Gae Savannah

Orchidwinter

2012-01-05T00:46:00.001-05:00

'Orchidwinter' C print ©gae savannah 2012

Aqua Ice

2012-01-05T00:36:00.001-05:00

'Aqua Ice' chromogenic print ©gae savannah 2012

Glazehaze

2012-01-05T00:28:00.003-05:00

'Glazehaze' chromogenic print © gae Savannah 2012

Aglasia

2012-01-05T00:23:00.000-05:00

'Aglasia' chromogenic print ©gae savannah 2012

Eglissia

2012-01-05T00:02:00.002-05:00

'Eglissia' C print © gae savannah 2012

Iglissia

2012-01-04T23:58:00.001-05:00

"Iglissia" archival chromogenic print © Gae Savannah 2012

Rhydal (detail) 2010

2010-07-04T19:53:00.004-04:00

'Rhydal' (detail) © Gae Savannah 2010

Rhydal

2010-07-03T21:54:00.002-04:00

'Rhydal' © Gae Savannah 2010

Lhan Tian

2010-07-02T22:13:00.001-04:00

©Gae Savannah 2010

Belize

2010-06-30T22:25:00.001-04:00

©Gae Savannah 2010

Bedahla

2010-06-29T23:34:00.002-04:00

©GaeSavannah 2010

Veritas

2010-02-14T18:16:00.002-05:00

Digital Confectionary ig78

2010-02-13T20:24:00.000-05:00

Digital Confectionary (dc0987)

2010-02-13T19:00:00.001-05:00

Digital Confectionary (dc1063)

2010-02-13T18:01:00.002-05:00

Digital Confectionary (dc1083)

2010-02-13T15:00:00.003-05:00

Digital Confectionary (dc0922aa)

2010-02-12T16:34:00.003-05:00

Cakes (installed at Rupert Ravens Contemporary)

2009-09-30T11:16:00.003-04:00

Pink Loaves

2009-09-15T10:51:00.000-04:00

VANITAS

2009-09-14T19:29:00.000-04:00

Vanitas detail-048

2009-09-12T19:11:00.002-04:00

Glamour Trance statement

2009-09-11T09:59:00.000-04:00

GLAMOUR TRANCE

Undine Spragg "liked to know that what belonged to her was coveted by others.” Altogether, “she relished the image of her own charm mirrored in people around her.” Edith Wharton Custom of the Country.

The CAKES serve frothed up castles of delusion, hyperbolic princess-lands that ooze the saccharine, nuclear-pink glow of the girl toy aisles in FAO Schwarz. Think Rita Heyworth in the film “Gilda,” --hypnotic sizzle. Glamour Trance freezes time and stunts emotional development, yet supremely entertains. In Nabokovian poshlust-glitz, the CAKES embody both entrancing appearances, and the intoxication they kindle.

In Society of the Spectacle Guy DeBord delineates a “social space blanketed by stratum after stratum of commodities,” where "consumerism is tautological.” Acting out circular reasoning, one moves round and round the large CAKES drawn into mirrors and enticing layers of stuff. Likewise, shoppers are lured into a buying loop by “the cunning of the self-perpetuating commodity,” its siren call of more, its cellophane promise to raise one in the glazed esteem of one’s social circle.

The CAKES muse on counterpoles, paradoxes in our value systems. On one hand, we, drugged on stockpiling, have lost some essential function of the heart. Wrapped up in buying-lust, we miss the turpitude growing insidiously all around us. Blind eyes are turned to the military industrial complex and other corporate scourges: drone slaughter, daily torture of gentle farm animals, massive, windowless, solitary-confinement prisons.

That said, emotions and cultural insight can lurk in the shadows of display racks. Through fashion, one establishes persona, if not core identity in the social sphere. Overstated adornment is paramount in significant rituals of primitive people. The CAKES invoke Nietzsche’s autocratic child’s games, forgetfulness, and self-rolling wheel.

Likewise, asserting the interdependence of the ‘substantial’ and the ‘superficial in her craft, Helene Cisoux acknowledges “writing’s necessary relation with narcissism.” In fact, her ecriture feminine espouses “contradiction, incongruity, and polyvalent meaning.” Submerged in the depths behind the surface of the glossy CAKES is a “level of subconscious,” “an inner text in the text.”

A heretic, I worship the Golden Calf. I insert an escape clause into contemporary art’s oligarchical governance. (Descartes, Duchamp, Warhol, and God.) I profane their sacred cow: cold, anti-retinal, banal, Puritan. As Carter Ratcliff put it, "beauty” is “the spook in the theoretical machine." If a big fluffy white dog saunters into a meeting of pedigreed curators, it will steal the attention of all—concepts temporarily thrown to the wind.

In the film “Big Animal,” a fabulous show camel turns up to share dinner through the window of a dour Eastern European couple’s abode. The camel brightens their lives and cheers all who encounter it. Then the pragmatists come upon the dear being and start to ring up the cash register, calculating what pelts and meat would bring on the open market. Meanwhile other “good citizens” see a non-contributor in the camel. “He should be paying taxes, should be working,” etc. they carp self-righteously. In the end with new fur cap on a boy, we surmise what happened. Yet all the same, the couple’s emotional demeanor has been transformed permanently through communion with the fanciful mystical creature. Similarly, nodding to Lao Tzu’s ‘greatest treasure,’ ‘contentment,’ the CAKES signify quixotic, purposeless diversion.

Gae Savannah 2012

Tiffany (Tiffy)

2008-01-25T21:27:00.001-05:00

TAHLA

2008-01-02T16:46:00.004-05:00

TAHLA Lushia Aviva at Rupert Ravens Contemporary

2008-01-01T17:08:00.002-05:00

Sawu (breeze catcher) 2007

2007-07-05T21:23:00.001-04:00

Nehara detail

2007-07-05T20:45:00.001-04:00

Nehara (breeze catcher) detail

2007-07-05T20:25:00.000-04:00

Aviva

2007-07-05T20:18:00.000-04:00

Installation shot, Beijing May 2007

2007-07-05T20:04:00.002-04:00

©gae savannah 2007

Lu Shia (detail)

2007-07-05T19:55:00.000-04:00

CURRENTS

2007-07-05T19:45:00.001-04:00

Just back from a 7 week residency in China!

