The winter edition of Gallery Night in Milwaukee took place Friday and Saturday this past weekend. I took the A.V. Club's lead on a couple of art exploits seen on Friday night, but ended up off the the trod path and left one destination on my to do list.
The Green Gallery is somewhere I've wanted to check out for a while. I heard of this space a couple of years ago, recognizing the name of creative mind Michelle Grabner in a promotional piece for the Green Gallery's second installation Silverpoint Drawings with Guest Mobile. Keeping with Milwaukee's good fortune, several classes of privileged but angsty local teenagers (myself included, more angsty than privileged), among others I'm sure, felt edified by her instruction and her work.
A Person of Color: a mostly orange exhibition is currently on display at the Green Gallery. It features a host of artists, mostly spry, hip, and trained with their works of mixed mediums staking out floor space and wall art hung low to make you exert some effort to take a gander. Aggressively, which I guess reflects the color swatches of orange employed here, several of the current pieces take deliberate stabs at your sensibilities in overtly self-indulgent to fast approaching borderline cliche ways (making it quite possible that cliche is the new cool this spring).
At Cuvee Black Art made a seldom witnessed mainstream appearance in Milwaukee, expressed through several collages, paintings, and illustrations authored by Evelyn Patricia Terry, a founder of Milwaukee's art presence. Best known for her paintings and printmaking, Terry's Gallery Night work included a series of illustrations carrying wisdom laden captions. Words offered ranged from the philosophical "Opposites attract, but likes stay together" to the practical "I have much work to do". The didactic intent of the Black Arts legacy resonated the gathering.
Art showed up in musical form at Bayview's Sugar Maple as the cooperative Milwaukee Area Composers and Artists (MAC&A) filled the sound stage with a couple Master's thesis jazz compositions featuring brass favorites tenor and baritone saxophone, trumpet, and lesser seen instrument the marimba. Instigated by local musician Steve Gallum, the set featured work by composition peers Blake Manning, and Mike Neumeyer. Ears out for these guys. Their scoring of original works with pen on parchment tinted paper and impromptu is well done; neither often shared with the public in an informal setting, both suitably hosted by Sugar Maple's indy jazz inspired confines.
Speaking of jazz, a free benefit (donations accepted) for the legendary Berkeley Fudge will take place at 7:30p this Friday January 28, 2011, at The Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. Berkeley recently suffered a health setback and the arts community is doing their part to recognize his contributions to the Milwaukee scene. Berkeley resident musician at the Jazz Estate, he was on the bill in the summer 2009 and I missed him unfortunately.
I missed out on Studio 420b exhibitions that featured artists Leslie Peckham, Lindsey Marx, Steven Ruiz, Fred Kames and several others. Judging from previous work, this camp of artist should also be added to your watch list.
Gallery Night in Milwaukee comes around again with spring this time, April 15 and 16th 2011.
Showing posts with label gallery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gallery. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Monday, July 27, 2009
Gallery Night Milwaukee: Endangered Concern
All around Milwaukee you can see physical changes taking place, clean-cut mixed-use developments, fragrant plantings in the boulevards. The streets are even getting paved after ten years of neglect. Some of that same rejuvenating energy is being released on the social scene too. Gallery Night is not a new invention and it's nice to see creative outlets taking root in Milwaukee.
One of my favorite displays of the night hung not from a wall of Art Asia, but from the shoulder of a stern-looking fellow who looked like a typical renegade with a Harley parked outside. Stereotypes in place, alligator would be expected to cover his feet. Instead one rested gently cradled on his forearm and bicep. Everyone has to have a cause.
The caretaker of the endangered Chinese Alligator had the kind of leeriness emitting from those that think satellite surveillance is being taken of them. Apparently he has been battling the animal rights activist, the extreme ones that do not believe anyone should own pets (especially if they are alligators). Those pretentious fun-suckers! Personally, I am all for docile 45 lbs, 18 year old alligators chilling on Gallery Night with their masters. Wait a minute... this must be one of only several handfuls of Chinese alligators left on the planet.
