When artists and gallerists part

An overheated art market sets all kinds of things in motion. Big galleries with money to burn and multiple spaces to fill start circling smaller galleries, eyeing their most successful artists like the underdeveloped properties they sometimes are. Artists get itchy and think about moving up the gallery food chain. And boom or bust, even the friendliest, most mutually beneficial artist-dealer relationships can prove finite. They are outgrown or become stale. Suddenly, it’s time to move on.

Read this oh-so-true article by Roberta Smith in the NYT
here.

Artists' Website: Mike Schaffer

Condoleezza Rice by Mike Shaffer
Mike Shaffer "assaults the famous and the unknown from the DC environs, their identities obscured, abstractified, warped and altered. Maybe you'll recognize them. Maybe you won't." Visit his blogwebsite here.

Wanna go to a DC opening tomorrow

M. Andrés Svensson, the Chilean Cultural attache brings to my attention the opening of the show by Chilean painter Gustavo Schmidt at the Embassy of Chile in DC. The show opens on Thursday, April 24 at 6:30PM and will include some good Chilean wines and food as part of the opening. The exhibition runs through May 20, 2008.

Ancestral Rites by Gustavo Schmidt. 2006, Oil on linen, 65 x 55 in.
You must RSVP to 202/530-4118 or email RSVP to cultural@embassyofchile.org.

2%

Which of the 300+ Chelsea galleries to visit?

Wanna go to a Richmond opening on Friday?

Flora, Fauna, Fabulous & Fun! opens in Richmond, Virginia's Chasen Gallery with an opening reception on April 25, 2008, 6-9PM. The show runs from April 25 - May 25th. Work by Carl and Jody Wright.

Wanna go to a National Harbor opening on Friday?

I haven't been to National Harbor yet, but it sounds and looks really cool.

A good reason to check out this emerging new location on the shores of the Potomac is that Art Whino has the opening for an exhibition featuring the art of Leah Sarah Bassett, and also introducing four new artists to the Art Whino Collaboration: Francesco D'Isa, Lisa Adams, Patrick Fatica and Nicolas Gracey

The opening reception is April 25th, 2008 from 6pm to Midnight at their new National Harbor location. 173 Waterfront Street, National Harbor, MD 20745. The event is free and open to the public.

DJ Stylo will be on the turntables and there will be special performances by I.R.E and LaVondra Shinholster. The exhibition will run through May 25th, 2008.

For directions visit www.nationalharbor.com/Directions.aspx. National Harbor is also accessible by water taxi. Please visit www.potomacriverboatco.com for more info.

Quilts save town

What Italy provides for people who love food is what Paducah does for quilting. A small Kentucky town on the Ohio River halfway between St. Louis and Nashville, Tenn., Paducah has become one of the prime destinations for quilt tourism, 21st-century style.

In late April every year, the American Quilter's Society draws 35,000 quilt makers and quilt lovers to Paducah for one of the biggest quilt shows in the country. The niche craft has been used as an economic engine to revive this once-declining town. The story of Paducah also helps demonstrate why quilting is now a $3.3 billion industry, with an estimated 27 million enthusiasts.

Story here; best quilters in the world?

Gee's Bend.

And then...

Read this

It started with a dog

In 2007, when I first received a deluge of emails and pictures of the art installation by Costa Rican "artist" Guillermo Vargas "Habacuc," they were so disgusting and sick that I decided against posting any discussion about it, lest I add more publicity to the artist and the act.

He got a ton of publicity worldwide anyway.

But my recent posting about the German artist Gregor Schneider planning to show a person dying as part of an exhibition has re-started the deluge, plus some newish information was made available, and so here it goes:

In 2007 Guillermo Vargas created an installation (details in Spanish and loads of horrible images here), where the artist allegedly paid a couple of Nicaraguan children to chase and capture a stray dog, and then the animal was tied to the gallery wall at Códice Gallery in Managua, Nicaragua and allowed to starve to death.

The Spanish language arts blogsphere erupted in shock and nausea at this event, and subsequently the artist stated (Via):

"Hello everyone. My name is Guillermo Habacuc Vargas. I am 50 years old and an artist. Recently, I have been critisized for my work titled 'Eres lo que lees', which features a dog named Nativity. The purpose of the work was not to cause any type of infliction on the poor, innocent creature, but rather to illustrate a point. In my home city of San Jose, Costa Rica, tens of thousands of stray dogs starve and die of illness each year in the streets and no one pays them a second thought.

Now, if you publicly display one of these starving creatures, such as the case with Nativity, it creates a backlash that brings out a big of hypocrisy in all of us. Nativity was a very sick creature and would have died in the streets anyway."

