{"id":38981,"date":"2007-12-03T19:58:45","date_gmt":"2007-12-04T01:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=38981"},"modified":"2018-12-03T22:22:12","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T04:22:12","slug":"found-art-gets-a-facelift-sf-recycled-at-the-salt-lake-art-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/found-art-gets-a-facelift-sf-recycled-at-the-salt-lake-art-center\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cFound Art\u201d Gets a Facelift: SF Recycled at the Salt Lake Art Center"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cPandora\u2019s Box\u201d by Andrew Junge, 2005, assemblage with neon, 11\u2033 x 21\u2033 x 9\u2033<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

SF Recycled<\/i>, the current exhibit in the\u00a0Salt Lake Art Center\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0Main Gallery, features artwork created out of materials from the solid-waste transfer and recycling center in San Francisco. Using old or found objects to create fine art is nothing new. Since the early avant-garde, artists have incorporated old objects into their work, usually as part of a modernist aesthetic manifesto and an attempt to challenge bourgeois norms. In a refreshing move for this late date in the found-art phenomenon, the Artist in Residence program at SF Recycling and Disposal \u201crecycles\u201d discarded objects into fine art and breaks the mold of the found art tradition to assess the critical political concerns of the contemporary situation.<\/p>\n

The Artist-in-Residence Program at San Francisco Recycling & Disposal, an organization established in 1990 to address a new global crisis, began in the pivotal environmental concerns of the \u201990s\u00a0and now is 17\u00a0years old \u2013 which might make it seem to be another chapter in the history of art. Not so. The global crisis of depleted resources and gluttonous energy use and the demand for efficiency make recycling a primary concern of a globalized economy. Recycling not only reuses resources but also reduces the energy used to create new products. Using found objects in a new aesthetic is the obvious way to address this crisis artistically. However, it is the eight artists themselves, each with a unique contribution to the project that, along with their ability to transcend the limits of the found-art tradition and their approaches to ephemeral concerns that makes this exhibition work.<\/p>\n

These artists, working in collage, sculpture and installation, were chosen by curator Jim Edwards for the current exhibit. While owing a debt to the past of found art and while maintaining the tradition of the SF Project \u2014 keeping environmental awareness and responsibility in the forefront \u2014 these artists make bold contemporary statements which push the trajectory and aims of the project into an optimistic future.<\/p>\n

Artist\u00a0Andrew Junge<\/a>\u2018s sculpture \u201cPandora\u2019s Box,\u201d 2005, is a contemporary Brillo Box.|0|<\/b>\u00a0He, like Warhol, uses familiar objects \u2013 here, a discarded toolbox and a neon sign reading \u201cHope\u201d \u2014 in the direct manner Warhol addressed his own sculpture. Like Warhol and much of the ideology he raised, Junge makes a statement on \u201ccapitalistic\/consumerist culture.\u201d Warhol, the Modernist Pop Idol, attempted to bridge the gap between \u201chigh\u201d and \u201clow\u201d art by using celebrities, familiar objects and inventing the \u201cpop\u201d in popular culture. His art was the definitive break, which freed art to be whatever art needed to be. Junge is indebted to Warhol but his aims are entirely different. Unlike Warhol, he does not use commodity to his advantage, glamorizing it, but faces the \u201ccapitalist\/consumerist culture\u201d directly through his recycled objects. Where Andy Warhol stopped, Junge begins.<\/p>\n

Another exceptional artist in the show is\u00a0Mike Farruggia<\/a>. His \u201cUnited States of Whatever\u201d recalls the Post-painterly abstractionists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Where they used found-art aesthetically, to create fine art, Farruggia goes beyond to address contemporary political issues. According to Farruggia, reusing recycled objects \u201crecalibrates the synchronicity of its path and therefore everything.\u201d As the title of this collage implies, Farruggia uses the recycling concept to investigate the deductive tools inherent in recycled relics on a much broader scale. In his overtly politicized use of the concept, the artist opens the gulf between what has been and what might be. In this work, more than the others, the idea of waste comes into play \u2014 we use, we consume, we throw away. His logic is a forecast of the moment, a vision of the future with respect for the past.<\/p>\n

The associations of the Dada cannot be avoided in this exhibition; theirs was the genesis of the future of found art, and their work has the strongest formal similarities with the artists in this show. The Dada, in Post World War I Germany and other cities across Europe, seemingly gave up hope in politics, society, spirituality, and even art and culture \u2014 all the things their predecessors had sought \u2014 and tantalized the viewer with ironic statements in what they found in their found art.<\/p>\n

