The current exhibition at the Front Room announces itself as a domestic space inside the Museum Walls.  The three artists – Zipora Fried, Margarete Jakschik and Sam Windett – contribute individual works that come to collectively resonate impressions of intimacy and domesticity.  Upon entering the Front Room, Fried’s black knit dining room table fills the space with sensations of dinner-table etiquette while its wool covering mystifies the art-object’s connotations.  Margarete Jakschik presents a collection of photographs that evoke the unceremonious but majestic sensibilities of American iconography.  The paintings of Sam Windett display his deep appreciation for the still-life tradition, recalling tropes of Modernism in their small but intense forms.

The exhibition closes October 31, 2010.  Visit www.camstl.org for more information.

Many of us at Laumeier have been involved in various capacities with an exciting new sculptural installation in the Museum’s Children’s Sculpture Garden—Jessica Stockholder’s Flooded Chambers Maid, 2009. The colorful interactive installation was originally created for an exhibition in Madison Square Park in New York City. Laumeier is thrilled to bring the work to St. Louis on a long-term loan as well as an exhibition of Stockholder’s work in February 2011. Stockholder, is a highly influential American sculptor and the Director of Graduate Studies in Sculpture at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Venture out to Laumeier to see the work as a crew of Laumeier staff, volunteers and County Parks employees complete the multi-component work in the next few weeks.

Please also join Laumeier in welcoming Jessica Stockholder to St. Louis as she presents an artist lecture in collaboration with the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis. This Monday, November 1, 2010, at 6PM a reception will preceed a 6:30PM lecture in Steinberg Auditorium at Washington University in St. Louis.

In the fascinating exhibition, “Uncommon Objects/Personal Views: The Collections of Rick Ege and   John Foster,” found and folk art transport us to a world of underground artists, con men, former slaves, criminals and hobos – drawing us in to a secret world of outsider art. John Foster has been collecting art since 1972, largely driven by his passion for surrounding himself with “objects of great mystery and design.” Foster makes no distinction as to whether an object is anonymous or by a named artist, but instead seeks quality and meaning.

In his own words, Foster tells the story behind “Assortment of 15 Carnival Punks,” one of the most wondrous pieces in the exhibition: Read the rest of this entry »

Part of my role at Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) is coordinating our public outreach, which encompasses publicity, tours, educational programming, and much more. A stimulating, and often fun, consequence of this aspect of my job is collaborating with my counterparts at other venues and institutions.

This collaboration takes many forms. Some of it is geographically based. Just this morning, in fact, I attended a meeting of the PR representatives of the arts organizations and other entities in the Grand Center district. We have been meeting regularly for at least six years now, an outgrowth of some ad hoc meetings among the galleries and museums of the district to plan a gallery walk. (That collaboration was in turn preceded by joint efforts surrounding the 2001 meeting of the American Association of Museums in St. Louis.) It was apparent that if Grand Center were to establish itself as the “Intersection of Art and Life” in St. Louis, we needed to pull together and coordinate our efforts  and pool our resources. It’s an ongoing effort to be sure, but with a number of notable successes.

Sometimes the collaboration is based on common interests. Taking a cue from the Grand Center model, several of the not-for-profit galleries and museums in St. Louis began meeting to discuss a challenge common to us all: how to promote awareness of, and draw visitors to, our venues, when it seemed like all of our accustomed media outlets were disappearing, and a bewildering array of alternative channels were taking their place. The blog you are reading now is a product of this collaboration, which came to be known as Saint Louis Art Map.

The visual arts community in St. Louis, like those in many other markets, has been affected by the seismic shifts in the media terrain over the past five or so years. The accustomed ecosystem, in which reviews not only stimulate public interest in an exhibition (and hopefully contribute to the public discourse about art), but also lend credibility to a venue and help attract artists and lenders–this ecosystem has been disrupted, and as happens in the natural world, the viability and adaptability of the art community are not entirely certain, yet are certainly not entirely without hope.

On the downside, the sole remaining major daily newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, no longer has a full-time visual arts critic, although it does still periodically publish exhibition previews and reviews. (This observation is not an indictment of the talented staff members from other disciplines and stringers who contribute these previews and reviews when they are given the opportunity. Indeed, MOCRA’s James Rosen exhibition was recently reviewed in the Post-Dispatch.) Notably, its weekend events supplement rarely includes mention of any but the biggest of blockbuster exhibitions.

