Tim Miller, at Yerba Buena all weekend

I had to dress up to see Tim Miller at Yerba Buena tonight, because my friends are so fashionable. Like, Page McBee and Michael Braithwaite are the cutest couple ever, both looking like andro Blythe doll with cooler haircuts and more plaid. Page is a writer working on a collection of poetic essays about the body and until recently was stirring shit up as a Bitch Magazine blogger, posting  a controversial piece about trans women that really should not have been controversial at all except for pesky 2nd wave feminism rearing its tranemy (that would be Enemy of Transpeople) head. Page is over the drama but check out the excellent, smart writing at http://bitchmagazine.org/post/transwomen-subvert-religious-imagery-be-still-my-heart.

Calender by The LGBT Collective of Madrid, sourced from Bitchmagazine.org

Michael is a brainiac and a painter whose current day job is organizing events at the San Francisco Zen Center. Their big January shebang is going to be Nick Flynn, a straight man who writes memoir, thereby making it safer for everybody else. He wrote the best titled book ever, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, and will be traveling around reading from his new book, which is not out yet but stealthy Michael had a advance copy in her backpack! I would have stolen it but I don’t want the karma, man. Also present was Ben McCoy, the performance artist who just killed the crowd at the Porchlight Storytelling Series earlier this week with a story about actually being a MCCOY - you know, the Hatfields and McCoys. Ben talked about the feud, in which ‘bitches got killed” and brought it home at the end with tales of her own lunatic yet righteous temper, beginning with climbing onto a moving school bus to terrorize the child that called her a witch (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and ending with  more mature Ben getting a gang of teenagers who threw a chicken wing in her hair on the subway arrested! Take that, youth! You do not throw chicken wings in a girl’s hairdo! Ben is one of my most favorite performance artists ever. I miss getting to watch Ben perform every night like I did on Sister Spit, her amazing piece where she opens acting like she’s going to lip-synch Lady Gaga, shames the audience for falling for it, then proceeds to lip synch a spoken word piece about drag queen jewelry theives and how crappy the world is to transladies.

Ben McCoy recovers after bringing it hard at Sister Spit's show at The Lab, lifted from Mission Local

And finally there is Jerry Lee Manhattan, wiped out after doing the lighting for the Chanel party on Maiden Lane last night. Jerry Lee is a lighting designer and has done tech for The Sex Workers Art Show Tour, and curates music for the gigantic Homo-A-Go-Go queer arts festival that just moved to San Francisco this summer after a childhood spent in Olympia, Washington. Jerry Lee has the best eyeglasses. This is why I had to have an outfit to attend the Tim Miller show tonight, not to mention it is always nice to pay your respects to a performer by coming to their show in hot pink sequins with a bow in your hair.

Tim Miller started doing solo shows about being queer in the 80s, and his work at this point contains the history of all the work that has already happened, and I love the accumulation of real, lived life that builds throughout a lifetime of work created by artists who use personal narrative and the raw material of their own experience as the inspiration, the content and the delivery. Tim’s work is big - it takes on the enormity of the individual and multiplies it by taking on that individual’s place and time, making the circumstances, indivisible from the artist characters in the work as well. Lay of the Land, making it’s San Francisco debut this weekend is about Tim – Tim as a child choking on steak while his father is trying to get him to go to the ‘gender re-education camp’ that is a baseball game. It’s about Tim the queer, choking in the throat of America, and it’s about Tim’s dad, who saved him with a heimlich maneuver but not before preparing to give him a tracheotomy, wielding a knife in a moment that triggers recalls of Abraham about to slay his youngest son, prompting a psychedelic flash of all the myths in which the youngest, fairest, queerest get killed, bringing in

