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A quick snapshot of what Dikeou Collection artists have been up to over the past month, and what to look forward to next month. 

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Devon Dikeou and zingmagazine Managing Editor, Brandon Johnson, will be in conversation at Dikeou Pop-Up: Colfax on November 9th for “X Marks the Spot: A History of zingmagazine, Artist-Run-Publishing, and the Future of Print” 

Devon Dikeou Studio and The Dikeou Collection

Devon Dikeou will be in conversation again the following week with “Mid-Career Smear” curator Cortney Lane Stell at The Dikeou Collection on November 18th for “What’s In-Between: Artist and Curator Conversation with Devon Dikeou and Cortney Lane Stell”

Johanna Jackson and Chris Johnson as photographed for The New York Times

Chris Johanson and his wife Johanna Jackson were recently featured in The New York Times article, “An Artist Couple Who Live Among the Furniture They Create”

Flyer artwork by Bree Dolan

Devon Dikeou and Brandon Johnson will have work exhibited at the is FAIR 20202021, co-curated by Dikeou Collection Director Hayley Richardson, opening at the Globeville Rec Center in Denver November 11-14

Illustration by Marcel Dzama from Between the Lines Coloring Book

Find Marcel Dzama’s drawings featured in Between the Lines Coloring Book from RxART

“Peace Bear with Chili Pepper” by Sarah Staton

Sarah Staton contributed a life-size bear sculpture to Bears of Sheffield charity auction

Lawrence Seward, “1989″ and Momoyo Torimitsu, “Business in New York” as represented in The Dikeou Collection

Lawrence Seward and Momoyo Torimitsu will both be featured in the 2022 Hawai’i Contemporary Triennial 

Anicka Yi, “In Love With The World,” image courtesy of Tate Modern

Anicka Yi talks about her new installation “In Love With The World” with The UK Standard, DPA, Vogue, and The Guardian

Chris Gilmour, “Ford” as represented in The Dikeou Collection

Mary Obering in her studio

On a recent visit to Mary Obering's home and studio, it felt like I was stepping into a movie set of another era, an era when artists occupied Soho’s industrial loft spaces to ply their trade and exchange ideas.

Mary's loft is a sprawling space with large plants and plenty of natural light, picture perfect in its representation of what I imagined life to be in 1970s and 1980s Soho. And that is perfectly fitting, as Mary Obering was in the thick of the scene in the 1970s, rubbing elbows and offering critique at dinners and studio gatherings with the now famous minimalist and conceptual artists who she also counted as neighbors.

I was invited to visit the artist within her domain to discuss her career and the current show on view at Marisa Newman Projects in Koreatown, “Mary Obering: Selected Works 1983-1987.”

The artist greeted me warmly in true southern style but with an openness that seemed to betray the behavior of a woman who was born in 1937 and bred into upper class southern society in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Mary found her way to Soho in the 1970s via Denver, Colorado where Carl Andre first saw her work in a group exhibition and suggested that with her talent she belonged in New York City. In this new environment, Obering embarked on a path of pure abstraction, influenced not only by painters such as Mark Rothko and Josef Albers, but also by what was happening around her - close friendships with Mary Hafif "she's a great painter," and Donald Judd “I really miss Don,” and other giants of this time.

In graduate school at Harvard, she studied Behavioral Psychology under B.F. Skinner. The scientific mindset and curiosity developed under Skinner later led to her interest in physics. While living an artist's life in Soho, she would also attend lectures on the subject and studied textbooks by Richard Feynman who created a widely adopted pictorial representation system for the mathematical expressions representing the behavior of subatomic particles, also known as Feynman diagrams.

Mary Obering, Analog, 1983

“Influenced by the movements of geometry and abstraction” these diagrams also caught Obering’s artist eye: “I was interested in that field and did a good bit of reading about it. I didn’t participate that actively in the area. But it interested me as an abstract and somewhat geometric art-maker, and those diagrams inspired me to do those works," "those works" being her “Event” paintings - two of which are included in the exhibition at Marisa Newman Projects, “Event, October” (1987) and “Muon Maker” (1987).

