Mariele Neudecker, "400 Thousand Generations". Courtesy the artist and Galerie Barbara Thumm. © the artist

The art of climate change is the focus of several high profile exhibitions this fall and winter. As previously reported, RETHINK: Contemporary Art and Climate Change opens in Copenhagen at the end of this month and runs through the UN Climate Change Conference there in December. Not to be outdone, London’s Royal Academy of Arts presents Earth: Art of a Changing World opening December 3 and running through the end of January.

The Royal Academy exhibition presents recent and new work from a top notch group of established and emerging contemporary artists.  Some have a long association with environmental causes and environmental art; other names on the list may be a bit of a surprise. The show is co-curated by David Buckland, director of the amazing Cape Farewell, one of the real driving forces behind the growing artistic and cultural response to climate change.

Antti Laitinen, "It's Not My Island". Image courtesy the artist and Nettie Horn, © the artist

Earth: Art of a Changing World will highlight the work of contemporary artists struggling to create meaningful human narratives out the global-scale crisis of climate change. Some works confront the issue head-on, whereas others explore ways in which climate change resonates through and influences the creative process.

Promotional material for the show describes a division of work into several thematic sections. Artists including Ackroyd & Harvey, Spencer Finch and Mona Hatoum will present work that engages directly with the earth and physical environment, while others such as Finnish artist Antti Laitinen, photographer Edward Burtynsky, Gary Hume and sculptor  David Nash will focus more on our human perceptions of the world, and our own security.

A third group including Darren Almond, Sophie Calle, Tacita Dean, Kris Martin, Studio Orta, Cornelia Parker and Shiro Takatani examine the role of the artist in examining, interpreting, and reflecting our changing world and damage being inflicted upon it.  After being confronted by a section focusing on the impacts of human behavior, a final section features works by artists and writers including Tracey Emin, Ian McEwan, Mariele Neudecker and Emma Wieslander examining how notions of beauty and permanence are being redefined by climate change–a cultural shift born out of the knowledge of what we stand to lose.

Mona Hatoum, "Hot Spot". David Roberts Collection, London. Photo Stephen White

Edward Burtynsky, "Super-Pit #4, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia". Courtesy Flowers, London, © The artist

Emma Wieslander, "'Derwentwater I". Courtesy the artist, © Emma Wieslander

Earth: Art of a Changing World is a post from: Art Culture

Tomas Seraceno, Biospheres

With growing urgency, contemporary artists from around the world have been responding to the issue of global climate change. Some spectacular examples of this work will be on display at a  major international exhibition of environmental and climate change-related art in Copenhagen, Denmark.

RETHINK: Contemporary Art and Climate Change opens October 31, and will be in full swing during the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.  The goal of the exhibition is to help provide politicians attending the meeting, as well as the general public, with new perspectives on some of the complex human issues stemming from global climate change.

Olafur Eliasson, Your Watercolor Machine

The exhibition features work by 26 important Nordic and international artists, including Olafur Eliasson, Henrik Hakansson and Tomas Saraceno. Works will be shown at a series of venues including the National Gallery of Denmark, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art and the Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center.

Four distinct sections of the exhibition highlight different aspects of the climate change crisis.  RETHINK Relations focuses on issues of global interdependence, with artists exploring new kinds of experience, knowledge and sociality emerging through our unified human response to the problem. RETHINK the Implicit challenges notions of a fixed and unchanging reality, drawing attention to the changeability of phenomena we normally take for granted.

RETHINK Information highlights the role of information, in various forms, in shaping our apprehension of climate change and the kinds of responses that may be available to us. Finally, RETHINK Kakotopia investigates various dystopian and even utopian fantasies that have emerged in connection with climate change.

Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno presents Biospheres, 2009, a series of transparent globes inspired by scientific studies of cloud formation, soap bubbles and spider webs. Some of the biospheres float in the air; others contain plant-based ecosystems and largest allow visitors to step inside.

In Your Watercolor Machine, Olafur Eliasson creates an installation in which basic properties of light and color are captured through use of a spotlight, prism and reflecting pool of water.

Among other highlights of RETHINK: Contemporary Art and Climate Change:

Nigerian artist Bright Ugochukwu Eke uses water as a metaphor for the universal source of all life. His installation Acid Rain consists of numerous suspended, teardrop-shaped bags filled with water and carbon. The work reflects Bright’s experience with rain in polluted areas, particularly in the oil-producing regions of Nigeria.

Bright Ugochukwu Eke, Acid Rain

American artist Jennifer Allora and Cuban collaborator Guillermo Calzadilla will present  A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear, a video work comprised of footage taken in New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Like other work by Allora and Calzadilla, the film finds telling details that stand as metaphors for larger global realities.

Allora and Calzadilla

Swedish artist Henrik Hakansson will present Atmosphere, an audio and light installation featuring sounds from four synchronous recordings taken in the jungles of Chiapas, Mexico. Hakansson also presents his new film 7.AUG,2009 consisting of super slow-motion footage of butterflies fluttering against a blue sky.

Henrik Hakansson, Atmosphere

Dynasty by Icelandic Love Corporation is a video performance in which three women dressed in furs and expensive jewelry gather to mark “the final moments of one of the last snow-clad areas on Earth”.

Icelandic Love Corporation, Dynasty

Finnish artist Tea Mäkipää presents Link¸a new video work depicting the life of a half-human, half-ape character living on a small island in a remote part of Finland.

Tea Makipaa, Link

Kerstin Ergenzinger presents Study for Longing / Seeing, a reactive installation that moves in response to both seismograph data and the movements of visitors in the exhibition hall.

Kerstin Ergenzinger, Study for Longing / Seeing

Canadian artist Bill Burns presents a selection of his Safety Gear for Small Animals, consisting of safety vests, helmets, goggles and the like all scaled down to the size of mice, frogs and birds.

Bill Burns, Safety Gear for Small Animals

Cascade by New Zealand new-media artist Janine Randerson uses projected images and sounds extracted from scientific mapping software, as well as shared videos illustrating the impacts that climate change has on the survival of Arctic animals and the Arctic ecosystem.

Janine Randerson, Cascade

Hyperkinetic Kayak is an interactive installation by Danish artist Jette Gejl Kristensen that explores how the body senses and knows the world. The work consists of a kayak situated in a virtual 3D Greenland sea ice  landscape that is affected both by the paddler’s movements and by data on Greenland air temperature.

Jette Gejl Kristensen, Hyperkinetic Kayak

See more at http://www.rethinkclimate.org.

All images courtesy of RETHINK and the artists. Thanks.

