Sinter Method

I Have Moved

2010-12-05T06:42:00.000-08:00

I will no longer be updating this blog and have moved it to a blog integrated within my website at: http://www.mariomarzan.com/category/news

Thanks for visiting

Layers at Rebus Works

2010-08-06T11:50:00.000-07:00

Mario Marzan + Eugene Korsunskiy

Opening Reception: Friday, August 6 from 6-10 p.m.

On view through September 25

Close Encounters of the Caribbean Kind at Rebus Works

2010-07-27T22:29:00.000-07:00

Two-person exhibition at Rebus Works in Raleigh, NC with Eugene Korsunskiy opening August 6, 2010

New series titled "Sinter Method: Close Encounters of the Caribbean Kind"

http://www.rebusworks.us/

Necessary Fictions Durham News Review - 6.27.2010

2010-07-04T23:13:00.000-07:00

Necessary Fictions Durham News Review - 6.27.2010 by Rodrigo Dorfman

Necessary Fictions Independent Weekly Review 6.30.2010

2010-07-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

Indy Weekly Review of Necessary Fictions Exhibition by Chris Vitiello - 6.30.2010

Necessary Fictions at ROOM 100, GoldenBelt- Durham

2010-05-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Opening reception Friday, May 21, 2010 from 6-9pm.

Necessary Fictions
Organized by John Ribó and Mario Marzan and featuring artists María DeGuzmán, Josué Pellot, Mario Marzan, Susy Bielak, Izel Vargas, and Francis Marquez.

In the first decade of the 21st century the U.S. Southeast was the region with the fastest growing Latina/o population, a phenomenon that has rapidly transformed the cultural landscape of states like North Carolina.

Latina/o, like many umbrella terms of identification, is a fiction that simultaneously obscures and highlights difference.

Amongst Latinas/os identification according to national origin often prevails because "Latina/o" brings together individuals with different histories, from different countries, who speak different languages and dialects, and who represent diverse cultural and ethnic heritages.

Yet in relation to the larger U.S. population, the term is often deployed in order to allow diverse peoples who identify as Latina/o the opportunity to look beyond their particular differences, to organize around common causes, and to celebrate shared experiences and cultural affinities.

Simply put, to be Latina/o means different things to different people.

Necessary Fictions explores negotiations of what Latina/o can mean by bringing together the work of six artists from North Carolina and beyond, each with their own particular reflections on Latinidad expressed in painting, mixed media, sculpture, video installation, photography, and performance.

New Work Commissioned for the New Carolina Latina/o Collaborative at UNC

2010-03-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

Both commissioned works will help inaugurate the new UNC Carolina Latina/o Collaborative beginning April, 10th of 2010.

Surreal Salon: Baton Rouge Center for Contemporary Art

2009-11-24T20:09:00.000-08:00

Check out my work in the exhibition "Surreal Salon" at the Baton Rouge Gallery: Center for Contemporary Art in Louisiana in January 2010, opening Jan 3rd, Reception/Costume Soiree: Jan 23rd.

http://www.batonrougegallery.org/

Seattle Center on Contemporary Art - 2009 CoCA Annual Catalog Cover

2009-11-24T20:01:00.000-08:00

Check out one of my drawings on the front and back cover of the Seattle CoCA exhibition I am in this month.
Buy Catalog

Exhibition runs through January 7th, 2010.

Lights Tension Strings

2009-06-30T07:28:00.001-07:00

Urging from this ludic summer hiatus, I am returning to write about the Biennale. One thing I did during my time off was take a trip out to the suburbs with my colleague Mary, who was also in Paris, to see the Mac/Val contemporary art museum. Mary and I met at the Francois Mitterrand metro station and once we figured out how to take the RER, we were off to this commune south of the city-Vitry-sur-Seine.

At the museum we met up with curator and friend of Mary's, Valerie; who gave us a very enjoyable personal tour of the current exhibitions as well as the rest of the museum.

I'm really glad Mary took me here and introduced me to Valerie, I would have never wandered so far out of the city and didn't know this place existed to be honest. Thanks to Valerie for the free catalogs.

Back to the Biennale ( I still have a few posts in me).... Highlighted above is the work of South Korean artist Haegue Yang. I came across Yang's work last year at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, and glad I was to see where her work had gone in just a few years. Her work was one of my favorite individual pieces in the keynote exhibition- a series of jacked up venitian blinds ( I lied again about there being no venitian blinds in Venice) with colored light bulbs intertwined with cables and strings, intersecting the blinds themselves- which are hanging on what appear to be clothing racks.

A host of other objects dangling from these structures created these somewhat intimate and formal compositions.

The Korean Pavilion (below) hosted her work as well. This piece resemble the pieces at the Carnegie International.

Just outside of the Arsenal towards the gardens was another of my personal favorites: Pae White. This old space was reconstructed by the addition of a drop ceiling/tapestry made of intertwined colorful strings. This caused the chandeliers (created out of raw materials and bird seed) to be displayed a lot lower and closer than they would normally be.

This created a sense of intimacy to the space that at the same time seemed to resemble a giant bird cage. Once in a while, the "gallery attendants" would go into wild bird calls, chirping away towards the heights of the space. A pretty surreal experience.

The tapestry below was unbelievable. Rays of colorful string woven into this spider-like den.

