BLACK MIRROR / ESPEJO NEGRO: A Museum Installation by Pedro Lasch is one installation that I’d very much would like to see, unfortunately I doubt that I’ll be in Durham, North Carolina this year. Fortunately the press release that I received from Pedro represents the installation clearly enough to excite the imagination and leave a mental imprint.

Look carefully at the left side of the photograph below, from the black mirror a colonial Spanish face peers out to the indeginous idol and the viewer.

The pre-Columbian figures borrowed from the Nasher Museum collection have their backs turned to the museum audience as they peer into the black mirrors on the walls. Pedro Lasch describes the sculptures with their backs turned as “defiant”. Upon viewing the picture, I viewed them as defiant to the museum and museum goers who view these works out of context, stolen from their homes and delivered to static white walls and pedestals. The black mirror collapses the past and present with the embedded colonial portrait and the reflection of both the pre-Columbian figure and the viewer. However the exhibition is best described by Pedro, particularly as I haven’t seen the installation:

BLACK MIRROR/ESPEJO NEGRO: Artist Statement

Abstraction and Refusal

As we enter the room, black rectangular mirrors of different proportions dance in stark contrast to the white walls, calling attention to the structural aspects of the gallery. Facing each mirror, at different heights and depths, defiant pre-Columbian figures stand on pedestals, all of them turning their backs to the viewer. While their refusal may push us away, their reflections on the mirror pull us in. Even so, we find that it is impossible to see these figures’ faces without also encountering our own faces reflected in the same mirror. The dark flat surfaces of black glass transform images of sculptural bodies into ephemeral paintings, incorporating the viewer’s reflection, the environment and the ghostly images of yet another set of gazes, those of Spanish priests and conquistadores.

Mediation
The individual works that compose the overall sculptural installation are entitled _Black Mirror #2 through #12_, each pairing a Spanish painting of the Colonial period that emerges gradually from behind a dark sheet of glass with one or more pre-Columbian sculptures from different regions and periods. At the center we find _ Black Mirror #1_, the object that inspired the whole installation. It is an elegantly shaped obsidian disc from the museum’s permanent collection. I propose we use this black “rosetta stone” as a tool to decipher ancient Amerindian civilizations, as well as a window onto the wealth of contemporary indigenous civilizations and peoples across the American continent.

Tezcatlipoca and the Obsidian Journey In pre-Columbian America, as in many other cultures, black mirrors were commonly used for divination, the art of knowing past and future events, and for necromancy, the art of communicating with the dead. The Aztecs directly associated obsidian with Tezcatlipoca, the deadly god of war, sorcery and sexual transgression. Threatened by similar associations with sorcery and deviance, Pope John XXII banned the use of mirrors for any religious purpose in 1318. Yet centuries later, obsidian plates of all shapes and sizes would be introduced into Christian altars across Spain and its colonies, eventually becoming the surface on which artists, including Spanish baroque master Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, would paint saints and virgins.

Through the Claude Glass and into the Age of Surveillance
The Spanish Colonial works appearing in this installation can be seen as early examples of two key modern and contemporary forms of representation that resemble the obsidian black mirror: the ever-present photographic camera and the _Claude Mirror _ of 18th-century Europe. Named for atmospheric painter Claude Loraine, the Claude Mirror was a portable, convex tinted glass or mirror, which painters and photographers used to create their pictures. This optical device marked a shift to a new period, when ritual and magic gave way to scientific illusionism and Colonialist expansion. We no longer use black mirrors to speak with the dead, or to fix a gaze on objects that may last a little longer than we will. Yet little black eyes still hover all around us in the form of cameras placed in many public buildings and outdoor spaces. These black mirrors still act as go-betweens between the present and the absent, the visible and the invisible, the colonizer and the colonized.
- _Pedro Lasch_

Kara Tanaka’s “Crushed by the Hammer of the Sun” is simply cool and mesmerizing. Thursday afternoon I had some time to kill in the Lower East Side, so I stepped into Simon Preston Gallery on Broome Street where there is currently a two-person show featuring Marco Rios and Kara Tanaka. I was immediately drawn to a silver spinning disc on an exposed mechanized pedestal at the back of the gallery.