Contemporary Art and Climate Change: RETHINK opens in Copenhagen is a post from: Art Culture

Faiza Butt: Get Out of My Dreams 1. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

The first major survey exhibition of Pakistani contemporary art opens this week at the Asia Society Museum in New York.  Titled Hanging Fire, the exhibition provides an important window into the creative energies of a country more often associated in the West with political conflict and social instability.

The show includes 55 works by 15 Pakistani artists, revealing a vibrant yet little-known contemporary art scene that has flourished over the past two decades in the world’s second-largest Muslim-majority country.  The exhibition is curated by the well-known Pakistani artist and curator Salima Hashmi.

Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan includes a wide range of works including painting, photography, sculpture and video.  Some of the works have never before been exhibited, including a painting installation by Imran Qureshi. Other featured artists included Hamra Abbas, Bani Abidi, Zahoor ul Akhlaq, Faiza Butt, Imran Qureshi, Anwar Saeed, Ayaz Jokhio, Naiza Khan, Arif Mahmood, Huma Mulji, Asma Mundrawala, Rashid Rana, Ali Raza, Adeela Suleman and Mahreen Zuberi.

Adeela Suleman: Untitled. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

The works on display in Hanging Fire attest to a rich cultural heritage and vibrant contemporary art scene, informed by Pakistan’s cultural history of dissent and activism.  Throughout the country’s turbulent history since its inception in 1947, Pakistan has produced a diverse and productive group of artists, art educators, critics, curators and collectors.  Today Pakistani artists are having an increasing impact on the art world both regionally and globally.  Contemporary art in Pakistan weaves visual elemenets from ancient and colonial history together together with issues stemming from the country’s growing urban culture, regional cultures and conflicts, and religious fundamentalism.

A full color, 160-page publication, Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan, accompanies the exhibition.  The show runs from September 10 to January 3, 2010, at the Asia Society Museum, 725 Park Avenue in New York.

Browse the mini-gallery below for more images from Hanging Fire.

Hamra Abbas: Ride 2. Courtesy of the artist and Green Cardamom, and the Asia Society

Imran Qureshi: Moderate Enlightenment. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Zahour ul Akhlaq; A Visit to the Inner Sanctum 4. Courtesy of Richard Seck and Asia Society

Naiza Khan: Constellation of Attire. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Arif Mahmood: Young and the the Fearless. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Anwar Saeed: A Book of Imaginary Companions. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Asma Mundrdawala: Is You Is or Is You Ain't...? Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Huma Mulji: High Rise: Lake City Drive. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Ali Raza: No Two Burns Are the Same. Courtesy of the artist and the Asia Society

Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan is a post from: Art Culture

Seizo Tashima, Hachi & Seizo Tashima: Museum of Picture Book Art

To view contemporary art you generally head for a museum. But the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, an landscape-scale art festival held every three years in the Echigo-Tsumari region of Japan, offers a vastly different experience.

Echigo-Tsumari is an economically distressed region with a decreasing and aging population. It covers an area of roughly 760 square kilometers, including the Tokamachi City and the Tsunan Town. The Echigo-Tsumari Triennial was originally conceived as a sort of experiment in regional revitalization through art. The festival has also become known for its experimental approach to art production and display.

During the period of the Triennial, which runs from July 26 to September 13,2009, you may come across art no matter where you choose to go. There is art in the rice paddies and forests, in abandoned buildings, old schools and classrooms, and along the roads. Even if you look up at the sky, you are likely to find artwork.

Yasuo Terada, Collection of Soil

Many of the works on display are site-specific installations, produced by collaboration between elderly residents of the rural area and younger urban artists. Part of the festival’s goal is to cultivate the “joy of solidarity and collaboration” that has been lacking in much contemporary art. This spirit extends well beyond Japan. The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial has attracted increasing international attention and participation, and now includes artists from 38 countries and over 350 works.

China, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines join the Japanese artists in representing Asia. France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Poland and Lithuania, Croatia, Belgium and Finland present the diversity of Europe. The Americas are represented by Canada, US, Mexico and Brazil. Other artists include those from Australia, Egypt and Israel among others.

Some of the pieces on display have traveled the world, while others are permanent installations created during previous Triennials. More than 200 new artworks are on display for the 2009 festival. And there are the numerous continuing projects, like the one where you can write a letter to someone-or to yourself-to be collected at the next art festival to be held in three years time.

Haruo Higuma: Natural Feeling

Works are displayed in a variety of settings across a wide area, as explained on the Echigo-Tsumari Art Trienial website:

“In contrast to today’s obsession with rationalization and efficiency, instead of concentrating these works in one place, Echigo-Tsumari Triennial has adopted a blithely non-efficient – yet effective – way of scattering pieces across 200 communities. Visitors liberate their bodies and senses and feel the life of the community while visiting works of art that highlight the beauty and richness of the satoyama as well as the human time accumulated there.”

Some entries, like Henrik Hakansson’s “The Waves of Sounds” (2009) gives you an opportunity to listen to the sounds of nature. The visitor is enveloped in the sounds, collected through a high-precision recording device, as she sits with headphones, listening and noticing the many unexpected sounds found in nature.

The nature theme is predominant in the festival artworks. Haruo Higuma’s “Natural Feeling” (2009) is a house made both internally and externally of glass. Inside, drops of water gently fall down. Photographs on display capture the look of visitors as they think about the water drops. The artist asks you what communication is there between one’s self in the mirror and the people captured in the photographs.

In Shoko Fukuya’s “A piece of forest” (2009, Japan), hammocks are slung among the beech trees, creating a place to relax in the forest. Takeshi Kobayashi’s “A hut of earth” (2009) projects different images on the floor of a deep hole. All are photographs the artist shot on foot in Tsumari throughout the four seasons. Visitors can experience another side of Tsumari, using your eyes as the camera lens.

The art festival itself began ten years ago with a view to revitalize the region through raising its attractiveness and ability to transmit to the world. So it is natural that the other predominant theme of the festival is revitalization and breathing to life old and abandoned buildings. Seizo Tashima Hachi and Seizo Tashima Museum of Picture Book Art (2009) takes and has transformed a closed elementary school into a picture book museum. Picture book characters traverse the space freely, and a new story begins. There are many similar projects. Sometimes the buildings themselves become the art.

If you are visiting, make sure you have ample time. If not, you can view the entire collection of artwork and installations at the Echigo-Tsumari website. While there, take your time to learn more about the various projects that are part of the festival. It is sure to transform your idea of what art is, and what it could be.

Here are some addition images from the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2009:

Noriko Obara: Capsule of Reproduction

Kees Ouwens: Stone Forest. Stones attached to wooden poles.

