M5Arts Presents ArtStreet

Photo by Brett Melliar

     I attended ArtStreet by Downtown Sacramento's art initiative, M5Arts, with a few of my fellow graduate students, two weeks ago.  I got to see Art Hotel last year, a project also done by M5Arts, and this was a greater experience.  Art Hotel had so many visiors that people were only allowed a ten-minute window to see every floor.  ArtStreet was superior since my group and I got to leisurely explore in and around the warehouse that featured over one-hundred artists.

Section by Jason Silva and Ginger S. Thompson, 2017, wood, fabric, corrugated cardboard, and paint

Photo by Jason Silva

     One of my favorite pieces at ArtStreet was an installation called Section.  I was instantly overwhelmed by the size of each structure and the scale of the entire installation.  Each structure felt more like a monument.  It's as if I was looking up at another world that held its own gravity, with the black forms operating as moutains that pointed down towards me.  The black, organic shapes attached to the white, rectangular forms also created a nice balance in their contrasting shift from one shape to the other.  Easily my favorite piece from ArtStreet.

Mythos Ad Infinitum by Mehran Mesbah, 2017, charcoal and erasers on paper

Mythos Ad Infinitum by Mehran Mesbah, 2017, projected video

     I was happy to come across work by my friend and part-time CSU, Sacramento teacher Mehran Mesbah.  He had a projection of clouds continue to change forms as an animation, from the original sketch that was mounted on one of the walls.  Mesbah's artist tag explained the piece best: "Utitlizing one of humanity's oldest recordable forms of communication, Mesbah draws, photographs, and subsequently erases this work only to repeat the process again.  These actions allude to the indefinite reinterpretation of phenomena ever generation passes to the next."  I'm intrigued by him taking the traditional method of illustrating on a surface as a form of communication, and recontextualizing it as a digital animation with the use of a projector.

     ArtStreet was fun and I'm looking forward to seeing M5Arts' next project, ArtCity.  Also, how often do you get to stick your finger in art?  Not very.  So I did it.

Sacramento in Living Color by Laurelle Davita

Photo by Sean Hong

Dona Nelson Lecture

     I attended a lecture by Dona Nelson on February 9th at Manetti Shrem Museum as part of the Art Studio Visiting Artist Lecture Series.  Nelson has had twelve solo exhibitions and is represented by Thomas Erben Gallery.  She is also a professor of Painting and Drawing at Temple University, as well as Tyler School of Art, both located in Philadelphia.

Birdy (front) 2015 acrylic on canvas

Birdy (back) 2015 acrylic on canvas

     Dona Nelson talked about her love for Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock.  She also said it took her ten-to-twelve years to shake off her "formal abstract painter" label.  She believes her "mature" work starts in about 1989.  She's well known for her two-sided paintings, which started by accident in 2003.  She was working with a hose while being outside, where she gets a lot of energy from the Sun, and the image appeared on the other side.  I've never seen someone install their paintings in a manner in which one could see the front and the back, so I was intrigued by the installation shots she included in her presentation.  After looking at all of her work on her website (donanelson.com), I'm not excited by the work as it appears on the backside of the canvas, but I can also see why it would be an interesting avenue to explore.  Nelson said she enjoys the strangeness of her two-sided work.  "One side is like material and action, and the other side's the image."

New Paintings Installation, 2015, Thomas Erben Gallery

     "Material is time.  I'm very aware of it and being extravagant with it."

-Dona Nelson

     Dona Nelson brought up that image in the European tradition is much more important than materiality.  And to Dona, she wants to equalize the image and the material.  She's a great lecturer and I really enjoyed her presentation.  She ended her lecture by saying she wasn't going to make you a better person if you went to her show and that type of openness and humor is so refreshing when compared to most of the art lectures I've been to.