This materiality theme kept on coming. Below is yet another favorite: Moshekwa Langa's installation containing unraveling spools of colorful string creating a huge cartographic map on the floor. The model cars placed throughout was the first clue that the 3-dimensional installation was meant to be perceived as a 2-dimensional map or perhaps a model diorama.

Each of the colorful strings symbolizing roads, rivers and other dividing lines we would originally see on a map. The spools of strings could have been transformed into buildings as they unravel and spill out onto the streets. I perceived this piece to thematize the idea of travel, yet something about it seemed to say more. Maybe it was that all the model trees in the diorama were uprooted. Perhaps the other random objects placed throughout tried to guide me in another direction. Yet another paradoxical statement addressing automobiles, perhaps the industry itself?

At this point I knew I was over-thinking it, so I just continued to enjoy the piece visually and formally. This was a beautiful piece. The title of the piece was "Temporal Distance (With Criminal Intent). You Will Find Us in the Best Places." Above is a worms eye view and here below is a shot with the camera raised a little to capture the scale of the space.

One last installation along the same material theme was the work of Yona Friedman (below). It was one of the first rooms of the Arsenal; like some of the previous ones the installation also created a sort of drop ceiling in the room, which trapped a slew of cardboard structures.

The installation went up some 20 feet in the air and seemed to resemble a city, with catwalks connecting some structures to others. Falling structures, crooked buildings...Venice?

Some close-up shots looking straight up at the installation.

Grandiose Biennale, Not So Much...

2009-06-30T06:22:00.001-07:00

There were over 100 sites outside of the Giardini and Arsenal that exhibited works connected to the biennale. If you took a walk between the two main sites you might have encountered one of Hector Zamora's many blimps throughout the exhibition. This one above is stuck between the narrow streets of Venice. I assume there were many throughout, but I just stumbled upon one of them. I did however see some of the work he had inside the Arsenal. Here (below) is a few of the blimps hanging from the ceiling. This half deflated blimp stuck between two old structures (above) seemed to resonate with the state of the economy and the not-so-grandiose turnout of this year's biennale. Apparently, the crash of the art market has left the Venice Biennale operating with 1.5 million dollars less than in 2007.

Hector Zamora is a Mexican artist who seems to be getting plenty of exposure as of recent, having exhibited in the Sao Paolo and Busan biennials in the past recent years. His work looks to create "social interventions that manifest themselves as architecture or sculpture, as a collective action or an installation in a public space".

Hector Zamora also created a corresponding video (above) inside the Arsenal of hundreds of computer generated blimps slowly moving over the city of Venice.

Another piece that seemed to correspond with the budget cuts was in the Nordic pavilion. I had mentioned in the previous post that Russia hosted the exhibition with the "most" artists for their pavilion, but I was mistaken. The Nordic pavilion hosted the work of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset. Their project consisted of them inviting a group 24 more artists to transform their two large pavilions into mock homes/mansions. Below is the pool of a fictional art collector- with him in it. The dummy, made of silicone-so his skin looked very realistic, was placed as if having just committed suicide. Inside you got to walk about his mansion and look at his eccentric collection of art, everything appeared as if the accident outside had just happened- music left playing, etc..

A site specific piece that I enjoyed was "Keep Something for a Rainy Day" (below) by Att Poomtangon from Thailand. This colorful structure 'combined social sculpture with environmentally friendly technology' and was functioning as a water pump and purifier, providing clean water for the visitors of the biennale.

German artist Tamara Grcic's site specific installation outside in one of the canals that meets the Arsenal, looked as if a campsite. Each large inner-tube had a bright orange tent covering with a microphone hanging down from the rafters, right over each tent. The sound component did not correspond to the images below, at times you could hear sounds from an office: fax copy machines, people chatting, computer sounds, modems, etc.

This next piece by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping hung from the ceiling in this beautiful old room inside the Arsenal resembling a large octopus creature. In fact, it was a large re-creation of the Hand of Buddha - a type of tree used in Chinese medicine. These sculptures scale brought the viewer into a fantasy realm, where the ambiguity of the spiritual and creaturely beings came together.

The lights in the back are from another artist whom I will cover in a section about 'lights and strings' (my favorite individual works in the biennale) - but thats for later. In the meanwhile, I hope you enjoy these large scale works in the biennale. I'm off to enjoy my last week in Paris.

'Ave a Go, Ya Mug!

2009-06-29T05:58:00.000-07:00

One of the most surprisingly good pavilions this year was the Australian. I dont know why I say 'surprising' really, I guess it's because I almost missed it, since it was tucked away and wasn't anything impressive. It also had a car (above) parked outside and a motorcycle (below) halfway into the structure.

The work was that of Shaun Gladwell. He presented a group of videos, photos and sculptures influenced by the Australian outback and the Mad Max movies. His work deals with a 'sort of journey or passage, an exploration of the sublime; action portrayed in slow motion, the human figure seen as a moving sculpture, and the strive for balance' both literally and metaphorically.

In this series titled " MADDESTMAXIMVS", Gladwell presents a slow moving high definition video of the Mad Max-like character standing on top of a souped-up car, car surfing if you will, as it flies at high-speeds down a never-ending dirt road without a driver. The character then stretches his arms wide resembling Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man". (Very appropriate -since the actual da Vinci drawing is housed in Venice). The character slowly climbs back into the car through the window. This piece seemed to be integrated into the biennale quite well- the paradox being that there are no streets in Venice.

