Jerry Saltz. Image courtesy of Art and Culture Center of Hollywood.

Jerry Saltz: senior art critic for New York Magazine, judge of Bravo’s Work of Art, and compulsive facebook user. There is little introduction to made for one of the most magnetic personalities in the contemporary art world. In anticipation for his lecture just past at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Jane Hart, Curator of Exhibitions facilitated a little interview for me with Jerry. We spoke over the phone and discussed his take on everything from facebook to the meaning of honesty in art criticism and his daily ritual of sitting in front of the computer from 7:30 am to 1 am.

Art criticism is such a funny animal and with the supersonic spread of blogging, tweeting, facebook status updates, etc it’s become even more so. You use both shorthand and longer prose formats and I wonder if you have a preference for one or the other?

JS: I would like to collapse both formats. I don’t make a distinction between “serious” and “not serious” writing. I always write about serious stuff that I’m thinking about in either format. I write for the reader. Most things I read are too long and don’t get to the point. You can go through five paragraphs before you get to one critical adjective that maybe has a point. Density in all things is good.

An art critic has to make themselves as vulnerable as what you’re writing about. You have to get out there and make yourself as available as possible. I don’t like being the critic on top of the mountain, speaking down to the masses. I want the many to speak to one another… to create a horizontal conversation. Art criticism should be chaotic and should recreate the experience of looking at art. It should not be easy to process, because looking at art is not easy to process.

And besides, art criticism doesn’t pay anything. And in all likelihood in the future it will pay even less so. So what that means is that you have total freedom in what you write about. There is no writing for money. You’re writing for the reader and reading about art can be as exciting as looking and talking about art.

Going back to what you had mentioned about the vulnerability, which format to find to be most honest?

JS: Every format! Look, if you’re not honest, the reader will know it in two seconds. You fall into the Mitt Romney role. Artforum is pornography. I can’t understand what they’re saying and they’re not taking any kind of a risk.

And beyond that honesty is really only a lie. A critic is like an artist inventing their ideas, language, persona, syntax, etc. It’s a fabrication. It’s really the idea of Wallace Stevens’ “supreme fiction.”

The effects of the onslaught of Art Basel Miami Beach have been widely discussed among locals in the art community as both a blessing and a curse. Based on your previous discussion on art fairs in general and their relationship to artists and art-making what are some of the positive and negative/ social and economic ramifications of this kind of event on a relatively young art community?

JS: Ok, Art Basel Miami Beach: good for emerging artists, good for the blood, good for parties and touching antennae and having a good time. How can it be bad, if you have the entire volunteer army of the art world at your doorstep? To say it’s a bad thing is being ungenerous. Even as fucked up as things have gotten, as horrendous as the equation between capital and quality has become within this system.

And it has to die; in fact it’s dying as we speak. I just posted an article today in response to Adam Lindemann and Charles Saatchi already turning on the system they helped to create. But this doesn’t mean we have to throw out the baby with the bastards. In fact, the babies need the bastards and vice versa.

One of his recent posts in New York Magazine is a sharp lashing of  Adam Lindemann’s supposed moratorium on this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach (he did in fact attend), and Charles Saatchi’s harsh criticism of the current state of the art world and collecting.

After we spoke, Adam Lindemann posted this response in the NY Observer.

“More on Miami – I’ve heard complaints from a lot of local artists about the void in Miami after Art Basel. Is it a viable place for an artist to work and hope to enjoy some success beyond our swamps and beaches? Is New York still the Shangri-La of the art world?”

JS: In Miami you can have a life, a studio and afford to work. Wherever you are, an artist needs to test your ideas out on strangers on a regular basis.

If you move to New York you won’t die, you’ll live in a shit hole, and you will have an inner life, but your outer life will die. In Miami, you can have an outer life and an inner life. I have no outer life, which is why I look the way I do. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.

(Jerry’s concept of the inner life refers to artistic practices and time spent thinking, talking and working, while the outer life could possibly include everything else.)

So what’s better? Do you have to move to New York to get rich and famous? I don’t know… it helps.

I have two secrets. I am going to tell you the second one first. I have very thick skin. I never take criticism personally because I know that there is probably a grain of truth to it. Even though it hurts, I always address them back. If you’re writing to be loved, then you’ve got trouble. I’ve never been asked to write for Artforum and they would never ask me to either. My voice would make no sense there.

The first secret is energy. Put yourself out there and produce, produce, produce. I have no degree (except my three honorary PhDs), and started in my forties, I’m a late bloomer. But I just put myself out there every day.

Finally, who is your favorite comedian?

JS: Sarah Silverman, Larry David, and I’m old school so Chris Rock.

