Saint Louis Art Map

Your guide to the visual arts in St. Louis.

Tommy Hartung & Uri Aran

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White Flag Projects is preparing for the launch of a new exhibition, Tommy Hartung & Uri Aran. Both artists are well known in the New York art scene and have had their work included in both solo and group exhibitions. Although the two have collaborated for years, this will be their first exhibition together. Hartung and Aran come from unique backgrounds and influences, but their work shares a personal nature and a surreal, abstract quality.

Hartung currently lives and works in Queens, where he creates his pieces in his basement studio. He builds his sets in his living space, from household objects, mundane materials, and any other “rejectamenta” he is drawn to. Hartung’s chosen media are stop-motion animation and sculpture. In contrast to the current trend of smooth, computer-generated animation, Hartung utilizes his handcrafted props and their intentionally un-lifelike movements. Correspondingly, he makes use of traditional filming techniques from the pre-CGI era. He is drawn to what he calls “dead cinema” – most of the moving objects in his film are not alive. He is not interested in describing a real or lifelike situation, but in creating unbelievable characters and discovering what meaning can be created through them. His works draw on other media, taking a story or theme and filtering it through the lens of the artist’s reactions and ideas about an object or setting. The films are personal, marked indelibly by Hartung’s persona and environment, but address universal, vaguely political topics like imperialism, cultural equity, and conquest.

Hartung’s 2009 film Ascent of Man was inspired by a 1973 BBC documentary about human development, written and narrated by Jacob Bronowski. Hartung combined footage from the original with his own stop-motion animation. The original documentary is linear and didactic, but Hartung’s film removes any markers of temporal specificity and emphasizes the “dramaturgical, visual and aural cues” Bronowski used to create his narrative of the ascendant arc of human evolution. The resulting film is a poetic and mysterious interpretation of humanity that was exhibited by White Flag Projects in 2011 and recently purchased by MoMA.

Aran is an Israeli-born artist currently living and working in New York. He works in video, drawing, painting, monotype, and sculpture. Like Hartung, Aran utilizes familiar objects in his work in a manner that resists easy interpretation. Where Hartung’s work takes its initial cue from other pieces of literature and film, Aran’s work seems to take its cue from an unknown system of meaning. Both artists are interested in exploring meaning and how it is created, and Aran does so through arbitrariness and investigating how arbitrarily chosen objects can gain or suggest meaning. In contrast to Hartung’s preference for stop-motion, Aran utilizes live action and directs his human actors. If Hartung draws his techniques from classic cinema, Aran draws his from Dada and Surrealism, such as repetition, non sequitur, and visual incongruity. His films often feature his actors repeating sentiments or clichés in exhausting permutations that seem to hint at a new meaning that transcends literal context. Aran also uses repeated shapes and things (circles, spheres, cookies, flames, coconuts) in his work. The repetition of these absurd elements implies a set of rules or reasons that the viewer does not have access to. Aran’s work is currently on view at Gavin Brown’s enterprise where his solo show will open January 14.

Aran’s 2008 piece Untitled(Bus) features cue balls stuck with glaze to a tabletop and labeled “BUS” with short strips of embossing tape. The deceptively simple arrangement seems haphazard yet deliberate, answering to some unknown logic that feels just out of reach to the viewer. The balls and the spilled liquid almost but not quite connect to create a narrative. The use of contrasting materials and forms is characteristic of Aran’s work, as is the careful composition. His piece “Dogs and Cats” utilizes coconuts and a cup and saucer; the roughness of the coconut contrasts sharply with the smoothness of the dishes. Aran’s use of domestic objects and familiar words serves as an investigation into how and why these familiar objects and words suggest meaning to and strike a chord with the viewer.

Tommy Hartung & Uri Aran will open with a reception from 6-8 PM on Thursday, January 19 and will remain on view until February 18, 2012. For more information on this exhibit and other upcoming events at White Flag, please visit www.whiteflagprojects.org.

(1/12/12 by Stephanie Trimboli, Intern)

Rivane Neuenschwander Events Oct. 8 & 9

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Installation view from Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other, New Museum, New York, 2010. Foreground: Rain Rains (2002).

Installation view from Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other, New Museum, New York, 2010. Foreground: Rain Rains (2002).

