Gallery Crawl

“Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Live from New York…” at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery

By: Sarah Blumberg

 

Damion Berger, Hula Hoops - Le Roccabella, Monaco, gelatin silver print mounted on museum board and aluminum, 27.5” x 42", Edition of 10, 2001. Copyright Damion Berger.

Courtesy Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC.

 

 

          Entering the Bonni Benrubi Gallery for “Hot Fun in the Summertime” was a lot like walking into multiple memories of childhood summers, complete with a soundtrack of The Beach Boys that was playing for the opening reception.  Summertime is about nostalgia, a feeling that is captured in this exhibition in many different ways.  For some of these photographers, summer is a colorful idealization: sand, surf, seashells, and screen doors that lead forever out to the ocean.  Other images focus on cooler images of muted tones and of summers past: cavernous hot springs, still lifes of fruit, portraits of people who have seen better days and circumstances, and storefronts long since fallen into disrepair.  The theme of summer nostalgia is what ties this exhibition together, but it’s the remarkably disparate outlooks that make it so interesting.

Peter C. Jones, Ocean / Screen, No 1, chromogenic print, 20”x 20", Edition of 15, 2008. Copyright Peter C. Jones. Courtesy Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC.

 

          Photography is the perfect medium for the moments captured in “Hot Fun in the Summertime” because of this element of nostalgia.  Even if the camera isn’t showing the viewer’s own experiences, all photographs retain this idea of depicting one specific moment, no matter how distant the time or location.  As “Summertime” is a group show that spans ages and decades, bringing together the work of young up-and-coming and more established photographers and displaying images from the 1940s through the 70s alongside contemporary work, it is really the way this exhibition has been curated, and in particular, which photographs have been placed beside or near each other, that create a visually compelling narrative about summertime and nostalgia.  For example, Heidi Bassett Blair’s Plastic in Paradise series, which depicts vivid images of tropical poolside affluence, displayed inside blue Lucite boxes that almost exactly match the color of the water and sky are rendered unnatural-looking by the fact that have been hung between Harri Kallio’s Lepidoptera Portraits, extremely close-up photographs of insects, and a series of silver gelatin prints depicting off-season beach scenes.  The duality of these very different sets of images spotlights each individual grouping while concurrently keeping the images separate from each other. 

 

Heidi Bassett Blair, Perfect World, from the Plastic in Paradise series, digital chromogenic print, 20” x 24", 2007. Copyright Heidi Bassett Blair. Courtesy Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC.

 

Another series that I was especially drawn to was Joni Sternbach’s tintype portraits of surfers: two with the simple composition of surfer, surfboard and sea, while the third captures the surfer, surfboard and a background that looks likes the possible beginnings of a bonfire.  Displayed in the vestibule leading into the main gallery space along with other surfing-related images, these contemporary yet antiquated-looking photographs are reminiscent of a golden age of surfing.  In fact, the only misgivings I had about “Summertime” were the few photographs that didn’t quite seem to work either within the grouping in which they were placed within the broader context of this exhibition, such as Nat Fein’s 1949 photograph The Babe Bows Out.  Displayed in a back alcove off the main gallery space, this photograph is gorgeous on its own, but feels like an afterthought, both because of its location and its subject matter, in an otherwise polished show.

 

Amalie R. Rothschild, Grateful Dead at Fillmore East, January 2, 1970. Copyright Amalie R. Rothschild. Courtesy Bonni Benrubi Gallery, NYC.

 

“Live from New York…” is the type of exhibition that makes the viewer happy simply because it includes so many incredible photographs.  Consisting of images taken of and about the New York music scene from the 1940s through the 70s, this exhibition may be small, but it presents so many iconic portraits and scenes that it feels much larger than the small side gallery, in which it is contained.  From William Gottlieb’s portraits of Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra to Amalie Rothschild’s The Grateful Dead at the Filmore East, January 2, these images are immediately recognizable, with the medium of the silver gelatin print providing them with an added presence and luminescence within the small, well-lit space.  In the entirety of this exhibition, only three of the photographs, the first two that are hung in the entry that separates the smaller space from the main gallery, along with David Leventi’s gorgeously oversized Metropolitan Opera, New York City, are color, chromogenic prints.  The first two, Bob Gruen’s Debbie Harry, Coney Island, New York and Linda McCartney’s Mitch Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix and Noel Redding, Central Park, are almost unnoticeable from their position in the doorway, but the effect of the Metropolitan Opera photograph is overpowering.  Displayed among a sea of black-and-white images with the maroon and gold of the interior of the Met matching the maroon of the gallery walls, this image both dominates and helps to tie together all of the photographs in this exhibition.

