José Bedia. Mpangui Jimagua (Twin Brothers), 2000; acrylic and conté on canvas with objects; 122 x 355 x 188 in. Courtesy of the Artist and the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Entering the newly renovated Jemison Galleries, the viewer is drawn to Cuban-born artist José Bedia’s multimedia installation Mpangui Jimagua (Twin Brothers) (2000), which immediately places ideas of crossings, migration, multiplicity, and exile at the center of the presentation. The son of a sailor, Bedia has lived outside of his home country since 1991. Here he paints a doubled silhouette that stretches off the wall and is pulled into space by the small boat attached to the assemblage. Dynamic and suggestive, the work emphasizes the movement of human capital across bodies of water as an ambiguous journey for those seeking new opportunities and financial security, or those fleeing as refugees or exiles. It is this idea of migration and the terrible contexts bound up in the histories of diasporic communities across the world that continues to appear in the exhibition, articulating culture as something mobile, durational, and thus continually in flux.

Nick Cave. Soundsuit, 2009; fabric with applique crochet and buttons, knitted yarn, metal armature, mannequin. Courtesy of the Artist, Jack Shainman Gallery, and Birmingham Museum of Art.

Nick Cave’s wearable, sculptural Soundsuit (2009) centers the second room of the exhibition, and places weight on the ways in which identity (particularly the categories of gender, class, and race) often appears in-between outward performativities and invisible concealments. These beautiful suits of armor are resplendent with jewel-toned appliqués of meticulously embroidered “throw-away” materials resonant of West African ritual costumes, as well as more “American” translations of these practices, such as by the Black Carnival Mardi Gras Indians. The suits signify as forms of bodily beautification and protection from outside force—from physical harm, judgment, or gaze. However, Soundsuit is also a garment of sensory and physical restriction; blinded by the cylindrical headdress and physically constricted down to the feet, Cave articulates identity, embodiment, and self-fashioning as forms of empowerment and entrapment simultaneously. This contradiction of freedom and constriction in regard to subjectivity mobilizes Bhabha’s sense of cultural hybridity toward more personal, lived articulations of self-identification and representation of the marginal body.

Merritt Johnson. Crow Booming the One Big Water, Gulls Flying Away, 2010; oil and alkyd on panel; 36 x 48 in. Courtesy of the Artist and Birmingham Museum of Art.

While each work in this exhibition could inspire book-length treatises on its significance to this incredibly rich show, I was left deeply moved by Crow Booming the One Big Water, Gulls Flying Away (2010) by the multidisciplinary artist Merritt Johnson. Descendant of the Kanienkehaka (Mohawk) and Blackfoot indigenous North American tribes, Johnson signals the seasonal migration of gulls across the ocean, mapping their aerial flight plans across destructive explosions of oil rigs in the Gulf. By attending to the murderous violence of indigenous peoples, animals, and the environment by the European colonizer, Johnson’s hard-edged, fragmented forms of bold, brilliant color operate as clashes between the human and nonhuman world. While the realm of nature offers up beautiful reminders of the ways in which animals and living cycles transcend the manmade borders, systems, and classifications imposed upon them, Johnson forces a recognition that these very beings are often destroyed by them nonetheless. Pushing Bhabha’s concept of a “third space” into a dialectic between human and nonhuman, this exhibition asks urgent and provocative questions of our current cultural climate—where it is going, where it has come from, and most importantly, what is/will be lost.

Third Space: Shifting Conversations About Contemporary Art is on view at the Birmingham Museum of Art through January 6, 2019.

[1] I extend my deepest thanks to the Birmingham Museum of Art’s Hugh Kaul Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Wassan Al-Khudhairi, and Sarah Tiambeng, Public Relations Account Executive for Third Space, for all of their help and support in the research and writing of this article.

[2] See Homi K. Bhabha’s text, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge Press, 1994), 55.

I’m in the process of writing an artist statement for a gallery that has recently picked up my work. What makes for a really good artist statement? Ideally, I would like to write something that is approachable and easily understood by other artists, the gallery’s clientele, and the rednecks I grew up with. Any advice here would be greatly appreciated. I find myself in the position of having to write statements at least every few months, but each time it seems difficult to put into words what I’ve been trying to do, as my subject matter changes often, and I do not often write about my work.

David Hockney. A Bigger Splash, 1967; acrylic on canvas; 8 x 8 ft.

Oh, the artist statement, that reviled and maligned document! Artists loathe writing them, and it usually shows. But they’re not really that hard to create if you have a clear goal in mind. Let’s begin with your particular case. Even though your subject matter changes often, perhaps you can craft a basic short statement that fits your overall practice, and every time your subject changes you can swap out a couple of sentences as needed. That way you won’t have to start from scratch every time. If you’re not in the habit of writing regularly about your work, I encourage you to start. It doesn’t have to be anything grand, just jot the occasional phrase or sentence down in your sketchbook, or keep an “open thread” type document on your computer. That way you’ll have a grab bag of ideas to choose from when it comes time to put your work into words.

