Hinge Exhibition

Am I am pleased to announce I will be exhibiting work at Hinge gallery’s inaugural opening. The main exhibition will
present the work of Tom Burtonwood and Scott Ashley as well as gallery artist Cole Pierce, Jeffery Forsythe, Ryan
Richey, Rusty Shackleford, and Grant W. Ray.

Hope to see you there.

Hinge Gallery
Grand Opening July 14
6:00 – 9:00

Exhibition Dates: July 14th – September 4, 2011

Hinge Gallery
1955 W. Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60622

hingegallery.com
info@hingegallery.com

SPE

One of the many great things about SPE is meeting people whose work inspires and enlightens.

Lori Hepner

Status Symbols: A Study in Tweets

Kerry Skarbakka

Constructed Visions

Stephen Chalmers

Dump Sites

Melissa Fleming

Catherine Wagner

Trilogy: Reflections on Frankenstein, the Arctic Circle and the History of Science

Adam Magyar

Urban Flow series.

Stephanie Dean

Modern Groceries

Bethany Souza

Sunshine State

Sarah Baranzki

Jennifer Litterer

ACRE Projects: Two-person show by Grant Ray and Becket Flannery

Top: Grant W. Ray "Steuben, Wisconsin: Triangulum Constellation"

Bottom: Becket Flannery "Debbies's Ruler"

ACRE Projects

1913 W 17th St

Chicago, IL

Opening:

Sunday, March 13th · 4:00pm - 8:00pm

Mr. Ray continues his experiment-based practice of documenting photographically the pseudo scientific investigations into unexpected forms of communication from unexpected places. For this latest set of photographs, Mr. Ray returns to the wooded rural areas of North America to get closer to an unblemished natural landscape in humorous exploration to locate marks, traces, or signs that could be construed as natures attempt at communication.

Becket Flannery’s exploration began with Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan; prior even to the text, a frontispiece depicts the new “artificial man” whose body is the people and whose soul is sovereignty. This cryptic image introduces and also summarizes Hobbes’ thought. The frontispiece was not simply a decoration, it was a way of reconciling political thought with the sensible – i.e. the creation of political vision. Lately, the rupture between vision and thought has been too severe to repair so easily. One of the most recent political manifestos is written by a committee that proclaims itself to be invisible; and what use does the image-driven political simulacrum have for text beyond the purely tactical?

Rather than the strict correlation of image and text, the intention of the collages in Frontispiece is different. Rather than focusing on the loaded image-symbols, those privileged nodes of interpretation, they play with the forms that frame and suggest this referentiality. These cues to the civic still linger, as we are constantly asked to engage with our political images, without being troubled with what they might mean. These text-less frontispieces then imply new ideas and social visions; they are images looking for authors."

Nina Beier and Marie Lund

"London-based Danish artist Marie Lund and Berlin-based Nina Beier work individually but have maintained a collaborative practice since 2003. With staged events as well as videos, photographs and sculptures, Beier and Lund tinker with social hierarchies and group dynamics. Together they have created performances, objects, and ethereal interventions, often rooted in the history of materials, context, and social space. Exploring the conditions of conception, perception, and interpretation, Beier and Lund test the boundaries of communication while introducing subtle shifts within institutional and behavioral structures."

Nina Beier Marie Lund

"A sensed perturbation" 2008

Nina Beier Marie Lund

"The Home and the Backdoor"

Remember Then: An Exhibition on the Photography of Memory

I am pleased to announce the inclusion of my photographs in the upcoming exhibition “Remember Then: An Exhibition on the Photography of Memory” being held at Concourse Gallery at Harvard University and co-curated by Regina Mamou and Scott Patrick Wiener.

“Remember Then: An Exhibition on the Photography of Memory is based on a simple premise that photographs are used as tools by our culture to recall the past. The artists in Remember Then set out to interrogate this proposition, and memories are used as source material for recreating images in the present, systematically and through various methodologies. How a viewer understands and receives this new memory is the catalyst for each image.”
(For the full press release please follow the link.)

It is truly an honor to be featured along side such extremely talented artist.
Jesse Avina
Carrick Bell
Wafaa Bilal
Kevin Buzzell
Helen Maurene Cooper
Jill Frank
Eiko Grimberg
Sharon Harper
Julia Hechtman
David Hilliard
Chelsea Knight
John Merrill
Daniel Poller
Arne Reimer
Irina Rozovsky
Michael Ruglio-Misurell
Jayanti Seiler
Kurt von Stetten
Nicole White

Concourse Gallery
CGIS Harvard University
1739 Cambridge Street
Cambridge MA, 02138

Opening: February 3rd 6-9pm

Stan Douglas - Television Spots/Monodramas

A few years back I had the opportunity to see Stan Douglas's Monodramas at the Guggenheim in New York. At the time I was studying photography at the School of Visual Arts, my Junior year, and was working on a photographic project entitled Story Telling. I know, very original and unique right. It was a project in which I was plumbing the possibility for photographs to be structured as ambiguous open ended narratives that would invite viewer interaction/interpretation. Initially what drew my interest to Douglas's Monodramas was biased. I neglected to understand the conceptual complexity of Douglas's work and instead focused on his process of creating ambiguous narratives open for interpretation. How ever Douglas's work is far more complex than creating simple dramas.

Stan Douglas_Monodrama_1991_"Don't Call Me Gary"

Douglas's Television Spots/Monodramas were made at the hight of post modern art practice. The short videos explore the hallmark trope that many artist were plumping in their work, namely the minutiae of everyday life. Douglas particular aesthetic, especially in the Monodramas, reflects the slick advertising technique found in the late 80's early 90's commercials.  Unlike the average television ad the video pieces do not include those devices that anchor something specific and concrete. Namely narrator, text, product placement, narrative. These devices which normally help the viewer interpret the message, what to buy, etc, are absent.  As the viewer of  Television Spots/Monodramas we are set into the middle of an ambiguous setting without the narrative safety of beginning middle or end. We are left to interpret the video for what it is, and subsequently what it is not.

Douglas's process reveals the empty shell of advertising through these absences while critiquing the function/spectacle/promise of advertising. In one of the Monodramas, personally the one I enjoy the most, the viewer is presented with three scenes involving a car. Instead of a car commercial presenting the viewer with the romantic trappings of travel on the open road,  the promise of status and happiness, Douglas's  commercial presents the everyday mundane reality that surrounds the culture of the automobile. Cars break down, cars drive on the highway in daily exercises of commuting, and every grand adventure in a car usually ends in the same non desrcript parking spot.

 

  Stan Douglas - Television Spots/Monodramas

- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

You can view a larger resolution below at Ubuweb's Stan Douglas site.

Stan Douglas Television Spots/Melodramas

latest update

It has been slow going on the blogging front due to teaching two courses this semester. I am always amazed at just how much time teaching and all its prep work takes out of a day. How ever with the end of my courses approaching it has brought a bit more free time to look at other artist and their work.

Currently I am thoroughly enjoying the photographic works of Emma Wieslander. In "Looking at the Sun" I was struck by the simplicity and minimal quality of the work and it conceptual richness. Wieslander's work operates on a metaphysical level inviting contemplation of the act of photographing the sun and the significance of such an act as performance. The artist choice in using text is similar to Taryn Simons photographic project "An American Index of the Hidden and the Familiar". Both have successfully utilized text in a way that compliments, or anchors as Simon states, the content of their photographs away from ambiguity or absurd.