Goodbye Chelsea Thompto

Chelsea Thompto, preparing for Embodying, now at the Sac State Library

The first thing that you notice when you walk into Chelsea Thompto's studio is how it smells. It smells strangely...good.  The delightful perfume of burned wood, chai tea, beeswax, and pine resin, is the pleasant side effect of the simple natural materials that she is using to make her art.  Most studio spaces are more aromatically challenged, mine included.  A cursory look around definitely confirms that a mad scientist is in residence. Experiments abound, her passions transfigured into an assortment of unique and powerful artistic statements.  Nylons tied to Redwood bark spells mysterious and cryptic messages. Rubbings of wood lie in piles.  Even a quick look around piques my curiousity.  Chelsea Thompto's art is definitely some of the most unique and current I've seen in Sacramento.
       I first met Chelsea in a sculpture class. She was the grad student assistant. I was immediately impressed by her suggestions, critique, and competence working with a huge array of materials and tools. But even better, here was another member of the LGBTQ community to talk to about art in a meaningful way.   From our conversations, I felt like I entered new levels of awareness of myself and my own art practice.  Through our conversations I realized I had been ignoring my homosexuality as influence on my work; I had simply come to take it for granted.  Getting to know Chelsea and the issues related to being a Trans-person opened my eyes to just how far we still have to go in the fight for equality.
        As a Trans-person, Chelsea has to deal with much more on a daily basis than most people can even imagine. When you're Trans, discrimination is a day to day reality.  We live in a country that has only recently begun to embrace LGBTQ people. Many gays, like myself, are now fixtures in contemporary mainstream culture. Being gay isn't really a major contemporary topic of conversation anymore; I feel largely accepted, for better and for worse, into the fold. But being a Trans-person is different. Trans people still face opposition and bigotry from a large segment of the US. Case in point, the bathroom law that was recently passed in North Carolina.

anti-Trans propoganda sticker

This reality is transfigured into Chelsea's work.  Her pieces focus on her identity, and how we perceive others and ourselves.  Thompto uses a code, completely of her own device, that acts as a buffer between her art and the viewer. The code, beautiful in it's own right when written, is a complex vehicle for interaction between Thompto and the viewer.  Understanding it requires some time and critical analysis; things we all too often don't make time for anywhere.  Through the cerebral process of decryption, we open ourselves to recognize the love of understanding that is shared by all people. Her work invites us to be a part of the art, where the participant is the critical link in completion of each piece.

Embodying, Chelsea Thompto 2016

       This work has culminated in her current MA show entitled Embodying, currently on display in the Sacramento State Library Gallery.  The show comprehensive, meticulous, striking, and powerful. Those mad scientist experiments culminated in a luminous volume of work that speaks to me on the deepest level. Yes, Chelsea Thompto is making important art.

Power Word: (Trans) written in the code

        But she's leaving. Moving on the get her MFA in Madison, Wisconsin, where she will also be teaching. They will be very lucky to have her. And while her leaving is a blow to hte Sacramento art scene, she has left an indelible mark on me and my art.  Her passionate creativity will be missed, but I am so glad that she will be out there making art.

"Everything in Between" Morehshin Allahyari

The Verge Gallery, S and 7th Streets

Last weekend I made the short trip to the Verge Center for the Arts to see Morehshin Allahyari's exhibition Everything in Between.  The works, collectively a meditation on the specific and complex identity of being an Iranian woman, raises questions about how technology binds us and can simultaneously set us free.

In one portion of the show, Allahyari produces a series of statues from Persian antiquity, that have been reproduced using 3D scanning and printing technology.  The twelve works, entitled Material Speculation: ISIS, are all pieces that were destroyed by ISIS in 2015.  Embedded in each work is a flash drive containing critical archaeological and physical details of each reproduced work of art. These works are make a powerful statement of protest about attempts to distort the past and manipulate culture to fit the conservative Islamic agenda of ISIS.  

Material Speculation: ISIS Morehshin Allahyari 2015-2016

In Mere Spaces All Things Are Side by Side I  2014 -Present

One of the most moving works is a short animated film called In Mere Spaces All Things Are Side by Side I that sets a conversation the artist had on Yahoo Chat with an online pen pal against 3D modeled architecture. Through the dialogue, we gain a poignant insight into the difficulty a person has using the internet in heavily censored Iran.  I remember being a gay teenager in the early 2000's and having the experience here in northern California. I lived in a world where I felt completely cut off and isolated from the world around me. Had it been ten years before, I would have had no online outlet to channel who I really was. I wouldn't have had the validation of chatting with other gay or lesbian people online or even seeing gay pornography that at least allowed me to recognize that I wasn't alone in my feelings. The internet was a form of social salvation.   I believe that Allahyari had a similar experience.

