"TELLUSTools", 2001, Double-LP, The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York. Gift of Harvestworks. Cover Art by Christian Marclay. Produced by Carol Parkinson, Harvestworks. Image courtesy Kanji Ishii

Where were you when the Music Television Channel was first introduced in 1981? I was seven years old and had a babysitter who, in her early twenties, was the coolest person I had ever met. I would follow her around just in the hopes that this perceived “coolness” would somehow rub off on me. It was through her that I was exposed, for the first time, to the brand-new phenomenon of the music video. Her family had just gotten cable and we would sit around and watch this small American network running loops of film shorts that visually illustrated the concepts and narratives of song by popular musical bands at the time. What we didn’t realize at the time, was that visual and popular culture as we knew it was changed forever.

Looking at Music 3.0., now at the Museum of Modern Art, New York through June 6, 2011, is an in-depth look at this moment in time and its effect on our cultural history. The third in a series of exhibitions exploring the influence of music on contemporary art practices, Looking at Music 3.0, focuses on New York in the 1980s and 1990s and the birth of the “remix culture.” The exhibition features 70 works from a wide range of artists and musicians: Beastie Boys, Kathleen Hanna and Le Tigre, Keith Haring, David Byrne, Miranda July, Christian Marclay, Sonic Youth and Run DMC.

Spike Jonze, Sabotage, 1994, Music by Beastie Boys. The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of the artist. © Capitol Records, Inc.

The exhibition begins with the German band Kraftwerk, positing that with tracks such as Trans-Europe Express, 1977, they had a large influence on the decades of music to come with their pioneering usage synthesizers and computer-speech software. It then expands into a wide array of issues and movements that were occurring during this time:  the birth of hip-hop and its growing strength in voicing the ongoing discrimination against the black community; activist movements seeking to counteract the AIDS epidemic and the increasing drug usage that was threatening New York; the introduction of art theory to new music as well as the rise of the digital domain; and the growing voice of artists commenting on the complicated relationship between commercial entities and its control of mass communication and the shaping of modern culture.

Le Tigre, "From the Desk of Mr. Lady," 2000, CD. Cover Art by Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman. Image courtesy Le Tigre Records

A highlight of Looking at Music 3.0 is the in-depth look into the wave of Feminism that was grounded in the riot grrrl capital, Portland Oregon, in the 1990s. On display are photocopied zines and posters by artists Miranda July and Johanna Fateman, as well as audio tracks from the band Le Tigre. These recordings serve as examples of the impromptu punk bands that were forming all over and the band’s usage of humorous lyrics and electronic dance music to confront a myriad of social ills that existed in New York.

Anyone interested in the history of music and visual culture will enjoy this exhibition. But for those of us who remember where we were when the music video was first introduced, you will walk out asking yourself, “What happened to the revolution?”

Will Rogan, "Busts," 2010, 6 altered magazine pages, 11 1/8 x 8 1/4 inches each; image courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery, SF

In 1980, French theorist and critic Roland Barthes published the book Camera Lucida, addressing the nature of photography and its inherent relationship with the mechanics of time. Barthes deconstructs this correlation and the concept of memento mori, roughly translated to mean “remember your mortality,” and how photography exposes the vulnerable temporality of life. Will Rogan’s exhibition, Stay Home, now at the Altman Siegel Gallery in San Francisco, clearly roots itself in continuing this investigation.

Will Rogan, "The Elusive Nature of Time," 2010, Gelatin Silver Print, 16 x 20 inches; image courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery, SF

The exhibition is comprised mainly of three separate series. The first is made up of photographs repurposing a book on the subject of time, originally published by Life Magazine Science Library in 1966. “The Elusive Nature of Time,” (2010) and “Man Versus Clock:  the Unequal Struggle,” (2010) are intriguing as Rogan gets close to actually documenting allusion. The layers that overlap within these images are palpable. The viewer experiences images of chapters of a then-relevant book, whose own memento mori has set in once the words hit the page, then captured by Rogan’s action of photographing the book, sealing its fate which was already determined at the minute it was conceptualized.

Will Rogan, "Mediums 4 (II)," 2010, paper, wood, beeswax, dimensions variable; image courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery, SF

In works such as “Medium 4 (II),” (2010), Rogan implements hand-cut wood sculptures to reference this idea of temporality within an art career’s shelf-life. Rogan applies images of artists he has salvaged from discarded art catalogs encountered at the San Francisco Art Institute onto the pieces of wood, positions them without any adhesive, resulting in free-standing assemblages. What is to be inferred from these works? At one point, these artists were, quote unquote, important enough to have their picture taken. Yet, their catalogs have been discarded. Is Rogan suggesting that these photographs capture the peak and then eminent decline of the life of these artists’ career? It may seem a bit over-determined, however, what comes to mind are the various cultures, such as Native American or Aboriginal, who held the belief that having ones’ photograph taken left the soul in danger.

