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The Nest of All Possible Worlds: Huong Ngo
January – February 2008 – China Arts
By Bert Stabler

The appeal of “virtual reality” was supposedly the “virtual” part—after all, the unfathomable obstacles of everyday reality aren’t too hard to come by. But we are born into the idea of an immersive, alternate universe, fecund with bliss-yielding possibilities, free of commonplace consequence. Paradoxically, this border between imaginary and symbolic space, the foundation of childhood group play and communal religious faith, is exactly what is continually offered and denied to us in our over-mediated environment.  Disbelief cannot be suspended for long in a democracy of competing illusions.

Huong Ngo’s work offers a glimpse into shared fantasy, operating in numerous registers. Forsaking the alienating commercial and academic solipsism that turns so many art galleries into tombs of stale deja-vu, Ngo and her collaborators create temporary nests where viewers can wear fabric landscapes or vestigial water-wings, climb into unique Tyvek Hazmat pods, watch lighthearted corporate safety training videos, listen to recorded dreams in defunct phone booths, or peer into a fully-furnished inflatable studio sitting on the sidewalk.

Ngo’s latest installation, Kosmolet (Radio Receiver No. 1) at the cozy Chicago technology-art nook Deadtech, exemplifies her approach, combining de-virtualized technology and elegant modernist handicraft with poignant historical moments. The entire gallery has been transformed into a shortwave radio, with antenna wiring crisscrossing the space and coalescing on the wall into delicate rectilinear spirals around flower-like frequency tuners made from cardboard and aluminum foil. More foil on the floor helps ground the signal, which is gathered by Mylar helium balloons floating out the window and then focused by induction coils made from wire-wrapped cardboard tubes, eventually ending up as an intimate whisper into the conch-shell rumble of tin can speakers.

The installation is augmented by a black-and-white stop-motion animation that Ngo constructed from tiny mechanical parts that also double as miniature buildings. Inverting the transformation of the entire gallery space into an interactive appliance, the video features the elements of appliances converted into interactive architectural spaces.  Like little space colonies, the cityscapes proliferate in gumball-machine plastic bubbles across a table situated below the projection screen.

The Soviet techno-utopia ethos suggested by the Constructivist sci-fi aesthetic throughout the installation is explained by unpacking the title: the press release states that “Kosmolet is a celebastardization of the Russian word ‘Komsomolet,’ or ‘little comrade,’ the name given to crystal radiokits for little boys during the Stalinist era.” Far from revering totalitarianism, the sense of hope for a nurturing society in the early days of Lenin’s rule (and stop-motion cinema) makes sense with the modestly optimistic tone of Ngo’s work. She tames and rationalizes the nihilism of the avant-gardes, shushing the snide irony of Tom Friedman and the junk-shop intertextuality of Thomas Hirschorn.

Crystal Wagner

I follow in a long tradition of artists working with ideas about the metaphysical world, about the greater human experience, and about the underlying biological capabilities of our perceptive knowledge.

At my core, I am a relativist. I value the phrase, truth relativism, as it relates to the doctrine stating that there are no absolute truths and I appreciate the fickle and abstract nature of knowledge. I often refer to the 20th century philosopher, Michael Oakshott, and a quote by him that communicates his comprehension of the human experience. He explains that, “Human beings are what they understand themselves to be; they are composed entirely of beliefs about themselves and about the world they inhabit.”

I am interested in the idea of ‘science fiction’ and consider its’ meaning not as a fantastic explanation of what could be, but instead as it relates to what actually is. A world of understandings based on one proposed fictive interpretation after another. Never really yielding anything true or absolute In a way, humanities biological utility offers only an artificial rendition of what exists in the world instead of a concrete definition, and I find myself seduced by terms like; interpretation, artificial, abstraction, synthetic, and fabrication when I regard the complexity of it all.

