I witnessed at least a handful of passerby pause in front of the glass-front façade of the Jones Center in downtown Austin, Texas. They shuffled through pockets and bags to find their iPhones, quizzically documenting the two unusual objects on view. How much contemporary art stops people dead in their tracks, not to scoff and mutter “well, I could do that,” but rather to ponder “how did he think to do that?” or perhaps, more importantly, “why?”

Installation image of "Nick Cave: Hiding in Plain Sight" at the Jones Center, AMOA-Arthouse, September 28–December 30, 2012. Courtesy of AMOA-Arthouse, Photos by Eric Nix.

We are thrilled to bring you a review of Liu Wei’s recent solo exhibition at Long March Space, from our partner ArtSpy, a website based in Beijing, P.R.China that is committed to establishing a platform for global artistic information. This article was originally written for ArtSpy and has been translated exclusively for DailyServing.

This new exhibition is divided into two sections. One presents a continuation of previous techniques—great numbers of wooden slats assembled in a circular configuration, giving the appearance of a conference room, or an ashtray, even though neither of these objects, nor any other, is the focus of the piece.

Actually, the foregrounding of the innate qualities of materials and forms is a consistent feature of Liu Wei’s practice. Variations of material in space and a sense of order perceivable between forms has become a vital element to the creation of his works. Liu Wei has never provided concrete images or designs, instead allowing his builders to complete the work according to a blueprint. Working together with them, the structure takes shape over the course of a ceaseless creative and building process, which is carried out in strict observance of the properties of the materials in use, as well as the sequential logic of the form. This process proceeds organically, and doesn’t only manifest itself in the gradual production of a formal object, but is also extended across the whole gallery space. This becoming of form acts as a unit of material in itself, blending with, adhering to the structure of the gallery space, and extending out into it.

Read More »

Help Desk is an arts-advice column that demystifies practices for artists, writers, curators, collectors, patrons, and the general public. Submit your questions anonymously here. All submissions become the property of Daily Serving. Help Desk is cosponsored by KQED.org.

I recently had to pick the edition size of a digital interactive project I made. I just went with a standard ten but it got me thinking. I understand that when you are making prints for example each piece in the edition has to be physically produced by the artist. Thus it makes sense to limit the number of pieces that can be made. But why arbitrarily constrict the number of something that can be copied infinitely at no cost or time to me? Video works would be another example of this. Movies, music, and literature don’t have this type of artificial supply constriction. Can you please explain the function and process of editioning digital art?

In general, edition numbers vary for reasons both pragmatic and market-driven. Traditionally, the edition run of a print on paper is determined partially by its technology; most printmaking media such as etching plates degrade with repeated use. Therefore, if you want the last print to look as good as the first, you have to limit the overall number of prints produced so that every print is of nearly the same quality. It has less to do with being physically produced by the artist—many editions are contracted out to printing houses—and more to do with the inverse relationship between edition size and print quality.

But, of course, there is no limit to the amount of digital copies you can generate from an original file, because unlike prints on paper, the reproduction quality never deteriorates no matter how many CDs or DVDs you burn. So should you limit the number of copies available? It’s a great question, but the answer isn’t arbitrary even though it may be artificial.

Cory Arcangel, Sweet 16, 2006. Projection from a digital source, dimensions variable, edition of 5

One factor to remember in digital editioning is that it’s contingent on the art-historical precedent set by the conventions of more traditional media. Capital-A Art typically has an aura, in part because the art object is singular (a painting) or because the technology that produced it can only last through a limited number of runs (lithography stones, ceramic molds). This has a direct bearing on digital editioning—generally, when a new technology is introduced to the arts it has to fit into the established paradigm.

In addition to its reliance on preexisting standards absorbed from other media, editioning of digital work is also market-driven. In a capitalist society, restricted supply means increased value, so when the medium itself is cheap and infinitely reproducible, value can be contrived by limiting its availability.

In the case of digital editioning, historical precedence and market forces conspire—sometimes to an absurd extent. For instance, some videos are now created in editions that include “artist’s proofs”—a term used in traditional printing for the very first prints, of higher quality resulting from the fresh printing stone. Print-on-paper APs, it can be reasoned, are more valuable because they are generally sharper and more colorful than subsequent prints; but video APs have no such enhanced clarity, making them into something between an embarrassment and an in-joke.

