"National" and David Hammons

David Hammons - Concerto in Black and Blue (mixed media) 2002 : visitors to the gallery were given small blue-bulb flashlights to navigate the dark and empty rooms of the Ace Gallery, NYC.

"It is an unfortunate fact that in this country, black artists' work seldom serves as the basis of rigorous, object-based debate. Instead, it is almost uniformly generalized, endlessly summoned to prove it's representativeness (or defend its lack of same) and contracted to show-and-tell on behalf of an abstract and unchanging 'culture of origin.' For all this, the art gains little purchase on the larger social, cultural, historical, and aesthetic formations to which it nevertheless directs itself with increasing urgency. And in the long term, it runs the risk of moving beyond serious thought and debate. Viewed this way, the given and necessary character of black art - as a framework for understanding what black artists do - emerges as a problem in itself."
-from How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness. Darby English. 2007

In a forthcoming ammendment to my curatorial statement for National, I hope to borrow this notion of culturally pigeonholed artwork that only comments on "culture of origin" to challenge expectations of what the artists in my exhibition are doing.

installation view of National, at University Galleries, Illinois State University; left to right: Rebecca Mir, Flag for the Nation of Rubaccaquon (green, silver, and purple fabric, flag pole, flag mount) 2010; Allison Yasukawa, Eclipsing a Sun (ladder, light, thread, altered Japanese flag, daughter [absent]) 2010; Maria Gaspar, Untitled [as of yet] (latex paint on wall) 2010

Play in Empty Lots

all made around Lake St. and Campbell Ave, Chicago

from Anthony Elms artist talk at ACRE

Juan Muñoz: “If you remove the furniture from a room, the room is loaded with that emptiness. It’s not an empty room, it is a room which is no longer occupied with what used to be there before. That’s a quality you cannot build from zero. You have first to build the house, then furnish the room, then take the things away.”
______________________________

Juan Muñoz, James Lingwood, “A Conversation, July 1995,” Monologues & Dialogues, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, 1996, pg 127.

new terms, after Wisconsin

jinx, hex, braucherei, powwow, gruttafoos, lucky stars, holy ghost, charm, curse, devil door, witches step, hollow ground

spiritual points in the forest and pastures near Steuben, WI

on my last morning at ACRE i decided to execute this project that i've been considering since the beginning of the residency. i made 10 markers and set out into the woods and cow pastures south of Bob and Rosa's farm; with a map and maul in tow. the form was taken from the utilitarian (property?) markers that i've seen around Joliet, IL. i placed these markers at points that i deemed spiritual - such a between 2 apple trees that i ate from, next to a found hawk feather, in a clearing with light in a dark part of some over-growth, inside a foundation of a long gone house, and at the end of a valley. the plan was to imbue this land with some mystical powers. i ended up getting very lost, and didn't know it till i reached a pond that was much farther East on the map from where i thought i was. at that point i was dehydrated (i forgot my water) and tired from hiking through dense overgrowth and from carrying the markers and the maul. i found a road and hitch-hiked back to the lodge. i was 2 or 3 miles of walking in the sun away from home and water. i was only able to place 6 markers.

nature! (Steuben, WI edition)

a bat that Sweetpea the cat killed

a valley carved by water

bald eagle

bald eagle close up

a big right angle

i drove toward the moon all night.

at 3:00am today i went from ACRE (Steuben, WI), south to Davenport, IA, and west to Joliet, IL.