As I work to fabricate through drawings and materials what seem to be imagined spaces, forms; both sculptural and two dimensional, the micro/macro; the elements that make up my images operate like propositions in that they lend themselves to interpretation. As abstractions their executions reference schematic illustrations, scientific diagrams, and architectural models while being organic. I discover in the work that the imagined is just as relevant as the real and that during inception the work takes on validity through its fabrication, fiction or not.

I am interested in the intersections between synthetic and organic, real and unreal, abstract and concrete and in that way am intrigued by the forms and concepts associated with Utopia. It is during fabrication that the myriad of materials and imagery fuse together to create from many different components, one. This utopian idea of synthesis permeates both the form and materiality of the work and in “Fabrication”, the pieces subsist as intricate and elegant displays of the artificial as organic. I recognize the blatantly synthetic nature of the pieces themselves and through the use of materials exploit of it to both the beauty and absurdity of people’s ability to fabricate their own understandings of the world they live in.

“Fabrication” is poetic, lyrical, and colorful. It is also artificial, synthetic, and abstract. Immanuel Kant suggests, “We cannot use evidence of our senses or thoughts to draw absolutely reliable conclusions about the ultimate nature of reality.” “Fabrication” is an exploration of what we can do and that is create through our own ability to fabricate; an elaborate, delicate and intricate system of knowledge and understanding efficient and beautiful enough to survive.

See more of her work here: http://www.crystalwagner.com/

Crystal Wagner was born on February 27, 1982 in Baltimore, Maryland. It was in Maryland where she began her exploration in art by drawing imaginative birds. Thirteen years later she moved to Pine Grove Pennsylvania where painting and creative writing became her primary focus as an artist.

Crystal attended Keystone College, a private liberal arts school in La Plume Pennsylvania where she earned her Associate Degree in Fine Art, receiving awards for both her prose/fiction writing and also her work as an artist. During her time there, she spent four months in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, experiencing the diverse terrain of the elevated landscape, studying and drawing from nature in the backcountry.

Ms. Wagner then moved to Atlanta where she attended The Atlanta College of Art. After two more years with a double concentration in both printmaking and sculpture, she earned her Bachelor Degree in Fine Art. In 2004 she was the recipient of the undergraduate Southern Graphics Council Fellowship for her achievements in printmaking.

Crystal recently completed her MFA at The University of Tennessee as a teaching associate. In 2006 she participated in a month long Artist-in-Residency in Poznañ, Poland. Her work has been shown both internationally and nationally. In 2007, she was a Visiting Artist at Kansas City Art Institute, where she co-coordinated a week-long workshop where the students utilized the printed multiple as a way to create wearable art ad costumes. The work produced by the students during the workshop led the “Print Parade” at the SGC Conference in the Spring. Also during that year she self-published her novel, “Crimson Sky”. In 2007 she was a printers’ assistant to Koichi Yamamoto at the Frontiers in Printmaking Conference in Normal, IL. Also during that year she was awarded the Terry Burnett Award for her overall achievements in fine art at the University of Tennessee.

In Spring of 2008, Crystal earned her Master of Fine Art degree from the University of Tennessee where she was a graduate teaching associate. Her work has been accepted into numerous national juried exhibitions and she had work shown both internationally and nationally. In March of 2008, she was Visiting Artist at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia. In July of 2008 she was awarded the Hearst Fellowship at the Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snowmass, CO. Currently you can find her large sculptural form “Conversion” on exhibit at the Knoxville Museum of Art in Knoxville, Tennessee as a piece of their pernmanant collection. For the month of July 2008, she will be at the Joshua Tree National Park Residency, in Joshua Tree National Park, CA where she was awarded a month-long Artist-in-Residency. Other up-coming shows in 2008-2009 include: “Fresh” AVA Gallery, Chattanooga, TN 7/11/08-7/26/08, “The Organics” Laredo Community College, Loredo, TX, 03/12/09-04/24/08 and “Prints by Crystal Wagner” Arkansas State University, Jonesborro AR, 9/1/08-9/30/08.

