Interview with Michelle Grabner (Part 1 of 4)

Michelle Grabner is an artist, curator, and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is also the curator Newtonland, the current exhibition at White Flag Projects. I had the pleasure of interviewing Michelle on the morning of the show’s opening; this interview will be posted here in four parts.

Lynna Borden: What attracted you to this space? I know it’s very different from both the Suburban and the Poor Farm.

Michelle Grabner: Well, Matt and White Flag Projects have an excellent reputation. Not being from St. Louis, I don’t really have a grasp on how White Flag plays out politically in St. Louis but, since I’ve been here, I’m really getting a sense of its uniqueness and how it holds a complementary relationship to programming at the Contemporary, the Kemper, Boots, and even Laumeier Sculpture Park. As a visitor, I find this very exciting.

After talking to Matt the other day, I realized that White Flag embodies the same sensibility and relationship to contemporary art as Midway Contemporary in Minneapolis. I have great respect for Midway’s programming, so I’m really at home here in terms of White Flag’s commitment to not just playing out exhibitions that feature local talent, but actually contextualizing them within international art practices. This is always a difficult, but necessary, project if one is really committed to raising the cultural stakes in cities that are left of center. Institutions like the Contemporary here or the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, certainly that is their mandate, but because they operate on a larger scale, their programming and their curatorial ideas get played out in a very slow way, sometimes so slow that they often appear behind the curve when it comes to examining what is contemporary. It’s spaces like Midway, LAX in LA, or White Flag Projects here that I think are doing the good work in terms of risk and breadth of contemporary practice and discourse.

LB: That’s true. Here, we can incorporate more artists and have exhibitions more frequently than larger institutions.

MG: That’s right, and institutions like the Contemporary or the MCA have obligations to various audiences. They’re always analyzing who their audience is and catering to them and their many expectations. Sometimes these institutions develop really great educational programs but sometimes catering to an audience leads to watered-down programming and an over-emphasis on making the institution social. But here at White Flag, it seems that your primary audience is the international art apparatus. Although this is my first time here, I’ve been following the on-goings at White Flag over the last two years from my vantage point in Chicago. I know there are curators and artists in Europe who have asked me specifically about White Flag, so my observation is that White Flag is more expansive and constructed very differently from the audiences that comprise other institutions.

LB: I feel like the work here can also push the boundaries a little bit more than in a larger institution.

MG: That’s right, or try things out—risk something. That’s my complaint all the time about other institutions. They play it safe. Artists and/or curators can try something out here and bigger institutions can’t fathom failure.

- Lynna Borden, Intern

Good Friday returns to MOCRA

Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) is currently presenting Good Friday: The Suffering Christ in Contemporary Art. This is an encore showing: Good Friday was originally presented in Spring 2009 as the second of two exhibitions celebrating MOCRA’s 15th anniversary. The exhibition includes works by over 30 artists of diverse backgrounds who have used the events of the day of Jesus’ death as inspiration for their own reflections on such themes as faith, suffering, loss, compassion, and unconditional love. The selected works are drawn from the MOCRA collection and works on long-term loan, and employ a wide range of media from painting and sculpture to fiber arts.

Sr. Helen David Brancato. "Crucifixion - Haiti," 1997. MOCRA collection.

It may come as a bit of a surprise—it did to me—that Good Friday was one of our best received exhibitions ever, given that the exhibition represented a bit of risk-taking on MOCRA’s part. We are committed to an interfaith exploration of how contemporary artists engage the religious and spiritual dimensions in their work. Although our track record of over 35 exhibitions demonstrates how ample our vision has been, it would be easy for people unfamiliar with us to dismiss a show with such an overtly Christian title as being sectarian. Quite to the contrary.

For instance, at least four works in Good Friday specifically treat the theme of “Pietà” (Mary holding her dead son after he is brought down from the cross). They include a large wooden cage, an abstract marble sculpture, and an homage to a famous 15th-century work, by artists from Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish backgrounds respectively, and a frenetic etching by Salvador Dalí. Taken together, these works represent a wide spectrum of understandings and interpretations of an age-old theme.