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1) New York Times review - Sunday, July 1st
(includes 2 images of GS sculptures)

Singularity in the Communal Tide
curated by Rupert Ravens
Gallery Pierro May 13-July 15, 2007

NYTimes Page (lo-res) (hi-res)

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2) Dream Palace
curated by Alfredo Martinez, Marc Hungerbuhler, and Li Feixue
A-Space, 1Artbase,
Beijing, CHINA
June 16-July 22, 2007

Artists:

Alexis Raskin
Alejandro Diaz
Agnieszka Kalinowska
Aenon Loo
Aaron Yassin
Alfredo Martinez
Arturo Elizondo
Aviva Beigel
Camila Sposati
Claudia Kapp
Ferran Martin
Gabriel Acevedo Velarde
Gae Savannah
Greg Santos
Gregg Biermann
Jacob Williams
Jeanette Doyle
Jeff Gompertz
Jonathan Cowan
Jorge Usan Martin
Judas Arrieta
Karin Suter
Katja Loher
KristianVodder Svensson
Lili Chin LoVid
Marek Goldowski
Natalie Bewernitz
Nemo Librizzi

Noel Fortune
Oliver Lyons
Papo Colo
Pawel Wojtasik
Peter Kveseth
Peter Wayne Lewis
Przemo Wojciechowski
Riiko Sakkinen
Wolfgang Stiller
Wang Jinsong
Feng Jiangzhou
Feng Yiying
Lu Yunting
Deng Yifu
Liu Wei
Liu Bolin
Liu Hexian
Ren Sihong
Qi Mengguang
Qi Zhonghua
Zhu Nengguang
Fexue Li
Chen Wenling
Chen Guangming
Wu Di
Wu Huiming
Zhang Dong
Zhang O

Zhang Peng
Zhang Hui
Zhang Jianglian
Zhang Xuemei
Zhang Jianhua
Zhang Chunyang
Zhang Botao
Zhang Tiemei
Li Xi
Li Xiaofeng
Li Shuyang
Song Chao
Yu Ji v Lin Zijie
Qiu Zhijie
Zhou Jun
Zhou Tiehai
Zhong Tianbing
Li Chun
Yuan Ye
Xu Xiaoyan
Huang Yan
Huang Gang
Jiang Huajun
Liao Jianhua
Pan Xinglei
Wei Dong

Dream Palace - More Info

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3) Interview with editor Carol Schwarzman on wburg.com
Fool's Paradise - Interview Here

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4) Recipient - Malka Lubelski Foundation Grant

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5) Dangerous Beauty - Opens at a Museum in Naples
curated by Manon Slome

PAN | Palazzo delle Arti Napoli
July 5-October 23, 2007

Artists:

Nelly Agassi
Beth B
Sergej Bratkov
Nicola Costantino
Jacob Dahlgren
Davis & Davis
E. V. Day
Martin C. de Waal
Daniella Dooling

Sylvie Fleury
Anna Fusco
Lauren Greenfield
Margi Geerlinks
Kirsten Geisler
Micha Klein
Paul Knight
Rachel Lachowicz
Assi Meshulam
Marilyn Minter

Joshua Neustein
Erwin Olaf
Orlan
L.A.Raeven
Rosy Rox
Gae Savannah
Joan Semmel
Joseph Stashkevetch
Ruud van Empel

Museum Site

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6) Exhibited 2 fabric sculptures at
CIGE - Beijing Art Fair
with China Arts Contemporary,
June 2-5, 2007

Tiskitte

2007-04-23T20:15:00.001-04:00

Starling

2007-04-21T22:17:00.004-04:00

Starling (detail from back)

2007-04-21T10:00:00.002-04:00

Nyassa

2006-07-12T18:03:00.001-04:00

Nyassa detail

2006-07-11T18:06:00.001-04:00

Nhanshhe (detail)

2006-07-09T22:56:00.001-04:00

Nhanshhe

2006-07-09T22:37:00.001-04:00

Shasta

2006-07-09T11:20:00.001-04:00

Laika

2006-07-09T10:12:00.001-04:00

Laika (detail)

2006-07-09T10:00:00.002-04:00

©GaeSavannah 2008

c0pyright Gae Savannah 2007

Press for Dam,Stuhltrager show, W'burg 1/7-2/12/06

2006-07-08T23:48:00.003-04:00

--Pick in flavorwire section of Flavorpill 1/20/06

--Brooklyn Pick on artcal.com 1/7/06

--Mention in Stephen Maine's article "Is Williamsburg Withering?" on artnet.com 1/06

--Write up on jameswagner.com 1/10/06

--Review in M magazine by Mary Hrbecek April 2006 issue

--Review in New York Arts magazine by Lisa Paul Streitfeld May 2006 issue

--photo of Laika at opening in Vellum magazine, Spring 2006 issue

--Review to come out in: Sculpture magazine, (D. Dominick Lombardi) summer 2006

--Interview to come out in: wburg.com (with Carol Schwarzman) summer 2006

Paroxysm

2006-07-08T22:25:00.001-04:00

Kisu

2006-06-20T22:19:00.000-04:00

Kisu

2006-06-19T22:17:00.004-04:00

back view, copyright gae savannah 2006

Shasta, Nyassa Dam,Stuhltrager gallery view

2006-06-18T22:02:00.000-04:00

A Fool and His Froth are Soon Parted statement

2006-06-17T17:46:00.000-04:00

“A Fool and his Froth are Soon Parted” Gae Savannah 2006

In polytheistic psychology’s circularity of topoi there seem to be no preferred positions, no sure statements about positive and negative and therefore no need to rule out some configurations and topoi as pathological;. …hence there can be more tolerance for the non-growth, non-upward, and non-ordered components of the psyche. James Hillman Blue Fire

