TO VIEW EXHIBITION IMAGES, PLEASE VISIT THE FOLLOWING SITES:

http://tedgdecker.com  (Click on Independent Curator tab)

http://modifiedarts.org

Ted G Decker Facebook page (photo album with exhibition title)


EXHIBITION TEXTS BY TED G. DECKER AND JUSTIN P. GERMAIN:

Intersecting Paths, Blurring Lines

Converging Trajectories: Crossing Borders, Building Bridges is an invitational group exhibition of works by 42 artists I have encountered through travel and ongoing research. Each is on a personal trajectory in pursuing a career as a visual artist. My own trajectory of reinvention began three years ago as I transitioned into starting and building my art consulting enterprise. Through me there is an intersection of paths that marks a moment in our histories. With their participation in this exhibit, the artists become connected with one another and with viewers from the Phoenix area and elsewhere who visit Modified Arts during the exhibition. Most of the artists are from Arizona and Brazil with others from Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, Charlotte, Chicago, Mexico City, and San Francisco. The vast majority of the artists started producing work during the past 10-15 years in times of rapid technological advancement, increasing globalization albeit polarization, and the end and beginning of centuries and millennia. Of the 42 artists in the exhibition, 21 are currently based in Brazil making this the most ambitious showing of contemporary art from Brazil in Phoenix and the Southwestern United States.

With rapid-fire changes, and especially with the rampant development and use of technology, social networks, and cheaper air travel, our own worlds continue to both expand and contract exponentially. More than ever before, we are able to recognize that the people of Earth strive for similar things in life and share dreams for the future. Artists made the works in this exhibition in response to personal, social, political, and economic issues of the human condition thereby blurring mapped nationalistic and cultural boundaries.

The art and exhibition concept are more relevant than ever in Arizona and the United States through the lenses of globalization, shifting populations, economic volatility, and human rights and dignity. The artworks are as diverse in content as in the origins and experiences of the artists who made them. Unbelievably, it is still easier for art to cross lines drawn on political maps than it is for many of the art makers to obtain visas for travel to Phoenix for the exhibition opening. This is especially true for artists living in the Americas south of us.

A major goal for this exhibit is to provide Arizona viewers with fresh and vital art for multi-faceted viewing, interpretation, and enjoyment during seemingly endless, hot summer days and vituperative political and social debates. Another is to provide opportunities for the artists in the exhibition and in our community to see their work in a broader context and different arena than they may have previously.   

I am assembling the art, bringing it to Phoenix, and providing opportunities for people to connect with art and artists, many of whom are showing their work in the United States for the first time. Information about the exhibition is being broadcast from Phoenix to people around the world through the use of technology, thereby making it possible to be interconnected across political, language, social, and cultural borders.

Building bridges through lively discussions of themes relating to art and culture, rather than subjects like politics and religion, allows us to establish common ground for understanding others and improving our lives and those of others in our community and beyond. This exhibition requests viewer response to and reflection about the art and offers interconnection and understanding between people while abating fear of the other or the unknown.

Ted G. Decker

August 2010

This exhibition is made possible by support from Kim Larkin and Adam Murray/Modified Arts and Ted Decker Catalyst Fund.* In-kind support was provided by Chico Fernandes (Rio de Janeiro), Bill Fielder/Bill’s Custom Frames, Joe Jankovsky, Lisa MacCollum/Lisa Mac Studio, Paul Jacques, and to Verónica Villanueva and Brent Bond.

Special thanks to each of the participating artists, Justin P. Germain, those who made the journey to Phoenix for the opening, Valber Silva, (Niterói, Brazil), and to the following galleries for their support: in Recife, Galeria Mariana Moura; in Rio de Janeiro, A Gentil Carioca, Amarelonegro Arte Contemporânea, Anita Schwartz Galeria de Arte, Galeria Artur Fidalgo, and Laura Marsiaj Arte Contemporânea; and in São Paulo, Novembro Arte Contemporânea and Zipper Galeria.

 *The Ted Decker Catalyst Fund is affiliated with MARS, Inc., a private, not-for-profit 501(c)3 educational organization committed to arts advocacy and education through its programming. Donations are encouraged and graciously accepted.

