January Blog

Whitney Biennial ver 1.0

2006-03-06T12:44:00.000-05:00

The Whitney Biennial, ver 1.0

Wednesday I attended the less glamor more clamor, second, "artists'" opening of the Whitney Biennial. My first impression of the exhibition was that it was almost unbearably arch, clever, cold, soulless and ultimately depressing. I hated it. The focus of the show seemed to be very much about "issues" that the art world seems to care about, not all of which are formal, but which seem to have little relevance in the world at large (witness Matthew Day Jackson's handmade, kitsch-owl commanded covered wagon with its bonnet of sewn-together state flags and undercarriage of rainbow colored flourescent tubes.) Not to be outdone, the worst work in the show was a series of large fake monoliths by Dan Colen. Giant (6 feet or so high by about the same in circumference) gray zoo-rocks covered in chewed gum wads and graffiti rest on 6" high wooden triangles carved to spell out "phrases from the street" like "eat shit and die". Everything about the objects themselves is overly precious and, like the art direction for West Side Story, completely removed from the physical reality of its ostensible subject matter.

I did enjoy having the opportunity to revisit some old favorites, however. Kenneth Anger's 2005 video Mouse Heaven is a delirious meditation on Mickey Mouse, made even more strange by the fact that Anger, now 78, is the experimental filmmaker of the occult, though the sinister overtones of the film (and it's maddening soundtrack by the Proclaimers) were completely lost in the din of the opening. Troy Brauntuch's mesmerizing white conté on black cotton drawings were a singular point of arcane beauty. Rodney Graham's film Torqued Chandelier Release was a disappointment, if pretty, but the projection apparatus used for the installation was magnificent--I spent my time watching it instead. Paul Chan (whose name is mysteriously absent from the Whitney's website, hence lack of title here) presents a video installation (projected onto the rough flagstones of the Whitney's floor) of a black and white animation of telephone wires, birds, and rising detritus moving against falling bodies. That image, people jumping to their deaths from the burning buildings, was the most horrifying from September 11, 2001. Ever since Warhol the art world has had a complicated relationship to disaster imagery; more often than not the aestheticization of this kind of imagery renders it mute and thereby perpetuates a second offense against its victims. Artists like Kelly Walker, whose re-presentation of Warhol's riot imagery covered with chocolate, shrilly and heavy-handedly decry the ability of media images to have a real impact on a public so saturated with them, but Chan's installation refutes this: those pictures of suicides are so indelibly burned onto the collective retina of New Yorkers, at least, that a subtle and intelligent artist can use their power in a way that is quiet, truly poignant, and devastating.

Peter Doig's much anticipated paintings were shockingly old-fashioned.

Less devastating is the continued presence of "rock art". Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla's Sweat Glands is a large video projection of a lady rocker playing a guitar around a monolithic amp. Maybe it's a 2001 reference? Who cares? Trisha Donnelly, a performance/installation artist from San Francisco, presents a big room with one panel of silver plastic curtain streamers from the middle of the room, a very large Marlene Dumas-ish ink on canvas of a naked woman on one wall, a silver swiss ball, perhaps a mirror ball? and a collection of shabbily-made flat-black wood panels with "abject teen" notes pinned to them. I wasn't present for one of the unscheduled performances, which are inteded to "disrupt the temporal logic" of the exhibtion".

I watched the Francesco Vezzoli trailer for Caligula.

I was embarrased for Richard Serra.

The Sturtevant installation remaking 12 of Duchamp's readymades made me realize that we have a crisis in graduate art programs that really has to be addressed.

Postal Works

2006-01-10T21:57:00.000-05:00

My friend Harris turned me on to this track of Postal Workers in Ghana Canceling_Stamps.mp3. My life not so musical.

More about this project here

Catherine Sullivan with a side of Mike Kelley

2005-12-11T15:34:00.000-05:00

If you’re in New York you can go see the Mike Kelley exhibition, Day is Done, at Gagosian Gallery – and you should as it is a thorough re-rendering of his previous preoccupations – but don’t expect to find any soul. The show is a clutter of smaller projects – none of which has been treated with any special attention. No particular work stands out, and even though each piece is different in form – a monitor in this one, a simple sculpture in that one, a speaker emitting shrieks over there – I began to feel the sensation of standing in the McDonalds of post-conceptual Californian art. Each project was either a Big Mac or Quarter Pounder, Chicken Nuggets or a plain old cheeseburger. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the show, but only because I know that real nourishment is still available elsewhere.

And what do you know; good work was being served just down the street at Mike K.’s actual gallery, Metro Pictures. The Chittendens, by Catherine Sullivan, successfully created an alternative image-world. Two smallish movie screens stood side by side in the newly carpeted main gallery. Two different black and white videos were projected onto them. Both videos were shot in the same starkly lit business office. Characters from the office populated its rooms. The characters, mentally isolated, hardly ever interacted with one another; instead they twitched and projected guttural noises. One bare-chested man with an athletic physique wiggled and squirmed, and at first I was just positive he was Iggy Pop. Ghostly, this man faded from the room and was replaced by a man in a dark suit, who invited the audience into his office. There he tried to butter us up for the sale - unfortunately psychosis seemed to shatter his ability to speak. He then faded. A woman appeared on a couch; she mumbled and bobbed her head back and forth. It was all very Lynchian. People stopped representing people and instead seemed to represent personalities in the same head. Sometimes Sullivan projected three or more of the fidgeting characters all at once - layering the imagery to create the feeling that a brain (represented by the room) had stored each character’s movements and was now replaying them – doing its best to organize the years of personalities left in its schizophrenic mind.

