The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Arts

Hints of Earlier and Other Creation

editor@thestranger.com (Charles Mudede) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

The Spare, Bare Geography of Heide Hinrichs at SAM by Charles Mudede Because this is my first encounter with Heide Hinrichs's work, this review will be more synchronic (about the objects themselves) than diachronic (the relations the objects have with other works, artists, and historical periods). The encounter with Hinrichs happened in Seattle Art Museum's SAM Next gallery, a space dedicated to local, national, and international contemporary art. Hinrichs is a local artist, but she does not come from here. She was born in Germany in 1976, studied art in a number…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Blart

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

What it is: Colin, Sucher & Sons Star Wars Store, Aberdeen, Washington (2007), photograph, by Eirik Johnson Where it is: Henry Art Gallery by Jen Graves This boy, named Colin, stands at the center of the Sucher & Sons Star Wars store (is he one of the sons?) like somebody frozen at the lip of a black hole just before disappearing. This photograph was taken in Aberdeen, after all: all past, no future. The place from which Kurt Cobain made his escape. Another disappearing Northwest town that was once all sawmills and whorehouses and saloons and gambling joints—even an aborted nuclear plant. Colin is frozen here…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

In Art News

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

Urgency Emergency by Jen Graves Across from the elevators at Seattle Art Museum are three lone windows looking out onto a darkening night. On the rightmost windowsill, one fighting burst of light comes from a pink candle on an old-fashioned chamberstick. Standing next to the window is a sad-looking rolled-up window tied with a ribbon that reads "Not Your Bag." (Me?) The windows are a series of afghans made of crocheted yarn dipped in indigo dye, and strings stream down their faces like rain. They…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Adoration of Alexander Calder

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

Grappling with the Good Cheer of the Maker of the Mobile by Jen Graves One night, lying on the deck of a ship in the Panama Canal in 1921, Alexander Calder found himself halfway between the sun and the moon. The sun, red, was rising. The moon, pale white, was vanishing. "When I have used spheres and discs," the artist once said, "I have intended that they should represent something more—the earth is a sphere, but also has miles of gas about it, volcanoes upon it, and the moon making circles around it. The…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

In Art News

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Get Your Souvenirs at the Henry's New Gift Shop by Jen Graves Last Friday night, hundreds of people showed up for the Henry Art Gallery's opening of five vibrant new exhibitions: roomsful of Polaroids by Robert Mapplethorpe and lumberjack-country photographs by Eirik Johnson (Johnson proposed that both shows be retitled "Got Wood?"), an entire level of the museum devoted to sculptures and bathhouse shoes and videos and prayer rugs from the permanent collection, and, on the mezzanine, an explosive little hanging of the "anti-photojournalistic" images shot by Allan Sekula in the middle…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Blart

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

What it is: Untitled (1973/75), Polaroid, by Robert Mapplethorpe; Where it is: Henry Art Gallery by Jen Graves Robert Mapplethorpe shot Polaroids for only a few years, at the start of his career. These little objects—four by five inches at the largest, each an original—are the warmest and hottest things he ever made. In this one, the subject is unknown; it may be the artist himself. The position is both sacred and profane, a perfect Janus pose. He's preparing for prayer and sex. His hips rise around the implication of an invisible but completely open core. Everything we…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Art Is Embarrassing

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

A Pet Cat as Model, Muse, and Mode of Transcendence by Jen Graves Matthew Offenbacher's third solo show at Howard House is called C.A.T., after a series of 1917 drawings dubbed "Conventions for Abstract Thoughts" by the artist Charles Burchfield. This show consists entirely of paintings of and about Offenbacher's cat. It may sound funny, but it's not a joke. At a recent talk Offenbacher gave, someone asked him whether he'd ever dreamed of being a standup comedian, and while Offenbacher in person is not at all jokey, the question made a certain…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

In Art News

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Crawl Space Is Closing by Jen Graves A year ago, Crawl Space gallery had a five-year expansion plan and its first-ever staff director. Now, rather than violate its basic mandate—"Be awesome," as member artist Anne Mathern once said—it's closing forever. It turned out it wasn't possible to be awesome and to be bigger, or even, at this point, to go back to Crawl Space's roots as a true small collective. "I just think things in the U.S. are not supposed to be permanent," Mathern said. "They just…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Frightful Power of the Camera

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Meiro Koizumi, An Artist to Very Seriously Watch (and Watch Out For) by Jen Graves A man starts out telling a tragic story from his life to the camera. He has answered an ad. He's 42 and has a long scar down his forehead. A few years ago he met a woman. They got pregnant and she had a baby girl, Angelina. Angelina was the best thing to happen to the man. He tears up. The offscreen director, wearing a preposterous layer of silver paint on his face, interrupts the man. The frame is too…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Hairless Romantics

editor@thestranger.com (RACHAEL PULLIN) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Maria Friberg's Existential Videos and Photographs by RACHAEL PULLIN Swedish artist Maria Friberg's first solo show in the Northwest is letting some much-needed air into the Nordic Heritage Museum. The series of photographs titled alongside us (2007) sends a chill right down the spine. Men cloaked in white garments are cradled in the limbs of dramatic, gnarled trees in a cocoonlike spiritual stupor—implying the precarious balance between human and nature. The branches spill across the composition like gestural marks in ink or paint: a reminder of the harmony that…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Leap of Faith

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Family as Fact and as Fiction at Western Bridge by Jen Graves Western Bridge is one of the most important places to see art in Seattle. Exhibitions thoughtfully mix and remix a permanent collection that's always increasing and advancing in connection to the world around it. Everything finds expression in a flexible and atmospheric showplace that's an architectural statement in itself. Nothing is for sale. It's like an ideal museum. But what we never think about is the delicate fact that all of it—this monument of civic good, where a recent opening…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Patriot Acts

