Singapore
Gérard Rancinan
Gérard Rancinan, Metamorphosis IV - The Big Supper, Argentic print mounted on plexiglas in artist’s frame 180 x 300 cm - 70.9 x 118.1 in. • Edition of 3
Gérard Rancinan’s thematic series of photographs – Metamorphoses, Hypotheses, Specimens, Wonderful World and Portraits – at the Opera Gallery Singapore are visually seductive and epically provocative representations of the contemporary issues that assail the twenty-first century. Exploring a complex web of interconnected issues – such as human rights, freedom, immigration, globalisation and capitalist culture – that would take more than bulletin news and politicians’s blustery promises to unravel, Rancinan’s photographs undertake this daunting task with interrogative aplomb, consistently alluding to the malaise of insatiable appetites that contribute to (and are subsequently reinforced by) today’s cultural vernacular.
Gérard Rancinan, Metamorphosis I - The Raft of Illusions Argentic print mounted on plexiglas in artist’s frame.
The Raft of Illusions reworks the cheerless, murky tones of Théodore Géricault’s Raft of Medusa (1818-9), an iconic painting of French Romanticism depicting barely-alive survivors in the aftermath of a shipwreck that precipitated a political scandal of his day. In its current incarnation, modelesque figures are depicted as refugees clad in branded scraps of fabric, who writhe on a raft hailing a partially submerged Hollywood sign and the Eiffel Tower in turbulent waters. These survivors, recast as fashion victims, desperately flail for rescue, yet look to the powerlessness of these selfsame drowning symbols for help.
Gérard Rancinan, Metamorphosis VI - Las Meninas Argentic print mounted on plexiglas in artist’s frame 180 x 234 cm - 70.9 x 92.1 in. • Edition of 3
If the female personification of a bare-breasted Liberty heroically leads her people with a bayonet and the tricoloured French flag in patriotic solidarity in Eugène Delacroix’s La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830), Rancinan’s Freedom Unveiled utilises the enduring legacy of the French Revolution and the idea of patriotic militarism to emphasise the mixed-bag of signs that characterise the excess and detritus of consumerist culture. Liberty is, for Rancinan, a woman in a black hijab who stands with ragged street urchins and handcuffed bodies against an apocalyptic backdrop of underground graffiti art, McDonald’s distinctive arches and television images of Mickey Mouse and Christian media evangelism.
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Perth
The lure of the animal
The Hijacked series of exhibitions and publications, currently in its third iteration, juxtaposes the work of Australian photographers with their international contemporaries from the USA, Germany, and now the United Kingdom. Hijacked III brings together thirty-two artists from geographically distant but historically linked places, and the diversity of work is pronounced. However, there are some discernible themes at play: the performance of identity within the urban landscape, the legacy of history in contemporary life, and the unreliable power of the photographic image. A number of artists in Hijacked III also demonstrate a shared interest in the constructed nature of human-animal relationships.
Luke Stephenson, 'Diamond Sparrow', 2009
Luke Stephenson’s ongoing series The Incomplete Dictionary of Show Birds attempts the impossible task of mapping domestic bird pedigrees in images that lie somewhere between portraiture and still life. The series shows the birds’ physical characteristics to their best advantage, emphasizing color, stature and markings, however, the intimacy of the scenes belies the formal beauty of the photographs. Stephenson is drawn to the eccentric world of breeders, chipping away at the encyclopaedic task of documenting their labors with equally fanatical vigor. Small details like the bright yellow leg ring of a grey finch or the curious gaze of a parrot remind the viewer of the birds’ captive lives and the relationship that binds them to the breeder, and allow them to be viewed as both objects and subjects.
Petrina Hicks, 'Emily the Strange', Lightjet print, 2011
In Petrina Hicks’ Emily the Strange, a young girl cradles a hairless sphinx cat, which clutches her shoulder with a wrinkled paw. A motif of mirroring seems to identify an otherworldly symmetry between the pair; girl and cat each have crystal blue eyes and wear the same pale shade of pink. These unlikely twins comprise a swathe of luxurious textures and vulnerability, and would fulfill that convention of female portraiture in which the subject holds some trinket or fancy that marks her as just one of many ornaments, were it not for the grotesque beauty of the wrinkled cat.
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Hashtags
#Hashtags: The art of being female
#Hashtags: Viral Thoughts on Politics, Art and Culture
#Hashtags provides a platform for longer reconsiderations of artworks and art practices outside of the review format and in new contexts. Please send queries and/or ideas for future to hashtags@dailyserving.com.
Screenshot taken from an attack ad against Congresswoman Janice Hahn, 2011.
