Gallery Crawl

“Sterling Ruby: 2Traps” at Pace Wildenstein

By: Simmy Swinder

 

Sterling Ruby, ”2 Traps.” Photo by G.R. Christmas. Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York.

Each sculpture measures approximately 10’ x 9’ x 40’.

 

  Sterling Ruby is a contemporary artist with an impressive repertoire. In a New York Times article, critics Roberta Smith, Ken Johnson, and Karen Rosenberg described Ruby as “one of the most interesting artists to emerge in this century.” His current show at PaceWildenstein certainly supports this claim.

  Walking into the gallery, I instantly noticed the smell emanating from the steel sculptures. “2Traps” consists of two monumental sculptures that look like freight containers titled Bus and Pig Pen. Bus is a vehicle turned ready-made sculpture while Pig Pen is composed of stacked cage-like cubbies, all but one sealed shut. Both sculptures are overbearing in their size, material, color, and yet invite one to enter.

 

 
Sterling Ruby, Bus, mixed media, 2009. © Sterling Ruby. Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York.

 

  Visitors can step inside Bus, sit at the very end where subwoofers and shiny chrome sound equipment are affixed in rows on either side. From this seat, you look down the long dismal, dark passage, to the front of the bus, where you can’t see through the windshield; it’s opaque and caged, just as all other window in the bus. You feel trapped, locked in, as if being inside the set of a horror movie. It makes you wonder, who was here? Who would be kept here? What happens to them? What happened to them? Pig Pen also begs these questions, but the title and manner in which cages are arranged makes it clear of the sculpture’s pragmatic purpose. This vicarious understanding of Pig Pen was supplemented by Bus, which personalized and humanized the feeling of being confined in a cell, displaced, and subjected to torture.

  The exhibition of the two works is emotionally engaging and visually engrossing. Like being present within, and without, any architectural space, the visit captures all senses and is fully experiential. It draws one in, makes one feel and wonder, and see with more than just one’s eyes. The juxtaposition of objects for human and animal entrapment, and forced transportation, left me questioning contemporary practices, in particular animal cruelty and human genocide. Sterling Ruby accomplished what every artist should strive for: to leave an inextricable impression on a public.

 

“Sterling Ruby: 2Traps” at Pace Wildenstein runs through March 20th

 

Pace Wildenstein Gallery

545 West 22^nd Street

Take the C or E train to 23^rd Street and/or the M23 bus to 11^th Avenue

Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat, 10-6

Gallery website: www.pacewildenstein.com

“Wolfgang Tillmans: Photography” at Andrea Rosen Gallery

By: Simmy Swinder

 

 

 
Installation View of “Wolfgang Tillmans: Photography.”

©Wolfgang Tillmans. Photo by Jeremy Lawson.

 

 

     Wolfgang Tillmans is a German artist who works primarily in photography. He was the 2000 recipient of the Turner Prize and a 2009 judge for Bloomberg New Contemporaries, an annual exhibition of Britain’s emerging art stars. Given his international reputation and prolific exhibition history, I’m increasingly curious as to why the 41 year-old has been met with such success. In particular, Tillman’s current show at the Andrea Rosen Gallery left me feeling more swindled than sold.

  Upon entering the gallery I was pleased to see artworks immediately to the right of the entrance. In this foyer space, a systematically organized collection of standard 4x6 glossy photos were elegantly framed and flanked by similar photos, which were visibly scotch-taped onto the wall. The subject matter was of everyday domestic scenes. I looked closely to see if these photos held artistic authority beyond what the average junior in college studying abroad could produce given visually stunning environments, and couldn’t find any. Disappointed, I reluctantly entered the main gallery where I was confronted, once again, with mediocre photographs. The democracy of image-making has completely submerged our society in photographing day-to-day scenes and subsequently an inclination to share these photographs with others. However, one expects the artist to provide more than a commonplace photo and make something that “wows” us, something we ourselves are unable to produce, or even see. Tillmans seems to abandon that sacred role and does what many Facebook and Twitter users do daily—holds up a mirror and “addresses life on the planet now.”

  Just as I was getting frustrated, the photographs in the hallway and last room checked me. The colors were striking, the compositions were thoughtful, and the relationship between the scale of the image and the closeness to the object was well balanced and visually engaging.

  Wolfgang Tillman’s solo exhibition is buttressed by its curatorial arrangement of works. With different size images at different levels, I was instantly engaged to look up and down and closely. However, upon further scrutiny, the question inevitably asked of any art connoisseur, “Is this Art?”, would be met with a sense of ennui on my part, and return me to the decade old question of what digital photography has done to fine art.

 

 

 

Wolfgang Tillmans at Andrea Rosen Gallery runs through March 13^th

 

Andrea Rosen Gallery

525 West 24^th Street

Take the C or E train to 23^rd Street and/or the M23 Bus to 23^rd Street and 11^th Avenue

Gallery Hours: Tue-Sat, 10-6

Gallery Website: www.andrearosengallery.com

"Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography and Paris" at the International Center of Photography

By: Meredith P. Nelson

 

Just opened at the International Center of Photography is "Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography and Paris," exhibited in a refreshing reinterpretation of ICP's downstairs space. Complete with photographs, film and ephemera such as magazines and books, the exhibition is an entertaining illustration of the comical, bizarre, beautiful and strange celebrated in Surrealist visual production. As the wall text at the entrance to the show tells us, the photographs reveal the hidden secrets of the commonplace, exposed and highlighted by the Surrealist's use of awkward camera angles, unexpected juxtapositions, experimental lighting techniques and technical manipulations of the image. 

