Bruce Nauman, One Hundred Fish Fountain, bronze fish suspended with stainless steel wire from a metal grid, 2005.
Stepping out of the elevator at Gagosian Gallery’s uptown, Madison Ave location, the roar of rushing water is immediate and surprisingly loud. Around the corner, squeezed into the main 6th floor exhibition space, is iconic conceptual artist Bruce Nauman’s sculpture of 97 cast bronze fish spouting water from their bodies as if they’d been hunted by rifle as well as hook and line. Elegant in photos, the mechanics of the piece – trailing tubes, a leaky basin, wires – dominate the in-person experience, creating typically Nauman-esque disconcertion. (‘One Hundred Fish Fountain’ is at Gagosian Gallery through Aug 31st).
Imagine perusing bedroom sets in IKEA and finding a quarrelling married couple bedding down for the night. Israeli artist Guy Ben-Ner is half of the couple starring in his own hilarious 18 minute 2007 video ‘Stealing Beauty’ that he shot without permission with a small camcorder in IKEA stores in New York, Berlin and Tel Aviv. As he, his wife and two kids discuss the ramifications of capitalism on their family life, they pretend to read from the store’s libraries, shower in the bathroom and sip drinks in the kitchen, creating a provocative dissonance between public and private life and questioning the personal impact of political ideology. (‘Stealing Beauty is in ‘Idea is the Object’ at D’Amelio Gallery, Chelsea, through Aug 24th).
Lizzie Fitch, Title TBD, wood, wood stain, ink on canvas, ink on paper, 2012.
Lizzie Fitch’s ‘Title TBD’ begs a few suggestions. ‘Man power?’ ‘Guy stuff?’ The central panel’s car/power tool/DIY theme and a pile of spike-ended lumber that looks like its destined for fencing tries hard to conjure masculinity. The piece tries so hard to look manly, it looks nothing like usual gallery fare (though it recalls Josephine Meckseper’s hot rod imagery). ‘Feminine’ artwork abounds in New York galleries, so why so little that’s blatantly male? (At Andrea Rosen Gallery, Chelsea, through August 21st).
Erica Love & Joao Enxuto, from the series Anonymous Paintings, inkjet print on cotton canvas, 2012.
Can abstract art be used as a tool to resist Google’s efforts to map the world’s every nook and cranny? Using screen grabs from Google Art Project’s museum walk-throughs, Brooklyn-based artists Erica Love and João Enxuto have launched a ‘counter archive’ of blurred images that have been obscured for copyright reasons. As large inkjet prints on cotton panels instead of tiny rectangles on a computer screen, they have a shimmering depth that recalls the 60s ‘Light & Space’ movement while pioneering a new medium somewhere between photography, installation and virtual art. (Love and Enxuto’s ‘Anonymous Paintings’ are included in ‘The Skin We’re In’ at Yossi Milo Gallery through August 31st.)
Oscar Tuazon, ‘People,’ sugar maple tree, concrete, metal basketball backboard and hoop, 2012. Photo by Jason Wyche.
Known for overtaking galleries with his wood and concrete constructions, Oscar Tuazon’s new site-specific sculptures on the Brooklyn waterfront have space to breath. Here, a sugar maple, concrete, backboard and hoop come together to form ‘People,’ a sculpture inviting folks to play a role in cleaning up the Brooklyn waterfront by having a little fun. (Organized by the Public Art Fund, Tuazon’s sculptures are on view at Brooklyn Bridge Park.)
Alyson Shotz, Wavelength #2, dichoric acrylic on aluminum tube and steel, 2008. Image courtesy of Alyson Shotz Studio.
‘Dazzling’ is a good way to describe Alyson Shotz’s optically enticing sculpture whether it’s the shimmering curtain of Fresnel lenses she memorably installed in the Guggenheim’s atrium in ‘07 or a mirrored fence hidden in plain view in the fields at the Storm King Art Center. ‘Wavelength #2’ from 2008 continues Shotz’s interest in waveforms and uses dichroic acrylic to both transmit and reflect different wavelengths of light, creating a range of colors from a clear material. (‘Wavelength #2’ is at Paul Kasmin Gallery as part of ‘Sculpted Matter’ through August 17th.)
Ashley Bickerton, ‘Seascape: Floating Costume to Drift for Eternity I (Armani Suit), suit, glass, aluminum, wood, caulk, fiberglass, enamel, canvas and webbing, 1991.
As far as self-portraits go, ‘Seascape: Floating Costume to Drift for Eternity I (Armani Suit)’ by Ashley Bickerton is a little on the dark side, despite its bright orange buoys. Made in 1991, just two years before this regular on the downtown New York art scene relocated permanently to Bali, it seems to foretell his departure. Quixotic, a little lonesome, and stylishly branded by Armani and his signature ‘Susie’ logo – a semi-corporate brand of his own invention – Bickerton’s craft signals a dignified leave-taking, a memorial to a past life and an adventure about to begin. (Through August 17th at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, Chelsea.)