If you remember, the apocalyptic character of the Mad Max movies, played by young Mel Gibson, was taking on revenge after the death of his family by a road gang. Mad Max goes on a raging chase to find and kill the responsible parties. In this video above- "Apology to Roadkill" by Gladwell, a character wearing his full on black motorcycle leather get-up, pulls his bike over and cradles a dead kangaroo desperately, on the side of an Australian highway. Both visually stunning and heartbreaking, he paces back and forth with this large kangaroo's limbs dangling from his arms. Doing a bit of research led me to something I was expecting- that Kangaroos are hit in Australian roadways at an increasing rate due to highway construction in major kangaroo habitats. The work was very simplistic, a mix of humor and turmoil, but quite enjoyable nonetheless.

A second pavilion worth mentioning as a good surprise was the Japanese pavilion- the artist was Miwa Yagani. The exhibition included 5 oversized picture frames containing these black and white photographs of half naked giant characters set against devastated landscapes in the background. If you were to peek around behind these, you would have found smaller portraits of women on the wall (one which was sweeping sand from the floor.)

The lighting was not that good inside here, so the images came out a little blurry.

The exhibition also included a video housed in a black tent, low to the ground. In the video: five set of feet under a black tent, moving across the desert. To parallel the work inside, the Japanese pavilion itself was also covered under a giant black tent. When entering Yagani's monumental installation "Windswept Women: The Old Girls' Troupe", your personal sense of scale turned to miniature ( 'Honey I Shrunk the Kids' feeling). The fact that the artist played around with the concept of the word "pavilion", was the best thing for me in the exhibition. The fact that the word was originally intended to be that of a temporary structure, yet in the context of the biennale- these structures have been up for 50+ years. Addressing this concept, the video inside shows a tent running around a desert in constant motion. The viewer is required to crouch down as if to enter the tent; entering a child's paradigm- reinforcing the shift of scale and perspective.

Thanks for sending me your emails, I will send the Aleksandra Mir postcards today. I still have a few- so make sure to get yours.

No Venetian Blinds in Venice

2009-06-28T04:26:00.000-07:00

Just came back from a three-day intense run through of the 53rd Venice Biennale. The sun was shining, temperatures mildly and pleasantly hot. So what did I see?

I checked out all of the international pavilions in the Giardini and the Arsenal, as many of the off sites as I could find in the Labyrinth, as well as Daniel Birnbaum's curated exhibition "Making Worlds", which extends to both major sites. I took hundreds of images and videos so it won't be easy to choose what to blog about- they will come in handy for slide lectures in class, thats for sure. Instead of just putting them up in a photo album, I have decided to post a series of entries in the next couple of days- selectively dividing into categories some of the highlights of the exhibition. This first post I will dedicate to two of my favorite country pavilions.

The best of them, in my opinion, was the German Pavilion with the work of Liam Gillick. The pavilion only exhibited one artist and had nothing in the show but a large kitchen-like wooden structure, with no appliances, extending from room to room. In the main room of the exhibition was a kitchen island, and on top of one of the shelves: a cat.

Not a real cat, but what appeared to be a taxidermied cat. It also had a crumpled up piece of paper in its mouth. The exhibition had a couple of other components to it- a written poem/story that you are handed as you enter the space, which had a story titled: "HOW ARE YOU GOING TO BEHAVE? A KITCHEN CAT SPEAKS" written by the artist as well. The story is about a cat who is worshiped by a whole town, as they wish to know the cat's stance on 'the history of totalitarian architecture or the restriction of credit within the context of failed models of globalization.' Ha...

That was part of a sound component too- a voice reading the story out loud:

"There will be a cat that can speak. All the people of the town will be very proud of their speaking cat.

People will come every day to hear what it has to say.

It will be very cynical but never mean.

It will see everything and understand all..."

The repeating design of the structure leads you throughout the pavilion's multiple rooms, bringing you back full circle into the room with the cat watching over you. The piece was pretty funny / I couldn't stop laughing. I came to realize later that it was a response to the history of the pavilion, it's totalitarian design and the fact that it was designed in 1938 pre-wwii, with no bathrooms or a place to rest. The piece could also be a general response of the site of the Giardini itself and it's disparate pavilion designs. Also, during the off season the Giardini is apparently known for being overrun by stray cats!

Either way, I thought of my cats and how they never let me work. Dandelion used to always climb on top of the fridge having to be in control of the whole room. Dolly always sitting on a stack of papers as I'm trying to grade them. This was their piece, I thought- they will always be the ultimate totalitarian voice- the only ones who speak. Very minimal, very german (although the artist was British, which was interesting) yet definitely my favorite exhibition hall in the biennale.

Forget the economy, the Russians put up some dough for this one. I thought Russia had one of the most ambitious and best exhibitions in the biennale- with 7 artists representing the country- the most of all. The theme of the exhibition dealt with utopian concepts of victory. Here below is Pavel Pepperstein's exhibition of mock utopian drawings accompanied by neon sculptures at the bottom. The walls were black and there was black lighting throughout the whole room highlighting the drawings, while speakers in the room were blaring Pepperstein rapping.

Here are some close-ups of the mock utopian drawings

In a different room - Irina Korina's fountain sculpture (above). This was one of Anna's favorite- it was made with plastic table cloths Russian's usually have in their kitchens- she tells me.

