April 28, 2014 The Female Gaze

I don’t often get over to the University of Denver to see shows at the Victoria H. Myhren Gallery in the Schwayder Art Building but ventured over there a week or so ago to see The Female Gaze.  This show is a large and wonderful exhibit of art by women about women from the collection of Linda Lee Alter and on loan from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.  Quite a coup for DU, this show is a fine companion to Modern Masters, now on view at the Denver Art Museum.  Not much time left to see it!  The Female Gaze is up until May 4 and open daily from 12-4 PM. 

At the entrance to the exhibit is a large, impressive work by Faith Ringgold.  We Came to America, 1997, is a story quilt, painted on canvas and hand-stitched with minimal stitching inside a pieced fabric border.  I had only seen Ringold’s work in books and on the ‘net previously and this was a great opportunity to see one example in person.

I found Autobiography, 1999, by Judith Schaechter, engaging for its unusual medium, stained glass window.  This piece reminded me of stained glass artworks I had seen last fall in a Rome museum where they depicted the daily activities of various artisans.

Hung Lui is quite well known for her paintings of traditional Chinese women.  She shows regularly at the Michael Carrroll Gallery in Santa Fe.  In a local show at Goodwin Fine Art some time ago, she also had some of her paintings of workers from the Cultural Revolution, work which I found particularly moving for their emotional content.  In this piece, Visage II, 2004, painted in oil on canvas, I was intrigued by the textures created by the paint dripped down over the woman’s face.

I’ll Be A Monkey’s Uncle, 1996, by Kara Walker was a good representative sample of her longstanding depiction of often brutal episodes in the lives of American slaves.  These images are always black silhouettes, many of them much larger than the one in this show, and always confrontational.  Quite recently Walker created a giant Sphinx-like sculpture with a styrofoam base and covered in a thick smooth layer of white sugar, alluding to the role of slavery in sugar production.

Gladys Nilsson, along with her husband, painter, Jim Nutt, were two of the original members of a Chicago group called The Hairy Who in the 1960’s.  Initially painting in oils, Nilsson switched to watercolor and gouache when pregnant in order to avoid turpentine fumes.  Looking Back, 1999, is a typical example of her palette and content.

I was very excited to see Squeak Carnwath represented in this collection with Memory Is Not, 1995.  I first encountered her work in Santa Fe several years ago at her one person show at the Michael Carroll Gallery and liked it so much I bought her book.  She was exhibiting large paintings with large color areas and included in them many personal markings which were quite arresting and mysterious.

At the entrance to the gallery at DU and not part of the above show was an impossible to miss large red sculpture with no identifying tag.  I had to hunt down an employee to ask about the artist.  The signature on the sculpture said Chen Wen Liny, 2005 but the title was in Chinese and had something to do with happiness.  It was pretty irresistible.

April 10, 2014 More Biennale- the Indonesian Pavilion and others

As I’ve mentioned, in addition to the two main venues for the Venice Biennale at the Arsenale and Giardini, there are numerous individual country pavilions situated on the grounds of the Giardini and also around Venice at other locations.

The title and theme of the exhibit at the Indonesian Pavilion was Sakti,, a Sanskrit term connected to primordial cosmic energy and the divine feminine creative power.  The atmosphere created by the different artist contributors to this pavilion was one of deep quiet reverence, agelessness and power.

Just inside the entrance, the work of Entang Wharso (b. 1967) used bronze, graphite and aluminum as well as other materials to create ominous and mysterious life-size figures mixing past and present, in this case, past presidents.

Further inside was the massive installation of Albert Yonathan Setyawan (b.1983) with its repetitive  ceramic forms.

They formed a sort of courtyard or grand entrance or, more fancifully, might have been an audience for Sri Astari’s (b. 1953) installation, Pendopo: Dancing the Wild Seas. Pendopo is a special chamber in an Indonesian house used for welcoming guests and conducting ceremonies.  These particular dancers express Sakti in the power of the South Sea Queen.  Her strength is supposedly behind the Sultan’s power and also resides inside each person.

