At the urging of a friend, I attended the BIL 2010 Conference. BIL is 3 years running and is usually situated near the TED Conference (devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading). The event is free and open to all guest presenters. Usually scientists, futurists, technologists, artists, venture capitalists speak on inspirational and oftentimes niche topics. Usually with a Powerpoint presentation up their sleeves. They are able to throw the entire conference for less than the cost of one TED ticket. Tickets to TED run around $6000. As you can guess, TED caters to millionaires, captains of industry, and invited guess geniuses and creatives. Fledgling BIL, doesn’t cater to millionaires and embodies a true DIY aesthetic.

This year the venue was the Museum of Latin American Art down in Long Beach which felt far to me, as I’ve fallen out of the habit of going to these events. I should mention that I was rewarded for venturing out as I was one of a handful of people who won a free palm-sized HD video camera compliments of Google, one of the sponsors of the event. It looks like an iPod with a lens mounted flush on one of its sides and a flip out usb plug. This one.

These were two of my favorite presentations at BIL.

The first talk of the conference set the bar pretty high: it was a Powerpoint presentation with video by Steve Jurvetson about his enthusiasm for model rocketry. His profile on Wikipedia reads:

He was a Venture Capitalist (VC) investor in Hotmail, Interwoven, and Kana. He also led the firm’s investments in Tradex and Cyras (acquired by Ariba and Ciena, respectively). Current Board seats include NeoPhotonics, SpaceX, Synthetic Genomics, Tesla Motors and Wowd.
…
At Stanford University, Jurvetson finished his degree in electrical engineering in 2.5 years and graduated #1 in his class. He then earned an M.S. in electrical engineering and an M.B.A., also from Stanford.

Steve Jurvetson has a blog at http://jurvetson.blogspot.com

My other favorite was the presentation by Brad Templeton, “Before the Robot Cars.” On the BIL website he says:

At BIL 2008 I introduced the future of robotic cars. But they’re still a decade away. This talk will focus on technologies that are on the near term horizon, or even available now. It will also outline new thinking in the design of transportation and energy based on modern computer technology that can be used while the people are still driving. I’ll show videos of cars today avoiding pedestrians and valet parking themselves, and simulations of intersections without stoplights taking us down the path to automatic transportation.

His bio on the BIL site hints at the big impact he (and the groups he’s represented) has had on shaping the nature of the internet, especially by fighting the good fight for our personal freedoms. In some ways, I think of the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a better purer version of the ACLU:

Brad Templeton has just completed a 10 year term as Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading civil rights defender in cyberspace. He is also on the boards of the Foresight Institute and BitTorrent Inc. He was founder of ClariNet.com, the internet’s first dot-com, rec.humor.funny and Looking Glass Software. He is also a panoramic photographer and Burning Man artist.

His photography is at www.templetons.com/brad/pano and his homepage is at http://www.templetons.com/brad.

The BIL website is at http://2010.bilconference.com

Unfortunately due to low energy and lack of time, I could only attend the LA Art Show for a few hours to grab this interview and have a quick look around on one of the days that this was here.

INTERVIEW:
My radio interview with Kim Martingdale (click here for his bio) and others is now up:

click here to listen

REVIEW:
My first stop was the live “graffiti” art in the entranceway. Three artists were simultaneously working on three large murals brought to the LA Art Show by the LA Art Machine Gallery curated by Bryson Strauss. World reknown artists El Mac and Retna collaborated on a monochromatic portrait of a Latina done in aerosol with text. Mear One was working on a deconstructed cityscape with LA’s Watts Towers in the background and a figure of a boy in the foreground with butterflies flying from his chest. Coffee was painting a cubist monochromatic piece.

Next I visited what was probably my favorite exhibit at the LA Art Show, a show called “Signs” (click here to read press release). Sundaram Tagore Gallery curated a grouping of Islamic artists. The paintings were heavily text-based because depictions of the figure are prohibited in that culture. What you have then is text used as a textural element in most of the pieces, text abstracted to symbols. Text sources could be anything from poetry to holy books. The alphabet and its forms was also emphasized.

I then stopped off at the Uruguay exhibit. This year’s LA Art show debuted their guest country program featuring Uruguay. Uruguay is the second smallest country in South America, but it boasts a healthy democratic government, high economic development with a high GDP per capita and the 47th highest quality of life in the world. It sits nestled between Brazil and Argentina and its art scene is world class. They did not have anyone English speaking at the booth so I was not able to interview them, but the artwork shown consisted of contemporary painting and installation work, with a video exhibit as well.