Above is video of Gosha Ostretsov's installation in the bottom floors. Reminiscent of a haunted house, the exhibition was full of motion activated animatronics in what appeared to be a dilapidated barn/basement. Sorry for the poor quality of this one.

This is Alexey Kallima's four wall projection of screaming soccer fans. The screams get louder and louder, then the lights in the room go on and everything is silent.

Anatoly Shuravlev's installation "Black Holes" displayed in a black room with a constellation of crystal balls suspended from the ceiling, in each: a miniature portrait of a 20th century figure whose work has changed the world in one way or another. Examples: Gandhi, Einstein, Picasso, Bush...

By the way- the only pavilion that would not let me document was: guess... the American pavilion. Thats quite alright though because the Bruce Nauman retrospect was pretty boring and if it wasn't for the Czech and Slovenian pavilions, I would say it was the worst of them all. (Yea yea, golden lion blah blah. Don't really care about the reviews) What a disappointing structure too- the American pavilion. The only reason the Americans stayed in the game was because of individual works throughout the curated exhibition, which I will write about later .

I also wanted to share this piece (above) with yinz who are still with me. This is Aleksandra Mir's work (Poland) titled "A Million Free Postcards." She gave away postcards with images of 100 places characterized by the presence of water, all with the word "Venezia" printed on them- all to be mailed throughout the world by visitors of the biennale.

E-mail me your mailing address: mariomarzan at gmail dot com and I will send you a postcard ( a piece of Mir's work from the biennale) to participate in this piece. I'll even write you a personal note...

Close Encounters of the Caribbean Kind

2009-06-22T04:54:00.001-07:00

I have been working on a video/animation, which will eventually be projected on the floor of a darkened room. I have to say that I was quite influenced by the Pipilotti Rist piece at the Elles exhibition that I saw a few weeks ago at the Center Pompidou. The piece is also influenced by a couple of other things- a few I have mentioned in previous posts: Mister Wister Time Twister, time travel, the movie 'Millenium', etc. But also The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite's -

"The Day the Eiffel Tower Went Berserk" - a graphic novel that tells the events of Paris being saved from an evil genius, resulting in The Eiffel Tower flying into space. The narration style of The Umbrella Academy is also of interest to me.

I have just finished rendering the background for the piece, which consists of video shot from under the Eiffel Tower, spinning and split into four parts creating a kaleidoscope effect. The image is also inverted and some motion/wind blurs and lighting filters have been applied as well. Here are a couple of screen shots. Im hoping that sharing my work in the blog will help me make better sense of it as I continue to work on it.

The video moves verrryyyy slow and took a while to render, so hopefully I will keep it "as is" for the background so I can move on to the actual animation. I wasn't too surprised to how easily the Eiffel Tower can look so spaceship - like with just a few tweeks. It's actually quite captivating as is...

The video also spins on an axis in the middle from the anchor point of the kaleidoscope.

Earlier this week I took a trip to Pere Lechaise Cemetary located on the 20th arrondissement of Paris- a popular "must see" spot in the city, for there a many famous peeps buried there. I visited all the main ones, but was particularly interested in looking for one, which led to an adventure. After checking out Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Jacques Louis David, Delacroix and Chopin, I decided to find the only Puerto Rican supposedly buried in Paris: Ramon Betances, the grandfather of Puerto Rican nationalismo; a.k.a: the father of the Puerto Rican peoples- as they say.

As you would have guessed - he wasn't listed in any of the visitors maps, so I had to inquire at the information services office. First, the office was not easy to find, even with a map. If you've been to Pere Lachaise you know how gigantic that place is. Then, they were not too crazy about helping me figure this out. After getting the run around for a while I was led to this great gentleman who informed me that Betances was moved to Puerto Rico on a special request and that this happened long ago, but that he would be willing to show me on a map to the area where his remains once were.

Again, the map didn't work...It took me over two hours of searching and all I found was this half opened mossy old crypt, which looked as if Betances had crawled out of there himself. It was kind of like entering the 'barrio' part of the cemetery- all broken down and dilapidated. This shot is actually from some of the video I shot there.

Having journeyed for so long, I decided to stay a while and use some of the environments growing on the tomb for my "red men" I found at the toy store a few weeks ago. The moss seemed to create these beautiful miniature landscapes and the stone of the tombs looked like ruins. Some of these shots have not made it into the video piece, which I think it's a related piece, but not the same as the floor projection that I mentioned above- but I wanted share an idea of how insane I must have looked offering little red men to the memory of Betances as opposed to flowers. I would like to think that I am offering my work to his memory with these- at least.

These distanced binocular shots are fitting in with some of the other shooting I did earlier this week when paying homage to Amelie of Montmartre- the part when Nino Quincampoix (who worked in pigalle!) looks down to the bottom of the hill with the observation binoculars from the top of Sacre Coeur.

(Above: Stills from "Amelie")

Ok... two other reoccurring/connecting factors to end the post. 'Red' and 'Pigalle'. A friend from grad school: Shana visited me in Montmartre last week, she was in Paris for a performance at the Cote Court Film festival. We hung out in Pigalle, which is just a few blocks away. It's the "red light district" of Paris. Its actually not as 'seedy" as I thought it would be and it's where a lot of the fun night spots are- we've hung out there quite a lot actually.

