2005 Lucelia Award Announced

A few days ago the Smithsonian sent a news release to everyone announcing the winner of the Lucelia Award:

The Smithsonian American Art Museum announced today that Andrea Zittel is the fifth annual winner of its Lucelia Artist Award, established by the museum in 2001 to encourage leading contemporary American artists. This award is part of the museum's commitment to contemporary art and artists through awards and acquisitions.

An independent panel of jurors chose Zittel for the award in recognition of her ability to "create objects and total settings that reconsider the relationships between art and life. A utopian yet rigorously formal sensibility dominates."

"The timing of the Smithsonian American Art Museum couldn't have been better," said Zittel. "I have been working on a number of new ideas recently and the Lucelia Artist Award will really help me continue with the projects."

"Andrea Zittel has shown a sustained commitment to distinctive work that challenges conventional thinking and expectations about the nature of art, which is exactly what the Lucelia Artist Award is intended to celebrate and support," said Elizabeth Broun, the museum's Margaret and Terry Stent Director.

The jurors continue in their statement, "Zittel's art is shaped by a serial-based comprehensiveness in which discrete works are part of ongoing experiments and the continuous development of ideas. An investigatory attitude prevails. Her practice embraces the recycling of materials and large-scale, public-art projects as much as the creation of custom-made objects and an extreme attention to personal, particularizing details. She has become a leading figure in the international art world and a strong influence on generations of artists worldwide."

Locally, the three jurors are now in the second phase of downselecting from the first set of semi-semifinalists for the $14,000 Trawick Prize.

Ms. Trawick has also added another $10,000 for the Bethesda Painting Awards, also being selected now.

Today Bake Gopnik in the WaPo has a nice story about the award. It would be nice if Gopnik also did a piece on whoever gets selected as the Trawick Prize winner; this would give Gopnik a chance to actually focus some of his printspace on an area art event of some significance.

Congratulations

To our own Tim Tate (represented by us), who recently signed on with WeissPollack Galleries in New York, which will represent his work there.

Tate will also create an installation for WeissPollack Galleries for SOFA New York, this coming June.

Important Opening this Weekend

"I really want to see..." a group show of new work or work never shown in the area by Laura Amussen, Maria Anasazi, Noah Angell, Ken Ashton, Mark Behme, Natalia Blanch, Margaret Boozer, Hsin-Hsi Chen, Noche Christ, Lynden Cline, John Dumbacher, Joseph Dumbacher, Susan Fenton, Thom Flynn, Inga McCaslin Frick, Marc Ganzglass, Francie Hester, Jason Hughes, Berta Koltenuik, Maggie Michael, Galo Moncayo, Brandon
Morse, Lee Newman, Foon Sham, Claire Sherwood, Richard Vosseller and John Winslow.

Reception to meet the artists: Saturday, April 30, 2005 6 - 9pm. Free and open to the public. Gallery Four, 405 West Franklin St. 4th Floor, Baltimore, MD, or call 410/962.8941.

San Diego

Spent all day indoors lecturing... but last night I visited my usual secret dining spot, Ortega's again for my fix of poblano mole and of Carnitas.

Tuesday Arts Agenda

The DCist Tuesday Arts Agenda is here.

Anderson on Flynn

Thom Flynn at Osuna Gallery
By John Anderson

For some the talk of collage in art receives a yawn and a "been there, done that." And though their applications have probably been beaten like a dead horse well throughout the last hundred years - since Picasso glued the caned backing of a chair to a canvas and framed it with rope - there is still something intriguing about a bunch of trash glued and stapled together into something. Or, at least, when it is done well it is intriguing, and sometimes seductive.

This seems to be the case for Thom Flynn, who currently has work on display at Osuna Gallery in Bethesda, MD through May 12, 2005.

Though ample work is not on display throughout the space, it does command the gallery well enough to attract attention at the very least from the simple curiosity of the people, if not some time for reflection.

