I haven't updated about art I've seen in a while, but a couple of the shows I saw last night made a strong enough impression that I feel like remembering them here.
Andrea Morales' exhibition "Public Play" at Practice Gallery spoke to me as an investigation of the complex social dynamics involved in dating--specifically, how we perform personas within varying social contexts. The premise of the exhibition was Morales having organised a consecutive series of dates through OKCupid and Craigslist, to be carried out within the gallery. Documentation of her correspondences with her dates were plastered on the walls for viewers to read when they weren't acting as voyeuristic observers of the activities of the dates themselves. The dates/ exhibition were all documented throughout the night, and the plan is for the edited footage to be exhibited at Practice for the remainder of the month.
There is so much about the concept and the execution of this piece that I love. I love that the artist is directing and composing these interactions for the express purpose of manifesting this exhibition, while leaving room for risk, chance, play, and vulnerability (to her collaborator and her audience). I love that live performance, the documentation leading up to the performance, and the documentation of the performance itself are all integral aspects of the piece. I love the fact that, even though you are in the room with the artist and her dates, observing their interaction and reading their correspondence, there are elements of their conversations that do remain private/ intimate/ just between them. Sure, you can see their body language, maybe even catch snippets of dialogue, but you remain at a distance, a member of the crowd--you can't see and hear every element of the exchanges that build the date they are on.
I only had the chance to see one of the dates--the third of the night. When I walked in, the space was illuminated by red lights. There was music playing, and I could see the artist and her date sitting on a bench behind parted curtains. They were both hunched over a camera, presumably shuffling through images. In speaking with one of the members of Practice, I gleaned that this date had actually been photographing the earlier dates, so they were looking through the images he had taken. I wanted to make it back to the final date of the evening, which was supposed to be with a female partner, and verge on more sexually charged content, but I missed it unfortunately.
I was sorry to miss the rest of "Public Play," but I was so happy I made it out to New Boone for "Forever," a collaborative exhibit featuring paintings by my studio-mate Kim Altomare and audio commentary by Anne Pagana. If I had to express my overwhelming impression of the exhibit in one adjective, I would use 'refreshing'--everything about the approach felt like a sigh of relief followed by a breath of fresh air. First and foremost, the experience of seeing Kim's paintings hung and lit within the context of a gallery space was thrilling for me--so much luster and detail that is hard to recognize when they're leaning against a studio wall came suddenly alive. It felt like the paintings themselves had been energized/ taken on a new life, and I was so filled with joy for them! The curatorial detailing--the incorporation of a friendship bracelet-making station [they'd run out of string by the time I got there :( ]; the integration of vibrant pom poms, shimmery sequins, tinsel, streamers, and googly eyes; the coordinated vignettes built out of objects contributed by Kim and Anne's artist friends, placed to keep the paintings company; the hand-articulated signage and decorated CD-players with headphones whose color matched the vibrancy carried throughout--all contributed to the overarching spirit of friendship and collaboration coursing throughout the show. Walking into the space, every aspect seems to squeal, "Hi! We're so glad you're here! Come be our friend! Stay a while! Look and listen and contemplate with us!" And how can you refuse that?
Which isn't to say that the content of the work presented is necessarily light or superficial--Kim's paintings incorporate symbolic imagery that alludes to death and violence, and Anne's commentary is deeply meditative. There is an audio track corresponding to each painting. I didn't listen to all of them, but those I did made it clear to me that Anne's spoken words access avenues of thought that are quite serious, and speak to a genuine desire for mutual understanding within the insular context of a friendship that exists within the broader, but still insular context of art-making. There is a sensitivity and consideration for the differences and commonalities in hers and Kim's experiences with and approaches to art and life. There is frustration and confusion, but also serenity to the acknowledgment that not everything can necessarily be fully understood between two people. I felt honored to be invited to listen to these meditations, and though they were focused on a personal relationship, I felt included because the concepts being considered speak to interpersonal relationships in general, and art-making practices more broadly. I got the sense that, though these are complex and difficult territories to navigate, underlying currents of hope, togetherness, and fun can carry us through.
Looking at the show through a feminist lens, I was struck by how it sits within the context of art history, which is so frequently dominated by men celebrating, commenting on, responding to, competing with each other, usually in a very egotistical way that has a lot to do with proving who has the most "genius". The mode of collaboration in "Forever" is definitely in dialogue with that tradition, but from a much more authentic, sincere, down-to-earth perspective. Celebrating each other does not have to be about proving anything--it can be about inviting everyone into this dynamic of mutual consideration and dialogue, of approaching things in a genuine way, together.
I think I responded to strongly to both of these exhibits because I like what they indicate about where art practice and art exhibition is heading. There is a sense of breaking things down and exploring them from new angles that I find so empowering and exciting. It makes me feel a sense of freedom, like there is license to explore new territories and just try things to see where they go. As there should be. No more musty, tired art shows ever please!
Showing posts with label Institution Mentions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Institution Mentions. Show all posts
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Engendered
For the past month, my video has been on view at Atlantic Works Gallery as part of Engendered, a juried show that explores the complexities and ambiguities of gender. The closing reception is tonight at 6:30, but the show will be up through July 7th--if you're in or near East Boston, definitely check it out!
P.S.
Also check out this review of the show, including my piece in Artscope Magazine!
And this mention in the Boston Globe's weekly gallery roundup!
P.S.
Also check out this review of the show, including my piece in Artscope Magazine!
And this mention in the Boston Globe's weekly gallery roundup!
Monday, June 10, 2013
First Friday in Philly Take Two (Braving the Rain)
This past Friday, June 7, I gave it another shot. I convinced my friend John to come with me to the 319 building before meeting our friend Vy at HyLo Boutique for a beer, coffee, cheese tasting around 7. We stopped for food that I thought was going to be takeout Vietnamese sandwiches, but ended up being a sit-down meal because I directed us to the wrong place. It was fine though because we had a solid prologue conversation about how frustrated I get reading theory due to the inherent hubris involved in any theorist offering an alternative solution to the problematic constructed system they are observing. My central point was something to the effect of: "It's like, I'm with you when you're deconstructing and problematizing and pointing out the wrongness of what's going on and the fact that the rules of what's going on were invented by and are upheld by other humans, but I feel like from there, there is this disconnect where the theorist doesn't acknowledge the fact that they are just another fallible human offering another construct. They end up saying: 'Recognize this problematic construct that misguided, fallible humans have been blindly promoting for centuries; I've got a better one for you.' And they fail to recognize their own subjectivity and the fact that everything they are observing is filtered through their own imperfect perception. They actually think they're better because they are embodying an idea that's more-than-human, because they've discovered a Truth, but instead of it being about the idea, it is inevitably about them and their brilliance and their contribution to history, and I can't get over the fact that the furtherance of that is extremely dependent upon problematic bullshit firmly rooted in the intertwined systems including-but-not-limited-to colonialism, classism, racism, patriarchy, eurocentrism that any decent theorist is supposed to be problematizing." John made a point about the necessity of doing the work of sifting through the annoying dregs of each separate theory to find the nuggets of Truth in order to string together your own collage of Truth that can guide you through your life, and how it's a singularly excellent thing to be able to encounter the Truths that resonate for you and be able to keep that. I agreed, but realized aloud that I've mostly had those kinds of moments when reading fiction—when reading novels. That when I read theory and encounter a Truth, I don't feel impressed by it because I feel like, "Yeah, so? I thought that thought yesterday." I don't respond well to people telling me what to think or what to look at in that kind of direct "look at what I know and you don't yet know" sort of way. I am much more inclined to be engaged by something that leads me to my own conclusions, that asks me to look and think in a more collaborative way because that's so much more empowering and requires a whole lot more skill and finesse and subtlety than having a thought and being like "OH SHIT I'VE HAD A BRILLIANT THOUGHT—EVERYONE, LISTEN TO ME NOW!" It might be a truly brilliant thought worth sharing, but if you can't figure out how to communicate that thought in a way that engages and empowers your audience, then you're just another asshole.
