"Whiting Tennis", Derek Eller
Hey Whiting, you have the whole gallery and you deserve it. Good job. Seriously, the artists two-dimensional wooden panel thing drawings have become outstanding sculptures. Incredible works. Fortunately the silly 'found object organizers' handing on the walls help remind us that not everything in the world is wonderful.
"seven line drawings by picasso" venetia kapernekas gallery
Wow. It's so easy to get Picasso'd out, but this was shockingly great. He makes it look so easy...
"New Prints: Spring 2008" International Print Center New York
Nathaniel Hester gets a 'buy' rating.
"Christopher Wool", Luhring Augustine
Why show those paintings at all when the silkscreens are so much better? It's like when Matthew Barney shows mostly bad props from his mostly overdone movies, it's both uncomfortable and unnecessary.
"Anish Kapoor", Barbara Gladstone
The 21st Street mirrors are fun to experience but not great art. The freaky nuclear smoke stack shaped thing on 24th Street went from interesting to "Oh good my eyes are dying, but in a good way" in the time it took to walk inside. The big shiny needle on 21st Street was just an embarrassment, it's only redeeming factor is that it might make a good place for a dramatic super-villain death.
"Mark Di Suvero", Paula Cooper
What can save us from that giant Mark Di Suvero piece? Maybe Mecha-Godzilla. We can only hope.
"String Based Instrument Study", Tanya Bonakdar
How is it that this project instantly became boring when I saw Olafur Eliasson's name?
"Liam Gillick", Casey Kaplan
These eyeball amusers become more acceptable with the socially relevant title.
"Ken Solomon, Josee Bienvenu Gallery
Laugh out loud clever work, all about the postal system. The best piece being a post box made of boxes all shipped throught he postal system, though I confess I'm suspicious as none of the boxes showed scuff marks on their shiny paint jobs.
"Anne Hardy", Bellwether Gallery
Walked in expecting the typical flinch, but... holy shit. A gallerist lets a good artist show good art, the system works.
Art faux pax of the month: Oh no! We've all created two-dimensional works using nails to create pattern and form! Someone has to go home and change.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Beyond the Pale, Moti Hasson Gallery, Jan 18 - Feb 17, 2008
This rather confused group show unites under the banner of going "beyond the limits of law or decency". Sadly, the closest thing to a tenet of decency that is challenged is the Modernist order to pursue the novel. Little new territory is explored, none is staked with any authority - even the shameless retreads like Clifford Owens performance documents and pretty works by Xylor Jane fail to work any sort of new meaning into the tropes on which they depend.
One might hope that the Fluxus posturing of Clifford Owens feeds back into the myth of performance in a witty, or at least sarcastic way. In the photograph Studio Visits: Skowhegan (Donald Moffet), Owes sits naked on a chair surrounded by props which indicate some sort of performance as being in the works. Artistic authority is lent by the mention of the famous artist residency, the Skowhegan School of Painting, and the politically loaded Donald Moffett (by the way Owens, Moffett is spelled with two T's). And since the artist is naked, we know that performance with a capital P is occuring. After all, naked equals serious.
We might hope that the straight stare of Owens is a challenge to the extremely conscious posturing of the photograph. He stares directly into the camera lens with slightly crossed eyes, reclining in a classical pose. However, his other work in the show diffuses this exciting thought.
Four Fluxus Scores by Benjamin Patterson (Whipped Cream Piece, Lick Piece, 1964) documents Owens recreation of the Patterson performance listed in the title, the simple instructions of which read:
cover shapely female with whipped cream
lick
...
topping of chopped nuts and cherries is optional
Owens doesn't recreate the original 1964 performance itself, but merely follows the directions Fluxus fashion - he opts to leave off the optional cherry but includes the nuts. His own, that is. For whatever reason, Owens is also naked in this acting out of the Fluxus performance. This puzzling decision, along with the clinical white of the photographs setting, seems to again be a struggle to find artistic legitimacy in played out terrain. Why be naked? Why do it in a gallery setting? Why photograph it and show it to us? In trying to make these performances his own. his choices seem consistently odd in a non-challenging way. In Owens' defense, the original performance of the piece included a naked woman which wasn't expressly called for either - let's all assume that the reason Owens is naked is somehow related to this fact.
