Over & Back
Curated by Ryan Woodring and special guest curator Roz Crews
Opening: April 25th, 2015
Open Call - Closing: May17th, 2015
Over and Back refers to a rule in basketball in which a team who has taken the ball beyond the half-court line into the opponent’s territory can not voluntarily retreat past that line without penalty. Since sports journalists are particularly prone to wordplay, I am borrowing this phrase to describe a unique binary in professional sports culture relating to the act of remembering. On one hand, sports are characterized by an ephemerality in which players are cycled through their youth and each year, regardless of the previous season’s successes or failures, the standings reset. While players are encouraged to forget, those who watch sports engage in a growing economy based in remembering. Fans, and the market surrounding them, capture and monumentalize fleeting moments of muscular serendipity with an expansive set of recording devices. The artists in this exhibition use the material of spectatorship, from televisions to t-shirts, to form nuanced personal and communal takeaways from fandom culture. With arrow-sized sewing needles, motorized tracks, silkscreened memorials, and karaoke pep-talks, each artist effectively plays on both ends of the court.
Surplus Space plays a fitting role in hosting an exhibition about domesticated sports culture. Greg Hayes‘ 500h49m, a series of over 150 individual photographic accounts of every game of the 2008 Red Sox season as seen on television, greets us in the living room. Hayes set his camera’s lens on the televisions that broadcast each game and exposed each photograph for the entire duration of the game. The over-exposed television screens obliterate the content of the games while illuminating the static furniture that accompanies the restless Boston fan who waits the entire year for h/er team to return to the World Series.
On the other side of the living room hangs Carolyn Castaño and Gary Dauphin‘s Asesinados United, a fantasy team of silk-screened shirts portraying eleven different murdered or mysteriously deceased soccer stars. Fan-fueled deaths rupture the perceived distance between player and spectator and public and private. The shirts (which are available to purchase in a range of sizes) serve dual functions as they memorialize the player while also identifying with the fan- whose most common show of support is the donning of the jersey.
In the adjacent white box space, Terry Boyd violently sews large canvases using a bow and arrow with an attached string. In Bow and Arrow Sewing, Boyd confines the act of archery to an unthreatening domestic space, allowing our eyes and ears to witness the cacophonous pairing of questionable myths (male as hunter) with current conditions of domestic dwelling. Using sewing as a backdrop, Boyd’s performance highlights, among several other intricacies of modern gender renegotiations, the enigmatic role of sports culture as both a promoter and an outlet for physical aggression on and off the field.
In the street-level garage/theatre space, Hand2Mouth‘s Julie Hammond, Liz Hayden, Faith Helma, Erin Leddy, and Jonathan Walters (director) reconfigure their interactive Pep Talk play for a four-hour opening-night only performance. In this comically exaggerated portrayal of sports mentorship, Hand2Mouth’s actors play the part of life coaches who channel famous sports speeches with the help of cryptic karaoke equipment. Pep Talk samples the unrelenting optimism of American sports culture to prompt more difficult conversations about the interchangeability of roles between coach and player, mentor and pupil, and ultimately, winner and loser.
Guest curator Roz Crews, creator of The Art and Sports Notebook blog is curating Surplus Space’s kitchen, hallway, and backyard. The artists who will be showing work include Amanda Leigh Evans, Adam Moser and Sean Starowitz.
Surplus Space plays a fitting role in hosting an exhibition about domesticated sports culture. Greg Hayes‘ 500h49m, a series of over 150 individual photographic accounts of every game of the 2008 Red Sox season as seen on television, greets us in the living room. Hayes set his camera’s lens on the televisions that broadcast each game and exposed each photograph for the entire duration of the game. The over-exposed television screens obliterate the content of the games while illuminating the static furniture that accompanies the restless Boston fan who waits the entire year for h/er team to return to the World Series.
On the other side of the living room hangs Carolyn Castaño and Gary Dauphin‘s Asesinados United, a fantasy team of silk-screened shirts portraying eleven different murdered or mysteriously deceased soccer stars. Fan-fueled deaths rupture the perceived distance between player and spectator and public and private. The shirts (which are available to purchase in a range of sizes) serve dual functions as they memorialize the player while also identifying with the fan- whose most common show of support is the donning of the jersey.
