Saturday, January 31, 2009

Laure Drogoul's Follies, Predicaments and Other Conundrums Opens @ MICA

Laure Drogoul's first retrospective, Follies, Predicaments and Other Conundrums opened at MICA's Fox building to an impressive (and impressed) crowd. Giant babies, costumed performers, interactive pieces and collected source material fill the Decker and Meyerhoff galleries. Fliers and recorded performances from Drogoul's 14 Karat Cabaret are included in the exhibition, with an on-site performance on February 13th in the Gateway building and additional events that can be found on the MICA website. As a major figure on the Baltimore art scene, Drogoul's work was remembered as well as seen, with a constant murmur from the familiar crowd as they recalled performances they'd been to (or part of), and appreciated by many for the first time. It was hard to get close to everything through the hundreds of people who tuned out for the event, but the work is on view through March 15th, and worth a few return-trips!









This is the inside of the giant woman



Friday, January 30, 2009

Bande a part @ the Charles Theatre this week

Jean-Luc Godard’s BAND OF OUTSIDERS



Showtimes:
Saturday, January 31 at Noon.
Monday, February 2 at 7 PM.
Thursday, February 5 at9 PM.

1964. Anna Karina, Sami Frey, Claude Brasseur. In French with English subtitles. 95m. bw.

“A kind of cockeyed caper movie about love and crime fueled by the unmistakable air of fatalistic French romanticism, “Band of Outsiders” begins with a pair of very small-time crooks, the sensitive Franz (Sami Frey) and the cocky, toothpick-chewing Arthur (Claude Brasseur). They drive to the outskirts of Paris in their battered Simca to case a house where they believe a large sum of crime syndicate money is theirs for the taking....



No matter how many bouquets you throw in its direction, however, the truth about “Band of Outsiders” is that words are not up to capturing its elfin charm, not even up to hinting how beautiful Paris looks in Raoul Coutard’s unconsciously romantic photography. Although Godard talked a lot about his theories and his methods, if he had a secret, it was a gift for creating irresistible images. “Band of Outsiders” shows him at his most amusing, and that is no small thing.” (Kenneth Turan, LA Times)

Thursday, January 29, 2009

AK Slaughter and friends @ Metro Gallery


Saturday, Jan 31st @ The Metro Gallery

1700 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD

$7

8pm doors 9pm show

SNACKS - Legendary and amazing hyper-instrumentalist duo that makes fantastic ear-boggling noises.

AK Slaughter - ur fave

Baby Venom - Excellent rock combo who is tons of fun

The Agrarians - Lo-Fi Folk rock for thinking people.

Laure Drogoul's Follies Opening @ MICA

Laure Drogoul's Follies, Predicaments and Other Conundrums opens @ MICA tomorrow, January 30th
5 - 8 pm
From www.mica.edu:

Curatorial Statement

Follies, Predicaments, and Other Conundrums: The Works of Laure Drogoul is the first large-scale retrospective featuring works created byMICA Rinehart School of Sculpture alumna and Baltimore-based artist Laure Drogoul ’81 over the last 25 years. It has been an exciting challenge to gather these incredibly diverse works together, in part due to size and scale, media, complexity, and ephemeral nature. To see all of Drogoul’s work at once, one cannot help but be astounded by the prolificacy and incredible energy.

While other artists of her generation and capability left art school and glommed onto the New York art scene, Drogoul decided to make Baltimore her home, ultimately establishing herself as a cornerstone in an increasingly vibrant art and music scene.

