Image via Complex Original
This past weekend, Silicon Valley’s new, young class of tech elite were privileged to a big new art fair. Put on by the fancy folks at Art Miami, Art Silicon Valley / San Francisco took place at the San Mateo County Event Center—right between San Jose and San Francisco—hosting 75 highly respected galleries from all over the world. To drop some names you are sure to recognize, we’re talking Jeff Koons to Pablo Picasso. There were even a whole bunch of Banksy pieces.
The event definitely had its young, techie audience pinned down, making for an exciting display of futuristic projections, interactive sculptures, and optical illusions galore. In a sense, Silicon Valley is at the cultural forefront, signaling where technology will take us in coming decades. So if art is following the same route, this was a little peek into what that future might look like. Here are 10 Things We Learned From Art Silicon Valley Fair 2014.
Projecting onto sculptures is awesomely effective.
When you walked into the art fair, Tony Oursler’s Slip was the first to greet you. It’s a large, fiberglass “S” with a green mouth and eyes projected onto it, creepily blinking and moving its lips. This set the scene for a lot of projection art to follow. In the VIP lounge, another Oursler sculpture lurked, this time a pile of faces lumped together with accompanying groans come from nearby speakers. Like much of Oursler’s work, they seemed eerily sentient, almost mocking the well-dressed attendees with their relative grotesqueness. Peter Sarkisian’s projection installations were a lot more literal, but kind of stole the show with their incredible realism. In Book, a small man projected onto a dictionary from above proceeded to draw snarky remarks all over it. Sarkisian also brought a pair of robots to life by projecting each of their bodily segments with different colors, complete with a tiny man tumbling inside the core of each. The subject matter wasn’t exactly avant-garde, but the execution was uncannily on point.
Edgy is always in.
People are always going to like symbols of violence and hedonism made classy. Chinese artist Liu Bolin’s Kitchen Knives edition of his “Hiding in the City” photo series—in which his subject is painted to blend into the background—is a great example of how objects like butcher knives will always maintain their appeal. Whether its Beverly Fishman’s shiny, candy-colored, and oversized glass pills or Chris Hedrick’s Flaccid melting wooden gun sculpture, it’s clear that the human obsession with destruction has maintained a place among an increasingly sleek and minimalist art world.
You can own your very own Banksy.
If you know what street art is, then you know who Banksy is. The notorious street artist famous for his straightforward social commentary is now being auctioned off at jaw-dropping prices by people who excavate the walls he paints on. A collection of his work was available at the fair, including a number of pieces from his New York City residency last year, through NYC’s Keszler Gallery. It’s stunning to see a Banksy piece on the West Coast, but also bizarre to see a chunk of New York City wall sitting in the middle of the San Mateo County Event Center. The takeaway: “Post-street” is more relevant of a term than ever.
Lighting is key.
LEDs that slowly shift from one color to the next are pretty cool, but we’ve all seen those before. In fact, a lot of Jacuzzis have them these days. At this point, it’s more interesting to see lighting that's elaborately strategic, not just colorful. Moto Waganari’s filigree polygon sculptures presented by Joerg Heitsch Gallery were made twice as stunning by their accompanying shadows. Strategically placed lamps cast the intricate entanglements onto the white walls behind the hollow figures. Shine Artists London also presented a few works by Korean artist Hwang Seon Tae that use LEDs to backlight contemplative interiors on tempered glass evoking quiet emptiness and recreating shadow play with warmth and depth. Doug Prince’s romantic and engrossing photo-sculptures were also perfectly lit from behind by Catherine Edelman Gallery. Although LEDs offer us a rainbow of lighting possibilities—manifesting brightly in the SF tech/art scene—sometimes subtlety offers the biggest draw.
Catering to millionaire millennials is a real thing.