Will Rogan, "Can," 2010, Gelatin Silver Print, 16 x 20 inches; image courtesy of Altman Siegel Gallery, SF

The final series of the exhibition is a body of photographs the artist took around the neighborhood he lives in and which the exhibition draws its title. The subject matter of this series is varied: a lone sneaker facing an indistinguishable wall; a discarded aluminum can emanating an iridescent light; a window pane that has been cracked in the shape of a teardrop and then outlined with duct tape in an attempt to fix the problem. These works are presented as Rogan’s attempt to capture what he considers outside found sculpture within the “urban and domestic landscapes around him.” There seems to be some implication that this series is a bit separate from the other two, and it isn’t quite clear why as they unequivocally fit within his investigation of the arc of time. Each individual subject serve as makeshift wormholes, leaving the viewer to imagine what happened in the ever-allusive past to lead up to its being captured on film—and its impending decline since the click of the shutter button.

Stay Home will be on view at Altman Siegel Gallery through November 6th, 2010.

"It's My World", installation view of downstairs gallery at Baer Ridgway Exhibitions; image courtesy of BRX Exhibitions

It’s My World, a current group show at Baer Ridgeway Exhibitions in San Francisco, is compelling in its approach to a somewhat dated subject matter: the landscape. The show successfully combines the apparent solid thesis of the exhibition: “a strong emphasis on the use of unexpected materials, abstracted forms and the examination of time” in a bid to approach issues raised by humans’ complicated relationship with the ever changing environment. The group exhibition is comprised of ten artists working in a variety of mediums: painting, video, drawing, photography and sculpture and the cohesiveness that permeates from each artist’s contribution is fantastic.

Claude Zervas, "Skagit," 2005, Green CCFL lamps, wire, inverters, steel, Wall: 70 x 50 x 1 inches; Floor: 37 x 65 x 60 inches; image courtesy of BRX Exhibitions

Claude Zervas’ Skagit, 2005, a vibrant installation of Green CCFL lamps, wire, and inverters that is modeled after the Northwest’s Skagit River, and protrudes out of the wall alive and active. Zervas’ arranges the inverter cords to simulate the river’s many tributaries, allowing the installation to course through the gallery space.  Christopher Taggart’s But Now You Know You’ve Seen the Worst, 2010, changes the term “process” to an entirely new level. The image is of a car’s driver side mirror that has been recreated, and pixilated, by small cut outs of UV laminated photographs glued to a board. To call this work a collage doesn’t seem to do it justice. The precision in which Taggart is able to assemble these small, seemingly picayune pieces while at the same time inferring the motion of a driver’s view of the landscape passing him by, is impressive.

Christopher Taggart, "But Now You Know You've Seen the Worst," 2010, UV laminated photographs glued to board with pigmented archival adhesive, 32 x 40 inches; image courtesy of BRX Exhibitions

If these eye- catching works draw you in, it is the more subtle pieces that will make you stay. David Wilson’s charcoal on paper drawings of public spaces serve as illustrations to his larger performance works of reinvigorating public spaces. Wilson arranges public events, or “gatherings”, within these depicted landscapes, as a way to serve as a conduit for others who have yet to figure out how to get back to nature. Sean McFarland’s series of Polaroid photographs, though small in size, are breathtaking. McFarland collages together a variety of mixed media – paint, image cutouts, etc., and then re-photographs these elements to create an entirely new image of an otherworldly landscape. These images are ethereal, elusive and affecting. Even if the image doesn’t stay with you for very long afterward, the mystical feeling it invokes within you of a lost world will.

Sean McFarland, "Plane and Land," 2008, Polaroid, 3 1/4 x 4 1/4 inches, edition of 3; image courtesy of BRX Exhibitions

In my opinion, to be an artist in these contemporary times is no small feat. At this point, it would seem that there is no topic that hasn’t been broached, no genre that hasn’t been explored, and no medium that hasn’t had its limits pushed. This is the second reason why It’s My World succeeds—the ability of the selected artists to take a theme that is almost as old as art history itself and to continue to innovate upon it.  Here’s hoping that other artists heed their call.

