"Whiting Tennis", Derek Eller
Hey Whiting, you have the whole gallery and you deserve it. Good job. Seriously, the artists two-dimensional wooden panel thing drawings have become outstanding sculptures. Incredible works. Fortunately the silly 'found object organizers' handing on the walls help remind us that not everything in the world is wonderful.
"seven line drawings by picasso" venetia kapernekas gallery
Wow. It's so easy to get Picasso'd out, but this was shockingly great. He makes it look so easy...
"New Prints: Spring 2008" International Print Center New York
Nathaniel Hester gets a 'buy' rating.
"Christopher Wool", Luhring Augustine
Why show those paintings at all when the silkscreens are so much better? It's like when Matthew Barney shows mostly bad props from his mostly overdone movies, it's both uncomfortable and unnecessary.
"Anish Kapoor", Barbara Gladstone
The 21st Street mirrors are fun to experience but not great art. The freaky nuclear smoke stack shaped thing on 24th Street went from interesting to "Oh good my eyes are dying, but in a good way" in the time it took to walk inside. The big shiny needle on 21st Street was just an embarrassment, it's only redeeming factor is that it might make a good place for a dramatic super-villain death.
"Mark Di Suvero", Paula Cooper
What can save us from that giant Mark Di Suvero piece? Maybe Mecha-Godzilla. We can only hope.
"String Based Instrument Study", Tanya Bonakdar
How is it that this project instantly became boring when I saw Olafur Eliasson's name?
"Liam Gillick", Casey Kaplan
These eyeball amusers become more acceptable with the socially relevant title.
"Ken Solomon, Josee Bienvenu Gallery
Laugh out loud clever work, all about the postal system. The best piece being a post box made of boxes all shipped throught he postal system, though I confess I'm suspicious as none of the boxes showed scuff marks on their shiny paint jobs.
"Anne Hardy", Bellwether Gallery
Walked in expecting the typical flinch, but... holy shit. A gallerist lets a good artist show good art, the system works.
Art faux pax of the month: Oh no! We've all created two-dimensional works using nails to create pattern and form! Someone has to go home and change.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Beyond the Pale, Moti Hasson Gallery, Jan 18 - Feb 17, 2008
This rather confused group show unites under the banner of going "beyond the limits of law or decency". Sadly, the closest thing to a tenet of decency that is challenged is the Modernist order to pursue the novel. Little new territory is explored, none is staked with any authority - even the shameless retreads like Clifford Owens performance documents and pretty works by Xylor Jane fail to work any sort of new meaning into the tropes on which they depend.
One might hope that the Fluxus posturing of Clifford Owens feeds back into the myth of performance in a witty, or at least sarcastic way. In the photograph Studio Visits: Skowhegan (Donald Moffet), Owes sits naked on a chair surrounded by props which indicate some sort of performance as being in the works. Artistic authority is lent by the mention of the famous artist residency, the Skowhegan School of Painting, and the politically loaded Donald Moffett (by the way Owens, Moffett is spelled with two T's). And since the artist is naked, we know that performance with a capital P is occuring. After all, naked equals serious.
We might hope that the straight stare of Owens is a challenge to the extremely conscious posturing of the photograph. He stares directly into the camera lens with slightly crossed eyes, reclining in a classical pose. However, his other work in the show diffuses this exciting thought.
Four Fluxus Scores by Benjamin Patterson (Whipped Cream Piece, Lick Piece, 1964) documents Owens recreation of the Patterson performance listed in the title, the simple instructions of which read:
cover shapely female with whipped cream
lick
...
topping of chopped nuts and cherries is optional
Owens doesn't recreate the original 1964 performance itself, but merely follows the directions Fluxus fashion - he opts to leave off the optional cherry but includes the nuts. His own, that is. For whatever reason, Owens is also naked in this acting out of the Fluxus performance. This puzzling decision, along with the clinical white of the photographs setting, seems to again be a struggle to find artistic legitimacy in played out terrain. Why be naked? Why do it in a gallery setting? Why photograph it and show it to us? In trying to make these performances his own. his choices seem consistently odd in a non-challenging way. In Owens' defense, the original performance of the piece included a naked woman which wasn't expressly called for either - let's all assume that the reason Owens is naked is somehow related to this fact.