Everything was red. Not Commy red but deep visceral blood red. This relic of a beast fit in perfectly with the ambiance of Art Asia, a trading post of Chinese gifts, furniture, and artifacts. Minus the crowd hovering around reptilian and owner, you may not have noticed the gator's presence. It was a serene creature, an expression opposite to the one given by the typical bewitching "alligator smile". The constant glance of this creature lacked menace unlike its relatives, looking almost relieved to feel protected by and outside force other than it's own wild instinct. I am usually harsh on exotic animal owners, but I think I can let this one slide. My super-cool friend Miranda and I both ended up donating 5 bucks to the cause.
Gallery Night is a quarterly event, which I think would make the next one scheduled for late November.
One of my favorite displays of the night hung not from a wall of Art Asia, but from the shoulder of a stern-looking fellow who looked like a typical renegade with a Harley parked outside. Stereotypes in place, alligator would be expected to cover his feet. Instead one rested gently cradled on his forearm and bicep. Everyone has to have a cause.The caretaker of the endangered Chinese Alligator had the kind of leeriness emitting from those that think satellite surveillance is being taken of them. Apparently he has been battling the animal rights activist, the extreme ones that do not believe anyone should own pets (especially if they are alligators). Those pretentious fun-suckers! Personally, I am all for docile 45 lbs, 18 year old alligators chilling on Gallery Night with their masters. Wait a minute... this must be one of only several handfuls of Chinese alligators left on the planet.
Everything was red. Not Commy red but deep visceral blood red. This relic of a beast fit in perfectly with the ambiance of Art Asia, a trading post of Chinese gifts, furniture, and artifacts. Minus the crowd hovering around reptilian and owner, you may not have noticed the gator's presence. It was a serene creature, an expression opposite to the one given by the typical bewitching "alligator smile". The constant glance of this creature lacked menace unlike its relatives, looking almost relieved to feel protected by and outside force other than it's own wild instinct. I am usually harsh on exotic animal owners, but I think I can let this one slide. My super-cool friend Miranda and I both ended up donating 5 bucks to the cause.Gallery Night is a quarterly event, which I think would make the next one scheduled for late November.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Non-Obvious takes on Big History through Little Eyes
In plain view under a curved lamppost with a conical fixture beaming down light, sits an endomorphic body-type mannequin postured upright on a wooden chair at the far end of a 20-foot table; it ominously presides over the diorama scenes intermittently placed over the balance of the wooden surface. The main action of Waldek Dynerman’s Train Project lives here. Curious on lookers begin to meander towards this area like cautious deer fawn at dusk, visibility is low. Me being one of them I decide to keep my distance, the diminutive artistic elements could be sensitive to clumsy eyes or just in case that mannequin decides to stand up I will have a clear path to the exit.
Not having read the description of this event, to my recollection, I am beginning to ask myself why I came. It's all so random, even creepy. I have seen it before, weird for weird's sake. I'm from the seminal days of Riddlin prescriptions: ahem, some of us wore mental disturbance like a badge not knowing you could get labeled for it.
A man comes forth subtly, gets the group's attention with a well placed 'auuh...' and reluctantly grants us permission to sit on the floor if we preferred, or otherwise make ourselves comfortable. The gentleman wears a conservative zip-neck sweater that covers an Oxford, and aside from a slightly disheveled bush of hair is markedly non-descriptive; maybe he is the host. Expecting Marilyn Manson incarnate to ascend from the concrete floor below, the gentleman, Dynerman to my chagrin, initiates his talk.
Days of Grace
Born 6 years after the end of WWII to a Polish-Jewish father and Christian mother, Dynerman begins recounting the time period of his childhood in post-war Poland and France. "A lot of what we saw on television and in movies was about the war," as if to understate a great preoccupation of the times, "we used the German words we heard when we played our games." Sometimes Dynerman was a German soldier exhorting a courageous Pole playmate that defied the order to 'halt'. Dynerman's father was a holocaust survivor, doing so with Dynerman's grandparents by living 18 months without leaving a family friend's 10 X 10 cellar room. When the ordeal ended, he recounts that his father found none remaining from his former life and his father eventually moved to Paris where he met his mother before moving to Israel.
The picture slowly comes together during Dynerman’s discussion. The installation features multiple sculptures and miscellaneous tangible elements amply spaced on the walls, floor and on hand-made pedestals. Scanning the installation, heads, malformed torsos and eerily dismembered doll limbs slowly come to focus in the midst of small wooden shelters and platforms. However, small human figurines of laymen, by standers, and soldiers are the stars of this exhibit.