Louise Bourgeois, "Echo I", 2007, Bronze painted white, and steel 76” x 17” x 14", Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco and Cheim & Read, New York; Photo courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

This past weekend, the art world took a collective breath as it was informed of the death of a titan, French-American artist Louise Bourgeois. At the age of 98, Bourgeois had accomplished an impressive sixty-year career which, at the time of her death, was continuing to gain momentum.

Bourgeois was born December 25, 1911 in Paris, France where her artistic career started as a young child participating in her family business of tapestry restoration. She attended the Sorbonne in the 1930s, at the height of the Surrealist movement and studied in the workshop of Fernand Léger. In 1938, Bourgeois moved to New York with her husband, American Robert Goldwater (an art historian who specialized in tribal art), and again found herself in the epicenter of the artistic avant-garde, interacting with not only the European artists who were in exile from WWII, but also with the Abstract Expressionists who were claiming the spotlight. From there, Bourgeois was front and center for the subsequent artistic movements that were to follow: Pop Art, Pluralism, Identity Politics, Body Art, Feminist Art and Post-Modernism. Yet, Bourgeois’ work could never be defined as belonging to one. Rather, her work was able to incorporate aspects of all and, working in a variety of mediums, able to elevate into an entirely new category all on its own.

Bourgeois culled her childhood history and personal life as subject matter, and her works were riffed with what we can now categorize as Freudian and Lacanian theory. Growing up in Choisy-le-Roi, France, Bourgeois often references her imperious and philandering father and her mercurial mother, charging her work with sexuality, psychology and mortality.

It wasn’t until the late 60’s/early 70s that Bourgeois begin to gain recognition of her work, and once the ball started rolling, there was no slowing it down. Between 1978 and 1981, she had five-one woman shows in New York. She has participated in four separate Whitney Museum Biennales. She has represented the U.S. in the Venice Biennale and had her work included in Documenta. In the last twenty years of her career, the list of institutions which housed her solo exhibitions reads like a “Who’s Who” of international museums.

A wonderful display of her work is now on exhibit at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco. The show, Mother and Child (open through June 12^th), is a collection of recent sculptures, gouache drawings and mixed media print works.  With this particular grouping of drawings, Bourgeois applied blood-red gouache onto wet paper and the affect of the absorption, in some inexplicable way, perfectly illuminates the complicated relationship of the female form with childbirth. I use the word “complicated” because Bourgeois work is such: beautiful, graphic, raw, and visceral. Additionally, Bourgeois often depicts the female form as an abstracted fertility form often encountered in ancient civilizations, reminding us that even with all our modern day technology, childbirth is just as primordial as it ever was.

Louise Bourgeois, "The Birth", 2007, Gouache on paper 23 1/2” x 18”, Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco and Cheim & Read, New York; Photo courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

The central piece of the exhibition, for me, was the work THE FRAGILE, 2007, a large piece of 36, 10 x 8 inches, archival dyes on fabric. Of all the work in the front room of a female form giving birth, this piece, installed in a smaller gallery room, seems the most intimate to me. This work comprises imagery of a variety of female fertility forms and spiders, juxtaposed together into a large grid. Often, Bourgeois would discuss the association of the spider form to her mother, and it is with this knowledge that the artwork reveals itself the most to the viewer. With THE FRAGILE, Bourgeois is allowing herself to be vulnerable with her audience, trusting enough to confide in us her complicated feelings about her mother, and possibly, her own role she has played in motherhood.

Louise Bourgeois, "THE FRAGILE", 2007, Archival dyes on fabric, in 36 parts 10” x 8” inches (each), Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco and Cheim & Read, New York; Photo courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

With her passing, there have been a slew of articles written about Louise Bourgeois and her contributions and positioning within art history. Many of these articles allude to the majority of her influence being felt by a largely younger, female contingency. This may be true, but one does not need to be female to appreciate and feel the power of Bourgeois’ work. One must be willing to allow him or herself to let down their walls and engage in the intimacy that Bourgeois invites the viewer to experience. In this day and age of many artists attempting to assert their identity of who and what they are in this world via their chosen medium, I defy you to find one who can strip down their psyche to such a vulnerable state as Bourgeois, while metaphorically returning your gaze.

Robert Mapplethorpe, "Louise Bourgeois in 1982 with FILLETTE, 1968", Copyright the Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe

Wangechi Mutu, "Royal Blue Arachnid Curse", (view of piece installed with damaged wall), 2005, ink, collage, contact paper on Mylar, 77 1/2 x 51 1/2 inches, Courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; Photo credit: Joshua White. Collection of Henry Kravis, New York

Aimée Reed: Tell me about the two exhibitions. Will both shows at AGO (open until May 23^rd, 2010) and Deutsche Guggenheim (April 30^th – June 13^th, 2010) feature works from the same series simultaneously?

