The U.P. in the Summer

NO COMMENT

Another Review I Forgot to Post Earlier...

TITLE:	Monica Johnson at lack Fischer Gallery
SOURCE:	Artweek 38 no7 14-15 S 2007
COPYRIGHT:	The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher: http://www.artweek.com/

Like some haunting dream-world between memory and history, nostalgia and nightmare, g Monica Johnson's exhibition, Stick 'Em Up! Stay Down! Grow Up!, consisted of images both familiar and unnervingly odd--the uncanny at its aesthetic best.
Technically adept, every line in Johnson's drawings seems perfectly planned and orchestrated, while the end result is in the style of certain graphic novels---slightly disproportioned bodies, overstated gestures and freckles and grins. These images are lodged in a fantasized childhood--but not a pleasant kind of fantasy with playgrounds and sunlight and your friendly dragon; more the ones you might haltingly talk about in a psychoanalyst's office. The figures peer out with expressions both exaggerated and inscrutable, often reminding the viewer of the petty cruelties children and adolescents inflict on each other, or the indignities children suffer at the seeming whim of adults. Indeed, Johnson states that these works emerged from a yearlong visit to her hometown, and are in some part an attempted exorcism of the ghosts of childhood.
Among the most striking of Johnson's images is a pair of graphite drawings depicting what at first glance seems to be innocent childhood scenes. Upon closer examination, one finds a complex orchestration of bodies, history, race and childhood exclusion reverberating amongst the juvenile figures. In Loser, a child (Johnson's self-portrait) in full Confederate regalia stands outside a short brick wall, forlornly looking into the middle distance, a pistol sagging impotently from her hand. Meanwhile, a small crowd of children dressed in nineteenth-century garb glare at her accusingly. Loser's companion piece, the aptly titled Winner, features a similar gathering, but with a pre-adolescent Union soldier (also a self-portrait) standing within a similar short brick wall, grinning amongst an adoring mini-throng of child admirers. The soldier holds a hand over her heart while the children gaze upon her lovingly and a happy little terrier dances upon its hind legs.
These pieces place the United States' thorniest domestic conflict within the world of childhood justice. And this is not, one realizes while looking at the images, to say that justice is somehow eviscerated or even mitigated by being placed in the hands of smaller humans. Instead, one is reminded of the often harsh justice that children mete out, and how it grabs hold of young ostracized or bullied psyches. In this context, a history of discord stretches out from 1865 to 2007 and beyond; the Civil War is resituated as a schoolyard tussle of epic proportions. The saga of racial tensions and the political friction between North and South is imbued with a new emotional resonance both smaller and greater than in our history books.
Johnson also groups six small chalkboards together, each inscribed with a meticulously lettered phrase: "Monica-Jar ate a Guitar That's Why Her Boobs Are So Big"; "I Just Wanted To See if I Could Make You Cry"; "Sacrifice Your Body For The Ball." The lettering's flourishes and flowing lines are straight out of the 1800s, but the phrases are pure late twentieth-century schoolyard taunt. This combination, as well as the halo of erasure marks that several are written upon, gives the works a ghostly presence that reminds us of how such sentiments inscribe themselves both transiently and tenaciously in memory.
In another series of six works, Johnson uses wallpaper--that flowery type you might find in your grandmother's parlor--and wood paneling to evoke a sense of the past. Each piece uses the found material to create the idea of a room, peopled with diminutive figures. Yet, this past is not only of your grandmother's era. It is also firmly marked by the 1980s: One figure is in a "Beat It" shirt, another hands a companion a Rick Astley album (on vinyl), a grinning girl with an Esprit bag slung over her shoulder stands next to a friend bearing an "Erin 4 VP." sign.
In her artist's statement, Johnson says that this show emerged from personal reflections on her long visit home. Yet, by combining this sense of internal inventory with iconic images-- Confederate and Union uniforms; an Esprit bag; an old pistol---she also gives the images the stamp of history, which is the imprint both of particular pasts and repeating patterns. They remind us that we can never escape history--not the personal nor the political, not those that have passed nor those that we are in the midst of living through. Viewing these works is like encountering and excavating the ghosts of one's ancestral home before tearing down the appalling wallpaper and bringing in fresh paint from Restoration Hardware.
ADDED MATERIAL
Jakki Spicer is a freelance writer based in Alameda.
Monica Johnson: Stick 'em Up! Stay Down! Grow Up! closed in July at Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco.
Monica Johnson, ErinForVP, 2006, vinlage wallpaper, wood veneer, graphite, watercolor, at Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco.

