Musical Notation as Art: CAMH Shows Every Sound You Can Imagine

If you are in Houston before December 7 I recommend you stop by the Contemporary Arts Musuem to see the Exhibit Perspectives 163: Every Sound You Can Imagine. I was there for the Steel Lounge Underground on Halloween, which is another reason to visit the CAMH.

From the CAMH website:

Experimental musical scores are considered as works of visual art in Perspectives 163: Every Sound You Can Imagine. This group exhibition samples the wide array of notational strategies and explores the cross-fertilization between musicians and visual artists, revealing the vital connections between experimental sound art and cutting-edge visual art.

I wasn’t prepared for the composers’ interpretations of musical scores. They look nothing like the scales and notation you are used to seeing, some resembling geological maps, others sparse arrangements of geometric shapes.

An except from Cornelius Cardew's "Treatise"

An except from "Treatise" by Cornelius Cardew

Having worked at and listened to KTRU for several years, I am no stranger to avant garde compositions. It never occurred to me that what sounded like improvisations might actually have originated from scores, even if only in the loosest sense. Looking at these odd notations I began to imagine how the music represented would sound. I just bought Earle Brown’s December 1952 on iTunes (for real!) and I’m going to listen to it to see if I can figure out how you get the music from this:

"December 1952" by Earle Brown

"December 1952" By Earle Brown

You are supposed to visually interpret how the music would sound and then, well, play it I guess. Every Sound You Can Imagine runs until December 7 at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

In Chicago This Weekend…

I’ve been quiet lately due to overwhelming work obligations, but I will get a much needed break this weekend when I head to Chicago to visit some friends and take in some incredible art.

Josiah McElheny courtesy of Flickr user windy234

Josiah McElheny courtesy of Flickr user windy234

The exhibit I’m truly jazzed about is Josiah McElheny at the Donald Young Gallery. I have drooled over McElheny’s mirrored glass sculptures for some time now, though I have never seen them in person. The sculpture to the left is a hollow blown glass vessel, mirrored on the inside, which is encased in one way mirrored box with other similar vessels. The effect causes a reflection of the object back onto itself without interference from the viewer, since the mirror is one way.

Also blown…my mind. I hope the gallery lets me take a few shots of McElheny’s work to share with you.

Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Art and Photography of Paris” opening this weekend at the Art Institute of Chicago is yet another reason I am counting down the hours until I arrive. I quote from the AIC website:

To celebrate the centenary of the birth of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the Art Institute will present, for the first time, a comparison of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs to the modern drawings, etchings, and paintings of his contemporaries—works that would otherwise be in storage in preparation for their installation in the Modern Wing.

Let’s see: 1. photography, 2. about Paris, 3. that’s a chance to see works that would normally be in storage…

I don’t know how I could forgive myself for not seeing this. I know very little about Cartier-Bresson, but that’s what this little experiment is all about: finding new (to me) art that I know nothing about and expressing my thoughts about it.

If only I could cram in a Chicago Architecture Foundation boat tour. I did that last time I was in the Windy City and it was worth EVERY PENNY. I learned so much about the history of Chicago and architecture in general that I think I annoyed my friends with my new-found knowledge when I got back.

Ahem.

That may also be a reason for this little blog. Now I can annoy you :-)

KA-BOOM! Cai Guo-Qiang’s Gunpowder Art

Cai detonating a piece. Courtesy of Flickr user we-make-money-not-art

Cai detonating a piece. Courtesy of Flickr user we-make-money-not-art

OK, so I have a huge crush on Art:21 right now. They have introduced me to many fascinating artists in the past few weeks (thanks to Netflix for stocking their entire series) and I want to share one of my favorites, Cai Guo-Qiang.

Cai was born in China and now lives and works in New York. His gunpowder pieces start out as drawings, which he then outlines with various types of gunpowder. There is great care taken to control the detonations. You can imagine it’s pretty tense working with such a dangerous material. In the Art:21 segment on Cai his description of the process is one of my favorite statements from an artist in the entire series:

This whole process of making drawings is very much like lovemaking. From the very beginning of laying down the paper, it’s like laying down the sheets on the bed. First you lay down the sheets and you have this idea of what you might want to do today, in form or in action, what you would like to accomplish. Then you bring in the materials, you lay them out, apply pressure here, but not too much pressure here. You know what kind of effect it might have. How much attention you should give to a certain area, how much material you should use, and how you should play off another balance are all things that you have to consider throughout.

