07-02-08
Magic to Show in Au Courant Magic, my video portrait featuring Jax the punk-rock horse whisperer has been selected by Williamsburg Brooklyn Gallery Dam Stuhltrager for their summer exhibition Au Courant. The exhibition opens Friday July 11 and stays up through August 10. I'm quite excited to finally debut this long labored and anticipated video work. Hope to see some of you there!s
06-28-08
Redesign in the Works I can no longer stave off the inevitable. The time has come to detonate this website. Behind the scenes, we're working on an entire rebuild and redesign. We'll be migrating to a Movable Type driven site which should facilitate easier blogging, comments and overall updates. I know. I know. Why wasn't I using Movable Type three years ago? Don't ask. And definitely don't ask how long it took me to get a cell phone—the same cell phone I often forget to turn on or take with me! We anticipate a full relaunch sometime this coming Autumn. 07-17-07
Magic Here are a few details from the forthcoming work Magic. In every way, this work is the sibling to last year's HD video portrait Captain America. (A web video draft of Captain America is available in eleven segments on youtube, starting here.) Both works were shot as part of a media residency through Brooklyn's Rotunda Gallery. While Captain America features Lazzarus recounting a very public mythology, in Magic Jax recounts her own story of nearly ten years work as a horse whisperer, rescuing and rehabilitating neglected steeds. Here are a few details from the frames. They've been resized and cropped to fit here.
02-06-07
Movin' on Up Hey all. As you can see, my web presence has been inactive these past few months. My life has been dominated by rehab on our building and I am now in the process of moving into a new more fitting studio space. Meanwhile, I've kept busy both in studio and a couple group exhibitions including one here in Brooklyn, NY and another in Toronto, ON. The HD shoot with Jax—intended as a companion piece to Captain America—couldn't have gone better. Jax did a wonderful job recounting her decade working as a horse rescuer. Her performance left several of the crew members weeping. I'm eager to get this one shown in all it's HD glory. Expect a clip in the coming two weeks.
10-11-06
Pinpoints & Sparkles, Chicago October 21, my solo show, Pinpoints & Sparkles, opens at Butcher Shop/Dogmatic in Chicago's West Loop district. I hope to see many of you there! Butcher Shop/Dogmatic Gallery 1319 West Lake St. Chicago, IL 60607 Reception October 21 from 6 - 10pm If you make it to the reception be sure to say hello!
09-13-06
Peekskill Project 2006 My new work, Hungry Dust, has been included in this year's Peekskill Project—a festival of site specific sculpture, performance and installation in Peekskill, NY. The Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art serves as an anchor organization for the annual event. Hungry Dust is on display in "the Children's Room" at the Peekskill Museum—a museum in an old Victorian house focusing local and Hudson River history. The Peekskill Project begins this weekend and will continue till Oct. 7. The Peekskill Museum will be staying open during the weekends of the festival with extended hours until 5 PM to accomodate all you art goers. If you would like to view the work outside of regular hours, I suggest contacting the museum directly to schedule a visit. The opening reception is this Sunday, Sept. 17, from 5 - 7 PM at the HVCCA on Main Street in Peekskill, NY.
06-27-06
Whitney Biennial 2006: A Postmortem from the Edge It came. It hung. It closed. Four weeks ago, we bid adieu to the 2006 Whitney Biennial. This year marked the first time the Biennial bore both title and theme in its nearly 100-year history. Curators Chrissie Iles' and Philippe Vergne's title Day for Night could have easily been All Wound Up With Nowhere To Blow. The show sat like a wet-fuse bottlerocket on a damp night. That made me sad. But I think I understand. The curators have openly professed their efforts to assemble a collection of American and international artists exploring liminal boundaries. Iles and Vergne assert we sit on the uncomfortable cusp of change. We have entered a liminal region of our own: where the land meets the sea, a place between places, a phase change between steady states, a point of bifurcation, the region scientists still label "Here Be Dragons!," where limit cycles are folded into strange attractors, the territory of complexity theory. Popular culture has yet to absorb a clear and accurate notion of liminality. Believe me, I should know! My 2000 installation Water Torture mapped and sustained an extended moment of bifurcation. It was my rendition of "Should I Stay or Should I Go," left forever teetering on the fence of a romance in question. The piece should have been as innocuous as any other rendition of boy-meets-girl. But the hostility it stirred! The unresolved five-channel video narrative, the finely crafted faux-antique television cabinets shown under the faintest of light, the dreamtime space where it floated; it was all too much for many. How dare I tell a love story without an ending! How dare I spend three years manufacturing objects just to hide them! How dare I suspend viewers in a room without walls! The reactions to this year's Biennial echo. The announcement of this novel approach-a titled and themed biennial-prompted writer Marc Stevens of The New York Magazine to ask, "Have the curators of this year's Whitney Biennial finally figured out how to make the show matter?" Weeks later, after the show opened, Stevens rendered his verdict: No. Stevens' review suggested an unfulfilled expectation of revolution. He regretted that, despite Urs Fischer's giant holes through third floor galleries, "the walls are still standing." He then revealed his own misunderstandings of liminality: "[The Biennial's] stated theme . . . refers to the way filmmakers can shoot night scenes during the day with certain dark filters." Not so! That is not liminal. A liminal boundary zone is not a mean average between two states. Nor is it the inversion of dialectic poles. Nor is it a path between A and B facilitated by a simple linear bypass. Liminal zones are third genders, often too unstable to be humanly predictable. They are short-lived relative to the timescales of the states they intercede. At the same time, a system can hang in such a region indefinitely balanced, waiting for God to play dice. Chaos rides a strange attractor masking chains of causality from human perception. This is the exotic physics of the melting point, the fragile temporary ecosystem of tidal pools. A liminal zone is not a revolution but the state that precedes one: fatigued, frightened, angry, indifferent, confused, corrupt, incompetent, aroused, all at once and nothing at all. We were clearly warned this year: curator as anthropologist, not celebrant. A catalogue of the typical overrides an elevation of the exemplary. Chrissie Iles confessed this much well in advance. "Day for Night explores the artifice of American culture in what could be described as a pre-Enlightenment moment," she said, "in which culture is preoccupied with the irrational, the dark, the erotic, and the violent, filtered through a sense of flawed beauty." Here be dragons. Here be us. I understand the art-blogosphere's chorus of dismissive derision. In many ways, the show smacked of the corrupt insider aesthetics that pervade the art world. Privilege, class, and connection trump try. "Why wasn't I included?" goes the never-voiced refrain. The collaborative work Never Trust Anyone Over Thirty Again, Jim O'Rourke's video installation and a piece my wife endearingly refers to as "The Led Zeppelin Room" sent my wife on an ambivalent tirade. "Growing up, we used to do the same damn stuff when we got drunk!" she complained. "But we never took it as anything more! Never made anyone else sit through it! Never insisted it belonged in a museum! These people are only here because of who they are, not what they did!" Too true and just the point! This year featured a carefully selected parade of the typical, each work an anecdote of the sort of work currently created across America, be they under the auspices of high art or high times. Most every work featured failed in unique Goldilocks fashion: Christopher Williams' photos too self-reflexive; Kenneth Anger's shrine too self-absorbed; Nari Ward's flag tanning booth too obvious; Aaron Young's bronze boulders too obtuse; and so on down the list. Dominic Angrerame's short video Anaconda Targets presents multiple unedited clips of thermal video from U.S. military operations. Spanish subtitles serve as a constant reminder of the non-English speaking world, the non-'Merikan world. One can watch as green silhouettes of human beings are systematically eliminated from a safe aerial distance. These are Schwarzkopf's smart bombs with PS3 graphics! Dig that anti-aliasing and light bloom, baby! The video, which could have been this year's Rodney King tape (included in the '93 biennial), was buried in a two-hour long program on a corner monitor with only two sets of headphones, as physically accessible as the grim realities of our foreign policy are to the U.S. media. Adjacent to this monitor, given an entire room, Pierre Hughes' big-budget failed masterwork, A Journey That Wasn't, plays on. It is a piece of new cinematic magic realism-a robust genre in bloom that deserved a nod in this biennial. Set against a warming planet, Hughes and company set off on a fantastical attempt to evoke the spirit of an island emerging from the Antarctic ice sheet through a twelve-tone orchestral concert in Central Park. The film is strikingly beautiful and tragically flawed. The distracted endeavor feels as asinine as prayer over medicine in the face of the looming crisis of global warming. But the film's beauty remains effectively distracting. Of all the candidates of new magic realism, this work's inclusion was no mistake! Together, Anaconda Targets and A Journey That Wasn't bring the collected inadequacies displayed throughout the museum into sharp focus: we are a nation slipping into cultural crisis. This is our liminal zone. The intuition of direct causality has flown. Willful ignorance drowns curiosity. Privilege has emerged as the single most important variable in the freedom to be heard. The biennial serves up a frightening and unflattering reflection indeed! By their actions, Iles and Vergne have made this clear: The revolution will not be curated! How could it be? If Stevens and others are to have the revolution they crave, it must come from broader base than a single museum survey, sustained longer than a single exhibition, reach far beyond the narrow confines of the art world. If and when that groundswell finally rises, we can invite Iles and Vergne back to sample and catalogue the phenomena as thoroughly as they have this one: our age between ages, this time between times.
