Mary Anna Pomonis with Charlie Hachadourian's art work

The list of questions below were given to Mary Anna Pomonis by me regarding her curatorial exhibition at Vincent Price Art Museum.

1. I read that the idea for this exhibition has been in your mind's eye for about ten years.  How did the show remain true to your original vision and how did it change?

In 2009 I was hanging out with Allison Stewart and Carole Caroompas.  Allison, Carole and I had just come back from a show I curated in New York at Space B Gallery in Chelsea entitled, The Gun Show. We began joking that after making a show about the taboo topic of gun culture it would be cool to do a show about God. The idea really stuck in my head because I am from the Midwest and a very conservative Greek Orthodox family.  On the one hand I rejected those ideas when I decided to become an artist and move away from home.  However, like anything else you reject it becomes deeply imbedded in your memory and somehow elements ofthat rejection become part of your practice.

2. How do your personal politics work with the artists you chose for the show?

I tried very hard to balance the selection of sculptors, photographers, painters, and environmental practicioners.  I also was very conscious of selecting a balance of men and women as well as people of color and people who identify as straight or gay.  I found that because so much of sacred ritual is based on diversified ethnicity and social experience, balancing artists led to a richer array of objects.  For example Todd Gray's Shaman photographs are shot in Africa where he has a studio.  Todd's work is performative, he stands with shaving cream completely covering his body in the middle of jungle.  His photographs simultaneously convey the frightening hood of a Klansman and an African shaman in the midst of a trance.  Those kinds of associations are specific to him because of his racial identity and his work resonantes with meaning as a result.

I took myself out of the show although my work is deeply connected to the exhibition statement since I am fascinated personally by the connection between modernist notions of aura and contemporary artistic practice.  I felt that taking myself out of the show would make the audience experience more about the topic and less about the ego of the curator.  I know that it's a protocol that is not always held up however, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

When I am selecting an artist for a show I have to feel a strong sense that in addition to the conceptual linkage with the project, the artist will be a pleasure to work with.  I include Allison Stewart in my shows a lot because her work has incredible depth of meaning and I know form experience that Allison brings a level of professionalism and generosity to the projects she is involved with.  Allison wrote the most incredible artist statement for the show outlining her project, American Anthem connecting her images of young soldiers to the Mannerist images of Christ and Madonna.  Stewart points out that images of the tragic hero have become our sacred secular icons, that idea really resonated with me and i had to include her work.  There are so many great artists in the show, I could go on and on, I'll just quote the didactic:

"To talk about the divine aspect of art production is as awkward as it is exciting

for the artists Mark Dutcher, Paul Guillemette, Charles Hachadourian, Paula J.

Wilson, Ross Rudel, and Linda Stark.  There is a theology of presence

evident in their work; the artist's hand must be present in the making in

order to create an energetic action that is felt by the viewer.  Each of these

artists utilizes repetitive action and touch in their work in order to elicit such

a response.  Mark Dutcher creates lushly painted glittering mirrors; Paul Guillemette

uses marquetry techniques to join wood together into new-age pyramids; ritualistic pits

that become sculpture; Ross Rudel methodically carves and sands elegant forms; Paula

Wilson employs painterly marks atop prayer rugs that can be used as objects, paintings or

dividers; and Linda Stark molds paint into cushiony textural surfaces that focus on mystical

images. Stark's inventive surfaces are often embedded with bugs and spices that are layered

directly into the paint, evoking magic via sacramental offering...

3. In your statement you wrote that the exhibition was divided by two: those who use ritual in their art and those who use the idea of spiritualism in a cynical way.  Would you consider ritual being a part of every artist's process?  Speaking for myself , and my creative process, I see having the qualities of spiritual rituals.

Most of the artists I know have incorporated aspects of ritual in their studios.  Artists place salt in the corners of their studios, burn sage, hang up images of Kali, the Virgin of Guadalupe and other collections.  Although most contemporary artist tend to mock the ideas of faith, they often have deeply repetitive practices in the studio that mimic sacred meditation.

4. How did the agnostics occupy this space?

The response I got most often was a sort of active confusion followed by excitement.  Many people at the performance day (co-curated by Adriana Yugovich) were really energized by the performances for different reasons.  My boyfriend Justin Stadel felt the performances enhanced his relationship to the work.  Which really surprised me because his sensibility is more abject.  It's one thing to say, The Semi-Tropic Spiritualists are going to perform and quite another to watch them build a pyramid and then go inside the gallery and stand in front of one of Paul Guillemette's beautifully crafted pyramids made of recycled wood.  The chanting Buddhists led by Jennifer Juniper -Stratford spread out around Paul Guillemette, Adrian De La Pena, Ron Laboray and Allison Stewart's work.  Their meditative chanting for me personally changed the experience of looking at Laboray's, "Flaming Monk" and Carole Caroompas' Dancing with Misfits: Eye Dazzler: Les Desaxes. Both Carole and Ron deal with popular culture imagery and its easy to think of the images as sarcastic however, there is a layer of Buddhist suffering that comes with the images of horror, so evident in both of their works.  Krystal Krunch held a workshop to help visitors intuitively read the artwork in the show, so there were a lot of people wandering around and looking at art trying to commune with the objects while performers were performing.  Ross Rudel created a beautiful piece entitled Wet Column, where he stood on a tree stump in a felt suit with a wooden cage revolving around his head while he stood transfixed.  Rudel fluffed out his hair in order to prevent the cage from striking him, there was this element of his being like a caryatid and the museum operating as a tie that bound him to the temple column.  Finally there was this really interesting dynamic between the calm Movement Ritual piece by Diana Cummins based on Yoga movements and the pure camp of Barfth the self-described sludge-metal band.

5. The "white cube"-occupying the gallery space reminded me of the Suprematists and their search for the purity of only "feelings".  Is the conceptual aspect of your curatorial efforts a search for this kind of non-objectivity?

It's interesting you should say that.  I definitely think that the gallery and museum today are the closest things our culture has to a pure or sacred space.  Perhaps its my own efforts that create meaning in the face of total banality that facilitated my drive to search out a museum venue for the show; to turn what initially started as a joke, into something that could lead to something more.

-Mary Anna Pomonis

Historically, skepticism and reluctance instilled a fear that technological advancements, such as television, video games, and the internet, would “turn our brains to mush” and inevitably lead to cultural and linguistic degradation.  Curated by Warren Schultheis, Things That Turn Your Brains To Mush (TTTYBTM) explores these fears, by embracing the animated GIFs' (Graphics Interchange Format) nascent application as a burgeoning form of cultural commentary and its contemporary art status as the new media darling of the moment.

A twenty-five-year-old technology most visible during the internet’s early days, animated GIFs are produced from still GIFs compiled together to create a simple animation.  As Flash—now becoming passé itself—came into use this rudimentary animation style was retired. The animated GIF's simplicity, however, is its strength. It has resurfaced online as an emotive and visual communication method, for diversionary and humorous purposes, temperamental outbursts, and blistering commentary on blogs, social media, and in advertising, that is as integral to our language as words.

In Something From Nothing, Chris Silva dismantles an animated GIF, presenting it as a sculptural installation of many still parts in a metaphorical depiction of the low-quality construction that binds it together. Katy McCarthy's video projection, running off, applies a humanistic approach, showing, in one man’s reoccurring journey into the fog, that purpose is temporal, importance is transitory, and humans are as fatigued in repetition as animated GIFs are fatiguing when viewed.

Tellef Tellefson, Transparent Home Transplants, 2013, Ten transparent animated GIFs overlayed on sbcaf.org, Varying resolutions and duration, randomly displayed and full-screen, Courtesy the Artist

Conceived for online viewing, Tellef Tellefson’s Transparent Home Transplants randomizes animated GIFs on CAF’s website homepage, which bleed intothe art institution's own informational offerings. Collapsing the distance between this media and how it is often seen creates both a communicative rupture and a fitting illustration of the exhibition's subject. Shown as well in digital frames within the exhibition space, Tellefson questions the effectiveness of an animated GIF viewed in non-traditional context; Placement gains significance, for without it the animated GIF becomes a misdirected environmental irritant.