Wangechi Mutu: No. They both come from quite a wide range of different works. AGO happened to have contacted me to work with them earlier than the Berlin folks. For example they have installation works such as The Ark Collection (a work that consists of four large vitrines displaying postcard-sized imagery of women from African Art) and Sleeping Heads (drawings of severed heads that are installed on a “damaged wall”, or a wall containing perforated holes that evoke wounds), which are both memorable and significant pieces. They also have a lot of my larger collages, the catalog Shady Promise (published by Damiani) and video works.

Wangechi Mutu, "Sleeping Heads (4 of 8)", 2006, Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins Gallery, NY

AR: The last time I saw you was at Ballroom Marfa in 2007 and at that point, correct me if I’m wrong, I felt that you had your installation pieces, and then you had your collages, as separate entities. But with these new works, such as Sleeping Heads and Royal Blue Arachnid Curse (at AGO), you have really incorporated them together to become one piece.

WM: Actually, Royal Blue Arachnid Curse was done before Marfa, but it is such a difficult priority to combine the two, that I don’t always do it so successfully and I don’t always try to do it. But now I have really made an effort to reconcile the two dimensions. Now, I am working with both and finding ways that I can play with the two dimensionality of the collage. For example, Our Lost Minds, came out of an installation called Dutty Waters, which [when installed at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London] had water pumped in from the Thames River. This evolved into Our Minds [installed at the 10^th Biennale of Lyon, The Spectacle of the Everyday, curated by Hou Hanru] which also included a curtain with the imagery of fallen heads which related to a lot of portraiture I had been doing and has to do with this collapse and breakdown of a system, while Sleeping Heads was, to me, about the leadership vacuum at this moment where I feel that we have lost our sense of direction. I say “we” as in, I don’t know, this country or our shared culture…whatever you want to call it. The last ten years were insane which culminated into the economy crashing. But there were also many other things going on that were leading toward this paradigm shift. So these fallen heads are somehow emblematic of this shift in priority. A little bit of the emperor being revealed naked.

Wangechi Mutu, "Our lost mind finding a heart in dutty water", 2007, mixed media installation; Photo credit: Haupt & Binder, included in "The Spectacle of the Everyday: the 10th Biennale de Lyon. 16 Sept 09 - 3 Jan 2010"

AR: In regards to your upcoming Deutsche Guggenheim exhibition, how are you going to approach the selection of works? The space is beautiful but it is not that massive in size.

WM: No, it’s not huge. It is more like a project room of sorts. [Because of the size], we have to make these very particular decisions about what to include. We have asked a lot of people if we could borrow work so that we can have it there as an option. There is going to be a video in the space and there are to be these bottle pieces, and the piece Intertwined is going to be a central image. The video is going to be projected at the end of the space and as you walk in, there will be a wall so that you don’t see everything inside, and the windows [and walls of the space] will be covered in blankets.

Funnily enough, I’m going back to the plates, but they are very small plates and they are sitting on these tables that are derived from images found from Rwanda where bodies were dried out on white racks.

(In a statement from the upcoming My Dirty Heaven exhibition, Mutu defines these tables as, “ones found in post Genocidal Rwanda used for exhumed bodies preserved and set using lime.”)

Wangechi Mutu, "Intertwined", 2003, 24 3/4 x 21 3/4 inches (framed), Courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; Photo credit: Gene Ogami. Private Collection

AR: I find it interesting that of the writing I have read about your work, people don’t really reference how much war plays into your ideas.

WM: I know. I think it’s because it is still one of the toughest things to admit to ourselves and it is happening right now and we are in it. Like now, Obama is in the process of creating a war. What did you expect? He is the President of the US – there is going to be a war in his time. There has been a war in nearly every President’s time.

AR: It is pretty much incorporated into our foreign policy at this point, I think.

WM: Exactly, and now, it is just about the American government’s decision to make this war a logical one that actually links to some ideology. As opposed to the way that Bush went about it by inventing a reason. I don’t think that there is any reason for war, but then again, that is why I’m not in politics.

AR: Besides the shows at AGO and the Deutsche Guggenheim, are you preparing for any other upcoming exhibitions this year?

WM: The works that are slowly forming in the studio right now are for my exhibition at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery later this year.

AR: This is your second show with her since you moved from Sikkema Jenkins Gallery, correct?

WM: No, it is my first show and I am really looking forward to it. I’m enjoying working on this upcoming show in Berlin, but my mind is also thinking about getting ready for the show at the Gladstone Gallery as well.

