Damian Aquiles work being installed in the exhibition

As developed countries have found themselves drowning under the flood of consumer goods, many visual artists have seen this trend as an opportunity to consider the consequences of a global economy and the possibilities for creative outlets. CCAD’s latest exhibition Supply & Demand considers the work of these artists, whose photography, sculpture, and installations provide us with moments to contemplate the necessity of the things we think we cannot live without.

Curated by Lisa Dent, associate curator of contemporary art at the Columbus Museum of Art, the exhibition includes work by 10 artists exploring these themes.

“I am continually amazed by visual artists and their drive to create objects out of the things that they see around them every day,” said Dent, who is also an adjunct instructor for CCAD’s graduate program.

Whether using new or discarded household objects, the artists in Supply & Demand use manufactured materials and wares to create their work.

“I wanted a variety of media to highlight the creative possibilities for materials that these artists have discovered,” she said. “I wanted to create an exhibition that honored them and their commitment to using their skills, especially without the overwhelming use of digital tools.”

Several artists immediately came to Dent’s mind as she began piecing together the exhibition.  Based on their creative mediums and also their sense of the global economy and its influence on production and art making,  Damian Aquiles, Richard Artschwager, Robert Beck, Jim Hodges, Vik Muniz, Tony Oursler, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Jeff Sonhouse, Irwin, and NSK (New Kollectivism), were tapped for the exhibition.

“Putting the exhibition together could not have been smoother. I have gotten incredible support from people in Columbus and the CCAD community. It is what every curator dreams of,” said Dent.

Supply & Demand will be open Oct. 7 – Dec. 6, 2011 in the Canzani Center Gallery. The opening reception is Oct. 7, 6-8 p.m.

Review:

http://starr-review.blogspot.com/2011/11/is-there-message-in-this-medium.html

Lisa Dent, adjunct graduate faculty member

By Lisa Dent

One beautiful day in the fall of 2010, I sat with eleven other people around a table on the third floor of CCAD’s Design Studios on Broad. Only recently acquainted with each person and unfamiliar with their background and knowledge, I scanned the room for signs of interest, apathy, or fear. All seemed present. I passed out copies of Roland Barthes’s essay “To the Seminar” and told them we would be reading this out loud together and then would discuss it for the next three hours. More confused looks. I officially started to love my new job.

As part of the requirements for CCAD’s new MFA program, students participate in my theory and criticism seminar. I prepare a list of required readings that will allow us to participate for several months in weekly discussions about the ideas that have inspired artists over the last 100 years. Scratching the surface of critical thinking about Western art is the goal. My hope is that each student will be inspired to discover more readings on his or her own later.

But first, they have to get through the ones I assign. By reading the Barthes essay together, I hoped to guide them through how this could go. I’d be less of a drill sergeant, more of a guide dog. Wait, now I’m a Labrador retriever? In any case, I looked to the great French literary theorist for a place to start. In his essay, Barthes proposes a scenario whereby all members of a seminar are on equal footing. The instructor, though sitting at the head of the table, does not have all the answers. We read through the essays together and find a way through them. There will be excitement, disappointment, and change. Although I’ve read these essays many times, I can still only look at them through my own knowledge and experience. How can I know what will come up for each of you? Together we will make this room a safe haven. Here we can talk, read, laugh, cry, argue, and confide in each other.

As I anticipated, the frustration soon revealed itself through a series of attempts to get me to shift my position. “Could you do a presentation with images of these artists’ works for us to see?” No, use the library. Keep reading and bring your thoughts to class. “I’m afraid that I’m not getting any of this at all. I’m so confused.” Of course you are. Keep reading. See you next week. I said in my first email to the class: sometimes you have to feel the burn.

So where do we find ourselves in relation to all of this theory six months later? I couldn’t tell you for sure. All of us are thinking about it every week. See how that worked? How fun is that?

