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This week: San Francisco checks in with dance legend Anna Halprin!!!

Anna Halprin (b. 1920) is a pioneering dancer and choreographer of the post-modern dance movement. She founded the San Francisco Dancer’s Workshop in 1955 as a center for movement training, artistic experimentation, and public participatory events open to the local community. Halprin has created 150 full-length dance theater works and is the recipient of numerous awards including the 1997 Samuel H. Scripps Award for Lifetime Achievement in Modern Dance from the American Dance Festival. Her students include Meredith Monk, Trisha Brown, Yvonne Rainer, Simone Forti, Ruth Emmerson, Sally Gross, and many others.

Printed Matter

Live Benefit Auction Event: March 9, 6-8:30 pm

Robert Rauschenberg Project Space
455 West 19th St, New York

www.paddle8.com/auctions/printedmatter

Printed Matter, Inc, the New York-based non-profit organization committed to the dissemination and appreciation of publications made by artists, will host a Benefit Auction and Selling Exhibition at the Rauschenberg Foundation Project Space to help mitigate damage caused by Hurricane Sandy.

As a result of the storm, Printed Matter experienced six feet of flooding to its basement storage and lost upwards of 9,000 books, hundreds of artworks and equipment. Printed Matter’s Archive, which has been collected since the organization’s founding in 1976 and serves as an important record of its history and the field of artists books as a whole, was also severely damaged. Moreover, the damage sustained by Sandy has made it clear that Printed Matter needs to undertake an urgent capacity-building effort to establish a durable foundation for its mission and services into the future.

This is the first fundraising initiative of this scale to be undertaken by the organization in many years, and will feature more than 120 works generously donated from artists and supporters of Printed Matter.

The Sandy Relief Benefit for Printed Matter will be held at the Rauschenberg Project Space in Chelsea and will run from February 28 through March 9th. The Benefit has two components: a selling exhibition of rare historical publications and other donated works and an Auction of donated artworks.

A special preview and reception will be held February 28th, 6-8 pm, to mark the unveiling of all 120 works and to thank the participating artists and donors. The opening will feature a solo performance by cellist Julia Kent (Antony and the Johnsons), followed by a shared DJ set from Lizzi Bougatsos (Gang Gang Dance) & Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio). The event is free and open to the public.

All works will then be available for viewing at the Rauschenberg Project Space March 1 – March 9, gallery hours.

All Selling Exhibition works may be purchased during this period and Auction works will be available for bidding online. Bids can be made at www.paddle8.com/auctions/printedmatter.

A live Benefit Auction Event will take place March 9, 6-8:30 pm with approximately 20 selected works to be auctioned in a live format. Bidding on these works will commence at 7pm sharp, while silent bids can be made on all other Auction works. Note, highest online bids will be transferred to the room. For absentee bidding of works, please contact Keith Gray (Printed Matter) at 212 925 0325 or keith@printedmatter.org. The evening will feature a performance by Alex Waterman on solo cello with electronics. Admission is $150 and tickets may be pre-purchased here. There will be only limited capacity.

Highlighted auction works include an oversize ektacolor photograph from Richard Prince, a woven canvas piece from Tauba Auerbach, an acrylic and newsprint work from Rirkrit Tiravanija, a large-scale Canopy painting from Fredrik Værslev, a rare dye transfer print from Zoe Leonard, a light box by Alfredo Jaar, a book painting by Paul Chan, a carbon on paper work from Frances Stark, a seven-panel plexi-work with spraypainted newsprint from Kerstin Brätsch, a C-print from Hans Haacke, a firefly drawing from Philippe Parreno, a mixed-media NASA wall-piece from Tom Sachs, a unique print from Rachel Harrison, a vintage xerox poem from Carl Andre, an encyclopedia set of hand-made books from Josh Smith, a photograph from Klara Liden, a table-top sculpture from Carol Bove, Ed Ruscha’s Rooftops Portfolio, as well as original works on canvas and linen by Cecily Brown, Cheyney Thompson, Dan Colen, Adam McEwen, RH Quaytman, and many others.

