Art for Sale Page 2

The Townhouse Gallery in Cairo is organizing an international symposium on archival initiatives and other strategies for the preservation and (re)activation of cultural memory.

Borrowing from the title of Vladimir Nabokov’s classic autobiography¹, Speak, memory is a three-day event structured around presentations, panel discussions, screenings, and artist talks exploring the rich array of methodologies that can be adopted to unearth, revisit or reactivate past artistic practices.

Recently, the Middle East has seen the emergence of a series of archival and historiographic endeavors focused on a local and regional history of modern and contemporary art.

In response to the scarce and scattered art historical documentation of the region’s most recent past, a growing number of researchers, curators and artists have begun collecting documents and recording the oral histories of artistic practices and exhibitions that have seemingly been forgotten, misinterpreted or dismissed.

As these research projects gain momentum, private collectors and newly created museums are also slowly acquiring artists’ archives, magazines and other remnants of the region’s 20th century cultural history.

These developments are not unique to the Middle East. A similar phenomenon has been taking place in Latin America, where private collectors, foreign museums and universities have been buying and exporting privately held archives related to artistic production of the 60’s and 70’s².

The current situation calls for a critical discussion between institutions, collectors, artists, curators, and researchers interested in reactivating recent cultural memory in a way that enables the creation of a multiplicity of narratives and ready access to these histories.

Speak, memory seeks to instigate an informed debate on the challenges and strategies for the preservation of modern and contemporary art histories, focusing on those that have been scarcely documented or are underrepresented in dominant art historical narratives.

In addition, the symposium will present archival initiatives that stand out for their successful organizational model, accessibility and discursive potential, as well as online platforms that are already providing possibilities for collaboration.

Rather than being a one-time event, the symposium aims to create a network of archival initiatives and broader historiographic endeavors that can facilitate a series of ongoing conversations and collaborations.

Invited speakers include, among others:

• Susan Meiselas (photographer, New York)
• Beatrice von Bismarck (curator and writer, Leipzig and Berlin)
• Kristine Khouri (writer and researcher, Study Group on the History of Arab Modernities, Beirut)
• Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (artists, London)
• Vasif Kortun (curator and director, Platform Garanti, Istanbul)
• Clare Hsu (director, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong)
• Barnaby Drabble (curator, writer and co-founder of Curating Degree Zero Archive, Zurich)
• Farah Wardani (director, Indonesian Visual Art Archive, Jakarta)
• Negar Azimi (writer and editor, Bidoun and Arab Image Foundation, New York and Beirut)
• Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh (researcher, Arab Image Foundation, Beirut)
• Heba Farid (photographer and researcher, CULTNAT, Cairo)
• Lucie Ryzova and Hussein Omar (researchers, Downtown History and Memory Project, Cairo)
• Celine Condorelli (artist, London)
• Jesús Carrillo (director of public programs, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid)
• Miguel López (curator and writer, Red Conceptualismos del Sur, Lima)
• Sean Dockrey (AAAArg.org and The Public School, Los Angeles)
• Ashok Sukumaran and Sebastian Lütgert (Pad.ma, Berlin, Bombay, Bangalore)

Program updates will be posted on the website www.speakmemory.org.

Speak, memory will take place at the Rawabet Theater by the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo on October 28-30, 2010 and will coincide with the exhibition of the Bidoun Library Project³ in the First Floor Gallery.

The language of the symposium will be English and simultaneous translation into Arabic will be provided.

Due to limited seating, registration is required⁴.

To register for the symposium, please send an email to info@speakmemory.org by September 15, 2010. Places will be allocated on a first come first serve basis.

This project is generously supported by the Bohen Foundation, Arts Collaboratory, Goethe Institut, the Spanish Embassy and Pro Helvetia.

1) Speak, Memory (1951) is an autobiographical memoir of Vladimir Nabokov’s childhood in Russia at the beginning of the century and twenty years of subsequent exile.

