As is often the case in Barcelona, cool things and places are just around the corner, but you have to keep your eyes open.
A couple of weeks ago I was having Ramen with a friend, and as I came out of the restaurant, my friend went right, I went left, and happened to look at the storefront next to the Ramen shop. It looked like an art gallery, and there was a little sign that said "Instruction Manual For Nothing." in Spanish. Intrigued, I tried the door, and while it wasn't open, someone came to let me in.
The exhibition is a collaboration of two artists, Xavi Rodriguez and Blanca Vinas. Both artists use chance, randomness, and a sort of childlike play with materials to create their work. Both are also teachers.
In the exhibit, Xavi's work is a series of drawings and sketches, rough hewn, scribbled, inspired by comics. Blanca’s work is best described as playful photography that bends the rules of “good photography” to make really interesting and abstract works out of found materials, art materials, and a lot of good old fashioned experimentation.
Works by Xavi Rodríguez Martín at the Chiquita Room. Photograph from Chiquita Room Website.
Works by Xavi Rodríguez Martín at the Chiquita Room. Photograph from Chiquita Room Website.
Works by Blanca Vina at the Chiquita Room. Photograph from Chiquita Room Website.
Works by Blanca Vina at the Chiquita Room. Photograph from Chiquita Room Website.
As part of the exhibit, there was a manifesto of sorts (the manual for the instructions for nothing) that could have been written by members of the surrealism, Dada, or Fluxus movements. Of course it appealed directly to me! (You can download the whole pdf document from the chiquita room website)
I had the good fortune to take a workshop with Blanca a couple of weeks later at the gallery, and got an insight into her process. For the workshop we took random slides of various artworks and buildings and landscapes, and using tape, shaped hole punches, negative scratching, and other methods of manipulating the slide, we were able to create works that used chance and controlled chaos to make works that were larger than the sum of their parts. The work was done very small, but when we projected them, the incremental changes took on lives of their own.
I have included a number of photographs of the slides below, made by myself and other participants of the workshop. (I have marked the ones I made for your reference.). I took these photographs in the dark, and didn’t edit them or change the colors of them in anyway, so they may be a little off or off kilter. I love how random chance plays a large factor in their composition and display.
The exhibit ends in just a few days, so I highly recommend checking it out if you get a chance. I am not sure what their next exhibit will be, but I for sure am planning on checking it out. This place is an interesting place.
My cousin Nicki Green has her first solo exhibition of her work at a majormuseum. It opened last week at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.The show is called Firmament, andis on through Feb 2, 2025.
From left: Nicki Green, Drifting Upon Swollen Water (Gavriel), A Slack Unthreading (Raphael), Perforated in the Night (Uriel), Fruitful Vine 2 (Michael), 2024. Courtesy the artist and CULT Aimee Friberg.
She also has another related exhibition Eye of the Fountain at gallery CULT Aimee
Friberg that runs through November 16 also in San Francisco
Her work is ceramic based, and celebrates and explores liminality and the interplay between Judaism, trans identity, and transformation. The press release says it a lot better than I can:
This September, The Contemporary Jewish Museum (The CJM) will present Nicki Green: Firmament, the transdisciplinary artist’s first solo museum exhibition. In this presentation, Green explores identity, transformation, and Jewish tradition through artworks that invoke imagery of fermentation, Jewish ritual, mycelium, and more. Bringing together new and existing works, the exhibition will include large-scale sculptures, fiber works, ritual objects, and drawings. The exhibition will be on view September 5, 2024 through February 2, 2025.
Green’s inspiration for this exhibition comes from the concept of the firmament — a thin dome or expanse referenced in the Book of Genesis that divides the earth from the heavens. This form of separation in the Torah offers Green a reference to imagine an architectural object that functions as a sanctuary for in-between states of being and thinking, and an environment of warmth, welcome, and liberation for trans and nonbinary bodies.
