Wolfgang Laib: Returning to What Is, review

Darren James Jorgenson interview with Wolfgang Laib gives us an insight into the world of the artist and his practice and how his life and past experiences and how they influence him in his work. It also brings to light even though his works have on first appearance a very nature based look tot hem he explains to us the real and true meaning behind his choices of mediums and why he is not as the critics say "nature artist".

Wolfgang Laib is very informant in his answers when talking about his process in his work where we are learn the reasons behind the artist choice material he uses like pollen, milk and beeswax is because to him and pointed out by Jorgernsen that material is already made and been thought this amazing process to get there and then to be used in his works. But instead of placing them in the natural environment Wolfgang takes them out it and and uses it purely for the material its self and placing it in the gallery space turns it into an abstract idea. he tkaes hte nautre out of the material and by doung this removes the "nature artist" from his work. We see through teh interview Liab's commitment to process through the passion in his answers and the way he tlaks of his works and the meaning and influences behind.

From this interview it can be said that Wolfgang's art is his life and that he is a very processed based artist in the way he collects the pollen before he starts the work, they way the milk has to be changed everyday in his works. its all a very slow and time consuming process but which is vital to his works as this interview is to understanding his works and showing the true meaning behind them.
Jorgenson allows Laib to give us this overview and insight into his work and also addresses the topic's that we wouldn't and just a viewer in the gallery wouldn't know.

art and institutions

Pawel Althamer is a sculpture, performance and action artist. he is highly involved with installtion and sculptures. but i won't to focus on one of his early works surrounding people on space.

Althamer has challenged the stereotypical notions of places and and space where he has totally redesigned the gallery space or manipulating the viewers perceptions on it, which was seen in his first solo exhibition call the exhibition where he totally removed and cleaned the place, washed the floors, scraped all the old paint off the walls and placed in the bare minimum but necessary furniture into to building as to refer to the building original 'purpose' which was an apartment which shows the institution as art and how it transform over the years to accommodate to the need of the people who inhabit the area.

in the work below again he change to gallery space into the surrounding you would find in a different type of building. where he transformed the main gallery area in the a waiting room. and cutting a hole in the wall to lead you outside into the gallery garden changes the original use of the place as it would of been used before. and taking away from the idea of the gallery. but more of a waiting room and the exit.


http://www.culture.pl/en/culture/artykuly/os_althamer_pawel#brodno

Art and globalization

Asian field

Anthony Gormely for the past few years ghas been working on projects in different countries that so the idea of globalisation, such as his field projects. the ones seen above are in Asia. and what he does is he collects the clay form local areas. In the process of making this work there were 500 people who volunteered

"My reply is that it's not one artist's work; it's everybody's that made it. The numbers - 180,000 little figures, 25 tonnes of clay, 3500 boxes - all those statistics are justified if you realise it's tackling big issues."

this work adresses a world issue... the growing population as the unborn, our future who will be the possible inheritors of the earth.

the work is meant to close in on the viewer and infect the space around them with all these tiny human like figure with out mouths and only staring eyes

art and spirituality

Ana Mendieta works embody several themes and ideas with in spirituality which tie to pre Columbia/ afro-cuban beliefs and also the body, mainly hers with in space and pushing the boundaries between matter and spirit. This connection with spirit was bought about by her speration from her parents when she was 13 by the American catholic chruch. this then influenced her greatly in her art practice.

Even though her works were shocking to the audience like in her work where she presses different parts of her body on a sheet of glass to distort it in front of an audience to question societies idea of a good figure of a women!

her development of her works were greatly influenced by the exile as well as the intercetion of the Caribbean/ north American cultures later in her last years.





Ana Mendieta's Burial Pyramid- an amazing performance work
http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/videos/193

Art and its institutions

Erwin Wurm

One minute sculpture
1997

Erwin Wurm is a hilarious artist who apparently had people send him a print of his work with a fee of 100 euro so he would sign it and send it back to them so they could call their print an original. This seems to question other ways art can be sold and what constitutes an original work of art outside the set standards of galleries.

This is an interview of him working and talking in his studio definitely worth watching http://prettycoolpeopleinterviews.submarinechannel.nl/erwin-wurm

Art and Spirituality - Dorothy Napangardi and painting “The Dreaming”

Born in the early 1950’s, “land artist” Dorothy, grew up 400 kms out of Alice Springs with her extended family who nomadically lived around the Mina Mina area, living traditionally off the land having a complete diet of bush tucker. Dorothy paints a major religious belief called the “Jukurrpa’ (“Digging stick – possessing – Dreaming” also called Karnta-Kulangu Jukurrpa “Women belonging dreaming”), which is a code that sets rules for living, morals and interacting with the natural environment, thereby providing an integrated life with man and nature.

