October 31, 2003
The week ahead
Please double-check to confirm dates and times. This subjective list is accurate to the best of my knowledge. Some events require advance tickets.
Saturday, November 1
"Fast Forward: 20 Years of White Rooms' opening reception @ White Columns
Anne Chu opening reception @ 303 gallery
Mark Lombardi "Global Networks" opening reception @ The Drawing Center
Raoul de Keyser opening reception @ David Zwirner
Ewan Gibbs opening reception @ Paul Morris Gallery
Steve Wolfe opening reception @ Luhring Augustine
Wolfgang Tillmans opening reception @ Andrea Rosen Gallery
Koo Jeong-a opening reception @ Yvon Lambert New York
"Fright Wig" group exhibition opening reception @ Feature Inc.
Nikki S. Lee opening reception @ Leslie Tonkonow
Monday, November 3
"Still Life with Sculpture" - Roy Lichtenstein & Henri Matisse opening reception @ Mitchell-Innes and Nash
Tuesday, November 4
Maria Marshall (gallery link) lecture @ Guggenheim, 6:30pm, $10/$7
Rikrit Tiravanija Public Art Fund "Tuesday Night Talk" @ the New School, 66 W. 12th, 6:30pm, $5
Wednesday, November 5
PEN American Center tribute to Gabriel Garciá Marquez (with Salman Rushdie) @ Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd, 8:00 pm, $20/$10
Luis Gispert opening reception @ Whitney Museum Altria branch
Carter Ratcliff "Against Art Theory" lecture @ New York Studio School, 8 w. 8th St., 6:30pm
Thursday, November 6
Charles Baxter reading @ NYU Bobst Library, 7:00pm, free
"An Evening with Zoo Press" @ 66 W. 12th St., 7:00pm, free
Phillips Contemporary Art preview @ 450 W. 15th St., 6-9pm
Thomas Nozkowski opening reception @ Max Protetch Gallery
Friday, November 7
Artists' Books & Editions Fair @ 601 W. 26th St., 14th Fl., 11:00am-7:00pm (also Sat. 11:00-7:00 & Sun. 11:00-4:00)
Jonah Friedman and Michael Phelan opening reception @ John Connelly Presents
Sooja Kim opening reception @ The Project
Terry Winters opening reception @ Matthew Marks, 522 W. 22nd St.; Peter Fischli/David Weiss opening reception @ Matthew Marks, 529 W. 21st St.; Robert Adams opening reception @ Matthew Marks, 523 W. 24th St.
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
Hayley Tompkins at Andrew Kreps
An Artforum.com review of Hayley Tompkins' second solo exhibition at Andrew Kreps. I'll include the text here because the link will die two months from now:
Hayley Tompkins's watercolors, executed on board or paper or applied directly to the wall, skirt the boundary between "precious" as a term of criticism and as a term of praise. Most of the works in this exhibition fall on the right side of the line. The best of these tiny paintings—many on square-format boards, a new surface for her—are gems and use minimal means to maximum effect. Their visual logic seems intuited, casual without being tossed off. One, approximately six inches square, uses three vertical lines with hooked ends to signify intersecting walls; another's black dashes look like a vertically bisected fireworks explosion. Tompkins cites Malevich, Sonia Delaunay, and Oskar Schlemmer as influences, but for now she seems more adept at Schlemmer's use of line than the others' blocks of color. The quiet elegance of Richard Tuttle and Robert Barry (whose work is on view at Gasser & Grunert through November 8) also comes to mind.
Posted in Art. Found always via this permanent link.
New York times art reviews
The New York Times Friday art reviews have been rather paltry for the past month. The critics finally get back to business this week, turning in a number of reviews worth reading. Click here to read them. Also, be sure not to miss the Philip Guston exhibition at the Met. It's reviewed by Michael Kimmelman here.
Posted in Papers & Periodicals. Found always via this permanent link.
October 28, 2003
John Berger quotes
Here are two John Berger quotes that struck me in the first fifty pages of his Selected Essays. The first comes from the introduction to Permanent Red (1960):
After we have responded to a work of art, we leave it, carrying away in our consciousness something which we didn't have before. This something amounts to more than our memory of the incident represented, and also more than our memory of the shapes and colours and spaces which the artist has used and arranged. What we take away with us--on the most profound level--is the memory of the artist's way of looking at the world.
