ISSUE 1
FALL 2015
PROVOCATIVE DISCUSSIONS COVERING THE WORK OF EMERGING AND MID - CAREER ARTISTS
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Contents
Tribal Dances of a Female Black Body A Conversation with Jessica Karuhanga by Kofi Forson
Focus A Curated Section Featuring Emerging and Mid- Career Artists
Letter from the Editor ARMSEYE’s Inaugural Issue
Artists who work with themes of technology, history, and ecology.
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Toronto based performance and new media artist Jessica Karuhanga speaks with New York based writer and poet Kofi Forson about her process, and the role the work of black feminists as well as traditional Ugandan dance plays in her work.
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Connections in Chaos A Conversation with Rachel Mason by Kathryn Drury Rachel Mason discusses her recent rock opera and film The Lives of Hamilton Fish, finding humor in politics, and her fascination with mysterious connections between people in a seemingly chaotic universe.
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PUBLISHER, EDITOR
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
Kathryn Drury
Julia Bohan
ON THE COVER
Aaron’s Dream , Jaime Scholnick, 2014, acrylic
and flashe on polystyrene, 64” x 60”x 60” Photo: Jay Oligny
Rocks, Rivers and Polystyrene The Sculptures of Jacci Den Hartog and Jaime Scholnick by Lorraine Heitzman L.A. writer and artist Lorraine Heitzman investigates the influences of the natural and human world on the sculptural work of Jacci Den Hartog and Jaime Scholnick.
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Dear Nemesis Nicole Eisenman at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego by Mario Vasquez Emerging L.A. writer and independent curator Mario Vasquez takes us through the traveling mid-career survey of Nicole Eisenman’s work as it stops off in San Diego at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
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ART
THANKS
Rachel Mason, Nicole Eisenman, Jesssica Karuhanga, Jacci Den Hartog, Jaime Scholnick, Victoria Bradbury, Robin Kang, Corky Sinks, Yuchen Chang, Troy Briggs, Liz Ensz, Melody Owen, Elena Grajek, Robin Kang, Sondra Perry, Paige Henry, Eleanore Lines, Matthew Schlagbaum, Elisabeth Nickles, Ali Aschman
Ann Chen Margaret Hutchins Tom Burtonwood The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego http:// www.armseyeart. com. Armseye is an international publication based in Los Angeles, CA
WRITING Kofi Forson, Lorraine Heitzman. Mario Vasquez
FOR MORE INFO EMAIL: armseyeart@gmail.com The entire contents of ARMSEYE and armseyeart. com are © 2015 by Armseye Magazine and may not be reproduced in any manner, either in whole or in part, without written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.
Untitled (Saint Lucy) , Ali Aschman, 2012, cut paper
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR KATHRYN DRURY
Welcome to the inaugural issue of ARMSEYE Magazine! WE ARE FOCUSED ON ENGAGING WITH LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS AND CULTURE MAKERS TO BRING THE PUBLIC EDUCATIONAL, PROVOCATIVE DISCUSSIONS COVERING THE WORK OF EMERGING AND MID-CAREER ARTISTS.
ARMSEYE is an international artist-run quarterly publication based in Los Angeles, CA. As an evolving platform for dialogue among artists, arts journalists, and critics, ARMSEYE Magazine connects readers and contributors with a global arts community. ARMSEYE seeks to shift cultural focus toward artists, their work, and their ideas through curated editions, written commentary, and participation in community events. Armseye, the project’s name, is wordplay on the
folk spelling armseye and the more familiar armscye, a word commonly used in dressmaking and pattern drafting to refer to the gap in a garment through which the arm passes. Similarly, our project seeks to bridge the gaps between the hand and the eye, dressing and undressing, labor and luxury, body and the mind, perception and action, and abstract pattern and subjective form. The connections among the hand and the eye; 2D pattern and 3D form; and the abstract, mathematical, geometric,
female, and body are folded into this word beautifully. This project originated from the desire to create an archive and platform for conversations with friends and colleagues about their art and the process of building creative lives. We hope that you will return, collaborate, join the conversation, and continue to read our future issues to learn about the work of featured artists and the communities they inhabit.
Kathryn Drury, Editor
Focus Technology, History and Ecology
The artists in this issue combine concepts of technology, history, and ecology in their work. The pieces encompass a heuristic explication of the impact those subjects have on the individual psyches of the artists and of humanity at large. If one of the functions of art is to allow the artist a means by which to work through the realities of their world as it applies to them, the art that is created from that process is also a reflection, to some extent, of our communal ability to work through the realities of everyday existence. This diverse group of artists shares an attraction to a poetic fracturing and re-constructing of the aesthetics of technology, nature, and history. They share a process of literal and figurative reconstructing of media and subject matter. This process is rooted in Dada and conceptual art, but refreshes this mode of working by including contemporary concerns, subjects, and visual influences.
Exercise in Process
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#2 , Eleanore Lines, 2013, digital print FALL
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
Snake, Yuchen Chang, 2012, pencil on paper
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
Build a Boat, Victoria Bradbury, 2013, digital print FALL
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
Circuit Bent Pinapple, Robin Kang, 2013, digital print
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“SAMPLER (Always Have an Escape Plan)”
Corky Sinks, 2012, graphite and watercolor on grid paper
FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
Strata Study
#1 , Liz Ensz
Frida og Snotra (from the Changeling series), Melody Owen, 2007, collage
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
What About Russia?, Paige Henry, 2012, crayon, acrylic, colored pencil and ink on paper
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
Exercise in Process
#1 , Eleanore Lines, 2013, digital print FALL
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
Gateway , Matthew Schlagbaum, 2013, digital image
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
Untitled, Elisabeth Nickles, 2013, ink on paper FALL
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
Pink Lion , Elena Grajek, 2013, digital print
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
100% Tangle Free
#2 , Sondra Perry, 2013, large format digital archival print FALL
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FOCUS: ARTISTS TO KNOW TECHNOLOGY, HISTORY AND ECOLOGY
Untitled, Ali Aschman, 2012, cut paper collage
From Collection #2 , Troy Briggs, 2009-ongoing, collection of found photographs FALL
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Tribal Dances of a Female Black Body In Conversation with Jessica Karuhanga By Kofi Forson
Previous page Bone Black Dust and Sky Lickers , 2014, Performance, 15 min.
