performance art, curiosity & the 4th wall

So recently between camera issues & computer problems, I haven’t been reviewing as much as is my habit. But I experienced a couple of wonderful pieces of conceptual artwork and I ‘d like to share even if I haven't figured out the picture features of posting this blog.

Right now in Xpo park you can walk to the other side of the street & at the UTD artists residency known as the gallery CentralTrak you can look to the right front corner of the roof & see a bronze sculpture perched up there. It appears to be a bomb with bird legs.

It was done by the artist known as Dadara Thinktank from Amsterdam. I first became familiar with his work last spring when the same gallery showed his interactive performance installation known as Dreamyourtopia. Here is a link to the website for the project where I suggest you take a look at the applications on pdf that guests have submitted when participating at exhibitions, as well as photographs from the four events. http://www.dadara.nl/checkpoint/ -or- http://www.dreamyourtopia.com/

This was not an average art opening last January. The promotional links said that a completed application from each guest would be required. It was highly dadist in questioning over two pages and they encouraged a picture or self portrait of the applicant be included in the passport photo sized box on the form.

The gallery space was modified so that guests were required to enter through the back entrance … and get in a line. One of many lines & cues I might confess.

Now you are probably thinking, why I hate lines & forms. Yes we do. Hell yes we do. & why would you want to voluntarily do so on your free time? Because this is different.

This is a social experiment of sorts. One line lead to another line & to another… Put strangers in confined places together. Make them jump thru hoops, edit their applications, read from children’s books aloud, be next in line. Tell them which way to face. Some people did not enjoy this, their torment was other’s amusement. Some of us have fun on the journey and questioned interrogators & played with the other captives & shared flasks. Social strata all removed, all applicants stood together in line.

But to what purpose are all lines & forms? With these concrete tools we have a path to flow through the system, to make things happen. And sometimes we see the loopholes & honesty that are required to subvert the system. I always subscribed to William Burrough’s theory about wearing a suit as a costume required to work under the radar of the uptight system so we might subvert & improve it. We don’t want to fit in. We want to confuse their ideas about reading a book by its cover. There are many costumes in this life.

So I got no pictures of that fantastic showing in Dallas. Not of the snaking lines of people. Not of the enclosed border crossing station that was solidly constructed of wood, reminiscent of old cold war movies. Not of the typical gallery opening that followed the at least seven earlier lines. When I arrived in the main gallery, I was overcome with the desire to do it all again, only backwards. So my friend who had wandered in the exit door & I snuck around the building housing the border crossing & did all the lines backwards. Installed ourselves and systematically did it in reverse. The people waiting in line the first time that saw us pass through were baffled.

Since that time, I have made a new friend or two. Two of which are a lovely couple of performance artists that are currently abroad till this time next year. We met at a body painting night Tigger hosted at our friend’s place. People all come with food & drink to share. The host provided the paints, brushes & inspiration. Guests were welcome to wear whatever they like or be used as a nude canvas if they prefer. This is not really of a sexual nature but is more a celebration of the human form. Painters & canvases come in all ages & sizes and are accepted as a beautiful human being to be embellished.


The monthly events have included the art of body painting as well as fire spinning by the host as well as our other friends who play with poi & light. The pictures are by a French photographer http://www.thomassubtil.com/ . You can also see Tigger’s set of pictures on flickr but they won't let me link them here due to the tasteful nudity (or maybe I just can't work this blog yet lol) and you can see them by clicking >here<

I bring Tigger into this story for two reasons. He participated in the final exhibition of the Dreamyourtopia installation in Berlin as well as applying at its earlier showing on the playa in Black Rock City. He gave me his Dreamyourtopia Passport before he left on his trip and I was shocked & thrilled & thought I was going to get a little weepy there but it was terribly terribly nice for him to share this piece of his experience with me. He says he has seen it four times. here is a link to his photo’s from the last installation of Dreamyourtopia done on the 20th anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall.

