Xenia Fedorchenko’s No Free Lunch: A Closer Look

Virginia Billeaud Anderson

At first glance it seems like a spastic horse, until you notice fingers on its neck and that bony dinosaur back ridge. Distant architecture with barely discernible towers and turrets bespeak medieval Europe, but a flying bird skeleton indicates something more hellish. I’m looking at Xenia Fedorchenko’s No Free Lunch, a stone litho and intaglio print in the group exhibition Heavy Hitters at Peveto through July 7.


Xenia Fedorchenko, No Free Lunch, 2012, lithography & intaglio, 15 1/4 x 20 1/4 inches

I first encountered Fedorchenko’s art in 2007 when she exhibited a copper plate etching of a severely disfigured nude in Lawndale’s Big Show. Its knee warts and sagging tits made me want to meet the artist who turned out to be Russian born, and who the year before had moved from the east coast to Beaumont to teach at Lamar University. With Untitled at Lawndale, Fedorchenko was making her Houston exhibition debut.

The Lawndale print was part of an on ongoing series of grotesque nudes meant to penetrate our excessive focus on outer appearance. Face lifts and other surface concerns, Fedorchenko believes, distance us from our corporeality. We “exist in a body without embodying it,” she told me.

The past colors her perspective. Fedorchenko lived in Moscow before the collapse of the Soviet Union, where there was scarcity, contrasted to American abundance. Arguably, people who experience waiting in line for necessities are probably less concerned with cellulite and perfect teeth.

I am recalling a nude she printed a few years back at Texas Collaborative, Dan Allison’s Houston print shop. It had a basketball shaped stomach and a painfully tiny penis atop wrinkly thin legs. Despite these afflictions, it wore a self satisfied smirk.

As previously mentioned, in No Free Lunch a bird carcass flies above the dinosaur “horse.” This motif of a flying “demon” is a compositional element shared with many of the nudes, which also include small flying figures. The flying demon it turns out is derived from devils who torture the damned in medieval depictions of Hell, particularly from the distinct current of Northern European medieval expressionism that includes the beaked, horned and scaly devils by Martin Schongauer who attack poor Saint Anthony. The flying dead bird’s thorny reptilian features relate it to Schongauer’s devils, and also to Matthias Grunewald’s devils with bird-like features. Grunewald also painted scaly dragon devils, some covered with mucous and excrement. Those who rape the wicked while they fly are very similar to Xenia’s flying caressing nudes.

In 2007 I noticed in one of her prints a fish emerging from a nude’s vagina, which directly quotes Bosch, who seems near hysteria in his dedication to helping sinners understand how horrible Hell is. In Bosch’s imagination torture can be even more hideous than a fish in your crotch. Many of his wicked have sharp objects up their butts. It was unnecessary to ask Fedorchenko if she looked closely at Bosch because her print included letterpress text of his writing, “a false paradise, sinful and demonic, the inhabitants of which would be damned.”

Fedorchenko’s treatment of skin also references medieval narrations of Hell in which devils are portrayed with rotting skin and the miserable sinners have diseased skin. Grunewald painted a corpse with syphilitic lesions that are art historically notorious. Fedorchenko’s blemished and pocked flesh, like to the putrefied rib cage on her horse, nods in that direction.

Not having spoken to Fedorchenko since 2007, I contacted her to hear the latest. Fedorchenko replied from Florence, it’s her semester break, said she could better reply when she arrived in Venice, and then wrote from Venice. She continues her teaching schedule, recently exhibited art in Saint Louis Missouri, and spends quite a bit of time giving printing demonstrations at other universities, recently at a university in California.

What’s with the horse? “The horse, a beast of labor,” she said, “symbolizes the average citizen, out of shape, overworked and tired.” According to Fedorchenko its small head and weird body indicate it’s confused, unsure of its surroundings and possibly defeated. The imposing disorganized city threatens. “Occasionally life presents the horse-being with a seemingly wonderful opportunity, the award-winning cup-cake/muffin thing, but still the being hesitates to seize it as a bird-killing monster may be lurking.”