04-18-06
The More Things Change... While reading at the laundromat, I came across the following passage: Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons have who acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form, which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs... ...the intellectual men do not believe in any essential dependence of the material world on thought and volition. Theologians think it a pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual meaning of a ship or a cloud, or a city or a contract... ...and even the poets are contented with a civil and conformed manner of living, and to write poems from fancy, at a safe distance from their own experience. But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or shall I say, the quadruple meaning, or the centuple meaning, or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact... That was written by Ralph Waldo Emerson well over 100 years ago. The language may read arcane, but his indictment of the dilettante leisure class would certainly make some of my favorite angst-ridden artbloggers smile. Meanwhile, his expressed concern regarding the segmented nature of professional expertise and the emphasis he places upon layered meaning echo my own intuitions that motivated me to explore the emergence of meaning. Stumbling across this passage in the laundromat has, once again, lent credence to that old truism: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
03-22-06
Still Here, Makin' Art The Short of It: A number of former readers have sent mail in the past few weeks asking where I've been. Don't worry. No health problems. No death. And definitely no dismemberment. I'm still here, makin' art. In fact, I've become so engaged in my studio practice for the past few months that I've let the art criticism fall completely by the wayside. Will I begin reviewing shows again anytime soon? Can't say. And I'm not prepared to make any promises that I won't keep. A Little Good News: I've been awarded a 2006 Rotunda Gallery/BCAT multi-media residency. This residency includes production time in a well equipped Brooklyn Community Access Television studio. While there, I will be shooting a number of new HD video portraits, starting with one focusing on the mythos of this star-spangled Avenger: And Something for the Ladies: Just in case the Cap clipping gave you the impression that it's all about boys toys under my roof, here's a little news about my fuzzy unicorn posters for Hungry Dust. The posters have shipped from the print house in Illinois to the flock shop in Missouri. I've already seen a post-press sample of the reverse print graphics and am quite pleased. The flock work should be completed within the next few weeks and 3000 lovely pink fuzzies will be put on a truck bed bound for Brooklyn, NY. Below is a snippet from the finished graphics. That pink is pretty true to the intensity of the flocking, which is actually a bit brighter in full white light!
12-05-05
Drawing Deep for a Bit of Charity Night of 1000 Drawings at Artists Space: This Friday, I'll be participating in the benefit exhibition and sale Night of 1000 Drawings at Artist Space at 38 Greene St. in Manhattan. I've donated two works: including a warbond certificate from The Warbonds Project (seen here in detail) and a very early, loose study of a unicorn from the forthcoming work Hungry Dust. (again in detail) The benefit runs from 5 till 10 pm Friday, Dec. 9. There is a $5 cover charge at the door and the open bar starts at 8 pm. All works are priced between $30 and $50. Hope to see some of you there! 12-03-05
Whoosh!! There Goes a Month! Nary a post in November Here's this past month in a nutshell: A week of focused studio time. An unexpected boon of freelance. Thanksgiving. More freelance. Flu. Pass go, collect $200, pay rent. Seems what's good for the studio practice and the pocket book is bad for the blogging. Hopefully December will be a bit more balanced.
10-18-05
Twin Cities Show and a Studio Update A Leap of Faith at Susan Hensel Gallery: Greetings from America, my cheeky and merciless lenticular portrait of a nation divided, has been included in A Leap of Faith, a group exhibition at Susan Hensel Gallery in Minneapolis. Susan Hensel has curated this show in effort to explore where faith and politics intersect and hopefully spur dialogue around the subject. Spies and agents stationed within the twin cities are ordered to see the show and report back. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...: Busy, busy in the studio. This last week has been dominated by yet another wave of application deadlines. Fellow artists, if you are not hip to slides.com for dupes and digital-to-slide transfers, check them out. Always quality, always quick, always cheap. Seriously, check 'em out. About a month ago, I had released a teaser image of the miniature barbed wire for Separatrix, a work in progress. This week I give you a glimpse at one of the studies for that piece. This is a miniature barbed wire fence. That barbed wire is only 28 gauge, but boy does it cut deep! Obstacles abound, both technical and formal. More studies are needed. Lastly, I haven't mentioned much regarding the performance portion of The Warbonds Project. Time to break that trend. I'll be spending this weekend in Boston with my director as we hammer out some timing issues. This will be essential before I can move into production of the multimedia component. Costuming elements are in the final stages of refinement. Here is a teaser of my headgear. The logo is hand embroidered. After Boston, I'll be traveling out of state to pull a number of older works out of storage. I'm anticipating several studio visits in the next two months. Expect another gallery crawl and more reviews just after Halloween. Keep it up. Keep it real. And keep it spooky!
10-05-05
Chelsea Crawl I've been in a really bad mood lately. Something broke inside me when Katrina hit and it continues to fall apart. I find myself oscillating between furious and ashamed. Furious at the current state of our nation and ashamed that "we the people..." have let it become thus. I'm having a harder and harder time mustering enthusiasm for gallery programs that are overwhelmingly market driven and artwork that aspires to promote the quasi-celebrity of their author over all other ends. Hippness does not equal righteousness. Not by a long shot. But in all fairness to the artists I am going to list today, I will reserve the rest of this rant (when possible) for a separate posting. And though I've limited my picks to just three this week there are a number of current shows up that shine in moments. But like I said, I'm having a really hard time writing about work that refuses to rise above the narcissism of youth and money. But enough with the rant and onto the goodness. Adam Cvijanovic at Bellwether Gallery: Contemporary American art feels stuck at the moment. Decorative. Lucrative. Obsessive compulsive. And often blissfully ignorant. Several exhibitions at Bellwether Gallery on 10th Avenue give me hope that we can transcend this current decadent stage in art without staging a wholesale rollback to earlier motifs. (Such maneuvers never really work anyway and they often sacrifice any advances that have been made in favor of nostalgia!) There was the anti-glamour of Tanyth Berkeley's all too human photo portraits. This was followed by Amy Wilson's deceptively innocent illustrations loaded with politically charged text. And now we have Adam Cvijanovic's Love Poem, Ten Minutes After The End of Gravity. His previous works have focused on iconic yet likely scenes culled from what could be called cornerstone imagery of popular culture. I don't want to call this straight up pop imagery, because the works don't reek of celebrity, camp, or consumerism. For example, his massive mural Night Game depicts a professional baseball player flinging his bat in disgust after striking out. Another work shows a quietly overgrown abandoned drive in movie screen. And yet another depicts the vapor trail following a space launch. All feel very generic yet specific, like a snapshot—an archetypical snapshot. This latest series of studies and large murals breaks stride to focus on images of Los Angeles after the end of gravity. Carefully rendered homes, automobiles, linens, and identifiable household products fill the air in a violent yet glacial gesture. In my current state of mind, I keep wondering, "Is this a playful expression of science fiction or a malicious desire for a civilization's suicide?" Considering the heartfelt nature of Cvijanovic's earlier works, I'm leaning towards the latter. But personal angst might be clouding my judgment. You have till Oct. 15 before this Los Angeles clear skies initiative moves on. Chris Hanson & Hendrika Sonnenberg at Cohan and Leslie: Right next door on 10th Avenue, Cohan and Leslie features a show of sculptures and paintings by the duo Chris Hanson and Hendrika Sonnenberg. The sculptures are insanely detailed full scale articulations of banal (and often public) objects in blue, green, and aqua polystyrene: a beaten up and abandoned bicycle frame, several chain link fences, a wire garbage can. Scattered along the gallery walls are a variety of street signs, recognizable only in shape. Each one reportedly stolen and then coated with a thick layer of self-leveling enamel, carefully matched to the hues of the sculptures' polystyrene. The sculptures mimic durable objects with history—objects with weight. And yet these objects are so fragile and light, they have been damaged repeatedly during the exhibition. At one point, an unsuspecting courier delivering a package to the gallery leaned his bicycle against one of the styrofoam fences. This speaks to these