In the adjacent white box space, Terry Boyd violently sews large canvases using a bow and arrow with an attached string. In Bow and Arrow Sewing, Boyd confines the act of archery to an unthreatening domestic space, allowing our eyes and ears to witness the cacophonous pairing of questionable myths (male as hunter) with current conditions of domestic dwelling. Using sewing as a backdrop, Boyd’s performance highlights, among several other intricacies of modern gender renegotiations, the enigmatic role of sports culture as both a promoter and an outlet for physical aggression on and off the field.
In the street-level garage/theatre space, Hand2Mouth‘s Julie Hammond, Liz Hayden, Faith Helma, Erin Leddy, and Jonathan Walters (director) reconfigure their interactive Pep Talk play for a four-hour opening-night only performance. In this comically exaggerated portrayal of sports mentorship, Hand2Mouth’s actors play the part of life coaches who channel famous sports speeches with the help of cryptic karaoke equipment. Pep Talk samples the unrelenting optimism of American sports culture to prompt more difficult conversations about the interchangeability of roles between coach and player, mentor and pupil, and ultimately, winner and loser.
Guest curator Roz Crews, creator of The Art and Sports Notebook blog is curating Surplus Space’s kitchen, hallway, and backyard. The artists who will be showing work include Amanda Leigh Evans, Adam Moser and Sean Starowitz.
Opening Night
Bow and Arrow
Terry Boyd
White Box
Through performance, abstraction and minimalist fiber art, Terry Boyd explores and interrogates systems of visual language. His staged performances of Bow and Arrow literally break through and break down tradition. The violence of the arrow and the purity of the white linen creates an elegant tension between the feminine and masculine and life and death. With drawings, sewn linen and machine-like abstractions, Boyd strives to create pieces that continue to reveal our fascination with the void.
The work introduces visual contradictions by magnifying the mending/healing metaphors of sewing to a scale at which it becomes violent and dangerous.
The work introduces visual contradictions by magnifying the mending/healing metaphors of sewing to a scale at which it becomes violent and dangerous.
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Born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1986, Terry Boyd’s earliest training as an artist began with lessons at the Carnegie Mellon Pre-College Art Program and the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts. These programs helped him earn the Andrew Carnegie Scholarship at Carnegie Mellon University where he received his BFA in 2009. Throughout his undergraduate training he maintained a triple-focus in Painting/Drawing, Contextual Practice, and Electronic Time-Based Media. In 2008, he was awarded an artist assistantship through the Carnegie Museum of Art for their International Exhibition. This allowed him to work with and learn from Kai Althoff, Thomas Hirschhorn and Barry McGee. Boyd later went on to earn a Master’s in Arts Management from CMU’s John H. Heinz III College.
Boyd is proud to call Pittsburgh his home and was honored in both 2013 and 2014 with a nomination for Pittsburgh’s Emerging Artist of the Year Award. Most recently, he earned the Eben Demarest Trust Award from The Pittsburgh Foundation, a prize shared with Jackson Pollock. Today he draws and embroiders art full-time in his Radiant Hall studio located in Lawrenceville. His current work focuses on large-scale sewing installations using a mechanical compound bow and yarn tethered arrows, meticulous neutral line drawings, and line drawings that are digitized and machine embroidered onto linen. art.terrenceboyd.com
Boyd is proud to call Pittsburgh his home and was honored in both 2013 and 2014 with a nomination for Pittsburgh’s Emerging Artist of the Year Award. Most recently, he earned the Eben Demarest Trust Award from The Pittsburgh Foundation, a prize shared with Jackson Pollock. Today he draws and embroiders art full-time in his Radiant Hall studio located in Lawrenceville. His current work focuses on large-scale sewing installations using a mechanical compound bow and yarn tethered arrows, meticulous neutral line drawings, and line drawings that are digitized and machine embroidered onto linen. art.terrenceboyd.com
500h49m
Greg Hayes
Parlor
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500h49m is a photographic record of the 2008 Boston Red Sox season. After two World Series wins in three years—the first of which came after 86 years without one—there was talk in New England of a baseball dynasty. The championships, it seemed, were won by the region and the team’s fans, as much as they were by the players and coaches. Fans who had long anticipated disappointment now expected success. This project is an exploration of fandom through exhaustive spectatorship. Beginning with the first Red Sox game on March 25, 2008, I watched each of the team’s 162 regular season games that year. Each time, and for the duration of each game, I made a photograph by opening my camera’s shutter when the game began and closing it when it finished. By rendering baseball unrecoverable amidst a series of living rooms, this project uses the photographic record to question the effects of a fan’s commitment to a team, and explore relationships between art, leisure, and work.