Tyler Rowland, The Stonebreakers (All the Objects Needed to Install a Work of Art), trash from jobsite, 2004-06
Artist Tyler Rowland was so taken by 19th century Realist painter Gustave Courbet that he spent a year impersonating (in appearance anyways) his forebear. In ‘HiJack!’ a show of work organized by the art handlers at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery, Rowland’s contribution is a missing Courbet painting (presumed destroyed in the WWII bombing of Dresden), along with the tools necessary to install it (all carefully manufactured by the artist from materials recycled from construction jobs). The layers of reference are complex but readable, making this piece a testament to the continuing influence of art history on contemporary painting while challenging preconceptions of what an artwork should look like. (‘The Stonebreakers (All the Objects Needed to Install a Work of Art), 2004-06’ is on view through Sept 1st. )
Tyler Rowland, The Stonebreakers (All the Objects Needed to Install a Work of Art), trash from jobsite, 2004-06
Linsanity goes on hiatus in Andrew Kuo’s tiny painting of Houston Rockets star Jeremy Lin as he is chastised by an angry basketball. Floating in a tank a la Jeff Koon’s basketballs in his 1985 ‘Equilibrium’ series, the ball becomes the object of our attention, forcing a downcast Lin into the backseat. The vicissitudes of stardom never looked so cute. (‘Tallboy’ is in the group exhibition ‘In Plain Sight’ at Chelsea’s Mitchell-Innes & Nash through August 17th).
Matthew Brandt, Bees of Bees 5 (detail), gum bichromate print with honeybees on paper, 2012.
Whether he’s burning trees to make charcoal or soaking a photograph of a lake in lake water to get an abstracted effect, Matthew Brandt uses his subject matter to create an image of that subject. When bee colony collapse led to his discovery of hundreds of dead or dying bees on the California coast, he collected the bees and photographed them in his studio, printing them with an emulsion made of the bees. The resulting prints are huge and swarming with bees (like the one in this detail), but chilling when a closer look reveals that they are in various states of decomposition. (At Yossi Milo Gallery through August 31, 2012).
Joan Brown, Mary Julia y Manuel, enamel on canvas, 1976.
Apart from its large size and bold color, Joan Brown’s ‘Mary Julia Y Manuel,’ from 1976 stands out for its romantic drama, played out on a bright red stage before a swirling San Francisco Bay. Mary Julia, model and poet, holds a similar pose to Goya’s supposed lover, the Dutchess of Alba and her name is paired with Brown’s ex-husband Manuel, making this nighttime scene ring with tension. (‘Viva la Raspberries’ is at Harris Lieberman, Chelsea, through August 17th).
Davina Semo, You Said We’re Skipping the Prelude; Start the Insults, reinforced concrete, safety glass, enamel paint, 2011
Three panels of painted concrete covered in shattered safety glass by Davina Semo at Chelsea’s Derek Eller Gallery rest on the floor like they were just brought in from a war-zone. Minimalist stripes in safety orange appear to have suffered heavy attack but survive to bear witness. Together they’re titled, ‘You said we’re skipping the prelude: start the insults.” (Though August 16th).
Walter Robinson, ‘Dallas BBQ,’ acrylic on canvas, 2001.
Walter Robinson’s ‘Dallas BBQ’ arouses a different kind of desire than his erotically charged paintings (resembling romance novel covers from the 60s) at Chelsea’s Haunch of Venison. ‘Here’s the beef’ this small but powerful canvas shouts as it evokes the danger of a cholesterol bomb and the pleasures of one of America’s favorite indulgences. (Through August 17th).
Alessandro Pessoli, Old Singer with Blossoms, bronze, steel, wool, 2012.
Alessandro Pessoli’s ‘Old Singer with Blossoms’ on the High Line is half hidden amongst short trees and lush plantings, making this odd character all the more strange once you become aware of his presence. A balaclava in pretty, rainbow colors gives him a childlike or hippy appearance completely at odds with his cold steel body and bronze head. As a mechanical creature subject to ridicule (for that silly hat), he could be one of Marcel Duchamp’s bachelors grown old. (On the High Line as part of the group show ‘Lilliput’ through April 2013.)
Ellsworth Kelly’s approximately eighty plant drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art could be some of the most insubstantial artwork on view in the city at the moment and some of the most enjoyable. In graphite on paper renderings from 1948 to the present of poppy flowers, beanstalks, ginkgo leaves and more, Kelly distills each plant into an easily identifiable outline that offers insights into the renowned abstract artist’s iconography.
Carol Bove, Aurora, concrete, bronze, steel and seashells, 2012.
After appearing on the cover of May’s Art in America magazine, Carol Bove’s sculpture ‘Aurora’ is on view in Chelsea at Luhring Augustine’s ‘Painting in Space’ summer group show. Bove is known for accumulating and displaying books, objects and ephemera that relate to 60s culture. More recently, she’s been scavenging natural materials to continue her investigation of what a readymade object (or collection of them) might convey when put on display as art. With their spikes, undulating surfaces and bands of color, these shells are exquisite examples of nature’s creativity and a contrast to the manmade, geometric rods that cradle them. (Through August 17th).
In a private moment of Olympics-mania today, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s installation of Panathenaic prize amphora to reconnect with ancient Olympians. One of the earliest of such vessels (560-550 B.C.) in the Met’s collection, it was filled with olive oil and awarded to winners of events like the 200 yard race depicted here. If you were an Olympic winner, would you rather have a gold metal or 42 liters of olive oil?
Robert Overby & Lizzi Bougatsos installation view at Andrea Rosen Gallery.
41 years ago today, LA-based artist and graphic designer Robert Overby created ‘Long wall, third floor (From the Barclay House Series), 4 August, 1971,’ a nineteen foot long cast of an abandoned building made of latex and cheesecloth. Its dirt, holes and grubby material make it a powerful symbol of entropy and decay. It’s both kin and contrast to Lizzi Bougatsos’ more delicate cracked eggshells on white bathmat – discards arranged into a fragile and pristine grid. (At Andrea Rosen Gallery, Chelsea, through August 21st.)
