We’re expecting Garth’s show here at White Flag to provoke a lot of substantive conversation, which you can be part of when it opens on Saturday, September 11 from 7-10 pm. It will be added to Weiser’s impressive record of exhibitions elsewhere, including one-person shows at Casey Kaplan in New York and Altman Siegel Gallery in San Francisco, in addition to serious group shows like “The Triumph of Painting; Abstract America,” at the Saatchi Gallery, London, and “Greater New York,” at PS1 MoMA, New York. Good for him, good for us, good for anyone else who decides to come by and see it. More updates on the installation next week.

On July 29, 2010, artist Juan William Chávez will lead a performance
for the grand opening of the Crown Square in Old North St. Louis.  The
performance is a snow cone stand in which Chavez will ask members of
the audience to create a drawing in exchange for a snow cone. In
addition, Chavez will incorporate snow cone drawings that were created
during a workshop with children from the Old North neighborhood.
Chávez worked with education and program consultant, Kathryn
Adamchick, to create a workshop that focused on snow cone culture and
its relationship to the community. The children viewed a slide show of
various snow cones from cultures around the world. After they finished
examining unfamiliar flavors and seemingly strange practices, like
sprinkling chili powder on a snow cone or topping it with kidney
beans, they had an opportunity to design their own snow cone flavors.
The workshop concluded with the children sampling some of the exotic
fruits and flavors they saw in the slide show such as fresh mango,
guava juice, and hot pepper jelly. The workshop took place at the Urban Studio Café.

Who - Juan William Chavez, artist
What - Performance - OLD NORTH SNOW CONE: crushed ice culture Grand
opening of the Crown Square in Old North St. Louis.
When - July 29, 2010 4-8 p.m.
Where - Old North St. Louis- 2600-2700 bocks of N. 14th Street
Why - For the grand opening of the Crown Square

The Institute for the Perpetuation of Imaginal Processes is assembled from Fuller’s virtuosity of set design, taking cues from theater production to create moments of static cinema. Entering into Fuller’s Institute, the exhibition begins with a contemporary, sci-fi slab of the natural world. Titled As it is, this full-scale diorama displays taxidermy forest animals inhabiting their portion of an astro-turfed earth, roaming at ease under the cover of a starry and geodesic sky. What, at first, may seem akin to the tradition of a natural history museum, is Fuller re-appropriating the conventions of historicizing presentation. Creating this fantastical version of the natural world, Fuller causes the audience to conjure up a story of their own. As it is revives the notion of the frontier, claiming its existence within our own imaginations.

Through the templates of diorama and performance, Fuller aims to preserve the storytelling apparatus, creating a platform for its preservation and transformation. His technique facilitates a self-analytical, self-historicizing reaction – where we can see ourselves more readily from the outside, to realize the ways in which we define our world, the interconnectedness of our ideas, and ways we relate to one another. The Institute for the Perpetuation of Imaginal Processes is on view at the Contemporary until its closing date August 8, 2010. Come by and visit The Institute.

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 >>

stylus: a project by ann hamilton opens tonight at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts. Ann Hamilton will be present for the reception that runs from 5-9pm and is free and open to the public.

Hamilton, with the collaboration of Composer and Sound Designer Shahrokh Yadegari, has installed stylus, a multimedia exhibition that works in harmony with the Pulitzer’s Tadao Ando building.  The installation incorporates, among other things, video projections, jumping beans, taxidermy birds, an opera singer, over five hundred paper hands and church bell speakers, which sound from the Pulitzer’s rooftop. Have a look-see at a Disklavier in the Lower Gallery:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Visitors will have a chance to play that player piano in a most unusual way, and there will be other opportunities to participate in stylus. You can phone a google voice account and leave a message that may be weaved into the sound system of the building. You can wave to your friends while wearing a pair of your favorite paper hands. And as you arrive this evening, you can wave back to a hand the size of a building (you’ll know when you get there).

These factors add up to an immersing sensory experience, in which visitors are free to listen or participate in exercises of call and response.

From the Pulitzer’s website:

“The installation asks the following questions: How do we communicate? What external forces act upon or inhibit our collective need for social contact and response? How are relationships enacted (or not enacted) by the architectural spaces we inhabit?”

For more information, please visit www.pulitzerarts.org.

While Brandon Anschultz was preparing for his upcoming show at Laumeier Sculpture Park, I was lucky enough to observe the construction (or deconstruction) of what I consider to be one of his most intriguing pieces—Approximately 1350 hours of painting and 2 hours of wood chipping. While I waited with Anschultz for the wood chipper to arrive at Laumeier, we discussed his show, and specifically the piece he was working on that day.

I couldn’t hide my horrified expression when I saw the back of his truck piled high with paintings, all sawed into five inch strips, in preparation for their demise. He showed me a painting that had been exhibited in New York, laid the pieces on the ground, shrugged his shoulders and suggested that he actually preferred it sawed apart. I asked why he was destroying work that he liked. “It’s just part of the process,” he replied. That’s when I began to understand that with Anschultz’s work, the process is as important as the finished product.

