Acropolis Spring 2017 by acropolis art journal

ACROPOLIS ART JOURNAL

SPRING ISSUE

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Spring 2017 Solidarity

Editor Tabor Chapman Staff Emma Brigaud Patrick Canteros Zhengyang Huang Kyle Lopez Claire Robertson Noah Shaw Tess Thompson Cover art by Rebecca Shkeyrov Purple Nurple

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Solidarity. Last year, I chose the theme: Chaos // Disorder while chatting with the previous editor. It was in relation to one of our more disorganized professors and she absolutely loved it. I had no idea how fitting that theme would be for the fall semester. As you dear readers know, our country faced an election and we came out as a divided nation. On November 9th, I read in horror about how people were treating their fellow students unjustly, unfairly and as if the last hundred years had simply vanished. Everyday, I read the online headlines and frankly cannot believe how our country is unraveling. George Orwell wrote: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosingâ&#x20AC;? and those words are horrifyingly real in the media today. I felt hopeless and alone until the marches. Millions of women (and men) marched in the cities, in their towns and in their communities to remind the world that we are not alone. Although we may feel powerless and alone - we are not. And this issue celebrates that notion - it celebrates the feeling of being powerful, of having someone who has your back, who speaks up for you and your rights when someone tries to silence you and who validates the truth when alternative facts are accepted. Solidarity. Even saying it fills your mouth with a nice, formidable sound. Never let them take you alive. tabor

CĂŠzanne Bathers, Beatrice Chessman, Summer 2016, oil on panel

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Mother Daughter, Beatrice Chessman, Summer 2016, charcoal on paper

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Best Friends, Beatrice Chessman, Fall 2016, oil on canvas

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Hay-Bales, Beatrice Chessman, Fall 2016, oil on panel

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Untitled, Mayzie Zechini, @mayziemuse_art oil on canvas, 18’x18’

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Owner and Belonging, Mayzie Zechini. @mayziemuse_art water color and acrylic on card stock, 8â&#x20AC;&#x2122;xâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;8

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Jenny Holzer: Text, Disruption, Power, and Material by Tess Thompson projections, as well as several other mediums. The concise, direct language she began with in her Truisms series has easily transmuted to narrower topics, such as her Living Series (1980-82) and Survival Series (1983-1984), which more directly advise the viewer. By using straightforward language that is easily understood, translated, and reformatted, the artist is able to reach as many viewers as possible. Holzer’s art is often presented in spheres of vision aimed at consumers, yet offers only knowledge, a command, or a piece of advice. Operating within a world increasingly desensitized to and saturated with bland ideas and images, Holzer’s Truisms and other text-based works offer a sense of discomfort and a questioning of sources of power in contemporary society. Jenny Holzer’s Truisms series is the artist’s oldest text-based work, and serve as “almost a table of contents [of her later work].” She says that “most of the subjects that

Jenny Holzer subverts the viewer’s relationships with authority and power using language and text in the public sphere. Holzer is best known for her Truism statements that emerged in 1977: single lines of declarative writing intending to provoke the viewer or disturb one’s peace of mind. The language she uses in her Truisms reverberates with a sense of dissatisfaction, fear, and criticism of the world we live in; consequentially, the viewer contemplates the amount of power they have (or lack) over their own lives. The artist’s goal was to have her work enter the public eye as seamlessly as the images aimed at consumers, and thus take the viewer off-guard in the process. Holzer used her signature motif of text on a diverse range of mediums, which change the values associated with the work. Her first Truisms were distributed on posters, stickers, and t-shirts, and she then expanded the series to LED billboards, granite benches, and monumental light 14

