Paintings by Daren Wilson

This week’s podcast came from the Marin Headlands — a beautiful site just on the California Coast — where Brian Andrews and Patricia Maloney joined Jordan Stein and Daren Wilson to talk (among other things) about Wilson’s “stalker paintings.” Wilson has made a recent practice of copying Morandi’s still lifes — even the distortions that result in the pixellated computer reproductions Wilson works from. You’ll also hear Duncan’s robot voice in the intro, which is good reason to tune in. 

It reminds me to recommend going to see Guy Ben-Ner’s new film, “Soundtrack,” presently screening at Aspect Ratio in the West Loop — “Soundtrack” pulls the audio of Spielberg’s 2005 blockbuster, “War of the Worlds,” grafting it to the artist’s kitchen.

THIS JUST IN: Music is, indeed, trending. While I did not see the Cave/s in person I was excited by all the hubub around two caves meeting in person. Maybe most of all, this performance sounds amazing: ”Everything we know about Passover we learned at Bobby Conn‘s final residency performance at the Hideout last Tuesday. His full band including Tim Jones fronted brass section was nothing short of a Pesach miracle.” That and more from WHAT’S THE T? (hooray!)
 

What I found after googling images for “frost giant”

According to Jeriah Hildwine ”the frost giants [have] finally abdicate[d] their annual reign over Chicago” which is good news in an of itself, though he writes primarily about his experience applying to MFAs, getting enrolled or rejecting, choosing this over that. “Like Maximus said in Gladiator,” Hildwine writes, ”‘The choices we make in life echo in eternity.’” And, it turns out, Chicago is a pretty good place to end up.

Anthony Romero continues his on-going series WHAT CAN BE DONE WITH DANCE? and interviews Rebekah Kowal about her book, How to Do Things with Dance: Performing Change in Postwar America,  exploring the relationship between social activism and dance choreography.“As of late” Romero writes, ”I have been writing a great deal about strategies and modes of resistance. I have been thinking about the usefulness of dance, of the power of embodied action to simultaneously imagine and enact alternatives to dominant schemas of value that exclude what Judith Butler has referred to as the “ungrievables”. Those whose lives are devalued by social conditions and governmental policies to such an extent that if their life were to extinguish it would go unnoticed.”

Near/Far, 2013. Installation view courtesy of Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art and Misha Kligman

Chiming in on Hildwine’s reference to transitioning seasons, Jamilee Polson Lacy writes with news from The City of Fountains, connecting a collection of noir short stories, Kansas City Noir, with some exhibiting artists:

“…transitions—seasonal or otherwise—are unruly. Kansas City artists Nicole Mauser and Caleb Taylor make paintings and collages which illuminate the wild, sometimes dark, often whimsical transitions that happen in the studio. Taylor, who currently has a show up at Sherry Leedy Gallery, presents a series of paintings that, like spring’s arrival, struggle to emerge through the dense fog of the artist’s heavy black brush strokes. But with the collages, Taylor is able to clear out the fog where necessary in order to contrast harsh lines and geometries with soft shadows and dazzling light. Indeed, these compositions read like atmospheric interludes designed for scene transitions in Film Noir flicks like Panique and Kiss Me Deadly.”

April 1972. The second, widely televised demolition of a Pruitt-Igoe building that followed the March 16 demolition. Source: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Kelly Shindler posted about the ghost of Pruitt-Igoe, a large public housing project in St. Louis that still continues to influence contemporary artists today:

“The ghost of Pruitt-Igoe looms large in St. Louis. The 33-building public housing complex, designed by Minoru Yamasaki (who was also the architect of the World Trade Center) and completed in 1954, has long fascinated architectural historians and enthusiasts alike. Designed in accordance with Le Corbusier’s utopian ‘Towers in the Park‘ vision, its demolition began less than twenty years later in 1972 as the site fell prey to dried-up funding, mismanagement, and subsequent decrepitude and crime. According to architectural theorist Charles Jencks writing in 1977, the notorious demise of Pruitt-Igoe, captured on film and televised widely at the time, marked the day that ‘modern architecture died.’” 

The WEEKENDS TOP [not 5 but] 6 (!) shows to see, courtesy of Stephanie Burke. 

“What does it mean when a city of almost three million with a thriving art scene has not a single full-time art critic?” Abraham Ritchie asks Chicago Media Publications, pointing out that most publications rely on freelance writers.

“If the Chicago art community wants more, more national and international attention and recognition, more major artists staying in Chicago, more opportunities across the board from sales to exhibitions, it’s time that we demanded our major newspapers and magazines step up and make a commitment. It’s time we had an art critic in our newspapers.”

Churchill seen here in 1948, probably in France.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, Brit Barton takes the Saturday stage to reflect on Winston Churchill’s painting habit:

“[Churchill] loved his landscapes and still lives and painted over an estimated 500 in his lifetime. What drew a man of such political power to something like painting? He saw it as the end-all, be-all of anxiety, which I think says a lot coming from someone who nicknamed his own clinical depression.”

All this talk of Churchill reminded me about Orson Welles. I remember my own mother seemed to intensely admire both men, and had various anecdotes about both of them. Here is a very strange clip to that end —

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This week: San Francisco checks in with a discussion with Aaron GM and Ginger Wolfe-Suarez

In this episode Art Practical contributors Zachary Royer Scholz, Elyse Mallouk, and Patricia Maloney speak with artists Aaron GM and Ginger Wolfe-Suarez. This was one of several conversations held over the weekend of the fair as part of “In and Out of Context: Artists Define the Space between San Francisco and Los Angeles,” a program that invited artists to consider the two cities as a continuously evolving constellation of dialogues, shared interests, and overlapping approaches. An abridged transcript of the conversation can be read on Art Practical.

