Pedestrian Project Opening B.J. Vogt April 2nd

Boots Contemporary Art Space

The Pedestrian Project is dedicated to public art in the city. Artists are asked to step outside of the white box to create an artwork for the audience that’s on the go. Taking advantage of the storefront window this year’s Pedestrian Project artist is B.J. Vogt.  Vogt will create several durational installations that mimic naturally dynamic landforms and systems.

“And yet, while bone allowed the complexification of the animal phylum to which we, as vertebrates, belong, it never forgot its mineral origins: it is the living material which most easily petrifies, that most readily crosses the threshold back into the world of rocks. (…) human populations began mineralizing again when they developed an urban exoskeleton: bricks of sun-dried clay became the building materials for their homes, which in turn surrounded and were surrounded by stone monuments and defensive walls.” - Manuel Da Landa, A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History

Please join us for an opening reception on April 2^nd from 6:30pm – 10:00pm

For more information about B.J. Vogt please visit- http://bjvogt.blogspot.com/

Boots Contemporary Art Space | 2307 Cherokee St. • St Louis, MO • 63118 • 314.269.7448

News and Updates on White Flag Projects Veterans

You may remember Craig Norton, a self-taught artist whose drawings and collages dealt with themes of social justice and racism, both current and historical. Norton’s solo exhibition at White Flag Projects in 2007 presented many of the same works currently on view at his most recent show at the Jim Kempner gallery in Chelsea, which was recognized in a New York Times review by art critic Roberta Smith.

Bill Smith, whose solo show at White Flag in September 2006 inaugurated the space, creates sculptural work that marries science and art. One of Smith’s kinetic sculptures featured in Pulse, an annual art fair held in New York City and Miami, was written up in The Huffington Post (and accompanied by a photograph! And video!) as a new media work that artist Erik Sanner would “remember for sure.”

Ian Weaver, who received his MFA from Washington University in 2008, recreates records of his family’s past by painting starkly realistic images of birth certificates and the like. His solo exhibition, Document, at the Saint Louis Art Museum contained the 10 paintings included in White Flag’s May 2008 show FastX2.

We’re pleased about the accomplishments of these local WFP veterans, and we’d like to wish continued success to all of our past artists.

For more details on past exhibitions, upcoming events, or our current exhibition Newtonland, visit www.white-flag-projects.org.

- Lynna Borden, Intern

Interview with Michelle Grabner (Part 4 of 4)

Michelle Grabner is an artist, curator, and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is also the curator of Newtonland, the current exhibition at White Flag Projects. I had the pleasure of interviewing Michelle on the morning of the show’s opening; this is the final of installment of that interview.

Lynna Borden: Did you and Brad make your piece specifically for the show and did you do it before or after you found the other artists?

Michelle Grabner: We’ve been making mobiles for some time and they always include some of my static silverpoint drawings. We like the contradiction between drawings comprised of silverpoint on panel and something vernacular, in this case, aluminum sections of bleacher seating, which implies a kind of spectatorship. So they’re formal, there’s mathematical proportion being played out and so forth, but there’s always this collision between something vernacular and recognizable in terms of material, and then degrees of abstraction.

So we’ve been working with those collisons for a long time. For the piece here, we were drawn to the structural space and the I-beams articulating the physical space and volume of White Flag Projects. Again, this work is more of a hanging screen than a mobile. What I really like about this piece and how it echoes the main space of White Flag is that you have these secessions of I-beams that horizontally dissect the volume of the space, and then you have the suspensions of these horizontal bleacher sections that echo the I-beams. I like to see it as a metaphorical gesture of flattening out the space that is White Flag Projects.

LB: It’s interesting that you talk about spectatorship because the piece really does change the way you view the rest of the show. You can only enter from the left side of the gallery and if you’re standing on the right, you’re forced to look through this kind of screen.