When cranked David Cooley's HYPNO-TROPE turns a rainbow inside out as an iris-shaped opening displays flickering psychedelic images. Because ingesting of this hypnotic drug is at one's own whim, the HYPNO-TROPE seems harmless, unable to encode traces that may impact negatively later on, while simultaneously providing relief in the form of a temporary suspension of time. As the color shifts and the circular pupil flattens into an oval, however, the work plays with the engrossing nature of repetitive images and suggests a hidden danger, the potential to become addicted to its mesmerizing affect. 

David Cooley (with Russ Carter), HYPNO-TROPE, 2013, Wood, acrylic, motorcycle, bike parts, resin, and crystal doorknob, 48 in. diameter, Courtesy the Artist. Photo: Wayne McCall

Petra Cortright transforms an efficient communication device into a distraction by distorting a computer screen with unintelligible results—a mark of AI possession perhaps? Flashing animated GIFs of landscapes descend towards the bottom of the screen as if dripping through holes in Windows. At times, tiled floral patterns take over the digital space, and though playful and light in the viewing they reference the darker side of the organic where a virus resides. Here the computer is in control, recycling endless loops of instructions such as “door may be open”, “door may be closed,” and “cancel,” as if it won’t return from its System Landscape vacation until it finds such an action convenient. 

In Tree Rings Yoon Chung Hun articulates trees in three forms: audio, video, and digital laser cut, emulating an animated GIF's distortion of data into new means with distinct applications. Mechanically-produced sound waves imprinted on tree slices obliterate the inherent pattern and rhythm of the rings. On screen, spiraling waves, displayed as animated drawings, vacillate from the smooth to jittery ridges of sound. Contrary to expectation, the soft, subtle hum of the subway in Morgan Ave, Brooklyn, NY pales when juxtaposed to Goleta Beach, CA’s raucous, intermittent wind gusts and crackling seaweed. In stereo, nature disrupts more than the urban and sound slicing through silence is deafening.

Yoon Chung Han, Tree Rings, 2012, Wood and laser cut, 14 1/16 x 9 1/10 in. each, Courtesy the Artist. Photo: Wayne McCall

Johnny Troyna projects looping surfing and skateboarding videos, superimposed by semi-transparent orbs on rickety, round handmade screens. In contrast to the surfer’s linear trajectory, the skateboarder executes an eternal street plant sweep in an arc as graceful as any refined highbrow act of physicality. An evolutionary offshoot of surfing purported to be a "sidewalk menace” with “punks” for practitioners, Troyna’s A movement without all the movement exposes skateboarding as a meditative and elegant endeavor that has contributed a heretofore nonexistent discipline to our cultural practice and a unique lexicon to our vocabulary.

TTTYBTM shows that technological advances, including animated GIFs, are another way of understanding, sharing, and navigating the real and virtual world. Instead of affecting us negatively, these communicative methods are complex utterances contributing to a vibrant living language. In the context of an art museum, the artists frame the conversation around animated GIFs as non-threatening to the legacy of and a positive addition to respected, already established mediums. Just as the animated GIF is experiencing a rebirth, in the world of contemporary art this exhibition underscores that all mediums, like technology, go in and out of style in the ceaseless pounding wave that is fad, but their potential is ever alive.

-Kimberly Hahn

Things That Turn Your Brains To Mush (TTTYBTM) is on view at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum through June 16. Within the context of the contemporary art world, animated gifs have been mentioned with greater frequency as a medium of interest in the last few months. ArtSlant recently juried an exhibition of animated gifs called <Error 415>  that opens at ArtPadSF May 17^th. 

‘Considering Collages’: a survey show of collages is exciting by definition because it’s a rare occurrence. Collages, especially the paper-and-glue  ( French ‘coller’ meaning ‘ to glue / to paste’) kinds,  which are often  playful experiments in forms, materials and contexts made from found objects,  tick exactly the wrong kind of boxes as far as the contemporary Indian art scene is concerned.

But the post 1947 collagescape at Jhaveri Contemporary with 14 artists ( born between 1882 and 1976 ) from the Indian subcontinent and the diaspora, induces more chuckles and raises more questions per square feet than most of the ongoing exhibitions.

Before walking in, it would be useful to  remember that the earliest Indian ones, the Sekahavati Collages and the earliest European ones  by Picasso and Braque coincided in time (1890s - 1910s) but not in their intentions. While the former explores the boundaries of culturally determined contexts the latter redefines the boundaries of surface and representation of dimensions. These two streams of intentions cross and uncross their paths across all the works displayed in this exhibition.

The joy of the chance- found is one of the main joys of creating and viewing collages and that’s there in plenty in NandalalBose’s (1882 - 1966)  torn brown paper and ink collages. More carefully planned, but just as playful are Benode Behari Mukherjee’s  (1904-1980) coloured paper collages made after his eyesight started failing in 1956. Interestingly, unlike Nandalal’s free-form, they are pre-planned (the preparatory pencil outlines could have been carried out by a student). Comparison with infirm Matisse’s decoupage are inevitable. But what’s also worth noting that all three of them got engrossed in these playful collages in their twilight years.  Even Abanindranath Tagore’s Kutum-Kataams,  doll-like constructs made up of found objects, were done very late in his life.

One of the reasons, perhaps collage is not taken seriously because, it is many a times,  a phase of experimentation and problem solving for the artist  before moving on to something more resolved and well-rounded.

K G Subramanyan’s (1924 -) Grey Studio (1966) done in New York City, is a far cry from his previous works and a striking diptych of pasted surfaces and paint- overs.

Just how powerful a meaning-maker can paint-over be is evident from Simryn Gill’s ( 1959 - ) work. With a few deft brush-strokes of paint on National Geographic Magazine pages, she rewrites the story altogether.

If Simryn Gill adds a sense of foreboding with her brush-strokes, C K Rajan (1960 - ) , adds hilarity with his scissors and glue. Dedicated to the medium for a while,with his Mild Terrors ( 1991-1996) series, he follows the tradition of collage-as-hybrid, the exquisite cadaver which doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Used magazine pages are all that Muhanned Cader (1966 - ) has in common with C K Rajan and Simryn Gill. He refashions those pages into imaginary landscapes fanning out over pages of glued-together moleskinnotebooks.

The exploration of boundaries of contexts and dimensions take place simultaneously in the works of Bhupen Khakhar (1934 - 2003) , Dashrath Patel (1927 - 2010) and Anwar Jalal Shemza (1928-1985). They all use unusual materials which make the collages two and a half-dimensional, much like the early modernist experiments on collages.

In The Sun and the Sea (1966), Shemza arranges the sawn off, unpainted legs of chairs, varying in diameter and height, to create an abstract landscape. In the wittily named Interactive Collage (1998), Dashrath Patel glues pieces of carved and coloured wood on a mirror, at once emphasizing and de-emphasizing the concepts of surface and (perceived) depth. Khakhar’s Wall of a small Hindu Temple (1966) is just that and yet not, with bits and bobs of Indian roadside ephemera stuck on the board surrounded by red paint resembling sindoor. These works remind the viewer the ‘telescopic’ or ‘boomerang-like’ delights and detours taken by the eye in modernist collages as described by Clement Greenberg. The eye goes back and forth between surfaces,between the real and perceived depths, between the ‘inside and ‘outside’ of the image, ricocheting between being deceived and undeceived.

If these works question the reality of dimensions, Mahbub Shah’s (1978 - ) collages gently rearranges visual reality with punch-cut ‘pixels’ taken out  from the pages of books and magazines. The result is a quasi-legible image, quivering between comprehension and randomness.  As if, looked from the correct angle, this visual puzzle will reveal itself.