It’s a very long process. You keep going at it and always working towards a final goal, but it’s a very prolonged process and all the time there’s this feeling that you just want it to explode, to finish. There’s continuous control of pressure, you want to set this on fire, to explode it, but yet you are afraid that maybe it’s too early, maybe it’s not the best time yet, maybe you need to work on it a little more. Excepted from the Art:21 interview

A gunpowder drawing. Courtesy of Flickr user ejbaurdo

Excuse me while I fan myself off a bit.

The final pieces look very primative to me, almost like cave paintings. There’s an organic, chaotic quality about them that suggests natural processes, even though they are created from man-made materials.

Cai also creates sculptures, usually with sharp objects sticking into or out of them. It seems he likes to evoke a sense of empathy for the objects, hoping that the viewer will identify with the pain. In one piece that I found amusing, Cai created a suspended sculpture of an airplane with sharp objects confiscated from passengers sticking out of it. Most items are nail files and the like, and were taken from people by the Sao Paolo airport security before they boarded.

Cai's airplane sculpture. Courtesy of Flickr user meltingnoise

Cai's airplane sculpture. Courtesy of Flickr user meltingnoise

If you want to explore Cai’s work further you should check out the Guggenheim Museum’s overview of his recent exhibit, I Want To Believe. There are plenty of goodies there, including a video of the installation and an online exhibition of much of his work.

Throwin’ Out Some Lurve to Art:21 and Sally Mann

I have been tweeting about Art:21 lately because I have queued the entire series on Netflix.

OK, lemme back up.

Art:21 is PBS series that discusses art in the 21st century from the artists’ perspectives. I’m wholeheartedly addicted to it. They have clips you can watch on YouTube and they have a blog which I find very entertaining and informative in that documentary/PBSey kind of way. If you are new to art appreciation this is a great place to start. It got me hooked on photographer Sally Mann, who is profiled in the clip below.

In the full length interview she talks about her wild days as a child running around nekkid, which explains quite a bit about her work. She gained a lot of notoriety for photographing her children nude, and some pretty awful things have been said about her work. When I look at those photos I’m fascinated by how mature the kids look. They are obviously young physically but they appropriate the soul-penetrating stares and assured postures of trained fashion models. Maybe being her kid would make anyone intense, or maybe she’s some kind of genius when it comes to photographing kids (which I’m told is NOT EASY). But these are more than mere portraits. Some are unsettling because it feels like we are seeing private moments that we shouldn’t. Not sensual, but intimate in a familial way.

Sally Mann "Tobacco Spit" ,1987 or "How did she get that baby to stare at me like that?"

Sally Mann "Tobacco Spit" (1987) or "How Did She Get That Baby To Stare At Me Like That?"

One more thing I like about Sally Mann: she uses an antiquated technique called collodion that takes a lot of patience and practice to perfect. It gives her photos a depth and tonal quality that I’m sure can’t be recreated in Photoshop. Perhaps the intimacy present in her images stems from her intimacy with the actual process of taking the photographs and developing them.

Or I could just be full of BS and making stuff up :-P

Chris Jordan: Photography/Collage Exploring the Statistics of American Culture

Cans Seurat, 2007 60x92". Courtesy of flickr user styleserver

Cans Seurat, © Chris Jordan, 2007 60x92". Courtesy of Flickr user StyleServer

Detail of Cans Seurat, 2007. Courtesy of Flickr user StyleServer

Detail of Cans Seurat, © Chris Jordan, 2007. Courtesy of Flickr user StyleServer

I first heard about Chris Jordan on Bill Moyers and was intrigued enough to dig further. An ex-corpo lawyer, Jordan now devotes himself to photography full time. In his latest series, “Running the Numbers: An America Self-Portrait” the artist assembles and manipulates small photos into large collages that represent some statistic of American culture. What I like about this work is that it’s clever and not preachy. The numbers are factual and the artist merely represents them in a way that we can grasp. It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that we use 106,000 aluminum cans every 30 seconds in this country. Seeing that number as a five foot tall collage representation of a famous pointilism piece by Seurat makes you think about your contribution to that number.

