Visual Arts Briefs

Last weekend New York City hosted more than a dozen art fairs, and SVA was well represented at several venues. At The Armory Show, faculty member Nancy Chunn’s Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear, a work that includes nearly 300 paintings, took over the Ronald Feldman Gallery booth. Off site, through a new partnership with SVA, Armory Show VIPs were able to enjoy private studio tours of alumni Alexis Rockman (BFA 1985 Fine Arts) and Billy Sullivan (1968 Fine Arts) who opened up their studios to guests for several hours on Saturday and Sunday. “It’s a chance for people who have long admired the work of these artists to meet them in an intimate setting and for the most part, to see work that hasn’t been shown anywhere else yet,” explains SVA staff member and alumnus Dan Halm (MFA 2001 Illustration as Visual Essay; BFA 1994 Illustration), who organized the program. Visitors were able to see some of the new pieces that Rockman is preparing in advance of his mid-career retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum later this year. Also present at the Armory Show was Dear Dave, magazine.

Several SVA alumni participated in the PULSE fair, including: George Boorujy (MFA 2002 Illustration as Visual Essay) at the P.P.O.W. Gallery booth; Lili Almog (BFA 1992 Photography) at the Andrea Meislin Gallery booth; Robert Lazzarini (BFA 1990 Fine Arts) at the Winkleman booth; and Thordis Adalsteinsdottir (MFA 2003 Fine Arts) at the Stux Gallery booth.

Over at VOLTA, alumnus Soyeon Cho (MFA 2004 Fine Arts) showed at the SKL Gallery Palma de Mallorca booth and alumni Gregg Louis (MFA 2009 Fine Arts) and Noa Charuvi (MFA 2009 Fine Arts) participated in the group performance The Holistic Healing Center and Emerging Artist Massage Parlor, which was part of the VOLTA NY Happenings program. PooL Art Fair showed the work of Cat Del Buono (MFA 2008 Photography, Video and Related Media) and the Verge Art Fair, new to New York this year, hosted a conversation with alumnus Katarina Jerinic (MFA 2002 Photography and Related Media), who discussed her multidisciplinary project The Work Office.

Image: Nancy Chunn, Chicken Little and the Culture of Fear Scene VI: The Road (detail), 2006-07, acrylic on canvas, 64 panels, 142 x 336 inches overall, courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York

Now that the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games are a wrap, the world has a new set of sports icons: the medalists of this year’s competition. But another set of icons will also go down in history: the pictograms and other graphics used at the various venues and in the media. This “frenzy of visual signage” hasn’t been lost on Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA Design Department, who traces the evolution of the Olympic pictograms in each sport since their appearance in 1932. Click here to view his multimedia report for The New York Times.

Another member of the SVA community, BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member David Ross, recently talked about the Olympic posters with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report. Read the original post here.

Image: Vancouver 2010 pictogram for alpine skiing, © VANOC/COVAN.

New York City’s East Village has long been a mecca for artists of all stripes, but has seen dramatic changes in recent years. Some of the neighborhood’s artistic history was recently on view in an exhibition at Bullet Space, which was organized by alumnus and faculty member Andrew Castrucci (MFA 2009 Fine Arts; BFA 1984 Media Arts). As covered on The New York Times‘ blog City Room, “The Perfect Crime” featured artwork and artifacts from abandoned structures taken over by squatters. Bullet Space itself was founded as part of the squatters movement: Castrucci and others claimed the abandoned property in 1986 and transformed it into an experimental gallery.

Castrucci spoke with the Briefs about Bullet Space:

Tell me about the genesis of Bullet Space.
When I graduated from SVA, I opened up the A&P Gallery, which was part of the downtown art movement at the time. After I got priced out of that gallery, I moved into Bullet Space, and after 1 – 2 years of revamping, we began to have exhibitions.

How has the space evolved?
Bullet Space started as an alternative art space and it still is. Since we are an experimental space, we take risks that commercial galleries wouldn’t. For example, our last exhibition showed squatter art, everyday objects and “junk” as art–much in the Arte Povera tradition–and even the tools we used to make the works as art. In our excavation of the space, we got lucky and found the old outhouse for the tenement. In treating an archive as an art form, we put that on display as well.