The artistic low-brow versus high-brow distinction has been pretty thoroughly muddled for a while now. Warhol and Lichtenstein made it clear to the masses early on that commercial design and comic books are art, too. Fast forward to today, and apparently that translates into Instagram and ebay logos. Fabien Castanier Gallery of Culver City had a number of “Speedy Graphito” pieces that offered a pastiche of imagery emblematic of the oversaturated millennial lifestyle. The shiny Andrea Stanislav collages at Cynthia Corbett Gallery insinuated a similar message in holographic film. White Walls gallery offered a more refined yet still youthful aesthetic with their room full of massive APEX paintings. Calling Silicon Valley’s millionaires "millennials" is admittedly pretty hyperbolic, but it’s undeniable that the hands holding the money bags are getting less and less wrinkly and the traditional distinction between high- and low-brow art is less relevant than ever.
Video installations are potentially the new paintings.
A lot of artwork emerging from such a dense landscape of technological innovation becomes just plain trippy. There’s a trend of hanging LCD screens showing video loops so that they look like paintings. The aim is either to say, “Look what I can do,” or to push boundaries past static engagement with painting-like pieces—or maybe it’s both. Licht Feld Gallery had a number of works by Marck that consisted of movie loops playing on LCD screens with metal mounted on top. In Neue Freiheit, a woman sensually swims in and out of an open metal ring. In another of his pieces, a woman smokes in slow motion, synced with a steam machine so that actual clouds leave the image when she blows out. They’re captivating but not mind-blowing. In Gregory Scott’s more intriguing video installations, the viewer enters the studio space as if the art is still being put together in a room beyond the gallery wall. Overall, one of the themes of the fair seemed to be: Why have still art when you can have art that moves?
Appropriating Warhol might finally be a joke at this point.
It seems that the distinct and recognizable Warholian aesthetic will always function easily as a blank canvas on which to throw an intervention with any desired inspiration. It’s been done a million times, but there always seems to arise an occasion in which someone deems it a good idea to do it again. In this case, Mr. Brainwash (Thierry Guetta) definitely thought it was a good idea, but it’s unclear whether he’s totally fucking with us. Mr. Brainwash updates Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can, turning it into a giant bottle of spray paint and redoes his Monroe grid with one of the most #relevant mugs for the event, Steve Jobs. Knowing MBW’s work, it might be an ironic appropriation critiquing the current art market through an intentionally misguided mix of aesthetics. But it’s difficult to tell. Either way, someone was likely bound to do it sooner or later, and someone will probably be hanging that Jobs piece above their remote-controlled fireplace soon too.
Old school is still cool.
It would be wrong not to mention that amid all of the shiny and new, there were a good number of works that were holding down the old guard medium-wise. The Alexander Calder tapestries were perfect and classic, showing us that textiles are still in (even though they aren’t interactive or on loop), and especially is they were designed by someone brilliant. Brian Dettmer’s book sculptures were beautifully intricate carvings that reminding us of the olden days before Kindles and their artistic counterparts. And, of course, you can’t forget the modern masters. It’s always impressive to see a Warhol, Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein or Pablo Picasso for sale. Those will never lose their aura.
We are all cyborgs.
In the performance piece Transcendence, artist John Slepian literally lifted himself with the power of his own mind. Using a hacked brain wave sensor and a contraption that lifts a platform, the artist programmed the device to levitate him when he achieved a meditative state. With incense burning in front of him, the piece has a hint of satire to it. At this point, we are all spiritually integrated with technology, using it as a means to reach to enlightenment more quickly. Who knows what EEG technology has in store for us.
Optical illusions are no longer cheesy. In fact, they’re awesome.
The most undeniable take away from the fair as a whole was that optical illusions are back in a big way. They fell into the realm of cheap tricks for a while, but have emerged more magical and mind-bending than ever. The majority was relatively straightforward, although exquisitely executed (and basically impossible to photograph). But the work of South Korean artist Chul Hyun Ahn brought the illusion play to another level entirely. His works were the most unforgettable of the entire fair. Expertly employing lighting, glass, and mirrors, Ahn’s work seamlessly intervenes with spatiality, evoking an ominous, infinite void like a wormhole to another realm of existence. In Railroad Nostalgia, viewers find themselves reflected on a railroad running endlessly into the dark distance. It’s a humbling experience, prompting contemplation of life as a railroad that leads each of us to death. While much of the new technologically innovative art can appear shallow, Ahn’s work shows us that it can achieve an intense poignancy when done best.
