POST-OFFICE ARTS JOURNAL

by allie linn

My memory of “The Serial Garden,” a short story I read when I was ten or eleven years old, is foggy, but the plot revolves around a boy who assembles a paper model garden from the back of a tasteless cereal called Brekkfast Brikks. After discovering that singing the Brekkfast Brikks ode written on the box allows him to enter the garden, the boy begins to withdraw more and more into the partially real, partially fabricated landscape that he has constructed both physically and, possibly, mentally. Inside of the model garden, large portions of the idyllic flora and fauna fade into a dreamy fog where the neighboring models have not yet been attached. Until the adjacent models are linked, the garden exists as an unfinished world.

August Moonlight. Oil on linen. 2015.

I was reminded of “The Serial Garden” for the first time in many years, while viewing the simultaneous flatness and hazy depth of the mostly blue and lilac August Moonlight, one of ten paintings by Ryan Nord Kitchen recently on view in “Summer Paintings” at Terrault Contemporary. The reliance on signifiers of the landscape (moon, tree, cloud) hinders August Moonlight from falling into total abstraction, but the ample use of blue and exposed linen accentuate the painting’s surface. Loose outlines of clouds and bushes in the foreground trail off into a collapsed, blurry backdrop in the center, drawing on traditional elements of perspective to create a deep space while concurrently acting as a wall, obstructing the landscape behind. The distortion of the dryly applied brush marks does somehow translate into a muggy and heat-shimmered atmosphere, and there is something inherently magical about a garden bathed in blue when the familiar urban landscape so frequently glows a noxious orange.

The palette for most of Kitchen’s paintings relies on one dominant color straight from the tube, interspersed with other primaries. The childlike color and mark making is most effective in works like Ponds 2, a field of green speckled with an archetypal corner sun, a puffy cloud with a perfect drop shadow, and a series of red tick marks making up a bridge or jungle gym. The pure yellow of Summer Painting, too, functions as a warm ground for a landscape of bushes and clouds, emanating heat and feelings of mirage and distortion. In some cases, the deliberate wiggle of a line even closely resembles a word, almost spelling out “wind” or “pond,” but ultimately these lines dissolve into indecipherable loops.

Ponds 2. Oil on linen. 2015.

Some of Kitchen’s compositions seem to borrow elements from Chinese shan shui (aptly, “mountain water”) scroll painting, stacking mountains and skies and suns from multiple points of view, especially in the more graceful linework of Garden and Fountain. Fittingly, many of these Chinese landscapes, primarily from the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, depict nature as a place of retreat or sanctuary in times of political instability. Perhaps Kitchen’s paintings do the same, relying on the garden as a space for escape and blissful daydreaming amidst a grim political climate. The only accompanying text for the show, “Some are cloudy days and others are sunny days,” mimics the childlike mark making of these paintings. What does it mean to equate the unending atrocities of recent current events (A Texas grand jury declined to indict anyone in the death of Sandra Bland, Boko Haram, now ranked as the world’s deadliest terror group, continues terrorizing Nigeria, recent mass attacks by ISIS in Beirut and Paris) with cloudy days? The depicted gardens here provide, as so many before have in the canon of landscape painting, a temporary retreat to a saturated wonderland that feels very pleasant, if slightly naive.

Summer Painting. Oil on linen. 2015.

Even after all of the Brekkfast Brikks models have been assembled in “The Serial Garden” to form a complete garden, the boy returns home one afternoon only to find that in the midst of spring cleaning, his mother has burned the paper model in the furnace. There is no trace of any other Brekkfast Brikks boxes or means of returning to the utopian garden again. Maybe it is a reminder that these moments of escape can only be short-lived. Kitchen’s depictions of perfect, summer days likewise can only momentarily provide a distraction, but for that moment, they do emanate a certain tangible warmth.

by colin alexander

Freddy Gallery was a curatorial project located on Franklin Street in the West Downtown neighborhood. Curator/Painter/Blogger Josh Abelow sat down to talk about the project in October.

Every interview you’ve done so far has been under the Freddy moniker, right?

Yeah, everything I’ve said about Freddy in an online platform has been through the “voice” of Freddy, but I also think by now most folks know it’s my thing. Well, I dunno, maybe there are plenty of people who have no idea? Anyway, I think it’s fine to say you’re interviewing Josh Abelow about it.

So, we’ve talked about this a little bit personally: what the aspect of anonymity offered that curatorial project. And what nuance levels there are to that? Because there’s a difference in maintaining a full cloak of obscurity so that maybe no one would know you and you wouldn’t show up at all.

I mean, as an idea, I really like the concept of complete anonymity.

What’s the name of the artist… God, I’m forgetting... Anyway, I’ll come back to it. Oh, Vern Blosum! So, the story is that there’s this AbEx guy who, in 1961, decided to make (invent?) Pop Art paintings under a false name as a kind of joke. The paintings look a lot like early John Baldessari (before Baldessari did them).

KEITH MAYERSON

Blosum was represented by Leo Castelli and I think MoMA bought one of the paintings and collectors were buying the work and what not. Basically, somebody got suspicious because there was no biographical information about Blosum and called the whole thing into question like, “This is fucking bullshit.” And after this artist going up and up and up, he just disappeared and all the works went into storage for 50 years. Maxwell Graham of Essex Street Gallery organized a show of these early works in 2013 and that was the first time I had ever heard the name Vern Blosum. In today’s world, where everyone knows everything about everyone because of social media, the concept of anonymity is especially attractive and interesting because it’s so rare.

All that being said, that level of commitment to anonymity was impossible for Freddy and it wasn’t really an objective—I was more interested in the idea of information about the gallery traveling around in the form of rumor—it was kind of inevitable that the cat would come out of the bag.

Right. Just the nature of gossip in smaller places.

Exactly.

It’s funny with that Blosum story. They’re all insincere works… is that the case?

I guess so. They’re satirical works, I would say.

Do you think that those works were valued for their attempts to fake it?

Well, I think they were valued because nobody had any idea that they were, essentially, joke paintings. To me, it seems like whoever made the paintings wanted to mess with the establishment through an act of infiltration.

—Yeah.

—And now, I think people are interested in the work and the idea of a fabricated identity because it relates to our relationship to the Internet and how we use Facebook or whatever to craft personas. There are so many artists who have careers based on playing pranks and that kind of thing. You know, Richard Prince’s joke paintings or Maurizio Cattelan hanging his entire Guggenheim show from the ceiling; I mean, there are so many examples. So, I think it’s an early example of that “pranking the art world as art” idea, which is very Dada.

***

Do you picture the Freddy character as the prankster then?

Yeah, I do.

When I got to grad school in 2006, I was so frustrated with this idea of the painter with a capital “P”—this person, alone in the studio, working on masterpieces with his or her big canvases and brushes. You know, like the romanticized idea of what it means to be painter.

So, I was fed up with this idea and I was trying to come up with different ways of staying committed to painting but, at the same time, I wanted to undermine it, critique or, to the best of my abilities, get out from underneath a purely narcissistic kind of practice.

I began to overproduce paintings as a form of defiance; Instead of focusing all my time on one large work, I would make like 60 or 70 or 80 small paintings and then I’d line them up in rows or grids like an assembly line. I was interested in a read of the work that would take into account this hyper-obsessive activity. All this led to an interest in doing my art blog, which, for me, was the antithesis of the lone painter in the studio.

Mmhm.

Freddy was sort of a segue into finding a middle ground between this Internet activity and getting back into having an actual space, talking to people, and dealing with objects. I was hoping that my blog viewership would bleed over into the Freddy audience, which I think it did.

***

With Peter Eide being the first Baltimore based artist that you showed, did that show have a difference in the way it came together than the shows that had happened previously?

I was excited to show Peter’s work because he was the first Baltimore artist. I had seen Peter’s work on Facebook probably a year before Freddy opened and I remember thinking, “This stuff is nuts, I really like this.” And I sort of put it on a shelf in the back of my mind and just let it be. When I got down to Baltimore, Jordan and I were talking and I was like, “Who should I go visit?”

He said I should go check out Peter Eide—and when I looked at his work on his website, I said, “Oh, this is the guy! I love this stuff.“ Jordan said, “Oh, you met him last night at the opening!” and I was like, “Oh shit, really?”

PETER EIDE

So, I went to Peter’s studio which is in a small town (New Windsor)—it’s actually the town where Clyfford Still used to live and work at the end of his career. It’s outside of the city, maybe like 45 minutes, kind of in the middle of nowhere next to a corn field.

I was intrigued by the whole thing because it was just fun to “discover” an artist working in relative obscurity in an old house, you know. He’s painting in his living room; there’s no proper studio. It all seemed very authentic.

And I was excited because Peter had never had a solo show in Baltimore despite the fact that he went to school here. So that was cool—to introduce the work to the local audience and also to a bigger audience via the Internet.

In the way that you talk about your own work (pushing against the solo artist myth, the painter alone in the studio), does it feel funny to lock on so much to Peter’s work when it is so framed in that myth? Like the way you just described it: “In the Clyfford Still town!”

Yeah! Yeah, totally. Curating allows me to fully embrace certain parts of my thinking that I wouldn’t do otherwise. To fully embrace Peter’s “Painter’s Painter” thing is so gratifying to me. And on the flip side, to work with Kenneth Goldsmith, who doesn’t make objects, is also extremely gratifying. Because that’s another side of my interests.

Did you feel like the curatorial impulse changed at all after there was criticism, like my writing or Michael Farley’s writing or that Facebook conversation?

Yeah, I think so. When I came down here, I knew that there were four or five shows that I wanted to present. I wanted to work with Kenny Goldsmith, the Ross Bleckner dick show, William Crawford, I knew I wanted to do the Albert Mertz show. There were some very specific things I wanted to present in this context, but that wasn’t to say that I wasn’t interested in showing people who lived here; it’s just that up until 16 months ago, I wasn’t living in Maryland and my access to the scene was extremely limited. I knew a couple people in the community like Jordan, Steven Riddle, Seth and Alex. I had a kind of peripheral interest in Baltimore for quite a while but, also, I was an outsider. I didn’t know people well. So my intentions were to get down here, get the ball rolling, get to know people, and see what would come out of that. But, when Freddy started getting all that criticism pretty quickly, I made a conscious decision to speed up that process.

***

One of the questions I wanted to ask was just to touch on the gallery backing stuff, since there was gossip about backing from James Fuentes. How did that play out? What was the story with it, etc.

