artVIEWS

Monthly magazine, a multi-disciplinary catalog of contemporary art reviews. 12 issues per year. Released in all 50 states.
50,000 copies of each issue to be produced and distributed.
articles in beginning
reviews in middle. Around 6 per show, each 1-2 pages. Lots of images.
In back, letters to editor, one cartoon.
Critics will be (primarily) critics of other genres (theatre, books, music, etc.)
all shows reviewed will have more than one reviewer, sometimes one that related to its field, for example a Chris Burden show reviewed by a theatre critic, but sometimes assignments will be arbitrary.


Very few of us are just artists anymore. Everyone has a day job. Thus, I am thrilled to introduce artVIEWS, a new contemporary art criticism publication that reflects this current culture. Just as artists are no longer just artists; neither are our art critics. They have other day jobs, too: being critics for other arts fields. artVIEWS has assembled an incredible team of passionate and well-versed scholars and critics in the fields of music, theatre, literature, movie/television, and fashion. This team of critics will bring you monthly reports of recent contemporary art shows.
And since we are already leaping bounds of genre, why not leap the boundaries of location? artVIEWS will primarily review shows in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and will include art from at least one other US city per issue. One month we may review a gallery opening Miami, the next, an instillation in Tulsa. The critics reviewing that locale’s shows will be from that city, and appointed by our head critic in each genre.
Art, of course, is our focus here. While we may have book and fashion designers lending their lenses to contemporary art, the purpose of the varying critiques is to give the work multiple, trained, critical viewings. In most magazine reviews, word limit causes readers to believe that Olafur Eliasson’s recent show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago is simply about color and nature. But it also contains elements of theatricality, kinetic experience, and activation – elements to which I am sure our theatre reviewer will devote his precious words. By giving works multiple reviews, our readers get a more robust and holistic experience of the work, as most readers will not have the privilege of experiencing the work in person.
I believe artVIEWS gives our readers across the country an “in” to the nation-wide art scene. When you walk into an art space, you see the work from more than one vantage point, you activate different senses, you relate work not just to art history, but to the culture in which we live. This magazine will give those perspectives to anyone interested in reading. This magazine is for the contemporary art-literate, to give them new perspectives on seeing. This magazine is for the contemporary art-curious, to give them options of which perspective to choose, and inspiring them to create their own opinion. This magazine is for the contemporary art-illiterate, who are offered pages of voices to explore, giving them multiple introductions to art.
With hope, this magazine will also bridge the gaps between the arts. With day jobs and our own art occupying our time, most of us don’t have the leisure to lend our spare time to supporting other genres of the arts. artVIEWS will give arts communities a reason to come together, extending our creative work to wider creative audiences.
Not to fear, artVIEWS will employ visual art critics and scholars, too. Issues will also contain articles from an art-perspective on new art venues and category-defying concepts. These articles will tackle such issues as Murakami’s consumer and fashion-based art and the use of blogs as public catalogues for artistic preference and inspiration.
I am excited for you to explore art from all angles.

-Andrew Karas, Collaborator-in-Chief

Zuzana Stefkova

In her May 20th talk at Northwestern University, Zuzana Stefkova provided an overview of Czech Republic and Slovakian art. Serving as a curator at the Center for Contemporary Art in Prague, Stekfova discussed the work of her native artists and how they use the region’s struggle with Communism, Democracy, and ideological shifts as the launching points for their work.
Stefkova began her lecture with defining political art. While political art is multi-faceted and varied, she said the common threads were: work that furthers a message/underdog social movement, deals with politics, addresses authoritative powers, and is socially conscious. She then defined political art more plainly, stating that it is art about social issues from a critical standpoint. Because of recent political changes in Central Europe, political artists have done a wide-variety of work in response.
She spoke of the type of art being made by her countrymen and women under different reigns. In the Socialist years of the Czech Republic, art and politics were to be separate. “Politik-um,” an exhibition in a Prague castle spoke to the Socialist mentality of separation, now presenting propaganda and political acts as art. The show, due to its proximity to the Head o State, was forced to close early so as to not represent that the entire nation also shared this anti-German sentiment. This show argued the need for art-for-art’s-sake. For while politically-natured, the artists were able to use even the most oppressive of subject matter to express their artistic concepts.
As much of the work is in political response to oppressive governmental ideals, and because there is strength in numbers, artists groups are commonly found doing the most socially-engaging work in Central Europe. Stefkova spoke of several, but the most memorable was Pink Tank, who painted a World War II monument (a tank) pink. Immediately after they painted it, the government countered and painted it back to its rightful green color. But not long after, people from outside of the group painted the tank pink again. While painting a tank pink obviously speaks to the want for military violence to be out of the public eye, it also argues for the want for art to very much be in the public eye.
She presented the works of David Cerny, whose projects blur the lines between art, politics, pranks, and activism. In one of his pieces, he appropriates crude objects to become the countries comprising Central Europe. A slab of salami adorned in Hungarian-colored ribbons was used for Slovakia, while a squat-toilet subbed for Bulgaria.
While the work she presented was very influential and exciting, Stefkova did finish the lecture with some fears of the possible downfall of Central European political art. Because this art scene has seen many changes, and so, too, has seen much publicity, she fears people may use political art purely to gain profits. She is also fearful of the manner in which the art functions. She believes art that tries to convert people may be just as bad as the oppressive government that the artists have been living under. And finally, she sees that a lack of independence may at some point force a stopping of this important art production.

