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05.04.2009 : “Now in Your Neighborhood” by Thukral & Tagra
Indian art stars Thukral & Tagra‘s 30 foot long magenta dinosaur “Now in Your Neighborhood”will be temporarily installed at 309 Cherry St. in Philadelphia.
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Cerealart is pleased to present Indian art stars Thukral & Tagra’s “Now in Your neighborhood, 2008,” The work confronts ideas of globalization in the contemporary art world and looks at how cultures are borrowing from each other. Now in your neighborhood addresses these issues through a pointed reference to mass cultural consumption. The collaborators Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra draw from pop culture, history and street-life to present a giant Dinosaur created entirely from cast pink resin squeeze bottles stamped with custom stickers depicting “everyday people” in silhouette. The familiar bottles, at home in supermarkets and pharmacies around the world (used for containing toilet bowl cleaner, shampoo, dishwashing detergent, etc.) are transformed by the artists from innocuous consumer products to a more menacing form: the seductive yet empty promises of consumerism.
The sculpture, in addition to it’s cultural references, succeeds brilliantly on an esthetic level and is very successful in drawing in unsuspecting visitors of all ages to contemplate it’s “ferocity.”
Artist: Thukral & Tagra
Title: "Now in Your Neighborhood" 2008
Size: 360 x 88 x 84 inches
Medium: Resin and decals on fiberglass bottles with metal structure and Astroturf.
Collection: Harris C. Legome
This installation is courtesy Cerealart. The gallery space has been provided generously by Rachael and Wesley Wei.
"Now in Your Neighborhood" Installation
CLICK HERE to view Tukral & Tagra's CV
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09.01.2006 : Ira Cohen Article
MOVIES | August 27, 2006
Long, Strange Trip for a Hypnotic Film
By JAMES GADDY
IT took 38 years, but Ira Cohen’s cult film, “The Invasion of
Thunderbolt Pagoda,” which was first screened in 1968 at the high point
of the psychedelic hippie head rush, is now commercially available.
Given the close calls, the long absences and his chaotic archival
system, Mr. Cohen, 71, is a little surprised himself.
“It didn’t really involve patience,” he said in his apartment on West
106th Street in Manhattan, surrounded by books stacked waist high. “It
was just reality.”
In 1961 Mr. Cohen built a room in his New York loft lined with large
panels of Mylar plastic, a sort of bendable mirror that causes images
to crackle and swirl in hypnotic, sometimes beautiful patterns. After a
few years experimenting with the technique in photographs, he invited
his friends from the downtown scene — like Beverly Grant, Vali Myers
and Tony Conrad — to make a film.
The finished product sets languid images of opium smokers (in fantastic
makeup and costumes) against a droning, chanting, tabla-beating
soundtrack by Angus MacLise, the original drummer of the Velvet
Underground. Xavier Garcia Bardon, film curator at the Palais des
Beaux-Arts in Brussels, said the film is an important artifact of the
era.
“It’s like going on an ecstatic journey to another planet, full of
magical beings, animals and plants,” he said. “It’s a hallucinatory,
almost trance-inducing experience.”
Mr. Cohen left New York in 1969, shortly after the film’s first
screening, for art- and drug-filled travels in India, Ethiopia and
Nepal. He roamed through the 1970’s and 80’s. While he was away, the
film’s legend grew, even as the original few copies slowly disappeared.
Mr. Cohen said he dropped off the original print at DuArt Film
Laboratories before he left; the staff reached him in Kathmandu in
1978, asking for $300 in storage fees. He asked the lab to send the
print to the Museum of Modern Art, but the museum has no record of
receiving it.
“If you have money, you can store it any way you want,” he said
ruefully. “But for some people, $280, $300 changes the way things turn
out.”
It wasn’t until a compilation of Mr. MacLise’s music came out in 1999,
20 years after his death, that interest in distributing the film began.
Jay Babcock, editor of the underground magazine Arthur, and Will
Swofford, a composer who was then studying at Wesleyan University,
independently tracked Mr. Cohen down.
Mr. Babcock said he was curious to see how Mr. Cohen’s early Mylar
photographs would look like in a film. “I had dreamed for years what it
would look like,” Mr. Babcock said. He began pressing for distribution
rights.
Meanwhile Mr. Swofford had persuaded Mr. Cohen, whose health has been
failing (he’s had two strokes in the last year), to let him operate as
an archivist and agent. Mr. Swofford eventually found 40 cans of unused
outtakes in a green trunk, buried beneath books, papers, slides and
assorted creative runoff.
“No one had touched the film for 25 years,” Mr. Swofford said.
Because the original version lasts only 22 minutes, he began beefing up
the content for the DVD age. Mr. Cohen wanted to use part of the found
film, an eight-minute section in which he is buried in mud, as a
prelude; Mr. Swofford used the nearly four hours of outtakes to fashion
“Brain Damage,” a 30-minute coda. The DVD also features a slide show of
Mr. Cohen’s photographs, audio recitations of his poetry and two
alternate soundtracks to the film.
One of these versions was by the band Acid Mothers Temple, which had
recorded a live soundtrack to the film at the music festival Kill Your
Timid Notion, in Dundee, Scotland, in 2003.
“I had no idea what a DVD could be,” Mr. Cohen said. “I would have just put the film on there.”
The film was released last month, the result of a collaboration between
Bastet, Arthur magazine’s music and video label, and Saturnalia, Mr.
Swofford’s label, with distribution limited to the magazine’s Web site
(www.arthurmag.com) and a few independent music retailers. Thanks to
labor donated by both parties, the initial 1,000-copy print run cost
about $8,000.
But $8,000 is still a lot of money for a magazine like Arthur, a
break-even labor-of-love venture. “It’s shameful, with the hundreds of
millions of dollars spent on movies every year in Hollywood, it’s left
to a penniless publication to put this out,” Mr. Babcock said.
Yet he remains optimistic. The film received positive reviews when
screened at the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Next month Mr. Bardon will hold
a screening with live music in Brussels, and Tony Conrad, now a
professor in the department of media studies at the University of
Buffalo, will screen the film in Atlanta.
Mr. Babcock is already making plans to release Mr. Cohen’s two other
films if Arthur can recoup the investment on this one. “We hope this is
just the beginning,” he says.
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08.10.2006 : SFMOMA Presents Turner Prize Finalist Phil Collins
Phil Collins, dünya dinlemiyor (the world won’t listen) (still), 2005;
Single–channel color video projection with audio, 58 min.; Courtesy the
artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; .
SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- From September 16, 2006, to January 21, 2007, the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present New Work: Phil
Collins, the latest exhibition in the Museum’s ongoing New Work series.
Organized by SFMOMA curatorial associate Jill Dawsey, the exhibition
will feature the work of British artist Phil Collins, who was recently
short-listed for the Tate Britain’s 2006 Turner Prize.
Working in conflicted geopolitical sites around the world, including
Baghdad, Belfast, Bogotá, Kosovo, and Ramallah, Collins employs video
and photography to create strikingly intimate and nuanced portraits of
people and places. Departing from much documentary and site-specific
practice, Collins often communicates through forms of popular and youth
culture, from pop music to reality television, soliciting people from
the far-flung communities in which he works to participate in highly
contrived performances. Recent projects include a disco dance marathon
in Ramallah (they shoot horses, 2004), a restaging of Andy Warhol’s
iconic “Screen Tests” in Baghdad (baghdad screen tests, 2002), and the
production of music videos in Bristol (the louder you scream, the
faster we go, 2005).
Says Dawsey, “Collins is engaged in producing an art of powerful
counter-representations vis-à-vis the mainstream media and
entertainment industries (not excluding the art world), which so often
offer only a culture of leveling spectacle and sameness. Paradoxically,
it is his use of a pervasive form like pop music that ends up
dispelling stereotypes, showing how people appropriate and use pop
culture toward their own ends, in their own idiosyncratic ways.”
The presentation at SFMOMA will center on Collins’s 2005 video
installation dünya dinlemiyor (the world won’t listen), which features
young people in Istanbul performing karaoke versions of tracks from the
eponymous 1987 album by the British band The Smiths. First presented at
the Ninth International Istanbul Biennial, this project is the second
in a trilogy; the first, el mundo no escuchara, was filmed in Bogota in
2004, and the third and final installment will take place in an
as-yet-undetermined location later this year.
For each incarnation of the project, Collins has selected local
musicians and performers through an open call inviting fans of The
Smiths and/or “the shy, the dissatisfied, and the narcissistic, to come
and have their chance to shine,” in the language of the posters Collins
wheat-pasted around each city. The volunteer vocalists take their turns
at the microphone situated in front of a simulated backdrop, singing
songs by The Smiths in their best nonnative English—it’s clear they
know the words by heart. Collins records the performances continuously,
with minimal edits, allowing the alternately awkward, disturbing,
touching, and hilarious moments to unfold in real time.
The Smiths’ original fan base—the disaffected, rebellious youth of
1980s, Margaret Thatcher–ruled England, of which Collins was a
part—found in the music a resonant message. Within the fraught context
of Istanbul, The Smiths’ melancholic pop takes on new poignancy and
urgency, as the karaoke singers ask us to listen to what the rest of
the world won’t. In this way, Collins challenges the alleged hollowness
of pop music, revealing its emotional core and the individuality of its
fans. While dünya dinlemiyor establishes the power of pop music to
bridge communities, transcend borders, and bring visibility to a part
of the world rarely seen or heard from in a playful context, Collins is
keenly aware of the potential to exploit his subjects in such a project.
About his work, Collins has said, “A camera brings interested parties
together. It attracts and repels according to circumstance or whim. A
camera makes me interested in you and you maybe interested in me. In
this sense, it’s all about love. And exploitation. You could say that
[this work] is driven by an emotional relationship with the subjects,
rather than the rational or sensational standards of journalism, which
also inhabit these territories.”
Collins was born in 1970 in Runcorn, England, and has been based in
recent years in Belfast, Brighton, and, currently, Glasgow. He received
degrees from the University of Ulster, School of Art and Design,
Belfast, and the University of Manchester. Collins’s work has been the
focus of solo exhibitions at the Tate Britain; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery,
New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade; the Temple Gallery,
Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia; Milton Keynes Gallery; Wexner Center
for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Espacio La Rebecca, Bogota; and the Wrong
Gallery, New York. Collins received the 2006 Deutsche Borse Photography
Prize at the Photographers’ Gallery, London. As a finalist for the 2006
Turner Prize, he will participate in the corresponding exhibition
opening October 3, 2006, at Tate Britain.
New Work: Phil Collins will be installed on SFMOMA’s fifth floor in
conjunction with Between Art and Life: The Contemporary Painting and
Sculpture Collection, a presentation of post-1960 contemporary art from
the Museum’s collection. A free illustrated brochure, with an essay by
Dawsey, will be available in the galleries.
The New Work series is generously supported by Collectors Forum, an
auxiliary of SFMOMA and the founding patron of the series. Major
funding is also provided by Mimi and Peter Haas, Nancy and Steven
Oliver, Robin Wright, and the Betlach Family Foundation.