I leave for Venice in a couple of days to check out the Biennial, so check back. I have also been meaning to cover some of the street art / wheat pasting going on in Paris, so look out for that.

What is a mongoose anyways?

2009-06-15T02:52:00.001-07:00

I wanted to share a quick bit on my research:

As I read myself to sleep last night I came across an interesting line in the current book I am trying to finish: Junot Diaz's The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (SPOILER ALERT)

To give you the least bit of context without giving too much away, the protagonist of the story is beat up and left for dead in a sugar cane field in nowhere Dominican Republic. Be it a figment of the character's imagination or something else altogether, she sees a strange "extraterrestrial-like" creature resembling a mongoose, which sings to her and helps her find her way out of the sugar cane maze and onto a road where she is found by a passing truck.

This of course made me think of Ismael Francisco's encounter with the child-like extraterrestrial creature who healed his belly-button wound out by Laguna Cartagena.

Anyways, the line that stood out to me as I could not help but laugh out loud was:

"But no matter what the truth, remember: Dominicans are Caribbean and therefore have an extraordinary tolerance for extreme phenomena."

This is starting to become reality. Doing this research has not made me a believer, but has showed me the tolerance that I have for this kind of stuff, which is exactly what I am trying to research.

I looked up the history of the Mongoose in the morning and found out that - not native to the Caribbean- the mongoose arrived in Puerto Rico in 1877 to control the black rat, since then it has caused the extinction of several reptiles and amphibians native to the island. Chupacabra? Perhaps...

In the book, Diaz goes on to say that "many Watchers suspect that the Mongoose arrived to our world from another" (Watchers- referring to an extraterrestrial species who watch the universe in Marvel Comics). Two lines that, although not important to the story as of yet - important to my research.

Speaking of other worldly...

Check out our boy here. I know its not art related...yet, but I could not post without sharing this trip to the "bird market" on Sunday. Every Sunday the vegetable and fruit market in ile de la cite turns into a bird market. You name it- they have it here. They even have critters, bunnies and other pets. This chicken with da fro made my day.

I was very close to getting one of these owl looking birds for my studio here, but then I thought of how terrified they would be of the metro. The smell alone would collapse their little lungs. (It was the first true HOT day in Paris on Sunday)

It's a rainy Monday in Paris today and I'm looking forward to just staying in my studio and working, after my cafe au lait of course. A week ago I started a series of 20 drawings that I hope to finish while I'm here. Perhaps I will share those with the blog this week.

Holy Goth!

2009-06-12T04:12:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I took the long trip on metro 13 to to the northern outskirts of Paris to see this structure that was recommended by a blog I have been following while here: Eye Prefer Paris. The blog recommends unusual walks and "must see" places around the city. Although not art related I will be heading to a "bird market" this Sunday recommended by this blog. Apparently it's like a fruit and vegetable market but with birds??

This wasn't the first time I had heard the name of this basilica; St. Denis- it's history starts in the town of Montmartre, where I am currently living. Saint Denis was the original patron saint of Paris, the first Bishop. According to legend he was beheaded in the streets of Montmartre, which explains it's name: martyr's hill. Even more bizarre, the legend claims that after his beheading he picked up his head and walked away, shouting and preaching until he passed out from blood loss at the site of the basilica, some five miles away. Pretty goth if you ask me.

Gothic architecture is not usually my thing, but it was hard not to be motivated by this structure, so I decided to include it in the blog. After you take in its outdoor beauty and enter through these large heavy doors, you find yourself in it's aisles, facing the altar. This image below actually shows a view from it's nave, turned around towards the entrance while I admired this massive pipe organ. Two doors in the front of the church give entrance under it's arcades seen here on the sides.

The architecture is said to be the first Gothic basilica, highlighting the change from Romanesque to Gothic. Before it was called "Gothic", it was apparently known as "French Style."

These columns are on the basilica's sides.

Facing the altar (above). I was really mesmerized by the criss-crossing going on here.

It was pretty hard to capture the the light coming through, but the purple, pink, yellow and blue glass windows really created quite a spectacle.

You really didn't have to be a believer to enjoy this view. This grand window was to the left of the altar and perhaps the most impressive of all. I have seen other churches in Paris thus far, Madelaine, Notre Dame, Pantheon, Sacre Couer etc. But this one had a different feel to it.

Check out the goblets of light casted on the corner where the walls meet below. These were consistent throughout this grand structure.

Looking up at the capitals of the columns.

Whats even more bizarre about this church is that it has been the burial site of ALL the kings of France and their families since the 7th century.

Their bodies are no longer underneath these effigies; apparently during the French Revolution workers were ordered to remove the cadavers from their crypts and thrown into a mass grave out back.

There was no-one in here and it kept feeling like I wasn't supposed to be there. It was quite a change from the crowds at Notre Dame, the Pantheon as well as the Sacre Coeur. By far the most beautiful and unique in my opinion.

