Megan and Murray

...a Landscape Show at Samson Projects

Julia Hechtman, Before the Fall, 2007, (video still), 2 min. single-channel video

Another standout Boston gallery, Samson Projects is the kind of confident-cool space that sends out press releases imploring the audience to "Go Outside!" instead of checking out their new landscape show, which is titled, with ironic accuracy, simply "... a landscape show." Of course, this is no mere landscape show, but a savvy survey of the outside through the postmodern lens of 13 observant and analytical artists.

From Noriko Furunishi's mash-up of a waterfall to Dan Torop's achingly invasive Sprinkler, to Shay Kun's couch-friendly landscapes with inappropriate killer whales and rescue helicopters and the elegant Alex Katz's economic portraits of people and nature, this exhibition runs the gamut of contemporary interpretations on a very traditional theme.

Julia Hechtman's prophetic video, Before the Fall, introduces the show, and with good reason. The artist in the corner of the television screen leads the viewer through a series of natural disasters, a thematic statement that provides just the right dose of relevancy to a show that could otherwise lean too heavily on beautiful imagery. Quoting again from the gallery statement, "The release of the elements as kitsch fodder? Is it necessary to elucidate more on the decorative aspects as well as the intelligent designer/ spiritual tenet?"

The only answer: see for yourself.

...a landscape show
September 7 - October 20
Samson Projects

Nancy Murphy Spicer at Bernard Toale Gallery

Nancy Murphy Spicer, Contents, contents of gallery storage space, 9'2''x27.5'', 2007

Nancy Murphy Spicer, Hanging Drawings (20 Successive Drawings, Unique and Unrehearsed), (video still), stripped and plied friction tape, flashe, pins and 5 minute video, 11'7''x11'5.5''x5/16'', 2007

One of the most impressive shows we saw at the South End Open Studios in Boston was one that crept up on all of us. It was at Bernard Toale Gallery. Probably our friend Alison Owen said it first, while we were unknowingly standing the midst of the exhibition: something along the lines of I know this room is probably just being de-installed, but it's my favorite thing we've seen all day.

Then the big reveal: it is exactly what we wanted it to be. In her witty and spatially sensitive show Provisional, Nancy Murphy Spicer emptied the contents of a gallery's storage closet and arranged them with precision in a configuration that appears to be the haphazard work of an especially artful and OCD maintenance worker. Upon closer inspection, there's some light paint work on one wall. A bad rush job covering up the plugged holes of an old exhibition? Nah. Even further examination shows that there's some subtle refinishing on the floorboards too.

The dead giveaway, though, is the gridwork of nails jutting out on the opposite wall. A black loop of string rests on the nails in a graceful swoop. Should you be adventurous enough to explore your hunch that this is indeed a deliberate doing, you'll find that deep within the emptied gallery closet is the key: a 5 minute video of the artist making "20 successive drawings" with the string on the nails. Bingo: hunch confirmed.

Yet, for me, the video was a bit of a disappointment of the kind you feel when someone spells out a joke, tells you why it's funny. And seeing the artist there, animating the string into various shapes, was, to use an old writing critique, "too much telling." Even so, the whole experience was a delight in a top-notch gallery not afraid to take risks. See it soon, because the show comes down this weekend.

Nancy Murphy Spicer, Provisional
Bernard Toale Gallery
August 28 - September 29, 2007

Additional bonus: if you ask, you might be invited back to the office to see one of my favorite photographs by Laura McPhee, Rocks from Sawtooth National Forest for Landscaping in Sun Valley, Pettit Lake Road, Blaine County, Idaho, 2003 from her show at the MFA last year.

Arthur Ganson at the MIT Museum

Arthur Ganson, title and date unavailable

Arthur Ganson, Machine with Wishbone, date unavailable

MIT's Sculpture of Arthur Ganson exhibition is one of the best shows I've seen all year, in part because I was expecting to see a robotics exhibition that turned out to be fine art, and in part because Ganson's antics float in that extremely rare space of being technically bewildering while simultaneously poetic.

Seen above: tenderly engineered, hand-crafted machines allow a chair to dance on top of a rock, a cat be smacked by another chair and a wishbone (as in chicken) to walk down a track. In each work the movement is precise and smooth, the obvious result of much labor and thought. The mechanics are not "the usual mechanics" either: each mechanical intersection begs consideration.

Ganson is an engineer's engineer.

The bar is now raised for kinetic sculpture. Each artwork — and their are approximately 20 in the room — holds you 10 times longer than usual and keeps you coming back to look all over again.

