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Most of the time, we think of art as separate things -- paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, site-specific installations, etc. But there can be another way to look at it: art as the curatorial process itself. By selecting and combining different artistic components into a group, a curator -- the person who picks and organizes the content of an exhibition -- can shape a show or series into a distinctive artistic statement.
That's the idea behind this weekend's "Screenings and Happenings" at Gallery 25. Curator Diran Lyons has assembled three components, including his own feature-length indie film, into a program that he hopes will form a cohesive whole. Lyons is mixing things up at the gallery in several ways:
- He's putting the emphasis on multimedia.
- He's making strong political statements about such hot-button issues as health care and generational inequities along with delving into more esoteric discussions, including the role of illusion and deception in art.
- And he's elevating to exhibition status one of his preferred techniques, the "remix" video, in which artists collide different pop culture visual sources (think the Obama-McCain TV debates combined with judges' comments from "So You Think You Can Dance") to make provocative new meanings.
This political remix video on Obama is called "Jake Gylenhaal Challenges The Winner Of The Nobel Peace Prize," by Diran Lyons. It will be part of the Gallery 25 exhibit this weekend.
This indepedent film called "Goodbye Victoria," is co-directed by Diran Lyons and Matthew Potter. It will be shown as part of a multimedia exhibit at Gallery 25 this weekend.
IF YOU GO
"Screenings and Happenings"
When: Jan. 29-31, Gallery 25, 680 Van Ness Ave.
Details: (559) 264-4092, gallery25.org
For Lyons, who resists easy categorization when it comes to his art, the weekend is a chance to flex his curatorial muscles.
"I work in a lot of different media, so classifying me is hard," he says. "I ask myself what would be the best and forceful way to communicate a set of ideas in a project."
Here's more on the weekend's lineup:
Fresno premiere of narrative film
What: "Goodbye Victoria"
Genre: Film
Screens: 6-8 p.m. today
Description: This feature-length narrative film, co-directed and written by Lyons and Matthew Potter, has been a passionate project of Lyons' for a couple of years.
It focuses on a young out-of-work "scenester" who moves from Charleston, S.C., to California to pursue a career as an actor.
The details: Produced for $20,000, the film has played at several film festivals, as well as online. The Gallery 25 screening is the Fresno premiere.
How it fits in: The film dives into issues related to the crumbling of the American dream. Head of state in fresh debate What: "Political Remix Video"
Genre: Video presentation
Screens: 4:30 p.m. Saturday, repeated noon-4 p.m. Sunday
Description: Lyons has compiled 40 examples of the remix genre, in which artists combine video and images from different sources to make political statements that are often different from the original intent. One entry is Lyons' "Jake Gyllenhaal Challenges the Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize," which juxtaposes scenes from Gyllenhaal's movie "Jarhead" with clips of Barack Obama.
The details: Jonathan McIntosh, a prominent remixing artist and creator of the YouTube hit "Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed," will be on hand.
How it fits in: Like the rest of the weekend, the remix videos have political undertones. Lyons says they're an example of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's view of art as an instrument that employs aesthetic deception, or lying, to evoke deductions on larger issues. Here's your shot at health reform
What: "Bearing Witness: A Pilgrimage for Health Reform"
Genre: Photo show and video presentation
On display: Noon-4 p.m. Saturday
Description: This traveling photo show, compiled by Seth and Hannah Gravette of the national PICO (People Improving Communities through Organizing) network, will feature approximately 800 color photographs and accompanying text documenting individuals who have a stake in an improved health-care system.
The details: This ever-increasing exhibit grows at each stop. A photographer will be on hand to document local residents who want to add their images to the collection.
How it fits in: Art is often about illusion, Lyons says. When you look at many of the well-dressed and well-groomed people in these photos, you'd assume they have health insurance. Many don't.
Gallery 25 is marking their 35th Anniversary by an exhibit featuring female artists.
