Pyrotopia: First Annual Festival of Fire Arts Call For Artists

My new home is in Pittsburgh, PA, and it's my desire to promote and support art events that are indigenous to the area. Check out the event listed below. If you're an artist who wants to apply or an art enthusiast who wants to attend, it could be a cool event. Check it out:

Pyrotopia is seeking visual and performing artists to participate in Pyrotopia: First Annual Festival of Fire Arts, taking place on October 7th and 8th, 2011 at UnSmoke Artspace in Braddock, PA.

We are accepting submissions for a wide range of exhibitions and performances, from meditative and quietly interactive to spectacular, high-tech, explosive or utterly undefinable. We will consider any works of art, performances and other forms of creative expression which either directly incorporate or thematically reference fire or related media, such as electricity and light. We will select the best of these works to showcase at Pyrotopia.

Pyrotopia will occur at UnSmoke Artspace and adjacent grounds. It will be free, family-friendly and open to the public. We expect a large turn-out from Braddock and the greater Pittsburgh area. Programming throughout the day and night will appeal to a wide range of interests and ages. Live fire art and events will occur on Friday and Saturday nights, with workshops, demonstrations and other fire-related programming during the day on Saturday.

Pyrotopia is being organized and produced by a group of Pittsburgh artists with a breadth of experience working with fire in art and performance, producing large scale events and spectacles and teaching fire arts skills. As artists, we love the medium of fire in its wide variety of applications, and we wish to ignite the public’s imagination and appreciation too.

For more information please visit the Pyrotopia website: http://pyrotopia.net/apply/index.html

Thanks and please forward this along.

Musings on 2011 Armory Week

I've been invite by the acclaimed Polish photo magazine, Fotografia, to contribute an article about some of the photography I saw during Armory week in NYC. An upgraded version which is much more specific and illustrated will appear in the forthcoming edition of the magazine. Check out their website for my article and other timely writing on photography both in Poland and internationally. In the meantime, here's a blog version of the article including some non-photographic work I found particularly noteworthy: 

The first week of March is art fair week in New York City. At the center is the Armory Show, held on two huge, adjacent piers on the Hudson River, which are the temporary home for over 270 international galleries.  The press for the last few editions of the Armory has not been the best, so there have been a few other fairs storming the castle making attempts at what they perceive to be a weakened throne. While there have always been other satellite fairs during Armory week, the newer ones are notable for their quality and spirit of innovation. But none of them match the Armory for sheer size. The Armory Show is the largest in New York City and, with Art Basel/Miami Beach in December, the largest in the US. Art Basel in the summer is the largest of all of them, but fairs like Art Hong Kong are making inroads both in quality and size. The other fairs in New York during Armory week are The Independent, ADAA (Art Dealers Association of America), Volta, Scope, Pulse, Pool, Verge Art Brooklyn, Red Dot, Fountain and this year’s newbie, the Dependent. I managed to visit all of them save Red Dot, Fountain, Dependent, and Pool. 

It used to be that one could get a good overview of the current art scene by visiting a big, prestigious art fair like the Armory. No more. Plenty of important galleries don’t go to fairs, some don’t come to New York, and the ones that do go don’t always show their most forward-thinking artists. Roberta Smith writes in the New York Times, “Art fairs occur because hundreds of art dealers have decided that these temporary confabs help them raise their profiles and make it easier to find one buyer each for a certain number of artworks. While the dealers seek those individual matches of art and buyer, the rest of us are free, in a sense, to watch: to absorb the art and learn from it, which is another kind of possession.” 

And that is exactly what I do. I look, ask questions, take notes, and try to see if there are patterns or trends worth noting in addition to scouting for artists that may be worth watching. There is much written online and in print giving general surveys of the various fairs, so I will confine myself (mostly) to works of photographic interest. Unfortunately, if we leave out the big names or at least the well-known names, there isn’t much to discuss. It goes without saying that one can see examples of Marina Abramovic, Olafur Eliasson, Anne Collier, and various exponents of the Düsseldorf School. Readers of this article will be familiar with them all. I would prefer to concentrate on the names that may not be quite so familiar, or at least not familiar yet. 

