“The Humans”, theatrical performance, directed by Alexandre Singh/choreography and assistant director Flora Sans/© Kate Lacey and Alexandre Singh, courtesy of Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Hello Meth Lab In The Sun artist, Alexandre Singh’s The Humans is currently up at Sprüth Magers, London.

From the gallery:

Alexandre Singh’s The Humans represents the culmination of years of study, writing, drawing and sculpting by the artist for the creation of a three act theatre play. Commissioned by Witte de With, Rotterdam, and Performa 13, New York, Singh’s story unfolds amid an allegorical landscape: a mountain rises centre stage separating the realms of Charles Ray, the pontifical Apollonian sculptor, and N, the silent, agile Dionysiac Rabbit Queen. Seeking to introduce chaos into an otherwise orderly cosmos,
Tophole, Charles Ray’s fretful son, and Pantalingua, N’s daughter and interpreter, plot to contaminate the sculptor’s perfect statues with the passions, desires and bodily functions of humans – cold stone made living flesh….

Following performances at the Rotterdamse Schouwburg and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the body of work presented at Sprüth Magers in London transforms the gallery into a theatre-cum-museum devoted to the universe of objects and characters depicted in The Humans. The gallery’s shop front windows provide a proscenium arch for the projection of a full-length film of a performance of The Humans. This theater-like space is outfitted with crimson curtains, confounding the distinction between stage and audience, actor and viewer.

The Humans will be on view until March 29,

If you missed Hubbard/Birchler’s Eight, Eighteen at the Linda Pace Foundation in October, you’re in luck! The video exhibition will be opening on February 15 at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York City; so be sure to see it before heading out to Marfa for the artists’ upcoming exhibition Sound Speed Marker at Ballroom.

From our previous blog post about Eight, Eighteen:

Eight, Eighteen consists of two films: Eight from 2001, which revolves around the birthday of an eight-year-old girl and Eighteen (2013), which follows the same subject, only 10 years later on her 18th birthday. Due to video looping, changing locations, and the non-linear and disjointed narrative present in both films, the viewer is forced to question what is fact and what is fiction, leading one to examine the larger theme at the core of Hubbard/Birchler’s work: the subtleties found in cinema’s components and within its history.

Eight, Eighteen opens on February 15 and closes March 15, 2014 at Tanya Bonakdar in NYC.
Sound Speed Marker will premiere on February 28th and the installation will run until July 31st,