Jenny Holzer: Nature Walk. Messages inscribed on stones along the path in the forest.

Stasys Eidrigevicius: The Visitors. Posters attached to masts.

Takeshi Kobayashi: A Hut of Earth. Photographic images projected onto the floor of a deep hole.

Akiko Iwai x Yoko Oba: Sound Park

Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial in Japan is a post from: Art Culture

Louisa Bufardeci: Governing Values: Food Price Indices. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

They say international pairings bring forth interesting children. That is probably due to unrelated gene pools coming together in novel ways, but the same may be true in art. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia has been exploring the potential of international art pairings in an occasional series of exhibitions, the latest of which opened July 28.

The current exhibition features the work of Australian artist Louisa Bufardeci alongside Japanese contemporary artist Zon Ito. The show is the fourth in a series of ‘international pairings’ at MCA Sydney. In each, a prominent Australian artist is asked to choose an international peer for a shared exhibition of new and recent work.

Earlier exhibitions included London-based, Australian-born artist Mathew Jones paired with Simon Starling, one of Britain’s most esteemed young contemporary artists (2002); and young Australian artist Ricky Swallow with American sculptor Erick Swenson (2001).

Melbourne-born artist Louisa Bufardeci chose contemporary Japanese artist Zon Ito for the pairing project, based on shared interests in material and conceptual approaches. The show offers a colorful array of sculpture and installation, wall drawings, digital prints and animation. Like previous entries in the pairings series, the Bufardeci / Ito exhibition is intended to help situate Australian contemporary art in a wider global context.

Louisa Bufardeci: Aldrich Ames with Someone in Russia. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

Louisa Bufardeci is a conceptual artist who works with statistical information from the public domain, including the CIA Fact Book, national census data and opinion polls. Data are translated into color charts, maps and architectural diagrams that reveal underlying patterns and inequalities. For this exhibition she has created an ambitious site-specific floor piece using statistics about Sydney’s residents.

Zon Ito creates intricate embroidered canvases and flags, cut paper, clay and fabric assemblages, and playful hand-drawn animations done in collaboration with his wife Ryoko Aoki. (He is also a member of the band Anti-Gravity, known for performing while suspended upside-down).

Together, the work of these two artists from Australia and Japan offer the visitor new ways of seeing and understanding socially constructed patterns and symbolic uses of form and color.

Zon Ito and Ryoko Aoki: Finger Coming Up from the Ground. Courtesy the artist and Taka Ishii Gallery

The exhibition runs from July 28 to October 25. To view more work by Bufardeci and Ito, visit the MCA website. The MCA is at 140 George Street, 140 George Street, The Rocks NSW 2000, Australia.

Zon Ito: Traveling in the Shallows. Courtesy the artist and Taka Ishii Gallery

Anna Schwartz Gallery

Taka Ishii Gallery

Louisa Bufardeci and Zon Ito at MCA Sydney is a post from: Art Culture

Anish Kapoor, C Curve 2007

The second annual India Art Summit takes place in New Delhi between the 19th and 22nd of August. If you are not planning to visit India but are interested in Indian contemporary art, you can still join in the fun through the India Art Summit 2009 website.

The 2009 summit builds on the landmark success of last year’s event, which attracted over 10,000 art enthusiasts from India and around the globe. If art sales are a measure, it was a huge success–about 50% of the artworks on display were sold during last year’s event.

Art community participation has swelled this year to include 54 leading galleries. International participants include galleries from Europe, Asia, the United States and the Middle East.

The India Art Summit is an effort to serve growing art market demand for an inclusive, international platform for Indian art. The event will be the first major exposition of international art in India, besides being the single largest showcase of Indian art.

Jayasri Burman, Stories Retold

The 2009 summit brings a focus on education, and raising awareness about art. An International Speakers’ Forum August 20-22 is a key component of the education and awareness agenda, and includes over 45 influential Indian and international speakers. The goal is to bring together artists, curators, scholars, museum directors, and art professionals to discuss issues that affect modern and contemporary art in India, and in a global context.

A large open air Sculpture Park, open to all visitors, adds another dimension to the India Art Summit. The park includes carefully chosen large scale sculptures that the organizers hope will open up a dialogue with the audience. The works represent a diversity of individual styles. Each explores the interaction of art with its environment.

Satish Gujralthe, The Mechanic

The Purple Wall Project consists of special installations of the best of modern and contemporary art displayed in locations across the fair. Curated by Gayatri Sinha, this unique project aims to highlight the experimental use of materials, mediums, techniques and genres by Indian artists today.

India Art Summit 2009 is supported by Sotheby’s and brings together a string of collaborations with organizations in support of the fine arts including Asia Art Archive, Asia Society, Lalit Kala Academy, The Devi Foundation, and The British Council.

When you visit the India Art Summit 2009 website, don’t forget to visit the India Art Summit 2008 photo gallery. You might also want to check out the IndiaArtConnect Newsletter which is full of informative and useful content. And if you are visiting India for the Summit, you will find the Delhi Art & Culture Map useful.

India Art Summit 2009 in New Delhi is a post from: Art Culture

Saat Samundram (Seven Seas), Subodh Gupta

China is embracing India, at least in art.  A major contemporary Indian art exhibition this summer in Shanghai promises a cultural bridge between the two giants of Asia.

The India Xianzai exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai reflects the growing cosmopolitan nature of the two countries, as well as  their shared cultural sensitivities.  It also marks the increasing importance of Indian contemporary art in Asia and worldwide.

Organizers say the goal is to present “the best of Indian contemporary art” in the first major museum show of its kind in China. Twenty-one Indian artists will be featured, including Subodh Gupta, Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Jagannath Panda, Mithu Sen and other internationally acclaimed figures.

According to curators, India Xianzai will examine the “processes, narrative structures and aesthetic strategies that focus on the question of culture as an agency in artistic expression.”  A common thread of active political and social engagement runs throughout, as well as exploration of “Indian-ness” in various national, hemispheric and global contexts.  The exhibition also addresses cultural assimilation, a concern not just for India, but for every country in our increasingly smaller and flatter world.

India Xianzai features nearly 60 works including paintings, photography, video and installations. Much of the work on display comes from private collections.  Several artists like including Riyas Komu, Suhasini Kejriwal and Schandra Singh created new works especially  for the exhibition.

The common thread of active political and social engagement with one’s country and how each reacts to the Indian-ness outside the country can be seen running throughout the exhibition.