One might say that Drogoul’s work is intimately interlaced with the “essence” of Baltimore. It is hard to imagine (although not impossible, surely) the work being made in another city. The birthplace of the Ouija Board is also home to the Urological Museum as well as the gravesite of Edgar Allen Poe. It is the city of Dorothy Parker, Blaze Starr, and Johnny Eck. Operating out of a downtown row house, Drogoul embraces and revels in the accessibility of Baltimore, mines its history, studies its characters, and injects them straight into her work. Her routines are performances—extensions of her sculpture. Drogoul “spelunks” city neighborhoods and combs the hidden paths and marshes of the Chesapeake Bay, searching for weeds, pungent smells, and cast away bric-a-brac—the things that have fallen through the cracks – to enrich her world. She is a quintessential Baltimorean: a maximalist, obsessive collector and medium to the spooky, seedy, and freakish aesthetic one can only find here. In the late 1980s, Drogoul established The 14Karat Cabaret in a downtown Baltimore basement bar. Under the umbrella of Maryland Art Place and modeled after the pre-wartime European cabarets of the ‘20s and early ‘30s, The 14Karat Cabaret is an arena of free-form expression barely rivaled in other, much larger cities. For nearly 25 years, Drogoul has operated, emceed, and curated the popular monthly event. From the clean and austere, to the glitzy, dirty, and gutter-soaked, The 14Karat Cabaret is, in essence, an appendage of Laure Drogoul and an obvious accompaniment to the work presented in this exhibition.

Drogoul’s vision is sprawling and labyrinthine – peppered with outrageous cartoons, drag queens and otherworldly characters. The work is abundant in puns and puzzles, and infected with sublime and subversive humor. Her “roadside attraction” follies are clever embodiments and critiques of humanity. Drogoul is part scientist and part soothsayer. She is lowbrow absurdist as well as high art feminist and Dadaist. The common thread woven throughout this installation is not just the performative element but the overarching interactivity of the works: communication with earthworms, creation of cacophonic soundscapes while knitting, mapping hometown smells on a giant interactive world map. By engaging in these communal “experiments” the participants become the creators of the work and open the door to a multitude of surprises. Like all great art experiences, as we meander through the freakish, garish, and supernatural; as we interact with earthly and non-earthly delights and visit other realms; we come across a path that serves as a conduit to the core of Drogoul’s work: the examination of the human condition, in all its fragility and beauty. It is extremely appropriate that MICA and Baltimore are host to Follies, Predicaments, and Other Conundrums: The Works of Laure Drogoul and I am personally very excited and honored to bring together this collection of her work at MICA. I am also extremely grateful to the students in MICA’s Exhibition Development Seminar and for the generosity of each mentor that has committed his or her time and knowledge. It is through their energy and ownership that this project was realized.

- Gerald Ross, Director of Exhibitions, Maryland Institute College of Art

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Everyone an Artist? OPENING! presented by Art on Purpose



I Remember Mama is being held at the Loyola/Notre Dame Library (directions), and The Art of Collecting is being held at College of Notre Dame’s Gormley Gallery (more information).

The opening reception for BOTH exhibitions is being held Thursday, February 5, 4:30-6:30pm. There will also be music, art activities, prizes and FREE food and refreshments.

Art on Purpose

Sunday, January 25, 2009

If I Didn't Care @ Park School January 30

If I Didn't Care: Multigenerational Artists Discuss Cultural Histories
Curated by Rick Dulaney, Gallery Director

Artists Include: Laylah Ali, Patssi Valdez, Tamasha Williamson, Paula Wilson, Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, Pamela Phatsimo Sundstrum, Faith Ringgold, Soumiya Krishnaswamy, Deborah Roberts, Emma Amos, Magiwa Orimo, Karen Powell, Isabel Manalo, Margaret Burroughs, Keiko Ishii Eckhardt, Regina Vater, Howardina Pindell, Athena LaTocha, Negar Ahkami, Joyce Scott, Swati Khurana, Kate Bae, Wanda Ewing, Saya Woolfalk, Debra Edgerton, Nina Buxembaum, Flo Oy Wong, Elizabeth Axtman, and Siona Benjamin

January 30 - March 30, 2009
Reception Friday, January 30, 6:30 - 8:00 p.m.

This all-medium exhibition features women-of-color artists whose work focuses on cultural histories, race, gender, or social-political areas of thought. The artists come from many different backgrounds and times. Some of the artists are recently out of college, while others have been creating for decades. A few of the participating artists will be coming to Park to meet with students during the exhibition.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Contempt@ the Charles Theatre this week

This week’s revival:
Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt” (1963)
In Color and ‘Scope.