For the final exhibit, Dreamyourtopia was created in a public pool in Berlin. During the opening, some people waited in those lines for over four & half hours. There was near riot. People were kicking holes through the plywood I am told. Now on Dadara’s blog you can get more inside information about this closing because I’m not exactly sure how the sequence of the next part of the story goes as I heard of the incident secondhand. dreamyourtopia.blogspot.com

All I know is at some point they brought in graffiti artists & tagged up the entire installation structure. Then they brought in the sledgehammers & went to it. Turned the entire thing into rubble. Love it.

So when the same artist returned to Dallas to show his BirdBomb, I had to be there. Ran into Tigger & the lovely Rebecca in a long hallway in the exhibit space where carefully crafted wooden boxes called sonic mnemonics by Patrick Murphy encouraged opening the doors & allowing the music box to be heard and delicate painting to be seen. http://www.utdallas.edu/centraltrak

Then suddenly our attention is caught by a little curly haired blonde boy about 3 or 4 years of age, who is standing at the far end of the hallway calling us, telling us we have to “Come see. Come see.” He is pointing into an open doorway at the end of the hall to the side. And being three of the most curious adults in the room, we scamper down to see what is behind door number one. Its an amazing light installation built onto a metal stand of some sort, covered in club lights, disco balls, lasers, smoke machines and an unfortunately not being used margarita machine. It had amazing controls for the operator like a video game & I was gushing verbally over it as I tend to do and out of the darkness the creator says thank you. I ask him to turn alllll the lights on it. & its fabulous & twinkling & such a nice surprise. We tell him so & suggest he put it on wheels.

Out on the back patio of Central Trak there was a set of three “dry” waterboards in a performance installation by a different artist, this one from Denton, named Angel Cabrales. Surfboards on an incline stand with straps for the combatant. & guarding this detention set up was a group of kids probably aged 3-5. known as the Blackwater Junior Corps, the kids were dressed in desert combat fatigues & carried little plastic guns with red laser sights. It was incredibly creepy. http://www.angelcabrales.com/



I don’t know what part I liked more. Guests volunteered to be strapped down by the little interrogators, have fake guns pointed in their face & having a tyke scream “what’s your favorite color?” But there was something surreal about watching a four year old dance around trying to catch the projections of a couple of laser sights, not because he was instructed to but because he is just a curious kid in a crazy world.

henry darger - outsider artist

"Do you believe it, unlike most children, I hated to see the day come when I will be grown up. I never wanted to. I wished to be young always. I am a grownup now and an old lame man, darn it."--Henry J. Darger

One night I saw a documentary about Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger … PBS also showed a different short about the animator who took the original from the outsider artist’s 20,000 pages of story and collages & drawings & exquisite watercolors and attempted to give it motion.

“The work of Darger's life was a saga titled ‘The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnean War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.’ It is a seemingly endless, repetitious and obsessively detailed narrative of child martyrdom, massacre and Edenic innocence set on an imaginary planet largely populated by moppets of six to 10.” (Time Magazine)



However, I really strongly recommend you see the documentary from 2004. Its his true biography interlaced with sequences from the storyline of his literature. It is about an autistic savant, outsider artist (developmentally deficient for you pc types) whose absolutely inspired epic about “the Vivian Girls” battle fantastic creatures in an invented world where children are sometimes enslaved by the oddly Confederate overlords and later armed by these seven Vivian Girls. Alternating between profane violence and blissful paradises, innocently hermaphroditic nude children and butterflies tangle with all sorts of challenges from creatures to labor reform. It eerily charming and absolutely fascinating to me.

Henry was a weird cat. He was institutionalized at a very young age in a scandal plagued madhouse and upon his escape lived a reclusive existence in Chicago as a janitor for a Catholic charitable hospital. He rarely left his apartment and no one knew about his epic story creation until about a month before he died in his 80’s.

a volume from "Story of the Vivian Girls" by Darger displayed at Amon Carter Museum, photo by Suzi Migdol

He was hyper-concerned with child welfare and was inspired to design one of the Vivian girls based on a photo printed of a murdered waif from the 30’s. We might also mention that he kept that photo around with him for several decades until it was lost after an apartment break-in.

