News
-
06/06/2010
Exiled Iranian artist and filmmaker Daryush Shokof is missing.
From Associated Press: Daryush Shokof, a 55-year-old Berlin resident, was last seen on May 24 in Cologne, where he planned to board a train to Paris. "As of now we have no information about his whereabouts and we don't have any evidence that a crime took place," Berlin police spokesman Guido Busch said. "However, we're investigating in all directions and are in contact with various exile groups from Iran that are based in Germany." Kazem Moussavi, a friend of Shokof's and self-described regime critic, told The Associated Press that Shokof was "a harsh critic of the Iranian government and constantly received threatening phone calls."
http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=1277633&lang=eng_news
-
06/03/2010
Issue 2 of Talking Cure is available to download on Art Practical!
"The Question of Taste in the Twenty-First Century" explores the various implications of Taste through artist's writing and interviews. Once the criteria for working in the art world was having distinctive if not discerning Taste. Discussion about this have all but disappeared from our the contemporary dialog, but Taste in a practical and philosophical sense is alive and well and desperate for examination.
Talking Cure Issue Two will be available for purchase soon through Magcloud.com, but can also be downloaded here: http://www.artpractical.com/talking_cure/
-
06/03/2010
Matthew Harrison Tedford and Megan McMillan join the editorial team at Art Practical.
Matthew Harrison Tedford is a writer and editor living in San Francisco. He holds a BA in Philosophy from UC Santa Cruz, and is a candidate for an MA in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts. In addition to working at Art Practical, he is an editorial assistant at SF Camerawork and recently edited the monograph Stella Zhang: 0-Viewpoint for the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco.
Megan McMillan is currently earning her B.A. in mass communications at Menlo College. Megan recently returned to California after spending a year studying in Buenos Aires. She lives in San Francisco where she continues to progress her passion for writing and her enthusiasm for the arts as an editorial intern for Art Practical.
-
06/01/2010
Louise Bourgeois, the French-born American artist, died at age 98.
From Artforum:Louise Bourgeois, the French-born American artist who gained fame only late in a long career, when her psychologically charged abstract sculptures, drawings, and prints had a galvanizing effect on younger artists—particularly women—has died at the Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, reports Holland Cotter for the New York Times. She was 98. Bourgeois’ sculptures in wood, steel, stone, and cast rubber, often organic in form and sexually explicit, emotionally aggressive yet witty, covered many stylistic bases. But from first to last they shared a set of repeated themes, centered on the human body and its need for nurture and protection in a frightening world.
-
05/30/2010
Actor, avid photographer, and noted contemporary art collector Dennis Hopper died Saturday at age 74.
From the New York Times: Dennis Hopper, who was part of a generation of Hollywood rebels in portrayals of drug-addled misfits in the landmark films “Easy Rider,” “Apocalypse Now” and “Blue Velvet," died on Saturday at his home in Venice, Calif. Mr. Hopper had several artistic pursuits beyond film. Early in his career, he painted and wrote poetry. His intimate and unguarded images of celebrities were the subject of gallery shows and published in books. He also built an extensive collection of works by artists he knew, including Warhol, Ed Ruscha and Julian Schnabel.
-
05/28/2010
Check out: imagined telepathic conversation between Bjork and Marina Abramovic.
As MoMA's first performance retrospective draws to a close, there has been much recounting of the various individuals jockeying to spend time sitting across from Abramovic as part of her live piece in "The Artist is Present." The link below imagines a telepathic conversation with the musician (and performance artist in her own right) Bjork. The actor James Franco also makes a guest appearance.
-
05/28/2010
Check out: the conversation between Art Practical contributors Renny Pritikin and Zachary Royer Scholz.
Appearing on SFMOMA's Open Space blog, the email conversation reflects on the Pickpocket Almanack class, Art and the Invisible, which Pritikin taught and Scholz attended. As Scholz notes, "Learning about swimming bats, urban bird populations, and the long history of Jews in China, were all fascinating in their own right, but together they sketched an expanded vision of the world, whose idiosyncratic quirkiness was fascinating exactly because it wasn’t controlled and was at times not what you even expected."
See complete entry here: http://blog.sfmoma.org/2010/05/conversation-with-zachary-royer-scholz/
-
05/27/2010
Oil reaches Louisiana shores; low estimate is 6 million gallons of crude have spilled into Gulf to date.
-
05/27/2010
Sharon Tanenbaum, Executive Director of SF Camerawork, has announced she is stepping down.
From a letter to SF Camerawork supporters: "I recently let our Board of Directors know that I will be resigning as Executive Director of SF Camerawork (at the end of June), after many years working with this wonderful organization. With a very capable and dedicated staff, strong leadership from the Board, and our exhibitions and educational programming well planned for the next two years, I feel confident that Camerawork is on very solid footing and I will be doing everything possible to assist the organization during this transition."
-
05/26/2010
Thirty finalists for the 2010 SECA Art Award have been announced.
Thirty artists were selected as finalists for the 2010 SECA Art Award. Apsara DiQunizio, assistant curator of painting and sculpture, and Tanya Zimbardo, assistant curator of media arts, selected the finalists from over 250 applicants. Studio visits begin this fall and winners will be announced on December 16, 2010.