Cerealart will be introducing a series of portraits by Phil Collins as
his Wrong Gallery Project. The 12" 1:6 scale portraits of Maurizio
Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnick will be introduced this
fall.
Image © Phil Collins and Cerealart
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06.28.2006 : Lawrence Weiner installation!
A Lawrence Weiner installation will inaugurate the new Cerealart Project Room in September.
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/weiner/
http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs_b/weiner/essay.html
The Lawrence Weiner installation will be followed by a drawing
show co-curated by White Columns Matthew Higgs and Amie Scally – a
former native of Philadelphia, who used to work at the Phila I.C.A.
http://www.whitecolumns.org/
Also on Lawrence Weiner:
Dia:Beacon Riggio Galleries. Claire Barliant, associate editor of
Artforum, lectures on the work of Lawrence Weiner, 1 p.m. June 24, 3
Beekman St., Beacon. Free with museum admission. Call 845-440-0100 or
info @ diaart.org http://www.diacenter.org/prg/talks/
Also, please read the informative multiples story in the July issue of Art + Auction!
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06.05.2006 : Kehinde Wiley:Columbus
Kehinde Wiley introduces a new series of paintings based on old master
works from the permanent collection of the Columbus Museum of Art in
Ohio.Kehinde Wiley:Columbus (June 30-July 8) at Roberts and Tilton - www.robertsandtilton.com
- offers large scale paintings of African-American males in urban dress
that mimics gestures and poses from historic Renaissance and baroque
paintings. The show is organized by the Columbus Museum of Art, to
where it travels later this year (Sept 8-January 7 2007)
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06.05.2006 : Phil Collins shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2006
Phil Collins is working on a series of "dolls" for his Cerealart Wrong
Gallery installation. There will be three 11.5 inch (30 cm) portraits
of Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnick with
changeable clothing and accessories.
Read more at Tate's site
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06.05.2006 : The Wrong Gallery's Whitney Biennial Contribution
The Wrong Gallery’s Biennial contribution was a one-room
exhibition-within-the-exhibition, which was on view in the Gilman Gallery on
the museum’s mezzanine. An exploration of the myth of the American
outlaw, the project, entitled Down By Law, is curated by Maurizio
Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, and Ali Subotnick (founders of the Wrong
Gallery and curators of the upcoming Berlin Biennial), who selected
works both old and new, from the Whitney’s permanent collection and
elsewhere. Down by Law is organized by the Wrong Gallery, with Cecilia
Alemani and Jenny Moore.
As stated in the show’s wall text, “Down by Law brings together a
family of bad men and women, a parade of wrong behaviors, illegal
practices, suspicious faces, and corrupted minds. Assembling works by
more than 50 artists from the 1930s to the present, Down by Law
presents a gallery of mug shots, police sketches, menacing portraits,
and twisted icons, both celebrating and degrading the dark heroes of
the American Dream.”
From the Whitney’s collection are works by such artists as Dennis
Adams, Paul Cadmus, Larry Clark, Leon Golub, Boris Gorelick, Glenn
Ligon, Mark Lombardi, Louis Lozowick, Vik Muniz, Raymond Pettibon, Tim
Rollins & K.O.S., Ed Ruscha, Dread Scott, Fred Tomaselli, Andy
Warhol, Weegee, and David Wojnarowicz. Selections by these artists are
potently mixed with works by Matthew Antezzo, Edgar Arceneaux, Richard
Barnes, Monica Bonvicini, Fernando Bryce, Chris Burden, Paul Chan,
Chivas Clem, Verne Dawson, Jules de Balincourt, Jeremy Deller, Sam
Durant, Marcel Dzama, Gardar Eide Einarsson and Oscar Tuazon, Kota
Ezawa, Mathias Faldbakken, Félix González-Torres, Gregory Green, Karl
Haendel, Barkley Hendricks, Jonathan Horowitz, Matthew Day Jackson and
Dan Peyton, Sergej Jensen, Mike Kelley, Christopher Knowles, Nate
Lowman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Henrik Olesen, Andres Serrano, David
Shrigley, Taryn Simon, Kerry Tribe, Visible Collective/Naeem Mohaiemen,
Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, and others.
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06.05.2006 : Tate Modern London
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06.05.2006 : Klosterfelde Gallery March 2006
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06.01.2006 : Wrong Gallery booth at Frieze 2005
Exhibition curated by Paola Pivi
Produced by RS&A Ltd London
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05.30.2006 : The Wrong Gallery
Check out the new Wrong Gallery Times!
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05.24.2006 : CerealArt has moved!
make sure to make note of our new address!
149 N 3rd Street
Philadelphia PA 19106
US
our new space will have retail hours and a project space.
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10.07.2008 : Interview with Olaf Breuning
whitehot | October 2008, Interview with Olaf Breuning
Olaf Breuning, Can Someone Tell Us Why We Are Here?, 2006.
Cibachrome laminated on aluminum. Courtesy Metro Pictures.
Catherine Ghim interviews Olaf Breuning.
Olaf Breuning solo exhibition
11 October through 8 November 2008
Metro Pictures
519 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
Olaf Breuning’s studio is located beneath a seafood bar on one of the busiest streets in SoHo. Patient individuals can click through his website’s eight intro pages to get the address. But it’s also fairly easy to miss, despite the sign that marks the spot. It’s only natural that Breuning’s professional hubs serve as an extension of the artist’s playfully open personality. His photographs, drawings, sculptures, installations and films are distinguished by an accessibility that’s been well-prepared, sort of like following trail of breadcrumbs down a rabbit hole. Part joke, part investigatory exercise, it’s easy to feel the effort is absurd halfway through, but the desire to get to the punch line always wins. Direct without being confrontational, Breuning holds a steady gaze to meet the viewer’s eye, should they choose to look. He is known to cull references from an infinite archive of mass media and pop culture. Nothing is safe from Breuning’s insatiable appetite or compulsive commentary of the world and its inhabitants.
“You know, this placed used to be a massage parlor” says Breuning after introductions.
He looks remarkably younger than his 38 years, possessing a youthful earnestness without any of the insecure aggression. Not much appears to have changed around his studio since he assumed the lease last September, when the parlor was shut down for dubious services rendered to some grateful male customers. I’m led to a pink room where the “body work” once took place. The Swiss artist counts himself as a former customer, and now uses the space as his drawing room and impromptu gallery. Forty to fifty letter-size pencil drawings are taped up in rows on the walls, with a slightly obsessive, yet pleasing linearity. Around twenty will make his 40th solo exhibition at Metro Pictures, which opens in a few weeks. This room is cordoned by a curtain of beads from the main area of his studio, where his manager and assistant go about their business. It is meant to stifle all external distractions of the bustling city above.
“I need to be completely alone with no distractions,” he explains, and I start to feel like a snoop, intruding on the artist’s schedule and studio. Then suddenly, we feel the rumbling of the subway beneath.
Olaf Breuning and friend, New York, 2008.
Photo: Catherine Ghim, courtesy the artist
“Occasionally there are still men who come to get massages,” he says. “It’s so complicated in New York. Even if I shut the door and unplug the phone, you’re always distracted.”
Apparently subways and journalists are not the only interference during Breuning’s day. Most recently featured at the Whitney Biennial, trying to summarize the references in his work would be like trying to summarize everything on Google. The breadth of cultural systems Breuning navigates is dauntingly endless, grows by the day, and often results in déjà vu.
CG: Your vocabulary is derived from the media, TV, advertising, Hollywood, fashion, history, science, fairy tales, social myths, religion and of course, the Internet. You’ve taken this Google-like collective conscious of the everyday to form an ongoing commentary on the everyday. Where is this omni-inspiration derived from?
OB: Wherever. All over! It’s not one perspective I watch. History is different relative to the moment. The most important thing for me is the personal approach. How I value the world, what I think about this world, what I don’t like, and what I like. Whatever that may be.
Olaf Breuning, Still from the film Home, 2003. Dual Screen DVD Shot with Digital Camera,
32 minutes, Edition of 5, MP# V-7. Courtesy of MetroPictures
CG: Is Google a thematic preoccupation with in your upcoming show?
OB: Google is our tool today to figure out the truth about issues, we use it for everything. When I meet my artist friends for example, and they ask something like: “Is it true that Bill Chamberlain slept with twenty thousand women?” I’ll say “Surely not?” But then I will go home and Google it. Then I’ll read on Wikipedia that why yes, it is.
CG: Do you feel there our Google-dependency is dangerous?
OB: Fifty thousand years ago we had stone tools, and now we have computers. Google isn’t dangerous. It’s just different, just something else. I believe some things about human beings are good and don’t change, despite Google or whatever. Humans don’t change. Love and relationships never really change, though maybe differentiate by culture. I’m really interested in finding these continuous, specific things about life and then speaking about them.
CG: You’ve clearly given the topic some thought. So despite the universe of information available to you, are you saying that you’re most concerned with the fundamental aspects in life?
OB: For me, and for the show at MetroPictures, that’s the theme of the show. There are going to be seventy different drawings, sculptures, and photographs. Each of those has a different quote or approach to speak about this world, to speak about myself in this world. I don’t as an artist try to speak about one body of work or one thing I care about...I try to go different places in my work, with my language, in other words as a human being. I don’t try to position myself in a specific way like, ‘I’m just interested in classical music so I just make my work about classical music.’ I’m just trying to be a common idiot, like a normal person.
Olaf Breuning, 20 Dollar Bill, Ghana, 2007. Courtesy of MetroPictures
CG: You’re an avid consumer of pop culture and mass media, in all its incarnations. In your past interviews you’ve admitted watching up to one movie a day. You also have a reputation for incorporating visual cues from B-grade slasher films, and even had an exhibition called “Hello, Darkness.” Are you a big fan of the genre? Does this influence your work?
OB: The thing is my art started from horror movies, but I've never been a big fan of slasher films. I've never been interested in making art about dark things. I’m fascinated by Hollywood. I'm a big fan of the early Peter Jackson films. I like John Carpenter films...I love Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry David. Now my references are random, because life is random. I still watch horror movies sometimes, but also TV series, romantic movies. I try to use the references from my life. I try to be like a normal human being, who floats in that mainstream stuff. I watch one TV episode when I’m alone at my lunch break. I just watched Mad Men. The day before, I watched P Diddy’s show. I just have an open mind. I’m really happy when I cover as much as I can, using my senses as tools and what I already know. Whether I’m in the mood to be critical or sarcastic about this world, I just try to translate it in my language. [Breuning turns to his assistant, who is working on an altered photograph of a landscape. It’s an achingly beautiful shot of a lush forest set against an auburn backdrop of dusk.]
You see the here, birds have formed into letters spelling “Why Can't We Be Nice to Nature? What Is Wrong With You?”
CG: It's endearing but heartbreaking. Is your work is in protest or celebration of the world?
