1 month ago | 2337 views | 0  | 8  |  |   Matthew Zigler’s “Darwin Economy”  Leslie Salzillo’s “The Rising of Soraya M (What Does That Make Her?)”  “Out House, in House,” by Carter Hubbard The artists’ assignment was to create artwork around a discussion with Dan Ariely, James B. Duke professor of behavioral economics, on social and economic inequality, wealth distribution and taxation. Artists sent in proposals via the Internet, and 34 were chosen by Catherine J. Howard, an independent art curator, who has worked with Ariely before. The show includes painting, photography, video, sculpture, book art, textiles and graphic design. This is Ariely’s second exhibition in his “Artistically Irrational” series organized around human behavior. The first was about dishonesty, the result of research he did during the writing of his book “The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves.” Art has often been used in the service of social issues, and I applaud every effort in this direction. But art dedicated to a particular issue has to have an immediate impact; a few images and well-chosen words should say it all, otherwise the message gets lost. For example, war as a theme fills museums with giant pictures of battles and soldiers dying in horrific conditions, yet the ones we remember can be counted on one hand. In my opinion there are only three in the history of art that get to the essence of the horror of war. One is Leonardo’s “Battle of Anghiari,” 1503-06, where a twisted mass of a few horses and riders battle to the death. Another is Goya’s “Third of May, 1808.” The French had invaded Spain and in the painting, a faceless firing squad, like automatons, shoot one Spanish soldier after another, each watching as he waits his turn. The third is Picasso’s “Guernica,” 1937, a black, grey and white nightmare of brutality, with horses screaming, one mother holding a dead child, another trapped in a burning building, a dead soldier on the ground. These images were painted in answer to great tragedies at the time, but each has transcended the political moment and now speaks on a universal stage. Visualizing inequality is a difficult task and it is obvious each artist thought through the problem carefully; almost all the images, however, require lengthy written explanations and an audience who keeps up with current events. This is art for an academic setting; most of it will not work in a traditional exhibition venue. With all that said there are a number of pieces worthy of special mention. Leslie Salzillo’s “The Rising of Soraya M (What Does That Make Her?)” is one. Here she shows us the portrait of a beautiful woman swathed in a gauzy white material; red poppies decorate the surface, as does a small image of a woman in front of a microphone. Among the few phrases written across the painting are “It Makes Her a Slut.” In the catalog, Salzillo tells us Iranian Soraya Manutchehri was falsely accused of infidelity and was stoned to death while in the U.S. an American law student, Sandra Fluke, testified before Congress about the need for women to have access to birth control medication and was called a “slut” on the air by Rush Limbaugh. Another is Matthew Zigler’s “Darwin Economy,” a hierarchal grouping of pigeon portraits that compare genetically engineered pigeons to rich and pampered humans. Pigeons can be bred to such a point they can no longer survive in the wild and can only be returned to their natural feral state over many generations. Humans, on the other hand, can be identified and changed by possessions and living arrangements which makes them useless at basic survival. Unlike the pigeon, the human can be stripped of these things overnight if the market turns or a job disappears. “Pull Lever” is an interactive piece by Lenara Verle. She has mounted a toy slot machine on the wall and invites the viewer to pull the lever. When a symbol comes up, there is a card on the table that matches it. For example, when the question mark (?) spins to a stop, its card reads “Your chances of losing your job are higher than the chances your spouse will cheat on you.” Another symbol, the happy face, reminds the viewer, “One’s chances of becoming bald are 2.5 times higher than his chances of finishing college.” Verle connects her symbols to mundane happenings and points out the reality of the inequalities of life. Using flattened toilet paper roles and connecting them with metal twine “OutHouse, in House,” is Carter Hubbard’s take on the community quilt and is worth a second look. She explains the quilt as a product produced through community relationships; this modern one, however, is quite different. The artist tells us the metal is superior to the paper, yet is dependent on the blank paper for its subsistence. The paper and the metal are metaphors for the wealthy and their relationship to the minimum wage worker. The equal relationships of the past have been replaced by the unequal ones in today’s society. The art is arranged