I Like America and America Likes Me

2009-06-11T02:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spent most of my day at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, where I followed around a group of young art lovers to see some of the art collection. They were a group of 5 year old Parisian youngins on a museum education program. I could not understand most of what they were saying but I did hear something like: "Le Coyote est d'essayer de le manger" - which I've come to translate as "the coyote is trying to eat him." I spent about a half an hour here in this video room sitting behind them as they tried to make sense of Joseph Beuys' conceptual performance "I like America and America Likes Me." They looooved it. Every minute of it. Who would of thought that when you put conceptual art in front of kids they would treat it like cartoons. Perhaps their responses were critiques; more than I could get out of my college students. You may be familiar with this performance, but in case you're not let me give you a little back ground. Before Joseph Beuys became a conceptual artist, he was a rear gunner in the German airforce. In the 1940's his plane was shot down near the Ukraine and what happened after became key in the development of his later artistic persona. He claimed that he was rescued from the plane crash by nomadic tribesmen, who had wrapped his injured body in animal fat and felt, which helped him recover. Although the German military claims to have rescued Beuys from the crash site and that there were no nomadic peoples around anywhere, this particular story or account of events according to Beuys became a powerful myth in his artistic career. (This kind of relates to that Gertrude Stein quote from a few days ago, no?)

In the performance, Beuys arrives in the U.S. for the first time ever for a performance at Rene Block Gallery in NYC, taken by ambulance from the airport, wrapped in felt, and dropped off at the gallery where a caged room with a coyote is waiting for him inside. He spent three days in this cage interacting with the coyote. Beuys would wrap himself in felt and the coyote would try to take it off of him by ripping it into shreds. Sometimes the coyote would pee on a stack of newspapers, sometimes Beuys was hanging out in a pile of hay on the corner staring at the coyote, other times the coyote would stare at him. At the end Beuys attempts to hug the coyote that has spent the last 3 days in this cage with him, and off he goes in an ambulance, wrapped in felt, back to the airport.

I watched a lot of people come in and out of the room with the usual face: 'what's this crazy guy doing and calling it art' kind of face. I think I myself had that face at times. But not these kids. They were patient and were holding out to see what transpired. They accepted it: There's a man and a coyote in the same room together... as simple as that- they didn't care how he got there or what his intentions were. This performance was in the early 70's, so Beuys was probably taking a position on the vietnam war or criticizing America's role. Supposedly in the performance he never "steps on american soil", which may support further that interpretation. The coyote has always been known as an aggressor or a symbol of aggressive behavior and may have symbolized "America" or "Americans". Another interpretation was that the coyote could be a symbol of "Native Americans" or what we have done to this native land and its cultures. Coyotes are also very enduring animals and can live for long periods of time without much food and water, so perhaps there was a metaphor from his past. To me the piece was quite peaceful, his failed attempt to hug the coyote at the end of the performance was very endearing. And the title, well... it's pretty elementary and very relevant to the context in which I was watching. I've encountered this piece in art history classes and books before, but I never had a chance to see the whole thing. If you havn't either, I recommend watching it with kids around, its a lot more fun. Plus in the end I like their interpretation better: the coyote WAS trying to eat him.

Another cool show I went to yesterday was at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in the Montparnasse district of Paris. The artist is Beatriz Milhazes from Brazil: here is a picture from the outside of the foundation and it shows the large 30 foot vinyl drawings that they wouldn't let me take a picture of from inside. The show also consisted of these beautiful paintings.

These are hot - and theyre quite large. Some of the detailing is amazing. A little of that pull/push effect. Makes me want to paint larger. I'll come back to this center later on in the month because there's a "graffiti" exhibition going up and would like to share that too.

About my work: I also came upon a treasure today at this store in Montmartre called Tombes Du Camion, which I think translates to fallen from the truck.

Miniature sitting RED men. I think they're supposed to be polo players or jockeys, but they'll become more mister wister-like in no time. I think they'll make it into this piece somehow.

Here they are sitting on my windowsill awaiting my next move. If my french neighbors across the courtyard didn't think I was weird before, well they do now...

Especially the old lady that watches me from the 3rd story window. Apparently Picasso's studio from his "Paris days" is next door, and we all know that guy was weird- so hopefully they're used to it. BTW - Someone in Paris stole a Picasso sketchbook from a Paris museum the other day worth some 64 million. I like when art makes the news. Did I mention Paris?

Centurion

2009-06-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

On the last post I had mentioned some of the USO research at Laguna Cartagena, so I decided to look back through this old footage to see if I found something worth using. Izel Vargas and I took a trip to Lajas, P.R. in May of 2008 to drive through the controversial "Extraterrestrial Highway Route 303", where there have been numerous USO and UFO sightings during the past recent years.

The Mayor of Lajas, Marcus Irrizari, is even supporting the building of a UFO landing strip as a welcome gesture to extraterrestrials that keep flying and hiding on and inside the island. In the article below you'll see local ufologist Professor Reinaldo Rios in front of the highway sign along route 303.

Perhaps important ventures such as this are whats bringing PR down:

"Puerto Rico Runs Out Of Money, Closes Down" May 1, 2007 SJ, Puerto Rico (AP)

We didnt have the best equipment with us on this hike, but we encountered a dweller that has lived in seclusion out by Laguna Cartagena for over 20 years and Izel managed to capture most of his stories on video. Here is an unedited preview of this man and the clips I've started working with. The sound is not the best because it was quite windy, but here he talks to Izel and I about his encounters with otherworldly beings in the lagoon: claiming he was cured of a belly button wound by an creature resembling a 7 year old boy, as well as showing us where the "kings are buried."