The first gallery had a few sculptures by Marco Rios: a giant yellow level leaning against a wall, a little elphin blue man holding his knees sitting in a corner sculpted from the anti-depressant drug Paxil and small non-descript metal pieces on shelves. The sort of work one expects to see in a gallery representing young artists who have been influenced by the likes of Charles Ray and Tom Freidman, really not very interesting or exciting, because we are so familiar with it and know it is merely contemporary art, not much more than objects that will hopefully be bought and sold…

But the spinning disc at the rear of the gallery isn’t clearly such a thing. It is a kinetic object that requires one to spend time with it, study it, and wonder what it is. That is until it stops spinning and one discovers it is a silver fabric on the exterior and tan, brown and pink fabrics on the inside that only become apparent as the mechanisim lifts the spinning disc of fabric and seperates the exterior and interior layers into an oblong UFO like shape. The beauty of the work isn’t that it is kinetic, but rather the manner in which it all comes together - a simple silver fabric being spun into a disc that immediately makes one think of a UFO, the use of speed and spinning disc helps to mesmerize the viewer. It’s a poetic work that doesn’t fall short of its title “Crushed by the Hammer of the Sun” which implies a heroic narrative. Of course it helps to walk into the gallery while it is in mid-spin and the material and shape are transforming, and then I had to watch it a second time.

Get great art at a low price and help fund the long-time running not for profit gallery Momenta Art in Brooklyn. ” momenta art presents its thirteenth annual benefit to support its ongoing mission to support the work of emerging and underrepresented artists.” The raffle tickets are $225 and there will also be work for auction. The benefit is at White Columns, Wednesday, May 21, 5-10PM, Auction: 5-6PM, Raffle: 7-9PM. Get details on the art work available.

This past week, I made my regular stop through Zwirner and was happy to encounter new work by Neo Rauch, one of my favorite contemporary painters. Rather than trying to describe the individual paintings documented here, I’ll list the general reasons that I’m drawing to Rauch’s work:

1. The heroic scale places the viewer into the painted environment, allowing one to enjoy the rich mixture of painting styles - moments of abastracion embedded within the general social realist setting.

2. The striking power of social realism interwoven with neoclassical depiction to create a displaced narrative. Displaced because various historical elements of varying Western periods are juxtopsed to allude to bourgeois revolutions, industrialization, socialism, the ideals of free time and creative engagement, fascism…

the rise of science, a depiction of German culture and human nature in general… The narratives are rich not only for their masterful use of paint, but because they trigger various learned histories with irrational creative nuances that bring to mind fatastic fables.

3. Technically - masterful use of paint and color, rich mixture of technical styles.

4. Lastly, I’ll repeat this point, employment of the fantastic that brings to mind old fables.

Neo Rauch at David Zwirner, May 12th through June 21st 2008

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Link to BLU

A Portuguese voice, a Louisianan voice and a Brit voice

This afternoon I attended a free discussion at the New Museum that was part of Creative Time’s “Hey Hey Glossolalia: Exhibiting the Voice,” a series of free events throughout the month of May. The discussion was between Robert King Wilkerson, former Black Panther who spent 29 years in solitary confinement in the Louisiana State Prison aka Angola Prison, artist and activist Rigo 23 and Creative Time curator Mark Beasley.  (Rigo 23 and Wilkerson have been working together for the past 7 years, apparently Rigo 23 is working on a documentary about Wilkerson.)

Robert King Wilkerson is the only member of the Angola 3 that has been liberated from prison. The other two Panther inmates, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace remain in solitary confinement, now 34 years, the longest that any human being has spent in closed-cell restriction that is 23 hours alone in a 6-foot-by-9-foot concrete box year after year after year.

The witness of a prison slaying that sent Wilkerson to a life-time jail sentence recanted his story which eventually lead to Wilkerson’s freedom as long as he wouldn’t sue for wrongful conviction. Now Wilkerson travels and speaks and people listen in amazement to a victim of a system that kept him in solitary confinement for 29 years and a total of 31 years in jail. If one stops to consider the psychological implications of spending half a lifetime alone in a small cell 23 hours of each day, it’s difficult to imagine how sanity may be retained.