The Fresno Bee
By Donald Munro
September 03, 2009
FRESNO, CA – Anniversaries are by their very definition about looking back. And because our culture is so enamored of them — there’s likely something primal at work having to do with the relentless changing of the seasons and an awareness of our own mortality — we end up spending an inordinate amount of time commemorating the past.
But not the 35th anniversary exhibition at Fresno’s Gallery 25.
This new show, which opens today with an ArtHop reception and continues through Sept. 27, manages to forge into the future even as it acknowledges many of the founding members of the gallery.
“I wanted to honor the original artists and then pass the opportunity on to the younger generation,” says curator Nanete Maki-Dearsan.
To that end, Maki-Dearsan has selected nine local women to highlight as “emerging artists.” Their work joins 10 of the original members of the gallery, which was formed in 1974 as a collective women’s gallery.
The impact of mixing the older and younger artists is striking. Walk into the gallery and you’re struck by the large, cocoon-like fiber art of Genevieve Bartolo, selected as an emerging artist, which dominates the center of the gallery.
There’s an earthy fecundity to Bartolo’s three-dimensional works — a feel of gestation, of imminent birth. Just beyond hangs some of the current work of longtime Fresno artist Joyce Aiken, an original member.
Years ago, Aiken began “preparing” for her own funeral — which, to those knowing her scrappy resilience still seems many years in the future — to the extent of decorating her own pine coffin.
Having the two artists’ works so close together offers an interesting generational contrast.
Gallery 25 was an offshoot of the burgeoning women’s artist movement of the early 1970s. The noted artist Judy Chicago, who had a guest professorship at Fresno State in 1970-71, helped spark the movement when she formed a collaborative women’s art class. (Another current show focuses on Chicago’s students in an exhibition titled “A Studio of Their Own: The Legacy of the Fresno Feminist Experiment, 1970,” on display at Fresno State’s Conley Art Gallery.) After Chicago moved on to the California Institute of the Arts, Aiken continued in the role of teacher and mentor to women artists at Fresno State.
Gallery 25 grew out of one of Aiken’s classes, in fact, after she assigned the students to mount their own exhibitions. There were 16 original artists, including Aiken.
The gallery later went on to admit male members, though a majority of the current Gallery 25 roster are still women.
Maki-Dearsan had a great deal of fun tracking down the original members. Of the 16, she found 12. One was deceased, and she wasn’t able to find three.
As late as last week, she was able to locate Chantal Trauner, who had a key role in establishing the gallery. Trauner is now an artist in Georgia, Maki-Dearsan says, and was “delighted” to be a last-minute addition to the show.
http://www.five-art.com/
August 28th Opening reception
Gallery [5]art presents Fresno G25, a group exhibition from Gallery 25 in Fresno, CA
In the main gallery : [5]art presents their fall season opening exhibition, Fresno G25 a group show featuring artists from Gallery 25 in Fresno, California. This exhibition will debut at Gallery [5]art in West Tampa located in the Old Santaella Cigar Factory and includes work from artists Diran Lyons, Joan K. Sharma, Trude McDermott, Lynn Anderson, Jerrie L. Peters, Donnalee Dunne, Barbara Van Arnam, Karen LeCocq, Joy Johnson, Jim Campbell, Robert Weibel, Ed Gillum ,Kris Kessey, Shannon Bickford, Norma Rogers and Rebecca Barnes.
The Fresno Bee
By Donald Munro
August 9, 2009
Gallery 25, one of Fresno's preeminent cooperative art galleries, has been extending its geographic reach.
Gallery 25, one of Fresno's preeminent cooperative art galleries, has been extending its geographic reach.
First Armenia, now Florida.
That's good news for local fans of visual art. It's great to walk into a downtown gallery and see a touring show.
A couple of years ago, Gallery 25 hosted an exchange with a gallery that was named, coincidentally enough, Gallery 25, in Gyumri, Armenia.
And now, in an exhibition that opened Thursday and continues through Aug. 30, the Fresno gallery features an exchange with an art gallery from Tampa, Fla.
