CONCEPTIONSCONCEPTIONS

I've moved on

2008-09-28T09:10:00.001-04:00

www.updownacross.wordpress.com

Us Them Poems

2008-07-30T18:58:00.007-04:00

Last night there was a poetry reading event at ACA Gallery and I had the pleasure of hearing a friend read some of his works. It was held by a small publication company/community BookThug and the evening featured some young experimental influential poets as well as music performance by one guitar strumming singer/songwriter.
Not only was I captivated by the gallery environment which was exhibiting a group show of mostly 18th and 19th century paintings (and also included an amazing spray painting groovy Judy Chicago painting/diary entry), I was happy to be part of such an engaged audience as these eclectic poets, and musician, put on a thought provoking awe inspiring performance.
Below is a poem by my friend Evan Kennedy published in the Chapbook titled Us Them Poems

We are spoonbenders in a town of
horrendous restaurants. In our homes
are jars of bent spoons and we bring the
jars to our mentor's tomb. Our step is
as light as men on th emoon our brains
soggy balls of yarn. Where else we ask
do these jars belong these modest jars
of spoons. Our plate-faced loves wait
behind bushes. They know the jar of
spoons will reappear at the restaurant
tables straightened. There is always
more time to unbend the spoons than
to bend the spoons. At the edge of town
this stupidest of towns is a wall we climb
and beyond that a valley of abandoned
knives as dull as the daily specials here.

This poem as well as others in the chapbook are rife with automatic wordplay, the stream of consciousness directed in myriad directions jumping to and fro leaving us in absolute wonder. The repetitive almost droning tone creates a choppy rhythm, and as Evan quotes becomes a conflict between musical and narrative. Each poem creates a vivid surrealistic story of spoonbenders vs. restaurant owners such as above, whistleblowers vs. bellringers, and the like. They are simultaneously optimistic and ominous, energetic and anti-climactic, playful and all too sober. It inspired an art project idea to take each poem and paint its story on a huge wooden sphere creating an other-worldly diorama of fantastical daydreams.
Click here to purchase Us Them Poems, I highly recommend it.

Let's end with another:

We are hat eaters letting our hats digest.
The reason one must eat his hat still the
same. There are always more hats to
eat so we wait for a train this train to a
place where hats come huge. The heads
wearing the hats sitting up on high.
And we hat eaters eat from a suitcase of
unclaimed hats. First around the brim
then deeper where thoughts are stored.
There is a thought that hat eating is not
what mankind is for but nothing is kind
about man. And it is always the hatless
who have to eat hats. There is nothing
left for us hat eaters but to eat their hats
and say we're through. Through with
their hats and with our mouths and
our minds for now. And we're smiling
though we haven't heard the latest news.

REVAMP

2008-07-11T13:14:00.013-04:00

It's been awhile since I've last posted and I've been doing some thinking. I've approached this blog in two different ways, at first more informal and opinionated, which got me into some trouble with employers, then it became objective, formal and a bit bland. I am not satisfied with either approach and knowing a blog's intentions are to get all your thoughts published and just as anyone can be an artist, anyone can be a published writer, I would like to start fresh, start new, with an approach between the formal and informal. I find it difficult to be purely conversational, but also find it boring to be pseudo-academic, on a blog for that matter. I want my writing to be incisive, natural, and thought provoking perhaps with a pinch of hysterical laughter. I plan to write about shows I see in museums, galleries, music venues, and the like. I want to share my thoughts on the books I read, of the events I attend, and other general cultural experiences. I often freeze in front of my computer on the verge of writing, I am yet to have created a comfort zone for my writing process. But with clarity, decisiveness, and ritual, not to mention encouragement I get from your readership, I think I can get this straight once and for all.
Here goes everything.

Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner

2008-03-23T13:06:00.013-04:00

Marcel Dzama's oeuvre is rife with disturbing childhood imaginations, executed in various mediums, each a successful means of connecting eerie psychosis with political imbalance. Scenes of the greedy and gruesome are displayed with the same dizziness and nonsensical story lines of twilight zone episodes, with decapitated heads, masked hunters, sexually questionable Pinocchios, burlesque theatrics, and the ubiquitous black bear. This cacophony of hauntingly nightmarish yet irresistibly cute figures come alive in this exhibition at David Zwirner.
In the first room, a series of drawings unite in color palette, where artist uses muted colors of red, beige, brown and gray, each drawing a constellation of figures mesmerizing the plane with repetitive patterns. In Poor Sacrifices of our enmity, a swarm of female figures utilizes the bow and arrow to point and shoot a goat atop a ladder, but none are placed on a sensical ground plane, filling the space from top to bottom swirling and rotating creating a layer of abstract patterns with the concentric circle of their bow. The blank background allows for this play on space and narrative, a violent scene marked by discombobulating placement of a singular figure. The minimal use of elements in these drawings send a strong message of the inhumane and inexplicable in each of us.
Pages from Dzama's sketchbooks reveal his interests in the magical fused with political manipulations and grievances of the individual. These dark themes are revealed thru quirky observations, each page of graph paper a collage of the artist's exploration of current events and random useless information. Page 5 of 13 in the sketchbook included in the exhibition includes a personal story in conjunction with a elementary science project study of the gopher, a naive childish caption beneath a violent scene with cartoon figures appropriated on top. And above the study for one of few puppet theater diamoras The Underground. The sketchbook is a precise portrayal of the artist's work in progress, his interests in the fantastical and the random, taking the mundane and newsworthy into a realm of imaginary characters and daydreams.
The second room is closed and dark, with a few dioramas in the likes of stages of stuffed animals seen in the museum of natural history, except these are scenes of greed, violence, and all that is deviously innocent. On the Banks of the Red River depicts men in gray suits from the olden days, scattered and numerous, pointing their rifles in the air as animals fall or in the midst of falling to their death. The scene is thrown into the fantastical with the inclusion of large decapitated heads and flowers billowing thru the empty space. The diorama creates contradictory reactions for the viewer, as we sympathize with the poor dead animals, feel animosity for the hunters, and are left with confusion as to why these zombie heads decorate the scene amidst beautiful blooming petals.
And the strongest and strangest work in the show is a 20 minute film shot in scratchy black and white, which is accompanied on select days by a pianist who plays in accord with the film, a beautiful trance of tunes accentuating each flighty scene. The protagonist of the film is an artist haunted by his own creations, costumed furry characters often masked who prance around the artist as both threat and revelry. There is a theme of keyholes thorughout the film, which is reiterated in an installation that reflects Duchamp"s Etant donnes, viewable through a peephole. Rather than the main image being a naked female, we are haunted by 2 figures, both male and female with a fox atop a hill, a successful predator preying on their fare skin and innocence.
A great show that merges the imagination with the all too real of our mundane and often ridiculously violent reality.

