Today SFMOMA announced the 2010 SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) Award Winners. The program was established to recognize Bay Area artists of exceptional talent with an exhibition, accompanying catalogue, and modest cash prize.
This year's recipients are Mauricio Ancalmo, Colter Jacobsen, Ruth Laskey, and Kamau Amu Patton. Their show opens this December 9th and will be up in the museum until April 2012.
Hype can't cover up meaningless art and that's what most of this year’s crop turns out to be. The speeches simply turned me off and, as it turns out, didn't remotely describe what we saw later. I know about art speak; I can do it myself. I was well on my way to an MFA when I decided that end of the art business wasn't for me.
One of the press attending the event (Susan Cohn, San Mateo Business Times) was asking the curator about how this art relates to people who are not already art insiders. The curator was tap dancing around the question, throwing up art speak like white caps on a windy day but the long and short of it is --- it doesn't. It doesn't matter that one of the artist's uploads his sound installations (think dull roar of traffic heard from a distance) to the Internet.
I thought that maybe the younger generation would "get it" but Susan said that she has two boys and they don't understand this art nor do they care.
But her unanswered question is an important one. The fact that the curator couldn't answer it without resorting to her previous memorized sound bites says volumes about the art.
Mauricio Ancalmo combines various found mechanical instruments in film-based installations and kinetic sculptures to form a structural dialogue that is both poetically and philosophically inspired. Do you want to have this translated into English?
His Rube Goldberg machine is an old fashioned turntable, hooked up to a projector that projects a loop of found film around the three and a half walls of a small room built within the gallery.The piece is mildly amusing although I got a bit of vertigo trying to follow the rapid image as it revolved around the room. The piece is titled "A Lover's Discourse" and if this is the state of loving communication, no wonder the divorce rate is so high
Colter Jacobsen's "meticulous drawings, watercolors, and installations often incorporate found ephemera to explore reflection and longing." The very young and very sweet curator described his work as "mundane and mysterious." Want a translation? The mundane and mysterious piece was a snail, made of found pieces. It was clever and witty but worth an award? It was hard to judge the small drawings and watercolors because it was difficult to differentiate between the artist's original work and what was found work.
Of the group, Ruth Laskey's woven pieces showed the most skill, Using a traditional floor loom, she weaves geometric abstractions into small, painterly pieces. The pieces reminded me of needlepoint on linen, except that she weaves the background as well as the geometric image and the process is complex and intricate. The meditative pieces with their monochrome color scheme are quietly beautiful.
Kamau Amu Patton synthesizes works in a range of media to investigate the inter-zone of sound, materiality, and perceptual experience. Please don't ask me to explain this because I haven't a clue. The room had black rectangles something on the walls and thinish black strips on the floor.
I'm glad for the artists who have now made a huge career leap but sad that SECA thinks that these are the best. What does this art say to me? Am I thrilled, provoked, enlightened, amazed, intrigued? Are you? The comments are open.
Comments