Field Trip: In Brief

Even more important to Duchamp, I believe, is the ambiguity of his presence, due to the fact he is neither entering nor exiting the room, but, in Foucault's words, "coming in and going out at the same time, like a pendulum caught at the bottom of its swing."

-- Bradley Bailey, from "Once More to this Staircase: Another Look at Encore à cet Astre"

More at kostis velonis (link)

Field Trip: The Last Clean Shirt

Artist Alfred Leslie's film The Last Clean Shirt with subtitles by poet Frank O'Hara (who lifted some of them from Alfred Leslie) was first shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1964.

From Tate Modern (who screened the film this past Wednesday, 24 June 2009):

In a letter to his friend and collaborator, the poet Frank O'Hara, Leslie writes: 'We will shoot for two SEPERATE LEVELS on the film. One is the VISUAL, the other the HEARD & the spectator will be in TWO places or more SIMULTANEOUSLY. NOT AS MEMORY BUT AT THE SAME MOMENT. PARALLELISM! MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW!'

It is a blueprint for The Last Clean Shirt in which a man and a woman take a car ride through the streets of downtown Manhattan. A clock on the dashboard foregrounds the fact that the film is a single shot. The woman speaks in double-talk Finnish, interpreted by the beautiful and brilliant story told via O'Hara's subtitles that run throughout. (more)

From NYS Writers Institute:

The Last Clean Shirt is a rarely-screened film that has become even more intriguing and thought-provoking with the passage of time. A young black man and white woman get in a car at Astor Place, tape an alarm clock to the dashboard, and start driving around as the woman yaks in an unknown language. This action is repeated three times, each segment featuring a different subtitled stream-of-consciousness narration by poet Frank O’Hara. Predating the rise of structural filmmakers like Michael Snow and Hollis Frampton by several years, Leslie’s film anticipates later avant-garde interest in the limits of cinematic form. 

Snubbed by critics and booed by audiences . . . at the 1964 New York Film Festival, The Last Clean Shirt was considered audacious and excessive in its day. During a run at the New Yorker, one crowd hounded the owner of the theater so badly that he was chased out of the building and hid in a dumpster. (more)

From Jacket 23:

The Last Clean Shirt was even more avant-garde or visionary than critics were able to see at the time: it is not merely a film but a new form of work of art, a new literary object, in the wake of the simultaneous poem (Blaise Cendrars). One might then wonder how the film goes beyond simultaneity in the mapping of a new artistic space created between images and words . . .

The film betrays the concerns of the painter: lines, planes and dimensions are carefully organized on the screen and enter a field of tension. The spectator can see vertical lines: the characters, the street, the buildings, the windshield frame and the hands of the clock. Horizontal lines also come into play: the subtitles, the upper part of the seats and of the windshield and a series of small horizontal lines can be seen on different parts of the screen.
     

Circularity also finds its place with the clock, the wheel and various buttons on the dashboard of the car. There seems to be no depth, no relief whatsoever on the screen. It is as though Alfred Leslie went back to the early years of cinema to show us that what we take for granted i.e. verisimilitude, lifelikeness, 3-D relief are but a construct, an illusion. (more)

Alfred Leslie (link)

Frank O'Hara (link)

Field Trip: Warholapalooza

James Warhola, page from Uncle Andy via Andy Wales' Panel Discussion (link)

Warholapalooza: Family Day @The Smithsonian, Washington DC - Among numerous other events, James Warhola reads from his children's book Uncle Andy's: A Faabbbulous Visit with Andy Warhol @National Portrait Gallery - Saturday, 20 June 2009 (link)

You can read a review of the book here (paired with a review of Claire Hatfield's children's book Me and Uncle Romie inspired by the artist Romare Bearden) (link)

According to Audrey Regan:

James Warhola, more than anyone, can create the most frightening creatures and have them appear completely non-threatening and ultimately cool. The aliens he includes in his numerous paintings of bars are larger than life (or smaller than life) and they are portrayed by Warhola as fun seekers. James is also an illustrator and author of children's books. His most recent offering is "Uncle Andy's" which draws on James' childhood memories of visiting Andy Warhol at his home in New York city. The book is published by Putnam and is available in bookstores everywhere. (pic/link)

More on Jamie Warhola's website (link)

Andy Wales has a charming story about Warhola and Uncle Andy (link)

