Alec Soth: Sleeping by the Mississippi, at Yossi Milo

by Merrily KerrReviewsPosted on Comments are Disabled

For ‘Time Out’ Magazine

Alec Soth, 'Lenny, Minneapolis' 2002
Alec Soth, 'Lenny, Minneapolis' 2002

Alec Soth’s exhibition may be titled “Sleeping by the Mississippi,” but no one sleeps in his photographs and the river makes only cameo appearances. His real subjects are the oddball characters that populate the cities and countryside along the waterway. Starting in Minneapolis where he documents a weight lifter, Soth moves down the river, stopping in Iowa for a picture of a lingerie-clad mother and daughter before arriving in Baton Rouge to capture a man clutching a bible and a branch on Palm Sunday.

Portraits can trigger our inner detective; we look for clues as to why a man stands on his snowy roof holding two toy airplanes, for example. But sometimes settings alone start the imagination racing, as when Sugar’s, Davenport, IA (2002) presents a room with poisonous green walls, a classic ‘70s floral patterned chair and a bright red copy of Hustler on the floor. In the gallery, Soth’s photos of unpopulated interiors infect his portraits with a loneliness reinforced by the time of year when they were taken – the bleak months of winter and early spring.

Surprisingly, apart from a freakish wax figure from a museum in Missouri, all subjects are white. By eliding geographic and racial differences in favor of exploring lives unified by their nonconformity, Soth undermines the lore of life on Old Man River. The photos don’t express nostalgia about the mighty Mississippi and there’s no Huck Finn thrill of adventure. Instead, they focus on people who, despite their hardscrabble lives, assert unique identities with a passion unfettered by circumstance.

Paul Graham, ‘American Night’, PS1

by Merrily KerrReviewsPosted on Comments are Disabled

For ‘Art on Paper’ magazine
During last summer’s blackout, New Yorkers walked home to all corners of the city and beyond and learned the value of public transportation. Life went back to normal after a day or two, but for America’s poorest citizens, lack of mobility is a daily obstacle. In his latest body of work, ‘American Night’, British photographer Paul Graham turned his camera on lone individuals in locations around the U.S. as they trudged by roadsides or waited for a ride. By overexposing his film and intervening in the developing process, Graham obscured each photograph with a veil-like overlay of white color. The resulting bleakness of the images not only emphasizes the barrenness of the urban and rural landscapes he photographs but introduces a metaphor for social blindness.

It’s difficult to make out the subject matter in each photograph, but gradually the seedy details of industrial streets and low-end strip malls start to materialize. A figure walks or stands alone at the center of each scene. Excluded from America’s car culture, these individuals are left to wait for the bus, as a one-legged man outside the Yum Yum restaurant does. Next to an empty parking lot of a housing complex, a woman stands with hands upturned in pleading or frustration as a car passes by without stopping. Equally poignant is a tiny figure in a parking lot, vast and barren as a desert.

Although each picture features one person, the focus is less on particular circumstances than the general plight of those forced to exist on foot in a hostile, car-centered environment. Like Graham’s photos from the mid-80s of English welfare offices, the images elaborate on the hardships and indignities of poverty. But while the subjects of those pictures waited together for assistance, survival for these solitary individuals requires active struggle. Their presence emphasizes the impersonal nature of both urban and rural planning in the U.S., which, in its glamorizing of the open road, also reinforces social exclusion. The photographs, shrouded in their white veils, suggest society’s willingness to ignore the problem. Despite their difficulties, the loners in ‘American Night’ have a mysterious quality, saving the photographs from pure social commentary and imbuing them with intrigue.

Jason Rhoades, at David Zwirner

by Merrily KerrReviewsPosted on Comments are Disabled

For ‘Tema Celeste’ magazine

Jason Rhoades, 'Meccatuna', 2003, Installation View
Jason Rhoades, 'Meccatuna', 2003, Installation View

Cod Canal. The Flounder. Fish Hole. Tuna Town. These phrases and hundreds more were spelled out in bright, neon lights high on the walls of David Zwirner’s gallery. At first, aided by an enormous, multicolored cube-shaped construction made entirely of lego, they created a festive atmosphere. The show seemed dazzlingly fun, at least until the artist’s symbolism was decoded. The seductively colorful lights in fact spelled out mostly derogatory slang terms for vagina, and were joined by less ambiguous words like “wound,” “monster” and “cum dumpster.” With a little explanation, the show flipped from impressive to oppressive.

The title, Meccatuna, summarized two competing trains of thought. First, Mecca—the home of the cube shaped Ka’ba considered by Muslims to be the center of the world—is represented in the show by the lego structure. Second, tuna—slang term for vagina—is symbolized by the neon words arranged on the walls and on metal shelving units, shiny metal disk sculptures, tires, and sculptures in the shape of a camel’s toe bone. Mecca and tuna are united in the narrative of a journey commissioned by Rhoades, who supposedly paid a man in Saudi Arabia to document the purchase of a box of Geisha brand tuna in Mecca.

The artist’s conceptual starting points are clear, but they initiate disturbing chains of association. His primary comparison is between the Muslim center of the world and the vagina as L’Origine du monde, as Courbet titled his famous painting. East also meets West in the donkey and camel, submissive beasts of burden and secondary actors in Rhoades’ tableau. Does this designation extend to women, whose vaginas are represented by the camel in this show? How are we to read a photograph on the gallery wall of the Ka’ba, surrounded by circumambulating worshippers? The relationship between animals, the faithful and women are too undefined; Rhoades may not have intended to directly insult women and Muslims, but his practice of encouraging ambiguous associations backfires in Meccatuna. Provocation for its own sake is like a drum roll followed by nothing—attention grabbing but ultimately disappointing.

