^{A photograph from Andrew Miksys's Roma series}

At Nelson Hancock Gallery in Brooklyn.

^{Napoleon Sarony and Benjamin Richardson's The Actor Henry E. Dixey (circa 1884), albumen print}

At Henry Art Gallery. (Museum web site here.)

^{A detail from Timea Tihanyi's Touching in the Bright Space (After Andreas Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, Plate 49 Book 4), 2008, sewn and cut felt, thread, mylar; 82 by 28 by 2 inches}

At the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. (Here's a review of the Seattle-based artist's last show, at Gallery4Culture.)

^{Installation shot of Jenny Heishman's rain-activated Water Mover (2008), steel, bucket}

Water Mover is a permanent public piece at Ernst Park; its dedication ceremony is today at 4 pm. (Park web site here.)

^{Title sequence from Kelly Mark's REM (2008), two-channel video installation}

At Platform Gallery. (Gallery web site here.) Closes Saturday, May 3.

This week's cover photo, by Los Angeles-based photographer Alex Prager, is part of Sugar and Spice, an exhibition at the Photographic Center Northwest, May 2–28. There's an opening reception Friday May 2, 6–8 pm.

Alexandra (2007), Courtesy of Robert Berman Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, and the artist.

^{Skull by Anonymous, 2008, watercolor, 10 by 8 inches}

At SOIL. (Gallery web site here.)

^{An installation view of Dario Robleto's An Instinct Toward Life, in his show Heaven Is Being a Memory to Others at the Frye. (Photos by Adam L. Weintraub)}

2008 is not even half over, and I'm putting money on Dario Robleto's new exhibition at the Frye Art Museum as the Seattle exhibition of the year. Basically, Robleto, a San Antonio-based artist, went in search of a dead Seattle woman, Emma Frye (co-founder of the museum), and this show is the story of his dark travels.

^{A closer view of An Instinct Toward Life, with two madonna-and-child paintings from the permanent collection.}

Not much is known about Emma, except that she was married to Charles, had a miscarriage, and never after had children. Heaven Is Being a Memory to Others is an imagined walk through her life led by a call-and-response of 19th-century paintings from the Frye's permanent collection and 21st-century "sampled" sculptures made by Robleto using such materials as melted-down audiotape of the longest-married couple talking about their marriage, melted lead excavated from various wars, and fulgurites, or glass made from lightning striking the desert. The show is also a story about the making of an art collection, about war and love, and about loss and the remix—but this is enough to start with.

^{A detail from Robleto's sculpture Time Measures Nothing But This Love.}

Just listen to the artist talk.

^{Michael Knutson's Blue/White Star Coil (2002), oil on canvas, 30 by 144 inches}

At Greg Kucera Gallery. (Gallery web site here.)

^{Anna Von Mertens's 8:45 am to 10:28 am, September 11th, 2001 (Above New York City looking toward Boston), hand-stitched cotton, 41 by 97 1/2 inches}

At OKOK Gallery. (Gallery web site here.)

^{Galen McCarty Turner's King of France, mixed media including glass, electricity, noble gases}

At the new Fulcrum Gallery in Tacoma. (A nice review of the show in The News Tribune is here.)

^{Su-Mei Tse's The Yellow Mountain (2004), video projection with sound, 3 minutes and 30 seconds}

At Seattle Asian Art Museum. (Gallery web site here.)

^{Andreas Zybach's 0-6.5 PS (Tunnel) (2007), liquid pumps, gouache, tubes, steel feathers, plywood, raw silk, hardware; 22 by 7 feet}

At Western Bridge, with an artist talk today at 1. (Gallery web site here; Stranger Suggests for the group show You Complete Me here.)

I can't confirm it with anyone at the museum at this hour, but I have it on good authority: Maxwell L. Anderson (former Whitney director over Rinder and current Indianapolis Museum of Art head) let it drop a few minutes ago in a podcast I did with him while he was in Seattle for a public talk. He said the appointment was made official tonight.

Here's Rinder's Wiki page, on which I discovered something I did not know about the noted curator:

His first play, “The Wishing Well," co-authored with Kevin Killian, premiered in 2006.

The podcast with Anderson is great, and will be up on The Stranger's site soon—and thanks to Anderson for staying up so late to go through with it during a short visit. Oh: and thanks for the scoop.