Seriously folks, why do performance artists still love to be naked? Is there really any territory left to tread in the naked world? And of all the folks that need to be chastised for the treatment of the nude, the Fluxists are pretty low on the list.
Other artists in the show fair better, but few properly shine. Kerstin Brätsch is probably the best of the lot, with geometric wall assemblies made up of photocopies and painted bits. Paul Pagk comes a close second with bright geometric paintings showing thin lines and rough brushiness, hard to go wrong with paintings of this sort. Shinique Smith surprises with beige-ified versions of her earlier cloth bundles - not necessarily exciting but it is always nice to see an artist change things up a bit. Tommy Hartung has a sculptural piece that has more to say about video than his video does. And Uri Anan has a video with a soundtrack that has little to do with the video - experimental video worthy of that long established genre.
But most of these artists, and don't fault them for this is an easy thing to do, fall into the same trap as Clifford Owens and the Fluxus work: They are following a script written by someone else and desperately trying to make it their own through heavy handed applications of art tools; nakedness, busyness, tropes and tricks. Beyond the Pale is more about resurrecting the mythological dead than testing any sorts of limits.
One might hope that the Fluxus posturing of Clifford Owens feeds back into the myth of performance in a witty, or at least sarcastic way. In the photograph Studio Visits: Skowhegan (Donald Moffet), Owes sits naked on a chair surrounded by props which indicate some sort of performance as being in the works. Artistic authority is lent by the mention of the famous artist residency, the Skowhegan School of Painting, and the politically loaded Donald Moffett (by the way Owens, Moffett is spelled with two T's). And since the artist is naked, we know that performance with a capital P is occuring. After all, naked equals serious.
We might hope that the straight stare of Owens is a challenge to the extremely conscious posturing of the photograph. He stares directly into the camera lens with slightly crossed eyes, reclining in a classical pose. However, his other work in the show diffuses this exciting thought.
Four Fluxus Scores by Benjamin Patterson (Whipped Cream Piece, Lick Piece, 1964) documents Owens recreation of the Patterson performance listed in the title, the simple instructions of which read:
cover shapely female with whipped cream
lick
...
topping of chopped nuts and cherries is optional
Owens doesn't recreate the original 1964 performance itself, but merely follows the directions Fluxus fashion - he opts to leave off the optional cherry but includes the nuts. His own, that is. For whatever reason, Owens is also naked in this acting out of the Fluxus performance. This puzzling decision, along with the clinical white of the photographs setting, seems to again be a struggle to find artistic legitimacy in played out terrain. Why be naked? Why do it in a gallery setting? Why photograph it and show it to us? In trying to make these performances his own. his choices seem consistently odd in a non-challenging way. In Owens' defense, the original performance of the piece included a naked woman which wasn't expressly called for either - let's all assume that the reason Owens is naked is somehow related to this fact.
Seriously folks, why do performance artists still love to be naked? Is there really any territory left to tread in the naked world? And of all the folks that need to be chastised for the treatment of the nude, the Fluxists are pretty low on the list.
Other artists in the show fair better, but few properly shine. Kerstin Brätsch is probably the best of the lot, with geometric wall assemblies made up of photocopies and painted bits. Paul Pagk comes a close second with bright geometric paintings showing thin lines and rough brushiness, hard to go wrong with paintings of this sort. Shinique Smith surprises with beige-ified versions of her earlier cloth bundles - not necessarily exciting but it is always nice to see an artist change things up a bit. Tommy Hartung has a sculptural piece that has more to say about video than his video does. And Uri Anan has a video with a soundtrack that has little to do with the video - experimental video worthy of that long established genre.
But most of these artists, and don't fault them for this is an easy thing to do, fall into the same trap as Clifford Owens and the Fluxus work: They are following a script written by someone else and desperately trying to make it their own through heavy handed applications of art tools; nakedness, busyness, tropes and tricks. Beyond the Pale is more about resurrecting the mythological dead than testing any sorts of limits.