Sister Cities had an collection of artists work from sister cities of Los Angeles. Pete Sterns of London had a very calming color field piece which he rendered as both a richly pigmented painting and as a computer animation. Nori, an artist from Japan, had two paintings representative of “every city.” His work is heavily influenced by jazz.

The Luce Foundation, a photography incubator, curated the Group LA exhibit. The main video element was a series of slideshows from different artist of their neighborhoods.

Finally, I found myself at the cluster of Korean art galleries. My favorite Korean artist is Yong Deok Lee who is known for his concave sculptures. The images are carved into a flat plane.

(YouTube turned up a few examples which gives an idea of the visual illusion created of 3-dimensionality when the viewer walks around his pieces:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SaG271TqqE)

I was happy to see a new piece, an aerial view of a swimmer underwater.

PHOTOS:
I didn’t have much time to appreciate the artwork this year, but this is a small sampling:

[View with PicLens]

 

This was one of the drawings I liked.

When our teacher was not busy helping students and took some time to draw along with the class, it was immediately humbling, because he is that good. I need to surround myself with more sources of inspiration.

This years Festival of Books’ logo was illustrated by Eric Carle who wrote The Very Hungry Catepillar.

Someone forwarded this to me: Allen Salkin has a fascinating story in today’s NY Times (link) about high end pawnshops like Art Capital Group.  Annie Leibowitz has borrowed about  $15 milllion from them and for collateral, among other things, she has put up the rights to all of her photographs. ]]> http://christinepalma.com/blog/2009/02/pawning-the-rights-to-artwork/feed/ 0 http://christinepalma.com/blog/2009/02/my-favorite-pieces-from-14th-annual-la-art-show-at-the-la-convention-center-january-25/ http://christinepalma.com/blog/2009/02/my-favorite-pieces-from-14th-annual-la-art-show-at-the-la-convention-center-january-25/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:59:20 +0000 Christine Palma http://christinepalma.com/blog/?p=92 This photorealistic painting of a pile of The Wall Street Journal newspapers on a bookcase by Steve Mills and the concave intaglio-like sculpture by Yong Deok Lee were my overall favorites from the LA Art Show. Please scroll down for comments and other photos.

Steve Mills

(detail)

Steve Mills

Wall Street Journal 2

Oil on Aluminum Panel

42″ x 59″

The creamy paint treatment on aluminum panel intrigued me. Why use aluminum panel?

Ross Merrill, chief curator of conservation at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC, writes in American Artist:

The most stable painting panel is an aluminum panel, such as Dibond (made by Alcon), that consists of a polyethylene and aluminum-skin core. Dibond does not respond to moisture or temperature changes, is exceptionally rigid, and is lighter than plywood.

From Wikipedia on Photorealism:

As a full-fledged art movement, Photorealism evolved from Pop Art^[1][2] and as a counter to Abstract Expressionism^[3][4] as well as Minimalist art movements^{[5][6][7] [8]} in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States.^[9] It is also sometimes labeled as Super-Realism, New Realism, Sharp Focus Realism, or Hyper-Realism.^[10] The Photorealist genre is predominately made up of painters. 

Photorealist painting cannot exist without the photograph. In Photorealism, change and movement must be frozen in time which must then be accurately represented by the artist.^[14] Photorealists gather their imagery and information with the camera and photograph. Once the photograph is developed (usually onto a photographic slide) the artist will systematically transfer the image from the photographic slide onto canvases. This is done by either projecting the slide or grid techniques.^[15] The resulting images are often direct copies of the original photograph but are usually larger than the original photograph or slide. This results in the photorealist style being tight and precise, often with an emphasis on imagery that requires a high level of technical prowess and virtuosity to simulate, such as reflections in specular surfaces and the geometric rigor of man-made environs.^[16]

20th century photorealism can be contrasted with the similarly literal style found in trompe l’oeil paintings of the 19th century. However, trompe l’oeil paintings tended to be carefully designed, very shallow-space still-lifes, employing illusionistic devices such as the use of shadows to cause small objects to appear to exist above the surface of the painting. (Trompe l’oeil literally means “fool the eye.”) The photorealism movement moved beyond this illusionism to tackle deeper spatial representations (e.g. urban landscapes) and took on much more varied and dynamic subject matter.