2) This resulted in the creation of the Southern Conceptualisms Network (Red Conceptualismos del Sur), which has been supporting, instigating and connecting archival projects of experimental and conceptual art practices from the 1960’s- 80’s in Europe and South America that were sidelined by authoritarian regimes.

3) An ongoing project, Bidoun’s Library Project is a collection of rare books, catalogues, journals, and artists’books that traces contemporary art practices and particular moments in the various arts scenes of the Middle East.The project space allows visitors to explore, research, and map connections through innovative materials that are generally unavailable.

4) Due to financial restrictions, a registration fee of 80 Euro will be charged to symposium participants coming from abroad.The registration fee will be used towards covering the cost of meals, printed materials and other administrative costs related to the organization of the symposium. Individuals living in Cairo can attend the presentations in Rawabet Theater free of charge but will not have access to the meals unless they pay the registration fee.

The country’s art legacy is truly secure in the custodianship of the current crop of the young and upcoming artists who never seize to amaze when it comes to creativity.

They have the nerve and conviction to uphold the international success and legendary excellence of executing the reputation that the country’s modern art has been riding on long before donkeys lost their horns.

It has since continued to be a thread of inspiration invested in today’s young master practitioners who undoubtedly are highly alert that dismounting is not an option.

The high recommendations that one hears from across continents where Zimbabwean artists have graced is incredible. In Zimbabwe art is very serious, it is survival, it is a career of choice that allows what is inside to rise to the surface and what is felt to be revealed.

Making a work of art should be something the artists want and are compelled to do, something which can be done in “that uncertain time before the morning” when blood sugar and the conscious mind are at their lowest ebb.

She also explains that the concept is .com, refers to an Internet domain name, which means commercial. “The whole motivation for the 1897 rape of the kingdom of Benin was based on economic interest. It is the same economic interest that continues to hold sway in these foreign museums. When Europeans view Benin objects in their museums, they have no cultural connections to them. What they appreciate is the artistry and commercial value of the works.”

Early in the month of May, the exhibition was staged in the main auditorium gallery of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Nigeria. From Ibadan, the showing will go through Abuja and Benin till the end of the year.

Benin1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question consist of multiple assemblages of ancestral portraits, symbols, and texts that are imbued with Benin histories and memories. On one of the works in the exhibition, Ezuzu Maidens can be seen as a portrayal of the moral standing of the people of Benin Kingdom, before modernisation came into play.

The exhibition not only seeks to find answers to questions, but is also aimed at commemorating Nigeria at 50, while serving as a Post-inaugural Exhibition in honour of Professor Dele Layiwola, immediate past Director of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. To be declared open by the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), the exhibition opens August 20 and runs till October 10 at the Museum, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.

The accompanying publication for the exhibition features essays by authorities in the art world like Kwame Opoku, Commentator on Cultural Affairs; Folarin Shyllon, Former Dean of Law, University of Ibadan; Professor Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA; Professor Freida High, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA; Mimi Wolford, Director, Mbari Institute for Contemporary African Art, Washington DC, USA; Sola Olorunyomi, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, co-editor and curator as well as Professor Mabel Evwierhomaof the University of Abuja among others.

The project is supported by Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation (CBAAC), the Edo State Government, the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Abuja, the University of Lagos and the University of Ibadan.

The history of the Benin Kingdom cannot be written without mention of the role played by the mother of Oba Esigie. Known as Queen Idia, she is represented in history books as a fierce warrior. She played a very significant role in the rise and reign of her son. She was a strong warrior, who fought relentlessly before and during her son’s reign as the Oba of the Edo people.

When Oba Ozolua died, he left behind two powerful sons to dispute over who would become Oba. His son, Esigie controlled Benin City while another son, Arhuaran, was based in the equally important city of Udo about twenty miles away. Idia mobilised an army around Esigie, which successfully defeated Arhuaran, and Oba Esigie became the 16th king.