Let’s start at what I thought was the best of the fairs, The Independent (http://www.independentnewyork.com/2011/). Last year was the inaugural year for the Independent, but it has quickly established itself as the fair to watch and the one with the most personality. As one noted curator I know said as he left the Independent, “You know an art fair is good if, when you’re leaving, you don’t hate art.” I’m not exactly sure how independent the Independent is - it’s chock full of big-name, established galleries – but the quality can’t be denied. Again quoting from the New York Times, Karen Rosenberg said, “The inaugural Independent attracted a lot of attention, critical and commercial, for its don’t-fence-me-in installation and well-edited mix of contemporary art. The fair’s cachet was such that it managed to poach a couple of dealers from the Armory, the city’s biggest art fair, including Wallspace and Harris Lieberman (www.harrislieberman.com), for this year’s edition.” And Harris Lieberman had one of the most talked about photographic artists in his booth, Lisa Oppenheim. Her photograms of flowers, which explored Victorian symbolism and alternative languages, are not my favorite from this artist, but she is an undeniable talent. Absolutely check out some of her other projects. http://www.lisaopp.net/images.html

My favorite photo “discovery” of the week, Erica Baum, was across the room from Harris Lieberman at Bureau Gallery (www.bureau-inc.com). On view were straight on but eye-bending shots of splayed open books, which successfully challenge our notion of what we see when we see a book. Though the work has a collage or photoshop feel when first seen that resolve quickly into the reality of what they are, the cropped words and images glimpsed in the open pages combine beautifully into a concrete-poetic tableau. Be sure to look up previous projects by this talented mid-career artist.http://ubu.com/contemp/baum/index.html

Last on the photo front at Independent was a super example of Anne Collier’s conceptual brilliance at Anton Kern Gallery (www.antonkerngallery.com). While other works by Ms Collier were to be seen at other fairs, Mr. Kern had a particularly fine example here shown to beautiful effect.

A dozen blocks uptown was the Volta fair. Volta has a relationship with the Armory show, presenting itself as the smaller, hipper nephew of the big, wealthy uncle. As part of their push for innovation, they have an on-line catalog that is quite satisfying to navigate (http://volta.artlog.org/) The philosophic conceit of Volta is that it requires galleries to present single artist booths. This strategy has its strengths and weaknesses. As a viewer, it makes the apprehension of a booth that much simpler; you know all the work in a booth is by one artist no matter how disparate.  On the other hand, if that artist’s work doesn’t speak to you, there’s nothing the gallery can do to hold you in their booth to explore other aspects of its program. I confess, Volta is always a mixed bag for me, and this year was no exception. While I did see a few stand-out booths, most of the fair was forgettable. 

On the photographic front, the best booth was not quite photographic. Madder139 (http://www.madder139.com/) had graphite drawings by Paul Chiappe which were dead-on re-creations of fuzzy snapshots and yearbook photos. From the technical mastery of the medium through to the sharpshooter focus of the emotional tone, these were great works. 

Also at Volta, Marx and Zavaterro Gallery from SanFrancisco (http://www.marxzav.com/) had the multimedia work of Bradley Castellanos. Working in a combination of oil, acrylic, photo collage, and resin, Castellanos’ complex, layered pieces address man’s relationship to the environment and world ecosystems. I heard about the work form a curator I know and trust. She said Mr. Castellanos is quite hot and being acquired by some notable collections and institutions, but my first impression was quite negative. I found the work cluttered and unappealing. But based on her strong recommendation, I did some more research and looked at more examples online. I can’t say I’m a total convert, but I’m beginning to see the appeal of the work. The technical command is unassailable, and he instantly presents a distinctive visual style.

  
Pulse Fair was, as usual, filled with some exciting work though most of it was not photographic. Galeria Havana (http://www.galerihabana.com/) had some lightboxes and pin/thread photos by Cuban superstar Carlos Garaicoa, but the standouts in the booth were sculptures by Ivan Capote and Giselle Léon. Von Lintel Gallery (http://www.vonlintel.com/) had some dramatic examples by personal favorite Marco Breuer as well as some stunning typewriter pieces by Allyson Strafella (also shown at the Gallery Joe booth). Kudlek van der Grinten from Köln (http://kudlek-vandergrinten.de/) unfortunately didn’t bring any Thomas Böing photographs, but I love the drawings by Lucie Beppler that they did bring (again, also at Gallery Joe). 