Tim Miller considers setting some flags on fire in Lay of the Land

images from The Brady Bunch and an obscure and totally creepy-amazing song by The Buoys called, creepily-amazingly, Timothy, about some coal miners trapped underground who decide to kill and eat the youngest, fairest, queerest miner, Timothy. It’s not a far jump from this to hate crimes and Tim has us all bear witness to some of the most recent atrocities – the decapitation of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado; the Ecuadorean brothers read as gay on the streets of Brooklyn and beaten until one is dead and the other in a coma. Indeed, in Lay of the Land, anti-queer American culture is revealed to be one long hate crime, taking shape in the form of ballot measures like the recent Proposition 8 catastrophe, the passing of which prompts Tim to pull a lube-sized bottle of lighter fluid from his cargo shorts and consider setting the California flag on fire there on stage at Yerba Buena. But Tim has long felt the bear on the California State flag to be his spirit animal, and we are treated to tales of wild bear encounters and fantasies of bears text-messaging, and here is another thing I love about Tim Miller’s performance and about personal narrative based-work in general: the ability to follow a tangent through all its twists and loops, to trust the logic of it, to trust in the performer, really, that there is a pattern at play, only we can’t see it, we’re too deeply embedded in it, but we’re being carried through it by the artists’ wild vision and, as the whole work is ultimately about him, the artist, we always end up right where we’re supposed to be. I love the surprise and mystery of a tangent and Tim Miller’s work is full of them, witty and clever and high-energy, just like him, running around he stage like a kinetic maniac. He opens the whole show pretending to look for his Blackberry, which he claimed to have lost while talking to Annie Sprinkle, who is actually sitting in the audience, looking like a queen in feathers and velvet. The performer goes on to recount the many things he’s lost, such as his virginity in the Haight, and then realized he’s lost his right to marry (”Isn’t that careless of me!”) So much of the show is about queer marriage, an issue super close to the artist as his long-term boyfriend, the writer Alistair McCartney, is Australian and the couple live in fear of his visa being denied and having to split the country. And, as a queer who super supports gay marriage but it often frolicking amidst queers who poo-poo it as not radical enough for their care, it felt important to be presented with one of the real-life consequences of queers not being able to legally marry. I mean, I would firstly for sure sign on to the complete smashing of the state, but barring THAT happening any time soon, why not let everyone get married so there can be more big frivolous love parties? I personally would like to be able to abuse the privilege a la Elizabeth Taylor and countless trashy straight people and get married lots and lots of times! Plus doesn’t it just make you mad that a bunch of ignorant hicks in the sticks get to vote on whether or not you have the right to assimilate? It just steams me! Anyway, these are the sorts of things in my mind this evening after seeing Lay of the Land. It’s sort of amazing that Tim Miller is disappointed in the state and the nation for not supporting queers – I totally expect them not to, and it makes me wonder how and when that happened and if it’s not a little sad. Tim Miller is a real activist who has put his body on the line countless times during the AIDs crisis and during all the many fights queers are forced into to defend ourselves. He’s been arrested I think he said 11 times (once outside the Moscone Center) and sued the United States Government to get his NEA Grant back after it was vetoed by evil NEA chair John Frohnmayer. The NEA swiped Tim’s grant along with Karen Finley, Holly Hughes and John Fleck; thanks to judge Wallace Tashima calling bullshit on decency standards, the grants were reinstated but it took years. Tim talks a bit about the fight in Lay of the Land, crediting Tashima growing up in an American concentration camp for his sage views on mob rule. Tim Miller shows Lay of the Land Saturday 11/21 at Yerba Buena, and Sunday afternoon at 3 there is a performance featuring the maestro with the group of performers he’s been teaching and working with all week.  http://www.timmillerperformer.com/

George Schneeman, Chiusure, egg tempura on wood, 2006

Tim Davis, Magnolia, photograph, 2005

Collection of Bill Berkson & Constance Lewallen

L to R: Rev. Wanika Stevens, Destiny Muhammad, Archbishop Franzo W. King and artist Mark Dukes

I Just returned from Jazz harpist Destiny Muhammad’s Birthday Celebration at the Malonga Casquelord Center for the Arts in Oakland. Tonight Destiny hosted a group of musicians ranging from an extremely impressive youth jazz ensemble (youngest member 10 years old.) to a string trio featuring Vincent Tolliver and Tarika Lewis to internationally recognized artists such as Dwayne Wiggins of Toni! Tony! Tone!