It seems natural for an abstract painter to find an affinity with scientific diagrams - each are distilling complex information into simpler forms for the sake of communication. These paintings of Obering’s, along with another series depicting abstract forms of the sun and moon, were part of a new development in the 1980s of engaging in the natural world. From the macrocosmic cycles of sun and moon, Obering goes beyond micro into the realms of the natural that are no longer observable without the assistance of highly sophisticated technology. To a realm where abstract schematics are necessary for human comprehension. This being right in her wheelhouse, Obering picks up on the formal nature of these abstract diagrams and with her painterly concerns elevates this mode of communication to high art, using her sense of color and training in gold-leafing to accentuate the action of molecular collision. The end results are honorific abstract paintings in homage to the fabric of life itself.

Mary Obering, Frasi Lunari I, 2004

Later on, after finishing in the studio, we traverse to the bedroom hallway where Obering shows me a series of paintings on paper from the early 2000s featuring the rising moon as observed from her kitchen window in Puglia, Italy (where she spends part of her year). It seems that her fascination with the natural world continues.

With a final farewell, and kind invitation from Obering to return again for a glass of wine, I’m off back onto the cobblestones of Wooster Street, head full of cosmic wonder and imagined scenarios from Mary’s extraordinary life in that loft.

A snapshot: Kevin is sitting under a Christmas tree in Munich holding a framed postcard. The Heinrich Hoffmann photo shows Adolf Hitler in profile looking into the light of candles enflamed on a Christmas tree. Intended as a contribution to gay and festive celebrations, the card is entitled "Deutsche Weihnacht". This man staring into open fire with relaxed features, just about to crack into a smile is an entirely cynical concept and in this sense the perfect ready made illustration for “Evil Camouflage.”

"Psychologists discover everything to be camouflage. It is then made clear how little these experts know of tanks." For the passage from France to England, Caesar invented the little green men, later in Scotland, at Birnam, the woods were taken for a walk, in short, human mimicry practiced in a terrain of military significance has had many literary and historical predecessors. Nevertheless, the technique of camouflage, as we know it, is a 20th century contribution to the history of warfare. It is the strategy of obscuring objects with the intention of deceiving the enemy. These objects can be subjected to the attempt to render them invisible within their given surrounding, or to make them appear as something, they are in fact not. Its invention is closely linked to Modernism. Seemingly, military camouflage, its patterns provided by Cubism, Vorticism, or Futurism applied, often in quite a dazzling way, is nothing but modern art put to use and practice.

As such, "Evil Camouflage" is yet another example of the abuse of warlike techniques for peacetime pastime activities. The artworks assembled for this project, as diverse in style and context as they may be, all employ some strategy of disguise, obscurity or deceit in their technique of communication. Against the background of the viewer's expectations, the appearance of an image or the nature of the presented topic might read as harmless or as pleasant. A closer look reveals that the story told has taken rather unexpected turns. In such a manner, "Evil Camouflage" gives room to trick and twist and make ironic. In its finest examples it offers a forum for the challenged states of mind or serves as a technique for insight and critique.

This project also takes into account the natural existence of camouflage. Even in nature, no one is safe. "There are predators everywhere. The possibility of discovery and of subsequent death provides the arena for the evolution of deceptive strategies." In the course of the following investigation into contemporary evolutionary practice, four arenas will be entered. "The Female" introduces mean kids, evil mothers and sexual desires. "The Body" is subject to mutations and mutilations. "Objects" will be introduced as the anticipation of casualties. And some "Suspicious Minds" reflect upon attitudes and politics.

—Adriaan von der Have & Rafael von Uslar

seminars/lectures (s/l) is an ongoing project of Rainer Ganahl’s – a series of photographs depicting education as a utopia, “a network of interconnecting tunnels with people gathering…for the sake of exchanging ideas.” In this series, Ganahl captures the side of education where classrooms are used to gather academic interest as a driving force for productivity in our society.

Without a doubt, education is essential for progress. This can be seen in political movements across history, where academic institutions are broken down for a tyrannical regime to gain control and undermine the power of individuals. Bessa gives the example of the military junta in Brazil in 1964, where their first deliberation was to close the Philosophy Department in all universities across the country. In Cambodia, during the genocide in the 20th century, educated people were the first to be killed, making it that much harder for the society to rebuild once the Khmer Rouge regime ended.