Many of the familiar Surrealist elements are present in the works on display. Their bizarre, dream-like settings can be found, for example, in Ilse Bing's Puddle Paris, 1930 where the only recognizable cityscape appears in an isolated, reflective puddle surrounded by a familiar, yet disorienting paved street, gutter and sidewalk. André Kertész' Broken Plate, Paris, 1929 is similarly disconcerting with its unfolding city shattered by a crack and hole in the glass plate through which the scene is viewed. 

 

 
André Kertész, Broken Plate, Paris, 1929, gelatin silver print, 7 5/8 x 9 3/4 in. The J. Paul Getty Museum. © Estate of André Kertész/Higher Pictures.

 

Fragmentation and strange juxtapositions are also prominent in the works, creating unusual dichotomies of strange/familiar, constructed/organic and erotic/grotesque. Brassaï, whose works feature prominently in the show, presents in Nude 115, Paris, 1936 a woman's nude torso and buttocks, cropped to create a distinctly phallic shape. Hans Bellmer's photographs of his disassembled, erotic and unbelievably creepy dolls also evoke a kind of disturbed, sexualized spirit. 

 

 

 
Brassaï, Nude 115, Paris, 1936, gelatin silver print, 9 3/8 x 7 1/16 in. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Manfred Heiting Collection. © The Brassaï Estate- RMN.

 

 

Dada makes an appearance as well, especially through the presence of collages, like that by Georges Hugnet Untitled, 1934 where a phallic Eiffel Tower springs up from between the legs of a smiling girl, spread eagle against a sprawling cityscape. A documentary side is also present, seen in the archival vein running through some of the photographs. Clearly taking their inspiration from the chance encounters with Old Paris, the Surrealist photographers document the random moments experienced while walking through the city's streets. Brassaï's Shop Window, Paris, 1931-32, for example, shows a man who glances into a storefront filled with mannequin bodies. His eyes rest on a life-sized, female mannequin and the two seem to share an odd moment of flirtation as he glances at her and she remains turned away. A number of portraits can also be found in the show, especially of the bohemian crowd that frequented the cafés and dance halls of the Montmartre and Montparnasse neighborhoods. Ilse Bing captures and freezes the frenzied movement of the figures in French Cancan Dancers, 1931 while Brassaï portrays the groups of men and women who frequent the dance halls in his Bal Musette, 1932. 

 

 
Ilse Bing, Cancan Dancers, 1931, gelatin silver print, 8 x 11 in. Galerie Karsten Greve, AG, St. Moritz, Switzerland.

 

While the individual works displayed are fantastic illustrations of the Surrealist spirit, the ultimate goal of the show is unfortunately, not entirely clear. Given the prominence of the city of Paris in the photographs (and in the accompanying wall and label texts) it would seem that the show is about Paris as a city in transition between tradition and modernity and the wonderful ability of the Surrealist photographers to capture glimpses of this transition. The inclusion of the Surrealist's manipulation and distortion of female forms, however, seems to be an unrelated addition. On the other hand, if the aim of the show is to present the production of Surrealist photographers working in Paris in the 1920's and 1930's, then the material seems off-balance and too focused on Paris as a source of subject matter. Also confusing is the treatment of Eugène Atget, a major source of inspiration for Surrealist photographers in Paris. Atget's work is included in its own section in the exhibition; however, there is also a small exhibition of more of Atget's works right off of the Surrealism exhibition space. Why present two separate treatments of the same material? It would seem to make more sense to either present the Atget material within the exhibition proper, or to leave it out and have the smaller, separate exhibition serve as a convenient illustration of a precursor to the show's main material.

  Despite these ambiguities, the material itself stands firmly on its own. The pieces in the exhibition are arresting illustrations of the quotidian, the extraordinary, the erotic, the obscene, the marvelous and the morbidly fascinating. A film on the love life of the octopus- who can resist?! If you approach the exhibition as a chance to look, bit by bit, individual image by individual image, you will find yourself completely absorbed and fascinated by this remarkable material. I most definitely recommend visiting the show, if not to deepen your understanding of Surrealist photography or Paris' inspirational role, then at least to look at some engrossing pieces of art.

 

 

“Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography and Paris" at the International Center of Photography runs through May 9th

 

International Center of Photography

1133 Avenue of the Americas

Take the B,D,V or F trains to 42nd Street, Bryant Park Station

Museum Hours: Tues-Thurs, 10-6; F, 10-8; Sat-Sun, 10-6

Exhibition Website: http://www.icp.org/site/c.dnJGKJNsFqG/b.5708935/k.AFD1/Twilight_Visions.htm

 

“Demons and Devotions: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves” at the Morgan

By: Reggie Lynch

 

   

This winter at the Morgan Library and Museum, the curatorial staff is warming up the city of New York with the glowing, gold-smothered pages of the Hours of Catherine of Cleves (1440). Although the manuscript would have originally been one bound book, for this exhibit it has been unbound. The pages are presented and organized by their subject matter and the order in which they would have been prayed throughout the week. For those who are wondering, a book of Hours is a medieval illustrated prayer book made for wealthy lay people. It would guide the religious through a series of daily prayers similar to those prayed by the clergy. These prayers were typically illustrated with images depicting scenes or religious figures that related to the prayer. Aside from linking laymen with the ordained, these books made direct communication with God possible. They also allowed for a personalized prayer experience, since prayers and images could be added or subtracted according to the patron’s wishes.

