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Hennessy Youngman performs at NADA art fair

Friday, December 9, 2011

Hennessy Youngman giving his “His History of Art” lecture at NADA Miami Beach.

This year’s installment of Art Basel Miami Beach mania brought the usual army of art world celebrities to Miami. Among the throngs of the who’s who was newcomer to Miami Basel, Hennessy Youngman who gave a lecture labeled “His History of Art” at NADA Miami Beach. In keeping with the popular ART THOUGHTZ series currently available on Hennessy’s Youtube channel, Youngman tells it like it is with help of a prepared slideshow and a glass of Hennessy to steer the course.

Audience at Hennessy Youngman’s “His History of Art” lecture at NADA Miami Beach.

Youngman has become a hit among art students who find the marriage of his humor and criticality refreshing in the sea of bloated art speak. This was made evident in the huge turnout that packed the lobby of the Deauville hotel for his performance. Much of his success comes from embracing the role of outsider with insider knowledge that makes him both approachable and intellectually stimulating. Recently, his popularity is also garnering him critical acclaim, named as one of the top ten highlights of 2011 by art critic Michael Ned Holte for Artforum’s annual “Best of” edition.

For the NADA performance, Youngman’s lecture, which in keeping with Miami time started behind schedule, began as teaser of slides and comments referring to the secret of success for artists. Youngman described a timeline dating back to everything and everyone from ancient cultures to conquistadors and scientists. Including all examples of human creativity and innovation. For all of this, Youngman said we can credit one thing… the ultimate secret to success and what he referred to as the “artist’s ally” in all things creative. This, Youngman finally reveals is one thing and one thing only… cocaine. And if you were paying close attention, and considering that this lecture was written for Youngman’s first Miami performance, you might have seen this one coming.

Hennessy Youngman’s “His History of Art” lecture at NADA Miami Beach.

Upon wrapping up his lecture with a barrage of slides that included everyone from Marcel Duchamp to Claes Oldenburg to Damian Hirst, Youngman took a scientific approach to proving the positive effects of cocaine on the practices of all successful artists. In the end, proclaiming, “cocaine is the eternal friend of people who need to do shit.” The crowd, filled with everyone from hipsters to an impressive turnout by local artists sipping on green Grolsch bottles were enthralled by Youngman’s energy. So much so, that Youngman headed into the crowd in a stand-up comedian style tête-à-tête with members of the audience. At one point singling out the only collector he could find to try to sell him some work. Wherever he went in the audience and whomever he chose to sit down with, everyone was wide-eyed and star struck and snapping pictures with smart phones. I can honestly say that the audience was in love with Hennessy Youngman.

Hennessy Youngman speaking with Peggy Nolan.

Hennessy Youngman is the creation of artist Jayson Musson, whose work has become synonymous with the characters he develops. However, Musson is no one trick pony. Other examples of work that represent more traditional art forms include a set of colorful abstract “paintings” made from woven Coogi sweaters currently on view at David Castillo Gallery in the group exhibition Don’t Get High On Your Own Supply. For these paintings, Musson borrows from the visual language of Abstract Expressionism and uses materials that reference pop culture icons like rapper Biggie Smalls (The Notorious B.I.G) and Bill Cosby, cleverly joining versions of “high” and “low” art forms. Also included in the exhibition are classic ART THOUGHTZ on Bruce Nauman and Post Structuralism.

Courtesy David Castillo Gallery, Photography by Alissa Christine.

Musson is also currently part of a two-person intervention exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Hennessy Youngman has created an audioguide to accompany visitors through the museum’s collection along with two videos in the ART THOUGHTZ vein that are also in dialogue with the museum’s collection. An intervention, that Musson notes, hasn’t been exactly welcomed by the museums more conservative docents[.]

This post was contributed by Melissa Diaz.


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L’ENCYCLOPEDIE DE LA PAROLE

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

l’Encyclopédie De La Performa 2011. Courtesy if the author and Art in America Magazine.

On Nov 2, as part of the Performa 11 Biennal activities,’ L’Encyclopedie de la Parole’, a French performance group dedicated  to using speech as the central element in performance, produced a series of carefully chorused Speech Pieces based on familiar spoken texts taken from political rhetoric, YouTube’s  ‘most-watched’ videos and other pop American language sources.