Tom Marioni

In Tom Marioni’s May 18th artist presentation, he repeatedly referred to himself as both a sculptor and a conceptual artist. He spoke about being interested in art dealing with the present – and, according to his definition, sculpture always exists in the present. Moreover, he claimed to be the founder of the conceptual art movement, even founding the Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco.

The first work he showed was “From China to Czechoslovakia,” a sound sculpture and slideshow from 1976 that recorded him blowing into different beer bottles in geographical order across the globe. Throughout his talk, Marioni spoke about intention being the one necessary element of art. While these sounds may not be art, the intentionality he brought to the project made it an artwork.

In his 1972 “Out-of-Body Drawings,” Marioni made lines on pieces of paper taped to the wall. The lines were connected to natural human movement – walking, making circular form with radius of arm. While an important element of the piece is the ending document, he thought for a long time and planned these markings thoroughly, giving it importance via his intentionality.

He then showed an interview of himself where he talked about his life, his views on art, and his current projects. What was most interesting in this was his definition of conceptual art. He claimed, “Conceptual art is not for the making of a static object.” After the interview, he told us that he now thinks conceptual art is simply not glued down to one specific medium.

Later in the talk, Marioni addressed the theatricality, or performativity of his work. Marioni holds that performance manipulates matter, while theatre manipulates the audience. He considers himself a performance artist, as he manipulates objects. In his 1969 “One Second Sculpture,” he threw a tape measure into the air, manipulating the objects form, action, its temporality, while also giving it a sound, or playing its music.

Even though a specific concept is obviously so important in his work, he said it is not paramount in the desired experience of the viewer. Instead, he said he “shoots for the mood,” allowing the audience to uncover the majority of the content.

At the end of his speech, students gathered together to perform his 1976 work, “Beer Drinking Sonata”, in which students follow each sip of the beer with a blow into the top of the bottle. The project called for 13 participants, but for some strange reason, only eleven students were drinking, while Marioni served as number twelve. Moreover, because the event was co-sponsored by a political student group, the political science students seemed like they thought this was the silliest thing they had ever done, and were also extremely self-conscious of the audience watching them drink and blow. Marioni said he “shoots for the mood.” But I don’t think this experience was anything like the mood he created in 1976 where he and his friends joyously (and with intention) got together to sip on some beers.

Complexity, Simplicity, and 4 Lamps

Upon entering Josef Strau’s newest show, “Iniquities Suspend,” at the Rowley Kennerk Gallery in Chicago, I thought to myself, “this show is about lamps.” Walking into the small, homelike space, I was accosted by a dying gaggle’s-worth of awkward lamp personalities. There was a cheap, thin IKEA-esque lamp with a bashfully sized turquoise shade. There was a lamp, the miniature version of the aforementioned standard silver lamp with a more conservative tan shade, sitting alone on a very small pedestal. In the corner, there was a boring white bent-rod lamp with an exposed bulb. Finally, there was an incarcerated lamp. This decorative gold tableside lamp, complete with beige pleated shade, sat imprisoned underneath a rod-iron and glass table that may have once been its stage. In this small and (when I went) uninhabited space, the lamps kept me company. They pitifully awaited my arrival, the tallest one even putting on its fanciest turquoise shade for the occasion. But, alas, holding court with this merry band of gentlelamps proved a fleeting excitement. Surely there was context, history, explanation, content? Yes? Well, of course. The lamps were not simply awaiting my arrival: they were working to illuminate the canvasses, decorated with paper and scribbles, feebly hanging on the walls.

One wall was covered in an end-to-end wallpapering of continuous text. The opposite wall had a canvas with only about ¼ used, typed paper glued to its surface. On another wall, there were two twin canvases covered in squiggly lines of black and white materials: graphite, ink, and beads, and even pearls. Opposite this wall was another canvas, this one using individually-placed letters deposited across the canvas. And this canvas was dirty. Oh, yes: Dust bunnies were harmed in the making of this art. However bizarre and meek the wall pieces seemed, I began thinking, “this show is about mark-making.” The lamps pointed me to the canvases, on which lines point me to the next canvas, the next thought, the next found material. Oh wait, of course, this show is about a personal journey. Great, phewf, I figured it out. This show is about self-discovery. (Don’t IKEA, dust, and self-discovery-tastic adolescence go together nicely?)

