Visitation Station

VCU DEPARTMENT OF SCULPTURE + EXTENDED MEDIA VISITING ARTISTS: SPRING 2008

Teresita Fernández
lecture: Tuesday, February 12 at 5:30 pm
VCU Grace Harris Hall,
Harris Auditorium
1015 Floyd Ave.

Teresita Fernández, [MFA, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1992] was born in 1968 in Miami, Florida and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions internationally and abroad at sites including the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Site Santa Fe, New Mexico, Castello di Rivoli, Torino, Italy, the Witte de With in Rotterdam, and the Miami Art Museum.


Fernándezis the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards both in the U.S. and abroad, including the 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a 2003 Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 1999 Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, and she has had residencies in Japan, Italy, and at ArtPace in San Antonio. Most importantly - she has an installation of new work on view at Reynold's Gallery this month.

from:
lehmannmaupin
grandarts
macfound.org
bio


Connie Butler
lecture: Wednesday, February 27
5:00 pm VCU Student Commons Theater
907 Floyd Ave

Connie Butler is the Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, a position she has held since February of 2006. From 1996-2006, she was Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Butler is the curator of WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, an international survey of feminist art which opened at MOCA in Los Angeles on March 4, 2007, and which will travel to The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY and The Vancouver Art Gallery. A selection of Connie Butler’s previous exhibitions at MOCA include Robert Smithson, September 2004, Willem deKooning: Tracing the Figure, 2002, Flight Patterns, 2000, and Afterimage: Drawing through Process, 1999.

She is currently working on a monographic exhibition of the South African artist Marlene Dumas, which will be co-organized by MOCA Los Angeles and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Connie Butler completed graduate work in art history at Berkeley in 1987 and, in 1996, did further graduate studies in the PhD program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Butler has taught and lectured extensively and contributed to publications including Art + Text, Parkett and Art Journal.


from:
http://www.moca.org/wack/?p=273
http://www.frieze.com/feature_single.asp?f=1235 http://www.laweekly.com/general/features/connie-butler/174/

Please Note - the webmaster here felt that WACK exhibition at the Women's Museum in Washington DC was very disappointing. It was expensive, offered minimal discounts and a condensed version of the LA exhibition. The catalogue offered a much richer variety of work than the D.C. version of the show.

Su-Mei Tse
Lecture: March 27
(time, location TBA)

Metaphors of futility and longing mark Su-Mei Tse's (b.1973) art works with a young romantic sensibility. This Luxembourg-based artist has produced an eclectic body of work (violin, installation, photography, and sculpture) much of which relies on performance. Initially trained as a classical cellist, Tse still has a fondness for playing and strives to sensitize the audience to the complexities of sound.

from
renaissancesociety
ps1.org
nytimes
modernamuseet


for more information visit this link
Department of Sculpture + Extended Media
(804) 828-7176

Langdon Graves @ ADA

An overview of Langdon Grave's current installation at ADA.

I've been following Langdon's work for a number of years. She has a provocative installation of sculpture and drawings on Broad Street at the moment. Roy Proctor wrote a feature on her work which can be read here. The show closes on November 11 - so check it out!

Nathan Tersteeg and Charles Yuen each have solo shows up that are a great counter to Langdon's new work.

a PREVIEW of Exposition of Self

Harry Kollatz and David Bruce discuss art, light and urban planning
mid-installation in Plant Zero's Project Space Gallery.

Harry and I spent some time at 220 Hull St yesterday viewing the proposed Master Plans for the city of Richmond. If only making these ideas manifest were as easy as taking a marker to paper...

Still - it was exciting to see so many passionate proposals put forth by the citizens of Richmond. Richard Bland was there with an ancient map of the city. His proposal includes a light rail system that would run the length of Grace Street between the two VCU campuses. It could be a great solution to the growing problems of urban transit.

We were also able to try out the newest version of the Plant Zero Cafe and we ran into a number of people we don't see as frequently during the summer. People we know are either buried in their studios are away on holiday. Andrew Havenhand was there and announced that he and Lucinda will both be teaching in Syracuse next year! It's that time of year. Everyone is gearing up for the new season.

We also met David Bruce who is finishing up an ambitious installation in the Project Space at Plant Zero. David also has experience as an urban planner and his installation is certainly the best use of space I've witnessed in the Project Space. His talent and vision are evident here. It is unfortunate he couldn't participate more fully in the master plan meetings next door since he has the voice of experience. His use of light and space of this industrial structure is elegant and succinct. It will be interesting viewing the work in artificial light on Friday when there will also be live music and the energy of a Friday night.

