Another (digital) take on Robert Frank's, The Americans

I was just made aware of what I believe is a new project by Sherwin Tibayan based on The Americans via In the In-Between blog.  I'm initially pretty interested in this project, but with a bit of hesitation.  I did especially enjoy reading the artist's narrative discussing their very personal experience with Frank's seminal book. 

Image Credit:  Sherwin Tibayan (sourced from In the In-Between)

I'll have to come back to it to see whether my thoughts change, as they have regarding Mishka Henner's rendition (I've grown much fonder of these spare, abstractions over time - they remain true to the quiet, lonely quality or the originals, in many ways).

Image Credit:  Mishka Henner (sourced via mishkahenner.com)

Richard Tuschman's Hopper Meditations

There's been a bit of a lull here, but time to get posting items of interest again as I've got a brand new batch of fantastic students for the spring semester. Photo II students might find particular interest in this series by Richard Tuschmann, as it relates so nicely to their first assignment exploring color, light and narrative.  

From the series, Hopper Meditations by Richard Tuschman (image sourced from Explorers.com)

I came across these images yesterday when they come through my newsfeed via the Art Photo Index (a great resource).  I was immediately captivated by Tuschmann's take on Edward Hopper's painterly style - although, after a more prolonged look, I'm not sure how I feel about the somewhat pictorialist strategy employed, which seems to be unnecessarily used.  The selective focus (or post-processing blur?) calls too much attention to itself and the grainy quality reads as a bit of heavy-handed filter use (it could indeed be scanned film grain, but I'm noticing it in a way that makes it a bit distracting to me).

Overall, they just seem a bit too "arted up."  I recognize that Tuschmann is deliberately aligning these works with paintings, but for me they may be stronger without all the extra, stylistic artifice (the fabricated scenes, set design, positioning of figures and theatrical lighting in and of themselves are where the strength of the work really seems to lie).

Speaking of narrative(s)....

Two pretty interesting exhibition press releases came across my desk today from E-flux.  Worth a glance, to be sure.

Kelani Abass, Olori Nlado, from the “Calendar” series, 2013. Corrugated cardboard, laminated print & acrylic on canvas, 99 cm x 122 cm. Courtesy the artist.

Kelani Abass
Àsìkò: Evoking Personal Narratives and Collective History
www.ccalagos.org

Huseyin Bahri Alptekin, Self-Heterotopia, Catching Up with Self, 2009. Photo: Peter Cox.

Once Upon a Time… The Collection Now
www.vanabbemuseum.nl

Video/Photo Exhibition in Germany Explores Constructions of Self/Identity

Johanna Reich, Kassandra, 2008. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2013. Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt.

Per Speculum Me Video

Frankfurter Kunstverein

www.fkv.de

A press release on e-flux describes the exhibition as bringing together,

"works by nine artists who explore the construction of the self in contemporary video art and photography. Sounding like a long-forgotten magical spell, the Latin title of the exhibition underscores that self-perception and the development of the ego are coupled with the recognition of one’s own image in the mirror.

Closed-circuit installations and self-portraits have always played a central role throughout the 50-year history of video art, as a reflection on the standpoint of the viewer or as an epistemic question of identity. Today, the daily production and dissemination of moving self-portraits have become the norm in everyday life and in social networks. As a result, new questions have emerged for many video artists surrounding the visual constitution of a subject or its counterpart as well as the perception of the self in a moving image. The exhibited art works therefore offer deciphering gazes at the self and its mirror image."

Participating artists: Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Martin Brand, Manuela Kasemir, Sabine Marte, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Barbara Probst, Johanna Reich, Eva Weingärtner and Gilda Weller

Curated by Holger Kube Ventura

The exhibition is part of the B3 Parcours.

Rebecca Norris Webb @ Southeast Museum of Photography

Rebecca Norriw Webb, Badlands

REBECCA NORRIS WEBB
My Dakota

"In 2005, I set out to photograph my home state of South Dakota, a sparsely populated frontier state on the Great Plains with more buffalo, pronghorn, coyotes, mule deer, ring-necked pheasants, and prairie dogs than people. It's a landscape dominated by space and silence and solitude, by brutal wind and extreme weather. I was trying to capture a more intimate and personal view of the West. I was trying to capture what all that space feels like to someone who grew up there. A year into the project, however, everything changed. One of my brothers died unexpectedly. For months, one of the few things that eased my unsettled heart was the landscape of South Dakota. It seemed all I could do was drive through the badlands and prairies and photograph. I began to wonder: Does loss have its own geography?" - Rebecca Norris Webb
  
October 18, 2013 - February 2, 2014
 
Artist Talk, Book Signing and Opening Reception:
Friday, October 18, 6:00-8:00 pm

Southeast Museum of Photography  
1200 W. International Speedway Blvd.
Daytona Beach, FL 32114

Click HERE for more information.

50 Great Works of Video Art...

...that you can watch online.  I absolutely LOVE it when my students direct me to such useful spaces on the internet (thank you, Haley Bowen).  As the article says, "This collection should serve as a compact introduction to video art for anyone who’s uninitiated or a handy compilation for anyone who loves the medium but has some trouble finding the good stuff online."

Click HERE to access the page with video links.

Final post in fototazo's "How to Start a Project"

Mark Steinmetz

...and it's a good one.  Photographer Mark Steinmetz suggests that,

"people like to justify to themselves that the work they are doing is valid and it seems natural to use words to tell yourself that what you are doing is important and meaningful. But it’s important to not to too narrowly define what you’re doing through the use of language. People want to feel like they have a grip on things and so using words to make sense of what you’re doing might provide a feeling of relief and control but be careful you don’t make your project less interesting by having it fit neatly into a scheme of words. Images have a power that is different from the power of words and they communicate in ways that words cannot. In today’s culture, words dominate our thinking and, used in a lazy manner, they help sustain a spectrum of fundamentalist thought. Being able to accept ambiguity leads to a better quality of life and better work."

