03/29 WK 10 UT/ WK 09 NYU

ANNOUNCE

I'll be getting midterm grades posted next week. Please go here for your assignment check list

IN CLASS

THE ARTIST'S JOKE: Guest Speaker Michael Rees, Presentation and Q & A

Biography Michael Rees was born in Kansas City, Missouri and graduated from the Yale School of Art (MFA sculpture) and the Kansas City Art Institute (BFA sculpture). Michael Rees' work traverses a wide range of activities and efforts. He has shown at the Whitney Museum in the 1995 Biennial and again in 2001 in the exhibition BitStreams. His work has been exhibited in New York galleries and in private and public collections including the Whitney. It has also been exhibited in Museums and Galleries in the United States, China, Germany, Turkey, and Spain. Rees works in a broad continuum of sculptural practice. The work utilizes performance, animation, vinstallation, sculptural objects, computer software programs, and interactivity. He has used augmented reality extensively to create a sculpture/image/object interactive experience.

In 2018-2020 Rees’s work was on view in Michael Rees; Site and Para(Site) at Grounds for Sculpture. Also that year he did a one person show “Pneumatopia” at the German Museum of Contemporary Art as part of Open Spaces Kansas City curated by Dan Cameron. He has shown at the Whitney Museum in Bitstreams curated by Larry Rinder and also at the Kemper Museum of Art, The Aldrich Museum of Art, Centrum fur Median Kunst (ZKM) among others. One person shows have appeared at Bravin Lee Projects, Bitforms Gallery, 303 gallery and others. An exhibition catalogue for Site and Parasite is available from Scala Press: Micahel Rees: Site and Para(Site) (2020).

Grants and awards have included a Rockefeller Renew Media Grant, A Creative Capital grant, New Jersey State Council Grant, a National Endowment of the Arts Grant, and a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst grant for Study in Dusseldorf, Germany. He has been written about widely appearing in numerous survey books especially concerning digital art, genetics and art, and contemporary conceptual art. His one person shows have been reviewed in the New York Times, Art In America, Flash Art, Tema Cleste, New York Arts, Sculpture Magazine, World Art. He currently teaches at William Paterson University and is the director of the Center for New Art there.

Short Statement Humor and the Absurd in Putto Series 2001-2014, ClownTown 2016 and Site and Parasite 2018 My work extends from the existential to the artificial exploring bits and pieces of what I uncover along the way. It would seem nigh impossible to sidestep absurdity and its twin sibling comedy within that framework. And yet, humor in the arts finds a tough audience. Establishing prior context and then delivering punchiness is complex. It can sometimes be out loud laughing but more often it is an inner kind of observation such as “that’s not right! Or “hmm is this funny?”. This is hardly proof that humor thrives in art, but artists are always telling jokes and humor abounds. I’ve been told many times that my art is a joke. And yet I persist. Taking on the clown in a picaresque novel of a show, my exhibition ClownTown used augmented reality to explore various clown tropes and slapstick humor. Later in Site and Para(Site), the absurd was on display as modernist geometric inflatables gave way to image triggers and then to interactive augmented experiences featuring animals and insects. The object, image, augment structure gives rise to a rich possibility and allow a temporal experience, essential to the joke. Another feature of humor is that it is so often paired with darkness, another hard sell in art. This is the first time I’ve gone directly at speaking out loud about the work’s humor. Liberally sprinkling jokes into, through, and around my work I will falter and flounder my way into a territory that resists intellectuality, perhaps terrorizes it.

PRESENTATION: Snow Yunxue Fu and Hailing Liu on LOL

OPEN WORK SESSION: Working on 🃏 Humor Has Made Me a Better Storyteller and LOL

END TERM PROJECT DISCUSSION: 🃏 Humor Has Made Me a Better Storyteller: (can be collaborative or independent)

• Sharing your project ideas!

OPEN WORK SESSION: Discussing 🛣 End Term ProjectIdeas

ASSIGNMENT 09

VRL (1)To Be Posted (2) WRITE & POST on your✍ Process Blogyour responses to the VRL( 3) WRITE & POST your responses to Michael Rees talk ( 3) CONTINUE to brainstrom and ideate on your 🛣 End Term Project (4) BE PREPARED to present your ideas in class next week.