COLLECT | Winter 2013 by Yellow Peril Gallery

PROFILES

REVIEWS

GARY DUEHR 6 BARBARA OWEN 8 MASHA RYSKIN 10

UNTIL THE KINGDOM COMES 20 @ David Winton Bell Gallery

FEATURES

MORE AND MORE, MORE IS MORE 21 @ Gelman Student Exhibitions Gallery

VANISH 14 Maralie

cover: Gary Duehr, CCTV 01 Untitled (Counter), 2012

NAVIGATION PAINTINGS 16 Michael Childress

SPECIAL COLUMNS THE MOST PECULIAR HISTORY LESSON WE HAVE EVER HAD 23 ARTDESTINATION: MARFA, TX 27

IN THE HOLOCENE 22 @ MIT List Visual Arts Center

WINTER/2013

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Contributors: RenĂŠe Doucette

Kyla R. Foster

RenĂŠe Doucette is an emerging art columnist based in Providence, RI. She writes a regular monthly art column for East Side Monthly and covers the Providence art scene on her blog, artrogueisland.tumblr.com.

Kyla R Foster is an emerging art columnist living in Providence. Foster received a Bachelor of Arts from Ohio University in Art History and General Studio Studies with a focus in modern critical theory. She currently works at RiverzEdge Arts, a non-profit in Rhode Island which promotes positive educational and economic outcomes for youth through artistic expression.

Staff COLLECT is a quarterly, limited edition magazine published by Yellow Peril Gallery. Each issue features interviews with artists from YPG exhibitions and profiles from artists in our Flat File program, as well as reviews and previews of art exhibitions and events both in and out of Providence and special columns dedicated to art and design here in the region.

Publisher Vanphouthon Souvannasane Editor Robert P. Stack Art Director Marcel McVay Advertising Executive Jen Young Intern Emma Fague

Robert Moeller Robert Moeller is a writer and painter. His work has appeared in Artnet, AfterImage, Art New England, and Big Red and Shiny. The last exhibition of his paintings was at HallSpace in Boston in March 2012.

Nate Risteen Nate Risteen is an artist, writer, and teacher at The University of New Hampshire and The New Hampshire Institute of Art. He writes a blog about art in greater Boston at www.bostonartreview. blogspot.com.

A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR New Year is always an opportunity to reflect back on the year past, while looking forward to the coming year. This duality of repose was doubly so for 2013 as it also marked the one-year anniversary of Yellow Peril Gallery’s Collect Art concept launch. Reviewing the events of 2012, we can feel proud of our many initiatives to promote art collection. The Collect Art concept was started to utilize the off-season as a time to promote up-and-coming artists experiencing their first solo show and offering more affordable works for entry-level collectors. COLLECT magazine debuted in March, providing readers with not only news and reviews of the contemporary art world, but uniquely focused testaments from experienced collectors regarding their passion for collecting art.

Concepts of what collecting art constitutes were explored further with several performance-based, experiential works exhibited in The Courtyard at The Plant, such as Ari Kalinowski’s interactive “The Beacon”, “Table Fights”, and Quintin Rivera-Toro’s relational aesthetic piece “Summer Grid”, the latter of which was selected by City of Providence Department of Art, Culture + Tourism to be featured on their “Buy Art” buttons.

Stay tuned in 2013 as we continue to launch interesting new Collect Concept programs and events in our ongoing obsession with uniting great people with great art.

Robert P. Stack Editor, COLLECT magazine

#102 Satellite Project afforded even more opportunities to further the collect concept, including the launch of our flat file program promoting two dimensional works on paper, and MADE, a curated shop promoting art created in the various historic mills reclaimed as studio spaces around historic Olneyville. January 2013 brings us full circle to our second annual Collect Art program, featuring in 2013 exhibits by emerging artists Maralie and Michael Childress.

PROFILES

GARY DUEHR BARBARA OWEN MASHA RYSKIN

1 Gary Duehr, CCTV 07 Untitled (Airport), 2012 pigment print on watercolor paper 17"X22"

7 Barbara Owen, Black Bloom Zig Zag, 2012 acrylic, ink and gouache on paper 8"x10"

2 Gary Duehr, CCTV 03 Untitled (Entry), 2012 pigment print on watercolor paper 17"X22"

8 Barbara Owen, Network with Blue Lines, 2012 guache on cut up old book paper 5"x7"

3 Gary Duehr, CCTV 01 Untitled (Counter), 2012 pigment print on watercolor paper 17"X22"

9 Barbara Owen, Network with Black Lines, 2012 cut up old book paper 5"x7"

4 Masha Ryskin, Daily Walk I mixed media on paper 13"x20" 5 Masha Ryskin, Dwelling II mixed media on paper 30"x44" 6 Barbara Owen, Red Bloom, Black Specks, 2012 acrylic, ink and gouache on paper 8"x10"

