Picture
of
the
Day - www.zverina.com A "blog" before blog was a word, this online
photo journal has been continually updated since January 1998. Unlike
blogs, each installment is hand-coded in HTML with custom layouts
designed to integrate text and image into a harmonious whole.
57
Short
Films
about Bicycles is included on a bicycling
advocacy DVD compilation published by Shake Edizioni in Italy: "Senza
retorica, con ironia, fantasia, molto coraggio e una forte dose di
pazzia, un movimento si è diffuso a macchia d’olio, conquistando
centinaia di città e spronando un numero sempre più ampio
di attivisti, corridori o acrobati a invadere le strade."
Flattened
Can
Spiral
#6, September & October 2008
As an advocate of public transportation, I was delighted to
be included in Sound Transit's STart
on Broadway group show. The sixth incarnation of the Flattened Can
Spiral was the largest and most durable to date--1,300+ cans, each
nailed to the asphalt with a galvanized roofing nail, displayed for 60
days. Read full account.
memory
(w)hole, August 1 - September 27 2008 McLeod Residence, Seattle
In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, history is constantly
rewritten, with the old versions being tossed into the "memory
hole"--an incinerator. memory (w)hole is a play on words that
implies we inhabit a space between total recall and utter amnesia. This
exhibit presents the largest compilation of Robert
Zverina Short Films to date, with 24 hours of non-repeating
microdocumentaries cycling chronologically in a comfortable cinema
setting. In an adjacent gallery, 572 Picture of the Day web page printouts line
the walls from floor to ceiling to form an "exploded book," a grand
gesture in the futile struggle against forgetting.
Flattened
Can Spiral, June 18 2007, Seattle
1,044 traffic-smashed can arranged into a spiral. Fourth in a series of
temporary deployments.
Trash
Cycle-Own, April 2008, Seattle
Most recent attempt to keep discarded materials from going to waste.
Shown at Recycled Art Show.
AUTOBIOANTHROPOLOGRAPHY, DVD + 28p. booklet, 2007
On March 29, 2007 I gave a slidetalk at Henry Art Gallery called AUTOBIOANTHROPOLOGRAPHY--a combination of the
words autobiography and anthropology which I use to
describe the subjective history of our rapidly evolving culture
recorded via my microdocumentary video vignettes. The DVD is a
50-minute Robert Zverina Short Films
sampler with accompanying 28-page color booklet which reproduces the
lecture notes embellished with the same illustrations used during the
slidetalk.
[ Download
the
booklet ]
439 Flattened Can Spiral
June 18,
2005, Seattle
Second in series, this spiral was constructed in the now defunct
Priceless Works Gallery parking lot.
This piece is documented also at www.zverina.com/2005/0618.htm
1,000
Flattened
Can
Spiral
September 8, 2005, Seattle
Third in series, assembled for RE
Store
Recycled
Art Show. If you stand close to the spiral, you
might notice a curving of your vision at the periphery. Through this
optical effect, the piece literally changes the way one sees.
This piece is documented also at zverina.com/2005/0908.htm
Inside
Out, spring 2005
In early 2005, I started saving packaging--mostly the boxes processed
food comes in. I'd find the glued overlapping seam, pull it apart, then
hot glue the box back together inside out. I didn't know what to do
with these boxes as they piled up, but I kept making more anyway. It
finally occured to me that the only decent thing to do would be to
return the boxes to their natural environments. So, like wounded
animals rehabilitated in captivity, they are being reintroduced to the
herd. The idea is to invert the purpose of commercial packaging which
vies for the consumer's attention to induce a purchase. The blank
nonmessage outdraws the competing messages and provides an oasis of
calm amid the tumult of signs and colors, offering an empty box and
blank canvas on which to reflect.
(When exhibited at Crawl Space in Seattle, a sample box was tacked to
the wall beside a printout of www.zverina.com/2005/0525.htm)
163 Flattened Can Spiral
May 4, 2005, Seattle
The can spiral series arose from the persistent urge to repurpose
discarded material in a practical manner. If this result is not
practical, it is at least aesthetic. The cans were collected from the
streets of Seattle. The collection and subsequent spiral constructions
continue to grow. Spirals are fragile and temporary, displayed always
in vulnerable public settings which invariably lead to cans' return to
entropy. #1 in series.
Boycott
100 (poster) was created for the group show One Hundred Ways to
Remove a President from Power
at CoCA Seattle, curated by Greg Lundgren, August 2004. One hundred corporate
logos downloaded
from internet arranged to spell BOYCOTT; 100 posters printed and
distributed for free.
These
two pieces from spring/summer 2004 owe a debt for inspiration to the
work of Czech collage artist Jiri
Kolar (whose last name, properly pronounced, sounds a bit like collage).
Stretched Dollar appears in the book 24 Hours in the Life of Seattle's
Contemporary Arts, ConWorks Press, May 2004 and is available for
purchase. It consists of two one-dollar bills sliced apart and
interleaved, bound by packing tape.
Organically Grown was created for the group show Urban Dwellers
at Priceless Works Gallery in Seattle, curated by Ragan Peck, July
2004. It was a temporary sculpture lasting until the apple rotted.
Perhaps if it hadn't been organic the preservatives would have helped
it last longer. Stickers courtesy of Fremont PCC, a local food co-op.
Import/Export,May 2004 Consolidated Works, Seattle
A smaller and potentially portable version of Everything &nd
More (see below) installed in an 8'x8'x8' shipping container and
presented as part of Frozen Moments group show curated by Dylan
Neuwirth. Sadly, the effect wasn't as powerful in such a confined space
and the entire piece self-destructed about 5 weeks into the
exhibition--which in an odd way made it better. If the box represented
a skull full of memories, its collapse symbolized the inevitability of
forgetting and being forgotten.
Everything &nd More,
February 2004 Priceless
Works Gallery, Seattle
"This installation gives play to the casual snapshot, free, for the
most part, of the usual earmarks of arty aspiration....The "everything"
of the title is all that's contained in approximately 5,000 snapshots
lining the walls, ceiling and floor of a small irregular gallery niche;
the "more" is what happens when you crowd 5,000 snapshots—bits of life,
throwaway moments, accidents—together. The point is the accumulation,
but it's an accumulation that refuses to be subsumed into a whole; the
tension of the discrete part and the engulfing whole keep this
installation lively and disturbing."
[ Read
Full
Review | click pix to enlarge ]
Key
Entrance
Floor to Ceiling
Floor
A Sense of Scale
Ceiling
792
Short Films, December 2003
Howard House, Seattle
"It is precisely the opposite of Andy Warhol's eight-hour film of a
single view of the Empire State Building; instead of scoping in to
notice tiny shifts in light or circumstance, your perception opens out
like a lens. You are never bored, only longing for a few more seconds
here or there, to know what becomes of something, to hear the end of
the sentence. It makes you aware of your capacity for seeing and taking
in and interpreting. It is all generosity...."
[ Read Full Review ]
Art
Bikes, June 2002
Left: Liberated Stationary Bicycle (really a tricycle) pokes
fun at the way some people pedal and pedal without ever getting
anywhere. Exercise bicycle with front stand chopped and shopping cart
wheels added in back. It steers from the rear with a little butt
scooching. I'd like to see more of these made and then race them in
view of a health club's window. Thanks to Bill Vaegemast for his
mechanical assistance.
Right: Three-Wheeled Articulated Tandem is two dumpster bikes
with front fork of rear bike hooked onto rear hub of front bike. Front
bike has drive train removed; only back person pedals. Riding requires
good balance and cooperation as bike pivots in the middle. Nate Everson
provided mechanical assistance.