Unlike spoken word performances, Slams and Rants, the work here is traditional-style rehearsed composition with a group of speaker/singers and a choral conductor. And the reference to older forms is an invitation to examine the appropriated content more closely: having been elevated here in a well-rehearsed aesthetic context that reinforces the sense of nuance and care that is central to this group’s exploration into linguistic constructs.

The French appreciation of language, the significance of words and their pronunciation, of complex verbal structures in that ‘diplomatic’ language alongside the more haphazard, innovative and free-style aspects of the American use of language is a striking mix that arguably brings out the qualities of both approaches; in this case American content presented into a French style structural form.

The group is composed of Francophone and Anglophone artists singing together; the words are carefully, maybe even over-pronounced so that we fully understand them, even though there are a number of different accents involved. The effect of American language constructs that went viral in one way or another, being turned into a kind of slo-mo, fastidious chant, is humorous and then revealing in the same way as other close-ups of pop phenomena.

On one hand, the greater significance of the content is in each case distilled down to it’s bottom line essence by virtue of being re-presented in this re-focused context; on the other the vapid superficiality of some of what goes viral is also laid bare. Not least here, the way language is used to express emotion becomes almost comic when elevated to song, then repeated in chorus structure.

In a sense, the emphasis on language, removed from its context and sung, can be considered analogous to the use of text in visual forms: Lawrence Weiner and Jean Michel Basquiat used words and phrases to add dimension and to express the back and forth of ambiguity and meaning that language is capable of; particularly when extracted from it’s original context.

In this case Presence, the primal, electro-magnetic even of Performance, and spoken word, replace text (and language) used in 2 and 3 dimensional traditional forms, but abstracted in a parallel way: Basquiat’s use of pop phrases clipped from common usage come more to mind here than, for example, Lawrence Weiner’s more heady single word byte constructions from a content angle are comparable in the way these demand that we focus on the actual non-contextural meaning. The polished  presentation is closer to Bruce Nauman. whose blinking neon phrases and video of a clown on a toilet agonizingly moaning out the letters of the alphabet come quickly to mind.

L’Encyclopedie has here blended 2 disparate cultural practices; the informal and formal, the structured and unstructured, in a way that reveals aspects of both; they’ve mined language in ways parallel to other contemporary forms; the focus on language is a striking reminder of the  complexity  power of word, and not least when the ever expanding theoretical language around art continues to become central to the actual content of art[.]

Link here to a video of L’Encyclopedie de la Parole.

This post was contributed by David Rohn.

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Reality Conference 2011

Sunday, December 4, 2011

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.

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The Woman and the Machine

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Installation view, main floor, photo by Stephan Goettlicher.

Re-Framing the Feminine: Contemporary Photography by Women from the Collection of Francie Bishop Good + David Horvitz, the current exhibition on view at Girls’ Club, an alternative exhibition space in downtown Fort Lauderdale, explores the varying narratives and complex relationships between female photographers and their subjects. Curated by Dina Mitrani, whose Wynwood gallery specializes in contemporary photography. Mitrani’s background lends one of the strengths of the exhibition that demonstrates a careful consideration of the medium and it’s variances in deployment and development from the 1950s to the present.

Tina Barney, The Grandaughter, 2004, chromogenic print.

The exhibition seeks to explore a uniquely feminine approach to photography – that is capturing subjects both figural and psychological that reflect a woman’s view of the world and what matters most to us as women.  A view that is as subjective as it is generalized in the selection of the works in Re-Framing the Feminine. While feminism as a topic is not new nor cutting-edge in discussions in modern and contemporary art, what is intriguing about this small survey is the polemical underlying psychology interplay of feminine notions of narcissism and vanity. Even in the face of extreme poverty as in Maria Michelogianni’s  Barbie in Athens where even in the direst of states, a little girl still holds a Barbie up as an emblem; or the exuberant wealth of Tina Barney’s New York socialite world, the primal need to explore and represent women as both strong and now sexual is shuffling its way into debates on contemporary feminism. Whether subconsciously hinted at or boldly stated, these issues are at the core of neo-feminist discussions like Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs, a controversial defense of a kind of reverse misogyny that seems to be taking hold of contemporary society and pop culture.