Other artists represtented include Anju Dodiya, Chitra Ganesh, Fariba Alam, Hema Upadhya, Justin Ponmany,  Probir Gupta, Reena Kallat, Suryakant Lokhande, Susanta Mandal, Thukral and Tagra, TV Santosh, Vivek Vilasini and Vibha Galhotra.

India Xianzai runs from July 16, 2009  – August 31, 2009 at MoCA Shanghai, Gate 7, People’s Park, 231 Nanjing West Road, Shanghai, China.  Various special lectures and screenings will be held throughout the run.  A panel discussion featuring artists, Jitish Kallat, Mithu Sen and co-curators Alexander Keefe and Diana Freundl will be held July 16th.

For a taste of India Xianzai and the latest in Indian contemporary art, enjoy the gallery below! All images courtesy of MoCA Shanghai.

Take Away on Wall, Riyas Komu

Portrait of Zindi, Anju Dodiya

Neo Camouflage, Vibha Galhotra

Nature Gallery, Thukral & Tagra

Scrap Management, Probir Gupta

Under Scrutiny2, Susanta Mandal

The Lucky One, Chitra Ganesh

Saat Samundram, Subodh Gupta

Aquasaurus, Jitish Kallat

The Night Journey, Fariba Alam

India Xianzai: Contemporary Indian Art at MoCA Shanghai is a post from: Art Culture

Billly and Steven Dufala: Ice Cream Truck / Tank

Emerging visual artists take note: the West Prize is again accepting applications. Now in its second year, the contemporary art prize is backed by $125,000 for the acquisition of new works.  Each of ten finalists will receive $10,000 for work to become part of the West Collection, and the winner receives an additional $25,000 award.

In it’s initial run last year, the international competition received over 3,600 applications.  All were reviewed by West Collection curator Paige West and her father Al West. The top prize went to the Dufala Brothers for their Ice Cream Truck / Tank–”a rebuilt Grummonds bread truck, outfitted as an attack vehicle that serves ice cream.” Nice choice!

Last year’s ten finalists included a number of artists with only minimal prior recognition outside their local area.  Artists were selected based on how they would fit, foster, challenge, and stretch the West Collection. Finalists showed a wide range of styles and artistic sensibilities, from pure painting to hybrid and mixed media work, in some cases drawing from crafts and design traditions.   Overall, themes of illusion and mixed or confused identity seemed predominant.

The West Collection is a large private collection dedicated to promoting young contemporary artists doing challenging and inventive work. It hosts installations and traveling exhibitions, and loans work to museums and university art galleries around the world.  The collection’s Versions of Reality exhibition was part of the NEXT emerging art fair in Chicago in May.

For visual artists who are doing something really new and interesting, and doing it very well, the West Prize seems like a great opportunity.  Entries are being accepted through November 1, 2009.  Before applying, have a good look at last year’s finalists, and at the broader set of contemporary artists represented in the West Collection.  You might want visit Paige West’s Art Addict blog as well.

The West Prize Seeks Exciting New Artists is a post from: Art Culture

Souther Salazar

Bay Area fans of urban contemporary art can check out Scion’s Installation 5 Art Tour, which arrives in San Jose this weekend after recent runs in New York, Phoenix, and Miami during Art Basel.  The traveling exhibition / arts fundraiser / major auto manufacturer promotional event includes work by an international cast of new contemporary and street artists, designers, illustrators and photographers.  An opening reception for the San Jose exhibition will be held Friday, June 5 from 8 p.m. – 12 a.m. at Gallery Anno Domini.

The powerful lineup includes Brazilian painter and multi-media artist Alex Hornest, legendary French stencil grafitti artist Blek le Rat, painter and modern iconographer Nicholas Harper, famed culture jammer and billboard liberator Ron English, composer and visual artist (and former Devo band member) Mark Mothersbaugh, illustrator and urban pop artist Yoskay Yamamoto, and Los Angeles-based painter Souther Salazar.  The show’s nine-city 2008-2009 tour will wrap up in September at the Scion Installation L.A. gallery in Culver City.

Not surprisingly given the sponsor,  the Los Angeles art scene is strongly represented.  The show should offer an intriguing look at the cross currents at play where contemporary art meets street culture meets money and corporate branding.  Figures such as LA’s Augustine Kofie, Patrick Martinez and Skypage all emerged as street artists before moving on to gain wider recognition in gallery shows and (in some cases) as corporate-sponsored designers.  Other southern California artists showing in Installation 5 include David O’Brien, Jeff Soto, Kelsey Brookes, Rob Abeyta Jr, Sage Vaughn and Todd Tourso.

Kofie: Untitled

For this year’s edition of the Installation tour, artists were asked to create literal, or non-literal interpretations of the theme ‘Self-Portraits’. In addition to paintings by over two dozen artists, the show also includes photography by the likes of Angela Boatwright, Jamal Shabazz, stencil artist Logan Hicks, Peter Beste, and Rick Rodney.  Video art is included for the first time since the tour began in 2003, including work by graphic artist and novelist David Choe, Tokyo-based designer Ian Lynam, and the Bay Area’s Peter Glover.

Last year’s Installation 4 tour raised over $50,000 on behalf of Art From Scrap, a Santa Barbara-based environmental and art education organization.  Funds from this year’s tour will be generated at the Scion Installation L.A. gallery show, where all of the Installation 5 tour artwork will go up for public auction.  All of the proceeds from Installation 5 go  the national artist support and funding organization Creative Capital.

Installation Five / Self Portraits runs from June 5^th – 20^th at Gallery Anno Domini, 366 S. First St, San Jose, CA 95113. Here are some more images…

Edwin Ushiro: Familiar Kiss of the Underground Sandstorm

Kelsey Brookes: Self Portrait

Tessar Lo: Untitled

Nicholas Harper: Bonjour Tristesse (Hello to Sorrow)

Andrew Schoultz

Yoskay Yamamoto: Quiet Flame

Blek le Rat: The God Father

Installation 5: International (and LA) Art in San Jose is a post from: Art Culture

Diana Thater: RARE. Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner Gallery, New York

The Human/Nature exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) is beautiful, both in concept and content. Among other qualities, the show achieves an aura of maturity and real world-relevance that stands in quiet contrast to some of the contemporary art world’s less noble celebrations of cultural currency and market value. It was exhilarating to encounter a show that takes artists and their ideas this seriously.

Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet is an ambitious collaborative project of which the exhibition itself is the final stage. Included are new commissioned works by Mark Dion, Ann Hamilton, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Marcos Ramírez ERRE, Rigo 23, Dario Robleto, Diana Thater, and Xu Bing. The project was sponsored by two California contemporary art institutions–BAM/PFA and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego–and the international conservation organization Rare. The overall premise of the project is summarized by the paired questions: Can conservation inspire art? Can art inspire conservation?

