Presenting “Work of Art”

I approached the idea of Bravo’s new reality TV show Work of Art with some disdain and apprehension. The idea of artistic competition, fenced by deadlines, assignments and criticism, is not new in the art world. I mostly had reservations having the ability to maintain artistic integrity within the framework of a reality TV show. After watching the season premier, I found myself pleasantly surprised. There is a value to seeing artwork in the context of a TV show like this one. It also helped that the art was really good.

The show becomes an unexpected way to bring art to a viewership that might not necessarily have access to emerging art. It lends itself to a gallery experience, showing both the art and how other people interact with it. In fact, the critical segment of the show, featuring some of the most famed art critics in New York, becomes a crash course in how to talk about and see art. It contracts the two-part process of reading an art critique in print—seeing and retaining the work, then understanding what the critique is referring to. It inadvertently trains the eye to discriminate not only based on presentation but also based on process.

There are, however, elements to the show that I still feel unsure about. Though each critique is preceded by a gallery show, in which the work has a chance to interact with a selected public, I want to see how other venues and contexts will affect the process and the work. (Art is never just the object itself, but what it is presented in, and how.)

Also, because of the set-up, the show overstates the role of critics in determining the success of a work. The reliance on this might just be a function of keeping the show efficient and moving forward. The deeper debates of art are relegated elsewhere. It is easy to see that the judging might become tricky because aesthetic preference has always been a touchy subject in our culture, which begat the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  The show might have a hard time identifying and consistently justifying criteria that define a successful art piece throughout the season. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this avoided entirely for the sake of keeping it digestible.

On the whole, it has something for art lovers, and drama lovers. I am optimistic.

Work of Art airs Wednesday nights, 11/10c on Bravo.

The Life Cycle of Street Art and Graffiti

I just an article titled “Banksy Mural Threatened With Destruction Moved”
off of Clancco, an art law and news blog. Though the article was short, the title conveys the sentiment behind the municipal duty to preserve art, contributed to in no small part by museums and historic institutions. With cultural artifacts and historical objects, the moral certitude of preservation becomes hazy and debatable, but in the case of street art and graffiti, the preservation works against the ephemerality at the basis of the art.

In street art and graffiti, the conditions of its creation define its content, much like performance and installation art. It is necessarily site specific and has a life span. Unlike more traditionally studio-created work, street art and graffiti are impermanent and their contexts cannot be managed. This art is an homage to the process of creation in opposition to rampaging object fetish, and to the individual life of the art after its creation and beyond the control of the creator. When I worked with Gawker Artists last summer, I had the chance to meet the street artist Billi Kid, who put this in perspective for me. Regarding his work, he says to “Take a close look at it, smile at it, tear it or cover it with something new.” That is the rhythm of art in the street–perpetual fleeting motion.

The want to preserve Banksy’s mural above defy the nature of and remove the power of the work. The particular piece in question, ironically, is about impermanence, and retains its magnitude from also having a limited lifespan, if not from destruction then from natural forces of weathering. The threats made against the work of being defaced that prompted the gallery to remove the work from view do not destabilize the work so much as reveal the skewed objectives of an institutional setting.

This Banksy piece gives me an excuse to say what I feel is true of many street, performance, installation, conceptual art forms sheltered and protected by museums and viewing spaces. The work is meant to be transient and subject to the forces and itsaudience without mediation from a third party.

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For Thirty Days in New York

Tonight is the opening party for a new gallery and a new gallery concept, Thirty Days Gallery. (See site for details on attending the party.) Curated by Family Bookstore (I believe it is this curated bookstore in LA?), the gallery is located in Tribeca and will be on view, as its name suggests, for only 30 days, now through May 7th.

Looking at the lineup and the calendar, it seemed that the planning and effort were disproportionate to the length of the display. But maybe Thirty Days is not meant to be looked at as just another gallery, but a total work in itself. While their page does not say this, I believe the gallery project is an homage to the art forms it will be presenting, and the under-appreciated ephemerality of art and art spaces of New York.

The gallery, like the art it will house, exists and can only be experienced aesthetically for a set amount of time–installation, film, music, and (the act of reading) books. Thirty Days seems to want to respect the temporality of these art forms by aligning itself with their organic cycles of coming into/disappearing from the public eye, rather than transcending it with permanence. This is a gallery project that respects the nature of this art, and perhaps suggests that a gallery is defined by its composite parts.

Thirty Days also shows its affinity for its fellow gallery spaces, many of which have closed in the past year due to economic pressure. While art (categorically and historically) is considered to be eternal, it is clear that those that struggle to build lives around it are not. In its graceful entrance and exit, Thirty Days honors whole gallery practice and struggle.

I am disappointed that I will not be able to see this gallery at all. Please if you have the chance, pay a visit.

Thirty Days Gallery
70 Franklin Street, between Church & Broadway
Tribeca, New York

Through May 7th, 2010

PS1 and Studio Space

MoMA’s PS1 started a project a while ago called Studio Visits, in which artists of the boroughs of New York can upload images of their art in their studios to be featured on the virtual apartment complex. Photos include not only artwork installed in their sites of conception, but of the exterior of the studio’s building, perhaps for context, perhaps for a greater sense of realism in having visited the space.

A Studio Visit feature: Suhee Wooh

Increasingly, the studio has become a space of interest in the art world, but is typically excluded from participating directly in the highly-glossed circle of the art market. Perhaps this is because the studio is still romanticized as a place of genius, or individual creative expression–separate from transaction or commerce. The studio, as a site of process, remains conceptually and somewhat physically isolated as a result.

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The Face of Virtual Galleries

I’ve been meaning to do a write-up on Gawker Artists, in case you were wondering about that large, colorful, ever-changing banner to the right. Rather than making this a glorifying post of my experiences, I’d like to look at what I think the next frontier of gallery space might be after my time with them. Please see the extended version below.

Click here to register with Gawker Artists as an artist.
Click here to register for a banner for your own site.
Be a fan on Facebook.

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Honey Space: Gallery Revisited

I read about this place originally in a Times review in 2007 or 2008, and recently looked it up again for research on alternative art spaces. I’m really happy to hear it’s still open and exhibiting shows.

Honey Space is a self-proclaimed gallery space in Chelsea with none of the commercial, posh fixings of its neighbors. In fact, it doesn’t have in-house staff most of the time. Or heating. Or a door. (Metal gates come down over the place when it’s not open on its business schedule.) It’s a raw space for site-specific installation, started by a Brooklyn-based artist. The artists showing in the space count entirely on the good faith of the viewing public to contact them to purchase work (rather than stealing it), and the owner of the gallery doesn’t charge rent, or take a penny of the earnings.

This place interests me because it implies that art is an environment, and that an artistic environment has definite characteristics. It calls upon a moral code, a basic level of respect, and a two-way faith between viewer and creator mediated by objects. Furthermore, the entirety of the space as a whole installation (the gallery exhibition) can be broken down into its composite parts (the artwork) and still retain its articulacy.

There is something heartening about a kind of space like this, that is an open-ended creative environment. It was from sites like these that early installation art, and performance art came into being. Places like this cannot be underestimated in terms of importance in the larger food chain known as the art world.

Please drop in sometime if you are in the area.

Honey Space
148 11th Ave. (btw. 21st & 22nd); New York, NY
Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat 11-6