4/4/10: Artist #10: Lynette Mager

I found this artist when researching black face.

Lynette Mager studied Photography and Art Therapy at the University of the Arts Philadelphia where she received her BFA. She lives and works in Philadelphia. "My studies and brief work in art therapy have greatly influenced my attitude towards the work I create. I will embark on a project with a conscious intent, knowing the work will take on a life of its own and the larger meaning of the work will become apparent after completion. Creativity is not a wholly conscious endeavor, art is not a vehicle to aggrandize the artist's personal psychology, but rather the artist is a vehicle to interpret larger cultural, spiritual or philosophical questions."

"Black Face" 2002

"White Goggles"

"Levitation"

"Moon"

"Skull"

She doesn't say much about her work. I agree that a viewer can get what they wish from a piece but... I feel like the work could be racially charged. I wonder if she is aware of what some of it looks like.

Like this one:

3/29/10 Artist #9: Michael G. Magin

 Michael G. Magin is a photographer based in Mannheim, Germany. He shoots virtually everything with a hasselblad. While his work is not hard to find, information about him is. He doesn't even have a biography on his website.

Artist Website
Flickr

This is the first image of his I came across when trying to see how flour has been used in photography. I have already researched Nigel Rolfe so I wanted to branch out:

Flour Power 2008

When researching the artist I found another flour image. He commented that this was a better version. I think the one above leaves more for me to investigate. Looking at his other work I notice a theme.... Nude women. Oh well.

Blood Printed 

This is saying something completely different. I am not quite sure what was intended though. 

Other work I liked aesthetically:

Mirror, Mirror

B

Black Curtain

La Venezian

3/22/10: Author #8: Andrew Jolivétte

I decided to focus on a writer today since I am trying to narrow down and make my work more concise. When I research biracial artists all that comes up is stock imagery of interracial families and attractive light skinned people. Its interesting and a bit irritating. In a way it sort of confirms how I feel. Feeling apart from my general peer group... Feeling other. There are limited resources.

Andrew Jolivétte is an author and lecturer that is an associate professor at San Francisco State University in American Indian Studies. He also teaches Ethnic Studies, Educational Leadership and Race and Resistance Studies. He is the board president for iPride and Speak Out which is part of the Institute for Democratic Education and Culture.

Part of his iPride bio: "Professor Jolivétte is a mixed-race studies specialist with a particular interest in Comparative Race Relations, Creole studies, Black-Indians, and mixed-race health disparities. Andrew is the author of, Cultural Representation in Native America (AltaMira Press, July 2006) which is a part of the Contemporary Native American Communities Series. Dr. Jolivette also recently received an advance book contract for his second book, “Louisiana Creoles: Cultural Recovery and Mixed Race Native American Identity” to be published sometime in 2007. Andrew will begin work on a third book, “Mixed Race Gay Men and HIV: A Community History” in the fall of 2006."

iPride is a really interesting organization. I wish that I knew about things like this. There definitely needs to be more advertising and networking. Their mission is: "We envision a cohesive multiethnic society based on justice, inclusion, and respect for all human diversity. We actively seek to build and foster broad coalitions that will result in an environment that supports the right of every person to be recognized as whole and complete."


He identifies as French Creole, a combination of French, American Indian, African and Spanish. He is committed to working within colored communities.

 

I read a good portion of this book online. I could relate to him immediately and it was an amazing feeling. Chapter One was an introduction titled, "Who is White?". He talked about questioning what white is and who identifies that way. "For people of mixed decent, questions of race and ethnicity are compounded by the question of choice." Choice. You choose how you identify, but you cannot choose where you came from. His book focuses on the experience of the Creole. While I am not Creole, I feel like it gives good dialogue for my work. "Questioning who is white subverts the typical power dynamic in racial classification that usually marks as other those who are not white." Now he is really speaking my language.

Interracial, Intercultural Pride 

3/8/10: Artist #7: Sigalit Landau

 

Sigalit Landau. Barbed Hula (from Cycle Spun, 2007). 

2000. Video (color, sound), 2 min.  

Sigalit Landau: internationally acclaimed Sigalit Landau represented Israel in the 1997 Venice Biennale. She has shown at prestigious international art institutions, including solo exhibitions at MOMA, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Ikon Gallery and group shows at PS1, The Brooklyn Museum, The Pompidou Centre. Work currently on show in elles@pompidou. Sigalit Landau gained acclaim for her provocative video Barbed Hula, 2000, in which the artist hula’ed naked with barbed wire, using her body in a ritualistic manner to explore transformations, history, memory, politics, borders, which will be shown in the Body in Women’s Art Now.

