First Friday Highlights, March 2015 (Experiential Collaboration Forever!!!)

I haven't updated about art I've seen in a while, but a couple of the shows I saw last night made a strong enough impression that I feel like remembering them here.

Andrea Morales' exhibition "Public Play" at Practice Gallery spoke to me as an investigation of the complex social dynamics involved in dating--specifically, how we perform personas within varying social contexts.  The premise of the exhibition was Morales having organised a consecutive series of dates through OKCupid and Craigslist, to be carried out within the gallery.  Documentation of her correspondences with her dates were plastered on the walls for viewers to read when they weren't acting as voyeuristic observers of the activities of the dates themselves.  The dates/ exhibition were all documented throughout the night, and the plan is for the edited footage to be exhibited at Practice for the remainder of the month.

There is so much about the concept and the execution of this piece that I love.  I love that the artist is directing and composing these interactions for the express purpose of manifesting this exhibition, while leaving room for risk, chance, play, and vulnerability (to her collaborator and her audience).  I love that live performance, the documentation leading up to the performance, and the documentation of the performance itself are all integral aspects of the piece.  I love the fact that, even though you are in the room with the artist and her dates, observing their interaction and reading their correspondence, there are elements of their conversations that do remain private/ intimate/ just between them.  Sure, you can see their body language, maybe even catch snippets of dialogue, but you remain at a distance, a member of the crowd--you can't see and hear every element of the exchanges that build the date they are on.

I only had the chance to see one of the dates--the third of the night.  When I walked in, the space was illuminated by red lights.  There was music playing, and I could see the artist and her date sitting on a bench behind parted curtains.  They were both hunched over a camera, presumably shuffling through images.  In speaking with one of the members of Practice, I gleaned that this date had actually been photographing the earlier dates, so they were looking through the images he had taken.  I wanted to make it back to the final date of the evening, which was supposed to be with a female partner, and verge on more sexually charged content, but I missed it unfortunately.

I was sorry to miss the rest of "Public Play," but I was so happy I made it out to New Boone for "Forever," a collaborative exhibit featuring paintings by my studio-mate Kim Altomare and audio commentary by Anne Pagana.  If I had to express my overwhelming impression of the exhibit in one adjective, I would use 'refreshing'--everything about the approach felt like a sigh of relief followed by a breath of fresh air.  First and foremost, the experience of seeing Kim's paintings hung and lit within the context of a gallery space was thrilling for me--so much luster and detail that is hard to recognize when they're leaning against a studio wall came suddenly alive.  It felt like the paintings themselves had been energized/ taken on a new life, and I was so filled with joy for them!  The curatorial detailing--the incorporation of a friendship bracelet-making station [they'd run out of string by the time I got there :( ]; the integration of vibrant pom poms, shimmery sequins, tinsel, streamers, and googly eyes; the coordinated vignettes built out of objects contributed by Kim and Anne's artist friends, placed to keep the paintings company; the hand-articulated signage and decorated CD-players with headphones whose color matched the vibrancy carried throughout--all contributed to the overarching spirit of friendship and collaboration coursing throughout the show.  Walking into the space, every aspect seems to squeal, "Hi! We're so glad you're here! Come be our friend! Stay a while! Look and listen and contemplate with us!"  And how can you refuse that?

Which isn't to say that the content of the work presented is necessarily light or superficial--Kim's paintings incorporate symbolic imagery that alludes to death and violence, and Anne's commentary is deeply meditative.  There is an audio track corresponding to each painting.  I didn't listen to all of them, but those I did made it clear to me that Anne's spoken words access avenues of thought that are quite serious, and speak to a genuine desire for mutual understanding within the insular context of a friendship that exists within the broader, but still insular context of art-making.  There is a sensitivity and consideration for the differences and commonalities in hers and Kim's experiences with and approaches to art and life.  There is frustration and confusion, but also serenity to the acknowledgment that not everything can necessarily be fully understood between two people.  I felt honored to be invited to listen to these meditations, and though they were focused on a personal relationship, I felt included because the concepts being considered speak to interpersonal relationships in general, and art-making practices more broadly.  I got the sense that, though these are complex and difficult territories to navigate, underlying currents of hope, togetherness, and fun can carry us through.

Looking at the show through a feminist lens, I was struck by how it sits within the context of art history, which is so frequently dominated by men celebrating, commenting on, responding to, competing with each other, usually in a very egotistical way that has a lot to do with proving who has the most "genius". The mode of collaboration in "Forever" is definitely in dialogue with that tradition, but from a much more authentic, sincere, down-to-earth perspective.   Celebrating each other does not have to be about proving anything--it can be about inviting everyone into this dynamic of mutual consideration and dialogue, of approaching things in a genuine way, together.

I think I responded to strongly to both of these exhibits because I like what they indicate about where art practice and art exhibition is heading.  There is a sense of breaking things down and exploring them from new angles that I find so empowering and exciting.  It makes me feel a sense of freedom, like there is license to explore new territories and just try things to see where they go.  As there should be.  No more musty, tired art shows ever please!