One could argue this point, but Jerry Saltz is one of the art world’s most distinct figures. He is known for his unabashed critical observations of the contemporary art world and of course his wit. People either love him or hate him… either way they find themselves reading what he has to say. Saltz’s approach to art criticism is considered brazenly honest and straightforward, and he is not one to squirrel away from voicing his opinion, a quality that has also gained him cult status among fans.  Jerry credits his self-proclaimed “privileged” role and unique approach to beginning his career late in life. If you can imagine it, he once drove semi trucks across country and did not begin writing about art until his forties. Even now, when asked about being an art critic and how he came to be, Jerry has this to say:

JS: I feel lucky to get whatever I get. I’m where I am partly out of desperation. I came into the game so late, and I had to admit how badly I wanted to be in the art world. And I don’t consider myself a critic. At best, I consider myself a folk critic.

Upon finishing up the interview, Jerry invited me to communicate on facebook and exchange ideas with him on his page. I may be taking liberties here, but I invite all you facebookers (even the ones with the secret accounts) to do the same. Even if you hate him, go ahead, he can take it[.]

This past Saturday Jerry Saltz gave a lecture as part of the Hot Topics Discussion Series at Art and Culture Center of Hollywood.  For more information about past and future lectures in this series please go to: http://artandculturecenter.org/hot-topics.

This post was contributed by Melissa Diaz.

Here follows an interview with MoCA North Miami Associate Curator Ruba Katrib and the University of Wynwood and O Miami Founder and Director P. Scott Cunningham on the subject of Reality Conference 2011, a conference about reality television organized by Cunningham and Katrib and presented by the University of Wynwood, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to advancing contemporary literature in Miami. The responses to the questions below were generated jointly by Cunningham and Katrib.

How do you qualify/define Reality TV?

In its infancy, reality TV was just TV that didn’t use actors. In other words, it didn’t pay the participants at a market rate. (Though a handful of people did make some real money off of game shows.) What’s happened since the debut of The Real World is that reality TV became a genre with conventions that are as defined as those in a Western, and the line between actor and “real person” has been continually eroded. I think in the next ten years we’ll see that line eroded even further, at least in terms of the market. With the advent of social media, many, many “average” people have made themselves into marketable personalities in the manner of 1930s actors.

The release on Reality Conference 2011 seems deliberately open ended. Does Reality Conference 2011 seek to qualify/define Reality TV through attendee participation?

No. It’s open-ended because this is the first time we’re doing something like this. We also realize that everyone has their own unique relationship to reality TV, so we hope to present a range of interests and investments in the genre during the conference without any qualifying intention.

Considering that those in attendance at the conference will have been exposed to reality TV shows, many of which begin “America’s…” can we expect a jaundice appreciation for the genre of reality TV? And if so, is this important? And if so, are you taking steps to broaden the vista?

Some people may dismiss reality TV as an inadequate subject matter, but if so, why attend? Unless it’s to come and argue, which is great.  But simply saying, “reality TV” is dumb, is a conversation-ender. Lots of very, very intelligent people are involved in the creation of these shows. If Barthes can find something interesting in fake wrestling, we can find plenty of material in reality TV. We’re really not interested in broadening anyone’s vista. That’s his/her problem.

In terms of format, for the sake of discussion, do you feel it is important to subjugate this expanding genre by differentiating and subsequently pigeon holing its many incantations into ‘types’ such as fly on the wall programming (focused on industry – restaurants, fishing fleets airlines hotels etc), skill based, often individual starred shows (such as Man Vs Wild and various instructional/dramatic home improvement shows) and contest based shows (like Big Brother, American Idol/Top Model, Art Star, Survivor and The Batchelor)?

That could be very useful, yes, but we also wouldn’t want to reduce comparisons between shows just because of an arbitrary distinction. In general, as organizers, we’re not interested in classifying anything. For most part, the presenters generate the specific topics; we are more interested in what specific angle fascinates them and this is an opportunity to share. We just want to open up the discussion.

The concept of reality TV is by no means new and subjects covered by reality TV include many industries, even within the art world such programming has seen multiple epochs. What makes now a pertinent time to discuss reality TV?

TV has become the dominant American art form, supplanting film, which long ago supplanted the novel. The high art of TV (The Wire, Six Feet Under, Mad Men, etc.) is well-discussed but the low art of reality TV has not received as much critical attention, which is a shame because it says much more about us than any of the high art shows. Also, reality TV is increasingly pervasive as a genre. There was a point when maybe it seemed it would wear it self out, but we all know with the increasing success of many shows and the endless spin-offs, the novelty is gone and reality TV is here to stay.

Considering that “Reality television frequently portrays a modified and highly influenced form of reality, at times utilizing sensationalism to attract audience viewers and increase advertising revenue profits.” (Wikipedia) will it be a priority to of Reality Conference 2011 to illuminate the inherent irony of reality TV?