Seriously folks, why do performance artists still love to be naked? Is there really any territory left to tread in the naked world? And of all the folks that need to be chastised for the treatment of the nude, the Fluxists are pretty low on the list.
Other artists in the show fair better, but few properly shine. Kerstin Brätsch is probably the best of the lot, with geometric wall assemblies made up of photocopies and painted bits. Paul Pagk comes a close second with bright geometric paintings showing thin lines and rough brushiness, hard to go wrong with paintings of this sort. Shinique Smith surprises with beige-ified versions of her earlier cloth bundles - not necessarily exciting but it is always nice to see an artist change things up a bit. Tommy Hartung has a sculptural piece that has more to say about video than his video does. And Uri Anan has a video with a soundtrack that has little to do with the video - experimental video worthy of that long established genre.
But most of these artists, and don't fault them for this is an easy thing to do, fall into the same trap as Clifford Owens and the Fluxus work: They are following a script written by someone else and desperately trying to make it their own through heavy handed applications of art tools; nakedness, busyness, tropes and tricks. Beyond the Pale is more about resurrecting the mythological dead than testing any sorts of limits.
One might hope that the Fluxus posturing of Clifford Owens feeds back into the myth of performance in a witty, or at least sarcastic way. In the photograph Studio Visits: Skowhegan (Donald Moffet), Owes sits naked on a chair surrounded by props which indicate some sort of performance as being in the works. Artistic authority is lent by the mention of the famous artist residency, the Skowhegan School of Painting, and the politically loaded Donald Moffett (by the way Owens, Moffett is spelled with two T's). And since the artist is naked, we know that performance with a capital P is occuring. After all, naked equals serious.
We might hope that the straight stare of Owens is a challenge to the extremely conscious posturing of the photograph. He stares directly into the camera lens with slightly crossed eyes, reclining in a classical pose. However, his other work in the show diffuses this exciting thought.
Four Fluxus Scores by Benjamin Patterson (Whipped Cream Piece, Lick Piece, 1964) documents Owens recreation of the Patterson performance listed in the title, the simple instructions of which read:
cover shapely female with whipped cream
lick
...
topping of chopped nuts and cherries is optional
Owens doesn't recreate the original 1964 performance itself, but merely follows the directions Fluxus fashion - he opts to leave off the optional cherry but includes the nuts. His own, that is. For whatever reason, Owens is also naked in this acting out of the Fluxus performance. This puzzling decision, along with the clinical white of the photographs setting, seems to again be a struggle to find artistic legitimacy in played out terrain. Why be naked? Why do it in a gallery setting? Why photograph it and show it to us? In trying to make these performances his own. his choices seem consistently odd in a non-challenging way. In Owens' defense, the original performance of the piece included a naked woman which wasn't expressly called for either - let's all assume that the reason Owens is naked is somehow related to this fact.
Seriously folks, why do performance artists still love to be naked? Is there really any territory left to tread in the naked world? And of all the folks that need to be chastised for the treatment of the nude, the Fluxists are pretty low on the list.
Other artists in the show fair better, but few properly shine. Kerstin Brätsch is probably the best of the lot, with geometric wall assemblies made up of photocopies and painted bits. Paul Pagk comes a close second with bright geometric paintings showing thin lines and rough brushiness, hard to go wrong with paintings of this sort. Shinique Smith surprises with beige-ified versions of her earlier cloth bundles - not necessarily exciting but it is always nice to see an artist change things up a bit. Tommy Hartung has a sculptural piece that has more to say about video than his video does. And Uri Anan has a video with a soundtrack that has little to do with the video - experimental video worthy of that long established genre.
But most of these artists, and don't fault them for this is an easy thing to do, fall into the same trap as Clifford Owens and the Fluxus work: They are following a script written by someone else and desperately trying to make it their own through heavy handed applications of art tools; nakedness, busyness, tropes and tricks. Beyond the Pale is more about resurrecting the mythological dead than testing any sorts of limits.
Daphne Fitzpatrick, Bellwether Gallery, October 2007
My first question on entering the show was the same I asked on my way out. Who the heck is Daphne Fitzpatrick and why is occupying a prime slot at Bellwether while their hottest gallery artist, Ellen Altfest, is showing at White Cube in London. Where did this person come from?