Destiny Muhammad is a harpist in the tradition of Jazz innovators such as Dorothy Ashby and of course the legendary Alice Coltrane. Both John and Alice Coltrane were renown for music that was palpably buoyed along by their spiritual convictions but unburdened by religious dogma. In other words if you knew nothing of their religious perspectives you were likely to be moved anyway. Destiny’s music has this affect as well and she brings the extra-added skills of a trained songstress to her mix of gospel inflected sacred jazz. So it was no surprise when Bishop Franzo Wayne King of San Francisco’s Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church appeared at the climax of this celebration of Oakland’s community treasure. Bishop Franzo King delivered a short sermon on the musical “trinity” of rhythm, melody and harmony with the sounds of Coltrane’s classic “A Love Supreme” presenting his words like a gift to the audience turned congregation.

After the concert the artist Mark Dukes presented a reproduction of one of the Coltrane church’s painted icons to Destiny. Dukes’ work is unique in that he brings the Byzantine icon painting tradition into the 21st century by immortalizing revered modern figures such as John Coltrane. The icons of John Coltrane at the Saint John Coltrane Church in the Fillmore district are particularly striking and beautiful. Dukes is also a deacon at the church.

Icon painting of Saint John Coltrane by Mark Dukes

Seeing Destiny beaming with a glowing smile while holding the Coltrane icon was so special that I had to share it with the SF MOMA Open Space audience.

Harpist Destiny Muhammad with Mark Dukes' Coltrane Icon

Githinji in his West Oakland Studio Photo by Deterville

I can recall a panel discussion that I attended in New York where artist/cinematographer/film theorist Arthur Jafa discussed how African artists use the power of objects that have been used and contain what the Yoruba of Nigeria call “ashe” (inherent life force) that is evidenced by the patina of utilitarian objects. Githiji’s work accesses this ashe because he uses the slats, wood and debris that comes from buildings and old houses in the west Oakland neighborhood that is home to his studio. The house that is home to his studio was dubbed “Cornelia Belle’s Black Bottom Gallery” a few years ago. It was named after the old black woman that lived in the house for many years. I was part of the five person collective that showed work there about a year ago and I’ve watched it transform into different types of cultural spaces ranging from café to gallery and now studio.

Here are a just a few images of Githinji Wambire’s studio. Look for an interview with Githinji in my next series of posts.

Two small Africa painting/sculptures with one drawing

Beads for African spirits (elekes)

Githinji Sometimes paints by candle light.

Detail of an Africa painting dedicated to Ancestors

This piece shows the faces and names of Pan African freedom fighters such as Jomo Kenyatta and Dedan Kimathi amongst others.

Studio wall working Drawings

Githinji Wambire

I trust Eileen Myles’ writing more than anyone’s. She’s just so honest, she’s not afraid to make a goon of herself so she is utterly unafraid to call bullshit on any number of things, to recount moments painful or triumphant. She has a great piece about coming up against menopause and her car starts fritzing out like it too is having hot flashes and they’re in it together. She pitched it to all these magazine and no one wanted it but thank god she wrote it anyway, she just trusted it would find a home and it did, this collection I’m telling you about. Other pieces have been published, like the narrative about flossing her teeth, it’s about class, that one, because teeth are absolutely a class thing. Whether or not you have them, the shape they’re in, etc. You know, how dreams of losing your teeth are supposedly about money, they totally are, right, and this is really Eileen’s terrain. One of many of her terrains. She wrote about sleeping in a cardboard box designed for homeless people, that was in Nest, that great interiors magazine that went under, RIP. She writes a bunch about the filmmaker Sadie Benning, there are a ton of art pieces in the collection, though my favorite are the section titled Talks. I love listening to Eileen talk, period, just ruminate on anything and then when they get shaped into deliberate essays like these, part essay part dharma talk part philosophy part wandering total poetry – amazing. Eileen is so cool, the band Japanther just had her come into the studio and record one of her poems so they can wrap their sound all around it. Basically, I think you should buy this book immediately. You’ll feel smarter by the end of it, smarter and like a better person actually, like your heart got opened up alongside your mind. Yeah.

http://www.eileenmyles.com/

Let’s focus on just one of those words right now: FREE.

