NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Art Benefit Sale for Priene Hali @ SVA Fri Nov 30, 6-9pm

Pictured: Priene Hali rug workshop (Gullubahce, Turkey)

 

Benefit Sale for Priene Hali
@

School of Visual Arts
(Fine Arts Building)
335 West 16th Street
Ground floor

Friday, November 30, 6-9pm

Established and emerging artists alike have donated over 80 works of art, each available for purchase for $75, to benefit the Priene Hali rug workshop in Güllübahçe, Turkey. The workshop has taught the craft of pile rug weaving to over 50 women from Gullubahce and its environs, allowing them to create and sell rugs independently and providing a community center.

Artworks range from drawings and paintings to photographs and editioned prints.

Note: Cash only accepted for purchases.

Priene Hali traces its origins to a 2006 public-private partnership to provide women vocational training in the Turkish village of Güllübahçe. Under the leadership of Fatma Öztürk, the director and hodja (master teacher) of the studio, and with support from the Güllübahçe Municipality, the community has grown to include over 50 women who are practiced in traditional pile rug weaving.

Organized by faculty member Peter Hristoff and presented by the BFA Fine Arts and BFA Visual & Critical Studies departments in partnership with the American Turkish Society.

“Canceled”: Art, Censorship and the Possibility in Failure at The Center for Book Arts

View of “Canceled: Alternative Manifestations and Productive Failures,” 2012

via Artforum Critics' Picks:

“Canceled: Alternative Manifestations and Productive Failures”

THE CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS
28 W 27th Street, 3rd Floor
April 18–June 30

06.04.12

Author: Zachary Sachs

04.18.12-06.30.12 The Center for Book Arts

Richard Prince v. Patrick Cariou, a fair-use case currently in appeals, threatens to set a dangerous precedent for the legality of appropriation. The initial ruling against Prince in 2011 included—in a surprisingly draconian injunction—an order that the works be destroyed or never displayed publicly. Cases like this can make an artwork seem considerably less interesting than the machinery of art and institutions that revolve around it. Greg Allen’s YES RASTA, 2011, a deadpan bound volume that reproduces depositions in the case, is one of the sixteen quasi-documentary, quasi-performative works on display in “Canceled.” The exhibition courses through several decades of art’s challenges to censorship, from the Los Angeles Police Department’s late-1950s persecution of Wallace Berman’s work and exhibition (“pornography”), to the imploding of Manifesta 6 in 2006 (Cypriot politics), to David Wojnarowicz’s recent expulsion from the Smithsonian’s “Hide/Seek” exhibition (an “assault on the sensibilities of Christians”).

Some remarkable artifacts come to the surface in this extensive trawling: a one-of-a-kind collaged mailer from the artist Cameron to Berman; Hans Haacke’s personal copy of his monograph Werkmonographie, which documents his inspired struggle with the Guggenheim in 1971. (The muscular neutrality of Haacke’s work made him seem a particularly stylish David wielding nothing more than Concept against Goliath’s vested interests. Here you can find the best joke, from the Guggenheim’s rejection letter to Haacke: “The trustees have established policies that exclude active engagement toward political and social ends.”)

At times the curatorial conceit can be a bit baggy: Seth Siegelaub’s books-as-exhibitions from the 1960s are a form of rejecting the gallery’s physical space, but they have little rapport with the conflict that animates most of the other selections. The curator, Lauren van Haaften-Schick, suggests in an accompanying essay that that the exclusion of contested artworks from exhibitions represents “ultimately productive failure,” which reminded me of the chestnut “fail better” from Samuel Beckett’s last novel, Worstward Ho (1983). Beckett was fairly black about about one’s prospects in the end (hence that title)—“Canceled” leaves one with a much more generous feeling about the possibility of failure.

JustLuxe: Joy Garnett's Momentary Explosions are Blowing Up the Art World

REVIEW

via joygarnett:

Joy Garnett's Momentary Explosions are Blowing Up the Art World

By Carly Zinderman

Posted: May. 7th, 2012

New York artist Joy Garnett has introduced some interesting theories into the artworks that have made her popular, by reinventing photos and transforming them into explosive paintings. Although she uses paint and canvas like a traditional artist, her works are created from photographic images of explosions she sources from the Internet.