Well, first of all, talking about money is always weird, but—

—I only bring it up because, when I look at the art scene in Baltimore, so much of it depends on, “Where’s the space?” We just talked about the request for proposals on Howard Street, and how if something like that went through for any project around here, because of Baltimore’s size, possibly the entire trajectory for what people in town are making is altered. So it’s funny to see the way that real estate and money actually affect our creative output. So I don’t know—

—Yeah.

—It’s something I think about.

Yeah. In terms of the practical side of how the project came about, I had been following sophiajacob, specifically. They had invited me to participate in one of the lecture series events and I wasn’t able to do it, but I liked that they had reached out. I was following their program and I was posting their stuff on my blog. And at one point, near the end of their run, I was given an opportunity to co-curate a show in New York and I was interested in the possibility of including work by an artist from Baltimore. Which sort of goes back the fact that I’m from Maryland and I feel a connection to this city.

Also another part of it—I feel like, in New York, curators think they’re being adventurous if they show an artist who’s in NY, but didn’t go to Yale. Like if you don't have an MFA from Yale, you're a self-taught wacko or something. Like, “Whoa, you’re really thinking outside the box…” Anyway, I thought (and still think) that there’s talent in other pockets waiting to be discovered. And I thought (and still think) that Baltimore has a lot of creative energy. There are a lot of people making things that deserve attention.

ROSY KEYSER

So, I did a couple studio visits down here. I met with Jordan and Steven and talked with them a good bit about all these kinds of thoughts. I didn't end up including a Baltimore artist in the New York show for various reasons but, during that visit Jordan mentioned that the sophiajacob project would be ending soon. I said, “Whoa, really? What’s happening with the space? What is the rent?” Jordan said, “The rent is $300 and it’s gonna be available.” This price would never be possible in New York and, honestly, I was shocked. I’d struggled with the high cost of living in New York since I moved there in 1999. I find it extremely stressful and, in many ways, the antithesis of making art. Money is like a virus there; it just infects everything.

So, I sort of just made the decision to make this Freddy idea happen no matter what. I’m struggling to pay my rent, I don’t even have a proper studio, but I have to seize this moment. So I called my gallery in New York and said, “Hey, this is what’s up, are you interested? Would you want to partner with me or help me fund this and I’ll pay you back?” And at first he said yes and then he said no. Then he said yes again and we made it happen.

And the amazing thing I’ve learned is that, even though there’s cheap rent, the cost of doing this project is actually really expensive, and there’s no way we would’ve survived without the auction I organized with Paddle8—Freddy would’ve ended like 8 months ago. It was never about making money and it didn’t make money, but when all's said and done I will hopefully break even. It was really just something I wanted to do and I figured out a way to do it.

Cool, that’s good to understand a clear picture of that.

Well, I think there’s an assumption that New Yorkers are rich—how else could they afford to live there? “That gallery or that artist must be making lots of money because they are in New York.” And having lived in New York for a long time, having practiced art for 20 years, having worked with more than one commercial gallery for more than five years, I can tell you that most artists and galleries (even the ones that are very visible) are not putting away stacks of cash. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors in the art world.

If anything, I have this new level of respect for Lower East Side galleries that, you know, take risks. But even this last trip to New York, I noticed a lot of the spaces on the LES showing work that looked kind of safe, kind of salable, and what that signifies to me is exactly what I’m talking about. In order to stay afloat, these galleries are forced to show what the market wants. They do fluff shows so they can afford to stay in business. Then, hopefully, they can do a show with an artist who’s making more exciting, more interesting work who is maybe not so commercially viable.

***

How do you reflect on the project now that it’s done?

The project has been super refreshing in a lot of ways.

The fact that Freddy generated conversation, that it got a community of local artists (and maybe elsewhere) thinking and talking about these ideas is a good thing in my opinion. To be down here, to be part of a smaller scene, and also, sort of on a personal level, to see the tightness of the community has been inspiring. And it’s been great to be a part of it. Working with Jordan has been amazing, discovering June Culp’s work has been amazing. Peter, Stephen Booth—there’s so many interesting artists.

I have a young artist friend I was talking with the other day about how she’s so nervous about this show she has coming up in New York because, “if it bombs,” her career’s gonna be fucked and she’s not gonna be able to sell anything for the next five years and that kind of thing. And on one hand, there’s a side of me that’s like, “Ah God, don’t think like that. That’s horrible.” And then there’s another side of me that’s like, “God, you’re kind of right. It’s fucking very cut throat.” It’s a weird time to be a young artist, specifically in New York. I think it’s a bad time.

It’s very strange in New York—a particular artist might get some visibility in the scene and suddenly that person Has All These “New Friends.” It feels very disingenuous. In Baltimore, a lot of the artist friend groups and support seem to come from a more genuine place. And I have found that to be—I think that’s what I was looking for, that’s why I left. It’s kind of exceeded my expectations actually.

When you say, “Won’t be able to sell work for the next 5 years,” I think, “How can that not affect your output?”

Yeah. I think it’s crazy. I think it’s not a good place. I hate to sound like the Patti Smith lecture, like “Artists should leave New York! New York sucks!” but I feel very similarly to her. Have you ever watched that movie Downtown 81 with Jean-Michel Basquiat?

Yeah.

He goes down to the East Village and he goes to the Mudd Club and the LES looks raw and dangerous and fucked up. It was such a different scene and artists and musicians and creative minded people were all going there because it was fucking bombed out and it was cheap and there was an openness in terms of what was possible. It wasn’t about selling; no one imagined that they would be making money. Now, New York is just so sanitized; you can’t even walk down the street without seeing Citi Bikes everywhere. People could argue, “Well you know, that’s Manhattan but you still have the other four boroughs to explore.” But even that’s changing—I just read a big article in the Times about how Ridgewood, Queens (where I was living) is the new hip spot.

I sublet my apartment for a year and went back to move my things out when I decided I didn’t want to live there anymore and there was a new hip coffee shop right there on the corner next to my apartment. And it makes me depressed because there are generations of families that have lived in these neighborhoods that are gonna get pushed out. The rents are gonna go up and it’s just what it is.

PHILIP HINGE, BRAD PHILLIPS, AARON CARPENTER

There’s just something great about being down here where there’re still warehouses that artists live in and weird noise shows at someone’s house. And people are doing it because they wanna do it and they believe in it and they’re doing it for their friends. And that’s the kind of stuff that made me want to be an artist.

Right, but I think people see the Ceremony Coffee shop pop up in Baltimore and everyone’s like, “Shit.” I feel that everyone here is super, super sensitive to any changes in that direction, because they’re like, “Well, this is it. Here it comes.”

Yeah, and I think, speaking to that, I can understand why people were freaked out about Freddy at first. Like does a New York based artist doing a project in Baltimore signify that the underground scene in Baltimore is gonna get fucked up?

I think that is part of the aspect in the question about the money— about people getting backed, various ways of “Testing Market Waters,” and seeing the Ceremony Coffee pop up, because, to an extent, that gossip stuff is real. I mean, I have some friends that, when they moved into their house a few years ago, went to the lease signing and the landlord said something like, “By the way, you’re going to be paying $50 more per month.”

They’re like, “What? You spring this on us after we’ve already agreed and are signing the lease?” And he just pulls out a flyer and says, “If these guys in Mt. Vernon are charging this much for a one bedroom, why can’t I?” Everyone is working on the same amount of information, it’s a weird social space to be in.

I’m also curious on your thoughts regarding the music scene as it relates to the art scene—like, in the last 10 years or so, there have been a number of bands coming out of Baltimore who have received national and international attention—I'm thinking of Beach House, Dan Deacon, and more recently Future Islands (among others). But it seems like with music, maybe if you’re in a cool band in Baltimore that the world doesn’t know about yet—do you think that folks want to blow up? Do they want the world’s attention? And, likewise, do you think young artists want to be engaged in a larger, more global dialogue—showing nationally and/or internationally?

JUNE CULP

Well, I think picking up on the different sects in Baltimore is super important, like you were saying, because you could point to anyone and the answer would be different.

I guess I mean the scene you’re involved in.

Yeah. The importance of the cultural scene here for me has, to an extent, hinged on its autonomy, or its self sufficiency as a wildly dynamic space, as being able to function almost entirely without having to pull from other spaces or communities (like waiting for A Big Band to come to one of the more legit venues). The style has been that other communities would suck in Baltimore stuff, you know, pay $40 a ticket for a Baltimore act and then, here—

—Go to their house.

—Yeah, see them play a $5 whatever show. I mean especially with music, I would see so much of it get sucked into New York or other cultural centers. I feel like the questions that I bring up in [the art] conversation—it seems that because it’s all on the East coast, everything above a certain point has to pass through New York and below a certain point, Miami. But, compare it to the way things have progressed in Europe: maybe it is biennial culture that has made smaller cities there much more apt for being able to support their own art historical lineages.

Absolutely.

When I graduated from college, I didn’t have a computer and the Internet was not developed like it is now. People were using AOL dial up to get online...

—Live journal just invented, right.

I remember there was just this tremendous push, like, if you want to be an artist, you gotta go to New York—otherwise you don’t fucking exist.

And, of course, there are always gonna be people that don’t buy into that, like “Fuck that, I’m gonna stay in Providence.” I was more interested in what New York might have to offer. I wanted to see my work in a white cube. That, to me, was interesting. I’d only seen my shitty paintings in shitty rooms. So living in New York at that time, my knowledge of the art world was pretty much extremely New York centric. I didn’t know what was happening in Europe or Los Angeles or wherever else—I was in the dark.

In 2006, I met a guy who had been living in LA and he knew all these artists and galleries out there that I had never heard of and it was like somebody lifted up a curtain. In 2008, I moved to Berlin for a period of about nine months. That was an extremely stimulating situation because I was exposed to a whole other world of contemporary arts spaces, like in Germany and even doing a little bit of traveling and seeing interesting spaces in Prague and elsewhere. You know there were all these spaces in out of the way places in little nooks and crannies throughout Europe—that doesn’t really exist in America. If you want to see contemporary art, you basically go to the LES or Chelsea and you walk a couple of blocks and that’s where all the shit is. It’s like spoon feeding you the stuff.

So the point I’m trying to get at—I’m pretty sure it was 2008 when Contemporary Art Daily came on to the Internet scene and that was (and still is) highly influential. And one of the things that I like about it a lot is that it’s not New York centric. So I can visit that website pretty much any day of the week and see an artist I’ve never heard of in a gallery I’ve never heard of in a city I’ve never heard of. That’s amazing. I think that becoming more aware of various artists and galleries in many parts of the world helps keep it interesting.

