Tensions with Comparisons; 1969 P.S. One Art Center

“Opposition of gravity and weightlessness, form and its content, site and non-site, materiality and concept established the tension and connection of disparate works made within a single year.”

- P.S. One Contemporary Art Center

P.S. One Contemporary Art Centers’ 1969 show features a broad range of artwork drawn from every department of the Museum of Modern Art collection. Amassing a wide range of mediums from sculpture, painting, photography, and video; 1969 claims ‘to present a cross-section of works made in 1969 (not to recount events).’ While walking through the gallery, viewers are confronted with a multitude of contrasting artworks which highlight 1969’s constant state of unrest. The show also brings in a handful of contemporary artists to create original works for this show which ‘reflect 69 through the lens of the present day.’ Like many large-scale time period exhibitions, the primary goal is to look back at the past and relate it to our present circumstances. 1969 accomplishes its goal but leaves this artist uncertain of its necessity.

The primary reason for 1969’s success is the small infusion of contemporary art with the large collection of work from the past. When you first approach Stephanie Syjuco Custom Transitional Utility Object (Morris Mover) [2009] you believe it’s an original Robert Morris piece from the 60s. It has the same dimensions and shape, a 72” wide blanket which originates as a single piece then almost immediately dissects into six 180” long pieces, as the original Morris Untitled work. But ultimately you notice the materiality of the work isn’t Morris’s signature felt. This piece is made from the cross-stitched blankets typically used by moving companies. You also observe how dirty and disheveled the blanket is, making you wonder what experience it has gone through. As you walk past the hanging blanket you notice a glass case containing photographic documentation. These photos show the Morris Mover in-action, transporting boxes containing artwork to and from MoMA and the P.S. One Art Center.

Morris Mover does an excellent job of duplicating many of the concepts studied by Process artists. For many Postminimalists (Morris included) they wanted to show the process of the artwork as the medium itself. Morris Mover does this by re-creating the original Untitled Morris piece and using it throughout the art moving process. Stephanie Syjuco was obviously aware of the trends in Process art and created a piece which further personified the movement. Morris Movers, like many of the artworks in 1969, rests in a constant state of flux. Never quite becoming an artwork or an art process, it straddles between the two and leaves you with tension. While viewing 1969 as a whole, I see many of the artworks functioning as shifters; each piece having been created with contrasting elements and leaving us within a state of tension.

Hank Willis Thomas’ People Are Talking About [2009] was another successful injection of contemporary artwork. It was a simple LED news ticker which streamed headlines from the pages of Ebony and Jet magazines from 1969. The speed at which the headlines appeared was fast enough to be read, but too challenging to comprehend. On one level, the piece does address the lack of equal rights during 1969 and the present. But on a deeper level, the piece echoes the same uneasiness, which bridges this 40-year gap. Tension caused from drastic contrast was evident throughout the selected work from 1969 and this tension clearly influenced the creative process of these contemporary artists’s.

In a completely literal sense, Bruce Nauman’s Pulling Mouth [1969] was an excellent example of this tension. The piece consists of a large projected black and white video, which displays a close up of a mouth being pulled apart, from both sides, by two hands. The video moves at a super slow pace while the frame constantly shakes and stutters. The content is self-explanatory and shows Nauman’s typical approach of using his body as medium. The contrast of slow motion and frenetic shaking is what really brings this work to life. You pains-takingly sit there and watch the video unsure of what will come next. The end is anticlimactic, fading out to black and simply loops back to the beginning. The lack of climax perfectly illustrates the constant unrest the viewer experiences while walking through 1969.

1969’s tension was not just caused by individual pieces, it also occurred through opposing works of art. Ed Ruscha’s Hey [1969] is a simple lithography print with the word ‘Hey’ spelled out with illusionistic oily bubbles. The piece is dark, ghostly, and is similar to Thomas’ People Are Talking About in the sense that the word is seen and then quickly forgotten. Hey is an extremely traditional piece but the word is muddy with uncertainty. The ambiguity of the piece comes through by its content rather than the medium. In an opposing fashion Donald Judd’s Untitled [1969] is a shiny gold-colored metal box hung from the gallery wall at eye level. Light from the ceiling bounces off the box’s edges and creates abstract flares coming off the artwork. For a Minimalist like Judd, the ambiguity is brought about by the direct presentation of the medium. No metaphor or alternative meaning is presented and this can leave us searching for more.

When you finally leave 1969 you feel like you’ve seen a highlight reel from some of the greatest artists of the sixties. The drastically different mediums and artistic approaches constantly grind against one another causing a tension which never leaves the gallery. In this sense, 1969 can be viewed as a success by recreating the social unrest of that era. While this tension can easily be related to our current circumstances, one must ask if this comparison is necessary. Can we be certain that 2009 will be as revolutionary as 1969? Only time will tell.

Creating Dynamic Spaces in Between Spaces at P.S. 1

PS 1’s Between Spaces is an exhibition that starts to play in the space between negative and positive in reference to volume, light and line. The artists that have contributed to this show have each, in their own style and approach, manipulated the delicate line between the two.  The artists in this show have primarily decided to work with three-dimensionality while only a few found they could find their in-between balance in two dimensions. Conceptually and aesthetic choices come into play while determining how each of these artists have engaged the issues at play. While some of the artists in this show provide a cohesive connection to the main theme, others seem to have completely missed the mark. As the viewer traverses the individual rooms, certain pieces stand out and demand attention as they balance in new ground between was is and what isn’t.

Martin Soto Climent’s series, entitled Blinds, starts to push the boundary of everyday objects as he creates organic compositions displayed in an atypical manner that deviates from being located in normal gallery viewing space. He bends and shapes beige venetian blinds together to distort horizontal lines into a fan of rays stemming from a similar point. These shapes are delicately placed between corners high over doorways and half over windowpanes. Although blinds are typically hung over windows, Climent pushes the function of the blind by turning it into fine art. These contemporary pieces that are hung half over a window creates light that cascades through the overlapping lines and starts to push the balance between the light and dark layered components. This series generates striking imagery of line and light yet falls flat in comparison to the concepts tied to the aesthetic effectiveness with the rest of the show.

            This tie between light and line is prevalent in Marc Swanson’s piece Untitled (Window Box). Swanson creates a reflection of light on the floor as if the light was streaming through separate windowpanes in a dark space and casting the beams onto a projected surface. Though under closer inspection, the light is coming from in front of his sculpture of a wooden slats and the photograph of the shattered windows are in front of a solid piece of plywood, unable to allow the projection of light through the material. Swanson is creating an illusion that the photograph of the windows is illuminating the space in front of the sculpture. The first impression yields to the realization of the creation of the piece. This artist plays with the in between by building a fantasy interaction of light, space and volume.