Oba Esegie, who ruled from 1504 to 1550, was the first Oba to speak any language other than the native language. As the great warrior who fought to maintain the empire, the Queen is represented in one of the works of Layiwola titled Queen Idia Going To War. She fought like a man, was brave and powerful. She is also seen as a symbol of woman’s liberation.

The history of the Benin Kingdom cannot be written without mention of the role played by the mother of Oba Esigie. Known as Queen Idia, she is represented in history books as a fierce warrior. She played a very significant role in the rise and reign of her son. She was a strong warrior, who fought relentlessly before and during her son’s reign as the Oba of the Edo people.

When Oba Ozolua died, he left behind two powerful sons to dispute over who would become Oba. His son, Esigie controlled Benin City while another son, Arhuaran, was based in the equally important city of Udo about twenty miles away. Idia mobilised an army around Esigie, which successfully defeated Arhuaran, and Oba Esigie became the 16th king.

Oba Esegie, who ruled from 1504 to 1550, was the first Oba to speak any language other than the native language. As the great warrior who fought to maintain the empire, the Queen is represented in one of the works of Layiwola titled Queen Idia Going To War. She fought like a man, was brave and powerful. She is also seen as a symbol of woman’s liberation.

The people of Benin take great pride in their art, as the artistry of the people does not end with bronze making. Furniture making is one other highpoint of the people in terms of creativity. Early accounts by explorers speak of the artistry of the local craftsmen. 1897 is a historic marker for Benin.

The exhibition also becomes handy in the sense that it comes at a time when the clamour for an unconditional return of all looted African works of art is being treated with disregard by the looters and their collaborators.

Several requests have been made to foreign museums where the Benin works are domiciled, but none of such requests have been answered favourably. In 1938, some form of reparation was made to the Benin monarchy when part of the regalia of Oba Ovoramwen found in a private collection in UK was returned to Oba Akenzua II.

In writing the history of the people, historians have always used the pillaging that took place in the kingdom over a decade ago as an identification symbol. Among the objects captured is an exquisitely crafted ivory pendant mask now at the British Museum. In 1977 Nigeria requested the loan of the ivory mask for a pan-African cultural festival centred in Lagos, and which had chosen the mask as its emblem. The British Museum initially requested an insurance bond of £2million for the mask, but then argued that it was too delicate to be moved from its carefully controlled environment. In the event the mask was not lent and this led to controversy. Also, in order to build up the collection of the national museum in Benin, then in its early stages of opening, the Federal government had to buy back some of the Benin pieces in the 1960s.

Over the years, Peju Layiwola has been experimenting with forms and media ranging from terracotta, copper, bronze and gold, among others. The current exhibition could as well be taken as an assemblage of all her medium of specialisation.

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In an overheated market, works by African American painters are a bargain — for now

By Chicago Art Magazine on Jul 20, 2010 in Featured, Reviews

Gallery Spotlights are posts about randomly selected* art venues in Chicago

Anna Schier

Born in a Basement:

From the moment of its birth in the basement of an abandoned building, Little Black Pearl Art and Design Center has enthusiastically enriched the Kenwood/Oakland community. 10 years later, the south side youth center continues to thrive and grow under the steady hand of founder and Executive Director, Monica Haslip .

Haslip’s passion for her work is clear. “I always wanted to create an avenue to introduce African American youth in particular to the arts as a potential career path,” she states. “I met a number of kids that lived in the neighborhood and I talked to them about art and many of them had some really short visions for what was possible. Creating an environment where kids who didn’t normally have access to art could have a place where they did have access had the potential of changing their lives and giving them more hope and possibility.”

What began a decade ago has grown tremendously. The 40,000 square foot space, formerly a liquor store and Little Black Pearl’s residence of three years, is home to an astounding array of facilities, including a metal studio, wood studio, computer lab, mosaic studio and one of only two glass blowing studios in Chicago. It is the perfect place to discover art’s power to educate and inspire.

