Although full of witty quips as David Fahrenthold examined the stimulative prospects that each artist has, he failed to acknowledge that most of this money will most likely go towards institutions that surround the arts, not the artists themselves. Individual grants to artists were a casualty of the culture wars in the early 90′s, and as it stands funding largely goes to organizations with only a few exceptions (Literature Fellowships among them). 

As tragic as it is that individual grants for artists are not a feasible reality, the reality is that artists are only a small part of the art world that needs economic support right now. Almost all art museums across the country have hiring freezes right now and are in danger of downsizing. The sources that these institutions rely on –their own endowment, or that of a contributing foundation– are all seriously lacking this financial year, leaving museums few options. The near closing of MOCA this past fall, the selling off of the Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum collection, The Getty’s recent announcement to cut 25% of their fiscal budget for the coming year, and even Damien Hirst’s decision to lay off his London workshop staff  by nearly half, are all examples of the economy’s effect on the institutions and the hundreds and thousands of employees that run the art world. To a certain extent Fahrenthold is right, controversial art is the best stimulus investment. But it won’t matter if no one is around to show it.

The symposium’s discussion coincides well with a talk happening here in DC,  6:30-8pm Tuesday, March 3 at the Goethe-Institut which will discuss Non-Profit Visual Arts Organizations, how alternative spaces have been affected by the culture wars and their place in the art world, and what lies ahead for them in the future. The talk is part of Transformer Gallery‘s Framework series and comes at a really opportune time with a new administration in town that emphasizes supporting the arts. 

Another interesting thing I’m seeing is the imagining of the fall of the Israeli government played out in various media. I suppose it’s not that surprising considering the political climate in the middle east at the moment. However I find it interesting that all of these works seem to be emerging around the same time, and with something as specific as imagining what the fall of their government will be like in 20-30 years. 

What else is coming, you ask? Several awesome commissioned works at the New Museum! Really cool stuff at the Chelsea galleries. And let’s not forget, there’s a lot going on here in DC as well. Today the Louise Bourgeois retrospective opens at the Hirshhorn, the Morandi retrospective opened last week at The Phillips Collection, and there’s plenty of fare at our local galleries. Certainly enough to keep me busy.

I was shocked, taken aback, my jaw dropped. Had they just subversively made a commentary on the type of news that is usually featured on local news channels? Sensationalist happenings which are of little importance, serving little purpose outside of itself. I wouldn’t put it past NPR to do such a thing. Really, only makes me love them more.

Preoccupied with repetition, cycles, and time and it has been unnerving. It has paralyzed me within a stage between stages wherein I have been unable to move beyond the recognition of any given thought. I haven’t had a good enough grasp on these thoughts to write about any of them and play with them in that way. In a similar fashion, I have seen art since last I wrote about hearing Lawrence Weiner speak, but have been unable to talk about said art, just see it and know it. But alas, it has been too long.

A recent show at G Fine Art featuring two artists was too random and had no collective identity. One painter’s works were either classically allegorical or stereotypically textural and symboled. The other artist’s works were unnecessarily sexual and without even being explicitly so. Were they boobs or artichokes? I guess we’ll never know.

At Irvine nothing spectacular, but certainly much better than the offering at G Fine Art. Aspect: Ratio 1 is the name of the show up there and it all involves small paintings. Interesting (sort of) because it shows a DC representation of a larger trend, that of the return to smaller works. The works themselves were hit or miss, but of course the real trouble was (and always is) finding a work that you can talk about. 

Exhibit A: Edward del Rosario’s works just keep knocking my socks off. Not that he’s ever-producing them (or that I’ve seen his work before this), but rather that every time I look at them I’m like man. Please stop wowing me. Seriously. The two works up in the show are “Boomerang” and “Nunchaku,” paintings each depicting a young unassigned ethnic girl wielding her weapon of choice, i.e. the respective titles. These weapons are technologically rudimentary and outdated as well as objects that have been absorbed into our culture almost farcically. How many cartoon plots have involved a boomerang taking out the bad guy, or when was the last time you heard a ninja reference including some mention of nun-chucks? I make my point.