Ninety years later, artists\u00a0Daphne Ruff<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Mark Faigenbaum<\/a>\u00a0appear to have found the utopia that the Dadaist and Modernism had given up on. Both of these artists, Ruff with her Fr\u00e4ulein Maria waltzing in mid-air over the Danube in the work \u201cSpring Sing,\u201d\u00a0<\/b>2006, and Faigenbaum with his excruciatingly articulated collage \u201cUnfolding,\u201d 1998, reveal the extent to which the recycled object can be taken aesthetically. In splendid constructions, both regenerate what was once called degenerate. The aims of\u00a0SF Recycled<\/i>\u00a0are fully manifest in these two collages: Faigenbaum\u2019s \u201cephemeral quality . . . of outdating technology and mechanisms,\u201d and Ruff\u2019s statement of similarly ephemeral themes such as fashion and apparel using that which has been discarded. These establish the subject and relationships between past, present and future. Such performative qualities add the post to Post-postmodernism.<\/p>\n

The other represented artists, in like-manner to those above, all address topics dealing with temporality, a reassessment of value systems, and an investigation of the priorities of the human species. Artist\u00a0Nomi Talisman<\/a>is \u201cconcerned with memory, how we interpret and understand our collective and individual histories.\u201d Her Hockneyesque photographs document an ideal while questioning what is actually real. The ideal and utopian are common threads in the work of these artists. Bessie Kunath, whose \u201cthrift store sculptures\u201d are a pastiche of reinvention, states \u201cWhen I first started working at the dump, the idea of having access to everything at the public disposal area was dreamlike.\u201d Says\u00a0James Gouldthorpe<\/a>, whose sculptures bring out subtleties of the artifact in a concept of visual relationships and puns, \u201cMost of the images I use are found in magazines and books\u2026that seemed desperately to want to simplify the intricacies of human relationships, and each other with the natural world.\u201d Finally,\u00a0Dee Hibbert-Jones<\/a>\u00a0says \u201cI untangle and examine the complexities of need that exist within human relationships, and our relationships to the earth itself.\u201d Her seemingly sterile installations, re-creations of a \u201chomelike environment,\u201d are haunting in their lack of the human element, a poignant reminder of mortality.<\/p>\n

Such implications give this art the strength to disassociate itself from the hackneyed reuse of found objects that has become widespread among many contemporary artists. As the eight artists now showing at the Art Center illustrate, amidst the multitude of art that expresses similar aims the San Francisco Recycling & Disposal Artist-in-Residence Program has survived successfully because of the unique caliber of many of the artists that have participated. The sum of each individual artist\u2019s aesthetic focus on various aspects of the ephemeral makes these found objects, and the Project itself, a powerful statement.<\/p>\n

Today, with the growth of a globalized world and the resulting possibilities and challenges, an artistic investigation into the use, misuse and reuse of the things we make speaks to an urgent political need. The artists in\u00a0SF Recycled<\/i>\u00a0may owe a debt to the Modernists for opening up the garbage bin and showing the way to an aesthetic treasure trove, but the\u00a0SF Recycled<\/i>\u00a0artists have also managed to do what the Modernists could not do. They have not merely used found art for art\u2019s sake, but by emodying their messages in recycled refuse have used history to challenge the state of the present and forecast a utopia of the future. If only Andy could be around to see this show.<\/p>\n

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Mike Farruggia | United States of Whatever, 2006 | metal on wood | 21 x 24 1\/8 in.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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Daphne Ruff | Spring Sing, 2006 | fabric, paper, rocks, dried grasses, toy deer, and mixed media | 28 x 58 x 4 in.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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Mark Faigenbaum | Unfolding, 1998 | mixed media collage | 28 x 40 in.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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James Gouldthorpe | Robin, 2006 | wood and paper | 27 x 42 x 34 in.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
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Dee Hibbert \u2013 Jones | School Days, 2004 | Found desks, 9 glasses\/straws, Downy, clocks, color photographs, glass |dimensions vary<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

SF Recylced\u00a0continues at the\u00a0Salt Lake Art Center<\/a>\u00a0through January 26.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cPandora\u2019s Box\u201d by Andrew Junge, 2005, assemblage with neon, 11\u2033 x 21\u2033 x 9\u2033 SF Recycled, the current exhibit in the\u00a0Salt Lake Art Center\u2019s\u00a0Main Gallery, features artwork created out of materials from the solid-waste transfer and recycling center in San Francisco. Using old or found objects to create […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":38982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[78,809],"class_list":["post-38981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-salt-lake-art-center","tag-umoca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/75-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 12:32:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38983,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38981\/revisions\/38983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}