Cezary Poniatowski. No Center No Edges, 2016; installation view, Piktogram Gallery, Warsaw. Courtesy of Piktogram Gallery.

In the largest room, five sizable canvases are hung from chains high on the wall, evoking castle-hall portraits of the aristocracy—but their subject matter is not so exalted. On the far right, a horned figure assumes the stance of a champion, athletically mounting an Olympian plinth; in the middle of the grouping, another muscular figure triumphantly raises his own severed head. These victorious figures counter the impression made by the canvas on the far left, which depicts a minotaur-like character hunched, horns drooping. Inside this being’s rough outline, ten miniature black paintings are portrayed in a salon-style grouping.

The repetition of this bullish hybrid across many of the canvases might tempt viewers to believe that the minotaur is Poniatowski’s proxy, and that the character’s oscillation between elation and misery depicts the state of the artist himself, who must waver between engagement and withdrawal. There’s also a sense that the figure’s machismo is a comedic feint, as in Warner Brothers’ classic cartoon “What’s Opera, Doc?” in which the silhouette of a gargantuan horned monstrosity turns out to be the shadow cast by a diminutive Elmer Fudd in an oversize Viking helmet.

Cezary Poniatowski. Casablanca, 2015; acrylic on canvas; 125 x 100 cm. Courtesy of Piktogram Gallery.

In the other rooms of the exhibition, various canvases extend the artist’s range of cultural references and allusions. Casablanca (2015) introduces visual and temporal discontinuity to a restaging of the most famous scene from the middle of the 1942 classic film: Blobby, anthropomorphous figures convene around an upright piano, but the overlaid quote,“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” is, in fact, the last line of the film. The mismatch between the scene and quote creates a layer of friction that points to the way in which supposedly remarkable cultural moments are misremembered.

Pingelap (2015) spells out a source of inspiration for the limited palette of the show—the famous color blindness of the Pingelap people, who live on an island of the same name off the coast of Papua New Guinea—but the letters swirl in a vortex with random, abstract motifs. Other paintings contain hints, innuendo, and allusions that vary in their specificity and universality, from ancient Minoan amphora decoration to hip-hop fashion. Context often determines the reading of semi-abstract motifs; the arched rack of horns in one painting becomes the curve of a smile in another, and a crescent moon in yet another.

Cezary Poniatowski. Untitled, 2016; acrylic on canvas; 180 x 145 cm. Courtesy of Piktogram Gallery.

The flat comic-style heroes are often placed awkwardly into their panels, lending an air of both hubris and pathos to their energetic and mysterious proceedings. The dry-brushed black paint reveals the gestural energy of Poniatowski’s mark-making, and in some of the works the inclusion of glitter provides another layer of haptic texture. Such gestures, along with the exuberance to the compositions, contrasts with the austere lack of color, suggesting a self-conscious struggle to make chaos into a stable whole. This darkness unites all the works in the exhibition, making it read more like an installation rather than a collection of discrete works.

Cezary Poniatowski. No Center No Edges, 2016; installation view, Piktogram Gallery, Warsaw. Courtesy of Piktogram Gallery.

The title of the exhibition is taken from a moment in Jim Jarmusch’s 2009 film The Limits of Control: “The universe has no center and no edges; reality is arbitrary.” Poniatowski’s echoes and quotations are a complex synthesis that seems de rigeur for the information age: a series of quasi-narrative, mythical, discontinuous scenes that feature a pantheon of frail titans and cheerful malcontents. In these images, viewers may perceive an artist who contends with a cultural onslaught and tries to interpret or represent the sense of its assailment. Like the minotaur, both he and his viewers are doomed to wander a labyrinth of recognition and misperception—or as Jarmusch wrote in his script, “Everything is subjective.”

Wendy Given. On Myth and Magic No. 14: Chrysalis, 2010; C-print; 40 x 60 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Mythos: fantasy, fiction, legend, saga, parable, fable, narrative, invention, fabrication, yarn. The conceptual distance between myth and the concrete manifestations of mythology is a potentially endless—yet meaningfully orderable—list of synonyms. But with each word the gap shrinks, as mental images of processes and then objects emerge, even if just as puns. Wendy Given is bridging the gaps between the abstract idea of a mythos and its textural and visual components—the story.

