New Art

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Friday, November 11, 2005

Art + Landscape = Artscape

Here is a project I participated in a short while ago:

The Logical Picture of the Facts is the Thought, group project (by artLAB) (2005)

The inhabitants of the city of Penafiel, Portugal, were temporarily deprived of their most beautiful landscape. The entire Lovers’ Garden vista point was covered by 150m of white canvas, creating a border between the scenery and the park. The onlookers’ immediate reaction was a decision on their own place in the landscape.

The vista point separates the public space of The Lovers’ Garden from private vineyards. The visitors faced a choice: either stay in the public park without the scenic landscape, enjoying the new cosiness created by the canvas, or go behind the canvas and rediscover the view, but as a private, intimate experience. Then, the visual isolation from the nearest surroundings gave the panorama an unexpected closeness.

This collective work was the fruit of an artistic residence and workshop around “New Ways of Approaching Landscape”. The basis was research done on the relationship between the city dwellers and their most beloved panoramic viewpoint.

The picturesque wine hills are also next to the city center, making them a target for real estate development. Several areas are soon to be transformed into cheap housing blocks. The Logical Picture… is a reaction to this situation. It presents the landscape as a prohibited fruit, a “thought-provoking picture”.
(And I must tell you, rarely have I seen people react like that to a work. It made us feel good.)

This initiative was created by artLAB*projectos in September 2005, with the support of the City of Penafiel, the Caixa Geral de Depósitos bank and the Superior Institute of Agronomy (Universidade Técnica de Lisboa)

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Of course, the first superficial reaction is - it's pretty close to what Christo does. Which, in my humble opinion, is false. It does take up a similar language, but uses it in a distinct manner. The idea is not a "package", nor a "fence". And it is very distant from the modernist "art for art's sake" approach that is at the core of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's work. Here, a clearly social work was made. A "public" work in a meaning I like to use.
The long title, a quote from Wittgenstein, makes it clear - we want you to think, not just leave the work as a "neutral" fact.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Little fish jumpin'

Vvoi, Urban Fish (2004)

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Type your search here

Monday, November 07, 2005

Playing with Picasso

Rodney Graham, untitled (2005). From the exhibition Picasso, My Master at the Johnen Galerie in Berlin. The exhibition will be moving to the Warsaw (Poland) Raster Gallery as part of a project of exchanging the physical spaces of the two galleries.
As you can read in the first links to his name, Graham is also (above all?) a gifted musician and filmmaker (after an initial period of hating the medium).

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Amusing

18.12.04, 1 mbot, china ink on paper, 115 x 130 cm

Symbiotic Art Manifesto
[Making the Artists that make the Art]

1) Machines can make art
2) Man and machines can make symbiotic art
3) Symbiotic art is a new paradigm that opens an entire unexploited field in art
4) Object manufacturing and the reign of the hand in art can be abandoned
5) Personal expression and of the human/artist centrality can be abandoned
6) Any moralistic or spiritual pretension and any representation purposes can be abandoned

- ArtsBots by Leonel Moura with Henrique Garcia Pereira

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Art as Self-Promotion

I purchased 24 30-second commercial spots on two New York television channels, Channel 4 and Channel 9, and 21 spots on three Los Angeles channels, Channel 5, Channel 11 and Channel 13. My «ad»consisted of a series of names: «Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Chris Burden.» The series was repeated twice and followed by the disclaimer «paid by Chris Burden - artist. (...) The first five names were chosen from the results of a nationwide survey which showed them to be the most well-known artists to the general public.

- Chris Burden

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

ExperimentaDesign (2)

Below is the second part of the review of ExperimentaDesign.

