State of the art

[Photos: USF CAM] Above and below, Jim Campbell, Church on Fifth Avenue, custom electronics, 768 LEDs, treated Plexiglas

By MARY ANN MARGER, Times Staff Writer

© St. Petersburg Times
published February 17, 2002

Shows by artists whose medium is video technology give bay area art lovers a look at what is happening in the rapidly changing visual arts world.

TAMPA -- "Outside of the Box," now at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, tears down the walls of conventional thinking with two shows of international artists whose medium is video technology.

The show's title has become the term for artists who are working in new ways, pushing back the rules to expand what art can be. The same title has been used for other shows, including one of installation art at Sarasota's Ringling Museum in 1999.

That exhibit included Tony Oursler, also exhibiting at USF CAM. Then and now, Oursler's work involves one or more distorted faces and sounds, filled with psychological overtones. But it is not so much the image that captivates Oursler; it is the medium, listed here as aluminum antennae, Plexiglas and DVD projection, with a credit to Metro Pictures, N.Y.

As with the better works in the show, his inventive presentation is more significant than the visual result.

Manmade images, in our time, have become increasingly easy to produce and reproduce. It doesn't take much cleverness to turn out a picture. These artists, for the most part, share a compulsion to be unique. They are concerned less with what we see than with new ways to see it.

The larger of the two shows takes up one gallery and the lobby with works by nine artists from around the world. Their use of video is not always obvious in the result. The smaller show, "Carlos Amorales: Fighting Evil (with style)," is a one-person exhibit built around Mexico's distinctively vicious style of professional wrestling.

For sure, you won't feel lonely here. Audio components of various works resound throughout. In other shows, audible art can annoy a viewer trying to understand a work by someone else. Here, the noise actually enhances the overall mood.

And that includes London artist Sam Taylor-Wood's quarreling couple in his laser disk projection Travesty of Mockery. Played out on two screens, it is part of his continuing exploration of emotional isolation; he showed another aspect of the theme at the museum in 1996.

Sure to be the most popular work in the show is All Is Full of Love by British artist Chris Cunningham. The artist, who once built robots for the late Stanley Kubrick, is now considered a leading director of music videos.

Set to music by Bjork, the work presents two robots who seduce not only each other but also the viewer into thinking they have real feelings. Their loving expressions are thoroughly engaging -- until a long shot reveals their extensive connective gear, housed in machines that make such humanlike expression seem possible. Even as we are charmed by these creatures, we are in awe of their creator's wit.

In Church on Fifth Avenue, one of two works by American artist Jim Campbell, a grid of light bulbs blinks on and off in a pattern that reveals people walking along the street. Is this the view from the unseen church? Is Campbell playing God? Or shall we just spend our time pressing our cheek to the wall to see how the thing works?

Nearby is another urban street scene from across the world, set in a fashionable section of Tokyo. Japanese artist and former model Mariko Mori has set up a capsule big enough to hold a mannequin of her own likeness and set it on the sidewalk where it is ignored by some and investigated by the more curious. The passers-by, unwitting participants in a performance, are captured by a hidden camera as they seek explanation and receive none. We add another layer as we view the resulting video through a peephole, encouraging others in the gallery to wonder what it is we see.

Geneva artist Daniel Pflumm's documentary video of people at work is interspersed with strings of logos. Stuttgart artist Wolfgang Staehle's canvas is covered with videotape used as material, rather than as film, and is then painted in black.

Completing the show are Indian-born artist Maria Marshall's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, a monotonous silent video of a boy, about 6, smoking, and Ron Athey's Psychic Surgery, a tattooed torso gently undulating as it is bloodlessly cut. Both have more to do with subject matter than with medium.

Multiplying masks

Carlos Amorales, whose work fills the smaller museum gallery to the right of the entry, is a Mexican artist currently dividing time between Mexico City and Amsterdam.

Works on view include eight large digital inkjet prints, a photo and an installation with vinyl tape and a tire. But by far the most captivating is Amorales vs. Amorales, in which the artist presents four consecutive videos of Mexican wrestling. According to supplied literature, there can be no meaner sport. Matches take place in various venues, from a seedy-looking arena to a black-tie banquet. The museum has installed a small, square room to house the videos, one on each wall.

Unlike members of the World Wrestling Federation, Mexican wrestlers wear masks, which give them different identities. Amorales -- not his real name, but a play on words -- had a mask made of his face. The work raises some intriguing questions. Does that make him a wrestler? Or is the wrestler Amorales?

And what happens when a second wrestler climbs into the ring, also wearing the mask of Amorales? If the loser is unmasked, does his character still exist?

And can this documentation of performance art still be viewed as sport?

Many issues come to play here: good vs. evil, real vs. fiction, theater vs. sport. A catalog is available for purchase. And there is always the Web site: www.lostart.nl/amorales.

Both shows were curated by Margaret Miller, director of the Institute for Research in Art at USF, and Jade Dellinger, a New York independent curator and graduate of USF with an impressive string of exhibits to his credit. With Miller, he has organized several major shows for the museum, including computer art in contemporary printmaking in 1998 and Keith Edmier's first solo museum show in 1997. You can catch up on Edmier -- as well as with Jim Campbell -- at the prestigious Whitney Biennial, March 7-May 26 in New York.

The shows are a rare opportunity for bay area art lovers to check the pulse of the rapidly changing visual arts world. Pick up explanatory brochures at the front desk. You may not understand the work, or even like much of it, but this is the mainstream; this is the art that will link whatever is to come.

Review

"Outside of the Box" continues through March 8 at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, 4202 E Fowler Ave., Tampa. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday. Free admission; parking is $2. Call (813) 974-4133; Web site: www.usfcam.usf.edu.

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