May 25, 2011

Paul Gellman qtd. in Chris Krause, Where Art Belongs (Semiotext[e], 2011), 36.

"Being a good collage/assemblage artist requires being a good scavenger. As you walk down the filthy streets outside your hovel you are probably feeling depressed because for one you live in a hovel, or you are affecting an air of the disaffected, or you are experiencing a fall out from some drug you've been binging on for the past weekend, week, month ... Use your downward gaze as an opportunity to see the beautiful detritus that our polluted city offers ... Begin to see recurring themes, colors, shapes in the pieces of trash your eye is drawn to. If you are attracted to something, it is because in some way it represents you and the more you learn about yourself the more freedom you have from said hovel."
_______
And she shows you where to look
among the garbage and the flowers
--Leonard Cohen

May 25, 2011

Started reading Chris Kraus', Where Art Belongs (Semiotext[e], 2011) on the train to work today and was thinking that what she did to document the importance of the Tiny Creatures gallery in LA (9-43) really needs to be done for 21 Grand in Oakland.

October 29, 2010

Three things worth seeing at 798:

1. Lee Gil-Woo's work at Gallery TN. Multi-layered work that uses a process so that each layer is equally for and background at the same time.

2. Pace Beijing's "Great Performances." As much as they leave out, and with an exhibition of this scope with an exhibition space of this size, curator Leng Lin had some difficult choices to make, but managed to offer a representative primer of Chinese performance art in the 1990s. Well worth seeing.

3. At Faurschou Beijing, they have Christian Lemmerz's "Hypnosis." I'm still trying to assess the piece as theory sound, or the obvious other. The fact that I'm thinking about it at 10:30 on a Friday means that it might be worth you guys mulling it over.

August 9, 2008

Brion Gysin, Turning into the Multimedia Age, edited by Jose Ferez Kuri (Thames & Hudson, 2003).

I first learned about Brion Gysin via Wm. Burroughs & their cut-up projects they did back in the late 50s (I managed to interlibrary loan a first (only?) edition of Minutes to Go when I was an undergraduate), working my way to his permutation poems which I still find fascinating to hear & to read aloud:

kick that habit man
that kick habit man
kick habit that man
habit kick that man . . .

and once I learned of the Dreamachine, I fruitlessly tried to convince any sculptor I knew with sufficient skills & technology to build one.

This book traces Gysin's art career from his days as a surrealist, cut-up artist, visual poet, minimalist water colorist, etc. . . touching on the many phases of his long career. Beuatilfully illustrated, this does a good job as a restrospective catalogue. The essays are for the most part shortish and surface, more intro than delving.

This coupled with Back in No Time: The Brion Gysin Reader offer a better than good introduction to Gysin's approach to the arts.

June 17, 2008

Tony Perniciaro, Tony the Bricklayer (Delacorte, 1972).

When Geof Huth wrote that my "poem-drawings (or poem-paintings), thus, resemble those of Kenneth Patchen, Tony Perniciaro, and others," and I didn't know Tony Perniciaro's work, I immediately hopped on the internet and purchased this book. I am glad I did.

Tony the Bricklayer has both poem-paintings as well as poemy-poems, but the visual work far outweighs the textual. There is a working class cynicism that runs throughout: one of the poem-paintings text reads: "when a foreman lunches with you,/ the flies are the first to leave--." The wit is dry & mordant.

June 16, 2008

Joseph del Pesco & Scott Oliver, eds., 100 Shotgun Reviews: Contemporary Art in the Bay Area: October 2005-April 2007, (Collective Foundation, 2007).

I picked this up at 21 Grand last night after the New Reading Series reading. Just as the title spells out, this book contains a plethora of shortish (mostly 1-2 page) art reviews and interviews covering a wide range of Bay Area art venues. With 50 contributors, the approach to the writing of art criticism is varied and at times uneven. But for someone trying to get a good sense of the various art scenes in the Bay, this is a good place to start.

February 10, 2008

With the main art gallery closed, yeasterday probably wasn't the best day to visit the Oakland Museum of California; although, the jade pagoda piece in the lower level was certainly something to ponder.

There was a lot going on outside though. In Chinatown, there were several multi-generational small Chinese persussion ensembles keeping things lively between setting off rounds of fire-crackers in store doorways.

And up at a mailbox on the 5200 block of Clarement Avenue (by the Red Sea Ethiopean restaurant) Ariel Goldberg performed a round in her on-going project "Letters to the Names of the Dead." 100 letters written to dead soldiers, sealed in unaddressed envelopes (how do you address letters to the dead?), Goldberg went through several gestures that call forth and emphasized the futility of such a project, while simultaneously calling our attention to the importance of such actions. The mailbox itself seemed a monolithic metaphor of beaucratic and real silence & inaction, with Goldberg's final gesture being to succumb and plant herself as though dead underneath the mailbox. Check her website for photos.

January 7, 2008

Helena Keefe, "Talking to Neighbors: Jim in West Oakland"(2007).

A telephone-based social sculpture. Call 510.451.1489 to listen or visit 7th Street near West Oakland BART to see the installation.

December 24, 2007

1. Let Sha drive a car around Mills yesterday. It was her first time behind the wheel ever. I think she may be hooked on the sense of power operating a ton of machinery gives you. At least, she's seriously comtemplating driving school when she gets back to Minnie.

