Topic 9: Accessible

Significance:
Some people cannot get it, lose interest and walk away. For others it is too obvious and they even take offense, the artist have underestimated them. It is impossible to please all audiences but good works can be perceived on different levels. Also works are engaged in different way, sometimes immediately sometimes through investigating them.

Quotes:
1)
2)

Book/interview article

Work: High ART by Sarah Lucas versus Bulgarian dirty songs by "Cherno Feredge"

Emerging Artist Galleries

East Coast

Gallery 10 G, New York, NY
owner: Jill Fortunoff Gerstenblatt
http://www.gallery10g.com

First reason to choose this gallery is its objective: "...a stepping stone for emerging artists to help them get more exposure and recognition in the art world."
10 G features photographers and painters. It also deals with works from artists not represented by the gallery. The photography section is not very consistent, it rather attempts to show several different approaches: night land/cityscapes, collage, typologies, conceptual/performance, and the personal experience documentary reminiscent of the Jen Beckman's blog. All prints are color around the 30x40 size and format.

Kevin Cooley
http://www.kevincooley.net
Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and often times collaborator Bridget Batch.
He is primarily a photo and video artist who does freelance assignment work as well.
His artwork has been published in many magazines, most recently in Le Monde 2, GEO Italy, and Bright Magazine. He is a recipient of The Aaron Siskind Fellowship and the Rema Hort Mann Grant. His work is also included in the permanent collection of the Harvard Business School.
The School of Visual Arts, M.F.A. Photography, New York, NY 2000
Lewis and Clark College, B.A. International Affairs, Portland, OR 1997

Review for "At the Light's Edge":
Kevin Cooley’s new photographs plunge directly into this Romantic tradition of landscape, and he enriches it with contemporary concerns. Nature is the muse, and man is the explorer. Breathtaking night views of American landscapes are illuminated by eerie distress signals, possibly messages coming from above or vice-versa. Light shooting through the sky highlights an endangered beauty and at the same time represents a divine or extraterrestrial phenomenon. Taking photographs, for Cooley, is a lonely job, infused with silence and meditation. This contemplative mood, along with a sense of wonder and fear, permeates the entire new body of work. http://www.artcat.com/exhibits/7740




Ofer Wolberger
http://oferwolberger.com
(b. 1976) is an artist who lives and works in New York City. He is the recipient of The Humble Arts Foundation Spring 2008 Grant for Emerging Photographers. He was a finalist for both the BMW Paris Photo Prize in 2008 as well as the Prix HSBC pour la Photographie in 2009. His photographs have been collected and exhibited internationally. In 2009 his project Life with Maggie, was exhibited at Michael Hoppen Gallery in London and at C/O Berlin. Next year Life with Maggie will be exhibited at VU in Quebec. He is currently working on a series of 12 self-published artists books collectively known as The Photographic Book Project.

Life with Maggie
(2007-Present)
Resembling a photographic travel diary or a personal photo album, Life with Maggie is the unique record of a character lost in time and place.





Michael Mazzeo Gallery, New York, NY
http://www.michaelmazzeo.com

According to the statement in the gallery's web site, it is "one of the premier showcases of new and under-recognized talent in New York's Chelsea Gallery District, having awarded nine artists their first solo exhibitions in New York City and including nearly 100 others in group exhibitions. " It is exclusively a photography gallery, works vary but are consistent it their quest for something new and experimental - whether as a concept or process.

Caleb Charland - Artist Review 7

Dave Jordano
http://www.davejordanophotography.com
1974 B.F.A. Photography, Center for Creative Studies, Detroit, Michigan.
Owned and operated a highly successful award winning freelance commercial photography studio in Chicago specializing in food and product advertising. Short list of clients include, Starbucks Coffee, Crate & Barrel, General Mills, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, Wilson Sporting Goods, Sears, Quaker Foods, Dove, Kraft Foods, Suave , Timex, etc
Currently working as documentary and conceptual photographer.





West Coast

Kopeiking Gallery, Culver City, CA
http://kopeikingallery.com
Paul Kopeikin, owner and director
A photography gallery that deals with different types of photograph representing artists who are from emerging to very established. Also they sell works of unrepresented photographers. There is an open call for submissions with the friendly reminder that submissions are so many that no immediate answer should be expected (if any).