Kofi Forson: Jessica, these are happy times. You are on your way to Italy for the Black Portraitures 2 Reimaging the Black Body in the West. Please tell me more about the project. How did you get involved? Karuhanga: I submitted to an open call. There was an adjudication process which took place within the course of a few months. My adjudication process involved being asked by mentors and colleagues to bring my individual perspective to the panel. And so I applied. I got an email of an official invitation to speak. In what context are you making your presentation? JK: I’m on an artist panel with Andrea Fatona, Camille Turner and Ella Cooper. We are the first panel to bring a Canadian perspective to an international platform in this particular context. I do reference black feminist texts in my work which comes from an American context. A R M S E Y E A R T.C O M
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Top The Trip, And The Fall, And The Lost Heap of Longing , 2014, Performance, 76 hours.
Is this then incongruent to your beliefs as a female black artist with respects to gendered and racial philosophy? JK: Yes. Often in the Canadian landscape it’s a discussion that doesn’t take place. Or there’s an exporting of ideas of what black performance might be. And often that exportation happens in the context of text or pop culture or the cultural institutions we go to where they export artists from elsewhere instead of focusing on the regional community. Can you further explain your proposal on the subject of blackness? JK: I refer to blackness with relevance to my specific hybrid body. I proposed an idea of blackness as a constellation of different forms of recognition and experience. I refer to the idea of displacement which
INTERVIEW: JESSICA KARUHANGA TRIBAL DANCES OF A FEMALE BLACK BODY title section presence. So that’s one approach. Given the immediate satisfaction of reaching a global audience, are you inspired by spontaneity, ideas that come to you in the moment, perhaps in dream or dialogue? JK: Ideas can happen in a flash or image. The source for the material is organic which occurs whether I’m reading a book or hearing a conversation. It doesn’t resonate as to who is speaking or what they are saying in the moment. Later on through channeling it is incorporated into a performance. They can also be as spontaneous as singing a song I remember from childhood. makes the body a homeland, a landscape of ruptured fibers and fissures. Its roots are migrants in constant motion. That is the essence that comes through in a lot of my work. I speak about my body as a process unfolding. That’s how I understand my body in the West. Your art originates from what I would call musings, these small drawings and tiny sketches, short evocative poems and brief videos you upload on Instagram. What is the approach behind this fragmented view of art? JK: My trajectory methodology is a continually unfolding process. The theory part comes later. Would you say the theory is manifestations, codes that become the performances? JK: Sure but the origin is in the diaristic element that emerges to the surface through the drawings and poems. What do the drawings and poems reference? JK: They tend to be like unfinished sentences, phrases or sketches. I work a lot of this out on my blog which is a way to reach out to an audience beyond my physical
If the drawings, sketches and poems come from a conscientious place and are fragments on your blog, when did you come to terms with your body as a physical tool or instrument? JK: My body has always been an instrument in my art. I am formally trained in sculpture. I remember making sculptures that suggested a longing for movement or had a relationship to the body in their size and form. The figurativeness is evident in your drawings. When did you make the transition to video?
JK: The videos came about when I started using a web camera to make what I never considered to be art even though they always in essence were. They were manifestations of poetry and love letters I wrote to friends, basically a form of note keeping. This became the starting point. When did it become more than just a habit but rather a gradual attempt at accomplishing and developing a personal style and conviction? JK: It started when I saw a line develop between art practice and other forms of labor that I do then it began to open up my understanding for the potential of my body as an instrument. That led me to do more formal performances for the camera. How does the camera shield and serve as a protective element? JK: There’s a safety there. The camera acts like a vessel or filter or some kind of mask. Even if you were seeing my face or I was semi-nude, it still felt very safe. How then did the process of evolution lead to the performances? JK: I saw the need to break out from that frame and take
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INTERVIEW: JESSICA KARUHANGA TRIBAL DANCES OF A FEMALE BLACK BODY that urgency somewhere else because once you are experiencing it as a video or art piece, as mystical and complicated as that is, the moment has already happened. You are experiencing a trace. There’s a haunting that kind of happens. That’s when I moved to live performances. On your Facebook page, Jeanette Winterson’s novel Written on the Body is among the books you love to read. In the novel the body is void of gender or sexuality. It is human. How do you use your body to channel the themes of gender and race? JK: I can’t possibly touch on the complexity of that in every piece. Actually that’s an amazing book to reference because ultimately I am trying to arrive at a kind of humanity and that is through blackness. I think all black bodies are queered in space because of the way they are dehumanized. This then would be politicizing of the body, of the black body. JK: I did a piece which addressed this very topic. I placed a white bed against a white backdrop. I rested my body on the bed. I set up a camera so that all you could see was my torso at the hip bone to just beneath the breast. There was nothing which gave the impression of gender or sex. All you could see
Black Dust and Sky Lickers is a good example. JK: Yes, even as far back as ten years ago when I explored dancing with my father, learning how to do traditional Ugandan dance, which are interesting when you think of gender because some of these dancers were female role dancers and here you had my dad representing them. So it is definitely ritualistic, a conscious mix of actual tradition but also subversions of degenerative archetypes, especially when thinking of the role of being African. UPCOMING
was the pulsating waves of my stomach breathing. And also you could see brown or black flesh and maybe you could see the markings I have from a genetic disorder. These are the only allusions to a social body. What I realized was that it wouldn’t have mattered if I was trying to make something about racial politics. Just by my body being in the frame becomes a reference to race as a sign of social difference.