Nice Review of My Work....that i forgot to post earlier

right here

Metalmags are so German Public Access circa 1980

Unraveled and Re-Knit

I've completed my first unraveled and re-knit sweater. To be fair it's not exactly a sweater anymore. And it's actually crocheted, not knit. I'm a big fat liar, okay? In the process of unraveling the Charter Club brand machine-knit sweater I lost quite a bit of thread so I had to settle for a much smaller re-creation. Using a loose crochet pattern helped the thread cover much more area than if I had knit it. You can see in the arm pit area of the original sweater that the pattern gets a little complicated. That's where the unraveling became problematic and the thread turned into a mess of knots.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure why I'm doing this. It's cheaper to reuse old sweater yarn than to buy new yarn, even when you factor in the cost of the sweater. Yarn is wildly expensive and I'm tired of paying for it. And, of course there is something of a comparison between machine-made and hand-made in play here, as well as deconstruction and reconstruction.

I've got four other sweaters unraveling right now and one in the process of becoming a re-knit shirt. I would love if anyone would like to donate old sweaters to this project that are otherwise headed for Goodwill. Single-colored sweaters work best (usually if there are multiple colors the sweater unravels into multiple strands and becomes a mess). Send me an email and I will come get them anywhere in the New York area. monicamjohnson@hotmail.com

I Can't Make It Anymore

Better Than the Whitney Biennial

Whitney Biennial

On Wednesday I went to the opening night of the Whitney Biennial, my first biennial of any kind. I have to be honest: it was a low-rent affair. Holland Cotter says it better:

...the overall tenor of the show is low-key, with work that seems to be in a transitional, questioning mode, art as conversation rather than as statement, testing this, trying that. Assemblage and collage are popular. Collaboration is common. So are down-market materials — plastic, plywood, plexiglass — and all kinds of found and recycled ingredients, otherwise known as trash.

Clever, that one... Still, Phoebe Washburn's installation, whose title as well as image is nowhere to be found on the Whitney's website, outshines all the the low-key trash. (alternate Washburn image above) Assortments of yellow and green golf balls stand in for lemons and limes in a factory-like installation that seems to create a botanically-based beverage. Upside-down buckets stabilize a wooden deck, through which plants grow with the help of clip lamps. Instant Gatorade packets flank the inner walls of the factory, making the conceptual link between golf balls, plants and beverage. Aquariums filled with colored water add an element of activity and industry.

Other works I liked were by Frances Stark (middle image) and Ry Rocklen (below). But, of course, these are not images of the work that I liked in the show. Sorry.

The only celebrity I saw the entire evening was Tracee Ellis Ross*, otherwise known as the bug-eyed girl on BET's sitcom Girlfriends. Like I said, it was a low-rent affair.

*I just found out she is also Diana Ross' daughter. I can't decide if this lowers or raises the rent...

Natural History Museum

Martha Rosler's "Semiotics of the Kitchen"

Dorothea Rockburne

This will not be a very informed post, but i just wanted to get these images up before another impulse took over. I went to MOMA yesterday and saw this piece by Dorothea Rockburne, an artist who (until now) has slipped through the cracks of my art history education. She was born in Canada in 1932 and educated at Black Mountain College, although she was significantly younger than Rauschenberg et al. The piece is titled A, C and D From Group/ And, 1970. I thought it was interesting to note the differences in its installation between 1970 (below) and 2008 (above).

Her early materials include graphite, cardboard, crude oil, chipboard and nails. i think this work is so elegant and so "felt," especially standing in front of the huge slabs or drapes or drafting tables or whatever they are. Her later work is a little on the "eh..." side. She was heavily interested in math, science and astronomy and has spent most of her later career making cosmos-esque paintings that have none of the strength in A, C and D. She turns away from "felt" materials and instead uses traditional paints on mostly handmade papers. Eh.... I am guessing her Black Mountain days finely tuned her Martian sensibilities, making work about physicality and strength and with a limited palette. Since then, it seems, she has turned Venetian. She is more in her head, more sensual and dependent on color and line. These are just my initial thoughts after seeing her work for the first time.

