In conjunction with “Open for Business”, Brian and Patrica will interview René de Guzman live in public at Triple Base Gallery on Thursday, July 10th at 5:00 PM. The raw interview will then be posted to the site as that week’s show.

René de Guzman is the senior curator of art at the Oakland Museum of California. Previously, he was the director of visual arts at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA).

UPDATE: The interview will be held at 5:00 PM, not 6:00 PM as previously listed.

See you there!

Bad at Sports is participating in “Open for Business” at Triple Base Gallery from July 10th – 13th. The west coast team will be there with stickers, custom BAS Audio CDs, MP3s and more schwag. Come by and barter for the goodies. Check out lowdown from Triple Base after the jump…

Open for Business
July 10 – August 3, 2008
Marketplace Hours: Thursday & Friday: 5-8pm, Saturday & Sunday 12-5pm

Throughout the month of July, Triple Base will activate the gallery with alternative art commerce. A weekly rotation of artist booths designed by sixteen contemporary artists and creative inventors will each provide an offering of goods, services or information. The set-up facilitates an active space for exchange and social interaction, allowing the artists to highlight their influences or endeavors outside of their regular visual art practice. Each week (Thursday through Sunday) four different artists or artist groups will man their custom-designed booth and conduct a project that engages the public. Artists will offer limited edition and one-off items, provide services – from tattooing to yoga lessons – or distribute information that will either be for free, trade/barter, or simply be for sale in cold hard cash.

Participating artists include Alissa Anderson, Bad at Sports, Taha Belal, Michelle Blade, Shashanna Chittle, Beth Cook, Tara Foley, Suzanne Husky, Justin Limoges, Travis Meinolf, Kyle Mock, Scott Oliver and Jesse Schlesinger.

Biomaterial charges against N.Y. art professor dismissed.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — A judge threw out charges Monday against a college art professor accused of improperly obtaining biological materials for an exhibit protesting U.S. government food policies.

U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that the 2004 mail and wire fraud indictment against Steven Kurtz, a University at Buffalo professor, was ”insufficient on its face.”

Kurtz is a founding member of the Critical Art Ensemble, which has used human DNA and other biological materials in works intended to draw attention to political and social issues. His arrest drew protests from artists in several countries who called the charges an intrusion on artistic freedom.

”Obviously this is a weight off his back, but he still had to suffer through this for four years,” said Kurtz’s attorney, Paul Cambria. ”The last thing this guy is is a bioterrorist.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Buffalo said it was considering an appeal but otherwise declined to discuss the ruling.

Kurtz was indicted in 2004 following what began as an anti-terrorism investigation after police saw lab equipment in Kurtz’s home while responding to the death of his wife, Hope.

Although investigators determined that lab equipment was part of his art work, he was indicted a month later. The charges carried a maximum of 20 years in prison.

Kurtz was accused of plotting with Robert Ferrell, former chairman of the University of Pittsburgh’s human genetics department, to improperly obtain potentially harmful organisms. Ferrell was fined $500 in February after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count of mailing an injurious article to Kurtz.

Art major Aliza Shvarts ’08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself “as often as possible” while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock . saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”

“I hope it inspires some sort of discourse,” Shvarts said. “Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it’s not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone.”

The “fabricators,” or donors, of the sperm were not paid for their services, but Shvarts required them to periodically take tests for sexually transmitted diseases. She said she was not concerned about any medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages.

Shvarts declined to specify the number of sperm donors she used, as well as the number of times she inseminated herself.

Art major Juan Castillo ’08 said that although he was intrigued by the creativity and beauty of her senior project, not everyone was as thrilled as he was by the concept and the means by which she attained the result.

“I really loved the idea of this project, but a lot other people didn’t,” Castillo said. “I think that most people were very resistant to thinking about what the project was really about. [The senior-art-project forum] stopped being a conversation on the work itself.”

Although Shvarts said she does not remember the class being quite as hostile as Castillo described, she said she believes it is the nature of her piece to “provoke inquiry.”

“I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity,” Shvarts said. “I think that I’m creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be.”

The display of Schvarts’ project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts’ self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

School of Art lecturer Pia Lindman, Schvarts’ senior-project advisor, could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

Few people outside of Yale’s undergraduate art department have heard about Shvarts’ exhibition. Members of two campus abortion-activist groups . Choose Life at Yale, a pro-life group, and the Reproductive Rights Action League of Yale, a pro-choice group . said they were not previously aware of Schvarts’ project.

Alice Buttrick ’10, an officer of RALY, said the group was in no way involved with the art exhibition and had no official opinion on the matter.

Sara Rahman ’09 said, in her opinion, Shvarts is abusing her constitutional right to do what she chooses with her body.

“[Shvarts' exhibit] turns what is a serious decision for women into an absurdism,” Rahman said. “It discounts the gravity of the situation that is abortion.”

CLAY member Jonathan Serrato ’09 said he does not think CLAY has an official response to Schvarts’ exhibition. But personally, Serrato said he found the concept of the senior art project “surprising” and unethical.

“I feel that she’s manipulating life for the benefit of her art, and I definitely don’t support it,” Serrato said. “I think it’s morally wrong.”

Shvarts emphasized that she is not ashamed of her exhibition, and she has become increasingly comfortable discussing her miscarriage experiences with her peers.

“It was a private and personal endeavor, but also a transparent one for the most part,” Shvarts said. “This isn’t something I’ve been hiding.”

The official reception for the Undergraduate Senior Art Show will be from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on April 25. The exhibition will be on public display from April 22 to May 1. The art exhibition is set to premiere alongside the projects of other art seniors this Tuesday, April 22 at the gallery of Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall on Chapel Street.

