So I picked up Art in America December issue
a few days ago and read most of articles. I haven't read art magazines awhile, so I attempted my 'studies' with the magazine with curiosity and excitement - to see what is up with current contemporary art in America. All very interesting, in fact, I was really resonating with one particular artist’s work - Simon Fujiwara, especially his Frozen piece viewed at the Frieze Art Fair. Also The Feature Story (story about the founder of Feature Inc. - Hudson) written by Steel Stillman grabbed my attention. Gallery stories –
Hudson's ideas about managing a gallery space, what an art space should be like... were refreshing. A list of up-front contemporary artists who showed at his space at the beginning of their careers was indeed impressive. To brag about my gallery Get This! Gallery in Atlanta, I thought some of characters of Hudson were similar to Lloyd Benjamin (gallery director of Get This!)'s. For my first solo with the gallery, he gave me an open invitation to 'just do my work' and carry out my vision without a pressure of anything else – such as sales. He helped me to refine ideas and collaborated with my work and fabrication. Such permission from a commercial gallery, I thought, was unusual. Lloyd’s support was incredibly crucial in my exploration of space and growth as a young artist.
 |
| Repose at Get This! Gallery, 2010 |
OK, this is going to be a little bit long as I chew on some things - I don't want to feel like I am writing another version of a graduate school paper, but it may sound like it. So bear with me.
 |
| Simon Fujiwara |
Fujiwara’s Art Stardom –
Art in America extensively covered Fujiwara's story and works. Beautiful images and an intriguing story in 8 pages. That’s called a stardom when Simon Fujiwara is only 28 years old. Graduated from Cambridge University as an architect, Fujiwara showcased his site-specific installation Frozen (2010) at London’s Frieze Art Fair that also marked the artist’s receiving of the Frieze Foundation’s Cartier Award.
Combining multi-medium installations and performances, Fujiwara is able to create a faux history and a place where remnants of his constructed history reside. His biography is deeply embedded in his works. Being half-Japanese and half-British, the article points that Fujiwara’s works reflect “a sense of cultural dislocation, combined with related sensitivity to conditions of economic inclusion and exclusion.” Fujiwara even states, “I am my work.” Repeatedly, I come to conclusion that an artist’s biography is an endless sources of his or her creative practice. In whatever ways artists' biographies are manifested, Louise Bourgeois was right.
“A lot of people are so obsessed by the past, they die of it. This is the attitude of the poet who never finds the lost heaven, and it is really the situation of artists who work for a reason that nobody can quite grasp. Except that they might want to reconstruct something of the past. It is that the past for certain people has such a hold and such a beauty…”
- Louise Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father Reconstruction of the Father
Toni Morrison also quotes, “memories and recollections won’t give me total access to the unwritten interior life… only the act of the imagination can help me.”
Within a context of recent discussion of Miami Art Basel and so many art fair we now have, Fujiwara also is able to point out the system of art ecology in this contemporary era. Considering that his work Frozen is a part of the Frieze Art Fair, I applaud his acute and conscious sensibility to critique the art fairs’ ‘consumerist context.’ Alex Gartenfeld quotes, “Fujiwara’s Frozen City at Frieze served as a reminder that the art-fair network will eventually be lost to history, and as a morality tale about the ultimate futility of acquiring artworks.”
Fujiwara was able to insert his biography and ideology into the current system of art world instead of the other way. I find that important and impressive. Recognizing that artists are ultimately the driving engines in the art world is crucial in our survival as artists.
Well, he indeed has established an extravagant stardom in the art world right now.
To read more about his work, go to :
Art in America – white gentlemen artists
Please forgive me for this term, but it dawned to me a few days later that all the articles I read in Art in America were on white gentleman artists and dealers. I was stunned that that didn’t appear to me as an issue at first – because I like all of their works and stories. And then I found myself perplexed by this situation. I believe artists should be viewed within a context of their works, not non-sensible identity politics. And this kind of discussion can get complicated and old. Yet was I to be completely content with reading every major article in Art in America on white gentlemen artists? Maybe some of artists in Letters to Young Artists are right about this, still relevant in 2010. Here is an excerpt from our Guerrilla Girls:
“Sure, the art world’s better now than ever before, especially at the entry level where everyone wants to see what women and artists of color have to say. But galleries still overwhelmingly show white males, and up the ladder, at the level of museums, auctions, and art history books, there’s a crushing glass ceiling, way worse than in a lot of other fields.Let’s face it, it’s hard for anyone to succeed at making art, especially in a system that manufactures scarcity, then sells it for big bucks to rich collectors. Museums suck up to these art investors, ask them to sit on their boards and let them decide what to save for the future. We think that’s a lousy way to preserve our culture!So you need to make your work endures. Whether you do that as an art world insider or outsider, you’ll have to spend some time away from your work, out of your studio, communicating and engaging with whatever art world you decide to live in. Be aware of the system. Don’t be afraid to stand up and criticize it. Be inventive. Do some creative complaining!”
- Guerrilla Girls
I have been fortunate in my early career as an artist despite myself being a woman and a minority. Many other women and color artists are in fact actively engaged with the art community in Atlanta: Jiha Moon, Fahamu Pecou, Lucha Rodriguez, Whitney Stansell, and many more. That’s beautiful and exciting. Yet a constant re-contextualizing and re-evaluating our system within the community AND outside of the community is necessary. As an artist blogger, I thought I had to voice this out somehow in an articulate matter. I hope I did an OK job. This was eating me up for a few days for some reason.
Please, comment as you wish. I think having dialogues is a great thing.
Peace, everyone.
- G.
No comments:
Post a Comment