This blog is an online component of "Voice Lessons," a topics class taught by Jason Lazarus at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The class is Jason's new pedagogical baby--a conceptual lab for students to discover and refine their artistic voice.
Olaf Breuning is an inventor of dichotomies, of play dough like realities.Breuning constructs controlled yet chaotic dioramas, questioning what is natural and what is merely a representation. Evocative of 90’s Cindy Sherman, his crude craftsmanship asks the viewer to play along.
brandy,
this is too short...i think there's more to relay in his work. mentioning 90's sherman is smart but potentially misdirecting viewers if they are not imagining the work you include in the wide category of 90's sherman.
Influenced by the condition of information culture, Matthew Keable produces autonomous works of art loosely based around structure and rule that foreground capitalist and social critique. Combining several genres of art making into one, his work often plays with the curiosity, gullibility and deception of his audiences; purposefully the work is confusing and disjointed. Authorship and authority challenge the role of the participant through a falsified sense of freedom, which in turn reflects upon our production as subjects under capital. Matthew Keable’s work allows for a realized resistance to constructed regulation.
bea, this is good. i would lose loosely and make that sentence more pointed.
This series exists in a state of transit. Searching for a steady path of conscience, it serves as an exploratory exercise, which may determine where creative impulse is strongest. While it hesitates to commit to an overall theme, it attempts to address some related ideas.
In this body of work, appropriation is a reoccurring means to a meta-narrative which speaks of history in terms of first hand experience.
Other reoccurring qualities include autonomy, physical encounters, installations, universality and escapism.
Still, these qualities are ill defined in the work and the collection hovers at the intersection of potential paths waiting to be embarked upon.
neda, this statement is confusing. please rewrite for next week. for starters, how about this change: Appropriation is a reoccurring means to address the meta-narrative in terms of first hand experience. I appreciate the attempt at reoccurring qualities, work on this list. also rename, maybe as artistic strategies? autonomy and installations should not be in the same list....keep going!
This art exists as a means of social experimentation and reaction, and a way to understand the fabrics of a postmillennial generation surrounded by machines. Appropriately expressed through computer software programs and electronics, Harvey Smith’s work stimulates a dialogue between machine transmitter and human receiver. The dialogue is consistently triggered by an unsuspected twist, which serves to interrupt our daily routine, and provokes new thoughts and questions about how we interact with the every day tools we often take for granted, and with each other.
not bad...drop social experimentation and reaction and go straight into the rest of the sentence. Fabrics may work better as fabric singular. I think it's important to mention harvey is writing the code himself, or hacking/manipulating existing code...and that this is a place of 'art-making'. Unsuspected twist overly simplifies the work...rework this phrase
A seeming disarray of subjects, actors, places and mediums, Olaf Breuning’s work would come off as sporadic and unorganized, if not for the consistent language they speak in and the message they carry.
It asks the big questions, ones that every human being, by nature, indefinitely asks of the world. In this way his work is a mark for human kind, something we can all relate to.
It lives outside of the pretentious cage of the art scene, speaking to civilization in all of its mass consumerism and technological innovation.
In an age where machines are inescapable and technology has relieved us of human error, Breuning celebrates our imperfections, while recognizing the necessity of technological tools in our mass society. Celebrating human and machine imperfections, and using them as a means of art making, his work has the ability to give us a little comfort and tenderness in our existence
His work directly interacts with the materials and relics of our culture, hovering between reality and fantasy.
The raw imperfections purposefully exposed in his work parallel the nature of life. Olaf Breuning doesn’t look for formal appraisal from the art world. His intention is simple like his work. In a world abundant in cultural distractions, we are reminded of our most basic and essential quality, that we are all human beings.
Art should be made to assimilate communities. It should wrap around them like a rhizomorph, form like cancer, or profile like Dachau, and do so as a rebellion against those negative agencies that inform it. My project is to do just this - to piss off, confuse, decimate, invade, and above all, to get people to interact and laugh along with ridiculous, broken systems. The child who uses his imagination to turn his bike into an ice cream machine is in far better psychological condition than the logical adult who feels he can change the world.
this is getting there...i'm not sure 'interact and laugh along' is effective...which assumes your art is devoid of more interesting content. what you do in your art is to lift viewers into an aerial view of the conformist, regulated, and dysfunctional systems they create/participate in.
