SELECTED PRESS
NEW YORK TEAM’S FAIR-Y TALES
by Natalie Hegert
Moving on to the IMPULSE section of the fair, this portion is very effective in creating an intimate platform to engage with recent work by emerging artists. Each gallery here presents a solo exhibition of one artist.
Megan Whitmarsh’s whimsical Color Work Station at Michael Rosenthal (San Francisco) is a “meta studio”, an entire furnished room, almost completely re-created out of soft sculpture, containing everything from soft fabric paint tubes squeezing out fabric paint, to a fabric garbage containing a fabric banana peel.
Masterfully navigating the flat plane are drawings and wall installations by Spanish artist Roberto Mollá featured at Christina Ray (formerly Glowlab). These elegant, graphic, surrealist pictorials combine narrative references with geometric abstraction.
Antena Estudio (Mexico City) features a presentation by Mexican artist Gabriela Alva, of print, sculpture and installations, beautifully reinventing a platform and format for disposable materials.
Hiroshige Fukuhara’s large, elaborate graphite drawings on black gesso panels, presented by *Ai Kowada Gallery (Tokyo) *are aesthetic masterpieces, depicting fantastical, decorative nighttime scenes of humans and beasts encompassed by flowers and foliage.
Although the fair does not deny its commercial purpose, an effort is made to add creative and enriching content that exists beyond the marketplace, providing a context for the other work. Not to be missed is this year’s Pulse Play, Ordinary Occurrences, a sensitively organized and compelling video series curated by Deborah Cullen, Director of Curatorial Programs at El Museo del Barrio. This selection highlights recent work by artists of Carribbean and Latin American descent, presenting “timely perspectives on the terror, sadness, power, beauty, and possibility at the conjunction of man and place.” Artists included are Eliz Alba, Monika Bravo, Michael Paul Britto, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Zachary Fabri, Rob ter Haar, Claudi Joskowicz, Jorge Macchi, Liliana Porter and the Rickards Brothers.
WAGMAG
Contemporary Mexican Art
Live With Animals and BQE Gallery
2010-01-01
This month in Brooklyn, there are two galleries offering Contemporary Mexican Art on the topic of Mexican life and various challenges thereto. In Mexico, escalating violence and political malfeasance are common occurrences. The collision of complex issues including poverty, pervasive corruption, kidnapping, extortion and a wearisome drug war, has created a ‘perfect storm’ of adversity for its citizens. It is from within this context that these two shows originate.
“Asesinos” (Assassins) through January 10th at Live With Animals Gallery (210 Kent Ave) is the product of an exchange with up and coming Yautepec Gallery in Mexico City. Intended as ‘an exploration of violence from several uniquely Mexican perspectives’, Asesinos succeeds in presenting a disturbing glimpse into a world, uncomfortably familiar to our own.
Ximena Labra’s ‘Vigilante’, a video loop of a gun-wielding mannequin installed on a hospital rooftop, sadly recalls the futility of scarecrows, plastic owls and other pest control aids. Equally poignant, Marion Sosa’s photography requites, through the scratching out of faces in a Santeria style visual patricide, a difficult family upbringing. Enigmatic images from Mark Alor Powell of abandoned cars, contusions, and lifeless figures raise alarming universals; “What happened?” “Where have they gone?” and “What will become of them/us?”
A few streets away finds a collaborative effort against corruption from Factoria de Santos and Eyelevel BQE Gallery (364 Leonard St). Extended through January 17th, “Honesty” presents art curated around themes of rectitude, self-reflection and a fictional saint named ‘Honesto’. Created by Luisa Gloria, ‘San Honesto’ has his own legend, observance day and a mirrored face, forcing all who see him to consider their own lives and values. Replete with figurines, prayer cards & candles, ‘San Honesto’ is brilliant in its ability to be inserted seamlessly into the quotidian activities of the Mexican populace. A highpoint is ‘Mundo Feliz’ (Brave New World) a pulp novella illustration of ‘Honesto’ at work from famed ‘El Libro Vaquero’ cover artist, Jorge Aviña.
Intended to replace real money in the occurrence of ‘mordidas’ (bribes), artist Vena2 tenders gorgeous revamps of the 100 Peso bill. Available at the newly launched eyelevelfocus.com, this convincing currency replaces our ‘In God we trust’ with “I’m honest”, “I won’t swear again” and “Thank you for freeing me”. Also of note, Gabriella Alva’s clever “Faux Truth” and a sensitively hand rendered drawing by lauded designer, Dan Funderburgh.