By October of 2007, the Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion had picked up the story from the Spanish language arts blogsphere and delivered this story. In the story, Marta Leonor González, identified as the editor of the La Prensa cultural newspaper in Managua, confirmed that the dog had indeed died (by then lots of blog stories had come out that the dog had been fed in between shows, or that it had escaped alive).

She also stated that the installation included the statement (in Spanish) "You are what you read," written with dog food on the walls of the gallery. It also included an audio of the Nicaraguan National Hymn played backwards, photos and an incense burner, where 175 crack rocks and an ounce of marijuana were burnt.

In the same story the artist defends his installation and makes the point that "no one untied the dog, or gave the dog food, no one called the police. No one did anything." The piece was also an homage to a woman who had been killed by feral stray dogs.

A month earlier Guillermo Vargas had been also chosen to represent Costa Rica at the Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008. He already was part of Costa Rica´s Visual Arts Biennial (Bienarte) 2007 when the announcement that he and five other Costa Rican artists would represent their nation at the Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008 was made.

The fact that no one (at least in the English speaking world and to Google) had ever heard of this biennial was a little suspicious to me, until later on I figured out that it had been misnamed in the story and in countless other stories that followed. I think that the actual title is the "VI Bienal de Artes Visuales del Istmo Centroamericano."

The selection was made by a jury comprised of Ana Sokoloff (Colombia), Oliver Debroise (Mexico) and Rodolfo Kronfle Chambers (Ecuador).

This selection really incensed the Internet, and several boycott petitions were initiated (one is here), and by October of 2007, one of the best American visual art blogs -- Edward Winkleman -- discussed the issue at lenght and even published an explanation of the event by Códice Gallery defending the actions and claiming that the dog had been fed and that it had escaped.

By March of 2008, the Argentinean newspaper Clarin was reporting that over a million signatures had been recorded. In the same article the three jurors who selected Vargas to the Biennial defended their choice and stated that the work that Vargas offered up had no relation to the earlier installation and they also "rejected" the boycott campaign.

Then a few days ago Artnet.com discussed the story in the context of the dog, the gallery, and the supposed "Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008."

Like Artnet, I can't find any references or websites to the above titled Biennial, but what I have found is a letter from the one of the sponsors of the Honduran Biennial (different biennial) and also for the VI Bienal de Artes Visuales del Istmo Centroamericano, which I think may be the forementioned Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008. They are the Mujeres en las Artes “Leticia de Oyuela” and the letter about the Biennial, the dog and Vargas is here in Spanish.

To add confusion to the mix, the website of the Museo de Arte de El Salvador (MARTE) has the Biennial scheduled to take place at the museum from 27 May to 27 July of 2008, and back in October 2007 they had a press conference about the Biennial. Not in Honduras, but El Salvador.

And because in this interview of Rebeca Dávila Dada published in the Salvadorean newspaper La Prensa, one of the items in her resume list her as a consultant to the VI Bienal de Artes Visuales del Istmo Centroamericano, by now I should be pretty sure that the "Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008" is actually the "VI Bienal de Artes Visuales del Istmo Centroamericano" and will take place in El Salvador and not Honduras.

Clear?

Not so fast!

For here's the Call to Artists for Salvadorean artists who wish to be considered for the Biennial. They claim that it will take place in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Confused again... and now I think that what will happen in MARTE is the exhibition of El Salvadorean artists from which a few will be selected to represent El Salvador at the Biennial - not the actual Biennial itself!

And thus I have emailed a whole bunch of people in Spanish (in Central America) to see where and when this almost internet urban legend Biennial will take place.

One thing seems to be clear, the vile act focused upon the stray dog by Vargas accomplished exactly what this artist desired: immense publicity and horror.

Until he's raised one by Gregor Schneider's human plans. Let's hope that no one raises Schneider's sicker plan.

But I think that I know what is next. It was proven to be a hoax, but for a while ( Via) this story in the Yale Daily News discussed Art major Aliza Shvarts' art project during which allegedly she for nine months "artificially inseminated herself 'as often as possible' while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process."

And I wouldn't be surprised that somewhere, a gallery and an artist are currently discussing some sort of live installation focusing on some sort of in situ abortion of some sort.

We've already had a live circumcision in DC.

And if the law allowed it, you can bet that some sicko would love to make cheap headlines by tying a homeless person to a gallery wall and watch him or her starve to death in the name of art.

It's all been done before by an artist group collective called "The Romans." They ruled the art world, in fact most of the Western world, for a few centuries. In fact, the massive gallery where they performed most of these vile installations still stands in Rome.

