Pre (again)
Originally exhibited at Black Ball Projects:
February 11 - March 16, 2017
Co-curated by Jason Tomme & Ana Wolovick
PRE
“As we round the corner to the 2020 election we thought it might be a good time to reflect on our 2017 exhibition ‘Pre’. I remember thinking about how important the making of art was and would continue to be – as a form of protest as well as personal mental salvation. Politicians and leaders come and go, we rarely remember their names, but we do remember the art and artists of the time.
Today, almost four years after the election, we're still reeling from our country's decision to vote for Donald Trump, but back then we had no idea what would be in store for us in the upcoming years. The basic idea I had for ‘Pre’ was to select works by artists that were political as well as apolitical, the only rule being that the work had been made before election day. What would that look like? How would the works dance between themselves and create their own narrative together?
In this, our first Viewing Room, we re-present ‘Pre,’ as we are again Pre-election. 2020 has been quite a year for all of us and no less so for the artists included in ‘Pre’. We are proud to show you some of their current works, links, and images from shows they have been involved with in the intervening years as well as to get inside some of their processes for making work. Luckily for us, most artwork does not spoil like food, but continues to exist and take on different contexts and meanings via its relationships to each other and, most vitally, to time.”
-Ana Wolovick (Black Ball Projects Co-founder)
works By:
Shoshanna Weinberger
Alejandro Diaz
Palma Blank
Hannah Rose Dumes
China Adams
Scott Hug
Shoshanna Weinberger
“45's election was like waking up in a nightmare that somehow seemed to unfold with anger and disbelief. But over the past 4 years I've had some memorable invitations to do special projects, solo exhibitions as well as many group shows.
I live and work in Newark, NJ, where I have maintained an active studio practice for the past fourteen years. Generally, I have been well despite COVID, US politics and social unrest.
I got engaged in Dec 2018, but had to put those plans on hold in 2019, as I had several months of travel for my (then full-time job) with a leading art storage company; while juggling my position as the 2019-2020 McMillan Stewart Endowed Chair in Painting at MICA. Traveling and staying in Baltimore, where I worked as a visiting critic - critiquing undergrads with their thesis projects. It was an extremely rewarding experience.
This past June, I was laid-off from the art storage company where I had worked for the past 14 years. However that decision by my former employer was the best thing that could have happened to me. With only a 5 minute walk from my apartment to my studio I have been able to keep a daily practice and decided paid-work would eventually find me.
I have been able to put self-care and my art practice first.
Happy to announce that MICA invited me back as McMillan Stewart Endowed Chair in Painting for the 2020-2021 year. Working virtually in Zoomland with the undergraduates, so the paid-work is finding me.
It's exciting to see how artists are navigating during this time. But artists are used to isolation and social distancing, holed up in our caves, doing our own things.
Hopefully there will be some wedding plans in the future - but not until at least 2021.
Dropped my ballot off and ready to vote this awful administration out!
Hope everyone is staying safe.”
A short film featuring my studio window and Art Off-Screen installation
“Marginalized Reflections of the Sky” created using 2 sided mirrored acrylic.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Weinberger’s work is rooted in an exploration of her Caribbean-American lineage. It draws strongly on the complexity of heritage and assumed norms. Referencing memories, history, literature and our current xenophobic zeitgeist, Weinberger considers herself a visual anthropologist, cataloguing and surveying these experiences. Weinberger renders her female muses along a spectrum of character types. Some are excessive, sexualized, and quirky; while others are passive, or dominant, a culmination of figures that ultimately question standards and the psychology of beauty and identity.
Newark Artist Database webinar workshop on September 9, 2020.
The webinar walks viewers through the steps on making a basic portfolio for flatwork using D.I.Y. materials
“From Pandemic to Protests”, August 20 - October 18, 2020, Van Every Smith Galleries at Davidson College, Davidson, NC
In Conversation: Reading art through the lens of social isolation and social injustice with artists Anthony Goicolea and Shoshanna Weinberger.
Moderated by Lia Neuman, Director/Curator, Van Every Smith Galleries
UPCOMING IN 2021
Sunroom Project Space (solo)Wavehill, Bronx, NY
May 29-July 11, 2021 *
https://www.wavehill.org/discover/arts/exhibitions
*Originally scheduled for June-July 2020 and postponed due COVID-19
Alejandro Diaz
These works come from an ongoing project of performances and objects dealing with cardboard signs that began in 2003…
Palma Blank
“This time is tricky. In many ways, I feel a little freer with my time and productivity in the studio. I used to feel like I always needed to be productive, but lately, I just appreciate the time in the studio - even if I am not working per se but rather thinking, sketching, or reading. I don't just want to make stuff. I want it to be worthy of being made before I rush in.
That being said, I have had a very solid studio practice during quarantine and I began work on a series called "Face Times". The work has kept me excited and allowed the time to feel like it had some real value.