objects' ability to prey on our expectations and to deceive. McMansion America employs ever more of this construction grade foam to lend artificial weight, history, and luxury to cheap, ugly, disposable architecture. Via their choice of subject matter, which has willfully eliminated luxury, Hanson and Sonnenberg invite us to initiate a critique of artifice and its role in contemporary culture. The street signs, which at first feel like footnotes, slowly advance in significance. As objects, they are neither as gripping nor as accessible as the polystyrene constructions. But their conceptual gesture rivals that of the sculptures. These objects were all public property. Each had a specific (though humble) functional existence. Their functionality has been hobbled in order to bring them in line as artworks. Can these objects survive outside the privileged environment of the gallery? An important question. This work—in its obsessive and repetitive detail, its careful figurative articulation, and its engagement of disposable materials (polystyrene) and ready-made components (the street signs)—embraces the aesthetic zeitgeist of current contemporary art. But this work bears an uncommon conceptual cohesion. These sculptures aren't just masturbatory renderings of things these artists see out their studio window. These enameled street signs aren't just salables designed to advance the artists' career and collectability. The work encourages (and hopefully for some: evokes) a tumbling, circuitous critique of artifice. The cautious viewer may limit this critique to the role of facade in art and architecture. But metaphoric comparison to larger, more important realms such as politics, industry, and macroeconomics are almost unavoidable. And it is precisely this concise yet open conceptual resonance that makes this work meaningful, that makes this work successful and maybe even important. The show is on display through Oct. 15. Joel Sternfeld at Luhring Augustine: As I previously stated, I've grown increasingly troubled lately about the disconnect between celebrated trends in contemporary American art and state of the larger world in which we live. Our current policies, lifestyle, and very beliefs are not sustainable environmentally, economically, militarily, politically, or culturally. We risk disaster, bankruptcy, long-term isolation, and industrial and intellectual ineptitude. Meanwhile, most of us in the art world seems content to wank ourselves into irrelevance. I starve for any sort of work that challenges this status quo. Enter Joel Sternfeld's quiet photographic survey Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America at Luhring Augustine on 24th Street. This series documents 30 different sites of historic and present day utopian communities through a single photo per site and a brief text on each community. The photos engage the landscape, often with a high horizon line. The wall text accompanying each image names the community and any figures present in the image. It recounts the location's history providing names and dates. And it describes the significance of any architecture present in the frame. In addition, the wall texts describe each community's practical accomplishments such as a their sources or electricity, water, and food. And it attempts to convey more complex social aspects such as the faith, marital practices, and political structures of the community. While some experiments failed or were abandoned, others continue to thrive. Sites covered range from a shot of the Oneida Community mansion house in Oneida, New York with a decendent gardening in the foreground to a wide portrait of maverick architect Paolo Soleri staring at the horizon from the Arcosanti complex in Cordes Junction, Arizona to an unpopulated aerial photograph of the green roof on Chicago's city hall. It's been a long time since I've heard the phrase "artist as ethnographer." But Sternfeld seems more than happy to stand back and let his subject take center stage. On their own, each image would have a tough time reaching and holding the average American (New York?) viewer. Collectively, they form a chorus that issues a harsh indictment on mainstream America's belief in the infallibility of the individual and the marketplace. This is offset by a gentle but inspiring reminder that America has possesses a history of ingenuity and a cautionary reminder that, as in the past, this ingenuity demands a sacrifice of the self. This is an important body of work delightfully out of step with today's art world. Some of the photos in this survey go back ten years, demonstrating Sternfeld's steadfast commitment. It is not to be missed at this hour in history. Make sure you go when you have the time and mind to read through a majority of the wall texts. The show remains open through Oct. 22.
9-20-05
Two Bits Later this week, I have a day set aside to finally get out to Chelsea. Until that crawl gets written, tide yourself over with these bits and pieces: Artist Interviewing Artists at Thinking About Art: I've participated in J.T. Kirkland's latest artists' writing project at Thinking About Art. J.T. collects 5 questions from each artist participating and randomly redistributes them to another artist taking part in the project. My five questions came courtesy of artist Sky Pape. Another Glimpse into the Studio: I've made mention of a project involving a unicorn poster and flocking. Here's a couple studies of unicorns from the sketch book: And here's a shot of swatch samples of standard flock colors. For those of you unfamiliar with flocking, it is that velvety finish found on the inside of jewelry boxes and around the borders of many psychedelic black light posters. You can have it custom manufactured to match just about any Pantone ink color with a degree of reliable permanence for a cost. But there are almost two dozen standard colors. I'm currently leaning towards a pink, royal blue, or turquoise for my unicorn poster. As whimsical, lighthearted, and kitschy as this work is on the surface, I've had many long, somber, and mournful studio hours. The craft to prepare this artwork for manufacture has proven long and arduous. The subject matter tackles a number of existential questions that arose during a recent death in my family. Sometimes, there's no getting around those sort of studio hours.
9-13-05
Williamsburg Crawl The new season is upon us. Despite the cold, ugly truths revealed by the Katrina disaster and a deep questioning of our civic morals, the shows go on. So I'll try and find a way to keep it about the art. With only half the spaces in Williamsburg open this past weekend, my list is short. A number of notable spaces such as Sarah Bowen, Parker's Box, and Front Room, will debut their September shows this coming Friday, Sept. 16. Meanwhile, Plus Ultra has shifted to a by appointment only schedule as they prepare to move to a new space... rumored to be (where else?) in Chelsea. (On a related note: if you haven't checked out Edward Winkleman's blog, do so. It's a good read and often inspires some lively discussion.) Engaging Ephemera at Stay Gold: First up from this batch of shows: Engaging Ephemera at Stay Gold Gallery on Grand Street. It's been a long time since I've seen a group exhibition that so neatly and succinctly fits its title. All three artists, MFA candidates from Purchase College SUNY, do indeed engage ephemera. For me, this show generated the most interest with a mental game of compare and contrast. Cal Lane perforates metal objects such as a wheelbarrow and spadel, leaving behind a lacework shell of the original object. And when I say lacework, I mean that literally as in crewel work patterns you'd expect to find throughout a Victorian home. Underneath this pile of delicate jetsam is an even more fragile carpet of dried soil, sifted into similar lacework patterns. Ksenija Cerce's video work features stray lights and undersea footage of some sort of marine mammal. A manatee perhaps? Digitally manipulated audio fleets away before it ever constructs itself clearly. In fact, the entire work retreats from viewership, much like the images from a dream from mattress to shower. Though I watched the work for at least seven minutes, I can't tell you what I saw... other than that dangling manatee(?) flipper. Lastly, Joelle Jensen digs into old photos of young girls. Some stand in sun dresses tracing circles with their toes. Another overpowers a younger sibling with an embrace. All are awkward and evocative of family snapshots of our own youth. These images are reprinted and mounted in the gallery. Next to each vintage snapshot is a modern restaging of the photo with the original subjects, now decades older. Puffy toddler cheeks have given way to crows feet. Awkward innocence begins to take on a character of sexualized roleplaying. That little sibling now stands as the taller. Like with so much good work, for Jensen, its in the details. Socks are carefully hiked up and rolled down. Pigeon-toed stances are carefully reproduced. Accurate stand-ins for stuffed animals have been found. All are meditations on the edge of memory's envelope. The show succeeds in rounding out its theme: Ephemera. It leaves me asking, "What is ephemera?" Is it merely objects too fragile to touch? A mournful consequence of time and mortality? Or is it those much deeper and even more evasive, like those thoughts that never form and those sensations that never take root? Or is it all of the above? And if ephemera comes in so many flavors, this then begs the next question: which do you fancy? This show is up through Oct. 6. Mark Esper & Ryan Wolfe at Dam, Stuhltrager: On a similar note of ephemera, Dam, Stuhltrager Gallery at the corner of Marcy and Hope brings us a miniature