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  February, 2012

Recipient of 2012 Brooklyn Arts Council
Artist-Community Collaboration Award
 		   
  Upcoming exhibition at Marginal Utility, Philadelphia



Working on a project exploring the utility of excavating the 19th century Knights of Labor from its buried position in US history for an upcoming individual exhibition at the non-profit space MARGINAL UTILITY in Philadelphia.  The exhibition will be comprised of a gallery component and a related urban intervention.
 		   
  Arte Util panel at A-Lab

December 10, 2011, 2:00 - 4:00 PM

ARTE UTIL
This forum centers around the works of artists whose practice involves social and political engagement.  Through actions, performances, situations, and in may instances the reference to the object(s) , participating artists explore possible ways to bridge the gap between audiences and art experience.  Taking as departure the notion of Arte Util (Useful Art), first introduced in the 1960’s , the forum will open the dialogue to offer a possible re-formulation of  ideas behind artistic creation, aesthetics, alternative narratives, and public participation. Selected artists were invited to present their work and share their approach, ideas and experimentation with art that can found in the streets outside the white box of a gallery or museum setting.

Participating Artists:
Suzanne Broughel
Tania Bruguera
Aisha Cousins
John Hawke
Shani Peters

Organized by Hector Canonge

 
 		   
  Gifting Abstraction at Soho 20



Gifting Abstraction establishes an intimate economy within Soho20Chelsea gallery in which abstract objects have not yet turned into objectified commodities. The gift economy paradigm recognizes that there is value outside market forces, and that the gift renders forces and riches of its own. One of the perplexing aspects of the gift is that while its effect cannot be quantified, its intention is generally palpable: at its best, the gift generates a sense of interconnectedness. In this exhibition, artists' labor stretches beyond the works themselves, as connective lines are symbolically rendered through the gifting process onto a relational dimension. 

Gifting Abstraction questions the idea that abstract works are inextricably bound to the marketplace and therefore to a larger discourse of individualism. Abstraction has been construed as standing in direct opposition to the “relational aesthetics” theorized by Nicolas Bourriaud: “It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows.” Bourriaud implicitly pits object-based art practices such as abstract painting – which he associates with the notion of (failed) utopias – against what he calls “microtopia,” a provisional, DIY, relational approach to art.

This exhibition dismantles these oppositions, bringing abstract objects into a shifting and relational process. The arrangement of abstract art works in the exhibit will change regularly over 20 days based on choices by the participating artists. Each artist gifts a piece and selects one from the exhibition to take at the end of the show. There will be a diagram notating each selection, and artists can rearrange the works after they select their gift. Each artist communicates with the previous and subsequent “gifting” artists, and with the other artists of the show through a blog designed for that purpose, in an exhibit where the relationships among the artists are of primary importance. Also inspired by Umberto Eco’s  poetics of the “open work,” this exhibition changes with each gift, creating a new communicative situation through the abstract works themselves. 

Artists: Melanie Crader, Matthew Deleget, Anoka Faruqee, Michelle Grabner, Brent Hallard, John Hawke, Gilbert Hsiao, Pablo Manga, Thomas Martin, Leah Raintree, Claudia Sbrissa, Karen Schifano, Karen Schiff, Jessica Snow, Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Robert Strati, Ann Tarantino

Gifting Abstraction, curated by Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, is part of Abstraction at Work, a series dedicated to rethinking abstraction’s functions through projects ranging from installations to curatorial experiments.

October 4-29, 2011
Soho20 Chelsea Gallery, NYC
 		   
  "LEAN NETWORKS/VISION GROUP donation to IMMA"



Process Room at Irish Museum of Modern Art,
Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin
June 6- 19

John Hawke presentes a three meter tall "magnetite boulder" as presented to IMMA from the aggressively contemporary Lean Networks/Vision Group.  The mirrored stone on castor wheels roams the grounds before settling provisionally in the central courtyard.  Inside the museum, the LN/VG establishes a branded "lobby gallery' to display their corporate collection.
   
  Beyond Fiction and Document



Mandatory Minimum, a new video work, will be screened as part of:

Between Document and Fiction

curated by José Carlos Teixeira
two Porto Venues: Maus Hábitos [Bad Habits] and Passos Manuel
June 3, 4, and 5

Mandatory Minimum
6´59"
2011

"Mandatory Minimum" explores the real effects and limits of a fictive declaration installed on the wall of a highway ramp across from the exit of a construction materials store in Brooklyn, New York.  The 1.2 x 2 meter commercially fabricated coroplast sign was installed by the artist in May 2010, by firing explosive fasteners into the concrete.  The sign declares without explanation that the minimum legal wage for laborers is $11.75 per hour (a %50 increase from the actual minimum US wage of $7.25 per hour).  In the video, the artist discusses the effect of the sign as well as Art´s potential agency for social change with men who congregate, as "a reserve army of capitalism," in the parking garage of the store, seeking employment.