Skylab Gallery's current artist-in-residence is Portland-based artist, cartoonist, and illustrator Aidan Koch. Koch's exhibition Trophy Room will have a one-night opening on June 29th from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Following the reception is a dance party with music by DJ Detox.
This event is free, all ages, and BYOB.
Skylab Gallery's artist-in-residence program is made possible through support from the Greater Columbus Arts Council.
Koch will also be giving an artist talk at 7:00 p.m. at the Wexner Center for the Arts on June 26th.
Other News:
* I featured David Berezin's stock-photo still lifes on Beautiful/Decay.
* David Leighty drew this Monster House group portrait.
* Caitlin McGurk on the Fantagraphics blog.
* I featured FASTWURMS on Beautiful/Decay.
*Wes Flexner interviews Slave Labia, the Labia cover Beat Happening's "Indian Summer."
* Information regarding Aidan Koch's June 26th artist talk at the Wexner Center is up.
* Elijah Funk posted images from his senior thesis exhibition Unsadding.
* Jacky posted images of all the One-Hour Publications thus far.
* Tatyana Kagamas writes re: Lena Dunham's priv'.
This book, We Never Learn, is out and about for your purchasing whim. It was written by Eric Davidson, the lead singer/provocateur of Columbus's own New Bomb Turks, and it features a foreword by Byron Coley who writes a column with Thurston Moore at Arthur and Wire.
I transcribed a couple of interviews on behalf of Eric for this book - one with Rocket From The Crypt's John Reis and another that I can't recall. I learned more about San Diego from listening to John Reis than from any other experience in my life, including being in San Diego. Outside of San Diego-centric concerns, I think that if you like punk, garage, punky-garage or garagey-punk and somehow also enjoy reading that you will be pacified and pleased by We Never Learn.
You should buy it (it's on sale!) from another New Bomb Turker at the Wexner Center Store.
Eric Davidson will be reading from We Never Learn in the Film/Video space at the Wexner Center July 9th at 9PM.
A Cassavetes film Green's students wrote about for their class blog.
I recently wrote this story - my second to last for the Lantern - about Ron Green's partnership with the Wexner Center to develop a public blogging mechanism for his seminar class devoted to the Wexner's Media Arts programming. Set ups like this are sort of a no-brainer to me yet they seem to not be a widespread practice at OSU. Of course, that's OSU. So kudos to Green and the Wexner for attempting something out of the norm.
An interview with Chris Stults, the Wexner Center's assistant curator of film/video - here.
An interview with Dan Guarnieri, a student in the class - here.
The story is after "the jump." So is my interview with Green.
Major museum retrospectives usually occur in the last years of an artist’s life or the first years there after. To be the subject of one as a “mid-career” artist is a rare, honorable distinction. But for Luc Tuymans, it seems overdue.
Tuymans, born in 1958 in Belgium, is a pre-eminent European painter informed by post-war politics, the language of cinema and the photo-paintings of Gerhard Richter. His work demands high prices on the international art market and high regard in critical journals.
Over 70 works of his are on display, filling up each gallery of the Wexner Center for the Arts on campus.
In a reductive sense, Tuymans’ work drives to undercut the authority of the image. His paintings aim to make clear the tangle of ideology underneath the innocent façade of a skier or a rabbit, a wax seal or an empty room.
But once one realizes the empty room is a gas chamber or that the blank skier is the Third Reich’s favorite architect, the inner logic of the show is unlocked and each subsequent piece becomes less surprising. Around the third gallery listless apprehension sets in; no longer can you comfortably rest in the nook of an intriguing color scheme or contemplate a minimal composition. These paintings become impossible to process aesthetically since the question of what they actually represent is continually brought to the surface.
This discomfort is due to Tuymans' success in raising difficult questions about how we negotiate the meaning of Western civilization’s baggage. What isn’t questioned is the life of these paintings outside of his concept and aesthetic: Is producing a representation of an atrocity to sell for millions of dollars ethical? Is it still ethical if one’s buying audience is of the same ruling classes that initiated the colonial and genocidal policies he seems to condemn?
