SELECTED FOR THE SPRING EXHIBITION

The "Spring Exhibition" was founded in 1857 and is one of the most established Open Call exhibitions in Europe. So it is with great pleasure we announce that WOOLOO.ORG artist Anne Herzblut has been selected to participate in this year's show!

Former participants include Olafur Eliasson and Alvar Aalto among others.

WOOLOOPICK OF JANUARY

We are happy to announce Selena Marinello as the WoolooPick of January 2011! Selena got the majority of the public votes from WOOLOO.ORG users and visitors. She lives and works in San Diego, United States.

Wooloo spoke to Selena about her life and work.


- How would you describe your artistic practice?

Extremely messy, haphazard, and spontaneous. By the end of the art process I will have more medium covering myself than on the actual canvas, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I believe my art process to be something that is based mostly around the extreme self-criticism floating in my head as well, thus the eventual anarchy of my hands rebelling against all constraints and worries to create a master piece of messy dresses and leaving a “painty artist” in it’s wake.

- Can you give us an example of a work of yours that you are especially happy with?

Drawing the “Old Men” have been a bad habit of mine for a while and it’s an unfortunate happenstance that my father happened to draw something rather similar in his early 20s while away in the Peace Corps. I can’t really describe how I draw them, it’s like my hand wants to shit out a demon that’s been haunting my mind and these are the beings that it decides to create. I never end up drawing women, always men. I don’t ever really plan on drawing woman to be honest, it’s nothing against my own sex, I’m just tired of seeing naked women every where in art. Time for some penis.

- What inspires you to create your work?

Willpower to prove to myself that there is hope in the art world? I feel like there has been a lack of community within the realm of artists and it saddens me. I want to see a new “ism” I want to get contemporary art out of this temporary “contemporary” pluralism that it seems to be stuck in. I don’t know if I’m the right person to inspire a new revolution in art, but it’s high time this century of young artists made a mark in art history, and not just one based in technology. What that is...well I have no idea, but I feel like I’m getting close.

- Has the internet had an effect on your practice as an artist? And if yes, in what way?

I probably spend too much time hitting “random article” on Wikipedia.com and looking at more colleges to apply to more than worrying about how the internet will help me further my art career. However, this is probably what drives me the most: endless accessible knowledge that is constantly available. If I have ANY questions that randomly pop up in my head, Google will supply me with a variety of answers that I can choose from, depending on what I want to hear/read.

- How long have you been using WOOLOO.ORG and why do you find it useful?
-
I’ve been on WOOLOO.ORG for a couple months and the notifications for upcoming competitions or festivals has been really helpful in knowing what is out there, internationally. As mentioned before, I don’t think a new “ism” is going to be entirely based on technology, but I believe that technology and social networking will have a large part in a global movement. Art movements are no longer restrained to individual countries since the world is so intertwined with the amount of information available on the internet, thus making it easier for an international movement in the art world for young artists! Banish the idea of being individual with art and support the passion for art and creating aesthetic beauty globally.

- Do you have anything to add?

I’m extremely surprised and touched that I’ve won WoolooPick of the month and cannot express how entirely grateful I am to those that voted for me. My only hope for the art world is that it can once again be recognized as something that is federally important to each country and not seen as an “accessory” to education. I hope to inspire those that feel art, whatever form, is their true passion in life and that they pursue it without any regret.

WOOLOO ARTISTS PUBLISHED IN PARK MAGAZINE

This week we are excited to let you know that WOOLOO.ORG artists AnnaMaria Kardos, Gavin Martin Campbell, Christina Thwaites and Jarik Jongman have had their work selected for publishing in the great Portuguese PARK magazine.

Congratulations to all of you!

WOOLOO ARTISTS SELECTED FOR LOS ANGELES SHOW

We're happy to announce that artists Philip Dembinski and Juan Alberto Negroni will be participating in the exhibition DETROIT: A BROOKLYN CASE STUDY.

Philip and Juan were selected via an Open Call on WOOLOO.ORG and the show opens in LA on the 20th of January.
Check it out if you are in town!

FEATURING WOOLOOPICK OF NOVEMBER

This week we are featuring artist Alexander Razin

With the majority of public votes from both Wooloo members and visitors, Alexander recently became the WoolooPick of November
Alexander Razin was born in 1958 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In 1996, he emigrated to the United States with his family and settled in Long Island, New York.

Wooloo spoke to Alexander about his life and work.

Wooloo: How would you describe your artistic practice?

Alexander: As a post-modern conceptual artist, I always look for symbols to connect the content of my art with the contemporary world. I always utilize the principles of repetition, simplicity, imagination, and symbolism in my art.
As of late, I have received most joy when working on site-specific installations. This includes the ‘’Japanese Garden’’ (link) and ‘’Hanging Garden’’ (link) installations featured on Wooloo.org (linkto: www.wooloo.org), as well as the recently exhibited ‘’Urban Garden project. I particularly enjoy working in larges spaces which allow me to express my ideas through different mediums.

What inspires you to create your work?

Alexander: There are a number of factors which provide inspiration for my work that are also dependent on the project at hand. However, I receive most of my inspiration from the urban landscape and everyday life in New York.

We are glad to have you on Wooloo.org. Tell us a little about your use of the website?