Gustave Courbet and Nicolas Poussin at the Met

2008-03-02T12:51:00.006-05:00

The Courbet and Poussin exhibition at the Met was an educational and intriguing viewing experience, an inspiring appreciation of formalism and psychological intensities.
While Courbet is engrossed in role playing turning every painting into narcissistic self-portraits, Poussin takes a modest approach thorough painting romantic narratives. They both singular intense emotions and psychological conundrums, depicting the intangible in opposing styles, Courbet with close perspective, simple, muted, and intense in limited use of color, Poussin with layer upon layer of hills and mountains in a vast landscape with multiple scaled figures and structures.
Courbet's multiple self-portraits often delve into fantasy as the artist depicts himself as wanderer, cello player, and madman. The hazy, sexy, stylized rendering gives Courbet a rambunctious arrogant look, a much intended representation. The fare skin, the seductive gaze, wide eyed, sharp nose and shaped lips are mesmerizing and relentless in enticing the viewer to come closer and be tempted to touch the realistic portrait he makes of himself.
In Self-portrait with Pipe, the figure sits very close to the canvas, taking up all foreground and background of the painting, ready to spill out and greet us with his awesome presence. The colors are dry and muted, monochromatic and thinly painted, his face lit from above as if shined on by the gods.
His pioneering Realism is tainted by the fantastic and lush, adding spice, delicacy and vibrancy to each portrait and landscape that he creates. The Meeting, or Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, 1854 presents the artist as the lone wanderer in a happenchance meeting with a patron and manservant. The outline of the figures are extremely clear cut making it seem as if theyve been collaged onto the generic landscape surface, barren for the panting dog peering curiously at the bearded man with the walking stick. In Sleep, Courbet delves into the controversial and pornographic as he depicts what seems to be a lesbian couple in deep sleep, their bodies entangled in each other, within in a muted regal setting. The elements are again limited, a bed, 2 figures, and 2 tables in front of a shady monochrome background. The voluptuous figures float on canvas, delicate and peaceful in their embrace, a dreamy addition to a realistic brothel environment.
The works of Poussin are comparatively dense in its formal qualities and displays the physical and emotional narrative with subtlety and bountifulness. Landscape and narrative painting is merged to form a detailed and expansive palette, a multiplicity in scale of numerous figures, hills, mountains and skies that prance around the canvas simultaneously. The sheer scale alone can be daunting and can result in sensory overload but upon learning to appreciate one element at a time, the overall scheme of each work is perfection.
In Sight of Death, T.J. Clark writes about 2 Poussin paintings extensively over a long period of time in journalistic format and 1 of the paintings he discusses is included in the exhibition. Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake consists of multiple layers of paths and hills with a lake as middle ground, more hills behind that, and a mountain above, then finally the sky. Three figures are placed in the foreground and near middle ground, 1 dead wrapped by a menacing snake, a man with arms and legs extended in opposite directions, running and warning/reaching out to the woman splattered on the floor with clothes basked next to her, her arms gesticulating in correspondence with him. We are not certain if he is fleeing from fear or if he in an act of heroism is warning the woman, refraining her from coming any closer. The right side of the frame is rife with trees and clouds, and the wind blows from right to left, in the direction the man is going, the direction his hand is gesturing, as if the whole of nature has come to warn the public the atrocity that is at coming. Each figure is placed on a different escalated hill, as if creating a series of events, and everything behind the woman is oblivious and at peace.n The subject of the painting is a myth amongst art historians, as there is no clear identification of the characters. Nonetheless it is a narrative strife with trauma, fear, death, and bliss.
Both artists has contributed to art history by providing realism and romanticism that incorporates and reveals psychological tension with the self and other. Each created a technique that allowed for multiplicity in identity and vision. They are masters of their time and have influenced many future artists. Each painting is refreshing and simply beautiful.

Jasper Johns at the Met and Matthew Marks

2008-03-02T12:50:00.003-05:00

The Jasper Johns exhibition at Matthew Marks is an appropriate extension of his gray retrospective at the Met, both shows reveal with variety and precision his interests in literal execution and contemplative self-expression.
As a widely studied figure, Johns has been historicized for his use of representational icons such as targets, numbers, the alphabet, and the american flag. These motifs are easily recognized and the viewer is familiar with these representations creating singular interpretation through the view of universal symbols. He often gives new meaning, whether multiple meaning or non-meaning, to everyday objects incorporated directly onto canvas such as brooms, rules, strings, and household utensils, giving them triple functions as image, tool, and text. Johns reverberates the multiplicity of function and interpretation thru creating series after series of sketches and paintings, as if fighting each element for perfection.
Each flag, target, alphabet motif is generously represented in the Met, except with the absence of color. This thesis oriented exhibition breathes fresh air, albeit a foggy, thick and humid air, into all his signature works. The lack of primary and tertiary colors usually represented are silenced and choked by an overwhelming barrage of gray.
In Fool's House, 1962, a broom with wooden handle hangs vertically by a hinge at the top of the canvas, its body stained and used by the paint. It is also used as a mark maker evident by the scratch swooshy pattern made by sweeping the broom dipped in paint across the bottom of the canvas. A spontaneous and effortless gesture made by the artist, the broom seems to breathe life marking its presence, its significance in the back and forth act of sweeping. Johns uses text to label each item on canvas, a towel, stretcher line the bottom with a cup hanging off the tip by a hook. Each is labeled in a sloppy sketchy manner with an arrow relating the text to each item. A diagram, presentation, statement of the obvious, an inventory of belongings inside a fool's house, the fool most likely being the artist himself as he presents us with objects in his studio, the objects that he is most intimate with, the most widely used and functional. The oversimplification and literalism of the works are rife with dead pan humor mixed with somber meditation on the meaning of things.
A more recent work, Untitled, 1992-1995 keeps to the idea of using familiar icons, such as a floorpolan, stick figures, and eyes, and mixes with abstract figurative and non figurative motifs, the use of line as it billows around the canvas and makes for a surrealist take on object making. The background is split in three shades and patterned with dots, text and lines. A ladder sits diagonally on a cross, and somber stick figure prances around out of the cross as if just stepping off this ladder, a fallen man entering a surreality encased with abstraction. A geometric symbol consisting of two circles supported by diamond bodies and triangular wings float above this figure as if angels in duality representing his conscious. The colors are muted and thick, the motifs are plenty, overlapping and tumbling within each other's presence. The scattered positioning seem to be a reflection of the happenings within a mind, the thoughts and emotions presented in a conglomeration of literal and fantastical images.
These symbols of ladder, stick figure, and angelic form are also presented in a sketch shown at Matthew Marks, a repetitive positioning of scattered images, spontaneous in placement, a marking of the mind.
The drawings in the Matthew Marks show reveal the artist's interests in mark making in the last decade, many with references to Matisse and Picasso, an ode to modernist expression. There is also presented a few works on gray, the cross hatching and rectangular shaping create a field of abstracted infinitum. The exploratory referencing reveals the artist's recent interest in back tracking to history of mark making and representing.
Both exhibitions reveal an artist always at work, his never ending curiosities an impulse, a statement to the exploratory learning process of an artist who has himself made a mark in history.

Juan Usle at Cheim & Read

2008-02-24T14:02:00.003-05:00

A recent series of paintings by Juan Usle on view at Cheim & Read reveals the artist's interest in transferring personal experience into visual constructions. The paintings conversate with one another expressing unique characteristics based on color, line and pattern. They vibrate with blissful shouting, as if color emerge on their own accord and organic form coordinates them into systems of vibrant environments.
Upon entering the gallery the viewer is struck by their immediacy and overwhelming presence. The uniformity between them is not created by the instruments used and the artist intention as much as their ability to create an environment of clarity, spontaneity, organic compartmentalizing, and sinuous grids. The contradicting formal elements of each work make Usle much more than a Greenbergian formalist, he is rather, an AbEx expressionist thats been cultured by the conventional wisdom that is Modernism.
Usle's use of instruments to execute the textile patterning of each stroke crates a static and uniform surface that is contradicted by the movement and fluidity of the curves and shapes they create. In La Escena Perdida, which translates to "The Lost Scene", flat black chords striped by a mark making tool intersect each other, uniting and dispersing in free movement without reference to coordination or choreography. Each strand is a member in this spontaneous dance, spiraling in and out to infinity. The minimal use of color in this painting seems to create a dissection that stalls or amputates each stroke. The ambivalence and allusion, the multi-defining within each painting is also contradicted by the precise and clarity of color, the smoothness of surface, the uniformity of the grid. In Aislados, or "Isolated", a consistent brick pattern spreads throughout the canvas, none is equal in siye to the other, they stand alone and independent forming a crowd of identical difference. Allusions of shadow and three dimensionality makes room for 2 white feather like strokes to reast on the 2nd tier of squares, members isolated from the rest of their group, standing, or laying, or being, in peace, or rather, in paranoiac loneliness. The freedom of interpretation makes the artist intent indeterminate, but the title of each gives a slight clue into the realm of these non-figures, a reflection of the artist's personal experiences and surroundings.
Standing at the center of the gallery, the viewer will easily notice the triptych of square grids on one side, and on the reflecting wall 3 painting of swirly shapes and lines. Its as if these opposing works are 2 identities of 1 form, the duality created within this setting makes for an almost schizophrenic impulse, grounded on non-conformity and ambiguity.
The irony in Usle's paintings is reflected again in Sin Desenlace, "Without Outcome", with its overwhelming layering of form, pattern, and color. Loops, lines, perpendiculars, stripes, patches, all these forms gather, as if at war with each other, fighting to conquer and overtake the surface of the canvas to no avail. The painting is chaotic, an overload of lines and colors that is too disorienting to absorb. But the clarity and smoothness of the surface bring the forms together and comforts the viewer with the safety of the line between us and "them".
The dichotomy that rests in the works of Usle is ingenious in their randomness, in its unplanned multiplicity, and the absolute ambivalence and conflict it creates in the viewer. It is spontaneously a refreshing and flabbergasting experience.

