Author: Rebecca Bednarz

Trevor Smith on Mark Bradford: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Have you ever felt like a fish out of water? As a young man growing up it was assumed that because he was so tall Mark Bradford would want to become a basketball player, but, in fact, he was much more drawn to hair design and wanted to work in his mother’s salon.

In this video, Bradford plays with both career expectations and gender norms by wearing a hoop skirt to practice basketball. The flowing skirt gets in the way of dribbling and trips him up as he drives for the basket. It’s a way for him to create an image of tension between appearance and desire.

Each of us has had some kind of experience where we’re expected to behave a specific way, but we either have to roleplay or resist. Such struggles are very often the seedbed for creative expression.

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Trevor Smith on Lara Favaretto: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

I love that Lara Favaretto made this work from car wash brushes because it connects to a really common experience that many of us have shared.

Driving through the car wash, I’m often mesmerized by the patterns and colors that form on my windshield as the brushes pass over. Sometimes I even think it would make an amazing painting.

In Simple Couples, there are seven pairs of car wash brushes, all of different heights and widths and colors, just like people.

Like several other artists you will see in PlayTime, Favaretto is taking an off-the-shelf object made for a singular purpose and imagines a new life for it. These brushes will no longer wash your car; however, they have new life as paintings, as kinetic sculpture, as objects of wonder.

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Trevor Smith on Gwen Smith: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

I first saw these photographs by Gwen Smith when they would arrive in my mailbox each December as holiday cards. Most family cards that we receive depict awkwardly staged portraits that ruthlessly repress any tensions or interpersonal negotiations we all know were going on.

Smith takes a very different tack using play to amplify the character of her family relationships. The one constant is the presence of a Yoda mask, a depiction of the wise mentor from Star Wars. He appears as an unchanging avatar around which the annual ritual revolves.

In all but one image, it is worn by her husband, artist Haim Steinbach. We see the fashions of play changing as her son, River, grows up. We see him using play to define his own character, to draw closer to or resist the omnipresent Yoda.

I find the unusual invitation Smith makes with her family to roleplay with one another to be very vulnerable and moving.

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Trevor Smith on Erin Wurm: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Long before social media made public embarrassment an everyday occurrence, Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures accomplished a similar feat by inviting people to play in public with common objects in uncommon ways.

By asking you to hold a pose for one minute, he pulls you out of the normal pace at which you view and consider art. In the process, you yourself become an artwork to be seen by others.

The instructions Wurm gives you often invite reflection on specific words or phrases, or, even in one case, you are invited to make up a piece of poetry to be recited while you pose.

I performed a One Minute Sculpture at Wurm’s most recent show in New York a few months ago. His instructions invited me to lay my head on a plinth under a lamp and think about Epicurus, an ancient Greek philosopher. I knew that one of Epicurus’s ideas was about living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends, so I stood there, eyes closed in this public space, and thought about the many wonderful dinner parties that I have hosted in my home.

Some people only treat the One Minute Sculptures as an opportunity to laugh, but this misses something important. I was aware that by posing as I did I looked ridiculous, but the opportunity to step outside my normal behavior for a minute offered me a quiet moment of reflection and the work had a strangely calming effect on me.

How will you feel when you do a One Minute Sculpture?

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Trevor Smith on Cory Arcangel: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Sports video games allow us to bowl or shoot hoops without ever having to get off the couch. These games are often branded with a professional athlete. In Nintendo 64’s NBA Courtside 2, it’s Shaquille O’Neal and, for Shaq, basketball is a very serious business.

We aspire to the grace of such professional athletes. They’re so good at what they do that the extraordinary often appears effortless, which is why it’s really, really fun to watch them fail. So when Arcangel reprograms the game to have Shaq through nothing but bricks, it’s like watching an extended sports blooper reel.

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Trevor Smith on Cao Fei: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Cao Fei makes machines behave like bodies and bodies behave like machines. In Shadow Life, she works with clockwork precision of virtuoso puppeteers. In Rumba, she makes robots dance.