Aspiring shock artists should read Suetonius' The Lives of the Twelve Caesars , especially the chapter on Tiberius, to get a lesson on some really disturbing and shocking art installations done by this vile Roman Emperor artist over two thousand years ago.

Face it, it's been done!

Makes me sick.

PS - I bet that these Biennial calls are open to Salvadorean and Honduran born artists residing in the US. It would be a good opportunity to try for, and then if selected you can tell me if the Biennial did take place!

Update: Yale refuses to allow Aliza Shvarts' art project to go on display today; read the story here.

Congrats!

To Marsha Ralls, founder of The Ralls Collection in Georgetown in DC, who together with Seth Goldman, President and TeaEO of Honest Tea, were honored recently by The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) for their commitment to increasing education and economic opportunities for low-income youth, at NFTE’s 15th Annual Salute to the Entrepreneurial Spirit Awards Dinner in New York City.

Anne W. McNulty, JBK Partners, introduced Marsha Ralls (right) at the Awards' Dinner
Ms. Ralls chaired NFTE Greater Washington DC’s most successful Dare to Dream gala to date, helping the organization raise nearly $1 million to support its work in low-income communities.

Congrats Marsha!

Plexiglass House

Kriston responds to my rock here (missing the point a little, I think); no more on this subject from me unless a get together is arranged somehow.

But I'm not sure that I'm not gonna twitch the next time that he reviews the gallery that he curated a show for.

Update: OK, OK... one more thing here.

Opportunity for artists with disabilities

Deadline: Friday, July 11, 2008

Sponsored by VSA arts and Volkswagen of America, Inc. Open to emerging artists with disabilities, ages 16 -25, living within the U.S. Fifteen (15) artists will receive a total of $60,000 in cash awards. No entry fee.

"Green Light" challenges artists to pinpoint the motivation behind their work and the infinite possibilities that creativity provides. Eligible media include: paintings and drawings (oil, watercolor, acrylic, pencil or charcoal), fine art prints (lithographs, etching, intaglio, or woodcuts), photography, computer generated prints and two-dimensional mixed media - any media that may be represented in two-dimensions. Artwork should not exceed 60 inches in either direction.

New This Year: Sculpture and time-based media (video, film etc.) will also be considered. Sculpture should not exceed 24 inches in any direction. Fifteen (15) awardees will be honored at an awards ceremony on Capitol Hill during the Fall of 2008, and their artwork will be displayed in a nation-wide touring exhibition that debuts at the Smithsonian during September 2008.

To learn more about last year’s program, visit: www.vsarts.org/driven For additional information and to access the application, please visit: www.vsarts.org/VWcall or contact Jennifer Wexler at 800.933.8721 x3885; email: JCWexler@vsarts.org. Alternative formats of the application are available upon request.

Art Deals

Wanna get a Colby Caldwell for a $100 bucks? How about a Tim Tate for $100 Samolians? or an Amy Lin? or Melissa Ichiuji? Susan Jamison? Joshua Levine? Akemi Maegawa? Linn Meyers? Marianela de la Hoz?

Those blue chip artists and a ton more artists' works will be on display at the Corcoran first ever Art Anonymous fundraiser, benefiting the Corcoran College of Art + Design’s BFA Scholarship Fund.

Leading DMV contemporary artists will offer for sale original works alongside the creations of students, faculty, and staff of the Corcoran College of Art + Design and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. All works are only $100 —- the catch: all artwork is signed on the back, so the identity of the artist will remain a mystery until after the purchase.

Hard to disguise a Tim Tate or a Linn Meyers though...

Saturday, May 10, 2008 - 6 p.m. Preview and Raffle, 7 p.m. Bidding Opens; Drinks and dancing until 11 p.m.

You have to RSVP for this event by May 1, 2008. For more information and to register, please click here or call (202) 639-1753.