Anyway, it was a good talk, and though we were running unforgivably late afterward, I'm glad we had it because the first thing we saw when walking into Vox Populi was Jess Wheelock's animation How to Win Friends and Influence People, which was maybe my favorite piece of the night. It shows Wheelock trying to read Dale Carnegie's book, but falling asleep, from which point, a drawn animation of herself falls into a dreamy landscape of the book itself and has a surreal encounter with Carnegie himself (also a drawn animation). It is hilarious and absurd and very smart. My favorite moments were the animated Carnegie encouraging her to pretend to be happy so that people will feel more comfortable around her—he tells her to smile; she folds her arms across her chest and frowns skeptically, shaking her head. So he offers her a smile-mask to hold up in front of her face instead. Later, Carnegie rambles about his motivation for writing the book and says something to the effect of, "When I was a kid, I didn't have any friends," which made me laugh out loud and elbow John and affirm that this piece was "so great, and so appropriate to the conversation we were just having."
Wheelock's video was separate from the "Union, Justice, Confidence" exhibition that filled the rest of the gallery. Standout pieces included Dave Grebber's My Stassed (Red Velvet) in Gallery 2, which I would actually like to look at again when there aren't so many people around interfering with my ability to actually hear what the people in the video clips are saying. The gist of the piece seemed to be a statement about the language of commodity-advertising as specifically applied to the virtual space that now defines our lives. Formally, it draws you in with layers of color and moving images, and then it holds you there with campy infomercial-style anecdotes performed in a familiarly composed way (if you're someone who watches a lot of infomercial-type ads), but with the people promoting a thing you've never heard of before. Again, I could not hear the content as much as I'd have liked to, but what I got from what I could discern is that "My Stassed" is some kind of virtual reality space that allows you to organize and keep track of your life to a vaguely terrifying extent (one participant says something about being able to watch his wife and daughter all the time via My Stassed)—it's framed as an ideal, utopic space that you can customize, but superficiality and falseness in the actors' faces makes you feel uneasy about the attractive bells and whistles that so easily drew you in. Good. In Gallery 4, there was a video by Stephanie Patton titled Conquer, in which a woman, presumably Patton, has covered her face and neck/ shoulders in band-aids and is ripping them off one by one. I was queasily reminded of my own Putting My Face On and didn't really want to watch the whole thing, but I feel like I probably should go back in order to do so.
We also checked out the openings at Grizzly Grizzly: "Permanent" featuring Kim Faler and Kristen Kimler [I was unimpressed by the tiny snippet images of hubcaps pinned inside circular frames and equivalent images of columns arranged around the column in the center of the room. The "wallpaper" on the back wall also fell flat for me. I don't know—I just felt myself asking "OK, and?"]; Tiger Stikes Asteroid: "Gillian Pears: Elsewhere" [beautiful images of pieces of cloth draped over clothesline before colored walls. Formally impressive]; and Napoleon: "The Flame and the Flower: New Works By Marc Blumthal" [digitally abstracted images of Reagan...and some kind of manifestoish statement scrawled on the wall. "Adolescent impulses with a pretentious title" is what I numbly wrote in pen on the notecard I took. The downpour of rain soaked this and all other press releases to a bleeding stack of pulp at the bottom of my canvas bag, which seems appropriate to mention.] before heading out.
We got to HyLo at 8:30 instead of 7, but Vy didn't seem to mind. Combining coffee, cheese and beer is a thing I vow to do for the rest of my life. Walking around in the rain to the point that your raincoat ceases to even remotely serve its intended function and your shoes become squishy pools and your dress might as well be a bathing suit because it's suctioned to you like a second skin—also not so bad. The concluding art experience of the night was accepting a feathered mask from a dude under an umbrella who was trying to hand it off to everyone walking past him. "There's a good one" is what he said when I took it from him. I don't know what that meant, but I wore the mask the rest of the way to the L and left it on a bench for someone else to pick up or throw away. There were little wet bits of green feather stuck to my face, apparently. Good.
Anyway, it was a good talk, and though we were running unforgivably late afterward, I'm glad we had it because the first thing we saw when walking into Vox Populi was Jess Wheelock's animation How to Win Friends and Influence People, which was maybe my favorite piece of the night. It shows Wheelock trying to read Dale Carnegie's book, but falling asleep, from which point, a drawn animation of herself falls into a dreamy landscape of the book itself and has a surreal encounter with Carnegie himself (also a drawn animation). It is hilarious and absurd and very smart. My favorite moments were the animated Carnegie encouraging her to pretend to be happy so that people will feel more comfortable around her—he tells her to smile; she folds her arms across her chest and frowns skeptically, shaking her head. So he offers her a smile-mask to hold up in front of her face instead. Later, Carnegie rambles about his motivation for writing the book and says something to the effect of, "When I was a kid, I didn't have any friends," which made me laugh out loud and elbow John and affirm that this piece was "so great, and so appropriate to the conversation we were just having."
Wheelock's video was separate from the "Union, Justice, Confidence" exhibition that filled the rest of the gallery. Standout pieces included Dave Grebber's My Stassed (Red Velvet) in Gallery 2, which I would actually like to look at again when there aren't so many people around interfering with my ability to actually hear what the people in the video clips are saying. The gist of the piece seemed to be a statement about the language of commodity-advertising as specifically applied to the virtual space that now defines our lives. Formally, it draws you in with layers of color and moving images, and then it holds you there with campy infomercial-style anecdotes performed in a familiarly composed way (if you're someone who watches a lot of infomercial-type ads), but with the people promoting a thing you've never heard of before. Again, I could not hear the content as much as I'd have liked to, but what I got from what I could discern is that "My Stassed" is some kind of virtual reality space that allows you to organize and keep track of your life to a vaguely terrifying extent (one participant says something about being able to watch his wife and daughter all the time via My Stassed)—it's framed as an ideal, utopic space that you can customize, but superficiality and falseness in the actors' faces makes you feel uneasy about the attractive bells and whistles that so easily drew you in. Good. In Gallery 4, there was a video by Stephanie Patton titled Conquer, in which a woman, presumably Patton, has covered her face and neck/ shoulders in band-aids and is ripping them off one by one. I was queasily reminded of my own Putting My Face On and didn't really want to watch the whole thing, but I feel like I probably should go back in order to do so.
We also checked out the openings at Grizzly Grizzly: "Permanent" featuring Kim Faler and Kristen Kimler [I was unimpressed by the tiny snippet images of hubcaps pinned inside circular frames and equivalent images of columns arranged around the column in the center of the room. The "wallpaper" on the back wall also fell flat for me. I don't know—I just felt myself asking "OK, and?"]; Tiger Stikes Asteroid: "Gillian Pears: Elsewhere" [beautiful images of pieces of cloth draped over clothesline before colored walls. Formally impressive]; and Napoleon: "The Flame and the Flower: New Works By Marc Blumthal" [digitally abstracted images of Reagan...and some kind of manifestoish statement scrawled on the wall. "Adolescent impulses with a pretentious title" is what I numbly wrote in pen on the notecard I took. The downpour of rain soaked this and all other press releases to a bleeding stack of pulp at the bottom of my canvas bag, which seems appropriate to mention.] before heading out.
We got to HyLo at 8:30 instead of 7, but Vy didn't seem to mind. Combining coffee, cheese and beer is a thing I vow to do for the rest of my life. Walking around in the rain to the point that your raincoat ceases to even remotely serve its intended function and your shoes become squishy pools and your dress might as well be a bathing suit because it's suctioned to you like a second skin—also not so bad. The concluding art experience of the night was accepting a feathered mask from a dude under an umbrella who was trying to hand it off to everyone walking past him. "There's a good one" is what he said when I took it from him. I don't know what that meant, but I wore the mask the rest of the way to the L and left it on a bench for someone else to pick up or throw away. There were little wet bits of green feather stuck to my face, apparently. Good.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Art I've Seen Around Philly So Far
So, my first official week in Philly, my friend Maia convinced me to do First Friday in Old City with her. I found it pretty disappointing--possibly because we kept ending up at places right as their supply of free beer and/or drinks ran out, but also because much of the artworks in Old City seem to be lacking in substance beyond either the craft of how they were made or the final presentation of them as objects. I wasn't really paying attention to the names of the galleries or exhibitions as we strolled through because, frankly, things started to look the same to me. I only remember the show at the Center for Art in Wood because it was full of strikingly beautiful, well-made objects. Not particularly inspiring conceptually, but full of gorgeous things. Similarly memorable was a more design-centric location: lots of futuristic furniture pieces and ornate glass chandeliers and jewel-like objects clearly intended for someone's china cabinet. Shiny pretty things that I remember experiencing because they were so shiny and pretty. If I'm being honest, Fireman's Hall Museum was my favorite venture of the evening because it houses a steam-powered fire engine (!!), which cannot really be beat if we're talking stupendous objects.
