COLLECT | Spring 2014

ART FAIRS: A Necessary Evil?

INTERVIEWS: 5 Questions, 3 Artists

SPECIAL FEATURE: Cuadro Escrito

For emerging galleries, art fairs are akin to

Insights from Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez,

Carrie Cooperider explores the power of

a game of Russian roulette. » p. 50

James Montford + Bradley Wester » p. 56

text in the work of León Ferrari » p. 44

COLLECT art + design for the curated lifestyle SPRING 2014 | VOLUME III

Selfies & friends: contemporary portraiture AT CADE TOMPKINS PROJECTS BY A. WILL BROWN

CARLOS JIMÉNEZ CAHUA: NEOPLASMS & PLEONASMS AT SAMSØN BY PAM LAI

Diatraea saccharalis: “al arrullo de la palma pienso en tí” AT VOLTA NY BY IAN DELEÓN

The Ulysses Glove Project by Jessica Deane Rosner (Courtesy of Cade Tompkins Projects)

prov idence pr eservat ion societ y

Providence Preservation Society’s signature annual event opens some of Providence’s most beautiful historic homes, gardens and converted industrial mill spaces.

The Festival begins Friday, June 13, with an evening cocktail reception followed by tours on Saturday and Sunday. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit ppsri.org/festival or call 401.831.7440.

june 13-14-15

providence, rhode island

CONTENT SELFIES & FRIENDS: CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITURE AT CADE TOMPKINS PROJECTS BY A. WILL BROWN Contemporary versions of portraiture can be found anywhere a media platform exists — Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Instagram.

With this in mind, Cade Tompkins set out to find a fine-art counterpoint to the continuing aggrandizement of self-constructed

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media, and she found one in the portraiture of eight artists.

CARLOS JIMÉNEZ CAHUA: NEOPLASMs & PLEONASMS AT SAMSØN BY PAM LAI Something is up at Samsøn Projects. Carlos Jiménez Cahua’s winter show at Samsøn continues the gallery’s interest in sculpture that plays with the usual nature of materials and their relationship to a space, but it leaves out the social commentary of many comparable shows.

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JOSEPHINE HALVORSON: FACINGS

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TED GAHL: SUNDAY (Like the brightest light in a theatre shining on an empty stage)

AT SIKEMMA JENKINS & CO. BY CLARITY HAYNES

AT DODGEgallery BY NATE RISTEEN

Josephine Halvorson’s third solo exhibition comprises “quotidian,

Ted Gahl’s recent exhibition at DODGEgallery exposes the process

utilitarian industrial objects that often possess a kind of New

and struggle of painting, humbly and disarmingly, with an aware-

England austerity.”

ness of how being a painter has changed.

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50

Diatraea saccharalis

ART FAIRS: A NECESSARY EVIL?

AT VOLTA BY IAN DELEÓN

THE GALLERIST BY VANPHOUTHON SOUVANNASANE

Ian Deleón is one of many Caribbean and diasporan-­based artists

Running a commercial art gallery in an economic downturn means

whose practices intersect various disciplines including New Media,

evolving the business to match the financial climate. For some

Performance Art and Social Engagement.

emerging galleries, participating in a top-tier international art fair may be the only true opportunity to go back to black.

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LEóN FERRARI: CUADRO ESCRITO

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INTERVIEWS: 5 Questions, 3 Artists

BY CARRIE COOPERIDER

BY ROBERT P. STACK

Despite everything, the letters in León Ferrari’s Cuadro Escrito some-

In the first edition of INTERVIEWS: 5 Questions, 3 Artists, COLLECT Ed-

how manage to arrange themselves into the portrait of a piece of

itor-in-Chief Robert P. Stack probes for context behind the artwork

writing. But their posturing is merely a conceptual operation, an

of James Montford, Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez, and Bradley Wester.

idea whose time may be just beginning, or is already lost.

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THE ART OF COLLECTING

CALENDAR

AT NEW BEDFORD ART MUSEUM BY LAUREN SCHARF

CULTURAL HIGHLIGHTS

The recent The Collectors II: Translations exhibit at the New Bed-

Providence, Boston, New York City and beyond, as curated by the Ed-

ford Art Museum brought together three distinct perspectives on the

itors of COLLECT from submissions by readers

practice and avocation of collecting art.

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Craving Cultural ConneCtion?

Discover the Providence athenaeum, an independent, member-supported library and cultural center open to the public! !

The Athenaeum’s expansive array of current and classic books, periodicals, music, and films, along with lively programs, will satisfy a lifetime of cultural curiosity. And our 1838 building is a work of art! To learn more or arrange for a tour of this jewel in the city’s cultural crown, call Stephanie Knott at 421-6970 x14 today.

the ProviDenCe athenaeum 251 Benefit Street, Providence, RI 02903 401-421-6970 providenceathenaeum.org

EDITOR’S LETTER The Phoenix from the flame / I have learned / I will rise / And you’ll

of the Art Fair: Ian Deleón from the perspective of a contributing

see me return / Being what I am / There is no other Troy / For me to

artist, and Vanphouthon Souvannasane from the perspective of an

burn (“Troy” by Sinéad O’Connor)

exhibiting Gallerist.

Third time’s a charm as COLLECT reinvents itself once more, in

Three area artists exhibiting at Yellow Peril Gallery this spring are

our quest to be the best we can be. Two years ago we launched

interviewed regarding the themes integral to their work, Carrie

COLLECT as a monthly playbill-style format, but after six issues we

Cooperider looks at the text based art of León Ferrari, and Lauren

decided to redesign the magazine from top to bottom. We shifted

Schraf delves into the world of collecting from the eyes of collec-

to a quarterly publication and a square format.

tors.

We’re very excited about our latest changes, debuting a new rect-

This multi-perspective examination of the art scene is as fascinat-

angular format and some new staff, namely our new Managing Ed-

ing as it is informative, and we think you’ll love the new issue as

itor Nate Risteen. No matter what changes evolve, we’ve always

much as we do.

maintained our mission to promote art and design for the curated lifestyle.

As in the past, our Spring 2014 issue looks at the world of art collecting from many varied facets.

Robert P. Stack Editor-in-Chief, COLLECT

Reviews of dynamic exhibitions happening in Providence, Boston and New York cover what’s happening in area galleries and museums.

Two features highlight collecting through the rarefied experience

COLLECT COLLECT is a quarterly limited edition magazine that promotes art and design for the curated lifestyle. Each issue of COLLECT features interviews with artists, reviews of art exhibitions and events, and special columns exploring various topics relevant to the art world. 250 copies of COLLECT are printed each quarter. Subscriptions available upon request.

COVER: The Ulysses Glove Project by Jessica Deane Rosner (Courtesy of Cade Tompkins Projects)

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Publisher: VANPHOUTHON SOUVANNASANE Editor-in-Chief: ROBERT PATRICK STACK Managing Editor: NATE RISTEEN COLLECT 60 Valley Street #5 Providence, RI 02909 +1 401 861 1535 Advertising + General Inquiries: info@collect-magazine.com

www.headmastermagazine.com Matias Uris for Issue No. 3

CONTRIBUTORS A. WILL BROWN is the curatorial assistant of contemporary art at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, RI. He is a curator, writer, and a regular contributor to Daily Serving and Art Practical, and has also written for San Francisco Arts Quarterly, California College of the Arts’ Glance Magazine, and Alternative Apparel.

CARRIE COOPERIDER is a writer and artist living on a remote island off the mainland of New York City. She is old enough to know better.

IAN DELEÓN is a radical, light-skinned Latin from conservative parentage. His work is a personal journey of familial and cultural discovery, with societal implications that highlight lingering narratives within popular culture that seek to exoticize, romanticize, or apologize for colonialism in all of its forms.

CLARITY HAYNES is an artist, writer and educator who has taught and lectured at numerous institutions, including the New York Academy of Art, Brooklyn College, CUNY, Rutgers University, and Adelphi University. Haynes lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is a member of the tART collective.

PAM LAI is a freelance writer living in Boston and Ceredigion, Wales.

NATE RISTEEN is an artist, writer and teacher at The University of New Hampshire and The New Hampshire Institute of Art. Before his role as Managing Editor of COLLECT, Risteen was the primary writer for BostonArtReview, a blog about art in greater Boston.

LAUREN SCHARF is an Art History Major, and a member of UMass Dartmouth’s graduating class of 2014. As an undergraduate, she has taken on important positions in a range of extracurricular activities, including president of the student-run Art History Club, staff writer for the campus newspaper The Torch, and an intern for multiple organizations.

Through these activities, she has coordinated lectures, film screenings, fieldtrips, exhibitions, and three annual undergraduate art history conferences.