When he started up the wood chipper and began feeding his paintings into it one strip at a time, I snapped a few pictures. I couldn’t watch for long—it almost seemed intrusive for me to witness simultaneously the destruction of past work and the creation of new work.

If you would like to view the finished work, Approximately 1350 hours of painting and 2 hours of wood chipping, and meet the artist, attend the opening reception of Stick Around for Joy on Friday, June 11 from 6-8 p.m. at Laumeier’s Indoor Galleries.

— Rebecca Lee, Laumeier Intern

Brandon Anschultz: Stick Around for Joy, runs from June 11-September 26, 2010 at Laumeier Sculpture Park.

Kathryn Adamchick, an Art/Food organizer, talks about how Art/Food relates to the work of Gordon Matta-Clark and a 1971 pig roast under the Brooklyn Bridge.

As part of the Contemporary’s “Homegrown Summer,” and to celebrate the closing of the Pulitzer’s Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark, the two institutions will together host Art/Food tomorrow, June 5, from 1-4pm. For full event details, please visit our event page.

To get an idea of how this multi-layered event came together, I interviewed one of the key organizers, Anna Poss, Administrative Assistant to the Departments of Curatorial and Community Engagement at the Pulitzer.

AB: What has your role been for Art/Food?

AP: I have been working with Kathryn Adamchick, an independent art education consultant, and Alex Elmestad, from Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, in developing and planning this event. We wanted to create a collaborative event that represented the themes of our respective shows. For the Contemporary and their Great Rivers Biennial, the goal is to feature local and sustainable food. For the Pulitzer, the aim of the event is to incorporate the ideals of Gordon Matta-Clark from his restaurant Food and his performance pieces that incorporated food, like the pig roast he had under the Brooklyn Bridge. Food and art both have this amazing capability of bringing people together from diverse backgrounds and uniting them. Art/Food really highlights this connection and celebrates it in a way that is rarely done.

AB: What sparked the partnership between the Contemporary and the Pulitzer for this event?

AP: We are neighboring arts institutions, so it only seems natural to combine our forces to create an event for our publics and the neighborhood.

AB: Why five dollars or flour, oil and vinegar as suggested donations?

AP: We are suggesting that people bring donations in for St. Louis University’s Campus Kitchen because their goal is to serve the community through food. They provide meals to people who do not have regular access to them. Their mission and goals align with what we are trying to accomplish with this event.

We want this event to be accessible to everyone, so we wanted to give people the option of donating something besides money. Jenny Bird, the director of Campus Kitchen, gave us a list of items they have a need for and flour, oil, and vinegar were on the list. Kathryn Adamchick had this really great idea of these items relating to alchemy in that they are basic items used to transform dishes. With that thought, we were able to make a connection to the show at the Pulitzer.

AB: What is significant about the gumbo and roasted pig being served?

The gumbo we are serving comes from Gordon Matta-Clark’s personal recipe that was used at Food. Jane Crawford, his widow, is being so gracious in letting us recreate and serve it. Gordon Matta-Clark roasted a whole pig (and made 500 sandwiches from it!) under the Brooklyn Bridge and made a film about the event. Our roasted pig from Kendrick’s is a homage to that.

AB: What are some other dishes that will be dished out?

AP: We will have a pasta salad and two vegetable dishes made from local produce. The chefs from Five, Monarch, and Herbie’s Vintage 72 have generously donated their time in making these original dishes for us. Fitz’s has donated root beer and Mountain Valley is donating water. The Garage Brewer’s Society of St. Louis will be on hand to give out samples of micro-brewed beers.

AB: What activity are you particularly excited about?

AP: People who attend Art/Food can create s’mores in solar powered ovens from Earthways. Environmentally friendly deliciousness? Yes, please!

Monarch is my favorite restaurant, so I beyond thrilled to have them be a part of this event. People will probably find me at their station trying to get seconds!

Slow Rocket Urban Farm talk about their urban farm in South St. Louis. They will give a presentation on their work during Art/Food.

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.

Photo by Ronald Krone

FRAN is  (Tom Buescher, Erin Gulley, and Merv Schrock) and Alex Mutrux & Carol Crudden as back  up. The ladies on the stairs: Connie Su & Mel Trad. Video by Brett Williams

Photo by Mamie Lane                                          Photo by Ronald Krone

Holy Trinity Catholic School students make a video with 2010 Whitney Biennial winner Theaster Gates about what they want to see in their neighborhood. Gates’ exhibition Dry Bones and Other Parables from the North will open this Saturday as part of the Transformation Project Walk.

Join the Pulitzer this Saturday, May 15, for the Transformation Project Walk, the grand finale to the Transformation projects. Since last fall, the Pulitzer has been implementing community programs in relation to the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, which combine art, social engagement and the urban landscape. On Saturday, these programs will showcase their achievements at various sites in Grand Center and the neighborhood of Hyde Park. For a full description of this event, visit the Pulitzer’s website.

Robert Longyear spray paints a battered trashcan inside the Woolworth Building. The St. Louis-based artist collected various objects around Grand Center to be incorporated into his show for Transformation. For an explanation on this exhibition, visit the Urban Evolution blog.