Besides these shows, I have other things for next year and the year after that are contingent on some of these things working out. I feel that it is a really good point for me right now because I am doing what you are perceiving – blending a lot of things and making whole spaces out of two- and three-dimensional works and video. I’m really trying to pay homage to the notion of the sublime and the abject together and using the aesthetic of rejection, or poverty, or wretchedness as a tool to talk about things that are transcendent and hopeful. Also, as a means to talk about on a very basic level, recycling and reusing because I think that there is such an urgency to come up with solutions out of things that have really been fucked with and destroyed. I think that unless we decide to have an apocalypse in order to clean the slate, in order to start again, we really do have to pick up pieces and remake and rework things and translate them into something new and hopeful.  This is what I’m trying to work through for the Berlin show and what I hope the feel of the show will be.

One of the fun elements of the Deutsche Bank Award is that they give you an option to create a series. They allow you to come at it from any angle: you can do a print, you can create an object – you can do whatever you want. So I decided I was going to do a puzzle of the image The bride who married the Camel Head. It’s printed on Corian, this beautiful white plastic that is a little bit like solid Mylar that has both the effects of enamel and matte. The box is going to be beautifully done so you can actually choose to do the puzzle and have it on your table, or you can just have the box of puzzle pieces and display it on your shelf. In one of the center pieces there will be a pendant and the puzzle will be built around it.

Wangechi Mutu, "The Bride who married the Camel Head", 2009, mixed media on mylar, 42 x 30 inches, Courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Gallery

I think it will be fun because one of the things I have been running into is trying to figure out how I can make some of the works accessible – both price-wise, and as something that people can live with. Because I also want to own certain things and I think, “Oh man, I’m working at the same time as some artists and I can’t afford their work.” That is such a bogus thing. It’s so weird. But I also know that some of my larger pieces take me so long that I can’t think of any other way to price them. So, I think that [this puzzle] is a really great way to [approach] this issue.

AR: That is so inventive to do a puzzle because you are bringing the audience into the image and having them engage and interact with the work.

WM: Right. I think if people actually make the puzzle, you sort of see this wonderful thing. I mean, I know that some people do and some don’t, but you start to really see what is happening in the collage. You find the little figures and the incredibly tiny detail of things that come together to create this microcosms of an image. I’m pulling people into my obsessive behavior.

AR: One point that I want to return to is when you were discussing how we need to either have an apocalypse to start again or that we need to re-purpose imagery to lead to solutions. This, again, brings me back to how your images directly are referencing war and how nobody seems to really want to talk about that relationship. For me, this brings up the larger issue of why we (as a society) keep having that cycle because, as you made the point before, no one wants to address it.

WM: If you eradicate that memory, it seems like it is happening for the first time in our perspective lifetimes.

AR: Exactly. [With this in mind], returning to your work, I see you taking these severed heads, these very real and graphic things that are happening today, and you are making them into beautiful images to force people to actually see them. You aren’t tricking them, because I don’t want to use that word. But it’s like masking medicine for a child with a little bit of sugar.

Wangechi Mutu, "Our lost mind finding a heart in dutty water" (detail), 2007, mixed media installation; Photo credit: Haupt & Binder, included in "The Spectacle of the Everyday: the 10th Biennale de Lyon. 16 Sept 09 - 3 Jan 2010"

WM: Yes, and it is also a strategy of creating a monument to some degree. You embalm it, you catch it in time, you bronze it to say, “This is what is happening. This is now.” I guess this is my way of doing it by appropriating imagery, but also kind of trying to keep the references slippery as to what it exactly is. And actually, people don’t always go there. It’s not because it isn’t obvious, but because they don’t want to or don’t know how to deal with it. They have never seen such a thing. They wouldn’t believe it could happen. It is kind of a mass denial of our complicity in these kinds of situations.

So, I think it’s sort of trying to slowly place this image up front yet again, and again, and again. A lot of my work is about repetition; repeating the same thing, repeating the same image by going at it from different angles. I also think it takes a while for some things to be understood. I feel that what happens is that I have to keep continuing the work in order for it to be understood, “Oh, she kind of means it.” When you are criticizing a culture from within, it is a little bit harder sometimes for people to accept it.