Daphne Fitzpatrick, Bellwether Gallery, October 2007
My first question on entering the show was the same I asked on my way out. Who the heck is Daphne Fitzpatrick and why is occupying a prime slot at Bellwether while their hottest gallery artist, Ellen Altfest, is showing at White Cube in London. Where did this person come from?
To skip to the end of the book, I'll tell you that Daphne Fitzpatrick was one of the original founders of Bellwether back when it was a down-homey space in Greenpoint. She also is one handshake away from the Yale grad school connection that Bellwether's owner seems to love. But in the imaginary book we just skipped through, chapter after chapter was full of people saying "Oh, I didn't know that Daphne Fitzpatrick made art". Confidentially, I'm not so certain she does do so. Not well, at least.
The second question that I posed to myself was about the ramp. I went up it, looked around, laughed a little, and went down it. I thought about all the other ramps I've traversed while in art exhibits, a few moments of reflection and I decided that my favorite was at PS1 several years ago. Mostly because that one had a point, Fitzpatrick's ramp seemed to be entirely disconnected from the rest of the show, and being that the show is pretty ramshackle to begin with... But it's a ramp and you can hardly go wrong with one of those.
The show has its good points. Links of different types of sausages pass through a hole in glass jar and then droop down towards the floor. It takes guts to make a ham-handed joke like that (a little sausage humor there). The variety of sausages was what made the piece for me, though. It's the little things that get you.
Three wax candlesticks of increasing, or decreasing if you like, size rest on a shelf. Again, this is a visual gag of the get-it-or-you-don't variety. I laughed out loud.
Turning about, I cringed at the shiny silver flag arrangement. I suspect that Daphne borrows style by the bucketful and deploys it to create interesting thoughts. It can be assumed that she borrowed this flag arrangement from "Sculpture 201", as it does all sorts of ground breaking things. Namely it knocks a hole in the drywall of the gallery, exposing the naked brickwork underneath. Take that for-profit gallery system! And I'll lay down a piece of flooring under my piece, because it helps tie it together visually! There's a reason none of the press this show has gotten mentions this piece, it's awful.
The back wall has what the press release calls "construction fencing". Imagine a plywood box covered in tattered prints of what I think are Warhol drawings. There was a peephole in the side of the fence, but the inside was as black as night - maybe inside was the secret key to whole show. According to the press release it was. Technical problems seemed to have kept the lights out off and on, as the peep holes were dark both times I looked.
A proper door lets one into a musty sitting area, where a video monitor shows us the artists attention to detail. Watch the bug crawl across the board. Watch the blurry reflection in the window. I can practically feel the whir of the autofocus lens on the camera, in-out in-out. Videos like this have been ruined for me by television, and not in the way you might expect. A long while ago a commercial ran in which they talked about cell phone designers paying attention to 'the details', viewers were shown designers studying things closely and randomly pressing buttons on an elevator. At the end of the commercial a comical intern is chastised for imitating the designers (he aped them by pressing random elevator buttons, just as they had). Fitzpatrick's video feels like its aping the long tradition of 'attention to detail' films that have bored us since the 60s. I hope that this is another example of her cleverly borrowing conventions from previous style, because if this video is intended to be a true chart of the artists interests then she's a pretentious fool.
More, it seems, it's about style. About creating a place from which to make art and allow others access to that position as an interpretive tool. Fitzpatrick identifies herself with the video monitor work, it helps position everything around it as 'smart' because only a smart person would show something so dumb. Any moment, though, I expect the artist to leap forward and strike a dramatic pose, shouting "It's ACTING!" ala Saturday Night Live.
Run through the show with the price list in your hand, or else you'll be missing the titles. With names like "Tie a Pabst Blue Ribbon around my prize pony Bud" and "A roll of saran wrap and a bottle of beer", you can't tell the horses without the racing program. The titles help, they help set the mood for the show, they remind us that it's funny. "A roll of saran wrap and a bottle of beer" seems unnecessary, though, as the piece is pretty sexual and funny as is.
Walking up the ramp and out the door, I give Bellwether props for what might be their least sellable show ever, and I mean that in the nicest way.
