Article - Biennial Showcases Contemporary S.C. Art

Issue #24.40 :: 10/05/2011 - 10/11/2011 

Biennial Showcases Contemporary S.C. Art

701 CCA Aims to Fill Void Left By Demise of Triennial

BY JEFFREY DAY

When the Triennial was done away with several years ago, an outcry arose in the arts community. No one was louder about the demise of the every-three-year South Carolina contemporary art show than Wim Roefs, a Columbia gallery owner. When the 701 Center for Contemporary Art opened in 2008 and Roefs became its board president (and de facto director), he stated the center’s commitment to creating a show to replace the Triennial.
The first one of those — a biennial rather than a triennial — opens this week. The exhibition by 24 artists will be broken into two parts, the first opening Friday, Oct. 7, from 7 to 9 p.m. and the second starting Nov. 17.

“It was really a great loss,” says Roefs of the Triennial’s demise. “They were great shows and a place to discuss what was going on in the arts.”

Biennial 2011 includes artists from Hilton Head to Spartanburg, painters and potters and sculptors, the latter working with everything from found objects to cut-up blue jeans to books. Each artist will show two to five pieces. Participants range from such well-established and familiar artists as Mary Edna Fraser and Jim Connell to others who are young and mostly unknown. They range in age from 23 to 76.

“This is better than a solid list,” Roefs says. “There are established artists, but the younger ones are nothing to sneeze at — these are artists with great potential.”

He’s not tooting his own horn, because he didn’t select the artists. The contemporary art center asked a dozen curators, educators and artists from throughout the state to nominate two artists for the Biennial. Among the nominators were Brian Lang, decorative arts curator at the Columbia Museum of Art; Leo Twiggs, an artist and retired professor and museum director at S.C. State University; Tom Stanley, artist and chairman of the Winthrop University Art Department; and Tyrone Geter, artist and director of the Benedict College art gallery. Midlands artists in the show are James Busby, Peter Lenzo, JRenee, Lucy Bailey and Jim Arendt (who recently moved to Conway.) Three artists are from the Upstate, two from Orangeburg, five from Charleston, six from Rock Hill and three from other places in the state

Several of the artists were in one or more of the five Triennial exhibitions held from 1992 to 2004, including mixed media artist Aldwyth from Hilton Head; ceramic artists Jim Connell of Rock Hill, Alice Ballard of Greenville and Peter Lenzo of Columbia; and Charleston resident Colin Quashie, who explores political and social issues with bite and humor and a wide range of mediums. Others who have long been working in the state, such as Shaun Cassidy of Rock Hill and Winston Wingo of Spartanburg, will be in the Biennial. Among the lesser known artists are several who have solid careers, including James Busby of Irmo, who has had several exhibitions at the Stux Gallery in New York, and Stacey Davidson, who just began teaching at Winthrop University and who shows at the Marlborough Gallery in New York and London.

New Art - Plantation Digest

I decided to combine what were stand alone panels into one cohesive piece. The initial idea was to create a faux magazine that would have been read by plantation owners had it existed. After looking at a few 'lifestyle' magazines, I noticed that many had advertisements up front followed by table of contents, editor's note, etc. Since I had already created the advertisements (all of the J. CROW pages), I decided to redo them on thinner panels and hinge them together to resemble a magazine layout. I'm quite happy with the outcome and who knows, I may just continue to expand upon the piece by the time it makes it to the exhibition at REDUX in March.

I needed to submit work for the Biennial that was newer than 3 years old. Since I had been working on the UNC Mural much of that time and then went headlong into the plantation pieces, I decided to preview one of the pieces in the Biennial. It will interesting to see what kind of a response it garners.

Plantation Digest
32" x 44" (each panel)

Gel Transfer and Acrylic on Birch Plywood

INDIVIDUAL PANELS:

 

 

Fine Art Reproductions Sale

For a limited time (maybe until Christmas), buy three prints at a reduced price. Click here to order.