“There’s no free lunch,” she wrote from Venice.

New Acquisitions--another 20x200 print and a Fort Thunder veteran

Brian Chippendale, untitled (Lets Party), ink on paper, 2010

Chippendale did the densest, hardest to comprehend comics while he was part of Fort Thunder. these have been collected in the book Maggots. He did another book called Ninja. He is half the noise band Lightning Bolt. And he has a great blog where he analyzes mainstream comics with a jaded connoisseur's eye. I saw this piece on the website of Cinders Gallery in Brooklyn, and liked it. This piece is second by a Fort Thunder alumnus (the other is Brian Ralph). That leaves Mat Brinkman, Jim Drain, Lief Goldberg, Chris Forgues and probably a few others I am forgetting.


Ross Racine, Prairieside Forks, archival pigment print (22 of 500), 2010

This looks like a Google map of suburban sprawl, except the more you look at it, the more odd it seems. In fact, it was drawn by Ross Racine on a computer. No suburb would have a street layout like that--it would be a  bizaare maze. But perhaps no more bizarre than the curvilinear cul-de-sacs, arterials and freeways of our government mandated suburbs, which have helped turn us all into petroleum-guzzling lardasses. This piece is another print from the wonderful 20x200.

New Acquisitions--Chad Hagen, William Powhida, and Ward Sanders

I mentioned a while back that I had bought a William Powhida print through 20x200. This is the one I bought:



William Powhida, Why You Should Buy Art, archival ink print, edition of 500, 14" x 11", 2010

The concept behind 20x200 is to create artworks that are cheap enough for non-wealthy collectors to buy. The add two pieces every week (one photographic, one not). The prices range from $20 to $200. I recently bought two more pieces from 20x200.



Chad Hagen, Nonsensical Infographic No. 3, archival in print, 10" x 8", 2010



Chad Hagen, Nonsensical Infographic No. 4, archival in print, 10" x 8", 2010

I got these because not only are they beautiful to look at, they also deal with one of my favorite subjects--the visual representation of data. Of course, these are ironic because they are visual representations of no data. But let this be a warning. I intend in the near future to write something about data, statistics, and data visualization as art.

Chad Hagen is a designer, the profession that has been most deeply involved with data visualization.

One thing I  don't like about the 20x200 pieces is that they aren't signed on the artwork. I was taught that when you do editions, you should sign and number them, usually in pencil, on the front underneath the image. But 20x200 has the artists sign little slips of paper that come with the prints.



My problem with these is that it separates the signature--which is the thing that authenticates the work--from the physical piece. It also places a burden on the collector. He or she needs to keep track of this little slip of paper from now on.

Anyway, these are my recent budget fine art buys. Small inexpensive limited editions, offered through an internet store, are a great way to get involved with collecting. It's definitely a lot less intimidating than the alternatives. Like going into a gallery and buying a piece. If one is not an experienced buyer from galleries (and I am not), one always wonders what the etiquette is. In almost any other retail establishment, you don't have to worry about this. But art is a luxury item, and buying it seems like it should involve certain rituals and niceties.

Here's what I bought recently at Hooks-Epstein. It's called Zarzuelas and it is by an artist named Ward Sanders.


Ward Sanders, Zarzuelas, assemblage, 11" x 16" x 5.5", 2010


Ward Sanders, Zarzuelas detail, assemblage, 11" x 16" x 5.5", 2010

Sanders' exhibit consisted mostly of wooden boxes with mysterious things in them. The obvious antecedent is Joseph Cornell.


Ward Sanders, Zarzuelas, assemblage, 11" x 16" x 5.5", 2010


Ward Sanders, Zarzuelas detail, assemblage, 11" x 16" x 5.5", 2010


Ward Sanders, Zarzuelas detail, assemblage, 11" x 16" x 5.5", 2010

I had, buying Zarzuelas, a slightly amusing experience. I asked a question about the piece--what was the liquid in the test tube. They shrugged their shoulders--"Eh, I dunno." But once I made my interest in buying clear, they quickly got the artist on the phone! (I'll leave the contents mysterious for you.)

