“Almost mythic in status, the Bauhaus is seen as one of the most influential schools of art and design of the 20th century. Established in 1919, the Bauhaus sought to erode distinctions among crafts, the fine arts, and architecture through a program of study centered on practical experience and diverse theories. Until the school’s forced closure by the Nazi regime in 1933, students and masters worked with a variety of traditional and experimental media and continually reconceived the role of art and design in contemporary society. Despite its relatively brief, itinerant existence, the Bauhaus occupies an outsize position in the cultural imaginary.Â
Marking the 100th anniversary of the school’s opening, Bauhaus Beginnings reexamines the founding principles of this landmark institution. The exhibition considers the school’s early dedication to spiritual expression and its development of a curriculum based on elements deemed fundamental to all forms of artistic practice.” – per website
– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson
BAD MANTRAS
Nathaniel Mellors & Erkka Nissinen
June 7 – July 20, 2019
Opening reception: Friday, June 7, 6 PM – 9 PM
“BAD MANTRAS by Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen, Mellors’ second exhibition at The Box, is a dark satire of contemporary western politics and cultural assumption. We enter a space/time k-hole/black-hole where autocracy and corruption has led to a world of dysfunction and absurd inversion…
…Where humans are subjugated to puppets and a giant talking egg is GOD.
…Where nationalism manifests in cosmic/comic acts and the world is remade as just one country … FINLAND.
…Where liberal-democracy has become a terrified technocratic autocracy and to make matters worse the God-like creators of Planet Finland will be back any moment now to check-in on the culture they think they’ve created…
This may not go so well.
At the core of Mellors and Nissinen’s exhibition is The Aalto Natives, a project originally conceived for the Finland Pavilion of the 2017 Venice Biennale. This is a comedy which fuses creation mythology and religion with contemporary themes through the archetypal narrative of Atum and Geb, the father and son creators of “New Finland”. Atum and Geb – a talking egg and talking cardboard box – exist in the gallery as animatronic sculptures, interacting with the video projections, through which we experience their mock-epic narrative. The Box will show The Aaltos Natives (Floored version), which was exhibited in Mellor’s solo exhibition, Progressive Rocks, at the New Museum in 2018. This work is a sculptural amalgamation of Atum and Geb: multiple projections shoot from their heads and limbs, floating images of the film around the room and encouraging the viewer to move about the space and objectify the sculptural bodies.
The current political and cultural situation in the U.S.A. intertwines crooked corporate dealings, infantile political activity and the hermetic mediation of reality through social media and the news cycle – we experience the apparently permanent extension of the dominant power structure and its inverse – the new underclass – a growth beneath the belly of ownership. In The Aalto Natives, all the characters living outside of the technocratic political super-structure are subject to misery and mutation. They sing songs about it, and some have resorted to performance art. This work mirrors the scenes and situations we see increasingly manifesting in the world.
In narrative dialogue with The Aalto Natives storyline, the exhibition presents two new works: Presidential Crucifixion (2019) and Bad Mantras (2019). Presidential Crucifixion features The President of Finland puppet, with a spherical head and long tentacle-like arms, and mounts him to the wall as a totemic sacrifice. The projected film upon him both glorifies and degrades him at the same time. Bad Mantras isa felt sculpture of the mangled Transcendental Accident character from The Aalto Natives. The Transcendental Accident has no centralized body but multiple-heads and long limbs reaching out and improvising with various musical instruments. It’s performing, it’s singing … it’s a sculpture trying to transcend its own objectification.
