#psu mfa

Oh BTW I graduated already.

Nonetheless, I plan on maintaining this blog and continue to workshop ideas on here.

The PSU School of Art + Design – MFA in Contemporary Art Practice – Studio Practice – Graduate Exhibition

Opening reception: Saturday, June 7, 2014, 6-11 p.m.  @ ROCKSBOXCONTEMPORARYFINEART

Featuring:

Perry Doane

Mark Martinez

Kaila Farrell-Smith

Isaac Fletcher Weiss

Wesley Petersen

Sergei Tcherepnin is a classically-trained, NYC composer who uses a variety of non-traditional musical instruments and techniques to make his sounds. When Sergei visited my MFA studio he spoke of how meaningless the term “experimental” has become- much like the word “weird”- it could be referring to anything, not necessarily the underground sounds Sergei aspires to make. When I asked him how he would like to be labelled, he began talking about his process to make sounds queer. This was during a discussion where I explained that my art studio is becoming queer and, much like Sergei’s music, is in desperate need of a conceptual coming out party! Sergei’s music is impossible to classify or describe, as well as impossible to capture on record; it’s meant to be seen, felt AND heard.

(Massage Performances (Music). 2012. Mixed media sound installation at Karma International, Zurich. Photo: Marina Leuenberger)

While Sergei was vague in describing what he meant by “queering sounds,” I asked him during his MFA lecture at PSU if he could give any examples or describe any breakthroughs he’s had as he finds out what “queering sounds,” means to him. He said that if one takes a musical instrument and plays it in someway that isn’t traditional, that that sound can be queer. Perhaps referencing the male sexual organs (or female) being used not as it were intended (by God, Biology, Government) - in a homosexual act. This all makes sense when you realize how Sergei likes to perform, or what instruments he prefers to use and assemble when playing music. In a November 28, 2012, New York Times music review titled, “I Hear, and Become, the Body Electric,” Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim describes Sergei’s six-channel composition, which he played through the body of the listener, at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn: “Mr. Tcherepnin played through my body by means of electric impulses sent through a blanket-covered platform I lay on, as well as through four electrodes. Two of these I held against my chest and abdomen while he moved the other two around my head.”

(Motor Matter Bench. 2013. Wooden subway bench, transducers, amplifier, HD media player. Unique. Image courtesy Murray Guy, New York)

It was recently announced that Sergei would present at the next Whitney Biennial, the last that will take place in Whitney Museum’s current location, before it is demolished. Sergei plans to use the elaborate lighting panels in the foyer to make music. Essentially, Sergei plans to make all of the Museum queer, permeating with his impossible sounds. Sergei also presented at MoMA’s first exhibit dedicated to sound artists- he literally brought in old, wooden subway benches to be his musical instrument, or sound source- using tranducers, amplifier and HD media player. My favorite piece however, at least visually since I wasn’t able to experience any of these performances in person- is Sergei’s Pied Piper, Part 1, 2012, a mixed media sound installation at Audio Visual Arts in NYC. There’s something very queer about the arrangement of metal boxed musical instruments, separated by a bright, blue door- and named Pied Piper! A character that Sergei has performed as again and again, though at the MFA Lecture he asked, “I’ve only been doing it a few years but is it old?”

(Pied Piper, Part 1. 2012. Mixed media sound installation at Audio Visual Arts, New York. Photo: Justin Luke)

Writing a new artist statement can be a difficult task, there are whole college courses out there on the subject. My experience in writing is in the field of journalism, literature, theater and film.  Much like my live and visual art- I enjoy writing with honesty and a little bit of theater and flare.

(Vanessa Beecroft, VB 35, 1998. Solomon R. Guggenheim. vb35.079.vb. Photograph by Vanessa Beecroft.)