To skip to the end of the book, I'll tell you that Daphne Fitzpatrick was one of the original founders of Bellwether back when it was a down-homey space in Greenpoint. She also is one handshake away from the Yale grad school connection that Bellwether's owner seems to love. But in the imaginary book we just skipped through, chapter after chapter was full of people saying "Oh, I didn't know that Daphne Fitzpatrick made art". Confidentially, I'm not so certain she does do so. Not well, at least.
The second question that I posed to myself was about the ramp. I went up it, looked around, laughed a little, and went down it. I thought about all the other ramps I've traversed while in art exhibits, a few moments of reflection and I decided that my favorite was at PS1 several years ago. Mostly because that one had a point, Fitzpatrick's ramp seemed to be entirely disconnected from the rest of the show, and being that the show is pretty ramshackle to begin with... But it's a ramp and you can hardly go wrong with one of those.
The show has its good points. Links of different types of sausages pass through a hole in glass jar and then droop down towards the floor. It takes guts to make a ham-handed joke like that (a little sausage humor there). The variety of sausages was what made the piece for me, though. It's the little things that get you.
Three wax candlesticks of increasing, or decreasing if you like, size rest on a shelf. Again, this is a visual gag of the get-it-or-you-don't variety. I laughed out loud.
Turning about, I cringed at the shiny silver flag arrangement. I suspect that Daphne borrows style by the bucketful and deploys it to create interesting thoughts. It can be assumed that she borrowed this flag arrangement from "Sculpture 201", as it does all sorts of ground breaking things. Namely it knocks a hole in the drywall of the gallery, exposing the naked brickwork underneath. Take that for-profit gallery system! And I'll lay down a piece of flooring under my piece, because it helps tie it together visually! There's a reason none of the press this show has gotten mentions this piece, it's awful.
The back wall has what the press release calls "construction fencing". Imagine a plywood box covered in tattered prints of what I think are Warhol drawings. There was a peephole in the side of the fence, but the inside was as black as night - maybe inside was the secret key to whole show. According to the press release it was. Technical problems seemed to have kept the lights out off and on, as the peep holes were dark both times I looked.
A proper door lets one into a musty sitting area, where a video monitor shows us the artists attention to detail. Watch the bug crawl across the board. Watch the blurry reflection in the window. I can practically feel the whir of the autofocus lens on the camera, in-out in-out. Videos like this have been ruined for me by television, and not in the way you might expect. A long while ago a commercial ran in which they talked about cell phone designers paying attention to 'the details', viewers were shown designers studying things closely and randomly pressing buttons on an elevator. At the end of the commercial a comical intern is chastised for imitating the designers (he aped them by pressing random elevator buttons, just as they had). Fitzpatrick's video feels like its aping the long tradition of 'attention to detail' films that have bored us since the 60s. I hope that this is another example of her cleverly borrowing conventions from previous style, because if this video is intended to be a true chart of the artists interests then she's a pretentious fool.
More, it seems, it's about style. About creating a place from which to make art and allow others access to that position as an interpretive tool. Fitzpatrick identifies herself with the video monitor work, it helps position everything around it as 'smart' because only a smart person would show something so dumb. Any moment, though, I expect the artist to leap forward and strike a dramatic pose, shouting "It's ACTING!" ala Saturday Night Live.
Run through the show with the price list in your hand, or else you'll be missing the titles. With names like "Tie a Pabst Blue Ribbon around my prize pony Bud" and "A roll of saran wrap and a bottle of beer", you can't tell the horses without the racing program. The titles help, they help set the mood for the show, they remind us that it's funny. "A roll of saran wrap and a bottle of beer" seems unnecessary, though, as the piece is pretty sexual and funny as is.
Walking up the ramp and out the door, I give Bellwether props for what might be their least sellable show ever, and I mean that in the nicest way.
This is all made from scratch. I hope the artist uses a knife to cut up the plastic rings of the can holder, otherwise a baby seal might choke on it.
To skip to the end of the book, I'll tell you that Daphne Fitzpatrick was one of the original founders of Bellwether back when it was a down-homey space in Greenpoint. She also is one handshake away from the Yale grad school connection that Bellwether's owner seems to love. But in the imaginary book we just skipped through, chapter after chapter was full of people saying "Oh, I didn't know that Daphne Fitzpatrick made art". Confidentially, I'm not so certain she does do so. Not well, at least.