 

Biennial 2011 Essay

THE POST-MODERN SENSE OF REGIONALISM
A Shift Of Consciousness
By Mary Bentz Gilkerson

Statewide art exhibitions like the TRIENNIAL, produced by the South Carolina Arts Commission and the South Carolina State Museum between 1992 and 2004, refl ect more than current trends in the state’s contemporary art community. They reveal deeper shifts in how the culture of the area perceives itself. Even as recently as the TRIENNIAL 2004 there was degree of self-consciousness about the way that both the curators and artists approached their regional position. The result was the selection of work that for the most part focused on the universal and mainstream rather than a regional sense of place.

In the intervening seven years the South Carolina art community has become much more comfortable with a greater postmodern sense of regionalism: a strong connection to place revealed in the way that artists freely mine themes and media that have been considered traditional for the area – landscape and figurative narration, clay and craft traditions – combined with an awareness of the national and international art dialogue. This initial Biennial, produced by 701 Center for Contemporary Art, reflects that shift of consciousness.

At its most fundamental level, place is topographic landscape, a mapping of geographical features that illustrates a culture’s relationship to the space it inhabits. Working from aerial photographs, Mary Edna Fraser maps the South Carolina coastline from great perspective distance, using traditional batik processes on oversized silk panels. Jarod Charzewski explores landscape topographically as well, creating installations that use precisely folded and stacked clothing or books to mimic the undulations of the earth and its interaction with man-made structures. Kim LeDee creates sculptural installations from carefully woven constructions that move from the flat surface of the wall into the gallery. Small plastic toys fill her miniature environments revealing the absurdities of communal conflict.

Landscape and place extends beyond topography in the multimedia installations of Gwylene Gallimard and Jean-Marie Mauclet. Their work is deeply rooted in the particularities of a community, going beyond simple documentary or social commentary to explore the complex intersections of place with traditions, histories, stories and spirit. Their process of working intimately within a community gives their work insightful depth regarding the paradoxical nature of human relationships.

Figuration and narration go hand-in-hand to invoke personal memory, trauma and history as well as direct challenges to examine our communal relationships to issues of race and sexuality. Winston Wingo’s sculptures use combinations of organic and geometric shapes to address the relationship of humanity to nature and technology. But they also address the dehumanizing factors that have effectively “erased” minorities from the broader dialogue within the culture.

What is subtle in Wingo’s work is exquisitely direct in Damond Howard’s and Colin Quashie’s.

With wit and passion Quashie uses the language of media marketing to dissect stereotypical views of cultural relationships and expose them as separatist constructs. He uses the seduction promised by contemporary advertising to lure the viewer into a conversation that can be haunting in the depth of the issues raised.

Howard incorporates some of the most heinous examples of 19th century illustrations and caricatures into self-portraits that reflect on the conflicted sense of identity and self that dominant culture imposes on minorities – in his case, an African-American man from South Carolina. Like Quashie, he uses humor to leaven the harshness of the commentary without diluting his message.

The narrative is also very personal in the work of Aldwyth and Peter Lenzo. While the literal figure is absent from many of Aldwyth’s works, it is implied through the multiple narratives she creates in her collages and sculptures. Although she resists categorization and rejects labels outright, the many little biographies that fill any one of her works form larger statements that are certainly astute social observation if not commentary. Lenzo’s clay sculptures are heavily embellished reliquaries of triumph over suffering. Building on the South Carolina craft tradition of the face jug, Lenzo creates self-portraits that contain all the pathos of the human condition.

Jim Arendt, JRenée, Stacey Davidson, Karen Ann Myers, Jon Prichard and Lucy Bailey pursue shared communal narratives, both traditional ones and those created by the disjunctions of contemporary culture. Arendt uses multiple layers of faded denim, the very fabric of the working class, collage together to explore connections to work and place. Using a similar narrative tradition, JRenee’s vivid paintings on glass contain echoes of Romare Bearden’s collages and cutouts and pull from the shared myths and traditions of the African-American community of New Orleans. Lucy Bailey’s figurative work is a quiet counterpoint, exploring the human body using forms that have an archetypal, archaic quality.

