Olaf Breuning: Small Brain, Big Stomach

Swiss artist Olaf Breuning is a product of his generation. Combining whimsy and invention with uncivil references to art history, his work is simultaneously tangible and imagined, ironic and sincere. This kind of ruthless innocence dominates "Small Brain, Big Stomach," a solo show of his works currently on view at Metro Pictures in New York.

Drawing heavily from a post-modern reaction to the general impetus of violence/ sexuality/ loneliness, Breuning comically exploits the humor of oversimplifying such heavy themes. The irreconcilable difference between his gut-wrenching subjects and their innocent forms recalls the drawings of David Shrigley, who so brilliantly evokes feelings of pain or sorrow in scratchy lines.

The wall drawings and simple wooden sculptures which dominate "Small Brain, Big Stomach" are all based on a series of drawings he made while in a self-imposed isolation travelling alone aboard the Queen Mary II. Though they speak to "the simple questions one could have about life," the large scale, imposing colors, and rough materials make the works far more complicated than their childlike source material. The wall drawings are immense, as overwhelming as they are funny. Similar to the large-scale humorous installations of Stefan Sagmeister, the viewer's initial reaction is a giggle or laugh-- until the content makes itself clear. The images are incredibly faithful to the sketches, and Breuning's pencil scratchings make themselves known despite their scale and high production value.

Breuning's sculptures are essentially three-dimensional drawings, bringing to mind the sculptural writings and physical codes of David Smith. Like the drawings, forms are realized in black, and lines float in space as if they were sitting listlessly on the page. The directness of these works is best summed up by a work like "Me, Me, Me, You and Me": an outline of a human head contains the very honest depiction of our true thoughts, the word "me" is written a dozen times, only matched by a single "you."

In "Generation After Generation After Generation," the words "Generation" and "After" are repeated, endlessly, one after the other, in chunky wooden letters. When spelled out in words and formed into sculpture, lineage and family history takes on a physical weight-- despite any specificity or reference to distinct forbears. "Focus, Focus, Focus" is another word sculpture, the word "focus" appearing repeatedly in different places, making it nearly impossible to concentrate on one word in particular.

Breuning's work is consistently interesting and provocative, and "Small Brain, Big Stomach" is equally engaging and amusing. Its accessibility is matched by humor, invention, and an enviable lack of pretension. This is a child's world come alive, their deepest questions and most curious scribbles translated to an adult scale in a white box space.

Olaf Breuning: Small Brain, Big Stomach is on view at Metro Pictures through December 5, 2009. 519 W. 24th St.

Le Loup - "Family"

(Cross-posted from The 405: thefourohfive.com)

Artist: Le Loup

Album: Family

Label: Hardly Art

Release Date: September 21, 2009

Website: http://www.leloupmusic.net/

There are significant sounds of autumn: subtle changes in the sky make the underfoot hum of the pavement whisper in warmcool breezes. Finding the perfect record for grey days and new mittens is precious, measured by breadth and depth. “Family,” the sophomore release from Baltimore-based Le Loup, was lovingly crafted in dusty and pastoral sessions in North Carolina. Floorboards creak under the joyous rapture of folk influences while heavy layering of sounds wraps the listener in a grandmother’s quilt.

“Family” is a fitting title for an album which announces the band’s now fuller, post-Craigslist lineup. Frontman Sam Simkoff needed musicians to help him tour as a live act, and after finding collaborators online, Le Loup is now a full and sublime group. Where electronic interjections and dazzle marked their first album, Le Loup has now settled comfortably into a chanting, direct, hold-you-closer-no-really-I-mean-it-much-closer sound.

Simkoff’s vocals carry “Family” along the meandering way from furry/fury-filled breaths to the chantings of a spiritual healer. His yearning voice is punctuated throughout by symbiotic handclaps, clement drums, and the tender exclamations and provocations which best befit the act of running into the sea fully-dressed, your heirloom watch still fastened around your wrist.

