Margarida Sardinha's Da Vinci Simulacrum: Catch It If You Can

#10 Heart Sound

We're all familiar with the story of Christopher Columbus who in 1492 set out to find a passage to India by traveling westward across the sea. While listening to a lecture today regarding the significance of this man's conviction that the earth was round and the challenges he faced, the lecturer made a reference to American author Washington Irving. Most Americans know him best for stories such as The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. He was also one of the first magazine editors to publish Francis Scott Key's "The Star Spangled Banner."

In 1815 a financial disruption prompted him to cross the Atlantic to salvage his family's trading company. After two years he was forced to declare bankruptcy. Instead of returning to the States, he remained in Europe and pursued a writing career, inspired in part by Sir Walter Scott, author of the novel Rob Roy, whom he'd spent some time with in 1817.

Irving left England to explore the Continent. At one point, while in Paris, he received a letter from a friend encouraging him to come to Spain. He was told that a number of manuscripts had been recently been made public. Like any real writer that I've ever known, he was always on the lookout for good stories. Being given full access to a remarkable collection of books and documents pertaining to Spanish history, Irving began several books at once, the first being A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.

As I listened to the lecture on Christopher Columbus, Irving's time in Spain was commented on, specifically his time spent staying at The Alhambra in Granada. Naturally, as soon as I heard mention of The Alhambra, a unique palace/fortress in the Andalusia region, I immediately thought of Margarida Sardinha's richly rewarding 2015 art exhibition titled Symmetry's Portal which was inspired by this self-same place. 

This memory/connection was fresh on my mind due to a recent press release regarding her latest installation titled Da Vinci Simulacrum, which will be opening this coming Saturday, 23 April, at the Museu Ibérico de Arqueologia e Arte de Abrantes (MIAA). The show is curated by Hugo Dinis and supported by Garantir Cultura and Abrantes Municipality, Portugal, in partnership with Figueiredo Ribeiro Art Collection. It will be on display through 25 September.

The Lisbon-born Sardinha has been receiving much-deserved recognition for her labors in the arts these past two decades. I first became aware of her work circa 2010 and have been perpetually impressed ever since. What impressed me (or attracted me to her ideas) was the manner in which she synthesized and distilled concepts from literature, philosophy, religion, science, mathematics, technology and art. The concepts she wrestles with are expressed in a range of mediums including experimental film and other formats.  

The imagery on this page is from her current show, Da Vinci Simulacrum. You can see more by visiting https://www.margaridasardinha.com/work/20

Other themes from past shows include Wave-Particle HyperLightness, Oxymoron Tiling, Hyperbolic Hyparxis, Symmetry's Portal, London Memory and Darkness Reflexions. 

To learn more about Margarida Sardinha visit 

https://www.margaridasardinha.com/about

 

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Links to my first two interviews with M. Sardinha

2013

Artist Margarida Sardinha Talks About London Memory multi+city

2010

Ten Minutes with Artist Philosopher Margarida Sardinha

Flashback Friday: It's Interesting, But Is It Art?

Ten Years Ago Today

Ken Burns' documentary Jazz has so much to say about so many things that a once through experience of watching is not enough. Race relations and the American experience are but one of the threads that weaves through this story about music and musicians. Another thread is how the reclusive edge of the avant-garde jazz scene bled into the broader culture in so many various ways.
 
Yesterday was the last episode in the Robert Hughes documentary Shock of the New, which the Duluth Art Institute so graciously shared at the Zinema 2 downtown. While watching this film series, which explores how modern and post-modern art came to be, I couldn't help but see parallels with the music scene. Many of the problems were similar. What is important? What is good? Who determines value? If the public likes it and it's popular, can it really be great? (This was Updike's complaint with Stephen King.)
 
When the narrator in Jazz put this out there I had to set it down in writing because of all that it conveyed. The basic truth, Artie Shaw concluded, is that popular music has little or nothing to do with musical values at all. “I still wanted to play music and the audience was saying, ‘Play what you’re playing. Over and over. We like that.’ They never could understand that what they liked was something I did on my way to getting better. That record that they liked… became a millstone, became an albatross around my neck.”
 
So yesterday, we watched the final installment of our series, which was really more like an addendum. The original series appeared circa 1980. This last piece was produced post-9/11 in 2005. Hughes' aim, he stated, was to discuss "what was good, what was bad and why it is important to know the difference." Just because something is novel and new doesn't mean it is vital or important or good.
 
To make his point he has us join him as he visited with Jeff Koons, whom he said was probably the most successful living American artist. Koons used to be a commodities broker before leaping headlong into the art scene. Koons is an American artist who built a reputation around reproducing banality it seems. It's hard to take him seriously, but he's audacious enough to suggest with a straight face that he is simply a modern equivalent of Michaelangelo. Certainly he's learned a thing or two from Warhol about how to capitalize on his chosen path.
 
It just so happened that a couple days ago someone shared with me a link to Morley Safer's 60 Minutes segment on Contemporary Art. And look who's in the limelight... It's Koons. His fifteen minutes evidently didn't end here. (Be honest, does this excite you or turn your stomach?)

