selected reviews, listings, press releases,and posts by bloggers

review: ARTnews

Wed, 1 May 2013 21:05:09 -0400

may 2013, page 100

new york
Michael Waugh
Winkleman
Michael Waugh's dense and absorbing exhibition was dominated by a delicate series of representational drawings created entirely out of tiny flowing texts copied from Adam Smith's 1776 The Wealth of Nations. The largest, a triptych, featuring a sinking steamboat engulfed by enormous waves, took nearly 1,200 hours to complete. Other images here included idyllic scenes of rowers in front of country mansions and portraits of handsome young oarsmen. All were visually airy and evanescent in spite of the labor they required.
The show was intended as a fundraising prequel to Rowing Back, a future performance inspired by the 1827 death of Waugh's ancestor Gideon Dexter, who froze in a rowboat while attempting to recover his employer's drifting sloop. Waugh plans to hand-build a boat he will row from the place where Dexter died to the site from which he departed, reversing the journey to symbolically recuperate his life.
The Invisible Hands (2012), a video documenting Waugh's preparations for this project, was projected on a wall monitor hung over a pair of handmade oars. Shot from a camera attached to the handle of a rowing machine, the film shows Waugh's body moving toward and away from the lens as he trains, with an almost uncomfortable intimacy. Footage of the oars' creation is also included, along with documentation of the unsuccessful maiden voyage in a [racing shell] that immediately capsized, plunging [Waugh] into the water.
Another video records one of Waugh's eight-hour readings of Smith's book. Audible fragments of economic theories float in and out of the viewers' consciousness while they look at the rest of the work, enabling Waugh's romanticized Arcadias to dissolve into Smith's impersonal phrases. The arbitrary masochism of Waugh's entire artistic enterprise underscores capitalism's human cost.
- Elisabeth Kley

image: Michael Waugh, Money as a Particular Branch of Society (The Wealth of Nations, part 17). 2012, ink on mylar, 22" x 28". Winkleman.

Press release: 8-hour endurance performance The Wealth of Nations (scene 2, Chelsea)

Fri, 1 Feb 2013 10:30:18 -0500

a reception from 6PM to 8PM will follow the performance

performance at:
Winkleman Gallery
621 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
T: 212.643.3152

Winkleman Gallery in collaboration with Schroeder Romero are pleased to announce an all-day performance by artist Michael Waugh as part of his ongoing solo show Offenses Against One’s Self. The artist will read, non-stop for an eight-hour work day, starting at 10:30 AM and ending at 6:30PM. Please join us at any time during the performance, or catch him during the home-stretch: The final half hour of the performance (6 to 6:30) will overlap with a reception for the artist from 6PM until 8PM.

Waugh will be reading aloud from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which is the text that Waugh uses in most of the work on view in the gallery. This marathon-length performance helps underscore the artist’s ongoing exploration of labor and value in artistic production. This reading will be a continuation of the performance that Waugh began at the University of Connecticut’s School of Business, where he read from the beginning of Smith’s book – also for eight hours, non-stop. He will continue staging eight-hour performances (later in 2013) until he has read aloud the entirety of the book.

The date of February 1st was chosen for this performance as a memorial for the artist's great-great-great-great grandfather, Gideon Dexter, who died in a working-class rowing accident on January 31, 1827, having rowed himself to exhaustion against an unexpected storm. His frozen body was found off the coast of Martha's Vineyard and returned home the next day, February 1st.

Michael Waugh began doing live readings and performance while earning his MFA in poetry at Texas State University. After earning his second Master's degree (in visual art) from New York University, Waugh began combining his training. In September of 2000, he staged his first 8-hour long performance, on the corner of 20th St and 11th Avenue in New York. He has also staged 8-hour performances at the Austin International Poetry Festival, the College Art Association's annual conference, and at the PULSE contemporary art fair in Miami. His video work presents documentation of even longer, performative projects. And his labor-intensive drawing practice, in the context of his performance background, exists as a fetishized record of his Herculean (or perhaps Sisyphean) efforts. Waugh's work has been exhibited at Winkleman Gallery (NY), Schroeder Romero Gallery (NY), Ronald Feldman Gallery (NY), Diverse Works (Houston), El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), the Arkansas Arts Center (Little Rock), The University of Connecticut (Storrs), and the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art (AR), among others. He has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, The Marie Walsh Sharp Space Program, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundadtion.