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Y E A R

T O

C E L E B R A T E

A R T

Art League Rhode Island – Inspiring artistic growth and excellence through education and exhibition.

Since its inception in 2000, Art League Rhode Island, with its nearly 200 members, has promoted and elevated the role of the visual arts in Rhode Island. Here’s what we’ve been up to in recent months: • Hosted the inaugural IonaFest, a day (and night!) long celebration of the arts in memory of Iona B. Dobbins, “First Lady” of RI Arts. Parades, performances, food, fun, art … all to celebrate RI Arts and raise funds for art scholarship.

• Served as creative incubator for the Rhode Island Art Archive Project (RIAAP), a documentary film series that looks at RI arts through the eyes of established and emerging artists, and goes behind the scenes with curators, gallerists, museum directors, and local collectors.

• Educated, explored, and inspired with programs and speakers including Judith Tolnick Champa (Editor-in-Chief of Art New England), Robert P. Stack (curator, Yellow Peril Gallery), and Malcolm Grear (graphic artist, Malcolm Grear Designers).

Above, members’ ar t wor k from a panel in the new ALRI brochure. From the top: Painting by Gretchen D ow Simpson Sculpture by Howard Newman Photograph by Cindy Horovitz Wilson Drawing by Nanc y G aucher-Thomas

www.artleagueri.org

Visit, Vie w, Collect, Join

• Promoted the highest standards of artistic excellence via critically acclaimed exhibitions throughout the State, featuring works in all media by Art League RI members.

That’s just the beginning: learn more about Art League Rhode Island and how you can be a part of it by visiting our website.

Artists, art lovers, and supporters are welcome!

SELFIES & FRIENDS: CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITURE at CADE TOMPKINS PROJECTS BY A. WILL BROWN Contemporary versions of portraiture can be found anywhere a media platform exists — Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Instagram. While not initially intended as archives of narcissism and fleeting ideological claims, social media networks are premised upon a self-guided and, at least on the surface, conscious construction of the self — they’re self-branding and marketing in an age of image and information proliferation. With this in mind, Cade Tompkins set out to find a fine-art counterpoint to the continuing aggrandizement of self-constructed media, and she found one in the portraiture of eight artists — Suzanne Schireson, Dan Talbot, Ben Watkins, Sophiya Khwaja, Buck Hastings, Aaron Gilbert, Eckhard Etzold and Julie Gearan. The works featured in the exhibition, Selfies & Friends: Contemporary Portraiture , are all portraits and self-portraits that take varied forms — sculpture, painting, and mixed media collage — and all intelligently manipulate subject and form.

Sophiya Khwaja: Worshipping the Button (2013) collage, graphite, found and readymade objects, digital printing, 44” x 44” x 11” (Courtesy of Cade Tompkins Projects)

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Selfies & Friends installation view (L to R): Suzy Schireson, Dan Talbot and Julie Gearan (Courtesy of Cade Tompkins Projects)

The gallery is immaculate and spartan, yet has a surpris-

painted with gold leaf. Prime takes a similar tact, rendering

ingly airy atmosphere and resonates with just enough in-

the outline of a nearly life-size human figure, presumably

timacy — despite being both windowless and partially un-

the artist, in shades of white and grey paint on a slick fiber-

derground. There is something mysterious and seductive

glass surface. This makes the work appear more sculptural

about confronting the work of the eight artists in Selfies &

than it is — a clever use of trompe l’oeil effects. Watkins’s

Friends: Contemporary Portraiture. The works and the space

approach, though more conceptual and perhaps a bit light

seem to mediate one another, particularly as the collection

on that end, was successfully antithetical to the notion of

of portraits in a sealed-off and partially underground space

the contemporary portrait or “selfie” that unifies the exhibi-

become a body, or history of work. It’s like having a last en-

tion, in its obfuscation of any tell-tale signs of character, per-

counter with a group of personal histories before they are

sona or social standing - all of which a portrait, historically

sealed forever in a bank or archival vault.

at least, was meant to convey.

Local artist Ben Watkins’s two pieces, Begetting (2013) and

Sophiya Khwaja’s work, Push the Button (2013), a mixed me-

Prime (2009) are the most abstract works in the exhibition.

dia collage combining found objects, drawing, and digital

Begetting is an 11 x 21 inch white plaster panel featuring the

printing, approaches portrait making from a markedly less

honeycomb-like silhouette of a human skull carved out and

indulgent and more critical angle. Her work in the exhibi-

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tion was dispersed across a number of gallery walls, more

Khwaja’s portraits immediately become about more than

of a map or chart-like installation than a traditional two-di-

a depiction of the exterior self — they construct the self as

mensional image. In one panel the artist depicts missiles

a confabulation of interior and exterior forces, constantly

tethered to balloons, and a solitary woman — the artist —

working together and in opposition to create a complicated

relaxing with a glass of red wine in a brown bathtub that

and unresolved identity. In her case, or in the case the work

rests, tentatively, in a field of black and grey grass. Minia-

sets out to make, it’s an identity largely defined by the in-

ture cut paper sharks of varying blues and purples swim

ternalization and regurgitation of exterior perceptions and

ominously around her, but with a touch of the absurd. The

environmental forces.

three registers of the collage — fore, middle and background — don’t quite cohere with accepted standards of depth-of-

The exhibition does include more traditional portraits, the

field and perspective, however they aren’t meant to. The bi-

most striking of which are two vibrant and penetrating works

zarre flattening and lack of painterly depth make Khwaja’s

by Suzanne Schireson and a series of small paintings by Dan

works more visually intense, but they’re also confounding.

Talbot. The exhibition comes full circle as Schireson and Talbot’s works confront the viewer head on with both formal and thematic intensity. Schireson’s two paintings, Blindspot

Ben Watkins: Prime (2009) paint on fiberglass: 67” x 32” (Courtesy of Cade Tompkins Projects)

(2009) and White Coat (2012), portray the artist in the throes of painting, or more aptly, in the throes of pausing to contemplate herself as a subject and maker of her own paintings — a delicate and revealing moment. The two works are vastly different in scale but both are rendered in hyper-real detail with a thick, visibly fragmented painterly touch — like a photograph going in and out of focus. Schireson’s works, though, have multiple focal points, which move the eye around the composition with a balanced rhythm. What stands out most, at least across both canvases, is the almost maniacal, and surprisingly vulnerable, penetrating look in her eyes, which inspires a shared moment of communication between the viewer and Schireson’s depiction of herself.

Two of Dan Talbot’s paintings in the exhibition, Say it with Flowers! (2004) and Exploring Fall River (chicks dig it) (2008), are close-up views of the artist’s face. Again, this artist has paid particular attention to the eyes. However, the gaze Talbot constructs in these two works is looser and less gripping than Schireson’s, yet it is equally successful in conveying an internal psychological state. Talbot is concerned with confronting the audience on a more personal and less restrained level, one that could repulse if taken in too quickly or without consideration of both the context of this exhibition and the series of small canvases these works are a part of.

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self-branding and marketing in an age of image and information proliferation Each work in the exhibition does, in its own way, revolve around the portrait — internal vs. external, perceived vs. experienced and constructed vs. deconstructed — as a rich and complex artistic trope. Like many engaging exhibitions, it is not the framing, but the artwork that opens pathways in the minds of viewers to engage with ideas and to critically evaluate the world outside of the white cube. Selfies & Friends: Contemporary Portraiture is no exception; however, the thin logic given for bringing these works together, antagonizing or providing relief from the culture of the self-constructed digital image proliferated through social media, falls apart because the culture of the “selfie” is far more complex than the exhibition’s definition of it allows. In turn, like many cultural memes do, the “selfie” subsumes the logic behind this exhibition and makes it just another contributing factor to the continued proliferation of the self-constructed digital image. While perhaps not particularly critical of its subject, or self, the exhibition doesn’t particularly aim to be such.

With a beautifully laid out installation in a decidedly well-composed gallery space, Selfies & Friends: Contemporary Portraiture achieved a critically important end, one that

Dan Talbot: Say it with Flowers! (2004) oil on fabric, 24” x 18” (Courtesy of Cade Tompkins Projects)

is often overlooked — an omission that can be very discouraging. The gallery put the artwork and artists first, something that can be a huge challenge for a group exhibition with eight artists in a two-room gallery.

Selfies & Friends: Contemporary Portraiture was on view at Cade Tompkins Projects (www.cadetompkins.com) from February 14 - March 29, 2014.

A. Will Brown is the curatorial assistant of contemporary art at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, RI. He is a curator, writer, and a regular contributor to Daily Serving and Art Practical, and has also written for San Francisco Arts Quarterly, California College of the Arts’ Glance Magazine, and Alternative Apparel.