tornado and synthesized breezes, courtesy of Mark Esper and Ryan Wolfe respectively. With Mark Esper's Second Orrery, in a darkened room, a tiny model train gracefully winds it's way around an extensive coil of track that is neatly folded into something of a mobius-like donut around a shallow pan of water. Several shims of clear, thin plexi have been placed at odd and seemingly arbitrary angles around the pan of water. When the light is just right and your eyes have adjusted, a tornado of vapor rising from a pan of water reveals itself. The work is playful, dreamlike, and fantastical. Though relatively polished in execution, Second Orrery bears the character of a tinker's delight. Not knowing the artist, it is very easy to begin attributing this piece to a clever gnome with a thin white beard, bifocals, and tiny tiny hands. While Esper cobbles together the fantastical, Ryan Wolfe dissects and resynthesizes the natural. In his work Sketch of a Field of Grass, Wolfe utilizes elegant custom circuit boards to drive individual robotic blades of grass. These modules consist of a long wispy green blade of synthetic grass attached to a tiny servo motor that can twitch the blade back and forth. This motor is hidden behind an implied dirt-line created by tiny acrylic jewel boxes filled with soil. Descending from this is a root system ending in a gorgeously designed and compact factory produced custom circuit board. (Look for the grass blade graphic and Ryan's signature on the boards solder resist!) Each of these modules is autonomous. The "breezes" that you witness emerge as incidental, aggregate phenomena. Wolfe has deliberately taken the intellectual high road. And it pays off—at least to informed viewers familiar with agent based models. There is a formalism at play in Wolfe's work; a formalism that is well versed in the geometries of complex systems theory; a formalism that I guarantee will continue to propagate as the sciences of complexity and emergence continue to seep into our culture. (That is if the Intelligent Design crowd doesn't have their way first!) Both of these wind works remain on display through Oct. 16. Braggin Rights at Jack the Pelican Presents: To bring things full circle, from the ephemeral back to the visceral, from the delicate and fantastical back to the brute and nightmarish, I'll end with the current show at Jack the Pelican Presents on Driggs. In the wake of my own post-Katrina civic angst, I find myself listing towards Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua's Largest Bowie Knife Ever Made. Bercowetz and Bua's work shares aesthetic roots with that other JtPP artist: Peter Caine. These three come from the same vein as Art Brut, the Kienholz, and maybe even Paul McCarthy. This work is unhinged. It is a sloppy, rambunctious train wreck. It is a hundred-twenty foot long temper tantrum covered in tin foil. And it is dangerous! The press release hints at intellectually directed roots of material choices. But when a riot breaks out, don't you just smash and grab whatever is within reach? Similarly, the performative nature of this installation holds great catharsis. And for me, it's not a day to soon. You have through Oct. 9 to catch this one. TTFN
8-24-05
A Glance into the Studio: While we await the September deluge of new shows, here are a couple pics of one project in production. A tiny sample of the barbed wire from the epic, room-dividing, miniature, west Texas fence of Separatrix. Can you believe that I need to manufacture about 1k to 4k feet of this stuff? That is my finger tip in there to give you an idea of the scale. Here is a closer look at the braiding and barbed knots. The next big step is to make a few study fences. I've got some things to work out prior to that, but hopefully I'll have some images of those soon enough as well. Okay, back to spinning wire for me!
8-10-05
Chelsea Crawl: While a majority of Chelsea galleries are on August recess, a number of spitfires have decided to remain open for the month. Some have extended their summer group shows through the month of August, others have mounted new group shows testing a few emerging rookies in their program, and there are even a few solo shows in the mix. For most of Chelsea, September 8 is the magic number. Save that date. But till then, I recommend the following. With Minets A Polis, Cohan and Leslie on 10th Avenue has filled its gallery with the work of six artists from or based in Minneapolis. If you missed Aaron Spangler's winter solo show at Zach Feuer (LFL), you have a second chance to experience one of his spectacular bas reliefs. Though I am a fan of Spangler, Chris Larson's video work Barn Razor dominated my attention. This projected video work shows side by side, via split screen, engaged in a pull-up contest. The press release states that this work "explores university fraternity culture and its macho underpinnings." Though true, there is much more at play in this video. Unlike an MTV Real World/Road Rules Inferno, Larson's physical challenge is silent. The editing is minimal. Neither winners nor losers are ever singled out. When one young man reaches his limit of pull-ups, Larson simply replaces his side of the split screen with a jump cut to another fresh body. The video transforms quickly from an exploration of the source material to a study of physicality, a study as figurative and erotic as a baroque painting. I soon found myself focusing on the classical Greco-Roman beauty of the motion of a pull up, the biomechanics involved, and the physics at play. Though this aesthetic appreciation certainly informs how I consider Larson's subject matter, it is also sits at odds. I know that the voyeuristic gaze I was employing would never be welcomed in most fraternities. Regardless, this piece alone makes a visit to Cohan and Leslie worthwhile. The show is up through August 19. Next up is Saturday Morning, the summer show at Josée Bienvenu upstairs on 20th Street. For a number of years now, Josée Bienvenu has championed delicate, obsessive work that unfolds slowly. This vein of work has rapidly grown in popularity over the past two years, but Bienvenu's program continues to stand out. Several works in this show challenge and explore the periphery of this popular approach to art making. Lisha Bai's Constructing Spaces, a Renaissance two point perspective illustration made of contemporary wall making materials, flexes conceptual muscle as it collides antique image and contemporary context raising questions while reserving judgment regarding the relevance of cultural recycling. Many of today's graphic trends can be traced directly to a recycling of Victorian surface patterns from the arts and crafts movement, which themselves were recyclings of medieval era decorative patterns. In light of these trends, I welcome the inspired introspection. Also included in the show is Sophie Toulouse's scenery003, nation of angela, a large delicate wallpaper mural. As tiled large scale computer plot prints, this work unabashedly confirms Adobe Illustrator's influence on the graphic culture of contemporary painting and wall drawing. What's more, the imagery amplifies and accelerates many tropes of contemporary image making. Toulouse's "other job" as a full time graphic designer situates her on the bleeding edge of this graphic culture. Who better to explore today's decorative trends with a more and faster approach? This show will remain up through most of August, but may come down sooner to permit installation of the September show at Josée Bienvenu. Hurry over before it's gone. A block over on 21st, Kravets/Wehby Gallery has extended its summer group show Is it live. This four person painting show typifies Kravets/Wehby's fairly West Coast figurative program. Here, you can get a sneak peek at what might be Wendell Gladstone's next body of work. This past year, horses, vultures, and pirate ghosts populated Wendell's paintings. Though painted, these works had material properties similar to cut and applied vinyl. This latest painting represents some minor departures. The application of his paint is more cellular and evocative of stained glass and he has adopted the lion as a motif. When considering most artists, I would not pay much mind to this relatively minor change in motif. But Gladstone takes such a mythological approach to his subject matter that I can't help but feel this is a significant shift. Additionally, this show features a couple recent paintings by Stella Vine. For me, Vine is an acquired taste. But the more I see of Vine's work, the more I like. It may be too early to predict, but the arc I see her currently evolving along has me wondering if she might be the indirect heir to Philip Guston. This show remains open through August 16. Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL) on 24th Street currently hosts Belgian based photographer Geert Goiris' first New York exhibition. Goiris has traveled throughout Europe and beyond to bring together this collection of vast, stoic images. Many of the images have broad horizon lines. There is a sense of desolation in several images, from the pile of discarded roadside barriers in E313 to the ruins of a Soviet era restaurant from Lithuania in the wallpaper mural Palanga. But there is never a sense of finality. Instead, it feels as if everything is on pause, like geologic forces have taken the day off and Goiris has afforded us an afternoon to take in these experiences. There is no need to worry. The water pouring from the tap will remain frozen in Frost and the lake will continue to support its single occupant in Standing On Ice. On a personal note, it was nice to see one of Goiris' photos capturing an explosion in a forest clearing. He too received a grant to explore subject matter akin to my explorations in snap! The Geert Goiris show is up through August 23. I had first learned of Dan Steinhilber's work from a review over at grammarpolice. I was delighted when I walked into In My Empire Life is Sweet at DCKT Contemporary on 24th Street and saw that Steinhilber was included. In one of his untitled works, Suave shampoo in over a dozen varieties of blue are wedged between the wall and chrome towel racks creating an evocative aquatic gradation. Another untitled work features hundreds of packets or orange duck sauce—the kind you always get from a Chinese lunch counter but rarely use. These still sealed packets cover the surface of a canvas, creating a bright vibrant feathered field of color and texture. Lastly, using his own saliva, Steinhilber has systematically adhered sticks of chewing gum to an acrylic ground, creating a tri-colored minimalist flag. A former mentor of mine was recently bemoaning the high number of Duchampian ready-made retakes from today's young artists. Though I agree with his concern, I am glad there are subtle and sublime artists like Steinhilber exploring the blurry division between stuff and material. His work may not be topical enough (yet) to fully articulate environmental questions that grow increasingly urgent. But by employing a sentimentality often reserved for the "natural world," Steinhilber provides us a space to reflect upon ourselves, our biology, and our economy and their relationships to the "natural" world. This show closes soon—August 12. Speaking of sublime, one block over on 25th Street, PaceWildenstein is hosting two of Sol LeWitt's latest wall drawings. For a number of years, I've asserted that these wall drawings—often executed by large crews under the direction of LeWitt—shine as the strongest works of his career. These two drawings, each over 16 feet, are his largest yet. Countless, consistent graphite scribbles have been built up to generate a gigantic circle in each of these drawings. In one drawing, a dark circle emerges off a white wall and in the other tonality is reversed and a white circle emerges from a dark ground. For much of his career, LeWitt's work has employed number theory by both overt and intuitive means. But here, it feels like he's shifted his attention from Euclidean geometries of common to the industrial era to the geometries of emergence. Undoubtedly, these are geometries that we will be hearing more about as we continue to progress into an age of biotechnology, distributed machines, cellular warfare, and global environmental change. While many people approach the latter set with a degree of surrender, LeWitt is somehow able to maintain his signature heroic machismo even in these new works. These are on display through August 25. Last up is Fresh Paint at Lehmann Maupin on 26th Street. The works of all the artists included are worth your time, but I mention the show particularly for the work of newcomer Fabien Rigobert. Despite the title of the show, Rigobert creates plasma screen videos, not paintings. But his videos are amongst the most painterly I have ever seen. He strings together carefully composed stills and animates them using video morphs. The result produces figurative images in which the figures slide and sluce from gesture to gesture rather than by locomotion. Imagine a William Kentridge animation but with photographs. This is one of Fabien's first exhibitions, but with such a strong start I recommend keeping an eye on this rookie. The show is up through August 19. That's all for this week. See you all soon!
8-1-05
Studio Update: Hey readers! How you been? Several of you have sent emails asking, "Where you been?" It's nice to know that my web presence has been missed. Between an abundance of freelance work, shifting work schedules that are still settling, and a reinvigorated and refocused studio practice, I've not been able to find the full days required for my weekly gallery crawls. Since I have no reviews to bring you this week, hows about a brief glance into the studio? The performative element of the warbonds project is currently in production. Six weeks of intensive script writing and rewriting has resulted in a twenty minute solo piece in which I move through a number of military personas including a benevolent general, an ornery drill sergeant, and an eager private. My director and I have already put in six weeks of memorization, rehearsal, and workshopping. Costume elements are coming together, even though as usual, I'm finding I need to special order pieces. For example, I have a pair of uniform pants on order from a marching band supply company. Yup. This performance involves band pants. And mouse ears. In the meantime, I've begun collecting assets for the multimedia element of the performance. Yup, there's a lot going on in this one and its taking some precise tuning to balance all the elements. In addition to band pants and drill sergeants, the studio has been a clutter with skylines, unicorns, and yards of micro barbed wire. I've found myself doing long hours of research and studies with velvet flocking, cast sugar, and the history of Captain America. These are all bits and pieces of a new body of work, some of which will be shown in Chicago in late 2006. I must admit that I am worried about the barbed wire. To execute the piece properly, I will need to spin between 1000 feet and a mile of the stuff. I have refined my process and gotten my production speed up to about 15 inches per hour. Do the math and you too will see why I am worried about this piece. It's going to be a long time before I can string my own west Texas fence line. So that's it for now. I hope my schedule stabilizes enough in the next few weeks to resume regular gallery crawls. Till then, keep the faith and I'll keep spinning barbed wire.
news & culture blog
7-3-05
Williamsburg Crawl: Saturday was a hot, summery day that left many galleries muggy and musty. With the holiday around the corner, several spaces did not open and those that did carried a relaxed, casual atmosphere. Since maybe a full third of the galleries were closed, this is by no means a full comprehensive crawl, but I did see a few things worth passing on as well as one new discovery. I'll begin with the discovery. Though it has been open for a few months already, I had never been to Unpublished Underground on Hope Street, a space with a unique mission. This gallery serves as a reading room and small press for underpublished and emerging writers. Unlike other independent presses that choose to function within the hierarchy of the literary world, director Bryan Reilly has taken his initiative into the visual arts community adopting the emerging artist gallery as a model for his effort. Manuscripts are available at a price comparable to the cost of materials, often well under $10. An interesting and bold endeavor. I wish Bryan the best with this unique tactic. Also, Unpublished Underground is currently seeking submissions. If you are interested, contact director Bryan Reilly via info @ unpublishedunderground.com. Lately, I've spent a good deal of mental energy grappling with perennial philosophical questions such as "Why do we make art?" "Why do we look at art?" After being in New York for just over a year, I find myself once again concerned with accessibility. I am interested in work with an audience that transcends the borders of the contemporary art world. One path to wider audiences lies in light-hearted whimsy. Another path can be found in merchandising. The four-hundred-plus robo-narratives of R. Nichols Kuszyk on display at McCaig-Welles Gallery on Roebling Street demonstrate these strategies combined and in action. The works are charming and non-threatening. They are the sort of small works that many people will want to live with. This show provides one set of simple answers to those questions of "Why do we look at art?" It's an extremely short show, open only from July 1 through July 10. Go take a look before it comes down. Meanwhile, Reconfigure, the summer survey show over at Pierogi serves as a mnemonic touchstone. Many of the twenty-plus artists included in the show, such as Dawn Clements, Don Doe, Tony Fitzpatrick, Jonathan Herder, and Jonathan Schipper, have had successful solo shows over the past year, many of which were in Pierogi. It's interesting to see their individual works in this larger context. This show reveals the texture of the current Pierogi program, one that mirrors many overarching trends of contemporary art. The overall palette has a "Crayola and felt-tip marker out-of-the-box" quality to it. Horror vacui dominates the field, with open space a rare exception. In most cases, the intricately sensual and decorative trumps conceptual responses. Part of my recent soul searching has lead me to explore, for my own studio practice, when I assimilate and where I stand in defiance regarding the current trends dominating this New York school. This show serves as a great summary of both Pierogi's past year and mine. The show is up through July 25 and is worth a visit. That is it for this week. Short and simple. Like I said, not every space was open this weekend. So keep in mind: this week's crawl is by no means a complete survey of Williamsburg.
6-28-05
So Very Quiet: The good news for me: I've been up to my eyeballs and earlobes with freelance opportunities. The bad news for you, my readers: I've not been able to take the time required to get out, do a proper gallery crawl, and post reviews. But things are falling into a much more predictable rhythm. I expect within the next week, I'll be able to get out and resume a pattern of crawls and recommendations. If you've been frustrated by the lack of new content here, stay with me and check in next week. I'll be writing soon.