Toward a New Community: Uniting Separate Paths

 

We all follow our own path and, by design of fate or coincidence, individual paths cross those of others.  Converging Trajectories: Crossing Borders, Building Bridges is one of those intersections.  The show brings together diverse examples of contemporary art without a predisposed thematic element—seemingly the only link between the artists is the curator.  But the exhibition is not only a tool to organize and build interest in contemporary art.  It serves as a framework to construct a community in which the cultures of the curator, the artists, and the viewers are brought together to re-code assumptions about group identity.  The artists are forever connected through the exhibition.  The viewer engages with the art and therefore with the artist.  Thoughts and ideas create a dialogue.  Inferences are made.  Connections become clear.  The experience of the exhibition unifies and defines the constructed community.

Each of the works serves as a window into the artist’s complex relationship with our world.  They have constructed their visual language from personal experiences derived from views both unique and shared.  They each interpret existential and cultural anxiety, clash and engagement between cultures, socio-economic realities within communities, cultural integrity, and self-affirmation.  But they all express personal views unique to the people they represent.  The act of bringing together various people hints towards a human community, not by promoting a universal concept of culture, but instead by celebrating diversity.

Because it is unrealistic to define contemporary art with any degree of finality Converging Trajectories serves as a glimpse into test cases of evocative global art.  These instances of originality and experimentation intersect in the exhibition, and from within the interstices between cultures, a complex community develops and further shrinks our world by breaking down liminal boundaries.

 

Justin P. Germain

August 2010

 

  

   

 

      

 


  



 

       

  

Don't miss a conversation with Sergio Allevato in a video which is part of the Catalyst Artist Video Project, an ongoing series of video conversations with artists.

Work by Sergio Allevato can be enjoyed in the exhibition Converging Trajectories - Crossing Borders, Building Bridges curated by Ted G. Decker. The exhibition opens at Modified Arts (http://modifiedarts.org) in Downtown Phoenix, Arizona on Friday, August 20th, 2010.  

Sergio Allevato

 

August 5^th – September 4^th, 2010

Artur Fidalgo Gallery, Rio de Janeiro

 

At first glance Sergio Allevato´s expertly rendered watercolor paintings look as if they are illustrating flora, like Margaret Mee’s traditional botanical art. However, upon closer examination, the observer discovers mimicry in parts of the anatomy of the plants, characters of Disney, Hanna Barbera and others that delight and inhabit the imagination of children. The characteristic ears of Mickey become a part of Magnolia seeds; the trunk of the Dasylirion take the form of the profile of Speedy Gonzales´ face; the fruit of the ginko biloba plant endemic to Japan is Hello Kitty´s head.

 

In the series “Botanic Atlas” the most famous cartoons of each country – among them Mortadelo, Spain; Mickey Mouse, United States; Speedy Gonzales, Mexico – appear in plants endemic to those places.  Allevato proposes a game that involves extensive research of botany and the nationality and cultural territory of the characters in animated drawings. For example, in the series “Rio de Janeiro” the pistils of a bromeliad native to that region, the Alcantarea imperialis, become Zé Carioca, his girlfriend Rosinha and his nephews which were cartoon characters created by Disney to represent the cariocas, people who were born in Rio de Janeiro.

 

The viewer sport of closer examination soon reveals that the cartoon character forms an integral part of the plants’ reproductive organs thereby revealing multi-faceted layers for interpretation of Allevato’s paintings. The viewer recognizes a sexually aroused Pinocchio as the androceu of an amaryllis. Both the drawing that scientifically describes the botanical species and the cartoon character are displaced. They remit respectively the control of nature and the purity of childhood. The image has an ironic smile in the corner of the lips.

 

What is the meaning of an asexual Disney character appearing in the sexual organ of a plant? Why do cultural and natural elements dispute a territory? The unexpected mixture of disparate fields leaves the voyeuristic observer distrustful as if he/she is facing something malicious in which things such as infancy, nature and culture are not as they seem.

