Steve Hollinger

        Sorry this is late, I'm not sure what was going on but Blogger was NOT letting me post it! Last month I went to the south end for Boston's first fridays and while in the Walker Contemporary gallery one artist's work caught my eye, Steve Hollinger.
        His works are basically alive. There isn't really another way to word it. The couple of his pieces on display were like a small window into some weird 19th century laboratory. Responding to temperature and light, many of Hollinger's works are physically active. The pieces that I saw twirled around in strange vials of water and light (first image), or twitched in a way that was so bizarrely lifelike (his "pods") you probably could have told me they were something alien and I would've been willing to buy it. Another piece had vials of polariod emulsion catching light (last image).
        As someone who is very much into sci-fi, and obviously very much into anything visually pleasing, his works were particularly attracting, as they invoke a sort of eerie feeling of both past and future, while also being really stunning. If you can't see his work in person, you should at least watch the video I've linked here, which shows his pieces doing their thing.

Video of some of Hollinger's works in action
Hollinger's website
Walker Contemporary site




images: stevehollinger.com

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

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

Iris Schieferstein

Iris Schieferstein 1966-

        I am admittedly somewhat confused by Iris Schieferstein, and it is perhaps because of minor language issues or the simple fact that her work is absolutely bizarre. The latter also happens to be the reason that I like her.
        I stumbled across her website (which is in German and roughly translated to English) after seeing pictures on google images of hoof high heels that she made (I was looking to see if A. McQueen's shoes would come up, or what else would... just a little insight into the weird ways I come across things...) I was intrigued so I ended up at her website.
        It's difficult to figure exactly what she typically does, other than that it involves dead animals. On her website I found a menagerie of photographs and sculpture, both revolving around taxidermy. The image on the main page of her website is a Vincent Price-esque photograph of what I presume is the artist, standing over a severed sheep's head a and a glass of wine, wielding a pair of scissors. Again, not sure what to think. The description underneath makes her out to be some sort of Frankenstein, stating that she "...has worked with dead animals as raw material for her pieces of art. She joins the fragments together to new creatures and thus gives a new face to death. No matter, if her arrangements follow paintings of the great masters of art or if the joined objects turn out to be whole words - her work always gives evidence of aesthetic intutition and her inclination to subtle entertainment." -the last part of which can be seen in her taxidermy sculpture works which spell out words and phrases such as "life can be so nice" and "elvis". Her photographs (look at the series Fotoplastiken) would also suggest that she is possibly somewhat of a feminist.

If anyone knows more about her, definitely share!
Schieferstein's website
Breakthrough : show at HP Garcia Gallery NYC which is up until TOMORROW (sorry!)




images: iris-schieferstein.de & hpgarciagallery.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

Beverly Semmes

        Beverly Semmes (a graduate of SMFA) gave a lecture at the MFA yesterday. Her work is often described as, and certainly appears to be, very feminist, so I was surprised and interested to hear that this was not her foremost concern, or even something that she had originally considered. Semmes described how one of her earlier pieces had been written up as a "pool of menstrual blood", and how she had been surprised and embarrassed, thinking that she had simply been making landscapes.
        It is impossible in contextualizing Semmes' work to ignore the feminist connotations of what she has created, intended or not. She works in female garments, placed together with empty vessels (either clay or glass, both of which are made by coiling). In order to understand where Semmes is really coming from though, it is important to look back at where she is stemming from.
        Out of grad school Semmes and her boyfriend (now husband) moved to a psychiatric hospital - where he worked and they were offered free housing. There Semmes became consumed by the hospital's extremely well manicured garden. She began to making garments which reflected the space, and making super-8 films of friends wearing the garments and walking around the garden (second image). It is here that Semmes identity as an artist began to become more apparent. She described the way no one could quite do it the way she wanted. People moved too fast, looked back at the camera, overacted. It was obvious that even if she could not express it at the time, she had a clear intentionality for these pieces. She described it as something like the "marking" or "claiming" of space.
        This continued into her other pieces. By using scale, color, and once even smell, Semmes has a complete control over space. She chooses colors which she describes as both beautiful and nauseating, sometimes with a goal of "color contamination", where nothing is safe from the color, reflecting off of walls, clothes and skin of observers. She plays with this even further in pieces where the garment is the same color as the walls, making it not only difficult to locate but almost claiming the entire room as her art. She ups the scale in every one of her pieces, making dresses that are unwearably huge and with oddly pushed proportions.
        One of her more interesting pieces (in my opinion) was a small room, with orange curtains surrounding it, a couple of red pots, and a large circle of tan bandaids stuck to the floor in the middle of the room. Semmes states that although it cannot be taken too literally (which would leave no place for the pots) she thinks that the bandaids were in some ways standing in for skin, and the curtains one of her dresses. This places the viewer in an undefined space, between skin and fabric, something I thought was really cool, and goes along with her interest in marking or claiming space.
        She showed and discussed work than I can describe here (I unfortunately was unable to find pictures of most of this work, including much of what I was so interested in), but some other things she showed included giant fluorescent yellow "poops" with a guard dressed in the same yellow, a sea of pink fabric (the guard again dressed in the same color, and often chosen to be an older woman), video and images of Semmes watching her feet (an exploration, she says, of the self-absorption involved in being an artist), and a collaboration with a dance studio - something which she again like her early super-8 films, disliked her lack of control over, and ended up making new work in response to this.
        If you ever get an opportunity to see her work, I could not advise more that you do so. It is difficult to find too many images of her work on the web, and that aside her work is of an extremely experiential nature, and I have a feeling that photos only begin to scratch the surface.

