Plan now for the end of the month!

The Handshake

January 30 – February 20, 2009

Opening: January 30, 6-9PM

The Gallery Group at the Art Institute of Jacksonville is pleased to announce the opening of The Handshake on January 30, 2009 from 6PM-9PM. The Handshake features the works of artists Jason Boyer (Richmond, VA) and Robert Ryan (Asbury Park, NJ). Catalog of exhibition with a limited edition CD will be available at the opening.

The works of Jason Boyer and Robert Ryan display a quest for knowledge through the individual’s relationship with universal symbols. The images describe a struggle between an alienation and a dependency on the universal for transcendence.
Below is an excerpt from the catalog:

“The Handshake exhibit is an introduction, the work of two meeting for the first time. Jason Boyer and Robert Ryan were, until now, strangers. The work on the wall is a visible manifestation of an introduction, an agreement, and perhaps, an obscure association. Boyer and Ryan seem to have an allegiance to the unknown. They belong to the club of visionaries, mystics, shaman, the priestly class. They are the makers of dreams manifest. Boyer and Ryan are both painters, musicians, and tattooers. Both are fascinated by the oppositions of the known versus the unknown, extensions of the individual expressed in both the macro and the micro.”

-Barrett Fiser, instructor, tattooer

The Handshake has been organized by the Gallery Group at the Art Institute of Jacksonville. The Gallery Group is a focus group of 15 graphic design and interactive media students responsible for curating, installing and advertising two exhibitions each the year. Students develop a concept, research artists and curate each exhibition with the intention of further defining the relationship between “fine art” and design.

All The Chandeliers Were Lit

Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake were a bicoastal pair of wunderkinds whose work (collaborative and separate) was tapped first by the powers-that-be in the NYC artworld (they were both featured in the Whitney Biennale--in different years), and next by Hollywood.

However, as a couple they descended into paranoid delusions of persecution which ultimately claimed both of their lives last summer. So why talk about this couple now? Because Vanity Fair just did an in-depth story on Jeremy Blake, which only awakened question of Theresa Duncan in my mind. Probably because death, especially by one's own hand is the ultimate act of deliberation; it is wholly undo-able. Unlike other debacles where one can rise again, and wipe off a scandal-tainted smudge, there is no returning from a bottle of pills or the undertow off of Rockaway Beach.

The above video is from Blake's piece, Winchester 2000 (based on the house built by the heiress to the Winchester fortune, a house she never stopped building out of penance for all the lives Winchester rifles had take--this topic was also of huge interest to Duncan) while if you click on the title link, it will take you to an animated movie (40 mins), The History of Glamour, that Duncan made in 1999.

Though both pieces are video works, they are hugely disparate: Blake's is like a collage come to life that bleeds in and out of conciousness; while, Duncan's piece though visual, relies on a witty and insightful narrative that elegantly skewers fame and the idea of glamour itself...long before the Devil dreamed of wearing Prada.

Both pieces are elegant elegies, even if they were made at the hight of happiness. The pieces are suffused with undertones of sadness and dissonance that in light of their creators' choices seem fitting...if nothing else.

Hold {them} in Your Heart

Generally, I am not given to overt gestures of sentimentality, and even less often to displays of militaristic, nationalistic, pride.

However, on the way home tonight, NPR’s “All Things Considered,” was playing excerpts from the messages of family and friends of fallen soldiers. It crept into my consciousness slowly...and then I suddenly realized that I wasn't listening to the usual programming anymore. So why this broadcast on this day? Because sometime between today and yesterday, the death toll in Iraq (American deaths) rose to 4,000.

4,000 is a vast number of lives, too many to consider as singular individuals, while seeing their memorials and eulogies in print is reductive to the point of redundancy; four or five lines in black and white cannot convey the depth of a life. That’s why NPR’s broadcast of messages was so powerful. The memories shared aren’t being intoned by a professional broadcaster’s carefully neutral voice, instead they are the voices of those left behind, those for whom even speaking a name aloud can provoke a slew of memories. There are hitches and odd pauses as one memory slides into another; and suddenly the war isn’t about propaganda and ideology, it is about the weight of each life.

The memories, though American, serve as a reminder of the costs borne on all sides of our war...a war which Bush still asserts we're winning, "...this is a fight that America can and must win.”

Click on the title for a link to the NPR piece, it's only 3 minutes and 38 seconds long.

*the pictured image is from the project “Eyes Wide Open,” a project of the American Friends Service Committee. Since 1917, the American Friends Service Committee has championed the dignity and worth of every individual, the sanctity of human life and humanity's collective responsibility to promote peace. www.afsc.org.

Odd Birds

One of my earliest memories of David Lauderdale, is of reading an interview where he said that he believed that most of the art being made today was/is a footnote to art history.

I disagreed with him then, and I disagree with him now. I believe that even if every curator, gallery owner and collector is wrong about the art that is considered relevant, the best and most valued will still rise to the top after time.

This evening, as well as last Saturday night, OPAQ Gallery hosted “Two Birds,” a show featuring the installation work of Mark Creegan, and Lauderdale’s paintings/assemblages. I attended the Saturday opening.

Creegan’s works were interesting and charming in a sweet, off-kilter way. His installations included a hairnet and bubble mountain, toothpaste stripes, and sharks’ teeth framed in gold foil.

He said the sharks’ teeth had all been collected by his wife, that when he was at the beach, he could never find any. Anyone who has ever tried to, will acknowledge that collecting sharks’ teeth is a very deliberate act, requiring patience and sharp eyes. And really, there is something of an art to it. The first time I ever found a shark’s tooth, I was ridiculous enough to think that someone had placed it on the sand for me…and my only companion at the beach that day was my dog.

Thus, the teeth, in addition to aesthetic objects, become symbols of monumental patience and deliberateness within a domestic and semi-idle framework (hunting for beach treasures isn’t exactly quantifiable or reliable). The frame, constructed of discarded foil serving dishes, is correspondingly grand and disposable—and like the teeth, the interest value is in the effort of the transformation.

Lauderdale’s works: black, white, red, white, and blue with electric guitars affixed to the surfaces, seemed to be at once macho and sneering. It’s hard to take icons--especially those already assigned a sort of cultural value--and reinvent them in an engaging manner.

When this is accomplished in a hurry, as Lauderdale admitted he’d done, the result has very few subtleties and layers. The works seemed to inhabit a sort of bizarre middle-ground between a snarky commentary on American pop culture and a hero-worship of the electric guitar form. A sort of grand statement reached for, but not quite caught.

Perhaps it is okay to make art with deliberation, patience, and a lower case “a.” Let art history take care of itself.

As a brief aside, Artwalk this time around, yielded a surprising find: Lara Simmons. Her line quality was interesting and sure. However the small collection she was showing lacked coherence. It is also clear that the artist is going through what must be the requisite Egon Schiele phase of her career. Her challenge will be to successfully translate her draftsmanship into larger-scale, or just more cohesive works.