Valerie Constantino Lecture: "Crossing Sublime (After After Nature)"

Photo by Sean Hong

     I attended Valerie Constantino's lecture on her Crossing Sublime (After After Nature) exhibit, on February 7th.  Constantino teaches at California State University, Sacramento and American River College.  Her lecture was formatted in a manner in which she shared the history of her old work and the investigation she was pursuing in Crossing Sublime (After After Nature).

"I've struggled all my life to get the maximum meaning in the simplest form."

-Anne Truitt

     Valerie Constantino spoke about her influences, most of which she finds in reading works by writers who "spend time outside."  She also brought up the quote above by American artist Anne Truitt because it touches on what Constantino is pursuing in the work she creates.  "Reductive abstraction" are the words she used to describe it.  She also mentioned her process involves "listening" to what needs to be done rather than the desire to do.

     The "language" of textile became Constantino's source material.  She said she sees the material as related to time; a four-dimensional object.  It's challenging for me to understand what she means by that because I'm solely a two-dimensional artist.  With Crossing Sublime, Constantino used W.G. Sebald's narrative poem After Nature to draw inspiration from.  In her lecture, she mentioned that besides producing work in the persona of Anne Ryan and Valentina Tereshkova, the last character is an aspect of herself.  It's the part of herself observing the world and having a sense of things being illusory, while trying to make a connection to those things.  I think this is an aspect of ourselves that we all certainly have in common.

R.W. Witt Gallery Exhibition: "In the Quiet of Bedlam" by Kiere Paris

Untitled, 2016

     For the student exhibition aspect of our blog, I chose the work of Kiere Paris to write about.  Kiere also happens to be in our class.  Hi, Kiere!

Untitled

     I've been interested in the work of Kiere Paris since I first came across it in the Advanced Painting course we both shared last Fall of 2016.  As a whole, the work exhibited in the Witt Gallery ranged from traditional painting to mix-media.  There was one sculpture on a pedestal and a large-scale installation piece on the very back wall that both echoed the forms used in his abstract work, as well.  And until stepping foot into the gallery, his abstract work is all I'd been exposed to.  There were two representational paintings in the exhibit and in my opinion, they didn't seem to feel like they belonged with the rest of the work.  But they were interesting paintings on their own.  His abstract work is the highlight and it's evident that he has a strong understanding of color.

Untitled, 2016

     Some of my favorite works were his plaster(?) pieces on the wall that are spray-painted gold.  He had done some of these pieces in the class we took together so I'm already familiar with them.  The manner in which the texture folds and ripples reminds me of soft fabric.  And the thickness and size of the overall piece itself conjures the the image of a pillow.  I'm interested in the contradiction that occurs when I see the hard and brittle material of plaster and I'm instead reminded of something I could rest my head on.  I think there's a lot that can be explored in just that contradiction.

     Whether he continues down the path of investigating color as the vehicle in his work, or leans towards the sculptural elements he also explores, I'm confident that whatever he creates will be interesting.

Congrats, Kiere!

Photo by Polo Lopez

Else Exhibition: "Crossing Sublime (After After Nature)" by Valerie Constantino

     I have an especially intimate experience with Valerie Constantino's work.  I was hired by Professor Constantino to photograph her installation, as well as each individual piece.  The small scale of most of the work and the neutral colors lends to the show's presence as quiet; there is nothing flashy about it.  Colors aren't vivid and nothing is loud.  One absolutely needs to walk right up to each piece to really appreciate it.

    Left: After Valentina Tereshkova 1 (Performace with Star Trails) 2016, photomontage

Right: After Valentina Tereshkova 2 (I am Seagull) 2016, assemblage with photomontage on silk, embroidery, faux leather,  motion detector, composition of found audio including voice of Valentina Tereshkova from space

     When I first walked into the show, the work didn't feel like it all belonged in the same exhibit.  It rather felt like three, separate bodies of work installed in the same space.  The work draws inspiration from the narrative poem After Nature by W.G. Sebald.  The pieces are Constantino's interpretation of the lives and works of others.  In After Valentina Tereshkova 1 (Performance with Star Trails), Constantino has presented herself with a self-portrait as cosmonaut Tereshkova in the appropriate uniform, with digitized star trails behind her.  With Valentina Tereshkova 2 (I am Seagull), Constantino has a motion detector that plays the voice recording of Tereshkova in space, when someone walks by it.