Crystal recently accepted a year-long Printmaking-Residency at the John Talleur Printshop in the Lawrence Art Center, Lawrence KS which commences on August 1, 2008

The Smell of Painting by Any Other Name: Candace M. Briceño
by Jeff M. Ward

“White head & Sod” felt, thread on wire hoop, 2005.

The act of painting is one of illusion. Particularly before the late 1900’s, painting in the West was largely about making pigmented goop look like something in the real, three-dimensional world. Modernist, especially abstract, painting of the last one hundred years points away from this essential fallacy of painting. Rather than picturing reality, these works sought to emphasize the surface, plane and objecthood of paintings. Here, the painting is an object. Candace M. Briceño makes objects, too; moreover, Briceño’s objects are perhaps best understood as the direct progeny of such Modernist painting logic. This connection to painting might be hard to notice as Briceño’s artwork is rooted in a number of techniques, none of which uses the application of colored adhesive on stretched fabric all that often. These artworks are too physical to create the illusion associated with the preponderance of painting. Rather, Candace Briceño stresses the physicality of painting’s surfaces, even using those surfaces as sculptural building materials, to underscore art’s inherent limitations in mediating visual experiences through her plucky and ultimately self-sufficient objects.

Though it is true that there is little paint per se in Briceño’s work, there is the physical surface on which paint is applied, the support. Paintings’ support is most typically linen or canvas stretched across a square, wooden frame, but Briceño also uses paper and felt. When creating an illusionistic painting, the canvas or other material is coated with a priming material that obliterates much of the physical, object-giving information of the support’s material self. Successive layers of paint are built atop this foundation to create an illusion of a fruit bowl, field of flowers or some other objects in space. Briceño, however, employs techniques that highlight that the support is a piece of fabric. Ultimately, this concentration on the fabric becomes the conduit for moving into

“Connected Landscape” acrylic, felt,pencil on paper, 2003.

entirely threedimensiona objects, but it is easier to trace Briceño’s connection to painting by first investigating her work that conforms to comparatively recognizable painting conventions.

Specifically, those works on stretched canvas look the most like paintings. These paintings usually have a minimal pictorial design with much blank canvas. In many of these paintings, a dominate, stuffed fabric element is sewn directly onto the canvas while paint, if used at all, is spread thinly. In an abstract painter’s terminology, this thin layer of paint is a stain. Like a grass stain on a pair of trousers, this kind of paint seeps into the fabric support thereby emphasizing the physical existence of the support rather than covering it up. The sewn elements of these works emphasize the physical support by employing a tailor’s technique to affix these blistered surfaces onto it. Furthermore, the raised elements bring the whole image into a low sculptural relief. Here, the canvas is treated like a piece of physical, malleable fabric rather than a stiff blank page, but Briceño draws out plain paper’s physicality, too.

Using paper and another process that approximates sewing, Briceño’s drawings made entirely of needle pricks also demonstrate the objecthood of the support. In this body of work, Briceño uses a needle as a drawing tool by perforating a design into large sheets of paper. Punched from both the front and back sides of the paper, pricks made form the front of the paper catch the light differently than the ones poked back-to-front. This technique calls attention to the many-sided sculptural reality of the paper whereas a blank sheet of paper, like a painting’s support, is usually an empty space for illusory design. This paper is not illusionistic but sculptural.

“Blue Landscape” felt, thread, pencil, and acrylic on canvas, 2004

However, the rigid surface of the paper permits a sculptural experience mostly limited to rectilinear planes, but actual fabric such as a canvas support possess a floppy physicality that Briceño explores sculpturally, too. Like her other square paintings, Briceño has also made works of sewing dyed, cut felt allover a stretched canvas. Besides their higher relief than the other square paintings, these works become more even sculptural when Briceño displays them horizontally. Laying the works on a shelf perpendicular to the wall undercuts the potential illusion that the painting is some window onto a real space. It also exposes height, or depth off the wall, of the support that is the third dimension usually hidden by illusionistic painting.

