Henrik Menné

I've become an instant fan of Danish artist Henrik Menné. His sculptures have a poetry that is often missing in technology-based art. He seems to have something in common with Tim Hawkinson and Olafur Eliasson.

75P. 2004, paraffin and iron, 150x150x150cm (Cone: 70x100cm)
Fotograf Anders Sune Berg

Description of 75P from the kunstdk.dk website:

The machine is an iron construction on which a small rotating iron disk is mounted. Onto this rotating disk, small drops of hot wax are poured. The rotating disk swirls the drops creating a shape on the floor. The rotating disk is 15 centimetres in diameter and placed 80 cm above the floor. With these measurements, the drops will create a shape of approximately 1 m in diameter. After a few days, the wax will have created a thin cone-shaped shell.

Stone. 2001, marble, water, fibreglass, 70x130x180cm (Stone: 36x36x50cm).
Fotograf Anders Sune Berg

The white marble cube is hollowed out and floats on the water.

Beholder (Container). 2005, ventilators and foamed polysterene, diameter 210 cm
Photograph: Anders Sune Berg

[via Make]

Ball droppings

Ball droppings is a fun online toy. It makes me think of a project idea I had a year or two ago that involved drops of water plinking on sheets of styrofoam.

One too many Camera/Chimera posts

At the risk of over-posting about my recent curatorial project, I just wanted to let folks know that the series of Telephone game images can now be seen on my website.

Tobias Leingruber's "Time Machine 1.0"

Tobias Leingruber writes about his Time Machine 1.0 Firefox add-on:

Nowadays the web is designed by professionals, and everybody has a broadband connection. Ebay was overtaken by so called "Power-Sellers" and the shiny and smooth Web 2.0 Blogger-Design rules the web.

In the 90's People started creating webpages about their hobbies and dogs on geocities or other free webspace providers. As many people didn't have much content to post on their "homepages", they just put an "under construction" sign on it to show that the website was not finished yet, but maybe in a couple days.

As the people only had slow modems, it was really important to keep the data small. Otherwise the user would have to wait for like 5 minutes for a website to load. This is one reason why midi files became popular - It was the only way to listen to music on the early web. (You are listening to the great euro dance classic "Dune - Rainbow to the Stars")

This Firefox Add-on uses the syntax of any webpage, and changes it into a beautiful Web 1.0 amateur page. This is my tribute to all the pioneers of the web.

[via Ceci Moss on Rhizome]

Thoughts on ArtPrize

ArtPrize is an interesting competition being help in Grand Rapids, MI. The general idea is that artists can submit ideas for temporary art installations and Grand Rapid businesses can submit their space as venues. The venues and artists link up over the internet and a show is born. During the run of the show (Sept 23, 2009 - October 10, 2009) the public can vote on which artworks they like best (and give negative votes to ones they do not like)... the most popular artwork wins $250k.

Kevin Buist, the Director of Artist Relations for ArtPrize, wrote an Art21 Blog column about ArtPrize last week. There were two main threads of criticism:

1. The fact that ArtPrize charges submission fees (most of the criticism regarding this came from me)
2. The fact that ArtPrize is won by popular vote (most of this criticism came from Richard Kooyman)

Personally, I'm not too bothered by the popular vote... Will the best artwork win? Probably not. But I think the format of the competition (which has been compared to reality shows such as So You Think You Can Dance) may help spark interest in contemporary art. One of the sad things about art is that there is a wall of learning that stands between the general public and an understanding/appreciation of what contemporary art is about. I think Art Prize is an admirable attempt to get people thinking about art.

Kooyman's concern might be summed up in these comments from him:

I would agree that the model of change you suggest in “decentralized curation”, where even a bar owner can curate a selection of Art work to exhibit is change, but I don’t see that as innovation. That’s simply stripping any sense of professionalism and expertise from “the largest art competition in the world” and replacing it with a populism which might be fun for the venue owners but certainly won’t gain AP any credibility for innovation. “American Idol” may be a fun program (for a while) for people to watch but it’s hardly a professional way to pick talent.

and

I’m suggesting you have intentionally engineered a Art competition where you in fact want to replace the issue of professionall quality in Art with a mainstream populism.

