So! We had 2 shows this month in the Student Union Galleries. Here are a few photos.

The show in the LG space was called Heuretic Housewife. The artist is Ellen Alderman, an MFA student from the VCS department. This show was concerned with the idea of a young woman trying to have it all, while simultaneously defining what "it all" is for herself.

These were garments that Alderman made and wore to fulfill the different duties in her life.

Here's the studio work apron with pins that are like girl scout badges to show accomplishments/goals of the Heuretic Housewife:

Close up of some of the pins:

These are the text pieces that made up the rest of the show. Each included aspects of the artists own life, such as wedding vows, sewing patters, and visual and critical studies texts.

AND the GX show was titled Gravtitation Pull. This show was also the work of an MFA student. His name is JiHyun Yoon and he is in the Art and Tech department. The work in this show was minimal; there were just 3 works. Two of the pieces were big wood square panel that had hundreds of small squares hinged to them. Both pieces moved by sensors on the floor that when stepped on signal the too-smart-for-me-mechanisms to rotate, in one piece's case, or move forward and back off of the wall, in the other piece's case. The last featured work was a video that used animation and effects to show the square pieces running around in Millineum Park.

Posted by Jamilee at 6:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While Prague may have lame contemporary museums, its friend Vienna is just 5 hours away with, in my opinion, some of the best museums on the planet. Vienna has a Museum Quarter. It’s a little museum campus of purely art exhibition spaces ranging from very sound Old Masters Collections to a nice selection of international Modern and Contemporary works.

My favorite space is the MOMUK. It’s a really interesting building designed by Jo Coenen, and the outside is covered with little rectangular slabs of molten rock.

I’ve been to this museum 5 or 6 times and the shows are always quality. They have a huge collection Actionism, of course Viennese, since Vienna was where it all started, but they also have a big spectrum from the States, Germany, Italy and others. Last summer I saw a Sigmar Polke retrospective and it was great too. But this year, they have a show of contemporary Chinese Art titled, China:Facing Reality.

This show was, of course, well curated and really did reflect the contemporary tastes, subjects and working style of Chinese artists. I thought the show was really well curated, all of the works were greatly relevant. The show took up 4 floors (which are pretty huge) and was hung according to a few different criteria….sometimes being group by region in which it was made, sometimes by medium, sometimes by subject matter, etc. My only qualm with the show was that I thought the upper middle floor was a little too crowded (it was every medium you can think of: video, painting works on paper, sculpture), as if they thought “these are the pieces that don’t group that well, so we’ll just put them all in this big hall and hope that nothing distorts the meaning of anything else.� Sometimes I think this grab bag set-up can work, but in this case I wasn’t pleased with the effect because most of the works were small or really visually complex, rather than being monumental and really eye-catching.

These photos courtesy of Meghan Steinman.

However the first floor was strategically good because it got people to keep going for two reasons, 1) they realized they recognized the work and 2) because all of these works were huge, bright and technically impressive. This floor had all the work that the Chinese have been paying huge million dollar prices for, so of these pieces the rest of the world is quite familiar.

These photos courtesy of Meghan Steinman.

Then, the exhibition got a bit quieter and showed some really great stuff.
On the final floor, looking at the Shanghainese work, which was mostly photo/video and new media, when I really started to get into the show. The work from Shanghai had a lot to do the lifestyle of being from Shanghai. All of the work was really easy and natural to look at and be with. I really loved being able to compare and contrast my life to those of some of these artists and other young people from a place across the world that I have always assumed to be so different. And while it is obviously very different, it’s the same in that the kids there are going day by day and picking through the traditions and societal demands and choosing what they’ll keep or trash in order to develop an open culture that they can live proudly and enjoyably within.

These photos courtesy of Meghan Steinman.

Also in the photo section of the Shanghai stuff, there was an installation of 3000 photos on the floor. Each photo came from a collection of 20,000 snapshots of random moments in the artist's life that he took over a year or so. I'd decided it was my favorite. It was really precious and sweet, but not at all cheesy. The piece was by Song Tao and titled, What a Wonderful World. So, I'm walking along just glancing through it and then I realized, "Wait, I know that guy." And what do you know, my friend Han Tao is everywhere. I got really excited and told Han Tao about it. He said that he and this artist are best friends and they hangout and work together all the time. Han Tao is getting his Masters in SAIC's Arts Administration program and he's my office buddy in the ECO/SUGs office. Our boss, Michael, told me a while ago that Han Tao is a pretty well known photo curator in Shanghai, but I didn't really think much about it after that. But seeing him in this I'm definitely very excited to see what Han Tao will be doing in the future. I carefully went through all 3000 photos and I counted, he is in 46 of the photos. Wow. I attached a few visuals for you all.

Posted by Jamilee at 4:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, I haven't written for quite a while because over winter break I was in Prague for 2 weeks with an additional few days in Vienna. I was so lucky to be the trip assistant for SAIC's Prague Study Trip. I actually lived and studied in Prague for the whole of last year, so I have become somewhat knowledgeable about the Czech Republic and Eastern/Central Europe in general. My accumulated “wisdom� naturally, specializes in the arts scene. It seemed to me that Prague's professional arts and exhibitions are lacking. Especially when it comes to quality exhibition production, such as installation techniques and innovations. Even the simplest things, such as presentation: the pieces are crooked or hung so that they look unstable, they haven't been dusted in years, the walls are dirty and waterstained, the lighting is bad and some of the pieces even look recently faded in their horribly rickety frames. The museums kinda suck for these reasons, plus there is a limiting, a filtrating of the contemporary work coming into the country because there is still a bit of a power struggle amongst the older members of the art community in Prague. This power struggle lies within the remnants of a system that still lingers from communism.

So, as people have been frequently doing in areas not so dense nor diverse with quality contemporary art, my friends and I opened and produced projects in a squat gallery for 6 months. This was a pretty incredible experience, as running a space that is always temporary and isn't fully in your control (think water, electricity, legal battle tie-ups, keys and authority being passed around, etc.) can be pretty nerve-racking and hectic. But it is really crazy fun.

New and internationally inspired energy is slowly trickling into the exhibition scene thanks to these squat galleries and independent projects like the one I got involved with. Both students/emerging artists and longstanding artists are active which gives birth to a wide range of ideas and art being shown. And although the exhibition process is pretty informal, it is still well thought out and innovative. Good installation and presentation techniques are still practiced, its just that experimentation is greatly utilized due to the quirkiness of many of the spaces. Gallery A.M.180 of the Vinohradska neighborhood featured one of my good friends and Norwegian artist, Anders Gronlien. Here's his show flyer and some work:

This is why its really exciting to be involved with one of these projects because the scene is small and these ideas of facilitation and self-motivation/promotion are still pretty new there. The experience was great especially because of being American, since sometimes it seems as though nothing is ever considered new here, it seemed revolutionary there AND it was because I am still young and learning and I got to do so with a variety of types of people and artists. My show flyer for a solo show I had in a squat gallery called Independent Creative Space was purely a digital scan:

And then here are some pictures of various installed works and artists looking and hanging out within some of my favorite squat/alternative space projects.

So it was really interesting to go back to Prague after having been gone for just 6 months and to see all of the new cool obstacle hurdling spaces. It felt really great to have been and still be part of something thats small but important. Especiallly when its halfway across the world!

Posted by Jamilee at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)