I would think that it’s going to have an impact on… I guess what I’m trying to say is that, I think way before Freddy got here, I saw artists in Baltimore and other cities like Philadelphia extending their dialogue out to New York. Nudashank in particular, really generated a good amount of visibility for Baltimore and some of its artists. I was impressed to see Springsteen becoming a member of NADA—A small gallery in Baltimore, MD doing NADA with galleries from Zurich and Prague and the world—right on, I thought that was so cool.

So there was that desire (at least in a certain portion of the art scene here) in wanting to engage in a broader conversation. And that was also part of my thinking—I was like, “Cool, I want to be a part of that.” I was curious to see how a smaller community of artists would respond to the work I planned to exhibit.

Yeah.

But, it always comes back to money doesn't it. People are afraid that rent’s gonna go up and you might have to move to a different neighborhood and, as a result of that, I think people are kind of fearful and opposed to what might come in from the outside. So I think it’s a really strange thing for you to have to navigate, for you guys, as young artists working here. How do you, if you want to engage with a bigger conversation, allow yourself to be open to that, but at the same time, to some extent, protect what you have.

There is that push and pull. Part of me is always urging against globalism because I have all these negative connotations with homogenized culture (which is the way of the world, I guess), but the aspect of seeing the way that Europe is able to have all these non-central centers that are just killing it—

—Yeah.

—That they are able to exchange as equals, and that they are just [different] “cultures,” that is very interesting to me.

NICHOLAS BUFFON

And maybe that is simply from the historical [and imperial/colonial] power of Western Europe from the past 500 years, where the art scenes had overbearing histories behind them because they were directly supported by a lot of money and resources. You know, patrons commissioning “This or that scenery of our estate and it’s beautiful and we’re painted into it and it shows how rich we are.” Maybe because there is art historical reference within their own cities, they might not have the same need for validation from another place.

There was an interview with the late Mike Kelley that I was watching recently, he was saying how American culture is vehemently anti-intellectual. Which I think is true. And having spent some time in Europe, it’s truly not the case over there.

I think that’s part of it, too.

by bailey sheehan

I especially appreciate when an idea is courageous enough to venture into the "real world," its “real problems” and “real communities” exponentially more apparent than in the temporally frozen space of an institution.

Six @ Six was held in the Unpretentious Motor Inn with free Wi-Fi that is Motel 6. The rooms that were rented/parceled out were the six rooms closest to the entrance of the Motel itself. The show spaces were ground floor and all in succession to one another. I did not find much to engage with in a large percentage of the work exhibited in this show, which is not to be considered a demerit to the work itself. I believe regardless of what the work may have been about, I found myself put at an incredible distance from any of that prospective meaning by the mechanics of the works’ handling of the site.

Some of the inconsistencies I find with the show become more apparent when it is compared to a haunted house (which the show could have been easily mistaken for). People were led in groups into highly thematized spaces where we witnessed various amounts of acting/performing. There was lots of laughter and an undeniable giddiness in the air. This is not successful in that most people go to haunted houses so that they may be entertained by being scared. In an endeavour to be entertained, most people pay for a modular experience and, with that awareness, the experience turns from one of being scared, saddened, or surprised to one of being entertained, which might be analogous to the modularity experienced when viewing art.

It may have been this expected modularity that caused the motel rooms to feel more like sets rather than real spaces being responded to. If it was too scary, one could, at any moment, stop or remind themselves of the simulation’s presence. It is a form of spectacle that is especially apparent within performance; it either works or it doesn’t (it seems).

What I found to be especially frightening was the light emanating from the second floor rooms atop the exhibition. It was suggestive of another presence outside of the work/the group of mostly young people. It would be wrong to assume that whoever was in those rooms was using them for the motel’s intended purpose; it may have in fact been for equally bizarre reasons as the show (though those reasons were hidden from the public eye). I believe the foreignness of the work being presented at the ground level led me to feel as though everything else was just: everything else. This is an imposition that I don’t think the show was interested in enacting. The art becomes the art and its spectacular showing is so loud that it groups everything else together as “other.” Motel goers become thematized into being exactly what we think of “them” to be.

Despite some of those shortcomings, I found the sixth room of the show to be incredibly successful. The room, directed by Marcelline Mandeng, Keenon Brice and Emilia Pennanen was most striking in its avoidance of giving the viewer anything they would immediately expect or want, things they probably received in the rooms preceding. Viewers were denied the assumption that they, too, would have the same metaphysical implication of modularity, or distance, that we usually expect to have while looking at an artwork.

The door was locked shut (though this was not the only room to do so) and the viewer waited to be allowed in. All three performers were wearing masks and rarely spoke. The door would fly open and Marcelline would quickly pull out a gun and hold it to viewers who were otherwise expecting to be allowed in (they were not). If they were lucky enough to be let in, they would be pushed to do things that some believed were pushing the boundaries of their own personal limitations. A woman was made to leave the room after having her hand dunked in what appeared to be a lube-like substance. A friend of mine was escorted out after having a pomegranate smooshed against his face and shirt while being told to call his mother and count to one hundred. Another friend of mine never got the opportunity to go inside the room because they never let her in. I even heard that someone was thrown in the shower and soaked.

People want equity, people don’t want to get their clothes dirtied or to be treated in a way that might discomfort them in a nonconsensual way. That said, what could have been a better embodiment of the atmosphere exuding from Motel 6 for the two hours that the show took place? Emilia’s, Kenan’s, and Marcelline’s room remained in avoidance of becoming a spectacle because it remained true to the individual’s experience rather than focusing on the politics of curation or performance, politics that don’t register with importance given the site’s context.

Six @ Six was a one night only group show at the Motel 6 on North Avenue, featuring six site-specific installations and performances. Work by: Forced Into Femininity, Julie Libersat, Sashenka López & Miguel Mendías, Marcelline Mandeng & Keenon Brice & Emilia Pennanen, Adam Void, and Laura Weiner. Curated by Miguel Mendías.

The Motel 6, 110 W. North Ave, Baltimore, MD 21201 (November 6, 2015)

a conversation by lian tsai & kimi hanauer

For recently graduated international art students, the OPT (Optional Practical Training) visa presents a challenging way to remain in the United States. The visa offers a year renewal for maintaining a job in the field that you studied, but fails to acknowledge that, in the case of studio (or post-studio) artists, relevant paying positions very well might not exist. The rare administrative position becomes the expectation; actually maintaining one’s practice becomes a naïve dream.

Lian Tsai, a Taiwanese national living in the U.S. since 2008, found obtaining even one of these administrative positions next to impossible after graduating from the Maryland Institute College of Art in May 2015. In September, Tsai moved into the collectively run, live/work project space Penthouse Gallery without plans for how to handle her quickly approaching October 1st deadline.

After a series of conversations between Tsai and Kimi Hanauer (a member of the Penthouse collective), the two settled on a curatorial project that would have Penthouse Gallery hire Tsai as its new Gallery Manager. Hanauer wrote a letter of hire for Tsai’s visa agent and the two quickly received notice that Tsai’s visa had been extended by one full year. As part of the contract the two wrote in this project, one of Tsai’s initial responsibilities was to organize Penthouse’s October opening. “Penthouse Gallery Presents: Lian Tsai,” documented the visa process, celebrated Tsai’s newly acquired OPT visa, and recorded the occasion of her continued residency in the United States through a durational performance performed by Tsai.

According to Hanauer, the performance went like this:

“Audience members walked in and were greeted by artist Marcelline Mandeng, who offered them a cupcake or a beer. Tsai was in the central space. She had coded a program that would translate the tone of her voice into high pitch piano sounds. She paced around the space while talking into the mic, and the program modulated her voice into those piano sounds. On the other side of the room, artist Chris Zickafoose used an actual piano to converse with Lian’s synthetic piano sounds. Lian carried a large inflatable planet on her back. She placed pumps on her hands that could inflate the planet and approached audience members, touching hands and squeezing the pumps throughout the event. This slowly inflated her planet. People sat on couches, drank beer, ate cupcakes, and blew bubbles.”

-Editor

KH: What was your experience leading up to getting the visa?

LT: It was so stressful before I talked to you. Trying to find an arts related job. It felt a lot like this OPT visa was a trap to get free labor in the U.S. for immigrants who are just getting out of college, people that have been living in the U.S. for some time and are desperate to stay. Under this visa, companies that employ us don’t have to pay us, and it’s totally legal. So I was feeling a lot of dark energy around that. When I talked to you and you came up with the idea of hiring me to work for Penthouse Gallery, I didn’t know if it would work…

KH: Honestly, I thought there was no way.

LT: Yeah. It sounded so simple, like, “I’ll just work for my friend. I’ll just make it work.” And I was running out of my grace period. So, I kind of just sent the email to my visa representative not taking it too seriously. And then she replied, said “OK,” and sent the information along. The only thing I had to change was that I had to request more hours to work at the gallery, at least 20. Which is kind of crazy if you think about it: we are legally permitted to be working for 20 hours a week unpaid.

How did you come up with the idea just on the spot?

KH: I thought, why not? I mean, it is legitimate. There is so much work to be done around here. I wish Penthouse could pay people, but that’s not how it is. I didn’t think it would work honestly, I just thought of it as a good gesture we could make, whether it worked or not. But I thought it was worth a shot, that there was a chance it might work.

So much of the artist-run activities that happen here happen without money, nobody gets paid for what they do, but then that doesn’t mean it’s not important. Why should Penthouse not be seen as legitimate? Real things happen here and it takes a ton of invisible work that is constantly being put in for no monetary return.

LT: It kind of puts us all on the same plane. Because so many of the artists here are underpaid, I don’t feel like I am being taken advantage of by the system for not getting paid. I mean, I’ve had companies tell me that they just wouldn’t pay me, but that I could work for them. And this makes me feel like I am being taken advantage of.

KH: What’s the difference here then?

LT: I guess because here, everyone is working towards a similar thing and on equal terms, and everyone is putting energy into it. And these companies definitely could pay me, they have enough going on that they could support another person for their work, but they choose not to because they don’t have to and they will have someone else trying to do it if I don’t. While this is more like we are all helping each other out. I’m putting my energy into this and you are holding me up.

KH: Yeah, it’s not a hierarchical and capitalist structure. It’s rhizomatic and none of the artists involved are really making a profit or realizing their dreams at the expense of the exploitation of someone else. This is a collective project, where those involved are mutually invested.

