Unbranded by Hank Willis Thomas

I always get a thrill from the elevator ride up to Lisa Dent's fourth floor gallery overlooking Mission Street. The elevator must be as old as the building. It's the type that has an exterior door and a sliding interior cage, both of which are operated manually. Alarmingly there is a stone tile floor in the elevator—something you might see in a high-end residential bathroom. Visual contradiction aside, "why," I wonder, "permanently increase the burden on this antique machine?" I imagine the cables, pulleys and motor straining under the weight of this hulking old car, plus the stone tile and me, and wonder if it will hold.

I was having this thought on my way up to see the equally weighty work of Hank Willis Thomas. His new series of photographs, "Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America," focuses on black stereotypes in advertising over the past few decades. The photographs are actually photographs of photographs—images taken from advertisements depicting blacks engaged in various activities. The corporate logos, tag lines and ad copy have been removed, leaving only the telltale sign of enlarged halftone dots (these can only be seen upon closer inspection) and some truly strange images. Freshly untethered from their utilitarian function of selling products even the most familiar of these images invites new meanings.

"Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son in Law" Image Courtesy Lisa Dent Gallery

For those who follow contemporary art the strategy of "rephotographing" advertising images from magazines is nothing new. Richard Prince's rephotographed Marlboro ads from the 1980's are perhaps the most well known example. But Willis Thomas' use of this strategy is more politically overt and arguably less aesthetically motivated. That said, the work in "Unbranded" is more ambiguous than Willis Thomas' past work—not as message driven as his "Branded" series from 2004 nor as obviously personal as the film, "Winter in America," that he made with collaborator Kambui Olujimi in 2005 (also currently on view at Lisa Dent and alone worth the trip).

As I walked around the gallery I was alternately amused, offended, and dismayed by what I saw. In trying to read the meanings embedded in the images my own cultural assumptions were being brought into play. This sort of subjectivity is going on all the time but it became more apparent to me here. I found myself searching for points of overlap—places where my own experiences (as a white man) converged with black culture. This is, I know, a misleading exercise, but I do it all the time, in all sorts of social situations, in an effort to find commonalities. Well intentioned or not, this makes it all too easy to side step individuals. For instance, there are two images in the "Unbranded" series that seem totally benign to me—not at all evocative of the black stereotypes I'm aware of. One features a boy making a chalk drawing on asphalt and the other a group of boys jumping into a river. I thought, "These images remind me of my childhood. What could possibly be offensive about them?" Later my girlfriend reminded me, I don't get to decide what is and what is not perceived as a stereotype. How true.


"Exxon: Black Street Art" Image Courtesy Lisa Dent Gallery

It's not to say that I believe there is a correct interpretation of these images. Each viewer will likely have his or her own take, but Willis Thomas does have an agenda. With the removal of the original text from the ads he has also added his own in the form of provocative titles. The two for the images mentioned above are "Exxon: Black Street Art" and "Don't Let Them Catch You," respectively. While I find these to be somewhat heavy-handed and manipulative they are certainly not more so than the original ads. Speaking of his past work Willis Thomas has said "...my work leans toward the didactic side of the spectrum of art." And "What this work is trying to do is just start conversations."* With “Unbranded” Willis Thomas continues to instigate conversation around a subject that can easily become polarized.

Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America will be on view through April 8th at Lisa Dent Gallery ( http://www.lisadent.com ).

*Quotes from "The AI Interview: Hank Willis Thomas" http://www.artinfo.com/News/Article.aspx?a=9148&c=296

Overhung II: Hungover

Oakland's Boontling Gallery has found a niche in the signature staging: a year old and already having annuals, as in the salon styled open entry art exhibition Overhung, of which has shown great popularity among local artists and audience.

This month, gallerists Weisberg and Simpson delivered part two of this annual exhibition, Overhung II: Hungover, which was no small feat due to space constraints and the quickly growing reputation of Boontling Gallery as a destination where emerging artists meet the intersection of the safe (as in the unpretentious stepping stone) and the transition onward.

Upon the immediate awe of this intriguingly cautious and cleverly hung show, Overhung works best as an art historical study: one look at the small Boontling Gallery's interior transformed into a salon styled maison d'art and one finds themselves immediately in the middle of a strange reflection regarding the familiarity and roots in the aesthetics of Bay Area art generation after generation of artists. The complexity of Overhung is found then almost exclusively in its familiarity and in the express salvation that any prior claims to a single Bay Area style or any notions of such resemblances were, in fact, a chance to market something that was not nearly as passing or isolated as was made to seem.