John Morris at D'Amelio Terras

2008-02-03T15:45:00.001-05:00

A series of intimate paintings by John Morris on view at D'Amelio Terras, consisting of obsessive details in the shape of swirls, dashes, dots and lines. Mostly in white made translucent by a layer of wax, these small abstract works are ethereal, repetitive, organic and serial. Each painting on board focuses on a particular motif, repeated in differing shades and sizes, overlapping, underlapping, crossing, and chaffing each other as if in conversation. The narratives created are completely up to the imagination of the viewer and they are subtle in message.
Each pattern creates a world of its own, they are deceivingly simple, revealing an intertwined network of channels, of forms, of delicate energy.

Hans Haacke at Paula Cooper

2008-02-03T15:00:00.001-05:00

A mini-retrospective of works by Hans Haacke at Paula Cooper, minimal and scarce in number but enough to create an environment that is diverse in medium, concept, and subject.
The strongest and most emotionally influential is Wide White Flow from 1967 which consists of large white fabric dreamily billowing by a few fans. Each corner is fitted to the floor preventing chaotic stormy movement. The fans create waves of movement, an energy in constant flux, but steady in tone, serene in attitude. Its all encompassing size is contradicted by its closeness to the floor, as if stunted, limited in its freedom to expand and billow into infinitum.
His controversial and signature photographic conceptual piece, Sol Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, a Real-Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, is on view in a separate room, a line of buildings stationed on the wall, an unforgiving simplicity attached to its concept of political and social significance. Not very easy to digest, or perhaps too easily digested without proper chewing, this series is often dismissed for its lack of formal aesthetic but this is precisely what the artist intends, making the viewer struggle in finding a meaning behind all the closed doors. The data gathered comments to a social system based on ownership, power and manipulation, as the rich get richer thus kicking out the less fortunate from their forced state of comfort.
A more recent work consists of a dilapidated couch, torn, stained and ugly on which is planted an embroidered pillow quoted with words by George H.W. Bush and a torn paper flag, its other half still in its frame above the couch. The message is clear, perfectly rendered with simple everyday household goods.
Each work in the show deals with a level of consummation, consuming culture, politics, property, beauty, art viewing, etc. They all reflect current concerns specific to America, of fear of change, obsession with real estate, and the growing promiscuity of the art market.

Mike Cockrill at KENT gallery

2008-02-03T13:28:00.001-05:00

A series of works on paper by Mike Cockrill is on view at KENT gallery, a follow up on a recent show on paintings. Both shows cover the almost redundant theme of naiveté, adolescence, sexual curiosity and exploration. They are soft, dreamy and effeminate, with image of pretty girls, butterflies and airy colors. The girls engage the tainted and pedophilic impulses in the viewer with their taunting come hither glances, pleasure driven poses, scanty clothing. They act innocently, we react pornographically. The watercolors are thinnly painted but the result is rich, especially when using colored paper creating a monochrome background making way for a more fantasy driven narrative. The amount of violence imbedded into the narrative is disturbing and leaves the viewer at unease, jumbling pleasure with pain, admiration with repulsion. This ambivalence
Not as successfully affective or intriguing is a series titled from Stations of the Cross. A numbered series of watercolor on paper works picturing various protagonists as Jesus going through the process of life and death and resurrection. In one piece Jesus is a black man, in another Jesus is a series of youthful flirtatious women out of the 50s. Neither convincing nor relevant in its attempt to create a successful fantasy narrative concerning condemnation and regurgitated life lines.
Overall, the works of Mike Cockrill is straightforward in its content, disturbingly beautiful in its formal elements, and unfortunately, dismissive.

Accidental Modernism at Leslie Tonkonow

2008-01-27T16:38:00.001-05:00

A group show consisting of works created in the last century, titled Accidental Modernism on view at Leslie Tonkonow gallery. A very well curated show based on the theme of artist appropriating their voice onto found, or happen chance materials, manipulating found products to incorporate and incise with their individual expressions. A vast range of artists from Jean Tinguely and Rudolf Stingel to Keith Tyson and a collaboration with Reena Spaulings, Bernadette Corporation and others.
Each work coincide in their interest with ambivalence and abstraction, transcending the interpretable, creating witty nonsense, yet separating with each other as very separate singular entities. They communicate the same concepts in different dimensions.
Bill Morrison's video "Light is Coming" is ethereal and dreamy, with a couple scenes superimposed, a stop animation of paintings, similar to the works of Jacco Olivier. A horse, a man and a woman make appearances throughout the video, blissfully drowning in a sea of earthy orange and yellows. The painterly-ness of the video creates an existential environment, tempting the viewer to jump in and escape from reality.
Keith Tyson's "Table Top Tales: The Little Silver Screen" from 2000 is a comical take on the existence of the artist in an artwork. He takes a used table with scratches and holes and gives them definitions, specifically indicating them to a tv guide schedule. This specificity grounds the work with our space, and the table mounted on the wall by its legs converts it into a screen for our viewing. We see chance and text combined with artificial surrealistic meaning, witty and comical in its rendering of the artists hand.
Rudolf Stingel's signature foil work is mounted here with a single panel engraved with bathroom graffiti phrases. There was no mention of the viewer to take the freedom creating their own remarks, but here the artist takes away the author and creates a work that stands alone defiant of being manipulated by a single creator.
Each work in the show, no matter their medium, either come together or go against each other, almost simultaneously, creating an ambivalent, confusing and surreal conglomeration.

El Anatsui at Jack Shainman

2008-01-27T14:30:00.001-05:00

A series of works by El Anatsui on view at Jack Shainman gallery comprises of obsessive and repetitive patterns made by bottle caps and foils creating a landscape of muted glitter and billowing waves. The artist's African background is essential in interpreting these works, as they reminisce kente cloth patterns and symbols, delving into the nitty gritties of common culture and twisting it to a disorienting effect.
Each work is carefully crafted by hundreds of disposed liquor caps and the foil neck wrap. Each are punctured and connected by thin copper wires, each foil wrap either straightened our or folded into squares or twisted. The colors are exquisitely coordinated by palcing the wraps on the outside or flipped to reveal the muted silver underside. The works from afar glitter but also resemble jewelry that could use shining and cleaning. The overall effect is disorienting, as the rigid weaved pieces unite to create undulating waves of false fabric, a smoothness and regal authenticity marked by the refused and mundane.
As abstract and non-representational as they may seem, each work is titled mindful of the realities of nature, its gifts of order and beauty, its curse of death and violence. In Bleeding Takari II, straight and narrow bottle wraps reveal their backside, an army of rigid and dignified soliders lined up in discordance that result in the waves of overwhelming patterns. Random spots of red caps seem to grow out of these figures creating the blood of the work, dripping down in single file, trickling like a leaking dam into the viewer's space, transforming the silver plane into a multidimensional abstraction. The title references the political polarizing occurring in our all too real world, but a rarely heard of term/identity that face their own significant turmoil.
Overall the works in the show are beautiful in their scale, their obsessive repetition, with respect and awe for the patience of the artist, and his gift of giving meaning to objects so mundane and easily disposed of.

Jesuvian Process at Elizabeth Dee Gallery

2008-01-27T12:20:00.001-05:00

A group show consisting of artists working in the last 50 years, portrays a concern with the contemporary obsession with recognition, blinded by the market and undervalued by lack of constructive criticism.
The title of the show "Jesuvian Process" takes on 2 significant meanings for the show, one pertaining to a term coined by art historian Rosalind Krauss, which describes the castration anxiety felt by men and the overall desire to overcome, secede and superiorize, over their rahter or larger counterpart. The second meaning pertains to the dialogue these works engage in, unconcerned about representation, regal conceptions, focusng rather on delapidated found material and jumbling them all together to create a successful un-pompous object.
The curated concept puts these artists on a self-created pedestal, guilty of "I'm larger than you because I made a good work of art that is formless yet meaningful, superior without even trying using garbage." I am certain this is far from the case but the concept behind the show, and the press release tells otherwise.
The most appealing in a non-appealing way is Hillary Harnischfeger's paper collage works. A dense layer of paper is carved deeply and concisely, most likely by an electronic cutter, creating a bulbous landscape, abstract forms that are underlined and outlined with thin colors of marker. The overall color scheme is an off dirty white, tainted and marked by blotches of subdued grays, maroons, and forest greens.
They are reminiscent of the large scale expressive abstract paintings of Janaina Tschape, especially the work titled Patternist II from 2007, made of paper, ink and plaster. There is a feminine crafty aspect to the work that is appealing to the eye, but not as clean and pretty. The sharply incised cuts and ridges create a subtle violent tone that is missed at first glance. The incongruent pattern making process seems spontaneous, uneven, disheveled, but unified by an imperfect beauty which is more real and tangible than the over-archiving perfection-ing act of the too careful and mighty.
The wooden sculpture works of Louise Nevelson perfectly exemplifies the theme of the show, with its kitschy and haphazard assembling of scrap pieces. The piece seems to be stifled and stuck on the wall, as if it were a breathing figure trapped and wishing to be free standing. The layers of elements are geometric and abstract, but again as in the works of Harnischfeger, very tangible, humble and dignified in its solidarity, its all encompassing dominance of color. It has a tinge of Raucherberg's Combines to its agenda but fiercer, more subdued, demanding.
These two artists seem to conversate to each other and perfectly understand each other, although they speak in 2 different languages.
Majority of the works in "Jesuvian Process" successfully transcend today's anxieties of making it big in the art world, and because of this irresponsibility to contributing ot the neuroticism, they succeed in getting their message through, which is formless, layered, and free.