Yong Deok Lee

Yong Deok Lee
Untitled
Sculpture

This triptych was untitled. Yong Deok Lee is a Korean artist known for his concave sculptures. The images are carved into a flat plane.

YouTube turned up a few examples which gives an idea of the visual illusion created of 3-dimensionality when the viewer walks around his pieces:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SaG271TqqE

These remind me of ancient Roman intaglio jewelry:

http://www.ancienttouch.com/roman-intaglios-cameos.htm

Other interesting pieces:

Jordan Eagles

New Blood

I asked and they said it’s made from real cow blood.

Damien Hirst

Cathedral: Orvieto

Diamond Dust and Silk screen with Glazes

42 1/4″ x 42 1/4″

$38,000

Real butterflies?

William B. Hoyt

Hours with Walter Evans, 2005

Oil on Canvas

32″ x 48″

$45,000

William B. Hoyt

Island Kitchen, 2008

Oil on Canvas

30″ x 32″

$35,000

William B. Hoyt

Aranciata, 2008

Oil on Canvas

24″ x 29″

$25,000

Chris Shelby, CGU

Reflections, 2008

Pastel on Paper

50″ x 30″

This was from the student gallery.

These were my favorite prints from Photo LA held at the Barker Hanger at the Santa Monica Airport:

Soo Kim
Midnight Reyjavik, 2008?
Hand-cut C-print
25 x 25 ” (63.5 x 63.5 cm)

What is the story behind Soo Kim’s Midnight Reyjavik photo series? The title of the photograph above implies that it was taken at midnight on the longest brightest day when midnight is almost indistinguishable from noon. In fact, the shadows the structures cast are short. Soo Kim’s exacto knife cuts mainly in the highlight areas where you might expect white giving the image a blown out feel. She also turns architecture into lacey membranes inviting the audience to peer into the hive that is this city.

Some interesting facts from Wikipedia for Reykjavik, Iceland:

•Its location, only slightly south of the Arctic Circle, receives only four hours of daylight on the shortest day in the depth of winter; during the summer the nights are almost as bright as the days.

•Steam from hot springs in the region is supposed to have inspired Reykjavík’s name, as Reykjavík loosely translates to “Smokey Bay”.

•Most houses in Reykjavík use the geothermal heating system. It is the largest system of this kind in the world.

•The city has fostered some world famous talents in recent years, such as singers like Björk and Oddur Sigurjónsson and bands Múm and Sigur Rós.

Rob MacInnis
Fresh Faces 2

The worse thing happened last week: My 15-year old dog Tommy died suddenly on January 2nd. He taught me to be sensitive to the animal spirit. We had been through so much together. I was still raw from this when I attended Photo LA. I was immediately drawn into Rob MacInnis’ work.

When you first encounter Rob MacInnis’ Farm Families series in the mural size, you are struck with a sense of the unhomely or uncanny. (Especially Fresh Faces I) Is it a trick, my friend asked, Are these animals alive or dead, How do they stand so still. In this particular “family portrait” (above) we have rare animals, including pygmy goats and miniature horses. I was also struck by the popularity of this print; I counted nine red dots next to the photo which means nine buyers.

If this print calls out to you, check out Rob MacInnis’ fascinating website – http://www.robmacinnis.com where you can see his body of animal portraiture work, as well as, watch a very good documentary on his work process. I would love to have this print.

The press release notes:

MacInnis’ work focuses on the idea of the creation of identity within the photographic image. By foregrounding our innate compassion of animals, MacInnis explores the correlation between the reifying process of animal consumption and the fashion world’s depiction of the body.

MacInnis’ uses animals as portrait subjects, drawing parallels between the idealization of the human form in contemporary fashion photography and the subjugation of animals by humans.

The artist gives the animals an arena for self-expression as well as humiliation. His photographs reverse the traditional roles of animals in western society, setting them to a level on par with humans. The artist’s objective is to portray an alternative world where animals are not our possessions, but individuals whom we subject to the same idealization as we would a contemporary fashion model.

Rob MacInnis’ portraits demand immediate emotional reaction, drawing on the raw connection between viewer and subject and exposing the instinctive, compassionate union of species.