  In Catherine’s case, her book of Hours is extremely personal. Catherine was born into a wealthy Dutch family in 1417 and, as part of a political maneuver, was promised to Arnold of Egmond at the age of six. Their marriage was an unhappy one and by 1440 the two were no longer living together. The images she included in her manuscript reflect her disappointment and disapproval of her husband. Her inclusion of such images make the work kind of self-assertion of herself and her heritage without any note or influence from her husband. In essence, she wanted anyone who saw the book to know that she financed and commissioned the work without the help of her financially irresponsible husband. Her disassociation from her husband is clear from the start. The book begins with an image of Catherine praying to the Virgin. Although this is common image in a book of Hours, two facets of the image make it uncommon. First, because Catherine is depicted in the left portion of the image, she is the first person the typical left-to-right reader sees, as opposed to a more customary image of the Virgin or Christ. The first page also features several coats of arms, the majority of which represent Catherine’s ancestry instead of her husband’s. The largest coat of arms is a combination of her and her husband’s family crests; however, she dictated that her family’s symbol, a red ox, be prominently placed above the crest. Although modern readers may not see the significance of such a commission, anyone from Catherine’s era who saw this first page would have known from the start that Catherine was making a bold statement of independence.

 

“Catherine Praying to the Virgin” from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves. Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum.

 

In addition to these unabashed displays of Catherine’s superiority over her husband, the sheer grandeur of the work speaks volumes about Catherine’s insistence that this manuscript be as impressive a representation of her as possible. The manuscript features an unusually large number of illustrations, all of which were undoubtedly the result of Catherine’s requests. Since Catherine commissioned more images than were commonly contained in most books of Hours, the artist was faced with the challenge of coming up with enough scenes to fill the book. The result is a collection of rarely depicted scenes and stories. For example, the prayers that would typically be said on Fridays were supposed to be the Hours of the Cross, but, because Catherine requested an Hours of the Passion for an earlier section of the book, the artist had to replace this day with the Hours of the Compassion of God. In order to illustrate this while still maintaining a connection to the typical Hours of the Cross, the artist used this portion of the book to depict the apocryphal Legend of the True Cross. The story of the True Cross involves tales of trees growing out of the deceased Adam’s skull, Solomon and Bathsheba, and holy healing fountains at Bethesda. As such, its inclusion in a legitimate religious text is atypical, to say the least, but, then again, so was Catherine.

If you make it to the Morgan to see the show, it couldn’t hurt to bring a magnifying glass. Many of the images, especially those depicting the Suffrages, feature intricate borders with everything from birds and fish to Catherine’s initials buried in the intertwined knots. Also, be sure to listen to the audio station in the exhibit. It features a recording of some of the prayers read in the original Latin, followed by an English translation. On the sad occasion that you miss this show, have no fear. The online companion includes all of the images from the show, along with a zoom feature so you can take a close look at the all intricacies. Last, but certainly not least, while you’re at the Morgan, take a look at the Flemish manuscripts from the era of Catherine of Cleves. They offer an interesting contrast to the bravado of Catherine’s less-than-humble manuscript. Whatever the case, be sure to check out this show in one way or another – you won’t be sorry.

 

“Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves” at the Morgan Library and Museum runs through May 2^nd

 

The Morgan Library and Museum

225 Madison Avenue

 

Take the N or W train to Herald Square or the 6 train to 33^rd Street

Museum Hours: Tues–Thurs, 10:30-5; F, 10:30-9; Sat, 10-6; Sun, 11-6

Museum Website: www.themorgan.org

“A Delicate Touch” at Studio Museum in Harlem

By: Reggie Lynch

 

  “A Delicate Touch”, a show of 18 watercolors from the Studio Museum’s permanent collection, is proof that size doesn’t matter, at least in terms of exhibitions. Although the show is brief, it offers an interesting insight into the use of an often-overlooked medium. Traditionally, watercolor has been seen as, what the Studio Museum calls, “a sketching tool.” It was, for many artists, a stop on the road to a finished product. The works in “A Delicate Touch,” however, feature artists who chose to use the medium as a stand-alone art form, rather than a means to an end. As this show demonstrates, once artists began embracing the medium as a legitimate art form, they were, and are, able to create works of stunning grace and elegance.

  The curator, Lauren Haynes, chose to arrange the show by style rather than chronologically. At first, I was thrown off, thinking that an exhibit that pointed out the development of the medium over time would be more beneficial to viewers. As I went from painting to painting, however, I realized that the development of the medium isn’t the point. Instead, the point is watercolor’s ability to fit into and do service to various styles and artistic approaches, be they abstract or representative. The light, airy quality of watercolor suits the first work in the show. John Dowell’s, A Delicate Touch (1977), for which the exhibition is named, features small bursts of confetti-like color paired with gently flowing lines. Dowell took advantage of watercolor’s lighter tones to evoke a sense of child like celebration and placed these tones in contrast to the spaces of bare parchment. It is a work about the play of line and color, definite form and formlessness, exhalations of tones. As the works progress, line takes a back seat and color becomes the main focus. Sam Gilliam’s Untitled (1964), for example, he has abandoned line almost completely, instead letting creases and folds in the paper provide a sense of form. Although, suggesting that there is any real sense of form in this work is an overstatement. The two notes I initially wrote when faced with the painting were, “tie-dye shirt” and “a J.M.W. Turner sky on acid.” It’s all about the color, man.