A few days later, I wandered over to the Fabric Workshop and Museum and saw "Changing Scenes: Points of View in Contemporary Media Art," which I found much more satisfying. I got to experience Adrian Piper's Cornered in person!! I'd only ever seen Piper's monologue, which I consider powerful enough to stand alone. But the piece exhibited has many more components I hadn't known about. It seems like the way it is displayed and how the installation is titled has evolved or is at least different from how it has been displayed in the past. For this incarnation, you walk in and are confronted with an array of TV monitors arranged in a diamond. Each monitor is sitting on a wooden stand that elevates it to eye level. A chair accompanies each stand--not for sitting: the chairs are all tipped over on the floor so that their metal legs jut out at you. The monitor at the pinnacle of the diamond--the one in nestled where the walls meet--has an entire table tipped against its monitor in this fashion. Arranged on the walls surrounding the monitors are black and white portraits of African American women smiling. I asked a gallery attendant if he knew who the women were--if there was a specific reason their particular portraits were chosen to be displayed/ if the order mattered. He couldn't tell me.
Piper's monologue plays first. About halfway through, after she makes the point about the extreme likelihood of the viewer having at least some black ancestry, the chorus of "We Are Family" begins playing. While credits roll on Piper's monitor and the music continues to play, the sixteen chair-having monitors sequentially play footage of individuals speaking the same phrase, at first one at a time, then in slowly building unison until they are speaking together in a mighty, tumultuous roar of simultaneous voices. They say, " .'
I also got to see Javier Tellez's video Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See (2007), in which six blind people encounter an elephant. Each person's immedaite reaction to the feel of touching the elephant is integrated with additional voiceover and video of their broader meditations on their experience of being blind. Everything is in rich black and white, and there are exquisite transitional shots of the elephant's skin close up. It was so fascinating and so...I don't like to throw around the word beautiful, but this accessed something transcendent and human and fragile and complicated while remaining simple and straightforward and lighthearted and unpretentious, and that very much fits my standard of beauty. It made me cry. There's a sculpture in the same gallery that is a composite of all of the descriptions of the elephant made by the participants in the video piece--it incorporates the materials to which each of them likened the sensation of the elephant's skin and presence (a wall, tires, a coat, etc.).
For May's First Friday, I hit 319 N. 11th St with my friend Avi. A few years ago, I interned in that building at a gallery that no longer exists, so I knew the vibe of the spaces there would be more experimental, artist-run, collective-oriented than the Old City experience. Vox Populi, Grizzly Grizzly, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and Marginal Utility are among the spaces that live in the 4-story walk-up. Very much still the hippest scene. I don't know if I was in a weird mood or what, but I found myself experiencing the opposing spectrum of disillusionment--work that is mostly concept and not enough execution. I mean, I'm obviously a conceptual art fan, and I tend to prefer work that engages me intellectually, but I couldn't manage to connect with anything I was seeing. I felt a similar disconnected blurring effect to what I'd experienced walking around Old City--everything looked and felt the same; it was just work adhering to a different set of ideals and standards (which still didn't quite align with mine, but for different reasons). Avi and I left feeling frustrated, bitching about the annoying cycle of people continuing to iterate ideas that have already been iterated, repeatedly, by people far more talented and capable of communicating. This rant was not a reaction to any specific piece/ artist/ space in particular--nothing was atrocious, nor was anything stellar--it was more a general tantrum about the infuriating pursuit of contributing something creative to the world and inevitably falling short. Feeling like anything could be "good" enough to earn a pass, but like nothing every really should. I'm gonna blame it on a weird mood and try again in June...
A few days later, I wandered over to the Fabric Workshop and Museum and saw "Changing Scenes: Points of View in Contemporary Media Art," which I found much more satisfying. I got to experience Adrian Piper's Cornered in person!! I'd only ever seen Piper's monologue, which I consider powerful enough to stand alone. But the piece exhibited has many more components I hadn't known about. It seems like the way it is displayed and how the installation is titled has evolved or is at least different from how it has been displayed in the past. For this incarnation, you walk in and are confronted with an array of TV monitors arranged in a diamond. Each monitor is sitting on a wooden stand that elevates it to eye level. A chair accompanies each stand--not for sitting: the chairs are all tipped over on the floor so that their metal legs jut out at you. The monitor at the pinnacle of the diamond--the one in nestled where the walls meet--has an entire table tipped against its monitor in this fashion. Arranged on the walls surrounding the monitors are black and white portraits of African American women smiling. I asked a gallery attendant if he knew who the women were--if there was a specific reason their particular portraits were chosen to be displayed/ if the order mattered. He couldn't tell me.
Installation View of Out of the Corner (1990)
I also got to see Javier Tellez's video Letter on the Blind, For the Use of Those Who See (2007), in which six blind people encounter an elephant. Each person's immedaite reaction to the feel of touching the elephant is integrated with additional voiceover and video of their broader meditations on their experience of being blind. Everything is in rich black and white, and there are exquisite transitional shots of the elephant's skin close up. It was so fascinating and so...I don't like to throw around the word beautiful, but this accessed something transcendent and human and fragile and complicated while remaining simple and straightforward and lighthearted and unpretentious, and that very much fits my standard of beauty. It made me cry. There's a sculpture in the same gallery that is a composite of all of the descriptions of the elephant made by the participants in the video piece--it incorporates the materials to which each of them likened the sensation of the elephant's skin and presence (a wall, tires, a coat, etc.).
For May's First Friday, I hit 319 N. 11th St with my friend Avi. A few years ago, I interned in that building at a gallery that no longer exists, so I knew the vibe of the spaces there would be more experimental, artist-run, collective-oriented than the Old City experience. Vox Populi, Grizzly Grizzly, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and Marginal Utility are among the spaces that live in the 4-story walk-up. Very much still the hippest scene. I don't know if I was in a weird mood or what, but I found myself experiencing the opposing spectrum of disillusionment--work that is mostly concept and not enough execution. I mean, I'm obviously a conceptual art fan, and I tend to prefer work that engages me intellectually, but I couldn't manage to connect with anything I was seeing. I felt a similar disconnected blurring effect to what I'd experienced walking around Old City--everything looked and felt the same; it was just work adhering to a different set of ideals and standards (which still didn't quite align with mine, but for different reasons). Avi and I left feeling frustrated, bitching about the annoying cycle of people continuing to iterate ideas that have already been iterated, repeatedly, by people far more talented and capable of communicating. This rant was not a reaction to any specific piece/ artist/ space in particular--nothing was atrocious, nor was anything stellar--it was more a general tantrum about the infuriating pursuit of contributing something creative to the world and inevitably falling short. Feeling like anything could be "good" enough to earn a pass, but like nothing every really should. I'm gonna blame it on a weird mood and try again in June...
Friday, November 30, 2012
Seeing Friends, Seeing Art
I'm back in PA after an excursion to Boston! Saw a bunch of people and places and things, including the awesome exhibition "This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s" at the ICA through March 3, 2013. Many of my favorite things were there. There was wall text about Judith Butler! I got to take Adrian Piper's calling cards home with me! Inspiring things I'd never seen before included Mary Kelly's Interim Part I, Corpus, Appeal and Lorraine O'Grady's Art Is.... Familiar-looking text from Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger text/image combinations also screamed at me from unexpected points on the walls (Kruger's were near the ceiling, and Holzer's inhabited the sides of a free-standing wall). I wanted to buy the book, but it was $50, and I needed that money for food and bus fare...onto the Amazon Wishlist it goes!