Melanie Schiff’s video is an interesting addition to the collection of spatial images. Schiff literally tries to create volumetric space within her video Perfect Square. Filmed from beneath a swimmer in what appears to be at the bottom of a lake, the viewer watches as the female tries to swim in a perfect square. The square space is never fully achieved and she is constantly swimming on an angle or along curved lines as the lake continues to flood the space with artificial currents. This video is very aesthetically unappealing and tedious until the viewer understands the intention behind the concept of the piece. Once the viewer realizes that she is trying to swim in a specific shape, the connection with space becomes relevant. Even if she was swimming in a perfect square, she would still not be creating a space out of volume since it is a time-based video which consists of a single point traveling a line and thus fits the core ideas behind the exhibition. The concept is word for word what the show hopes to represent yet visually this film seems too forced to fit the requirements of this specific show.

The most astounding piece within the entire show is David Altmejd’s mixed media, Untitled. Altmejd brings together many juxtapositions of visual and conceptual ideas. Within this piece, the artist plays with sharp rigid lines against organic fluid threads and fragments. Taking over an entire room, the artist created an interesting mix of architecture and fine art.  He used plexi-glass to divide the space and create smaller rooms within the larger box. These plastic planes intersected hand painted threads, gold chains, and other small found materials. Within the center of the space, a large bird stretched out as it drifts in and out of sectional plastic divisions and organic framework. The body of the creature is a spinal column created from individual plastic vertebrae forms. Large planes of plastic, threads and chains intersect the spine as they create the feathers and wings of the creature. The body shifts seamlessly from the inwards to the outer parts of the being. This piece shifts between the dead and the living in ways displayed in many of Altmejd’s pieces. He has given up his werewolves to create a simpler, more fluid creature that shift between the line of real and invented, although he still relies on his comfortable juxtapositions of beauty verse death, living verse man-made, and sharp lines verse fluid compositions. Untitled is the quintessential piece for creating in between spaces and exemplifies the concept of the P.S. 1 show all on its own.

Within this show, these artists are pushing the boundaries of how sculpture and imagery is defined by space. While all sculptures require the artist to contemplate spatial attributes, these artists are creating dynamic compositions while continuing to question the concepts that require them to work in a three dimensional space. While negative and positive spaces are easy to understand in terms of substance, it leaves the special ambiguity to walk the line of dynamic and conceptual relevance.

 

 

Walid Raad

Walid Raad
Scratching on Things I Could Disavow: A History of Art in the Arab World / Part I_Volume 1_Chapter 1 (Beirut: 1992-2005)
At Paula Cooper Gallery

In 1975, Lebanon entered a period of brutal civil wars that would persist over twenty years. Since then, the small country has begun a sluggish process of rebuilding, although the political and social state of affairs still remains incredibly unstable. Born in Chbanieh, Lebanon in 1967, artist Walid Raad was surrounded by this volatile environment for most of his life and it would consequently infuse every aspect of his artwork later.
Like so many other examples throughout history, during its course of rehabilitation Lebanon experienced a kind of cultural resurgence, developing art festivals, galleries, museums, schools, publications, and much more. It was this cultural revival that inspired Walid Raad to begin The Atlas Group- an ongoing project that researches and records contemporary Lebanese history, with a particular focus on the civil wars and their after effects.
For a decade now, Raad has been documenting current Lebanese history and compiling it in The Atlas Group Archive. He does this by collecting documents, letters, videotapes, photographs, and objects. Raad then employs various methods of displaying his findings such as multi-media installation, video, essays and performances, all modeled after conceptual art, to exhibit this documentation in exhibitions across the globe.
His latest exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery, Scratching on Things I Could Disavow, is similar to many Raad has done in the past as an extension of or in association with, The Atlas Group. It is comprised of five works that include mixed media installation, sculpture and photography. Earlier this year the exhibition was shown at REDCAT in Los Angeles. Some of the key pieces were still included, however, the L.A. show was a bit larger.
The first work in the exhibition is located immediately upon entering the first gallery room to the right. It is a large low-lying model of what appears to be a gallery itself. This piece, entitled Part I- Chapter 1- Section 139: The Atlas Group (1989-2004), is peculiar and amusing. Within the model are miniature pieces of artwork (all from past exhibitions linked to The Atlas Group) hanging on the walls. Raad even included video projections- the artist installed tiny LCD screens with real audio playing. Part I- Chapter 1 is one of the crucial works representative of the exhibition, and Raad has repeated this piece several times.
To the left, one enters the much larger main gallery space with its towering wood- beamed ceilings. Beginning on the right, is an untitled installation that involves a replica of museum or gallery door frames. The sculpture is mounted to on the wall and is painted virtually the same color making it difficult to discern. Beside it, the artist has painted two grey gallery walls in realistic detail directly on the actual Paul Cooper Gallery wall. Both these works play with perspective and create an optical illusion when standing in front of them. Additionally, these three works are obvious references to the recent flourishing of galleries, museums and art spaces that have now become ubiquitous in Lebanon.
The center wall displays several sheets of paper, each a different color, with printed and handwritten text, lined single-file across the viewer’s eye-level. Here is where the connection to Raad’s Atlas Group is most apparent. Raad frequently includes a piece in the similar vein as this one- numerous documents displayed next to each other. He even included a miniature example of this in his model (Part I- Chapter 1).
The last work in the show is one that is scarcely noticeable until you are inches away from it. Running along the entire span of the white wall runs white adhesive text in both Arabic and English. The words are unreadable- a jumble of letters that at times resemble words or names, but always remain nonsensical. In one seemingly arbitrary spot, red Arabic letters appear floating above the rest. Again, Raad is using techniques of visual trickery. These last two works are more in line with the documentation style linked to the Atlas Group.
Presented with this exhibition and the information given about his history with The Atlas Group, it would almost appear that the title of artist for Walid Raad is a misnomer- “creative art historian” would be more akin to what he does. That is, if it weren’t for the fact that oftentimes his documentation is doctored, the stories he tells are invented and the characters he introduces are imaginary. One example from previous works is the use of a character named Dr. Fadl Fakhouri, a Lebanese historian who would carry around video cameras and expose a frame of film every time he thought the war had ended. This resulted in a montage of single shots of Beirut.
In doing this Walid Raad intentionally blurs these lines between fact and falsehood, causing confusion and frustration that is mirrored in the political and social changes in Lebanon. The artist himself described the five artworks in Scratching on Things I Could Disavow as “stage sets from a forthcoming play about the history of art in the Arab world,” emphasizing Raad’s play on reality and make-believe.
Moreover, by describing a Lebanese cultural history that is imaginary he is simultaneously demonstrating the fact that Lebanon does not truly have a cultural history due to the chaos and ravages of war and politics. His work then further becomes a commentary on the delicate, and often flawed, process of recording history, as well as the damage war can inflict on a country’s culture and traditions.
Thus, artist Walid Raad has a mission: to document contemporary Lebanese history via text and image, even if he has to invent some of it along the way. At the root of this mission reside strong feelings of frustration and loss of national history and culture. In Scratching on Things I Could Disavow, the artist successfully manages to express this exasperation through conceptual approaches. By creating pieces that depict an absence of reality, Raad is constantly forcing the viewer to confront it.
Walid Raad currently spends his time between Beirut and New York. He is an associate professor at Cooper Union.