The folly of subterranean emotional life, the sublimely ridiculous, mystical dreaming…--more intrigued by the ‘uncool,’ I’m not interested in making shrewd or prosaic things. Complexities of muddled emotions, narcissism, self-sabotage, self-delusion, stupor and intoxication attract me. Dostoevsky’s Fyodor Pavlovich abjectly refuses to reign in his perverse whims, propensity to provoke. (Brothers Karamazov). Self-declared buffoon, he will not be denied the titillation of pulling the rug out from under any sanctified rite of decorum. Mortifying all present, he can’t resist lampooning Catholic hypocrisy during a ceremonial family meeting with a top church elder. In Notes from the Underground, our needy narrator hounds a disdaining socialite to procure an invitation to a party. The day arriving, the narrator further demeans himself by turning up two hours early with desperation on his sleeve. Fitzgerald’s Beautiful and Damned Anthony Patch adopts irony and vacillates between self-effacement and aggrandizement all in the first paragraph.

I aim to traverse the murky depths of the subconscious, eluding the blandness of the conventional art world and vacuity of newest skateboard chic. It was ‘Lunatic’ Parsifal who asked the obvious question.

In River Town, Peter Hessler muses:
“(‘I dislike Hamlet’s hesitation. As a man he should do what he wants to do resolutely.’ student’s journal, Fuling China)
You couldn’t have said something like that at Oxford. You couldn’t simply say I don’t like Hamlet because I think he’s a lousy person. Everything had to be more clever than that; you had to recognize Hamlet as a character in a text, and then you had to dismantle it accordingly, layer by layer, not just the play itself but everything that had ever been written about it. You had to consider what all the other critics had said, and the accumulated weight of their knowledge and nonsense sat heavily on the play. You had to think about how the play tied in with current events and trends. This process had some value, of course, but for many readers it seemed to have reached the point where there wasn’t even a split-second break before the sophistication started. As a student, that was all I had wanted –-a brief moment when a simple and true thought flashed across my mind: ‘I don’t like this character. This is a good story.’ This was what I was looking for as a student—some sign that literature was still enjoyable, that people read for pleasure and that this was important in and of itself, apart from the politics…In Fuling there was no question that the students enjoyed what they read… Sometimes when they were working on an assignment, and I was looking out at the Wu River, I’d smile and think to myself: We’re all refugees here. They’ve escaped from their classes on building Chinese socialism, and I’ve escaped from deconstructionism.”

In buying hand-crafted Chinese furniture, baskets hand-woven on the islands of Cebu, Philippines, and silk hand-beaded in India to fold glibly into contemporary sculpture, I brandish American, suburban hubris. Craft/folk art is always an underpinning. Can I buy heart? In the global Capitalist paradigm, the 'fool' is the indigent craft laborer, forging exquisite colored glass lanterns in Morocco for quarters. Comically blanketing an old wooden Chinese footstool in plastic plaid hair clips epitomizes the foolishness of America. (plaid invokes our imperialistic lineage, England and its vanquished.)

The fool is l. I am like Bartelby. I refuse to edit and calculate my actions (artwork) according to what is acceptable social code. I prefer not to manufacture cold, sanitized, cerebral, sparse, snide, or hackneyed rectangles to sell to lemmings, collectors of the insipid familiar. (A new Korean SVA MFA student queried, “Gae where do they show the sculpture in Chelsea?” …Uhhh ...) I make eclectic, overdressed, queer entities. What a fool am I to pour obscene amounts of labor into un-beige-enough-for-the-living-room-wall ‘amphigory.’ A fool can’t resist sap, sentimentality. Ever indulging in the one-step-too-far foppish, I can’t resist adding wings to sculptures. Like a shameless dog, I have no dignity. Like Coetzee in Disgrace, ultimately, I rest my case on the intrinsic right to desire.

“The pleasure of the text is not necessarily of a triumphant, heroic, muscular type. No need to throw out one’s chest. My pleasure can very well take the form of a drift. Drifting occurs whenever, by dint of seeming driven about by language’s illusion, deductions, and intimidations like a cork on the waves, I remain motionless, pivoting on the intractable bliss that binds me to the text (to the world). Drifting occurs whenever social language, the sociolect, fails me…Thus another name for drifting would be: the Intractable—or perhaps even: Stupidity.”
(Roland Barthes, the Pleasure of the Text.)

Tai Rhi (in progress)

2006-06-16T20:00:00.000-04:00

2006-06-15T13:46:00.000-04:00

Lei-tsu

2006-06-14T15:11:00.000-04:00

© Gae Savannah
"Leitsu" 2003; (purple) hair accessories, Christmas ornaments, beads, feathers, wire, wood; 22” x 9” (diameter)

2006-06-13T15:25:00.000-04:00

2006-06-12T14:36:00.000-04:00

FOLLY, FEMININITY A MUSING…

Fatuous footstools –femininity as confection, cream puff, cupcake, tartlette…Kim Novak, (the Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders;) Lisa Kudrow, (Romi and Michele’s High School Reunion;) Caroline, dress-up duchess, (Anita Brookner’s novel, Providence;) Hyacynth (British TV’s Keeping Up Appearances;) the narrator’s (mis)calculating mom of purple hat debacle, (Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge;) and…

Footstools and Vanity Benches explores both intrinsic and fabricated femininity. Invoking “low art,” (read: “girl art’) --crafts, interior design, and fashion, I use fabric, hair accessories, beads, and Christmas and floral fare to debunk the value system of Fine Art where frivolity is still the poor cousin to austerity. Although undervalued, frivolity is not vacuous, but teeming with insight about our interior emotional life. Like itsy-bitsy, supra-beribboned doggies on Madison Avenue Manhattan, the benches are prim, preened, and poofed coquettes or wannabe princesses. The patterns --powder blue, French boudoir toile, striped Indian Shantung silk, and chartreuse Chinese silk brocade --make drawing room or bedroom culture palpable. All in all, spruced up, poised to please, both fetching and ungainly characters stir up the visceral desires of the beholder.