Isn’t Cindy Sherman exploiting the sexual nature of female archetypes in her Film Stills to the benefit of her artistic innovation? What of Kristine Potter whose The Gray Line series feminizes trainees at West Point Academy? It points to a trend of women artists using technology along with conceptions of beauty, vanity and hyper-self awareness to achieve a certain level of control over their subjects. In the case of Sherman, it can be viewed as an act of aggression against the preset notions of femininity and art, while in Potter it can be understood as a means of injecting a bit of feminine vulnerability to a world of typically staunch masculine stoicism. For Untitled #7, she masks the face of a male soldier with the floral pattern of a military camo net.

Gismo – Aye!, 2006, C-print.

One of my favorite works was Miami collaborative GisMO’s Aye!, primarily because it resonated with my own Miami upbringing. The image of an aging “chonga” applying mascara to the point of discomfort was a particularly poignant reflection of the feminine preoccupation with outward appearances. A reflection that is mirrored by Delia Brown’s Some of My Clothes, a series of 98 4×6 photographs that show the artist blankly modeling the contents of her closet.

Obsession with appearance and the self is not limited to adult womanhood. Many of the works in the exhibition explore of the controversial subject of the sexual disposition of young girls. Sally Mann’s photography has widely been mined for it’s ambiguous approach to her child subjects (her own children).  Virginia at 3 is a particularly complex example of Mann’s work that straddles the realms of sexuality and innocence, two concepts that are commonly associated within negative terms. The young Virginia leans against a bed where her sibling lies resting, her little hand on her hip and the other on her breast, suggests an early determination of the power of her femininity and her body. Through the lens of neo-feminist discourse, this kind of imagery empowers her young subject with the potential knowledge of her own future sexual prowess. It isn’t a bad thing, but the idea of children exploring their sexual identity, as innocently and naturally as it is, is not a topic that makes people comfortable.

Sally Mann - Virginia at 3, 1998, gelatin silver print.

In other works, youthful sexual exploration isn’t as benign. Colby Katz, whose work explores the raw artificiality of children’s beauty pageants is represented in the exhibition by Rayne-Lin, Little Miss Firecracker, LA. The photograph shows the tiny figure of a somber little girl dwarfed by the trophy she clutches and enormous crown on her head. Emotionally void, the little girl’s face falls downward, the opposite of the self-assured Virgina in Mann’s portrait.

Photography is the most deceptive medium in that it suggests realty in the way no other art form does. This deception is what good photographers have capitalized on for years to manipulate stories and raise issues through their work. For women, it has been an enormously popular outlet exploring notions of gender and identity. In a way, Re-Framing the Feminine suggests that female photographers seem to turn the camera on themselves even when they are not. Even the psychological spaces favored by artists like Ania Moussawel and Candida Höfer, reflect the stereotypical concepts of fragility, delicacy and beauty associated with femininity.

Installation view, mezzanine, photo by Stephan Goettlicher.

At its inception, photography was a product of male relationships with machinery. ‘The man and the machine’: a symbolical pairing long associated in Western societies with progress, power, and linked to colossally masculine concepts like Fordism. Yet, at some point, perhaps around the chronological starting point of this exhibition, female photographers began to rise to prominence. With leading figures like Diane Arbus, Sherman and Nan Goldin (who are all represented in the exhibition), photography seems to be  the medium in which women have managed to gain the boldest presence. It appears that the female relationship to the camera – the woman and the machine – deserves a little historical revision and scholarly attention in light of the shifting voices of feminism. Re-Framing the Feminine is a concise survey of such a dialogue that deserves further exploration.  It’s exemplary of the power of a simple survey exhibition to raise questions rather than offer watered down answers to monumental questions. However, instead of “re-framing,” it would be nice to see forthcoming explorations go beyond the frame, and back to the machine and how women command it both in front of and behind the lens[.]

Re-Framing the Feminine is currently on view through September 30, 2012 at The Girl’s Club. A catalogue for the exhibition is slated for release in the spring with an essay written by the prolific photography historian and critic, Vicki Goldberg. Re-Framing the Feminine will also the thematic backdrop for the upcoming installment of Artists in Action!,  a series of behind-the-scenes lectures and demonstrations by artists at the Girls’ Club.