To attempt an answer, each of the eight artists was given the opportunity to chose a destination from a global list of UN-recognized World Heritage Sites–places of high biological diversity which are also at high risk for habitat loss and species extinctions. Artists completed mini-residencies in their chosen locations, with full logistical support and access to local scientists, conservationists and native communities through Rare’s network of contacts. The only requirement was that, working on site and after their return home, each complete a single piece or body of work in response to their experience.

Bringing artists to the front lines of the conservation battlefield was risky in several ways. Clearly there are issues of artistic integrity involved, and introductory videos explain how these were addressed. The project was carried out under an explicit agreement between artists and sponsors that the resulting work be entirely free of conditions. The artists were not expected to act or be identified as conservation agents when visiting their chosen sites. They were encouraged not to feel burdened by any preconceived ideas of what was expected of them, beyond completing a residency in a threatened location and reporting back through their work.

Art and environmental causes have been paired in many ways before, but seldom on such a high level and with such an explicit focus on global declines in species and biological diversity. In its early stages the collaboration included two additional institutions, the Houston Museum of Contemporary Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. Both eventually had to bow out for financial and other reasons, leaving just the two West Coast art museums and Rare as sponsors. Two artists on the original list of ten (Olafur Iliasson and Gabriel Orozco) also withdrew, leaving eight who completed the project.

Human/Nature unfolds across three levels of BAM’s cascading gallery space. The work on display is highly varied in style and mood, reflecting differing practices and sensibilities and also the unique biological and cultural circumstances that each artist encountered. Many if not all of the pieces were shaped as strongly by encounters with people as with natural environments. The loss of nature is explored in very human terms throughout, often from the perspective of local communities, or in light of broader human values and meanings.

The pairings of artists and locations, and the kinds of work these produced, were often fascinating. Mark Dion, it turns out, has a lifelong fascination with Komodo dragons, and visited Komodo National Park in Indonesia for his residency. Dion has explored themes of natural history museum collection and display extensively in his work, and one might have expected something along those lines emerging from his Komodo experience. What Dion produced instead was a fully functional supply cart for the park’s tireless and poorly equipped rangers. The wheeled, decorated cart (replicated for the exhibition) included everything from scientific equipment and a small library of field guides to basic supplies-tools, flashlights, first aid gear, playing cards. Beyond the admirable underlying gesture it’s an interesting work. In a sense Dion has reversed the current of some his previous collections work, bringing the implements of natural history study back out into the field. As museum-goers what we see is a replica of the artist’s original, which was left (and is presumably serving its function) on the island of Komodo.

Marcos Ramírez ERRE: Shangri-La: el sueño volatil. Courtesy of the artist.

Other parings were equally intriguing. Ann Hamilton visited the Galápagos Islands, and produced a complex installation reflecting her engagement with the islands’ legacy of evolutionary studies, with sensory features of the natural environment, and with local school children. Marcos Ramírez ERRE went to the Yunnan Protected Areas of southern China. His installation is a gorgeous 20-foot long, temple-like structure incorporating elements of Tibetan monastery architecture, with four embedded plasma monitors showing long video sequences of daily household and work life shot during his visit. Xu Bing traveled to Mount Kenya National Park in Kenya, where he became deeply involved in an educational process centered on forest protection. In a series of workshops he worked with children and teachers in developing their own art using methods of calligraphy and drawing.

Like other visitor’s I was immediately drawn to two large, hanging sculptures by Rigo 23. The artist visited the highly diverse Atlantic forest region of southeastern Brazil, and completed works in collaboration with indigenous villagers using local materials and methods. What appear from a distance to be large but delicate organic forms turn out to be something quite different. Suspended just a few feet off the ground is an enormous nuclear submarine built of tree fibers and bamboo. An opening on one side reveals a festive crew of colorful carved figures in indigenous dress.

Rigo 23, Sapukay: Cry for Help. (SDMCA Installation). Courtest of the artist.

High overhead, meanwhile, a cluster bomb is exploding. Sapukay: Cry for Help is a large and multifaceted mobile, with dozens of basket-like containers spilling from the bomb’s open hatch. Many of the baskets have already unleashed their contents: brightly painted animals and birds. In both pieces the gesture of reverse appropriation of powerful, dominant culture symbols is carried off well, thanks to the seamless blending of concept and craftsmanship. Icons of mass destruction (and mass simplification) are unexpectedly and powerfully suffused with rich diversity, and a sense of enduring beauty. The work also possesses a kind of magisterial presence which counteracts any overly simplistic reading of flower-in-a-gun-barrel symbolism. The political message comes across in a language unencumbered by irony and manifest anger–the register of resistance is more Gandhi-esque.

The most powerful work in the show, however, was that conceptual artist Dario Robleto. I spent well over half of my time in the museum studying Robleto’s sculptures, and ended up neglecting some of the other artists. If part of the goal of Human/Nature was to expand the conceptual repertoire and perhaps even the practice of conservation through encounters with contemporary art, I think Robleto’s work makes the greatest contribution. While other artists found unique and inspiring ways to both celebrate and defend nature, Robleto goes the necessary step further in exploring how we might mourn nature’s now inevitable decline.

He does so by means that are both dense with information and precisely, poetically to the point. Forgoing the opportunity to travel to some more exotic location, Robleto chose as his destination the Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, on the border between the U.S. and Canada. There he worked with scientists studying the park’s melting glaciers, which become a central metaphor in Robleto’s work for multiple kinds of loss. In speaking of his conversations with the scientists, Robleto explains that he was seeking not only specialized knowledge but clues to deeper understandings: What does it mean to us that so many things once taken as eternal are now fleeting, almost eternally gone? And how can we possibly respond?

Robleto describes himself as a materialist poet and his work shows why. His six sculptures on display bear titles such as Time Measures Nothing but This Love, and The Ark of Frailty. Robleto begins his sculptures with words, and then pieces together the physical elements. Each is a kind of display case collection of decorative domestic materials and wild, sometimes impossible-sounding objects and substances. The various elements are often woven together with audio tape bearing recordings of particular, unusual sounds, or contained in intricate glass vessels. The elegant The Common Denominator of Existence is Loss, for example, is composed of rings of “50,000-year-old extinct cave bear paws, human hand bones, stretched and pulled audio tape of the earliest audio recording of time (experimental clock, 1878).”

