U:L:O at Interstate Projects

by Nick Irvin

 

View of “psy•cho•so•mat•ic•ad•dict•in•sane.” Courtesy Interstate Projects.

 

 

Advertisement

During the summer’s usual glut of group shows, it’s always refreshing when an art space treats the format less as a mandate and more as a generative opportunity. This summer, Interstate Projects is embracing this challenge. Run by gallerists Tom Weinrich and Jamie Sterns, the Bushwick gallery is currently in the middle of debuting “U:L:O,” an annual, six-week curatorial program inviting emerging artists and curators to organize concurrent group shows in three very different environments.
“U:L:O” is named for Interstate’s three spaces: the upper room, which is a roomy white cube; the lower space, comprising a comparatively unfinished basement; and outside, which is an open-air concrete courtyard. The program pairs a curator or curating group with each space.
“Interstate is unique for a younger gallery because it’s so large. We want to share that space with our peer group,” Jamie Sterns told A.i.A. According to Sterns, “U:L:O”‘s objective is to “create a convergence of what is happening ‘now’ within various art groups.” Its curators and artists come from around the country—a long-standing commitment of Interstate’s programming.
This year, “U:L:O” is occurring in two sessions. “U:L:O: Part I,” which closes July 13, is organized by artists who run (or have recently run) galleries outside of New York, and who work with “overlapping communities of artists with shared aesthetics and themes,” according to Sterns. Visitors first encounter Zachary Davis’s outdoor show “Infinite Border,” which features installations by Sol Hashemi, Sara Ludy and Cameron Rowland so discreetly woven into their courtyard environment that it’s hard to pin down exactly where they start and finish. According to Davis (formerly a curator of Appendix, a now-closed project space in Portland, Ore.), he “wanted works that could appear to mobilize the entire built environment around them, or, alternately, disappear. That it was the gallery’s entry and exit area too seemed to fit.” Passage, permeability, and disappearance do unify these works’ effects. Rowland’s contribution, a disconnected power conduit hanging high above Interstate’s entryway, is essentially camouflaged within the courtyard’s Bushwick brutalism; in a far corner, Ludy projects a video which, during the daylight of visiting hours, is so slightly visible that it seems a hallucinatory impression. Hashemi’s piece is the most concrete and elaborate of the three. It runs a wire along the far wall of the courtyard and through several situations: on one end, the wire dangles a container of coffee beans into a heat vent, in the middle it runs through a log slice propped up by metal armatures, and on the other end it is weighed down by some of the courtyard’s potted plants.
Passing from the courtyard to the interior, in the upper space is “Now Feel Bad,” a much louder exhibition organized by Chicago gallery Queer Thoughts. Jared Madere contributes parts of a Suzuki racing motorcycle resting on a flower-strewn tarp, along with a refrigerator that, when opened, turns out to be full of acrid mold. Looming over the bike are two metallic prints by Darja Bajagić, which appropriate images from a pornography website. In one, a squinting, smiling woman looks down at the viewer, exposing her breasts. In the other, the same woman looks down with the same expression, pointing a plastic submachine gun at the viewer.
Downstairs is Oakland gallery Important Projects’ “psy•cho•so•mat•ic•ad•dict•in•sane,” packing sculptural and two-dimensional works from 13 artists into the basement. Of particular note are Eric Veit’s three glass tea kettles, steeping materials like rose and ginseng with goat knuckles and fingernails; as well as a flat-lying quilt by Erin Jane Nelson, “Princess Loko” (2014), which incorporates photography, clipart, and stitched-in earbuds.
“U:L:O: Part II,” which will run from July 18 through August 3, will feature very different artistic communities, as well as a thematic focus on archives. CAVE, a collectively organized exhibition space in Detroit, is filling the courtyard more robustly than Davis: their show, “Paper for the Sky,” will expose works on paper from 41 artists to the elements, enacting a kind of anti-conservation. Blonde Art Books, a New York publishing organization run by Sonel Breslav, will turn the basement into a cinema that will screen a “preview reel” of trailers made for books, featuring 11 previews in all. The corresponding publications will also be on display.
Lastly, New York artist Ben Gocker will present “INSIDE OUT,” featuring Jamel Shabazz and Armand Schaubroeck—two artists whose work deals with their lives’ involvement with the American prison system. According to Gocker, “for Schaubroeck, that means taking the harrowing experience of his incarceration and turning it into art and music; for Shabazz it means being a vigilant observer of his workplace and creating a document of that time in his life and in the lives of all those he worked beside as a corrections officer.” “INSIDE OUT” will feature music, paintings, and ephemera from Schaubroeck’s experience of the late 1960s and early ‘70s, including his quadrophonic, 1975 triple-LP rock opera A Lot of People Would Like to See Armand Schaubroeck…DEAD, as well as never-before-exhibited photographs by Shabazz documenting the African American community throughout New York in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