The weekly Riverfront Times, which once allotted space for full-length reviews, now limits itself to “capsule” reviews which don’t allow for much more than a quick summary of what is on display. This is a shame, since reviewer Jessica Baran is a perceptive and eloquent critic.

On the upside, there are still quarters of the St. Louis media committed to in-depth consideration of the visual arts, including independent radio station KDHX-FM’s “Arts Interview” program; St. Louis Public Radio (KWMU-FM)’s weekly “Cityscape” program, and periodic features on PBS affiliate KETC’s “Living St. Louis.” The West End Word still publishes regular exhibition reviews.

We’ve also seen some new outlets and initiatives in recent years, some from institutions and others from grassroots origins. The online-only St. Louis Beacon posts regular visual art reviews from Ivy Cooper. Two collaborative ventures include the Saint Louis Art Map blog you are reading now, and the experiment (ever to be repeated?) of bringing in a visiting art critic to produce long-form reviews of several exhibitions at various venues, sponsored jointly by the Beacon, KETC, and KWMU. Boots Contemporary Art Space has given us five issues of the biannual Boot Print (here’s hoping that we’ll see more). Art St. Louis sponsors a blog that gives special attention to local and regional artists, while Art-Patrol St. Louis keeps current on exhibition openings and events.

While it’s an “older” format by social media standards, special mention must be made of the Critical Mass listserv, which has been going strong since February 2000. It’s an outgrowth of an earlier collaborative effort that produced a print gallery guide for several years. Beyond being a place to announce exhibitions and events, Critical Mass has seen some thoughtful, sometimes heated discussion about the state of the visual arts in the St. Louis region.

Other sources, while not focused exclusively on the visual arts, have been consistent in bringing attention to the gallery and museum scene. Where Magazine – St. Louis regularly highlights exhibitions in the area for the benefit of out-of-town visitors. Sauce Magazine makes room in each monthly issue to feature at least one or two current exhibitions, while St. Louis Magazine‘s Look/Listen blog keeps tabs on the visual arts. Culture Surfer has established a niche by presenting video content, including artist interviews. A number of arts calendar sites help get the word out about exhibition openings, notably the Regional Arts Commission’s Arts Zipper.

St. Louis has a toehold in the blogosphere* as well. There are institutional blogs, such as the shared blog of Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Kemper Art Museum News, White Flag Projects blog, and MOCRA’s own blog. On the (all-too-neglected) Illinois side of the river, the Schmidt Art Center launched a blog this past March. There are a number of individual bloggers covering the St. Louis art scene as well.

This roll call is not an exhaustive survey of the current terrain–I haven’t even tried to explore the role of Facebook, Twitter, and other entrants in the field of social media. Feel free to mention additional resources in the comments section to this post.

At present, though, I find it encouraging that many people from varied points of origin on the visual arts spectrum are venturing into the void left by the Post-Dispatch and other media heavyweights. Institutions like those who established Saint Louis Art Map wonder what will emerge as the new “measuring sticks” of (professional) critical appraisal, and whether they will help to stabilize the arts ecosystem. At the same time, the atomization of arts criticism and discussion has opened the floor to previously unheard voices and given those voices much wider reach than they ever could have had previously. Hopefully that bodes well for renewed interest and engagement in, and moral and financial support for, the visual arts in the St. Louis region.

* The term “blogosphere” is credited to a much loved and much missed member of the St. Louis arts community, the late Brad Graham. It’s a shame his other suggestion, “blogmos,” didn’t catch on instead.

(This essay was adapted from a post previously published on the MOCRA blog.)

The Testimony (2009-2010), Nina Beier and Marie Lund’s most recent performance-based collaboration presents both a layered and dismantled episode of memory.

After documenting the conversations between former commune fellows on film, the artists take apart its components – image and sound and dialogue – and piece them into a single account, narrated by one voice in front of a silent film.

Beier and Lund exhibit the silent film as staff and interns of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis perform an ongoing reading of the reworked dialogue.  What sounds vaguely like a conversation is a reduced version of the transcript – a body of text devoid of all punctuation marks, other than periods at the end of a sentence – it is read in unbroken, dry utterance.

To divorce and redraft elements originally part of a whole would seem, at first, to be that of obfuscation, instead Beier and Lund bring to the awareness ways in which a story, knowledge, and history arrive after passing through several layers separation.  In this case documentation, time, estrangement, edition and narration offer an intriguing impression of life characterized by sexual jealousy, dissipated group dynamics, and waning behavioral structures within the confines of communal living in the 1960s.