I’ve been sick for almost four days, holed up and trying to take advantage of the fact that a lot of TV shows are available online via websites like Hulu, etc. So far I’ve watched the first few episodes of PBS’ NOVA series “Becoming Human,” and marveled at the sort of stiff animation of our ancestors (available streaming for free on the PBS site), as well as several installments of the docu-drama “Secrets of the Dead” (one, on the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918 -was not the most enlivening to view while being ill, I might add). Also some episodes of Season 6 of Project Runway on Lifetime.com, my shameful pop culture vice (”Make it work!”). But I was supremely let down to find out PBS had just yanked their Michael Pollan epic “Botany of Desire,” from the free section and had just missed viewing it by a day.

So in the midst of this FREE-for-all I wanted to alert everyone that for a limited time every episode of Art21 (”Art in the Twenty-First Century”) documentary series on contemporary art is available to view for free. The new season has some great episodes with William Kentridge, Cao Fei, Paul McCarthy, and more. Catch it now! It’s your tax dollars at work! OK, well I guess it’s really not free, is it. Arrrrr.

Also, a while back I discovered an amazing Canadian documentary called “RIP: A Remix Manifesto,” which explores issues of copyright and media appropriation in our late-capitalist culture. With interviews with copyright lawyer Lawrence Lessig, musician and Girl Talk frontman Greg Gillis, and a most wonderful section on how Brazil has taken on issues of breaking copyright (in this case pharmaceutical) for the sake of medical equity for its people, this is a wonderful documentary. All that and cameo appearances by Gilberto Gil? OMG. The cool thing is that you can purchase it for download on a pay-what-you-will model, a pioneering example along the likes of Radiohead and others who are trying to navigate the new world of digital downloads and cutting out the middleman distributor. I highly recommend checking this out — it’s fresh, funny, political, and will energize your thoughts about creative production in a media-saturated world. Also, despite the fact that free is fun, I will gladly pay to support an artist’s project directly.

Now back to the big question: watching Battlestar Gallactica Classic or Project Runway? Or maybe flipping through the latest US magazine and checking in on that affair Fergie’s husband may have had. Being sick certainly has its charms…

The rough idea for the Anecdote Archive materialized during a conversation with Sam Gould. As we stuffed ourselves with Dim Sum in a strip mall outside of Portland, we exchanged stories of our recent travels. Word-of-mouth we agreed was an important, if not the primary, means of distributing non-object-oriented projects and practices. As we ordered one last plate of pork dumplings we discussed legendary figures like Alan Lomax and the Folkways Archive and more recent projects like StoryCorps. Over the next three days we developed the possibility of building a video archive; informally recording word-of-mouth as recalled by various friends and artists in the year ahead.

The release of Issue No. 1, the first 12 videos, was accompanied by a short excerpt of a text called Talk Talk written by Magnus Bärtås for Geist Magazine (and recommended by Matthew Rana):

“The fact that works of art to a large extent are tales, points to the folkloristic aspect of the artworld. In other words, the art world is a place for transmissions: someone has seen or heard of someone who has done something. The story is told and retold. As in any other oral culture there are misunderstandings, adjunctions, displacements and falsifications. The dependence on ‘what is on every lip’ creates a situation where works that are difficult to talk about run the risk of being neglected and ‘disappearing’. Sometimes an art practice escapes omission through stories about the artist as a person. Whatever one may think of this oral circulation of art — through formal seminars, think tanks, staged conversations, informal discussions, and not least through chatting at bars and cafés — it should be recognized as a place for art distribution equally important as the exhibition space and printed matter.”