Bad at Sports contributer Patricia Maloney will be leading a brown bag lunch discussion of her most recent curatorial project Make You Notice at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery this Tuesday April 15 from 12 – 1pm. San Francisco listeners should come check out the great work.

Make You Notice features video, photography and ephemera by four contemporary women artists who utilize performance in diverse practices, seamlessly integrating collaboration, activism, irony, and optimism into their work. The exhibition features the artists Lisa Anne Auerbach, Kate Gilmore, Laura Swanson, and Jenifer Wofford.

The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery is one of many organizations currently showcasing artwork by women. Other exhibitions are:

The Way That We Rhyme, YBCA, March 29 – June 29

We Interrupt Your Program, Mills College, January 16 – March 16

Small Things End, Great Things Endure, New Langton, January 17 – March 15

Conduits of Labor, Queen’s Nails Annex, January 18 – February 24

Women, Power, Politics, International Museum of Women, March 8 – December 31

From the SFAI Website:

In response to a series of violent threats by animal-rights extremists, the San Francisco Art Institute announced today that the public discussion on Adel Abdessemed’s exhibition Don’t Trust Me, scheduled for Monday, 31 March, has been canceled. For the same reasons, the exhibition itself, which was temporarily suspended on Wednesday, 26 March, has now been permanently closed.

“We unconditionally repudiate these threats against SFAI,” stated President Chris Bratton: “My first concern is with the safety and security of SFAI’s students, faculty, staff, and their families, as well as members of the public that regularly visit the campus. In light of the violent threats by extremists against this institution, we are unfortunately forced to cancel any public discussion or display regarding this artwork.”

Soon after it opened, the Abdessemed exhibition became the subject of an orchestrated campaign by a number of animal-rights groups, including Animal Liberation Front (ALF), In Defense of Animals (IDA), and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). One result of this campaign was a parallel onslaught of explicit death threats and threats of sexual violence against SFAI staff members and their families. The swift escalation from controversy to credible threats has regrettably forced SFAI to make a decision unprecedented in its 137-year history.

“Though we’ve decided to take this action,” continued President Bratton, “SFAI stands behind the exhibition as an instance of a long-standing and serious commitment, on SFAI’s part, to reflection on, and free and open discussion of, contemporary global art and culture. As an institution, we take seriously our responsibility to encourage and promote such dialogue.”

“The artist,” continued President Bratton, “participated in an already-existing circuit of food production in a rural community in Mexico. The animals were raised for food, purchased, and professionally slaughtered. In fact, what causes the controversy is that Abdessemed, an artist, entered this exchange, filmed it, and exhibited it.”

“Here, then, is a case where highly local assumptions about how things are produced have come to inform how the world itself is seen. In general, consumption in the US is fueled by things produced out of sight and from far away. In many cultures, particularly those of the global south including Mexico, the killing of animals for food is often direct and present, not concealed from sight as is the case of industrialized food production here. This distinction is certainly relevant to Don’t Trust Me. Admittedly, this is an uncomfortable confrontation for some, but is nevertheless a real condition not only for animals, but also for the people whose lives are bound up with them. Simply stated, it is an outrage that threats of violence have, in this case, succeeded in derailing a public debate on issues that are critical to our everyday lives.”

The press release can be found here.

A supporting blog for the panel can be found at artblogging.org.

For two days in December, Los Angeles residents were blessed with some of the best public art I’ve seen in quite a while.

A billboard for Takahasi Murakami’s retrospective was bombed by legendary writers AUGER/REVOK.

LA weekly is now reporting that the missing work didn’t get censored, but was actually was picked up by Murakami himself for his KaiKai KiKi studio. Link to LA Weekly Article.

Brian and Marc recently collaborated on a review of Tony Lebat’s Bulk at Queens Nails Annex for Shotgun Review. Here’s an excerpt:

“Tony Labat’s exhibition Bulk opened to throngs of art students, smoking and drinking on the sidewalk. At first, the event seemed like any other gallery reception. However, as a show focusing on the manifestation of social relations in an art event, the students hadn’t come to see anything in particular, but to rather simply be with one another. With the gallery’s main space converted to a bar, complete with amateur bartenders, swill cocktails at criminal prices, and makeshift wooden tables; Bulk turned Queens Nails Annex into a speakeasy, one built like a cheap theatrical set.

… Bulk’s events have drawn together those who share in a common perspective – art students, gallerists, curators, etc.- participating in their prescribed roles of social exchange and power dynamics, as if the events had a written script. The exhibition doesn’t challenge itself to compose the audience, who provide its labor, or translate their efforts into meaning. Any examination into the relationship between the mechanics of audience as a means of production, and how it conditions the possibilities of interpretation, is absent. Without intervention, the events emerged as expected; codified and rigid. Creating work that fosters social relations shouldn’t reduce an event to the calling together of a coterie, turning the artist into a socialite of aesthetics whose practice would be a chain of well-hosted shin-digs. Bulk is emblematic of this festivalist, lackadaisical attitude that’s far too common in contemporary art.”

The full review can be found on Shotgun Review. This writing is an extension of a survey of the San Francisco art scene Brian wrote for Artnet.

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The filmmaker, Theresa Duncan, 40, who has also drawn attention for her writings on cultural topics, committed suicide in their East Village apartment on July 10, the police said. Her companion, Jeremy Blake, 35, a well-regarded artist known for digital animation that blurs the line between abstract painting and film, has been missing since his clothes were found on a beach in the Rockaways on Tuesday evening, they added.

Link to NYT story. Here’s a related item on Gothamist. Modern Art Notes has more, including word that the Corcoran will go forward with a planned exhibition of Blake’s work. Above: still from Jeremy Blake’s 14-minute DVD art piece “Sodium Fox,” 2005. Link to Theresa Duncan’s blog. (thanks, Coop, and Circuit Master)