The second question that I posed to myself was about the ramp. I went up it, looked around, laughed a little, and went down it. I thought about all the other ramps I've traversed while in art exhibits, a few moments of reflection and I decided that my favorite was at PS1 several years ago. Mostly because that one had a point, Fitzpatrick's ramp seemed to be entirely disconnected from the rest of the show, and being that the show is pretty ramshackle to begin with... But it's a ramp and you can hardly go wrong with one of those.
The show has its good points. Links of different types of sausages pass through a hole in glass jar and then droop down towards the floor. It takes guts to make a ham-handed joke like that (a little sausage humor there). The variety of sausages was what made the piece for me, though. It's the little things that get you.
Three wax candlesticks of increasing, or decreasing if you like, size rest on a shelf. Again, this is a visual gag of the get-it-or-you-don't variety. I laughed out loud.
Turning about, I cringed at the shiny silver flag arrangement. I suspect that Daphne borrows style by the bucketful and deploys it to create interesting thoughts. It can be assumed that she borrowed this flag arrangement from "Sculpture 201", as it does all sorts of ground breaking things. Namely it knocks a hole in the drywall of the gallery, exposing the naked brickwork underneath. Take that for-profit gallery system! And I'll lay down a piece of flooring under my piece, because it helps tie it together visually! There's a reason none of the press this show has gotten mentions this piece, it's awful.
The back wall has what the press release calls "construction fencing". Imagine a plywood box covered in tattered prints of what I think are Warhol drawings. There was a peephole in the side of the fence, but the inside was as black as night - maybe inside was the secret key to whole show. According to the press release it was. Technical problems seemed to have kept the lights out off and on, as the peep holes were dark both times I looked.
A proper door lets one into a musty sitting area, where a video monitor shows us the artists attention to detail. Watch the bug crawl across the board. Watch the blurry reflection in the window. I can practically feel the whir of the autofocus lens on the camera, in-out in-out. Videos like this have been ruined for me by television, and not in the way you might expect. A long while ago a commercial ran in which they talked about cell phone designers paying attention to 'the details', viewers were shown designers studying things closely and randomly pressing buttons on an elevator. At the end of the commercial a comical intern is chastised for imitating the designers (he aped them by pressing random elevator buttons, just as they had). Fitzpatrick's video feels like its aping the long tradition of 'attention to detail' films that have bored us since the 60s. I hope that this is another example of her cleverly borrowing conventions from previous style, because if this video is intended to be a true chart of the artists interests then she's a pretentious fool.
More, it seems, it's about style. About creating a place from which to make art and allow others access to that position as an interpretive tool. Fitzpatrick identifies herself with the video monitor work, it helps position everything around it as 'smart' because only a smart person would show something so dumb. Any moment, though, I expect the artist to leap forward and strike a dramatic pose, shouting "It's ACTING!" ala Saturday Night Live.
Run through the show with the price list in your hand, or else you'll be missing the titles. With names like "Tie a Pabst Blue Ribbon around my prize pony Bud" and "A roll of saran wrap and a bottle of beer", you can't tell the horses without the racing program. The titles help, they help set the mood for the show, they remind us that it's funny. "A roll of saran wrap and a bottle of beer" seems unnecessary, though, as the piece is pretty sexual and funny as is.
Walking up the ramp and out the door, I give Bellwether props for what might be their least sellable show ever, and I mean that in the nicest way.
This is all made from scratch. I hope the artist uses a knife to cut up the plastic rings of the can holder, otherwise a baby seal might choke on it.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
LMCC 200 Hudson, Saturday, April 25
First off, don't show the same videos in the screening that you are going to have looping in your studio. That's annoying. We sit down in the darkened room, and spend two hours watching videos stumble by just to have the same damn things shown to us again later. Except all at once, so they are all loud.
Second, go see video art before you make video art. It's hard, yes, but it's worth it. It's a crying shame to see the same videos made again and again. And again.
Third, it's okay to NOT make video art. You don't have to, really. Sure, all the cool kids are doing it, and it's really easy to just pick up a camera and stagger around with it, or appropriate or whatever, but don't. If you're a good painter, paint. If you stop painting and make a video, make sure it's a good one before you let it taint your overall practice.
