Matt Johnson’s ‘Untitled (Swan)’ marries industrial materials to the natural world by shaping a train track into the shape of an abstract swan set in the High Line’s lush gardens. Known for morphing everyday items – a crumpled Starbucks cup carved from wood and painted, a stack of plastic party cups actually rendered in painted bronze – into objects of wonder, this twisted rail pays homage to the former rail line on which it’s installed. (In ‘Wanderlust’ on the High Line through March 2017).
At over ten feet tall, this polyethylene sculpture by Jeff Koons magnifies kitsch to its limits. Whether it’s a contemporary crucifixion, as Koons has said, a phallic symbol, as others have pointed out, or something else entirely, there’s more than meets the eye. (At Chelsea’s Flag Foundation through May 14th).
Eddie Martinez continues to mine art history in increasingly abstract paintings now on view in Chelsea at Mitchell-Innes and Nash. Tapping into diverse sources of inspiration – from Basquiat’s jittery line to de Kooning’s boldly outlined bodily forms – Martinez creates strangely familiar paintings to ponder. (Through March 5th).
As the reviews come out, Cindy Sherman’s retrospective at MoMA (open Feb 26 – June 11) seems set to break ‘best-loved show’ records. Universal critical adoration usually arouses suspicion of cliquish agreeability. But Sherman takes the very notion of conformity to fashion and self-presentation -negotiated through society’s expectations – as her subject matter. Absurdity and grotesquery appear at every turn in this show, making Sherman an uber-critic whose acuity forces the following homages from New York’s major cultural commentators:
Roberta Smith, New York Times:
Though Smith takes umbrage with the show’s selection and non-chronological arrangement, calling it “magnificent if somewhat flawed,” Sherman herself is “…an increasingly vehement avenging angel waging a kind of war with the camera, using it to expose what might be called both the tyranny and the inner lives of images, especially the images of women that bombard and shape all of us at every turn.”
Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine:
Saltz also gives Sherman fighting cred, calling her “…a warrior artist – one who has won her battles so decisively that I can’t imagine anyone ever again embarking on a lifetime of self-portraiture without coming up against her.” He adds, “I think of Cindy Sherman as an artist who only gets better.”
Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker:
Schjeldahl affords Sherman the highest praise, saying, “The mysteries are irreducible…they qualify Sherman, to my mind, as the strongest and finest American artist of her time.” Pointing out that delusion allows a disconnect between “inner feeling” and “outer attributes” he adds that, “…Sherman makes hard, scary truths sustainable as only great artists can.”
Halle calls the MoMA retrospective “…the best show I’ve seen there since the Gerhard Richter survey [in 2002], and probably the best exhibit I’ve seen anywhere in a while…The way I’d put it is that Sherman uses glamour and horror to send up and celebrate the feminine mystique, including her own. She quantifies and categorizes the notion of one’s appearance, which fashion also does. But unlike Anna Wintour, Sherman isn’t in the business of marketing the cultural; she’s in the business of laying it bare.”
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.