You will lose, but, ultimately, you will be okay with that. This is Bea Fremderman’s chief focus. Through pop culture manipulations and photographs she glosses death and loss over with sugar and a snide sense of humor. By making the unpalatable into a sweet, she allows us to analyze what it is about loss that affects us. This, in turn, allows us to better cope.
lose the first two sentences. i think the possibilities of bea's work are broader and deserve more investigation....
Since I just moved here and since I am very attached to my pre-Chicago experience, I have been trying to figure out ways to let go and in the same time understand my new environment.
What stuck me the most, coming from Lebanon, where my childhood and youth was not lacking in experiences—including war and political turmoil, but also including luxury and artistic expression that is fresh and not derived, albeit irregular and chaotic—is that Americans were yearning for experience and existential meaning, a concept unnecessary to most outside the United States. Is this what happens to society, once it has peaked?
I must say I was culture shocked for the fist time in my life, and through my work so far, I have been trying to understand this, and in the same time, try to show where I come.
To do so, I have been coming up with different techniques. I found that giving myself a goal and doing whatever it takes to conclude it, either by repetition or long never ending processes helped me forget, it was like mediation. I thought of nothing except the present, 60 paper boats in 2 hours. Writing the same sentence over and over again, watching the water dripping transform my image. I did not care about the end product. For me, it was the about process.
And when I felt the need to scream out where I come from, and how I am different, I tried to imagine performances that called out for immediate attention, that touched other people s week points.
This working technique will be ephemeral, since I know that eventually all this will pass, and I will have different things to say.
ayla, there's some good content in this to work out. i think this is too first person and biographical, but i understand the difficulty in getting around this. here's the start of a second draft:
My artwork explores the tension between a Lebanese upbringing informed by war and political turmoil, and an adulthood contextualized by the American artistic yearning for experience and existential meaning. I attempt to reconcile these two paradigms through a focus on artistic process over end product, meditative acts that in themselves speak to a personal politics of investigation....
I asked Billy if he could describe his work in one word, his immediate response was: sentimental.
Though very diverse, and mostly applying photography as his tool, Billy Buck’s work is indeed prompted from deep inside. His work ranges from funny, sweet, tender to angry passive and aggressive. He evidently relies on his gut and emotions to come up with his ideas.
Attached to his childhood house, and trying to bid his farewell and move on, “I did this 4 u” was a way for him to let go of his nostalgia and greet subtly, but effectively the new owners of his house. He made sure though not to flaunt it, instead putting it somewhere discreet, hoping one day, maybe, they will find it.
He works with things that he finds, things that find him or things he has collected over the years. He appropriated passive aggressive notes, and studied the relationship between human beings, and how sarcasm is a way of communicating, just by writing them on a white piece of paper, and using his handwriting, he managed to get his message through.
Using text messages he’s kept from his parents, he delicately marked photo paper and made their words permanent using is a slow meditative process.
Billy’s work is sprung from what he has lived or witnessed, he is an observer studying himself and other human beings and coming up with work that always manages to touch you.
Using a variety of media with a focus on photography, Billy Buck’s work is prompted from biographical narratives of exchange. Mining the residue(s) of emotional and physical transactions, Billy manifests questions of intention, identity, progress, and loss...
Whether through photography, digital composites, or performance, Whitney uses her work as a way to inform or in some cases amuse the viewer. Her digital composite work is playful and lighthearted, whereas her performance works are blunt and intentional. In her olive pits piece, she commits to eating olives, one for every kilometer of the barrier around the west bank of Palestine and archiving the pits with intent to inform the viewer of the fallacy of Palestinian Land. This piece is personal and completed over a lengthy period of time. In a much different way of working, she confronts the immediacy and availability of modern Internet imagery by completing each piece in a comparably shorter amount of time. In her swinging rope series, she uses unrelated, found images from the Internet and composites them together creating bizarre scenarios encompassing the common act of swinging on a rope swing into a body of water. In one image from that series, a young boy swings into what appears to be a lake containing a digitally created whirlpool, a sort of vortex of water. She creates a fictional moment in time while still allowing the viewer to relate to the actual act itself, capturing the decisive moment of letting go of the rope and accepting whatever hand is dealt, be it a black hole or an ocean of killer whales. The series is odd and witty while maintaining a light of impending danger.
elise, this needs work. i'd like you to describe her practice more fully without indexing each project in detail...what are her artistic interests? what is the value of her process/projects?