As a dancer in your video and performance pieces what language are SHOWS you conveying? What is pivotal TAKING PLACE Is it performance in performance WHIPPERSNAPPER art? Is it art to you as GALLERY, movement based TORONTO CANADA an artist? on rituals and JK: The hypnotic THE ARTIST’S tribalism? Or and affective NEWSTAND is it a body moments! Yoko CHESTER revolving at an SUBWAY STATION, Ono comes to angle in space? TORONTO CANADA mind. Hers is JK: It has definitely one everything to of the first do with ritual but also performative pieces random circumstances. I’ve seen. Current Sometimes I look back performance artists I at a documentation of a think are amazing are piece and I’m surprised as the Nigerian-American to how primal it is. With performance artist, the dancing they started Okwui Okpokwasili. out as movement in space I think what she inspired by people like does with dancing Anna Halprin or Simone in performance art Forti. All these people are amazing. mean a great deal to me but I feel like I have roots So what do you derive elsewhere. My precedents personally from it? aren’t just Western JK: There are all these precedents. moments when I say “Aha! I get it.” Watching Your video piece Bone other performers I drew
that fragile and precarious line between seeing a performative event I thought of in a theatrical context versus real life. These were the moments when I wanted to pursue performance, although I may not have been ready when I was sixteen, I knew it was exactly what I wanted to do. So looking back on your work, how has it evolved from the drawings and sketches, collages and poems to the selfawareness with respect to your body to now presenting at Black Portraitures 2? JK: The diaristic things, meaning all the work I do on my blog and online, are all elements of my vision. I kept all my journals from when I was very, very young. For me that has always been my root or spine. And it was just a matter of when I would be ready to reveal them. It was discovering and experiencing vulnerability of a lot of black feminists like Audre Lorde or Bell Hooks or people like M. NourbeSe Philip. This made me realize the importance and necessity of showing vulnerability, arriving at a revolutionary moment. When did you take the leap of faith? JK: How I arrived at getting ready to show and do the work was outside the institutional framework of school. I was involved in many
A Still Cling To Fading Blossoms , 2014, Performance, 15 min.
“ showing vulnerability, arriving at a revolutionary moment” JESSICA KARUHANGA ON AUDRE LORDE, BELL HOOKS, AND M. NOURBESE PHILIP
projects in college. But once I got out of school I was ready to take charge, combine the experience of living and making art in the most real and professional sense. The internet is curated as an instrument to communicate with people in social media. That’s one way I’ve
gotten my work out there because access is an issue in the level of race and gender. So the idea of being a global citizen is wonderful. A good example is being asked to present at the conference. My evolution has been finding myself and becoming not so much
confident but seeing a necessity for honesty.
Jessica Karuhanga is a Canadian artist currently based in Toronto. Her visual art and performances have been presented at
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various centers throughout Canada including Royal BC Museum, Deluge Contemporary Art, Videofag, Electric Eclectics, Nia Centre for the Arts, and The Drake Hotel. Karuhanga was featured in FADO Performance Art Centre’s 2014 Emerging Artist Series at Xpace Cultural Centre. She has lectured at The Power Plant’s Sunday Scene Series and Art Gallery of Ontario’s Idea Bar Series. This spring she presented her work at the 2015 Black Portraitures Conference, a series coorganized by Harvard University and Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.
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CONNECTIONS IN CHAOS A Conversation with Rachel Mason
By Kathryn Drury
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Kathryn Drury: How did your film and performance piece The Lives of Hamilton Fish come about? What research went into making it? Rachel Mason: It was a very strange coincidence! While researching the execution date of a serial killer, I discovered the deaths of two men with the same name, Hamilton Fish, were listed on the same front page of the Peekskill Evening Star newspaper on January 16, 1936. One was a politician and the other was a serial killer. The front page reads Fish Faces Death In Chair Tonight As Supreme Thrill! On the opposite side of the page, it says, Hamilton Fish 86, Dies In the South: Of Famous Family. The mystery of why these two men were connected in name, death, and coverage of their death is at the center of this project. Hamilton Fish is a very musical name and the stories in the newspaper had evocative old headlines like “The Werewolf Of Wisteria!” As I researched these men and their stories, the song cycle and opera came naturally. I created the character of a newspaper editor whose perspective framed the story, as my perspective as an artist framed these events seventy years after they took place. This becomes clear in a very literal sense when watching the performance because my singing performance provides the all of the voices of the characters. Fractured representation and multiple perspectives is at the core of the film. All of the audio was recorded with my friend Stew Watson in his apartment. We didn’t expect the recordings to sound like much, but in RACHEL MASON ON DADA ARTISTS the end they had a magical quality that felt completely
“The work created by Dadaists is still relevant because they invented a sideways approach to art-making in reaction to overwhelming events.”
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cinematic. These recordings provided the soundtrack to the film, a bold move which actually made the film affordable to make. We only had to synch one track. Adding sound to a film can be almost as expensive as shooting it. I came up with the design of the film from German Expressionism; I wanted it to feel like a film from the Weimar Era and look like the hard-edged ThreePenny Opera sets of Berthold Brecht or Kurt Weil. The aesthetic created by the artists of that time aligned deeply with their ideology. The work created by Dadaists is still relevant because they invented a sideways approach to art-making in reaction to overwhelming events. It was when modern art was really starting to bloom. While being inspired by these influences, I created an overall design, Heather Quesada designed costumes, and Zane Pihlstrom was in charge of sets. Those veins of German Expressionism and Dadaism run through your other work with Alien Suns. Was that your first rock opera?
The Lives of Hamilton Fish , 84 Minute Film and live performance, 2015
RM: It was one of the first rock operas that I wrote and produced. Dada ran with the idea that the world had gone mad, that WWI had been so devastating, that the only appropriate response that art could make was to be absurd because the world had stopped making sense. It draws from of an old idea of the Jester speaking truth to the King at the risk of losing his head. Future Clown, a video performance where you, dressed as a clown, and lip-synched Rand Paul’s protest of John Brennan’s nomination to the CIA in the form of a 13hour filibuster seems to draw from this idea. RM: That piece was certainly inspired by Dada, but also the role of sacred clowns and court clowns spanning the globe throughout history. I believe in the power of the absurd to move people. For me, some of the greatest critics are comics. When something triggers laughter, it is profound. Most of my favorite artworks have an element of presenting chaos in an amusing way. The idea for Future Clown Filibuster came in 2013 while I was watching Rand Paul delivering his 13-hour filibuster speech on the Senate floor. I am interested in the length, the form, and the language of the filibuster. The U.S. has authorized countless strikes that have killed an untold number of innocent civilians. It is hard to agree with the use of drone strikes on civilians! RM: That’s the part of the filibuster that resonated
with me. I am deeply critical of our government’s use of drone strikes, and understand his concern. The piece highlights the form of the filibuster; the theatre performances that our taxes fund, that almost nobody watches. The filibuster is the lastditch effort that a politician can use in fighting for a particular cause. The act itself has the potential to put a politician on the map. I did performance of Wendy Davis’s filibuster that stands in contrast to Rand Paul’s. The location of the filibuster is a main factor. It did not take place in the Senate in Washington D.C., as Rand Paul’s did, but in the Texas Senate. She was filibustering to kill a bill, SB5, that would have severely limited the availability of abortions to women in Texas in opposition to a room of mostly hardline pro-life conservatives. When I did the performance of Rand Paul’s and Wendy Davis’s filibusters together, it allowed for a very clear portrait of the filibuster form. I think it is amazing that Rand Paul’s filibuster was 13 hours long! Isn’t that one of the longest filibusters that has ever been delivered? RM: I think it is up there! He only stopped when he had to go to the bathroom, which is a common end to drawn out filibusters. It’s a true a long-form durational performance! Wendy Davis’s filibuster ended for a very different reason. She was called-out on a dubious technicality. Throughout a filibuster, senators’ opponents will try to call them out on a technicality such as being off topic in their argument so that they can end it. Listening to the transcript of her filibuster, they sound so punitive! Her argument was finally taken down by a senator who claimed that one of her topics was “not germane to the point.” When her filibuster was halted, the entire balcony erupted in roaring anger that she was stopped before midnight and the voting was able to commence to approve the bill. The vote ruled in favor of passing the bill, but it was later found that the vote was taken after midnight! She had won in having the bill thrown out. Wendy Davis received little support from other senators, and her fight was an impressive uphill battle. Rand Paul, in contrast, was surrounded by a congratulatory boys club with Ted Cruz, among others, endlessly repeating, “I’d like to commend the senator for his great work!” The comments Rand Paul made during his filibuster about Alice falling down
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the rabbit hole, a reference to Alice in Wonderland, and his quote of Jay-Z were so comical. RM: All of the senators quote movie lines and make pop culture references left and right! It is hysterical because it’s all done while following a very rigid decorum and stylized form that only adds to the humor.