Field Trip: Appearing Rooms

Jeppe Hein Appearing Rooms (currently @Southbank Centre, London)

Hamlet and Jeppe Hein are both Danish and they could not be, at first glance, more apart in their approach to the reality that surrounds them. But in a way both indulge in a doubt about existence that makes them closer than it seems. Hamlet’s doubt is too famous to be repeated, but Jeppe’s doubt has not yet reached such notoriety, because maybe not even he knows what it’s about. His doubt is about art itself, how the individual can produce today a work of art that is not simply auto-referential and self-celebrating but addresses the nature of our social texture and blends with the basic flow of human actions. So the question for the young Danish is: “To be, just to be, or to be more, to be better?”

-- Francesco Bonami "Don't look! Move!"

Jeppe Hein's Loop Bench was featured @Art Basel, which ended today (link)

More (link)

Aequitas 2009

CM Pauluh aka Nebulosus Severine Bending Trees (diptych) acrylic and thread on canvas 16 x 10 inches (2009) (link) now on exhibition at Aequitas

Aequitas@Artspace OSA NYC (link) June 1-June 30, 2009
Aequitas Second Life Version@Caerleon Art Collective (link)(slurl) June 26-July 3, 2009
Second Life Reception June 26 6:30-8:30 PM SLT

From Stephen Beveridge's blog sense and defense (link):

Social media has drawn together a group of international artists to New York for Aequitas, an exhibit of art based on childhood experiences.

Artspace OSA in New York City and the virtual community of Second Life will host a joint exhibition of international artists: paintings, digital work, and virtual world installations during the month of June 2009.

Artists can be a solitary lot but with the advent of virtual worlds and web 2.0 they are finding each other and communicating in the way they know best: making and exhibiting art together. This disparate group of artists, having never met face to face, nevertheless finds a common ground in exploring their childhood for art.
Sowa Mai, also known as the artist Stephen Beveridge, conceived and planned this exhibit as an extension of the relationships he had formed in the Second Life virtual world with artist/avatars from different time zones and cultural backgrounds.
The exhibit in Washington Heights, New York City will display paintings and digital work by the human artists. An exhibit in the Second Life virtual world will consist of (art) installations and scripted objects by the human artists’ avatar counterparts. Both exhibits are based around the theme of mining childhood experience for art.

Dekka Raymaker Andrew MacLachlan Penumbra Carter Beth Olds Nebulosus Severine CM Pauluh Sowa Mai Stephen Beveridge David Ferrando Banrion Constantine Robert Garlick Elif Arat

Aequitas
Artspace OSA
June 1 – June 30, 2009
Reception Friday June 19th. 6:30-8:30
178 Bennett Ave @ 189th St, NYC
1 train to 191st Street | A train to 190th Street

Second Life Version
Caerleon Art Collective
June 26 – July 3, 2009
Reception June 26th. 6:30-8:30slpm

(slurl)

Contact:
Stephen Beveridge
212 928 8351
SowaMai@gmail.com

Nebulosus Severine has more information here (link) and a slideshow of images here (link)

Field Trip: Musée Magritte Museum

Festive Opening Today
Musée Magritte Museum, Brussels, Belgium (link) (more)

Field Trip: Event Horizon

David Hominal Le Troue (2009)

Event Horizon@Raster, Warsaw, Poland (link) (more)

Within the gallery itself the opening scene consists of David Hominal’s corridor-sculpture Through the Window (2009), an assemblage that comprises an armchair, a lighter, a packet of cigarettes and a Polish translation of Andrei Bely’s modernist novel Saint Petersburg (1913, revised 1922). Recounting the story of Russia in 1905, the paperback is one of a pair of literary references made by Hominal. In the large room, Le Troue (2009) comprises the collected works of Victor Hugo, a stake rammed through the middle of their pages. Little squares of paper, scraps displaced by the spike, hang on the wall in three collages. The works recall Marcel Duchamp’s instructions for a window-hung geometry book The Unhappy Readymade (1919). ‘It amused me,’ Duchamp later admitted, ‘to disparage the seriousness of a book full of principles.’ (Daniel Miller, Frieze Magazine (link)  

Field Trip: Go Figure

Gerhard Richter Deck Chair II oil on canvas 39 1/4 x 78 3/8 inches (1965)

Go Figure@Gagosian Gallery NYC (link) May 9-June 13, 2009