I never quite understood the overt sexual objectification in the work of performance artist Vanessa Beecroft. Much like the work of Matthew Barney, I often find myself bored by art that is surpassed in terms of actual tension and sexual energy by pornographic billboards on the highways of my hometown of Las Vegas. Is her art supposed to matter more because it’s in a gallery? Because all the woman are naked? Because as an audience member I’m surrounded by rich socialites dressed in clothes that often cost more than everything I own? These thoughts are emphasized by the fact that when I lived in Manhattan, I only heard about her performance at Guggenheim from my most well-off friends at art school. “It was so cool, nobody knew WHAT was going on- including the models who looked.. emaciated, beautiful, bored, naked..” I was always annoyed by this work, even when real military men (such as in her performance at the Whitney Biennial in 1999) were used in place of women.

(Vanessa Beecroft, VB 39: U.S. Navy SEALS, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, digital chromogenic print, 1999)

Of course, leave it to my ex-UNLV Professor, Dave Hickey- as well as underground LA conceptual drag artist, Vaginal Davis- to school me on what I was missing. Within her book, Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (2006)- in a Chapter entitled, “White Sex: Vaginal Davis Does Vanessa Beecroft,” Jennifer Doyle discusses this realization at length. She speaks of David Hickey’s essay, “Vanessa Beecroft’s Painted Ladies,” where Hickey explains his reaction to seeing Beecroft’s performance in person, “Our anxiety, then, does not arise from the fact that naked women are near to us, but from the unabridged, yet ill-defined distance between ourselves and them. It is not the anxiety of desire, but the anxiety of displacement.” The anxiety of Beecroft’s performance is highlighted by the fact that she is both a performance artist that isn’t in her work- and a performance artist that has permeated the elite artist world- having consecutive shows from Guggenheim to an exclusive gallery in Beverly Hills.

(Vaginal Davis. Photo by Rick Castro.)

But what happens when a similar performance is “recreated” by a conceptual drag queen that performs at queer parties and gay bars of Los Angeles- not Beverly Hills? In a performance at a gay bar, Vaginal Davis- often described as “Amazonian”- not only repeats Beecrofts gallery show- but promises to perform AS Vanessa Beecroft- whose a petite, Italian blonde- perhaps the polar opposite of the Black and Mexican-American Davis. Davis appears on stage dressed as Beecroft- proclaiming over-and-over that she (Vanessa Beecroft) was asked to present at the Whitney Biennial- a fact that confused the audience who thought Davis was speaking for her actual self. Doyle proclaims, “Art, as understood by Davis in her citation of Beecroft, is a form of class warfare.” This statement is highlighted by the fact that most of the people at her LA performance were said to not know who Beecroft was- this was the first time many of the gay men and women (who probably don’t go to Beverly Hills galleries) heard of her.

("Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Care" Photo by Loria de Haven.)

In Vaginal Davis' 2000 queer burlesque and performance entitled, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Care", the audience was promised that a real-life marine was going to ejaculate on them- as both Kenneth Anger videotaped him AND dozens of men and women half-dressed in military attire, half-dressed in jock straps and underwear, stood on the stage looking at the audience- in a "Guggenheimy Bikini Show." But the marine had “trouble” performing, and never quite got hard even as one of the men “vigorously” gave him head. Doyle explains, “His failure to perform exposed our investment in the discovery of military culture as pornographic fantasy.” I could see myself being angry at both Beecroft and Davis’ performances- what did I just pay for? I wasn’t ejaculated on as promised! But of course, if I could spout that last sentence I would everyday for the rest of my life. Perhaps I should have taken the opportunity to see Beecroft’s performances back when they were accessible to me, in much the same way that I would absolutely kill to see ALL of Davis’ underground performances.

Pieces are piling up!

I dropped off 17 steel pieces off at the powder coaters this morning. I'm cranking away on several sculptural pieces made from styrofoam and bondo. Rene is building me a wall and two plinths. I'm working on getting some pedestals built and still need to print some wallpaper. 

Saying Wavy - process