Art Market Hamptons
July 10 – 13, 2014
Bridgehampton Historical Society
2368 Montauk Hwy
Bridgehampton, NY
artmarkethamptons.com

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I think the proliferation of social media has allowed larger institutions to interact with their publics more directly. Some bigger museums have begun crowd-sourcing public opinion, something which provides institutions with a deeper understanding of their audiences while making museum visitors feel they have made an impact on the institution. As an example, Brooklyn Museum’s GO project invited the people to make studio visits with 1,700 Brooklyn-based artists and nominate particular artists for a group exhibition at the museum. By integrating public opinion into their artist selection, the museum reconstituted the traditional, omnipotent curatorial voice to include other perspectives from the community. Another effect of the rise of social media in museums is the perceived accessibility of these large-scale institutions. With the ability to do things like comment on an organization’s Facebook page or Tweet directly at a museum, visitors can actively engage with the institution, exhibitions, artists, programs, and fellow museum-goers. In this way, direct feedback and visitors’ experiences are publicly addressed by the museum—a traditionally inaccessible entity.

It seems that the contemporary curator needs to be more mobile than before, able to travel within and outside of the institution more fluidly than the once traditional “one curator, one space” model may have dictated. As an emerging curator, I would apply to open calls for exhibition proposals in cities around the world with the hope of to acquiring funding necessary for travel and installation. This model of the independent curator necessitates an itinerant lifestyle of pursuing research, meeting with artists, visiting paces, and overseeing exhibition installations. Curating an exhibition without knowledge of the local context and audience is highly problematic, so ideally, a curator might have a sustained relationship with a specific location in order to produce a relevant, meaningful exhibition for a given space and audience. When conceptualizing an exhibition or initiating a project, the curator’s role requires a nuanced understanding of the context and audience, since things like the socio-political climate of a particular location and the audience’s existing knowledge and exposure to contemporary art inevitably affect the works selected for an exhibition.

I recently worked with Anna Witt, whose work often explores the political sphere, relationships of power and submission, and public interventions. For a recent work entitled Breaking New (2013), Witt employed a group of local craftspeople to re-purpose found rubbish by collecting bulk waste, building new furniture, and leaving these refurbished objects on the streets for public use. Even though this work was specific to the steel industry town of Marxloh, Germany, it addresses broader issues of waste and regeneration, and activating public social change.

By Kimberly Kitada

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PT: Alaska?
BM: (Laughs) I set out West just before my 19^th birthday. I intended to write stories, poems, perhaps a novel. I mostly smoked cigarettes and snowboarded.

PT: Why an art dealer?
BM:  Because, Pete, I know the deal. I’ve been around dealers of all kinds all my life. I’ve seen dealers sell bags of weed through mailbox slots in East New York, and I’ve seen people make multi-million dollar real estate deals, and everything in between.

I have been surrounded by artists, always have been: painters, writers, dancers, comedians, musicians, actors, rappers and poets.

They inspire me to create and live fully, and now I have an opportunity to share their work with the world. I’m a facilitator by nature and I absolutely love being at the confluence for all these creative individuals to come together and create dialogue. There is a wonderful ethos that is happening down here on Chrystie Street. I welcome the collaboration, the debate, the harmony and even the discord – those little moments when egos are diminished and the soul and the spirit of the converging energies involved take over. It’s really wonderful and exciting.

PT: You’re a creative person yourself. You’ve done all kinds of things. Writer, stand-up comic, professional basketball player in Europe, a business man, a fitness professional, a serious martial artist, and you were involved in the founding of Glasschord magazine, and that helped lead toward the gallery didn’t it?
BM: Yes, I have done all of those things and am still involved with many of them. These unique experiences have provided and helped me to develop good habits, strong character and solid values.  Studying Kung Fu provides the foundation for me to do my best as an individual, and Glasschord Magazine provided the foundation upon which Brian Morris Gallery is being built. The other founding members, Gregory MacAvoy, Noah Post (my assistant director), Daniel McCabe, Phil Moffa, Vijay Singh and Patrick MacAvoy along with all of the GC community, which include over 100 artists and over 100,000 subscribers have collectively played a role in the gallery’s growth and success. I would not be doing this without them.