While initial glances at Flynn’s work might evoke the work of artists like Mimmo Rotella and Jacques Villéglé, the relationship ends with poster material and some method of adhesive. Whereas Rotella and Villéglé were prone at times to treat their décollage as found objects, Flynn’s compositions involve both additive and subtractive elements of collage and décollage until so much of the image is lost in the development that what remains is a series of rips across the picture plane.

Flynn’s work reads as drawing. The rips are gestural across the surface with their varied thicks and thins. And, like the master draftsman he is with these rips, Flynn mixes it up just enough to keep the eye moving throughout the composition, yet controlling enough to maintain our attention in the gallery.

Sometimes the rips repeat, piling up one after the other. They intersect, lines lost in the overlap. Flynn lets us know just how much control he has over the compositions, and the compositions do not lose intensity and fall apart with a shift in scale.

The other point of major interest is the thickness of his pieces. They are constructed like topographical maps, with so many peaks and valleys the surface is begging to be touched. Guests of the gallery can often be seen looking from one side of the piece to the other to determine just how thick the pieces are, and how many layers back they can see.

Where things become problematic is twofold. First is the simple way the pieces are unified.

Constructed with staples adhering layer to layer, the final piece is shellacked with a gel medium that provides additional bonding strength to the staples, and arguably holds the whole piece together. While this act of preservation offers an interesting dialogue in contrast to the deteriorating condition in which these posters were found, as a solution it feels "too quickly arrived upon" and not as well planned in consideration to additional issues of texture, variety of surface throughout the composition.

Secondly is a more pressing issue, where does the work go from here? In the last few years Flynn has demonstrated his ability to work in this method throughout several exhibitions. While some might be frustrated trying to "read" the piece through the fragmentary images, it is obviously not necessary, as it is not the artist’s intention. Unfortunately, in the quest to see what information is peering around the tears becomes akin to a Where’s Waldo game, searching for what might be some random body part. In addition, without this style moving forward, it is likely to be relegated as furniture.

Airborne Today

Heading to the Left Coast once again... come back later and I should have some postings once I get to California.

Wanna Ask John Currin a Question?

Do you want to interview John Currin? Is there something you'd like to ask him?

With Flash Art, now you can.

This spring, Flash Art is giving you the opportunity to interview John Currin. Flash Art is now soliciting questions from anyone, the readers of Flash Art and the Flash Art newsletter.

They will present the best of these questions to John Currin, and he will respond to them in an exclusive interview published later this year.

Please e-mail all questions to Matt before the deadline - Wednesday, 4 May, 2005.

Gopnik on Steinhilber

Gopnik doesn't pay too much attention to DC galleries, so make sure that when he does, we do as well... read it here.

Jenkins on Steinhilber

Guest Review by Mark Jenkins

I work beside Numark Gallery and have been passing by this exhibit daily and so thought to contribute a brief piece about my reaction to it in this blog -- just for fun.

The first work that grabbed me in this show is a large canvas on the ground tilted against the wall with a small orange ball centered on its edge that seems to light up the wall behind it. The friend I was there with wondered if it was a light as I’m sure many will.

I won’t ruin the secret of it, but if you can jump as high as me -- I barely dunked a basketball some years ago, but that was some years ago -- you’ll see it too. It was this act -- perhaps a reward for my effort and for not caring if I looked a little bit like a fool -- that enabled me to begin to understand the way Steinhilber’s mind enjoys reality. He does so by creating or uncovering simplistic enigmas of the everyday item.

I remember in one of the Dune books Frank Herbert said something about a character The Changer: "He illuminates the banal in a way that terrifies."

While Steinhilber hardly terrifies he certainly illuminates the ordinary in a way that gets you thinking. The caterpillar made from forks and plates, the cardboard boxes that seem like a family of acrobats, the sorrowful kite riled by a fan like a chained canary, and a small tape metropolis with one tower deconstructing itself, all share this Changed spirit.

One other thing to mention or rather advise -- go to the show on a full stomach or you’ll find yourself seriously considering taking a bite out of the giant cheeto.

Kirkland on Steinhilber

JT's review can be read in DCist here.

For next week...