Starseeds ,
in the voices of world leaders who were key players in wars and conflicts in your 2014; installation lifetime, and resulted in live performances view, Envoy in which you performed the songs dressed Enterprises, New York City as leaders. Part of this project involved actual correspondences with politicians including one with Noriega. You insert yourself, into these individuals’ stories as they have shaped your life. It appears to be a very strong statement of power reversals. You have even Is the Kissing President Bush piece a visual said of this series, “I started to fantasize that I could quote of My God Help Me Survive This Deadly Love: play with all of these world leaders like dolls.” the mural from the Berlin Wall of Brezhnev and Gorbachev kissing? RM: What is interesting is that The Ambassadors Project tied into the real world. My correspondence RM: That piece was my own reaction to the Bush with Noriega inspired the song Se Infecto Mi Canal, administration. The idea came to me in a dream “My Canal is Infected,” a line from his book in which from an overwhelming revulsion at how no protest he referred to the Panama Canal as being infected. At seemed to penetrate the government at that time. I the time, I was suffering from a painful ear infection. protested and did all I could to be part of anti-war I involved other songwriters in this project and movement, but it felt futile. I felt complicit because received an incredible stack of poetry, which went my tax dollars were helping to fund the war. Kissing into the first album The Ambassadors I. It was created President Bush achieved a level of notoriety because for an exhibition organized by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer Roberta Smith wrote a story covering art exhibitions who contributed the lyrics to one of the songs. This devoted to the Bush election and printed my piece began a long friendship and several collaborations on the front cover of the New York Times art section with her partner Jeff Hassay who is a producer and before the Republican National Convention. It was musician. The second album came from songs that a very powerful moment for me. It was also very I wrote which evolved into several performances depressing when Bush was re-elected. with projections. I wrote the My Chechen Wolves song imagining the thoughts of the Chechen political The Ambassadors project began with songs written leader Dzhokhar Dudayev. The story of Chechnya A R M S E Y E A R T.C O M
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Future Clown Filibuster 2013; video and performance
vs. Russia is one of David and Goliath. A video of my performance was put on YouTube, went viral in Chechnya, and was later appropriated for videos promoting the Chechen cause. Of course, I don’t want my song to be used for propaganda that incites violence, but I am proud that it has been used by Chechens to feel strengthened against their oppressor. Moral questions are raised when an outsider steps into a conflict. However, the project is one of fiction, like the previous pieces I had done fictionalizing political figures. I worked with the idea that politicians represent us, so why can’t we re-present them? The Ambassadors sculptures look like pieces on a war board. Chess is a war board in a sense; it is one of the oldest strategy games symbolizing war. It mimics strategy boards that generals used to use, and I suppose, still do to visualize the movements of enemy and home forces, and to communicate plans of attack to each other. It is interesting that in creating small busts of world leaders you have subverted this idea. They have become the symbolic pawns in your master plan. RM: It is interesting because originally, that was my idea, to present the busts on abstracted mountain forms in collectible sets-like sets of all the American Presidents. If you could have your own unique set of the key players in wars that occurred in your life what would it look like? I studied the wars of my own lifetime so that I could study their faces and create sculptures of them. Starseeds, Dear Unisphere, and Alien Suns draw from the optimism of science fiction and new age philosophy. Do you think this approach has something to do with the fact that you are originally a Californian? RM: Science fiction has been around since the beginning of human storytelling. Our most ancient stories include earlier iterations of themes found in most science fiction. People imagined the causes of extraordinary phenomena and wrote fantastic stories to explain them. I feel closest to the larger truths of our universe when I am
working with material that builds upon the fantastic. You created the performance Dear Unisphere in Queens, NY at the site of the Unisphere sculpture. The sculpture represents the world coming together in global interdependence, it was built for the 1964-65 Worlds Fair to celebrate the beginning of the space age and was dedicated to “Man’s Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe.” Which, in some ways, is a very optimistic and positive idea, the three rings around the earth are meant to represent Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, John Glenn, the First American to orbit Earth, and Telstar, the first active com satellite. Flushing Meadows Park prior to 1930, was the Corona Ash Dump, which was referred to in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as the “Valley of Ashes.” The 32 dump was turned into the beginnings
of Flushing Meadows Park after the parks commissioner ordered the millions of tons of burnt trash be removed in an effort to restore the park and improve the environment for the surrounding neighborhoods. While researching for this interview, I noticed that shortly after the Unisphere was built, the 1968 Earthrise photo was taken by the Apollo 8 crew, the first crew to break Earths orbit and pass behind the moon. It has been said that it was this point when we became aware of how finite our resources are and how amazing it is that life exists on this “tiny blue dot” in the wilderness of space. It is also when the environmental movement started to gain traction. It is amazing how all of this history and these ideas seem to feed into the Unisphere piece. RM: That piece was commissioned by the Queens Museum for the Queens Biennial. They asked me to do something that was directly connected to the Unisphere. The Unisphere is a monument to engineering, America’s Eiffel tower, and is the most iconic symbol of Flushing Meadows Park where the Queens Museum is located. The process of the park being built started in 1930. This inspired me to look up With a Song in My Heart, an ecstatically optimistic song that was popular at the time, and perform it as the Unisphere personified surrounded by dancers and musicians. Your costume in that performance mirrored the Unisphere sculpture, but also reminded me of Anais Nin’s Astarte costume with its birdcage headdress in Kenneth Anger’s 1954 film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. I also found it interesting that Astarte is a ancient Middle Eastern goddess of love and war, and that symbolism seemed to tie in with your other work, but also with the meaning of the Unisphere sculpture itself. RM: I feel deeply connected to Kenneth Anger’s work. The Cockettes, these acid queens who were religiously devoted to elaborate costumes and fantastical performances, were involved in some of his films. I perform sometimes with one of the last Cockettes, Rumi Missbau, who occasionally A R M S E Y E A R T.C O M
