It’s been a year! Thank you to all of our initial subscribers, helping us get off the ground.

We’ve been getting great responses from TPG4. Since a few of our subscribers have mentioned how much they liked the images we included of Brian’s other failure series prints, I’m posting them here for everyone to enjoy.

Sorry, 2007 5 Colour Serigraph on paper (detail) Paper Size: 28″ x 22″ Image Size: 5 1/2″ x 8″ edition of 10

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I’m trying to get my act together over here, so rather than post all these things I have been thinking about for a long time individually , I’m going to slam bam you in one massive post.

First off, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone’s was wonderful and looked as good as this. Scrumdillyumptious.

As most of you know, or are finding out any day now, #4 is out!! We are very happy to have ended an eventful year with Brian’s work. Here’s a peak at me doing a late night final edit of our letter to our lovely subscribers.

In our travels and travails around, we have come across a few things that I think are worth sharing.

Guerilla Sculpture spotted in Walnut Creek, CA- Sunday, November 18th

We just happened to come across this at the exact right moment, it’s peak. For a moment we didn’t understand or comprehend what was going on- it almost looked like snow, but it was advancing slowly towards us. For a moment while my brain was adjusting, I had a fleeting fear-unknowing, but then I was sooo happy. The bubbles were just billowing out and the wall of foam (at least a foot and a half tall) was slowly creeping across and covering the street. Pretty soon thereafter cars started whizzing through it, sending up huge blasts of “confetti” into the air, and trailing it all down the street.

This reminded me of an article I had been meaning to read for a while in Art Review Digital (Issue 16), entitled “What is Art for?” Here are a couple of quotes from it:

“[Artworks] help contruct my notions of what is possible, open new vistas of interest and have the potential to change who I am and what I think….What they do share is that there is a consequence to looking and thinking about them – a consequence that generates a possibility that was not there before, or was, at least, not available as a possibility to me…and has the potential to affect our social relations – how we choose to behave and what we choose to value.” -Charles Esche

“Art is the best tool we have when it comes to shattering our environment into an infinite number of imaginary tales, forms and space-times….What does seem clear is that art occupies a specific position in the city, and that this position is thus political: it incites its subjects to become active, to refuse the passive position the world of entertainment tries to foist on them. Entertainment places us in front of images to be looked at, while social formatting provides us with frameworks in which we must live. If artistic activity consists of putting these instruments and products back into play, then the observer’s task is, as in tennis, to knock the ball back into the other court.” – Niclolas Bourriaud

I found it interesting that both authors found the ulitmate purpose of art to be social, political. I’ve always liked art, and considered “good” art, anything that has had an affect, one way or another, on me. It is the challenge. A game. Bourriaud insinuates that it is the viewer that absorbs the new world and boundaries that the artist proposes by using that information to define and restrict that very world with new boundaries. Think of all the advertisements showing things floating in glass cubes floating in liquid years after Damien Hirst showed his first floating shark. So what is art for? It keeps the game going, keeps us moving forward.

Almost as good as the real thing. Anu Vikram, critic for TPG3, posted photos from her whirlwind tour of this year’s Venice Biennale.

Xiem Gallery in Pasadena has put on a ceramics show with the theme of Skin. Juried by Paulus Berensohn, and chosen from over 400 entries, Presley Martin (TPG2) has two works in the show.

The show is up from October 13th – November 24th, 2007.

Gallery: 1563 North Lake Avenue Pasadena, CA 91104

Hours: Tuesday- Friday 10am-6pm, Saturday 10am-5pm

The Present Group is featured in Estates West magazine’s holiday gift guide. We’re one of twenty Glam Gifts “that won’t wind up collecting dust in the back of Millie’s closet.”

Here’s a link to photos from Ethan’s Anthroptic show at PS122 Gallery in New York:

“I always think that art, on top of the thing that you are looking at, is a sortof occasion to have a discussion about whatever it is that the art brings to bear, or to light rather.”
-Scott Oliver from An Interview with Scott Oliver and David Lawrence by Frank Prattle from Neighborhood Public Radio

Brian Stuparyk at work on #4. Looks tasty.

We had an intimate night of art, food and conversation. It was great fun and delicious. Thanks to Svea at Swarm and to all those who came out to share in the goodness.

We spent the day meeting and talking with a whole host of great people. We’ve discovered that the most successful way to explain our project is one-on-one, so the Expo was a perfect opportunity. We encourage all the artists we met to submit proposals before November 1st.