After Valentina Tereshkova 3 (Blue Arc) 2016, mixed media on paper

     One of my favorite pieces is After Valentina Tereshkova 3 (Blue Arc).  What seems to be a sort of graphite rubbing on the paper with deckled edges is minimal and really engaging in its presence.  The blue curve that comes down the center is a representation of the curve of the Earth that Tereshkova saw from space.

     There's a lot that can be said about each piece in the exhibit.  The one thing that's ultimately clear is Constantino's interest in and effective use of non-traditional material in her work.

Photo by Polo Lopez

University Union Gallery Exhibition: "Call Your Corners" by Ryan Seng

     I saw the current exhibit at the University Union Gallery titled Call Your Corners, a couple of weeks ago.  Ryan Seng is a clearly talented painter.  However, the presentation and content of the work leaves little to be desired.  According to Seng's artist statement, the show is a representation of his life explorations in art and running a "high quality cocktails in a can" company.  The artistic idea behind his company is to create exposure for Sacramento artists by placing images of their work on Seng's cocktail cans, but so far, it's just his work being featured.

Sausage oil on canvas, 2016 

     About eighty percent of what is immediately noticed around the gallery are large paintings of barely-clothed, slim, white women.  Every gallery tag not only featured the name, medium, and date of the piece, but also a small story.  Seng puts himself in trouble with some of these stories.  For his Sausage painting, he brings up his decision to mostly paint women.  "A lot of people ask me why I paint women all of the time.  I tell them that is just what happens."  To be blunt, I think that's a stupid reason.  I don't believe it "just happens."  These paintings serve as just another representation of the conventionally-attractive woman done through the male gaze.  It's boring.  

Photo by Brett Melliar

     The rest of his work are cartoonish renditions of boars which he deems "very punk rock" to him.  I don't find that subject matter interesting, but it's certainly less boring than his depiction of women.

Briony Fer Lecture "Transactions of Detail: Manet and Still Life"

     I attended a lecture by British art historian Briony Fer, at the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, on February 2nd.  Fer is a professor of History of Art at University College London and is a critic and curator, too.  She writes about contemporary art and specifically, abstract work.

     The lecture on Edouard Manet and his still life started with two questions: "What if we were to think of Manet as a consequence of, rather than a precursor? What if we were to flip it and ask what HE got from abstraction?"  To be honest, I've never been keen on Manet's still life paintings; I'm much more drawn to his figurative work.  His still life are quite dull to me, but it was interesting to approach them through this lecture as something else.  Through the lecture, we get to ask what his work is from our perspective and what came after his paintings.  Fer also said, "How and when abstract art became culturally old is also worth asking." 

There were a lot of questions.

     A humorous moment in the lecture came when she recounted the tale of the asparagus paintings Manet had done for art patron Charles Ephrussi.  Manet had sold Ephrussi Bunch of Asparagus for eight-hundred francs and Ephrussi was so appreciative, he sent one-thousand.  In response, Manet swiftly created a smaller painting of one asparagus and sent it with a note to Ephrussi that one had slipped the bunch. 

     Bunch of Asparagus 1880

One Asparagus 1880

     

     Manet's flowers were a focus for a significant part of the lecture.  It's interesting to think of them beyond their traditional status as feminine, amateur, and "trinkets of collectors." Fer believes they're not just status, but possibilities.  "Manet's flower paintings mobilize symbolic references."  It was challenging to understand these concepts immediately, but what helped was the end of the lecture, when Fer said, "Manet's props don't serve their symbolic purpose.  He's trying to show how material vision is."  This especially connected with me as an artist creating representational work, striving for what is seen to transcend its literal occupation. 

Flowers in a Crystal Vase 1882

Photo by Sean Hong