Olaf Breuning is a mixed media artist working in photography, installation and video. No matter the media Breuning’s work repeatedly references pop culture, the evils of human existence, explores notions of male and female gender, or exists as simply a collection of visual iconography. His interest in the multiple is evident throughout much of his work in the repetitive characters and invented dichotomies. His influences include artists such as Jeff Koons, Henry Cartier-Bresson, Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman as well as music by Talking Heads, and The Eurythmics. His video work is often staged in found locations, using friends as subjects as well as homemade costumes and bargain shop props. His photographs appear as almost out-takes from his videos. Inspired by clichés in horror films and music videos, his images take on an almost childlike quality as a result of his absurd humor and crude editing techniques. Bodies covered in paint, eyeballs attached to inanimate objects, and bizarre wigs are all gestures Breuning uses to express violence, sexuality, or companionship. In his Image “Double” his subjects stop and pose for a happy snapshot in the middle of a tennis game, but Breuning has covered each of their faces with a make-shift mask cut out of a vibrant yellow construction paper. Two holes for the eyes and one for the mouth, he conceals their identities and places his own face taking complete control over their representation. In another image, “Mr. Hand and Mrs. Ass, Mrs. Knee & Mr. Food”, he places his subjects in precarious positions again concealing their identities, adding the playful twist by painting childish faces on their nude body parts.
this seems to be written in two different voices...consolidate them, expand on his practice without indexing individual pieces...
Growing up in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, has continually influenced my work. Built in forty months and completed in 1960 Brasilia was built to be the utopia of modernity. Today it is the home of the most corrupt politicians in the country. This combination has resulted in my interest for working with sociological themes through my photography.
I investigate inconsistencies behind the idea of utopia as well as its relationships to reality and unreality. I hope to bring about questions and create a sense of awareness concerning these issues.
I investigate inconsistencies behind the idea of utopia as well as its relationships to reality and unreality. Growing up in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, has continually influenced my work. Built in forty months and completed in 1960 Brasilia was built to be the utopia of modernity. Today it is the home of the most corrupt politicians in the country.isn't it also home to many things beyond corruptness? can you expand on this? what about poverty levels? health issues? discrimination/repression/ quality of life? take us in deeper! I hope to bring about questions and create a sense of awareness concerning these issues.
brandy, these are both too short and require a bit more investment...
Aaron Smith
Through the use of new media and found imagery, Aaron Smith deals with how information and advertisement is delivered to society and the relationship between function and non-function.He brings up questions concerning our awareness and recognition of information and its media driven filters.Addressing how information enters our unconscious Smith asks the viewer to re-consider the function of an object or image.
B.E.Fisher
Through the use of sound, text and new media, B. E. Fisher explores the intersection of utopic ideals, the complex nature of language and our inability to truly understand one another.Fisher’s work is meditative, suggesting a search for truths, asking the viewer to reconsider the effect of language and our dependency on answers.
I think of my work as an investigation. I don't understand something or come across a piece of information I know little about and I use my work to learn more. My method of working is to deconstruct a situation and replay it in an almost mundane nature. To view through the spectacle and reveal the foundational ideals of a situation. To break down molecules to their atoms is an analogy I would use. I then take those basic elements and recreate the subject with my intentions. I want my work to be embodied by the content that I am concerned with. If my content is chaos then my work should be chaotic. If the subject is mundane then the work must maintain elements of the ordinary and bland.
your personal statement needs a lot of work...the writing is awkward and missing grammar and words (i think you need 'when' at the beginning of your 2nd sentence for starters). rewrite with some help from a friend and lets revisit this next week
Artist Statement for Brandy Fischer
Brandy Fsicher’s work gleans the remnants of human interactions.Intimate moments, awkward confrontations, and human fears are her starting points.From there she deconstructs these moments to find their hidden complexities. There is a continual sense that something intimate has occurred from nostalgic fondness of an old friend to subjects far more sinister.Brandy studies these happenings and breaks them down into categories and groupings that contribute an objective but sensitive tone to her body of work.
Breuning's films, especially "Home" starting Brian Herstetter, seem to represent wonderfully his approach to the rest of his art making. Playing with the difference between fantasy and falsity, Breuning mixes just enough reality to make you feel uncomfortable for laughing. Whether filming his friend's commentary on native New Guinean rituals or dressing people up in elaborate costumes (such as the 2007 piece "Band"), Breuning brings a playful sensibility to his works. Even digital/internet based projects such as the 2003 series "I Never Invite My Friends Again, They Are Wired" or the endless string of links titled "Nothing-Comes-From-Nothing", Breuning challenges the viewer to not only view his work, but especially to participate.
this needs a lot of work...avoid defining breuning's work by referencing his work (1st sentence). think about broader artistic strategies, themes, and content and address these....
