Ilona Anderson

(I do realize that it's not Tuesday, but this show closes this weekend, so I'm posting it now)

        Sort of a cop-out first post back, because I had to write this review for a class, but the show is AMAZING, and since I already had something written on it, it seemed silly to write something new...

        In her solo gallery show Dwell Ilona Anderson pulls from her personal history, having lived under Apartheid in South Africa. On the gallery's website she describes the interactions in her "improvisational structures" (drawn tree houses) as "quirky and unpredictable". Ilona Anderson "Dwell": A Drawing Installation is on view at the Kingston Gallery in Boston's SOWA district through March 27th (it opened the 2nd). Coming into the gallery on an unforgivably unpleasant and rainy day, I had the pleasure of viewing the installation uninterrupted by the presence of other viewers, and was able to truly enter into Anderson's built world.
        The exhibition is comprised of two rooms, the large main room of the gallery and a smaller second room. The first room reads more as an "installation" as the show title suggests, the drawings (as large as ~10x30') flowing into one another and placed at all levels of the wall, while the second room is comprised of smaller (~2-3') drawings hung almost exclusively at eye level, which exist more separately from one another. Here I will focus on the pieces which make up the larger installation.
        To enter into the gallery space one must walk up a ramp parallel to the window-front, and walking up, straight ahead is the beginning of Anderson's installation. The first inclination is to get as close as possible, examining the tiny details drawn in fluorescent and glitter pens on black and a variety of gray papers. The drawings are treehouses, awkwardly pieced together in a way that is reminiscent of a Rube Goldberg machine, except one which probably wouldn't work- the structures seem haphazard at best. They are a mixture of natural trees and odd metal tubing and hinges, which mark them as imaginational structures. In the first drawing there are two figures, a man and a woman, the man sucking on the woman's breast. The image is repeated in the second drawing as well, and the remaining figures throughout the exhibition are for the most part lounging or engaged in various sexual acts.
        The paper is thick, almost tangible, and each piece is cut into jagged forms which are then pieced together, the drawings overlapping onto each page. They are not like a puzzle though, the pages run over one another and gaps are left between. Some pieces are connected by thin, scraggly looking shapes. As I backed away from the wall it became clear that the fragmented arrangement of the papers mirrored the haphazard treehouse structures inside Anderson's drawings. Here she has managed to create structures that are simultaneously chaotic and clearly intentional. Every connection, whether it be a strip of paper or logs tied together in ink, no matter how crooked or strange, has the distinctive touch of the human hand.

        Being carried through the dream-like narrative (I say dream-like because the drawings are so obviously unrealistic- but as if dreaming they are deceptively believable while viewing them), I begin to recognize the fluorescent and glitter lines under the gallery lights as gel pen, the connection to my own childhood furthering the fantastical feel of the drawings. The brightly colored lines are contrasted by Anderson's use of black ink, both in line work and in fields of black, often on black paper, creating an effect that looks almost like velvet.
        The escapist nature of the drawings begins to be interrupted as I begin to notice strange things happening within the drawings. It starts with a woman who is hanging from a hook by her braided hair. Once attention has been drawn to her hair, I begin to notice braids all over the drawings, both attached to heads and independent. Suddenly it becomes apparent that much of the "rope" in the drawings is actually braided hair, such as on a rope ladder and connecting parts of the treehouses. The hair ducks in and out of the drawings through suspicious holes, which appear also in places where strange liquid seems to be seeping in. In one section a naked woman knits, and towards the bottom her knitting dissolves into a mass of fluorescent liquid, disappearing into one of these holes. This melting fabric is repeated in other places, in one drawing a dress seeps off a figure. Another figure wears a mask and balances four others on her head. The surreal imagery seems to be pulling from some sort of mythology, whether it is one that is personal or cultural I could not guess, but the imagery is strong, and curious.