Artists featured in PROFILES are part of the Flat File program at Yellow Peril Gallery. Works are available for view and for purchase at the gallery upon request. To set up a viewing appointment, inquire by email to info@yellowperilgallery.com or by phone to +1 401 861 1535

Winter/2013

PROFILES

GARY DUEHR

Based on closed circuit television (CCTV) from anonymous global sources, Gary Duehr's "Closed Circuit" examines the ubiquitous state of Big Brother's watchful eye. In 2007 Duehr was chosen as a Best Emerging Artist in New England by the International Association of Art Critics. In 2003 Duehr received an Artist Grant in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and his work has been featured in museums and galleries including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Exit Art, Umbrella Arts, and New York Arts, New York, NY; Gallery Tsubaki, Tokyo, Japan; SKC Gallery, Belgrade, Yugoslavia; and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba. Past awards include grants from the LEF Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

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Close Encounters of the 3Â˝ Kind, 2012. Collage 6.5"x5"

PROFILES Winter/2013

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GARY DUEHR

PROFILES

MASHA RYSKIN

Masha Ryskin is a Russian born artist currently based in Rochester, NY and Providence, RI. She received a classical art education in Moscow, Russia, followed by a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of Michigan. She uses a variety of media, including drawing and painting, printmaking, installation, and fibers. Her work is concerned with landscape and its elements as a metaphor for memory, history, and passage of time. Masha's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She has participated in a number of artist residencies, both in the United States and abroad. She is a recipient of many grants and fellowships, including a Fulbright grant to Norway.

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MASHA RYSKIN Winter/2013

PROFILES

BArbara OWEN

"The work I make explores the space between abstraction and representation. Each painting is comprised of interwoven abstract forms for the viewer to dissect. The process of drawing/arriving at a shape through a kind of “automatic drawing” is one of the ways I create various shapes. Through these I explore color relationships. I am

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intrigued by color relatedness and its simplicity and complexity; each work of mine is one product of understanding the many diverse associations.... My work has evolved through the act of process: One piece leads to another. For me, the most effective way to make a painting is to find a methodology; which allows the painterly process,

once set into motion, to proceed as a natural force. With this allure painting offers in its most elemental simplicity, the opportunity to create imagery and is a record of itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s making."

BARBARA OWEN Winter/2013

PROFILES

If it can be welded,

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st 12

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Winter/2013

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PROFILES

still from Pure Life, 2012 ÂŠ Maralie

FEATURE

vanish

Providence-based artist Maralie works within the rich and ever-changing borders of human identity within a technologically saturated society.. Though this is by no means uncharted territory, Maralie brings with her a colorful background in performance that lends itself to a refreshing perspective on our simultaneous relationships to our bodies and our information-saturated, technological surroundings. Her work, whether photography, video or performance, asks us to examine our saturated and compressed techno-social relationships.

Maralie: Yes. Last year I had my first solo exhibition, A Seer's Spectacle.

Marcel McVay: Vanish will be your second solo exhibition?

Whether through performance or image, the human body streams through

You have been involved for years in multi-media music and performance projects, such as Soophie Nun Squad and you still perform with your husband, Eli V Manuscript, as Humanbeast. Does your past and current collaborative practice play a role in informing your solo work? There is a symbiotic relationship between my solo work and collaborative work. Each require different amounts of courage and vulnerability.

your work. What is it about the body (and specifically your body) that makes it such a prominent character in your narratives? Sensory observations can be so distracting. Walking down the street translates into smelling strangers as I pass, the crunch under my shoes, and hearing a pigeon slowing the flit of its wings to land. We all experience our surroundings like this. I obsessively make mental notes of it. When those mental notes reach critical mass, they transform into photo, video, costume or dance. It boils down to how someone might cross barriers without tools or skills. What's the bare minimum?

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In the series of Bathroom Fan shorts, the loud rush of air beneath numerous bathroom fans is illustrated as it deforms the skin on your hand. In Somatic Sonata, you record the sound of a tattoo gun as it inscribes Eli's skin, digitally visualize the waveform and inscribe it on your arm with an inkless tattoo gun. Can you describe your investigation of sound or sonic experience as it intersects with and becomes visualized by the human body? As a teenager I watched a friend, who is deaf, jump when a thunder clap sound effect played through a PA system. I was shocked and loosely signed "How did you hear that?!" she explained that she could feel it in her body and the vibrations were terrifying. Of course! It took seeing the embodiment of that principle for me to truly understand that sound is physical energy. Since then I imagine how every organ in the body experiences sound.

engineer and loved it because it forced me to listen beyond the genre of music the bands were playing. I had to listen what frequencies were provided and find the best way for each to be represented simultaneously.