What makes a good statement? Well, it has to be readable and say something concrete and interesting about your work. When you tell me that you want your statement to be equally accessible to “other artists, the gallery’s clientele, and the rednecks I grew up with,” I worry that you’re trying to serve too many masters. Who is your audience? If your audience is mainly yokels, then by all means write a statement that will appeal to them, but otherwise, the hillbilly parlance will have to go. This statement is for the new gallery, so aim to connect their visitors and collectors to your work.

That’s not to say that you have resort to highfalutin opacity. Your statement is an introduction to your work, the what, why, and how of your practice, and pretentious language will only put your audience off. Here are some tips:

-Don’t overlook the what—I’ve read so many statements that talk about Kierkegaard and liminal space and “the quiet mind” or whatever and I still have no idea what the person makes. Don’t let that be you. If you make sculptures and performances, just say so.

-The why is probably the hardest for most people. But really, what makes you go into the studio every day? Are you trying to capture something, figure something out, or just work with your hands? You don’t have to give us the Pop Psych 101 details of your crappy childhood, but if there’s an idea there that helps the viewer understand your motivations, then write it down.

-You don’t have to bother with the how if your process is pretty standard, but by all means, if there’s something that you do that is unique or inventive, let us in on it.

-Art theory only has a place in an artist statement if it has a direct bearing on your day-to-day studio practice. Otherwise, skip it.

-Aim for clarity. Could you hand your statement to a stranger and have a reasonable expectation that they would understand your practice? Because once your statement goes up on the gallery wall, that’s essentially what you’re doing. If writing’s not really your game, emphasize facts over flowery language or personality.

-Nobody wants to read more than 250 words. And let at least one other person read/edit your statement before it goes public.

-Finally, a plea: leave the artist-statement clichés down in hell where they belong. Please do not, under any circumstances, include the words “I’m inspired by nature” or “My work is about memory.” Because who isn’t inspired by goddamn nature? If your work is based on the natural environment, give some specifics. Same for memory. Let’s all just agree to reserve vapid generalities for Top 40 lyrics.

About those rednecks: crafting a narrative for your work that fits an art audience might make you feel like you’re leaving Aunt Billie out in the cold, but remember that contemporary art is a specialized field just like information technology or plumbing. The non-professional can’t expect to fully understand everything in one go. With a little effort you can probably think of a few things about your work that family members might connect to, whether regarding your medium or subject matter or studio life, and you can say all these things in a holiday conversation. Your statement is for a particular audience—the audience that regularly reads and cares about artist statements—and since Aunt Billie’s not going to exhibit, sell, or buy your work, you don’t have to write a statement aimed at her. Your statement is an art-career device, not a literary effort designed to please everyone.

Congratulations on your new gallery! Good luck!

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. 

Lutz Bacher, Installation view, 2012. Courtesy of Ratio 3, San Francisco

With Lutz Bacher‘s exhibition, San Francisco’s Ratio 3 creates a stark contrast to the surrounding neighborhood. Once the gallery’s heavy black doors close behind you, the vivid colors of Mission Street are abruptly shut off. The jagged, cavernous space is given over to stark black and white, or, to be more precise, irregular spatters of black on a white or light grey surface.

Lutz Bacher, The Celestial Handbook, 2011. Image Courtesy of Art Fag City

The first thing one notices are small black spheres strewn about on the floor. The spheres — black stress balls — shift as the viewer moves about the space. On the walls are a selection of Bacher’s series The Celestial Handbook, eighty-five framed offset-printed book pages. The framed pages contain black-and-white images of galaxies and nebulae paired with short academic captions. Besides giving factual information, the image captions express the book author’s admiration of the cosmic vistas’ expansiveness and beauty. While reading the captions, one recalls the language of a catalog of exquisite items. It seems like the author, astronomer Robert Burnham Jr., just could not suppress the inclination to visually perceive his objects of study. The aesthetics of these tiny images of vast spaces become echoed in the floor installation, giving form to the intangibility of the cosmos.

The notion of space is emphasized throughout the entire exhibition. The framed images are placed at a considerable distance from each other, and the floor installation oscillates between its reference to tiny stars, planets, or subatomic particles – a true play between the macro and the micro.