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concern me appeared there first”, her overarching themes being sex, death, and war. The origin of the Truisms can be traced to Holzer’s experience at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program, which she joined after graduating from Rhode Island School of Design with a master of fine arts in painting in 1977 . The Whitney Program’s reading list consisted of several classical philosophical texts, which Holzer reduced down to simple but forceful lines of single text. Previously, Holzer was interested in the use of text in art as early as 1975, incorporating words and found text into her abstract paintings at Rhode Island School of Design. The aim of the Truism series, Holzer admits, is ambitious: to represent every subject, from every point of view . She states, “The Truisms were my first attempt to understand and to depict what people think, as a means to the end of understanding why they do what they do”. She gathered inspiration from the minds of the people around her, attempting to write from their perspective, and from books or contemporary issues. It is easier to say that Holzer was trying to capture the ‘voice’ of all people, and to

equalize all perspectives by placing them in the same format. The first incarnations of the Truisms were street posters printed during Holzer’s time at the Whitney, which she posted anonymously around New York City. By placing many statements on one page, rather than singly, the comparisons and contradictions of the ‘voice’ of the text are more apparent. The choice to not represent a particular background or philosophy is deliberate; Holzer declares, “I didn’t want to make a didactic or dogmatic piece” The distinction of the artist’s intent is important; read individually, the opinions presented in the Truisms series are easy to associate with a political message, or as a representation of Holzer’s personal beliefs that she is trying to disseminate. Displayed in the same image, however, contradictory opinions make pontification impossible. For example, PEOPLE WHO GO CRAZY ARE TOO SENSITIVE is a conservative and harsh evaluation of mental illness; it is also a declarative statement that bars room for discussion. In contrast, SLIPPING INTO MADNESS IS GOOD FOR THE SAKE OF COMPARISON, another Truism, reads almost like a recommendation 15

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or an endorsement of mental illness. By placing both of these ideas in the same context, Holzer both negates and questions the sense of truth that emanates from the confidence of the ‘voice’. The ‘voice’ of the Truisms is the most distinctive aspect of the series; while the subsequent text-based series (Inflammatory Essays, The Living Series, The Survival Series, Under a Rock, Lament, and Mother and Child) use a similar ‘voice’, the ‘voice’ gradually becomes less neutral and eerily authoritative as Holzer’s work progresses, drawing more and more upon her personal experiences . The authority associated with the voice of the Truisms gives weight and power to the pieces as they move between different forms and mediums. The sense of authoritarianism comes from both the language of the text itself and the visual elements at work. Holzer explains that the minimalist format was meant to transcend gender in order to exude power and neutrality. “The typeface was chosen for its boldness but also its lack of personality, which I think is more effective than something specific. It was meant to look institutional”. The

earliest manifestations of the Truisms were displayed in lists of single lines, typed in black and white and in all capital, bold, italicized letters (fig. 1). As the series expanded to other mediums, such as T-shirts, stickers, hats, and later electronic signage, billboards, television, Truisms were also displayed singularly or in moving lines of text, sometimes in other colors, such as red. The minimalistic style is reminiscent of artists such as Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt (fig. 3), both of whose clarity and ordering of space influenced the arrangement of Holzer’s text-based work. The concise, abrupt natures of Holzer’s textual images are easily distributed and understood; a passerby on the street could easily absorb the message of her public work in a few seconds. Rather than seeing a brightly colored advertisement image, the viewer is confronted with a statement or series of statements meant to disturb the daily pattern of their thoughts. One of the main values of Holzer’s work lies in the transmutability of her phrases, as well as the instant understanding of the words presented, even if the content itself is confusing. 16

Even after Holzer stopped officially writing Truisms in 1979, the phrases from the series continued to be recycled and reimagined in new spheres of consumption. One of the earliest Truisms, ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE, has been displayed using several mediums throughout Holzer’s career. The phrase evokes an ironic awareness of the corruption of political office; on a more personal level, a viewer can imagine exploitations of power experienced more directly, such as in a familial or romantic relationship, or in the workplace. The ambiguity of the phrase is arguably its most provocative and powerful feature, as different viewers place different associations with the text. The text appeared in Holzer’s early street posters and T-shirts (fig. 6) in the 1970’s, on the spectacolor electric sign in Times Square, New York (fig. 2), in the marble floor of Holzer’s installation representing the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1990 (fig. 4), and on a Web Page created in 1995 (fig. 5). With each new medium, ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE changes meaning. The street posters invited an element of participatory art; viewers often