"Exposition of Self"* will open on Friday, July 27 from 6-9pm in the Project Space Gallery of Plant Zero. Located at 4 E. Fourth St., off Hull St in the Manchester District of Richmond. The installation runs through August 21 and is open daily. For more info one can visit any of the links above.

*We are both a little baffled by the title of this installation but as we've both been struggling with matters of public and private art and self of late - perhaps it's just us...

Chelsea in the snow and sleet

I met a painter from Alaska as I exited the 23rd St subway this morning. Joan and I made our way across Chelsea to 24th St and witnessed some very compelling art. I loved this installation of drawing, photography and sculpture. Maybe it was so effective because the artist lives in a place with real winter snowfall. It mirrored the streets in many ways and kept our attention for much longer than most anything else.

We also loved the William Wylie show at Charles Cowles Gallery. This installation of painting, drawing and assemblage work didn't grab me as much as his last show there but it was still warm and wonderful and funny and a nice respite from the sleet. I've decided that I prefer his work on paper or slate more than his work on canvas. His large paintings feel more laborious and lack the compression of the smaller work. That's not to say I don't enjoy many of his large canvases - but in general I prefer the smaller stuff.


above: William Wylie assemblage, Charles Cowles Gallery, Chelsea

Ready, set, go

I've missed writing, reading, surfing... blogging in general. We've been busy doing other things.
Last night we covered most of the art roundtable between Solvent Space, Plant Zero, Artspace and the Anderson Gallery. Donato's show was very inspiring. I am looking forward to spending some time with the show during the next month. In the meantime Ledelle Moe has shows at 1708 and Reynolds and the Reynold's show is coming down at the end of Feb. I LOVE HER WORK. If your are curious you can see images of her large installation on the 1708 blog.

This weekend I've been transitioning our guest quarters from the home of Mom to the place newcomers can land before they move on to the next thing. A young artist from Nashville is looking at it this morning. She's in town working on an HBO project.

Tomorrow I'll be at a long brainstorming meeting at 1708. Monday I leave for Madrid!

Art in Auvillar and other distractions

This afternoon I realized I haven't seen my passport since Derek and I went to Toulouse on Wednesday. Not good... particularly since I am trying to get out of town and see some of the region before this gig comes to an end.

I tore though my atelier and bedroom. No luck.
Sometimes a change of locale can rattle the chains of that get in the way of my functioning memory so I left for France's vernissage up in the village at the A7 galleri. Her wooden sculptures were my favorite work in this collective exhibition of three floors and numerous styles and combinations of media and motif. The galleri was an amazing facility all in all and I could see great potiential there. It is in the middle of the village and appears to have had some sort of educational purpose at one point. As I was leaving to check out the other galleries near les halles the gallerist Olivier invited me to have dinner with the artists afterwards which was very nice.

My favorite aspect of the evening was a young performance group that commandeered les halles with lights and props. Their performance was magical and held my attention even though I could understand little of the dialogue. Derek and I left afterwards and as we walked down the steep hill to le port I confessed I was really rattled over the loss of my passport.
After we made it back down the hill I decided to look one more time in my atelier before hitting the hay. As I looked my mobile rang and it was the Saarinens! They were finally free for the evening and wondered if it was too late to come by the studio for a look at my work! It proved to be a wonderful, beneficial distraction since they told me there was an American consulate in Toulouse (news to me!) and that is where I should go to report and get another passport if it didn't turn up. We talked about their time in Auvillar and they asked some interesting questions about the new work I am doing.

My passport is still M.I.A. but at least I feel calmer about it and hope that if I sleep on the thing will turn up tomorrow.

Yesterday (Jeudi 1708 Aout 2007) at 21 heures we attended an exceptional Recital de Piano at Eglise Saint-Pierre. Katia Bronska performed selections from Bach, Mozart, Schubert and Chopin under the sacred rafters of this intimate cathedral on the Pyrenees. Her technical excellence was evident in her ability to convey rich and electrifying emotion in this sublime setting. My favorite selections of the evening were two Chopin Nocturnes.



Top and Middle: Performance Group in Auvillar doing their song and dance at Les Halles.

Bottom: France Alvin at the Collective Exhibition at A7 Gallery in Auvillar.

Art Victimized Once Again

Is this the next step? In early times they'd just chop off the heads of those with power as documented in the painting of Marie Antoinette's head rolling into a basket in a museum in the Marais.

Now it seems the disgrace of disfigurement is more in vogue. It disturbs me. I enjoy watching the grafitti artists perform on the temporary walls of the Palais de Tokyo but when they piss on the art it makes all of their work illegitimate for me.