Thomas Wrede
http://thomas-wrede.de
Thomas Wrede’s internationally exhibited serial works often challenge our concept and relationship with nature, landscape and imagery. His series simultaneously trigger a sense of familiarity and unfamiliarity. Wrede’s choices of familiar scenes often induce a sense of nostalgia. However with the manipulation of the compositions and lighting effects of his photos, a feeling of uneasiness is inevitably evoked.
The idea behind Wrede’s work is aptly summarized by the artist regarding one of his series, Real Landscapes : “The starting point of my photographic work is the human longing for nature and the mediation thereof. I question the relationships between constructed model and reality, between picture and copy.” http://www.galerie-wagner-partner.com

Bio:
Thomas Wrede (born 1963) is a German photographer.
Wrede was born in Iserlohn-Letmathe. He studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Münster from 1985–1991, Germany, where he was also teaching years later. In 1991 he was the student of Dieter Appelt in Salzburg and Berlin. He has been included in many exhibitions such as “Strange Paradise” at Städtische Galerie Iserlohn, 2005, “Seascapes. Am Meer” at Goethe-Institut London and in Helsinki, 2006. „Tamed Nature“at Brandenburgische Kunstsammlungen, 2005, in Germany. „Really True! The Assurance of Reality in Photography“ at Ruhrlandmuseum Essen, 2004, in Germany and „the Paradise of the Modern“ at Bauhaus Dessau in Germany. Exhibitions in 2007: ”Real Landscapes” at Galerie Herrmann & Wagner, Berlin (27.04-16.06.2007) and the exhibition ”Von Oben und von Unten”, Akademie Franz Hitze Haus, Münster (15.01.2007-14.03-2007). He is presented by WAGNER + PARTNER in Berlin, by f5,6 in Munich and by Beck & Eggeling in Düsseldorf.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Thomas-Wrede/104060642965166





Edgar Martins
www.edgarmartins.com/
Martins photographs the beaches bordering cities in Portugal and Iceland creating flattened and timeless images. As he explains: "These nighttime beach images are all about temporal experience - there is a kind of theatricality to them, a sense of observing an abandoned stage, or a stage awaiting some event." These moments bring the viewer to another world, yet he does not manipulate or stage any of his photographs. While these images convey a sense of solitude and emptiness, the manner in which they are composed fills the viewer with a sense of calm rather than abandonment. Nostalgic props of an imminent event or one in the recent past are also an important aspect of the work in this series. As a result of his positioning of the camera and use of natural ambient light, life size objects can seem minuscule. He plays with the notion of scale and composition to confuse the viewer, not knowing whether we are viewing an inhabitable space or simply model created in its form. Even though the figures and subjects of these images appear to be contrived and manipulated for the scene, they are almost all found by the artist.

Bio:
Portuguese by birth, Edgar Martins grew up in Macau, China, where he published his first novel
entitled 'Mäe, deixa-me fazer o pino'. In 1996 he moved to the UK, where he later completed an
MA in Photography and Fine Art at the Royal College of Art. He has exhibited extensively
throughout Asia, America and Europe and has received numerous awards for his photographic
and literary work.
His work is represented internationally in various high profile museums, public, corporate and
private collections.
His first book, 'Black Holes & Other Inconsistencies' was awarded the Thames & Hudson and RCA
Society Book Art Prize. A selection of images from this book were also awarded The Jerwood
Photography Award in 2003.
‘The Diminishing Present’ & ‘Approaches’ Martins’ following monographs were launched in 2006.
An exhibition of this work has toured Lisbon, New York, Oporto, Madrid, etc.
In Spring 2008 Aperture Books launched Edgar Martins’ most comprehensive monograph to date.
This work will be exhibited internationally, in Portugal, UK, USA, Germany, Brazil, amongst many
other countries.
Edgar Martins was the recipient of the inaugural and much sought after New York Photography
Award (Fine Art Category) in May 2008.
Martins was considered by US art critics as ‘one of the most influential artist of his generation,
working within the medium of Photography’.
Edgar Martins works and lives in the UK.







DNJ Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
http://www.dnjgallery.net
Pamela Schoenberg, owner and director
A good place for emerging to mid career photographers. Some of their works tend to be conceptual or documentary other more decorative and some even simplistic. The owner looks for variety within certain range of topics in order to satisfy market interest.