Philip Guston, San Clemente, 1975. To commemorate its closing on February 2nd, we’re presenting this series of essays about the artists featured in Comic Future. Previously we looked at Walead Beshty and Arturo Herrera. In this final essay, Adam Helms offers an overview of the exhibition as a whole. Helms is a New York-based artist whose work was part of the Ballroom Marfa exhibitions You Are Here (2005) and Every Revolution is a Roll of the Dice (2007). Comic Future will travel to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio where it will be on view from May 17 through August 3, 2014. ——————————————– The Comic Presence After walking through the exhibition Comic Future, one work of art kept surfacing in my mind: Philip Guston’s San Clemente (1975), the grotesque lumbering caricature of Richard Nixon (fig. 1). In Guston’s later years, this single work (which metastasized into a painting from his drawing series From The Phlebitis Series (1975)) served as Guston’s vehicle for a gesture towards political satire, yet remained in keeping with his quasi-figurative language as a painter. Guston moved from his early years in the ’30s as a social realist into Abstract Expressionism; then finally to a mode of painting and draughtsmanship that incorporated personal narratives and symbols from within a cartoon or ‘comic’ figuration. The only painting of its kind in Guston’s oeuvre, San Clemente suggests that perhaps Guston had doubts about this particular piece. (1) Rather than the ambiguous identities of his Klansmen­ — or the heads, eyes and feet of his reoccurring figure subjects — this particular piece dealt with direct representation, Guston’s own anger and the politics of the time in which it was painted. San Clemente serves as Guston’s attempt to balance a work as both a history painting and a statement of political satire. In many ways, this Nixon cartoon caricature bridges the gap between Guston’s early social realist concerns — and politics — and the freedom he strove for as a painter breaking new ground rebelling in his departure from abstraction. For Guston’s intentions it straddles the issues of painting as much as it does political cartooning. Guston elevates the political and a mass cultural icon to the level of the sublime. It would be perhaps a form of alliteration to suggest that all of the artists in Comic Future directly reflect the bifurcation of Guston’s piece or intentions, but the spirit of San Clemente echoes throughout the exhibition. Beyond simply a selection of artists that deal with themes of ‘comic abstraction’ or even particular cultural references, Comic Future posits a multitude of questions surrounding political representation, archetypes and visual language, beauty and the grotesque and ultimately: painting and the materiality of objects through the prism of a ‘comical’ gesture. All of the artists represented here look to an appropriated and symbolic language to speak to the time and culture in which they find themselves and in which the works become a reflection or response. Though the intentions of individual artists may vary, the allure and levity of a visual comic language becomes a satirical and subversive conceptual strategy. Works on paper by Sigmar Polke, created between 1964-1969, All works courtesy of Michael Werner Gallery, New York and London, Photography © Fredrik Nilsen The grouping of Sigmar Polke’s 13 works on paper (1964-69), involves an abject and almost proletariat language of comic-like capitalist imagery. This period of Polke’s work was generated during the postwar years of reconstruction in Germany and “apart from their self-critical questionings of Polke’s identity, parodied a taste for the trivial fueled by the banalities of everyday German life in postwar years and ensuing “economic miracle” (2). Polke together with Gerhard Richter saw their work at this time as “Capitalist Realism”. Influenced as a reaction to American Pop, Polke’s works indicate an almost investigative approach towards what he and his colleagues at the time saw as the “authentic cultural phenomenon” of Pop in the imagery of both the mass media and economic system of the West towards an art making moving from the structures of the conventional art of the time (3). In these works Polke remains ensconced between the camp of a Dadaist-like subversion of consumerist imagery and an embracing the visual apparatus of a mass culture that he would help to elevate to ‘high art’.

Above: Extended Organ at Mike Kelley’s Mobile Homestead, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, November 2013. L to R: Paul McCarthy, Joe Potts, Tom Recchion, Fredrik Nilsen, Alex Stevens. Photo: Danny Gromfin, courtesy of East of Borneo.

If you were looking for a reason to attend Printed Matter’s L.A. Art Book Fair (other than the thousands of amazing printed material), look no further. Presented by East of Borneo and The Box, The Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), “the seminal West Coast experimental music collective”, will be performing at the book fair’s opening on Thursday, January 30.

The night begins at 6pm with improvised music by John Wiese and Ted Byrnes. At 7pm, Extended Organ, a band composed of long-time Ballroom photographer Fredrik Nilsen and Comic Future artist Paul McCarthy will take the stage. Extended Organ also contains sound recordings by another Comic Future artist, Mike Kelley, who was a long-time member of the band before his death in 2012.

Finally, Airway, a noise orchestra created by Joe Potts in 1977 will perform at 8. For this special event, Airway will be composed of 16 on-stage musicians (including Nilsen and friend of Ballroom and Mike-Kelley-installation-expert, Dani Tull) and will also be joined by “Team Airway Japan”,

Arturo Herrera’s 88 DIA (1998), photo by Lesley Brown.

To commemorate the closing of Comic Future on February 2nd, we are presenting a series of essays and readings about some of the artists and their work represented in the show. Previously, we featured Walead Beshty, and his 2012 work, Unmasking. In this post, Ballroom’s Gallery Manager, Rebecca McGivney, discusses Arturo Herrera’s works in the show, including 88 DIA, which was commissioned specifically for Ballroom Marfa.

Comic Future will travel to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio where it will be on view from May 17 through August 3, 2014.

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On the surface, Arturo Herrera’s two works in Comic Future, 88 DIA (1998) and Untitled (2001), look quite different. 88 DIA is a large colorful mural composed of a number of images. Though they at first appear somewhat abstract, the images quickly come into focus. A large potted plant topped by a red, spiky flower sits against a bright blue background. In the foreground, three cartoon birds fly above the figure of a girl. Although her head is hidden (or has been removed), she seems familiar.

