Issues of under-financing, administrative inadequacy and lack of community support are some of the problems that can be found currently in multiple organizations in New Orleans. Prospect New Orleans, a nascent biennial founded in 2008 has had its share of these issues. However, new leadership and the selection of an artistic director whose passion and interests jive with many of the cultural and social issues in the city suggest a new maturity and professionalism to be found in the upcoming edition.

Presently the Chief Curator of Contemporary Art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Franklin Sirmans has taken on an additional role: Artistic Director for Prospect.3 in New Orleans. With recent news of the Biennial getting pushed back a year to 2014, this time presents a good opportunity to reflect with Sirmans on how he would like to see Prospect.3 define itself.

Franklin Sirmans. Photo by Julia Galdo.

Tori Bush: So, when did the opportunity to curate Prospect.3 arise and how does it relate to the work you’ve done at LACMA, the Menil Collection and Dia Center for the Arts?

Franklin Sirmans: The opportunity was presented after coming down to meet some members of the board via Dan Cameron, whose work I have admired. In some ways Prospect.3 might coincide with some of what I do at LACMA because that is where I am living and thinking and working closely with my colleagues Rita Gonzalez and Christine Y. Kim, who will advise me for Prospect.3, which, in many ways, I see as an extension of our everyday work.

Dia and the Menil are formative places for me, so the effect they will have might be there but far less noticeable than my work here at LACMA. Different things can, and have been done at those institutions keeping in mind the varied needs of three very different places covering this country, geographically and conceptually: New York, Houston, and Los Angeles. I try to be hyperaware of my surroundings. A show like NeoHooDoo played differently in New York, Houston and Miami though the overall framework was the same in each place. The resonance was different and that is the sort of texture I am interested in.

TB: New Orleans can be a politically savvy and wonderfully proud place. I was wondering how sensitive you are to that and how you will take the culture of New Orleans and Louisiana into account?

FS: I’ve never done an international biennial before so I have no personal blueprint but I anticipate a show that has a good deal to say about where it is. This region and its immediate surroundings within the southern United States, more specifically (and affectionately, at least in Houston, called the 3rd Coast), the entire Gulf of Mexico region excites the hell out of me and has been a subtext of some of my work in the past.

At this point I’m wide open, not letting any theme guide me, just trying to listen and look to artists and the world around us at the moment. My desire is to spend some time getting the lay of the land, meeting people and figuring out venues early on, hopefully by the end of the year. After that, we shall see.

TB: Recently, there have been some discussions around the lack of site specific installations in Prospect.2 which had been so impressive in Prospect 1. How do you plan on integrating the profound amount of architectural and historical space of the city into your installations?

FS: I think site specificity is an integral part of any biennial type of exhibition where the city itself is a living host and really the backdrop and conceptual background of the exhibition and this can happen in varied ways. It was refreshing to see the last Venice Biennale make the city a conceptual part of its main exhibition, Illuminations. Three of the very first works encountered in this biennial of contemporary art were 16th century paintings by the Venetian artist Tintoretto.

Tintoretto. The Stealing of the Dead Body of St. Mark, 1562-66; The Last Supper 1592-94. Shown on view at the 2011 Venice Biennale.

In this case, the selection of New Orleans by Dan Cameron was very specific. It is a unique city, in so many ways. We all know that it is the birthplace of jazz; it is a pivotal place in America’s multicultural heritage; and Prospect began, in part because of Katrina and I will go absolutely no further in trying define a place I only know as an outsider. The foundation of Prospect is very closely tied to a reading of the city as integral to the art showcased in its biennial. I hope to explore those roots in selecting and presenting artworks and artists who are also interested in that history.

Back to the question. A tough question for me right now. The New Orleans contemporary art scene is raw and energetic, judging from the energy that comes from the galleries and the artists’ initiatives that are in St. Claude in particular. One could imagine doing a show that embraces a certain guerilla style representative of the city and looks solely to the inspiration that artists might find in the nooks and crannies of the city. But, on the other hand, there is the desire to show an American-based biennial that also embraces in part the language of the international biennial exhibition and thus there are certain traditional spaces that will also play an integral role in delivering some sort of a cohesive thematic around the exhibition. To be more specific to your question, I don’t know. It’s hard to say right now.

TB: With so many troubling issues in New Orleans – a test tube education system, crumbling ecosystems and the highest rate of murder per capita in the United States in 2011 – do you think Prospect.3 will seek to address these complex topics?

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Glen Fogel, installation shot of “My Apocalyptic Moment,” 2012. Image courtesy of PICA.