 

Sergio Allevato’s work is included in the permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro; Museum of Modern Art, Bahia; American Museum of Natural History, New York; Smithsonian Museum, Washington, D.C.; and others, and in a growing number of international private collections. He was selected to participate in a residency at Kew Gardens, London after winning the Margaret Mee Prize, and was chosen to be an artist-in-residence for nine months at the Arizona-Sonoran Desert Museum, Tucson. He received the Acquisition Prize in the 14th Art Exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia in 2007. In 2008, he earned a Master in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College, UK. Allevato currently lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

 

-Text by Fernando Gerheim, Art Critic and PhD in Comparative Literature (with additional text by Ted G. Decker)

 

 

 

 

 

Artur Fidalgo Gallery

Rua Siqueira Campos, 143 loja 147 a 150, 2nd floor

Copacabana – Rio de Janeiro – RJ, Brazil, 22.031-900

 

Gallery hours:

Monday to Friday – 10am to 7pm, Saturday – 10am to 2pm and by appointment

For further information please contact us at 55 21 2549-6278 or contato@arturfidalgo.com.br and visit our website at www.arturfidalgo.com.br

Video conversation with Sergio Allevato, May 2010
A casual conversation with Rio de Janeiro-based artist Sergio Allevato in May, 2010. Gain insight into the ideas, art making process, and an get an exclusive glimpse at this amazing artist.
Produced by Ted Decker for Catalyst Artist Video Project. Film editing by Chico Fernandes.


 

   

When the Water Came:
Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina

 

 

Interview-poems by Cynthia Hogue. Photographs by Rebecca Ross

 

 

 

 

Published by University of New Orleans Press, August 2010

When the Water Came: Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina is a compelling collection of interview-poems by Cynthia Hogue and photographs by Rebecca Ross that portrays the experiences of twelve evacuees. These evacuees include ordinary people from all walks of life–people like Freddie Munn, a disabled man who built a raft of doors, then swam to safety after his raft capsized, spending the next week on a bridge before being rescued, and Ardie Cooper, a casino bartender, who clung with her daughter to the roof of their home while being inundated by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. When the Water Came gives form and voice to the resourcefulness of individual evacuees expressed through their own words and in the photographs of faces, rescued possessions, and lost homes. Through images and words, these survivors tell us about courage, dignity, and resilience.

A number of events are planned in conjunction with publication of the book, including an exhibition coordinated by Scottsdale Public Art as well as an exhibit and signing at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe. Your purchase or donation at the $375 level or above ensures your name listed in the acknowledgments at each venue.

When the Water Came: Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina

 

 

 

 

Pre-Publication Order Form for Signed Books and Limited-Edition Photographs

 

 

 

 

Pre-publication prices offered through July 31, 2010. Estimated order shipment date: August 31, 2010.

 

 

____Signed book, $25 (while author supplies last)

____Signed book / one 8”x8” photograph, $150 (after July 31, $200)

Acknowledgement at exhibition venues included with the following:

____Signed book / one 13”x13” photograph / acknowledgment, $375 (after July 31, $500)

____Signed book / five 8”x8” photographs / acknowledgment, $550 (after July 31, $750)

____Signed book / nine 8”x8” photographs / acknowledgment, $950 (after July 31, $1,250)

Please indicate your image selection(s):

 

 

____Emily’s studio floor ____Kid Merv ____Claiborne Avenue Bridge

 

 

 ____Ardie’s box of photographs ____Freddie’s house, 2009 ____Richard

____Jim’s jade figurine ____Catherine’s front porch ____Untitled, New Orleans, LA

 

 

____I wish to support presentations of this project with a donation of $______ 

 

 

Donations to the Ted Decker Catalyst Fund may be tax deductible. Please check with your tax advisor.

 

 

NAME:____________________________________________ PHONE:________________________

 

 

ADDRESS:_________________________________________________________________________

CITY:_____________________________________ STATE:________________ ZIP:_____________

E-MAIL:___________________________________________________________________________

Make checks payable to: Ted Decker Catalyst Fund

For more information, call (480)557-8295 Mail to: Ted Decker Catalyst Fund email tgdecker@cox.net or visit http://www.tedgdecker.com

When the Water Came: Evacuees of Hurricane Katrina, are supported in part by: Arizona Commission on the Arts with funding from the State of Arizona and the National Endowment for the Arts; City of Tempe, Arizona; Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University; and the Ted Decker Catalyst Fund.