Engage (commissioned/created by Erik Adigard, a designer working with such companies as Apple, Microsoft and Sony, also engaged in new media art projects) shows some possibilities of a politically and socially active design. It is a large collection of posters whose authors look at the world in a critical way. Neutrality is not welcome here. A surprising combination of photos or an ambiguous drawing are the weapons in a fight for putting into doubt what we often unconsciously accept. “The designer stopped being a craftsman. He has become an agitator”, Adigard said during one of the conferences that accompanied the biennale. But a greater power requires greater knowledge. Influential agitators can be dangerous. That’s why the best designers know how to distinguish Coca-Cola from cocaine, and Bush from Bin Laden. In this sense, Catalysts! is an appeal not to spectators, but to designers: Go study!

But aren’t designers becoming victims of their own methods? They often take on the role of journalists and scientists, they want to explain the world and improve the life of its inhabitants (that’s how the Inform part presents them). But they do it with no scruples, attacking as hard (effectively?) as they can. Maybe that’s why during the exhibition, the visitors, used to controversial games, take a quick look at the posters, smile at the creativity, and move along to the last room. Here, a dark room has its one wall covered by a film projection. It is a mixture of scenes that the author Rob Schröder found “fascinating, important, strange, disgusting or simply shocking” during his 40-year TV-watching marathon, staring at three screens at once. This part is appropriately called Moral Panic. This is where most of the visitors gather. They stand quietly against the walls, waiting for a scene that would give it all any sense.

My World, New Crafts is an entirely different exhibition. One could call it an answer to the “catalysts”. The exhibition, in the midst of the Lisbon botanical garden, lacks the will for power and for a “universal civilization”. In the expression “global village” My World... focuses on the village. Does cultural identity still exist? And if so, what could it mean in the face of the challenges of technology and communication? Against pessimistic prognoses, the works gathered here show it can mean many things wonderful, diversified, and up-to-date. Here, finding oneself means a strange, sometimes useless, but always inventive employing of what is already there: a transformation, a recycling, a disarmament, but also a rediscovery of old crafts and design traditions. Furniture out of plastic containers, radio-alarm clocks controlled through Atari joysticks, modern handbags designed together with old ladies from traditional districts of Portuguese cities: My World... presents a whole range of arguments in the discussion with the gloomy prophets of the end of civilization. At the same time, it does it with humor: a pork-legged stool (author Fernando Brízio was inspired by the Portuguese pigs called Pata Negra - “black leg”), or a cup outgrown like a virus (by Kjell Rylander) are excellent examples of combining fresh, modern design with a great laugh.

ExperimentaDesign is not too interested in new technologies. The porcelain with designs made through a changing projection, or objects for using the internet without a computer, win the viewers through their creativity and charm. From a technical point, they aren’t quite revolutionary. The projects shown at the biennale also often seem unpractical, or difficult to use - as the strange “futuristic” architectural projects at the Portuguese Houses exhibition. But EXD isn’t afraid of risk: all the twelve projects will be realized in a special experimental village. They are to cost no more than the average price of real estate of a similar size in this region.

One could criticize many things about the ExperimentaDesign. For one, the biennale “headquarters”, in a wonderful, decaying palace downtown with a view on the Tagus river, besides a bar (associated brand: Super Bock beer) and a small library only has “tangentials”, or accompanying exhibitions (associated brand: IKEA), not always on the highest of levels (with a few exceptions, as this poster by Kau Bernau). A work by Stefan Sagmeister commissioned as a “solo exhibit” on a city billboard (commisioned by: Super Bock) is difficult to find, and at the Catalysts! exhibition nearby (official builder: Certame) nobody knows anything. But Portuguese people are friendly, cell phones starting ringing (exclusive sponsor: Vodafone) and a friend of a friend explained how to get there. Proving that the biennale’s motto, “The Medium is the Matter”, has one crucial meaning: it’s all about communication.

ExperimentaDesign is 5 main exhibitions, 30 tangentials, conferences, debates, films. Among other presented areas are architecture, multimedia, scenography, experimental cinema... The biennale lasted from the middle of September until the end of October. It is expected to be visited by some 150 thousand people.