Chris Verene
http://www.chrisverene.com/
For a quarter-century, I have been documenting the same people in Galesburg, Illinois, where three generations of my family have lived. Each person you see here has been in my life for a very long time, and my commitment to our relationship is forever, for good times and bad times, for all the future. As a novice photographer, my family accepted my plan to follow their lives with my camera. I am honored that they still encourage me to this day. It continues to be my aim to make honest pictures of my family and friends-pictures that show true stories that anyone can understand. It continues to be my life commitment to further my relationships, friendships, and kinship with the people in my pictures-who are my people.

Education

1996	M.F.A Georgia State University
1991	B.A. Emory University

David Trautrimas
http://www.trautrimas.ca
Trautrimas' photo based architecture explores the construct of home with a series of residential buildings born of everyday objects. From Art Deco coffee pots to the Constructivist grid pattern on an old bathroom scale, Trautrimas searches for source materials which allude to a greater architectural doctrine usually unnoticed in these machines. Then, by dramatic distortion of scale and context, elements of these objects are meticulously re-assembled into strikingly original structures that are paradoxically familiar by virtue of their origins.

Bio:
Certified Apple Desktop Technician - June 2004
AOCAD diploma with honors, OCAD - June 2003
Audio Visual Multi-Media Diploma, Fanshawe College - June 1998





International

C/O Berlin, Germany
http://www.co-berlin.info
founders: Stephan Erfurt, Marc Naroska and Ingo Pott
This is an organization featuring photographers and videographers in the beginning of their careers. It is not a traditional gallery however it promotes artists like one. C/O runs other programs and exhibiting emerging artists is part of their agenda. Photography seems to move from conceptual to documentary and journalism. They organize shows with featured photographers in Goethe Institut branches in Washington DC and Helsinki, Finland (the ones I know of). They also sell prints but the objective is promoting photographers.

Ivonne Thein
http://www.ivonnethein.com
This photograph comes from Ivonne Thein’s series entitled “Thirty-Two Kilos,” which deals with the pathological striving of young men and women to be extremely thin. The background to this work is a phenomenon that emerged in the US already in the 1990s with the Internet movement “Pro Ana,” which elevates anorexia nervosa to the status of a new, positive lifestyle for young women. The Internet has become the virtual home to diverse communities that do not define themselves as self-help groups for those suffering from eating disorders. Quite the opposite, they support the desire to lose weight, circulating encouraging slogans to help girls achieve the perfect bodies of their dreams. On these sites, this extreme body ideal is illustrated with abundant visual material. Role models are celebrated – for example, female celebrities with anorexia, who seem to embody the connection between extreme physical self-control and a happier and more successful life. The health risks of this lifestyle, however, disappear from view. At the same time, one also regularly finds photographs on these sites that the trained eye can recognize as having been manipulated.

1979 born in Meiningen, Germany
2007
exchange studies, Bachelor of Art RMIT University, Melbourne, Australien
2003 – 2009
Studies of photo and design, Fachhochschule Dortmund under Prof. Susanne Brügger and Prof. Cindy Gates
Awards
2008
C/O Talents 2008, Winner
2007
Passion of Fashion, London Photographic Association, Highly Recommend






Oskar Schmidt
http://oskarschmidt.de/
Cannot find a statement on his web site, obviously he is playing with norms and the notions of what's acceptable. There is no pre pubescent nudity but the photos suggest sexuality in other ways. Are they resolved enough? He was included in a show in Goethe Institut in Washington DC via the O/C Berlin organization. Of course an emerging artist.
OR maybe I am wrong about his work. Here is a review:
"Bare, sparsely furnished rooms and introverted women and girls, barely present to their surroundings: the starkly reduced photographs of Oskar Schmidt are both portraits and interiors. Like paper cut-outs, the silhouettes of their bodies contrast against the bleak walls, as mute as the objects in a still-life. The people and spaces seem familiar, but they remain mysterious and slightly beyond reach. These pictures do not focus on the individual characteristics of the places and people, but much more generally on their forms and postures, and on each inconspicuous detail. The women and girls portrayed are revenants, characters appropriated from the history of art and brought back to life in a new medium: photography.
Works by Oskar Schmidt (b. 1977) have been shown in numerous solo and group shows in such cities as Berlin, Barcelona, London, Peking and Zurich. This series was selected for inclusion in the “Talents” series by C|O Berlin, the International Forum for Visual Dialogues."
http://www.culturaltourismdc.org/things-do-see/calendar/event/exhibition-revenants-wiederg%C3%A4ngerinnen-photographs-oskar-schmidt




