Founded in 2003 by artist and curator Todd Brooks, Pendu Org Arts & Actions is a curatorial project based in Brooklyn, NY. Pendu Org functions as an underground hub documenting cultural and artistic actions that share a commonality of expressive, frenetic, or ad hoc approaches to making art.
12 Questions by Pendu Gallery.
1.) Q: When did you first start making artwork? Is there a particular artist or group of artists that really sparked your interest in making art?
I have been making art since childhood. But, at eighteen art became an integral part of my daily life after my father‘s sudden death in an automobile accident. That event led me to study the effects of trauma on the lives of artists (especially Outsider artists). Understanding these origins and their relationship to my life continues to act as a catalyst for my art making.
2.) Q: Are you self-taught? Do you feel you had to ‘reinvent the wheel’ on your own to get where you are or are there certain people who have helped guide you along the way? Any important books that you found especially insightful for technique?
I have a Masters of Fine Arts in sculpture from Tulane University. Dada, Fluxus, Relational Aesthetics and L’Arte Povera artists have substantial influences on my work.
3.) Q: What keeps you inspired to continue making new work?
A flow of ideas that never stops. I am haunted by my creativity. This seems to be a large part of the reason my work is produced quickly and with readily available materials. The concepts need to be produced in one concrete form or another. Giving the idea a physical form is crucial for my continued exploration into my conscious and unconscious realities. My ability to create art that communicates the experience of being alive keeps me inspired.
4.) Q: What themes do you find yourself most attracted to and returning to in your work?
Religion, Politics, Sex, Utopian and Dystopian Realities, Childhood Memories, Production and Consumption of Energy.
5.) Q: How much of each piece of your artwork would you consider comes from an intuitive or spontaneous sense of creating and how much is analytical and planned out?
This depends on the medium, time, space and concept. Most of my work originates with automatic drawing or writing. Sometimes an idea will remain as concept for years before resurfacing in one way or another as visual art. I also collect wood, paper, fabric, and other debris for producing sculpture objects and installations. These remnants of everyday life are chosen for their visual and conceptual strength. They are often left to the elements for long periods of time, while I consider their use. Photography and video are often more spontaneous processes. Internet art, I consider my entire internet presence NetArt, requires a much more analytical approach.
6.) Q: How important is music to your art? Do you listen to certain music when working? Any particular musicians?
Music is important to a positive work environment. Progressive college radio is always fun. Listening to Radiohead is an almost daily occurrence.
7.) Q: Do you have a favorite cultural critic, philosopher, or psychoanalyst that you enjoy reading/learning from? Has their work directly or indirectly influenced you and if so, in what ways?
In my opinion, Nicolas Bourriaud is the most relevant theorist today. Relational Aesthetics is such a promising idea that it seems to have limitless sociological and cultural potential. As early as 1990, my writings show a clear consideration for the audience’s input into the production of art. I differ from Bourriaud’s model in one important sense. My work approaches art making as a way of life accessible to and alterable by anyone. By ritualizing daily life, we give meaning and significance to the most mundane events. This allows one to elevate profane actions to the level of extraordinary. Life becomes mythological.
8.) Q: What is your favorite young author right now?
Not sure about a favorite, I am enjoying “Snow Garden” by Christopher Rice.
9.) Q: Is there a young visual artist right now whose work particularly has your attention?
Mounir Fatmi would be one of many. Well he’s my age, but he’s young in the sense that his career is developing presently.
10.) Q: Do you make a living as an artist? If not, and you don’t mind sharing, what is your day/night job?
I have never depended on art to pay the bills. Teaching assignments and good old-fashioned labor usually keep the bill collectors at bay.
11.) Q: What are your future plans?
Thankfully, there is some momentum in the local art community. New Orleans is seeing a “rebirth” in cmany ways. My future will be affected by this more than any plan. I will just keep making art with or without an audience.
12.) Q: Any cryptic messages that you would like to send out to the readers?
Art is embedded in our experiences. Artists suggest new relationships between these experiences.
We are all artists.
Review by Ashley Boudreaux, ArtVoices Magazine, June 2008/Issue 05.
Anthony Carriere: Etalage
May 17 -31
Terrence Sanders Gallery
Anthony Carriere, a 38 year old father of two , was almost Father to an entire parish. “My mother pushed me to be a priest,” the Calcasieu (River area) native explains.
Although his artistic leanings may have been misunderstood by his traditional Cajun family, his extensive study of religion rendered some valuable career skills. “I approached the lifestyle of being an artist as almost a monastic lifestyle,” says Carriere.
Carriere’s solo show “Etalage,” is featured at the Terrence Sanders Gallery at 936 Royal Street through the end of May. “Etalage” means “display,” and what’s displayed there is a visually-compelling marriage of pop and Cajun folk influences. Carriere’s eccentric color combinations and crisp, bold swirls are subtly, and intentionally juxtaposed with unpretentious brush strokes and iconography. Taken as a whole, his work screams post-modern pop culture and then soothes with an organic sensibility rarely found in tangent. A close look at his work reveals textures that belie the underlying masonite.