The Whitney Biennial: DAY for NIGHT

ANGELA STRASSHEIM
Untitled, 2004 C-print
40 "x 30 "
courtesy Marvelli Gallery, NYC

I wish I could say that this Biennial did half as much for me as Angelina's, the tea room described in the Night and Day post made earlier this year. Valerie, a New York artist I've followed since her student days told us, "Well, you 've got to see it to hate it..."

The problem with the Biennial this year is that most of it was so forgettable I can't remember it well enough to muster up the emotion of hatred. I do remember one piece that was so bad I know it would have received an automatic F if it were turned in from any of my art or design students.

The most memorable piece was the WRONG GALLERY installtion which many museum goers missed since it could only be accessed from the permanent collection on the fifth floor of the Whitney. I loved wandering through Calder's "Circus" on the way and then also discovered an amazing Milton Avery painting of the Seine which I'd never seen before.

The Wrong Gallery consisted of an installation of art depicting evil doers and angels; titled DOWN BY LAW, something I can relate to in my own work. It includes painting, sculure, assemblage, conceptual work, etc by more than forty artists and included several artworks from the Whitney's permanent collection.

I pleasantly surprised to discover Angela Strassheim's work included in the mostly forgettable Biennial. She had a studio in the 23rd St. loft with Susann and I. I knew she was very talented, she was working on very interesting projects and then when I learned she was headed to Yale it was obvious she would have a real career. Her work was a highlight of this hodge podge collection.

Ron Mueck at the Foundation Cartier

Today is the last day of the Australian artist Ron Mueck's installation at the Foundation Cartier. I wish I could say that I had become accustomed to waiting in long ques since my arrival in Paris. Lets just say I have accepted it as part of the process of looking at art here... it just means that I expect more when I finally get past the ticket box and security check points.

Yesterday Mueck tested these expectations since we began our walk to Montparnasse in the fitful late winter rain typical of Paris in February. There were two pieces in the exhibition that made it worth the rain and the wait... extraordinary works that made me realize what the fuss has been about. I believe Mueck had a piece in the Whitney Biennial several years ago. That work, also seen in the Melancholy exhibition at the Grand Palais, has a larger than life illustrative quality common in the film industry which makes sense since that is where he got his start. What hasn't made sense to me until this exhibition is why I his work was getting so much attention in the art world. Photography was forbidden at the Foundation Cartier so I have included the image above from the Venice Biennial to illustrate Mueck's ability to manipulate perception and scale.

At its best the work seems as if the figures are living, breathing creatures on a scale that tests perception. There is a piece of a giant scaled middle aged woman in bed, looking out the glass walls of the gallery. The sheets of her bed are monumental, her skin luminous, yet careworn. Mueck has the eye of Ingres when tacking skin tone and its subtlies. I think this is the quality that impresses me most. Its unnerving.

The other work that blew me away was about the size of two malnourished felines laying side by side - but it was a human couple spooning, both gazing into the distance, half dressed on a flat white pedestal. As we gazed upon this image it seemed as if they were about to stretch the muscles and roll over...the same lumious quality to their skin and lips, the bottom of their feet...it was an amazing work.

The other three works on view didn't come close to comparing to these two. They has a doll like illustrative quality that reminded me of Duane Hanson or Bill Nelson... but less successful.

The Foundation Cartier is located in Montparnasse on Boulevard Raspail near Cemetrary Montparnasse the famous cafe Le Dome where Simone and Sartre once held court. It's worth a visit if you are in the 14th Ar and need a 21st C art fix to balance the beauty of the 19th C architecture. The foundation is a glass and steel structure with an interior court yard past its glass facade. The structure pays great homage to the Parisians love of trees and has built around them. They are literally part of the design and it is quite remarkable.

Open Studio on 23rd St

Susann Whittier, Theodora Merry, Langdon Graves and I presented an Open Studio this weekend in our 23rd St Space in preparation for the moving and transition that will be occurring soon. Susann and Langdon are in grad school limbo studio wise and Theodora and I are on the lookout for another space since the development of this block is inevitable with the Market now open and the parking lot gleaming beneath my windows.

I loved the thirteen years I spent working on Fulton Hill but I can't move into another space owned by developer or a space within the path of a developer. Moving a studio is exhausting, expensive and disruptive to my creative process. Picasso managed to avoid this issue by putting a padlock on his door when he moved into another atelier. He left whatever inventory may be left there for his estate and the French Goverment to squabble over after he was long gone.

The image above depicts Harry with a wall of my work from the past few years on display. The images below show Theodora's installation in the large studio downstairs. She's been focusing on materials that relate to 20th C domesticity: tupperware, upholstery fabric, etc. I think her work looks great in the natural light.

I enjoyed seeing everyone's work on the walls and hearing people's comments. My time there was limited due to a teaching conflict I had but I enjoyed every minute that I could be present.