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Critiques
The Royal College of Art, London UK:
"We have examined the sculptures of Eike Waltz, including his major work (The Swan Figures). We have been greatly impressed by its aesthetic and polemic qualities and by the sensitive, skilled creativity and intellectual honesty which pervades it. We consider these sculptures to be work of importance. Signed: Professor R Y Goodden- Pro-Rector; Professor Misha Black; Eduardo Paolozzi (sculpturer).
Alan Bamberger, in www.artbusiness.com
“Art is about expressing yourself creatively and sharing that expression with others. To make a series of paintings that shirtsleeve your feelings, to rent a gallery space in downtown San Francisco to show those paintings, to share your pain for one month with people you’ve never met, all with no intention of selling a single penny, is not only an act of bravery, but it’s what art is all about at its very central innermost core. No matter what your position on the War in Iraq or the current administration, this is a unique event, and worth seeing. And if you’re an artist, talk to the Halligan-Waltz’s. They’ll remind you why you do what you do”.
Maureen Davidson
Sheila Halligan-Waltz and Eike Waltz have made it very simple. They have rented the cavernous extension of the Hide Gallery beyond Broadway in the South-of-Water district, and mounted an exhibition of their art. There is no curator. There are no labels beside the paintings and sculpture, no titles, no prices. In "Sheila's Outrage-Outreach," the viewer needn't feel compelled to assess the value of the works in connection with their price, for they are not for sale. The paintings, assemblages and sculpture speak volumes, clearly, for themselves. And they just aren't polite. Wasn't everyone warned as a youth that it wasn't polite to talk with strangers about politics, religion, sex or money? Sheila and Eike took money out of the conversation right away, and filled a barn-size room Victorian-gallery-style with double-stacked sizeable paintings that express the artists' outrage over the violence done by the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, American aid/AIDS policies and the Catholic Church. Visceral portraits of Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and others are painted assemblages of news headlines and photographs — filled to overflowing with words and images from those daily newspaper accounts that make up history: layer after layer of documentation encases a powerful portrait of each person — outrage running off the front of each canvas to continue on the sides, with words.
Political denunciations hang on the right, social statements on the left and atop a high wall are posed 18 realistic, life size plaster corps de ballet — human below the waist, with swan necks and heads, Eike's "The Dilemma of Ballet." On pedestals, his smaller bronze and resin sculptures are sensuous abstracted figures or futurist-style portrait busts. The back walls are full of Sheila's paintings of friends, family and local characters that are just as brimful of content, that occupy their rectangles with the same powerful eye-to eye communication as do the portraits of political leaders.
But this is Eike's mother, there is Santa Cruz's umbrella man, this is friend of Sheila's childhood — Sheila tells visitors a story about her, but you didn't need the story to know that this woman was a bold and delightful character as she meets your eye coquettishly, almost defiantly. Among the portraits are erotic paintings of Sheila and Eike and others, perhaps to make sure that Miss Manners would still have a trio of subjects to offend her.
In an evening reception — one of six held every Friday during the course of the show until the last on Nov. 3, Eike Waltz mounted a mid-gallery staircase under a hanging canopy of stars and stripes made of stitched bandages, and, behind a podium, read a statement to the gathering, quieting the jazz ensemble, drawing guests away from the reception tables.
He told about the inception of the exhibition — the desire of his wife Sheila to reach out to people with her painted expressions of outrage: to affect them, spur them to awareness and action. His reading was a performance, a manifesto, a declaration by him — an immigrant — that this wasn't the American Dream they signed up for.
There is nothing to do but respond to the passionate message, so forcibly delivered. The works are consistently impactful. Sheila studied at the Chicago Art Institute. Eike is a German-born graduate of the Royal Academy of Art, former ballet dancer and friend of Rudolf Nureyev, and an engineer whose success in technology and management made this exhibition, and it's predecessor, in another ersatz gallery near Union Square in San Francisco, possible.
Art impolite, without price, communicating passionately, demands your attention.