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CA DE TOM PK I NS PROJ EC TS PRESENTS

DEAN SNYDER April 26 - June 20, 2014

MiddleWay 2014, flo-jet cut stainless steel, 93 x 59 inches

Cade Tompkins Projects • 198 Hope Street • Providence, Rhode Island 02906 (Entrance on Fones Alley between Angell and Waterman)

Weekdays Open by Appointment • Saturdays 10 am to 6 pm Telephone 401 751 4888 • Email: cadetompkins@mac.com www.cadetompkins.com

CARLOS JIMÉNEZ CAHUA: NEOPLASMs & PLEONASMS at SAMSØN BY PAM LAI

Something is up at Samsøn Projects. You won’t see it every month, but the recurrence of minimal, spatial, and materially cloying sculpture at the gallery has come to feel like a manifesto of 3-D values. Sculpture at Samsøn is rarely the twisty baubles of public art, but nor is it a series of vanity installations or tabletop objects.

Carlos Jiménez Cahua’s winter show at Samsøn continues the gallery’s interest in sculpture that plays with the usual nature of materials and their relationship to a space, but it leaves out the social commentary of many comparable shows.

The core of the idea goes something like this: the thing isn’t really the thing. It’s an old idea, but not necessarily a bad one. A slew of Surrealists, color theorists, and Modernists of all stripes (think Josef Albers, pun intended) have made their viewer question the nature of what they’re looking at, and indeed all forms of tromp l’oeil result from this kind of thinking.

We tend to like this game. Our pleasure in being playfully tricked is the basis for haunted houses everywhere, and it’s the motivation for painting a Tuscan landscape between the columns of a pizza parlor. ‘Fine art’ painters tend to look down on tromp l’oeil, whether pizza parlor or Charles Wilson Peale, but somehow tricking the eye has become standard in contemporary sculpture and installation art. Many of our most established sculptors, like Jessica Stockholder and Judy Pfaff, have made careers out of finding clever ways to brake planes, trick senses, and re-appropriate materials, and Carlos Jiménez Cahua is working in a similar direction, but more simply.

Antoniadis and Stone addressed related themes in their 2011 show at Samsøn, and it’s hard not to see a lineage. Their Brutalist tromp l’oeil sculptures loomed over the viewer as a false menace, reminding us of how much the field of architecture has gone astray. Cahua’s pieces have similar visual qualities but without the threat, and are instead a series of minimalist material games. Cahua’s bucket of water isn’t really water, but it has a printed image of water floating on top. A can of spray paint lurks near a corner,

Carlos Jiménez Cahua: Untitled #104 (2013) inkjet printer, steamer, water, timer and electricity, dimensions variable (Courtesy of Samsøn Projects)

Carlos Jiménez Cahua: Untitled #89.1 – 89.35 (M[A] VDTTH...) (2013) inkjet monoprints, 11” x 8.5” (Courtesy of Samsøn Projects)

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Carlos Jiménez Cahua: Untitled #103 (2013) window screens, 62” x 32” x 2.5” (Courtesy of Samsøn Projects)

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itself covered with the pigment it contains. Cahua has painted a

Elsewhere nihilism reigns. Cahua hands us a world that’s flipped

square of the gallery wall in the tone of the floor and vice versa,

and reversed, but no purpose is given for the reversal. The work is

saying explicitly that his show is a reversed world where the nature

clever, visually astute, and probably very good – but although its

of everything is unexpected.

cold technological nihilism feels appropriate and contemporary, it leaves me a just a little bit sad.

But that’s where the content mostly stops. A ladder against a mirror gives a strong echo of Antoniadis and Stone’s reversed stair-

Neoplasms and Pleonasms by Carlos Jiménez Cahua was on view

case in 2011, but Cahua’s show has few of Antoniadis and Stone’s

at Samsøn Projects from January 3 - February 28, 2014.

political allusions. Carlos Jiménez Cahua references the changing nature of technology, with a stretched photograph of a face, some disintegrating images on white printer paper, and a projected curs-

Pam Lai is a freelance writer living in Boston and Ceredigion, Wales.

er moving on the wall, but any judgments on this change are left to us. An exception comes with the show’s strongest piece, built from a carpet steamer placed vertically against a wall to humidify a photographic desert. The photo’s buckling under the steam has both tactile and narrative qualities, reminding us of the western drought that coincided with this show.

Carlos Jiménez Cahua: Untitled #78 (2013) container, water and laserjet print, dimensions variable (Courtesy of Samsøn Projects)

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AS220 GALLERIES

LISA MALONEY | DAMAGED DARKNESS | AS220 Main Gallery 115 Empire St. June 7-28th, 2014 opening reception Saturday June 7th, 4-7 p.m.

QUINTIN RIVERA-TORO | MANDA PODERE | AS220 Project Space 93 Mathewson St. June 7-28th, 2014 opening reception Saturday June 7th, 4-7 p.m. www.as220.org | neal@as220.org | 401.831.9327x114

JOSEPHINE HALVORSON: FACINGS at SIKKEMA JENKINS & CO. BY CLARITY HAYNES

Josephine Halvorson grew up in Brewster, Massachusetts. She is

their simple physicality.

the daughter of a sheet-metal worker mother and a blacksmith father — a biographical detail which shines light on her chosen

The mostly small paintings are surrounded by ample wall space

subject matter: quotidian, utilitarian industrial objects that often

in the large, open gallery, and resemble plain, weathered jewels.

possess a kind of New England austerity.

The often-flat subjects — steel panels, clapboards, wooden doors

— engage with the ancient concept of a painting as a window into I’ve been trying to put a finger on what it is exactly I find so thrill-

something; but as John Yau has pointed out, in Halvorson’s work

ing about Halvorson’s work. It has something to do with the way

they are mostly views denied into something. We see, instead, the

her subjects translate spatially within the format of a painting. The

surface — a more recent, 20th century metaphor — the painting as

painting is a thing, and the subject is a thing; the scale seems to match. The edges of the painting and the edges of the subject are often nearly the same. There is something radical in this insistent, almost sculptural equivalence, or as Tom McGrath describes it in his excellent catalogue essay for Halvorson’s current show, the “compression of image and surface.”

object, refusing the illusion of deep space.

64 is a fantastic small painting of a wood panel, with the 6 and 4 spread lushly in glowing orange paint on its surface. The Heat series depicts the grate of a small industrial fireplace. In Heat, 2 the enclosure holds burning red embers. In Heat, 3 the coals seem

Facings is Josephine Halvorson’s third solo exhibition at New York’s Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Having long admired her work in reproductions, I had an idea of what to expect. But I felt a palpable sense of delight when confronted for the first time with her paintings in

to have burnt themselves out. A row of rusty (painted) nails dot the tops of the paintings (also the tops of the subjects.) There are several larger works in the show, such as the life-sized Woodshed (Door). Foundation is a long, seven-panel painting of a series of

“I guess I do think of painting as a frame, as a surface, a record. I guess I am American.” — Josephine Halvorson with Phong Bui, The Brooklyn Rail, November 2, 2011

Josephine Halvorson: Heat 2 (2014) oil on linen, 16” x 19” - detail (Courtesy of the Artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.)

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Josephine Halvorson: Woodshed Vine (2013) oil on linen, 36” x 28” - detail (Courtesy of the Artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.)

concrete slabs, pockmarked and weathered.

outdoor environments. She often travels and searches extensively to find what she wants to paint. Once she has chosen her subject,

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What almost all of Halvorson’s subjects have in common is that

she sets up her easel and works without pre-planning. She stands

their surfaces serve as direct, playful metaphors for the act of

quite close to the scene she is observing, focusing for many hours

painting. There is something unabashedly sensual and fun about

at a stretch, and rarely spends more than a day on a painting. If she

these paintings; it is clear that the artist delighted in making them.

feels the day’s composition doesn’t work, rather than revisiting the

It’s almost as if she chose her subjects because they already were

same painting, she tries again with a new canvas. Sometimes she

paintings, their surfaces marked with inevitability. An animated,

paints the same subject many times before coming up with what

painterly surface is almost always visible, whether in the form of

she considers to be a successful piece. The artist’s alla prima, or

wood grain, painted letters or numbers, cracked paint, oxidation,

wet-on-wet, approach to painting is central to her work. She has

scratches, scars, years of exposure to sun and rain… the surface is

said that to return to a painting — to add another layer — would

the surface of the painting which is about painting.

feel like a concealment, a deception.