The second comes from an essay in that collection titled "The Clarity of the Renaissance" (1955):
After Michelangelo the artist lets us follow him; before, he leads us to the image he has made. It is this difference--the difference between the picture being a starting-off point and a destination--that explains the clarity, the visual definitiveness, the tactile values of Renaissance art.
I need to read further, as I'm only in the mid-1960s of this mostly chronological selection, but thus far I have found two distinct characteristics of his writing (which are intertwined): his braggadocio and the ease with which he is quoted. He writes swaggering epigrams, not unlike Dave Hickey, that at first contain the seductiveness of their own confidence. Further thought slices right through that surface--in Berger's case (so far) revealing a relentless political stance that has a reductive effect on his observations--but there is definite value to searching for the diamonds in the rough. It is best left for another post altogether, but I at least give Berger credit for expressing his opinion with force, something often lacking from contemporary criticism. (At times my own included.)
Posted in Quotes. Found always via this permanent link.
October 27, 2003
Whitney Biennial artists announced
The Whitney Museum has announced the artists to be included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. I have italicized the ones about whom I am writing for the catalogue:
Marina Abramovic, Laylah Ali, David Altmejd, Antony and the Johnsons, Cory Arcangel/BEIGE, assume vivid astro focus, Hernan Bas, Dike Blair, Jeremy Blake, Mel Bochner, Andrea Bowers, Slater Bradley, Stan Brakhage, Cecily Brown, Tom Burr, Ernesto Caivano, Maurizio Cattelan, Pip Chodorov, Liz Craft, Santiago Cucullu, Amy Cutler, Taylor Davis, Sue DeBeer, Lecia Dole-Recio, Sam Durant, Bradley Eros, Spencer Finch, Rob Fischer, Kim Fisher, Morgan Fisher, Harrell Fletcher, James Fotopoulos, Barnaby Furnas, Sandra Gibson, Jack Goldstein, Katy Grannan, Sam Green & Bill Siegel, Katie Grinnan, Wade Guyton, Mark Handforth, Alex Hay, David Hockney, Jim Hodges, Christian Holstad, Roni Horn, Craigie Horsfield, Peter Hutton, Emily Jacir, Isaac Julien, Miranda July, Glenn Kaino, Mary Kelly, Terence Koh, Yayoi Kusama, Noimie Lafrance, Lee Mingwei, Golan Levin, Sharon Lockhart, Robert Longo, Los Super Elegantes, Robert Mangold, Virgil Marti, Cameron Martin, Anthony McCall, Paul McCarthy, Bruce McClure, Julie Mehretu, Jonas Mekas, Aleksandra Mir, Dave Muller, Julie Murray, Julie Atlas Muz, Andrew Noren, Robyn O'Neil, Jim O'Rourke, Catherine Opie, Laura Owens, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton, Chloe Piene, Jack Pierson, Richard Prince, Luis Recoder, Liisa Roberts, Dario Robleto, Matthew Ronay, Aida Ruilova, Anne-Marie Schleiner, Brody Condon, and Joan Leandre (the "Velvet-Strike" team), James Siena, Amy Sillman, Simparch, Zak Smith, Yutaka Sone, Alec Soth, Deborah Stratman, Catherine Sullivan, Eve Sussman, Julianne Swartz, Erick Swenson, Fred Tomaselli, Tracy and the Plastics (Wynne Greenwood), Jim Trainor, Tam Van Tran, Banks Violette, Eric Wesley, Olav Westphalen, TJ Wilcox, Andrea Zittel.
I'm glad that I am no longer obliged to keep a secret.
Posted in Art. Found always via this permanent link.
October 25, 2003
The week ahead
Please double-check to confirm dates and times. This list is accurate to the best of my knowledge. Some events require advance tickets.