Back in the main building at the Giardini, I was fascinated by Guo Fengyi’s (b.1942) drawings and life story.  Retiring from her job in a rubber plant at 37 because of severe arthritis, she began the practice of Qigong, a practice supporting wellness through focusing and strengthening energy.  After a vision in 1987 related to her Qigong practice, she began a tremendous outpouring of art in the form of drawings in ink, ball point, pen and pencil, using long Chinese scrolls.

March 26, 2014 Biennale continued-Humble materials

Some of you, especially those from the Southwest U.S. such as Santa Fe and environs will be familiar with milagros, also called ex-votos, religious folk charms used to elicit healing from the divine.  In that part of the world they are little charms, fashioned in the form of body parts such as an eye, leg or arm out of silver or less precious metals.  I’ve been told that in some parts of the world they are much larger and made from wax.  The ex-votos at the Biennale, made from papier-mâché, originally painted and numbering over 5,000, were collected over many years (1600-1900) from the Santuario di Romituzzo in Sienna, Italy.

James Castle, born deaf in 1899, expressed himself entirely in art, never learning to communicate with any form of sign language.  He was born in Idaho and lived his entire life there.  His artist materials were all forms of paper and packaging, some donated by his postmaster parents in the form of discarded mail.  He produced constructions of paper and handmade books.  For the birds, he sewed strips of paper and attached them to the bodies with thread or twine.

Interested in customs of dress, Phyllis Galembo (born 1952, New York) has done large scale portraits of people in ceremonial garb.  This work was inspired by the actions of two men from Ghana, Janka Abraham and A.K. Yamoah, called the “Nobles,” who put on their own masquerades in the 1920’s, mimicking festivals held earlier by the Dutch and British traders.  While the characters portrayed were usually of local figures, the masks were European and they even used Halloween costumes.

Don’t know what to do with all the odds and ends in your studio?  Trimmings, buttons, odd pieces of wallpaper, buttons?  Check out Enrico Baj’s (1924-2003) work.  Baj rebelled against the conformity he saw in the 1950’s in art and politics and instead worked more in the Expressionist style of André Breton and Max Ernst.  HIs Dame series, begun in the 1960’s, comprised collage and assemblage portraits of women in forms alluding to puppets which he also actually made.

In addition to the main exhibition hall at the Giardini, there were also many pavilions representing different countries.  Throughout the Biennale were several exhibits of works carved from books.  In the South African pavilion, were sculptures by Wim Botha of heads and a whole body, completely carved from books. For other sculptures he has used stacked newspapers and prison release papers.

March 20, 2014 Video interviews

Back in November when my show as up at aBuzz Gallery in Denver, I was interviewed by Quilters Newsletter.  A couple months later, the team came out to my studio to videotape the process I use to create my colorful abstract textile works.  Bill Gardner, Editor-In-Chief, Mary Kate Karr-Petras, show host, and Brian Buss, videographer made the whole experience a lot of fun.

The first video, the gallery interview, will air tomorrow, March 21, and the second, the computer process, will air March 28.  You can see them QuiltersNewsletter.com, QNNtv.com and on the Quilters Newsletter YouTube channel.  Hope you will tune in !!

March 13, 2014 More about the Biennale

One aspect of the Biennale that I really appreciated was the opportunity to see a wide variety of work across different time periods.  One artist, Arthur Bispo de Rosario, a Brazilian former navy man, did most of his artwork after being admitted to an asylum in 1938 after sharing a vision he had that God had asked him at the end of time to present those things in the world that he judged worthy of being saved.  He worked in wood, textiles and many other media.  The embroidery he did often used blue thread that he unraveled from uniforms at the psychiatric hospital.  The Biennale featured a room-sized installation of his work.

In another large but quite different installation, Matt Mullican, a contemporary artist, presented collections of pages grouped on many room dividers.  On these pages, using signs , symbols and schematic drawings, he tried to create  the sense of a complete vision of the universe and explore the contrast between lived experience and objective reality.

Originally from Senegal and later studying and working in Paris in the middle to late 1950’s, Papa Ibra Tall moved his art from the sort of aesthetic principles he had studied in Europe to strong color and a decorative way of working to represent stories and myths from Senegal. Moving back to Senegal after independence, he continued to root his art in the traditions of Senegal.