If you’re unfamiliar with Golden Age, this is the perfect time to become acquainted. Hailing from the hot-bed of creative activity that is Chicago, Golden Age will set up shop in our space next weekend, from October 1-2. Join us Friday evening for the opening of Golden Age: Permanent Collection I and a first look at the goods on sale. This “pop-up” shop will feature a lovingly curated mix of artists books, exhibition catalogues, and limited edition tote bags, so you can carry that special book you’re eyeing safely home. Golden Age will stay open on Saturday from 12-5pm, after which it will be back on the road.

Their dynamic catalog includes everything from a North Drive Press box set containing artist multiples and interviews to a bootleg cassette of Javelin’s recordings. They have recently published Can I Come Over to Your House, a comprehensive 10th anniversary review of The Suburban, the Oak Park-based exhibition space co-run by Michelle Grabner, curator of White Flag’s exhibit Newtonland, from last season.

North Drive Press 05 – Various Artists | Can I Come Over to Your House

In addition to distributing books, zines, and albums, Golden Age hosts exhibitions and performances in-store. Cadaver Corpse presented a playful collection of exquisite corpse works from artists around the world. Zachary Kaplan’s Popular Reactions to September 11 invited participants to engage in a conversation centered around film, music, and text through the project’s weblog.

As a creative nexus, Golden Age works with an amazing variety of artists and idea-generators. Come see for yourself at our pop-up shop event – whether your obsessions lie in magazines, artist interviews, or sonic experimentation, Golden Age: Permanent Collection I is bound to satisfy that niche craving.

Golden Age: Permanent Collection I will open the evening of Friday, October 1st and continue through gallery hours on Saturday, October 2. For more information on Golden Age, visit www.shopgoldenage.com. For more information about White Flag and upcoming events and exhibitions, visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.

Andy Warhol, Carolina Herrera, November 1978. Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 2008

Don’t miss the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum’s summer exhibitions before they close on Monday, July 26! In addition to the annual MFA Thesis Exhibition, the Kemper Art Museum is featuring its permanent collection in an installation of recent photography acquisitions titled Focus on Photography; according to the Riverfront Times “This exhibit of new additions to the Kemper’s collection concisely and powerfully charts the development of photography from its early, documentary-inflected use to its transformation into a contemporary expressionistic medium.”

Visit today >>

This Saturday night June 5 from 7 to 10 pm White Flag Projects invites everyone to join us for the opening reception of Ernest Trova (1927-2009), the first posthumous survey of artwork by the St. Louis native who died last year at the age of 82. Focusing on the artist’s serial use of abbreviated human forms, the exhibition will include sculpture, painting, and prints spanning Trova’s 60-year career, including major works from his notable Falling Man series, as well as many artworks that have gone unseen for more than 40 years. The exhibition remains on view through July 17, 2010.

In the 1960s and 70s Ernest Trova was among the most successful and widely acknowledged sculptors working in the United States. In 1969 his work was heralded by the New York Times as “among the best of contemporary American sculpture,” and for two decades significant examples of his work were prominently displayed in The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and The Walker Art Center among a dozen other major museums. But despite the long ago success that resulted in Trova being invited to participate in a Documenta, three Whitney Annuals and three Venice Biennales, today the eccentric art of Ernest Trova is largely forgotten.

Ernest Trova (1927 – 2009) presents the artist’s morose and uniquely comic expressions of the human condition for reconsideration, and includes many of his most significant sculpture and paintings from every important phase of his development. Ernest Trova (1927 – 2009) is accompanied by www.etrova.org, an all-new website featuring hundreds of artworks, studio photographs and clippings from the Trova archives collected especially for the exhibition.

Greg Stimac is a Chicago-based artist who currently whose solo exhibition of work is currently on view at White Flag Projects. Below is an interview I did with Greg, where he discusses his artistic process, the White Flag show, and some of the themes that recur in his work.

Lynna Borden: I’m interested in the idea of the photographs depicting dead bugs accumulated on small Plexiglas sheets attached to your car. Can you discuss the origins of this project and where these works fit into your oeuvre?

Greg Stimac: Three years ago, I was with my friend Billy Joyce in Portland, Oregon. We had just driven up from Oakland, California and the front of my car was covered with bugs and dirt from the drive. We taped some pieces of mat board to my bumper and drove to Chicago. Most of the debris just flaked off by the time we arrived and we forgot about it. After some time I started thinking about how to bring that idea into photography. I settled on using Plexiglas sheets fastened to the grill with bailing wire.