Overhung exceeds in space design, exposure opportunity for over 100 artists (absolutely amazing navigation of space), but not in any grand standing idea of resurrecting the salon style as a standard. Weisberg and Simpson managed to take a dull, seemingly art school topic and turn it into something far from the expected. For the intensive labor and time included in staging a show of this type, (managing nearly 300 works and dealing with close to that in sheer number of artists involved), one could possibly overlook the practice of charging emerging Bay Area artists five dollars to show in a gallery that is still emerging itself.

Though the annual Overhung exhibition provides much needed exposure for Bay Area artists, Boontling is not a showcase gallery but is exceptionally smart as a staging ground for emerging artists in the Bay Area. The ultra casual, make shift environment of Boontling Gallery lends itself to a certain naturalism in terms of the artists and art that are attracted to this venue, making an exhibition like Overhung invaluable both as a segment or as a whole.

Repetition - Artur Żmijewski

The Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) cannot be repeated. However, contemporary artist Artur Żmijewski does not have the same restrictions as a social psychologist on his research-based art project Repetition (2005). And so we observe how an artist can enter the back door and avoid ethical considerations in order to open up for us the limits of what art can and cannot do. With Repetition, Zmijewski aims to repeat the basic construct of that landmark research experiment, and therefore test its potential for successful repetition. Zmijewski's half-hour film depicts how he, like my father, social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, created a temporary mock prison in which his research team documented the behavior of a group of men randomly assigned the role of prisoner or guard. The Stanford Prison Experiment was terminated early because of the guards' abuse of their power and the prisoners' mental duress. In Repetition, the participants fear how the situation will change their behavior and choose to end the 'experiment' before it escalates further.

The temptation to recreate the drama of this infamous experiment through media reenactments predates Repetition, albeit in the realm of entertainment media, not the art world. The Stanford Prison Experiment has been the subject of countless news features, either as a story in its own right, or revived in relation to real world examples of the institutional abuse of power. Every so often, the Stanford Prison Experiment receives television and cinematic renditions exploring the possibility of alternate endings, notably the German feature-length film Das Experiment (2001), the British reality television series The Experiment (2003), and now an upcoming Hollywood drama. The celebrity of the original serves the celebrity of these films. Zmijewski chose his target wisely.

Repetition follows on the heels of the most recent explosion of citations of the Stanford Prison Experiment: the worldwide news coverage of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. The visual parallels in the imagery of prisoner humiliation are immediately striking. The disturbing visual documentation of the Stanford Prison Experiment is part of what it offers Zmijewski, an artist attracted to and regularly employing intense physical imagery, such as amputees and colliding naked bodies in his photography and films. The analogy to Abu Ghraib during the controversy went beyond the visual similarities. The study was used to question whether this atrocity should be considered as the isolated, deviant behavior of a group of prison guards, or a product endemic to the military prison situation and its political governance. The Stanford Prison Experiment asks us to consider the role of the situation in shaping human behavior, instead of attributing abusive actions only to individual disposition. It has been a powerful tool for understanding the dynamics of authority, the role of deindividuation, and the diffusion of responsibility. As studies alone, the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) and its frequent comparison, the Milgram Experiment [Obedience to Authority Study] (1963), are both essentially time capsules in the history of social psychology. Both remain difficult to reproduce and are no longer able to be granted approval to be reproduced by the Human Subjects Committee.

Berek (The Game of Tag) (1999), a previous video by Zmijewski shown at the Wattis Institute also centers on creating a psychologically difficult situation based on a historical referent. Zmijewski organized a group of men to run naked inside of a former Nazi gas chamber. While I initially viewed Zmijewski's practice as drawn to darkness, it also tends to gravitate towards unexpected light. Momentary humor and eroticism can be found in the otherwise chilling and cathartic situation of Berek, and negotiation and camaraderie appear amidst the emotional tension of the mock prison. Zmijewski foreshadowed his lead-in to Repetition in an interview, "instead of a tragedy, we are seeing a childish, innocent game. It almost resembles a clinical situation in psychological therapy."

The work solely focuses on being a simulation of a simulation, and not a commentary on the prison industry at large, nor a replication of the Stanford Prison Experiment's effects on prison reform. The conclusive message that mock prisoners and guards will peacefully cooperate bears even less of a relationship to the harsh realities of real prisoners and guards than the Stanford Prison Experiment did. If I must find a theoretical application, the film demonstrates the power of observation in effecting behavior: the role of subjects who are aware of being observed by the camera. The project also emphasizes the importance of video footage in narrating the events and explaining methodology. Interestingly, Zimbardo and Milgram each collaborated on documentaries based on their filmic and photographic records. A contemporary of Repetition, Haron Farocki's film installation I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts (2000) exposes the daily conditions of life in a maximum security prison in California and its episodes of violence as documented by surveillance cameras. The footage functions as both evidence of the prison system's failures, as well as the institution's own record used to justify its disciplinary measures.