Participating artists include: Irene Abdou, John M. Adams, Dana Aldis, Geoffrey Aldridge, Shahdeh Ammadi, Alida Anderson, Tim Anderson, Sondra N. Arkin, John Aquilino, Geoff Ault, Patricia Autenrieth, Jennifer Axner, Malena Barnhart, Jessica Grace Bechtel, Diane Blackwell, Lisa Blas, Raya Bodnarchuk, Tanya Bos, Richard Boswell, Mark Cameron Boyd, Joseph Bradley, James Brantley, Courtney Bratun, Lindsay Bratun, Julia Braun, Jean Brinton- Jaecks, Andrew Brown, Jason Bulluck, Renee Butler, Craig Cahoon, Colby Caldwell, F. Lennox Campello, Julie Carrasco, Stevens Jay Carter, Julie Casey, Gloria Cesal, Sarah Chamberlain, Amy Chan , Natalie Cheung, Nannette A. Clark, Lauren Clay, Michael Clements, Genevieve Cocco, Cindy Ann Coldiron, Tim Conlon, Bryan Conner, Sarah Coombs, Ellen Cornett, Patricia Correa, Adger W. Cowans, Robert Creamer, Christopher Cunetto, Emily Cunetto, Christopher Cunningham, Jasmine Daraie, John Deamond, Adam de Boer, Marianela de la Hoz, Rosetta DeBerardinis, Francks F. Deceus, Kate Demong, Jennifer DePalma, Rosanna Dixon, Nancy D. Donnelly, Joel D’Orazio, Katie Drenga, Nekisha Durrett, Steven Eson, Lori Esposito, Steven E. Frost, Lee Gainer, Lacey Gentry, Casey Goldman, Janis Goodman, Pat Goslee, Liz Gordon & Anna (Na Kyung) Ahn, Melissa Green, Tom Green, Lauri Hafvenstein, Mohamed A. Hamo, Rion Harmon, Carol Harrison, Jonathan Hartshorn, Stephen Hay, Sean Hennessey, Dayan Herrara, Randall C. Holloway, Jackie Hoysted, Michal Hunter, Melissa Ichiuji, Megan Irving, Ema Ishii, Harry L. Jaecks, Chris Jamison, Susan Jamison, Ian Jehle, Ryan Carr Johnson, Sue Johnson, David Jolkovski, Adam Jones, Coty Jones, Benjamin Gray Jones, Courtney Jordan, Mila Kagan, Margaret Kepner, Amy Kincaid, Marti Deppa Kirkpatrick , Nick Kirkpatrick, Katherine Kisa, William Knipscher, Steve Lakatos, Nick Lamia, Joshua Levine, Gina Marie Lewis, Katie Lewis , Amy Lin, Heidi Lippman, Carol Lukitsch, Raymond MacDonald, Akemi Maegawa , Dana Maier, Susan Makara, Isaac Maiselman, Isabel Manalo, Joey P. Manlapaz, Katherine Mann, Nathan Manuel, Anne Marchand, James Marshall (Dalek), Madeline Marshall, Myra Maslowsky, Leah Matthews, Cory May, Lisa McCarty, John McDaniel, Joseph McSpadden, Robert Mellor, Ashleigh Nicole Meusel, Trace Miller, Adrienne Mills, Elizabeth Lundberg Morisette, Camille Mosley-Pasley, Marci Nadler, Otto Neals, Emilia Olsen, Kerry O’Neil, Jonathan Ottke, David Page, Paulette Palacios, Chul Beom Park, Annie Peters, Brian Petro, Pamela Phillips, Ryan Pierce, Michael B. Platt, Nick Popovici ,Antonio Puri, Carole Rabel Nicoteri, Camden M. Richards, Marcel Richter, Charlotte Riley-Webb, Emily Rockwell, Andrew Roda, Lisa Rosenstein, Michael Knud Ross, Ron Rumford, Anna Samaha, Nancy Scheinman, Kahn & Selesnick, Mike Shaffer, Joanna Silver, Kristy Simmons, John Simpkins-Camp, Kerry Skarbakka, Paul So, Judy Southerland, Ashley A.. Sullivan, Lynn Sures, Zach Storm, Erik Swanson, Jordan Swartz, Tim Tate, Steve Taylor, James Stephen Terrell, Katurah L. Thomas, Kevin Tierney, Erwin Timmers, Susan Powell Tolbert, Patricia Truitt, Alexia Tryfon, Nicholas Tryfon, Katie Tuss, Linn Meyers and Bert Ulrich, Jessica van Brakle, Izel Vargas , Oliver Vernon, Ivi Volanska, Christopher Walker, Cheryl Warrick, Ellyn Weiss, Moon Young Wohn, Sharon Wolpoff, Antoinette Wysocki, Thomas Xenakis, Lindsey Nicole Yancich, Michelle Yo, Trevor Young, and Toopy Zerotree.

Valko at the Corcoran

Only two days left to catch Marissa Valko's Fine Art Senior Thesis I (through March 23, 2008) at the Corcoran's Gallery 31 in DC.


Next is Nicholas Carr from March 26–30, 2008.

Scotland's Rocky Statute?

If we were accountants or lawyers, I am sure our professional advice would be taken seriously but when it comes to art, everyone is suddenly an expert.

