December 30, 2004
"Pages" at Cristinerose/Josée Bienvenu
An Artforum.com review of a group exhibition currently at Cristinerose/Josee Bienvenu. The link will die two months from now, so here's the text:
Not "The Page" but "Pages": This exhibition's title invokes the seriality of the printed page, which we expect to precede and follow others. Likewise, many of the artworks here reference predecessors on the continuum of art history: Laurie Anderson's collage It's Not the Bullet, 1977, includes the lyrics to a reggae tune she wrote for Chris Burden, while in Rodney Graham's Study for Casino Royale, 1989, two pages from a James Bond novel are set inside what could be a unit of a Donald Judd stack sculpture. (The pages in question narrate a torture scene, in a mischevious comment on the "difficulty" of Minimalist sculpture.) Other references are less direct. Matthew Higgs's From the Center: a framed bookpage to be hung centrally on any given wall, 2000, is an excised page from a secondhand book—and a sly reference to Robert Barry's placement-specific paintings. The constructivist undertones of Marco Maggi's Pages, 2003, chime with Alastair Noble's aluminum sculpture inspired by the typographical layout of a Mayakovsky poem. Fellow bibliophiles take note: This show (curated by Buzz Spector) resonates with the sensibilities that lead us to fetishize the book as object.
Posted in Art. Found always via this permanent link.
December 28, 2004
On TNR's literary reviews
n+1 magazine has a brief sketch of The New Republic's recent transition from bastion of heavyweight literary criticism to host of "shit-smearer" Dale Peck. It doesn't quite merit the summing-up title of "The Intellectual Situation," but it's humorous in parts and (from what little I know of the back of the TNR book) fairly accurate. A choice excerpt for those who don't want to read the whole thing:
Leon Wieseltier’s choice of a title for a book of essays by Lionel Trilling, The Moral Responsibility to be Intelligent, summed up the outlook. (The quotation belongs originally to John Erskine, but Trilling used it and it could very well have been his own—do recall, in your nostalgia for the fifties intellectuals, that lugubrious funereal tone.) The moral responsibility is not to be intelligent. It’s to think. An attribute, self-satisfied and fixed, gets confused with an action, thinking, which revalues old ideas as well as defends them. Thought adds something new to the world; simple intelligence wields hardened truth like a bludgeon. Thinking is tiring, we commiserate.
(Link via Rake's Progress.)
Posted in Books. Found always via this permanent link.
December 18, 2004
2004 top sixteen list
In response to Tyler Green's post at Modern Art Notes calling for lists compiling top exhibitions, I'm posting a Top 16 "anything goes"-type list. In no particular order, here are sixteen exhibitions, essays, albums, and films that won me over in 2004.
- William Gass, "On evil: the ragged core of a sweet apple," Harper's, January 2004. My best friend pointed this essay out to me not long after it was published in January, and I've re-read it almost monthly since.
- Matthew Greene, "she who casts the darkest shadow on our dreams", peres projects, Los Angeles. I had the pleasure of meeting Matthew in New York in January, working with him in Paris in June, and being duly impressed by his solo debut at peres projects in Los Angeles on Halloween weekend. Instead of exhibiting minor variations on the paintings that brought him attention in galleries and at art fairs throughout the year, he chose to push forward and exhibit works that indicate the breadth of the fields he is exploring. Click here for a brief review I published on Artforum.com in November.
- Kai Althoff, "Kai Kein Respekt," ICA Boston and MCA Chicago. I first visited Althoff's gesamtkunstwerk in June in Boston; I made a pilgrimmage, and brought a friend, in August. I've since seen the show twice in Chicago and will see it a third time next week. It's likely that there will never be another US survey of his work, and I am glad to have bathed in the aura of his singular vision five times. One of the top five solo exhibitions I have seen since I began to look closely at art. Click here for a brief review I published in June on Artforum.com.