Furthermore, we experimented with ways of inviting people to approach the work from a standpoint of contemplation, or even prayer. Is it  appropriate to encourage this sort of thing in a museum? This was a topic taken up in the MOCRA conference “Art and the Religious Imagination” in March 2009. Dr. Gerald Bolas, former Director of the Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill, discussed the challenges and sensitivities for a state university art museum in displaying art and artifacts associated with a particular religious tradition, but also the opportunities for community engagement. The role of various sorts of museums as stewards and interpreters of sacred materials is also explored in the book Stewards of the Sacred, edited by Lawrence E. Sullivan and Alison Edwards.

The situation at MOCRA is a little different. First, we are a museum at a private Catholic university, and an interfaith outlook is built into our mission statement. Furthermore, Good Friday does not include liturgical objects or objects tied to particular communities. Still, how do we help people feel welcome to seek a faith experience, without putting any undue pressure on those who simply want to look at the art? One response was through a booklet of meditations on the art of Good Friday which is offered to visitors for self-guided reflection. Another was the development of group visits, facilitated by MOCRA staff, which incorporate discussion of the art from a spiritual or faith perspective as well as an art appreciation perspective.

I’ve discussed both of these approaches in posts on the MOCRA blog (here and here). In one of those posts I raised some questions, which I have refined a bit since then:

• Does the idea of approaching art this way leave you feeling ambivalent, or even opposed?
• Could (or should) something like this take place in a “public” art museum? Why or why not?
• Do MOCRA’s particular mission and setting on a private Catholic university campus give us latitude to do things other institutions can’t safely attempt?
• Good Friday has a clearly Christian point of departure, and the groups I described were coming from a standpoint of Christian faith. Is this sort of exhibition and approach to art transferable to art from other faith traditions?

We invite you to visit MOCRA and the Good Friday exhibition, and consider these questions for yourself.

Good Friday: The Suffering Christ in Contemporary Art continues through April 25. On March 28, MOCRA Director Terrence E. Dempsey gives a lecture titled “The Wounded Body of Christ and the Modern Social Conscience.” The lecture is free and open to the public. Find more information by clicking here.

Newtonland at White Flag Projects

Science and art can sometimes be seen as being at odds with one another—fact versus feeling, the tangible versus the intangible. It’s rare when the objectivity of science and the subjective nature of art come together in a harmonious pairing; however, artist and curator Michelle Grabner bridges the gap in Newtonland, an exhibition that opens this Saturday, February 27th from 7 to 10 p.m., at White Flag Projects.

The artworks featured in Newtonland are both whimsical and astute as they play on space, geometry, perception, and movement. Greg Bogin frames white space with shifting neon colors, prompting viewers to take note of what isn’t there as their eyes trace the border of his shaped canvas. Elizabeth Bryant also works with negative space by removing cutouts from an otherwise saturated photographic landscape and then hanging the fragments around the image for the viewer to piece together. Several other pieces in Newtonland also deal with the concept of negative space – Ib Geertsen’s torqued metal mobile confuses perception, while Jan Van Der Ploeg’s circular forms allow for an appreciation the pureness of color and the simplicity of shape. Anne Eastman’s mirrored mobiles skew our reflection and observation, as does Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam’s large-scale aluminum and silverpoint mobile bleacher material. Alternatively, Jonas Wood translates tenets of mobile sculpture into 2-D drawings, taking inspiration from the forms of Alexander Calder and tethe organic geometry of houseplants. Finally, the avant-garde score and movements of marine life in Jean Painlevé’s short films serve to complement both the implied and literal movement of the mobiles and the ever-present pull of gravity itself.

Newtonland opens this Saturday, February 27, 2010. The opening reception will take place between 7 and 10 PM. The exhibition will remain open through April 3rd. For more information on this exhibition and other upcoming events, please visit www.white-flag-projects.org.