One figurine stands roughly two inches tall and is dwarfed by two quarter pieces of cinder block fused together, to form what looks like a giant high modern building on a European street corner. The figurine lonesomely steps onto a mock curb illuminated by a scaled-down model street lamp. Half-way across the room in the shadow cast behind the large endomorphic mannequin , a crowd of peach colored figurines bunches up when approached by an on coming hoard of evergreen tinted army soldiers with ranks that reach around to the lateral side of the mannequin's wooden throne.
Is any one watching? Certainly not the mannequin who is content to glare forward, certainly not the fortunate peach figurines that are watching the small LCD displays flickering pretty colors in cozy wood enclosures. He reveals that this work's subject matter is the holocaust, among other genocides as they have occurred as recently as this year.
Artist in Our Minds
A painter by trade and training Dynerman decided to deviate from his master craft into sculpture, to satisfy his want to delve into a medium with which he was always fascinated. "I always found mannequins interesting," he utters. While reflecting on his decision not to incorporate several large paintings into to the piece, he wonders into a thought about how he preferred to have a stark white background for the exhibit so that the viewer could "wash their eyes" and refresh their minds before continuing to different parts of the gallery.
His philosophy is consistent and modest. Dynerman's father and his father before him were tin craftsmen. In ode to his memories, fashioned metal street lights in various scaled-states frequently dot the dusky hall punctuating the tiny dramatic scenes in perpetual suspense. His conversation trickles English with an endearing thick native Polish-speaking accent, "I grew up around a shop so I always liked building things... the things you see here, the pedestals, the table.... are all built by hand...and when I build them I craft them to the extent that they serve the purpose that they are built for and not more." He’s right staining the woodwork would look contrived.
There is quite a bit of irony here and the use of scale is apparent in the exhibition. Located on the table opposite the seat-perched mannequin is a 3-foot-tall tin model of the Eiffel tower flanked by miniature coniferous trees. Dynerman shares that his father retained his love for Paris, even while in Israel, and constructed the model of the famous structure as a gift to Dynerman. To use the iconic landmark often revered for its invocation of love and freedom as a backdrop for his mini-theatre, is a brilliant twist on reality. "I have no sensible response," he offers when I asked if there is a deeper meaning to the use of scale in his art. "I think that somehow the viewer may have more empathy [for small doll-like figures]," his tone is somewhat playful when making this remark as if he is omitting something from a secret recipe. I think he has discovered a way to mock human cognition into choosing its own adventure instead of spoon-feeding perceptions.
For Dynerman, by his own admission, simply "painting death" seemed inappropriate. Lucky for us we are able to see Dynerman's motion picture snap-shot of the human condition projected on the adjacent wall, from the point of view of a remote-camera-equipped model train scurrying on the table behind the omnipotent mannequin, alongside the madness of the evergreen aggressors converging on innocent peach crowds, turning with the track to a straight away with a small mirror positioned like a billboard, capturing the face of the mannequin in the reflection, then futilely hustling past a neon blue filament-lit carousel that upon closer examination is housing a series of severed doll feet and legs protruding from the inner cylinder of the amusement park favorite, only to endlessly repeat the circuit as if to take the spectator on a whimsical reoccurring nightmare. If you are paying attention, it is surreal. Train Project is on display at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Union Gallery from January 26 - February 27, 2009.
Not having read the description of this event, to my recollection, I am beginning to ask myself why I came. It's all so random, even creepy. I have seen it before, weird for weird's sake. I'm from the seminal days of Riddlin prescriptions: ahem, some of us wore mental disturbance like a badge not knowing you could get labeled for it.
A man comes forth subtly, gets the group's attention with a well placed 'auuh...' and reluctantly grants us permission to sit on the floor if we preferred, or otherwise make ourselves comfortable. The gentleman wears a conservative zip-neck sweater that covers an Oxford, and aside from a slightly disheveled bush of hair is markedly non-descriptive; maybe he is the host. Expecting Marilyn Manson incarnate to ascend from the concrete floor below, the gentleman, Dynerman to my chagrin, initiates his talk.
