Slablog

Review: Zoe Crosher at DiverseWorks

noreply@blogger.com (The Necessarian) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:39:00 +0000

Orginally posted at "...might be good" Issue #96
Zoe Crosher: 1 Yr Later
Diverseworks
On view through April 28, 2008
by Nancy Zastudil

Few things are more personally revealing than a teenage girl’s bedroom: objects and images are unapologetically (though not unself-consciously) displayed, and tell the story of her adolescent pilgrimage through individuality and conformity. Zoe Crosher assembles and edits such stories with her current exhibition 1 Yr Later at DiverseWorks.

1 Yr Later is a series of photographs of American girls in their bedrooms at age 17 and again in almost identical surroundings at age 18, presented as diptychs. Each girl sits on her bed (except one who stands in front of an American flag) in the middle of the compositional frame against the personalized backdrop of a bedroom wall. The side-by-side, before-and-after format implies the classic compare-and-contrast method of a simple high school essay.

Crosher allows changes in the girls’ physical appearances and the addition or removal of bedroom items to reveal prejudices relevant to coming-of-age sexual and emotional dynamics related to the female experience. For example, Michelle’s attention to accessories and straightened posture; Nicole and Paige’s switch between brunette and blonde (and the assumed confidence relative to each color); Kristin’s new headboard and discarded teddy bear; Elana’s intensified uncertain gaze; Marcey’s augmented U.S. allegiance; and Lori’s enduring interests accented by her “new look.”

These photos represent the time lapse of a full year—the diptychs referencing the transience between adolescence and adulthood, contrasted with an ever-growing temporal distance between now and then. Guided by her conceptual approach to representation and documentation, Crosher works with cultural assumptions and societal preconceptions about the influence of internal and external forces acting on the girls. 1 Yr Later is an indication of Crosher’s graceful ability to present complicated psychologies and provocative subject matter.

Night Light exhibition photos

noreply@blogger.com (The Necessarian) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 20:10:00 +0000

Outdoor installation view. From left to right: Max Warsh (not shown; see installation images below), Enrique Castrejon, Erik Frydenborg, and Mindy Rose Schwartz

Erik Frydenborg
Title: "Arrangement (panned, enlarged)" 2007
Mixed media

Mindy Rose Schwartz
Titles: "Hi" and "Macrame Intervention: tree to plant, to brick, to tree, to chair, to whiffle ball" 2007
Mixed media

Max Warsh
Title: "The sea means cement" 2007
Digital video with sound; 6 min.

Enrique Castrejon
Titles: "Suicide Bomber, "Boom," and "Gay Bomb" 2007
Mixed media

Max Warsh
Title: "The sea means cement" 2007
Digital video with sound; 6 min.

Brief thoughts on taking time

noreply@blogger.com (The Necessarian) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 22:09:00 +0000

A recent studio visit with artist Lillian Warren reminded me of what it means to look at something. Ours is a culture whose attention span is said to be unflatteringly short, but for almost an hour I had the luxury, or maybe the task, of looking at Warren’s paintings. And then this week I chose to look at works by the Russian group AES+F at the Station Museum. The exhibition consists of three projects, all of which are certainly worth taking the time to see, but for the present time Id like to write briefly about one project, Defile.

Truth be told, taking the time to look can be difficult. To look at the lightbox morgue photos of Defile, with their curious bodily scars, discolorations, and misshapen extremities, took more of my effort and concentration than did Warren’s banal (yet rewardingly detailed) city street scenes. One body of work possesses shock value and the other does not, yet both are representations of life lived. Oddly enough, the focus of Defile is the pairing of fashion with death, but that is not what remains in my mind's eye.

It is difficult to identify whether or not the marks and bruises are remains from the cause of death, or possibly the process of mortuary preservation. And because of the malformations that death imposes, the personalities I perceive in some of the photos is most likely the augmentation of embalming fluid rather than the shadows of healthy joviality. But the harsh truth, maybe harsher than death, is a truth that comes from paying close attention to both Warren's and AES+F's work. We do not know when someone or something, maybe life itself, will betray us.

Tonight, December 18! X-TRA Launch Party

noreply@blogger.com (The Necessarian) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:44:00 +0000

Celebrate the new X-TRA 10.2 Winter Issue which includes a review of A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s (University of California, Berkeley Art Museum) written by Slab's own Wendy Mason!

The Launch Party will be held on December 18 at LAXART, 2640 S Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, from 7 to 9 pm.