-Lynna Borden, Intern

What Lingers with Mike Bidlo

Mike Bidlo has made his career recreating and appropriating the art of other artists, replicating the work of everyone from Jackson Pollock to Marcel Duchamp to Henri Matisse to Julian Schnabel. Though the popular revival of appropriation-based art (1980-90’s) has passed, the practice continues to be relevant in part because of its reliance on the idea of re-contextualization. While other artists – such as Bidlo’s contemporary Sherrie Levine – make vast changes to the original work, Bidlo’s reproductions seek to imitate precisely the image, scale, and materials of their source. What’s more, he does not work from the original, but from reproductions, making his pieces twice-removed from their selected source material.

Bidlo’s Not Robert Rauschenberg: Erased de Kooning Drawings, featured in our current exhibition, are novel only in their complex way of commenting on the hegemony of art historical influence. By meticulously reproducing Rauschenberg’s bold erasure of an actual de Kooning drawing (1953), these works disrupt the notion of a historical canon by independently asserting whom from the past we should – or should not – consider our creative forebears. Bidlo, here, is asserting which historic works are contemporarily relevant.

Rauschenberg, with his gesture, called the precious nature of art into question and challenged the status of proposed masters such as Willem de Kooning, who was at the height of his career at the time the piece was made. Bidlo, on the other hand, seems to want to re-instate the combined significance of Rauschenberg and de Kooning in the contemporary moment, offering, through the new piece, a kind of double-bind of anarchy and reverence.

The last day to view Love & Theft is tomorrow, February 13, between noon and 5 p.m. For more information about this exhibition and other events at White Flag Projects, visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.

-Lynna Borden, Intern

Engaging with Asher Penn

Kate Moss has inspired countless fashion designers and artists; W Magazine even had a special issue purporting just that— the timeless and boundless nature of Moss’s influence. Moss has been a muse to so many because her ubiquity has rendered her somewhat of a blank canvas. Most of the art she’s present in really isn’t about Kate Moss, it’s about the work’s creator. In this case, it’s about Asher Penn and his 300-part artwork Kate Moss Rorschach.

In his riff on the now-unreliable psychological test designed by Hermann Rorschach in 1921, Penn literally uses Moss’s image as ground for his improvised near-Rorschachs, appropriating three Wolfgang Tillmans’ photographs of the model and overlaying them with vibrant red patterns. By using a Tillmans photograph, Penn is not only taking on the model and all of the associations that come with her, but he’s also taking on high-art. The gritty photocopy method he uses to reproduce the original photographs removes the image from its glossy, high-profile context and makes it more accessible.

The accessibility of these images is heightened by both the gritty photocopy method he uses to reproduce the original photographs and the fact that they strongly imply a viewer. Moss’s gaze, which is either framed or obscured depending on the individual pattern, serves to implicate the viewer through a direct stare that draws you in or a sideways glance that suggests your presence. Looking at the images, the viewer is forced to come to terms with their desire for meaning and for possession—possession of images, of commodities, and even of others. Moss’s status as one of high fashion’s most sought-after advertisers coupled with the interpretive nature of Rorschach patterns allows viewers to project their own meaning and desires onto Penn’s work and engage with it on a level beyond the surface.

Love & Theft is on view through this Saturday, February 13, 2010. For more details on this exhibition and other events at White Flag Projects, please visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.

-Lynna Borden, Intern

• Art Organization: Laumeier Sculpture Park

Mark Newport: Self-Made Man at Laumeier

The early February weather may not be all that inviting, but that’s no problem for Sweaterman!

Join us tonight (February 5) for the opening reception of Laumeier’s spring exhibition, including a performance by the artist as Sweaterman.  Laumeier Sculpture Park presents Mark Newport: Self-Made Man, an exhibition that explores the role of modern man and modern-day heroes.  Newport’s human-scale, hand-knit superhero costumes, photographs, video and embroidered comic book covers will be shown in the Park’s indoor galleries.