Michael Hoppen Gallery, London, UK
http://www.michaelhoppengallery.com/
Michael Hoppen, founder, director and owner

Artist Review 9: Tony Matelli

Significance:
As a continuation of the topic on the disturbing in art, Matelli is very straight forward in picking on fears universal for all people. The main topic of his work is loss: of life, possessions or balance. He materializes these fears in durable art materials - fiber glass, urethane foam, bronze and paint. The precise, permanent and realistic sculptures depict frozen in time ephemeral objects or setups, happenings or results of something that happened.
I may take ideas from his work as it goes beyond the unsettling. Or maybe not, sometimes he is trying too hard to be scandalous and that annoys me.
The lack of a well defined agenda in his work is a weakness too. Or maybe he has given up the very difficult and obscure task to make a difference in order to support himself as a studio artist. Tony Matelli exhibits worldwide.

Bio:
Born 1971 in Chicago, IL, lives and works in Brooklyn NY
Education:
1995 MFA Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan
1993 BFA Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Wisconsin
1991 Alliance of Independent Colleges of Art - Independent Study, NY


Quotes:

1) "...with Matelli’s art, its not enough to focus on just one work; you must employ a peripheral vision to see how he seizes on one oafish cliché after the next making them testify against their own crude sincerity, finally admitting that their one-dimensional values are in the end inconsequential. This is Matelli’s style of moralizing."
Roland Jones http://www.tonymatelli.com/Tony_Matelli/Ronald_Jones.html

2) " Lost, absurd and debased, Tony Matelli’s figures experience the complexities of life with ever-present possibility of both death and rejuvenation on the horizon. Sleepwalkers, lost boy scouts, rotting vegetables, sprouting weed, beer cans and card stacks signal the banal passing of time. As hyperrealist bronze sculptures, these scenarios instead are frozen in time, captured in visceral detail. Matelli’s often vulgar sense of humor rivals the delicacy of his tedious technical process."
Natalie Westbrook http://www.tonymatelli.com/Tony_Matelli/Natalie_Westbrook.html

Work:







Representation:
http://www.leokoenig.com/
http://www.andrehn-schiptjenko.com/site/
http://www.tatintsian.com/
http://www.stephanesimoens.com/
http://www.galeriemoser.ch/

Reviews: http://www.tonymatelli.com/Tony_Matelli/Tony_Matelli_Text.html

Web Site: http://www.tonymatelli.com

Topic 8: Disturbing

Significance:
It is important as this engages people in topics. We need both the pleasant and the disturbing and the inability to draw a definite border between can be employed in making people notice things in order to ask themselves "what am I looking at?" I have been drawn to the idea of using the disturbing as pointing to more universal political environmental economical or ethical topics. And yet, some artists tend to embrace the scandalous just for the sake of it. Wafaa Bilal addressed that in his speech, the use of the unsettling for a specific agenda versus the unsettling for just gaining audience.
Artists won't make a mistake (at least in drawing attention) if they evoke the very universal fears of: mortality, pain, loss, the unknown and rejection form society.
And yet how effective is having disturbing and engaging imagery about a greater political topic? Will it change anything? Can it be something more than imagery?

Quotes
1) "My very first project was a documentary of street people in Berkeley – Dorothea Lange or Bruce Davidson type documentary – when I was 22 years old. That’s when I first realized there was a major discrepancy between my good intentions and how the images actually functioned in the world. I had a coffee table book (Telegraph 3 am) of poor people on the street, with a show at ICP. I was very young and it raised all those problems... But does it really change the world? What really is the out come of all that?" Richard Misrach
http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/lib/artists/misrach.php

2) "Richard Misrach I take a lot of political license and I’ve been criticized roundly for that. And that’s fine. But the point is that without it then it becomes something else, it becomes a study of just the beauty of death and there’s a certain amount of that there but I definitely want to put my spin on it. People will come to it and take from it what they want. but I definitely had an agenda when I did it and I hold onto the agenda as much as I can.