We leave the screening and head up to the studios, enter and are assaulted by Generic Art Noise. Man that's awful. At least with video folks have an excuse to have not seen it, but shit, we've all heard the endless droning of installation noise. God.
One poor guy, Nathan Bennett, seemed to have a sort of interesting thing going on in spite of the somewhat generic art noise pouring out of his humorously crafted speakers. There was a nice feel in his space, a sort of gothy techno vibe that didn't take itself too seriously. A record was spinning out to some speakers, a cool looking record whose appearance somehow defused the generic art noise coming out of it by a trick of self-mockery. Sadly, Bennett's studio was drowned out by a less considerate neighbors generic art noise coming off of a generic Let's-Run-Some-Reel-to-Reel-Audio-Tape-All-Over-the-Room-and-Back-Through-the-Deck-Like-We-All-Did-In-College.
I can only hope that the neighbors work was about nostalgia and I am too dense to get it.
The LMCC Studio Program is supposed to compete with the AIM thing, but it seemed to fall flat for the most part. It seemed to feel a little too pre-emerging, a little too undeveloped. I caught myself thinking that if these folks had nine months of free studio in the greatest art city in the world and this is the point they wound up at, then they must've started out TERRIBLE.
(Mind you, not everyone was bad. Mike Estabrook was bizarre and bad enough in some magic way that the work was good, like a car wreck where no one gets hurt. Eric Sall had some very nice paintings, and Jason Keeling's work was pretty smart. I think.)
Good party, though.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
So this is what it looks like when you are accepted to an Art Expo show. This was from an earlier call, not one of the current ones I mentioned above. Here he tried to soak me for 60 euros. My understanding from other Luca Curci communication was that he wanted 60 euros per artwork submitted, here it sounds like it is only when you are accepted.
Regardless, the fact that there was a fee is nowhere in the original art calls.
---
The participation in ArtExpo events requires an entry fee of 60 euro for every artwork submitted and selected in every exhibition, because as you know we are an indipendent group. You can send your entry fee by Paypal ( email: lucacurci@lucacurci.com ), or by Western Union, or by Bank transfer.
Bank account:
Account Number: 27600
Name: Luca Curci
Bank: Banca Meridiana Spa
Bank Address: Filiale 14, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II - n. 112, Bari - Italy
Bank Code (IBAN): IT09 S057 8704 0040 1457 0027 600
Bank Code (BIC): AMBPIT2M
Thanks for all,
Luca Curci - art director
International ArtExpo Group - www.lucacurci.com/artexpo
e-mail. lucacurci@lucacurci.com
phone. +39.338.7574098
---
Regardless, the fact that there was a fee is nowhere in the original art calls.
---
The participation in ArtExpo events requires an entry fee of 60 euro for every artwork submitted and selected in every exhibition, because as you know we are an indipendent group. You can send your entry fee by Paypal ( email: lucacurci@lucacurci.com ), or by Western Union, or by Bank transfer.
Bank account:
Account Number: 27600
Name: Luca Curci
Bank: Banca Meridiana Spa
Bank Address: Filiale 14, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II - n. 112, Bari - Italy
Bank Code (IBAN): IT09 S057 8704 0040 1457 0027 600
Bank Code (BIC): AMBPIT2M
Thanks for all,
Luca Curci - art director
International ArtExpo Group - www.lucacurci.com/artexpo
e-mail. lucacurci@lucacurci.com
phone. +39.338.7574098
---
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Luca Curci and the ArtExpo Scam
A while ago I sent a packet off to an anonymous internet call for artworks. It was a call for video works by Art Expo, a non-profit run by Luca Curci in Italy.
I am a video artist, and relatively savvy about how the art world works. Normally I don't send off blind packets to video festival type situations and I never do "pay to play" shows. Paying for the right to show your artwork is for the ignorant, the desperate, and the vast sea of art professors who will happily pay for the right to look like practicing artists. Art Expo looked legit. No fees. Good sign. Great show title, "It'll sound good on my resume" thinks I.
