Opening Tonight! Jennifer Dalton's "Cool Guys Like You" and in the Curatorial Research Lab, Melissa Brown's "DOTTO LOTTO", @ Winkleman Gallery

Jennifer Dalton
Cool Guys Like You

September 9 - October 15, 2011
Opens September 9, 6-8 PM

Dear Bill/Brian/Charlie/Jon/Leonard/Rachel/Stephen/Terry:

I listen to or watch you regularly, in most cases for years running. Let's just get this out of the way: I admire you. I admire you for finding a wide variety of intelligent, interesting guests, and for having entertaining and illuminating conversations with them. You radio hosts have made it possible for me to work for hours and days in the studio without going bonkers. And to be completely honest, I have also made artwork while watching all of your TV shows too.

You interview people who are not necessarily household names and seem to make a point of discussing issues and ideas that are not commonly discussed elsewhere (except in the New Yorker, which you all crib for ideas, obviously). Just as important, you help me and others like me to feel less alone in the larger sea of fear-, humiliation- and tragedy-based media. I am grateful to you.

But when I looked closely at whom you interview—the people you collectively decide are the most important of the moment—I was very surprised. I should explain that a lot of my artwork starts with a bee in my bonnet, a question of, “Is it just me, or are things really the way they seem?” I had started to feel, after years of experience with all of your shows, that I just wasn't seeing or hearing all that many women guests. So I went to your website archives and started counting, and what I found was this:

In 2010, the most lopsided show among you featured only 17.5% female guests. The most balanced among you still only featured 34% female guests. The rest of you are in between, but mostly huddled around the more lopsided end of that spectrum.

If I may be so bold, WTF?

I would like to get to the bottom of this lopsidedness. I would like to understand why men are still perceived as more brilliant, more fascinating and more important than women. I have some theories, and I respectfully request a meeting. I know you are the interviewers by trade, but I would like to interview you or one of your producers to discuss the reasons behind this imbalance: is it an internalized bias or a business decision? What is there to be done about it?

I assume you like to see yourselves as critical thinkers. Might it be possible to get a bit more critical about the internal and external forces that encourage all of us to think that men produce the best ideas and cultural products out there? I think it might.

As I hope this letter makes clear, I have a sincere desire to understand your perspective on a problem we all share. But at times I also wonder if it's edifying for me to be exposed to so much bias, and Winona Ryder's character in the 1988 movie Heathers springs to mind. At the end of the movie she finally realizes that she is better off without her smart, hot and psychotic boyfriend (played by Christian Slater). She tells him, striking a blow for all of us who feel oppressed by those they have admired, “Do you know what I need? Cool guys like you out of my life.”

In any case, my response to your shows has inspired me. I have incorporated my explorations of the demographics of your guests into large scale artworks I'm presenting at my next solo exhibition.

I look forward to your response.

Best wishes,

Jennifer Dalton

Jennifer Dalton received her BFA from UCLA and her M.F.A. from the Pratt Institute in New York. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including in: "Making Sense," a solo project at the FLAG Art Foundation, "#class" and "#ranks" a multi-disciplinary project with William Powhida at Winkleman Gallery and the SEVEN Art fair, "Wall Rockets: Contemporary Artists and Ed Ruscha," curated by Lisa Dennison, FLAG Art Foundation, NYC; "Made in America," curated by Janet Phelps, Peel Gallery, Houston, TX; "Air Kissing: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art About the Art World," curated by Sasha Archibald, Arcadia University Art Gallery, Glenside, PA; and "The Cult of Personality: Portraits of Mass Culture," Carriage Trade, NYC and Galerie Erna Hécey, Brussels, Belgium. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art Review, Art + Auction, ArtNews, and Art in America, among other publications.

For more information, please contact Edward Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or info@winkleman.com.

_______________________________________________________________
And in the Curatorial Research Lab


Melissa Brown's DOTTO LOTTO
Organized by Julie Chae

September 9 - October 15, 2011
Opening: Friday, September 9, 2011
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

DOTTO LOTTO Video Trailer

DOTTO LOTTO is an installation of almost 3,000 connect-the-dot puzzles on business reply mail postcards completed and returned by people in New York City and across the globe, along with an animation video that "connects" the postcards.

A year ago, Brown initially distributed these postcards by slipping 1/3 of them into magazines at newsstands in mass transit locations such as Grand Central Station, Port Authority Bus Terminal and Union Square; providing 1/3 of them to New York City public school teachers who incorporated them into art classes; and handing out 1/3 of them to colleagues in the art world, including prominent artists, gallerists and curators.

These postcards provide simple instructions to connect the dots and use the US postal system to give voice to participating individuals and groups. In addition to tourists to New York from around the world who found the postcards in magazines, the New York City public school students and art-world colleagues of Brown and curator Chae, some of the participants came upon the postcards through Fluxface, a mail art blog/website located in Merignac, France; an art teacher in Hellerup, Denmark; the Federal Corrections Institution Elkton in Lisbon, Ohio; and the Green Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as well as Winkleman Gallery in New York.

Brown has created a stop-motion animation video by scanning in the returned postcards and editing to place similar responses in frames next to each other. The similar images pass the eye at a rate to “animate” the images and “connect” the individuals who created them with each other. The Dotto Lotto project plahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifyfully and seriously explores the possibilities for human connection through these elementary puzzle-game postcards. The video is approximately 6 minutes long and appears accompanied by a sound collage created by Brown.

A sample of the Dotto Lotto video is available at dottolotto.com.

For more information, please contact Edward Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or info@winkleman.com.