MG: Yep, it was funny because my concern was that it was going to be much more obtrusive or opaque. That the viewer wasn’t going to be able to penetrate it, but you’re right, to get a clear view of the work you do have to be in one space or the other. You can see work through the horizontal stretches of the bleachers, but not clearly, so you start playing with strikingly horizontals frames.

LB: Do you think that doing this show and working in this space will inform or influence what you do next?

MG: Well, I can tell you that it already has influenced my new work. In the past, the mobiles were true mobiles, where things were moving in multi-directions, balanced out and so forth. We’re working on a piece for New York, a show that will open in April that elaborates on the piece here though, it’s more suspended sculpture than mobile. There are also some architectural elements and references involved in the new works that come directly from working through Newtonland.

LB: Thank you so much for your time!

-Lynna Borden, Intern

Interview with Michelle Grabner (Part 2 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 is the second of four installments of that interview.

Lynna Borden: You’ve worked with a couple of the artists in this show before, Jan Van Der Ploeg and Elizabeth Bryant, what attracts you to their work?

Michelle Grabner: Good question. They have a really solid foundational practice. Jan is a classical abstract formalist—interested in elemental, two-dimensional vocabulary and known primarily for his wall paintings that explore architectural constructs: interior/exterior, public/private. There is a kind of great graphic sensibility with Jan’s work that is super compelling and I am always pulled to it.

Elizabeth Bryant is really interested in the negotiation of nature and culture, and you see that with her work presented here—a manufactured photograph of a landscape. Playing with an innocuous mass-produced vista, she pulls out shapes, looking for other types of topographical elements that get worked into this clichéd landscape. And she’s been doing that for a long time, looking at gardens, looking at different kinds of landscapes and integrating cultural objects into that. At what point do these integrations break? When do they create balance and harmony? I think the piece here does that with a sense of balance, movement, and physical and illusionary space.

Also, both Jan and Elizabeth are solid mid-career artists, which is something I am really committed to. They’ve really been slugging it out for years and all too often that doesn’t get rewarded in the larger contemporary art apparatus. The contemporary art landscape prefers the new and the young so I have a commitment, as a mid-career artist myself, to look at the work of those who have been around the block a few times.

LB: Did Jan create his piece specifically for this show? His other work is very different, especially in the way it’s bound to the wall.

MG: My guess is that his mobile is a prototype. It has this kind of sketchy potential—color and movement overlapping. When we were installing it, Matt was astute to notice that maybe it’s supposed to be this flat viewing plane that is at the heart of this work. Identifying where these colored circles are overlapping each other is at the core of this mobile. Jan has made objects before, but my guess is that this may be the first time he’s integrating movement in the form of a mobile. I look forward to seeing more from him in the future.

LB: When I was first looking at the artists in this show and thinking about their work, the one I had trouble relating was Jean Painlevé. Can you talk a bit about why you chose to include his videos and how they relate to the other works in the exhibition?

MG: Some of it has to do with my own love of his film making, which is vast, funny, and erudite. There’s fantasy and surrealism as well as delight in the formal investigation of movement, shape, balance, and color, which this show features. Even the straightest documentary- nature-oriented videos, the ones that are looking at nature in the most empirical way, still have a soundtrack or a narration that is not “good science.” So, there is this great subjectivity that he brings to the natural world exploiting our wonder. There are hyperbolic-like spaces that get articulated in the underwater creatures he films. But formally, the movement of some of those animals, how they are suspended and move through another realm, is formally exquisite.

LB: Yeah, after spending more time with the works and watching the videos, you can definitely see the similarities in movement and form but, at first, on the surface, I found it difficult to relate.

MG: That’s right and this is why I brought Elizabeth’s mobile into the exhibition, to give context to the nature videos with another piece that negotiates images or constructs of nature.

When we were installing the show, what I really liked was that you can see the show as three distinct spaces— and each space is shaped around an investigation of distinct formal elements and movements. You have the front space with Greg Bogin, and then the piece that I did with my husband Brad Killam that starts to make reference to text and has signifiers, and then there are the works that play with reflection and dynamic movement and so forth, and then you have the two works that pull suspensions of nature into the exhibition.

