Mike Nelson’s: A Psychic Vacuum, sponsored by Creative Time is the latest addition to a genre of installation art that attempts to create either replicas of “real” spaces (or fabricates fictional though hyper-realistic spaces out of “real” stuff), while usually adding a clever surreal or conceptual twist. This territory has included Christoph Buchel, Justin Lowe, Gregor Schneider, and Christian Tomaszewski. Schneider, for example, once turned part of Barbara Gladstone’s Gallery into a sepulchral parking garage while Lowe recently created a replica of a typical New York City bodega within Oliver Kamm’s 5BE Gallery.
With the Lower East Side’s derelict Old Market, Nelson’s been supplied with a massive ready-made, a picturesquely decaying building which he’s transformed into a sprawling, quasi-Lynchian labyrinthine installation filled with decrepit musty rooms, salvaged junk, and bits of Americana. Entering, initially, into a filthy derelict Chinese food restaurant and passing through its back kitchen, visitors subsequently encountered, among other things, a long bar with a few scattered stools, mausoleum-like walk-in freezers, and a cavernous room filled with drifts of sand piled up almost to the ceiling. One little room appeared twice, almost duplicated although one could notice odd subtle differences in some of the details.
Nelson’s particular flair, actually, is for these little dramatic moments. By controlling pacing (almost like a film editor) through the size, scale, and arrangement of these spaces and selecting the odd details that create mood (like a great set designer) he creates a lot of momentum and drama out of our own movements and turns particular discoveries into “moments”. My favorite part was trying to learn my way around, to mentally map, the densest part of the installation - a convoluted tangle of small rooms near the middle of the installation. Still, without a commitment to sculptural form or a discernible narrative, the whole project falls back on a type of realism which becomes, in essence, tautological. Things here are representations of themselves (not unlike film-sets, actually, which are similarly partial). The room of sand at the end invokes the grandeur of the desert and initially feels fraught with archetypal symbolism or otherwise psychologically loaded (and maybe it is), but these implied meanings are never fully consummated in any specific, meaningful way. Sometimes a room full of sand is just a room full of sand.
But the larger problem with A Psychic Vacuum was that it was so intent on creating a sense of dislocation and realism that, paradoxically, it seemed to constantly assert its status as art - like how bad Photo-Realist painting is constantly reminding you of just how impressively well it was painted. Inside, I wandered around, nearly lost, and yet, still found myself visualizing my location in terms of the intersection outside the building; as if the whole installation (regardless of all of its little shocks and amusingly disorienting features) was – far from being a vacuum – rather, a black box: a discrete location within a categorically definable “art” experience or place, (literally speaking, on the corner of Essex and Delancey) – and more defined by its context than defining it.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Judi Wherthein's Corporate Logo Review
My review of Judi Wherthein's show "Corporate Logo" at Art in General is up on Frieze on-line.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Carter Mull Review on New Frieze Site
My review of Carter Mull's show "Ethics of Everyday Fiction" at Rivington Arms is up on Frieze's newly launched web-site. This new site will feature on-line exclusive short reviews of shows while they're still up. What a concept! I'm really happy to be a part of this new feature as my reviews usually don't see the light of day until months after the show is already over and nearly forgotten. So check out my review and go see Carter Mull's show for yourself!
He's also in two pretty good group shows. Practical F/X is at the uptown Mary Boone gallery and the other, "Post-Retro", is at Brooklyn Fireproof in Williamsburg. They're both worth checking out.
He's also in two pretty good group shows. Practical F/X is at the uptown Mary Boone gallery and the other, "Post-Retro", is at Brooklyn Fireproof in Williamsburg. They're both worth checking out.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Banks Violette
My Review of Banks Violette's recent shows at Team and Barbara Gladstone as it appeared in the most recent issue of Artillery:
There’s something about Banks Violette’s strategy of melding high and low (Minimalist sculpture with the aesthetics of Death Metal) that I find a little obvious. It’s as if his high art credentials are meant to validate the cultural slumming while the sub-cultural cachet of death metal injects crusty old forms with a jolt of intensity or an air of authenticity. In actuality, it feels more like an exercise in stylistic genre-blending than invention - averaging out into something safe and accessible rather than remaining either rigorous or marginal.
It’s a given, anyway, that the monolithic and serial forms of Minimalism are symbolically kin to tombstones. Infusing Minimalist tropes with death metal theatricality is both obvious and almost campy in its literal take on the genre’s latent symbolism. Violette wants his art to be about big issues (death, morality, etc…), but the work’s marriage of these disjunctive forms is so jarring that it’s impossible to see beyond their function as art-historical or cultural signs.