What motivated you to get your MFA recently?
I think I was hanging out with too many outlaws in the squatting scene and so it was a bit of a relief to go back to SVA. What I enjoy is the idea of groups of artists working together. It’s the same in a school as in art collectives, where artists are both creating and presenting. I bridge both worlds.

Image: Photo of interior of Bullet Space by Andrew Castrucci

BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member David Ross was a guest on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report on Thursday, February 11. Ross, who has played a prominent role in the museum world since 1971, serving as the director of both the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, spoke with host Stephen Colbert about the history of posters for the Olympic Games. After Ross demonstrated the disappearance of the heroic figure in contemporary Olympic posters, Colbert unveiled his proposed poster for the Vancouver 2010 games. Designed by artist Shepard Fairey, the poster features an attempted reemergence of the heroic figure: an illustration of Colbert riding a bald eagle. Click the image below to view the interview segment with Ross or visit ColbertNation.com to view the entire episode.

• New York Times art critic Roberta Smith profiled various current gallery exhibitions from what she describes as “bad-boy week on the New York art scene.” Two of the seven artists profiled are SVA alumni: Banks Violette (BFA 1998 Fine Arts) and Keith Haring (1979 Fine Arts). Violette’s show, which includes a sculpture that Smith calls “one of his best works so far,” is at Gladstone Gallery, 530 West 21st Street, through Saturday, April 17. One of Haring’s pro bono murals will be on view at Deitch Projects, 18 Wooster Street, at various times in February. Click here to view a slide show of images from the Times article.
• An interview with photographer and alumnus Kareem Black (BFA 1999 Photography) was recently featured in 25 Magazine. Black talks about some of his recent photo shoots, like one for The Real Housewives of Atlanta, as well as advice his instructors gave him when he was at SVA.
• The California Chronicle wrote about alumnus Eric Wight (BFA 1998 Animation), who is publishing another book in his Frankie Pickle series for children, which combines the comic and chapter book formats. Frankie Pickle and the Pine Run 3000 is the second book in the series from the artist who has worked on various film and TV projects, including animation for the movie Beavis and Butt-Head Do America and comic book art for the TV show The O.C.

Image: Banks Violette, throne ( and over and over again), 2009 – 2010, fluorescent tubes, steel, chain, wire and road case; Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York, and Team Gallery, New York.

Last semester, SVA invited a group of leading curators, critics and artists to speak at Modernism and the Global Diaspora, a panel discussion on the changing terrain of contemporary art in light of globalism, led by BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member David Ross and featuring Thelma Golden, executive director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; Hou Hanru, director of exhibitions and public programs at the San Francisco Art Institute; Susan Hefuna, an artist based in Egypt and Germany; and Vasif Kortun, director of the Platform Garanti Contemporary Arts Center in Istanbul.

For those who missed it, now there’s another chance. New York’s WNET Channel 13 has launched the new THIRTEEN Forum, a Web site presenting the best lectures and debates taking place around the city. They are currently featuring the video of “Modernism and the Global Diaspora.”

“On any given day in New York you can attend hundreds of fascinating talks, lectures or panel discussions, but you usually can’t find the time to get to them,” explains Debbie Adler, director of online marketing for Thirteen.org. “The goal of Forum is to share that wealth of content,” she says, “and we look forward to collaborating with the School of Visual Arts.”

The panel and other SVA lectures are also available at no charge on the College’s iTunesU page, including Boris Groys’ recent talk, Everybody is an Artist.

As part of the spring 2010 Art in the First Person lecture series, the BFA Fine Arts Department is presenting Iconic Shows: A Talk with Exit Art’s Founders and Creative Directors Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberman. Starting in 1982 with “Illegal America,” which used mimeographs, Xeroxes and other radical means to present multimedia artwork, Exit Art has mounted more than 100 groundbreaking presentations of art, theater, film and video. According to the gallery’s mission statement, “Exit Art is an independent vision of contemporary culture prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives.” Colo and Ingberman will be on hand to discuss some of the most iconic shows of this historic, independent New York City cultural space, including “Fever” (1992), “Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution” (2000), “The LP Show” (2001) and “Exit Biennial: The Reconstruction” (2003).

The talk will take place on Thursday, February 4, 7pm, at 209 East 23rd Street, 3rd-floor amphitheater. Admission to this event is free and open to the public.

Images: Exit Art Founders Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberman.

