Show #41:
UTOPIA PLANITIA
Curated by: Kylin O’Brien
Featuring: Best Praxis, Bon Jane, Aimee Cavazzi, Jennifer Coates, Cara Cragan, Carmen Delaney, Corey Escoto, Clarity Haynes, David Humphrey, Jason Clay Lewis, LoVid, Carolanne Patterson & Jonathan Schipper
Opening: Thursday, May 11, 6-8 pm
Dates: May 11-June 14, 2017
Field Projects is pleased to present UTOPIA PLANITIA, curated by Kylin O'Brien. Named after an impact crater on Mars, the show puts to the test a deep exploration of value systems and an inversion of the art market pyramid. Each embracing their own value-destiny, Utopia Planitia’s 13 artists have created 13 unique structures dictating the terms for the sale of their work. Seeking exchange systems beyond the monetization of their work, the artists have been free to include money in their arrangements, but only to tease out greater values. The result of this experiment, along with the 13 diverse works of art in the show, is a revelation of personal, social, and political potential. Utopia Planitia presents creative engagement as a catalyst for economic evolution and a conversation about our collective futures. More than anything, the show exposes the fluidity of value.
In the exhibition there are paintings, works on paper, sculpture, video and performances. Each artist’s work is available with its own agenda. David Humphrey offers his painting to a collector committed to beginning a cascading downfall of capitalism. Bon Jane invites participation in a ritual aimed at transforming transactions, forever. Clarity Haynes candidly proposes a straight-up barter. Jonathan Schipper presents an audacious contract for someone to sign. The variety in the show speaks as much to the human experience of value as the commonalities speak to our shared existence.
Kylin O'Brien is a New York City born, Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist. She holds degrees in Philosophy from Vassar College and in Contemporary Creative Practice from Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK. Kylin has participated in numerous group exhibitions and has enjoyed solo exhibitions at Feature INC Gallery in New York and Open Source Gallery in Brooklyn. She has been a Brooklyn Arts Council, Awesome Foundation and Pro Arts award winner. Kylin’s art utilizes both current media and ancient concepts to contemporize enduring themes. She has created commissioned public work during Art Basel Miami and has had public work on display in Wynwood Miami, Brooklyn and West Oakland. In addition to both studio and consulting work, she is currently conducting multiple collaborations, presentations and workshops.
Best Praxis | talbeery@gmail.com
The Reading Residency, 2017
Value: Survival
Currency: Intimacy
Like so much else, our financial system is an illusion, sustained through repetition and “real” only in the way things, when they are repeated like a mantra or incantation, are willed into being against all odds and evidence. Most of us are convinced value comes from money and money comes from jobs. Our efforts at work feel real and money feels real. It is a foundational belief, inextricably interwoven into how most of us survive. But there is nothing essential about this civilization, nothing particularly “true”. We are not living in a culmination of some linear process destined to bring humanity toward a dramatic apocalypse or utopia. Living is ongoing and tangled. We survive within an unstable system. As things around us change, die, and contort, we do as we have always done: observe, adapt, survive, and create. How do we adapt, if not together? What do we survive for, if not each other? We are at an edge, at the precipice of something new. In times like these, strengthening our capacity for togetherness, for sharing intimacies, is a matter of survival. For this exhibition we are offering our work, The Reading Residency. It is an observational practice and an exercise in ways of knowing a stranger. If you want to participate you must invite us into your home to read 7 to 10 of the most important books you own - books that somehow define you developmentally. We will spend the day reading and in the meantime, shower in your shower, cook in your kitchen, lounge around and nap wherever comfortable. In this process, the public and private will be quietly inverted. We will become familiar with the intimate spaces you have shaped and that shape you daily. What will result is a stronger network, new relationships, and a photographic portrait we will produce of ourselves inhabiting your space - an image, possibly, of another as yourself. For your generosity, for your sharing, you will also receive two archival inkjet prints documenting the experience. Images which may, we hope, reveal something new to you. Something you have never seen before about yourself.
