ArtPrize: What Was The Experiment?

Rick Devos’s ArtPrize, described as “the the largest Art Competition in the world”, was self billed from the start as a “ radically new experiment. The experiment was basically this, could the general public via a majority vote pick ten top works of Art out of a pool of over 1200 applicants and then award the best of the top ten a grand prize of $250,000. The comparison to the television contest American Idol was down played by Artprize organizers by saying that the competition really wasn’t about the money but rather the public dialog that would ensue from having such a competition. The organized spin didn’t of course alter the fact that Artists did not pay a $50 application fee to dialog with their neighbor but rather to enter a competition and a run for a chance at $450,000 in prize money.

As an Artist this was both a fascinating premise for a competition and a infuriating assault against what I know about Art with a capital A. It was something that I wanted to remain open to for it’s new potential and it was something that flew in the face of my belief that if you are going to judge something in life you should know something of what you are talking about. I’m not talking about your personal opinion. I’m talking about your ability to judge.

If I learned anything from my collage science classes it’s that any experiment has to have a theory by which to test your experiment against. What was ArtPrize’s theory? Was it that the average person on the street can pick a top work of Art as good as any professional critic or curator? Or was the experiment actually an attempt at conservative social engineering by the ultra conservative Devos Foundation who funded the prize money?
For all the denying that Artprize had engineered a referendum against the established Art World, the idea remains that this model of Art Competition attempts to replace knowledge with public opinion about what is good Art. How dangerous you believe that premise is might point to which side of the argument you reside on.

The Artprize organizers from the inception of the event seemed invested in the idea of organizing a Art Competition through new technological means. They created a model with exciting sounding procedures that stacked up buzz phrases like “rebooting” and “decentralized curating”. Exhibition spaces were called “Venues” and Artists and Venues were “ matched” online like an online dating service. Cool.

ArtPrize was said to be “open to any Artists who can find a space”. This open call concept ended up not quite being the case and in reality Venues acted as entry jurors selecting who they wanted to exhibited before the public ever saw anything. Some Venues employed professional jurors with curatorial experience and some Venues were “curated” by people or committees that may not have had any Art experience at all.
“Decentralized curating” to AP must also mean mystery curating because the public was never given an idea which Venues were professionally curated nor was there any credit given to who the curators were.
That being said it was easy to tell the Venues that had been professionally curated from those that had not. The best Venues I saw ( I did not see all of AP. It is mentally impossibly and logistically difficult) was the UICA and The Old Federal Building both which were curated by UICA curatorial volunteers. Why these curators weren’t considered important enough to be paid for their services must be part of AP’s new “decentralized curating” model.

I believe Art can be a lot of different things and it can be found in a variety of unexpected and non traditional places. Thats exciting. But that doesn’t mean that anything is Art and that art can exist or be placed anywhere.

A bar propping up a painting in a window like a cheap department store display does not a meaningful Art experience make. And there are certain architectural features inherit in particular Venues that should have prevented them from hosting Artists. The West Michigan Center for Arts and Technology was a awful place to exhibit work. Two artist’s work was stuffed in a stair well in the building and the remaining work is hung wherever physically possible. Armin Mersmann’s formal yet personal drawings and Tim Portlock’s large format prints “Ghost City #1 and #2” suffered from being exhibited there. Plus the place at lunch time smelled like a office workers Spaghetti- O’s.

But good art displayed poorly is still more tolerable than bad art displayed badly and the Venue know as The B.O.B was of that ilk. A three story bar restaurant complex made the Art work seem like bad theme decor and their adjacent parking lot looked like a sad amateur Art Fair after a thunder storm. For all I know there might have been something interesting in The B.O.B but it was lost in a black hole of seafood smelling, canned music banality.

So what was the outcome of this years “radically new experiment”? Was the general public able to pick a fair sampling of at least the ten best works of Art worthy of a cash prize. In my professional opinion no. The grand prize winner Ran Ortner;s “Open Water No.24 was deserved and an easy pic for Michigan -The Great Lakes State.

Who were my favorites? I’ve listed them below and have a sadden feeling when I think of them having been so over looked. None of them made the top ten.

Brooklyn Artist Anja Mohn’s (www.re-title.com/artists/Anja-Mohn.asp) “One Another” a black and white photographic female image embedded into blocks of paraffin wax was reflectively beautiful and seemed suspended in time and should have been given more exhibition space.