This sense of  imminent transformation, haunts  Yamini Nayar’s (1975-) collages too. She is prone to collecting bits of waste – paper, foil, string, and other detritus – that she finds in the streets around her New York studio before photographing them from different angles. Untitled  1 ,2 (Malleable Structures) have more than a hint at structures constantly collapsing and rebuilding themselves with the trajectory of our eyes.

The most painterly of the collages are from F N Souza (1924 -2002),  Apnavi Thacker (1976-) and Alexander Gorlizki ( 1967 - ). Yet the most successful of Souza’s collages, Two Nudes on a Beach (1966)  come from a judicious mix of photography and paintbrush, ripe in the shock value of both change in contexts and Souza's characteristic  brashness. Apnavi Thacker’s collages from the Drawing Breath series (2013) have equal mixes  of surrealism and Victorian nature imagery. Here, the exquisite cadavers strike again. The junction of painted and pasted surfaces in Alexander Gorlizki’s Framing Options (2013) have to be hunted down and once found, rewards the patient viewer with meanings and possibilities.

Another level of delight is added when the entire exhibition is looked at as a metacollage, a collage of collages. By  choosing artists of different chronology and persuasions and juxtaposing them, it establishes itself as a deliberately non-linear art historical narrative.

If there’s one thread that runs through the 34 works by 14 artists in this exhibition, it’s the gradual disappearance of visible  junctions between the mismatched surfaces over time.

The glue has become metaphorical.

Spraying a full size London Tube Train. Sound amazing!

Peter Saul is likely the greatest discovery for the German market at this year’s Gallery Weekend. Now 79, the vanguard of Pop Art is spot on as ever, when  transforming his contemporary diagnoses into colorful mélanges of mythology, Mad Magazine, art history and Walt Disney. An artist-artist, who arrived in the upper echelons of the art world elsewhere a long time ago. Welcome to Berlin, Mr. Saul. — Gesine Borcherdt

The last event thrown by this group was also a fundraiser.  The event raised close to $3k for the Free Arts for Abused Children. Hundreds of people came out to enjoy a night of art and music and were not let down. While one could hear the solid musical performances of Alligator Republic and The Random Acts of Blindness,they were surrounded by many works of art ranging in style and genres. These events are up for only one night, which is barely enough time to see everything, so get there early. The night ended with all participating artists donating works of art that were raffled for the ticket price of just a couple dollars! All the winners were esctactic, as not only did they come away with some art, but 100% of each raffle ticket sold went to The Free Arts charity!  This time around, there will be 20 artist and 4 bands...... and i personally cant wait to see how the night unfolds and what surprises overflow! It takes place in the historical and very spacious Mezz Bar ballroom on the 2nd floor of the Alexandria Hotel. 

Rahman Statik works were interesting combination of black culture and egyptian art. Pretty pretty paintings great portrait painting skills.

#respect#

 Also the merchanise at the elephant room gallery were cool 

Kathy has played around with the fiber medium and given it a painting quality treatment. Her subject matter is related to social media and internet. Through embroidery she is attempting to connect the mentality of two different generations (current generation & their parents). . Her works are witty and will make you go ‘LOL’. 

http://agnichemburkar.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/too-much-information-tmi-may-24th-july-6th/

Author: Deborah Ross

http://exploreartphoenix.com/2013/05/24/5-reasons-to-visit-mesa-contemporary-arts/

An attractive building amid the Mesa Arts Center complex, the MCA Museum usually mounts four to five shows at a time in its relatively small galleries. There have been times I’ve visited when not all the shows appealed to me. Last visit, though, I feel like I hit the jackpot, and I recommend you see all five shows — all on exhibit until August 11, 2013.

I reached for the jackpot analogy because one of the best pieces in the show “American Dream,” which features the artists of Eye Lounge in downtown Phoenix, is Sarah Hurwitz’s “Lucky Livelyhood.” It’s a real slot machine retooled by the artist to mirror the games we play in choosing our careers. Put in a quarter, pull the lever, and the spinning images land on such choices as “pet detective,”“parachute tester,”“mad scientist” and “blogger” (oh, that’s a good one!). Flanking the machine are posters on oak tag paper with Hurwitz’s postage-stamp-size illustrations of faces and “clip art,” forming a caustic and comprehensive “Career List.”

The MCA greeter told me that the slot machine can be played only during supervised tours, as the museum doesn’t want to risk breaking Arizona gambling laws. Schoolkids have gotten a kick out of it, though.

I’ll highlight a few pieces by the Eye Lounge artists — this small collective, by the way, has been a mainstay on Roosevelt Row — but mention that almost all of the chosen pieces are worthy of being given this museum treatment and that this serves as a fine salute to Arizona artists:

– The fog-like street scene of Logan Bellew’s digital photograph “Untitled (In the Loving Calm of Your Arms),” which borrows from an essay by Roland Barthes, a French cultural critic.

– Abbey Messmer’s “Surface Tension,” showing three boys in a pool, which you would think would be a colorful, joyful piece, but which instead is dreamlike, with a potentially complex narrative.

–“Smoke” by Melissa Martinez, in which the actual remnants of trees struck by lightning are mounted on steel bases. The sight of them leads to ruminations on nature’s fierce beauty.

I purposely want to list the other local artists in the show (alphabetically): David Bradley, Lee Davis, Sean Deckert, Paul Elliott, Daniel Funkhouser, T.J. Hogan, Mimi Jardine, Chris Maker, Merkel McLendon, Michael Max McLeod, Christina Mesiti, Mary Meyer, Ann Morton, Dianne Nowicki, Crystal Phelps, Lara Plecas, Christina Pruitt, Olivia Timmons and Claire Warden.

Moving on to the show “Arizona Catalyst: Artists Working In & Beyond the State,” I felt a small triumph that the four featured artists all began their careers in Arizona, and although they now live elsewhere, their ties to the local art community remain strong.

I enjoyed seeing the multi-layered mixed media pieces by Fausto Fernandez, whose name has come up recently in conjunction with the beautiful mosaics and other public artwork at Phoenix Sky Train’s 44th Street Station. Wesley Anderegg entertains with his dioramas of puppet-like characters in storytelling poses. Angela Young produces beautiful pencil drawings, sometimes showing body parts magnified to the point of abstraction. Best of all is Angel Cabrales’“Preparativos Para la Invasion,” a mixed media piece with Mexican and military paraphernalia and the sound of a Rachel Maddow broadcast — a sarcastic commentary on unfounded fears of  Mexicans, perhaps?

Another current show at MAC is “Now Playing Everywhere: A Survey of Social and Political Works from the Stephane Janssen Collection.” You could spend quite a bit of time with the various works by internationally renowned artists — Janssen must be one of the smartest art collectors around — and the artists’ statements with each piece are quite helpful in understanding the mindset behind the strong messages of their work. Simply put, though, if you’ve never seen work by the likes of Spencer Tunick, Isaac Montoya, the Russian collective AES + F, Vic Muniz and Fritz Scholder (his famous “Indian Before Remington”), then head on over.

The smallest of the shows is the installation “Bipolar,” a collaboration between Texas artist Alice Leora Briggs and Arizona artist Albert Kogel, in which you are meant to walk among highly detailed woodcut cubes and metal sculptures as if you are somehow lost between reason and madness. Look closely, and be absorbed by the “mental patients” within.

As for the last exhibition to mention, it’s probably one of the main draws right now: “The Dogs of Ron Burns,” a survey of the Arizona artist’s colorful, idiosyncratic doggie portraits. I admit, I found myself sucked in … and I’m a cat person!

Variety is certainly the name of the game with the summer offerings at Mesa Contemporary Arts. See all five shows … or the one that most appeals to you.

All photographs below are courtesy of Mesa Contemporary Arts.

