Headed for CAA? Don’t Miss This Panel

I just got notice of this via the Southern Graphics email-list, for those of you not privy to this very exclusive service I’m re-posting it here. The panel is scheduled for Friday @ 12:30 p.m. in the Concourse Meeting Room 409AB, Level 2, Los Angeles Convention Center. 

Multiply and Vanish: Influenced and Inspired by the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Moderator: Mark Franchino

Panelists: Virgil Marti, Adriane Herman, Kate Bingaman-Burt 

Multiply and Vanish: Influenced and Inspired by the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres

In an age of expanding communication technologies the world is simultaneously at ones fingertips and out of reach. Limitless choice, unending supply, permanency—are these real or merely perceived? Felix Gonzalez-Torres was able to contain these seemingly opposing concepts in his works—stacks of limitless copies that are disseminated and replenished, slowly dimming repetitive strands of light bulbs, temporary billboards. In 2006, 10 years after his death, Gonzalez-Torres was selected to represent the US in the Venice Biennale. Nancy Spector, chief curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum whose proposal for an exhibition of his work was selected in an open competition by a committee of curators, museum directors and artists that advises the U.S. State Department, suggested that his work has become even more influential since his death, and that Gonzalez-Torres probably would have considered his art to be even more relevant politically now than when he made it. These concepts and concerns are central, and more relevant than ever, to the field of print media as it expands into new forms of communication. 

Panel Moderator – Mark Franchino

Panelists

Virgil Marti
Adjunct Instructor, Tyler School of Art, Temple University 
This Charming Man, or How I Came to Be the Proud Owner of a Very Long George Nelson Couch

In the early 1990’s, I served as the project coordinator for Felix Gonzales-Torres’ residency at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. This involved many phone conversations with the artist, and accompanying him on excursions to furniture shops that specialized in mid-century modern design. I will discuss my observations of his working methods, and how what I love about his art relates to my own.

Adriane Herman 
Slop Artist, Maine College of Art
Learning from Felix Gonzalez-Torres:  from “Temp to Perm” and Back Again

Felix Gonzalez-Torres utilized ephemeral media to address unforgivably permanent realities like death and grief.  Conversely, he took what felt impermanent — his elderly father and ailing lover — and paid them permanent tribute by imposing on museums who collected the candy “spills that referenced them the responsibility to replenish them in perpetuity.  My work engages cycles that compelled Gonzalez-Torres.  I explore what we consume wittingly and unconsciously, employing media ranging from the archival to the edible and otherwise ephemeral.  For an installation entitled “All This Baggage is for the Birds,” I cast suitcase fragments out of solid birdseed and installed these manifestations of baggage that felt permanent but no longer useful outdoors for birds to consume.  My goal was for this baggage to disappear literally and figuratively, thus morphing the seemingly “perm” into “temp.” I will present a range of artists’ efforts to fix the fleeting and deny the undeniable.

Kate Bingaman-Burt 
Obsessive Consumption, Portland State University
Felix Gonzalez-Torres: No Need to Preach

Felix Gonzalez Torres was motivated by his desire for dialogue and community as well as knowing that work did not need to preach to be effective. “The most successful of all political moves, ” he once said, “are ones that don’t appear to be ‘political.’ In my work I deal with consumerism on a personal level, yet engage a broader audience through temporary installations, zines, and websites so people can think and talk about their own purchasing habits and emotions. I will discuss my own work as well as other makers who use temporary elements and rely on community engagement to express their message.

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2 Responses to “Headed for CAA? Don’t Miss This Panel”

1. RL Tillman says:

   February 23, 2009 at 11:10 pm

   Thanks, Amze. Once I was blacklisted by SGC, the CAA-shunning was inevitable. Ever since, I’ve had to rely on the black market for second-hand conference bulletins.

   Seriously, sounds like an uncommonly great panel… Not to be missed (except by me, since I can’t make it).

2. amze says:

   February 24, 2009 at 6:24 pm

   Keep that kind of talk up and you’ll be blacklist from the black market.