Edouard Duval-Carrié, Le monde actuel, ou Erzulie interceptée (The World at Present, or Ezili Intercepted), 1996, Bass Museum of Art

With the recent events developing in Haiti, the complicated history between the country and the United States has quickly surfaced. A group of American Baptists attempted to transport Haitian children out off the country without proper documentation causing an international media storm and a recent article from UK Guardian journalist Seumas Milne’s which questioned the U.S. Military’s motivation in “[commandeering] Port-au-Prince’s airport…[turning] away flights bringing medical equipment and emergency supplies from organizations…in order to give priority to landing troops.” This latent disregard seems to also be seeping into the discussion of the country’s history of art as well. In the earthquake’s aftermath, it is difficult to argue the importance of salvaging this artistic history while the reality of the devastation and number of lives lost continues to reveal itself. Yet, the recent foray of two U.S. media publications into this realm, and the aforementioned events, has led me to believe that the need for this discussion has come to us sooner rather than later.  It is the apparent unfamiliarity with Haitian culture, in this case, its art, that is most problematic and results in its artists and history to undergo further marginalization. By using its artistic history as a window into its national identity, hopefully, Haiti can be defined as more than one of the world’s poorest countries.

On January 24^th, the Los Angeles Times reported the destruction of the Centre d’Art, a historical art center founded in Port-au-Prince in 1944, which helped to launch Haitian artists onto the international art scene. There are two major problems with the article that need to be discussed further. The first is the usage of the term “primitive.” This label was used to define Haitian artists by the founders of the Centre d’Art (two Americans and a Frenchman) as a way to market said artists within the international scene. The trend in the art world during this time was to find the next great “primitive” artist, an influence of Dada and Surrealist artistic movements that sought to reclaim an innocence felt to have been lost with the industrialization of Europe. Haitian artists who were willing to be perceived through this European/American hegemonic gaze could find a place within the international art market.

Centre d'Art damage (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times / January 23, 2009)

However, there is a long tradition of Haiti’s creolized academic tradition of which a formal, figurative style in Haitian painting can be traced back to. Philomé Obin (1892 – 1986) had been painting thirty years before the center opened and is still considered one of the most influential artists on Haitian art today. His work stands as an example of the school of memorializing well-known events within Haiti’s revolutionary history, frequently referencing Haitian heroes such as Toussaint L’Ouverture and Charlemagne Péralte. Obin championed the school of nationalist art in Haiti and his influence can still be seen today in works by internationally known artists such as Edouard Duval-Carrié. To continue to refer to these artists and their works as “primitive” in this day and age without any context, as did the Los Angeles Times journalist Tracy Wilkinson, is, well, just plain lazy.

The second problematic area of the Los Angeles Times article, and in which we can also refer to the New Yorker’s January 25^th cover, is the continued use of the world “voodoo” when referring to the Haitian religion of vodou (also known as vaudou). The cover featured the painting The Resurrection of the Dead from contemporary Haitian artist Frantz Zephirin (a grand-nephew of Obin). The painting depicts imagery of vodou guide (“gods”), as they guard the passage between life and death. Both publications use the term “voodoo”, a Western construct laden with racial prejudice, with no further explanation of its immense role within Haitian art history or the formation of its national identity. Vodou is a combination of West African and Roman Catholic religions, comprised of deities, or lwas, which through worship, help practitioners get closer to the supreme god, Bondeyé. In her article Vodou, Nationalism, and Performance: The Staging of Folklore in Mid-Twentieth Century Haiti, Kate Ramsey discusses the role of the religion in the formation of the indigènisme movement, a conceptual rallying point for revolution against the U.S. occupation of 1915, rooted in ethnic and cultural identity. The religion was criminalized and those who observed its ceremonies were persecuted, forcing vodou to go underground and evolve into a locale of resistance for Haitians. During this time, vodou would become exoticized by American/European artists searching to connect to the “other”, such as choreographer Katherine Dunham and avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, best known for Divine Horseman: the Living Gods of Haiti, a film documenting vodou ceremonial rituals and practitioners.

Frantz Zephirin, The Resurrection of the Dead (2007), On the cover of the January 25, 2010 of "New Yorker" magazine

Once vodou became legal in 1946, the Centre d’Art encouraged its artists to incorporate religious imagery within their artwork, as it was perceived as purely authentic (read “primitive”). Haitian artists who made the conscientious decision to allow themselves to be labeled as “other,” were able to achieve success within the international market. A prime example is the artist Hector Hyppolite (1894-1948), who through acceptance of the role projected onto him, exhibited in Paris and New York frequently and could claim patrons such as André Breton (father of the Surrealist movement) and American author Truman Capote. In his 2000 lecture, Voodoo Terror: (mis)representations of voodoo and western cultural anxieties, presented at the October Gallery in London, John Cussans discusses the “voodoo construct” and its four different distinctions: the voodoo doll; the zombie; the voodoo witch doctor; and voodoo possession. Through these continued representations, Cussans argues, vodou has been continually objectified and suppressed by U.S./European culture and its continued need to ethnographically “authenticate,” (or define through a Western gaze), what they don’t understand. Cussans concluded, “It is this tendency to return voodoo to vodou that must be reversed if we are to resist the compassionate continuation of vodou’s suppression effected by the misguided will to authenticity.” In other words, any concept of voodoo must be abandoned when approaching the Haitian religion; otherwise, we are doing nothing more than participating in the continued misrepresentation. This is the problem with the U.S. media publications. So ingrained in the American psyche has this misrepresentation become, these journalists didn’t even think to research the religion.

