Dylan Vitone

I always like to keep an eye on what the MFA, Boston is collecting and their annual report (which came yesterday in my mail) lists their acquisitions over the last year. This year it looks like they acquired four works by a young photographer, Dylan Vitone, including the image shown here of a Homeland Security drill (you can click on the image to see it larger). Dylan Vitone is a MassArt alumnus and he currently teaches photography at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I first saw (and bought) his work at the annual MassArt auction this past April. He makes long panoramic documentary-style pictures by digitally "knitting" individual photos together. There seems to be a narrative (or narratives) in the photos and the process reminds me of a very high tech version of Hockney's photo-collages, except Vitone's work is seemless. He did a series of scenes of South Boston and more recently has been documenting Pittsburgh.

His work was at Photo Miami this year, but the booth's installation was really lackluster. On the outside wall (prime real estate), they enlarged one of his photos (actually of the image we own) and broke it into three separate pieces- totally destroying its impact.

Dylan Vitone has a great website:

http://www.dylanvitone.com/

He is represented by the Oswald Gallery in Jackson Hole, WY and DNJ Gallery in LA. The prints are done in two sizes, a smaller version in an edition of 30 (currently priced at $1,800) and a larger version in an edition of 5 (currently priced at $4,000). You might also be able to pick up his work at the next MassArt auction on 4/4/09.

Artist as Shaman- A New Trend?

This year at the art fairs in Miami, I noticed a trend emerging among a few different artists. Although these artists are from very different backgrounds, they are either fully trained shamans or perform shamanistic rituals. In a world that has become increasingly technological and further removed from the natural world, these artists attempt to reconnect us with the earth, the animal and spirit world, and ourselves. At Art Supernova, Jose Alvarez was showing psychedelic works on paper and mica that incorporated porcupine quills and feathers. He also had a video piece that was to simulate the experience of taking natural hallucinogens used in shamanistic rituals. At the Rubell Family Collection and at Art Basel Miami, there were several sound suits by Nick Cave (shown here).

However, my favorite, my personal BEST IN SHOW for all of the Miami art activities was Marcus Coates' 14 screen video installation, Dawn Chorus, at Workplace Gallery in the NADA fair. Coates, a trained shaman who lives in Britain, selected a chorus of birdcalls indigenous to Britain and taught singers to sing as individual birds in the chorus, but at a much slower speed given the human voice. He then filmed these singers in their natural habitats, such as their bedroom or office, singing their call. Finally, each video was sped up to have the singing sound like the actual calls and the video monitors and speakers were installed in the round. Miles Thurlow of Workplace was nice enough to send me some links to Coates' work. The two videos require Quicktime.

Dawn Chorus
2007
HD Video Installation
Edition of 3 (& 2 AP's)
Duration: 18 minutes (looped)
MC0015
Installation view: Dawn Chorus, BALTIC Centre For Contemporary Art, UK
http://workplacegallery.s3.amazonaws.com/Coates/Media/MarcusCoatesDawnChorus.mov

Radio Shaman
2006
HD Video Installation
09:31 mins, Edition of 5 plus 1 artist's proof
MC0016
Courtesy of the Artist and Workplace Gallery, UK
https://phsexchweb.partners.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://workplacegallery.s3.amazonaws.com/radioshaman.mov

You can also read more about his work here:

Marcus Coates Selected Portfolio 2008 (6.7MB)http://workplacegallery.s3.amazonaws.com/Coates/Coatesportfolio/MarcusCoatesSelectedPortfolio08(6.7MB).pdf

Here is going to have a solo show at Workplace Gallery in 2/09 and is going to be part of the Tate Triennial, in case you will be going to the UK in 2009.

Have a flat Christmas

We picked up a few editioned Christmas trees at the ARTWARE booth at pulse. For $100 you can get an artist designed sticker that you put on your wall (and peel off). We liked the Minter and the Tomasellis the best.

Jody

Martin Parr at the Wolfsonian

Last night as part of a benefit, several of us had the opportunity to have our portraits taken by Magnum photographer, Martin Parr, at the Wolfsonian in Miami. Martin Parr is a key figure in the world of photography, widely recognized as a brilliant satirist of contemporary life. He is the author of over 30 photography books, including Common Sense, Boring Postcards, and Think of England (the image above right is the cover of that book). His photographs have been collected by museums worldwide, including the Getty, The Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Modern. Parr was featured in Cruel and Tender, the Tate Modern's major survey of photography in 2003, and a retrospective of his work that opened at the Barbican Art Gallery in London in 2002 continues to tour major museums around the world. His most recent work, Luxury, has focused on the photography the "ostensibly wealthy of the world" and can be seen on his website: http://www.martinparr.com/.

We were expecting him to quickly snap our photos in one shot, but he spent time with each of us, directing our posture and pose ("No smiling!") and taking several shots (as many as 10-15) before he was satisfied with the image. We haven't picked up the prints yet, so we can't tell you how they look.

I first heard of Parr's work when he published his book, The Phone Book, in 2002. The book was comprised of photos from around the world of people talking on their cell phones. Although that book wasn't available on Amazon when I last checked, several other of his books are.

Jumping at Scope

Who says art collectors are sophisticated? The Scope fair catered to the kid in us, with a bouncy castle for adults. That said, we didn't find much to jump up and down about at Scope today. For the second year in a row however, we all found a lot to like at Art Miami. (More about that to come)

Jody

Rubell Family Collection

Spent the morning at the Rubell Family Collection. The current exhibition entitled 30 Americans features works by 30 African American artists. A few, including Mickalene Thomas were in attendance. The exhibition included many large scale works including ones by Kara Walker and Kahinde Wiley.

Even breakfast was a work af art (sort-of) incuding piles of bananas. Once again, we bumped into the twins--performance artists from Germany.

Jody

Spotted: Julian Schnabel

Just brushed by Julian Schnabel browsing at Luhring Augustine booth at Art Basel. We are not very good at taking high quality clandestine photos.

Jody