I stopped over at the New Museum on my journey home to see "Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery, 1969-1989," which closes on December 30. It's a small exhibition of materials from the museum's Bowery Artist Tribute archive and Marc H. Miller's 98bowery.com, not quite as packed full of favorites as I'd been expecting, but still worth the visit. The show's archive-inspired nature was evidenced by the resource room, which had various relevant books and magazines, as well as computers to access online archives themselves. The upper back wall of that room displayed the Bowery timeline and a few Christy Rupp rats scurried around the baseboard. In the gallery, Adrian Piper was representing again (an example from her Hypothesis Series, which I cannot find represented on the Internet...), as was my buddy Keith Harring (his studio door was in the middle of the room, and there was evidence of a project for which he left snippets of paintings all around the city). Inspiring things I'd never seen before included Paul Tschinkel's video piece Hannah's Haircut (also nowhere to be found on the Internet...), in which a topless Hannah Wilke gives Claes Oldenberg a haircut. Completely bizarre and captivating--he looks so fucking uncomfortable the whole time and she kisses his ear at one point. Hannah Wilke is forever a favorite of mine--I remember seeing Through the Large Glass at MoMA some years ago and experiencing the same inability to look away (I feel my weird feelings about a normatively attractive woman objectifying her own body for an audience that might not intellectually jump the hurtle of ogling her tits, and then I get over them because she is so in control and knows exactly what the fuck she's doing and I love her for it). Also, video footage of Charles Simonds' Dwellings, for which he carved out spaces for imaginary tiny people in the walls of crumbling buildings.
I have to get my ass back to New York to continue my 80s-obsessed jaunt with "Times Square Show Revisited" at the Hunter College Art Galllery (til December 8) and I also need to see "Materializing "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art" at the Brooklyn Museum through February 17 (plus, you know, buy that book...)
I stopped over at the New Museum on my journey home to see "Come Closer: Art Around the Bowery, 1969-1989," which closes on December 30. It's a small exhibition of materials from the museum's Bowery Artist Tribute archive and Marc H. Miller's 98bowery.com, not quite as packed full of favorites as I'd been expecting, but still worth the visit. The show's archive-inspired nature was evidenced by the resource room, which had various relevant books and magazines, as well as computers to access online archives themselves. The upper back wall of that room displayed the Bowery timeline and a few Christy Rupp rats scurried around the baseboard. In the gallery, Adrian Piper was representing again (an example from her Hypothesis Series, which I cannot find represented on the Internet...), as was my buddy Keith Harring (his studio door was in the middle of the room, and there was evidence of a project for which he left snippets of paintings all around the city). Inspiring things I'd never seen before included Paul Tschinkel's video piece Hannah's Haircut (also nowhere to be found on the Internet...), in which a topless Hannah Wilke gives Claes Oldenberg a haircut. Completely bizarre and captivating--he looks so fucking uncomfortable the whole time and she kisses his ear at one point. Hannah Wilke is forever a favorite of mine--I remember seeing Through the Large Glass at MoMA some years ago and experiencing the same inability to look away (I feel my weird feelings about a normatively attractive woman objectifying her own body for an audience that might not intellectually jump the hurtle of ogling her tits, and then I get over them because she is so in control and knows exactly what the fuck she's doing and I love her for it). Also, video footage of Charles Simonds' Dwellings, for which he carved out spaces for imaginary tiny people in the walls of crumbling buildings.
I have to get my ass back to New York to continue my 80s-obsessed jaunt with "Times Square Show Revisited" at the Hunter College Art Galllery (til December 8) and I also need to see "Materializing "Six Years": Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art" at the Brooklyn Museum through February 17 (plus, you know, buy that book...)
Monday, October 1, 2012
Great Things I've Seen Lately
I've had some recent sojourns to NYC, which involved some experiences worth keeping track of.
I visited the Brooklyn Museum for a job interview. I didn't get the job, but I did see an incredible Keith Haring retrospective while I was there. I was particularly in awe of his experimental video work (surprise surprise), which I'd never seen before or known existed in the first place. The one that kept me mesmerized was called Machines--it's 7 minutes of a close-up on a mouth wearing red lipstick (ehem...). The mouth is speaking lines from a text, but the sounds and movements of the mouth are disjointed. The words spoken are over-enunciated, and the mouth pauses to pucker, smile, and grimace throughout the speech. The meaning of the words is lost to the image of the mouth speaking them--the physicality of speech is emphasized in a way that causes one to lose track of what is even being spoken. There is a complex multiplicity of focus, with a great deal of repetition and rhythm (fluctuation between things being in- and out- of sync, the same motions or words being pronounced over and over in succession before the sentence moves forward). I watched it loop at least twice, and was completely overwhelmed by feelings of dislocation/ alienation/ the urge to understand, but being unable to do so, and losing track of what I was even trying to understand. I was frustrated and captivated. It seemed to me that there was a duality between the language of hearing and the language of seeing, and they were being held in an amazing tension. When I stopped trying to make sense of the words he was speaking, I focused more on the saturation of the color, his sweat, his blemishes, his teeth. I was constantly deciding where to focus, changing my focus over time, going back and forth, catering to multiple focuses at once. The fact that it was an identifiably male mouth with an identifiably male voice wearing the red lipstick was an extra layer for me. The words of the statement that stood out/ were repeated most were phrases that included "things," "machines," and "she said." The complexity of a male voice giving an account of a female voice, while wearing red lipstick was pretty joyous.
There was a whole other room of videos. One of them was called Tribute to Gloria Vanderbilt--it's only 3 minutes, and it's just Keith dancing in front of the camera and occasionally kissing the lens, with rabid enthusiasm. I loved that he was recording this kind of moment--it was full of joy, and felt welcoming, but also weirdly voyeuristic (to be watching)/ exhibitionistic (of him to have recorded), and confrontational in the way he kisses the lens--it isn't soft, it's pretty violent/ aggressive.
The Brooklyn Museum is also the permanent home of The Dinner Party, so I had the chance to actually confront it in person. For me, the most powerful aspect of the project is the "Herstory Gallery" that accompanies the table. It's a very impressive documentation of the role of women throughout history, incorporating examples of significant female figures. The narrative exists on walls that you can stroll among, reading the accounts. The whole point of The Dinner Party as a project is to "bring women to the table of history," and I think the Gallery is the more impressive mechanism. It's written like a timeline/ text book, with pictures and quotations, and it's clear how much research went into its existence. It successfully incorporates and asserts the importance of figures that have gone ignored within the iteration of history that was constructed to exclude or reduce the incorporation of women. It offers an alternative--a more expansive, inclusive potential model, which is undeniably an important thing.
The problem I have with the piece is the way in which the table reduces women to their vaginas, and the way the entire project uses that reduction to imply an essential "female experience,"complete with an overarching set of "female values" that exist in opposition to the "male values" that rule our society. I'm not arguing that patriarchy is not a very real thing--it absolutely is. A binary concept of gender has been polarizing people into opposing roles based on their anatomy for centuries, and the ideal attributes of one role have certainly been valued over the ideal attributes of the other for just as long. It's annoying and frustrating and it's perpetuated constantly by companies and governments and individuals who are too insecure to entertain the idea that everyone would be a whole lot happier if a set of unattainable expectations weren't imposed upon them at birth. I don't enjoy an approach that further perpetuates the notion of "inherent female values" as opposed to "inherent male values" because I find it counterproductive to the goal of everyone existing as mutually respected individual human beings, with differences and similarities that all serve to make life interesting and educational and surprising. I don't enjoy being told that I am inherently a certain way by virtue of the fact that I was born with a particular sort of genitalia. The experiences I have as a result of society's assumptions/ presumptions/ behaviors regarding my body are very real and certainly affect and shape the way I live my life, but that's a problem, and asserting that yes, women are innately this way and that's why we're better is still a part of that problem. *Deep breath...