Overall, the Bonni Benrubi Gallery has done an excellent job curating two appealing group exhibitions.  “Hot Fun in the Summetime” successfully evokes a particular type of nostalgia for all things summer, from glistening bodies and sultry weather to the sea, surf and sun, while “Like from New York…” provides a glimpse into the iconic music scene of a New York long past. 

“Hot Fun in the Summertime” and “Live from New York…” at Bonni Benrubi Gallery run through September 5, 2009.

Bonni Benrubi Gallery

41 East 57 Street, 13th Floor

Take the 4, 5 or 6 train to 59^th Street, the E or V to 53^rd Street, or the N, R, W to 5^th Avenue

Gallery Summer Hours: Monday-Friday, 10-5:30

Gallery Website: www.bonnibenrubi.com

 

 

RIP: Ernesto Neto’s anthropodino at the Park Avenue Armory

By: Gallery Crawler

 

 

Installation view of anthropodino at the Park Avenue Armory. 

Image via Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/idletype/3532869263/page2/

 

anthropodino, Ernesto Neto’s installation at the Park Avenue Armory, which closed on June 14^th, was compelling in the truest sense of the word.  It is fitting that there was always a traffic jam of strollers at the entrance, because the installation inspired a child-like need to touch, run around and jump all over it.  anthropodino, like most of Neto’s recent work, was a giant composition of translucent fabric.  At the Armory, the fabric was stretched over a frame of wooden bones, which made the installation resemble the digestive tract of a dinosaur.  As you entered the Armory’s great hall, you were confronted with three mouths of fabric tunnels, each leading to a soaring central area.  Sacks of spices, sand and beads of varying sizes hung throughout the structure and around its perimeter.  A small ball pit and a giant beanbag chair were nestled next to the structure.  The combination of the delicious smells of spices and Neto’s visually stunning structure in the vast, dark emptiness of the hall created an atmosphere of fantasy and wonder that elicited awed sighs and giggles of delight from children and adults.  I can only imagine the mythical place that anthropodino will occupy in the minds of the littlest visitors. 

anthropodino was an absolute treat for the whole family.  If you didn’t have a chance to experience it make sure to catch the next Neto installation.

 

See a slide show of the installation process here:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/05/12/arts/10090512_

NETO_SLIDESHOW_index.html

 

“Unica Zürn: Dark Spring” at the Drawing Center

By: Nat Ceger

    On view until the 23^rd of July, the drawings of German-born painter and author Unica Zürn have brought in a season of “Dark Spring” to the Drawing Center.  Best known as a follower of the Surrealists, Zürn clearly marks their influence in the fanciful, dreamlike works on display.  Her personal touch, however, lends a fragile, delicate beauty to the drawings that is strangely enhanced by their dark undertones.

    The exhibition is named for Zürn's last completed novel, Dunkler Frühling, which chronicles the sexual awakening and mental illness of a young woman.  The autobiographical content of the story suggests that these major events were rooted in Zürn's longing for an absent but idealized father, in keeping with the Freudian theory that was immensely popular with the Surrealists.  Freud's interpretation of dreams, in particular, is useful in decoding Zürn's drawings.  Many of the depictions, like Untitled (1961), combine parts of humans, birds, fish and felines, which may have been inspired by her father's collection of African objects; according to Freud, the impossible melding of figures and objects is born of suppressed desires.

    None of the drawings are overtly erotic, although it is hinted at in the sensual handling of line and curve.  The works are a clever veil, with their decorative lacework distracting the eye from any hidden meaning.  The details are truly fantastic, with some pieces drawn in darker than others to create a rippling effect that is both dynamic and unsettling.  The eyes are often highlighted within the drawings, perhaps as windows to the soul that hint at a secret inner life.  A few of the drawings, for example Untitled (c. 1961), make use of color, mostly shades of red that hint at violence, an abundance of life, and love. 

