Erik Reel at Frameworks

Just wondering: When were his solo shows at the Contemporary Arts Forum?

Why don't you check out his website and find out?

No CAF solo shows are listed, just a couple of CAF group shows that seem to be the un-curated, un-judged fund-raising events in which anyone got to hang a piece as long as they donated the fee.

Unfortunately, the final sentence seems to have had a word or two dropped that could lead to a misunderstanding. There have been 11 solo shows in Santa Barbara (at various galleries, the UCSB Faculty Club, and the SB Visitor's Bureau, and Roy). Plus group shows at places like CAF and the Karpeles Manuscript Library.

All this information is posted on the artist's website at erikreel.com.

I sincerely apologize if the implication of my question turns out to be unfair, but I still wonder whether those group shows at CAF were curated or were instead fund-raising events in which anyone who wished could make a donation and then hang whatever piece they wanted on a wall alongside a hundred other people who had also paid for the right to do so.

The Forum-ulations show and related group shows that this artist lists at CAF were not fundraisers, but open shows for CAF members. A tradition that CAF has had since its beginnings as a show of support for contemporary art and the local art community. They tend to have relatively high quality work by some of our best local artists. Similar shows are held by other alternative spaces, such as the one in Berkeley and similar institutions. I suggest that if you are really interested in finding out about this sort of thing and contemporary art in the Santa Barbara community that you contact the Contemporary Arts Forum directly and talk to the great staff that works there.

Open shows for people who pay a membership fee are not juried or curated shows but are public relations events and admirable efforts at community outreach--they also serve as fundraisers by giving people an incentive to join up. It's misleading to put them on a resume as though they testified to marks of approval about the quality of one's work.

I know many people who were chosen to show at CAF based on the quality of their work; they shouldn't have the value of listing CAF on their resume diluted.

First, the tradition of "open" shows at alternative spaces derives from Marcel Duchamp -it was his preferred exhbition mechanism (he deplored exhibtion committees) and has been encouraged by alternative spaces ever since as a viable exhibition venue.

Second, it's absurd to say this artist "dilutes" a CAF listing. This artist has been in shows curated by Gene Barto and Howard Fox, considerably higher "bars" than the CAF.

PK, your comments reveal much more about you than about the artist.

Marcel Duchamp??? Please. The issue is padding one’s resume, not challenging the institutional history of art.

Your next claim is equally nonsensical. Being curated by the guys you mention might be the most prestigious thing in the world, so superior to being chosen by CAF that the latter pales into insignificance by comparison, but the supposed greatness of the former honor still doesn’t change the fact that the latter never occurred.

Pray do tell what my comments reveal to you about me, other than that I appreciate CAF’s significance to the SB arts commmunity and understand, as you seem not to, that this sort of resume juggling does a harm to the institution and to those who have been chosen to show there.

pk, you're embarrassing yourself.

Remember, Duchamp's whole point around the R. Mutt thing was his insistence that the exhibition committee should have no control over what was exhibited. Duchamp, and the Dadas were making a point against the old idea of a juried or curated salon. Duchamp's point was that the authenticity of art rested with the artist, not an outside jury or curatorial power, that authenticity revolved around whatever the artist chose to exhibit, NOT a curator or jury.

So they staged "open" exhibitions, that is, events that had neither jury nor curator, a practice later revived by Macunias and his Fluxfests. It was Macunias who also tried to revive the term "forum" in reference to this idea of an "open" exhibition, in relation to the original meaning of the word "forum" --as that place in a Roman city where any citizen could go and be heard, no jury or outside "curatorial" power allowed.

It is so thickly ironic that this whole discussion is around two shows at CAF, the Contemporary Arts FORUM, both shows further emphasizing the term "forum" in their titles.

The idea that these shows are somehow, inauthentic, that claiming them on a resume as exhibitions in that space, could "dilute" that space, that they somehow are less than a show at the same space, that using them is a means of "padding a resume" (implying a lesser value to these shows)-- all these "ideas" are incredibly out-of-touch and out-of-line with the art-historical precedents involved, and constitute a particularly naive misreading of the situation.

In a way, it is doubly ironic, in that this artist actually collaborated with Macunias. The whole value-system that even thinks the CAF space could be "diluted" in this way exhibits the kind of mentality that these shows and Duchamp and Macunias warred against.

Yes, Duchamp please, that IS the point.

I imagine that your Art 101 lecturer will be pleased that you saved your notes. Now enroll in an Ethics 101 class and maybe you'll be able to understand what this is about.

PK, if you are so upset over this, why don't you write the artist directly and express your concerns? All your huffing and puffing is over two puny little lines on a website.

A website incidentally that doesn't have half of what this artist has done. He's been in over 140 exhibitions- hardly someone who needs to "pad his resume" ... I mean, the ethical thing to do would be to talk to the artist directly, instead of making bitchy comments on a public website.

My response was to something I read in an article on a public website, so---surprise!!---I responded to the article on a public website.

I don't know why you've been so exercised and overwrought about my calling attention to a couple of "puny little lines" in a resume, but I do appreciate being graced with the condescending and absurdly irrelevant residue of your art historical education. This isn't about the history of art as you recall it, but how one prepares a resume. It should be simple to understand the distinction, but I guess it continues to escape you.

You can have the last word if you wish; this bitch has other fish to fry.

And in that resume preparation if an artist is in two shows called "forum-ulations" and "focus on the forum" at the CAF, and lists these shows as such, that is unethical?

What do others think about that?