emoemoji : bear is a visual performance that operates by invoking surprise and soulshame, a vulnerable emotional state within us connected to our appetites and desires. The GIF poems combine flickering images and text, in most cases appropriated from third party sources. By reading the poem superimposed over the GIF image, the viewer is transformed into the performer.
The performer must decipher the text by moving the printed reticulated image back and forth as she reads.
The movement of the images heightens the sense of surprise in the performer as the full ramifications of the text reveal themselves through the repeated movement of the images. The surprise and discovery of soulshame in the performer has a transitive effect upon the audience.
By decontextulizing popular and hyper-realistic images from the web and refocusing their meaning through superimposed text, emoemoji : bear seeks to create a state somewhere between Maryln Minter and "abuse of power comes as no surprise."
Ken Castelli moved to Tangier Island, Virginia five years ago as the inaugural Artist in Residence at the Tangier History Museum. After three years of building exhibits and learning the local dialect (an accent, much like most Tangiermen eccentricities, wholly unique to the island), he decided to make Tangier his home. But this home is disintegrating, bit by bit, chewed away by winds and tides. Tides that swell and surge through the town, unearthing the dead, encroaching on homes, and drowning the marsh. In this exhibition, Castelli, whose larger body of work documents the landscape and lifestyle of Tangier and the Eastern Shore/DelMarVa Peninsula region of the United States, sketches out vignettes of the inevitable. Abandoned by local politicians and put on hold by scientists and studies, the people of Tangier stand on land that is ever sinking and shrinking, waiting for the water to reach their necks.
This series of drawings is both a warning and a dirge. The rhythm of Castelli's linework rings out a threnody for a piece of American history. This tiny world speaks to the universality of our entropy.
I, like most Americans am inundated with sharing. It takes seconds to share. For better or worse, my networks generate the vast majority of the visual, political and cultural content I see. The artists in this collection of videos were selected because for years I have admired their work and their sensibility has influenced me in some way and what they care to share consistently displays one of two qualities that I prefer to see: Poetics and Things that Make Me Laugh.
To the artists: The world can be a bitter and disappointing place some days, but you guys surprise me, remind me, teach me, inspire me and crack me up! Thank you for your contributions to this project. Thanks for sharing.
Jen López lives in Chicago, Illinois and completed her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. She is a recovering academic, makes art for pleasure, curates for fun and the majority of the time is a champion of artisan cheese.
Chen has been involved in the San Francisco Bay Area arts community for over 12 years as a curator, arts administrator, and visual artist. Since 1998, he has been the Program Director at Intersection for the Arts. He is a graduate of Columbia University.
Ben Ruggiero's work has shown both nationally and internationally including Art and Commerce's Festival of Emerging Photography, Fotofest and Austin Museum of Art's New Art in Austin Triennial.
His recent solo project "After Icebergs with a Painter" was shown at Testsite in 2010 and addresses the mythology and visual legacy of Romanticism and its relationship to Photography as realized by Frederic Church and in particular his painting "The Icebergs."
His work was on display this summer in the membership show curated by Ariel Shanberg at the Houston Center for Photography, as well as upcoming work being included in the Museum of Fine Art's Photo Forum 2011. He is a graduate of Bard's MFA program, a Lecturer of Photography at Texas State University as well as a member of the Austin photography collective Lakes Were Rivers.
Opening September 9th in St Louis at the Bruno David Gallery, this exhibition features hundreds of intimate small-scale artwork from the first seven years.
With the proliferation of video recording devices and the variety of ways in which to view video, the video artist's intent can get muddled. The initial experience of watching video meant for a large screen fluctuates greatly from seeing it on YouTube. For the 2nd annual exhibition, the Museum of Pocket Art invites video artist to submit work with the intent of seeing work on a mobile device.
Curated by Portland's Grand Detour.
