dayton is not in ohio

I’m gonna try to crank out a good run-down before Anna wakes up from her studio nap. Advising kicked off this week and I had great conversations with both of my advisers, Shane Campbell and David Raskin, both in the art history department at SAIC.

David taught my winter term art history class on Vito Acconci, and I was very impressed. He’s an expert on Donald Judd, and I’ve been influenced by Judd for all of the wrong reasons, so that ought to keep our conversation lively. He had some good thoughts and insights regarding my current project.

Shane is ABD for a PhD in Art History from Iowa, I believe, but more interestingly owns Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago. I met him last year at the Armory Show in NYC. He was the only Chicago gallery represented. He’s refreshingly irreverent, for an art historian, and that’s because he’s a gallerist first. He has encouraged his advisees to read Dave Hickey’s, Air Guitar, which I’d borrowed and read a couple of years ago, and which causes most of the respectable art historians at the Art Institute to cringe. Read the first chapter and you’ll know why. I’m also reading The Uncertain States of America Reader, a publication spawned by the exhibition from which it takes its title, curated at Bard College a couple of years ago. I’ve only read the first short essay, but it’s a spot-on, if somewhat clumsily written, account of what it’s like to be an art mover. It explains a bit about why I was eventually fired - only you have to also insert the character of the evil stepmother from Cinderella as my boss, give her a mustache, and describe all of her dialogue in profane, gravelly, guttural outbursts. And her pumpkin is a home-made race car.

Shane’s gallery has two locations. One in Chicago, and one in Oak Park, on Harvey Avenue. If Harvey Avenue doesn’t ring a bell to you: that’s the street we live on, several blocks south of the gallery. It’s not just any gallery, though. It is a part (shares space with, sorta) of the Suburban, a independent artists’/project space started by Chicago artists Michelle Grabner and her husband Brad Killiam after they moved to Oak Park. You must go to the website and read the history of the space. It’s really fascinating, and an amazing place to discover right down your average suburban street.

I’m enjoying going to art openings weekly. They are rapidly becoming less nerve-wracking. For those that have never been to an opening, the reason they can be nerve-wracking is that they are usually crowded, loud, and they are often lousy for seeing the art. In the past I would just pick the openings that I thought were interesting, or was invited to by a friend. But the last month I’ve been to probably fifteen openings and have been running into the same folks a bit, which makes it enjoyable. I’ve also started to realize that, unless I become famous, my work will never undergo the same relentless scrutiny that it has for the last year-and-a-half. You learn this by looking at the art that people make that gets shown in galleries, and knowing exactly how it would be dismantled at your school. I hope to always make good work and receive healthy criticism, but it’s still a comforting thought.

I saw a lot of work this month and it ran the gamut from really interesting, to forgettable. I had my own opening, and I’d give my work in that an okay. By far the most interesting opening was Clive Barker at Packer-Schopf. Clive Barker is probably best known as the author of the novel Hellraiser, and for his writing and directing the movie of the same name.

[Clive Barker Liar Oil on Canvas, 24 x 24 inches]

Well, the book/film has a cult following - a horror cult following - and I spent my first thirty-minutes at the opening wondering whether Barker was aware of how utterly boring his paintings were, when surrounded by his fans. On any other day the paintings might have been more arresting (although they still looked like board-book material compared to an average Odd Nerdrum), but that night they played second fiddle to the freaky, freaky fans. It took me a while to figure out who he was, but he turned out to be pretty normal looking guy.

Downstairs was work by Ron Bell. I enjoyed the work for its craft and complexity and meaningless machinery, but it ultimately felt like a side-show to the circus upstairs. I’d be interested to see a couple of these works in a large, open space, rather than a dramatically lit, white cube dungeon. They work perfectly in the dungeon, and that’s the problem, it seems.

[Ron Bell]

The show I was in was a group show at Gallery 2, one of the Art Institute’s exhibition spaces. I made two new pieces for the show, neither of which am I enthralled with. I don’t hate them either.

[Cargo, 2008, wood, digital video, monitor, peephole]

[For the Love of Guns, 2008, MDF, rhinestones]

The real highlights of the show for me were works by Tom Gokey and Daniel Lavitt. Tom graduated from the department last year and Daniel is a first year sculpture MFA.

[Tom Gokey]

Tom’s work stole the show for me. Tom’s a gimmick guy, but his gimmicks are always so good that I immediately forget whatever might be bad about gimmicks. As elegant as these four grey-green hand-made paper panels are, they are equally as ignorable in the midst of a sculpture show. It’s this type of aesthetic understatement that acts as a foil to the medium, as the paper is made from $49,000 in shredded US currency. In fact, it’s made from the exact amount of Tom’s tuition at the Art Institute, acquired from Uncle Sam, who constantly shreds cash, apparently. It reminded me of Tom Friedman’s work in which he places a microscopic ball of his own feces on a pedestal. Very understated. Very invisible. Very loud. Crap in public just is, tiny or not, and so is money, reconstituted or not.

[Daniel Lavitt]

I don’t have a detail shot of Daniel’s bronze cast McDonald’s cheeseburger, but it’s really nice, resting in its styrofoam nest. It reminds me of my own unapologetic affinity for McDonald’s burgers and begs the same question really: “How could something so bad, be so good?”

Finally, I’ll mention a group sculpture show at Kavi Gupta Gallery. The work that caught my eye immediately was a skeletal chandelier by Tony Tasset. I’m currently becoming interested in making skulls, and I recently discovered that Tasset lives in Oak Park.

[Tony Tasset, Capuchine Chandelier, 2006)

The work is well done, but not remarkable if you’ve, A) ever imagined what the production designers for Goonies could do with a chandelier while napping, or, B) seen any of Adam Wallacavage’s octopus chandeliers. However, I’m still thinking about making some skulls, so I was interested.

[Adam Wallacavage, Venus in Furs, 2006]

finis