This is all made from scratch. I hope the artist uses a knife to cut up the plastic rings of the can holder, otherwise a baby seal might choke on it.
To skip to the end of the book, I'll tell you that Daphne Fitzpatrick was one of the original founders of Bellwether back when it was a down-homey space in Greenpoint. She also is one handshake away from the Yale grad school connection that Bellwether's owner seems to love. But in the imaginary book we just skipped through, chapter after chapter was full of people saying "Oh, I didn't know that Daphne Fitzpatrick made art". Confidentially, I'm not so certain she does do so. Not well, at least.
The second question that I posed to myself was about the ramp. I went up it, looked around, laughed a little, and went down it. I thought about all the other ramps I've traversed while in art exhibits, a few moments of reflection and I decided that my favorite was at PS1 several years ago. Mostly because that one had a point, Fitzpatrick's ramp seemed to be entirely disconnected from the rest of the show, and being that the show is pretty ramshackle to begin with... But it's a ramp and you can hardly go wrong with one of those.
The show has its good points. Links of different types of sausages pass through a hole in glass jar and then droop down towards the floor. It takes guts to make a ham-handed joke like that (a little sausage humor there). The variety of sausages was what made the piece for me, though. It's the little things that get you.
Three wax candlesticks of increasing, or decreasing if you like, size rest on a shelf. Again, this is a visual gag of the get-it-or-you-don't variety. I laughed out loud.
Turning about, I cringed at the shiny silver flag arrangement. I suspect that Daphne borrows style by the bucketful and deploys it to create interesting thoughts. It can be assumed that she borrowed this flag arrangement from "Sculpture 201", as it does all sorts of ground breaking things. Namely it knocks a hole in the drywall of the gallery, exposing the naked brickwork underneath. Take that for-profit gallery system! And I'll lay down a piece of flooring under my piece, because it helps tie it together visually! There's a reason none of the press this show has gotten mentions this piece, it's awful.
The back wall has what the press release calls "construction fencing". Imagine a plywood box covered in tattered prints of what I think are Warhol drawings. There was a peephole in the side of the fence, but the inside was as black as night - maybe inside was the secret key to whole show. According to the press release it was. Technical problems seemed to have kept the lights out off and on, as the peep holes were dark both times I looked.
A proper door lets one into a musty sitting area, where a video monitor shows us the artists attention to detail. Watch the bug crawl across the board. Watch the blurry reflection in the window. I can practically feel the whir of the autofocus lens on the camera, in-out in-out. Videos like this have been ruined for me by television, and not in the way you might expect. A long while ago a commercial ran in which they talked about cell phone designers paying attention to 'the details', viewers were shown designers studying things closely and randomly pressing buttons on an elevator. At the end of the commercial a comical intern is chastised for imitating the designers (he aped them by pressing random elevator buttons, just as they had). Fitzpatrick's video feels like its aping the long tradition of 'attention to detail' films that have bored us since the 60s. I hope that this is another example of her cleverly borrowing conventions from previous style, because if this video is intended to be a true chart of the artists interests then she's a pretentious fool.
More, it seems, it's about style. About creating a place from which to make art and allow others access to that position as an interpretive tool. Fitzpatrick identifies herself with the video monitor work, it helps position everything around it as 'smart' because only a smart person would show something so dumb. Any moment, though, I expect the artist to leap forward and strike a dramatic pose, shouting "It's ACTING!" ala Saturday Night Live.
Run through the show with the price list in your hand, or else you'll be missing the titles. With names like "Tie a Pabst Blue Ribbon around my prize pony Bud" and "A roll of saran wrap and a bottle of beer", you can't tell the horses without the racing program. The titles help, they help set the mood for the show, they remind us that it's funny. "A roll of saran wrap and a bottle of beer" seems unnecessary, though, as the piece is pretty sexual and funny as is.
Walking up the ramp and out the door, I give Bellwether props for what might be their least sellable show ever, and I mean that in the nicest way.
This is all made from scratch. I hope the artist uses a knife to cut up the plastic rings of the can holder, otherwise a baby seal might choke on it.
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