But after these interpretative breakthroughs, and after making several quick laps around the small room, I was left a) slightly dizzy and b) still confused. What was I to make of this wall art? What does this text mean? Even if there was some beauty within the pieces, I, frankly, did not care to look. Did Josef Strau actually want me to stand and read every word of his wallpaper-sized musings (which seemed to be from a made-up language, reflections on art, philosophy, poetry, etc.)? Was I supposed to ponder the meaning of a mod-podge canvas, complete with pearls stolen from mom’s vanity? Well, I’m pretty sure he wanted me to. The lamps led you to the walls, their light casually asking that you come and stay awhile. The gallery had become a room inside of a home. This room was not transitory, you came and you came to stay. But I was choosing not to. Suddenly, the pathetic lamps were strong and confident. Had they read the gibberish up on the walls? Of course not. But they respected it, and when I decided that I did not, the whole room turned upon me. A once welcoming space was now intimidating and harsh. I began to notice the eerie simplicity to everything in the room: the lamps were thin, the font simple, the beads overlaying the print-out texts were skinny and lacked real purpose. This room was Strau’s mind, posited in the gallery, its most essential content mounted to prove its importance and better its position to convince you to stay.

Strau’s previous work has been centered around the abstract idea of a “non-productive attitude.”1 That is, the execution of ideas isn’t important, but rather, the raw ideas prove to be really all one needs. But, of course, this work is a contradiction, for the pieces were made and installed in the gallery, thus manifesting the thought, which should have been good enough just as that thought. What I, in turn, find fascinating about this show is Strau’s want not to simply exemplify this idea. If that were the case, he would create a messy room where sketches linked with complicated language littered upon the walls and the ceiling with crumpled-up paper strewn about the baseboards. That would be the mind in thought on a subject. In this installation, he presents to artists and spectators alike the idea of “non-productivity.” He is presenting an ideal mind who ascribes to this theory. But, of course, this is his own mind. He did coin this means of intellectually-dominated practice. The title of the show, “Iniquities Suspend,” then is a charge for all to strive to convert their minds towards this ideal. Stop partaking in messy thought, clouded by the need to physically produce! Stay awhile inside the non-productive attitude. Let the lamps keep you company as you parse through the seemingly-complicated, actually-simple musings on the walls. Get to know this space so that you can make one of your own.

But even after my utterly satisfying and complex experience of coming to understand Strau’s exquisitely purposeful space, I still am not inspired to stay awhile. His simplicity was simple enough for me to understand, but simplicity is too complex a mindset for me to adopt.

1 "Josef Strau". Kunstaspekte. http://www.kunstaspekte.de/index.php?tid=37098&action=termin. 5 May 2009.

Kara Walker and I are best friends

Xiaoze Xie

Xiaoze Xie originally studied architecture in Southern China, where he was born, but after his studies, he wanted to “break out from straight lines” and pursue a career in fine art. In his earlier work, he painted stacks of books in libraries. In this series, he was interested in capturing these “sleeping” books, sitting unread in libraries. He sees books as containers of the abstract, artifacts of loss, memory: they pursue permanence. They are not simply about knowledge. He paints the books as if they are portraits, honoring the valuable work they have done for the world. In a later series of books from MOMA, he chooses modernist compositions to echo the modernist subject matter. whereas his first series was not at all interested in the content of the books.

In his next series, “The Silent Flow of Daily Life,” he began painting newspaper piles, showing fragments of headlines of old, archived papers. By this time in his career, he has come to the realization that he is a still-life painter, but his subjects aren’t necessarily still. Rather, the news, the content of the publications are alive, actively working to preserve the memory of the events it speaks of. He argues that the way we interact with papers is what is still. All these awful things happen around the world (most of his paintings focus on papers with headlines chronicling wars, political uprisings, etc.) but we receive these events as still images, as stagnant text. They come to us, and within a day, become just one in a pile of other old, now useless papers. But somehow they create a beautiful order. Their contents are chaos, but their archiving calms the chaos. Xie related this idea to Communism and Mao’s “Little Red Book,” inspiring Xie to use his paintings as parts of installations, this time focusing on how books are not just the record keepers, but can be the reason for uprisings, book burnings, etc.

In a video project, he follows the lifespan of a newspaper in the New York City subway system. The camera follows a newspaper being read, accentuating the aesthetic qualities of the paper, how it can be folded/manipulated, then zooming in on the images from the paper, focusing on the miserable occurrences that happen daily in our world, and once the emotion peaks, the paper is seen abandoned on the ground, forming a simple geometric line on the pavement. While this video was by no means his strongest work, it did seem to encapsulate his feelings about newspapers, while chronicling his own art-history with the subject.

He spoke at the end of his talk as to the importance of following your artistic impulse – to find what interests you and explore it, catalogue it, deconstruct it, and put it back together. And, indeed, Xiaoze Xie’s work is evidence of this, his work serving as an all-encompassing survey of the subject of archived texts.

kelly strikes again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q62pOio7PaY