Greg J. Hayes is a visual artist committed to building a more complex photographic idea. His art practice, based on the idea that art making is a way of thinking, engages questions about the conditions of perception, and insistently investigates the resonance of time and experience. His conceptual goals largely determine the form of his artwork, thus he has incorporated drawing, text, video and sculpture into a mostly photographic practice.
After an undergraduate degree from Northeastern University and a year of study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) in Boston, Greg received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. He has exhibited and published his work and participated in symposia and residencies in the US and abroad. In addition to making art, Greg’s creative practice includes teaching and community engagement. In recent years he has held faculty positions at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, SMFA, and Marlboro College. Currently, Greg teaches photography at Oregon State University, and facilitates a class for the Exposures Program, a non-profit cross-cultural youth arts program. gregjhayes.com
Asesinados United
Carolyn Castaño & Gary Dauphin
Parlor/Kitchen
Asesinados United is a fantasy team comprised entirely of murdered soccer players. The eleven players–each represented by a t-shirt–invite us to consider how a sporting legend can founded just as easily on catastrophe as on brillant play. Rendered using Carolyn Castaño’s highly economical linework, these images (and their accompanying backstories) are powerful tools that allow us to explore locally distinct–yet global–notions of heroism, manhood, pride, success, and tragedy.
As scrutinized as they are skilled and fetishized, footballers know that their performance on the field of play can have implications beyond the game, elevating them to national heroes or, in the case of players on the 2010 French national team, reducing them to international embarrassments. For some players, on-field events can have deadly consequences, as with Colombian defender Andrés Escobar, whose own-goal at the 1994 World Cup cost him his life. For others, it is success itself that invites tragedy, as it was for Thiago da Silva, the Brazilian footballer who was brutally murdered by a girlfriend who feared being be cast aside as his fame grew. Then there are murkier cases like Joe Gaetjens’, the Haitian-born player who scored the winning goal in for US vs. England at the 1950 World Cup. Gaetjens returned to Haiti after helping produce what some argue is the greatest upset in soccer history only to be disappeared by the Duvalier regime.
Asesinados United uses the vocabulary of the humble screen printed t-shirt to create an alternate patheon where fame, heartbreak and commerce commingle. Each shirt is hand crafted by Castaño, with accompanying text written by her CARGA1804 collaborator Gary Dauphin.
Asesinados United uses the vocabulary of the humble screen printed t-shirt to create an alternate patheon where fame, heartbreak and commerce commingle. Each shirt is hand crafted by Castaño, with accompanying text written by her CARGA1804 collaborator Gary Dauphin.
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Carolyn Castaño is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work in painting, drawing, video, and mixed-media installations explores the personas and narratives associated with the narco wars and political dramas currently unfolding in Latin America. Exhibited both nationally and internationally, Ms. Castaño’s recent exhibition Mujeres Que Crean/ Women Who Create at the New Americans Museum in San Diego, CA investigates the relationship between the female displaced victims of the Colombian armed-conflict, the environment, and historical representation of both in art.
Her work has also been featured in LACMA’s Fútbol: The Beautiful Game and the critically acclaimed exhibition, Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, which traveled to the Museo Del Barrio, New York City and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City, LA Now: Emerging Artists, Galerie Dominique Fiat, Paris, Liquid Los Angeles: Contemporary Watercolor Painting in Los Angeles at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, Semi-Precious, The Public Art Fund, New York and International Paper, an exhibition of drawings at the Hammer Museum.
Ms. Castaño has had solo exhibitions at Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, Kontainer Gallery, Los Angeles and Lombard- Freid Fine Art, New York. She has a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Masters in Fine Art from the UCLA School of Art and Architecture.
www.carolyncastano.com
Her work has also been featured in LACMA’s Fútbol: The Beautiful Game and the critically acclaimed exhibition, Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement, which traveled to the Museo Del Barrio, New York City and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City, LA Now: Emerging Artists, Galerie Dominique Fiat, Paris, Liquid Los Angeles: Contemporary Watercolor Painting in Los Angeles at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, Semi-Precious, The Public Art Fund, New York and International Paper, an exhibition of drawings at the Hammer Museum.
