artistsinriseTING TEAL: HUMOR & MEANING
Updated: 21 hours ago
Ting Teal is an “interdisciplinary artist trying to find some humor and meaning” while living and working in New York. I was introduced to Ting’s work through Rene Franco, an artist we featured last year; they met during their residence at Skowhegan. I was fortunate enough to speak with Ting over the phone a few months back. We talked about things like the art market’s attachment to certain media and the difficulties that places on interdisciplinary work (specifically in performance and video work.) Many of the topics covered connected back to their fascination with histories and mythologies; how they inherently define standards, create divisions, and muddy understanding.
So much of that conversation was stirred up again as I reviewed Ting’s performances, installations, and video works. Sarcasm, humor, social and cultural critique are commonly layered into Ting’s artistic practice. Ting wittily employs different mediums to uncover, question, and laugh at the things that make up our contemporary “realities.”
Join us as we take a deeper look into some of Ting’s recent works. To start us off: ART ATTACK!
ART ATTACK!
Do you remember that show on Bravo called Work of Art: The Next Great Artist? It was a reality competition produced by Sarah Jessica Parker. The premise was to have 14 “up and coming” artists compete in challenges each week for a chance to have a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. It was judged by “elite” art world figures Jerry Saltz (art critic), Bill Powers (New York gallerist), and mentored by Simon de Pury (art auctioneer.)
Artists including KAWS, Mary Ellen Mark, and Adam McEwen were guest artists & judges. The show even had its own catchphrase: “your work of art didn’t work for us.” Well, the show didn’t work past its second season. The winner of which, Kymia Nawabi, was quoted shortly thereafter by Hyperallergic saying, “I am still waiting tables to pay my bill so… I have had folks recognize me on the streets and in the subway, but by no means am I well known for my artwork.”
It's interesting to think about how the entertainment world has picked up on the creative professions. I mean, I get it. It’s fascinating to see the creative mind at work; to watch individuals make their concept’s tangible. Shows like Project Runway and Iron Chef have been wildly successful and remained on air for more than twenty plus years. So, why did Work of Art, a show using that same competitive reality show format, completely flop? The reasons are cringey and countless. At the heart of it is, perhaps, that what moves the art world is hard to define and nothing is guaranteed for an emerging artist. That being said, a large part of our contemporary art world has become an increasingly market driven industry and the routes to success are becoming more discernible. Ting Teal’s ART ATTACK! offers insight into what it's like to participate as an artist this industry by creating a performance that contrasts Work of Art.
Ting filmed this performance in 2019 during their residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. They state, “I wanted ART ATTACK! to be a site-responsive work/love letter to Skowhegan. We were at this residency that proudly wears its own heavy mythology, with all of us as participants buying into it. The game show format seemed like the perfect way to see what we were made of as "chosen artists," and to simultaneously acknowledge the capitalist reality of us being needlessly pitted against each other within the industry.” In other words, Ting wanted the artists to utilize the skills they’ve had to learn and perfect in order to push their artistic practices to a higher professional level, but for fun and without consequence.
The game? The artists compete “for a variety of different points from a variety of different challenges:” Ceci n’est pa une Artwork, Worth of Art, and My Day Job is Killing Me. The “competitors” were Ting’s fellow artists in residence; Sedrick Chisom, Jeffrey Meris, Eli Hill, Ish Lipman, Rene Franco, Pat Blocher, Maria Tini, Bryson Rand, and Jordan Wietzman. The video opens with the host (Ting) turning to the camera saying, “hello and welcome to ART ATTACK! Where the game is to make it as an artist!”
An excerpt that captures the execution of Ting’s intention for this performance is during Ceci n’est pa une Artwork. In this challenge, an artist is selected randomly by the eccentric scorekeeper. They then have one minute to, as the host says, “generate” an artwork using the provided materials. The other competitors receive one point for subsequently “generating” a statement based on that work. When Maria is called, she quickly grabs her materials, makes her way to the surface on the ground and says, “you’re all going to be so impressed.” A minute passes and several simple marks are made. “Can I share with you?” she says while still on her knees. The work is a square with markings resembling eyelashes on the top and bottom lines. “My artwork is called Malevich Goes Drag.” Maria goes on to try to explain the piece but is cut off by the host exclaiming, “okay, okay! That's enough!”
Ish Lipman is the first to offer a statement: “The left side is where the power of the work lies - and I think that the mark making here is very important because the marks are made with the use of another square. It makes me think of structures within structures and how those structures function.”
Rene Franco follows up: “I think the structures point to a place that goes beyond our compositions of realities. So, for example, the way we construct reality we think of things from the surface and then what's below the surface and what's below the surface? The sea. And what's below the sea? Places...Places below the sea are places where specific people live in, for instance, pineapples. So, when I think of a square that has the ability to move, I think of a certain square that has cultural resonance for us Millennials and for Generation Z who interact with it through a different square, through a meme. They are interacting with the figure we all know as SpongeBob SquarePants…and Plankton.”