It is a rare opportunity to see concurrent shows (with over 14 Contemporary Mexican Artists between them) on similarly salient issues. Though emanating from episodically hazardous circumstance, these artists share a sentiment common to most; the immutable calling to spin order out of chaos.
—Enrico Gomez
Lion Proyect – Moco Loco
Gabriela Alva Cal Y Mayor is a Brooklyn artist with a mixed bag of tricks that range from Bandaid-based installations to Post-its landscapes and a photography series that follows a Mexican ceramic lion who makes its way through the neighbourhood. The lion’s golden mane stands out in any setting, whether picking up a pizza, getting its hair done or just hanging out with the girls. When an object that does not belong is inserted into an everyday scene, the ordinary elements warrant a closer look.
Artist: Gabriela Alva Cal Y Mayor
+ leairbag.com
Interview to Steve DeFrank
I had the joy of interviewing the artist Steve DeFrank. The interview was realized originally in english, then translated to spanish for Mexican magazine, IndieRocks.
I will post it first in spanish, and will post the option in english as well.
Steve DeFrank
Texto: Gabriela Alva Cal y Mayor • Fotos: Steve DeFrank
“Mariquita sin calzones, mariposón, maricón, reina, muñeco, joto…” son adjetivos
comúnmente utilizados, que Steve DeFrank se dedicó a coleccionar para una de sus pinturas (Faglish) presentada en su más reciente exhibición Mirror, Mirror. Allí, al ver todas las piezas reunidas en una misma galería se percibía una sensación de estar en un bosque mágico y escondido; un sitio donde se exploraban varias formas del lenguaje utilizado de forma derogatoria, pero que DeFrank logra caricaturizar; pasando de una forma a otra, bajo el comando sonoro de sutiles campanitas escuchadas en un cuento de Disney, que ayudan al lector para pasar de una hoja a otra.
IndieRocks! Espejito, espejito…
Steve DeFrank ¿Quién soy?, ¿Dónde estoy?
IR! ¿Nos podrías platicar sobre la serie que se presentaron en la galería Margaret Thatcher?
SDe. La serie de pinturas que estoy mostrando en dicha galería (GMT para abreviar), es mi versión de lo que sería un bosque encantando. En este mundo mío, raro y por demás extraño, de los troncos de los árboles crece pelo y las hojas que caen tienen mensajes escritos describiendo su destino. Un mundo mágico donde tanto sus habitantes, como sus visitantes, han dejado mensajes grabados en superficies de madera y además hay mucho, pero mucho, polvo de hada.
IR! ¿Cuál fue el proceso que seguiste para decidir
qué técnica utilizar en tus pinturas?
SDe. He encontrado la técnica perfecta para mis pinturas, tras años de trabajar con medios y técnicas laboriosas…
La forma en que empecé a probar esta técnica fue tiñendo pequeños pedazos de plástico, con los que creaba mosaicos luminosos (literalmente iluminados); cada uno de ellos empezó con fragmentos pequeños que utilicé como estudios de pintura. Estos estudioslos pinté con una pintura llamada caseína, (la cual está hecha a base de una fosfoproteína derivada de la leche), ésta actúa de una manera muy similar al óleo, pero seca más rápido, además de que da un toque mate y aterciopelado. Yo pienso que mi proceso se dio al igual que el de la evolución, donde los grandes dinosaurios murieron (los mosaicos) para dar paso a los mamíferos, que entraron a pasos agigantados (las pinturas de caseína ). Con estas pinturas he conseguido una estética que no había logrado antes: el efecto que da la luz directamente sobre la pintura, absorbiendo
y reteniéndose en ella misma.
IR! Art School Confidential es una película dirigida por Terry Zwigoff basada en un comic escrito por Daniel Clowes, ¿Si Zwigoff, sabiendo que eres un instructor en una de las escuelas más grandes en Nueva York, viniese a pedirte ayuda con ideas para una segunda película, cuales le darías?
SDe. ¡Esa película me fascinó! Logró reunir la atmósfera perfecta de una escuela de arte, con estudiantes raros y una facultad extraña. Yo contribuiría a que las acciones se desenvolverían alrededor de los personajes, con situaciones que sólo se suceden en las escuelas de arte (como modelos desnudos que le hablan a los estudiantes recién ingresados, observando a estudiantes y maestros hablar seriamente sobre las cosas más ridículas, etc.).