The book as artifact

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's current show, the aptly named chronotopes & dioramas, serves two functions for its exhibit space—it both brings the Hispanic Society of America's collection into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and expands the collection to include objects native to the Americas. Founded in 1904 by Archer Milton Huntington because of his fondness for Spain, the Hispanic Society is comprised of a library with over 400,000 holdings and a museum with nearly 200,000 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures, and decorative arts pieces. This cultural repository, though comprehensive within its scope, is narrowly limited to the history of the Iberian peninsula and colonial Latin America. Troubled by its lack of modern resources upon her first visit to the Hispanic Society, Gonzalez-Foerster, a French-born artist who divides her time between Paris and Rio de Janeiro, became intrigued by the idea of expanding the library beginning with an exhibit of contemporary “American” literature.

Reminiscent of a natural history museum's “habitat groups,” Gonzalez-Foerster's dioramas occupy the former Museum of the American Indian gallery building, now an annex of the Hispanic Society's research library. Upon entering the annex, the viewer first sees a large white wall covered with seemingly odd groupings of text in a variety of languages. This wall is the backside of the dioramas, and the text consists of excerpts from the books contained within the dioramas. The odd groupings comprise elements of a skyline, most obvious is the Empire State Building shaped quotation at the far left of the wall. To either side of the bright wall is a short, dark hallway leading to a more dimly-lit and enclosed area that provides a stark contrast with the initial entryway. There the viewer encounters three adjacent dioramas which are set up to represent three climatic or geographic areas of the American continents—tropical, desert, and the northern Atlantic. These three distinct areas correspond with the birthplaces of either the author of each book on display or the piece of literature itself. The forty-some odd volumes range from 1895 to 2004, from Joseph Conrad to Roberto Bolaño.

Chronotope, the other half of the show's title, is taken from the writings of Russian literary theorist M.M. Bakhtin in which he defined the term as “the essential correlation of spatio-temporal relationships, such as it has been assimilated by literature.” A term more akin to Einstein's branch of physics, chronotope, which literally translates to “time-space,” could easily replace the literary term setting. This refers back to the dioramas and their representation of either the settings of the books they house or the settings in which the authors wrote them. This self-referential title and her incorporation of literature is not atypical of the artist, such as with Tapis de Lecture in her show, Nocturama, at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) in Spain.

Commissioned by Dia Art Foundation as part of its recent partnership with the Hispanic Society, chronotopes & dioramas appears, in some ways, related Gonzalez-Foerster's recent show at London's Tate Modern, TH.2058. Known primarily as a video and installation artist, her “work is characterized by a quiet, intimate interrogation of contemporary urban life. Exploring cinematic conventions, temporality and subjective experience, her short films and installations recreate specific moments in which individuals intersect with places.” The Tate Modern installations and the Hispanic Society dioramas do just that. Whereas TH.2058 places the viewer within the futuristic installation filled with books and monumental sculptures, he or she maintains the role of outside observer in chronotopes & dioramas. Seeing the show is like examining the history of the future through recent written word in much the same way the past is studied via historic objects unearthed in archeological digs. Therefore, though the viewer is first confronted with the museum-like qualities of the display, the exhibit quickly presents a more science fiction feel, a genre for which Gonzalez-Foerster has a particular fondness as evidenced by some of her book choices. One looks through the glass front of each diorama to a world long gone, a place whose only legacy lies in the words left by its former inhabitants.

Like so many contemporary artists, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster challenges traditional notions of the answer to “what is art?” In chronotopes & dioramas, the artist acts more as a set designer, an area with which she is familiar having designed fashion displays for Balenciaga. The dioramas themselves were constructed and painted based on images created by Gonzalez-Foerster by a team from the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. The books, though titles selected by the artist, are obviously not objects created by her own hand. Chronotopes & dioramas utterly embodies the terms conceptual and site-specific. The show's significance and function lies solely in the act of Gonzalez-Foerster adding to the Hispanic Society's canon expanding its scope.

Something Like a Phenomenon, “Between Spaces” at PS1

In Poetry, Language, Thought, Martin Heidegger describes poiesis as a transformative action that turns matter into poetry. A poetic statement doesn’t aim to provide a definitive answer, but to create a realm in which the mind can dwell.

So do the works included in Between Spaces, a group show on view at PS1 until April 5, 2010. Curated by Tim Goossens and Kate McNamara, the exhibition includes sculptures, installations, video and photography by eleven emerging and established artists who transform, recontextualize and/or combine found objects with new materials. The result is a collection of thought-provoking works that celebrate the threshold moments in which the ordinary becomes phenomenal.

Between Spaces grabs our attention with a strong succession of one-person rooms, each one featuring a sculpture/installation hybrid in which poiesis operates in a different way. The first room is devoted to Heather Rowe’s imposing Green Desert (missing the points), a group of six structures aligned to form a cohesive whole. Rowe’s work looks like a construction site - and in a conceptual sense, it is.

At first look, it’s as if what once was a single unit had been split into two long parallel sections that form an aisle wide enough for viewers to circulate. Each section is subdivided into three smaller parts crossed by narrow paths. This grid pattern borrows the typology of the suburban residential area: a street lined with evenly spaced out single-family dwellings. Each construction even has a large opening looking out to the central aisle like a bay window. But these half-built structures have been left unfinished, unfit for habitation. In this way, Green Desert becomes a metaphor for the incompleteness and dissatisfaction of the suburban lifestyle. These houses will never be homes.

A closer look at Green Desert exposes another layer of meaning. Features typically found in interiors - mirrors, painted walls, slats from hard-wood floors - face the outside of the sculpture, while its central aisle is made up of unfinished wood beams and panels of sheetrock still bearing their manufacturing codes. It’s as if the wall separating two rooms had been ripped apart. Viewers find themselves literally between spaces, outsiders on the inside (and vice versa).

Looking closer still, one notices small, inconspicuous openings outfitted with angled mirrors that reveal elements of home décor such as plush carpeting, wallpaper, picture frames and decorative moldings. Now the house’s interior seems to have been crammed inside its walls. These nooks and crannies must be explored individually by moving around and through the structure, an experience not unlike that of visiting an unfamiliar house (or a once-familiar one rendered strange by the passage of time) and of (re-)discovering the unique character of each room.

Rowe’s sculpture transports viewers to a fragmented reality in which they find themselves simultaneously on a street, inside a house and between the house’s walls. For anyone who grew up in a suburb that felt like a comforting trap, Green Desert (missing the points) represents an unsettling homecoming.

