Art In America – The CSPA

Data Sweep: David Bowen

The Esther Klein Gallery at Breadboard is pleased to announce its newest exhibitÂ Data Sweep: David Bowen. AnÂ Art in America review described Bowen as taking an â€œabsurdist approach to the translation of scientific technology into art.â€ Bowenâ€™s work creates a strange symbiosis between technology and the natural world. Mircocontrollers translate the activity of natural agents, like a swarm of flies or live data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data buoy stations around the globe, into mechanical motion that animates his art.

Data Sweep will be on view at the Esther Klein Gallery (EKG) from January 14th through March 20th, 2011 in Esther Klein Gallery at 3600 Market Street.

Growth Rendering Device, David Bowen

About the Exhibition:

Data Sweep features works by artist David Bowen. Bowenâ€™s work focuses on outcomes that occur when machines interact with the natural world. He produces complex devices and situations that are set in motion to create drawings, movements, compositions, sounds and objects based on their interaction with the space and time they occupy. The devices he constructs often play both the roles of observer and creator, providing limited and mechanical perspectives of dynamic situations and living objects.

Included in the exhibition will be Growth Rendering Device (see image), a system that provides light and food in the form of hydroponic solution for the plant. The plant reacts to the device by growing. The device in-turn reacts to the plant by producing a rasterized inkjet drawing of the plant every twenty-four hours. This system is allowed to run indefinitely and the final outcome is not predetermined.

Data Sweep â€“Â List of Works

About the Artist:

David Bowen is an artist and educator. His work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions including: Brainwave at Exit Art, New York; The Japan Media Arts Festival at The National Art Center, Tokyo; Artbots at Eyebeam, New York and Data + Art at The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. His work has been featured in publications such as: Art in America, Leonardo and Sculpture Magazine. He was recently awarded Grand Prize in the Art Division in The Japan Media Art Festival and Third Prize in the Vida 12.0 Art and Artificial Life International Awards. He received his BFA from Herron School of Art in 1999 and his MFA from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in 2004. He is currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Physical Computing at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

For more information, please visitÂ dwbowen.com

– # # # –

California Map Project

{California Map Project, 1969, by John Baldessari}

Somehow I missed learning about this piece until just recently, but it’s my new favorite work of “land art.” In 1969, John Baldessari took the map of California (lower right) and then went to each place on the map where the map letters spelling ‘California’ would be located. At these sites, he spelled out the letter in rocks or some other way, or maybe he found them. I don’t know exactly how he mad the piece, but it’s a pretty hilarious work and definitely in line with my other favorite piece of land art, Bruce Nauman’s untitled text piece which states, “Leave the Land Alone.” (A whole issue of Mammut was devoted to this text piece.)

Unfortunately, the online images of Baldessari’s piece aren’t that great. I’ll keep my eyes open for a better version, maybe in a book image that can be scanned. I also just read an excellent Dave Hickey piece on land art from the September-October 1971 issue of Art in America. In it, Hickey examines the perceived notion that land or earth artists were challenging the status of object production or the space of the museum. This is a viewpoint that still seems to be thrown around today. Hickey points out that the work was marketable and that many museums commissioned land art projects. He goes on to write that

It is not the Earth artists who are challenging the market and the museums, but the magazines themselves. Earth art and its unpackageable peers cannot hurt the market, but extensive magazine coverage can, since not as much object art will get exposure. The magazines have found in this unpackageable art a vehicle through which they can declare their independence from art dealers who invented the critical press, nurtured it, and have tended to treat it like a wholly own subsidiary. Now there is an art form ideally suited to presentation via magazine. Work consisting of photographs and documentation is not presented by journalism, but as journalismâ€”a higher formâ€”needless to say.

The people on the magazines must believe (and I think rightly) that these indefinite art forms might do for the magazines what Pop Art did for the dealersâ€”lend a certain institutional luster,, and with it a modicum of arbitrary power.

It’s a great read of Earth Art and it makes sense to me. And works like Baldessari’s map project or Nauman’s text piece point to movements spawned by Earth Art, such as environmental art, where it’s not about bulldozers and diesel or creating monuments, but instead a use of land in a way that is less invasive. And artists have come up with a variety of strategies to turn that kind of art into careersâ€”whether that means founding their own non-profits, existing on museum commissions or yes, making things for galleries. It’s hard to be a rebel these days, but there are still interesting things to do.

Go to Eco Art Blog