Untitled (Chicago to Memphis to Little Rock) was the first one made in the series. Arriving in Little Rock at night I pulled over, removed the Plexi, connected a flatbed scanner to my cigarette lighter and made a scan at roadside with the lid of the scanner removed making the background of the image black. It worked out that the black of the image was actually the dark of the night sky.

I enjoyed making photographs that were composed by driving and the road itself, and not really knowing what imagery would emerge. All I could control was the time of night/day, season and rate of speed. I imagined the process to be somewhat akin to the collodion process of old, where the photographer coated their glass plates, photographed and developed in the field.

LB: Travel and cars, specifically, are featured directly or indirectly in many of your artworks, including most of the work in the White Flag show. Would you discuss how the automobile figures into your process as both a means of production and as a motif?

GS: To me the car is just as important an instrument as the camera. I often make work that features automobiles and the road because it is something very present and close to me, it has become part of my lifestyle.

LB: Do you think being a first-generation American has much to do with your perspective on American culture?

GS: Not so much. I was born and raised in Ohio (the heart if it all).

LB: Do you consider your work to be documentary or autobiographical in any way?

GS: I think about documentary photography and the work may have some documentary attributes, but often in more of a ridiculous, mundane, and playful way such as in the series’ Bottle of Piss and Mowing the Lawn.

LB: Do you think road photography and other road narratives as an inherently masculine subject? Do you ever consider your work as being gendered in any meaningful way?

GS: History shows us many woman photographers who engage in this mode of photography. Dorothea Lange for one.

LB: Is your work dependent upon being American and in America?

GS: It’s where I live and work right now. I can’t tell what I’d be making if I lived elsewhere, but why would I? America is a fascinating place.

LB: Do you see your work as any kind of critical commentary on American culture?

GS: I suppose at times certain works carry those layers more than others, such as Bison Silhouette, which is represented in the White Flag show. I had been thinking about the vast herds of bison that had once roamed the Great Plains and the West, now absent except places such as Yellowstone National Park and the occasional meat ranch. I came across this black rusting metal cutout of a bison positioned in the landscape along Hwy 20 in the Methow Valley in north central Washington state, and to me it sadly represented that negative space.

LB: The work in the White Flag exhibition was made over the last several years. Is there anything you’re working on currently that you can discuss?

GS: I’d like to do some aerial video work this summer.

Greg Stimac is on view through May 22, 2010. For more information on this exhibition and upcoming events, please visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.

Details (from top to bottom) of Martin Brief's "Amazon God," Sarah Frost's "Arsenal," and Cameron Fuller's "From the Collection of the Institute for the Perpetuation of Imaginal Processes"

The fourth iteration of the Great Rivers Biennial opened Friday night, April 30. The Biennial is a collaboration between the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Gateway Foundation designed to strengthen the local art scene in St. Louis. This innovative program identifies talented emerging local artists and mid-career artists whose work explores new directions, and provides them with financial support as well as local and national visibility.

This year’s Great Rivers Biennial 2010 artists, Martin Brief, Sarah Frost, and Cameron Fuller, each received $20,000 to help support their practice, in addition to the opportunity to mount an exhibition in the Contemporary’s Main Galleries. The Great Rivers Biennial is one of the most widely anticipated exhibitions presented by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. The energy it has generated has galvanized the arts community in St. Louis, contributing to an enhanced quality of life for St. Louis area residents.

This year’s exhibition includes the following:

Martin Brief’s suite of twenty-eight new drawings, collectively titled Amazon God, appear at first glance to be seismographic in nature, the recording of tectonic shifts. In fact, they meticulously inventory the results of a search for “God” on Amazon.com. Brief records the thousands of book titles his search unearthed on scroll-like sheets of paper with a Rapidograph pen.

Sarah Frost’s installation, Arsenal, had its beginnings on the internet, too, though YouTube provided the impetus. Frost found there a community of young boys who self-publish instructional videos for making elaborate paper guns. Guided by the boys’ videos, Frost fashioned a paper cloud of weaponry suspended from the gallery ceiling, which shares the space with YouTube stills.

Cameron Fuller’s The Institute for the Perpetuation of Imaginal Processes reveals his interests in folk art, Native American artifacts, and the natural history museum. Upon entering his “museum within a museum,” you’ll encounter As It Is, a life-size diorama, and then, in adjoining rooms, Remembering Washington, The Guidance of Disaster, and Where My Heart Will Lead Me, an allusion to the itinerant tinker.

The Great Rivers Biennial 2010 runs through August 8. For more information, visit http://www.camst.org/.