Cory Arcangel, I Shot Andy Warhol, 2002. Interactive video installation

All skepticism aside, creating a limited run of a digital work is a perfectly legitimate practice. Doing so is a promise to collectors that you will not devalue their purchase by making additional copies of the work at a later date. And if you do limit the edition, it is important that you stick to this promise, painful though it may be in the long run if demand for the work increases. The question of whether or not to limit an edition of a digital work hinges on your priorities. If wide distribution is your first priority then it would be more advantageous to produce a larger edition or an open edition. If you desire a high financial value for the work then a limited edition and the scarcity it creates will serve you better.

Read More »

There are a lot of things happening every day that are inevitably missed by the majority of, if not all people. Objects go unnoticed, small actions occur without anyone ever knowing. And these insignificant parts of our world could remain invisible forever if it weren’t for the few individuals who actively seek them out. Paul Graham has the uncanny ability to find the quiet and beautiful moments that are necessarily ignored by everyone else. On view now at MoMA PS1, New Pictures of Common Objects examines the mundane pieces of daily life and reinterprets their possibilities.

The following article was originally published on March 29, 2012 by Madeline McLean:

The Pace Gallery and Pace/MacGill Gallery debut Paul Graham: The Present with a striking selection of sixteen diptychs and two triptychs. This series concludes a trilogy with the series a shimmer of possibility (2004–2006) and American Night (1998–2002), both of which showed in numerous institutions and galleries internationally. Alongside the exhibition of The Present, Graham has published a 114-page monograph with London-based MACK, which will present the series in its entirety.

Paul Graham, 53rd Street & 6th Avenue, 6th May 2011, 2.41.26 pm (2011), pigment print mounted on Dibond, 56" x 74 1/4" (diptych), © Paul Graham 2012

Read More »

We are thrilled to bring you a review of The Theme Exhibition of the 4th Guangzhou Triennial from our partner ArtSpy, a website based in Beijing, P.R.China that is committed to establishing a platform for global artistic information. This article was originally written for ArtSpy and has been translated exclusively for DailyServing.

Michael Craig-Martin, An Oak Tree, assorted objects and printed text under glass, glass on shelf. 15 × 46 × 14 cm. 1973. Collection: National Gallery of Australia.

About the theme, as curator Jiang Jiehong said, “The Unseen is the main framework for this themed exhibition, and not a topic that it needs to revolve around. Under limited visual experience, projecting expectations that would exceed natural perceptive experience”

This themed exhibition is made up of three sections – with Guangdong Museum of Art as the main venue together with special project “Grandview Project” and the performances at the Guangzhou Opera House. The main venue is a traditional exhibition venue, every piece of work is a sense, “observing” some kind of explanation and illumination around the theme, the space seem to be in a temperate manner, contrived.

Jonathan Schipper, Slow Motion Car Crash, installation. Dimensions variable. 2006.

Giovanni Anselmo, For an Incision in an Indefinite Number of Thousands of Years, iron, rust preventive, wall inscription. 1969.

The Grandview Mall is a large general shopping center that everyone in Guangzhou is familiar with. All works presented do not have any description or label, “lurking” in the public spaces, which once again, highlight the issue of which is between the artist and the audience, between art and the public space.

Below are some thoughts expressed by the general public.

Passerby 1 - Middle-aged female customer: No, no idea what that is, don’t feel much about it.

Passerby 2 - Young male customer: (Next to Date and Left Right Left) why is there so many of these February 28^th? And these lights. Is it meant to turn this place into some sort of city landscape? This is a theme, right? (Blushes) And so it can’t leave. The city itself is a work of art. (If you weren’t told that this is a work of art) I think it’s cool. (About this lurking display) Also quite good, but you must really pay attention.

Read More »

#Hashtags provides a platform for longer reconsiderations of artworks and art practices outside of the review format and in new contexts. Please send queries and/or ideas for future columns to hashtags@dailyserving.com.