    In 1953, Zürn met artist Hans Bellmer and she described her feelings for him as “mad love” from the beginning.  She moved with him to Paris, and became the inspiration for his work.  Some of her artistic collaborations with Bellmer are on display at the Drawing Center, allowing a glimpse into their unusual relationship.  Several photographs depict Zürn's naked body tightly bound in ropes, evoking a distorted close-up view of her drawings.  Descriptions of the photographs relate the pleasure that she derived from the ropes pressing into her skin, revealing a darker aspect to the latent sexuality of her work.  Even so, her desire is not without romance; Untitled (1961) shows a combination of a masculine and a more feminine face, illustrating a wish for lovers to be as one, together forever.

    The majority of the drawings in this exhibition were created during the time that Zürn struggled with bouts of depression and her ongoing treatment for schizophrenia, thought to have been triggered by artistic experimentation with drugs.  Her relationship with Bellmer also grew increasingly difficult due to his fits of jealousy, and, later, a stroke that left him partially paralyzed.  Judging by the ethereal beauty of the drawings, I would like to think that art-making brought her some measure of peace.  At the very least, it has left us to weave together the remnants of a story both disturbing and fascinating.  Go to the Drawing Center and pay your respects to the life of Unica Zürn – one way or another, she deserves the recognition.

“Dark Spring” at the Drawing Center runs through July 23rd.

The Drawing Center

35 Wooster Street, between Broome and Grand

Take the N, R or W trains to Canal Street or the A, C or E trains to Spring Street

Museum hours: Tues-Sat, 10 am-6 pm

Gallery website: www.drawingcenter.org

“Claire Harvey: Next to Nothing” at Lombard-Freid Projects

By: Diane Vivona

Claire Harvey, Next to Nothing, 2009. Installation at Lombard-Freid Projects.

Claire Harvey is a young artist with keen observation skills and a fascination with social structures. Her work focuses as much on the individual figure as on groups and crowds, and highlights the fragile as well as playful shifts between these two identities. Lombard-Freid Projects is currently presenting Harvey’s first solo show in the US, a welcome introduction to the artist following Harvey's recent success in Europe.

Low-tech is at the core of Harvey’s aesthetic.  She works with materials like scotch tape, overhead projectors, glass slides, and blu-tack as a means to create awareness of formal aspects of scale, space, and line as they occur in daily actions and activities.  A simple manipulation like mounting a glass slide with blu-tack and placing the blue blob so that it finishes the image painted on the front side of the slide, shifts the value of the material from practical to figurative. 

Harvey’s tactics are often borrowed from earlier modes of representation.  She uses 18^th century camera obscura techniques to create magical surprises, obscuring or revealing space like a magician. She appropriates compositional structures directly from classic film genres, using the cinematic shadows developed for film noir and pulling images directly from  these1940s films for her drawings and paintings.  Her consistent reliance on simplicity supports the work's emotional resonance and underlying nostalgia.  One of her best tricks is to create a sense of longing by having blank canvases and transparencies mixed in with those that are filled.  These frames of absence allow each viewer to pine for something or someone that could be there, pulling from individual memory banks to expand the work’s potential and meaning.

The main room of Lombard-Freid Harvey brought together 14 separate works into one site-specific installation, Next to Nothing (2009)*.  Delicate drawings are projected onto the wall, each figure seemingly plucked from a different scenario and many in mid-activity.  Fully realized canvases mix in with the projections, and the figures, whether the background is a blank wall or an oil covered canvas, appear equally isolated. They are lone figures in nondescript actions. Unexpectedly, they also appear as part of a community.

Harvey’s familiar strangers are there to be seen but also are a group that the viewer becomes a part of, as walking into the installation effects a display of the viewer’s shadow.  Viewing becomes active as the shadow figures may interrupt an image or obscure it completely.  Occasionally, a shadow of another viewer passes and, by obscuring one image, reveals a figure formerly hidden.  The viewing voyeurs turn into participants and quickly the representation of strangers includes you and the person next to you. 

Untitled (Easily Removable) (2009) is remarkable in its depiction of Harvey’s trust in the ephemeral.  Over 100 figures, each less than an inch high, are painted onto pieces of transparent tape and placed directly onto the wall.  This work was exhibited at the Tate Modern’s Member Room from July 2007–March 2008 and, amazingly, some of the work survived from their walls to Lombard-Freid’s.  Others were recreated.  All the figures, most in small groups, face away from the viewer.  Each group attends to a collective gaze, as if waiting for a bus or observing fireworks.  By looking at them, the viewer joins the crowd, and the person behind who gazes joins in as well.  It is another trick that Harvey employs – forcing a tension between the passive and the active gaze - and in so doing highlighting the act of looking itself. 