rewrote lines, added comments, or even tore apart the poster. In that medium, the role of the viewer is elevated, and their reaction is a tangible presence that contributes to the life of the piece. The public, free nature of the poster was a way to make the message more impactful and accessible. The T-shirt version of the Truism allows the viewer to adopt the line as part of their identity, and to project the ‘voice’ as one’s own. The ‘power’ of the piece now rests on the wearer of the shirt, as the individuals are choosing to adorn themselves with a slightly discomfiting statement rather than just viewing it as a separate entity. It is a literal covering of one’s body with a subversive statement on power, bringing into question both the relationship and interaction of the human body with notions of power, and the power of the wearer to disseminate the Truism (and to add or detract from the statement with their own behavior). ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE in particular evokes associations of physical abuse, and the authority an individual does or does not have over their own body. Additionally, the T-shirt is more of a consumer product than the other mediums, and begins to dissolve the boundaries between art, fashion, and consumption. 17

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fig. 1 Truisms, Jenny Holzer, offset poster 20 x 14 in.

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fig. 2 Truism Jenny Holzer Spectacolor electronic sign 20 x 40 ft Times Square, New York

The Times Square signage is one of Holzer’s more iconic mediums, and marks an elevation in her work from inexpensive street art to associations with money and power, which are often foci she tries to subvert. The spectacolor image displays her Truism amidst other advertisements imploring the viewers to purchase unnecessary objects or participate in the capitalistic exchange. The deliberate interruption of the norm aims to catch the viewer by surprise, and on a basic level, make one more aware of the images consumed (actively or subconsciously) on a daily basis. Critic Alexander Gelley writes, “…we absorb the present-day environment saturated by commodity culture as our natural ambiance; its messages, both explicit and implicit, are the accepted doxa of daily life, the white noise that needs no interpretation since it’s part of the taken-for-granted world we live in. How can this murmur, this buzz (both auditory and visual) be interrupted?” The interrupter, in this instance, is Holzer. The tension between the Truism and its medium invites the passerby to question the nature of advertising and how it alters perception. Rather than offer

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an opinion of the advertising world and public images, Holzer subtly invites viewers to increase their awareness of the images they are visually assaulted with daily by inserting an anomalous, often disturbing image into their visual frame of mind. Writer Michael Auping explains, “In essence, Holzer’s Truisms are less about providing answers than they are about posing questions regarding the nature and quality of public discourse” . While the ‘voice’ of the Truisms often speaks declaratively, the true nature of the series is meant to insert a deeper awareness in the viewer of the opinions touted, and of the power of the mediums themselves. The 1990 Venice Biennale was a landmark moment for Holzer’s career; she was the first woman chosen to represent the United States at the international art fair, and was able to experiment with a range of mediums and public spaces; additionally, she won the Golden Lion Award for Best Pavilion . While she displayed excerpts from several series, she included ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE SURPRISE in the floor of the pavilion. The floor was

made of rare Italian marble in alternating diamond patterns; each red diamond was carved with a Truism in alternating languages, catering to the internationality of the fair, as well as highlighting the ease in which her works translate and transcend the language medium itself. The use of an expensive medium associated with wealth and monumentality elevates the Truism. The marble is a stark change from a paper poster than can be destroyed easily; it adds a degree of memento mori and of ephemerality to the statement. The choice of this Truism invokes associations of marble with governments and regimes that hope to create structures that will last forever; by carving ABUSE into the marble, Holzer subverts and challenges the power associated with the medium. Contrastingly, however, the placement of the marble Truism on the floor places the text below the viewer’s body and in a place approaching inferiority. Holzer’s text must be stepped on and walked over in order to be experienced, and this de-elevation is an interesting change in power dynamics between the ‘voice’ and the viewer, even as the text is elevated 20