Issue No. 2 concluded last week with an anecdote by Ted Purves, chair of the MFA program at CCA and editor of What We Want is Free. This issue includes the first self-reflexive moment in the archive; a project by Josh Greene is recounted by Brenda Tucker and later Greene gives an anecdote. It also includes the first guest camera-operator; artist Catherine Ross follows Sara Magenheimer’s lovely gesticulations. To accompany the second issue I’ve culled images from the web, each corresponding to one of the anecdotes, as an alternate index…

Dirt princess seeks unicorn for woodland frolic, I’ll put some shine on that horn…..Desperately seeking Sugar! Hi Sugar, I miss you lady. If yr around and want some awkward conversation call me…..FTMS- Are you feeling the rush of the roids? Wish you could afford a hooker? Call me anytime. I’m into being a worn out mattress. I’ll do it for free. 24 hour service…..DON’T BUY IT! Did you know? Triclosan is an anti-germicide you can find in anything from toothpaste to dish soap, it’s actually a derivative of agent orange! Avoid!…..WANTED: Foreign Coins. Bring them to Adobe books and trade them for a book…..SLOT MACHINES + POOLS OF CHIFFON. Looking for a tender buffalo to bicycle around with. You think cute butts when you hear alley……Central Y troll seeking new haunts. Will remove dentures…..PARANORMAL CHAT LINE 24 HRS “THE VORTEX”…..Free tiny saw blades-Will mail anywheres. I found them on the street, they are for jewelry making or ? The company name is Rio Grande, they are spiral saw blades, size 3, made in Germany. I have heard they are pricey……FTM LOOKING FOR DATES. Wrestling, 420 and cats will be integral. Interested in getting this party started?….NEED TO TRANSGRESS REALITY? JOIN THE EPHEMERALISTS! THE WORLD WE ARE FORCED TO INHABIT IS A FRAUD!…Artist seeking big freezer or refrigerator to borrow to make massive soppy arrangements, I’ll return it clean.

Baitline is issued by Sy Wagon If you are in need please contact sywagon@gmail or write to BAITLINE!!! 70 Richland San Francisco CA. 94110

Photos for this post were taken by John Huston

The second installment of a semi-diaristic series of entries relating to travels and exhibitions in London and New York during October 2009. Read part 1 here

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Dear Open Space Diary (heretofore again lovingly referred to as “OSD”),

Gahhhhh! Well, I have utterly failed in my attempt at providing intrepid behind-the-scenes reporting from the front lines of the Frieze Art Fair in London, and for that I am woefully sorry. Yes, it came and went (October 14 – 18), and alas, I was not the journalistic gadfly that I thought I would be. I had visions of even opening up a Twitter account to report on-the-spot celebrity art sightings (look! it’s John Baldessari at the champagne counter! OMG, isn’t that Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Moss with Matthew Higgs at the Gagosian booth? Who knew art and celebrity were so intertwined?!?). Sigh. So many sad emoticon faces to follow up on this one…

BUT! All is not lost. And granted, this diary entry is technically postface, but I think I can relate based on recollection. OK, let’s do it before my brain gets too fuzzy and the mists of my present begin to impinge on the mists of my past…

Below are some general ruminations, a pictorial rundown, as well as a surprising amount of San Franciscan local celebrity sightings at the Fair. Who’s reprezentin’ the Bay? We are! Let’s go, London!

COPYSTAND Production Area, to the left of the Gallery Area. Artists Jim Ricks, Claudia Djabbari, Yason Banal, and Maria Taniguchi all hard at work

Selling out: Nothing over 500 Pounds!

In a nutshell, I presented a five-day long performative parasitic project for the Frieze Art Fair in London called “COPYSTAND: An Autonomous Manufacturing Zone.” I enlisted a team of 3-5 artists at a time to hand-make counterfeits of other artworks found within the Fair, which we then sold for incredibly discounted rates in our own gallery booth space. The production area was in full view to the public and showed the counterfeiting artists live, in action. We wound up knocking-off about forty different artworks ranging from Rirkrit Tiravanija to Philip Guston, a kind of crazy feat considering we were fabricating them under the harsh stage lights of the general public.

And yes, we SOLD OUT all of our knock-off artworks. Take THAT, recession!

