Go West Artists

Some artists from our Go West exhibition have upcoming exhibits at some very prestigious museums!

Olga Koumoundouros has an exhibit at the Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Koumoundouros’ work explores the reality of the American Dream and what the “Dream” really means in our day. Using materials from industrial and domestic objects, Koumoundouros analyzes this topic in a unique and thought provoking way. You can read more about her exhibit here and view photos here.

Martha Rosler is contributing to an exhibit at the Singapore Art Museum. The exhibit, titled “Open House,” is part of the third “Singapore Biennale” at the museum.  The exhibition has four venues, and Rosler’s work will be shown at the Old Kallang Airport. The exhbition explores artistic processes and their links to the daily interactions between people, while using it as a means of communication for these daily interactions. You can read more about the exhbition here.

Mai-Thu Perret is exhibiting at the University of Michigain Museum of Art. Titled “An Ideal For Living,” the exhibition intertwines feminist politics with modernist abstraction. The installations have numerous genres: literarture, craft, design, and performance. You can read more about the exhibition here.

Andrea Geyer released a new book entitled meaning is what hides the instability of one’s postion. It is a photographic essay on that takes the reader through different photographs of various airports.  The theme of the book is that while international borders are viewed as country or state lines, airport transit areas are also borders. The book was released on February 15 by Sternberg Press. You can read more about it here.

Myranda Bair is exhibting at the Stolen and Escaped gallery.  Entitled …and this is goodbye, the exhibit is filled with beautiful water color painting of insects and amphibians inside of jars. The exhibit goes until April 8 at the Stolen and Escaped gallery on 77 East, 300 South, downstairs at Frosty Darling, . You can read about the exhbit here.

What are the artists of Contemporary Masters up to?

It looks like our Contemporary Masters artists have been keeping busy since the event! Erin & Nick Potter, along with Trent Call, have contributed to an exhibit at the Blonde Grizzly gallery! The exhibit is a “Utah Jazz, Theme Grouped Art Show,” featuring different mediums of art all with a common theme of the Utah Jazz.  The exhibit goes through March 11 at the Blonde Grizzly gallery, 15 East 400 South with hours Monday-Friday 11:00 am – 6:00 pm and Saturday 12:00 pm – 5:00 pm.

These artists aren’t the only ones who have been keeping busy since the exhibit! Jimmy Lucero, another of our Contemporary Masters artists, has brought art to the Viva Market on 900 West North Temple. Inside the market, you will find murals painted over the walls, each with a unique Latin – American theme.  Click here and here to see photos of Lucero’s murals and click here to read an article about them.

Margarita Cabrera

Margarita Cabrera, an artist from our fall 2010 Go West exhibition now has her own solo exhibition at the University of California-Riverside Sweeney Art Gallery! The exhibit presents three unique installations, entitled Pulse and Hammer, Mexico Abre la Boca, and Florezca Board of Directors: Performance. The projects serve as an investigation into the creation of fair working conditions and the protection of immigrant rights. Right up her alley, Cabrera is known for her Mexican folk art and US-Mexico relations pieces. Her exhibit will be housed at the University of California-Riverside Sweeney Art Gallery until April 2.  For more information, go to http://sweeney.ucr.edu/exh_topic.lasso.

Spy Hop Productions PitchNic youth wins Best Artist-Made Karaoke prize!

Congratulations to Spy Hop Productions PitchNic youth film class for winning the Best Artist-Made Karaoke prize!  Thank you to everyone who voted.

Sundance Film Festival New Frontier

The Art Center is pleased to be presenting Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier program, January 21-March 25, 2011.

Take 1, January 21-29, 2011

Exhibiting in Take 1 (these works will continue into Take 2):

Mark Boulos
All That is Solid Melts Into Air
United Kingdom/The Netherlands, 2008
15 min. Looped Two-Channel Video Installation
All That Is Solid Melts into Air powerfully juxtaposes two documentary videos, which are projected on opposite sides of the room—one depicting a Nigerian guerrilla group battling the colonization of petroleum resources on their land, and the other showing Chicago stock traders speculating on energy futures. The viewer, caught between the two videos, negotiates these two scenarios. As the films play, the stakes rise, and the intensity crescendos to an uproar.