Mural Size Vivian Girls by Darger displayed at Amon Carter Museum, photo by Suzi Migdol

  detail of Vivian Girls mural by Darger displayed at Amon Carter Museum, photo by Suzi Migdol

back side of Mural Size Vivian Girls by Darger displayed at Amon Carter Museum, photo by Suzi Migdol

 There is much controversy about whether Henry was a harmless, misunderstood creative child in the body of an adult or if he was an untried pedophile and murderer, driven to create by obsession and guilt. I tend to want to think that he was obsessive compulsive and was too religious to allow himself to hurt a fly much less act on sinful impulses. I think the obvious fact that the genitalia of the characters in his work is naïve and unformed by the exposure to female anatomy, suggests that Henry had never had a girlfriend or lover. This behavior suggest to me that his repression would not allow him to act on romantic interests and probably precluded him from more sinister criminal pursuits as well. I think his work is the product of retarded genius, the dark scenes project his lifelong struggle with the evil on Earth that his god does not prevent and get pretty gruesome. The scenes of joy and light revel in the innocence of nature, fantasy and childhood and are colorful and deliberate.

There is an exhibit in New York at the American Folk Art Museum that just closed of 300 watercolors from the roughly 15,000 pieces held in their permanent collection. There are also rumblings of an exhibit in Chicago recreating his pack-rack apartment. I adore outsider art & Henry is justifiably becoming increasingly famous after his own lifetime.

If you like abnormal psychology or outsider art, Henry is a fascinating research subject. There are very good texts by both Michael Bonesteel (whose Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings includes some of Henry's writings) and John MacGregor (I prefer Henry Darger: In the Realms of the Unreal as MacGregor spent more time with the material). The landlord’s wife who owns the copyrights to Henry’s work also was more involved in a beautifully illustrated book organized by Klaus Biesenbach called Henry Darger

Henry's original studio space in his apartment

Tour inside Henry's Apartment in Chicago > www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWbjIpfi_7w

Pics of Henry Darger’s works:
hammer gallery
edlin gallery

Readings on Darger:
time magazine
gseart
wiki
henryjdarger(dot)com
saraayers(dot)com
american folk art museum

henry darger reading list

Re-creation of Darger's apartment on display in Chicago

 

a volume from life memoirs by Darger displayed at Amon Carter Museum, photo by Suzi Migdol

Henry Darger's typewriter, photo by Jacinda Russell

& finally, one of the most accessible collections of photographs from his epic book can be found in:
Darger: The Henry Darger Collection at the American Folk Art Museum
 American Folk Art Museum in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2001 at 128 glossy colored pages.

review of : Boondocks Saints: All Saints Day

**no spoilers**

So Sam Raimi made Evil Dead & if you had seen that original as a very serious horror movie, then the sequel would have been a surprise. The first Boondocks Saints movie is often compared to Scarface, the sequel carves a less serious niche all its own. But as a young filmmaker, sometimes they have to give themselves permission to have fun with the process. If they have a strong fan base this can be a vital self confidence boosting exercise, important to their evolution as a later artist.

That being said, the sequel to The Boondock Saints
 is this screenwriter/director Troy Duffy’s second movie to make ever. In person, you can tell he enjoys film and was very nice & down to earth but Duffy isn’t the most confident guy in the room. In our conversation, I told him it was okay to take his time between movies to do it right. I also told him “fuk Weinstein.”

Weinstein is a studio exec that this director must’ve pissed off. I asked him how he managed to do that & he just laughed. There is a quite defamatory “documentary” funded by that studio exec which features a lot of cleverly edited outbursts taken out of context & shown in a way that makes the director look like a tool. Troy Duffy & Sean Patrick Flannery both confirmed this was the case in Q&A, they also put the rumors to rest and said 100% of the people involved in the last film came back to work on the sequel. The holy trinity of filmmaking is to have a single artist direct, film & edit their own work. The Coen Brothers do it, so does Robert Rodriguez. It is a rare thing because the studios don’t like giving any one person that much control.

Studios also don’t like giving the audiences that much control. Distribution of film is tricky business & its based on what they assume will be popular (who their selected control group of test audiences deem fit for mall release). Sleeper cult hits are a nagging reminder that studios don’t always know what the audience wants.