It is important to know that Halvorson’s creations are the result

What is singular about Halvorson’s art, I believe, is that these

of intense, intimate encounters with the landscape. She is a plein

strange objects she creates are both paintings and not paintings.

air painter, and her paintings are portraits of found objects in their

One feels as if her images are not so much described as, some-

how, directly transcribed. It is useful to contextualize her work in relation to that of artists working in other media, for example, Rachel Whiteread, who creates sculptures of objects by casting their negative spaces in plaster. The object itself, pressing against the drying plaster, creates the form that becomes the work; in Halvorson’s case, something just as direct, just as felt, has happened in the communion of found object to painted object. Halvorson is deeply invested in the objects she paints, and is interested in their function and history. Her process — in that it is about time, listening to the object in the landscape, and learning its history through her materials — also suggests a connection to an artist like Nancy Holt, whose outdoor sculptures explore the profound relationship between human beings and the earth.

Halvorson has said that she doesn’t think of herself as a painter; she describes her paintings as by-products of her time spent with her subjects in their environment. But isn’t this what the best painting is? The record of an authentic experience, a struggle, a love? Halvorson’s work possesses an uncanny tension between facture and story: they are old, weathered things painted with a kind of sparkling economy. In this way, although the work often seems to be about an industrial past, it is anything but nostalgic.

The work feels very fresh, and about the now.

When viewed from about ten feet away, Woodshed (Vine) appears

Josephine Halvorson: 64 (2013) oil on linen, 17” x 12” (Courtesy of the Artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.)

to be a tightly rendered, meticulous trompe l’oeil replica of its subject -- a rectangle of wood, perhaps a space where a window once was, painted in cracked, aged white paint. A single dark twig grows up from the bottom of the frame. Stepping closer to the work, one can see how openly painted it is, with confident, straightforward brushwork. The cracks in the white paint on the subject are laid on concisely, one by one, with a simple, almost calligraphic mark.

As relatively quickly as the paintings might have been construct-

world. Using the senses is not anti-intellectual.” That is probably true of all good painting. But this artist conjures paintings and subjects with especially visceral materiality — objects whose surfaces reveal their history as clearly as living skin.

Facing by Josephone Halvorson was on view at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (www.sikkemajenkinsco.com) from January 23 - March 1, 2014.

ed, however — the lucid, fluent approach calls to mind artists like Alex Katz, Lois Dodd, and Robert Bordo -- the overall effect is that of a profound slow reveal. There is a resonant, haunting depth to Halvorson’s work that transforms banal objects into miraculous scenes of mysterious significance.

As I walked from painting to painting, I realized that what makes

Clarity Haynes is an artist, writer and educator who has taught and lectured at numerous institutions, including the New York Academy of Art, Brooklyn College, CUNY, Rutgers University, and Adelphi University. Haynes lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, and is a member of the tART collective.

Halvorson’s work feel so psychological, even emotional, is its somatic quality. The body — with its awkwardness, vulnerability, idiosyncrasies — its failures and its beauty — is undeniably present in the paintings, despite its literal absence. Halvorson has said of her process: “It’s really just your body and your relationship to the

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Ted Gahl: Münter (After P.D.) (2013) acrylic and graphite on canvas, artist frame, 72” x 60” (Courtesy of DODGEgallery)

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TED GAHL: SUNDAY (Like the brightest light in a theatre shining on an empty stage) AT DODGEGALLERY BY NATE RISTEEN If we can agree that painting isn’t dead — and hopefully we can — then we can ask what painting has been up to. Is Paul McCarthy painting when he splatters blood-like fluids on Santa Claus? Is Davina Semo painting when she spray paints steel chains? Is something a painting when you can hang it in a living room, and a sculpture or installation when you can’t?

Many of us will just roll our eyes at this conversation and move on. But the existence of these questions implies a threat to formalist painters everywhere, because if nearly anything can be painting then why worry about tone and color? Why should anyone care about formalism when there’s such a broad range of acceptable forms? Ted Gahl’s recent exhibition at DODGEgallery shows that these formal concerns are still worth caring about, and he exposes the process and struggle of painting, humbly and disarmingly, with an awareness of how being a painter has changed.

This changed nature of painting, however, is only apparent when compared to painting’s

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Gahl’s canvases alone reveal an awareness of almost everything painting can be, from house painting and childish line drawings to tonal landscapes and art historical baggage, by using any technique he deems appropriate. history. Gahl is no outsider artist, and he acknowledges his art his-

painter can take this all in, mix it up, and give it back to us.

torical lineage with a series of allusions. Many of his passages are built with the thin lines and delicate touches of Kandinsky or Klee,

Sundays (Like the Brightest Light in the Theatre Shining on an Empty

which Gahl often pairs with the airy, tonal distance of Ferdinand

Stage) by Ted Gahl was on view at DODGEgallery from January 11 -

Hodler or Caspar David Friedrich. Ab-Ex brushwork is also prom-

February 23, 2014.

inent, but none of these techniques come to dominate an entire painting. Ted Gahl leaves us with the message that painting can’t be defined by a single method, even for a single piece.

Nate Risteen is an artist, writer and teacher at The University of New Hampshire and The New Hampshire Institute of Art. Before his role

But Gahl’s point of view is clearest when he takes us through the

as Managing Editor of COLLECT, Risteen was the primary writer for

looking glass. He shows his audience what painting means from

BostonArtReview, a blog about art in greater Boston.

the creator’s perspective, reversing canvases to expose the staples and frayed edges that actually hold an artwork together. He suspends cheap brushes behind a wooden grate, thereby demonstrating what materials are forbidden in a real painter’s studio.

Gahl even references the most basic confusion about what painting is by using text that asks, “need your house painted?”

A frame of Home Depot paint stirrers implicitly restates this question, and although the stirrers are clever and fun, they aren’t really necessary. Gahl’s canvases alone reveal an awareness of almost everything painting can be, from house painting and childish line drawings to tonal landscapes and art historical baggage, by using any technique he deems appropriate. This plurality feels somehow fitting when nearly everything is acceptable as painting, and when cultural change happens at a seemingly immeasurable pace.

Ted Gahl’s work at DODGEgallery demonstrates how a painter’s

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Ted Gahl: Blinky/Walking Away (2013) acrylic, wood, colored pencil, 2 x 4 and staples on primed and unprimed canvas, artist frame, 86.25” x 30.75” x 1.5” (Courtesy of DODGEgallery)

“Blank Canvas with Red Fence”, 36x36”, acrylic on canvas, 2014.

Barbara Moody: Escape June 4 - 29, 2014 Opening reception: Friday, June 6th, 5-8 p.m.

Kingston Gallery

450 Harrison Avenue #43

Boston, MA 02118

617.423.4113

www.kingstongallery.com

“Metanoia: Practices of Exhaustion” panel at Volta NY (L to R): Holly Bynoe, Ian Deleón, Joiri Minaya, John Cox, Blake Daniels, Olivia McGilchrist, Jayson Keeling

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Diatraea saccharalis at VOLTA NY BY IAN DELEÓN

During Armory Week 2014, ARC Magazine presented “Metanoia: Practices of Exhaustion” at VOLTA NY, a discussion centered around Caribbean and diasporan-­based artists whose practices intersect various disciplines including New Media, Performance Art and Social Engagement. The informal conversation was lead by ARC Magazine Co-­founder and Editor-­in-­Chief Holly Bynoe (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) and Junior Editor and Writer Blake Daniels (USA) and featured artists: Olivia McGilchrist (Jamaica); John Cox (The Bahamas); Ian Deleón (Cuba/Brazil/USA); Jayson Keeling (Jamaica/USA); and Joiri Minaya (Dominican Republic/USA).

This is Ian Deleón.

The opening question for the panel framed the evening as an examination of the exhausted body of the ‘Other’ (black, brown, creole, and the many multiples within): How were we, as artists comingfrom the Caribbean/its diaspora, “reconsidering stories…and create[ing] anachronisms that provide moments for rupture… and fluidity”?

39

Later, I would be asked specifically to discuss the performative use

Themes from the previous day’s panel transform from a discur-

of my body as a decolonized space and site of historical trauma,

sive model into a one-night exhibition at Grace Exhibition Space

creating inseparable linkages between my work as an artist, activ-

in Brooklyn, co-­curated by Holly Bynoe and Yasmine Espert with

ist, and educator.

production assistance from Laura Blüer.

Throughout the panel, I created a narrative concerning these three

In direct conversation with my earlier comments on metaphorical

key aspects of my life, grounding my social practice in a decidedly

burrowing, diasporic amnesia, exhaustive labor, privileged bodies,

archaeological vocabulary. I spoke about popular culture as a kind

and colonial symbols, I crafted a simple score for a durational per-

of rich, though carefully raked topsoil, one which I regularly ap-

formance, which would end up taking my body further than ever

proach using various critical lenses and revisionary tools in order

before as a public site for reconsidering physical and psychological

to excavate, to rupture, that heavily tempered surface layer.

traumas of the colonized Caribbean.

