Art-Full Life

For a really absorbing visual experience, see Riches & Ruin: New works by Benjamin Kelley on view at Open Space until December 17th. It furthers the notion that sculptors must be good at choosing sculptors. The show is curated by artist/musician Neal Reinalda, who graduated from MICA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture in 2009. Only four Kelley pieces, all made this year, make up the exhibition, but each one is compelling in its making and meaning.

To understand these works, it’s helpful to know about the artist.  Benjamin Kelley, a graduate of MICA’s Rinehart School of Sculpture, now works in the college’s studio shops and teaches skills in wood and metal.  His own skills are breathtaking. As you look at his sculpture Hypovolemic, you will find yourself asking, as I did:  “You mean, he cast that? Really? That meat grinder isn’t a found object?”  But even more important, Ben’s work is a thought-provoking commentary on our time and the price we might have to pay for our excesses. 

Ben’s biography provides some potential clues to his intentions.  He is from Michigan, and we see in his work references both the production of sleek automobiles—glistening metal, flawlessly welded, or  bright colors, perfectly cast—and to the destructive forces of industrialization—a dried out whale bone, the rotten wood of a sunken ship,  or the threatening coal dust left behind by miners.  As he comments in his artist’s statement: “After screaming through the age of industrial worship, progress of the tangible is flattened, our immediate environment comes to a sharp focus. All prey has fallen. We have hunted energy, material, commodity, design, and we shall not be celebratory, as a formidable distance stands gray between the relic and modernity.”

Mistress Fallen Martyr expresses the push-pull of Detroit and its products. A soft black shape, cast in coal dust and resin, preserves the graceful curves of a Motor City relic, a Model T fender. Enshrined atop an aluminum and plastic structure that is a pedestal or a table, it inexplicably casts a flat rectangular shadow on the floor below.  The cast fender is clearly a ruin left behind by the riches of another time, but its aged, pitted surface tempts you to touch.

In Spoils, Ben makes a similar juxtaposition: a whale vertebrae with a large gold tooth inserted into its side sits on two bent pieces of plastic, one side gray, the other bright orange.  Here color is insinuated—as it is in each of the exhibited works—a pleasant surprise in a world of industrial metals and black/white/gray modernism.

If this piece alludes to the impact of industrialization on the environment, Gitche Gumee takes us deeper into these waters. Found wooden relics from sunken boat, their scarred surfaces covered with worn, chipped paint and dried barnacles, are strewn over three pristine white planks.  The old and rotten bears down on the new.  The ruined hull has been shot by a hot pink arrow, which, of course, has been fabricated and assembled by the artist so that its “feathers” are made of wood.  Maybe it isn’t clear who (if anyone) is winning this battle!

In the library at Open Space, Ben and Neal have selected books around the subject of Detroit and industry.  These range from a 1934 publication on mechanical drawing from the Henry Ford Trade School in Dearborn, Michigan, to Ford’s own treatises to a book on strip mining. A great, open-ended opportunity for connecting with the issues Ben explores!

Disorderly Construct, a collaboration between David Armacost and Nikholis Planck, is on view at Open Spaceat 2720 Sisson Street until October 15. As Katherine M. Reinhart explains in her accompanying essay, these artists “challenge visitors to see their work not as exalted and sacred, but as immediate and disposable; the exact opposite of artists who slave for months over a single canvas.”

The result is a rare experience for art lovers—a total inversion of what we see and do in galleries and museums, maybe more like an engaging studio visit with lots of conversation, actual and visual.  The cover of Reinhart’s essay is inscribed “looking art/ talking about it/pointing at it/gesturing/emailing about art/texting/g-chatting.” 

Disorderly Construct is very much about how artists in this next generation will create and display work—in part, an outcome of quicker, more intimate, more transparent communication and connectivity.

In this turned-upside-down display space, there are no labels and authorship is a non-issue.  It gets us further from finished products and closer to the process of creation—in this remarkable case, co-creation.  It is a reminder that art is about making for the artist and about experiencing for the viewer.

In the large opening gallery, the traditional white cube is subverted by a huge black table.  Large sheets of particle board, six by three sheets, stand on saw horses and sturdy wooden legs.  It feels like a work table, underscoring the process-based intention of the show. The only open space is around the edges, where a relatively narrow corridor channels visitors around the room.  Across the room, you will encounter a digital print lying on the floor, stretching under the far wall and into the next gallery. I have to restrain myself from the museum-person compulsion to pick it up, protect it.