The Ted Decker Catalyst Fund is affiliated with MARS, Inc., a private, not-for-profit 501(c)3 educational organization committed to arts advocacy and education through its programming.

All Photographs © 2010 Rebecca Ross.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When traveling in Brazil, plan to be in Rio de Janeiro over a weekend for many fun reasons. On Saturday afternoons, head to the bohemian neighborhood of Santa Teresa high above Rio with breaktaking views of the City and Guanabara Bay. Here you will find very cool shops with work by artisans, some fun bars, street artists, and good restaurants. An obligatory stop for me each time I am in Rio is Bar do Mineiro in the heart of Santa Teresa. You can get there by taxi though take the name and address with you, take bus 214, or even better by the bondinho street car which actually passes directly in front of the restaurant (get off at the Largo dos Guimarães stop). 

One of the best things about Bar do Mineiro is the lively atmosphere. Many artists, residents of Santa Teresa and Rio, and now tourists come together in family style tables to eat, drink, and be merry. Even waiting for a table (usually required) outside the bar and flowing into the street (watch for the bondinho!!) is a kick which is saying a lot for someone who hates to wait for tables in restaurants! Make sure to give your name to Angela for the waiting list. And if owner Diógenes Paixão is around, make a point of saying hello to him. This guy is the real deal and also is an amazing art collector. Make sure to check out art, artisan works, and antiques on the walls of the restaurant.
 

Ted Decker interviews Havana-based artist Kadir Lopez Nieves in Phoenix, Arizona

Flicker, Spark, Flame

 

The sudden, unexpected death of Rose Johnson, for years a Downtown Phoenix fixture and player in the City’s developing contemporary art infrastructure, caused our cultural community’s lights to flicker. It sparked me to look back at the rise of contemporary art in our Valley and to identify, acknowledge, and celebrate those trailblazers who came before, their legacies, and their influences which paved the way to where we are at the beginning of a new year and a new decade. It seems appropriate that Kim Larkin and Adam Murray are taking the torch from one such trailblazer Kimber Lanning, the founder of Modified Arts on Roosevelt Row in Downtown Phoenix.

 

Recently, after being introduced by Kimber to Adam and Kim, I went off on one of my tangents about the impressive, but actually short in retrospect, rise of the cultural Phoenix, an idea that resonated with the new guard at Modified Arts. They too had been impressed by who they were meeting, the art they were seeing, the places they were visiting, and trying to synthesize it all as they settled into their new lives here.

 

Paralleling the rapid growth of Phoenix, the cultural infrastructure has blossomed in the past fifty years. At one point several years ago, there were four museums being built, remodeled or added on to simultaneously. That is impressive by anyone’s standards! From a linear perspective, 1960 was a baseline year for our contemporary art community when a group of civic leaders including artist Philip C. Curtis and Walter Bimson, the chairman of the Valley National Bank (then Bank One, then Chase), founded the Phoenix Art Museum. There had been significant art practice here before by artists and illustrators who came to the desert for the natural beauty, amazing light, and new commercial opportunities, such as Jesse Benton Evans, Marjorie Thomas, John Stuart Curry, George Elbert Burr, Augustus Dunbier, Andy Chuka, and Robert Harris. Artists, like Curtis, Lew Davis and wife Mathilde Shaefer, and Phillips Sanderson, came to the Valley to work on Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) projects starting in the mid-1930s. Many stayed and others came. Artists survived through commercial work, corporate and private commissions, collector investment groups, and through sales in galleries including Scottsdale’s first gallery, The Stable Gallery, founded in 1960 by Avis Read, the Thompson Gallery on North Central Avenue, the Riva Yares, Elaine Horwitch, Suzanne Brown, Marilyn Butler, Lisa Sette, and Bentley galleries in Scottsdale.