Sullivan’s quotation of cinema - especially of the black and white, silver-screen, nostalgic strains – allowed me to slip out of the real world and into a trance. I wondered into the next showroom. There were two more videos, but this time they were projected on two opposing walls. You could not watch both at once. Here my attention was divided between a large projection of the same characters – again gesturing wildly, trying to communicate with non-speech – and a smaller, oval-shaped projection with a few of the characters milling about, possibly working, in an incredibly beautiful landscape by the sea. Here Sullivan combined the romance of 20th century cinema with the romance of18th and 19th century landscape painting. I could read, only, that the characters in the larger projection expressed desire to inhabit the scene in the landscape projection.

There was a third side room of projections, but it superfluous. Everything had already been accomplished in the main galleries. I spent a trance-blurred hour in the installation; except for the time that I was forced to patiently endure a Michael Snow mini epic (because the artist had planted himself right next to me) this is the longest I’ve ever sat to watch video art.

Ann Hamilton at Yokohama Triennale 2005

2005-11-29T22:40:00.000-05:00

When the artist Tadashi Kawamata was appointed as a director for Yokohama Triennale 2005, there were only 10 months left until the exhibition's opening on September 28th. He took full advantage of this peculiar circumstance and organized a lively art show of 86 artists and collaboratives. I had a chance to work with Ann Hamilton for this exhibition, and I think her work at the Triennale represents the improvisational quality that the exhibition has as a whole.

Ann Hamilton produced her installation/performance at Yokohama Triennale 2005 through email correspondence with participating climbers. She had not yet visited the site but instead worked from photographs and a floor plan of the exhibition space. She says, "All work happen [sic] by finding the right people and being in response and in conversation."

After considering the documentation shown to her by the Yokohama Triennale staff, Hamilton chose to work with the truss that supports the warehouse ceiling. Her e-mail on August 18, 2005 notes, "I am trying to develop a simple proposal for a single person/climber to move around the ceiling based on a length of rope or the measurement of the ceiling grids." The e-mail continues:

at a length - say 50 feet .... the person will pause, to make the sound of an insect with a hand held instrument until the climber perceives that someone below is listening to the call .... then pivoting off that point to climb to another place in the ceiling and repeating the gesture. The pattern of the rope in the ceiling will in time become a map of listening.

Quote ends here.

With this first proposal in mind, Hamilton, a novice climber, began a dialogue with several expert climbers. Learning about a system called lead climbing from Justin Roth, she decided to simplify her proposal. Hamilton's e-mail on September 1, 2005 says, "I believe it is better to have the work be the act of climbing through the ceiling with a red rope in a shape that traces a circle in the ceiling." With the help of a local climber, Daisuke Inoue, this proposal was further adjusted to fit the specific peculiarities encountered while climbing through the truss.

Titled "line," the final proposal included two climbers and a red climbing rope. The climbers wore simple white shirts and headlamps. The climbers also had i-pod's strapped to their waists. These ipod's periodically broadcast birdcalls throughout the space. The sound was soft and subtle. Since Hamilton wished the work to be understood as an evening ritual, all the performances began quietly an hour prior to sunset.

The climbers ascend to the ceiling by following an orange rope. The rope connects a point in the ceiling with the sidewall. Upon reaching a starting point high up in the ceiling truss, they secure themselves with the ends of a red rope. The lead climber moves around in the ceiling first, clipping the red rope to pre-installed carabineers. This happens while the second climber sits in a small swing installed at the starting point, feeding the red rope to the lead climber. When the lead climber reaches the last carabineer, which is at the starting point, he has used the red rope to trace a full circle in the ceiling truss. The circumference of the circle is about fifty meters. The first climber descends from the ceiling after completing his circle. While on the ground, he is careful to keep the rope taut so that the second climber can follow his route. The second climber traces the same path, purposefully unclipping the red rope from the carabineers. When the second climber finishes, the circle drawn with the rope is gone.

In this simple gesture of "handing the line end to end ... of gathering and letting out gathering and letting out," one can feel a crucial bond between the two climbers. The climbers are connected by a simple line, through which they become responsible for each other's lives. If one climber falls, it is the other climber's body weight that prevents him from hitting the ground. Thus, the line drawn with the 12mm thick rope is a line that sustains the lives of the climbers.

Each climber’s trip around the ceiling takes about 20 minutes, and it is not an easy route. Fighting the slope of the ceiling strains both climbers’ necks. The L-shaped truss material bites into their hands. The circle is drawn with great intensity and concentration, but as soon as a circle appears its erasure begins. Hamilton notes:

I think this really is in some ways the care for me of the gesture ... to close or draw a circle, a form that embraces and connects ... in a social or in a political sense ... to daily task between people and a daily challenge in the global world of many languages, cultures, climates and religions.

Harrell Fletcher: The American War

2005-11-25T14:34:00.000-05:00

In a recent project, Harrell Fletcher documented a display at The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The museum is a memorial revealing the atrocities that we committed during the Vietnam War - which is known in Vietnam as the American War.

Fletcher’s photography is purposefully amateur. The photos are of text and images framed behind glass, and - in an attempt to minimize reflected flash - they’re taken at peculiar angles. The wonky documentation makes the subject of the images more immediate.

In case it is unrecognizable as such, the following paragraph is intended as a compliment.

Fletcher’s project is hard to view as artwork. Its subject matter maybe too important to be understood as Duchampian reframing, and, unlike Pictures generation artwork, Fletcher has not really transformed the images into aestheticized art objects. Fletcher’s presentation is too direct for the discourse of appropriation, but this also means that I can mentally foreground the subject instead of experiencing an artwork. I will spend the next two paragraphs doing just that.

I first viewed the project’s website while at the office and had to stifle the impulse to weep. Murder and Savagery. Young Americans mutated into animals wielding weapons beyond their comprehension. There are not words vile enough to describe our aggression in Vietnam, but, foolishly, I’ll try; what we did was fucking monstrous and subhuman.