These Auction works can be previewed at: www.paddle8.com/auctions/printedmatter

In addition to auction works, a vitrine-based exhibition of rare books, artworks and ephemera are available for viewing and purchase. This material includes some truly remarkable items from the personal collection of Robert Rauschenberg, donated by theRobert Rauschenberg Foundation in memory of the late Printed Matter Board Member, bookseller and publisher, John McWhinnie. Among the works available are books and artworks from Marcel Duchamp, Willem de Kooning, Alfred Steiglitz,Joseph Beuys, Brigid Berlin (Polk), as well as a Claes Oldenburg sculpture, a rare William Burroughs manuscript, and the Anthology Film Archive Portfolio (1982). Additional artists’ books have been generously donated by the Sol LeWitt Estate. Works include pristine copies of Autobiography (1980), Four Basic Kinds of Straight Lines (1969), Incomplete Open Cubes (1974), and others. Three Star Books have kindly donated a deluxe set of their Maurizio Cattelan book edition. These works can be viewed and purchased at the space. For inquiries about available works please contact Printed Matter’s Associate Director Max Schumann at 212 925 0325 or mschumann@printedmatter.org.

Co-chairs Ethan Wagner & Thea Westreich Wagner and Phil Aarons & Shelley Fox Aarons have guided the event, and Thea Westreich Art Advisory Services has generously lent its expertise and assisted in the production of the auction.

In anticipation of the event Printed Matter Executive Director James Jenkin said:

“Not only are we hopeful that this event will help us to put Sandy firmly behind us, it is incredibly special for us. To have so many artists and friends associated with our organization over its 36 years come forward and support us in this effort has been truly humbling.“

Auction includes work by: 
Michele Abeles, Ricci Albenda, Carl Andre, Cory Arcangel, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Tauba Auerbach, Trisha Baga, John Baldessari, Sebastian Black, Mark Borthwick, Carol Bove, Kerstin Brätsch, Sascha Braunig, Olaf Breuning, Cecily Brown, Sophie Calle, Robin Cameron, Sean Joseph Patrick Carney, Nathan Carter, Paul Chan, Dan Colen, David Kennedy Cutler, Liz Deschenes, Mark Dion, Shannon Ebner, Edie Fake, Matias Faldbakken, Dan Graham, Robert Greene, Hans Haacke, Marc Handelman, Rachel Harrison, Jesse Hlebo, Carsten Höller, David Horvitz, Marc Hundley, Alfredo Jaar, Chris Johanson, Terence Koh, Joseph Kosuth, Louise Lawler, Pierre Le Hors, Leigh Ledare, Zoe Leonard, Sam Lewitt, Klara Liden, Peter Liversidge, Charles Long, Mary Lum, Noah Lyon, McDermott & McGough, Adam McEwen, Ryan McNamara, Christian Marclay, Ari Marcopoulos, Gordon Matta-Clark, Wes Mills, Jonathan Monk, Rick Myers, Laurel Nakadate, Olaf Nicolai, Adam O’Reilly, Philippe Parreno, Jack Pierson, Richard Prince, RH Quaytman, Eileen Quinlan, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Ed Ruscha, Tom Sachs, David Sandlin, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Cindy Sherman, Josh Smith, Keith Smith, Buzz Spector, Frances Stark, Emily Sundblad, Andrew Sutherland, Peter Sutherland, Sarah Sze, Panayiotis Terzis, Cheyney Thompson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Nicola Tyson, Penelope Umbrico, Fredrik Værslev, Visitor, Danh Vo, Dan Walsh and Ofer Wolberger.

