Hasta La Ideas

Walker Art curator searches far and wide for artistic innovation

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Curatorial savant and innovator Philip Bither exudes an infectious enthusiasm for the performing arts, fueling a passion that has spanned more than 25 years. Commissioning a range of artists from the emerging playwright Young Jean Lee to such stalwarts of the art scene as Laurie Andersen and Philip Glass, Bither has established a name as one of the most progressive curators of the interdisciplinary arts.

Surrounded by a shared love of jazz while growing up—his grandfather was a jazz banjo performer—Bither cites music as a catalyst for his devotion to the arts. After graduating from the University of Illinois, Bither made the great leap to NYC and landed a fortuitous position in the fundraising department of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). “I went to BAM specifically because I was so interested in the large-scale avant-garde theatre, dance and music productions that they were supporting. The producer, Harvey Lichtenstein, was brilliant at making commitments to artists who he loved.”

Equally committed, Bither’s dedication placed him at the forefront of BAM’s hallmark event, The Next Wave Festival, where he served as both associate director and music curator, producing “a lot of music shows that lived somewhere in the in-between land of downtown noise and rock and pop and avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical music.”

Drawn to the dynamism of small venues that think big, Bither became assistant director of the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, a homespun sensation in Burlington, Vermont. “I thought that I could translate some of the ideas and passions around the downtown dance and music scene that I was so involved with in New York into a smaller city and more community-based setting,” explains Bither. Under Bither’s tutelage, the Flynn Center’s burgeoning three-day jazz festival evolved into “one of the great small city jazz festivals in North America,” which continues to run, expanded to a two-week clip.

In 1997, Bither accepted a coveted opportunity to head the Performing Arts Centerof the internationally recognized Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. An amalgamation of art, the Walker Art Center hosts a variety of art events and exhibitions that offer an “intellectual ferment” where attendees “can simultaneously walk and see a French New Wave film, look at current trends in graphic design and watch a postmodern dance movement.” Named one of the nation’s “big five” museums of modern art, The Walker Art Center is dedicated to finding the “newest of the new” in art trends and talent. “We try to stay attuned to the next generation of innovators and artists who are combining art forms in new ways and even changing the whole relationship between audiences and live art,” enthuses Bither. Upholding the museum’s mission to “select works that have an intrigue and freshness,” Bither travels extensively in search of new and, often, international talent.

To showcase its provocative and engaging roster of performers, the Walker Art Center offers a range of unique programs including the annual Out There series, an event that “creates a framework for brand-new hybrid art forms.” Entering its 23rd year, the still-innovative event gets creatively “reinvented” each year. The Walker Art Center further promotes artists with the “SpeakEasy” program, an informal post-performance bar-side chat for audience members. Engendering an environment that both informs and intrigues, Bither hosts an interview series that has amassed “an amazing library of conversations with artists who are now written up in the history books of dance, theater, performance and music.”

Motivated by the diversifying climate of performing arts, Bither and his team are also involved in pioneering an academic initiative to train a new generation of curators. Bither explains, “We’re helping to evolve a half dozen of initiatives or networks, some of which we helped start. The leadership role that the Walker plays is something that spans the visual arts and film. The Walker is very ambitious and inspired to work way beyond its own state lines or national boundaries.”

This story is part of an editorial series sponsored and inspired by Le Meridien. New Perspectives explores fresh ideas and distinct points of view in global art and culture.

A Brazilian artist’s solo exhibition re-imagines the urban landscape

Daniel Escobar will ring in 2012 with “Fictitious Topographies,” his first solo exhibition in the United States. Inspired by the ubiquitous influence of the urban landscape, the Brazilian artist has decided to remake aspects of real cities into creative works of art born from maps and printed promotional materials. By destroying and resurrecting the physical world, Escobar finds new possibilities in the everyday.

The exhibition features several series by the artist united by common themes. “Permeable (Up Close)” takes billboard ads and perforates them to create a single, layered collage reflecting the artist’s interest in the human form and commercial media. “Atlas of the Urban Anatomy” is another series inspired by Escobar’s hometown Belo Horizonte and creates 3D fictional maps from actual maps sourced from guidebooks of the town. “The World” is a photographic series of details from pop-up books that the artist constructed from tourism material.

Escobar’s dedication to constructing something entirely new out of pre-existing forms results in a fascinating collaboration between the artist and his materials. On the one hand, Escobar acts as a modern version of the 19th century flâneur, exploring and imposing his imagination on the landscape. On the other hand is the landscape itself, rigidly constructed and resistant to change while constantly undergoing an evolution of its own. In the end, Escobar is both documenting and creating the landscape, merging his artistic endeavors with his passion for everyday topography.