Kiki Smith, Milky Way, murrini with push pin, glass and plastic glitter, gold leaf and ink on Nepalese paper mounted on canvas, 2011.
Kiki Smith’s ‘Milky Way’ brings to mind a more benevolent Edenic serpent hovering over a field of pointed breasts (a fertile Eve? multi-breasted Greek goddess Artemis?). Murrini glass, plastic glitter, and gold leaf amongst other materials create a dazzling backdrop and light up the snake from beneath. The piece could read as an exhuberant celebration of fertility or its opposite, as sharp breasts threaten. (In ‘It’s Always Summer on the Inside’ at Anton Kern Gallery, Chelsea, through August 24th).
Sandro Rodorigo, Sandro at Work: The Great Self-Portrait, oil on masonite, 2009.
Over years of avid art viewing, particular museum security guards have become as familiar to me as the art they guard though we’ve never exchanged words. ‘Artists Guarding Artists’ a group show at Family Business breaks the silence with work by artists who work as guards at the city’s major museums, from the Met to the New Museum. Next time I go to the Guggenheim, I’ll be looking for Sandro Rodorigo to congratulate him on his tongue-in-cheek, self-aggrandizing ‘Sandro at Work: The Great Self-Portrait.’ Though it’s a small painting, it perfectly pillories art world hierarchies of importance that don’t favor guards. (Through August 17th).
Despina Stokou, ‘Conversations on the Dirty Dozen series,’ mixed media on wall, 2012.
Berlin-based Greek artist Despina Stokou makes her New York debut with ‘Conversations on the Dirty Dozen,’ an unmissable mixed media wall installation featuring a nude surfer and scrawled text. The haphazard look of Stokou’s writing channels Cy Twombly’s energetically repeated words and marks and Matt Mullican’s automatism, and looks as if it would involve insane ramblings. In fact, the words trail off with a piece of tongue-in-cheek art world advice (from an artist who is also a curator) reading “I used to be an artist too, you know. If you don’t watch out you’re going to end up a curator.” (Stokou is part of ‘Sweet Distemper,’ organized by Isaac Lyles at Derek Eller Gallery through August 16th).
Dieter Roth, Lauf der Welt (The Way the World Runs), 1970, chocolate, aluminum foil, folding carton board in plastic bag.
Nobody outdoes iconic German artist Dieter Roth for the aesthetic possibilities he derived from rotting food, from oil-extruding sausage to pressed bananas. It makes his work a shoe-in for ‘The Nature of Disappearance’ at both of Marianne Boesky’s galleries, a group show focusing on “…the intentionally initiated process of decay.” ‘Lauf der Welt’ (The Way the World Runs), 1970 (seen here in detail) is one of three Roth pieces included and features a smashed chocolate Santa and Easter Bunny. Though he does it by crushing the gaiety from children’s treats, Roth easily lays low the commercialism of the holidays by displaying a graphic version of their aftermath.
Claire Fontaine, installation view, ‘Dogma’ at Metro Pictures.
‘Kultur ist ein Palast der aus Hundescheisse gebaut ist.’ Spelling out the phrase ‘Culture is a palace built from dog shit,’ in German gives the idea more gravitas. Putting it in blue neon, more consumer appeal. Both are relevant to artist collective Claire Fontaine’s use of this quote by Bertold Brecht via Theodore Adorno criticizing mass culture’s commercialization. How the art world’s own extreme commercialization in recent years changes the equation is the question begged by this piece. (‘Dogma,’ a show more or less about dogs and people runs at Metro Pictures through Aug 10th).
It’s not clever words or phrasing but a pretty, undulating shimmer that make German artist Juergen Drescher’s six-foot wide speech bubble attractive. Silver-plated laminated polystyrene reflects the gallery’s light and the viewer, drawing us into conversation that must surely be intended to charm or impress. (The group show ‘Systemic’ is at Carolina Nitsch through August 11th.)
Allen Ruppersberg, ‘What Should I Do?,’ 1988, silkscreen on steel.
Allen Ruppersberg’s ‘What Should I Do?’ from 1988 poses a simple but often relevant question. It relates to his ‘70s autobiographical project ‘The Novel that Writes Itself’ for which he sold the parts of individual characters to people he knew. By the 80s, he hadn’t resolved the novel and in its place, began accumulating a series of short, unrelated texts like this one. Though only a few words, it assumes a lot: that the speaker has an audience, agency and options. With almost no means, this silkscreen on steel portrays a life in flux. (At Zach Feuer through August 3rd).
Mason Williams, Bus Book, 1967, silkscreen on paper.
‘Stand still like the hummingbird’ at David Zwirner is a group show as full of contradictions as it sounds, from Rodney Graham’s upside down oak tree photos to Robert Gober’s bronze slab painted to look exactly like a block of dirty Styrofoam. Musician and comedy writer Mason William’s 1967 life-size silkscreen of a Greyhound bus is a standout for its size alone, but the warning on the side of its box (displayed on a pedestal in front of the print) to avoid opening the artwork in the wind creates an amusing mental image with even more impact. (Through August 3rd).
Hiroshi Sunairi, Elephant, 2010, pruned tree branches and mulch from Flushing Meadows Corona Park and Cunningham Park, Queens, twine.