From Artisans to Entrepreneurs:

“They learn about the importance of pricing, they learn about the market that they are selling to, they learn about quality control,” Haslip explains.

The students at Little Black Pearl, ranging from elementary-aged to late teens, don’t simply learn these concepts in theory, either. They implement them, crafting pieces commissioned by a wide range of clients, including the University of Chicago, the Quad Communities Development Corporation and the Illinois Department of Transportation, as well as small businesses, community members and collectors.

Haslip notes, “They [the students] have to really understand the importance of being efficient and dealing with the client’s interests and needs. When they move forward either to college or to start businesses or in the workforce, they already know some of the basic business principles that are required to be successful.”

While students are busy constructing pieces to be sold in the art center’s store or for clients, participants in Little Black Pearl’s Workforce Development Program gain valuable professional skills and job experience.

The program, aimed at young adults aged 19 to 35, offers jobs and internships in everything from studio work to administration. After 6 months in the program, interns are either shifted to full time positions at Little Black Pearl or the art center tries to find them another placement, providing professional opportunities for many young community members.

Creating Art, Creating Community:

Little Black Pearl provides local youth with the opportunity to learn how to succeed in the art industry. But Haslip’s programs also offer students something else: a voice.

“Some of the stuff now that we’re going through in the city, violence and youth violence — a lot of our kids really didn’t feel like they had a voice in these issues,” explains Haslip. “Because those things are impacting our community, we really are using art as a vehicle for our youth to have a voice.”

Little Black Pearl’s Summer Program, in particular, encourages participants to address social issues through painting, poetry, dance and theater. This summer’s theme, Collateral Damage: Creating Legacies of Boundless Peace, is part of an ongoing year round project at Little Black Pearl.

The highlight of Little Black Pearl’s summer of social awareness will take place on August 21st. The art center will host Pearl Fest , an event that will include health screenings, local artists and musicians. Haslip explains that the festival “is our way of bringing the resources that we’ve developed over the year through our relationships with other partners back to the community.”

Little Black Pearl’s community outreach doesn’t end with the summer. Come September, the center continues to give back with an in-school program. Primarily catering to alternative schools, the art center educates students while visually improving their schools.

“We’ll design workshops so students can participate in producing murals and other public installations for the school,” says Haslip.

Little Black Pearl refuses to be limited to educating only the students enrolled in its programs. Rather, the instructors and administrators reach out to the surrounding neighborhood, actively engaging with south side residents, offering programs catering to seniors and adults, artisan residency, academic tutoring, a gallery, and a cafe with free wifi.

Says Haslip, “We use art as an avenue to get youth and adults engaged in much broader issues. One of the things that makes this organization unique is that we really do believe that art has a place in community development and economic development. Hopefully in the future we’ll continue to be at the table where those discussions are taking place, making sure that art is being considered a very important aspect of community.”

Little Black Pearl Art and Design Center is located at 1060 East 47th Street. It is open from 10 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday. Pearl Fest will take place in Mandrake Park on August 21st from 10 am to 10 pm. Admission is free.

*Gallery spotlights are chosen based on a lottery, which we document by videotape, in order to be transparent and truly random. 10 were chosen out of a pool of 350.

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The SCLC Magazine, which has been published five times annually since 1971, serves as a vital educational and informational link between SCLC’s national headquarters and our constituency throughout the country. It is distributed through its chapters, affiliates and membership nationwide with an estimated readership of 400,000.

As his solo show opens at the Wexner Center in Columbus, the Los Angeles artist talks to us about the dynamics of community, working with children and making art in post-Katrina New Orleans…..

Standing 6ft 8in tall, the elegant and engaging Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bradford cuts a striking figure. His mural-sized abstract collages and installations are assembled from signage, advertisements and posters which he layers with paint, twine, and glue, and then repeatedly sands down. An LA native, his installations, sculptures and videos both celebrate and critique the communities of South Central Los Angeles. In 2009 the 49-year-old artist won the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, propelling his career to greater heights. A major 10-year survey of his work debuts this month at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio before embarking on a four-city national tour.

