Sunday post 10/19/2008

Francis Alÿs

Highlight an artist of interest that relates to your work. Provide the following information:



b. 1959, Antwerp, Belgium

Francis Alÿs was born in 1959 in Antwerp, Belgium. He attended the Institut Supérieur d'Architecture Saint-Luc in Tournai, Belgium, from 1978 to 1983 and the Instituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice from 1983 to 1986, where he received a master's degree in urbanism with a thesis on the presence of animals in medieval and Renaissance-era European cities. After graduation, he moved to Mexico City, where he worked in the workshop of the weaver Jacobo Islas Mendoza in collaboration with Felipe Sanabria. The abundant presence of street animals in that city inspired the early work The Collector (1991–92), in which the artist "walked" a magnetized sculptural model of an animal through the city, extracting random metal detritus from the street. The sculpture, along with photographic documentation of its use, was exhibited in Alÿs's second solo exhibition, at the Galería Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City in 1992.

Many of Alÿs's subsequent works examined the act of walking through an urban environment. The Leak (1995) consisted of a walk through Ghent with a punctured can of paint, which left a trail behind him. In Paradox of Praxis (1997), he pushed a block of ice through Mexico City until it had completely melted away. His work also developed a political edge; in Patriotic Tales (1997), he led a flock of sheep into the Zocalo, the central square of Mexico City, in reference to the bureaucrats who authored the suppression of a protest there in 1968. For the photographic series Sleepers (1999), he took photographs of animals and homeless people sleeping on the street. In his recent project When Faith Moves Mountains (2002), which was exhibited at the Bienal Iberoamericana de Lima in 2002, his focus shifted from the urban experience to notions of collective myth making: five hundred volunteers used shovels to move a sand dune four inches from its original location.

Alÿs has had solo exhibitions at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City (1997), Musée Picasso in Antibes (2001), Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut (2002), and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (Projects 76, 2002), among other venues. In 1999, he produced a web project for the Dia Center for the Arts in New York. His work has also appeared in the Bienal de La Habana (1994), Bienal de Arte Tridimensional in Mexico City (1997), Bienal Barro de Am�rica in Caracas (1998), Melbourne International Biennial (1999), Mexico City: An Exhibition about the Exchange Rate of Bodies and Values at P.S. 1 in New York (2002), and Moving Pictures at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2003). Alÿs was a finalist for the Guggenheim Museum's 2002 Hugo Boss Prize. He continues to live and work in Mexico City.
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- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork






- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.postmedia.net/alys/interview.htm

- link to gallery representing artist
http://www.davidzwirner.com/

- artist website
http://www.francisalys.com/

Thursday post 10/16/08

Thoughts of interest – Week in review

- Answer the following questions:

* Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?
Simen Johan took a look at my work this week. He liked the visuals that I am working with now, but suggested to be sure to further exploring other metaphores other than water just to make sure that it is the correct expression. Other than that he really liked where my photos were going at the beginning of the sememster last Fall LOL!

* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
To have someone look at old unexplored work that got left behind and show interest.
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Wrap some stuff up.
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
Shot more footage read more
* What has been an artistic failure this week?
Not being 100% well enough to drown my self some more.
* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
That I might just figure out where this is all going.
* If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
See #1
- Post 1 picture, video, etc. of your choice

Sunday post 10/12/2008

Ann Hamilton
- Artist Biography and brief explanation of work (can use quotes from critics or galleries)
Bio-
Ann Hamilton was born in 1956 in Lima, Ohio. She trained in textile design at the University of Kansas, and later received an MFA from Yale University. While her degree is in sculpture, textiles and fabric have continued to be an important part of her work, which includes installations, photographs, videos, performances, and objects. For example, following graduation she made “Toothpick Suit,” for which she layered thousands of toothpicks in porcupine fashion along a suit of clothes that she then wore and photographed. Hamilton’s sensual installations often combine evocative soundtracks with cloth, filmed footage, organic material, and objects such as tables. She is as interested in verbal and written language as she is in the visual, and sees the two as related and interchangeable. In recent work, she has experimented with exchanging one sense organ for another—the mouth and fingers, for example, become like an eye with the addition of miniature pinhole cameras. In 1993, she won a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. As the 1999 American representative at the Venice Biennale, she addressed topics of slavery and oppression in American society with an installation that used walls embossed with Braille. The embossed Braille caught a dazzling red powder as it slid down from above, literally making language visible. After teaching at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 1985 to 1991, she returned to Ohio, where she lives and works.







- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/hamilton/clip1.html
- link to gallery representing artist
SeanKelly Gallery: http://www.skny.com/
- artist website
http://www.annhamiltonstudio.com/

Thursday post 10/09/08

Thursday Entry:

Thoughts of interest – Week in review

- Answer the following questions:

* Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?
NO, but someone will on later on today.
* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
I watched Tounges Untied by Marlon Riggs
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Keep shooting and maybe find a large bath tub 6ft long? Scout locations for 1 project
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
Did test shots for next project set up for interview exercise/possible project
* What has been an artistic failure this week?

* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
That I may have something to say, an idea a storyboard….wow!
* If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
NA
- Post 1 picture, video, etc. of your choice

Pitts Grad Research Assignment: Discussion Questions on Article or Essay

This is a text also taken from "The Friendliest Black Artist in America."
This article is by Kristine Stiles entitled "Thunderbird Immolation: Burning Racism."


Stiles, Kristine. William Pope. L : The Friendliest Black Artist in America. By Mark H. Bessire. New York: MIT P, 2002.


I have chosen this text in effort to reign in t some semblance of order my research regiem. I am genuinely interested in reading this text as I honestly believe it to inform my present direction and studio practice.

1. I find this a just one fascinating tale of a streets performer, William Pope L. I wonder at the courage to take "public art" to such a degree both with Thunderbird and the crawls and other such pieces. Where does this sort of art situate currently in the "art world?"
I do not really know where such a performative type of engagement finds a home in the art world right now. This is the discussion I would like to have. Are there any other artist who engage on the same sort of resonant levels or are they still fringe type artist.
2. How does the art of william Pope L. fit into the idea of institutional critique? Does it? What is your take on institutional criticism.
It seems like it does not if the term institutional critique is only looking at the art world. But does it, that's what I am asking. And also is William Pope L. also critiquing in this piece specificly the art world by staging it in fron of 420 west broadway? Is it a double stab? I think obviously so but when I read writers write about such a cult personality I begin to wonder if what I am reading is an aesthicization of the event. I don't know what do you think? My mind has not quite grown so large to grasp the yellow in the piece. I'm sure it is there for a reason. If anything that is the only thing I don't understand. The rest is just powerful.

Sunday post 10/05/2008

Jillian Mcdonald
- Artist Biography and brief explanation of work (can use quotes from critics or galleries)
Bio-
Jillian Mcdonald is a Canadian artist, currently living in New York. She is Associate Professor of Fine Art at Pace University, where she also curates and co-directs the Pace Digital Gallery. Originally from Winnipeg, she dreams of the snow-covered prairie.

Recent solo shows and projects include Moti Hasson Gallery and Jack the Pelican Presents in New York; Third Avenue Gallery in Vancouver; The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; Third Avenue Gallery in Chicago; 1708 Gallery in Richmond, Virginia; vertexList Gallery and ArtMoving Projects in Brooklyn; TPW (presented at The Drake Hotel) and YYZ in Toronto; Video Pool in Winnipeg; and Edge Media in Newfoundland. Group exhibitions and festivals featuring her work include The Edith Russ Haus for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany, The Krannert Museum in Illinois; MMOCA in Wisconsin, The Whitney Museum's Artport, Year Zero One in Toronto, Manifestation d'Art Internationale de Québec, 404 International Festival of Electronic Art in Argentina, La Sala Naranja in Spain, The Sundance Online Film Festival in Utah, The Cleveland International Performance Art Festival, La Biennale de Montréal, ISEA 2004 in Estonia, and the Centre d’Art Contemporain de Basse-Normandie in France.

Mcdonald received grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, Soil New Media, Turbulence, The Gunk Foundation, NYSCA, The Experimental Television Center, Thirdplace.org, and Pace University. She lectures regularly in North America and Europe about her work and attends numerous residencies including The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Program and Harvestworks in New York; DAIMON, Sagamie, and La Chambre Blanche in Québec; CFAT in Halifax; Em-Media in Calgary; and The Western Front in Vancouver. She is a 2008 resident at The Headlands Center for the Arts in California and a 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Video Fellow.

