Mazu, Silence (Ten Thousand Waves), 2010. Courtesy of the artist, Metro Pictures, New York and Victoria Miro Gallery, London.

Isaac Julien’s Ten Thousand Waves is a nine-screen video installation interweaving three seemingly discrete narratives that explore the migratory journeys of people whose impetus for movement converges on the sole need to fulfil utopian desires for a better life. Set against the contrasting backgrounds of the blustery northwest coast of England, the rush hour in Shanghai and the misty bamboo forests and mountains of the Guangxi province, Ten Thousand Waves’s motivating incident and first filmic narrative is the Morecambe Bay tragedy of 2004, in which 23 Chinese migrant workers drowned while picking cockles at the seashore in England while Wang Ping’s poem, specially commissioned for this work, is intoned over Julien’s images. In the second filmic narrative, Julien re-interprets the classic silent movie The Goddess (1934) – a euphemism for a streetwalker – whose protagonist (played by actress Zhao Tao) struggles with her chosen occupation in order to support herself and her son. In the third story, an ancient sea goddess Mazu (played by actress Maggie Cheung) believed to be the saviour and protector of fishermen and sailors in the Southern Chinese provinces, soars above the mountainous Chinese landscape.

Blue Goddess (Ten Thousand Waves), 2010. Courtesy of the artist, Metro Pictures, New York and Victoria Miro Gallery, London

Ten Thousand Waves, 2010, Installation view, Bass Museum of Art, Miami. Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Photo by Peter Haroldt.

But if the 55-minute film tests the endurance of any gallery visitor, its heavily down-sized counterpart, shown simultaneously at the Valentine Willie Fine Art Gallery (VWFA) white-cube space as photographs/stills from the film, neglects the fundamentals of this monumental work: the labyrinthine, imagistic spaces of nine, double-sided screens positioned strategically to “frustrate the ontological gaze of the spectator” (in Julien’s own words), within which the viewer experiences the truncation of traditional, linear cinematic narratives. In fact, the freedom of audience movement between screens subverts any attempt to establish a coherent narrative and sets up instead, a poetic interplay of images competing for visual dominance that tell of the migratory experience across the installation space.

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Show card for "Hybrid Narrative" at Mac Arthur B Arthur, in Oakland, CA, 2012.

Sight, acknowledgment, and shared experience all figure prominently in Hybrid Narrative: Video Mediations of Self and the Imagined Self, currently at Mac Arthur B Arthur in Oakland, CA. Artists Liz Rosenfeld, Chris E. Vargas, Sofia Cordova and Shana Moulton make themselves “seen” though video, film transfer, installation and performance.

Liz Rosenfeld, Untitled (Dyketactics Revisited), 2005.

Rosenfeld’s Untitled (Dyketactics Revisited), a 16mm film transfer to video, brings us to another time both via its material, and the performers themselves . A near-direct reenactment of filmmaker Barbara Hammer’s Dyketactics (1974), Rosenfeld’s work is non-narrative and lyrical. A small group paints their faces, necks and arms, and bind themselves with tape in what appears to be abandoned urban and industrial spaces. The short film is an analgesic; these desirable and compellingly filthy bodies lull and please, but also unabashedly idealize. Untitled recalls the ‘70s not just in its aesthetic but also in its evocation of community – Hammer’s original film sought to make visible the 1970s lesbian-feminist art coalescence. Rosenfeld’s work is decidedly queer and pictures a similar community present at the margins of the larger contemporary art market.

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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.

My question has to do with getting back into the swing. I am a painter/installation artist who showed frequently for a few years after grad school with a small amount of critical notice whose opportunities dried up quickly. My work changes form frequently, and I have really been out of the loop for about five years now. I have been making work with regularity but have not attempted to “get back out there.” My show opportunities had always followed a this-begets-that path and now I have little idea of how/who to approach in order to try and show again. Any advice?

This is a good question, one that in many ways gets to the heart of what it means to choose art as a profession. The reason that art is not for the timid is because your work can be put on hold for any number of reasons and your general career trajectory is not likely to be an ever-increasing incline but a squiggle of ups and downs. It’s like a board game played out over the duration of your life: good review? Go forward one square. Studio building for sale? Pick a card. Sold out show? Advance to an institutional-gallery catalog. Had a baby? Wait two turns. It’s important to remember that the winner is the one who keeps plugging along, believing in what she does.