 

Like other cities, we share a legacy of artists banding together to promote their work and advance their careers. Founded in 1937, Arizona Painters and Sculptors was a predecessor to groups that were either similarly organized (Phoenix Artists Coalition) or formed due to common aesthetic and/or personal interests (The House Studios, 3-Car Pileup, TRE 25). Since the early 1970s, Phoenix has benefited from resilient artspaces with long life spans such as Alwun House (founded 1970), Movimiento Artistisco de Rio Salado [MARS] (1978), 11 East Ashland (1986), and The Icehouse (1990). They paved the way for more recent iterations – Modified Arts (1999), ersonName w:st="on">Eye LoungeersonName> (founded in 1999 and spearheaded by visionaries Cindy Dach and Greg Esser), 515 Arts (also Dach/Esser and others), as well as Perhelion Arts (2002) and Pravis Gallery (2006). In 1989, lead by ersonName w:st="on">Beatrice Moore and Tony ZahnersonName>, Artlink inaugurated Art Detour and in 2004 launched First Fridays which has become the largest monthly art walk in the United States.

 

Establishing themselves and their business in Phoenix, Larkin and Murray’s approach includes fresh enthusiasm, open-mindedness, intense curiosity, and an admirable desire to understand the Phoenix visual, sound, and performance arts landscape. They have encountered an abundance of artists, other gallerists, collectors, curators, arts administrators, and business people, several whom they asked to make oral histories on video for the exhibition and for their website. Their strategy is smart, genuine, and passionate. From their acculturation adventure, they selected art for this exhibition which deeply resonated with them. While appearing eclectic and in no way an encyclopedic survey, the art in this inaugural re-launch of Modified Arts celebrates and spotlights the legacies of people who came before and of people still actively working today. It also demonstrates rekindled enthusiasm and response to Kim and Adam’s efforts and shared vision by artists, collectors, galleries, and private dealers who have generously lent art work for this noteworthy exhibit. Viewers will delight in seeing works which they may not be familiar with by artists Philip C. Curtis, Lew Davis, Dorothy Fratt, Phillips Sanderson, ersonName w:st="on">Beth Ames SwartzersonName>, and Fritz Scholder. They also will enjoy seeing current and historic work by Downtown Phoenix pioneer artists like Beatrice Moore, Janet de Berge Lange, Jeff Falk, Annie Lopez, as well as offerings by Bob Adams, Lew Alquist, Mark Klett, John Armstrong, and Sean O’Donnell. The exhibit includes art by artists who emerged on the scene in the 1990s including Randy Slack, Steve Yazzie, David Dauncey, ersonName w:st="on">James AngelersonName>, and Sara Abbott. Photos by ersonName w:st="on">Joe JankovskyersonName> document performances as well as the actual space at The Icehouse and MARS.

 

Is there an aesthetic or stylistic common thread connecting the art works in this exhibition? What effect does a rapidly growing urban environment whose cultural infrastructure naturally lags behind basic city infrastructure, i.e. water/sewer, streets, fire and police stations, have on artists and their art-making practices? Does the art deal with issues that are unique to Phoenix or is the content more of a universal nature? I suggest the common thread is not readily visible, but instead intrinsic to the work made by artists who give voice to ideas, emotions, and social and political concerns while living in a fused naturally beautiful yet harsh, arid, and sprawling, gridded urban environment. These are ideas to think about when viewing this exhibition and afterwards. This work, like all contemporary art, asks the viewer to respond, to finish a statement, or to ask a question.

 

For many years, La Phoeniquera was an annual juried exhibit at MARS Artspace during the hotter-than-hell summer months. I always anticipated and enjoyed it because it was like taking a pulse on what art was being made in Phoenix and who was making it. In the same vein, Modified Arts: Looking Back to the Future offers opportunities to ponder what is “Phoenix-like” in artistic production here. We are encouraged to celebrate an art community whose flame burns brighter because of contributions made by those who came before us, those here today, and to optimistically anticipate future torchbearers of a rich legacy. 

 

Ted G. Decker

Phoenix, Arizona

January, 2010