Again, as organizers, we don’t have any priorities, other than getting smart people involved and having a good time with it. We think the irony of reality TV is obvious to everyone involved.  Irony in general is so pervasive at this point we’re not even sure we can call it irony, and certainly not in any classical sense.  Again, the novelty of reality TV has really worn off, and increasingly many people are “coming out of the closet,” admitting that they are avid watchers of particular shows, which do have a cultural and social impact. The Reality Conference is an occasion to publicly share what most interests us about this captivating genre that we spend so much time pretending to despise, even while we rush home to catch the latest episode of the Kardashians[.]

Excerpt from Nov 21st Release:

REALITY CONFERENCE 2011, December 10, 2011 1 p.m. – 5 p.m. Lester’s Bar 2519 NW 2nd Ave. Miami, FL 33127 (map)

The Problem
Why is “reality television” so awesome? Discuss.

How Do I Attend?
Attendance at REALITY CONFERENCE is free but space is limited. Register here.

Call for Abstracts
If you’re interested in participating, please send a brief description, no more than 300 words, outlining a presentation, paper, panel, or performance on any topic related to “reality TV.” Abstracts are due on November 23rd. The presentations will be no longer than 15 minutes long with 5 minutes of questions from the audience. Prior experience in academia is not required. Please put “Reality Conference” in the subject heading and send abstracts and inquires to: scott@universityofwynwood.org. Submitters will be notified by Monday, November 28th.

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.

Bespoke cupcakes, made fresh and local for O Cinema by Iris from Cupcake World.

After a sneak peak in the form of Scissors and Glue: The Miami Project, during this past Art Basel Miami Beach, O Cinema, a non profit, cutting-edge independent cinema art house located in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District, is finally screening proper. The brainchild of Vivian Marthell and Kareem Tabsch, co-directors of Living Arts Trust, who were awarded a $400,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to establish the cinema’s presence in the South Florida entertainment and arts marketplace, O Cinema specializes in showing first-run independent, foreign, art, and niche market films as well as being a visual and video art gallery.

For the past two nights O Cinema have screened their inaugural movie, Tina Malbry’s Mississippi Damned, and will again today, tonight and tomorrow from 1pm until 10pm at their theater on NW 29th street opposite the Rubell Family Collection. In the midst of their debugging, with the smell of fresh cupcakes in the air, and before their seats get completely stuckup with gum, Vivian and Kareem took time out to answer a few questions for us:

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Speaking on behalf of your funding body, The Knight Foundation, why do you feel you were given the opportunity to create such a venue?

The Knight Arts Partnership was created to help fund creative ideas that transform the community.  Ultimately we think that the real reason we were chosen for funding comes down to the fact that their has been a true need and hunger in the community for what O Cinema is bringing; a forum for indie, foreign, art and niche film in Miami’s urban core. The magic of movies can transform lives. It may sound corny and cliche but it’s true. The value of seeing stories like your own… whether from a neighboring state or a remote village across the world, can be an immensely powerful experience.  So we think that the Knight Foundation gets that and want to help make it happen. Also, we’re hoping that the fact that we’re pretty and charming had something to do with it.

Can you summarize your 150 word grant application?

We obsessed over each and every one of those 150 words, but ultimately what it boiled down to was: ‘We want to bring amazing movies that otherwise wouldn’t be seen here to the epicenter of our amazing city. Please help’

Kareem and Vivian.

How does O Cinema differ from other South Floridian art house cinemas such as Miami Beach Cinematheque?

There are now five different indie cinemas in the Miami area. Each one of them great in their own right, but I definitely think that O Cinema is the funkiest place in town to watch a movie. From the handmade ceramic countertop concession by artist Carlos Alves, to the regularly curated art in our gallery space there is really something to see everywhere you look. Our dedicated monitoring art video gallery, our in house artist galleries and art boutiques all help make a visit here a sensory experience.

So that’s something that certainly sets us apart but also our geographic location and the audience that we draw set us apart. The Wynwood Arts District and our surrounding neighborhoods like the Design District, Midtown, the Upper East Side and Downtown cater to a younger audience, so what you’ll see at O are films that are reflective of that. Also, we’re in the midst of one of the largest and most important arts districts in the world, so with that comes a responsibility to showcase films that are not only international in scope but that push the artistic boundaries of the medium.  So while you’ll see an array of different kind of films at O, you’re going to see programming that mirrors the uniqueness of our neighborhood and our crowd.

O Cinema, 90 NW 29th Street Miami, FL 33127.

With the various ‘film nights’ that have come and gone there is is obviously a market, but can you speak about the need in South Florida for art house cinema?