Creating from Within by Tricia Ratliff, Silvia Santiago and Shannon Chester is an exhibition of original paintings, collage and photography to create awareness about EP's innovative public art project- Synergy!

The opening is this coming Wed. April 27 , from 6-8 p.m. at Karma Lounge (19th and I Street in DC). Artwork will be on view through May 14th.

This showing is a fundraiser for Synergy. With each purchase, you'll receive free ($40) tickets to The Artists Reality Show, a very unique performance event to be held on May 14, at The Dennis and Phillip Ratner Museum, in Bethesda, Maryland.

Tickets and information about The Artists Reality Show will be available at the opening.

Katzen Arts Center

American University's Katzen Arts Center is about to open, and it includes a new gallery with 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, which is certain to become one of the key exhibition venues in the whole Eastern seaboard.

This will be a great new addition to our area's art scene, and lucky for us, it will be guided by a steady and experienced hand in the person of Jack Rasmussen, who as most of us know, is a highly experienced arts professional with a very deep knowledge of the DC area and Blatimore area art scenes.

And Jack steps into the new job with a brand new BLOG! Is that cool or what?

Visit the new BLOG here.

The Thursday Reviews

In the City Paper, Louis Jacobson reviews Barbara Probst at G Fine Art and also Maria Friberg at Conner Contemporary.

In the WaPo, Jessica Dawson has her usual third Thursdays set of mini reviews. Also in the Post, Jacqueline Trescott has a story on The National Endowment for the Arts' "scaling back" their initiative to "send the best of American culture around the country and is starting with only a tour of visual arts." Trescott reveals that the "NEA announced yesterday that it is giving the Phillips a grant of $100,000 to support a traveling exhibition of 20th-century painter [and my former art professor] Jacob Lawrence."

In DCist, Kirkland reviewed Victor Schrager at Adamson and JT tells me that later today DCist will have his review of Dan Steinhilber at Numark.

In the Gazette, Karen Schaffer has an article on Sandra Pope's Colour Art Studio and Gallery, a new art space in Silver Spring.

Also in the Gazette, a byline-less article discusses that as part of the Montgomery College annual Holocaust Commemoration program, Montgomery College Professors Jon Goell and Brian Jones, former Montgomery College students John Hoover and Susan Maldon Stregack, and Holocaust survivor Nesse Godin will discuss their participation in the exhibit "Portraits of Life."

Goell and Jones acted as project leaders and chief photographers of the exhibit, photographing and interviewing local Holocaust survivors in their homes. The professors were assisted by Montgomery College adjunct faculty member Rollin Fraser, students and former students, who acted as photo assistants, interviewers and photographers. Jane Knaus, the college's creative services director, designed the exhibit and coordinated its production.

More than 30 Holocaust survivors have been photographed for "Portraits of Life," creating a lasting legacy of their lives and their stories of survival.

The "Portraits of Life" photography exhibit will be on display at the college's Communication Arts Technologies (CAT) Gallery. It will officially open at the Holocaust Commemoration event and will remain on display through the end of April.

Arts Talk Today

Curator Susana Torruella Leval, Director Emerita, El Museo Del Barrio, New York, will lead a roundtable discussion on "Latin American" Art: Expectation and Reality, today at the Arlington Arts Center starting at 7PM. Free and open to the public.

The exhibition "Art with Accent: Latin Americans in the Mid-Atlantic States," which was curated by Torruella Leval, is currently on exhibition at the Center and showcases work by Aldo Badano, Juan Bernal, Gute Brandao, Mark Caicedo, Ana Cavalcanti, Irene Clouthier, Pepe Coronado, Gerard de la Cruz, Felisa Federman, Luis Flores, Eva Holz, Tamara Kostianovsky, Rosana Lopez, Carolina Mayorga, Lara Oliveira, Alessandra Ramirez, Victoria Restrepo, Helga Thomson and Maria Velez.

The 6th annual Bethesda Literary Festival starts tomorrow, Friday, April 22 through Sunday, April 24, 2005 throughout downtown Bethesda's art galleries, bookstores, restaurants, arts organizations and venues and retail businesses.