In order for the Dreaming to exist, it must be perpetuated to be regenerated. So not only is Dorothy illustrating their identities and spiritual connectedness to the country, but also passes on valuable cultural information for future generations and ensuring that the Dreaming mythology is kept alive.

Dorothy is creating visual spiritual illustrations through her work.

Napangardi, Dorothy. Dancing up country : the art of Dorothy Napangardi. Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002.

Art and its Institutions - BABABA INTERNATIONAL

(above) Soap City, 2010

This Sydney-based art collective have made use of the gallery space throughout various projects by turning it into a workshop, a kitchen, and even a nail parlor. They recently held an 'exhibition' at First Draft called Soap City, where they used the space as a work shop in which to produce soap for the public. On each bar of soap was a map directing its beholder to a make shift roof top shower somewhere nearby, taking the viewer outside of the institution and to a secret place in which to cleanse themselves.

These guys seem to be interested in using the city's surrounding resources, and are totally breaking down barriers between art and life. Through their DIY mentality, Bababa bring the art making process into the gallery, and diminish the exclusive image that art galleries commonly possess. Instead of witnessing a finished product, the viewer is a part of the process and is encouraged to take part. Their practice is fun, lighthearted, communal and rough around the edges- challenging conventional perceptions surrounding art and its institutional factor.

Check out their website for more information and past projects:

http://www.bababainternational.com/

Youtube links: School and Creativity

The following links were forwarded to me a while ago, so just wanted to share regarding school/Uni and creativity. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D0pwe4vaQo&feature=channel

Arrt and gobilisation

I found out about Juile Watai aka Ai Amano aka Alice 100% moe (?) aka SAMURAI GIRL by looking for some reference material and found her Lolita (somewhat polite anime porn) style of photography pretty leet. In her early publication of 'Samurai Girl- spirituality and technology for the mor consciousness, Watai explores pop culture, which is largely influenced by the rising of otaku culture. Otaku, おたく, translates to someone elces house and has Been used in a negative context, referring to an obsessive compulsion (anime otaku = anime mania). However the Japanese gen y, whom have been hugely influenced by the west, have embraced this compulsion and have started a second pop revolution through the first globalization era.
After the war I believe Japans defeat took away whatever identity japan had, as though japan had lost an arm. It was only though this embrace of otaku culture japan's arm was patch worked together from pokemon blue and red cartridges, professional cosplay outfits, hardcore octopus hentai mangas, all of which influenced jap pop. Watai captures the contemporary aesthetic of the imaginary and virtual space through her portraits and performances. Through globalization the west has taken away Japanese innocence, inserted their own culture, only for it to be mutated into this contemporary introverted fluro kinky kawaii thing, that the west have embraced.

Marina Abramovic

I remember someone did a talk on Marina Abramovic last semester, they showed a work where the artist sat down in front of a member from the audience and stared into her eyes. when I saw this I was like WTF? people line up for that?

I stumbled on this blog.. its photos of people she made cry... while staring into their soul. tones of people crying! Makes me think she was saying mean things to them quietly.

anyway I think this adds a whole other element to this particular performance.

You can thank the internet for this... Globalisation in its purest form!

http://marinaabramovicmademecry.tumblr.com/

Art and Globalisation.

www. 2000
Laser etched optical glass
100 x 100 x 100mm

www. caught my eye as a great expression of the ease of travel (through physical travelling and by the internet) that we have which has led to globalisation. Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell are artist work together mainly creating works that are architectural sculptures that are sometimes functional like 'Paddington basin bridge' in London and other times just conceptual without a function. When displayed this is a sphere suspended inside a block of optical crystal glass that shows the globe by the airplane routes available. The globe is such a fixed image so representing it in this way is thought prevoking.

http://www.langlandsandbell.com/index.html

art and institutions -blogging style

From a social sciences site i get this:
Commonly, experts officially recognize five major social institutions that have been evident in some way in every civilization in history:

• government
• religion
  
• education
  
• economics
• family

i note that art is not part of this list, nor is language. common experts eh!
what i've noticed so far and this is no disrespect to anybody in particular is that blogging seems to be a one way discourse with pictures. This concerns me because i feel like i'm writting to a vacuum that represents the latest global communication tool.
Are we scared to comment or does it just take to much time?
might a comment offend or is a comment just a comment?
Is language inherently dangerous in the wrong hands.
Who decides and who owns these words ? me or you or the corporation that is google.
oh did i mention the seductive black background that has been thoughtfully provided to make the images and text look more interesting.

Art & its Institutions: Blu

If, within this train of thought, we are critiquing the gallery/museum as the space for art then why not look at artists who bypass it all together? Although Heartney doesn't mention it in her chapter, i thought it would be cool to raise the subject of graph culture as a direct subversion of art and its institutions.

