Who is Per Kirkeby? James Stanfield

I’m sure that many of you already know this artist, but I was really unaware of him until I happened upon a Greek magazine (ARTI) from 1994 in a used bookstore. The cover, which caught my eye, depicted a small, sculptural building made of brick. Curiously, there seemed to be no way into the building, which I guess is not so curious if you think of this thing as less a building and more a sculpture. Here is a link to a page of images that I scanned from the magazine.

Flipping thorough the magazine, realizing that the artist’s works were split between totally nasty 80’s paintings and these sculptural abstractions made of brick, produced a sensation of partial repulsion and partial attraction. I purchased the magazine, and read it in the bathroom.

Kirkeby’s romantic, public abstractions echo all kinds of creepy architecture. They are square, strong, too small to be truly impressive, and wallow in the failed permanence of the architectures they mimic. In them I see old-time astronomical observatories, Nazi ovens, Roman aqueducts, unused public plazas – things that we now only see as ruins. In the same way that they condense western architecture, they begin to suggest a condensed history. I’m projecting here, but the fact that many of these sculptures present themselves as faux-buildings without entrance or exit makes them indifferent to a viewer’s presence. In this way they become authoritarian – maybe even fascist.

I love the little expressionist bronze trophies that Kirkeby says are the models for his brick sculptures. Does he really discover the form of a building while molding these things? Does he really present these hunks of metal to public works committees as models for his proposals?

Sarah Morris, Los Angeles James Stanfield

Last night a friend and I went to the opening of Sarah Morris’ Los Angeles at the Friedrich Petzel Gallery. I was just blown away. Morris went to Los Angeles the week before the Oscar Awards ceremony was filmed and captured as many different sparkling aspects of the city as she could on video. Every image edited into the artwork is gorgeous. There are many long pan shots, images taken while the camera was tightly crammed into car interiors, as well as shots that look like they were made using a dolly and tracks. Her images capture the celebrity life of LA – from corporate meetings, trips to pristine drugstores, the rehearsal for the Oscars, scenes depicting teeth bleaching, sports cars racing down empty highways at night, people I almost recognize smoking cigars while on cell phones, all the way up to the red-carpeted entry of the awards ceremony.

In my mind this work of Morris’ not only represents one of the most enjoyable art-video experiences I’ve come across in a long while, but it also becomes a fantastic dissection of the Hollywood image branding factory. Every few seconds in Los Angeles gives another way of peering into Hollywood image machinery while at the same time creating a space to critically look at images in general. The video contains so many gems: Will Smith throwing up his hands with an attitude that may no longer be his own, images of movie executives and their personal assistants become confused with images of celebrities and their personal assistants, as well as pan shots describing back-lot movie sets that reminded me of the moving images of real LA displayed 3 minutes previous.

In Morris’ work the documentary and fantasy aspects of image-town LA mix so well that no longer can we look to her video as either document or fiction. Instead, what she has created truly fits into a much sought after in-between space that few artworks achieve. Let me also add, that her electronic sound track was perfect, enjoyable on its own as well as flawlessly synched with her flashy film scale projection.

A quick post about The Gates Keith Gladysz

I haven't come across too many people who enjoyed the latest Christo and Jeanne-Claude project. Those who did like it seem to attribute aesthetic qualities to the work that I thought were completely lacking.

But the comments I've heard most in defense of the Gates, and the one I oppose most ardently, is it's function as public theater. Seemingly, the fact that the artists attracted so many people to view the work and experience it together in the public realm, is enough to justify its merit. That argument is more concerned with the PR genius that Christo and Jeanne-Claude have perfected over the years, than discussing the actual uninspired Home Depot-looking Gates themselves. If this line of thinking were true, any work could've been placed in the environment and served the same purpose. In that case, I'd have preferred to witness their Wrapped Trees which presents strong lyrical and transformative qualities.



Sure, Christo and Jeann-Claude created a media spectacle around Central Park. What I'm not sure of in this instance is why.

Cotter on Richard Tuttle James Stanfield

We went to the Richard Tuttle show at the Drawing Center this past weekend. Holland Cotter has written about it here. Cotter made the exhibition sound challenging and even slightly magical. After seeing the show in person, I find nothing difficult and am left wondering what it is that Holland Cotter sees that I don’t. The dematerialized challenge that Tuttle represented in the past is gone, and what is left seems to be studio produced gallery bound improvisation. It may be that the works ask us to appreciate small choices and small improvisation, but, sadly, I don’t care and remain ho-hum about the entire show.

I loved that Cotter asserted that Tuttle has absorbed into his work multicultural aspects without imitating the cultures they come from. Indeed this is something I want to believe is possible (it's the reason I dragged myself to SoHo), but when I look to the exhibition I see collector-size works lining the walls, each painted soft and happy. To me the only cultures that have been absorbed and remixed (yet again) are the cultures of the cozy studio and white gallery space.

What saved this visit, however, were the Hindu Tantric drawings presented across the street. You can read about the drawings here and here. They were shown concurrently with the Tuttle exhibition to suggest Tuttle’s good-globalness, but in my opinion they pointed to what his show lacked. These drawings are made as a meditation aid, and what has crept into them is acknowledgement of what I will call the gradation from positive to negative forces. Tuttle's current work doesn't have that. His is mainly a positive vision about noticing as pleasure, but today’s Tuttle only notices the nice and inoffensive. The tantra drawings seem at first to be abstractions, but figurative elements abound. Many of these elements (gnashing teeth, neon colors, sharp arrows) refer to parts of our experience that push towards the unpleasurable.

The Beginning Keith Gladysz

Leave it to us to start this January Blog on February 12th.
As long as we're not so late in our thinking, I think we'll be fine.

I'm looking forward to this space as a catalog and slight remedy for speeding heads.
Roy and Mayumi, my blogging partners, I'm excited to share this contemplative practice with you.
It feels good unravelling subtle questions with friends.