Brazilian conceptual artist Rivane Neuenschwander will discuss her work with Richard Flood, chief curator of the New Museum in New York, at 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 9, in Steinberg Auditorium.

The dialogue is held in conjunction with Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other, the artist’s first major midcareer survey, which opens at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 8. Covering a decade of her work, the exhibition explores Neuenschwander’s wide-ranging interdisciplinary practice, which merges painting, photography, film, sculpture, installation and participatory action.

“It is Neuenschwander’s extravagant disregard for artistic categories that makes her work so perfectly tempered for this time,” says Flood, who organized the exhibition, which opened at the New Museum last June. “In this exhibition, much of the art is created by the public, and much of what isn’t made by the public is clearly dedicated to the public.”

A Day Like Any Other remains on view at the Kemper Art Museum through Jan. 10. Other related events will include a concert of Brazilian popular music by the St. Louis band Samba Bom (Oct. 29), a lecture by art historian Monica Amor (Nov.8) the Contemporary Brazilian Film Festival (Dec. 7-9), presented at the Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar Blvd. In addition, the museum will host a pair of special curator-led tours, each lasting approximately one hour, Oct. 29 and Jan. 7.

Anschultz Discovers the Joy of Wood Chipping

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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.

Opening Night at the Contemporary!

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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.

Xavier Cha, Two-Way Mirror, 2009.

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.

Boots Fall Opening Exhibition – Theaster Gates

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Opening reception: Friday, September 18th – 6:30 – 10pm

photo: Sara Pooley

photo: Sara Pooley

Holiness: In 3 Parts, a solo exhibition at Boots will give Theaster an opportunity to work through ideas surrounding the psychic space of the back yard. On opening night, with help from his performance ensemble, The Black Monks of Mississippi, Gates will bring charismatic structures of the black church into brief conversation with the formalities of City Planning Policy.

Performance will begin at 7:42 and last till 8:53

Part 1: The Westside Piece (Front Space) 7:42- 7:52 (Theaster and possibly Orron Kenyatta -poet)

Part 2: The Glorious Picnic (Front of the back) 7:52- 8:40 (Black Monks of Mississippi)

Part 3: Stairwell to heaven and Other things from my backyard (Back of the back Space) 8:40-8:53 (Monastic Funk Band)

“Holiness in three parts could be thought of in the following way: Heaven, Hood and the City – using sculptural objects made from things in my backyard, we will move between these three loosely prescribed categories. With “The City” representing hell and the hood being somewhere between paradise and the underworld, I hope to consider three different presentation formats, in three different parts of the space in what would appear to be a Joseph Beuys styled performance that uses the black religious form to deliver thoughts on new urbanism, slave labor via the embodiment of Dave the slave potter and the history of the racialized bodythrough performance. Holiness in three parts is literally a trinity of confusion and urban rumination. Lots of stones will be left unturned, but those turned will get a good shining”

Theaster Gates

Tea Shack- photo by Sarah Poole

Tea Shack- photo by Sara Pooley

about Theaster Gates

Sculptor and Performance Artist, Theaster Gates works with the sacred city found just below its forgotten and often abandoned exterior. With parts of old buildings and visions of grand rehab projects, Gates, a believer in the possibility of place, begins to release some of the resonate beauty of the city’s under belly in a way that is both contemplative and frenetic.

for more info on Theaster Gates click on the link

Coming soon to Boots…

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Relation-Chute: Meditations on My Slaughter
Asma Kazmi

Relation-Chute is a platform for transdisciplinary action and the accumulation of materials, people, and ideas. By documenting her training in zabiha slaughter (slaughter in the method prescribed by Islamic law), the artist attempts to complicate the ever-growing distance between the consumption of meat, religious observance, and the reality of death. The project’s current form is a website which can be viewed here.

BootsRelation-Chute: Meditations on My Slaughter at Boots Contemporary Art Space will focus on collapsing the distance that the Relation-Chute website assumes between a viewer and an image. The exhibit is a manifold encounter, realized through bringing a community of voices under one roof to participate in an exchange which will happen in words and beyond words, through shared inhabited time and space.

The artist, Asma Kazmi, was born in Pakistan and studied at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited and included in collections such as The Contemporary Art Museum in St Louis, Gallery 400, University of Illinois in Chicago, Boston Under Ground Film Festival, Balagan Film and Video Series, Women In Film & Video/New England, and the MassArt Film Society.

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