The lush “Beach Town” begins with a hoot, the sound of seagulls overhead. Tribal drums introduce themselves, though slowly succumb to the whispering haunt of Simkoff’s voice. Bongos float in and out, as if held by fickle kite strings. A bass line sneaks in, rising from a low tide to meet a guitar, and together they cluster beneath Simkoff’s lilting howl.

“Grow” begins with a delicate tickle of ivory, which then succumbs to a chanting which resembles an Animal Collective-directed church choir. The early pop-flavored drums recall “Be My Baby,” accompanied by a dulcet guitar which provokes comparisons to the sound of 1960s surf movies or the Buddy Holly “Apartment Tapes.”

“Morning Song” recalls folk and American roots music, with warbling voices and a euphonious banjo. And the creepier “Family” begins with the sounds of howling dogs, passing trains, and rustling, dry bones. Quiet, closed-eyes chanting devolves into a handclap-bursting ode to mothers, brothers, and sisters.

“Forgive Me” sounds like a fertile run on the pavement in bare feet, the concrete still damp from last night’s rain. And the unassuming “Sherpa” takes its time, waiting nearly two full minutes to exclaim itself. The song emerges from still quiet, a small tapping, and perhaps the lull of a wooden rocking chair. A clock ticks louder, mechanical sounds pulse through plaster walls, until finally, at 1:50, a jubilant family song erupts from the musty darkness. The family hums in and out of a rapturous ode to the ocean and togetherness, “I GIVE TO MY SISTERS AND BROTHERS! I GIVE TO MY SISTERS AND BROTHERS!” and again they retreat into the darkness of an autumn cottage.

Le Loup does not hide behind its influences, proudly acknowledging their admiration of their comrades Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes, and Grizzly Bear. And though there are similarities to be drawn between them all, Le Loup stands out on its haunches as a particularly compelling group. Their effortless collages of sound, the bare joy of the instrumentation, and the sweet howl of their lyrics makes a sound which is full, spacious, and clear. Quiet warnings melt under opiate guitars, anodyne chants, and soporific banjos. Nature is exalted, family a stimulant. Full and empty moments chase each other throughout “Family,” resulting in a record which sounds like running after sunlight through the waning hour of dusk.

Allan McCollum at the New York Public Library

A Conversation with Allan McCollum and Josiah McElheny, Organized by Art21 and the New York Public Library, October 6, 2009.

"How do artists use systems? Why do we accept some systems while rebelling against others? Who owns images? How do artists invent new grammars and logics in today's supercharged, information-based society?" -Art21

Allan McCollum uses methods borrowed from mass-production and assembly lines in creating individual artworks which provoke questions of uniqueness, value, and the visible hand of the artist. His works, endless numbers of small objects displayed programmatically, are deceptive in their nature: it is nearly impossible to imagine that each work in a vast series has been made (laboriously) by hand. With an inclination towards shape, subtlety, and planning algorithms, McCollum’s art is as much mechanical and scientific as it is sublime and overwhelming.

With the help of assistants, paleontologists, meteorologists, woodworkers, and countless others, McCollum has shaped a body of work which returns repeatedly to the idea of surrogates, stand-ins, and copies. A white-walled gallery takes on the form of a study center or research laboratory when filled with his drawings, paintings, and sculptures.

Last week, McCollum discussed his work at the New York Public Library, in association with Art21. The artist is one of the subjects of the new season of the PBS documentary series about contemporary artists and their work. He concluded his presentation with a conversation with artist Josiah McElheny, who was featured in Art21’s third season.

Again and again, McCollum returned to the question "How do we think about what an art object is?" His work seems as dependent on this conceptual consideration as it is on materials and process.