Money Funny

We are in love

.....or maybe he's just submitted to my ways. This dog, this toothless, sightless, senseless, ever hungry and thirsty, poop'n'pee machine of a dog, has turned me into a spineless slave to his every desire. you wanna pee on the carpet today? that's fine, just lick my face when you're done. you want ground beef with yams and rice tonight? coming right up! i'll even add some olive oil for a shiny coat and lecithin for an active peanut-sized brain. if aliens were observing our daily rituals, they would wonder how the small furry creature managed to enslave the pale-skinned biped. i am an unconditional slave to cuteness. that's how.

Staying Indoors Today

It's so crummy out today. The one time i left the house i found out my new boots are not actually waterproof (i stepped directly into a six-inch deep slush puddle) AND i got caught in the crossfire of a snowball fight. I still can't get over that those kids laughed when it hit me. Why not say sorry? Because hitting white ladies with snowballs is funny. The other day when i was walking Walter, a kid ran up behind him and yelled at him. Scaring the living shit out of an obviously dilapidated dog was hilarious to him. What the hell is wrong with kids? Leave my dog alone. I'm getting a BB gun tomorrow....

A Gay WHAT?

A Gay BOMB. That's right. I just happened to be up last night reading about this year's winners of the Ig Nobel Prize and came across a particularly disturbing winner. The Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio was awarded the 2007 Ig Nobel Peace Prize for suggesting research and development for a "gay bomb," which would cause same sex enemy troops to get freaky with one another. What? Now, the fact that they won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize this year is perfectly fitting. Ig Nobel is a play on the word ignoble, meaning not noble, not honorable and just plain stupid. So the award is not the disturbing issue. What is killing me softly is knowing that the United States Air Force proposed a $7.5 million dollar research project to develop the so-called "gay-bomb." This originally happened in 1994, the same year Clinton tried to openly admit gays into the military and then embarassingly settled on "don't ask, don't tell." Knowledge of the Gay Bomb proposal didn't reach mainstream media until 2005 but has regenerated attention with the 2007 prize. It is encouraging to know our military is going to absurd lengths to develop non-lethal weapons. The obvious problem is that the gay bomb proposal exposes profound institutional ignorance and hatred of homosexuality.


I ran out into the living room to share my discovery of the Gay Bomb only to find my roommates watching Tom Tykwer's (Run, Lola, Run director) movie Perfume (which i highly recommend, btw.) In the final scene of this disturbing murder flick, the protagonist splashes himself with perfume made from the bodies of several dead women. The crowd that had amassed to see his execution (for the murder of the several dead women) consequently falls into a rapture of love and lust for him and then for each other. A massive orgy ensues in which opposite and same-sex French peasants suddenly find each other irresistible. This movie was based on the book Perfume by Patrick Suskind, published in 1985. So, I'm wondering could the Gay Bomb proposal of 1994 have been influenced by this book? People in the military read books? Could it be? Incredible. You heard it here first.

New Work

I had a rough week and i think i may have channeled my frustrations into my work.

crazy for rachel

if the apocalypse were to happen today Rachel Harrison would be in the streets scavenging for sculptural fodder. i think that's what excites me about her work. she has completely convinced me that grotesquely-painted polystyrene forms and debris from our commercial culture go together like tires and stuffed goats. http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-rauschenberg/ENS-rauschenberg.htm
maybe she is just the Robert Rauschenberg of her generation and maybe that's just what her generation needs. my generation needs. we all may need. she's 42, by the way and not necessarily so new to the art world's mainstream. She's had solo shows at both the Milwaukee Museum of Art and the SFMOMA in the early 00's. I have heard from a personal source that she is a force to be reckoned with. By that, i mean that she is fierce about her choices with her work and most likely wouldn't take well to a curator's constructive criticism. In New York her work can be seen in the New Museum's inaugural show Unmonumental, in Two Years at the Whitney and in some corner of the MOMA, i don't remember where.