Davidson sculpts dolls that she then arranges in scenarios. These fictional narratives become the subjects of her subsequent paintings. There is an uncanny quality to the painted dolls, a level of fiction within fiction, both innocent and vaguely disturbing. Myers’ subjects inhabit a similarly charged psychological space, one that focuses on our cultural obsession with youth, beauty and glamour. The stories she tells of cocktail parties and power games are off set by a deep sense of loneliness. That absence is filled in Prichard’s drawings and performances by the ceremony and ritual of the fictitious society he creates his work around.

Thomas Whichard and Marshall Thomas create very ambiguous, loosely defined narratives based on the dialogue between artist and model. The stories are potential fictions, slices or moments, removed from their contexts.

Chris Todd’s sculptures imply a human presence through her use of exaggerated and distorted chair forms as surrogates. There is a whimsical quality to the sculptures that is off-set by the precarious nature of the predicaments that she places them in.

Abstraction, the modernist ideal, has become one of the many genres available to contemporary artists. Alice Ballard and Jim Connell both reference ceramic craft traditions in creating organic, abstracted works that move beyond traditional vessels to function as sculptural objects.

Shaun Cassidy, James Busby and Katie Walker pursue an art of pure abstraction where the subtle relationships of shape, surface and color invite contemplation. Busby and Cassidy reduce or eliminate many of the formal elements to focus our attention on the remaining ones. Mike Gentry’s grid-based collages give an aesthetic order to the jumbled visual bombardment of junk mail advertising and transform these fragments of media culture into relatively benign colors and textures.

The South Carolina Biennial 2011 reflects a shift in consciousness and perspective, a step away from the mainstream/regional dialectic. The sense of regional inferiority seems to be giving way to a synthesis of regional concerns – landscape and figurative narration, clay and craft traditions – with a more global awareness of the interconnection of all places to each other.

......................................................

Mary Bentz Gilkerson is an artist, critic and curator. Her reviews regularly appear
in the Free Times weekly in her hometown of Columbia, S.C., where she teaches art at Columbia College.

Joe Norman at Benedict College

My wonderful friend Tyrone Geter is curator of the art gallery on Benedict College in Columbia, SC. I really hope the students understand the depth and uniqueness of the exhibits he seeks out and brings there. His upcoming show with the printmaker Joe Norman is such an exhibit. Here is an overview:


Joseph Norman and the Middle Passage Doc Promo from Leasa Fortune on Vimeo.

Invite to the inaugural SC Biennial 2011

"With wit and passion Quashie uses the language of media marketing to dissect

stereotypical views of cultural relationships and expose them as separatist constructs.

He uses the seduction promised by contemporary advertising to lure the viewer into

a conversation that can be haunting in the depth of the issues raised."

- Mary Bentz Gilkerson
The Post Modern Sense of Regionalism
A Shift of Consciousness

First A La Carte event at the studio

This has been a dream of mine for quite some time; to have a lecture series of African-American artists in my studio presenting their art to the public. With the help of Sandra Campbell, Brenda Lauderback-Wright and Garcia Williams, we are about to pull off the first one.

I met Michaela via facebook and later met her in person at the opening of the Triennial Revisited exhibition. I absolutely love this woman and her art. Very provocative and informative. She is the perfect artist to set the tone and pace for the artists I want to bring to Charleston. I hope the audience is ready for her!

Charleston City Paper Article

Many local black artists struggle to fit in at MOJA
This Ain't My Festival
by Joy Vandervort-Cobb
My original intent was to write an article about the MOJA Festival and its impact on the African-American arts scene in Charleston. Makes sense. MOJA is atop us, I am an artist, and I like talking to other folks in the arts. Easy, right? Wrong. I've had more off-the-record conversations in the last week than I ever anticipated. There is disenchantment with the lack of local performing artists being featured. There is a sense, as one anonymous source put it, that "This ain't my festival." And according to a number of people — from musicians to thespians to technicians — the local buy-in from our community of African-American artists is about as flat as the economy.

But let me start with the easy, non-confrontational stuff. This is the 28th year that the festival is celebrating African-American and Caribbean arts. Those of you who have been in Charleston for any amount of time at least know that during MOJA, the culture and history of African-American and Caribbean people is celebrated through art, music, theater, dance, and literature. There are loads of free things to do, including the popular Caribbean Street Parade and the Reggae Block Party.