The Surrogate Paintings are perhaps one of McCollum’s most recognizable series. Begun in 1978, each Surrogate is made from wood and board and shaped like a framed work of art. However, unlike a traditional painting, the flat plane and its frame are indivisible: linked as a solid body. Plaster Surrogates, begun in 1982, was a series which stemmed from the first group of Surrogate Paintings. Rubber molds were made of select works in the previous series, and then solid works (resembling paintings) were cast in plaster. These “constructed paintings” satisfy all the definitions of what a painting is while contradicting the same standards.

Another recognizable McCollum series is his “Individual Works,” which he began in 1987. To produce the “Individual Works,” he collected small shapes and plastic pieces which he found in dime stores, on sidewalks, markets, and hardware stores. These objects included “bottle-caps, jar-lids, drawer-pulls, salt-shakers, flashlights, measuring spoons, cosmetics containers, yogurt cups, earrings, push-buttons, candy-molds, garden-hose connectors, paper-weights, shade-pulls, Chinese tea-cups, cat toys, pencil sharpeners, etc.” From these disparate shapes, McCollum created a system by which an infinite number of unique shapes could be produced, combined to create new shapes, and painted with a glossy enamel more befitting machine-made objects. The “Individual Works” are usually made into sets of 10,000, and displayed in an incredible spread which begs disbelief of their manual manufacture.

McCollum has created countless other iconic series, though my favorite (especially in light of his episode of Art21) is the Shapes from Maine project. Begun in 2005, the Shapes from Maine were begun after McCollum’s earlier Shapes Project, which sought to create an infinite number of unique shapes—one for every person on the planet. Using an algorithm and designs which could create over 31,000,000,000 Shapes, McCollum has made 214,000,000 individual forms so far. These shapes form the source material for a number of his recent experiments, including Shapes from Maine.

Shapes from Maine was undertaken in collaboration with craftsmen McCollum found on the internet. He was particularly drawn to artisans who work out of their homes and sell their own work online. Communicating exclusively by phone and e-mail, he selected four small crafts workshops to create hundreds of custom, hand-made shapes which were derived from his design algorithm. Copper cookie cutters, wooden ornaments, rubber stamps, and hand-cut silhouettes were all made to McCollum’s specifications.

The Shapes from Maine project in particular wrestles with the divide between handmade objects and mass production. Do we value these objects less, despite their craftsmanship, due to their quantity? Objects that are alike are often deemed less interesting than objects which are unique, as are objects which are made by a group as opposed to an individual. Shapes from Maine was designed by McCollum to rely on a group of artists to create an incredibly large body of objects and then ask us the question “Does our quantity limit our value?”

Questions about quantity and value are extremely relevant today. With globalization, widespread capitalism, and the endangered idea of craftsmanship, what does it mean when individuals imitate mechanized processes in their creative endeavors? What is the value of "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction?" In his treatise of the same name, Walter Benjamin argues that an object's importance is not dictated by its physical characteristics, but rather the idea of its exhibition, limited quantity, or its provenance. Of all artists whose work should be read in the context of Benjamin's ideas, McCollum's is the most provocative and convincing.

Watch Allan McCollum in the Art21 Season 5 episode Systems, premiering on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 10pm (ET) on PBS (check local listings). The episode will also feature artists John Baldessari, Kimsooja, and Julie Mehretu.

Baldessari and Rauschenberg Prints in San Francisco

Rauschenberg and Baldessari Prints at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

(Image: "Booster," 1967, Robert Rauschenberg, Color lithograph and screenprint, 72 x 36 inches, published by G.E.L., Los Angeles)

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, comprised of the Legion of Honor and the de Young museum, are simultaneously exhibiting the prints of pop artists John Baldessari and Robert Rauschenberg, respectively. Though the concurrent displays are not intended to serve as a dialogue between the two institutions, there are undeniable exchanges between both exhibitions.

“John Baldessari: A Print Retrospective,” at the Legion of Honor, is a methodical and chronological exploration of the artist’s development as a printmaker from 1970 to today. On view are 125 works spanning forty years of experimentation with diverse methods of image-making, including photoetching, photo-offset lithography, and photogravure.