The image at the top of the page is taken from the performance documentation of The Wealth of Nations (scene 1, UCONN), the filming of which was assisted by Amy Barbieri, Dominique Mohansingh, and Kate Owens. Thank you to the University of Connecticut School of Business and the Contemporary Art Galleries: Storrs for their contributions towards the staging and filming of the performance of The Wealth of Nations (scene 1, UCONN). Thank you to Barry Rosenberg for arranging the location and coordinating the assistants.

Interview: NYFA News

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:27:14 -0500

Meet a NYFA Artist: Michael Waugh

NYFA talks to Michael Waugh (2009 Printmaking/Drawing/Artists Books Fellow) about his current exhibition, incorporating multidisciplinary elements into his work, relating text to images, and rowing a boat across Buzzards Bay.
Tell us about your process. How would you describe what you do?
The drawings that I make use a technique called micrography, in which tiny hand-written words form a visual image. The technique has been around since at least the 12th century. I don't think that my drawings would be all that remarkable if they were only concerned with this traditional form. The creative site of my work is the relationship between text and image. I work with that relationship in the drawings as well as in performance, video, and sculpture.
How did you arrive at your medium?
I earned a BA in history and an MFA in poetry before studying visual art, so I came at art-making with all those disciplines in tow. Before I started making the micrographic drawings, my drawings used text in several ways, handwritten as well as font-based, alongside drawn and painted elements. As with my current drawings, those older drawings and the texts that I used were made in conjunction with multi-media work and sculpture. The first time I used micrography, I thought it would just be a one-off. But I got caught up in the possibilities -- and found that the micrography solved a lot of the formal issues that I'd been having in my drawings.
How do you choose a text to work with and how do you relate the text to the images you depict?
To a certain degree, I choose texts because I want to know more about them. I have been using important texts dealing with economics and the federal budget recently because, after the crash, I wanted to know more about those topics. But within that field, there are thousands of choices of important texts. The next step involves a lot of back and forth -- looking at images -- reading articles -- looking at how money affects my life on a daily basis -- repeating this process over several months. The titles of my work always make clear the text that I use. From my perspective, the relationship between the text and the context that I create is the most important thing
You have an exhibition that opened on Jan. 12 at Winkleman Gallery, in conjunction with your long term gallery Schroeder Romero. Tell us about the work in this exhibition and about your ongoing rowing project.
To a certain degree, the show that just opened is a prequel to a larger project. Almost every piece in the show has rowing imagery in it -- portraits of university crew, images of boat-houses, hand-made oars covered in hand-written text, etc. And the most prominent text that I'm engaging with is Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, which is a foundational text for capitalism. My next project will not just have oars covered with text but a whole boat, and I'm going to row that boat across Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts, retracing the final, fatal voyage of my great-great-great-great grandfather.
What has been the most gratifying part of this project?
The most gratifying part of this project has been working outside of my studio. I've had to learn woodworking skills, how to row, and I'm learning about the processes of the ocean. My work has always been engaged with ideas. But ideas don't mean much without people. I'm figuring out how to engage with people as part of my process instead of just as an audience. It's nice to move beyond the producer/consumer dichotomy.
You incorporate elements of performance, such as video and live readings, into your work. What has led you to develop this multidisciplinary approach and what direction do you see your work moving toward from here?
I earned my degree in poetry before I started making visual art, so I was giving readings and performing first. When I went back to school at NYU for visual art, I adopted a multi-disciplinary approach by incorporating what used to be called the plastic arts into my writerly practice. One of the best classes I took was with Marina Abramović, who helped me see some new possibilities. My graduate thesis consisted of video and installation, and I've continued to work in various disciplines since then. However, the market has given more exposure to my drawings than to my other work. My hope is that as my career progresses, I'll have more chances to show the full context of my practice. One way that I'm working towards that is through things like the rowing project that engage directly with a community instead of relying on salability to find an audience.
On the business side of things, what do you consider to be the most challenging aspect of managing your career as an artist?
I think that, like most artists, I am a horrible networker. Unless someone asks, I just don't talk about my work (so thanks for this opportunity!). Part of managing one's career is getting the word out to writers, curators, other artists. But I think that it's important to try to make those connections in a genuine way and not out of self-interest. I think that most artists live their careers in the same way as I do. Nonetheless, it presents a challenge that I feel acutely.
What advice do you have for up-and-coming artists, especially in terms of managing a career?
The best thing emerging artists can do is be generous. Be generous with your time. Visit friends’ studios. Volunteer at non-profits. Ask dealers questions about their businesses. And do all of these things out of genuine curiosity. Presumably, we are all in the art world because we love art. But it's easy to fall into the false political consciousness of believing that artists are in competition with each other. We aren't.
Who/what influences your work?
The great thing about living in New York is that I am surrounded by creative people and have the opportunity to see hundreds of shows, good and bad. I see a lot of work that I find deeply problematic (usually for political reasons. The visual form of a work is rarely what I respond to first). But then I walk into a show like Janet Biggs' video installation at Smack Mellon, and I realize why I do what I do and why I live here. I am equally motivated to respond to her work as to the artists whose work I find problematic. I guess what I'm saying is that what influences me is being part of a dialogue. Though, to be honest, listening to Democracy Now and NPR, or reading John Kenneth Galbraith (my current reading), influence me as much as any art or artist.
In 2009, you won a NYFA Fellowship in Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts. How has this award affected your work and your career?
The NYFA award had a huge impact on my career. I am convinced that the NYFA Fellowship gave me the visibility to go on and get two more awards in rapid succession, and I know that people who saw my work because of NYFA have then gone on to visit my shows. So the award has really helped to build an audience for my work. As I said earlier, I'm not a world-class networker. So NYFA's stamp of approval has done a lot to help promote me in ways that would be difficult for me. On a practical level, I used the grant to buy a new computer, which I desperately needed. I plan my drawings in Photoshop and my old computer took several minutes to render any changes. Between making 45-layered Photoshop files and processing video, my old computer would get burning hot and whine miserably. I would have worked that little laptop into the ground, and probably I would have lost work. So the grant and the new computer were of huge assistance. The timing of the award was incredibly fortuitous, and for that I am deeply grateful.
Article Published: January 23, 2013 Interview by Michon Ashmore