Untitled also transforms the longer one focuses on it. At first it appears to be a large, black and white squiggle, somewhat reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock drip painting. It quickly becomes apparent that the entire drawing is composed of various recognizable shapes — namely some of the same shapes seen in 88 DIA. This is because both works use the same source material: Walt Disney’s 1937 classic, Snow White.

It is impressive that Herrera is able to disguise, even momentarily, such iconic images; but what is even more interesting is why he uses them at all. It is nothing new for an artist to take a familiar image and place it in a work of art; often, when one does so it is to critique and criticize what that image represents. As Roland Barthes notes in Mythologies: “the idols of consumer culture, car, refrigerator or screen goddess, have a totemic power in the modern age.” (Translated in S. Greeves, “The Language of the Wall”(MA Diss., the Courtauld Institute of Art, 1995), 29.) The most direct and effective way to break that power is by changing and subverting it. (see Sergei Chakhotin’s The Rape of the Masses: The Psychology of Totalitarian Political Propaganda, 1940)

Herrera, however, does not use these images expressly for the purpose of negation. Rather, they relate to his interest in modernism and its ideal of universality. In addition to Herrera’s various aesthetic references to modernism (his use of collage techniques and found material, as well as allusions to various artistic movements including surrealism, cubism, abstract expressionism, pop-art, and the affichistes, to name a few), the artist confirms that he is strongly attracted to the conceptual ideas behind modernism, particularly the belief that art is universal. As he explains in an interview: “Modernism’s boundless optimism and idealism created exciting visual realities. Some of these propositions failed or are no longer valid…. The key is to have a critical dialogue with this legacy.” Thus, while Herrera is attracted to these ideals, he differs in how he accomplishes them. While the modern artist hoped to create a work that could instantaneously convey its meaning through abstraction, Herrera uses the figurative and familiar to establish a “connection” and give the viewer something of which to grab hold: Snow White.

It is important to note that when Disney was first founded, the company’s work was seen as extremely modern. So much so that Sergei Eisenstein once declared Disney’s animations to be “the greatest contribution of the American people to art.” Walt Disney also shared in the modernist’s ideal of creating a universal art by appealing to our shared childhood. As he explained while defending his fantastical stories and imagery: “Everybody in the world was once a child. We grow up. Our personalities change, but in every one of us something remains of our childhood…. It just seems that if your picture hits that spot with one person, it’s going to hit that spot in almost everybody.” Herrera uses the same technique to entice the viewer into his work, the difference is that once one enters, Herrera, unlike Disney, no longer guides you. As he notes: “My work actually tries to discourage a specific message. It tries to free a place up, to clarify through ambiguity….You read the image very easily, but in the end, you are on your own.”

For more information on Herrera and his process, be sure to read his terrific conversation with Josiah McElheny from 2005 in Bomb. An excerpt:

The challenge is, how can an image so recognizable, like a dwarf, or a cartoon character’s foot or nose, or the red and blue specific to Snow White’s dress, have another meaning that I impose onto it? Is it possible? Can I make something so clear ambiguous? Can I uproot it? In which ways is the baggage that we bring to the new image relevant to the vivid recollections within our cultural context? I am attracted to juxtaposing invented images and readymade images without establishing explicit relations between elements.

From Herrera’s interview with Tom Friel of Bad At Sports:

Using everyday printed materials which are instantly recognizable leads the viewer directly into the image and at once a connection is established. Crashing our invented, private meanings onto a newly constructed image only adds to the impact of the original source. This undoing of linearity is attractive to me.

Finally, to see what Herrera is up to now, be sure to check out the images from his newest show, Books, at Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago. From a review at The Seen by Shreya Sethi:

These works come across as strong interventions into the act of reading. Using the help of stencils, Herrera haphazardly covers up the content of every page to the point of illegibility. We are forced to consider the nonrepresentational shapes foregrounded by the contents of the book, as a kind of linguistic information whose meaning we are left to determine.

If you’re in Stockholm, be sure to check out Immaterial alum, Linda Matalon’s work, currently featured in Signal to Noise at .

The exhibition, which is named for the scientific ratio of signal intensity (useful information) to noise intensity (background noise and static), asks “what happens if we intentionally do things in another than the logical or best possible way, disrupting the established forms of response, reaction, and linear communication.”

