Painting as Paradox, at Artists Space

For ‘Flash Art’ magazine

Karel Funk, Untitled, 2002, Acrylic on Panel, 46 x 37 cm
Karel Funk, Untitled, 2002, Acrylic on Panel, 46 x 37 cm

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.
Jose Leon Cerillo, Eden, Eden, 2002, Acrylic on MDF Panel, Formica on Wood, 60 x 92 x 89 cm
Jose Leon Cerillo, Eden, Eden, 2002, Acrylic on MDF Panel, Formica on Wood, 60 x 92 x 89 cm

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.
David Nicholson, The Garden of Love, 2002, Oil on Canvas, 193 x 254 cm
David Nicholson, The Garden of Love, 2002, Oil on Canvas, 193 x 254 cm

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.
Milree Hughes, Krill, 2002, Lenticular Print, 56 x 71 cm
Milree Hughes, Krill, 2002, Lenticular Print, 56 x 71 cm

Regarding Gloria, at White Columns

For ‘Flash Art’ Magazine

Cheryl Yun, Botox Purse with Beaded Handles, 2002
Cheryl Yun, Botox Purse with Beaded Handles, 2002

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.

Queens International, at Queens Museum of Art

For ‘Flash Art’ Magazine

Jaishri Abichandani, Vishnu: Haridwar India, 2000, From the Series, 'Under the Western Sky', C-Print
Jaishri Abichandani, Vishnu: Haridwar India, 2000, From the Series, 'Under the Western Sky', C-Print

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.

James Johnson, The Copper Airplane, 1998-2001, Mixed Media, 9 x 27 x 29 ft
James Johnson, The Copper Airplane, 1998-2001, Mixed Media, 9 x 27 x 29 ft

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.

Michael Joo, at Anton Kern Gallery

For ‘Tema Celeste’ magazine

Michael Joo, 'Untitled (Coyote) #19,' 2002. Plasticine, medex, polyurethane foam & wire. 81.3 x 71.1 x 64.1cm
Michael Joo, 'Untitled (Coyote) #19,' 2002. Plasticine, medex, polyurethane foam & wire. 81.3 x 71.1 x 64.1cm

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.

‘Translated Acts’, at Queens Museum of Art

For ‘ART AsiaPacific’ Magazine

Wang Peng, Passing Through, 1997, thread performance, New York
Wang Peng, Passing Through, 1997, thread performance, New York

Translated Acts is the first large scale exhibition in New York of work by Asian artists since the landmark ‘Inside Out’ show in 1998 at the Asia Society and PS1. In contrast to the previous sprawling survey, this more concise exhibition focuses on performance and body art from Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. In her catalogue essay, curator Yu Yeon Kim outlines two organizing principles, explaining first that East Asian artists have uniquely conveyed their historical and political positions through performance art, and second, that photography, video and other digital media and are no longer used solely as documentation, but are now integral to the artwork. By flagging this change, Kim herself documents the way in which the particular cultural and economic situations of Asian countries has resulted in an avant-garde art fundamentally different from the West.

While there is a slight bias towards male, Chinese artists, the nearly thirty featured artists are a diverse group that includes those living and working in their native countries as well as ex-pats from different generations. Young, international artists like the ubiquitous Mariko Mori and Michael Joo, whose sculpture was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial appear alongside artists like Xu Bing, Zhang Huan and Gu Wenda. All of the above continue to receive significant attention in the US and provide some anchors to aid the New York audience in understanding this ambitious and intense exhibition.

Translated Acts does not propose to be a ‘who’s who’ of performance artists in Asia, nor is it a historical survey. Instead, the assembled group of work has similarities and differences that inspire reflection on the multitude of conceptual tactics employed by East Asian artists over the past decade. In her catalogue essay, Yu Yeon Kim warns her audience against interpreting the artwork solely in relation to the Western, modernist paradigm. To this end, she briefly outlines the tumultuous political and economic events of the last 50 years in each of the countries represented. She also develops an argument that Asian artists are likely to be influenced by Buddhist or Taoist ideology, which opposed to the hierarchies implicit in Western thought, accepts a more fluid concept of structure. Considering that at least a third of the artists in this exhibition live or were born in the West and taking into account the popularity of Eastern philosophies in the West in the past 50 years, this dichotomy may be less useful than Kim suggests. However, on a less philosophical level, many of the featured artists do acknowledge the importance of their faith in their work. Further, an approach which privileges the spiritual is an interesting counterpoint to the recent observations that China’s lack of “godly morality” has resulted in the use by some artists of the living or dead human body with little regard to its sanctity.