The common thread is having always enjoyed being around and involved with creative people. Composer Eric Maltz of ‘Peculiar Gentleman’, plays piano in the gallery twice a month, and has opened the door for more musical performances in the coming months. Poet Michael Collins and I are developing a writer’s workshop and a reading series. Geoff Young of Geoffrey Young Gallery and artist Gary Petersen helped guide Noah and me through this first year of development. All the artists that have shown here, and will show here, are so gracious and enthusiastic about the space and the potential of BMG. A list of all the artists that I’ve worked with is available on the website.  In our first year, we’ve exhibited a solid group of emerging and mid-career artists.

Installation view of the Sleight of Hand exhibition. Image courtesy of Brian Morris Gallery.

PT: When did you open the gallery?
BM: We opened the doors December 11, 2012. It seems like a long time ago, already. So much has gone on in such a short time. I just added a backyard sculpture garden that can also be used for private events and performance. I intend to host theatre, poetry, music, comedy – whatever might lift the spirit of the community.

PT: What turns you on as a dealer?
BM: Truth, soul, rhythm the things you can’t fake.  Mainly, all of the little connections between art, artists, and visitors that brings life to a space. Being a part of what’s true and relevant and grand.

Knowing that I can introduce art to people, and inspire them to take a second look at their surroundings, and perhaps encourage them to look deeper into themselves is a big part of what excites me as an art dealer. To be able to invite and encourage others to paticipate more fully in their own lives.

PT: So then you must collect as well?
BM: Absolutely. I have a collection of work from many of the artists that I show. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorite parts of being in this business.

PT: Where do you see the gallery going in the future?
BM:  The gallery has been attracting a lot of attention as we come to the end of our first year. I would like to see the gallery become a cultural hub in the LES.

We are also looking to co-curate a 20,000 square foot warehouse in Bushwick with artist/curators Bonnie Rychlak and Peter Hopkins.

Coming up at the gallery we have some wonderful guest curators including Geoffrey Young and artist Rick Briggs. We will be showing work from artists such as Sean Greene, Michael Dotson, Brian Cypher, Jason Stopa and Russell Tyler. I also hope to see some new artists in here that I’ve recently begun a relationship with like Matt Phillips, Ruth Hardinger and Carol Salmanson. We have been hosting group shows up until this point, we may have some solo-shows in the second year program. Now, with the upstairs gallery space and the backyard sculpture garden, the dynamic of the gallery has changed immensely. The shows can now be even more exciting, more creative, include more artists, more work, more, more, more!

www.brianmorrisgallery.com

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Even though Henry didn’t think he would ever work as curator, he believes, “it does make sense that artists do end up curating. I see it as analogous to any other artistic discipline. It just happens that the curators use other people’s work as a medium, the gallery as a substrate. The finished piece is the exhibition.” The curator is kinesthetically involved, connecting the dots for the viewers.

For both curators, art has been used as a point of reference throughout their lives, anchoring their childhoods and subsequent careers. Robert’s father was an artist and a professor of art; making his son’s transition into the art world smoother than most. Henry credits the influence of his mother to lead him in a creative direction. She would take him to the Brooklyn Museum every Saturday, where they took art classes together. “My memories of these moments are quite profound. They were some of the first times I saw my mother as a whole person who could do things other than ‘mom’ things.”

Given their longstanding investment and experience with art from an early age, both curators agree that the origins of their curatorial projects can stem from anywhere, sometimes the farther away from the visual arts the better. Henry interjects, “inspiration can happen anywhere.  The more unconventional, the more compelling the exhibition could be. Getting back to the connect-the-dots metaphor, it’s not so much fun if you’re only connecting dots that are close to one another.”

The gallery presents mainly solo exhibitions, and tends to hearken back to the visual and conceptual principles that both curators share. They use their gallery as a point of exploration, in which the exhibitions function as a continuous string of challenges and experiments. While some shows are conceptually closer to their personal visions, “other shows are farther away. So, rather than a series of curatorial projects Robert Henry Contemporary functions as one continuous curatorial exploration with every show, containing some, but not necessarily all of the ideas in the cluster of interests that Henry and I share.”

