art review

Who Cares For Planet Earth?

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 15:28:25 +0000

Who Cares For Planet Earth? Anonymous July 9, 2018 - 11:28

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Considering the scope of climate change, it really begs the question why more artists aren't tackling the subject.

Fortunately, we're seeing a sea change. Artists from the Sunshine State (and others) are assuming the mantle for bringing attention to a subject that is as dire as it is censored -- heck, the words "climate change" are even forbidden from being included in official documents, a mandate from Gov. Rick Scott.

At the Morean Arts Center, the comprehensive exhibition Water over the Bridge: Contemporary Seascapes displays both accessible and challenging works in a staggering variety of media. Curated by D. Dominick Lombardi of Valhalla, N.Y., and Amanda Cooper, the Morean's Curator of Exhibitions, it's a must-see for anyone who cares about supporting visual art and gaining perspective on the environment.

"Contemporary artists can very often be like the canary in the coalmine warning of the presence of deadly gases," Lombardi wrote in the exhibition's program.

"Artists can bring to light the changes in sea levels, and the industries that contribute to the problem by simply exposing, with visual and written references, a very troubling reality that we are in the thick of a political battle for our very future, and the futures of the animals and plants we love."

Artists helping meet Lombardi's objective include Kate Helms, Kenny Jensen, Selina Roman, Anne Bowen, Babs Reingold, Carolina Cleere, Margaret LeJeune, Rieko Fujinami and William Thompson.

While some may flinch when invited to a climate change-focused exhibition for fear of a heavy-handed downer experience, "Water over the Bridge" does much more. It elevates the discussion, offering as much that's life affirming as is foreboding. It provides humor and whimsicality as well as punch-you-in-the-gut pathos.

"If you look at works by Don Doe, Bill Gusky, Scott Hatt, Dale Leifeste, China Marks and Selina Roman, you will see that they are raising our awareness of rising sea levels with a bit of humor," Lombardi elaborates. "I also believe that we have to be thankful for the not-for-profit institutions like the Morean that will mount challenging shows that raise important issues like climate change. Since not-for-profits do not have to rely on selling the work they exhibit, they can show art that goes beyond saccharine seascapes and landscapes. Living in New York I am no stranger to rubberneck delays on highways. It's a shame there is such great interest in slowing down to look at the carnage of a car accident across a roadway, while issues about the environment have become a nasty political battle."

According to her artist statement, Kate Helms calls attention to the "parroted paradise ... born of stout St. Augustine grass, primly planted medians, perfectly spaced palms, and gracefully arcing sprinkler showers." Her works are "united by a desire to question cultural attitudes about the fabricated environments we inhabit and fetishize to the point of precarious delusion."

Her installation Colony 1 (created with resin, cloth, sandpaper and found chaise, measuring 74 x 28 x 35 inches) proposes a creepy hypothetical scenario; it foresees the future state of an antique chair in an opulent Florida living room after it's been submerged for decades -- the chair's once opulence is reduced to an absurd oddity as realistically crafted barnacles overtake it. It's both a poignant and humorous look at how nature may conquer us if we don't stop abusing it.

"I haven't lost all hope and you shouldn't either," Helms said during her recent gallery talk at the Morean, adding that her work is not intended as a death knell but a call to action. A Stormwater Program Administrator for the City of Largo, the scientist/artist has painstakingly tracked the effects of runoff and expresses no doubt that climate change is human-influenced.

Babs Reingold's mixed-media installation The Last Sea mirrors a more current reality, one that harks viral videos of wildlife strangled by plastic bags -- a canoe filled with flaccid, nondescript small stuffed animal corpses and strewn with plastic litter. In addition, one of Reingold's Luna Ladders hangs overboard. From one perspective, it denotes a "jump ship" attitude like those of wealthy people who believe they can just colonize Mars. On the other hand, the ladder could intimate one last hope for survival. Adding a touch of dark humor, the boat's name, the piece's title, spelled out in a boat name painted whimsically in a recognizable 1950s-style semi-cursive font. It's a light touch on a dark piece. Ultimately, The Last Sea offers a chilling scenario, a proposition of the last major body of water on Earth. Its theme, a progression of Babs Reingold's series "The Last Tree," takes its inspiration from Jared Diamond's 2004 TedEx talk, when he asks, "What was the person who cut down the last tree on Easter Island thinking?"

The ideal exhibition to bring teens and tween students to, Water over the Bridge engages and elicits critical thinking and discourse; a highly prescriptive antidote to reactive social networking and comment-board trolling.

"This exhibition does succeed as a kind of protest," Co-curator Amanda Cooper says in the brochure for the show. "If you ever thought about land conservation and wondered why it was important or whether you should care about it -- one only has to look at these paintings to see what we stand to lose. Sometimes a beautifully and lovingly crafted work of art speaks louder than a megaphone."

In tandem, The Morean Arts Center is also presenting a solo exhibition by an established artist who places an emphasis on the joy and wonder we feel while encountering nature. "Leslie Neumann: Manna from Heaven … and Earth," shows the trajectory of an established artist and conservationist‘s work over a long period of time, focusing on the beauty of nature vs. our troubling current events.

Arguably the world's most urgent problem, climate change not only hits close to home on both the figurative and literal level, but offers a number of philosophical quandaries to explore -- from the most elemental of human needs to more abstract, complex issues around stewardship of our planet, morality and evolution. - Julie Garisto

Ms. Garisto is an assistant editor/contributor at the central Florida nonprofit arts agency Creative Pinellas, where she covers arts and music events. Julie also contributes to the Tampa Bay Times as well as other publications. She served as arts and entertainment editor for Creative Loafing (2010-2015).