And finally, the main fair: The Armory Show. What can I say? Even with hundreds of galleries present, there wasn’t that much photography to see much less to talk about. Seventeen Gallery from London (www.seventeengallery.com) once again presented the work of Abigail Reynolds. Ms Reynolds looks for multiple images of a single location from book plates and travel brochures which she then combines in origami-like photo constructions. The booth sold out last year so one can understand why they brought more this year. 

Moyra Davey is an artist who has stayed under the radar for most of her career. That may be changing. Her smart, pithy writing, and her cool, conceptual photographs are just now coming into wider view. Copperheads is her most well-known series which her gallery, Murray Guy (www.murrayguy.com) showed last year. The complete series is about to go up at an exhibition at the Met. This year, my favorite work, 16 Photographs from Paris, was in a box under a table which you had to ask to see. I hope more people got to see it, it’s a super project. 

Ingleby Gallery (www.inglebygallery.com) was showing newer work by Susan Derges. As much as I admire the work, it was not breaking new ground. Last year I really admired the graphite and photogram pieces by Iran Do Espirito Santo at Sean Kelly (www.skny.com), but the ones this year looked to be exactly the ones they brought last year. I didn’t ask. Over on Pier 92, Bruce Silverstein (www.brucesilverstein.com) had the deeply gestural work of Shinichi Maruyama. When I was introduced to this work a few years ago, I was worried that it would be gimmick-y and mono-dimensional. I’m pleased to say Mr. Maruyama has beaten my pessimistic expectations by continuing to grow and vary his output while remaining true to a central visual idea.

Perhaps the most original work I saw during Armory week was not to be found at a fair. Sam Falls’ show at the not-to-be-missed gallery, Higher Pictures (http://higherpictures.com/), was a model of forward-looking photography that was satisfying on every level. In his current show, Mr. Falls engages the past and future of photography-as-visual-representation by layering acrylic, watercolor, pastel and digital “painting” over a digital photo. Hand-painted photographs have existed since the very beginning of the art, of course, but Falls’ use of the technique asks us to look forward as well as back. His process uses camera as machine, computer as camera, computer as painter, and, finally, the hand of the artist using old-fashioned paint. The result touches on centuries of tradition while taking a firm step forward. Roberta Smith in the NYTimes says, "The thoroughly ambiguous, lushly radiant, slightly hallucinatory results have a reverberant push-pull energy that evokes Hans Hofmann, Richard Prince, Gerhard Richter and James Rosenquist while mining a social-retinal terrain all their own." Take a look at this promising young artist. I think we’ll be hearing more about him soon.

Katarzyna Majak

Readers of this blog will remember that I mentioned Katarzyna Majak in my recent posts about my trip to Poland. My first encounter with this artist was as a juror in an online photocompetition created by Jessica Porter at her Gallery, Raandesk. Ms Majak won first prize and now has her work on display at the gallery. Check it out. She is also giving a talk at B and H Photo about her work. Details of the event and a short bio are below. If you're in NYC this week and are curious about what's happening in the extremely vital Polish art scene, I suggest you register to go. Recommended.

Katarzyna Majak "An Artist On The Move"

Tuesday, March 15, 2011  |  11:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Speakers: Katarzyna Majak

Event Type: Photography

Katarzyna Majak is a fine art photographer from Poland, an Ex-Soviet Bloc country, who has lived through a period of many changes; economic, societal, and cultural. She will present several projects, both completed and in progress to bring insight about her very personal path to becoming a photographic artist. Katarzyna's story is one of a woman who finds freedom creating art and whose work reflects the themes of change, self-awareness, rites of passage, archetypes, personal freedom, and shamanism. She believes this personal search for freedom through art echoes a greater universal impulse.

Katarzyna Majak

Has recently defended her PhD on how clothing constitutes identity in selected photographic projects at Multimedia Communication Department of University of Fine Arts in Poznan (Poland). Is an active visual artist, a writer, a photography lecturer;  member of editorial board and a regular contributor to Kwartalnik Fotografia (‘Fotografia Quarterly' - a high-end Polish photography magazine), cooperates  with 1000 Words Photography Magazine. Awarded a scholarship by Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado and the Ministry of Culture in Poland; an associate artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. Has written for exhibition catalogues, is an author of an introduction to 4 Photography Biennial in Poznan and ‘LAB EAST' - a book on 30 Eastern European photographers. Curated and coordinated shows both in Poland and abroad. Participates on photo juries and reviews portfolios at photo festivals all over Europe. Her work has just been included in The Collector's Guide to New Art Photography Vol. 2. Represented by Ego Gallery and Zderzak Gallery.Her work can be seen at: http://www.katarzynamajak.com
Link to BandH website page for registration: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/eventDetails.jsp/id/925