My Apocalyptic Moment, by New-York-based artist Glen Fogel, and currently on view at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, is a show about impact and identity, mediated by desire. Projections of wedding rings fill an empty loft; love letters are reproduced at five feet tall; a model’s collaged portrait hangs on a rooftop in the middle of the city. Fogel works at the scale of advertisements, of billboards and banners. However the content, and the source material, is the handheld and the personal.

“With Me… You” is a five-channel video installation that documents the wedding rings within Fogel’s family, beginning with his great grandmother’s ring and ending with his sister’s. Fogel filmed the rings in HD video, following the aesthetics of the Home Shopping Network; the rings were placed on a turntable and the footage put through a star filter, making them glisten and sparkle. It’s a twenty-minute loop, at the end of which the videos fade, and fluorescent lights come on (which are spaced evenly and consistently along the walls). Reviews of Fogel often comment on the “hypnotizing” nature of Fogel’s videos. More accurately, I think the videos are cold—they’re polished, streamlined, and absent of any marks that might suggest the handmade. The maker seems absent from the art; the work seems authorless.

Glen Fogel, “With Me… You,” 2011, 5-channel video installation, fluorescent lights, 20 minute 4 second loop. Dimensions variable. Image courtesy of PICA.

That is, until you pick up a humble piece of takeaway literature, placed at a table near the videos. It is a copy of a 2010 letter written from the artist to FedEx, and is the first detection of a self-possessed (and emotional) voice in the show. After Fogel filmed his mother’s ring, he opted to return it via mail. The ring was shipped from Brooklyn to Fogel’s mother, in Denver, and insured for $6000. The package arrived empty. “The ring is irreplaceable—the stones and band can be replaced, but the history cannot,” Fogel wrote. It seems noteworthy that this piece of paper, easily overlooked and essentially meant to be thrown away, gives so much insight into the installation; it operates as an asterisked footnote, at the bottom of the commercial appearance of the videos (indeed, a reminder to “read the fine print”). Without it, you wouldn’t be aware of the history of the rings, of their relationship to the artist, or the labor and trouble caused in making these slick videos.

Fogel also includes a series of photorealistic paintings, commissioned by himself and painted in China. They are giant reproductions of love letters, written to Fogel when he was in his teens, by three admirers. You’d expect the letters to be dishy, but they really aren’t. The language in them is fluff, like the melodramatic words that drift from an idle mind stuck in study hall, or a suicide note from a soap opera, i.e. non-specific: “Glen Fogel, what magic and enchantment that name is to me, now more than ever before…You have dropped me deeper into heartbreak than I have ever fallen before.”

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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 co-sponsored by KQED.org.

Your counselor, hard at work.

Do you think that contemporary art pieces that are controversial or seem to have required little effort contribute to the opposition of government funding of the arts?

The way your question is phrased makes me think you already had an answer in mind when you wrote, but I’m going to play the naïf and take it at face value (to begin with, at least) and simply answer no.

What does contribute to the opposition to government funding of the arts? Historically, it’s been individuals and groups not directly involved in the arts who, for various religious, political and ideological reasons, feel that they are entitled to dictate to us all what art is and should be. Others seem to be opposed to government funding of pretty much anything strictly on the basis of their desire not to pay any taxes. So there’s your query answered, right?

Andres Serrano, Piss Christ,1987. Cibachrome print mounted on Plexiglas, 23.5 x 16 in

But underneath my innocent demeanor is a deep concern that you’re blaming the victim. “It’s controversial, so it was asking for funding cuts,” sounds to me like grossly flawed reasoning. Do you really think that poor old Piss Christ should take the blame for the funding cuts to the NEA? Or should we blame the politicians like Jesse Helms and Al D’Amato who worked tirelessly on a campaign of misinformation and propaganda to create a culture war in order to promulgate wedge issues that to this day keep an emotionally unstable populace distracted from issues like racism, sexism, the economy and war? The artworks cited in the struggle to limit funding for the arts are red herrings used to conceal what are, in fact, simple political agendas.