Given’s work includes photography, sculpture, and installation, often combining all three to create imagery for mythologies and stories. These stories simultaneously capture and unite the literal and abstract components of the processes of mythmaking. She pays particular attention to the natural world and provides placeholders for the components of stories—characters, settings, objects, rituals—and in so doing constructs nearly identifiable narratives. It’s important to note that Given is neither illustrating existing stories nor inventing new ones—her practice does something in between. Her works are not quite archetypal, but they hold just enough familiarity to stimulate the imagination.

Wendy Given. The Flowery Dream: Specimen 4, 2010; mushroom embedment in resin; 3 x 3 x 3 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

The Flowery Dream: Specimens 1-7 (2010) consists of seven mushrooms embedded in resin, each inside of a three-inch cube, displayed in a row like specimens in a natural-history museum or a research laboratory. The artist explains: “The magic exists in being able to view the cubes from all six sides, experiencing the mushrooms disembodied from the earth, loose from the soil, like a tiny floating spirit captured for all eternity.” One can imagine these seven mushrooms as magical remedies, healing ingredients, or even as poisons that a narrative’s villain would use in the plot of a primeval yet unidentifiable parable.

Wendy Given. The Flowery Dream: Specimens 1-7, 2010; mushroom embedment in resin; 3 x 3 x 3 in. each. Courtesy of the Artist.

A particular quality of Given’s work reminds me of Damien Hirst’s notorious The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a great white shark encased in a glass chamber filled with formaldehyde. Given’s work does contain all the potential for death—or at least a psychedelic experience—but her installation is so much more personal and folkloric, as it presents an undetermined number of both physical possibilities and potential storylines. Each mushroom is neither a story nor is it not a story, but a series of potentialities—both actual and fabled.

Wendy Given. On Myth and Magic No. 5: Eclipse, 2009; C-print; 17.25 x 26 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

On Myth and Magic (2009–2010), a body of C-print photographs, presents visual imagery that alludes to specific myths with props, figures, and scenery, but it focuses more on capturing the atmosphere of agelessness and the seductive mystery that makes so many myths endure in hearts and minds. 

While No. 5: Eclipse’s (2009) eerie shadows, saturated greens, and diorama-like quality is purely atmospheric, On Myth and Magic No. 14: Chrysalis (2010) takes a step further into storytelling as a velvet-caped woman, with only part of an eye and a shock of blonde hair visible, lies amid spilled fruit and fabrics. One can begin to imagine so many possibilities as to what befell this sleeping, injured, or dead character as she made her way through the shadowy woods at night, yet no specifics emerge to point to one narrative or another. With this series of images, Given pushes the processes of storytelling right up against any specific narrative, frustrating the viewer only to revel in vague yet richly aestheticized visual and cultural clues.

Wendy Given. Gaest No. 11, To Lucybelle, 2012; C-print; 20 x 20 in. Courtesy of the Artist.

Time and again Wendy Given uses the component parts of a visual language used for telling folkloric tales that are, as the artist says, “inspired by narrative literature from all over the world.” Given explores “[the] many similarities folkloric tales from divergent cultures share, and history, natural history, folklore, myth, allegory, and magic.” Her fascination with the natural world, which inspires and grounds her installations, photographs, and sculptures, contains a primordial-ness that defines her work and allows it to blur the lines between truth and fiction in believable and at times solely atmospheric ways.

Wendy Given is a visual artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. She has a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, GA, and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions in Atlanta, GA; Portland, OR; Santa Monica, CA; Guatemala City, Guatemala; Los Angeles, CA; New York City; and Tacoma, WA. Given has also been awarded residencies at Signal Fire Alpenglow, Mt. Hood, OR; Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency, Joshua Tree, CA; and at Caldera Arts, Sisters, OR.

Wendy Given. Gaest No. 11, To Lucybelle, 2012; C-print; 20 x 20 in. Photo courtesy of the Artist.

