New Art

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Gorrilla, though not Girls

Juan de la Mora is a Chicago-born Mexican-American artist living in Madrid. His background is in architecture, but his true passion seems to be stencil art. His works are precise games of colors and forms, often introduced in "low-profile" street contexts. While it is clear de la Mora spent a substantial amount of time experimenting with graffiti on the streets, it is no less clear that in his recent works he takes it to another level, creating multi-layered works with autoCAD (architectural software) and specialized cutting-plotting machines. The exhibition I saw in Montemor-o-Velho (here in Portugal) had two distinct parts. One was the manipulation of the word manipulation, starting with a line and then turning it into a wor(l)d that could be inhabited, though remaining ambiguous, something between a room, a house, an abstract form, very much in the modernist spirit. The other (partially shown here) was a grungy, funky yet surprizingly clean way of playing with stencil forms, using the theme of a gorrilla to create dense, powerful imagery. The two parts might seem completely different, until you meet the man - and discover his passion for art, architecture, street creation, freedom, traveling, and... cooking. His dream - to have a restaurant were everything would be de la Mora design. From the space, through colors, smells and tastes. Now that's a new way of understanding Gesamtkunstwerk!

What is it I like so much about the gorrillas? This particular one is called "You and I". Without it's black color (the original model was a famous albino gorilla) it seems humanlike, but also, abstract, unreal, as if it were some sort of a hidden symbol or code, or maybe a map of something. It appears out of the white as, well, sorry, but as a shroud (as in the Turin one). A shroud is the proof of existence, and that's how this feels. Also, it gives me the idea of a medical image, some sort of analysis, so the stains become even more ambiguous and challenging. How do you read a face?

The works are part of the group exhibition Reflexiones at the Galeria Torre de Relógio, in Montemor-o-Velho, which is on until October.

Art world gossip

Yes, I have gotten that low. Maurizio Cattelan and Vanessa Beecroft used to be lovers. And, according to the title of the article, she accuses him of stealing her ideas. The content of the text, however, does not seem to confirm that.
On the other hand, it raises the (so often raised) question of originality and plagiarism in art. Cattelan is quoted as saying: "Was Warhol robbing Marilyn [Monroe's] identity when he painted her? And what was Cézanne doing? Robbing apples? In art, all you can do in the end is appropriate that which surrounds you. So it is never a robbery. At the most it is a loan. Unlike thieves, artists always give back the stolen goods."
Is it always that simple? Nothing is stolen, everything is transformed? Come on, be a little original, Maurizio, don't just repeat old phrases.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Storker

Avant-garde children?

My workshop in Montemor took place during the Citemor theater festival. One of the plays I've seen there was Tot És Perfecte, created by Roger Bernat, called the "new enfant terrible of the Spanish stage".
The production could be described in many ways. It is a medieval tale with a "making-of" included, a story about love and the meaning of life, a mix between contemporary and ancient/fantasy worlds. But above all, it is a play acted by teenagers. The 14-to-16-year-olds act out their private conversations as if the stage - and the public - were simply inexistent. They talk about things they care about, worry about, love (?). And then, they represent a medieval tale. In a fairly unconvincing and uninteresting way. So what is it that makes the show shocking to some, appealing to most? When not acting the story, the teens are "themselves". With all the consequences. They swear more than a drunk butcher, they talk dirty to each other, occasionally becoming incredibly cruel, some of them even actually spanking others, smoking, or, in one boy's case, undressing and playing with the genitals in front of the public. Oh, and sucking on it. For the acrobatic trick. And the public's guilty feeling of joy.
I tried talking to the actors, the director, several other spectators. I wanted to know what they felt. They thought it was real. And funny. The actors felt just fine about all this, stating that this is who they are and they were not forced to do anything, on the contrary, they were the ones suggesting, and several things they suggested were rejected. The boys who smoked had been smoking since they were 12, the boy who made the exhibitionist trick insisted on doing that and had a long conversation with everyone about what he was going to do.
And of course, my favorite argument: this is who they are. We can't be so politically correct as to censor it. It would be hypocrisy. And come on, this is no big deal really. There have been much worse things happening on stage in contemporary theater, also to teenagers.
Then why is it bothering me? Maybe because I have a few friends who started smoking on stage, and never quit. Or because I remember myself at 14, 15, 16, and the enthusiasm with which I undertook the most silly and unwise things. I suppose I was in the luxurious situation of not being tempted to try them out on stage. Why? Maybe, because there is a difference between what's happening with or without a witness. And because I'm not sure of how far it goes, but I'm pretty sure the young people I spoke to are so even less. Or maybe because I'm just a boring moralist, who can't deal with true avant-garde when he sees it.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

I'm going away until Sunday, and am not sure if I'll have access to the internet.

