Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Michael Minelli | Guide-LA.com Video Interview


Guide-LA.com has posted a new conversation with WPA artist Michael Minelli and UCLA Contemporary Art History Lecturer Miwon Kwon. Check it out here.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Charles Irvin | Art Since the Summer of ‘69

January 17 – February 21, 2010
Opening reception on Sunday January 17, 4 – 7 p.m.

Art Since the Summer of ‘69
195 Chrystie Street,
Suite 303, 3rd floor

10002 New York, NY
www.artsince69.com

Art Since the Summer of ’69 is proud to present Wuv is the Waw, Charles Irvin’s premier solo show in New York.

Los Angeles-based Irvin works with a wide range of media, including video, performance, drawing and painting. For Wuv is the Waw, Irvin has produced two series of new drawings, depicting conflations of opposing concepts: birth and death, masculine and feminine, inner and outer space, organic and inorganic, the spiritual and the obscene.

The drawings depict mystical states where all is one, visualizing the alchemical concept of the union of the opposites. Carl Jung compared this to the psychological process of individuation, where the personal and collective subconscious join with consciousness. Since Irvin’s imagery is intuitive, the work depicts the process that creates it, the subconscious and conscious working together.
The drawings in the series Wuv is the Waw were inspired by a quote from Aleister Crowley; “Love is the law, love under will”. The drawings seek to represent the fun, light-hearted, and perhaps even cute and cuddly side of the complex, multifaceted Crowley. In tribute to Crowley's meditations on the multivalence of symbols, the drawings contain an image that evokes light and dark sides of our contemporary visual culture. Crowley loved riddles, so Irvin refuses to reveal what these sides are.

For more information and image requests,
please contact the gallery by email info@artsince69.com or by phone 347.208.5437.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Michele O'Marah | Opening at Cottage Home


Michele O'Marah
A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do
January 9 - February 6, 2010
Opening Saturday, Jan 9th, 6-9pm






Kathryn Brennan Gallery is thrilled to present A girls got to do what a girls got to do, an exhibition of new work by Michele O'Marah. For the exhibition, O'Marah has created three new video works that are re-created scenes from the Pamela Anderson film Barb Wire (1996). Continuing her examination of the mass media representation of the revolutionary, this exhibition is the second half of a project that began with her piece How Goes it with the Black Movement? (2007), whose focus was a PBS broadcast interview between Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton and conservative host and author William F. Buckley on his program Firing Line. A counterpoint to the heady, academic discussion of the former, O'Marah's current source, Barb Wire, is an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name. Anderson's "Barb" is a disaffected mercenary in the post-Second U.S. Civil War city of Steel Harbor, who gets caught in the middle of the revo lutionary activities of a former flame who is working to expose the ruling Neo-Fascist government for its ruthless behavior. Aimed at a Gen X audience, the film has acquired a cult status despite a poor reception, both critically and at the box office.
For A girls got to do what a girls got to do, the artist will be exhibiting three video works, installations of set pieces, photographs, and text-based drawings. Having re-staged four scenes from the film, O'Marah has cast a different actress for each to play the character of Barb. In addition to the artist's probe of the corporatized, MTV version of a revolutionary hero, O'Marah's efforts serve as deconstructive analyses of the film's representation of femininity. Hiring a diverse range of professional actresses to fill Anderson's stiletto high heels, O'Marah's "Barb" takes various forms. Working with each actress, O'Marah's video works take on the most sexually explicit scenes from the film and offer a variety of interpretations of the lead role: campy, flirty, and sexy. The one-dimensional, Barbie Doll of a character is given a depth, sexuality, and humor that is lacking in the original. Set pieces from the production of the videos re-installed and accessori zed with photographs and sculptures blur the line between art installation and function. In addition, a series of text-based works on paper, pulled from dialogue and lyrics from the film’s soundtrack (primarily new metal cover versions of older songs), address issues of authorship and contrivance.