All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ Have you ever visited The Museum of Everyday Life? This unique "cabinet of curiosity" in Vermont, comprising a Philosophy Department, a Performance Department, and Exhibitions and Collections, is dedicated to "a heroic, slow-motion cataloging of life; a detailed theatrical expression of gratitude and love for the miniscule and unglamorous lives of the unfamous."  The museum also sponsors workshops and educational programs that "celebrate mundanity, and the mysterious delight embedded in the banal but beloved objects we touch everyday." You'll want to stop in often.

✦ The first phase of the multi-year project to digitize primary source materials on 20th Century Latino art went live January 17 at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas. Working with its research institute, the International Center for the Arts of the Americas, MFAH if offering 2,500 documents as part of its online art history archive, which eventually will include 10,000 documents, including previously unpublished artists' correspondence as well as newspaper and journal articles. The archive is free to the public and accessible worldwide. A museum news release about the project is here.

Documents of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art (The site is available in English and Spanish.)

✦ Visual Overture has a blog offering how-to tips, listings of current events, and new or emerging technologies in art. In addition, Visual Overture Creative Solutions recently was launched to provide professional services (for example, art critiques) and resources for emerging artists, as well as galleries and other art venues.

✦ Encouragement to put discarded materials to inventive re-use is one of the goals of the Artist-in-Residence program at Recology San Francisco, which I learned of through SFMOMA's excellent Open Space post highlighting the sculptures of interdisciplinary artist Terry Berlier. In addition to being given a stipend and studio space at Recology Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center, resident artists have access to the recycling areas from which to scavenge materials for their art and have opportunities to speak about how they use recycled materials. At the end of their residencies, they contribute work to the facility's sculpture garden and permanent collection. Bay Area artists with residencies this year are Karrie Hovey, Beau Buck, Tamara Albaitis, Amy  Wilson Faville, Michael Damm, Julia Goodman, and Jeffrey Hantman. I encourage your to explore their Websites to see some of their highly creative work.

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Who knew Buffalo, New York, was a hotbed of "radical creativity" in the 1970s?  In "Wish You Were Here: The Buffalo Avant-Garde in the 1970s", the Albright-Knox Art Gallery sets out to shake up your preconceived notions about art flourishing outside New York City. Opening March 30 and running through July 8, the exhibition showcases some 300 artworks — paintings, sculpture, photographs, videos, films, sound recordings and installations, ephemera — by the likes of Gordon Matta Clark, Max Neuhaus, Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad, Bruce Nauman, Hollis Frampton, Lynda Benglis, and scores of their peers who showed at such venues as the Albright-Knox, the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Art, the Center for Media Study at the University of Buffalo, and the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts. An illustrated catalogue accompanies the show.

A selection of images may be viewed here (scroll to bottom of page).

Albright-Knox on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ In Ridgefield, Connecticut, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is presenting through June 10 six exhibitions of work by artists who appropriate ideas and use salvaged materials: "Jim Dingilian: Subtractive Images", "Barrao: Mashups", "Roy McMakin: Middle", "Regina Silveira: In Absentia (Collection)", "Kathryn Spence: Dirty and Clean", and "Xu Bing: Tobacco Project".

Jim Dingilian, The Unexpected Signal, 2011

Credit: Jim Dingilian and McKenzie Fine Art, New York

© Jim Dingilian

The Aldrich on FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube

The museum has made available via issuu exhibition-related publications for Silveira, Spence, McMakin, Dingilian, and Xu Bing. Here's the one for Jim Dingilian:

Open publication - Free publishing - More aldrich

✭ At the Art Institute of Chicago, Steve Jenkins's cut-paper collages for nonfiction picture books are the subject of "Animals Around the World: Picture Books by Steve Jenkins". The show, running through April 22, includes illustrations from seven books, including How Many Ways Can You Catch a Fly? (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), Biggest, Strongest, Fastest (Houghton Mifflin, 1995), Brothers and Sisters (Houghton Mifflin, 2008) and Actual Size (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). 

Steve Jenkins
  How Many Ways Can You Catch a Fly?, Illustration, 2008

© Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

You'll find on Jenkins's site a 2.5-minute video about the making of his book Move! (Houghton Mifflin, 2006).

ARTIC on FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and ArtBabble

ARTIC Blog

Notable Exhibitions Abroad

✭ In partnership with Photoworks, a photography commissioning agency, the Imperial War Museums is presenting a solo exhibition in the United Kingdom of work by London-based Ori Gersht: "This Storm Is What We Call Progress". On view through April 29, the show takes up Gersht's themes of conflict, history, and geographical place and the human spirit in both film and photographs that leave one breathless. Gersht's Will You Dance for Me? from 2011 presents the moving recounting by an 85-year-old dancer, Yehudit Arnon, of her experiences in Auschwitz, where she had to dance with SS officers, while his 2009 Evaders, a two-screen film, depicts the journey of Jewish writer-philosopher Walter Benjamin along the Lister Route used to escape Nazi-occupied France. In his gorgeous photographic series titled Chasing Good Fortune (2010), Gersht relates dramatically the symbolism of Japanese cherry blossoms (they came to be associated with Kamikaze pilots but also evoke renewal). Some background on work in the show can be found in this review.

Ori Gersht, Chasing Good Fortune, Against the Tide, 100 Bridges

C-type Print, 80 cm x 100 cm, 2010

Edition of 8

© Ori Gersht

Photo Courtesy Mummery + Schnelle, London

Selection of Exhibition Images

Selected Images of Work by Ori Gersht at CRG, Mummery+Schnelle, and BOOOOOOOM

Artist Book: Ori Gersht (Photoworks). This is a limited-edition, three-box set on the creative process behind the making of Gersht's films Evaders, Will You Dance for Me?, and Offering.

IWM on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

David Chandler of Photoworks talks with Ori Gersht:

Part 1

Part 1: Artist Ori Gersht in conversation with David Chandler, writer, curator and Director of Photoworks. from Photoworks on Vimeo.

Part 2

Part 2: Artist Ori Gersht in conversation with David Chandler. from Photoworks on Vimeo.