“Only Queens Museum would have a pile of decomposing tree trunks and branches out front instead of a piece of contemporary sculpture,” I thought outside the QMA the other day. Signage quickly proved, however, that the pile is a sculpture titled ‘Elephant’ by NYU professor Hiroshi Sunairi, one of whose major projects has been worldwide distribution of seeds from trees that survived the Hiroshima bombing. These trimmings come from Flushing Meadows/Corona Park trees, however, and take the rough shape of a reclining elephant (the trunks are its legs). They not only take on the form of an animal known for its good memory, they create a new, mini ecosystem which, it’s hoped, will house new trees of its own.
Barbara Kasten, Construct XIII, 1982, Polaroid, 10 x 8 inches.
Barbara Kasten’s photographed constructions from the mid ‘70s to the present at Bortolami add some welcome historical background to the recent vogue for abstract, set-up photography (think Sara VanDerBeek and Eileen Quinlan). Mirrors and light create enticing spatial ambiguity in some constructs, but not this one from ’82, in which awkwardness enlivens the image. A disappearing backdrop, hovering shapes, twisting light beams and tense wires lead the eye around an aesthetic obstacle course.
Mary Heilmann, Mojave Mirage, oil on canvas, 2012.
‘It’s Always Summer on the Inside’ at Anton Kern Gallery features some pretty dark fare, from the Coke logo emblazoned with the word ‘blood’ to one of Joyce Pensato’s sinister Batman paintings, making Mary Heilmann’s ‘Mojave Mirage,’ a blessed burst of candy-colored happiness. Her signature technique of adding extra canvas to the conventional rectangular shape works a treat as the sands of a flat desertscape suddenly swoop and swirl. (Through Aug 17th.)
John Dilg, ‘A Religious Experience,’ 2009 – 10, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 in.
John Dilg is no outsider artist (he’s an art professor at the University of Iowa) – though his pared down painting style may look unskilled it purges unnecessary details from his eerie, uninhabited landscapes. Muted colors and hazy lines add to the ambiguity of this scene titled, ‘A Religious Experience.’ Monumental in theme but not size (at 11 x 14 inches, it’s a little larger than book size), Dilg invites personal interpretations as he evokes a cascade of water or mountain capped by cloud a la Moses on Mt Sinai. (‘The Big Picture,’ a group show of small-scale painting, is on view at Sikkema Jenkins & Co through July 27th.)
Israeli artist Adi Nes created this startlingly beautiful image as part of a series of staged photographs picturing a fictional kibbutz in Israel’s historically embattled Jezreel Valley. Dense orchard foliage creates a sense of intimacy with this sun-lit boy and his horse but brings with it a sense of our intrusion. (Adi Nes’ ‘The Village’ is at Jack Shainman Gallery through July 28th.)
Thomas Houseago’s ‘Lying Figure’ lurks in shadow on the High Line under the Standard, like a voyeur lying in wait for the hotel’s notorious exhibitionist guests. Composed of repulsive, fecal-looking coils cast in bronze, the character is nonetheless a commanding presence despite being laid low and missing his head. (On the High Line through March 2013).
Patrick Jacobs, ‘Window with View of the Gowanus Heights,’ diorama composed of various materials, 2012.
‘Window with View of the Gowanus Heights,’ a tiny, meticulous diorama by Patrick Jacobs set into the gallery wall, imagines what paradise would look like if it suddenly materialized beyond the fire escape. It is part of the group exhibition, ‘Great Photographs: Scapes’ at Hasted Kraeutler, which includes huge photos of lush forests and burning woods, magnificent aerial views and vintage prints of the 19th century Colorado railroad. But it’s Jacobs’ humble ‘what if’ that really dares to dream big by turning a superfund site into a verdant Eden. (Though July 20th.)
Mateo Tannatt, New Line, Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero/Shogun 1982 – Present, 2012.
With his swing set turned sculpture at D’Amelio Gallery, LA-based artist Mateo Tannatt exploits the shock value of mixing themes of car crashes and children, though after a moment, it seems just as likely that this auto fragment has been junked like so many old toys. Swinging can be relaxing or thrilling, and Tannatt deftly suggests both the insulating attraction of a car-like pod and the consequences of pushing it too far. (Though August 24th.)
David Perez Karmadavis, Estructura Completa (Complete Structure), 2012, video.
Rather be in the Caribbean? The next best thing might be seeing ‘Caribbean: Crossroads of the World,’ a 200 year survey of visual culture from the islands at three NYC museums. At the Queens Museum, highlights include videos like ‘Complete Structure,’ by David Perez Karmadavis. Here, a blind Dominican man carries a handicapped Haitian woman through busy streets to allude to the relationship between their neighboring countries. Though reminiscent of Francis Alys on Mexico City streets, Karmadavis’s video captivates by concentrating on the dynamic between this unlikely duo. Watch the video on Vimeo. (Also at the Studio Museum in Harlem through Oct 21st and El Museo del Barrio through Jan 6th.)
In January, David Zwirner’s 519 W. 19th St location housed one of the most expensive to install and popular site-specific artworks ever shown there. Just seven months later, this prime real estate has been turned over to gallery employees (who happen to also be artists) for the group show, ‘People Who Work Here.’ A few participants might want to keep their day jobs, but among the standouts is this oil on wood portrait of Thomas Jefferson by David Ording titled, ‘Melanin.’ Based on a freckle-free 1805 original, the painting repatriates Jefferson’s pigmentation…perhaps at the expense of his dignity? (Through Aug 10th).
Christian Jankowski, ‘Discourse News,’ video on plasma screen, 2012.