And it’s worse, because we’re still doing the American War: still killing, still profiting and still pretending that we’re helping. For nearly every devastating photo of our brutality in Vietnam there may exist an equivalent act of abuse in Iraq. The documentation - mediated by Harrell Fletcher but originally presented at The War Remnants Museum - not only recounts our cruelty in Vietnam but also illustrates the horrifying cost of our current and future military engagements.

The disruption is an opening

2005-11-17T02:41:00.000-05:00

I made a quick visit to the new home of Smack Mellon in Dumbo today. A group video art show called Multiplex 2 is currently showing. Takeshi Murata's Monster Movie (2005) drew me in because it reminded me of recent thoughts on abstraction.

Disrupted technology, or the unsuccessful digital transmission is captivating. You’ve seen moments of slow pixel-freezing on digital cable. And corrupted image files from the internet. These are some of the most beautiful images of ‘failure’.

I find it very optimistic viewing a situation this way, because there’s room to drop success and failure. The firm grip placed on determining the outcome of an experience lightens, and the mixed signal can be enjoyed for what it is. The disruption is an opening.

Technology is the speed of progress and I find it compelling to watch it crash. Enjoy the mistakes as they slip into unexpected ambiguity, birth and brilliance.

While Murata’s Monster Movie doesn’t literally capture and organize these malfunctioned moments, it does recreate this effect by distorting each individual frame of video. The result is non-stop psychedelia that feels like four minutes of malfunctioning tv. This can be a little much, but it’s Murata’s rhythmic sense of editing and the soundtrack provided by Plate Tectonics that keeps this piece just on the plus side of chaos.

Multiplex 2 is showing through November 27th.

Crass

2005-11-16T23:22:00.000-05:00

“…his cross, his manhood, violence, guilt, sin. He would nail my body upon his cross. Suicide Visionary. Death Reveler. Rake. Rapist. Life-fucker. Jesu. Earthmover. Christus. Gravedigger. You dug the pits of Auschwitz. The soil of Treblinka is your guilt - your sin. Master. Master of Gore. Enigma. You carry the standard of our oppression. Enola is your gaiety. The bodies of Hiroshima are your delight. The nails are your only trinity. Hold them in your corpsey gracelessness - the image I have had to suffer. The cross is the virgin body of womanhood that you defile. You nail yourself to your own sin. Lame arse Jesus calls me sister. There are no words for my contempt. Every woman is a cross in is filthy theology - in his arrogant delight. He turns his back upon me in his fear. He dare not face me. Fear-fucker. Share nothing you Christ. Sterile, impotent, fucklove, Prophet of Death. You are the ultimate pornography. in your cunt-fear, cock-fear, man-fear, woman-fear, unfair, warfare, warfare, warfare, warfare, warfare, warfare, warfare, warfare. JESUS DIED FOR IS OWN SINS, NOT MINE.”
- Crass from the song Asylum

And with these lyrics from the first song on the first Crass record that I ever laid eyes on, I fell permanently in love with Crass. I was in junior high or early high school, and, since Nirvana was being played on MTV, punk rock was infiltrating my small town. I got hold of Nevermind and Bleach, then came some Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr. records, and not long after that Sonic Youth and Minor Threat, and then some Bad Brains and Black Flag, and on and on and on. But of all these punk rock creatures it was Crass – probably least musical of the above-mentioned bands – that really stuck. Crass’s Feeding of the 5000 was the first time I encountered left-leaning politics stated directly, a well defined DIY punk ethic, and – looking back - also served as my introduction to artwork with avant-garde pretensions.

When I finally got my own copy, I remember bringing it to someone’s house – a girl that I considered to be really smart – and asking her to go through it with me. She tried to entertain my enthusiasm, letting me pick passages from the liner notes to read to the beat, but obviously considered my infatuation juvenile. Nearly 15 years later I’m still just as juvenile because I still love Crass. I read the lyrics – and though some are kinda’ trite – I believe in the direction they’re pointing.

Now that the internet is around I’m able to look them up and find out a little more about them. It seems they became confused towards the end. You can read about them on Wikipedia. Here’s an excerpt:

“In 1983 and 1984 they were part of the Stop the City actions that can be seen as fore-runners of the early 21st century anti-globalisation protests. Explicit support for such activities was given in the lyrics of the band's final single release "You're Already Dead", which also saw Crass abandoning their long time commitment to pacifism. This led to further introspection within the band, with some members feeling that they were beginning to become embittered as well as losing sight of their essentially positive stance. As a reflection of this debate, the next release using the Crass name was Acts of Love, classical music settings of 50 poems by Penny Rimbaud described as ‘songs to my other self’ and intended to celebrate ‘the profound sense of unity, peace and love that exists within that other self.’”

Academic Art

2005-11-15T14:32:00.000-05:00

Artworks are ritual objects. They become useful when viewed from a context that makes them so. Here the context is super reduced and super simple: the objects that produce the most money are the best objects. In my place and at this time, the idea of appreciation is tied in an exceedingly simple way to the idea of commodity.

Academic art (major). The Chelsea shopping mall is the academy, and the farce of serious language as a catalyst for the sale of ritual objects is the current hallmark of academic art. It is when language surrounding an artwork becomes more like a sales point and less like a belief that the art in question has become academic.

Academic art (minor). Reactionary to academic art (major), academic art (minor) seeks to eliminate art language completely.

Academic art. The pejorative phrase is abused. If used, it should mostly be directed towards decorations bound for Chelsea walls. But a better phrase might just be boring art.

Washington D.C., y'all.

2005-10-22T23:30:00.000-04:00

I was recently in Washington D.C. Most of these shows are closed now, but it's always nice to document in the written word.