"The Sundays of Life" by Bela Doka (with an essay by Evan Mirapaul)

I'm thrilled to report that I have an essay in a new book by Hungarian artist, Bela Doka, called "The Sundays of Life". Bela asked me to publish a letter he wrote asking for support of the book through a limited edition and signed copies. His letter is below. Check it out and let me know what you think of the essay:


Dear friends, dear friends of photo books,

I am very pleased to share the news that German publishing house , Kehrer would like to publish my limited edition photographic album, "The Sundays of Life", as a trade edition, with worldwide distribution.

I need to contribute printing costs toward the edition, which I would like to cover with the sales of the remaining copies of the original limited edition (series of 250).

Each book in the limited edition is handmade, in hard cover and cloth binding, numbered and signed.

In addition, there is a deluxe, boxed edition (Edition of 50) : the book is bound in white goatskin, in a handmade box. If you purchase a volume from this edition on my website, you can select an original Lambda print (24x30 cm) of any photograph, as a token of my appreciation, together with the book.

Every purchase is a contribution towards the next publication. If you are interested in further details, please contact me on my private e-mail address: beladoka@gmail.com. You can also contact me to purchase a copy of the book directly from me, and I am happy to sign with a personal inscription.

wishing you beautiful Sundays,

Bela

Poland, part 3

Belatedly, here is part 3 of the account of my recent Polish art trip.

A name that should be mentioned in any discussion on Polish photography is Karolina Lewandowska. Ms Lewandowska was a curator at the National Gallery where, among other shows, she was responsible for an exhibition with a related catalog about the history of female documentary photographers in Poland. It is a shame that this book is not distributed in the US as it would have a significant audience across a wide spectrum of the photo world. Her focus now is in a foundation,  Archeologia Fotografii, which is devoted to historical Polish photography. The foundation is doing important work to preserve whole archives of Polish photographers often rescued from family members or institutions who don't have the knowledge or facilities to care for them. They do this on a shoestring budget that would shock even a US non-profit. She confided to me that they lacked the funds to by a bigger cold storage unit needed to house a growing collection of archival negatives. When I asked how much was needed, I was astounded to learn that the figure was $1500! Philanthropically minded folks out there, you could have a significant impact on the preservation of a photographic culture for under 5 figures! Where else could you have such an effect for so little. Think about supporting them.

A related but separate entity is Galeria Asymetria run my Karolina's husband, Rafał Lewandowski. Asymetria is also concerned with historical Polish photographers - and shares a few names with Archeologia - but unlike the foundation they have works for sale and feature some artists not in the foundation. Their publishing program is also worth a look.

I was treated to a personal guided tour or Yours Gallery, one of the most high profile galleries in Warsaw. Yours has a dual mission of representing Polish photographers as well as introducing non-Polish artists to the Polish art scene. On the Polish side of the roster, I was particularly intrigued by a one-name artist called Bownik who is working on a series of portraits about online gamers. Some of the work is a little too beholden to Avedon's American West aesthetic, but overall it's a strong body of work which explores a particularly contemporary population. Check it out.

The strangest piece of serendipity evolved around my introduction to Katarzyna Majak. While I was in Bratislava, I met my Hungarian friend, Lilla Szasz, who wanted to introduce me to a friend of hers who was a reviewer at the Bratislava Photomonth portfolio reviews. When she asked me if I had ever heard of Katarzyna Majak, the answer was yes but from an unlikely source. I had just finished acting as a judge in Raandesk Gallery's online photo competition, and my fellow juror and I had just awarded Ms Majak with first place! I had the pleasure of informing Ms Majak that she had won the competition, and we made plans to meet in Warsaw in the coming days. Ms Majak wears many hats in the Polish art scene. She has a complex, multimedia art practice, curates shows, teaches, and writes for the only Polish photo magazine, Fotografia. By all means check out her work. I send thanks to her as her guidance and stewardship were invaluable to my trip.

In part 4, a visit with a photo-reportage collective called NAPO and an all-too-brief visit to Poznan.