IR! ¿Qué es lo que harías si Rudy Giuliani se apareciera en la apertura de tu exhibición y te preguntara si le vendieras, a él tu pintura del 11 de septiembre?
SDe. Si él entrara en la galería y quisiera
comprar esa pintura, le cobraría exactamente 900,011.00 dólares, así el precio equivaldría al número de veces que mencionó dicha fecha durante su chistosísimo intento de candidatura a la presidencia.
IR! Si tu pintura Faglish fuese parte de un cuento, ¿qué nombre de todos los que usaste en ella le darías por título?
SDe. ¡Ah esa está muy fácil! Pienso que de todas las palabras en Faglish que pueden ser utilizadas para nombrar algo, yo escogería Pansyland, simplemente porqué suena como Disneyland, ¡sólo piensa que tipo de parque de diversiones sería uno como ese!, imagina todos los diferentes juegos que habría en este lugar: la rueda de la fortuna, se llamaría rueda de la hadita de la fortuna.Hasta me río solo con pensar en la historia de una familia típica norteamericana y sus vacaciones en Pansyland… ¡Esos niños jamás volverían a ser iguales!
DeFrank es un artista que radica en Brooklyn, en su periodo de luces se dedicó a teñir de diferentes tonalidades los tornillo de aquel juego infantil, que tal vez muy pocos recordemos, donde al insertar dichas piezas en un panel conseguían
efectos de puntillismo luminoso-electrónico. Cuando logró alcanzar el efecto deseado, tras haber ingresado a colecciones como la del National Portrait Gallery de Washington y sin importar cuanto más se quería ver de su trabajo, dejó pasar una serie de ofertas para que volviese a esta técnica. Steve simplemente decidió dejar que la luz se extinguiera, para dar cabida a la técnica que actualmente utiliza, donde pintando con caseína, consigue acabados mate perfectos, que engañan a la vista por la
forma en que brillan.
Éste singular artista, que haciendo uso de superficies de madera crea ecos en un bosque de troncos cortados y animados, presentándonos también, esculturas de pilares del mismo material (recargados en una pared) donde cada uno recibe su nombre de artistas porno del cine gay.
Utilizando elementos de la cultura popular, crea un efecto similar al que suce-dería si se contase un chiste al revés, donde uno se reiría primero y luego vendría lo demás.
thatcherprojects.com
MANDARINA
Revista IndieRocks
Original Interview to Steve DeFrank
This is the original interview, without the magazine introduction. (The questions are marked in bold)
Interview to Steve DeFrank
1) Mirror mirror on the wall…
who am I, where am I?
2) Could you tell us about the series you are presenting at Margaret Thatcher Gallery? The series of paintings that I’m showing at MTP is my version of an enchanted forest. My weird and strange world where tree stumps grow hair and falling leaves have strange messages describing their fate. A magical world where fellow travelers have carved graffiti on wooden surfaces and lots and lots of fairy dust.
3) What was the process you followed for choosing the media for this series? I found the perfect medium for my paintings. After many years working in a labor intensive medium. Dying little pieces of plastic and creating a glowing (literally light up) mosaic. Each mosaic started with a small painted study. I painted these studies with a paint called caseins. A milk based paint. They act and feel a lot like oil paint but dry quickly to a mat velvety finish. They have been around for thousands of years. I think of my process like that of evolution. The big dinosaurs died (the mosaics) and then there was room for the tiny mammals to take a foot hold (the tiny casein paintings). The casein paints have a look like no other paint that I’ve worked with. The light hits the painting and is absorbed and holds itself in the paint. People often remark that the paintings seem to glow. So it seems fitting that these odd paintings have a magical glow to them.
4) Art School Confidential is a movie based on Daniel Clewes comic, this Comic, later on was transformed into a movie. If Clewes, knowing you are an instructor at one of the biggest schools in NY were to come up to you for some ideas, for a second movie which kind of situations would you like to have him write about? I loved that movie! It really got the feeling of art school with strange the students and the odd faculty. I thought the movie screwed up the the whole murder thing so I guess I would make part II focus on the characters that are attracted to the art world. Think of early John Waters movies meets Checkoff. My movie would be character driven with situations that happen only happen in art school. Naked models taking to nervous freshman. Watching students and teachers talking seriously about the most ridiculous things. In fact instead of a movie it needs to be a television series each week something funny and strange takes place.
