Peter Daverington, Nubian Girl, 2011
Kianga Ellis Projects (KEP) is a mobile gallery program that hosts conversations about the studio practice and work of invited contemporary artists. KEP’s inaugural Art Talks Weekend will take place on July 29th through 31st at HD3 on 560 Montezuma Avenue, located in the heart of the Sanbusco/Railyard District in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The weekend’s program is open to the public and will involve several of the artists attending in person and via Skype. Follow on the Web by watching the talks on Ustream and Twitter using the hashtag #KEP.
Friday, July 29th, 3 – 8:30 pm/OPENING RECEPTION 5 – 7:30 pm
Saturday, July 30th, 1 – 4 pm
Sunday, July 31, 12 – 8 pm
Details below; RSVP on Facebook or Evite.
THE ARTISTS: Ethan Cranke ~ Peter Daverington ~ Brian Dupont ~ Jeannette Ehlers ~ Sabina Forbes II ~ Nikita Gale ~ Clarity Haynes ~ Laura Isaac ~ Elisa Kreisinger ~ Nikolaj Recke ~ Bryan Reyna ~ Maritza Ruiz-Kim ~ Painta ~ Jason Varone ~ Katarina Wong
Friday, July 29, 3 – 4 pm : RETHINKING REPRESENTATION
Elisa Kreisinger, Queer Carrie, 2010
Elisa Kreisinger, Pop Culture Pirate, joins KEP live from New York via Skype to discuss the world of “Remix”:
I’m a video remix artist subverting the carefully constructed world of corporate content to work off my massive consumption of pop-culture and reverse the psycho-social toll it takes on my sense of self. I also believe that women want more stories about other women that don’t revolve around men. Remix allows me to create tangible examples of what these stories might look like without the old ball and chain of the traditional production system. When people don’t like my version, remix encourages them to make their own.
This conversation will also consider how contemporary artists Clarity Haynes and Sabina Forbes II reflect or challenge popular notions of the feminine ideal in their Breast Portrait Project and Conceptual Bodies works, respectively.
Artists:
Sabina Forbes II (b. Somerset County, New Jersey; lives in Manhattan, NY and works in New Jersey)
Clarity Haynes (b. 1971, McAllen, Texas; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY)
Elisa Kreisinger (b. 1986, Passaic, New Jersey; lives and works in Manhattan, NY)
Friday, July 29, 5 – 7:30 pm: SMOKE SIGNALS, OPENING RECEPTION
Jason Varone, Untitled (Not with a Whimper But a Bang), 2010 | mixed media on paper
Jason Varone (b. 1977, Brooklyn, NY; lives and works in Brooklyn) combines moving images with cartoon-like representations of our modern landscape that disturb, such as plumes of smoke from natural disasters and dying wildlife. Varone combines appropriated news footage, maps and electronic data in visually beautiful ways that carry a harsh message – even a warning – and critique of Western technological advances. In recognition of the wild fire disaster in New Mexico and surrounding states, Varone will present a site-specific painting on canvas and digital projection.
Friday, July 29, 7:30 – 8:30 pm: VIDEO SCREENING ~ TRINITY LAND ART INSTITUTE & OTHER INTERVENTIONS
Nikolaj Recke, Trinity Land Art Insitute (video still), 2010
In the summer of 2009, Nikolaj Recke (b. 1969, Copenhagen, Denmark; lives and works in Copenhagen) traveled to the American Southwest in search of Land Art, one of the great movements in post-war American Art that has been a continuous inspiration and reference in his work. Given the fragile state of our environment, it is no surprise that contemporary artists are showing renewed interest in the land. But unlike the iconic works that inspire Recke, his own work is invested with personal subjectivity and a desire to connect emotionally with the spectator.
Trinity Land Art Institute (2010) – Recke builds a shed on land facing the Trinity site in New Mexico where the United States tested the first nuclear bomb in 1945.
I miss Sol LeWittt (2010) – Recke’s homage to the conceptual art legend who died in 2007.
Waking Up to Roden Crater (2010) – Recke records the sun rising behind Roden Crater in Arizona, a volcano crater James Turrell has been working on since the mid-1970s.
Insecurity Zone (2009) – Recke takes a blindfolded walk on Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty being directed orally by the videographer, a re-enactment of Vito Acconi’s Security Zone (1971).
Saturday, July 30, 1 – 2 pm: EVERYTHING & EVERYDAY
Nikita Gale, WWRPD, 2011 | mixed media
The subject of this conversation is taken from Nikita Gale’s current series, “Everything and More,” begun this summer during her residency at the Center for Photography in Woodstock, NY. We will discuss the new approach to the Everyday by artists whose passion for making work fuels a daily routine of sharing their process and thought life with “followers” on social media. Ethan Cranke’s newest series of paintings, Fire Man: Art is an Act of Self Immolation, will provide a metaphor for understanding the motivations and concerns of both Gale and Shawn Lindsay (a.k.a Painta). Gale will join us live via Skype from Atlanta. Cranke and Painta will join us in Santa Fe!