Many thanks

noreply@blogger.com (The Necessarian) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:40:00 +0000

Slab would like to extend a heartfelt "Thank You!' to the artists who participated in and the visitors who came to support our first exhibition, Night Light.

Hello from Houston! (via Portland and Long Island)

noreply@blogger.com (The Necessarian) — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:47:00 +0000

We at Slab are busy preparing for our inaugural exhibition, Night Light. I am reminded that so many variables exist in the process of conceptualizing an exhibition - decisions regarding artworks, transporting the works to the site, conversations about installation, advertising and promotion, and finally the public experience of the exhibition itself. It is quite an exciting process, each time offering new challenges and possibilities.

New challenges and possibilities abound personally as well. Recently I moved from San Francisco to Houston. The two cities are drastically different in their attitude, consideration, and support of artists. In Houston audiences of all ages indulge in the performing arts. Since I now work for a visual and performing arts center my employer asked me to attend the Time Based Art festival (TBA) at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) in mid September. TBA has now completed its fifth festival year.

Though seemingly unrelated these two short diatribes are intertwined. During TBA I saw the New York-based theater group Elevator Repair Service perform Gatz, a 6- hour performance/reading of the literary classic The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Growing up I had never read Fitzgerald’s text. Instead I watched the motion picture, starring Robert Redford, during a time when my parents’ cable company played it repeatedly, back-to-back it seemed with Out of Africa, starring Glen Close. I have vague flashing memories of Mr. Redford and a fair blond woman…a flowing yellow silk dress…and mint juleps on a white porch, heavy with the summer heat. I knew nothing of the story. I did not know Gatsby.

Similarly, after a year of living in the Bay Area I knew very little about San Francisco; I knew very little of Houston before moving here; and this was my first visit to Portland. So here I sat during TBA in a small theater…watching. The set was an office made from props that looked as though they had been taken from the trash heap – an rickety table poised as an office desk, an old typewriter, a dusty computer, tall metal shelves filled with file boxes, a secretary’s workspace behind panes of glass, two grimy entrance/exit doors, a large window which looked out onto a narrow hallway, and smaller details such as a coat rack and some odd chairs. Ironically, to stage right sat a crisp looking young man who flawlessly executed the technical controls for light and sound.

As the lead actor (Scott Shepherd) read from The Great Gatsby, word for word and chapter by chapter, as the other actors seamlessly shifted their roles from office coworkers to Fitzgerald’s characters, I was glad to have never read the book. I was swept up in the romantic notions as this meager stage was magically transformed into Gatsby’s magnificent house. I say magically because not once did stagehands change out the props. Even the sound and light technician incorporated himself into the dialogue. I felt lucky to be hearing Fitzgerald’s words for the first time in Shepherd’s voice. When he spoke to me about Gatsby, his words were soft and kind, yet cool and reserved with ill words of others; he recounted the green light tragedy that became of Gatsby’s life and love. I was thankful to be introduced to Fitzgerald, to Gatsby, to Elevator Repair Service, by a stranger. I was grateful for these hours to sit and be read to. We were all getting to know each other.

In a ‘round about way, Elevator Repair Service helped me to appreciate several things through the eyes and experiences of others. Similarly I now primarily appreciate San Francisco through stories from the friends I left behind; I am learning of Houston from the new people I am meeting; I was introduced to Portland through the artworks of new (and old) artists at TBA; and now Slab is venturing forward into new and variable territories.

As Wendy and I ready ourselves for our first event as Slab, I will once again be guided along by others. The artists in Night Light will reintroduce me to Chicago and Los Angeles and they will welcome me for the first time to new artworks - to the thoughts, struggles, contradictions, elations, and curiosities that they bring with them.

Slab is a new artistic and curatorial entity formed for the purpose of experimenting, generated out of another of our exhibition concept projects in Chicago called Mule. Could Slab mean a 6 hour performance of our own someday? I don’t see why not. Could it mean exhibitions in cities all over the world? I’d like to think so. Because "...tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther..." (1) But for now, for the first time, we will proudly host several artworks outside on a slab of concrete in Glendale, California.

1.) Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Great Gatsby." New York: Scribner, 1925, pg. 180

Slab + Blog = Slablog!

noreply@blogger.com (Wendy) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:52:00 +0000

This is the first of many posts we hope to present regularly on things on and off the Slab. Keep checking in with us.