Like those of materials, twists of language, can divulge the paradoxical nature of what we deem “profound” or “superficial.” In Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, it is frills that spawn lucid, cogent prose. “Glamour” originated in a Scottish corruption of the term “grammar.” “Narmada,” the holiest river in India, means “whore.” “Cosmetics” and “cosmos” notwithstanding, harkened from the same French root, and on Keats’ Grecian Urn, prettified is even “petrified.”

“Maja,” one piece’s title, is derived from Maya, the Hindu goddess of material appearances. Maya personifies the central philosophical concept of Hinduism --that the physical world, although intoxicating in its multiplicity and diversion, is actually a veil of illusion. To Hindus, beneath what our senses tell us, there is a sustaining spiritual foundation. But in America, foundation is manufactured by Cover Girl. To attain the revered “flawless finish,” our goddess is not Maya but Maja, powder and perfume with a hackneyed Spanish flamenco dancer logo sold in cheap variety stores in Queens.

Fabric can be defined as both an internal framework, as in the fabric of society and as an external covering. Like veils which both conceal or accentuate, appearances not only lie but also tell the truth.

2006-06-11T14:33:00.000-04:00

Meraharem JP6

2006-06-10T14:32:00.000-04:00

Meraharem statement

2006-06-09T14:26:00.000-04:00

We need only realize how much obsessed a person is not only with the desired one but with desire itself; how (s)he is not seeking sainity but intoxication and yearning, and fears nothing more than to be relieved of his her delusion.
Thomas Mann, The Transposed Heads

In Harem, The World Behind the Veil, A.L. Croutier states: "The harem is a unique archetype of the collective unconscious. ‑‑where there are 1001 chambers of our dreams." Maraharem with striped silks and diaphanous veils is a netherworld where time is suspended and the sensuous reigns.

In skewing rigid notions of gender, we aim to recast femininity as a safe, challenging realm for men. Here men are drawn into the intoxicating and confusing experience of being looked at, where power is derived passively. All the same, while female viewers become navigators of the gaze, the point is not a reversal of power.

Instead, through art, a shared reciprocity between genders, and more expansive self‑expression beyond prescribed gender roles, can evolve. Ultimately situated perhaps on the bank of the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey or in a country in one's mind, this feminine lair manifests an insatiable longing for the exotic other. Although intellectualism is presently viewed as the peak of human potential, we would argue that one's desires form the core of human existence. Indeed here, all elements are subordinated to the delirium of the emotions. As in Hollywood simulacra where authenticity of cultural details is irrelevant, Meraharem is a pastiche of divergent Eastern objects, characters and patterns.

The photos recall sensationalized Indian kitsch of multi‑limbed magical Hindu goddesses and gods in too much make‑up and gaudy tunics. And yet all told, the frivolity and sentimentality are rendered enduring by the substantial, resonant content of myth underlying the images. The title Meraharem, a palindrome, itself, mirrors multiple layers of mythology. Symbols that are present include. book, peacock, deer, marbles, lotus blossom, Krishna and Narcissus. Epitomizing the mix‑up of sensory oblivion and enriching artistic creation, feminine and masculine energy, is the king of kitsch himself, Krishna. The Lord of the senses with the finest hair is not only the warrior liberator but also the god of happiness.

Satresine

2006-06-08T22:58:00.001-04:00

2006-06-07T14:23:00.001-04:00

Lida statement

2006-06-07T13:28:00.000-04:00

Lida references the infamous story of Leda and the Swan.* In this mythological tale, a swan is purported to have descended on Leda and ravished her vaingloriously. Nevertheless, as swans and girls are anatomically incompatible, from the start, this yarn is absurd. It is amazing that, although this myth is truly archetypal as everyone has heard of Leda, few know the details of the narrative, where even a dictionary of mythology is vague. Thus, this work exemplifies my belief that our labels of “superficial” or profound,” applied to what we value (or don’t value) are slippery at best. Leda and the Swan is indeed the quintessential sentimental story, yet it is a permanent thread in the fabric of greater human culture.

Behind the sculpture on a ledge are three ovals. Appearing to be hat-boxes or some sort of frivolous accessory storage containers, in fact, these boxes contain the profound passages of literature. One of the books in the boxes is Nadja by Andre Breton. This oeuvre depicts a reeling love affair that transports us out of the physical realm of gravity and physics. As a swan glides along the water’s edge, we are conveyed along, drifting through a sensory world of intoxicating emotion. Here, again, is another interweaving of the superficial and the profound.

In the end, I decided to not research Leda’s alleged circumstances further. Instead, I venture my own interpretation. With grace and pretty, fluffy feathers, a swan is surely a feminine entity. I see this saga as being femininity’s ravaging of itself. On one level, with its narcissism, hyper-attention to the external, passivity, and dogged compulsions, femininity’s ravishing siege likely ends in none but our own self-generated defilement.

*Normally, as a sculpture is being made, it suggests its name to me. Then, upon reflection and research, I derive the piece’s story. Misspellings (ie Lida—Leda,) reflect the presence of Aesa (greek root meaning error) in the irrational, emotional domain of art.