As described by the gallery, Matalon’s method of “adding and subtracting” from the surface of her wax covered drawings, “calls to mind the first sound recordings from the late 19th century”, which were made on phonograph cylinders covered in wax. Audio signals were then produced from grooves etched into the surface. Because wax is a non-conductive compound,the information could only be transmitted through its immediate shape and materiality. Thus, it is not only the material that connects Matalon’s work with the early technology, but this emphasis and interest in materiality and its ability to convey meaning and communicate. Matalon’s wax reveals every mark the artist makes, allowing the viewer an intimate glimpse into her technique and process: her gesture forming a new language.

Signal to Noise is on view until January 19th, 2014 and features the work of artists Nina Canell, Robert Kinmont, Linda Matalon, Rivane Neuenschwander, Amalia Pica, Sophie Tottie,

Amy Balkin’s A People’s Archive of Sinking and Melting, which was recently part of Ballroom’s group show Quiet Earth, is currently on view at the Prelinger Library in San Francisco. the work displays Balkin’s collection of “artifacts documenting the impact of climate change on society worldwide.”

These “artifacts” range from discarded ephemera to souvenirs and include everything from a used candy wrapper to a magnet from Antarctica. Although each object is disparate from its neighbor, Balkin notes in the description of the project that they are all gathered “from places that may disappear owing to the combined physical, political, and economic impacts of climate change.” The artist presents each object catalogued and archived meticulously as if they were rare historical objects, because one day they may well be.

Fortunately, the exhibition is also thoroughly documented on the project’s tumblr, so even if you’re stuck in a polar vortex and unable to get to the Bay Area,

Le Révélateur
with live score by Mary Lattimore & Jeff Zeigler
December 30, 2013
Crowley Theater, Marfa, Texas
Doors at 7 pm ∙ Show at 7:30 pm
Free

Listen to Marfa Public Radio’s Talk at Ten radio interview with Mary Lattimore & Jeff Zeigler, December 30, at 10 am on KRTS 93.5 FM or via their online stream.

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Celebrate the coming new year with Ballroom Marfa! For our fifth annual New Year’s film program, we’ll host a film screening of Philippe Garrel’s 1968 film Le Révélateur, with a live score by Philadelphia harpist Mary Lattimore and synth player Jeff Zeigler.

Mary Lattimore is a classically trained harpist whose collaborations have seen her working with such esteemed luminaries as Kurt Vile, Meg Baird, Thurston Moore, Ed Askew, Fursaxa, Jarvis Cocker and the Valerie Project. On her debut record, The Withdrawing Room, she found a worthy sideman in Philadelphia’s Jeff Zeigler, whose contemplative Korg echoes and holds a mood for Mary’s runs.

Zeigler has amassed quite the resume in recent years, between his space-rock outfit Arc in Round and his production work for local luminaries Kurt Vile, Purling Hiss and The War on Drugs. Zeigler’s also been expanding into the solo / collaborative experimental zone, playing solo shows with Lattimore and opening for English ambient artist Benoît Pioulard.

We talked with Lattimore about her interest in avant-garde film, her approach to improvisation and her plans for New Year’s Eve in Marfa.

How would you describe your music to new listeners?

I would describe it as sort of underwater, spacey harp through effects and delay, loops of decaying noise, droney sometimes, ethereal crushed-up diamond sounds. Jeff plays a Korg Mono/Poly synth and does cool textural stuff, plays beautiful, haunting melodica that sounds like a sad, distant train, and plays guitar, too. It’s gonna be fun. Our sets are usually all improvised, but with this one we are establishing themes and trying to be thoughtful about the changing scenes.

Why did you choose Le Révélateur for this project?

I consulted a very film-knowledgable friend. He suggested a few silent films and I checked them out and this one seemed to have some really memorable images. It’s a very strange film, very stunning, filmed in 1968.

What else can you tell us about the score you and Jeff will be performing?

It’ll be thought-out improvisation, with harp through a Line 6 looper and melodica, guitar, and synth. It’s a little over an hour long and will probably be a combination of melodic, hypnotic strings and maybe some harsh-ish noise. We want to be conscious of space, too, and also to incorporate minimal moments because the images are so affecting on their own.