Press release: solo show at Winkleman Gallery in collaboration with Schroeder Romero

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 15:00:51 -0500

exhibition on view at:
Winkleman Gallery
621 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
T: 212.643.3152

Winkleman Gallery, in collaboration with Schroeder Romero, is pleased to present Offenses Against One's Self, a solo exhibition of new work by New York artist Michael Waugh. The exhibition includes labor-intensive, micrographic drawings in which line upon line of delicately handwritten text comprise a series of evocative landscapes and portraits. Also included are equally labor-intensive sculpture and video that utilize related texts, including documentation of an eight-hour performance-reading. Waugh will stage a similar non-stop reading on February 1st, starting at 10:30 AM and continuing without break until 6:30PM.

The exhibition’s title, Offenses Against One's Self, is taken from the title of an essay written in 1785 by British philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham, in which he argued for the elimination of laws that limited same-sex relations in his era. It's an ironic title, given that this exhibition's most present subject matter is capitalism -- specifically text from Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations. Smith's book has been used to argue for the elimination of laws limiting capitalism and for promoting a libertarian, greed-is-good ethos. In this show's context – amid images of shipwrecks, mass shootings, lynchings, and model-perfect young men – greed, becomes the "offense against one's self." Smith's other major work, also utilized in this show, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, engages with concepts of social connectivity – posing ideas that are at odds with notions of entrepreneurial greed.

