With spring comes flowers, birds, glimmers of summer, and sometimes one and a half feet of snow. But spring also brings back our Family Saturday Workshop series, which begin on Saturday, April 9. Inspired by a specific work or series in the collection, the Family Saturday Workshops aim to teach participants about materials and techniques used by an artist in the collection. The series begins with a look at Margaret Lee’s piece entitled Think About Tomorrow or Don’t from 2007, where kids and families will create their own wooden monument. These free workshops are fun for all ages. We invite you to bring friends and family to create your own Dikeou Collection inspired artwork.

Margaret Lee, Think About Tomorrow or Don’t, 2007.

The most recent Family Saturday Workshops from the 2015 season included Momoyo Torimitsu’s storyboard and performance workshop in July, Rainer Ganahl’s scarf printing workshop in August and Misaki Kawai’s character building workshop in September.

March 2015 Lee Stoetzel workshop.

Lee Stoetzel’s Accidental Tourism, is a series of close-up photographs captured from his studio windowsill, scratched glass and globs of paint that compositionally appear to be distanced landscapes. In this March workshop, participants took extreme close-ups of tile, wood grains and artwork textures from the collection to capture their own landscapes

August 2015 Rainer Ganahl scarf workshop.

Rainer Ganahl’s Hermes Marx series includes a set of four Hermes silk scarves that have been screen printed over with his own logo “Hermes Marx”. In this workshop, participants were invited to print over the existing printed fabric of a scarf with their own design. This act of printing over the pre-existing design, not only changed the aesthetics of the scarf but then appropriated the object into the participant’s own piece of artwork.

September 2015 Misaki Kawai character building workshop.

The last and most recent workshop was a Misaki Kawai character building workshop that had participants create themselves in the form of an iconic Kawai doll. Designing their own clothes, hairstyle and doll, participants learned about Kawai’s use of photography, sewing and doll-making in her work.

Looking to our 2016 Family Saturday Workshop series, we will teach workshops that include materials and concepts like cardboard, color theory, wood, paper mache and found objects to continue exploring the art practices found in the Dikeou Collection. Can you guess which artists use these materials?

The purpose of the Family Saturday Workshops is not only to get the audience thinking and talking about artworks in the collection, but to ignite their own creative process as well. Learning about how the objects in the collection are made, conceived or experienced allows a deeper understanding of the practice of art making and teaches new techniques to our audience. We have instructions to guide one’s way through the project but we also encourage the participants to incorporate their own ideas and techniques to the projects. Encouraging personalization incites the audience to not just replicate but to create from their own artistic energy. Teaching various techniques used in the collection also creates a relationship between the viewer and an art object. Conceptually understanding an artwork can be difficult, but if someone can physically create it themselves using a similar technique as the artist, the gallery-go’er is that much closer to understanding the work.

Keep an eye out for our 2016 Family Saturday Workshop press release, which will include an artist list with dates of the entire 2016 lineup.

-Madeliene Kattman

Patterns of repetition fill the gap that exists between static images and animated ones. A single, fixed image comes alive when it is repeated over and over, with some slight variation, to create movement and tell a story. Dutch artist Serge Onnen’s video animation, “Break,” surrounded by his illustrated pink wallpaper titled “Silence Fence” at Dikeou Collection, combines stillness with motion to create an installation that immerses the viewer in the power of repetition. The placement of Onnen’s artwork in the collection (in the women’s restroom) creates a combination of viewer experiences as well, where it can be seen both publicly and privately. This unorthodox location is actually quite advantageous as it is the most frequented room on the entire 5th floor of the building, continuing Onnen’s conceptual drive toward movement, stasis, and rhythm.

Onnen created “Break” and “Silence Fence” through drawing, and hands appear prominently in these works, thus making them additional important themes. In “Break” two arms extend from the left and right sides on the screen and smash together random objects like lamps, telephones, and beer mugs. The objects break apart into pieces, and the hands then touch in someway before they pull apart offscreen and reappear for another smash session. An eccentric, non-melodic, guitar plays the soundtrack. “Silence Fence,” which covers all the walls in the bathroom, is composed of people holding their hands to the their ears. Their facial expressions reveal various states of displeasure, insinuating that they are experiencing some terrible deafening noise. Perhaps they are absorbing this noise, placing the viewer on the quieter side of the “Silence Fence.”