^{Stacey Farrar's All My Bad Ideas (2008), graphite on paper, 24 by 30 inches}

At Vermillion Gallery. (Gallery web site here.)

This is the latter-day Bird in Space I was telling you about yesterday, the one that just came into Seattle Art Museum's collection.

^{Photo by Rafael Goldchain}

And here's the original "that's-not-a-bird-in-space!" Bird in Space.

I just saw the new installation of the Frye's permanent collection by San Antonio-based artist Dario Robleto (working closely with smart-as-hell Frye curator Robin Held), and it blew me away. It blends paintings from the museum's collection, which look more alive than ever, with new pieces by Robleto made in response to the collection. It is intense.

I have to go and write about something else right now (remember the print edition of the paper?), but more to come on this, including an upcoming podcast with Robleto. The show opens Saturday.

^{Susan Robb's Digester (2008), 55-gallon drums, various parts, Scott Lawrimore's shit}

At Lawrimore Project. (Opening tonight, 6-10 pm; gallery web site here.)

That's The Great Wave at Kanagawa (ca. 1831-33), from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, by the great Japanese master of the ukiyo-e print, Katsushika Hokusai. That particular one I took from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's web site. It's in the museum's collection.

The Great Wave is just about as famous an image as the Mona Lisa. It is an incredible composition. Its supposed subject—Mount Fuji—stands placidly, eternally, in the background, but is captured in a split second, framed by a treacherous wave that threatens three fishing boats. The contrast between the foreground and the background could not be more stark. There's no mystery about why this print has become an icon; it's a masterpiece.

Unlike the Mona Lisa, though, it is a print. There's not just one of it. But how many are there? Is it still a big deal to have one of them? That depends which one you have. And Seattle Art Museum has just this winter received a promised gift of a Great Wave from local collectors Mary and Allan Kollar.

I called SAM Asian art curator Yukiko Shirahara to ask her about the SAM Great Wave.

"Many people have this question," she said. "Ukiyo-e print is public art of the time. They'd print 200 at a time, and we don't know how many times the 200 were printed. Once they'd make a woodblock, they'd use it until it was worn out."

That means that many, many museums around the world have Great Waves. They vary in quality so much that Japanese museums entirely devoted to ukiyo-e prints base exhibitions around demonstrating the differences between the early and the late. Early prints have clear, unbroken lines, and sensitive, bright colors, Shirahara says, before the woodblock was too worn down.

Determining which is which is an art, not a science, and Shirahara says she still needs to "check many points." But she says she believes the one coming into SAM's collection is early (like, she says, the Met's), from when Hokusai was still alive and overseeing the prints.

"In the Kollar's collection, those are earlier, which means the print reflect's the artist's intention more clearly," she said. "Ukiyo-e is teamwork. Hokusai never cut the wood. He make the drawing and designate the color."

With this gift, Shirahara says, SAM will have all three of Hokusai's most beloved prints of Mount Fuji, The Great Wave, Thunderstorm Under the Summit, and the one known as Red Fuji. Here are the other two:

See the rest of Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views here.

This month at James Harris Gallery is Margot Quan Knight's coming-out party in Seattle.

She is, basically, a disillusioned photographer. A wonderfully disillusioned photographer. She's become disillusioned from her fantasy (our collective fantasy?) that photographs describe, if not reality, then still a version of truth. Until recently, she made composed images of unreal events that revealed themselves to be fictions indicative of real sensations and experiences, often ones that defy time, like this one (that's her):

^{Drop, 2006}

But then she was hit by a car. And she started graduate school (MFA at Bard; she finishes this summer). And the result of those things intersecting with Berenice Abbott (and other readings in photographic history), a strobe-light dance she saw at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the thought of her mother getting older resulted in a break—out of which came an entirely different body of work, all based on reflective surfaces.

Artists at the beginning of their careers—and sometimes, artists at any stage—may be doing great things, but they don't always really know what they're doing. That can be perfectly fine, or a disaster. In Quan Knight's case, her eloquence is not necessary to understand her work, but it's a very nice surprise. Listening to her will be well worth your time.

Click here for the podcast.

And because these works are all reflective, I'm posting a video (by Quan Knight) that depicts the works the way you would experience them, rather than the blank, more formal stills on the gallery's web site.

