5th Annual Bethesda Fine Arts Festival

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District will present the 5th annual Bethesda Fine Arts Festival, a two-day fine arts event highlighting 140 contemporary artists who will sell their original fine art and fine craft on the streets of Bethesda, Maryland. The festival is scheduled for Saturday, May 10 from 10am-6pm and Sunday, May 11, 2008 from 10am-5pm.

The festival will take place in downtown Bethesda’s Woodmont Triangle along Norfolk and Auburn Avenues, located six blocks from the Bethesda Metro Station. Free parking is available adjacent to the event in the parking garage located on Auburn Avenue.

With over 20,000 attendees over the two day period, the Bethesda Fine Arts Festival has become one of the top art events in the Greater DC region and a must see for those who think that good art is only available in gallery or museum walls.

Direction here and a list of details here.

Go buy some artwork!

Con La Mirada en el Cielo

In his second solo show at Philly's Projects Gallery, Henry Bermudez presents “Con La Mirada en el Cielo” where Bermudez continues "his exploration of spiritually surreal imagery, combining his unique vision of pre-Colombian and Christian iconography. The complex arrangement of interlocking lines and colors are reminiscent of intricate Persian tapestries. The dense arrangement invites us to travel further into a realm of contemplation. Bermudez’s current body of work expands upon the tradition of cut-paper assemblage, in some cases expanding his surface to monumental proportions."


An internationally exhibited artist, Bermudez’s work is in numerous museum and private collections throughout the world. He was the Venezuelan representative to the 1985 Venice Biennale. A solo exhibition of his work is scheduled at the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in New York City in 2009.

The exhibition opens this coming First Friday, May 2nd with artist receptions from 5-8 p.m. The exhibition continue through May 31st, 2008.

DCAC’s Sparkplug opens this coming Friday

DC Arts Center’s resident collective Sparkplug launches its first exhibition as part of "an ongoing pursuit of adventures beyond the commercial gallery system."

Sparkplug is "a gathering of a dozen or so Washington, DC metro area emerging artists, curators and writers that meet once a month to discuss their work, explore common concerns and ideas, grow their community, and dream up creative engagements both in DC and around the globe."

This inaugural two-week catalyst show will include work by: Deborah Carroll-Anzinger, Peter Gordon, Lisa McCarty, Kathryn McDonnell, Michael Matason, Mark Planisek, Karen Joan Topping and Jenny Walton. It is curated by Lea-Ann Bigelow.

The goal of Sparkplug is "to identify superior artists, curators and arts writers without current gallery representation or institutional employ, to provide them with an ongoing source of support, inspiration and encouragement, and to enlist them in the long-term development of a vital DC Arts Center collective."

Sparkplug is still actively seeking members – "dedicated visionaries with a broad range of backgrounds and experiences and a diversity of professional preoccupations and creative aspirations – from all communities in the Washington, DC region."

The Opening Reception is May 2, 7 - 9pm and some of the artists will be on hand on Saturday, May 10th from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM to discuss the show, their work, and Sparkplug at the DC Arts Center.

Sculpture at Evergreen

Wanna go to an opening in Philly next Friday?

The Bridgette Mayer Gallery in Philly has coming up an interesting solo show of gallery artist Ivan Stojakovic -- titled Build-Up -- opening on the 29th, which will run through May 24, 2008.

This is Stojakovic's second solo show at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery. He currently lives and works in New York City, and is originally from Belgrade. Along with his solo show at the gallery in 2007, Stojakovic has exhibited in New York, Canada and Serbia in solo and group exhibitions.

Build-Up will run from April 29- May 24, 2008. An opening reception with the artist will be held, First Friday, May 2nd from 6:00- 8:30p.m.

Post Modernist Writing

". . . invents puzzles out of nonsequiturs to seek congruence in seemingly incongruous situations, whether visual or spatial . . . inhabits those interstitial spaces between understanding and confusion."

The above quote is from the Whitney Museum's Biennial exhibition of contemporary art... yeah.