A work featuring fluorescent tube lights hanging askew and large black wooden beams in a rectilinear formation is obviously meant to recall Sol LeWitt’s Variations on Incomplete Open Cubes (as well as Dan Flavin’s use of fluorescent tubes, and Donald Judd’s - or Liam Gillick’s – commercially fabricated objects), but these are intentional over-deliberate references rather than assimilations of those artists work. It also presents what seems like an obvious metaphor for entropy that doesn’t embody this quality in its presence: entropy as an image rather than a product of process. This effect makes his work feel more like commercial product than sculptural form. It also makes his work’s take on death (itself a product of entropy) seem a little tepid.
Violette’s work is best seen in comparison to other emerging artists working in similar territory. The Neo-Gothic werewolf sculptures of David Altmejd and the rock-inflected chaos of Anthony Burdin’s videos are, respectively, more complex, visceral, and less amenable to art-historical parsing. Violette also draw heavily on Damien Hirst’s melding of Minimalism with death-inflected subject matter but lacks the accessible clarity that Hirst, at his best, can achieve.
Despite his obvious intentions to deal with serious issues, his work’s most striking effect is art-historical. As an extension of Minimalist-derived techniques for using commercially available materials and procedures in art, Violette shows how the planes and surfaces of Minimalism could become the scaffolding of a rock concert set or the more complex articulations of musical equipment. The variegated knobs, swiveling arm, and tripod-like structure of a cymbal stand are closer in form to one of Judd or Flavin’s “specific objects” than we might normally think. Unfortunately, this formal innovation say too little about Violette’s ostensible content - death, morality, homicide, or death metal subculture - but it is an accomplishment, however short it falls from realizing his larger ambitions.
There’s something about Banks Violette’s strategy of melding high and low (Minimalist sculpture with the aesthetics of Death Metal) that I find a little obvious. It’s as if his high art credentials are meant to validate the cultural slumming while the sub-cultural cachet of death metal injects crusty old forms with a jolt of intensity or an air of authenticity. In actuality, it feels more like an exercise in stylistic genre-blending than invention - averaging out into something safe and accessible rather than remaining either rigorous or marginal.
It’s a given, anyway, that the monolithic and serial forms of Minimalism are symbolically kin to tombstones. Infusing Minimalist tropes with death metal theatricality is both obvious and almost campy in its literal take on the genre’s latent symbolism. Violette wants his art to be about big issues (death, morality, etc…), but the work’s marriage of these disjunctive forms is so jarring that it’s impossible to see beyond their function as art-historical or cultural signs.
A work featuring fluorescent tube lights hanging askew and large black wooden beams in a rectilinear formation is obviously meant to recall Sol LeWitt’s Variations on Incomplete Open Cubes (as well as Dan Flavin’s use of fluorescent tubes, and Donald Judd’s - or Liam Gillick’s – commercially fabricated objects), but these are intentional over-deliberate references rather than assimilations of those artists work. It also presents what seems like an obvious metaphor for entropy that doesn’t embody this quality in its presence: entropy as an image rather than a product of process. This effect makes his work feel more like commercial product than sculptural form. It also makes his work’s take on death (itself a product of entropy) seem a little tepid.
Violette’s work is best seen in comparison to other emerging artists working in similar territory. The Neo-Gothic werewolf sculptures of David Altmejd and the rock-inflected chaos of Anthony Burdin’s videos are, respectively, more complex, visceral, and less amenable to art-historical parsing. Violette also draw heavily on Damien Hirst’s melding of Minimalism with death-inflected subject matter but lacks the accessible clarity that Hirst, at his best, can achieve.
Despite his obvious intentions to deal with serious issues, his work’s most striking effect is art-historical. As an extension of Minimalist-derived techniques for using commercially available materials and procedures in art, Violette shows how the planes and surfaces of Minimalism could become the scaffolding of a rock concert set or the more complex articulations of musical equipment. The variegated knobs, swiveling arm, and tripod-like structure of a cymbal stand are closer in form to one of Judd or Flavin’s “specific objects” than we might normally think. Unfortunately, this formal innovation say too little about Violette’s ostensible content - death, morality, homicide, or death metal subculture - but it is an accomplishment, however short it falls from realizing his larger ambitions.
Kwik-E-Mart Article.
My Kwik-E-Mart article as in appeared in the most recent issue of Artillery:
Approached from the side-walk, the exterior of the new “Kwik-E-Mart” – a completely re-branded 7-11 on 42nd St. near Times Square - is a sight to behold. The unexpected appearance of this fictional store-front lifted from “The Simpsons” world and recreated in real life is thrilling and hilarious. A few other select 7-11s (about 15, nationwide), feature this total transformation, while all 7-11s nationwide will offer some of the related merchandize and product re-branding. Standing on the sidewalk, one can watch smiling, bemused strangers come out of the store with “Squishies” (the fictional “Slurpee” equivalent form “The Simpsons”) in their hands. In terms of the public’s non-dutiful appreciation, “Kwik-E-Mart” might have “The Gates” beat.