Dragana Crnjak’s wall work “ I Thought I Might Find You” was a show stopper. Composed of painted and charcoal drawn shapes. It was one of the finest pieces in ArtPrize. The wall installation painting was done on a wall 12 ft tall by some 70ft long where the actually images and design were well integrated into the physical space. Her use of small oval charcoal shapes with 3-dimensional shadow aspects to them was optically alluring. It was joyous.(www.markelfinearts.com/port.php?id=33)

My very favorite piece in AP and my vote for the best was Ann Arbor Artist Heidi Kumao’s “Correspondence”. Part video image, part sculpture, part theater it was perfectly situated in a small semi dark alcove where a video was projected onto both the back wall and a bell jar on a small metal table. Your eye and attention was led between the action and colorful and animated images on the back wall and a separate world projected onto a sheet of paper in the bell jar. I would have spent a whole day in bed looking at this magical theatricality with it’s visual poetry.

Kurt Perchke’s “Red Ball Project” seemed like a interesting idea and I wish I could have found where the ball was that day because the documentation lacked what the experience must have been like. (www.redballproject.com)

The day I visited The Old Federal Building top ten winners Ran Ortner and Eric Daigh were garnering steady crowds that should have been looking at Chicago Artist J. Thomas Pallas’s “Jordan”. A 14ft by 10ft drawing made directly on the wall in the image of a woman’s face. The image was drawn with a hand inked stamp of Michael Jordan which was pressed onto the wall thousand of times to create the image. It was stunningly epic in scale and purpose. (www.jthomaspallas.com/home.html)

Viewers also should have been paying attention to Reni Gower’s “Papercuts”. Three large sheets of paper cut out of Celtic patterns that hung away from the wall and reflected a colored glow from the painted back surfaces. This was a particularly brilliant installation where the size and objects worked intimately with the space and the lighting of that space. More installations should have been this sensitive to the space given them. (www.renigower.com)

I also loved the personal world expanding Jerry Gretzinger’s Map Project (www.jerrysmap.blogspot.com/) and Megan Heeres “Things that go back and forth” comprised of things that..well… moved back and forth. These “things”, shapes, sculptures,paintings were like new sensory objects to my eyes, seen for the first time. And Grand Rapids artist Sam Blanchard’s David Lynch like roller coaster sculpture sat eerily in a darkened room. It reminded me of both a futurist event and something out of antiquity.

Dennis Michael Jones’s participatory room installation “Sometimes I Wonder” had word drawings that people were invited to add to. It was directly up front and refreshingly dynamic,both seemingly simple and socially complex in context. He should have been given a larger room.

Kudo’s to Yolanda Gonzales’s “Dress like the Sky”, Danielle Roney’s “Cybertourism”, Claire Walkins’s “Think Three Thoughts at Once”, and Erika Blumfeld’s “Apparent Horizons: Antarctica” who made my short list also.

Kendall Collage of Art displayed 5 subtle oil paintings by Jenny Brillhart (www.jbrillhart.com/) from Miami. The paintings were partial views of swimming pools empty of their water. The soft glow of her paint reminded me of old worn pool tiles.
Unfortunately to get to them you had to walk past Paul Kaiser’s large scale photo realistic drawings of portrait busts of American soldiers in uniform which smacked to much of creepy war idolatry and the G.W.Bush years.

As I drove away from Downtown I passed a sad hand lettered sign pointing down a side street. It said something like “ More good Artprize Artists this way” begging for my attention. And while the majority of Grand Rapids natives feel Rick Devos should be awarded a prize himself for bringing a cash cow to this midwestern town it seems depressing that we even have to have an event like Artprize to make people believe they can look at and have a conversation about Art. This would be a myth that I would not want to see future events like ArtPrize propagate. Because you don’t have to wait for Artprize to tell you can look at Art. Art doesn’t leave the City of Grand Rapids, the State of Michigan and the region of the Midwest when ArtPrize closes down this year. Believe it or not it was here before ArtPrize came to town. The great new Grand Rapids Art Museum, the UICA and Grand Rapids Art Galleries, Artist studios work diligently everyday to get your attention to focus on Art. The world class Art center of Chicago is only a 3 hour drive away. New York City is a short 4 hour flight.
You don’t need ‘Sticks’ Furniture on steroids plopped up on a bridge and Styrofoam monsters in the river to make you want to look and think and talk about Art. You can do it on your own. And you should.