I am currently staying in the Guest Room of Rachel Stuckey’s homepage until the 12th of June. Feel free to flip through some of my books, talk to the shopkeeper, or check out the beautiful view! (the corner seems a bit dusty…)
Please stop by!
Brief Histories (Vol. I-IV)
2015
A series of single-page foldable educational pamphlets. False fictional documents weaving a contradictory and nebulous historical narrative, piecemeal but suggestive of a greater but equally fictional historiography.
BOOTLEGGED SWIMMING POOLS
2014
Ed Ruscha
Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass
Artist Book, 1968
BOOTLEGGED SUNSET STRIP
2014
Ed Ruscha
Every Building on the Sunset Strip
Artist Book, 1966
BOOTLEGGED PARKING LOTS
2014
Ed Ruscha
Thirty Four Parking Lots in Los Angeles
Artist Book, 1967
(Originally posted here)
Hyperallergic’s review of dis artselfie book says “too many white ppl,” their review of triennial (which has mostly poc) says “too much art”
— Standard Definition (@briandroitcour) March 6, 2015This is a funny tweet. It’s also a pretty on-the-mark tweet. The New Museum’s second Generational Triennial (and the first actually confirming its triennial status) has gotten mixed reviews– some notable negative reviews are from ArtAgenda and Hyperallergic. On of the argument is pretty easy to discern (it’s right in the title of the latter): Too Much Art.
What’s the problem/irony in this? Well, for starters, there’s a flimsy idea of what this could possibly mean– there’s an implication that the sheer volume of art chosen (which definitely fills the space to the brim) is itself just a surface-level ploy to try and “get a Tumblr aesthetic going.” Deeper down, this encourages a dismissal of any particular individual piece as “extraneous and irrelevant,” focused on manufacturing an “aesthetic experience,” and has the potential to really just take a lot of agency away from these different artists, a lot of whom’s work revolves around a critical lens that places not the “net” itself but the sub/superstructures that networked capitalism and the web encourage. But I mean, whatever, it’s a bunch of millenials making a piecemeal aesthetic zombie.
It’s here where the pervasiveness of curmudgeonry creeps from the woodworks. In the midst of the Western/NYC-centric narratives of contemporary art, the market and auctions, the record sales, the MFA explosions, the gentrification, and the increasing dissatisfaction with the racial and economic distribution of the art world, there are a lot of things to find fault with in biennials and art fairs– and with good reason! There’s a tangible majority in representation in the art world (something something Whitney Biennial 2014 something something). However, what happens when a large group of POC and queer artists place these structures under scrutiny in meaningful and complex ways? “Too Much Art.”
Too often is the institution-wide large-scale show derided as being formulaic, irrelevant (often masturbatory.) But what about when relevance becomes front-and-center? The sparse, White, male, biennial gives us something to really hate– “can we go back to that, please?”
You can learn more about/ check out some images of the NuMu Triennial Here
//PIGGYBACK//
2015
Dissection of a text by Michael Connor. //PIGGYBACK// is a document of the organic processes (fracturing, erosion, and accumulation of debris) that information undergoes as an object under scrutiny.
TeamWork/Play: A Collection of Essays (Edited by Connor Frew)
2015
This anthology was compiled in order to address the dance floor as a potential platform for political as well as bodily action, and the use of tech-mediated “fun” as infrastructure for collaborative and decentralized art production.