OB: Life is both for me. It’s like how I said before; many artists get into an “artistic ghetto” and become absorbed in a world that just exists out of similar things. But definitely I use my language about this world with a kind of disappointment. This disappointment that asks, ‘Why we can’t be better human beings? Why are we violent? Why are mean to each other?’ I try to ask all these questions. [Breuning walks over to a small print of his 20 Dollar Bill taped to the wall. Five African boys each hold a single twenty dollar U.S. bill up for the photographer. They are grinning ear to ear, just yards away from the rubble and poverty in the background. There’s none of the pleading desperation of a Greenpeace canvasser. It’s impossible to ignore heartbreaking truth that lies just beyond the happiness captured in the foreground.]
That is very disturbing work. You see I had to fly to Ghana. I had to put twenty dollar bills in their hands. I went to Ghana to film, and there I took this photograph. Here I can do a drawing in five minutes. You get a piece of paper and pen and more or less you get the same message. But here (motioning to photograph) that will be interesting in the show. Because you will see it in the drawing and here with photographs, and this the idea to go there and be conscious and signal “What is wrong?” The relation of the world? What is our responsibility?
CG: This is a typical of your work. It doesn’t shy away from the fact that we’re still universally ignorant despite globalization, or the wealth of resources made available to us. Your subjects present themselves with a jaded look of having seen it all. They’re disjointed from themselves and the world around them. They’re like props, in stage sets with ridiculous costumes. You achieve a result that’s at once shocking, familiar, intriguing and repulsive. Do you consider the audience and how they might feel, during your process of conception?
OB: I don’t really make art because I make art for the audience. I mean sure, I like it when people like my art. But the main reason why I make art is to make check boxes. Oh I spoke about that? Next! Next! Next! That’s why I make art.
Olaf Breuning, Ultimate Suicide, 2008. Pencil on Paper. Courtesy the artist
CG: What are you working on now?
OB: (Walks over to a free-standing mechanical contraption that stands five feet tall. It's a colorfully complicated system of pulleys, tunnels, tubing, levers and wheels meant for kids who aspire to become physicists or engineers. The kind whose parents thought I was a bad influence.) That's the nose and eyes, do you see? There are some balls and they'll go up and down and turning and jumping and rrrrrrr! This is one part of a series of sculptures that’ll be included in the show. (Picks up a photograph.)
These are being made in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They are completely white colossal ceramic bodies and they have no ceramic head. You see here, that could be an arm, that could be a belly button but they have no head.
CG: [Squinting, failing to make out any recognizable appendages] I’m not sure what I’m looking at.
OB: [Points to the Lego-tower-for-geniuses] That will be a head. These ceramic bodies are the same but with different heads, it could be a Gandhi or an Adolf Hitler. Whatever is possible! This one stands for a guy who thinks a lot, an intellectual. Another sculpture I've got has a head made out of boobs and asses. It stands for a primitive guy who thinks about sex a lot. I think it will be a very strange, simple installation. But also beautiful, because the head on will be very nice on top of these beautiful ceramic bodies. They are a lot more expensive than the shit that’s standing on top of it. I like the dichotomy.
CG: I get it! They’ll be easier to get once the parts are assembled. [Bumps into the tower] Did I break it?! [In panicked voice] There goes my rent.
OB: No, no, it’s cheap anyway. I got it for $150 off a website on science.com or something.
CG: Okay, maybe just my ConEd bill. [Whew] The message will be easy to grasp once the head and body come together. It seems like your work is usually not meant to be esoteric or over-moralizing, despite tackling some heavy issues.
OB: You don’t have to be someone who reads a lot of books, travels, has money and knowledge about things. [My work] isn’t limited only to people who have these things. I’m interested in how we think, how we operate. I have an open door and people can walk in and they might be confused when they come inside. But I’m not an artist who closes the door and writes only about culture and art history for people who understand it. It’s just not my cup of tea.
Detail of Olaf Breuning's studio interior, New York, 2008.
Photo: Catherine Ghim, courtesy the artist.
CG: I’d like to look at your drawings again.
OB: Sure. [We return to the pink room to look at his drawings. He points to a drawing of a man sitting in a filled bathtub with a radio perched precariously on the edge, a bottle of pills strewn on the floor, while a cement ton brick hangs by a thread above and he holds a gun against his head.] I like this one, “Ultimate Suicide.” For all of these, I locked myself in, closed the door and took an Adderall pill. I have a friend who's a shrink who gave me twenty of those pills. He's a good friend.
CG: I need more friends like that.
OB: (Nodding) He gave it to me, and I never used it. I took one to see how it is and its actually wonderful because even if you take one pill, its just shhhhhhwww! [Makes a tunnel motion] That’s something appealing I had about when I started to make art more because I was in my zone. But here it’s so complicated; New York is a difficult place to focus. So I call this the “Adderall Series.” [Picks up a book of his sketches “Queen Mary.” The first drawing series Breuning completed was drawn onboard the Queen Mary, going from New York to England to save himself from boredom.]
None of those were made on Adderall. There's nothing, it's just sea. There was really nothing which is actually beautiful.
CG: What will happen once your Adderall supply runs out? Will you get more?
OB: Sure, I could but I won’t. I just don’t need it anymore. I have five or six pills left and that’s all I need for five or six days left I need to do [the drawings]. It has these side effects. At night I go out and often I meet people, but you feel socially awkward on it. I’m kind of a virgin for pills! I never took them before, so my body reacts like “wow, incredible!” So after this show I go clean. (laughs) At least I can say I was a drug addict!”
Tool wall in Olaf Breuning's studio, New York, 2008. Photo: Catherine Ghim, courtesy the artist.
CG: Every artist needs a good drug story.
OB: [Mocking voice] Yeah, I had to quit Adderall. It was really hard. [Grows serious] I know a lot of people especially in New York, especially Americans, who have kids who have problems to focus they would give them. But in Europe it’s not usual to take it. It’s a cultural thing. I just would never do that as a parent. Especially when you take it a long time, and you think you can’t live without it. Ah! I have to do a drawing about pills.
CG: Do you have other work aids, like music?
OB: Usually music helps. Nowadays I’ve been into hip hop. I’ve been listening to hip hop for eight years.
CG: Like Michael Phelps!
OB: Who is Michael Phelps?
CG: He’s the Olympic gold-medal…Nevermind.
OB: Anyway, yes I like hip hop very much at the moment because it’s the so far removed from me. I am not Black; I don’t live in the hood. Punk rock music is like where I come from, too close to me. But at the same time I’m not someone who’s specific. I’m a big fan of Lil' Wayne. His new album is a good record. I think he’s a very good rapper. Hip Hop is like a Hollywood movie. It has the same patterns. Often there are these guys who make one album and it’s just the industry. That’s why people like Lil’ Wayne stand out. He seems to have a brain, have character in how he raps.
Olaf Breuning, Print of 20 Dollar Bill, Ghana, 2007. Courtesy the artist.
CG: Your fascination with pop culture is particularly provocative on film. I’ve seen "Home". Do you plan on doing more films in the future?
OB: I am interested making art using film as a medium. Take the Sopranos for instance; it’s a two hundred hour movie. You have a lot of characters and stories. But not in a film, when it’s just 2 hours. It’s just like there’s not that much going on. Short films, like Japanese films. That’s actually what I want to make when I make films. Art as film. I’m not interested in making film films. I want to make artist films. I want to make low budget films without big production scene around it. That’s what I really like. Because it can be just like when you make a drawing or photograph. Keep it simple.
CG: What will your next film be about?
OB: I don’t know. I would like to make Jurassic Park 4 with very weird dinosaurs!
Breuning’s films are a visual catalog of our social conventions, regurgitated into an absurdist, no-holds-barred-tableaux. The world he captures in his films reveals relentless truths about our reality in the most surreal way. Even the most grotesque of Breuning’s subjects are nonthreatening, simple in nature despite the “in your face” quality. Breuning can get away without stepping on toes because he executes everything with the Puck-ish spirit of a class prankster. After all, who hasn’t experienced boredom from the humdrum of everyday routine? What may initially come off with a “Jackass” outburst isn’t obnoxious or juvenile, but a deliberately stylized method. Breuning refuses to play the part of passive receptacle. He chooses to interrupt life's lessons in complacency with unapologetic honesty, and implicate the viewer into his world, and theirs.
Interior of Olaf Breuning's studio, New York, 2008. Photo: Catherine Ghim, courtesy the artist.
“I like to stay open, not close myself down and to this pigeon hole. Keep it open. That also makes my work a bit more offending? A lot of young people, kids like my work because they just understand. They see this thing and it’s easy and they can understand it, this kind of direct language,” he says.
Since audience isn’t a preoccupation, he has no qualms about taking a chainsaw to the familiar, reassembling its dismembered parts to construct his armies of macabre messengers. Breuning is engaged in an investigation with his “Frankensteins,” reinforcing the boundaries of genre, sex, reality, fiction and fact by distorting them. He has a penchant for dressing subjects in funny costumes, placing them in stranger habitats without blinking an eye. They are completely unaware of how ridiculous they look, instead possessing a somber, ritualistic seriousness. His subjects stare vacantly out of the photographs and drawings, insinuating the viewer’s own empty expressions of life, and the shallowness in which we go about everyday without ever really trying.
Look closely, and you'll see Breuning's sly tags, his psycho-socio-cultural-geo-political graffiti marking every weird, tacky surface of these imagined netherworlds. He despises passive stupidity, our narrow perceptions, homelessness, genocide, poverty, and soulless acceptance of it all. Breuning’s strongest tool is humor, using it to lower inhibitions then subvert our realities while we’re having a pleasant chuckle. Because they are so unassuming, the simplest low-tech sketch drawing is capable of upsetting the world we think we know. Drawings are Breuning’s strongest suit and perfect poison, because they allow him to easily shift between time, place, and character.
Most of the time, it’s easy to laugh at his subjects, those hybrid freaks of nature and colossal efforts in bad taste. How else to deal with such absurdity? But the joke is actually on us. Breuning gets us drunk off our own clichés in order to seduce us into his nightmare vision of the world, violating our realities by exposing them as fraudulent daydreams. This is Breuning’s ultimate prank.
For more information visit the Olaf Breuning's website.
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Catherine Ghim is a freelance writer in New York.
catherine.ghim@gmail.com |
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10.07.2008 : Interview with Olaf Breuning
whitehot | October 2008, Interview with Olaf Breuning
Olaf Breuning, Can Someone Tell Us Why We Are Here?, 2006.
Cibachrome laminated on aluminum. Courtesy Metro Pictures.
Catherine Ghim interviews Olaf Breuning.
Olaf Breuning solo exhibition
11 October through 8 November 2008
Metro Pictures
519 West 24th Street
New York, NY 10011
Olaf Breuning’s studio is located beneath a seafood bar on one of the busiest streets in SoHo. Patient individuals can click through his website’s eight intro pages to get the address. But it’s also fairly easy to miss, despite the sign that marks the spot. It’s only natural that Breuning’s professional hubs serve as an extension of the artist’s playfully open personality. His photographs, drawings, sculptures, installations and films are distinguished by an accessibility that’s been well-prepared, sort of like following trail of breadcrumbs down a rabbit hole. Part joke, part investigatory exercise, it’s easy to feel the effort is absurd halfway through, but the desire to get to the punch line always wins. Direct without being confrontational, Breuning holds a steady gaze to meet the viewer’s eye, should they choose to look. He is known to cull references from an infinite archive of mass media and pop culture. Nothing is safe from Breuning’s insatiable appetite or compulsive commentary of the world and its inhabitants.