Harvey’s brilliance is in representing moments that are non-glorious as well as non-contemplative.  These are positions that are always there and rarely noticed, and by repeating them over and over again with multiple figures, in large and minute renderings, she gives them importance and mass.  By capturing the unseen in-between acts or gestures that make up a life, she creates a representation of life and loss.

Having recently completed a residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, academic persuasions and historical influences are ripe in Harvey’s current work.  Equally present is her passionate ability to create an intimacy among strangers.  The work could be seen as visually updating the sentiment projected in a line from the 1944 film The Phantom Lady, “No names, no addresses. Just companions for the evening.”

* Note: each work may be purchased separately

 

“Claire Harvey: Next to Nothing” at Lombard-Freid Projects runs through June 27, 2009.

Lombard-Freid Projects

531 W. 26^th Street, 2^nd Floor

Take the A, C or E train to 23^rd Street and/or the M23 bus to 23rd and 10^th Avenue

Gallery Hours: Tues – Sat, 10 am - 6 pm

Gallery Website: www.lombard-freid.com

“Kim Dorland: Super! Natural!” at Freight + Volume

By: Gallery Crawler

 

 

Kim Dorland, Super! Natural! oil and acrylic on wood panel, 144" x 96", 2009.

Courtesy of Freight + Volume.

The first thing that hits you when you enter Kim Dorland’s latest exhibition at Freight + Volume, “Super! Natural!” is Texture with a capital “T.” “Hefty impasto”—the rather euphemistic phrase used in the gallery literature to describe the massive gobs and six-inch-deep waves of paint that dominate Dorland’s works—doesn’t even begin to cover it.  Dorland’s enthusiastically heavy-handed application of paint is bombastic; it isn’t just a device, but rather a raison d’etre.  Viewing his paintings, I get the feeling that the canvases only exist to hold up the pounds of paint. It takes a lot of will power to get past the looming black pines and bulging fungi of his impasto and address the content of these new works.  However, if you can shift your attention, you will be rewarded with quirky depictions of Dorland’s native Canada.

 

In his artist statement, Dorland explains that the exhibition title, "is an old jingle advertising the natural beauty of British Columbia...I thought it would be a nice tounge-in-cheek reference to the mythic beauty of Canada's wilderness and the history of painting the 'untamed' nature that surrounds us." The canvas you first encounter when you enter the gallery shares the exhibition's title and is easily the best example of Doland's brand of levity.

          Super! Natural! is a Rousseau-esque tableau inspired by Dorland’s childhood memories of promotional posters for national parks: all forest creatures great and small gathered together in one image.  He further pushes the inherent inanity of this stage-managed scene through the use of a limited color palette. The flora and the fauna look as though they have been drawn with a child’s set of crayons, except where notes of bright, neon spray paint pop out (witness the electric, kool-aid bunny in the lower left corner).  Dorland shies away from explicit detail, instead depicting the forest’s occupants as seemingly hastily applied outlines filled with contrasting colors.  In Super! Natural! Dorland employs his Texture to transform dark pines into storm clouds that menace our animal friends. 

My knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss this work as gimmicky, fit only to be hung in an Urban Outfitters.  But as I worked my way through the gallery, I found myself turning back to look at Super! Natural! again and again—and finding new things each time.  Second and third glances at the painting revealed a graffiti-covered rock near the center and Molson Canadian bottles strewn throughout the forest.  Rousseau would be appalled. However, the inclusion of the detritus serves to indicate, in a comic way, our (as in humanity’s) sense of ownership of our surrounding landscape.

 

Two other canvases hung in the main gallery riff on Dorland’s concept of the patina of human pollution spread over nature’s glory: in RIP Tom Thomson and Go Home, graffiti phrases sully the purity of pale birch trunks and in Go Home images torn from dirty magazines hang from the trees.  But Nature quietly takes its revenge in both scenes. Bulbous pastel bushes or fungi crouching among the birches seem to be an opposing natural defacement of the forest—so saccharinely ugly they trump the banal scrawls.  On the adjacent wall, Nature breaks into open rebellion in the person of Sasquatch.  This work is my least favorite.  The application of fur to the canvas, to indicate the doomed hare in the monster’s grasp, seems to be forced and expected when compared to the clever juxtaposition of tags and trees on the facing walls. 