Showtimes:
Saturday, January 24 at Noon
Monday, January 26 at 7PM
Thursday, January 29 at 9PM


“...Contempt focuses on the relationship between playwright Paul Javel (Piccoli) and his wife Camille (Bardot), a former typist. While in Rome, Paul gets hired by American producer Jeremy Prokosch (Palance) to doctor the script for an international blockbuster, based on Homer's Odyssey, being directed by Fritz Lang (Lang himself). Shortly after Paul is hired, in the ruins of a once bustling Italian studio (Cinecitta) that has just been sold, the writer insists that Camille ride in Prokosch's red Alfa-Romeo to the producer's villa outside Rome while he follows in a taxi; this flip gesture sparks the protracted on-again, off-again quarrel between Camille and Paul in their flat... The action shifts to Capri, where the film of the Odyssey is being shot and the remainder of Contempt unfolds, charting the growing estrangement between the couple and Prokosch's interest in an affair with Camille...." Click for extended examination of CONTEMPT by Jonathan Rosenbaum


CONTEMPT website and Trailer



“One of the defining moments of modernist filmmaking, a movie that takes place amid the smoldering ruins of the studio system, creating much of the language and spirit of the new cinema even as it deeply, solemnly mourns the loss of the old. A film that teeters between filial loyalty and Oedipal revolt, between allegiance to a unified, classical system and an angry impatience to get on with the new, Contempt is one of those works in which you can feel the aesthetic ground shifting beneath your feet. Like a Cezanne still life or a Sullivan skyscraper, it yields a low rumble—the sound of rules changing…With its widescreen image restored, its multilingual soundtrack returned, and its dazzling, pop-art colors refurbished, Contempt is now ready to retake its place in film history as the richest film of Godard’s first period, and perhaps the most complete and satisfying career of his entire career."
– Dave Kehr, Film Comment

"One of the masterworks of modern cinema that has influenced a generation of filmmakers… What makes Contempt so unique a viewing experience, even more than in 1963, is the way it stimulates an audience's attention as well as its senses… Godardians regard Contempt as an anomaly, the master's most 'orthodox' movie. The paradox is that it may also be his finest...with Contempt Godard was able to strike his deepest human chords."
– Phillip Lopate, The New York Times

“Brilliant, romantic and genuinely tragic.
It's also one of the greatest films ever made about the actual process of moviemaking."
– Martin Scorsese

"the greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe," - Colin MacCabe, Sight and Sound

Hidenori Ishii and Neil Meyerhoff @ C. Grimaldis Gallery


Neil Meyerhoff's "Children" and Hidenori Ishii's "A Little Earthshine" exhibitions at C. Grimaldis Gallery are begging to be rearranged.  Meyerhoff, whose one-liner photo show takes the main space, would benefit from the limitations of the smaller gallery.  With photo after photo of international youths, one starts looking for the Christian Children's Fund donation box.  Cropping some images in odd, vertical compositions, the show looks like it was stretched to fill the space, and its message is clear after the first few photos: we are the children, we are the future, we are the world, we get it.  Ishii's work, on the other hand, is inviting, colorful and forced into the back of the gallery.  The paintings are stunning, slick and polished, leaving viewers wanting more.  In half the space, most gallery attendees seemed to spend twice the time admiring the 9 works.  Put your best foot forward, more Ishii!  Oh, and we were asked to mention that Meyerhoff's images are copyrighted.      
Hidenori Ishii above and five below





Chris Anderson and Ann Hazels at the opening


copyright Neil Meyerhoff

For more information on the exhibition and artists, visit the C. Grimaldis website

Call For Entry @ Park School

Cornel Rubino @ Park School's Gallery
09/10 season: artists must submit their work no later than March 09 that focuses on environment, sustainability, eco, and anything surrounding it.

10/11 season: 2 open shows, submissions needed no later than March 09:

  1. First show will be titled Rock, Paper... artists that work with stone and artists that work with cut paper. That is two separate mediums – not an artist that works with both.
  2. Currently the other exhibit is open, although eventually it will be thematic, so I would like to see all types of work.
Please send proposals to:
Rick
Delaney
Exhibitions Educator
The Park School
2425 Old Court Road
Baltimore, MD 21208

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Closed Caption Comics take over Cinders Gallery

CHECK IT OUT! Baltimore's own Closed Caption Comics Collective is currently showing at Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Way to rep Bmore, dudes!
From Cindersgallery.com :
January 9th - February 8th 2009

