Emvergeoning

Via Andrew Sullivan I came across this cool NYT slideshow of people alongside their avatars on video games such as Second Life, City of Heroes, and EverQuest. A surprising number of them are accurate self-portraits (minus a few pounds, of course); but there a few cross-gender avatars and purely fantastical characters. Edward Castronova made a name for himself studying the economics of EverQuest; perhaps there’s a similar opportunity for someone to study the psychology of avatar construction. Oh wait…

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Winners were announced for the Photographic Center Northwest’s 12th Annual Photographic competition. Shuffling through some of the photographers’ websites, I found the stunning work of Brea Souders from the land of NYC. Souders spent some quality time in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile as well as the decaying innards of a Catskills resort.

Congratulations to William Hundley in Austin for being the only Texan to win over the new Department Head and Curator of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Charlotte Cotton. Although much of the work she chose seems geared towards glossy fashion, a few cultivated interesting portfolios like Cat Gwynn [left] and Sung Jin Park [right]:

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In case you can’t make it to Austin this month, here’s a sneak peek of new work from Sterling Allen at Art Palace. The exhibition perfectly encapsulates Allen’s keen ability to start with a mess of scribble clouds, untangle one free flowing line drawing and finally extract meticulously detailed phantasmagorias like this:

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Taking the simpleton characters in repose that we find currently on display at the Bluestar, an artist from Amsterdam named Harm Van Den Dorpel {you heard me} offers an improvement upon a basic premise (make sure you roll over the person to activate the art). Check out the deconstruction of a horse and watch the limp limbs of a sleeping man take on a life of their own.
In other news, Work has a nice, serialized collection of skull art currently on display.

If you skipped the art walk yesterday beneath a light rainfall, well, you didn’t miss much. Robot Art Gallery had a half assed show that wasn’t even installed yet at 645pm opening night. Oops. Add the conspicuous absence of appetizers and drinks and it seemed like a disaster. El Sol Studios outshines all other tiny art spaces down Alamo Street with an interesting, colloidal, monochromatic foam installation. Make sure to catch this show, which is an anomaly from their conventional painting exhibitions.

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Last month the Express-News reported that Ruth Medellin, executive director of the Alameda National Center for Latino Arts and Culture, will be leaving the organization. This comes on the heals of Laura Esparza’s departure from the directorship of Museo Alameda (which is run by the Alameda Center). However, this hardly the whole story.

According to Emvergeoning’s sources, virtually the entire Alameda staff will have to reapply to their jobs if they want to stay with the organization, while the Alameda conducts a national search to replace not just the executive director, but her staff as well. There were many problems with the launch of the Museo Alameda, and the organization had to make moves to address these problems. The exhibitions lacked vision; the wall text was riddled with errors; at least one commissioned artist wasn’t even reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses in the tens of thousands of dollars, and had to hire a collector.  However, despite problems with the opening of the museum (documented in part by the New York Times), I have to wonder if this purge is the wisest course of action at this juncture.

Now I don’t have an MBA, and I certainly don’t know about the internal politics of the Alameda, but to me it would seem much more reasonable to allow the incoming director to replace staff as needed, rather than throwing the entire organization into turmoil.

In the Express-News piece, founding chairman Henry Muñoz III says, “We’ve got senior-level people both at the museum and the Alameda, and they’re going to see us through this transition.” Are they going to remain committed to the Alameda during this time, not knowing who they will be working for or with at the end of the transition? Maybe it would be worthwhile for a full-time reporter to follow up on this purge, so we could learn more about the underlying causes and potential repercussions of the move.

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Alice Twemlow, kicking off a piece for Design Observer, points us to a Very Short List post giddily discussing an album which is a soundtrack without a film. Very Short List concludes the post reeling with the possibilities: “Dazzling book jackets without novels inside; awesome stage sets on which actors never set foot; kick-ass magazine covers with no accompanying articles . . . we love the myriad possibilities of this new cart-before-the-horse genre.”