Considering the name of their curatorial endeavor, Robert Henry Contemporary, art of the moment is of primary interest. While both curators share much in common, their artistic preferences and interest tend to be quite different. Henry states, “I’m attracted to somewhat minimal work. I also have a tendency towards works on paper, as well as works that are heavily process oriented.” Robert admits he has a great love for Dutch portraiture and landscape paintings of the northern Renaissance. “Rogier van der Weyden, to name one.”

Every show is an amalgamation of Robert and Henry’s personal visions and philosophies, and while this may appear to be a daunting task, the duo isn’t too stressed about it. “I think collaboration often requires compromise by all parties involved. The most successful collaborations are ones where you can see the dialog between the voices, and not simply the lowest common denominator.”

And if you asked these two what they would change about their space if they could, you’d find they’re perfectly satisfied just where they are. Henry states, “I actually don’t like to think about our gallery and our curatorial vision in those terms. Any space can be the most beautiful space in the world if you knew what to do with it. As for a dream artist, this is Brooklyn, after all. There are a lot of artists out there. In that mix is some really exceptional work.”

Robert and Henry are always looking to their next project, anticipating how they can provoke their viewers to ask questions, and engage with their space and the work they believe in. They aren’t slowing down anytime soon. This fall the gallery is anticipating a number of solo shows by artists James Cullinane, Richard Garrison and Noah Loesberg. In December 2013, Robert Henry Contemporary will head to the beach for the Aqua Art Fair in Miami. We have no doubt they will work hard together to bring the heat.

roberthenrycontemporary.com

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Leah Oates: How did Associated Gallery form and what is your collective vision for the gallery?
Associated Gallery: Associated evolved out of Weeknights Gallery, a previous curatorial project that Jen had been running in her studio at The Active Space. When time came to renew the lease in the space, Theresa and Jen, who are both painters and had neighboring studios, thought to combine forces and share studio #28 for painting and turn #27 into a full gallery, which became Associated when they asked another friend, artist, and curator, Julian Jimarez-Howard, to join. We collectively aim to engage the community of artists and showcase those who are underrepresented. We also have aimed to bring totally new ideas to the curatorial world, like with our plant show, “You Are My Sunshine,” in the fall, which received a Critic’s Pick by Jerry Saltz in New York Magazine.

LO: Bushwick has a thriving art scene composed of galleries, non-profits, artists studios and performance spaces. How do you see Bushwick changing and growing and is it the place where the newest, freshest art is being created and/or is its now getting to expensive to pull these things off as much?
AG: We were just talking about this! We are excited for the possibilities that the growing community lends itself to, but also nervous that the increasing rent costs will drive out the thriving art scene before artists really have a chance to settle in the neighborhood. We are worried that Bushwick is becoming more about commercial consumption rather than artistic production. This might seem to be good news for us as a gallery because we rely on people buying work from us (hey collectors!!), but it’s a kind of double-edged sword as we constantly consider the eventuality of being priced out of this neighborhood that we all consider home, or even worse, being stuck in an overly commercial and artificial neighborhood, like what has happened in lower Manhattan since the 80’s.

LO: Are the three of you artists and what do you think of artist run spaces?  There seems to be a resurgence of artist collectives and artist run spaces in the NYC area. Do you think that artists bring something to the table that non artists do not?
AG: We are all artists actually. But our energy as a group isn’t really like an artist collective. Artist run spaces like ourselves, Regina Rex, or Parallel Art Space operate like a standard gallery, showing the work of other artists, and not our own work. The fact that we are artists definitely informs our curatorial approach and aesthetic, but at the end of the day, at Associated, we’re three curators working together to create professional and compelling exhibitions.

LO: What advice would you give to emerging artists who are just out of BFA/MFA programs or who have just settled in NYC?
Julian Jimarez-Howard: Buy lots of vegetables because they’re cheap and healthy, even better, farm them.
Theresa Daddezio: Stay positive and motivated.
Jen Hitchings: You have to work together, and stay in touch with your mentors/professors.

