A festival exploring the odd, ordinary and ingenious in the spectacle of daily life. Art in Odd Places aims to stretch the boundaries of communication in the public realm by presenting artworks in all disciplines outside the confines of traditional public space regulations. AiOP reminds us that public spaces function as the epicenter for diverse social interactions and the unfettered exchange of ideas.
Showing posts with label rob andrews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rob andrews. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Rob Andrews presents: DOOR WORK --> OPENING OCTOBER 22
DOOR WORK
October 22-November 5, 2011
/opening Oct 22 - performance begins at 8pm/
English Kills Art Gallery
English Kills Art Gallery presents DOOR WORK, the first full solo exhibition of Rob Andrews' work after a decade of rigorous investigation into the nature of myth, ritual, and the role of the storyteller.
DOOR WORK hews at the genesis and location(s) of private moments of spiritual transformation, the intersection of the spiritual and profane, the role of ritual in our social landscape, and the boundaries we accept and those we will ourselves to cross.
DOOR WORK bridges the psychic and material distance between performance and the static art object. Rob will present two new major performance works: one, on October 29th @ 8pm for Bushwick BEAT night, Clean Hrag, is a collaboration with Hrag Vartanian, founder and visionary at Hyperallergic.com, and the other which opens the show October 22nd @ 8pm: Ant--Bird 2, is a ritual designed to open a spiritual and metaphysical door using the power of blood, sweat, spit, and the vocal power of a human chorus.
In 2003, Rob cleaned the floor of the gallery Exit Art for three months. Roberta Smith of the New York Times wrote, "In a piece that suggests interior reconstruction Rob Andrews has been and will continue cleaning the gallery's entire floor with a toothbrush, a few square feet each day. His air of meditative concentration contrasts noticeably and nicely with the prevailing sense of bustle and bulk." DOOR WORK balances performance and the object towards speaking to interior reconstruction: destroying old doors, and opening new ones.
Rob is proud to officially join English Kills Art Gallery. He has shown work at the Museum of Modern Art, Exit Art, Grace Exhibition Space, and travels to Bitola, Macedonia in early November to take part in Exchange Radical Moments, a Pan-European live art festival that takes place in 11 European cities on 11.11.11
DOOR WORK is dedicated to the memory of Jeanette Ingberman.
This performance/variable media art work was made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Major support of the Franklin Furnace Fund was provided in 2010-11 by the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation and Jerome Foundation. Special thanks also to the Gowanus Studio Space, United States Artists, and numerous private donors.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
In exchange of your support, Rob Andrews might give you a pedicure
We typically view the word "ritual" as a very religious, almost snooty, act. However, the word can also invoke a sense of "regularity": an activity done to simply bring order. It could be as elaborate as ceremonies, but ritual could be about doing simple things: such as cleaning or taking a bath. Our next artist has explored rituals in different ways, such as using toothbrushes as a cleaning utensil or singing to a coyote, to name a few. We are excited to have Rob Andrews to be part of this year's festival. Upon getting to know his work, the Art in Odd Places team feels this partnership is a match made in heaven.
Who is Rob Andrews and what exactly is he doing for the festival? It involves your feet and something about cleaning. You will know in just a second. I do want to take this time first to let you know about his fund raising project with a great micro-funding site called United States Artists. He is currently asking for your support for his upcoming exhibition soon after the festival. Read it all about here: http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/door_work
Now let's get to know 2011 Art in Odd Places artist, Rob Andrews.
Now let's get to know 2011 Art in Odd Places artist, Rob Andrews.
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| 2011 AiOP artists, Rob Andrews |
AiOP: Tell us about you?
RA: I'm an artist and teacher based in Brooklyn. My work focuses on enacting rituals and telling stories using my own body and the bodies of others. I steal from tradition, religious practice, and from my collaborators in an attempt to get their stories wrong on purpose in order to make them right in another way. My practice involves personal intervention into the muck of inherited mythology, public actions, and volunteer and forced collaborations. I've shown work at the Museum of Modern Art, Exit Art, Grace Exhibition Space, and English Kills Art Gallery in New York as well as in collaboration with other innovative public programs like 40*PHI Art in the Parks.
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| "Assembly" by Rob Andrews |
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| "Be Void" by Rob Andrews |
AiOP: Let's talk to us about "Gowanus Minotaur". The imagery is so, if I may say, a little scary.