I think Kooyman is right, but it doesn't really bother me. Given that almost every art show worth talking about is curated with an attempt at professionalism and expertise, I think it's fine (even desirable) to have a show that takes another approach. I do not think that ArtPrize puts curatorial expertise in jeopardy.

My issue is that ArtPrize requires a $50 submission fee from artists and a $100 fee from venues. Here's what I said about that:

I think the entrance fee puts the event in an unflattering category. Generally fee-based exhibitions are a form of fund-raising for marginal art galleries/organizations. Many artists will categorically not submit work to such exhibitions.

My suggestion for next year would be to do away with the entrance fee. It is better to have smaller prizes, but attract more entries.

That was countered with an argument that smaller prizes would ruin the point of the competition (i.e., that at $250k it is the "largest art prize in the world").

But the prize only attracted "hundreds of artists from around the world" to create profiles... the first step in the submission process [and many of those creating profiles probably did not actually finish their submission]. That's actually a pretty small number of submissions. Even if there were 1,000 artist submission fees paid, that would only generate $25k $50k in revenue. The revenue from the venue submission fee probably isn't over $20k, so we're talking about the fees generating around $50k $70k. I think it's worth eliminating those fees and have a $200k $180k prize instead of $250k (it's still an impressive amount of money).

Visit Art21 to see the entire discussion

Camera / Chimera's catalog is (almost) available

A Photograph Confused With the Original Inspiration, or Dumb and Dumber II
Timothy Hutchings, 2009, 4" x 3"

Untitled (220 East 117th Street, 2009)
Patterson Beckwith, 2009, 10" x 8"

untitled
Becca Albee, 2009, 11" x 14.5"

Camera / Chimera is an upcoming show that I curated. The show is a series of photographs, each by a different artist. The artists are asked to replicate the previous artist's photograph. The result is a visual game of "Telephone" in which the image slowly (and sometimes abruptly) mutates through the process of recreation.

Camera / Chimera's sixty-six page catalog should be available for $10 in the next day or two.

Artists included in the show:

Becca Albee, Holly Andres, Patterson Beckwith, Chase Browder, xtine burrough, Cassandra C. Jones, Adrianne Davis, Stephanie Dean, Dennis Delgado, Joel Fisher, Harrell Fletcher, Joy Garnett, Greta Ham, Tim Hutchings, Steve Lambert, Gus Meisner, Robin Michals, Hajoe Moderegger, MTAA, Shani Peters, Anne Schiffer, Christian Marc Schmidt, Tom Thayer, Mariana Tres, Angie Waller.

Writers included in the show:

Sarah Kate Baie, Michael Betancourt, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Sharon L. Butler, Andrei Codrescu, Greg Cook, Evonne M. Davis, Laurel Gitlen, Ethan Ham, Ellen Handy, N. Katherine Hayles, Paddy Johnson, Lisa Kjaer, Jonathan Martin, Carolina A. Miranda, Ceci Moss, Jack Murnighan, Laura Napier, Tim Maul, Catherine Spaeth, Hrag Vartanian, James Wagner, Emma Wilcox

The show is at Gallery Aferro at 73 Market St, Newark, NJ 07102 September 12 - October 3
Opening Reception September 12, 7-10 PM

Superflex's "Today We Don't Use the Word Dollars"

Today We Don't Use the Word Dollars is one project from a series of One Day Sculptures--temporary public artworks that were commissioned in New Zealand over the last year.

Superflex's project involved the employees of Auckland's Karangahape Road branch of the ANZ bank. On Wednesday May 27th, 2009 all the employees of the bank were not to say or use the word 'DOLLARS.' The staff used other words of their own choice to explain themselves to customers and co-workers. When they accidentally broke the rule, they paid a $1 fine into a staff social fund.

[via Ceci Moss on Rhizome]