These objects, if they are regarded with the skeptical eye Tuymans asks us to put to his blank rooms and skiers, become like trading cards or postage stamps of humanity’s worst moments made to be exchanged among the affluent.
Artistically, Tuymans only runs into problems when his references are too obvious. His portrait of Condoleezza Rice is too direct to lead the American viewer into a dialogue. Likewise, when he introduces collage or text to his muted oils an element of mystery is lost, it becomes too clearly connected to the outside world.
He is at his best in a series concerning the colonial past of the Belgian Congo. Dueling portraits of rival leaders, one ruling on behalf of Belgian interests and the other a symbol of anti-colonial independence, set off a room of incendiary associations that plays like the visceral imagery of a film trailer.
Following soon after crowd pleasing exhibitions of Andy Warhol’s Marilyns and William Wegman’s Weimaraners might lead to a perception of this show as being inaccessible or severe. But with a little patience, a little context and some discussion, the rewards of Tuymans are likely to be more nourishing.
Co-curated by Madeleine Grynsztejn and Helen Molesworth, the Wexner Center’s former chief curator of exhibitions, the show will travel to San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, and Brussels, Belgium at the end of its run here January 3rd.
For some, the gesture might be rather presumptuous if they have not been moved from a rather narrow definition of “art” by the work of Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, the Hernandez brothers, Alison Bechdel, Hergé and thousands of others around the world and over the past century. But if you’re reading this, I assume we at least share the common ground that cartoons-comic books-graphic narratives are art, and one can find examples of dreadful and sublime artists and work in abundance equal to any of the more traditional disciplines.
But, wouldn't you know it... I don't think there will be any of his books there. I've only flipped through this particular book but I see quite a bit of these "STREET ART" compilations coming through the Wexner store. In general these things seem to get printed because they don't have to pay royalties to anyone but that kind of cheapo spirit usually permeates the rest of the book in its cheap pages, cheap covers, bad design, and worse writing. And with 90% of street art (or tattoos, or punk flyers, or record covers, etc) being complete tripe it's usually worth it not to waste your time. But I always do. Because I got this book from the library when I was 16 and shit blew my gasket. Just the imagery of late seventies, early eighties New York is a bit spellbinding. Everyone looked legitimately cool. And then there are the full subway pieces on the entire line. And the colors were all candy pop sugar gum. It made me start using spray paint in my paintings for no defensible reason until I realized my mom was right about the no ventilation in my basement being maybe bad. I still (this is serious and not an over exaggeration) feel like I haven't even been as sharp as I was mentally before I spent some time getting to know spray paint.
Anyway, dude is staying at the Monster House Friday night so feel free to stop by during our show and chat him up about stencils and graff and the internet and book tours that jump from the Trumbull Plex to the Wexner Center.
ON A DIFFERENT NOTE ENTIRELY:
I just finished all 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers. Swoon.
"During the Gallery Hop on August 1, the Mahan Gallery will have an opening for “This is a Comic Book,” an overview of current threads in comics as represented by some of the more interesting voices in the field. Featuring artists such as Ron Rege Jr., Lauren Weinstein, Anders Nilsen, and Columbus’s own Phonzie Davis, the exhibition hopes to hint at the full spectrum of possibilities within the medium while casting a few questions at the propriety of its possibly tongue-in-cheek title.
The show will be accompanied by a small run catalog-zine featuring writing by Anne Elizabeth Moore, former editor of the Comics Journal, and the Wexner Center’s own film and video curator, Dave Filipi.
Books by the comics creators will be available for purchase courtesy of the Wexner Center Store. More information, including a full artist list, can be found here.
James Payne works at the Wexner Center store. He co-curated this exhibition with Colleen Grennan.
image credit: Panayiotis Terzis King Top: Bluetooth, 2009 17 x 23.5 inches, watercolor on paper"
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