Michael Hutter and the sex of death

Michael Hutter is a painter, a visual artist in the classical meaning of the word. Some of his pieces seem combinations of Dali and Beksiński. Others are closer to sci-fi yet others seem games with painting conventions. Take his The Girl and Death (2005), echoing as if in a crazy mirror the romantic works of the likes of Munch or Schiele. This time, though, sexuality is present in a different, contemporary and self-ironic way:


And then, there are his erotic engravings, full of tension and strange perversions. Even the most innocently sexual scenes take place in somewhat creepy settings. The idyllic stories have dark backgrounds, as if innocence, here, was just a cover-up, a play-on-words.

(via)

Poetry, the internet, and the paradox of flash

Poetry on the internet is a delicate matter. More: poems are a delicate matter. They are fragile, require faith.
And the internet doesn't seem to have the required stillness that reading a poem might demand. But it has other advantages. And Born Magazine uses them, combining flash animation with poetry and music, turning poetry reading into a truly aesthetic experience, that is, speaking to the senses.
My problem with some of the works, as with Courtney Queeney's Origami, is that it could very easily be considered kitsch. And the problem is not with the poem, nor is it actually in the flash animation. It seems to be the combination of the two, which turns a pretty poem and a pretty animation into an all-too-sweet experience. Too much sugar.

But then, not all works are like that. Many are darker, more aggressive. Some are gloomy. But in all cases it seems the flash-maker really creates the poem. This goes further than classical "interpretation" of a play. The direct impact of sight and sound appears as much more potent than the subtile work of a poem. I need to digest a poem in order for it to have impact. But by the time I finish watching the animation, the story is over, my wave of emotions (or wavelet, in case of weaker works) has long gone, and there is no turning back. In some works you can stop and decide when to read, but the graphical side seems to take over.
But then, maybe that's the trick? I wouldn't go to a poetry page anyway, and here I am trying to go back to the poem to discover it without the all-too-clever animation. Paradox? Reverse psychology?

Technorati: net art, internet art, poetry, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Burden Fails: 220

220, F-Space, October 9, 1971: The Gallery was flooded with 12 inches of water. Three other people and I waded through the water and climbed onto 14 foot ladders, one ladder per person. After everyone was positioned, I dropped a 220 electric line into water. The piece lasted from midnight until dawn, about six hours. There was no audience except for the participants.
The piece was an experiment in what would happen. It was a kind of artificial "men in a life raft" situation. The thing I was attempting to set up was a hyped-up situation with high danger which would keep them awake, confessing, and talking, but it didn't, really. After about two-an-a-half hours everybody got really sleepy. They would kind of lean on their ladders by hooking their arms around, and go to sleep. It was surprising that anyone could sleep, but we all did intermittently. There was a circuit breaker outside the building and my wife came in at 6:00 in the morning and turned it off and opened the door. I think everyone enjoyed it in a weird sort of way. I think they had some of the feelings that I had had, you know? They felt kind of elated, like they had really done something.

- Chris Burden

quote from:

Human

Photo by Francine Gagnon.

Does anyone say he is his body, period?

What is it that makes the body such a scandal? Is it because bodies we see are not our bodies? Is it this un-identity, the fact that empathy seems like a childish dream, some sort of ridiculous belief? Is it that touching is losing my own touch? Listen to Wittgenstein: The truth is: it makes sense to say about other people that they doubt whether I am in pain; but not to say it about myself.
So there is a basic egocentrism in our thinking about the body. In English, we say "take a walk in my shoes". Compare it to the Polish version: "put yourself into my skin". (Strange, how my skin seems to define me.) Is a racer without his car still a racer?
And that's where the fear of skin appears. And the obsession of skin. Its shapes, tones, actions.
How many skins can I have, how distant is this skin from mine, what can be done with this skin. Using it to re-create identity, as a toy, a scandal, or any other pretext. And we all do it - which is scary, and nice : feel the carress. It translates the other into what's yours.
And vice versa.

NB: Here is a short overview of body in contemporary art (in French)

Technorati: photography, erotic art, fine art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Surface

Untitled (2005)

Technorati: photography, visual art, fine art, erotic art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Artistic residency

Mousonturm is organizing an artistic residency for its Plateaux Festival:

Plateaux is a supportive model for young performing artists.

Plateaux invites international artists, performers and companies in the field of experimental theatre, performance art and live art to send in conceptual proposals. The proposals should display a discrete and textually well founded aesthetic position.

Plateaux commissions a limited number of productions and invites the artists for production residencies. The artists can carry out their respective projects at Künstlerhaus MOUSONTURM in Frankfurt/Main or at one of the co-producing institutions. The productions will then be presented at the Künstlerhaus MOUSONTURM during the Plateaux festival in October 2006.