The director said that he originally got no profits out of the first film & the studios didn’t even give him the rights to the sequel. They fought in court for five years before all parties settled with him out of court for an “undisclosed sum of money” Lucky for us, he also got the right to make a sequel & do it his way.

"Boondocks Saints: All Saints Day” is a fun movie to watch. It looks like it was pretty fun to make too. It is a little heavier on comic relief than I would like, but the gratuitous violence is still there. The Brothers McManus still have the same chemistry & it was fun to watch them interact in real life. The new Mexican sidekick introduced in the film tries to be funny but he reminded me of one of Street Fighter Sonny Chiba’s wacky helpers.      But I will forgive his unnecessary slapstick, because the fight scene the sidekick is introduced with is pretty freaking awesome.

Julie Benz from the series Dexter plays an FBI agent and he films her like it’s a Russ Meyer movie, from the taking down of her hair to her cherry red heels. I appreciate a tough as nails & smart female character that isn’t there to be avenged or rescued. Speaking of great characters, I really liked the dark psychological stuff going on with the bad guy “shooter.”

There are lots of dream sequences & re-enactments of all new murders which lend a surreal quality to the movie. This gives the story a sense of balance actually & keeps it from being uneven. I suppose the comic relief is a break for the intensity of all the killing, which still has that odd sense of reverence (who knew I would also run into a highly religious boondocks fan at the afterparty lol). Excellent prequel flashbacks tell the origin story of the father’s own violent youth.
The priest from the first movie has been murdered in an attempt to frame the brothers and lure them out of hiding. Three cops from the last movie are back (including stand up comic Bob Marley who I was hoping would get taken out before his next attempt at a joke) and are joined by the lady FBI agent. The brothers are in self imposed exile in Ireland & take the murder as a challenge to return. In an almost A-Team moment of preparation, we get to enjoy a shower scene of the brothers featuring the boys’ fine backside assets. This is my kind of exploitation movie. The sequel brings more vigilanteeism, interrogations, setups & over the top plans. Fight choreography reminded me of a music video at times. But it was worth it all to see the plot culminate in the greenhouse. The dialogue between those two characters… firelight flickering off their glasses, ah that scene looked great.

The director talked about the symbolism of bad guy Peter Fonda’s ritualistic snack and was worried that we had missed it with our audience’s rowdy laughter. I told him I caught the comment about the tomatoes on the phone and then I compared it to the scene in Angel Heart where deNiro is eating the egg. The director seemed relieved and a little flattered. He shook his head in agreement, “that is exactly the mood I was going for there.” I also told him he had enough artistic serious footage that he didn’t have to add so much cheese but I still enjoyed the film.

They leave a wide door open for another sequel. Personally, I am thrilled.  Army of Darkness was a really fun movie done with great production values after the first two The Evil Dead pictures became underground sensations, leading director Sam Raimi to head the Spider-Man franchise for a while. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Troy Duffy. If this picture gives him the confidence & contacts to do another film (whether its in the Boondocks storyline or not), I expect good things. If the fans stick with him after All Saints Day & have fun with this sequel, I think Duffy will not be afraid to take himself seriously.

Writer/Director Troy Duffy and actors Sean Patrick Flanery & Norman Reedus were in attendance at the screening as well as the drunken afterparty at the Irish pub, Trinity Hall. There was massive fan presence & they all signed autographs for at least two hours at the pub. The brothers needed their bodyguards to keep the lusting females at bay. But both actors had conversations with the fans while Reedus took smoke breaks, posing for pictures, signing memorabilia like tattoos inspired by the movie & defying bodyguards in general. The director hung out and talked film with all the movie nerds like me.

The theatre was filled to capacity an hour before show time (my companion waited in line for two & half hours for our seats). Many people were turned away, others were smuggled in & sat lining the walls of the theatre as well as the center row. Fans drove from all over this state and a few neighboring ones to see the film, some travelling over 5 & 6 hours. Q&A questions about the documentary, kudos to the filmmaker & fans from places like Oklahoma City asking when will this movie come to big screen in little town America?