6-10-05
Art Opening in Union Square Tomorrow Night: I normally don't like reprinting press releases verbatim, but I'm going to make an exception today. Jason Polan is an artist who orchestrates extremely modest and understated fluxus-style events. The announcements are often as much a part of the work as the events themselves. I first became aware of his work several years ago when Jason saw one of my exhibitions. Soon after, I began getting emailings, one every other month or so, describing these events. One such email described an opportunity to meet his mother. He promised a formal introduction. Another described a process in which he picked up 1000 pieces of litter and made artworks out of 100. If you wanted one of these works, all you had to do was pick up a piece of trash, dispose of it properly, then email Jason your address. This sort of work can raise suspicion amongst the cynical. Some of you are apt to wonder if these are just stunts designed to help launch Polan's career with the minimal amount of effort. I've received Jason's little conceptual announcements for just over three years now. At this point, I am convinced that Jason Polan's intentions are sincere. More importantly, his emails often make me smile. Without further ado, from the horse's mouth: You are cordially invited to Art Show(s). Art Show(s) is comprised of three art openings in three cities occurring at the same time. Porous Walker (Napa, California), Michael Worful (St. Louis, Missouri), and Jason Polan (New York, New York) will each be hosting an opening in their city with art by all three artists. This event(s) will be taking place on Saturday, June 11. Napa, California Kentucky Fried Chicken 2-3pm. The show may move to Home Depot depending on attendance. St. Louis, Missouri Matt Hannon's parent's house. 4-5pm. New York, New York The west side of Union Square. There will be a very limited book available to visitors titled New York Wildlife: Rats Pigeons Dogs Cockroaches. There will also be pizza and Hawaiian Punch. 5-6pm. We look forward to seeing all of you. We will not hold it against you if you cannot make it to all three openings. www.porouswalker.com www.messengerbird.com www.jasonpolan.com Jason is a very generous artist. If you are interested in getting on his mailing list, just drop him a line via his website.
6-4-05
Chelsea Crawl: Have you ever smelled autumn in the spring? The damp, dreary weather we had a few weeks back produced a brief odorous illusion. One afternoon, when I closed my eyes, I swear it smelled like fall was around the corner! I had a similar experience in Chelsea this past week. Visceral sensations persuaded me that an inevitable shift is coming soon—not in the weather, but in the art. Lately, it has felt like a number of synchronicities in style and strategy, lending cohesion to this period of pluralism, may be coming to a crest. Many of young exhibiting artists seem to be working from positions of extreme clarity—they know what they are doing, they know why they are doing it, and they have the skills to get it done. But these periods of clarity, enjoyed by many artists at some point or another, do end and are often followed by upheaval. I keep thinking about Inka Essenhigh and the change in direction she has recently taken. Is she a canary in the coal mine of the early 2k's pleasure factor? Will a lot of today's rising stars be reinventing themselves within the next two years? I can't put my finger on why, but this past week the baroque, indulgent, decorative work we've been seeing so much of lately didn't look as fresh as usual. Instead, I found myself attracted to a wider range of works on the periphery of today's trends. Of course, I am passionate person prone to platitudes and I may be confusing shifts in my person with shifts in the general zeitgeist. So maybe change isn't just around the corner, but it is inevitable. Regardless of when it comes, this week has given me a momentary vista over the vast range of possibility on where we can go from here. I am enjoying entertaining visions of what sort of work might emerge in the next five and ten years. (Of course, I may feel very different when my own work falls into crisis!) Without further ado, here's my write up of the strange mix of shows that moved me this past week: Rinko Kawauchi's photographs, currently on display at Cohan and Leslie on 10th Avenue, require a mindful eye. Graphically, they are striking images, well composed and well produced. Given a quiet minute, each photograph can quickly transform from strictly visual to intensely synaesthetic. The images are packed with immersive micro-narratives, complete with sounds, smells, and even climates. Each photograph imbues her subjects with a profound animism. For example, with one image, I found myself feeling deeply for both a chunk of stone and the circular blade cutting the stone. The intense emotional connection evoked by each image makes for a series of strange and beautiful experiences. You have a couple weeks to catch this one. It's up through June 16. Nina Katchadourian's, Accent Elimination (part of The Genealogy of the Supermarket and Other New Works) at Sara Meltzer Gallery, pulled me in for a good 20 minutes. Katchadourian breathes new life into the postmodern paradigm of artist as ethnographer. Her work is perceptual, but not like most work shown today. Rather than evoking a lusty sensuality, she inspires thoughtful fascination. In Accent Elimination, Katchadourian works with her mother, father, and a voice coach as she and her parents attempt to swap accents. Three video monitors display the results of their efforts in an iterated dialogue regarding her parents' ethnicity. Each iteration is performed in a different accent and the audio fills the space. Three other monitors, each with headphones, document their coaching sessions. On first impression, the voice coach can come across as a sleazy, second rate talent agent. But his insights are so consistent and astute that I quickly realized the he's quite good at his job. This work has momentarily sensitized me to speech. I've found myself listening more carefully the past few days. If you'd like to listen for yourself, you have through June 25. Considering the theme for today's write up, I need to mention Eyebeam. I always enjoy going into their gallery on 21st, in large part because their shows remind me of pre tech-boom conceptions of cyber art. Granted, the work often suffers from technical and curatorial challenges—a constant reminder of one reason this genre has not enjoyed wider circulation. Their current show, a traveling exhibition entitled What Sound Does a Color Make, is no exception. In many parts of the gallery, Audio bleeds horribly from one chamber to the other turning most the show into a bodiless cacophony. But a single Jim Campbell work, Self Portrait of Paul (DeMarinis), at the front of the show stands out. A speaker emits sonic tones into a microphone which are then interpreted by custom circuitry that illuminates LEDs forming a low res portrait fogged glass. In my experience, Campbell's low-fi LED video imagery always works. Literally. The electronics are always functioning as intended. This piece alone makes a visit to the show worthwhile and can serve as another reminder: though many of the media often showcased at Eyebeam are 30 going on 40 years old, we have barely begun to explore the aesthetic and conceptual potential of these media. Eyebeam is an important refuge for truly experimental digital arts. This show is also up through June 16. Today, art containing text often sends up a warning flag: "Dated didactic strategies at play!" So I was very skeptical when I encountered Sophie Calle's Exquisite Pain at Paula Cooper's space on 21st (artnet page). In this large, two part installation of photos, fabric, and text, Calle documents the days leading up to and following what she calls "the unhappiest moment of my whole life"—when her lover left her for another woman in 1984 the day she returned from an artist residency abroad. There is a lot of text in this work. The piece follows a linear progression along the wall similar to an exhibit in a natural history museum. I feared that this work would be a parade of shameless self indulgence and exploitation, once the territory of high art but now ubiquitous (and played out) in an age of reality television. My fears were realized in the first half of the exhibition documenting the weeks leading up to her breakup. I found myself asking, "Why should I care?" But something interesting happened in the second half of the exhibition. In this half of the piece, Calle juxtaposes retellings of her breakup with others' accounts of suffering. These accounts come from interviews where she asked one simple question: "When did you suffer most?" With each new account of another's suffering, Calle's story fades and shortens a little. Taken in its entirety, the installation has a similar effect of grabbing an ipod, a pair of headphones, going into a darkened room and blasting Al Green's How Can You Mend a Broken Heart? Like soulful blues and blue soul, this work serves as a campfire for universal pain and heartache. Like Katchadourian's aforementioned exhibition, Calle's work serves as a reminder that there is still steam in several means and methods currently considered outdated. This show is open through June 27. There always needs to be a couple exceptions to every approach. These next two shows serve as mine today. While most of the exhibitions I'm mentioning fall outside contemporary trends, these represent a deepening of today's currents. Dean Byington's large duo-chrome canvases at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects on 22nd embody the best of early 2k's whimsical and decorative painting. These works are