The title of your first solo exhibition, A Seer's Spectacle, as well as that of Vanish, both allude to inexplicable visual phenomena. Can you describe how this ethereal vision make it's way through these exhibitions?

my models and my own are treated with the same amount of anonymity. It is the struggle to remove myself and ultimately my ego. An attempt to create a universal somatic experience. A reach toward seeing the unseen. It's a failure, but I persist. This work is the residue. I am that residue. Vanish, a collection of multimedia photography, video, installation and drawing is on display at Yellow Peril Gallery from January 18 until February 11, 2013.

Both exhibitions feature "self portraits" absent of my visage. All the bodies of

I've noticed you use both visual and sonic noise to distort often melodic and resonant figures and fields, images and voices. The intention grew as a consequence of embracing my tools and resources and apologizing for it.

How did you become interested in noise? It is difficult to trace the beginning, but I was more familiar with avant garde and biological experiments with noise before appreciating the musical genre. I worked a few years as a live sound

still from Strict, 2012 ÂŠ Maralie

Maralie Vanish Winter/2013

FEATURES

FEATURE

michael childress

setting a course Like the Second Officer aboard a seafaring vessel, Michael Childress provides for us his navigational prowess. Contemporary tools help to plot a route through a two-dimensional plane both seen and imagined. 1

This simultaneously real and virtual plane has been a stage on which visual artists have performed for centuries. With the advant of digital technologies and their screen-centric interfaces, this stage has never been more relevant to our understanding.

as production) for Michael Childress' new body of work, Navigation Paintings. Rather than conducting an interview to introduce this show, we decided to use the drawings presented here to provide a sort of visual exposition - a brief class in orientation before setting a course.

The Field Drawings, shown here, demonstrate complex planar movement through an expansive vocabulary of mark making, and as such, act as a springboard (both in viewing as well

The following statement from Childress provides an image of his new works. "This series of seven paintings was created on the concept of a seven

pointed compass. They propose a frame of reference for the viewer onto an ideal plane. Both landscape and diagram, the image attempts to represent movement through space. The construction of the abstract image is in itself a navigation. All seven paintings are intended to be seen as if looking out in different directions as the painter, and now the viewers, orient themselves within a larger synthetic space."

Michael Childress Navigation Paintings Winter/2013

FEATURES

Michael Childress' Navigation Paintings will be on view at Yellow Peril Gallery in Providence, RI from February 15 until March 17, 2013.

1 Field Drawing 1, pen on paper 2 Field Drawing 5, pen on paper 3 Field Drawing 3, pen on paper 4 Field Drawing 4, pen on paper ÂŠ Michael Childress, courtesy of the artist

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Untitled #136, 2006 ÂŠ Simen Johan Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, NY

REVIEWS

Until the Kingdom Comes

Simen Johan’s, “Until the Kingdom Comes”, is an ongoing series of large verisimilar photographs capturing animals positioned in a seemingly stock-still setting depicting a glimpse of devotion. The artist takes multiple photographs of animals at zoos, museums, farms, and nature preserves and then digitally constructs the images into an environment taken elsewhere. The relationship between the chosen animal— often times multiple animals— and the environment, masks any definable line between what is real and spiritual or bizarre and reasonable. The process, in addition to the visual result of the photographs, forces the images to teeter between an ontological and phenomenological realm.

animals. Both periods of works depict the same ghostly yet tranquil feeling, but there is no doubt the artist shows progression with his concept in the more recent subject matter of animals and plants. Johan makes it clear during the conversation that his works are never “happily ever after” or “ignorance is bliss” as the images always allude to a blurring of binaries or dichotomies. Johan’s negative print of the entrance of a cave, portrays this idea by bringing into the question the idea of uncertainty, invertedness and that there is “evidence of things unseen.”

Untitled #164, 2011 © Simen Johan Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, NY

To further explain the visual result of the process, Johan adds to the alternating feelings of worldly and otherworldly by presenting the animals with anthropomorphic characteristics. The photograph of two foxes sitting as if romantic, in a beautiful field of snow, appear to have tears in their eyes. Another photograph depicts a large buffalo proudly sitting in the foreground of a garbage dump. A third photograph allows the viewer to sit in on what seems to be a conversation between two white birds over some red berries. During the artist conversation between Johan and Jo-Ann Conklin, the Director at the David Winton Bell Gallery, works prior to “Until Kingdom Comes” were mentioned. These previous works include children as subjects rather than

The visual rendering of each photograph by the artist is only a portion of the experience of the viewer. Taking into consideration the viewer is consistently being pulled between what in the images are realities and the parts that are constructed, the viewer must rely on his or her own interpretation knowing there are aspects of each photograph that cannot be seen with eyes alone but only with help from the lens of Johan’s camera. In addition to the viewers’ own interpretations, the artist still persists that his interpretation be seen in the images—a world with no real, right or true answers. “Believing in the image is a prerequisite for the experience." Kyla R. Foster "Until the Kingdom Comes" is on display at Brown University's David Winton Bell Gallery from November 17, 2012 through February 17, 2013.