One of the more prominent themes in Baldessari’s works is a fascination with detritus and anonymity. Though his early prints drew on the artist’s personal photographs, he eventually turned to found imagery, movie stills, and altered posters. This fascination with found material most clearly culminated in the 1994 series “Table Lamp and Its Shadow,” in which Baldessari used photographs of table lamps he found in hotel rooms in creating a series of printed objects which are only saved from anonymity by his usual bright colors.

In 2004, Baldessari began another large series of works based on a found image/ object. He approached the Mixografia workshop in Los Angeles (the same workshop which produced the “Table Lamp” series) with a found image of two men standing in front of Stonehenge. A six-part print was made from the single Xeroxed photograph, using different colors to obscure both the faces of the men and the monument itself.

Generally, Baldessari’s work is complex, despite its reliance on simplifying images to blocks of color and layer. He creates impersonal prints from impersonal objects and events, removing himself further and further from the subject with each printer’s proof. This absence of the artist is extremely antithetical to the deeply personal prints of Robert Rauschenberg, simultaneously on display at the de Young.

“Remembering Rauschenberg: The Artist’s Prints” is a concise exhibition of many of Rauschenberg’s innovative print series, made in collaboration with fine art presses around the world. He began making prints in the 1962 at Universal Limited Art Editions in West Islip, Long Island, and his relationship with the medium developed throughout the course of his career.

The exhibition includes many innovative and experimental works including “Breakthrough II” (1965), which was printed on a broken lithographic stone, and “Booster” (1967), a six-foot high x-ray of the artist’s body. Rauschenberg repeatedly draws inspiration from incredibly personal source material, in stark contrast to the found movie stills which comprise Baldessari’s prints.

The “Bellini” series, which Rauschenberg began in 1986, draws on images collected by the artist on his world travels. The prints take their name from the artist Giovanni Bellini (c. 1459-1516), whose small paintings in the Accademia, Venice, provided source material for Rauschenberg’s larger photogravures. The Bellini images are overlapped by Rauschenberg’s own photographs of urban life, and the entire series is painted with his own brushstrokes in gorgeous, jewel box colors.

The previously mentioned "Booster" is one of the artist's key prints, and the touchstone of the de Young exhibition. For his collaboration with Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles, Rasuchenberg wanted to produce the largest hand-pulled print ever made on a lithographic press. He succeeded with the personal, life-sized x-ray work. The production of "Booster" expanded the limits for scale and size in contemporary printmaking, making way for even larger works which Rauschenberg would produce with Gemini in the following years.

Though both Baldessari and Rauschenberg could be termed Pop printmakers and worked with some of the same printing workshops, their processes and subject matter are incredibly different. Whereas Baldessari’s images are loud, impersonal, bright, and basic, Rauschenberg’s prints are quiet, more technically innovative, and more heavily reliant on the artist’s personal experience.

The differences between both artists and their printmaking methods could not be better explored than in a direct comparison of both Fine Arts Museums exhibitions. See Baldessari’s blocked-out faces at the Legion of Honor, then consider Rauschenberg’s bare bones at the de Young— there is a lot about printmaking that you can learn in one afternoon in San Francisco.

"John Baldessari: A Print Retrospective from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation" is on view at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, until November 8, 2009.

"Remembering Rauschenberg: The Artist's Prints" is on view at the de Young Museum, San Francisco, until October 4, 2009.

Jason "Hey, Wait"

(Sorry, Marissa.)

There are some stories which can only be told in pictures-- this is why art persists. There are other stories which require more: a subject so heavy might also need words, pages, and decisive and divisive squares which frame more information than can be summed by one canvas.

Recent graphic novels have actively elevated the genre from its roots as a Bazooka Joe/Batman offshoot to a new type of thinking about art. The past ten years has seen an unprecedented boom in published works in which storytelling is at the visual center, and the symbiosis of words and pictures puts together so many things which are often left apart.

