Sanford Biggers
Cheshire  2007
14 minutes
continuous loop
DVD projection, single channel, color, sound element

Into The Trees

The Fields Sculpture Park
Omi International Arts Center
Ghent, NY

June 21 – November 30th, 2008

Curated by Lilly Wei and Amy Lipton

The Fields Sculpture Park is pleased to present its 10th  annual summer exhibition, Into the Trees. The exhibiting artists are Polly Apfelbaum, Sanford Biggers, caraballo–farman, Elizabeth Demaray, Stephen Dean, Katie Holten, Jason Middlebrook, Alan Michelson, Cordy Ryman, Shinique Smith,Chrysanne Stathacos and Saya Woolfak.

The exhibition title is borrowed from Ernest Hemingway's novel, Across the River and into the Trees and functions descriptively. A site-specific, open-ended project, it is as much -- if not more -- focused on the idea of a fixed point and the proliferation from that point as a metaphor for the creative process as it is on environmental issues. Into the Trees is interested in how each participating artist, given a tree as a common element and initial stimulus, will arrive at an innovative, utterly individual resolution.

For Into the Trees, eight artists have been invited to select a living tree from the 100-acre site of The Fields Sculpture Park at Omi International Art Center in Ghent, New York. The artists will work with their tree on a site-specific installation and must therefore take into consideration the temporality of their construction and materials as well as the natural surroundings and are asked not to harm the tree, the only restriction.

The exhibiting artists outdoors are:
Polly Apfelbaum, Elizabeth Demaray, Stephen Dean, Jason Middlebrook, Alan Michelson, Cordy Ryman, Shinique Smith, Chrysanne Stathacos and Saya Woolfak. 

Into the Trees will continue indoors as the debut exhibition in the newly completed 1500 sq. ft gallery space in the Charles Benenson Visitor Center. Three artists will make use of the gallery space as a continuation of the outdoor exhibition. Katie Holten, from Ireland, will recreate her sculpture, Excavated Tree: Missouri Native (Flowering Dogwood), a monumental tree sculpture produced and exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in 2007. Holten represented Ireland in the 2005 Venice Biennale. Working in video, installation and photography, the artist team of Argentinian-born Abou Caraballo and Iranian-born Leonor Farman have been collaborating since 2001 and have recently exhibited at the Tate Modern in London. For Into the Trees, they will create a new work consisting of a live video feed transmitted from the roots of a sapling planted outdoors to a monitor in the gallery, a "performance of growth" that can be watched in real time. Sanford Biggers, an artist from Los Angeles will exhibit Cheshire (2007), a video sequence where, in turn, a different black male dressed in his work uniform climbs--or tries to climb--a tree: a fencer in white knickers; a dentist in scrubs; a lawyer in a suit. Tree-climbing as a stand-in for social climbing, its darker reference is to strange fruit, depicting, according to the artist, "black men hanging out in trees, as opposed to being hung from them."

In conjunction with Into the Trees, The Fields Sculpture Park is pleased to present:

Twitchers and Cheaters, a one-person exhibition by New York artist, Nina Katchadourian.

Twitchers and Cheaters, a new work by Katchadourian will be installed outdoors at the Fields Sculpture Park at Art Omi. "Twitcher" is a slang term for a birdwatcher, and avid birdwatchers frequently keep a "life list" of the birds that they have personally observed. This list is the source of great pride for many birdwatchers, since they will often travel long distances to be able to observe new birds. Ultimately, however, every birdwatcher's "life list" relies on a kind of honor system since there is no easy way to prove bird sightings, which often happen in a fleeting manner and in very remote places while the birder is alone.

Twitchers and Cheaters consists of a multi-channel video project installed into tree branches. On the monitors in the trees, viewers will see images of birds appear and disappear rapidly and intermittently from monitor to monitor. Any bird in the northeast that could conceivably land in a tree at the Fields has been included in the footage, and also many others that would be much more rare and harder to spot in this location. The images flit from screen to screen, and as such prompts a viewing experience that resembles the quick and "twitchy" experience of birdwatching itself. However, by watching the video screens in the woods, a viewer can effectively assemble a "cheater's life list" of all the birds of the northeast in the space of only few minutes.