Until Kingdom Comes David Winton Bell Gallery 20

REVIEWS

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More and More, More is More

It may come as no surprise that the Rhode Island School of Design can proudly claim that their Digital+Media program has for the past decade kept up with the development of a medium heavily reliant on the ever-evolving world of technology. In the latest exhibition in the Gelman Gallery, mixed media meets the increasingly obsessive world of excess with interesting results in the show, “More and More, More is More” curated by Lisa Iaboni MFA 13 DM and Elizabeth Rossiter MFA 13 DM. The Gelman Gallery, located on the elusive second floor of the RISD Museum, caters to students, both undergraduates and master’s students seeking to take an idea for a show and bring it to fruition. For many students,

Installation view of "More and More, More is More" Photo: Namwoo Bae

this space often provides their first opportunity to exhibit or curate an exhibition publicly. The idea for “More and More, More is More” coalesced after Iaboni and Rossiter came to the realization that their studio work did not fall in line with any of the “Call for Submission” postings up around campus. Despite stark aesthetic differences, their work shared inspiration from the world of excess that surrounds us. This show exhibits excess even in terms of how many artists are participating in the show; over 20 artists’ work fills the space, proving that Digital Art is not going anywhere and that, for as much as people like to dump all over pop culture, you cannot deny its presence or shock value. It is exciting to see all of the different artists pulled together for this show, both in number and in variety of perspective.

Despite the curators being in the Digital+Media program, the artists involved belong to various differing programs. Among the names highlighted by the curators are Josephine Devanbu, who creates a solid column out of discarded plastic jewelry containers, Zach Seeger, whose previous work tried to create an alternate cultural history, and Ed Brown, who truly plays with the capability of digital art. With so much and such a diversity of work in one space, it takes more time than average to take it all in - especially when some of this work is more cerebral. Although the concept of the show is not unique, the overwhelming and diverse response to participate demonstrates that people are not done discussing the conditions of excess in our culture. In the words of the curators, “’More and More, More is More’ critically engages with the overwhelming detritus of our everyday lives, the remainders of our collisions with technology, environment and culture. It celebrates chaos over order, noise over signal, accident over intent, and excess over restraint.” As the first show at Gelman Gallery of 2013, it could not have been better timed. At the dawn of a new year, we still seem to be plagued with the same issues, putting us deeper and deeper in cultural debt. Our days of being moved to revolt are harder to inspire as we continue to become increasingly self-involved, but at least this show turns some of our negatives into positive inspiration.

Renée Doucette "More and More, More is More" is on display at RISD"s Gelman Student Exhibitions Gallery from January 11 through February 3, 2013.

More and More, More is More Gelman Student Exhibitions Gallery Winter/2013

REVIEWS

In the Holocene Nominally inspired by Swiss writer Max Frisch’s 1980 novella, Man in the Holocene, which was first published in the United States by the New Yorker magazine and later greeted with wide acclaim, In The Holocene, at the List Visual Arts Center is the vagabond step-child of a work of genius. Frisch’s book, which is a rugged and austere (yet darkly comedic) story about an elderly man trapped in a catastrophic storm that threatens to destroy the village he lives in. At root, the novella is meditation on the erosion of memory, logic, and the discordant relationship that exists between us, and the natural world. In The Holocene should feel more substantial given the quality of many of the works included. Trevor Paglen’s photograph “The Clarke Belt” which shimmers with emptiness, the blurred dots, disused communication satellites left to circle us for an eternity. Joseph Beuys’ “Light bulb powered by Lemon” has a revved–up simplicity that trumps its basic execution. Robert Smithson’s photograph of his “Partially Buried Woodshed, Kent State (1970)” documents a process he called disarchitecture where erosion becomes visible and the act of creation accelerates the process of decay. Interestingly, Kent

State, where the project was installed, was the scene of a campus shooting by the National Guard during a peaceful protest over the war in Vietnam. Four students were killed and nine others wounded. Smithson’s work became an informal memorial adding a wholly unexpected resonance to the work. The inclusion of John Baldessari’s singing tribute, (modeled, some say, on Ella Fitzgerald’s tribute to Cole Porter), to Lewitt’s “Sentences on Conceptual Art” is ragged and amusing. But one is left wondering just how it found itself here. And perhaps, that is in large part why this exhibition feels unbalanced and more akin to astrology than astrophysics. There is an inherent flakiness to a lot of the work chosen, it is too personal, too idiosyncratic; mimicking science rather than pausing over any methodology or inquiry. Science is the gloss, here, not the substance. For example, Trevor Paglen’s work is about the moral and political dimensions of the uses of technology. He is less concerned with how a satellite is put into orbit but rather it’s usage after the fact. One could argue that Paglen is wholly a political artist riffing on secret sites, drone warfare, and government malfeasance. What he documents is not the processing or production of technology (the science) but instead the applications of already existing platforms and how

