you had to be an artist or a rockstar

Gedi Sibony

Installation view, Whitney Biennial, 2006

Courtesy Greene Naftali, NY

The New Museum’s inaugural exhibition, “Unmonumental: the Object in the 21st Century,” at its (relatively) new SAANA-designed building in the Bowery also had an online venue titled “Montage: Unmonumental Online”, hosted by Rhizome, an online institution that has been affiliated to the New Museum since 2003. Although the physical exhibition at the New Museum is over, the online section of the exhibition is still available, showcasing online projects by 14 different artists.

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La exposición inaugural del New Museum, “Unmonumental: the Object in the 21st Century” en su (relativamente) nuevo edificio diseñado por la firma japonesa SAANA en el Bowery también tuvo una etapa en línea titulada “Montage: Unmonumental Online,” hosteada por Rhizome, una institución de arte en línea que ha estado afiliada al New Museum desde el 2003. Aunque la exposición física ya ha terminado, la sección en línea sigue disponible, mostrando trabajos de 14 artistas diferentes.

Montage: Unmonumental Online

So far, I have not been able to write about Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century,” the inaugural exhibit at the New Museum on the Bowery that inspired my recent homage to collage and that closes on March 30. It’s been overwhelming not because I’m not interested in teasing out my response to the show, in general, and certain pieces, specifically, but because every time thus far that I have turned to focus on Unmonumental, I’ve not been able to get past my newly-identified obsession with collage as a form.
Incidentally, I’m not alone. In grappling with his thoughts about the Whitney Biennial in the March 24, 2008 issue of New York magazine, Jerry Saltz describes the show’s “resultant assemblage-collage aesthetic” as “the style du jour right now.” He writes: “Huldisch and Momin [the youthful curators] assert that current art is exploring what Samuel Beckett called “lessness,” and that it’s in a “do-over” phase. … artists are working in modes of “anti-spectacle” and “ephemerality,” and employing “modest, found, or scavenged materials.” … artists are working together and off one another, and that they’re making use of the open-source systems, self-replicating strategies, and decentralized networks of our YouTube-MySpace world.”
Yes, yes, yes! To cite that candy-colored sign announcing the New Museum’s presence on the Bowery: Hell yes!

What Saltz fails to mention—or maybe doesn’t agree with—is the whimsy, often surreality, of this mode of art. Collage is playful. A sumptuous full moon adorned in chains of faux pearls, fur pelts, foam-stuffed fishnet stockings, fringe, curling horns shaped out of silver, shiny aluminum foil, a pair of long johns, plastic tubular hose and gourds, among other miscellany, is the focal point of Wangechi Mutu’s wall-size mural (50×25 feet, I’m guessing) titled, “Perhaps the Moon Will Save Us.” Small pink blossoms blown from a crooked, wind-bent tree drift toward the moon. Except, look closer: They aren’t blossoms. Look closer: They are small, pink, (presumably) dead pigs, affixed with a tuft of animal fur. Light as a feather, (they are tiny), they drift on the breeze. The realization doesn’t shake one from one’s dreamlike reverie—at least it didn’t me. Any more than Madame moon’s tacky-trashy accoutrements.
Artists who work in collage generally do not shy away from the grotesque, the grit and grime of life—literally, when working with found objects. What they create is all the more soulful for it.

Thanks to Wooster Collective for the photo of the New Museum. Street arts aren’t unrelated to collage: juxtaposition of textures, colors, surfaces. layers of meaning. irreplicable process. surprising results. the transformation of a wall, a lamppost, into something … else.

Collage is:
The collective unconsciousness of a subway car, or an airplane cabin.
A waking dream.
Leaves leftover from last season tangled in spring.
Simultaneous tabbed web browsing, emailing and IMing.
Spontaneous decisions.
Mismatched sheets.
May involve paper, scissors and glue.
However, any source material will do. (rhyme!)
— Always pieced together to make one new thing.
There is an eye which sees,
Like how a photographer frames X for desired effect (only with more imprecise edges).
There’s a thought there, to tease out. Call it inspiration, idea, inquiry.
It’s a nudge. of Life’s pieces. Some make sense. Others don’t (until you tilt your head). (And then still maybe not).
A shattered mirror’s fragmented views is still always a reflection.
An different perception, perhaps?
Always a labor of love, inherent opinion.
Perceived as a Frankenstein to some,
A celebration of living, in the best case scenario.
Always a public record. And art, entangled.

(pushed over the edge by Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century at the New Museum)

Post script: From where, oh where, did I get my love of collage?
Junking (garage sale scavenging) with Grandma. Loosing oneself in the layers of beats and vocals, looped—hallmarks of the music defining my generation. A result of living amid the ebb and flow of city life. Three instances of how collage inspires life—this one, at least.