The central sculpture appears as a large tent-like structure situated in the center of the gallery and frames several of the large-scale clay works on view. In addition to the firmament, the structure is inspired by descriptions of the biblical mishkan or tabernacle — a portable sanctuary constructed by the Jewish people to represent God’s earthly domain while in exile. The “skin” of the tent — a sculpture made by Green’s longtime collaborator, artist Ricki Dwyer — is woven to reach up to the heavens, while also anchoring and sheltering the artworks and bodies in the space. READ THE REST OF THE PRESS RELEASE
A couple of years ago I went to the Lyons Bienniale because she had some work featured in it, I spent a couple of days roaming the Bienniale, hanging out with her and her husband and her friends (including Ricki Dwyer, who collaborated on the main sculpture for this exhibit, and basically enjoying Lyons. Eye of the Fountain was featured in the Lyons exhibit.
And my family went and visited her in Wisconsin on a very snowy day when she was in residence at the Kohler factory.
Eye of the Fountain. This appeared at the Lyons Bienniale
Nicki and I when we visited together at the Kohler
Nicki's a really talented artist who puts a lot of meaning and thought into her work. I am so proud of her for slugging it out in the competitive art world, doing what she loves, and yes, making it happen. I know how hard it is to stick your guns as an artist.
If you are in the Bay Area, please go check out her exhibits and let me know how you liked them!
Before I left for Europe for the summer, I took in an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art which I've been thinking about how to write about for almost two months. The exhibit was a retrospective of Virgil Abloh called "Figures Of Speech."
Abloh is an artist, designer, engineer, and architect, who, while pursuing his masters degree in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, managed to hook up with Kanye West, and become the creative director of his creative team, working on album covers, concert designs, and merchandising. He parlayed that work to create his own fashion brand Off-White, and recently became the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear collection.
I was really struck by a couple of the pieces, including "You're Obviously In The Wrong Place" which quotes Pretty Woman with George Segal style sculptures in white that manages to be funny and meaningful on a number of levels, accessing racial discrimination, class discrimination, and impostor syndrome all at once. I loved it.
Another piece I really loved was the Figures of Speech mural, which incorporates a whole lot of imagery and signs and signals. I did a video flyby of it, but it really deserves looking at and studying.
And a third piece I loved was the Black Cotton Logo. With a simple inversion, Abloh manages to elegantly make a statement about consumerism, racism, history, and branding. It's this kind of elegant and sardonic minimalism where I think Abloh is at his best.
There were lots of other pieces that I was not enamored of, but I'm not going to focus on them.
Abloh is an interesting character-- in 2002 he was a student, in 2006 a graduate student and in 2009 he was an intern at Fendi, and by 2019 he is a ruler of the universe. One of Abloh's mandates in his work is "Question everything." So here are my questions. How did he rise so fast? What is it about his work that is so fantastic that in 10 years he can rise to the literal top? And could the next Virgil Abloh be a white female septugenarian?
I'm not exactly sure, but after listening to him talk at the opening of the exhibit (which runs through September 22 in Chicago, before going on to Atlanta (Nov 9-2019 to March 8, 2020), Boston (July-September 2020) and Brooklyn (Winter 2020 to Spring 2021) I'd say it's a combination of a few things.
Articulate Abloh is a good talker. He's got a lot of ideas and he likes to talk about them. It was a little frustrating, someone asked him a straight forward question at the opening (about the difference between appropriating, stealing, and quoting) , and he preceded to talk for ten minutes, say all kinds of interesting stuff, and never answer the question. He didn't even directly talk about the question, he just followed his own thoughts. This is a guy whose trademark image is a quotation mark.
Actuator. After looking through the entire exhibit, I think that Abloh is an actuator. He takes his ideas and puts them on canvas/fabric/sculpture/whatever. (He's come out with furniture, music, clothing, and a whole lot of other stuff. It makes sense now when he has the money to make things happen, but I got the feeling from looking at his work that he was making stuff constantly, even if it wasn't very good. He puts out his ideas concretely, even if they aren't fully formed or fully functional. He lays it out there.