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through its marble medium. A final incarnation of ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE is the digital medium of the Internet. While Holzer has mostly avoided the use of the Internet to disseminate her works, the collaborative project ‘Please Change Beliefs’ launched in May 1995, and invites the viewer to agree with or rewrite the existing Truisms . The participatory element of the project is even more radical than that of the public posters of the 70’s. The visitors to the site become the artist and assume authorship of the elusive Holzer ‘voice’, as they are asked to confirm or deny their beliefs in the lines and to then edit them as desired. While the home page of the site contains the original Truisms and lines from the Survival and Living series, individual changes made by the viewer are added to a ‘master list’ of thousands of lines of text. The disembodied nature of the Internet and the free, public access to the site offer extreme expressions of some of the most prominent themes in Holzer’s work. While not an advertising space, but a sphere of contemplation entered willingly, the ‘Please Change Beliefs”

fig 3. Wall Drawing 565, Sol LeWitt, 1988, india ink on wall

fig. 4 The Gallery D Installation, Jenny Holzer, 2008, red and white tiles

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project is still considered public art, and its democratic nature of permeability adjusts the notions of power of the artist herself. If anyone anywhere can edit Holzer’s text, its status as an art object (or art experience) is demystified. If anyone can change the meaning of ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE, then the statement itself has the potential to lose or change its meaning entirely, and thus to no longer exist. The exploration of medium in Holzer’s work is especially interesting as the same piece of text can be viewed in countless forms, places, and languages. It is clear that medium informs meaning and experiences of the work, and holds

fig. 5 ada’web project Jenny Holzer, internet

major transformative power. ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE is seemingly one-dimensional, but the elements of consumption, time, longevity, and context can alter the text, even as the text itself transcends the boundaries of artistic medium. The power in Holzer’s Truisms series is, in part, dependent on medium as the avenue of both deliverance and meaning.

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fig. 6 Truism Jenny Holzer, clothing

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Pomelo, pigeons, 4:10, Yuming Cao

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Three phases of life, Yuming Cao

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Jellyfish Ciarra Stebbins water color

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Clumsy Choreography Zhengyang Huang

This piece started with another sculpture I made earlier which has a movable long “arm”. From this, I later videotaped a performance in which the performers were holding one or two ends of this long sculpture trying to balance it while turning their bodies and even lying on the ground. Then I edited and amplifies the sound of every failure of balance: dropping, falling, etc. and sounds that largely disturbed the performance: door opening, wheeling of cart, etc. I also marked every such sound with red distortion in the video and reframed the viewpoint on the performers’ heads, hands, feet and the objects they are balancing. Then it comes to this video installation where I projected these two videos on a figure-sized white “box” and put two metronomes on top of it. Those two metronomes were tuned up with the sounds of each videos on each side and the sound of the videos are situated a few meters away from the box on either side.

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Fail to Trade in a Mask, Zhengyang Huang Photos by Quiyang Shen

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Fail to Trade in a Mask Zhengyang Huang. Photos by Qiuyang Shen.

This is a series of 3 wearable masks that I initially made for passengers on bus but later found the train station too somehow works for this project. My brother Zhengzhou Huang, one of my friends Qiuyang Shen, who help documented this projects, and I went to the transportation center in Williamsburg. We first experiment the masks on ourselves in the Amtrak station waiting rooms. Then I started to invite people around to try these masks. The bus driver only allowed us a really short time to experiment and document the mask on the bus. So I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get a chance to invite passengers.

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Fail to Trade in an Elevator Zhengyang Huang

This piece is specifically designed for a double-door elevator (unfortunately the doule-door elevators on campus do not allow project like this). The window-like frame of eight two-way mirrors is hung from above with the light inside the elevator being relatively dimmer than the light outside. These four cone-like things on the “window” replace the outsiders’ faces and reflect the insiders’ faces at the same time. While I initially made this piece for anyone in the public, I then founded that it could be a rather personal, performative sculpture being performed by my twin brother, Zhengzhou Huang and me standing on either side.