The Exhibitionist – Maureen Davidson
STEAM RISES FROM THE MILL
In “Sex & City” at the Mill Gallery, prepare to meet favorite body parts, some exuding steamy essence, perhaps in close-up or on figures in interlocking embrace; extended tongues in cheeky gestures; a neon phallus; red vinyl lips. If it all becomes exhausting, there are twin bathtubs inviting visitors to step in, relax, lean back on the cushions, hold hands and-what are these pills? A twisted torrent of limbs-swans wearing the torsos and legs of ballet dancers-tumbles down two stories at the center of the space. Indeed, this exhibition of work by Sheila Halligan-Waltz and Eike Waltz screams SEX. It doesn’t mean it. The works are erotically posed but not erotic. They are stories circling a central idea. “Sex & City” is not an exhibition of art objects. The exhibition is the artwork, and the subject is living passionately. What a pair they are, Sheila & Eike; she from a small Illinois town, then Chicago, where she began her art studies at the Art Institute before moving to Santa Cruz and meeting Eike, who had been a ballet dancer in Berlin, then a MFA graduate of the Royal College of Art in London with a concurrent degree in industrial design (MdesRCA) and a successful engineering and business career. Over the years they each and together continued and deepened their art practice, expressing their shared political views through art, aiming to effect change thereby. To do this, Sheila & Eike mounted exhibitions: “Outrage” in San Francisco in 2004 and “Outrage/Outreach” in 2006, “out” in 2008 and now “Sex & City” in the Mill Gallery in Santa Cruz. Sheila paints sometimes massive canvasses in whatever style suits the message, at times also working in collage or bronze sculpture. Eike calls his sculptures Sculpitti-3Dgraffiti-in bronze, fiberglass, cast resin, structural foam, steel and wood. Biannually, they hire a huge space for a month, install their artwork, staff it every day themselves, converse with all comers and produce performances related to their theme. The performances have included cabaret-style theater and music, fashion runway, comedy, dance, film and improve featuring local and national artists. Their first three exhibits expressed objection to the Bush administration policies, and in “Sex & City” they grabbled with the hypocrisy of the institutional enforcement of morals. Nothing is for sale. They are there own curators. Some of the individual pieces are exquisite artworks, others are simply signboards for a message.
It is in the totality of each exhibition that Sheila & Eike are successful.
"We have examined the sculptures of Eike Waltz, including his major work (The Swan Figures). We have been greatly impressed by its aesthetic and polemic qualities and by the sensitive, skilled creativity and intellectual honesty which pervades it. We consider these sculptures to be work of importance. Signed: Professor R Y Goodden- Pro-Rector; Professor Misha Black; Eduardo Paolozzi (sculpturer).
Alan Bamberger, in www.artbusiness.com
“Art is about expressing yourself creatively and sharing that expression with others. To make a series of paintings that shirtsleeve your feelings, to rent a gallery space in downtown San Francisco to show those paintings, to share your pain for one month with people you’ve never met, all with no intention of selling a single penny, is not only an act of bravery, but it’s what art is all about at its very central innermost core. No matter what your position on the War in Iraq or the current administration, this is a unique event, and worth seeing. And if you’re an artist, talk to the Halligan-Waltz’s. They’ll remind you why you do what you do”.
Maureen Davidson
Sheila Halligan-Waltz and Eike Waltz have made it very simple. They have rented the cavernous extension of the Hide Gallery beyond Broadway in the South-of-Water district, and mounted an exhibition of their art. There is no curator. There are no labels beside the paintings and sculpture, no titles, no prices. In "Sheila's Outrage-Outreach," the viewer needn't feel compelled to assess the value of the works in connection with their price, for they are not for sale. The paintings, assemblages and sculpture speak volumes, clearly, for themselves. And they just aren't polite. Wasn't everyone warned as a youth that it wasn't polite to talk with strangers about politics, religion, sex or money? Sheila and Eike took money out of the conversation right away, and filled a barn-size room Victorian-gallery-style with double-stacked sizeable paintings that express the artists' outrage over the violence done by the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, American aid/AIDS policies and the Catholic Church. Visceral portraits of Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and others are painted assemblages of news headlines and photographs — filled to overflowing with words and images from those daily newspaper accounts that make up history: layer after layer of documentation encases a powerful portrait of each person — outrage running off the front of each canvas to continue on the sides, with words.