His Master's thesis project. He redid it for this exhibition.
Iteration The second part of that is that Abloh seems able to move on from one piece or idea and into another fairly effortlessly. He has no problem releasing 10 or 15 different versions of something as he strives for what works (both aesthetically and in the marketplace)
Collaboration Abloh enlists lots of other artists into his works and is able to use their contributions to fuel his own ideas and then take off even further. He's worked with some powerhouses, including Kanye, Jenny Holzer, and Arthur Jafa, and has been inspired by diverse influences including the movies Black Panther, Pretty Woman and architect Mies van der Rohe.
Merchandising Abloh seems to be a master merchandiser. He's really great at putting price tags on things and getting people to buy them. It's not so much a zeitgeist thing (I think) but a "knowing how to be the cool kid" thing. Anyway you slice it, he knows what sells, and he seems to do a great job selling. (By the way, that's the third artist who is a commercial success that I've seen have an exhibit at MCA- Virgil Abloh, David Bowie, and Takashi Murakami. Food for thought.)
These 5 elements seem to be at the heart of his work, and so I think the answer to my question lies somewhere in the middle here.
But whoever the next Virgil Abloh is, I'm going to guess that they will exhibit some or all of those traits above.
You can find out more about the MCA exhibit Figures of Speech at their website: https://mcachicago.org/Exhibitions/2019/Virgil-Abloh Timed tickets are being sold for this exhibition, which also allows you access to all of the other museum exhibits. And the Museum has a particularly strong slate of events around the Abloh exhibit, including talks with the artist, performances, student opportunities, and more. Click the link above to find out more.
Hamilton the Exhibition is now open at Northerly Island
on a peninsula near the Adler Planetarium. It's not Weehawken
NJ, but it will have to do!\.
I had a great time attending the opening day of Hamilton the Exhibition, even though by the time I left the exhibit it was snowing in April. Welcome to Chicago, Hamilton the Exhibition!
As you all know, I have been a big supporter of Hamilton since I first heard the soundtrack three years ago, and have chronicled on this page and on Facebook my obsession with Hamilton (I've seen it three times, and was so thrilled to meet the director Tommy Kail (and later Lin-Manuel Miranda) the creator at various events. So I was excited to attend a press conference with Lin-Manuel and Exhibiton Creative director David Korins (who also did the scenic design for Hamilton) And I surprised my son by picking him up at school to take him to the press conference!
A model of New York during Hamilton's time.
I thought he would be thrilled, and maybe secretly he was, but he was also upset, because we were cutting into his valuable screen time. He had a couple of near crying experiences at the press conference, and I felt like an idiot for bringing him and expecting more from him. Really, that's the problem with ten year olds-- they seem like they've got it together, but they are really hanging on by a very tenuous thread. I also made the mistake of not having sweets for him, (I ran out of time) and that didn't help the situation.
We muddled through, and I got to hear Lin-Manuel and David Korins talk about the exhibition.
Here's just a sample of what they talked about.
Later, we walked around the gift shop and they've really plussed-up some of the merch. They had a beach towel that said "Run Away With Us For the Summer" and shot glasses that said "Do Not Throw Away Your Shot." They also have glasses to raise to freedom, and a lot more.
The next day we drove back to the exhibition, well-rested, relatively well fed, and amply supplied with snacks (although I think my son would disagree with that last point, as he ate his snacks and mine about 2/3 the way through. Ah, 10 year old metabolism!) My son was better behaved then, and suitably impressed. I think he even liked having been in the same room as Lin. (although we didn't get to trip a little light fantastic!)
The exhibition was fantastic, and may be one of the most dramatic and well-designed exhibitions I've ever seen. Part of it is my affinity to the subject matter to be sure, but a lot must be attributed to David Korins, whose design and thinking this exhibit reflects.
My feelings about Hamilton The Exhibition in a nutshell!
One of the things that makes this interesting is that it is an exhibit about Hamilton the person, but it is seen through the lens of Hamilton the Musical.
