Kicking off our 2016 Summer Session is a sequence of articles that regard labor in the arts: work, innovation, compensation, leisure, and more! In this Help Desk column, Bean Gilsdorf answers a question about internships, working for free, training for future employment—and considering what the law allows. The article was originally published on December 17, 2012.

In general, blog writing is a tricky area in terms of authorship. I wrote the blog for a gallery for over six months without having my name attached. The blog did very well and was picked up on by a local magazine that asked the gallery owner to contribute a regular guest column for their publication. Unbeknownst to them, the blog was written by me, the intern. I proceeded to plan and outline the next six months of art-related subject matter with the pretext that I would be getting paid as my internship was completed. After the internship had ended, I wrote three posts for the gallery’s blog before the owner told me it was no longer in his budget. I was never paid for those entries and my ideas continue to be used thereafter. As interns, I realize that we must be willing to work without pay and cannot expect full agency in the work we do without a real job title. Still, I am wondering how you would suggest interns find a balance here? Where do we draw the line on our unpaid time and efforts while aspiring to get recognition for the work that we do?

Yoyoi Kusama. Dots Obsession, 1999; mixed media. Collection of Les Abattoirs, Toulouse.

I talked to Jonathan Melber, the co-author of ART/WORK, about your dilemma. He had a few thoughts about your predicament. First, in terms of authorship of a blog, “If you write it, then it’s your intellectual property unless you’ve granted it to someone else in writing, for example in the blog owner’s terms of service or in a gallery’s employment agreement.” Second, “You can still ask to get proper credit for this work. Maybe you can get them to add a byline, or get permission to link to it, or to list it on your resume.” Melber recommended that you talk with the gallery owner to see if you can get credit for the blog. And if you manage to obtain that acknowledgement, then talk to the editors at the magazine about retroactive credit there. He also pointed out, “Of course, you could threaten a lawsuit, which might result in the gallerist having to take the blog entries down, but the repercussions are probably not worth it,” so think long and hard before you travel that route—lawsuits are ugly and expensive. If you have no luck with the gallery owner (and you didn’t hear it from me), there’s a blog called How’s My Dealing? where artists vent anonymously about how galleries have treated them. At least you’d have your revenge.

Beyond the problem of this particular gallery internship, let’s talk about working without pay and the notions of agency and effort, as you do in the second part of your letter. What is an internship for? Ideally, you receive on-the-job training (essentially, an education) and your employer receives a helping hand (of sorts). As with any educational or business agreement, there should be a contract that outlines responsibilities and expectations—for you both. Now, having said that—and acknowledging the massive imbalance of power in traditional internship situations—let me say that in the cases where no contract is forthcoming, you should at least have a conversation about your role and the benefits that your work will have for both the company/gallery and your professional life. Take notes! Ask specific questions about the duties you will be asked to perform. Do interns ever fill in for a sick receptionist? Will you be expected to clean up after openings? And for what, if anything, can you expect to take credit when you leave? Put your cards on the table and expect your internship mentor to do the same. If you want training for the “real world,” then this is definitely it, so don’t be shy.

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The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography and Film presents a dynamic portrait of one of the most significant narratives in the history of 20th-century avant-garde art, and examines the vital place of still and moving images in the creation of early Soviet history and national identity. Originally organized by the Jewish Museum in New York under the curatorial vision of Jens Hoffmann, this exhibition asks viewers to confront the ways in which images hide as much as they reveal.

Arkady Sheikhet. Assembling the Globe at the Moscow Telegraphic Central Station, 1928; gelatin silver print; 17 ¾ x 13 3/8 in. Collection of Alex Lachmann. Courtesy of Nailya Alexander Gallery.

As a newly emancipated minority in “the New Russia,” Jews were optimistic for the arrival of a more egalitarian Soviet world, with many entering the newly minted professions of photography, design, and film eager to charge their aesthetic experimentations with the political goals of revolution and modernity. However, viewers of The Power of Pictures are presented with a dispiriting historical narrative of the project, as imagery shifts from radical experimentation to overt state propaganda. As Stalin began to consolidate his power and impose regulations and mandates on artists to produce work with obvious socialist content, artists struggled with the state’s directives, its limitations on their creative freedom, and the ethical implications of staging a Social Realist aesthetic that had little to do with the realities of life under a totalitarian dictator. The deep tension within these images, namely the ways in which art and politics collide and reify, gives this exhibition a powerful and timely political weight.