Elise Hibbard’s work deals primarily with scale. Working with childlike symbols such as dollhouses, toys and log cabins, Hibbard uses depth and dramatic lighting to create theatrical moments that play with the viewer’s sense of reality. This mixing of fantasy with “real life” blurs our perception of true and false and allows Hibbard to create both humorous and disturbing scenes that place memories, fantasies, and experiences into the scale and aesthetic of a diorama.
this is a good start but seems to avoid discussing much of her work (the TTV project using her grandmother's camera for instance)...please expand...
Ayla’s work takes an aiding role in her life. Coming from a completely different society and moving to the United States posed many difficulties for her. Her work involves working with numerous meditative processes that involve physical interaction with the material. The ending result carries a certain emotional baggage that hints at her discomfort but more importantly, her willingness to overcome the difficulty of the culture shock she has experienced. This honesty can be seen by the result of a project; in that it is focused on concept and process, and not technique.
this writing is a bit awkward--rewrite the first sentence for starters. what materials is she using? also, rewrite the last sentence, it's important that we understand clearly that process is her practice....
Human interaction eternalizes our existence. Whether it is disconnected, connected, or completely internal, my work is an on going accumulation of instances of human interaction that relate to both people and places.
the first sentence makes no sentence. this is vague, short, unacceptable...
Sunday, March 28, 2010
In April 2009, days after being released in stores Walgreens ordered the removal of the "Chia Obama" from its stores in Tampa and Chicago, saying the ceramic-plant figure of the president, "is not appropriate for the company's corporate image."
The first thing you see when you enter Walgreens is how organized it is, and how the employees spend their days rearranging the products according to color, price and type. I went it, dropped some things on the floor, created a mess and left.
The Walgreens website has a health section with a whole list of risk assessments (cancer, stress & anxiety, career burnout) and calculators (body mass index, desirable body weight). I decided to take these tests and see where Walgreens recommended I start toward self-improvement. According to Walgreens I am overweight, at high risk for cancer, a workaholic, and have "sleep problems". Thanks Walgreens!
Interested in the intersection between the familiar and the absurd, Olaf Breuning explores mystic imagery to relay truths amidst humanity. Through mediums such as photography, installation, sculpture, film and drawing, Breuning uses repetition, color and pattern to emphasize conceptions within his artwork. Inanimate objects are personified though simple gestures while the human figure stands in as symbolic representation. By way of these gestures and symbols, a distinct recurring language is presented in Olaf Breuning’s work. With this established vocabulary, Breuning produces narratives that convey humor, honesty and uncertainty of the world that surrounds us. The autonomous works present an imagination that exists in an unidealized yet sensitive society that Breuning constructs.
this is vague, what's the content of the work? his work does not explore mystic imagery, and amidst humanity needs editing...
Olaf Breuning tests the limits of playfulness in art with his absurdist and almost surreal works. From the small interactive narrative at the beginning of his website he tests how far the viewer will allow the artists to take them. He is essentially testing the trust that the viewer has in the artist. His photographs move through playful fun imagery to somewhat shocking (although rough) photoshop jobs, such as fire 2008. He is not shy and almost determined to give the viewer some sense of how he made each image by showing props or backgrounds with the photograph. His inversion of reality forces the viewer to reassemble proper reality in their head thus forcing them to think through each motion of proper reality more thoroughly and therefore allowing more room for critique of proper reality.
Olaf Breuning unapologetically pulls you into his constructed world and sets forth his creations, creatures, and inhabitants.For the time you are viewing his work his reality becomes your reality and trying to directly associate his back to our proper reality would only confuse the issue.In the end complete trust in the artist is the only was to enter, survive, and exit his world.
Olaf Breuning’s artwork derives many of its themes from aspects of popular culture as well as universal images and symbols. Breuning utilizes a variety of mediums, which include: photography, sculpture, video, and installation. Many of his pieces are staged and digitally manipulated. While other artists who work in this manner attempt to make their artifice look as authentic as possible, Breuning’s set-ups are crudely arranged and have a playful messiness to them. This crudeness becomes a part of the content in his work.