Now, keep in mind that we were miles away from the nearest small town and there was noooooobody out there but us. He sort of cornered us with his dogs and his fatigues, wondering what we were doing out there. He claimed that the only people that come out there now came to dump bodies. It was a pretty nerve wrecking moment, but Izel kept talking to him and he opened up to us. It was starting to feel like he was keeping us there as the sun began to set; his dogs guarding the only escape route, and I thought perhaps we should get out of there before we became the "kings" he spoke of. A little later we began to realize he was quite harmless, all it took was listening to some of his stories.

Splendid Elles

2009-06-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

I finally got to the Center Pompidou in Paris today - on the "free museum day" (first sunday of the month) - I was not too crazy about the other two exhibitions (Calder and Kandinsky) at the center, which weren't even free, plus, I have seen enough of these two, so I decided to experience the Pompidou on a budget instead. Not a bad decision - there was one exhibition which was free. Actually, it was their permanent collection but presented in a different way than usual. I read some mixed reviews about it and decided to check out the exhibition titled ELLES, a rehanging of their permanent collection but designed to present the work of women artists. Having received limited exposure to female artists throughout my education, as many of us have, I thought this sounded outstanding.

The show did not disappoint. It was quite an ambitious exhibition with more than 200 works, and if you have been to the center pompidou, you know that each floor is gigantic. The exhibition was divided into seven different sub categories, thematically and chronologically - from the "pioneers" to the "activist body" to "eccentric abstraction", and finally "immateriality." Taking up almost two of the floors of the center, the exhibition had a nice flow to it, very concise and enjoyable. I was really excited to see so many important works in the same room at times. Although visually intense, this shot was from one of my favorite rooms in the exhibition - I think there were about six different projections no more than four feet from each other: Anna Mandieta, Valie Export, Marina Abramovich, Carolee Scheemann, among a few others.

I ran into one of my colleagues from school at the exhibition, Dan - in the genitalia room actually- I was pretty amused by that. I knew he was going to be in Paris so I was not as surprised, but I had not spoken to many people in english for the past several weeks so it was pleasant. I was just thinking about Valie Export the other day when I read she will be one of the curators for a pavilion at the Venice biennale this year, which I will get to attend later this month. It was also great to see some of her key works in the exhibition, which I had only experienced in text form before today: Touch Cinema, Action Pants, as well with this one below, which came up earlier on this past semester for me.
In the room themed around Virginia Woolfe's essay, 'A Room of One's Own' I came across the Valie Export video that I could not recall this past semester while talking to one of the grad students at UNC, where a family is sitting watching television while eating dinner. Emily, the grad I'm talking about was working on a timed camera piece, where the timer took shots of different couples sitting in front of a TV throughout the span of an evening.

Another interesting piece was a Mona Hatoum that actually reminded me of a Valie Export installation in the last Venice Biennale. The stand alone cylinder with two entrances, required the viewer to enter and look into the ground at a round, floor projection of a camera traveling through what appeared to be parts of the human body.

Some of the other work that I enjoyed in the exhibition were Sophie Calle's hotel series and this awesome Pipilotti Rist floor projection.

The kids there had a blast interacting with this piece, which made me smile. (I had been trying not to smile for two weeks- for I read in the book 'French or Foe' / a guide to living in Paris that smiling to strangers give you away as an american) They were running up and around everywhere and hijacking the piece as if it was a playground. I was surprised of how many adults avoided stepping on the projected image.
I have read these Sophe Calle pieces below in several essays before, which I liked quite a lot, but they are originally in french and I could not revisit them fully this time around. The first one is from the hotel series.

I felt that the show was hung effectively as well, carrying the punch intended - the message of including only women in a history of 20th century art, yet also reflected on the caliber and great taste of the center's permanent collection, highlighting it's history. The exhibition pretty much follows the same trajectory that a general 20th cent. collection should have, minus the men.

Another area of interests in the show were the rooms dedicated to minimal and conceptual art - areas that we are used to seeing dominated by male artists. This is an area of museums I often hover towards - being a fan of minimalism. It was refreshing seeing more than just the Agnes Martins in this collection, a little Vera Molnar, Silvia Bachli, Hanne Darboven and perhaps other artists who would not have associated themselves with these movements.

There were lots of other great moments in the show that I am not mentioning, like revisiting great pieces such as Rossler's 'Semiotics of the Kitchen' or Landau's 'Barbed Hula', Eleanor Antin's '100 Boots', Jana Sterbak's meat dress, Sadie Benning, Tania Bruguera, Adrian Piper, sorry for name dropping but I can go on and on...

I will end this post with a very frenetic quote I came across in the exhibition by Gertrude Stein that I liked and wanted to share - It was used in a section of the show dealing with narrative and autobiography (to give you some context) and it went really well with the work of Sophie Calle and perhaps Gina Pane, but I found some parallels to my own work as well:

"And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself. That is really the trouble with an autobiography you do not of course you do not really believe yourself why should you, you know so well so very well that it is not yourself, it could not be yourself because you cannot remember right and if you do not remember right it does not sound right and of course it does not sound right because it is not right. You are of course never yourself"

Mister Wister Time Twister

2009-06-05T01:04:00.000-07:00

A little something on what I've been working on in Paris: I came across this great french cartoon the other day about this character "Mister Wister" who looses his hat and goes back in time to retrieve it. Now, this reminded me of my obsession with my hats and the fondness for each. Most are aware that I wear some kind of "lobal warming" at all times. There have been times when I've had to retrace my tracks on my bike for miles in the middle of the night, looking for fallen hats that I had stuck in my back pocket while switching it out for my bike helmet.