Waugh's work has always been fueled by such contradictions. Formally, his work is simple, even elegant – terms not often used to describe highly political work. The drawings are classically beautiful and representational. The sculpture falls into that most conservative category of object, utilitarian. And the video appears to fall into another straightforward category, documentary. All the work takes conservative forms to ridiculous extremes. The first video in the show, for example, offers a single, eight-hour-long shot – virtually impossible to watch in its entirety in a gallery context. While the second video, entitled The Invisible Hands, uses the incidental sound of a rowing machine to guide the editing of a months-long process of oarmaking and physical training, reducing the process into a frantic eight minutes that end in failure.

Viewed as a whole, the work in this exhibition implies a narrative; an aggressive narrative in which facts are ignored in deference to dogma and structure, a narrative in which the ever increasing volume of hard-learned truths remain always on the verge of overwhelming us. A final contradiction may be that Waugh's work itself does not overwhelm. The drawing, video, and sculpture sit as testament to the thousands of hours of labor invested by the artist. The traces of his efforts remain always on the surface – forestalling the inundation of information and pointing out the solution that we always knew existed: hard work.

Thank you to New Bedford Community Rowing for training/support/advice during the creation of work included in this exhibition; specific thanks to Chey Bayse, Carolyn Flynn, Sheilagh Flynn, and Calder Reardon for assistance during the filming of The Invisible Hands. And thanks to Amy Barbieri, Dominique Mohansingh, and Kate Owens as well as the University of Connecticut School of Business and the Contemporary Art Galleries: Storrs for their contributions towards the staging and filming of the performance of The Wealth of Nations (scene 1, UCONN). Thank you to Barry Rosenberg for arranging the location and coordinating the assistants.

mention: NY1

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:20:29 -0500

Chelsea Art Gallery Credits Wave Of Support In Sandy Recovery (click here for video)

By: Stephanie Simon

The Winkleman Gallery on 27th Street in Chelsea reopened Friday after being closed for more than 70 days to repair damages brought on by Hurricane Sandy. NY1's Stephanie Simon filed the following report.

Just before Sandy hit gallery owner Ed Winkleman returned to his 27th Street space three times to raise the artwork stored in his gallery's basement to as high as four feet off the ground. At the time he thought he had over prepared.

"We came back the water on the first floor had subsided, but the floors had all buckled. there was mud everywhere. The big shock was in the basement where the water was up to the ceiling. So you would see a work of art floating by so it was heartbreaking and surreal at the same time," Winkleman recalled.

Now after drying out, conserving what could be saved and figuring all that was lost The Winkleman Gallery and four neighboring galleries on the far west side of 27th Street are all reopening. Ironically Winkleman is reopening with a new exhibit by Brooklyn artist Michael Michael Waugh which has a strong water theme.

"The artwork uses a technique called micrography in which very tiny handwritten words make up an image and in this work there's an image of a wave that's just inundating a ship," Waugh said.

And while it was overwhelming trying to get the show up not knowing when the gallery would re-open, both Michael and Ed say they were also overwhelmed by the outpouring of support form the arts community as buyers, artists and conservators showed up to help.

"As competitive as the contemporary artworld is, and it is very competitive, it has a bigger heart," Winkleman said.

"With this construction we've all been coming in and out of each others' galleries, seeing how the construction is doing, seeing how everyone is doing and we're neighbors again," Waugh noted.

