilmann, Catherine Murphy, and Amy Sillman. The book's designer Geoff Kaplan employed aspects of graphic novels, magazine layouts, and art monographs in translating the writing and illustrations into a mutant creature. Introductions by Chris Kraus and Alexi Worth provide contexts for understanding the book s presentation of the turbulent intersubjectivity that pervades contemporary art.

DAVID HUMPHREY has exhibited his art throughout the United States and curated several shows in New York City. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize and a Senior Critic at the Yale School of Art. His art criticism has appeared in Art in America, Art issues, among other publications.

GEOFF KAPLAN of General Working Group is a graphic designer who teaches at the California College of the Arts. He is currently writing and designing Power of the People: The Graphic Design of the Radical Press and the Rise of the Counter Culture, 1964-1974.

ALEXI WORTH is an artist and a critic published in Artforum and the New York TImes. His art has been featured at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery and P.P.O.W., both in New York City.

CHRIS KRAUS is a writer and filmmaker. Her publications include I Love Dick, Torpor, and Video Green. She founded Native Agents, an imprint of Semiotext(e), to publish work dealing with theories of subjectivity. In 2008, she was the recipient of the Frank Jewett Mather award in art criticism from the College Art Association.

 

ANNOUNCING the book signing and release party for David Humphrey’s long-awaited anthology of art writing, Blind Handshake, with introductions by Alexi Worth and Chris Kraus.

WHERE:

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.  

530 West 22nd Street
New York, NY

WHEN:

Wednesday, December 16th, 6 – 8 PM
Short reading at 7

Blind Handshake is published by Periscope Publishing and distributed by Prestel. Available at St. Mark's Books, Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

The art criticism of the painter David Humphrey merits an anthology. But neither Humphrey nor Periscope wanted to present his writing as archival documents from 1990 to 2008. We decided it would be more innovative to treat the texts as the starting point for a book that acknowledges and extends the connections between Humphrey s studio practice and his criticism. The outcome is Blind Handshake. It foregrounds the social life surrounding contemporary art the practices and gestures, the dialogues and monologues that determine its place in the world. Organized thematically, the book considers Coupling Dramas, Unknowable Others, Collective Solitudes, Prosthetic Selves, and Good Liars. Artists drawn into the action include Richard Prince, Chris Ofili, Lucien Freud, Mamma Anderson, Tony Oursler, John Currin, Mary Heilmann, Catherine Murphy, and Amy Sillman. The book's designer Geoff Kaplan employed aspects of graphic novels, magazine layouts, and art monographs in translating the writing and illustrations into a mutant creature. Introductions by Chris Kraus and Alexi Worth provide contexts for understanding the book s presentation of the turbulent intersubjectivity that pervades contemporary art.

DAVID HUMPHREY has exhibited his art throughout the United States and curated several shows in New York City. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize and a Senior Critic at the Yale School of Art. His art criticism has appeared in Art in America, Art issues, among other publications.

GEOFF KAPLAN of General Working Group is a graphic designer who teaches at the California College of the Arts. He is currently writing and designing Power of the People: The Graphic Design of the Radical Press and the Rise of the Counter Culture, 1964-1974.

ALEXI WORTH is an artist and a critic published in Artforum and the New York TImes. His art has been featured at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery and P.P.O.W., both in New York City.

CHRIS KRAUS is a writer and filmmaker. Her publications include I Love Dick, Torpor, and Video Green. She founded Native Agents, an imprint of Semiotext(e), to publish work dealing with theories of subjectivity. In 2008, she was the recipient of the Frank Jewett Mather award in art criticism from the College Art Association.