ADAA

2007-03-05T17:54:00.001-05:00

The ADAA fair was far superior in quality and presentation compared to Armory and Scope. The amount of booths showing was tolerable and space in between isles were breathable. Majority of works exhibited were what you'd find in art history books from early 20th century to postmodern, from Picasso to Fred Sandback and a minimal display of emerging art. The crowd attending the fair differed greatly from whatever people watching I encountered at the other fairs: bourgeois deep pocketed retired individuals with heavy makeup covering layers of wrinkles and enough perfume to rid the odor of a hobbit.
Some highlights:
Fred Sandback at David Zwirner, 2 strings attached to the wall down to the floor, abstract and minimal, a direct encounter between viewer and work as we share the same space, emphasizing the lack of volume and the space it doesn't occupy. A poor space to exhibit since the sculpture is heavily based on its communication with its environment. The pieces are so much more appropriate in a setting like Dia Beacon where they can reveal their significance with more freedom and impact. It was awkward and visually limiting to see the piece in an art fair booth environment.
Cy Twombly at L&M Fine Arts for $485,000. His works are commonly described as graffiti, with an inscriptive nature that is illegible but maintains the gesture of writing, which makes me wonder: is he communicating within a mindset of a child limited in vocabulary and the outcome is merely frustrated scribbles of nonsense and hysteria?
Rona Pondick's Cat at Sonnabend. I found it grotesque, menacing and disturbingly androgynous.
John Currin at John Bergmen Gallery. I found this grotesque and disturbing as well. But not as bad as his disfigured and heinously morphed females.

My most admired Egon Schiele at Galerie St. Etienne. Raw and decomposing skin colors, figures always skeletal and erotic. Merging love and death with passion and suffering. The male figure looks like Prince.
Richard Kalina at Lennon, Weinberg. Anything with geometric abstract grid patterns captures my attention. Such works lets me get lost and over-empowers me with its spellbinding movement that is a manipulative play to the eye.
Jim Hodges at CRG Gallery. Contemporary, refreshing and unconventional, created from ordinary everyday objects such as discarded clothes and chains of different widths to form spider webs along the walls. This booth received much publicity for the solo booth show and its unquiet presentation compared to the stiffer neighbors. Ephemeral meets the mundane in these conglomerative works.
Jean DuBuffet at Jeffrey H Loria & Co, INC.
I thought this was more graffiti than Cy Twombly. A mixture of what alludes automotive parts, industrial, anthropomorphic, and organic, this sculptural form was mounted on the wall like a painting but protruded off a significant amount. It's abstraction and disorganized arrangement and outlined edges were enticing.
Colin Brown at Fischbach Gallery. Process-based art, a long and tedious technique to create this photographic night city scape made from nickel on board using white powder, engraving tools, black on white background and gesso. Reminds me of the spraypainted fantasy scapes sold on the sidewalks near times square and other tourist locations.
Andy Warhol's Two Sisters (after de Chirico) from 1982, serigraph ink and acrylic on canvas. I appreciate both artists and especially love the play on color overlapping the repetitive images creating a separate entity and character for each.
Lee Krasner at Knoedler & Company. While Pollock was indulging himself with dancing paint gestures dripping away Lee Krasner was involved in a less self-centered art making practice creating grids of color and pattern influenced by hieroglyphic illustrations. The outcome is just as abstract and ambiguous as Pollocks but without the arrogance of a misogynist.
Takashi Murakami at Greenberg Van Doren. I would say its cute except it's intimidatingly large and is titled Mr. Pointy. Phallic and fuzzy don't go together too well for me.
Lesly Dill's Scrolled Torso at George Adams gallery from 1995, photo silkscreen, ink, shellar thread, wire, gauze on tea stained muslin. Too gothy, masochistic teenager angst for me but I can definitely appreciate it for its expressive technique and feminist agenda.
My newly discovered favorite: Wangechi Mutu at Sikkema Jenkins. Her collages are vibrant and intense, apocalyptic and grotesque, feminine and political, ethereal and provocative. She is also showing at the side room in the gallery. She stars in some videos and photographs in Lorna Simpson's work up now at Whitney. I am her new fan.
Shahzia Sikander also at Sikkema Jenkins: decorative floral designs mixed within cultural specifics, her drawings are delicate and refined, detailed and usually on a smaller scale in reference to miniature painting within her native culture. Her animation videos are witty and historical, with rhythmic sound affects that drum to actions of fairy tale figures and ephemeral backgrounds.

An Ad Reinhardt retro at Pace Wildenstein: colorful rectilinear abstract grids that are haphazard and spontaneous in arrangement, full of shapes and patterns that are difficult to distinguish and make sense of. I found them stubbornly organic and a bit frustrated: like he wanted to create expressive gestures that were free and unlimited but keep hindering himself within the edges of the canvas.
Jean Helion at Adler and Conkright Fine Art. A curvaceous Mondrian.
Ai Wei Wei at Robert Miller gallery. It stands 8 feet tall and 2.5 feet wide. Gigantic glazed ceramic, rebelling against the idea of a functional object. A defiant and outspoken monument.

Louis Bourgeois' Femme series at Cheim & Read. Her sculptures are deformed and passionate, making literal statements about a femininity that is culturally appropriated. Each piece is created with a sense of anger and punishment, fetishistic and sexually violent.

Overall I found ADAA to be educationally fulfilling. I got to see works that were justifiably expensive for their artistic excellence and art historical significance. Walking from booth to booth was like flipping through a disorganized art book which made it difficult to comprehend with a clear lens but was informational enough to be able to contemplate and reflect on each piece.

Scope

2007-03-01T16:25:00.001-05:00

I attended the Scope fair for the first time last week and unfortunately I was disappointed. It was smaller than I expected, not that I would've wanted another Armory, but I was hoping for an alternative emerging art that was engaging and refreshing. Perhaps I make it sound worse than it really is, I must give it credit for exhibiting some neat unconventional work, but for the most part I found the works at the fair over-determined and pompous.
An amusing observation were the performances that were simultaneously wandering around the booths: a taller healthy woman with white latex swimming bottoms with rings of power cords around her neck and shoulders carrying a radio starring at art and occasionally changing the channel, I overheard her say "I am my own power source" or something to that extent. Then there was a mini doll house with wheels with a skinny asian guy inside strolling around each isle taking up space, there was a sign on top "art for sale $2.00". Then there was a short lady with a black trench coat video taping herself standing and occasionally flashing a passerby, opening up her jacket to reveal a red lingerie outfit.
Few highlights:
Lisa Kereszi at Yancey Richardson. I know I'm not the only one fooled to think it was Kirsten Dunst.
Aaron Llyod at Begona Malone in Madrid. There's something simultaneously comical and eerily dark about these drawings that made me laugh and turn up my eyebrows at the same time.

At Lincart booth, didn't catch artist name. Really annoying when you exhibit for a fair and think you're too good to put labels on the wall. Contradictory isn't it? This I thought was a mix between painted sea shells and painted fake nails.

