Venison
  • Quarterly
  • Weekly
  • Camp Venison
  • About
  • Get Involved



Weekly Blog

Welcome to Venison's Weekly Blog! Here you will find advice, show reviews, thoughts and short articles by the Venison Team. We welcome your input comments and thoughts in return! 
​Thanks for reading Venison Magazine!

Quarterly

Parts & Labor - New work by Nemo Gould

10/27/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture

This October the On-Sight Project is thrilled to announce a rare solo exhibition by Oakland kinetic sculptor Nemo Gould. His first solo show in many years, Parts & Labor includes several new never before shown works.


On view now through November 12th.
Open Fridays 10am-2pm,
Saturdays 1-4pm and by appointment.

​
This collection of intricate mechanical sculptures promises a journey of exploration into the whimsical yet precise detail of Gould’s interior world. A former Artist in Residence at Recology San Francisco, he draws from a meticulously organized and extensive collection of salvaged parts and electronics to create his art. Engrossed in a multi-decade relationship with obsolescence and redemption, the artist acts as a catalyst engaged in a sort of design anthropology integrating and activating fragments of industrial history to create works that live in our hearts and inspire us to imagine.

Offering an oddly romantic glimpse into the internal drive of machine psychology, the works reimagine obscure industrial design with care and reverence for the objects incorporated. Seemingly intelligent and self-aware, Gould’s anthropomorphized characters are destined to repeat the actions that define them through endless mechanical repetition. Diverging from a well trodden genre of fetishized vintage sci-fi, these works are neither depictions nor collages but museums in and of themselves, paying tribute to the evolution of technology and its cultural counterparts in literature and comics. Gould earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1998, and his Master of Fine Arts degree at U.C. Berkeley in 2000. He is a founding member of Applied Kinetic Arts Collective and Lost & Foundry studios in Oakland, CA. His work was recently featured on Discovery VR and is shown in galleries and museums throughout the U.S. and abroad.

The On-Sight Project is a mobile pop-up venue converting vacant commercial real estate into exhibition space for contemporary art. We seek to pair donated locations with local artists working with non-traditional media and/or methods. Parts & Labor By Nemo Gould Curated by Anja Ulfeldt 

The On-Sight Project (temporary location) 471 9th Street, Oakland, CA 94607
​CONTACT: Anja Ulfeldt | 510-917-2230 | anja@ulfeldt.com 
0 Comments

Time Peace &The Hustle (In Progress) - Studio Visit with Anja Ulfeldt

4/6/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture

Studio Visit by: Danielle Schlunegger

Picture
Public Reception: Saturday April 11th, 4-8pm
Lost & Foundry Oakland
305 Center Street, Oakland CA, half a block from West Oakland BART


Lost & Foundry Oakland will be unveiling new works by Artist in Residence, Anja Ulfeldt this upcoming Saturday. Time Peace is the culmination of a 5-week residency featuring a series of rotary devices that measure time and symbolize its passage. I wanted to visit her in the studio for a little sneak peek before the opening. Upon entering the metal door of The Lost and Foundry Gallery this past Wednesday, I was immediately confronted with two huge barrel-like structures, and several smaller versions lining the walls. Covered in mahogany and cherry veneer, the wall "tumblers" still had their plexiglass faces covered and tapped tight with blue painters tape, evocative of large faceless wall clocks. 

As part of the crowd funding campaign to build the work during her residency, contributors donated objects that they had felt an attachment to for one reason or another to be weathered down by these tumblers. In effect this transformation would lift the weight of the donor’s previous inability to let go of the objects, relieving them of their attachment through a mechanical weathering of the object. 

“You’ll be able to see through them,” says Ulfeldt, placing her fingers on the blue tape holding the industrial covering onto the plexiglass, gently spinning it on the wall.

“The tumblers are definitely a sound piece. They have these mahogany shelves inside like a dryer, that help lift/stir the contents and then drop them. It's supposed to be like a chorus of randomly timed falling sounds. The motors make a whirring/grumbling sound when they run. I kinda love it! I just got a donation of a pile of coins too which will probably sound great falling every couple of minutes." Across the room she pulls a cardboard box out from under a collapsible table and sits cross-legged on the floor, opening the flaps. Inside rests the collection of objects that have been donated for their eventual destruction. 

“Growing up in what might have qualified as a hoarder house I have a close personal relationship to the question of what gives an object power over us emotionally? What makes us love an object of art for reasons we sometimes don’t understand? Often in art there is a focus on longevity. Some artworks are made of stone and can outlive the civilization that created them while others are intentionally ephemeral. But what about other items those individuals collect and keep in their lives and how does this relate to wealth accumulation and assignment of value on objects, material and art? I'm particularly interested in how we assign value to possessions beyond the obvious monetary value of the materials they contain.”  