In her artist's statements on her website, Garnett explains, "My paintings are associated with the 'apocalyptic sublime,' a metaphysical condition of astonishment and awe. Culling my source images from the Internet while referencing painterly tropes that include Abstraction, Op Art and the Luminist landscapes of the 19th century, my work continues to develop its own pictorial engagement with the vertiginous information explosion that defines our 21st century Technological Sublime Age."

Using images of destruction and explosions, Garnett translates the images onto canvas for bright bold effects. For Boom and Bust, a solo show of six large paintings at the Winkleman Gallery, Garnett used military explosions set against dark night skies as her inspiration. Without physical groundings like horizon lines or objects on the ground, each image gives the viewer no concept of size or scale, the explosions are somehow even more intense.

Currently, Garnett is working on a visual memoir entitled "The Bee Keeper," [sic!] a piece about her grandfather, A.Z. Abushady, poet, publisher and an innovative beekeeper in both Egypt and England during Egypt's Ancient Regime, when King Farouk was in power. In addition, Garnett has worked as the Arts Editor of the scholarly journal Cultural Politics and regularly publishes writings on arts, media and related subjects in various publications and on the web, including her blog NEWSgrist.

Garnett lives and works in New York City and her pieces have been shown in numerous galleries up and down the East Coast. She was most recently part of a group exhibition, The Tool at Hand, at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Visit FirstPulseProjects.com to see more.

Installation Shots: The Tool at Hand @ The Milwaukee Art Museum

Joy Garnett: Pink Bomb (2011) Oil/canvas. 54x60 inches.

 

Here is a flickr set with installation shots and links to all the artist videos and info. From my recent trip to the Milwaukee Art Museum, where the artists and curators convened last weekend on the occasion of the exhibition The Tool at Hand. Video of Pink Bomb in progress is here.

 

Interview with Amy Wilson: "We dream of starfish and geodesic domes"

Installation view: Amy Wilson: We dream of starfish and geodesic domes, 2012. BravinLee programs, NY.

 

While attending artist Amy Wilson's opening for her current exhibition "We Dream of Starfish and Geodesic Domes" at BravinLee programs (through March 24th), a mutual friend asked, "So, how do you and Amy know each other?" Which made me realize that we met many years ago at yet another opening. Although we both live and work in and around New York, Amy and I first met on the occasion of Barry Blinderman's fabulous "The UFO Show" at Illinois State University Galleries where we both had work. I remember being very green. And that it was a very fun show. And that afterwards we were treated to burgers and pints at a dark, atmospheric pub. There was a fine exhibition catalog, and we all got to take home a bright green frisbee with "The UFO Show" emblazoned on it. Most of the artists, who had never met before, came out for the opening.... Amy and I lost touch after that, and recently we've re-connected. I have followed her through her work all along, and I thought this might be a great time, while her show is still up, to ask her a few questions for NEWSgrist.

NEWSgrist: Hey Amy, how would you characterize the work you were doing at the time of The UFO Show? could you describe the developments and evolution of your process since then?

AMY WILSON: I was right out of grad school then, and the work I was making was really a transition for me. I had gone to school for sculpture and loved making huge pieces... and then found I couldn't afford a studio after graduation, had a tiny little apartment, and basically decided - ok, I guess I'm going to work on drawings for now. It was a practical decision, but at the time it was the only one that made any sense. But it meant I had to really learn how to draw, which I had avoided in grad and undergrad because I figured: hey, I'm a sculptor!

Amy Wilson: A Utopic Vision, After Bosch (Seasteading) 2011, watercolor, pencil, collage on paper. 22 x 30 inches. Courtesy the artist and BravinLee programs, NY

So I set out to make a bunch of different drawings, basically learning as I went. The drawings in that show were part of a series about unexplained phenomena, and featured text that was lifted from what people who had had strange experiences (seeing UFOs, being visited by aliens) reported in books and articles I'd read which had fascinated me. So I was more or less coming home from work every night, sitting down at my kitchen table, and learning the basics of drawing by sketching out these UFOs (very easy to draw, good for someone just starting) and carefully writing this text.