It isn’t news that art jargon can obscure more than it illuminates. But in Christian Jankowski’s video ‘Discourse News,’ the spectacle of a popular New York news anchor delivering the artist’s wordy definition of art from her usual desk in the NY1 studio makes visual art verbosity seem particularly absurd while also reminding viewers of how over-simplified normal news programs can be. (Jankowski’s latest solo show runs through July 28th at Friedrich Petzel Gallery.)
Aurie Ramirez, Untitled, watercolor on paper, no date.
One detached, one accusatory, doll-like and dark, masculine and feminine at the same time, these have to be among the stranger mermaids out there. Conceived of by Aurie Ramirez, an artist working at Oakland’s Creative Growth Art Center, a studio program for mentally, physically and developmentally disabled adult artists, these girlish ladies stick in the mind for their sheer weirdness. (‘Creative Growth’ is at Rachel Uffner Gallery through August 10th.)
Alex Van Gelder, Untitled, 2012, Platinum Palladium hand coated print on Van Gelder 100% cotton paper.
They’re not exactly light summer fare, but Alex Van Gelder’s photos of gravestone, mausoleum and family tomb portraits are a visually stunning showcase of the effects of aging on pictures. Cracked and deteriorated, images like this untitled portrait are no longer about solemn memorials; now they demonstrate the aesthetic effects of disintegration, as if the hand of time wielded Photoshop for its own pleasure. (On view at Cheim & Read through Sept 8th.)
Christian Marclay, ‘The Clock,’ still from single channel video, 2010.
Christian Marclay’s 24 hour video installation ‘The Clock’ – praised as one of the standout artworks of the past decade – opened today at Lincoln Center as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. Composed of thousands of film clips featuring timepieces, and synched with real time, it entertains while making viewers eerily aware of the time they’re spending watching it. Arrive early – lines snaked down the block to view it in Feb ’11, so check out the Festival’s twitter ‘line update.’ (Runs through Aug 1st).
Hilton Head Island, S.C., USA, June 24, 1992. Chromogenic print, 117cm x 94 cm. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris. Copywrite Rineke Dijkstra
Adolescent awkwardness has been Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra’s stock in trade, starting in the early 90s with photos of gangly youngsters on the beach and continuing through series focusing on young mothers, bullfighters, dancers and more. The surprise delivered by her retrospective, which opens June 29th at the Guggenheim Museum, is the marked shift in her subjects’ confidence level from the 90s to the present day; her career now memorializes a time before reality TV and social media primed kids for their moment in front of the camera.
The show opens with young bathers from South Carolina to Croatia posed on the beach and brilliantly lit to highlight pimples, pores and, most notably, bodies still in formation, often in ill-fitting or unflattering swimsuits. Nearly nude, the teens have nowhere to hide, and the tension is palpable, whether the subject is a pretty blonde in an orange bikini or her less manicured Belgian counterpart, whose robotic stance – hands to her sides, palms flat on her thighs – suggests she’s itching to get away.
Rineke Dijkstra, De Panne, Belgium, August 7, 1992. Photograph on paper, 1370 x 1070mm. Collection of the Tate Modern.
Other subjects kept returning to Dijkstra, notably ‘Almerisa,’ who we meet as a six year old Bosnia refuge in a portrait taken at a Dutch asylum center. Two years later, her blank stare has changed to a smile, later to a knowing expression, and in her teen years to a challenging look. She gains confidence, fills out and by the time she’s twenty has her own baby. As amazing as Almerisa’s physical transformation happened to be (her morphing style choices make it hard to tell she’s the same girl sometimes) distilling her life into an image every year or so denies the complexities and variation of her experience. Watching Almerisa grow up is frustrating as we’re left to guess at what or who influenced her shifting appearance, how she assimilated or challenged her new Dutch environment.
In her pictures of Almerisa, or the Israeli twins Chen and Efrat, whose faces and characters undergo a remarkable change from tame tweens to club vixens and finally to softer featured young ladies in white tank tops, the teen age years look like a scary time without giving a great deal of insight into how the difficulties were navigated. From our after-the-face perspective, Dijkstra’s subjects are survivors. Somehow, sass and sullenness eventually departed, leaving young women who look more in control of their identities and self-presentation.
Almerisa, Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. January 4, 2008
Dijkstra’s more contemporary subjects seem to have missed out on this phase, however. ‘The Buzz Club,’ A video from ’96-97 shot in a Liverpool club shows young people swaying or dancing with restraint to a beat. A little over a decade later, a second video titled ‘The Krazyhouse’ and also shot in Liverpool features five confident teens who could be in trails for ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ so confident and practiced are their moves.
In contrast to earlier work, in which impending transitions created drama (bullfighters range from gormless to wise, Olivier, the model-handsome French legionnaire developed from a sad-looking, vulnerable boy to a hardened man) or individuals like the bathers symbolized a moment of change, it’s become harder to see past the teens’ practiced exteriors. Though they’re more self-possessed, Dijkstra’s recent subjects can still elicit sympathy and concern via the daring cut of a dress or greasy-haired headbanging. But they, like a group of students thoughtfully considering Picasso paintings in one of Dijkstra’s more recent videos, have evolved into having, or at least appearing to have, more of their own agency, an upbeat final impression conveyed in the show’s final galleries.
The big draw of Mark Dion’s exhibition at the members-only, Upper East Side Explorers Club is, unsurprisingly, the club itself. But Dion seems to have anticipated the distractions posed by the club’s exclusivity and the exotic appeal of its artifact displays from around the world by offering an installation of all-white sculptures that literally contrasts its colorful surroundings.
