Art in General...

Two weeks ago I went to the opening of Art in General's presentation of  Nyeema Morgan’s You Are Here. This Is Now, a site-specific installation in the Musée Miniscule. Along with being pleasantly confused by Nyeema's time travel experiment, I was introduced to the DEAD RECORD OFFICE, a fictional auditory exploration of war-making by  Steve Goodman, Toby Heys and Jon Cohrs.

I also browsed a collection of brochures cataloguing some of the projects of past residents and found an inspirational motherlode!  Choosing the female representatives only, I'm detailing a little about their respective projects and the touchstones that connected with the way I'm trying to push my art making forward...

REBECCA HOLLAND, Hold/Unwound (2003)

"For her residency at Art in General, Rebecca Holland has carpeted the floor of the gallery with approximately 35,000 yards of polyester, cotton, and rayon thread. To create the installation, which is aptly titled, Hold/Unwound, Holland carefully unwinds layer upon layer of spooled thread in elliptical patterns to create three-dimensional floor coverings that form sinuous paths along the floor. The thread installations mirror the exact size of the wall that they originate from and, in effect, highlight the structural relation between the walls and the floor."  (I am attracted to her use of basic materials (thread, candy, silver leaf and how they transform the space and affect the viewer.)

ANGIE ENG, Transhumance (2003)

"Transhumance, a new media project created by Angie Eng, draws parallels between ancient nomadic and contemporary digital cultures. Drawing on her own travel experiences, Eng animates maps of nomadic routes, which she juxtaposes with mappings of cerebral responses mixed with video loops of Asian and African landscapes. The video is projected onto a tent-like structure that suggests a nomadic dwelling. The wall facing the tent features a map of the route of the African Rendille tribe’s transhumance over a span of seventy years. Juxtaposed with this work are twenty digital maps that take mental road trips via the Internet and visit twenty-five destinations within the course of one day." (I am curious about the construction of non-competitive games and how this approach can be used to gather data and create opportunities to engage others.)

ANNA MARIA MAIOLINO, N Times One|N Vezes Um (2002)

"For her first major solo exhibition in the United States, Anna Maria Maiolino has molded and shaped over 4,000 pounds of clay to create a series of site-specific sculptural works and installations. In a gesture similar to the ancient technique of coil ceramics, Maiolino hand-molded an immense number of clay sculptures that express “the shape of the hand that molds them—the size of man.” Maiolino’s residency is held in conjunction with a retrospective of her drawings at the Drawing Center, New York." (Repeating basic forms- a recipe for objects-action?)

FLAVIA GANDOLFO, A Contemporary Fresco Mural | Mural Contemporaneo al Fresco (2001)

"Using an inventive photographic technique, Flavia Gandolfo has created two murals during her residency that explore and reinterpret colonial religious murals and modern-day political imagery in Peru. The first mural was created by applying photographic emulsion to the wall and exposing the images, thereby developing them directly on the wall; the second mural was created by developing images on a sheet of paint that was then peeled and applied to the wall. In depicting religious and political figures, Gandolfo challenges symbolic images of power and authority."

ANI O'NEILL, The Buddy System (2004)

"The Buddy System is based on a crocheting workshop held by artist Ani O’Neil in which visitors are invited to crochet a simple wool flower. Each flower will be added to an installation created by O’Neil that a features a vine that gets longer with each new addition. At the end of the exhibition, the vine will be dismantled and the individual flowers will be sent to a friend or family member chosen by the participant. Several videos will play throughout the exhibition, depicting various stages of the flowers’ creation."

MONA MARZOUK, The New World (2006)

"Mona Marzouk creates abstract paintings on canvas, site-specific murals, or sculptures, drawn primarily from architectural history. Most recently, her work has also included imagery informed by other fields, such as mythology, science, and even comics."  (Her graphic approach is naturally appealing to me, but it's the choices she makes regarding research that truly inspires - Think: WHITEBITCHES | The NFL Edition)

JAN ESTEP

"Ad Infinitum is a video created by Jan Estep that explores the philosophical journey of an optimist and a skeptic as they make their way through the desert. Filmed in the high deserts of southeast Utah, the video features an intense discussion between the two philosophically-minded characters. In addition to the video, Estep has created a number of drawings, sculptures, and an artist book that explore similar themes. After researching the desert biomes in North America and the geology of the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, Mojave, and Great Basin deserts, Estep created a number of drawings and word poems based on the names given to various sites in those landscapes. A selected poem that references Death Valley is displayed on the gallery walls. In addition to these works, Estep also created a series of embroidered text pieces that cite the history of the term skepticism as recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary and Descartes’ Meditations." (I love what she has done to represent text...WHITEMANTALKING?