Mcdonald's work is featured and reviewed in The New York Times, Flash Art, Art Papers, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, and The Village Voice, among others. A discussion of Me and Billy Bob appears in Stalking, a book by Bran Nicol.

Recently she discovered playing keyboard, backpacking, rock climbing, cycling, and running half marathons with Beckley Roberts. In 2007 she ran her first marathon in Atlanta, GA. Some of her favourite people are strangers.

Artist statement-

My work in video, web art, and public intervention is often performative and relational.
In my recent videos, I am interested in the American cult of celebrity, the fantasy that buoys extreme fandom, and the mechanisms of fear as entertainment at work in horror films. I am interested in the ways in which film genres affect their audiences, and in the fan sub-cultures that fuel them. The presence of my image in this work serves not as a self-portrait, but as a projection of universal emotions such as desire or fear. Screen Kiss features romantic scenes from Hollywood films starring popular actors into which I insert my image and manipulate the existing narrative in a soft critique of celebrity obsession. In Screaming, I trespass digitally into popular horror films such as The Shining and Alien, screaming at the monsters to scare them away or blow them to smithereens. Zombie Loop is a two-channel video in which projections on two opposing walls position the viewer in the center of a visual loop, wherein a gruesome zombie endlessly pursues a running survivor. On screen, I play both zombie and survivor.

Hollywood films and their fans also inspire my web-based artworks. Snow Stories is a data-driven story engine where visitors' written stories are translated into audio-visual stories culled rom a database of film clips; Me and Billy Bob documents an ongoing obsession with actor Billy Bob Thornton and sincerely participates in his online fan culture. Caitlin Jones, of Rhizome, wrote that my "work is distinct from many other artists also concerned with the cinematic. Not simply interested in issues of narrative, time, space, or the like, Mcdonald looks specifically at the genres romance and horror and how these constructions become a part of our own experiences" (Rhizome, Oct 8, 2007).

In public works, I engage an audience comprised of a very general public that is not necessarily expecting art or gathered in established arts venues. I interrupt the flow of daily public exchange, inviting strangers into momentary relationships. I engage with passersby as a means of orchestrating activities away from their usual context and my audience is made up of willing and chosen participants. Zombies in Condoland is an upcoming large-scale piece where passersby are invited to play a part in the spectacle of a horror film shoot: instantly cast as actors complete with makeup, costumes, lights, camera, and action scenes. In Horror Makeup, I apply makeup on a daily subway commute, transforming myself into a zombie rather than beautifying my face. With a base largely made up of strangers, I shampoo hair in a salon in Shampoo, offer free non-professional advice in Advice Lounge, radically transform clothing in Tailor Made, bring houseplants into private homes in House Plant, sew protective messages in participants' garments in Seams, and borrow personal objects for a month in Borrowed Things. Sylvie Fortin (Art Papers magazine, Sept / Oct 2005) writes of my practice, "relationships are her medium, fleeting encounters her material".
- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork





- a link to an interview with the artist or a review
http://www.jillianmcdonald.net/press/kasprzak_transmedia.jpg
- link to gallery representing artist
http://csis.pace.edu/digitalgallery/index.html- curator
- artist website
http://www.jillianmcdonald.net/

Thursday post 10/02/08

Thoughts of interest – Week in review

- Answer the following questions:

* Did anyone critique your work this week? If so, what were their impressions?
No- no actually some one did. They felt like my installation experiment was interesting and I should keep testing sites and configurations. I should also investigate my symbols more rigorously.
* What was the most motivational or creative moment of the past week?
Finally getting to read something I've been waiting to read for a while. "The Friendliest Black Artist in America"
* What do you want to achieve in next week's studio practice?
Shoot a new segment and possibly more once I figure out some angles.
* What did you achieve in your studio this past week?
A new idea perhaps writing a lot, reading some....
* What has been an artistic failure this week?
not doing as much Work work as I want to
* What was the most profound thought in relation to your practice this week?
I need more time-I ned more control over my time, I need to read more.
* If there was a visiting artist this week, what is your impression of their work and process in relation to your own?
no
- Post 1 picture, video, etc. of your choice