Krista Buecking

Magenta Magazine

April 3, 2013

By Ellyn Walker

WE THING, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based Canadian Krista Buecking, points to the intangibility of the neoliberal ideal. Playing with the linguistic development of the word ‘thing’, the exhibition’s title reminds us of the public body intrinsically located within any object, matter or circumstance. Similarly, examining prevalent social and economic systems within a critical lens, Buecking’s multifaceted installation underscores the inherent fracture within the current North American climate.

Ubiquity, turned on its head, permeates the exhibition. Referencing neoliberal prototypes such as the Human Potential Movement made popular during the 1960s as a model for self-actualization and social motivation, Buecking plays upon the notion of such ‘lifestyle marketing’ while disembodying its claims. Asking “What does it mean to grow up having been told you can be anything you want and then have reality be something different?,” Buecking locates our generational sense of disappointment and alienation within a social economy that guarantees the unsustainable.

Comprised of material props that remind us of television stage sets from 1980s sitcoms, Buecking takes up this interest in an effort to re-imagine what it means to use these formal predicates. The main gallery space sees Buecking penetrate these tropes within her videotaped performances shown on a glossy monitor and an older television set from the 1990s, showing scenes of the artist infiltrating an oversized GAP shopping bag, engaging with pop culture forms of furniture, as well as embracing the screen itself from which these images emanate.

Several questions like HOW MANY CONSERVATIVE ECONOMISTS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHT BULB?” also appear on the screens, followed by tongue-in-cheek answers such as NONE. IF THE GOVERNMENT WOULD JUST LEAVE IT ALONE, IT WOULD SCREW ITSELF IN. Here, Buecking equates the familiar instance of domestic handiwork as a metaphor for the inability of political stakeholders to meet basic societal needs.

Furthermore, the overwhelming presence of green house plants within the various sets, similar to ones seen in storefront windows and waiting rooms, appropriates the popular practice of enlivening space with totems of the living. In this case, the vacancy of a human stage presence and of overarching economic promises allows the plants to suffice as emblems of a society that exists outside of its means.

The interrogations found in this exhibition expand upon Buecking’s artistic practice and combined body of work to date. Her earlier series, "LOVE SONG FOR A FUTURE GENERATION", "Proposal for Ruins" and "WHERE WE ARE MISPLACED" also explore similar sentiments of disappointment, disintegration and tenuousness. While each mark important criticisms of our imperfect world, there exists an overarching sense of sincerity within Buecking’s analyses of social economies.

Whether aligned with this exhibition’s particular trajectories or not, it is almost impossible not to appreciate the absurdity evident within Buecking’s reassembled environments. WE THING thus reiterates our identity as that of social construct, rooted in the premise of a lifestyle promised, and formerly believed unattainable.

http://www.magentamagazine.com/12/exhibition-reviews/krista-buecking

Abstract art in the era of global conceptualism: A site for discussion of so-called abstract art, including its past, present and future.

How Hummingbird?

Posted on February 3, 2013 by Robert Linsley

Yesterday I saw a show by Patrick Howlett. It fit well with my recent thoughts on Stella because Howlett’s work is also distinguished by sheer pictorial invention. Abstraction should not mean but be, to paraquote a famous poet. The largest piece in the show held my attention for some time. It’s composed mainly of triangles, but the most striking feature is that none of the shapes exactly line up or fit in the way they were apparently made to do.

 Patrick Howlett, you may gather/a kind of absurdity/if you see her 2012

They’ve all been jiggled out of place—a very intelligent strategy. Another piece that got under my skin was indebted to Klee but not derivative at all, and that is a good thing.

 Patrick Howlett, how hummingbirds choose flowers 2012

Actually this piece has an important origin in cubism, and that’s also very interesting. But Howlett’s line is very Klee-like in that it thinks as it moves, and probably the most important effect of the show for me was that it pushed me further off my position on straight lines. Straight lines or shapes with straight edges are hardly unusual in abstraction, but I don’t use ‘em, and have a bit of an allergy to the same. Like everything else, including reliefs made of cut-out panels, it’s what you do with them that counts.

http://newabstraction.net/2013/02/03/howlett-hummingbird/

Patrick Howlett: How Hummingbirds Choose Flowers
December 15, 2012 – February 2, 2013
Susan Hobbs Gallery

By Amy Luo

How do hummingbirds choose flowers? As it turns out, even ornithologists don’t know: lacking a sense of smell, these tiny birds depend on a variety of visual cues to find flowers but the exact process is difficult to pin down. How Hummingbirds Choose Flowers, then, is a good title for an exhibition of Patrick Howlett’s purely abstract works, which present the viewer with myriad suggestive visual cues that can’t exactly be pinned down. Currently showing at Susan Hobbs Gallery, this one-man show comprises the Canadian artist’s new works from 2012, dispersed among the two floors of the gallery alongside several related older pieces.

Patrick Howlett, Installation view, How Hummingbirds Choose Flowers, 2012, Susan Hobbs Gallery

The displayed two-dozen or so works shows Howlett’s versatility in using an impressive range of media: watercolour, distemper, tempera, pencil, silverpoint, and cyanotype, among others. He uses each medium in a way that highlights the distinct application techniques and visual characteristics associated with it. Each work reveals the process of its own making and evokes the artist’s procedure behind it, lending his abstraction a charming intimacy.

While Howlett’s previous output had notably been small-sized paintings, this exhibition includes several new works showing the artist working on a considerably larger scale. He approaches the larger works in much the same manner as his smaller ones, employing several media and working with jagged, geometrical shapes. The scale of the larger panels pushes the viewer to step back in order to apprehend the work as a whole. Viewing from this distance, however, diminishes the effect of the intimate handwork and interplay of different media that give each of his smaller works a unique aura.

Among the modest-sized panels is a kind of absurdity (2012), a watercolour and coloured pencil piece with meticulous hatching and cross-hatching handwork. The concentric, irregular shapes and the earthy tones impart the work with an organic quality, which is rather rare from Howlett. In the same grouping of small works is the eponymous how hummingbirds choose flowers (2012). Here, geometrical shapes are roughly rendered in pencil and layered over by variegated watercolor soak stains, which immediately evoke Helen Frankenthaler’s Colour-field paintings.

Patrick Howlett, a kind of absurdity, 2012, coloured pencil on linen, watercolour on wood, 38.75 x 43.25 cm

Despite that association, Howlett’s abstraction is devoid of the monumentality and emotionality ofAbstract Expressionism, instead closer in line with a humbler, more lighthearted aesthetic. Several of his works incorporate fabric cut-outs, leather piping, and pieces of wood, suggesting links with craft and textile arts. It is not a surprise, then, that among his artistic influences areAnni AlbersandSophie Taeuber-Arp, two key innovators of textile design. The tight cross-hatching in suppression (2008) evokes Albers’elegant weavings, while a penchant for the geometric is shared betweenHowlettand Taeuber-Arp. But the younger artist’s work is a playful and slightly rebellious

reinterpretation of his influences. It is as if he took the neat, geometric forms and bold, resolute lines of his predecessors and deconstructed, distorted, and scrambled them. His art is whimsical and youthful, with colours, shapes, and lines that mischievously extend onto the frames and unusual combinations of media playfully cohabiting on surfaces.

The tortuous and zig-zagging lines of Howlett’s art are in fact apt visual metaphors for his equally meandering working process. He often uses results from a Google image search of an evocative phrase as the starting point for his work. From there, a succession of additions, deletions, distortions and transmutations carry the image along to its final state. The finished work may no longer resemble the image of the search result or illustrate the query phrase, but the process of its making invisibly connects it to both.