Both of us spend a lot of time traveling throughout the states and North America and every time we were in New York,  LA, San Francisco or Toronto there would always be a whole slew of films playing that would never see the light of day back home in Miami. So we knew we had to do something to change that. The whole cannon of artistic expression has really come to its own in the city over the least decade in particular, but film has needed to catch up and thats what we wanted to do, provide a year round forum for great movies.  So why is there a need?  Because people like to see good movies in their own neighborhoods. Sometimes you’re in the mood to see the new Harry Potter film and sometimes you’re in the mood to see Jean Luc
Goddard… or better… discover the next Jean Luc Goddard in the making.

Still from Mississippi Damned.

Do you preference any specific genres?

I don’t know if we have a particular favorite but as we say our focus is indie, foreign, art, and niche films. We are pretty passionate people with very different tastes… so more than a specific genre you may see stuff that speak to us in its uniqueness. We like interesting topics that are dealt with in interesting ways… I think the films we’ve already showed or the ones we’ve schedules are a pretty good indicator of that… from movies about the Punk Islam scene and rural African-American families fighting a cycle of abuse to dark comedies about suicide bombers and their failed terrorists plots to a Scandinavian murderer on the road to reformation who turns into the unlikely town stud. There will be a little bit of everything at O…except for anything with Sylvester Stallone in it… unless its directed by David Lynch, and then we’ll consider it[.]

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Remaining show times for this weekends film are as follows:

Elmgreen & Dragset Powerless Structures Fig 101.

PULSE from artlurker weblog on Vimeo.

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.

Installation view of Between a Rock and a Soft Place featuring a hammock piece by Colin Sherrell at CasaLin.

And so it begins…after months of preparation, a few frantic weeks, and for most a 36 hour day that finally came to an end sometime yesterday afternoon, Art Basel Miami Beach is finally upon us once again. Amidst roads snarled up fancy rental cars, gaudy boutiques that seem to blob out of the dust, an influx of pasty skinned administrators and enthusiasts, graffiti bombed everything and Bert Rodriguez’s ass, this time painted silver, emblazoning just one of the usual flurry of economic, fair-centric, and largely sensationalist articles in the local press, Artlurker is drifting, sourcing and generally avoiding the hype. Last year we boycotted Basel all together, the year before that we focused on artists in their studios. This year, or rather this week, armed with passes and guest list invitations we’ll be seeking the truth behind the spin, speaking with regular people about their experiences of ABMB and hopefully making our peace with cultural tourism.

Tuesday night saw galleries in both Wynwood and the Design District throwing opening bashes, an evening which for many culminated in a bacchanal at Wynwood Walls. There were and are many good shows; Limestoned, a solo by Nicolas Lobo at Charest-Weinberg being among the best. And although we didn’t get treated to a band at the fair weather Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, or should I say the Wynwood Art Garden, this year, it was sentimental for want of a better word to see the old/new building lit up again.

This morning was the breakfast opening of the annual outdoor exhibition space, CasaLin. As ever the catering was excellent, the atmosphere relaxed and the rum coconuts in full swing. The site specific work of New World School of the Arts students and faculty plus Joshua Levine in Between a Rock and a Soft Place, curated by Fredric Snitzer, was pretty good too. Here’s some pictures in case you plan on missing it.

A tongue in cheek tour performance of the exhibition by Patti Her and Abel Ramon greeted us as we arrived.

Cutouts by Carol Brown, this one hilariously featuring Helen L Cohen, famous Miami Herald arts critic.

Micheal Loveland’s annual chicken coop offering, this time around a metallic canoe ensemble. Thank the lord for the trees or we might have had an addition to the morning’s catering!

Another theme gathering momentum at CasaLin, the sand square. See Chad Cunha’s The Place Where Jesus and Logic Wrestled from 2009. Oh, hang on, no image on the website. Ahem.

The shed again takes on a new life through artful camouflage. Joshua Levine, I assume.

A collaborative book installation by Carol Todaro and Peter Borrebach. A round of beers for the folks at the lecterns, as Douglas Hanks of the Miami Herald would say.

In addition to showcasing Between a Rock and a Soft Place, this year was the grand unveiling of the new yard and house, a somewhat breathtaking addition to the already Eden-like space made possible by the acquisition and radical renovation and landscaping of the adjoining property. Native species from courtesy of Fairchild Tropical Gardens were then used to create a sensitive yet virtuosic botanical symphony.

According to Michael Loveland, an artist with Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, a sculpture tutor at New World and a long time protagonist and friend of the CasaLin legacy, landscapers scoured the top soil back to the limestone, uncovering a series of magical, although now inert sink holes (see above).