Katchadourian's work often plays with the human relationship to the natural world and asks us to consider what we go to nature to find. Twitchers and Cheaters pokes fun at our longstanding human tendency to collect and categorize, as well as the competitive strain that we bring to activities even as pastoral as birdwatching. It also asks us to reflect upon the impatient temperament of our culture by taking our thirst for time-saving strategies to such an extreme that it turns an activity such as birdwatching, which by definition requires patience and keen observation, into something comically oversimplified and absurdly efficient.

Nina Katchadourian, Twitchers and Cheaters
The Fields Sculpture Park
Omi International Arts Center
Ghent, NY

June 21 – November 30th, 2008

Curated by Kathleen Triem and Peter Franck

For further information please contact:
Amy Lipton, Director
The Fields Sculpture Park at Omi International Arts Center
518 392 4747  thefields @ artomi.org

Image Via; exhibition Via

This is an excerpt from a longer post by John Perreault on what may be my favorite art-critical blog (or one of them):

Jeff Koons: Having It Both Ways [Excerpt]

 [...]

Up on the Roof

When you step out on the roof, there is a "no photography" sign that no one pays any attention to. It was difficult to get a shot of Balloon Dog, Yellow (1994-2000) sans tourists. Singles, couples and groups took turns posing in front of the obscene Koons Dog made out of stainless steel sausages or penises.

So I concentrated on the Sacred Heart (1994-2007), a stainless steel representation of a chocolate heart wrapped in foil, but in spite of its jab at Catholicism, it is a lesser work. Like the Dog, it is an Oldenburgian blowup of a popular object. Still lesser is Coloring Book (1997-2005) -- the coloring book outline of Winnie-the-Poo's Piglet, with scribbled-in colors. Unlike Dog and Heart, the Piglet is not singular enough to have much impact, though it could pass for a good joke about abstract painting.

So here's another question: How come almost anyone can tell that these blowups are not Oldenburgs?

Claes Oldenburg is never nasty. And there is always a little something that lets you know that you are not looking at a straightforward blowup, some kink or glitch. On the other hand, a Koons is bland, seems unmediated and immaculate, as if untouched by human hands -- which is not really the case. We have a friend whose artist-nephew is thrilled to work in the Koons studio, polishing stainless steel, for hours and hours, day after day.

 

     

Vote With Your Camera

While waiting for the Balloon Dog to be clear of tourists exposing frozen smiles, it dawned on me that the number of students and other art fans posing in front of the Dog indicated that this was the hands-down favorite. It is iconographic. It is photogenic. And somehow it says: I am here. I am in New York on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. No one, I swear, was having his or her picture taken in front of the Sacred Heart (I did imagine that some nuns might appear at any moment), and no one was posing in front of Piglet.

As everyone knows, the snapshot is a better voting mechanism than the museum postcard. Postcard images are preselected.

The public and I agree that Balloon Dog is the winner.

But it took me awhile, because...

I once had an art administrator friend who was dating a clown. He was actually an actor who did clown work to pay the rent, specializing in making balloon figures at kiddie birthday parties in Ringling Bros. drag. I thought he was both handsome and quite jolly. His good looks notwithstanding, my art administrator friend and her Bozo soon parted ways. She didn't like it when, out of clown drag and back in mufti, he would sometimes wear his clown shoes in the streets of Soho -- to embarrass her, she thought. I fantasized that perhaps it was because he had really big feet and his clown shoes were more comfortable than his wingtips or his sneakers.