Lynn Hershman Leeson
RAW/WAR
U.S.A., 2011
Transmedia Installation
Lynn Hershman Leeson employs transmedia storytelling to create a seminal history of the American Feminist Art Movement. Expanding the scope of her documentary !Women Art Revolution, RAW/WAR is a live, user-generated, community-curated video archive that documents the achievements of women artists. RAW/WAR reconceives history as an ongoing project of collaborative authorship where participants enter an interactive environment to upload new material and use Wii-powered virtual flashlights to illuminate invisible histories. RAW/WAR is created by Lynn Hershman Leeson in collaboration with Alexandra Chowaniec, Brian Chirls, and Gian Pablo Villamil.

Open Ended Group & Bill T. Jones
After Ghostcatching
U.S.A., 2010
13 Min. Looped Single-Channel, 3-D Video Projection
In Ghostcatching (1999), Bill T. Jones dances a series of original and haunting choreographic sequences accompanied by his own vocalizations as OpenEnded Group captures and portrays the movement using a customized technique. After Ghostcatching expands this work to incorporate 3-D technology, immersing audiences inside the dance and allowing them to experience this wondrous world of virtual movement with new depth.

James Franco
Three’s Company: The Drama
U.S.A., 2010
Mixed-Media Video Installation
Our prolonged and increasing exposure to dramatic entertainment shapes our imaginations, our aspirations, and the way we reference our memories and structure the time in our day. How does a television show have such an impact on our lives? In Three’s Company: The Drama, James Franco examines the classic TV show, breaking out individual elements of narrative, character, composition, and set design to reconstitute them and create an immersive experience of the story world through which we may consider how this definitive 1970s sitcom connects and organizes our memories.

Milk+Koblin (Aaron Koblin and Chris Milk)
The Johnny Cash Project and The Wilderness Downtown
U.S.A., 2010
3 min. and 5 min. Respectively
Participatory Mixed-Media Installation, Interactive Film
These two participatory, web-based projects are the result of the innovative collaboration between data-visualization artist Aaron Koblin and filmmaker Chris Milk. The Johnny Cash Project invites participants to create individual drawings that are woven into a collective, animated music-video tribute to Johnny Cash, set to his song “Ain’t No Grave.” The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive film that uses HTML 5 programming and Google Maps to create startlingly personal videos that accompany the Arcade Fire song “We Used to Wait.”

Events in Take 1

Preview: For Members of Salt Lake Art Center
Thursday, January 20, 6:00 PM
A special preview evening for members of Salt Lake Art Center with food, drinks, and a tour of the exhibition.

Discussion and Comic Book Signing: Lynne Hershman Leeson on RAW/WAR
Tuesday, January 25, 4:00 PM, signing at 5:00 PM
Lynn Hershman Leeson employs transmedia storytelling to create a seminal history of the American Feminist Art Movement. Expanding the scope of her documentary !Women Art Revolution,  RAW/WAR is a live, user-generated, community-curated video archive that documents the achievements of women artists. RAW/WAR reconceives history as an ongoing project of collaborative authorship where participants enter an interactive environment to upload new material and use Wii-powered virtual flashlights to illuminate invisible histories. RAW /WAR is created by Lynn Hershman Leeson in collaboration with Alexandra Chowaniec, Brian Chirls, and Gian Pablo Villamil.

Party: Celebrate New Frontier at the Art Center- Invitation Only
Tuesday, January 25, 8:00 PM
An evening with the artists of New Frontier. Food, drink, and fantastic music. Become a member or a Facebook fan for information on how to get an invite.

Performance: Myth and Infrastructure by Miwa Matreyek
Wednesday, January 26 at 7:00, 8:00, and 9:00 PM
Brimming with elevated visions of the ways the human body interacts with its surrounding environment, award-winning animator Miwa Matreyek integrates her own shadow into her whimsical, handcrafted, animated worlds. Her breathtakingly beautiful images mix with dreamy original music sung by Anna Oxygen to create glistening realms of enchantment. Myth and Infrastructure expands the scope of the connections to the environment as a whole.

Discussion: James Franco on Three’s Company: The Drama
Thursday, January 27 at 7:00 PM
Join us for an evening with the artist as Franco discusses his interpretation and re-presentation of the ultimate pop-culture happy show.