Reviews of Deep Ellum Fall Gallery Walk 2009

Armed only with a digital camera & pair of green heels with white polka dots, I hit the Deep Ellum Fall Art Walk last Saturday evening. This year introduced the opening of the green train from the neighborhood to its sister hipster enclave, Exposition Park. (Now if DART would just keep the trains running after last call, we’d be on to something). If you want to skip the text & get right to the pictures I took at the shows click >here<

The folks behind the 20 year old Dallas Video Festival provided projections in the parking lot of Kettle Gallery. They showed the best of last summer’s festival which is always interesting, independent, innovative & frequently imported.

Speaking of Kettle Gallery, they had a group show celebrating the green line and Barry Kooda’s fabulous icon birdhouses. Clint Scism’s 3-d shadow boxes stole the show for me with their cleanly layered lines & charm. “Mass Transport” was especially dreamy with its layers of drawings, structure and clouds intertwined by the riveted snake train.

Hal Samples Gallery featured the show “Genius, Order, Phylum, Species” exhibiting the metal sculpture of George Fowler. Inspired by nature, the work focused on metal interpretations of flora. I don’t know how many red dots were up but quite a few girls around the art walk seemed to have collected the long stem singles in brushed sheet metal. Self taught & from East Texas, “two main themes in his work are the synchronicity of disparate elements … contrast of the idea of fleeting beauty in juxtaposition of the relative permanence that metal affords the sculpture…mechanical elements made beautiful in both meaning & aesthetics.”

The good people at Public Trust did an exhibit of editioned works called Manifold. Beautiful serigraphs on exquisite paper, numbered & signed by artists like Evan Hecox, Shepard Fairey, Marcel Dzama, Andrew Schoultz & Ryan McGinness (who did an exquisite print in gold leaf). But this was more than rare print show, some works were hand painted pigment prints and the digital video by Richard Garet extended the exhibit away from the walls & flickered to gather your attention. & word is that art prostitute is getting ready to work the corner again. Relaunch issue to feature works by Steven Hopwood-Lewis, Margaret Meehan, Misty Keasler, M and Brent Ozaeta (limited edition print suite by all 5 artists for $100).

Edward Ruiz showed cast resin figures at Avenue Arts in Exposition Park. The DIY monkey was back from spring and the deranged raccoon action figure. But lots of other artists made figures as well in the show, like Tyson Summer for example. But most interesting to me was Edward’s offering of the figurine blanks open to the creative impulse of the collector themselves to decorate in the same vein as the popular Munny dolls. DIY yet again gives the viewer a turn to be creative.

Barry Whistler was showing Lawrence Lee’s ink & graphite on paper. His sepia tones are provided through artfully applied tea stains. I’ve always been a big fan of his work. Powerful re-appropriation of iconic African American figures is a prevalent theme. The personality of all his characters, both man & animal are infused in Lee’s drawings with a unique energy. These characters seem to have their own back story.

Back in Expo Park, Central Trak has a colorful show inside & the installation in the display window by artist, Mary Benedicto is pretty & candy colored as well. Benedicto’s sound installation was based on a single tone sung by the Castrato Boys Choir and her own intonations recorded and looped played from a speaker inside a tiny toy piano placed upon green Astroturf. But the real star is the lemon yellow St. Angela surrounded by almost tentacles forms shaped from plastic, rubber & prints of Mary’s signature digitally manipulated patterns & colors. Skittles for the eyes.

Art Love & Magic on Commerce offered its guests an opportunity to witness the creative process in action. Artists of multiple mediums gathered easels in a single room & worked for hours. I visited early during daylight & later just before the close & the evolution of the work is always remarkable to watch. Sadly I didn’t get pictures of the after, only the before. Nice seeing art in action

Next door is the 3 story Nomad Gallery, with its registry bank of computer taking the place of a sign in register with ink & paper. I always like seeing other people’s handwriting. It says so much about them. Great afterparty featured djs on the first floor & bands like the Happy Bullets on the roofdeck with video projections. I especially liked the assemblage work by Jason Ice and Melissa Carroll’s brightly colored interpretations of antique photography framed in equally neon colors. Henry Dees aka Junkie has been catching my eye for sometime with his diverse & sometime dark conceptual art. He is definitely one to look out for, his work is something special.