Emphasizing the slippage between past and present, between the event and how it is reprocessed through time-based media, is Repetition's shared strength with several videos investigating the concept of reenactment. Examples include recent work by Jeremy Deller and Pierre Huyghe. The title 'Repetition' should be qualified in that the artist, in avoiding making a nostalgic period piece, allowed for considerable differences between the art project and the original experiment. Such factors include inviting older, unemployed Polish men to participate in a movie, instead of college-age Americans to participate in a research experiment. With an art film, achieving exact replication seems beside the point. However, to my surprise at the panel in Timken Lecture Hall (CCA), the artist insists on that problematic comparison as proof to challenge the study's findings. In his effort to claim that his reenactment resulted in a positive ending, Zmijewski turns a blind eye to the unethical features of his own construct. While adhering to certain protocols and missing others like providing debriefing or counseling, the project has potential negative implications for participants. The problem with collapsing the distinctions between art and social science is that the work's status as art is ultimately its legitimization. Using art to investigate these distinctions saves Zmijewski from being a pseudo-scientist.

The presentation of Repetition at the Wattis Institute is significant to the Bay Area, not only for it's proximity to Stanford University, but in its being situated within the California College of the Arts, an academic institution fully embracing the recent development of social practice in art. In contrast to Repetition, some recent examples of local artists mimicking professional practices, such as adopting the role of the therapist, are innocuous and often predicated on offering a service. However, Repetition raises challenging questions about the differences between art and life, the ethics involved in working with human subjects, and the extent to which artists will put others at risk in order to carry out an action.

Janet Cardiff's Video Tour

Cardiff's video-guided wandering through the halls and white walls of SFMoma alternates between Brechtian style detachment and hyper-suspension of disbelief. The result is a feeling of euphoria, but the work also leads to reflections on the mnemonics of time and space. It seems to accomplish this impossible conflation by splitting one's attention in two, part looking at the video camera screen and part looking at the physical world as it passes by. Comparing snapshots of attention can make traversing a spectator filled museum a harrowing endeavor. There are moments of reprieve from the people dodging, however, when Cardiff turns toward the out-of-bounds areas of the museum or stops the tour to soak in a soulful choral number. These well-tested emotion triggers are cribbed from her many audio tours, where Cardiff accumulated the necessary ingredients for a spine tingle or a warm sigh.

Some of the most notable features of the re-presentation of the video tour (the work has been available once before during the 010101 show at SFMoma in 2001) are the result of changes within the museum. Walking through the galleries and stairways during the tour one encounters the afterimage of de-installed artworks and a new arrangement of desks in the lobby. These ghostly overlays add to the destabilizing effects of the work and enrich its overall meaning.

Best to go on a Friday, because that's when the (tall dark) man behind the counter who will trade you a video camera for your drivers license is revealed as a double-agent, a character in the drama. I promise you when you go to return the video tour equipment 15 minutes later you won't look at him the same way.

A Brief History of Invisible Art

A Brief History of Invisible Art brings together a range of contemporary artists and highlights some rarely seen conceptual works of the 1960's and 1970's. In the viewer it arouses a heightened sense of awareness of the installation and representation of art within an exhibition space.

The invisible is hard to present without a reference. These references take the form of documentation of an event or process, while others are determined by  placement, proximity, space, sound, light, architecture, and other subtleties. All of these become crucial factors in determining an Invisible work's impact, especially when a good portion of the works are dependent on space for their success.  Ideally the show should be in a much larger room or works should have complete rooms to themselves. The invisible art is sometimes crowded visually or physically as with  Andy Warhol's pedestal crowding Michael Asher's "Column of Air."  

Asher's "Column of Air" worked great the first time I saw the piece over a month ago, but it didn't work the second time I visited. Sun-light entering the space raised the temperature of the room and caused the ceiling vents to blow lots of air more frequently, creating noise, completely canceling out the channeled air from the individual straws in Asher's Column. These room distractions and a clicking light near Friedman's "Cursed Space" didn't help either. My experience of Robert Barry's "Electromagnetic Energy Field" was also affected by these distractions and felt it needed to have a large blank space to itself. The wall description tag strangely became a point of reference and converted the waves into text.  