With his history of creating museum-like displays that question how we categorize information and pursue scientific enquiry, Dion seems like the perfect artist for the Clark Art Institute’s commission to commemorate the 100th anniversary of a publication by Singer Sewing Machine heir Robert Sterling Clark (whose brother’s old residence now houses the club) documenting his 1908 specimen-gathering expedition to northern China.
Mark Dion at The Explorers Club
Dion responded by crafting a catalogue of items representing those taken on the Clark expedition, including barrels and boxes of supplies, tools arranged carefully on a long table, a Chinese rock squirrel scaled up to eight times its normal size, a wild boar and a cooking fire. Sculpted in white celluclay (and white furry material for the squirrel), each item stands out as particularly unnatural amid the ‘Trophy Room’s’ hunting lodge décor.
The barrels recall Gary Simmons’ white backwoods liquor brewing stills, both of which take objects out of context to question the context itself, while the huge squirrel is hard to take seriously, looking like a giant stuffed animal from the polar regions. Removed from their native locations and uses, Dion’s whited-out objects are made unavoidably strange, and they resist absorption into a narrative of daring discovery.
Dana Schutz, Piano in the Rain, 2012, oil on canvas. Courtesy of Friedrich Petzel Gallery.
Join art critic, college teacher and tour guide, Merrily Kerr on a small group gallery tour (limited to ten or fewer participants) for an intimate exploration of New York’s best art. At each venue, Merrily gives information on the galleries themselves and the artwork on display – questions and conversation are encouraged!
Tours last two hours and take place regardless of the weather. Advance registration is required to reserve your place and can be made by visiting newyorkarttours.com.
Our itinerary will showcase eight of the most important and talked about exhibitions of the moment, including an energizing mix of artwork in different media by emerging talents and internationally acclaimed artists.
Meet at 508 West 26th Street. Tour departs at 2pm. $40 pp in cash or check on the day.
Join art critic, college teacher and tour guide, Merrily Kerr on a small group gallery tour (limited to ten or fewer participants) for an intimate exploration of New York’s best art. At each venue, Merrily gives information on the galleries themselves and the artwork on display – questions and conversation are encouraged!
Tours last two hours and take place regardless of the weather. Advance registration is required to reserve your place and can be made by visiting newyorkarttours.com.
Our tour will include exhibitions at veteran downtown galleries and outside-the-box projects, guaranteeing a lively mix of unconventional artwork and unique spaces.
Meet in front of 235 Bowery (The New Museum). Tour departs at 2pm. $40pp in cash or check on the day.
No artist stereotype is as persistent as the garret-living starving artist, but a runner up with a more contemporary feel must be the artist trapped in the studio, ruminating on his or her surroundings. Bruce Nauman’s floor-pacing, wall-bouncing videos from the 60s and ‘Mapping the Studio…’ from ’01 give the artist’s space itself a role in the creative process. Jeanne Silverthorne casts her studio floor as a means of ‘archaeology’ while artists like Ellen Altfest have created meticulous renderings of paint-splattered floors, plants and views from the window of her studio.
London-based artist Elizabeth McAlpine also reproduces scenes from the studio, but obscures their origins in ‘The Map of Exactitude,’ her first New York solo show. The exhibition features mysteriously shaped sculptures combining organic and geometric forms and even more eccentric-looking framed images on paper that hint at architectural diagrams which, in a way, they are. McAlpine’s sculptures are actually casts of the ceilings and corners of another artist’s studio, which she then made into pinhole cameras with multiple tiny openings.
Elizabeth McAlpine at Laurel Gitlen
Photosensitive paper folded to the dimensions of the casts’ interiors records multiple views that are often so abstract, they don’t really give much insight into a place that is intended for art making. Instead, McAlpine puts the artistic process itself on display by exhibiting her tools and the resulting images – sculpture-like cameras – on equal footing. Using the peculiarities of the space to make artwork about the space could be obnoxiously self-referential, but comes across instead as a thoughtful reflection on the process of pursuing ideas and discerning meaning in the studio.
Elizabeth McAlpine at Laurel Gitlen, 261 Broome Street, Show extended through July 1, 2012.
Join art critic, college teacher and tour guide, Merrily Kerr on a small group tour of the biggest museum show of the season, the Whitney Biennial. Find out why critics are calling ‘the show everyone loves to hate,’ one of the best ever. In early May, Merrily will guide you to the best Chelsea gallery shows of the moment, including a jungle gym-like installation composed of crocheted netting and plastic balls by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto and the late Richard Avedon’s monumental photo murals.
‘Best of the Whitney Biennial,’ Sunday, April 29, 2012, 11:30am – 1pm
“Artists are taking matters into their own hands,” says New York magazine critic Jerry Saltz, “…resetting the agenda, and fighting back against an art world that had been focused on selling, buzz and bigness.” Join Merrily to find out what the buzz is about on a small group tour focusing on the visual art in a show dense with performance and film. SPACE IS LIMITED to the first six participants to register with Merrily by visiting newyorkarttours.com. Meet in the lobby of the Whitney Museum, (945 Madison Ave at 75th Street). Please purchase tickets prior to the day of our tour at whitney.org or arrive at least 20 minutes in advance to purchase a ticket to this extremely popular show. The museum opens at 11am and the tour departs at 11:30am. $40 pp in cash or check on the day. Does not include museum admission ($18 general admission, $12 seniors 62+). ‘Best Contemporary Art in Chelsea,’ Saturday, May 5, 2012, 11am – 1pm Our itinerary will showcase eight of the most important and talked about exhibitions of the moment, including an energizing mix of artwork in different media by emerging talents and internationally acclaimed artists. With space limited to ten or fewer participants, Merrily’s small group tours are an intimate exploration of New York’s best art. At each venue, Merrily gives information on the galleries themselves and the artwork on display – questions and conversation are encouraged!