I must admit, the most interesting invite I received on the walk was for midget wrestling at some West Dallas nudie bar named for a jungle feline. as far as performance art goes, I don’t think anything can top it this week.

More practical than an invite to midget wrestling, the Deep Ellum Public Art Guide is a handy postcard map listing all the permitted murals & sculptures in walking distance of the neighborhood. Best of all the artists are listed for easy reference.

Uptown Art Festival this Saturday Sept. 27 on Fairmount between McKinney Ave & Howell. Last weekend was the DADA art walk through Dragon Street & the like.

Dale Chihuly has a magic rowboat of blown glass globes in fiery yellow, orange & reds for a half million dollars. Check it out before its gone at Dunn & Brown unless you want to see its sister installation shown seasonally at the botanical gardens in Miami.

On my way to Deep Ellum I stopped and saw the show at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary featuring video projections & much more by Paul Slocum, Amy Revier, Brian Fridge and Edward Setina. I was especially fond of the crawling astronaut projections.

A quick visit to the Dallas Contemporary offered a solo show by Vernon Fisher, who is interviewed in this month’s THE magazine. Large scale conceptual work splicing together dreamy chalkboard images with embedded collage images. Cobalt blue grid frames the torn edges of the Hindenberg zeppelin. Plasticized punctuation marks attempt to draw the viewer into the deeper textual subplots behind the images. Water is a theme as is visceral anatomy and cartographic elements.

Fisher says in the interview: “Art isn’t for everybody…some people’s lives are so grueling that they have nothing left after putting food in their mouths… Texas encourages a sensitivity to ‘bleak’.” The native Texan artist mentioned the scattered art community of Dallas, “Everything’s so far apart that the reward to exertion ration is out of proportion.” I tend to agree that Dallas has more to offer than seen at first glance but the galleries are not pedestrian friendly for the most part aside from Dragon Street & the determinedly resilient Deep Ellum areas. Hopefully the green train will encourage cooperative scheduling between the xpo park & ellum galleries in future art walks.

Fisher also confesses that “for me, Texas has been a place to overcome.” Like many Texas artists, we attempt to stretch the boundaries of the “regional artist” categorization and seek to join the ranks of expatriates such as Donald Judd, Robert Rauschenberg & Julian Schnabel who are known more for the impressive quality of their artwork rather than their state of origin.

With that thought, we bid fond farewell to And/Or Gallery and its curator, Paul Slocum as they close up shop & leave us for a bright future in NYC. Take a moment & check out his online portfolio.

Slocum’s final installation at his own space offered us a peek at three tax returns that made me think long & hard about the cost of running a for-profit art gallery. So he showed the 990’s for the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), the Mac (McKinney Ave. Contemporary) and his own space (And/Or). Interestingly enough, in the year displayed the forms indicated the little gallery on Peak at Bryan sold as much art as the Mac. The major difference is that the Mac and DMA pay no rent, and receive lots of funding from both private donors & govt. grants for programs. That’s pretty tough to compete with, but And/Or showed consistently some of the most innovative (and often 8bit) artwork Dallas has seen in a long time. & we’ll definitely miss their digital influence that had the more institutional spaces scrambling to keep up. xxoo1s&0s

intro to this blog

i suppose my first blog should say hello. but if you want to know about me you can click on the links over there & see my old stuff. i would like to share some text with you & tell you how i feel about art & music & travel & life. so for now i will move forward & share new information. when i have more time i will mine my old reviews & essays to post here as well. sometimes i get a bent for research & dig up everything you never knew about something, transcribe the article about dead writers clipped from the magazine in your doctor's office (yep it was me), photograph the road i travel and share it all with you..

art reviews in dallas
travel adventures
art action
film
electronic music
jazz
poetry
conceptual art

i like to write reviews of the movies seen, books read, art exhibits visited, music heard. can't help it when i am inspired.