Ms. Castaño has had solo exhibitions at Walter Maciel Gallery, Los Angeles, Kontainer Gallery, Los Angeles and Lombard- Freid Fine Art, New York. She has a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Masters in Fine Art from the UCLA School of Art and Architecture.
www.carolyncastano.com
Pep Talk
Hand2Mouth
Black Box
PEP TALK is an interactive theatrical celebration of coaches, teams, and everyday heroes. PEP TALK’s coach/performers recreate and reframe iconic motivational sports speeches from real-life games and sports films. Combining the bravado of Muhammad Ali, the gravitas of Vince Lombardi, and the humor of The Bad News Bears, PEP TALK inspires audiences to step from passive observers to active participants.
After 15 months of performing PEP TALK in theatres, gymnasiums and community centers across the Northwest, where motivational speech and/or acts of team enthusiasm are expected, this performance will explore what it means to pep an audience in a space which has traditionally encouraged critical distance and restrained enthusiasm. Tackling the challenges of gallery spectatorship and duration (the four hour art opening) head on, the coaches will persevere and ultimately win the hearts and minds of every goddamn person in that place.
PEP TALK is performed by long-time H2M company members Julie Hammond, Liz Hayden, Erin Leddy and Maesie Speer, under the direction of Hand2Mouth artistic director Jonathan Walters.
After 15 months of performing PEP TALK in theatres, gymnasiums and community centers across the Northwest, where motivational speech and/or acts of team enthusiasm are expected, this performance will explore what it means to pep an audience in a space which has traditionally encouraged critical distance and restrained enthusiasm. Tackling the challenges of gallery spectatorship and duration (the four hour art opening) head on, the coaches will persevere and ultimately win the hearts and minds of every goddamn person in that place.
PEP TALK is performed by long-time H2M company members Julie Hammond, Liz Hayden, Erin Leddy and Maesie Speer, under the direction of Hand2Mouth artistic director Jonathan Walters.
Pep Talk - Hand2Mouth from Surplus Space on Vimeo. |
Pep Talk - Hand2Mouth from Surplus Space on Vimeo. |
Described by The Seattle Times as having “the kind of promise, fearlessness and energy that the American theater needs, and should encourage,”Hand2Mouth is a permanent ensemble of artists who have been working together since 2001. Their mission is to make original theatre that is bold and accessible. Led by artistic director Jonathan Walters, Hand2Mouth creates original performances from their rehearsal studio in Portland, OR, and regularly performs in Portland, New York, Seattle and San Francisco.
Jonathan Walters founded Hand2Mouth in 2000 after training with street theatre troupe Teatr Biuro Podrozy in Poland. Hand2Mouth has since created 18 original performances (from its home in Portland, OR), and the ensemble has grown to include a core of company members and associate artists. Hand2Mouth performances are developed over a period of 10-18 months through intensive rehearsals; each show demands its own creation process and training which builds over months of exploration including long form improvisations, movement exploration, text research and songwriting. From these raw seeds, the company hones fragments into cohesive wholes, producing theatre that could not be created from the pages of a script alone. hand2mouththeatre.org
Jonathan Walters founded Hand2Mouth in 2000 after training with street theatre troupe Teatr Biuro Podrozy in Poland. Hand2Mouth has since created 18 original performances (from its home in Portland, OR), and the ensemble has grown to include a core of company members and associate artists. Hand2Mouth performances are developed over a period of 10-18 months through intensive rehearsals; each show demands its own creation process and training which builds over months of exploration including long form improvisations, movement exploration, text research and songwriting. From these raw seeds, the company hones fragments into cohesive wholes, producing theatre that could not be created from the pages of a script alone. hand2mouththeatre.org
Pep Talk - Hand2Mouth from Surplus Space on Vimeo. |
Pep Talk 3 from Surplus Space on Vimeo. |
Equal Playing Field
Sean Starowitz
Hallway
Curated by Roz Crews
Sports are not only about brawn and brain, but culture and community. Without a doubt, contemporary society owes much to sports: the game-watching and playing rituals; superstitions ranging from lucky t-shirts (and other unwashed articles of clothing) to untrimmed facial hair and bizarre eating habits; The neighborhood park pick-up game or Thursday night bowling league. But one must question, can a game, a tournament, or sport be a healthy and democratic way to unite us? Can sports move beyond race, class, and caste to show the potential of the collaborative spirit and teamwork? Can a soccer game be more about equality rather than scoring the most goals?