The way Onnen poses his figures, with their hands held to their hands, expresses his interest in the complex relationship between our brains and hands. The connection these two parts of the body share is what enabled humans to create, to build, and evolve. It is also what gives us the capacity to draw, a creative activity that Onnen holds in the highest esteem, as it is the generative process for all other artful mediums and is accessible to every human on this earth. Drawing is an exercise that, when done regularly, strengthens the mind and sharpens coordination.

When there is a lack of mindfulness, hands become tools for destruction rather than creation. In “Break,” where heads are absent, the hands demolish objects that were originally designed and made with much thought and intention. The gentle way the hands touch each other, though, after they break something, suggests that this is not a violent act but rather one that symbolizes release. We are often slaves of our own creation, and recklessly destroying something can be mentally liberating.

-Hayley Richardson

To speak about the artwork of Lizzi Bougatsos is to speak about Lizzi Bougatsos herself.   Multidisciplinary, punchy, and ephemeral, Bougatsos’ art is the child of an urban wasteland. The world is her oyster and her apartment is her studio. Her visual art is conceived in short bursts: give her a month and she will give you an art show. Bougatsos is a performer by nature, which means that being a fashion icon and noted queen of the underground is a part of her art practice. It is impossible to find an article about her that leaves out the fact of her sweet witchy vibes and her celebrity friends. She works quickly, touting a plethora of different art works and collaborations, often made with found objects and smashed together with the brilliance of a quick wit. Bougatsos is most known for her performative capacity both in her musical work with bands Like Gang Gang Dance and I.U.D., her performance art at venues such as the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art, as well as her sculptural work that is represented by James Fuentes Gallery in New York.

In both her zingchat interview with zingmagazine and her lecture for School of Visual Arts, she describes an encounter she had with artist Suzanne Anker that would come to define her personal philosophy of art. “She [Suzanne Anker ] said to me, ‘This is sculpture’ [throws a no. 2 pencil in an arc]”.  This pedagogical moment was a profound one for Bougatsos’ career.  In truth, the aesthetic and metaphysical tendencies of her art can be traced back to this juncture: that of performance and sculpture. For Bougatsos, there is no distinction between those two mediums. A sculpture is just performance over a longer period of time. Each physical part of the object takes up space in a particular place for a particular moment in time be that the movement of a dancer’s body, or the time it takes for a material to disintegrate. Self-Portrait (2012) is a mold of the artist’s leg cast in ice which slowly melts as it is put on display in a gallery setting. The sculpture becomes a personal performance in destruction; Strange in its disembodiment, and beautiful in the natural slowness of its change from one state to another. Suzanne Anker’s observation about the nature of sculpture is so apt in describing Lizzi Bougatsos’ art not only in its philosophical implications, but in the fact of its humor. It suits Bougatsos’ style to have a story that is all at once funny, surprising and performative.

The Dikeou Pop-Up: Colfax location houses six pieces by Bougatsos dating from 2010 and 2012. Her piece Good Hair (2010) encapsulates these elements of humor, performance, and sculpture that dominate her art practice. The piece consists of a large stage-vanity scene with bright lights surrounding a frame. Where the mirror would be is a poster of comedian Tracy Morgan from his 2010 film Cop Out. Below the “mirror” is a shelf strewn with lipstick, a hair straightener, a half finished cigarette, a glass filled with red wine. As a viewer, the piece forces you to participate in the narrative of a person readying themselves for a performance. For a moment, you are the main character of the scene. You stand in front of the mirror and you laugh because for a moment you see yourself as the brashly funny Tracy Morgan.

Good Hair is a physically static art object, and yet it feels more closely related to a stage set than a marble statue. Bougatsos is able to soften the rigidity with which we usually see physical art objects. It is also important to mention that Good Hair is a self-portrait. Bougatsos considers herself to be a comedian: a purveyor of the same kind of Saturday Night Live, yo-momma defacing, character-driven humor that is associated with Tracy Morgan. Her art reflects a character wrought with celebrity. And yet, she is not the revered, godlike kind of celebrity, but rather the archetypal jester figure that asks for attention with an exposed tongue and thumbs in its ears.