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| Gowanus Minotaur photo provided by Rob Andrews |
RA:This work was a breakthrough. The Minotaur is part of our character: as Americans, as humans, as brothers, as mothers, as sons, as friends. He haunts us in his impotency and violence. This piece achieved a fidelity to its source even I couldn't have anticipated. During this work, the Minotaur was meant to be separate from the gallery (a former textile factory), and present only as a specter. The Minotaur was under the main space, chained through the floor to an industrial sewing machine. A three channel video made him visible in the gallery, but the body of the Minotaur was removed - in the labyrinth so to speak. Over the course of the piece however, audience members infiltrated the basement, and threw bottles at the Minotaur, and poured liquor on his body. Someone actually broke an 8 foot florescent bulb over the Minotaur.
AiOP: How did you hear about Art in Odd Places?
AiOP: Walk us through your thought process in creating your piece for Art in Odd Places
RA: I have been building cleaning pieces for ten years. Cleaning is a profound metaphor for human experience. Not only does it have deep formal ritual roots across world religions, it is a notable informal form of human connection. One has one's feet cleaned at a beauty salon. I clean my children at night, and in doing so honor and protect them. We clean ourselves for absolution. For presentation! We clean to get closer to each other, or to get control.
In 2003 I cleaned the floor of the gallery Exit Art for three months. Roberta Smith of the New York Times wrote of the work, "In a piece that suggests interior reconstruction Rob Andrews has been and will continue cleaning the gallery's entire floor with a toothbrush, a few square feet each day. His air of meditative concentration contrasts noticeably and nicely with the prevailing sense of bustle and bulk." My goal is to use this project as a spiritual nexus, invite collaborators from the public to meditate beyond their workaday personal interactions, and possibly experience interior reconstruction themselves.
Cleaning is a beautiful expression of absence as well. I'm attracted to actions like this: that superficially imply subtraction, but that represent metaphysical gain. I've cleaned the feet of strangers. I've convinced others to allow themselves to be cleaned by strangers. I've cleaned my body to the point that it was an open wound and, in so doing, invited threatening infections into it - all to achieve a sort of spiritual purity!
This is why cleaning is so special. It embodies our contrary nature in it's most basic form. We try to control the things that are out of our control. In a sense, that's what ritual is: an acknowledgment or our fundamental weaknesses. An appeal. The question is of course: to whom do we appeal and why?
I am going to fill Union Square with forty cloaked figures. The cloaks are black and will extend to the figures' ankles. The public will be invited to clean the feet of the figures with me. They'll be invited to do so in English and in Arabic. This is an act of communion. Of preparation for prayer. Of sublimation. Of sharing. Of acknowledgment of difference, but also of sameness. Let us be contrary, but let us find peace in our shared rituals!
AiOP: How is the preparation coming along?
RA: The piece is coming together! For the most part, the challenge in a work like this is building a trusting and courageous volunteer base. This is a threatening and vulnerable act as a "cleanee." You give yourself over to an intimate intrusion. The trick is finding the strength in that act. Again, we have this lovely paradox: gaining control by giving it up.
AiOP: Where will see you along 14th street during the festival?
What do you hope to bring to the festival?
I hope that when the public engages with my work, they let it live inside them. I hope they remember the selves that are compacted inside of them. I hope they live in their memories and the memories inside those memories. We need to touch each other. We need to stop fearing each other.
AiOP: Any message to the people who will be in 14th street during the festival?
RA: Do not be afraid.
AiOP: Where can we reach you
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/andrewsautomat
Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/andrewsautomatic/ (or @andrewsautomat)
AiOP: Any final words?
RA: I am so thrilled to participate in Art in Odd Places and to announce that shortly after the festival, my first solo show goes up at English Kills Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn on October 22, 2011. As a 2010-11 Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art winner, I qualified to collaborate with an amazing organization: USA artists, a sort of specialty Kickstarter for fine arts projects. For the next two weeks (only!) I'm raising money for this show and I have a long way to go. My work is unconventional, ephemeral, and outside of the mainstream. Please consider joining my supporters in micro-funding this ambitious project. Please check out the project, where I show a video that explains a bit more about the project and my work in general: http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/project/door_work - I need your help! You can be a patron of the arts right now!
Every dollar counts, so visit his fund raising page and make a donation. Thank you so much for sharing, Rob. We wish you all the best with this fund raising endeavor
Every dollar counts, so visit his fund raising page and make a donation. Thank you so much for sharing, Rob. We wish you all the best with this fund raising endeavor
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