The query phrase not only serves as a starting point, but it also sets up a complex semantic interplay in the finished work between abstract visual elements and verbal fragments, engendering a tension between signification and meaninglessness. It was thus an unfortunate oversight that titles were not affixed next to the artworks on show. Though Howlett’s abstract works are visually stimulating and evocative, considering them alongside their titles adds another level indeterminate tension that enriches the encounter with his art.

http://www.artoronto.ca/?p=17512

Patrick Howlett Draws Fresh Vectors for Painting

Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto

December 15, 2012, to February 2, 2013

By Wojciech Olejnik

POSTED: JANUARY 11, 2013, Canadian Art Online

The title of Patrick Howlett’s exhibition “How Hummingbirds Choose Flowers” at Susan Hobbs Gallery refers to how hummingbirds, which have almost no sense of smell, rely on colour and form cues to find flowers. It also evokes how, in their constant search for food, hummingbirds are always open to new sources.

Accordingly, Howlett’s collection of work here employs many different media, comprising egg tempera paintings, watercolours, drawings, a cyanotype, as well as a few slightly older selections and pieces that vary greatly in scale. Because the works are hung dynamically at various heights and at uneven increments, viewers are prompted to shift position frequently and to navigate the exhibition in unique, roundabout ways.

The space of each work seems to unfold according to an inner logic. Each piece is populated with lines and planes that converge at sharp angles, creating triangular, jagged figures. Like the pointer on a dial, a triangle always points to another part of the space, away from its centre. As a result, Howlett’s lines seem to endlessly wander; they ricochet around the canvas, sometimes revisiting the same parts, their destination unsure. Some lines and forms bleed over the edges of their canvas or support, while others stutter as if they’ve been digitally pixellated.

Overall, Howlett’s works seem to be executed with both exuberance and caution. In one light, they appear frail, delicately worked into being over an indeterminate amount of time. But the fact is that these paintings are far from timid; Howlett’s approach relies on intuitiveness, play and voracious experimentation. This strategy aims to test any given painting’s own internal logic, as well as test the broader limits of what an abstract painting can be.

Perhaps this attraction to experimentation explains why Howlett decided to exhibit such diverse work. Though each piece may initially read as an abstract painting, many utilize drawing media such as charcoal, pencil and crayon; others use collaged elements. chrysanthemums (2008–12), for example, might appear to be a monochromatic watercolour until one notices the lack of brushwork—its blue “washes” are actually cyanotype pigments.

Like many of its works, the exhibition “How Hummingbirds Choose Flowers” is elusive, set at a slight distance from the expected, and also at a slight distance from the real. It references not only early modernist painting and the digital information age, but also the objecthood of painting. This association to the object comes through in the way that Howlett may only paint on a small, considered area of a stained wood panel, or may extend a composition onto the sides and frames of a work.

The general effect of the show is well demonstrated by Howlett’s suppression (2010–12). Composed of shimmering, subtle, silvery gray geometric shapes, suppression offers a field of pale colours that the eye requires time to adjust to. As a result, viewing the work recalls the experience of waking up in a bright room, where for a first moment, everything is simply hazy fields of light and the walls, windows and shadows are nothing but clusters of abstract shapes.

Moving closer to suppression, however, its shimmering surface reveals itself to be a dense web of pencilled cross-hatching. This work allows for a suspension of the real, permitting the viewer to indulge in the movement of lines, patterns and illusions—always knowing, however, that at any moment the experience can fold back into the real, material world again.

http://www.canadianart.ca/reviews/2013/01/11/patrick-howlett-susan-hobbs/

FrameWork 5/13

Kathleen Smith on Oliver Husain

gebimsel = in German, domestic decorations hanging from the walls or ceiling. A word is a feeling is a lifestyle is a socio-political analysis.

On a day filled with wandering and shopping and lunching you may find yourself at Susan Hobbs Gallery just south of the Queen West strip on Tecumseth. In a skinny re-purposed building – a remnant of Toronto’s industrial past – is a tiny door set back from the sidewalk. Duck and enter.

On the walls of the ground floor space large hand-dyed silk squares flutter gently whenever the gallery door to the street opens and closes. facade (1) and facade (2) are deep yellow, superimposed with sobering grey grids. facade (3) is more muted in tone, presenting hints of light blue and cloud white and red brick in what must be the reflections of the sky in the windows of a tall building.

On the wall opposite a large vinyl poster advertises Pandan Cake Mix– a cooing Audrey Hepburn lookalike admires the lime-green fluffiness that results from someone’s efforts in the kitchen. Your lips involuntarily purse as you decide the icing on the cake is likely coconut.

These works are your entrée into Oliver Husain’s Gebimsel– you can see the installation and its objects laid out before you, if not the invisible path that beckons you to examine each object. There is a sense of flotsam and jetsam, the bits and bobs that litter this route. But this is not rubbish – these are precisely positioned artifacts, some constructed, some deconstructed, some found and others halfway to being lost. The embodiment of the viewer moving through their midst causes them to radiate briefly. They have been waiting for you.

A few steps and you are face to face with two works that feature bendy pieces constructed from dowels, springs and ribbon. Collapsables/Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro sits on a wide plinth. Pick up one of the 4 X 5 digital prints littering the base if no one’s looking. Put it back, they are all the same image. Oh, but wait – they are not all the same! You can tell they are stills from a film, in this case it’s a 1984 Indian cult comedy about real estate corruption. In the scene depicted construction cranes toil away on a job-site while a developer and a politician in the foreground seal a deal with handshakes and smiles. In each print the two villains express a minutely different level of glee while the cranes do their elegant building dance in the background.

Nearby Pandy Ramada’s Bendable Displex stands solid; it’s a screen that obscures exactly nothing, made from sheets of laminated corrugated plastic held together with zip ties. Collapsables Duo is visible just beyond - repeating and distilling the vibratory quality of Collapsables/Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro times two. Flick the elements and they bounce, wait for an extremely heavy person to pass by (or rush past the work yourself, stepping hard) and you will see them tremble.

Continue on to the back of the gallery. A tall rolling display stand supports a mass of bundled felt. It looks like a brain and, indeed, it might as well be since this is a bundle of felt words. Husain has painstakingly cut out a portion of Vorbemerkung (Preliminary Remark), the Rolf Dieter Brinkmann text from 1974 that inspired and anchors the Gebimsel installation.

******

“The storytellers continue, the automotive industry continues, the workers continue, the governments continue, the rock ’n’ roll singers continue, the prices continue, paper continues, the animals and trees continue, day and night continue, the moon rises, the sun rises, eyes open, doors open, the mouth opens, one speaks, one makes signs, signs on the facades, signs on the street, signs on machines, which are being moved, movements in rooms, through an apartment, when no one but oneself is there, wind blows old newspapers over an empty grey parking lot, wild bushes and grass grow over the abandoned lots full of rubble, right downtown, a construction hoarding is painted blue, a sign is nailed to the blue hoarding, Post No Bills, the hoardings, the posters, the No’s continue, the elevators continue, the facades continue, downtown continues, the suburbs continue.

What a delight to walk down a street in the sunshine. The poems I have assembled here were written between 1970 and 1974, for various occasions, in various places, are they any good? You ask. They are poems. All the questions continue just like all answers continue. Space continues. I’m opening my eyes and looking at a white sheet of paper.”

~ Vorbemerkung (Preliminary Remark) by Rolf Dieter Brinkmann (1974), translated from German by Oliver Husain and Ken McKerrow.

******

Look carefully – you can see the final word of the original German paragraph ‘papier’ dangling there.

The text continues too, literally, in the continued series of eight drawings lining the back wall. The ink on paper drawings trace the shapes and shadows generated by another felt word cutting-out and folding project, the word manipulated here: ‘continued’.

In this part of the room (if the gallery is quiet and you are there at the right time) romantic music insinuates itself. This is Illusionenonce per hour. As the title suggests, this piece consists of the melodramatic folk-pop song Illusionen by German singer Alexandra (who died in the sixties) played in its entirety once every hour: “Illusions hover, summer blue, in the sky above your life – but you know for sure: this cloudless dream image of your fantasy will never come true.” The sound issues from a round boom box set on the floor near the staircase to the gallery’s upper level.