Given’s work includes photography, sculpture, and installation, often combining all three to create imagery for mythologies and stories. These stories simultaneously capture and unite the literal and abstract components of the processes of mythmaking. She pays particular attention to the natural world and provides placeholders for the components of stories—characters, settings, objects, rituals—and in so doing constructs nearly identifiable narratives. It’s important to note that Given is neither illustrating existing stories nor inventing new ones—her practice does something in between. Her works are not quite archetypal, but they hold just enough familiarity to stimulate the imagination.

Wendy Given. The Flowery Dream: Specimen 4, 2010; mushroom embedment in resin; 3 x 3 x 3 in. Photo courtesy of the Artist.

The Flowery Dream: Specimens 1-7 (2010) consists of seven mushrooms embedded in resin, each inside of a three-inch cube, displayed in a row like specimens in a natural-history museum or a research laboratory. The artist explains: “The magic exists in being able to view the cubes from all six sides, experiencing the mushrooms disembodied from the earth, loose from the soil, like a tiny floating spirit captured for all eternity.” One can imagine these seven mushrooms as magical remedies, healing ingredients, or even as poisons that a narrative’s villain would use in the plot of a primeval yet unidentifiable parable.

Wendy Given. The Flowery Dream: Specimens 1-7, 2010; mushroom embedment in resin; 3 x 3 x 3 in. each. Photo courtesy of the Artist.

A particular quality of Given’s work reminds me of Damien Hirst’s notorious The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991), a great white shark encased in a glass chamber filled with formaldehyde. Given’s work does contain all the potential for death—or at least a psychedelic experience—but her installation is so much more personal and folkloric, as it presents an undetermined number of both physical possibilities and potential storylines. Each mushroom is neither a story nor is it not a story, but a series of potentialities—both actual and fabled.

Wendy Given. On Myth and Magic No. 5: Eclipse, 2009; C-print; 17.25 x 26 in. Photo courtesy of the Artist.

On Myth and Magic (2009-2010), a body of C-print photographs, presents visual imagery that alludes to specific myths with props, figures, and scenery, but it focuses more on capturing the atmosphere of agelessness and the seductive mystery that makes so many myths endure in hearts and minds. 

While No. 5: Eclipse’s (2009) eerie shadows, saturated greens, and diorama-like quality is purely atmospheric, On Myth and Magic No. 14: Chrysalis (2010) takes a step further into storytelling as a velvet-caped woman, with only part of an eye and a shock of blonde hair visible, lies amid spilled fruit and fabrics. One can begin to imagine so many possibilities as to what befell this sleeping, injured, or dead character as she made her way through the shadowy woods at night, yet no specifics emerge to point to one narrative or another. With this series of images, Given pushes the processes of storytelling right up against any specific narrative, frustrating the viewer only to revel in vague yet richly aestheticized visual and cultural clues.

Wendy Given. On Myth and Magic No. 14: Chrysalis, 2010; C-print; 40 x 60 in. Photo courtesy of the Artist.

Time and again Wendy Given uses the component parts of a visual language used for telling folkloric tales that are, as the artist says, “inspired by narrative literature from all over the world.” Given explores “[the] many similarities folkloric tales from divergent cultures share, and history, natural history, folklore, myth, allegory, and magic.” Her fascination with the natural world, which inspires and grounds her installations, photographs, and sculptures, contains a primordial-ness that defines her work and allows it to blur the lines between truth and fiction in believable and at times solely atmospheric ways.

Wendy Given is a visual artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. She has a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art, Atlanta, GA, and an MFA from Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions in Atlanta, GA; Portland, OR; Santa Monica, CA; Guatemala City, Guatemala; Los Angeles, CA; New York City; and Tacoma, WA. Given has also been awarded residencies at Signal Fire Alpenglow, Mt. Hood, OR; Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency, Joshua Tree, CA; and at Caldera Arts, Sisters, OR.

I’m just about to finish my first really serious series of paintings, and I’m curious about which approach is the best for self-promotion. Is it better to go all out and submit art to blogs, magazines, post cards, business cards, etc., or is it better to play it subtly, try and meet the right people, and become that hidden gem that someone finds and then shows to the world? Is it possible that being over-exposed on blogs can be a turn off to galleries, like they don’t have the pleasure of being able to say, “Look what I found!”? (I’m talking about the galleries that like to showcase new talent rather than blue chips, the kind you get your foot in the door with as an artist.)