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Zhengyang Huang. Photos by Cherrie Yu

The fan is a mask to wear on the hand, made with wooden sticks and plastic clinging wrap. By the closing and opening your fingers, the fan folds and unfolds. The whole setting, including the fan, the benches, the stage, and the sticks and cotton threads attached to the fan, is for a performance. The whole piece is to collaborate with a performer. What is to be performed is to be determined by the performer according to the fan setting, instead of me prescribing the whole performance. Those cotton lines kept in the holes of benches are attached to each single section of the fan for viewers to sit down and manipulate the movement of the fan, along with the performer manipulating the fan. The two benches and the stage are really narrow as they are just wide enough to sit/ stand on. The surface of the stage is covered up with plastic wrap as it catches light along with the plastic wrap fan.

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A Lone Wreath, Gracie Gilbert

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Dystrub, Gracie Gilbert

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In Rainbow, Rebecca Shkeyrov

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Purple Nurple, Rebecca Shkeyrov

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Ascension of Buddha, Rebecca Shkeyrov in collaboration with Octavian Ristea

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BlackBlack and Blue, Rebecca Shkeyrov

Waste, Rebecca Shkeyrov

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“Nigger Arabesque, 1978” by Kyle Lopez What follows is a visual content analysis of a Grace Jones photograph shot by Jean-Paul Goude in the late 1970s. The subject is a dark-skinned black woman with a shaved head in a flexible pose, with all of her limbs outstretched except for her anchored left leg. It is a profile shot with the left side of the subject facing the camera. In her right hand, she holds a microphone with a lengthy wire extending several feet to an outlet behind her, while her left hand is empty and her fingers clenched. Her right leg bends at the knee and reaches the height of her hand at a seemingly impossible angle, and she wears nothing except for a bandeau and several arm and leg bands. Her left foot, her only body part touching the ground, stands on top of a piece of small, square piece of cloth, which in turn rests on what looks to be a wooden floor. The colors in the image complement each other well, consisting almost entirely of shades of pink and blue. Jones’s bandeau is a

salmon tone just a few shades darker than the band around her knee, and both match the red makeup highlights on the upper half of her face. The band around her left arm appears to be a light green, which matches the slight green tone of the floor. The photo’s background consists of a plain wall in a bright teal hue; simple yet vibrant. The wall and floor color combination creates a certain aquatic vibe that makes it easy to imagine the subject as a colorful, exotic ocean fish. Pops of stark white in the bands around her wrist and ankles accent the photo nicely and contrast the model’s dark brown skin. The entire image lacks dullness in any part of it other than the floor and matching armband, as the rest of the visible color pops are highly saturated and have high value. The shot’s hues are made vivid by the intense brightness of the photography, which appears to come from the front of the photo as seen by the viewer. We see this due

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to the shadow cast by the subject onto the wall behind her, clear and non-distorted the way it might be if the light source came from somewhere on the side. In addition, the light is reflected all over the subject’s body, granting her an intense highlight that suggests her body consists of an artificial material, has been covered in some form of lubricant, or both. The highlight is also aided by the high saturation and high value of her skin tone, which allow the viewer to better see the contours and muscles of her strong body down to her neck’s agitated veins. The photograph’s spatial organization and logic of figuration are simultaneously simple and complicated. Goude has captured a full-body long shot viewed from a frontal angle in which a vanishing point does not really exist; what we see within the photo is all we get, although the teal expanse of the background does call into question the length and height of the wall and what the space might look like outside of this shot. Jones poses far enough from the camera that she essentially does not engage with the spectator at all, almost like an