Robert King Wilkerson is not only lucid, he’s a powerful speaker who triggers the imagination and hope. When asked how he kept his sanity, Wilkerson states that it was his innocence, that although he was in prison, he wasn’t going to allow prison get in him, his love to think, to dream, dream as a form of talking to himself. He also had lots of nightmares, but the dreams out-shined the nightmares.

In closed-cell restriction (ccr), prisoners are not allowed to speak, so talking to oneself in the cell and out loud to other prisoners during the one hour time out of the cell became a method of contestation and protest. “We weren’t going to let anyone from keep us from talking, no matter how many times they’d write us up. We’d tell them to write us up…” In talking about the power of voice, Wilkerson quotes his fellow Panther inmate Herman Wallace - “The deeper they bury me, the louder my voice becomes.”

When asked about the purpose of art and activism, Wilkerson states “thay you can use your hand, you can use your talent… to tell a story, a work of art can encompass a great deal.” His point being that art may be a very powerful means for change in our society. However when Rigo 23 was asked about his practice as an artist and activist, he stated that it’s “hard to not be overcome with a sense of futility, get overwhelmed with distractions and that he has left art to try to get something undone and from Robert to learn how to deal.” Rigo 23’s “One Tree” mural in San Francisco that points to a single tree next to the highway South of Market is amongst one of my favorite public works, so hopefully he’ll return to art in some way. Although when the curator who moderated the panel isn’t familiar with Act Up’s long time, powerful logo - the pink triangle over the phrase “Silence = Death”, one can’t help but question the point of activism in today’s Art World.

Documentary filmmaker, Jimmy O’Halligan is working on a film about the Angola 3; preview is available on youtube.

May Day was celebrated in strength yesterday at Union Square where several hundred people gathered to listen to speakers and music that questioned the deportations of laborers, demanded immigrant rights and celebrated multiculturalism. The gathering of several hundred grew to several thousand as the May Day activists marched from Union Square to City Hall.

At a time when all the news seems bleak - continued death of innocent people and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the increasing cost of groceries and gasoline, a growing popularity of McCain - the candidate who hopes to continue the Bush Administration’s failed agenda… it was reinvigorating to have a joyful gathering demanding citizen rights for those immigrants who help keep the city running.

Every human color and age was present at the rally. It was an exciting mix of generations, languages and cultures enjoying the right to demonstrate in one of the greatest cities of the world. Amongst the points of protest were the raids of work places to deport laborers and markedly a protest against last week’s verdict regarding the killing of Sean Bell by 50 police bullets.

As the rally spilled from an enclosed area in Union Square onto Broadway, the number grew to the thousands, where tourists were taken by surprise.

VOTEMOS.US the site that questions what the 2008 U.S. presidential elections would look like if all residents in the U.S. could vote will now feature weekly video interviews with U.S. immigrants and Mexico City residents concerning the presidential elections and general relations between the United States and Latin America.

Although VOTEMOS.US is a Spanish-language site, the videos have English language subtitles so that U.S. citizens may have an insight into the views of their Spanish speaking neighbors within the country as well as those south of the border. The weekly video interviews are available on the site, as a podcast or rss feed:

This week Argentine Jose Antonio Lazzari relaxing in the park Alameda Central located in the historical center of Mexico City states that he would not vote for Obama, Hillary or McCain and he questions who the leftist candidates are in the U.S… Jose Antonio goes on to point out that the United States is controlled by the transnational companies that are making a fortune in Iraq.

We had a lengthy conversation with Jose Antonio Lazzari, a theater actor and educator who runs a free school in Argentina. Sections of this conversation will be published over the next few weeks. Past interviews with NYC undocumented resident Raymundo are also available and all videos will be archived on the site.

On Wednesday April 9th, I was fortunate to be invited by curator Karla Jasso to a small presentation by a group of Mexican artists at el Laboratrio Arte Alameda, the beautiful colonial church converted into a new media center in the Historic Center of Mexico City.

I had met a few of the people present at the meeting during my stay in Mexico City for Transitio_MX02 last fall, but I had only seen one or two works by the artist presenting that afternoon. I came away from the meeting impressed and excited by the work that I had seen. Some of the work reminded me of projects I saw coming out of Carnegie Mellon University in the 90s, but entirely re-contextualized by the environment and culture of Mexico.