“You know, this placed used to be a massage parlor” says Breuning after introductions.
He looks remarkably younger than his 38 years, possessing a youthful earnestness without any of the insecure aggression. Not much appears to have changed around his studio since he assumed the lease last September, when the parlor was shut down for dubious services rendered to some grateful male customers. I’m led to a pink room where the “body work” once took place. The Swiss artist counts himself as a former customer, and now uses the space as his drawing room and impromptu gallery. Forty to fifty letter-size pencil drawings are taped up in rows on the walls, with a slightly obsessive, yet pleasing linearity. Around twenty will make his 40th solo exhibition at Metro Pictures, which opens in a few weeks. This room is cordoned by a curtain of beads from the main area of his studio, where his manager and assistant go about their business. It is meant to stifle all external distractions of the bustling city above.
“I need to be completely alone with no distractions,” he explains, and I start to feel like a snoop, intruding on the artist’s schedule and studio. Then suddenly, we feel the rumbling of the subway beneath.
Olaf Breuning and friend, New York, 2008.
Photo: Catherine Ghim, courtesy the artist
“Occasionally there are still men who come to get massages,” he says. “It’s so complicated in New York. Even if I shut the door and unplug the phone, you’re always distracted.”
Apparently subways and journalists are not the only interference during Breuning’s day. Most recently featured at the Whitney Biennial, trying to summarize the references in his work would be like trying to summarize everything on Google. The breadth of cultural systems Breuning navigates is dauntingly endless, grows by the day, and often results in déjà vu.
CG: Your vocabulary is derived from the media, TV, advertising, Hollywood, fashion, history, science, fairy tales, social myths, religion and of course, the Internet. You’ve taken this Google-like collective conscious of the everyday to form an ongoing commentary on the everyday. Where is this omni-inspiration derived from?
OB: Wherever. All over! It’s not one perspective I watch. History is different relative to the moment. The most important thing for me is the personal approach. How I value the world, what I think about this world, what I don’t like, and what I like. Whatever that may be.
Olaf Breuning, Still from the film Home, 2003. Dual Screen DVD Shot with Digital Camera,
32 minutes, Edition of 5, MP# V-7. Courtesy of MetroPictures
CG: Is Google a thematic preoccupation with in your upcoming show?
OB: Google is our tool today to figure out the truth about issues, we use it for everything. When I meet my artist friends for example, and they ask something like: “Is it true that Bill Chamberlain slept with twenty thousand women?” I’ll say “Surely not?” But then I will go home and Google it. Then I’ll read on Wikipedia that why yes, it is.
CG: Do you feel there our Google-dependency is dangerous?
OB: Fifty thousand years ago we had stone tools, and now we have computers. Google isn’t dangerous. It’s just different, just something else. I believe some things about human beings are good and don’t change, despite Google or whatever. Humans don’t change. Love and relationships never really change, though maybe differentiate by culture. I’m really interested in finding these continuous, specific things about life and then speaking about them.
CG: You’ve clearly given the topic some thought. So despite the universe of information available to you, are you saying that you’re most concerned with the fundamental aspects in life?
OB: For me, and for the show at MetroPictures, that’s the theme of the show. There are going to be seventy different drawings, sculptures, and photographs. Each of those has a different quote or approach to speak about this world, to speak about myself in this world. I don’t as an artist try to speak about one body of work or one thing I care about...I try to go different places in my work, with my language, in other words as a human being. I don’t try to position myself in a specific way like, ‘I’m just interested in classical music so I just make my work about classical music.’ I’m just trying to be a common idiot, like a normal person.
Olaf Breuning, 20 Dollar Bill, Ghana, 2007. Courtesy of MetroPictures
CG: You’re an avid consumer of pop culture and mass media, in all its incarnations. In your past interviews you’ve admitted watching up to one movie a day. You also have a reputation for incorporating visual cues from B-grade slasher films, and even had an exhibition called “Hello, Darkness.” Are you a big fan of the genre? Does this influence your work?
OB: The thing is my art started from horror movies, but I've never been a big fan of slasher films. I've never been interested in making art about dark things. I’m fascinated by Hollywood. I'm a big fan of the early Peter Jackson films. I like John Carpenter films...I love Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry David. Now my references are random, because life is random. I still watch horror movies sometimes, but also TV series, romantic movies. I try to use the references from my life. I try to be like a normal human being, who floats in that mainstream stuff. I watch one TV episode when I’m alone at my lunch break. I just watched Mad Men. The day before, I watched P Diddy’s show. I just have an open mind. I’m really happy when I cover as much as I can, using my senses as tools and what I already know. Whether I’m in the mood to be critical or sarcastic about this world, I just try to translate it in my language. [Breuning turns to his assistant, who is working on an altered photograph of a landscape. It’s an achingly beautiful shot of a lush forest set against an auburn backdrop of dusk.]
You see the here, birds have formed into letters spelling “Why Can't We Be Nice to Nature? What Is Wrong With You?”
CG: It's endearing but heartbreaking. Is your work is in protest or celebration of the world?
OB: Life is both for me. It’s like how I said before; many artists get into an “artistic ghetto” and become absorbed in a world that just exists out of similar things. But definitely I use my language about this world with a kind of disappointment. This disappointment that asks, ‘Why we can’t be better human beings? Why are we violent? Why are mean to each other?’ I try to ask all these questions. [Breuning walks over to a small print of his 20 Dollar Bill taped to the wall. Five African boys each hold a single twenty dollar U.S. bill up for the photographer. They are grinning ear to ear, just yards away from the rubble and poverty in the background. There’s none of the pleading desperation of a Greenpeace canvasser. It’s impossible to ignore heartbreaking truth that lies just beyond the happiness captured in the foreground.]
That is very disturbing work. You see I had to fly to Ghana. I had to put twenty dollar bills in their hands. I went to Ghana to film, and there I took this photograph. Here I can do a drawing in five minutes. You get a piece of paper and pen and more or less you get the same message. But here (motioning to photograph) that will be interesting in the show. Because you will see it in the drawing and here with photographs, and this the idea to go there and be conscious and signal “What is wrong?” The relation of the world? What is our responsibility?
CG: This is a typical of your work. It doesn’t shy away from the fact that we’re still universally ignorant despite globalization, or the wealth of resources made available to us. Your subjects present themselves with a jaded look of having seen it all. They’re disjointed from themselves and the world around them. They’re like props, in stage sets with ridiculous costumes. You achieve a result that’s at once shocking, familiar, intriguing and repulsive. Do you consider the audience and how they might feel, during your process of conception?
OB: I don’t really make art because I make art for the audience. I mean sure, I like it when people like my art. But the main reason why I make art is to make check boxes. Oh I spoke about that? Next! Next! Next! That’s why I make art.
Olaf Breuning, Ultimate Suicide, 2008. Pencil on Paper. Courtesy the artist
CG: What are you working on now?
OB: (Walks over to a free-standing mechanical contraption that stands five feet tall. It's a colorfully complicated system of pulleys, tunnels, tubing, levers and wheels meant for kids who aspire to become physicists or engineers. The kind whose parents thought I was a bad influence.) That's the nose and eyes, do you see? There are some balls and they'll go up and down and turning and jumping and rrrrrrr! This is one part of a series of sculptures that’ll be included in the show. (Picks up a photograph.)
These are being made in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They are completely white colossal ceramic bodies and they have no ceramic head. You see here, that could be an arm, that could be a belly button but they have no head.
CG: [Squinting, failing to make out any recognizable appendages] I’m not sure what I’m looking at.
OB: [Points to the Lego-tower-for-geniuses] That will be a head. These ceramic bodies are the same but with different heads, it could be a Gandhi or an Adolf Hitler. Whatever is possible! This one stands for a guy who thinks a lot, an intellectual. Another sculpture I've got has a head made out of boobs and asses. It stands for a primitive guy who thinks about sex a lot. I think it will be a very strange, simple installation. But also beautiful, because the head on will be very nice on top of these beautiful ceramic bodies. They are a lot more expensive than the shit that’s standing on top of it. I like the dichotomy.
CG: I get it! They’ll be easier to get once the parts are assembled. [Bumps into the tower] Did I break it?! [In panicked voice] There goes my rent.
OB: No, no, it’s cheap anyway. I got it for $150 off a website on science.com or something.
CG: Okay, maybe just my ConEd bill. [Whew] The message will be easy to grasp once the head and body come together. It seems like your work is usually not meant to be esoteric or over-moralizing, despite tackling some heavy issues.
OB: You don’t have to be someone who reads a lot of books, travels, has money and knowledge about things. [My work] isn’t limited only to people who have these things. I’m interested in how we think, how we operate. I have an open door and people can walk in and they might be confused when they come inside. But I’m not an artist who closes the door and writes only about culture and art history for people who understand it. It’s just not my cup of tea.
Detail of Olaf Breuning's studio interior, New York, 2008.
Photo: Catherine Ghim, courtesy the artist.
CG: I’d like to look at your drawings again.
OB: Sure. [We return to the pink room to look at his drawings. He points to a drawing of a man sitting in a filled bathtub with a radio perched precariously on the edge, a bottle of pills strewn on the floor, while a cement ton brick hangs by a thread above and he holds a gun against his head.] I like this one, “Ultimate Suicide.” For all of these, I locked myself in, closed the door and took an Adderall pill. I have a friend who's a shrink who gave me twenty of those pills. He's a good friend.
CG: I need more friends like that.
OB: (Nodding) He gave it to me, and I never used it. I took one to see how it is and its actually wonderful because even if you take one pill, its just shhhhhhwww! [Makes a tunnel motion] That’s something appealing I had about when I started to make art more because I was in my zone. But here it’s so complicated; New York is a difficult place to focus. So I call this the “Adderall Series.” [Picks up a book of his sketches “Queen Mary.” The first drawing series Breuning completed was drawn onboard the Queen Mary, going from New York to England to save himself from boredom.]
None of those were made on Adderall. There's nothing, it's just sea. There was really nothing which is actually beautiful.
CG: What will happen once your Adderall supply runs out? Will you get more?
OB: Sure, I could but I won’t. I just don’t need it anymore. I have five or six pills left and that’s all I need for five or six days left I need to do [the drawings]. It has these side effects. At night I go out and often I meet people, but you feel socially awkward on it. I’m kind of a virgin for pills! I never took them before, so my body reacts like “wow, incredible!” So after this show I go clean. (laughs) At least I can say I was a drug addict!”
Tool wall in Olaf Breuning's studio, New York, 2008. Photo: Catherine Ghim, courtesy the artist.
CG: Every artist needs a good drug story.
OB: [Mocking voice] Yeah, I had to quit Adderall. It was really hard. [Grows serious] I know a lot of people especially in New York, especially Americans, who have kids who have problems to focus they would give them. But in Europe it’s not usual to take it. It’s a cultural thing. I just would never do that as a parent. Especially when you take it a long time, and you think you can’t live without it. Ah! I have to do a drawing about pills.