on the walls of the office of Ariely’s Center for Advanced Hindsight. Megan Hogerty, Ariely’s assistant, walked me through the exhibition and assured me the space is very welcoming and the staff is quite loose in its work methods. People will be very hospitable, she said, if you can manage to cross into this very different art environment. Blue Greenberg’s column appears each week in Entertainment and More. She can be reached at blueg@bellsouth.net or by writing her in c/o The Herald-Sun, P.O. Box 2092, Durham, NC 27702. “Message & Medium” at PhilaMOCAPublished on 08 March 2012 by Chip Schwartz in Philadelphia The show “Message & Medium” had its opening at PhilaMOCA on Thursday, March 1. Its name is taken from the famous assertion by Marshall McLuhan that “the medium is the message.” In this exhibit, assembled by artist and curator Gaby Heit, some 20 artists display work, which is in some way based in textual elements. In contemporary society we are inundated with images from art to ads and everything in between. More often than not, especially within advertisements, text also plays a crucial role in directing our thought process. Language is often the most literal factor, displaying information, which would otherwise be lost through images or abstractions: dates, times, locations or names for instance. The art in “Message & Medium” plays off the ubiquity of text and language in popular culture.  Joe Montenegro, "happyrain." Image courtesy Gaby Heit Joe Montenegro’s “happyrain” is an interactive piece, which stems from the world of social media. A monitor refreshes every few minutes with live feeds from Twitter, turning the messages sideways so it appears that they are raining downward. The data received is specifically content that deals with Tweets expressing excitement or happiness. As the viewer examines the raining words, the happiness is vicariously delivered to the audience in an effort to spread joy or positivity. Curiously enough, the night of the opening coincided with Justin Bieber’s birthday, so many of the messages were barely legible birthday shout outs to the teen pop star.  Matt Zigler. Image courtesy Gaby Heit A very abstract take on the concept of language is the gigantic QR barcode by Matt Zigler. He expresses communication through technology as well, but in this case the image is fully part of a computer language — no birthday wishes here. The code is actually scannable, but, as it stands, the code appears as merely a grid of black and white cubes. Zigler compares the code to the poetry of the Tao Te Ching in that its positive and negative spaces are like that of yin and yang, playing separate but inherently connected roles in conveying meaning.  E. Sherman Hayman, "WHEEL, DEAL III – Nabobery." Image courtesy Gaby Heit E. Sherman Hayman creates intricate narrative panels utilizing painting, drawing, old engravings and photographs. These little graphic documentaries trace various American political and social movements and provide statistics and quotations to back up the research. The text appears in boxes and speech bubbles in which historical figures discuss concepts, like wealth inequality, with an eye on current events. There are many more artists, images, dialogues and diatribes within this wonderfully wordy exhibit. From Boots Levinson’s image “Respect,”which shows a young black man moments after the election of Barack Obama on November 4, 2008, to a comic without any visible characters by Paula Searing and Brian O’Neill, there are many takes on language and text in contemporary art. The show will be at PhilaMOCA until March 12. PhilaMOCA is located at 531 N. 12th St.; 267-519-9651. US Airways Magazine - July 2011Artwork and bio included in 4 page profile of the Green Hill Center in Greensboro, NC (PDF File)The Beautification of The PigeonVegansaurus.com Artist honors pigeons with mobile museum at Philly University of ArtsBy Miriam Hill Inquirer Staff Writer If a pigeon ever pooped on your head or desecrated your windshield, you might find yourself bewildered at the saintlike images of the birds on South Broad Street. Rendered in bold colors on plexiglass, the five depictions of pigeons beckon pedestrians to make an offering of birdseed in front of the University of the Arts building. It's a pigeon pantheon. Stride to the other side of the staircase in front of the building and you will find a large crate housing "The Mobile Museum of Pigeon Culture and History." A small sign explains that the museum is the collection of Red Lahore, who wanted to "convince the world that pigeons are far from the pests we see them as." Lahore is the fictional creation of Matt Zigler, whose pigeon exhibit just helped him earn his master's degree from the university. Zigler arrives in Philadelphia this weekend to dismantle his project but says most of it will be open Saturday. A resident of North Carolina, near Chapel Hill, Zigler has lived in Philadelphia part-time while pursuing his master of fine arts