Gregory Sale

I think that if I had just looked up Gregory Sale and his work online I would have little to no idea as to what his work was actually about.  I went to his 1.5 hour talk and even now, I'm not really sure that I have it fully digested.  In fact, I have tried to explain it to at least two people and failed pretty miserably.  I'm going to make one last attempt to describe the art of Gregory Sale and see if I can get a grasp on it--specifically his It's Not just Black and White installation/ social experiment/ relationship observation....errr, whatever.

                                        Go Ahead, Wonder 2009-- Phoenix citizens are invited to offer up a short blurb about there musings for the future on their city, specifically regarding social issues.  A collection of recordings, photographs and texts memorialized the participation of Arizona citizens in this project.

  Bienvenidos! Here at the Welcome Diner 2009--The Welcome Diner served as the site and restaurant for a dinner that brought together a neighborhood with food, music, and art.  It was an opportunity to consider the growing tension of immigration issues in AZ, as multiple cultural groups shared the same space for one purpose.

                                                    Love Buttons 2008

 

  Love Buttons in Local Produce 2008--Thousands of buttons were produced and dispenced into crowds of people becoming wearable art and poetry. The buttons encourage and create interactions between people, thus turning individials into a collective, dynamic, performance art work.

 

Its not just black and White is the work of Sale's that I am most familiar with.  I have posted several pictures from his 2011 It's Not Just Black and White Exhibit and will attempt to examine the work depicted in the photographs and Gregory Sale's artistic work as a whole.

The initial installation was created by a group of inmates that were allowed to leave prison, and in their black and white prison uniforms paint the walls of the exhibit space in black and white stripes, highly symbolic and evocative backdrop for Sale's work.

One aspect or "piece" or "pearl" in Sale's exhibition was a series of tours to a tent prison erected in the desert. 

 

The gallery space used by Sale was the site of workshops, dialogs, classes, etc. that focused on aspects of the corrections system and its participants.  Pictured here, a writing workshop centers around the experiences of corrections personal and former prisoners.

Sale's work is an examination of human interaction.  In all cases, a form or participation from a group or groups of individuals is necessary for his work to convey its "intended" meaning.  I put intended in quotations because though this is a form of art, at its roots is social experimentation put on display (my wording. This may not be the way Sale himself would describe his work).  His work More than just black and white took on almost an activism quality, in that it addressed a problem with out ever coming right out and calling it a problem.  It was a social experiment with a commentary on policy, and human rights issues running throughout the piece. It brought to light complex issues such as class-ism, whether Sale intended that or not.  As Sale described his work during the guest lecture I attended, it became less and less about the issue of incarceration, over crowded prisons, policy, etc. and more about law breaking citizens of one "class" interacting with law abiding citizens on another "class". Maybe its crude, or simplistic to say it so plainly but I don't really feel like sugar coating it, plus it's late and sugar coating takes thought and consideration.  

One thing that I have been thinking about when it comes to Sale's Art is that he has two different types of viewers or participants: the people that are wearing his buttons, going on his prison tours, talking in a space with striped walls, and people like me who are trying to glean from a few pictures, a video, a text blurb what the experience was like. I suppose even in the most traditional media that caveat exists.  I cannot experience the Mona Lisa that way Leonardo intended unless I make a trip to Paris.   Still, it is a profoundly different experience to participate in social interaction than it is to view about it--think about having a fight with your partner vs watching two people have a spat in a documentary.  So I guess I my biggest question is...where is the art?  Is it in the interactions/reactions of the people participating in his "experiment"?  In other words are they the art work, and the passive observer gets to watch them like subjects in a fish bowl, or are the participants the only ones who get to fully experience Sale's art, and the rest of us are getting a diluted version.  Heck, maybe it's both, but it just begs a lot of questions, like "is the painting art, or is the hours that the artist spend hunched over the canvas also art?"