The Art Newspaper: Your early paintings incorporate supplies from your mother’s hair salon like hair dyes and permanent-wave end papers. Why did you move away from this subject matter?

Mark Bradford: My early works used socially loaded material but I was always interested in abstract painting. So my first gesture was to combine the two. Later I learned that I didn’t have to combine them on the same pictorial surface.

TAN: Can you describe your working process?

MB: I use secondary advertising and found printed matter from the streets, things that have some use value. I am drawn to ways of working that are very tactile with a certain physicality. I tend to obliterate the canvas with paper so it becomes opaque, almost like a wall, and then I begin to build. Between the first layer and the final surface layer of paper is where all the action happens.

TAN: Is it true that you and your assistants wear uniforms, placing official-looking plastic cones on the ground before you take down paper signage from fencing and plywood construction boards in your neighbourhood?

MB: It’s quasi-illegal for these advertising companies to paste the posters on the plywood barricades, and its quasi-illegal for me to take them down, so my actions exist in a real grey area. Once a year, city services come and take the advertising down. I appropriate the role of a city worker and I perform their job for them, and this way I don’t have any problems. I have gone to multi-million dollar buildings during the middle of the day and they assume that I’m on a certain side of the law.

TAN: You entered the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1991 at the age of 30. What were you doing before you entered school?

MB: I was working at a hair salon, travelling to places like Europe, Africa and Mexico, and going to clubs and dancing. I didn’t know that at 30 I’d be sitting with 18-year-olds straight out of high school. That was an adjustment.

TAN: Did you always know you wanted to be an artist?

MB: I didn’t come from an art background. Being an artist was really a class thing and it wasn’t a conversation we had in my house. We were self-employed, working-class people and although we were very dynamic and creative we were geared toward making a living.

TAN: You have mentioned that at CalArts you were immersed in art theory, but what part of your experience had the most practical and meaningful impact on your career?

MB: When I was growing up I didn’t know anything outside of the mainstream. So when I got to CalArts, I learned that there were liberal, alternative and non-traditional ways of thinking which was really new for me.

Don’t forget I was going back and forth every day from traditional black America. I could relate to Foucault’s ideas about how one’s subjectivity moves through territory. It meant that I could go to the hair salon and back to CalArts as one whole person and not compartmentalise my being.

TAN: Your mother owned a beauty salon and you come from several generations of self-sufficient merchants. Can you talk a bit about why you collect and use posters in your work?

MB: I only collect posters that represent self-run businesses. These posters are about fringe economies and I’m always fascinated by things that fall between the cracks of the middle-class. The middle class shuffles along, but the lower and the higher classes are dynamic—both are irreverent and are risk-takers.

TAN: You seem to bury cultural ideas and documents under layers of abstraction that the viewer can never see.

MB: I think that the idea of accretion or accumulation is no different than modern day Rome, where archaeologists have found layers of ancient cities. In my work, often the viewer can only see the top layer which is not translucent, but the weight and the energy of what’s underneath there will pulsate.

TAN: Your video Niagara (2005) portrays an African American male wearing shorts and a tank top sashaying down the street in South Central Los Angeles. Can a person be openly gay on the streets of South Central LA?

MB: It’s complicated but no. He was performing the gesture with his body on one of the main thoroughfares of the black community and one of the toughest streets in the neighbourhood. That space was inscribed with a very particular power dynamic and it made me think about the fragility of the body in public space. The only other time I would see this type of fragility is when I would see a young boy in the wrong part of the community wearing the wrong colours and then you would see his vulnerability and desperation because he was trying to get to a place where he wouldn’t be harmed.

TAN: Would you say your work is both a celebration and a critique of the dynamics of community?