There are a few artists which have been particularly synonymous with the popularization of graphic novels: Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, and Norweigian artist Jason.

Jason (John Arne Sæterøy) has been making graphic novels for a few decades now, though his works have only recently been published in English for the first time. His best-known book, "Hey, Wait" is characterized by the artist's minimalism. Like Ware, Jason is able to draw silence. His books read like silent films, his pages are monochromatic and narrated only by punctuated bursts. One can scan the pages without a clear feeling for any dialogue. The human form is also absent, replaced instead by abstract, anthropomorphic creatures like rabbit-dog-teenagers.

Divided in two parts, "Hey, Wait" is an unflinching story of the difference that those words could have made upon a lifetime. They serve as a line drawn between childhood and the present. Two teenage friends, Jon and Bjorn, are enjoying an idyllic summer marked by reading comics, peeking through windows, and playing pranks. When they decide to form a club, a single moment in their initiation changes everything.

The words "Hey, Wait" were said too late, and the story unfolds as a mourning for lives wasted. Characters become the versions of themselves that they detest, and imagination slows to a dull throb. With a minimalistic and conscious hand, Jason creates a dramatic and poignant story which thoughtfully seeks to break your heart.

A beautiful third printing of "Hey, Wait" was published by Fantagraphics Books in 2008. Click here for details.

Next New: Green

Artists have always found inspiration in nature. From the sweeping landscapes of Claude Lorrain (c. 1600-1682) to the monumental land art of Robert Smithson (1938-1973), the physical world has consistently maintained its supremacy as a subject for the visual arts.

But what role does nature have in art today? We are living in the clutches of a global crisis: sea levels are rising, glaciers retreating, our summers are colder, and our winters are warmer. During the persistent debate about the environment, nature’s value as an artistic subject has been a neglected topic. Fortunately, “Next New: Green” at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art is an exhibition about the subject of climate change and its identity as a modern visual subject.

In a kind of creative Kyoto Protocol, the ICA has brought together nine emerging artists who use the vocabulary of the environmental crisis in their work. Recurring exhibition themes include apocalyptic visions, floating cities, inhumane landscapes, and technologies which cruelly mimic the natural world. Artists featured in “Next New: Green” include Colette Campbell Jones, Michelle Blade, Rebecca Rothfus, Michael J. Ryan, Misako Inaoka, Vanessa Marsh, Carson Murdach, Sandra Ono, and Ryan Pierce.

Michelle Blade’s painting “Untitled (We Found God on a Cruise Ship),” 2007 is a serene, if slightly frightening, vision of an epiphanic scene. A blinding burst of light dominates the horizon as the bow of a ship plows through Arctic ice. The light and the ship are fragmented, and the people who gather along the edge of the deck seem endangered. There is the irreconcilable force of nature (the ice) threatening man and his machine, under the supreme watch of a god-like being. Though the scene is quiet, perhaps the onlookers are hushed, the idea of the painting is confrontational and booming: How should we define our relationship with nature? Via exploration and exploitation or through our personal experience of the sublime?

Rebecca Rothfus’ “Tower Series” exactly portrays a world already lost to industry. Her quiet, exact paintings of space dominated by antennae and telephone wires resemble photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher set against flat spaces in the colors of petit-fours. Towers are rendered in precise pencil on matte gouache, giving architectural elements a fragility similar to things found in nature. The simplicity of the scenes is almost threatening in their innocuousness, with the natural world apathetically accepting the things made by man.

Another exceptional work is “Dead Space,” an installation by Michael J. Ryan. Using consumer materials like shopping bags, fishing line, and electronics, Ryan has constructed a living, breathing mechanism—a life support for no one, a machine which does nothing. There is a resonant redundancy in a piece made from plastics which resembles something which could live forever, independently. Controlled by a timer, the machine breaths in and out, inflating and deflating the plastic bags like lungs. Perhaps in a future world, a world after nature, the only living things will be those made from indestructible materials like plastic shopping bags. Maybe our visions of a future dominated by robots and machines were wrong: it’s far more likely that the shopping bags will outlive us all. Though the contraption could be an innocent tool which simply circulates air, it could easily have far more sinister connotations. If we continue to abuse our natural resources and use and disuse plastic bags, perhaps the natural world might someday resemble Ryan’s most unnatural installation.