After CasaLin was passed through the neighboring Fountain fair, a satellite fair that describes itself as “the installation-based exhibition of avant-garde galleries.” While the work was generally so-so, there was a great feeling to the fair, a refreshing artist-run kind of vibe that provided a welcome contrast to the hot-lamp, hard sell claustrophobia of its larger cousins. In case you’re too busy to waste your time with this kind of thing, I made this video for you.

Fountain Miami 2010 from artlurker weblog on Vimeo.

OK, that’s definitely enough sleep deprived spleen venting for one afternoon. Tonight we’ll be documenting the happenings at the FriendsWithYou event. The evening will start off with a reception at their Design District studio then move over to their expansive Rainbow City and Building Blocks installation for a concert by N*E*R*D. Maybe see you there[.]

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.

Ana Mendez, from Tribute: A Summoning (2010).

For these dog days, while Miami’s art world is gearing up for the fall season, it’s all about dance. Not just your average dance on stage, but genre-bending performance and an exploration of the intersection points between dance and art.

On the lower end of the artistic spectrum, Step Up 3D, the third installment of the Step Up series is out in theaters. It’s a shamelessly indulgent dance film, and yes, it’s in 3D. Delicious dance candy, battles galore! I mention this film not only because it’s a great opportunity to turn off your brain for a minute and have a good time, but also because it belongs in a rich vein of cross-genre performance: dance for camera. Stay tuned to artlurker.com for this weekend’s mini-film festival of dance videos including some classic examples from the archives.

In the meantime, big news on the local performance front. Thursday August 19th at Miami Art Museum, the Afterhours program features Talking Head Transmitters, with a broadcast on contemporary dance from their in-museum AM radio station, and Walking Spell, a performance by local performer and choreographer Ana Mendez.

Ana Mendez, from Valley of the Queen (2009).

MAM’s announcement describes Walking Spell as “experimental performance.” Indeed, Mendez’s work, lying somewhere in the space between theater, dance, music and art, is not easy to describe. Consider her the conductor of a series of beautiful games. I use beautiful in the broadest sense because her visually stunning performances can be gritty at times, anguished, and emotionally resonant. The striking sense of presence that characterizes much of her work is due to her construction process – she creates situations and improvisatory scripts rather than strict choreography. As a result, her performers “play” the show, embodying her instructions with their own movement patterns. They seem to experience the performance as deeply as anyone in the audience. The musical background is not canned either – it’s a live soundscape responding to the dancers’ movements or the rules of the game.

Walking Spell will be driven by a deck of cards. Very John Cage. Each card drawn by the dancers prompts a specific sound to be played by the musicians. Every sound then generates a movement from the dancers. Because such a show could not exactly be rehearsed, the attention of the performers will be heightened as they listen for cues and respond to each other. Mendez describes Walking Spell as a meditation – “we intend to lose ourselves.” She will be performing alongside Aja Albertson, with sound created by Richard Vergez and Frederico Nessi and a customized floor built by Richard Martinez. The concept for this show was inspired by Cage’s Water Walk, a 1959 composition for, among other things, grand piano, electric mixer, whistle, tape recorder, five radios, a bathtub and a vase of roses.

John Cage performing “Water Walk” in January 1960, on the popular TV show I’ve Got A Secret.

While Mendez is clearly a talent to watch, one of her greatest strengths is her ability to work collaboratively. She draws generously from the talents of her performers, most of whom are not actually trained dancers, but accomplished artists or musicians in their own right. Tribute: A Summoning, a performance earlier this year based on the life of music producer Joe Meek, was well-developed in every aspect – visually, musically, and performatively – thanks to the contributions of her many collaborators (including both Vergez and Nessi). Each element could easily have stood on its own as a solid and complete artistic effort and so the show, as a whole, was far more than the sum of its parts.

Ana Mendez, from Tribute: A Summoning (2010).

Mendez and Nessi, creative partners for both Tribute and Walking Spell, first collaborated in 2008 for a project called Wire Wire Wire. The strength of their working relationship was later extended when local musicians got involved, and Psychic Youth, Inc. was formed in 2009. PYI’s performances are, like Mendez’s solo projects, structured by a loose set of parameters rather than a rigid set of movements. Psychic Youth Inc.’s recent extravagant three-night happening at the de la Cruz collection earlier this year, TRI, followed an improvisatory script that allowed each performer to fully own his or her movements and position in space. A wild and unpredictable, living, breathing show was born.

Tonight’s event promises to be another memorable addition to Mendez’s already rich performance history. The program runs from 6-9pm. Don’t miss it. For more information, visit www.miamiartmuseum.org.

Walking Spell flyer by Richard Vergez.

This post was contributed by Annie Hollingsworth winner of this year’s Miami Writer’s Prize.