The table surface is simultaneously rough, just simply what particle board is (overlapping lines of wood fragments and torn fibers) but it is painted a glossy black that reflects the drawings and photographs arranged on it. Drawings lay on top of one another other, as though a random pile has been fanned out without deliberation or selection, sometimes with one drawing obscuring others as though it has been blown aside or its corner folded over carelessly. They are all just beyond our ability to view or read or completely comprehend.  An occasional cursive word is decipherable: “GOLDEN TOUCH.” Truer words were never spoken—or painted. A couple of piles of color photographs, the kind that are developed at one-hour services, lie tantalizingly out of reach. 

Suddenly, a group of visitors has grabbed the photos and have distributed them across the table for examination. Were they meant to do that? I ask. No, responds David, we are not supposed to be touching them and not all that information has intended to be shared! I peak anyway. 

Some are photos of a related installation David and Nikholis completed the night before the opening on the bulletin boards outside of Saint John’s, a few blocks away on 2640 Saint Paul Street, best known as a collectively run outpost of Red Emma’s and a favorite haunt for Baltimore artists and musicians. This intervention extends the reach of the show to one of the city’s most heavily trafficked arteries.

I ask Nick which drawings are his. I confess that they all seem so unified, so much of a piece, together, that it is hard to tell where he ends and David begins. It pleases him that their work and ideas have blended so seamlessly, but he does allow his work tends to be figurative, David’s abstract; that most of the color work is David’s and that a lot of the work on newsprint is his. 

Nick rewards me with a pin emblazoned with the letters CY, a memorial to the recently deceased painter Cy Twombly, one of the greatest mark makers of the modern age, and an inspiration during his exchange with David.

Two not-quite-identical paintings lean against the wall, a diptych of sorts that must reflect the collaboration between David and Nick. Did they each work on both canvases? Did they repeat each other’s gestures?  I can relax. It doesn’t signify. The paintings are their paintings.

In the second gallery, usually the Open Space collection of artist’s books, there are a series of works— piles of paper, a file, a sheaf of drawings and marks—displayed on narrow wooden shelves, each one standing on its corner, as though it could topple over at a moment’s notice.  In some ways anxiety- provoking, the arrangement makes us see the items displayed in fresh ways.  As in the rest of the show, we can only see part of what is there, and once again, we wonder:  are these art works we shouldn’t touch or books meant to be open and read?  

This month David Armacost begins his graduate work at Towson University, but for nearly two years he has worked in Visitor Services at the BMA, that tall guy with the welcoming smile. Kudos to his colleagues who pitched in to help—Katie with the essay, Anna Hoffman with the installation, and many others with their presence and enthusiasm. 

Open Space welcomes visitors Fridays, 4 pm to 8 pm and Saturdays and Sundays, 12 pm to 4 pm.  Don’t miss this one!

Untitled by Dru Donovan

The artists at Open Space have collectively curated a photography show that asks us how close the images exhibited come to depicting reality—and, whose reality is this?

Dru Donovan’s black-and-white photographs, all untitled, are painfully intimate views of young people, often those whose lives are not going well. Three depict groups of young men who seem detached, drained, even empty, as they support a delirious companion, drag a limp body up stairs, or flank a companion who stands expressionless as he is licked and kissed. Three more focus on women, capturing their obsession with hardened beauty—acrylic nails, false eye lashes, and the outcome of endless dieting or body-building.

Pete Deevakul’s Fianchetto is a captivating piece, created from countless stop action shots seamlessly assembled.  Projected on the wall, it reveals just how inanimate objects might be active in our homes while we are absent or sleeping.

In a series of studies punctuated by white or black screens, we see (and hear) kitchen appliances, tools, paper bags, weights, plants, rolls of tape, even tables and chairs, that gyrate, bump into each other, and dance, all as though they are as independent and busy as the people who use them every day.

Seated on a sofa, a brown paper bag folds itself down and inserts itself into the crevice behind a cushion. Later, a Mickey Mouse blanket emerges slowly from the same location, folding itself elegantly on the floor below.  Brown bags (nested inside each other) tear apart and roll their shreds in circles, creating a paper flower, dead or dried, but unexpectedly appealing.

Some of my favorite moments are bizarre—like the agitated skeleton head that looks rapidly left and right as it sits on a crowded book shelf—and some are simply beautiful, like a tall glass pitcher that stands in brilliant sunshine, its speckled surfaces casting reflections on a windowsill. Others are downright angry, like the table and chairs that vie strenuously to exit a door; or small kitchen appliances that jump from cabinets and chase each other around the room, pulling their plugs behind them like tails; or snipping scissors that pursue yet another brown paper bag, eventually cutting it in two.

