Both Hubbard and Esquivias are video artists featured with solo exhibitions this year as part of the museum’s ongoing Hammer Projects series. This series of exhibitions focuses primarily on the work of emerging artists, providing international and local artists a laboratory-like environment to create new work, or to present existing work in a new context. Thus far, it is one of the best venues I’ve found in Los Angeles to discover work by emerging artists that is both challenging and satisfying.

During a February visit, I encountered the video work of Venezuelan-born artist Patricia Esquivias. Multiple screens featured videos playing simultaneously in the dark gallery; I gravitated towards one where the frame was largely dominated by a laptop screen. Two hands, which would prove to be those of the artist, moved around the keyboard and screen while she scrolled through and discussed a collection of images. A childlike lilt and playful quality was pervasive in her narration. From one video, I recall street view images of an apartment building and her observations regarding the objects presented in their windows. In another, I remember the view out the window of a plane. Ultimately, the imagery and the narrative proved secondary; instead I was captivated by her mode of presentation. The presence of her hands in the frame, the presentation of a flow of images within an image.

Patricia Esquivias, Of a short stay (video still), 2010, 2011

Reading more about the artist, I learned that Patricia Esquivias has been consistently on the move throughout her life. Born in Venezuela in 1979 and raised in Madrid, she then attended school in London and San Francisco (receiving her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2007) and has been awarded residencies in Skowhegan, Maine; Brussels; and Stuttgart, Germany. She has also lived in both New York and Guadalajara, Mexico, and currently resides back in Madrid. These places have become the inspiration for and locations of many of her works; her videos are records of the places she has been and the stories she has collected through her travels.

The resulting work interweaves images, history, and personal anecdotes. With the camera trained on the artist’s laptop, wall, or desk, the viewer sees only her hands scrolling through digital images, playing videos, and inserting pictures before the lens while her voice narrates these vignettes. The narration is meant to feel improvised and casual, although there is significant intention and planning behind Esquivias’ work. In her recent series, Of a short stay (2010–11), the videos focus on her experiences at various artist residencies around the world. Presenting home videos recorded in various cities from her travels, which remain unnamed, Esquivias reflects on incidents that occurred during her visits and foreign customs while connecting them to her own experiences.

The idiosyncratic connections in her videos proved somewhat difficult to follow, the threads fleeting and images distracting when faced with a number of videos at once. But as I watched the different videos and listened to segments of her narration, I felt this was part of the intent. I began to make my own connections to and stories about the flow of places and images, enjoying the inviting familiarity of the artist’s voice and the almost comedic appearance of her hands as she invited us into her own process.

Returning to the Hammer a month later, I happened upon the work of New York-based video artist Alex Hubbard. His first solo museum exhibition, the show marked the debut of a new video piece presented alongside some of his previous work. Both screens featured fantastically messy yet beautifully structured videos incorporating bold colors, performative gestures, and evolving compositions. Using everything from active power tools to towering cups of coffee, from moving dollies to paint-doused bones, the artist skillfully played with the frame and multi-directional layers as a means of exploring composition and expanding depth. Introducing new elements throughout each piece, these actions would sometimes take the form of the artist or just his hands repeatedly entering the frame.

Watching Hubbard’s videos, I felt as though I was attending a party of destruction unfolding at the studio, revealing an artist in the throes of pitching things together and just trying to make something work. The feeling was spontaneous and haphazard, yet its construction was quite the opposite. It was composed chaos, a strange marriage of objects and actions coming alive in unexpectedly harmonious ways. I learned that the artist is also a painter, which makes sense when considering the striking elements of color and composition in his work. Born in Oregon in 1975, Hubbard received his BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and also participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

Alex Hubbard, The Border, The Ship (video still), 2011

It has been said that Alex Hubbard’s adventurous and increasingly complex videos “challenge notions of duration and question the difference between looking and watching.” This is a striking statement, one that drives at my core interest in the work of both Hubbard and Esquivias. The inherent nature of video as a moving image challenges notions of looking versus watching. In this case, it is more than that. The performative gestures incorporated into the work of both artists demonstrate the existence of a work in progress; we are watching them unfold. We are listening to and watching Patricia Esquivias literally sort through her travels. We are watching Alex Hubbard physically introduce seeming disparate elements in the pursuit of harmony within frenzy. We are watching them work through and make sense of their materials. For me, the physical presence of the artist’s hand(s) in both exhibitions is further evidence of their desire to focus on process as the heart of the work.

I am of the same generation as both Alex Hubbard and Patricia Esquivias, one which saw the introduction and rise of the personal computer, the beginning growth of the video game era, cable television, and the Internet. Reflecting upon the roots of both artists in relation to the continuing explosion of digital media also provides an interesting framework in which to consider their work. Patricia Esquivias’ deceptively casual videos reveal a wry commentary on our increasingly mobile society, one in which we are engulfed by imagery and digital media sources. Laptop computers have become our trusted traveling companions, the portals by which we sort through and process our world. In the case of Alex Hubbard, his work skillfully manipulates the limits of digital video while overwhelming the viewer with a barrage of sounds, objects and colors. In both cases, I perceive an attempt to introduce or at least reinforce a sense of humor, humanity and fragility in this digital age. In revealing their hand in the work, in revealing their process, they remind us that beneath the slick exterior, we continue learning how to negotiate these rapidly changing times and tools together.