Brooklyn transplant and Mt. Pleasant resident Marlene Gaillard, an avid arts fan and longtime MOJA supporter, is torn about the festival this year. News of the 2011 schedule wasn't announced until just a few weeks ago, and Gaillard is disappointed with the seeming lack of organization. "First and foremost, could you explain to me why I just received my program booklet yesterday?" she says. "September 20 for a large event that begins nine days later? How does one plan for that? And there are enough 'TBAs' in this booklet that I had to ask myself if it was the name of a group I'd never heard of but was increasingly popular from the amount of times it's listed." The major R&B concert that's usually a highlight of MOJA was one of the TBA casualties.

The Office of Cultural Affair's Ellen Dressler Moryl explained that a number of factors, including a diminished staff, promoters backing out, and other events like the 9/11 commemorations, got in the way of planning. Perhaps most significantly, the MOJA program coordinator position was vacant this year, and a programming committee was tasked with the planning. Elease Amos-Goodwin, who formerly held the position and recently retired, served on the committee. "This year it has just been an occupational hazard that things didn't happen as one might want," Moryl said.

Gaillard also bemoans the lack of local talent represented at MOJA. "Why aren't there things in local venues with local musicians? Happens all the time during the big festival," she says. Moryl responded that she'll address that concern next year. "That's an interesting perspective," Moryl said. "I'll address it with the committee. As you know, we don't dictate from this office what should or shouldn't be in MOJA. We offer advice, give input, and support."

Colin Quashie is one local artist that has had some negative experiences with the festival. He's been a screenwriter, sketch comedy writer for television (MAD TV), a filmmaker, novelist, and contemporary artist. He's a bit of a provocateur, both in his work and his thought process. From the moment I met him in 1996 at my first MOJA, in which I performed with a San Francisco theater company, he has intrigued me. There he was at the end of the table, angry and loud and ready to spar with anybody crazy enough to challenge him.

New Art - Plantation Digest

I have been in the process of using a 3D architectural program to put together the Plantation exhibition at REDUX Studios. I wanted to include the J. CROW Advertisements but somehow they didn't seem to fit within the overall context. After staring at all of the pieces with a couple glasses of wine for clarity (in vivo, veritas!), I understood what was wrong and what needed to be done. Needless to say - 1 piece was destroyed (Black Tie Affair) and another modified (Blaccessories). The logic behind the destruction and rebirth was simple: if the stand alone panels were to be combined as one piece they needed to support an overall narrative which was missing. They needed two other pieces in support. If these were indeed intended to be ads in a fictional magazine that may have existed in that era - then what was the magazine? Enter ---> Plantation Digest!

Plantation Digest
36" x 48"
Gel and acrylic on board

As you can see - one of the teaser articles on the cover is 'J. CROW - Dressing for Succession' - which relates directly to the fake ads. The overall piece will have five panels with the cover going first, followed by 'Look Solid With Stripes'. It is meant to represent the first five pages of the Digest as though you were actually reading it. The next missing piece is being planned as I write and will be a letter from the editor. The corresponding text will help to shed some insight into the piece (not too much - let the viewer bring something to the piece!). I am finally happy with the display and can't wait to see it completed! Now I just have to figure out where it should be hung in the exhibition.

Plantation Coloring and Activity Book

I went by REDUX Studio's today and met with Karen Myers (Director) and showed her my proposed layout for the upcoming exhibition. I used a wonderful program - Live Interior 3D Pro - to draw a schematic of the gallery and place many of the paintings on the wall. It allows you do a virtual walk thru of the exhibition and see everything. I highly recommend it to anyone. Here's what a screenshot looks like:

With this program I can place work on the walls in their actual sizes so I can see how the flow will work. Karen is basically allowing me to curate my own exhibit so I want to keep her up to date with everything. I should have everything completed by Thanksgiving - unless I decide to change - which will probably happen.  I'm about 4 works short right now and made a couple changes to the Plantation Coloring Book. I wasn't happy with a couple of the panels so I painted over and redesigned them. Here are the two newest panels:

I dumped the Jim Crow and Draw the Aunt Jemima panel. They were a bit soft my taste - this is supposed to be a very cynical piece and I needed every panel to hold it's own.