One thing that distinguishes Sanders biographically is that he has no formal art education, as far as I know. He has a BA in biology and did some graduate level work (but I don't know if it was in art or not). These days, when so many artists are credentialed professional (an absurdity when you think about it), it is kind of a novelty to run across one who doesn't have an MFA. In any case, his lack of education hasn't hurt him none. His pieces in this show were beautiful, mysterious, full of hidden antique knowledge. I'm reading Winters Tale by Mark Helprin right now--Sander's assemblages remind me a little bit of Helprin's novel of a fantastic turn of the century New York.

William Powhida, The Brooklyn Rail, and 20X200

Robert Boyd

This should probably be three different posts, but they all kind of flow together. If you follow the goings on of the art world (and good for you if you don't), you may have heard of the controversy of a show at the New Museum in New York curated by Jeff Koons selecting from the personal art collection of Greek uber-collector Dakis Joannou--who just happens to be a trustee of the museum. Major conflict of interest. How? Remember what Don Thompson wrote in The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark--museum shows brand art. Given two otherwise similar pieces by an artist, if one was included in a major museum show, it will on average be worth more. So this looks like a way for Joannou to increase the value of his collection.

Tyler Green wrote an excellent criticism of this practice. But it is unlikely to stop as long as contemporary art and big museums are seen as amusements for the rich. Why should the average person get too bothered? (More on this later.) The wittiest take-down was done as a drawing for the cover of the Brooklyn Rail by William Powhida.



William Powhida, cover of the Brooklynn Rail, November 2009

OK, that was really cool, but what is the Brooklyn Rail? It turns out that they are a monthly magazine (I've never seen a physical copy--is it more of a newspaper?) with distinctly contrarian views about art. In a recent editorial where they basically say ditto to a piece written by Roberta Smith for the New York Times (well worth reading, by the way), the editors of the art section of the Rail wrote the following:

As Ms. Smith made quite clear, New York museum curators “have a responsibility to their public and to history to be more ecumenical, to do things that seem to come from left field. They owe it to the public to present a balanced menu that involves painting as well as video and photography and sculpture. They need to think outside the hive-mind, both distancing themselves from their personal feelings to consider what’s being wrongly omitted and tapping into their own subjectivity to show us what they really love.”

We would go a step further and state unequivocally that many of these individuals have not only shirked their public responsibility, they have turned the museums into playgrounds for an elitist group of trustees and globetrotting art fair devotees, stocking their exhibitions primarily from “powerful galleries.” And if our position is not clear enough, it will become more so in the coming months through in-depth articles and well-researched drawings examining the actions of particular individuals, their public statements and their exhibition track record.  (editors, Brooklyn Rail,  March 2010)

Personally, I can't wait. Taking names and kicking ass makes for good reading. But part of the problem is that well-to-do collectors who are able to buy very expensive works of art end up having a lot of power within the art world. Now I don't find this particularly sinister. I think most of these people are really into art and want to be involved in some way. I can fully relate to this. I'm not an artist, but I like it and want to be involved. But people who have spent a lot of money on a thing (shares of a company, a house, a piece of blue-chip contemporary art) want it to retain its value. This is going to provide an incentive for some of them to do what Joannou has done.

So is there a solution? I have my doubts. Let's face it--artists and curators have been playing around with solutions with varying degrees of success for at least 40 years without really changing the system. The usual solution is to try to build an alternative space or scene. This works for a while, but it's hard to sustain. Money (and its lack) is always a problem. If you choose not to be commercial, you are reduced to begging for grants and donations. You can scrape by this way, but who is giving those donations? When you need to build a new roof for your space, the tip jar isn't going to cut it. You need a person or institution with deep pockets.