John Paul Caponigro And the agenda was what?

Richard Misrach To politicize it. To basically put it into a political context as opposed to putting dead carcasses in peoples faces for fun."

http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/lib/artists/misrach.php

Interview of Richard Misrach by John Paul Caponigro

Works

Richard Misrach, the Pit (1988)

Patricia Piccinini

Artist review 8: Jill Greenberg

Significance:

The Monkey Portraits are seemingly trivial and cute, however, they could be put in the context of more complicated issues. I see them as a take on contemporary fine art photography with its quest for expressions revealing something profound. And here they are, animals doing a great job with the emotions that recent photography has adopted as a norm. Are emotions in portraiture sincere, can we trust them or take them as the focus in a body work? The answer to me is "yes" and "no".

The idea of mimicking art history in absurd way to engage people in a contemporary topic is what I tried with the Dutch Baroque still lives with plastic bags. Would that fall into the category of editorial or photo illustration? What would be a way to go beyond that?

It is interesting how the monkey images can be one thing for me: challenging uniqueness of expressions; and another for her: anti republican statement. Nevertheless these images are contradiction to her other work. The people in her commercial portraits put side by side with the monkeys gain another meaning.

Bio:

Jill Greenberg was born in Montreal, Canada in 1967. At the age of 2, her family moved to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan where Greenberg began her arts education while attending Cranbrook’s elementary school where she was in the photo darkroom in 5th grade. Many extra-curricular courses supplemented her arts education: Kingswood, Birmingham Bloomfield Art Association, and the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit. Before senior year in High School, she enrolled in Rhode Island School of Design’s pre-college program in Illustration 1984. Senior year, she was the recipient of the Traub Scholarship for Art from Andover High School, which afforded her the opportunity to attend Parsons in Paris for Photography the summer before entering college in Providence at RISD.She earned a BFA with honors, RISD ‘89 Photo with a senior thesis called “The Female Object”; took a class at Brown University, in Semiotics. After graduation, Greenberg moved to New York City.

Quotes:1) "Like others at the Atlantic, I was appalled to read about the actions of Jill Greenberg, the freelance photographer who took the cover portrait that illustrates my article about John McCain. Greenberg doctored photographs of McCain she took during her Atlantic-arranged shoot, which took place last month in Las Vegas. She has posted these doctored photographs on her website, which you can go find yourself, if you must. Suffice it to say that her "art" is juvenile, and on occasion repulsive. This is not the issue, of course; the issue is that she betrayed this magazine, and disgraced her profession." Jeffrey Goldberg http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2008/09/about-that-mccain-photo/8825/

2)"For the series “Monkey Portraits”, Greenberg has created a series of monkey portraits and asks us to consider, in another way, where we are coming from. We look into her monkey’s expressions, their faces -- their peculiar physiognomy -- and somehow see ourselves. It is frightening and disorienting and exhilarating and awesome. She mischievously shows us another type of mirror-stage, where we confront an ancient and distorted reflection, another startling spectacle, and try to make sense of who, or what we are seeing. By intentionally anthropomorphizing her monkeys, we can’t help but identify with their gaze, and be reminded of people we know, expressions that we have seen." http://kopeikingallery.com/exhibitions/view/monkey-portraits

Work:

Jill Greenberg

Jill Greenberg

Samantha Cohn

Lisa Wiseman

Hanna Witte

Amy Elkins

Jill Greenberg

Sophie Barbasch

Jill Greenberg

Dai Oinuma

Jill Greenberg

Georgi Ivanov

Review:

The Atlantic Monthly and McCain Very interesting. Did she actually achieve something besides much ado? I think she only victimized McCain by being very unprofessional and juvenile. There are other ways to make a catching, yet sophisticated image of a politician and definitely not by exploiting a situation. This might as well hurt other photographers by affecting the relation photographer - client.