        Looking at the pictures online (before coming into the gallery) I had been skeptical of Anderson's use of the word "installation" in the title of the exhibition. I realize that the term installation does not require that the work be 3D, however in my experience what I would truly consider "installations" were works that could be experienced, a physical space that could be entered into. The idea of a "drawing installation" seemed sort of contradictory, perhaps a word that was only being used to describe the way the works were laid out on the wall.
        What Anderson has created however, is truly an installation. Aptly titled "Dwell", the drawings are not only of dwellings (treehouses) but they allow the viewer to almost literally be inside them. To dwell for a moment within them. Through her drawings, Anderson has seemingly tapped into some kind of shared imagination. The viewer is acutely aware that she is looking into Anderson's experiences and mind's eye, but she is there. Anderson has pulled us into her own world, but in it she is speaking to shared experiences; the quiet painful moments, the quirkiness, feelings of instability, joy, sex. In her drawings she has captured a spectrum of human existence that the viewer is able to enter into, and I believe that this is her goal in creating these spaces. It is as experiential as something you could physically be inside. So installation? I say yes.


If you're in Boston you can check out Dwell at the Kingston Gallery (it's only open through the 27th though!)



images: kingstongallery.com & shambhalatimes.org

Marc Johns

        While this blog is first and foremost a way for me to organize all the artists that I find inspiring, I couldn't help but include Marc Johns. (Not to put down his work, because I love it, I just haven't found any artists to write about lately that I'm really connected to or as inspired by as I have in the past). If you ever have bad days (I imagine you occasionally do), then those will be the days to look at his work. Johns' tiny illustrations are extremely minimalist (and in this very charming), but in their simpleness he packs a lot of humor and cleverness. Many of the illustrations are accompanied by small bits of text, which are equally short and sweet, and obvious the the most clever ways.
        His simple drawing style is something that I can relate to, but his sense of humor is something that is definitely unique to Johns. Many of his illustrations are also terribly strange (and by terribly I obviously mean brilliantly), another nod to his unique brain.
        Like I said, not too much to say, but if you're ever feeling sour here are a few places to check out some more of his work! :

Johns' website
Johns' flickr
Serious Drawings Book, which you can not buy (sold out) but there's a preview of a bunch of the pages, and it's really cool the way his sense of humor is apparent even in the setup/organization of the book..




images: flickr.com/photos/marcjohns

Amy Cutler

        I was first attracted to Amy Cutler's illustrations because of the weird space they seem to occupy between nonsense and some sort of strange ritual. I wasn't quite sure what to make of them. I was interested.
        I stumbled across her when finding images for my post a little while back on Nikki S. Lee, whose work is carried by the Leslie Tonkonow gallery; which represents Amy Cutler. Her gouache illustrations are charming, but at the same time there is something unsettling about them. They are slightly off. Women performing mundane tasks (tasks that are particularly associated with females) are offset by slight peculiarities in the scene. (The perfect subtleness of the strangeness in her scenes can especially be seen in the first image, it took me a while to notice the women behind the trees.) The stark white absence of background leaves a large hole in the narrative which makes it clear the whole story is not being told. It makes them appear deceptively simple. They are nonetheless definitely narratives, however cryptic, or pieces of them at the very least.

Cutler at Tonkonow




images: various sources, c. Amy Cutler

Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith 1954-

        I meant to write about Kiki Smith around the time of SMFA's InsideOut sale (as she had a piece in it; Born last image - one of her many depictions of the red riding hood tale) but somehow I managed not to do so.
        Kiki Smith is one of those artists where I've had an impossible time choosing images to put up here. This is not only because I love her work so much (definitely one of the artists I aspire to be like), but also because she works across so many mediums that it's absolutely impossible to give any kind of window into the breadth of her work. Nevertheless, I have chosen some of my favorites, and tried to give a small taste of what she's about.
        Smith has said that she strongly identifies with her gender, and it is definitely clear in her work, which re-contextualizes and reconstructs stories, myths, and histories; through her female eye. The two sites I've included here have way more information about her than I could possibly share or even summarize, so I suggest you take a look at one or both.

-awesome MoMA interactive site from their 2003 show Kiki Smith: Prints, Books & Things with lots of her work and lots of info.
-Art:21 on Kiki Smith (in the "Stories" episode)






images: pbs.org & moma.org

Fefe Talavera

Fefe Talavera 1979-

        Since I am home for the holidays I was going through a bunch of old Juxtapoz magazines to check if I could throw them out, and stumbled upon a few great artists I had overlooked the first time, including Brazilian street artist Fefe Talavera, whose work is both beautiful and badass.
        Her myspace explains that her monster paintings "are metaphors for strong and subconscious human emotions like anger, fear, dreams or desire", and that she connects them to the "dark side of her inner self". Her cultural roots also play a large part in her work, as she (who is half Mexican half Brazilian) was raised in São Paulo which is known for its graffiti scene, and has also affected some of the deeper meanings and intentions behind her work. Inspired by her heritage she also incorporates Aztec and Mayan mythologies into her work.
        I just thought her images were really strong and definitely worth putting up here, so take a look.

