Art Basel

Art, work, and artwork

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VISUAL ART The global financial crisis continues to impoverish and displace those within reach of its residual tremors. Yet in the art realm, there have been signs of hope. Recent fairs — Frieze Art Fair in October and Art Basel Miami Beach earlier this month — brought reports of strong sales and optimism within the distressed economy. So why are artists everywhere worried about their futures, and more critically, panicking about their present tenses? The squeeze has to do with the work in artwork. More often than not, artists aren’t getting paid for their work.

The general prosperity of the current art market does not reflect the financial success of most artists — it just means that artworks are selling, and many of those works are by artists who are already established or dead. The other artists, the worried ones, the ones scraping by on paint chips and uncreative, menial part-time jobs and unpaid internship after unpaid internship, are starting to organize. And talk. Worried as well, I recently attended two events, one in New York and the other in Oakland, that call for a shift of terrain in art/work.

The New York event, titled, “What Is the Good of Work?” — the second in a four-part series organized by Goethe-Institut New York — was more abstract in its approach, seeking to redefine work through film and literature. For instance, when British novelist Tom McCarthy roused Herman Melville’s character Bartleby in order to express the potentials of “recess” in a “recession” and promote a politics of pause as escapist rather than reactionary, an audience member inquired: “But how can this be implemented in real life?” Here, McCarthy went quiet. The rest of the panel, too, including the nihilist philosopher Simon Critchley, only seemed capable of speculating on a new function of work, as opposed to how this new work would, well, work.

Comparatively, the Oakland event was more concerned with brass tacks. Organized by Sight School, an artist-run storefront newly opened in November, its aim “to create dialogue around new modes of living and being in the world in order to reveal connections between art and life” was actually visualized.

The evening began with local artists and writers reading primarily from a newspaper compiled by the Chicago-based collective Temporary Services. In it, more than 40 artists and writers pinpoint problematic issues and propose a way out. The front page introduction succinctly outlines its motivations:

We can see how the collapse of the economy is affecting everyone. Something must be done. Let’s talk. No, it can’t wait. Things are bad. We have to work things out. We can only do it together. What do we know? What have others tried? What is possible? How do we talk about it? What are the wildest possibilities? What are the pragmatic steps? What can you do? What can we do?

FREE / TAKE A COPY. MAKE AN EXHIBITION.

HOST A DISCUSSION IN YOUR TOWN.

The urgency of this situation was emphasized most strongly by Julian Myers, an assistant professor of curatorial practice at California College of the Arts. He fervently read the group Research and Destroy’s “Communiqué from an Absent Future: On the Terminus of Student Life,” which was drafted in response to the current University of California crises. Myers conveyed the text’s uncomfortably accurate detail of a bankrupt future not just for students, but anyone not already financially secure. The text incensed everyone in the room, as they realized the gravity of student debts and of academia as a new factory — a neverending rabbit hole of false security.

The last reader, Natasha Wheat, decided not to read at all; rather, she turned to the audience and asked, “What does a just art economy looks like?” Immediately, people chimed in. The space turned into a sauna of conjectures, arguments, personal anecdotes, and pleas. A variety of ideas and subjects — everything from emphasizing the importance of guilds and collectives to providing braces for children — were bandied about. These rants often lacked direction. Many were fueled by emotion and gave way to incomprehensible babble about new economies without realizing the previous paths paved by Marx, Adam Smith, and Keynes. But the passion, heretofore dormant, was inspiring.

Interestingly, the only thing missing from all the cries of desperation was a focus on artwork itself. In this small storefront room, everyone — artists, writers, curators, historians, and spectators — was hyper-aware about the lack of funding. But ironically, art had gone missing as well. Not many will disagree with the assertion that workers deserve payment for their labor, but what if their work blows? If I actively paint a canvas for eight hours a day, and no one finds it of value, why should I get paid? If money were a given, we’d all be doodling for dollars.

Zachary Royer Scholz, one of the readers and most intelligent contributors to the discussions, ended the event with a similar concern. He shifted the blame away from the economy and back toward the art. “Canada has strong government and institutional funding for its artists, but look at its art … it sucks!” Just then, a man on the opposite side of the room descended on Scholz, barking in protest. His ass-length dreads swung in tandem with his raised fists. It looked like a fight might break out, but the affront turned out to be performative — the room was filled with artists, after all.