Hammer Projects: Alex Hubbard is on display through May 20, 2012.

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Created by filmmaker and photographer Sharon Lockhart, the film is comprised of two stationary, 49-minute, middle-distance shots in which a woman digs for clams on the coast of Maine.  The title refers to the rare occurrence of low tide twice in daylight hours, once at dawn and again at dusk.  The screening was held at the Hollywood Theater in Portland this week as part of Cinema Project’s Textural Spaces series, a yearlong look at architectural and spatial experience within the cinematic context.

“Film is a function of the mechanical time you mention, and I think part of its appeal, even its existence, is tied to the way it reflects and operates within the regimented time of the industrial workday.  My methodology in filmmaking is to unravel the expected trajectory of time.  People are used to experiencing time as money, as labor.  They don’t slow down and contemplate the everyday.  I’m interested in creating that opportunity for contemplation.”  -Sharon Lockhart (from an interview with Michael Ned Holte)

Settling into the first shot of Double Tide, we hear and then see a woman walk onto the beach at dawn, pulling a small dingy behind her.  She pauses to take a drink of water, and then sets to work.  This work is comprised of a simple set of repetitive actions: sliding a smaller basket along the sand as she trudges through the muck, repeatedly burying her arms in search of clams.  A heavy fog largely shrouds the coastline behind the woman as she gathers.  Slowly, it emerges as she works her way back and forth across the frame.  It is largely quiet; with the exception of the strange sucking sound made each time she plucks a clam from the muck.

With Lockhart’s work, my encounters as a viewer have engendered the sense of both a challenge and an unexpected reward.  Her films explore the boundary between photography and cinema, often resulting in quiet, composed meditations on work, time and light.  They are deceptively straightforward, using a static camera and prolonged shots of largely unchanging actions.  Yet, there is always something more.  Watching Double Tide, I felt the obligation to look carefully, without knowing exactly what I was looking for.  I waited for something to happen, though I knew that the film was structured to focus on this singular scene and repetitive action.  Yet, I still watched and waited.  And then, slowly, my gaze relaxed and I was able to freely drift about the frame.  As my mind wandered, I felt my own sense of linear time and thought begin to unravel.

Double Tide (16mm transferred to HD, 99 min), 2009

In the second half of the film, the woman returns to the same scene at dusk and her process starts all over again.  As does ours.  The structure of the shot is the same, but the palette of color, light and sound has changed, and we are given a new set of elements to settle into.  Eventually, repeatedly, my attention returned to the slow and steady path of the clammer at both dusk and dawn.  It is her steady movements that serve as the film’s powerful baseline.  They demonstrate a striking humility and honesty, serving as a testament to something much greater than just this simple act.  I interpreted this as a testament to the core elements of the human journey – toil and struggle, foward movement that sometimes goes sideways, messy yet enduring.

Lockhart’s work challenges viewers to figure out for themselves what they are looking at, and in the end, the perception is often something very different than originally expected or intended.  There is a deep sense of honesty and authenticity in her pursuits; it’s apparent that she is also intimately involved with this act of looking (shown by physical duration of the pieces themselves as well as the time she invests in her projects).  As viewers, she invites us to slow down and contemplate with her.  Even if our gaze is not as steady, the willingness to try reveals the gift of a layered and reflective experience.

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Alfredo Jaar, Skogall Kunsthall, 2000

Jaar is mostly known as an installation artist, often addressing socio-political and human rights issues.  During this lecture, he focused on an array of public interventions facilitated around the globe: Finland, Chile, New York City, Sweden, Germany, the Mexico-USA border, and Montreal.  Jaar strategically employs the use of theatricality in these projects, whether orchestrating the public viewing of a burning museum constructed entirely of paper or momentarily blinding viewers in order to imprint their minds with a striking afterimage effect.  He intermingles information and spectacle, often incorporating text to ensure clarity while creating dramatic effects and/or spaces to overwhelm.

Seeing the wide range of aesthetic strategies used in his projects, I continued thinking about those first three words.  I considered how difficult it must be to maintain clarity of vision when creating work inspired by a wide spectrum of places and issues.  When asked about his selection process, Jaar explained that he considers 12-15 open commissions from cities around the world each year.  Of these offers, he chooses one.  Once an agreement is made, the artist spends 2-6 years investigating the physical and social landscape of the location, culminating in a project that reveals “the essence of a place.”

The resulting works have created an impressive network of symbolic gestures, but are these really public interventions?  I considered how Jaar’s work fits into the history of interventionist art.  In the 1960′s, groups such as Situationist International and the Art Workers’ Coalition worked to mobilize avant-garde art as a political tool to address social tools and bring about social transformation.  Since then, the term “intervention” has been increasingly used by politically engaged artists to describe their interdisciplinary approaches, which nearly always take place outside the realm of museums, galleries and studios.