Representation: www.clampart.com

Web Site: http://www.manipulator.com

Topic 7: Urgency

Significance:
The important questions: 1) what is your work about? and 2) what do you want it to do?
An example:
Sebastiao Salgado's Sahel: The End of the Road is a project he executed by sacrificing great amount of time and effort to dignify people who barely manage to survive in the aftermath of a natural disaster. His hope was to show this image in newspapers, magazines and other mass media in order to attract people's attention. The topic was extremely urgent and he hoped to make a difference. No publishers wanted to deal with so depressing matter and his effort went in vain. The outcome of his work was gallery shows: people gathered to discuss his masterful use of light, composition and capturing the right moment. Persons depicted in the photos became interesting characters rather than triggers of consciousness. Exposure is always good however that was not the exposure he wanted.


Quotes:
1) "I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation. The parks that surround some museums isolate art into objects of formal delectation. Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art . A park carries the values of the final, the absolute, and sacred. Dialectics have nothing to do with such things."
2) "A work of art when placed in a gallery loses its charge, and becomes a portable object or surface disengaged from the outside world."
ROBERT SMITHSON: THE COLLECTED WRITINGS, 2nd Edition, edited by Jack Flam, The University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California; University of California Press, LTD. London, England; 1996

Street Art: Joshua Allen Harris
Junk art or street art or environmental installation or social protest or a spectacle. Does it mean that if it's about many things it is about nothing?

Work

Aargon Neon (neon sign company),
Untitled (abu-ghraib), 2004,
16” high by 12” wide, black acrylic,
wire, neon.

Some nice funny decoration or urgency to engage the public in contemporary issues?
Who ordered that?

Collaborative Interview part 1: Questions

Jamie Lawyer

1) Your work is about psychological trauma and coping with it. How important for you is the specificity of this trauma? Do you aim to show the source of trauma or only the outcome?
2) Are you about subtlety in images or shocking the audience? What would be your aim in the future?
3) Could you explain what is the role of scale and repetition in your work.
4) What do you aim with your work? What is the discourse you want to engage your audience in?
5) Who are the artists/writers you associate with?
6) Do you explore trauma on personal or social level and what is the reason for you emphasis?
7) As an emerging artist, what venues would be ideal for your agenda? What would be the most effective ways to reach the audience?


Jon Philip Sheridan

1) Are your works about representing ideas or delivering sensations?
2) Formulated concept or formal exploration: which is more essential when you begin a new work and why?
3) Considering the Inflection installation, what emphasis do you put on process? Is the end result the goal or the process itself that becomes essential?
4) What is the subject matter of your work? Is it about aesthetics, political topics, social phenomena, human nature, existentialism?
5) How does your work connect to the specific exhibition space, does it respond or conform to it?
6) Do you aim at galleries or public spaces? Could you explain why?
7) How do you want to influence your public? What do you want to make them think about?

Studio visit: Julika Rudelius

I only presented the Vacation Industry series, and yet 30 minutes was not enough. I am really glad she spent effort to get into that work - the images as well as the exhibit installation. She talked how my work fits in contemporary photo practices, more precisely documentary, what qualities it has and what it lacks. It seemed that her immediate, detailed and very opinionated response came from similarities in our work. First, Julika has been working as a photojournalist, no idea if she has been doing documentary projects on her own (documentary does not exclude conceptual work using the medium as a vehicle to convey meaning). So she has been not only practicing but making a living of photography. And second, her work is exclusively on political end social topics.

Her main point was - go back and re-photograph... easier said than done. That was my greatest concern, the fact that my work is an exploration. I tried to plan in advance but of course that is possible to an extent. I needed to look at the images I have and pick only a piece from the whole story and then focus on that one aspect of the whole. I got pretty good ideas only after I finished the project. These were focusing on details characteristic of the problem rather than exposing the entire problem. Julika's evaluation:
1) don't mix types of images or styles if you are not fluent in all of them. Some photos are weak and that stands out compared to others.
2) make sure to know exactly what it is about. She did not like the beach images because they were taken in mid day, worst light. Eventually she appreciated them greatly because of the reason to photograph at that time - to show that the beach is empty during the day. That does not make much sense with the other photos unfortunately.
3) Displaying is hard and I did not make a good job. The salon style arrangement does not go with the formally presented works. Look into details.
4) She agreed with me that it is hard to find consistency while photographing. It is difficult to go with an idea and see that it does not translate in images well. In my case some places are full, other empty, some working well, others are a disaster and so on. In her word, that was the reason to stop doing photography, too hard to show something if that something is not so simple and still be honest and true. And the presentation as well, that was the other reason.
5) again, what it is about? waste of land? blunt consumerism and decay? transformation of the landscape? social injustice? environmental problems? economical problems?