Hector Hypplite (1894-1948), La dauration l'amour (The Adoration of Love), 1946-48, in the collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum

The Centre d’Art and local galleries have reported the loss of many artworks contained in their collective walls, not to mention a number of represented artists. The recent tragedy has made Haiti the world’s disaster darling and it has been tremendous how people from all over the world have responded to the country’s need for help. Yet, we need to take a collective breath and become aware that we are treading on complicated ground.  The lack of reference to any real historical, artistic or political context from both publications highlights the challenging areas that arise whenever a Western power has offered aid to Haiti. We cannot sustain meaning as a global community if we keep repeating the historic mistakes of colonization. As we go forward, we need to raise our awareness to include the entire story, not fixing Haitians and their history in a marginalized space, putting aside our preconceived notions in order to truly help Haiti. If not, I guarantee, we will have another revolution on our hands.

Marilyn Minter, Crystal Swallow (2006), Promised gift of Jeanne and Michael Klein to The Blanton Museum at the University of Texas at Austin

Now showing through April 25^th at The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is the group exhibition Desire. Curated by Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Blanton curator of American and contemporary art and director of curatorial affairs, Desire features fifty works from an international grouping of contemporary artists working in a variety of media. The concept of the exhibition is to present the many ways artists have explored the notion of desire and its many facets within their work. The thought of this concept being visually displayed is tantalizing, yet, it is only with the multiple video works that the exhibition’s guard comes down. Isaac Julien’s Long Road to Mazatlán (1999), a video collaboration with the choreographer Javier de Frutos, is a stunning visualization of the yearning of two cowboys “dancing” around their mutual attraction and the stigma that often comes along with it.  Cauleen Smith’s Elsewhere, is a sensual film of a woman standing absolutely still while another person slowly unravels her sweater by a single thread.

Amy Globus, Electric Sheep (2001 - 2002), Blanton Museum of Art, Purchase through the generosity of the 2004 Blanton Contemporary Circle

However, it is Amy Globus’s video installation Electric Sheep (2001-2002) that will make the viewer blush. Set to Emmy Lou Harris’ rendition of Neil Young’s, Wrecking Ball, a large octopus is filmed in slow motion as it makes its way from one confined space to another. While watching the piece the viewer is likely to feel all the accoutrements of desire simultaneously: longing, lust, sensuality, fantasy, rejection, sexual identity, passion, intimacy etc. Also not to be missed is Mads Lynnerup’s Untying a Shoe with an Erection (2003), a tongue-in-cheek performance of presumably a man untying his shoe with his penis. The exhibition is able to transcend being merely an exercise of artists implementing the theme of desire, perhaps a bit unwittingly, with the dominance of these video works. The question that lingers long after leaving the museum is exactly how much of a continued role visual media plays in defining our collective idea of desire.

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin, housed in a recently completed two building complex, is one of the foremost university art museums in the country. The museum’s collection is the largest and most comprehensive in Central Texas and comprises more than 18,000 works. It is recognized for its European paintings, modern and contemporary American and Latin American art, and an encyclopedic collection of prints and drawings.

Christopher Simmons & Timothy Belonax "Everything is OK," 2009 (998 Market Street)

Art in Storefronts is a pilot program initiated by the office of Mayor Gavin Newsom and implemented by the San Francisco Arts Commission and Triple Base Gallery to reclaim abandoned storefront spaces in the San Francisco neighborhoods of Mission, Bayview, Market and Tenderloin. Rounding up participating artists by sending out a call for proposals, those selected were then assigned an address where they were allowed to create large-scale installations implementing a variety of mediums. Not to miss in the Market Street section are Christopher Simmons & Tim Belonax’s Everything is OK (998 Market), a neon installation that comes at the viewer as both a reassuring mantra and a questioning of the status quo. Additionally, Paul Hayes’ breathtaking ethereal installation, Giant Ghosts (989 Market), astounds the viewer by presenting life-size floating sculptural figures out of crumpled, white paper and illuminated by bright blue light. The aspiration of the project is to try and help reinvigorate neighborhoods traditionally abandoned due to economic downturns, while simultaneously giving local artists a unique opportunity to showcase their artwork. What would be most interesting would be to see a local artist use the space to explore the artist’s role in gentrification.