Take 2, February 4-March 25, 2011

Exhibiting in Take 2 (all Take 1 pieces, plus the following):

Takehisa Mashimo, Akio Kamisato and Satoshi Shibata
Moony
Japan, 2004
Interactive Digital Media Sculpture
This sublime and elegant work liberates the pixel entirely from its usual proscenium format and reshapes our encounter with the moving image by using steam as a screen and an interactive interface. Plunge your hands into the steam quickly to touch one of the virtual butterflies projected into the vapor, and it may fly away and disappear. But hold your hand in the steam for a while, and butterflies will flock around and play with you.

Avish Khebrehzadeh
Theater III + Edgar
U.S.A., 2010
7 min. Looped Video in a Mixed-Media Installation
Avish Khebrehzadeh’s works integrate painting and video to evoke fairy tales and dreamscapes, which are often inspired by her own dreams and memories. In Theater III + Edgar, three loosely linked vignettes unfold on a massive painting of a grand theatre with a proscenium screen. The film tells the story of three men carrying a pregnant woman past a village into the desert, where they leave her. She then disappears down a hole with the man who has been digging it. In the last act, the drama transgresses many boundaries, including the very screen where it is being presented.

Daniel Canogar
Hippocampus 2
Spain, 2010
Found-Object Multimedia Sculpture
By transforming electronic detritus into stunning sculptural installations, Daniel Canogar’s work externalizes the hidden structures of media technologies and explores the short lifespan of the hardware that encrusts and defines our modern lifestyles. Hippocampus 2 is constructed from tangles of electric-cable refuse. Light is projected onto the sculpture in such a way that it seems to free the energy stored in the electronic waste, awakening in it memories of the past.

Miwa Matreyek
Myth and Infrastructure
U.S.A., 2010
Video Documentation of 17 min. Multimedia Performance
Brimming with elevated visions of the ways the human body interacts with its surrounding environment, award-winning animator Miwa Matreyek integrates her own shadow into her whimsical, handcrafted, animated worlds. Her breathtakingly beautiful images mix with dreamy original music sung by Anna Oxygen to create glistening realms of enchantment. Dreaming of Lucid Living explores domestic spaces, large and small cities, and magical powers in dreamlike vignettes. Myth and Infrastructure expands the scope of the connections to the environment as a whole.

Squid Soup
Glowing Pathfinder Bugs
United Kingdom, 2009
Interactive Digital Media Installation
Pixels become independent creatures that move through time and space in this playful, interactive work. Glowing Pathfinder Bugs uses projection to visualize virtual bugs that participants can interact with in a real sandpit. The bugs are aware of their surroundings and respond to the shapes in the world around them. Viewers can pick bugs up, dig holes, and create mounds that the bugs must react to. If the bugs are squashed, they die, but if they live, they evolve to become butterflies.

Lance Weiler
Pandemic 1.0
U.S.A., ongoing
Transmedia Storytelling
A mysterious virus begins to affect the adults in a small rural town, and the youth soon find themselves cut off from civilization, fighting for their lives. How fast is the virus spreading? It is confirmed—the virus has hit Park City. Can you survive? Pandemic 1.0, a transmedia storytelling experience, unites film, mobile and online technologies, props, social gaming, and data visualization, enabling audiences to step into the shoes of the pandemic protagonists anytime during the day. Mission Control is the only way to learn where you stand in the face of the spreading pandemic.

Events in Take 2:

Panel: The Influence of Digital Media in Contemporary Dance
Friday, February 18, 7:00 pm
Inspired by the use of 3-D video and live-capture technology in Bill T. Jones and OpenEnded group’s After Ghostcatching installation (featured in New Frontier), this panel brings together the leaders of Utah’s contemporary dance community to debate the pros and cons of integrating dance and digital technology.  If one uses video with dance, does it risk being just another bad music video, or can technology be used to help redefine the medium of dance itself?

Performance: ELEPHANT, by Deke Weaver
Saturday, March 19, 6:00 pm and 8:30 pm
Artist discussion of the work will occur at 7:30pm
U.S.A., 2010, 75 min. Multimedia Performance
Inspired by the literary concept of the unreliable narrator and the motif of the medieval bestiary, which gave every living thing a spiritual purpose, Weaver’s lifelong project, The Unreliable Bestiary, is an ark of splendidly told stories about animals, our relationship to them, and the worlds they inhabit. ELEPHANT, the second chapter of the project, examines this endangered animal and its habitat. From burial rituals to subtle interpersonal communications to post-traumatic stress, Weaver offers striking insights into the remarkable similarities that unite elephant and human societies.

