Tag: new york

For ‘Flash Art’ magazine

Since its supposed rebirth in the past decade, painting has been the subject of international exhibitions, books and magazine articles. Last fall, ‘Painting as Paradox’ at Artists Space took its own look at the genre in an exhibition of work, hung salon style, by over sixty emerging artists. Hanging on the wall at the entrance to the show, ‘Minotaur 1.1,’ a labyrinth constructed of gilded picture frame by Jan Baracz, alluded to the multiple paths available to the artist without employing an ounce of paint. It also introduced the ‘paradox’ of the artist who still manages to work in what has been called a ‘dead’ or underrated medium. The show’s main proposition was that painters are avoiding dead ends and make the medium relevant to contemporary art and life by embracing the influence of photography, architectural images and computer ‘painting’ software.

One long wall devoted almost exclusively to photographically influenced realist portraiture included Octavius Neveaux’s black and white self-portrait that mimicked the act of looking into the camera, and Isca Greenfield-Sanders’ sunbather, painted from composite photos. A wall of landscapes favored abstract compositions like Millree Hughes’ light infused lenticular prints and Odili Donald Odita’s angled horizontal planes painted on canvas. In a separate room devoted to architecture as subject matter, Carla Klein and Marc Handelman each presented foreboding futuristic interior spaces, that contrasted with the kitschy Miami Vice vibe of Australian painter Kieren Kinney’s hand painted island cityscape at night that resembled a computer generated image. Several paintings adopted a mechanical look, and several digital prints affected the look of painting, like Claire Corey’s complex skeins of looping color. Artists even used video to ponder the concerns of abstraction, like Robert Bermejo’s software program generating patterns on a flat screen monitor and Perry Hall’s DVD of paint, bubbling like lava.

The conceptual framework of “Painting as Paradox” was built on the understanding that painting is still not entire out of trouble. By focusing so heavily on paintings that adopt elements of digital technique, the show implied that the genre needs to ‘do something’ to make itself more relevant to those who would dismiss it in favor of new media. This point of view isn’t surprising given curator Lauri Firstenberg’s own tastes and respectable track record, both of which tend toward exhibitions of photography and architecturally inspired artwork. But this organizational principle doesn’t do justice to the wide range of painting being made today. A more concise exhibition that clearly stated its biases could have avoided a true paradox, which is that the tired discussion of painting’s health continues to occupy center stage in art discourse.

For ‘Flash Art’ Magazine

A mini wave of exhibitions focusing on feminist art and its present day legacy hit New York last fall. White Columns led the way with two shows: ‘Gloria,’ which featured feminist art from the 70s, followed by a modern day sequel, ‘Regarding Gloria’, that tried to gauge the impact of feminist art on contemporary women artists. From over 1000 responses received in an open call for submissions, the curators chose work by ten young women artists who reinterpreted the old slogan ‘the personal is political.’ For example, MK Guth’s DVD, in which she plays a caped superhero was reminiscent of Dara Birnbaum’s 1978 images of Wonder Woman. But in her humorous narrative, Guth’s valiant deeds not only critique the usually male superhero persona, but also act out a fantasy of empowerment. Likewise, Jenny Holzer’s statements to the general public contrast Kathleen Kranack’s highly personal list of the comments and insults she has received from men. Shocks like Carolee Schneeman’s 1975 performance, during which she pulled a scroll from her vagina, weren’t replicated in ‘Regarding Gloria.’ Instead, several artists crafted slick displays or featured the bodies of other women, to comment on the ways in which women can be complacent in their own oppression. For instance, one of Cheryl Yun’s fashionable handbags featured tiled images of a woman’s Botoxed face, Melissa Potter’s ‘Price Per Fuck’ series paired photos of luxury items with a calculation of the price for the sexual favors which secured these gifts, and Edythe Wright’s deconstructed Wonderbra was pinned in a glass case like an exhibit at a natural history museum. Thirty years after feminism’s heyday, women still challenge sexism and assumptions about the ‘ideal’ woman, but ‘Regarding Gloria’ suggests that they now do so with less urgency and more humor.