Plateaux deadline
JANUARY 14 2006 (Postmark)

Technorati: performance, performance art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Obscene Art #2: For Christ' Sex - Sarah Lucas

Chicken Knickers (1997)
"I was quite a tomboy when I was growing up, I liked hanging out with a lot of boys, and I sort of got used to their way of talking about sex. And at the same time as thinking it was funny, I suppose I was a bit aware that it also applied to
me, and I've always had those two attitudes."
We Do it With Love
"I don't think I have a problem with having more than one view about it at once."


The Stinker (2003)

Got a Salmon on (Prawn) (1994)
Recently you could buy it at Artangel for under 20 000€...



The Kiss (2003)

"I first started smoking when I was nine. And I first started trying to make something out of cigarettes because I like to use relevant kind of materials. I've got these cigarettes around so why not use them. There is this obsessive activity of me sticking all these cigarettes on the sculptures, and obsessive activity could be viewed as a form of masturbation."

Christ You Know it Ain't Easy (2003)
(link to anarticle about the exhibition here)

Beer Can Penis (1999)

Beer/Cake (2001)

And a little more.

Obscene Art #1: Cutting off the penis

The Polish events, which just keep getting worse and worse, are an inspiration to write about body art and every possible controversial art form I can think of. For now, enjoy some pictures of Paul McCarthy's work:
Here's a free translation of a (fragment of a) recent post about McCarthy's last London show by my friend LunettesRouges:

In a huge abandoned warehouse, models of pirate ships and a few remains of the filming, some heads, arms, swords. This is where Paul McCarthy and his son Damon spent a month filming pirate scenes that are now projected on two sets of screens. It is grotesque, hilarious, carnavalesque, obscene, unsettling, funny, terrifying, violent, perverted, orgiastic, gore, gargantuan. The music is obsessive, deafening. The actors scream, shout, laugh, fight. It's Hollywood and Disney gone amok, perverted, parodied. The pirates attack a village, they kill, rape, torture the prisonners (Abu Ghraib, of course), they sell the girls at auctions. The blood is naturally ketchup, the cut off members are naturally made of plastic, and nothing is done to hide the cameramen or the dummies.

It's a deformed reality, a repulsive attraction, and, if you don't leave disgusted after five minutes, it's a mind-twisting experience.

(all this off-site from the Whitechapel Gallery)

And here's an article from the Guardian, in case you want to know more about the man.
Oh, and since it's the right season. Here's a holiday picture, courtesy the very special mind of Paul McCarthy:
"I am not interested in art being a cure-all." - Paul McCarthy

More:

Post Guernica now!

Art has power. Here is how much:

John T. Unger, an artist and longtime commenter on Collision Detection, recently announced an intriguing art project called "American Guernica: A Call for Guerilla Public Art". He's calling upon artists nationwide to post replicas of Guernica, Picasso's famous antiwar painting, on billboards and the sides of buildings(...).

Why Guernica? Because Picasso intended it to depict the horrors and insanity of war, particularly the human destruction wreaked by bombings. Guernica caused a stir when it was unveiled back in 1937, and apparently it still does. John says his inspiration for the project came from an Iraq-related incident, as detailed by Wikipedia:

A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room ... On February 5, 2003, a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations. On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Diplomats, however, told journalists that the Bush Administration leaned on UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other U.S. diplomats argued for war on Iraq.

As John writes, "If the painting intimidates warmongers into covering it, then why not make sure that it goes up in as many public spaces as possible?"

Well, I don't have the resources to put one up on a billboard, but at least virtually, I make my statement, and encourage others to do the same. And, scarily enough, although in this case I might not physically be in America, it really doesn't make much of a difference, does it?
(via)

Technorati: internet art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Spiral Jetty up close

If you look from a distance,

From Rozel Point, the Jetty is just a doodle on the landscape. It is art as ornament, Smithson-made bling-bling for Mother Nature.
(- Tyler Green)

But if you come up close,

You also begin to see that the entropy at work here at Spiral Jetty is not all natural. There is evidence all around that people are using the site in ways that will lead to its disintegration over time. People (probably men based on the expressionistic traces left) have pissed all over the work--on the sides of the boulders, on the top of the jetty, and (most prominently) right at the tip of the spiral--staining the white salt yellow. There are several piles of shit on the jetty and on the hard salt surface around the piece. At the tip of the jetty someone has left what was probably once a small sculpture made of modeling clay. It's now disintegrated into a puddle of red, blue, yellow, and green mush that looks like a melting scoop of Superman ice cream. There are cigarette butts on the jetty and empty cans at its base.
(- Todd Gibson)

Couldn't we consider this part of the artwork? Here is a comment by the photographer who took the above picture, Chas Bowie.