Starting today, Seattle Art Museum will announce its acquisitions on a quarterly basis, meaning you'll get a regular sense of what's coming into the collection. Here are a few images, with info and background on the jump.

^{Paul Manship}

^{Joseph Goldberg}

^{Adrian Paci}

Continue reading "SAM's New Acquisitions" »

This spring in Seattle, while this artist

^{Mandy Greer}

presents her version of this

^{Jacopo Tintoretto}

this artist

^{Josiah McElheny}

presents his version of this

^{Big Bang theory}

and this artist

^{Jeffrey Simmons}

presents his version of this

^{Galactic objects}

and this artist

^{Kader Attia}

presents his version of this

^{"Beach" in Algiers}

I found this painting in an alley on Capitol Hill at least two years ago. It was in the trash, along with some household items, behind an apartment building. Someone was moving, I guessed, and decided that this painting and a few other items weren't going to make it to the new apartment. The painting looked awfully sad leaning against the dumpster, out there in the rain, waiting for the garbage truck. I stopped, picked it up, looked at the back, and learned that the painting had a name...

Nourishment

...that it took five years to create...

1990-Fucking-1 to 1990-fucking-5

...and that the artist or subject's name was...

Vanessa

And I thought, hey, why not surprise Vanessa by rescuing her painting, taking it to the office, and putting it on the cover of the Stranger? So I carried to work, took it up to production, and presented "Nourishment" to the Stranger's Art Director. "Nourishment" has been sitting up in production ever since, next to the Art Director's desk, patiently waiting its turn for a cover. Now and then I would ask the Art Director when "Nourishment" was slated to appear on the cover, and Corianton or Aaron would say, "Oh, yes. We'll get that on the cover sometime soon, Dan, sometime soon."

Well, yesterday I found Vanessa's painting in a hallway, banished from the production area, clearly destined once again for a dumpster. And I rescued "Nourishment" again, placed it next to the Art Director's desk again, and asked to see it on the cover again.

You'll get your Stranger cover soon, Vanessa, soon.

^{Jennifer Harrison's Three White Houses, oil on canvas, 18 by 24 inches}

At Garde Rail Gallery. (Gallery site here.)

On the Boards just announced its 2008-09 season, and I noticed Wynne Greenwood is on the roster. Greenwood used to be Tracy in the "band" Tracy + the Plastics—or, truth was, Greenwood was all three band members. Tracy appeared live and the other two (Nikki and Cola) appeared on video (played by Greenwood). They were great.

That performance was March 31, 2007, in Olympia. Since then, the band broke up. (Greenwood took herself out to dinner to celebrate, and uncannily, the restaurant seated her at a table for four.) Greenwood lives in Seattle now, and this winter, she had a solo show at Susanne Vielmetter Gallery in LA, for which she made this video (note the instrumental karaoke), shot inside the installation.

Here's what the announcement says she's doing at On the Boards a year from now:

WYNNE GREENWOOD | Sister Taking Nap Wed – Sun | April 15 - 19, 2009 World Premiere Best known for her schizophrenic portrayals of 3 band members in Tracy + the Plastics, Wynne Greenwood embarks on a new creative phase fusing sculpture, installation and music into an intimate performance environment. Sister Taking Nap is a one-act about human evolution where objects such as an animal cage, a suitcase and a TV double as small stages for posing the question: What must we give up in order to survive? Greenwood’s art and performance works have been shown at Reena Spaulings Fine Arts (NYC), The Kitchen (NYC), Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), PICA (Portland), Walker Art Center and the Whitney Biennial (NYC).

It's on my calendar.

This morning the painter Matthew Offenbacher handed out two folded 8 1/2 by 14 sheets of brownish paper printed on both sides and with the title "LA ESPECIAL NORTE 1" across the top.

And that marked the arrival of a brand new Seattle artist "newsletter"—a thing like a zine, but not the kind put out by snotty teenagers. This is a publication made by artists. Career artists. Artists like Joe Park, Gretchen Bennett, Eli Hansen, and Offenbacher himself. And still, I worried it would be tragic.

The thing is great.