Talavera's blog ,
myspace ,
& flickr .




images: flickr.com/photos/fefe_talavera

2009 wrap-up

        In case you haven't been following my every move this year, here are my top ten favorite discoveries (all are artists that I had not known of before this year, since I sometimes write about long-time influences of mine):

April 18th : Bianca Casady (knew of her before 2009, but not her artwork)
April 29th : Jan Švankmajer
June 5th : Nadine Byrne
June 7th : Miwa Yanagi
July 24th : Compagnia della Fortezza
July 29th : Andrea Marshall
August 12th : Ali Scarpulla
September 23rd : Bert & Bertie
October 9th : Susanna Majuri
December 21st : Miru Kim




        I realize that the majority of this list is women, and while this did not surprise me (I tend to seek out female artists), I was slightly surprised after a bit of investigation, that the reasoning for this is also partially that the male artists that I've written about this past year are almost entirely artists I had prior knowledge of (and therefor did not include). This coming year I'll try to find some guys who are new to me.

images (top to bottom): Miwa Yanagi, Bert & Bertie, Andrea Marshall & Susanna Majuri

Sam Moss

        This month Sam Moss launched a blog which chronicles his most recent visual project, daily drawings which he has titled Imagined Faces. He states that though the "imagined" aspect is not a rule, the drawings (which he often does "on the cusp of sleep") typically turn out this way. He scans the drawings directly out of his sketchbook.
        The faces remind me of a combination of Ray Johnson's work and Ken Kesey's sketches in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (though this may be off the mark as I haven't seen the book in a while and google books has removed ONLY the pages with illustrations). Johnson for the composition and Kesey for the style.
        The fact that he is so close to sleep is possibly responsible for some of the stranger aspects of the drawings, as just before and just after sleep are generally considered to be the times when the creative and subconscious are most readily accessible. Little bits of other information (sometimes less immediately obvious) find their way into the portraits, giving them a strange transitory movement. Some of the drawings feel like they could be imprints of the artist's mind, with floating shapes, images and text all mashed into the same plane as the figures. It is difficult to speak for them because their language is very visual.
        The works very clearly represent Moss' artistic style, which can be seen in his other visual work (mainly drawing and collage) as well. While I imagine he would identify foremost as a musician, Moss is also a visual artist, a sizable sampling of which can be seen on his website alongside his music.

Imagined Faces
Moss' website




images: imagined-faces.blogspot.com

Ahmed Abdalla

        This past Thursday I had the pleasure of attending Ahmed Abdalla's opening for his show Melody and Witness, which is currently up at GASP Arts in Brookline, MA. Abdalla's statement for the show reads as follows;

        In melody and witness, there is anxiety about what is happening and what might never happen. There is frustration, sometimes, with the impossibility of communication.
        Humility and arrogance, power and greed, guilt, redemption, forgiveness, ambiguity, paradox and contradiction are all present in this art event."

        This "art event" (described by Abdalla as something that lies between theater and fine art - his background is in both stage design and fine arts) incorporates elements of painting, drawing, sculpture, video projection, sound and light, culminating in a wildly powerful installation. He has effectively controlled every aspect of the experience within the space, and the effect is overwhelming.
        The viewer enters through the street entrance to the gallery, and is immediately confronted by a small space, a temporary wall covered in pencil marks, and a curtain to the left. Entering into the actual gallery, it is dark. The lights are set up to alternate between two overhead bulbs, darkness, and lighting underneath a table that is set up, with a large glass of oil and tar set next to a slab of special type of tar that has the appearance of both wax and charcoal. Small beads (I'm unclear on what they actually were) cover the ground, Abdalla explained that he hoped visitors would step on them and feel that they had done something wrong (something that I certainly felt before having the discussion with him about it). The second smaller room is pitch black, aside from a video projection into a pedestal sink, a man's hands scrubbing to get almost gold brown oil of his hands under running water.
        By nature of the piece, it really must be experienced (and I encourage anyone in the Boston area to do so) to understand the true power of it. Abdalla has extreme mastery over experiential language; his political and emotional message can almost be sensed without explanation or text.

