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.
