Tonight is the opening of John Armleder and Olivier Mosset. The public reception starts at 7:00 pm, but there is a Member Preview at 6:00 pm and a Patrons Preview at 5:00 pm. In just a little bit the entire staff and all of the docents and gallery attendants will take a walk through the exhibition with the curator. It is definitely a great experience for guests who come to Opening Nights, because they too will get to experience what the staff does on the walk through - access to the curator, director, staff members and artists…a chance to ask questions and to really get an idea of what the exhibition is all about. I highly recommend Openings!

In only a few days, the Contemporary’s space has changed dramatically. The space that was previously a large, open space, allowing event space and gallery space to merge as one, is now divided approximately in half. There is so much “wall talk” that goes on here: “How will constructing a wall affect our space when it comes time for events,” “do the upcoming exhibitions also need a large wall and/or smaller rooms for displaying work,” and “how will this wall change climate control?” After all this wall deliberation, it is up!And in the way of the exhibition…the work has arrived. The last couple of weeks we have been patiently waiting for the work to travel from Zürich then to New York before making here. I have word that one crate has been opened and everything is right on track.

I got to take a look at some of Mosset’s work…it’s still in plastic, but exciting to see!

The Great Rivers Biennial 2008 is almost over. The last day to view this exhibition highlighting local artists is Sunday, April 20. The Contemporary will then close for the installation of John Armleder and Olivier Mosset. Tomorrow, during the last Walk-In Wednesday of Great Rivers, the Contemporary’s education staff, Kathryn Adamchick and Katrina Hallowell, will discuss some of the ideas explored during the Great Rivers Biennial exhibition (including what critics, artists, and visitors had to say). If you are unable to attend this Walk-In Wednesday, check back here tomorrow to get the recap of the discussion and read through some of the thoughts of the exhibition.

Though there is another flood in the forecast, today has shaped up to be a lovely day and today’s Walk-In Wednesday made it all the better.  The focus was on the novel A Clockwork Orange written by Anthony Burgess and the film directed by Stanley Kubrick (and created from the book).  For those of you who haven’t visited the current exhibition (hurry it closes April 20^th), one of the artists (Juan William Chávez) has work that focuses on the film.  Chávez created still images of the two most violent scenes in Kubrick’s film and then reanimated the stills to the actual audio from the film. For today’s Walk-In Wednesday, we watched interviews with the director, author, and film enthusiasts concerning A Clockwork Orange.  I have yet to watch the film myself, but after today, I’m intrigued more than ever.  I found out that when the film was released, it created an uproar.  People thought the film would be detrimental to the already deteriorating social state in England, because, during this time, the environment was already considered dark with the onset of anarchy, the three-day work week, and with power shortages in the country.  The collection of interviews we watched showed us the effect it had on the public, as well as how the film changed the industry.  All of the interviews shown during today’s Walk-In Wednesday can be found in the extras section on the DVD of A Clockwork Orange.

Make sure you catch next week’s Walk-In Wednesday where Contemporary staff members, Kathryn Adamchick and Katrina Hallowell, will recap the ideas explored during the Great Rivers Biennial exhibition. 

Come hungry…leave informed.

 This week seems to be jam packed!  Not only did April creep in, but a new tenant moved into The Front Room (see the previous blog), there was a Walk-In Wednesday today, and tomorrow there will be an off the wall concert from electronic rocker Silverio. Today’s Wednesday-In Wednesday was hosted by Corey Escoto, one of the Great Rivers Biennial artists.  Escoto shared with the crowd the general goals behind his work and how it came to fruition.  We were joined by a group of students from Lebanon, Illinois who helped fuel the discussion regarding presentation of his work.  There was some great insight brought to the actual housing and casing of his work and an interesting point was also brought up regarding the drill that Escoto has exhibited in the courtyard.  Although it’s an homage to Claus Oldenburg, it was noted how it alludes to the current oil crisis; it creates a contemplative moment when viewing it.  Escoto ended the lunch hour with a quick insight of his future plans and hopes for his work. 

Don’t miss next week’s Walk-In Wednesday, especially if you’ve ever wondered about the film behind Juan William Chávez’s work!  Come view interviews with artists, directors, actors, and authors as they discuss the influence of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

Links to some of the organizations mentioned today:

United Nations

Kiva; loans that change lives

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.]

Emily Bryan is one of the curatorial interns at the Contemporary who has been here for about 6 months working with our curators, Laura and Anthony, on various projects. For the next three weeks she will give us a little more insight on each of the Great Rivers Biennial 2008 artists…starting with Juan William Chávez. Look for a series of posts with the title “Artist Spotlight with Emily Bryan.” -mrq of camstl