DUAL Opening 8.29.08

Opening August 29th at Aerosol Warfare
Friday, 7 to 11pm

New DUAL!

Red Bull: Can of Bullshit

by Buffalo Sean

Now it doesn’t bother me that they cost twice as much per ounce as any other energy drink. Or that they have introduced a new and legal high to America. No, it bothers me that Red Bull decided to throw their bullshit Art of the Can in Houston.

Haven’t heard of it? Seen the billboards of bauxite pterodactyls? Or their web ads with a shiny tin cowboy boot? Hmm… then you must not be one of the five hundred artists who submitted to the exhibit. Pardon me while I tell those artists FUCK YOU YOU GOT HOSED. Excuse me, but I had a feeling one of them might read this and I couldn’t resist the urge to publicly insult someone. If you are sitting next to someone who entered the show tell ‘em for me. Their ridiculousness is only eclipsed by the willingness of advertisers to use, exploit and degrade you. Three things strike me as particularly stupid in this endeavor, an artist’s willingness to forgo one’s judgment of materials, the inestimable monetary cost of the project and the complacency and triviality of the artworld.

Materials, malleable objects and ideas, are explored through trial and error and practice. Conceptual artists screaming in a dark room go through the same shtick as a watercolor artist painting on a Sunday afternoon. Exploring materials, finding what you like to work with is a big part of artistic identity. Warhol had silkscreens, Rauschenberg had ink transfers and Oldenburg had cloth. Robyn O’Neil has pencils, Bert Long has ice and the Art Guys have their bodies. Why would you limit yourself to a prescribed, corporate material? Barring an intensely enlightened group working together for a very long time I would not believe an exhibit of one material could ever be justifiable. The fact that the show looked like a high school hallway on parent’s night was unavoidable, but shame on you guys for getting duped into thinking this could ever be worth it beyond that navel-gazing moment of delight that comes with being included. On the team.

By the way, in getting on this team, how much did you guys spend on those cans you’ve woven into dragons, moustaches and the Statue of Liberty? Didn’t think about it did ya. Or maybe it just blew by; you were so high on fructose syrup and guarana. No entry fee for the exhibit? What a crock of bullshit. It’d cost you $200 to construct a spaceman out of your product’s encasement. Maybe it only cost a hundred bucks to cover that guitar in $4 eight-ounce cans. It’s kind of like usury. Does it seem stupid to enter yet? Or would you like to hear about Arthur Vaisvilas’ piece? The hapless son-of-a-bitch drew The Ramones wearing Red Bull t-shirts as they rock out in a stilted colored pencil attempt at thankfulness. Unless you’re in high school Arthur, you should be punched in the face. You might be big so I’m not gonna do it- but The Ramones deserve better. The oodles of cash Red Bull throws around all over the country on fun, stupid shit is reprehensible if you’re not having fun, but if you’re part of the crowd you may feel some sense of elation, like there’s something new happening and you’re in the thick of it. Shut the fuck up. It’s all the caffeine.

The jittery feeling you get sometimes, when it seems like there is a comprehensive, wide-ranging spectrum of artists out there and possibilities for advancement; that means that someone should back over you with a truck. Don’t assume that those collectors and critics at the opening spell validation. I am terribly surprised at the ability to bend over backwards and lower their standards that many jurors demonstrated, as well as the media outlets and even well meaning artists. Oh, I mean that I’m so surprised that they can do that when there is money involved. Did that slip my mind? Woops. As one juror stiffly said; “don’t take it so seriously, they’re not artists.” I was staggered. I kind of hoped that they were artists. I kind of believe that they are, even Arthur, and they shouldn’t have to go away when the money leaves. The kvetching that went on when the Hunting Prize patronized to artists sent the community into an uproar, but no one takes this seriously? Damned bull, I would have preferred a pinewood derby or an air show, and this will not do. At least it has proven that corporations have an extensive reach in the artworld, and to resist it is futile. I’m not drinking a can of that shit. I’ll drink the Kool-Aid.