 

 

“上：下：外”州际馆项目

（本文译自《美国艺术》）

文/尼克·艾尔文（美国）  翻译/吕墩墩
夏季总是充斥着群展，但总能出新。不是授权令其产生，而是自我滋长而出现，今夏的州际计划就是这种情况。艺术家汤姆·魏斯里奇和杰姆耶·斯腾斯在布什维克画廊展出新作，现在展出的是该馆为期6周的馆方策划项目，叫做：“上:下:外——初出茅庐秀”，现展为该项目的中期（7月初已开幕）。受邀的人包括了艺术家及策展人们，他们一同完成工作将作品呈现在了三个完全不同的环境中。
“上：下：外”（u:l:o）的构词来州际馆的三个空间，“上”即上房，为白色立方体。“下”即下房，相对来说里面无装备，“外”即户外，是水泥地面的庭院。每个区块都由不同的策展人和策展组担任布展。杰姆耶·斯腾斯说：“该项目是特别为几个新画廊设计的，我们让同级画廊一同使用空间，这样就很大。”他告诉《美国艺术》的记者，“上：下：外”的宗旨是聚合全美现存的各式各样的艺术。这是一个经历长期信念和努力策划的项目。
项目包括两个方面，其一，7月13日闭馆，由纽约以外经营画廊的艺术家来组织，它融合了重叠社区艺术家的美学以及主题：参观者首先会看到扎加里·达维斯设在户外的“无限边缘”，由哈希米、萨拉、路迪、卡梅隆·罗兰德的系列装置组成。它们被精心、谨慎地编织在庭院中。
据斯腾斯介绍，水泥环境非常硬，布置过程从头至尾都很难用钉子。“我本想让作品浮动地安置于建筑环境的各处，间或让其消失，进出口处特别适合，那么，进入、深入、消失这些因素都整合到作品中。罗兰德悬挂了不相连的通电导管于入口处，以隐蔽的形式，这在布什威尔的野性氛围中很有必要，而在远角处，路迪投放了影像装置，在白天的氛围中由于强光，影像只能看到一点点，这倒给人某种梦幻的印象。哈希米的作品在三人中是最为精心炮制的实物，他在庭院的长墙上安装钢丝，所经过处构成几个观赏点。其一在一头拴了一个空咖啡罐，它的位置处于一个热气排气孔，在中段，一个原木的切片被钢丝串起来，本身的重量使之下坠，落脚在院子里的盆栽植物里。穿过庭院往里走，就来到被称为“现在感觉不爽”的上层空间，这是一个很刺激的地方，由芝加哥“女王思想”画廊的嘉德·玛德瑞提供的一些本田比赛摩托车的拆卸的组件，散落在一块油布上，旁边放了一个冰箱，假如你打开它，会看到全是刺眼的模型。掠过摩托分离体可以看到两幅打印在金属板上的图景，那是从色情网站上截下的稍显温和的形象——一位裸胸女人眯眼微笑地看着观众，另一幅是同一女人以同样的表情，手指着一只塑料的机关枪，这是达加·巴加几克的作品。
在楼下是澳克兰画廊的“身心失调的瘾疾”为题的展览，13位艺术家的作品以雕塑和二维的方式揉合在一起，值得一提的有埃里克·维伊特的茶壶浸泡系列，在3个玻璃茶壶泡着古怪的东西，有玫瑰、高丽参、羊关节和指甲壳。另有艾琳、简、纳尔逊的平铺的拼贴综合物“洛克公主”，系摄影、拼贴和缝制为一体的作品。
上：下：外之二的展览从2014年7月18日展到8月3日，是个完全不同的社团展品，聚焦于“文献”主题，称为“凹陷”，是来自底特律展览空间群的集合呈现。其作品安置在庭院里，比戴维斯的更充满能量，一组“纸上天星”的纸上作品由41位艺术家创作，都是以比较反传统的形式呈现。
要提一下索内尔·布利斯拉夫为纽约出版公司“金色艺术丛书”编辑了一套预告片在展厅里放映，其中相关11本书的预告。
最后面的展出项目是由纽约艺术家本·郭克斯的题为“掏空”的项目，杰姆尔·夏巴兹与司考布罗伊克两位艺术家以切身经历揭示了美国监狱系统的故事。司考布罗伊克的痛苦的监狱经历转化为了绘画和音乐的形式。