Today the Front Room opened with work from Croatian-born artist Vlatka Horvat and London-based German artist Eva Weinmayer.

Horvat works in a range of media, from video and photography to works on paper, performance and text. Often at the center of her practice is an interest in sites of break-down, fragmentation, or collapse, and the possibilities for repair and renewal. In The Front Room, Horvat explores the effect of frames and systematic limitations placed on the body.

Invested in the behavior of written and spoken language is artist Eva Weinmayer, whose series of works based on newspaper headlines examine how complex realities are shrunk into sound bites. Drawn to the daily stream of information, she focuses on the narrow gap between fact and fiction, as well as notions of rumor.

Today The Front Room opened with Max Schumann, our newest featured artist. The exhibit consists of images taken primarily from commercials shown frequently during newscasts. Using images that are not his own, issues of appropriation and authorship a la Richard Prince become a latent part of the experience. He evokes a Madison Avenue advertising overload feel with the technique used. The similarity and the abstract loose paint application replicates the vortex of imagery bombarded at consumers today. All of Schumann’s images are low-priced for viewers to buy, eliciting selling movement in order to recreate the media’s constant flow and change. The images derived from the commercials depict familiar personal scenes to the viewer, bringing questions of where reality and entertainment meet and divide.

Schumann paints on cardboard canvases, rejecting the hierarchical material value resonant in the art world. He replaces his signature with a price, referring again to the commercialization of art. Some paintings include text, adding a new element to the work. The texts, written like the tagline of an advertisement, sometimes micheviously bring about a humorous underbelly. One thing becomes another as a phrase leads your mind to make new connections. Combining two unlike things fluidly leads into the main room exhibit. Juxtaposing Armleder and Mosset similarly transforms the works into something new.   

Phrases from a meeting about our upcoming exhibition: “it is boring when you go to a show and you are like, ‘oh I see what they are doing, looks good’ and then move on” “people will be confused” “the best shows begin when you leave…if you start thinking about your grocery list, the show isn’t good” “there is something there” “mash up” “commenting on something really important, but I’m not sure what it is” “pulling odd items from everyday life, but not telling you why” “engaging” “there is a certain level of pop culture appropriation, but…” “ignoring the acceptable rules” “bold to put that in an art museum at all…it’s a different move” “consistently doesn’t play along” “like a bite of something you can’t quite figure out what it is that you are tasting” “gothic, horror” “stairwells and basements” “animal-like” “quick edits” “add noise” “provoke anxiety” “sexploitation horror films”

The Contemporary offers a public program designed to introduce concepts in Contemporary art (including artists, movements, styles, and more). This summer we are offering two Contemporary Art 101 classes, one this evening and a second Thursday, July 10. Each centers on themes drawn from the current exhibition, John Armleder and Olivier Mosset. Tonight, Chief Curator Anthony Huberman will lead a discussion on abstract painting from the 1960s to the present.

Starting today, visitors of the Contemporary can view the graphic symbols of the Norwegian artist Gardar Eide Einarsson. Here, the artist presents an abstract vocabulary, which plays with the signs of outlaw subculture to reveal hard-edged rebellion and political hypocrisy.

With an increasing focus on the abuses perpetrated by power structures in American culture, Einarsson’s installations are often determined by outsider communities that challenge accepted ideals.

For The Front Room, Einarsson creates a site-specific installation of a chain link fence using spray paint and a single, re-used stencil. For more on The Front Room, please visit our website.

Check out these photographs of the John Armleder and Olivier Mosset exhibition…      

If you are interested in further information on the exhibition, visit our website.

Tomorrow evening the Contemporary will host Yawn Happy Hour, an opportunity to “unwind after work with an evening of art, music, and drinks at the Contemporary.” Events like these are always great because they allow community members to do something different. They can get drinks, listen to avant-garde music (performed by Yawn), browse through the museum and be social in a different, fun, art setting. Here is an article about Yawn Happy Hour in the River Front Times. You can also take a look at Yawn’s website.

 At the end of last told you about the high school exhibitions taking place at the Contemporary this summer, well the Annual High School Juried Exhibition that I mentioned is now up and ready for viewing. The opening was last Friday and attendance tripled from last year! Schools that have participating students include Whitfield School, Fox Senior High, Villa Duchesne/Oak Hill, Marquette High School, University City Senior High School, Clayton High School, Crossroads College Preparatory, and DeSmet Jesuit High School. Here are a few photographs of the work.

On view beginning today in The Front Room is Alex Hubbard and Oscar Tuazon.Check out further information on The Front Room and images of these two artists work by going to the Contemporary’s website. It is interesting to look for correlations between the two artists, which goes back to what I discussed earlier this month…the equation 1 + 1 = 3 (yes, we’re bad at math but good at art!)

Friday night the Contemporary participated in the Grand Gallery Walk. People walked (or took trolleys!) around the Grand Center Arts and Entertainment District, browsed through galleries, grabbed a bite to eat and took part in a “passport game.” If someone visited at least six of the institutions and got their passport stamped, they got to enter into a drawing for a raffle at the end of the evening. It was a perfect evening for walking around and looking at art.

Free Family Day was also this weekend…a great opportunity for families to engage in art activities together in a creative environment. From the look of the sidewalk this morning, the kids (and probably the adults) had a good time. The Contemporary offers a Free Family Day about three times a year, going along with each exhibition.