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Looking for Redemption in The Old, Weird America by Jen Graves My mother and father didn't work out; my mother remarried during a blizzard at the Old First Church in Bennington, Vermont, where Robert Frost is buried. This place, which around this time of year will smack you silly with beauty, is less than an hour from our house in small-town upstate New York, and on the way is a museum we'd often stop at, the Bennington Museum. That museum has just one claim to fame: its unparalleled collection of paintings…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

In Art News

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

A Seattle Power Quartet Not Quite Plugged In at Ambach & Rice by Jen Graves The Seattle art world is a nice place to be. Sharks and dickishness are at a minimum. Artists know and support each other. They visit each other's studios, go to each other's openings, have dinners, collaborate. This is a good thing. Meanwhile, four good and likable leading Seattle artists make an art show together in the kindest and most loving of spirits, and all I can think is, it's just okay. This is not a nice thing to say. The…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Ace in the Hole

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Leo Saul Berk and the Obscenity of Data at Lawrimore Project by Jen Graves In the days after the capture of Saddam Hussein from inside a "spider hole" on December 13, 2003, reporters scrambled to go into the hole. They couldn't get an interview with Hussein and were in no position to discern how the capture affected the progress and meaning of a complicated ongoing war—especially since this war had been waged in large part on this one man—but the hole was there to be comprehended in full. It was only six feet deep…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

In Art News

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Where the Sick Artists At? by Jen Graves It was raining and it was dark. The light coming from Country Doctor Community Clinic was yellow and warm, like a contented kitchen, and this was not misleading. You could, in fact, go into this place for refuge and help (and an escape from the sort of thinking teabaggers do). Country Doctor Community Clinic, founded in 1971 by community activists, has always been a thing from another, better place and time. They take you in regardless of whether you can…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Where Am I? What's Going On?

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

A Glowing Grotto at Suyama Space and the UFOs of Kirkland by Jen Graves A successful installation at Suyama Space can be measured by a single metric: Does it feel like you haven't been in it before? The gallery itself is so distinctive—bellylike, with vaulted wood ceilings, creaky and splintery wood floors, and heavenward windows up top—that it overtakes any art that shows the slightest sign of weakness or sameness. Your memories of that art aren't of that art, they're of the space. On the flip side, a strong enough work of art will…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

In Art News

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Brendan Jansen's Visible Human Project by Jen Graves In ancient Greece, the Pythia—the woman charged with transmitting the Oracle—descended into a temple that sat on the intersection of two fault lines in the earth. What happened once she got there is the subject of argument, but basically it involved divinity and drugs. She saw the present, past, and future all at once; she spoke in tongues or with her own voice and vocabulary; she probably was high on gas hissing out from the cleft in the planet. A…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

What Are You, Yellow?

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

War Breaks Out at the Wing Luke Asian Museum by Jen Graves The painting, from 2008, is called Yellow Terror. It is covered—covered—in Japs. Bloodthirsty Japs laughing maniacally, slanting their slanty eyes all the way closed, with fangs on their buckteeth. Waving, slaphappy kamikaze Japs in cockpits. Japs with elephant ears for spying. As wily snakes. Rats in traps. Dogs wearing the epaulets of generals, pig rank-and-files, hairy-palmed apes. They form a vortex at the center of which is the face of the painter himself—Roger Shimomura, familiar from his many other self-portraits—pulling…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Son of N. C. Wyeth and Some Lady

editor@thestranger.com (Lindy West) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Andrew Wyeth: Dirty Old Man by Lindy West So there I am in the Andrew Wyeth exhibit at SAM. Everyone around me is 100, and I am ready to look at seven paintings and touch them with my brain and form a brand-new Wyeth-shaped brainwrinkle (it has pigtails). I am ready! Andrew Wyeth died this year, SAM's wall tells me, "leaving a legacy of deeply personal paintings that nevertheless have shown, through their enduring and wide popularity, that they have the ability to touch us all." So what…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Yeats Motel

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:00:00 -0700

Cornish Finally Has Dorms—in Creepy Old Motels in Denny Triangle by Jen Graves M otel odor is different from hotel odor. This is what separates the two. A hotel smells, if you smell it at all, like effort: the effort to cleanse or to cover over everything that smells. The particular magic of a hotel is that, through a certain overall system of strenuousness, it subtracts residue with every guest rather than adds it. (Full disclosure: I used to be a hotel maid.) When the residue begins to build up in a hotel,…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The House That Spite Builds

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 04:00:00 -0700

On Malicious Erection, Everlasting Fights, and Fire's Power by Jen Graves Spite is a step beyond anger. It happens when anger has hardened, you've polished it shiny, and you've fallen in love with it. Now in dangerous territory, you nevertheless can't stop, and you decide it needs a monument. What you do next is inescapably, pigheadedly wrong—and also epically right. You build a spite house. There is a spite house at 2022 24th Avenue East in Montlake. It is pink stucco on the outside and only four-and-a-half feet wide at one…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Help!

editor@thestranger.com (Jen Graves) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 04:00:00 -0700

A New Way to Keep Looking at Robert Yoder by Jen Graves Robert Yoder made this show because he has complaints. He is not impressed with what he sees. He feels disconnected from the Seattle scene and dissatisfied with art generally. The last great show he can name is Gustave Courbet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Not fair—Courbet is pretty much art's ultimate OG. But point taken: Yoder's in a critical mood and doesn't want to stagnate here. So he thought up Send Me an Angel, a circulatory system of an…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]