- Anne M. Wagner, "Splitting and Doubling: Gordon Matta-Clark and the Body of Sculpture," Grey Room 14, Winter 2004. This essay, along with David Zwirner's presentation of "Bingo" this past spring, renewed the interest in Gordon Matta-Clark that led me (in 2002) to watch consecutively every film and video he ever made. The essay is a pitch-perfect example of strong academic art historical scholarship: measured, logical, thought-provoking, and even willing to throw a few elbows at other scholars. I respect anyone whose attention span allows them to focus on a single subject for so long; I respect even more those who inspire me to attempt to do the same.
- Tim Hecker, "Mirages," alien8recordings. This is Hecker's third full-length record presented under his own name. "Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do It Again" (2001) and "Radio Amor" (2003) were—for lack of a better term—haunting amalgams of digital static, found sound, and processed analog instruments, all suffused with an air of melancholy seemingly born of a Canadian winterscape. "Mirages" is his smoothest work to date: Unmistakably a Hecker record, from harsh opener to languid closer, and a perfect antidote to everyday stresses and his most seamless record yet.
- "A Minimal Future?: Art as Object 1958-1968", Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and "Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form 1940s-1970s", Los Angeles County Museum of Art. These two shows (along with, to a lesser extent, "Singular Forms" at the Guggenheim) showed us what critical fuss is all about. It's time to unearth the 1960s, and there's a gold mine joke in here somewhere: Both shows presented plenty of gems for our inspection.
- Diedrich Diedrichsen, "The Primary: Political and Anti-Political Continuities Between Minimal Music and Minimal Art," in A Minimal Future?: Art as Object 1958-1968. A slightly idiosyncratic and highly personal survey of—you guessed it—continuities between minimal music and minimal art. The essay introduced the highly useful term "psychedelic gaze" to my vocabulary. I have Artforum.com colleage Michael Ned Holte to thank for insisting I read (and re-read) this essay. I urge you all to do the same.
- Hero, directed by Zhang Yimou. Like Rivers and Tides, the Andy Goldsworthy documentary, with fight scenes. Absolutely beautiful.
- Craig Seligman, Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me, and Geoffrey O'Brien, Sonata for Jukebox, both published by Counterpoint Press. Two great books with orange covers from the same press in the same year? It can't be a coincidence. Sontag and Kael is the only book I've read twice this year. By his own admission, Seligman loves Kael and reveres Sontag. It makes for a slightly uneven book, but the questions he asks of each writer's body of criticism will inevitably lead to a fruitful self-examination in any practicing critic. O'Brien's memoir-through-music was the most pleasurable read of the past twelve months, as he takes as much pleasure in writing (he is a poet, critic, and the editor of the Library of America to boot) as he does in listening.
- The Futureheads, "The Futureheads," 679 Recordings. This band came out of nowhere and out-Franz Ferdinanded Grammy nominees Franz Ferdinand in September at Roseland. Their self-titled album, while a few tracks too long, contains just as much energy as their live show. If you're having trouble getting out of bed some winter morning, this is the record for you.
- David Wojnarowicz, "Rimbaud in New York," Roth Horowitz. One of my favorite gallery-going experiences is being introduced to well-known works with which I was previously unfamiliar. With over a dozen never-before-exhibited prints, this show was a revelation even to those who were familiar with the "Rimbaud in New York" photos, and the inclusion of several diaries in the exhibition had the unexpected (and pleasant) side effect of leading me back to Wojnarowicz's writing.
- The Animal Collective. This prolific and amorphous group continues to fire off beautiful record after beautiful record. This year's "Sung Tongs" is a step forward from last year's "Here Comes the Indian," which was already delightful. Not to mention the Campfire Songs side project (my favorite release yet) and individual releases by Panda Bear and others. Great live shows too.
- "Philip Guston", The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This exhibition was only on view for four days in January (and I saw it repeatedly throughout November and December 2003), but apart from being a timely, necessary retrospective, it is also a strong example of what the Metropolitan does best. It never gives enough space to traveling retrospectives and is too staid to feature artists still at mid-career: What results are not-quite-complete retrospectives of Modern masters (Guston) and surveys of stalwarts (Thomas Struth, Vija Celmins) that are a pleasure to behold (and easy on the feet). Celmins's print retrospective held there in late 2002 was one of the most illuminating exhibitions I have ever seen.