For example Gilberto Esparza’s robotic urban parasite series recalled the work of Simon Penny, particularly projects such as Petit Mal or Sympathetic Sentience. As Simon puts it: “robotic artwork which is truly autonomous; which is nimble and has ‘charm’; that senses and explores architectural space and that pursues and reacts to people…” However Gilberto Esparza’s creations are the rougher, tougher, streetwise cousins of Penny’s works.

Inspired by the street vendors (ambulantes) of Mexico City, who set up a sidewalk shop and will take electricity from a near by electrical post to establish a cozy store with light, television and radio, Esparaza’s “Parasitos Urbanos” (Urban Parasites) use the electric cables for power and as a means of movement. Pictured below are mrñ (maraña), dblt (diablito - little devil), “clgd” (colgado - hanging). Each of these creatures feeds from the electric cables that they use as a mode of transportation, they emit sound and through a series of sensors react to their surroundings. Watch the linked videos to see them in action. As much as I like the hanging species, I think that my creatures exist with the trash - ppndr-s (pepenadores) live near the gutters amongst the trash, playing, moving objects about.

Ivan Puig also presented his work. I was most intrigued by a current collaborative project in which he is creating a vehicle that will drive along abandoned railroads throughout Mexico. The vehicle will document these regions that were once vital economic hubs, but have been left abandoned as the railroads are no longer in use. People will be able to virtually ride along these abandoned tracks in real time by login to the site that will present live streams from the vehicle. Ivan also presented a large scale sound installation that recycles old technology to create a series of instruments that people may interact with.

Also amongst the presenters was Laboratorio Curatorial 060, a curatorial collaborative group that addresses various social issues by programming thematic exhibitions that commission new works from artists.

Artist Ivan Abreu presented his poetic combination of conceptual and new media art. Amongst my favorite of Ivan’s recent works is a sound performance using a record made from ice with Mexico’s National Anthem pressed onto it. He plays the anthem on a record player, but as it plays the ice begins to crack and melt, the record breaks and the artist struggles to keep it together so that it will continue to play.

In the midst of globalization, real-time communication networks, and the structuring of artistic production into a market-based system from education to the museums and galleries, it’s difficult to find artistic production that isn’t influenced by 20th century Western avant garde movements. What I find striking and exciting are the regional nuances that contemporary art production incorporates or that the most creative element by the artist is the manner that ideas and production are transformed according to the reality at hand.

We live in a cultural collage, that is to say, that the world is an assemblage of histories, people, products that traverse the globe. Through the sharing of information and knowledge, once distinct lineages of production are no longer distinct to a particular time or place, so it’s interesting to see how this information is hybridized in different locales. I’m not saying that this is anything new, it’s just fun to see it in the new media landscape and to pay witness to it (perhaps it just means that I’m getting old).

Imagine being highly susceptible to hypnotism and electing to give yourself over to a series of trances investigating your subconscious.  When in your normal state you do not recall what you said or how you behaved during the hypnotic state, however emotionally you have undergone a transformation.  You now feel a sadness and may cry for no apparent reason.  These are a few of the sensations that Mexican artist Ale de la Puente experienced during a period of personal investigation with a Canadian hypnotist.

Ale traversed her past and her subconscious projection into her future.  She put herself in the trust of a hypnotist to experience and pay audience to the power of her subconscious (pay audience by watching the video documentation of her trance states).  Following this intense periods of hypnosis, Ale’s hypnotist proposed one more trance to offer her a gift.  Following the final trance, Ale experienced a week of incredible happiness.

This is the personal territory that has informed Ale de la Puente’s current installation at kbk arte contemporaneo, a gallery in Mexico City directed by Ubaldo Kramer.  Ale has created a visually rich landscape entirely made of confetti; more precisely a mountain scape of confetti formed through celebration.  By throwing a large amount of confetti about the room, eventually a series of mountains appeared.  She finalized the confetti-scape by placing specific colored confetti onto the shapes, creating a series of color plateaus.  The confetti composition is accompanied by a series of beautiful photos documenting the process.

Ale de la Puente at kbk arte contemporaneo, Mexico, D.F.