Image credit.

Friday’s Hairy Eyeball; looking forward for [a] change.

A selection of prophetic links:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/12/faces-to-watch-in-2010-art.html

http://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Art-2010-Wall-Calendar/dp/160237256X

https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/87/richard_bruce_anderson.html

http://www.burningman.com/art_of_burningman/bm10_theme.html

https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/87/philosophy-zero-point.html

http://www.pnj.com/article/20100101/ENTERTAINMENT/1010305

https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/87/silver-bullet-big-ideas.html

https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/87/coming_insurrection.html

http://www.kansas.com/entertainment/all/story/1119151.html

Upcoming fairs:

http://www.artpalmbeach.com/exhibitors.html

http://www.mia-artfair.com/exhibitors.html

http://artlosangelesfair.com/exhibitors

Annie Wharton, Video Still from “Magellan Hollywood,” 2009. RT: 3:02 minutes.

Artlurker’s own West Coast editor, Annie Wharton’s new video “Magellan Hollywood” is included in the GEO-graphic show currently on view at Diana Lowenstein Fine Art. In addition, at the gallery’s booth at Pulse Miami, Wharton is showing paintings.

Gallery says: “Magellan Hollywood is the new video by Los Angeles painter/video artist Annie Wharton. A lone female figure (Wharton) dressed in skintight pants and a silver sweater, traverses an urban setting, sees a globe that would normally be found in an elementary school classroom, and destroys it. A tongue-in-cheek commentary on our planet’s collective foibles and weaknesses, and ranging in reference from 3rd Wave feminist moving image works to the humorous early corporal videos of William Wegman or Bruce Nauman. With a pair of sparkly gold Valentino boots, Wharton uses her body to literally obliterate the signifier of the world.  Her experience as an abstract painter is evident, as the camera angled into the sun creates refractory imagery and random abstract depictions find arbitrary presence. A rolling globe morphs into a series of unsettling abstractions, lighting changes from white to gold, and temporal rhythms are jerkily interrupted.”

Annie Wharton, Video Still from “Magellan Hollywood,” 2009. RT: 3:02 minutes.

Shot in Hollywood, California with a handheld camera the film utilizes only existing sounds (e.g., a Salt ‘n Pepa song that happened to be on the radio while recording the video, ambulance sirens, footsteps, and screeching brakes) and available lighting. On the occasion of the GEO-Graphic exhibition at Diana Lowenstein,Wharton premieres Magellan Hollywood with Magellan’s Folly, the sole performative relic from video – a sculpture created from the wreckage of what was once a globe.

Annie Wharton, Video Still from “Magellan Hollywood,” 2009. RT: 3:02 minutes.

Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts is located at 2043 North Miami Avenue, Miami, FL 33127.

Pulse Miami is located at the Ice Palace at 1400 North Miami Avenue, Miami, FL 33136

For more information please call 305-576-1804 or visit www.dlfinearts.com

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.

RENT ELECTRICITY GAS as it looked for Felix Larreta’s Spherescent opening.

Last year around early fall the phones of various Miami businesses started ringing. We had all expected the slam since before summer, and sure enough by September (at the latest) the glut of clients seeking Basel related services had fully descend via satellite and a thousand inboxes on our mellow existence, forcing us to gear up for the crush three to four months ahead of schedule. This year, however, while we rightly expected some lapse in extravagance it seemed unlikely that moderate expense and display would come to define the proceedings. But, shockingly, the typical swarm of high budget clients that gainfully employ – and in many cases stave the financial ruin of – Miami’s many seasonal workers have thus far proved hard to come by and while the parties are getting into the swing and the streets are peppered with murals and life there is a tangible sense of conservatism. Sure there are always going to be a select few in the now rare position to make inordinate dissipation their winter hobby, but for the most part, especially among locals, cautiously moderate seems to be the new excessive.

Services ranging from fabricators to art handlers, equipment renters to events coordinators are all reporting the same story, and while they are not hurting too bad (most securing at least one or two high rolling clients) they are certainly not over committed and swimming in cash as in previous years. Many ascribe this shift in trends to the economy, which is understandable; nevertheless, whether or not the current economic climate is a catalyst, there is a common surge of community-oriented consciousness that many artists are tapping into.

In the 80’s many art dreams were made reality. The 90’s by comparison was a good time for art, but maybe not such a good time for the art world. In Miami, our 80’s happened around the beginning of the century, 2001 to be precise. Art dreams were for a short time fulfilled and young emerging artists who had not yet been picked up or poached straight out of college were vying for the carrot being dangled – the promise of art stardom. By 2006 however, things had begun to get real and now, this year specifically, it is not unusual to find artists either leaving their galleries or getting full time jobs.

