Congratulations
To Olga Viso, the Hirshhorn's new director.
Read the news release here.
Es un gran honor para Olga y para nosotros...
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Gopnik on Portraits
Blake Gopnik comes across with a really excellent piece on portraiture. Read it here.
On June 1, the National Portrait Gallery is launching its first nationwide portrait competition, borrowing an idea from its British counterpart. Photography isn't being allowed in. But even if some truly interesting painting or sculpture emerges when the winners are announced next year, it's hard to see how it could touch the hermetic world of official portraiture. Unless a picture looks a fair bit like the portraiture that's come before, it doesn't fill the peculiar social and political roles its patrons have in mind for it.
Opportunity for Photographers
The Frederick Camera Clique's 19th Annual Summer Competition
Entries will be received at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center from
9 a.m. until noon on Saturday, June 25, and again from 9 a.m. until noon on
Saturday, July 2.
A reception for the exhibition will be held on Saturday, July 16 from 5-7
p.m. at the Mary Condon Hodgson Art Gallery at Frederick Community College.
The exhibition will be on display at the gallery from July 14 to Sept 8.
Click here for complete details of the competition and a downloadable entry form.
Seven: Videographer Wanted
An idea that I hope to implement for Seven is to have the entire process documented.
As such we're looking for a volunteer videographer who's be willing to videotape the entire exhibition process, from the delivery of artwork commencing June 27th, to Kelly Towles painting a wall, to Alessandra Torres transforming a room, to the formal opening on June 30th.
Interested? Email me.
Georgetown International
The deadline for the 9th Annual Georgetown International Fine Arts Competition is rapidly approaching: June 3, 2005.
The 2005 juror is Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator of the American University's Katzen Arts Center Galleries.
Entry forms and prospectus here.
Bring Darko Maver into the Equation
Nick Salvatore writes that:
All this discussion of lies and faked photos as art immediately reminded me of the career of Darko Maver.
As discussed here, Maver was supposed to have based his work on using various sculpting materials to painstakingly re-create crime scenes and murders he'd seen in photos. The pieces were so obsessively crafted and "life"-like that they were nearly indiscernable from the actual scenes he recreated. The audience only ever saw his work in the form of photographs, so presentations of his work wound up looking like collections of forensic and medical photos.
As it turns out, that's exactly what they were. A couple of neoists had found a bunch of grim photos, re-imagined them as images of re-creations, created a compelling life story for their artist, and presented it all to the unknowing public. Not that this is going on here, necessarily.
But it's interesting to me that, years after the Maver thing, there's an artist out there who's actually put in the man-hours to make a more audience-friendly version of the same point. And I can't help but wonder whether Demand's work achieves or conveys anything that "Maver's" work did not. I suppose I should see the show.
Vera Blagev
One of the great assets of living around the DC area, is that in addition to having one of the most active fine arts scenes around the nation, and loads of exhibition venues, we are also lucky to have a lot of alternative spaces that show art, as any perusal of the Washington City Paper "On Exhibit" section will prove.
Area artist Vera Blagev is currently showing in two of these venues. Some of her drawings are currently on display at the CD Warehouse store in Georgetown (3001 M Street NW in Washington DC) starting on May 16th running for 8 weeks and at Cafe Luna (1633 P Street NW in Washington DC) starting May 16th for one month.
New Arts BLOG
After reading Bailey's essay on Demand's work, Teague Clare was compelled to succumb to making a blog specifically so that he could easily post some things that came to him after reading it!
And a damned good start if I may say so myself!
Welcome to the BLOGsphere! Visit Innerbias often.
The Weekly Reviews
In the City Paper, Louis Jacobson reviews Richard Barrett and Pamela Soldwedel at Parker Gallery.
In the Gazette, Dr. Claudia Rousseau reviews Compelled by Content at Fraser Gallery Bethesda.
In the WaPo on Thursday's "Galleries" day = Zip. But on Friday Michael O'Sullivan reviews "Close Up in Black: African American Film Posters," on view at the International Gallery of the Smithsonian's S. Dillon Ripley Center.
At Solarize This, Alexandra Silverthorne reviews our Gabriela Bulisova show at Fraser Gallery Bethesda.
In DCist, J.T. Kirkland reviewed Teo Gonzalez at Irvine Contemporary and also Kehinde Wiley at Conner Contemporary.
And in here, Bailey reviewed Gopnik on Thomas Demand at MOMA.