Lisa Dent is an adjunct graduate faculty member at CCAD and the associate curator of contemporary art at the Columbus Museum of Art. In 1992 she was a Helena Rubenstein Fellow at the Museum of Modern Art and subsequently held curatorial positions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she completed its independent study program. Afterward, she was director of the Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York and worked as a freelance writer, art critic, and scenic designer. She has taught modern art history and design at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and the University of California, Davis, and owned a gallery in San Francisco.

Image from Jon Rubin's Waffle Shop Project

The New Administration of a Fine Arts Education is a series of four public conversations at CCAD featuring leading individuals in contemporary art, culture, and education who engage in multiple and overlapping artistic and pedagogic practices. Their exhibitions, writing, artworks, and teaching are innovative integrations of cultural production, lifestyle, studio, and teaching.

The New Administration of a Fine Arts Education seeks to contribute to both art and education by generating questions about how we educate artists and what it means to be a practicing artist today. An accompanying publication will be available in March 2011.

All four presentations will take place at CCAD Design Studios on Broad, 390 E. Broad St., at 7 p.m. on the dates indicated below. All are free and open to the public.

Oct. 14, 2010: Jon Rubin
JON RUBIN is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the social dynamics of public places and the idiosyncrasies of individual and group behavior. His solo and collaborative projects include creating a game show for ideas, opening a fake store in an indoor shopping mall, starting a restaurant that secretly operates via take-out orders from its double across the street, broadcasting an office’s telephone conversations through a talking piano, running a neighborhood truck that gives away free homemade goods and services, operating a radio station that only plays the sound of an extinct bird, and developing a free, nomadic art school. He has exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico, the Rooseum in Sweden, the Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen in Germany, and the Nemo Film Festival in Paris. Rubin is an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Nov. 17, 2010: Matthew Higgs
MATTHEW HIGGS is an artist and curator based in New York City. He is director and chief curator of White Columns, New York’s oldest alternative arts space, founded in 1970 by Jeffrey Lew and Gordon Matta-Clark. Higgs has curated numerous exhibitions of international art, served as a curator at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and has contributed to the journals ArtForum and Frieze, among many others. As an artist, he has exhibited widely with recent solo exhibitions in New York, Vancouver, and London. He has taught in the curatorial practice program at California College of the Arts.

Jan. 31, 2011: J. Morgan Puett
J. MORGAN PUETT is known for her distinctive fashion designs and installations. Her large-scale collaborative projects engage communities, local cultures, and historical sites, drawing from traditions of costume, labor, personal appearance, and adornment. Recent projects have been commissioned by the Queens Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Forum, MassMoCA in North Adams, MA, the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Wave Hill in the Bronx, and the Serpentine Gallery in London. Puett and the artist Mark Dion operate Mildred’s Lane, an educational and cultural institute located on their 96-acre farm in the Upper Delaware River Valley in rural Pennsylvania. Both indoors and in the landscape, Mildred’s Lane presents workshops, readings, performances, screenings, temporary exhibitions, and architectural installations. Central to the project is a connection between research, working, making, and living with art. Puett is a visiting faculty member at California College of the Arts.

Feb. 2, 2011: Michael Mercil
MICHAEL MERCIL is an artist and a professor of art at The Ohio State University (OSU). Mercil has recently exhibited at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York, the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, and Columbus Museum of Art. His practice reflects interests in the intersections of agriculture and urbanism, searching for sustainable ways of inhabiting land. As part of his ongoing investigations with the Initiative for Living Culture, Mercil’s public works “The Beanfield” and “The Virtual Pasture,” produced in partnership with the Wexner Center for the Arts, the OSU Department of Art, and the Social Responsibility Initiative in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at OSU, consider the original history of OSU’s land as a site of agricultural production.

Curators: James Voorhies (Bureau for Open Culture & CCAD) with Lisa Dent (Columbus Museum of Art & CCAD)
Produced By: Bureau for Open Culture