The notion of an organization designed to fix all the world’s problems influences Corey Escoto’s work in the Great Rivers Biennial. He explains in his video interview that the idea started when he found an old United Nations cookbook at a thrift store, full of recipes from all over the world compiled by the wives of representatives. He began his collection of UN memorabilia after finding this item. And that, along with the growing culture of “do it yourself” projects (and blogs, and books, and kits, etc.), influenced the creation of the fictional Global Repair Service (GRS). Escoto presents the viewer with a display of GRS memorabilia, rendered in a variety of media and unified by the practice of drawing, and a crisp light blue color palette. I have two favorite pieces, but they are all intriguing. The first is the hexagonal display case that he built and which houses several items, including a Ven diagram projecting “togetherness” for 2015, a limited warranty for the earth, issued by God, and several possible slogans for GRS campaigns. The hand-drawn documents are all so idealistic and feel very familiar-Escoto has managed both to critique and congratulate countless relief efforts in these sketches. By housing them in such a case, they remind me immediately of the document cases found in history museums, giving them an air of importance, but also unrealistic idealism.

My other favorite piece is the giant inflatable drill that occupies the courtyard. It’s funny and profound because of its size and absolute uselessness. Its title, Right Tool for the Job?, embodies Escoto’s explorations of “the conflict between idealism and futility that occurs when endeavoring to better a troubled society.” It’s also a nod to iconic artist Claes Oldenburg and his anti-Vietnam War piece, Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks (which is pictured and discussed here). The beauty of Escoto’s body of work here is in its dualism-there is a clear tension between wanting to trust that the efforts of organizations like the GRS (or UN) will actually work, while recognizing that the best laid plans-like the vehicle fleet shown in frames on the wall, collecting money through an appealing display like the coin funnel, or catchy slogans-probably miss the deeper issues of a troubled society.

For the Great Rivers Biennial, Michelle Oosterbaan has created a site-specific installation, Living Room, where she seeks to create an environment in which she communicates to the viewer through images of myth and memory. At the heart of the work is a struggle to represent some pretty abstract concepts—time, memory, space, and all those feelings we attach to them—in an ultimately concrete form—an art piece. What emerges is a system of icons. The work is ethereal, but the key for the viewer is to not try to figure out what Oosterbaan is trying to say, but rather decide for ourselves what meaning or memories are culled up in our minds by the imagery. Oosterbaan presents her icons in three distinct pieces. The mural on the window works as a sort of collage of memories (which she explains in the looped video playing at the museum and which can be seen here) that also serves to form one whole side of the Living Room. Her drawings line two other walls and are driven compositionally by an attempt to represent the passage of time in the form of prismatic lines. She has left them unframed so that the viewer’s imagination has the freedom to spread onto the wall with them. Like in the window collage, we see flora and fauna, free from gravity or any particular setting. The large areas of untouched white paper next to very detailed sections of drawing give the viewer some visual breaths, and more space to fill in with personal narrative. The environment is completed by a large piece on the floor, a chalk dust carpet of stenciled city street maps. It focuses on the role of simple lines in these two dimensional representations of three dimensional space we have created out of necessity. Oosterbaan is pointing out that these places often hold even further significance based on our experience of them that can never be represented in a map. Can anyone figure out which one is Saint Louis? It’s in there, but when broken down to it’s most basic lines, it becomes an abstract line drawing.

We all share the experiences of attaching meaning to objects, places, and images based on our personal experience of them, and globally some of our greatest traditions emerge from mythologies that attach significance based on cultural experiences. Michelle Oosterbaan has presented us with parts of her personal iconography and invites us to participate in her work by considering our own.

Juan William Chávez 

According to our own gallery guide, he’s “interested in the relationships between drawing and cinema.”  To me, this initially sounds like a line from an artist statement that sounds good but doesn’t really mean much except that he likes both of these things.  But let’s think about it-what ARE the relationships between drawing and cinema?  I think the key relationship is a contrast-stasis versus kinesis, fancy words for still and moving.  This is what Chavez is getting at, he presents us with both drawings and cinema while trying to blurr the lines between them, making a display out of the processes by which one moves to the other.  He has made a series of drawings while watching a movie, in this case two violent scenes from  A Clockwork Orange.  So rather than make a drawing from memory or from a still-life or a photograph (stasis) he’s attempting to capture action in a still medium both by drawing simultaneously with the action and making one drawing right after the other-animation in reverse, if you will.  But then he re-animates into the film which he pairs with the original movie’s sound.  So the product is first a series of drawings–  some very complete and well rendered, others barely more than stick figures–neatly framed and hung with a level on the white museum wall (a narrative in pieces) accompanied by his film in the next room.