The weapons then are merely decorative, perhaps further demonstrated by the spellings of the titles which don’t correctly spell out the names but rather allude to them in playfully poetic ways (on the website the title of “Boomerang” is spelled several ways, incorrectly and correctly. I am unsure which style of spelling is intended). The canvases themselves are rather sterile, containing nothing other than these ethnically indeterminate girls armed with useless and outdated weapons, and are even completely barren of shadows. Rosario has stripped away the elements of optical illusion which arm painting with its power to seduce and transport, leaving it vulnerable as a two-dimensional object which can only represent flatness. The girls’ dress is neutral in the sense that neither particularly stands out. The dresses themselves are disarming because they are so familiar and common, containing decorative patterns that have been long accepted and integrated into the visual world. However, these familiar designs are not on contemporary, traditional dress but rather on what vaguely appears to be something foreign or of an era foregone. The familiarity of the patterns eases any potential tension that might be felt because of the foreign aspects.

In this way Rosario seeks to disarm step by step. By placing the girls in a sterile, open environment he’s placing them out in front as if to be judged independent of outside factors so as not to be compared with anything else. He then arms them to defend themselves against their critics, but does so with weapons that are primitive. One has to ask if he’s doing this to set them up for failure, or rather to say that there is no need for them to defend themselves. This latter possibility seems all the more true when considering their surroundings. The judgments of criticism rely upon the fact that everything is relative to everything else, and therefore one’s judgments are reached through comparison. The girls’ ethnicity and dress is also fascinating, largely because it’s hard to precisely pin it down. The patterns are recognizable to our American sensibilities. Rosario made a brilliant move there, for decoration is often above criticism in ways that art is not. The universality of ethnicity, or perhaps even culture is possibly being alluded to––and what politically is more disarming than that? If race or national identity is something universal, how can one wage war against the other? Perhaps it’s a leap, but I see his works as a meditation on the disarmament of all kinds: political, aesthetic, prejudicial, preconceptions, stereotypes, nationalism––ah, I’m sure the list could go on. There were others I liked at Irvine, but I’ll have to save that for another time.

He is a man who speaks plainly and means what he says. I came to understand that he speaks very literally and does not speak in suggestions or implications, and he also practices this in his artwork.  Most artists have to talk about their art in order to explain the symbolism behind the artwork, whereas Weiner seems to do it to get people to realize there is no symbolism behind it and that it is what it is. When you consider that he picked the medium of language because he felt it was something that no one had to learn in order to understand, it becomes somewhat ironic that he still seems obligated, out of necessity, to explain how to understand his work. 

Somewhat surly he kind of blew over the predictable questions that the curator had prepared and would quickly answer them but use each question as a jump off point into interesting explorations of his thoughts on art. When asked about his relationship with Count Panza, the collector who donated a portion of his collection to the Hirshhorn (which is currently on view) including a few Weiners, he briefly told of how they met and have continued to be friends. But when the Hirshhorn’s curator tried to categorize Count Panza as a collector who truly loves art and collecting, Weiner countered by saying that yes, he is very passionate but above all he is a business man, involved in real estate and investments and all of those things, and he simply very early on recognized that art is something that is used. 

This was something that he came back to several times, the idea of art as a thing that has a use in society. Weiner categorized the business man’s recognition of such use as a pragmatic decision for them, although a slightly more abstracted one. In Count Panza’s case he has nothing to gain monetarily from his collection because rather than selling it, he has donated it to a cultural institution, and thus his recognition of “use” has more to do with recognizing cultural capital and value and whatever purpose that serves him. This is not to say that the only collectors out there are like this; on the contrary, many collectors buy art like its real estate, flip it and sell it at a profit after owning it for awhile. 

Regardless, Weiner meant more about the use of art than this. It is an object within a culture that is just as functional as the car or toothbrush that you buy, not necessarily because everyone uses it daily or even come into contact with it in a lifetime, but because art serves to present new logic systems which are eventually absorbed within a society. 

An audience member asked him about his art as philosophy, adding that she felt that contemporary art generally seems more like philosophy than art, to which Weiner replied that Giotto made just as many philosophical choices about how to present ideas and concepts to his contemporaries as do the artists working today. Further characterizing what contemporary art is he said that art is something that is put out into the world and, if it is good, it floats around, knocking into things, banging back and forth until it slowly floats down and settles onto a table, and then it is part of art history. Art as the presentation of ideas that are given up as an offering to its public to chew on and either embrace or reject. The pieces which are reacted to violently, either positively or negatively, are the ones that are significant to the time, and what then becomes markers of an era. Weiner seems interested in art history, although only marginally precisely because the objects of history no longer have anything to do with now, other than being an indicator of what was. As a concept it’s sort of a kick in the face to all those who study it, but at the same time it’s impossible to ever really know a time other than your own. I think this is best exemplified in culture; it is near impossible to completely assimilate into another culture other than your own because different ideals about how best to live  have been emphasized. Not having grown up in that societal framework with its own logic system leaves one studying and appreciating, but not necessarily identifying with those beliefs.