Jennifer Coates | doodlebug666@aol.com
Geode for Sale, 2015, Acrylic on canvas, 40” x 30”
Value: Love
Currency: Trust
A gift economy, gift culture, or gift exchange is a mode of exchange where valuables are not traded or sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. I want my painting to go to someone in honor of two beautiful incredible young women. They do not know each other but they are both paralyzed from car accidents that killed family members. They have inspired me deeply and will inspire you. You can contact me and I will tell you about them. I don’t need to know exactly how or when they will be honored, beyond my gifting of this artwork, to promise you my painting. I will have given it without explicits, without specifics - as to objects to move or time to keep. I will have given it, in trust. Dear potential trustee of my friends’ honoring… Why you?
Corey Escoto | entposvib@aol.com
Vertical nightlight arrangement #1 (artist conk mushrooms), 2017, Cast resin, led lights, plug molding, 48" x 5" x 5"
Nightlight arrangement #4 (terrible parable) 2017
Cast resin, led lights, plug molding, 45" x 62" x 4"
Value: Community
Currency: Access
Money is like language. In the same way that words and their meanings change over time, so does perceived value with respect to the exchange of goods and services. What kind of factors go into creating an argument for valuing one thing or service? Where basic needs are barely met, the necessities of food, fire, water, shelter are of high value. In our first-world reality (this art creator/consumer's context), these needs are taken as a given by most. Here, the need discussion begins on Maslow's third level of need - the level of love and belonging. Or if not there then maybe the a new proposed strata of "premium physiological desire". Our economy is divorced from an understanding of the object, and any sense of “true” or necessary value. At this point our focus is more on how the good or service is marketed - the experience and the narrative associated with the product. The product is a reflection of a lifestyle and identity, a “branding” that consumers buy into. I'd like to think that art somehow lies outside of that, but I’m not so sure if or how much it does. What does one buy when they become a collector of art - a status symbol, a perceived sophistication or individuality, a rare luxury good, an investment with profit potential? Perhaps an art buyer also buys access to a community of creative producers and enthusiasts. Do you need money to access a creative community? I hope not. In the unique and extremely difficult to sustain business model of the traditional commercial art gallery, access to art is free and openings for public reception of the work is free. There are no financial barriers to have the opportunity to be impacted by art or to interact with a creative community. In this I see value and hope. Hope that more and more, especially in these darkening days, the bonds created around the dialogue and viewing of art will give rise to collective actions and a sustained recognition of their need and power - as perhaps the most valuable thing right now for the survival of our society. For this exhibition I am offering my artwork to a person who is doing and connecting, working to create impactful, warm, community and action(s). I am offering my artwork to a person who has and can share compelling access. Let me know what you’re up to.
Jason Clay Lewis | jason@jasonclaylewis.com
Clockwise from left, Hephaestus, Shell Shocked, Tempest, Sugar Coated, 2016
Oil, acrylic on canvas, 14” x 11” each
Value: Experience
Currency: Awe
We all want to be inspired, if only for a moment. These experiences make us who we are. The moments in my artistic life that have been the most powerful:
Living in a castle in Prague
Visiting temple ruins in the jungles of Cambodia
Meeting Jasper Johns on my first day in New York
Being unexpectedly kissed by Robert Rauschenberg
Spending the day with Jim Rosenquist after he had just come back from Moscow
Having frozen dinner with Jeff Koons, made by Cicciolina
Cooking all day for Merce Cunningham and John Cage
Talking with Michael Crichton about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro
Viewing my first Monet painting of a bridge over water lilies when I was young
I am offering my work in this exhibition to the person who can provide me an unforgettable experience. I would like to be transported for a day into an experience that is nothing less than awe-inspiring. “A Perfect Day” - an unexpected experience I will remember forever - a day that lingers outside of time, an immeasurable value.