More info: www.experimentadesign.pt

1. Engage (fragment), Erik Adigard (2005); 2.Collateral Image, Jasper van der Made (2003). 3. Columbus Day, James Victore (1992). 4. Lofting House, Marcosandmarjan (2005) 5. Switzerland United Banks, Kai Bernau, Christoph Dunst (2005) - part of the "Neutrality" exhibition. 6. Use Condoms, James Victore (1999)
All photos by Verónica Fernandes.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Roi Kuper

Saturday, October 29, 2005

ExperimentaDesign 2005 (1)

Below is the first part of a review of the Lisbon design biennale ExperimentaDesign 2005 that I wrote for the Polish review Architektura (to be published soon, in a shorter and slightly modified version). Translated here for your global enjoyment.

ExperimentaDesign 2005: The Medium is the Goal

The Lisbon ExperimentaDesign 2005 is a biennale of paradoxes: brilliant works stand next to silly provocations, ingenious discoveries next to funny, though useless ideas.

This is hardly a surprise. Contemporary design remains in a state of tension between its high culture-forging aspirations and the commercial prose of life. Money can’t buy everything (e.g. many projects are related to activism); but even what it can’t buy has to be sold. Even if it is to convince others.

That’s where modern design gets all its power. It quietly enters more and more parts of our lives: from publicity to politics, from architecture to film, from media to street art. It does it quietly, although the limit of culture and commerce seems like an ideal situation to remain in the center of attention. Still, designers rarely appear on magazine covers or TV shows.

The Lisbon biennale moves design out of the shadow of anonymity. In a well-prepared, incredibly diversified series of exhibitions it shows the trends, the fashions, but also the characteristic styles and unique approaches. It’s not afraid of controversy; on the contrary, it proves that yesterday’s scandals are today’s common bread. You can feel it’s an ongoing experiment - although it doesn’t always mean innovation. Sometimes, it’s as simple as juxtaposing a commercial with a political flyer, or using classical design in an artistic installation.

The 6-year-old biennale has a strategic partner for its main events: the Belém Center of Culture. This large complex far from Lisbon’s center, created from the first funds of the then European Community, is a symbol, that the Portuguese, usually full of complexes, can do it after all. The modern, if modest-looking, building contains concert and theater halls, exhibition spaces, and among them an excellent Museum of Design. But this time the Museum is empty. The visitors line up to the biennale’s largest exhibition, Catalysts!

Catalysts! is an exhibition with a thesis. According to the curator Max Bruinsma, we can’t consider designers neutral helpers any more, professionals limited to solve the clients problems. They are rather “critical cultural agents”, or - “cultural catalysts”. That’s why in an exhibition which might at first seem as a classical graphic design showing, we get something far beyond - communication design, ranging from typeface to publicity to video to logos to fine art to pretty much anything that communicates.

The exhibition is divided into four main, autonomous parts: Believe, Seduce, Inform and Engage. But actually it’s all just one big seduction. And as it is usually case with flirts, it’s not the message, but the very process of transmitting that plays the main part. Soviet propaganda (considered as the beginning of modern design!), pro- and antiwar posters coexist with commercials of soap or underwear. Next to the chronology of design, we find a quote from Henry Ford: “We want artists in industrial relationship. (...) We want those who can mould the political, social, industrial, and moral mass into a sound and shapely whole”. The unsettling motto has no comment next to it concerning the (controversial) morality of Ford himself. Designers are also not interested in the analyses of the content of the Bolshevik postulates or discriminating commercials.

Designers-catalysts are interested in attracting attention. On a poster created in 1999 as publicity for his own lecture, one of the most renowned contemporary designers Stefan Sagmeister (who recently won a National Design Award), we see the naked author. All the information was cut out on Sagmeister’s skin by his assistant. This cynical use of one’s own body is one of many examples of adapting artistic ideas from the 60’s and 70’s to commercial purposes.