Inside, you can find numerous Simpsons related products, from Buzz Cola and Squishies to Krusty O’s cereal. Other 7-11 products have been promoted with Simpsons-styled advertising. Donuts, for example, are advertised with the slogan “Go Ahead, they aren’t called Don’t Nuts”. A photocopy of a hand-lettered sign reading “This is Not a Library!” is posted above the magazine rack, hovering neatly between cartoon and phenomenological worlds.
Cross-brand promotions of this type are familiar enough but I can’t think of a similar attempt to meta-fictionally re-brand an entire store. Inside the lofty confines of the art-world, some recent projects of related intent have included a promotional campaign for a fake, unfilmed, movie (“United We Stand” by Eva and Franco Mattes 0100101110101101.ORG), and the recent transformation of Oliver Kamm 5BE gallery into a replica of a standard New York City corner bodega by the artist Justin Lowe. More conceptually similar might be the work of Michael St. John who makes 3-D sculptures of 2-D cultural artifacts (both high and low): a Nike Swoosh, for example, or a head from a Basquiat painting.
At any rate, there’s something witty about a company embracing a fictional parody of its own brand as its branding. Let’s not forget, a lot of those satirical criticisms leveled at 7-11 and its ilk by the Simpsons writers are well on target: ever actually eaten a 7-11 pre-packaged sandwich? (Don’t). It’s possible to wonder if this project was a hard sell with the “suits”. The bizarre upshot of this is a sort of (semi-intentional?) truth in advertising: irony turning in on itself. Meanwhile, as I plunk down a buck-fifty for my “Squishie”, I realize that I don’t really mind. Mmm… Slurrrppppeeee…
A little disappointingly, they do eagerly break the fourth wall by offering merchandize of Simpson’s characters that wouldn’t have merchandize inside of the Simpson’s universe (Homer, Bart, etc..) in addition to offering merchandize that does or could exist in their world (Krusty O’s and Radioactive Man comic books). However, it’s interesting to see how certain things do (or don’t) shift unwittingly between the two worlds. Of course, taking it seriously enough to nitpick on this level belies a ridiculous willingness to go along with an absurd premise in the first place. Can promotional merchandizing be Brechtian?! By heightening our awareness of the function of product tie-ins, placement, display, design, promotion, visual marketing, and branding – not to mention irony - it does throw the whole dynamic of consumerism and exchange into a new light. Can this be art? Probably not, but it is pretty good entertainment.
At any rate, what carries the whole project is the overall visual élan with which the Simpson’s style has been tweaked, to good effect, for “reality”. The presentation, interestingly, falls a little short of cartoon-y. A “Buzz Cola” sign, for example, features a notably restrained use of gradients in its design, for example, but it’s also more schematic and simplified than the more familiar rococo graffiti of contemporary soft-drink packaging. (This is also turned out to be prescient, or timely, as Coca-Cola has recently announced plans to release a more flat and streamlined redesigned can.)
In the end, whatever it’s promotional or conceptual intent, this project’s effects turn on questions of what our world can look like. We’re so acclimated to thinking of cultural detritus as part of our environment, that we forget sometimes how arbitrary, subjective, or historical determined, the look of, say, a Slurpee cup might be – that these are works made by people. Can we ever know, in our own time, what our stuff actually looks like? Maybe, but Kwik-E-Mart, Squishie’s, and Buzz Cola et al offer a revealing example (in both their incongruity with and resemblance to their respective meta-fictionally isomorphic brands) of just how much we might always be taking for granted.
Approached from the side-walk, the exterior of the new “Kwik-E-Mart” – a completely re-branded 7-11 on 42nd St. near Times Square - is a sight to behold. The unexpected appearance of this fictional store-front lifted from “The Simpsons” world and recreated in real life is thrilling and hilarious. A few other select 7-11s (about 15, nationwide), feature this total transformation, while all 7-11s nationwide will offer some of the related merchandize and product re-branding. Standing on the sidewalk, one can watch smiling, bemused strangers come out of the store with “Squishies” (the fictional “Slurpee” equivalent form “The Simpsons”) in their hands. In terms of the public’s non-dutiful appreciation, “Kwik-E-Mart” might have “The Gates” beat.