Lutz Bacher, Installation view, 2012. Courtesy of Ratio 3, San Francisco

The adjacent room is smaller and dimly lit. The floor installation continues, as a sound installation begins to come into focus, and a voice stutters Puck’s words in a Midsummer Nights Dream saying “If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended.” The only object to adorn a wall in this secondary space initially appears as a black mirror. On close inspection the wall piece reveals a darkened, slightly obfuscated photograph of Robert Pattinson’s character, Edward, from Twilight. What is he doing there? The image shocks the space out of cosmic mystery and serenity, forcing me to reflect on Bacher’s choice of images which seem to belong to that special class of pictures that are almost too trivial to admire. Yet, the unsettling nature of the darkened vampire photo, the stammered rhythm of Shakespeare, the way the shades of black fold together, the tactility of the stress balls under one’s feet, amount to a transformation of the familiar and the banal into something much more captivating – something that lies just outside of what can be truly known.

Lutz Bacher runs at Ratio 3 until November 3.

Your counselor, hard at work.

How important is it to consider the intent of an artist when viewing his or her work?

Your position on this matter depends on how you feel about the artist’s desire for a particular expression versus your own powers of interpretation. On one hand, we might wish to honor—or at least consider—the stated intentions of the artist when viewing the work, even if only to see how it matches up against our own perception. On the other hand, “Works of the imagination are sites of interpretation,” claims artist David Robbins in his book Concrete Comedy. “Indeed they are made in order to be interpreted; art is not simply a matter of ‘appreciation,’ of ‘understanding the artist’s intentions.’ If we accept that the spectator completes the work, then it follows that the audience for imaginative works may interpret them with the same freedom and intensity that informed their creation. Nothing can and should prevent us from offering imaginative interpretations of works of the imagination, since every individual’s relation to their own imagination is sacred—more sacred, even, then is respecting an artist’s intentions. The idea that certain interpretations must be cordoned off and others reinforced without challenge…is a position finally impossible to defend. To do so is to violate an essential principle of human history.”

Sometimes I think a former professor had the last word on pointing out the limits of artistic intent when he asked, “Given how very little most people really know about themselves, why should we trust their stated intentions?”

Chris Burden, Shoot, 1971. Documentation of performance.

Do you think that tattooing/tattoo derived imagery (drawings, flash, etc) is a valid form of contemporary art? Would you view it as a fine art, an occupation, or a mixture of both? Do you think a hierarchy of importance should be in place when talking about contemporary art and its applications?

This is not exactly my area of expertise, but thankfully I found just the person to answer your query: Dan Gilsdorf, who has been tattooing professionally for 20 years, agreed to guest-write the opinions below. He also has a professional career in the fine arts, and so was uniquely qualified to opine on both tattooing and contemporary art.

I ought to make a couple of clarifications before diving into an answer. I’m going to assume that by “tattooing” you mean as it’s practiced conventionally in the U.S. and other developed countries—that is to say a professionalized activity that takes place in a business context and provides, to a greater or lesser extent, a living in the economic sense. Let me also state that art is a term that gets thrown around pretty loosely and is often misapplied to anything that is done in a highly skilled manner, such as graphic design, furniture making, plumbing, etc. For our purposes here, let’s agree not to use the term ‘art’ as a value judgment (either positive or negative) and let’s concede that a great plumber is best and most suitably appreciated for his or her greatness as a plumber, not as a plumbing artist. After all, who of us would really want our toilet to subvert the dominant conceptual paradigm?

Chris Burden, L.A.P.D. Uniform, 1994. Fabric, leather, wood, metal & plastic, 88 x 72 x 6 inches (223.5 x 182.9 x 15.2 cm) Ed. of 30

So, on to your first question about the validity of tattooing as a form of contemporary art. One of the great features of postmodernity is that there are no invalid forms of contemporary art. An artist’s work can take on any form whatsoever, and that form can change at any time and to any extent. Indeed, artwork need not take a “form” at all, as seen in the examples of conceptualism and social practice. The flip side of this principle is that there are no forms whose validity as contemporary art is a given. Painting a wall and doing a painting on a wall are essentially the same thing, yet we categorize them differently based on subtle distinctions such as context, intent, etc.

Chris Burden, Relic from Jaizu, 1972. Glasses in acrylic box, 7-3/8 x 10-1/4 x 8-1/4 inches (18.7 x 26 x 21 cm)

The same holds true for tattooing. Many artists have utilized tattooing and tattoo imagery with the intent to create contemporary art and have presented their work within a fine arts context. (Santiago Sierra, Spider Webb, Tony Fitzpatrick, Shelley Jackson, Dr. Lakra and Don Ed Hardy are examples) However, this does not mean that all tattooing qualifies as contemporary art. Likewise, a lot of this kind of work, great art though it may be, doesn’t really make good tattoos.