In an enormous room, presented singly and in small groups were the eerie life-size plastic sculptures of Pawal Althamer.  Entitled The Venetians (2013), the faces were of local Venetians cast in plaster and then connected to thin bands of extruded plastic formed into bodies and limbs.  The cavernous space of the room in the Arsenale with its cement floors and brick walls intensified the feeling of human frailty expressed in the positioning of the bodies and their facial expressions.

February 27, 2014 Lots to see-Denver art in February

Art used to be hard to find in Denver.  Not any more.  Last Saturday I couldn’t believe the variety in a number of shows in downtown Denver.  The Museum of Contemporary Art, always presenting thought-provoking work, featured two shows.  Joel Swanson’s work in several media, gave visual form to some peculiarities in the English language in a clever and witty way.  His work reminded me of another show at the museum some time ago on conceptual art using language.

Swanson’s entry piece was an entire wall covered with black ampersands, converting a familiar symbol into pattern and surface design.

One “you had to be there” piece, Homophone, 2014, showed various homophones of the word right.  As you moved in front of the piece from left to right, “write” and “rite” appeared in the holographic surface.

The entire second floor of the museum was devoted to work by Rashid Johnson in different media including video, painting, two installations and an installation sculpture.  Several paintings in the series Untitled, Love In Outer Space, 2013, used a process similar to resist processes in dyeing.   He covered the canvas with black eyed peas and lentils, coated the whole surface with black enamel, then removed the lentils and peas resulting in white spaces on the canvas.

In another work, Going To Meet the Man 2013, he combined mirrored tile, black soap books, plants and shea butter.  Other works in the gallery also took part as they were reflected in the mirrored surface.

Phoenix Bird, 2013 was a mark-making tour de force.  Using a branding iron, an implement once used to brand African slaves, he scorched and scored the surface of black soap, spray enamel and wax creating a sgraffito-like surface on scorched wood.  All of these works are wall size.

Not far from the museum at the Robischon Gallery was a group show, Out of Line, that included both wall and sculptural work.  Jason Karolak’s painting, Untitled, one of a series with the same name, had a very 3-D feel created by the use of advancing and retreating colors.  

An actual 3-D piece, coming forward from the wall was Ted Larson’s construction from salvage steel and rivets.

Kate Petley’s work of resin and mixed media on aluminum provided another interpretation of line.

Redline Gallery, hosting Transit of Venus:  Four Decades of Front Range Women in the Visual Arts, showcased painting, glass sculpture and metal work.  Sally Elliott’s gouache on paper, Red Coat Memories, appealed through bright saturated color and intriguing symbols. 

Michele Amateau’s Goia In Meditation was a fierce image in cast glass.

And Barbara Baer’s acrylic and steel sculpture, Scatterbrain, provided a playful ending to an eye-exhausting day of varied and stimulating Denver art.  Next post will be back to the October 2013 Venice Biennale.

February 12, 2014 More Biennale

Posting these images from the Venice Biennale has turned into somewhat of a research project.  Though I tried to photograph labels for artist names and materials used, I apparently fell down on the job when it came to identifying individual pieces.  And I’ll try to remember to comment on sizes of the work, too.

Stefan Bertalan’s austere and cerebral sculptural piece, Maxwell’s Demon,1967-68,  was intriguing from many different angles on its waist-high white pedestal.  Composed of black and white cotton threads in a wood frame,  it cast wonderful shadows on the walls around it.  And I learned that Maxwell’s Demon refers to a thought experiment, created by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell, that appears to contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Quite opposite in feeling was the work of Jakob Julian Ziolkowski. These highly imaginative yet disturbing paintings were created in 2013 for the Biennale in response to The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorges Luis Borges.  Using oil on canvas or panel and relatively small in size but not in impact, these highly saturated and writhing forms have a presence that relates to dreams or nightmares.

One Hundred Eyes One Hundred Fingers

Continuing the theme of fantastical images, Shinichi Sawada’s clay figures, all named Untitled and dated 2000-2012,  were at the same time engaging and threatening.  Their clay spikes reminded me of African sculptures bristling with nails but these are from a mythology of the artist’s imagination.