Jordan sums up this project on his website:

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming. © Chris Jordan, 2008

There are many other pieces on the website, including a collage of Barbie dolls representing the number of breast augmentations performed monthly and stacks and stacks of folded prison uniforms that depict the number of Americans incarcerated in one year. His other projects, “Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption” and “In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss From an Unnatural Disaster” are just as thought provoking and absolutely worth a look.

Everyday Folks as Celebrities

I stumbled upon The Faces of Bellingham whilst cruising through some blogs, and I gotta say this is a message that resonates with me. Lea Kelley snaps portraits of the everyday people in her town of Bellingham and posts them on this site. She encourages folks to search the site for their photos and comment on themselves, thus creating a bit of “celebrity” for those who would otherwise never have it.

On the site she states “Everyone is a somebody”:

This community art project reflects a culture in which we are obsessed with celebrities…We all want what celebrities have. We want recognition for who we are and acknowledgment for the things we do. Each individual has the ability to contribute to our society by way of our talents, personalities, skills, and participation…our community would not be what it is without every one of us.

When scrolling through the photos I wasn’t prepared for how truly beautiful these people are. Kelley captures the majority of her subjects posing and smiling, but a few photos are more candid or their subjects seem pensive.

I can’t decide which I like better.

What I love about this project is that it speaks to the need in humans for some kind of recognition or attention, all while satisfying our voyeuristic tendencies. I find myself wanting details about these people. My only criticism is I would like to see more comments on the photos by the subjects themselves, perhaps collected from them by Kelley when the photo is taken. It would add more depth and would fully realize her project statement.

Mystery Art: Sculpture at the Centre Pompidou

The Transition (I made up this title)

When ArtLicker was a noob, she took a picture of this sculpture at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and forgot to write down the artist and title.

Can anyone out there tell me about this piece? I love how tender it is and I’d like to find more of this artist’s work. I’m being lazy and could probably find it online myself, but I’d like to hear from you even if you just have a guess. Maybe I’ll make this a regular post, like a fun way to benefit from the onset of my senility. Wheeeeee!

Poking a Stick (or Spoon) at Consumerism

asking the tough questions

asking the tough questions

Mission17, a sleek little gallery above a thrift store in San Francisco’s Mission District, is showing an exhibit that has ArtLicker all in a tizzy. Ryan Alexiev’s mixed media installation “The Land of a Million Cereals” is a commentary on American consumerism featuring pieces made entirely of breakfast cereal.

LICK!

Alexiev creates exaggerated and at times gawdy representations of consumer culture as seen through the eyes of a F.O.B. Bulgarian peasant. The result is a humorous and thought-provoking commentary on what we consume and why we do it. The Mission17 sites says:

“Currently, there are 400 different kinds of cereals on the market, which ultimately are distinguished by little more than their ad campaigns.”

Chew on that for a sec…sure, Oat Bran probably has more fiber and nutritional value than Coco Puffs. I think the distinction arises when you choose Coco Pebbles over Coco Puffs. I mean, I just find Sonny annoying, but really they taste the same to me. Ugh. Although I may think of myself as a rational, educated consumer, at my core I fall shamelessly for the marketing of the most common products. I don’t like that image of myself, but that’s what good art is supposed to do. In my opinion, if an artist can get me to examine my own behavior and experiences then they’ve done something laudable.

But this guy below? I’ll never touch that stuff.

Sit still or I'll give you something to whine about

Sit still or I'll give you something to whine about

The Land of a Million Cereals is currently showing at Mission17 until Aug 2, 2008.

Untitled (Aretha) by Roni Horn at MoMA

begging for it

Oh, COME ON!

I mean, if you don’t want me to lick it, why make it look like a big Jolly Rancher?

This piece, Untitled (Aretha), is currently showing at the MoMA in the exhibit “Multiplex: Directions in Art 1970 to Now”

I lurved this sculpture because it really did make me want to paw it, sniff it and lick it. The color was vibrant, refracting the light inside the sculpture and then reflecting it onto the floor. This play of light gave the sculpture the appearance of fluidity, like at any minute it could dissolve or melt.

If this sculpture had a theme song, it would be Under the Water It Glowed by Eluvium.

image from numbertwelvesmith on flickr