they are put to work, or in many cases, hidden from view. And while Alfred Jarry might have written the first cyborg sex novel (TheSuperMale) his views on science are of the skid row, delirium tremens variety. Jarry, while certainly brilliant was a drink and drug-addled mystic who decoded the universe in almost absurdist fashion. The system he devised called “pataphysics” is a collection of observations that, at best, are subtly amusing, and at worse, will leave you scratching your head. Only practical at the end of his life, his last request was for a toothpick. Ultimately, In The Holocene is about artists mediating information, largely in a conceptual fashion. The relationship here to science is thin-plated and serves to under mind the show as a whole while reminding the viewer that art is often counter-intuitive. Or as Sol Lewitt said (and Baldessari sings): “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.”

In The Holocene MIT List Visual Arts Center 22

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The Most Peculiar History Lesson We Have Ever Had Nate Risteen

I recently had a visit from an old

college friend, a musician who’s now pursuing a Ph.D in neuroscience. We’ve grown apart in forgivable ways since college, but we both understand implicitly that distant friends have to make an effort to foster shared interests, and this unspoken agreement is probably why we’re still friends. He also visits me far more often than I visit him, and the possibility that this might be a coincidence gets feebler as we age. With this understanding in mind he brought over a book by Morton Feldman, and I was willing to give it my attention, regardless of whether the material deserved it, in an effort to maintain our friendship. Morton Feldman, like my friend, was a musician with a separate day job (selling children’s coats in Feldman’s case, not neuroscience), and he could be loosely called a classical composer in the broad meaning of ‘classical’ that would include John Cage. My friend is an extremely talented songwriter and guitarist when he’s not in the lab, but he also recently made an eerie tonal soundtrack for an online video that went viral. The video was an advertisement for an ice cream shop that some of his other friends had started, and the ad consisted of a woman made of ice cream eating her own head. This was accompanied by a monotonous voice extolling the virtues of ice cream, all while my friend’s abstract soundscape built in the background.

This video inspired a slew of hate mail and threatening phone calls to the ice cream shop, including one from an angry father who berated my friend’s voicemail. My composer friend was impressed by the strength of this response, and all this attention had encouraged him to go further into non-objective music. Morton Feldman, as the self-styled companion and successor to John Cage, was a logical source of inspiration for this interest, in no small part because Feldman had a habit of writing very provocative and very short essays in addition to his challenging scores. Feldman preferred a punchy sentence to a coherent argument, and this, along with his difficult music, made Morton Feldman’s work an excellent example of how artists could build their careers through provocation. My friend had discovered that upsetting people might be a way for him to get back into music, and he appreciated Feldman’s brashness. He also liked telling me how Morton Feldman had gone from selling coats to self-proclaiming his leadership in the 1950s avant-garde, and how Feldman had believed that he was part of a history-breaking trio of artists that included John Cage and Philip Guston. This peaked my interest. Guston had been a landmark professor in Boston University’s graduate program (albeit much earlier than when I studied there), and he’s still talked about with a sense of awe by many of his former students. And Morton Feldman was right in finding similarities between himself and Philip Guston. Both Guston and Feldman were fat; fat in

The Most Peculiar History Lesson We Have Ever Had Winter/2013

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their creative breadth, fat in their ambition, fat in their carnal tastes, their eyebrows, and their insatiable consumption of art. After considering their personal lives and the art they produced, their corporeal fatness seems like an afterthought. In retrospect, it makes sense that Feldman and Guston would be so close to John Cage. Cage’s thinness in body and art must have made these two seem even fatter. Morton Feldman would have loved that last sentence. He was thoroughly anti-academic and resentful, and his writing shows that he loved some good bullshit. Feldman was the kind of author who would title something "Philip Guston: The Last Painter" and then write only a few short paragraphs. Here’s a good example: “Guston is of the Renaissance. Instead of being allowed to study with Giorgione, he observed it all from the ghetto- in the marshes outside of Venice where the old iron works were. I know he was there. Due to circumstance, he brought that art into the diaspora with him. That is why Guston’s painting is the most peculiar history lesson we have ever had.”(Philip Guston: The Last Painter, p. 39). Due to circumstance? What circumstance? Guston’s painting is the most peculiar history lesson we’ve ever had? That’s good bullshit. This sort of bullshit endeared me to Feldman, and it led me to read Feldman’s entire piece on Guston in the middle of a party that I’d held for my friend’s visit. The essay is so short that reading it didn’t seem anti-social, and I’d finished the piece before my friend could get back from his conversation in the kitchen. But reading essays at parties isn’t good for anyone, so it was only later that I read the entire book. Feldman was writing in the 1950s and 1960s mostly, and a more complete reading of his work revealed it to be filled with the self-importance of Abstract Expressionism. As his essays go on they show a seething resentment of elite academia, especially Princeton, coupled with an unquestioned reverence for Philip Guston. This presents a contradiction, as Guston became a notable teacher at Boston University, and Feldman himself taught at the University of Buffalo. Contradictions, however, did not bother Morton Feldman, and Feldman was similarly unconcerned with how Guston was one of the most notable Abstract Expressionists to push his way back towards representation. In the middle of his career Guston returned to making relatable subjects and images, and back into the ‘history’ of art that Feldman claimed he wanted to be ‘getting out of’(Conversations