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Semiotexting and Snorealism on Instagram

Millree Hughes — Sun, 11 Feb 2018 08:57:12 +0000

Semiotexting and Snorealism on Instagram Millree Hughes February 11, 2018 - 03:57

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Like many people who like to look at art and write about it, I don't have time to go to galleries, I work too much. But I do find time to look at paintings on Instagram. This is my take on the work that I see there. It's never going to be the same as experiencing it live, my read is bound to be limited. This is a skim, a study of tendencies if you like.

There are many ways to find Art on Instagram. DM Simons posts work by interesting artists. Dailycollector is another account. I often search for the work of people I know, have known or vaguely know.

The recent change of guard at Artforum provoked ire from the art lovers on social media. Many complained that the outgoing administration used too much Frenchified "art-speak". Largely forgotten in their own country the Semiotexters have been hugely influential in the art and literature departments of American colleges for over thirty years. Their ideas have trickled down into art criticism. Their original position stems from Lacan’s theory that there is nothing in human development before, outside of, or without language. The study of books and paintings has become, on their watch, a hyper-sensitive examination of culture as a kind of code.

What artists find mesmerizing about Lacan, (caught in a double loop of love and hate). Is his assertion that they can’t see the psychic monkey wrench in their own hand? The code isn’t always available to us. Only the analyst can read it. The central anxiety -- the thing that really bites them in the arse -- is invisible to them because it is suppressed by their own unconscious. Modern Artists don’t like this, they believe seeing that thing ("Gimme Das Ding"*) is central to their work. "This is what we do!"

It's a given in Modern Art that you can’t talk about all this naffed up stuff unless you’ve been to your own dark side. And for some it’s the main content of the work.

Secondly, and more particularly galling for the Americans, is the power put into the hands of the critic. The idea that all the weight of your guilt is only available to you through the Analyst/Theorist/Priest is way too Catholic and too top down for most Americans. They truly believe that they can make those assessments for themselves.

What artists love about Lacan and his followers is the visual nature of their models and themes. Lacan’s prophylactic eye is a deliciously perverse image. Gaston Bachelard’s beautiful work on the oneiric nature of the home, The Poetics of Space is a book for dreamers and painters.

My favorite Contemporary painting knows it’s primal urges. The Lesbian Eros of Angela Dufresnem (image above left). The Thanatos of the United States daubed in fake blood by Michael St John.

A typical St John painting looks like a section of hoarding covering a new construction. A picture of Britney Spears brandishing a white snake is posted on a painted ground. A woman holding a snake appears in many cultures around the world. It can signify menstrual psychic energy in Aboriginal myth. Minoan snake goddess figures represent renewal, fertility and the reborn dead. St John finds the mythic in the banal arguing that its power comes through even when it's chosen in total ignorance.

Dufresne's figures revel in a Sapphic paradise. A particularly great drawing has a butch lesbian holding a girl upside down about to give her cunnilingus. Dufresne performs the perfect act of sublimation, turning sexual fantasies into art realities.

But if Lacan is right and It's not really their "thing" that's underneath the work, driving it. What are they painting, and why? And if they're not qualified to do their own "work" why should we do it for them.

But perhaps I'm making too much of Contemporary painters loyalty to the idea of understanding their dark side. I've noticed a group of young painters acting as if revealing the unconscious is a stylistic thing. I call this "tendency" Snorealism.

Snorealism is like Surrealism but without the delimiting constraints of evoking anybody's dreams. Well painted but not so as to make too much of an accurate rendering, that doesn't seem to be the point. Neither does the suppressed unknown of the artist, as it might be imagined by Jung or Freud. In fact it seems to be painted in a knowing way to illustrate something not known.

Young artists like Benjamin Senior from Britain. A typical Senior Painting shows swimmers beside a pool. A dark skinned one is exhibiting the crawl to the others. We are not meant to read her skin colour as being significant. The retro feel of the bathing costumes and the wall length window and tiles seem more important. It's like a play set sometime after the War and before the Permissive Society when the world was a stagey self-conscious place.

Sports and exercise is a recurring theme. The odd positions that people adept when doing them can be read as theatricalized performance. Caitlin Albritton paints yoga girls whose tights are covered in snaggy Memphis-like decorative dashes. These painters often evoke some unspecific past. Robin F. William's painting, "Butter Circle" has a wistful '50s Life Magazine illustration feel, but by way of the '80s' colours. Andrew Wyeth done for MTV. (Image top of page.)

An earlier era siphoned through the '80s seems to be a recurring characteristic. It feels as if the people are wandering around in one of those gothic storylines that the Cure intercut between them playing the song in their pop videos.

DM Simons is an interesting artist with great taste and posts a lot of this kind of work, often alongside similar '20s and '30s paintings. It’s not all bad and some are very nice. My problem is the message from these young painters Is that deep urges are exploited for effect rather than critical heft. Consequently it looks more like illustration than painting.

But perhaps I'm being obtuse and Snorealism is deliberately designed to answer the unavailability of the Lacuna. It accepts that we don't know our actual motivation. And that frees up the movements of the subconscious to be used as a flavoring, a garnish. Nowadays the collectors don't need to peer into the abyss, an amuse bouche only needs a hint of Tartarus. - Millree Hughes