This week’s patron saint is Carl Jung, who claimed that certain images can have psychological effects.

But back the advice part: the first thing I want you to do is to go through your old CV and make a list of anyone who you’ve met who has been supportive. This includes old teachers or mentors, dealers who’ve sold your work and gallerists who put your paintings in group shows, critics that included you in favorable reviews, etc. Write down absolutely everyone you can think of, line by line, and then go back over the list and put a star next to anyone who was friendly and approachable. Next, write a nice email to the first ten of these starred people. Be honest. Say you’re getting back in touch because you’ve been out of the loop for a while and you’re ready to dive back in. Explain that you’ve been working the whole time, but not showing your work, and you’d like to get some feedback. If it’s an old mentor you’re writing to, express how valuable their help has been in the past. If it’s a gallerist you’re writing to, remind them of the date and title of the show you were in at their gallery and thank them again for their prior support. Include a link to your newest work on your website. Ask them to come for studio visits. In the studio, if they seem engaged and receptive, ask if they can think of a place that might be interested in showing the work.

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This look into the DS Archives goes out to all you people (myself included) who are horribly, wonderfully captivated by the dark underbelly of the world and its manifestations. Nathalie Djurberg is an artist who “goes there” with no shame, and does a damn good job. If her work is up your alley, don’t miss ‘You Killed Me First,’ the current exhibition at KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin. Rest assured, “There will be blood, shame, pain and ecstasy, the likes of which no one has yet imagined.” (Nick Zedd)

The following interview was originally posted by Michelle Schultz on November 3, 2011:

The work of Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg is defined by duality. A partnership between artist and musician, their stop-motion animation videos and haunting audio tracks precariously balance horror and humour, immersing child-like puppets in a world where perversion, violence, aggression, and power dominate. In their latest exhibition in London, the artists explore the medium of glass and its materiality – fragility becomes threatening and desires are laid bare, exposing the traits that both define us and may lead to our demise. On the occasion of A World of Glass at Camden Arts Centre, Nathalie Djurberg, Hans Berg, and Michelle Schultz sit down to discuss puppets and process – and the relationship between art and music.

Nathalie Djurberg with music by Hans Berg, A World of Glass, film still, 2011. Courtesy of the artists, Zach Feuer Gallery, New York and Galleria Gio Marconi, Milan.

Michelle Schultz: Most of the materials you use – clay, fabrics, even the music – have a strong sense of malleability and fluidity to them, but in A World of Glass, the focus is on a very unyielding material that is both fragile and, I find to be, quite threatening – could you speak a bit about the significance of the glass for you?

Nathalie Djurberg: What this entire project is about is fragility – and transparency – and while it can be perceived as threatening in the way that it stands on the table, for me, it is almost like a shipwreck that has been washed up on a beach and reassembled again. It is almost apocalyptic. That is also how I made them, taking things that I could find – glasses, plates, and bowls – assembled them, worked on them with clay, and then had them moulded and casted.

Hans Berg: There were all these ugly parts – some things were just a pile of clay, made with the hands, and then you stuck glass on it, but then, through casting, it is turned into this crystal clear, fragile figure. I think that’s where you will find a connection between the frightening and hard stuff, and how fragile everything looks – when it is transformed.

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As part of our ongoing partnership with Flavorwire, Daily Serving is sharing  Rozalia Jovanovic’s preview of Juergen Teller’s latest exhibition at Lehmann Maupin in New York.

JUERGEN TELLER. Kristen McMenamy 032c Casa Mollino No.3, Turin 2011, 2011. C-print 12 x 16 inches (image) 30.5 x 40.6 cm 13.78 x 17.72 x 1.26 inches (frame) 35 x 45 x 3.2 cm. Edition of 5. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin.