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The Lives of Hamilton Fish , 84 Minute Film and live performance, 2015
organizes tours. Kenneth Anger’s connection to the Unisphere is unintentional, but you are very apt to see his influence, especially as I grew up in close proximity to the Los Angeles underground queer adult filmmaking scene through my parents’ store Circus of Books. For the Starseeds project, you created doll-like sculptures with mirrored bodies and faces in the likenesses of your favorite artists and musicians. Many of the female artists and musicians you pay homage to are also my heroes including Joan Jonas, Yayoi Kusama, Eva Hesse, Joanie Mitchell, Maya Deren, Etta James, PJ Harvey, Nina Simone, Ana Mendieta, Laurie Anderson, Kate Bush, Alice Neel, Yoko Ono, Frida Kahlo, Patti Smith, and Bjork. How have these women influenced you and your decision to become an artist? The project seems like a meditation on fandom and focuses on female and queer artists. Did you create this piece to draw attention to the history of female artists? RM: Patti Smith said recently, “The best art makes you feel like you can do your best work.” The term
“I am constantly reminded that we are the product of the stars.” RACHEL MASON ON HER STARSEEDS PROJECT AND THE MYSTERIOUS CONNECTIONS BETWEEN PEOPLE IN A SEEMINGLY CHAOTIC UNIVERSE
your work with The Lives of Hamilton Fish, for which you perform live at every screening. You bring the film to life in the space of the theater with your presence onstage.
starseeds is a New Age idea that some people have the soul of an alien who was sent here to make the world a better place. In a way, it is an idea I have thought about for years because I am constantly reminded that we are the product of the stars. I created a video called Doll Audience with the Starseed dolls where I sing songs in front of them, and they form my backup band. My costume is a reflective mirrored dress that the dolls also wear. I wanted to surround myself with women who have proven by example that what I want to do with my art and music can be done. It is also a very subversive move because if you take art history classes, in college or wherever, almost all of the artists you learn about, or whose work you see in museums are white men. It is in contrast to a lot of Art History books that were written as if female artists have never existed. RM: That could also be part of it. I am very happy Joan Jonas represented the U.S. in the 2015 Venice Bienniale. I think that is a major triumph for our country as a nation to have a woman representing us for what is now, only the fifth time! How many figures did you sculpt for the Ambassadors or the Starseeds projects? Performance can be likened to ritual, especially in
RM: It took me six years to sculpt over 119 figures, and make molds. There were outside pressures to show the work before it was ready but it was important to commit to the process of sculpting each figure. There is something ritualistic about creating art and that adds to the depth of the work. It isn’t the same when you hire assistants to expedite the process; years of my life, a chunk of my 20s, and a chunk of my 30s are in that work. It is against what the art market dictates is appropriate for business. This work was created on the timeline that made sense to me as the artist, and as a result, the work exists now as it was meant to be. The role I play in my work is that of a narrator bard. The work fundamentally represents a cosmic state of being: of seemingly unconnected people and events being connected. I feel very grateful whenever anyone decides to be present in a public space where someone is performing and take part in that ritual or exchange. Whether I am in an audience or performing, I feel the sense of the holy presence of life being shared.
Rachel Mason is a New York based artist, musician, and performer originally from Los Angeles. She has shown and toured internationally. Her upcoming performances and shows of the Lives of Hamilton Fish and other works include:
OCTOBER 17 Rutter Family Foundation, Norfolk, VA OCTOBER 29 Mattatuck, Museum of Art, Life performance and Screening, Waterbury, CT
SPRING 2016 New Solo Project at LAMOA (LA Museum of Art) at Occidental College, L.A., California
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Rocks, Rivers & Polystyrene The Sculptures of Jacci Den Hartog and Jaime Scholnick
By Lorraine Heitzman
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hese are not sculptures that wear the hefty cloak of masculine ambition or the genteel politeness of earlier generations. They are neither academic nor didactic. They are definitely not timid. Instead, Jacci Den Hartog and Jaime Scholnick challenge our notions of interior, exterior, natural, and urban landscapes. Den Hartog examines the geologic forces of nature in isolated tableaux and seeks to provoke an emotional and kinesthetic response, whereas Scholnick celebrates and castigates the surplus of industry and our urban landscape to a more political end. Both artists approach sculpture by embracing contradictions to examine and critique our environment. There is a subtle humor in this approach: materials, scale, and contexts are at odds with their subjects, and the viewer is engaged on many levels. Their work may be bold, but at the same time there is a subtlety behind the brilliant hues.
Fountain , Jaime Scholnick, acrylic and flashe on polystyrene J aime
Scholnick’s early polystyrene sculptures were modular totems assembled from molded Styrofoam shapes commonly used in packaging; they were predominately white and painted with black outlines reminiscent of the work of Jean Dubuffet. The sculptures appear elementally solid, but her use of disposable and lightweight materials belies this appearance. These pieces exhibit a sense of quirkiness because the materials are recognizable, yet transformed, unconstrained by the practical purpose for which they were originally intended. They were simple sculptures but in hindsight, precursors of more complex work to come. A Los Angeles native, Scholnick earned her MFA from Claremont Graduate University. Beginning with figurative sculpture, and gravitating towards mixed media, Scholnick was influenced by the work of Richard Tuttle
and the artists of the Arte Povera movement, an Italian art movement of the late 1960’s to the early 70’s. Both influences emphasized the discarded beauty of repurposed common materials, a sensibility that forms the basis of her sculptural work. Scholnick’s current work includes densely layered sculptures, paintings, and collages. While her most recent show at CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, Mowing the Lawn, represents her response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, her work has always contained political elements. Her earlier solo show at CB1 in 2014, Redesigned, Repurposed, Re-everythinged, may be less overtly political, but it is nevertheless an indictment of our consumerist culture’s appetites. As Scholnick states, “I accept the material for what it is. This is our society.” Through her sculpture, Scholnick immortalizes our consumerism in a sort of time capsule that seeks to explain the human condition. She celebrates and elevates the ingeniousness and beauty of her materials even as she highlights our disposable culture.