I was immediately attracted to Mister Wister's red wardrobe and the scene with the pink flowers towards the end. Perhaps because I have been feeling the same hypnotic feeling while walking down the old, charming streets of Montmartre, and it feels like literally stepping into a time machine. The scenes of the traffic is also reminiscent of walking around the city.

On some past thoughts: I started researching ufo related activities while in Puerto Rico last year with Izel Vargas, one of my past grad students. We had watched this documentary about the citizens of Lajas and their accounts of sightings around that area of the island. Laguna Cartagena, pictured on the right on the southwest part of the island near the Caribbean Sea, was talked about as a possible "underwater tunnel"; a transport for USO's to reach the island from the Sea. Also pictured above is the Arecibo Observatory, which appeared in episodes of the x-files and below in the movie Contact with Jodie Foster.

Some of you may know that Puerto Rico sits in one of the corners of the Bermuda Triangle and is a hot bed for UFO activity. Not that I completely believe all this stuff but we explored in and around the area of Laguna Cartagena, which was quite an adventure- the place was miles away from population and we encountered quite a character while there, but thats for another time. Perhaps he will make it into this project. We also visited the Arecibo Observatory, the largest radio-telescope in the world.

The Abyss... one of my favorite movies, also played a roll in my desire to explore this concept of an underwater passage way leading to the interior of the island. Youre probably wondering where I'm going with all of this or thinking that I've completely lost my mind. Well hang on and I will make it come back full circle, hopefully:

I was really interested in the history of Puerto Rico and its colonization state since the 15th century. The island could still be called one of the only colonies left in the world- under US rule since the end of the Spanish American war in the late 1800's. I wanted to explore a metaphor that addressed the individual psyches of the cultures of such affected regions ("insularismo" as Pedraira calls it or / insular identity) Puerto Rican culture has a rich history of myths and folklore that is influenced by it's history of colonization. From Vejigantes to Chupacabras, these characters were/are invaders of the island/culture. Today, the invaders could very well be the "aliens" invading the island. Almost all puerto rican inslanders have some sort of story about a flying object they have witnessed or a tale of how the chupacabra has affected them.

I was also thinking of the word "alien". The word ranges from foreign to extraterrestrial. For many latinos the word refers to a discourse related to denigration, which may imply to be of non-american status.

Back to Paris: I have also been a bit obsessed with reading about the disappearance of flight AF 447 over the atlantic. Maybe it's because it affected a lot of Parisians and I see images in every newspaper stand, or perhaps it's my old obsession with flight/planes/maps/migration. Either-way, I was walking down the street the other day by the Madelaine and felt pretty broken up upon seeing the families of the victims being escorted to Notre Dame for the memorial service by police. Not to be insensitive in any way, but the whole mystery behind the disappearance; no one quite knowing what really happened, etc. makes me think of the 80's movie Millenium, about the disappearance of a plane, space ships, abduction, time travel, etc.

I rewatched the trailer of the movie the other day (Trailer) and gathered several connections to the cartoon I watched earlier this week. For instance, one thing that stood out right away was the flight attendants get-up: red suits and hats.

Coincidence? probably...but visually similar to this cartoon's bright red suit...

On with more sanity:

Some of my conceptual goals for this project are: (1) I hope to highlight the significance of the metaphor of travel, perhaps the metaphor of time travel and its effect on identity (2) to rethink some of the identifying traits of "insularismo" as described by Antonio Pedreira in his book (3) to examine a cognitive approach to narrative video and animation.

Oh yea, I've also had one of my colleague's body of work below on my mind as well: Mike Sonnichsen. I keep thinking of these.

If you have any suggestions, things I should be looking at, reading, watching, etc, feel free to post.

"Make, Shift, Home" August 29 - October 11, 2008

2008-10-21T08:31:00.001-07:00

Safety Architecture October 15-November 15, 2008

2008-10-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

Residency @ El Status Studio, San Juan P.R. May 4th-18th, 2008

2008-05-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

Residency @ El Studio Status: Mario Marzan (Puerto Rico) and Izel Vargas (South Texas) are currently enjoying a two week residency @ El Status Studio in Puerta de Tierra, San Juan. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professors/educators/artists are documenting their stay and work by streaming fotos directly from an iPhone to Flickr.

http://flickr.com/photos/marzan

Flanders Raleigh / "Dive and Reappear"

2008-01-04T11:41:00.000-08:00

Feb. 1st - 28th

Opening Reception, Feb 1st, 6-9pm

18 seaboard, Raleigh, NC

Rebus Works / "Transient Structures"

2007-12-19T08:51:00.001-08:00

October 5th - November 24th

Welcome

2007-12-19T00:35:00.001-08:00

Hello and welcome to my blog. It will be under construction for the first month or so as I get back into things, updating my website and things around the studio, so check back. I will use this blog to post exhibition information and other studio or art related info not available on my website. I will have work in a couple of exhibitions coming up in 2008 so far: dive and reappear (solo) at flanders art gallery in raleigh, nc / "forcefield and weather patterns" (two person show with painter mark brown) and "safety architecture" at Muhlenberg College in PA. Thanks for stopping by. - mm