Indeed many of the Bougatsos’s pieces that reside at the Dikeou Pop-Up read as one-liners. Pussy For Rent (2010) consists of a For Rent sign with the words “my pussy” scrawled in marker on the blank space. Bougatsos makes a sort of feminist joke about her own genitalia being real estate in a world where women’s bodies are constantly being objectified. In God We Bust, also created in 2010, is a green neon sign that that displays those words. The piece references America’s catch phrase, satirized with pun, written in the medium of a late night city. The sign reads like a quip uttered in the wake of silence after political debate meant to tease out some laughs to ease the tension of the room.

In Happy Ending 2 (2012) Bougatsos presents a large scale version of anal beads. Five large reflective silver balls are connected by a rope and hung from the ceiling. At the bottom a pink rose trails to the floor. This piece exemplifies the dichotomy between objects and their referential, societal meaning. The title of the piece and the rose component can be symbolically understood in more than one way. The saying “happy ending” conjures relations to both fairytale stories and sexual climax. The rose is a symbol of natural innocence and is also used as innuendo when related to taboo body parts. By changing the scale of a sex object Bougatsos allows the viewer to consider each part of the piece in the context of erotic imagery and also in a societal vacuum.

The pieces in the collection at the Dikeou Pop-Up also include the controversial Dick Toss II (2012) which involves an upside down American flag hung on the wall, overlaid by a poster depicting the body of an explicitly clad and faceless woman. She offers the viewer a game of beer pong and the caption reads “ATM: Get your balls wet”. Where the woman’s breasts would be, two toy sized dildos are placed with removable rings. The title invites the viewer to play a game, toss the rings and incriminate themselves in the overt sexual objectification that dominates American culture. Once again Bougatsos’s art is performative. Just as Suzanne Anker suggested, the second half of the sculpture is created when the viewer engages physically with the work, throwing the ring in an arc and playing a part in the performance. Thus we implicitly participate in the cringe-worthy imagery that Bougatsos’s wants us to admit to.

-Liana Woodward

Janine Gordon, AFI, 2001, silver gelatin print

The early 2000s: The era of boy bands, pop divas, blinged out rappers, and middle of the road alt rockers. In the midst of this music-for-the-masses arena one genre stood apart, like a big middle finger eager to burst the bubbly world of Pop: Metal. System of a Down, Rage Against the Machine, Disturbed, Slipknot, and Linkin Park dominated the airwaves and the Billboard charts, stomping the Britneys and Justins with ease. This “New Wave of American Metal” was fast, aggressive, and loud with dynamic musicians who knew exactly how to rile up their fans and unleash their angst. The crowds at live shows are quintessential representations of primal energy at its physical and psychological apex, and Janine Gordon captured the intensity with her camera to create her photographic “DIRT” series on view at Dikeou Collection. Gordon’s focus on the people in the audience shows that they were just as charismatic as the performers on stage, and, as a collective fandom, just as socially and culturally powerful.

The concerts Gordon attended took place at Randall’s Island in New York in 2001 and 2002, a time before everyone’s hands and eyes became glued to a smartphone. The body and mind were free to experience the music and the energetic environment without distraction, creating a perfect photographic atmosphere with no inhibition or distraction. She approached her subjects like a journalist, putting herself in the center of the action which “allows us to see the fury, the motion, the aggression, the camaraderie, the unity, and the spirit of a team/teenage life, angst, and revolution…” (Devon Dikeou, curatorial statement). Gordon’s photos serve as documentation of a specific sect of society, and the concert becomes a ritual ground where members of the sect perform a prescribed series of actions, primarily adulation of the music through movement.

Janine Gordon, Surfing, 2002, silver gelatin print

The figures in Gordon’s photographs are in the throws of the mosh pit. Whether circling, skanking, crowd surfing, stage diving, pogoing, or doing windmills, those who partake in this activity do so not with the intention to hurt others, but are accepting and forgiving of pain. Gordon states it’s one of the “dirtiest dances that youth culture embraces today,” but the pit really is a thing of beauty in its own right. Individual people coalesce into a swirling entity of humanity. There is no room for ego or vanity, and gender, religion, and sexuality mean nothing. Everybody is equal.

