November 29, 2003
David Altmejd
This is a short text written for the exhibition brochure that will accompany "Scream: 10 Artists x 10 Writers x 10 Films," the January-February group exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery.
David Altmejd’s grotesque sculptures, usually of heads or other fragments of monster bodies, directly engage the repressed underside of our imagination. He looks past the imagery of B-movie horror clichés to a morbid, Victorian-era definition of the heinous (typified by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein); he conjures implausible sculptures into being as if channeling spirits through the Ouija board. When peering closely at the details of Altmejd’s decapitated and decaying hand-crafted heads, it is difficult to shake the uncanny sensation that the werewolf eye may blink open at any moment, springing to life like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Yet the intensely appealing layer of crystals, glitter, rhinestones, jewelry, and other materials that seem to sprout organically from the plaster sculptures defers the horror of beholding such objects. Altmejd understands that the process of decay carries within it the promise of growth; his objects arrest the moment where the former transforms into the latter.
The sculptures are often integrated with pedestals that recall mid-century furniture or modernist sculptures. They present horizontal surfaces at different heights, often have mirrored elements, and, importantly, allow for a theatricalized placement of the heads. Altmejd frequently carves box-like tunnels out of these structures, placing a head in a form-fitting hall of mirrors that distorts perception. This act calls to mind Robert Smithson’s use of the material and exploration of entropy. Yet unlike in Smithson’s work, Altmejd’s structures seem sound (his 2002 solo exhibition was titled “Clear Structures for a New Generation.”) It is the body that inevitably decays.
Several of Altmejd’s most recent works attach the werewolf heads to bodies. For an installation at the Istanbul Biennial, the mirrored boxes were not only carved out of the pedestal, but also from the body itself, exposing bones that traverse Altmejd’s otherwise empty mirrored cubes. Like a mad scientist, having brought these unnatural creatures into being, Altmejd is now meticulously picking them apart.
Posted in Art. Found always via this permanent link.
November 28, 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. If you have an event you'd like to see listed, please e-mail me with the information.
Continue reading "The week ahead"Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
P. S. 1: What happens next?
There is another withering review of a P.S.1 exhibition in today's New York Times. (Click through to the end of the article to see the discussion of P.S.1's exhibition.)
(Full disclosure: I was an intern/assistant in the curatorial department at P.S. 1 from August to December 2001.)
P.S. 1's location in Long Island City is, I think, the one thing that has saved it from the damning criticism lately heaped upon the Guggenheim and the Whitney museums. Were it in Manhattan, and therefore more visible on the public's cultural radar, it would have come in for some serious bashing. What was the last exhibition you saw there that could be described as particularly strong or relevant? Or, rarer still, a combination of the two?
Whereas the Whitney and the Guggenheim have seemingly suffered from overmanagement, P.S. 1 suffers from neglect. Approximately two years ago Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, then Chief Curator, left for the Castello di Rivoli in Turin; a few months later Associate Curator Larissa Harris also left, eventually ending up at Artforum. Those departures left a curatorial vacuum greater than what Klaus Biesenbach and Daniel Marzona, two part-time curators with other gigs in Europe, could fill. Instead of immediately hiring someone to begin applying a new vision to the museum, P.S. 1 began curating by committee: recently there have been exhibitions curated by registrars, assistants, and others on the staff in conjunction with a curator or director. Curating by committee necessarily dilutes the focus of any exhibition--see the criticism heaped on recent Whitney Biennials--but this phenomenon is particularly acute at P.S.1 given their lack of funds. You can run a museum with a vision and only a little money (the New Museum in its early years) or get by with a lot of money and mediocre exhibitions (the Guggenheim), but having neither will only lead your institution to irrelevance. Perhaps the hiring of Amy Smith Stewart as Assistant Curator and Jimena Blazquez Abascal as Curator indicates change to come. I certainly hope so, because right now I no longer put the museum's exhibitions on my mental "must see" lists. And if I, as someone dedicated to visual art by passion and profession, don't do that, who will?
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Meta Top Ten list
There are eleven top ten lists in Artforum's annual December "Best Of" roundup. Here, in no particular order, is what the Guardian calls the "digested read," my subjective pick of the ten best from the 110 best. I've added my own comments immediately afterward.
Continue reading "Meta Top Ten list"01. Felix Gmelin, Farbtest, Die Rote Fahne II (Color Test, The Red Flag II), "Delays and Revolutions" at the Venice Biennale. "Time travel, 2002 to 1968. Gmelin juxtaposed two small-scale, rather intimate projections: one of his father participating in a revolutionary action in Berlin in February 1968 as one of several runners carrying a red flag through the streets and the other a re-creation of the event which the artist staged in Stockholm last year. The action in Berlin culminated with one of the protestors, having gained access to the town hall, emerging with the flag on a balcony; Gmelin's replay omits only this detail, implying that political protest is foreclosed. 'Politics' as theme, gesture, and look: The red flags, separated by thirty-plus years, function as nostalgic, seductive, glamorous icons." (David Rimanelli)
This was my favorite discovery at this year's Venice Biennale. Rimanelli sums it up well, but the humbleness of the entire enterprise seems important to note. The videos' silence, the familial connection, and the fact that the Scandanavians paused their protest run at stoplights made this a gentle provocation. Really beautifully done.