In keeping with Kim’s assertion that video and photography have become inseparable elements of performance art, the exhibition is stronger on performative photography and installation than actual performance. The promising but poorly organized opening events featured appearances by Chiharu Shiota, who slept in one of the many cot-like beds featured in her installation, Wang Jian Wei, who presented a red carpet resting on a bed of glass, which was methodically crushed by the visitors, as well as other performances by Ja-Young Ku and Chun-Chi Lin. A past performance by Chun-Chi Lin is presented on video, and documentation of Tehching Hsieh’s year long projects occupy one room. Hsieh’s performances, which double as feats of endurance, are meaningful in a Western performance tradition, but it is in the context of this exhibition alongside fellow Taiwanese that his radical experiments make fuller sense.

Fellow Taiwanese artist Chieh-Jen Chen’s recent large-scale photographs are the most disturbing pieces in the show, and likely contributed strongly to the Museum’s decision to restrict access for children. Suggesting the invasion of a devastating epidemic, or the impact of a tyrannical regime, the photographs feature scores of prostrate human bodies, covered with sores and invaded by metal clamps, harnesses and tubing. Also unnerving is Yuan Goang-Ming’s “The Reason for Insomnia”, an interactive sculpture in the form of a bed. When the bedposts are touched, different projections of blood, fire and feeling hands appear on the sheets.

Atta Kim, 'Museum Series' 1994-2002, Photograph Collection of the artist
Atta Kim,

These dark images contrast sharply with Kim Atta’s ‘Museum Series,’ in which nude models hold prolonged poses in glass boxes placed in Buddhist temples and serene landscapes. These sublime bodies establish a recurrent theme of the idealized versus the absent, injured or defiled body. Contrasts appear throughout the exhibition, for example between Mariko Mori’s ‘alien body’, a perfect specimen enclosed in a pill-like capsule and deposited in various locations around the world, and the defiling rituals carried out by her countrywoman Chiharu Shiota.

Unclothed bodies result in the most striking imagery of Translated Acts. Collages and videos from Ma Liuming’s nude photo sessions with the public, during which he places his own unprotected body at the disposal of his audience, show the artist in a sometimes meditative, sometimes indifferent state. A public dynamic was also central in Zhang Huan’s ‘My America’, seen in Spring 2000 at Deitch Projects in Soho. This video, created from documentation of a performance in which a large group of Western volunteers shed their clothing and followed Zhang’s directions, is a portrait of the artist as he navigates a place for himself in his new country.

Other fruitful juxtapositions surface in the show’s installation. Gong Xin Wang’s ‘The Face’, his own laughing and eventually disappearing head, is positioned opposite Young Kyun Lim’s serene portraits of Korean youth. In another room, photos from Qui Zhijie’s ongoing Tattoo series, in which the artist continues a pattern from the wall behind him onto his own naked torso, appear next to documentation of the now legendary performance, ‘Cultural Animal,’ by Xu Bing, in which a mannequin and live pig were stamped in nonsensical Chinese and English script. Next to these two pieces is a video document of Gu Wenda’s ritual performances in which he writes calligraphy with an enormous brush. This combination of three uses of calligraphy by three Chinese artists who privilege the body is a mini-exhibition in itself.

Yu Yeon Kim’s triple concerns of ‘…cultural identity, historical legacy and inner expression…” cut across national borders in Asia, and apply to artists living at home and abroad. They also offer a way for Western viewers, unfamiliar with the unique and turbulent histories of East Asia over the past half-century, to engage the artwork. Kim has successfully brought together a mixed body of work that comments on the specific cultural backgrounds of the artists and the political situations in which they find themselves. She also addresses the need to develop an understanding of work that has been produced on the other side of the planet and outside of Western frameworks of thought, in an era of globalized culture. ‘Translated Acts’ challenges Western viewers to look beyond the easily digested and much imported anime inspired artwork seen so often in the US recently, and to instead grapple with East Asian art through the truly universal subject – the human body.