So complains Richard Calvocoressi, the director of the Henry Moore Foundation and until recently director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, who packed up his toys and went home over the fact that the Scots apparently want a particular statute in front of their Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, and it's by an artist who was not one of the five that he and the rest of the body which recommends art for the Scottish Parliament invited to submit proposals.


Read the Guardian story here.

Wha's Like Us? Damn Few And They're A' Died

End of Nature

I've heard good things about the "End of Nature" show at the Warehouse complex in DC. Loads of good photos here and then read the City Paper review by Maura Judkis here.

School 33

Jody Albright has stepped down as director of Baltimore’s city-owned School 33 Arts Center. It's the second School 33 to to resign abruptly in the last four years. Read the story here.

Congrats

To DC's Isabel Manalao's Studio Visit blog , which has been selected by the City Paper's staff as DC's "Best Art Blogger" in the current "Best of DC" issue of the Washington City Paper.

See the other staff picks here and visit Isabel's blog here.

Video Art World

A new website designed to showcase video art and make it available to video collectors has made its debut at www.VideoArtWorld.com.

Galleries can sign to show brief clips of videos they represent for various fees starting at $95 a month for three clips.

Glasshouse shattered

From Kriston Capps in 2005:

"It's bitchy of me to say— and I don't know the extent to which Lenny Campello of DC Art News contributes or what Cyndi Spain [the DCist Arts Editor] has to say on the subject— but I twitch whenever I see a feature with Lenny's name attached on DCist about work on display at the gallery he operates. I don't doubt the conviction Lenny clearly feels about the art he represents or enjoys, and I don't think that it's unreasonable that he writes about artists he represents on his own blog. But you really can't don the critic's cap when you're a producer in the community."

Back then three years ago I didn't think that Capps was right, but just in case I quit immediately contributing gallery openings information ( which is the only data and info that I ever contributed) to DCist.

But now Washington City Paper art critic and many other outlets' contributor Kriston Capps has become a "producer" himself when he curates the current show at Project 4 in DC.

Will I twitch now or whenever I see a future Project 4 feature in the Washington City Paper or any of the other freelance outlets that Capps writes for?

I don't think so, because inside me I think that those outlets, like DCist was in 2005, and it is now, know how to separate themselves from unethical procedures. And because Project 4 is a terrific gallery in the DC art scene and deserves attention. And I sort of hoped that Capps would have had the same "inside me" feeling about the data that I was contributing to DCist back then... but he didn't and perhaps rightly so, lowered the ethical limbo pole for "art producers" who are also art critics or writers.

Inside me, I know this is not 100% the case, and that the art universe has plenty of room for critics who want to be curators and vice versa. And it is not Project 4's fault or the WCP's, or any of the other places that print Capps' eloquent words, that this unwarranted ethical attention has been brought onto to them by Capps' actions, as it wasn't DCist's faults that the unethical spotlight caused by my gallery openings contributions was focused onto them in 2005 by Capps.

But words count, and we Cubans tend to have long memories, and I recall being pointed out for something that was almost smelling unethical in Capps' words, without the courage to say so, and so I took the high road and quit contributing to DCist.

Right away.

Not writing reviews for DCist -- mind you... I never wrote a review for DCist as some less than accurate bloggers erroneously reported -- but just being associated with DCist at all... just in case Capps' ethical testing strip might have a tiny chance of being right...

But now I think that it is time to throw a stone at that Kristonian ethical glasshouse, and put Kriston to the same limbo test that he put me three years ago when he was not a "producer" as he is now as a curator for a gallery show in the city where several of the freelance outlets that he writes for... ahhh... cover.

"It's bitchy of me to say — and I don't know the extent to which Kriston Capps contributes or what Mark Athitakis [the Washington City Paper Arts Editor] has to say on the subject — but I twitch whenever I see a feature in the City Paper about work on display at the gallery that employed Kriston as a curator. I don't doubt the conviction Kriston clearly feels about the art he curates or enjoys, and I don't think that it's unreasonable that he writes about artists [that] he curates on his own blog. But you really can't don the critic's cap when you're a producer in the community."

I was never, ever a critic for DCist.

Thus, if it was an issue for me to contribute multi-gallery opening data to DCist while being an art "producer," then it definitely is an issue for Capps to contribute to the City Paper or his other art writing outlets that may cover the District, as a writer... while now being a commercial gallery curator, which falls neatly into the set of "producer."

And please do not try to justify it as curators are not producers.

What is the solution?

Sounds like it would make a great topic for discussion at an art panel or over a few beers.... first round on me.

DCAC? AU? AAC?