The back two works, James Lee Byars' "Ghost of James Lee Byars," a darkened room, and Art & Language's "Air-Conditioning," a room with AC,  are physically set back from the rest of the work in the show. A door between the two links them together and gives a fun house feel to them. As a friend of mine was walking through the darkened space, I could easily surprise him from the other entrance. Both works needed to be physically separated or blocked from the other.  The entrance to  "The Ghost of James Lee Byars" darkened space is too direct and needed a winding hallway to block out more of the outside light  as it is often done in the downstairs space. "Air-Conditioning" is good in the context of the show but needed to be set  amongst many to show room to room temperatures. 

Carsten Holler's "The Invisible," was once one of 7 items in his piece "New World Race", as seen in the catalogue, of a series of 3 dimensional items in different race lanes on either side of it.  In "New World Race" the #4 racer "Invisible" is given volume in reference to the height, width, and length of the other racing objects. Once Invisible is transplanted from that context, without the reference of the others, "Invisible's" volume diminishes and becomes a secondary fragment of the original. At CCA there is no reference to height or depth.  The scale of the flat works by Cattelan and Chung hang on either side of it as the shortened parking-spot/race-lane tape on the floor make "The Invisible" two-dimensional. 

Viewers like to touch works, but with Tom Friedman's "Cursed Space" any marks on the pedestal detract from its punch. Location can also distract, if it is too far out from the corner. This causes a viewers site of the cursed space above the pedestal to be broken up by the grey floor line. Friedman often limits a viewer's range of vision with his works. The viewer looks in, directly at, and looks down to keep other works out of the line of site. The close placement in proximity to a corner is intentional. I once heard Tom Friedman mention, that cursed space is always shipped with enough room for the actual cursed space above the pedestal. I have these visions of  the crew unpacking the work, setting it up, and packing it back up again with its cursed space.  

Jay Chung's invisible film, "Nothing Is More Practical than Idealism," involves a film crew who make a film without knowing there wasn't any film loaded in the camera. Its strength lies in its conflict. The piece is both cruel, manipulative, humorous, sad, and sympathetic. Documentation becomes the work's final form and is both essential and problematic. Do we believe or trust Chung's word of doing this? There are many methods of representation and documentation. The piece primarily exists in the action of making it, and is now relying on a mounted color copy/print out of a photo and text description of the event. Would a real photo changed anything? I don't know. 
 
Jonathan Monk 's Robert Barry translation is quirky and expands on the language of instruction pieces. Monk's gestures are often quick and sometimes have the feel of a one liner. In 1999 he had vinyl wall piece stating that he would be on the golden gate bridge on a specific day in 2009 or equivalent.  I often wonder if it will materialize. Will Jonathan not show up because he gets ill, has a death in the family, or has he already come to the end of his existence? The text creates an image in the viewer. We often do as we read, in that text becomes an image. 

Cattelan's "Denuncia" uses documentation within the real world to reference the invisible. An invisible sculpture stolen from the back seat of Cattelan's car, becomes real only through the printed word of a police report. Text on the wall would not have given it as much weight as the official police document. Gianni Motti follows a similar strategy, using news media. Motti often subverts media, and is strongest when he lets "the self's" ego dissolve and become a conduit to reflect larger social structures and political systems. In "Nothing by force," everything through the power of the mind"  Motti sends an invitation to the Columbian president to meet with him for an art piece. The president doesn't reply and Motti goes to the newspapers stating he will use telepathy, a form of non-verbal communication, to transmit information to the unpopular president to resign. This invisible communication doesn't become concrete until it is in print.  It's strange that the newspaper headlines presented by Motti are framed prints rather than the original newspapers.

Ultimately I am a real believer in the strategies and works of these artists and the means that Rugoff went to getting these works. The Yves Klein's sketches of Air Architecture that Rugoff has brought to the show and are reproduced in the catalogue are a rarity. These sketches are ideas of impossible possibility. They remind me of the text descriptions of Dario Robletto's early work in  I Want To Be A Part Of The Sum Of Your World Vol. I 1998. Pieces such as I Would Give You The Air You Breath in which the official dirtiest air in the world from Mexico City was collected in tanks and pumped into a gallery every hour through its ventilation system. In another "We'll Dance Our Way Out Of The Womb," Robletto goes through his neighborhood in San Antonio, Texas switching out all the porch bulbs with slightly brighter ones. I have never seen these works, but have only read about it in text form. Does the visual form lose in relation to the vivid description he presents? The text above is a reference, but does writing about this show's invisibility make it visible in writing about it?