MB: Absolutely—it’s not some romanticised view of community. It’s a very complex conversation and there is no closure. I think the conversation is what’s interesting.

TAN: In your video Practice (2003) you are dressed in an antebellum hoop-skirt stitched together from Los Angeles Lakers’ basketball team uniforms. As a 6ft 8in African American man, one would think that you have to dispel several stereotypes.

MB: I have no public privacy. I’ve always been vulnerable in public space; because of my size people feel like they can step into my private world at any moment and ask me how tall I am.

People say that I look like a player but what does that mean? Basketball is religion and the high priests are the players. When you tell people you don’t play, they say what a waste, like it’s almost a sin against the body that I was born in.

TAN: Do you feel that you or your work has also been stereotyped or misrepresented in some way?

MB: I think that with artists of colour, often people are looking for the real story connected to the image. Here’s the funny thing: in the art world I was first described as the black hairdresser from South Central, then I became urban black from South Central, but now I’m a 2009 MacArthur winner—that’s my new moniker. It’s another type of branding.

TAN: One of the most celebrated and poignant pieces at the 2008 New Orleans Biennial Prospect. 1 was your sculpture Mithra (2008)—a monumental 70ft-long ark built on site in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward. How was your interest in community and history realised in New Orleans?

MB: It wasn’t my community; I was definitely an outsider. I was a biennial artist and I never tried to be “we the people”. My actual father, who I’ve never met, is from New Orleans, and people kept trying to make a connection between me and the city. But I don’t feel any special connection because of my DNA. By being engaged and open I built some interesting relationships that I still have with Keith [Calhoun] and Chandra [McCormick] of the non-profit art centre L9. They really embraced the work. I went from door to door to introduce myself. My people skills come from working at a hair salon. My mother used to always say nobody wants to feel overlooked.

TAN: In 2008 you painted the words “HELP US” on the rooftop of an LA gallery. The work conjures up images of stranded survivors during Hurricane Katrina. What is this work about?

MB: I painted the words on the roof of a building across the street from a new wing at Los Angeles County Museum of Art from where viewers could look down onto it. At that time I was thinking something doesn’t feel right about the art world. It just didn’t feel right to me that people were kicking down doors at art fairs and buying everything, and I thought something was going to break.

TAN: Does the art world feel better now?

MB: I don’t know that it feels better, but at least artists are not being so blindly led. We’re becoming more independent, and we are more involved in our careers. The commercial space of the gallery is just one thing that we do, but it’s not everything that we do.

I just finished a project for the Getty called “Open Studio” where I invited artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Catherine Opie, Kerry James Marshall and Michael Joo to create lesson plans that teachers can download for children in grades kindergarten through 12. I’m working more and more with kids, and I’m interested in how we move art education away from craft projects with macaroni and glitter to a conversation about the world that they live in.

TAN: Can you talk about your latest commissioned installation Pinocchio Is on Fire, which looks at South Central Los Angeles from the 1980s to the present?

MB: Pinocchio Is on Fire is a mythological character that I created to talk about black culture in South LA at a time of flux and fluidity in the late 1980s when it was changing from an older narrative of family toward a “Boyz in the Hood” hip hop moment. And now the ground is shaking again, hip hop is receding and immigration has changed the landscape. The work is a sound piece using my voice and music. It came very naturally to me.

By Charmaine Picard | From issue 213, May 2010
Published online 7 May 10 (Features)

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*Rolling Stone is reporting that new material from the late Michael Jackson is coming to stores this fall courtesy of Sony Music.

Ten previously-unreleased songs are due in November, which will be the first in a 10-project, seven-year, $250 million deal the Jackson estate signed with Sony Music in March 2010. The pact also includes reissues of Jackson’s classic albums, greatest hits sets and a DVD collection.

The magazine said Jackson is believed to have left hard drives filled with unheard music, much of it recorded during his 1980s peak. Jackson’s manager Frank DiLeo said he estimates that the King of Pop’s vaults contain more than 100 completed and unreleased songs, including collaborations with artists Akon, Will.i.am and Ne-Yo.