I ALSO finally saw Sleep No More. My friend Adrienne has been trying to get me to go since she first saw it when it opened in Brookline, MA, and she obsessively attended multiple times a week until she knew the whole cast. After that, she managed to get a job working behind-the-scenes, and stayed involved after the production moved to NYC. She managed to score tickets for us (herself, me, and our friend Emily who was visiting from San Francisco) while I was in town installing my video at BWAC and oh boy do I regret not seeing it when it was in Brookline! Every single experience of Sleep No More is different. It's an interactive performance that unfolds around you as you navigate through the space. Visitors wear white masks that render you anonymous as you observe/experience the action of the cast members. The plot is based loosely on Macbeth, and the scenes repeat three times during the three hours from when the show begins, which means that you have the opportunity to encounter scenarios and discover rooms you didn't notice during the first hour, or that you might witness things multiple times. I'll describe my experience:
We walked into a dimly lit hotel lobby area and checked our coats, where a woman handed us each a playing card [I kept mine and have it in a little shadowbox frame on my wall]. Then we navigated through a series of dark hallways, led only by the flickering light of candles marking the dead-end walls where we needed to turn. Adrienne made Emily and me go first because we'd both never experienced it before. From there, we spilled into what I can only describe as a David Lynch night club. Or maybe a cheerier manifestation of the hotel bar in The Shining. There was a woman in a shiny green dress with perfectly coiffed hair, crooning into a microphone stand on a small stage. Cocktail waitresses in costume mingled through the smokey air, passing out small glasses of absinth. I felt a little edgy, realizing I might not have adequately prepared myself psychologically for what was about to happen, but I felt relieved to be there with Adrienne, who knew these people out of character. And I felt familiar enough with this kind of vibe anyway. I've always wondered what it would be like to wander around inside a David Lynch movie...
Adrienne told us the basics of what was about to happen: one of the slicked gentlemen would announce that people holding aces [the first wave--we among them] were to board the elevator. There, we'd be given our masks, which were not to be taken off for the rest of the night [very Eyes Wide Shut]. She told us to hang back with her in the elevator so that she could bring us to a solid starting point. From there, she felt we should separate so that we could each follow our own journey. The prospect of this made me nervous, but also excited. At the behest of our accordingly coiffed leader, we were shepherded into the elevator, where we dutifully donned our masks. The conductor said scripted things to us--generally, iterating the mask consistency and no talking rules, but also encouraging us to explore. "Fortune favors the bold," he said as he stopped the elevator on the 6th floor. "Everybody off," he told us, moving aside so that one person could exit. Before anyone else got the chance, he closed the doors again and re-started the elevator [Adrienne told us later that he'd let that person out alone on the asylum floor. Not a place I'd liked to have begun, especially alone. A thrilling notion in its dirty-trick cruelty]. When Adrienne squeezed our hands as a signal to exit with her, she led us to the nearest stairwell. We crossed through a graveyard that I made a mental note never to return to alone [which I did later--it was as terrifying as I'd anticipated], and down into a great hall, where a party seemed to be ensuing. This scene introduced us to the full cast of main characters. I was particularly drawn to one erratic character with dark eyeliner and spiky, tousled hair. He seemed to be able to see us while the others ignored the audience. His dancing was more sexually charged than the others' and he seemed to have a manipulative power over the other characters he danced with, particularly another young gentleman. I should probably admit here that I've never read Macbeth, so I was at a slight disadvantage as far as the plot/ character identification layer goes. My only real option was to respond to the way things were being performed, and connect to the narrative that way. Adrienne and Emily left the hall when the party scene shifted, and most of the cast members scattered. Many people left at this time, following particular characters to new locations, but I decided to stay because the eyeliner-wearing fellow was still there, along with one of the female cast members. The lighting in the room changed from bright warm yellow tones to mysterious blue/purple. Their dancing became interpretive and intense. The woman removed what turned out to be a wig, revealing her completely bald head. Her shoulders and neck were mesmerizing. I decided to try to follow her for the rest of the night.
When she exited the room, I and the remaining horde of masked visitors followed her up a winding staircase and down a hallway toward a doorway, where we were ushered into a room. Her eyeliner friend was there, along with another woman. All three of them had that same kind of restless, knowing energy about them. Once everyone was inside, they gathered around a table and we gathered around them. I was struck by how incredibly creepy it was to see more than 50 masked faces crowded together, all watching the behavior of these three people, close enough to touch them. To be one of them was bizarre. It felt very voyeuristic, but there was also an eerie sense of belonging about it, and a freedom to the anonymity [My photography professor liked to drive home this quote about how photography gives us permission to stare. Well, masks do that as well]. What ensued inside that room was what I later described to Emily and Adrienne as "a bloody disco orgy." They both knew what I meant--Adrienne because she'd seen Sleep No More hundreds of times, and Emily because she'd managed to encounter that scene too, in its third incarnation, toward the end of her experience. "Oh good! I was hoping you'd both get to see that scene! It's one of the most important ones," Adrienne gushed. "I saw it within the first 15 minutes," I asserted with a deadpan emphasis on how intense a formative experience that had been.
From there, it's mostly a blur. I lost track of the woman I'd been determined to follow and wandered through various rooms. I found myself in a hotel suite where there was a pregnant woman agonizing and dancing on top of high bureaus with her husband. I entered the master suite and saw the Macbeths quarrel, and found myself back there to see Macbeth return, bloody--Lady Macbeth drew him a bath in the claw foot tub on a platform in the center of the room. I saw her bathe later, on the asylum floor, which was how I knew she was Lady Macbeth. There was a banquet scene back in the great hall, which became a forest of evergreens afterward. I saw a man carrying a door, and was briefly convinced that this was some kind of Hogwarts situation where the staircases moved. Time and space were bizarre, ethereal entities that I lost track of. I felt disoriented in my wandering, but felt comfortable in that sense of dislocation--like that was the point somehow. I got lost and kept coming upon the same people and places. It was extremely surreal. I managed to see several in-between sorts of moments, when the performers were setting up for the next scene (they did so in character, making each action part of the performance). It was strange, but I felt gratified that I was having a meta experience of the production itself, which I appreciated because I found the entire dynamic so fascinating--the requisite trust between the performers and the audience to be coexisting and navigating together; the cyclical nature of everything; the extreme intimacy but simultaneous anonymity/otherness. There were the black-masked attendants strategically scattered to maintain some security for the performers/ offer assistance to the visitors when necessary, but other than that fact, it felt very...nebulous. It was like having gone down the rabbit hole and entered a world that included everything decadent, lavish, covetous, alongside everything ominous, treacherous and terrifying. Which is a captivating tension. I felt completely ambivalent the entire time. Ambivalence is sort of my natural state, but this was a much more intense brand, and it felt right in its ambiguity--appropriate, encouraged even. It was a place that nurtured confusion and reveled in it, and I felt comfortable in a reality whose only concrete truth was the power of mystique.
I had expressed a fear to Adrienne before we went in about getting lost. "How will I know when it's over? How will I find my way out again?" "Oh, you'll know. And it's not like you're going to stumble into a janitor's closet or something," she had laughed. I proved her wrong at one point by pushing open an industrial-looking door behind a curtain, which turned out to be concealing a florescent-lit storage closet. We laughed about that later. "Oh god, you're such an artist! You would reveal the storage closet!" It was around that point that I started to become frustrated, knowing that there were many more floors that I couldn't seem to access, feeling trapped in a spatial loop. I wandered down a hall and walked into another room that felt like I shouldn't have found--it was completely empty and the walls, table, ceiling and floor were painted black. That was when I noticed a black-masked attendant and silently indicated that I needed help. She kindly directed me through a curtain that magically led back into the Lynchian lounge from the beginning. I felt relieved and thirsty and immediately went to the bathroom to splash water on my face and stare at my reflection in the mirror for several minutes. It was nice to be grounded in a place. I'd left my phone in my purse, so I had no idea how long I'd been inside. I asked someone for the time and figured out that I still had 40 minutes to wait until Emily and Adrienne and everyone else came back out. I considered going back in, but decided against it, feeling mentally and physically exhausted enough to just revel in the air conditioning with my glass of water, watching other wayward people slowly trickle out.
It was excellent to hear Emily and Adrienne's accounts of their respective experiences once they were out. They were so completely different from mine! Emily had had a "one-on-one," a hallowed occurrence in which a cast member chooses you and whisks you off to a secluded location. Hers involved entering a wardrobe, where the woman told her a creepy poem about being trapped, and then left her locked inside the wardrobe, unable to go out the way she'd come. She had to discover a secret passage that led her out in a different direction. They were both surprised that they'd never seen me--they'd run into each other a couple times. I told them about my bizarre in-between/ meta experience and neither were surprised, as this seems to be my way. They described places and scenes I hadn't seen, and scenes I'd seen being prepared. It was fun to piece together the plot and the layout of the place based on our subjective journeys, and it was great to hear Adrienne's behind-the-scenes anecdotes and tidbits--she was so thrilled to finally be able to share it with us (I mean, she had been since it opened in Brookline, but it finally meant something to us!).