Inside, you can find numerous Simpsons related products, from Buzz Cola and Squishies to Krusty O’s cereal. Other 7-11 products have been promoted with Simpsons-styled advertising. Donuts, for example, are advertised with the slogan “Go Ahead, they aren’t called Don’t Nuts”. A photocopy of a hand-lettered sign reading “This is Not a Library!” is posted above the magazine rack, hovering neatly between cartoon and phenomenological worlds.
Cross-brand promotions of this type are familiar enough but I can’t think of a similar attempt to meta-fictionally re-brand an entire store. Inside the lofty confines of the art-world, some recent projects of related intent have included a promotional campaign for a fake, unfilmed, movie (“United We Stand” by Eva and Franco Mattes 0100101110101101.ORG), and the recent transformation of Oliver Kamm 5BE gallery into a replica of a standard New York City corner bodega by the artist Justin Lowe. More conceptually similar might be the work of Michael St. John who makes 3-D sculptures of 2-D cultural artifacts (both high and low): a Nike Swoosh, for example, or a head from a Basquiat painting.
At any rate, there’s something witty about a company embracing a fictional parody of its own brand as its branding. Let’s not forget, a lot of those satirical criticisms leveled at 7-11 and its ilk by the Simpsons writers are well on target: ever actually eaten a 7-11 pre-packaged sandwich? (Don’t). It’s possible to wonder if this project was a hard sell with the “suits”. The bizarre upshot of this is a sort of (semi-intentional?) truth in advertising: irony turning in on itself. Meanwhile, as I plunk down a buck-fifty for my “Squishie”, I realize that I don’t really mind. Mmm… Slurrrppppeeee…
A little disappointingly, they do eagerly break the fourth wall by offering merchandize of Simpson’s characters that wouldn’t have merchandize inside of the Simpson’s universe (Homer, Bart, etc..) in addition to offering merchandize that does or could exist in their world (Krusty O’s and Radioactive Man comic books). However, it’s interesting to see how certain things do (or don’t) shift unwittingly between the two worlds. Of course, taking it seriously enough to nitpick on this level belies a ridiculous willingness to go along with an absurd premise in the first place. Can promotional merchandizing be Brechtian?! By heightening our awareness of the function of product tie-ins, placement, display, design, promotion, visual marketing, and branding – not to mention irony - it does throw the whole dynamic of consumerism and exchange into a new light. Can this be art? Probably not, but it is pretty good entertainment.
At any rate, what carries the whole project is the overall visual élan with which the Simpson’s style has been tweaked, to good effect, for “reality”. The presentation, interestingly, falls a little short of cartoon-y. A “Buzz Cola” sign, for example, features a notably restrained use of gradients in its design, for example, but it’s also more schematic and simplified than the more familiar rococo graffiti of contemporary soft-drink packaging. (This is also turned out to be prescient, or timely, as Coca-Cola has recently announced plans to release a more flat and streamlined redesigned can.)
In the end, whatever it’s promotional or conceptual intent, this project’s effects turn on questions of what our world can look like. We’re so acclimated to thinking of cultural detritus as part of our environment, that we forget sometimes how arbitrary, subjective, or historical determined, the look of, say, a Slurpee cup might be – that these are works made by people. Can we ever know, in our own time, what our stuff actually looks like? Maybe, but Kwik-E-Mart, Squishie’s, and Buzz Cola et al offer a revealing example (in both their incongruity with and resemblance to their respective meta-fictionally isomorphic brands) of just how much we might always be taking for granted.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Matelli review in Sculpture
My review of Tony Matelli's last solo show at Leo Koenig is out in the new September issue of Sculpture magazine.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
More Recent Old Review: Rachael Harrison
Review of Rachael Harrison’s “If I Did It” at Greene-Naftali
Rachael Harrison is one the best contemporary sculptors around and this outing at Greene-Naftali, titled, “If I Did It” after O.J. Simpson’s title for his unreleased book, shows her at the top of her game. The sculptures here, each titled for a famous man, hewed closely to her typical formats – generally lumpy, stucco-ed, brightly painted, misshapen quasi-formalist sculpture adorned with kitschy knick-knacks, as well as a long rebus of photographs of sculptures depicting faces. The results here were nonetheless surprising in new ways.
Typically, these pieces all present a number of contradictory ideas about space and how radically different sculptural motifs, using a free-associative approach to meaning, can be juxtaposed. Each element seems to mock our tendencies to read them in familiar ways. Does it matter how beautiful, formal, well-crafted, or whatever, an abstract element is if there’s a can of “Arnold Palmer’s Lite Half & Half Ice Tea/Lemonade” nestled into one of its crannies (or that this can makes its appearance in a sculpture titled “Tiger Woods” – get it, “half & half”?)? It does, but only because the efficacy of a punch-line is mostly determined by its set-up. Part of the can’s jolting incongruity is that it suddenly becomes a formal element, as well, forcing you to think about what this ridiculous thing looks like i.e. utterly bizarre.