Ai Weiwei: “To use art is not enough”

Ai Wei Wei photographed in Beijing last week, with the scars of his ordeal clearly visible.

via The Art newspaper:

“To use art is not enough”

Ai Weiwei on the reasons writing, blogging and tweeting on politics matters

By Chris Gill | From Art Basel Miami Beach daily edition, 3 Dec 09
Published online 3 Dec 09

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, speaking today at Art Basel Conversations (right), is recovering from brain surgery in Munich, the result, he says, of an assault by police officers in Sichuan Province. “The operation saved my life,” he said when The Art Newspaper visited his Beijing studio just before the fair, adding that it will take around four months for him to fully recover.

Ai’s popular blog on Chinese website Sina.com has been removed, and his activities are now limited to Twitter, on which he has around 10,000 followers. “140 characters is enough—following the operation, that is all I have the attention span for,” he said. “I cannot write long articles right now.” Twitter is blocked by the government in China, so users hack into the site.

Recent topics on his prolific feed have included his ongoing struggle with Sichuan police over the assault, his research into the Sichuan earthquake, the nomination of Chinese writers for the International PEN Writers in Prison award and the recent Obama visit to China, often using strong language. The police in Sichuan have issued an official denial of his assault (Ai says he has a recording of the attack that took place against him), and the government has now launched a probe into his finances.

Describing his move into the media, Ai said: “To use art is not enough, to describe your view, in the old traditional forms, such as painting, sculpture…as a citizen you need to express your views. Writing, blogging and giving interviews is a part of that, otherwise you will very easily be misunderstood by the establishment…as long as there is power and people there will be a struggle.”

Ai grew up with his family in exile in Shihezi, on a semi-military farm camp in Xinjiang Province, in the north west of China. “[The Cultural Revolution] was nothing but frightening,” he said. “The whole society was frightening. I was born in 1957—the year my father [the poet Ai Qing] went into exile. First he was sent to the forests in north China to work, then one year later to Xinjiang, so I grew up there until I was 18 years old. During the Cultural Revolution we were sent to live in the poorest conditions as punishment. I hate to tell those stories, there is too much sentiment there. The fact is people died, were dying. My father lost his sight in one eye, he almost died several times, and I came out of there very fragile.”

Ai then went to New York. “A completely different civilisation—1980s art, German expressionism, all these kinds of things there,” he said. His career started as a painter. “In school I majored in animation and then started doing more installations or objects. I came back to China in 1993, having left in 1981.” Ai was one of the original members of the Stars Group, considered the most important movement following China’s reform process of the 1980s. “This was completely new, freedom, but the party wouldn’t let you go too far, unless there was some structure. There were struggles, there was no real understanding of contemporary life then, it was more art for art’s sake—but quite political.”

Ai said he threw away his work from that period. “I never knew I would be so successful today…I had my first show in 2004, in Bern.” Ai had already been in China for more than ten years, working on his underground book project, and had founded the China Art Archives and Warehouse gallery with Hans van Dijk. He also co-curated the Shanghai exhibition “Fuck Off” in 2000 at Eastlink Gallery, with Feng Boyi. “I was quite unhappy about some of the content [of that show], but art is not about making people happy. Not much art touches the taboo—it was ugly, bloody, violent and sickening, but not far from reality. Reality in China is at least one million times worse.”

Ai’s latest work is Sunflower Seeds, 2009, a pile of 1,000 handmade ceramic sunflower seeds. “These seeds, they are a memory of the Communist times, we would share these seeds with friends,” he said. He does not know what effect the Chinese government’s censorship on art exports (The Art Newspaper, November 2009, p1) will have on future shows he may have abroad—works for his previous two major shows this year at the Munich Haus der Kunst and Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum were shipped out of China before the rules came into place in August. “I think strategically China has come to a very crucial moment, they have to re-justify themselves, even the past 20 to 30 years are based on a kind of destructive, suicidal act. Now they are trying to reach a higher level, but I think in any society, culture should have its own rights, not to be touched by the government, not to be promoted by the government, also not to be destroyed by the government.”

For the full version of this interview, see the January issue of The Art Newspaper

Download the complete issue (PDF)