...when I was there making the afore-linked photo, previous visitors had piled a collection of rocks taken from various points on the jetty and piled them at the tip of the line, creating a sort of nipple at the end, which stacked to about a foot higher than the rest of the jetty. I couldn't imagine caring enough about the Jetty to drive all the way there, only to add your own stupid little touch at the end. It reminded me of the old Steve Martin bit in which he travels to France, and describes basking in the awe of a glorious cathedral, drinking in the stained glass windows and architecture—only to pull at a can of spray paint to leave a dopey tag behind. Needless to say, I dismantled the distracting little pile (those rocks are indeed heavy).

I'm not sure it's that simple. The very way the work was made, its placing, context, character, all incite a dialogue. We are out of the museum here, and out of the socially binding cultural context of "art". And that was one of the points Smithson seemed to be making - introducing human intervention into a domain where normally it wouldn't be considered appropriate, at least not as an artistic act. One could say: leave the beautiful Salt Lake alone. It doesn't need your silly, megalomaniacal twister.

Technorati: landart, land art, art installation, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Figure, out

Technorati: painting, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Art-of-Focus

Michael Takeo Madruger's net art works on Turbulence are calm, seemingly monotonous. They fear focus as dates fear the morning - it takes away the clarity of feel. Some of them are quite political, others personal, all of them seem to play with our ability to see - or rather, to almost see. (there is a wonderful Portuguese verb for that - "vislumbrar" - to appear in an unclear way). Re_collection is one of them, a short piece where "nothing" actually means a lot, where every pixel fights for expression - until they manage. Don't waste too much time reading the project description - at least not before you see it.

Technorati: digital art, internet art, net art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Another Polish controversial art scandal

I have never seen the Polish performance group Suka Off live. Which means I am not a very comptent person when it comes to judging their shows.
But several influential people in Poland recently decided that it really doesn't matter. If you know the story, or have seen a picture or two, you basically can decide if something is respectable, or, as has been in the case of Suka Off, if it's just "disgusting pornography" and should be burned down, destroyed, killed and rot in hell, where it belongs. It all started with an article in the tabloid Fakt, which stated "They call this disgusting stuff art!" and "This is pure pornography!". The journalist didn't see the show - but saw the pictures. Then, a politician read the article, and decided it was time to do something about it. He didn't see the show, only read the article. And he put the case to court, declaring it a case of "distribution of pornography" (illegal in Poland). Some other politicians felt the need to confirm the hienous nature of the show. A few old, renowned directors said how horrible this was. One of them, Hanuszkiewicz, used to make scandals himself, putting motorbikes in the National Theater (in the middle of the comunist era!), and such. Now he's old and his productions are aweful - but he is the perfect "judge" of the situation.

The next day after the original article appeared, Suka Off got dished from the program of an alternative theater festival. Its director now says it was for "financial reasons".
I will not write about the originality of the show, or the lack of it, for that matter. I don't know much more than a few descriptions (imitating fucking, pissing, hurting oneself). I like the pictures, though have seen not-too-different ones before. It could be as good or as bad as anything, but damn it, it's there, and it's the 21st century or so they say, and Poland looks like a joke. A sad joke.
Suka Off have self-censored their pretty site as a form of protest. (you can see it through here though - in Polish)

NB: It's amazing how short-lived people's memory of live (performing) art is. And to some extent, it is natural, since they really did not see the Abramovićs, the Gina Panes, Chris Burdens, or the viennese actionists. Is that another reason why history repeats itself? Because it's not film?

Technorati: performance, performance art, sex, erotic art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Portrait (feeling of the day)

Decomposition, Tomasz Żołnierek (2005?)

Technorati: photography, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Bad gender art?

I've been thinking about my last post. What do I actually think of this feminist art revival? The question is: can we judge it as good or bad art? Why does it appear to be an ethical and not aesthetic choice? I mean, say I appreciate this type of art. Could I still consider one of these works bad art? The critics, all of them, don't seem to give me that choice: either you are avant-garde and therefore love it, or have another system of values which disqualifies this art altogether. This is a very irritating phenomenon that also happens in other forms of artistic expression where important life values are at stake. It is as if the issues were so important, the art part of art is nearly irrelevant. That's a pity - because the quality of a work not only goes beyond its concept (that's trivial), but also engages the spectator in a specific way. This engagement, this relationship, is what I might call quality, and it is what seems to matter no less than the "intention" or "concept" or so. The spectator could be a hypothetical one, but he is still part of the works dialogical being, so to speak. From the works shown below, I find Kozyra's piece stronger than Żebrowska's, because it goes deeper, on more levels, and it attracts me aesthetically, whereas Żebrowska's work, not for the first time, I find discomforting, almost unappealing, as in - weak. I can very well imagine a cross, a penis, and some other forms sliding out of a vagina, and they would seem to "work" - but there is something just too simple about it, naive, one-sided. Kozyra, on the other hand, manages (once again) to keep the balance in her ambiguity. She confuses us, makes us shake our heads, and then answer, and then ask again. And it's this constant coming back to a question I particularly appreciate.
And yet, once again I ask: is this sort of art fair?