There's an essay about shit in Seattle art (hence the brownish paper color?) by Offenbacher, and it's better than most of what passes for essay writing in art magazines, drawing together works from Eric Elliott's paintings to Susan Robb's transformation of her dealer's shit into art in a show opening this Thursday. (Offenbacher declares Stranger Genius winner Alex Schweder "our old master of [the] genre.") What else? Porn by Hansen, Bennett's personal, narrative "philosophy of street art," Park's interview with old-time Seattle curator Chris Bruce, and a reprint of Robert Smithson's 1972 essay "Cultural Confinement," which seems to suggest that Seattle artists are bristling below their polite surfaces.

As for images, there aren't pictures of art in La Especial Norte, there are drawings of art. Which is better. (There's a detailed scribble of Jenny Heishman's Mud Thing, for instance—seen for real here—and a sketch of a 2005 staged wedding between artist Steven Miller and a pile of dirt. Bonus: I had no idea Steven Miller "married" a pile of dirt!)

I have no idea where you can get a copy. But the masthead-like thing on the back page says to contact northern.special@gmail.com for more information. It also says La Especial Northern will come out two or three times a year. I'm ready for the next one now.

^{Detail of Jenny Heishman's Mud Thing, courtesy Howard House}

1. Nancy Stoaks, my previous intern and a scholar of Niki de Saint Phalle's shooting paintings, has been invited this week to speak at the Tate Liverpool's Niki exhibition. Not only that, but I am pretty sure Stoaks is sharing a billing with Griselda Pollock. Not bad. Stoaks also is the new director of James Harris Gallery. (Congrats!)

2. This morning, I got this email from artist/former intern/general maven of life Elysha Rose Diaz:

i'm in paris at centre pompidou. i just cried my way thru the most beautiful exhibit of louise bourgeois. and now i'm completely overwhelmed in the main section of the museum.

3. My current intern, artist Lauren Klenow, has a show up now of drawings, sculptures, and assemblage at Cafe Racer in the University District. Later, I'll add a link to the show—the reason I can't now is that she was too humble to enter her own show in the calendar listings she puts together every week so she's doing one now at my request.

UPDATE: Here's the link!

4. Another former intern, Carly Dykes, is now, in addition to being a regular and levelheaded Slog commenter, working in development for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—which means she's helping to keep LACMA alive.

5. Craig Brownson, yet another former intern and general personage, in addition to being a Stranger freelancer, has to his credit these immortal words: "Untitled (Gene Simmons Inspires Me) ... is a sculpture of the iconic, giant tongue resting on some old weathered foam, a kind of homemade stage fit for that awesomely vile thing" and "A woman sprawls across an armchair, a toddler hanging upside down on her lap. Both seem bored as hell."

Today is a day of love, and I love you, interns.

^{Ghost's Untitled Blue, acrylic on canvas, 28 by 22 inches}

At BLVD Gallery. (Gallery site here.)

The latest from the awful case against artist Steve Kurtz, in this press release from Kurtz's supporters sent out yesterday:

JUDGE DISMISSES MAIL FRAUD CASE AGAINST BIO-ARTIST KURTZ

Buffalo, NY—A process that has taken nearly four years may be coming to an end. On Monday, April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara ruled to dismiss the indictment against University at Buffalo Professor of Visual Studies Dr. Steven Kurtz.

In June 2004, Professor Kurtz was charged with two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud stemming from an exchange of $256 worth of harmless bacteria with Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

Dr. Kurtz planned to use the bacteria in an educational art exhibit about biotechnology with his award-winning art and theater collective, Critical Art Ensemble.

Professor Kurtz’ lawyer, Paul Cambria, said that his client was “pleased and relieved that this ordeal may be coming to an end.”

The prosecution has the right to appeal this dismissal. How the prosecution will proceed is unknown at this time. If an appeal were undertaken the case would move to the New York Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City.

Lucia Sommer, Coordinator of the CAE Defense Fund, which raises funds for Kurtz’ legal defense, said, “We are all grateful that after reviewing this case, Judge Arcara took appropriate action.” She added that “this decision is further testament to our original statements that Dr. Kurtz is completely innocent and never should have been charged in the first place.”

I'm just getting back from this morning's Art Klatch at Cafe Presse, which was an introduction to San Antonio artist Dario Robleto. Robleto has a traveling show that's coming to the Frye next month, but what's cool is that he also created a new exhibition that will only be in Seattle, called Heaven Is Being a Memory to Others, based on the histories of Frye founders Charles and Emma—especially Emma. That show opens Saturday.

