The Prague Post
March 13th, 2010
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    star Gift Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Altered states

From the U.S., a rollicking and unruly aggregation

By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
December 19th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
A sea of heads from artist Mike Bouchet's Top Cruise, cruises the floor of the Galerie Rudolfinum in Old Town.
enlarge
Uncertain States of America: American Art in the Third Millennium

at Galerie Rudolfinum Ends Feb. 24, 2008. Alšovo nábř. 12, Prague 1–Old Town. Open Tues.–Sun. 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

“Uncertain States of America” has become a successful and evolving traveling exhibit of 42 contemporary American artists, most born after 1970. After exhibiting this year in France, China, Denmark, and Poland, it ends the year in Prague’s Galerie Rudolfinum, with more destinations to follow.
The exhibition debuted at The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, Norway, in October 2005. The curators — Europeans Daniel Birnbaum, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Gunnar B. Kvaran — traversed the United States for two years, searching out artists from the emerging generation, especially “unknown” artists outside the New York gallery scene, with no other special theme or concept in mind.
Perhaps that’s why there is an inherent chaos in the works on display, though it also makes the show a successful multicultural splash — certainly not a clash. And this ultimately reflects American culture at its best.
For instance, there are some perplexing sculptures, such as Frank Bensen’s A Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, an oversized peach with a candle intriguingly stuck into its side, resting on a barrel. Another one is his white plaster turtle which has four human arms and hands instead of legs, and a fist for its head. Cristina Lei Rodriguez’s garden in a corner of the same room is a complexly layered arrangement of fake flowers and plants, doused in glitter, paint and wax, and ornamented with cheap jewelry, cobwebs and saliva.
In the next room, Josh Smith’s paintings, made over painted panels, incorporate scraps of notes, newspapers and drawings or small paintings as well as scribbles and graffiti. While Aaron Young’s silkscreens on canvas are done in two tones (black and gold or red and gold) with spray paint, the used paint cans are stenciled onto the canvas to reference graffiti street culture most effectively of all.
In the main parlor room, Edgar Arceneaux’s The Michael Jackson Project includes a severed head of a Jackson mannequin in a glass case and drawings with titles like Dancing Machine and I Am Not an Animal — Technological Man.
Half of the room is dominated by an installation by Guyton/Walker combining paintings and stacks of paint cans with unique labels. There are also some unlabeled cans on a crate that give the installation a sense of a work in progress.
In an anteroom, there is a perverse video by Mika Rottenberg: Dough (2005) shows an absurd production line in a dough factory, led by an obese black woman, in which thick chunks of dough are massaged through an overly complicated production cycle, and the whole process ends with a tear drop dripping off a naked toe.
Another video, Killer Shrimps by Piero Golia, is an 80-minute B-movie epic about young loafers, filmed in the style of Herschell Gordon Lewis, that ends in a zombie gore explosion.
Two of the best works in the show occupy only floor space: Mike Bouchet has created a sea of heads, with paths to walk through and maneuver around. His good-humored Top Cruise (2005) consists of 1,000 identical heads of a guy with brown hair. And Paul Chan projects jittery shadows of human figures and phone and electric lines seemingly tossed across the sky, like a hurricane seen from overhead in slow motion.
Frank Bensen’s painting of a large, warped American flag hangs over the entrance of the exhibition, but you don’t notice it until you exit the last room — a perfect ending to the show. If you loiter in the gallery’s reading room, you will get a treat (or an earache, according to the attendants) from a sound installation by Miranda July. It begins with a shout-out, like at a rock concert, which sounds obnoxious in the space. But perhaps July’s installation reflects the reputation Americans have acquired abroad for behaving obnoxiously.
There will be music performances in the gallery’s hall to complement the Indie-rock influences and connections of many of the artists, such as Devendra Banhart. Sabot (an instrumental jam duo formed by Americans living in Tábor) plays Jan. 9, and Feb. 6 there will be Please the Trees (an alt-country band from Tábor) and Atlantic Cable, led by Prague-based American Tyson Crosby.
By involving these music groups in the wider scope of the exhibit, the curators are recognizing the diaspora of Americans spread around the globe, whether in Berlin, Prague, Costa Rica or Tábor. Artists of this expat American community abroad may be yet another aspect of uncertain American states to be revealed.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (19/12/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.