“Fictitious Topographies” opens at the RH Gallery 17 January 2012.

Images courtesy of the artist and RH Gallery

Brooklyn-based painter curates an exhibition in Santa Monica

Curator of the upcoming exhibition “Dark Water,” Brooklyn-based painter Martin Wittfooth drops his brush in favor of hand-selecting contemporaries who inspire him, compiling 29 representational painters’ whose visions reflect the exhibition’s namesake. Wittfooth admits, “As an artist in the curator’s seat, I’ve been very biased in who I invited due to my own tastes, but I think this approach has made it a rather focused project.”

The exhibition’s haunting works shock and entrance with challenging variations on the mythic visual theme. Standout pieces include Christian Rex Van Minnen‘s grotesquely surreal creature, the mythology of Caitlin Hackett, a pregnant Venus by Steven Assael, and a continuation of Jason Yarmosky‘s Elder Kinder portraits.

Wittfooth recognizes dark water as an allusion to the inner self, but chooses paintings that tie in relevant global issues such as environmental imbalance and dependence on industry. Presenting new takes on antiquity is nothing new for Wittfooth—his solo show “The Passions,” currently running at NYC’s Lyons Wier Gallery, is a contemporary exploration of martyrdom, depicting enormous animals as the subjects of antiquated devotional paintings.

Wittfooth explains, “The image of dark water shows up in a lot of my own work and I felt that it would be an interesting symbol for other artists to work with—the title, Dark Water, is the theme itself.” With this, Wittfooth presents a collaborative resurrection of the symbol’s timeless intrigue.

“Dark Water” runs from 12 November through 3 December 2011 at the Copro Gallery in Santa Monica, CA.

A Chicago convention explores artistic failures of the digital world

The upshot to digital failure, GLI.TC/H is a conference on noise and new media that sees artists from around the world gathering for a weekend packed with lectures, workshops, discussions, screenings and more. The second iteration, happening this weekend in Chicago, will explore topics like how to crack, break, hack, pirate and otherwise alter digital media. After Chicago, the celebration will move on to Amsterdam and then Birmingham, UK.

Accompanying the physical conference is an extensive Internet component accessible though their website. We had a bit of fun playing around with GLI.TC/H online, which includes a wiki page with primers on databending, an explanation of the project, a history of glitch art, and some glitch theory. The main page, while hilariously difficult to navigate, does link out to an exhibition, a schedule of events, an impressive flickr page and T.RASHB.IN, a bank of community-sourced images, some of which were used for this post.

A program called extrafile allows users to play with image file formats, and has been made available for download. To promote the event, supporters have produced a series of video “bumpers,” which showcase the glitch ethos in action. We recommend you all head over to the site soon to explore the material before GLI.TC/H disappears for another year. Cool Hunting has been tracking glitch art for a few years now, and it’s nice to see the community organizing an event of this scale.

Australian graffiti artist’s scuffling greyscale characters inhabit everything from paintings to scarves

Using everything from street walls to hundred-dollar bills and dresser drawers, Australian graffiti artist Stormie Mills has been exploring themes of urban decay since 1984. Characters, rendered predominantly in greyscale, evoke a sense of loneliness and isolation, portraying the age-old themes of quests for identity. His street art-style paintings, well-received by critics and collectors alike, have been commissioned for the creation of murals across Greece for the Athens Olympics and featured at Miami Art Basel, as well as at exhibitions in Barcelona, Greece, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.

Throughout his career, Mills has undertaken several unusual projects. In 2009, he and five other artists, calling themselves “Agents of Change,” stayed in an abandoned village in Scotland prior to its imminent demolition, transforming the area into a large work of art. The undertaking was documented in a short film, which showed at the London Film Festival. Stormie has also ventured into the world of collectible toy-making, releasing a limited-edition figure which was sold in Tokyo and New York.

His latest project gives wearable art the Stormie treatment. Inspired by the famous Oscar Wilde quote, “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars,” the artist created a limited-edition scarf, of which only 150 were produced. Available in black, blue, and grey and featuring a character dubbed “The Time Keeper,” the scarves include a hand-numbered booklet and sell from the Art Gallery of Western Australia for $450.

Commercial endeavors aside, the graffiti vet has enjoyed widespread success in his gallery showings, the most recent of which opened last Wednesday at Metro Gallery in Melbourne, Australia. The show, titled “Scuffling,” runs through 20 August 2011 and explores the idea of perpetual motion as well as a method of applying paint. “Scuffling as a way of painting seems to fit well with the sounds that I imagine my paintings would make if they were to walk,” explains Stormie, “I imagine they’d scuffle along, a cross between a shuffle and a scrape, very much like the way that I paint them.”