Further into Between Spaces, the work of Zak Kitnick sets poetry in motion by making the ordinary special again. Kitnick’s sculptural grouping illustrates the way visual paradigms cycle from so-called high culture to everyday life and back. In the center of the exhibition’s third room, patterned vinyl tiles are arranged in a perfect square, like a showroom reconstruction of a suburban kitchen floor. Viewers are encouraged to walk on the tiles, reinforcing their lack of artistic value. This commodity sculpture acts as a foil for a trio of square, life-sized reproductions of the tiles’ pattern, each one rendered in a different ratio of brass, copper and bronze, and equipped with its own built-in vitrine. Gleaming like jewels and safe behind their protective cases, kitchen tiles become works of art.

Kitnick charts the transition from floor to gallery wall, from functional object to art object, through the arrangement of those elements. Two of his assemblages lean against the wall near the tiled area, while the third one is installed at eye level on the wall above them, hung at a forty-five degree angle so that viewers may perceive its shape as a diamond rather than a square. As the eye moves from the tiled floor to the leaning pieces to the fully transformed and recontextualized assemblage on the wall (which barely acknowledges its humble origins), Kitnick demonstrates how a change of materials and context can transform consumer goods into fine art.

Over the past century, motifs stemming from art movements like De Stijl, constructivism and geometric abstraction have filtered down through material culture and then trickled on down into mass produced home furnishings. By using a common object featuring a pattern that reflects those influences as the starting point of a new work of art, Kitnick completes the cycle, turning the ordinary back into art.

David Altmejd offers up a more whimsical kind of poetry, one in which the shift is in progress, the magic still brewing. His latest sculpture represents a large, multicolored winged creature seemingly maturing before our eyes inside a Plexiglas box. Dramatically lit from above and densely packed with symbolism, Altmejd’s vivarium brings Between Spaces to a fever pitch.

Here again, the temptation to read the work as an iconographic puzzle is irresistible. The figure looks like a cyber-punk Nike, sporting arms like clear guitar necks and several sets of wings. Gold chains drape over its architectural spine, evoking both gilding and constraint, and strategically placed crystal formations provide protection and healing. The figure doesn’t seem quite ready to emerge from its Plexiglas womb yet, but Altmejd has provided a vaginal opening on one side of the box to indicate the animal origins of this machine-like organism. At once grotesque and majestic, Altmejd’s sculpture seems to portray the gestation of a creative idea.

In the lower corner of the box, Plexiglas spools issue multicolored thread that form a geometric root structure and then stretch into rainbow formations, partly covering the creature’s face and wings. Here, creation is represented as a process akin to textile arts, in which initially distinct strands combine to form a new being or concept. The box itself could be seen as a loom weaving the fabric of life/knowledge/reality.

As beguiling as Between Spaces gets – and the pieces described above are only a few of the exhibition’s many high notes – it loses its curatorial focus when Goossens and McNamara decide to show the work of two artists per room. Although a few pairings are perfect matches, most of them seem arbitrary and uneven; the stronger work would have been more affecting if it had been shown on its own. Still, Between Spaces creates ruptures in the fabric of life that let us glimpse at stranger realms beyond. It offers a new outlook that makes the everyday transcendent. It lets poiesis work its magic.

Sade for Sade's Sake by Paul Chan at Greene Naftali

“For you, I am become thunder, For you, moonlight, I am a whore.” This strange phrase is Paul Chan’s name rendered in his own font, created specially for the exhibit Sade for Sade’s Sake. To clarify, these fonts take each typed letter and transform it into a new word or phrase. He created 21 fonts inspired by the Marquis de Sade and other characters, of which the one represented here, Oh Ho darlin, is one of the most tame. The fonts are available on the artist’s website for free download.

Chan’s exhibit is an intersection of a surprising amount of media, it is innovative in the way it blurs the lines between painting, video, and design. He has designed fonts for the computer, but also painted them on large boards and propped them against the wall. Supported by a pair of shoes on the ground, the paintings have an aesthetic appeal beyond simply conveying typographical information. He paints the fonts with a procession of correspondences between the keyboard keys and Chan’s phrases. The fonts replace letters with whole words with disturbing and sometimes hilarious consequences.

Painted with dripping black ink the letters and words assert themselves, striking the onlooker with their boldness. Each font plays out like a the miniature story. Chan is playing with words and is using technology to bring to the fore what is usually implicit, implied, or hidden. His fonts bring out subtexts of language, forcing the writers to make explicit statements they would never type themselves. He has done this before, creating fonts based on the black power movement. It has proven a successful formula to pose questions about words, specifically those usually left unsaid. When writing with his fonts, phrases spring up on their own, creating imagery that many people would rather not confront.

Chan views art as a “dispersion of power”, and this principle is in full effect here. He creates the means of expression through fonts, but limits himself to displaying them in rigid order. It is up the visitor of the gallery or fan at home to take these fonts and create; he freely hands out his system of art making. Chan transforms typography from design to art, and though the line here is always blurry, he takes the function of fonts and subverts it, when considering fonts as means to clearly represent what is typed. On the other hand fonts always affect how thoughts and words are made manifest, Chan simply takes it to the extreme.

A keyboard sits at the center of the room, the keys of which have been transformed into gravestones. What this means is unclear, but it unfortunately lends itself to a simplistic and obvious comment on technology. Theoretically typing on this unique keyboard would create texts on a connected computer in one of Chan’s fonts. However, this jerry-rigged connection was not functioning (a meta-comment on death and technology as well? probably not). The keyboard, if functioning, would ultimately undermine Chan’s fonts. Because the keys are stripped of their letters, Chan’s fonts no longer transform what is typed. Rather they are produced with no expectation from random keystrokes.

Paul Chan takes his influence from a wide variety of sources, his artistic inspirations span from the Renaissance to the contemporary. The centerpiece in the exhibit is a large video installation. The film draws the ideas of the Marquis de Sade and is rendered in a cutout style reminiscent of Kara Walker. Chan uses the cutout to present objects in his art because it parallels his idea that “there are no such things as ‘actual objects’ in art.” Chan has used the projected cutout before, in his 7 Lights exhibit at the New Museum. In that exhibit the cutouts were inanimate objects that looked as if they might have been real silhouettes. Here, however, there is never any doubt that the people in Chan’s video are cutouts. Instead of objects that happen to be cutouts, they now assert their artificiality; proclaiming their existence as mere silhouettes of silhouettes. Does the idea that there are no actual objects in art hold true beyond contrived demonstrations of Chan’s principle? There are counter examples from history, but has modern art come to the point were functioning “actual things” cannot be art? Or does Chan mean this statement in a more platonic way and his projections simply reinvent the shadows on the cave wall? Chan wants his art to ask “new questions for possible futures.” He is certainly raising plenty of questions, but with few answers.