large, pleasant, and obsessive in detail. They appear, at first, to be nothing but dichromatic textural fields formed by some low tech version of offset printing. But don't dismiss these as weak twists on Gerhard Richter distortions, where dragging is replaced by lifting. Take a closer look. That texture is actually tight, illustrative imagery akin to the sort found in Victorian wallpaper with the horror vacui of early Peter Doig landscapes. I studied the paintings long enough to conclude that the patterns do not repeat. This lends a strong sense of handcraft to the works and yet the scale, consistency, and cleanliness of line hint at printmaking. The press release makes allusions to a hybrid process involving "image sampling, drawing, xeroxing, collaging, printing, and painting." Regardless of how he does it, Byington's paintings are a triumph of craft. This show is up through June 18. Don't miss it. While one camp of painters continues to explore a decorative approach, there is another camp employing a faux-naive, fine-lined hand in a sort of searching reiteration of neo-expressionism where boundaries between daily life and image making are deliberately blurred. This work tends to be autobiographic, pictorial, doodly, and sometimes even abject. Danica Phelps, Dawn Clements, and Zak Smith come to mind. I enjoy Tim Lokiec's work, currently on display at Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL) on 24th. His paintings hold a density of marks uncommon in the works of many of his peers. But I can't resolve my take on his palette. His colors have a "straight from the tube" quality the lend themselves to the faux-naive brutishness common to this approach to painting, but there is something about too much cadmium lemon that makes my skin crawl. Obviously, these are sensual paintings. They don't reproduce well. So go see them in person. You have through June 18. Still on 24th, Luhring Augustine features a treat in the gigantic cinematic photos of Gregory Crewdson. Like the Byington show, these works are also rare triumphs of craft. Unlike Byington's work though, there is little mystery in how these photos are created. A quick glance through the catalogues available at the gallery reveal that each photo takes dozens of crew members to produce, with credits given to lighting crews, set designers, and even prosthetic artists. The results of Crewdson's direction unfold like a good M. Night Shyamalan film packed into a single frame: gritty, creepy, supernatural, and spectacular. The lighting, atmosphere, and special effects all serve the narrative. Nothing feels superfluous, despite the obviously exorbitant production spent on each work. If you want to witness these movies in a single frame for yourself, you have until June 18 to do so. After being warmed up by the Tim Lokiec show, I was delighted to encounter one of my favorite guilty pleasures—Joan Mitchel—on display at Cheim & Read on 25th. These paintings come from a three year period when Mitchel worked in a studio on rue Fremicourt in Paris, France between 1960 and 1962. If you make it to the gallery, be sure to give a long look to the painting on the south wall of the main gallery. You'll know it by its significant balance of violet. Any generous readers interested in acquiring this painting and gifting it to me (along with a wall large enough to accommodate it!) are highly encouraged to do so. Send me an email and I'll send you a delivery address. Ms. Mitchell's work is always a delight. This show is up through June 25. And lastly, just to punctuate how wide a range I was enjoying this past week, I must recommend the Pierre Soulages exhibition of black canvases at Robert Miller Gallery on 26th. A few months ago, I would have probably blazed through this show, writing it off as a rehash of a 1960's "end of painting" by an 80 year-old artist out of touch with contemporary art. I'm so glad I didn't. Yes, like the minimalism of yore, these are slow subtle works. Yes, they are distant, cool, and beyond human scale. Yes, I found myself hanging out in a gallery with a number of elderly European women. But you know what? I didn't care. I found the slow pace demanded by these works refreshing. These are the sort of paintings that fall flat in description. On paper, their economy makes them look inferior to most contemporary art. But go experience them. They are magnificent and relevant. Take your time. You'll see what I'm talking about. This one comes down soon. You only have through June 11. That is it for now. Until next time, cheers!
5-27-05
Best Intentions...: I had scheduled a gallery crawl for yesterday, with the best intentions of bringing you the good word from Chelsea today. But Wednesday night, I decided to cavort with a virus ripping through our household. I spent the better part of yesterday in bed followed by trying to get a jump for our car because some knucklehead (me!) left the lights on. Oh the dumb things you do when your brain is filled with mucus. Today, I'm back on my feet but barely and moving at half speed. I'm eager to return to Chelsea. There are a half dozen new shows I'm curious about. But that will have to wait till sometime next week. For now, I give you... Some Good News For Large Format Photography: Have you feared for the longevity of large format photography in the digital age? Fear no more. With the gigapxl project, a small team of visionary photographers and technologists are busy pioneering large format digital photography. Be sure to browse their gallery and check out the progressive zooms demonstrating the overwhelming detail present in each picture. From the image on this page, you can see that the camera is massive enough to make proud the glass plate photographers of yore. My head is swimming with novel applications, such as a composited video showing a 40 minute slow zoom along a "tunnel of unfolding action," similar in format to Michael Snow's classic formalist film Wavelength. Novelty aside though, I expect large format digital cameras to impact the art world mostly in mammoth wall-sized prints with unprecedented clarity. It's as if the room-filling giant Polaroid camera (information midway through linked page)—famously utilized by William Wegman, Olivia Parker, Chuck Close, and David Hockney, amongst others—has suddenly become portable. In this digital age, large format will remain a specialized endeavor, but not without application.
5-22-05
A Couple Updates From Williamsburg: Some confusion with my scheduling at work left me unexpectedly free yesterday afternoon. After a phone call and a train ride, I met up with my wife for a bit of gallery hopping and the best—though still unfulfilled—intentions to make it up to P.S.1. (No, I have not seen the Greater New York show yet. My schedule has been jam packed. And since I know the show goes until September, I have procrastinated on this one—probably too much already!) I had no intention of subjecting my wife to the grueling clip I set when doing a thorough gallery crawl. That sort of pace requires an early start and a quick, tireless eye. Besides, this is her weekend as much as mine. So without the usual authority and pomp, I bring you one update and one recommendation. artMoving, whose John Giglio show was listed in my last Bill-burg crawl, has finally launched their gallery site. I'm glad to see it. It's your basic informational gallery site, but they had none prior. This project space hosts a number of worthwhile shows each year. I'd hate to see them overlooked due to mere lack of visibility. We spent a good twenty minutes browsing Gil & Moti's "Sleeping with the Enemy" show at Jack the Pelican. I was very skeptical going in to this exhibition. The two artist are lovers, gay, and Israeli. Over the course of the exhibition, they are living in the gallery while they court Arabic men in search of a third for their relationship. I was afraid that, like many shows of this ilk, "Sleeping with the Enemy" would suffer from blinding narcissism as the art takes a back seat to facile social and sexual politics. But I was struck by how absent politics were from the exhibition. Though bulky and awkward, the artists' base camp in the gallery feels utilitarian and inconsequential. Instead, dozens of quiet video vignettes and sensitive watercolors of potential lovers dominate the show. Yes the imagery is sexual, and at times even pornographic (such as one depicting a gentleman in the final stages of autofellatio). Gil & Moti intersperse watercolor transcriptions of correspondences other men amongst these images. I found an uncanny air of deep, earnest, yearning love where I expected to find only crass exploitation and sexual indulgence. I walked away from the exhibition convinced. These guys aren't exploiting their lives and loves for the sake of their careers, rather they are mining their careers for the sake of their loves and lives. You have till June 5 experience the show and decide for yourself.
5-18-05
Mass Detourism: If you missed an opportunity to snag one of my Greetings From America lenticular postcards, you've got a second chance. The work is available at the Detourism Center at the Contemporary Artists Center in North Adams, MA. A brief description from the press release for this exhibition: Come to the Detourism Center. Not unlike your ordinary tourism bureau, The North Adams Detourism Center provides a sideways glance at what makes ‘visiting’ ‘touring’ and site-seeing so pleasurable and pernicious. Featuring: Basekamp and the Center for Advanced Architecture, Bordermates, Carrie Dashow, Robert Derr, Aaron Gach and Eva Stromheimer, Rene Garcia and Anne Bansalmo, Ryan Griffis, James Leonard, Lize Mogul, and Karla Roberts So if you're up there touring the neighborhood, be sure to drop in at the CAC and check out the Detourism Center.