Panel: Transmedia Narrative
Thursday, March 24, 7:00 pm
Transmedia narrative is a form of information design that integrates multiple technology platforms – video, internet, text messaging, billboards, QR codes– to create ad campaigns, art projects, video games, and more. Scientists, software designers, and artists will discuss the evolution and application of this newest form of storytelling. Several of the artists in New Frontier employ transmedia narrative in their projects: Lynn Hershman Leeson, Aaron Koblin and Chris Milk, Lance Weiler, and Miwa Matreyek, and Deke Weaver.

Also at the Art Center:

Spy Hop Youth Media, Find Your Voice
January 21 – January 29
What does the world look like to teens in 2011?  How do they communicate? How do they focus their thoughts, their ideas, and their voice?  Spy Hop takes media engagement to the extreme in this interactive bandwidth experience. See how teens interpret the world around them and emerge with a wholly different perspective of what it feels like to be 16 in the 21^st century.

Looped: on loan from the UBS Art Collection
January 21 – March 25

Chieh-jen Chen
Factory, 2003
Video, 50 seconds
The videos of Chen Chieh-Jen provide a platform for the forgotten and disenfranchised of Taiwan’s industrial boom and subsequent bust.

Cao Fei
Whose Utopia, 2006
Video, 20 minutes
In Whose Utopia Cao records workers of the OSRAM China Lighting factory acting out their whimsical and endearing fantasies against the drab, impersonal, and oppressive backdrop of industrial machinery and anonymity.

Sawa Hiraki
Airliner, 2003
Video, 3 minutes
Sawa’s aircraft in Airliner are like rows of ducks flying relentlessly over the pages of a stuttering flick book, spotted, contained, framed and catalogued as part of a hypnotic spectacle.

Daniel Guzman
New York Groove, 2008
Video, 3 minutes
An unauthorized music video for Ace Frelley’s song New York Groove, Guzman relocates the song in Mexico City as he tracks a series of seemingly unwitting passersby as their movements are inspired by the beat of the music.

Lecture: October Follies, or Diagrams (Dis)covered in Desert Sands by Mohamed Sharif
Friday, January 28, 7:00 pm
Mohamed Sharif presents a series of reflections on post-monumentality in architecture beginning with speculations on maneuvers in the western theaters of operation in the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973; and ending with observations on contemporary manifestations of the post-monumental. Mohamed Sharif is the principal of Sharif Studio, a faculty member at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles and served as the President of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design.

Family Art Saturday: DIY Valentines
Saturday, February 12, 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Learn a variety of printmaking techniques to produce one-of-a-kind valentines that are sure to be loved.

Family Art Saturday: Set the Stage!
Saturday, March 11, 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Families create a miniature set design or installation while exploring lighting, characters and stories- all inside a box! Based on Multimedia Installations in Sundance New Frontier!

Concert: Jason Hardink
Thursday, March 16, 6:00 pm and Friday, March 17, 6:00 pm
Jason Hardink, the pianist for the Utah Symphony and Artistic Director of the NOVA Chamber Music Series, will be performing a four-part recital series devoted to the music of Schubert and the  Second Viennese School of composers,  exploring the relationship between Viennese Expressionist painting and the Second Viennese musicians.

EVE!

The Art Center is buzzing with EVE activities!  We’re right in between the Temple Square Trax stop and the Salt Palace (just outside of the paid boundaries).  So stop in and sing, exchange gifts with a stranger, intervene on an image, or offer your New Year’s resolutions up for interpretation to be projected onto the face of the Art Center for all to see.

Open ’til 10:00 PM on December 29 and 30, and ’til midnight on New Year’s Eve!

Intervention Convention

What’s old is new again! Led by Reclaimed Sentiment creator Phoenix Osterman, participate in an artistic intervention into the unusual and humorous.   Venture into the world of collage; materials will be provided, or you can bring used books & paintings that are ready for the thrift store.  Drop in from 6-10pm on Wednesday, December 29, 2010.

New Year’s Resolution Telephone:

Do you feel like your New Year’s resolutions don’t always turn out like you wanted?  Come play a game of Telephone where you can see your New Year’s resolutions transformed with a final result being displayed for all to see.  Resolution Telephone will occur every 30 minutes during EVE hours on December 30 &31.

