Notes and observations by karley klopfenstein
Symposium explores Artists in Wartime
Daniel Heyman I Did Not Have a Beard 2008. Gouache and pencil on paper, 29 x 41 inches. Courtesy List Gallery, Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College presents Artists in Wartime: Bearing Witness / Shaping a Response, series of events consisting of two concurrent exhibitions, a symposium and poetry reading that explore the role of contemporary artists who focus on war and other crises of politics on Saturday, March 20.
The symposium, moderated by Janine Mileaf, Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College, brings together artists Daniel Heyman, Damian Cote, Juan Manual Echavarria, and Melissa Ho and documentary photographer Andrew Lichtenstein, to discuss the role of contemporary artists who address global welfare, related health issues and the effects of organized violence. The symposium takes place at 10 am at the Lang Performing Art Center Cinema.
At 1 pm, poet Nick Flynn reads at the McCabe Library, where a group exhibition, Printmakers Go to War is also on view. At the List Gallery, Daniel Heyman, a Visiting Associate Professor of Art at Swarthmore and the inspiration for the symposium, presents his exhibition: Bearing Witness, Recent Works. Heyman’s moving portraits and recorded testemonials of former Iraqi detainees, gathered over a four year period, capture a sense of human dignity without passing judgment.
All events are free and open to the public. The gallery exhibitions open March 4 and continue until April 10 (List Gallery) and April 9 (McCabe Library). Swarthmore College is located at 500 College Avenue in Swarthmore, PA. For more information call 610 328 8488. or visit www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/cooper.
Panel Discussion at MIT examines Performative Art
Claire Fontaine Change 2006. Twelve twenty-five cent coins, steel box-cutter blades, solder and rivets, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Neu, Berlin. Photo: the artist
The MIT List Visual Art Center presents The Annual Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art. This year’s forum, titled Parody, Politics and Performativity, brings together several practicing artists and experts on performative practices. The 2010 Wasserman Forum will include a panel discussion with artists Tino Sehgal, Tania Bruguera and the collective artist Claire Fontaine, moderated by writer and curator Jens Hoffmann, with respondents Dorothea von Hantelmann, Frazer Ward and Joan Jonas. The forum will examine a variety of artistic practices in which the relationship to the viewer and the passage of time are significant. Unlike art objects that are characterized by a physical presence, many of the works created by the panel participants undermine and question, often in humorous ways, the common forms of more traditional art. Also significant is the new way in which institutions present, collect and display art today. This is exemplified by Tino Sehgal’s current Guggenheim performance piece, This Progress, until March 10.
Parody, Politics and Performativity will take place on Saturday, March 13 at 3 pm followed by responses beginning at 4:45. The forum, free and open to the public, will take place in the Ray and Maria Stata Center, Room 123, at 32 Vasser Street, Cambridge, MA. For more information call 617 253 4400 or visit http://listart.mit.edu/
Jack the Pelican to fly no more
Published by anonymous (later identified as Charles Sarka)
A Song Without Music, 1921
Ink and watercolor on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches each page (total 40 pages)
The gallery scene in Williamsburg will get less colorful in a few weeks as. after eight years, Jack the Pelican Presents is closing its doors. When asked by artcritical about this decision, owner and former art critic Don Carroll gave the expected answer: economic downturn, drop in sales, and increased rent. In addition, due to the enormous cost of renting a booth, the gallery was not able to attend many of the popular art fairs, where in past years they sold well.
Jack the Pelican Presents has been at its Driggs Street location in Williamsburg since 2002. Its enigmatic name derives from an inebriated misprision of Jackson Pollock. The current and last exhibition is especially poignant for Carroll. Titled “The Sacred Comic Book,” it consists of a hand-drawn, unbound, illustrated story of an anonymous frustrated artist, his seedy existence, his community and his struggles in New York starting in 1921 and spanning 30 years. It’s central theme, “Just Keep Pecking Away,” is as close to a mission statement of the gallery as anything.
Some highlights over the years include the wildly popular David Shapiro show in 2003, where the artist filled the gallery with a bodega-sized collection of garbage, neatly organized on commercial shelves. This exhibition received critical acclaim and helped establish the gallery’s reputation. Another of Carroll’s favorite shows was the Icelandic Love Corporation, in 2004. Mixing video, performance, sculpture, and photography, this all-girl quartet used fanciful narratives combined with symbolic associations of materials of their Icelandic homeland to create narrative meaning.
With so much support from friends and artists, Carroll isn’t ready to quit the gallery game yet. He’ll be looking for a smaller space, probably in Manhattan. But as he hasn’t had a weekend off in 8 years, he might take his time about it.
“The Sacred Comic Book” will be up for a few more weeks, the actual date of closing is unknown at this time, so calling ahead is recommended. The gallery is located at 487 Driggs Street (between 9th and 10th) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and is open Friday through Monday 12-6. For more information, call 718 782 0183.
Bushwick SITE Fest set for March 6 and 7
Jill Sigman, who is also performing at SITE Festival this year, in a piece from 2009. cover FEBRUARY 2010 shows unnamed performers from 2009 outside the Jefferson Avenue L Stop. (more caption info welcome on this image!)
Arts in Bushwick celebrates the diversity of live art with SITE Fest: a rollicking two-day, multi-venue interdisciplinary art festival on Saturday and Sunday, March 6-7. Now in its second year, SITE investigates the Brooklyn neighborhood’s amazing variety of theater, dance, music and performance art enacted in an urban setting.
SITE Fest will take place at three main venues, each focusing on a different genre with a clear curatorial voice. Chez Bushwick (304 Boerum Street) will feature dance; Grace Exhibition Space (840 Broadway) will showcase duration and media-based pieces and 3rd Ward (195 Morgan Avenue) will highlight theater and short-form performance art.
Additional performances will take place in a variety of alternative spaces: apartments, studios, street corners and neighborhood galleries. Expect innovative street performers, circus dance parties and costumes at every corner. SITE Fest will open with a party at Bushwick’s Beauty Bar (921 Broadway) on Friday, March 5, starting at 9pm and conclude with an after-party at Page Not Found (76 Jefferson Street) on Sunday, March 7 starting at 7pm.
In conjunction with SITE Fest, Arts in Brooklyn presents ionSOUND, a two-day music festival at Goodbye Blue Monday (1087 Broadway) on Saturday and Sunday night, with performances starting at 7:30pm and 3 pm, respectively.
The festival was created to in response to the overwhelming number of performance or collaborative-based proposals that Arts in Bushwick receives each year for its BETA Spaces and Open Studios program. It also highlights the galleries, businesses and culture of this unique and much-loved Brooklyn neighborhood.
Arts in Bushwick also sponsors Bushwick Open Studios, which takes place the first weekend in June and involves dozens of artists.
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