I don’t find it coincidental that Dave Hickey’s The Invisible Dragon: Essays On Beauty (University of Chicago Press, 152 pages, $22) stirred from its coma this year. Its polemics could not be revived at a better time. First released in 1993, the book has been out of print for several years. Hickey originally pulled the plug because the “intensity and icy aggression” of The Invisible Dragon’s provocation was too great. In other words, people were pissed because Hickey insisted on the importance of art’s beauty.

In the collection’s first essay, “Enter The Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty,” Hickey argues that beauty has been replaced by meaning, and laments the art market baton swap from art dealers to institutions. “The institution’s curators hold a public trust,” Hickey writes. “They must look attentively and genuinely care about what artists mean, and what this meaning means in a public context — and, therefore, almost of necessity, they must distrust appearances.”

The problem, according to Hickey, parallels the one in Michel Foucault’s 1975’s Discipline and Punish, wherein punishment shifts from the external, via physical torture as public spectacle, to the internal — torture of the soul and mind via incarceration and criminal psychiatry. In effect, it’s a shift of gaze and surveillance: we now internalize this gaze and monitor ourselves.

But what does this have to do with art? Art limited to meaning loses its subversive potential; it gets too worried and existential. By contrast, allowing art to express itself through appearances also allows it to find new folds within an otherwise predetermined economy of signs — an economy controlled exclusively by arts institutions.

I imagine if Hickey had been in that room that evening, he would have stood up early on to demand that everyone stop acting like economists: You’re artists, dammit. You’re not here to fix the economy, you’re here to create things. Now go out and make shit — but for Christ’s sake, make it beautiful. *

www.sightschool.wordpress.com; www.temporaryservices.org

Sprinting toward Babylon

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VISUAL ART I remember the first time I heard about Conrad Ruiz. I was standing by the fire on the patio of the Eagle, a spot that for me is a site of great tidings. A pair of talented San Francisco artists told me with enthusiasm about this young painter whose large-scale works depicted things like a man riding the nose of a killer whale as it burst forth from a pool, or a coach getting a golden shower of Gatorade from his triumphant team. According to their accounts, Ruiz magnified and entwined the absurdity and ecstasy of his subject matter. I had some cathartic laughs just imagining his paintings.

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Detail from Overload. Challenger explosion not pictured.

When I first “saw” Ruiz’s art, online, it exceeded my expectations. In particular, I was blown away by Overload [2009], which among other things deserves consideration as the best piece of “Barack Obama art” to date. Panoramic and vibrant even when shrunk 25 times in size, Ruiz’s watercolor works on paper and canvas once again incited a convulsive reaction. I laughed my ass off upon seeing works such as New Fall Lineup [2009] for the first time. But the longer I looked, the more caught up in wonder I became about their myriad tiny details and teeming — at times disturbing subtextual currents.

What goes on in Ruiz’s imagination? On the eve of his first solo show, at San Francisco’s Silverman Gallery, I caught up with him as he navigated the social conflagration of Art Basel Miami, the megafair where at least one magazine tipped him as the leader of a “new generation of art stars.” Whatever one makes of that claim, Ruiz — who is also plotting some collective artistic efforts with friends — is the splashiest crest of an exciting new wave of young California painters.

SFBG How are you doing?
Conrad Ruiz I’m alright. I’m just sitting on South Beach. I wanted to find a place to gather my thoughts, and I’m watching this guy tan himself. I can’t believe he’s doing that. He’s got these great stomach muscles. [Curator and Berkeley Art Museum director] Larry Rinder and I were talking about doing sit-ups before we came here, but we both just got busy — we never did it.

Miami’s fun. I kind of wish I could take my shirt off everywhere, but I feel a little bit squishy.

SFBG It seems like your art would look good in Miami.
CR The colors are finding a home here. There are a lot of bright red and yellow bikinis around. This couple nearby are either arguing or also tanning themselves. They just sit and look at the sun, kinda like lizards.

SFBG What do you think of the Tiger Woods news frenzy right now? I wondered about your take on him. In a way, I thought he might not fit along with some of the athletic figures you depict, because golf isn’t so much about dynamism.
CR But you always hear comedians say, “Just leave it to a black American to dominate another sport.” Chris Rock essentially says, “Wait till we get on ice skates, man, we’re going to take over hockey.”