Do you have any other experience doing film scores? Or with filmmaking in general?

I have done a few film projects. I was a member of this 11-person ensemble that composed an alternate score for the Czech New Wave Film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders in 2007. We traveled around with the original print of the film and performed in theaters, recorded it and Drag City put out the record. I learned a lot from the way we composed the music together. Recently, I did a soundtrack for a film that’s set in Iceland. I played on the score for the documentary Marina Abramovic – The Artist Is Present. The interaction between music and story/visuals, how they can complement each other to create a singular, memorable experience is something I really love. Jeff recently did an original live score for 2001: A Space Odyssey with our friend Dave (Nightlands) as a cool, creative project. Hopefully, our ideas will be true to the vibe of this gorgeous, weird film.

How does your background in improvisation inform this work?

Whenever I improvise or whenever Jeff and I improvise together, we’re always trying to paint a picture or to inspire a mood and often there’s a narrative structure where things get stirred up in the middle and resolve themselves by the end. But I think this one should contain a lot of in-the-minute decisions and negative space that will make it hopefully a unique performance that we can only half-predict, so that’s exciting.

What other projects are you working on?

Jeff and I are working on a Lattimore/Zeigler Duo record that we’re recording at his studio, Uniform Recording in Philly. I just played on the new Sharon Van Etten record, which will be out next year. We are going to try to repeat our Le Révélateur performance in Philadelphia, too, so that’s in the works. Got some upcoming gigs with my mom, who is also a harpist, and we’ll be playing carols to spread some holiday happiness. Lots of fun stuff ahead!

Is this your first trip to Marfa? What do you know of our town?

Yes, it’s my first visit to Marfa! I don’t know much, but I have a bunch of friends who have visited and who’ve fallen in love with it, so I’m psyched. Have read about the Marfa lights and the great art. I love that I get to spend New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in this far-away place – great way to start 2014. Jeff has been before while on tour with his band. Really looking forward to it!

What are your plans for Marfa and Far West Texas beyond your performance?

Hmm, I’m not sure. I guess to just relax, hang out, walk around. We are staying for a few extra days. I have a close friend Rachel who moved there recently. My pal Matt, who owns the excellent Harvest Records, is coming from Asheville, NC.

Congratulations to Erin Shirreff on being named the winner of the 2013 Aimia |AGO Photography Prize! It was announced on November 7 that Shirreff, whose work appeared in Ballroom’s 2010 exhibition Immaterial and is a former Chintati artist-in-residence, had been selected by public vote to receive the C$50,000 prize. In addition to the stipend, Shirreff will also participate in a two-month-long residency in Canada.

Matthew Teitelbaum, the Director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) discussed the prize, noting:

“There was an incredible amount of talent among this year’s shortlisted artists and we were thrilled to see the enormous response from the public, who voted by the thousands, in record numbers…. In partnership with Aimia, the prize is truly innovative in its accessibility and broad support of Canadian and international contemporary photography.”

Voting began online on August 27, as well as in person at the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize 2013 Exhibition. There visitors could see two of Shirreff’s “long-duration videos”: Lake and Moon, Both of which

“extend and explore the act of looking. Constructed from hundreds of individual photographs captured in her studio, these works collapse time and place as they fluctuate between natural and artificial effects, stillness and motion. Lake features an image of the Okanagan Valley, near Shirreff’s hometown of Kelowna, B.C.”

Once again congratulations, Erin!

To learn more about the award, please visit the AIMIA | AGO website or read the press release.
The Aimia | AGO Photography Prize 2013 Exhibition will run until January 5, 2014 at the Art Gallery of Ontario. If you’re unable to travel up north, however, Shirreff’s winning work is also available here.

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On Wednesday, October 23, at the Long Center in Austin, Graham Reynolds gave an intimate preview of his Marfa Triptych and, judging by these photos, it was a fantastic experience. But take heart if you missed out! Reynolds will soon be premiering the full Part One of the Triptych entitled The Country and Western Big Band Suite on November 16 in Marfa. For additional information and to buy tickets, visit the event page.