2006-06-01T16:15:00.000-04:00

2006-06-01T16:13:00.000-04:00

© Gae Savannah
"Meung Shei" (dream water) 2003; mixed media with pool and fountain, (aluminium, fabric, wood, Chinese ceramic garden stool, beads, floral accessories, hair acceesories, Chinese wedding basket, plastic aquarium plants, wax lotus blossoms, plastic mirrors, marbles, bamboo, bamboo bench, pool, fountain, light.) 117” x 100” x 90”

2006-06-01T16:12:00.000-04:00

2006-06-01T16:09:00.000-04:00

2006-06-01T16:08:00.000-04:00

Taffy

2006-06-01T16:03:00.001-04:00

Taffy and Wysteria at Scene Gallery, Lower East Side, NY

2006-06-01T14:47:00.001-04:00

2006-06-01T14:22:00.000-04:00

© Gae Savannah
"Patisserie" (6 of 20) 2002; floral, wedding, & hair accessories / beads / ornaments / garlands; approx.13” x 12” (diameter) each.

2006-06-01T14:19:00.000-04:00

© Gae Savannah
"Patisserie" (3 of 20) 2002; floral, wedding, & hair accessories / beads / ornaments/ garlands; approx. 13” x 12” (diameter) each.

2006-06-01T14:17:00.000-04:00

2006-06-01T14:16:00.000-04:00

Big Igloo

2006-06-01T14:00:00.000-04:00

2006-06-01T13:52:00.000-04:00

2006-06-01T13:48:00.000-04:00

2006-06-01T13:39:00.000-04:00

2006-06-01T13:37:00.001-04:00

2006-06-01T13:33:00.000-04:00

2006-06-01T13:28:00.000-04:00

© Gae Savannah
"Patisserie Chinoise": "Ko-wei" (red), "Nai Nai" (orange), "Ping Ping" (magenta) (3 of 8 to date) 2003; wood / hair accessories and mixed media; approx. 17”x10” (diameter) each.

Patisserie Chinoise statement

2006-06-01T13:27:00.000-04:00

Patisserie Chinoise

“The very power and scope of Orientalism produced a kind of second-order knowledge with a life of its own, …in effect, Asia has become the West’s “collective daydream of the Orient.” The Orient then seems to be a theatrical stage affixed to Europe [the West.]” Edward Said Orientalism

Said writes of the “domestication of the exotic.” The attempt to reduce whole countries to over-embellished tchotchkes reflects an eye-candy, shopping-hypnotic mentality. Patisserie Chinoise (Chinese Bakery,) evolved after visiting Shanghai last summer and realizing that I was standing in the future. I bought the hair accessories, silk brocade, etc. for the pieces there and in Beijing. So China fabricates plastic-everything, inexhaustible varieties of ‘toys’ to lull Americans into cheaper and more stylish convenience. (We don't make anything any more, my father always reminds me.) Next, China, now itself buying the pretty items, wallops us economically, and become the new America. Ironically, Capitalism comes down to: the one with the most plastic wins. (Yes, there is a Walmart in Beijing.) Moreover, with previously quaint Shanghai now looking identical to any towering megalopolis in the world, we have irrevocable homogenizing globalization, loss of the charm and soul of folk culture.* So a French Patisserie can be Chinese --it's all mixed up, East and West. Particularities are being sucked into the tornado of the dollar/yuen consumer generic.

In Soul Mountain, in quite a more ambivalent mood than in the poetry of Sung dynasty painters who were transfixed by the same mountains of rural China, wryly sardonic author Gao Xingjian admits a sordid secret. He can’t love anyone. As China manufactures us all further and further into dependent oblivion, (returning the favor of all the opium we generously provided in the past,) all Gao can do now is continue his rambling, casting about the hinterlands for an emotional dimension (in folk songs) which is missing in contemporary action.

Alas, for nearly a century, East has been chasing West’s racy, slick possession-love. Yet few trendy Asians have noticed the emptiness of this candy-coated black hole. I feel, on the contrary, West should be chasing East. Ultimately, besides razing traditional Asian houses, sky-scraper corporate juggernauts efface gentle rainforests. America’s excessive verticality is toxic. First-world-wide, there is a glut of yang. Subconsciously, we pine for horizontality, yin. The roof of a pavilion (pagoda) has an archetypal elongated curve. This shape sustains a notion of infinitude. The angular West needs the compensating Taoist wu-wei, breezy, curvilinear state of mind.

So, Asian fetishist, these refulgent refuges, petite pavilions of dream, are but exotic, Orientalist play-acting pastiche. Nonetheless, perhaps in some kind of a trance, you can still slip through the glitzy surface, into a mountain-teahouse-like liminal interlude.

*Harboring the labor-of-love aspect of craft, small, bungled foul-ups in pieces, (mismatched edges, pins, lumpy fabric, etc. ) reflect not the flawless execution of manufacturing, but hand-wrought, failed craftsmanship.

SELECTED PRESS 1

2006-05-30T21:50:00.001-04:00

NEW YORK TIMES

Works From New Talent Seeking a Boldface Name

By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO

March 5, 2009

(excerpt) Other works are equally spectacular, like Gae Savannah’s opulent assemblage sculptures using glass beads, trinkets, reams of gossamer and other cheap objects and materials relating to shopping and the beauty industry. Her assemblages are risky, but when they come together there is a wonderful sense of lushness and overflowing color.

ANIMAL MAGAZINE
AUGUST 2006

Gae Savannah, Orientalist

Gae Savannah’s art is worth ‘all the tea in China’ so you better start saving. She creates brilliantly colored mixed media sculptures using fabrics, gems, and other things we can’t identify. True to her fascination with Asia, she dreams of being a buyer for an Oriental furniture wholesaler and kills time by excavating Chinatown. Gae agreed to answer all our questions (albeit curtly) and showcased some of her fantastically engineered creations.

Tell us about how you make your art? Go shopping; mix ‘n’ match.
What's your process? Fast failures
Who is your Art for? Current boyfriend.