The techniques Briceño employs to emphasize the physical support in those artworks that closely resemble two-dimensional practices such as painting and drawing carry her into more radically three-dimensional artmaking. A large portion of Briceño work are wall-mounted, hand-sewn felt sculptures. In these pieces, green discs jut out of the wall while linear elements sprout out their tops. Like the square pieces, the felt is sewn via a paint stain. Displayed one-by-one or sown in a group across an acreage of wall, the works are constructed and hung with enough of an eye to sculptural concerns that they almost entirely outgrow their immediate painting references. Still other plush works have been plucked from the wall altogether. For instance, Briceño’s fabric banana peels exemplify her wholly sculptural work.

The felt fruit also points to the central motif that binds all of Briceño work together. That the works posses a painting pedigree although they are clearly not paintings has been discussed discretely heretofore without any mention of Briceño’s works’ other contents. The exclusion of grappling with the breath of the work’s subject matter has not been to soft-petal the symbolic potential of their subject, but rather to highlight the deep connection between Briceño’s practice’s moves in and out of painting proper and that content. For the artist, these works are a response to the desire to capture her experiences with the natural world. For instance, the square paintings typically picture landscapes: the paint stains are shadows; the puffy appliqués are abstractions of flowers and trees. Pom-pom flower tops bloom from pipe cleaner stems that spring forth from wire-rimmed pillows of earth in the wall-mounted works. Piles of banana peels are somewhat less abstract variations on their real-world counterparts.

“Peel” felt, beads, and thread, 2002

The discarded banana peel, the font of the slapstick pratfall, is also the keenest signifier of humor in the work. Attentive hand sewing might make the work feel precious, fussy or fragile, but their tangible, handmade levity dominates and is key to Briceño’s translation of her experiences with nature. Humor can be also seen in the artwork’s palette: bright in hue with a highly saturated intensity. The use of brightly colored felt gives the work a plush familiarity. It is amicable as a puppet. The work is whimsical, almost cartoony. It is not without melancholy, however. Even the charming banana peels exhibit a distinct pathos.

A sense of loss can be noted in all of Briceño’s work. In the banana peels, the bananas are missing. The wall-mounted pieces, while looking like abstracted flora, fauna and fungi, also resemble finely handcrafted display devices from which a precious stone has been removed. The square paintings lack, by and large, paint. Overall, Briceño’s practice is missing the look of painting even through they are steeped in that tradition. This sense of loss is integral to the work’s content and the artist’s intent. Just as loss permeates the work, the project of representing the natural world is as unobtainable for Briceño as it is for
painting itself.

Trying to represent one’s experience of the natural world is always filled with pathos. It is a task doomed to failure. Art is, by definition, not the thing it represents but a mediation of it. Modernist painters’ fixation on painting’s selfaware objecthood exemplified their attempt to privilege artworks’ form, and not their illusionistic capacities, as the appropriate territory for art. Briceño’s hopscotch among Modernist painterly impulses and more dimensional objects dramatizes the conflict between her desire to capture the experienced world and her awareness that such an illusion is flatly inadequate. Consequently, Briceño has to move away from painting even if she cannot abandon it altogether. Disconnect between real nature and Briceño’s art mirrors the disappointment in our awareness of art’s inability to adequately match-up with reality. Together, these sorrows give Briceño’s work its depth, literally, as sculpture, and figuratively as well.