Float upstairs in slow motion admiring the narrowness of the stairwell (so high the risers! so sturdy the wood!), lovingly fingering the bumpy whiteness of the not quite pristine drywall. In the second-floor aerie the installation continues, sharing space with books for sale, and the business hub of the gallery.

Here you can slide behind another corrugated plastic screen – a double of the one downstairs – to sit on a plastic chair and watch the video PARADE. Watch it several times in order to fully understand its damning secrets or to calm down from your busy day or if you are planning to write about it. A fan will blow air down the back of your neck, a bit noisily. It’s a white noise so not disruptive.

The ideas of the first floor are reiterated and encapsulated in this 11-minute work. Husain deploys condominium sales fly-throughs (CGI promotional videos designed to seduce potential buyers by illustrating dreamy and uncluttered domestic and social scenarios), projecting and re-shooting the images on fluttering fabric to suggest pristine lives lived in elegant and austere boxes in the sky.

At times the video is populated by alternately beautiful and creepy computer-enhanced urbanites, composite characters who go from work to shopping to working out to groomed perfection to ground-floor lounge drinks with compatriots, without stepping outside – though they may gaze longingly at the moon through a window or briefly traverse a manicured courtyard. At other times, the video clips resemble an unpeopled video or computer game –Myst, for example – in which the viewer wanders/drives/skates through architectures and landscapes designed for people but devoid of life. These scenes are at once dystopian and deeply alluring.

In program notes written for the gallery, Husain’s video is linked with French writer Marguerite Duras’ concept of the image passe-partout (an image designed as a container or envelope for an infinite number of texts) from her 1978 film Les mains negatives. This linkage invites multiple readings of the material presented yet the same gloomy questions prevail – questions about human habitation patterns and how they reflect societal values.  Husain’s historical strategy of connecting cultural relics from the sixties, seventies and eighties with the concerns of today solidifies on the screen, these digital images making the point even more firmly than the material objects that have been teasing the viewer on the journey across the ground floor and upstairs. The Brinkmann text returns here too, further anchoring Husain’s video dream of a manufactured world ready and waiting for visitors, tenants, owners, inhabitants. A continuance, since we have learned nothing.

Retrace your steps now and notice a new weight in the delicate components of this Gebimsel. The objects may flutter and tremble and cast shadows for you now in a slightly more sinister way.

As you waft downstairs, out the front door (past the book for signing) and into the empty street, you feel light and unencumbered, as if you have left something heavy behind. The almost-black silk square facade (4) waves good-bye, darkly. The sun-dappled day stretches out before you.

516 ARTS, a non-profit museum-style gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is led by Suzanne Sbarge, Executive Director, and Rhiannon Mercer, Associate Director. Since 2006, the exhibition program has centered on contemporary issues and innovative approaches to art-making, with supportive educational programs that delve into the visual and literary arts, music, and film. They are known for their 516 WORDS poetry series, workshops, lectures and panel discussions, and public projects–most recently city murals–all of which continue their mission to cultivate arts and culture in Albuquerque.

516 ARTS has also been an important incubator for broader city-wide (and beyond) special projects and collaborations with arts organizations and museums. A great example was the 2009 Land Art program they spearheaded, in which over 200 artists and 25 organizations participated. The event included a tour of Charles Ross’ Star Axis; the exhibit Dispersal/Return: Land Arts of the American West at the University of New Mexico Art Museum; the exhibition Experimental Geography curated by Nato Thompson, a panel discussion with Matthew Coolige, Katie Holten, Lize Mogel, and Lea Rekow at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History (moderated by Bill Gilbert); and a bus tour with the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Each of these, and many others, examined art, land, and their intersection with community.

516 ARTS also organized, in partnership with The University of New Mexico and the Albuquerque Museum of Art & History, ISEA 2012 Albuquerque: Machine Wilderness (the 18th International Symposium for Electronic Art), which was a regional collaboration involving over 100 partnering organizations across disciplines, reviewed in depth here. These projects organized by 516 ARTS have contributed significantly to the cultural landscape of the region, to countless individual artists, and to the Albuquerque community at large.

Flatlanders and Surface Dwellers, running March 9th to June 1st, 2013, is the latest exhibition at 516 ARTS, guest curated by Lea Anderson. The exhibition examines how contemporary artists explore surface in their art-making, which is broadly defined by the twenty-four artists included in the exhibit.

Sage Dawson is an artist, writer, and educator based in St. Louis, Missouri. She examines the history of cartographic rendering: mapping to investigate collective experiences, sublimity, and the distinct identities of spaces. Her work draws from community projects, radical cartography, and the landscape itself. Sage’s work was recently featured in Elephant Magazine and in FROM HERE TO THERE published by Princeton Architectural Press. www.sagedawson.com

516 ARTS, a non-profit museum-style gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is led by Suzanne Sbarge, Executive Director, and Rhiannon Mercer, Associate Director. Since 2006, the exhibition program has centered on contemporary issues and innovative approaches to art-making, with supportive educational programs that delve into the visual and literary arts, music, and film. They are known for their 516 WORDS poetry series, workshops, lectures and panel discussions, and public projects–most recently city murals–all of which continue their mission to cultivate arts and culture in Albuquerque.

516 ARTS has also been an important incubator for broader city-wide (and beyond) special projects and collaborations with arts organizations and museums. A great example was the 2009 Land Art program they spearheaded, in which over 200 artists and 25 organizations participated. The event included a tour of Charles Ross’ Star Axis; the exhibit Dispersal/Return: Land Arts of the American West at the University of New Mexico Art Museum; the exhibition Experimental Geography curated by Nato Thompson, a panel discussion with Matthew Coolige, Katie Holten, Lize Mogel, and Lea Rekow at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History (moderated by Bill Gilbert); and a bus tour with the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Each of these, and many others, examined art, land, and their intersection with community.

516 ARTS also organized, in partnership with The University of New Mexico and the Albuquerque Museum of Art & History, ISEA 2012 Albuquerque: Machine Wilderness (the 18th International Symposium for Electronic Art), which was a regional collaboration involving over 100 partnering organizations across disciplines, reviewed in depth here. These projects organized by 516 ARTS have contributed significantly to the cultural landscape of the region, to countless individual artists, and to the Albuquerque community at large.

Flatlanders and Surface Dwellers, running March 9th to June 1st, 2013, is the latest exhibition at 516 ARTS, guest curated by Lea Anderson. The exhibition examines how contemporary artists explore surface in their art-making, which is broadly defined by the twenty-four artists included in the exhibit.

Sage Dawson is an artist, writer, and educator based in St. Louis, Missouri. She examines the history of cartographic rendering: mapping to investigate collective experiences, sublimity, and the distinct identities of spaces. Her work draws from community projects, radical cartography, and the landscape itself. Sage’s work was recently featured in Elephant Magazine and in FROM HERE TO THERE published by Princeton Architectural Press. www.sagedawson.com

‘Considering Collages’: a survey show of collages is exciting by definition because it’s a rare occurrence. Collages, especially the paper-and-glue  ( French ‘coller’ meaning ‘ to glue / to paste’) kinds,  which are often  playful experiments in forms, materials and contexts made from found objects,  tick exactly the wrong kind of boxes as far as the contemporary Indian art scene is concerned.

But the post 1947 collagescape at Jhaveri Contemporary with 14 artists ( born between 1882 and 1976 ) from the Indian subcontinent and the diaspora, induces more chuckles and raises more questions per square feet than most of the ongoing exhibitions.

Before walking in, it would be useful to  remember that the earliest Indian ones, the Sekahavati Collages and the earliest European ones  by Picasso and Braque coincided in time (1890s - 1910s) but not in their intentions. While the former explores the boundaries of culturally determined contexts the latter redefines the boundaries of surface and representation of dimensions. These two streams of intentions cross and uncross their paths across all the works displayed in this exhibition.