Feed your Gehry Jones
In the unlikely event that you are one of those Jonesing for a local Gehry, now that it seems that the Corcoran's Gehry plans have evaporated, then the webcam for the new Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi may feed your Jones to see one of the origami buildings being constructed (perilously close to the waters of the Mississippi Sound by the way).
Locals in NYC
Congratulations to Chan Chao, whose beautiful Echo photographs opened last Friday at Yancey Richardson Gallery. Chao's show runs through July 2, 2005 and he's represented locally by Numark Gallery.
Congratulations also to Jesse Cohen, whose photographs also opened last week at Brooklyn's Ch'i and runs through June 15, 2005.
Congratulations to our own Tim Tate, whose glass installation opens at SOFA NY at the Armory on June 2 and runs through June 5, 2005.
And congratulations to the below-listed almost locals from Virginia Commonwealth University's acclaimed Graduate Sculpture Program -- currently ranked #1 in the country by U.S. News & World Report -- and so it should be a strong show. Their show opens at Kim Foster Gallery in New York on June 4 and runs through July 2, 2005.
Bailey on Gopnik on Demand
Below is J.W. Bailey's Magnum Opus on "photography, photographic lies and the liars who lie about photographs," as inspired by Gopnik’s recent review of Thomas Demand’s photographs.
Seven Update Three
I've re-visited about a third of the 24,000-plus slides in the WPA/C Artfile. There are a lot of old slides in there (including mine), and also a lot of WPA/C members don't have slides on file. Tsk, tsk...
I've also received quite a few entries electronically via email, and in some cases from members updating their files.
The selection process continues, and so far I've selected about thirty or so artists, most of which have or will receive an email from the WPA/C. I think that I will probably end up picking up about twenty or so more. After all the seven spaces at the Warehouse are quite ample, and I also have this salon-style vision for at least one of the spaces.
I've also invited (and they've accepted) Sam Gilliam and Manon Cleary, without a doubt two of DC's best known and most respected artists.
A few other artists that I wanted in this show have been unable to participate due to the fact that two of them have moved away and one is working furiously for a coming show and already has a waiting list for his next paintings!
There are also quite a few artists whose work I did not know... and this is part of the two way dialogue that happens between a curator and 24,000 slides.
There are dozens and dozens of very good artists who will not an invitation, but that have made a positive impression on me, and thus in a way are also gaining from this experience, as there's a good chance that their work may appear in something else associated with me in the future.
And that is why it is important to get out there and have slides in registries, and work online and so on: it needs to be seen!
Even being rejected has a possible positive footprint.
Case in point: Rebecca D'Angelo. Nearly ten years ago, Rebecca approached me with an exhibition proposal for a specific series of her photographs. The idea was interesting, but (for a then struggling commercial gallery) not very feasible, and so I told her no.
Years later, as I walked the seven various spaces that comprise the Warehouse holdings on 7th Street, one of them jumped in my mind as being perfect for Rebecca D'Angelo's project. I contacted her, she visited the spaces, and agreed!
Wait till you see it (her project that is). Opening night for "Seven" is June 30th from 6-8:30PM. Set that night aside.
Kirkland on Gonzalez
JT reviews Teo Gonzalez at Irvine Contemporary Art.
It's a damned good review too, from a self-declared minimalist looking at another minimalist, and recalling the difficulty of comparison in the world of art.
Rousseau on Glass
Dr. Claudia Rousseau, art critic for the Gazette newspapers, reviews our Compelled by Content group glass exhibition at Fraser Bethesda.
Compelled by Content has become one of our most-reviewed shows ever, as well as one of our best-selling, and I think it is a seminal indicator of a new direction that glass is taking; away from the vessel and the decorative, and towards the narrative and context-driven.
Curators
"The rise of curators and "super-curators" hasn't come out of the blue. Twentieth-century modernist conceptions of art-making presupposed the need for a class of specialist professionals to mediate between "advanced", "challenging" artists and lay gallery-goers. In the past decade or so, however, the balance of power has tipped so emphatically towards curatorship that many canny artists have opted to reinvent themselves as part- or even full-time curators."Read the whole article by Rachel Withers here.
Corcoran's Director Quits
David C. Levy resigned yesterday as president and director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The Corcoran's board of trustees have also suspended the museum's longstanding efforts to build a new wing designed by architect Frank Gehry.
Read the WaPo story here.
Seven Update
This week I'll will try to re-visit all 20,000 plus slides in the WPA/C registry for "Seven.".
I'm continuing to attempt to bring together some of DC's most visible and recognized names, together with artists who (I feel) deserve a bit more recognition and/or exposure.
Deadline is June 10. Submissions details here.