In the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War, artists sought to present a new image for their new country—one that would provide a strong case for the success of the class struggles to the masses as well as to the West. For a brief period, the synergy between vanguard aesthetics and politics found its heights in the work of artists eager to bring the radical reductions and geometries of abstraction to bear on their work; strong angles, extreme perspectives, and disorienting compositions evoked the overwhelming monumentality of this new world. Strikingly powerful, Arkady Shaikhet’s images form the pinnacle of this visual style, which explains the inclusion of his work in many important international journals seeking to depict the might and achievements of this new nation. Shaikhet’s elegant image of two proletarian engineers shot from a low camera angle elevates the figures to an almost spiritual status in Assembling the Globe at the Moscow Telegraphic Central Station (1928); it compels the viewer to admire and celebrate the heroic labor of the Soviet worker by deploying the striking visual strategies of experimental art.

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Currently on view at Frye Art Museum, Young Blood is a large-scale exhibition of two prominent contemporary artists and brothers, painter Noah Davis and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph. The most elaborate display of their individual works to date, Young Blood includes painting, film, sculpture, and installation, weaving varied mediums together with precision and fluidity. Through the tone and cadence of their depicted world—one of beauty, mystery, and raw honesty—Young Blood is as much a celebration as it is a homecoming.

Noah Davis. Painting for My Dad, 2011; oil on canvas; 76 x 91 in. Rubell Family Collection, Miami. © The Estate of Noah Davis. Photo: Rubell Family Collection.

The title of the show comes from a term of endearment Joseph gave Davis and describes their common starting point as artists. Raised in Seattle, the brothers spent the majority of their careers in Los Angeles. Sadly, Davis died of a rare cancer in 2015 at the age of 32. Joseph, who still works in LA, continues to gain elevation, with his most recent work as co-director on Beyoncé’s hip-hop magnum opus Lemonade.

Opening the show is Davis’ Painting for My Dad (2011), featuring a figure, his father, approaching a starry black sky. Holding a lantern, the silhouette is relaxed as it stands beneath a rocky entrance. The night sky before him sparkles, expansive and looming. This dichotomy, of aesthetic simplicity paired with layered states of narrative, not unlike a film still, is a veil of omniscience that speaks through Davis’ work. It is what beckons the viewer to continue looking, to see beyond the canvas. The strokes of paint are just the entry point to a story that extends much further.

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Shotgun Reviews are an open forum where we invite the international art community to contribute timely, short-format responses to an exhibition or event. If you are interested in submitting a Shotgun Review, please click this link for more information. In this Shotgun Review, Ángel Rafael Vázquez-Concepción reviews Celebrating a Vision: Art and Disability at the San Francisco International Airport Terminal Three Gallery.

Susan Wise. Baskets, 2015; mixed media; variable dimensions. Courtesy of the Artist and NIAD Art Center, Oakland.

Traveling via San Francisco International Airport (SFO) soon? If so, SFO Museum’s Terminal Three gallery is worth a layover for Celebrating a Vision: Art and Disability, an exhibition of work by artists who are affiliated with the Oakland-based Creative Growth Art Center (opened in 1972), the National Institute of Art And Disabilities (NIAD, established in 1982), and San Francisco’s Creativity Explored (founded in 1983).

These organizations are the brainchildren of two unique individuals, artist Florence and psychologist Elias Katz, whose vision is honored in this showcase. The Katzes were pioneers of the arts and disabilities movement, a broad network of professionals that since the mass deinstitutionalizations of the ’50s and ’60s has worked to recognize and encourage the profound artistic capacities and intuitions of individuals with disabilities.[1] Institutions, such as those the Katzes founded, have sought to recognize the distinctiveness and artistic merit of the discourses produced by the artists they serve while entering into broader conversations about ethics and aesthetics. Without exception, each artist on display in Celebrating a Vision presents us with profound, dexterous visual languages.

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Today from our friends at BmoreArt we bring you a piece on an interactive art installation in an abandoned trolley station. Author Brendan L. Smith says of the space, “The curving walls of an oval-shaped room descend like stair steps next to a cluster of miniature buildings that resemble a child’s bristle-block creations.” This article was originally published on April 4, 2016.