Apparently you missed that day in Catholic school when they taught us Matthew 5:15-16: “Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works.” Notice that this verse doesn’t advise, “get thine light discovered by cunning means” or “have another man lighteth thine candle for thee.”

Philippe Parreno, La Batalla de los Patos, a documentary project with Rirkrit Tiravanija, 2003, 2013. Screenprint, printed in phosphorescent ink, 39.5 x 55.5 inches, edition of 6

Where are all these imaginary people who have ample time and inclination to discover you? I can’t imagine a single gallerist who, after curating, framing, installing, promoting, and selling a show—in addition to managing a staff, courting new collectors and arts patrons, and maybe even having a home life in the odd moment outside of work—who is going to be able to wade through the deep seas of information put out there by artists who are promoting their work, in order to find you. I hope I am making this point clear for artists who sit in their studios hoping to be “discovered”: when you hear the phone not ringing, it will be the galleries not calling.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. I wrote to several arts professionals about being found and they all said the same thing: it doesn’t work like that. One gallerist from Boston said, “I would agree with you on the ‘discovery’ idea. With all the ‘noise’ in our contemporary culture, subtlety when it comes to self-promotion is a losing idea. Years ago, before social media, [another] gallerist told me he had a rule of three: if he heard the same name from three different people he would check out the work. The more ‘buzz’ around the work the more attention it is going to get.” A gallerist in San Francisco told me, “I couldn’t agree more. An emerging artist should be doing as much as he/she can to connect with others and find exhibition opportunities. So much can be learned from showing and working with others. This is how an artist builds his/her community within the art world and an important audience for their work. From a marketing or sales perspective, it’s of course far easier for a gallery to work with an artist who has already established a positive reputation.”

Philippe Parreno, No More Reality, reunion, 2006, 2013. Screenprint, printed in phosphorescent ink, 39.5 x 55.5 inches, edition of 6

As for “playing it subtly” and trying to meet the “right people,” those are strategies likely to disappoint unless you already know influential arts professionals who have previously indicated that they are happy to promote your work. Here’s where you need to be honest about your ability to get within shouting distance of whomever these “right people” might be—I’m guessing that you’re not currently rubbing elbows with a bunch of gallerists and collectors who summer in the Hamptons. In the long run it’s better to rely on the quality of your work and your marketing than to try to strong-arm friendships with the mighty. I’d rather see you take a more sensible route, one that will keep you from dying with a note to David Zwirner clutched in your paint-stained hand.

Since your ultimate goal is to get some attention from galleries, you’re going to have to start elsewhere and build up that “buzz” that our friend in Boston is talking about. Have your work photographed by a professional. Make it easy for people to find you by having a website with a good layout and visible contact info. Email a few images and a short press release to online and print publications likely to be interested in your work. Make a Facebook page, a tumblr, or an instagram account. Contact the local papers. Sometimes you can get other groups interested—for example, if you paint trains you could send an email to the National Model Railroad Society. Don’t laugh! It’s a somewhat-facetious example but I do know artists who have made sales and built a buzz on the basis of their work’s subject matter, so brainstorm people and organizations who might connect to what you’re doing. Don’t discount any avenue you have for creating a dialogue around the work.

Philippe Parreno, From November 5th Until They Fell Down, stop animation film, 2010, 2013. Screenprint, printed in phosphorescent ink, 39.5 x 55.5 inches, edition of 6

While you’re doing all that, line up some studio visits with arts professionals—gallerists, independent curators, even arts writers. Do your homework and figure out who might be interested in your paintings. If you’re not used to doing studio visits, practice by swapping visits with art friends and/or ask a few former professors to come for a short visit so you can “warm up” and be ready for when a gallerist arrives.

In about every third column I find myself flogging the book Art/Work, and the reason is that it’s a tremendously useful resource for artists who want to be on the gallery track. Please buy a copy and read it cover to cover. You will find that it answers many of the questions that are bound to come up after the buzz starts. Get your work out there, and good luck!