When my friend Marisa Olson, video artist extraordinaire, invited me to the opening of Unmonumental, an exhibit she co-curated with Lauren Cornell featuring artists working with Internet-based montage, at the New Museum next week in New York (VIP, of course), I had to ask what she’d be wearing. “I like wearing custom garments that reflect the concepts I work with,” she said. The exhibition will be available online from February 15 to April 6, 2008 at rhizome.org/montage.

“Cutting and pasting, breaking apart and re-assembling, ripping and remixing, the participating artists extend the radical practice of collage to the Internet, demonstrating how previously tried techniques can engender rich, new artistic practices.” – The New Museum

Accordingly, the piece Marisa will debut is a custom-made RUFFEO HEARTS LIL’ SNOTTY sweater-dress that conceptually, could compare with the likes of recent Prada, Miu Miu, and Balenciaga trends, and reflects Unmonumental’s lo-fi montage aesthetic.

And they do menswear! Never grow up, with big bold slabs and blocks of color, snap-on bandit-bandannas, kitsch prints and florals, rainbows, big-lips patches, and hooded-necks that you wouldn’t mind having to wear a brace under after you get whip-lash from watching someone walk by in one.

RUFFEO HEARTS LIL’ SNOTTY is the ironic Tee-shirt that grew up and got political. Each garment is hand-made in a Seattle workshop, and the designers take the fashion industry as seriously as they take consumer-capitalism in general – not very. With a disdain for Urban Outfitters and company, and a tongue-in-cheek sensibility, they prepare us for care-free craziness.

In a world where everyone wears RUFFEO HEARTS LIL’ SNOTTY, there is no war – just rock-shows, ridiculous cartoons, scrabble clubs, and fixed-gear bicycles. It looks like an 8-bit, space-age video-game puked all over Peter Pan’s Lost Boys after a Salvation Army run – and I love it!

The best part is it’s made from 100% recycled and re-purposed materials (minus the zips & snaps). The even BESTER part is that it’s all relatively affordable and you can buy some right now on Etsy.com

• If you haven’t been to Etsy.com, you are so missing out on handmade everything from amazing artists all over the place. Go!

DB’s Etiquette Recommendation: If you want to dress like a big toddler, there is a right way and a wrong way. The wrong way is creepy and makes people feel uncomfortable: Form-fitting overalls with running shoes will do this. The right way is taking the cue from RUFFEO HEARTS LIL’ SNOTTY and turning your attitude towards having fun, quitting your boring job, and liberating your inner-child with geometric art, huge color, and a genuine cohesion.

235 Bowery, New York, NY

Each month the New Museum is adding a new layer of art for their inaugural exhibition, UNMONUMENTAL. For the first month the museum had only sculpture, now into the second month, they have put up collages and collage installations on the walls. In mid-February they will add a layer of sound art and Internet art. The exhibition wants to focus on the times we are currently living in. These fragmented and sometimes precarious forms reflect the opening of the 21st century- marked by moments of falling monuments (ie/ Twin Towers, Saddam Hussein, etc). It also reflects the current trend in art to use modest -unmonumental- materials. This isn’t a show of marble statues and meticulous oil paintings; it’s littered with broken furniture, paper clippings, and old clothes. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself bumping into a sculpture that looked like a turned over trashcan.

I wasn’t a big fan of the sculptures, they weren’t doing enough for me to give more than a glance. Maybe because I wanted those small intimate moments when artwork draws you into looking at a small fragment of itself, similar to a painting. I LOVED the collages. They were loaded with imagery. “Collage: The New Painting for the 21st Century” could be another title for this second installment. Thomas Hirschhorn had a wall full of collages that juxtaposed images of death and gore with porn ladies. On top of that he drew all over and around the clippings with a pen. My favorites were Martha Rosler’s framed works that collaged domestic interiors with happy advertisements with runway models with the War in Iraq. I know there is a glare on the photos I took, but if you look closely there is a Febreeze add of a lady cleaning a couch inside a bombed out castle. That says a lot right there- perhaps, as we are cleaning our homes our military is cleaning out other peoples’.

On the lower two levels of the museum were monumental collages. Monumental in their massive size and installations. Wangechi Mutu’s, “Perhaps the moon will save us” has flying pigs (with faux fur for wings), holes in the wall for stars, and a moon made of stuffed stockings, blankets, and various garments. Mark Bradford’s “Helter Skelter 1 + 2″ is an enormous collage on canvas which he sanded through to expose different layers. From afar is looks like, well- Helter Skelter, but when you come up close you can see the various fragments of images.