Jonathan Schipper | generalmotion@gmail.com
Object of Cultural Significance (detail) 2017, Legal Document, 24” x 18”
Value: Reinvention
Currency: Freedom
As an artist, I live for moments of clarity when all preconceived meaning is lost and there is nothing but the raw data of the world surrounding me. Where for a moment I do not know what a chair is and I must reexamine the object to find new meaning and structure on my own from the raw data. It is then my occupation, as a professional artist, to bring this new idea back to society for evaluation and possible inclusion into the existing lexicon. This is in complete contrast to money and the structure of society. Money sits on the shaky foundation of a group hypnosis that the paper in our pockets or numbers in our bank accounts equal time. That each person can possess time and exchange it for things or other people’s time. Society as we know it would not work without a shared meaning, language, economy. But it also would not work without constant reinvention. A rigid society will be consumed by flexible ones. If all definitions could not be mutated by artists, they would slowly fall out sync with the universe and become meaningless. Society needs the artist for change… but not too much. Art is a constant threat to society and shared meaning, but without the artist to make new and vibrant connections society risks losing its power. In our art world, the power of big money throttles and controls the artist by buying and consuming art that does not threaten the current schema too much, but just enough to keep their systems vibrant and flexible. These throttles, gateways, are called galleries and they are an interface between the artist who wants to live in the chaos and the collector who wants to solidify our group illusion. They both enable and hinder. Without them the artist can be hard-pressed to find support, but they also act to limit the artist to making things that are not too difficult for society to consume. For this exhibition I am inviting an exchange that affords me total creative freedom. A promise, with no strings attached as to “consumability” or direction, to sponsor my next project no matter how long it takes, how much it costs or what it is. If you can provide me this freedom, you will be contributing to my work as an artist, uniquely, radically. Whatever the outcome, it will be yours.
Bon Jane | lebonjane@gmail.com
Coyote Sun Cult, 2017, Archival Giclée Print, 24" x 36”
Value: Connection
Currency: Inspiration
In the summers of my childhood I would visit my cousins at an ashram in Upstate New York. The air was sweet with incense and chanting and a warm silence wrapped itself around every activity. I learned about actions taking on significance. Walking in silence, removing my shoes… Their guru was visiting from India and I waited my turn to kneel before her and be blessed. I was influenced by the sacredness of her attention and the connection I felt to everything unseen in that moment. The dramatic divide between human society and the natural world - Earth and all living creation - is to me the most disconcerting aspect of our current economic establishment. Our systems of exchange have lost their connection with spirit and nature and humanity’s relationship to the environment and all living creatures (plants and animals) has become violent. We have a system which is unsustainable, unconscious, and requires more and more destruction to maintain. As an artist, I wish to bring attention to our hearts, our spirit, and our planet, beyond monetary compensation, artistic recognition, or conceptual form within the art world. I am a creator of shock waves and consciousness and want to exchange compassionate understanding with the viewer. I want nothing less than a radical heart opening and shift in perspective on our systems of exchange. In my work I want to move the spirit and the unseen. For this exhibition I am creating a sacred ceremony. Participants will be invited to enter a Holy Circle and bless and be blessed by farm animals. Utilizing touch and ritual, a vow of increased consciousness in relationship with all living things will be established. Ribbons will ceremoniously be tied to wrists, a reminder to what occurs in the heart and ripples towards change and more connected living. I will infuse the silent love of spirit into this exchange, to awaken, to remind, and to encourage this consciousness to enter all exchanges, all transactions, from that day forward. I am offering this work: its witnessing, its experience, and its sacredness to anyone who can manifest with me a miracle - a transformative transaction in which the heart is opened and the mind and spirit transformed.
Cara Cragan | cara@dollhousecollective.com
Offspring, 2017, Resin and brass, 36” x 36” x 36”
Value: Legacy
Currency: Storytelling
The gift of my story.