Opening Reception Friday January 9th 7-10pm

Cinders Gallery is proud to present Adolescent Rage, the first NY show by Baltimore-based collective Closed Caption Comics. We first encountered the artwork of this prolific group when some of them came into the gallery bearing an amazing colorful stack of self-published comic and art zines. These beautiful handmade silk-screened goodies featured wild stories, inventive layouts, and the type of manic fun energy we find wholly exciting and infectious. As a group, Closed Caption puts out a comic zine of the same name that features a section by each artist, allowing the reader to delve into the different worlds of each contributor. These worlds vary from forests to cities to outer space and are inhabited by as diverse a cast of characters such as mummies, toads, robots, aliens and ordinary folks riding bikes around town. From meticulous fine line renderings to scratchy chaotic explosions, the styles and stories couldn't be more varied and yet make perfect sense together in a haphazardly homey kind of way. This group show will feature drawings, paintings, prints, collages and zines by all 10 artists, allowing the viewer to be enveloped by their art on a larger scale.

The artists of Closed Caption Comics are Maryland Institute College of Art graduates who started making zines together in 2004. In addition to their collaborative bookmaking, they also are individually involved in the Baltimore art community by way of putting on shows, making posters, being in bands such as Witch Hat and Bears and Pieces, running the record label Lost Ghost Records, as well as organizing the all-girl performance festival Puss Fust.

Congrats!
Molly O'Connell

Also check out their Village Voice Blurb

Art Department @ The Zodiac tonight for FREE

Photo by Justin Tsucalas

Ten Tigers' friends the Art Department plays a FREE SHOW tonight:

SANTA DADS, TINY CONCEPT, ART DEPARTMENT, SONIC SUICIDE SQUAD
THURSDAY, JANUARY 22nd @Zodiac 21+ only 10PM FREE

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Call For Installation Proposals @ Whole Gallery


SUBMIT NOW: ENTRY DEADLINE MARCH 20, 2009

call for INSTALLATION Proposals for a new WHOLE Gallery Exhibit:

OFF THE WALL running from 4/18/09 - 5/17/09

Hoodoos.
Chandeliers.
Stalactites & Stalagmites.
Looking for art that does not live on the wall
but grows from the floor and drips from the ceiling.
We will transform the 3rd Floor of the H&H Warehouse into a cavern of delights.
Email 5 images of relevant previous work w/ size, medium, and date
and a brief proposal of your installation idea to:
shout@emilycd.com

Monday, January 19, 2009

Photos From the Opening of The Rumors Are True @ The Creative Alliance

Christine Sajecki
Christine Sajecki and Megan Hildebrandt opened their two person show of individual and collaborative works at the Creative Alliance this past weekend. With two distinctly different styles, (Sajecki showed super-slick, encaustic paintings while Hildebrandt exhibited drawings, collages and costumes) the two artists managed to impressively tie their work together in their collaborative installation (and title) piece, The Rumors Are True.
Megan Hildebrandt

Megan Hildebrandt

Collaborative Installation, The Rumors Are True

Megan Hildebrandt (pretty awesome)

And while you're at the Creative Alliance, don't miss the Minstallation Gallery's new, awesome exhibition, Soft Animal by Pamela Phatismo Sunstrum. It is my favorite minstallation so far!

Get excited about tomorrow!


Illustration by Patrick Moberg

So Many Organs @ Current Gallery Jan 30

January 23 - February 13
Reception January 30, 7-10pm

A group exhibition featuring drawings, paintings, photographs, and mixed media works by Dina Kelberman, Liz Donadio & Ryan Syrell

"If you were to examine a single organ without the rest of the animal for reference (and assuming you had no specialized knowledge) you'd never know what it was for. If you were to examine an organ in the context of other organs and no one promised you they were from the same animal, or even if you had it on good authority that they were definitely NOT from the same animal, it wouldn't prevent you from finding meaning in their arbitrary physical arrangement & aesthetic similarities. You'll never know what they meant for the animals, and the animals will never know what they mean as a silent society of forms. This art show is kind of like that."

Dina Kelberman

Ryan Syrell

Liz Donadio

For more information on the exhibition and the artists, visit the Current Gallery website