Screwed Moves

screwed moves an interactive, imaginative, super-sized, spontaneous mixed-media arts experience

Se p te m b e r 13 , 2012 – FE b ruary 10, 2013

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SCREWED MOVES The Screwed Arts Collective

In 2008, during the hottest days of July, a group of artists armed with sketchbooks, paint, plywood and screws propped open the front doors of the Gallery at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission to work on an installation they called Screwed In. Working in an urban street-based style, they transformed the white box walls of the gallery—f loor to ceiling—into an active public space. During their 10 day marathon of marking and spraying brilliant red, yellow and orange paint on plywood, the artists intentionally spent time on the sidewalk along Delmar Boulevard outside the gallery, soliciting feedback and inviting the passerby in.

The conversations were part of the work.

In August 2010, with a few variations, they did it again over a two week period in a monochromatic palette to evoke a more graphic style. The painting and the transformation of space were visible to the street and on the Web. The next year, The Screwed Arts Collective put the show on the road for the ArtPrize Festival in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (UICA), on a massive wall clearly seen from the street, the artists again collaborated, dancing across scaffolds, up and down ladders, to create a dynamic temporary wall drawing.

Now, the nine members of The Screwed Arts Collective have accepted the challenge to create one of their unique installations in the World Chess Hall of Fame. They had no trouble making connections between the game of chess

SCREWED IN, 2008 (Details) Mixed media wall drawing St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Saint Louis, Missouri

and their art making. Marcel Duchamp, among others, famously illuminated that connection, in his art work and in his chess play: “Chess players are madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, but isn’t in general.”

The Screwed Arts Collective members are Christopher Burch, Daniel Burnett, Stan Chisholm, Christopher Harris, Daniel Jefferson, Kris Mosby, Jason Spencer, Justin Tolentino, and Bryan Walsh. They are artists who create collaboratively as well as individually. To watch them paint, as a collective, is to watch an improvised choreography. Dancing on walls and ceilings across scaffolds. Moving with grace and concentration. Improvising like break dancers to a hip-hop sound track. As with street dance, there are few limitations.

Paradoxically, as with chess, there are a few rules. Painting over another’s work is acceptable if the new work is clearly more exciting. Sharing beer is mandatory.

Art for these artists is a very public process.

There is energy in the spontaneity, the directness, and the challenge. While their work is highly sophisticated, it is also meant to poke at the “elite establishment.”

Their ease at the use of media in all forms—the paint, the pencil, and the Web—and the accessibility to their process of art-making give their work the quality of public performance. The veil is lifted. The scaffold underneath the cloud-dancers’ feet is revealed.

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Left: SCREWED AGAIN, 2010 (Details) Mixed Media wall drawing St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Saint Louis, Missouri Right: SCREWED RAPIDS, 2011 (Details) Mixed Media wall drawing Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts Grand Rapids, Michigan

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“There is a class of men—shadowy, unhappy, unreal-looking men—who gather in coffee houses, and play with a desire that dieth not, and a fire that is not quenched. These gather in clubs and play tournaments...”

—H.G. Wells, Concerning Chess When the collective came together to decide the themes for this installation at The World Chess Hall of Fame gallery, there was no shortage of ideas and concepts. The deep history of chess and its players is plentiful with stories, both mythical and true. Is chess a metaphor for war? For the acquisition of power and territory? For some Freudian need? And what about lighter themes? Should the artists play with the traditional colors of black and white and red? With the idea of the King? Or the dominion of the Queen?

Structure. Logic. Opposites. Pattern.

Memory. Intensity. Exhilaration. Chaos.

This might be seen as the trajectory of the creative yet logical mind. Perhaps the mind of an artist facing a blank room is like the chess player at the first board.

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This might be seen as the trajectory of the collective artists’ approach to the “problem” of a new installation.

In Poems and Problems, Vladimir Nabokov described the opening board of a chess player, “The chessboard before him is a magnetic field, a system of stresses and abysses, a starry firmament.” An opening of a game with chess pieces in place and a blank room prepped for paint: these are universes of possibilities. Tangles of landscapes to be traversed. Chaos within concentration. Screws to turn.

It’s been said that master chess players often have several hundred thousand chess patterns in memory. The artists in the collective carry the memories of past installations and movements of their cohorts across the walls of the past. They have layers of shared language that are built on within a process taking place over time. Pattern. Memory. Anticipation.

These artists begin with a set of rules and self-limited parameters for each collective work. Yet, within this structure, there

are unlimited ways of organizing the elements of imagination and possibility within that environment. This time, in Screwed Moves, they are bound by the concepts of a “chain of operations”—from structure to chaos. The artists are seeking to make the mind and psychology of the chess player visible through their markmaking on the walls. Bound by rules and aggressively creating within those rules, they are mimicking the structure of the game itself, order within the chaos of the stimulated mind. They are embracing opposites; finding patterns; making moves.

Message from the Director

—Roseann Weiss (2012)

­­— Susan Barrett

Roseann Weiss is Director of Community Art & Public Art Initiatives at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission (RAC). In this position, she serves as director of the Community Arts Training (CAT) Institute – an innovative program centered on the belief that art can amplify the voices of communities, regenerate neighborhoods and be an agent for positive social change. Roseann also leads RAC’s public art initiatives, which include identifying resources for new projects. She has 25 years of experience in arts leadership in both nonprofit institutions and gallery settings.

Since opening in September 2011, the World Chess Hall of Fame has been honored to host the work of nationally- and internationallyrenowned artists, and we are proud of the global recognition we have received for these innovative exhibitions. For Screwed Moves, however, we have turned our attention locally, showcasing area artists and highlighting Saint Louis’ reputation as a center of chess activity. The members of The Screwed Arts Collective have transformed our first-f loor gallery into a working studio and community space exploring the seemingly disparate worlds of art and chess, and how they have uniquely impacted the city’s cultural life by offering new rules to break in art, music and the spoken word.

Left: SCREWED IN, 2008 (In Progress) Mixed Media wall drawing St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Saint Louis, Missouri Right: SCREWED AGAIN, 2010 (In Progress) Mixed Media wall drawing St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Saint Louis, Missouri

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SCREWED MOVES September 13, 2012 – February 10, 2013 Special thanks to the Screwed Arts Collective: Christopher Burch, Daniel Burnett, Stan Chisholm, Christopher Harris, Daniel Jefferson, Kris Mosby, Jason Spencer, Justin Tolentino, and Bryan Walsh. Related programming and a downloadable pdf of this brochure can be found at www.worldchesshof.org.

Curated by Roseann Weiss and Bryan Walsh.

WORLD CHESS HALL OF FAME Director: Susan Barrett 4652 Maryland Avenue Saint Louis, MO 63108 (314) 367-WCHF (9243) Copyright World Chess Hall of Fame Designed by Paige Pedersen Printed on Recycled Paper Twitter – @WorldChessHOF Facebook – World Chess Hall of Fame Flickr – www.flickr.com/photos/worldchesshof Financial assistance for this project provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.

Photos: Chris Harris Cover image courtesy of Juan Montana Edited by Jenn Carter