MERZBAU Reconstruction at Berkeley Art Museum

MERZBAU reconstruction at Berkeley Art Museum 7/2011. Video and timelapse by Mona Caron. Music: Béla Bartok, Six Rumanian Folk Dances - Roumanian Polka; and June De Toth, Gnossiennes n.4 by Erik Satie.

- The legendary Hanover MERZbau was created by Dada/Constructivist artist Kurt Schwitters in his apartment in Hanover, Germany in 1931-33, and was destroyed in 1943 during an allied air raid.

 In 1981-83 Peter Bissegger reconstructed the MERZbau through extensive calculations and research, and with the help of Ernst Schwitters' memories (Kurt Schwitters' son.) 

Information about the long adventure of reconstructing this lost classic of modern art can be found at 

www.merzbaureconstruction.com

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

Solo Exhibition Project for the AC Institute. New York City
December 12^th – February 22^nd 2014

by Jessica Angel

 

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

INTRODUCTION 

CONCEPTUAL BASIS 

DESCRIPTION AND PROCESS 

PUBLIC PROGRAMING

VISUALIZATION 

DOWNLOAD DOCUMENT

"The "Strange Loop" phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started."

Douglas Hofstadter

"That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing." Thus, whatever happens on any level of reality (physical, emotional, or mental) also happens on every other level.

"The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus"

INTRODUCTION

The solar system can easily be paralleled with the “basic” unit of matter, the atom. Operations of a colossal city are analogous to the miniature calculations of a computer.  Phenomena of any system occur every instant, simultaneously, on small and large scales. I am interested in exploring these patterns and parallel realities, this duality between the vast and the minute. The deeper into the minute one goes, the closer one gets to understanding the large and vice versa.

I have chosen two specific analogies to embody the idea of the minute and the vast as equivalents 1) the relationship between the outer space and the digital information space and 2) the similarity between urban planning and computer integrated circuits.

To work around this dichotomy I will create an immersive installation that takes over the northern room of the AC Institute. I plan to "invert" these two ideas representing the "large" in a small scale and the "minute" in an outsized scale, emphasizing the concept of the strange loop and the cyclic patterns. The installation will make reference to the micro world of computers in correlation with outer space phenomena.  

Internship Available for Installation Project Production

Jessica Angel, International visual artist based in New York, seeks career-minded students and art enthusiasts with a working knowledge in contemporary art, drawing and installation work to assist with the execution of an installation project in a Chelsea art gallery. Prior experience related to dye-cut vinyl installation and perspective drawing is preferred. Attention to detail, promptness and strong organizational skills, are required.

The installation of the project starts on Nov 20^th until Dec 12^th 2013 and applicants must be available 3 days a week. 

Find the project details HERE
Download the project PDF HERE

To apply, please send to jessica.angel@gmail.com:

• A 100 words paragraph stating why you are interested in this position. 
• 5 images in a JPG format 800 pixels - 72 dpi of the work that best represents your compatibility with this project.
• Schedule. Dates and hours you can commit to the project. 

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Monday November 18th 2013

This position comes with a weekly modest stipend. College credit may be available. Schedule is flexible but changes must be made in advance.

You can see "the making of" past projects of the same scope:

HEMISPHERICAL IMMERSIONS

THE SELF OF THE BUILDING

ENTER THE WALL

Website: www.Jessica-Angel.com

Edward Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
by Jennifer Baichwal

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is a feature length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of ‘manufactured landscapes’ – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization’s materials and debris, but in a way people describe as “stunning” or “beautiful,” and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.

The film follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people, factory floors over a kilometre long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai’s urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera.

Shot in Super-16mm film, Manufactured Landscapes extends the narrative streams of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our profound impact on the planet and witness both the epicentres of industrial endeavour and the dumping grounds of its waste. What makes the photographs so powerful is his refusal in them to be didactic. We are all implicated here, they tell us: there are no easy answers. The film continues this approach of presenting complexity, without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, it tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it.

2006, Canada, 90 mins.

Watch Documentary HERE

Source: 

http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/Sections/The_Film/Manufactured_Landscapes.html

VIDEOLINER The conjunction between Mural Painting and Video-Mapping Performance.

"VIDEOLINER" is the name of a collective created in 2012 by Jessica Angel and Laura Ramirez (a.k.a. Optika). Jessica is a NY based contemporary artist with experience in drawing, painting and large-scale mural works and Laura is a video artist, based in Bogota who focuses on live performances and video-mapping projection experiments. Through this collaborative initiative we aim to dynamically merge our skills to generate new AV censorial languages.

Art has been created using a great variety of techniques in order to fulfill different intentions. Let’s take the cave paintings as one of the many examples where mural painting served to the purpose of meaningful events and ceremonies. The medium and the purpose take their place in time. We are interested in exploring this relationship between time, medium, place and purpose, by creating site-specific projects that engage the media of our time with people who celebrate art and life.

Videoliner’s first project ENTER THE WALL was carried out in December 2012 in a 23' x 65' feet (7 x 20 mts) outdoors parking lot wall in Bogotá. Inspired in Archigram and retro versions of the future, this black and white mural done with acrylic paint and video-mapped with colorful animations, worked as a screen that divided the real space against an artificially created depth. Like Alice through the looking glass, the piece invited people to cross the wall and enter an imaginative world.