When the students at Acorn Preschool on East 26th Street returned to class this semester, they were greeted by a series of colorful murals, courtesy of more than 20 SVA student volunteers. Last November, Zach Brunner, a current student in the BFA Film, Video and Animation Department and a student assistant in the Office of Student Activities, along with Tina Crayton, associate director of student activities, made contact with the principal at Acorn to set up the community service project. Together they brainstormed ideas for the murals and came up with a series that represented the four seasons and various iconic images of New York City, including the American Museum of Natural History and the city skyline. The murals were completed over two weekends and cover the concrete walls surrounding the school’s playground.

Brunner said of the project, “It was great to see the preschoolers actually playing with the drawings and pretending they were real. I think we all had a lot of fun being creative and making things simple and enjoyable to 2 – 6 year olds.”

The participating students were Alex Thiel from the BFA Advertising and Graphic Design Department; Zach Brunner, Yanise Cabrera, Pat Hughes, Thomas Minerva and Melody Shaiken from the BFA Film, Video and Animation Department; Adam DePalma,  Jesse Keating, Maria Petrovskaya, Andrea Solow and Ximena Velazquez-Arenas from the BFA Fine Arts Department; Hyang  Mi An, Yura Kim, Melissa Matos and Louis Spano from the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department; Suh Hwang, Shashank Mittal and Kristen Vincent from the BFA Interior Design Department;  Luke Nilsson and Samantha Yudin from the BFA Photography Department; and Yvonne Andrea Castellanos from the MFA Fine Arts Department.

Image: Photo by Melissa Matos.

In 2006, the venerable music retailer Tower Records closed its doors in New York City. Since then, the former Tower site at the corner of Broadway and Fourth Avenue has remained empty…until now. The not-for-profit arts organization No Longer Empty, which uses vacated properties in NYC to stage public art exhibitions, has opened “Never Can Say Goodbye” in the former record store. The multimedia show spotlights work by more than 20 artists, including two SVA alumni: Mike Egan (MFA 2007 Fine Arts) has contributed an original video piece; and Ted Riederer (MFA 2006 Fine Arts) created a massive music-themed installation called Never Records that incorporates works by more than 40 fellow artists, including Jeff Beebe (MFA 2006 Fine Arts), Jake Berthot (faculty), Steven Bindernagel (BFA 2006 Fine Arts), Brendan Carney (MFA 2008 Fine Arts), Allison Hester (MFA 2006 Fine Arts), Jason Losh (MFA 2007 Fine Arts), Marilyn Minter (faculty), Ted O’Sullivan (MFA 2006 Fine Arts), Josh Shaddock (MFA 2006 Fine Arts) and Ryan Sullivan (MFA 2007 Fine Arts).

The reopening of Tower for “Never Can Say Goodbye” has invited the attention of the local and national press, with stories appearing in the New York Post, Papermag, Time Out New York, The Wall Street Journal and many others. Riederer talked to the Journal about his large-scale installation, which he describes as a “love letter” to the quickly disappearing idea of a physical record shop. “My goal is…to have them in the store for 30 minutes until they realize it’s not a store,” he told the newspaper. For more on No Longer Empty and “Never Say Goodbye” (which runs at the former Tower Records through Saturday, February 13), visit nolongerempty.org.

Image: Ted Riederer, Never Records, 2010. Courtesy of No Longer Empty.

The spring 2010 semester at SVA is bringing a new slate of classes, new exhibitions in the galleries and, once again, a new installment of the Art in the First Person lecture series. The series of talks and panel discussions begins on Tuesday, January 19, at 6:30pm, when the BFA Fine Arts and BFA Visual & Critical Studies Departments bring electronic media artist Perry Bard to 133/144 West 21st Street, Room 101C, for Video in the Age of YouTube; two days later, the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department presents Everybody is an Artist, a talk by educator and critic Boris Groys at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street, 7pm.

Art in the First Person will continue to bring speakers to SVA throughout the semester, including Exit Art founders Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberman (Thursday, February 4, 7pm, 209 East 23rd Street, 3rd-floor Amphitheater); poet Ann Lauterbach (Thursday, February 11, 7pm, SVA Theatre); and painter Megan Craig (Tuesday, February 16, 6:30pm, room 101C). All events are free and open to the public. For more information on these and other events in the series (which runs through April), visit sva.edu/events.

Image: Megan Craig, Heavy, 2009.