A singularly unique experience that I'll probably be processing for the rest of my life
I visited the Brooklyn Museum for a job interview. I didn't get the job, but I did see an incredible Keith Haring retrospective while I was there. I was particularly in awe of his experimental video work (surprise surprise), which I'd never seen before or known existed in the first place. The one that kept me mesmerized was called Machines--it's 7 minutes of a close-up on a mouth wearing red lipstick (ehem...). The mouth is speaking lines from a text, but the sounds and movements of the mouth are disjointed. The words spoken are over-enunciated, and the mouth pauses to pucker, smile, and grimace throughout the speech. The meaning of the words is lost to the image of the mouth speaking them--the physicality of speech is emphasized in a way that causes one to lose track of what is even being spoken. There is a complex multiplicity of focus, with a great deal of repetition and rhythm (fluctuation between things being in- and out- of sync, the same motions or words being pronounced over and over in succession before the sentence moves forward). I watched it loop at least twice, and was completely overwhelmed by feelings of dislocation/ alienation/ the urge to understand, but being unable to do so, and losing track of what I was even trying to understand. I was frustrated and captivated. It seemed to me that there was a duality between the language of hearing and the language of seeing, and they were being held in an amazing tension. When I stopped trying to make sense of the words he was speaking, I focused more on the saturation of the color, his sweat, his blemishes, his teeth. I was constantly deciding where to focus, changing my focus over time, going back and forth, catering to multiple focuses at once. The fact that it was an identifiably male mouth with an identifiably male voice wearing the red lipstick was an extra layer for me. The words of the statement that stood out/ were repeated most were phrases that included "things," "machines," and "she said." The complexity of a male voice giving an account of a female voice, while wearing red lipstick was pretty joyous.
There was a whole other room of videos. One of them was called Tribute to Gloria Vanderbilt--it's only 3 minutes, and it's just Keith dancing in front of the camera and occasionally kissing the lens, with rabid enthusiasm. I loved that he was recording this kind of moment--it was full of joy, and felt welcoming, but also weirdly voyeuristic (to be watching)/ exhibitionistic (of him to have recorded), and confrontational in the way he kisses the lens--it isn't soft, it's pretty violent/ aggressive.
The Brooklyn Museum is also the permanent home of The Dinner Party, so I had the chance to actually confront it in person. For me, the most powerful aspect of the project is the "Herstory Gallery" that accompanies the table. It's a very impressive documentation of the role of women throughout history, incorporating examples of significant female figures. The narrative exists on walls that you can stroll among, reading the accounts. The whole point of The Dinner Party as a project is to "bring women to the table of history," and I think the Gallery is the more impressive mechanism. It's written like a timeline/ text book, with pictures and quotations, and it's clear how much research went into its existence. It successfully incorporates and asserts the importance of figures that have gone ignored within the iteration of history that was constructed to exclude or reduce the incorporation of women. It offers an alternative--a more expansive, inclusive potential model, which is undeniably an important thing.
The problem I have with the piece is the way in which the table reduces women to their vaginas, and the way the entire project uses that reduction to imply an essential "female experience,"complete with an overarching set of "female values" that exist in opposition to the "male values" that rule our society. I'm not arguing that patriarchy is not a very real thing--it absolutely is. A binary concept of gender has been polarizing people into opposing roles based on their anatomy for centuries, and the ideal attributes of one role have certainly been valued over the ideal attributes of the other for just as long. It's annoying and frustrating and it's perpetuated constantly by companies and governments and individuals who are too insecure to entertain the idea that everyone would be a whole lot happier if a set of unattainable expectations weren't imposed upon them at birth. I don't enjoy an approach that further perpetuates the notion of "inherent female values" as opposed to "inherent male values" because I find it counterproductive to the goal of everyone existing as mutually respected individual human beings, with differences and similarities that all serve to make life interesting and educational and surprising. I don't enjoy being told that I am inherently a certain way by virtue of the fact that I was born with a particular sort of genitalia. The experiences I have as a result of society's assumptions/ presumptions/ behaviors regarding my body are very real and certainly affect and shape the way I live my life, but that's a problem, and asserting that yes, women are innately this way and that's why we're better is still a part of that problem. *Deep breath...
I ALSO finally saw Sleep No More. My friend Adrienne has been trying to get me to go since she first saw it when it opened in Brookline, MA, and she obsessively attended multiple times a week until she knew the whole cast. After that, she managed to get a job working behind-the-scenes, and stayed involved after the production moved to NYC. She managed to score tickets for us (herself, me, and our friend Emily who was visiting from San Francisco) while I was in town installing my video at BWAC and oh boy do I regret not seeing it when it was in Brookline! Every single experience of Sleep No More is different. It's an interactive performance that unfolds around you as you navigate through the space. Visitors wear white masks that render you anonymous as you observe/experience the action of the cast members. The plot is based loosely on Macbeth, and the scenes repeat three times during the three hours from when the show begins, which means that you have the opportunity to encounter scenarios and discover rooms you didn't notice during the first hour, or that you might witness things multiple times. I'll describe my experience:
We walked into a dimly lit hotel lobby area and checked our coats, where a woman handed us each a playing card [I kept mine and have it in a little shadowbox frame on my wall]. Then we navigated through a series of dark hallways, led only by the flickering light of candles marking the dead-end walls where we needed to turn. Adrienne made Emily and me go first because we'd both never experienced it before. From there, we spilled into what I can only describe as a David Lynch night club. Or maybe a cheerier manifestation of the hotel bar in The Shining. There was a woman in a shiny green dress with perfectly coiffed hair, crooning into a microphone stand on a small stage. Cocktail waitresses in costume mingled through the smokey air, passing out small glasses of absinth. I felt a little edgy, realizing I might not have adequately prepared myself psychologically for what was about to happen, but I felt relieved to be there with Adrienne, who knew these people out of character. And I felt familiar enough with this kind of vibe anyway. I've always wondered what it would be like to wander around inside a David Lynch movie...
Adrienne told us the basics of what was about to happen: one of the slicked gentlemen would announce that people holding aces [the first wave--we among them] were to board the elevator. There, we'd be given our masks, which were not to be taken off for the rest of the night [very Eyes Wide Shut]. She told us to hang back with her in the elevator so that she could bring us to a solid starting point. From there, she felt we should separate so that we could each follow our own journey. The prospect of this made me nervous, but also excited. At the behest of our accordingly coiffed leader, we were shepherded into the elevator, where we dutifully donned our masks. The conductor said scripted things to us--generally, iterating the mask consistency and no talking rules, but also encouraging us to explore. "Fortune favors the bold," he said as he stopped the elevator on the 6th floor. "Everybody off," he told us, moving aside so that one person could exit. Before anyone else got the chance, he closed the doors again and re-started the elevator [Adrienne told us later that he'd let that person out alone on the asylum floor. Not a place I'd liked to have begun, especially alone. A thrilling notion in its dirty-trick cruelty]. When Adrienne squeezed our hands as a signal to exit with her, she led us to the nearest stairwell. We crossed through a graveyard that I made a mental note never to return to alone [which I did later--it was as terrifying as I'd anticipated], and down into a great hall, where a party seemed to be ensuing. This scene introduced us to the full cast of main characters. I was particularly drawn to one erratic character with dark eyeliner and spiky, tousled hair. He seemed to be able to see us while the others ignored the audience. His dancing was more sexually charged than the others' and he seemed to have a manipulative power over the other characters he danced with, particularly another young gentleman. I should probably admit here that I've never read Macbeth, so I was at a slight disadvantage as far as the plot/ character identification layer goes. My only real option was to respond to the way things were being performed, and connect to the narrative that way. Adrienne and Emily left the hall when the party scene shifted, and most of the cast members scattered. Many people left at this time, following particular characters to new locations, but I decided to stay because the eyeliner-wearing fellow was still there, along with one of the female cast members. The lighting in the room changed from bright warm yellow tones to mysterious blue/purple. Their dancing became interpretive and intense. The woman removed what turned out to be a wig, revealing her completely bald head. Her shoulders and neck were mesmerizing. I decided to try to follow her for the rest of the night.