Other works that utilize 3D printing are works of banned images in Iran. This includes dogs (which are banned in Iran and the ownership of which incurs a sentence of 74 lashes), pigs, Buddha, and Homer Simpson.  These works playfully and purposefully create digital assemblages of these banned objects, raising awareness of cumbersome and futile censorship imposed by the Iranian government.  

Dark Matter; First Series 2014

Samara Golden at the YBCA

A Trap in Soft Division, Samara Golden, 2016

Soooo, there was a lot to see at the Yerba Buena Center for the arts. I thought I'd write a bit about what else is currently up. Samara Golden's A Trap in Soft Division is alone worth the visit to the YBCA.  The installation is in a large ballroom with floors covered in pristine mirrors reflecting a series of small staged rooms some 40 feet over head. Each room is complete with everyday objects: furniture, lamps, take out boxes, and open laptops. The rooms are completely enclosed, and while there are similarities between them, none are the exact same.  In each corner rumbles a white noise machine giving the whole room a vague hum that is both soothing and lonely. 

 It feels like we have all the information, but nothing is clear. The space is devoid of life, and we are kept remote. We view the rooms from either the mirrors on the floor, or by craning our necks up.  Viewing the work by looking up or down changes the interpretation.  As one looks down at, it elicits a sense of omnipotent voyeurism. As you look up, it's a surreal topsy-turvy reality that almost causes vertigo. 

View of the floor

Looking up 

The installation is thought provoking, delicate and fascinating work. The clinical compartmentalized nature of the rooms starts to evoke a feeling of cells, no matter how comfortable they appear. The installation is multi-layered and complex and my friend Tracy and I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what we were feeling. 

 Golden is interested in expressing our increasing isolation in a technology saturated world. As social media brings us closer together online, our physical lives retreat into the safety and insulation of the tiny spaces we can define.  I personally know the feeling of not wanting to leave my house and face the grinding external reality of Sacramento.    

This surreal space and the complex spectrum of emotions that it draws out in a minimal way, is highly inspiring. 

Take This Hammer, revolutionary art at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Ahhh San Francisco.  Once you cross that glorious old Bay Bridge, one almost feels as if they are entering into a magical fairy tale kingdom. In this land, where justice and fairness prevail, people can think freely and live passionately. It's a land unsullied by the realities that slog down pretty much everywhere else in the world: ultra-conservatism, crime, ugly stuff. Lofty San Francisco floats above it like a castle in the sky. Almost.

Remains of an apartment fire at 24th and Valencia, loaded with metaphor 

         It only took a few hours of being back to realize that San Francisco is definitely not what it used to be. There is break neck development going on everywhere that is turning quaint quiet corners of the city into glittering gems of banality. There's a sense of vacancy in the Mission, as if all the weird vibrant people and their culture have been handed smallpox blankets by the patriarchal money worshipers that run the city. All around, people are being evicted, their homes are being destroyed, and new monuments that say absolutely nothing are rising in their place. San Francisco has fallen.

That's a little dramatic, but not totally off the mark. San Francisco has always been a place for change, and these days there's little that is not changing. For better or for worse, it is under going what I think of as Disneyland-ification. It's an attempt to scrub the city clean of anything real or gritty like the rather awesome graffiti that used to cover my old building. Or to slowly make 6th street a parade of expensive eateries while not so subtly forcing all the Black inhabitants to find somewhere new to live.  It's as if they are trying to turn San Francisco into a family friendly theme park, a parody of a real city. These negative changes, that are forcing more and more of the poor people out, have created an emotional backlash that artists have been documenting. Take This Hammer, the current show at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is comprised of art that is rebelling against the injustices and growing disparities in San Francisco, the US, and the world.