It feels to me as it she’s making fun of the utopian ideal that if technology could free us from labor, we would all have a lot more time to play. For example, to clean the floor I used to have to vacuum or sweep. Now, a robot can do that while I check my Twitter feed.

When Cao Fei takes robotic vacuums off the floor and onto platforms in a gallery, their continuous movement accomplishes nothing and instead becomes an absurd dance—a Roomba rumba, if you will.

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Trevor Smith on Brian Jungen: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

When I reached out to Brian Jungen to invite him to participate in PlayTime, his response was to say he’d never really thought of his work having that much to do with play, but I’m happy he decided to trust me on that.

Jungen’s works in this exhibition start with articles of clothing that are directly associated with play—Nike sneakers and professional football uniforms—but at every turn he transforms their function and meaning.

Football uniforms symbolize team affiliation and competition, yet Jungen transforms them into blankets that suggest warmth and intimacy.

Nike sneakers become abstracted faces and masks. The feet have become the head.

You’ve probably already noticed that many of the artists in this exhibition have transformed the function of off-the-shelf objects that are ostensibly made for a singular purpose. You can still recognize the object, but the surprise is how meaningful they become in their new guise.

I think these seemingly absurd actions symbolize how the world can be transformed by the power of our imagination.

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Trevor Smith on Angela Washko: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

What I find fascinating about Angela Washko’s work is that she didn’t set out to make art about video games, but recognized that it was possible to produce her projects within the game itself.

One of the special features of World of Warcraft is that it encourages social and conversational interaction. For example, within its open landscape there are towns where players might gather to socialize rather than engage in combat.

Washko used this forum to conduct absurdist performances and engage other players in discussions of gender, sexism, and harassment.

Her work inside of World of Warcraft began in 2012, a couple of years before Gamergate made us all aware of the vicious harassment and threats to which women and gender non-conforming gamers were commonly subjected.

Washko’s point was not to critique the game itself, but rather to get inside and facilitate a dialogue about the rules by which we are all agreeing to play.

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Trevor Smith on Agustina Woodgate: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

When I was talking with Agustina Woodgate about the origins of her rug pieces that are made from eviscerated stuffed toys, she told me this story: when she was a young girl growing up in Argentina, she had one teddy bear called Pepe.

Because there was only one, she had a deep, emotional attachment to it. She still has it to this day.

So, when she moved to the United States as an adult, she was surprised by how often plush toys ended up in second-hand stores. Did this mean that these toys were less loved?

Moreover, if she plush animals were so abundant, could she use them as raw materials for her work?

After making these works for several years, she is now planning to form the Animal Rug Company, giving new life to these stuffed animals for years to come.

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Teppei Kaneuji Artist Video: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

This work was made two years ago in Osaka. This was one of my biggest pieces of work during this show. This piece of work is still very important for me as an artist. Let me explain to you how I came to create this series of work.

During the winter season in Kyoto, the scenery that I’m familiar with changed overnight. While I was walking in the snow, I happened to see a Mercedes-Benz and dog poo both covered in snow. I found this to be very interesting.

For this piece of work, I poured white resin on top of stacked daily objects. When the resin is poured continuously, it gradually forms the shapes of icicles.

I find it interesting how those daily objects have meaning on their own and start to lose their meaning. The white resin, which originally has no meaning, somehow starts to have connections with the objects. I find these two relations interesting.

This is one of my series White Discharge. The reason why I use the color white is because of its dual meaning in Japanese context—existence and nonexistence. So I use the word “white” often.

I have this image of white liquid poured on the objects, which somehow releases the object of its actual context.

The image in mind brings about the title of the series White Discharge. When creating the White Discharge series, the most important and fun part of it is to feel that I am doing something naughty constantly.

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Erwin Wurm Responds to the Manifesto: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

Play is, um, Y, and play is an L, and some times play is an A, and quite often play is a P. I love my P, I love my L, or I don’t like my Y. I don’t like my A. Um, he loves play, but she doesn’t play, but we like to play, and, uh, my time and your time with play, so to say, and hey, I love my play. And your play. And sometimes her play. And, uh, never a question, never an answer, never too good, never too bad.

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