-Lynna Borden, Intern

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

TONIGHT OPENING of International Artist in Residence Wilhelm Neußer at Boots

Boots Contemporary Art Space is pleased to announce the 2009/2010 International Artist in Residence, Wilhelm Neußer.

BIRDHOUSEINCATTREE      February 19th – March  2010

GUY OVER SEES INSTALL AT BOOTS

Guy, Boots new gallery dog has been hanging out during the install of BIRDHOUSEINCATTREE, an exhibition by International Artist in Residence, Wilhelm Neußer. The space is looking good and is slowly being filled with paintings and sculptures.

For the last couple of days Neußer had been focusing on installing 2 sculptures in the front gallery space.  With high hopes Guy wanted to join in the efforts but “that whole not having thumbs thing” turn out to be a problem…. maybe next time Guy.

Hope everyone can join us this Friday on the 19^th for our opening reception. 6:30pm – 10:00pm.

For more information please visit our web site at http://bootscontemporaryartspace.org/blog/home/

About Wilhelm Neußer

Wilhelm Neußer lives and works in Cologne, Germany. He studied with the sculptor Harald Klingelhöller at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts.  His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions and in 2007 he was awarded the prestigious ZVAB Phönix art prize for emerging artists.

For more information on the artist visit: www.wilhelmneusser.de

Upcoming show International Artist in Residence Wilhelm Neußer

Boots Contemporary Art Space is pleased to announce the 2009/2010 International Artist in Residence, Wilhelm Neußer.

BIRDHOUSEINCATTREE      February 19th – March  2010

Opening reception February 19th 6:30pm- 10:00pm

For his upcoming show at Boots, opening February 19^th, 2010, Neußer embarks on an unusual expedition in the wild world of domesticated animals. With the notion of “bird house in cat tree” the artist presents the animal lover as architect, thereby revealing our desire to construct nature.

• 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

Enduring and Fading with Sara Greenberger Rafferty

The three artworks Sara Greenberger Rafferty has on view in Love & Theft at White Flag Projects all prominently feature 1970’s-era comedians (Valerie Harper, Vicki Lawrence, and Joyce Dewitt). While these works could be considered portraits, their goals are a far cry from what is traditionally expected of the genre.

The stand-up comedian is more than a random fixation for Greenberger Rafferty; rather, the aesthetics of stand-up comedy act as a metaphor for her artistic practice. Like the comic, her work stands alone; it’s not overly ornate or overwhelmingly large, and it’s accessible and human in scale while attempting to be engaging. Greenberger Rafferty’s process and choice of materials also complement the vulnerable stand-alone humanity of her works. She scans, prints, splashes, and rephotographs each image, lending the slick C-prints mounted to Plexiglas a somewhat abused, and discarded quality.

Like most appropriation art, what is interesting about these altered images is not only the present artwork but also the necessary reconsideration of the original object, and the effect Greenberger Raffterty’s strategy has had on it. The fluid stains on a Vicki Lawrence photograph that originally appeared on the 1972 album cover for The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, make Lawrence look like a demonic teenage boy. In contrast, Valerie Harper turns both gory and rain-soaked, longingly gazing to the right as if searching, and Joyce Dewitt transforms into a spectral, skeletal floating head.

Greenberger Rafferty’s pieces confer a range of emotional suggestion – from sadness to isolation, failure to obscurity. Juxtaposing these apparent sentiments against the backdrop of comedy strikes an oppositional note that allows the images to capture both the viewer’s visual and emotional attention. Greenberger Rafferty’s work in Love & Theft brings faded celebrities back into view and allows us to witness their slow dissolve.

Love & Theft will remain on view at White Flag Projects until Saturday, February 13. For more details on the exhibition and other events at White Flag Projects, visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.

-Lynna Borden, Intern