 

In the rear gallery, several smaller works center on a far less evocative environment, Canadian suburbia. This takes the work in a less successful direction.  For example, Big Air depicts a group of teenagers standing around and watching a central figure catch “big air” as he flies on a skateboard over two cases of Dorland’s ubiquitous Molson Canadian.  Dorland employs neon paint to delineate the youths’ shadows and applies his dramatic Textures to their faces and hair.  Whereas in Sasquatch, the obscuring quality of the heavy application of pigment suits Big Foot’s mythic status, in Big Air, Dorland’s preoccupation with impasto renders the figures as oozing zombies.  His trademark technique doesn’t add to the suburban narrative, instead it garbles and confuses the scene. 

 

Nevertheless the forest canvases in the main gallery are well worth a look.  Dorland’s cheeky and substantive paintings are a fresh addition to the nature painting cannon that he pokes fun at.

 

“Kim Dorland: Super! Natural!” at Freight + Volume runs through June 25^th

 

Freight + Volume

542 West 24^th Street

Take the C or E train to 23^rd Street and/or the M23 bus to 23^rd and 10^th Avenue

Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat, 11 am to 6pm

Gallery Website: www.freightandvolume.com

Artist Website: www.kimdoralnd.com

Watch an Interview with Dorland:

http://www.vimeo.com/1569492?pg=embed&sec=1569492

 

“Fashioning Felt” at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum

By: Sarah Brooke Saraga

 

Fashioning Felt, an exhibit at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, is full of surprises and experiences. This exhibit tells a visual story, the background and foreground, on all things felt.

If you are an art lover who is looking to view a more unconventional, almost interactive exhibit—I say, go go go! Felt is fashioned everywhere and in every way possible. The exhibit space is architecturally transformed—there are sculptures, rugs, jewelry, clothing and pieces of furniture—all presented with imagination and ingenuity. Kathryn Walter’s Felt Molding (2008-2009) is placed sporadically along the walls in the first gallery. It is molding, twisted in such a way to appear as permanent as the building’s wood paneling. The appeal for me was the search for what was felt and what wasn’t. Tip #1: read all exhibit signage. Otherwise, you may miss something.

Considering wool (the main ingredient in the production of felt) can be so uncomfortable and hard looking, I found it astonishing to view the many pieces that used felt in a soft and gentle way. For example, Necklace (2003) by Brigit Daamen is comprised of light-colored Merino wool covering plastic beaded costume jewelry—creating a weightless quality. Christine Birkle’s 3 Dresses (2006) provide the opportunity to marvel at the use of felt in fashion design. Most of the clothing exhibited is not even sewn—the designers harness the natural shrinkage inherent in the felt-making in order to fit and sculpt the garments organically—who knew?

The highlight of “Fashioning Felt” is the Palace Yurt (2009) by Janice Arnold. This piece is comprised of vast panels of Merino wool and silk draperies that encapsulate the museum conservatory (FYI: a yurt is a decorated royal Mongolian tent). Tip #2: look closely at the entranceway and go on a sunny day. Through the translucent material hung from the glass canopy, you can see outlines of our fantastic city and the sun’s rays cast patterns from the fabric all over the room. There are window seats all around and copies of the exhibition catalogue, encouraging visitors to stop and celebrate a felt shelter.

The final hallway includes an installation of photography and videos covering the design of the artwork and creation of the felt, through both traditional and industrial methods of production. There are swatches of felts and fabrics provided for you to touch and feel—giving the visitor yet another avenue of participation and pulling the separate sections of the exhibit together.

“Fashioning Felt” at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museumis an exhibit that opens our eyes and minds to the function and aesthetic of a straightforward fabric that is so commonly used.

 

"Fashioning Felt" at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum runs through September 7th

2 East 91^st Street at 5^th Avenue

Take the 4, 5, or 6 train to 86^th or 96^th Street stations or take the M1, 2, 3 4 or 5 buses

Museum Hours: M-F, 10:00am to 5:00pm, Sat 10:00am to 6:00pm, Sun 12:00pm to 6:00pm

Museum website: http://cooperhewitt.org/