Gallery 25 has teamed up with the art gallery to create a show titled "Five + 5 Presenting." It features work from five Tampa artists and five guest artists from the West Coast, including Gallery 25 president Diran Lyons.
Yes, that's a lot of fives (or multiples thereof) all around.
The idea, Lyons says, was to create a show using some works that had already been displayed in Tampa and others specifically created for this new show to fit the mammoth Gallery 25 display space.
As the Fresno representative to the show, Lyons -- who is also an independent filmmaker -- opted to show a series of four paneled photos of artifacts from his newest movie, "Goodbye Victoria," which he describes as a "hipster-flavored homage to [Jean-Luc] Godard." Lyons co-directed the film with Matthew Potter.
The artifacts include a photo of text from the book "The Time Image" by Gilles Deleuze. The recently completed film -- which Lyons has submitted for competition in various film festivals -- tackles the notion of how time is represented in cinema, eventually making the audience reconsider the chronology of the film itself. (It sounds very daring, perhaps in the tradition of "Memento.")
So how did an indie filmmaker hook up with a gallery in Florida?
In the art world, lots of things happen because of personal relationships -- and this exhibition is no exception. Lyons, who got his degree at California State University, Fresno, and went on to teach in several parts of the country, is friends and colleagues with Tracy Midulla Reller, a founding member of art and a full-time faculty member at Hillsborough Community College in Ybor City, Fla.
Midulla Reller suggested to Lyons a collaboration between the two galleries. She arranged the details on her side of the country. Lyons did the same in Fresno. Soon they'd hammered out an arrangement for the current show. Next month, 15 members of Gallery 25 will send work to Tampa for display.
Before traveling to Fresno, the show made stops at galleries in Atlanta and Nashville.
Normally, when an art exhibition travels, pretty much the same pieces are displayed at each venue -- give or take a few items that don't fit because of space or size limitations.
But the creators of this show decided to make each stop more distinctive. A different curator at each venue picked from a large inventory of pieces from the participating 10 artists. The curator used those pieces to create a show that best fit the individual gallery space. Lyons, who curated the Fresno show, had an inventory of 70 pieces from which to choose.
"It's a little bit of an experiment," Midulla Reller says with a laugh from Tampa. (She'd hoped to get out to Fresno to see the show in person, but airfares from Tampa were too expensive this time of year.)
Because Gallery 25 is by far the largest of the four venues for the exhibition, artists were given the opportunity to create large-scale works to take advantage of the space.
To keep shipping costs down, Midulla Reller made one stipulation: all artists had to create works on paper to make it easy to travel.
"Unfortunately because of the economy, everybody is strapped for cash," she says.
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The Fresno Bee
Hot it was on Thursday night -- hot off the presses, that is. The Fresno art scene doesn't usually boast a gallery opening that includes a printed catalog, but that's what greeted visitors to Gallery 25's "Alchemy" show. (OK, so it was bloody hot, too, but what else is new?) Beehiver Felicia Matlosz was anxious to see "Alchemy," and she says it was worth the wait. Here's her take:
The buzz about the new "Alchemy" exhibit at Gallery 25 turned out to be true. It is a plush, strong, marvelous display of some of the area's most creative talent. With a showcase of 29 artists, there is plenty to visually devour. Make sure you carve out ample time to breathe in the scope of this show.
First, why the title "Alchemy"? The catalog introduction, written by one of the featured artists, Trude McDermott, states: "The contemporary use of the term alchemy is frequently a reference to a mysterious synthesis or fusion of different elements into a new form." From that premise, these artists forged visions from that concept.
The moment you walk through the gallery's front door, you will briefly ponder which way to go. But I think you'll be pulled to the right. On the wall hangs one of Robert Weibel's large-scale gunpowder works of bison. This one is a multiple image, in a lighter, golden-brown tone, that gives the work an ethereal feel, as if aiming for transcendency. To the left is a huge, vertical, three-panel painting by Nanete Maki-Dearsan, called "The Abilities of Butterflies." It's a dramatically dark, textured work, with whiffs of white seemingly struggling from submergence for a separate plane of existence.