Throughout the exhibition, there are little places where they tell how the musical changed facts or combined people for dramatic effect (for example, it wasn't Jefferson, Madison and Burr that confronted Hamilton about his payments to Mr. Reynolds-- it was three members of Congress. But in the musical, it didn't make sense to introduce three new characters to disappear.
Or the fact that Burr didn't actually attend Hamilton's wedding. Or that Angelica was actually married BEFORE she met Hamilton, and therefore was never available.
It's fascinating to see all those things in reference to the musical that wouldn't make any sense in a typical exhibit.
Here are some of my favorite parts of the exhibit.
GEO-LOCATED SOUNDTRACK Every guest gets a headset that has a geolocator, so as you walk into each room of the gallery, that triggers an introduction, or explanation. My son's didn't quite fit, but he was able to make it work.
So now you have Lin-Manual Miranda and Phillipa Soo (who played Eliza) guiding you through each room. Commentaries by other people, including Yale Historian Joanne B. Freeman and Christopher Jackson, who played George Washington, are also included. There are also various exhibits where you can point your headset at something and hear a more thorough explanation. This does two things-- it gives people a natural certain amount of time to take in the exhibition, and keeps people moving along through the exhibition. There are a few rooms that are stops along the way-- little experiences that only a few people can do at a time.
More importantly, it now gives us the opportunity to really personalize the experience at the hands of two fantastic actors, and that makes the experience come to life even further.
DESIGNED GALLERIES
Each room that you enter in the gallery tells a story of the musical and thus of Hamilton's life. Many of them are beautifully designed, and have a theme that is relevant to the musical, but are not handled very dryly.
For example, there is a hurricane room, in which they talk about the hurricane that devastated the Caribbean island that Hamilton was born on, and which you wrote so eloquently about that the island people took up a collection to get him educated in the United States. This is a slow stairway up into the next set of galleries, that features two turntables slowly turning debris. Creating a hurricane of sorts. The turntables also echo the turntables in the production.
Another room that was pretty amazing was the tent/war room for the battle of Cornwallis This is a tent that you walk into and there is a giant map in the center. You sit or stand around it, while Christopher Jackson as Washington tells you his plan. Meanwhile, as they explain what happens, mysteriously, 3 dimensional sculptures of ships, and figures representing Cornwallis, or Rochambeau, or Lafayette all move as if my magic across the map. It's pretty remarkable. (I wanted to videotape it, but the proctor said no videotaping, and she was standing right next to me. You'll have to see it for yourself!
The map, with the figures
One of the last rooms is the most dramatic. You enter into it and see two lifesize sculptures of Burr and Hamilton about to duel.
The details are great, down to the pistols used and the glasses on Hamilton (which are mentioned in the musical)
In this room, there is also a dual timeline (see what I did there?) which shows Hamilton's last 32 hours on the top and Burr's last 32 years on the bottom. One of the fascinating ironies is that Alexander Hamilton Jr. presided over Burr's divorce as he was dying. These guys were intertwined!
Timeline: Hamilton's last 32 hours vs. Burr's last 32 years.
The last couple of rooms are dedicated to the legacy of Hamilton and to Eliza.
Replica of Hamilton's desk
Hamilton family tree
One of my favorite parts was seeing what people over history had said about Hamilton. He was a divisive figure for sure. (And Balloon of Malice has to be one of the best insults ever! Thank you William Carlos Williams!)
And at the very end, you the viewer got to have your say.
The very last room was both intriguing and circular. It featured the first song about Hamilton (What's Your Name), as performed by the current(?) cast of Hamilton.
It was great, and I think promises that the inevitable movie of Hamilton the Musical will also be great, but it's a little weird that we didn't start with that song.
I love how it made the circle complete- we are talking about Hamilton, and here's a reminder of the musical. But I think that if you were going to really make it circular, you should start the whole shebang with this video, which is the video of Lin-Manuel Miranda performing a new song that might be part of a concept album he was making called Hamilton The MixTape.