Still from Google Google Apps Apps,Persia Ft. Daddie$ Pla$tik, 2013

The first thing you hear when you walk in the door of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is a TV screen playing the music video. The 2013 song, by drag artist Persia, is titled Google, Google, Apps, Apps. Be warned, it will bore into your subconscious and lay eggs there.  Persia, a fixture in the dwindling San Francisco drag scene, plays with the seriousness of the situation facing anyone who isn't making over 100,000 dollars a year.  The refrain "I really want to be white" is a poke at the increasing segment of affluent white population while other ethnic groups melt into the larger bay area or even Sacramento. LGBTQ culture, once a key pillar that held the city aloft, is slowly being eroded. LGBTQ people (and anyone else) are welcome in San Francisco as long as you uphold the status quo.  As long as you don't spray paint art on abandoned buildings. As long as you don't drink beers in Dolores Park. As long as you've got the money. Otherwise you will be kicked out this little theme park. 

Oree Originol, Justice for Our Lives, 2013-present

Racial violence is a topic many of the artist the exhibition address. Artist and Black Lives Matter advocate Oree Originol creates simple black and white portraits of those who lost their lives to an increasingly "shoot-first" police policy throughout the country. Oree's work also offers a stack of the images of those slain for the public to take and color, fostering a connection to one of the countless faces on the wall.  The internet connects the dots, and these previously isolated incidents have a emerged as a definitively racist murder policy by US police forces.  This work serves not only as a memorial to those who have lost their lives, but as a reminder to those who are largely removed from the realities of poverty, discrimination, and violence, that life is not all Disneyland for many in San Francisco and the rest of the US.

Dignidad Rebelde (Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes), Various posters, 2015

          The works by Dignidad Rebelde, a collective from Oakland, are a series of beautifully designed and printed revolutionary posters.  In the works, one sees the immediacy and youth culture of 60's music posters, 80's street art, Wadsworth Jarell and Emory Douglass.  My particular favorite features a native Hawaiian bearing the slogan "Free Hawaii." I also have been contemplating the merits of a California that is no longer part of the US. 

           The show is a melting pot of not only different backgrounds and issues, but different mediums, with technology 
taking a greater role in the works.

Indira Allegra, Blackout, 2015

Pieces such as Indira Allegra's Blackout series utilize the overwhelming visual inundation of information in her pieces as metaphor for our emotional reaction to the barrage of headlines and news we can't escape or ignore. 

Technology and the internet have also provided unprecedented access to groups, information, and communication that other generations of activists would have had to expend much larger amounts of resources on acquiring.  Handheld devices make it possible to do all the work a computer did ten years ago, and do it discreetly. A factor that artist Ruby Mountain capitalized upon to record police brutality experienced during the Occupy Movement in Oakland.  

Ruby Mountain, Revolution, 2012

Tucker Nichols, Op-Ed Drawings, 2005-2016

Tucker Nichol's political op-ed cartoons use satire to amusingly critique a variety of issues from censorship to fracking.  By appropriating actual pages of the New York Times and altering them, the viewer is left to question what was altered and what was actually printed. Unfortunately, they did seem a bit out of step with the earnestness with which other artists are addressing these issues even if his heart is in the right place. 

      The show was inspiring to me. It sometimes feels like being in school and working is informally compliant with the system.  I have let issues that I feel passionate about stay submerged in my subconscious because it's easier to not to care. I convince myself that as a white male, there is little for me to contribute.  Few people are remotely interested in the concept of revolution.  Living passionately and discussing ideas fiercely, is a rare quality once you reach your 30's. Nobody wants to talk about the harsh realities of the world anymore. We get comfortable, find decent jobs, buy houses, and these injustices and tragedies that are happening right outside our doors become as removed as tv shows.  Most people, consciously or not, have chosen defeat.   Take This Hammer reminded me that these issues shape my work.  I decided to get a degree in art because I felt like it was the purest vehicle for change in myself and the world around me. What the world needs now is change, and yes, I will take that hammer.  

Good Things in Small Spaces, Terry Peterson at the InsideOut

Nestled in the fertile ground of midtown Sacramento stands an unforgettable monolith to weirdness, the Flop Haus. Anyone familiar with midtown has certainly seen the grand old house on the corner of 21st and I streets. It has a palpable aura of zeitgeist,  non-conformity,  and general coolness that Sacramento so conspicuously lacks.  One can only wonder, "who are the rare inhabitants of such a place?" Well, one is Mehr Mesbah, professor of art at Sacramento State University.

All this beer has got me thinking

Mesbah, who is by training a painter, has recently mixed up his media and made forays into 3D and 4D works.  These new explorations catalyzed the formation of his newly lauched InsideOut art space. And you can find this experimental gallery in Mesbah's living room window at the Flop Haus.