Without Stravinski, p. 51). Guston, in truth, made an increasingly personal and direct art as Feldman’s work became more insufferable and ethereal, and Guston’s fat figures and impastoed light bulbs make a striking contrast to Feldman’s later music that could trap an audience for more than six hours. But Morton Feldman’s writings also show that he was more loyal than right, and this only made me like him more. He would rather be wrong with his best friend than justly alone, and this, unlike Feldman’s music, reveals his more humble and sympathetic side. And though he’s wrong about Guston’s artistic direction, at least through Guston’s later years at Boston University, Feldman inadvertently describes Boston’s art, irrespective of Philip Guston, in his essay called Boola Boola. After a good rant about professors and professionals (in his mind only imitators can be professionals), Feldman says “unless we take a chance, we die in art”(Boola Boola, p. 47). He

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then goes on to say that music is not an art to many professors (due to their lack of risk-taking), but that “it is a process of teaching teachers to teach teachers” (Boola Boola, p. 47). Feldman calls this the “Academic Avant-Garde”, and with this phrase Feldman is identifying Boston’s artistic problem. Boston certainly has a long list of distinguished universities, and academia has become a dominant force in the economy and culture of greater Boston, both in the sciences and the arts. These fields can often seem to overlap, with MIT hosting prominent exhibitions in their art museum, and schools that are often noted for their art programs, like Boston University, leading the way in fields like photonics, the science of light. It’s tempting to cite Boston’s scientific institutions as being a direct influence on the city’s artists, but instead the sciences have become an excuse for Boston’s artists to make abstract gibberish. Science is often thought to be the foundation of Boston’s frequently mushy and meaningless painting, but what these artists are really doing is hoping to relate their work to our shared cultural awareness of scientific progress and the daring advances of Modernism. Sometimes this art trends toward Abstract Expressionism, but without that movement’s emotion. Sometimes it includes political-seeming

symbols, but without making any discernible statement. But more often this work resembles an enlarged petri dish, with pseudo-cellular shapes in a sea of illogical color. This is meant to allude to a scientific rationale, all while being painterly and unstructured enough to remind us of Modernism’s cool. It’s this insidious imitation of earlier forms of art, coupled with the false allusions to actual research, that make this work doubly Academic Avant-Garde. It is imitative of past art in exactly the way that Morton Feldman resented, and it refers to scientific patterns without having a scientific basis. And, due to Boston’s university-centered economy, this is frequently an art form made by teachers who are teaching future teachers. • My friend had long been home by the time I finished Morton Feldman’s book, and I excitedly called him to share this revelation on Boston’s art, as it seemed like a solid piece of Feldman-spirited bullshit. Morton Feldman had inadvertently identified the problem with Boston’s art scene! Isn’t that amazing! But I had forgotten that my friend was now a neuroscientist first, and he met this observation with a scientist’s tentative hope. “Is there a traceable connection between

The Most Peculiar History Lesson We Have Ever Had Winter/2013

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scientific education in Boston and the city’s artists?” he asked. “Do they collaborate? Are some of these scientists making art?” All of these questions made sense from his perspective, as he had set out to be a musician and found himself in a Ph.D program in neuroscience. To him, the idea that scientists could be influencing, or even creating, a city’s dominant art form was irresistible, and it fired his own longing for an arts-focused past. He sensed an opportunity. “No," I explained, as I was still struggling through a life in the arts, and I knew better than to credit these artists with having an actual scientific basis for their work. “This is just like Feldman’s explanation of Philip Guston. It’s bullshit. These artists are just using science to make their abstract gibberish seem important. Then maybe they’ll throw in a few meaningless symbols that look politically or socially aware, and everybody wins. People get to feel like they’re saying something without actually saying anything, and it all looks like it’s justified by research. But really it’s just abstract kitsch. And Morton Feldman called them out without even knowing it. Isn’t that amazing?” I was pretty proud of this. I thought it was good party bullshit, the kind of thing we could drink and argue about without actually staking anything. But my friend took it personally. He wanted to believe that scientists were actually influencing art, and that he hadn’t completely given up his music for a day job testing mice. His distance from art had made him believe in it more, and he was willing to buy into the idea that this pseudo-scientific abstraction could be taken seriously. His professional failures had ceased to be artistic, and he now felt only a hobbyist’s successes, like his viral ice cream video. His fully-funded Ph.D had come to protect his art and to distance him from it, while my own art and ideas had no protection. I continued to be crushed by the instability and constant failures of being an artist, and this had made me cynical and dismissive. In short, I had identified with Morton Feldman’s bullshit, and my friend had identified with Feldman’s self-importance. But I saw the harm that even a small argument like this could do to a distant friendship, as this subject had enflamed both of our insecurities: his in the regrets that came with leaving art, mine in the difficulties of staying

