Laura Letinsky, Untitled #14 (from the Ill Form and Void Full series), 2010-2011. Courtesy of the artist; Valerie Carberry Gallery, Chicago; and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.

Laura Letinsky is a master at having it both ways. She photographs messes that are exquisitely tidy. She uses white like a color. She presents endings in a moment when they are still new, still vibrating with just spent energy. She captures objects as images and images as objects. She makes decay look gorgeous.

Letinsky is known for her artfully arranged still life photographs of empty ice cream bowls, half-eaten and over-ripened cantaloupes, and slumping party balloons. Over the last decade, she has chronicled the moments after the party, after the sumptuous meal, after all the ice has melted and all the guests have gone home. With the eye of a commercial art director, her photographs are as fastidiously orchestrated as those you might find in a Martha Stewart catalogue. Similar, that is, if the Grande Dame of country house finery employed petit bourgeois entertaining as a metaphor for loss, mortality, and the tragic promise of unattainable perfection, as Letinsky does.

At Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Laura Letinsky’s self-titled exhibition “Laura Letinsky” consists of large-scale still life photographs from her series Ill Form and Void Full and expands upon her exploration of earlier themes by incorporating collage elements into her tableaus. Decaying food items, wilting flowers, and dirty silverware are arranged next to magazine images of fresh fruit and sparkling serving dishes in order to create a poetic effect that complicates viewers’ perception of what is on display.

Laura Letinsky, Untitled #3 (from the series Ill Form and Void Full), 2010. Courtesy of the artist; Valerie Carberry Gallery, Chicago; and Yancey Richardson Gallery.

Within the reality of these photographs there is the constant question of which elements are authentic and which elements are mediated; what is an actual object and what is actually an image of an object? A lime rind twisting through Untitled #3 (2010) appears to be a paper cut out. But it also casts a shadow. The paper is an object in space with an image printed on it. The lime rind – as well as the ripe cantaloupe and candy dish also featured in the piece – is an idealized depiction of an every day object. It’s also an idea pertaining to decoration, one that casts a shadow on our desires as consumers and on our notions of what to strive for as members of an image conscious society, but only exists in print.

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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.

Your counselor, hard at work.

What is the most effective way to build a relationship with galleries and eventually have your work shown? Do you simply walk in with a portfolio of works/images and try to convince them of how great you are? Do you go to show openings and schmooze with gallery owners?

Sneak attack! Imagine that you are a kindly gallerist, minding your own business (literally) and making a few phone calls to chat up some nice collectors, when suddenly there is an eager artist at your desk with a portfolio. He wants your attention RIGHT NOW, though he does not have an appointment, though it is obvious that you are busy working. Put yourself in the dealer’s shoes: even if this kid is the next Jean-Michel Basquiat, are you likely to give him a solo show, let alone a second glance? No, what you are going to give this guy is a swift boot to the rear end.

You won’t get a gallery by pouncing on an unsuspecting dealer.

The most effective way to build a relationship is to build a relationship. Go to openings, yes, but do not schmooze because schmoozing is yucky and gallerists can see right through you. Instead, look at the art, and then think about it until you find something intelligent to say, and then go say it to the gallerist (and also to the artist, please, who is standing awkwardly to one side hoping that someone will say something–anything–intelligent to her this evening). Is there a question you have about the work? Did it make you think of something you saw, or read, or experienced? Go have a conversation, because conversations are the best way to build relationships.

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Today we take another look at the conversation between Andrea Bowers and Julie Henson, originally posted on August 7, 2o10. Bowers is now included in the group exhibition Artist as Subject  at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, on view through May 27, 2012.

"No Olvidado - Not Forgotten", 2010. 23 graphite on paper drawings. Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo credit Robert Wedemeyer.

There are very few artists today who willingly take a direct political position in their work. Often artists neglect how powerful artwork can be as an instigator for social and political change. In many ways art and politics, or art and activism, have gone hand in hand throughout history, helping to over come social injustice. But, just as often, artwork has acted as a tool to help further social and economic inequalities by declaring ownership and possession.