The video runs for over five hours. This eliminates the sense that the work is simply repeating itself, but will surely frustrate completists. It alternates between abstract shapes and cutout people. These people move like puppets in rhythmic motions acting out routine and sometimes inventive sex acts. The characters are men, women, and some with mixed attributes. Their repetitive movements hypnotizes, but also impress the viewer with the characters’ tenacity. The video is less aesthetically pleasing than 7 Lights and despite its provactive subject is in many ways less interesting. The abstract images were dull and uninteresting and and the orgiastic scenes may have been pulling for shocking but fell short, only managing to amuse. The video is supposed to build to a climax, but since it runs five hours most visitors will miss the full experience.

Paul Chan is known for his political activism, especially his work surrounding the 2004 Republican Convention in New York. He prefers to keep his politics and his art separate, and has spoken about how political art is often dismissed. Other critics have already mentioned that his stance artificially divides his work, which are politics and which art? Sade for Sade’s Sake, presented in the art world surely makes cultural and political statements. Indeed this intersection of social commentary, humor, and visual interest is one of the show’s strongest suits.

Overall, the show is amusing and occasionally inspired. Only the font series rises to the intellectual bar that Chan has set for himself. His ink posters have a stark visual quality, and reading the words as art is satisfying. Chan extends the experience beyond the gallery and democratizes it by distributing his fonts free online. The show is a continuation and development of ideas that he has been working on, at times advancing them, but sometimes keeping them in a holding pattern.

Robert Bergman: Selected Portraits

Robert Bergman has gone largely unnoticed in the art scene for the past 60 or so years that he has been photographing, but this year his exposure seems to be growing exponentially. His first solo exhibition debuted at the National Gallery in D.C. on October 11, just prior to his opening at PS1 on October 15. Such a new found interest from two big name spaces begs the question: why the sudden interest in a portrait photographer, especially when considering that this body of work was produced over ten years ago, from 1985-1997? Is there something new about his work that warrants the attention?

The current exhibition on view at PS1 has a very minimalist setup. Straightforward and no-frills, the show displays twenty-four brightly colored photographs framed in plain white in a serial fashion. All equal in dimension, 37" x 25", and situated equidistant apart, the pictures fill two rooms with a stark sense of organization. Yet, there is a lack of direction. There are no dates, titles, or explanations to guide the viewer, save the initial background on Bergman visible outside the first room, which explains that he shot "everyday people on the streets of various American cities." Passing by the photographs, the viewer is led by his or her own readings, not by anything provided by the exhibition's detached layout.

The images are presented in a manner that suggests they should speak for themselves; the only information provided for the viewer is that they were shot from 1985-1997 in the United States. Bergman leaves all the portraits displayed as “Untitled.” Without any descriptive reference for the stories behind the subjects, the viewer must rely upon visual clues alone to learn about the subjects, namely their faces. Much like with the strangers we pass everyday on the street, we can decide (or not) if the person is educated, sober, poor, dirty, crazy, pretty--but Bergman provides no answers.

Stylistically, the photographic approach is blunt. Unapologetically close-up and clear, the images are almost hyper realistic because of their grand scale. The larger-than-life-size faces confront the viewer at eye level, whereupon the size and clarity of the images provide no chance of hiding flaws, scars, wrinkles; even dilated pupils are painfully obvious. The shots are either from the neck or waist up and are cropped so closely that they reveal very little, if anything, of the environment of the sitter. Against the white wall and frame, the colors are bright and bold, catching the viewer's eye immediately.

Bergman's subjects are often unpolished and gritty; many appear homeless, haggard, even disfigured. Because they are displayed on such a monumental scale, the subjects seem to invite the viewer to judge them. The range of interpretations is great: some figures appear sad, dirty, proud, or drunk. A woman with scabs dotting her face provokes assumptions of drug use. A man wearing a necklace made of trash suggests that he may be homeless. Initially it may seem that Bergman exploits his often down-and-out subjects with such intimate close-ups. However, he presents his figures with dignity in their illuminating colors and confident positions. Furthermore, he does not divulge anything that the viewer does not determine on his/her own.

Portrait photography has long been the subject of scrutiny regarding the artist’s relationship to his subject. Bergman's photography conjures references to August Sander's earnest prints of his fellow countrymen, but also to more controversial figures like Diane Arbus, whose intimate shots of people on the fringe of society received heavy criticism. There are definite parallels to Arbus' choice to focus primarily on the "unbeautiful." Unlike Arbus, however, Bergman does not deign to label his subjects. He does not brand them freaks or wanderers, fore example. Instead he photographs them all honestly and refuses to classify them. In this sense, they remain complete strangers.

His choice of subject matter--random Americans on the street--has garnered comparison to another Robert: Robert Frank. Bergman began photographing in black and white and made the switch to color film in 1985. This particular series of color photographs reflects a departure from Bergman's earlier, more spontaneous-looking work to more posed compositions. When he began taking portraits of people on the street, his explicit interest lay in depicting strangers and Americans. However, Robert Bergman's images lack the rich contextuality that Frank emphasized in his series The Americas, which is coincidentally currently on display at the Met in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of its publication.

Particularly striking about Bergman’s work (in stark contrast to Frank’s) is that his subjects are not obviously Americans. The subjects' dress and hairstyle do not necessarily have archetypal American characteristics. A quality not found in Frank's very obvious references to America and American society (for example the American flag shows up in several of his photographs), the universality of Bergman's images shies away from overt links to nationality. The ambiguous nature of his photographs seems to celebrate the humanity of mankind, rejecting preconceived notions of country, class, and race.

Edward Steichen once said that "photography's mission is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth." Echoing Steichen's sentiments, Bergman seems to understand the inherent difficulty in revealing an individual through the photographic lens, which might account for the lack of contextual information. To accuse Bergman of exploiting his subjects would be shortsighted. He merely presents them in an extremely direct manner and then lets the viewer infer what he/she can. This technical decision emphasizes the mystery and unknown element behind the faces. While we as viewers can invent stories about the subjects, interpret dilated pupils as evidence of drug use or certain facial expressions as crazy, we will never know. These are people captured by chance, passed by, and gone forever. In the end, the timelessness of his images transcend the here and now. In the same way that Robert Frank's portraits are quintessentially representative of 1950s America, Bergman's are hard to place in a location, period, or context.

1969 at PS1

The Interventions
1969 at PS1 is an exhibition ‘exploring a cross section of art made during a period marked with revolution and socio-political tumult’. It features works of art that were produced during or acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in 1969 and is the first large-scale exhibition at PS1 to draw works from all departments of MOMA. Now in its 80th year, MOMA says that it is not attempting to ‘recount’ the events of 1969, but wants to present a ‘cross section of works with their narratives and point of view’. The show contains works of famous artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Martha Rosler, Andy Warhol and Helen Frankenthaler to name a few. In an effort to connect the past with the present and to throw light on 1969 in a current context, the exhibition also features ‘Interventions’. These are works produced by current generation artists who have attempted to relate the art produced in 1969 to their pieces done in 2009.

The artists were given complete freedom in their artistic expression and complement the show by emphasizing themes already present in it or works and themes that are absent. This group, consisting of Base, the Bruce High Quality Foundation, Mathew Day Jackson and David Tompkins, Hank Willis Thomas and Stephanie Syjuco, have attempted to related the ‘tumultuous times’ of 1969 to the present.