Kinetic sculptors: it' time to buy a ticket to Boston. Exhibition is "ongoing."

Arthur Ganson, title and date unavailable

Exploring Art in New England

Since moving to Providence in August, we've begun to explore the rich art resources in our new surroundings. In the past two weeks, we've been to MASS MoCA to see the Spencer Finch show, to the ICA for Philip-Lorca diCorcia, to the MIT museum for the whimsical and Tim Hawkinson-esque Sculpture of Arthur Ganson, and to the South End Open Studios and most of the major galleries in Boston.

In the next few posts, we'll begin to unpack some of what we're thinking about the art we've seen.

Natalie Jeremijenko, Tree Logic, 1999 [at MASS MoCA]

The Oldest Song We Know: Additional Installation Images

Megan and Murray McMillan, The Oldest Song We Know: Installation, 2007

Megan and Murray McMillan, The Oldest Song We Know: Installation (detail), 2007

The Oldest Song We Know: Online Opening

Megan and Murray McMillan, The Oldest Song We Know: Photograph 1, 2007, 26'' x 39'', ed. of 3

Today our exhibition The Oldest Song We Know opens at Qbox in Athens, Greece. In conjunction with the opening in the gallery, we are hosting an online opening here on our blog, featuring the same work: three photographs, an installation, and a video. The work will only be online for the duration of the show, from Sept 11-Nov 10.

Megan and Murray McMillan, The Oldest Song We Know: Photograph 2, 2007, 20.5'' x 31'', ed. of 3

Megan and Murray McMillan, The Oldest Song We Know: Photograph 3, 2007, 20.5'' x 31'', ed of 3

Megan and Murray McMillan, The Oldest Song We Know: Installation, 2007

Megan and Murray McMillan, The Oldest Song We Know: Installation (detail), 2007

Megan and Murray McMillan, The Oldest Song We Know: Installation (detail), 2007

Megan and Murray McMillan, The Oldest Song We Know: Video, 2007, 1:06 min, ed. of 3

The Oldest Song We Know: Essay by Dana Turkovic

From the essay by Dana Turkovic which accompanies our current exhibition at Qbox gallery in Athens (through Nov 10)...

"The Oldest Song We Know" is undeniably, and in many complex ways, tightly linked to the current state of re-building on the island of Kea and the Parthenon’s literal and linear approach to its telling of stories, but particularly aligned with the displacement of a large portion of the friezes from Athens to London in the early 1800s by the British ambassador and antiquarian Lord Elgin. The McMillans describe the scandal of the “Elgin Marbles” as one inspiration for the piece: “it is a deconstructed narrative that exists in two places at once; between the people who experience the pieces in England and the people of Athens, as they approach the works in different ways with different readings; both a historical reading and a modern one; where narrative itself is deteriorated over time.”

Download the essay here.

Dana Turkovic is an independent curator based in St. Louis, Missouri.

Related: from The Los Angeles Times, Taking the Long View of Architecture in Athens; from The International Herald Tribune, Campaigner urges Greece to fight for Marbles for new Acropolis museum, and from The Guardian, Should we give the Parthenon marbles back?

Simultaneous Athens and Web Opening Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Tuesday Sept 11, when The Oldest Song We Know opens at Qbox in Athens (noon EST), we'll simultaneously post images and exhibit the video on YouTube for anyone unable to come to the opening in Greece.

Sinking City: The Oldest Song We Know

Our exhibition, The Oldest Song We Know, opens at Qbox in Athens on Tuesday, Sept 11. The exhibition features photos, a video and an installation. In the days leading up to the opening, we'll be showcasing additional photos from the series, including the one above, here on the blog.

Read about it here on Art Daily.

The Oldest Song We Know: Art Agenda

The Oldest Song We Know, 2007, installation detail

Our solo exhibition, The Oldest Song We Know, opens Tuesday, Sept 11 (6-11pm) at Qbox gallery in Athens, Greece. The exhibition is the culmination of our summer residency on the island of Tzia, hosted by the gallery, and features a video, photos and an installation.

The press release for the show is now available here on Art Agenda International. If you read Greek, or want to see more images, you can also find information here, here and here. The gallery's English-version website is here.

We'll feature more images on the blog in the days leading up to the exhibition's opening.

Megan and Murray McMillan
The Oldest Song We Know
curated by Dana Turkovic
September 11 - November 10, 2007

Opening: Tuesday,
September 11, 6 to 11 pm
Special visiting hours:
Saturday 8 & Monday
10 September from 12 to 8 pm

http://www.qbox.gr