When she exited the room, I and the remaining horde of masked visitors followed her up a winding staircase and down a hallway toward a doorway, where we were ushered into a room. Her eyeliner friend was there, along with another woman. All three of them had that same kind of restless, knowing energy about them. Once everyone was inside, they gathered around a table and we gathered around them. I was struck by how incredibly creepy it was to see more than 50 masked faces crowded together, all watching the behavior of these three people, close enough to touch them. To be one of them was bizarre. It felt very voyeuristic, but there was also an eerie sense of belonging about it, and a freedom to the anonymity [My photography professor liked to drive home this quote about how photography gives us permission to stare. Well, masks do that as well]. What ensued inside that room was what I later described to Emily and Adrienne as "a bloody disco orgy." They both knew what I meant--Adrienne because she'd seen Sleep No More hundreds of times, and Emily because she'd managed to encounter that scene too, in its third incarnation, toward the end of her experience. "Oh good! I was hoping you'd both get to see that scene! It's one of the most important ones," Adrienne gushed. "I saw it within the first 15 minutes," I asserted with a deadpan emphasis on how intense a formative experience that had been.
From there, it's mostly a blur. I lost track of the woman I'd been determined to follow and wandered through various rooms. I found myself in a hotel suite where there was a pregnant woman agonizing and dancing on top of high bureaus with her husband. I entered the master suite and saw the Macbeths quarrel, and found myself back there to see Macbeth return, bloody--Lady Macbeth drew him a bath in the claw foot tub on a platform in the center of the room. I saw her bathe later, on the asylum floor, which was how I knew she was Lady Macbeth. There was a banquet scene back in the great hall, which became a forest of evergreens afterward. I saw a man carrying a door, and was briefly convinced that this was some kind of Hogwarts situation where the staircases moved. Time and space were bizarre, ethereal entities that I lost track of. I felt disoriented in my wandering, but felt comfortable in that sense of dislocation--like that was the point somehow. I got lost and kept coming upon the same people and places. It was extremely surreal. I managed to see several in-between sorts of moments, when the performers were setting up for the next scene (they did so in character, making each action part of the performance). It was strange, but I felt gratified that I was having a meta experience of the production itself, which I appreciated because I found the entire dynamic so fascinating--the requisite trust between the performers and the audience to be coexisting and navigating together; the cyclical nature of everything; the extreme intimacy but simultaneous anonymity/otherness. There were the black-masked attendants strategically scattered to maintain some security for the performers/ offer assistance to the visitors when necessary, but other than that fact, it felt very...nebulous. It was like having gone down the rabbit hole and entered a world that included everything decadent, lavish, covetous, alongside everything ominous, treacherous and terrifying. Which is a captivating tension. I felt completely ambivalent the entire time. Ambivalence is sort of my natural state, but this was a much more intense brand, and it felt right in its ambiguity--appropriate, encouraged even. It was a place that nurtured confusion and reveled in it, and I felt comfortable in a reality whose only concrete truth was the power of mystique.
I had expressed a fear to Adrienne before we went in about getting lost. "How will I know when it's over? How will I find my way out again?" "Oh, you'll know. And it's not like you're going to stumble into a janitor's closet or something," she had laughed. I proved her wrong at one point by pushing open an industrial-looking door behind a curtain, which turned out to be concealing a florescent-lit storage closet. We laughed about that later. "Oh god, you're such an artist! You would reveal the storage closet!" It was around that point that I started to become frustrated, knowing that there were many more floors that I couldn't seem to access, feeling trapped in a spatial loop. I wandered down a hall and walked into another room that felt like I shouldn't have found--it was completely empty and the walls, table, ceiling and floor were painted black. That was when I noticed a black-masked attendant and silently indicated that I needed help. She kindly directed me through a curtain that magically led back into the Lynchian lounge from the beginning. I felt relieved and thirsty and immediately went to the bathroom to splash water on my face and stare at my reflection in the mirror for several minutes. It was nice to be grounded in a place. I'd left my phone in my purse, so I had no idea how long I'd been inside. I asked someone for the time and figured out that I still had 40 minutes to wait until Emily and Adrienne and everyone else came back out. I considered going back in, but decided against it, feeling mentally and physically exhausted enough to just revel in the air conditioning with my glass of water, watching other wayward people slowly trickle out.
It was excellent to hear Emily and Adrienne's accounts of their respective experiences once they were out. They were so completely different from mine! Emily had had a "one-on-one," a hallowed occurrence in which a cast member chooses you and whisks you off to a secluded location. Hers involved entering a wardrobe, where the woman told her a creepy poem about being trapped, and then left her locked inside the wardrobe, unable to go out the way she'd come. She had to discover a secret passage that led her out in a different direction. They were both surprised that they'd never seen me--they'd run into each other a couple times. I told them about my bizarre in-between/ meta experience and neither were surprised, as this seems to be my way. They described places and scenes I hadn't seen, and scenes I'd seen being prepared. It was fun to piece together the plot and the layout of the place based on our subjective journeys, and it was great to hear Adrienne's behind-the-scenes anecdotes and tidbits--she was so thrilled to finally be able to share it with us (I mean, she had been since it opened in Brookline, but it finally meant something to us!).
A singularly unique experience that I'll probably be processing for the rest of my life
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
BWAC Opening
BWAC
The crowd
Putting My Face On, officially installed.
I realized pretty quickly that the installation across from mine actually provided the perfect lurking spot. I could hear what people were saying from there, and I could conceal myself among the hanging objects while I took photos.
Watching people look and listening to them talk to each other, I got the idea to add my notebook to the podium with a note asking people to write down their thoughts and feelings about the video. I wanted there to be a more direct vehicle for people to communicate their thoughts to me, but I didn't want to interrupt their experience or color it by talking to them as the artist.
And people actually wrote things!
I wish I could have left the notebook there for the entire run of the show, but it's the notebook I'm currently using as my sketchbook, and my mom and I went right from the show to the 2-week family beach vacation I'm currently on, so I really couldn't bear to leave it behind. It's definitely a prototype for the kind of engagement I'd like to incorporate in future installations though.
I think the smaller scale did lend itself to a different, more intimate experience of the piece--it was powerful to see people standing face-to-face with it.
Also, the nature of it playing on a loop became important. People would walk up to it when it was already halfway through, and they would stay to see how it began. I like the idea of the process revealing itself in a different way to certain people, depending on when they encounter it (more specifically, I like the way it messes with the chronology, expectation, narrative, suspense of the experience).
Watching children engage with it was also great. There was a pair of little girls who were sisters. I saw the younger one sitting and staring for a while. She got up and returned with her older sister...
She squealed, "Isn't it SO CREEPY?!"
The older one agreed that it was, and lingered, watching it for a full 2 loops before scurrying off to catch up with her sister and mom, who'd migrated to a different area of the floor. I saw her tug her mom's skirt and point back at the video and I heard her say, "Mommy, I like the red one!"
Some other overheard responses include:
"I don't know if I'd call it art...I mean, I know it's art...it's just not my kind of art"
"Now that's an interesting piece"
"I wonder what motivated her"
"It's a shame it's not larger. The installation itself leaves something to be desired"
"[looking at the title] That's hilarious! [watches closely] It really does make you think about getting ready to go out...how you cover your face to do it..."
"Her face is so pretty. I don't know if the lipstick is enhancing or detracting from it"
"The ending is great--I just wish it were longer"
"I feel weird watching this--kind of perverted...voyeuristic?"
"It's like she's putting on war paint. Look how she's sweating. Look, you can see the sweat!"
"The technique of how she's applying it--so measured and even...and what a color"
"That red! It's so...it's overwhelming. Powerful. Yeah, powerful"The piece won Best Assemblage/ Installation, as chosen by Brooke Kamin Rapaport herself! They added a ribbon label to the podium and gave me a certificate and even some prize money!
Exciting stuff folks. The show is up through August 19--go see it for yourself if you find yourself near Red Hook before then.
Monday, July 11, 2011
NYC II
Took another epic trip to New York this past Tuesday through Thursday! I was accompanied by some art history buddies, so things were on a pretty even keel, considering our mutual tendencies to devour and absorb any and all art.