degree. Initially, he shared Woody Allen's view of pigeons as "rats with wings." "It was sort of ... there are mice in my dorm room and pigeons on the street," Zigler said. But one day in the summer of 2007, the 33-year-old art teacher noticed a beige pigeon amid a gray flock. That got him thinking about how people so often fail to notice the "little dramas, narratives, and moments of profound value" around them. His brain took flight, pursuing pigeon information with the speed - the birds can fly more than 60 m.p.h. - of his subject. He pored over two recent books, Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird, and Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan . . . and the World. His case for changing our understanding of pigeons goes something like this: We love doves and imbue them with spiritual meaning. Scientifically, doves and pigeons are practically the same bird. Through most of our history, people held pigeons in high esteem. During World War II, a pigeon named G.I. Joe carried a message that saved 1,000 people. Squab is considered a delicacy, though Zigler notes that it's a baby pigeon. People once ate pigeons more, but as industrial farming took hold, chicken became the preferred bird. The more Zigler studied, the more he believed that the dulcet cooing of pigeons spoke loudly about society. His "genocide" poster in the museum refers to passenger pigeons. They met with extinction in 1914, killed by hunters and loss of habitat as trees were felled for farms. But an artist who is a friend of pigeons? The birds whose droppings defile architecture? Even there, Zigler sees a lesson. Pigeon droppings have become more acidic as the birds have learned to eat our trash, he said. When the birds ate a more natural diet, their droppings were valued as fertilizer. "We get what we put out there," Zigler said. "When we start feeding them processed pizza crusts and Wonder bread, we get the results of that." That's why his exhibit entices visitors to put 25 cents in a gumball-type machine to buy birdseed to "feed" one of the pigeon images, which sit atop small black altars. The pigeon museum is a moving crate donated by PODS Enterprises Inc., a container company. Everyone calls it the Pod. Inspired by fictional characters in art, Zigler came up with Lahore, named after a fancy breed of pigeons. According to Zigler, Lahore, once a student at Duke University, withdrew from society as he fed his pigeon obsession. Zigler came up with Lahore's story by thinking about how scientists must find it difficult to cope with knowledge about humans harming the environment. "I think it would take an extraordinary amount of will for a scientist not to despair, so I let Lahore go ahead and despair," Zigler said. Don't expect Zigler to be as much of a downer as his alter ego. In a phone conversation, he sounded thoughtful and lighthearted. Later, he sent an e-mail that read: "Maybe there's hope for the good name of the pigeon yet." Inside the Artist's Studio with Molly Matlock. Lori Waxman's "60 wrd/min art critic" reviews at Durham Arts CouncilMay 19, 2010  MATTHEW ZIGLER LORI WAXMAN A friend of mine considers pigeons rats of the sky, but I have always found this to be a decidedly ungenerous attitude. Columba livia, as the common pigeon is formally called, deserves respect for adapting so well to the urban environment. The bird's not so bad looking either. Matthew Zigler seems to take a similar position on this common creature, and he has devoted his current painting practice to memorializing it and its contemporary habitat. A pair of birds etched into scrap metal has potential in its surprising silver lines on rusted plates, but this series remains unresolved, the drawings themselves not rendered convincingly enough. Dead birds meticulously painted onto fragments of safety glass feel just right, so fragile and touching. A series of small wood panels present tender, brushy oils of individual birds, exacting enough to provide information yet not so overdone as to feel educational. Zigler sources found materials, and installs some of his finished work, in an abandoned local mill, where one suspects the painted creatures can only rest temporarily, being less weatherproof than the feather-and-blood ones. Who gets to see them there? Other birds, perhaps. Zigler photographs these installations and also suggests them in elaborate painted compositions, but these re-presentations are of less interest than the installations themselves. But why paint such common creatures at all? Perhaps to help us pay more attention to that which hops and flies past us everyday, as we ignore or shoo or insult it away. My friend, the pigeon hater, could certainly stand to contemplate some. http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/lori-waxmans-60-wrdmin-art-critic-reviews-at-durham-arts-council/slideshow?oid=1432185&slideshowtype=pop%20up&slide=27MUSA – “making” in the US today |
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