LO: Who are your favorite artists and why?
TD: Artemisia Gentileschi because she’s badass.
JJH: Gabriel Orozco and Francis Alÿs have been decent sources of inspiration for me over the years, but really my favorite artists are my friends. I think that probably goes for all of us, though.
JH: Allison Schulnik, John O’Connor, Lisa Sanditz, and some musicians such as The Caretaker, since music makes a big impact on my painting practice.

LO: What shows and projects do you have coming up at Associated Gallery or elsewhere.
AG: Our next show, opening in late February, is a group show of artists who work with materials in the outdoors, or who create work that exists just outside of the “art world.” It’s a broad take on “outsider art.” The following show is a two-person exhibition concerning landscape, and in May we will be showcasing some BFA candidates from SUNY Purchase (where Theresa and Jen graduated are alumni). We hope to eventually have some exhibitions travel elsewhere, but that’s an idea for the future.

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In a certain light, Smolenski’s entire body of work seems to be encapsulated within this project. Having learned a lot from his time working as a student in an influential sound lab in the Fine Arts Academy of Poznan, Smolenski always saw audio and visual art pursuits as being two elements of the same exploration. From Smolenski’s view, sound work seems to be the contemporary zeitgeist in the Polish art scene. More and more visual artists are beginning to express themselves within the realm of audio art, in part stemming from the forward thinking of a scene growing out of the audio culture fostered by sound labs, including the one where Smolenski got his start at the Fine Arts Academy of Ponzan.  It’s an exciting trend and Smolenski finds himself right in the thick of it.

One of the artist’s more exciting current projects is being an elemental member of the band BNNT.

Acting as a duo, Smolenski teams with Daniel Szwed to become two members of a sound-bombing experiment, traveling about performing sonic assaults on improvised public settings, gallery spaces, and musical festivals as BNNT. The project has been ongoing since 2007 and serves as a fitting example of Smolenski’s understanding of art being equal parts audio, visual, and performance; a creative cocktail of expression which the artist sees as integral pieces to the same experiential puzzle. Smolenski’s work seems to present a disdain for making distinctions between audio and visual creations, about this the artist states, “There are no definitions or clear cut distinctions. I try to blur them in search for a total reception…Often the perception of art is limited by habits. I aim at creating a more open experience.”

BNNT’s sound is raucous and dissonant, ominously dark and distorted. Incorporating recorded elements such as political speeches, crowd grumblings, and other sonic disruption to build a sonic output defined by a feeling of unrest and unease, the work as a whole seems very much about the nature of politics both in the subjects approached by their songs and the nature of how they put together performances.

The DIY style of their work is immediately present in their mobile truck stage, guerrilla approach of their often unannounced shows, and outfits styled after balaclava-wearing revolutionaries and other agents of forced change and dissatisfaction. Smolenski’s creation of a baritone electric guitar with a body styled after a hollowed out tomahawk missile adds the finishing touch that points to a need to be taken seriously as a carefully considered art performance bent on change.

The work seems appropriately timed given Smolenski’s ideas about the lack of open minded-ness in the public’s approach to art paired with the state of flux and economic difficulty the European union has undergone as of late.

The venue that seems likely to be the most in need of the change Smolenski and Szwed can provide would probably be the world of art, although it is hard to say in most instances whether politics guides culture or if things actually happen the other way around. We are pulling for the latter. In either case, the next time the BNNT rolls into town we would all do well to bum a ride.

By Matthew Hassell

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The animating strike is the question, “what does it mean to be an American today,” an idea that resides as much in abstract notions of America as in a chimeric Americana, in those fabled high periods of yore. America today is a country far downwind from those onetime peaks, and in the lowlands things have begun to smell a bit foul. The stench no doubt lifts from the Corpse Politicus, our national institution that’s been so supremely bungled by the very leaders we entrusted with its care.

It should be noted, if we are to ground this exhibition in the current moment, that America is a nation assuredly polarized, and the rift is unflaggingly wrenched wide by “representatives” who insist on dividing our national oneness into a sumless, disunioned bunch. A fragmented citizenry makes for easy pickings, and in a few short decades our elected leaders have stripped the communal landscape bare, colluding with their corporate consorts in defunding or outright dismantling the social and cultural fabric that at one time wove this nation into a believable fiction. At hand now is nothing short of a masturbatory farce, and it is the Americans—the noble subjects of this show—who must suffer through the requisite, never-ending cum shot.

