ARTisANAL:
20 Year Retrospective
Inspired by the unusual
configuration of the landmark
McAdoo Building housing Dendroica
Gallery at 1718A E. Olive Way, I
mounted an ambitious show of old,
repurposed, and new work in a solo
exhibition that utilized every
square inch of space, right down
to the stair risers.
ARTisANAL
Handbuilt site specific LED
sign, 90"x27"
Picture of the Day - www.zverina.com
Launched in 1997, Picture
of the Day is the longest running
website of its kind--an unpredictable
mix of photography, creative
non-fiction, poetry, citizen journalism,
and activist calls to action rooted in
the Web's early idealism as an
anti-commercial space where information
was meant to be free and idiosyncratic
voices could find an outlet liberated
from market pressures. Much has changed
in the online landscape since then but
PoD has refused to keep pace. No ads, no
gimmicks, and no single reductive idea
guiding it, it's where Web v.1 lives in
all its quirky, hand-coded, static HTML
glory.
robZtv
The decisive moment street photography approach of
Henri Cartier-Bresson updated for the digital age.
Thousands upon thousands of brief pocket video
clips--each 30 seconds or shorter--capture poetic
glimpses of life's unexpected beauty, pathos,
and absurdity, organized in
chronological order for narrative effect.
Ongoing since 2003 and presented in scores
of venues, a syndicated cable access TV program,
and 7 feature-length DVDs to date with a dozen
more in the works.
4Shadows
An absurdist art collective masquerading as a rock
band has met weekly since 2008 to record
improvised music, genre-hopping between rock,
blues, metal, punk, synth-pop, psychedelia, and
more abstract forms that have no name. Regular
collaborators are Will Kitchen,
Rich
Lehl, Jesse Paul
Miller, Robert Millis,
Matt
Wainwright, and Robert Zverina.
Ghosts of Seattle Past, edited by
Jaimee Garbacik, is an atlas of lost
Seattle places and associated memories
from those who have witnessed the rapid
changes to this once affordable and
down-to-earth city.
I contributed photographs and a short
essay about Monkeyhut, an informal
community center that thrived in the
Fremont neighborhood at the turn of the
(21st) century.
I expanded my essay into a slidetalk which
addresses some of the principles of what
typifies neighborhoods supportive of arts
and activism--and how these same factors
make them vulnerable to gentrification.
Selected proposal
for Giant
Steps, a group
show and competition curated by Greg
Lundgren that
challenged artists to imagine what they
would do with a 48-hour residency on the
moon.
Inspired by photographs
from Apollo 12 which show waste gas
from spacesuits glowing blue with
refracted sunlight, Encapsulated
Sky
proposed
to inflate a sphere with atmospheric
gases to create a
visual link to our "big
blue marble" by bringing a
little bit of our life-giving
atmosphere to the inhospitable
lunar landscape.
The
Happy Dance, EXCinema Exquisite Corpse
(curated by Salise Hughes), December 2014
One of 13 filmmakers invited to contribute a short
experimental film based on random opening and
closing prompts. Given "happy dance" and "girl
drawing" resulted in this
narrative short.
Music Videos
Produced and edited for various bands using
original and found footage, some staged, others
candid.
I'd been attending
Smoke Farm Lo-Fi Festival for years but
never had a clear idea of what to
propose there. Then I woke up the
morning before it started and began
writing down phrases which I thought
could describe arbitrary delineations of
space on the ground. I
wasn't trying to provoke anyone but I
didn't want to wait a year to go through
the formal application process, plus
claiming the space on the sly, guerrilla-style, seemed most
appropriate to the idea of how real
estate is an idea "agreed upon" by
authoritarian decree, originated in
theft and perpetuated by force, so I
just went ahead and did it.
Projector
Project
Since 2005 (formerly BYOP--Bring Your Own
Projector), this sporadic happening invites
artists and experimenters to project on bare
gallery walls (usually in between shows) with no
restrictions on types of device or subject matter.
Spontaneity is key, with imagery often moving
around the room and overlapping in surprising
juxtapositions. Film and digital projectors,
overhead and slide, as well as custom built
devices have clashed and harmonized in venues
including Priceless Works Gallery, Alibi Room, The
Josephine, and Vermillion (pictured here). More to
come!
Semi-autobiographical short novel about
the mixed-up son of Czech political
refugees who tries to find his way in the
NYC suburbs at the end of the 20th
century, torn between cultural
expectations of material success and a
quest for deeper meanings and connections.
At Buzz’s climax, a viscerally rendered
near-death scene delivers a cosmic,
revelatory concept too deep to get into
here. But it’s worth all the angst and
uncertainty that precede it. Seriously—I
read and reread this scene with an
anxious and inflated heart.
Cell
Everything, Vermillion Gallery,
Seattle (curated by Greg Lundgren), April 2009
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
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
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.
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.
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.
People
Boxes, 12'x7' composite mural, OK
Hotel, Seattle August 2000
