May 17th 2013
For Immediate release: 'Exchange V'
May 22nd 2013:’ Exchange ’
7:30 PM until there are no more paintings to exchange.
5905 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles Ca in front of the Chris Burden Lamps.
Skip Snow announces and invites the community to participate in
‘Exchange’ an intervention taking place in front of the James Turrell opening at LACMA on may 22nd at 7:30 PM. In this performance Skip Snow gives away 7 of his original paintings in exchange for the recipient exchanging information about their identity and having their portrait taken by Todd Gray, while Frau Kolb videos the event.
This project is documented at http://projectArtExchange.com. After this 5th instance of ‘Exchange’ thirty eight of Skip Snow's paintings
will have been placed in the collections of artists, art professors, art dealers, art critics, curators and art lovers.
This is a collaborative project by Los Angeles artists Skip Snow, Todd Gray and Frau Kolb, with curatorial input from Ciara Ennis.
By hijacking 'legitimate art venues', such as museum openings the team de-contextualizes and impoverish Skip's paintings, while at the same time automatically comparing them to the work which is being celebrated just steps away by a noble institution of art. The portraits made by Mr. Gray rise to the level of fine studio portraits or celebrate the event itself depending on what environments Mr. Gray finds to shoot within, and Frau Kolb’s documentation take on an increasingly alienated distance from the an actual journalistic narrative
of the event as the events become more and more clear in form and content over time.
This performance begs the questions
• Can an artist join the community of art, without joining its institutions of art?
• What is the value and meaning of an original painting outside its capitalist context?
• Can an original painting be seen f its context is sufficiently impoverished by means of:
o Presenting it in on the street
o Presenting it with its own reproduction
o Presenting it without any faith by the cultural capital bestowed by museums, galleries or institutional space.
Artist Biographies:
Skip Snow, a participant of the East Village Art movement 1989- 1994 has exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions including MOMA’s PS 1, The Aldridge Museum, The Patterson Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Armory, The New Math Gallery, Club 57, The Sharpe Gallery, The Alexander Wood Gallery, and Fashion Moda. He suspended his public participation in the art world from 1990, until now. Skip Snow received his undergraduate education at NYU’s Experimental Theatre wing, and was a studio assistant to many notable artists. He worked as a performer and technician with Sky Saver Productions and The Wooster group.
Todd Gray received his BFA and MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Gray is currently a Professor of Art at California State University, Long Beach. Gray has performed at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), New York University,
University of Houston, Syracuse University and the Kunsthochschule fur Medien, Koln, Germany. He has exhibited his photo-based work internationally and is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MOCA, Los Angeles; University of Parma, Italy and other collections.
Frau Kolb is an artist, primarily a painter, whose interest in art history (in which she has a B.A. from Columbia University 2001) and contemporary art have led her to focus on the dazzling work of her fellow audio, visual, and performing artists. In 2010, during her epic tango with breast cancer, the artist began performance painting in collaboration with musicians, after nearly a decade of producing
abstract paintings; she became interested in time based mediums including art-noise performance. Frau Kolb made her first performance art video at Art Haus, a pop-up artists' collective led by, Topanga legend, artist James Mathers. She has participated in group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Berkley UC Davis, and New York City beginning in 2010 and as recently as 2012. The alternative art-news web-site www.talkinggrid.com is her brainchild.
For further information and press kits, please contact Skip Snow at:
skip.snow@sbcglobal.net or call 323 349 0881.
Also refer to http://projectArtExchange.com
April 4th, 2013
For Immediate Release 'Exchange IV'
Media Contact: Skip Snow, skip.snow@sbcglobal.net; TEL: 323-349-0881
ART Walk
April 11th 2013:’ Exchange’
901 South Broadway inside the Blackstone Gallery
9:00 PM until there are no more paintings to exchange.
Skip Snow and Steven Thomas Higgins announce and invites the community to participate in ‘Exchange’ the 4th instance of an intervention and performance project by Los Angeles artists Skip Snow, Todd Gray and Frau Kolb, with curatorial input from Ciara Enni.
This event is collaboration between Skip Snow a painter, Todd Gray a fine art photographer and Frau Kolb a videographer.
In this intervention Skip gives away his paintings in exchange for the identity of community members. In this instance Skip de-contextualizes his work by presenting it in a ‘down and out’ artist run gallery in a show that is full to the brim with images, so much so, that the work itself is difficult to see as individuated. Skip presents both originals and reproductions. The dealer will sell the reproductions but on art walk the originals are given away in exchange for collector’s identities.
The performance begs the questions
- · Can an artist join the community of art, without joining its institutions of art?
- · What is the value and meaning of an original painting?