As an artist that has committed her work to implementing social activism through art making, Andrea Bowers’ drawings and video eloquently document the lives of those who directly interact with the political system, through such issues as illegal immigration and land ownership. Her methods of representation help to humanize and quantify abstract concepts, such as the number of deaths caused by border crossing, through subtle interactions and involvement with her documented subjects. When modern media often explores these issues in a removed and politicized manner, Bower’s work reminds us of the individual. The simple act of documentation gives a face to those who are otherwise overshadowed by the dominating political sphere.

After viewing her recent exhibition at Susanne Veilmetter Los Angeles Projects, which closed last week, I had the privilege of meeting with the artist to discuss the roles of artists and activists, the function of memorials, and personal commitment to public issues.

"No Olvidado - Not Forgotten", 2010. 23 graphite on paper drawings. Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo credit Robert Wedemeyer.

Julie Henson: To start with, could you tell me a little bit about your show, The Political Landscape, at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects?

Andrea Bowers: The Political Landscape continues my recent exploration of contemporary issues associated with the genre of landscape.  It focuses on contentious locations where countries and corporations are willing to cause environmental degradation or human rights violations for the purpose of attaining or maintaining power.  One of the earliest functions of the landscape picture has been to provide evidence of ownership; in this project I aim to reveal the abuse of ownership. For the exhibition, I have made two different projects that focus on two different sites in the American West: public land in the state of Utah and the Mexican/American border.

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Liz Miller‘s installations are stunningly elaborate compositions, combining materials and shapes in ways that often belie our expectations. In her current exhibition, Recalcitrant Mimesis, Miller responds to the work of Abstract Expressionist painter Clyfford Still, whose museum opened late last year in Denver. Recalcitrant Mimesis is up through today at David B. Smith Gallery in Denver. Miller’s work is also currently included in the group exhibition Abstract Fiction at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Union Art Gallery through February 24.

DailyServing contributor Allie Haeusslein had the opportunity to speak with Miller about her distinctive process and approach to wide-ranging forms on the occasion of these two exhibitions.

Liz Miller. "Recalcitrant Mimesis, " 2012 at David B. Smith Gallery, Denver, CO. Mixed media installation. Photo credits: Paul Winner. Courtesy of the Artist.

I’m really interested in your use of materials, which for me seem to play with notions of weight and weightlessness, ephemerality and permanence. How do you select and think about the relationship between your various materials?

My installations have recently been comprised mainly of synthetic felt with a stiffener in it—this is what most of the installation at David B. Smith is made of. I like this material for many reasons. It conveys fragility, but is actually very strong. It has multiple associations. Felt is used in crafts, but also has industrial applications. It is highbrow (fine, woolen handmade felt) and lowbrow (the craft felt that I use). I love the fact that I can start with a soft, tactile material and manipulate it in ways that are structured and architectural. Lately I’ve been referencing the silhouettes of weapons in many of my works. I like the contradiction between the softness of the felt and the violence of the source materials.

With your current exhibition at David B. Smith Gallery, you were asked to create a site-specific installation utilizing the work of Clyfford Still as a point of departure. How do you typically select the forms employed in your work?

The forms in my installations are usually hybrids. I love merging organic forms with synthetic ones, benign forms with malignant ones, contemporary forms with historical ones. Through simplification and recombination, shapes lose their original connotations and take on new and varied meanings. I manipulate shapes by mirroring, bending, and folding as well as through color choices. The manner in which a form is draped, suspended, or folded can completely change the way the viewer reads that form. Ultimately, forms gain resonance through their relationships with one another and take on new lives within the installation.

Still has been credited with laying the groundwork for the Abstract Expressionist movement. I am curious to know if any of the concerns embodied by this movement have informed your work, or this project in particular.

Abstract Expressionism championed the individual gesture, and Still’s work is no exception—the idea of active, gestural mark-making is present in his large, bold canvases. Surface is also important in his work—there is intensive layering and tactile paint handling that makes his colors resonate and gives them depth. In some regards, the idea of translating an abstract expressionist’s gesture to a cut form is futile—my work only has hard edges. The gesture becomes frozen and generalized. I think this dissonance between my process and his is an interesting one.