I send off a DVD of work suitably themed to the call, the call specifically states that there is no limit to the amount of work that can be submitted. A few months later I receive a communication from Mr. Curci himself. It seems that I failed to submit the $60 (I think this is the correct amount) required to have my video considered for the show. I write back, informing him that I hadn't read that there was a fee. I apologized and asked him to remove me from consideration and to please destroy my submitted DVD.
Annoyed with myself, I look up the listing for the show. Scanning it top to bottom, there is no mention of a fee. None at all. I dig around through different listings for the same Art Expo call. None of them mention a fee. At this point, I am royally pissed. I write Luca Curci back and tell him that nowhere did he mention a fee on the art call. He write back and asks for money again, the broken English makes it feel like an email from a spammer. I inform him that he is conducting his business in a fraudulent manner, "clip joint" style. He never writes back. I forget about this event, because the world is a big place full of exciting things.
Today I bump into a friend of mine who tells me about her own encounter with the show curator. My poor pal sends off a video for an Art Expo call and has the piece accepted! But in the email Mr. Curci states that a fee of 110 Euros (I think) is required for the video to be shown. Holy fuck, what a rip-off. Of course, this fee is not listed anywhere in any of the information listed in the call.
I'm a little bummed because my own work wasn't even good enough for this advanced form of clipping, instead I got the "you ain't gonna get in the show so we'll just try to get a lower amount out of you" email. I know I'm a terrible artist, but I do hate to have other people remind me.
My friend wisely sends Curci on his way with a few choice words. She had already swallowed some pride just to send her video in to a blind call, paying out the ass to a cheeseball like this would've been too much.
As we compare notes on Curci's tactics, I fall into a rage. I assumed that my brush with Curci had been a mistake on his part, a failure to properly write up the call for work. But no, it was his business plan - his hustle, his scam, his preying on those desperate to have their artwork seen by a bigger world. He tried to get trick the two of us into giving him money using the same method, different events and different times, same trick. Later I find out that the 110 Euro fee was standard for this particular show, one sucker I know PAID IT! And he had been told about the fee in the exact same way.
Curci is showing about fifty artists in an upcoming show at Monkey Town in Brooklyn, this is the show that costs 110 Euros to be in which my friend chose not to be in. Monkey Town is a pretty respectable space, I wonder that they are dealing with a pay to play set up like Art Expo. It's a pretty big hit to their street cred, I'd more expect Curci to be hooking up with the Slowinksi Gallery or some other such place. My only hope is that they don't know about Art Expos sleazy practices and that this is some terrible mistake.
If each artist is paying 110 Euros, that's 5500 Euros the curator is getting from each chosen artist. If we assume that he pulls the same "bill 'em after the send the work" stunt that he pulled with me, that could be thousands more in his dishonest coffers. My god, I wish I had thought of this amazing way to bilk idiots. Of course, I would never suspect that this would work in a thousand years.
Folks, seriously, don't pay for the right to be in a show, unless you are a watercolor artist teaching at a small town in the Midwest and need the show to make tenure. People LAUGH at you when you do this stuff. It is an embarrassment to have this stuff on your resume. There are about eighty billion "show opportunities" listed on the internet, most of them are free. Go apply to those.
Paying a pondful of money to have your work shown at a fancy sounding film festival is an especially bad idea if the showing is at some place like the Indiana University branch in Kokomo. Seriously, Kokomo Indiana. I've got to say that the show sounds very impressive, the "Indiana International Video Art and Architecture Festival". Hard to argue with. And Curci's original art call says the festival is at the "Indiana University Art Gallery". Indiana University is a pretty good school with a surprisingly good art program. Of course, when one speaks of Indiana University they expect that you are talking about the main campus in Bloomington, which has about 38000 students, not the Kokomo campus with 3000. Looks like kooky Curci managed to put another one over on a handful of cash-wielding artists.
All of you who spent your good money on the "Indiana International Video Art and Architecture Festival" do a Google search on the festival. As far as I can tell there wasn't such an event. The only places I see it listed are on the Art Expo website and in the scattered resumes of the artists who were in it. I can find one confused ramble of a local events column, but the IU-Kokomo gallery itself doesn't list the event. Was it worth the money? Would you have paid it if it had been advertised that the show was on the Kokomo campus? Are you laughing as hard as I am?