But then again, how could anyone argue with the fact that nothing in the COPYSTAND gallery booth cost over 500 GBP (about 800 dollars), with the lowest being 10 GBP ($16)? Compared to the insanely priced Ugo Rondinone sculpture (which as they were setting it up we all thought was kind of hideous looking, but then again i guess they’re supposed to hideous, right? hmmm) we were looking mighty good, almost just more than the price of lunch for your average high-end Swiss art collector. And sell to Swiss collectors we did. And Hong Kong ones. And German ones. And British ones. And there were a few Americans in there as well. For god’s sake, who wouldn’t want a nice little Francis Alys painting for only $250???

Hawking artworks to the public. For some reason I thought it would be awesome to wear an all-white outfit.

OSD readers, to sum up my time at the Fair, it was grueling and exhilarating, all wrapped up into one bundle of amazing, productive chaos. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Dudes, trust me, I’m not complaining of the opportunity but the scale of it was totally unexpected and it took me a while to get my bearings on the whole thing. I was so stressed out I didn’t sleep for the first five days I was there, lying awake in my room at the Holiday Inn, dead exhausted but obsessing about all the things I had to do the next day and what I could be doing better.

By the fifth day of no sleep I remember floating on an eerie cloud of delirium at the Fair, almost having an out of body experience as I was talking into a television camera. And then the next day my mind and body did a kind of about-face and it was like I was running on pure adrenaline. I think it may have been similar to what people go through when they begin fasting: the beginning is totally all about hunger and pain and then all of a sudden it’s like –poof!– you’re just moving along it and through it and you don’t even feel it anymore. Wowwwwwwww. It was like that.

Remember that cheap perfume line called “Designer Imposters” that was really popular back in the 80s? Their slogans were like, “If you love Chanel #5, you’ll love Chantal #8,” or something like that. Basically, they were conscious of their secondary knock-off status but it didn’t matter, since by incorporating it into their taglines they wound up directly addressing the desire that came with it.

For most of my time at COPYSTAND I was a hawker, sitting at the gallery desk and talking up our products like a good gallerist should. I would even fill in a potential buyer about the wonderfulness of the original work we had remade (”Artschwager is amazing — his work is so seductive and all about a kind of translation of essence onto surface. He blows my mind“) and then adding a pitch about our remake (”And our version–just look at it. While the materials are different and we have only contact paper and coroboard at our disposal, I think our surface treatment is an ingenious, sensitive parallel to the original and speaks to a modern day attempt at achieving perfect form, a kind of everyman’s striving for perfection, if you will…). Blah blah blah. It was so fun to pull from my own art history chest of phrases, and the cool thing was that I really meant everything I said. Both works were good. And both works had a relationship that I could talk about in a lucid manner and make a case for. I was pitching for both teams, earnestly and seriously.

On the left: a remake of a Rirkrit Tiravanija work “The Days of This Society Is Numbered,” by Jim Ricks, only using papers from the Irish Times instead of the New York Times. Considering that he is generally known for ephemeral activities and dematerialized events, it was surprising to see so much “product” of his for sale at his “real” gallery booth.

During the first few days of the Fair word started leaking out to the other galleries that counterfeiting shenanigans were going on in my nick of the woods and they started sending out people to scope us out. Some gallerists identified themselves, and some didn’t. We had a bulletin board area by a color printer where we would print out a visual “hit list” of things we wanted to work on and it started to feel like it was a race to see what we could accomplish before the end of the event. We would walk into a gallery booth and either furtively or sometimes brazenly take digital snapshots of our chosen items, then upload them to our laptops to print out and use as source material for our remakes.

By the end of the Fair I felt like a predator, roaming the carpeted hallways hunting for a morsel that caught my attention and lending itself in some way to be creatively reworked in paper, cardboard and tape. And it was like I could feel the eyes on the back of my head as I circled, the gallerists’ thought-bubbles blurting out, “oh god, there’s that copygirl and her crew again. What now?”

Guest gallerina and Bay Arean Kuniko Vroman dropped by and wound up volunteering for several days. This lady handled sales inquiries, scheduled my press interviews, and was our go-to girl for running reconnaissance trips to the other galleries and securing valuable information for us. Thank you!