The five galleries, all set to reopen Saturday, are located on West 27th Street between 11th and 12th Avenues. And while that's a full block off the heart of the Chelsea gallery district it's definitely worth the walk.

article: Sippican Week

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 13:19:37 -0400

MATTAPOISETT — Michael Waugh doesn’t know much about rowing, he isn’t familiar with water currents and he’s got tendonitis.
That would be unremarkable if he weren’t planning to row 20 miles Martha’s Vineyard to Mattapoisett Harbor in a homemade boat.
Waugh, a full-time artist based in New York City, has started a two-year project that will trace his great-great-great-great grandfather’s (yes, that's four greats) tragic last day in reverse.
On January 31, 1827, Waugh’s ancestor Gideon Dexter rowed out of the harbor on a stormy, icy night with his cousin to fetch his employer’s runaway skiff.
“It was clearly a bad idea,” said Waugh of his “working class” ancestor. “The storm is coming in, let the damn boat go.”
But as Dexter and his cousin chased the ship, in their individual boats, the wind blew them into Buzzard’s Bay. Both were killed.
“My ancestor was found the next morning with his oars shattered and his hands lacerated and frozen solid near Martha’s Vineyard,” said Waugh.
Now Waugh wants to relive this ill-fated expedition, sort of.
“This very tragic, personal story, has a larger economic truth to it, too,” said Waugh. “Working class people take risks that other people don’t. As part of his job, he died. Part of that is making a snap decision to try and save someone else’s property.”
Waugh wants to take Dexter’s journey in reverse. Instead of starting out at night, Waugh’s plan is to start in the morning. Instead of making a quick decision and rowing into the harbor unprepared, Waugh has a two-year plan.
“I’ll be in control of every aspect of it, from training my body to building the oars myself,” he said. “I’m trying to keep in the spirit of these working class origins.”
Waugh is going to document every step of the process in what is a new step in his career as a performance artist.
“This current project is more involved. I reached a point where I have a desire to go to the next level,” said Waugh, who's art is admittedly “hard to sound byte.”
In his previous work, for example creating poems from press releases on a street in New York City, Waugh combines text, performance and, usually, a video camera to record it all.
“I always try to make work where the immediate impression of it is very inviting and comfortable, so inviting and comfortable that you want to know more,” he said. “The more you know, the more you realize how complicated and involved it is.”
The artist’s work is usually political, combining “big ideas and individual lives.” Working in Mattapoisett’s shipping industry, Dexter’s individual death clearly coincided with the bigger economy.
Waugh, may not be tapping into the town’s shipping economy with his project, but he doesn’t plan to go it alone like Dexter.
“I can’t do it myself,” said Waugh. “Hopefully, I can meet boaters and rowers and people interested in the Bay who can help me, and on the day that I decide to do the event, there will be people with me.”
Waugh has already connected with the Buzzard’s Bay Coalition and is taking lessons from theNew Bedford Community Rowing program (luckily rowing hasn’t bothered his tendonitis, so far). He will also craft his own oars this summer at a boat building nonprofit in Maine.
To fund the project, Waugh hopes to raise money through grants and an upcoming show featuring rowing-themed drawings. But Waugh knows getting grants could be an uphill battle.
“If you just keep waiting, you’ll never do it, so I’m just plunging in," he said.
Finishing the project in 2014 also has special significance for Waugh.
“Gideon Dexter died 66 days before his 47th birthday. The date I’ve set is 66 days before my 47th birthday. This project is meant to be,” he said.
To follow Michael Waugh’s progress, visit his blog Rowing Back at rowingback.com and see other examples of his work at michaelwaugh.com.

