Sorry it’s been a while since the last post! Recently the architecture and art students haven’t done anything as a big group, so the following updates are about art classes and art lectures that we’ve attended over the past two weeks.
February 19th marked the Drawing Center Opening for “Apparently Invisible: Selections Spring 2009”. Nine artists were featured in the show: Susan Collis, Michaela Frühwirth, Elana Herzog, Marietta Hoferer, Sarah Kabot, Anne Lindberg, Janine Magelssen, Chris Nau, and Janet Passehl. The exhibition reveals the range of work that can be achieved through the action of drawing, not necessarily through the process of putting pen/pencil/pastel/etc. to paper (although some artists from the show did).
Collis showed other works in the exhibition, one including this ladder piece, where she adorned a step ladder with precious jewels and metals: diamonds, pearls, gold, silver, etc. At first glance, the viewer probably won’t notice these rarities, but once these markings are discovered, the viewer’s perception about the colloquial, labor, and preciousness changes. In another work, Collis stitched patterns on a smock where paint splatters and stains usually reside. Her other piece takes the form of a bag, but she used only paper to construct it; she drew with ball-point pens to make the imitation designs. Chris Nau uses the wall as his canvas: he fashions a new wall in front of the gallery wall, draws his design on the wall, and cuts the pieces out one by one. After sanding each piece down, Nau replaces the pieces like a puzzle, tilting certain pieces at different angles to play with light and shadow. Elana Herzog also used the wall as part of her piece, stapling fabric to the wall and ripping certain unstapled parts to create negative space. Sarah Kabot revamped The Drawing Center’s bathroom by placing a thin vinyl tape line 1/2 inch to the right and 1/2 inch above the outline of every tile, door, screw, toilet, and picture in the room. Kabot wishes to draw attention to the first move of building an architectural space, and how placing the first tile or floorboard changes the allocation of every other piece within that space.
For Douglas Ross’s class, art students visited David Reinfurt of Dexter Sinister early last week. Dexter Sinister is a collaboration of Stuart Bailey and David Reinfurt, whose main office is located in a basement at 38 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side in New York City. Dexter Sinister is a small publishing organization of sorts, modeled after a ‘Just-In-Time’ economy of print production, where publications are printed and distributed as they are ordered. A very small group of writers, printers, and publishers help to sustain the business, limiting waste, concentrating productivity, and using innovative, pragmatic approaches to distributing and printing works.
Here is their website to check out! http://www.dextersinister.org/index.html?id=35