Gustaf Mantel

Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year is finally here: GIF. Not the noun, but the verb. In fact, the noun is boring, old hat. The first GIF (the first file ever formatted as a graphic interchange format, with lossless compression) dates back to the mid-‘80s; the first GIF posted to the Internet is now twenty years old. And contrary to what you think you know, GIFs don’t have to be animated. That first picture, for instance, featuring girlfriends and friends of a bunch of CERN scientists (yes, the Higgs Boson CERN), isn’t.

But “to GIF” is something different: not just to create a GIF file (as Oxford defines it), but to animate – to appropriate – cultural detritus in a unique fashion. And, like any medium, some artists are better at working with it than others, using it as a tool to challenge their audience to think in new ways. In reality, the GIF is just another part of a long lineage, from the collage to the ready-made, on through the Pictures generation and toward the mashup. If Cindy Sherman, Sherry Levine, Richard Prince and Jack Goldstein had been born millenials, their medium (or action) of choice may well have been the GIF.

It’s eerie how closely Goldstein’s looped films resemble GIFs, especially “MGM,” which features the MGM lion roaring over and over against a red background, or the illustrated birds in “Bone China,” which come alive and ceaselessly circle a dinner plate. Like many popular GIFs, the constant repetition of Goldstein’s films makes the normal abnormal and the bizarre laughable.

In my opinion, however, the most effective GIFs (beyond those that embrace a slapstick humor) offer an antidote or counterpoint to Goldstein. Take the work of Gustaf Mantel, for example, whose Tumblr, If we don’t, remember me, features animated gifs paired with quotes, snipped from films as diverse as The Conversation (1974), Suspira (1977), Ghost World (2001), and Sedmikrásky (1966). The most successful and haunting are those with only a whisper of movement, which somehow evoke the mood of the film without completely reanimating it.[1] Slowly but surely, Mantel and others seem to be playing with the form’s potential for something I can only call “suspended animation”: inviting us, as viewers, to occupy a single frame,[2] yet maintain an awareness of the image’s motion, and of passing time.

Wafts of ginger and cilantro from the nearby Vietnamese eateries swirls around the propelling bus exhaust as I walk through London’s funky Shoreditch on an overcast day. Though I (embarrassingly) have not yet visited before, the unexpected island of pristine glass of the Flower’s Gallery is not hard to miss among the rickety cheap shoe shops and tabacs littered with half-shredded ice cream posters. A cool brightness takes over as I pass through the white entryway and patter along the polished concrete floors. The space is larger than expected, and there are three very different exhibitions on display – without a sense of crowding. Upstairs I find what I am looking for: a small group exhibition of works tucked away in a single, airy room.

Installtion view of 'Brush it In' at Flowers Gallery. Photo courtesy of Flowers Gallery.

Loosely based around conceptual photography and curated by Lorenzo Durantini, the simply presented Brush it in is a curious and intriguing grouping. As I walk through, the photo-based works seem to have very little in common at first: some gaudy and metallic, others graphic and hyper-real, there are elegant still lifes, photos stuck directly to the wall or printed on sculptural plastic creeping out of it. Subjects include vases, sneakers, tools, furniture, rocks, raindrops and abstract patterns, some insanely bright with color and others in cool black and white. Although heavily laden with banal objects, it soon becomes clear that, curatorially-speaking, the subjects of the photos are not necessarily the subject of this exhibition, a rarity in photography. Rather, it is the variegation in process and concept. It is ostensibly a formal show about the nature of today’s photography.

Antonio Marguet, 'Exotic Juicy Tutti Frutti,' 2011 C-type print Ed.5, 106.5 x 91.5 cm. Photo courtesy of Flowers Gallery.

As its name suggests the show has a strong focus on digital photography and computer-generated imagery, ‘Brush it in’ referring to the process of making alterations to a photograph after the fact. The expression implies a hiding of mistakes or blemishes – emphasizing the multifarious ways in which to merely correct or enhance an already existing image. It hardly need be said that today, ‘brushing it in’ is part of an entirely self-contained medium; digital manipulation is a pre-intended process in which many artists fully invest their creativity in image making. Yet, although Photoshop has existed since the late eighties, the realization that a photograph has been digitally manipulated is still met with varying degrees of controversy – digital correction being ironically associated with a sort of damage, inauthenticity, or to put it more simply, cheating.

Read More »