Last chance for Red Bull Art of Can

Well, we all know you can't step over a pile of shit lately without hearing about Red Bull Art of can or a related event. Our own site here is splattered with their links and the city is abuzz with the hype. The exhibit ends this Friday and it it your last shot to see all the creations. Nonetheless, let us know what you liked, how you feel about whether this uber-corporate event has been overdid, or whatever.

ArtStorm to Host Green Drinks at Beaver's on July 30

On Wednesday, July 30th, ArtStorm will host a Green Drinks Night at Beaver's. Every Wednesday throughout the summer, Beaver's features a happy hour featuring drink and appetizer specials from 5-10pm, $4 appetizers, $3.50 beer and $5 cocktails.

25% of all proceeds from the special green drinks and appetizer menu will go to ArtStorm. Support visual art in Houston! Come and meet the friendly ArtStorm crew that keeps enthusiastically bringing you the work of innovative artists, live music, and fun, art-inspired events!

Beaver's Icehouse
2310 Decatur Street
Houston, TX, 77007
713.864. BEAV (2328)
www.beavershouston.com

Estadounidense

To the rest of the world the word American must sound a bit disingenuous. The application of a blanket term to what we regard as a country and many regard as a mindset takes us further from equality- both within our own culture and to the rest of the world. Identity politics are a big distraction, and for now right-wing politics use the word American as their own personal bludgeon. I may not want their America, but I do want the word back.

Montrose wants it back for their Pride Parade, as if the Stonewall riots weren’t American. The black cowboys who marched through downtown on Juneteenth want the word American back, as if the Buffalo Soldiers weren’t American. First generation immigrants who rallied at Guadalupe Park on May 5th want la palabra too. As if their sons and daughters in the military aren’t American.

In a year ripe for change, in the middle of a hot summer, in a city in transition, in the depths of the reddest red state, we look for ways to call ourselves American. Barreling through a recession without a dip in housing prices or a drop in average speed on the freeways it is still impossible to ignore the ugliness on the horizon. America doesn’t mean relentless consumption and callous wastefulness; it only meant that to the 20th century. Energy is our business here in Houston, and without an evolution we may be looking to Copenhagen or London for our center of power, in more ways than one.

Two Houston curators are now stepping into the fray with timely shows that reexamine Americana without Modernism. It’s a curate-off! The Old, Weird America and Neo-Hoodoo delve into the collective past that we learn as children and recycle as adults. Today, for the first time in my life, an America without a political party may emerge- and these exhibits play on our collective education and culture with a knowing hand. Whether your last name is Cruz, Uzokwe, Naseer, Fitzgerald or Butler digging up the messy innards of American life is not as easy as describing our differences or how we have been horrible towards each other.

The integrated, interwoven fabric of American society has at its core a sense of entitlement straight from English law, but the roots of American society are West African and Scotch-Irish. Two peoples oppressed by the iron grip of the British Empire defined the temperament, cuisine and folklore of an emergent American culture, coming together three centuries later as rock and roll. As peoples from across the globe have emigrated from their homes to America they adopted the ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ mentality so thoroughly, it was thought that the great melting pot knew no bounds.

Our past century of hate and destruction that began and ended with Modernism may now relent; we may be free from cruel logic. We have no illusions of parity and no rules to rail against. At the Contemporary Arts Museum (1000 Montrose Blvd), The Old, Weird America teases folkloric implications out of contemporary, market-driven artwork. The results are supremely nostalgic, and even if their presence here validates the backroom manipulation that oppresses the American people their touching inclusion in an art museum reminds us all of how we do contribute to the moneyed class’ playthings. The ironies of post-modern artwork allow for the realities of America’s dirty past bleeding through even if they are contained in sanctified sarcophagi. Curator Toby Kamps has truly tried to create something worthwhile out of the glad-handing art industry.