Elsewhere these tricks achieved mixed results. A tall roughly rectangular monolithic sculpture with a thermostat mounted on its side was titled “Al Gore”. Painted in both warm and cool tones, it initially seemed like a joke about color “temperature”, but the title reduced it to a one-liner. Likewise, a piece titled “Fats Domino” with a can of Slim-fast set on top is sculpturally impressive but the “Fat/slim” pun is a little grating. Another, titled “Johnny Depp”, painted in metallic gold paint and violet which included a large hoop ear dangling off it was more subtle and convincing. The clashing shades of fake gold were stunning, vulgar, off, and mesmerizing all at once.
A ring-bound book of Harrison’s source material and inspiration here also provided insight into her practice and offered unusual clues to her sculptures’ significance. A quotation from the enlightenment philosopher John Locke for example, describes how “complex” ideas derive from simpler ones: how the simple ideas of “red” and “sweet” together might form the complex idea of a “sweet, red apple”. Aside from offering an analogue for Harrison’s practice (where complex elements would seem to combine in mounting complexity) it also provides an alternative explanation for the funny Styrofoam apples appearing elsewhere on a couple of her sculptures (and, therefore, a concomitant comment on her tendency to deflate complex meanings back to the comical incidentals of particular forms – as if John Locke was a guy who wrote about apples). Whatever else apples might signify, a Styrofoam apple (with an apparently real bite taken out of it) is nonetheless, like Ms. Harrison’s sculptures as a whole, an ineffable, marvelous oddity unto itself.
Rachael Harrison is one the best contemporary sculptors around and this outing at Greene-Naftali, titled, “If I Did It” after O.J. Simpson’s title for his unreleased book, shows her at the top of her game. The sculptures here, each titled for a famous man, hewed closely to her typical formats – generally lumpy, stucco-ed, brightly painted, misshapen quasi-formalist sculpture adorned with kitschy knick-knacks, as well as a long rebus of photographs of sculptures depicting faces. The results here were nonetheless surprising in new ways.
Typically, these pieces all present a number of contradictory ideas about space and how radically different sculptural motifs, using a free-associative approach to meaning, can be juxtaposed. Each element seems to mock our tendencies to read them in familiar ways. Does it matter how beautiful, formal, well-crafted, or whatever, an abstract element is if there’s a can of “Arnold Palmer’s Lite Half & Half Ice Tea/Lemonade” nestled into one of its crannies (or that this can makes its appearance in a sculpture titled “Tiger Woods” – get it, “half & half”?)? It does, but only because the efficacy of a punch-line is mostly determined by its set-up. Part of the can’s jolting incongruity is that it suddenly becomes a formal element, as well, forcing you to think about what this ridiculous thing looks like i.e. utterly bizarre.
Elsewhere these tricks achieved mixed results. A tall roughly rectangular monolithic sculpture with a thermostat mounted on its side was titled “Al Gore”. Painted in both warm and cool tones, it initially seemed like a joke about color “temperature”, but the title reduced it to a one-liner. Likewise, a piece titled “Fats Domino” with a can of Slim-fast set on top is sculpturally impressive but the “Fat/slim” pun is a little grating. Another, titled “Johnny Depp”, painted in metallic gold paint and violet which included a large hoop ear dangling off it was more subtle and convincing. The clashing shades of fake gold were stunning, vulgar, off, and mesmerizing all at once.
A ring-bound book of Harrison’s source material and inspiration here also provided insight into her practice and offered unusual clues to her sculptures’ significance. A quotation from the enlightenment philosopher John Locke for example, describes how “complex” ideas derive from simpler ones: how the simple ideas of “red” and “sweet” together might form the complex idea of a “sweet, red apple”. Aside from offering an analogue for Harrison’s practice (where complex elements would seem to combine in mounting complexity) it also provides an alternative explanation for the funny Styrofoam apples appearing elsewhere on a couple of her sculptures (and, therefore, a concomitant comment on her tendency to deflate complex meanings back to the comical incidentals of particular forms – as if John Locke was a guy who wrote about apples). Whatever else apples might signify, a Styrofoam apple (with an apparently real bite taken out of it) is nonetheless, like Ms. Harrison’s sculptures as a whole, an ineffable, marvelous oddity unto itself.