The joy of the chance- found is one of the main joys of creating and viewing collages and that’s there in plenty in NandalalBose’s (1882 - 1966)  torn brown paper and ink collages. More carefully planned, but just as playful are Benode Behari Mukherjee’s  (1904-1980) coloured paper collages made after his eyesight started failing in 1956. Interestingly, unlike Nandalal’s free-form, they are pre-planned (the preparatory pencil outlines could have been carried out by a student). Comparison with infirm Matisse’s decoupage are inevitable. But what’s also worth noting that all three of them got engrossed in these playful collages in their twilight years.  Even Abanindranath Tagore’s Kutum-Kataams,  doll-like constructs made up of found objects, were done very late in his life.

One of the reasons, perhaps collage is not taken seriously because, it is many a times,  a phase of experimentation and problem solving for the artist  before moving on to something more resolved and well-rounded.

K G Subramanyan’s (1924 -) Grey Studio (1966) done in New York City, is a far cry from his previous works and a striking diptych of pasted surfaces and paint- overs.

Just how powerful a meaning-maker can paint-over be is evident from Simryn Gill’s ( 1959 - ) work. With a few deft brush-strokes of paint on National Geographic Magazine pages, she rewrites the story altogether.

If Simryn Gill adds a sense of foreboding with her brush-strokes, C K Rajan (1960 - ) , adds hilarity with his scissors and glue. Dedicated to the medium for a while,with his Mild Terrors ( 1991-1996) series, he follows the tradition of collage-as-hybrid, the exquisite cadaver which doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Used magazine pages are all that Muhanned Cader (1966 - ) has in common with C K Rajan and Simryn Gill. He refashions those pages into imaginary landscapes fanning out over pages of glued-together moleskinnotebooks.

The exploration of boundaries of contexts and dimensions take place simultaneously in the works of Bhupen Khakhar (1934 - 2003) , Dashrath Patel (1927 - 2010) and Anwar Jalal Shemza (1928-1985). They all use unusual materials which make the collages two and a half-dimensional, much like the early modernist experiments on collages.

In The Sun and the Sea (1966), Shemza arranges the sawn off, unpainted legs of chairs, varying in diameter and height, to create an abstract landscape. In the wittily named Interactive Collage (1998), Dashrath Patel glues pieces of carved and coloured wood on a mirror, at once emphasizing and de-emphasizing the concepts of surface and (perceived) depth. Khakhar’s Wall of a small Hindu Temple (1966) is just that and yet not, with bits and bobs of Indian roadside ephemera stuck on the board surrounded by red paint resembling sindoor. These works remind the viewer the ‘telescopic’ or ‘boomerang-like’ delights and detours taken by the eye in modernist collages as described by Clement Greenberg. The eye goes back and forth between surfaces,between the real and perceived depths, between the ‘inside and ‘outside’ of the image, ricocheting between being deceived and undeceived.

If these works question the reality of dimensions, Mahbub Shah’s (1978 - ) collages gently rearranges visual reality with punch-cut ‘pixels’ taken out  from the pages of books and magazines. The result is a quasi-legible image, quivering between comprehension and randomness.  As if, looked from the correct angle, this visual puzzle will reveal itself.

This sense of  imminent transformation, haunts  Yamini Nayar’s (1975-) collages too. She is prone to collecting bits of waste – paper, foil, string, and other detritus – that she finds in the streets around her New York studio before photographing them from different angles. Untitled  1 ,2 (Malleable Structures) have more than a hint at structures constantly collapsing and rebuilding themselves with the trajectory of our eyes.

The most painterly of the collages are from F N Souza (1924 -2002),  Apnavi Thacker (1976-) and Alexander Gorlizki ( 1967 - ). Yet the most successful of Souza’s collages, Two Nudes on a Beach (1966)  come from a judicious mix of photography and paintbrush, ripe in the shock value of both change in contexts and Souza's characteristic  brashness. Apnavi Thacker’s collages from the Drawing Breath series (2013) have equal mixes  of surrealism and Victorian nature imagery. Here, the exquisite cadavers strike again. The junction of painted and pasted surfaces in Alexander Gorlizki’s Framing Options (2013) have to be hunted down and once found, rewards the patient viewer with meanings and possibilities.

Another level of delight is added when the entire exhibition is looked at as a metacollage, a collage of collages. By  choosing artists of different chronology and persuasions and juxtaposing them, it establishes itself as a deliberately non-linear art historical narrative.

If there’s one thread that runs through the 34 works by 14 artists in this exhibition, it’s the gradual disappearance of visible  junctions between the mismatched surfaces over time.

The glue has become metaphorical.

Charlotte Jansen: Good to see you the other night at the Catlin Prize. And those pointy jazzy shoes of yours... have a good time?

Philippa Snow: Those jazzy shoes were an absolute nightmare; half a size too small, and the tip came off the heel when I - very sensibly - went straight home after the prize (by which I mean: "went for whiskey sours in a dark bar").

CJ: Talking of dark rooms; I meant to ask you what you were doing crouching down on the floor there when I got in?

PS: I was trying to get some signal, in fact, to send my partner a picture of the big blue monster with the caption "I can't believe this is what I do for a job." He responded with "nice suit." A wag. Did you end up feeling terrible the next day, or no? I think if I had stayed, I definitely might have done. In a very professional manner, obviously.

CJ: Well, the aperol cocktails did not help. But they definitely made me very verbose about the art that evening. So, the winner for 2013 was Terry Ryu Kim, who created the installation piece, Screening Solution I, II & III: now 5k richer. Deserved? (deserve-ed?)

PS: I think that it was the slickest work in the show, and I think that it was the most eminently saleable. If I'm absolutely honest, I didn't initially realise that it was an artwork - I thought that it was a piece of elaborate set-dressing, designed to hustle us into the room with, you know, the dancing monster. But that's sort of the point, right? A rat in a maze, pushing a button for a long-remembered treat (read: Campari cocktail). The CCTV, in fact, was sort of eerie and pale and ephemeral and just unheimlich, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-your-own-reflection kind of way.

David Ogle,08020; Photo by Peter Hope.

CJ: It had a definite finesse to it, and I like that idea, turning visitors into surveilled subjects on a stage in the appropriated public space. But I do think my favourite was the light work in the second room... what did you make of it?

PS: Ah, the David Ogle! Would this have been your winner? I'm always cautious about light works, because they're so easy to make into something good-looking and ultimately, you know, contempo. As with the winning work, one could have this perfectly tastefully in one's home, assuming that "one" were a collector of art, and had a home which was generally palatial. What was it you liked in particular about it - the style, or the content?

CJ: And I know you were a bit disturbed by those Japanese face-tighteners...

PS: Yes, there's an absolutely horrifying informercial for them. Hang on - I'll find it, as we're doing this for the web:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXcYVh-W14E

Shades of Mike Myers in his plastic Shatner mask. I'm quite interested to hear what you thought of these (these being Juno Calypso's images), as they were the winner of the visitors' prize: one thing which did really strike me was the attention to detail, in the colour schemes and the settings. That sort of thing in constructed images of this type always makes me think about, say, Guy Bourdin - there's something very seventies about it. I'm a big Guy Bourdin fan, so that's no small compliment. Some very heavy Lynchian vibes going on there, as well, wouldn't you say?

Juno Calypso, Reconstituted Meat Slices; Courtesy Juno Calypso.

CJ: Shudder. You know how I've hated Lynch since you forced me to watch Blue Velvet. WHY would anyone make such a film.

It’s always interesting at Catlin to see the disparity between the simultaneous visitor's vote (this year won by Juno Calypso) and what the judges select…

PS: I don't say this to deliberately underestimate the public (or the winner of the public vote), but I suppose I always expect their winner to be something that's either appealing to the eye, or that has a certain novelty to it. Honestly, I assumed that the monster piece would be their winner, but Calypso makes a kind of sense, as well; it's the sort of imagery which might look at home in a womenswear campaign, or as the artwork for a Lana Del Ray L.P. (at least, at absolute face value, which is its intention, I think).