Further, you cite a nebulous group of works that “seem to have required little effort” and I wonder what effort has to do with any of this. How would we even begin to decide how much effort went into a work of art before it could receive government funding? Should there be a Department of Homeland Artistic Effort? Remember that Marcel Duchamp signed a name to a urinal and exhibited it as a sculpture, an act that was so pivotal that we’re still talking, writing, and arguing about it nearly a hundred years later. Sometimes the simplest ideas turn out to be the most potent.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, original destroyed. Porcelain, dimensions unconfirmed, approx. 360 x 480 x 610 mm

Right now I am taking a course that introduces students to the images and works that artists in the “contemporary art” sphere are producing. I realize I may be alone in this opinion, but I can’t help but feel discouraged watching piece after piece flash onto the overhead-screen. When I produce a painting, drawing, photograph, or even a poem, it is often a painful process and the final product is always emotionally charged. Placing something so personal and painstakingly meaningful in a gallery of chocolate Jesus sculptures, diamond skulls, dot paintings, Piss Christs, and dead animal tanks just doesn’t seem appropriate. This class makes me regret the decision to major in studio art (a seemingly meaningless and ridiculous discipline) and has ruined all positive connotations the title “artist” used to carry. So my question is: Am I the only person who thinks pieces of the contemporary art world are demeaning and deprive art of any credibility? Where’s the challenge and talent in art if all you have to do is make use of repulsive, explicit, and/or offensive media?

Oh, those teenage years. Here you are, driven by hormones and angst, searching your soul deeply in order to artistically express your vital emotional states which no doubt ping-pong between the pit of despair and the mountain’s peak of elation.

I am sorry to hear that you find your coursework disheartening, but I’m sure we can all agree that it’s better for you to find out sooner rather than later that contemporary art is not your cup of tea. Really, that’s what the undergraduate experience is all about  and you’re always free to change your major to a subject you find less painful, like kinesiology or microeconomics.

Piero Manzoni, Merda d’artista, 1961. Mixed media, edition of 90.

Obviously you are not the only person to have these sad thoughts about contemporary art (c.f. Jesse Helms, above), so I’m going to assume your first actual question is hyperbolic for effect and not because you are a simpleton. However, your second and final question warrants some deliberation: if “all you have to do” indeed is make repulsive, explicit, and offensive art, why don’t you try it? Certainly art created in this manner carries an emotional charge that you might find cathartic. Also, I would love for you to explore the process of making this kind of art and attempting to have it funded and exhibited. You might find the answer to your entreaty for challenge and talent.

Luckily for you, you will never ever be asked to place your emotionally charged and painstakingly meaningful work in the same venue with the diamond skulls, dot paintings, or dead animals in tanks that you deplore. I guarantee it! And good luck with the rest of your adolescence.

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast
A weekly column by Catherine Wagley

Meg Cranston. Rock Bottom, 2005. Paper, gelatin silver prints, varnish. Dimensions variable. Installation view, Michael Janssen Galerie, Cologne.

My sister, who is on a Fulbright in Thailand and living in a small village in the Uttaradit Province, realized a week ago that she needed a haircut. This was nerve-wracking. There were cultural differences and language barriers involved, and nothing makes you crabbier than a haircut that isn’t right. She asked a woman named P’Oong, and said “My hair is not beautiful,” partly because it was truly how she felt, partly because it was something she knew how to say in Thai. P’Oong pulled back her hair and said, “Chai ka. Oh, but your face is beautiful and your eyes are the sea (ta-lay) and your smile is genuine (jingjai) and your body is catwalk.” Wrote my sister, “For the rest of my life, I will fly back to P’Oong to get my hair cut.”

Good curators are like good hairdressers, writes artist Meg Cranston in a smart 2011 essay for Bard’s Red Hook Journal for Curatorial Studies. “Younger curators in particular tend to see their job as a hermeneutic pursuit to uncover or properly define the themes illustrated by objects in the work,” she explains.  This is the “curator as journalist” method, exhibition-assembling as a fact-finding, storytelling mission. But once the story is found and told, the objects are just placeholders, and “the exhibition doesn’t really matter.” Instead, curators should be far more superficial and image focused: like hairdressers, “the best ones make you look good, the worst ones ask how they should cut your hair.” The best curators have “the goal of creating a captivating appearance that eases the burden of received notions of truth.”

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As part of our ongoing partnership with Flavorwire, Daily Serving is sharing Emily Temple‘s preview of Yasuaki Onishi‘s amazing invisible mountains at the Rice University Art Gallery in Houston, Texas.

Yasuaki Onishi, reverse of volume RG, 2012. Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, Texas. Photo by Nash Baker.

In his new installation at the Rice University Art Gallery, which we first spotted over at Artlog, Japanese artist Yasuaki Onishi continues his Reverse of Volume series with a gorgeous cloud-like confection suspended in the gallery space. Like the other works in the series, this site-specific installation was crafted by a process Onishi calls “casting the invisible”: he drapes clear plastic sheets over cardboard boxes and drips black glue from the ceiling to hold them in place, ultimately removing the cardboard to achieve the floating mountainous form. Click through to check out some amazing photos of Onishi’s work, and then, if you’re intrigued as to the process, head to his Vimeo page to watch a video about the artwork. The installation will be on view until June 24th at the Rice University Art Gallery.