Tiger Woods has been developed into this brand, aligned with Nike. It’s a very intelligent campaign. It’s not Obama, but he’s been this person who can do no wrong. That’s the personality that has developed through whoever is handling his marketing. It’s more than his being an excellent golfer, he’s also been displayed as this great human. We don’t know that much about him, and then something like [the car accident and ensuing scandal] happens. It’s all we get, and it’s kind of sketchy, and it happened to fall on this awesome Thanksgiving weekend. I thought, “All must be right in the world if the only thing we have to talk about is Tiger Woods getting hit with a golf club by his wife.” If that’s what actually happened.

SFBG People are already Photoshopping and digitally animating visions of that.
CR That’s my job — to look up all that stuff.

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SFBG Does 1970s cinema have any place in your mind’s eye? The Jaws [1975] shark in your painting Rough Riders [2008] and the disaster film or Towering Inferno-like [1974] quality of works like New Fall Lineup made me wonder. I could see that I might be wrong about the latter, since a flaming, exploding skyscraper has other obvious connotations.
CR My work really started with that time period and in painting advertising from that era. The colors were a lot more primary. When I was painting those advertisements, the work was more sarcastic. That beginning body of work was about developing this snarky character that evolved into what I’m making now.

It is about going back and catching some of the ridiculousness of what was so popular at one time. When you watch a disaster film now, you know the history of those celebrities. It’s hard for me to relate to that period of time, but it’s easy for me to relate to early 1990s movies like the Naked Gun franchise — O.J. Simpson was in those — and the Terminator flicks. Those are ridiculous and fun. I like them, and of course [lowers voice], that’s my Governor.

Everyone says “I hate that guy,” but even though I think [Schwarzenegger]’s doing a terrible job, I don’t want my politicians to be these people I don’t know — I’d rather have them be these celebrities I hate. If I’m going to hate who’s in office, I’d rather have it be Sylvester Stallone or somebody.

SFBG When you make work that has a contemporary element, there’s always a danger of it becoming instantly dated. But I think some of your work is both timely and ahead of its time. Overload, for example, just becomes more and more evocative.

The NASA element of the piece, with the Challenger exploding, is taking on new facets as Obama is increasingly identified with the military and space program. I saw a show at Altman Siegel Gallery by Matt Keegan earlier this year that utilized a New York Times front page photo of Obama boarding Air Force One for the first time. That’s a more direct example of what I’m talking about. Six months ago, that image had a different connotation.
CR I was really hoping Obama would get elected, because I started Overload before the election.

SFBG I have to ask about the Challenger’s presence in Overload. I was talking with the artist Colter Jacobsen recently about the fact that I’d like to put together a show of Challenger-related art. Within the art world, there are at least a dozen or so people who have incorporated the Challenger one way or another into work. That’s not even counting how it has manifested as band and album names and jokes in popular culture.
CR For me, it would be great to ask the artist about the original idea behind making a Challenger painting. Everyone has a different a point of view about what’s going on. I always feel like I’m casting with my paintings. There are these scenarios that have never happened, and since I get to decide what’s happening, I also decide who is the star —whether it’s someone from a B movie, an unsung celebrity, a friend who I’m giving a big break, or someone from a blockbuster, like Eddie Murphy and David Alan Grier.

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Overload is a blockbuster sort of painting. I cast that [Challenger] explosion because I thought it was a very unique, amazing explosion. Once I began painting it, people began talking about its relevance, because it says something different when Obama is flying towards it, possibly causing it or stopping it.

To be very honest, I didn’t initially know it was the Challenger exploding. My Mom told me. She’s a teacher, so to her it was a terrible thing, and she asked me to really consider what I was doing. I told her, “That’s perfect.” Because to me the painting is about Obama coming to the rescue and shitting these energy projections — either he’s going to stop the war, or he causing some trouble of his own.

A few paintings later [in New Fall Lineup] I painted the Twin Towers exploding for a similar reason. I was casting this unique explosion and trying to create a different scenario with it.

SFBG I don’t often self-identify in generational terms, but when I was talking about the Challenger explosion with Colter [Jacobsen], he was saying that he had referred to it while teaching a class, and that it wasn’t even a memory for many students. Whereas for he and I, there was the teacher element, and also the fact that everyone was watching the Challenger at school that day. So as a disastrous event, it was similar to 9/11 in that the day just stopped.
CR The Challenger explosion has a lot to do with failed promise, doesn’t it? There was tremendous hope about what was about to happen, and it all fell apart in one second.