CG: Do you have other work aids, like music?
OB: Usually music helps. Nowadays I’ve been into hip hop. I’ve been listening to hip hop for eight years.
CG: Like Michael Phelps!
OB: Who is Michael Phelps?
CG: He’s the Olympic gold-medal…Nevermind.
OB: Anyway, yes I like hip hop very much at the moment because it’s the so far removed from me. I am not Black; I don’t live in the hood. Punk rock music is like where I come from, too close to me. But at the same time I’m not someone who’s specific. I’m a big fan of Lil' Wayne. His new album is a good record. I think he’s a very good rapper. Hip Hop is like a Hollywood movie. It has the same patterns. Often there are these guys who make one album and it’s just the industry. That’s why people like Lil’ Wayne stand out. He seems to have a brain, have character in how he raps.
Olaf Breuning, Print of 20 Dollar Bill, Ghana, 2007. Courtesy the artist.
CG: Your fascination with pop culture is particularly provocative on film. I’ve seen "Home". Do you plan on doing more films in the future?
OB: I am interested making art using film as a medium. Take the Sopranos for instance; it’s a two hundred hour movie. You have a lot of characters and stories. But not in a film, when it’s just 2 hours. It’s just like there’s not that much going on. Short films, like Japanese films. That’s actually what I want to make when I make films. Art as film. I’m not interested in making film films. I want to make artist films. I want to make low budget films without big production scene around it. That’s what I really like. Because it can be just like when you make a drawing or photograph. Keep it simple.
CG: What will your next film be about?
OB: I don’t know. I would like to make Jurassic Park 4 with very weird dinosaurs!
Breuning’s films are a visual catalog of our social conventions, regurgitated into an absurdist, no-holds-barred-tableaux. The world he captures in his films reveals relentless truths about our reality in the most surreal way. Even the most grotesque of Breuning’s subjects are nonthreatening, simple in nature despite the “in your face” quality. Breuning can get away without stepping on toes because he executes everything with the Puck-ish spirit of a class prankster. After all, who hasn’t experienced boredom from the humdrum of everyday routine? What may initially come off with a “Jackass” outburst isn’t obnoxious or juvenile, but a deliberately stylized method. Breuning refuses to play the part of passive receptacle. He chooses to interrupt life's lessons in complacency with unapologetic honesty, and implicate the viewer into his world, and theirs.
Interior of Olaf Breuning's studio, New York, 2008. Photo: Catherine Ghim, courtesy the artist.
“I like to stay open, not close myself down and to this pigeon hole. Keep it open. That also makes my work a bit more offending? A lot of young people, kids like my work because they just understand. They see this thing and it’s easy and they can understand it, this kind of direct language,” he says.
Since audience isn’t a preoccupation, he has no qualms about taking a chainsaw to the familiar, reassembling its dismembered parts to construct his armies of macabre messengers. Breuning is engaged in an investigation with his “Frankensteins,” reinforcing the boundaries of genre, sex, reality, fiction and fact by distorting them. He has a penchant for dressing subjects in funny costumes, placing them in stranger habitats without blinking an eye. They are completely unaware of how ridiculous they look, instead possessing a somber, ritualistic seriousness. His subjects stare vacantly out of the photographs and drawings, insinuating the viewer’s own empty expressions of life, and the shallowness in which we go about everyday without ever really trying.
Look closely, and you'll see Breuning's sly tags, his psycho-socio-cultural-geo-political graffiti marking every weird, tacky surface of these imagined netherworlds. He despises passive stupidity, our narrow perceptions, homelessness, genocide, poverty, and soulless acceptance of it all. Breuning’s strongest tool is humor, using it to lower inhibitions then subvert our realities while we’re having a pleasant chuckle. Because they are so unassuming, the simplest low-tech sketch drawing is capable of upsetting the world we think we know. Drawings are Breuning’s strongest suit and perfect poison, because they allow him to easily shift between time, place, and character.
Most of the time, it’s easy to laugh at his subjects, those hybrid freaks of nature and colossal efforts in bad taste. How else to deal with such absurdity? But the joke is actually on us. Breuning gets us drunk off our own clichés in order to seduce us into his nightmare vision of the world, violating our realities by exposing them as fraudulent daydreams. This is Breuning’s ultimate prank.
For more information visit the Olaf Breuning's website.
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Catherine Ghim is a freelance writer in New York.
catherine.ghim@gmail.com |
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05.21.2008 : Preview of Print Portfolio Published by Cerealart to Benefit YouthAIDS and The Cambodian Children's Fund
Cerealart is publishing a print portfolio in an edition of 25 with works by Michael Bevilacqua, Jeremy Deller, Kenny Scharf, Laurie Simmons, Shinique Smith, Mickalene Thomas and Kelley Walker as a benefit for YouthAIDS and The Cambodian Children's Fund to be released Fall 2008. Each print is 16 x 20 inches and handsigned and numbered by the artist. The Portfolio of 7 works in an edition of 25 will be cased in a linen box and will be avilable for $5500.00, 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the two organizations.
YouthAIDS is an education and prevention program. It uses media, pop culture, music, theater and sports to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and reach 600 million young people in more than 60 countries with life-saving messages, products, services and care. Starting as a handful of small projects in South Asia and Kenya YouthAIDS now has programs that span the globe offering creative interventions appropriate to the specific health needs and cultural settings of each country. www.youthaids.org
The Cambodian Children's Fund (CCF) was originally developed to provide a safe haven for 45 children in critical need. Within four short years, the CCF has grown to incorporate three separate facilities, where nearly 300 children receive nutrition and housing, as well as medical treatment, dental services and vaccinations.
CCF children are given a comprehensive educational program that includes local language reading and writing, as well as multi-level classes in English, social studies and math. They also attend evening classes at the rooftop cultural center, where they learn traditional Khmer music, dance and drama. Vocational training continues to be a vital aspect of our organization, and CCF''s children are encouraged to pursue both on- and off-site studies in computer training, cosmetology, hair-dressing, graphic design, restaurant management and language instruction. The CCF is also expanding into community relief programs to provide education, health care, safe drinking water and sustenance to the country's most indigent families. Only through self-sufficiency can the generational cycles of poverty and abuse be broken. www.cambodianchildrensfund.org
Michael Bevilacqua, The Idiot, 2008,
16 x 20 inches, Archival pigment on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 100% cotton rag paper. Edition of 25.
Jeremy Deller, Sitting On The Fence Is Strictly Prohibited, 2008,
16 x 20 inches, Archival Pigment print on Crane Museo Rilver Rag 100% cotton rag paper with a gloss finish. Edition of 25.
Kenny Scharf, Purple Three-Eyed-Guy, 2008,
16 x 20 inches, Archival Pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 100% cotton rag paper, with silk-screened glitter. Edition of 25.
Laurie Simmons, You Can Lean A Lot of Things from the Flowers, 2008,
16 x20, Archival Pigment print on Crane Museo Rilver Rag 100% cotton rag paper with a gloss finish. Edition of 25.
Shinique Smith, Something Blue, 2008,
16 x 20 inches, Archival pigment on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 100% cotton rag paper. Edition of 25.
Mickalene Thomas, Lovely Six Foota, 2008,
16 x 20 inches, Archival Pigment print on Crane Museo Rilver Rag 100% cotton rag paper with a gloss finish. Edition of 25.
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Kelley Walker, schema - Aquafresh plus Colgate with Mint Zing (Stacey Dash), 2008,
16 x 20 inches, Archival Pigment print on Crane Museo Rilver Rag 100% cotton rag paper with a gloss finish. Edition of 25.
For more information please contact Shiya 215-627-5060 or shiya@cerealart.com.
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11.28.2007 : Cerealart During Art Basel Miami
Please join Cerealart at
The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) Art Fair
and The Rubell Family Collection
December 5 - 11, 2007
The New Art Dealers Alliance Art Fair
December 5-9, 2007 at The Ice Palace
1400 North Miami Avenue
(corner of North Miami Avenue and NW 14th Street)
December 5th through 8th - 11 am to 7 pm
December 9th - 11 am to 4 pm
The Rubell Family Collection
December 5 -11, 2007 95 NW 29th Street
Domino Magazine Brunch
Thursday December 6th, 9 am - 12 noon
Hosted by Jennifer Rubell and Domino Magazine
Daily visits December 5th through 11th - 9 am to 6 pm
Cerealart will debut new editions by Nathan Mabry, Taylor McKimens, Kenny Scharf, Mickalene Thomas and Kehinde Wiley.
New editions by Nathan Mabry:
 
New edition by Mickalene Thomas:
(images of the editions show work in progress)
For more information about Cerealart's new editions please call 215.627.5060 or email info@cerealart.com.
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10.25.2007 :
Cerealart's newest edition "The Gypsy Fortune-Teller" by Kehinde Wiley is an elegant 76 x 96 inch tapestry that was woven in Belgium. Recently "The Gypsy Fortune-Teller" was photographed installed in the ballroom at the historic Powel House in Philadelphia. (www.philalandmarks.org)
Kehinde Wiley, Louis XVI, the Sun King, 2006
Edition of 250, hand signed and numbered, cast marble dust and resin, 10" h x 9.5" w x 3" d.
Kehinde Wiley, After La Negresse, 1872, 2006,
Edition of 250, hand signed and numbered, cast marble dust and resin, 11" h x 10" w x 9".
Kehinde Wiley, The Gypsy Fortune-Teller, 2007
Tapestry woven in Belgium, 76 x 96 inches, Edition of 48.
Powel House courtesy of the Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks, Landmarks Contemporary Projects.
Photo credit: Aaron Igler
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09.12.2007 : Ira Cohen Opening Reception
Ira Cohen Photoworks Opening Reception Friday September 7th, 2007
Ira Cohen
Outside of Cerealart
Cerealart - displaying Ira Cohen's "From the Mylar Chamber" Series.
Ira Cohen and Cerealart Owner / Director Larry Mangel
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09.12.2007 : Ira Cohen Films For Sale
CEREALART is now selling two DVD's by Ira Cohen, "The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda" and "Kings with Straw Mats."
Purchase them online at www.cerealart.com or by calling 215-627-5060. The dvd's are $30.00 each.
The Invasion of Thunder Bolt Pagoda
From Ira Cohen - 1968
- The only psychedelic film ever made
- First ever director authorized DVD
- Color corrected, 16mm fiilm transfer
- 16 page booklet of poetry & photos
- Over 60 minutes of special features
- Slide shows of Mylar photography
- Soundtracks by Angus Maclise, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Acid Mothers Temple & Mahasiddhi
Kings With Straw Mats
A film by Ira Cohen
"The naked Nagas marching to the river, like sparks from some primordial fire, the people of dust with arms held high. There is a pleasure of being mad that only the madman knows." - Ira Cohen
A pilgrimage into the heart of India's greatest sacred celebration, the Kumbh Mela which takes place every 12 years. Filmmaker and poet Ira Cohen brings us face to face with an unforgettable gathering of holy men and into the heart of a visionary experience by rendering it as it really is: a circus of high madness, true devotion and showbiz savvy. The Kumbh Mela takes its name from the Hindu legend which tells how four drops of the gods holy elixir fell to the earth from a "kumbh" or pitcher during a struggle with jealous demons fighting in the heavens. The celebration takes place where those drops fell to the earth.