This tour will last two hours and take place regardless of the weather.
SPACE IS LIMITED to the first ten participants to register at newyorkarttours.com. Meet at 508 West 26th Street. Tour departs at 11am. $40 pp in cash or check on the day.
Matt Collishaw, installation view. Photo courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.
Photos of Texas death-row prisoners’ last meals, giant prints of dead insects and sculptures of diseased flowers (titled, for instance, after a poem from Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal or a U.K. waste-management company) confirm that original Young British Artist Mat Collishaw still traffics in sensation. Surprisingly, the most gratuitous subject—the last meals—proves to be the most thought-provoking, despite the fact that it, too, reflects Collishaw’s fondness for grotesquery.
Collishaw rightly calculates that our morbid fascination will attract us to these photos of french fries, steak, cinnamon rolls and other repasts, dimly lit to recall Dutch still-life painting, but mainly looking gray and unappetizing. Still, evoking this last moment of pleasure does create twinges of sympathy for the condemned, whose orders range from a dish of yogurt to a heaving pile of food.
Vitrines of waxy-looking, boil-covered, meat-pink amaryllis, lilies and other flora growing in toxic soil are so blatantly gross that they kill any such nuance of feeling. A video animating decaying flowers buzzing with flies in a comically misty dead forest does a bit more than the sculptures to suggest the dark enchantment hinted at in Baudelaire’s title, but setting the flatscreen behind an 18th-century altarpiece seems like a mere ploy to stir the pot with a tangential religious reference. Collishaw gets it right when he mines the contradictions in humanity’s capacity for base thoughts and actions. But when he simply represents it, he produces more of the same.
For an artwork with such potential to bore its audience silly, On Kawara’s One Million Years at David Zwirner Gallery is surprisingly seductive. To try to better understand this landmark conceptual art project, consisting of several volumes of type-written numbers counting one million years into the past and one million years into the future, I volunteered to take part in a public reading one Saturday afternoon.
Half expecting to emerge from my two-hour stint hoarse and semi-deranged after such a mind-numbing chore, I was relieved to survive relatively intact. I’d thought that my mind would wander to all kinds of interesting places while my lips went on autopilot. No such luck.
Plowing through the centuries at a steady clip (my male counterpart and I covered a millennium in about an hour), I had to stay focused despite the temptation to meet the gazes of staring gallery visitors or gawk at one knoodling couple. To my chagrin, the piece brought out my inner nerd, so preoccupied by speaking up and not making mistakes that I couldn’t begin to get my head around the idea of the numbers representing meaningful dates. Instead, my thrills came from configurations like 48,888AD and the turn of the millennium.
Later in the day, though, I found myself thinking about the progression of ‘our’ numbers – 48,625 A.D. – 49,678 A.D. Something about the repetition was soothing – maybe the idea of time marching inevitably and quickly on, regardless of what may or may not happen all those years in the future. I can’t say my immediate perception of time has been effected, but the idea of a human lifespan passing in a flash while barely a dent was made in the tally of dates is still awe inspiring.
Catch On Kawara’s One Million Years before it closes on February 14th, or watch my exhibition review .
Several museum shows are timed to close at the end of the holiday season; don’t let your chance to see Elizabeth Peyton’s and Mary Heilmann’s solo shows at the New Museum slip away.To much publicity, Peyton added a portrait of Michele Obama to her exhibition after November 4th, but the artist’s best work comes when she indulges her obsession with wan and pretty men.Plenty of female artists have depicted men in feminizing ways to in order to critique conventional portrayals of women, but Peyton doesn’t demean her subjects, instead giving them their own aura of exquisiteness.Downstairs, forty years of painting, ceramics and furniture by Mary Heilmann refreshingly demonstrate this much admired artist’s ability to conjure a range of moods –– electrifying, humorous, or serene – through her abstract canvases.Highlights include ‘Lovejoy, Jr.,’ a day-glo grid inspired by the stained glass windows in the church on The Simpsons and a row of blue and white paintings in the lobby gallery, which riff on the meeting of land and sea.
Obama-mania has swept the art world this fall with myriad auctions and other fundraising events. At David Zwirner Gallery, you can do more than buy art or hobnob with politically like-minded art lovers. you can take home a piece of history from ‘The Voting Booth Project,’ an exhibition of artwork made from actual voting booths used in the 2000 election in Florida. If the memory of the faulty booths makes you a little queasy, at least the lineup of participating artists promises to sex up the symbols of disenfranchisement by including the campy, carnivalesque assume astro vivid focus, Mickalene Thomas, liberal user of rhinestones in her images, and Fred Tomaselli of drugs-as-collage-materials fame.
The Rema Hort Mann Foundation presents The Voting Booth Project at David Zwirner Gallery, 525 West 19th Street, Oct 14 – 25 and at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 540 West 26th Street, November 7-8.
“If Ms Walker retired today she would leave behind one of the most trenchant and historically erudite bodies of art produced by any American in the last 15 years, only a portion of which is in the Whitney show,” wrote New York Times critic Holland Cotter of Kara Walker’s powerful survey show at the Whitney Museum. Pilloried by some prominent African American artists in the late 90s for trafficking in negative black imagery, Walker’s signature installations of black-paper silhouettes on white walls, drawings, projections and texts mine America’s past and present race relations in all their ugly complexity. For viewers unafraid to confront controversial issues head on, this is the show not to miss. (On through Feb 3rd).