The new divide manages to make everyday acts of being as much political as they are inherently personal. To be gay in America, immigrant, pregnant, jobless, uneducated, uninsured, hungry, without heat; all speak to a political beyond the personal. Further pushing our private selves into the political sphere is the fact that we as citizens are now routinely surveilled: our phone calls, emails, online searches, purchases, our point-by-point movements throughout the day. All of which makes us, whether we like it or not, political beings who possess a certain anxiety-producing potential, a truth that terrorizes our government enough to warrant an obsessive homeland reconnaissance.

The press release for Corpus Americus acknowledges these tensions in citing Habeas Corpus as derivation for the exhibition’s title. Translating as “you shall have the body,” Habeas Corpus, the release states, “is an important, often-manipulated legal instrument safeguarding individual freedom from arbitrary state action.” The theme, then, offers a rich platform for raw, unchecked expression and, one would’ve hoped, fearless interpretations of what it means to be an American today.

So it is curious how tepid some of the works in this exhibition are, or how unspecific they are to any experience uniquely American. From another angle, namely curatorial, I puzzle at an allowance for artwork that fails to explore the implicit tensions in the show’s title and explicitly addressed in its stated theme. Certainly some do, but easily a third of the works do not. For instance, how does Margaret Bowland’s The Tea Party, a well-crafted painting of two children lazing in their party dresses amongst fine linens and a goose, articulate a “distinctly American” experience? The goose brings me straight to Europe, but that might be my own skewed reference points. Instead, I’ll drop my focus to the lower registers of the painting where an oily-milky substance pours down from on high and splashes in at the girls’ bottoms. Are we to infer something American in this? Might there be some veiled environmental commentary about, say, how current practices in the oil and agricultural industries are dirtying or endangering our children? Perhaps, but then the girls in the painting remain perfectly untouched. More specific to the curator’s own citation of Habeas Corpus, one has to wonder how The Tea Party is anywhere in the same universe as “safeguarding individual freedom from arbitrary state action”?

The same questions arise when looking at Simon Leigh’s Cowrie #82, a glazed stoneware representation of, well, a cowrie. The piece feels so oddly out of context in an exhibition attempting to explore meaning in being a citizen of this land that it demands your full and considered attention for no other reason but to understand its placing. What is it about a sea shell, this sea shell, that speaks to the American experience? I walked away clueless.

Still, there are a handful of strong representations in this intimate, twelve-piece show. The standout is Doron Langberg’s On All Fours #3, a work of brute eloquence that communicates the full poundage of what it means to be an American in the first decades of the 21st Century. The painting sits just on the representational side of abstraction, an ambiguous medial that in itself speaks starkly to a now generalized American experience–that of alienation, isolation and despair, of feeling unseen, unrepresented, and permanently on the out. The figure in the painting is a muddied totality of it all and his body no longer bears the weight. He is fallen to such an extent that it implicates each one of us, while as a society we are all the more culpable for allowing such wholesale slippage to occur in our midst. Few amongst us would note this one’s plight for he is so far sunken, more of soil than flesh, a mere mound of ochres and raw umbers that hint only minimally at a presence. While the forces dragging him low seem nearly gravitational, as if from the inward collapse of some existential black hole, what keeps him there is the crushing tide of the world around him which crashes-in at his back in broad and abrupt strokes of blue. America is not one for lifting its fallen, preferring they languish for the long, slow fade; on his own, the figure in On All Fours #3 will not be standing anytime soon.