How am I going to proceed from now? The meeting coincided with my recent thoughts about documentary - I don't have resources. If one shoot takes me weeks to set up only to find out that my transportation failed me... it is not only discouraging but irrational. I have enough to show people for now and what needs to happen is applying for grants or residencies in order to do my work. I'd better put off that type of work for another time (without forgetting it) and focus on what I can be most productive for now.

Artist Review 7: Caleb Charland

Significance: I really appreciate his photographic, sculptural and kinetic explorations that bring the images beyond the process and the demonstration of it. I see the scientific not as the focus but as a vehicle to explore balance, fragility and time, maybe one can see the topic as existential. Yet, I was disappointed by the way Charland and others describe his work - it is just an experiment, curiosity. OK, and what about the breath amplifier by Scott Snibbe, who states plainly that his work is NOT about technology. What about Christopher Bucklow's famous silhouettes, they are not about process at all, however, remind of the more recent works by Charland. It is interesting to see in what context people put their work in. Can Charland's work be more than experiment if he presents it in another way or includes social, psychological or political hints?

Bio: Caleb Charland graduated in 2004 with a BFA in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston. His work has been included in juried exhibitions throughout the United States, and he is represented by Susan Maasch Art, Portland, Maine. Charland may be reached at calebcharland@hotmail.com.

Quotes:
1) "Using the laws of physics as a springboard, Caleb Charland puts elements such as fire, water, and man-made compounds to the artistic test in his series Demonstrations. In these alchemic images, he captures scientific phenomena in moments of still life as well as full-tilt action, calling to mind such forebears as Edgerton and his freeze-frame milk droplets." http://www.aperture.org/apertureprize/w2007-3.php

2) "Carefully planned and meticulously executed, his Demonstration images consist of precisely controlled, yet decidedly low-tech, sets of actions performed for the camera. ... playful use of allusion and illusion appears regularly throughout his projects."
http://mazzeogallery.blogspot.com/2010/04/caleb-charland.html

Work:

one of his 4x5 "bacteriographic" negatives

Interview: School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Representation: http://www.michaelmazzeo.com/

Web Site: http://www.calebcharland.com/

Topic 6: Process

Significance: An important aspect of my photo abstract work has been the process itself and asking the question: is it to remain hidden or it becomes the very essence? As a quick comparison between the 2 opposites: work by Dave Ford - Truck Drawings which reveal how they were made and Wolfgang Tillmanns' Blushes. I could not find how the Blushes were made and the public, unlike in many other cases, don't seem to care about the making either.








A systematic graph about process based art:
http://www.jimcampbell.tv/portfolio/miscellaneous_references/formula.swf

Quotes
1) "My own engagement with digital art has, in general, little to do with technology. Thematically, the work is about interdependence, perception, social interaction, attention, awareness, concentration, metaphor, and spirituality. What seems to make the work successful is that viewers are unaware of the technology. And I believe this is the characteristic of most successful artwork – to transcend the medium, becoming more purely the idea being transmitted. " Scott Snibbe,
http://www.brown.edu/Research/dichtung-digital/2006/01/Snibbe/index.htm

2) "Unlike a conventional camera Nadia has no display of the photographs to be taken, but rather gives the judgment of aesthetic quality to the machine, displaying only a current rating as feedback about when and what to snap."
http://www.andrewkupresanin.com/

Nadia from Andrew Kupresanin on Vimeo.

TED Lectures #1

1) Dan Gilbert, Why are we happy?

2) Barry Scwartz, On the Paradox of Choice

On almost the same topic, some ideas are repeated. It is about what makes people satisfied or more precisely why satisfaction isn't good enough anymore. Expectations of people are way overblown and that is what creates discontent. Freedom of choice, indeed, is another reason for feeling bad. I do agree and their argument reminds me of Lars von Trier's Manderlay
Whoever is free bears the yoke of responsibility and not everyone wants that burden. Same is with bigger variety when buying or having more options. We choose one but feel sorry for the ones missed. "Missing opportunity" gets more and more depressing as there are more opportunities.
Schwartz argues that some places people are unhappy because of too many choices other places because too little. True. But then was very disappointing with the end of the lecture:
"Income redistribution will make everyone better off". Who is going to decide that? There was one recent such redistribution, when GM was bailed out. Who is getting the redistributed money and why? Can anyone impose on people to lower their expectations?