What is your Art supposed to do? Amuse.
What is your art worth? All the tea in China.
What single work of art would you most like to destroy? A John Currin, but I wouldn’t make the effort.
Name one ‘crappy’ "Artist:” Jon Pylypchuk but I love his stuff. Now name another one Angela de la Cruz. Also love.
Best museum: South American Folk Art Museum (does it exist?).
Worst museum: Those tedious, somber colonial villages that you were forced to tour on elementary school field trips (with blacksmithing demonstrations).
Describe the finest moment of your artistic endeavors: In grad school when I decided I would never again make anything that looked like Art.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOW GET DOWN AND GIVE US 19

1. Favorite ANIMAL: Deer.
2. What gets you excited? Plastic.
3. Worst Job: Art program director at a camp for fat kids. Dream Job: Buyer for an Oriental furniture wholesaler (I’d be based in Asia).
4. Best kept secret about NYC: Tompkins Square Park dog run.
5. What would you do if you found A LOT of cash in a cab? Free Tibet.

6. Favorite website: Jameswagner.com. Most embarrassing favorite website: Starmatch.
7. Early bird or night owl? Early bird (wannabe).
8. Motto, mantra, words of advice, or favorite quote: mystic samurai.

9. Name your favorite ISM: Solecism or ...well there's also solipsism
10. If you invented a recreational drug, what would it be called? Pier 1.
11. What's the greatest thing the internet has given mankind? Netflix.

12. Who owes you something? Pillow (cat)
13. How would you run the zoo? More petting.
14. How do you kill time: read
15. Favorite watering hole: Suzie Wong, (Beijing)

16. Are you looking for anyone you've lost contact with? (maybe we could help.) Beauty and the Geek on TV.
17. Do you need anything really bad? Not to want this sentence to have correct grammar.
18. Any tips for the kids? Don’t try this at home.
19. Shout outs: Hey Huang Du!

SELECTED PRESS 2

2006-05-30T18:50:00.003-04:00

REVIEW

-scope Los Angeles, or Fun with Arts & Crafts,

Downtown Standard Hotel, Los Angeles,

July 18-21, 2003

by Shana Nys Dambrot

(excerpt)

In a similar vein, Gae Savannah’s “Patisserie Chinoise” sculptures at Curcio Projects (NYC) surprised and delighted. Succulent, seductive assemblages of florid, shiny, plastic beauty accessories, her girls, as she calls them, have a real femme fatale quality. Dripping with beads and fringe and lace and gold, the works resemble a sort of garden of poisonous blossoms, whose materials are artifacts culled from the society of fifty years ago, when the myth of feminine delicacy – and its attendant, undervalued freedom to be frivolous - was alive and well. Souvenirs from the artist’s globetrotting shopping/research expeditions, thousands of disparate elements are made to correspond through a labor-intensive construction process that could only be executed lovingly.

These sculptures are not indictments of their origins, but neither are they nostalgic for them. Instead, they are improbably organic representations of the inner lives of things, and the ways in which even inanimate objects become expressive through recontextualization. Her artist statement includes a great Thomas Mann quote that forms a sort of conceptual index for the whole –scopeLA experience. “We need only realize how much obsessed a person is not only with the desired one but with desire itself; how (s)he is not seeking sanity but intoxication and yearning, and fears nothing more than to be relived of his/her delusion.” I can’t wait to see how this down-home high-art fetishism does when the fair returns to Miami Beach in December.

Dangerous Beauty Catalogue essay

2006-05-30T17:50:00.001-04:00

Dangerous Beauty

Chelsea Museum

Pallazzo della Arti Napoli

(PAN museum, Naples)

(excerpt)

Gae Savannah plays with our desire to worship in a zone where beauty and commerce intersect. Savannah's miniature temples to beauty and exquisitely intricate pagodas allude to the richness of Eastern culture but are entirely constructed from ready made cheap beads and hair trinkets. Savannah purchases all of her materials on frequent trips to both China major (the country) and minor (China Town, New York).

An abundant interplay of plastic, ornaments, baubles, beads and fabrics, Savannah's studio is a "legally blond" fantasy, a veritable oriental market arranged by strict color codes in plastic containers that line every wall. With an avowed distaste for much of art world posturing, Savannah enacts her love for plastic in these deliberately decorative sculptures made, as she described it in another context, in that split second break before sophistication started. The glitz of the sculpture, the immediate level on which it resonates, is the glittery world of make-up, models, artifice and surface. The work preens its exteriority like a star on the red carpet, twirling and posing so the cameras can capture the gown. Like celebrity and the beauty culture, her sculptures thrive in the glow of strong light, presenting themselves for the sweet edification of our eyes and tempt with their surface.

We must imagine and draw conclusions about what must lie inside from our intentionally limited engagement with the exterior. Savannah states, " I'm parodying our anointing something as a revered relic or shrine, but at the same time I feel the trickster game is wearing thin."

--------Manon Slome, curator 5-07

Resume - 2012

2006-05-29T17:52:00.015-04:00

GAE SAVANNAH
www.gaesavannah.com 411@gaesavannah.com
133 Avenue D New York, NY 10009
85 Market Street Newark, NJ 07102
917 607-7887

EDUCATION
1993-95 MFA, Installation/Sculpture, School of Visual Arts, NY
1991-92 AAS, Fine Art, Parsons School of Design, NY
1996-00 BA, Art History/Comparative Literature, Colby College, ME

AWARDS

2010 Artist of the Month (December), Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL 2007 Malka Lubelski Foundation grant, NY

1995 MostContemporary Artist award, MFA dept. SVA, NY

1993-95 Edward Zutrau Fund grant; (awarded twice) MFA dept. SVA, NY 1990 Charles E. Revson Foundation grant, NY

SOLO
EXHIBITIONS
2009 Cake Rupert Ravens Contemporary, NJ
2006 A Fool and His Froth Are Soon Parted, Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery, NY
2005 Chinoiserie, Curcioprojects, -scopeNY
2003 Patisserie Chinoise, Art Resources Transfer, NY
2002 Blush, The Scene Gallery, NY
2001 Meraharem, Art Resources Transfer
1988 Connections and Forces, Ramune Gallery, NY