Naturally, mosh pits would not exist without the bands whose music incited such a concept. The early hardcore punk band Scream’s 1982 song “Total Mash” (which they pronounced as ‘mosh’), defined the ethos behind moshing in the lyrics: “Let me reach out and grab your heart / There’s no reason for you to stand apart / Prefab notions that hold your motions back / Cuts off your head, and tells you how to act.” Then there’s Penelope Spheeris’ seminal 1981 documentary “The Decline of Western Civilization,” which offered mainstream audiences one of the first looks at the punk and later hardcore and metal subcultures.

Dan Witz, 70 Commercial St, 2012, oil and digital media on canvas

The heaving allure of mosh pits and its participants have piqued the interest of artists who work in a variety of media. Dan Witz has created dozens of photorealistic mosh pit paintings that exhibit the same Baroque exuberance as a composition by Rubens, creating a compelling combination of classical, academic sensibility with chaotic and rebellious subject matter.

Bryan LeBoeuf, Mosh Pit (study), 2000, charcoal on paper

Artist Bryan LeBoeuf’s illustration of a figure crowd surfing exemplifies the state of physical and mental surrender one succumbs to while in the heart of the mosh pit. The overhead perspective and languid anatomy is like witnessing, or undergoing, an out of body experience.

Charles Peterson, Mosh Pit at Endfest, Kitas County, Washington, 1991

Charles Perterson, well known for documenting the grunge scene of the early 1990s, directed his camera toward the sea of bodies at intimate shows and large festivals alike, proving that no crowd or venue is too small or too big to instigate such a frenzy.

Janine Gordon, Plant Your Feet, 2001, silver gelatin print

Janine Gordon captured moments that are damn near divine within the hedonistic mass that is the mosh pit. Her ability to hone in on an individual within the group highlights how the singular intensity of one person has a ripple effect, creating a collective energy enhanced by the music. She bravely integrates herself into the pit to capture these moments, while other photographers would likely work from a more comfortable distance. The clouds of dirt kicked up from the movement of the crowd got into in her camera and developed into the film, creating an atmospheric effect and adding that conceptual layer and authenticity to the powerful “DIRT” series.

— Hayley Richardson

Lisa Kereszi: Video Dialogue Screening

As a permanent, non-rotating, contemporary art collection, we are always working to engage our audiences with artworks or artists that they may already be very familiar with. In July of 2015, Saniego Sanchez and Jenna Maurice created and launched the Video Dialogue Series, a monthly video screening. The Video Dialogue Series is a program that focuses on one artwork/artist in the Dikeou Collection and uses videos to explore tangential connections to expand the conversation around the selected artwork/artist. Each screening features one hour of video clips assembled from common and unconventional sources and thus serves as an unofficial video conversation about the artwork/artist. So far, Sanchez and Maurice have created six of these Video Dialogues focusing on artists Chris Johanson, Momoyo Torimitsu, Giasco Bertoli, Lisa Kereszi, Sarah Staton and most recently, Devon Dikeou. Looking to the artist’s inspiration, contemporaneous art movements, location, or their own dialogue about the work, the Video Dialogue Series is able to carry both a light-hearted and a serious approach to discussions surrounding the artwork in the collection. 

Each screening begins with specific information about the artist/artwork featured. This introduction can either be the artist statement, or a video clip documenting the artwork and a localized conversation about it. From there, the selected videos range from advertisements, to conversations about similar artists. As customary to such varied presentations, there is a handheld program provided for the potential eager audience member, or more importantly for reference if they want to re-watch a clip or the entire hour-long series. Not only does the Video Dialogue provide an alternative visual and audio guide to explore the artwork, but the food and drink provided at the screening corresponds with the theme to extend the dialogue and to engage a more sensory experience. 