But don't neglect the smaller pieces, such as Erin Webster's "The Blackening." It struck me like a mix of surrealist Salvador Dali and that last shot of David Hedison in "The Fly." You know, that moment in the film when the scientific transference of man and fly goes horribly bad, and the man's head is stuck on the fly's body. Except in this painting, it's a woman's alarmed-looking face on top of a brown bird's body, her eyes fixed upon a coffee cup suspended inside a narrow, tall glass container. It's a trippy painting, evoking lots of modern-day angst.
I don't have enough space here to detail other work in "Alchemy," so I plan to go back and write a story about this feast of a show.
Sept. 5, 2008 |
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The Fresno Bee
"Alchemy" at Gallery 25 is an art ex-hibit that spotlights work by 29 mem- bers, many of whom are well known in the Fresno-area arts community.
Artist Trude McDermott views this show as an important one for the 34-year-old gallery. She came up with the theme months ago as she was reading about alchemy. She also has a piece in the show -- "Cave of Shamanic Change," a fusion of photo-collage and oil painting -- and wrote the essay for the exhibit's catalog.
"It was really a complex show to pull together. When everyone is doing their own thing, you wonder how this is going to work in an entire installation," McDermott says. "It worked beautifully. ... I think the term 'alchemy' excites artists. They almost see themselves like alchemists, taking one material and combining it with another and coming up with a new aspect. Everybody seemed to pick up on it."
Donnalee Dunne, whose oil painting "Apocalypse" is in the show, curated the exhibition. "To me, it's a milestone," says Dunne, who teaches graphic design and computer art at California State University, Fresno. "It's cohesive. It has depth. It has meaning. It has context. ... With the high caliber of artists in this group, we all knew we would come up with something elegant, deep and beautiful."
The exhibit's final days are Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The gallery is open only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, but groups of three or more who cannot visit those days can make special appointments by calling (559) 658-8354. You'll see a lot of colorful paintings and multimedia presentations. Here's a look at some.
Dunne's "Apocalypse" is a four-panel piece that harkens to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse but focuses only on the horses. Each animal, in closeup, looks possessed or strikes an intimidating pose as bright blood reds and orange hues vibrate through each panel. One horse has a great horn thrusting from his forehead. Another wears a vikinglike headpiece while his chest cavity is exposed. The piece reflects Dunne's many interests, including history and the work of other artists, such as Francisco Goya's gory "Saturn Devouring His Son."
In Robert Weibel's "American Bi- son," the alchemy comes from creating images from gunpowder. His large-scale piece here is a multiple image in a lighter, golden-brown tone.
The paint in a three-panel painting by Nanete Maki-Dearsan called "The Abilities of Butterflies" has a texture to it, with dark colors and whiffs of white the artist uses to show the butterflies struggling from submergence to another plane of existence.
Ed Gillum's "Regroovable" has an ode to recycling. For Gillum, alchemy goes hand-in-hand with his concerns about the environment. This work starts with a solar panel in the window that helps light up parts of the piece. There are two worn rubber tires that serve as the base. Hearty ligustrum plants sprout from inside the tires. Rising from the plants, plastic water bottles and bamboo shoots help support a flat, bubble-patterned top. A tall, vertical square-shaped melding of colorful glass pieces sits on the top, the pieces being thrown-away remnants from other people's art projects.
"This piece addresses second chances and persistent effort in the cause of change," Gillum writes in the catalog. The catalog is a rare element for a local exhibit. But Dunne and others felt strongly that the show should be permanently documented. The catalog is available for $18.50.
Sept.22, 2008
By Felicia Matlosz
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The Fresno Bee
Art that clicks
Gallery 25 pieces together a great 'Assemblage' show.