It’s likely that this is just a phase. But if this were the slow death of the art world would it really be such a bad thing? Whatever happens will happen. In the mean time however, we all get to grow stronger for working together and savoring the many low-key projects born of a return to a more organic, creative approach to art making.

Here follows a brief run down of some of the many unpretentious attractions this Art Basel Miami Beach:

The Brief Happy Life of Workshop Workshop, Design Miami.

Workshop Workshop, a factory and salon created by artist Jim Drain, poet P. Scott Cunningham, and sculptor Graham Hudson, produces zines that respond to Design/Miami itself—its participants, objects, conversations, histories, narratives, belief systems and forms. Even the detritus of the tent’s construction has been put to use by Hudson, who is in the act of constructing the space using remnant lumber, rubber, plastic, furniture—anything the fair and the city (the larger fair) has cast off.

Workshop Workshop promotional image.

In Workshop Workshop, physical and metaphysical byproducts are recycled and put to use, creating an environment, a process, and a series of works that reflect the intense interchange that occurs in Miami each December, and creates a locus for collaboration.

Drain, Cunningham and Hudson will draw from a rotating—and ever-expanding—crew of local and international artists, designers and writers, in order to produce as many zines as it can during the length of fair, with as diverse a range of content as possible.

Completed zines cost $5.00 each or can be bartered for intellectual property.

Proceeds will be donated to two local non-profits, Bas Fisher Invitational, an artist-run exhibition space, and the University of Wynwood, a literature advocacy organization.

CUDDLE FISH

Cuddle Fish is a small zine conceived by Miami based artist Bhakti Baxter as a way for the outsider to access the peripheral thoughts, no matter how obscure, of 30 Miami artists. Baxter asked artists to submit not art, but rather source material or that weird/funny/fucked up image floating on their desktop and ultimately on the mind. The entries were then collaged together into what is now a 14 page, lo-fi, black and white Xerox on colored paper zine. A total of 160 copies were made, with an addition of 33 artist proofs.

“Fossil remains found…Undated handout photo of an artist’s impression of “Ardi” – Ardipithecus ramidus. Fossil remains of a short human-like creature that lived 4.4 million years ago could be the closest thing yet to the mythical “missing link”, it was revealed today. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Thursday October 1 2009. The almost intact female “hominid” skeleton, unearthed from a desert in Ethiopia, is the oldest known and writes a new chapter in human evolution. See PA story SCIENCE Human.” Photo credit:  J.H. Matternes/PA Wire

For more information on CUDDLE FISH please watch this hilarious video of Bhakti Baxter courtesy of Wet Heat (third one in from the top).

Twenty Twenty Projects Booth at NADA.

Twenty Twenty Projects Booth at NADA is a result of the project space receiving a grant from the knight foundation mandated that it be used to provide emerging unrepresented artists with a free a booth at an art fair during Art Basel Miami Beach. Presumably Nada was chosen because it is considered to be the highest quality satellite fair.

The artists chosen to receive the booth were Nicolas Lobo and Tom Scicluna, two artists who have worked with the Twenty Twenty Projects since its inception. Rather than simply present some stuff in a booth they settled on making a collaborative project that embodied the ethos of the project space consisting of an armature or a system of display to show smaller projects which stand up as works in their own right.

American Donut – Nicolas Lobo and Tom Scicluna’s installation in Twenty Twenty Projects’ booth at NADA.

The main feature of the booth is a 35 ft radio antenna that has been cut and folded to fit inside the booth. Around the base of the antenna are a series of custom-built glass tables on which smaller projects are be displayed.

The booth’s main function can be defined as a process of production. Books, transcriptions of pirate radio station transmissions in Miami titles 89.5 Miami Dade hint at a clerical air. Inside the booth the pair have set up their own radio transmitter. Via a phone they are connecting to American Donut, a dial up party line (712 429 0405) that they are then transmitting (on the same frequency that the pirate radio station transcribed in the book previously occupied), effectively making their own pirate radio station. All transmissions will be recorded and eventually edited down to a 36-minute record that will exist as documentation of the project.

As their booth-made pirate radio station is a replication of a party line anyone can call into it, immortalizing themselves within the documentation of the project, an otherwise transient medium.

American Donut – Nicolas Lobo and Tom Scicluna’s installation in Twenty Twenty Projects’ booth at NADA.