G Fine Art, 1515 14th Street NW
Blasts, curated by Paul Brewer
Quote from the gallerist: "[The show] ends up being anti-war without being didactic." Interesting. I didn't find any hint of anti-war-ness in the show, save perhaps Louis Cameron's Warfare Riddim (version 2) digital piece showing a fake newsperson in front of cinematic imagery of buildings being blown up in a faux news show. The rest sort of seems to be about explosions. Heide Fasnacht's drawing, Three Buildings shows one of the three in the process of demolition. Something that I personally think is taboo regarding explosions is their beauty. A specific example is the visual beauty of buildings being blown up, even dare I say, the World Trade Towers. I think the beauty that we can not speak about does not rise from the symbolic destruction of a superpower, but rather in the ordinary way that we like to play with games and toys like Jenga. It's fun to watch things topple over. It's actually kind of beautiful to watch something hard and concrete end up to be a pile of rubble in the end. For me the show was a revelry in watching rubble happen.

Numark, 625 E St. NW
A City Paper "pick". The show is sort of the polar opposite of "Blasts", titled "An Empire of Sighs". This was a really delicate show that kind of reminded me of some of the more irritating parts of the art world. The fascination with delicacy and preciousness. At its best, I can be a participant in the fineness of this group show, like Michele Kong's Pores, made of hot glue and mono filament in a precious display of latticework. Sadly, the rest of the work left me uninterested either because it wasn't twee enough, or because craftmanship left something to be desired.

Fuse Box, 1412 14th Street NW
An installation by Kendall Buster, Model City is made from tent-like materials and is suspended from the cieling. Who lives in this model city? Why are they living in blue tents painted to look like brickwork? How is it a city when clearly all there is outside of any individual "tent" is another individual "tent"? None of these questions kept me from liking the work.

Conner Contemporary, 1730 Connecticut Ave. NW
Julee Holcombe's one person show was at first a witty trickster playing with notions of painting and image in photography. It becomes deeper as you notice the careful slowness with which her imagery is constructed. I'm constantly on the lookout for work that whispers or hums, not shouts. Holcombe's work melodically hums without you noticing that you've picked up the tune yourself.

Found Sound, Various locations around DC
I only got to three of these installations. Harry Shearer's ipod shuffle with ambient street sounds in the wake of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans, Brandon Morse's street sound installation that mixed traffic noise with prerecorded sounds constantly mixing in a parabola, and Joseph Grigely's non-sound piece about not wanting girls to hear one pee. All three were fun, and the kind of thing cities are good for. That is, communal experiences. To have a large community involved in sound awareness can only spell good for those of us who are acutely atuned to improper cell phone usage and unnecessary honking incidents.

D.C. had a lot more than I expected. And the Spy Museum rocks a whole lot.

Sam Durant

2005-10-17T17:28:00.001-04:00

Several of my friends asked what I thought of the Sam Durant exhibition at Paula Cooper.

The main showroom spaces are filled with gray – Bondo colored – renditions of obelisk shaped monuments. The press release can give you the skinny on the conceptual project behind it all. My politics are so aligned with the thrust of this project that I don’t feel any shock or estrangement from the facts that Durant asks me to focus on. (In fact, the only persons that could be challenged by his trajectory are either deplorably undereducated or Republican.)

My criticism is that Durant takes no real chances. This cleaned-up, research-enriched, gallery-ready, conceptual project method of building an art experience is so acceptable that I can’t find the excitement. The method has become prosaic. It’s unfortunate that a project intent on exposing the glorification of homegrown genocide is stifled by such a Phaidon book version of 80’s and 90’s era post-conceptual practice.

On the up side, the mental gesture involving the transfer of these monuments to Washington, D.C. is amusing. What if he could cause that controversy – force the majority to face facts?

Seth Price: Dispersion

2005-10-09T15:11:00.004-04:00

I found Seth Price’s Dispersion while wandering the artist’s website. The essay is easy to read, and it's presented as a fully illustrated, and appropriation drenched, booklet/internet document.

Sometimes images in Dispersion act as layout devices, sometimes as literal illustrations of the text, and still at other times they act as visual non-sequiturs, but at all times the images reinforce Price’s penchant for leveling all imagery found in the popular archive.

What is the popular archive? It is hard to say - as Price does not spend much time describing it. I take it to mean a collection of all the images that have ever been produced. In Dispersion’s case Price is describing all audio and visual signs - made since the invention of the printing press - that can travel in a mass-produced media document. He sees these as objects to be collected and reused “with or without modifications, regardless of intellectual property laws.”

Price says:

The last thirty years have seen the transformation of art’s "expanded field", from a stance of stubborn discursive ambiguity into a comfortable and compromised situation in which we’re well accustomed to conceptual interventions, art and the social, or “relational aesthetics”. The impulse to merge art and life has resulted in lifestyle art, a secure gallery practice that comments on contemporary media culture, or apes commercial production strategies.

End quote.

Instead of continuing this practice Price offers up the restaging of familiar techniques of distribution - using recognizable and previously distributed images - as a way of creating an art-like experience outside the confines of the gallery. It is uncertain if this action is art, since it attempts to escape the confines of artistic practice by more fully merging its sensibility with whatever media is being used. So Dispersion argues for less of a rupture between artistic interventions and distributed media.

The most gruesome example offered in Dispersion is “the Daniel Pearl video”.

Quote begins here.

Even without the label PROPAGANDA, which CBS helpfully added to the excerpt they aired last spring, it’s clear that the 2002 video is a complex document. Formally, it presents kidnapped American journalist Daniel Pearl, first as a mouthpiece for the views of his kidnappers, a Pakistani fundamentalist organization, and then, following his off-screen murder, as a cadaver, beheaded in order to underline the gravity of their political demands.