6 Quotes #1

1) "Every man is a consumer, and ought to be a producer. He is by constitution expensive, and needs to be rich. "
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Conduct of Life, part 3 (1860)

2) “We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality, because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other.” Naomi Klein, No Logo

3) "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." Steve Jobs, BusinessWeek, May 25 1998"

4) “Once they learn to like the beverage, they would come back in the morning and become regulars.” Howard Schultz

5) So, if consumers are like roaches, then marketers must forever be dreaming up new concoctions for industrial-strength Raid."
(A quote of a marketing guru, forgot the name and don't have the book right now) Naomi Klein, No Logo

6) "Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists."
Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State, Introduction (1973)


It is scary to be free and have no worries. Figuring out what to do with free time and finding a direction is challenging. Big companies constantly fabricate dreams and engage people in pursuing them. In order to be big you have to create people's needs rather than answering them. Life is now more convenient but that does not seem to make it easier - people's needs and expectations have gone up. Essentials as communication become more complicated and expensive as internet takes over and new devices become a must. The paradox of becoming more affluent and free and in the same time more dependent is something that inspires my work.

Artist review #6: Gebhard Sengmüller

Significance:
What first caught my attention were the light bulbs (the small appliance type, 2500 of them!) because of my sympathy for the low tech. The warm and dim light creates a special feeling, like a ritual. Is that engineering or art? We are looking at very conspicuous image transmitter employing the basics of TV. It reminds of Daniel Rozin Peg Mirror (2007). What I like about Sengmuller's work is its focus on revealing a process. All the 2500 cables are exposed and take a sculptural quality. In his work transferring image is obviously a divide more than connection, the device turns reality into abstraction. Can we talk like that about media in general?
Yet, many installations transforming sensitory experience have concept but without a big subject matter. For that reason some call them "science museum art". A good question when looking at media/interactive work - does it do anything beyond showing a process or effect?

Biography:
Gebhard Sengmüller is an artist who works in the field of media technology. He is currently based in Vienna, Austria. Since 1992, he has been developing projects and installations that focus on the history of electronic media, creating alternative ordering systems for media content, and constructing autogenerative networks. His work has been shown in Europe, the United States, and Japan, among others in venues such as the Ars Electronica, Linz; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Postmasters Gallery, New York City; and the ICC Center, Tokyo.

1) “A Parallel Image” is an electronic camera obscura. ... The result is an apparatus that attempts a highly elaborate parallel transmission of every single pixel from sender to receiver. This is only possible by connecting camera and monitor using about 2,500 cables. Unlike conventional electronic image transmission procedures, “A Parallel Image” is technologically completely transparent, conveying to the viewer a correspondence between real world and transmission that can be sensually experienced.
http://www.gebseng.com/08_a_parallel_image/

2) Black cube installation: A film sequence (35mm motion picture, 24 frames/sec.) is cut up and the individual frames are mounted as slides. They’re then distributed among 24 slide projectors that are all focused on the same screen (the exact same point).
Via electronic control of the projectors, these individual images are then reassembled-in an extremely cumbersome way-into a chronological sequence.
The formula “one projector per frame” thus gives rise to something that at least rudimentarily (and inevitably very inaccurately, due to the lack of precision of the mechanical devices) suggests a motion picture. The film soundtrack emerges as a byproduct - the mechanical clattering of the projectors changing slides.
http://www.gebseng.com/04_slidemovie/

Work:

Farm Animal Drawings video
Making of the Farm Animals Drawings

Interview:
Media art has already become something of a negative buzzword. The term can almost no longer be used, because every kind of art is actually media art. It has to be more precisely defined to refer to art with electronic media, or in my case with electromechanical media. You could call me a media artist, because I play with the medium and because I’m more concerned with the medium than the content.
http://www.gebseng.com/publications/artists_as_inventors_excerpt_sengmueller.pdf

Representation: http://www.fotosengmueller.com/
Did not find any galleries representing him. He has been sponsored by tech companies to do his work and is also a professional architecture photographer.

Web site: http://www.gebseng.com