Once I rose above that particular memory, I was able to look at Balloon Dog for what it really was: a beautiful monument to bad taste.

read full post.

via re-title.com:

Critical Art Ensemble / Institute for Applied Autonomy

Seized

7 June 2008 to 18 July 2008

SEIZED examines the physical artifacts of the 2004 FBI investigation of Buffalo artist Steven Kurtz. The items the FBI seized from his home are represented here in photographs of the negative spaces they left behind: missing computers, books, notes, props from performances, lab equipment and unfinished manuscript. Balancing these empty spaces is the voluminous pile of garbage left behind by federal authorities at the Kurtz residence, providing a rare window into the anatomy of a "bioterror" investigation. Hand drawn maps, "to do" lists, and countless articles of protective clothing are set against a backdrop of several hundred energy drinks and over thirty pizza boxes. To date, none of the seized items have ever been returned.

In addition, documentation and ephemera from the Critical Art Ensemble projects confiscated by the FBI and Department of Justice are on display. Finally, we present Marching Plague -- the project the FBI attempted to stop through seizure of the research and materials needed for its production and presentation.

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
341 Delaware Ave
Buffalo, NY 14202

[...] The resulting exhibition will offer a strange amalgam -- part survey of CAE's recent body of artwork, and part exploration of an attempted bioterrorism investigation.

www.critical-art.net
www.caedefensefund.org
www.appliedautonomy.com

Also (via email):

ARTIST CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES IN PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 11, 2008

CONTACTS:
Email: media@caedefensefund.org
Dr. Steven J. Kurtz: (716) 812-2968
Lucia Sommer, CAE Defense Fund: (716) 359-3061
Edmund Cardoni, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center: (716) 854-1694

ARTIST CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES IN PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE
Department of Justice Fails to Appeal Dismissal
Kurtz Speaks about Four-Year Ordeal

Buffalo, NY--Dr. Steven Kurtz, a Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY at
Buffalo and cofounder of the award-winning art and theater group Critical
Art Ensemble, has been cleared of all charges of mail and wire fraud. On
April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara dismissed the government's entire
indictment against Dr. Kurtz as "insufficient on its face." This means that
even if the actions alleged in the indictment (which the judge must accept
as "fact") were true, they would not constitute a crime. The US Department
of Justice had thirty days from the date of the ruling to appeal. No action
has been taken in this time period, thus stopping any appeal of the
dismissal. According to Margaret McFarland, a spokeswoman for US Attorney
Terrance P. Flynn, the DoJ will not appeal Arcara's ruling and will not seek
any new charges against Kurtz. [Download CAE-Cleared.rtf - full press release]

more info...

via email, The Drawing Center:

Frederick Kiesler: Co-Realities installation view. Exhibition design by nARCHITECTS. Photo by Cathy Carver.  Join us this Wednesday, June 11 at 6:30 pm for a free tour of the exhibition Frederick Kiesler: Co-Realities by curator João Ribas in the Main Gallery.       Learn about architect, artist, designer, and theoretician Frederick Kiesler, the man Philip Johnson called "the best-known non-building architect of our time," as you tour this incredible exhibition illustrating Kiesler's theories of Correalism, Perception, Endless Architecture, and Exhibition Design.     Also on view in the Drawing Room until 10pm: Drawing on Film  ____________________________   This event takes place as part of SoHo Night, an evening of extended exhibition viewing and special programs by 7 not-for-profit visual arts institutions in SoHo!

Free gallery talks, exhibition tours, previews, screenings, and more!   6 pm to 10 pm (some institutions close at 8 pm, check program for details)   apexart Art in General Artists Space The Drawing Center Location One Storefront for Art and Architecture Swiss Institute   Click to download a PDF of the SoHo Night program

________________________________________ More information about Public Programs Learn about Current Exhibitions Frederick Kiesler: Co-Realities and Drawing on Film   ________________________________________

Mark your calendar: As part of the Drawing on Film exhibition, The Drawing Center will present a rare screening of 16mm films by   Stan Brakhage Friday, June 27 at 8:30 pm and Dieter Roth and Amy Granat Saturday, June 28, 6:30 PM

I first came across BAST by accident online, and then later in the streets of Soho (above). He's having a show at Brooklynite Gallery, opening next Tuesday:

BAST: Nose Candy

Brooklynite Gallery
Williamsburg / Greenpoint / Bushwick

334  Malcolm X Blvd, 347-405-5976
June 10 - July 12, 2008
Opening: Tuesday, June 10,  7 - 10PM
Web Site

more via ArtCal (see map) :

Right off the bat, Brooklynite Gallery comes out swinging--- hitting a grand slam for its premiere show featuring new print works by the artist BAST. An opening reception will be held on Tuesday, June 10th 2008. The BAST print show will run from June 10th to July 12th, 2008.