“There are a couple of songs we recorded for the Bad album that we had to cut that are just sensational,” DiLeo said.

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Friday, Aug 6th 1pm-9pm

J&R GRASSROOTS YOUTH SUCCESSFEST
All Children Eat Free 1pm – 5pm College App Fee Waived for 100 Students sponsored by EduIncOnline Zakee Z. Abdur Rahman Scholarship Award Ceremony: in honor of the life of Nicetown businessman and entrepreneur, Zakee Z. Abdur Rahman. Though his life was taken by senseless violence, his legacy lives on to honor and recognize youth who have accomplished outstanding achievements despite facing extraordinary life challenges.
(For more info see flyer or call (215) 726-7178)

August 7th 1pm-9pm
A SOULFUL SATURDAY
11AM – Line up for Walk For Peace; 11:45AM Walk For Peace begins
1PM – Mainstage Opens
Patti LaBelle accepts the Vision of Life Award – Blaqmel Ushers In Jeane CCarne & Miki Howard

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NEW YORK, NY.- Sikkema Jenkins & Co presents Electric, an exhibition of new works by Jennie C. Jones, on view from July 8 through August 13, 2010.

Jennie C. Jones works at the intersection of art history and black history. She layers the formal language of modern art—abstraction, minimalism—over the conceptual and technical strategies of avant-garde jazz. Jones’ work in audio, sculpture and drawing extends the parallel legacies of experimentation, wit and riff of these radical cultural forms. The new work brought together in Electric continues the artist’s exploration of cultural confluence, hybridization, and a more complicated and historically inclusive form of modernism.

In her new audio work Slowly, In a Silent Way—Caged Jones digitally slows a section of Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way (using tempo changes and cross-fading) to match the length of John Cage’s pivotal work 4’33”. In Jones’ edit, the time frame Cage set aside for ‘silence’ is filled by Davis’ measured hypnotic instrumental score (his characteristic trumpet is absent from the edited section). The result is a meeting of two notions of silence.

The installation of this work is carefully integrated with the architecture of the gallery: it is set for playback on a loop that alternates between the side front galleries. When its speaker is ‘dead’ the Cage piece is recreated as the sound of its listeners, the space itself filling the rest of the void. This is a mediated version of Cage’s work: the speaker has replaced the live musicians.

In the main space, Jones presents a new series of collage and ink drawings based on the packaging of music. The “Song Container” series focuses on the compact disc box, transforming the commonplace collateral of listening into a minimalist art form. We are clearly still in the territory of the formal language of analogue but a new metaphor emerges in the reference to the ‘emptiness’ of the digital realm. Jones’ reconfigured containers—shells that once held something as ephemeral as sound—are shown with display racks and other objects that evoke the formal language of minimalism.

In the same space, a series of sculptural ‘drawings’ made from instrument cable are plugged directly into the gallery wall. The medium of these works—instrument cable—is part of the electrical apparatus used in the capture and editing of the music featured in this exhibition. Miles Davis’ performance of In a Silent Way featured a full-blown electric set-up and is regarded as the first of his fusion recordings. John Cage was a well-known electronic music pioneer. But by plugging into the non-conductor surface of the gallery wall these wall works bring us back to the idea of silence. In the same way, the artist playfully questions the title of the exhibition.

Jones attended Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts where she received her MFA in 1996. Prior to that she attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving a BFA in 1991. Over the past decade she has participated in numerous prestigious artists residency and fellowship programs, both nationally and international. In 2008 she was a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center as well as a Visiting Artist at The American Academy in Rome, Italy. Her awards include a Creative Capital grant in 2008, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award, in 2006, and a Pollock-Krasner in 2000. Jones was the 2008 recipient of the William H. Johnson Prize awarded to one emerging african american artist a year. Upcoming exhibitions include a major solo shows at The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco and LAXArt, Los Angeles in early 2011.