The festival will bring together novelists, poets, journalists, nonfiction writers and children's authors and illustrators who represent the rich diversity of modern literature. The Bethesda Literary Festival also features essay contests, poetry slams, kids' and youth book parties and the 2nd annual Play In A Day.

On Saturday, April 23rd from 1-2PM we will host Alexandra Robbins, author of Quarterlife Crisis and its sequel Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis and Jen Chaney, the Washington Post's DVD and movie columnist. Robbins and Chaney will join together to share their insight on modern day living.

And then, on that same day from 2:30-4PM, we will host authors Jim Grimsley (Comfort & Joy); Susan Leonardi (And Then They Were Nuns); Michael Mancilla (Love In The Time of HIV: The Gay Man's Guide to Sex, Dating, and Relationships); and Kathi Wolfe, a local poet. The authors and poet will offer a look inside gay and lesbian literature.

See ya there!

Opportunity for Artists

Call for entries, Gateway Georgia Avenue, and Jesse Cohen's Artdc.org Art in Transition.

Info here, Although you have to log in to read it, but it only takes a second or two to create an account. Below is the gist of the call for artists.

An Artdc.org proposal has been accepted, and they have received permission from the owners of a Georgia Avenue property near Takoma Park to conduct an art show and exhibition.

This show will allow them to represent all or most of Artdc.org’s membership, that they can fit. It will present the opportunity for a semi-curated show. All those who apply will be allowed to hang at least one piece on a first come first serve basis limited by the space available on the install date.

The works will be hung in salon style to take advantage of nearly 1300 square feet of open office space. There is the opportunity for use of a balcony for 3D and other weather proof or performance art. If artists have ideas for an event, please contact Artdc.org. They are interested in developing master classes, studio days, and music events. The more the ideas, the better.

The call for entries will be 100% digital. Submit via CD, images must be at least 4" by 6" at 300 dpi. They are interested in all types of art. 2D, 3D, and more. Submit at the meeting this coming weekend; exact time, date and location TBA.

What: Gateway Georgia Avenue, and Artdc.org--Art in Transition

Where: Off of Georgia Avenue, MD in Raw Transitional but Empty Office Space.

When: Install May 14, 2005 Opening May 21, 2005 Closing June 17, 2005

Theme: What does it mean to EMERGE!

Requirements to show:

-Must be registered at Artdc.org with completed profile including username, interests, webpage if available.

-Must live with in 150 miles of Washington, DC.

-Must submit a CD of at least 1 to 5 images of available work. They will select at least one image. (4" by 6" at 300 dpi or larger).

-A $20 dollar Hanging Fee which will be applied to marketing costs, show maintenance, and possibly the development of the next show.

-Volunteer time to gallery sit or help install and de-install, Canvas neighborhoods, or develop programs. (They are flexible 3-6 hours total or more if you like).

-A resume and/or artist statement with completed application.

-Most important, include a paragraph or poem to be displayed with your work about the meaning of emerging within the art world, and the effect it has had on you. Be personal.

-You may consider yourself emerging or established to apply.

-Self promotion and flyer posting. Each artist should post at least 10 flyers for the event.

-Artists should attend the openings.

-Please limit the size of your work to allow room for other artists.

MOCA Opening this Saturday

"Forgotten Memories" opens with a reception this coming Saturday at MOCA in Georgetown's Canal Square from 6 to 9pm. The exhibition includes Michael Dax Iacovone's Experimental Photography and Ben Premeaux's Mixed Media Paintings. The Exhibition runs Saturday, April 30th.

Craghead on Bailey on Botero

Warren Craghead's excellent Drawer has a counterpoint to Bailey's Botero Letter, and also a couple of comments by Bailey. Read it all here.