  As the show progresses, the curators pull us back to artists who use watercolor to create works full of distinct forms and shapes. In Untitled (2007), Chris Ofili lets form take hold, depicting a woman composed entirely of curves, almost as if to mimic the movement of the water based medium that gives the woman her shape. Similarly, Richard Yarde let the medium and its colors define the figures in The Parlor (1974). The execution of this technique is most clear in his depiction of the family dog. Instead of defining the dog with specific outlines, he lets the background colors delineate a dog-shaped piece of bare parchment. For me, these works with concrete subjects don’t possess the same sense of experimentation found in the more abstract works. Instead, the artists were more interested in the subject and style, as opposed to the facets of the medium. By the time you’ve reached the final works of the show (three small works by Wangechi Mutu) the points have nonetheless been made. The flexibility of watercolor has been proven and its validity as a true, artistic medium has been established. All is right with the world.

 

“A Delicate Touch” at Studio Museum Harlem runs through March 14^th

 

Studio Museum Harlem

144 W. 125^th Street

 

Take the A, B, C, D, 2, 3 or 6 train to 125^th Street

Museum Hours: W– F, 12-6; Sat, 10-6; Sun, 12-6

Museum Website: www.studiomuseum.org

 

“Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

By: Michelle Jubin

 

There are few surprises in the latest nineteenth-century photography exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but there is plenty to delight in this jewel-box display of photocollages from the 1860s and 1870s. Works from the Met’s collection have been used as part of this exhibition, “Playing with Pictures: The art of the Victorian Photocollage,” which originated at the Art Institute of Chicago.  The Met collection has always been skewed toward the connoisseurial, even before the scholarly Thomas Campbell took over the Montebellian reins as museum director in 2008.  Its encyclopedic collection has traditionally been employed in the pursuit of Enlightenment notions of ideal forms and  idealized iterations of these forms by a  hierarchical coterie of artists.

In the case of “Playing with Pictures,” the elevated few whose works are displayed were, if not perhaps “artists,” certainly already high-society.  What makes this exhibition interesting, however, is the focus on a practice that hasn’t always been fodder for “high-art” exhibition spaces.  The catalogue terms it “photocollage,” but today we might also know it better as scrapbooking.  Practiced within the home by mothers and daughters, often with the intention of creating a family heirloom or keepsake, it’s refreshing to see this slice of specifically female craft culture on display at a major museum.  Long before Hannah Hoch got out her scissors and planted the Dada flag on the practice of reframing the photographic image, Victorian ladies were at it across the Western hemisphere.  Their photocollages consisted of watercolor backdrops – usually domestic scenes, coquettish trompe l’oeil, or fanciful, delicately painted tableaux – with the visages of family and friends pasted atop in careful hierarchy.  The exhibition reveals the intimacy of these collages, originally destined for private albums to be shared amongst close relations, and allows the viewer a novel insight into Victorian visual culture, a realm already heavily fetishized in academic and museum circles alike. 

The exhibition opens with a “straight” photograph André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri a celebrated court and studio photographer of mid- and late-nineteenth-century Paris (reportedly, Napoleon stopped off at his studio en route to Waterloo).  The format Disderi made famous is the eight-image  carte-de-visite, the precursor to the modern multi-image passport photo, created with a multi-lensed camera.  The curatorial team obviously wishes to make clear, in one checklist item, the increasing ubiquity of the photographic image from the 1850s onwards.  The introduction of “wet paper” techniques from 1851 onwards facilitated cheap, easy, and quickly produced miniature studio photographs, and the opportunity to create not only one’s portrait but to fashion one’s public image.  The photocollages created by aristocratic women with excess leisure time relied on this expanding technological field, turning it inwards, towards the privacy of the home. 

Hung beside Disdéri’s carte-de-visite is a leaf from the Filmer Album of the mid-1860s, in which Lady Filmer has snipped away at family photographs to create a fanciful family tree in the shape of a green and black umbrella bedecked with five male relatives.  The shape of the umbrella, as the wall text accompanying another collage employing a parasol suggests, points metaphorically to the popular nineteenth century accessory, used for flirtation or as a method of camouflage for gossiping underneath.  The ‘Madame B’ Album – created by Madame Marie-Blanche-Hennelle Fournier, the wife of a career diplomat - displays photographs of family amidst carefully rendered snowy boughs.  Fournier used her album to establish herself in the tricky familial position as her husband’s second wife, while also serving as a travelogue as she followed him from post to post across Europe.  Other women patchwork their own families with members of various royal houses, reminding us again that the photograph could be refashioned in any number of ways to cement or suggest social status, linking one’s own family with kings and queens.  Georgina Berkeley’s album shows nine figures pasted together within a viewing box, red drapes painted around them.  The theatricality and performance of photographic poses are suggested innately in the arrangement of family figures taking in the spectacle of the opera.