Blu is an italian mural artist who I am particularly interested in for his mural scale stop-animation works. I think these works, although not so much sculptural, have cross-overs with performanative and installation practices in terms of their engagement with and response to space.

Heres some images, but for the full effect, deffinitely check out youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uad17d5hR5s

SENSATION!!!!!

Art & its Institution: Sarah Oppenheimer

Sarah Oppenheimer is an American artist, who was born in 1972. She graduated with a BA in Semiotics from Brown University in 1995, and an MFA from Yale University in 1999.

"I felt at the time and still feelt hat the gallery is one essential context for the cultural reception of my work. What came under scrutiny in the Claire Compley work was the question of whether a work of art whose discourse disclosed the system of economic reproduction could possibly, at the same time, engender that economic reproduction for itself. Just as the work served as a model of how the gallery operated, it also served as a model for its own economic reproduction." - Michael Asher

I find the idea behind the works of Sarah Oppenheimer are almost an extension of Michael Asher.

610-3356, 2008.

MF-142, 2010.

D-17, 2010.

OE-15, 2010.

The title of the works in letters and numericals are "derived by reference to a typology or classification system created by the artist that describes, in graphic form, how the hole is perceptually perceived and the materials used to create it." Sarah Oppenheimer's artworks change the viewer's perception on art and experience of space. She uses the space in a non-traditional fashion where her artwork doesn't gaze the visitor as a painting or sculpture would, but it instead directs your gaze at different spaces. It changes the way we look at art and what we think of it.

Bibliography:

Heartney, Eleanor. Art & today. Newyork: Phaidon, 2008.

"Sarah Oppenheimer: Projects". http://www.sarahoppenheimer.com/index.html?id=2 (Accessed September 21, 2010).

"Rice Gallery: Sarah Oppenheimer D-17". http://www.ricegallery.org/new/exhibition/oppenheimer.html (Accessed September 21, 2010).

"Artinfo: Tyler Green Modern Art Notes". http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/category/uncategorized/page/90/ (Accessed September 21, 2010).

"P.P.O.W: Sarah Oppenheimer". http://www.ppowgallery.com/press_reviews.php?artist=21 (Accessed September 21, 2010).

Bibliography

Art and its Institutions

Janet Cardiff (born 1957 Canada)

Murder of Crows / Installation 2008

"The notion that art should provide a window on the world has been well established at least since the mid-fifteenth century, when Leon Battista Alberti laid out the principles for representing space through the system of one-point perspective. Conceiving the picture plane as a stage on which objects were arranged in diminishing scale, the artist drew the eye into the painting and hence away from any of the distracting apparatus that might have dispelled the illusion."

This idea of a singular perspective is similar to the establishment of the institution and its one-way path to success, its ability to ignore the ‘distracting apparatus’ that is art unbound by rules and conventions. Since the early 1990’s artists have explored this symbolic relationship between art and its institutions within their practice. Questioning and observing the hierarchy between curators, collectors, and artists; the commercialisation of art; the role of the audience; the housing and display of art. ect. Canadian artist Janet Cardiff is one such artist who is exploring the role of the physical gallery space of the institution. Cardiff works with sound and video within her practice and is perhaps best known for her signature audio walks, which she has made extensively internationally. Her gallery installations - often made in collaboration with George Bures Miller, Cardiff’s husband - are narrative and suspenseful sound and video works.

Cardiff’s audio walks transform an everyday stroll into an absorbing psychological and physical experience. In these walks Cardiff reinvents the audio walks offered at museums that explain current exhibitions, focusing not on the exhibition itself but instead a fictional narrative. The viewer is given a headset and simply follows the instructions of the voice. Most walks begin in an institutional space then either diverges outdoors or inwards into classified parts within the institution. The viewer is enveloped within a cinematic and non-linear experience as retrace the footsteps of another with no idea of what is to come. Cardiff’s audio walks invite and guide the viewer to notice and appreciate something from a different perspective. By removing her works from within the institution Janet Cardiff’s exploration in the physicality of art and the housing of art is clear.

Bathroom Stories 1991

Muenster Walk for Skulptur Muenster 1997

Bibliography

Books

Phoenix Art Museum. Constructing New Berlin: contemporary art made in Berlin/Phoenix Art Museum; [transi. From the German by: James Roderick O- Donovan], Munich: Prestel, 2006.

Art and its institutions: current conflicts, critique and collaborations/edited by Nina Montamann, London: Black Dog Publishings, 2006.