Bailey on Botero

That word-processing living machine known as J.W. Bailey responds to my call for reviews and art commentary with the below open letter in response to AP reporter Dan Molinski’s article, "Botero’s Latest Muse: Abu Ghraib," as published in the Washington Post. Comments welcomed:

"The Deconstructed Portrait of a Postmodern Art History Teacher"
By James W. Bailey

The postmodern art theorists (translate: anti-American French and wannabe French "art philosophers") must be having a field day around the world preparing their glowing reviews of Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s new series of propagandistic Abu Ghraib paintings in which he predictably pours gasoline on the exaggerated horrors of the unfortunate documented abuses of some Iraqi prisoners by a handful of American soldiers.

One can easily picture Botero’s sycophant leftist art fans standing at the ready outside museums in Paris anxiously awaiting the arrival of this vapid artistic pabulum while passing the time muttering their memorized anti-Bush screeds in clever but meaningless French art speak phrases, with lit Gitanes cigarettes hanging from their cynical lips prepared to flick them onto the inflammable canvas of art and politics that Botero has composed for his choir.

Botero is quoted by the AP as saying the following: "No one would have ever remembered the horrors of Guernica if not for painting." What self-serving deluded narcissistic tripe! Only the relativist philosophy of postmodernism would be so bold as to ludicrously encourage us to believe that wrapping a female panty around a male Iraqi prisoner’s head equates to Franco and Hitler conspiring to kill more than 1,700 innocent people in the Basque region of Spain by bombing and shooting them to death.

But then again, only such a shallow philosophy as postmodernism could inspire an aging super-famous mega-wealthy artist living in an ivory tower penthouse who longs to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize before he dies to say something like that and expect it to be taken seriously by anyone but a burned-out religious convert to the fraudulent philosophy of postmodernism in the first place.

However, to play Botero’s art history game: If Botero is so concerned about horrors being preserved and presented in art so that it can serve as a leftist platform for politically correct history lessons, where are his paintings of the innocent Iraqis who dared to dissent with the ruling elite and were tortured to death by Saddam Hussein and his gang of thugs? Where are his paintings of the Kurds being gassed to death? Where are his one million paintings of the one million Rwandans being hacked to death while Bill Clinton and his gang of State Department cronies diddled around trying to parse the United Nations’ international definition of genocide?

Closer to his native land, where are his paintings of innocent Colombians being blown to bits in Medellin by wealthy drug lords? Are they still in the hands of wealthy private collectors locked away for private viewing? (Some of Colombia’s cocaine barons have no doubt long been enamored of Botero’s strained ruminations on the invented mythology of America’s endless abuse of power throughout the world because their own rabidly anti-American positions on international terrorism seem to dovetail so nicely with his – considering that Botero has already painted a sympathetic portrayal of Pablo Escobar being killed by Colombian police, they’re also probably on his collector’s list as every true mass-murdering gangster longs to be celebrated in art by a famous sympathetic artist at some point in his life, or death.)

I find it quite interesting that Botero, in a classic postmodern art theorist move, has numbered his Abu Ghraib series from 1 to 50, rather than taking the time to research the names and identities of those prisoners he painted that he claims were "tortured." Undoubtedly, Botero’s international art attorney advised him that to attribute names to the faces in his paintings would raise the troubling issue of exploitation of unlicensed imagery for financial gain – that is, royalties might have to be paid out of Botero’s back pocket to those "victims" he's so concerned about.

Of course, good postmodern art theory does not allow for the "innocent victim" of a right wing government to object to their image being used by a leftist artist without their permission if such use advances an exploitative anti-American opinion that intersects with an impending world museum tour – no, such theories better suggest that the leftist artist in question just keep the names, identities, facts and truth out of the whole picture... and keep all the profits once that fraudulent picture is sold to the world by a compliant media all to himself.

But God help you if you happen to be a real innocent victim of a left wing government – the true French postmodern art theorists will never remember your death because they are not about to condone, let alone critically review, any artist that would dare to stray from the party line and paint that aesthetically confusing picture. They would much prefer that history lesson never be remembered and taught through art.

Sincerely

James W. Bailey
Experimental Photographer
Force Majeure Studios

Opposing views on this subject:
Mike Whitney at Counterpunch and also at Al Jazeerah.

Elizabeth Nash at The Independent.