Click HERE to read the full essay.

Pipilotti Rist at Guangdong Times Museum in China

Mercy Mercy,Audio video installation,Music by：Heinz Rohrer,留涟 [Gentle Wave In Your Eye Fluid], Times Museum, Guangzhou, 2013,All works courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine New York

An excerpt from the announcement on e-flux describes the exhibition as follows:  

"The Guangdong Times Museum is situated on the top floor of a residential tower. Rist has abandoned the lofty, unreachable stance of the art museum, re-envisioning it as a medium for transmitting her spirit to the masses. She has penetrated the substantial space of the art museum, extending her art into the museum garden and into the lives of the museum’s neighbors, creating the outdoor installations Innocent Lanterns. She uses mischievous methods to insert strangeness into the everyday lives of local residents. This “strangeness” is like a mote in your eye, drawing your attention to another side of reality, showing you the danger beneath the glamor.

Rist has also devised the 75-meter-long installation Mercy Mercy especially for Guangdong Times Museum, as well as creating artworks with locally sourced materials, such as Relax Your Eyeball, made with locally collected glass lenses. These artworks are the results of her exploratory visit to Guangzhou last year. Guangdong Times Museum is on the outskirts of Guangzhou, where the city meets the country. It is a microcosm of Chinese urbanization. Through the museum space, Rist has inserted her woven Technicolor world into the complex, contradictory and vibrant Chinese social reality."

Click HERE to visit the museum website.

New Photography 2013 @ MOMA

Lisa Oppenheim, Man holding large camera photographing a cataclysmic event, possibly a volcano erupting, 1908/2012 (Tiled Version 3). 2012

Another interesting selection this year.  One of the first reviews is in The New York Times today, and MOMA has a separate website for the exhibition including short, audio clips with the artists speaking about their work.

Click HERE to read the review.
Click HERE to visit the exhibition website.

Fototazo's How to Start a Project Series

© Brian Ulrich, Marshall Fields, 2009

Another great addition to this series from artist Brian Ulrich.  An excerpt from his contribution is below:

"My advice to students is to work a lot and enjoy working. After a time the project will pick you. Work is also not just using the camera but researching, reading, asking questions, critiquing, etc. Practice. Improvisation. Evaluation. We call it work because it is not easy and doesn’t necessarily get easier. The reward of this is the many small and big discoveries that are outside of what one knows and what one would know by just thinking about it all. I am still amazed by how focus and fidelity can function; I still marvel when I discover something out in the world entirely indicative of the multi-layered moment we live in; at how psyches and expressions change over time."

Click HERE to read the full article.

Live Performance to be viewed on YouTube in Real Time

Nicoline van Harskamp, European English Exercise, 2013. Courtesy the artist.

BMW Tate Live: Performance Room 2013
With Nicoline van Harskamp, Ragnar Kjartansson and Daniel Linehan
19 September, 24 October and 12 December 2013 at 20h BST
Watch live online: www.tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive

BMW Tate Live: Performance Room is a pioneering programme of live performances commissioned and conceived exclusively for online viewing and simultaneously seen by international audiences across world time zones. 

Audiences are invited to enter the online Performance Room via www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive at 20h in the UK and exactly the same moment across time zones on the specified dates—15h on the East Coast of America, 21h in mainland Europe and 23h in Russia. 

Theatrical Fields

Interesting review of an exhibition of film/video incorporating performance.
"Theatrical Fields examines forms of artistic practice that make use of the theatrical in performance, film and video. Developed as a research project by the curator Ute Meta Bauer, Theatrical Fields explores the analytical and political potential of theatricality through various manifestations ranging from an exhibition to public presentations, film programme to a live performance."  From E-flux

Joan Jonas, Lines in the Sand, 2002. Commissioned by documenta 11. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Werner Maschmann.

The Carnegie International Opens in October

2013 Carnegie International opening weekend

October 4–6, 2013

www.carnegieinternational.org/opening

...among the artists, is Zoe Strauss -

Zoe Strauss, Blast Furnace Matriarchy, Braddock, PA, 2012, from the series Homesteading, a multifaceted collaborative project based in Homestead, PA, and an installation of photographic prints and video projections at Carnegie Museum of Art; Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by Carnegie Museum of Art for the 2013 Carnegie International

Magdalena Sole at The Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Magdalena Solé’s Mississippi Delta is a photographic exploration of the Delta communities in the Deep South, evoking visions of sharecroppers, plantations and the sound of the Blues. The area has a small wealthy gentry and a large impoverished underclass. What is little known outside the Delta is the warmth, resilience, community and family cohesiveness of its people. In 2012, Solé’s in-depth study of the region was published as "New Delta Rising" (The Dreyfus Health Foundation and University Press of Mississippi). (Click HERE for more info)

MAGDALENA SOLÉ
The Mississippi Delta

September 13 – December 15, 2013
Exhibition Opening Reception: Friday, September 13, 6:00-8:00pm
Artist's Talk, Book Signing and Reception: Friday, September 27, 6:00-8:00pm

4th Street and Issaquena, Clarksdale, MS, 2010

Video Art, Monitors and Boxes...

Came across this today on the blog Who Wore It Better (itself a fantastic archive of works by various artists that are aesthetically and/or conceptually similar, and sometimes reference or appropriate one another).  Had me thinking about our conversation in Intro to Video Art about the purposeful use of specific types of monitors to display moving image works.  Anyhow, here is the image:

Ben Schumacher Obelisk  ::  Ernst Caramelle Video Landcape