There’s an element of comedy that I’ve kind of borrowed from Richard Pryor. As I watch his stuff, it’s more like performance art. What he talked about wasn’t funny at all, it was actually horrible. He was an interesting character in that he talked about things that were definitely not right, but did so in a way that everyone would be laughing. Comedy is a way of passing serious information without being worried about the consequences. That makes it kind of a new territory. Dave Chappelle was able to say some unique and terrible things in this fun format.

SFBG It’s interesting that you bring up Chappelle, because after he hit his sort of Challenger moment on the pop culture stage and went away, Block Party [a.k.a. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, 2006] came out.
CR That’s a beautiful movie.

SFBG It was released during the final stretch of all the jockeying for Academy Awards in Hollywood. All these talking heads were going on about which movies were important, and I remember thinking that Block Party was more important or vital and connected to the world than any of them.
CR/strong> His stuff is always about pointing out differences, and bringing together ideas of social class hierarchy. In a roundabout way, that’s what he did [in em>Block Party]. He brought together a lot of high-end artists and gave a free show. It was about giving to the people or the neighborhood. The idea of a barbecue, a barbecue block party, also has an ethnic connotation to it.

SFBG There is a lot of athletic imagery in your art, and I don’t want to reduce it to masculinity or sexuality, but I do want to ask about being drawn to those kinds of visuals, or wanting to render them.

Veronica De Jesus does some sports-oriented work that’s quite different from yours, but also has a terrific sense of humor. Sports are quite iconic — moments like an Olympic runner tumbling or Zidane’s headbutt become part of the collective consciousness. But beyond that, there’s an ecstatic, colorful, lively quality to your sports imagery.
CR Sports have always been a part of my life. My mom and dad were very athletic at one time, and they encouraged my brother and me to take part in sports. The alternative was for us to be on our own, and they knew we had a lot of Latino friends, so of course I was just going to get into trouble. So I was enrolled in soccer and taekwando. I was a sprinter in high school, and I was on the football team.

[The paintings] are a culmination of all the things you’re talking about. The outfits these athletes wear are designed to be eye-catching, with these primary colors. The Denver Broncos have that awesome dark blue with orange …

SFBG I love that combo. I just put together a sports cinema program with a film curator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and when I’d introduce a movie from the 1970s, I’d always mention the athletic fashions.
CR Everything is designed to be the most freaking amazing thing possible, because these people are performing acts that no one else can do — they’re leaping through the air catching a ball thrown from very far away while wearing purple and yellow. The performance and exertion is incredible, and at the same time, what can make it even greater is being in a stadium where everyone is screaming their lungs out at the same time. Whether it’s an epic win or colossal failure, it’s still that climax. The climax doesn’t mean that it’s good — it’s a peak of performance.

When I’d meet with advisors at CCA [California College of the Arts], we’d really break it down, and they could easily talk me out of making my work. When you get down to it, what I’m doing is a little ineffective, and what would be more effective, to really get my idea across, would be to just play soccer with a group. I’d be performing, I’d be creating these intimate male relationships. I could actually be slapping some guy’s butt instead of painting around it. Joining a soccer team would be more efficient.

SFBG Maybe you and Luke [Butler, a fellow Silverman Gallery artist whose work engages with masculinity] should join a soccer team.
CR [Laughs] Yeah.

SFBG There is some commonality between your work, and also some major differences.
CR I think it’s because I’m the boy and Luke is the dashing man. I’m looking to be a man and trying to figure out what a man is, while Luke is a dashing man looking sideways.

CONRAD RUIZ: COLD, HARD AND WET
Fri/11 through Jan. 30, 2010
Silverman Gallery
804 Sutter, SF
(415) 255-9508
www.silverman-gallery.com