Mark Newport is a man who knits like no other.  The Michigan-based artist creates human-scale, acrylic-knit superhero costumes that question the role of heroes in contemporary culture. Some of these costumes reflect the comic book legends that many of us grew up with.  Newport also expands on the genre with creations of his own. Batman and Captain America are presented on equal terms with Newport’s Sweaterman and Y-Man.

Free Opening Reception: February 5, 6-8 PM

• Art Organization: Kemper Art Museum

Kemper Art Museum Spring Exhibitions Open February 5

Stop by the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on Friday, February 5 from 7-9 pm for the public opening and reception for two new special exhibitions:

Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break

Sharon Lockhart, Outside AB Tool Crib: Matt, Mike,Carey, Steven, John, Mel and Karl, 2008. Courtesy of the artist.

Contemporary artist Sharon Lockhart is well known for her films and photographs that often explore social subject matter. To create the works in Lunch Break, Lockhart spent one year in Bath, Maine, at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector US naval shipbuilding company—observing and engaging with workers during their daily routines. The resultant film installations and series of photographs focus on the activities of these workers during their time off from production.

Allison Smith: Needle Work
Allison Smith’s work draws on “living history”

Allison Smith, Untitled, from Needle Work, 2009. Inkjet print on exhibition paper, 22 x 16”. Courtesy of the artist.

museums, battlegrounds, and most recently the Internet to explore gendered conventions of craft, constructions of national identity, and experiences of violence. Needle Work centers on Smith’s recreation of European and American gas masks from World War I and World War II, and includes staged photographs with the masks and images of the masks on silk parachutes printed by Washington University’s Island Press.

And mark your calendar for these related events:

Sharon Lockhart Walkthrough
Saturday, February 6, 2 pm
Artist Sharon Lockhart and curator Sabine Eckmann lead a walkthrough of the Lunch Break exhibition.

Allison Smith Lecture
Monday, February 8, 6:30 pm, Steinberg Auditorium
Artist Allison Smith will discuss her work, including the Needle Work exhibition.

• Art Organization: Amy Broadway, The Pulitzer

Panel Series Starts: The City as Studio

Panelist Juan William Chávez talks about the art experience provided at Boots Contemporary Art Space, an alternative art space in St. Louis, MO.

Tomorrow at 7:30pm, the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts will begin its panel series related to the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, alongside its current exhibition Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark and tailored programming entitled “Transformation” (tour the show’s mind-blowing catalogue for a primer). The basic question posed in these conversations will be, “How do communities evolve, and in what ways can their members guide the process?”

Tomorrow’s “The City as Studio” will focus on how art spaces and creative acts invigorate urban neighborhoods, spotlighting examples of this happening in St. Louis. Panelists include Juan William Chávez, Theaster Gates, Mary Jane Jacob, Luis Croquer, and Christy Gray, all of whom have exceedingly impressive bios you can read on the event’s webpage. The intention, though, is that the panelists won’t be the only ones comparing notes, and that the occasion will provide an arena for all attendees to contribute thoughts on revitalization.

We hope you’ll join us tomorrow and for future panel discussions. For more information on upcoming events at the Pulitzer and to subscribe to our e-newsletter, please visit www.pulitzerarts.org.

Love & Theft Opening Reception at White Flag

This Saturday, January 23rd, between 7 and 10 p.m., White Flag Projects celebrates the opening of Love & Theft, a group exhibition currently on view and featuring artists Mike Bidlo, Dutes Miller, Asher Penn, and Sara Greenberger Rafferty. Each of these artists explores preexisting figural motifs in order to either reinvigorate or dismantle the appropriated image.