When I first visited the space around Feburary, I was thrilled by the idea. His living room, having always been a crucible of fantastic creations, had been partitioned off around his street level bay window. The space created, while modest, is perfectly positioned for viewing from the street. There is definitely a feeling of voyeurism as one stops to peer into the windows, and the signage outside is minimal. The glowing windows draw the gaze of passerbys as if it is a fancy boutique. Mesbah stated to me he wanted to created a non-commercial space that would focus on community involvement, specifically bridging the gap between the community and Sac State University.   The new installation which opened a few weeks ago, is showing the works of Terry Peterson, professor of sculpture at Sacramento City College.

Street view, looking inside

 Peterson's current installation, Alter, is an expertly crafted assemblage of unlikely materials. It evokes meditations of masculinity, the grind of work commutes, and the longing for nature.  The Alter seems to lead to the distillation of a truckers cap shoved into an old igloo ice chest wryly bearing the slogan "Doing our jobs."  Forms intersect, diverge, and are illuminated with harsh fluorescent lights like a laboratory.  He makes use of Arduino motors, which cause various aspects of the work to move at different times. such as a mason jar that appears to be filled with coffee and broken glass.  The piece is expansive, and communicates a sophisticated local mindset. I could easily imagine seeing this on the street in San Francisco before the art extinction of the last few years.


So here is a small curated show that can compete in the big leagues. Art Hotel showed how desperate Sacramento is for contemporary work, and InsideOut is a great step forward to scratching that itch.     Mesbah's already got a line of artists ready to make use of this great space, myself included.  He is maintaining an open call for local artists who work isn't quite white cube gallery material; if you're interested check out the links below.

"Doin' our Jobs!"...

http://www.the-insideout.org/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-InsideOut/1088725607867099

Becoming the masks of Bidou Yamaguchi

Vermeer Transfigured

Armed with a long fascination with all things Japanese, I decided to stop by the library gallery at Sacramento State to see the exhibition of Bidou Yamaguchi's modern Noh masks.  These masks, perhaps more akin to sculpture than anything, are a unique blend of new and old, dark and whimsical, east and west.  The majority of the masks are Yamaguchi's interpretations of female faces from famous western paintings. They are incredible in their likenesses, and among the cameos made are the Mona Lisa and The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

But as I walk the gallery,  there is something eerie and dreamlike about the work; Something intangible but familiar has sprung into reality, like a character from a well-read book emerging from its pages.  Masks are  pre-loaded with metaphor, but these might take the cake.  To better appreciate what is happening here, I do a bit of research on the art of Noh.

Noh  (which I had "Noh" knowledge of before this exhibit (apologies)) is a specifically Japanese theatre art that can be dated back to the mid 1300's.  It's most important elements include: the wearer "becoming the mask," a three part story, and the subtle reinterpretation of the traditional in the contemporary context.  The masks usually play a central role and are one of the key factors that make Noh mysterious and unique. Each mask can convey a variety of emotions based on the tilt of the head and how the lighting is utilized. By standardizing these techniques, a skilled Noh actor can convey complex emotional information with a single mask.

Same mask at three different angles to show the range of expressions

Bidou Yamaguchi is a master carver of Utsushi, or replicas of masterpiece Noh masks.  Some of these heirloom masks, from which Utsushi are modeled, are 500 years old.  Recreating the subtle feeling of a particular mask is the main job of a master carver. Yamaguchi has taken this formal training and applied it to some fascinating new source material: famous female portraits of western art and the portraits of Kabuki actors from the early twentieth century. By changing the subjects of these masks, Yamaguchi is breaking a very long tradition.  His goal in these works is to use his skills to create new works rather than Utsushi. He voices his feelings in an interview with MPR.org (Minnesota Public Radio) in 2011:

"The Noh mask makers, what we do today, we’re copying originals from other periods. Every one would say the best mask is the original, and each maker will say they can never achieve the brilliance of the original artist...Tradition should not be just a matter of copying the past, but to add something before passing it on to the next generation. It’s up to the next generation to decide whether they want to keep it or not."