In the art world of today, I suppose it is fair to call Jaar’s projects public interventions.  Yet, what I appreciate most about Jaar’s approach is a genuine and refined effort to convey his individual experience as a global witness.  In covering so much terrain, he cannot dedicate himself entirely to the social transformation of any one place or issue.  But I don’t think that is his role.  Instead, he has the burden and privilege of seeing the news of the world firsthand, then distilling and presenting his experiences to a critical art world largely removed from such realities.

Alfredo Jaar, The Geometry of Conscience (at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago de Chile), 2010

It was a fitting coincidence that Alfredo Jaar’s lecture took place in the midst of the Occupy Portland movement.  When asked about the recent Occupy movements springing up around the US, Jaar described these as “an act of desperation by those who have given up on politics.”  He cited their lack of a specific agenda as their greatest strength, and their collective frustration as a sign of the times.  This link provided an interesting parallel to Jaar’s work and different models of how art can be engaged in politics.  While I do not consider the public intervention of a protest to fall in the same category, their roots are the same.  As Jaar states, “I can’t force people to see, but I can provide conditions for people to slow down so that the work can engage them in a dialogue.”

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In September, I packed up the Bubble and headed back west.  I spent part of the month as an artist-in-residence at El Nido Cabins in Tieton, Washington.  These cabins are part of the Mighty Tieton project, which is something akin to an artists’ enclave being developed in tandem with the needs of a struggling orchard town in Central Washington.  During my time there, my attention focused largely on a wild tract of land located near the cabins which I systematically explored and photographed on a daily basis.  A special thank you to Lori Talcott and Robert Kolden for creating the access point to this unique space.

I also fell in love with the tiny town of Tieton, its center focused around a communal park/green space as I experienced in many towns in Central and South America.  This center, known as el zocalo, serves as the hub and gathering place — in this case, the businesses bordering the square in Tieton included a carniceria (meat market), an old-school diner, a fine art printing press, a thrift shop and a killer Mexican bakery.  Great range.

I am currently living and working in Portland, Oregon.  Some of my recent efforts have been focused on reviewing shows and interviewing artists as a contributor for a new online art journal (coming soon!).  Until its launch, I’ll keep posting my articles here.  Stay tuned for an article on Alfredo Jaar’s November lecture at Blue Sky Gallery.

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In February, I was a participating artist in Women!, an aptly named event at the Crofoot Ballroom.  Now in its second year, this multi-faceted celebration featured a variety of female musicians, comedians and visual artists.  Shortly after midnight, a balloon drop at the main stage contained the pieces I’d created inside.

Later that month, I geared up with a group of Cranbrook students, faculty and alumni for the first annual One x One event in midtown Detroit.  Organized by our Artist-in-Residence from Metals, Iris Eichenberg, this event was an art exhibit and bazaar tied up in one.  Held at an old Cadillac dealership just north of Wayne State University, the spectrum of work involved was expansive.  The concept was to create multiples of one object, displaying one at a time and speaking about the ideas behind it as visitors rolled through (Detroit News article on One x One Event).

My concept was Found Objects of Mythical Proportions, based upon a series of keys I photographed this winter. The prints were sold with custom mythologies based upon an interview with each buyer.  These myths served as the link between my release of the object (the chosen key from my past) and its insertion into another’s history.  I asked each buyer to provide the following: 1/Time, 2/Location, 3/Any Piece of Information.  Whether rooted in fact or entirely fictitious, their answers provided the foundation of the resulting mythologies.  One was set in New York City in 1980, another in a bathroom at midnight, and there were multiple request for stories from the D…

Since then, I’ve been largely focused on projects here at Cranbrook and sorting out the details of my Thesis project. This has involved a good amount of time working in Detroit and Hamtramck.  Motor City is not an easy place for pedestrians, which made the experience of walking, photographing and gathering materials in these spaces all the more interesting and at times, surreal.  A number of images from this series will be featuring in our upcoming Thesis Exhibition, which opens on April 16th.  The prints will be accompanied by a run of 6,000 newspapers I’ve designed; viewers will be encouraged to take copies.  (Note: Should you be looking for a newsprint printer, check out Park Press.  Ask for Bob.)

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Also, wanted to suggest a beautiful book that Liz Cohen recommended to me recently. It’s by the photographer Robert Frank, entitled Thank You. This is the description he provides: “I have saved these cards over many years. I was touched how many people wanted to tell me their appreciation of what I was doing without asking anything in return. This small book is my way of saying Thank You.” Simple, powerful gestures.

The Dakotas, 2010

Merry Christmas and much love from snowy Michigan.

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Gallery 40 is the brainchild of Todd Jannausch — a 40 sq. ft. mobile art “gallery” that has been promoting the work of artists at various Seattle art    walks and events throughout the summer.  His installation is designed to  examine the idea of what it means to be a gallery, promoting greater  accessibility and communication about the creative process.

For my show, we will be partnering with PrintZero Studios in Georgetown on Friday 8/27 from 6-10 for the final evening of their Print Exchange.  Gallery 40 will be set up outside the studios, where I will be showing some new color work, accompanied by two sculptural installations.

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