Mike Bidlo’s Not Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawings reference both Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg’s infamous 1953 erasure of a de Kooning. Appropriation isn’t new to Bidlo–-he’s been replicating the work of 20th century Modernist masters for decades in paintings and sculptures usually titled “Not (insert artist’s name here).” Bidlo has also tied a performance aspect into many of his projects, such as his 1984 recreation of Andy Warhol’s factory in the attic of New York’s P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center or his public replication of Picasso’s Guernica in L.A.’s Gagosian Gallery. Bidlo’s oeuvre is as impressive as it’s extensive. His pieces are witty (he called his version of Picasso’s Desmoiselles d’Avignon, She Works Hard for the Money) and layered in their associations and references.

Chicago-based multimedia artist Dutes Miller’s pornographic collages provide a literal layering of images suggestive of the stacking of bodies. At once lewd and honest, Miller’s collages, as well as many of his other works, place gay male experience at their forefront. The lowly frames used to encase the work complement the gritty, no-budget aesthetic that the barrage of unrestrained body parts evokes. The abundance of images allows Dutes’s collages to have quite the opposite effect of Bidlo’s Drawings—they become over-stimulating in both a visual and figural sense.

Brooklyn-based artist and Interview magazine contributor Asher Penn uses three different and somewhat bizarre Wolfgang Tillmans photographs of British model Kate Moss as the raw material for his series of Kate Moss Rorschach works on paper. In this series, Penn layers red acrylic paint over the photocopied Tillmans photographs (most of which I personally and painstakingly placed in clip frames) to create images reminiscent of out-moded Rorschach psychological tests. The sheer volume of the images coupled with the non-repetitious and questionably arbitrary paint-blot patterns, make the work viewed as a whole quite a spectacle.

Sara Greenberger Rafferty received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Columbia University’s School of Arts. In the early 2000’s, Greenberger Rafferty became interested in the subject of entertainers and performance – an interest that her three works on view (all portraits of 70’s-era female comedians) evidence. Like Penn, she also works with the photographic image, but instead of using photocopy as her means of reproduction, she re-photographs each image, digitally manipulates it, and stains it with unknown fluids (???), thereby transforming the original photograph into a specter of its former self. The disparity between the vibrant sharpness and saturation of the printed photograph and the blurry washed-out quality of the fluid-soaked spots creates an uneasy visual discord.

Despite the many differences between their images and their aims, one thing each artist has in common is their use of appropriation to further complicate an original image (or lack thereof) in order to reveal something original through reproduction.

Love & Theft opens Saturday, January 23rd from 7- 10 pm at White Flag Projects. For more information about this exhibition and other White Flag events, visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.

-Lynna Borden, Intern

Opening Night at the Contemporary!

Next Friday, January 22nd, the Contemporary Art Museum debuts its new exhibitions including the Main Galleries with Sean Landers: 1991- 1994, Improbable History and Stephen Prina: Modern Movie Pop, alongside a performance in The Front Room by Xavier Cha.

Installation is in full swing, the Contemporary staff is busy in preparations for an incredible new season. Performative, expressive, and literary, Sean Landers quixotic and elusive practice has since the early 1990s defied contemporary art world trends. For the artist’s first large scale survey in an American museum, this exhibition takes as its subject the artist’s early years in the studio, constructing a broad body of work that has long gamed on sincere attempts to map the boundaries of human-nature and the self. Alongside is a new exhibition by American artist Stephen Prina, who has long been considered a critical voice in contemporary art. For thirty years he has developed a singular and multifaceted practice that encompasses painting, installation, photography, sound, and film. Meanwhile, he has cultivated a rich and acclaimed career as composer and pop musician. Presenting Prina’s recent work in multiple media, alongside his music for the first time, Modern Movie Pop explores the relationship between artistic intentions and the afterlife of objects.

Join us opening night at 7:00 pm (6:00 pm for members!).

For more information on our upcoming exhibitions, please see our website at www.camstl.org

Image: Xavier Cha, Two-Way Mirror, 2009. 4 x 8 foot acrylic two way mirror, aluminum frame, professional clowns. Courtesy of the artist.