Just in time for New York Fashion Week, Juergen Teller, the German-born photographer most known for his cheeky refusal to keep his ad campaigns for designers like Helmut Lang, Yves Saint Laurent, Vivienne Westwood, and Marc Jacobs distinct from his most intimate, non-commissioned images, has an exciting new show opening at Lehmann Maupin. “I don’t really see it as commercial work when I do commercial work,” he has explained. “I see it more like… Let’s say somebody wants to do an independent film, right? They have to cast actresses and choose locations and all that. So I’m just using this stuff to create my own fantasies and dreams.”

The exhibition gives a prime sample of Teller’s no-holds-barred approach to picture-taking, which at times has lent his work an air of contention. Divided into three groups, the first series of Teller’s show features alluring portraits of Vivienne Westwood (wearing nothing but her fiery red mane) and photos of model Kristen McMenamy, which were controversial for their purportedly “pornographic” quality. The second set, Men and Women, depicts what some see as representations of the stages of masculinity — from coming-of-age to loss of virility — as contrasted with female power. The third grouping, Keys to the House, features intimate shots of friends and family as well as landscape photos taken at Teller’s home in Suffolk, UK. Click through our slideshow for a sample of photos from this bold, racy, and beautiful show.

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

Matt Ashjian, "Then, They Told Me That The Most Current Theory is About a Rejection of Theory. . .," studio debris.

A grad school classmate of mine, one of the more resourceful people I’ve met, had a studio that looked like a carpenter’s shop. Though not clean per se, it was functional and organized, with shelving units and a storage loft above a small couch. When he got stuck or couldn’t decide why he’d gone to art school or wondered whether there was any use in having a “critical discourse” around his work, he’d build something useful: a surf board, a book shelf, a cabinet.

One late evening, I walked past his studio, and from a distance, it looked like everything was gone. Then from the doorway, I could see that he’d piled it all — his old paintings, the surf board he’d crafted, his metal shelving unit, wood, his office chair — up against the back wall.  I sort of loved it. It seemed more like piled up frustration then outright anger, and the pile itself spoke the language of the art world it reacted against: two painted rectangles on the floor and the small, perspective-driven paintings at the base led into a towering triangle of stuff, all the trappings of a studio breakdown built up into a handsome structure.

Math Bass, "Body No Body Body," 2011. Courtesy Overduin and Kite.

It was a not-quite-rejection, a sculpture made by someone who really just wants to make stuff, but can’t quite get out of the realm of art-as-idea even if it frustrates him (“Then, They Told Me That The Most Current Theory is About a Rejection of Theory. . .” is what he titled the pile, once he’d decided it warranted a title). The New Museum’s Unmonumental show in 2008 grappled, I think, with a similar problem: can you be unheroic, unambitious and still genuinely thoughtful?

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Terry Winters, Cricket Music, 2010. Oil on linen, 88 x 112 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

Comprised within two of Matthew Marks Gallery’s Chelsea locations, Cricket Music, Tessellation Figures & Notebook presents Terry Winters’ most recent paintings and collages to make their debut in the United States. In an impressive selection of 14 large-scale paintings, Winters’ patterned canvases display brilliantly pigmented tessellations in an array of lattice structures. Also working from a fascination with knot theory, the works posses a lyrical movement by virtue of meticulously layering both pictorial form and coloration. However, with a method such as this – the multiplication of form and layering of paint – gives way to a meditative process that rather than articulates depth, which the paintings insinuate, flattens the composition and renders it irrevocably horizontal.

Terry Winters, Notebook 30, 2003-11. Collage, 11 x 8 ½ inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

The viewer is immediately confronted with works such as Tessellation Figures (6) and Tessellation Figure (7) (2011) that appear pleasant largely due to an accomplished placing of complimentary colors, which is not convincing enough for me. While Tessellation Figures (6) is vaguely reminiscent of – though in a blown-up, pixilated version – Henri Matisse’s The Goldfish (1912) or Claude Monet’s Nymphéas (1920-26), this work and others unfortunately verge on the decorative. Similar to his older works, Winters’ paintings depict a fluid intermingling of organic and scientific phenomena, where abstract form takes on the uncanny appearance of figuration. Though in works such as Tessellation Figures (4) the abstract-figurative conglomerate seem oddly unsuccessful. However, Winters does successfully develops a language of formulaic process that harnesses both the notion of the natural and the mechanical, for example in Cricket Music (2010) where he masters the fluidity of sound in abstract form.

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