Visual Arts Briefs

On any given day, New Yorkers are likely to feel a little on edge: from the pressures of work and economic anxiety to the unfiltered rush of people and information that make it hard for the mind to take a break, there is no shortage of factors that can lead to uneasy feelings.

The consistent undercurrents of disquiet in contemporary society are the starting point for a new exhibition curated by alumnus Jee-Young Maeng (MFA 2007 Art Criticism and Writing) and featuring work from current MFA Fine Arts Department student Jong Hyun Oh. “Subtle Anxiety: This Is How You Feel Now” is on view at the Doosan Gallery, 533 West 25th Street, and according to Maeng, features works by three artists who “capture the invisible anxiety in our current culture and transform it into visual language through a variety of media, including painting, photography, video and site-specific installation.” “Subtle Anxiety” is on view at the gallery through Saturday, August 14.

Image: Installation view of “Subtle Anxiety: This Is How You Feel Now,” courtesy of Doosan Gallery, 2010.

On Thursday, April 22, at 7pm, the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department is presenting a talk by Iranian-born artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat. She will discuss the transition of her work from still photography to video installation and, most recently, to feature-length film. Neshat’s directorial debut, Women Without Men, based on a novella by Shahrnush Parsipur that had been banned in Iran, received the Silver Lion Award for Best Director at the 2009 Venice Film Festival.

Neshat will be speaking at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street. The event is part of the Art in the First Person series, and is free and open to the public.

Renowned architect, artist and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar will be joining MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department Chair David Levi Strauss for a screening and discussion of Jaar’s new short film, The Ashes of Pasolini, on Thursday, March 25, 7pm, at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street. Jaar is a Chilean-born artist who is bets known for his “public interventions,” a series of extended installation works that examine hot-button socio-political issues like the Rwandan genocide and immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border. This event—which is part of the Art in the First Person series, and is presented by the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department in partnership with Aperture—will focus on Pier Paolo Pasolini, a controversial Italian poet and critic who was murdered in 1975. Admission to the event is free and open to the public.

The following evening, Friday, March 26, at 6.45pm, Strauss will be taking part in The Review Panel, an event billed as “an evening of critical conversation about art.” He will be part of a panel that includes Michelle Kuo, Mark Stevens and moderator David Cohen, discussing several current art exhibition in New York City: Mike Nelson at 303 Gallery, Joan Jonas at Yvon Lambert, Anya Kielar at Rachel Uffner Gallery, and Robert Ryman at PaceWildenstein. The event is presented by the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, in partnership with artcritical.com, at 1083 Fifth Avenue, across from the Guggenheim Museum. Space is limited, so please contact cortiz@nationalacademy.org to register for the event.

Video: Alfredo Jaar discussing Pier Paolo Pasolini in PBS’s Art21.

One of the most anticipated events in the American art community, the Whitney Biennial, opened last month at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue. The exhibition, simply titled 2010, is a presentation of contemporary American art from 55 artists, including two SVA alumni: Kate Gilmore (MFA 2002 Fine Arts) and Marianne Vitale (BFA 1996 Film and Video). (Gilmore and Vitale will be giving a talk at the SVA Theatre on Tuesday, April 6, 7pm; click here for more information.) Another alumnus, Aimee Walleston (MFA 2009 Art Criticism and Writing) recently wrote a series of profiles on five Biennial artists for Art in America.

The critics have also been kind to Gilmore and Vitale, who are both showing videos in the exhibition. The New York Times review of the Biennial called out Vitale’s work: “Most of the performance-based art in the show is on film, and some of it is really good. In a sort of stand-up comedy video the artist Marianne Vitale spits out abusive commands like a psychotic drill sergeant.” Additionally, Gilmore was one of three Biennial artists selected as a “must-see” by WNYC. Click on the image below to view a video of Gilmore preparing for her performance.

Gilmore spoke with the Briefs about the Whitney Biennial:

Tell me about the work you are exhibiting in the Biennial.
It’s a new site-specific sculpture and video that was shot at the museum. The video consists of me entering a column-type structure and then kicking and punching footholds in the structure to create a ladder-type system. When I kick and punch, splashes of color emerge, changing the environment from a banal grey to a vibrant yellow. After the footholds are created, I am able to climb the column and turn off the camera.

What was your reaction when you found out your work had been selected?
Needless to say, I was very happy. It is one of those shows that most artists, at some point in their lives, hope to be a part of.

How do you think participating in the Whitney Biennial will affect your career?
No idea. I’ll have to wait and see. It certainly will allow a lot of people to see the work!

Image: still from video, Whitney Museum of American Art.

In celebration of the publication of his newest book of essays, MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department Chair David Levi Strauss will have a book signing on Thursday, February 25. Discounted copies of Strauss’ book, From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual (Oxford University Press, 2010), will be available at the signing at Cue Art Foundation, 511 West 25 Street, from 5 – 8pm.

The February/March issue of Bookforum reviewed From Head to Hand, which deals with different artists’ manifestations of ideas into physical works of art. Bookforum writes, “Strauss makes a good case for paying heed to not only the objects before us but also to how they came into being.”

Strauss previously spoke about From Head to Hand in an interview with the Briefs.

Image: photo of David Levi Strauss by Sterrett Smith

The first in a series of one-on-one conversations with SVA’s department chairs.

MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department Chair David Levi Strauss is starting off 2010 with a double publishing event, releasing both his new essay collection From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual (Oxford University Press, 2010) and a new edition of his underground classic Between Dog and Wolf: Essays on Art and Politics (Autonomedia, 2010). Strauss talked to the Briefs just before the beginning of the spring 2010 semester to discuss the two books and his role running a graduate department at the College.

Tell me about From Head to Hand.
It’s a book that has been in the works for awhile, and I’m very pleased with how it’s turned out. I’m generally known as someone who writes about photography and politics, and this was an effort to focus on mostly painters, sculptors and drawing, along with some writers. It’s a look at the least mediated of the arts; if photography is the most mediated, meaning that it involves the most media between the artist and the work, the things I’m talking about in this book are much less so.

You’re also seeing an older book, Between Dog and Wolf, reissued at the same time.
It was my first collection, and it’s kind of earned an underground place. This new edition has a prologue written by Hakim Bey, with whom I’ve done a number of things over the years. I’ve had an unusual trajectory as a writer, in that I started out as a poet and then began to write essays. I’ve found the essay form to be extremely flexible and full. It’s served me well for 25 – 30 years. I can certainly see an historical progression in the way I think, and the writing has developed in various ways, but I think there’s a continuity through it all.

How has your experience at SVA affected the way you approach art criticism?
The thing about SVA that people know is that we encourage practitioner teachers. When I became chair, I didn’t stop being a writer. I write constantly and publish a lot, and I think it feeds into my teaching and running of the department. From the beginning I’ve had the idea that this is not a primarily academic program—it’s a practical program. It’s intended to prepare people to write out in the world as I do. The intent is to write directly and clearly about art.

What impresses you most about the students in your department?
Their enthusiasm to learn. That’s what I’m looking for in students. When I find it, it’s very exciting, and it makes everything go better when someone is just hungry to learn. Then, the teachers can do anything. There are no brakes on how far we can go.

Image: David Levi Strauss, From Head to Hand: Art and the Manual (Oxford University Press, 2010).

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.

On Saturday, November 14, the MFA Computer Art and the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Departments are presenting MediaModes, an interdisciplinary graduate conference examining the contemporary dialogue between art and technology. MediaModes provides a critical forum for current scholarship exploring the juncture of media, theory, criticism and the visual arts. Jonathan Crary, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University, will deliver a keynote address titled On the Ends of Sleep: Reflections in the Glare of a 24/7 World. Crary has written extensively on the confluence of art, technology and mass media; he is founding editor of Zone Books and author of Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture (MIT Press, 2001).

The conference panels will be held at 133/141 West 21st Street, 10th floor, 10am – 3:30pm, and will feature 25 current students and recent alumni from graduate programs throughout Asia, Europe, North America and South America. Presentations will focus on six topics: Body, Identity and the Virtual Space; Spatial Experience and Social Networking; Perception, Information and Temporality; The Spectator and the Spectacle: Mediating Differences/Technology and Politics; Processes and Aesthetics of Digital Art; and Sound Junctures. Following the panels, Crary’s keynote will take place at SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street, 4 – 5:30pm. For more information on the conference and participants, visit mediamodes.com.

Image: Jonathan Crary, MediaModes keynote speaker.

The MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department invited noted cultural critic and provocateur Dave Hickey to speak at the SVA Theatre on Thursday as part of the Art in the First Person fall lecture series. With his trademark wit and candor, Hickey spoke to a standing room only crowd from his perspective as a writer, educator and art-world observer for the past four decades. Addressing a range of issues—from supply-side economics in systems of patronage to the Darwinian market situations facing artists today—Hickey stressed the importance of rethinking currently accepted trends and practices in art.

Hickey’s observations included:

• “There is always a stable field of artistic maneuvers that may be said to constitute standard practice at any moment and a field of historical works of art that constitute the fashionable canon.”
• “Any work of art that is in perfect compliance with standard practice and the fashionable canon of its moment is for all intents and purposes, invisible.”

The complete lecture will be available in October on iTunesU, and you can read Aimee Walleston’s (MFA 2009 Art Criticism) interview with Hickey in The New York Times blog The Moment.

Coming up next in the Art in the First Person series is a conversation between painter David Salle and art historian Karen Lang on Tuesday, September 29, 7pm, at the SVA Theatre; click here for more information.

Image: Dave Hickey speaking at SVA; photo by Keri Murawski.

• Producer and alumnus David Kornfield (BFA 2003 Film and Video) recently won three New York Emmy Awards for his TV show NYC Soundtracks. The show, which won in the categories of Documentary; Entertainment: Program/Special; and Arts: Program/Special; is an elimination-style competition among New York City subway performers that just wrapped up its first season on MSG. Read an interview with Kornfield in The Lancaster Online.
• The Salt Lake City Examiner featured an interview with alumnus and BFA Fine Arts Department faculty member Lane Twitchell (MFA 1995 Illustration). Twitchell discusses his time as a student at SVA and recent work, including Transformation Windows, a series of laminated windows that will be installed in an emergency intake center in the New York City Department of Homeless Services in 2010.
• Aimee Walleston, a current student in the MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, has been a contributing writer for The Moment, the blog for T:The New York Times Style Magazine. Read her commentary about developments in the art world, including an interview with art critic David Hickey, here.