2. Bought an antique Smith-Corona manual typewriter from a guy in Fremont for $20. It's in excellent shape and even has a good ribbon. It's exactly like one I owned the second time I moved to New York.

3. Adam Bock's Shaker Chair is on at the Shotgun Player's theater near Ashby BART. It's refreshing to see such poignantly political material in the Bernard Shaw tradition. Good acting, minimal set, and Bock's dialogue.

4. Took Sha to the Laney College flea market. She was horrified and fascinated in equal amounts at all the crap up for sale. I walked away with a wash board. Couldn't find a set of thimbles though, so I'll most likely be scrounging in Chinatown--Chinatown has everything-- today to get some.

5. The graffiti at 46th Avenue and Foothill is something.

December 5, 2007

from Fiona McGregor:

Friends,

On Sunday 25th November I staged an interventionist performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. 'Dead Art' was a protest about the absence of live performance art in the MCA, one of Australia's foremost contemporary art institutions.

Dressed in curatorial black, tagged like a morgue corpse, I lay on the floor in one of the galleries until I was forcibly removed by the NSW Police. I chose the Contemporary Australian Art show as the exhibition in which to display my dead body.

I came back to life outside the institution, where I was fined $220 by the NSW Police for 'Failure to comply with Police Directions'. I was banned from the MCA for the rest of the day.

'Dead Art' was also a mourning ritual to commemorate the previous evening's deposition of our Great Lord and Master, John Winston Howard.

Enjoy the photos. More details to follow on the website.

Fiona McGregor
http://www.senvoodoo.com/

November 24, 2007

Hiraki Sawa, "Going Places Sitting Down" (2004). SMOCA.

There were other worthwhile pieces at SMOCA, albeit seemingly hodge-podge put next to each other.

Hiraki's piece was the room, projected on three large screens. 3 channels exploring the notion of travel in their own slowish pace, via rocking horse, camel, plane, etc. . . in surrealistic landscapes that forces the viewer to question not only the nature of travel but the reason that propels one to distant landscapes. Left long enough, the viewer could easily create a visual mythology.

July 31, 2007

On My Knees: A Public Divorce Ceremony by Cathy Gordon

June 17, 2007

Walter Logue. hitmewithaflower. Gallery of Urban Art. Runs through July 13th.

Logue's work in this exhibition appropriates lyrics from the rock & roll cannon (yes, think "Stairway to Heaven"). While at times a little too literal in its cut & paste usage, the assumed shared (pop) history [would the gallery's Black West Oakland neighbors immediately conjure up Velvet Underground or even Trainspotting by simply seeing the words "Such A Perfect Day" affixed to shiny black rectangles?] had the effect of forcing me to hear ass-rock guitar licks that I hadn't thought about or listened to in years.

May 15, 2007

Just in case you're not on the Buffalo list, you might want to check this out:

John Cage on a game show (it's pretty awesome).

May 14, 2007

by Matthew Lusk

April 16, 2007

Artist Xu Zhen gave Sha an email interview for her thesis.

March 23, 2007

I forgot to mention this the other day. If you're in the Jack London area, you really should check out David Gentry's exhibition at Pro Arts. Gentry's sculptures blur the lines between industry and nature. I know, this is a pretty generic description, but this really is first show in a long while where I walked away thinking "hey, that was actually good." The exhibition runs March 16 - April 22 with the Artists' Reception, Friday, April 6, 6-8pm.

February 24, 2007

Kiyomitsu Odai, Music for Found Objects at Signal Flow, Mills College, February 23, 2007.

I normally wouldn't comment on student productions, but Kiyomitsu Odai's piece blew me away last night. Mixing all of the criteria for new music with aspects of theater (Anantha Krishnan's elbow diving the cardboard box, for example), the piece used common objects--wood, tools, paper, a vacuum--set to stopwatch timed actions to create a piece that intensified these usually banal (and annoying) sounds. The fact that all of these objects are used in various working class environments (conctruction, warehouses, butchers/deli, hotel domestics) hints at a larger discussion than just a Fluxus-inspired exultation of the bathetic.

Philip White, wood I
Peter Musselman, wood II
Luke Selden, suspended paper
Kiyomitsu Odai, vacuum
Anantha Krishnan, cardboard box & pipe

November 24, 2006

Yoko Ono, One: Fluxfilm 14 (1966). 5 minutes.
___, Cut Piece (1965). 8.58 minutes.

&

Taiwanese rapper Jay Chow, "Shi Mian Chu Ge." 4.05 minutes.

&

Sergei Eisenstein, October (1927). 5 minute clip.

&

Mak Shing-fung, Some interesting Hong Kong animation (2006).

October 7, 2006

21 Grand's 'Illuminated Corridors' project demonstrates an Oaklandish vitality that the recent Yerba Buena exhibit didn't quite capture. Multiple simultaneous projections and musical ensembles (coteries?) set up in a very DIY fashion, showing video against the backdrop of city buildings and transmitting sound waves down 25th for all to hear. The mission statement reads guerrilla: "the Illuminated Corridor is always seeking to collaborate with intermedia artists and engage with communities in the reclamation of public space." Engaged, inclusive, creative re-use of urban resources.

Or you could pay $20 to go to Burning Man's 'Decompression 2006' in San Francisco tomorrow where the back of the postcard doubles as a rule book: "Dont bring renegade sound systems or unauthorized fine art. None!"