Unlike the examples above, the vast majority of tattoos in the world are made according to the specifications of the people wearing them, that is, the customers. In this way, most tattooing has more in common with a design service than with contemporary art. Of course, as with any design service there are considerations of style, and customers will choose tattooists based on the style of their work, but stylistic input doesn’t make it art, at least as far as the tattooist is concerned. Therefore, if you’re considering taking up tattooing as means to express yourself artistically, I’d suggest finding another medium; one that doesn’t bleed, squirm, or make off-the-wall design requests that you find to be in horrible taste.

Chris Burden, Three Ghost Ships, 1991. Sailboats, one with solar panel and electronic components; 3 boats: 6-1/2 x 6-1/2 x 15-1/2 feet each sailboat hull. Installation at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills.

As for tattoo imagery, the flash designs drawn or painted by tattooists are typically intended to be sold individually as tattoos and are akin to a catalogue of available motifs. Many tattooists make and sell paintings, drawings, prints, and the like without necessarily intending that they end up on someone’s skin, but these tend to be shown and marketed to a tattoo audience rather than a fine arts audience. Granted there is significant potential overlap in these two audiences but, generally speaking, they are quite dissimilar in their tastes and expectations.

Which brings us to hierarchies. Hierarchies abound in the arts, for better or worse. Most of us would agree that work of higher quality should be regarded above work of lower quality, but what constitutes a quality work of art turns out to be remarkably subjective. In tattooing, the standards of quality are much simpler; if the customer likes his or her tattoo, and is happy with it, then mission accomplished. It doesn’t really matter what the tattooist, the tattoo community, or anybody else thinks about it, and that’s pretty much the end of the story in my opinion. But then there is the question of hierarchy in a more general sense; is tattooing “lower” than contemporary art? Not surprisingly, it depends on whom you ask and how they valuate such things. It’s a little like comparing ice hockey to basketball. They’re not without their similarities but they are different games. The good news is that you can appreciate both for what they are. It’s perfectly acceptable to love art and to love tattoos equally and simultaneously.

Paraiso at ltd los angeles. Installation view. Image courtesy of ltd los angeles.

Take Paraíso’s three opening works: Michael Linares’s Untitled, 2011, a big, blue balloon hovering above several beached strands of triangular, car-lot flags, weighted down by a rock; Linares’s Wait ‘til it grows, 2011, two small coconut trees sprouting straight from the coconuts themselves, burdened by a hammock strung between them that has yet to make it off the ground; and Charles Juhaz-Alvarado’s Del brazo a la garganta: (mimus polyglottos), 2011, a large, handcrafted wooden bulldozer claw that looks like it should be attached to an equally huge wooden bulldozer, but which is actually attached to a vehicle the size of a toy.  All three works exist in indeterminate states, with the onus on the viewer to decide whether the balloon is ascending or descending, or whether the hammock will make it off the ground.

Paraiso at ltd los angeles. Installation view. Image courtesy of ltd los angeles.

Michael Linares, Wait 'til it grows, 2011-ongoing. 4 feet x 8 feet. Image courtesy ltd los angeles.

This “half-empty or half-full” scenario continues throughout the show, including Jesús “Bubu” Negrón’s video La Promesa, 2003, in which the artist lovingly and exasperatedly drags an empty wheelchair from the airport in Mexico City to Ex-Teresa, an exhibition venue, stopping at multiple bars.  Two equally entertaining works by Negrón sit at the registrar’s desk: Mini Colillón Masculino, 2011, and Mini Colillón Femenino, 2011, a set of two giant and crumpled cigarette butts made of hundreds of smaller cigarettes.  Here your options include being disgusted by the sculptures’ material or wowed by their whimsy (including lipstick stains to indicate which Colillón is Femenino).

Jesús “Bubu” Negrón, La Promesa, 2003. Digital video with photonovela. Image courtesy ltd los angeles.

Jesús “Bubu” Negrón, Mini Colillón Masculino, 2011, and Mini Colillón Femenino, 2011. Cigarette butts, lipstick and glue. 8 in x 4 in x 4 in, approximately. Image courtesy ltd los angeles.

While Paraíso’s visual punning is reminiscent of the Puerto Rican artists Allora and Calzadilla’s entry at this year’s Venice Biennale, its message is more nuanced.  The press release for the show makes much of the idea that paradise relates to action, referencing scholar Alan Millard’s description of paradise as a work of cultural memory, as well as Cuban author José Lezama Lima’s book Paradiso, a sprawling tale in which little happens but just about everything is discussed.  Whimsy, beauty and tragedy are all there for the taking, but Paraíso reminds us that more often than not, they come as one package, and it’s up to us to decide how we’d like to unwrap it.

Paraíso is on view through August 13, 2011, at ltd los angeles in Los Angeles.