Such media fossils as one disturbs during this process of careful ex-

Anabel Vázquez assisted me in the prosthetic application of a pine-

amination are difficult to separate from the sediment of historical

apple directly onto my bare back — a gaping tropical wound, a bit-

bias, gaps, and inaccuracies to which they have inevitably adhered.

tersweet burden slowly but methodically settling amidst the spinal landscape. I chose the pine fruit for its symbolic role as an indica-

Thus, like a paleontologist, I become responsible for the most ap-

tor of great wealth and political means during the height of its co-

propriate assemblage, or reconstruction of said fossils — reactivat-

lonial migration from the Caribbean to Europe in the 17th and 18th

ing what Shalini Puri calls “Volcanic Memory”, hoping that it will

centuries; also, because of the pineapple’s current development

begin to reverse the process of diasporic amnesia that seems to

into an exploitative monoculture by Western produce corporations

plague Caribbean communities living in the “West” for more than a

operating (colonizing) in Central America. I chose to embed the

season.

fruit to my body as a reference to a particularly painful scene from Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”.

40

“al arrullo de la palma pienso en tí” The action of the performance consisted of my extra-­species

my beliefs in the power of a body becoming a temporary site of

embodiment of a sugarcane borer moth, a tiny insect capable of

historical trauma and residual pain as an educational tool for the

wreaking havoc on a crop of sugarcane. Upon the discovery of this

critical rupturing of lingering colonial narratives in the seedbed of

creature’s existence, I immediately recognized some significant,

popular culture.

symbolic, revolutionary potential in the destructive natures of its boring actions.

Recalling the cane fields of the Caribbean as crucial space for vi-

Ian Deleón is a radical, light-skinned Latin from conservative parent-

olent democratization during slave uprisings, I set about felling a

age whose performance work is often characterized by a duality and

total of six unshaven sugarcanes, fastened steadily to the floor of

tension which reflects the ambiguous identity of a second genera-

the performance space, using only my mouth as the instrument of

tion Caribbean in the diaspora, as well as the pseudo-sovereignty

their undercutting.

experienced by several ‘post-colonial’ territories such as Puerto Rico and its status as a ‘Free Associated State’.

Well over an hour in length, leaving behind clearings of blood, saliva, and splintered cane, the performance proved to be one of the most powerfully intense experiences I have endured, both in my public and private life. The mouth sores that would develop and last for the next week, the expressions of solidarity, respect and the reawakening of “eruptive, involuntary memories” cemented Ian Deleón: Performance at Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, NY (Photo: Justen Blaize)

“Thus, like a paleontologist, I become responsible for the most appropriate assemblage, or reconstruction of said fossils — reactivating what Shalini Puri calls “Volcanic Memory”, hoping that it will begin to reverse the process of diasporic amnesia that seems to plague Caribbean communities living in the “West” for more than a season.”

Ian Deleón: Performance at Grace Exhibition Space, Brooklyn, NY (Photo: Justen Blaize)

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THE MANUSCRITOS SERIES “The Manuscritos series includes Cuadro Escrito a piece of writing a conceptual operation that describes the painting Ferrari would make “if I knew how to paint”. This is not, however a cold list of portrait, landscape or still life subjects to be described with the materials of painting (“marten hairs on the tip of a flexible stick of ash drenched and submerged in crimson oil”); it is instead a motley gathering featuring birds…”

— Andrea Giunta, “León Ferrari: A Language Rhapsody”, in Luis Pérez-Oramas, León Ferrari and Mira Schendel: Tangled Alphabets (NY and São Paulo: The Museum of Modern Art and Cosac Naify, 2009), p. 51

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LEóN FERRARI: CUADRO ESCRITO

by Carrie Cooperider Once jutting forth with proud angular insistence, the letterforms in

What Ferrari would make, if words were less treacherous and

the Manuscritos have been eroded, sanded into scattered parti-

pictures less deceitful, are colorful nests of entwined letterstrokes

cles that blow in sussurating clouds across the desert floor. In that

where inscriptions could safely roost. If we were ever to meet, León

series of doublecrosses with which history likes to mark its events

Ferrari and I, – in a footnote, say, or at the end of an epilogue – he

in time and space, the exiled letters betray each other. Their sad

might ask me if I knew into which sacred grove the nests could

display of exclusive self-interest includes several members of the

be securely placed. And if we had come to a time when all sacred

alphabet – A springs to mind, or, shockingly, S – of whom one had

groves had been obliterated, I would try to remember how to

thought better.

paint one into vivid existence. At least, this is what I tell myself when, in dreams, fat correspondences drop ripely at my feet, their

Look: you can see them crowding together, jockeying for position

messages pleading for divination.

as they vie for a place of prominence in Cuadro Escrito; there is P’s elbow jabbing into O’s soft pillow of surprised dismay, and there,

Our meeting is not, however, likely to happen.

F’s arms reach to menace Y’s slender twigged throat – and above that, M’s double plough shoves W dangerously close to the rim of

If one were to draw a line in the sand, and on one side make a cold

the page’s white cliff.

list of things likely to happen, and on the other, an equally frigid list of unlikely things, one side would stutter quickly into silence

Despite everything, the letters somehow manage to arrange them-

while the other would loudly riff on “what ifs” with baroque logor-

selves into the portrait of a piece of writing. But their posturing is

rheic flourishes.

merely a conceptual operation, an idea whose time may be just beginning, or is already lost.

Let me ask you: do you think it is better to allow a portrait, landscape, or still life to dictate history than to give words permission

Breaking away from the picture, a flock of words that describes

to engrave the boundaries of our understanding? These, and oth-

the rise and fall of a hundred notions shimmers above a sentence’s

er subjects worthy of discourse, are questions that I realize may

long horizon before settling in uneasy syllables among the dusky

be more usefully answered through gesticulated than articulated

branches of its letters.

thought. Whether our experience is to be described with phrases that coil themselves into paragraphs upon a page or with paint-

The painting, watching, waits for light.

strokes that float images onto the surface of a canvas is a matter

45

for fruitful debate.

But, listen – let’s not lose our way in a melancholy thicket of words, some motley gathering of marks sequestered within the walled

Perhaps the materials of painting, with their gorgeous color

garden of a page. Any decent picture or poem, while proudly fea-

and sticky allure, are more suited to seduction than the drab, dry

turing its author’s best intentions, must also include a legible ex-

artifacts left behind in the wake of a pencil or pen. Nonetheless,

panse of emptiness.

Ferrari understands that penstrokes, as fine as marten hairs, may assemble themselves into either word or image. Expression may

Then, stepping onto that blank shore, the mark we latecomers

be on the tip of one’s tongue or the tip of one’s fingers, or both. It

leave will be like the inscription of birds engraved between two

may even be conveyed through the agency of a flexible stick, like

tides.

a conductor’s baton ushering an orchestra through the corridors of a score. Entering music’s more spacious rooms of meaning, we

A previous version of this article originally appeared in Marginalia’s

find sadness, but also release, in the confirmation that we are only

Ekphrasis issue in 2010.

made of ash.

Drenched and submerged in the depth of origins, we surface

Carrie Cooperider is a writer and artist living on a remote island off

thirsty for air, and our breath crackles for a moment with incen-

the mainland of New York City. She is old enough to know better.

diary heat. We may, in our interval between water and fire, anoint the pages of our lives with crimson oil whose stained presence then attempts to retell the past and augur the future. However, the story thus created can never speak a whole truth; it is instead a phantom record of mixed desire and delusion.

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50

ART FAIRS: A NECESSARY EVIL ?

THE GALLERIST BY VANPHOUTHON SOUVANNASANE

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People can be so “cautiously pessimistic” when they are asked

er Program at Miami Beach. We were elated beyond words, but at

to define ‘success’, especially artists. What is it? A sold out solo

the same time, “cautiously optimistic” about how our presence at

show? Museum acquisition? Review in ArtForum? Fame? Riches?

the art fair will benefit our artists and our business. After all, the

For some emerging galleries, the only way to reach the coveted

costs associated with participating in the fair almost exceed our

collectors, curators and critics who make any of this possible is

yearly lease for the gallery!

to introduce their artists at international art fairs – a costly value proposition with a multitude of risks and rewards.