 

Sigalit Landau .|. Barbed Hula + Barbed Salt Lamps .|. 2001-07 from reel aesthete on Vimeo.

3/1/10: Artist #6: Marina Abramović

 

Golden Mask. chromogenic print. 2009.

Role Exchange, 1975 / published 1994
2 black and white photographs with 1 letter press text panel

Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful, 1975
video projection on DVD with sound, 13' 51" loop

Representation
Interview

Marina Abramović was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in the early 1970s. She has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art from and is compared to artists like Bruce Nauman as a generational movement. She uses her body and others as a subject and a medium. Marina likes to explore her physical and mental limits of her body. An interview stated that she had a scar on her chest from a performance where she laid out numerous tools and told viewers to do what they wanted to her. There was a knife and gun among these, the scar was made by a knife. Abramović has presented her work with performances, sound, photography, video, and sculpture in the U.S. and Europe. Her earlier works were only documented with black and white photography but she now uses video to document her work. "She calls the objects, installations and environments that she has created since the mid 80s ‘Transitory Objects’ - works of art to be used, vehicles to communicate the dialogue between the viewer and him or herself" (Frieze Mag).

I only used the one image which presents the strongest moment of the performance itself, and can therefore stand on its own as a photograph… . The audience can, by reading the text description, and by looking at one single photograph, imagine the rest in their minds. -– Marina Abramovic

 

Lips of Thomas, 1973/1994

2/22/10: Artist #5: Gillian Wearing

 I signed on and they would not give me nothing. 1992-93

 I have been certified as mildly insane! 1992-93

Gillian Wearing was born (1963) in Birmingham, UK and currently lives and works in London.

She was first known for her series using signs. Signs that say what you want to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say was done in 1992, where she photographed strangers on the street holding signs that showed what they were thinking about, how they felt or what bothered them. She is interested in "interrupting the logic of photo-documentary and snapshot photography" by attempting to collaborate with public society. She is interested in the connection or boundary between the public and the private. She sees photography as a way to "edit life" and photographs or films people confessing things. Her work as a series was presented at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Pennsylvania and was titled "Mass Observation".

Confess All On Video. Don't Worry You Will Be in Disguise. 

Intrigued? Call Gillian Version II  1994

Wearing posted an ad to Time Out "Confess all on video. Don't worry you will be in disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian." Anonymous people responded to this ad and were able to wear one of Wearing's various masks to shield their identity. Finding actual footage of this is almost impossible. She just exhibited it late 2009 so hopefully it will become available soon.  

I find Wearing's work to be really interesting and it gives me insight to working with the public. It also relates to my idea of walking around with a dry erase board and asking people to answer questions and pose with the answer.

Frieze Article

ICA

2/14/10: Artist #4: Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie, Chicken 1991

I have been intrigued by and have looked endlessly for the image above. I just stumbled upon it today and am very happy. I couldn't think of how to search for it without knowing the artist's name. I have always been so intrigued by this image, it makes me question and wonder about gender and identity. 

Catherine Opie was born in 1961 and is primarily a documentary photographer based here in the US. She mainly focuses on aspects of community, including the LGBT community. Recently she has been photographing high school football players. "She's also interested in how identities are shaped by our surrounding architecture" (Wikipedia).  She currently teaches photo at UCLA. 

She has two huge bodies of work separated into Portraits and Landscapes. They are so different!

The image above, Chicken, is from her series "Being and Having".  All of the images are very intimate and close to the face. Presented in a wooden frame, they all have name plates with their pseudonyms etched in cursive (Chicken, Con, Ingin, Papa Bear..etc). She is making a conversation and challenging the idea of gender identification and questioning how it could be stable or natural. “If I had taken portraits of my friends in the streets or at the clubs where they go-go dance with mustaches and jockstraps on, then [the work] would focus on the notion of peer performance. When you isolate the face and put a nametag on the frame, you emphasize the question of identity" (Opie, Guggenheim). Her goal with the series was  “expanding lesbian identity and showing how lesbian sexuality is heterogeneous and complex”. The women represented didn't necessarily identify as men or anything in particular but challenged how lesbians can be depicted and that outer appearance is an individual choice.

