Indy.com
Today:
IMA exhibit look at parades and why we love them
Posted: Apr 25, 2008 in Things to do, Culture
Tags:
RELATED POSTS
RELATED EVENTS
VENUE INFO
A parade is never just a parade.
A parade is always about bigger issues, at least in the mind of the artist -- or the art historian.
For Rebecca Uchill, the Indianapolis Museum of Art's assistant curator of contemporary art, a parade can investigate ideas of public space, expressiveness and the connection between participant and spectator.
Which is why an exhibition like the IMA's "On Procession" is so important. "Because it takes a look at parades as contemporary art," said Uchill.
The two-part exhibition began Saturday with a live parade ("On Procession: In the Streets") in Fountain Square, where local artists and residents created works -- from a giant mousetrap to floats and puppets -- that expressed individual messages. The event follows in the footsteps of The Art Parade in New York and Art Basel in Miami -- a change of pace for Indianapolis parade-goers.
"I think maybe Indianapolis as a culture is more familiar with a ..... certain kind of parade, a more institutional or authoritative parade, like the 500 parade," said Uchill. "And maybe all parades go that way at some point."
However, the roughly 25 pieces in "On Procession: In the Galleries" -- opening Friday at the IMA -- represent a different, more artistic thread in the world of parades.
An example is "The Modern Procession," a piece by Francis Alyes, a Belgian artist based in Mexico City. The installation takes up a whole room, with maps, brochures, e-mails, plans, film and drawing components.
It documents a parade that Alyes organized around the collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art.
"It was this procession where he marched these objects, replicas of art on the walls of MOMA, out the door and across the Queensboro Bridge to Queens, where MOMA was relocating temporarily," Uchill said.
"The project becomes about the museum as a destination for housing iconic, significant and spiritually uplifting works of art. It was almost a church procession, with a Peruvian brass band."
That the IMA would present such an exhibition, in conjunction with the live parade, says something about a philosophical shift at play within the museum.
"I think what's changed at this museum is this willingness to be a laboratory, and a willingness to stand behind some really unusual ideas and projects," Uchill said.
As part of the IMA's "On Procession" program, the museum invited Los Angeles artist, puppeteer and pageantry expert Allison Heimstead to give a lecture on parades, or, as she refers to the phenomenon: "Spectacle as a tool for public interface."
During her lecture, Heimstead asked, "Why do people parade? Why do they come out and take these spaces for this period of time?"
In answering, she acknowledged that the tradition goes back centuries in Europe, before it moved across the globe absorbing some of the local elements of the seasonal celebrations.
"The amazing thing about parades is they give you license to behave in ways you never would otherwise," Heimstead said. "To many, one thing that's critical is how many hands you can get making the work. It switches from the individual to the community."
Christopher West, curator of the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA), saw first-hand how a community -- the arts community, specifically -- leaves its trace on a parade, when he attended Art Basel in Miami late last year.
The art parade there took place on the beach and felt almost like a party, West said, which seems appropriate because these parades are viewed as an informal reaction to the commercialization of the art world.
"Performance art in general seems to be making a bit of a resurgence," West said. "There's been this backlash against the crazy art market and how expensive works have gotten."
West noted that Performa, the world's first performance art biennial, began in 2005, one year after the first Art Parade, by Deitch Projects, a contemporary art gallery in New York.
And both have since become significant events on the arts calendar.
"Over the past few years, there's been this emphasis on performance art and interaction with the audience," West said. "A lot of people are going for things that can't be sold, and going for purity of performance."
Local artist Kyle Ragsdale, who participated in the IMA's parade in Fountain Square, is impressed with the idea of the gallery show celebrating art in parades.
"I think maybe a lot of times contemporary art doesn't try to connect, that it tries to get over everyone's head," he said.
Ragsdale also said it's appropriate that the exhibition, celebrating tradition and innovation (as well as innovation despite tradition), is happening in Indianapolis.
"Because it's kind of the hometown big city -- it's middle America," Ragsdale said. "It's a nice place to make that connection."
Allison Smith
Sculptor, 36, New York
"On Procession" contribution: "The Donkey, The Jackass and The Mule!"
Allison Smith has been moving at warp speed during the past few months.
The Brooklyn-based artist has been traveling, doing projects at the Mattress Factory Art Museum in Pittsburgh and at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston.
She's been teaching in Baltimore and San Francisco. And on a recent Friday, she was preparing for the dealers, collectors and assistants about to invade her studio.
At least she can relax in knowing that her commissioned work for the IMA's "On Procession: In the Galleries" exhibition -- "The Donkey, The Jackass and The Mule!" -- is complete.
Smith collaborated for weeks with students from the Herron School of Art and Design on a set of three equestrian pull toys. Standing roughly 9 feet tall by 9 feet long and 4 feet wide, the toys are made from painted wood, with horse hair, leather work and glass eyes, and are pulled with ropes on large oak wheels.
"I was really trying to play with scale and the idea of these large antique-looking toys that'll be activated in the parade," she said.
"I want to create a kind of pocket of history -- a pocket of time-travel within the parade."
Originally, when Smith was invited to propose a project for the exhibition and parade, she was thinking about the archetypal procession: that of Jesus riding on a donkey through the gates of Jerusalem as a peace gesture, yet being celebrated almost as a war hero with the armies of heaven by his side.
Smith also noted that the etymology of the word "easel" is donkey-related, which she found pleasing.