Through creative accounting (and the generous support of friends and family), we made it to our first international art fair at SCOPE

“Take your artists to Miami,” suggested a top collector who’s been

Miami Beach 2013 in December. We spent countless hours prepar-

acquiring contemporary art since the ‘50s when he “discovered” us

ing in advance for the show, carefully curating work from our top

during our first summer in Providence. “Serious collectors don’t go

artists and evolving iterations of our booth design for a six-month

to gallery shows anymore,” he stressed. “Most do the bulk of their

period in advance. As the week progressed under the hot tent, we

collecting at the art malls.”

met collectors, curators and critics from all over the world and exceeded expectations on the sales front. But I knew Miami Beach

Duly noted. Running a commercial art gallery in an economic

was just the beginning of this new business venture since repeti-

downturn means evolving the business to match the financial cli-

tion is an important part of art fair protocol.

mate. For us, this meant extending the reach of our gallery online on targeted sites like Artsy and exploring the major art fairs and

“Galleries usually have to exhibit at a particular fair at least three

their satellites to identify which one best suits our program – a pro-

years or so in order to get a footing and attract significant numbers

cess that took over a year.

of potential buyers,” says Ilana Vardy, who has directed art fairs for nearly twenty years including Art Chicago, Art Miami, Art DC, and

“Selection committees reject galleries all the time, simply because

Chicago Contemporary and Classic. “Serious collectors appreciate

they don’t have a strong program or record of achievement,” con-

repeat appearances because not only does being there year after

fided an exhibition director at one of the top-tier art fairs. “We ac-

year contribute to building trust, but it also differentiates estab-

tively monitor emerging galleries to see if they are a match with the

lished committed galleries from here today gone tomorrow dab-

audience that attends our fairs.”

blers.” She stressed, “The truth is that many buyers are reluctant to spend big bucks with galleries they don’t know or have never

Generally, emerging galleries should be in business with a brick-

heard of, no matter how scintillating the art, so each successive

and-mortar site for at least three years before most art fairs will

appearance makes the probability of sales that much greater.”

consider offering them space. In exceptional cases, art fairs do invite emerging galleries to join as part of an accelerated program to

Sure, it’s important to sell work at art fairs, but that’s not the only

introduce them to the global market. Luckily, this is exactly what

reason to fork over thousands of dollars to showcase work outside

happened to Yellow Peril when SCOPE invited us to join the Breed-

your gallery walls. Opportunities may lurk in other booths too, es-

SCOPE’S BREEDER PROGRAM Recognizing the powerful voice of the curator, SCOPE’s Breeder galleries are selected by a rotating panel of independent curators for each edition of the fair. SCOPE’s Breeder Program has served as a remarkable opportunity for unprecedented exposure launching and catapulting careers of gallery directors and their spaces such as Peres Projects, John Connelly Presents, Galeria Enrique Guerrero, Daniel Reich Gallery, Bischoff/ Weiss, INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, SEVENTEEN, ROKEBY, Taxter Spengemann, Magical Artroom and Spinello Projects, among others.

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Presented by Yellow Peril Gallery at Cutlog NY: Jessica Deane Rosner, The Ulysses Glove Project (2012) 310 rubber gloves, ink and wire armature (Courtesy of Cade Tompkins Projects)

pecially if there are galleries in the fair with artists whose work may

opportunity for us to spotlight a single artist and introduce visitors

be appealing to your audience, or vice-versa. For us, the network-

to our booth. It also meant that we could bring artists who create

ing aspects were most invaluable since many of the galleries in our

large-scale sculptures and installations to future art fairs.

neck of the woods are nonprofits with their own set of challenges that don’t necessarily parallel with a commercial gallery like ours.

Bottom line, we ended up making more money during Armory Week than the two-and-a-half years that we’ve been in business.

After participating in SCOPE Miami Beach 2013, we decided to par-

We even sold artwork to collectors who met us in Miami Beach

ticipate in the New York edition during Armory Week since many

a few months before. Our participation in art fairs has definitely

of our collectors and friends are from the Big Apple. We exhibited

raised the gallery’s profile and reach as we had hoped. Our artists

many of the same artists that were in our Miami Beach booth but

have been mentioned in the global press, and we’ve tapped into a

decided to augment the scale by having smaller works from the

network of collectors and curators across the globe. A necessary

same artists after realizing that wall real estate may be an issue

evil? No, just what gallerists need to stay relevant.

with apartment dwellers.

Another thing that we did differently at SCOPE New York was

Yellow Peril Gallery will be participating in Cutlog NY during Frieze

propose installations for Featured Programming. Our successful

Week in May and then SCOPE Basel in Switzerland in June. The

submission was Cardboard Trees by Joan Backes, which features

Gallerist is COLLECT Publisher Vanphouthon Souvannasane. He is

two large scale trees made from cardboard from every continent.

also the Director of Yellow Peril in Providence, RI.

Contributing to the fair beyond the exhibition space was a great

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INTERVIEWS: 5 QUESTIONS, 3 ARTISTS INTERVIEWS BY ROBERT p. STACK

56

COLLECT Editor-in-Chief Robert P. Stack is a very curious person. In the first edition of INTERVIEWS: 5 Questions, 3 Artists, he probes for context behind the artwork of James Montford, Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez, and Bradley Wester. All three have solo exhibitions scheduled in 2014 at Yellow Peril Gallery in Providence, Rhode Island.

James Montford, Black Indians in Space: The Constellation Anabel Vázquez Rodríguez, RETROPICAL Bradley Wester, DISCOurse

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JAMES MONTFORD

What are the cultural/political events that inspire your work?

My creative process and studio practice involves scholarly exploration conducted in tandem with the development of an aesthetic that seeks to convey a social construct which further focuses on creating an art that considers societal “justice”. To me this is the essence of relational aesthetics. I do not see the work as political but rather more closely related to “a conversation” in its broadest and inclusive context. The ongoing work is to research what is “Black Indian” and the work created from the exploration will serve as the basis for a dialogue that is intended to go beyond the work. The work is part of the global dialogue, which seeks to question the cannon by engaging in the deconstruction of perceived cultural constructs examining oppression. What is holocaust?

How long have you been working on this particular series?

For about two years.

Does this new series fit in with your overall body of work?

There is an effective ambiguous nature to the work that aptly lends itself to the focus of the discussion on subjugation while still being interested in resolving formal conceptual issues. I am acutely interested in and fascinated by the issues raised by the work in addressing the false universal societal constructs-racism, community, and environments, their interaction with myth, their persuasiveness focusing on the deconstruction of stereotyped images as they relate to people of color in the global sense and relationships to the Holocaust. I use Holocaust here in the global context. I am a black Indian as well. I am interested in connecting the conceptual/formal concerns of the work with a pan-cultural aesthetic. This exploration should provide the backdrop for the continued development of the work from its formal and conceptual directions while enhancing my interest in cultural history as it pertains to the Pan-African Holocaust. My work then has a multi-layered approach that seeks to encourage a transformative process for the viewer. I hope to continue developing an evolving dialogue with the work that recognizes the realities of global oppression and its implications.

Are there any groups outside of the art scene that you wish to speak to with the themes you are exploring?

I think my objective on some level is to challenge the construct that is the art scene and thereby create an environment that is more culturally inclusive.

Does your own cultural identity influence the art you create?

“With a telescopic view of racism, Montford decontextualizes vernacular stereotypes to create his own ‘cosmos’ or metaphysical world order.

The celestial sphere in Black Indians in Space is guided by the ontology of prejudice, racial objectification and deep-rooted allegories of the Other. ‘Heavenly’ bodies and constellations formed out of collaged derogatory images gravitate within painted, starry night skies. These oppressive archetypes form an expansive microcosm of identity politics, challenging the universe that envelops us all.”

- Christine Licata, Associate Director of Visual Arts, Boston Center for the Arts, MA

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ANABEL VÁZQUEZ RODRÍGUEZ What are the cultural/political events that inspire your work?

As a self-exiled Puerto Rican woman in a constant state of remigration, I take great inspiration from these back and forth journeys; the experience of seeing my homeland through a tiny cabin window, the quotidian idiosyncrasies of island life, and my perpetual state of “Otherness”, no matter what side of the Atlantic I am on. These reflections are grounded in a historical understanding of Puerto Rico as a 500+ year-old colony, one that merely changed hands after the wars of 1898. The occupation lead to movements for the violent overthrow of the colonial U.S. government — revolutionaries like Lolita Lebron, Albizu Campos, and later Los Macheteros, are a testament to the active resistance to colonial rule. These days you can see that same revolutionary spirit in the student and labor movements in PR as well as the popular mobilization against the U.S. occupation of the island of Vieques, off the east coast--their ability to organize, resist, and successfully change the policies of PR through civil disobedience and protest, proving the power of a people united.

How long have you been working on this particular series?