At Magnan Enrich, medium: cockroaches and crushed flies.
Will Ryman's "Lovers" at Marlborough, made from magic sculpt, resin, acrylic paint, and copper. I think picture makes for a perfect postcard. Their undulating body and oversized head with tribal face features are contradictory but make for an overall amorous sculpture.
Roman de Salvo's "Naughty Pine" at Steve Turner Contemporary. Three natural circular shapes have been cut and mechanized to pop in and out of the wood panel. And given a sexual pun of a title, it's not all that convincing and is rather vulgar and obnoxious.
Alan Rath at Bryce Wolkowitz, a video sculptor with an MIT degree in electrical engineering. Far more intriguing than 3 wooden knobs playing whack-a-mole, this piece screens eyes that are at wrong ends framed by glasses, moving in all directions as if in mode of surveillance. It brings up subject of isolation, paranoia, and is as humorous as it is challenging.
And my favorite from the fair: Wu Junyong's animation dvd at Chinese Contemporary. He also has a show at the new york gallery on 24th street until March 22nd. Part of the "Opera Series", the animation depicts Chinese culture and specifically narrows on the behaviors of politicians and a changing state of society in contemporary China. The artist mocks and satirizes specific symbols and actions of Chinese culture by engaging nude men with red dunce caps to dance and frolic about a stage giving a performance that is surreal and perverse, backed by beats that coincide with each movement/scene.
Scope fair was overall a neat circus freak show with trinkets and curiosities, an entertaining past time event to satisfy the bored and the restless.

Armory: hypersensory labyrinth

2007-02-25T17:48:00.001-05:00

The Armory Show was as I would've expected: massive, disorienting and overwhelmingly cramped. I didn't quite know where to begin upon being exposed to endless isles of compartmentalized spaces with narrow paths and came real close to turning around and giving into my claustrophobic weakness. It was a familiar experience I've had in walking into Walmart in York, Pennsylvania: gluttonous consumption overload. But I persevered and eventually found my peace slowly pacing through each space and concentrating on one piece at a time (which is very difficult when in your periphery are constellations of art to distract you).
Some highlights:
Linder Sterling at Stuart Shave/Modern Art, a rock cult figure of the hay days, made cover art for Buzzcocks and is known to be best buddies with Morissey, works with collage and mockingly comments on femininity and equalizes female body to commodities of american culture. Her collage works were also part of Matthew Higgs' curated show 'Deconstruction' at Barbara Gladstone this past summer where I first encountered her cynical raunchy images of discombobulated, 'deconstructed' bodily features, and here every female body is topped with a rose with genitals fully exposed, appropriated symbol of romance and sexiness directly onto fetishized body.
Marina Abramovic at Sean Kelley, I'd like to find out if this is related to the performance of the same title or just a staged photograph. I think she looks magnificent. A cinderella in disguise.

Robert Miller dedicated their space to Yayoi Kusama, best known for her obsession with polka dots (a result from hallucinating about them as a child) and mirror boxes that reflect off each other and reveal a world of stainless steel balls and peepholes for your sensory satisfaction. It's amusing and there were two of them at the booth that people couldn't tear themselves away from sticking cameras through the hole to take pictures, etc. Along the wall were shelves of polka-dotted wormy phallic creatures bunched into nests and compartmentalized, perhaps a reflection of the claustrophobic art fair, the serialization, unity and chaos. Or perhaps its just her continual fascination with fantasy, childish doodle creations, the japanese animated world reflected and vibrating in our very real mundane world.

Her silkscreen on canvas drawings were refreshing, finally something other than dots. A series of them were lined against the outside wall of the booth, and each seemed to have its own narrative, again a childish doodle of an imaginary world, otherwise they were patterns of jagged lines going across the canvas creating a flow from one to the other. A serial continuation of faces and lines with what seems like critter legs created a dreamy out of body experience I enjoyed very much and would have to say it is my favorite booth of the fair.

Gabriela Vanga's "Pavel" at Plan B. I thought it amusing that the gallery name coincided so well with this piece (plan b being a brand for emergency contraception). Only a matter of time before new life is (un)born.

Olaf Breuning at Kodama Osaka, a swiss artist assimilating the cute animated world of japan in miniature pottery sculptures with eyes. I would've loved to take one home.

Lucas Samaras at Pace Wildenstein, his cut paper drawing with hands emerging from each side presenting an object that gets mixed with the array of semi circle lines within the plane. The intricacy of cut paper patterns always intrigues me, as did his Reconstruction #41 made of clashing fabrics collaged and layered, chaotic and personal, gridded but disorderly, and emotionally charged.
Michal Rovner's Mathematics 3 also at Pace, a video projected onto blank book pages covered in a glass box standing on a pedestal. An animation on numbers as rows mini figures jump and merge into each other in a rhythmic dance of addition and separation. Its the book come alive as if under a spell demonstrating its calculating capabilities.

Thomas Hirschorn at Arndt & Partner, politically charged gruesome intoxicating images of deformities and annequins stuffed with disease. Fulfills the savory needs of this society of the spectacle. I couldn't stop whirling around the installation starring at each picture of deranged faces and bodies. That instinctual need to experience and relish in the suffering and on top of it all a collage of phrases that caption all around the piece like subliminal messages dictating our thought process.
Julian Opie at Lisson Gallery, video animation of a gyrating nude, minimal and hypnotizing.
Georg Herold at Friedrich Petzel. It's made of caviar and lacquer. Abstract but looks like a topographic aerial view of some obscure croissant-shaped island surrounded by white sea.
And finally, Tony Matelli's zombie monkey at Leo Konig. I'm sure many sympathized with his state of being after parading around the fair.

Overall, I enjoyed the art all taken out of context and jumbled together in a flea market setting. There was a curatorial string of any sort that tied everything together, just a chaotic conglomeration of salable commodities. But for those gathered for amusement and eye candy it was beyond satisfactory.
More later on ADAA and Scope.

James Siena at Pace Prints

2007-02-09T13:37:00.001-05:00

images from Pace Prints website

Above the Josef Albers and Donald Judd show is a selection of prints by James Siena whose intricate abstract pattern making is mind-boggling. I love being able to immerse myself into these abstract geometric patterns, failing to let my eyes focus on one point and just getting lost within the lines and colors and shapes. And there is always the urge to go home and copy a repetitive square within square within square pattern and see if it comes out in the same effect as Siena creates. There's a simplicity and exactitude with which he executes the works that really is respectable and thoughtful IMO. It's fine-art-doodling at its best, comparable to Sol Lewitt and Sophie Taeuber.

Sugimoto's "Good, Better, Best"

2007-02-08T14:28:00.001-05:00

Hiroshi Sugimoto's talk at Guggenheim last wednesday, as part of series titled "Good, Better, Best: Perspective on Connoisseurship" where artists share their perspective on judging art and securing themselves through self-promotion titling their work the best, of course.
Sugimoto was a most humorously witty, small and humble man with a touch of broken english, sharing his working process and the various photographic series he's created over the years. A documentary video was included showing his studio, his medium, and ongoing projects all over the world.
From the beginning of the lecture he emphasizes that there is no correct standard to judging art, that we may think it has to do with art history, curators, or the art market but in the end there is no appropriate scale that evenly and fairly judges art.
From there he told the lifeline of his art making history, his interest in time and space consciousness, using photography to measure and observe (which reminded me of maholy-nagy and josef albers except working in different mediums, a future paper topic perhaps).
He deals mostly in black and white photography and he does this because "color is too simple and easy" and how the human eye must be trained to see in black and white.
Here are some images that exemplify his interest in 2 tones, time exposure, and space awareness:

image from hirshhorn website

Sugimoto’s seascapes transpire through time, literally through camera lens exposure, which can last for hours. The emphasis on the crisp horizon line, of 2 polarizing elements equally dividing the picture plane creates a ethereal union, a peaceful junction of opposite spaces joined to create a beautiful abstracted view on nature.

image from hirshhorn wesbite

Sugimoto’s time lapsed photographs of theaters share the same interest in space and time as the artist opens the shutter for the entire length of a film and produce the finished image which displays a starkly blank white screen. This void is coincided with the emptiness of the theater, and the over-decorated walls which creates a distance that is objective and solitary. The viewer is observes the empty theater with an empty screen and is left to wonder how to go about interpreting such contemplated seclusion.

image from hirshhorn website

Sugimoto’s early series on panoramas of the Museum of Natural History was created out of curiosity and as a reaction to what he thought was “weird, interesting, and wrong”. A staged natural environment pretending to be real is photographed and then further deceives the viewer to think it’s actually real, more convincing than actually standing behind the glass pane at the museum.

image from hirshhorn website

In the portraits from Madame Tussauds museum in London, Sugimoto recreates a non-existing presence of old world figures and followed technical painting details of portrait painters of the day. The artist mentioned he will only take a portrait of you if you are dead and made into a wax figure. Hilarious.
Currently Sugimoto is working on a series where he creates the negative print of an old bought paper print. A leaf on paper work he bought that originated from late 19th century or so is then photographed to reveal it’s negative appeal. He’s proud to reiterate that this is the first time in history that these prints have been manipulated on and reworked.