This week, I’ve delved into the Bad at Sports archive and pulled an especially interesting interview with Mark Dion, conducted by Duncan and Brian in June of 2010. Below, excerpts from Mark’s discussion of the joys of being a dilettante:

“I have a lot of interests but I have to keep that somewhat narrow, in a sense. I want to have some degree of expertise. I can’t do everything. I really do feel like it’s my responsible as an artist, that if I’m working around issues of zoology that I have to have a foundation in zoology, and if I’m working in issues of archaeology, I have to know that. So I can’t just jump from one thing to the other in a haphazard way, I do have a responsibility to at least have the core of what that field is. And so it’s difficult. I still am very much a dilettante, not a professional. I’m not an ornithologist or an ichthyologist or a herpetologist or an archaeologist, but I do try to use aspects of their shared methodologies in a way to tease out some of their own prejudices and to look at those fields from a distance. My wife often says, “you’re an archaeologist like Tin Tin is a journalist.”

“Certainly I had to study biology before I started this work in a formal way, but I’ve learned a lot going through these projects and having opportunities such as being artist in residence at the Natural History Museum of London. I do learn a lot by my contexts with these experts. We’re always partnering with other experts in the field, and that’s a big deal, to have someone you can trust who understands the emphasis of your project and can advise you on decisions.

“On one hand, very often I’m working with institutions that are practicing science now, and a lot of the individuals working in them are very tied to the history of that science, and we share an interest in that history and maybe even a passion for the aesthetics of that history. Very often, a lot of [the scientists who work in these institutions], they know by the time they’re 12 or 14 that this is what they want to do. I share that passion and that interest from the early stages, but I still exist as an amateur in a way.

“I could never be a scientist because the rigors of that and the amount of time one has to spend in front of a computer screen or in an office is just overwhelming. I meet people who spend two months in Guyana or wherever doing field work, collecting, and then for the next four years they’re in an office sifting through that material and making sense of it. Taking the road of the artist is the road I’ve chosen…of being a professional dilettante, in a sense. I’d like to rescue that term, “dilettante,” and bring it back…A lot of my work does hearken back to a moment where there’s a collapse of disciplines, to this kind of time where the artist, the scientiest, the poet, the theologian–were the same person.”

Click here to listen to or download the podcast.

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This week: We talk to artist Mark Dion, about social practice, the Museum of Jurassic Technology, cabinets of curiosity. The word “taxonomy” is bandied about at great length.

Mark Dion was born in 1961 in Massachusetts; he lives and works in Pennsylvania.

Dion is known for making art out of fieldwork, incorporating elements of biology, archaeology, ethnography, and the history of science, and applying to his artwork methodologies generally used for pure science. Traveling the world and collaborating with a wide range of scientists, artists, and museums, Dion has excavated ancient and modern artifacts from the banks of the Thames in London, established a marine life laboratory using specimens from New York’s Chinatown, and created a contemporary cabinet of curiosities exploring natural and philosophical hierarchies.

His approach emphasizes illustration and accuracy but is charged with a biting undertone. Dion has a longstanding interest in exploring how ideas about natural history are visualized and how they circulate in society. Dion’s work has been presented at many U.S. and international museums and galleries, including solo exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Galleria Emi Fontana, Milan; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; and Deutsches Museum, Bonn. Dion has been commissioned to create works for Aldrich Museum of Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; the Tate Gallery, London; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

I wasn’t very familiar with Mark Dion’s Travels of William Bartram – Reconsidered until about a month ago. For this week’s video pick Dion returns to Bartram Gardens to install the objects he collected while on his journey.

“Travels of William Bartram – Reconsidered will examine the history and culture of 18th century American naturalists, John (1699-1777) and his son William Bartram (1739-1823). Using their travel journals, drawings, and maps, Dion plans to retrace the exploratory journeys of the Bartrams, in particular, William’s expedition to northern Florida. Often Dion and his companion “explorers” will travel in the same ways the Bartrams did:  by horseback, boat, and on foot.”
For more info on the project check out the comprehensive project site.