Megan and Murray

Alison Owen Installation in Our House

Alison Owen, Untitled, 2008, installation, adhesive, dust, lint, animal hair

Installation artist Alison Owen, a former New Yorker now living in Providence, uses the existing elements of an environment to make sharp and witty tromp l'oeil works with conceptual heft. In previous bodies of work, Owen has painted shadows behind architectural oddities, extended lines, and otherwise ever-so-slightly modified the palette of a room.

In her current work, she has branched into creating "decorative" motifs out of the invisible contents of an environment. Her most recent installation is a faux floral wallpaper pattern constructed out of the dust, animal hair and detritus she harvested from the corners of the room.

From a safe distance, the material seems velvet-like and tactile, and the color shifts from flower to flower in each iteration. Yet as soon as you're close enough to see what it's made of, the experience changes from aesthetic pleasure to mild disgust coupled with the voyeuristic interest piqued by seeing somebody else's "dirt."

Up indefinitely and viewable upon request.

Styrofoam at the RISD Museum

Folkert de Jong, Mount Maslow, 2007, (detail), styrofoam, polyurethane foam and pigment, [source]

Any exhibition where the organizing factor is as straightforward as material runs the risk of reading like a treatise on variation and the artists' ingenuity of the material's exploited uses. With a material as ubiquitous and malleable as styrofoam, the title and basis of RISD museum's current exhibition, the risk of catalogued variation seems a pitfall hard to avoid.

Yet, in this quirky show, the stuff the artwork is made of stays in the background, allowing the works to speak to one another in surprising ways by using the properties of the material as a point of conversation.

Richard Tuttle's carved arrowhead-shaped works play at the crossroads of high / low art and old / new technology. B. Wurtz's photographs of the contours of packing material are a humorous take on modern landscape. Heide Fasnacht's Exploding Plane, which hovers in the airspace above the other works, though made in 2000, draws the conversation into a possible political commentary on exploited natural resources and the lead-up to the terror attacks of 2001.

It is Folkert de Jong's dancing figures that inspired curator Judith Tannenbaum to originally propose the exhibition. Carved into kilted totems of leprechaun-like hilarity, these creatures pose defiantly under the deadly plane, just, you know, keepin' it light.

Styrofoam
RISD Museum
March 14-July 20, 2008

Styrofoam Panel Discussion and Opening Reception at the RISD Museum on March 19

Heide Fasnacht, Exploding Plane, 2000, Graphite Acrylic over Neoprene, Dimensions Variable (approx 20' sq), [source]

Styrofoam presents art made of the commonplace material known for its light weight quality and wide application. Opening to the public on Friday, March 14 (opening reception on March 19, see below) in the lower Farago Gallery, Styrofoam highlights both the earlier and current uses of this material by artists in a wide range of styles and approaches. Styrofoam (extruded or expanded polystyrene) is a material whose intended uses range from building insulation and construction models to product packaging and coffee cups. In recent years, artists have used styrofoam in a variety of new and ingenious ways. They carve into it, mold it, and assemble it into entirely new forms and images that often contrast with its original functions, at times implying environmental concerns about use and reuse. Artists represented are Folkert de Jong, Heide Fasnacht, Tony Feher, Tom Friedman, Steve Keister, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Pearson, Shirley Tse, Richard Tuttle, and B. Wurtz.

Opening Reception: Styrofoam
Wednesday, March 19
5:30 pm: View the exhibition
6:45 pm: Artist panel discussion with Heide Fasnacht, Steve Keister, Bruce Pearson, Richard Tuttle, and B. Wurtz. RISD Auditorium, Canal Way. Free and open to the public. More info here.

Barry Anderson at Roger Williams University

I'm curating a outdoor video space on the campus of Roger Williams University that is now featuring Vertical Blinds (2) (2007) from Kansas City artist Barry Anderson. Vertical Blinds (2) employs animated strips of people's faces. The strips are animated separately creating a space in which faces appear and disappear.

The outdoor screen is active Monday through Thursday from 7pm to 1am. Vertical Blinds (2) closes March 21.

Providence Transition Complete

Slater Mill, Pawtucket, RI [source]

We just finished our move to Providence. Everyone here thinks we have an accent. This week we'll be touring the Rhode Island School of Design, which is down the street from us as well as Brown University, also down the street. One of my faculty perks is a library card to each.

My first impression of Providence is that it's dominated by the visual arts. Apparently, Providence has the second highest artists-per-capita in the States. This is underlined by the numerous mills in this city that have been converted to artist studio spaces. We know of at least 5 mills that have more than 100 studios each.

Providence is an artist paradise in a way. It's close enough to Boston and NY to have reasonable access to large exhibitions while being small enough to afford studio rent and a high standard of living. BTW, this is also a "foody" town because of the prestigious Johnson and Whales Culinary School — down the street, yet again.