By Caleb Manning and Alex Scoville
On Friday, Arts & Entertainment Editor Alex Scoville and “In the Details” columnist Caleb Manning gave their picks for Art Detour 28 weekend. Three days have passed, the galleries have closed their doors and the DD staffers returned with their top three experiences of the weekend. Read their picks below, and also listen to their podcast, “Art School Dropouts,” for more discussion about their top choices and thoughts on Art Detour as an institution.
Alex’s Picks
“Meta Views” at phICA Shipping Containers
All three of the Phoenix Institute for Contemporary Art’s container outings for Art Detour weekend were so strong. Monica Aissa Martinez’s “Cella” was an intimate reflection on the human body and made the most of her container’s equally intimate space, and Carolyn Lavender’s “Progression” featured a series of graphite self-portraits that were truly moving. But the middle container reserved for the phICA’s Emerging Curator Initiative stood out not just of the three, but of the whole weekend for me.
“Meta View” was guided by Kev Nemelka and features two abstract artists, Joe Ferriso and Brando White. Ferriso and White’s painted works prominently featured doorways, whether a bright spot at the end of a tunnel or a large square cutout looking out on a sunset with no horizon. They’re dizzying “non-places,” and I couldn’t help but experience vertigo peering through. These themes accompanying that sensation were best expressed in the highlight of “Meta View” for me: the debut of an untitled video piece by White. The work wound the viewer through an endless series of hallways, tunnels, ladders and other passages rendered in a low frame rate and chunky graphics that most immediately evoked “Minecraft.” Watching even small sections of the video was a twitchy, paranoid experience — both anxious to stay and see the end (please, there has to be an end), and anxious to escape.
“In Sight” at Eye Lounge
There is no better season for downtown artistic super groups than Art Detour. The 28th weekend brought together, among others, Four Chambers Press and Eye Lounge. The gimmick itself has strong enough legs: 11 of the press’s frequent collaborators respond to 11 artists in the gallery’s fold. But the exhibition transcended that premise in many ways. The most immediate reason was the quality of both the writing and visual works on display. Less immediate was the level of hours and effort put into the final product lying just beneath the surface.
Quietly tacked on to the bottom of each literary piece was a statement from the writer about their process working with their respective visual artist. These reflections were almost more fascinating to read than the responses themselves. They easily demonstrated an immense mutual respect, admiration, interest and creativity between the two artists. In Jia Oak Baker’s reflection on collaborating with Christina You-sun Park, she wrote: “Her art makes me question language.” This spirit best represents Art Detour to me.
Colin Chillag at The Chocolate Factory
If I were handing out superlatives for my Art Detour weekend, this experience handily wins Best Surprise. The Chocolate Factory wasn’t listed on the official Art Detour guide, and I generally best recognize the building for its beautiful El Mac mural. But when I walked by today at the beginning of my day, that garage-door mural was rolled up and the space open to the public. I peeked in and was struck to see it was a retrospective from Colin Chillag.
Chillag is an accomplished Phoenix artist: his work has been shown across the country and sponsored by many in-state arts organizations. You’re just as likely to see his art in Los Angeles or Miami as you are in the Phoenix Art Museum or by your table at Lux. While some of his art can verge a little too on-the-nose and brash for me, his takes on mundane scenes — whether it’s a neighborhood Whataburger, portraits of friends or tourists in front of the Grand Canyon — ring strongly for me. His blend of hyperrealism and abstraction lend themselves to these scenes of normalcy, taking them to either beautiful or terrifying spaces. His deconstructed portrait “Man with Red Mustache” disturbed me in a far more moving way than a series of small paintings depicting an alphabet of suicides. His style is precise and possesses admirable technical skill, but still manages to feel like it could run off the rails at any moment. That energy made this surprise stop all the more lasting.
Caleb’s Picks
“In Sight” at Eye Lounge
This show stood out to me as an excellent example of how art can be enhanced through viewing another’s interpretation and iteration. Some of the visual art on display was familiar from exhibits I had seen before, but the writing changed how I read the works so drastically that this may as well have been the first time once again. The ability to gain insight into the writer’s interpretations and processes turned the act of viewing visual art into an act of collaboration in itself. My interpretation of both the written and visual works was expanded by the other. Increasingly broad and complex visions of intent mixing with my personal emotive response turned these small-scale individual pieces into a series of tiny galleries all by themselves — each offering a kaleidoscope of ideas and interpretations which will take many hours and multiple extra visits to truly get a handle on.
“Meta Views” at phICA Shipping Containers
This installation spoke volumes to me about the broader nature of art as we see it in downtown Phoenix. The show itself plays into the idea of an intentional vague representation. It was art not trying to convey a prefabricated and packaged statement to the viewers, but an experience intending to stick out like a sore thumb. That this vague exploration of paranoid spaces was flanked by two very direct, explanatory sets of art by Monica Aissa Martinez and Carolyn Lavender was an intentional juxtaposition that made me realize just how direct the majority of downtown art really is. It made me appreciate that the art we see here is so often at its core just an artist with something specific and often pointed to say.
“Intersection of (-isms)” Live on Central
The art and performances at Live on Central demonstrated this direct tone perfectly. The venue was wonderfully unpolished, and the performances, while not masterful — or at times even well—executed, always rang genuine. The vocals fell technically flat, but soared with genuine emotion. The dance was wrought out of basic, simple movements — sloppy at times — but that deficit seemed borne not out of a lack of ability but a sheer urgency in the artists. The dancers moved like they couldn’t wait to get out their choreography that represented Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march, or Billie Holliday’s “Strange Fruit,” even if that choreography wasn’t the most groundbreaking or complex. The same trend came again with the poets. Words and thoughts were poured out on the bar floor, often being jumbled and mixed in aesthetically-unappealing ways, but never losing their bite. And while it was a definite trade-off of polish for the sake of genuine emotion, in those precious hours I was more than willing to make that trade. That time to me was the soul of Phoenix art: not always the prettiest or the most technically excellent but always genuine.
Contact the reporters at csmannin@asu.edu and ascovill@asu.edu.