I have been a Designer for Frank Gehry in Los Angeles, invited by him to work together. I have been the Director of Architectural Projects at the Guggenheim, working with Tom Krens (Former Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation), Richard Armstrong (Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation) and Juan Ignacio Vidarte (Director of Guggenheim Bilbao). I have been a Studio Leader for David Rockwell in New York City. I have a Master’s degree in architecture from Yale. I am an artist. And I am making art again. At 41, after working for incredible iconic men, I was diagnosed with uterine - or womb - cancer. My uterus and ovaries were removed and the cancer eliminated. A brush with death triggered a reassessment of my life and the role of creation within it, as a woman, an architect and an artist. Losing my womb made me rethink my value system and the value systems of others. Zaha Hadid was my last mentor at Yale - a lifetime ago. She was fierce and proud, beautiful and challenging, dynamically carving and painting a world I wanted to inhabit. Like her, I started as a female artist. What comes around goes around. Twenty years of building and I am making art again, as well as starting my own design firm, Dollhouse. Childless, I am driven to create, to leave a different kind of legacy, to tell my story. I’m stepping out of the shadows of others, into my own bright light. My work in this exhibition is offered in exchange for a lifestyle article featuring me and my practice in a beautiful publication with wide circulation (ie: New York Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Art Forum). Share your light with me, with mine.
Legacy. Largess.
Clarity Haynes | clarityhaynes@gmail.com
Ria, 2010, pastel on paper, 19" x 25"
Value: Fairness
Currency: Equality
My large oil paintings are a body of work that I think of as one piece. Someday I would like them to be acquired together, preferably by a museum. While women artists’ work is undervalued and artists in general are often expected to work for free, I’m glad I like to teach, because that is the main way I make money. And money is a necessity - especially amidst so much invisible labor. In these large paintings, the torsos depicted are larger than life. They are part of The Breast Portrait Project, which began in queer feminist communities in the late nineties and has engaged more than 500 sitters/participants. People have posed for me for all kinds of reasons, involving healing from past traumas, recovering from illness, exploring gender identity, and celebrating self-acceptance. Over the years, I have also often done life-sized torso portraits on a sliding scale for money. These portraits only take a few hours, and I always document the sitting by having models write something about their story, and their experience of posing. Because I consider this work a service and an exchange, I’ve never turned anyone away for lack of funds. But for the large paintings, I need more time. I need a commitment. The expense of paying models often slows my process down. I do portraits of cis & trans women, trans men, and gender nonconforming folks. I love tattoos, birthmarks, wrinkles, scars, and other characteristics that make each person unique. If your body and temperament are a good fit for a trade, I can always use viable models who can commit to sit for a large long-term painting. In exchange I am offering the pastel drawing in this exhibition. In this one way, for this time, we can empower each other and be a bit more free of a system which so often, in so many ways, oppresses us. A barter - a truly equal barter - is exciting. Money is transformed, made manifest, into a different, but still real and vital state. It feels like operating outside of the system. An unfair system it feels good to get out of, if only for a moment.
LoVid | lovidlovid@gmail.com
Pele’s Umbilicus, 2011, Video composed with analog-synthesizer
Value: Discernment
Currency: Responsibility
Market Issues:
Problem: Poorly treated and underpaid workers
Problem: Corrupt government and business relations
Problem: Lack of stewardship of socially responsible products and businesses
Problem: Unfair distribution of proceeds and profit
Problem: Lack of small business sustainability
Problem: Exploitative product sources and manufacturing
People need easier access to responsible shopping, without the burden of sifting through and avoiding all the above problems by themselves every time they make a purchase. They need pragmatic and creative shopping solutions to get quick and easy information and access. They need tools to help them easily choose businesses and products they can support with their dollars and a clean conscience. Responsible businesses and products need better circulation and promotion. To this end, we are offering our work in this exhibition to someone who can assist us in the creation of a website to encourage shopping at socially responsible (#grabyourwallet approved) businesses.