Artists:
Ethan Cranke (b. 1978, San Francisco, California; lives and works in Sonoma County, California)
Nikita Gale (b. 1983 in Anchorage, Alaska.; lives and works in Atlanta, GA)
Painta (b. 1988 in Fort Washington, MD; lives and works in Forestville, Maryland)
Saturday, July 30, 2 – 3 pm: OBJECTIFIED
Bryan Reyna, Pink (New Photography, 2010), 2011
The subject of this conversation refers to contemporary artists making three-dimensional works that have more kinship with the Specific Objects of Donald Judd’s era than current trends in installation art. Almost 50 years later, however, a kind of reversal has occurred in what artists understand about the nature of art in space. The places where some artists exchange ideas with others, particularly in the online realm, or where they attend to work obligations apart from their primary art making, form a dimension that becomes an important extension of their artistic practice. The experience of place is the new art object. The commodifiable work no longer expresses the artist’s primary meaning; the commodity is better understood as an artifact. The true content of the work therefore rests in the representation or investment of the experiential dimension in that object.
Artists:
Brian Dupont (b. 1973, Tacoma, Washington; lives and works in Brooklyn, New York)
Bryan Reyna (b. 1977, Plano, Texas; lives and works in Queens, New York and at The Museum of Modern Art)
Saturday, July 30, 3 – 4 pm: #WITHIN
Katarina Wong, Head 2, 2010 | Sumi ink on clay board
The subject of this conversation is the title of a project begun by Maritza Ruiz-Kim in January 2011 to make paintings with her own hidden information inside them and to expose the fact that she is doing so through regular blog posts and on Twitter. Blended cultural and racial biography can produce particularly challenging questions about identity. The “within” that gets expressed “without” through works of art by such artists can be challenging in its political and social directness. Sometimes the narrative is more like a dream (or a nightmare) and hardly understood during waking hours. Ruiz-Kim will join us in Santa Fe!
Artists:
Jeannette Ehlers (b. 1973, Holstebro, Denmark.; lives and works in Coppenhagen, Denmark)
Martiza Ruiz-Kim (b. 1975, Orange County, California; lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area)
Katarina Wong (b. York, Pennsylvania; lives and works in Manhattan, New York)
Sunday, July 30, 12 – 5 pm: PERFORMANCE ~ 10,000 HOURS
Laura Isaac, Knitting Vigil for Ai Weiwei and His Four Missing Associates (Hours 426 - 472), 2011 | bamboo knitting needles and 100% Pima cotton
Documenting the journey from absolute beginner (0 hours) to supposed master (10,000 hours), Laura Isaac (b. 1977, Kansas City, Missouri; lives and works in Kansas City) set out in February 2011 to become an expert knitter. She has completed just over 500 hours to date. This performance will be her third livestream broadcast in which Isaac knits for up to 8 hours and chats with followers watching online and communicating with her through Twitter. She said in a June 21 blog post about the project:
I doubt it’s the “knitting” part of this equation that gives me the queasiness. But change… now that’s something humans tend to fear on such a base level. Impermanence. 10,000 Hours is an unusual project this way. The change is at the core of it… The knitting is just the vehicle I’ve chosen to hitch a ride in.
Isaac has based her entire journey on Dr. K. Anders Ericsson’s, The Making of an Expert, new research showing that outstanding performance is the product of years of deliberate practice and coaching, not of any innate talent or skill.
Sunday, July 31, 6 – 8pm: SOCIAL MEDIA ART: FAD, FARCE OR FUTURE?
Maritza Ruiz-Kim, Artifact from an Anthropological Experience, 2010 | mixed media on panel
The subject of this conversation is taken from the June 2011 ARTnews Magazine cover story, The Social Revolution, by Barbara Pollack featuring artist and designer An Xiao:
“Artists who have been working with the Internet and with new media since that genre began are interested in participatory systems and social networking,” says Lauren Cornell, the curator of “Free.” “What is new is more advanced technologies and new applications connecting masses and masses of people. It’s really just a progression.”
An Xiao, an early adapter to Web 2.0 and the founder of @Platea, a collective of online art makers would disagree. “I think social-media art is a new genre of art,” she says. “It blends many different things. It blends performance art because it is people interacting socially with each other. It blends visual art because Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and the rest all rely on very visual elements. It blends net art, but it is more of a public space than traditional net art.”
Since the publication of this article a passionate and lively debate has blossomed online following some critical comments by New York blogger and critic Paddy Johnson in L Magazine, #Don’t Follow Twitter Art. Xiao recently responded in An Open Challenge to Social Media Critics published by the popular art blogazine Hyperallergic. She will join us live from Beijing via Skype to continue the discussion.
Follow live all weekend on Ustream and on Twitter with the hashtag #KEP.
Posted on July 25, 2011
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