Picture
She shows me a sand dollar with -January 5th 2014 -Surfing for the first time- written in fat black marker on the back. Then pulls out a pair of glasses, some hearing aids, a softened and sad looking plaster cast of a child’s face, a little ceramic bird, and several other everyday objects from the box.
Picture
“I know the story of some of these objects better than others,” she said holding the sand dollar out to me as we rummaged through the box together. I turned it over in my hand and knew this was the last time I would see these little objects that someone, somewhere, had cherished in their whole, un-mutilated state.  

She closed up the box and placed it back under the table, and humored my curiosity regarding the giant wheels in the center of the room.
I watched her step into one, and as it turned around and around with her steps it became evocative to a time in my childhood. For a moment I was back in a county fair funhouse, rolling about with a bunch of other squealing children in an oversized padded wheel. The sounds of those memories faded away and all was silent except for the loud whirring of the metal-framed wheel turning under the warm gallery lights.   
Picture
Picture
 Ulfeldt steps out and explains The Hustle (working title),  “… Invites visitors to enter one of two walks of life: one a fast-moving hustle, the other a seductively soft resting place. These take the form of rotary drums sharing an axle and transmission. The gearing is designed so that the movement of the fast-paced climbers eventually destabilizes those lounging on the slow-moving side. The treadmill … speaks to the labor of love that is sculpture and the sculptors’ love of labor. The Treadmill represents the desire for purpose and the need to work toward that purpose.  If you can understand the idea of art for art’s sake then why not labor for labor’s sake.

"This piece is also inspired by the level of hustle required to survive as an artist in the Bay Area. While the love is the labor and the labor is the love there is still this feeling that if you stop to rest you may never make it back onto the wheel or that the fast paced world of money may just pass you by. The level of hustle required to be an artist in the Bay Area is increasing at a rapid rate and many people are leaving. So I pose the question: How much hustle can you sustain? Is it really worth it?”

Ulfeldt stairs up with tired eyes at the pair of wheels she has meticulously welded together and layered in plywood. I left her to her work at the Lost and Foundry studio. She seemed anxious to get back to it, probably with a grand to-do list looming in her head.

The question Ulfeldt had previously stated rang again and again in my head. At first this question in her statement threw me off.

“Is it worth it?”

As an artist, The Hustle speaks to me of the amount of work many Bay Area artists must endure to be able to sustain their practice: working 40 hours a week, producing art, maintaining the work load and personal relationships, and the attempt to grow an ever evolving network to forward my creative career. This is a task many artists face. It can be wholly overwhelming at times, and can feel utterly unsustainable. How do I keep my own momentum moving forward without overturning everything I’ve been working towards?

“Is it worth it?"

"Is it really worth it?”


You can Interact with The Hussle (working title) and join Anja Ulfeldt for a public reception of Time Piece this Saturday April 11th, 4-8pm at Lost & Foundry Oakland
305 Center Street, Oakland CA, half a block from West Oakland BART 

http://lostandfoundryoakland.com/
http://www.anjaulfeldt.com/
Picture





Anja is the Co-Founder and Director of Basement Gallery Oakland (slated to reopen in May, 2015) as well as a founding member of the Artstead Boat Project, a floating venue for art and performance built from a converted potato barge. She is a recipient of the Visions from the New California Award in 2010, TSFF & SOMArts Murphy and Cadogan Contemporary Art Award in 2013 and The AAF/Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts in 2014 resulting in a three-week fellowship at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria. 


The daughter of a painter and an engineer, Anja grew up in Berkeley, CA, and earned her BFA from California College of the Arts in 2001 and her MFA from Stanford University in 2014. Her recent installations have become know as “performable objects” and are physical scenarios in which the participant becomes an impromptu performer. 

0 Comments

    Author

    Our Venison team uses this blog page to post short articles about events, projects, journeys, and art adventures that we find relevant to the contemporary lives of fellow artists.