Breuning approaches his pieces and ideas in a child-like manner. His artwork reminds us of the way in which a child perceives the world, and this peculiar outlook that the artist employs as an adult is part of what makes his work so successfulyou can't have a value judgement in the middle of an artist statement. Furthermore, this aspect of Breuning’s practice is reinforced by his use of cultural archetypes to explore fundamental human impulses and instincts such as sexuality, friendship, and violence. For example, his portrayal of social and historical groups such as Vikings, cavemen, and natives is so playful and unpolished that it walks the line between humor and bad taste.
The amateur nature of his work makes it a spontaneous gesture, and this adds to the humor in it. The purposefulness behind his under worked aesthetic leaves the door open for the viewer.
here is the itinerary for the rest of the term...notice you do NOT need
to bring an idea for a class assignment until 3/29...
Wk 8 - 3/22/10
Walgreens crit
Homework:
Make new work using any assignment method used so far…and/or redevelop
any old projects you are not yet happy with…
Students exchange portfolios with someone else in class….write an
artist statement for yourself and someone else in the class. Bring
both statements next week.
Bring an idea for a Voice Lessons assignment next week.
Wk 9 - 3/29/10
Crit your redo project (new work using a method assigned in class, or
significantly further develop an assignment you already attempted).
As a class vote on the next assignment and agree on its conceptual
parameters…due next week.
Pick an artist for next week on whom you’d like to do your voice lesson
presentation.
Wk 10 - 4/5/10
Record artist presentation picks
Assignment #9
Do an installation outside somewhere that you leave up,
photograph/document it, and walk away. Bring the photo to class. Next
week go back to photograph it either there or now
missing/aged/partially destroyed. Bring both prints to class the next
week as well.
Conceptualize 10 Art projects that are impossible financially,
conceptually, physically
look at books for final project inspiration, joan flasch…mocp?
Wk 12 - 4/19/10
Critique 10 impossible art projects and view second photograph of
outside installation after one weeks passing
Wk 13 - Wk 5 - 4/26/10
Artist presentations
10-15 minute audio/visual presentation on the artistic voice of an
artist of your choice…not a report on their career, but an opinionated,
well-articulated deconstruction of their practice and its conceptual
arc, evolution, innovations, visual language/vocabulary, anomalies,
successes, failures…
Wk 14 - 5/3/10
crit week (NO CLASS)
Wk 15 - 5/10/10
final critique—present a book representing all your work during the
term and any additional works that conceptually add to your grouping of
artistic gestures…have a digital version of the book to hand in on a
disk
Make artwork for next week that in some way uses Walgreens as your conceptual parameter.
Walgreens, the largest drugstore chain in the United States, is a ripe conceptual parameter for art making.
Simultaneously offering a strategically conceived basket of goods and services, Walgreens is a contemporary amalgam of the general store, pharmacy, photo-mat, Hallmark Store (greeting cards), toy store, corner grocery, clothing store, hardware store, etc. It is woven into the urban and suburban sprawl landscape, and evokes a consistency in terms of its layout and offerings that is consistent with a successful and sprawling chain-store concept.
What economic, cultural, scientific, historical, artistic, and geopolitical issues and ideas quietly reside there?
What is your relationship to a place like this, to its offerings of needs and wants, to its emotional and mental connection with the familiar? Do you have different ideas/feelings as you occupy the different areas of the typical Walgreens (toy aisle, cosmetics, pharmacy, photolab, hardware aisle…).
Walgreens is a uber-contrived physical space as well, rendering as many areas as possible as viewable shelf space, cost-efficient lighting, customer traffic thoroughfares, employee-only areas, Walgreens signage and branding (employee outfits, wall signs, aisle signs), security measures (mirrors and cameras), illuminated parking lots, landscaping, and street viewable signs.
More info:
In its 2009 business model Walgreens locations are always set up as freestanding locations at the corners of busy, intersecting streets on the prevailing side of the street with the most traffic flow -- literally making it a "corner drugstore" similar to how many independent pharmacies evolved over the years in the United States. This also usually allows the store to offer services such as a drive-through pharmacy and 24-hour shopping that would not be possible in a shopping mall.
A typical Walgreens store is about 14,500 square feet (1,350 m2) with 11,000 square feet (1,000 m2) of sales area. on average, 25,000 items are for sale and typically staff between 25 and 30 people per store. A typical store pulls in $8.5 million in annual sales. Most stores include a pharmacy, a photo lab, a cosmetics counter, and a general merchandise area.