Liz Miller. "Untitled 03 (Mimetic Deception)," 2012. Mixed media on paper 24.5 x 19.5 x 8 in. , framed. Courtesy of the Artist and David B. Smith Gallery, Denver, CO.

Given that the majority of your works are room-sized installations, your smaller scale works are an exciting departure; they feel like psychedelic Rorschach inkblots. Can you speak a bit about these works’ scale and their bright, bold colors?

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

Whitney Houston, center, with her mother, Cissy Houston; father, John Houston, second from right; brother, Michael Houston, left; and half-brother, Gary Garland in Newark. Circa 1979.

“She could have been signed on the basis of her pedigree alone,” said columnist Stephen Metcalf, talking about Whitney Houston on Slate’s culture podcast Tuesday, four days after the singer’s death. “Her godmother was Aretha Franklin. Her mother was an accomplished gospel singer. Her cousins were Deedee and Dionne Warwick. She could have been signed based on her looks alone”–she’d modeled and appeared on the cover of Seventeen before she’d sold records–“and she could have been signed on the basis of her voice alone.” Metcalf concluded, “To have any one of those things could make you an enormous star. The fact that she had all three. . .”

“Just in technical terms, I don’t think I’ve heard a better instrument in my lifetime, even from singers I prefer, who are better. . . in terms of expressiveness or just the vibe,” added Slate music critic Jody Rosen. Her performance at the 1991 Super Bowl, just after the Gulf War, showed that instrument’s full force; it also again showed Houston had it all. Said Rosen,

You can really really hear the extraordinary range and nuance in her voice. She’s just technically out of this world, and, also, it tells you something about the stature of Whitney Houston: here was this black women who was quote-unquote America’s sweetheart–she was called that many times–and at this moment of National crisis or of fervent jingoism, she was called upon to play the Kate Smith or Bing Crosby role . . . as F-16s roared overhead.

The “whole package”– sweetheart, stunner, virtuoso–is something you can only be if your body, your image, is put out into the world along with your talent and brain. So it’s pop stars who deal with the pressure to be/have everything far more often than other artists.

Hannah Wilke, "S.O.S. Starification Object Series," 1974-82. Courtesy Museum of Modern Art.

In the visual arts, in fact, being/having the whole package is sometimes suspect. When, in the 1970s, Hannah Wilke made small vulvar, fleshy forms out of latex, ceramics or bubble gum, attached these to her body,  and posed topless for pin-up posters, critics accused her of flaunting her beauty. Amelia Jones, in her essay “Everybody dies. . . even the gorgeous,” quotes Wilke: “People give me this bullshit of, ‘What would you have done if you weren’t so gorgeous?’ What difference does it make?. . . Gorgeous people die as do the stereotypical ‘ugly.'” Looks didn’t give her an advantage, she implied.

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There is always someone who is offended by every biennial. They are inherently two-headed beasts, with the introspective head judging the strengths and weaknesses of a portion of the art world, while the extroverted head optimistically presents a narrative, declaring why the included artists are notable. For this year’s DeCordova Biennial, curators Dina Deitsch and Abigail Ross Goodman followed tradition by programming a regional Biennial of New England artists. A few years ago, the DeCordova refocused their annual show by turning it into a biennial. The annual was described to me once as the place where the curators put the oddball artists that didn’t fit into the DeCordova’s group shows but still deserved a wider public. The change to the biennial structure granted guest curator teams more time to schedule a tighter exhibition. They hoped that the change would create an active rather than a reactive exhibition. The 2012 exhibition (up through April 22) lives up to this promise not by presenting a relentless concentrated central theme, but instead by assembling a flexible show relatively centered on “anxiety, discomfort, and overall change.”

Steve Lambert, Capitalism Works For Me! True/False, 2011. Aluminum and electronics. 9 x 20 x 7 feet. (Electronics by Alexander Reben) courtesy of the artist and SPACES, Cleveland, OH

In terms of quality, the show runs the range: from phoned-in works that are indistinguishable from the artist’s earlier works to delightfully new works that show expanded range.