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08.09.2007 : Response to Ira Cohen Naga Photographs
Dearest dearest Larry,
Don't worry I take no offense...
That photograph just stirs the wrong image of the religion and its beliefs; Hindu's are non-violent pious people and as strange as the western world finds such beings, they are our swami's, our holy guides, and we respect them and their devotion to the faith.
You know me, I am far from religious, I just try and do what's best for everyone and I thought that if I didn't say how I felt about that picture I would be helping a misinterpretation. Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Christian we are all the same... There are just some that take the religion more seriously than others and sometimes you condone them but at the same time you have to think about their devotion to the faith. What I don't like is
those religious individuals that put other faiths down...we must all live in this world as equals, nobody is right, nobody is wrong but we all need to eat and sleep to survive and therefore naked, we are all the same.
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08.09.2007 : Kenny Scharf
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06.12.2007 : CEREALART Project Room Presents
"OLD HEAD - YOUNG HEAD"
Greg Tobias and Dan Murphy
June 28th - August 31, 2007
Opening reception: Thursday June 28, 5 -8pm.
 The CEREALART Project Room's upcoming exhibition "Old Head Young Head" features work by two Philadelphia artists capturing the city's underbelly grittiness. Greg Tobias brings a 65 year olds perspective which will be contrasted against the vision of 30 year old Dan Murphy the founder of Megawords and an original member of the Space 1026 artist collective.
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04.09.2007 : CEREALART Project Room presents PRIMITIVES
Primitives
Chris Caccamise and Jonas Wood
Curated by Michael Clifton
April 20 - June 23, 2007
Opening Reception, Friday April 20th 6-9pm
Cut, paste and paint – together these actions shape a bold, warped and
spatially askew visual aesthetic in the work of artists Chris Caccamise
and Jonas Wood. Moments within their paint on paper compositions
recall aspects of geometric modeling or vector graphics, like those
used to create South Park and at times their artworks - sometimes
crude, brightly colored and often humorous - bear a tertiary
relationship to the characters and landscape that populate the animated
television show.
Whether its a manatee painting next to a portrait of robust sunbathers
in his parent's hallway, or a poster of former NBA player Manute Bol,
Jonas Wood is attracted to geometric forms in situ, from both natural
and mediated sources. Three-dimensional objects in his compositions
appear assembled together via points, lines and curves, or
'primitives' (such as those in geometric modeling), to create a final
two-dimensional image. The pasted paper and enamel sculptures of Chris
Caccamise in comparison are more literal in how they relate to modeled
forms.
Unlike the 'primitives' of vector graphics that derive from
mathematical equations, algebraic calculation plays no role in the work
of Caccamise and Wood. Both artists work from life and
imagination, preparatory sketches and re-purposed collage elements.
Classical subject matter becomes contemporized in their work. Nature
and society are examined at close range and today's heroes are sports
figures and art world celebrities. In his sculpture "Take An Object",
Caccamise re-stages a famous quote by Jasper Johns using a sly
interplay of compositional syntax. Set atop a flatbed truck in
candy-colored block letters, the quote "Take an object. Do
something to it. Do something else to it." seems poised to
conquer Middle America. Likewise Wood's depiction of a potted
plant, with blue stems
and pink leaves, is observed from life yet tinted with imagination, allowing for nuanced readings.
For Chris Caccamise and Jonas Wood, inspiration may derive from the
familiar but the results are anything but commonplace; their cut, past
and paint actions yield modern compositions, re-imagined through
primitive instancing.
http://www.chriscaccamise.com
http://www.antonkerngallery.com/news.php
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04.09.2007 : Mickalene Thomas - Metro New York
Rhinestones and Oprah
Mickalene Thomas explores ideas of femininity through unlikely subjects
by kenya hunt / metro new york
MAR 30, 2007
INTERVIEW. While New York’s art scene is largely based in Chelsea, a
loosely connected group of Brooklyn artists who explore issues of race
and gender are becoming increasingly significant voices.
“It’s about bringing your cultural self to creativity. We’re all aware
of the fact that we do it,” says artist Mickalene Thomas of her friends
Kehinde Wiley, Wangechi Mutu, Bradley McCallum, Jacqueline Tarry and
Shinique Smith during a morning chat in her work studio on Grand
Avenue. Her space is livelier than usual. The phone doesn’t stop
ringing, and a seemingly endless stream of interns come in and out as
they work in preparation for her upcoming show at Caren Golden Fine
Arts. Two hours later, she’ll hop on the Acela to Philadelphia where
she’ll create a series of multiple works for a local gallery there.
“Kehinde, who I know because we both went to Yale, introduced me to
Rhona Hoffman, who presented my first solo show. A lot of my success is
because of my friends,” she adds. The rest, however, comes from her
ability to evocatively address old notions of beauty and race in fresh
ways.
The idea of self-identity plays a strong role in your work. Can you pinpoint the time when you began to really question it?
I kind of discovered art through an art therapy course. I took it
during college to deal with a few issues that I had with my family and
my sexuality. I just saw an ad for it in the local newspaper and
decided to take it. It lasted a weekend, and I remember making these
works in pastels about my identity. A friend of mine saw the work and
suggested I apply to art school. I
needed to find clarity and bridge this sort of gap within myself. Ever
since then, a lot of my work has been about my mother and issues of
beauty.
What issues specifically?
For instance, take someone like Lil’ Kim or Farrah Fawcett. Both, at
different points, introduced a new sensibility of what beauty is. I
live in America; I can’t ignore the fact that they influence what I’m
doing. We live in an age of plastic surgery. They’re affecting
everyone. They affect the way we see beauty.
Is that why your paintings are often embellished with Swarovski
crystals, glitter and rhinestones? They’re all materials that are
usually associated with fashion and beauty.
I wanted to make the work flamboyant and explore the art of dressing
up, the act of beautification. When we accessorize our clothing and put
on lipstick, that’s an act of masking. Other times, it’s an act of
enunciating what’s already there.
Your “Odalisque” series looks at your friends through the lens of the
1970s blaxploitation period. What about that moment attracted you to it
as a cultural reference?
I really was influenced by the 1970s in general and all of those images
of women in magazines like Ebony and Jet. They all had this sense of
charisma and self-confidence about them. It was about capturing the
sensuality of black femininity and the way it’s represented in the
media.
How did you choose Oprah Winfrey and Condoleezza Rice as your current subjects?
They’re both powerful cultural icons whether we like them or not.
They’re shape-shifters in a way. I started to wonder, “What if the way
we perceive them is the total opposite of how they actually are
internally?” What if Oprah is really a sensual woman? They’re an
enigma, and I began to see the possibility for ambiguity. So, I
deliberately chose images of them where they aren’t wearing their
typical expressions.
http://ny.metro.us
Cerealart will debut two new editions by Mickalene Thomas later this year.
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03.01.2007 : New OBJECT by Kenny Scharf
COMING SOON...
Object by Kenny Scharf will be available as a multiple in an edition of 500.
Scharf will also be hand painting 25 individual pieces like these two examples.
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03.01.2007 : The Armory Show, 2007
The New York Social Diary covers The Armory Show, the International Fair of New Art Opening on February 22, 2007.
Newyorksocialdiary.com
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01.10.2007 : INKY TOY AFFINITAS
Featuring work by:
Markus Amm (London), Helene Appel (London), Nicole Bianchet (Berlin), Ulla von Brandenburg (Paris), Damien Deroubaix (Berlin/Paris), Lucile Desamory (Berlin), Marte Eknaes (London), Claire Fontaine (Paris), Aurelien Froment (Paris), David Gaus (Paris/Zurich), Ellen Gronemeyer (London), Alexander Heim (London), Sophie von Hellermann (London), Uwe Henneken (Berlin), Julia Horstmann (Berlin), Volker Hueller (Hamburg), Bethan Huws (Paris), Lisa Junghanss (Berlin), Dorota Jurczak (Hamburg), Janice Kerbel (London), Armin Kramer (Hamburg), Rene Luck (Berlin), Isa Melsheimer (Berlin), Laurent Montaron (Paris), Thomas Ravens (Berlin), Norbert Schwontkowski (Bremen/Hamburg), Andreas Slominski (Berlin/Hamburg), Isabell Spengler (Berlin), Katja Strunz (Berlin), Alex Tennigkeit (Berlin), Emily Wardill (London)
Curated by Anna-Catharina Gebbers
February 16 - April 14, 2007
Opening reception: February16, 2007
CEREALART
149 N. 3rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
T 001.215.627.5060
F 001.215.627.5061
www.cerealart.com
The group show INKY TOY AFFINITAS will feature works on paper by thirty-one artists from Berlin, Hamburg, London, and Paris. Curator Anna-Catharina Gebbers has invited thirteen artists from these cities to participate with their own works and by inviting artists themselves.
This exhibition presents, on one hand, the disparate possibilities of paper works as a playful sketch, as mnemonic, as conceptual work, and moreover as an evidence of intentional perception. On the other hand, the artists will show both their own works as well as that of artists to whom they extended the invitation. These relationships spin a web of intellectual affinities, one which broadens the visual preferences beyond their origins.
Kant first mentions "affinitas" (affinity) in connection with chemical processes in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798). The influence of chemistry on the formulation of thoughts during Kant's later lifetime -- the so called Chemical Age, as Friedrich Schlegel deemed it -- is as well attested to in Goethe's novel Elective Affinities (1809). Chemical reactions were understood to be a template of analog psychological and intellectual processes. Still today in chemistry the term "affinity" describes a "process of confederation" wherein specific heterogeneous substances, chemical species, or atoms of unlike composition, combine to create new chemical compounds.
The concentration upon artists from four European cities reflects a range of preferences on the part of the curator that delimits the number of potential affinities and associations. And some of the artists could not or did not want to name any "affinities," while others invited several colleagues to contribute. In the end, this playful dance represents an elected perception and mutual appreciation.
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The thirteen artists invited by Anna-Catharina Gebbers and the artists invited by them are:
From Berlin, Germany:
- Nicole Bianchet
- Alex Tennigkeit - together with Nicole Bianchet: Damien Deroubaix (Berlin/Paris), Katja Strunz (Berlin), Uwe Henneken (Berlin)
- Lucile Desamory: Isabell Spengler (Berlin)
- Lisa Junghanss (Berlin)
- Isa Melsheimer: Thomas Ravens (Berlin), Rene Luck (Berlin)
From Hamburg, Germany:
- Dorota Jurczak: Armin Kramer (Hamburg)
- Norbert Schwontkowski: Volker Hueller (Hamburg)
- Andreas Slominski
From Paris, France:
- Ulla von Brandenburg: Laurent Montaron (Paris), Julia Horstmann (Berlin), Aurelien Froment (Paris)
- Claire Fontaine (Berlin/Rom)
- Bethan Huws: David Gaus (Paris/Zurich)
From London, Great Britain:
- Marte Eknaes: Janice Kerbel (London)
- Alex Heim: Markus Amm (London), Helene Appel (London), Ellen Gronemeyer (London), Sophie von Hellermann (London), Emily Wardill (London)
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12.03.2006 : Please visit CEREALART during ArtBasel/Miami!