project: rowing back

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 17:29:51 -0400

I started a blog today to record the progress of a project that I've been thinking about for a couple of years -- and I've finally gotten to the point of action. The name of the blog is "rowing back," not because that will be the name of the work when it’s done, but because the core performative act around which everything else depends will consist of me rowing back from Martha’s Vineyard to my family's home town of Mattapoisett, MA, a distance of about 20 miles.
In 1827, my great-great-great-great grandfather Gideon Dexter, who worked in the shipbuilding industry of Mattapoisett, was killed. Here’s how it happened as reported in a clipping from a New Bedford newspaper of 1827 and reprinted in The Dexter Family in America:
"On January 31, 1827, the sloop Betsey of Wareham came into Mattapoisett Harbor and hauled in as near the shore as was practicable on account of the ice; soon after she was seen to be drifting toward the bay and several persons from the shore went to her assistance. About 7 o'clock in the evening they lost the small skiff overboard and Mr. Gideon Dexter and Mr. Caleb Dexter, Jr. of Mattapoisett, took a boat and went to recover the skiff. The wind being strong at north and the weather extremely cold, they were unable to return to the sloop, which was run ashore, and the persons on board landed with difficulty, wet and much exhausted. The next morning, the men and boats not having returned, search was made and the skiff was found on Goat Island, about half a mile distant, and the body of Caleb Dexter was found lying on the marsh frozen. The other boat drifted out of the bay and was picked up near East Chop, off Holmes Hole, with the body of Gideon Dexter, which was also frozen. His hands were much lacerated and the oar battered to pieces, from which it appears he exerted himself to return until exhausted. Mr. Gideon Dexter was 46 years old, and left wife and nine children. Mr. Caleb Dexter, Jr. was 34 years of age, and left a wife and an aged father and mother to lament their loss."
I’ve set myself a little over two years to get the project done. Gideon was blown eastward about 20 miles from Mattapoisett to “Holmes Hole,” now known as Vineyard Haven on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. For me to row the 20 miles from Martha's Vineyard to Mattapoisett, most likely against the prevailing winds, will be a huge undertaking, especially for someone who has never rowed, who has very little upper body strength, and who suffers from chronic tendonitis of the wrist, elbow, and shoulder from drawing too much.
My previous projects (drawings and performance-based work) are self-consciously masochistic. My right arm’s tendons will most likely never fully heal from what I continue to put them through. But the reason that I make work like this is not that I like pain. Really, what I’m concerned with is labor -- and especially the relationship of the labor of working people to capital. Artists' labor is not that different in the larger sense -- except that artists’ work is fetishized to the point of aestheticization. The extreme quality of my work means that its labors can not be ignored, and that is unsettling because the aesthetic experience of the viewer is interrupted.
I am continually looking for ways to prevent aetheticization, to make the world, to make labor, to make the extremity of my labor break the experience. That desire motivates me to spend the next year doing physical therapy and fundraising. I also plan to present, in early 2013, a solo show (at Schroeder Romero & Shredder) that is a prequel to this rowing project. This show will have plenty of labor-intensive micrographic drawings. For these drawings I have copied out, word for word, the entirety of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which weighs in at over 500 pages. I also plan to make (by my own hand) the oars that I will use for my rowing project, and I plan to show those oars (again, as prequel) in this 2013 show. They will sit at the center of the show as totemic objects of power; they, too, will be covered in Adam Smith's text.
The following summer (2013) I will build (again, by hand) the boat that I will row those 20 miles. And over the whole two years, I will be working on drawings with rowing imagery composed out of text that delves into theories of history, class, and labor. I plan to edit those same texts as voiceover into the video piece composed of footage shot during my whole project. Drawings, video, performative rowing, and in-gallery performances will all bleed into each other and inform each other.
What happened to Gideon was thoughtlessly negligent. Was it worth it for two men to risk their lives to fetch a skiff from the harbor -- as a storm was bearing down -- with the harbor so dangerously full of ice that a ship couldn’t get to the wharf? Why didn't someone stop them?
By contrast, my two year project will be methodical, calculated. The haste of Gideon’s decision will be replaced by the care of my own. I will build the best boat for the situation. I will get in the best shape for the challenge. I will have a coach. I will have a master builder guiding me. I will gather a cohort of boaters and rowers to safeguard my journey. Unlike the working class men, Gideon and Caleb, whose lives weren’t worth as much as a skiff, I will build a network of friends, colleagues, and sponsors who will be by my side both figuratively and literally. And through this process, I will rewind the cynical accounting that led to Gideon's solitary and fatal exertions. I will not just row back in the opposite direction, I will reverse all the decisions, all the aesthetics that devalue labor. I will refuse the tragic end of one person by returning him to the interconnected and continuing histories of many.