Another Old Review - Ann Craven's 400 Paintings
Review of Ann Craven’s 400 Paintings at Gasser & Grunert
Originally Published in Artillery Issue 5
Ann Craven has a tendency to repeat herself. In the past this has meant re-painting an entire show with a single adjustment: doubling the size of the canvases. Last year in a show of featuring 15 nearly identical paintings of deer, she scattered empty beer cans all over the gallery and provided free beer for visitors during gallery hours – a concept created in collaboration with the painter Josh Smith and titled “Deer and Beer”. This time around she’s painted the moon, 400 times, from life over the course of a single month – each painting identical in size and scale. A concurrent show at the Cincinnati Art Center featured a series of 400 duplicates –paintings that she made from the 400 originals. As an added twist, in a nod to Felix Gonzalez Torres, two stacks of small posters were placed on the floor. One was a reproduction of a painting from the original series, the other, a reproduction of a painting from the series of duplicates.
The 400 moon paintings stretched around the room in arrangement which might be called salon-style though it also resembled a sort of fragmented, off-kilter grid and also called to mind the word “constellation”, given the celestial subject matter. Each of the relatively small, square canvases presented a fresh variation on her theme - ranging from nearly monochromatic, to cloud-obscured views, murky concentric circles of fog, moody glimpses through skeletal silhouettes of tree brances, and several elegantly efficient treatments of yellow or orange crescents.
With her narrow set of constraints and carefully limited palette, Craven exploits seemingly every possibility available and reminds us that, for as long as it’s there, people will always stare at the moon and invest its image with Romantic, emotional, poetic, and meteorological significance. Adjacent paintings grouped roughly into themes. The appearance of a single bold stroke representing a moon-obscuring cloud felt brazen and thrilling next to a stretch of nearly austere crescents. Her paint handling in each was both light and self-assured – towing a fine line between loose and controlled, though erring on the side of too loose, and was reminiscent of both Katz and Richter, yet distinctly her own.
At any rate, her method of repeating herself may have less to do with the encyclopedic array of art-historical references which she’s incorporated into her work and more in common with a musician practicing a simple melody in order to assimilate its subtleties into physical reflexes. And while her various conceptual maneuvers are generally well-considered, I did wonder, as I haven’t actually seen them, if the trick of reproducing 400 paintings is absolutely necessary. But this is beside the point, by tying together ostensibly disparate practices and ideas, Craven isn’t simply trying to convince us of her own cleverness (or how inside of art history she is), but rather to channel the inchoate joys of art, art history, and (while deigning to dismiss the issue with sly, humble irony) the ever-effulgent possibility of the new.
Originally Published in Artillery Issue 5
Ann Craven has a tendency to repeat herself. In the past this has meant re-painting an entire show with a single adjustment: doubling the size of the canvases. Last year in a show of featuring 15 nearly identical paintings of deer, she scattered empty beer cans all over the gallery and provided free beer for visitors during gallery hours – a concept created in collaboration with the painter Josh Smith and titled “Deer and Beer”. This time around she’s painted the moon, 400 times, from life over the course of a single month – each painting identical in size and scale. A concurrent show at the Cincinnati Art Center featured a series of 400 duplicates –paintings that she made from the 400 originals. As an added twist, in a nod to Felix Gonzalez Torres, two stacks of small posters were placed on the floor. One was a reproduction of a painting from the original series, the other, a reproduction of a painting from the series of duplicates.
The 400 moon paintings stretched around the room in arrangement which might be called salon-style though it also resembled a sort of fragmented, off-kilter grid and also called to mind the word “constellation”, given the celestial subject matter. Each of the relatively small, square canvases presented a fresh variation on her theme - ranging from nearly monochromatic, to cloud-obscured views, murky concentric circles of fog, moody glimpses through skeletal silhouettes of tree brances, and several elegantly efficient treatments of yellow or orange crescents.
With her narrow set of constraints and carefully limited palette, Craven exploits seemingly every possibility available and reminds us that, for as long as it’s there, people will always stare at the moon and invest its image with Romantic, emotional, poetic, and meteorological significance. Adjacent paintings grouped roughly into themes. The appearance of a single bold stroke representing a moon-obscuring cloud felt brazen and thrilling next to a stretch of nearly austere crescents. Her paint handling in each was both light and self-assured – towing a fine line between loose and controlled, though erring on the side of too loose, and was reminiscent of both Katz and Richter, yet distinctly her own.
At any rate, her method of repeating herself may have less to do with the encyclopedic array of art-historical references which she’s incorporated into her work and more in common with a musician practicing a simple melody in order to assimilate its subtleties into physical reflexes. And while her various conceptual maneuvers are generally well-considered, I did wonder, as I haven’t actually seen them, if the trick of reproducing 400 paintings is absolutely necessary. But this is beside the point, by tying together ostensibly disparate practices and ideas, Craven isn’t simply trying to convince us of her own cleverness (or how inside of art history she is), but rather to channel the inchoate joys of art, art history, and (while deigning to dismiss the issue with sly, humble irony) the ever-effulgent possibility of the new.