Or consider the description of A Homeopathic Treatment for Human Longing: “Glass vials, vintage glass electrode wands, nineteenth century bloodletting cupping glass, various homemade homeopathic remedies (sound of glaciers melting, voice of oldest to ever live, last heartbeat of loved one, million-year-old blossom, million-year-old raindrop, deceased lovers’ heartbeats, extinct animal sounds, extinct languages), various custom-ordered remedies made by professional homeopath (black amber, willow, tears, mammoth hair, glacial runoff, voice of oldest widow, black swan bone dust, Sylvia Plath’s voice) velvet, silk, leather, ribbon, brass, iron, cork, pine, typeset.”

This kind of work is hard to describe, and may not work for everyone. It probably won’t reward a casual viewing. But perhaps I share a kind of sensibility with this artist–the longer I looked the more I was drawn in, both intellectually and emotionally. I had a sense that here is someone who is bravely asking exactly the right questions.

Dario Robleto: Some Longings Survive Death, 2008; glacially released 50,000-year-old woolly mammoth tusks, nineteenth-century braided hair flowers of various lovers intertwined with glacially released woolly mammoth hair, carved ivory and bone, bocote, colored paper, silk, ribbon, typeset; 57 x 53 x 8 in.; courtesy of the artist and D’Amelio Terras, New York; Inman Gallery, Houston; Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris; ACME, Los Angeles. Installation view, BAM/PFA, photo: Ben Blackwell.

Human/Nature completed its run at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego earlier this year. Now in the Bay Area it shows through September 27 at the Berkeley Art Museum. A great collection of supplementary material including video interviews with the eight artists is available at the project website, artistsrespond.org.

Human/Nature at the Berkeley Art Museum is a post from: Art Culture

Cultural Geometry, Rigo 23 and Fernando Cardoso. Courtesy of the luggage store

Cultural Geometry is a new piece of public art by Rigo 23, the San Francisco-based political artist and muralist.  The work is a large stone mosaic which comprises the heart of the “Tenderloin National Forest”, a public space reclamation project led by the luggage store, a San Francisco arts organization.  Many years in development, the Tenderloin National Forest celebrated its official opening with a daylong celebration on May 9.

True to its name, Cultural Geometry weaves together multiple cultural histories in its visual and material elements, and in its situation in San Francisco’s diverse and highly urban Tenderloin district.  The physical/material history of the work begins in a limestone quarry in Porto de Mos, Portugal.  Over 30 tons of stone were excavated and shipped to San Francisco for the project. This video shows stone masons in Porto de Mos quarrying and sizing the stone that would be used by Rigo 23:

To help with the mosaic work, Rigo 23 enlisted the help of Portuguese calçada master Fernando Cardoso.  Cultural Geometry includes two long pathways on either side of the “forest” formerly known Cohen Alley, joined by a central rounded patio.  Geometric designs embedded in the linear walkways are derived from traditional basketry of the Ohlone Indians native to the Bay Area and Northern California.

Tenderloin National Forest

In contrast, the central plaza is dominated by a large figurative representation of a hummingbird in red marble.  According to the artist, the hummingbird was chosen because “it is a bird that is revered by many different cultures,” and also because it represents an element of nature that can often be seen in the new urban gardens of the Tenderloin National Forest.

The project website notes that Rigo 23’s  weaving together of European and Native American vernacular traditions in Cultural Geometry was undertaken “to honor and celebrate our ancestors and affirm the possibility of multiple worlds co-existing in time and place.”

“Cultural Geometry helps to formalize the transformation of Cohen Alley and symbolizes, to our very transitional and richly diverse neighborhood, a lasting engagement of the space with the community–a place for reflection, shared cultural activities and experiences.”

The Tenderloin National Forest installation also includes a diverse array of murals by a number of Bay Area artists, garden plantings, and gathering places encompassed by the pathways of Rigo 23’s mosaic. The site’s transformation from a waste-strewn, dead-end alley to a public art space is the result of over 20 years of effort by luggage store directors Darryl Smith and Laurie Lazer.  This video tells the story of the project:

Portuguese-born Rigo 23 was the perfect choice for the Tenderloin National Forest mosaic.  The artist has lived in the Bay Area since the early 1990s and created a number of well known works of public art, often addressing political  or social justice issues.  His eight-story Ground/Sky mural adjacent to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art was a local landmark, until it was removed by new construction in 2003.

Ground/Sky

While perhaps best known locally for his block letter or street sign-based murals, stone mosaic work has long been a part of Rigo 23’s practice in California and in Europe.  The artist is also featured in the Human/Nature exhibition running all summer at the Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive.

The Tenderloin National Forest and Cultural Geometry can now be visited every afternoon; gates are locked in the evening.  The site is adjacent to the luggage store 509 cultural center, at 509 Ellis Street between Hyde and Leavenworth.

Public Art in the Tenderloin is a post from: Art Culture

Desiree Holman - Surplusage - Courtesy of the artist and Silverman Gallery

San Francisco magazine featured a story in its April arts issue about the city’s changing gallery scene. The premise: A handful of “young and hungry” gallerists are working to transform San Francisco from a backwater to an international power center for emerging contemporary artists.

The question asked and answered throughout is whether recent developments in the Bay Area signal the emergence of a “major” contemporary art scene comparable to that of Los Angeles. Numerous obstacles are noted, from San Francisco’s “tiresome counterculture associations” to the area’s risk-adverse, scene-deadening collectors who “despite their cultural pedigrees, are not unlike magpies: drawn to all things shiny.” Ouch.

The unabashed LA-envy is a little jarring for a San Francisco publication, but of course in the realm of contemporary art it makes perfect sense. As author Franklin Melendez notes, the Bay Area has great museums and some fine contemporary art galleries showing (primarily) established, mid-career artists. It also has some excellent arts schools and a ton of creative output. But historically, it hasn’t been a place where emerging artists gain international recognition. If there is such a place on the West Coast, it’s Los Angeles.

That hasn’t been the case for long; just twenty years ago, Melendez writes, LA was “a gallery no-mans land”. I don’t know the history well enough myself, but in Melendez’s telling the important changes began in the mid-1990s and involved a synergy generated around a number of small, out-of-the-way galleries featuring some outstanding local and national talent, coupled with a surge of interest from collectors and from the press.

Offered as evidence that a similar “citywide renaissance” may soon take hold in San Francisco are profiles of four relatively new, mostly off-Geary-Street galleries that have made a splash with a potent mix of high-profile representation and just the right amount of hipsterdom . Featured are Ratio 3, Silverman Gallery, Triple Base Gallery, and Fecal Face Dot Gallery (an outgrowth of the like-named blog.) A second set of “critical new guard” venues given brief mention includes Jancar Jones Gallery, The Luggage Store, Park Life, New Langton Arts, and Altman Siegel Gallery. It’s an intriguing list overall and, renaissance or not, at least suggestive for an afternoon of edgy art viewing.