                  *      *      *

LT: You were talking about how not a lot of people know about what happens here?

KH: I feel like everything that happens here, or maybe just a lot artist-organized activity, is really fleeting, or you know, just not kept track of or documented well. Things just sort of happen and then they go away. And the people who are here for it know about it and experience it, but then nobody else does. And that’s kind of why it’s beautiful, why it is what it is. There is some power in that type of independence and existing outside of a traditional structure or platform.

But it’s also kind of like -- what the fuck? – amazing stuff is happening everywhere and no one has access to it, almost no one can see it! The fact that even though this activity is not visible or accessible in a lot of ways, can get someone a visa, a completely life-changing thing, the fact that you can stay in the United States for another year because of this bullshit we do—it kind of legitimizes what happens here while also playing the system. We were able to use this system, that otherwise seems very oppressive, in order to legitimize work that also exists outside of dominant institutional platforms, such as art venues that exist inside of people’s homes.

LT: Yeah I like how you are talking about how it legitimizes the Copycat venues [live/work warehouse space in Baltimore], it is proof in a way. Like a medal.

KH: Exactly. But why do we have to feel like we’re playing the system? Maybe we’re not? This is a real job. The work is extremely time consuming and makes real things happen… for some reason, in my head I still feel like it’s not legitimate. I still feel like we are getting away with something, when really, “Gallery Manager of Penthouse” is a real job that has to get done. If it doesn’t get done there’d be a major Penthouse void!

LT: Why does it have to feel sort of ‘unreal,’ doing what we do?

KH: I feel so complicated about that, too, because now, I do have an art related job, that actually pays me (!) and it’s not exactly what I do in my art practice, but it is related for sure.

LT: It just makes me question my choices. Like, why didn’t I major in Graphic Design and Sculpture instead of just Sculpture? Something more “practical…”

KH: A degree in Sculpture sometimes can seem pretty useless in the eyes of the capitalist work force and the capitalist business owners when compared to Graphic Design. And why is that? It’s not as if we worked any less hours. If anything I’d say Sculpture majors are some of the hardest working, sharpest students I know.

LT: We learned how to make things happen.

KH: Exactly. But then, how do the skills we learned fit into a capitalist system? As opposed to Graphic Design, where you can just help sell people products. Our work doesn’t always lend itself to that system, and even when it does, I don’t know if we’d want it to. Maybe that’s why so much of what happens here is insular, because it mostly appeals to other artists who do the same weird shit.

                *      *      *

LT: I think what makes events at the copycat so magical is that they bring you to another space. That’s what I was thinking when I was performing – transforming this space into a non-space.

KH: Yes, such a migrant theme…

LT: Everywhere could be my home, but nowhere is really my home. But then this place, Penthouse Gallery, lets me not worry about that and lets me create my own space without judgment or anything, it becomes a non-place for me.

KH: So, what makes Penthouse a non-place?

LT: I guess just how open and malleable it is. Its identity was built on by the people who make this place. Instead of trying to mold the artists or the people that are here into a certain ‘cool’ style.

KH: Yeah we hate “cool”!

LT: We just like to play!

KH: Somehow – your visa has legitimized all artist-run activity in Baltimore. We need you to exist now.

LT: It’s almost like a governmental stamp. Saying, “Ok. You guys are legit now.” The Penthouse Gallery is in federal documents now. The government knows. Even though being undocumented gives you a type of freedom, being documented makes it legitimate in a different way. They have my time sheets, my working hours, your name, and Penthouse’s name. If me taking care of Tony [the Penthouse cat – ed.], dying plastic and making patterns for my planets counts as a legitimate job to stay in the United States, then everyone at the Copycat, just living their lives, taking out the trash, doing whatever is legit…it’s a government approved job.

KH: Yes, totally.

                *      *      *

LT: Back to my role as Gallery Manager, I have been thinking about how I could use my background to make this gallery more diverse. Sometimes I feel like people see women or non-white people as accessories. I’ve been told to embrace my Asian background more by people, like people want to be able to label me more as an Asian Artist.

KH: What happens when you are labeled in that way?

LT: I feel like when I was younger, I was really into calligraphy and other things that related more to my culture, but now that I’m here, when I’m labeled that way it just feels really limiting. It makes me into an exotic object that a white audience can look at, “she is a small Asian girl that does little Asian things.” It feels like I’m made into a fetish.

KH: Yeah I understand. I used to just not tell people I was Israeli, I would just leave it out. But now I’ve sort of started to do the opposite. And it’s not because I’m proud of that place. But I want to embrace that even though I come from this place that does terrible things and where terrible things happen, it doesn’t mean that I do terrible things. Being Israeli can also mean being a pacifist. Not that the prominent perception of Israel is anywhere near the truth, many news platforms seem to completely disregard Israel's violent and oppressive occupation. Also, I feel like it’s important that as an Israeli, I can also be in a position to be critical of that place.

LT: Yeah I do feel like that’s something that’s easier to do when you are from that place.

KH: But also, as a migrant, when I am critical of Israel, how does that come off to people or my family members who actually live there? It’s like, well “Who are you to say that, you don’t even live here.” But, I wonder, when you are in a position where you have to constantly think about your safety, when you are living within a conflict, how can you also be thinking clearly about the morality of this or that action? In that way, migrants do have a certain special ability to be critical and thoughtful about a place. It’s because we are not really allowed to lay claim to just this or that place, you’re not really from here and you’re not really from there either.

Maybe that’s why I love Penthouse so much, it is a non-place, like you said, but its something I can finally lay claim to which also rejects that idea completely (through its non-hierarchical network of collaborators). It’s interesting that many artists take the role of protecting art platforms in general, and sometimes this means their physical manifestations, like protecting Penthouse Gallery. This is similar to my experience of being a migrant, I think. In the sense that you have to prove that this is your place, that you can be here, that what you do and how you think is legitimate, that you are legitimate… Just attempting to own that ground, to keep a space alive, becomes your work and your life. But Penthouse can’t be claimed, and it shouldn’t be—it’s inherently a huge, non-hierarchical collaboration.

LT: Do you feel that towards the United States? About criticizing the United States?

KH: In one sense I feel like, “Wow, this place is amazing.” If I didn’t live here I would’ve just been getting out of the Israeli army. Instead, I just graduated from a world-class art school, have a rad job, and am able to do projects I care about. However, while living in the U.S. has been really great to me, this place is also really terrible to many of its own people. How crazy is it that I, as someone who isn’t even originally from the United States, has had an amazing experience, while so many people who were born here, who grew up here, live in worse conditions than I would ever even experience?

LT: I have this intuitive feeling of thankfulness to the country that I struggle with. How do you feel about the thankfulness you have for America? For me, I feel kind of resentful towards it. If I feel too thankful, then I lose my power to America. It’s like they give you just what you need, nothing more, just to keep you working. But at the same time, hearing from what you just said, it is such a great thing that we are here.

KH: I understand what you’re saying, and I do feel really thankful that I live here. My brother pointed out to me recently that maybe we shouldn’t feel thankful for a government or social structure for simply doing the right thing, what they should be doing anyways. Like granting people's basic freedoms and rights and having a minimum safety-net like a welfare program, and for not making military service mandatory so people aren’t forced to fight in unjustifiable wars. We are allowed to be critical of the country we live in and still appreciate living in that country.

Documents : 

Lian Tsai emails

Letter of Offering (K. Hanauer)

Letter of Acceptance (L. Tsai)

Time Logs (1, 2, 3, 4)

Photos and documents courtesy of Penthouse and the artist. 

fiona sergeant

The Realization of the Search 1

There is a system or cycle of thoughts that exists in this world that I have only recently begun to consider actively and find words for. It is something of a snack cycle that is made up of a continuous flow of small desires and potential small satisfactions. In this cycle there is generally a moment of desire followed by one of three temporary resolutions:

I acknowledge a loose desire for some kind of satisfying snack but am overwhelmed by the options when I press the decision further. I ultimately postpone the search.

I determine a specific snack that I hope will be satisfying, but upon eating it, I decide that it is not quite right and am still left unsatisfied. I might feel a little bit bad about consuming meaningless, unsatisfying calories.

The third (and most rare) situation is that I make a lucky selection and am satisfied by the snack. Even in this best case scenario, the satisfaction that I feel is only moderate, and I generally feel a new craving for the next snack within (at most) a day.

The Contemporary American Snack

It is empirically felt that snack consumption has been on the rise in the United States during the last few decades. Various studies show that there has been a significant increase in both the average number of snacks consumed daily by individuals as well as in the percentage of daily calories that are consumed through snacks. According to Richard D. Mattes, Ph. D., professor of foods and nutrition at Perdue University, “between 1977 and 2006, snacking in the American diet had grown to constitute a ‘full eating event’ or a fourth meal, averaging about 580 calories each day.”2 Another report put together by the NPD group, a market research company, shows that the traditional three meals are getting smaller, often becoming “mini-meals” while snacking is on the rise. The report states that “one out of every five eating occasions in the U.S. is a snack and over half of Americans (53%) are snacking two or three times a day.”3

This data is not surprising for anyone active in the American public sphere. The idea of leading busy, hectic lives has become built-in to the contemporary American Identity. There is a desire to participate in the growth and prosperity of the contemporary world; to experience this directly is to feel overwhelmed and hyper productive. The very existence of on-the-go and convenience-oriented foods may function especially to reinforce the idea of the always-busy, on-the-go American who doesn’t have the time to sit down to a full meal. By choosing the product for the busy individual, the individual tells themselves (and others) that they are busy.

An increase in snacking may also be due to the incredible abundance of snacks available in the contemporary environment. Aside from the overwhelming diversity of snacks one can experience at any local convenience store or supermarket, “Mintel Menu Insights data shows that restaurant menu items incorporating the words “snack,” “snackable” or “snacker” have risen 170 percent since 2007, and further growth is expected as restaurants pile on this new trend.”4

In contemporary culture, food and food marketing have become incredibly developed languages. Food objects and situations have gone beyond acting as passive signs where they are read for their often slowly established, passive, historic and cultural connotations and have now become a language that is heavily written by food marketers attempting to keep up with the contemporary conceptions of reality. It is the aim to both give the people what they want and make them want things they had not expected. One of the key strategies of food marketing presently and historically is to sell people on the new. Because of these marketing efforts, products in the snack, candy, and cereal aisles of any given supermarket seem to mutate like bacteria, there is a line-extension to fit any taste.