Field Projects Gallery
Value: Artists
Currency: Relationship
Field Projects is an artist-run space that promotes mid-career, emerging, and underrepresented artists. Particularly during this challenging political climate, we support meaningful exchanges promoting mindfulness and inclusivity. To encourage transparency we publish the gender and ethnic identity statistics of our exhibitions, keeping us aware of our role in breaking or reinforcing representation gaps in the art world. We host open calls for artists and curators to create opportunities for others to use our space for radical ideas. We support experimental shows, like Utopia Planitia, to encourage more dialogue, exchange and critical thinking. Field Projects is committed to developing ongoing positive relationships within our art community. For Utopia Planitia, we are interested to see if an alternative value system can encourage positive interactions that not only benefit the artists, collectors, and curator involved in the show, but also serve as a way to give back to the gallery. For this exhibition we are proposing the artists, collectors, and gallery make a meaningful exchange of mindful community support and promotion beyond this one show. We suggest the artists in Utopia Planitia and the people who are lucky enough to participate in an exchange for their artwork make a unique effort with Field Projects in mind.
We suggest you can support Field Projects and honor our contribution by:
*Help promote the open call opportunities at Field Projects
*Posting about past and future shows on social media
*Sharing our mission of promoting mid-career, emerging, and underrepresented artists
*Regularly attending our openings
*Using social media to follow Field Projects and share images of our exhibitions
*Bringing friends, art writers, or collectors to the gallery
Aimee Cavazzi | aimee.cavazzi@gmail.com
Mercurial Dream, 2015, Silver leaf on Canvas, 70” x 50”
Value: Service
Currency: Support
I have two kids, an ex-husband that doesn’t work and a three hour daily commute to a NYC public high school in the Bronx - where I teach other people how to be creative. I love my *jobs as an *art teacher, a *provider, a *homemaker, an *artist and a *mother. It’s truly an honor and privilege to raise and support wonderful people and to witness the creative process day in and day out as I've done for ten years. Yet, my own creative process is very last on the list. My housework and full time job doesn’t leave enough time for my own creative work. Weekends are spent regrouping and recharging from a chaotic week. My “free” time is spent cleaning and organizing my little material plot on this planet. What I need is support for myself. I need help with the domestic rubble I dig my family out of every weekend (laundry, cleaning, dishes) in order to be a decent parent and to provide a basic home. Why doesn’t this seem to happen to dads so much? Women are allowed to give up more? Women are willing to give up more? Women are willing to give up less? I have been unwilling to compromise my roles as a homemaker and provider (as a responsible parent) to “indulge” my career of choice, being an artist. I am offering the painting in this exhibition in exchange for bi-weekly house cleaning vouchers from a local service, for one year. If someone just gave me money it would go to other financial needs. Having a house cleaner will allow me to do my creative work, without compromising basic household chores. The payoff to me and my creative process will be of tremendous value. Its ripple effect profitable in every area of my life. Much more so than just some extra cash.
Carmen Delaney | carmenmariedelaney@gmail.com
Petrify, 2015, woven bamboo, clay, quartz, limestone, acrylic polymer, 42" x 15" x 6”
Value: Quality
Currency: Attention
The 2016 presidential election was an unwelcome shock to many Americans. We awoke to the sad but true reality that a new form of currency rules our country. We live in an economy of attention. We live in a country where truth and facts have little bearing on success and the loudest man in the room, the one garnering the most attention, is the voice that is heard and heeded. Politicians, celebrities, corporations, all now benefit more from human attention than from economic transactions. Monetary gains are a byproduct of mass impression. This, in my opinion, is how the 45th President of the United States of America was elected. This is not only true for politicians, celebrities and the like, this is true for everyone living in this society. The signal to noise ratio is so off balance. Facebook posts are either buried or boosted according to algorithms. Followers and subscribers are bought, views are monetized, and basic, quick, consumable content thrives. For most artists this is a difficult pill to swallow. I have personally seen many talented artists’ careers wane when not ‘fully embracing’ the tools of social media and the internet to garner mass attention. This new economy of attention and impression is not based on quality, but on quantity. The higher the numbers the better. Forget about meaningful interaction and quality feedback. The focus lies entirely on sensation. I believe that one single unintentional and un-targeted impression can have a greater impact than mass exposure. My work in this exhibition is offered to the person who shows me how their single impression of my work can have a profound impact on my life as an artist.