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Since his last show at Bridgette Mayer Gallery, Mark Brosseau seems to have thrown caution to the wind and the results are mostly exhilarating. His paintings of four years ago – eccentric, charming compositions that brought distant views of old-fashioned amusement parks to mind – have given way to more expansive, fluid, and abstracted visions of the scenes that catch his eye.

The window composition, a staple of Sir Howard Hodgkin’s paintings, is a framework in several of Brosseau’s recent paintings. But while the British artist’s windows seem to frame a lingering appreciation of something seen or experienced, and offer a powerful whiff of the exotic, Brosseau’s appear to catch a view of architecture – and unexpectedly at that, in a snapshot, drive-by fashion. At times, different sections of his abstracted views seem to zoom out and in. Merging (2010) looks like apartment buildings as glimpsed by the driver of a car, a quick impression that captures the essence of fast seeing, but thoughtfully reimagined in paint.

Brosseau’s obvious affection and eye for vivid color stood out before this show, but his juxtapositions of colors have become edgier.

Somehow, he’s managed to make hot pinks, life-jacket oranges, parrot greens, and sunny yellows straight out of Lilly Pulitzer fabrics look a little ominous together in Parading (2010). (I can remember some scary Lilly moments, come to think of it.)

A group of small, entirely abstract paintings in the back gallery seems tangential to Brosseau’s show, but I liked this indulgence and the deliberate untidiness of these works. Here, in similar palettes of Chinese red, ultramarine blue, and lemon yellow, Brosseau communes with Kandinsky, Gorky, Stuart Davis, and maybe even our own Arthur B. Carles. You sense he is enjoying a fling with these uncharacteristic (for him) strokes and colors.

As with a few other shows at Mayer, when an artist has been given the entire gallery and the Vault space to fill, the latter’s gloomy environs are not made the most of. Two of Brosseau’s long, accordion-style notebooks are mounted on the wall parallel to each other, and although they provide an interesting insight into his working process, they don’t command the space. And they would have been easier to see in good light, on a table in one of the two galleries.

Bridgette Mayer Gallery, 709 Walnut St., 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. 215-413-8893 or www.bridgettemayergallery.com. Though July 31.

Building Violence,” an exhibition of work by Michael J. Dalton II at Third Street Gallery, reveals the unfolding of this young Brooklyn photographer’s artistic vocabulary and vision.

Two years before his 2008 graduation from New York’s School of Visual Arts, Dalton already had embarked on chronicling the theme he cares so deeply about: how, as a landscape evolves, a certain violence must occur, whether through destruction, construction, or just letting it lie fallow. His childhood experience, shuttling back and forth between his separated parents, prompted him to begin documenting the constant change taking place in the industrial and commercial Northeast Corridor.

Those early memories of seeing dockyards and factories being demolished by developers stayed with him. So, as an art-school grad needing a job that would support his work as a photographer, he became a construction-site laborer and joined Laborers’ Union 731 in New York. He now works at some of the same locations he photographs.

Reflecting the dramatic changes he has seen around him are 13 featured images of landscapes, buildings, and people, chosen from 40 photos he has made so far in the series with his 8×10 camera. These he prints himself on 30-by-40-inch chromographic photographic paper, then mounts on Plexiglas.

Everything here is imbued with a curious air of anxiety, except Dalton’s fellow construction crew members and his shop steward, Ray. And oh yes, the odd concrete “tree brace” at Brooklyn Botanic Gardens’ subway stop, which looks menacing but actually rescued a threatened tree.

Finally, it’s left up to viewers to decide whether the “evolution” of land Dalton pictures is good or bad for the community.

Third Street Gallery, 58 N. Second St. To Aug. 4. Wednesday through Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Free. 215-625-0993.

ROME – It seemed too good to be true: the discovery of a new painting by Caravaggio during celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of his death. It turns out, it probably was.