There is an inherent lack of limits built into the concept of the snack. Snacks can be any food (or really, any thing); snack-time can be any time (as long as it involves a snack), and the creation of new snack foods embraces the unorthodox. In some ways, snacks and treats function as the fiction and fantasy of food in the same way that America (or the idea of America) functions as the fiction and fantasy of countries. They are both in some ways connected to a history, but that history is defined by youth (that is to say, by a state of freedom from the weight of history) and revered more for its power of influence than any other factor. The more important aspects of these fantasies are tied to the ideas of creation, innovation, and the progress of technology. Both attempt to offer innovative formats for easy, accessible, modern living, and both exist heavily in media [they are heavily mediated].

The 100-Calorie-Snack-Pack

A key period in the recent history of American snacking was the rise and fall of the 100-calorie-snack-pack. In theory, the idea makes sense; if people are simply given smaller bags of snacks and told their caloric worth, individuals will have no problem knowing when to stop. They were marketed as a form of pre-fab portion control. The catch is that these smaller packages tend to cost twenty to thirty percent more than their large-bagged counterparts. For a while, people seemed to be willing to pay the price. They were introduced by Kraft in 2004 with the launch of Oreo Tin Crisps, Wheat Tin Minis, and Nabisco Mixed Berry Fruit Snacks, and in July of 2007 the New York Times reported1 the sales of these 100 calorie snack packs to be past “the $200-million-a year mark.” They quickly fell out of style, however (notably during the onset of the financial crisis), and by June of 2009 were dead enough to warrant the article title “The Demise of the 100 Calorie Pack” on the marketing blog MarketingProfs.6

It is both ironic and telling that as a culture we have arrived at and gotten past the point of pre-portioned 100-calorie-snack-packs of processed foods since it was the discovery of basic cooking, initial forms of food processing, that allowed our ancestors to access and consume the calories necessary to support the cranial development that makes us human was we understand it. The 100-calorie-snack-pack marks the concrete moment when it was literally more valuable to the consumer to have less than to have more. Here, now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it is our extreme proficiency at gathering and consolidating calories that has become one of our main cultural epidemics.

Post-Utilitarian Consumption: The Snack

Snack foods, as they exist in America, are made to be fun (60% of Americans report snacking for fun rather than hunger).7 Snacks let you treat yourself and take a break. In kindergarten, snack time is generally built into the schedule. Although there are some diet plans built around having many small meals throughout the day rather than the standard three square meals, generally people don’t eat snacks to survive. In the case of those diets, one eats mini-meals rather than purely snacks. Because snacks are primarily non-utilitarian, they enjoy the most freedom in expression.

When I was a kid, I used to (and still do) take enormous pleasure in trying to think up new snacks and treats. While lying in bed trying to fall asleep or staring out the bus window on the way to school I used to think up fantasy treats; I performed numerous experiments on the textures of various things after being microwaved or frozen (there was an especially in depth series of experiments regarding the achievable textures of marshmallows in the microwave). This kind of experimentation is at the heart of snack culture. Nothing is sacred and everything is at least worth trying. Snacking is a perfect low-risk environment for play and creation. I was not the mother of the house; I did not have to cook and provide for the family. I am the daughter who is free to cook to provide for her own interests and imagination. Because snacks are frivolous, they are free.

Doubt and a Lack of Satisfaction

The grand total of all varieties of snacks available on Walmart.com (including candy, cookies, chips, crackers, nuts and trail mixes, and granola bars) is 4879 options, as of November 2013. When attempting to make the right choice regarding the search for the satisfying snack, this overwhelming number of options is the primary hurdle. I, at least, experience a slight doubt that I’ll choose correctly when the options become too great (this is common, also, at record and thrift stores where most options are probably great, but I have no way of knowing which are the best). Mathematically, the odds of choosing correctly are not in your favor. What ways can one ensure a correct choice? A friend recently told me, “If I only have rice to eat, I will be satisfied with rice.” With this thought, it seems that one way to achieve satisfaction is to deal with the reality of the situation and decide to be satisfied.

But what if there is satisfaction in the lack of satisfaction experienced in the search for the satisfying snack? At our most ancient cultural roots, humans are hunter-gatherers. The acquisition aspect of the utilitarian hunt has become too easy to be totally satisfying. The never ending search for the satisfying snack comes about as a way of staying un-satiated in order to never tire of and never complete the hunt. There is something pleasurable about wanting.

Info-Snacks

Snacking today is not just limited to food-snacks. Rather, snacking has become our primary mode of consumption in most areas. Food, media, relationships, thoughts, even the acquisition of objects. We deal in frequent short bites of varied things; with the advent of the internet and the ever growing global economy, the proliferation of accessible, consumable goods has followed. Snacking is just a way of coping with this information overload, this overload of possibilities as it allows one to make more choices and sample more bites. While the world has always contained more than any one human could comprehend, humans were rarely ever confronted by the whole world all at once. Now, even just one company, Google, can provide access and answers to more inquiries than any individual could ever ask (even if all the questions were asked, there are still the images to browse and the maps to wander).

This overwhelming everything has created a new system of self-definition. Rather than being defined so heavily by what you do and where you are, it seems that a lot of how people are defined today is by What They Are Into and How/How Much They Are Into It. With the accessibility of information and quasi-experience available through the internet and other media, there are no longer many limits of what an individual may have been exposed to given their geographic location or social status. Anyone has the ability to have heard of or to be interested in anything. This makes it seemingly all the more important to define and declare oneself. The declaration has become especially image-based rather than action-based due to the rise of screen-based living. Much of life on the internet centers around consuming and producing all of the info-snacks that make up the whole [persona].

As our known universe continues to expand with the progression of history, invention, and discovery, there will continue to be more and more of everything, but the individual will continue to be individual. Individuals may not be able to act of the scale of the universe and take it in all at once, but we can always make the attempt to sample it all and eat on the go. In an article titled, “Snacking Could Be the Future of Eating,” Gary Stibel, executive of New England Consulting Group (whose clients include Frito-Lay) predicts that “You and I will continue to snack more and sit down to meals less.”8

Who knows.

Photo : Dylan Thadani 

“I can never not eat the whole bag. Except usually I’ll stop when there are just 5 chips left at the bottom because I know that if I take one more handful I’ll have eaten the whole thing. So I always have a bunch of bags of chips with chip clips on them that have only five chips inside.” -anon.

“Snacking Constitutes 25 Percent of Calories Consumed in U.S.” - IFT.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013. 

“U.S. Consumers Adhere to Tree Meal Times Daily But Define Meals Differently and Snack Often, Reports NPD.” – NPD. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.

“Bite Sized Bliss.” Food Processing InPerspective™ by Cargill Salt. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2013. 

Peters, Jeremy W. “Fewer Bites. Fewer Calories. Lot More Profit.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 07 July 2007. Web. 05 Dec. 2013. 

Mininni, Ted. “MarketingProfs.” MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013. 

Wyatt, Sally L. SNAXPO2013-for-Webinar. N.p.: SymphonyIRI Group, 2013. PDF. 

quintessa matranga

It is fitting that Ajay Kurian’s show at Rowhouse Projects uses the word “work” in its title: Work Harder Under Water. The mega exhibition, consisting of three floors (several rooms to a floor) indeed shows a lot of work. The install utilized a multitude of media including the aroma of freshly fried fish prepared by Kurian’s mother, and served, at times by the artist himself throughout the opening. The home cooking and inclusion of family nicely complimented the ever-present domestic atmosphere of Rowhouse Project’s interior on its opening night.

The home cooking was not the only reference to consumption or childhood in the show. Upon entering the foyer of the house, you were greeted by a sculpture of a black frog serving a speaker on a platter garnished with an assortment of faux leaves. Adding to the prankish absurdity, the frog’s pants were pulled down revealing heart patterned boxers.  Catching the waiter in this goofy yet humiliating state of undress was erksome and there was a sadness underneath the lightheartedness of this sculpture. The encounter with the humiliated frog waiter as an entry to the show is emblematic of the title of the exhibition, “Work Harder Under Water.”  The waiter’s work is undermined by his appearance of ineptitude. The voyeuristic quality of this moment was just a taste of what more was to come further on into the exhibition.

In the same room, a caricature of a high school aged Kurian was silkscreened on the maroon red wall in butter. The cartoonish portrait depicted the artist as a hairy ape with a human face. The greasy substance made the image only faintly visible and suggested certain racial slurs like grease monkey etc. The ape-man caricature is particularly poignant considering the press release for the exhibition, which details the artist’s experiences growing up as a person of color around the time of 9/11. “The membership into a white world that I had so assiduously earned was then called into question,” (speaking of the post 9/11 political climate). “The jokes and playful fears manifested in suggesting I better not grow a beard when I go to New York were meant to show that I wasn’t a terrorist, but that I’m one facial hair mishap away from fitting the description,” reads the press release.

Continuing through the house, you came to a beer-pong sized folding table supporting a ten gallon Igloo water cooler in bright orange (a humorous decoy to the beverages typically provided at openings).

Within the belly of the cooler was a silver ironman looking mask submerged in a lemon-lime colored liquid. The way the mask glimmered under water (another tie in to the title of the show) resembled shiny change in a fountain, tossed in for good luck. The liquid softened the exaggerated masculine features of the mask making it appear more as an illusion of masculinity rather than a symbol of it.

Just past this room, Kurian’s mother fried the fish in the house’s kitchen. The staging of this scene reads like a snapshot made to be viewed in real time. To quote Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space, “We realize that the calendars of our lives can only be established in its imagery.” Through this scene, the theatre of memory is revisited and the physiological reverberations of the act are absorbed in the walls of the house along with the aroma.

Positioned there on a wooden shelf was a derelict sculpture presenting a much less edible food; two Styrofoam containers from Cup Noodles were placed several inches apart. In one of the containers was body hair from Kurian soaked in about two inches of Neem oil. The adjacent soup container held the recently extracted molars from the painter Jamian Julliano-Villani, also soaked oil. These abject cast offs can signify our mortality while also provoking disgust at the fate of our ultimate decay and the messiness that goes along with it. The primal body is treated in pieces and sorted as a doctor might while performing an autopsy. In this tableau, the fragility of the body is gently contrasted with the stark materiality of the synthetic soup containers.

The oil has Old Testament significance as well. Oil as a magical material, one that can mysteriously extend its own life, etc., offers a trace of hope.

