#MyArtMyCity: ART21’s Instagram Takeovers

Liz Magor. LightShed, 2005. Installation view at Coal Harbour, Vancouver. Production still from the ART21 Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 8 episode, Vancouver. © ART21, Inc. 2014

For the past month, we’ve invited a series of artists and arts organizations to take over our Instagram account, and share the art they love in their city with #MyArtMyCity. A chance to reach beyond our sixteen Season 8 artists, the takeovers included artists and organizations in the four cities from Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 8, alongside art in Portland, Philadelphia, and Manila.

@jorgemps | Mexico City

#MyArtMyCity takeover 📷 from @jorgemps, Mexico City: “Mobile Matrix” (2006) This picture shows, I thought a different angle of Gabriel Orozco’s famous whale skeleton (excavated from a national park in Baja California) inscribed with geometric patterns in graphite and suspended inside one of Mexico City’s biggest libraries to give the effect of motionless floating. The @newyorkermag called Orozco a leading conceptual and installation artist of his generation. His works, which are often site-specific, are known for their grand scale and amazing structures. #Biblioteca #library #GabrielOrozco #MexicoCity #promocioncdmx #cdmx #MyArtMyCity #MobileMatrix

A photo posted by ART21 (@art21) on Aug 17, 2016 at 1:07pm PDT

Jeff Hamada, @booooooom | Vancouver

#MyArtMyCity takeover 📷 from Jeff Hamada of @booooooom, Vancouver: Photo by Vancouver-based Vishal Marapon (@vishalparadigm). Vishal has a great ability to find beauty in the mundane.

A photo posted by ART21 (@art21) on Aug 23, 2016 at 9:00am PDT

Association for Public Art, @assocpublicart | Philadelphia

We’re excited to have Philadelphia’s @assocpublicart take over our feed for #MyArtMyCity! First takeover 📷: Established in 1872, the Association for Public Art (aPA) is the U.S.’s first private nonprofit organization dedicated to integrating public art and urban design. During this take over, the aPA will highlight some of the many sculptures that we’ve commissioned and acquired in Philadelphia throughout our 140+ year history. Artist #MarkdiSuvero describes his monumental I-beam sculptures as “paintings in three dimensions with the crane as my paintbrush.” His “Iroquois” (1983–1999) sculpture (pictured left and acquired by aPA in 2007) towers 40 feet high on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Installed nearby (pictured right) by the aPA in 2014, #RoxyPaine’s “Symbiosis” (2011) is hand-fabricated from thousands of pieces of stainless steel pipe, plate, and rods. (📷: @caitemartin) #MyArtMyCity #lovepublicart

A photo posted by ART21 (@art21) on Aug 25, 2016 at 9:09am PDT

@abrahamritchie1 | Chicago

#MyArtMyCity takeover 📷 from @abrahamritchie1, Chicago: I’m the Social Media Manager for @mcachicago so I’ve been spending A LOT of time with our current exhibit #KerryJamesMarshall: #Mastry and one work I keep coming back to and have fallen in love with is “Past Times,” 1997. Parks are a part of almost every city, but they’re an especially important part of #Chicago, from @millennium_park (which I featured in a past post), to @lollapalooza -hosting Grant Park @chicagoparks, to Jackson Park, designed by Frederick Law #Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who also designed @centralparknyc. This painting of a park is a perfect combination of #MyArtMyCity as Marshall sets the painting in one of Chicago’s important parks, likely Jackson or Lincoln Park. It’s also a clear homage to one of Chicago’s most important paintings too, “A Sunday on La Grand Jatte — 1884” by Georges Seurat (1884/86) which hangs at @artinstitutechi; this work hangs in a venue also highly trafficked and public, @mccormickplace. Marshall has been very clear that he intends to engage with the masters of painting and art history on the highest level and this painting does just that, creating an almost pastoral scene of city life—the figures look out on us as if we’ve interrupted them in the middle of their fun. But there’s almost much more than that going on. Whereas an all-white cast populates Seurat’s picture, an all-black cast enjoys leisure in Marshall’s. What’s remarkable here is the unremarkableness of the arrangement, as Marshall describes it: “The challenge is on some level to establish the black mundane as a glamorous category.” This painting proves he’s clearly succeeded.

A photo posted by ART21 (@art21) on Aug 31, 2016 at 1:27pm PDT

Curtis Knapp, @yaleunion | Portland, Oregon

Taking over our feed for #MyArtMyCity over the next few days is Curtis Knapp from @yaleunion in Portland, Oregon. First 📷: Nothing Between Us, 2016, Rose Dickson for her show Slow Mask at Melanie Flood Projects 8/26-10/2 @rose_di @mf.projects Curtis Knapp @yaleunion in Portland, Oregon, here, taking over for the next few, fleeting moments of #MyArtMyCity

A video posted by ART21 (@art21) on Sep 1, 2016 at 5:19pm PDT

Liz Larner’s studio | Los Angeles

@thebesttomallencolors, @ethanrtate, @alexunderscoreperliter, @picturepoint

Thanks to #LizLarner’s studio for taking over our feed this past week to share work from Los Angeles. Final #MyArtMyCity takeover 📷 from studio member @picturepoint: This past May, I participated in “A Hole or Something Like the Sun,” a group show organized by LA-based artist and friend, @chris_hanke at @1world.pea’s Scranch Ranch Hideout – a new creative art space located in Wonder Valley. For #MyArtMyCity, I wanted to mention this particular exhibition because all of the artists who participated currently live and work in Los Angeles. For the show, I constructed a primitive wood-fire kiln out of clay deposits collected from the Joshua Tree region. Pictured here is a detail image of the kiln’s fire chamber. Atop the kiln base, sit several figurines or kiln gods audience members built from the same clay body used for the kiln. Kiln gods are traditionally made out of raw or fired clay and placed over the entrance of the kiln to bless each firing, much like a rabbit tail. 🔥🔥 Stay tuned for the second show at Scranch Ranch Hideout to participate in the raku firing of these kiln gods. 🔥🔥 #continuum #scranchranch #scranchhideout #aholeorsomethinglikethesun

A photo posted by ART21 (@art21) on Sep 8, 2016 at 10:26am PDT

MCAD Manila, @mcadmanila | Manila, Philippines

#MyArtMyCity takeover 📷 from @mcadmanila, Manila: Just last night, the exhibition entitled “Paintings To Take Drugs To” featuring the work of artist #ManuelOcampo opened in Manila. Ocampo has been a vital presence in the international art scene having shown his work extensively since the 1990s. Known for using religious and political iconography, his work has been called provacative and possibly, more than once, blasphemous. He explains that the strong symbolism used in his work are used to push the conventions of painting to the point of ridicule. Today, Ocampo is active in engaging the local art community through independent exhibitions he has organized and through collaborations with other artists and curators.

A video posted by ART21 (@art21) on Sep 11, 2016 at 6:25am PDT

See all the takeover posts on our Instagram, and share the art you love in your city with #MyArtMyCity.