- EN/OF series, Bottrop-Boy. This series comprises limited edition 12" records by experimental electronic and improv musicians paired with artworks made by contemporary artists. The first release, dated 2001-02, featured two cut and dyed felt sheets made by Liam Gillick and "White Cube Jazz," a collaboration between Ekkehard Ehlers and Joseph Suchy. Earlier this year, Tim Hecker (mentioned above) was paired with Stan Douglas. My admiration for this series is entirely abstract, as I do not own any of the editions, but I've heard several of the musical compositions and they're of unfailingly high quality.
- "Before the End (The Last Painting show)", curated by Olivier Mosset, Swiss Institute, New York. Originally presented at Le Consortium, Dijon, this spring, this show was a tightly-wound "Missing You" card From Mosset to a generation of painters who left painting behind in the mid- to late-1960s. Click here for a brief review I published on Artforum.com.
- Triumph the Insult Comic Dog in "Spin Alley" after the Presidential Debates. Look this clip up online. It makes me wish I owned a television.
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
December 17, 2004
Update
In the last ten days, Artforum.com has published my 'Scene & Herd' diary entry on the NADA art fair (click here to see it at Artforum's site; it is archived here) and my brief review of Gabriel Vormstein's exhibition currently on view at Casey Kaplan (click here; archived here). I'm working on a handful of freelance writing projects that are keeping me from posting too frequently, though I have it in my mind that I should try updating more often. We'll see how it goes.
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
December 5, 2004
Daniel Lefcourt and Lisa Sigal in New York
Artforum.com has posted my brief reviews of new exhibitions by Daniel Lefcourt and Lisa Sigal. Both will soon be archived on BrianSholis.com. In the meantime, here are the texts:
This exhibition is a study in sameness and difference. Zoom in on the seven paintings and you'll find all-black abstractions whose narrow rivulets of paint playfully catch light, as if Jason Martin's sine-waves had been scattered in every direction; zoom out and you're faced with more or less undifferentiated portraits of rocks, set adrift on large expanses of unprimed linen and available in two sizes (large and small). One can envision Lefcourt in the studio, making one after another as if in a meditative trance—an impression that's echoed by a sly allusion to scholar's rocks: His titles—such as The Banality of Evil, The Pain of Others, and Variable Value (all works 2004)—allude to texts by authors from Arendt to Sontag, or possess a more generalized intellectual portent. In the back room, a small monitor plays a looped stop-motion animation of rocks, this time painted gold, passing by in an unending procession. The catch? Paradoxically—and unlike the paintings, which are editions of a sort—the video is unique. The conceit is meant to add conceptual gravitas to what are, after all, paintings of rocks. But the canvases, seductive but not really "pretty," hold their own (and the viewer's attention) just fine.
In her second solo at this gallery, Lisa Sigal trades in her site-responsive archi-sculptural vocabulary—which has stood out this year in group shows at Artists' Space, White Columns, and Clementine Gallery—for a more painterly idiom that focuses on the internal relationships of each construction. It's tough to call this a conservative move, because her works—made of wooden panels, vellum, sheet rock, masonite, joint compound, cardboard, and other materials, juxtaposed and partially painted over—still explode the traditional frame of painting. (Her forays into gouaches and small works on canvas are competent but not nearly as strong as the larger pieces.) Here, the works are nailed to and propped up against the walls, and the largely abstract fields of solid color, sometimes crossing multiple objects in the bricolage, highlight her material juxtapositions. This show is drawn from life, so to speak, and the acuity of Sigal's construction-site aesthetic translates the complexities of observed places (with their accidental beauty) into static objects whose intricacies are consistently rewarding.
Posted in Art. Found always via this permanent link.
Back from Miami
Scene & Herd is now online. I'm back from Miami. More soon. For the moment, here's Roger Sale on Irving Howe (the quote appears in Morris Dickstein's article on Howe in the new Bookforum): "Only the best critics are generous enough to find the right words for their authors."