The exhibition is successful for a few reasons, not least the fact that it takes a neat slice (two small rooms total) of ephemeral visual culture and creates a strong, convincing narrative for this practice within the origin story of photographic history.  The exhibition also includes computer hubs where visitors can view further examples of photocollage, rather than cluttering the walls, and provides catalogues for public perusal with several essays by curators at the Art Institute of Chicago, including “The Page as Stage” and “Society Cutups.”

Photographic appropriation?  Performance and play with social rules and roles?  “Playing with Pictures” has it in spades, pointing to the moment in the nineteenth century that foreshadowed our own contemporary obsession with the post-production manipulation and the social spectacle of observation that are part-and-parcel of what the photographic means today.  Richard Prince and Sherry Levine have nothing on these ladies.

 

 

Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage runs through May 9th

 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1000 Fifth Avenue

Take to 6 train to 77^th street or the 4 or 5 train to 86^th Street

Museum Hours: Tues-Thurs, 9:30-5:30; F and Sat, 9:30-9; Sun, 9:30-5:30

Museum Website:  www.metmuseum.org

“Rites of Passage: 1995-2009” at Cooper Union Gallery

By:  Jeremy H. Polk

 

Ryan and Trevor Oaks, Infinityscape, 2010, 19’ x 19’ 8”. Courtesy of Cooper Union.

 

 

  Rites of Passage  is a group exhibition, organized by guest curator Thomas Micchelli, that considers the multiple paths taken by new forms of expression at the turn of the 21^st century, specifically those found in the work of alumni of The Cooper Union who graduated between the years 1995 and 2009 from The School of Art, The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, and The Albert Nerken School of Engineering.    The exhibition is shown at 41 Cooper Gallery at 41 Cooper Square.   These artists’ explorations range from the intangibility of light and sound to the poetry of infrastructure, autobiographical reflection to political outrage, naked terror to absurdist humor. 

  This was my first visit to the new Cooper Union building and 41 Cooper Gallery.  It opened in 2009 and designed by LA architect Thom Mayne, with New York collaborator Gruzen Samton, and like many of the new glass and concrete structures going up on college campuses everywhere, the space itself seems somewhat cold and sterile.  But after a walk down a flight of stairs, I found myself in a warm, intimate gallery space located on the lower level of the building.  As I descended the concrete steps, I was greeted by Salman Bakht’s Cooper Union: Nodes and Passages, a sound installation I can only describe as Gregorian like chants combined with the sounds of cricket-like clicking or chirping.  After descending the last step and moving my way into the main gallery the sound seemed to dissipate as I entered into a more traditional white walled space.  The gallery itself was quite overwhelming at first as the space seems packed to the brim with some 42 participating artists.

  The works are strung, hung, tabled, and stacked on every wall and surface available.  The quality of the work is, as one might expect from Cooper Union’s esteemed alumni.  Having students represented from the schools of fine art, engineering, and architecture strong concepts are presented with beautifully controlled designs within sound construction.  However, as most exhibitions go there were works that locked me in while others left me with no clue or no need to care and others I will continue to think about for days to come.

  Upon entering the gallery there was several large pieces that grabbed my attention.  However, since I am particularly interested in fabrics, I gravitated towards Laura Lee-Georgescu’s Untitled painting installation.  Three large sheer rectangular pieces of fabric suspended one behind the other from the ceiling almost reaching to the floor.  Treated with dye or paint, I am unsure.  The color took on a very non objective form of vibrant reds, blues and yellows.  Lee-Georgescu then seemingly went in with a brush and painted the most beautiful and delicately sparse areas of crisp lines.  The piece has a very unassuming presence at first.  Because of the sheerness the size does not draw you.  There is no visual weight to the color necessarily.  It is the delicate nature of the treatment of the cloth that draws you in and begs you to look for more.   The boldness of color in certain areas counterbalance the softness of others and the treatment of the painted lines move you all over the composition.

  One of the other attention grabbers in the room, one because of its size, and the second because of its dimensionality is We Have Never Been Modern by Rush Baker + Sam Vernon.  A wham! bam! boom! three dimensional story of war in an almost comic context made of acrylic on canvas, cardboard, and paper collages of pen and ink drawings.  The piece molds itself around two entryways leading into the back section of the gallery.  It is built from many layers of smaller strips of wide paper, some raw, and others covered with a seemingly laminated like surface.  From the front there are what seem to be people running within explosions and though the overall piece is black and white there are shapes of color coming even further out of the piece that add even a further dimension.  The beauty of Never Been Modern is even if the content doesn’t entice you, the textural and drawn elements will.  Once inside either entryway the story is no longer literal; on the contrary, the drawn textural elements become like primitive drawings in black and white with no representation at all.  It is as if I had discovered the first Paleolithic cave.

  As I walk through We Have Never Been Modern I came upon Discovering Eudaimonia by Gaurav Namit, a straight from nature sticks and stones with digital images and found objects.  I didn’t see this piece as a piece of visual art but more a documentary because of its literality.  It is presented with a message board laying out the trip to Eudaimonia and visual images documenting the people that live there it seemed to be something that should have been in an issue of National Geographic rather than an art exhibition.  On the floor down below projected images is a large bowl of sand with sticks lying across it.  Though I found a quiet enjoyment in the story I couldn’t quite figure out the purpose of the installation bowl and sticks.  Though the story is intriguing and the piece is about the native people’s needs for wood within their culture, I wasn’t quite sure if I was to look at it as a personal experience or a general documentary.  