A small delight in the exhibition is Mario Moore’s, Grisaille of Oshun.  Stylistically simple, with a palette straying little beyond the primaries, the painting is a gracefully understated study of an individual who is unmistakably American because she is so fiercely individual. Moore taps squarely into forces of womanhood that find equivalence in such natural phenomena as typhoons or earth-rending quakes. His heroine is all soldier, a panther in spirit who will tear the flesh from any fool who attempts a cross or any system that conspires to marginalize or estrange. It would be our error to believe she’s a sheltered thing come of age through shaded narrows of innocence, as might be inferred from the cover of an early issue of Jet magazine at her feet. In its early years, Jet—belying their wholesome covers—steadily chronicled the grueling, often murderous struggle for civil rights. At the same time, the magazine offered a crucial, unchallenged voice to the nation-shaking ideologies of that movement’s towering leaders. Perhaps more relevant to the heroine of Grisaille of Oshun, Jet would later give prominent coverage to feminist/Black activist warriors such as Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver. We’d be wiser, then, to assume the magazine at her feet is but one in a lineage of teachers in the art of war. Yet though her fist lies like a hammer at the ready, what allows her to lift into the highest representation of an American in this show is how open and easy she is, how ready to nurture and warm all who enter her care. To that end, she is as much an American archetype as a Woman for the ages.

By Christopher Hassett

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At the time I had been interviewing others for my work, and thought I had struck upon a golden opportunity to observe and analyze myself with roles reversed. Reaction time. Discomfort. Statements. Body language. Things only I was responsible for. I glanced through the window again at a guy sitting cross-legged during his apparent interview. As a rather shy and insecure person at times, I shrugged it off. Harmless. “Where do I sign this thing?”

By this statement I authorize free-of-charge, indefinite use of the film recording featuring my image and voice, and the use of such recording for artistic purposes.

A crewmember called me into the small space, propping the door with his foot. Once in the gallery, I was pointed to a spot on the floor where I should stand. Three to five cameras were adjusted to film me, lights flicked on and pointed, and a woman who I assumed was the artist glanced at my form while propped on a low equipment trunk. I passed a wordless moment by watching the many screens flash to my left with video art and documentation of performances past. I noticed my shirt was wrinkled and didn’t fit in the most flattering way; I wondered how much I weighed that day. I feigned carelessness as I straightened my posture as slowly and discreetly as possible, waiting for the questions I would answer. Language is a vaulting, something you leap into and get lost in with your tongue.

I have to say, there is nothing wrong with me. I am not falling in love. I have no illness. I feel sorry for the inactivity of my legs. I listen to a part of myself I’d like to kill off. I am the body that turns food and dreams. I start something and look away.

“Whenever you are ready,” Ms. Kozyra said. I looked blankly. “Go ahead, we are waiting.” She nudged on, speaking with an accent. I felt as if I had jumped in a cold pool, my body prickling at the sandpaper feeling of bubbles rushing against skin. It was apparent they were expecting me to perform, turning the tables of our little interview into a stage. At the time I was going to stress management sessions on the Upper East Side. I had just learned a new breathing technique to nip an oncoming panic attack in the bud. So I did that. In for five seconds, out for ten. In for five, switch off the fight or flight mechanism, out for ten. In for five, eyes open to the cameras but glazed over, out for ten. The pressure of being put on the spot felt like I was gathering every embarrassing moment I’ve had in my life like crumbs in a wide skirt. In for five, how long could I play this off, out for ten.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure in one of the videos make a gesture, so I imitated the gesture. Then I imitated the gesture again, imitating myself this time. I kept this up for a while until I felt I could bend my knees slightly into a squat. At this point a few minutes had passed so it felt appropriate to say something. “Something,” I said. “Something.” I squatted some more. Then a force outside of my body shrank me into the corner, like a zipper. Now I’m in the corner, I thought. I pliéd, struck the floor, contracted, and addressed the bystanders filming me on their iPhones through the window. I moved fast, slow, considered and made decisions in a moment. Can movement become inhuman, or only more human?

I start to feel life. I feel my hands around the corners of it like a package I cannot see, that will never open. Only the feeling of opening a gift every day. Seeing then doing, doing then seeing, doing and seeing at the same time; doing and seeing that action.

I enacted just about every genre of body movement memory I had; hunching over my desk during a test, winning a backstroke race, climbing stairs, fifth grade honor choir with that African song I still remember, ballet, and the modeling class I took that one time. I mined movement I learned from High school musicals, shaking hands, Shaolin Kung Fu self-defense classes I took at the local community college, and Martha Graham techniques. It seemed the only way to adequately deal with the awkwardness of the situation was to relinquish making any sense at all, and instead eek out every last bit of experience I had synchronized inside of myself.

