OPENING: MFA-wielding curatorial duo to screen latest “guerrilla intervention” at Heller Gallery Fri

Emma Hogarth, 3,600 Seconds, 2009. Multiple video feeds projected onto 9 cast-glass picture frames.

In 2008, two Rhode Island School of Design glass graduates, Yuka Otani (MFA, 2008) and Anjali Srinivasan (MFA, 2007) joined forces as a self-styled curatorial team. Branding themselves “yuka + anjali,” they set out to research, organize, and present the diversity of works being made by a new generation of artists (mostly recent art school grads) who bring a higher level of conceptual thinking and material investigation to their work in glass. This shift is seen by this youthful duo in grand, even revolutionary terms, and yuka + anjali use phrases such as “guerrilla glass” and “post-glass artists” to describe them (though what “post-glass” means exactly is never quite clear since glass remains central to much of the work). Their latest effort will be a curated screening of videos at New York City’s Heller Gallery on September 10th, from 6 – 8 PM, which is described in the event’s press release as exposing “specific relationships with glass – phenomenological, material, social and personal.”

The duo’s first major project was the provocative “How is This Glass?“ exhibition that ran concurrently with the 2009 Glass Art Society conference in Corning, New York. Though it was not funded by GAS, the exhibition used gallery space in the shops and offices along Corning’s Market Street to present a wide range of artwork that drew many conference attendees. With funding from the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes Region, the curators assembled works ranging from the macabre (a glass engraving being filled with blood drawn from the artist during a live performance), to the nausea-inducing (a video taken by a camera mounted to a blowpipe), to the sublime (an installation featuring two reflections that were beamed onto opposite sides of a single piece of fabric that displayed either a male or female figure depending on the viewer’s vantage point). Though the work was uneven, all 20 artists in the exhibition shared in the urge to take apart processes, be they glassmaking techniques or how visual perception functions.

Perhaps what “yuka + anjali” are after in their use of the “post-glass” term is a confrontation with the conservatism of the glass art world as it is defined by glass-centric galleries which continue to focus on Formalist objects presented as self-contained sculptures on a plinth while the wider art world has long since moved into performance, installation, and participatory events. In the “About Us” section of their blog, the two write that they are working toward “the exhibition and publication of guerrilla interventions.” While they may sense their project is a militaristic assault on outdated artistic values, the works they have chosen seem very much in line with contemporary artistic practices in mixed media.

A sign of the difficulty in finding common ground between all the diverse projects that they are bringing under the “post-glass” umbrella is evident from the exhibition announcement that lists diverse artistic efforts linked only by common media: “Working with the lens of a video camera, artists featured in the exhibition engage a wide gamut. They investigate an intimate relationship with glass, capture the poetic beauty of vulnerable moments using the metaphors of glass and implement performative acts that problematize (sic) a situation or provide insight. They explore social implications of transparency and reflectivity and create moments by unmaking objects.”

While there may be some further curatorial thinking to be done, “yuki + anjali” are providing a valuable service in their efforts to document, and frame the work of emerging artists engaging glass in entirely new ways. Their “How is This Glass?” blog project provides important documentation and insightful analysis of bold new visions in the material, and is well worth a visit for anyone despairing of innovation in the field.

In total, the video exhibition debuting tomorrow evening will include work by 19 artists: Alana Kakoyiannis, Alexandra Ben Abba, Andrea Oleniczak, Andrew Salgado, Armel Houstiou, Arun Sharma, Betsy Dadd, Brett Swenson, Charlotte Potter, Emer Lynch, Emma Hogarth, Giuseppe di Bella, Kevin Kay, Kimberly McKinnis, Matthew MacKisack, Netta Bacon, Rui Sasaki, Sarah Rose Allen, and Ted Sonnenschein.

The curators will be in attendance during the opening reception from 6 – 8 PM.

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