  There is so much great material in this show I could write a book, but will forgo to say these creative individuals have strong concepts and marvelous execution allowing for a very precise show.   The exhibition does what any group showing should do, it converges a dichotomy of ideas while creating a consistent flow of quality design.  Because of the limitations of the space some pieces seem too much to take in from certain angles but a dramatic moment occurred as I was walking through the space from a different angle, through We Have Never Been Modern, which was a comic printed explosion from one angle but had become a cave structure from another.  And through it revealed before me were multiple pieces that at that angle acted as a larger installation.  Infinityscape by Ryan and Travor Oaks is a long blue and white paper tapestry giving the visual of sea to sky.  As a final impression, it was a grand experience.

 

“Rites of Passage: 1995-2009” at Cooper Union Gallery runs through  February 11^th

 

41 Cooper Gallery

41 Cooper Square (Lower Level)

Take the 6 train  to Astor Place or the N or R train to 8^th and Broadway

Gallery Hours: Tues-Sat, 11-6pm

Exhibition Website: http://cooper.edu/rites-of-passage

Nathan Skiles: "Black Forest/ White Lighting" at Sloan Fine Art

By: Eliana Hidalgo Vilaseca

 

 

Nathan Skiles, Two Headed Boy, Part I, 2009, 34" x 24" x 10", corrugated plastic and foam rubber. Courtesy of Sloan Fine Art.

 

Nathan Skiles Black Forest/White Lighting a recently opened exhibition organized by Sloan Fine Art, in conjunction with Greene Contemporary is a collection of ten foam rubber cuckoo clocks.

  Skiles’ usage of foam rubber conveys an innovative and unique artistic vision, one challenging the current definitions of art. In today’s pluralistic and overwhelming art world, art production must no longer follow a single, unified style of production. Due to globalization, the art world faces a crisis of competence. I strongly believe that it is through the application of new media—rubber foam—and the use of original techniques—carving and sculpting foam—that good art and great artists can be differentiated in what has become an incomprehensible industry.

Skiles’ creative vision converted wooden cuckoo clocks traditionally assumed to be an object of craft since the late 17^th century, into a weightless, playful sculpture. Foam rubber, a spongy malleable material allowed Skiles’ to create detailed carvings and elaborate imagery. Even though the same amount of detail can be achieved on wood and on rubber, foam rubber can be worked at a faster pace. It is a medium that breaks easily and does not require to be polished.

In addition to Skiles’ technique, the clocks contain symbolism and iconography. His works explore themes such as time, space, myth and popular culture. Two-Headed Boy, Part I, a black sculpture of two identical clocks merging into one another, contains Native American imagery such as a human-ears necklace, a wishbone and a rattlesnake skin. The clocks, representing time, in correlation with such imagery successfully communicate the myths, legends and traditions of the Native Americans. Even though, Skiles’ work presents many cleverly executed objects, I believe that the barbed wire on By The Pricking of My Two Thumbs… was the best aspect of the whole exhibition. Skiles’ ability to recreate something dangerous so realistically and in such an innocuous medium makes him a true artist. The remaining clocks are as interesting as the ones discussed above; they are all different in sizes and in palettes, successfully telling different stories relating to myths, the passing of time and popular culture.

 

 

Nathan Skiles, By the Pricking of My Two Thumbs... , 2009, 100" x 42" x 11", corrugated plastic and foam rubber. Courtesy of Sloan Fine Art.

Whether you are fascinated by legends, adore or own a cuckoo clock, or are intrigued by new approaches to art production Nathan Skiles’ Black Forest/ White Lighting is a must see.

 

“Nathan Skiles Black Forest/ White Lighting” at Sloan Fine Art trough February 20^th

 

Sloan Fine Art

128 Rivington Street

Take the F, J, M or Z to Essex and Delancey

Gallery Hours:

Gallery Website: www.sloanfineart.com

PROW: The Prequel and Jil Weinstock: Mementos at Sara Meltzer Gallery

By: Vincent Cimino

 

Walking into the fourth-floor space of Sara Meltzer Gallery, I got a laugh out of movie posters adorning the walls for “Pet II” starring Jennifer Tilly and “Iceberg III” (tagline: “Matter has a mind…once more”) starring Bill Pullman.  Don’t get your hopes up though.  Disappointing as it may be, these films are not on view.  In fact, they were never made.  Instead the posters are part of a work called Sequels by the collaborative enterprise PROW.

  Founded by artists Peter Rostovsky and Olav Westphalen, PROW is modeled after a typical Hollywood production studio, but it also looks to subvert the inherent status quo of the film industry.  Bridging the gaps between all aspects of contemporary artistic production, PROW gives equal authorship to anyone who played any role in the work’s conception, design, fabrication, or installation, no matter how small the contribution.  Despite its self-conscious resignation to working inside the conventions and established institutions of the art community, PROW seeks to foster a dialogue about the possibilities of the non-hierarchical exchange of creative ideas. 