The humor and playful visual tone of Mellors and Nissinen’s work highlights the moral complexity of our intense political and environmental issues. The Box is excited to bring these works to their first showing on the west coast at a time of broad social and political vulnerability and to invite the viewer to enjoy the work’s humor and use it as a vehicle to encourage reflection.” – per website
The Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson is pleased to present GROPING in the DARK curated by Alex Young. GROPING in the DARK addresses human land use and the effects of the modification of Earthly matter upon interdependent ecologies of mind, society, and environment. The exhibition serves as an experimental presentational platform for artist-researchers whose ecological practices are informed by and actively agglomerate a diverse array of disciplines and media in examining world systems and developing new models of being-in-the-world. Spanning an array of inquiries into planetary scaled networks, agricultural engineering, multi-species entanglements, and the simultaneous expansion and collapse of anthropogenic space, the works collected for this exhibition take the form of in-depth ecological open works wherein their subjects are continuously observed, reexamined, acknowledged as far from fully knowable, and the assumed whole is always less than the sum of its parts. GROPING in the DARK is presented in response to our ecological moment and present reactionary political climate. In stark contrast to a backdrop of manifest anti-egalitarianism, hetero/cis-normative gender constructs, xenophobia, and speciesism, GROPING in the DARK gathers artist-researchers actively exploring plausible worlds through social ecology and multi-species intersectionality, migration, placemaking, and resilience.
The title of this exhibition is borrowed from the 1982 publication Groping in the Dark: The first decade of global modelling—produced as the conference proceedings for the Sixth International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis Symposium on Global Modelling—collaboratively authored by Donella Meadows, John Richardson, and Gerhart Bruckmann. Released ten years after Meadows co-authored The Limits to Growth—the foundational report on the findings of the World3 systems dynamics computer model simulating interactions between human population, industrial and economic growth, food resources, and the limits of earth ecosystems—Groping in the Dark was created as an experimental guide for the production of new world models and the modelling of new worlds. Constructed as a patchwork of disparate-yet-interconnected texts ranging from reports on major works and methodologies in global modelling, to ruminations on the contradictions and limitations of the burgeoning field, to a list of the editors’ respective biases—Groping in the Dark provided an abundance of entry points into then-current attempts to understand and create change within complex social and environmental systems. In a manner akin to its namesake, this exhibition joins practitioners and projects that employ diverse modes of thinking in the examination of how humans modify Earth systems and how we might better model new worlds. Photo credits: “Wild Relatives” by Jumana Manna, “CASH CROP” by J. Eric Simpson, and “Cooking Sex” by Epicurean Endocrinology.
Participating Artists:
Epicurean Endocrinology (Liz Flyntz + Byron Rich), Ryan Griffis and Sarah Ross, Mary Maggic (with genital collaborator Tamara Pertamina and technical collaborator Char Stiles), Jumana Manna, J. Eric Simpson and Caleb Lightfoot , and SPURSE
– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson
“In the 21st century, each of us—often unknowingly—leave a digital footprint in everything we do from texting to a simple internet search. This exhibition presents the multiple ways in which we, as users, interact with an artwork and the response or output the artwork provides in return. These interactions are meant to get the viewer thinking not only about the traces we leave behind, but the effects we have on technology. In this important moment in time, humans and technology are evolving together and interactive art exemplifies this relationship. This intimate level of engagement with an artwork opens the opportunity to shift the viewer’s perspective on the meaning and boundaries of art itself.
The work of pioneering artists in the field of interactive digital art will be on view alongside emerging artists on the cutting edge of technology and art, including work by a local artist using virtual reality. The nine artists included in the exhibition are: Ernest Edmonds, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Marpi, Aakash Nihalani, Mimi Onuoha, Purring Tiger (Aaron Sherwood and Kiori Kawai), Daniel Rozin, and Tiffany Trenda.
Organized by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Curated by Curator of Programming Julie Ganas.” – per website
– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson
– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson
Featuring over 350 historical aircrafts, from a Wright Flyer to a 787 Dreamliner. Sitting on 80 acres the museum opened its doors to the public in May of 1976. Over the past forty years, the museum has grown immensely and today encompasses six indoor exhibit hangars (three dedicated to WWII).
Docent-led walking tours and museum ground Tram Tours are offered daily. The museum is the exclusive operator of bus tours of the 2,600-acre “Aircraft Boneyard”/U.S. military and government aircraft storage facility (10-business day advanced reservations required, tour offered Monday-Friday, non-federal holidays only). – per website
– for more information on additional images from this event please contact EMS at [email protected] or Instagram at @ericminhswenson
An opening of an exhibition of collaborative drawings by @justjorosenthal and @xzoeus.
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