As with most artists, I have a day-job, which has since quarantine expanded in a myriad of directions and has often kept me very busy.
I usually play softball all Spring/Summer at McCarren Park in a league founded by musicians and artists, but with gyms and exercise classes closed, I had to get creative inside our apartment - which included a routine using speed ladders and building other agility training - in preparation for my team's season - which ended up being postponed and restarted a few weeks ago with enforced mask-wearing and distancing.
Trump is just a straight-up nightmare.
We are experiencing such a low point in history. However; there is also great energy coming out of these challenging times and I just hope that election day can be effective and give us that push towards the changes we so desperately need.”
FACE HUNTING
“The Face Hunting Photo series became an activity started during quarantine during my daily walks. Being isolated made me take comfort in the perceived faces formed by inanimate objects and broke up the monotony of daily life. The excitement and playfulness of these characters inspired me to paint my Face Time series”
FACE TIME
“The lack of people in RL made me see faces everywhere.On daily walks my partner and I are calling out these characters in puddles, cracks in walls, windows, etc.
I wanted to translate this joy of discovering these embedded characters into my work.
Each piece is a separate and contained world, but they simultaneously work as a group expressing their personalities and emotions within their own confines.
To me this is similar to our social lives lived out through VR these days.”
Below are 2 paintings from the Face Times series as I worked through them, beginning to end.
PRACTICE AND PROCESS
“My process is a hybrid of the handmade and the machined. The starting point is usually marker drawings and small doodles on paper. I like to find shapes that relate to each other spatially to create some sort of movement or change of perspective between them. Once this relationship is discovered it is then refined digitally. The digital file continues to develop in step with how the painting evolves.
Previously I worked with solid stripes made using tape; this process has now been replaced with sets of dash formations, allowing for a variety of patterns to form across the painting and become embedded into the individual lines like an encrypted code.
Once the physical painting starts, layers are isolated from the main digital file and are cut into stencils and then transferred onto the canvas. Each color represents a separate layer in the process. Seeing each completed stage is the most gratifying part for me. Even though I have an idea of how the layer is going to look and relate to the piece as a whole, there is always something unpredictable that reveals itself upon viewing.
Viewing the work can take on strategies similar to lenticular printing, where stripes are interlaced together in alternating order to create a synthesis of the two compositions, the paintings shift and animate depending on the angle of view, adding an almost sculptural quality to the work.
Much of my recent work is conceived as a place for reflection and meditation. And others like the Face Times series - more of a dance where one's eyes are put on a crazy ride.
All of my works function as a space for experience through seeing.”
Marker Sketches
Studio View - Face Time Series
Studio Selfie with home-made PPE
“For cutting stencils I have been using a vinyl cutter. This machine has been a game changer in many ways - allowing my practice to expand in many different directions as I experiment with its possibilities. Sometimes I even make drawing with it by swapping out the blade for markers.”
HANNAH ROSE DUMES
“Making art has always been an impulse, since I was a toddler. A problem to solve with urgency and joy. Now I have a toddler of my own and a baby, and I get to watch that same pull to make things with their hands, to draw what they feel and what they seek to understand or explain, on paper. My story of being an artist and mother is not very inspirational, I fear. I have not mastered either, especially not at the same time. Some women are able to paint with a baby who sleeps in a carrier or in a travel crib in their studio. It can happen! Just not to me. But obstacles or time constraints are always an opportunity to get back to the basics in the studio. I've been drawing on paper in a more immediate manner, using paint sticks on boards, collaging paper and images from magazines. It's not about the big idea anymore, and the feeling that you have nothing to lose as an artist is actually a very generative space. The kitchen table works just fine when you're pressed for time or space, which many parents already know, and many artists in the pandemic have learned.
I've managed to stay committed to my art practice over the last five years of being pregnant and raising kids, fractured as it has been, while working a day job that I enjoy and helps support my family. Juggling these things has helped me understand something I already knew after working in the art industry for over 10 years in various capacities - life as an artist is long. Life as an artist is meant to be lived.
Four years ago, I had just given birth and did not know what lay ahead. I hoped we were about to elect the first female president of the United States. I was so wrong. And now here we are again, in the midst of a crippling pandemic under an unconscionable administration, hoping, in spite of our fear, that the future can feel bright again. ”
Additional exhibitions 2017:
Flossie, Cuevas Tilleard, New YorkTry to Smoke It, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, NYSay Yes, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, MIThe Reflection in the Sword of Holofernes, Galveston Artist Residency Gallery, Galveston, TXSpring/Break Art Show, By Proxy, Cuevas Tilleard Gallery, New York, NY
China Adams
“The “Betsy Ross Perversion” pieces were made between 2004 - 2006 during the George Bush Junior years. His infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech along with his relentless use of the word “evil” disturbed me and got me thinking about how information is perverted. In turn, I started thinking about the way in which a symbol, the US flag, could be torqued and disfigured, it’s symbolic meaning. Now, in 2020, in the horror-storm of Trump’s presidency the significance of my Betsy Ross Perversion pieces feels more relevant than ever.”
