February 5, 2003
Notes
All apologies for the delay. Life is filled to the brim and I appear to have forgotten my intention to record things here. I've seen many interesting things lately, though I won't write about them here with as much detail as I'd like.
Rivers and Tides, a documentary film about Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy, is by turns breathtaking and repellent. These shifts hinge completely on the artist himself, poetic when sculpting and hard to stomach when talking about 'being one with the stone'. What he has is an eye for line and color--two things that translate well to film--and the uncredited assistance of Mother Nature, who provides backdrops that are the stuff of Manhattanites' wet dreams.
Ryan McGinley's exhibition at the Whitney, part of their 'First Exposure' series, is bland and unnecessary. I maintain that any artist who has participated in a group exhibition at Andrea Rosen gallery, published a book with Peter Halley/Index Magazine, and presented a solo exhibition in Paris with Agnes B (who came to New York to throw him a congratulatory after-party at the outsized Ace Gallery) does not need 'First Exposure.' Furthermore, the production value of his photographs was upped once again: at the museum we are presented with flat-mounted chromagenic prints that are slightly larger than his most recent presentation in Chelsea, which were already slicker than earlier efforts. What is unfortunate is the lack of a parallel development in the quality of his images, which still come across as hollow imitations of the intimate daily-life snapshots perfected first by Nan Goldin and later by Wolfgang Tillmans. What bothers me further is that I cannot tell if my reaction is purely formal and aesthetic or somehow intertwined with a subconscious jealousy of the attention and accolades he is receiving at an age not far from my own. I'd like to think I'm above that, and that my inability to 'fully' appreciate Goldin and Tillmans--I see them both as needing an editor to separate diamonds of effortless beauty from a rather large patch of rough--indicates a consistent eye when faced with this type of photograph. I need to go back and look again, to make sure that my dismissal of McGinley's work is truly because I do not see it transcending the 'style' it represents and not simply my impatience with the affects of style themselves. Of greater interest to me is a small exhibition of Dennis Oppenheim's 'Aspen Projects,' a series of process-oriented videos made in 1970 and 'Listening Post,' one of the first pieces of 'digital art' that seems as equally resolved on formal levels as it is technical ones.
A few thumbs up for Russian Ark, the Thomas Struth exhibition at the Metropolitan museum (especially the second-floor gallery dedicated to his cityscape photographs), the Ori Gersht exhibition that just came down at CRG Gallery (tomorrow I'll post a review to be printed in the next issue of Flash Art), and the Martin Amis non-fiction collections I have been reading over the past few days. I hope to get back on the journal bandwagon soon!