- · How is an original painting understood if its context is sufficiently impoverished by means of:
o Presenting it with its reproduction
o Presenting it without access to the cultural capital of museums or a more prestigious galleries.
The result of the first three interventions is documented at http://www.projectartexchange.com/exchanges.html
Artist Biographies:
Skip Snow, a participant of the East Village Art movement 1989- 1994 has exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions including MOMA’s PS 1, The Aldridge Museum, The Patterson Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Armory, The New Math Gallery, Club 57, The Sharpe Gallery, The Alexander Wood Gallery, and Fashion Moda. He suspended his public participation in the art world from 1990, until now. Skip Snow received his undergraduate education at NYU’s Experimental Theatre wing, and worked as a performer and technician with Sky Saver Productions and The Wooster group.
Todd Gray received his BFA and MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Gray is currently a Professor of Art at California State University, Long Beach. Gray has performed at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), New York University, University of Houston, Syracuse University and the Kunsthochschule fur Medien, Koln, Germany. He has exhibited his photo-based work internationally and is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MOCA, Los Angeles; University of Parma, Italy and other collections.
Frau Kolb is an artist, primarily a painter, whose interest in art history (in which she has a B.A. from Columbia University 2001) and contemporary art have led her to focus on the dazzling work of her fellow audio, visual, and performing artists. In 2010, during her epic tango with breast cancer, the artist began performance painting in collaboration with musicians, after nearly a decade of producing abstract paintings; she became interested in time based mediums including art-noise performance. Frau Kolb made her first performance art video at Art Haus, a pop-up artists' collective led by, Topanga legend, artist James Mathers. She has participated in group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Berkley UC Davis, and New York City beginning in 2010 and as recently as 2012. The alternative art-news web-site www.talkinggrid.com is her brainchild.
For further information and press kits, please contact Skip Snow at:
skip.snow@sbcglobal.net or call 323 349 0881.
March 9th 2013
FOR IMEDIATE RELEASE Exchange III
It begs the question can an artist join the community of art, without joining the instatutions of art? The result of the first two interventions is documented at http://www.projectartexchange.com/exchanges.html
This event is a collaboration between Skip Snow a painter, Todd Gray a fine art photographer and Frau Kolb a vidiographer, and blogger. Exchange invites members of the community to accept a painting by Skip Snow in exchange for information about themselves and their relationship to the art community. The participants are required to have their portrait taken by mr Gray, and fill out a questionnaire about their relationship to the art world in ‘exchange’ for a painting by Skip Snow from his studio practice. These six performances hijack various art event's context. They use that context in order to question the relationship of these unpermitted 'street art performance' to the dominant art institutions that control the contemporary and historical dialouge. The various sites vary in terms of their cultural value, from established museums (LACMA), art schools (UCLA), alternative art collectives, commercial art galleries (Blum and Poe) to street venues where artists sell their work directly to the public (Venice Beach) or community art centers (Watts Tower). Community participation is crucial to the production and completion of the work.It is the intention of the intervention to allow participants, viewers, and those who witness the work via the web and other media to examine their relationship to the manner in which as a general practice we have surrendered our direct relationship to the objects of desire, and the physical fetish that a ‘western’ produced painting ontologically produces, to the work’s placement within the cultural hierarchy as established by the institutions of art and the people who occupy them. It is further called into question our complicit relationship to the value we attach to a work of art, and its place in the commoditized world of artist’s brand, fame, and monetary value as these fetish objects are traded in the market place.(Skip Snow September 2012) Artist Biographies: Skip Snow, a participant of the East Village Art movement 1989- 1994 has exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions including MOMA’s PS 1, The Aldridge Museum, The Patterson Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Armory, The New Math Gallery, Club 57, The Sharpe Gallery, The Alexander Wood Gallery, and Fashion Moda. He suspended his public participation in the art world from 1990, until now. Skip Snow received his undergraduate education at NYU’s Experimental Theatre wing, and worked as a performer and technician with Sky Saver Productions and The Wooster group. Todd Gray received his BFA and MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Gray is currently a Professor of Art at California State University, Long Beach. Gray has performed at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), New York University, University of Houston, Syracuse University and the Kunsthochschule fur Medien, Koln, Germany. He has exhibited his photo-based work internationally and is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MOCA, Los Angeles; University of Parma, Italy and other collections. Frau Kolb is an artist, primarily a painter, whose interest in art history (in which she has a B.A. from Columbia University 2001) and contemporary art have led her to focus on the dazzling work of her fellow audio, visual, and performing artists. In 2010, during her epic tango with breast cancer, the artist began performance painting in collaboration with musicians, after nearly a decade of producing abstract paintings; she became interested in time based mediums including art-noise performance. Frau Kolb made her first performance art video at Art Haus, a pop-up artists' collective led by, Topanga legend, artist James Mathers. She has participated in group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Berkley UC Davis, and New York City beginning in 2010 and as recently as 2012. The alternative art-news web-site www.talkinggrid.com is her brainchild. For further information and press kits, please contact Skip Snow at: skip.snow@sbcglobal.net or call 323 349 0881.