The creation of man is a few inches between fingers on a ceiling in Rome. This is called Sistine, which sounds more like a lovely death, or watching a small child learn what to do and how to do it.

I thought of poise, of stature. I must have been at it for 10 minutes. Before I knew it, they had stopped me. Ms. Kozyra began to ask me questions, but I’d already done something I didn’t know how to say. “Thank you. What made you prepare this performance for me today?” I stood there, out of breath.

“Well actually, I was just walking by on my way back to work from an errand.” Her eyes widened. “You mean you just improvised? Do you know I am auditioning for my upcoming film in order to cast the role of myself?” That part was hazy for me. “I’ve done many things in life for my art. Difficult things. Do you think you could do difficult and dangerous things in order to replicate my life on screen?”

I asked her what dangerous things. “I have killed a horse. Would you kill a horse for art?”

Um. “I think conceptually I could. But physically, like actually—in reality—to be honest, I’m unsure.”

“How far are you willing to go in order to receive the role of Katarzyna Kozyra? Do you have the ability to reenact my performances so truly and honestly that they become yours? Would you change your gender? Would you wear a fake penis and beard in order to illegally enter a men’s bath and film yourself secretly?” I nodded yes, of course.

After a slew of other intense questions, I began to think she was rather excited about me, that I was a real prospect for her film and that somehow I would win this thing right off the street. They thanked me and ushered me out the door, Kozyra assuring me they would be in touch in case they decided to cast me for the part. I flew back to my internship and recounted the whole experience to the curatorial assistant.

A few weeks passed and it became obvious the “film” she was casting for would never materialize; that her project, Casting, at Family Business was indeed the actual performance. Even so, something about the experience of believing in something and the enacting of sheer improvisation ignited a force in me. I had put myself on display as for art’s sake.

I have long wondered if it’s possible to maintain a mode of being that exists apart from physical experience. Through my improvisational performance, I felt that somehow I had addressed the puzzling dynamic between the inner and external space and the constant battle we face reconciling the two each day.

With the selfie, we deliberately place our bodies and faces in relation to the person scrolling, clicking, and masturbating on the other side of the screen. We make “posts” of ourselves with the recognition of humor and vanity and yet with it, a lack of concern. We consciously build an image, our outstretched hand reaching to curl back around into ourselves. The marble busts and bronze figureheads of the contemporary society are our peers, celebrities, and role models putting themselves on display everyday; rather than chiseled into a moment, attached to a base, and installed in the town square. We invent our own image as patriots in an act of patriotism. We find what is self-like and stare it down.

Partial view of Cynthia Rowley’s 2013 Fall Line. Image courtesy of the author.

I recently attended Cynthia Rowley’s Spring 2014 presentation, my first ever New York Fashion Week event. For one hour, the attendees had the opportunity to regard lovely clothing donned by models standing in a row, absolutely still, on black theatre box bases. Like many other fashion shows, the models stared out, on display and towering above us like the Hall of Famous Missourians honored for their achievements and contributions to the state. They represent supreme proportions, a future ideal, trajectory, the “mode.”

I think about environments where we go to see and be seen: bars, after parties, gallery openings, the clustering of humans with similar physical traits and unending arrangements of differences. The way we flaunt our appearances while countless thoughts pass through the mind in one moment, and another moment, and then another. The force of the patterns we draw, repeat, follow, and share with one another. The feeling and fear of failure that can be transferred to one another, felt—though sometimes indescribable—and seen physically through posture. Poise. The fact that I can feel empowered by my jewelry and clothes. We contort ourselves; we adorn ourselves—yet we are still so bewitched by our bodies. We constantly obsess over what we are made of and how we can push the limits physically. We ask who we are and we look for ourselves in others, seeking reflections of ourselves.