Finalists include: Mauricio Ancalmo, Michael Arcega, Amy Balkin, Michelle Blade, Nate Boyce, Castaneda/Reiman, Sergio De La Torre, Anthony Discenza, Bruno Fazzolari, Rebecca Goldfarb, Michael Guidetti, Misako Inaoka, Colter Jacobsen, Jason Kalogiros, Pawel Kruk, Ruth Laskey, Bernie Lubell, Chris McCaw, Sean McFarland, Brion Nuda Rosch, Jennie Ottinger, Kamau Amu Patton, Alison Sant, Paul Schiek, Alice Shaw, Weston Teruya, Gabrielle Teschner, Richard T. Walker, Lindsey White, and Pamela Wilson-Ryckman.
To learn more about the SECA art award: http://www.sfmoma.org/pages/seca_art_award
-
05/26/2010
The Bay Citizen, the new Bay Area newspaper, launches today! Includes AP's interview with the Present Group.
The Bay Citizen was founded in 2010 as a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to fact-based, independent reporting on civic and community issues in the San Francisco Bay Area. It covers Bay Area civic and cultural news topics that are under-reported today. They also partner widely with independent media organizations and writers to bring readers the best of Bay Area news. Art Practical is a community media partner of the Bay Citizen; you can see the recent interview with the Present Group on their Arts and Life page.
-
05/25/2010
Art Practical will become a media partner with the Bay Citizen, the new online newspaper for the Bay Area.
The Bay Citizen, which launches May 26, is an online newspaper covering the Bay Area. It is working in partnership with the UC Berkeley School of Journalism and the New York Times.
In creating media partnerships, the Bay Citizen wants to work with independent media organizations and bloggers who are doing on-the-ground reporting, especially in the areas of hyper-local news and culture. These partnerships are envisioned to be collaborative, serving the goals of both parties while also creating a great experience for site visitors and community members. Every story from media partners would be branded, and also linked to full pages dedicated to media partners, with RSS feeds, and links back to the original article.
To learn more about the Bay Citizen and the partner program: http://www.baycitizen.org/
-
05/24/2010
Check out Michael Zheng's video project, The Profession: Artists Talk About Their Careers in Art
Currently on view at the Marina Abramovic Institute West, as well as online, SFAI alum Michael Zheng has created a series of videos, in which he posed questions to his former classmates, asking them about their careers as artists since graduating with MFAs five years ago. In the interviews, Zheng asks the artists a variety of questions—what are the challenges to maintaining a studio practice? What has been your experience with commercial galleries? How has art school prepared or failed to prepare you for careers in contemporary art?
-
05/21/2010
Orange County Museum of Art announces the artists for the 2010 California Biennial.
From the LA Times: The Orange County Museum of Art has selected more than 40 artists and collaborative groups to participate in the 2010 California Biennial. The exhibition, which will run Oct. 24 to March 13, is designed to showcase new developments in contemporary art with an emphasis on emerging artists from around the state. This year's participants were chosen by OCMA curator Sarah Bancroft, who is curating the biennial.
Numerous Bay Area artists will participate. To see the complete list:
-
05/21/2010
An experimental photographic process of the early 1990s is proving unstable.
From the Art Newspaper: At a recent seminar for new photography collectors at the Photographers’ Gallery in London, audience members were warned of the risks of purchasing c-prints dating from the early 1990s by artists such as Andreas Gursky because of the works’ inherent instability. The materials of c-print—or chromogenic—colour photography are complex organic compounds, which are unstable. Unlike the constituents of black and white photographs, the ingredients of c-prints continue to undergo chemical reactions rather than stabilise.
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/C-prints-fade-into-the-light/20892
-
05/20/2010
Intersection for the Arts opened their new space last evening: Intersection 5M.
In its 45th year of operation, Intersection opened a new space in conjunction with an innovative, cross-sector project in the Chronicle building located at the corner of 5th and Mission Streets in San Francisco. Partnering with The Hub Bay Area, a co-working space, and TechShop, a membership-based do-it-yourself workshop, this collaboration is part of a prototype for a new, open urban campus of for-profit and non-profit businesses, artists and entrepreneurs that dissolves boundaries and consistently instigates synergistic collaboration across disciplines in order to inspire and enable new ideas for change.
For more info on the space and the inaugural exhibition: http://www.theintersection.org/
-
05/20/2010
The San Francisco Fine Art Fair opens this evening with a preview benefiting the San Francisco Art Institute.
Running May 21 through 23 at the Festival Pavilion at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, the SF Fine Art Fair marks the return of an internationally-ranked art fair to the city. Over 70 galleries are participating, representing over 500 artists. The fair includes the Lift, a section of gallery-sponsored solo artist booths, to showcase emerging artists and trends, an installation in conjunction with the upcoming Zer01, and will honor Ruth Braunstein.
For hours and tickets: http://www.sffineartfair.com/
-
05/18/2010
Not quite derivative art: artist offers options on his future work.
From The Times: Tom Saunders, 23, a conceptual artist who graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in London last year, is offering investors options on his future work. For £2,000 now, you get the option of buying any piece of his work for £1 in ten years’ time. Two investors, including one well-known collector, have reserved options already. The process is covered by a legal contract, known as an emerging artist derivative contract — itself a work of art according to the artist and to murmurART, the art company in East London that is staging his latest exhibition.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/consumer_goods/article7128207.ece
-
05/18/2010
Arts groups see Mayor’s budget plan and shudder.
From the New York Times: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s $63 billion budget for fiscal year 2011, which starts July 1, calls for a 31 percent reduction in financing for arts groups and a 25 percent cut for libraries — steeper than any such measures he has proposed at this stage of the budget cycle in the last eight years. And the City Council will most likely have to draw from a smaller pool of funds to help make up the difference than it has in the past.
-
05/16/2010
"I think there are a lot of interesting voices out there." A.O. Scott, noted film critic, speaks out on behalf of online criticism.