In an abandoned trolley station buried beneath Dupont Circle in downtown Washington, D.C., new worlds are being created and destroyed in a subterranean space filled with hundreds of thousands of translucent plastic balls.

An interactive art installation called Re-Ball!: Raise/Raze united architects, designers, and 1,400 volunteers in the inaugural project by Dupont Underground, a nonprofit organization that has transformed the derelict trolley station into an unusual arts and cultural destination. Tickets for the entire month-long run of the installation sold out before the doors, or really a grate over the street-level subway entrance, opened April 30, but more tickets have been added before the June 1 closing.

More than 650,000 plastic balls, enough to fill an “ocean” during a very popular installation called The Beach last summer at the National Building Museum, were packed and moved to the Dupont Underground, which hosted an international design competition with entries from 19 countries. To create the winning proposal from New York–based design studio Hou de Sousa, volunteers armed with 225 pounds of glue created almost 10,000 cubes, each containing twenty-seven balls, that can be combined like building blocks with Velcro edges.

Read the full article here.

For Gala Knörr, the world of social media is a labyrinth of communication that never ceases to pique her curiosity. She finds inspiration in connecting with random strangers on Snapchat, an increasingly popular app that enables users to share photos, videos, or conversations through private and public messaging without leaving a permanent record. With its informality and speed of sharing, Snapchat has become a hotbed for millennials and celebrities alike; for Knörr, it is the humor and the immediacy of establishing connections that is the heart of its appeal. Her practice is a reflection of the everyday exchanges that occur between people—friends and strangers alike—in the era of the internet and its (dis)contents.

Gala Knörr. Threesome, 2015; phototransfer and oil on linen; 7.8 x 13.7 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Knörr’s medium is painting, but she sources her material from interactions with people on Snapchat. The artist spent a few months following and amassing followers and creating an archive of images of the snaps people were posting. Knörr’s technique is simple: She screen-grabs a succession of images from the content people post on Snapchat, then sifts through the footage to select what she will eventually re-create in painting. In doing so, Knörr defies the temporary quality of the app, creating a permanent record of the ephemeral images she captures. In combining technological resources with traditional mediums, Knörr also responds to the transience of the digital through the tactility of the physical.

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Paola Pivi’s exhibition, Ma’am, at the Dallas Contemporary Museum fills the galleries with colorful creatures and inflatables, coffee beans, feathers, and faux pearls. Visual tricks and gags, sensorial puns, and oddities—these are the territory of Pivi’s sculptures, photographs, films, and interventions. Her monumentally scaled, untitled airplane work—a small Fiat G-91 placed upside-down on the floor—guards the entrance into the space. Around the corner, a swath of Pivi’s neon-colored, life-size polar bears stand, crouch, lay, and perch frozen in time. Covered in tiny faux feathers in various shades like neon pink and lime green, Pivi’s bears are big, surreal teddies that visitors aren’t allowed to touch. Their colors and positions add to their unreality, though upon close inspection, I noticed that their eyes are oddly realistic-looking.

Paola Pivi. Ma’am, 2016; installation view. Courtesy of Dallas Contemporary. Photo: Kevin Todora.

On the other side of the airplane, a series of various spinning wheels—bicycle wheels mostly, though not of uniform size or make—with feathers extending from their spokes churn methodically in clockwise and counterclockwise courses. The next set of works beckons with a loud hum and a familiar scent. A giant, rainbow-colored inflatable ladder is propped up as high as it can be in the gallery’s ample space. Ducking underneath to enter the next room, I quickly identified the slightly acrid scent in the air: Pivi’s 2008 work, a musk ox (a horned ox named for its strong scent) standing amid and blending into a pile of whole coffee beans. Across the gallery, in an epically sized photograph, I see a solitary donkey standing in a sad, solitary motorboat, set against a field of oceanic blue, sea and sky.

More photographs can be found in the next room. A large pair of images on adjoining walls depict two zebras posed somewhat unexpectedly in a snowy landscape. On the gallery’s third wall, a motley crew of animals—a camel, some cows, a polar bear, a donkey, some horses, a llama, a snake, a butterfly, some ducks, a couple of sheep, and two very spastic-looking dogs—share a lust, tranquil landscape with green grass, trees in the distance, and bright blue sky. All of these animals in Pivi’s One Love (2007)—despite their different species—are creamy, cool tones of white.

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