exhibit meant to be studied. Since we neither fully see Jones’s eyes nor whatever lies in her view, the photo lacks internal focalization, making the viewer rely solely on the camera’s shot as the external focalizer. The configuration of Jones’s body more than makes up for the simplicity of the perspective, as the angles she forms suggest superhuman pliability. The sharpness of the lines in her arms and legs complements the roundness of her waist and buttocks, and the resulting amalgamation emphasizes her athleticism and femininity at the same time. Since the shot is a profile shot, we know that her left side is closer to the camera than her right; however, looking at her left arm and right leg makes it difficult to distinguish the distance between the two. In this way, the photo draws our attention to the subject’s many dimensions and curves while still portraying her as somewhat two-dimensional overall, like a hieroglyph etched on a teal slab. The image presents much for unpacking in terms of expressive content. On one end, it represents an impressive artistic achievement still today despite being almost 40 60

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years old. Goude clearly went to great lengths to organize the photo in such a way that multidimensionality and two-dimensionality might both be possible at once, and the decisions made for color and lighting make the photo striking, alluring, and difficult to look away from. The photo gives the impression of Jones as an otherworldly specimen of unattainable physical perfection. In addition, her androgynous haircut adds a queer element to the photograph that perfectly represents her personal politics when it comes to gender presentation, and grants us heightened insight into her persona; in fact, she even repurposed the photo for the cover of her first compilation album, Island Life, in 1985. Goude captures his model’s beauty in a highly flattering way, but considering the photographer’s subjectivity and the image’s title itself might impart a different feeling. Goude, a French white man, considered Jones to be one of his greatest muses; the two collaborated on many projects and even have a son together. Unfortunately, there are aspects of Goude’s photographs—and this one in particular—whose depictions of black people read less than positive in a racially-conscious context. Jones’s dark skin and fit body are the focus of the photo, and while this

photo might read as an expression of body positivity and female empowerment as a self-portrait, the fact that it was put together by Goude raises some questions about its intentions. For example: why was nudity necessary for this piece? Viewers could have easily seen Jones’s muscles and curves through tight clothing were they essential to the final product, and the nudity does not particularly make logical sense with what we are being shown. Shooting Jones nude contributes to a possible reading of the photograph as dehumanizing, as I alluded to earlier when describing her skin as looking manmade. Something specifically about the top Jones wears juxtaposed with her lack of a bottom garment makes her seem like a mannequin: a prop on which to place decorative garments, but not necessarily in a way compatible with how everyday people dress. Given the excessive sexualizing of women’s bodies in art, dating all the way back to the Venus of Willendorf, as well as the historic objectification of black women’s bodies, one has to wonder the extent to which Goude’s creative decisions for the shot were informed by fetishistic desires. His subject stands as the idealized museum statue that we find accessible and yet can never fully reach, as works of art are not for touching. 61

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Along those same lines, Jones’s memorable pose in the photo invokes the stereotype of superior black athleticism that so significantly informs how black people are perceived in society. She looks like an Olympian sprinting for the finish line, and her microphone almost seems like an afterthought even though her primary vocation is music. A person unfamiliar with Jones might not even guess that the photo means to portray an actual musician. In this way, the photograph seems to draw our attention away from Grace Jones herself and all that makes her a unique and compelling figure, capitalizing instead on Jones as the quintessential black Amazonian woman. The title “Nigger Arabesque” and the pose—reminiscent of the titular ballet technique, but altered to more closely resemble running— work with one another to distance the first word from the second, so to speak. If this photograph shows a “Nigger Arabesque,” than the traditional “arabesque” itself might lie in opposition to the “nigger,” resulting in the bastardized version seen here. The artist drawing this distinction might be seen as

as anti-black when interpreted in such a way. This, along with the use of the slur itself, corrupts the work permanently, in a sense; however, the experience of close reading the image and title can prompt viewers to consider their own racial biases and tendencies toward stereotyping, which makes ambiguous its overall morality and intent.

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Straw and Plaster sculptures Created by students in Michael Gaynesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Figure and the Body class

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