Their openness to free collaboration with other artists, and even random individuals, has led them to appropriate artwork posted anonymously on the internet for drawings in their new exhibition “The Prequel.”  The drawings, seen once you step behind the curtain and go inside the main gallery, are all hand-made renditions of computer generated 3-D models produced by users of Google’s free SketchUp and 3-D Warehouse software.  The original artists are all credited in the exhibition notes, except the ones whose identities (or screen names) were not volunteered or could not be found.

  While the drawings are all technically precise and well executed, and thematically relevant to the show in the way concept art or scene “animatics” are to a film production, these drawings are accoutrements to the main installation.  Prominently installed in the center of the room is the piece Pyre.  With all the gallery lights on, it doesn’t look like much.  White polyester sheets cut to resemble flames lie limp on a metal frame that stands above a rig of orange, red, and yellow lights and some industrial-strength fans.  Then suddenly the show begins.  Off to the side of the gallery, a cello and a violin strapped into custom-made machines strike a dark, foreboding chord before the gallery lights go off and the fans roar to life.  For a couple of minutes Pyre dances in the gallery, its reflection eerily cast into the film production drawings on the walls.  No longer just a static stage prop, it burns with life, the product of many hands and hours of thought and labor. 

 

PROW, Pyre, 2010, aluminum, polyester, theatrical lighting, industrial fans, electrical equipment, cello, violin and various technical parts. Installation view. Courtesy of the artists and Sara Meltzer Gallery.

 

Then the lights under the flames and the fans cut out too, as quickly as the whole spectacle began.  The audience of gallery visitors is left standing for a moment in total darkness and social awkwardness.  It is a similar feeling to the moment when the credits roll on a summer blockbuster, right before the theater lights come back on.  Everyone stumbles out of their seats in a daze, but in the gallery there are definitely no sticky floors or spilt popcorn everywhere.  The illusion has been broken and everyone is once more in the light and clarity of the gallery.  Alone, the pieces of Sequels and “The Prequel” are disparate and puzzling.  The posters, the drawings, and Pyre don’t make much sense in isolation, but in the context of PROW’s manifesto, they coalesce into a vision for a new way of making art.

Making the viewer question appearances, PROW’s “The Prequel” is at once a playful and serious invitation to a conversation about artistic authenticity, production methods, and the institutions that house and promote artwork.  Compared to the factory production model used by Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons, PROW embraces the work done by its collaborators instead of hiding them in a workshop, and it isn’t focused on becoming an assembly-line mining the same idea over and over.  The art factory pays a wage, while PROW pays in recognition; a valuable asset to leverage in the Google economy.  The debate over authorship and ownership, and between truth and special-effect, are important questions for the artists of the 21^st century to consider in developing their work.  I look forward to seeing how the next PROW collaborations treat these issues and navigate the delicate balance between free artistic expression and polished commercial product.  With the proliferation of social networking applications that foster more and more idea sharing online, it will be interesting to see if and how PROW will leverage the power of “crowd sourcing” or Twitter.   

If you like the show at Sara Meltzer Gallery, I encourage you to see their other exhibition “Anti-Prow” running concurrently with “The Prequel.”  If the “The Prequel” is PROW’s commercial endeavor, then “Anti-Prow” is its celebration of creative freedom and artistic vision, living up to the independent spirit of its manifesto.  “Anti-Prow” is on view at Art in General until March 20, 2010, visit www.artingeneral.org for more information.

Another exhibition that opened the same night as PROW at Sara Meltzer’s upstairs gallery is Jil Weinstock’s “Mementos.”  Using the electroplating technique used in bronzing baby shoes, Weinstock electroplates childhood toys in copper—a shell of shiny, pure nostalgia.  This show is made up almost entirely of copper-plated Fisher-Price toys.  My favorite piece is the passenger jet, its ovoid fuselage exactly as I remember it, but now gleaming in copper.  Weinstock’s objects are idealized forms, the perfect memories of an untroubled past.  The electroplating process that surrounds the toys in metal captures every detail of its surface, but once polished to a sparkle, all the scratches and dents are nearly invisible.  This technique reflects the desire to capture and treasure childhood objects and memories, and the elevated status children have in modern American society.  Weinstock comes close to making these works of art the fetish objects of nostalgia.  The copper toys raise up childish things that everyone must, at some point, put aside.  But beyond the Mementos being idealized forms, they also invoke the individual memories inside each viewer.  The electroplated pieces engender the sort of close-up inspection that a patient of psychoanalysis gives to her own childhood memories. 

The possibility for personal narrative is more apparent in the series of rubber houses in assorted colors and sizes on view.  These too are cast from toys, but I feel the home is a more apt metaphor for what Weinstock is after.  The home is more of a container for memories, for good or for ill, than a toy.

 

 

 

 

Jil Weinstock, Rubber Houses, 2010. Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Sara Meltzer Gallery

 

The sedated, cool tones of the houses resonated more deeply than the luster of the copper.  Home is a place of more intimate encounters and intense emotion.  Perhaps it is the deluge of everyday encounters with pop culture icons such as Fisher Price toys that has enervated my ability to connect with it, but I feel the houses were much more successful.

  All in all, I enjoyed seeing both “Mementos” and “The Prequel” at Sara Meltzer Gallery.  However, they are small, intimate exhibitions, so unless you’re already in the neighborhood, I’d recommend heading over when you have time to walk around and see some other shows in Chelsea.