in it. I saw the very real possibility that, in the future, my friend might simply be too busy to come visit, and that I probably still wouldn’t take the bus to visit him. But Morton Feldman’s attitude was right; it’s better to be wrong with your friend than justly alone, so I tried to find a compromise. I pointed out that Morton Feldman had indentified the problem with Boston’s Academic Avant-Garde, but he’d also found its potential solution in Philip Guston. Guston could be championed as an example of how artists could leave the false trappings of repetitive abstraction for the honesty of their own imagery. Philip Guston had stopped painting color fields in order to explore his own place, his own story, and his own values, and he’d pursued all this while becoming one of the most influential teachers in Boston. He could be held up as a counter-example of what Boston’s art could be, and of how the city’s creative voices should stop being imitators and professionals, and instead be their own artists. The influence of science on art had been quietly left out of this observation. Being a good friend and good company was more important than winning a point, and my friend seemed willing to accept this compromise, probably because it left aside his regrets and vulnerabilities. In advocating for both Guston and Feldman I was supporting our friendship and an unconditional support for each other’s art, and this fit with our unspoken understanding. And in the end, our discussions of sixty -year-old writings should just be artsy provocation and party bullshit. But quietly, and to myself, my friend had left me wishing that Boston’s artists would follow Morton Feldman’s spirit and break with their imitative abstraction and pseudo-science, and hopefully take a Guston-like path toward finding their own direction. Not paint like Philip Guston, but take his sort of risks, and give our region a brave and truly representative art form.

C Nate Risteen is an artist, writer, and teacher at The University of New Hampshire and The New Hampshire Institute of Art. He writes a blog about art in greater Boston at www.bostonartreview.blogspot.com. All quotes in this piece are from Give My Regards to Eighth Street, Collected Writings of Morton Feldman by Morton Feldman, edited by B. H. Friedman. All figures have been left uncaptioned to respect the anonymity of the artists.

NATE RISTEEN 26

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ArtDestination: Marfa, TX After driving hours on quiet desert highway, a structure emerges blurry in the distance. It could be a mirage. You begin to rejoice, as this is the first sign of civilization you have seen in hours. Getting closer, the sign becomes legible and reads: PRADA MARFA. This cannot be real. You pull over to see what this is about and think it must be a joke and, in fact, it is not what it seems. A sculptural façade of a PRADA store that one would find on fifth Avenue stands there in the middle of nowhere. Peering through locked glass doors you see dusty vintage designer shoes and purses neatly on display in the mint green interior. The permanent installation, PRADA MARFA, by artists Elmgreen and Dragset, is the first sign that you are finally close to your destination. Prepare yourself now; you are about to enter Marfa, Texas. We are in West Texas by the Rio Grande, surrounded by the Chinati Mountains. The landscape is desolate, thirsty, and deprived while clusters of civilization are few and far between. Yet despite the unforgiving terrain, the land contains a priceless resource. Enter a sleepy cowboy town with Mexican burrito stands and deserted railroad tracks to find arguably the most important collection of Minimalist Art in the world.

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Donald Judd’s legacy is the reason why art enthusiasts make epic pilgrimages to the West Texas desert. Signs for La Fundacion Chinati/ The Chinati Foundation lead you off highway 67, up a dirt road. About one mile away from Marfa’s Town Hall you park your car and walk into an office that makes you feel like you have teleported to Chelsea. A smirking intern with thick-framed glasses and a plaid button-down accepts your presence indifferently and advises you to browse the bookstore while you await the docent guide. Your fellow visitors quietly linger in anticipation for what lays ahead. The Chinati Foundation exists at an old army barracks that was modified by Donald Judd to permanently display site-specific and conceptual art installations. Single story cabin style structures repeat one after the other in a persistent and uniform manner and you enter each of them to view world-class art. Donald Judd, a.k.a. the Father of Minimalism, had become increasingly discouraged and unmotivated by the spatial confines of producing work in New York City. He wanted a place to make art with no limits, so he moved to Texas in the seventies to create a place for his work. Over time, he invited some of his contemporaries including fluorescent light-artist-guru, Dan Flavin, as well as John Wesley, Ilya Kabakof, Carl Andre, John Chamberlain, and a few more to

Installation view of Judd's work at the Chinati Foundation.