Aaron GM lives and works in Los Angeles. He studied at both San Francisco Art Institute and UCLA. Recently he exhibited a solo presentation at the NADA Art fair in Miami Beach (2010). Other Recent solo exhibitions include capezio (2010) at ltd los angeles, Timeshares (2009) at Parker Jones Gallery in Los Angeles, and sales calls(2008) at Blanket Gallery in Vancouver. Aaron has shown in group exhibitions both nationally and internationally.

Ginger Wolfe-Suarez is an emerging conceptual artist, writer, and theorist. Her work often takes the form of large-scale sculpture, exploring the psychology of built space. Both an exploration into the experiential phenomena of body-object relationships, and a questioning of the material nature of sculpture interweave concepts of memory and process. Wolfe-Suarez teaches studio critique and art theory, and is currently Visiting Faculty in the graduate program at San Francisco Art Institute. Her writings on art criticism have been published internationally, and her artwork has been recently exhibited at Silverman Gallery, ltd Los Angeles, KUNSTRAUM AM SCHAUPLATZ in Vienna, Artist Curated Projects in Los Angeles, Mills Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and High Desert Test Sites, among others. She studied at Goldsmiths College in London and later received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her MFA from the University of California at Berkeley. Wolfe-Suarez lives and works in Richmond, CA, where she raises her three-year-old son.

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This week: Patricia tailgates with Lisa Anne Auerbach and Michael Parker!

As part of the Art Los Angeles Contemporary art fair, which took place January 27-30 at the Barker Hanger of the Santa Monica Airport, the crew from Art Practical produced “In and Out of Context: Artists Define the Space between San Francisco and Los Angeles,” a series of conversation that imagined the two cities as “a continuously evolving constellation of dialogues, shared interests, and overlapping approaches.”

In this episode Patricia Maloney, Catherine Wagley, and artist Elyse Mallouk tailgate with LA-based artists Lisa Anne Auerbach and Michael Parker from the back of Auerbach’s aqua blue Mini Cooper, parked behind the airport hanger. As prop planes rumble by on their way to takeoff, Auerbach and Parker discuss topics ranging from torn porn and being one’s own bumper sticker to the Shakers and how artists can make change in the work.

Lisa Anne Auerbach’s practice is interdisciplinary and takes the form of photography, publications and, more often than not, knitting. Combining humor with a biting critique of the complacency and routine of modern life, her work inserts itself into the visual and social fabric of the communities that she engages. She received her BA from the Rochester Institute of Technology and her MFA from Art Center College of Design. She is represented by Gavlak, West Palm Beach, Florida.

Michael Parker work makes use of the concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones to produce microtopias, experiments that are situated between idealist notions of community and pragmatic methods for narrating the actions of individuals and groups. He received his BA from Pomona College and his MFA from the University of Southern California. His work was recently featured in in “Landfill, Part 2.” in Art Practical.

SFMOMA’s Open Space blog has an interview with Art Practical editor Patricia Maloney, who is also one of Bad at Sports’ San Francisco correspondents. Art Practical is a new online magazine that covers the visual arts in San Francisco and shares SF-related podcast content with Bad at Sports. A brief excerpt from the interview follows; go on over and check ‘em out!

From the beginning, your strategy has been to partner with other web-based content providers. How does this strategy reflect the larger philosophy and approach of Art Practical?

In the mission statement, I wrote that Art Practical is not a proprietor of information; our goal is to generate pathways for investigation. In additional to the original content that we produce, which appears as Reviews and Features in issues, we share content with three web-based platforms—the calendar and directory Happenstand, the podcast Bad At Sports, and the forum Shotgun Review—as well as one quarterly print publication, Talking Cure.

Shotgun Review now exists as a section within Art Practical; the other entities operate fully outside of Art Practical as well as providing us with content. Our event listings for openings and closings, as well as our editorial picks, come from Happenstand; we conduct interviews that appear simultaneously as Features on Art Practical and podcasts on Bad At Sports, and many of our Features are published first in Talking Cure. Together, we function as a coalition that provides comprehensive information and analysis of events, practices and exhibitions.

Art Practical is the site that choreographs this coalition. The idea came together via conversation with and the generosity of the people involved with the respective entities you, Joseph, and Scott Oliver (Shotgun), Lucas Shuman (Happenstand), the Bad At Sports team, and Jarrett Earnest (Talking Cure). I had no interest in duplicating their activities, but instead saw an opportunity in which we could mutually support our shared objectives. Collectively, we create visibility for individual projects and a forum for critical reflection for an audience much broader than our individual efforts.

Art Practical itself is a collective endeavor, emblematic of the collaborative spirit of the Bay Area visual arts culture, which has a long local history of incubating experimentation and innovation.  The team members that have created Art Practical and produce each issue have each played crucial roles in creating a model for visual arts criticism that is highly conscious of the audience it is serving. Perhaps more than anyone else, Stoyan Dabov, our developer, recognizes and articulates the ways in which familiar forms of communication are being ruptured. As the site evolves, he is pointing us toward embracing new approaches. The Editorial team, Hope Dabov, Vicky Gannon, Catherine McChrystal, and Morgan Peirce, work tirelessly in encouraging our writers to be creative, to find new modes of description and criticism, and to further define their personal voice. Their collaboration reflects our entire approach. (Continue reading here).