Of the group profiled Melendez’s thesis is perhaps best advanced by Ratio 3 and Silverman Gallery. At Ratio 3, owner Chris Perez has generated some international buzz while bringing recent and rising stars like Ryan McGinley to a perilously obscure warehouse location at 1447 Stevenson Street. The current Ratio 3 exhibition Liberation on Contact includes work by Jose Alvarez, Mitzi Pederson, and 2008 SECA Award winner Jordan Kantor among others. All interesting, but the geometrical, monochromatic linen weavings by Ruth Laskey were what held my gaze the longest. That show closes May 30; the gallery will be hosting solo shows by Pederson and Alvarez later this year.

The “young and hungry” tag would seem to apply well to Jessica Silverman, who at the age of 26 is showing nationally recognized artists at her Silverman Gallery at 804 Sutter St. The current exhibition of work by Desirée Holman received an Art Forum “critics’ picks” review, and along with her 2008 SECA honors is sure to add to Holman’s growing reputation. Titled “Reborn”, the Silverman Gallery exhibition includes colored pencil drawings and a single channel video that explore the psychological and cultural implications of the highly refined doll craft practice known as “reborning.” It’s all just a bit out of reach for me, but the work is impressive.

From Reborn by Desiree Holman. Courtesy of the artist and Silverman Gallery. Photo credit: Kalissa Conlon

Other San Francisco gallery shows of note:

Altman Siegel Gallery at 49 Geary (4^th Floor) is showing Postcards & Calendars by conceptual artist Matt Keegan, through May 23. Keegan is one of the under-33 artists represented in the New Museum Generational: Younger Than Jesus, exhibiting here for the first time in San Francisco.

Triple Base Gallery opens Intricacies of Phantom Content, a solo exhibition by San Francisco artist Hilary Pecis on May 15. 3041 24^th St.

Same Loud No, paintings and an installation by Damon Soule, opened May 7 at Fecal Face Dot Gallery, 66 Gough St.

The recently-opened Pae White exhibition at New Langton Arts (1246 Folsom) is fantastic. In Between the Outside-In features two video installations show multilayer, morphing animation sequences based on 3D digital imaging of an oak tree, a manzanita grove, and a raspberry bush from a site in the Sierra foothills. Juxtaposed on multiple axes is the show’s third element, a collection old and recently-made ceramic vessels from the same locality.

Pae White, In Between the Outside In, at New Langton Arts

The group show Trace Elements opens at the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) Gallery at 401 Van Ness. Newly commissioned works explore the small but significant “trace elements” of the city, in an attempt “to reveal or reconcile some of San Francisco’s hidden secrets”.

San Francisco’s New Generation Galleries is a post from: Art Culture

They are lost souls, or rather, lost men, women and children. The figures of Santiago’s 2501 Migrantes stand for those departed in real life, migrants driven by poverty and economic dislocation to leave their homes and families and go searching for a way to live. Even as statues they seem compelled by forces they have little power to resist. Currently, hundreds crowd the cavernous lower-level display space in one of Mexico’s most unusual art venues, the magnificent Centro de las Artes de San Agustín (CASA) in Oaxaca.

The installation marks the three-year anniversary of the center, a project initiated by Oaxacan artist and “Alternative Nobel Prize” winner Francisco Toledo. Located in a small hill town 6 miles north of Oaxaca City, the arts and environmental center occupies a 19th century textile factory that has been elegantly restored and converted into a series of galleries, studios and teaching spaces. In addition to the opening of 2501 Migrantes, CASA’s three-year celebration last month featured a talk and discussion by Mexican contemporary art superstar Gabriel Orozco.

Alejandro Santiago was born in 1964 and grew up in the small farming community of San Pedro Teococuilco, in the Ixtlan district of Oaxaca. Working primarily as a painter in the 1980s and 1990s, he became one of Oaxaca’s better-known artists and a figure in the growing Mexican contemporary art scene. But Santiago’s career took an unexpected turn when he returned to his native village, after having been living abroad (mostly in Europe) for many years.

The story told about the origin of 2501 Migrantes is mythical. According to gallery guides and biographical information on the project’s website, upon returning to Teococuilco Santiago was shocked to find that the village was a shell of its former self, decimated by the outward migration of most of its working-age adults to other parts of Mexico and the United States. Inspired by a dream, the artist vowed to “repopulate” Teococuilco with 2500 clay figures (plus one, himself) representing the village’s lost inhabitants.

Whether literally true or a clever bit of stage-setting, this origin myth frames the way the project to be viewed. In interviews Santiago has said that “Migrantes” carries no overtly political message. The work addresses immigration not as an “issue” or sociological phenomenon, but squarely and painstakingly at the level of individual human experience: hence the project’s reliance on physicality and case-by-case enumeration, rather than abstraction and emblematic representation. (It comes as no surprise to learn that Santiago himself, in preparation for the work, undertook a migrant’s journey north and secret border crossing.) Whatever lessons may be drawn from the work are left to the viewer to discern.

Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño does something similar, in the long section of his epic novel 2666 based on the serial killings of poor and displaced women in Ciudad Juarez, on the U.S. – Mexican border. I was reading 2666 at the time when I viewed the new installation of 2501 Migrantes, and the connections were striking. Surely among these exiles from the poverty of Oaxaca, rendered in clay by Santiago, were some of the same individuals whose fate would be recorded in Bolaño’s reality-based fiction.

Questions of fate swirl like an invisible cloud over the entire exhibition. In giving form and identity to the migrants, Santiago makes their presence before the viewer almost inexplicable, almost ghostly. Are we viewing the living or the dead? The ones who found jobs in the north and are sending money back home, or the ones who died crossing the desert? Why are they here, these few hundred, and where are all the rest–the many hundreds more implied by the title?

The figures reveal nothing directly, though their bodies often appear stooped by past deprivations and long journeys, their faces scarred by leavings. For the most part they ignore you, to an extent that it may occur to you that you feel safe among them. And there precisely lies the work’s originality and power. Not content to merely represent a crowd, Santiago has summoned forth the very thing. Something emerges from that totality that goes even beyond the artist’s laudable and bold gesture of enumerating the individual subjectivities of the migrants.