That elitist deconstruction of the English language is what passes in some circles for art lingo, but the Wall Street Journal's Eric Gibson has it right when he writes that "there is no excuse for a museum letting nonsense of the sort quoted above out in the open, particularly an institution whose mission includes educating the public. If the Whitney continues to snub this public -- its core audience -- by "explaining" art with incomprehensible drivel, it shouldn't be surprised if people decide to return the favor and walk away."

Bravo Mr. Gibson! Read the whole article here.

I visited the Biennial a few weeks ago intending to write a review, but I just couldn't justify spending time doing so. Everything seemed... so common and typical... nothing stood out in my mind.

For example, Oliver Mosset's work is exactly like a the work of a couple of hundred art school students each year (and because I am curating a student exhibition even as I type these words... I know!) and even like the work of a few Artomatic artists every time that there's a new AOM. As is Ry Rocklen's... or Frances Stark or 97.756% of these artists' works.

It is not to say that they are all bad, but what it does says -- to anyone who visits a few art fairs and a few hundred art gallery openings a year -- is "I've seen a few dozen artists who do exactly this stuff... yawn."

In this blue chip setting, I and we want to see something that WOWs us... never mind the shitty writing to explain the shitty art.

We say this because we expect this show to -- at least-- show us a couple of artists and works which really stand out, but instead, it seems likes it continues to degrade into a masturbatory event of "what-does-the-chosen-curator-who-never-actually-goes-to-gallery-openings-regularly... so that he/she only has a tiny perspective..." think is "new" and worthy of inclusion.

But it is not the curators's fault, but the mix of curators.

Whitney Museum: Throw in some common sense in there and you'll be shocked by the changes. Add a small time collector to the curatorial mix; not a multimillionaire, but a guy who owns a dry cleaners or a deli and has a passion for collecting art, or a bartender from NYC who has a passion for going to gallery openings and whose apartment is full of art. Include a small city curator or gallery director with a very focused perspective and you might be surprised what some commoners' blood does add to your blue blood curatorial effort: stamina and a new set of eyes (and new eyes have new perspectives),

For arts' sakes, connect to the "outside the art world" world... somehow.

Otherwise, stay they way you are, and resign yourselves to be the laughing stock of the critical and public world, but at least show me at least one memorable fucking painter or at least one video worth remembering, or one installation that doesn't look like garbage.

Pick out a really young artist whose name hasn't come to you via the usual routes... someone still in school but struggling to deliver something that is good and still someone can choose to display in their homes, for after all, some significant parts of the production of the art community are commodities -- not all mind you -- but not all are just ideas and undecipherable conceptual art.

It's supposed to be sort of a survey... right? So stop trying to be so edgy, because by the time you get to the edge, we've already seen it before when we got there first.

Because unlike you, we are not stuck in offices in museums, waiting for someone in our inner circle to tell us what is the latest and greatest in edgy art, so that we can then re-invent the English language to explain it.

Get out and see some stuff, and remember what the word "survey" means. Or take the approach that some Latin American nations' Biennials take (such as El Salvador and Costa Rica) and open the Biennials so that artists can send submissions for consideration. In this cyberspace world, it is not that hard to do and not that difficult to view and jury.

As for the text, it also brings me to the non-issue of: since every signage in public spaces these days are of the bilingual nature, why isn't museum wall text also displayed in Spanish?

Oy Gevault! Imagine translating all that crappy writing into Spanish if the Whitney Biennial was to travel around the US, as some have suggested.

Que Barbaridad!

Orphan Works Bill

(Via)

In their final report, the independent review has recommended that the UK adopt a similar policy to what U.S. Orphan Works legislation is proposing, namely that works can be used if the copyright owner cannot be found after a 'reasonable search'.

Is Congress on drugs or what? Give up copyright if the copyright owner cannot be found after a "reasonable search"? This is crazy! Especially in the cyberspace world of today, where an image may be reproduced myriads of time and then lives forever as multiple digital footprints of that original image!

According to the Orphan Works Blogspot, earlier on, the Copyright Modernization Act of 2006, HR6052, which incorporated the Orphan Works legislation, after intense pressure, was withdrawn, but it is now back!

Read the Senate Version here and/or the House version here and then contact your Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds elected official and tell him or her to drink a lot of coffee and realize what they're doing!

You'd think that the Republicans were in charge of Congress or somethin'!