5) What would you do if Rudy Giuliani showed up at your opening and asked you to sell him 9/11? If Rudy Giuliani walked in the gallery and wanted to buy my 9/11 paintings I would charge him 900,011.00 dollars. Each dollar equal to the number of times he mentioned 9/11 during his hilarious attempt to run for president.
6) If the painting Faglish were a story or a tale, which name of all of the ones you used would you use for the title, and what would the title be? Oh this is an easy one. I think of all the words in Faglish that would be used for a title for a tale would be PansyLand. It sound a lot like Disneyland. Just think of what kind of amusement park that would be! Imagine the the different rides you could have. The Ferris wheel would be called fairy wheel. I’m giggling to myself just thinking about a story about a middle American family vacation to PansyLand. The kids will never be the same.
7)Which are has been the wiser use of words that an article has used to describe your work? Margaret the owner of the gallery hired a young writer Leah Redfield to write about my paintings. I believe the last sentence of the press release sums up perfectly the look and feel of the show. “…this is a world much like Cinderella’s where despondency reigns but hope nevertheless persists”.
Steve, I truly want to thank you for your time to answer this questions. Best wishes for the exciting and upcoming opening. No thank you! I just wish my Spanish were better and I could have done this all in Spanish. La proxima vez.
Gabriela Alva Cal y Mayor
Intl. Collaborator for Indie Rocks
www.indie-rocks.com
leairbag@gmail.com
Mobile: 917 660 4650.
Bombin Magazine
Bombin’ Magazine meets Artworld Digest
This are some images from an article Susan Katz wrote about Seed, Green and Graffiti, somehow they met and worked on this writing presented at a magazine called Bombin’ from a project that started with David Cohen’s Artworldigest magazine and the seed project.
Basil Seeds that you can purchase now at Whole foods.
Biodegradable Graffiti?
Graffiti and tag culture have always been about the reclamation of privatized space; once misunderstood to be merely the vandalism of property and a problem many urban areas hoped to eradicate—today graff is flourishing. With more and more young cats like NeckFace following in the footsteps of acclaimed street artists of yore, such as Basquiat and Keith Haring, street art has in fact left the street and is now on display in art galleries around the world. Although the public’s perception of graffiti has been elevated from a favorite pastime for hoodlums to a kosher form of artistic expression, this shift in attitude has also seemingly been why graffiti has lost a lot of its edge. No longer just about surreptitiously leaving your permanent mark, or expressing a political agenda, today’s graffiti is often commissioned for the concrete jungle— trendy, watered down, and lacking the rawness of its predecessors. The capitalization of this once revolutionary style and its subsequent acceptance and integration into the mainstream, has made way for even fresher ways of taking back the streets.
The ever-growing green phenomenon- has taken hold of our culture with no signs of slowing down. No longer only a concern to treehuggers everywhere, the mission for increasing environmental awareness has given birth to a art/activist movement known as guerilla gardening. Considered to be one of the first such groups, Canadian Public Space Committee’s website explains “without permit or license, we plant seeds and seedlings in all those neglected corners of public space”. By using nature as their medium, green guerillas are re-imagining local vacant plots and what TreeHugger.com calls “driving sustainability mainstream”. The movement, which continues to gain momentum and is now practiced worldwide, has led to the inspiration for art projects such as Art World Digest’s The Seed Project which encouraged art activism through planting creatively. The project brought together “artists and activists [who] planted wheatgrass seeds creating individual art projects from what was grown”.
One of the most innovative submissions to the project was artist Gabriela Alva’s literal take on guerilla graffiti’s “nature as graffiti” concept. After growing wheatgrass in small rectangular containers, Alva attached these “biodegradable graffiti” to public fencing spelling out the word “seed”. “ I wake up pretty early before the majority of the people start heading to their respective jobs and decided to do it without being caught”, Alva chuckles. “If you think about it, who is really going to stop you from painting with greenery?” she playfully asks no one in particular.
Celebrating traditional graffiti through look, form, and execution, while simultaneously promoting green guerilla issues Alva’s work is a dichotomy combining the natures of indelible graffiti and transient vegetation. This August look out for her graffiti to “seed” the streets of Bushwick ; “just a visual manifestation of how all this talk about global warming and recycling are really not being considered”, she laments.
For more information visit her website: www.leairbag.com