If you’re young and female, I hope you’re introduced to a positive mentor early enough to build a strong sense of self-worth, because in 2012, American society still refuses to make it easy for you to maintain one. Looking at the last few months, women’s rights seem to be in retrograde, with the obvious example being the tone of the Republican campaign. But if you need more proof: so far this decade we have seen Hillary Clinton and a female aide photoshopped out of situation room documentation of the moment Osama Bin Laden’s death was announced, Fox News’ Greta van Susteren’s decision to ask Sarah Palin on-air whether she’d gotten breast implants, and an attack ad against Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Hahn comparing – even conflating – Hahn with a pole dancer.
And then last week there was that little Rush Limbaugh thing. You know, where he repeatedly attacked, on air, a woman that he first identified as “Susan Fluke.” Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student, had argued in front of Congress that private health insurers such as her own should be required to make birth control available at affordable rates. Fluke collected the stories of friends and fellow students, ultimately testifying that women rely on birth control not just for contraception, but in their treatment of other health issues, like ovarian cysts. For her trouble, Limbaugh called Fluke a slut and a prostitute, demanded that she put her sex videos online, and even suggested that by forcing insurers to provide this option, the taxpayer would take on the role of pimp.
Screenshot of Sandra Fluke speaking on "The View," March 5, 2012.
Unfortunately for Limbaugh, Fluke turned out to be nothing like his stereotypes – he had her pegged as a ditzy undergraduate, not the articulate and thoughtful speaker that she is. Fluke met Limbaugh’s comments with a press tour of her own, putting her remarks (and his) into context and reshaping the narrative that Limbaugh had twisted, so much so that Limbaugh eventually offered a limp apology.
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Help Desk
HELP DESK: On the Web and In Your Head
Welcome to another week of HELP DESK, where I answer your queries about making, exhibiting, finding, marketing, buying, selling—or any other activity related to—contemporary art. Together, we’ll sort through some of art’s thornier issues. Email helpdesk@dailyserving.com with your questions (you can use a free anonymizer like Anonymouse.org if you want) and save the comments section to chime in on the topics of the day. All submissions will be treated as anonymous and become the property of Daily Serving.
Your counselor, hard at work.
My question centers around income: does an artist truly need their own website to be successful? Do prospective buyers really look up your name and view your work? I’m a financially struggling student–I do not have an official website (only a facebook dedicated to art). Is this a serious drawback in the sense that others will not take me seriously as an artist even if my work is of good quality?
Worrying about being taken seriously is putting your cart before the horse, because how will these hypothetical people even find you in order to evaluate your work? I asked around about websites and this is what I heard:
One New York gallerist said, “One doesn’t NEED a website, but it helps curators and galleries find your work… I doubt that ‘buyers’ really come via the web, but I think it is advantageous so have some web presence if you want to be found.”
Likewise, the gallerist I contacted in Berlin said, “Yes of course people (collectors, curators, gallerists) are researching artists they are interested in – who doesn’t use Google? If an artist does not have a gallery representing them with a comprehensive overview of what they’ve done on their site, it’s probably good to have some information available that allows interested persons to see the work without contacting the artist directly. I don’t know if it will make anyone successful though! Most “buyers” are going to buy from galleries I think, and really it’s gallerists and curators who are going to reference the site, so it would be bad form to set up a website that was geared towards selling work.”
Make it easy for people to find your work. (image: affiliatemarketerscollege.com)
The most comprehensive answer came from a San Francisco gallerist (it must be that famous “California abundance” at work): “This is an interesting question. Ultimately, a website is one piece to the puzzle and the need is probably in relation to what an artist’s gallery (or galleries) is providing for them. Having one’s own website of course provides the greatest control of presentation so long as the artist is capable and willing to do the work. Most people do not realize the extent to which a website is an on-going project and an out-of-date website can easily give the impression that an artist has given up their practice. One needs to keep the images (individual works and exhibitions), biography and press updated and the photography should be as professional as possible. The design and photography on any given website has evolved so much in the past five years, and with it our sophistication as visual consumers on the web.”
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From the Archives
Czech out the DS Archives!
I know, cheesy pun but too good to resist. And it’s relevant because today’s look into the DS Archives features Czech artist Monika Fryčová and the group exhibition, There is Nothing There at the Czech Center Gallery in NYC. The two exhibitions demonstrate the countless ways in which Czech artists and people interpret their lives in the current social and political state in the Czech Republic: “a tension suspended between the failure of the communist utopia and relentless capitalist expansion.” (Czech Center Gallery)
The following article was originally posted by Marilyn Goh on December 15, 2011:
Monika Fryčová, Perpetuum Mobile, 2011. Image: Kling og Bang gallery.
Monika Fryčová’s show Perpetuum Mobile at the Kling og Bang Gallery propositions that the relationship between the visible and invisible is constantly in motion and ephemeral.
Locked behind the socialist borders in then-Czechoslovakia, stories of local culture were the only narratives that Fryčová heard. Like many artists who were restless for new physical activity and renewed visions after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Fryčová became in her own words, a traveller who charted her own routes and made her own narratives without maps or guides. Consequentially, Fryčová’s works are highly improvised, and dependent on the indeterminacy and spontaneity of human interactions.
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