David Humphrey | aikenhump@aol.com
Handstand, 2016, Acrylic on canvas
22” x 30”
Value: Power
Currency: Counterpole
The contingency of elections folds into history to produce a vertiginous and imprisoning nausea. Contingency is infinitely scalable and this one is sized to hurt and diminish. The “what if” that can be played out on the surface of a canvas looks like a confession of weakness in the face of hard power. Contingency, for artists, is highlighted by our feeble efforts to overcome it - by the making of coherent forms, solid structures and the control of materials. The value of accumulation, the ubiquity of the commodity form, the religion of monetization in the digital age, are sickening. Making art can address this feeling if not the material conditions that caused it. We return again to consciousness and language as the locus of our power. My anarchist instincts lead me to propose an inverted pyramid scheme for this exhibition. Anyone can have my work, but they have to promise to give away two things that they value with the condition that each recipient promises the same. That’s it; not quite a potlatch but a scheme committed to the production of loss. In principle this will cascade into an ever-widening give-away, eventually feeding back upon itself and destroying capitalism.
Carolanne Patterson | carolannepatterson@gmail.com
Blue, 2016, California pine cone, spray paint, motor, steel, foot pedal, 10" x 8"
Value: Optimization
Currency: Generosity
Nomadic Pinecone. As a seed, this work must pollinate and move around. Possession coupled with generosity will increase its value. If you want this piece, you must be willing to give it away for five years (or longer). Eventually you will get it back. A commitment to this agreement, along with a travel diary of its whereabouts is required. This work must travel each year to a new home, for five years. The first year it lives with you, then you will find it a second temporary home. That person then does the same. You do not need to know the other participants. After five years it will come back to you. You can choose to keep it moving or have it for yourself permanently after this journey. Documentation of the pinecone's excursion, a simple travel diary, is a way for you (and me) to learn about the people and places that will have the piece for the years it is not in your possession. This is an experiment in movement and the unlikely concept of increasing value by sharing - in this case artwork, usually a very subjective personal purchase. By working together, many people will participate in the experiment of this value exchange. The pinecone's performance in each of its residences fulfills the value of its movement, since it has to be activated by a human to turn the motor, to stay in motion. Increasing human involvement in the realization of this exchange is what interests me most.
Kylin O’Brien | studiokylinobrien@gmail.com
Value: Evolution
Currency: Possibility
The exploration of alternative economics is not, for me, about a disdain for capitalism or money. I don’t believe money is the root of all evil. I do believe humanity is currently wandering, misguided, in the distance between goods and services, needs and wants - a distance money both covers and creates. We have a tenuous indirect connection with value. Value systems are less about what is and what works. They tend to be moralities, mental constructs, narratives seeped in created, advertised, personal and cultural meaning, removed from functionality often to the point of being quite glaringly dysfunctional. People conflate ideas about what “matters” with truth. Ideas that have usually been created for those in power to keep them in power. For most of us it doesn’t work socially or environmentally to relate to each other and our world in this way. Not as belief systems collide on an ever-shrinking planet. Not as media-fueled consumerism is exposed for what it really is, a dog chasing its tail. The artists in this exhibition were asked to create structures for exchange that would be of equal or greater value than a simple monetization of their transactions. They have been free to include money in their exchange systems, just asked to use it creatively to tease out the greatest value. My work explores enduring human themes and it has been my hope that with this show we might uncover a profound reveal - an ancient weave of threads running through all our concerns, lives and commitments. What we have uncovered are themes and uniquely personal moments. A recipe for a recognition of infinite variety, possibility and shared experience. The artist’s brain is wired to innovate solutions. The creative path, the “alternative” occupation, is ever a puzzle to be solved. Who better to explore avenues of possibility, to help fuel our appetites for social and economic evolution, than the creative class? This is what artists do anyway. I have just asked them to do it for Utopia Planitia, explicitly.