One of the video’s most striking aspects is not the grisly, though clinical, climax (which, in descriptions of the tape, has come to stand in for the entire content), but the slick production strategies, which seem to draw on American political campaign advertisements. (Price)

End quote.

Here a violent, political action was taped and then edited for consumption. The edits mimic media graphics in either a naive or mocking way. There is a willingness on the part of the executioners to exploit the same graphic language used in American propaganda. This video's tragic content is too powerful to rest as art, but its advert-like appearance makes it confusing. Its edited and reprocessed existence feels like a media critique - like something that uses contemporary art making strategies.

In Dispersion there is a still from the Daniel Pearl video printed next to the text. The three images following this still are various appropriated portraits. Two of these portraits would normally not be understood as gruesome, but since they are printed near the image of Daniel Pearl’s decapitation video they both gain a slightly eerie connotation. These two images’ titles are Computer Technique Group, Cubic Kennedy, 1960’s and Computer Technique Group, Return to a Square, 1960’s. It is in this grouping that Price’s way of creating experience through bits culled from the popular archive begins to emerge. It is the residue of shock (Daniel Pearl video) mixed with the residue of history (assassination of Kennedy) and underscored with the residue of perpetually obsolete technology (Computer Technique Group, 1960’s) that creates an art-like experience for the reader. The general tenor of this mixture is one of pathos and melancholy.

Why is this experience just art-like and not simply art? I believe Price’s own phrasing is best:

One suggestion comes from the philosopher Sarat Maharaj, who sees the question as "a marker for ways we might be able to engage with works, events, spasms, ructions that don’t look like art and don’t count as art, but are somehow electric, energy nodes, attractors, transmitters, conductors of new thinking, new subjectivity and action that visual artwork in the traditional sense is not able to articulate." These concise words call for a art that insinuates itself into the culture at large, an art that does not go the way of, say, theology, where, while it’s certain that there are practitioners doing important work, few people notice…

End quote.

Mike Smith Database Pt II

2005-10-06T11:45:00.000-04:00

Hello!

I completely forgot about this blog until today... I saw the posting about Mike Smith, and I felt compelled to add to it a bit as I, too, am a devotee of his work and know that access to it seems difficult. (So please don't kick me off!)

The best resource for information about Mike's video work is the Electronic Arts Intermix website:
http://www.eai.org/eai/artist.jsp?artistID=316
On the site you will find all of the videos by Mike in the EAI collection as well as a brief synopsis of each. The best part about EAI is that anyone (including you) can call them up and make a 2 hour appointment to see any work in the entire collection. There is no charge for this, and EAI is conveniently located (for artheds) on 22nd St in the Printed Matter building.

Hooray for Mike Smith.

Open Letter to Mark

2005-10-04T16:00:00.000-04:00

This is in response to a comment left at the bottom of the previous post.

Hey Mark,

That last post of mine was pretty cheeky. I don’t think I wanted to critique Zak Smith’s work as much as I wanted to critique the Chelsea/Grad School scene that puts so much machinery behind young artists. It is like collectors want to buy the work that reminds them of their children. The effects are not devastating to art – you can’t kill that. The effects are devastating for individual artists. Zak Smith is already a brand name – his future potential limited by this fact. Those gallery lights are pretty bright and won’t mind burning him and several hundred other kids to a crisp.

Of course I know what you are saying, but everyone has different tastes. Many of the people working out here are doing so in their own field of inquiry.

I always have mixed feelings about my own work. Usually I feel like I’m chasing down something really important - doing something that few others would be willing to. But, when my work is shown very few people are capable of reacting to it. I don’t think that my work is of low quality (although a lack of craft is part of its demands); I just think that it’s not for everyone. In fact, it’s for very few people.

There is a romantic idea that someone really can express themselves in their artwork. Well, I’ve found that this is true, but it’s not as simple as it first sounds. Since I’ve been in the city I’ve met only a few artworks - by a certain few people- that I’ve truly been interested in. These works don’t express a lot in the romantic sense. They aren’t containers for immense amounts of pain and anguish. They aren’t happy, radiant, or bubbling over with human dignity. They don’t express much in the plain-speak sense of the word express. What these works do is communicate that their makers and I are thinking similar thoughts. I live for these moments. I like to believe that what is being said in these artworks is something that would not be as well communicated in words. I also believe that what is being said could not have been achieved if the artist hadn’t physically worked with material from the world.

It is strange that so much artwork is made, but that I’m only able to find the things I care about in a small percentage of it. It’s like I’m blind to much so that I can have a deeper experience in just one area. At 19 I did not know that it would be harder and harder to like others’ work. At 27 art journeys are already starting to seem bittersweet.

Thanks for the comment,

Roy

Nine Inch Bohemian

2005-09-30T22:21:00.000-04:00

I found myself at the Zak Smith opening last Wednesday in Chelsea. The art was really boring. I mean put you to sleep boring. The paintings reminded me of high school work – or maybe my first year in art school when all I wanted was to draw my new girlfriend naked.

The opening was packed and many of the guests had really cool died hair-jobs. Part of the crowd was pure Chelsea, but the other part seemed like they had just walked out of a NIN video (circa 89 or 90). I never really liked NIN. 1990-93 was always more about Nirvana or old Minor Threat and Crass records to me. Anyway, the hair-jobs were fun and the crowd made up for the sad pictures.

Ian Pedigo once said that he did not know why the arts are associated with the idea of bohemianism. I've thought about this, and I’m uncertain myself. When one bohemian group becomes a little tired a new set of cool kids appears. I guess that psychedelic kid art – the stuff in that new Deitch book – is on its way out, and here comes an awkward reworking of a strange phase, associated with the music industry, when synthesizers, punk, and goth all met to send industrial music into a perilous downward spiral. Hair-Job.

