Tracey Baran, “Pictures of Tracey,” Leslie Tonkonow Artworks and Projects

by Merrily KerrInside ViewPosted on Comments are Disabled

The feeling of silent stillness in this memorial exhibition of Tracey Baran’s self-portraits and photographs of her family and friends is palpable, an affecting parallel to a life suddenly stopped short after a brief illness at age 33.  The action of Baran’s past hunting, demolition derby and road-trip photo series has been excluded to show the artist in the context of those she cared about in intimate moments of friendship, restful calm, and longing.  Sometimes considered a chronicler of small town life, this show convincingly argues that Baran pursued grander themes, uncovering evidence of the profound mysteries of familial and romantic love in rural America.

Baran’s more wistful pictures now appear prescient; as she kisses a steamy window after a goodbye or gazes out a window with fingers crossed, she’s not just a young woman caught up in her inner world but a harbinger of more profound loss.  Other pictures beautifully capture a time of life when major decisions are frighteningly open and the future is yet to be written, as in ‘Today I’m 30’ in which Baran greets a new decade with a spirited scowl as she curls up on the edge of her bed near a solitary cupcake.

Baran’s photographs have the quietude of a stage, not just the country or her thought life.  Several of her contemporaries were influenced by Gregory Crewdson’s artificial dramas; Baran shares his fascination with rural life but not its noir mood, the stories told via her portraits are informed by art history and first-hand knowledge of her subjects.  Her father morphs from misfit to thinker in a bathtub portrait that recalls David’s Marat, Baran channels Girodet to picture her boyfriend awash in a celestial glow in a mossy glade, ‘In the Garden’ pictures the two in archetypal roles as Adam and Eve, while ‘Ivy’ depicts Baran as an unorthodox odalisque who’s taken a roll in some poison ivy.  Such references might help validate her eccentric characters for us, but the tenderness with which they are depicted suggests that for Baran, the ones she loved transcended time and place.

Originally published in Flash Art, November – December 2009.

Janine Antoni, “Up Against” at Luhring Augustine

by Merrily KerrReviewsPosted on Comments are Disabled
Janine Antoni, "One Another," 2008. Photograph courtesy of Luhring Augustine, New York.

Tied together only by an amazingly adaptable title, Janine Antoni’s new photography, sculpture and installation leap from theme to theme — new motherhood, Hurricane Katrina, a cheeky re-imagining of the female anatomy — in an ad hoc exploration of intimacy and/ or adversity. Though some of her best-known artwork has delved into her relationship with her mother, Antoni is frustratingly ambivalent about her own connection with her young daughter. Ironically, it’s when Antoni herself seems to be acting juvenile, in a piece that has her urinating from the top of the Chrysler Building, that her work is most resonant.

At the gallery entrance, a photo of Antoni’s toddler poking a spoon at her mother’s exposed navel portrays the artist as authority figure, so it’s startling to encounter an image of her using a bronze, shoehorn-shaped gargoyle as a substitute penis to direct a stream of urine in a hilarious piss take of the adolescent male urge to mark territory. Less daring than Margaret Bourke-White’s famous perch atop the Chrysler’s eagles, more restrained than Lynda Benglis’s raunchy posturing, Antoni’s absurd gesture is nevertheless empowering, removing one more obstacle between the sexes.

The show’s final two pieces are less original. A damaged wrecking ball coupled with a close-up projection of an eyeball blinking to resounding booms is a one-dimensional parable of destruction in the blink of an eye and too closely tied to the context of its debut at “Prospect 1” in New Orleans. In a final photo collage, Antoni hovers, spider-like, from a rope web wearing a doll house as skirt, her flesh filling rooms and pressing against tiny furniture in a beautifully succinct illustration of motherly overbearing. But it’s not clear what Antoni’s getting at with the spider reference (and hard not to compare with Louise Bourgeois’s powerful Maman), while the martyr-like pose she strikes doesn’t say anything new about mothers’ sacrifice. We’re extended a tantalizing invitation into the intimacy of her personal experience but come away unenlightened.

Originally published in Flash Art International, no 267, November – December 2009.

Walid Raad, “Scratching on Things I Could Disavow” at Paula Cooper Gallery

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Walid Raad, "Part I_Chapter 1_Section 139: The Atlas Group (1989-2004)." Photograph courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery.

The Arab world has recently jumped on the global art bandwagon with a spate of new fairs, biennials and galleries, but Walid Raad is less than enthusiastic. His jam-packed résumé makes him an unlikely candidate to critique the forces of globalization, but surprisingly, this show of new sculpture and work on paper—subtitled “A History of Art in the Arab World/Part I_Volume 1_Chapter 1 (Beirut: 1992–2005)”—cynically argues the powerlessness and conflicted interests of artists.