5-11-05
57th Street Crawl: Some sad news, some happy news. One of the few remaining steady vestiges of contemporary art amongst the 57th street galleries, Littlejohn Contemporary, is moving. Littlejohn has brought many gems to this part of town, such as the quasi-naturalist paintings of Laurie Hogan and the sound works of Stephanie Rowden. Their exodus will make finding good contemporary art on my 57th street crawls a bit harder. Littlejohn will be opening a space in Connecticut. There are also long term plans for a space in the Chelsea district. In the meantime, Littlejohn will be operating a by-appointment viewing space on 72nd Street. Sad to see them go, but here's to a bright future in their new locations! Down the road from Littlejohn, in the 24 W. 57th building, Garth Clark Gallery features The Clay Menagerie, a show animals rendered in clay. The exhibition assembles recent works by eleven different sculptors. Three artists in particular, Beth Cavener Stitcher, Adelaide Paul, and John Byrd, dominated my attention in the gallery. Stitcher's work depicts rabbits and goats, often cowering or caught in struggle. Though the anatomy of her figures remains accurate, their exaggerated and stylized expressions push into a realm that transcends empathic boundaries deliniated by species. It is in their fear, exasperation, and anxiety that these animals become anthropomorphised. Meanwhile, Paul's porcelain horses bound in bright leather slips coolly dominate their wall space. Sexy, visceral, and precise—these horse bodies seem like vehicles for an assembly of form, texture, and color. Similar to moments in a Matthew Barney film, they carry an air of clinical yet surreal clarity that is easily experienced but not easily understood. Lastly, John Byrd's sculptures combine cleanly produced clay bits and pieces of taxadermy. The resulting collisions feel like something from a high school biology lab or a small town natural history museum. The clay elements read like plastic models more than fine ceramics. And the taxidermy, like it is wont to do, feels oddly removed from its living source. On the whole, Byrd's playful work simultaneously celebrates and mocks scientifically defined relationships with animal species. This show is up through June 18. A few blocks over and around the corner on 5th Avenue, McKee Gallery plays host to an exhibition of colossal hands sculpted by William Tucker. Like Adelaide Paul's work in the previously described show, these hands serve as a vector for Tucker. But unlike Paul's cool and aloof horses, Tucker revels in expression and poetics. The gesture of his subject is given over to weighty open metaphors, bolstered by single word titles on each work such as Gift, Void, and Secret. In either bronze or plaster, several of Tucker's giant Rodan-esque fists tower well over six feet. Included at the entrance of the exhibition are small bronze studies portraying each hand at a life-size scale. While in the gallery, I couldn't help but think about this range of scale—not just scale in terms of size but in terms of era. Tucker's craft hearkens back to an age of romantic figurative sculpture, yet the size of his finished works evokes the fabled Colossus of ancient times. The mammoth pieces in plaster feel like dinosaur bones, wrapped in a protective cast and ready to be shipped in from the field. And despite these epochal echoes, the work still remains very contemporary. You have through June 3 to see what I mean. Down the hall, Mary Boone's uptown space has a several graphite and watercolor illustrations by Hillary Harkness. What if men didn't exist? No longer existed? Never existed? What if women ruled the world? All of it? These questions, one part serious feminist and gender inquiry, one part whimsical science fiction, seem to be the launching point for Harkness' imagination. Like the genre paintings of yore and the children's book illustrations of my youth, her often vast scenes are loaded with vignette after vignette. Her fantastical she-worlds vary in setting from deco sci-fi (think Sky Captain meets Barbarella) to the wild, wild West to uncharted native islands circa World War II. Though meticulous in detail, I found that the rather plebeian hand of production employed enhances the air of pulp surrounding these works. These works collide serious themes of labor and class, war and peace, reproduction and sexuality—all while dancing through homoerotic fetishes, both lesbian and gay. Go, see the show, and get engrossed. You'll enjoy yourself. Trust me. You have through June 25. That's it for this week folks. See you again soon.
5-03-05
The Sky is Falling: Though I prefer to avoid turning my blog into a web news filter, today I make a minor exception. I just saw this on the front page of the New York Times during lunch. For better or worse, progress marches on the north shore of Brooklyn (nytimes link requires free registration). Exactly what this means for the already rapidly changing communities of Williamsburg and Greenpoint remains to be seen.
5-02-05
Williamsburg Crawl: Before I dig into the shows, I have an open call from two artists for donations. The Israeli artists Gil & Moti will be creating a home space and living in Jack the Pelican's space for one month. They have placed a sign in the window asking for donations of home furnishings from coffee tables to dining chairs to bookshelves to beds. So if you have any extra furniture you can donate before the show opens this Friday, May 6, please call the gallery at 718.782.0183. Also a bit of news: Priska C. Juschka is moving to Chelsea. This space has been one of my favorite Williamsburg galleries over the past couple years. But their tailored nature always felt a bit out of place in the rough-and-tumble of Williamsburg, where even refined spaces like Pierogi and the aforementioned Jack the Pelican Presents manage to maintain a casual air of rock-n-roll coolness. I wish them the best and hope their move brings good fortune. Now, on to the recommendations. It Was Here a Minute Ago at NurtureArt on Keap St. features works by a number of artists exploring the ephemeral. In the context of the show's theme, a single, tiny work overshadows the entire exhibit. Irene Chan's SumiIce drawings prescribe that a single ice cube, doped with Sumi Ink, be placed at the center of a paper each weekend. If, like me, you find yourself lucky enough to enter the gallery a few hours after a new piece of ink-ice has been exposed, you too can witness this work's eerie, simple, quiet beauty as the spongy black ice transmutes into a large, slick, amorphic bead of ink that is then absorbed becoming a wet, black, rumpled stain. This SumiIce setup is so gorgeous and simple that I wanted to halt its progress and possess it as an object. But possession proves impossible. The final drawings—the products of this process—admittedly do little for me. The intense magic comes from witnessing the process. Chan's little work dominates the show; it is the only work released back into the wild rather than ending up mounted and stuffed. Meanwhile (and this may be the curator's fault) the rest of the show seems to confuse the delicate and the moving for the ephemeral. Show is open through May 15. artMoving (no weblink available, sorry!) at 166 North 12th street is filled with Big House, Big Man, a large (half-scale?) inflatable house by John Giglio. Tucked away in the shadow of this puffy sculpture, a video monitor plays documentation of a goofy performance in which a man in a hard hat struggles to move and control the inflatable house in a backyard in exurbia, only to have the house repeatedly topple him. The graphic qualities of the house kept evoking memories of the Fisher Price Family House, but these recollections only indirectly informed my experience with the work. The house's cheap—yet precise—character echoes the ubiquitous American McMansion and the related popularity of prefab construction and Tyvec building plastic. I'm not sure what I take away from this piece other than a wry, cynical grin, but the show is worth a visit if you are in the neighborhood. On display through May 22. There is an awful lot of decorative installation being produced and shown lately. Much of this work is characterized by larger pieces made up of countless, little, delicate parts. Caroline Cox's show, 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky, at Sara Bowen Gallery on North 6th street stands out from the pack. Her work exhibits the sort of fluid, intuitive understanding of light that one usually expects from a painter. The delicate shadows radiating from her wall works seem as important to the whole of the work as the coiled physical elements. The central installation—a large room-filling chandelier mobile comprised of lenses, parabolic mirrors, wire, and lacy mesh bags—makes the most of the gallery's skylight. The work shatters optic space, casting light into a sparkling crystalline lattice work. On a sunny day, this installation certainly does kiss the sky... I register only one frustration when looking at works like 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky. So often after viewing such work, I find my mind abuzz with notions of complex systems theory. Unfortunately, the majority of artists creating this sort of work have not read-up on the subject. Though they are obviously intuitively informed, there are several esoteric and counter intuitive aspects that are elusive without study. I am eager to one day sit and talk with an artist who is producing this sort of work and is equally passionate and informed about complex systems theory. Until then, I guess these thoughts will have to keep swirling privately inside my skull. This show was only up through May 1. I apologize for tagging it post-closing. [UPDATE: This show has been extended through May 15 and can be viewed during weekend hours, 12 - 6 pm, or by appointment (917.612.4026)] While there is a dearth of decorative work these days, there is also a surprising lack of political work. Perhaps it is due to a combination of fashion, fatigue and shell shock. Just the same, some political work looks fresh to me these days. This is especially true when the work is as unswerving and unapologetic as Sean Hemmerle's photos currently on display at Front Room Gallery on Roebling. The Secret Collaborators presents numerous large C prints depicting American military planning rooms, war torn Middle Eastern countrysides, and media outlets disseminating information about the war. While looking at the photos, which are very matter-of-fact in character, I had a hard time extrapolating if the indictment I sensed against the powers that be was from the photos themselves or from inside me. Powerful stuff. Up through May 8.[UPDATE: Sean Hemmerle will be giving an artist's talk on on Sunday, May 8 from 5 - 6 pm in the Front Room Gallery space.]