Stephanie Syjuco is a conceptual artist based in San Francisco and her works use 'tactics of bootlegging, reappropriation and fictional fabrications to address issues of cultural biography, labor and economic globalization'. Syjuco’s Custom Transitional Utility Object (Morris Mover) is one such intervention. It is a take on Robert Morris’s Untitled 1969 felt piece, a rectangle felt blanket 180”x72” in length, which is slit vertically (the cuts stopping about 12” short of the top) to create five strips or arms. The lack of climate control options at PS1 prevented the original Morris from being in the show, due to the felt’s tendency to attract dirt and insects. Syjuco's work is displayed in the exact manner of the original at MOMA by hanging it high on a wall and letting the five arms cascade down the wall and fan out on the floor. Syjuco has recreated the sculpture using a similar felt blanket with same dimensions, produced industrially in an American factory, but has added utility value to it.

Her sculpture was used to wrap and move artworks, which were going to be shown in the exhibition, from MOMA to PS1. She documents the journey of the work through photographs, which are also on display. The purpose of recreating the fabric sculpture is stated as “making transparent the labor and process involved in its creation”. But Syjuco is unable to translate this purpose in her work. Through the documentation, she captures the utility of the piece ‘after’ its creation and not ‘how’ it was created. In no way is it reflecting on the transparency of labor and creation, except stating that it is made in America and has the same dimensions as the original.

Another intervention by Syjuco is Temporal Aggregrate/Social Configuration (Borrowed Beuys), which as the title suggests, is borrowed from Joseph Beuys’ The Sled from 1969. Syjuco’s sculpture comprises of a wooden “Davoser” (German-made sled) with blankets and a flashlight strapped towards the back of the sled and bottle with white matter (presumably lard, as Beuys has lard in his piece) sealed with a piece of plastic under its cap in the front. On the floor in front of the sled, she has laid out different ropes, straps, more flashlights, bottles and jars filled with white matter, vintage felt blankets and a brown taped box. The original Sled could not be shown in the exhibition due to the same climate concerns and its effect on the felt, wax and wood components of the sculpture.

Syjuco’s works are as much an artistic process as is the finished outcome. In keeping with this, in addition to recreating an ‘absent’ work, Syjuco’s method of recreating this piece is interactive. She accumulates her materials by borrowing them from friends, associates and just about anyone by posting messages on facebook and blogs on social sites. On one such blog on worldpress.com titled “Can you lend me a Joseph Beuys artwork? Seriously…”, she explains her project, what she needs, her purpose, the need to borrow, shipping and other details. So why the need to borrow? Syjuco explains, “Essentially, I am asking for the general public to rummage through their closets to come together to do what MOMA itself can’t do: lend a Joseph Beuys artwork for the show.” At the conclusion of 1969, the borrowed works will be returned to their owners and perhaps put to everyday use.

Syjuco’s pieces do fulfill the purpose of the show as they recreate works that are absent, the works that could not be exhibited due to practical reasons, but there is definitely no connection, no effort to present 1969 in a current context. Syjuco’s interventions lack something vital. It feels as if you are watch a theatre show with the understudy, who is no doubt good, and perhaps also brings her own element to the show, but lacks the same punch and charisma of the original.

Her sculptures raise more questions than they answer: Is the sole purpose of her work just to fill in for Beuys or Morris and will be rendered obsolete or redundant when the right climate control is achieved? Moreover, how do we address the works, can we consider them as originals or as copies? If 40 years from now, PS1 presents a show titled 2009, it seems highly unlikely that these works will be exhibited in the show. It will always gain a back seat either to the original it reappropriates or to the multitudes of other work produced in 2009. Her interventions for the 1969 show might never stand on their own merit, as they will always be remembered in conjunction with the Beuys or the Morris pieces.

Kristen Baker : Splitting Twilight

Kristen Baker
Splitting Twilight
Deitch Soho
The artist Kristen Baker was born in 1975 in Connecticut. She is based in NY. Her work is often described as a mixture of abstract expressionism, pop art, and minimalism. A lot of her interests revolve around motor sports because her father was an amateur racing driver. She is also involved in the sport.
Entering the Kristen Baker show my eyes were immediately overwhelmed and intimidated. I could not automatically adjust to what I was seeing. Were these paintings or posters? Were these huge canvases or paper behind glass? Were these large collages? Once I looked a little closer ,a lot of the mystery disappeared. I wonder if this is the fault of the work or the presentation in the gigantic gallery space in Soho. It is a larger than life space and very heavily and unnaturally lit.
I came up to the paintings and I realized I was not looking at paintings on canvas. The images were put together from many parts and I saw that the parts were somehow attached afterwards. There seem to be a lot of images that are painted over. Enlarged photos perhaps? When I read about the artist I was excited to see the wild and abstract expressionist elements in her work, which from afar were somewhat present but up close it began to look as if these images, like a collage were actually very carefully planned. Due to the large scale and careful planning, and layering, it seems like the paintings are more about the process of becoming what they are then the finished works. Kristen Baker uses tape to make the paintings first marks by using it to assemble the imagery together after she removes the tape she paints it in. It is interesting that there are two types of mark making happening but it still seems backwards and unintuitive. As if without all these steps,and minus the tape,an image just as interesting can be made and maybe even fresher.
For example,when I saw :
Kristin Baker, Bash Bish Rubicon, 2008 acrylic on PVC panel 3 panels - each @ 120 x 80 inches overall dims: 120 x 240 inches, 304.8 x 609.6 cm
I read that Baker is interested in landscape. I would have guessed she was a California artist inspired by surfing. The image is a landscape. It looks like a large collage of waves and a sunset. It is a huge painting on three panels but it seems too obvious. If it wasn't for her collage like method and for its overwhelming size it would be a mediocre collage of a sunset and water. It is hard to figure out what is so important to her about this subject matter. I tried to think about these paintings as made by someone who is interested in racing, in speed and adventure. I could get the sense of these things in some parts of her work but otherwise I think her ideas tend to get lost due to being so overworked.
I cannot help but feeling as if these paintings are too forced. As if the artist wants to labor away to ensure that these paintings will be cool and monumental.
It is interesting that the artist is using PVC and acrylic to make these very large paintings. PVC is so toxic that it is also called “Poison Plastic”. I find this to be an unlikely choice for a painter making landscapes. Whether she is using it to make a point or is unaware of its danger, I think the materials reputation is too strong to just be ignored. Her material should not be working against her. If her material of choice is not that important to her I still find it strange to use such a strongly debated material. The state of California is thinking of banning the use of PVC because of its effects on human and environmental health.
Like most exhibits at Deitch, these paintings are in fact cool , very large, and intimidating which makes me understand that this artist is working with a very large budget to make sure these paintings will be this way. I think that the people representing her are also making sure of this But I am no interested in big budgets when I look at paintings. I am interested in honest painters.
Overall I find these images to make a good first good impression but that impression falls apart as an illusion. These images bring to mind digital re-imaging. Although it seems like the artist is trying to bring something new to painting and trying to respond to the history of painting, it gets lost along the way.

"Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty"

“Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty”
The Urs Fischer show was very large. The pieces in the show were large and the man power it took to install this very expensive show was very large as well. But the smallest piece of the show was the one that I would choose to best describe the show. It was a lifelike tongue that was supposed to pop out and scare people when someone came near it. While I was there one person screamed and three people couldn't get it to do anything. I noticed that the guard was in charge of coming up to everyone and telling them that the piece needs some time between people to work. This seemed like a glitch on the artists part.
After seeing the kitschy tongue piece I could not help feeling insulted by this”fuck you” piece. The museum wall is sticking its tongue out at everyone who tries to look. As if to laugh at us for trying to see “art” where there isn't any.
I was also confused by the monumental sized mirrored rectangular boxes of everyday images seen from all sides. The mundane still seemed mundane. It made me think back to Andy Warhol. And although they looked different than his work, they were very large and intimidating for that reason, otherwise it was hard for me to think of how they were different. I tried to get a better understanding of them and went to look at the titles but that did not make any sense as well. The titles were not meant to fit in any way with any of the parts of the show. It was interesting to walk through this maze of popular imagery but at that point in the show I started to get the sense that this artist uses scale as a way to convince people that his work is bigger than it really is. A way to intimidate and not much else.
The other parts of the show were confusing as well. The candy colored melting structures that would appear on each floor and the huge metal structures. The large structures had gigantic fingerprints on them which gave the piece a sense of humor and made the viewer feel as if they were in a surreal or fantastical environment. This made me once again question the artists intentions. I could not figure out a way to connect the different parts of the show together ,except that every part of it had some kind of illusion or joke involved.

Historical Fashion at the ICP

 

            Dress Codes is on display as the Third ICP Triennial of Photography and Video. It exhibits a wide range of style and fashion throughout many cultures, eras and identities. Within a large range of imagery and ideas, two individual artists stood out because their work echoed themes and concepts of one another as their work hung on opposing walls. Janaina Tschäpe’s Lacrimacorpus and Tanya Marcuse’s Undergarments and Armor were two photographic series that stepped back in time and used former styles of clothing to demonstrate their artistic concepts. They each distorted the appearance of the body through this attire by hiding or accentuate basic natural human curves of the body.

            Tschäpe’s series revolved around a woman whose figure and identity is hidden by a cascade of balloons and attire from the 18^th Century. There is barely an inch of flesh shown as every camera angle hides the truth of her figure and face well under fold of fabric and latex. Her body seems invisible as her skirt is transparent and doesn’t reveal legs under a large hoop skirt. With the garmets covering her skin, her figure is transformed from a woman in the space to a ghost like appearance as she traverses the castle. The balloons that spill down from under her bonnet resemble tears as she wanders the halls of a building that once overlooked a Holocaust concentration camp.

            Marcuse’s imagery is a collection of photographs using undergarments and armor throughout different historical periods as the attire accentuates and hides certain elements of the human form. Through these platinum prints, Marcuse blends and distorts the line between gender identities throughout history. Without these gender roles in fashion, both genders’ fashion echo styles lend to distinct accents within specific features. A man's armor emphasizes his pectoral muscles and upper torso while a woman's corset decreases her stomach to aid in visually increasing her bust line. During different eras, clothing seemed to switch between being women and men's ware in developing strategic armor for men and enhancing visual sex appeal in women.

            These two artists’ works play very well against each other in the spacing of the ICP triennial exhibition. Both use the fashion from a past generation to make historical references and try to bring a new perspective to these past costumes. Although each artist takes a distinct approach to this concept, their work clearly conveys that fashion attire in an integral part of human history. 

"Dress Codes" at the International Center of Photography

The International Center of Photography’s triennial entitled “Dress Codes” is an exploration of how contemporary photographers and videographers view fashion. Although the participants do not belong exclusively to the fashion industry, each of the thirty-four artists explore how clothing can be important in defining people personally and socially.
As a whole, “Dress Codes” addresses a large number of themes and issues including racial stereotyping and cultural identity. One of the most significant themes explored is the notion of creating a persona through what we put on. Both Cindy Sherman’s photographic series from Paris Vogue (2007) and Julika Rudelius’ video Tagged (2003) exemplify persona creation the best. Sherman is widely known for her photographs where she dresses in different guises. In this set, she critiques individuality and the world of high fashion by dressing as similarly clothed socialites. Sherman replicates her own images with only slight variations in order to criticize the fashion industry’s value of being unique. After all, if we can all own the same clothing, how different can these fashionable people be?
Rudelius’ video installation, on the other hand, uses the creation of persona as a central theme. The video features young Moroccan and Turkish men from the Netherlands discussing how their designer clothing is essential to how they are perceived. Rudelius depicts how this outward shallowness is necessary to these men’s lives. In order to cope with their cultural identities, the subjects spend extravagant amounts of money in order to set themselves apart from their given cultural background while simultaneously attempting to gain acceptance from another.
Sherman and Rudelius may only represent a small percentage of “Dress Codes”, but their ideas on constructing identity can be seen throughout the triennial. “Dress Codes” offers an introspective look at the culture of fashion. Clothing is an aspect of life that many do not think about, but the exhibition makes it clear that clothing influences who we are and how we react to the world around us. The ICP triennial brings the importance of fashion to the forefront, but whether or not we should be celebrating the industry is up for debate. The viewer is merely offered multiple viewpoints on the same subject. This exhibition does not offer a solution for or verdict on fashion, but we are given the chance to look closely at our own situations and draw conclusions.

Bigger Isn't Always Better

Occupying all three exhibition floors of the New Museum, “Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty” uses larger than life objects, both abstract and recognizable, in an attempt to transport the viewer to a trippy, surreal space. Upon exiting the elevator onto the fourth floor (for it is suggested by museum staff that visitors begin there and work their way down) the viewer is faced with massive freeform metal objects, one hanging from the ceiling and the others resting on the floor. These sculptures would seem infinitely heavy if it were not for the knowledge that they are cast out of aluminum. Also on the fourth floor are three unrelated pieces—a not-to-scale skeleton entering or escaping a cardboard box, a pink melting light post, and a cake floating below a bag above part of a subway seat. Moving down, the third floor is largely empty space, its focus being the walls. Fischer photographed every inch of wall and ceiling to create a wallpaper of the entire space which he attached just off center. In other words, ever object on the wall and ceiling, from the fire alarm to the light fixtures, is being followed by a shadow of itself. The effect, which could easily be assumed to be intentional, is like visual tracers. The center piece of this level is a green melting baby grand piano. Continuing to the second floor, the viewer enters a room filled with a host of familiar objects, from food and clothing to lighters and even a red British phone booth. These objects are actually photographs silkscreened onto highly reflective metal boxes. The viewer therefore can look at all four sides of the recognizable object while also seeing reflections of other objects and him or herself. Then, in the corner and seemingly out of place, is a pair of melting crutches.