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10.27.2006 : Nov 17th OPENING at CEREALART Project Room
Opening reception 6-9 PM
CEREALART Project Room
'25 x 25'
Curated by Matthew Higgs and Aime Scally,
White Columns, New York
November 17, 2006 - January 17, 2007
The show will consist of 25 works by 25 artists
who have shown with or who are associated with
White Columns.
With works by:
Anthony Campuzano
Carter
Graham Durward
Jack Goldstein
Colter Jacobsen
Scott King
Christopher Knowles
Sarah Anne Lobb
Dan Miller
Aurie Ramirez
Kay Rosen
James Rosenquist
William Scott
Josh Shaddock
Alexandre Singh
Gerone Spruill
Paul Butler
Jeremy Deller
Trisha Donnelly
Richard Prince
Jack Pierson
Eileen Quinlan
Amy Robinson
Michael Smith
Rirkrit Tiravanija
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10.27.2006 : What a cabbage patch doll?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/arts/articulate/200610/s1772199.htm
By Stefan Armbruster. Posted: Tuesday, October 24 2006 .
A portrait of the Queen hung in the Tate Modern's Wrong Gallery in London has been causing a stir. Is her royal highness amused? Buckingham Palace is saying nothing. "We are not commenting on it. This is very much a matter for the artist."
But New York artist George Condo , whose works sell for more than $A2.5 million, sounds like he's having a bit of fun. "This
painting looks like a Cabbage Patch doll. They do have similar
characteristics. Cabbage Patch dolls are something every child loves.
It is a nightmare picture of herself in her own head. It is an
improvisation of her own nightmare."
The work is one of nine portraits of the Queen. "I
was told that you are not allowed to show members of the royal family
nude in a public place, [but] I'll be working on it next."
"What I had originally intended to do was a stunning nude that would be in the style of the Velazquez Rokeby Venus.
That was my original idea. It is very difficult to do something new. At
first it was the most petrifying thought - to paint something of the
Queen. I would absolutely love it if she would sit for me."
In the nude? The New Yorker tells of the other portraits. "The
surrealist distortions and grotesqueries familiar to viewers of Condo's
"imaginary portraits" over the past twenty years were dominant in
several of them-double or triple rows of teeth, clown noses, chins
colliding with mouths, heads pierced by large carrots; others were
likenesses of the monarch at different ages and in various moods."
But the conservative tabloid Daily Mail questions the artistic values of Condo's work. "Has the latest royal painter taken artistic licence a tad too far?" Tate Modern has defended the painting, which hangs next to a work by Jackson Pollock. "Condo's is a very interesting imaginary work."
The history of the Wrong Gallery, which opened at the Tate in December 2005, is quiet an interesting one too.
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10.27.2006 : Wrong Gallery re-enacts 1972 performance which outraged Italy and the Vatican
A man with Down’s Syndrome will contemplate three objects during Frieze
By
Anna Somers Cocks |
Posted 12 October 2006
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=462
LONDON. Go to the Wrong Gallery at Frieze (F28) and you will see a bit
of history in motion: a man with Down’s Syndrome is sitting on a chair
looking at a stone, a sphere and an imaginary cube.
This is the re-enactment of “Second solution of immortality:
the universe is immobile” shown at the 1972 Venice Biennale, but which
shocked artists, the public and media so much that in its original form
it remained open only for a few hours before the man with Down’s
Syndrome was replaced by a “normal” girl.
The participation of a
man described by the press and critics of the time as a “mongol” (while
the artist, Gino De Dominicis (1947-98) always referred to him by his
name, Paolo Rosa) led to accusations of Nazism. The Vatican said the
work “destroyed any credibility of art and offended human reason”, and
even the radical film director Pier Paolo Pasolini accused De Dominicis
of being “an accomplice of the repressive ideology of capitalism”.
Many artists in Italy and at the Biennale itself were
indignant because this was one of their first experiences of conceptual
art. Italy had also entered a decade of revolution; the student riots
of 1968 preceded some real anarchy and the middle classes were putting
up the shutters. Actually De Dominicis was not a revolutionary in this
sense, but a man genuinely obsessed with metaphysical questions such as
immortality. He combined the invisible cube, the sphere that might
bounce and the stone that might be thrown with the young man who might
make them do something, or might just be looking at them. The essential
thing was that De Dominicis saw Paolo Rosa as occupying a different
state of being, “like an alien”, which for the artist raised questions
about the underlying concept of the universe.
What has
changed in 34 years? This is what interests the Wrong Gallery (not a
real gallery, but a team of art impresarios: Maurizio Cattelan, the
artist, and curators Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick) who have
produced the installation in collaboration with RS&A Ltd. In the
art world, a tremendous amount. The type of art—more or less outrageous
installations with or without human presence—is now so common that few
in the art world will be genuinely shocked.
So far as people with a disability are concerned, the change
is even greater. My brother Philip has spastic cerebral palsy and
people used to stare at him, or, what was almost worse, avert their
eyes. Then, disabled people tended to be hidden away or over-protected.
Now, they have many opportunities to integrate. As Amanda Sharp one of
the organisers of Frieze said to me about the young man staging the
performance, “He’s an actor and fully aware of his role”. In other
words, he’s just an ordinary bloke. But did I imagine it? Didn’t she
say it just a little too fast, as though to forestall any possible
suggestion that he is being exploited? No, integration is not yet
complete and the subject remains very sensitive.
The irony is that it is Ms Sharp’s comment that actually makes
the work completely different from the 1972 version, where the whole
point was that De Dominicis thought Paolo Rosa was not seeing the event
with the same eyes as “ordinary” people.
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10.27.2006 : Some Images from London during Frieze Week
looking at art  The Wrong Gallery at the Tate Modern with the George Condo installation of the Queen  Jeff Koons opening at Gagosian   |
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10.27.2006 : Phil Collins featured in article about Turner Prize in London
Turner Prize: Inside one of the installations
The artist Phil Collins has
controversially set up a real office in the Tate for this year's Turner
Prize. So what's it like to work there? Lena Corner reports on her
fortnight in the eye of an art-world storm
Published: 22 October 2006
read more at http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1903108.ece
It's one of those mornings when you just know it's going to be a slow day in the office. Everyone is finding it hard to concentrate. It's not for want of trying either - each one of us is rooted to our workstation. The problem is that more than 200 people are pressed up against our office window staring in at us. Video cameras are rolling and flashes are going off all over the place. I'm not sure whether I feel like a celebrity or a goldfish.
It's press day at the opening of the 2006 Turner Prize exhibition - or, as one paper puts it, "modern art's annual punch-up". One of the four exhibits, by 36-year-old artist Phil Collins, is a working office plonked in the middle of Tate Britain. It's here that I'm sat, trying to work for the newly formed production company, Shady Lane.
It's not often you get a chance to be part of a living artwork, so when a job came up at Collins' company, I decided to apply. Phil was looking for a team of researchers to work for three months, finding people who feel their lives have been ruined by appearing in reality television shows to feature in his next artwork - for the Turner Prize, it's the office itself that he will be judged on. I had an interview, got the job and was duly summoned to the Tate for training. My desk sits facing the sickly salmon back wall (Dulux's Dreamy Peach), to my right is the fax machine and to my left a wilted pot plant and the filing cabinet. All the mundane paraphernalia of the dreariest desk job. I might be a work of art, but I'm certainly not surrounded by it.
It's the first time in the Turner history that real people have been such an integral part of the work, and for the Tate curator Katharine Stout, we're something of a logistical nightmare - how are we going to interact with the public? There's a hatch on the side-wall of the office so potential subjects for the study or visitors can come up and talk to us, and Katharine has patiently trained us all up in dealing with even the most challenging enquiries. We now have an answer to every conceivable question. "Phil Collins? Is that a joke?" she boomed through the hatch in one of our many practice runs. "Call this art?" she shrieked again and again, until all the answers tripped effortlessly off our tongues.
The office is certainly a bold idea. Phil is using the Tate to get on with his own work, at the same time as harnessing the enormous publicity the Turner Prize generates to aid his research. I listened the gallery audio guide so I know exactly what the visitors are hearing when they're staring in at us.
"He is working almost as a parasite within the Tate," says the voice on the guide. "Making them host his office to produce a new work is asking very interesting and critical questions about the idea of a finished piece. He's directly challenging the very prize that he's in the running for."
Parasite or not, me and two other researchers, Jane and Max, have reported to Phil bright and early on this, our first day there (we're paid to work from 10am-6pm, Monday to Friday). Max and I have made an effort to look nondescript, knowing that an enormous press pack was on its way to scrutinise our every move. Phil, normally a photographer and video artist, seems to have morphed effortlessly into office manager. His only instructions to us are to avoid bending over (cue "Art? My Arse" headlines) and not to fish anything out of the bin ("What A Load Of Rubbish!"). Predictably, later on I bend over to pick some paper out of the bin to put it in recycling.
Apart from momentarily forgetting how to switch on my computer, things run fairly smoothly. At this stage we are just setting up email accounts and giving people our contact details, but it is almost impossible to do even this under such intense scrutiny. Some people arrive and just leave their cameras rolling on us, which is particularly disconcerting, and Jane is convinced she has spotted someone else listening in on us, hiding in a blindspot. Thoughtfully, though, Phil has installed a privacy screen in one corner of the office so if anyone does lose it, they can do so away from the glare of the crowds. I spend more time there than anyone else. On the plus side, there's no eating or drinking in the office so, with afternoon grazing off the menu, it's going to be great for our diets.
BBC News 24 gets its first report out quickly and by lunchtime calls are starting to come in from former reality-show contestants. That evening, Shady Lane Productions features on most of the other TV networks and the following morning, on a local London station, there's a long, unfortunate shot of Max and myself sniggering behind our computer screens.
By the time we get into the office on our second day, Max's ego is enormous. His picture seems to feature in virtually every newspaper. Sat at his desk, side on, he thinks he looks a little like Rodin's The Thinker. Others might say he resembles a small, baffled ape. I'm a little bitter that I feature virtually nowhere, aside from a piece by the Sun's esteemed arts critic, Toulouse le Plot. Jane, who is six months pregnant, isn't happy either: "If I'd known we were going to be all over the press," she says, "I would never have worn a bright pink curtain." (I do crop up on Newsnight later in the week though, and am so vain that I tape it and rewind it over and over again until I capture a perfect shot of myself and Phil on my phone.)
But despite the blanket press coverage - far more than the other three exhibits - Phil is unhappy that most people in the art world seem to assume the office is a spoof. "These people are so lazy it is just easier for them to believe it's a fake," he says. "They're so unbelievably entitled, the biggest surprise for the people I spoke to yesterday is that I actually go to my office every day and that none of us are actors. I mean, really!"
It's also annoying: we have work to do. Our brief is to find roughly 15 people whose lives have been ruined by appearing on TV - on makeover shows, talk shows and reality programmes. If people don't think we're real, they're not going to call.