Photo: Matthew Chamberlain / mchamberlain.com

develop permanent installations on his distant and expansive property. The guide unlocks the door of a large converted artillery shed and you enter excitedly for your first glimpse of the art. Inside feels clean and quiet and the floor-to-ceiling windows bring in morning light from the east. Donald Judd’s 100 Works in Milled Aluminum lie there in front of you and your entire group simultaneously sighs in delight. This is the crux of your epic journey. Your guide takes you from building to building, unlocking and relocking each one as you come and go. Everybody has a glow in their eyes and a calm sentiment. The drastic contrasts of mountain desert with minimalist installation that exists in the interior of these buildings is startling. Observing hot mountain desert sun alongside bright fluorescent tubes and shiny reflective objects, your

perception loses gravity and the experience becomes transcendental. You wonder about Judd’s artistic motives and why he chose such a place as Marfa, Texas to execute his inspiration. Each installation was made specifically for the space that would contain it. You will never be able to see it anywhere else.

place. They are excited to share with you their experiences and let you in on Marfa’s hidden gems. Your new friends are proud to tell you that this is their fifth time to come here and you decide then and there that this will not be your last visit to Marfa. Jen Young

Once you have finished your tour at the Chinati Foundation, you re-enter the town with a new air of privilege. There is more to see, as contemporary art galleries, design firms, hotels and hip restaurants have emerged to keep up with the pace of the flocking art geeks.

Jen Young is a Providence-based glass artist and writer. She is also Advertising Excecutive at COLLECT magazine. She hopes to explore and share art destinations as she journeys through various inspired sites.

An energetic mood floats about and you can probably find live music happening somewhere in Marfa tonight, if only just new friends improvising around a campfire. At your hotel you find a group of fellow wayfaring art nomads and they invite you to sit with them for a drink. They forget to ask you your name and instead ask you your purpose in this

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Winter/2013

REVIEWS

JANUARY FEBRUARY

@AS220 Feb 2-23 Reception Feb 2, 5-7pm @Project Space Echoes & Shadows: SARAH CLOVER & STEPHEN BROWNELL @Main Gallery New Works by IAN COZZENS Paintings by LYN HAYDEN @Open Window New Work by BRIAN HOCKER @Youth Gallery New Work by INDIRA MILLER as220.org/galleries/ @Cade Tompkins Projects Double Legacy Jan 19 – Feb 28 cadetompkins.com

@Candita Clayton Gallery Through Time: KATE BLACKLOCK Jan 25 - Mar 6 canditaclaytongallery.com/ @RISD Museum RISD Business: ALEJANDRO DIAZ Current-June 9 The Festive City Current-July 14 Double-and-Add: ANGELA BULLOCH, ANTHONY MCCALL, HAROON MIRZA Current-June 30 2013 RISD Faculty Biennial Feb 22 - Mar 17 risdmuseum.org

SUBMIT YOUR EXHIBITIONS

@Samsøn Projects the origin of the world /\ the force of the source \/ the cause of the vigor Jan 4 - Mar 30 samsonprojects.com @Yellow Peril Gallery Vanish: MARALIE Jan 18 - Feb 10 Navigation Paintings: MICHAEL CHILDRESS Feb 15 - March 17 Reception Feb 15, 6-9pm yellowperilgallery.com

SPRING 2013 MAR APR MAY to info@yellowperilgallery.com

MARCH APRIL

@AS220 Apr 6 - 27 Reception Apr 6, 5-7pm @Project Space ARIELLE AFFIGNE @Main Gallery Drawings by ERIC FULFORD Photography by JOHN A. CASTILLO @Open Window JOHN HOUSLEY as220.org/galleries/ @Cade Tompkins Projects CORAL BOURGEOIS Mar 8 - May 4 cadetompkins.com @Candita Clayton Gallery WAY O'MALLEY & ANDY DAVIS Mar 15 - Apr 28 canditaclaytongallery.com/

@David Winton Bell Gallery UNTIL THE KINGDOM COMES: SIMEN JOHAN Nov 17 - Feb 17 www.brown.edu/ @RISD Museum Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion Apr 28 - Aug 18 Made for Eternity Mar 15 - Dec 31 Double-and-Add: ANGELA BULLOCH, ANTHONY MCCALL, HAROON MIRZA Current-June 30 risdmuseum.org @SamsĂ¸n Projects LISA SIGAL Apr 5 - May 18 samsonprojects.com @Yellow Peril Gallery Reverse Cowgirl Mar 21 - Apr 14 Foreclosed Dreams: DAVID H. WELLS Apr 18- Jan 13 yellowperilgallery.com

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