(I'm aware that this is making me seem pretentious as all hell, but I sort of am. I apologise.)

CJ: I can’t believe I missed that big fluffy blue monster!

[Part of the performance by Nick Deeley].

PS: I know that this is perhaps not the most important quality in an art work, but it was Goddamned adorable. Intellectually, I was certain that it was a person in a monster suit, and not a real monster. Emotionally, I just wanted to bury my face in that big blue behemoth's chest, and go to sleep. I also felt convinced, on some level, that it would be the big blue monster receiving the prize if Nicky Deeley were to have won, and felt cheated not getting to see the resultant acceptance speech.

(If anybody who knows Nicky Deeley is reading this: I will buy that monster suit.)

CJ: (Oh me too. You can have it for the weekend and holidays).

But really what we should ask ourselves, and each other, is: do canapes distract from art? What is your view on food at openings? And canapes: if consumed in sufficient quantity, can they ever really replace dinner?

PS:"Free food is good food," as I have tattooed over the small of my back - I don't think canapes can ever hurt anything. I didn't actually eat any of these, though - were they any good?

I think maybe next time, they should theme the canapes around the work: I've always felt that more artworks could do with being edible. Sarah Lucas had the right idea with her indecent kebabs.

What did you think of the quality of the venue, by the way? Really quite a stylishly put-together - and well-stocked, in terms of booze and those aforementioned untried-canapes - event, I thought. A real thing for the calendar (you can imagine my air quotes here).

I like the Londonnewcastle space. It’s the second year the Prize has run here and it really fills it, so many shows I’ve seen there don’t know what to do with such endless space, but it has a great flow that really benefits the artists, and I think that more than anything constitutes good curating. The Prize night has become a very popular party event for sure - let’s not forget that it has corporate support, hence all those suits and cocktails, and don’t try to smoke a joint the in garden by the way - but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Justin Hammond [the Catlin Prize curator] knows how to work both things together, and it’s ultimately doing a good thing for emerging artists.

—Philippa Snow& Charlotte Jansen

(Image on top: Nicky Deeley performing Island Year; photograph by Emily Hasell.)

Charlotte Jansen: Good to see you the other night at the Catlin Prize. And those pointy jazzy shoes of yours... have a good time?

Philippa Snow: Those jazzy shoes were an absolute nightmare; half a size too small, and the tip came off the heel when I - very sensibly - went straight home after the prize (by which I mean: "went for whiskey sours in a dark bar").

CJ: Talking of dark rooms; I meant to ask you what you were doing crouching down on the floor there when I got in?

PS: I was trying to get some signal, in fact, to send my partner a picture of the big blue monster with the caption "I can't believe this is what I do for a job." He responded with "nice suit." A wag. Did you end up feeling terrible the next day, or no? I think if I had stayed, I definitely might have done. In a very professional manner, obviously.

CJ: Well, the aperol cocktails did not help. But they definitely made me very verbose about the art that evening. So, the winner for 2013 was Terry Ryu Kim, who created the installation piece, Screening Solution I, II & III: now 5k richer. Deserved? (deserve-ed?)

PS: I think that it was the slickest work in the show, and I think that it was the most eminently saleable. If I'm absolutely honest, I didn't initially realise that it was an artwork - I thought that it was a piece of elaborate set-dressing, designed to hustle us into the room with, you know, the dancing monster. But that's sort of the point, right? A rat in a maze, pushing a button for a long-remembered treat (read: Campari cocktail). The CCTV, in fact, was sort of eerie and pale and ephemeral and just unheimlich, in a blink-and-you'll-miss-your-own-reflection kind of way.

David Ogle,08020; Photo by Peter Hope.

CJ: It had a definite finesse to it, and I like that idea, turning visitors into surveilled subjects on a stage in the appropriated public space. But I do think my favourite was the light work in the second room... what did you make of it?

PS: Ah, the David Ogle! Would this have been your winner? I'm always cautious about light works, because they're so easy to make into something good-looking and ultimately, you know, contempo. As with the winning work, one could have this perfectly tastefully in one's home, assuming that "one" were a collector of art, and had a home which was generally palatial. What was it you liked in particular about it - the style, or the content?

CJ: And I know you were a bit disturbed by those Japanese face-tighteners...

PS: Yes, there's an absolutely horrifying informercial for them. Hang on - I'll find it, as we're doing this for the web:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXcYVh-W14E

Shades of Mike Myers in his plastic Shatner mask. I'm quite interested to hear what you thought of these (these being Juno Calypso's images), as they were the winner of the visitors' prize: one thing which did really strike me was the attention to detail, in the colour schemes and the settings. That sort of thing in constructed images of this type always makes me think about, say, Guy Bourdin - there's something very seventies about it. I'm a big Guy Bourdin fan, so that's no small compliment. Some very heavy Lynchian vibes going on there, as well, wouldn't you say?

Juno Calypso, Reconstituted Meat Slices; Courtesy Juno Calypso.

CJ: Shudder. You know how I've hated Lynch since you forced me to watch Blue Velvet. WHY would anyone make such a film.

It’s always interesting at Catlin to see the disparity between the simultaneous visitor's vote (this year won by Juno Calypso) and what the judges select…

PS: I don't say this to deliberately underestimate the public (or the winner of the public vote), but I suppose I always expect their winner to be something that's either appealing to the eye, or that has a certain novelty to it. Honestly, I assumed that the monster piece would be their winner, but Calypso makes a kind of sense, as well; it's the sort of imagery which might look at home in a womenswear campaign, or as the artwork for a Lana Del Ray L.P. (at least, at absolute face value, which is its intention, I think).

(I'm aware that this is making me seem pretentious as all hell, but I sort of am. I apologise.)

CJ: I can’t believe I missed that big fluffy blue monster!

[Part of the performance by Nick Deeley].

PS: I know that this is perhaps not the most important quality in an art work, but it was Goddamned adorable. Intellectually, I was certain that it was a person in a monster suit, and not a real monster. Emotionally, I just wanted to bury my face in that big blue behemoth's chest, and go to sleep. I also felt convinced, on some level, that it would be the big blue monster receiving the prize if Nicky Deeley were to have won, and felt cheated not getting to see the resultant acceptance speech.

(If anybody who knows Nicky Deeley is reading this: I will buy that monster suit.)

CJ: (Oh me too. You can have it for the weekend and holidays).

But really what we should ask ourselves, and each other, is: do canapes distract from art? What is your view on food at openings? And canapes: if consumed in sufficient quantity, can they ever really replace dinner?

PS:"Free food is good food," as I have tattooed over the small of my back - I don't think canapes can ever hurt anything. I didn't actually eat any of these, though - were they any good?

I think maybe next time, they should theme the canapes around the work: I've always felt that more artworks could do with being edible. Sarah Lucas had the right idea with her indecent kebabs.

What did you think of the quality of the venue, by the way? Really quite a stylishly put-together - and well-stocked, in terms of booze and those aforementioned untried-canapes - event, I thought. A real thing for the calendar (you can imagine my air quotes here).

I like the Londonnewcastle space. It’s the second year the Prize has run here and it really fills it, so many shows I’ve seen there don’t know what to do with such endless space, but it has a great flow that really benefits the artists, and I think that more than anything constitutes good curating. The Prize night has become a very popular party event for sure - let’s not forget that it has corporate support, hence all those suits and cocktails, and don’t try to smoke a joint the in garden by the way - but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Justin Hammond [the Catlin Prize curator] knows how to work both things together, and it’s ultimately doing a good thing for emerging artists.

—Philippa Snow& Charlotte Jansen

(Image on top: Nicky Deeley performing Island Year; photograph by Emily Hasell.)