Peruvian-American Carlos Jiménez Cahua seems to take us from reality to abstraction.  His commanding digital prints—hung directly on the wall representing patterns of light or a flat wall with marks and scratches—all approach the impact of the painted picture plane.

This show was a provocative backdrop for the Publications & Multiples Fair held at Open Space in March. Tonight Friday, May 6, from 7 to 10 p.m. you have one more chance to see this work at the Closing Party! Don’t miss it!

Inside Open Space’s white boxy gallery, Noel Freibert’s monumental skull—made of paper bags stuffed with garbage—grins at viewers. And four bundles of printed paper hang from the ceiling on metal chains.  Their contents, which collectively chronicle an imagined film, The Blue Hand, will be collated into books. 

Another piece-in-progress lies inside two stacked fish tanks, where piles of Riso-printed books lie in liquid. They are surprisingly made more beautiful through their near destruction. Like the hanging bundles of paper, they too will be saved and reconfigured. 

Interspersed between these and other creative pieces are Carlos Gonzales’ appealing sculptures—made from street clothing spray-painted and stiffened with cornstarch. One lies in a heap on the floor; another flows like a waterfall from an electrical outlet. Some stand on their own, leaning perilously against the wall. Others interact with chairs set around the room, rest on seats as if tossed by the wearer, and appear as if in the midst of sliding to the ground. 

This weekend is your last chance to see Noel and Carlos’ exhibition before it closes on Sunday, Dec. 12. At the closing party on Saturday, Dec. 11, Closed Caption Comics will release its ninth issue, a 192-page extravaganza with contributions by a group of 2005 MICA graduates, including some still living and working in Baltimore.

Visible Matter (Above Ground) can be seen at Open Space Fridays, 4-8 p.m.; and Saturdays and Sundays, 12-4 p.m. until December 12.

“The show means a lot to me, and it also adds greater meaning [for it] to be in Baltimore. [The City] gave me so much while living there, and I’m happy to come back from wanderings with something to say.” – Curator Hayley Silverman 

A Collection of Hideouts by Philippe Van Wolputte, www.vanwolputteprogress.eu/

A series of 4-x-3 ft. images at Open Space depicts the places we will squeeze into in the wake of a catastrophe, according to Belgian artist Philippe Van Wolputte. He captures these claustrophobic and cluttered spaces in black-and-white digital prints, each covered with clear packing tape. Not unlike the bomb shelters of the 1950s, they are filled with tools, rolls of paper, water jugs, and blankets. Hardly inviting, but perhaps welcome after a disaster. 

On the ninth anniversary of 9/11, Open Space opened the exhibition Liberty B, including Philippe’s digital prints. Essentially, the exhibition takes a look at survivalism—stockpiling supplies, seeking emergency medical treatment, and building secure retreats that will allow people to survive, whatever happens. As the show’s catalogue explains, Liberty B, the independence and self-reliance of survivalism, allows us to exercise Liberty A, the freedom embraced historically by Americans. 

The international flavor of this exhibition was undoubtedly determined by its Curator Hayley Silverman (a 2008 MICA grad who until recently was living in Berlin) and by the liberating possibility of sharing art across the internet. Everything in the show was created and moved halfway around the planet on the worldwide web. The irony here, of course, is that a large enough disaster would render that enduring connectivity unlikely. 

Multi-media work by Guthrie Lonergan

For the exhibition, Los Angeles-based artist Guthrie Lonergan assembled commercial images shot in front of a blue screen. Hand gestures made by multiple figures are interspersed with a wrench, basketball, apple, popcorn that rises from below, leaves that blow across the screen, and an hour glass filled with sand. All of this is accompanied by a snippet from the song Message in a Bottle by the Police. “SOS. . . SOS. . . SOS” is repeated so often, you feel sure that time indeed is running out and the ship is sinking.  

Climb at your own risk by Claude Closky, www.closky.info

Adding to the auditory mayhem, at the show’s opening, musicians mounted the stepladders in Climb at your own risk by French artist Claude Closky and played a guitar and a flute. 

Detail, Motion 01 by Philippe Van Wolputte, www.vanwolputteprogress.eu

In Untitled, American Damon Zuccone offers us a digital clock (set to the actual time) that morphs constantly in shape. In Damon’s 6312414236, using computer software, a cell phone number rewrites itself every nano-second. 