Abstract Small is organized by Museum of Pocket Art Exhibitions Director Mario Trejo and showcases some of Trejo's favorite contemporary painters. The first MoPA show to focus specifically on painting, Abstract Small will utilize the unique parameters of the Museum to explore the intimate processes of the painter, showing works that more than hold up to their large-scale counterparts.
This exhibition will "employ" the standard business card as a jumping-off point for an exuberant skewering and subversion of corporate language and structure.
Curated by MoPA Communications Director Hannah Piper Burns
Using catalogues, magazines, books, and postcards referencing art, textiles, furniture, interior and industrial design, Jan Blythe's mixed-media collages fracture and re-combine found images into formal exercises far removed from their original source imagery. This solo exhibition is an extension of Blythe's broader art practice, which allows materials to combine and transform in her hands as she manipulates them to unexpected ends.
With the proliferation of video recording devices and the variety of viewing platforms, the video artist's intent can get muddled. The initial experience of watching video meant for a large screen fluctuates greatly from seeing it on YouTube. For the inaugural exhibition of an annual series, the Museum of Pocket Art invites video artists to submit work meant to be viewed on a mobile device.
Curated by SEO Wan-Tae and MoPA Museum Director Robert Jackson Harrington
Cognition and decision-making is an inherent aspect to any art practice. This process makes the artist fully aware of self while developing work. This show attempts to remove the decision process from the work and thus provide an insight into the unconscious artist.
Curated by MoPA Museum Director Robert Jackson Harrington
An evening at the Lab featuring our last 10 exhibitions with work from over 40 artist.
Reception on Friday, December 4th from 5 to 9pm. Exhibition continues Sat the 5th, and Sunday the 6th, 1 to 6pm, in conjuction with the Postcard Show 13.
Contemporary society lives in a state, a cultural condition even, of anticipation. The title of the show, Titanic Piano, is an anagram for "anticipation." This incarnation of the Museum of Pocket Art acts as an actual site of anticipation, ultimately reflecting the cultural state of contemporary subjectivity. Whether inventive, escapist, or evocative of anxiety, anticipation propels us into an unknown future. We asked fourteen artists to consider the grand nature of Titanic Piano, with its touch of humor and hint of doom, as it relates to our current global social and economic climate.
Co-curated by Nancy deY Elkus and Laura Boles Faw
Eric Shultis is a painter and photographer whose work explores personal history, memory, and gender. He has exhibited his work nationally in galleries and museums including the Illinois State Museum in Chicago and Springfield (solo and group exhibitions), Dadian Gallery in Washington D. C. (solo exhibition), the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Michigan (solo exhibition), the Chicago International Art Expo, I Space in Chicago, Sheldon Art Galleries and the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis.
Shultis received his M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and his B.F.A. and Associates Degrees From Kendall College of Art and Design. Shultis has taught at Florissant Valley since 1998. Previous teaching includes the University of New Mexico, Trinity Christian College in Chicago and Kendall College of Art and Design.
Organized by Mario Trejo.
MoPA invited artists and architects to submit sketches, ideas or reactions to the fictional International Museum of Arts. The proposed space houses the world's largest collection of art, from antiquities to contemporary work in an urban space, housed in over 4 square miles of footage. The initial idea for the show was inspired by Frank Gehry's quick sketches of his plans for future designs on napkins. The show hopes to explore the simple elegance and communicative power that a sketch can convey.
Organized by exhibitions director Mario Trejo.
Curated by Hannah Piper Burns and Alexandra Chowaniec.
Curated by Clark Buckner director of MISSION 17 in San Francisco.
Featuring work by Los Angeles artist Robert Moya.
Featuring work by artists Priyanka Gupta and Matthew Cella.
Curated by Jeannene M. Przyblyski director of the San Francisco Bureau of Urban Secrets.
Featuring work by artists Manuel Guerra and Susan Klahr.
by longtime MOPA supporter Richard Smit.
Work by artists Odin Perez, Marvin Hill and Adrianna Corral.
Curated by New York artists Jose Enrique Krapp and Cindy Krapp.
MOPA's inaugural exhibition.