Information on visiting the art event Melody and Witness:

GASP Arts
362-4 Boylston Street
Brookline, MA 02445
617.418.4308

The gallery is open Thursday - Saturday 11am-5pm and is less than two blocks from the Green D line Brookline Hills stop.




images: taken by me, c. Ahmed Abdalla Melody and Witness

Reed + Rader

Back to normal posting from my 2 week hiatus! Midterms are over and I am ready to go.

        And of course I am back with something bizarre and fascinating. I usually try not to post more than four images, but since these were just so amazing, and because I've been gone for two weeks, I possibly went a little overboard. But I'm not apologizing, because as I said, the images are amazing.
        Reed + Rader is made up of fashion (photography/ video/ installation/ graphics) duo Pamela Reed and Matther Rader. What initially attracted me to their work was the strange feel and unconventional look. Two minutes into their website I was hooked.
        I can not tell you much about the artists themselves, other than that they are 26 and live in New York. Their website also states that they "enjoy cats, stuffed animals, nintendo, pizza, robots, deli sandwiches and computing on the internet". I imagine that they are fun to be around. What I can speak to is their work.
        While all of their work is very different, it is all distinctively theirs. Looking through their website, I began to notice that images were moving (a startling discovery at first), sometimes animated very subtly (a blink or breath). While many of their photographs and videos are simply set up to be strange and other-worldly, many of them have also had some sort of outside intervention, whether that be drawing strange sci-fi additions over the photos, collage, photo manipulations, and animation. While I am always excited to see anything different going on in fashion advertisement, their work is particularly interesting because it also speaks to other things, such as technology, medium and contemporary culture. Their work very successfully resides in both the worlds of fashion and art, and comments on both.

I know I always say this, but you really, seriously, need to look at their website. I couldn't post the moving images or their videos here, and there is just so much more on the website that I wish I could've posted. All of it really.

their website -so many amazing things here
their blog meowzas -has a complete list of their other projects and sites (flickr, youtube etc) on the links page






images: reedandrader.com
(last one is a video still)

Peter Callesen

        I entered into Peter Callesen's world through his performance piece Palace of Dreams, which consisted of a white castle floating in the middle of a lake, to which the viewer would be rowed out to (by Callesen), left alone in the castle for half an hours, then picked up and rowed back to shore. The piece is very representative of Callesen's work, which in its playful nature examines greater concepts, existing simultaneously in reality and a strange dream-like state.
        A post could be written for each of the mediums Callesen works in, which is not to say that his work is not cohesive, because it certainly is, rather that his body of work is so large and the attention paid to each section of what he does is such that it seems silly to try and tackle all of Callesen in one shot. Because of this, I will keep it relatively brief and can only plead that you check out his website for a more comprehensive taste.
        In subject matter, it is easy to see why I am attracted to Callesen's work, he repeatedly goes back to my three favorite things; birds, skeletons and houses. His work is executed so perfectly that one wonders if he is possibly insane. In particular his papercuts, which are absolutely breathtaking, have such a degree of perfection and minute detail that it seems both obsessive and unreal.
        In his artist statements Callesen refers to fairy tales, and the magic and in some ways tragic implications of papercut - something that is reflected in many of his pieces, through delicate images of death and decay. One of his installations (untitled, last image shown here) requires the viewer to "bend down to level of a child" to enter. It is clear that Callesen is playing with connections to childhood, and perhaps childhood interpretations of the world.
        Callesen is also a performance, installation, and 2d artist and sculptor.