SELECTED GROUP
EXHIBITIONS 2012
Paperazzi, Janet Kurnatowski, Greenpoint, NY
Mic Check, Sideshow, Williamsburg, NY

2011 Chain Letter, Samson Projects, Boston, MA Peace Project, San Antonio Museum of Art, TX Apocalyse Now, Sideshow, Williamsburg, NY Paperazzi, Janet Kurnatowski, Greenpoint, NY

2010
Material Girls, New Jersey Center for the Arts, NJ
Off the Wall, Allegra La Viola Gallery, LES, NY
Vanitas, curated by Melissa Caldwell, Philadelphia Art Alliance, PA
2009
ArtViceroy, curated by Renee Vara, Miami
Squishy Universe, curated by Walter Patrick Smith, Miami                                     Neo Rococo, Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, NJ

2008
Boson Exotic, Rupert Ravens Contemporary, NJ
Summer Mixer, Umbrella Arts, NY
Surfactant, Rupert Ravens Contemporary, NJ

2007
Meet Cute, Heskin Contemporary, NY
Sanctuary, Rupert Ravens Contemporary, NJ
#5 and Beyond, Supreme Trading, curated by Vellum magazine editor
Stephanie Young, NY

Gyeong Nam International Art Festival, Gyeong Nam Museum , KOREA
Dream Palace, Art Base 1, curated by A. Martinez & Feixe Li, CHINA
CIGE Art fair, Beijing, China Arts Contemporary, CHINA

Singularity in the Cultural Tide, Gallery Pierro, curator Rupert Ravens, NJ
Dangerous Beauty, Chelsea Museum, curator Manon Slome, NY;
Dangerous Beauty Palazzo Arti del Napoli Museum, ITALY.

2006
ScopeMiami, Curcio projects, FLA
Art Toronto, Curcio projects, CANADA
The Raw and the Cooked, (contemporary sculpture,) UMass at Amherst, MA

Paper and Plastic, Swope Museum, IN
Thread; Artspace, New Haven, CT
NOVA art fair, presented by Creative Thriftshop, curator Lynn del Sol, IL.
Icons of the 21st Century, the Lab Space, Roger Smith Hotel, NYC,
              Lisa Paul Streitfeld, curator

2005
ScopeMiami, Curcioprojects, FLA
Multiple Partners; Pablo’s Birthday, NY
Beautiful Dreamer; Spaces, OH
the New Beasts; Chelsea Hotel, NY, Renee Vara, curator
Culture Vulture; Jack the Pelican, NY, David Gibson, curator
Hi-Lo; Sara Nightingale Gallery, South Hampton, NY

Botany 5000; the Lab Gallery, Roger Smith Hotel, NY, Christopher
                Chambers, curator
Boundless; Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway; Henry Meyric Hughes, curator

2004
Intimacy; Brooklyn Fireproof gallery, NY; David Gibson, curator
Big America; Fish Tank Gallery, NY; Pan Xing Lei and Linda Dennis, curators
LZ Gallery; Seoul, South Korea
Scope Art Fairs with Curcio Projects; NYC, L.A., London, Miami

2003
ID_ENTITY; Nurture Art Gallery, NYC; David Gibson, curator
Williamsburg Bridges Asia; Cristine Wang Fine Art, NY
$99 Store Show; Cynthia Broan Gallery, NY
Scope Art Fairs with Curcio Projects; NY, L.A., and Miami

2002
Anywhere but Here; Media Merge Project Space, NY; David Gibson, curator
Unraveling; Superior, Claire McConaughy, curator, OH
New Jersey Now, Hunterdon Museum, NJ;
Scope Art Fair with curcioprojects; Miami
Shiny Show, Bullet Space, NY; Susan Jung, curator

2001 Response; Exit Art, NY
The Fireplace Room Show; Willoughby Sharp Gallery, NY

2000 The Connecticut Vision; Mattatuck Museum, CT

1999 Size Matters; Gale Gates Gallery, NY; Mike Weiss, curator

1998 Inspiration; Visual Arts Museum, NY

1996 Crafted; Crocker Art Museum, CA
1994 Drawing Selection, Artists Space, NY

1988 Class Act; Bronx Museum, NY

BENEFITS
2011 Flux Factory Auction
2008 Constance Collins and Martin Margulies’s Lotus House shelter, FL
2005-08 Benefit Committee, SVA Alumni Society Auction
2006 Drawing the Line Against Domestic Violence, NY
2004 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY
2003 P.S. 122, NY
Fragrance Foundation; the Proposition, NY; Mary Dinaberg, curator
Foundation of East Village Artists, NY

COLLECTIONS
Steve Shane, Ellen Donahue, Louise Grantham, Toshimasa Kaga, James Larkin, Westover School, Laurice Rahme, Princeton Review, Steven Taft, Builder Levy, William Bartman, Patricia Wineapple, Emily Stern, Laura Dail, Raul and Emilie Debrigard, Claudette Sutherland, Carmela Rea, Emily Stern, Annemarie Minke, William Stark, Rupert Ravens, Sophie Dail, Rupert Ravens, Renee Vara and the Sundari Foundation.