This project aims to organize series of conversations and soccer games/tournaments (Futsal style, 5-a-side with a keeper) that allow for an equal playing field between various powers, people, institutions, neighborhoods, and teams. Equal Playing Field is in collaboration with Alex Elmestad, a St. Louis based Artist and Public Programmer. The project is going to be made possible through various partnerships that include but are not limited to Gooolll!, The Luminary, and Better Together STL.
In collaboration with Alex Elmestad (Stl based, Artist and Programmer)
This project aims to organize series of conversations and soccer games/tournaments (Futsal style, 5-a-side with a keeper) that allow for an equal playing field between various powers, people, institutions, neighborhoods, and teams. Equal Playing Field is in collaboration with Alex Elmestad, a St. Louis based Artist and Public Programmer. The project is going to be made possible through various partnerships that include but are not limited to Gooolll!, The Luminary, and Better Together STL.
In collaboration with Alex Elmestad (Stl based, Artist and Programmer)
Sean M. Starowitz’s work is executed in a variety of social, political, and community engaged contexts. Notable projects include Fresh Bread, BREAD! KC and Byproduct: The Laundromat. He has also explored curatorial projects such as The Speakeasy, and Vagabond, Kansas City’s premiere pop-up restaurant. He has contributed writings to Proximity Magazine and Temporary Art Review, and has lectured at Queens College in NY, UCLA’s World Arts and Cultures Department, and at American University in D.C. He currently resides in Kansas City, Missouri as the artist-in-residence at the Farm To Market Bread Company. He is a 2010 graduate of the Interdisciplinary Arts program at the Kansas City Art Institute and a 2012 Rocket Grant recipient with support from the Charlotte St. Foundation, Spencer Museum of Art and the Andy Warhol Foundation. More recently, he is a 2014 Charlotte St. Foundation Visual Art Award Fellow. seanstarowitz.com
Adam Moser
Outdoors
Curated by Roz Crews
Adam Moser - Over & Back from Surplus Space on Vimeo. |
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Moser opened drinks for the duration of the show with an amplified bottle opener. The sounds of cans cracked, pressure from a beer bottle released, and wine corks popped traveled through the interior of the house. Much like the way sound designers enhance our viewing experiences of sports on television this piece generated similar excitement and engagement of spectators who attended Over and Back.
Sports and games a common thread, Adam Moser‘s practice covers a lot of ground. He often draws from his experiences as an athlete and fan, which has led him to do projects that have found homes in Major League Baseball, NBA.com, and in the hands and on the screens of his fellow pickup softball teammates. Moser hit 21 dingers in 2014. adamoser.com
Sports and games a common thread, Adam Moser‘s practice covers a lot of ground. He often draws from his experiences as an athlete and fan, which has led him to do projects that have found homes in Major League Baseball, NBA.com, and in the hands and on the screens of his fellow pickup softball teammates. Moser hit 21 dingers in 2014. adamoser.com
Outside during opening |
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Open Call
May 14th, 2015
Amanda Leigh Evans
Curated by Roz Crews
Open Call was a competition in front of a live audience that mixed the form of a sports tryout, juried application process, and reality TV show. Five artists were selected from a pool of applicants to compete in a series of events that tested their intellect and creativity. The final round of the competition involved a formal presentation of artwork by the artist in front of three selected jurors, who along with the audience determined a winner.
Open Call 1 from Surplus Space on Vimeo. Open Call 3 Eric and Sam from Surplus Space on Vimeo. |
Open Call 2 Jah Justice from Surplus Space on Vimeo. Open Call 4 from Surplus Space on Vimeo. |
Open Call 6 from Surplus Space on Vimeo.
Amanda Leigh Evans works in social practice, ceramics, performance, and sculpture. She has worked on collaborative projects with traditional potters in rural Turkey, with her ceramic students at Biola University, with elderly adults, and with people who have developmental disabilities. She has also worked with other artists on projects related to food, ceramics, and history. From 2010-2012 she was a contributor to the Los Angeles Urban Rangers and is a founding member of Project 51, the collective behind Play the LA River. She has presented projects and publications at major institutions including MOCA, the Portland Art Museum, and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. Amanda is based in Los Angeles, CA.
Open Call took place May 14, 2015 at 7:30 PM at Surplus Space. For more information: opencall2015.tumblr.com
Open Call took place May 14, 2015 at 7:30 PM at Surplus Space. For more information: opencall2015.tumblr.com