This post was contributed by Melissa Diaz.

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IN THE NAVY….

Friday, November 4, 2011
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Two weeks ago Hugo Montoya, Meatball, Justin Long, and others including Alvaro Ilizarbe and Gavin Perry opened a very fun show called ‘Bros B4 HOES’ at the Little River Yacht Club. It’s closing is tomorrow, Saturday, November 4th from 1-6 and there’s still a lot of ‘boy butter’ (sex lubricant), ball-headed dildos, a big cock slide, a dildo-climbing wall with a brass dildo suspended like a trophy at the top, and a strap-on cock-connector’ for attaching 2 guys to each other by a pipe at their crotches (this broke at the opening when Meatball got a little carried away with his partner).

Alvaro Ilizarbe taking down Gavin Perry with a pizza box with slit and tub of ‘Boy Butter’.

The real ‘meat’ of the show would have to be Hugo’s photos of the boys wrestling with each other in their underpants; striking poses of feigned surprise, dominance, submission, or just plain old coyness, all set against tecnicolor-pastel backgrounds. The shows at LRYC are events really: People whooped as they slid down the cock slide, climbed the dildo wall, laughing and gulping beer. Montoya mentioned that the work wasn’t really for sale and in any event a lot of it had to be cleared out to make room for other day-to-day activities. Yeah art for art’s sake; and in this case a bit of vaguely naughty fun.

Center: The Dick Slide Left: A fragment of one of Hugo Montoya’s photographs.

To this observer it all looked like a step forward in a still macho-bound culture where men are shamed if they express weakness, or even if they cling hopelessly to the ‘male mystique’ model: emotional stoicism, independence and self-reliance, or above all horror at the idea that a guy might enjoy an erotic moment with another guy. As if men and women were really so emotionally different from each other. And for anybody who doubts that the roles for men haven’t been more rigidly guarded in recent years than those for women, just ask an advertising executive about the way in which their industry agonized over how to try to sell things like yogurt and diet soda to men (let alone hair dye and facial masques). Turns out it was much easier to suggest that women might like hiking boots, gym memberships and sports cars.

Dildo-climbing wall with brass dildo ‘prize’ suspended at top

Ten years after the term ‘metrosexual’ was coined and men first felt that they maybe didn’t need to pretend to be a cyclist or s professional swimmer to justify shaving their arms, legs, chest and back, it’s finally come to this: erotic acting out among guys who’ve been told that ‘boys will be boys’ but that don’t you dare veer off the rigid path of manliness. As if all those cowboys and boy scouts didn’t share a moment or two themselves from time to time over years of ‘bonding’ in tents. What a relief to see that the freeing up that so often starts with artists, is finally about letting the cat out of the (sleeping) bag. It looked as though the gals were loving it too: with all those dicks around what’s not to like… And maybe, after all the criticism men have taken for finding two women ‘together’ highly erotic, it turns out that some women might think watching two men go at it is titillating too[.]

This post was contributed by David Rohn.

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TINT: New site on the block

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Screen capture from THERE IS NO THERE.

We’d like to give a quick nod to THERE IS NO THERE (TINT), a new Miami based website for the contemporary arts. Founded earlier in the year by Hunter Braithwaite, a freelance writer, graduate of Literature and Cultural Theory, and resident of Miami, the website – in addition to his not yet being affiliated with any of our local rags – is perhaps his latest in a string of accomplishments including but not limited to two years writing and teaching at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, covering the arts in Shanghai, Paris, New York, and Miami for Artforum Online, ARTINFO.com, Artslant.com, CNN.com, NY Arts Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, Time Out Shanghai, and City Weekend Shanghai, and being a contributing editor at Asian Art News. Striking out today with five posts, categorized and unfaltering in their address of ideas both various and encompassing, Hunter made quite a splash in our community. We hope that his mission to contextualize Miami’s contemporary art scene and further the work of artists and writers is a long-lived and successful one.

Welcome, thank you and good luck.

This post was contributed by Thomas Hollingworth.

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