Days of Grace
Born 6 years after the end of WWII to a Polish-Jewish father and Christian mother, Dynerman begins recounting the time period of his childhood in post-war Poland and France. "A lot of what we saw on television and in movies was about the war," as if to understate a great preoccupation of the times, "we used the German words we heard when we played our games." Sometimes Dynerman was a German soldier exhorting a courageous Pole playmate that defied the order to 'halt'. Dynerman's father was a holocaust survivor, doing so with Dynerman's grandparents by living 18 months without leaving a family friend's 10 X 10 cellar room. When the ordeal ended, he recounts that his father found none remaining from his former life and his father eventually moved to Paris where he met his mother before moving to Israel.
The picture slowly comes together during Dynerman’s discussion. The installation features multiple sculptures and miscellaneous tangible elements amply spaced on the walls, floor and on hand-made pedestals. Scanning the installation, heads, malformed torsos and eerily dismembered doll limbs slowly come to focus in the midst of small wooden shelters and platforms. However, small human figurines of laymen, by standers, and soldiers are the stars of this exhibit.
One figurine stands roughly two inches tall and is dwarfed by two quarter pieces of cinder block fused together, to form what looks like a giant high modern building on a European street corner. The figurine lonesomely steps onto a mock curb illuminated by a scaled-down model street lamp. Half-way across the room in the shadow cast behind the large endomorphic mannequin , a crowd of peach colored figurines bunches up when approached by an on coming hoard of evergreen tinted army soldiers with ranks that reach around to the lateral side of the mannequin's wooden throne.
Is any one watching? Certainly not the mannequin who is content to glare forward, certainly not the fortunate peach figurines that are watching the small LCD displays flickering pretty colors in cozy wood enclosures. He reveals that this work's subject matter is the holocaust, among other genocides as they have occurred as recently as this year.
Artist in Our Minds
A painter by trade and training Dynerman decided to deviate from his master craft into sculpture, to satisfy his want to delve into a medium with which he was always fascinated. "I always found mannequins interesting," he utters. While reflecting on his decision not to incorporate several large paintings into to the piece, he wonders into a thought about how he preferred to have a stark white background for the exhibit so that the viewer could "wash their eyes" and refresh their minds before continuing to different parts of the gallery.
His philosophy is consistent and modest. Dynerman's father and his father before him were tin craftsmen. In ode to his memories, fashioned metal street lights in various scaled-states frequently dot the dusky hall punctuating the tiny dramatic scenes in perpetual suspense. His conversation trickles English with an endearing thick native Polish-speaking accent, "I grew up around a shop so I always liked building things... the things you see here, the pedestals, the table.... are all built by hand...and when I build them I craft them to the extent that they serve the purpose that they are built for and not more." He’s right staining the woodwork would look contrived.
There is quite a bit of irony here and the use of scale is apparent in the exhibition. Located on the table opposite the seat-perched mannequin is a 3-foot-tall tin model of the Eiffel tower flanked by miniature coniferous trees. Dynerman shares that his father retained his love for Paris, even while in Israel, and constructed the model of the famous structure as a gift to Dynerman. To use the iconic landmark often revered for its invocation of love and freedom as a backdrop for his mini-theatre, is a brilliant twist on reality. "I have no sensible response," he offers when I asked if there is a deeper meaning to the use of scale in his art. "I think that somehow the viewer may have more empathy [for small doll-like figures]," his tone is somewhat playful when making this remark as if he is omitting something from a secret recipe. I think he has discovered a way to mock human cognition into choosing its own adventure instead of spoon-feeding perceptions.
For Dynerman, by his own admission, simply "painting death" seemed inappropriate. Lucky for us we are able to see Dynerman's motion picture snap-shot of the human condition projected on the adjacent wall, from the point of view of a remote-camera-equipped model train scurrying on the table behind the omnipotent mannequin, alongside the madness of the evergreen aggressors converging on innocent peach crowds, turning with the track to a straight away with a small mirror positioned like a billboard, capturing the face of the mannequin in the reflection, then futilely hustling past a neon blue filament-lit carousel that upon closer examination is housing a series of severed doll feet and legs protruding from the inner cylinder of the amusement park favorite, only to endlessly repeat the circuit as if to take the spectator on a whimsical reoccurring nightmare. If you are paying attention, it is surreal. Train Project is on display at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Union Gallery from January 26 - February 27, 2009.
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