Looking up

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

In late 2006 several major art-market events — record-breaking auctions and 14 Miami Beach art fairs — provided a bracing contrast to a slew of exhibitions concerned with the immaterial, experiential, mystical, and social. These instances clearly illustrate the exciting, age-old tensions between the thrill of commerce and the quest for artistic integrity.
In November a Christie’s sale of impressionist and modern art yielded nearly half a billion dollars. A good chunk of that auction money was laid down for recovered Nazi art loot, a noble corrective yet one rooted in economic conditions, not necessarily philosophical or penitential ones. Big money seems to obliterate the pure intentions of art, though record price tags do have a way of speaking to a broader audience.
Meanwhile, the fanfare and brisk sales at the recent Miami art fairs — Art Basel Miami and satellite events — attest to a healthy market and, hopefully, the ability for artists to forge self-sustaining careers, not to mention allow San Francisco galleries to expose their wares to international collectors. In her heartening reportage on the Miami fairs, New York Times critic Roberta Smith noted how the events level the field of information and offer a platform for market resistance, pointing out artists who conceptually dare collectors through assaulting video and purposeful repetition of mundane imagery.
Much like the rest of the economy, flush with stock market upticks and the national budget’s creative accounting, art sales are solid, similar to those in the so-called go-go 1980s. Part of the thrill of the boom is the anxiety of a crash lurking in the future. So how does a thriving market — and all the commercialism that goes with it — affect the creation of new art and its reflection of contemporary culture?
In 2006 you didn’t have to look far to find examples of artists aiming to tackle our collective anxieties, either politically or spiritually, through their quest to envision the intangible. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s current Anselm Kiefer show, “Heaven and Earth,” embodies that idea as it surveys a German artist whose paintings are informed by alchemy, mythology, and Jewish mysticism. Kiefer makes large works addressing even bigger themes. He also has firm political convictions — he has consistently refused to enter the United States in protest against George W. Bush’s policies. It’s worth noting that Kiefer’s work hasn’t exactly seemed fashionable in recent years. Is his appearance now coincidence or zeitgeist?
“Heaven” inhabits the same gallery space that hosted “Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint,” a sprawling exhibition as steeped in the artist’s celebrity and sex appeal as it was in Shinto references and other lofty themes. A hushed, almost religious vibe pervaded the proceedings as viewers looked up at the video monitors in quiet awe — or perhaps disbelief. Both Barney and Kiefer are comfortably blue chip, and their work sells even when they strive for deeper meaning.
A new strain of alternative art is being fostered at Southern Exposure, which this year put an emphasis on social interaction and artwork that unfolds in public places. Packard Jennings’s lottery tickets, available in local corner stores, offer scratch-off prizes to feed the mind, not the bank account, and Neighborhood Public Radio’s broadcasts traffic in community and dialogue. These programs have been driven by a seismic upgrade and the need to work off-site, but the thrust of the gallery’s program also revealed that bias in its actual building.
Taking on a more conventional gallery form was “Ghosts in the Machine,” the inaugural show in SF Camerawork’s impressive new space. Curator David Spalding expanded on the topic of shared history to suggest a sense of cultural haunting by unresolved past actions — those related to the Vietnam War, suicide bombings, and US racial tensions. The range of work was serious — and very much engaged in a yearning for art with staying power.
Mexico City curator Magali Arriola’s “Prophets of Deceit” at CCA Wattis Institute for the Contemporary Arts probed the troubling charisma of cult leaders like Jim Jones, as well as the persuasive qualities of cinema. It was a disturbing counterpoint to the wispy “Cosmic Wonder” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which included artists who, according to their press literature, “explore trance, ‘alternative’ realities, and the psyche.” While a major curatorial misfire that raised serious questions about the YBCA’s programming choices, “Cosmic Wonder” nonetheless points to interest in and tension between otherworldly themes and art world trends. The show, organized by neophyte curator Betty Nguyen, included young gallery darlings — a fair number of whom likely partied themselves into altered states in Miami Beach. It all goes to prove: there are multiple roads to artistic, financial, and spiritual enlightenment. SFBG

GLEN HELFAND’S ARTY TOP 10
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan (Penguin)
•Phil Collins, dünya dinlemiyor, SF Museum of Modern Art
•Andrea Bowers, “Nothing Is Neutral,” Redcat, Los Angeles
•Tavares Strachan, “Where We Are Is Always Miles Away,” Luggage Store
Battle in Heaven, directed by Carlos Reygadas
This Book Will Save Your Life, A.M. Homes (Viking)
Maquilopolis, directed by Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre
•Julia Christensen’s www.BigBoxReuse.com
•Takeshi Murata, “Silver Equinox,” Ratio 3
•Kathryn Spence, “Objects and Drawings,” Stephen Wirtz Gallery