 

“The Prequel” and “Mementos” at Sarah Meltzer Gallery run through February 27^th

 

Sara Meltzer Gallery

525-531 West 26^th Street

Take the C or E train to 23^rd Street

Gallery hours: Tues-Sat, 11-6

Gallery website: http://www.sarameltzergallery.com/index.php

Artist websites: PROW and Jill Weinstock

Tino Sehgal at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

By: Justin Wolf

 

Rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum. Taken during Tino Sehgal’s interactive exhibition, 2010. Photo by Justin Wolf

    The year is 1953. A young upstart named Robert Rauschenberg visits the loft studio of Willem de Kooning, by now one of New York City’s most celebrated abstractionists, and asks the artist if he may have a drawing. Naturally, de Kooning inquires as to why. Rauschenberg says he wants to erase it. Reluctant but intrigued, de Kooning hands over a work heavily marked in charcoal and lead. Nearly two months and fifteen erasers later, Erased de Kooning Drawing is completed, so to speak. “It’s not a negation,” Rauschenberg said years later, “it’s a celebration…it’s just the idea.”  

  Now it’s 2010, and conceptual artist Tino Sehgal has done to the Guggenheim Museum what Rauschenberg did to de Kooning’s drawing. All six levels of the rotunda have been cleared out, their walls rendered blank, like there was nothing there to begin with (the first time this has been done in the museum’s history!). Okay, so where’s the idea? It’s not in the erasure itself, and it’s certainly not in the tangibles - there are none. The idea of Sehgal’s exhibition resides in one’s ability to become part of a social reality, and converse within the artist’s literally twisted playground. There are no spectators here, just players.

  I walk into the Guggenheim on the afternoon of Sehgal’s opening, and the first thing I notice is the absence of a crowd getting funneled into the ticket line. Instead, the vast foyer belongs exclusively to a young couple who seduce each other, ballet-like, in fluid slow motions of kissing, turning, gazing, lusting. They are interpretive flirting, and frankly, if these two are able to avoid ravaging each other in real time at the end of a work day, I’d like to know how. The ground floor is the beginning - this is the conceptual stage.

  “Hi, I’m Ben,” says the young boy who greets me with a handshake at the entrance of Rotunda Level 1. “Would you like to learn about the exhibition?”

  “Sure,” I respond.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “What is progress?”

  We begin to walk together, me following Ben’s lead along the ascent, answering each question he proffers. He keeps his eyes intently focused on mine, which can’t be easy for a kid all of four feet tall. As Ben and I approach the end of the Level 1, he stops walking. A young man steps forward, introduces himself, then asks me if I believe it’s plausible to apply a “happiness index to a global population.” While considering the question, I turn around to discover that Ben has disappeared.

  The young man and I begin to walk together. The conversation evolves as we continue up the rotunda, discussing matters of personal faith, applied pragmatism, international travel and geo politics. My new companion sets the pace, he shapes the conversation, but nothing feels pre-scripted. We discover that we’re both Red Sox fans, that we’ve both visited Eastern Europe; we find common ground and shared perspectives, and our dialogue quickly becomes a real pleasure.

  By the time we reach Rotunda Level 4, an older gentleman steps forward. “You know, when I was a freshman in college, the Cuban Missile Crisis was taking place. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Yes, I am.” I turn around to discover the young man has disappeared. My brief yet evident confusion does not register with the older gentleman. He just smiles and extends his hand. The rotunda is aging, maturing, accruing the memories that define a life. I have now entered the final stretch of Sehgal’s work.

  And we begin to walk together. Our conversation centers on the human condition in the modern world, how we deal with anxiety, the parallels of facing nuclear fallout and terrorism. But our talk is patient, tempered, and I now feel more comfortable drawing on personal experiences than just personal beliefs. After he shares with me his reaction to the 1962 Crisis, I share with him my reaction – replete with context and locale – to 9/11, and how that defining moment affected both me and those around me. Keep in mind, these aren’t stories you typically share with strangers; a person’s tale of 9/11 has too much gravity to qualify as some get-to-know-you chit-chat. And this speaks to the intimacy that Tino Sehgal has shaped for his current work at the Guggenheim.

  Without these experiences, these interactions, without questions of personal responsibility and action, the spiraling ramps and accompanying walls of the museum are no more than they appear – blank. But as a practitioner of unorthodox art forms and theories, Sehgal has successfully embraced the full potential of the Guggenheim’s unorthodox aesthetic, and created something that I will ponder for months if not years to come.

Let’s face facts. The Solomon R. Guggenheim has never been the ideal venue for the visual arts. While the building is a visual wonder in itself, its naturalistic gradient too often clashes with the materiality of the works on display. Odd as it may seem, it feels like the Guggenheim has been waiting 50 years for someone like Sehgal. Some unassuming, fresh-faced artist with a strange idea to walk in and announce: I want to erase it.

 

“Tino Sehgal” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum runs through March 10, 2010

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum       

1071 Fifth Ave. (at 89^th St.)

Take the 4, 5, 6 trains to 86^th St.

Museum Hours: Sun-Wed 10am-5:45pm, Fri. 10am-5:45pm, Sat. 10am-7:45pm, Closed Thursdays

Exhibition website: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view now/tino-sehgal