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SWOOSH! , Jaime Scholnick
2014, acrylic and flashe on polystyrene 270” x 36 3/4” x 113 3/4” Photo by Jay Oligny
Propped against a two-story back wall, Scholnick’s sculpture Swoosh swoops down eighteen feet from the ceiling to land gently on the floor of the gallery in a colorful, yet ordered manner. Polystyrene is an amorphous solid, meaning that its atoms are randomly ordered, an apt metaphor for this sculpture and most of Scholnick’s work. Taking modular to the level of DNA sequencing, shapes are repeated with endless variations. The elements are painted differently to emphasize separate features of the molded packaging with overlays of lines that create a textile effect. For all its complexity, it is balanced to the extreme, and the pixel-like display of colors and elements unifies Swoosh into a singular testament to our communal consumption.
Time and Time Again , Jaime Scholnick 2014, Acrylic and flashe on polystyrene, LED lights 84” x 60” x 60” Photo by Jay Oligny
In the main gallery at CB1 in her last show, Scholnick’s sculpture Time After Time appears massive, yet weightless, as it hovers inches off the floor, suspended by wire from the ceiling. Loosely but deliberately assembled from unpainted Styrofoam and lit from within, the construction emits the blue-violet light of LEDs to illuminate the interior as it sways intermittently. Backlighting emphasizes the cutout forms, while the exterior faces of the polystyrene remain light and delineated by shadows. It is chiaroscuro for the 21st century: mostly colorless, the subtle tonalities define the forms. It looks as if Louise Nevelson had tried her hand at constructing a sculpture using Maya, a 3-D computer graphic imaging program, but failed miserably. The grid is gone, but the focus on shape and textural qualities remain. The piece is a fine example of Scholnick’s concerns: transformation, contradiction, and the elevation of discarded materials to fine art.
Artifacts Series: Black, White and Flo Red Installation: North Side ,
Jaime Scholnick , Los Angeles International Airport, Terminal One , 6’ x 18’ x 5’, mixed media, Photo: Josh White In her installation Artifact Series: Black, White, Flo Red, located in the Terminal 1 Concourse at LAX Airport, Scholnick’s art becomes more aggressive and chaotic. Within an oversized glass case, she creates a terrarium of jumbled packing materials. Here is a violent, menacing quality, as if the work were taking on urgency in calling attention to our throwaway culture. The polystyrene pieces are barely contained and exhibit more limited colors. This tumultuous assemblage of shapes is a sanitized landfill, overflowing and excessive. It is the dark underbelly of our society’s over-consumption, distant from Scholnick’s earlier immortalization and contemplation of the same materials held up for scrutiny in the gallery. Together, these are the contradictions that Scholnick wholeheartedly embraces, the contradictions and problems of our times.
Redesigned, Repurposed, Re-Everythinged ,
Jaime Scholnick ( front and back view) 2014, walnut 18” x 17” x 2” Photo: Jay Oligny Scholnick’s sculpture, Redesigned, Repurposed, Re-everythinged, elevates the polystyrene form to aesthetic object by changing the material. Fabricated from walnut, the packaging has been transformed and divorced from its utility and placed upon a pedestal. This is not a readymade, although perhaps a close cousin, and for this show, the sculpture functions as a Rosetta stone. Scholnick finds that which is undervalued and confers value upon it. Where others see something to be thrown away, or recycled at best, she sees the possibility of creation.
Thinking Like a Mountain , Jacci Den Hartog, 2014, flashe and acrylic on steel reinforced hydrocal and aqua resin, 83 x 27 x 76” Photo: courtesy of Rosamund Felsen Gallery
Every Morning a New Arrival ,
Jacci Den Hartog, 2014, flashe and acrylic on steel reinforced hydrocal and aqua resin, 49 x 29 ½ x 23 ½” Photo: courtesy of Rosamund Felsen Gallery
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n her last two solo shows at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Jacci Den Hartog’s very unnatural nature scenes are fused to tabletops or cascade down walls to rest on ledges. Some may even sit low to the ground, but they are all concerned in different ways with the velocity and mass of mountains, waterfalls, and rivers. Den Hartog transforms massive natural geological forms into brashly colored, isolated vignettes that allow us to to experience the essence of landscape. Rocks and rivers are taken out of context in their size, color, and orientation: Water spills over a boulder and falls downward; a stream rushes between mountains. If her aim is to emphasize the immensity of these elements and the power of gravity, she succeeds in part
by reducing the scale of her subjects. This contradiction emphasizes the forces of nature by allowing the viewer to take in the entirety of a mountain, the gestalt of a landscape. Den Hartog’s work alternates between ethereal sculptures of elongated, thin waterfalls and streams of rushing rivers, and immutable mountain peaks and boulders. Den Hartog says her interest is in the intersection of the physical, sensory, and emotional. These are not landscapes of particular places or terrains; they are forms that inspire feelings of immensity. The contradiction between these almost weightless sculptures and what they represent is part of what makes them so arresting. Den Hartog explains that, although water is constantly in motion, it is searching for a calm, still place. “How then can you depict motion?” she wonders. “How can you make a
sculpture that will provide Late Snow in the Come and Show Me The Way , the experience of immensity? Early Spring is one such Jacci Den Hartog, 2012, installation, Photo: courtesy of Rosamund Felsen Gallery Immensity relies on the work. Made of plaster, viewer rather than [the artist] polyurethane, and steel, depicting it all.” this sculpture is a beautiful Den Hartog began as a potter in high school, example of her ability to extract illusions and and perhaps this involvement with materials and poetry from her materials. Using craggy forms and three-dimensionality foreshadowed her choice to compositions from Chinese landscape paintings; become a sculptor. When she saw the early work of Hartog drapes translucent polyurethane over jadeLee Bontecou, she first experienced what she calls like rock formations to imply a shroud covered “sculptural immensity.” Process Art, born in the mountain vista. The title not only suggests the 1960’s and concerned primarily with the process of conditions of weather, but also correlates to the making art rather than on the art object itself, was contradictions within the sculpture: translucence also a source of inspiration to Den Hartog. Artists versus opacity, the vertical draping versus the more of this movement who have most impacted Den horizontal rock forms, the colorless linear form Hartog’s work are Lynda Benglis, Eva Hess, and versus jade green, dense shapes. Bruce Nauman. The history of Chinese landscape In 1997, Hartog began to isolate river forms in paintings however, have had the greatest impact on space, casting polyurethane in molds made from clay her current work. The complex perspectives through forms. Her 2012 show, Come and Show Me the Way, which far and near are juxtaposed allowed her to at the Rosamund Felsen Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, experience the breadth of landscape, and resonated represented a departure. Den Hartog says she had with her wish to create an immersive experience. always wanted to be a painter and that these pieces In 1996 these ideas began to crystallize in her were excuses to paint in a process-based way. The show, Invitation to Reclusion, at the Christopher works in this show depict landscapes rising like Grimes Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. With poetic hallucinations from tabletops. The surfaces of the titles borrowed from the Chinese paintings she works are painted in high contrast, colored stripes, admired and the melding of physical and emotional which function like a continuous contour drawing, experiences, Den Hartog was able to create objects or topographical map. As the lines flatten the overall that addressed shifts and changes in weather and image, they also draw attention to the mountainsensorial memories. like shapes that rise from a flattened base.