In text accompanying a sculpture of a miniature exhibition space installed with pint-size versions of his work, Raad asserts that his entire oeuvre mysteriously shrank the moment he agreed to show it in his vast Beirut gallery. The premise is absurd, but the message cautionary: Participation in the system comes at the cost of meaning.

Artists are bypassed as active parties in the exhibit’s two other main pieces. A wall text and photo essay are based on telepathic communication from misguided future artists, who long for an authoritative, editing hand. Elsewhere, a collection of pages from various publications purports to demonstrate the fanciful notion that during the Lebanese wars, compositional elements—color, line, shape—became refugees, hiding in the text and format of various documents and ephemera.

Raad’s critiques are so tangential, his story lines so elaborate, that he doesn’t quite get around to concrete hypotheses on how conflict shapes aesthetics. But if his own resistance is a catalyst for other artists to ignite a new flurry of art activity, one couldn’t hope for more.

Originally published in Time Out New York, issue 740, December 3-9, 2009.

Nick Mauss at 303 Gallery

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Nick Mauss, "Insert," 2009. Photograph courtesy of 303 Gallery, New York.

For his first solo show at 303, Nick Mauss takes a decisive step away from his best-known earlier work—paintings of dandyish figures adrift in lush fields of color—with minimalist sculpture and stark, etchinglike compositions on silver leaf. Somewhere between an attack on history and self-editing in overdrive, the work makes explicit the frustrations involved in the impulse to communicate.

Though his approach is nearly abstract, Mauss takes pains to invite viewers into his universe. A huge sheet of paper hung to suggest a doorway, then torn open, stands near the gallery entrance, ushering us into the show. Beyond it, a house-shaped framework suspended from the ceiling surrounds a slide projector showing blank slides, continuing the metaphor for transparency but literally and conceptually offering little substance.

Both feel like mere stage setting for the panels, rife with subject matter yielded grudgingly. Because the works are positioned at awkward viewing heights against the gallery wall, it’s easy to miss the occasional vessels, mythological characters or beasts that remain after the artist distressed the surface to reveal a void of black paint under the silver leaf. The vigorous scratch patterns nearly obliterate the sketchy figures, evoking an aura of vandalized archaeological treasures. This subtle attack on icons of ancient art history also recalls Rauschenberg’s erased De Kooning drawing, but Mauss’ idiosyncratic selection of subjects suggests something more personal, like burning a diary or sketchbook. While he doesn’t always strike a proper balance between emulating the past and wanting to eradicate it, his bold marks on delicate panels are an admirably decisive act.

Originally published in Time Out New York, issue 739, November 26 – December 2, 2009.

Jessica Stockholder, “Flooded Chambers Maid” at Madison Square Park

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Jessica Stockholder, “Flooded Chambers Maid,” 2009. Installation view at Madison Square Park, New York. Photograph courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

Jessica Stockholder’s synthetic aesthetic is a strange fit for the beautifully planted Madison Square Park, and her first outdoor installation was a confusing mix of resistance and concessions made to its setting. The alien, saturated colors of a seating platform and set of bleachers took little inspiration from their verdant surroundings. Yet to make this durable furniture for park users, she disappointingly abandoned the improvisatory quality that makes her work so rich. True to Stockholder’s practice of experimenting with unconventional materials, she also created a design in greenery and colorful plastics, but the result is as disjointed and uncommunicative as the installation as a whole.

Among the characteristic sculptures of repurposed consumer goods in her concurrent gallery show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, a standout assemblage resembled a matronly figure standing before orbs of light on a lawn-like base, making a clever connection between inside and out. But instead of taking the next step and actually engaging the natural world in the outdoor installation, the piece looks ill at ease, its colors and geometries relating less to the park itself than the man-made objects and structures visible on its perimeter.

In what should have been the installation’s focal point, but which was instead a segment of the show half-hidden behind the bleachers, Stockholder attempted a literal combination of nature and culture with a winsome, asymmetrical arrangement of grasses and flowers alongside a too-sparse scattering of man-made materials. The myriad associations that Stockholder can evoke with everyday objects makes her practice compelling; but the banality of this planting suggests we have a more developed relationship with our most commonplace, manufactured junk than with the products of nature. Stockholder’s outdoor debut can leave one wanting to see the artist get back indoors to her studio.

Originally published in Flash Art International, no 268, October 2009.