We start a cuttings file on reality-related stores and it only takes one set of Sunday tabloids to realise that the fallout from ordinary people appearing on TV is everywhere. Whether it's stories of drunken sex parties on X-Factor, or boob jobs on From Lad to Ladette. By now more people are coming forward and we're hearing stories about loss of confidence, homelessness, drug addiction and families being torn apart. "I've always wondered what happens after these shows are transmitted," Phil explains to someone whose come to the hatch to ask the "Why reality TV?" question yet again. "You have to wonder what happens when, for instance, a transsexual hooker, who has effectively come out on national TV, pops down to the local bakery and bumps into friends and neighbours. How well equipped are people for these situations? And for how long, if at all, does the oft-spouted promise of counselling continue for?"
In our induction we were all given a crash course in Phil's work (including a similar experiment conducted in Turkey in 2005). A recurring theme is an examination of our obsessive love of cameras and their ability to both seduce and manipulate. "We are fundamentally interested in is people's stories," Phil said. "Frighteningly, on Trisha's website she says something similar. Trisha though, as far as I can see, has exhibited no apparent interest in the socio-economic realities underlying her contributor's stories."
On Tuesday night, there's an opening party, and we clear up early and head to the bar. The response from guests seems to be positive, but it's annoying the number of people who express indignation that we're not still at our desks. "Are you usually at your desk at 9pm in the evening?" I feel like asking. The two highlights of my evening are meeting dancer Michael Clarke and helping Phil to smuggle a carrier bag full of falafels past the bouncers into his after-party at Madam Jojo's nightclub in Soho to feed his drunken entourage.
Back at our desks the morning after, we're feeling jaded and hungover. "I spent the whole night being literally clawed," says Phil. "It was like being both bride and wedding organiser at my own marriage." He's not sure if it's overtiredness, or reality TV overkill, but today he is convinced he's seen Aggie from How Clean is Your House? having a cream tea in the Tate café.
Gillian, the cleaning supervisor, pops in. Apparently the cleaners have been too scared to empty our bin in case it's an artwork. In 2004 German-born artist Gustav Metzger created a piece of "auto-destructive art" for the Tate. One element was a bag containing rubbish that he had collected from within the gallery, but a cleaner mistook it for a bag of rubbish and threw it out. Metzger declared the piece to be ruined. No wonder the cleaners are a little nervous.
Requests come flooding in from journalists wanting to come and work in the office but Phil turns everyone down. If I'm totally honest, it's not entirely luck that won me my coveted position in Shady Lane Productions. I first met Phil when we were students in Manchester in 1990. He turned up on my doorstep one day after being thrown out of a house in Longsight for not paying his rent. We ended up becoming flatmates for so long that we'd joke that I was his common-law wife with rights to half his measly pile of worldly goods.
We moved frequently, avoiding the city's student enclaves and living instead in Salford, Old Trafford, Lower Broughton and a two-week stint in Whalley Range before a brick through our bathroom window moved us on again. It was the era of acid house and Madchester. For years Phil worked in the Hacienda at a time when Shaun Ryder and Barney from New Order could regularly be found propping up the bar - just before the whole scene imploded into a mess of gang warfare and shootings. Phil says he really can't remember anything from that whole time, "because I spent it off my face at service stations at four in the morning".
A few peripatetic years followed. He dumped all his belongings in Kwik Save carrier bags, shoved them under my bed, and went off to try his hand at bingo calling, teaching and barwork, before ending up in Belfast to do an MA in fine art. Despite his current art-world success he's still the only person I know who doesn't own a debit or credit card or a mobile phone. He's never driven, can hardly ride a bike and only this year got a washing machine for the first time. As an artist whose work regularly takes him to troublespots such as Baghdad, Ramallah and Bogota, he's certainly not looking for an easy way out. No wonder, he says, he feels at odds with the art world. "I don't like a lot of the way the art world is organised," he says. "I don't feel I fit into things. I think it's really removed and unnecessarily alienates a large proportion of the population. It is, of course, the only area of modern life where people give away free drinks and still nobody comes."
As the week rolls on at Shady Lane Productions, we're quietly beginning to embrace a few office stereotypes, The office bully (me) is first to emerge, then there's the office swot (Jane) and finally the office idiot (Max) who arrives every day off the Tate boat feeling slightly seasick. "We've become completely institutionalised within a week," says Jane. But this still doesn't feel like a normal job. Maybe it's because it's Phil, or maybe it's the need to show off to visitors, but there's a sense of dedication from each of us that none of us have shown in any previous jobs. And, completely unheard of, when it comes to invoicing we even find ourselves knocking off the odd hour if we don't feel we've come up with the goods.
In the next few days, Newsnight's Kirsty Wark pops her head in to make a few pertinent suggestions about the daytime chat-show hosts Trisha and Jeremy Kyle. The Tate Britain director Stephen Deuchar passes by to check Phil is treating his staff right, and a journalist from the Communist Morning Star stops in to interrogate him on how it's all being paid for. "It's been paid for by me," says Phil patiently. "With money from work that I've sold. Everyone gets exactly the same, which is at the rate of the highest earner in the office. Except for me. I get nothing."
BBC Radio Scotland invites Phil on for a head-to-head with Cameron, the winner of Big Brother 4. It backfires slightly when both sides are in total agreement. Cameron's mum is an artist, so of course, he says, an office could be considered to be an artwork. Shortly after the interview, Cameron phones back to say that he could put us in touch with some former Big Brother contestants who have since had plastic surgery. Apparently things got so bad some no longer want to be recognised.
Week two in Shady Lane coincides with Frieze Art Fair and the global art community has descended on London en masse. From my humble work station I catch a glimpse of David Hockney, Maurizio Cattelan and Jeremy Deller passing by. It's also a rare chance to see the international art set at its schmooziest. Every evening there's more openings and free wine than anyone could possibly stomach. Phil tells me that he turned up at a Royal Academy party in a brown cardigan and puddle-splashed jeans. The invite stipulated lounge suits. "Well, it has been a long day at the office," he told security.
Despite our training, the public are, on the whole, polite to the point of timidity. Few are bold enough to strike up a conversation with us through the hatchway - with the exception artists and schoolchildren. On some occasions, though, I do slam the hatch door shut when people get too noisy outside. My ignorance of the gallery scene is shown up when I do this to a group of visitors, who, it is later revealed, are art-world dignitaries. Phil is sympathetic: "Well, they were being bit noisy," he says.
As our research progresses we begin to uncover a whole murky world of television that we never knew existed. Programme titles such as My Teen's a Nightmare, We're Moving Out, I Know What You Ate Last Summer and our favourite, Bye Bye Thunder Thighs, make us cry with laughter. By the end of the second week, we've forgotten that we're being watched, and, as you would in any office, start sharing loud, inappropriate gossip. With up to 3,000 people passing through the Turner Prize exhibition in a day, that's a lot of eavesdroppers. So if you're passing, drop in and tell us your story. We're all good listeners, and I promise I won't slam the hatch in your face.
Has your life has been ruined by an appearance on TV? If so, contact Shady Lane Productions tel: 020 7887 4924 or go to www.shadylaneproductions.co.uk.
The Turner Prize is announced on 4 Dec; the show runs until 14 Jan at Tate Britain, tel: 020 7887 8000
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09.01.2006 : Treasury, A Musical Jewelry Box by Kirsten Hassenfeld
Edition Size: 1000, stamp signed
Material: Resin, plastic, sound-chip
Dimensions:
Open: 12” h x 9.5” w (30.48cm x 24.13cm)
Closed: 8” h x 9.5” w (20.32cm x 24.13cm)
Pre-publication price: $350.00
Open up the diamond to reveal two delicate swans that spin around a
lotus flower to the tune of “I’m Sticking With You” by the Velvet
Underground. Flocked trays line the diamond, providing ample room to
store jewelry of all shapes and sizes.
To hear Treasury play "I'm Sticking with You" by the Velvet Underground click here .
Treasury can be pre-ordered at www.cerealart.com or by calling 215.627.5060.
Kirsten Hassenfeld was born and raised in the suburbs of Albany, New York.
She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994 and a
MFA from the University of Arizona in 1998, both in printmaking. She
attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and was a
fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In
2003-2004 she was in residence at the Smack Mellon Studios in
Brooklyn. Hassenfeld’s work was included in the exhibition
Open House: Working in Brooklyn in 2004. She is a 2004 recipient of a
Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio in New York. In September 2004, Bellwether
Gallery presented Kirsten’s first solo exhibition in New York, Objects
of Virtue. Her work was included in PS1/MoMAs survey show Greater New
York. Kirsten creates extravagantly decorated, oversized translucent
gem and crystalline sculptures painstakingly crafted predominantly from
paper. Borrowing forms and techniques from jewelry and other luxury
goods, she creates opulent hybrids of traditional decorative art and
otherworldly excess. Her works speak to notions of privilege,
ownership, family pedigree, and the confusion of what we have with who
we are through an embarrassment of riches. Using the language of the
intimate domestic object (the chandelier, the curio) and the monumental
public object (the obelisk, the reflecting pool,) Kirsten playfully
evokes traditional markers of power and symbols of plenty, mixing their
opulence with the fragility of the hand hewn.
Hassenfeld lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband Lee and their son Jasper.
*Treasury will be available this fall at
select Barneys New York Stores, 1-888-8barneys;
Cerealart at 149 N. 3rd Street, Philadelphia;
Cerealart at the ICA Philadelphia, 118 S. 36th St. Philadelphia, PA Tel. 215.898.7108;
and at Cerealart at the Rubell Family Collection, 95 NW 29th Street, Miami, Tel. 305.573.6033
For more information about Kirsten Hassenfeld's artwork please visit Bellwether Gallery.
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09.01.2006 : New Glasses from Yoshitomo Nara.
Please see details in the store section.
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09.01.2006 : Lawrence Weiner Inaugural Exhibition in the Cerealart Project Room
From September 1 though October 31 Cerealart will present an
installation by Lawrence Weiner, "Have & Take" "Give & Get",
2003, 85 x 95 inches (dimensions variable).
Lawrence Weiner was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1942. In 1968 he
presented Statements, a book of works composed solely of language, and
since then he has continued to explore the capacities and presentation
of language as a sculptural medium. The museums in which Weiner has had
solo exhibitions have included The Philadelphia Museum of Art (1994),
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2000), the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
(1994), and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C. (1990). In 1991 Dia presented his work
Displacement and published an accompanying book of the same title.
Lawrence Weiner had a major installation at Tate Modern in December
2005 and there will be retrospectives of his work at The Whitney Museum
for American Art, New York in 2007 and Los Angeles Museum of
Contemporary Art in 2008. For more information about Lawrence Weiner,
please see the Lynne Cook essay at www.diacenter.org.
Also on display will be the "Give & Get" and "Have & Take"
stencil edition (1000) that Weiner designed for the 1:6 scale Wrong
Gallery by Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick. The
edition was influenced by the stencil that was used for his Wrong
Gallery exhibition at 516 1/2 W 20th St. New York, NY in 2003. For more
information visit www.cerealart.com.
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