Heartney, Elenor. Art & Today. New York: Phaidon Press Ltd. 2008. Art and it’s Institiutions

Websites

City Gallery Wellingtons, Janet Cardiff: The Forty-Part Motet Exhibition Notes Issue #01, http://www.cardiffmiller.com/press/texts/Curatorial%20Notes JCardiff Web.pdf

[Accessed 19 sept 2010]

Janet Cardiff Bures Miller, http://www.cardiffmiller.com/index.html

[Accessed 19 Sept 2010]

Art & It's Institutions: Lawrence Weiner bibliography

Lawrence Weiner. "Placed upon the horizon (casting shadows)" 1990, Vancouver art gallery.

Lawrence Weiner, "Many colored objects side by side to form a row of many colored objects" 1979. Enamel on Brick.

Lawrence Weiner, "One quart exterior green industrial enamel thrown on a brick wall", 1969. Enamel on gallery wall.

Bibliography:

-Heartney, Eleanor. Art & Today. New York: Phaidon Press Ltd. 2008. Chapt. Art and It's Institutions.

-Möntmann, Nina. Art and it's institutions: Current conflict, critique and collaborations. London: Black Dog Publishing. 2006.

-Albero, Alexander; Zimmerman, Alice; Buchloh, Benjamin H.D.; Batchelor, David. Lawrence Weiner. London: Phaidon Publishing. 1998.

Art and spirituality

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/eliasson/images/hallsun4.jpg

The way in which Olafur Eliasson might employ mechanics to create art contradictions that force viewers to question there own spirituality. Weather and environment, a once unexplainable force controlled by a omnipotent force, still symbolizes the surrealness of our existence.In The Weather Project, the fourth in the annual Unilever Series of commissions for the Turbine Hall, Olafur Eliasson takes this ubiquitous subject as the basis for exploring ideas about experience, spirituality and representation.

In this installation, The Weather Project, representations of the sun and sky dominate the expanse of the Turbine Hall. A fine mist permeates the space, as if creeping in from the environment outside. Throughout the day, the mist accumulates into faint, cloud-like formations before dissipating across the space. A glance overhead, to see where the mist might escape, reveals that the ceiling of the Turbine Hall has disappeared, replaced by a reflection of the space below. At the far end of the hall is a giant semi-circular form made up of hundreds of mono-frequency lamps. The arc repeated in the mirror overhead produces a sphere of dazzling radiance linking the real space with the reflection. Generally used in street lighting, mono-frequency lamps emit light at such a narrow frequency that colours other than yellow and black are invisible, thus transforming the visual field around the sun into a vast duotone landscape.

Through reenacting ritual and spirituals phenomenon, Eliasson suggests spirituality can be found within many different formats. The shared experience is a common feature that underpins his work, which is an important factor in art as it reminds us of our equality as humans. Yeh sure that's sounds nice and arty. What the hell am I writing about, as if anyones actually going to read this bullocks. Eliasson is a giant douche anyway, like only the Dutch would be like "ok ve need a giant sun in ze room , lots of lights for dees English faggots arhohoho" . The end.

http://www.tompenney.com.au/ESSAY%20ART%20SPIRIT%20TECH.doc
For more info.

Art and architecture

http://images.gizmag.com/gallery_lrg/4455_19080520119.jpg




Michael Rakowitz feels strongly about the issue of homelessness. So strongly that when he focussed his creative attentions on the subject he began manifesting practical outcomes, specifically the ParaSITE. The parasite is a is a small, collapsible, double-membrane shelter that uses the escaping warm air from a building’s HVAC system to inflate and warm the temporary home.

"While these shelters were being used, they functioned not only as a temporary place of retreat, but also as a station of dissent and empowerment; many of the homeless users regarded their shelters as a protest device, and would even shout slogans like "We beat you Uncle Sam!" The shelters communicated a refusal to surrender, and made more visible the unacceptable circumstances of homeless life within the city.

For the pedestrian, paraSITE functioned as an agitational device. The visibly parasitic relationship of these devices to the buildings, appropriating a readily available situation with readily available materials elicited immediate speculation as to the future of the city: would these things completely take over, given the enormous number of homeless in our society? Could we wake up one morning to find these encampments engulfing buildings like ivy?

This project does not present itself as a solution. It is not a proposal for affordable housing. Its point of departure is to present a symbolic strategy of survival for homeless existence within the city, amplifying the problematic relationship between those who have homes and those who do not have homes." Michael Rakowitz

I see this work as a reaction to the way we live. The reality is the modern form of architecture allows for mass homelessness to occur in cities. Societies fabric is hugely influenced by the way we live and people living on the strews is a byproduct of dense populations. Rakowitz tackles this idea head on by using the metaphor of the parasite, an organisms that uses it's host to survive, As a means to make a statement and create a temporary solution.

http://www.gizmag.com/go/4455/

Art & It's Institutions

I shall be presenting Lawrence Weiner, if only he would stand still on that pedestal... :)

Art and its Institutions

Hey amanda, just letting you know the artist i'm presenting is Janet Cardiff.