Lisa Kereszi’s Video Dialogue Program

Lisa Kereszi’s Video Dialogue on November 4, 2015, addressed addictive substances. In her photo series at the collection, Kereszi frames various social situations in which her friends are engaged in party-like scenes smoking and drinking. But there is also a lingering sense of hostility, tension, and frustration in what seem to be happy party-goers enjoying themselves. The minimal separation of enjoyment and potential danger is especially clear in Kereszi’s photo entitled Jack With Jim Beam, where a revolver is foregrounded with a bottle of whiskey. Inspired by Kereszi’s photography, this Video Dialogue focused on the various ways society views addictive substances and how these views have changed dramatically over time. The food provided at the screening included candy cigarettes, alcoholic chocolate and sugar crystals (in the shape of crack rocks). Clips included cigarette and alcohol ads that promoted the use of these legalized, government endorsed addictive products but other clips warned against the addictive use of substances considered “drugs.” As the categorical line between drugs and legalized substances thins out, the audience is able to recognize the classist and racist use of deception and hypocrisy when it comes to what is considered socially acceptable addiction. The end of the screening included a little bonus cartoon titled “Life Smartphone” about a society-wide addictive behavior, as we are all glued to our cell phones. In the video, characters are only engaging with their cell phones, taking selfies and texting, all the while the world is crumbling around them and they have no idea. Here is a link to the preview of the screening so you can get a little sniff for yourself https://vimeo.com/145013121.

Sarah Staton’s Video Dialogue Program

Sarah Staton’s Video Dialogue on December 18, 2015, focused on the Young British Artist (YBA) movement, Sarah Staton’s Supastore and contemporary viewpoints on the work and ethics of the YBA’s collective actions and creations. Touching on the com-modified and material economy of the art world, through her Supastore, Staton created a parody of department stores in which the audience would navigate their way through a traveling store’s drawers to find portfolios, cigarettes, or even credit cards. The portfolio in the collection from the Supastore titled 10 Supastore Supastars, includes a print series of one work from ten different artists. Staton’s Supastore featured artists in a unique exhibition space and art market, challenging the gallery and its stagnancy. The Video Dialogue informed the audience about the multidimensional ways in which the YBAs engaged their practice into their daily life such as Tracy Emin’s 1995 work, “Curriculum Vitae.” The Video Dialogue also addressed the ways in which the movement was critiqued. In a clip entitled “The Art of the Critic: The New Brutalists” an art critic follows around potential art buyers and makes fun of the artwork seen in the studios, putting off the buyers and thus sabotaging the next great art movement. The clips in this screening varied in topic, but each seemed to point directly to the YBA movement as a form of shock art, showing how they are simultaneously oppositional and entrepreneurial. Eating fish n’ chips, Cadbury Flakes and Turkish Delights while washing it down with Ribena and Old English 40s, the audience seemed to enjoy the multifaceted ways in which the YBA movement worked its way into the contemporary American art world by first contextualizing spaces and artworks back in England while critiquing or disrupting the global art market in a beneficial way. The preview for Staton’s screening can be found here https://vimeo.com/144802406.

Devon Dikeou’s Video Dialogue Program

The most recent screening of the Video Dialogue Series at the collection, highlighted Artist, Editor and Curator, Devon Dikeou and focused on her piece titled Not Quite Mrs. de Menil’s Liquor Closet. Looking at the connections between cabinets of curiosities and birds flying into the windows at Mrs. de Menil’s house, the audience was informed about Devon’s interests, practice and relationships to her fellow contemporary artists. Information about how to properly taxidermy a bird, mix a cocktail, and advertisements for portable liquor cabinets guided the audience on a Bud Light flavored path to better understanding her practice and specific use of space and other’s artwork in this installation. The clips also historically contextualized the practice of collecting small, foreign objects into cabinets of curiosities, while relating them to Mrs. de Menil’s actual liquor closet and home in the clip “Menil House and Museum.” Clips in the Video Dialogue connected these two temporally disparate art collectors to their various objects and methods of display. Even more so, the Video Dialogue gave an illuminating glimpse into Devon Dikeou’s intermingling of art collecting with her own art practice. As these works were either gifts or trades, none purchased, the audience can better understand Devon’s own relationship with the artists whose work she collects. Bar food like White Castle burgers, truffle popcorn, mixed nuts and vending machine candy were provided to compliment all of the liquor and taxidermy talk on the screen. Devon Dikeou’s preview can be found here https://vimeo.com/145013478. 

Video Dialogue Screening at Material Art Fair