“That texture is actually painting beneath the surface,” he explains. “Masonite is perfectly smooth.” Inspired by Picasso’s predilection for hiding images under layers of paint, Carriere compares his method to keeping a diary. “I don’t believe in erasing anything,” he laughs.
The idea of outsider art, or art born from trauma resonates strongly with Carriere, who discarded his aspirations of designing cars when his father died in an automobile accident. “I didn’t come out of my room for six months,” he recalls. “I just stayed in my underwear and painted.” Formally trained as a sculptor, he feels that paint is his weakest, and therefore most challenging medium. Even a cursory glance around his solo show assures that it is a challenge that has been well met.
Carriere is captivated by the work of German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, and subscribes to the belief that art is an integral part of everyday interactions, and can thereby engender revolutionary change. Consequently, he’s less interested in relaying a precise message than he is in his audience’s reactions.
“When art can stop you for a couple of seconds and effect you, the artist has done his job,” says Carriere. “That shift in experience when people connect with you is what it’s all about.”
Two works in particular grabbed this writer: They Will Judge Us By Our Enemies, and Target Ed. The former incorporates a camouflage rooster, and leaves the viewer with a delicate wistfulness and a nagging sense of political discomfort.
There’s nothing delicate about the latter work, however. Target Ed is a study in symmetry, utilizing heavy tribalistic stylizations against colors that pop, ultimately creating a psychedelic, three-dimensional felling of movement that almost throws the viewer off balance. It’s hard to look away. Carriere says that this piece is the largest of an entire series, and that it was a freehand exercise in meditation–a modern day mandala. He cites Jasper Johns as an inspiration.
But don’t expect future redundancies along this vein. He points to Big Black Cock and his acrylic and graphite combinations as examples of where he feels his work is going in the future, citing “the looseness, the rawness,” of them both. His art is indexical, rather proselytistic, and detaching himself from it simply adds to the power of his work.
“As an artist, I’m asking my audience to finish the piece, to close it,” says Carriere.
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Posted by: Anthony Carriere @ 6:27 pm
Link:
http://may2008.artintervention.org/.
Date:
May 15, 2008
A boat made of flotsam floated out to sea? A stretch limo art bar! A Rant Recorder, an experimental Green Wedding, an inflatable outdoor museum, art and films on the streets! It must be the Intervene! Interrupt! Rethinking Art as Social Practice festival hosted by UC Santa Cruz.
Breaking the boundaries of conventional arts practice, the interventions festival takes art performance, websites, objects and events out of the gallery and into other social and public spaces to explore politics and everyday life. For the month of May 2008, artists will create work up and down the coast from San Francisco to San Jose to Santa Cruz, convening at UC Santa Cruz for the first West Coast interventions
conference. The Yes Men, Nato Thompson, Suzanne Lacy, Guillermo GoÌ mez-Peña, Helen and Newton Mayer Harrison, Linda Montano, Marilyn Arsem, Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry, Amy Franceschini, Neighborhood Public Radio and many more artists, critics, and theorists explore what it means to make and consider art as performance and social practice.
The month long series of exhibitions and a three-day conference focuses on three topics: interrupting hierarchies, art and life, and subversive complicity. Art events will take place throughout the month of May on UCSC’s campus, in and out of gallery spaces, on street corners, beaches, and projected onto the side of buildings. Events will be held at UC Santa Cruz Sesnon Gallery (featuring work by Martha Rosler and others), the LAB San Francisco, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Santa Cruz Film Festival. Outdoor performances will be hosted in collaboration with the Santa Cruz Guerilla Drive-In, the KFC collective, the Santa Cruz Film Festival and more. A complete event program can be found on line at http://may2008.artintervention.org/.
A very useful tool for painting : www.colorjack.com
New Orleans reconstruction: We shall overcome
Building Magazine UK
2008 Issue 16
Three years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged
New Orleans, the city is still in ruins and 40,000 people are homeless.
The government has abandoned reconstruction in favour of commercial
development, but the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward, determined to
stop their district becoming an industrial park, have engaged
charities, architects and a Hollywood star to change the fate of their
community. Dan Stewart went to take a look. >>>more.
Just finished a photo shoot for Building Magazine in the UK. The article profiles members of the Ninth Ward community in New Orleans as they rebuild their homes and businesses. Check it out if you are in the UK. I’ll post tearsheets on this blog when they are available.
I have nearly completed the paintings and drawings for my exhibition in May at Terrence Sanders Gallery in New Orleans. There is so much temptation though, JazzFest would be a nice way to spend the next few weekends.
Peace.
Check out this great video of Richard Dupont explaining his production techniques and art, from CoolHunting.com.
In this video the artist unmolds one of his distorted replicas of his body that he made using military scans, walking us through his process and some of the ideas that inform his work. Terminal Stage is currently open at Lever House in New York.
Terminal Stage
Opening Reception: 13 March 2008, 6-8pm
13 March-3 May 2008
Lever House
390 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Global Inheritance is an organization working to reinvent activism for today’s young generation.
New Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture by Anthony Carriere
Terrence Sanders Gallery
May 17 - 31, 2008
936 Royal Street
New Orleans, Louisiana
Nam, graphite and glue on paper.