Catching up with the Contemporary
http://www.vimeo.com/8063417Alex Elmestad, a graduate research assistant from University of Missouri–St. Louis, describes new media he’s working on at Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
Catching up with Boots
Here on Saint Louis Art Map, we’re launching a video series, “Catching up with ______,” in which I visit St. Louis Art Map spaces and ask people there, “What have you been working on?”
Let us begin with words from Nicholas Kania, an intern at Boots Contemporary Art Space.
http://www.vimeo.com/8084947Nicholas Kania, an intern at Boots Contemporary Art Space, describes recent art shows he’s worked on at Boots.
Art Map now on Facebook
Anyone on Facebook can now get new Saint Louis Art Map posts delivered right to your news feed – just CLICK HERE and become a fan of the Saint Louis Art Map blog’s page.
“Destroy All Monsters is a hard way of life.”
Destroy All Monsters Opens Saturday 9/19, 7-10 PM
Formed at a house party in 1973, Destroy All Monsters was originally equal parts The Stooges, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Velvet Underground, and Sci-Fi B-movie shtick. The band’s music was accompanied by artwork, performances and films, as well as a self-titled zine of drawings, prints, and collages inspired by sci-fi movies, underground music, and iconic elements of 1960s counterculture as filtered through to the collective’s industrial Midwestern hometown of Detroit, Michigan. In 1995, the original collective of Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, and Jim Shaw reunited, and have been in a lot of shows since then, including the 2002 Whitney Biennial, and Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 at the MCA Chicago.
Destroy All Monsters: Hungry for Death opens Saturday, September 19 from 7 to 10 PM, at White Flag Projects. We’re going to have a public conversation with curators James Hoff and Cary Loren that Sunday afternoon, September 20 at 2 PM.
In 1976 Mike Kelley wrote about DAM for Destroy All Monsters Magazine:
WHAT DESTROY ALL MONSTERS MEANS TO ME
The first point to make is: Destroy All Monsters is not a band. Our main intention is to be engaged in an activity that provides an instantaneous and powerful cleansing noise. We are not interested in making music. A one-to-one relationship is set up, whereby each action is answered by a growling response, like that produced by poking an animal with a stick, or crossing a threshold and setting off an alarm. Once in motion, this response can go on regardless of the actions of the initiator. To produce something, like a sound, and then have it mature enough to keep going without your assistance causes a pleasant sensation – one of creation. Destroy All Monsters is therapeutic. Destroy All Monsters can be a sedative, a pleasantly gurgling muzak to file the rough edges off, an emotion-deadening machine repetition setting up a rhythm for you to live more easily by. Destroy All Monsters can be electro-shock therapy to wake you up when you slip into a coma. It can blow away the cloud with speed and volume and then move away into a rarified atmosphere where each hum in an inaudible mess becomes more clear and an inaudible mess in itself. Yes, Destroy All Monsters does all this, and more. It’s good American physical work to do something over and over again, factory-style. It makes you sweat the poisons out of your system. It’s hard to push a button and have to sit there and listen to it. You can have a nervous breakdown being an air-traffic controller, having the responsibility of choosing which button to push on the drum box. Destroy All Monsters is a hard way of life. It’s a backwards battle toward a cliff that goes down into chaos and silence. But, it’s a rare treat to be involved in the Destroy All Monsters scene. It’s so esoteric, or so you think. Really, it’s easy, just like staying alive. Lastly, Destroy All Monsters is a call for a new therapeutic popular music. I’m sure, by now, everyone realizes the importance of popularization, of mass-production, of the easing of the lives of as many people as possible. Why not mass produce the Destroy All Monsters achievement? Everyone should pump out Monstrous, destructive Destroy All Monsters black noise. If everyone let their aggressions voice themselves in such sound there 1) wouldn’t be any need for popular entertainment of any kind, and 2) wouldn’t be anything – just an existence of total comfort. I told you so. Let us show you too.
http://www.whiteflagprojects.org/
New Sculpture at Laumeier
I woke up the other day and realized that an entire summer had whisked by in what seemed like a good night’s sleep. Perhaps it was the uncharacteristically great weather or maybe the litany of projects and events that made June, July and August blow right on by. Nevertheless, fall is fast approaching and I’d like to share a bit about two recent acquisitions to the Laumeier landscape and remind you about our upcoming fall exhibition.
The newest sculpture in Laumeier’s collection is Donut No. 3 (2002) by Fletcher Benton. Sited in the Children’s Sculpture Garden, Donut is a tasty visual treat for visitors of all ages. Benton was recently recognized by the International Sculpture Center with a lifetime achievement award and this piece showcases has mastery of materials and aesthetics.
Over the summer, Laumeier secured the loan of a fabulous sculpture by Cosimo Cavallaro. Knots (1996) tangles up perceptions with contorted steel that mimics string or noodles in a mystifying dance of form and mass.
You can visit Laumeier everyday between 8AM and sunset to see the new works by Benton and Cavallaro and more than 70 other sculptures. A visit in October will provide another opportunity for contrasts.
Roberley Bell: Inside Out which opens at 6PM on October 9, 2009 and continues through January 10, 2010 presents the vibrant colors of a fluorescent springtime and the juxtaposition of real and man-made natural objects and specimens during those neutral hued days of autumn and winter.
Visit Laumeier and be inspired.
A Reaction to “private (dis)play”
Walking with a group of friends to see the opening of the new exhibition at the Center of Creative Arts (COCA), private (dis)play, I had no idea what to expect. The concept sounded novel: exhibit pages from artists’ notebooks to gain an 
understanding of their inner lives, but I wondered how such an idea might be implemented effectively. After all, I thought as I jumped over the puddles of slush covering the unlit streets of University City, notebook pages alone are not very interesting.
As we entered the building and made our way to the exhibition room, I thought my worst fears were confirmed. The show was housed in a white exhibition space, and the nature of the art being shown made for a fairly drab appearance. Reluctantly I began to circle my way around the space, glancing at the notebooks and sheets of paper pinned and encased in plastic along the walls. Though the exhibit emphasized the sketchbook component of private work, the pieces took many forms. In addition to white sketchbook pages, the show housed larger sheets of paper with drawings done in pen, video monitors displaying digital animatics, lined sheets with watercolor, and even a few collages.
After I had perused through the gallery for a few minutes one of the curators, Jamie Adams, began to speak.
“Hello”
Welcome to a new blog initiative, started by a group of non-profit visual arts institutions in St. Louis, Missouri. We hope this becomes your favorite site for information and critical discussion about the arts in our city. You should bookmark it now.
This is just the beginning, and we’d love to hear suggestions from you. Is there something you want to hear about? Someone you want to hear from? Want to be a guest blogger and write posts yourself? Leave your ideas in the comments!