For many New Yorkers, Chris Ofili’s name will bring to mind the brou-ha-ha around his painting of the Virgin Mary supported by two clods of dried elephant dung, exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999. Ofili’s choice of materials aimed to beg the question of what kind of art he should make as a Caribbean-British artist, a topic that he revisits in a show of new work at David Zwirner Gallery. A recent move to Trinidad appears to have influenced the subject matter and style of his recent paintings, with languid characters, intense colors and tropical landscapes making references to European masters like Gauguin and Matisse, who ventured abroad in search of the exotic. With several standout paintings and sculptures, Ofili peels back another layer of his complicated identity, making this the ‘don’t miss’ show of the moment.
For more information on Chris Ofili’s ‘Devil’s Pie’ exhibition, visit David Zwirner Gallery.
Feminism is dead? Think again. Touted as, ‘The first international exhibition exclusively dedicated to feminist art from 1990 to the present,’ ‘Global Feminisms’ at the Brooklyn Museum proves that women around the world (with quite a few art stars among them) are making artwork about specifically female experience. The show opens the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, implying not only that feminism is here to stay, but that the artwork identified under that title will be continually worthy of a significant swathe of Brooklyn Museum real estate. Judge for yourself if this controversial investment is truly groundbreaking or ‘a false idea wrapped in confusion,’ as New York Times critic Roberta Smith recently put it. (Show closes July 1st.)
For more information on Global Feminisms and the Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art, visit The Brooklyn Museum’s website.
Attention all photo enthusiasts, don’t miss three shows set to close April 7th. Selections from Mitch Epstein’s series, ‘American Power’ may feel a little disjointed – images representing family and romantic power relations are shuffled in with photos depicting refineries, fuel processing plants and the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina – but are still a sobering visual essay on the cost exacted by American energy consumption. Justine Kurland’s subject matter is likewise tied to the American landscape, but her photos of mothers and their children posing nude in the wilds are idyllic scenarios suggesting a thwarted yearning for prelapsarian perfection. Meanwhile, over at 303 gallery, Karel Funk’s photorealist paintings (OK, it only looks like photography) prove it’s not just God who can count every hair on your head. Check out the lavish attention paid to the minutest detail of his male subjects, including the wispy locks on one magnificent hipster in the back gallery.
Exhibition closings come in waves; the next set is due to break on February 10th. Don’t miss Stan Douglas’s video ‘Klatsassin,’ a murder and revenge story set during a gold rush in 19th century British Columbia, at David Zwirner Gallery. Presented in Douglas’ characteristic looping format, with 850 possible permutations, the entire effort runs over 70 hours, both teasing and enticing viewers with an elusively juicy plot. Though their subject matter is decidedly less dramatic, at least two other shows merit a last minute trip to Chelsea. Dike Blair’s tiny, mundane, but mysterious still life paintings at D’Amelio Terras Gallery muster a murky noir feeling, while Charles Long’s elegant, white sculptures at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery recall Giacometti but were actually modeled on bird droppings, giving them pedigree in an art world long obsessed with bodily function.
Christmas is just around the corner, but amid the shopping and festivities, don’t forget that many gallery shows are slated to close right before the holidays. The most obvious must-see is John Currin’s racy, exquisitely rendered portraits at Gagosian Gallery’s uptown location. Meanwhile, don’t miss the huge show of late Warhols at the gallery’s two downtown spaces, where self-portraits in fright wigs butt heads with Mao and Jesus makes an appearance in monumental Last Suppers. For something out of the ordinary, catch Martha Camarillo’s photographs of horse-riding culture in the heart of inner city Philadelphia (as in, hanging out on the street on a horse), at the Jack Shainman Gallery. (All shows close December 22nd.)
A trio of shows south of the border (e.g. just beyond the Meatpacking District!) are a cinch to draw visitors below 14th Street this month with excellent offerings by young West Coast artists Evan Holloway and Jennifer Bornstein and Swiss legend Dieter Roth. Holloway at long last presents his first New York solo show after attracting attention in the 2002 Whitney Biennial for his abstract sculptures, while Bornstein departs from her usual photo and film-based work to present intimate portraits created by copperplate etching. Meanwhile Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art shows editioned graphics and objects by the master of odd art materials (including chocolate and sausage) as part of a two-gallery show also at Josee Bienvenu Gallery in Chelsea. (Evan Holloway’s and Jennifer Bornstein’s shows are open until Nov 18th, Dieter Roth’s is open until Nov 25.)
It’s no wonder ‘Helter Swelter,’ Justin Lowe’s first New York solo show attracted reviews in The New York Times, the Village Voice and Time Out. This young collage artist turned the gallery itself into an artwork by creating a convincing, full scale corner store in the front room, parking an ice cream van in the hall, and covering the floor of the back room in fabulous psychedelic swirls of fabric. This meeting of life and art may not explain the mysteries of the universe, but the experience is unique enough for a visit. (Through July 28th)
For one week only, New York hosts an extravaganza of Asian art made here and abroad in a series of non-stop lectures, exhibition openings and events. Highlights include an array of video works presented at art venues across the city, sculptures by legendary Indian outsider artist Nek Chand, and even an intergenerational showdown between two action painters on a blocked off street in Tribeca. With so many events happening in so many venues, it ’s a sure bet that something good with be happening near you.