Viewed as a central idea, the exhibition describes nature: both its mystery and the threat of its absence. Art needs to address the environmental crisis in the same way that other industries have done, and the ICA has done a brilliant job in highlighting the potential framework for this new debate. Though art has traditionally emphasized the beauty of nature, it is now time for art to speak to its fragility and vulnerability in the 21st century.

Next New: Green is on view at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art until September 20, 2009.

Wallworks at YBCA

(Image: Leslie Shows at "Wallworks," courtesy of FecalFace)

Sometimes a space best functions when left to speak for itself. In a museum, an empty room, a perfect window, or floating staircase can be art objects like the paintings hung on the wall. In "Wallworks," the summer exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, new visual arts director Betti-Sue Hertz has commissioned eight artists to create works which physically scale the walls of the space.

Designed by architect Fumihiko Maki, the YBCA is rational, minimalist, functional, and acutely aware of its public spaces. Humanist modernism characterizes both the upstairs and downstairs galleries, made of diverse materials like glass, metal, and stone. Like Renzo Piano, Maki also uses light more as a building material than a byproduct of his design and he was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1993, the same year that the YBCA's doors opened.

Hertz found inspiration in Maki's design, making the bold decision to let the building be the centerpiece of her first project. Generally, the YBCA is not an ideal exhibition space: on the ground floor, there is a major gallery and a small white box space. Upstairs, shows are often mounted on the walkway around the foyer, sweeping around to a smaller gallery which more resembles a black box theatre. The sleek architecture is the only unifying theme throughout the different spaces.

Using the more literal aspects of the YBCA building, eight artists each create their visions using Maki's design as the starting point. Entering the show through the foyer, one must first walk through a work by Nigerian/Philadelphia artist Odili Donald Odita. Odita's geometric, sweeping paintings seem to mix the brightly-hued colors of Nigeria with the radiant shapes and pathways suggested by something more transcendental. His consideration of pattern speaks to consciousness: both the consciousness of shape as well as of the act of painting itself.

Tillman Kaiser's installation is more humorous and ready to announce an awareness of Western art history. With references to Futurism and Constructivism, the Austrian artist brings ideas of art's past to his scenes of sci-fi urban futures. Makoto Aida's mural combines imagery from manga, video, and Japanese pop culture to create low-brow high-art. Facing Aida's mural in the main gallery is a work by Israeli artist Yehudit Sasportas. Her enormous landscape, figured precisely in black and white, recalls the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and the disorienting skies of JMW Turner. Dark colors and sweeping views make Maki's open, bright space seem threatening and cold.

In a smaller gallery downstairs are works by Amanda Ross-Ho and Leslie Shows. Both Ho's and Shows' pieces are more reliant on textiles and craft, and their pairing seemed intentional and effective. Ho's work recalls lace making, the history of objects, and the displacement of material: she often cuts holes, blacks out objects, and marks domestic things in black and white. Shows uses textiles to more ethereal ends, recalling the movements of wind, land mass, and waves of energy and color. Her high wall of white flags could be interpreted literally-- as a resounding surrender-- or metaphorically, joined together by their colors, slowly melting down the gallery walls.

Upstairs, beautiful and provocative works by Edgar Arceneaux and Chris Finley wrestle for attention with the physical gallery space, and visitors are encouraged to define the divide between Maki's art and those of the commission. Overall, "Wallworks" is a brave experiment in exploring the symbiosis between art and space, and , like biological creatures engaged in this type of relationship, both stand to benefit from mutualism and shared consideration.

"Wallworks" is on view at the YBCA until October 25, 2009