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Den Hartog’s most and Jacci Den Hartog. The Etiquette of Mountains , recent show, The Etiquette The contradictions that Jacci Den Hartog, 2014, acrylic on polyester of Mountains at Rosamund each artist employs are resin, on wood base, 60 x 146 x 155” Photo: courtesy of Rosamund Felsen Gallery Felsen Gallery, further concerned with opposing abstracts geologic features. forces, perceptions, and Every Morning a New Arrival intentions. In Den Hartog’s from 2014 is a rock and waterfall tableau positioned work, balance is achieved through highlighted on a white minimal ledge that all but disappears differences among elements and the physics of against the gallery wall. A sheet of water pours the natural landscape as they affect the viewer down between two boulders and balances a free-fall on a psychological and spiritual level. Scholnick movement against the static insistence of the rock wants us to see our urban environment as a forms. Fluorescent hues underscore the abstraction reflection of ourselves, that is at the heart of this work and allows the in all of its complexity, a viewer to contemplate the work’s elemental aspects, balance of our ingenuity Aaron’s Dream rather than the pictorial features. and shortsightedness. Jaime Scholnick, 2014, In the sculpture for which the show is named, Both artists explore acrylic and flashe The Etiquette of Mountains, Den Hartog has our relationship to our on polystyrene, created four iconic mountain forms that sit upon environment and suggest 64” x 60”x 60” three slatted wooden benches, which are positioned that the viewer must find Photo: Jay Oligny closely to the gallery floor. She explains that the the equilibrium necessary, structure is based on the most simple form of a within either an internal Japanese tea ceremony, a 4.5 tatami mat ceremony, or social context. The contradictions in our lives a structured ceremony based upon etiquette. provide rich material for Jaime Scholnick and “Tea ceremonies,” she continues, “Are about the Jacci Den Hartog, and one can only hope that they guest and host relationship, in which everybody is continue to search for the balance through their equalized.” Such egalitarianism is at the core of the inquisitive and provocative work. sculpture, and Den Hartog wanted its equilibrium to set the tone for the whole show, where mountains support water and water supports Lorraine Heitzman is a writer and artist living in Los mountains in counterbalance. Angeles, California. Her artwork can be viewed This idea of achieving equilibrium is a notion at www.lorraineheitzman.com, and she is a that applies in the work of both Jaime Scholnick 41 contributor for Art Cricket L.A.
Review
Dear Nemesis
Nicole Eisenman at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego By Mario Vasquez
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or the 1995 Whitney Biennial exhibition, Nicole Eisenman painted a mural, titled Exploding Whitney, which imagined the aftermath of an explosion at the Whitney Museum. With victims and news reporters surrounding the scene and works of art strewn everywhere, the figure at the center is the artist, observing and beginning to paint the outline of the scene. Six years after Exploding Whitney was finished, the World Trade Center was in ruins A R M S E Y E A R T.C O M
FALL
2015
after a terrorist attack, and Eisenman painted a shaken country. Nicole Eisenman: Dear Nemesis, a mid-career survey exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, draws upon Eisenman’s interest in the political and social concerns of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Using tropes, styles, and practices of early Modernism, her paintings, works on paper, and sculpture are packed with eroticism and humor. Emerging in the 1990s, at the beginning of the culture wars, Eisenman’s bawdy and humorous work juxtaposes pop and literary figures with sexual and queer subject matter. Eisenman’s painting Alice
in Wonderland (1998), for instance, depicts Wonder Woman receiving cunnilingus from Lewis Carroll’s eponymous heroine, Betty Gets It (1994), Betty Rubble and Wilma Flintstone are shown in a lesbian tryst. Eisenman returned to exploring queer, gender, and sexual identity in works such as Portrait of Celeste (2007), which features an androgynous figure with cropped hair wearing an Iron Maiden shirt. The name of the androgynous sitter, which serves as the title, challenges some viewers’ preconceived expectations regarding image and gender identity. Eisenman’s use of shadow and line gives the figure
REVIEW: DEAR NEMESIS NICOLE EISENMAN AT THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, SAN DIEGO the appearance of being ill or intoxicated. Most of the work in Dear Nemesis was made within the last 16 years and explores the effects of catastrophic events such as the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Towers, the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the recent economic crisis of 2008. In these works Eisenman uses stylistic approaches reminiscent of early 20th century German Expressionism including bold colors, inexact rendering of figures, and portrayals of emotions through color and figure. The influences of Neue Sachlichkeit artists such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, and George Grosz are also evident. Painters of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement sought to portray society with brute honesty. She often conveys the state of human relations by visually quoting the compositions
Previous page: The Triumph of Poverty; Top: Breakup, 2011, oil and mixed media on panel, 56 x 43 in, Collection of Bonnie and Robert Friedman. Courtesy the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.
