For most people art is like picking up a magazine in the doctor's office or watching television in an airport waiting room. It might be attractive, curious, distasteful or even vaguely astonishing but it rarely pokes beyond those bland borders. For a few of us however, art is a sweaty, disheveled must. I'm not talking about people who visit a museum three or four times a year. I'm not talking about people who own some original art and have an impressive library of, say, books on middling Spanish painters. I'm not talking about subscribers to art magazines. ***image2***I am talking about the entirely obsessed, carnivorous image addicts who will stand in front of a painting, drooling pigment-tinged spittle long past the point of involuntary urination. I am talking about the lecherous and disturbing compulsion to lick the hard-edge or the smooth round of something while the prim gallery assistant with the tiny tear in her stocking tries to decide whether to call security, arch an eyebrow or just keep smiling like her teeth are about dissolve into infinity. Yes, there is a sub-strata below the level of those with an appreciation for art, a level populated entirely by the maddened gaze of junkies who can't really relate to anything aside from art. It is, by and large, a desperate and lonely existence. But not this week, not in Santa Fe: For a few lovely and impractical days we are at the epicenter of an international art implosion.
On the heels of Santa Fe's UNESCO designation as a "creative city," an international folk art market and in tandem with the opening of an international jazz festival, comes ART Santa Fe, barrelling through the bulging confines of the Sweeney Center this weekend as Santa Fe hosts more than 40 galleries from around the country and the world. Number two art market in the land we may be according to the federal economic census, but we're selling a lot of baskets, beads and bad bronzes to get there; it's still possible to count the number of good contemporary galleries on one hand so the art fair is like heroin-tinted manna for the starving art pilgrims that dot these here hills. Better still, the art fair gives a chance not only for us to observe the shiny objects normally hoarded on coasts or other continents, but it offers the opportunity for the natives to mingle with these welcome colonizers, and engage in a kind of savage and deliberate art coitus all across the inexplicably strange carpet of the convention center.
Aside from the few local galleries participating in the fair proper, upstairs hosts a bevy of project spaces manned by regional artists. Most visually engaging among these is likely to be the return of Currents, the video and interactive media shenanigan that's been here and done that before, but hopefully will be being and doing better than ever. Make a concerted effort to pry your dry eyes from those kitschy (in a serious way) plastic German sculptures downstairs and head for David Stout's HotHouse project, using 10 simultaneous projections to show a "bio-mimetic" on-screen ecosystem evolution. Anything attached to the name keep adding, I'm willing to bet my own manna, is going to be outstanding.
You may also, wandering the fair in a delirious haze, come upon some manifestation of BLOC-BUSTA, an SFR-sponsored project that is hosting nearly 90 artists from Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Taos in dozens of venues, only one of which is at the art fair. BLOC-BUSTA is pretty much a big, unwieldy beast, but it's meant to do a lot of things: It's meant to help play proper host; when you invite gallerists, curators and collectors from all over the world, it's only polite to show them some art they've likely never encountered before. After all, they, too, are addicts. It's meant to lampoon both movie and museum "blockbusters," as well as acknowledge an etymology that includes a great deal of discomfort and malice about "the other." It's meant to illustrate for those managing our own city's marketing, cultural initiatives and economic development strategies, who can't figure out the correlation between continuing to promote "Cowboys 'n' Indians" and a diminishing population of young, creative professionals, that contemporary artists are serious about being here and contemporary art is worth the city's investment. Finally, it's meant to literally bust some blocs, like the segregated art communities of Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Taos. The best way to do that is to have a party: BLOC-BUSTA launches a free catalog documenting all the artists involved from 5-8 pm on Wednesday, July 13 at Pachanga's Hideaway Lounge (416 Agua Fria St., 988-5991). Friday and Saturday night are packed with openings and events, as well as after parties (Friday night after 10 pm find your way to Señor Lucky's, 142 W. Palace Ave., 982-9891; and Saturday follow your nose to the undergroundish Open Source). Look to
for complete schedules and more information.
The best part about this week is that even without the art fair, without the Currents video thugs, without BLOC-BUSTA bustin' out all over town, we junkies would still be in Nirvana. Last week's official sense of PhotoArts Santa Fe felt a bit of a fizzle, but the exhibitions that opened around town-ah, how to put it?-freaking kick ass. Erika Blumenfeld at the Center for Contemporary Arts (1050 Old Pecos Trail, 982-1338)? Perfect. The Pursuit of Joy is a Radical Act, curated by Erika Wanenmacher at Linda Durham Galisteo (12 La Vega, Galisteo, 466-6600)? Henceforth the world may be divided by those who bothered to go and see it and those who didn't. Motion, still photography documenting performance art, at Santa Fe Art Institute (1600 St. Michael's Drive, 424-5050)? Outstanding. And, I might add, better than performance art. Jennifer Schlesinger's photography at Phil Space (1410 Second St., 983-7945)? Disarmingly satisfying and wonderful. Finally, Unit D (2889-D Trades West Road, 424-1307) opens down off Siler this Saturday with a bold and gritty combination of photography and all afternoon BBQ while the prettier people slurp up a showing of Rackstraw Downes at the Lannan Foundation. All is right in the world. I just wish I hadn't peed my pants.