These works were originally shown at Steve Turner Gallery in Los Angeles in 2006.
SCOTT HUG
“It was a cold, snowy winter in Maine, I was starting a month long residency up at Colby College in the new year of 2016. David Bowie died and it felt like an eclipse as Donald Trump was about to take office as the first United States President to hold office with no prior background in politics. The world went dark and degenerative, like a black star. My creativity was flowing and my new mentor was Bern Porter.
During the pandemic this year, I began to go out with my camera before and after work for long isolation walks after my father died at the end of March, documenting our new social landscape. Some of these photos might end up in my film, or on a wall, or in a book. My art seems to be evolving intuitively, I try not to think about it too much, just keep creating—adapting to each new situation, being present in every moment of my life. I like to take chances, experiment and try new things. This allows me to keep growing—letting my curiosities determine the next direction and shape my art will take.”
DATA DELUGE SERIES
In 3 parts: 360 collages, 12 large sculptural paintings, and a computer program.
All originally from the show titled: “Million Dollar Spit In The Ocean”, 2009, Exhibited at John Connelly Presents, NYC
“These works present us with a curious truth; we often rely on an abstract interpretation of data and surface images to construct our understanding of the world around us, forgoing personal experience. The pie charts are derived from information provided by Gallup.com polls, a popular method for determining current nation-wide sentiments and opinions. Real-time interpretation of statistics has become more important than deep analysis—as soon as a survey is made it is already reduced to an aesthetic, only to be replaced by a new interpretation of data the next day. The obsession with abstract information is often more palatable than a discussion that addresses the original question, not just the answer. It’s just business. Gallup.com does not create pie charts to communicate their information—I created the pies based on their numbers that I mined. I was interested in abstracting the information even more and chose the pie chart as it illustrates a percentage of the pie we each get. I wanted to express a certain inequality that was very apparent during the housing collapse of 2008 with the large banks who got bailed out which led to the Occupy Wall Street movement.”
PAGE 6 SERIES
Several of these works were shown at
The Kitchen’s 2007 exhibition Just Kick It Till It Breaks
Recently the exhibition was featured in the Kitchen’s “From the Archives” series
Interview conducted by Lilly Cao with Scott Hug for her above article
Click here to read the full interview
“My background is in graphic design—I love how it can be so powerful and direct. I see my Page 6 Heads as these kinds of status updates—2007 was pre Facebook, pre Twitter... I chose headlines that were general enough that when decontextualized from the celebrity gossip column, they could speak to the absurdities of the George W. Bush administration. We get distracted and love to gaze into the eyes of stars. They were meant to be humorous, but also a deeper darker reading intended to go beyond the surface of celebrity culture and into the culture at large. It was a critique of our consumption of mass infotainment, our mass distraction.”
(excerpt from interview with Lilly Cao)
BERN PORTER DOCUMENTARY
"In 2011, I was teaching a class at NYU on artists’ books. Our class text book, A Century of Artists’ Books by Johanna Drucker introduced me to the work of Bern Porter. I found out that Bern worked on The Manhattan Project while publishing Henry Miller and other SF Renaissance poets and artists. Bern made collages with found materials that were reproduced as books—experimenting with postwar advertising, consumption, waste, and The Atomic Age—all with a wry and profound sense of humor. I asked around to my colleagues if they had heard of Bern Porter, and not surprisingly, he was relatively unheard of in the insider art world. Bern was a true iconoclast, artist/activist, outsider, and someone who cared deeply about humanity. With his background in physics and a love for Dada and Surrealism, Bern Porter had a unique perspective and way of working that today seems refreshing, especially in light of our current sociopolitical landscape. I started working on my film back in 2016 with the support of Colby College Special Collections. I still have a ways to go with the film. And I’ve been learning every aspect of filmmaking as I go. It has also reintroduced me to my love of photography. As with so many artists, I must work a full-time day-job; in 2020 I've also had to help my family out and be away from the city much of the year. So, unfortunately the project has been on the back burner, but I expect to get back to working on it when I'm back in NYC this fall.”
Below are a selection of film stills from the documentary.
CURRENT PHOTOGRAPHY
“Since I started working on my Bern Porter film project back in 2016, I’ve gotten back into a daily photography practice. Photography was my first love in undergraduate school. I’m working in a similar way—social documentary style. My most recent series is close to home. These images were shot in and around where I grew up in the small mid-western town of California, Missouri. I’m interested in capturing a present US vernacular, what is often overlooked, portraits of friends and family, within the current mood of a fractured America.”