Here in Houston, if you talk to young artists or curators, these issues are always brought up. I always feel like the odd man out in such conversations. I'm older and have a knowledge of business and economics that most of the younger artists just don't have. So for me, the problem of sustaining a viable space or scene is fundamentally about cash flow, but for them it's about creating something within a hostile culture. (A gross simplification, of course.) But even so, Houston artists keep on doing, just as they have been for decades. You're a young curator like Keijiro Suzuki, and you whip together the Temporary Space, and for a time (hopefully a long time) it is a place where exciting art happens. But eventually, Suzuki (or someone) has to ask someone for money. If it is one person or one institution, that person or institution ends up having a lot of power over your space. (Note: I am not suggesting Suzuki is or ever will be a sell-out!)

But I think solutions come from getting more collectors involved. Instead of depending on the tastes and wishes on a small number of very rich people, disperse the art income to a large number of small collectors. That means more people buying less expensive art. I asked earlier, why should the average person care about the ethics of museums? If the population of "average persons" included a lot more small-scale art collectors, they might care--they might become an important constituency in these matters. I've written about one such scheme in the UK to encourage art collecting among non-rich folk. Another is 20x200. Jen Bekman is a gallery owner who came up with a way to connect to potential collectors who 1) are not rich, and 2) may not have access to lots of galleries.

Jen Bekman opened her pocket-sized gallery on the Lower East Side nearly 5 years ago with the mission of supporting emerging artists and collectors, and she's made a name for herself doing just that. 20x200 takes the mission one step further, making art available for everyone.
On a Sunday night back in January2007, Jen came up with a formula:
(limited editions x low prices) + the internet = art for everyone

As we see it, there are a lot of people out there who want to sell their art and a lot of people who'd like to buy it. They just have a hard time finding each other. The internet is the perfect place to bring those people together, and we're exactly the right people to make it happen. We're passionate about art and the internet at 20x200. We're really excited about creating a place where almost any art lover can be an art collector.

Cool idea. But how is it different from, say, Etsy? I like Etsy, but with art (like other artforms), you need gallery owners and curators and editors and other gatekeepers. This sounds very elitist, but without these people, you have a chaos of random art that would paralyze a lot of collectors (it would paralyze me, at least). Jen Bekman's 20x200 works for me because she is a good gatekeeper.So when I discovered her site (through Art Milk, another good gatekeeper), I went ahead and bought a print. (This was back in early March--I haven't gotten it yet.) Here's what I bought:




William Powhida, Why You Should Buy Art!, archival pigment print, 2010


Here's what Powhida (always verbose, if you haven't noticed) has to say about this piece.

When I was in Miami during Art Basel last December, I conducted an interview with New York Times journalist Damien Cave who repeatedly asked, "What's the alternative to the art market?" The question is not an easy one to answer.

Short of radical social and economic reform, which seems incredibly unlikely in our pro-Capitalist, market-trusting society, I struggled to articulate my thoughts surrounded by the spectacle of Basel. While I was down there, I also saw Jen Bekman's booth at PULSE and it reminded me that one of my answers to Mr. Cave should have immediately been "access." Access to contemporary art is often restricted by high prices, including my own, that put it out of reach of the majority of people who love art. 20x200 offers a way to make art and the experience of buying art accessible to the broader public than the limited pool of collectors who have the means to buy unique and often wildly expensive art objects. Art, in many ways, is a luxury commodity and the larger question remains, "what is enough?"

I believe that it's a matter of scale; prices leap from hundreds to hundreds of thousands based on branding and marketing. I hope that established artists who command hundreds of thousands of dollars for their art will consider what it means to sell to a very small collector class. Are they really reflecting their own creative expression or the tastes of the ruling class? I don't begrudge their wealth or values, but I do believe that art is made freely and for more than those who can afford to own it.
-William Powhida, Maker*
*Please see my bio for William Powhida the "Genius"