Saturday, October 25
Shirazeh Houshiary opening reception @ Lehmann Maupin
Kelley Walker opening reception @ Paula Cooper
Isaac Julien opening reception @ Metro Pictures
James Casebere opening reception @ Sean Kelly Gallery
Sunday, October 26
Group abstract painting show opening reception @ Triple Candie
Tuesday, October 28
Jerome Sans lecture @ Swiss Institute, 6:30pm
Tom Sachs 'Public Art Fund Dialogues' talk @ New School, 6:30pm, $5
Paul Johnson interviewed by Roberta Smith @ NYPL Celeste Bartos forum, 6:30pm, $10
Thursday, October 30
Poet Mónica de la Torre (and others) reading @ New School, 66 W. 12th St., 7:30pm, $7
Jeremy Blake opening reception @ Feigen Contemporary
"Strange Worlds" group exhibition opening reception @ Hunter College
Shizuka Yokomizo and Christopher Orr opening reception @ Cohan & Leslie
Friday, October 31
Pierre Huyghe opening reception @ Dia Center for the Arts
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
October 23, 2003
Jason Rhoades at David Zwirner
To be published in a forthcoming issue of Untitled magazine:
In a moment when politically- and culturally-hypersensitive artworks are ascendant, populating biennial exhibitions worldwide with commentaries on the fate of this maligned group of people or that –ism, Jason Rhoades continues to create exuberant, messy agglomerations of pop culture ephemera that display little of the self-consciousness now popular. Being a little bit out of synch with the moment has its advantages and disadvantages, but no matter how you look at Rhoades’ work—as refreshingly anachronistic or just plain stale—a strong reaction is almost guaranteed. This exhibition is no exception. ‘Meccatuna,’ Rhoades’ second solo show at David Zwirner in eighteen months, reasserts several generally agreed-upon ideas about his art: he is a master of accumulation, deploying myriad objects in mixed-media installations of considerable formal refinement; he likes to create rather ridiculous conceptual frameworks for these installations; and these frameworks are often off-putting to some visitors. For better and worse, these qualities are pushed to new extremes in this show. Drawing upon his earlier artworks and a globe-spanning collection of consumer and post-consumer goods, ‘Meccatuna’ is a spectacular confirmation of your earlier opinion about his art.
Continue reading "Jason Rhoades at David Zwirner"Posted in Art. Found always via this permanent link.
October 20, 2003
Chris Doyle at Jessica Murray Projects
Chris Doyle is perhaps best known for his public art projects, including Commutable, for which he covered the Williamsburg Bridge steps in gold leaf, and LEAP, which projected leaping New Yorkers onto the façade of 2 Columbus Circle. In this exceptional exhibition, his second at the gallery, Doyle presents expertly rendered large-scale watercolors depicting everyday life at home and in the studio. These works exchange the isolation of his earlier watercolors, in which individual suburban houses were set adrift on vast expanses of white paper, for a warm-hearted take on the riches of family life. The colorful, controlled watercolors--ranging from three to six feet and occasionally grouped--document Doyle, his partner, and their daughter in a clear, natural light whose softening of color lends itself to the medium. Threaded through the scenes is a gossamer strand of art historical references that permeate but do not burden Doyle’s art.
Eva Triptych (all works 2003) looks from below at his nine-year-old daughter atop a ladder, arms outstretched as if in preparation for flight. Nestled between two depictions of the sky, her pose suggests the unbounded potential of youth while her luminous face and the atypical angle call to mind angels in Mannerist paintings. Eva is always lovingly rendered, whether in the center of Breakfast, which evokes The Last Supper, or in Plain Pleasures I, which also casts her as an angel, this time referencing Francesca Woodman. Doyle’s studio is in his home, and he chooses to look at interstitial moments rather than grand acts of creation: the watercolors show him fiddling with a tangle of video cables and accidentally tumbling off a ladder. In the gallery, the installation emphasized a blurring of boundaries, casually juxtaposing the studio with the living room or bedroom.
Doyle’s chronicle was made with a sly acknowledgment of the camera’s mediation; most make use of a 4:3 aspect ratio, and cables and viewfinders find their way into almost every work. His earnest, reverential depiction of loved ones is paired with an acknowledgement of the inability to separate home from studio or family from history. Ralph Waldo Emerson claimed that “all history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.” Doyle’s exhibition demonstrates with a gentle touch that the two need not be mutually exclusive, instead presenting medium, subject, and historical reference as a deftly unified whole.