Not that there is anything wrong with the gallery at Kokomo. Nothing at all. It just isn't what was represented in the ad.
There are all sorts of reasons to not participate in these "pay to play" art shows. Admittedly, a few good reasons exist which justify sending the money in, mostly these reasons involve artificially shoring up your show resume so you can fool people who know nothing about art. All that aside, you shouldn't give money to someone who is cheating you, and this IS cheating. It calls into question the legitimacy of the project they are promoting, of their competency at curating. Demanding money to look at the work after it has been advertised as a no-fee show is sleazy and shows where the true priorities lie. And by paying the money anyways you are encouraging this dishonest practice. I am forced to assume that there are fifty artists in any particular show of his because fifty suckers were willing to pay for the privilege. If a hundred had been willing the show would have fifty additional videos.
I wanted to list the names of the artists who showed in his projects, that way they would be tied to this article when anyone googled their name. But no, that is too cruel. Skimming through the folks I would have shamed I find the exact sort of folks that I suspected - university professors who started teaching straight out of an MFA program and have no art experience, artists with lots of shows but all in the same small town, you know the lot. I don't want to shame these folks, but I would like to inform them.
And I'd like to be informed myself. If anyone reading this blog has had an experience different than that of myself and the other two folks, please let me know.
Here are some relevant links:
-An example of the calls for the fabulous Indiana Festival of Video Art and Architecture and a show called Temporary Identities. Notice that there are no mentions of fees for either show.
http://weblogart.blogspot.com/2005/11/call-for-entries-artexpo-2006.html
-Luca Curci's website. You can tell from the opening page that he's an e-human. You can also tell he's a lot happier than me, as he can get scantily clad girls to run about while he photographs them.
http://www.lucacurci.com/
-Here's his next list of calls, none of which list a fee. Maybe I'll submit something under another name and report when he tries to charge money.
http://www.lucacurci.com/artexpo/home/events/calls/index.html
I am a video artist, and relatively savvy about how the art world works. Normally I don't send off blind packets to video festival type situations and I never do "pay to play" shows. Paying for the right to show your artwork is for the ignorant, the desperate, and the vast sea of art professors who will happily pay for the right to look like practicing artists. Art Expo looked legit. No fees. Good sign. Great show title, "It'll sound good on my resume" thinks I.
I send off a DVD of work suitably themed to the call, the call specifically states that there is no limit to the amount of work that can be submitted. A few months later I receive a communication from Mr. Curci himself. It seems that I failed to submit the $60 (I think this is the correct amount) required to have my video considered for the show. I write back, informing him that I hadn't read that there was a fee. I apologized and asked him to remove me from consideration and to please destroy my submitted DVD.
Annoyed with myself, I look up the listing for the show. Scanning it top to bottom, there is no mention of a fee. None at all. I dig around through different listings for the same Art Expo call. None of them mention a fee. At this point, I am royally pissed. I write Luca Curci back and tell him that nowhere did he mention a fee on the art call. He write back and asks for money again, the broken English makes it feel like an email from a spammer. I inform him that he is conducting his business in a fraudulent manner, "clip joint" style. He never writes back. I forget about this event, because the world is a big place full of exciting things.
Today I bump into a friend of mine who tells me about her own encounter with the show curator. My poor pal sends off a video for an Art Expo call and has the piece accepted! But in the email Mr. Curci states that a fee of 110 Euros (I think) is required for the video to be shown. Holy fuck, what a rip-off. Of course, this fee is not listed anywhere in any of the information listed in the call.
I'm a little bummed because my own work wasn't even good enough for this advanced form of clipping, instead I got the "you ain't gonna get in the show so we'll just try to get a lower amount out of you" email. I know I'm a terrible artist, but I do hate to have other people remind me.
My friend wisely sends Curci on his way with a few choice words. She had already swallowed some pride just to send her video in to a blind call, paying out the ass to a cheeseball like this would've been too much.
As we compare notes on Curci's tactics, I fall into a rage. I assumed that my brush with Curci had been a mistake on his part, a failure to properly write up the call for work. But no, it was his business plan - his hustle, his scam, his preying on those desperate to have their artwork seen by a bigger world. He tried to get trick the two of us into giving him money using the same method, different events and different times, same trick. Later I find out that the 110 Euro fee was standard for this particular show, one sucker I know PAID IT! And he had been told about the fee in the exact same way.