One last point that he made was that art already asks a lot of people because in a way it asks them to give up their dreams. This is something that I’ve started to write about, but it was still one of the most unsettling things I heard that evening.

I liked it precisely because it was this conversational structure which made the concepts palatable for those not following the latest in art theory, and I think it acknowledges the language/narrative based society that we live in. I like Weiner’s work but he definitely comes at it from a totally different angle–his works seem more interested in words as words, as materials, and within that a commentary on art and artmaking emerges. 

I was unaware before I went exploring on Book Works that Gillick wrote fiction, and while I’m normally skeptical of experimental writing or these small indie publishers (because I think often different for the sake of different is the result), I’m intrigued by Gillick’s style and approach to narrative and think it could be enjoyable and illuminating. And besides, if all else fails at least the book is a first edition.

A description for Literally No Place: 

Three characters return to a desert commune to tell three stories. Each one continuing until they reach a solution or a dilemma. Developing narratives that could be described as significant and marginal simultaneously. Addressing the urban/non-urban, the border zone and the locations of pre/post-presentation. 

Tin mining, ‘Hotel California’ and throwing spoons across bars in Tokyo all contribute to a text that indicates the collapses inherent in any attempt to pin down the shifting state of our urban structures. Literally No Place  was outlined during a public presentation in Brussels for the exhibition ‘Indiscipline’ in 2000. That improvised speech created the basis of this book, which attempts to address how changes in concepts of conscience and ethics have left their trace in the built world. 

Seriously, let’s think about this one for a minute. The art object is supposed to be priceless, a cultural object that holds meaning and value beyond its material’s inherent costs, one that is revered and conserved in art museums. So, then it’s made more accessible through housewares, but the art object itself isn’t made more accessible, it’s the artists’ name attached to some knick-knack that sort of represents their life’s work. And….are you supposed to use it according to its function?  One of my favorites is the rug by Judy Ledgerwood on sale for a cool $5000. Sure, if I had tons of cash to throw around I might buy it, but I’m not sure I could validate walking on it after spending that much money on a rug. Call me crazy, but I think I prefer limited edition prints.

Renaissance Society's press release

I’d always dreamed of bartering, imagining I would haggle with a gypsy woman from the old country in some distant flea market. Seeing my opportunity to live that fantasy, I raced to the gallery. It was the last day of the project and the gallery was about to close. Not having enough time to sift through my belongings in search of something meaningful or worthy of trading, I grabbed odds and ends things that I knew I wouldn’t miss. I had two books, picked up from a library give-away, a highlighter, and a broken brick I had picked up on the street en route.

At the gallery, a plywood board leaned against the wall, hooks fastened to the board for the custom baggies holding bartered goods. Each baggy had printed instructions explaining what to do with the object-to-be-bartered, asking participants to explain the significance of the object and what memories surround it. Some of the objects included a sheep made out of Crayola model magic, a pair of black platform shoes, a bag of pistachios, sex dice, a Hard Rock Café guitar pin, a bullet. On the opposite wall hung sketches archiving the evolution of the bartering over the weekend, each capturing the basic look of the object alongside notes on its story and significance.

It was apparent that these were objects easily parted with and which held no immediate value to their original owner. The experiment to recreate this outdated financial transaction was completely undermined by the participant’s modern attitudes towards the practice. When bartering works it’s because it is understood that the items being exchanged are considered by both parties to be of equal value. But what does it do to the value of the objects when the exchange is one sided? In the experiment, each participant was able to decide independently what they wanted to exchange their object for; they didn’t even have to determine a specific value. 

It could be argued that the value place upon each object—or, rather, the absence of any value—is meant to represent the value society places on art. In a sense, the participants were asked to willingly become part of a piece of art. The value wasn’t placed on the quality of the output, but rather on the participatory aspect of the project; the lure of being apart of something or some kind of process, something bigger than the individual, could be satiated through an artwork. It’s not unlike people who have photos take of themselves in front of their favorite artworks in a museum, thus being able to take a piece of it away to call it their own.

After surveying the bartered items I realized that, for the most part, others had done the same as I had; quickly ran their eye over their belongings and grabbed something they knew they wouldn’t miss. I stood reading the descriptions as I cradled the cumbersome collection of objects in my arms, but ultimately I couldn’t part with them. They held no stories for me, except for maybe the books which I still might want to read, and I felt cheap trying to barter off a broken brick. In an age of stuff, it’s never surprising what kinds of attachments we forge with mere objects.