"THE MAKING OF" ENTER THE WALL


PROJECT VIDEO 

Take a look at some reviews the project got before it was done:
The Creators Project 
Madmapper

Sol LeWitt "Wall Drawings" and the set of instructions that constitute the body of his work.

“The idea becomes the machine that makes the art” 

Sol LeWitt

Instead of creating a single wall mural, Sol LeWitt created instructions on how to create what he called “wall drawings” so that they would be reproducible and could be created by a collaborative team of skilled artists or fabricators.  He fully explored in his works the relationship between the idea and the final product, between outlining the concept and fully defining the work.  In one of his essays he says “The system* is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the system. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance”.

*View previous post "Systems Esthetics"

To that, when an organization or individual buys a LeWitt wall drawing, they receive two things, neither of which is the finished work of art. They get a certificate of authenticity and a detailed set of instructions—that is, they get the idea. To install the piece, they worked directly with LeWitt and now, since his death in 2007, work with LeWitt’s estate to hire one of his trained drafts-people to lead the installation. 

A fundamental component of the wall drawings is that LeWitt need not be present to install, then it did not matter to the outcome of the installation that LeWitt was no longer alive. In a process much like the relationship between a conductor and a group of musicians, a trained LeWitt draftsperson directs a team of workers to create the installation using the instructions as the “score.”

In Lewitt’s words, “an architect doesn’t go off with a shovel and dig his foundation and lay every brick. He’s still an artist”.  A Sol Lewitt wall drawing begins as a small sketch, and then Lewitt writes directions for completing the piece, the rest is up to the draftsman. Human error and interpretation affect the piece, making sure that no two wall drawings are ever exactly the same. Lewitt believed that “Ideas cannot be owned…they belong to whomever understands them”, and allowed others to reproduce his works as long as they closely followed his instruction.  However after the 1980’s, poor copies of his work began to circulate through the art world and he established a system of certificates. For a wall drawing to be considered a Sol Lewitt, it must be completed under the supervision of an assistant and be accompanied by a drawing and instructions certified by Sol Lewitt. The certificate system assured Lewitt that all his pieces would be of the highest quality.

His first wall drawing was executed in 1968 at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York City (wall drawing #11) and consisted of four squares, each with lines meticulously drawn in the four directions: left to right, up and down, diagonal in each direction.  He was exploring a system of rules and the various permutations of the system.  He developed written instructions for these wall drawings for his studio assistants to execute.  Neveretheless, the vocabulary to create these works had to evolve, as the drawings became increasingly complex in color choices and application. LeWitt kept these instructions very standard, developing easy-to-understand codes for color combinations, lines, and other elements.  Throughout his entire career, he continued to explore his basic concept, to use writing (both captions and instructions) to make that concept accessible to the viewers, and valuing the instructions and idea over the art object itself. 

The artist and his assistants had to become more specialized in specific drafting and painting techniques to create the desired effect (e.g. , masking with blue painter’s tape to achieve clear separation between bands of color, using a contractor’s blue chalk snap line tool to execute lines, and sanding and preparing walls with chemicals to make them more receptive to the paint).  The designs continued to grow in detail as exemplified by some of his final works “Scribbles”, where he returned to the graceful graphite pencil drawings using scribble lines in different spacing to create beautiful geometric forms with shading (wall drawing #1247 August 2007, #1260 July 2008, #1261 July 2008).  A complete Sol LeWitt wall drawingretrospective has been installed at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA), and will be on display for 25 years, until 2033. 

Text and images source:
http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2008/12/image_courtesy_of_mass_moca.html

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v8n1/gallery/smith_e/lewitt_541.shtml

http://www.tufts.edu/programs/mma/fah188/sol_lewitt/essaypage.html

http://www.nesug.org/Proceedings/nesug09/ph/ph02.pdf

Systems Esthetics by Jack Burnham

Systems Esthetics

Jack Burnham

Reprinted from Artforum (September, 1968). Copyright 1968 by Jack Burnham.

A polarity is presently developing between the finite, unique work of high art, that is, painting or sculpture, and conceptions that can loosely be termed unobjects, these being either environments or artifacts that resist prevailing critical analysis. This includes works by some primary sculptors (though some may reject the charge of creating environments), some gallery kinetic and luminous art, some outdoor works, happenings, and mixed media presentations. Looming below the surface of this dichotomy is a sense of radical evolution that seems to run counter to the waning revolution of abstract and nonobjective art. The evolution embraces a series of absolutely logical and incremental changes, wholly devoid of the fevered iconoclasm that accompanied the heroic period from 1907 to 1925. As yet the evolving esthetic has no critical vocabulary so necessary for its defense, nor for that matter a name or explicit cause.

In a way this situation might be likened to the “morphological development” of a prime scientific concept-as described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn sees science at any given period dominated by a single “major paradigm”; that is, a scientific conception of the natural order so pervasive and intellectually powerful that it dominates all ensuing scientific discovery. Inconsistent facts arising through experimentation are invariably labeled as bogus or trivial-until the emergence of a new and more encompassing general theory. Transition between major paradigms may best express the state of present art. Reasons for it lie in the nature of current technological shifts.

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