Posted in Art. Found always via this permanent link.
November 17, 2003
Phil Collins at maccarone, inc.
An Artforum.com review of Phil Collins' New York debut at Maccarone, Inc., on Canal St. The exhibition is on view through December 7 and the gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday 12-6. The link dies two months from now, so I'll include the text of the review here:
British-born photographer Phil Collins's New York solo debut is two shows in one. On the third floor of Maccarone are selections from the 2002 series "Real Society," in which Collins invited (via newspaper ad) anyone age eighteen to eighty-eight to strip for the camera in the penthouse suite of a San Sebastian hotel. The meat of the exhibition, though, is on the first two floors, where a video and photographs from Belfast, Belgrade, and Palestine document places and people facing social or political unrest. How to Make a Refugee, 2000, an eleven-minute DVD, betrays Collins's misgivings about the intrusiveness of the camera: His lens wanders behind a group of British photojournalists posing a family of Kosovar refugees; as if embarrassed by their ordeal, Collins can't quite concentrate on the Kosovars—the camera, occasionally out of focus, often seems to be trained on the floor.
One floor up, the scarred bodies of Collins's photographed subjects are imbued with emotional resonance: The viewer feels for Mici, pictured in an almost all-black print the night before her conscription into the Serbian army, and for Abbas Amini, an Iranian Kurd whose eyes, ears, and mouth are sewn shut. Images of Sinisa, the artist's Serbian boyfriend, fill one section of the show. He is pictured with a broken nose; bathed in a cool blue light; and obscured by the hot yellowish orange of overexposed film. Collins's lyrical photographs invert Sebastião Salgado's theatricalization of misery, focusing instead on human detail; his subjects speak volumes without giving too much away.
Posted in Art. Found always via this permanent link.
November 15, 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. If you have an event that you'd like to see listed, please e-mail me with the information.
Monday, November 17
Peter Singer lecture @ NYU (see link for details)
Nicolas Bourriaud talk @ Swiss Institute
Tuesday, November 18
Hans-Ulrich Obrist book launch & performance @ Dia bookstore, RSVP gsmltd@earthlink.net
National Book Awards nominees reading @ New School, 66 W. 12th St., 7:00pm, $5
Anri Sala talk @ Guggenheim, 6:30pm, $10/$7
Wednesday, November 19
John Currin opening reception @ Whitney Museum (may be invite-only? not sure.)
Thursday, November 20
Jack Pierson opening reception @ Cheim & Read
Bob Knox and Jean Pierre Gauthier opening reception @ Jack Shainman
Sam Prekop "Permissions" opening reception @ Clementine Gallery
Allen Ruppersberg lecturing on Robert Whitman @ Dia Center
Friday, November 21
Group exhibition opening reception @ Monya Rowe Gallery, 242 S. 1st St., Brooklyn
Saturday, November 22
Nick Mauss & Shelby Hughes plus Christian Holstad opening reception @ Daniel Reich Gallery
Gillian Wearing "Album" opening reception @ Gorney Bravin & Lee
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
November 10, 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.
Tuesday, November 11
Lucas Samaras 'Photographs' opening reception @ Pace Wildenstein, 32 E. 57th St.
Philip Guston "Mind and Matter" opening reception @ McKee Gallery, 745 5th Ave.
Darren Waterston opening reception @ Charles Cowles Gallery
Barbara Kruger opening reception @ Skarstedt, 1018 Madison Ave.
"Hobby Lobby," three-person show opening reception @ Visual Arts Gallery, 137 Wooster, 5-7pm
Nick Hornby reads from 31 Songs at Borders, 100 Broadway
Wednesday, November 12
"Looking Awry" group exhibition opening reception @ apex art
Colson Whitehead interviewed by Dean Olsher @ NYPL Celeste Bartos Forum, 6:30pm, $10
Thursday, November 13
Josiah Mcelheney lecture on Donald Judd @ Dia, 6:30pm, $6/$3
Gregory Crewdson talk @ NYU, 34 Stuyvesant St., 6:30pm
Aleksandra Mir & Jonathan Monk opening reception @ Swiss Institute, 6:30pm
Friday, November 14
Jonathan Monk opening reception @ Casey Kaplan
Sarah Morris opening reception @ Friedrich Petzel
Karlheinz Weinberger opening reception @ Nicole Klagsbrun
Daniel Zeller and Ati Maier opening reception @ Pierogi
"Flesh and Blood", Sue de Beer, Daniel Hesidence, Banks Violette @ Michael Steinberg Fine Art, 526 W 26th. St. #9E
Saturday, November 15
PFFR opening reception and performance @ LFL Gallery
Liz Craft opening reception @ Marianne Boesky Gallery
Pieter Schoolwerth opening reception @ Elizabeth Dee
Jacqueline Salloum opening reception @ Wallspace Gallery
Sunday, November 16
'Knitted Light' screening as part of Ocularis @ Galapagos, 66 N 6th St., Brooklyn, 7:00pm, $6
Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" @ Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th St., 1:00pm, $9
"Urban Baroque" group exhibition opening reception @ Plane Space, 102 Charles st.