The body of work presented at RETROPICAL is consistent with a particular theme in my work that I have been developing since 2002, that of the Caribbean “Other” living in New England, ever traveling between my two homes and various states of belonging. Over the years I have explored this theme in a wide variety of media including self-portraiture using 4x5 film, hand-drawn maps, video, performances for the camera, and installation. There are a few pieces in the show that I consider to be a part of an ongoing series executed in a particular style, such as my most recent work from the Sombras series, in which I am juxtaposing my body and veiled face with Puerto Rican landscapes betraying traces of the island’s colonial legacy. Another series within the work explores the documentation of all my flights to and from PR for the past decade through photography and video. I see this type of work as ongoing, for as long as I remain in this state of Otherness.

Does this new series fit in with your overall body of work?

The new work created for this show, such as the Sombras series mentioned earlier, is emblematic of my belief in the aphorism that the personal is political. Thus, these new pieces, with their autobiographical/historical focus, have a clear relationship with other themes found throughout my body of work, such as my work exploring the matriarchal images of worship. Also, a body of work called Portraits/Retratos where I photograph friends in a recreated turn of the century studio setting — perhaps the most isolated of my projects, but even so, it has that personal element because of the inclusion of people close to me and the occasional self-portrait.

Are there any groups outside of the art scene that you wish to speak to with the themes you are exploring?

In a universal sense, to those that have migrated and to those interested in that sociopolitical experience. I am also interested, to an extent, in how the work can be a tool for cross-cultural understanding and to encourage my New England audience to take a closer look at the Caribbean and question their own superstitions and assumptions about the region.

Does your own cultural identity influence the art you create?

Referring back to the first question, my work is absolutely concerned with the complexities of Puerto Rican identity, especially the ways in which that identity comes into question both on and off the island, now that I’ve been living away from the Caribbean for over 16 years. However, I do believe that the essence of the work I have been creating since this theme developed in 2002 is in direct response to the fragmented estrangement from my cultural identity. As the work on view reflects, having cut myself off from the day-to-day experience of being a Puerto Rican living on the island, the subsequent holding on to of any palpable connections has become the central focus of my Boston-based practice. As a consequence, I feel that when I do move back to the Caribbean, my work will undoubtedly have to change and reconfigure towards a new Otherness — as I disembark, with my luggage in hand, from a decade+ long voyage of cultural blending and diasporic living.

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BRADLEY WESTER What are the cultural/political events that inspire your work?

The current state of late market capitalism, where systems “too large to fail” are bailed out, creating a climate of risk aversion that gives the prospect of failure a bad name. Failure is one of the most important components of creativity.

The utopian impulse, including my research of early American experiments in utopian communities, and my personal experience with 70’s disco and the gay rights movement. Utopian experiments have historically almost always failed. They are by definition aiming for an ideal, a kind of perfection. We have come to believe this impulse or aspiration to be foolhardy, naïve. But my current body of work hopes to counter that notion. Rather, I see the utopian impulse as art’s natural predilection.

It seems odd to be talking about Failure and Idealization in the same breadth, but it is in the striving for perfection at the risk of failure that we demonstrate our most creative force for change. So long as we live in a world of such dramatic inequity with all corresponding economic, environmental, and social consequences, any construct dissatisfied with the ‘here-and-now’ but which imagines a better ‘not-here-yet’ is hopefulness in its most honorable form.

The original gay-led 70’s disco and club scene unfortunately became synonymous with decadence, sex, drugs, and eventually death. But its original utopic impulse can be seen as an attempt to create an alternative inclusive universe. My newest body of work which I call DISCOurse, conceives the formal properties of the disco ball as a kind of analogue utopic device: the spinning mirror disco ball creates a fractured multiplicity of moving reflections in the round that are then scattered onto limitless chance surfaces — dizzying, exotic, ‘queer’ mirror, a pixelated globe. It reflects what it sees behind, in front, up, down, all around, even what we can’t see, breaking that into fragments with borders that are re-contoured by the surface-shape it’s reflected upon. Here, even a straight reflection is made queer — different from a flat ‘straight’ mirror, which merely records the surface of things, as we know them, and where queerness can hide.

It is in this fragmentation of the global mirror, the interstices of society, and the spaces in-between, androgynous spaces, where potentiality lies. The site of DISCOurse, like all cross-border economies, is where ideas and materials are hybridized and repurposed, where culture, commerce, and the imagination anticipate a future diverse.

How long have you been working on this particular series?

Almost exactly one year. But my entire adult artist career really.

Does this new series fit in with your overall body of work?

I have used mirror surfaces and mirror structures for some time. Starting with early performances in undergrad school I would divide the stage in half up its center. I would enter the stage from one side and execute certain stylized movements and tasks. When crossing the centerline I would repeat these movements exactly but in reverse, mirrored. In graduate school I became politicized around gender issues. My work became very involved with the political agency of androgyny. With a female collaborator with whom I shared some physical characteristic, we began our performance as each other. I was she and she was me. Over the course of the performance we crossed over to our original gender identities, only after we experienced and emphasized a middle, primal, androgynous place — another mirror-centerline construct.

After those performance years I became primarily a painter. I evolved into an ‘everyday’ artist using paper ephemera and quotidian objects, along with painting. My work eventually took the form of a hybrid-practice or non-medium-specific practice, often employing several mediums at once. This created a kind of hyper-creative space between genres when they came up against one another, not unlike my concern for androgyny in the past or my interest in border economies that was yet to come.

The body of work after this took ten years to complete; three bodies of work created in three disparate but symmetrical cultures entitled,

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Ephemera & Culture: Italy, Turkey, and Japan — a Trilogy. Here again a kind of symmetrical mirror structure, east, west, and the gateway between. Part 1, “Italy,” I began at the American Academy in Rome where I was a Visiting Artist in 2003-4. Part 2 “Japan” is a result of a Fulbright Specialist grant where I spent the summer of 2008 as a Visiting Artist at Kyoto University of Art & Design. The most recent and final part of the trilogy, “Turkey” was the result of my travels to Turkey and Andalusia. When I conceived of the trilogy, just after 9/11, I knew it had to end here.

Istanbul in particular, a Muslim yet secular society, one of the richest ‘border economies’ in history, with its exquisite art and culture, where I could begin to reconcile being an American artist whose country’s values and foreign policy had elicited such extremes of hope and violence in Muslim society.

Are there any groups outside of the art scene that you wish to speak to with the themes you are exploring?

Yes, to students, and in particular students from across disciplines. I’ve come late to teaching on the college level, but see it now as an essential part of my practice. I have also taught high school students. And in point of fact, youth respond very well to my work for its inventiveness, its sense of color and light, its joy and optimism. First and foremost I am a visual artist who works within that language and world. But it is sometimes disappointing that when seen in that context, my work, like the work of other artists, might inhibit rather than encourage discussion. The general public is afraid of getting it wrong, as if there were a wrong. This is a matter of education, I believe. I have an ability, through public speaking on my work, to subdue some of those fears.

Does your own cultural identity influence the art you create?

I am a gay man who came of age in the 1970’s and never felt I belonged. Not until I found the art department in my university, anyway. This sense of exclusion with moral judgment and the threat of violence were essential factors in my disposition toward imagining a better, diverse future.

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APOPHENIA Harvey Goldman at

Dedee Shattuck Gallery May 1 -­‐ June 1 Artist’s Reception May 3, 5 -­‐ 7 pm www.dedeeshattuckgallery.com/apophenia

2014 Summer & Fall Exhibits Synergy: Ocean Stories 6/27/14 - 9/12/14

O p e n i n g re c e p t i o n 6 / 2 7 f ro m 6 - 8 P M A n e x c i t i n g e x h i b i t t h a t e x p l o re s c o l l a b o r a t i o n b e t w e e n a r t i s t s & m a r i n e re s e a rc h s c i e n t i s t s .

B ro u g h t t o y o u i n p a r t n e r s h i p w i t h M a s s a c h u s e t t s I n s t i t u t e o f Te c h n o l o g y & Wo o d s H o l e O c e a n o g r a p h i c I n s t i t u t i o n .

P re m i e re d a t t h e M u s e u m o f S c i e n c e , B o s t o n .

Original concept, curation, and written work created by Dr. Whitney Ber nstein & Lizzie Kripke, Directors of Syner gy and Curators of Ocean Stories.

Collectors lll 9/26/14 - 11/14/14 O p e n i n g re c e p t i o n 9 / 2 6 f ro m 6 - 8 P M F ro m c o n t e m p o r a r y p a i n t i n g s t o e v e r y d a y objects, many fill their lives with collections.