Self-representation is something we usually become aware of at a young age. It’s presence and relevance ebbs and flows with time. Every night when I finally turn off the lamp and decide to open the door to sleep, I face my being: a body in the dark; the grossness of its volume; the sag and tug of its misalignment. Let’s face it; you’d do plenty just to get out of your skin. You’d use your bones as a ladder to climb out of this lumpy world of gentlemen.

My heart runs so fast and my breathing falls short falls, short falls. I am a total collapse of self. A solvent. There is nothing in here to find. I don’t want my memories. I don’t want my heart. I don’t trust my body.

Thankfully, art empowers and celebrates the body as a form. The idea of presenting oneself as spectacle is often discussed. One of Kozyra’s famous video installations, Bathhouse (1997), was filmed inside a women’s bathhouse with a hidden camera. On tape, the women engaging in personal hygiene seemed to naturally assume the same postures that figures from old masters’ paintings held.

So what about the body as temple, the body as public space? Will we begin to consider those who take selfies to be social practice artists—just like how we now deem anyone who groups things together a “curator?” Really, what does the empty white gallery externalize about ourselves? What sort of temple are we building each time a new alternative space, public theatre, and well-curated instagram account appears on our radar?

I like to ask lots of questions; let them layer and build into a rock formation called belief and then let the earthquake of experience break it apart. I know my heart is a place where people can live—like that one song deep and wide that I find in the darkness. If I could only reach in and find the location of my soul (which wrestles all night with the sense of forever, and can’t be determined, unlearned, or reversed) I’d be ready for you in the first person. But right now I’m going to bed, and I know where I’ll be when I get there.

By Olivia Smith

The post Igniting a Force: Impromptu Self on Display appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

To this day his art and his music remain inextricably intertwined. We got in touch with Maxxx as he was on tour with his band Deep Space for the summer. Based out of Austin Texas, the psych rock group describes themselves as being, “created in the wee hours of acid trips and séances within the desert lands of Austin TX.” Give their work a listen and you will certainly see why. Grimy, dirty guitar licks and solid drumming are immersed in a darkly soupy sonic mash of bass and extra terrestrial synth. It all seems to perfectly envelop the lyrics, which are echoing out to us from the far side of an unfathomable void. Deep Space is a perfectly literal band name, which seems refreshingly honest in this day and age. Maxxx is listed as contributing guitar and sonic alchemy.

Not that the camera had been forgotten, he still carries it with him on tour, but these days Maxxx is pretty excited about his paintings. The musical references throughout his work always seem to be at the forefront, either gleaning ideas from exciting song lyrics or actually utilizing the inherent history and beauty of out-moded forms of musical devices such as tapes and records as supports for his painting.  He states, “For me, analog media, like cassette tapes and 8 tracks, have an aesthetic beauty that an mp3 doesn’t possess and never will.

We caught up with Maxxx for a few quick questions in between shows while he was recently on the road with Deep Space. Here’s a section we found particularly enlightening in relation to his work:

NY Arts: Which artistic venture do you consider your main creative outlet, music or visual art?
Maxxx Von Wilmann: I see it as a kind of bricolage, I make music and my conceptual art practice in tandem. As for this moment I’m on tour with Deep Space writing this from Salt Lake City, so today, music, but I draw and take photos along the way.

NYA: Do you connect with any other musicians who make visual art as well? If so, who are your favorites?
MVW: Christian Marclay, I like his cyanotype cassette tapes and the collaged records … man I wish I had thought of that! Michael Borremans is a great blues guitarist, and in my mind is doing the best work out there in paintings or video. I saw a show of Alex Brown’s at Feature Inc. last November, he was the guitar player of Gorilla Biscuits. Raymond Pettibon as well, but I don’t know how much he plays music any more. Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO…the list goes on.

NYA: If you could create the album art for any musical group other than your own, who would it be for and why? ­
MVW: This is an impossible question. There are so many bands in history and present that I would love to be involved with. Brian Eno, My Bloody Valentine­; the sounds they create are like soundscapes, really atmospheric and painterly. Also, Neil Young or Van Halen.

That last part about sums it all up. Even the music Maxxx finds himself drawn to represents itself visually. Music and visual art have always been the same for Maxxx and his talent has flowed seamlessly between the two. We hope that never changes.

maxwillmann.com

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