-----12345678910

2005-09-26T17:42:00.000-04:00

The following is quoted from an article called Born Into Bondage, written by Paul Raffaele and published in the September 2005 issue of Smithsonian Magazine.

“Lightning and Thunder split the Saharan night. In northern Niger, heavy rain and wind smashed into the commodious goatskin tent of a Tuareg tribesman named Tafan and his family, snapping a tent pole and tumbling the tent to the ground.

Huddling in a small, tattered tent nearby was a second family, a man, a woman and their four children. Tafan ordered the woman, Asibit, to go outside and stand in the full face of the storm while holding the pole steady, keeping his tent upright until the rain and wind ceased.

Asibit obeyed because, like tens of thousands of other Nigerians, she was born into a slave caste that goes back hundreds of years. As she tells it, Tafan’s family treated her not as a human, but as chattel, a beast of burden like their goats, sheep and camels. Her eldest daughter, Asibit says, was born after Tafan raped her, and when the child turned 6, he gave her as a present to his brother – a common practice among Niger’s slave owners. Asibit, fearful of a whipping, watched in silence as her daughter was taken away.

…

Asibit bore these indignities without complaint. On that storm-tossed night in the desert, she says, she struggled for hours to keep the tent upright, knowing she’d be beaten if she failed. But then, like the tent pole, something inside her snapped: she threw the pole aside and ran into the night, making a dash for freedom to the nearest town, 20 miles across the desert.

History resonates with countless verified accounts of human bondage, but Asibit escaped only in June of last year.

Disturbing as it may seem in the 21st century, there may be more forced labor in the world now than ever…”

Americans

2005-09-23T15:22:00.000-04:00

I really really love the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is just so ginormous that I can literally go there every weekend and see not just something different, but an entirely new wing that has never made itself apparent to me. I regularly spend hours at the Met. It's like a second home- apart from work.

For the past year, I have been visiting the American Wing- always giving it enough time that I end up being kicked out by the guards, but not enough to cover all its ground. The American Wing is my own personal favorite because I'm often spending time with the paintings and the guards alone. The location is tucked away in an upstairs area that is hard to imagine in architecture. Even though I have been visiting for a year, I still have a hard time picturing how it fits into the huge space.

It's funny that the Met hides this section within its architecture. I mean, when you walk in, there are those huge steps, and the first thing you are walking into is European Painting. The architecture just guides you there. But for the American stuff, you have to find your way to the back, and enter some strange indoor/outdoor/indoor spaces that really make you appreciate the monstrosity of the place. Even once you're in the American Wing, you're hard pressed to find those John Singer Sargents they all talk about, like Madame X... . They're all so tucked way way back in a section of the museum that likely gets a decimal of a percentage of the traffic that the European Paintings get. This isn't very nationalistic of the Met, and I personally think it's a shame. Why give all the credit to the tradition of European painting, when we can hand ourselves and our forefathers the credit for reconstructing painting in a new land.

Yesterday I hung out with the American old historical paintings. They seem so funny, these painters, painting historical battle or tactical events, characterizing their figures in "noble" light like a drama playing out on the battle field. There's something really interesting about this notion of painting real events that really intrigues me. Like a notion of "reality" painting that could work. Like, what if we painted as television has done "real" events but ratcheted up the drama? And not just grand scale "reality" like as in historical paintings of political events... but just the banal stuff that would get edited into a 30 minute piece on how I flipped out at some woman on the subway putting her bag all up in my face.

I think this American tradition of painting has something to say about how Americans paint today. It's like it's all a farce we're all trying to pose and act like we belong, knowing full well that the the tradition of painting will always hang over our heads either in the form of placed prominence in architecture or in terms of credibility in the larger art world.

I'll try to hedge off what I see coming in form of comments, and say that recent history has proved to be the coming of age of American art and has placed Americans at the center stage of the art world. But still. Americans are isolated, pugnacious, and bratty. This shows in our paintings especially. We pose and wring our hands trying to think of more neurotic more self-deprecating ways to present our ideas, and it all comes off false. We're likable, just not terribly sure of ourselves, and not certain that we fit the way we want to fit. I'd expand this cultural identity all the way up to our President, GWB. Bragadoccio and humility mix in an awful display of ineptitude that I think we all have to face. I think one way to start to retrain our perspective is to suit our largest national museum to the American prominence that it wants to take, but doesn't want to display. Or is it the other way around?

Old News As New

2005-09-15T00:09:00.000-04:00

It was September 10th when I finally saw the Greater New York Show at PS1. A bit behind the curve as usual, I’m afraid. Still it was new news to me, even if the shows been up since last March. I think the threat of its imminent closing finally got me to see the follow up to 2000’s original Greater New York (which I saw, quite early on, thank you).

Yes, hit and miss, though when it hit, it hit hard and with resonance. I had an exhaustedly good time. My regrets to the work on the third floor, I breezed by you in a fog. The first floor gets fresh eyes.

I loved the first gallery with works by Amy Cutler and Kent Henricksen. Show’s off to a great start, I thought. Amy’s drawings are equal parts craft and dream. I stared and stared, altering between analysis and hypnosis. And Kent’s work was the perfect compliment on the adjacent wall, cranking the uncanny creep knob a bit more. His embroidered images of hooded and masked s&m/ Klan figures on pillows depicting 17th century folk scenes, strangely connected the dots between faux idyllic imagery and the later work of Philip Guston. Who would have thought that would work? Kent did.

In the next room, I enjoyed looking at Yuken Teruya’s tree bags. The Notice Forest series transforms paper bags from well-known chains like McDonalds and Tiffany’s back into trees (at least metaphorically, and wielding tattooed corporate logos).

Hope Atherton’s Brown unicorn was like Beuy’s with a sad, pouty lip.

While Will Ryman’s The Pit made me climb, peer and smile.