Briceño’s use of the seemingly world-wide awareness of mediated forms’ limits upon which to pivot her work is what saves the project from the doom of trying to represent nature. Conceptually, Briceño’s work becomes the shared experience of this awareness. Art, at its best, does not so much seek to emulate the real as elucidate it. Briceño’s work makes the disappointment of art’s fakery not nearly so stinging. With a puffy and vibrant craft, Briceño’s work suggests that the inability to fully render experience is a friendlier situation than a vexing one. By spreading their roots in a tradition of physicalizing painting’s illusory conceit, the artwork of Candace Briceño is able to transform Modernist self-awareness into an affable and welcoming flowering of a self-assured art.

See more of Candace’s work: http://candacebriceno.com/

- Jeff M. Ward recently served as one of the Directors of Programming for ThreeWalls, a not-for-profit residency program and exhibition space in Chicago, Illinois. Prior to that, he was one of the founding members of Chicago’s nolonger- extant artist-run space The Pond, and is presently a critic-in-residence at the Core Program of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Glassell School of Art in Texas as well as the executive assistant for ArtLies Texas-focus quarterly journal.

by Lynn Boland

“Shhhp, shhhp.” “Baaaaaa, that’ll be the day/Ohhh.” “Ahh ahh.” These quotations might seem unfamiliar and even a bit strange, but you have heard them before. They are repeated every day on oldies stations across the nation, but we are more familiar with their lyrical counterparts: “Cupid draw back your bow,” “Well that’ll be the day/When you say goodbye,” and “There’s nothing I can do to keep from crying when he calls your name, Jolene.”[1]

In Backup, videos of Amelia Winger-Bearskin sing the alto voices from three popular songs in order to reveal the hidden support system of our society’s cult-of-celebrity. We know the names Sam Cooke, Dolly Parton, and Buddy Holly. They are the artists on the album covers, the ones we search for on iTunes. Maybe you’ve also heard of The Crickets, but can you name them? I can’t. Eight people are credited with backing vocals on the 1957 recording of “That’ll Be the Day.”[2] Songwriting credits go to Buddy Holly, drummer and vocalist Jerry Allison, and producer Norman Petty. More specific information as to who sang or wrote what is not readily available; there is no general demand for it since backups rarely enter our cultural consciousness.

Winger Bearskin’s self-imposed framework of using songs found on oldies stations also draws in other compelling, if unintended, issues simply because of the nature of such formats. She initially selected and recorded eight songs for the series, arranged in sets of three. The sets are determined by the songs’ pacing. Here, the visual arrangement of the three songs puts Rock-n-Roll between Rhythm & Blues and Country & Western. The traditional formula for the development of Rock is R&B + C&W = R-n-R.[3] In recent decades, this simple equation has been radically complicated, thus additional issues of underappreciated contributions to popular culture are brought to bear in the work.[4]

Winger-Bearskin’s three performances for Backup were each single takes. The intense expression on her face as she struggles to pick out the alto voices contributes to a kind of deadpan humor that gives the viewer immediate entry into the work. Such access is especially useful given the eerie, dissonant nature of the music that is created through the artist’s semi-aleatory process. The toe-tapping rhythms and melodic hooks are gone. The alto (literally “high”) voice is most often in the middle, a somewhat awkward tonal position, and the three songs’ battling keys further the work’s tonal complexity.[5] All three songs conform to the pop standard length of under three minutes. Two are in 4/4 time, and one in the equally divisible 2/4; yet despite these metric similarities, each has a different tempo. Had the whole of the songs been reproduced the result would have been cacophonous, but Winger-Bearskin’s process creates music that is atonal and ametric, notions unknown to Western music until the twentieth-century and still considered “difficult” in both pop and art music.[6]

Our selective idolization of popular entertainers is central to the musical and visual elements of Winger-Bearskin’s videos, from her choice of songs to her performance against a green chroma screen. Beyond the convenience of her own operatic vocal training, the artist performs in all of her work herself to avoid any illusion of objectivity; she is interested solely in subjective truth.[7] Like Brecht, she wants to use “lies” to show “truth.”[8]

** see video here” : http://studioamelia.com/backup.html
** see more of Amelia’s work: http://studioamelia.com/