Old Reviews - Matthew Ritchie's "Universal Adversary" at Andrea Rosen
There's more posts on the way but in the meantime I'm going to post a few old reviews here. These are things that I've had published a while but aren't on-line. Here they are.
Elwyn Palmerton
Matthew Ritchie's Universal Adversary at Andrea Rosen Gallery
Matthew Ritchie's recent show "Universal Adversary" began with a lightbox mounted outside the gallery featuring a quotation from Ezekiel: "their appearance and their work was as if a wheel within a wheel" it began and then continued "their rings full of eyes, round about them as four". The quote aptly evoked Ritchie's visual style and cosmological inter-disciplinary approach to art-making in addition to establishing his installation's quasi-religious tone of apocalyptic foreboding. Inside the gallery, the combination of a row of prismatic light-boxes (in which the images of ascending figures changed and dissolved depending upon your viewing angle), his swirling Arabesque latticework ("drawing" as architectural intervention), and the muted Earthy tones of the paintings created a cathedral-esque vibe – a tone amplified by an audio recording of a monotonous voice - the titular "Universal Adversary", presumably - intoning a litany of disaster scenarios that sounded as bureaucratic as it was ominous; the exhibition's title was lifted from a government report listing 15 threats to the U.S. population.
The overall effect was relatively tranquil, almost meditative – ironically so, considering his sprawling, chaotic aesthetic and paranoiac narrative – perhaps a reflection of how comfortable we are with the media's near daily hysterical pronouncements. In this sense, Ritchie's take on this sort of trendy religious/apocalyptic content was one of the more nuanced, lucid, and original interpolations of this recently popular theme.
The paintings, for their part, still feel like they contain the essential juice of his enterprise. This time around they're more painterly but they still contain his familiar diagrammatic flourishes – e.g. directional arrows, equations, and black outlines – as if his language will always remain an uncomfortable hybrid of contradictory devices - stuck somewhere between the picturesque and the schematic. The four shown here were redundant enough to suggest a series of stills rather than effectively independent paintings. His framing methods also, by focusing more on scale and density of information than on composition, accentuate the cinematographic as well as cosmological impulse in his work – as if he's alternately zooming in and out on a single, infinitely large and detailed, entity.
Given this tendency, one might expect more from the videos: two pixilated/grainy animations depicting atmospheric beachscapes or marshlands in mostly sepia and brown tones. Video ought to provide Ritchie with room to explore and reveal more of his inherently kinetic world but, unfortunately, he only manages to animate it. In a way, they're less cinematic or dynamic than the paintings; they're flurries of visual noise over static backgrounds – essentially an animation cliché: moving figures over a stationary ground.
Still, Ritchie's rigorously conceived world always elicits a combination of perplexity and wonderment – even when he fails to reveal enough of it. That he's flirting with its destruction is a tantalizing, amusingly ironic, and seemingly inevitable prospect, but the results felt timid: an atmospheric evocation of impending doom, an ambiance of paranoia, and the calm before the storm rather that the cataclysmic shit-storm that Ritchie's obviously capable of conjuring up. I guess we'll have to wait to see what comes next.
Elwyn Palmerton
Matthew Ritchie's Universal Adversary at Andrea Rosen Gallery
Matthew Ritchie's recent show "Universal Adversary" began with a lightbox mounted outside the gallery featuring a quotation from Ezekiel: "their appearance and their work was as if a wheel within a wheel" it began and then continued "their rings full of eyes, round about them as four". The quote aptly evoked Ritchie's visual style and cosmological inter-disciplinary approach to art-making in addition to establishing his installation's quasi-religious tone of apocalyptic foreboding. Inside the gallery, the combination of a row of prismatic light-boxes (in which the images of ascending figures changed and dissolved depending upon your viewing angle), his swirling Arabesque latticework ("drawing" as architectural intervention), and the muted Earthy tones of the paintings created a cathedral-esque vibe – a tone amplified by an audio recording of a monotonous voice - the titular "Universal Adversary", presumably - intoning a litany of disaster scenarios that sounded as bureaucratic as it was ominous; the exhibition's title was lifted from a government report listing 15 threats to the U.S. population.
The overall effect was relatively tranquil, almost meditative – ironically so, considering his sprawling, chaotic aesthetic and paranoiac narrative – perhaps a reflection of how comfortable we are with the media's near daily hysterical pronouncements. In this sense, Ritchie's take on this sort of trendy religious/apocalyptic content was one of the more nuanced, lucid, and original interpolations of this recently popular theme.