The images in seminars/lectures capture people in moments of preoccupation and intensity, focusing on whatever material is being presented to them. This content isn’t clear to us as viewers, suggested only by the title of the photographs. In Homi Bhabha, Whose Modernity Is It Anyway?, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 11/18/1997, two students are seen grappling with the lecture, both faced the same direction, focusing on the same thing. In the foreground, there is a pen in someone’s hand, another indication of a student actively listening. As viewers of these photographs, however, we aren’t forced to think about the specific content being taught. What we are being prompted to reflect on is people engaging, thinking critically – ultimately to be productive members of society, which is what the purpose of education is supposed to be.

  In a different way than the students, the lecturers are highlighted in the title of these pieces. Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Middle East Politics, Miller Theater, Columbia University, New York, 4/9/1999 singles out Noam Chomsky and Edward Said. They are placed on a platform, marked as people of importance who have something of value to teach, and the photos in the series reflect the significance of this type of individual. As such, seminars/lectures portrays this structure (often created by institutions), of an individual with somehow supreme knowledge which they are spreading to the masses. The important response from the students, which we are seeing in this series, is engagement which then leads to critical thinking. This is what results in “truly democratic” spaces, where ideas are exchanged in a utopian way.

But is education still functioning in this democratic way? Are people still gathering in classrooms as Ganahl depicts and fighting for “the ideals of humanism” (1)? I wonder if this exchange of ideas for the sake of academic interest is still the point – for both academic institutions as well the students attending them. Are these institutions more concerned with class and reputation than developing curiosity in their students? And are the students attending actively choosing to learn, or has school just become a means to an end?

How do we, as a society, fuel this passion so that it will culminate in ways similar to these moments captured in seminars/lectures? Ganahl shows the crucial aspect of education – how interest and passion act as a driving force for us as a society, but we must make sure students and people in general are learning to question as they learn, to debate and think critically. This craving for knowledge still exists and can be seen in socially and politically engaged people around the world, so we must find a way to make sure it’s given the appropriate outlets.

Think of a gallery not as a place for the exhibition of art (art-products, act-activity, art-processes, etc.) but as a condition for the exhibition of art. In other words: there doesn’t have to be a floor connected to walls which in turn are connected to a ceiling, making a box that the art has to fit into. But there might always be the possibility of a wall (in case, for example, a wall, or a section of a wall, was needed to hang a painting)—there might always be the possibility of a floor (in case, for example, a floor, or a section of a floor, was needed for a sculpture to stand on, or for a viewer to walk over). Think of a gallery, then, as a void, inside of which is the possibility/equipment/apparatus for showing art.

But this gallery will be an actual space, in a built building, in a real city; so the void has to be made palpable, tangible—it’s a void with boundaries, a void that’s separated from other spaces around it. This gallery, after all, will be inserted into a conventional New York building, into a rectilinear space on the ground floor that fronts the street. Make the void, then, out of the front wall.  Turn the front wall into something like fabric, like rubber, like skin. The façade breathes in now, the façade sucks itself in; it melts into a bulge, a blob, an ellipsoid that spills into the rectangle, and fills the rectangle.

Toward the street end of the gallery, the blob separates, the blob opens; it becomes a funnel that lets the city in. From the sidewalk, a strip of Toward the street end of the gallery, the blob separates, the blob opens; it becomes a funnel that lets the city in. From the sidewalk, a strip of concrete turns off and slips into the building; the sidewalk rises like a ramp, like a gangplank, to join with the bottom of the blob. As you walk down the street, you might follow the sidewalk inside, through the funnel, into the gallery.

The funnel opens into the exhibition space; there’s no door—an air-curtain separates inside from outside, and heats and cools the inside. You enter a space without corners; you’re in a curve that sweeps and swoops around you, you’re in the inside of a shell. The shell is translucent fiberglass, or molded plastic; it’s lit from behind, from the leftover space between the blob and the rectangular edges of the room—the exhibition space is a void of light. It’s a concavity of light; there are no walls, no ceiling, no floor yet (pretend you’re in this gallery before an exhibition begins).