My first experience with Robleto's work was earlier this year, when I saw the traveling group show Soundwaves: The Art of Sampling at the MCASD La Jolla. One piece in particular stuck with me. Seen here (click on Dario Robleto and then on the image of "Living With ..."—sorry! I couldn't grab an image), it's a jar with humble little objects inside it, and it has two titles—one for the sculpture's "A side," and one for its "B side." Here's the double wall label (which Robleto refers to as liner notes):

Living with Death as Something Intimate and Natural, 2005/2006, oak tree twig carved from dissolved audio tape recording of the heartbeat of an unborn child and the last heartbeats of a loved one, dried flowers picked on foreign battlefields sent home by foot soldiers from various wars, thread and fabric from military uniforms from various wars, veteran's old mason jar, mourning handkerchief, mourning dress fabric and thread, pigments, water extendable resin, willow, glass b/w The Artillery of Heaven, 2006, casts of excavated fired bullets and spent shell casings from various wars made with ground fulgurites (glass produced by lightning strikes when heat from blast melts surrounding sand), battlefield sand and soil from various wars, rust

It's two sculptures but also a doubled single sculpture; its materials are combined, like the possessions of a couple in a household, but they have separate meanings. Since I saw it, I've been trying to think of what to compare it to, and the best I can come up with is sculptures or artworks that have double meanings, which isn't quite the same thing. My mind runs all over the place when I think about it. I think I'm in love with the idea.

Yinka Shonibare's prognosis for the art world, from an Artworld Salon report of a recent Artforum panel about art and money: “We will move from the fetishization of material to the fetishization of the idea.”

There has to be a fetish!

^{Jennifer Diamanti's Expression 2, ink on paper, 13 by 10 inches}

At Shift Studio. (Gallery site here.)

Modern Art Notes this morning called the Pulitzer Foundation's Flavin web catalogue awesome, and he is so right. Go. Here. You'll find not only installation images from every floor of the exhibition and writings about the show, but also time-lapse and regular-time videos from inside the museum as well as a previously unreleased 20-minute interview with Flavin from 1973.

I'm grateful for and a little surprised at how well Flavin works online. A few of the videos are terribly gorgeous. Here's one view:

"Fairs are the new retail."

See The Kennedy live and talking about Art Chicago (last year) at the City Club of Chicago here, thanks to HindSight.

^{Weldon Butler's Silver Train (2007), mixed media, 60 by 60 inches}

At Kirkland Arts Center. (Gallery site here.)

^{Alison Keogh's Newsprint #1 (2008), layers of the British Financial Times on board}

At Drop City Gallery. (Gallery site here.)

So says Jen Graves in her review of Simmons's show up now at Greg Kucera Gallery.

Let's begin by clearing up one fact: Jeffrey Simmons's paintings are, in fact, paintings made by Jeffrey Simmons. This is true in the most traditional possible sense. He uses paintbrushes, on canvas. Laboriously, he layers acrylic paint on and sands it down. That's how they're made.

It's necessary to make this point because people endlessly mistake these paintings for photographs. People also mistake them for images powered by electric light, plugged in, lit from behind, illuminated by some secret source besides paint. The people making these mistakes are only getting halfway there. The paintings do look like photographs in light boxes at first; it's the fact that they're not that sends the mind spinning. In order to get the full cognitive dissonance, you need the mistake and the fact, the illusion and the truth.

Simmons is a Seattle artist whose name you ought to know; he has been making interesting paintings since 1996...

The rest of the piece--a wonderful piece of criticism--is here.

^{Margot Quan Knight's Pistoletto (2008), Fujitrans print mounted on Plexi, 2-way mirror, Plexiglas, aluminum fluorescent light box, wood; 96 by 54 by 8 inches}

At James Harris Gallery. (Gallery site here.)

It's Dennis Oppenheim's 18-foot-tall, fiberglass Safety Cones (2007), pictured on Park Avenue, in a rendering by Amy Plumb. (It was actually first installed in December 2007 at the entrance to the SCOPE Miami art fair.) They're scheduled to be up from mid-May through the fall.

It's Oppenheim season: The appearance of the cones corresponds with a show of models, drawings, and photographs of Oppenheim's work at Gallery4Culture starting next first Thursday, May 1, and running through May 30. On April 30 at 7 pm, Oppenheim will give a lecture at the Seattle Public Library. Admission is free.

I mean, "creative fiction."