Overall the lecture he gave at Guggenheim was educational, an overview coming from the artist himself, which was enlightening seeing how it’s easy to misinterpret an artist’s intention.

Kristian Burford & Marcel Duchamp

2007-01-28T13:18:00.001-05:00

2 male artists of differnt art historical eras conversate in their interest in narrative, spectacle, and fantasy:

Kristin Burford's "Rebecca" is shown at I-20 gallery, a theatrical setting enclosed behind doors that is peekable through a small crack. I tried to open it further but it was glued to be a non-functional stationary door. As the viewer/peeker I was presented with an amorous scene that had nothing really to do with a sexual encounter as it seemed but a display of a paralyzed woman role-playing with 2 girls not present in the scene who dressed up Rebecca as a ballerina. The indifference of her body, her imminent complacence is as idle and sexual as Duchamp's victim wax figure in "Etant Donnes" but lacks the violence and mystery that Duchamp instills into his similar installation.

Hey,Hot Shot! at Jen Bekman

2007-01-25T20:27:00.001-05:00

jen bekman's "Hey, Hot Shot!" winter annual show opened wednesday night and what a delicious treat it was indeed. I've discovered a delightful and gratifying amount of information about what jen bekman does and how this show came about. If I am correct, she has a website heyhotshot.com where photographers can submit their work and participate in a competition which leads to seasonal exhibitions which then leads to those photographers being represented by the gallery.
There is an abundance of great work from past hey,hot shot! shows such as Dylan Chatain's exploratory photographs of people and their surroundings, pictures he must have taken while traveling around the country. They seem to comment on spontaneous and curious encounters with hidden natural beauties embedded in obscure locations where garbage, McDonalds, and people abound. It's a complacent mixture of poverty, idleness, sunlight, greenery (images of country), and claustrophobia (images of people in elevators). I found an aesthetic voice in each picture that was reflective and innocent, that each picture was as pure and literal, what you see is what you see. Here are some images:

In the current show there didn't seem to be a unifying theme, a little about massive consumption of objects and information found in the works by kate bingaman-burt, whose statement explains it all:

statement :: obsessive consumption
I documented my purchases for 28 months. Every purchased item was photographed at the point of sale or soon after. Every receipt was archived and tagged. All of the documentation was uploaded to my website obsessiveconsumption.com. I created a brand out of the process to package and promote - an infinite loop of consumerism was born.
In September 2004, I started collecting all of my credit card statements each month (six total) and am copying all of them in pen and ink every month until they are paid off. I have drawn 144 statements as of October 2006. I do this as penance for my sins.
In February 2006, I started drawing one item that I purchased everyday. I have no plans to stop.
I created Obsessive Consumption, the brand, the company and the website, to showcase my love/hate relationship with money, shopping, branding, credit cards, celebrity, advertising and marketing. Personal consumer spending and monthly credit card statements ferociously fuel my work.
Obsessive Consumption is about making the mundane special. I am taking a mass produced product and personalizing it. The consumer is no longer faceless.
Obsessive Consumption conforms to the cliché that shopping is a favorite past time of society. Obsessive Consumption is repulsed and grossly fascinated by the branding of consumer culture. It wants to eat the entire bag of candy and enjoy the sickness that it feels and hour later. It doesn't want to be an outside critical observer. It wants to be an active participant. Obsessive Consumption wants to be serious. Obsessive Consumption wants to have fun. Obsessive Consumption wants to document and create from experiences through this over stimulating, nauseating world of consumer culture.
CONSUME/DOCUMENT/MAKE
Obsessive Consumption was created to showcase my love/hate relationship with money, shopping, branding, credit cards, celebrity, advertising and marketing. The work is inspired by the ever ubiquitous, generic, delicate, sometimes stomachache inducing credit card statement, craft as activism, and general consumerism.

I find myself suffering all the time with this need to consume as much information as I can and to take that information and turn it into something productive such as posting on this blog. So in this sense, I obsessively connect with kate and I adore her over-productively in multiple channels of expression. Here's an example of her credit card bill drawing. how exquisite:

Material for the Making at Elizabeth Dee

2007-01-08T21:09:00.001-05:00

Group show at Elizabeth Dee curated by new director Jenny Moore include works compiled together based on the theme of memory and subjective reality, re-presentation and re-making of things and memories that have already occurred and existed before.
Strongest work is Shaving Cream Series, a strip of small Polaroid photographs mounted horizontally by Gail Thacker, which includes images of performance artist Rafael Sanchez covered in shaving cream frolicking around with a swimming ducky float around his waist and a hat adorned with what seems to be a wired sculpture resembling baby toys that hang over a baby crib and rotate as it plays music and lulls the baby to sleep. It seems to recall psychoanalytical references of oedipal desires, fear of circumcision (the body lathered in shaving cream preparing to be razored), objects of infantile dependence such as the float and the crib toy. Gail Thacker manipulated the surface of the photographic material, rematerializing and texturing it through a "curing" process which makes it hazy and out of focus, much like our memories that are never truly rendered to the detail of its actuality.
In the back room is Kerry Tribe's video Near Miss, a recreation of an actual incident where her car spins on the highway in the middle of a snowstorm. I did not realize it was a set up recording until I came back into the main room and there was a photograph of the production process, the car mounted on top of a platform with a snow making machine and bright lighting. The video stirs the urgency and anticipation of an accident with the steady rhythm of the windshield wipers, as if to negate and comfort the anxiety of the viewer. In the end the car makes a slow, barely noticeable spin.
Kori Newkirk is well known for his use of pomade (a waxy hair gel) in paintings and other mediums. With themes of race and the transience of a short lived life he creates cut out snowflakes pasted around the gallery, scattered in different sizes but all in the same color black, against the white wall, seeming to hint at race differences between white and black. It reminded me of the appropriation of meaning Masaru Emoto gives to his snowflakes be exposing them to human conditions and emotional verbage.
Weakest work IMO was Mai Braun’s sculptures made of materials that have been deconstructed and reproduced to become an artistic object molded by the hands of the artist. A formless pastel yellow blob sits on a pedestal, an oversized textured snot meant to be abstract and unique in its “creating a symbiotic relationship between the image that inspired it and the form that follows after”. It is interesting that she has used found objects and gave them a new life as non-functional commodities but the lack of substance in the resulting form was tasteless and mute.

More Highlights on Dia

2007-01-06T07:39:00.001-05:00

Some more reflections on my recent visit to Dia:Beacon…
There was the general theme of geometric abstractions, of calculated and crispy clean shapes with a limited outsource of energy minus John Chamberlain’s contorted automobile parts, which were nothing but streaming color and vigorous movement.

The most mind-boggling works must be Sol Lewitt’s Drawing Series… , composed of 14 large wall drawings executed by a dozen or so assistants working on location at Dia. These obsessive and deliberate works reflect the Conceptual artists’ notion of executing an idea or concept onto a tangible surface. Squares and lines create gridded patterns on the wall arranged in colors limited to graphite and primary shades of red blue and yellow. They are at once visually engulfing, with viewer (me) hypnotized by the realization of a simple idea made existent in a serial manner. The determination to create these grids were rubbed off onto me and I am considering creating the same works with the guide of Lewitt’s instructions. That was his point, that it’s not the wall you take home but the conceptual idea he created. The drawings are merely the documentary evidence of Lewitt’s idea reduced to a written set of instructions, realized recently from concepts created in the 60’s.

Dia has exhibited extensively on Agnes Martin’s minimal stripe paintings in here they stood out as most gentle and feminine, differentiating from other geometric works such as Blinky Palermo and Robert Ryman. Large squares and horizontal grids were colored by soft pastels, barely significant lines drawn with graphite, serene and ephemeral in execution. I wonder why the initial graphite sketch weren’t erased one she painted over with these light colors, creating a second dimension of textured canvas and creating a music paper rendition of painting. Colors were neutral and peaceful creating a very subdued and almost ambivalent environment but simultaneously expressionistic. The delicate and painterly compositions creates a meditative and emotional environment distancing itself from the cold and rigid and mechanical works of fellow Abstract Expressionists and Minimalists.

