Emvergeoning

I’ve decided to do a series of three posts on Alberto Mijangos‘ work over the next week or so. This, the first, includes images of paintings from his “Chones” series. (For the gringos in the audience, that means “undies”.)

This series of paintings was a primary focus for Mijangos at the end of his life. Painting abstract underwear was a way for Mijangos to deal with the demagoguery, hypocrisy, and self-righteousness that pervades our politics (by “our politics” I mean the politics of the human race). These parts of our clothing that are most hidden and most easily soiled by embarrassing breaches in self-control, represent the obscure, dark side of the human personality; but at the same time, they represent a beautiful vulnerability and honesty. Here’s Mijangos discussing the Chones paintings in his 2003 interview with Smithsonian:

Well, it’s a situation about honesty, a situation about — communication with honesty, talking directly to another human being and really looking at that human being as a spiritual being, and to deal on those terms of I am talking to you with all my honesty and I’m talking to your spiritual being which is beautiful and perfection, and in that communication there’s an incredible experience of really, really admiring what creation is all about.

Sometimes I remember talking to my son and my son will look at me like his father and I would look at my son like my son. Not long ago my son, who is 40 years old, I went to him and I told him, I don’t know you as a human being. I know you as my son, but I want to know you as a human being. And he says, “I want to know you as a human being, too.” And our relationship changed incredible. Now we know each other spiritually and it’s no longer that situation about seeing objects or seeing a table like a table or seeing a cat like a cat. It’s totally different. We have that opportunity and we lose that because of what’s going on in the world, so we cover ourselves. We don’t want anybody to see our Chones.

Mijangos’ style of heavily layered expressionism allows him to convey basic forms that are simple and bold, but also imbued with the scuffs and marks of a complex personality that has lived in the world and is being revealed with honesty. These layers suggest the levels of experience, feeling, and thought that comprise a personality, and are expressed through the image of the underwear: the layer beneath the layer, which is itself stained and frayed. Coming up next: the T-Shirt Series.

(More images below the fold)

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Last night I made it out to Vtrue in time to catch whimsical but seamless ceramic sculptures by Pattie Chalmers. Drawing from fables and foibles, Chalmers’ cartoon-like characters are honest and simple without seeming trite. Mr. Disappointment (detail below) holds a bouquet of flowers and a lonesome visage, recalling an especially pathetic R. Crumb character.

But the installation is filled with other characters, several of which radiate satisfaction. Gracie, on the opposite end of the stage from Mr. Disappointment, looks out at the observer with the newfound clarity of her glasses, eating honey sandwiches.

[Note: All photos in this post by Justin Parr]

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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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