Adam Helm’s NFA-NorthEastCompany scared me silly, in content and quality.

There was a lot more work that I loved but failed to mention. That’s my fault for keeping poor records and leaving my judgments to first impressions only. Had I seen the show months ago and then revisited, I might have more to say. Oh, I feel sheepish. But I still have ten days to go back. The show closes September 26th.

Said by Nietzsche

2005-08-25T13:05:00.000-04:00

We must consider in this production of creative beings the indescribable malaise that they so often spread around themselves, when we evaluate the joy and ennoblement that humanity owes to their works. Their inability to dominate themselves, their jealousy, their ill-will and their uncertain characters mean that they are as often wrong-doers for humanity, where they would be its benefactors. In particular, the behavior of one genius to another is one of history's darkest pages. Veneration of genius has often been an unconscious form of devil worship. We should calculate how many men have corrupted their character and taste by frequenting geniuses.

We have perhaps more need of great men without works than great works for which such a heavy price has to be paid in terms of human souls. But at present we barely understand what a great man without works might be.

4 or 5

2005-07-23T13:51:00.000-04:00

It has been a little while since I posted. I apologize. You know…it’s the usual. Life was just too busy for a month there. But, now I’m back, and Mary Jeys will not have to triple post.

I have got four recommends from the gallery world right now. First there is a neat show at Anton Kern of Matthew Monahan pieces. These works are kind of traditional, but I respond to them because of their clunkiness. They're fun.

Another recommend would be the current group show at Barbara Gladstone called Bridge Freezes Before Road. It’s a nice rock ’n roll survey of what is cool and macho. There are several of the new hot artists in this show, but I would like to focus on the older dudes that are there to give the younger dudes their cred. That video by Chris Burden cracks me up, but let me call out that Jack Goldstein painting – Peeeeeew! What a piece of shit. I know that I’ve written glowingly about that work in the past, but this one sux. From the looks of this painting 1982 must have been a nose-burning coke year.

Andrew Kreps has got a great exhibition up right now – We Could Have Invited Everyone. This is a heavily curated, reading intensive show, but I'm a believer. These curator’s are artists for sure. Go see it, but make sure you stop by Paula Cooper and urinate first, because you're gonna have to stay for a good 30 minutes to get as much as this show has to give.

Nichole Klagsbrun has a group exhibition called Walls 'n Things. And really, I don't care for much of the work. As far as I’m concerned this one is all Gedi Sibony. As with all the group exhibitions he’s been in lately, he steals the show with far less work placed in a much smarter way.

And finally, I’ve just been alerted to the fact that Seth Price has curated something over at Friedrich Petzel. I’ll be stopping by there on Tuesday and will send you my full report through JBlog.

Grizzly

2005-07-21T00:40:00.000-04:00

I just went to this screening of Werner Herzog's new film, "Grizzly Man". It was pretty fun and free. One of the benefits in living in this overpriced town is that if you're down for it, you can have a killer time for free and even end up meeting the director afterwards.

Back when I took a film class in high school, we were taught that there are only three types of films in this world. Man vs. Man, Man vs. Society, and Man vs. Nature. This one falls in the category of the latter. But as with all things, there's a touch of the former two in it as well.

My favorite part of the night was the panel discussion between a professional moderator, the director, one featured person in the film, and a man who had really been attacked by a bear. When he got on the stage I knew it would be great because he had an eyepatch. When the eyepatch shows up, you know you're in for a ride.

I'm gonna keep this post short, but what's the deal with Werner Herzog? I can't say I've seen much of his work, but what little of it I have seen has me perplexed. I saw "My Best Fiend", and while it was a fascinating character study, I just don't know what I got from the film beyond "This guy is nuts!" It probably has something to do with my small brain and how it's used to being told what to think, but I just don't really get the work. Any help for me out there?

Bean Town

2005-07-13T23:26:00.000-04:00

I went to Boston last week. On top of it being a refreshing break from this hot and sticky overpopulated town, it was a chance to revisit how the other towns do this art thing.

Boston has no equivalent place to Chelsea/Soho/57th Street. There is no home base for galleries. As far as I know, there is only one place to see contemporary art of note, Barbara Krakow. Unfortunately, her gallery is on like the 3rd floor in the shopping district and is pretty much the most uninviting gallery I've ever tried to enter. I didn't know where I was, the door was closed and there was detritus all over the hallway.

This makes me think that the Boston gallery market doesn't really count on the "looky-loos." (thanks D.Hickey) If you are interested in spending real money on art in Boston, you make an appointment. If you just want to look around, you have your choice: cape cod seascapes, found at your local seaside tourist shoppe, or the Museum of Fine Arts.

I opted for the MFA (huh,). There were two temporary exhibits. One was the special "pay-extra, view-at-alotted-time-slot", the other was a "view-at-liesure". The Quilts of Gees Bend was the latter and is a show I highly recommend for everyone. It sounds boring, but if you get a chance, just wander through, it's all about the way these sewn minimalist patterns work way better than anything a painter ever did. (props to Roy)

The pay-to-see show was something called "Speed, Style, and Beauty: Cars From the Ralph Lauren Collection". This is a typical non-show. Look at cars! They're the art sitting in right in your garage! (Or in the overcharged parking spot as you view the exhibition) I mean, I like cars. I even like NASCAR. And yes, I have a favorite, The Bugatti (pictured above). But the show gave us nothing about a culture/society outside of our own. Part of a museum's draw is a peek into another time or into another place. To look at a famous designer's car collection is to look in a mirror- like Entertainment Tonight- but in a museum, it should work reflexively: why do we care? It wouldn't be so bad if it were a deep look, but too often museums won't offend paying visitors for the money shot to expose our over zealous obsession with celebrity and opulescence. This show is no exception. It's all about this one guy's collection. This guy who owns some stylish, and admittedly, old cars and has a fortune from making up-market clothing. I think it truly exposes the nature of special exhibitions at major museums. It's all just hobnobbing with stars.