The paintings, for their part, still feel like they contain the essential juice of his enterprise. This time around they're more painterly but they still contain his familiar diagrammatic flourishes – e.g. directional arrows, equations, and black outlines – as if his language will always remain an uncomfortable hybrid of contradictory devices - stuck somewhere between the picturesque and the schematic. The four shown here were redundant enough to suggest a series of stills rather than effectively independent paintings. His framing methods also, by focusing more on scale and density of information than on composition, accentuate the cinematographic as well as cosmological impulse in his work – as if he's alternately zooming in and out on a single, infinitely large and detailed, entity.
Given this tendency, one might expect more from the videos: two pixilated/grainy animations depicting atmospheric beachscapes or marshlands in mostly sepia and brown tones. Video ought to provide Ritchie with room to explore and reveal more of his inherently kinetic world but, unfortunately, he only manages to animate it. In a way, they're less cinematic or dynamic than the paintings; they're flurries of visual noise over static backgrounds – essentially an animation cliché: moving figures over a stationary ground.
Still, Ritchie's rigorously conceived world always elicits a combination of perplexity and wonderment – even when he fails to reveal enough of it. That he's flirting with its destruction is a tantalizing, amusingly ironic, and seemingly inevitable prospect, but the results felt timid: an atmospheric evocation of impending doom, an ambiance of paranoia, and the calm before the storm rather that the cataclysmic shit-storm that Ritchie's obviously capable of conjuring up. I guess we'll have to wait to see what comes next.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
New Kwik-E-Mart in Times Square
Not sure if this art or what exactly, but who cares. Everyone should go check out the 7-11 on 42nd St. that's been transformed Quik-E-Mart (it's between 8th and 9th).
Here's a flickr set of photos of a similarly transformed store in Burbank, C.A.:
http://flickr.com/photos/rdr07/sets/72157600590001691/
It's pretty amazing. You can purchase any number of products hitherto-unavailable outside of the fictional world of the Simpsons. Grab yourself a Squishie, some Buzz Cola, or Krusty O's. The whole atmosphere is incredibly entertaining. The employees are even wearing official "Kwik-E-Mart" garb. I especially love the "fake" ads which say things like "They don't call them Don't Nuts", "Our Hot-Dogs are Filled Bunly Goodness", and best yet "Buy 3, for the Price of 3".
Best Promotional Movie Product Tie-in Ever.
Here's a flickr set of photos of a similarly transformed store in Burbank, C.A.:
http://flickr.com/photos/rdr07/sets/72157600590001691/
It's pretty amazing. You can purchase any number of products hitherto-unavailable outside of the fictional world of the Simpsons. Grab yourself a Squishie, some Buzz Cola, or Krusty O's. The whole atmosphere is incredibly entertaining. The employees are even wearing official "Kwik-E-Mart" garb. I especially love the "fake" ads which say things like "They don't call them Don't Nuts", "Our Hot-Dogs are Filled Bunly Goodness", and best yet "Buy 3, for the Price of 3".
Best Promotional Movie Product Tie-in Ever.
Archive of Reviews
Here are some things that I've written that you can find on-line:
Noah Fischer's "Rhetoric Machine"
Anthony Burdin's "Anthony's Revenge"
Michael St. John "I'm a Child of Divorce, Gimme a Break"
Matt Bua and Jesse Bercowitz, "The Largest Bowie Knife Ever Made"
Oliver Payne and Nick Relph's "Sonic the Warhol"
Nicole Cherubini
Tara Donovan, "Untitled (Plastic Cups)"
Michael Bell-Smith
Review of Space Boomerang at the Swiss Institute
Also, I've written about Dana Schutz for Art Review for the new issue (July/August).
You can read it on Art Review Digital.
I also write for a magazine called Artillery, a free L.A. based publication, on occassion. A few galleries in Chelsea and maybe in Brooklyn put it out so pick one up if you happen to see it.
Noah Fischer's "Rhetoric Machine"
Anthony Burdin's "Anthony's Revenge"
Michael St. John "I'm a Child of Divorce, Gimme a Break"
Matt Bua and Jesse Bercowitz, "The Largest Bowie Knife Ever Made"
Oliver Payne and Nick Relph's "Sonic the Warhol"
Nicole Cherubini
Tara Donovan, "Untitled (Plastic Cups)"
Michael Bell-Smith
Review of Space Boomerang at the Swiss Institute
Also, I've written about Dana Schutz for Art Review for the new issue (July/August).
You can read it on Art Review Digital.
I also write for a magazine called Artillery, a free L.A. based publication, on occassion. A few galleries in Chelsea and maybe in Brooklyn put it out so pick one up if you happen to see it.
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