For ‘Flash Art’ Magazine

The history of art often boils down to an account of groups of artists who lived and worked in proximity to each other. Occasionally, those who leave the fold (think Gauguin when he set sail for Tahiti) interrupt this narrative. Situated just across the East River from Manhattan, Queens isn’t exactly the South Pacific. But most of the borough is off the map for the Manhattan-centric art world and, apart from Long Island City, there are few ‘artist neighborhoods’. “Queens International” gathered over forty independent spirits who choose to live and/or work in Queens in a group exhibition as diverse as its name suggests.

Tom Finkelpearl, the Museum’s new director, makes a point of avoiding competition with art venues in or near Manhattan. Instead of devising a counterpart to last year’s “Brooklyn!” show of young artists based in that borough, he and the other curators focused on the Museum’s unique selling point: the incredible cultural diversity of surrounding immigrant communities. The resulting exhibition featured artists from fifteen different countries and included work as diverse as Jaishri Abichandani’s small-scale photographs of young people in India and New York and thick oil paintings combining classical Chinese painting styles with the techniques of Van Gogh and Monet by Zhang Hongtu.

A slide projection of photographs by six different artists drove home the point that you don’t need to leave New York City to see the world. One highlight was Audrey Gottlieb’s shot of a Brahmin priest laying a stone statue of the elephant god in Flushing Meadows Lake, which looks like it could have been the bank of the Ganges. Elsewhere, Evie McKenna’s photos of quirky New York houses exemplify American outsider architecture and Gerard Gaskin’s photographic portraits of the residents of LeFrak City housing project lend a dignity to the sitters that belies the project’s rough reputation.

Although the participants ranged from Yale MFAs to artists who had rarely, if ever, exhibited their work, there were not dramatic fluctuations in the quality of the artwork. This speaks for the diversity of contemporary art itself and the mainstreaming of ‘outsider’ art as well as the curators’ success in drawing from a pool of untapped talent. Formal similarities also helped homogenize the show, linking Gilberto Triplett’s minutely detailed, organic abstractions to nearby drawings by John Morris. Obsessive devotion to detail tied together Emily Jacir’s hand embroidered tent listing the names of 418 Palestinian villages evacuated by Partition and James Johnson’s hand crafted, 29 foot long copper repousse replica of an airplane. Unlike recent curatorial experiments (remember “Black Romantic” at The Studio Museum?), the curators at Queens Museum might have discovered a way to simultaneously appeal to an art world audience and the larger community.

For ‘Tema Celeste’ magazine

In its early days as an art center on the far west side of Manhattan, Chelsea was jokingly referred to as the Wild West. As such, it was a fitting location for The Pack, a sculptural installation of fifty life-sized coyotes by Michael Joo. Had these animals, symbols of the American West, come to life on the opening night, they would have filled the gallery with the sounds of yelping and howling. Instead, the hairless, plasticine models stayed motionless on their individual plinths, like a canine version of a Vanessa Beecroft performance. But in contrast to the snarling replicas in natural history museums, these life-sized animals are benign, the little ones even cute. In the back gallery, a second sculptural installation, provocatively titled God, featured a human figure wearing work clothes and a fur jacket lying sprawled on a bed of ice. Unlike the lively animals in the first room, the man seemed to have succumbed to the elements despite being warmly dressed. His exposed face and one hand, rendered in clear polyurethane, revealed skull and bones underneath, emphasizing his frail mortality.

The coyotes, desert loners but here assembled in an enormous pack, are survivors despite their lack of hair and skinny bodies. The man, on the other hand—ironically clad in fur—has fallen victim to icy northern temperatures. The installation’s design suggests that the ice on which he rests would gradually creep up over his body, reinforcing the idea that nature has taken control.

Expansion in all its forms produces unlikely neighbors, whether it’s pristine, white-walled galleries adjoining grimy auto body shops in Chelsea, or coyotes, bears and other animals rummaging through garbage cans in the suburbs. As Americans continue to expand their reach into the habitat of wild animals, the boundaries between civilization and the wild become blurred. Joo manages to subtly provoke viewers to question their assumptions about the mastery and adaptability of mankind as we play God with our environment.