Political denunciations hang on the right, social statements on the left and atop a high wall are posed 18 realistic, life size plaster corps de ballet — human below the waist, with swan necks and heads, Eike's "The Dilemma of Ballet." On pedestals, his smaller bronze and resin sculptures are sensuous abstracted figures or futurist-style portrait busts. The back walls are full of Sheila's paintings of friends, family and local characters that are just as brimful of content, that occupy their rectangles with the same powerful eye-to eye communication as do the portraits of political leaders.
But this is Eike's mother, there is Santa Cruz's umbrella man, this is friend of Sheila's childhood — Sheila tells visitors a story about her, but you didn't need the story to know that this woman was a bold and delightful character as she meets your eye coquettishly, almost defiantly. Among the portraits are erotic paintings of Sheila and Eike and others, perhaps to make sure that Miss Manners would still have a trio of subjects to offend her.
In an evening reception — one of six held every Friday during the course of the show until the last on Nov. 3, Eike Waltz mounted a mid-gallery staircase under a hanging canopy of stars and stripes made of stitched bandages, and, behind a podium, read a statement to the gathering, quieting the jazz ensemble, drawing guests away from the reception tables.
He told about the inception of the exhibition — the desire of his wife Sheila to reach out to people with her painted expressions of outrage: to affect them, spur them to awareness and action. His reading was a performance, a manifesto, a declaration by him — an immigrant — that this wasn't the American Dream they signed up for.
There is nothing to do but respond to the passionate message, so forcibly delivered. The works are consistently impactful. Sheila studied at the Chicago Art Institute. Eike is a German-born graduate of the Royal Academy of Art, former ballet dancer and friend of Rudolf Nureyev, and an engineer whose success in technology and management made this exhibition, and it's predecessor, in another ersatz gallery near Union Square in San Francisco, possible.
Art impolite, without price, communicating passionately, demands your attention.
The Exhibitionist – Maureen Davidson
STEAM RISES FROM THE MILL
In “Sex & City” at the Mill Gallery, prepare to meet favorite body parts, some exuding steamy essence, perhaps in close-up or on figures in interlocking embrace; extended tongues in cheeky gestures; a neon phallus; red vinyl lips. If it all becomes exhausting, there are twin bathtubs inviting visitors to step in, relax, lean back on the cushions, hold hands and-what are these pills? A twisted torrent of limbs-swans wearing the torsos and legs of ballet dancers-tumbles down two stories at the center of the space. Indeed, this exhibition of work by Sheila Halligan-Waltz and Eike Waltz screams SEX. It doesn’t mean it. The works are erotically posed but not erotic. They are stories circling a central idea. “Sex & City” is not an exhibition of art objects. The exhibition is the artwork, and the subject is living passionately. What a pair they are, Sheila & Eike; she from a small Illinois town, then Chicago, where she began her art studies at the Art Institute before moving to Santa Cruz and meeting Eike, who had been a ballet dancer in Berlin, then a MFA graduate of the Royal College of Art in London with a concurrent degree in industrial design (MdesRCA) and a successful engineering and business career. Over the years they each and together continued and deepened their art practice, expressing their shared political views through art, aiming to effect change thereby. To do this, Sheila & Eike mounted exhibitions: “Outrage” in San Francisco in 2004 and “Outrage/Outreach” in 2006, “out” in 2008 and now “Sex & City” in the Mill Gallery in Santa Cruz. Sheila paints sometimes massive canvasses in whatever style suits the message, at times also working in collage or bronze sculpture. Eike calls his sculptures Sculpitti-3Dgraffiti-in bronze, fiberglass, cast resin, structural foam, steel and wood. Biannually, they hire a huge space for a month, install their artwork, staff it every day themselves, converse with all comers and produce performances related to their theme. The performances have included cabaret-style theater and music, fashion runway, comedy, dance, film and improve featuring local and national artists. Their first three exhibits expressed objection to the Bush administration policies, and in “Sex & City” they grabbled with the hypocrisy of the institutional enforcement of morals. Nothing is for sale. They are there own curators. Some of the individual pieces are exquisite artworks, others are simply signboards for a message.
It is in the totality of each exhibition that Sheila & Eike are successful.
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