The Never Ending White Elephant Gift Exchange:

Didn’t get invited to a holiday party this year?  Our shelves will be full of mystery white-elephant gifts for a 3 day long come when you please exchange.  Gifts must be brought unwrapped.  Wrapping will be provided on site.  December 29 -31  during EVE hours Wednesday 6pm-10pm, Thursday 6pm- 10pm, Friday 6pm-12:00am. Gifts must be appropriate for all ages.

Artist-Made Karaoke:

Come sing & dance your way into the new year!  Local artist-created music videos of your new and old favorite songs.  Lady Gaga will be jealous.  First come, first serve, during EVE hours.

eBay it Forward

The Salt Lake Art Center will serve as a drop off site for ‘eBay it Forward’ donations during regular business hours beginning December 9, 2010.  Tuesday – Thursday: 11 am – 6 pm, Friday: 11 am – 9 pm & Saturday: 11 am – 6 pm.  Donations also accepted throughout EVE.

Director Blackhorse Lowe – Thank you for coming!

Lowe came to the Art Center to discuss his short film Shimasani, showing with feature film Barking Water.  Friday night, Dec 3, at 7:00 PM.  A little preview:

EVE: Artist-Made Karaoke Call For Submissions

The Art Center is officially part of EVE!  Details forthcoming, but meanwhile, we are requesting submissions for Artist-Made Karaoke Videos!  The deadline of December 20 is is quickly approaching.

Call for Submissions

p.s there is a cash prize involved!

The Art Center to host New Frontier as an Official Venue of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival

Squidsoup, Glowing Pathfinder Bugs

Program to be on display for the first time ever in Salt Lake City.  See the press release for more.  Details forthcoming.

2011 Sundance Film Festival New Frontier Press Release

Today Sundance Institute is pleased to announce the artists and projects selected for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier Program.

The program, celebrating its fifth year, brings together established and emerging artists from film, art, performance, gaming, and new media technology, to provide for them a film festival environment to share their work, and for festival audiences to explore the latest in cinematic innovation and transmedia storytelling. Curated by Shari Frilot, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer, these works can be experienced at New Frontier, located at the Historic Miners Hospital, 1354 Park Avenue across from the Library Theatre in Park City, and, new for 2011, at Salt Lake Art Center, located at 20 South West Temple, in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City. Both locations will be open free to the public Thursday, January 20 through Saturday, January 30, 2011.

The 2011 edition of New Frontier at Sundance will feature internationally renowned artists Blast Theory, Mark Boulos, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Daniel Canogar, James Franco, Bill T. Jones & OpenEnded Group, Akio Kamisato, Avish Khebrehzadeh, Aaron Koblin, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Takehisa Mashimo, Miwa Matreyek,Chris Milk, Satoshi Shibata, Squidsoup, Deke Weaver and Lance Weiler. Many of these artists, while making their Sundance Film Festival debut, have presented these seminal works in bienniales, in institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, and in the international art exhibitions and fairs such as Art Basel, the Biennale di Venezia, Biennale of Sydney, Frieze Art Fair, SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica and TED.

Salt Lake Tribune

Indiewire

Visiting Artist Lecture: Oh Nancy art collective

November 10, 4:30-6:00 PM

Salt Lake Art Center is proud to host a lecture by the 3 directors/founders of the Oh Nancy national art collective–Fionn McCabe, Nate Wellman, and Arthur Henderson–in conjunction with The Hideout; a residency/exhibition project presented by GARFO Art Center.  Oh Nancy, based out of Boston, MA, presents a malleable narrative structure that facilitates collaboration and multiple-authorship. Oh Nancy has created a story that is a classically mythical and satirical portrait of Americana that examines fanaticism and the complexities of the American hero.  Artists are invited to respond to different facets of the story, organically building it along the way with their projects.   The visiting artists will discuss the narrative and its function within the collective, as well as its role in contemporary art.  Learn more at www.ohnancy.com

GARFO Art Center, co-curated by Cara Despain and Kenny Riches, is a function of the Visual Art Institute that seeks to educate, expose, and enhance the relationship between students, community, and contemporary art by facilitating dialogue through quality exhibitions and events.   Visual Art Institute is a non-profit art program for kids and teens focused on creativity and critical thinking.  

http://www.visualartinstitute.org/about_garfo.html

The Hideout: an Oh Nancy exhibition @ GARFO Art Center

November 13-January 7.  

Opening reception November 13, 6-10pm

1838 S 1500 East, 84105

(GARFO hours during VAI class times, M-TH 4:30-6:30pm, or by appointment: staffboxvai@gmail.com)