Technorati: performance, sex, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Sex, Art, Feminism and national culture

The Gallery of Polish 20th-Century Art at the Krakow National Museum just reopened (Polish link) with a brand new look. (Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to the Museum's website, which still seems like an archaeological exhibit rather than an important European venue and isn't even translated into English)
Among the various new elements, presence of the "youngest" generation is quite a novelty, as so far anyone born after 1939 and/or using any other means than oil on canvas or marble wasn't welcome at national (permanent) exhibitions.
This wasn't an easy step. Poland has a problem with tradition. It is defined through culture, which is defined through art, and thus artists are turned into monuments, and desired dead or at least "understandable", i.e., consistent with what had already happened before in art and (Polish) history. Recently, though, the Polish art world seems to be slowly waking up from the romantic dream of our "great forefathers", to discover that the artists haven't been sleeping, and their creations are as rich and diversified as pretty much anywhere else in the bad, bad, commercialized and rotten world we live in.
No awakening would be real without a few controversies. One of the major ones in Poland are women artists speaking of the female condition, graphically, shockingly, without the customary shyness or estheticizing. Sex is there, gender plays funny games, culture meets nature just to fight it till death over who we are, and how.
I found an interesting article by Paweł Leszkowicz about this new generation of Polish women artists. Some of it I agree with, some of it is speculation or stretching the limits of interpretation, but it's an interesting look at an important voice in the contemporary discussion about sex, gender and identity. As to the affirmation that "the critical violations of women’s art expose the violence of sexual inequality hidden under layers of democratic jargon and religion-turned-ideology", hopefuly this reinvented gallery at the Krakow National Museum will be an important step in proving, or rather making, this statement a false one.

Alicja Żebrowska, Original Sin (still) (1994)


Katarzyna Kozyra, Bonds of Blood (1999)

(you can find more about contemporary Polish feminist art here and here)

Technorati: erotic art, sex, photography, installation, art installation, visual art, performance art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Wodiczko in Warsaw

We have to see the relationship between what is being said and how it’s being transmitted. For people to open up and come closer to those who are conveying difficult truths, it may be easier through a spectacular project. So there is a function of the spectacular here, an artifice that is more acceptable because of its aesthetic quality.
- Krzysztof Wodiczko

The Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko rarely exhibits in Poland. Actually, I believe his projection at the famous Zacheta national gallery was his second appearance in Poland (he hasn't been living in Poland for a while now).
Here is a report I received from my mother (yes, my mom):

I think it was an excellent piece of work. Cariatides - young women holding up the building - were created by a projection of film on the Gallery pillars. And they talk, they talk about the violence of men towards them. Without pathos, without sentimentalism. Some women are older, some younger, some sob, other are rather cold. The projection shows them in pairs, or at times the same woman is projected on both pillars. Each of these couples has a dramatic form of expression, they were directed, but not too much, there is a rhythm in what they say, sometimes the words of one woman are a comment to the words of another. There is no fix rule, nothing is repeated, the whole thing lasts 20 minutes.
But it's a pity, a great pity that it wasn't created in a more busy place, one that would be seen from the crowded bus stops, or at some train station; the formal idea were the Cariatides and that's where the choice of the Zacheta building came from [it's a neo-classical building with large columns in front of it], but this way the main objective of the showing is putting it in Wodiczko's portfolio and the comments of critics, and this way the work becomes accompanied by some falsehood. Because if the final filmed monologue is an appeal to women - not being able to count on help from outside - to be careful and not raise their sons as future bastards, as this is the only thing they can do and this is the only chance for a change in the next generation; so if this is the message of the work, then if it is seen by a group of +-300 people, in their vast majority amators of contemporary art, then doesn't the mountain give birth to a mouse?


NB: Unfortunately I don't have any images of the Zacheta event. The pictures are from Wodiczko's previous initiatives. Here is an interesting interview with the artist.

Technorati: visual art, fine art, installation, art installation, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Joints: The meeting of bodies

Gneborg.org

(via)

Technorati: photography, art, contemporary art, vvoi

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)

----

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.

Technorati: visual art, art installation, installation, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Little fish jumpin'

Vvoi, Urban Fish (2004)

Technorati: photography, installation, art installation, art, contemporary art, vvoi

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