Blinky Palermo’s series of mechanical abstract paintings titled To The People of New York City is composed of 39 individual paintings in varying sizes divided into 15 parts painted on aluminum panels and disposed onto the wall in calculated arrangement and placement. Colors were limited to red yellow and black arrangement in horizontal 3 part grids, usually 4 in a row in various combinations with equal distancing between them. They were repetitive and serial and captivating for this reason, the effect of the banal, the everyday experience of wake, work, eat, sleep expressed in this dedication as referred to the title. There is no gestural activity except but the slight slip of paint upon close observation between 2 colors, otherize a regularized and inflexible system occurs that is mechanical and inexpressive, reminiscent of a flag of some nonexistent country.

Gerhard Richter’s installation was comprised of large glass surfaces mounted and angled from the wall at various angles, all a consistent opaque gray, reflecting the surrounding environment but simultaneously silencing what enters the medium. There are 6 large panes in total intimidatingly surrounding the viewer in unison and consistency. Light from the ceiling window was reflected off the surface casting looming shadows and brightening with crystal focus on other parts. It is an example of the artist’s notion of painting as either a window to reality or a mirror reflection of the self. There is no sign of expression of pictorial language in and of itself and engages only with the viewer and its immediate surrounding. A contradiction between opacity and reflection, Richter’s Six Gray Mirrors offer no definite conclusion as to whether we should or shouldn’t regard these pieces as a window to a view of the world or as a mirror reflecting the self-conscious presence of whatever subject engaged with the artwork itself.

Fred Sandback’s signature use of string as art and the framing of non-space, negative space is displayed here in a rather hectic arrangement, scattered between multiple galleries, attacking the walls, floors and ceilings in a hap hazardous manner. Sandback created an environment of volume-less sculpture, space less and yet full of content based on perspective and concept. The outcome is in his words a “material relationship with my environment…part of a continuing attitude and relationship to things…” , here being the work in active participation with the space and viewer. It brings to mind of concept of sculpture as installation, no longer standing on a pedestal self-imposed and irrelevant to the space it is surrounded in. Here it is no participatory and shares the same space as the spectator.

Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses consists of a series of gigantic steel plates lined next to each other willowing from side to side like flowers against the wind. Each shape has a narrow entrance for the viewer to step in and experience the space within the piece, and become one with the art, experiencing a push-pull relationship to the winding of the steel plate. It’s an adventurous task and certainly claustrophobic, especially once reaching the center of the piece and you realize you’re in the center of a huge contained circular sculpture. Scary. This self-consciousness and hypersensitive awareness of the viewer’s placement within the sculptures gives Richard Serra the ability to engage what in his words are “ways of relating movement to material and space”.
There were many men artists represented in this exhibition. The only female artists would be Agnes Martin and Louis Bourgeois, the latter of whom was situated in an upstairs attic-like area and works that did not communicated with the overall minimal geometric abstract theme of the works downstairs. Overall the show questions the relationship and interaction between consciousness and space, between viewer and artwork and their awareness with the space and environment surrounding them. The messages are subtle and subdued, beautifully abstract and minimal, cool and calculated, theoretical and simultaneously simple. A splendid show and a peaceful perfect one day getaway upstate.

Dia artist of the day: Walter de Maria

2006-12-19T21:38:00.001-05:00

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to visit Dia: Beacon twice in one month. It was a most serene and contemplative experience, a much needed relief from the labyrinth that is the New York art scene, or the chaos that is city life in general. A quaint and delightfully lit space, the museum was refreshingly open and void of clutter, crowd, and conundrum. It contained an assortment of minimal and abstract artists active in the 60’s and 70’s creating a unified stream of objects in varying mediums, giving the overall exhibition a simple, calculated and contained theme that was very much clear and straightforward.
Upon entrance I was greeted by a massive floor installation of Walter de Maria’s geometric sculptures, 2 rows of circles and squares lined parallel to each other in a large space divided by a wall. At first glance I was unmoved and was tempted to roll my eyes, but as with majority of the pieces at dia, they require meditative participation and keen observation. The Equal Area Series are excruciatingly calculated in their size and placement, each pair of circle and square differentiating another by couple inches. I’ve tried to walk along a single thin wooden vertical floor panel to see if the sizes differ from one circle to the next but it was impossible to tell. Perhaps this was that artist’s intention: to have the viewer participate with his/her own exploratory endeavors and expand on the concept of stillness, repetition, and calculation. The beauty of this piece resides in the progression of patterned geometry: circle square, circle square, male, female, yin, yang, positive, negative…all the polarizing forms of nature reincarnated through these clean stainless steel simple structures. Michael Govan states: “Within the powerful sense of dramatic scale and seemingly absolute geometric perfection…there are many dynamic relationships, for example, the play between the universal underlying cosmic continuum of natural abstract mathematics and our arbitrary culturally defined units of measurement”. One question I ask is: What would the triangle signify and why is it not primary enough to be included in this series of equal areas?

Ecotopia and the function of art

2006-12-14T23:06:00.001-05:00

While everyone was away at Miami having nervous breakdowns and going delusional from the bright lights and sleep depravation I got to enjoy a week of relaxation and focus on writing a small piece on ICP’s “Ecotopia”. Here it is:
The current exhibition at the International Center of Photography features the increasingly catastrophic relationship between human life and nature. “Ecotopia: The Second ICP Triennial of Photography and Video” running through January 7, 2007 combines public discourse and political agendas with artistic statements and aesthetic creation. Many have argued that contemporary art has been displaced by such specificities as politics, global warming and other social/environmental issues, which ultimately questions the role of art either as autonomous and nonfunctional, or a common participant to the everyday workings of society. During an evening discussion held at ICP, a scientist, journalist and photographer came together to share their perspective about the role art plays within the social system. I will attempt to review highlights of the exhibition in a most descriptive and informative manner, then discuss the issue of power dynamics between human and nature, and conclude with the function of art in relation to public discourse, politics and everyday societal perspective.
The exhibition statement blown up and tacked to a grass frame on the wall reads with foreboding fear-inducing vocabulary similar to that of speeches made by government and media imposing paranoia and anxiety onto the public:“…nature has become the focus of increasing cultural anxiety…there is growing alarm at the disastrous consequences of human attempts to harness or exploit nature…The crisis that has resulted from this disruption of the fragile ecological balance between humans and nature require new global consideration”. This narrowing and specified feed-your-thoughts statement was at once repulsive and left me skeptical about the show before even entering the exhibition space. Luckily I was able to put faults aside and indulge in the artificial greenery setting, black Styrofoam bubble layers meant to resemble rocks? and stuffed dodos.

My favorite piece of the entire show was a large panoramic landscape photograph (above) by Clifford Ross who (lucky me) got to speak at the panel discussion this past Thursday. He’s as romantic and delusional as I would’ve imagined, a Jack Nicholson look-alike face wearing a slick black leather jacket with thinning gray hair. He invented a detail-sensitive extreme focus camera labeled “RI” (R for Ross) which allows him to capture an awe-inspiring image of monumental scale with exquisite detail of mountains, forests and sea. A piece such as Mountain XIII reveals Ross’ romantic desire to rekindle human heart with the ancient soul of nature and in his words is “a longing for the past, bringing awe and beauty to the people”. His passion for the environment, the nonessential presence of man within an engulfing and expansive mass of nature is made available to us through the R1.

Another highlight which became an icon of Ecotopia is Mitch Epstein’s Amos Power Plant, Raymond, West Virginia. Here the artist photographs various industrial power plants set behind domestic dwellings surrounding them. It depicts a calm and peaceful middle class American home with all signs of comfortable habitation but resides with a looming backdrop of a power plant creating foggy suffocating clouds. This disturbing but all too real image of potential chaos and destruction is foreboding and contemplative, exposing the need for some serious environmental change. It’s a warning that if we continue to destroy the environment we’ll have green mutant babies that survive on pure carbon dioxide

Sam Easterson’s is a less intimidating and a more informative depiction of nature’s furry little animals. Here the artist attaches mini cameras to the bodies of a range of animals, from an Armadillo, scorpion, chicken to a falcon and a pig. The resulting image is a humbling, simple and reflective viewpoint of the natural world compared to our own egotistical power mongering human world.