Taryn Simon: ‘The Innocents’, at PS1

by Merrily KerrReviewsPosted on Comments are Disabled

For ‘Flash Art’ Magazine

Taryn Simon: Larry Youngblood, Alibi location Tucson, Arizona, with Alice Laitner, Youngblood's girlfriend and alibi witness at trial. Served 8 years on a 10.5-year sentence for kidnapping, sexual assault and child molestation. 2002. C-Print, 46 x 59 cm
Taryn Simon: Larry Youngblood, Alibi location Tucson, Arizona, with Alice Laitner, Youngblood's girlfriend and alibi witness at trial. Served 8 years on a 10.5-year sentence for kidnapping, sexual assault and child molestation. 2002. C-Print, 46 x 59 cm

“I kept saying to my lawyer, ‘Doesn’t the truth have to come out?’ And he’d say, ‘Nope, the truth don’t have to come out.’ But the truth is all coming out now. It’s pretty wild.” Taryn Simon’s large-scale photographs of men like James O’Donnell, who had this conversation with his lawyer, are anything but wild. Instead, their stillness conveys a sense that time has stopped. Commissioned by the lawyer activists of ‘The Innocence Project,’ Simon traveled around the country taking photographs and conducting interviews with men and women who were wrongly convicted of violent crimes and later exonerated by DNA evidence. Fifteen of the resulting forty-five portraits were exhibited at PS1 accompanied by an absorbing catalogue and a video of interview footage.

Most of the subjects stand still, looking steadily at the camera with mix of anger and wariness as they pose in locations related to the crime or their alibi. One man lies under a filthy mattress in a seedy motel where the police found him, others appear in front of the rundown stores where they were arrested. Beauty finds its way into the tragedy in photos of a man seated in a field of what look like brilliant red and orange flowers, but which are actually broken targets at a skeet range. The more chilling scenes are those where crimes took place, like the shrubby riverbank illuminated solely by truck headlights or the flooded wood behind some houses.

By photographing her subjects in a quiet setting usually alone or with a person related to their case, Simon extends the isolation of prison into the men’s free life. The men, with their similar poses and expressions become icons of injustice who are only really understood as individuals in the videotaped footage. Here, emotions rush to the surface as they struggle to comprehend what has happened to them and the difficulty of finding a way forward. When he was in prison, Marvin Anderson explains, “I used to make myself look at the world as being total darkness and me being the only person in it.” Anderson and the others fought for and won their freedom, but in the eye of Simon’s camera and a mistrustful society, many are still pretty much on their own.

Contemporary Asian Photography, at Japan Society

by Merrily KerrReviewsPosted on Comments are Disabled

For ‘ART AsiaPacific’ Magazine

Too many cooks spoil the broth, but a superabundance of curators doesn’t have to be tasteless. At least that is the lesson taught by “The Year of New Work: Contemporary Asian Photography,” a four-part exhibition at New York’s Japan Society organized by photography curators Noriko Fuku, Alice Rose George and Christopher Phillips. Beginning in November 2002, the external curators presented quarterly, themed exhibitions of contemporary photography and video by Japanese, Chinese and Korean artists in the new ‘Lobby Gallery.’

Most artwork in the four exhibitions came from the collection of JGS, Inc. (standing for Joy of Giving Something) a non-profit arts organization eager to partner with institutions to show its extensive photography collection. Besides supplying the art, JGS, Inc. brought the curators, each of whom acts as a specialist consultant for different parts of the collection. George, an independent curator, photo editor and art advisor who has worked with JGS for eleven years succinctly said, “We’re interested in whatever talent that is coming that hasn’t been before.” A quest for the new took the organization as far as Asia, where it began collecting work by emerging artists in the mid 90s.

The collection now includes work by artists familiar and new to New York audiences, a mix which was reflected in the exhibitions. The first show, ‘Character and Choice’ featured photographs by Nikki S. Lee, Yasumasa Morimura and Tomoko Sawada and delved into the theme of physical transformation. Lee’s makeovers as a skateboarder, a Hip-Hop diva and a senior citizen and 400 surprisingly diverse self-portraits taken by Sawada in a photo booth captured the artists’ chameleon-like ability to alter their appearances. ‘Flesh and Flames,’ the second show in the series, opened in Spring ’03 with photos of dying flowers by Nobuyoshi Araki, close-up shots of the aging Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno by Miyako Ishiuchi, and images of Buddhist rituals in the Kumano Mountains by Risaku Suzuki.

If the first two exhibitions favored the human body and ritual, the final two shows focused on the collision of past, present and future. ‘Spatial Narratives,’ which opened in Summer ’03, featured a collaged scroll by Hong Hao, a scroll-like series of photos by Xing Danwen, photos by Tomoko Yoneda and Atta Kim and a video by the New York- based Korean artist Seoungho Cho. Cho’s work also appeared in the final installment, themed around the fast changing Asian cityscape. Photographers included Naoya Hatakeyama whose series ‘Slow Glass’ captures city lights at night though a car windshield and two Chinese artists: Beijing based Zhang Dali, who alters the appearance of buildings scheduled for demolition, and Weng Fen from Hainan Island in south China who takes high format photographs of the new cityscapes with children in the foreground.

The year-long exhibition is another demonstration of the increasing importance of Asian photography in New York. Though, the lobby venue seemed inappropriate for three curators with such international stature. (Despite the tranquil sounds of a waterfall and gorgeous black stone walls, it’s still a lobby.) But other shows are on the horizon in the city. Phillips, a curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP) who is co-curating an exhibition of Chinese photography with Wu Hung at the ICP and Asia Society opening June 2004, points out, “Slowly, you’re starting to see mainstream galleries, and photography galleries starting to recognize that this is an untapped body of work of extremely high quality, which we can all learn something from.”