A brief Poland report-related detour

Yes, parts 3 and 4 of my Polish trip are coming, as well as posts about my weekend in Berlin and Paris Photo. But in the meantime, I want to plug an exhibit curated by Martha Kirszenbaum. I met Martha in Warsaw where she's completing a curatorial residency at the Center for Contomporary Art. She has a Project coming up in Brooklyn, NY the 11th and 12th of December that sounds exciting and intriguing called The Missing Link. Check out the website here. Check out her amazing bio here. More Poland on the way soon.

Poland, part 2

It's not like Poland doesn't have books and printed material ready to go. One of the first things that struck me when I started snooping around museum bookstores in Warsaw was that there are already quite a few scholarly anthologies in print, many of them in bilingual editions. Monographs, too, are in abundance and not just for the big names. But there is absolutely no distribution system for these books, and actually kind of a hidebound bureaucracy in place that resists sending the books out of Poland! I asked everyone I met if they knew this was the case and what they thought about it. For most of those I spoke with, it was not news that the books didn't get out but they were surprised that there was a ready and eager market for it if they did. More on that to come. But happily, one book did reach me a few years ago, a slim volume by Nicholas Grospierre. I'd been impressed by what I'd seen -- I even had him on a roster for a show I was considering -- but I just assumed he was French. It turns out Nicholas is half Polish and has spent much of his adult life in Warsaw. When Jan said this was going to be the first stop on the first day, I was pleasantly surprised that it was an artist I knew of and had been curious about for years. Nicholas has a number of satisfying and exciting projects, but I think the best are his explorations of how photography can be sculptural. His installations in 1:1 ratios of the original object, such as "The Library", are equal parts essay, sculpture, and photo. I'm less excited by his documentary work, but all of it is of a consistently high quality. He has a solid, well-developed body of work that is just waiting for some smart US gallery to snap him up.

The Centre for Contemporary Art is a beacon in the Warsaw art scene. Situated in a former castle overlooking the city, it is one of the few institutions dedicated to contemporary art. From my perspective, it is significant because it is the first Polish art institution to name a full-time curator of Photography. (Photography is still the poor cousin in the mind of the Polish art establishment. It is under-recognized, under-funded, not well researched, and often poorly archived.) The curator of photography at the CCA is Adam Mazur. Adam is an articulate and intense advocate for all things photographic in Poland. He's keenly aware of the deficit of information about the history of Polish photography both inside and outside of Polish borders. He's published a number of books and has curated numerous well-regarded shows highlighting Polish work. Here's a link with Adam talking about his book, "The Histories of Photography in Poland 1839–2009", from Krakow Month of Photography site. And another link with details about his exhibition of 21st Century Polish Photography, "The Red Eye Effect", which also had a published catalog. He's virtually alone in his position in Polish photography. Definitely someone to watch; he's smart, ambitious, and ready for prime-time.

One of the artists in the Red Eye show is named Wojciech Wilczyk. His website, for some reason I can't explain, doesn't list the book he did, called "There's No Such Thing As An Innocent Eye", which creates a typology of structures in Poland that had been Synagogues or Jewish prayer houses and are now something else. It's a super book, and yet another example of a publication that could sold in a hundred US venues to commercial and critical success.

Raster is an independent art space in Warsaw, established in 2001, exhibiting and representing emerging artists from Poland and abroad. They are one of the most well-known and well-funded of the galleries that consistently show in the West. There is also a Raster Foundation which follows generally the same program as the gallery but doesn't have the commercial component. The program of Raster is not merely focused on visual art but also includes screenings, discussions, literature events, concerts as well as informal meetings focused on the local community. Raster is run by Lukasz Gorczyca and Michal Kaczynski who have been established in the art community for some time due to their dynamic activity as critics and curators.I met with Lukasz and had a lively discussion about the Polish art scene and about the roster of his gallery. He was eager to introduce me to the opus of Aneta Grzeszykowska. I'd seen (and disliked) her "Untitled Film Stills" at Basel Statements 3 years ago, but there are a number of projects which I found satisfying and complex. The best for me is a photo album work which is culled from her actual personal family archives, but in which she has carefully edited out any trace of herself. I also liked her riff on Thomas Ruff portraits made entirely out of manufactured, fictitious physiognomies.

Coming next, more from Warsaw and 24 hours in Poznan.