Up the stairs and to the right is a large room in which three child-sized figures engage in a homoerotic display of pre-prepubescent debauchery. One of the boys (he had a clear piece of vinyl tubing in place of a phallus indicating that he was male) was urinating into the mouth of another figure positioned directly beneath the first while another one of the figures watched in giddy anticipation. Or was it horror? These figures looked like skeletons from hell dressed in Old Navy mimicking a frat house hazing session. Physically the “boys” were in different stages of decomposition or deconstruction. Parts of their armatures were left exposed. Their wigs hastily positioned atop uneven skulls. The voyeur of the group, the child who was not peeing or being peed on, had black skin while the other two characters skin could be described as white. I am having a hard time deciphering what the significance is for the black kid to bear witness to the sadomasochistic performance of the white children but to say that it was a hellish scene and the figures all appeared to be demons in it.

The fluids from this perverse vignette trickle down the house, unseen, literally soaking the foundation of the institution in the depravity. The “urine” eventually reaches the intimate space of the basement where it is caught in strategically placed cookware (pots and bowls). The basement or cellar of a house signifies the irrational. According to Bachelard who wrote; “In the cellar, "rationalization" is less rapid and less clear; also it is never definitive.” If the structure of the house mimics the human psyche the subterranean space of the basement, inherently dark and damp, is where secrets are kept. “The cellar dreamer,” states Bachelard, “knows that the walls of the cellar are buried walls, that they are walls with a single casing, walls that have the entire earth behind them. And so the situation grows more dramatic, and fear becomes exaggerated.” It is where one might give in to temptations, or regress to the primitive.

Perhaps this is why, in this same space Kurian hung electric neon light in the shape of the neighborhood watcheye pointing out the relationship between light and vision. But in this case vision is also a stand in for power. The neighborhood watcheye, a symbol for vigilantes, disrupts the nature of the cellar. The cellar cannot be a space to stowaway childhood fears because it is under surveillance. “But the unconscious mind cannot be civilized,” Bachelard writes.

Back upstairs, themes of race, power and consumption are subtly carried through in a video of a black police officer puppet attempting to eat his arm. Using the body and a nonsensical gesture, the piece looks like Sesame Street appropriating Vito Acconci’s early video work.

The show utilized every corner of the space with objects both deeply rooted in personal narrative and universal concepts; race, coming of age, consumption, violence. Children’s toys were used in several sculptures tracing the subtle significance of those objects on the psyche of the adult they help to shape. An oversized Jacob’s Ladder hanging in the stairwell of the house was particularly metaphorical. Climbing a Jacob’s Ladder does nothing to bring you forward while climbing the stairs in the house is what one must do to see the piece. The Jacobs Ladder, like a stationary bike, contradicts itself. It is the children’s equivalent to the myth of Sisyphus summed up in one elegant object.

The installation also made exciting correlations to Bachelard’s theory that the structure of the house parodies the human psyche. The functions of rooms of the house correlated poetically to the sculptures they harbored. In several pieces the artist used water or, “being under water” as the title phrases it to symbolize how one might struggle with the themes presented in this show. Like trying to run in a dream, working harder under water is futile and all efforts at it are ultimately doomed to fail.

bailey sheehan

The fate of the horseshoe crab seems to be dismal and worth the attention of an experienced artist’s touch, one that many would believe New Mexico artist Puppies Puppies to have. One might catch themselves thinking: this seems like an important project, I’m surprised more people do not know about this, as they leave the Freddy Gallery on West Franklin. But are we to believe that Puppies Puppies solely purposed this show to raise awareness of a ‘forgettable sea creature with a hidden chemical superpower?’ I feel there is more to discuss here.

The most recent exhibition at Freddy Gallery features painted horseshoe crabs and vinyl works in addition to a live performance. The work is seemingly focused on giving a visual explanation of the LAL test, which involves the use of a chemical found only in the amoebocytes of the horseshoe crab’s blood cells. “Pharmaceutical companies burst the cells that contain the chemical, called coagulogen. Then, they can use the coagulogen to detect contamination in any solution that might come into contact with blood. If there are dangerous bacterial endotoxins in the liquid- even at a concentration of one part per trillion- the horseshoe crab blood extract will go to work”- by turning the solution into a ‘gel’ substance. Nonetheless, to paraphrase the press release, virtually every American who has ever received an injection has been protected because we harvest the blood of the horseshoe crab.

I believe the most critical part of the exhibition lies on the back of the press release itself.

Hi this is Puppies speaking on behalf of HorseshoeCrabs:

The horseshoe crab… It has evolved onnnnly so much as to further its existence & existence it has achieveddd…. 445 million years worth….. horseshoe crabs and paintings seem to relate in my mind. They are expressions that have survived the test of time. By linking the two I’m expressing my need as an artist (not by me being the actual artist that painted the paintings) but my need to present the paintings in this context. Maybe these expressions are addressing my need to survive and to hide under many layers in order to do so. To understand my fleeting existence but know that humans like me will continue to paint. To breed on the shoreline in shallow water only to propel the existence of my expressions and the expressions to come later on, I feel very deeply for these creatures.

It is very tempting to digest this direct statement from Puppies in a binary sense (them commenting on a relationship between a human and external [natural] world). This would be a very stale modern take on an issue that, for the most part, a large percentage of us have gone our whole lives not caring about. Though Puppies only mentions man and horseshoe crab, I believe him/her to be outlining a more overarching network of thoughts. I believe it would also be very tempting to spout a thematic ecological discussion that would leave us all feeling very sorry for these poor, poor creatures. If we do choose to take that route, how are we then supposed to feel about painting? How are we then supposed to feel about our own reproductions through the everyday (facebook, snapchat, everyday performative gestures, etc.).

Puppies speaks about the need, obligation and instinct to procreate in both the production of paintings and within the horseshoe crab population itself. The relationship that Puppies finds between the two owes itself to many more things than just the initial similarities one may find. I begin to think of all the other happenings required for the two processes of production discussed earlier to take place. I do not want to view this relationship being described as one that temporarily floats above the mechanics of the everyday. I think of the full moons and high tides necessary for a typical horseshoe crab mating season, or even the worms and clams that form the horseshoe crab’s regular diet.

The average contemporary painter steps outside their mating process as they journey to the local art store to pick up the necessary paints, stretchers and canvas. As one starts to form a list of every thing related to the process of duplication, mating or ‘creating’ (as the romantic painter would believe) and then a respective list of all the things related to that long list of things first handedly related to the original act, it changes the way we speak about things commonly idealized as being autonomous such as painting or horseshoe crab mating. I think now we are drifting towards a more Latourian approach to dissecting just what this show is trying to dance around. If we take, for instance, French Sociologist Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (which treats objects as part of social networks) not only does it do the job of removing humans from a metaphysical top-tier in any analysis we try to mount, it also mobilizes horseshoe crabs as a driving force in that same relationship (able to act or participate in that same list of networks). If we instill within the horseshoe crab, an ability to act or participate actively in a system of networks (not through animism or our imagination, but rather through a pseudo flattened ontological mindset) we begin to tred into a conversation that is more entertaining and definitely a lot less lonely. We become less lonely in a sense that we may begin to realize we share the stage (as both humans and artists) with a lot more actors who have just as much if not more experience as us, that population no longer swept to stage left and labeled as other, everything else, or even people (as some ecological discussions tend to drift towards). To be perfectly honest, a hyperobject such as a horseshoe crab is a great stage partner to have.

The instinct to reproduce (whether painting or horseshoecrab mating) may not be one that is mythical or some thing that we humans or artists should find unbelievable and/or beautiful. The horseshoe crab may in fact be acting within its networks and among its set of alliances (which give justification for its existence not in a sense of purpose but in a pure empirical sense). As the horseshoe crab continues to breed on the shoreline in shallow water only to propel its constant ability to act, to change and grow (not so that on one far off day it may be free to live peacefully on its own, but rather for the sole purpose of expression, of acting), painting continues along a parallel trajectory. Painting can so often be a dreamy, mystical process of magic that happens when an artist is in their studio. Here, Puppies suggests that the initiative to paint is the same as a horseshoe crab’s performative act of reproduction. The fewer alliances an actor forms or has, the weaker their grip becomes on existence, therefore, painting (and, to a greater extent, art) survives (and is beautiful) through its alliances with other networks and its opaque malleability. I feel that both the painter and the painting should not colonize their way through the everyday. It may be because of this notion that makes it a perfectly appropriate move for Puppies to have not painted or even fabricated any of the visual components of the show. The fabulous myth of the painter lives on. Their ‘shared stage’ allows the perpetual act of recreation and duplication of painting to continue unfettered (even more so than the typical show we have become used to seeing). Puppies truly connects to this sea creature not in an animistic-type sense but in a sense that they are comfortable enough to share the stage. To say (in this instance) that it does not in any way really matter who painted or fabricated each piece (be it a professional artist or a more visionary-type painter), that would not be so bizarre would it?

Perhaps in remembering the artist’s various trips to the art store, high tides and pb&j’s we may begin to derail the magic of the artist and of ‘nature’ and understand our own initiatives as well as those around us as we begin to share Puppies’ feelings towards this forgettable sea creature.

HorseshoecrabsHorseshoecrabs is on view through September 26 at 510 W. Franklin Street, Baltimore, MD. All images courtesy Freddy Gallery.

Three fun news items today as we get back into the swing of it now that we’re finally done sweating.

Arts Criticism and The Arts Outpost is the limited run (ed. 75) transcript of the March 2015 conversation between Marcus Civin, Alex Ebstein, and Max Guy. It was released on September 17 at the New York Art Book Fair and will be available for reading at the Open Space White Box Library in front of 512 W. Franklin Street, Baltimore, MD 21202 from September 26-November 26. You can also purchase it for $10+s/h by contacting us here.

Another new release is the anthologized Fall 2015, vol. 1 no.1 edition of Post-Office Arts Journal. There are about 30 left of the physical edition of 100 that were printed and they will be available for free at bb and Open Space events in limited quantities. Please email us if you would like to specially request a reserved copy. We now will host pdfs of these in the future in our nav bar at post-office.tk, click here.

Lastly, we have a new partnership with Temporary Art Review that we will be entering into this month! Temporary Art Review explores alternative and artist-run art spaces in a growing network of regional communities. Each month on Post-Office, one piece of writing from our authors will be sponsored by Temporary and co-published by both of our sites. We’re looking forward to it. <3

As always, we encourage submissions and new writers. Please reach out if you would like to get involved here!