The show opens with Steve Lambert‘s Capitalism Works for Me! True/False a giant sign that tallies the audience’s answers to the title. I thought I knew what this politically loaded word meant, but Lambert made me reconsider that. Which capitalism? Am I being asked about the late stages of capitalism (making lots of money without any hindrance from regulations, too big to fail, global motion of capital, etc) or the older, more basic form where private ownership of the means of production is distinguished from state ownership? I have a love/hate relationship with the globalism version. Every artist (or writer for that matter) bases their self-employment on the latter definition. If I say False, I deny my and Lambert’s self-employment, but if I say True, do I align myself with the 1%? The more I considered Lambert’s question, the more I wanted to answer him both ways. I feel like a weasel that can’t commit to one of today’s central wedge issues.

Close reading of Ann Pibal‘s paintings will be rewarded. They are broken linear depictions of space that include balanced formal relationships that mask what feel like unbalanced emotional events. These lines replace what feel like haptic, concrete locations with painted incomplete drawings. This lack of closure forces you to see the relationships in the paintings for what they are. The viewer is asked to reassemble the discontinuities as they see them. What makes these powerful, are not the techniques used (like all abstract art, someone will dismiss it as “my kid can do that” art) but the logic behind why she does what she does. Space turns, curves, and slips along sequential fault lines. What at first appears to be linear regularity is denied the more you consider the relationships hidden in these paintings.

Chris Taylor, Untitled, 2004-2010. Glass, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist.

Chris Taylor‘s glass works are smart, formal proxies that deny their own optics. He explores many angles of craft in his work. His stand-outs are concealed blown glass, simulating something you can get for free at a gas station: styrofoam cups. Taylor does not just reproduce commodity objects though, there are also replicas of famous luxury crafted objects that Taylor used to fool the original makers into refunding his purchase price, claiming his errors were their own. Their substitute status, like Allen MCollum’s surrogates or Jasper John’s sculptures from 1960, are more than just formal tricks and are not just sculptural trompe l’oeil. They are also a witty mocking of tradition that rouses the work into a living relationship with our surrounding culture. Can factory made luxury goods be deluxe if the factory that made them can’t verify that the objects are their own work? You should also not miss his video, Small Craft Advisory, which is hanging in the staircase behind his work.

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Later, the scientist recalled what he and his colleague saw in that vacuum tube in 1898. “The blaze of crimson light from the tube told its own story,” Dr. Travers wrote, “and it was a sight to dwell upon and never to forget.” Not only neon, but the other noble gases would soon find application in signage and trim; that is the short of how inspiration found Stephen Antonakos (b. 1926) in 1960. While wending his way through New York’s Garment District at night, Antonakos was taken with the purity of color in the neon lights. Imagine—we are free to—storefronts piped in cherry red and tangelo, blue, blinking arrows in windows, establishment names ostensibly penned in hot-pink cursive. These are the commercial ends we know neon works for. But by most accounts, Antonakos saw God. In those tubes, he saw the line of horizon at sunset; he saw the waters off of Greece (his country of birth), and how they were sacred blue. Stephen saw yellow, haloing like the Byzantine.

Photo by Hye Kim, courtesy of SCAD MOA.

In a 1975 interview for for the Archives of American Art, Antonakos said,

With all the simplicity, if a person really looks at the neons when they are on, I think there will be a lot to see and understand. They are simple when you say, “a square, a tube, a square box, a cube.” The words are simple but look what happens to simple forms with neon tubes at certain locations on the walls. It is very different and they become very complicated then. It takes, I think, a person who must be interested in evaluating the problem. Of course, a person just casually seeing it as a tube and not analyzing it, he walks away happy, of course. It is just part of a tube on a wall and that is it.

Photo by John McKinnon, courtesy of SCAD MOA.

Antonakos’ exhibit “Tessares” is showing at Savannah College of Art and Design’s (SCAD) new Museum of Art until March 4th. (It is his third exhibit at a SCAD campus.) The title is the English of τέσσαρες (“four”): each of four glass showcases on the exterior front of SCAD MOA houses one of the artist’s neon back-lit panels.

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