Shabbona Lake State Park, IL Summer 2020
The image is of the artist, Brandon Alvendia, with his eyes closed sitting at a wooden picnic table drinking an unidentified beer sheathed in a foam Miller Lite can koozie, he is wearing a non-descript grey t-shirt, cap, and wedding band. In the background there is a concrete fire ring with a pile of unlit firewood, peeking behind the artist are two camp chairs, and everything is surrounded by dense woods illuminated by afternoon sunlight. In the foreground is an overturned metal bucket supporting a bare metal can whose top is removed and triangular holes punched evenly apart on the top and bottom edges upon which a carbonized round metal wire grate is nestled, through which two wisps of flame emanate from within the vessel. Shabbona Lake State Park, IL Summer 2020. (Photo by Angel Essig)
Jungle Boogie 2: Portrait of the Artist as a Colossal Wreck
Selected Projects (2008-2021)
By Brandon Alvendia
Jungle Boogie 2: Portrait of the Artist as a Colossal Wreck is a restaging of extant artworks, documents, and reclaimed materials derived from 13 years of artistic output of the artist, curator, and educator Brandon Alvendia, living and working out of Chicago. The artist portrays himself in this solo survey as a corpse stranded on a deserted archipelago amidst the wreckage of a shipwreck scattering his smuggled wares.
The work will be placed throughout the space in a series of desert island vignettes, designed to highlight the different methodology at play, spanning installation, curating, research, publishing, and foremost, collaboration. All of which is delivered with the signature comedic timing of the recently self-proclaimed (on Twitter), “Friendly First Generation Filipino Failson, America's Next Top Model Minority, and Sane Middle Class Asian American Anchor Baby.”
Detourning and decolonizing what would be a momentous occasion of an objective mid-career retrospective, the artist instead portrays himself working on an act of salvage and survival during a proverbial mid-career crisis. The works appear as compromised, damaged, fragmented, shabby, weathered, obscured, indistinct, and otherwise incomplete hazy documents adrift in the psychedelic experience of being lost in the vast sea of our contemporary moment. However, signs of reclamation, repurpose, reinvigoration, and reenchantment pervade the scenes, quickly erected ad-hoc altars and other useful, albeit rickety, structures prop up the remains, evidence of a desire for connection despite the condition of extreme isolation, a faint beacon at the top of the small barren hill still stands.
The artist, like scores of others, has managed to tread water on the precarious raft of creative-class 1099 labor struggle, the joys and difficulties of coalition building in an era of unprecedented atomization under capitalist identity regimes, the prospect of creating an alternative space of experience outside of the mirrored cave of post-modern, hyper-accelerated procession of images of social control through ceaseless consumption of self, diverting the wasteful stream of the ecological and human exploitation through material reclamation using amateur low waste, functional design tools and production strategies, the instrumentalized fetishization of self-care practices optimized to maximize efficiency disguised as spirituality, the neoliberal pleasures of Neko Atsume and Abstract Painting, and the reduction of language limited to hot-takes under 280 characters. #thirsty #sweaty #moodbored FollowLikeSubscribe
The project will end with the ritual burning of one of the altars designed for the occasion onto which visitors are invited to add their own messages to the fire. During the run of the show, production begins on a new artist book relaunching the dormant Silver Galleon Press to catalog the work but, more importantly, to thank the community the artist is indebted to. Immediately preceding the exhibition is the new piece NFT(Not F*cking Telling) a 5-act stage play adapted for and performed in a bank.
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NFT (Not F*cking Telling)
5-act stage play adapted for a bank.
2021
The artist will be premiering NFT(Not F*cking Telling). A 5-act stage play adapted for and performed in a bank with opportunities for audience engagement. The 15-minute performance inverts the genre, aesthetic, and production value of the Hollywood buddy heist film wherein guests are invited to assist in the rapid in situ installation of the work for the purpose of documentation in the form of analog instant photography. The result of which is placed in a sealed envelope signed and dated by the participants. After an equally urgent clean-up crew, the group may either hop into their respective getaway Lyfts or steal away to burn the evidence.
Guests that wish to participate should be aware of some sporadic environmental effects in the form of strobe, noise, darkness, as well as the ongoing challenges of existing indoors during a pandemic. Loose fitting clothes and functional shoes recommended to traverse the piece quickly and safely and/or formalwear for added challenge and distinction. The work may be experienced in a passive spectator fashion with no loss of fidelity of the work. Masks required throughout, some masks will be available for those that wish to conceal their identity. This event is FREE. BYO.
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Brandon Alvendia is an artist, independent curator, and educator.
Brandon researches and regularly collaborates with artist-run initiatives around North America to develop site-specific community-driven exhibitions, events, and publications that create space for experimentation, discussion, and collaboration. He is the founder of Chicago alternative spaces artLedge (2004-2007 w/ Caleb Lyons), BEN RUSSELL (2009-2011 w/Ben Russell), The Storefront (2010-2014), and Silver Galleon Press (2008-present).
In 2020, Brandon was Saturday editor and livestream producer/host for The Quarantine Times (published by Public Media Institute), organized the Zoom happenings OFFICE PARTY 1&2 for the 6th edition of the Common Field Convening, and closed the year out with an internet performance series for public intimacies, curated by Abigail Satinsky at Tufts University Art Galleries, Boston titled The Love Bug (Fwd:LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU). He is currently an Independent Curators International Research Fellow supported by the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation and the Hartfield Foundation. The area of focus is on artist-run alternative spaces operating within the Mississippi River Basin region of the United States.
Brandon has taught at the School of The Art Institute, University of Illinois, and Columbia College, all in Chicago, and Maine College of Art (MECA) in Portland, ME. He is an alum of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA ‘03), the University of Illinois at Chicago (MFA ‘07), Copycat Academy (Toronto, 2014), and Independent Curators International Curatorial Intensive (New Orleans, 2015).