Using historical motives isn’t limited to one era: any past is good for transformation. Thus, we can find a pastiche of the great publicity classic made by Tide in the 50’s, made by James Langdon. The name of the product is replaced by the word “ediT” (the name of the work is “Turn the Tide”), inviting to a creative game with the past. Catalysts! shows the best of the players. Instead of creating a new, expensive brand image, they use ready solutions everyone knows, acting through a subversion of meaning, encouraging us, the consumers, to think - and to choose the graphic Robin Hood. One that’s incredibly similar to his colleagues, the artists... with one exception: contrary to the artists from the 70’s, today’s designers don’t seem to be overtly worried with why something is important. And that is, no matter what they might wish us to believe. Langdon does not explain why he chose precisely washing powder. Sagmeister’s self-inflicted wounds are important only because they are visible. It is supposed to be the viewer’s task to develop a critical distance. Yes, but how?

Pictures: 1&2: The Most Expensive Dress, Silke Wawro; 3: Seduce, Max Bruinsma (?); 4: Poster, Stefan Sagmeister. All photos by Verónica Fernandes.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Fish

Here is a play between art (and recently a similar one visited Lisbon), politics and faith. How about that?

Voo-doo

From here. The design could be better, but this is just a steam-off.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Beach animals

The philosophical ideas were not really there from the beginning, but they have grown more complete with the years. It's not important just to make things, but also to reflect about them.

After so many years, are you in control of the beach animals or are they really controlling you?
They have always controlled me. I obeyed their laws. Only recently they do what I want.

[People] want to help me, they want to go with me and join me in my dream. That stimulates me very much. I think that somehow the beach animals are really personal. Some people, who never saw them before, recognize me in the animals when they see them. It's strange but it also feels good. I mean, then I know that I am the inventor and that nobody else could have done it.

- Theo Jansen, in an interview with Sebastian Campion

And here is a video (click on image):

Of Art and Business

Adbusters has an interesting insight into the art world's recent flirts with corporate business. The article doesn't really investigate the issues - at times appearing somewhat superficial. On the other hand, it clearly shows an ethical issue increasingy present not only in business of art, but in other fields as well. The big issue is: when and how are we allowed to judge a combination of business and art? The classic example is of a big company not always with clean hands that creates a foundation or fund of some sort that, say, supports culture. Clearly, they are trying to change their image. But in many cases they are making a huge difference (take the Saatchi collection, or Bill Gates' foundation...) . I don't think the right attitude is to simply refuse this sort of combinations - it seems unrealistic. The question I have is: are there any ways we can improve the situation? Besides trying to bring to justice the companies that act unethically, is there anything we can do? I would say, paraphrazing the wonderful Polish poet Herbert, that it might just come down to a question of taste. If one has a well enough developed taste, or sensibility, the motorcycle exhibition at the Guggenheim should be ridiculed. Not because motorcycles cannot be considered art - I know of an artist who spent a year making pancakes as art (and created a number of delicious works). There is simply something too PR-like in it. I mean, we cannot still be believing that the good people at the big companies only want to help out. And if we don't believe it, we must see how they help and what else they do when they're out of their angel wings. The thing is, I don't have time for checking all this all the time. Which is why I rely on others, journalists, critics, curators. And here, another question appears: the paranoia of the big bad corporate wolf that simply cannot do the right thing. I had that impression when seeing A Decent Factory at the DocLisboa film festival. It's an ever-more common (and irritating) case of not giving the big players a chance to try and improve their conduct. The way the film's director, Thomas Balmès, sees it, Nokia, the film's main (anti-) hero, simply cannot make a right move. They are bad because they work with suppliers from China, they are bad because they try to improve the work conditions there, because they certainly can't handle it, because, well, they're silly. It's a falsely "objective" way of seeing corporate activity, which starts off from a position that is simply unrealistic: that corporations can be something else than corporations. Which brings me back to the Adbusters article, which, although is interesting, irritates in a similar way. The author simply doesn't leave any space for actual improvement:

With arts funding drying up during the Bush administration’s renewed culture wars, it’s no newsflash that museums like the Walker are turning to private support. The real surprise is that it’d open its hand to electronic store chain Best Buy, an entity run by executives who, according to BuyBlue.org, made political contributions totaling more than $45,000 exclusively to Republicans in the 2003-2004 election cycle. Is the quick fix of corporate cash worth the long-term effects of alliances with those who support arts-averse politicos?