Media Contact: Skip Snow, skip.snow@sbcglobal.net; TEL: 323-349-0881
September 28th 2012: Exchange
Sidewalk, 2721 South La Cienega Blvd at 6:30 PM
Skip Snow announces and invites the community to participate in ‘Exchange’ an intervention and performance by Los Angeles artist Skip Snow, with the participation of artists Todd Gray and Frau Kolb. This is the first of six such interventions performed September 2012 through July of 2013. Forthcoming interventions will take place in specific locales across LA.
This intervention takes the form of collaboration between Skip Snow, Todd Gray and Frau Kolb a fine art photographer. Questioning the inter-relationship between the practice of painting, local community, established institutions, and the art market, the work exposes the entrenched hegemony of the art world. All interventions will be documented by Frau Kolb. Each intervention will add a new portrait photographer to the team.
Exchange invites members of the community to accept a painting by Skip Snow in exchange for information about themselves and their relationship to the art community. The participants will also be required to have their portrait taken by a photographer from the Los Angeles arts community, and fill out a questionnaire about their relationship to the art world in ‘exchange’ for a painting by Skip Snow from his studio practice.
These six performances will operate outside of the confines of the conventional art world and without the permission of the dominant art institutions that control the contemporary and historical cannon. The various sites vary in terms of their cultural value, from established museums (LACMA), art schools (UCLA), commercial art galleries (Blum and Poe) to street venues where artists sell their work directly to the public (Venice Beach) or community art centers (Watts Tower). Audience participation is crucial to the production and completion of the work.
It is the intention of the intervention to allow participants, viewers, and those who witness the work via the web and other media to examine their relationship to the manner in which as a general practice we have surrendered our direct relationship to the objects of desire, and the physical fetish that a ‘western’ produced painting ontologically produces, to the work’s placement within the cultural hierarchy as established by the institutions of art and the people who occupy them. It is further called into question our complicit relationship to the value we attach to a work of art, and its place in the commoditized world of artist’s brand, fame, and monetary value as these fetish objects are traded in the market place.(Skip Snow September 2012)
Artifacts of the intervention will archived on the web site http://projectartexchange.com
• The formal portraits taken of the collectors who acquire the paintings,
• A digital copy, which is the same size of paintings exchanged, will first become part of the intervention as a substitute for the painting exchanged, and then be retained by Skip Snow as one of an edition of 10 for each work. A photographic reproduction of each work will be posted on the web site
• An aggregation of information exchanged with the collectors who participate
• Biographies of artists, and collaborators in the project
• Video documentations of each intervention
• Theoretical underpinnings related to the intervention
Artist Biographies:
Skip Snow, a participant of the East Village Art movement 1989- 1994 has exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions including MOMA’s PS 1, The Aldridge Museum, The Patterson Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Armory, The New Math Gallery, Club 57, The Sharpe Gallery, The Alexander Wood Gallery, and Fashion Moda. He suspended his public participation in the art world from 1990, until now. Skip Snow received his undergraduate education at NYU’s Experimental Theatre wing, and worked as a performer and technician with Sky Saver Productions and The Wooster group.
Todd Gray received his BFA and MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Gray is currently a Professor of Art at California State University, Long Beach. Gray has performed at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater), New York University, University of Houston, Syracuse University and the Kunsthochschule fur Medien, Koln, Germany. He has exhibited his photo-based work internationally and is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; MOCA, Los Angeles; University of Parma, Italy and other collections.
>Frau Kolb is an artist, primarily a painter, whose interest in art history (in which she has a B.A. from Columbia University 2001) and contemporary art have led her to focus on the dazzling work of her fellow audio, visual, and performing artists. In 2010, during her epic tango with breast cancer, the artist began performance painting in collaboration with musicians, after nearly a decade of producing abstract paintings; she became interested in time based mediums including art-noise performance. Frau Kolb made her first performance art video at Art Haus, a pop-up artists' collective led by, Topanga legend, artist James Mathers. She has participated in group exhibitions in Los Angeles, Berkley UC Davis, and New York City beginning in 2010 and as recently as 2012. The alternative art-news web-site www.talkinggrid.com is her brainchild.
For further information and press kits, please contact Skip Snow at:
skip.snow@sbcglobal.net or call 323 349 0881.