Episode 150: René de Guzman

download

Recorded live in front of a studio audience at Triple Base Gallery on July 10th, 2008 as a part of the exhibition “Open for Business”. In this raw interview Brian and Patricia talk to René de Guzman about the cultural origins of art, how museums can be relevant in the 21st century, and Oakland’s future as an art center.

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).
[Read more]

Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty May Be in Danger

Robert Smithson’s widow Nancy Holt sent a letter out today to notify people that his masterwork Spiral Jetty is in jeopardy of being destroyed due to oil drilling.

Here is Holt’s full letter and a way for people to voice their concerns.

Yesterday I received an urgent email from Lynn DeFreitas, Director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake, telling me of plans for drilling oil in the Salt Lake near Spiral Jetty. See Attachments. The deadline for protest is [today] Wednesday, at 5PM. Of course, DIA has been informed and are meeting about it today.

I have been told by Lynn that the oil wells will not be above the water, but that means some kind of industrial complex of pipes and pumps beneath the water and on the shore. The operation would require roads for oil tank trucks, cranes, pumps etc. which produce noise and will severely alter the wild, natural place.

If you want to send a letter of protest to save the beautiful, natural Utah environment around the Spiral Jetty from oil drilling, the emails or calls of protest go to Jonathan Jemming 801-537-9023 jjemming@utah.gov. Please refer to Application # 8853. Every letter makes a big difference, they do take a lot of notice and know that publicity may follow. Since the Spiral Jetty has global significance, emails from foreign countries would be of special value.

They try to slip these drilling contracts under the radar, that’s why we found out so late, not through notification, but from a watchdog lawyer at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the group that alerted me to the land leasing for oil and gas near Sun Tunnels last May.

Thank you for your consideration of this serious environmental matter.

Art Fair Madness

It has struck me as strange that while people continue to delight in talk of an art market crash, the number of Art Fairs just proliferates. It is a bit like watching the Cold War Arms race. Just keep building them till you bankrupt the smaller spaces and smaller economies. (A race which seems to have already contributed to the demise of one Chicago gallery with another 4 or 5 being rumored to be closing sometime in ‘08.)

Last year in Miami there were 13 fairs. 2007’s fair boasted 23?

WTF is going on? And WTF is up with the Merchandise Mart?

Supposedly they’re planning the purchase or start up of an LA fair?(According to LA Weekly) And they have just bought the Toronto Art Fair? (according to the Chicago Trib) [Read more]

Teaching Orange County

Roland Young is an often lauded and very well respected member of the design faculty of Pasadena’s Art Center College of Art and Design.

A few years ago a “You Tube” video made its way around to the younger faculty at the art schools across America. The clip was called “Roland is God” and showed (via hidden camera) a particularly brutal critique given by Young to a group of students at Art Center. Now the video (in expanded form) can be seen on a site called (surprisingly) “Roland is God.” It has been accompanied by the release of an all new “You Tube” video displaying Professor Young’s unorthodox critical stylings.

Get it while it’s hot.

Brian and Marc review Tony Lebat’s “Bulk”

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.

Next Page »