Tag: playtime-peabody-essex

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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Agustina Woodgate Artist Video: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

When um . . . without noticing I um . . . I realized that I was carrying my bear, which is right there, and it just meant a lot the memory. And I became very interested in the relationship of . . .  that we had with materials at some point and all of a sudden I realized the relationship I had with this one. But at the same time, not only as a bear of what it meant as a bear but the . . . also the fact that it was just a bear, just a thing, and it was as a relationship to this one object that meant a lot more but by the end it was just a thing. So . . . getting very interested about that, I became very interested in the relationship we have with objects in general and then . . . investigating myself as well because I still wouldn’t even dare to use him or whatever. It just made a lot of sense to me to work with a material that would represent us . . . I found that in every culture or in . . .  it’s just like an icon, like an archetype. So I guess that’s how I ended up with the bears. And then it just like, everything just started falling into place. The relationship I have with animals in my personal life maybe, sometimes, might have something to do with it.

I’m going to cry.

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Erwin Wurm

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz
“I want to address serious matters but in a light way . . . of course, humor is a strong part of this agenda.”

 

 

 

WHO

Erwin Wurm (born 1954, Austria) explores the boundaries of sculpture and performance art. His absurdist work includes everyday object sculptures, architectural interventions, and photography.

 

WHAT

Much of Wurm’s work utilizes the human body. In One Minute Sculptures, he creates instructional drawings inviting visitors to use everyday objects in unconventional ways in order to pose as an ephemeral sculpture. In 59 Stellungen (59 Positions), Wurm dresses himself in nonsensical ways to create forms that appear like modern sculptures.

 

WHY

Wurm explores the physical and psychological boundaries of the material world. Why does using our body to create a sculpture in public cause some people to laugh and others to cringe? How does clothing shape our bodies but also our image of ourselves?

 

LISTEN

PlayTime curator Trevor Smith shares his own experience creating a One Minute Sculpture. Read the transcript.

 

WATCH

Erwin Wurm teaches us how to spell “play” in his response to the PlayTime manifesto. Read the transcript.

 

 

WORKS

 

Double Piece, 2002
From One Minute Sculptures, 1997–present
Mixed media
Studio Erwin Wurm

 

Metrum, 2015
From One Minute Sculptures, 1997–present
Mixed media
Studio Erwin Wurm

 


Organisation of Love, 2007
From One Minute Sculptures, 1997–present
Mixed media
Tate Modern

 

Sweater, pink, 2018
Cotton-acrylic blend fabric and metal
Studio Erwin Wurm

 

59 Stellungen (59 Positions), 1992
Video (20 minutes)
Studio Erwin Wurm

(Image credits: Courtesy of the artist, photo by Elfie Semotan (detail); courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong, photo by Elsa Okazaki; photo by Bob Packert/PEM; photo by Bob Packert/PEM; photo by Bob Packert/PEM; photo by Bob Packert/PEM; courtesy of Studio Erwin Wurm and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.)

Agustina Woodgate

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz
“I found that in every culture, [the teddy bear] is just an icon, an archetype.”

 

 

 

WHO

Agustina Woodgate (born 1981, Argentina) is a Miami-based artist making photography, installation, sculpture, video, and performances that often respond to a specific place or situation. She is interested in the relationships that people have with their surrounding environments and how the accelerating pace of technology affects those relationships.

 

WHAT

Woodgate collects large quantities of second-hand, mass-produced stuffed animal toys. With her assistants, she deconstructs and restitches them into colorful patterned rugs using traditional quiltmaking techniques. She references traditional rug making through the symmetrical patterning of these objects.

 

WHY

The rug series takes inspiration from the artist’s own teddy bear, Pepe, who was her only stuffed animal growing up. Pepe has accompanied the artist since childhood, moving with her from country to country and from studio to studio. For Woodgate, stuffed animals represent memories of their owner—even after they are donated or discarded. When she reorganizes them as artmaking materials, she creates new social narratives. What was once personal and private becomes public, communal, and new.

 

LISTEN

PlayTime curator Trevor Smith describes how Agustina Woodgate’s childhood toy eventually launched the Animal Rug Company (ARC). Read the transcript.

 

 

WATCH

Agustina Woodgate tells us about her teddy bear while creating Royal. Read the transcript.

 

 

WORKS

 

Jardin Secreto, 2017
Stuffed animal toy skins
Alex Fernandez-Casais Collection

 

Rose Petals, 2010
Stuffed animal toy skins
Benjamin Feldman Collection

 

Royal, 2010
Stuffed animal toy skins
Collection of Alan Kluger and Amy Dean

 

Peacock, 2010
Stuffed animal toy skins
Courtesy of the artist and Spinello Projects

 

Galaxy, 2010
Stuffed animal toy skins
Collection of Charles Coleman

 

(Image credits: Courtesy of Spinello Projects, photo by Joshua Aronson (detail); photo by Ken Sawyer/PEM; courtesy of Spinello Projects; Courtesy of Spinello Projects, photo by Joshua Aronson; courtesy of Spinello Projects; courtesy of Spinello Projects.)

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