A Critical Rub: Absorption vs. Subversion

OSD readers, I have a paradox to present to you for scrutiny. You could say we sold out in more ways than one. To frame it in a different way: how does the context of a “counterfeiting” space change when sanctioned by the very event it purports to critique? In other words, as a commissioned Frieze Project, COPYSTAND, was funded by an arm of the Frieze Fair itself (albeit a nonprofit, independently curated one), and fell squarely within the confines of sanctioned, and perhaps neutralizing institutional critique.

I didn’t think there was anything particularly “daring” about the project except that it attempted to directly and unapologetically show off a cold logic of capitalism: that wherever you find a market of high-end goods that are economically out of reach of a general clientele, a parallel counterfeit or black market will arise. My view is that COPYSTAND is intrinsically complicit with this logic and the only subversive possibility in it is that it lays this process out in the open, for all to see.

Whether taking the form of grand architectural obstruction or finding new ways of protesting, authenticating or motivating our relationship to the objects we make, look at and buy, this year’s projects create aesthetic opportunity out of the uncertainty that has become the hallmark of our troubled times.

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A Photo Album of Memories that Light the Corners of my Mind:

Production on display: COPYSTAND artists and knock-offers Jim Ricks and Claudia Djabbari during the first day of the Fair

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Foreground: Maria Taniguchi working on a hand-manipulated photocopy version of a large Ugo Rondinone drawing.

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Yason Banal (center) gives direction to two Warholian actor/stand-ins for a video and drawing series.

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An onlooker looks vaguely suspicious of our attempts and proferments.

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Fairgoers perusing the wares. Every day our inventory would change and we’d have to switch up the space with new works to replace sold ones. By the end we had artworks lying on the floor and kind of propped up against each other because we were running out of space and time to hang everything properly. But I think the casual effect was oddly nice and had an almost bazaar-like feel to it.

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A David Shrigley remake, copied off of a digital snapshot taken in a Belgian gallery booth by Jim Ricks. Upon hearing that Shrigleys were being handmade, a crew from his gallery came by to titter amongst themselves and hover over Jim while he painted it. Not realizing who they were, he exclaimed to them “Can you believe they’re selling this for 4000 pounds (about $6800) over there?” “Yes,” one replied. “We’re the gallerists.” Ooops. Needless to say, a fun time was had by all, with no (or at least, very few) hard feelings all around.

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The COPSYTAND research and development area, consisting of a color printer that spat out reference images of what we would work on. These were culled from furtive snapshots taken while roaming the other gallery booths, spy-style.

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On the left: a remake of a Rirkrit Tiravanija work “The Days of This Society Is Numbered,” (original cost: 90,000 GBP, or about $150,000). Our version, by Jim Ricks (cost: 500 GBP or about $850), but using papers from the Irish Times instead of the New York Times. Considering that he is generally known for ephemeral activities and dematerialized events, it was surprising to see so much “product” of Tiravanija’s for sale at his gallery booth, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. In a Guardian UK article, Brown was quoted as having a “flat” response to our remakes and later went further to say it had “flatlined.”

He’s no fun, is he? Phooey.

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The giant “I” in the background is a Mark Wallinger remake by yours truly. Sadly, it was the only thing I actually physically made at the Fair. I had so many plans, too little time, and too much management to accomplish. Sigh. Also pictured: work by Bear Lake and Jim Ricks.

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Local art historian and luminary Jeff Kelley dropped by and loitered in the gallery as well! Here in front of an Ugo Rondinone remake (original courtesy of Barbara Gladstone) by Maria Taniguchi.

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Detail: mini sculptures by Claudia Djabbari. So modest, so cute! Made of cardboard, self hardening clay, and tissue, the one in the front is a remake of a marble large-scale sculpture.

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SF-based artist Ajit Chauhan with a little mini-sculpture gift we gave him. Jack Hanley Gallery sent him over to see us after hearing that we were remaking his sandpapered album covers. Ajit’s work was so popular that we sold out (incredibly quickly! a testament to ajit’s popularity!) of the two that we made, and there were requests for more but we needed to move on… Thanks for stopping by, Ajit!