If we think of art sponsorship in these categories, we shouldn't accept anything that comes from corporations or big companies, since we can be sure at least some of the bosses are friends with people we don't like. In this case, it's blatant: a company that supported a political bad guy decides to supports arts (which he doesn't). Instead of being happy that they aren't as close-minded as he is, the author gets upset! The question is: if, knowing we can't always count on the government or the public, we refuse those "business" opportunities as a rule, how are we, the artists, supposed to make a living? Off Creative Commons?

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Bravo

I have just learned that the art couple Diller and Scofidio (their studio is actually now called Diller Scofidio & Renfro because of their new partner Charles Renfro) have won the prestigious National Design Award 2005 for architecture design. I've written about their Blur Building here.
(N.B.: Notice their web page isn't working. It hasn't been working since at least July. Which goes to show how overrated the importance of PR actually is! - Or is "under construction" an allusion to the architects' never-ending dreams?)

Friday, October 21, 2005

Speaking of design

Thank you, Paul Stremple, for making the world a happier place and giving us the Banana Bunker. This wonderful object... well, I'll let you imagine what it does. For now, it is an exhibit at the New York MOMA exhibition SAFE: Design Takes On Risk.

If you still think a successful invention is all about the idea, see the Banana Guard, an earlier, unrelated invention that hasn't quite won the world over as the Banana Bunker seems to be doing. The BB is a true designing gem. The, hum, sex-appeal of the fruit is here played with in such a subtle, pleasant way, it can only make you smile. I don't know if it works yet (will order one as soon as I get out of debt), at least as banana protection. As a fine, art object it's working for me already.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Vera Mantero: art with its heart eaten out

Today's viewing of the film Comer o Coração de Rui Chafes e Vera Mantero by Inês Oliveira (during the DocLisboa documentary film festival) made me go back to the original piece of art by the unusual duo - dancer Vera Mantero and sculptor Rui Chafes.
I must admit the work - called Eating Your Heart Out - struck me instantly as somewhat pretentious, pompous even in its post-expressionist "wild and true" attitude. Here is why: what you get is really a combination of two hermetic worlds. One is the hard-core line of modern (neo-modernist, I would dare say) sculpture. The other is the no less esoteric work of contemporary dance, one that still hangs on the "interior truth" ideals (the truth is within you, be true to yourself, etc.), but takes it to another level, accepting anything that's visceral, be it African shamanism, Bali ritual or Indian grotesque face-making. (You could call it post-modernism at its most obvious, if you wish. I'd rather not, since calling something post-modernism just because it includes elements from different epochs and places seems naive, considering similar procedures in the rest of art history.)
Combine the two and you get... well, what exactly do you get? A combination of the two. Does it mix? And does oil mix with water? Of course it does - creating a specific design, a dance unique for this combination.

The problem I found with it was that it was extremely hermetic. Someone I know who worked on the production of the piece told me it was quite different at the Sao Paolo Biennale, where visitors could see it from all levels. Thus, you could be right next to Mantero during her performance, or above or below her. The variation of point of view allowed a true visiting of the work.

In Lisbon, at the CCB, all we got was a view from the bottom.

Obviously, a large sculpture always has this sort of limitations. Here, though, we found ourselves deep in the pit, far from the heart, whether it was "eaten" or "vomited". (1) You face a huge metal sculpture, with a tiny little person up there, moving, screaming, singing, whistling - but all this seemed, well, almost symbolic, not direct, not present enough. Problems with distance scare me, as they seem at once subjective and difficult to surmount. A couple of glasses of wine, maybe?