The brand new Brooklynite Gallery is located in the Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood of Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. As pioneers in the area, nothing is better than introducing the gallery to the art world than with the cutting-edge work of BAST. Internationally renowned and always ahead of the curve, BAST juxtaposes a raw street-edge sensibility, an eclectic montage of pop culture "confusion" and the boundaries of sex in his work.

This time around BAST's new collection targets jewelry, or "bling" if you will, as he once again finds a new way to satisfy the eyes appetite for visual candy. As if his ironic pairing and displaced imagery wasn't enough, or even the infusion of vibrant neon color schemes, the bar is once again raised with the sparkle and glitter of ornamentation.

Image via

via Artforum, Critic's Picks :

"Decoys, Complexes, and Triggers: Feminism and Land Art in the 1970s"

[link to exhibition page]
 

SCULPTURE CENTER
44 - 19 Purves Street
May 4–July 28

Decoys, complexes, and triggers are pivotal to cause-and-effect relations; they are objects that provoke reactions. This survey, organized by Catherine Morris, brings together works that sculpt viewers' awareness of their surroundings with precision. An opening in the octagonal tower of Mary Miss's Screened Court, 1979, draws viewers inward through a loose circle of fencing, but a tighter row of steel mesh at the tower's base frustrates attempts at entrance. The perch at the top of Alice Aycock's Stairs (These Can Be Climbed), 1974/2008, offers a sweeping view of the exhibition -- a spatial sensation contradicted by the cramped feeling of crouching against the gallery's ceiling. Housed in Sculpture Center, "Decoys" convincingly demonstrates how Land art can achieve its effects even where land is scarce. The inclusion of documentary photography and video reminds viewers of the art's original outdoor contexts and gives the exhibition an archive's authority by expanding its scope to some fifty works by ten women.

Projecting identity politics onto this art is problematic, especially since -- as Morris acknowledges -- several of the artists featured have consistently rejected the "feminist" label. Nonetheless, "Decoys" opens a useful dialogue with the seminal survey "WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution," which can only be deliberate given Sculpture Center's proximity to P.S. 1 and the weeklong overlap of the two shows' runs. "WACK!" presented visual languages of ephemera and performance, liquidity and softness -- a resistance to patriarchal values of mastery and permanence -- while setting forth the proliferation of roles that women (and later, anyone) could assume as artists: the craftworker, the shaman, the activist, the diarist. "Decoys" adds to that by accounting for women artists who operated as architects, another mode current in the 1970s, and downplayed direct involvement of their hands and bodies. It might seem ironic that an ostensibly feminist show has documentation revealing that the "men's work" of the art was done by men -- in a video about Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels, 1976, male construction workers arrange massive tubes, and men in tractors drive tractors in pictures of Agnes Denes's Wheatfield -- A Confrontation, 1982. But the true nature of these artists' practices is reflected by Aycock's drawings of a large-scale land piece, Project for Elevation with Obstructed Sight Lines, 1972, and a photograph of Denes, waist-high in wheat with downtown's skyscrapers at her back, surveying the field where her vision bloomed.

-- Brian Droitcour

NEWSgrist pal Daryl Wein's feature length documentary SEX POSITIVE, about Richard Berkowitz and the invention of safe sex, will be playing in NYC next weekend on the big screen if you want to check it out!  It's part of the New Festival:

http://www.newfest.org/cgi-bin/iowa/index.html

Here are the times (it's 76 minutes):

Fri, June 6th.  10pm.  Loews 34th st. Theater 9
Sat June 7th. 1:30pm.    Loews 34th st. Theater 10.

Check out the website and trailer for more info:

www.sexpositivethemovie.com