Their works are immediately eye-catching. Loose brushwork shows constraint in its decisiveness and the works themselves are representational but often trail off, leaving edges or portions of the canvas more incomplete or cartoonish. Words and poetry are interwoven, sometimes indecipherably, sometimes as the centerpiece, and even outside of the canvas entirely. Their rough style brings to mind graffiti art without resembling it entirely. This is perhaps because the juxtaposition of words and image are better able to carry the aesthetic weight than just words themselves. One piece in particular is a large canvas with black and white portraits of Jason Griffin on the right and Jason Reynolds on the left. Griffin’s portrait is photorealistic, resembling a screenprint rather than a painting, while Reynolds’ portrait looks more “painterly” with gestural brushwork and murky outlines. There are two words spaced apart on the canvas so that one hovers over each portrait, and they read, “Art? Art.” It’s as if they’re juxtaposing the literary and visual arts against one another (which Griffin and Reynolds undoubtedly represent) but also two styles of painting. The painting suggests that exact representation, while impressive when executed with the brush, is not the triumph of art. It’s what is suggested beyond the likeness of an object through the artists’ style.

More in keeping with the local theme, artists Mandy Burrow and Ben Tolman are also represented in the show. Mandy Burrow resides and works in Arlington, VA and received her MFA in painting from George Washington University. In “Every Day,” however, we find only sculptural installation pieces and no traces of Burrow the painter. Finding utility for discarded everyday objects, Burrow beautifully illustrates the inherent paradox of such an undertaking in her artwork ever so delicately. Self-described as addressing the “issues of life, death, memory and resurrection,” it’s strange to think that such weighty issues could be worked out by addressing the life and death of a thing. But perhaps that is the strength and power behind Burrow’s work.

One of the installations, Teabag Quilt, has a surprisingly revealing title, since the material of the piece is not immediately identifiable. Hand-sewn together, the quilt hangs from the ceiling with squares of varying shades of brown making up the imperfect eight foot long and nearly four foot wide frame. Beneath the quilt is a carefully graduated pile of loose tea leaves, whose presence only emphasizes the past relationship between the two objects. The teabag was invented near the turn of the 20th century purely for the purpose of brewing tea, and is an easier and convenient alternative to using loose leaves and a tea strainer or infuser. However, using a strainer is much more energy efficient; constant production must occur to make teabags, which can only be used once. Defying their assumed lifespan and functionality, Burrow has used them to make a quilt after first using them up and emptying them of their contents. Their strength in their second role, however, is pathetically sad, as it is impossible for them to truly take on any kind of second life or role other than what they were invented for.

Another piece, Undone, also tries to give new life to objects that have already served their purpose. In a low, painted wooden cabinet sit balls of yarn, lined up neatly on each shelf with a label taped to the shelf in front of each ball. The labels reveal the balls’ former existence, either as an old pair of socks or a family member’s sweater, some complete with the remnant buttons. In her attempts to resurrect an already used object, Burrow has been able to create this new life. But it is doomed to be a short one; the objects cannot endure in their second and unnatural form.

Ben Tolman’s works showcased in “An Allegory in Ink” are technically impressive, large-scale ink drawings with a meticulous attention to detail that will evoke awe and admiration. His compositions certainly call to mind Escher’s visual puzzles, that challenge the rules governing physical space, surrealist works with faceless people, and the unsettling yet delightful madness of Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. I found it hard to see Tolman’s touch in his own work, however, perhaps because it is so inundated with allusions to past masters. He has great mastery in his technique, and I hope he continues to work to find his voice in his pieces.

Hillyer normally strives to showcase local artists alongside artists from abroad, so that there can be a dialog of cultural exchange. For some reason or another, this is not the case for this show. However, it seems that the Jasons have possibly filled that role. While they are DC area natives and went to school in the area, they live and work in the New York Art Scene. It would be naive to think that they don’t have some advantage over artists who live and work here, since in comparison they are better able to feel the pulse of what’s going on in the big leagues. They still represent our good ‘ole local boys, but they certainly bring something new to the dialog, for their experiences have surely shaped them as people, and as artists.

The show is open July 11-August 29 2008

Hillyer Art Space is located at 9 Hillyer Court, Washington, DC 20008

Hours are Mon 10-5, Tues-Fri 10-7, Sat 11-4 and by appointment

Contact: 202-338-0680