She is represented by Regen Projects and also had a huge show at the Guggenheim Museum, titled "Cathering Opie: American Photographer". The work shown at the Guggenheim overviewed her work as a whole bringing together nearly 200 of the artist's photographs in a major mid-career survey. Her work is very stimulating and eye-catching as well as political.

Pervert Self-Portrait 1994

 

Oliver in a tutu 2004

 

Self portrait/Nursing 2004

Rep: Regen Projects

Guggenheim

02-08-10: Artist #3: Pipilotti Rist

 I'm not the girl who misses much. 1986. Video (color, sound), 7:46 min.

 

Sexy Sad I. 1987. Video (color, sound), 4:36 min

   

You Called me Jacky. 1990. VIdeo (color, sound), 4:06 min. 

   

Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)2008. Multichannel video (color, sound), projector enclosures, circular seating element, carpet.

Pipilotti Rist is so intriguing that I find it hard to stop viewing her images/videos. She is from Switzerland and was originally a musician in a band. She deals with gender, sexuality and the human body. "Her focus is video/audio installations because there is room in them for everything (painting, technology, language, music, movement, lousy, flowing pictures, poetry, commotion, premonition of death, sex and friendliness) - like in a compact handbag." I think that it is important to understand why you are using a certain medium for an art piece. She enjoys installation because it is the highest form of mixed media. Her opinion on art is that: "Arts task is to contribute to evolution, to encourage the mind, to guarantee a detached view of social changes, to conjure up positive energies, to create sensuousness, to reconcile reason and instinct, to research possibilities and to destroy clichés and prejudices." Her work is so inspirational. I love what she does with the presentation. 

Artist Website
Representation 
MOMA

 

02-01-10: Artist #2: Mark Bradford

The written word can be poured into any vessel. I do it now. It’s poured into video, into a painting, into a public-domain practice. It’s the idea that holds it together for me. - Mark Bradford (Art21)

"Temporary" 2005. Mixed media collage and string. 130 x 196 inches

 

Mark Bradford was born in Los Angeles, Cali. in the 60's where he currently resides and makes work. He collects materials from the street and turns them into wall-sized mixed-media collages. They are meant to respond to public spaces and inter-workings of a city, whether public or underground. The compositions echo crowds of people and how neighborhoods are formed in structure. I enjoyed what he had to say about what is expected of an artist today and how he responds to those expectations. "Fluidity, juxtapositions, cultural borrowing- they’ve all been going on for centuries. The only authenticity there is what I put together."

"Potable Water" 2005. Mixed media collage, 130 x 196 inches

"An artist has a choice to be as political or apolitical as anyone else who’s making choices. So I don’t think an artist is necessarily apolitical if he or she doesn’t make overtly political work." He realizes that as an artist, we are always influenced by what is going on in the world, whether it is intentional or not. He is comfortable with the press and media topics bleeding into his work. I think that his work is very beautiful aesthetically and also can have many meanings to it. The pieces are not limiting.

One thing I didn't realize right away was the size. I copied down the dimensions but seeing a production still really helps one to imagine how massive these works are. Looking at them online you lose the experience of seeing it live. I appreciate the work so much more seeing how big it is and what he puts into it. The artist hand is more apparent.

I was turned onto this artist by Tom. He mentioned something about a performance piece with a skirt and a jersey. This work wasnt apparent right away so I had to go searching for it. It seems to be a piece about stereotypes. He narrates saying that the reason he made this big hoop skirt out of a lakers outfit was to create a "condition".  The skirt literally shows a struggle to get the basketball dribbled and to shoot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM3x0XOll30

Representation
Art21

01-25-10: Artist #1: Mary Coble

 So I was driving home from work and ideas just started popping in my head. I have been wanting to really experience performance in my work. Many people have stated that my work is performative but for the camera. I really want to have genuinely performances, real performances.

I was thinking that I would do a live performance where I would be as nude as I can get (publicly) and have people write on me with marker. I would want them to be as honest and brutal as possible, literally labeling me as they want. A friend suggested looking at Mary Coble and I realized she did something almost identical. It is still something I am interested in though so from here I want to find alternative ways of doing something so similar. Anyway...on to research of Coble.

 Mary Coble

Representation: Conner Contemporary Art

Artist Website: Mary Coble

Mary Coble lives and makes art in the DC area. She received her MFA in Photography at George Washington University.