Callesen's website (lots of images, various writing pieces done on Callesen, artist statements, current exhibitions, etc etc)




images: petercallesen.com

Charles Goss

        I've mentioned my mentor a few times in previous posts, and I feel like following Ray Johnson is a perfect time to bring him to the focus of a post. Charles Goss has been teaching at the Museum School since 1979, and (with fellow Museum School teacher Robert Siegelman) started the artist in residence program Art In Amsterdam in 1996. I took his class "Art as Process" my first semester at the Museum School, in 2007, and immediately asked him to be my mentor. He is brutally honest, and forces me to expand my ways of thinking and push myself out of my comfort zones and open up in a way that I have infrequently been asked to in art school. Goss' teaching, as well as his artwork, inspires expansion of the way art is looked at. If I became frustrated with a piece, he would tell me to rip it in half, or turn it on its side. In class projects would be outlined in simple terms that begged for consideration of exactly what they could be warped to mean, such as "draw every person you know".
        The playfulness and ability for everything to have multiple layers and meanings that I described in Ray Johnson is present in every aspect of Goss, personality, work, and intent. His work ranges from collage and painting to large scale installations. His solo show, A Vertical Life at the Bromfield Gallery (where he is represented) in 2008 displayed all these talents; the show included 63 collages (shown together and deceptively titled 60) - some of which make references to Johnson, displaying instructions on how to draw a bunny- a bulletin board covered in what seemed to be thousands of notes (Charles is never without scraps of paper literally covered in names, times, etc), a ball of socks hovering over a photograph of the edge of Goss' face looking upward -the socks collected from family and friends, attached together so that the socks from the ones closest to him were closest to the inside of the ball- poles with tiny scraps of metal, found in Amsterdam and Boston, sticking off the edges, a ball of digital watches on a pole, all originally set to go off at the same time, slowly growing apart due to slight differences in their mechanics (I happened to be there at one of the times when the watches went off, it was amazingly cool) as well as a few other pieces, including a couple tongue in cheek references to work.
        Goss' work is not only visually intriguing, but all very meaningful and often humorous. He and Johnson would undoubtedly have gotten along. In addition to his artist's statement, Goss shares on his website an "artist's focus", which, in perfectly descriptive of Goss fashion reads (click to enlarge):

Goss' website
Bromfield Gallery
Art in Amsterdam program




images: charlesgoss.com

Ray Johnson

        I don't even know how to begin discussing the genius that was Ray Johnson, and this post would be much better left to someone who knows more about him (a couple people very close to me hold Johnson very close to them), so I'm going to focus on few specific aspects of Johnson and his work, because I do think that it is important that I address him as someone who has inspired me. For the greater picture, I can't express enough how much I believe everyone (artist or not) should watch the documentary How to Draw a Bunny, which focuses on Johnson's life, death, and work.
        *note: the links in the following paragraph are to excerpts from How to Draw a Bunny
        Johnson, who is most well known for his collage work, basically lived his life as performance (some speculate, including his mysterious suicide in 1995). He has been hailed the "most famous unknown artist", and not only made really awesome work, but was a really intriguing and genuinely quirky character. Though he is described as a relative unknown, it is more a reference to the way many people did not realize exactly how prolific he was until his death, at which point thousands of works were found, and also because of the way he has been somewhat of a cult gem in contemporary art history. His work is owned by various museums, including the MoMA and he was friendly with many pop figures at the time, including the much more widely recognized Andy Warhol.

“Mail Art has no history, only a present” - Ray Johnson

        I've been thinking about Johnson a lot lately, because I'm hoping to embark on some sort of mail art project, and Johnson has often be considered the father of mail art (which he began in the 1950s). The above quote greatly characterizes Johnson and his work; a playful pun (present meaning gift) but also a statement that can be taken more seriously and analyzed in the greater contexts of the evolving art world.
        I think what Johnson started with his mail art was so important, a sense of community and collaboration in art, wanting to give without some sort of expectation that something would be returned. It is this sense of community that art can bring about that is so important to me, and the reasons why I would like to start creating and exchanging mail art amongst my many creative friends. Ray Johnson, as much of an oddball as he may have been, totally knew what was up.

Again, cannot emphasize enough how I think everyone should see How to Draw a Bunny, but here are some other Johnson sources as well:
(also note that the work I posted only represents his mail art, definitely try to get a look at the rest of his body of work, even if you just google him)

cool short essay on Johnson and mail art
source for a good number of his mail art images (difficult website to navigate, but click basically any link and an image will come up)
official website of the estate of Ray Johnson (nice bio, images, general info)
Ray Johnson: Correspondences (if you have $70 floating around)




images: various sources, including artpool.hu