At the Menil Collection (1000 Alabama) another curator new to town, Franklin Sirmins, tries his hand at divinizing American history with Neo-Hoodoo. Tailored more toward African religious themes, the artists included in HooDoo are hopelessly entwined with other cultures and a sense of abandonment in the same way that all Americans struggle. Even if hackneyed trite like Jean-Michel Basquiat makes it into the mix, there is more than enough careerists like William Cordova to provide the show with a revenue stream and critical acclaim. Reaching out to Latin American artists may give the curator reason to believe he is thinking differently than The Old, Weird America, but it simply points of Kamps deficiencies in including Hispanics in America’s “old, weird” period. The adaptations of Central American and Caribbean cultures to scarce materials may be attributable to their country of origin without a historical compass, but their struggles mirror those of poor Americans as well as new immigrants across the globe. Treating an ethnicity as particular and unique is a typical folly in our divisive times, as well is the commoditization of folk rituals and themes once they are mimicked by an artist with a higher education.

Both shows rely on illustrative work that narrates rather than demonstrates, but in all they are a good reflection of why it may be our heritage on the Left to be American too. As the artworld spirals into obsolescence it is first-rate to see the institutions of the 20th century point our way out of the degrading elitism of art and toward our own forgotten past.

-Buffalo Sean

Creature Comforts

ArtStorm’s newest board member Eli Sebastian Brumbaugh presents the Houston premiere of Toronto-based artist Deforgeo and fresh and imaginative work by a new generation of Houston artists in this summer’s Creature Comforts. The exhibition features the contemporary stylings of Deforgeo, Lisa Marie Godfrey, Rene Cruz, Shane Hillman, Jacob Calle and Brumbaugh himself in ArtStorm’s second show in its new location. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, July 12, 2008 from 7 - 10 PM, and the work will be on view through August 9, 2008. The reception will feature live music from Los Angeles’s art rockers Hard Place, and the local sounds of The Young Mammals, Wicked Poseur and News on the March.

July 12th to August 9th 2008

ArtStorm
4828 Caroline St.
Houston, TX 77004

A walk with death

End Game - British Contemporary Art from the Chaney Family Collection was the perfect Friday the 13th walk through. Curator Alison de Lima Greene called it the "iconography of demise." Walking past an item that looks like a kitchen implement, only much larger and called Marble Slicer, Greene mentions that a small version would be used to slice, say, tomatoes or a hard boiled egg, but that this device's cradle looks like the size of a child. A print journalist in the crowd, an older women, shudders.
The various pieces on display on the main floor of the MFA Houston's Law Building fall into the category of the Young British Artist movement and feature works from the last decade. Of particular stunning interest is the macabre tone of many of the items.
Nothing would better illustrate the grotesque nature of art than The Model Village of the Damned by Jake and Dinos Chapman. Mixed Media may be its genre but deliriously twisted is its calling. The scene consists of plastic toy figures in various scenes of brutal violence surrounded by shrubs with vultures on telephone poles. There are massive amounts of severed heads and even a few humanoids with multiple heads taking part in the carnage. All of this is sealed in a glass case and you have to walk around each side to fully take in its regal sense of slaughter.
Speaking of carnage, that term is the title of another striking series from the artist Damien Hirst. Walking across the expansive floor on the raised first level at the MFA one is able to slowly adjust their gaze and focus on large works. From ten yards the Hirst piece, The Card Players - The City looks like a beautiful large stained glass window. When I got close the panes of glass were actually butterfly and moth wings. Next to that is Carnage, an assemblage of flies and resin on canvas. Carnage, from across the room, looks like a huge chunk of asphalt. There are 22 works of art on display in this exhibition and all of them will leave their mark on your psyche. But in a grinning skeleton kind of way; a wry smile on your way to transcendence.
Another Hirst piece catches my eye. It's a bull heart with a dagger though it, held in a Perspex box with a five percent solution of formaldehyde, and titled Sacred IX. Start the tongue (in cheek) wagging now.
- Michael Bergeron