Performance Documentation from Marker (Madrid, Spain)
2008
As part of: ARCO'08 Performing ARCO

Performance Documentation from Marker (Washington, DC)
2007
As part of: SiteProjects DC

Her informational text, "You are invited to write on the artist's body deragatory words that have been used against you or slurs that you have used or heard used against others." 

Performance Documentation from Marker (Washington, DC)
2007
As part of: SiteProjects DC

I'm very interested in this project and how Coble decided to organize it. Her intent in this particular project and in most of her other work is to put on display discrimination and bigotry that happens subtly everyday. She states, "I want to challenge people to re-evaluate overly simplified and narrow understandings of a much more expansive reality."

"I try to be conscious of the constrictions that we all struggle against. The dichotomies that our society follows, such as feminine/masculine, beautiful/ugly and rich/poor are too narrow and restrict the myriad of experiences that makes up personal expression. I do not accept the roles, boundaries and decisions that our culture and society has strategically planned for all of us without taking into account our individual needs and desires."(from Coble Artist Statement)

Her whole artist statement is like candy to me. I agree with everything she has to say and think that her work is very successful in making a powerful political statement. 

I particularly enjoyed Coble's response to the marker project, "Blood Script".

Untitled 6 (from Blood Script Portfolio)
2008
24X20, Chromira Print
Portfolio Edition: 7

 After compiling a list of over 200 hateful words taken from her marker performances, she took 75 of the most common and had them tattooed on her body without ink. She juxtaposed the ornate lettering with the hatred of the words used. The tattoos drew blood and contact sheets were made immediately with watercolor paper.

Untitled 8 (from Blood Script Portfolio)
2008
24X20, Chromira Print
Portfolio Edition: 7

Dyke (from Blood Script Portfolio)
2008
8X11, 1 of 75 Unique Blood Paintings on Watercolor

11/23-Artist-Nigel Rolfe

"  Nigel Rolfe  Gallery  "Rolfe has been active as a performance artist since the 1970s, more recently moving into photography and video, though nearly always trading in images relating to his performance work, or to specific objects used in his performances. And there are aspects of the performance here that might be termed macho, in an archaic kind of way – the artist's body the site of assault, the impact to create empathy and at the same time estrangement. Something akin, indeed, to a certain mood of human embodiment, something apart from natural history, and yet terribly subject. It is a piece that negates fashion, proving Rolfe to be working a vein that is not yet, despite everything, shot. "
Luke Clancy, Art Review Jeff pointed me in the direction of Nigel Rolfe, a well-known performance artist. The work itself encompasses many types of media, including, sound and audio production, video and photography. He is best known for working live and his pieces live through slowed down videos. "The transformation of the performer from passivity to the point of struggle is a poignant metaphor for human limitations. " I think this is a really interesting quote. Slowing down the action allows for an experience that the human eye isnt capable and heightens the performance. His pieces are really interesting and I appreciate how simplified they are in location and environment.

11/16-Artist-Ana Mendieta

Washington Post Article
Galerie Lelong
Hirshhorn

Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-American who was famous for her performance work exploring gender and cultural identity. She used her own body and the earth to create photographic, sculptural and video work. "The naked female form inserted in nature became a hallmark of her artistic production as she developed her own self-labeled genre of art, “earth-body art,” which can be described as a hybrid of two 1960s movements: earth art and body art" (hirshhorn). Her work is considered strongly feminist and auto-biographical in nature. She is always present in her work whether physically and literally or just but remains she has left behind.

I really enjoyed her use of the silueta. It is a concept that she grasped onto and ran with. Most of the work she is famous for is in this body of work. Her work is also highly experimental. She tried just about every medium she could get her hands on. I like how she blends into nature in some of her images. At times it is hard to tell whether the body is her or a sculptural representation.

I had a hard time researching information on her because she died very young. Her estate exists at Galerie Lelong, although they don't show much of her work. Her technique is very different from any of the work I have done but I really can relate to it. What I take from this...I need to experiment more. Use all types of mediums... How can I be present but not actually be in the image?

Untitled (body on Glass)

Untitled (Silueta Series), 1977
Lifetime color photograph
20 x 13 1/4 inches (50.8 x 33.7 cm)

Untitled (Facial Hair Transplants), 1972 (detail)
Estate print: 1997
Suite of 7 color photographs documenting performance with facial hair
12 3/4 x 19 1/8 inches (32.5 x 48.5 cm)