Arts Criticism and The Arts Outpost was a panel discussion at PMFVI on March 28, 2015 that featured panelists Alex Ebstein, Max Guy, and Marcus Civin speaking with moderator Colin Alexander about the complications of criticality in non-capital arts communities.

by daniel greenberg

To safely light one’s hand on fire, first apply a sodium polyacrylate polymer. While water would run right off one’s hand, the polymer holds large amounts of water in gel form, protecting the skin from the flame. The promotional image for Watching Things Burn depicts a hand lit on fire using this method. The show’s poster, coupled with the title, tells me much about what I should expect to see: controlled chaos, staged fire, and the intensity of heat both with and without the burn.

Izabelle New’s candle and wax works are the most immediate reference to the show’s title. New’s cast apple and asparagus candles are scattered throughout the exhibition and were burned during the opening reception. No longer lit, the wax is frozen in action as it puddles, drips, and spills out onto the floor. Most noticeably, at the entrance, a wax candle is melted down to an indistinguishable mound of goo, while its handsome counterpart—a candle asparagus, titled for Julian—stands upright across the room. The potential of the candle is to melt away.

Unlike the candles, New’s work near the gallery entrance is concerned with preservation, rather than entropy. Fully bloomed chives covered in wax rest on a windowsill. Tension is placed on a single flower that has fallen off its bloom. The title of the work, your laughter comforts the dead, is a line from the poem A Tree Within by Octavio Paz. Paz uses the tree as a metaphor for the mind and spirit, which both grow and die—“born in the memory of an old women/ and you turn it into a flaming carnation.”

Jason Benson’s Untitled works share (but complicate) this notion of preservation. Clear tubes mounted with plumbing hardware contain paper with printed notes, moss, plant debris, and piss-yellow resin. The notes on paper are preserved in a staged temporality with resin bubbled in faux movement and plant debris that suggest rather then show natural growth from the enclosed notes.

With the tubes mounted flat against the wall, only sections of the printed notes are legible. One note reads, “Natural_Born_Killers Directors_Cut_ [1994].” The referenced film is a dark comedy about two murderers and lovers who are glorified by the mass media. Predating the popularity of reality tv, Gale, a tabloid journalist follows the couple for a show called American Maniacs. Gale gives a live television report as Mickey confessed to his crimes followed by a prison break in which people are beaten and killed. Now it is common for mass murders to use social media to confess and elaborate on their crimes. Take for instance Randy Janzen, who posted on facebook after killing his wife, sister, and daughter, “Rest in piece my little family. Love Daddio.”

Another piece of visible text in Jason Benson’s tubes, “You: fruit / flesh combination” points me back to New’s candles, reinforcing bodily connotations. Though these two works are formally disparate, they couple nicely.

If Izabelle New’s work embodies the show’s reacurring motif—the potential to burn, melt away, and unbecome—Sydney Shen’s and COBRA’s works sets the tone. Placed adjacent from each other they sing in disharmony.  Sydney Shen’s three works titled Lament Config. consist of metronomes inside of 3d printed boxes rotating on a mirrored platform. Each metronome beats at its own pace, displayed at three different heights. The work points to theatricality, performance, and musicality. The title Lament Config., comes from a fictional puzzle box popularized by the Hellraiser movie series. In the film, solving the puzzle box transports you to a demonic dimension, a place of endless pain and suffering. This is precisely where I am transported viewing COBRA’s video The Future is Wild – CRY CRY CRY -. In the video, a clown whimpers, ranging from a light sobbing to a theatrical hyperventilating cry. Equally exaggerated are the clown’s features, including overdrawn lips, eyebrows, and a prosthetic nose. The two works sing together. The metronomes keep time, and the clown cries eternally.

The most intense piece in the exhibition is Zachary Susskind’s Malcolm X Blvd, a flattened shoe that sits in the middle of the second room in the gallery space. The shoe is as flat as the floor with its shoelaces sprawled out like limbs from a chalk outline in a crime scene. The work is poetic and requires little explanation.

Alex Perweiler and Chloe Maratta’s works are the most disjointed of the show, but relate to the blurb released by Springsteen, which addressed the show as addressing “the modes of measuring performance through varying media.” Both works imply a performance.

Alex Perweiler’s work Role, an 8 x 10 headshot of the artist, feels too close to David Robbins’ work Talent to be a mere coincidence. Talent consists of eighteen 8 by 10 headshots of (now) well-known artists including Jenny Holzer, Cindy Sherman, and Jeff Koons. In an interview with Susan Morgan, David Robbins stated he chose talent as the title because, “Artists [… are] people involved with difficult intellectual, political, and moral stances, and on the other hand, they are public figures who function as entertainers.” Perweiler’s piece, made nearly thirty years after the original, asserts that the role of entertainer now overshadows any other artistic purpose.

Chloe Maratta’s D.I. dress is an artifact of a character and performance that is never seen. The dress is white, hand sewn, screen-printed, and smudged with a grey residue. A badge with the numbers “88” is sewn to the back of the dress. The work is too cryptic for me to understand or to relate to other works in the show.

by joseph shaikewitz

In her recently closed show with ICA Baltimore at Gallery CA, Angela Conant investigates a curious relationship with color. As the exhibition title “Deuteranope” clinically asserts, the presentation of paintings, sculptures, video, and installation peruses the condition of colorblindness through visual and performative manifestations. In this theoretical starting point alone, the writing of Clement Greenberg, the grandfather of formalism, immediately swarms my mind: is this a formalist exploration of color’s relationship to human vision? I resist this notion and, at times, Conant does too; in fact, it is in these sparse moments of rebellion that the exhibition stands out with a vibrant and inspired potential.

“Deuteranope” is unabashedly ambitious in its thorough approach to the sensory reception of color. A large-scale video projection (Color Cast, 2015) offers an ongoing soundtrack of the exhibition’s thematic linchpin as four actors, including the artist herself, define the visual phenomenon of color and feebly attempt to explain various hues through spoken language. Seated as newscasters, the performers parody the feigned objectivity of the media when confronted with a complex and subjective headline such as color. While the work at times nears too literal an approach to the overarching subject at hand, its saving grace comes in the uncanny and dry delivery of dialogue, sporadically reminding viewers of the intricacies of visual perception as they explore neighboring works.

A scattered series of paintings chiefly paired in diptychs (Human Gesture Paintings 1-5, 2015) is alive with formal interest but, when taken at face value, remains conceptually underwhelming. Each work treats a simple, gestural mark with careful dabs of pigment and consequently reads as sculptural and tactile rather than a hackneyed expressionist swath of oil paint. Conant conceives of the works in sets: one in bright pinks and purples over a field of flat green, the other in muted earth tones over a deep black ground. Through the latter, the artist intends to replicate the range of colors perceptible by those with red-green colorblindness. While I appreciate that Conant appears to ‘get to the point’ through these images, once again I remain unconvinced by the namesake premise of the exhibition. In other words, why are we supposed to be thinking about colorblindness now?

This is not to say that the exhibition completely misses the mark. Where Conant stands out and ultimately excels is in her conception of a transmedia practice that situates painting and sculpture in a refreshingly dynamic relationship; emblematic traits of painting inform the creation of the sculptures, and vice versa. The image of each Human Gesture Painting, for instance, finds a three-dimensional, wall-mounted analog rendered in a coarse mass of plaster and sand (Human Gesture Series, 2015). Three sweeping forms appear tucked away beneath an imposingly low window while others fully occupy a dark gallery-within-the-gallery and receive intoxicating washes of red and green light. The simple starting point of the gestural brushstroke not only motivates the shape of each sculpture, but is itself disrupted as the paintings resolutely and attentively render the contours of a carefree flick of the wrist.  The sheer muddling of the processes behind each artistic format revives what might otherwise be a conceptually wanting show and leaves me yearning for more of this rich transmedia experimentation.

by bailey sheehan

Longing For Leisure features work of London based artists Alex Brenchley, Lauren Godfrey, Nicholas Hatfull, and Alec Kronacker and was curated by Seán Boylan.

Leisure-longing is an endeavor known by little, as it is rarely intersected with an art viewing encounter. Phenomenology, being of awareness, could be perceived as boring (possibly even more boring through its acknowledgment) though whoever it was that said that boring is counter-effective should, in this instance, reconsider. Painting is as useful as is standing in a shower until the water runs cold or stirring pasta until the water comes to a boil on its own (I mean this in the best of ways). A realization has to be made at some point down the road. Leisure as a tool for non-literal thought posits an intuitive breakthrough that these four artists have laid their collective finger on.

Upon entering Longing for Leisure, it is easy to find yourself dissatisfied with the lack of imagery with which you are presented. One sees a few larger-scale (around 4x5’) paintings to the left and back-left, a smaller-scaled work and a few vinyl prints next to and in the front two window displays. Leaving the gallery, what I can remember most of the show is that much of the work was spaghetti themed and that there was a large painting of a man who is also a ship, smoking a cigarette. In the center of the space sits an enlarged, navy coffee lid with stirrers (all produced with a CNC mill). Lastly, one is to pick up a poetic gallery text accompanied with a list of the artists and their respective works.

This poetic preface to the exhibition is important in its failure to spark any ‘interest’ on the readers’ part. One observes the space and then, confused, turns to the text to attempt to put a name to an image. We read the preface and finish, perhaps maybe even more unaided in answering the question ‘what is this about?’

Maybe we knew the answer to that question and then we forgot it, and now, at this exhibition, we are trying to remember it. In considering ‘remembrance’ and ‘awareness’, we have lost touch just as the person (who is described in the short story in the gallery text) could not remember the note inscribed on the ripped piece of paper they lost between pants transfers (even though it was of most importance to them).

A risk is being taken in that this show walks a very fine line between being ‘interesting because it is seemingly boring’, or just being ‘boring in and of itself.’ I am trying to remember what exactly it was that I saw in the show and why I found it so fascinating, but it is escaping me. This isn’t necessarily detrimental to the show as much as it is a merit to its execution; its comfort in being forgettable. The show allows itself to become a backdrop and reemerges when I’m in the shower, or cooking pasta. I think that is especially beautiful.  

When trying to remember some thing, the more effort one exerts in remembering, the more the Thing escapes them. The inversion of this would be: the thing is most likely to present itself when we are not trying to remember or put our finger on it.

The moment we enter Longing for Leisure, we experience neither side of this coin but perhaps something between. We enter expecting to realize the thing that we have not yet realized. This prospective realization is unable to actualize itself through our concurrent attempts to grasp this thing. e.g. By attempting to remember the name of an actor, the further the name seems to drift to the back of your head; you realize that you need to not think of the search for the name in order for the name to naturally re-emerge.