T h i s y e a r ’ s s e r i e s w i l l s h a re t h e p e r s p e c t i v e o f R o b e r t P. S t a c k & Va n p h o u t h o n S o u v a n n a s a n e f ro m Ye l l o w P e r i l G a l l e r y i n P ro v i d e n c e .

As gallery owners and active contributers to the contemporary art scene, Stack & Souvannasane will show an array of s p e c i a l l y c h o s e n a r t w o r k s a q u i re d b y Ye l l o w P e r i l ’ s p r i v a t e c o l l e c t o r s .

The Museum shop & Region’s Gallery offer unique artworks for sale made by local artists.

New Bedford Art Museum/ArtWorks!

6 0 8 P l e a s a n t S t re e t , N e w B e d f o rd , M A 0 2 7 4 0 w w w . n e w b e d f o rd a r t m u s e u m . o r g (508)961-3072

1 2 - 5 P M Tu e s d a y - S u n d a y

These pieces, all part of the collection of Gretchen Keyworth, former director of the Fuller Craft Museum, were part of the new NBAM exhibition, Collectors ll, Translations. (Courtesy of Richard Gormley)

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the art of collecting AT NEW BEDFORD ART MUSEUM by LAUREN SCHARF The recent The Collectors II: Translations exhibit at the New Bedford Art Museum brought together three distinct perspectives on the practice and avocation of collecting art.

According to Lindsay Mis, Exhibitions & Events Coordinator of the New Bedford Art Museum, this is the second installment in a series of exhibitions being developed by the museum, revolving around the common theme of art collections.

Mis hopes for the museum to undertake approximately a dozen collectors’ shows overall. At the end of the series, the goal is to create a culmination of a volume of books/catalogs – one for each exhibit.

The exhibition was curated by artist/curator Seth Rainville and contained objects from the personal collections of artists Gretchen Keyworth and Michelle Samour, in addition to Rainville’s own collection.

The juxtaposition of these three unique viewpoints on art helped create a comprehensive overview of the broad definition of “collecting,” and what this term entails for different individuals.

“It’s interesting how these different roles overlap,” commented Mis. Michelle Samour installed her mixed media Drawn and Mirrored painting series along the walls of the museum’s Heritage Gallery. The forms of these luminous rainbow-toned works explore the interweaving of science, technology, and the visual world.

In her body of work, she makes frequent historical references to the display methods of Victorian parlors, Renaissance wonder cabinets, and encyclopedias of natural specimen collections and illustrations.

Simultaneously, Samour is interested in the ways in which we collect information in the digital age by means of computers, smartphones, and other forms of technology.

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Collectors ll, Translations (Courtesy of Richard Gormley)

“Now we are in the age of people collecting images on Pinterest,

Samour currently resides in Boston, MA and is a faculty member at

or posting images on Facebook or Instagram, so digital images are

the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

now starting to be prominent with how people collect,” explained Mis.

Administrator-turned-artist Gretchen Keyworth amassed an extensive personal craft collection during her tenure as Director of

“Instead of collecting actual objects, it’s just a picture of the ob-

the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. Interacting with distin-

ject,” she continued. “So, collecting is happening every day more

guished artists from all across the world allowed her to build this

than people realize.”

collection.

Inside a glass display case situated along a wall of the gallery,

For the exhibition, selections of these items – including furniture,

Samour showcased an assortment of items that she has acquired

ceramics, pottery, and textiles – were displayed along the walls

throughout the years. The scope of this collection includes every-

and floors of the museum’s Main Gallery.

thing from antique marbles and dice to insects, shells, and books.

Following her retirement from the Fuller, Keyworth was able to re“At the root of my practice is a need to understand and interact

turn to the studio full-time and pursue her interest in the craft of

with the world through the use of structure, the accumulation of

clay. A love for this medium was what initiated her interest in the

visual language within that structure, and the potential for fluctua-

collecting of art many decades ago.

tion and change between the two,” wrote Samour.

While taking a ceramics class at the Worcester Center for Crafts in “My interest in taxonomy is an extension of a desire to create

the 1970s, Keyworth purchased her first clay piece: a covered jar.

meaning, and as Baudrillard suggests, an exertion of power,” she continued.

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“The form was right on and I was in awe of the glaze application,”

Keyworth commented.

“Collecting is important, no matter what it is,” stated Mis. She noted Samour’s shell and insect collections as an example.

“The interesting thing is, [the jar] has always been in my kitchen, but I have never used it,” reflected Keyworth. “It’s not that it’s

“These are probably worth the least, but most likely have the most

precious but, for some reason, I’ve just never decided to use it. I

intrinsic value,” Mis explained.

thought it was more about how it looked, rather than its use.”

“Art is one of those things that isn’t exactly quantifiable – some-

Antithetical to Keyworth’s path, Rainville comes from an art-

times paintings are millions of dollars, and sometimes you can’t

ist-turned-administrator background. He is primarily a potter, hav-

give away a painting,” she concluded.

ing obtained his degree from UMass Dartmouth/CVPA. Later, he completed a residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts

By comparing and contrasting these three distinct collections

in Newcastle, ME. He currently lives in Dartmouth, MA as an artist,

through their juxtaposition in the museum setting, the New Bed-

educator, and curator.

ford Art Museum successfully highlighted the emotional and technical natures of collecting.

Like with Samour and Keyworth, a number of Rainville’s items relate to the sentimental value of personal collections, rather than

The Collectors II: Translations was on view at New Bedford Art Mu-

monetary worth.

seum from August 24 – November 14, 2013. This article originally appeared in The Torch on January 29, 2014.

Two of the foremost pieces in Rainville’s collection – a ceramic teapot by Rod Dugal and a stoneware cup by Bill Farrel – were given to him as gifts.

Lauren Scharf is a staff writer at The Torch, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth’s student newspaper, and president of the Art His-

“I was fortunate enough to have attended UMass Dartmouth with

tory Club.

Rod and was even more fortunate to have traded for this piece after his thesis show,” wrote Rainville.

Collectors ll, Translations (Courtesy of Richard Gormley)

“I received the cup as a gift from Bill during our residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts,” he continued. “The first day of the residency, Bill threw 100 of these cups in under 4 hours. His confident hand and clear passion for the form made my head spin.”

Rainville has built his 2D and 3D media collection over the years from local art shows and events. He collected the majority of those displayed in the exhibition while living in Arizona.

“I have been very fortunate to have many avenues for collecting the art and objects I love,” he wrote.

Throughout the nearly three-month period in which “The Collectors II: Translations” was displayed at the museum, Mis hoped that visitors of the exhibition would come to realize the “art to collecting,” and that building a collection does not necessarily have to be a costly endeavor.

For as little as twenty dollars, Rainville began investing in his earliest pieces of art while he was a college student.

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APRIL 02

ARTICULATED STRUCTURE Paul Myoda, Jacqueline Ott, Jane South until April 27 at Dedee Shattuck Gallery

05

MFA THESIS EXHIBTION 2014 Curated by Judith Tolnick-Champa until May 18 at UMass-Dartmouth

10

WE SEE EACH OTHER ALL THE TIME Dana Moser and Nita Sturiale until April 20 at Boston Cyberarts Gallery

12

ALUMNI EXHIBITIONS (PART 2) Sarah Morris, Rob Reynolds, Taryn Simon until May 25 at David Winton Bell Gallery

26

DEAN SNYDER until June 20 at Cade Tompkins Projects

CALENDAR Providence, Boston, New York City and beyond, as curated by the Editors of COLLECT from submissions by readers Summer Submissions from JULY / AUGUST / SEPTEMBER

JUNE 05 07 07

for editorial consideration: info@collect-magazine.com

17 68

MAY 07

40 YEARS AGO HERA GALLERY WAS BORN Past and Present Artist Members until May 31 at The Hoxie Gallery

15

NONSPACE Curated by Matthew King until June 14 at GRIN

17

UNLIMITED BOUND Pillino Donati until June 13 at Just Art Contemporary

25

A PORTRAIT OF ICE Caleb Cain Marcus until July 18 at National Academy of Sciences VINTAGE VIOLENCE Curated by Monya Rowe and George Rush until July 18 at Monya Rowe Gallery

HE AN until July 19 at Galerie Daniel Templon / Bruxelles

BLACK INDIANS IN SPACE: THE CONSTELLATION James Montford until July 13 at Yellow Peril Gallery LARRY CLARK until August 1 at Luhring Augustine

ART BASEL Basel, Switzerland until June 22

Paul Myoda: Constellation #1 (2013) aluminum, thermoplastic, PLA, reflective mylar, high power LED, motor, microprocessor & circuit, 7” x 14” x 15”

I used to be a Kitchen Cabinet!

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