PRESS
2011
James Kalm Report (video) Apocalyse Now, Sideshow Gallery, January

2010

Art.Es (Madrid,) Work and Words, July

All Art News, Allegra LaViola Opens With Sculptural Works…, July

Chikuwa Stumbles, Gae Savannah, Rhydal, June

artimageslibrary, Gae Savannah, Rhydal, June

ART YOU KNOW, Allegra LaViola…Sculptural Works Attached to the Wall, June

Art.Es (Spain) Newark Next, Laura Cincotta, February

2009
Daily News, NJ's New Creative Space, Karen Angel, December
dART International, Boson Exotic Katherine Hennesey, October
NewarkUSA, Savanitas, interview with Craig Schoonmaker, October
Glocally, Live With Gae Savannah, Mary Mann, June

Flash Art, Next Post, 18 Solos, Tate Osten, April
Time Out, Own This City, Grace Smith, April
NowhereHere (contemporary art blog,) Nancy Tobin, This Post: Next Post, March
Visual Opinion, Brian Glaser, Artworld Life After Slowdown, March
New York Times, Benjamin Genocchio, Works from New Talent…, March

2008
Go Live Miami interview, December
The Art Newspaper, Martin Parr, December
Wordpress, Nancy Tobin, Boson Exotic, December
Baristanet, Frances Pelzman Liscio, Boson Exotic, December
NewarkUSA, L. Craig Schoonmaker, Boson Exotic, October
Artcat (Artcal magazine), Surfactant, Patty Jordan, June
NewarkUSA, L. Craig Schoonmaker, Surfactant, April

2007
Seattle Art Blog, Carolyn Zick, December
NewarkUSA, L. Craig Schoonmaker, Sanctuary, October
Art Key Magazine (Italy,) Anna Rescina, August

New York Times, Benjamin Genoocio, June
Kalm Report, Youtube video, James Kalm, June
the Star Ledger, Dan Bischoff, May
the Essex Journal, May
wburg.com, interview with Carol Schwarzman, February

2006
NY Arts magazine, interview with Leah Oates, December
Sculpture magazine, D. Dominick Lombardi, September
Animal magazine Q & A, August
NY Arts magazine, Lisa Paul Streitfeld, April
M magazine, Mary Hrbacek, March
Vellum, Stephanie Young editor, March
Artnet, Stephen Maine, January
Flavorpill flavorwire, Jessica Bauer-Greene, January
jameswagner.com, James Wagner, January

2005
absolutearts.com, Multiple Partners, October
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dan Tranberg
Art in America, Stephanie Cash & David Ebony, May
Village Voice, Jennifer Snow, April
Blender, Stephanie Young, April
Artnet, Stephen Maine, April
jameswagner.com, James Wagner, March

2004
dART International, Christopher Chambers, November
Delicate Monster, Amie Oliver, May
NY Arts, Lydia Kenyon, June
wburg.com, Howard Stier, May
Joong-Ang Daily, Ahn Yu-Hue, May

2003
Downtown Express; December
NY Arts; Jamey Hecht; November
Coagula; Shana Nys Dambrot; September
M Magazine; Lily Faust; September
aparelsearch.com; Debra Stevenson; August
The New York Times; Ken Johnson; July 18
Angle Magazine; J. Utter; May

2002
NY Arts; Joyce Korotkin; January
1998
Women in Higher Education, Doris Green, April
1995
Darien News Review, Felicity Hoffecker, July

CURATING
2008-2011 Associate Curator, Rupert Ravens Contemporary, NJ
2006 Juror ‘SCULPTOURE,’ Shore Institute for Contemporary Art, NJ
Katherine Daniels, Sculpture Window, Lab Gallery—Roger Smith Hotel, NY
M. Krumenacker, Sculpture Window, Lab Gallery, NY
2005 Choice Cuts Critics Pick – Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, NJ
2003-04 Drawing Conclusions II – Work by Artist-Critics (70 participants), NY Arts Gallery

WRITING
2001-11 Flash Art International exhibition reviews; Sculpture magazine, exhibition reviews
2001-12 dART International; exhibition reviews
2006 Daily Constitutional; A Fool and His Froth are Soon Parted - excerpt
1999-01 ART AsiaPacific, and M magazine reviews
2004 Performing Arts Journal; On the Veranda – A Conversation between Wysteria and
               Meung Shei

TALKS
2010
Glamour Trance, MOCA North Miami,
2009
The New Next Paradigm in Art, moderator for panel discussion with Peter Nesbett/Shelly
Bancroft, (Art on Paper, ) Beth Venn, (Newark Museum,) and James Kalm (Brooklyn Rail.) Rupert Ravens Contemporary, NJ.

2008
When New is Old Art After Meltdown, moderator for panel discussion with Robert
Storr, (Venice Biennial,) PhongBui, (Brooklyn Rail,) Mary Birmingham,(Hunterdon Museum,) Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, (Jersey City Museum,) and Pat Bell, (collector.)
Rupert Ravens Contemporary, Newark.
Asian Fling, gallery talk on Chinese and Japanese art in the Metropolitan
Museum’s Asian wing, NY
Navigating the New York Art World, New York University, NY
Footstools and Vanity Benches, Montclair State University, NJ

2007 Dangerous Beauty, panelist, Chelsea Museum, NY
2006 Beauty’s Burden, the New Romanticism, Makor Gallery, NY

2005 Crazy for Construction, Real Art Today series, Makor Gallery, NY
2004 Patisserie Chinoise, Collectors Circle, NY
2002 Material Culture, Fabricated Space --Contemporary Sculpture in New Materials, Scene           Gallery, NY

PROFESSIONAL POSITION
1995-2012 Instructor, Contemporary Art, Film, and Thesis Writing, MFA dept., SVA, NY

Recent Art Reviews by GS (as of 2-10)

2006-04-01T16:35:00.001-05:00

Miami 2009 - Buoyant Orbit Miami Fairs at Decades End --this year's round up will go up any day now.

Miami 2008:
http://www.flashartonline.com/interno.php?pagina=whispers_det&id_art=282&det=ok&title=MIAMI-GAMBOL-THE-OTHER-FAIRS

http://www.flashartonline.com/interno.php?pagina=whispers_det&id_art=262&det=ok&title=HEADS-IN-THE-SAND,-REVELERS-PILGRIMAGE-

First of interviews with sculpture collectors:
http://www.flashartonline.com/interno.php?pagina=onweb_det&id_art=310&det=ok&titolo=MARTIN-MARGULIES-AND-CONSTANCE-COLLINS

Review on New York Minute curated by Kathy Grayson at MACRO Rome
----December Flash Art.

Review of Mika Tajima at X-Initiative space --coming out Spring 2010 in Sculpture magazine.