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    101/exhibit
    18th Street Arts
    3D Art
    99 Percent Invisible
    99PI
    Abrams Claghorn
    Adobe Backroom Gallery
    Advice
    Albany
    Alchemy
    Amabelle Aguiluz
    American Art
    A Narrow Passage
    Anja Ulfedt
    Ankica Mitrovska
    Anthropology
    Antler Gallery
    Art
    Art Advisory
    Art And Culture
    Art Camp
    Art Camp Spotlight
    Art Career
    Art Dealer
    Art Exhibit
    Art History
    Art Installation
    Artist Talk
    Art Magazine
    Artopening
    Art Opening
    Art Process
    Art Residency
    Art Review
    Arts
    Art Studio
    Art Walk
    Audio
    Australia
    Awareness
    Barbados
    Basement Gallery
    Bay Area
    Bay Area Art Show
    Bay Area Press
    Beginnings
    Blind Spot
    Blog
    Bones
    Bonnie Macallister
    Book Artist
    Book Arts
    Branch Gallery
    Brand Library
    Brian Donnelly
    Brooklyn NY
    Bryan Kring
    Calendar
    Camella Da Eun Kim
    Camella Daeun Kim
    Canadian Artist
    Canvas
    Charity
    Charles Hartman Fine Art
    Charlie James Gallery
    Chinatown Los Angeles
    Christina Mrozik
    Cincinnati
    Climate
    Collaboration
    Collective
    Colorado
    Conceptual Art
    Contemoporary Art
    Contemporary Art
    Contemporary Art Magazine
    Contriction
    Cordesa Fine Art
    Cosmos
    Crystal
    Culture
    Curation
    Curator
    Current Events
    Dance
    Danielle Schlunegger-Warner
    David Rice
    Design
    Design Matters
    Diorama
    Drew Leshko
    Duality
    Durden And Ray
    East Bay
    Elizabeth Leach Gallery
    Elsewhere Residency
    Embroidery
    Emerging Art
    Emerging Artist
    Emerging Curator
    Encouragement
    Environmental Art
    Events
    Exhibition
    Exploration
    Extinction
    Fabric
    Fall Art
    Fashion
    FeliciaGabaldon
    Fellowsof Contemporary Art
    Female Artist
    Female Artists
    Female Identity
    Feminism
    Fiberart
    Fiber Art
    Fien Art
    Fine Art
    First Amendment
    First Fridays
    Flesh
    Florida
    Florida Artist
    Foca
    Food
    Founding
    Fourth Wall Gallery
    Francois Ghebaly Gallery
    Gallerist
    Gathering
    Gathering: A Venison Magazine Retrospective
    Glendale
    Grief
    Group Show
    Hand Knit
    Hap Gallery
    Happening
    History
    Holiday Spotlight
    Hollywood
    Home
    Homes
    Housing
    Houston Artist
    How We Got To Now
    Human Condition
    Human Led Climate Change
    Illustrator
    Immigration
    Inglewood
    Inspiration
    Instagram
    Installation Art
    Interactive
    Interactive Art
    International
    Interview
    Jana Rumberger
    Jeanne D'Angelo
    Jeanne Dunning
    Jennifer Chen-su Huang
    Jennifer Pettus
    Jeremy Hush
    John Mooallem
    July 15th 2017
    Kay Healy
    Kent Fine Art
    Kiel Johnson
    Kinetic Art
    Knit
    Knitting
    La Art Scene
    Latin America
    Latino Art
    Latinx
    Leaving College
    Letterpress
    Live Music
    Los Angeles
    Los Angeles Art
    Los Angeles Art Scene
    Lost And Foundry
    Louise Bourgeois
    Magazine
    Makers
    Manifest Gallery
    Margaret Smithers-crump
    Marlene Dumas
    Matt Hall
    Mechanics
    Meline Hoijer Schou
    Metafiction
    Michelle Konczyk
    Miniature Art
    Mixed Media
    Morgaine Faye
    Mouring
    Muscle
    Museum
    Native American
    Natural History
    Natural Selections
    Nature
    Nemo Gould
    New York Art
    Nick Penderson
    Noysky Projects
    Oakland
    Oakland Artist
    Oakland Gallery
    Oakland Magazine
    October Show
    Ohio
    Oil
    On-Site Projects
    Opening
    Opening Reception
    Oregon Artist
    Painting
    Paonia
    Paonia Cocoons
    Paper Art
    Paradigm Gallery
    Paul Loya Gallery
    Pdxpart
    Penny Contemporary
    Performance
    Period
    Phillidelphia
    Photography
    Playground
    Podcast
    Portland
    Portraiture
    Postcard
    Press Release
    Project P:ear
    Pst La/la
    Q&A
    Real Estate
    Rebecca Reeves
    Recollections
    Recology
    Renaissance Man
    Retrospective
    Review
    R/sf
    Samantha Rausch
    San Francisco
    Santa Fe
    Science
    Science Fiction
    Screen Print
    Sculpture
    Sean Noyce
    Sexuality
    Skeletal Articulation
    Skeletons
    Skin
    Skye Livingston
    Solo Exhibit
    Solo Squadron
    Soup Experimental
    Southern California
    Space
    Space 15twenty
    Spencer Merolla
    Spray Paint
    Starting Artists
    State
    Studio Visit
    Surrealism
    Swedish Artist
    Swerdlow Art Group
    Talon Gallery
    Tam
    Taxidermy
    Technology
    Textile
    Textile Art
    Textile Design
    The American West
    The Getty Center
    The Knitting Tree La
    Thread Installation
    Thru Media
    Torrance
    Totally Rad Gallery
    Tracey Emin
    Travel
    Tyler Thrasher
    UCB
    Urban
    Utah
    Venison Magazine
    #venmag
    Vieno James
    Vital Opening
    Walkthrough
    Watercolors
    Water Stories
    Wearable Art
    Weekly Listens
    Wendy Red Star
    West Coast
    Whimsy
    Women
    Wooleyes
    Wool Felting
    World Trade Center
    Yulia Pink
    Yulia Pinkusevich
    Zoe Childerley
    Zoe Keller

Venison Magazine Copyright © 2016. All rights reserved.