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Lorna Macintyre; Installation view. Midnight Scenes & Other Works, Mary Mary, Glasgow 2012. Image courtesy of Mary Mary, Glasgow.

This concluding feature on Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art presents Lorna Macintyre – ‘Midnight Scenes & Other Works’, a solo exhibition of recent works by Glasgow-based artist Lorna Macintyre at Mary Mary, Glasgow that runs till 2 June 2012.

Lorna Macintyre; Midnight Scenes 2012; Steel, chain, stainless steel, ferric ferrocyanide crystals; 107.5 x 10 x 21 cms / 42 3/8 x 3 7/8 x 8 1/4 ins. Image courtesy of Mary Mary, Glasgow.

The exhibition’s title is drawn from the 1858 publication, ‘Midnight scenes and social photographs: sketches of life in the streets, wynds, and dens of the city [of Glasgow]’ by Alexander Brown, a letterpress printer in Glasgow, containing what he termed as “facts and observations” of the conditions of the poor, with photographs of the streets of Glasgow taken by moonlight. The imagery of midnight scenes bathed in the glow of moonlight suggest a particular point of time that demarcates the nebulous zones of night and day, dark and light, where concrete reality becomes enmeshed within and transformed by myth – themes that emerge in the exhibition.

Lorna Macintyre; Everything merges with the night (detail) 2012; Cyanotype collage, glass, wood; 44 x 30 x 6 cms / 17 3/8 x 11 3/4 x 2 3/8 ins. Image courtesy of Mary Mary, Glasgow.

The idea of moonlight emerging amidst darkness to reveal a situation from a different perspective parallels the way that the gradual exposure to light is used as an artistic process for Macintyre’s works. Dark blue crystals encrust the steel tubes of Midnight Scenes, a sculptural work whose tactility is a result of a process where light is used to alter the composition and appearance of materials. Macintyre uses cyanotype, a photographic technique requiring a photosensitive solution and exposure to sunlight. A monitor placed amongst Macintyre’s cyanotype collages and photographs displays a digital animation. At intervals, the blue appearing on its screen alters to another shade. Whilst pointing to the range of blue tones within the gallery space, its inclusion makes visible the contrasting production techniques, from a highly controlled digital format to one that reveals the effects of chance, light and time on materials, to create silhouettes of different intensities.

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#Hashtags features writing about art at the intersection of both pop culture and politics, but what does it mean for a work of art to be political? #onartandpolitics will feature occasional interviews with writers, artists, and curators on this topic, kicking off with Matthew Harrison Tedford, an editor at Art Practical and a #Hashtags contributor. DS spoke with Tedford last year as he coordinated programming a panel event about the nature of performance, art, and politics at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. This interview was first published at KQED.org.

Installation view of Wafaa Yasin's 'Aesh (Livelihood),' 2008.

DS: You’ve been writing about the relationship between politics and art for a little while, not just at Art Practical, but in other publications. How did you come to the topic?

Matthew Harrison Tedford: Originally, I studied political philosophy, so I’m indebted to that discourse. Personally, however, I became disillusioned because I felt the conversation was disconnected from reality. So I began to look at art through this lens. It’s not that art is really any more concrete, but there’s something about it that’s helped me to clarify my questions about politics. There are other avenues for this: becoming an activist, becoming a politician, for example. But, for someone interested in the arts, like myself, looking at political art is a way to engage as an activist or a politician might, without having to martyr yourself to a profession you might not be interested in.

DS: Were you an activist? Or an artist?

MHT: I tried to get involved with campus politics, but I found it frustrating. There was this mentality where if you raised a legitimate question, you were attacked for somehow being counter-revolutionary. It seemed very superficial and reactionary. So in that proto-radical, post-adolescent scene, I became withdrawn, but this wasn’t something I was happy about. I was left with a question about how to be involved with politics, given the unappealing experiences I’d had. Which is not to say that all political groups are like this, or that even most political groups are like this! I just didn’t want to be part of a group that wasn’t open to being questioned.

DS: Do you feel like there’s a lack of conversation about the relationship between art and politics?

MHT: No. Certainly not. My personal interest is to clarify this relationship, to make it more concrete. I think sometimes works are seen as political just because they have political content. For instance, just because it’s a painting of George Bush, it’s seen as political. For me, I need the definition to be more meaningful. My goal has been to really define what makes a work of art political, or when does art function as a political phenomenon versus just an artwork?

MIchael Heizer's 'Levitated Mass' on the move, 2012. Photo by Will Brown Hernandez.

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