In the video Desert Slide, Danish sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard and J.G. Thirwell climb a hill of pure white sand in the desert of Oman, then sit and slowly slip down the slope. Across the room, Jacob’s Sabulation emits weird, churning sounds that are actually created by the movement of sand. 

As always at Open Space, there is art in the arrangement of the pieces to enhance the whole (the Closky ladders define the gallery really effectively as a three-dimensional space).  And there are wonderful moments when one piece speaks to another.  

Liberty B is on-view at Open Space until October 18. And while you’re there, congratulate these enterprising artist/curators on winning the Citypaper’s 2010 Best Gallery in Baltimore!

Friday night at The Red Room in Normal’s, three cheery young men (the gatekeepers) explained to me that there were already so many people inside, they were not sure they could pry the door open to squeeze me in.

I was hoping to catch a lecture by Alphonso Lingis, a retired philosophy professor from Penn State who was at that moment exploring the significance of outsider art—works created by untrained artists. He had begun his free lecture  a half hour earlier to a sold-out crowd (so to speak), so I moved on to Open Space for one last look at the remaining prints and books in Fresh Prints.

Inside at Open Space, a crowd had gathered and the gallery had morphed to accommodate a series of three performances. All three were enjoyable, but most noteworthy for me, was how they triggered emotions and memories.

The 20th Century is Over
In Open Space’s darkened gallery, Alicia Puglionesi used a slide lecture to explain the universe.  Flashing antiquated printed images, many with exaggerated symbolism and drama, she quickly moved from the Renaissance to the 20^th century, running through “hypothetical things” such as optimism, trouble brewing, plagues, grief, and chronic illness. “Everything is traveling together . . . nothing is left behind,” she remarked. 

Alicia concluded this “forensic reconstruction” abruptly with an image of a large vintage car from the 1950s or 1960s. It appeared lost in a forest, stuck in a puddle of dirty water on an unpaved road. “This,” she said, “brings us to an important point.”  Suddenly, it was the end. 

When I thought about this in the light of day, I recognized that last powerful image as the embodiment of the Industrial Age—General Motors grinds to a halt! Every Ford or Chevy my family owned passed before my eyes, with me growing taller and older beside them.  The 20^th century is over—correction, has been over, and we’ll all have to get over it.

Inside the sandwiches were instructions to the performance.

Art-Full PB&J
Next, someone announced Nick Peelor would be offering us free art sandwiches. Nick circulated around the galleries, a tray hung from his neck on a red cord.  It held several piles of sandwiches, neatly, even artfully arranged. When he approached, I learned that there were four types of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They smelled sweet—and disappeared quickly. There must have been lots of art students in the room (they are always hungry.)  I can never even look at a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without remembering my own graduate school days in the early 1970s. I ate one every day on the steps of the New York Public Library, a posse of pigeons as my companions.

Coffins & Quarterlies  
Weird but beautiful sounds began to emit from the adjoining room. People flowed in that direction. On a white wall, a projected animation showed an old-fashioned wooden coffin (empty), its lid rising and falling.  The animation was connected to the release of the Schematic Quarterly, which editors Ingrid Burrington and Kimmy Fung describe as a subjective and sometimes impractical collage of art, diagrams, documents, fiction, and essays. 

A glance into the pod.

Pod people
Most of the darkened room was filled by a round pod, some twenty feet wide, that was kept raised by forced air and illuminated by the glow of a cool light.  As the audience—about thirty people— moved inside and took seats around the edges of the shelter they cast shadows of varying intensity. 

I stood outside in the darkness, listening, enjoying the pattern of the light and shadows. What was this gigantic pod? A tent?  An igloo?  A womb? I later found out that it was made by one of the musicians, Neal Reinalda.

The three musicians, a band called Floored (Neal, Brendan Sullivan, and Andrew Kennedy), continued to play in the center of the pod. There were sharp percussive beats and gentle sounds like whistling, noises that must have involved a computer or a synthesizer of some kind (this is not my forte, but I liked it). 

“The music was as soothing as deep breathing or listening
to the heart beat of an unborn child. Suddenly,
there was silence, then clapping, then laughter.
I wished I were inside the pod.  Next time.”

Up next at Open Space:

• On April 16 from 7 to 10 p.m., Beki Basch’s will screen her film Vision Quest Lundi: Baltimore throughout the night. The film is the first installment of a story that follows two protagonists on a quest to find the Atlantic Puffin in its natural habitat. Beki’s drawings and sculpture in response to her film will be on-view at Open Space through April 30.