Below: Sloppy Bar Room Kiss, 2011, oil on canvas, 39 x 48 in. Collection of Cathy and Jonathan Miller. Courtesy the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photos: Robert Wedemeyer.
of old masters Bruegel and Bosch, but also modernist artists like Picasso by using line, color, and style. Eisenman masterfully uses modernist approaches to depict subjects that are contemporary to today’s postmodern world. In Brooklyn Biergarten II (2008), Eisenman visually quotes Auguste Renoir’s Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (1876) as a composition model
to show a beer hall in contemporary Brooklyn, New York. The bar-goers are gathered for a drink and, in Eisenman’s own words, to talk about “how fucked up” the world is today. In the background, Death appears to join the conversation. In this painting, Eisenman imports the visual language of 19th Century Paris used by Renoir in a light hearted and celebrated manner to comment on a similar scene in a Brooklyn biergarten as an existential gathering where life’s meaning and the pressures are a gathering storm. The disconnected condition of human relationships is the subject of Eisenman’s painting, Break-Up (2011), which depicts a downcast figure holding a cell phone. The painting is a testament to the loneliness of 21st Century human relationships mediated by technology. Eisenman’s sculpture, Sleeping Frat Guy (2013), addresses the overtly drunken condition of a college student in a fraternity. The frat boy has become a totem to partying, machismo, and failed masculinity. His head is
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slumped backward, and his mouth opened in an unconscious stupor. Using Brâncuși and Modigliani’s simplified and monochromatic approach to the abstracted head, Eisenman portrays her subject as a figure abandoned in pathetic masculine overcompensation. Eisenman’s painting, Sloppy Bar Room Kiss (2011), takes as its subject matter, the abandoned inhibitions of a barroom scene. Two patrons of ambiguous gender, surrounded by bottles of liquor and beer, kiss with their faces pressed against the table. The isolation of both figures in a bar evokes a sense of loneliness. In the painting, no one acknowledges their intimate moment. The viewer is reminded of the figures in the paintings of Edward Hopper, desperate for human companionship. With her painting, The Guy Artist (2011), Eisenman challenges the trope of the tortured, starving, male Modernist artist. Equipped with a beret, one eye is closed, and his thumb up to measure the scale of his subject, his unflinching gaze focuses on the viewer like the African sculptures swirling around his head, perhaps an allusion to Picasso and other mostly white male, modernist artists who have appropriated African art. The folly that Eisenman exposes is the hubris of such
Above: Deep Sea Diver, 2007, oil on canvas, 82 x 65 in.
Private collection, San Marino, California. Courtesy the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo: Robert Wedemeyer.
REVIEW: DEAR NEMESIS NICOLE EISENMAN AT THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, SAN DIEGO artists to exploit the art and designs of cultures and people historically ignored in Western art. When it comes to stating truth as it relates to the human condition, Eisenman is at her best when she explores the recent economic and political landscape. The painting the Triumph of Poverty (2009) is both allegorical and direct in its representation of the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. It also refers to a painting by Hans Holbein of the same title. The painting shows a group of people ravaged and broken. Eisenman uses surreal elements to depict the scene, such as a tall man in a tuxedo whose torso is turned backwards. The painting portrays the blind in one corner on the left being strung along by the tall man in the tuxedo. Each figure seems to fluctuate between the recognizable and caricature. Each walks beside a beaten up car. Eisenman takes a cue from Bruegel’s Blind Leading the Blind (1568), which depicts the parable in Matthew 15: 13-14. In the parable, Christ tells the Pharisees, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides [of the blind]. If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” In Eisenman’s painting the viewer sees only a
hand on the left side leading the procession into the unknown. Eisenman alludes to the uncertainty, hardship, and displacement caused by the recession of 2008. Fear generated by the recent political climate is also evident in Eisenman’s work entitled Tea Party, (2011). The title alludes to the 1773 Boston Tea Party, as well as the current manifestation of the Tea Party, which arose in 2009, as a protest movement by disenchanted conservative activists, predominately white and male, after the election of Barack Obama. The painting portrays four figures: one asleep with a shotgun in his hand, two working on a bomb, and one depicted as an Uncle Sam-like figure. Eisenman’s version of Uncle Sam, traditionally a symbol of American patriotism and strength, is shown as a hollowed out, frail old man who looks into the distance blankly, without emotion; as if shocked at the changing world. The figures are sitting in a bomb shelter, isolated from the rest of the world, like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. These are the outliers of political discourse who are waiting for the end of the world. The painting’s colors are bright and bold, yet the figures are cartoonish.
Eisenman reduces Tea Party participants to pathetic isolated figures, a sense of danger, however, permeates their gathering conveyed through the shot gun and bomb. The mirror is turned darkly upon the political divide among Americans that is prevalent today. By using and filtering the past, to interpret the present, Eisenman has truly established a new New Objectivity that presents the viewer with truths that are both difficult and compelling. With the subject matter she draws from contemporary thought on such themes as feminism, gender identity, sexuality, politics and current affairs, Eisenman makes the viewer uneasy through the brutal honesty of her work as well as her use of jokes, visual tropes, and archetypes. Dear Nemesis is an excellent exhibition filled with depth and intelligence that will leave the viewer thinking about Eisenman and the world she portrays.
Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965, Verdun, France) lives and works in New York City. Eisenman was recently awarded the Carnegie Prize for her work in the 2013 Carnegie International. Recent solo exhibitions include MATRIX 248, Berkeley Art Museum (2013); ‘Tis but a scratch’ ‘A scratch?! Your arm’s
off!’ ‘No, it isn’t.,’ Studio Voltaire, London (2012); Nicole Eisenman: The Way We Weren’t, The Tang Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY (2009); and Nicole Eisenman, Kunsthalle Zurich (2007). Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions such as The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015); Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg, Russia (2014); NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, New Museum, New York (2013); the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2012, 1995); Prospect.2 New Orleans (2011); and 100 Artists See God, The Jewish Museum, San Francisco (2004); among many others. Eisenman is the recipient of several awards including an Anonymous Was a Woman Grant, the John Simon Guggenheim Grant, The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant. Her work is in the collections of many museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and The Ludwig Museum, Cologne.
Mario D. Vasquez is a blogger, writer and independent curator. His blog is Super Mario Art: Fine Art in the Fast Lane, www.mariosartworld. blogspot.com.
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A Room With a View , Matthew Schlagbaum, 2013, digital collage
ISSUE 1 FALL 2015
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