By Donald Munro
July 22, 2008
Chemistry is an ephemeral and mysterious thing. Movie-star couples can have it in romantic spades on screen -- or wind up hobbling along like brother and sister. A chef might combine two wildly different menu items and score a hit -- or cause indigestion. A boss and employee might get along famously, or they could wind up at each other's throats.
Art shows rely on chemistry, too. Curators long for it. Museum marketers crave it. Gallery hoppers flock to it. You're never quite sure what will happen when you take works from more than one artist and put them in the same room until you do it. Chemistry between elements can be about so many hard-to-measure concepts: compatability, tension or a combination of the two. Sometimes everything just clicks.
That's the case with "Assemblage," the terrific new exhibition at Gallery 25 that continues through June 30. Curator Karen LeCocq, a Mariposa artist well-known for her own assemblage art, brought together eight artists, including herself -- some familiar to local art lovers, others new names -- known for an interest in assemblage, or putting together found objects.
The different works combine in intriguing ways, from Chris Beards' large-scale works that suggest the fanciful giddiness of a toy store to David Medley's coolly evocative
conglomerations of neon, scrap metal and corrugated roofing that bring to mind a post-apocalyptic drinking establishment.
Part of the chemistry of the show is the color scheme: lots of rust and earth tones, as befitting the many found objects (read: junk) combined in the works -- and here and there a bright and cheery splash, such as the vivid hues in Jerrie Peters' small-scale landscape designs.
There is a sense here of used things, of dignified decay, of the excitement you get when opening an old trunk from the attic and discovering treasures within.
Part of it is the ebb and flow of the traffic pattern in the gallery: The way that the bright buttons on one of Nancy Youdelman's trademark encaustic-slathered dresses pick up the colors in Peters' little worlds directly across; the way the sharp angles of Medley's neon works complement the solid presence of Raphael X. Reichert's big and bold creations; the way the circular pattern of the displays moves the spectator through the room with a kind of spiral energy.
And part is just the tremendous creativity and whimsy of the show.
Take Beards' "Calendar," for example. The Willits artist, whom LeCocq "discovered" at a Merced College exhibition, has crafted a semi-circle of drooping, skinny nylon-mesh sacks weighed down by decorative balls.
Interspersed at various intervals within the sacks are oak galls, which are odd, roundish organic formations that result when wasps interact with oak trees. The fixture from which the sacks hang resembles a court jester's hat, and there is a light-hearted and whimsical feel to the piece.
Then there's Youdelman's remarkable collection of vintage letters from the 1930s that she bought on eBay.
All are addressed to the same man: one Allen H. Watkins of Greensboro, N.C. All are written by different women smitten with him.
Youdelman doesn't know much about Watkins, but it's clear from the tone of the women's letters that he was a charismatic man with a country-club lifestyle.
One thing that is remarkable about the piece is simply how beautiful the letters are with their carefully inked handwriting and formally addressed envelopes. (Can you imagine hanging a bunch of e-mails from today on the wall? Not quite the same aesthetic impact.)
"No doubt you take me for an idiot or just bad," one saddened woman laments.
But this isn't an attempt to re-create a relationship.
The work does nothing more than give a one-sided glimpse of a desirable man. We know his name, and all the rest that remains are the objects -- these precious letters that were likely dumped out by disinterested heirs -- that he left behind.
All the rest of the holes are left for the imagination to fill.
Which is perhaps why the show is so compelling. It makes you look at "junk" -- stuff that we wouldn't look at twice under different circumstances -- in a whole new way. It finds the intensity in the ordinary.
When "Assemblage"' opened at ArtHop earlier this month, the gallery was crammed with viewers. The excitement in the air was palpable. For one of the few times I can remember in this cavernous gallery, which Gallery 25 moved into in 2005, it felt like the space was being used to its full advantage.
The result is a full-blooded, exciting, memorable experience -- and one that reflects admirably on its curator."I think it should be a traveling show," LeCocq says. "It could go to the Guggenheim or the Modern."
I agree.
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