There is a serious lack of continuity within this show as a whole, which Fischer possibly tried to address by dispersing his melted Dalí-esque pieces among all three floors. The entire exhibition seems rather drug-induced right down to the arbitrary titles on the ill-placed placards. Overall, it is good for a few laughs and maybe more than a few perplexed looks, but visitors should not expect much else.

Dress Codes: The 3rd ICP Triennial of Photography and Video at the International Center of Photography (ICP)

Described as ‘the only one of its kind in America’, the 2009 triennial is ICP’s signature exhibition and marks the ending of its Year of Fashion. With an exclusive focus on ‘Fashion (as a form of social communication)’, the intention of this exhibition is to understand it by using ‘costume, clothing and disguise’ and expressing it by means of ‘specific references to history, culture, gender and geography’.
Some of the featured 34 artists were successful in establishing a strong connection between fashion and social communication. In Tagged, Julika Rudelius has invited young immigrants of Turkish and Moroccan decent who spend extravagantly on branded clothing. Shot in a hotel room, the narrative shows these young men trying on their clothes while talking about the amount they spent on each. The video is about the interplay between the men’s need to be accepted into the society they migrated to by wearing haute couture and guilt of spending these amounts in face of prevailing poverty back home. Yto Barrada’s The Belt, Step 1 to 9 is a series of nine photographs that reference the smuggling of clothes by an elderly woman into Morocco. With a bland face, the woman methodically unties the contraband clothes hidden under her djellaba. Both these artists reference fashion in terms of social, cultural and geographical context.
However, not all artists conform to ICP’s focus so agreeably. In Laurie Simmon’s Ballroom II, she first photographs an empty miniature set, then adds cutouts of women posing in fashionable clothes and a plastic toy male figure. She also places spotlights and a dreamy, starry background. The end result is aesthetically pleasing piece about fashion, but its social or cultural connection is rather weak. The case of Kota Ezawa’s lightboxes is similar. In New! ($2.99/ea), he takes images from Ikea catalogues and stylizes the scene by reducing the objects to flat shapes. He does however retain some of the advertising and pricing, thus the ‘New!’ and ‘$2.99/ea’. Even though his lightboxes are comment on material culture, its relationship to fashion is seems ambiguous.
Overall, not all works in this exhibition measure up to its objective of placing Fashion in terms of social, cultural and historical perspectives, especially for a Grand Finale. A more selective collection of artists’ work that conforms to the exhibition’s mold better and/or adapting the focus, perhaps making it broader would have made the show stronger and helped encompass all the works.

Allan Kaprow’s Yard: Redundant Reinvention

Hauser & Wirth Gallery made their American debut with the opening of Allan Kaprow’s Yard. The exhibition consisted of “reinventions” of Allan Kaprow’s famous 1961 “happening” interpreted by three contemporary artists. In addition to this, the gallery provided various printed materials documenting and paying tribute to Yard and all its subsequent adaptations. Each “reinvention” was staged at different locations throughout the city; Yard (Sign) by Sharon Hayes at New York Marble Cemetery, Yard (Junkyard) by Josiah McElheny at the Queens Museum of Art, and Yard (To Harrow) by William Pope.L. at Hauser & Wirth. I especially focused on Pope.L.’s interpretation, being that it was situated in the actual gallery and shared the location with the supplemental materials- creating a more cohesive exhibition piece than the other two, which seemed to be floating out in NYC limbo.
Upon entering, a familiar smell immediately transported me to my grandfather’s auto shop. The lights flash red to white, and between these intervals you catch glimpses of what you are trying to walk through- mounds of black rubber tires. Toward the end of the room at your right is a shelf holding large black trash bags filled with mysterious threatening shapes (later you discover they are mannequins covered in Vaseline). Mirrored walls create the illusion that this bizarre rubber abyss goes on forever, while recordings of Pope.L.’s voice boom overhead with nonsensical phrases.
Pope.L himself describes the piece as a revival of Kaprow’s spirit of fun as well as his message of environmental consciousness. And although the idea of amusement is apparent in the playground-like construction of the tires, which encourages gallery goers to climb and haphazardly rearrange them, I found the eco-friendly concept harder to detect. The subtitle, Harrow, defined as preparation of soil for growth, is an obvious implication of nature, however this seems more in line with Pope.L.’s attempt to bridge past and present. Even more difficult to distinguish are lines between reinvention and reproduction. The similarities between Pope.L.’s Yard and Kaprow’s get to be quite confusing, and one leaves the gallery wondering if the piece was indeed paying tribute or just ripping it off. Ultimately, Hauser & Wirth Gallery’s revival of this fundamental artist and period of art history reminds us of how precarious reinventions can be. In the end perhaps it was best to simply leave “Yard” to the man who reinvented it best.

Grand Openings, SculptureCenter

In a hidden nook just off SculptureCenter’s main exhibition space is a small gallery that, in its current incarnation, could easily be overlooked. On its white walls hang a light box and ten framed posters, all of them featuring the words “Grand Openings” in a variety of fonts. In its center is a table on which lie several copies of a nondescript black book.

This unremarkable layout is likely to inspire most visitors to glance at the posters, flip through the book and move on, seduced by the rhythmic music and pulsating lights of Mike Kelley and Michael Smith's installation next door. Those who linger will be rewarded with the discovery of an eclectic publication filled with strange charts, hand-drawn diagrams, excerpts from defunct philosophical journals and transcripts of online chats about Germany’s Next Top Model. At that point, the most intrepid may seek out the exhibition’s press release, google "Grand Openings" and begin to piece together the history of a relatively new art collective – their first collaboration took place in 2005, at Performa05 in New York - who mount bizarre performances that are evidently best enjoyed live.

Grand Openings’ beautifully designed publication is full of fascinating contents. It also presents an intriguing conundrum: is it an archive of the group’s past work, a blueprint for future interventions, an artwork in and of itself, or all of the above? Still, the book alone is not sufficient to grab and hold an audience’s attention, and the exhibition amounts to little more than a reading room.

SculptureCenter is an odd choice of venue for this sculpture-less setup. It could be argued that printed matter is a form of sculpture, or that Grand Openings’ performances constitute “living sculptures” but nowhere does the curator indicate whether he supports or rejects those hypotheses.

Although this bland installation may enable Grand Openings to reach a wider audience, it doesn’t do justice to the group’s chaotic energy. Additional props, ephemera and/or videos would have been more evocative of the collective’s interdisciplinary experiments, and a wall text describing the group’s ethos would have provided much-needed context. While some mystery might spark curiosity and generate buzz, visitors should not have to devote hours to post-visit research in order to fill-in the blanks of a poorly conceived exhibition.