To view Santiago’s figures you must literally join them and walk among them. Doing so triggers the same kind of awareness that emerges in any crowd setting: one is both alone among strangers and part of some larger human whole. This sense is only enhanced by the statues’ lack of realism. The fact that the figures are small, incomplete, almost two-dimensional is psychologically consistent with the experience of being in a real crowd, surrounded by a sea of half-seen faces.

Viewing 2501 Migrantes is a memorable experience, and a sad one. The work elicits an emotional reaction from many visitors, but not in a way that feels contrived or cheap. The CASA installation includes a video documentary running on a small monitor at one end of the large, dimly lit hall. While distracting at first, the detailed account of Santiago’s involvement with the project and the construction of the figures is fascinating.

As a work in progress 2501 Migrantes has previously shown at the Oaxaca Museum of Contemporary Art and elsewhere in Mexico. Its new setting is spectacular, and for anyone traveling to Oaxaca the show should not be missed. But it’s a pity that 2501 Migrantes, like the reality that inspired it, remains largely out of view to a broader North American audience. It is an artistically ambitious and richly informative work.

(links to sites in Spanish)

Centro de las Artes de San Augustin

Alejandro Santiago

Alejandro Santiago’s “2501 Migrantes” in Oaxaca is a post from: Art Culture

Trevor Paglen, KEYHOLE-IMPROVED CRYSTAL from Glacier Point © 2008 Trevor Paglen; photo courtesy the artist, Altman Siegel Gallery, and Bellwether

Bay Area art fans still have a few weeks to see the SECA Art Award exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The biennial award is administered by the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art, an SFMOMA-associated art interest group. Since 1967 the SECA award has honored Bay Area artists of exceptional talent that have not yet received widespread recognition.

The exhibition presents an extensive and highly varied lineup of work by 2008 SECA award recipients Tauba Auerbach, Desirée Holman, Jordan Kantor, and Trevor Paglen. The work on display reveals contemporary art’s swirling, chaotic fusion of new and traditional media, and its engagement with a host of social, political, and aesthetic concerns. The contrasts among the artists make for interesting viewing, and may leave one searching for any unifying threads or themes.

Of course art awards exhibitions always raise questions. Critics will disagree with the selection of one artist over another, while the general art-viewing public may wonder in a broader sense: Why these? Are these artists really in some sense “the best”, and what makes them so? What if I don’t like or understand their work at all? Depending on your personal tastes and interests, evidence of prize-worthiness may or may not be apparent at the SFMOMA show. But at the very least you will see some engaging, challenging and perhaps mystifying work by four highly accomplished contemporary artists.

Photography, video, and digital technology are involved in almost all of the work on display, if not as the actual medium then as reference point or subject matter. Paintings by Tauba Auerbach and Jordan Kantor draw upon and rework photographic images, exploring in very different ways a number of themes including the limits of perception and representation, and the transformations inherent in the manipulation, scaling and reproduction of images.

In other work Auerbach explores the formal and figurative implications of systems of meaning, such as binary code. Kantor is more concerned with the origin and fate of images, drawing on material taken from various realms including the history of art, science, and the mass media. Some of the same themes are also addressed in The Magic Window, a video installation by Desirée Holman that blends staged performance with clips from 1980s sitcoms.

Perhaps the most intriguing and most-discussed work at the SFMOMA show is that of Trevor Paglen. As both a visual artist and an “experimental geographer” (he actually is a professor of geography) Paglen draws on the technology and ethos of investigation. The target of Paglen’s investigative work is the secret side of U.S. governmental power: spy satellites and remote military bases, covert communications networks and systems of coded or disguised information. But while the imagery produced by Paglen’s long distance photography and data analysis has an overtly political cast, the work stands as art on its own aesthetic grounds.

The world seen through Paglen’s telephoto lens is both familiar and strange. In works like Nine Reconnaissance Satellites over the Sonora Pass and KEYHOLE-IMPROVED CRYSTAL from Glacier Point, iconic images from classical landscape photography are rendered abstract by the addition of deeper and spookier layers of information. In the latter work the time-lapse swirl of stars in the night sky above Yosemite’s Half Dome is bisected by traces of other objects moving at right angles to the firmament: airplanes and the specific target of Paglen’s camera, a spy satellite named KEYHOLE-IMPROVED CRYSTAL.

Other Paglen images reveal installations and objects that cannot be seen by the unaided eye—because they have been deliberately situated outside of public view in remote and restricted areas. Paglen calls photographing these secret military landscapes “limit telephotography”. In one such image a remote flight test center photographed from a mountaintop 26 miles away appears as an indistinct line of lights in a field of black. The photograph conveys little actual information, and that is exactly the point—the real subject of the image is not the secret site, but the government-imposed limit on what is viewable.

OK, but is it great art? You be the judge—and let us know what you think. The SECA Art Award exhibition honoring Bay Area artists remains viewable until May 10 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

SFMOMA SECA Award Show is a post from: Art Culture

This is a day of paying tribute to the great J. G. Ballard, who died yesterday at the age of 78.

To many, Ballard was a trusted seer and beloved guide through the landscapes of advanced capitalism, decadent consumerism, and attendant social and psychological monstrosities.  Like all truth-tellers he was a visionary, and his vision was often described as dark, bleak, dystopian.  But that’s simply because Ballard was so acutely perceptive and morally scrupulous in his depiction of the mad fantasy of modern life. Reading him one feels all of one’s comforting illusions bursting like bubbles.

The occasion of Ballard’s death has brought to my attention the fascinating site ballardian.com, which I had never visited before.  The accompanying image here is a partial screenshot of the site’s tag cloud, which speaks volumes.

Even if you’ve never read Ballard it’s worth a visit today to see the kind of tributes being paid upon the loss of a creative giant.  Better yet, it’s a good day to read some Ballard.

Excerpts from “What I Believe“, J. G. Ballard 1984.

“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen. . .

I believe in Max Ernst, Delvaux, Dali, Titian, Goya, Leonardo, Vermeer, Chirico, Magritte, Redon, Duerer, Tanguy, the Facteur Cheval, the Watts Towers, Boecklin, Francis Bacon, and all the invisible artists within the psychiatric institutions of the planet.

I believe in the impossibility of existence, in the humour of mountains, in the absurdity of electromagnetism, in the farce of geometry, in the cruelty of arithmetic, in the murderous intent of logic. . .

I believe all excuses.

I believe all reasons.

I believe all hallucinations.

I believe all anger.

I believe all mythologies, memories, lies, fantasies, evasions.

I believe in the mystery and melancholy of a hand, in the kindness of trees, in the wisdom of light.”

In the Wisdom of Light: J.G. Ballard is a post from: Art Culture