Semmes' website
70min conversation lecture with Semmes and Glenn Adamson at the PA ICA




images: various sources including beverlysemmesstudio.com

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

Joyce McDaniel

        Last week Joyce McDaniel came into GASP (the gallery where I work) to drop off her submission for Bag It!, our gala silent auction this Friday, and I was reminded of how much I absolutely love her work. McDaniel teaches at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and I took a course with her in the fall of last year. The class, which was an introduction to welding, had three teachers, and they started the course by each giving a short presentation on their own work, something that was unique (to my personal experience) at the school, and something that I thought was really important and exciting.
        I immediately fell for McDaniel's work, which juxtaposes delicate dress form and handmade paper with steel into the absolutely most amazing and tactile sculptures. The pieces seem directly representative of McDaniel herself, who is not an imposing person (her small stature belies the strength of her work) and is very sweet, but is also an extremely strong and inspiring woman. Her pieces speak powerfully about identity, femininity, and communication, and truly read as visual texts.
        My favorite series of hers makes reference to Virginia Woolf, who McDaniel feels a particular connection to,
        "Virginia Woolf queried what it means to be female; what it means to bear burdens of subordination, accommodation, patterns of lower expectations, rage, even quiet despair. Her life, work and death have struck a resonant cord within me. She chose to own her own death by filling her pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse. In my attempt to understand that event, I created a series of work paying sculptural homage to her. This piece is part of a series of work dedicated to Virginia Woolf."
(statement specifically in reference to Monday or Tuesday, last piece shown here)
        McDaniel captures Woolf in a poetic way that can only be explained as a visual equivalent to Woolf's own writing. One can sense the exact "quiet despair" and weight she has described. McDaniel's decision to include the soft round rocks in these pieces makes them particularly strong. Anyone familiar with Woolf's story will read it in the pieces, and visually it is a stunning choice.

McDaniel's website




images: joycemcdanielart.com

Hitoshi Nomura

        We looked at Hitoshi Nomura's Moon Score (above) in my contemporary photo history class last year. While visually it is not the sort of thing that would typically grab my attention, conceptually the project is quite cool, and while clearing out the many image files on my laptop a few nights ago, I cam across it once again and was inspired to look up the rest of Nomura's body of work.
        In Moon Score (1975-1979), Nomura photographed the moon on film marked with five lines (like staff paper). The project was supposedly inspired by Nomura spotting the moon moving behind telephone wires. In an early exhibition of the piece, visitors began to hum the "score", and later exhibitions featured a CD with a string quartet or chorus performing the score.
        His early work, which could be likened in concept to the work of earthworks artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, discussed "invisible concepts, such as ‘gravity’ or ‘time'", using for example cardboard towers, which were left to such effects, and documented over time. This brand of thinking moved Nomura to begin looking to the skies, as well as the earth (specifically fossils), and his Moon Score came out of this observation of the patterns of the sun and moon across the sky.
        His work, which takes on photographic and sculptural forms (often incorporating both), both displays the natural beauty of these processes of motion and time, but explores the concepts and their relation to humanity as well.
        In May - July of this past year, Nomura (who is 64, boasting a 40 year career) had a retrospective at the National Art Center, Tokyo. Their write-up on it is quite good, however unfortunately it has no images of the exhibition or his work.

NATC Retrospective page
Review of the retrospective from the Japan Times
Some nice images of Nomura's work (be sure to click "see more artworks by this artist" as well)




images: artcourtgallery.com
source of Moon Score image unknown, but c. Hitoshi Nomura