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Alternative takes

Monday, August 01, 2005

Fear

Marja-Leena's comment to my last post made me discover James W. Bailey's blog about art, mainly his own, with some fascinating insights of a fairly renowned modern artist (I've only just started investigating though). The most recent post is about a French stranger met in the metro, and is "illustrated" by two pictures (or is the text an illustration of the pics?). As I was reading through the blog, I was listening to the uneven, but occasionally excellent wps1 art radio (by the NY-based PS1 Contemporary Art Center) , to a conversation about fear. And I recalled a picture I took a few days ago in the metro. Went back to it, worked on it a little, and here it is:

Look

I guess you could say it's my drying of the puppies.

Popularity

It's incredible: it was enough to put some naked women on the blog, and the clicks keep coming in.

Of puppies and evil

What's

in a teddy?
Nothing, if they remain quietly suspended on a string.

Then, Rose begins writing. And the text explains that a short time ago a soldier (with an English name... US Army? British?) was abused by his colleagues for not being of the same color. He was washed, and then scalped. Cleansed.
And then Rose, the old, severe- but- kind- looking lady, goes back to the puppies. She grabs the black one, and washes it. Puts white detergent on it, splatters transparent water. Then spills the filthy, gray water on the floor and puts the puppy back on its place. And leaves. Stopping to look back a couple of times, just to make sure.
Rose and the Teddy Bears is a 20-minute street performance, part of a series presented by the French theater/performance group Princesses Peluches during the FIAR International Street Arts Festival in Palmela, Portugal ("street arts" in this case basically means theater). The quote on the group's site says "Rose makes people laugh and think at the same time". Well, this time it really

didn't make me laugh (though some might find the beginning amuzing thanks to the subtly stylized persona of Rose). Once you get it, it's really quite creepy. What I found interesting was that the whole thing would be rather weak - if it weren't presented by this character, which seems from a completely different story. And that's what gives the show its credibility. It's as if the old lady made it easier to swallow something so bitter we are usually tempted to refuse it as a "performance", or even as a direct social commentary.

Sunday, July 31, 2005

Portuguese young talent

Diana Silva, Heart Necklace (2003)

(This is a neckless made with the crochet technique, I believe)

ps.: I have just bought bluetooth for my laptop, at last, which will allow me to post pics and films from my mobile phone. Meaning - expect more terrible quality "new art" photos and films from Portugal!

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Cities/People/Bodies

Is there a surface that goes beyond itself? How deep does it go? Can we go so far to the surface of the picture, we go beyond it? It is only skin, matched and resampled as in a game, as in a text. And what are they really saying through the skin? This is who we are? This is what we are? Identity? So close? So quick, so easy?

Tokyo I

Berlin

Cape Town I

Buenos Aires

Deception

Selected pictures from The Nude Adrift Portfolio, by Spencer Tunick (at the Guy Hepner Contemporary gallery in London)

Workshop

I'll be directing a workshop next week in Montemor-o-Velho, entitled "Between Performance and Theater" (Portuguese link). I want to explore the zone between acting, enacting, performing and participating, so it should be a lot of fun and pretty challenging.

Friday, July 29, 2005

Birdwatching (1)

During the Serpa seminar, I did some filming. The goal was a specific type of (experimental) documentary, but the bad quality of sound made it unviable. One of the filmed sequences, though, came out amazing: a group of birds flying around in the setting southern sun.

Every time I saw the material, I became fascinated with the moving image, its fluidity, its combination of harmony and power and playfulness, the games of shadows and highlights. The entire scene lasts less than a minute, probably about 30 seconds. On the other hand, it seems just the right amount of starting material.
But for what?

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Blur Building

My girlfriend has made me discover the Blur Building, by Elizabeth Diller and (husband) Ricardo Scofidio (Diller&Scofidio - notice her name comes first, very nice and rare!), or rather, the recordings of it (scroll for the article), as it was disassembled after the Swiss Expo in 2002. It seems like a truly extraordinary project - a building that's a cloud. Witty, poetic, and above all - real!
It reminded me of one of Woody Allen's funniest characters - the man that became out-of-focus in Deconstructing Harry.
Diller&Scofidio have made and collaborated on many other fascinating projects, ranging from performances, to installations, to video art.
Long live artist couples!