"I'm really interested in all these different meanings of the symbol and how it can change over time," she said.
Although Smith's work was a functional part of the IMA's art parade, she is just as happy knowing the pieces will be inside the museum.
"I'm interested in the artifact quality of objects once they're been through a very specific activity, interacting with people and engaging them in specific questions," she said.
"The moment of the parade is very important with creating the meaning of the sculpture, but I'm happy with that story being told within the museum."
Katie Grinnan
Sculptor, 37, Los Angeles
On Procession contribution: "Rubble Division"
Katie Grinnan's first parade was a blur.
She remembers her mother waving from a float. She remembers clowns, and being excited.
But that's it.
In "On Procession" at the IMA, Grinnan will be exhibiting a far more focused and nuanced remembrance of a parade -- specifically, her own float commissioned for the 2005 Aspen Fourth of July Parade and the resultant videos that became her "Rubble Division" project.
Grinnan's work includes footage of the float, which juxtaposed photographic panels of "bombed-out buildings on one side and modernist architecture on the other," of spectators riding in a van while viewing the float's panels, and of the float panels reconfigured into a road-worthy sculpture driven from California to New York.
One video captures the roving float being broken down and re-assembled on that journey, every day, over 12 stops starting at Joshua Tree and touring places like Death Valley, an old mining ghost town in Nevada, even Crawford, Texas, where the Secret Service, protecting the Bush ranch, temporarily confiscated their cameras. And then on to New Orleans.
"It was eight months after Katrina, and still pretty devastated," Grinnan said. "In a way, we were taking the temperature of what was going on in the country at the time. It was smack in the middle of the war, and I was trying to figure out how to deal with that as far as the Fourth goes.
"A lot of the float also deals with dividing space. I wanted to deal with how you view a parade, where there are these two sides, moving through space. One side, I wanted to have one image, so the viewers on one side would have one experience and one on the other would have a different idea."
Grinnan also choreographed the procession of her float so that different sound components and music were specific to different parts of the float.
"A lot of it had to do with the way things get mediated from the war as well," she said. "Looking at the U.S. and Iraq and the distance between the two and how those places are mediated through imagery, for those of us who aren't actively participating."
Their structure, and the way they can at once be used as means of protest against power and also as a rallying point for allegiance and patriotism, is one of the ways in which parades interest Grinnan.
"The dualism is interesting," she said. "In a weird way, with protests people often feel helpless -- there's a lot of failure in it. There's a sense of community, but you're not sure you're accomplishing any change."
'On Procession' artists
Allison Smith and Katie Grinnan aside, "On Procession" will include works by:
Francis Alyes, whose contribution, "The Modern Procession," documents a ceremonial procession of art commemorating the Museum of Modern Art's temporary move from midtown Manhattan to Long Island City.
Jeremy Deller, who celebrated the diversity of San Sebastian in Spain by inviting a cross-section of the city's social groups to form a parade. His piece, "A Social Parade," is a video of that parade.
Friends With You, a Miami design collective, who will be installing "Dream Maker" -- a metal-framed balloon mobile 44 feet in diameter -- in the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion.
Sharon Hayes, who is showing a sound piece that originally debuted at New York's New Museum, called "I march in the parade of liberty, but as long as I love you I'm not free."
Michele Magema, a Zaire-born artist who contributes "Oye Oye," a two-channel video installation that speaks to notions of individuality and feminity during a dictatorial rule.
Paul McCarthy, whose work is represented by two projected DVDs of a parade he organized in Germany, as well as five mannequins in Western costumes made for but never worn in that parade.
Dave McKenzie, who continues his personal bobblehead fixation with "Watch the Sky," a video of his own avatar superimposed over a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Amy O'Neill, a Pennsylvania-born artist who focused her work, including video projection, on the 1964 Rose Bowl Parade.
Michael Bilsborough, who constructed "word balloon" signs ("Right Outta My Mouth") on poles for the 2007 Deitch art parade in Soho.
Matthew Blair, who also made work for the Deitch parade. Blair's one-man float/costume, "Kafka Helmet," is made of wood, copper and rattan.
Bob and Seth were part of the 2007 Deitch Art Parade, dressed as sticks of dynamite in a piece titled "The Washington Generals vs. Nine Sticks of Dynamite."
Sydney Croskery, who made "The Egg" in 2006, a costume that will be displayed at the IMA as it was meant to be worn -- on a mannequin wearing black tights and Adidas sambas.
The John Erickson Museum of Art, a portable, traveling museum of art in a box, which contributed a ceramic piece by Saya Moriyasu.
Fawad Khan, who is represented by three digital prints known as "Faceless Soldier with Chili Peppers." The prints were on view in the inaugural Deitch art parade in 2005.
Yoko Ono, whose simple vinyl banner reads "Imagine Peace."
Kembra Pfahler, whose contribution has the unusual title: "The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black flag."
'On Procession: In the Galleries'
What: "On Procession" includes a range of contemporary artworks -- video, works on paper, installation, and documentations from performance-based activities -- that use the parade as a theme or an apparatus. Some of the works were commissioned specifically for the exhibit, while other pieces are artifacts from, representations of or tributes to other parades.
When: Friday through Aug. 10 (open during museum hours).
Where: McCormack Forefront Galleries at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, 4000 Michigan Road.
Tickets: Free admission.
Info: www.imamuseum.org/exhibitions/onprocession/in-the-galleries