Around this same time - totally separate from this show and this work - I started copying texts out of books by hand, into a sketchbook, in pencil. I found that being in the city was making my mind race to the point that I was having a hard time sitting down and reading a book, so that when I would try to, I'd wind up skipping over entire sections and skimming it without meaning to (this of course was fine when I was reading glossy magazines, etc., but when I wanted to read something heftier it really caused problems). So this practice of slowly copying each word in a book became a way for me to reteach myself to read. I didn't realize it at the time, but I had these two things going on at the same time - learning to draw, and also relearning how to read.

Eventually I found myself with this notebook full of transcribed writings and thought, Hey, let's put this into the work. Sometime after the UFO show, I did - that's where this practice of cramming my work full of all these words comes from. At first, it was all transcription from other sources; over the last few years, as I've become more confident with my own writing, it's been my own words. The drawings have become more complicated and complex too, as I learned more and more about working on paper.

 

Amy Wilson: How We Came To Know We Were Ready (we tried to value), 2011, watercolor, pencil, walnut ink on paper. 7 x 5 inches. Courtesy the artist and BravinLee programs, NY.

NG: Considering that your work deals (literally) with narrative on the one hand, and seriality on the other, I have always wondered how much you consciously draw on (no pun intended!) certain popular genres such as the "graphic novel". How do you feel about that kind of comparison? is there a real, conscious connection between your work and the graphic novel, its obvious departure from that genre aside? which leads me to ask: what/who *are* your influences, conceptually and stylistically? do you consciously pull from other drawing/narrative styles and tropes? do you see your current work as being primarily diaristic? in an arch or strange way?

AW: I like graphic novels, and I don't mind the comparison. But my roots, and what I look at and really think about, is fine art. There's something about the whole graphic novel/comic book world that I really love, and something about it that feels off-putting to me. It's probably strange that I feel more comfortable and at-home in galleries and museums and intimidated by graphic novels and comics, but that's what it is.

 

Amy Wilson: How We Came To Know We Were Ready (we felt excluded by high culture), 2011, watercolor, pencil, walnut ink on paper. 7 x 5 inches. Courtesy the artist and BravinLee programs, NY.

My work is definitely diaristic. And within shows, there are definite story arcs. I'm most interested in making art that is a daily act, this little thing that you do every day that builds up and amounts to something after some time. It really is like keeping a diary, or a blog. I think of the project of someone like On Kawara - just this recording every day of the date. He's of course more disciplined and detached in his recording that I am with mine, but that's just part of the process being honest. I'm an anxious person and I have to make things, so I'm going to approach it differently than he does. A lot of times, in one of my shows you will see me contradict myself - you'll see me say one thing in one piece and the opposite in another. This isn't planned or anything; it's just that my thinking changes over time and more info filters in, moods shift, and so forth. It's just what happens.

As far as what kind of art inspires me - I've always been really drawn to Conceptual art and to art about ideas in general. But I'm a sucker for color, for materials, and for making things by hand. I'm messy, and I like that about myself. But mostly I like art that is challenging and even confusing to the viewer either by putting forward some difficult-to-understand idea or being aggressively ugly or emotionally wrenching, or something that really demands of the audience some attention and effort. I like to work hard, and I like art that demands of me that I invest some of myself in it.

 

Amy Wilson: What we needed to learn (we had been taught to compete), 2011, watercolor, walnut ink, and pencil on paper. 3.5 x 5.5 inches. Courtesy the artist and BravinLee programs, NY.

~~~

Amy Wilson
We Dream of Starfish and Geodesic Domes     
remains on view at BravinLee programs through March 24, 2012

526 West 26th Street #211
New York, NY 10001
tel 212 462 4404
fax 212 462 4406
info@bravinlee.com

Artist website: http://www.amy-wilson.com/

~~~