I have been a member of Wooloo.org for approximately two years. The website serves as a great tool for interacting and sharing work with other artists around the world who may view things from a different perspective.
Also, often I take advantage of the artist opportunities posted on the website.
In general, the internet has certainly affected the way I practice art. Primarily as an informational tool which I can use a resource to develop ideas.

You write in your bio that you grew up in an “Art Village”. What is that? Can you tell us about growing up in one?

I spent the majority of my childhood with my grandfather who was also an artist. We lived in the former Soviet Union, in a specific part of the city was dedicated to artists.
The government provided studio space and housing and the only residents were artists, fine art professors and their families.
From the age of 6 I shared my grandfather’s studio where I was constantly surrounded by various artists. This type of upbringing inspired me to become the artist I am today.

FEETURING AGM CONVERSATION SERIES: “ON DIALOGUE”

During the upcoming Cairo Biennale, AGM will coordinate a recorded conversation between curators, artists and cultural producers.on the 16th December 2010. This one day session will focus on social and geo-political topics relevant to the Mediterranean region, opening up to some tactics for producers and audiences to employ via modes of aesthetic journalism, ficto-criticism and political fictions. Having recently interrogated the nature of collective production and collaboration as part of Chamber of Public Secrets’ contribution to Manifesta 8, AGM wishes to expand on this to address the term “dialogue”. If, as in the realm of cultural diplomacy, dialogue is to be understood as a reciprocal act and as a prelude to collaboration/cultural understanding, then the session asks: who sets the terms of dialogue, where is it enacted, how does it function and what are its inherent asymmetries? More specifically, we hope to delve into the realm of questioning the instrumentalisation of “dialogue” in contemporary art and institutional practices as well as on the geo-political scale. This session will be disseminated through attendee’s networks and on agmculture.org.

The AGM Conversation Series brings together, in different configurations and venues, artists, curators, thinkers and contributors variously involved in processes of "knowledge production" via art, media, research or other forms of critical engagement. Adopting AGM’s itinerant format, these sessions seek not only to assess the “state-of-play” at various moments in the lead up to the exhibition or research process in which they are involved at that time, but to continue discussions around thematic that are central to their approach and productions.

A significant feature of the Conversation Series is that they have taken place in semi formal settings, requiring no audience but a camera and an amassed group of participants. They sit somewhere between the formal setting of the commonly used artists talk /seminar format and the informal nature of social/networked conversations between arts practitioners and producers. The sessions provide an open forum for sharing and exchange with no underlying pretext but to consider the current state of affairs.

The edited versions of the AGM Conversation series are distributed online through open networked communities such as Facebook, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter and also on agmculture.org.

Participants

Khaled Ramadan (Lebanon, Finland & Denmark) Alfredo Cramerotti (Italy & UK) Hannah Conroy (UK) Yesomi Umolu (UK), Khaled Hafez (Egypt), Aida Eltorie (Egypt & USA), (Dermis Leon (Spain), Achilleas Kentonis (Cyprus) Patrizio Travagli (Italy) Giuseppe Moscatello (UAE), Alexandre Gurita (France), Michael Thoss (Germany), Heike Mertens (Germany)


Sponsors/Supporters

Allianz Stiftung
European Union House of Delegation Cairo-Egypt


ABOUT AGM CUTURE

AGM Culture is a curatorial project with some of the inbuilt features of a parasite. Each time, by changing partner, location, form and content, its primary focus is to explore the peculiarity of the hosting body – be it a site, an institution or a theme. Previously, AGM has explored new modes of knowledge production within art and the media in Austria, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.K. and in the Web space.



Image credit
Nottingham Contemporary, 15 July 2010
"On Translation"
"On Translation" saw the participation of Michael Takeo Magruder, Fay Nicolson, Nada Prlja, Alfredo Cramerotti, Yesomi Umolu, Hannah Conroy, Jeffery Baker

FEATURING NEW LIFE RESIDENCY

Last Saturday, November 6th, saw the last opening of the NEW LIFE RESIDENCY at the Manifesta 8 biennial for contemporary art in Murcia, Spain.

The final Wooloo New Life Resident artist was Gema Alava in collaboration with her blind partner Rocío González from Murcia. Gema is a native Spaniard and for her residency project, she developed verbal descriptions of artworks on view in Manifesta 8 for Rocío to “see”.

During the opening on Saturday, Gema's descriptions were then passed on to the visiting public by Rocío during one-to-one walks inside the physically empty and dark space. These intimate, guided tours worked very well and became a suitable finale to five consecutive weeks of extremely different and interesting residency collborations.

We would like to thank all the participating artists Helidon Gjergji, Clarinda Mac Low, Matthias Neumann, Pedro Guirao and Gema Alava, as well as their wonderful assistants Cristina Martínez Roldán, Maria Jesús Cascales, Patricia Carrillo, Maria Jesús Ballesta and Rocío González for taking part in making this experiment happen.

Also, a special thanks goes to Mikkel Rosengaard, Giovanni Saladino and the entire Manifesta 8 team for their professionalism, skill and hard work. Without your efforts, there would have been no NEW LIFE RESIDENC!

Lastly, we want to bring your attention to some of the things, that have so far been written about the project...

READ ART IN AMERICA'S ARTICLE or practice your German with MONOPOL'S REVIEW of Manifesta 8 and Wooloo.

And if you did not already read Artforum's interview, HERE IT IS AGAIN.

You can read more about the NEW LIFE RESIDENCY HERE.