In late March, in the midst of Hughes' film series there was a guest lecturer at UMD who presented his take on developments these past 150 years in the art scene. Greg Volk, an art critic and curator himself, gave a lively and thought-provoking overview from a bit more esoteric perspective. Volk's fascinations end in a space that was different from Hughes' final pronouncements and ruminations.
 
Volk's heroes are artists like Katharina Grosse, Ayse Erkman and Roman Signer. Each was following a path into uncharted personal territories without boundaries. But I couldn't help simultaneously hearing in my head Morley Safer's take: "Who are these people trying to buffalo?"

Hughes comes full circle back to draftsmanship and painterliness. His heroes in the end are very different: Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Paula Rego. "Painting is about stories," Hughes stated. He dislikes the fast art of modern times as much his distaste for fast food. And he finds sensationalism appalling.
 
What I liked about the way our series was presented was that each week ended with a little discussion period which sometimes had almost as many insights as the films themselves. A couple weeks back one of the points made afterward was that all these various movements from Cubism and Dada to Pop, Minimalism and Conceptual art were helpful for artists today in that they were now free to pursue their inner vision in any direction they wanted. As Duchamp once pointed out, however, only posterity will decide what was important. Right now, we're standing too close to the oyster.

 
What's your take?

Preview of Friday Night's Opening: PRØVE Gallery Second

Last night I met with Justin Iverson, Anthony Zappa and Stephen Read, three of the five principals of the new PRØVE Gallery in Downtown Duluth. When I arrived I found the young men immersed in preparations for Friday evenings opening of PRØVE Gallery Second. The reception will run from 7 pm to 11 pm. I encourage Twin Ports arts followers to stop in at 21 North Lake Ave to catch some of the most progressive art action in the upper Midwest. Despite the looming deadline Iverson, Zappa and Read allowed me to interrupt, offering up chairs so we could chat in more depth about the vision and story behind PRØVE.

Several of the artists involved with the collective had been UMD art students involved with the two shows last year at the former European Bakery on First Street. Nearly all of them had other plans after graduation, but for some those plans fell through. As they discussed the year ahead the notion emerged of creating an art space independent of the commercial aims other galleries must grapple with in order to remain solvent. Their focus would be on extending the boundaries that restrict other galleries in the region.

While some of their peers moved away, this group was not about to sit idly by waiting for the next bus to somewhere. They set about to bloom where they were already planted. “We saw this as an opportunity to get experience and to build our portfolios,” said Iverson.

“We’re learning how to run a gallery,” said Read. Features of the gallery include having a space that is large and offering a gallery without some of the rules that restrict artists in other spaces. Zappa noted, for example, that the Duluth Art Institute doesn’t allow students to have shows. "We also want to create opportunities for emerging artists.”

As for positioning, the men indicated that they were inspired by the Ochre Ghost, which has limited space but has established itself as a venue for new creative work. The size of their space at the PRØVE allows them to take this to another level, but with a different ambiance than the Tweed. It’s neither a salon gallery or a commercial gallery, but it is definitely a serious endeavor.

“We’re all trying to get into grad school,” Zappa said. “This gives us something that we can build on. We’re not just looking for ‘anything.’”

Rick Hansen of Sound Unseen and Nickolas Monson are the fourth and fifth members of gallery team. The former student artists were introduced to Hansen through UMD grad Leon Nyarecha, a film maker now in Santa Monica. One of the men here said, “Rick made this all possible.”

I was impressed at the respect the students had for what was happening in the arts here in the Twin Ports, even if they were defining a somewhat different path for themselves. Read stated that most of the galleries were focused on tourism instead of being art galleries per se. They were selling art products as a business venture, hence the prevalence of paintings of the aerial lift bridge and the lake. “We’re all influenced by the lake but we’re not trying to make art just to sell,” he explained.

I asked what each was trying to achieve with his work. Iverson indicated that he was intrigued by kinetics, striving to incorporate that interest into his process. One of the others affirmed that he was indeed very process oriented. Iverson liked working with mixed materials.

Zappa’s interests led him to deal with issues surrounding perceptions of space. “I like to force people to acknowledge their presence” and to cause them to have more awareness of space and movement.

The best part of the collective, Read said, was the sharing of ideas. This second show would include more works by friends, volunteers and supporters. "Without them we wouldn’t be here. The first show was an introduction to the gallery with this show intended to be the beginning of a conversation after the introduction." Ten more shows will follow.

When I got home afterwards I realized I’d neglected to ask where the name of the gallery came from and contacted Hansen who replied that PRØVE was “a Norwegian word that means about the same as the word prove in English. It seemed to match what we were trying to accomplish with the gallery. Plus we really liked the O with the / as a symbol.”

Friday night’s event will feature art by Alexander Hanson, Nikki Burger, Michael Beachy, Brittany Sanford, Zach Gorr, Anthony Zappa, Justin Iverson, Nickolas Monson and Steven J. Read. It is free and open to the public.

Local sponsors of PRØVE Gallery Second include Sons of Norway, Carmody Irish Pub, Clyde Iron Works, Sherwin Williams, The Crunchy Bunch and Sound Unseen.