The store management team usually includes a Store Manager (MGR), an Executive Assistant Manager (EXA), and at least one Assistant Manager (MGT). In 2009, Walgreens introduced the Store Team Lead (STL) position in many of its stores.
Walgreens stock has been trading in the past year between $23.36 - $40.69.
for next week (March 22nd) bring in ideas for a voice lessons assignment. we will vote as a class on one winner and that will become an upcoming assignment!
Tomorrow, March 15th, we will be doing crits on your appropriation assignment.
You will be given your Walgreens assignment, due March 22nd.
in addition for March 22nd:
Assemble all of the work you've done this term into jpgs and text documents into a digital folder that you can hand off to another student in the class. Bring this to class on March 22nd. Due March 29, write an artist statement based off of the work you've made so far, and write a second artist statement for a classmate (you will be assigned another student).
N Building is a commercial structure located near Tachikawa station amidst a shopping district. Being a commercial building signs or billboards are typically attached to its facade which we feel undermines the structures' identity. As a solution we thought to use a QR Code as the facade itself. By reading the QR Code with your mobile device you will be taken to a site which includes up to date shop information. In this manner we envision a cityscape unhindered by ubiquitous signage and also an improvement to the quality and accuracy of the information itself.
Through Emergency Room, artists can react every day. They scan the emergencies of today and respond to their discoveries of conflicts and discrepancies. By being a constantly changing exhibition space commenting on current events Emergency Room creates a hotline to the public and to the mass media. Everyday there will be new reactions, and everyday there will be new reasons for audience and media to tune back in:
“Artists, audience and media have been fighting for weeks in order to get to see and participate in the new and innovating exhibition that with its "art of the news" puts the art institution itself to debate. Reuters, The New Yorker and the TV-channel ABC News are some of the leading media that have brought the story about the original exhibition, and at P.S.1 more than a thousand visitors per day have been seeing it…" (Nikolaj M. Lassen, Weekendavisen, March 30th, 2007)
There was something posted here, but my laptop's inability to use anything google related - and my forced use of a terribly slow public proxy - leaves me unable to post pictures.
Carrie Schneider is a photographer and filmmaker whose work is heavily based on performance. In her series "Derelict Self" Carrie explores the idea of mimcry and how it can be a way to both lose and secure a sense of self. She uses herself and her brother as subjects and explores this idea in relation to being a younger sibling.
Sophie Calle was once described to me as kooky. It's true-- as the article posted reads, "it is tempting to assume she is mad". Calle keeps me thinking- I always find new inspiration in her work. She has turned her life into one big performance- "recording her adventures", whether they are celebratory, strange or heartbreaking. There are questions to whether or not Calle is telling the truth- but that’s part of what is beautiful about it--- its her life--- she is the one telling it, imagining it and making it.
Ana Mendieta, Silueta Works in Mexico
20 x 13 inches, 1973-78, C-Print
tehching hsieh (is a great favorite)
yves klein
gabriel orozco
janine antoni
on kawara
b. nauman
ana mendieta
ukeles
charles ray
adrian piper
richard long
barry le va
eleanor antin
orlan
terry fox
piero manzoni
bas jan ader
shaun gladwell stan shellabarger
*Please note the time this post was created. I might be drunk right now but I might not be. Regardless, I think it's a good abstraction piece right now at 4AM – I might be wrong in a few hours.
Bas Jan Ader is a performance artist born in the Netherlands in 1942. He made the majority of his work throughout the 70s before his tragic disappearance and death at sea in 1975. His work didn't gain much popularity until the early 1990s. I am really drawn to Bas Jan Ader's work because he was able to make sincere gestures that captured sentimentality through performance of the body. His performances are humorous on the surface, but ultimately depressing and reflective of the time period and in raw human emotion. My favorite performance by Ader was his last performance entitled In Search of the Miraculous, where Bas Jan Ader attempted to set sail across the Atlantic Ocean – alone – in a 13ft boat. Bas Jan Ader's boat was found 10 months after the performance had began. His body was never to be found.
Nina's way of organizing work speaks to a particular abstract process of working. There are umbrella concepts such as language, ways of mapping or organizing and simply paying attention- finding meaning in what we often overlook. But Nina has many interests and by overlapping her work by medium and subject matter she can communicate her ideas from varying vantage points. Her work is playful but poignant as she touches lightly on many concepts and by connecting them she adds greater complexity.
