Process of Performance

August 12 – 22, 2011
Opening reception: Friday, August 12, 2011, 6 to 8 PM

Institute of Contemporary Art Newton (I.C.A.N)
Camperdown, Sydney, Australia

Portal is extremely excited to announce the forthcoming exhibition of new video and drawing from six New York-based artists at I.C.A.N. in Camperdown, Sydney.

Process of Performance takes on the documentation of artistic performances in video and drawing, and interprets them as metaphor for the process of being an artist, which can be much like a public performance. Ranging from the most seemingly banal experience, to time-based action, to performance, digital tools have become central to their works’ development and ultimate presentation.

Process of Performance will present five works by six artists: a VHS tape recording Colby Bird’s formal experimentations in sculpture in his studio, edited on the same TV-VCR on which it is presented; Jon Meyer’s performative drawing Eight hours drawing at one inch per hour with left and right hand, 2011, a drawing which was created with assistance from a unique software program the artist developed; Kevin Regan’s home-made video, widely available and presented in the gallery on YouTube, The Conversion of St. Paul, 2007, shows the artist passing out and waking up three minutes later after taking Salvia Divinorum, while his wife supervises and cleans the kitchen in the background; an illustration of a cloud, hand-painted on the wall, will rain Twitter feeds in Jason Varone’s microprojection Inclement Weather, 2010; Jody Wood and Mikel Bisbee-Durlam present a two-screen video documenting their performance of dragging one another through the streets of Bushwick, and within the controlled environment of a studio, while covered in concrete.
Representing both a unique cross-section of the wide variety of artists’ practices in Brooklyn today – with a strong focus on the artist-rich neighborhood of Bushwick – and providing an intimate view into their quotidian lives, Process of Performance provides a snapshot incredible creative energy present in Brooklyn now, and exposes how even the most traditional artist is exposed to the world via the digital space. Each work is strongly connected to digital technology, and how that technology has been employed by these artists to addressing the archetype of the artist, and how the artist engages in performance in every aspect of their practice. – ST

Artists

COLBY BIRD
JON MEYER
KEVIN REGAN
JASON VARONE
JODY WOOD &
MIKEL BISBEE-DURLAM

Curated by Stephen Truax,
organized by Janis Ferberg.

Kianga Ellis Projects (KEP) is a mobile gallery program that hosts conversations about the studio practice and work of invited contemporary artists. KEP’s inaugural Art Talks Weekend will take place on July 29^th through 31^st at HD3 on 560 Montezuma Avenue, located in the heart of the Sanbusco/Railyard District in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The weekend’s program is open to the public and will involve several of the artists attending in person and via Skype. Follow on the Web by watching the talks on Ustream and Twitter using the hashtag #KEP.

Friday, July 29th, 3 – 8:30 pm/OPENING RECEPTION 5 – 7:30 pm

The full schedule is available here.

There is an online catalog for “By Chance, A Video Show,” which includes essays by John G. Hanhardt, senior curator of media arts at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Kathleen MacQueen and a statement by curator Peter Campus. An excerpt from MacQueen’s “Subtle Intensities of the Unexpected:”

War, economics, and the environment are all topics of news headlines; they are also the subjects of Varone’s art, sometimes with an emphasis on war or the environment but often recognizing that all three systems are interrelated. But headlines are the stuff of sound bites designed to draw us in, stimulate our anxiety, and provide little substantial information. They are the “Pop” in Lichtenstein’s appropriation of comic book and advertising iconography. As he reflects our social and political universe is there an incentive toward active resistance? By Varone’s own admission, his news is “bad news” – it can be overwhelming if it isn’t filtered. The irony provided by the childlike innocence of his line drawings mask the destruction designated by the crawlers – a tense standoff between the tolerable and the intolerable.

These are six lines crossing at one point, at this time, at this place. The lines have different origins, different lengths, different vectors. Like the detective in Jorge Luis Borges ‘Death and the Compass’ (La Muerte y la Brújula) I look for meaning in these coincidences.

Alejandro Cesarco
Seoungho Cho
Nayda Collazo-Llorens
Jaime Davidovich
Beryl Korot
Jason Varone

I have applied the same level of intuition in my choices of artists as I do in the making of my own art work, believing that intuition (by any other name) consists of non deductive processes, and is the secret to the brain’s potential power.

If you care to believe, as i do for this moment, in right brain left brain differences, then these choices come from my right hemisphere, floating through the hyperspace of synapses picking up congruencies here and there.

Although a video show, by that I mean, one in which there is video, it would be just as correct to call it an art show. All these six people make art. It is their interest, their belief. I have followed the art work of each for at least a decade; I’ve seen the work twist and turn, and then fall back on itself. For most this represents a development along a strand or multiple strands of inquiry. With some the connection is through text, with others painting, but really those connections are superficial. In each there is the line of inquiry, the pursuit of truth expressed in the craft of the video medium.

Ananda Kentish Kumaraswami, writing about the Dance of Shiva in ‘The Transformation of Nature in Art’ talks of balance in great art, an art that has the qualities of physicality, mentality, emotionality and spirituality. These artists attempt to achieve that balance.

-Peter Campus, Director, 80wse gallery

This animated GIF was uploaded to a handmade USB thumb drive.
It was a Secret Santa gift and given away at Cristin Tierney Gallery
during their 2010 Holiday party/Artists gathering on December 14th, 2010.

Click to play. (Please use Firefox)

Locks Gallery is pleased to present alterations, a group exhibition featuring digital media, curated by the artist Peter Campus. alterations will be on view January 7th through February 5th, 2011. There will be a reception for the artists on Friday, January 7th, from 5:30 to 7:30pm.

Artists: Peter Campus, Nayda Collazo-Llorens, Kathleen Graves, Beryl Korot and Jason Varone.

ink on paper, 8"x10"

]]> http://varonearts.org/2010/untitled-arctic-plumes/feed/ 0 http://varonearts.org/2010/the-oc-art-blog-review-of-metadataphile/ http://varonearts.org/2010/the-oc-art-blog-review-of-metadataphile/#comments Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:45:10 +0000 varonearts http://varonearts.org/?p=1138 An excerpt:

In our fast-paced technology driven society, rarely is there time to pause for reflection or analysis of all the information we take on daily. Brooklyn artist Jason Varone’s piece Inclement Weather is part mural, part multi media video projection. Composed of a cartoon cloud painted directly on the wall, a video projection of reconfigured, live twitter feeds and news feeds fall vertically like rain from the painting. Varone calls himself a landscape painter because he paints and creates topographically but he sees the new landscape as digital in our contemporary society. Much of Varone’s work explores how we perceive social issues through various media outlets.

Ink and gesso on screenprint, 30" x 22"

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