{"id":879,"date":"2010-05-27T13:14:08","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T18:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/?p=879"},"modified":"2025-02-17T13:37:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-17T18:37:20","slug":"thomas-houseago-the-moon-and-the-stars-and-the-sun-at-michael-werner-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/27\/thomas-houseago-the-moon-and-the-stars-and-the-sun-at-michael-werner-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Houseago at Michael Werner Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Thomas Houseago, "Spoon IV," 2010. Photograph courtesy of Michael Werner Gallery, New York.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sculptures in Thomas Houseago\u2019s first New York solo show defy reigning art trends by embracing monumentality, mining art history for subject matter without being overacademic or self-conscious, and conveying meaning without detailed background info. None have the commanding presence or shape-shifting potential of the artist\u2019s towering\u00a0Baby<\/em>, a standout in the current Whitney Biennial. But his totemic and iconic pieces, made with labored simplicity, plumb life\u2019s mysteries with hopeful optimism.<\/p>\n

A line of skulls just inside the gallery would be grim if not for their wealth of associations, from Darth Vader\u2019s mask to Picasso\u2019s haunting late self-portraits. Jonathan Meese\u2019s Cubist-indebted faces come to mind, but Houseago\u2019s heads are more in keeping with the simple, alien grotesquery of Ugo Rondinone\u2019s all-black visages. With their hollow, zombie eyes, quizzical semi-squints and fingerlike ropes of flesh on their faces, the figures float between life and death, pop culture and high art.<\/p>\n

The show itself ambitiously aims to be many things at once\u2014figurative and abstract, humorous and serious, historical and contemporary\u2014but it feels crowded and thematically discordant at times. It\u2019s tempting to hunt for humanist metaphors to tie together pieces like the two giant spoons \u00e0 la Claes Oldenburg (nourishment?) and the Brancusi-like totem with bird\u2019s head\/bike helmet on top (spirituality?). Other objects make more fruitful associations: A repeated circle pattern appearing in a ghoulish face, a geometric frieze, and a sculpture representing sunrise and sunset merges personal and cosmic concerns, connecting dark souls to shining celestial bodies\u2014and speaking for art\u2019s ability to enlighten.<\/p>\n

Originally published in Time Out New York, issue 764, May 20 – 26, 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sculptures in Thomas Houseago\u2019s first New York solo show defy reigning art trends by embracing monumentality, mining art history for subject matter without being overacademic or self-conscious, and conveying meaning without detailed background info. None have the commanding presence or shape-shifting potential of the artist\u2019s towering\u00a0Baby, a standout in the current Whitney Biennial. But … <\/p>\n

Read more “Thomas Houseago at Michael Werner Gallery”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"both","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":301,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[8,29,18,9,15,14,13,12,36,10,56,16,34,11,35],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-art","tag-art-criticism","tag-artist","tag-contemporary","tag-critic","tag-exhibition","tag-gallery","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-sculpture","tag-thomas-houseago","tag-tour","tag-tours","tag-visual-art","tag-visual-arts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BDOD-eb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12222,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions\/12222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkarttours.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}