Curci is showing about fifty artists in an upcoming show at Monkey Town in Brooklyn, this is the show that costs 110 Euros to be in which my friend chose not to be in. Monkey Town is a pretty respectable space, I wonder that they are dealing with a pay to play set up like Art Expo. It's a pretty big hit to their street cred, I'd more expect Curci to be hooking up with the Slowinksi Gallery or some other such place. My only hope is that they don't know about Art Expos sleazy practices and that this is some terrible mistake.
If each artist is paying 110 Euros, that's 5500 Euros the curator is getting from each chosen artist. If we assume that he pulls the same "bill 'em after the send the work" stunt that he pulled with me, that could be thousands more in his dishonest coffers. My god, I wish I had thought of this amazing way to bilk idiots. Of course, I would never suspect that this would work in a thousand years.
Folks, seriously, don't pay for the right to be in a show, unless you are a watercolor artist teaching at a small town in the Midwest and need the show to make tenure. People LAUGH at you when you do this stuff. It is an embarrassment to have this stuff on your resume. There are about eighty billion "show opportunities" listed on the internet, most of them are free. Go apply to those.
Paying a pondful of money to have your work shown at a fancy sounding film festival is an especially bad idea if the showing is at some place like the Indiana University branch in Kokomo. Seriously, Kokomo Indiana. I've got to say that the show sounds very impressive, the "Indiana International Video Art and Architecture Festival". Hard to argue with. And Curci's original art call says the festival is at the "Indiana University Art Gallery". Indiana University is a pretty good school with a surprisingly good art program. Of course, when one speaks of Indiana University they expect that you are talking about the main campus in Bloomington, which has about 38000 students, not the Kokomo campus with 3000. Looks like kooky Curci managed to put another one over on a handful of cash-wielding artists.
All of you who spent your good money on the "Indiana International Video Art and Architecture Festival" do a Google search on the festival. As far as I can tell there wasn't such an event. The only places I see it listed are on the Art Expo website and in the scattered resumes of the artists who were in it. I can find one confused ramble of a local events column, but the IU-Kokomo gallery itself doesn't list the event. Was it worth the money? Would you have paid it if it had been advertised that the show was on the Kokomo campus? Are you laughing as hard as I am?
Not that there is anything wrong with the gallery at Kokomo. Nothing at all. It just isn't what was represented in the ad.
There are all sorts of reasons to not participate in these "pay to play" art shows. Admittedly, a few good reasons exist which justify sending the money in, mostly these reasons involve artificially shoring up your show resume so you can fool people who know nothing about art. All that aside, you shouldn't give money to someone who is cheating you, and this IS cheating. It calls into question the legitimacy of the project they are promoting, of their competency at curating. Demanding money to look at the work after it has been advertised as a no-fee show is sleazy and shows where the true priorities lie. And by paying the money anyways you are encouraging this dishonest practice. I am forced to assume that there are fifty artists in any particular show of his because fifty suckers were willing to pay for the privilege. If a hundred had been willing the show would have fifty additional videos.
I wanted to list the names of the artists who showed in his projects, that way they would be tied to this article when anyone googled their name. But no, that is too cruel. Skimming through the folks I would have shamed I find the exact sort of folks that I suspected - university professors who started teaching straight out of an MFA program and have no art experience, artists with lots of shows but all in the same small town, you know the lot. I don't want to shame these folks, but I would like to inform them.
And I'd like to be informed myself. If anyone reading this blog has had an experience different than that of myself and the other two folks, please let me know.
Here are some relevant links:
-An example of the calls for the fabulous Indiana Festival of Video Art and Architecture and a show called Temporary Identities. Notice that there are no mentions of fees for either show.
http://weblogart.blogspot.com/2005/11/call-for-entries-artexpo-2006.html
-Luca Curci's website. You can tell from the opening page that he's an e-human. You can also tell he's a lot happier than me, as he can get scantily clad girls to run about while he photographs them.
http://www.lucacurci.com/
-Here's his next list of calls, none of which list a fee. Maybe I'll submit something under another name and report when he tries to charge money.
http://www.lucacurci.com/artexpo/home/events/calls/index.html
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