Something else struck me in the documentary, though. The film is a fairly simple following of the piece's evolution. And what we see, is how the process of mythologizing art comes to being. How
matter turns into narrative, turns into object, movement, symbol, how content is transfered into the "as if" zone, or the "suspended disbelief" zone. Only through discovering the process did the work gain weight for me. Which is a common paradox of much of modern art: the artist abandons you. She has a key, but she decides you are to find your own key. And it is probably because of my laziness, but I simply usually don't feel like making the effort. It seems less... fun (?) to make up my own possible stories than to discover that the idea came from a balloon, from the idea of suspension, and from the idea of an eye, and of a being, a strange being. I can still make my own story, but learning about the roots gives me more momentum when I embark on the voyage.
In the work itself, the balloon has long disappeared. I am left with a ball, a dot. Closed into itself, the art-ist lives herself out, and her art - the wonderful discovery of the inner self.
But that implies that I am already a believer (in our cynical times!). That I believe in the self as strictly inner. And, for that matter, as a true self. And, of course, that I believe in wonders.
Which, to me, is a fair definition of hermetic art.
What is shared in the artistic expreience? Notice - it seems to be the artist's experience, but it is usually described as if it were the viewer's experience. No wonder sharing is so difficult. This is confusing empathy with confusion.
It is a strong piece of work. Both artists know their crafts, they know their references. They know how to build a structure of references. Nonetheless, references aren't always enough to integrate. Not enough to create a world. Especially, when the artists think of themselves as discoverers of new territories. As combiners, joiners. Balance and rooting seem key here. They are both very delicate issues: one has to do with the specific dynamics of each area of arts, they other, with the way one uses what came before. The balance seemed wrong here - the language of fine arts, with its silent phrases and comfortably clean lines, ate the heart out of the performance. Vera Mantero became a small, funnily painted strange creature, suspended too high. At least too high for me.

(1)Vera Mantero mentions (link to Portuguese site) she doesn't really identify with the title, as she is rather "vomiting than eating" the heart. She considers her performance to be an "answer to the title". Another strange thing about the title is that in English, it is Eating Your Heart Out. The Portuguese title would literally mean "to eat the heart". It comes from a sentence by Musil that Rui Chafes mentions in an interview (link to Portuguese site): "it is necessary to eat one's mother's heart [out? - vv.] to understand the language of birds".

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

ExperimentaDesign 2005 - Aperitif

This wonderful stool, called Pata Negra (Black Leg, though it sounds way better in Portuguese), is a creation of Fernando Brízio, a young, but already quite prodigious Portuguese designer. It was presented at the ExperimentaDesign 2005 biennale here in Lisbon. More on the biennale soon.
(in the meantime, check out some nice designs, mainly Portuguese)

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Scream, matter

It's pretty clear this is not Bacon. And it's pretty clear it's close, but later, oh, so much later, more angry, desperate, less attentive to the gentle tones melancholy brings to cool you, to ease the mad desire for pain.
And please don't mention the Fontanas or Pollocks, please don't make it all dry as a conceptual artist's funeral curator. If it reaches deep enough, why transfigure every last drop of paint? Damn it, be angry, and moreover, be angry well. Make it work. Turn the anger into something.

Construct. The clean, fresh lines contain the space of lovely, furry things. The charming mirrors and subtle lights bring us to the genteel fheeling of artsyness. "Pardon the mess." "The mess? What mess?" "[making an unclear gesture with the hand, maybe as if to show a landscape] Well, you know..." "Would you look at that beautiful plant! And the humor, the dynamic humor! Tell me, where do you get these ideas of yours?" "[still somewhat confused] Ideas? Ah, yes.

You know, it's all in what you choose to see."

All works are by David Altmejd (in order of appearance: Sarah Altmejd (2003), The Builders (2005), Untitled (2005)).

Monday, October 03, 2005

Sister

Katarzyna Kardasz, Lena/sister