Imagined conversation with Ralph Lauren and exhibition curator, Darcy Kuronen:

***ring! ***ring! ***
DK: Special curator du jour, how may I help you?
RL: Oh hi, Darcy. I uh, hey, can I ask you a question?
DK: Who is this?
RL: Oh, sorry, it's Ralph.
DK: Son, I told you, pranks aren't allowed while I'm at work!
RL: What? No No, really, it's Ralph. Ralph Lauren.
DK: Oh, oh. Lipschitz! What up, dog?
RL: Yeah, Darce. I have these cars see, and they're just collecting dust right?
DK: Yeah, I haven't worked at that car garage in quite some time, I don't even know anyone there that could give you a tire air discount anymore.
RL: No, the expensive cars, in my collection. I was wondering if you were curating anything at the moment.
DK: Your cars? What, have they been sat in by Jennifer Aniston, and Brangelina?
RL: ...No. Uh....no, I spent a lot of money on these vehicles over the decades, and I have run out of money to pay insurance on them. Also, I've had some credit problems. Anyway, I wanted to free up the garage for a new clothing line. Is there any free space in the Museum's schedule?
DK: Hmm, let me see... I think we can make this work, right between some real art, Ah yeah, let's just bump the Quilts...
RL: to downstairs. Yeah, no one's going to pay special price for some sewing. The people want to look at things they can't have.
DK: I bet we can even dig up some drawings from our archive. I think we can do this in July, but Ralph, I'm not sure that we can give you a publishing deal.
RL: Darcy... I, didn't.
DK: We can't do glossy, and gift shop paraphernalia won't be ready.
RL: You won't make me... I don't have any spare...
DK: I'm sorry Lip, we just can't.
RL: ...
DK: ...
RL: Fine, you can have a custom fit design of your choice for the show's opening only.
DK: Oh, huh. I just remembered, I think we've got some new meat in our publishing department with something to prove, I'm sure we can work things out.
RL: I knew you'd help, you're such a pal. See you on Fire Island?
DK: All summer!

The Mike Smith Database

2005-06-13T15:50:00.000-04:00

Since documentation of authentic Mike Smith artwork is so very difficult to find through Google, January Blog has taken it upon itself to provide The Mike Smith Database. This is a public service and free of charge.

Right now the database is tiny, but, since we believe Mike Smith to be among the best artists on Earth, we expect it to grow rapidly. If this database should ever meet with Mike Smith's disapproval, we will remove it from the web at his request. Until then send all images of Mike Smith artworks to wroistanfield@yahoo.com. Thank you.

Love the Container

2005-06-11T12:03:00.000-04:00

I made my first trip to Dia:Beacon over last weekend. The space and location was so amazing that a good portion of the work was eclipsed by the former factory space on the Hudson River. I had to decide to be heady or head out in the sun to enjoy the surrounding property. Even though the sun won I saw the whole collection and some really great work.

Richard Serra’s Torqued Series hit home with me. I loved walking in them, sensing the swelling, subtle movement of solid matter. On a geek note, they reminded me of the Jawa’s huge sandcrawlers, in almost static motion.

Also, Robert Smithson’s room was of interest. Sand and mirrors that somehow transform. Bruce Nauman’s ‘South American Circle’ was wonderful and displayed with proper eeriness in the basement.

There was also a Warhol exhibit that displayed a lot of his knick-knacks. Not too exciting to me. I’m wondering if I’d make a special trip again to Dia:beacon. If there were a particular show I'm sure I would. But having been there once seems enough to last me for a little while.

Mike Smith - Pro Sk8boarder

2005-06-09T19:08:00.000-04:00

Went to the Met to escape the heat. No air conditioner has Mayumi and I trying to spend the daylight hours in stores and museums. The met was amazing as usual – was also tiring as usual.

Found myself thinking of these three people all day:

Mike Smith. Have you ever tried to google his name? You’ll never find him among all the others. If you know his work that’s really very fitting. (He makes great stuff about failure.) I want to know what he’s up to lately. I would like to nominate Mike Smith for a Jblog award. Maybe, most creeped-out artwork (2005) for Take Off Your Pants! He has a co-conspirator that goes by the name Joshua White.

Neo Rauch. Wanted to complain about this work, but am too tired and hot to do that. I’m sure that is just as well.

Andy Coolquitt. If you have not seen his house in Austin, Texas – or the 20 pages in Nest Magazine devoted to it - you can watch this video made for the public station in Austin.

Oh, and I think the image at the top of this post is a poster for one of Andy's shows.

$5

2005-06-07T23:46:00.001-04:00

I picked this up over at Nicole Eisenman's blog. Will go if, sadly, I can pull together a spare $5.

Wednesday June 8th, 7pm,
Laughing Matters
An evening with presentations by philosopher Simon Critchley, artist Luke Murphy, and a screening of Samuel Beckett's Film.
The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street,
$5 Advanced ticket purchase strongly recommended (212 255 5793 ext 11)

"...Ever since Aristotle's lost book on comedy, laughter has been a conundrum in Western thought that has puzzled not only philosophers but also scientists, sociologists, and comedians. Laughing Matters draws on a number of sources to explore why people laugh. Beginning with a presentation by artist Luke Murphy utilizing simple Powerpoint graphs to "clarify" the relationship between laughter and other emotional states, the evening continues with a screening of Samuel Beckett's short film from 1965, in which an aging Buster Keaton seems to have a pathological aversion to allowing his face to be seen by the other protagonists or even the camera. Beckett's 20-minute film will provide the background for philosopher Simon Critchley to explore the three philosophical traditions that attempt to explain why humans enjoy laughing".