New Project: Exchange

I've been working on this collaborative performance-for-the-lens project since January.  It continues my exploration of lipstick as a transferable medium that can connote gender, sexuality, power, etc.  For this project, I was interested in how those concepts play out within the context of a romantic relationship.  My partner and I each took a turn as the wearer of the lipstick/ initiator of the action.  For each round, we would kiss until no more lipstick could be exchanged, stopping to capture an image of the progress in between re-applications.  We repeated this process until the surfaces of both of our faces were as covered in lipstick as they seemed like they were going to get. 

This relationship is still relatively new to me, and has brought up a lot of ideas for me concerning my own sexuality and gender expression (I am a queer-identified gender-nonconforming woman; Nick is a straight cis man).  Performing this piece collaboratively speaks directly to the process of mutual transformation I have experienced in this process of getting to know and falling in love with someone while navigating these complexities. 

Much of my work deals with thoughts surrounding identity--the idea of our surface/ performed identity in relation to our inner/ personal identity; how both are in perpetual flux, informing each other, shaped within the context of broader external forces and systems.  My drawing process lately has involved directly drawing the configurations of shapes and lines that I see in the surface grain of the paper I'm working on, then tearing and reconfiguring that surface.  In looking at past projects like Putting My Face On and Kissing the Boundary, I've realized that my gestures tend to take on this process of accumulated mark on the surface until the original surface is completely obliterated/ transformed into something unrecognizable.  I like the fact that this can either take on a sinister tone or a triumphant one.  Change is difficult, and it is hard to know in the moment whether the struggle is ultimately for the better or the worse.  It is hard to know if you are losing aspects of yourself or discovering potentials heretofore unknown.  I want to speak to both--to the hope and the fear, but mostly to the overarching ambiguous mess of transition--the mess of trying to figure yourself out while simultaneously communicating to and with someone else, of learning and transforming together.  My takeaway so far is that making oneself vulnerable to someone else is always terrifying, but it can be beautiful too, especially when the exchange is mutual.  Anyway, here are the resulting images (more curated view available on the website):

Set One, Me:

Set One, Nick:

Set Two, Nick:

Set Two, Me:

 Composite, Set One:

Composite, Set Two:

Composites Combined:

Flashback to January/2012: Melt/ Crystalize

During the only significant snowfall of this past winter, I made a snowball with a red/pink center, then used a heat gun to slowly melt it.

I recorded the process.  Sadly, the camera's battery ran out and the sun went down before I could completely melt the snowball, but I used the footage I got to make a video.  I sped up the footage to four times its original rate and reversed it so that it ends up as a fully formed snowball again.  Here's a low-res version of that video:

Here are some process stills I pulled from the video recording (note how much clearer they are...stupid video file size limits...): 

And here are some images I took during the act itself: 

It was a pretty spontaneous thing--when I did it, I was thinking about using heat to carve out an architectural interior space in the snow over time, without ever touching the snow.  The color was a playful element--I thought it would be more exciting if there was a reveal involved in the process.  It also made it sort of bodily, like the snow was bleeding, or growing orifices.  When I showed it to my class, the professor suggested that there was some sexual tension between the heat gun and the responsive snow.  I honestly hadn't been thinking consciously about that dynamic when I made this, but I can definitely see how he got there.  This is an important piece for me to look back on because it was my first concrete experiment with video as a medium, and because it involved me performing an action.

Recent Work: Putting My Face On

This is another incarnation of the red lipstick investigation.  I set up a camera on a tripod in front of me and slowly filled my face with lipstick, using the camera as a mirror.  I was thinking about concepts like "beauty" and "femininity" and "sexuality" and the ways in which those ideas are constructed and performed.  It was also a gestural action that had a lot to do with drawing and painting practices.  I think of it as a really ambivalent self-portrait, because actually, I'm trying to discover who my "self" even is, and what it means to embody a particular "self" in the first place.  What defines me?  What if I use those things that are supposed to define me in a different way?  I'd like to open things up and explore the possibilities within limitations/ impositions--I want to examine the things that make me most uncomfortable to discover why, and if there's a way to change them.

Here's the video.  The high-quality version was too large to upload, so this is a lower-res version, and is therefore not as dazzling as it could be: 

I showed this video, projected onto a wall, for my final post-bacc critique (I was still calling it Face Fill then).  It was recently accepted into a massive group show, Color, at BWAC (Brooklyn Waterfront Artists' Coalition), juried by Brooke Kamin Rapaport, former curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum.  The opening is on the 28th, and the show is up through August 19th.  Go see it!  It's installed in a 9.5x12.5" screen, and is somewhat more dazzling than what you see above as a result.  Incidentally, I'm interested to see how a more intimate scale will lend itself to the viewing, compared to the wall projection, which had an imposing effect.  

Here are some progressive stills I put together for the application:

mouth

eyes

full face

And some shots of my face after recording: 

mirror reflection

 

mirror reflection

straight on

I attended the senior thesis show with my face like this as an experiment, before most people knew about the video.  It was fun to see people's reactions.  I had a few friends kiss my face, hoping that their lips would leave negative space marks on my face.  It didn't have that effect, but it did lend them some lipstick for their mouths/ chins/ noses.

 evidence