Mark Dion’s installation The Bureau of Remote Wildlife Surveillance includes a makeshift nature surveillance office with surrounding images taken with a motion detecting camera used as data archiving the lives of animals such as deer and raccoons. This mode of investigation and process of information consumption is reflective of our current political obsession of the “see something say something” attitude within public discourse. I thought it was a rather mocking and comical portrayal of human curiosity and paranoia.

Harri Kallio combines advanced technology, photoshop and scientific data to create life-size models of the now extinct dodos and restore their presence in makeshift natural settings on photograph. It is amusing and informative like a display in the natural history museum, a warning of a future without shrimps, panda bears, whales and ultimately, humans.
The most “Ecotopian” work is Mary Mattingly’s photographs of a fantasy world with humans wearing khaki outfits that control and protect the body from hazardous exposure reeking throughout the environment. Nomads of this imaginary world travel and navigate toward a “water bound Eden” with the help of their all shielding “wearable homes”. This combination of mastered digital technology and childlike utopian creation is at once witty and successful in portraying the consequences of nature manipulation.
Ultimately, this show is a reflection of an ongoing polarization between the selfish and destructive intentions of humans and the responsive even more powerful influence of nature. It’s a war between the two forces according to such a show as “Ecotopia”, the news, the scientific technological updates, and politics (well, government is reluctant to face such inconvenient truths, but it’s inevitable, they’ll have to pay it some respect). And as much as we take advantage of mother earth’s gifts such as oil and ruin her forests and ozone layer we don’t do it with the intention of being sadistic. We are not the antagonist, but rather just trouble-making children trying to fool our paternal superiors (nature) that we are better, we are right and justified in seeping out all the resources possible from our parents. All in all we don’t need to be so reproachful of our own actions against nature, yes it’s naïve and ignorant of us but it’s all in good reason.
So how relevant, if at all, is art within the public discourse? What is its function and how influential is it concerning such issues as the ongoing war on natural habitats? According to the three speakers at the panel discussion at ICP, art is very influential and relevant in exposing environmental issues to the public consciousness, in addition to their autonomous value as a non-functional work of art. Sanjayan Muttulingam of the Nature Conservancy explained the double role of nature as protector and provider and the need for fields such as art to expose and make the connection to the public, to convey the complex ideas of nature and human interaction and use its power to move people in large numbers and maintain a dialogue with science, politics, and other forms of cultural discourse.
At first Clifford Ross, photographer of the large landscape photographs made with the R1 camera, clearly separated his art making process as first being a passionate aesthetic statement before becoming any sort of political/environmental statement but corrected himself in dividing the two agenda after an audience member commented it made him sound insecure about his work. He defined his photographs as a longing for the past, a “feel for something” rather than a creation of a specific message, a desire to bring his work originating from an experience of awe and beauty in nature made available to the public, his appreciation, passion and adoration for nature brought to the people through the photographic medium. When asked to what extent artists engage in public or political discourse he reiterated being pulled backwards into the environmental movement through his images, starting off with passion and artistic creation which ended up merging with environmental groups who used his passion to reach the public. He emphasizes the importance of artists to become involved, to become a tool and a voice of the people. A passionate romanticist.
Andrew Revkin is a science writer for New York Times, he has a blog and a band, and a book. He’s an award winning author and journalist, fast spoken and very articulate, witty in the Jewish kind of way, and knowledgeable in a vast amount of random topics. After enlightening us of an environmental issue that is invisible and difficult to expose (carbon, ozone, loss of bio-diversity and extinction happens in front of us and we can’t visualize with our eyes the affect it takes, it is hard to find evidence of absence) he emphasizes the role of art as a mode of communication, making visible through images the meaning of environmental degradation and extinction.
Art can impact the public with an iconic image such as Mitch Epstein’s power plant/domestic landscape photographs by extrapolating from one fact a broader issue that is accessible and tangible. Art can be deployed to ply into environmental issues and be used to tell a story that might not have been possible otherwise. It is a challenge for artists to serve the double role as public speaker and image maker without being a sell out.

Maureen Gallace

2006-11-29T07:51:00.001-05:00

A short review about Maureen Gallace's solo exhibition at 303 Gallery. Walking into the gallery and working reception desk gives me the opportunity to study my everyday reaction to the paintings as well as catching the interaction between the works and the scraggling confused visitors/collectors. The exhibit consists of miniature barren landscape paintings of solitary rural houses enraptured by the power of nature's silence. Expressionistic strokes are short and composed, personal in touch and in depiction. The titles of each work seems to refer to a past memory, nostalogic and personal for the artist: "My Brother's House", "Last Summer". Even so, there is a hint of unwelcoming distance as the houses are painted in mute neutral colors and is void of human warmth. "Road to the beach" shows a single house without doors or windows with a sanded path narrowing to the background. Her wide thick brushstrokes does not interfere with the coolness and neutrality of the scene, as if the expressionistic-ness is stifled by the content. This ambivalence of home v. isolation, cold v. warm, human v. nature, freedom v. containment is resonant in all of her works leaving the viewer baffled at the impact received from a seemingly harmless objective painting.

The Sight of Death

2006-11-21T22:24:00.001-05:00

Just finished reading T.J. Clark's new experimental book on art writing titled "The Sight of Death" in which he studies two Poussin landscape paintings over an elongated period of time and notes exquisite details about each and enlightens the reader with euphomisms to take home and contemplate on during the train commute home.
Here are some highlights:

"We are living, I reckon, through a terrible moment in the politics of imaging, envisioning, visualizing; and the more a regime of visual flow, displacement, disembodiment, endless available revisability of the image, endless ostensible transparency and multi-dimensionality and sewing together of everything in nets and webs - the more this pseudo-utopia presents itself as the very form of self-knowledge, self-production, self-control - the more necessary it becomes to recapture what imaging can be..."

Clark reiterates the ultimate self-consciousness of art production, of visualization as victim to de-personifying experiences, stripping the private of its intimacy and over-democratizing and making available the single object. This of course due to such magical creations as the internet that allows me to take my self-knowledge into a form of self-production and recapture my experiences through mediums such as blog-writing!

"My art history has always been reactive. its enemies have been the various ways in which visual imagining of the world has been robbed of its true humanity, and conceived of as something less than human, non-human, brilliantly (or dully) mechanical"

Correct me if I'm interpreting him wrong but, I love and cherish T.J. Clark for his anti-formalism, his effort of "making the painting fully part of a world of transactions, interest, disputes, beliefs, "politics"...the sign of art's coming down from its ivory tower". That's exactly what this blog is about isn't it? It's about taking what you see and interpreting it accordingly to the society in which it originates. Its what I sense the art world consists of: the readability of art, the inclusive interpretation, the personalizing and availability of interpretation.

"When I am in front of a picture the thing I most want is to enter the picture's world: it is the possibility of doing so that makes pictures worth look at for me"

What a humbling experience it is to read art by entering it. Art writing and criticism would be so interesting and surreal if it was all about one person's subjective experience upton "entering" a work of art. I love it.

"[The Snake] is the most ambivalent of all things, and its form transfixes and repels. It is the bare fact of causation given a body, or the best figure we are ever likely to have of why things change at all and therefore have a history - why death entered the world, why darkness succeeds light"

This is my favorite section of the book where Clark writes about the snake as not only being phallic but also representative of the vagina as formless and encapturing, "...a body without established hierarchy among its constitutents". I now think how perfect to get a tattoo on my body of a snake in its basket, mysterious and ready to pounce, narcissitic and erotic for its self-touching and manipulating slithery-ness.

So here is my first real blog post. What a nerve wrecking but refreshing experience.

First Step

2006-11-20T15:18:00.001-05:00

Having never published an image or published an idea on the ever so democratized internet system I am awed by the sense of authorship I claim upon creating a blog. I've spent the last couple of hours trying to figure how to go about posting photos and viewing and re-viewing my blog page to ease this tension of assimilating to the networld. I've ultimately decided to create a blog to motivate my thought process and produce ample amounts of coherent information for public access. I figure this will help me practice for a future dealing with art criticism and history writing. For months I've been hesitant about writing anything but I wanted ever so badly to write about art: essays, reviews, criticisms, blogs!. and so here I am finally and I do hope I can successfully find my voice and write with confidence about the art world: the art, the artist, the dealer, the collector, the critic, the historian...