Portuguese multimedia

The Portuguese center for digital arts Atmosferas has been quite busy recently. First, they made a retrospective net exhibition of Portguese net art in the last years. Now, they (along with Etic, the media art school they are a part of) are starting a 2-year Masters course in Games and Interactive Media. It is a unique program in Portugal, and was created with the support of YDreams, the immensely successful multi-media Portuguese company (with several multi-media installations on their account). I'm really glad things are happening around here.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

For now

Seyed Alavi, Not Here (1990)

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Of art and terror

Art in the age of global terrorism.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Googlography

As part of the Day-to-Day Data exhibition which presents several "artists who collect, list, database and absurdly analyse the data of everyday life" (curated by Ellie Harrison), Jem Finer's On Earth as in Heaven recreates the map of heaven - on earth. The idea is to localize the names of the stars that compose the main star constallations. The names can refer to places, but also objects, people, erotic drawings.

I imagined initially that all the stars would have streets or towns named after them (or themselves be named after terrestrial locations), but this was far from the case. Using Google as a research tool I found that star names were more often than not the name of an object, a document, a person, something transient at a specific time and place…

Using Google as a research tool? This is our world, this is our geography. This is the universe. Of course, I would probably have done the same thing (then again, I might have taken the trouble to check somewhere else, you never know). But it's strange, the way we seem to combine the conviction that we live in a global village with, indeed, a village mentality.
But the work is nice, and the online version quite appreciated by this village person.

Ps.: Jem Finer is also the author of the longest music piece in history: longplayer, which is to play uninterruptedly for a thousand years (it began on January, 1, 2000). You can listen to it (streamed) here.

Questioning modernism

Art by people like Richard Serra leaves me confused. Not that I'm shocked, not at all. I just find it, well, unconvincing. The huge steel plates, the massive cubes, the imposing shapes... it seems like a simplicity that's, well, out of date. I'm really having difficulty writing about this, as I'm not sure of what I think, feel, or would like to feel. Yet somehow, I find this doubt to be very important for me.
You see, it seems too heavy, too closed, too proudly hermetic. Remember this quote? "Nobody thinks sculpture's going to change the world", but then, Serra's wish is to "change the way you see, even minutely". There is a paradox here, a human one, but one which is no less irritating. What are these blocks of steel? Just this, blocks? In that case, shouldn't I take him seriously and consider them no more important than any other element that would "change the way I see, even minutely"? Wouldn't simple (and cheaper) binoculars do the thing? Do I really need this to change the way I see? And what does it mean, to change the way I see? Can you hear the ever-present note of classic modernism? I'll give you a hole, and you'll lift the world with your sight. Oh, brother. How classic that sounds today. And what are we supposed to do with yesterday's revolutionaries? Their space today seems ridiculous, or worse - funny. The pure form. Pure just doesn't sound right, does it? Their talk, their fafarafa, is good for the art market, which replaces the "beauty-based" language games by "truth-based" ones. And we have the Abramovićs of inner truth, the Serras of object-ive truth, and so on. They had 30, 40 years to read up on philosophy, on arts, on history. Their talk has gotten smoother, it developed into systems, or semi-systems, always open, as the post-structuralists wisely advised. The curators love it, the prices go up. They are now part of art history.
And I, the spectator, yawn. It might be my ignorance, my not taking their ride. Or, to put it in another way, I don't have enough strength for them, I can't handle all this essence. The masters of essence. With their squares and circles, plain surfaces, monochromes and voids. It's not a disliking, it's more a getting-tired, a thirst for content. And I'm not alone. The new artists are here. The little narratives, the concrete, but meaningful (signifying, something), stories, adventures, textures that reveal forms, directions, opinions, origins, contexts, those little narratives develop, combine, they feed off each other, and yes, off the modernist power trips, their dreams of the infinite, their need for space. And, well, (the artistic) now happens. Hesitantly, at first, making tiny, unbalanced steps, swirving and turning, crawling and going sideways, but somehow, it's more up-to-date for me than what the venerable revolutionaries are. It is more open, direct, it's more modest, but more aggressively reaching out. And I like that. I like the rusty marks the tools leave. Serra's, well, I don't know how he does it, but, paradoxically, his works don't stain.
At least not my young and innocent skin.

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Portuguese folk

Here, have some Portuguese music. This one comes from the north of Portugal. I've discovered it recently, and I was stunned. Its similarity with Corsican poliphony fascinates me. At the same time, it hasn't had the privilege of a commercial promotion, so it is slowly fading away.
And why is it here, on the New Art blog? Well, I have my reasons, but if you find its inadequate, well, live with it. And enjoy.