Chavez’ piece is called Drawings from the Cave, a reference to ancient cave paintings (i.e. Lascaux, some of the first paintings we know of) created by cultures whom the cave was a specific environment where rituals took place.  It served as a primitive theatre, light playing with shadows in a closed in space.  Chavez is all about this environment, but whether the theatre makes for a more free experience of what happens to be an extremely violent sequence from a disturbing movie, a place where you can escape into viewing then leave unscathed, or it makes you uncomfortable, self-conscious, sitting in the dark as a sort of voyeur-that may be up to the viewer.

For a broad perspective on this year’s Great Rivers Biennial, you can watch the YouTube video, or read a number of articles in local publications, including: the Riverfront Times, St. Louis Magazine, and two articles that appeared in the Post-Dispatch (available here and here).

[This blog posting was updated on February 22, 2008.]

Hello everyone, this is Emily, and I’m a gallery assistant at the Contemporary. Mark asked me to write an entry from the eyes of a gallery assistant…and he was pretty convincing, so here I am. I wanted to give everyone a taste of what it’s like to be one of those people who stands in the corners and occasionally points out a line to stay behind, jumps in front of you before you can snap a picture, or asks you to please keep all food and beverage out of the gallery…our job really is more than that! 

This particular show has been interesting for me. I am a relatively young girl, and many visitors have pointed out to me (as well as the other female gallery assistants), that we look like we’re part of the exhibit! This is understandable since several of the Girls’ Night Out artists are portraying women our age posed against walls. However, after looking at some of the underlying themes in the photographs - the boredom, the uncomfortable positioning, the edginess in facial expressions - I think it may not be the best thing to look like I’m part of the exhibit! 

Being a gallery assistant affords one lots of time to consider the art as well as how people react differently to it. Most people are pleased and can find at least one artist they really enjoy or relate to. Little kids often get to Katy Grannan’s section, whose ladies and gentlemen are predominantly nude, and say “Eeewww, gross!” I heard a preschool teacher once explain to her kids that a lot of artists show things we might think are gross or not pretty so that we can learn new things. Perfect. A few people dislike everything, but the most common question I get (besides “Are you part of the exhibit?”) is “Why is this art?” I am admittedly not the most qualified person to answer this question, but I do get a lot of time during the day to think about that question. The thought I most often come back to with this show is the context in which the pictures were taken. A lot of people, especially people with nice cameras, can capture scenes like these artists, but what makes these different is the process by which the models were chosen. Shirana Shahbazi’s work at first seemed very normal to me until I understood that normalcy was her theme and that it was teaching or demonstrating to people throughout the world an accurate vision of Iranian culture. Katy Grannan’s work looked to me like a grouping of uncomfortable nude photos, as though she had asked her friends to help her with these shots, and they agreed as friends, but weren’t at ease…until I learned that this was how the models chose to pose: they wanted to reveal things about themselves even if they were uncomfortable doing it, which is quite a conundrum to ponder. Elina Brotherus at first seems to a lot of our visitors as someone who is exploiting herself and her sorrow in order to make a clever photograph…but the longer I considered the series, the more it seemed like photos that she hadn’t intended to show. To me they seemed like photography was the best way for her to step outside of herself and evaluate what was going on in her life, just as writing is a place of analysis for me, just as film or music may be for others. So far, I think the best thing I’ve taken from this show is to really value the back stories as an intrinsic part of understanding why this is art.

Hopefully this was a helpful peek into the mind of a gallery assistant, and not a scary one…hopefully Mark isn’t going to read this and think… “I’m sorry I asked her…that was a bad idea…this is just scary!” Although just in time for Halloween, eh?