Paul Hayes "Giant Ghosts," 2009 (989 Market Street)

The project runs from September 2009 – February 1, 2010 and includes the locations of Central Market and Tenderloin (opens October 23^rd), Third Street (opens October 30^th) and Lower 24^th Street (opens November 20^th). A pdf map of all installations can be downloaded at the San Francisco Arts Commission’s website.

Now showing at Steven Wolf Fine Arts Gallery in San Francisco is Bessma Khalaf’s exhibition, You’re Not There. The show is comprised of five pieces: three individual video installations and two works that reference them. In Projection (2009), the viewer is lured into a lackadaisical daze by warm and fuzzy landscape imagery, only to be immediately jolted back out of it as a fist punches through the screen from the other side. In Monument (2009), the artist films herself sitting atop an ice sculpture in the shape of a horse, maintaining a hero pose as it melts under the California sun. Monument serves as the main illustration of Khalaf’s oeuvre and her negotiation of the space between the culture from which she originates from and her adopted one. Within this undefined region, Khalaf explores a variety of themes and issues along the way such as military exaltation, American consumerism, global warming, industrial pollution, identity politics and the spirit world. Nothing is taken for granted as she searches for understanding using her dual heritage as her lens.

Bessma Khalaf was born in 1978 in Baghdad, Iraq and moved to San Diego, California just before the first Gulf War. She received her MFA in Photography from the California College of Art in 2007 and has exhibited in multiple galleries around the Bay Area including Ping Pong Gallery and Arts Benicia Gallery. This is her first one-person exhibition at Steven Wolf Fine Arts. Khalaf currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Currently exhibiting at the N2 Gallery in Barcelona, Spain are the works of Spanish artist Aurelia Munoz. The works on display are delicate, yet formidable, sculptures made of materials ranging from handmade paper to textile fibers. The piece Entre Social, 1976, is a large-scale macrame sculpture that serves as testimony to Munoz’s ability to beautifully marry geometry and abstraction with natural textiles, creating an entirely new three-dimensional artistic vocabulary. Mandala con flores, 1988, gives new meaning to the term “work on paper”. Made from tiny pieces of handmade paper, suspended on tiny strips of flax linen, Munoz successfully straddles the two and three-dimensional planes, capturing the ever-elusive medium of shadow. This exhibition, which will be on view through November, marks the first gallery exhibition for the 83 year-old in nearly thirty years, as her work primarily is shown in museums.

Aurelia Munoz was born in 1926 in Barcelona, Spain. Her works are included in many museum collections worldwide such as the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Stedelijk van Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, Scotland; Museum of Contemporary Art Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain and theMuseum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, Spain just to name a few.

American Qur’an, which opened at the Catharine Clark Gallery earlier this month, is one phase of Southern California artist Sandow Birk‘s ongoing project to hand-transcribe the 114 suras, or chapters, from the Holy Qur’an. Birk juxtaposes the text with images from contemporary American life to create a narrative which addresses the misconceptions of Islam by U.S. culture by posing the question: how did two religions that originated out of the same region of the world end up in such polarized states? Birk comes the closest to presenting an answer with the works American Qur’an/Sura 47 (A-B), 2005 and American Qur’an/Sura 44 (A-B), 2003, where he illustrates Sura 47 titled “Muhammad” with images of American soldiers in Iraq; and Sura 44, titled “Smoke” with images of the destruction of the World Trade Center. Here Birk captures the chasm between what both religions, Islam and Judeo-Christianity, purport to teach and what has actually been manifested at the hands of men. American Qur’an is being concurrently exhibited at the Koplin Del Rio Gallery in Los Angeles and another installment of the project will be exhibited at PPOW in New York in 2010.

Sandow Birk received his B.F.A in painting from the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles. His work has an emphasis on social issues and his past work has included Los Angeles barrio life, inner-city violence, graffiti, prisons, surfing, skateboarding, Dante’s Divine Comedy and the War in Iraq. Birk has received an NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, a Getty Fellowship, and a City of Los Angles Fellowship. His most recent project, The Depravities of War, was published as a monograph by HuiPress, Makawao, Hawaii and Grand Central Press, Grand Central Art Center, California State University, Fullerton. Birk often collaborates with his wife who is also a practicing artist, Elyse Pignolet. Birk has exhibited with Catharine Clark Gallery since 1994.