At Longing, for Leisure, we have been assigned the task of the I can’t remember, which posits as much of a question as it does an answer (through it being the answer to a different question than the original one (what is this show all about?), and that same answer owing its Aha!-moment from the original question itself). To jump off the diving board harder is to only be drawn further into the enigma to which this show is presenting to us. Perhaps one would have to sit around and drink beer until one remembers.

by allie linn

Though it is unusual to see Springsteen’s lights dimmed during open hours, the current exhibition by Flannery Silva opts for a muted darkness and curtained-off front window to house its collection of digitally collaged posters, ceramic figures and ballet barres, and embroidered banners. Moving away from the net-ready, pristine shows Springsteen has consistently curated, Youth Dew offers a selection of carefully crafted and often times peculiar artifacts that feel like a secret or whisper offered by the artist and necessitate being explored in-person to fully resonate.

That said, navigating the space is much like navigating Silva’s diaristically structured website: a labyrinth of images and links fusing fragments of Little House on the Prairie, Little Women, and The Glass Menagerie among others. The characters from these stories seem to act as surrogates for the artist, and Silva shape-shifts between roles in Youth Dew, merging her own hand with the likeness of Laura Ingalls, ballerinas, and Precious Moments dolls. Silva’s interest in these childhood depictions of girlhood surpass nostalgia and border on obsession/fixation, making it difficult to distinguish the boundary between fact and fiction, performance and reality. Simultaneously imbued with tenderness and threat, Youth Dew blends young naiveté of melancholic reminiscence with something more sinister.

Akin to a crime scene, or perhaps the opening montage of a crime television drama, small vignettes of fabricated ballet barres, footprints indicating ballet positions, and spilled baby bottles lay on the ground untouched, softly lit in the otherwise darkened room. In one corner, a grey and black wooden cutout of a simplified, featureless figure in a bonnet hangs from white rope. It is unclear whether her hands are bound or she is innocently swinging. On the opposite wall, a triangle of fabric machine-embroidered with a poem hangs by two oversized hair clips. Splotches of juice or dye allow the white-on-white text to emerge more clearly, revealing collections of phrases both light-hearted (“a feeling i only want to poke with a stick”; “qUiLt TiL u WiLt”) and more threatening (“Drawers Hiked, Ode To Bloomers/ milk-teeth missing, lips bee-stung, nipples swell/nothingness for baby”). Throughout the gallery, hands are bound, faces are obscured, and shapes reminiscent of tears and flower petals litter the ground.

The exaggerated sadness of Silva’s arrangements references the performance work of Laurel Nakadate, while ties to artists Bunny Rogers and collaborative partner Filip Olszewski emerge in the imagery and content on display as well. Recently highlighted in Joanna Fateman’s article “Women on the Verge: Art, Feminism and Social Media” (Artforum, April 2015), Rogers employs a similar language as Silva, combining found text, crafted objects and websites, and appropriated imagery to explore cybermythology and child sexuality. Probably the most disturbing yet all-encompassing phrase cited in Fateman’s article is lifted from a poem of Rogers’: “Adorability is fuckability / because children are adorable/ and men want to fuck children/ Acknowledge or die wow/ You are dead to me.”

And there is something mildly disturbing about encountering so many characters and figurines intended for a young audience in Silva’s show, although this exploration of the uncomfortable intersection between trauma and innocence remains intriguing in its taboo without ever becoming overly didactic. Moments where these two subjects merge, as in the image of a young toddler crawling on all fours, cradled by the words, “This little country girl is all ready to be hung from your tree,” become the keystones for Youth Dew. Not explicitly erotic or violent, but certainly interpretive as such, these works provide only murmurs of their histories. Even the show’s title offers liberal interpretation, simultaneously referencing infancy, spring, freshness, perfume, perspiration, a water drop emoji, and a tear.

by colin alexander

Colin Foster and Torey Thornton show collaborative work as well as individual work in the current exhibition at Freddy Gallery, Rigor Raging Rigger. On entering, the compact space is crowded by a large floor pedestal that supports a sci-fi acrylic and wood table. On the table, a variety of objects sample one substance for this, another substance for that, forming an array of shapes that seem to have neither history nor future. To the left, a large red transparent vinyl covers the front window.

A few wall pieces by Thornton experiment with the context of OLD WOOD (which, in the context of particle board and depicted gum in one piece, I can’t help but think of as a sign increasingly owned by yuppie food establishments). A blue, “+” shaped cardboard collage is forgettable/unnervingly tidy in the mad (material) scientist atmosphere that everything else works to establish. Foster’s pieces each seem to embed some sort of overwhelmingly human narrative within their otherwise industrial/analog electronic Hobby Hell aesthetic.

The link between these practices seems to stem from a material dissonance — an ambivalence towards just how comfortable both might be with the found and manipulated material vernacular available. I see a sort of flattened timeline of cutting edge and antique materials, of natural and unnatural qualities forced to interact outside of their themes. Where Thornton’s work remains relatively sober, Foster’s work feels erratic and difficult to parse.

Though Top Ribbon (Disturbed Mono) by Thornton and Selling Shoes on the Beach by Foster are both non-collaborative, they mark where the artists most closely brush shoulders in practice. They seem to be the strongest pieces in the show in their ability to point to that link (a squished material timeline) and employ the separate strengths of each artist’s practice.

That the gallery text and title offer a roll of possible labels that function more as phonetic textures (pick your poison: beatnik poetic, summer camp icebreaker, dada, hashtag list?) than as specific descriptors is a nice coupling for work that relies so heavily on the physicality of objects.

As a collaboration, Rigor Raging Rigger is a treat to explore even with the few pieces that seem engaged in a different conversation. Thornton’s blue “+” still seems unfitting here, but the formal effort to match it (or to be matched by?) Foster’s large red vinyl window highlights the conscious efforts of the two to commit to the sort of material choreography that ultimately holds the show together. Perhaps a second collaboration is the stage for further grace in that dance—I’d be curious to see it.

by chris williford

breathe in gold light is a current exhibition at New Door Creative gallery in the Station North neighborhood. Curated by MICA Curatorial Practice MFA student Kelly Johnson, breathe in gold light creates a comfortable, dream-like oasis in which women’s bodies are observed as sacred temples: “sites” rather than objective destinations. For her thesis exhibition, the culmination of two years of rigorous collaborative work, Kelly was concerned with commenting on the gender-based hierarchies that still rigidly define the discourse of contemporary art as we know it. A light in itself, this timely exhibition—spanning painted, sculptural and performative works by exclusively local female artists—sheds new (gold) light upon spirituality’s role in a woman’s process of creating.

Walking into the space, I am instantly soothed by the dimly lit entryway that smells of decades earlier, when it was built. Red brick walls line a majority of the exhibition space, a gorgeous historic feature that supports Kelly’s interests as a curator concerned with re-contextualizing the gallery as a livable, breathable, space through which to view works. As Kelly explained, there are three visual motifs that can be interpreted from the exhibition: portraits, scenes of partnerships and scenes of group exchange, all equally powerful manifestations of female autonomy.

Looking around the first gallery, my eyes wander from Mequitta Ahuja’s Dream Sequence: Winged II to the tarnished surfaces of Rachel Rotenberg’s large wooden sculpture. On vellum, a painted composition reads as an ancient scroll on which Ahuja depicts a woman towering over a pastoral village. In the image, the figure exists not just as fearless woman but also as goddess; feathered wings extend out from underneath this protagonist, whose gesture already embodies a feeling of empowerment. Across the way, Rotenberg’s poetically rendered forms in Elizabeth echo the holistic sensibility of Johnson’s exhibition: a sum of parts that reference a larger whole. The twelve Mid-Atlantic artists in the exhibition demonstrate the criticality of representation within their given mediums, all or most of which have been commercially dominated by white, male artists throughout history. Evidently, there is strength in numbers as breathe in gold light surveys a vast landscape of cultural traditions and personal histories.

As I spoke with Johnson, I gained more insight about the mechanics of the exhibition. She displays a layered consideration for museum and gallery conventions in her minimal use of signage. For breathe in gold light, she feels, the signage and otherwise curatorial jargon had the potential to be too intrusive to the overall inclusionary nature of the exhibition. As a curator, she is more concerned with staging the variety of messages inside these works rather than musing further on their material components. By encouraging us to look beyond an artwork’s physical makeup, Johnson subverts the Modernist impulse to obsess over craft in favor of a more accessible conversation of imagery. Hourglasses were placed throughout the exhibition so that the viewer could meditate alongside artworks to gain perhaps deeper understandings of them. Another critical position on homogenized gallery culture, these signs explained that the average gallery viewer spends an average of six seconds looking at an individual artwork. Here, Johnson takes a political stance on the immediacy of contemporary artworks, giving works with allegorical or narrative structure time to shine in breathe in gold light.

Outside the gallery space is a painted labyrinth by Sandra Wasko-Flood. Visible from the St. Paul Street entrance, Goddess of the Universe Labyrinth was commissioned specifically for the exhibition. For thousands of years, these ornately designed mazes have been used to promote peace through wandering and meditation. Furthermore, non-profit organization Living Labyrinths for Peace says that walking a labyrinth can help balance the creative and analytical polarities of your brain. As I traversed through the golden labyrinth with a group of others, I became more aware of my body and also of the bodies sweeping past me, our individual energies fusing into a collaborative activation of the site-specific piece. The mission of the labyrinth echoes that of breathe in gold light in that it simultaneously suggests a venue for individual reflection in the context of a larger community.

This depiction of individual reflection is most thoughtfully articulated in the work of Cynthu Muthusamy, the single performative work in the exhibition. In her 2014 piece Soil, Soul, Society, the artist ritualistically creates patterns known as kolam, Hindu symbols that altogether represent creation, destruction and the wavering obstacles one must overcome in life. Muthusamy’s background in printmaking at MICA directly informs the graphic marks she imposes on the street outside her home in Baltimore. As the sun rises in the video, we are again reminded of gold light - and more importantly of the time we are given to breathe it all in.

breathe in gold light will continue its programming at New Door Creative, located at 1601 St. Paul Street, through May 19, 2015, with several workshops scheduled before closing.

Peace to Marilyn Mosby, Nick Mosby, Carl Stokes, No Boundaries Coalition, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, Joseph Kent, the Gray Family, Baltimore’s community leaders, Elijah Cummings, and everyone for being out there. Only the beginning!