Of course, something like this has been done many times before: Brian Eno’s “” (a 1978 album featuring soundtracks for imaginary films); Stanislaw Lem’s “” (reviews of imaginary books) and “” (introductions to imaginary books); and yes, even Harland Miller’s covers for imaginary books. The Design Observer article focuses on poster art, and the relationship between the poster and the (sometimes fictitious) event or product being promoted. It moves from minimal Japanese poster artist Ten do Ten whose designs only use huge black and red pixels, to Richard Niessen’s “Kong” poster: “A mosaic built up from pixellated K’s, O’s, N’s and G’s and fusing the game-scapes of Donkey Kong and Pong to create an architectural setting for King Kong.” Definitely worth a read.

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When I first saw Mike Gravel’s on YouTube, I figured he was just a 3rd tier Democrat trying to leverage Dadaism to get a little publicity. Crispin Sartwell has decided that these ads are no mere publicity stunt, but the genuine avant-garde of campaigning: “These are Dadaist campaign ads, as revolutionary in their context as Duchamp’s urinal, Warhol’s Marilyns, Washington crossing the Delaware, Bugs Bunny’s attack on Elmer Fudd.” You may never again see someone reference Baudrillard while critiquing a campaign ad, so enjoy it while you can, if you can:

Gravel’s works confront us with our own existences and our deaths, the brute thereness of truth, the skull beneath the $400 haircut, the cellulite under the pants suit. His is neo-existentialist, post-apocalyptic, post-post modern art, a silence that screams and cajoles.

(via The Plank)

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Such amicable weather is a nice respite from the typically sweltering month of too many shows and never enough snacks. In honor of Louis Armstrong’s birthday yesterday, I thought I would share this lovely song with everybody. Thank you KRTU for playing a full day of heartwarming songs from such a timeless character and supporting Contemporary Art Month. The hamsters that run this website will keep you posted on the latest events as they happen!!

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Join friends to remember the generous life of Linda Pace at 11am on Saturday, July 7th. Chris Park is on S. Flores across from the Camp Street building.

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Christopher Knight at the LA Times asks whether an as-yet-unrealized Felix Gonalez-Torres sculpture should have been chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale (hat tip MAN). The two primary concerns are whether Gonzalez-Torres really needs the exposure, and whether it is appropriate for a curator to undertake the realization of a new work for which there are only notes and sketches. MAN took up the second issue back in early March, and asked Michelle Reyes to address it in a brief interview. According to Reyes, who is the director of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and the Andrea Rosen Gallery:

This is fully formed, completely, no questions. But as per Felix’s working practice, there were parameters for the flexibility intrinsic to the work – there is a choice of two sizes and a choice of materials. As with the majority of Felix’s work, it will look different each time it is installed. There is no one true installation. This is one of the core aspects of the nature of all of Felix’s work.

If, as Sol LeWitt said, “the idea is a machine that makes the art,” there shouldn’t be any problem using the concept and sketches to realize a piece posthumously. But to what extent did Gonzalez-Torres subscribe to this idea of art-making? Although Gonzalez-Torres often built (endless) reproduction into the concept of his pieces (as in the piece Untitled (For Jeff), displayed around San Antonio on billboards to “welcome” the Alameda), and encouraged curator involvement in the production process, it is a question worth asking.

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This afternoon comes another great loss for the arts in San Antonio: Linda Pace died in hospice care. Although I didn’t know Pace personally, her dedication to contemporary art touched all of us involved in the art community in many ways. Her most ambitious project, Artpace, brought San Antonio into a dialogue with the national and international contemporary art world that has changed the way the city as a whole views art. Since 1995, Artpace has been a paragon of arts organizations in San Antonio: the quality of the work, the involvement with the community, and the professionalism of the organization have been consistently impressive. Beyond Artpace, Pace has contributed to the community in innumerable ways, through her own body of artwork as well as her support for other organizations.

I have heard that Pace left her collection to form the basis of a new museum, which will be a lasting legacy to her love of art and of the city of San Antonio. As I learn more about the form this will take, I’ll let you know.

I would encourage those that knew Pace better than I did (and there are a lot of you out there) to leave your thoughts on her life and her work in the comments.

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