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Randal Moore from Kukje gallery, surveying the mini sculptures being made by Claudia Djabbari that knock-off his artist, Gimhongsok. We wound up giving him one as a gift in the end. I know Randy from his days at John Berggruen Gallery here in SF, and it was a pleasure to see him in London, although slightly disconcerting after realizing we were entangled in a way. His sense of humor saved the day. I think he gave our version as a gift to the artist.

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Claudia Djabbari’s worktable with mini-sculptures in progress. On the second day of the Fair a big article featuring her re-makes came out in the papers and we used it as fodder for selling even more. Now that’s marketing!

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Djabbari’s mini Martin Creed paintings on cardboard. The entire set was 150 GBP (about $24)… a bargain! Other miniatures in her repertoire included Haim Stainbach, Martin Creed, Franz West, Jean Dubuffet, Tal R, Mike Bouchet, and more!

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The COPYSTAND version of a Jim Lambie wall work: colored paper, folded. By Jim Ricks.

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A second David Shrigley drawing and a Richard Artschwager sculpture made of plastic coroboard and packing tape by Jim Ricks. On the floor in front is our version of a sculpture of socks parodying another set of socks being sold by another booth for 25,000 GBP ($40,000). Our re-make: a whopping 500 GBP ($800)– rather expensive for us. This piece only lasted for a few hours until Claudia’s feet got cold and she had to put them back on again.

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The Philip Guston painting all wrapped and ready to go! Sold to Guardian UK art writer Charlotte Higgins, a lovely lady all around.

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On the fifth and last day of the Fair, we had a giant inventory blowout sale. I hastily made painted signs that morning and placed them all across the Production Area, pointing to the Gallery Area. Everything was slashed to half off (!) and as the afternoon progressed, prices were cut even further. I was selling things up until the last ten minutes of the Fair, but everything went out the door, amazingly. The funny thing was that someone asked if the signage I made was part of a Michael Landy installation (Landy being known for his “Breakdown” project and works dealing with liquidation sales signage). I didn’t realize that I had accidentally knocked-off someone. Ha. How appropriate!

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The sign says it all. Last things available: “work” by Dash Snow and Douglas Gordon on the walls above the desk.

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The COPYSTAND list of shame….

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An hour after the Fair doors closed on the last day, we had completely disassembled everything, packing up supplies and collapsing the Production and Gallery Space. It felt sort of melancholy, actually, like a burst of energy and delirious exuberance had been expended during the week, only to completely close up shop forever… COPYSTAND was fleeting and will not be repeated, like a pop-up temporary shop that only existed for the context of the wild and woolly situation that was Frieze Fair 2009. Out with a bang… COPSYTAND has left the building.

Seen but not pictured: SF collector Robert Shimshak, ever sweet-smiling and dapper during the ultra-VIP preview reception; artist Jim Goldberg squeezed in a visit before his own solo London gallery opening and left me a cocktail at my booth during the (normal) VIP event; artist Jina Valentine, taking a break from her Paris residency to swing by; writer and London School of Economics freshly-enrolled MA candidate Hanif O’Neil; ex-SF artists Anna Maltz and Adam Rompel; Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff; San Francisco Art Institute curator Hou Hanru making the rounds on a buying spree for the Tate (!); Jack Hanley of aforementioned gallery; and then there was that man-about-town and ex-CCA Wattis Gallery curator and current White Columns New York director Matthew Higgs, who walked by me many times and who I saw at numerous fancy-schmancy Cartier and Deutsche Bank afterparties but for some reason didn’t say hi (what is UP with that, man? No Bay Area solidarity?). But seriously, it was so fab to see friendly faces in the middle of the hubbub

Special thanks to all participating COPYSTAND artists: Jim Ricks, Claudia Djabbari, Bear Lake, Maria Taniguchi, and Yason Banal. With special guest artist Otto von Busch, special guest gallerist Steven Wolf, guest gallerina and Girl Friday Kuniko Vroman, and guest final day assistant Gail Pickering. And thank you to Frieze Projects team Neville Wakefield, Sorrel Hirschberg, and Samara Aster. It honestly couldn’t have happened without this entire roster

G’night for now, sweet sweet readers! I am poooooooped, even a few weeks later.

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