 Yamaguchi's feelings on maintaining traditions are surely echoed around the world. So often in our culture, we find that when something beautiful has been achieved, it must now be maintained.  We cease to recognize that change was the very origin of whatever this beauty was. It becomes beyond us, beyond reproach, a static interpretation of culture. These are difficult circumstances to transcend. It is much easier, I'd venture, in the context of the US, where change in ideas is a common occurrence and even venerated modality.

 As I finish my survey of the gallery, I stop to try on a Noh mask available to visitors. It fits strangely on my face, but the effect is rather delightful.  I feel it's mysterious power, and I decide viewing a Noh performance is definitely on the agenda. Quick research leads me to Theatre Yugen at Nohspace in Potrero Hill (San Francisco's "new arts capital..."). Theatre Yugen puts on a variety of performances of Asian theatre, including Noh.  Check out what's coming up on their website at www.theatreofyugen.org

These masks, contemporary expressions of an ancient art, have helped bring Noh onto the world stage. I laud Yamaguchi's willingness to reinterpret tradition for the sake of breathing new life into Noh. These masks start an important and necessary dialogue about how to keep traditions alive. The best way to do that is to encourage contemporary artists to reinterpret traditions so that they stay relevant in our culture. Without this contemporary stewardship, fascinating and beautiful traditions like Noh are likely to fade away.

 Additionally, Bidou Yamaguchi will be giving a lecture at Sacramento State on April 14th at 2pm.

Ai Weiwei at the Crocker

           A week ago, I went and saw the exhibition of Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at the Crocker Art Museum.  The work consists of twelve animal heads made of cast bronze representing the creatures of the Chinese Zodiac. Big deal, right? The Chinese Zodiac is a pretty much meaningless in the United State. I have always seen it in the context of paper place settings in a Chinese restaurant where is serves as a mere curiosity. I am the year of the Rat, but does it matter? From an outside perspective, and without much knowledge of Ai Weiwei, I thought these works seemed shallow and boring.  How wrong I was.

The Circle of Animals in the Crocker courtyard

I walked through the exhibition and acknowledged the skill and execution of the pieces. Each piece weighs around 1600 pounds, is 10 feet tall, and has quite a physical presence.  I stood underneath the Tiger and melted a little towards the work.  "Ok, they're more impressive in person," I thought. However, it wasn't until I walked upstairs and began reading the information presented about the works that I began to understand the significance of this piece.

During the Second Opium war with China, British and French troops looted the Summer Palace (Yuanming Yuan). Among the items pillaged were the bronze animals heads from a zodiac time fountain. These heads have periodically shown up for auctions in that last few decades and are a major point of contention in the ongoing global debate about the repatriation of lost art work.  These pieces are particularly irksome to many Chinese because they are symbols of the shame and subjugation associated with European colonialism.  Ironically, the fountain was western inspired and the original heads were designed by an Italian Jesuit missionary. They are unusual pieces with an unusual history.

Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals are essentially copies of the original bronze heads with some changes in the scale and presentation.  Despite these minor variations, he is largely appropriating these works.  He has re-contextualized the pieces into a fine art setting and generated new layers of meaning by doing so. The new works demand dialogue about the repatriation of stolen artifacts.  All over the world this battle is raging on.  The western colonial powers have works of art from all over the world that are best perceived as stolen. Public opinion in favor of their return and a taboo on buying and selling these items will be crucial to helping future repatriation claims.  In these heads, Ai Wei Wei has created posterchildren for that movement.

This tiger is not for sale

But whether or not he has strong feelings about the original heads is unclear. Ai Weiwei is definitely a disciple of Marcel Duchamp, pop art, and appropriation and I would venture that he sees his interpretations of the lost heads as having more meaning than the originals. He mentions in the video accompanying the work that the pieces were not even originally Chinese. I believe Ai Weiwei is saying to a Chinese audience, "here are works far more impressive and meaningful than the original heads. Why stay hung up on the originals? Recognize that we are making important art now.

The works may also be subtly criticizing how the US views China. China, alternately feared and derided in popular western culture, is thought of as backwards country that produces low quality items.  Ai Weiwei addresses this by making these pieces purposefully large, bold, and demanding of our attention. He is speaking in the language of the oldest fine art by using bronze, which China has a long and celebrated history of working.  These pieces dispel stereotypes and assert a strong, intelligent, modern Chinese identity.

So it turns out, this work was more loaded with meaning than I had imagined. The Circle of Animals is totally worth checking out and, in my book, Ai Weiwei went from being some celebrity artist to an artist that interests me.