In addition to the transcription books, the antenna, the transmitter, the tables and the phone, drawings derived from posters of text message glossaries and poster display unit with rubbings of vintage embossed velvet led zeppelin album covers encapsulate the focal notion of continual transmutation. The Led Zeppelin album is none other than the bands controversial untitled fourth album, sometimes referred to as ‘Zoso’ or ‘Led Zeppelin 4’. Some believe that when reversed devil worship messages that are supposedly subliminally transmitted by the album can clearly he heard. The original album covers were rubbed, the rubbings were then scanned, the scans were then reversed and both versions were then silkscreened. This process mimics that of the phone party line that is transmitted as a radio station and cut as a record through several mediums – the subject is the record as object.

ARCHIPELAGO at IDEOBOX Art Space

ARCHIPELAGO is exhibition by Gean Moreno and Ernestio Oroza instigated by the SaludArte Foundation, a pro-active organization who raise revenues to fund medical care solutions by involving the visual arts community in Miami and by holding cultural and charity events on behalf of the Jackson Memorial Foundation. Activating an idle space (26 NE 25^th Street) Moreno and Oroza have in their own words “put some stuff together.”

ARCHIPELAGO installation view.

The exhibition includes:

The Helga Platform – an installation of interchangeable seating by Moreno for the Convention exhibition -reconfigured in a new way.

Freddy – an outdoor bucket pavilion installation by Moreno and Oroza for Night Shift at Bass Museum – but this time indoor and larger.

Scrapwood stools.

A no-budget outdoor lounge.

“…and a couple of other things.”

Unlike the events mentioned thus far this exhibition runs through until February 26, 2010 and since each part of the exhibition can be activated through participation the pair are considering of hosting some programming after Basel.

In addition to ARCHIPELAGO, Moreno and Oroza have been making tabloids to accompany every exhibition exhibited. In that regard their publications have accompanied exhibitions at Charest Weinberg Gallery, The Arts and Culture Center of South Florida and most recently The Spanish Cultural Center whose curator was kind enough to make their tabloid the entire catalog of the show, while allowing the pair to maintain their identity by including information of interest to their over and above that demanded by the exhibition, on this occasion highlights included an interview of Serge Toussaint, a local mural artist by Nicolas Lobo and  a text by Brian Kuan Wood, editor of eflux journal. The tabloids enable the infiltration of institutional frameworks whilst still remaining relatively autonomous – something of a trademark of the pair’s recent activities.

RENT ELECTRICITY GAS at 380 NW 24^th Street

On behalf of Terri and Donna, Miami based curator Agatha Wara has set up a curious space called RENT ELECTRICITY GAS (a title borrowed from a Martin Kippenberger artwork). Featuring artworks in the form of seats and benches by Jim Drain, Nick Lobo, Ernesto Oroza and a young German artist Phillip Zach the space’s main function is as a bar. When asked “why a bar?”, Wara simply replied “ because what is the point of making more exhibitions?”

The bar opened in conjunction with Felix Larreta’s SPHERESCENT, the latest exhibition by Terri and Donna, a small but spicy gallery located on NW 36^th Street. Located in a large warehouse, RENT ELECTRICITY GAS occupies the main space that you have to walk through in order to get to Laretta’s piece located in one of many partitioned areas within the warehouse. The bar, although more of a concept than a serious business model, is functioning and for the next few weeks will serve some peculiar and actually pretty funny drinks made by Wara’s “foodist” friends. “My bar idea is really an experiment, a bar and an exhibition in one, but neither at the same time. That is what I am hoping to accomplish anyway,” said Wara.

RENT ELECTRICITY GAS opens Saturday December 5th, 7 – 11pm and Saturday December 12, 7 – 11pm.

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With only a few hours into the madness of Art Basel Miami Beach there already seems to be a theme emerging as works and events, tangentially or directly related to the process collaboration begin to stand out from the crowd.

From seeing events and talking with people it seems clear that the feeling that gripped the nation earlier this year is now manifest in the art world. Could it be that out of the ashes of a destabilized economy an anti-power global community phoenix is rising? What we have seen so far here in Miami certainly points to a more modest road ahead, but as we embark upon it, as we downsize, internalize, and foster, we are conscious that there is as yet no large-scale infrastructure set up for the change mentality that we seem to be buying into. As a result, people are doing things themselves, perhaps not because they want to, but because that’s the only way to get things done. Community, apocalypse, Obama, whatever, the fact remains that people are getting together, autonomous of a system, to make their own way. All kinds of communities are behaving this way and despite the suffering economy the focus is thankfully predominantly not oriented to the problem of a lack of available funds, but rather on solutions, which for the time being seem to be strength in numbers and hard, smart and humble work.

Jim Drain, an artist who has in the past won the Basel prize is now sat in Design Miami with a Xerox machine. Like a critical mass of microbes, creative’s all over the city are congealing, growing in numbers and stinking the place up with frugal awesomeness. Artists have always complained that Basel is not for the artists. Maybe this year will be different. The primordial soup has been achieved[.]

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.