We got in Tuesday afternoon and wandered over to Chelsea, where we visited a friend at James Cohan until the gallery closed. The show that's up right now, "Catch the Moon in the Water: Young Chinese Artists" was a pretty satisfyingly diverse survey of contemporary Chinese artists. My favorite piece was probably Hu Xiangqian's video/performance Xiangqian's Art Museum, which was hilarious and excellent and made me feel in good company conversationally. The piece consists of Hu Xiangqian standing in front of a microphone in a grassy patch in front of a brick wall, describing various works of art that he may or may not have seen, and which may or may not actually exist (some are well-known works that the audience could recognize, others he fabricates to sound real). It's pretty brilliant. I also couldn't take my eyes off of Chen Wei's photographs Records Hypnosis and House of Recovery. Really gorgeous. They kind of reminded me of Gregory Crewdson in a weird way.
The following day we finished up in Chelsea. The standout was Matthew Ronay's Between the Worlds at Andrea Rosen. OK, we walked into the gallery and encountered this box of black curtain. We had to circle the periphery to find the entrance, and when we did, it was like floating into an underwater cave/ forest/ dreamscape. Absolutely incredible--there were so many details to take in (screens of tiny carved wooden mushrooms; partially obscured light sources that added an undercurrent of magical/ holy energy to the space; owls that would suddenly appear on the periphery), but the thing I loved most was the simplicity of the materials. Everything was papier-mâché, fabric, carved wood, and simply applied paint. But simple choices in composition, color pallet and craftsmanship created this atmosphere that was completely engrossing. I wanted to live there.
Shows we also saw in Chelsea:
Against the Way Things Go at Gasser/Grunert (I really liked Joe Winter's piece, which investigated light and color by having viewers place pieces of colored construction paper under slightly varied light sources--2 variations of white light, 2 variations of yellow light. So, the color of the blue construction paper would look vastly different under the white light bulb than it did under the yellow light bulb, and slightly different under each type of white or yellow light. And each color had its own unique reaction. It was very simple and straightforward in its presentation, but still retained the phenomenological quality); Phoebe Washburn at Zach Feuer (she came and gave a talk at Brandeis this past semester, and I loved her/ her work. I didn't have the guts to talk to her then, and I didn't have the guts to talk to her when she was sitting in the office of Zach Feuer...); and Eraser at Magnanmetz Gallery (Shanti Grumbine's erased/ xacto-knifed newspaper pages were mesmerizing).
Later, we hit up MoMA and stayed until it closed (German Expressionists again, plus the Francis Alÿs, which was fantastic. It made me feel how I felt when I saw the Michelangelo Pistoletto show at the Philly museum, which is a feeling I still can't really describe).
Thursday was Lower East Side/ Chinatown day (because we were taking the Fung Wah back). The standout was Barbara DeGenevieve's Panhandler Project, which included a series of photos and an accompanying video. Essentially, the project consisted of her finding homeless black men and giving them food and a hotel room in exchange for their posing nude. The things involved in this piece!! I mean, race, class, gender, sexuality, exploitation discourse, the art historical history of the nude and objectification/ the gaze, on and on forever. But the beauty of the piece is the subtle suggestion of these things you need to think about in order to fully engage with it. It doesn't hit you over the head with an opinion or incite a blatant reaction outright--its ambiguity is what makes you think and feel the most.
Also:
"Lost" at Invisible-Exports (some interesting propositions, but nothing that really grabbed me); and Miriam Böhm, Rosy Keyser, and Erin Shirreff at Lisa Cooley (my favorites were Miriam Böhm's pictures of paintings, or pictures of pictures of paintings, which made me laugh while thinking about distance and remove)
The New Museum was under construction, so we got in for half price. The galleries that were open contained great things: "Charles Atlas: Joint's Array", which was gorgeous--an array of televisions all playing loops of video of Merce Cunningham's flexing and rotating joints, with a soundtrack of John Cage's ambient city sounds (touching/ poetic). There were moments when the images on a group of monitors would sync up for a brief interlude, and those moments took my breath away. Upstairs was "Ostalgia", a sweeping and eclectic survey of more than 30 artists from more than 20 countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. My favorite piece was Mladen Stilinović's Dictionary--Pain, which spanned the perimeter walls of a room--each panel contained a list of words with the original definitions scratched out, replaced by the word 'pain'). There was also a video piece about Marxist educational practices in East Berlin before the wall fell--there was propaganda-style footage of a class debating the exploitative nature of capitalism, as well as an interview with a former student/ party member who moved to Hungary before the wall fell. I would have liked to have stayed to watch the whole thing, and I wish I could remember the name of the artist! We also went up to the roof balcony and reflected for a bit (actually, my fear of heights and love of sweeping views mauled each other internally, but that's kind of like reflection...), and then I agonized over which books I could actually afford to buy out of the 12 or 15 I would have liked to horde. I chose 2: Inside the Painter's Studio (which has been on my Amazon wish list forever) and Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century (which was just too apt to pass up).
And then I took the weekend to recuperate/ re-organize my studio
We got in Tuesday afternoon and wandered over to Chelsea, where we visited a friend at James Cohan until the gallery closed. The show that's up right now, "Catch the Moon in the Water: Young Chinese Artists" was a pretty satisfyingly diverse survey of contemporary Chinese artists. My favorite piece was probably Hu Xiangqian's video/performance Xiangqian's Art Museum, which was hilarious and excellent and made me feel in good company conversationally. The piece consists of Hu Xiangqian standing in front of a microphone in a grassy patch in front of a brick wall, describing various works of art that he may or may not have seen, and which may or may not actually exist (some are well-known works that the audience could recognize, others he fabricates to sound real). It's pretty brilliant. I also couldn't take my eyes off of Chen Wei's photographs Records Hypnosis and House of Recovery. Really gorgeous. They kind of reminded me of Gregory Crewdson in a weird way.
The following day we finished up in Chelsea. The standout was Matthew Ronay's Between the Worlds at Andrea Rosen. OK, we walked into the gallery and encountered this box of black curtain. We had to circle the periphery to find the entrance, and when we did, it was like floating into an underwater cave/ forest/ dreamscape. Absolutely incredible--there were so many details to take in (screens of tiny carved wooden mushrooms; partially obscured light sources that added an undercurrent of magical/ holy energy to the space; owls that would suddenly appear on the periphery), but the thing I loved most was the simplicity of the materials. Everything was papier-mâché, fabric, carved wood, and simply applied paint. But simple choices in composition, color pallet and craftsmanship created this atmosphere that was completely engrossing. I wanted to live there.
Shows we also saw in Chelsea:
Against the Way Things Go at Gasser/Grunert (I really liked Joe Winter's piece, which investigated light and color by having viewers place pieces of colored construction paper under slightly varied light sources--2 variations of white light, 2 variations of yellow light. So, the color of the blue construction paper would look vastly different under the white light bulb than it did under the yellow light bulb, and slightly different under each type of white or yellow light. And each color had its own unique reaction. It was very simple and straightforward in its presentation, but still retained the phenomenological quality); Phoebe Washburn at Zach Feuer (she came and gave a talk at Brandeis this past semester, and I loved her/ her work. I didn't have the guts to talk to her then, and I didn't have the guts to talk to her when she was sitting in the office of Zach Feuer...); and Eraser at Magnanmetz Gallery (Shanti Grumbine's erased/ xacto-knifed newspaper pages were mesmerizing).
Later, we hit up MoMA and stayed until it closed (German Expressionists again, plus the Francis Alÿs, which was fantastic. It made me feel how I felt when I saw the Michelangelo Pistoletto show at the Philly museum, which is a feeling I still can't really describe).
Thursday was Lower East Side/ Chinatown day (because we were taking the Fung Wah back). The standout was Barbara DeGenevieve's Panhandler Project, which included a series of photos and an accompanying video. Essentially, the project consisted of her finding homeless black men and giving them food and a hotel room in exchange for their posing nude. The things involved in this piece!! I mean, race, class, gender, sexuality, exploitation discourse, the art historical history of the nude and objectification/ the gaze, on and on forever. But the beauty of the piece is the subtle suggestion of these things you need to think about in order to fully engage with it. It doesn't hit you over the head with an opinion or incite a blatant reaction outright--its ambiguity is what makes you think and feel the most.
Also:
"Lost" at Invisible-Exports (some interesting propositions, but nothing that really grabbed me); and Miriam Böhm, Rosy Keyser, and Erin Shirreff at Lisa Cooley (my favorites were Miriam Böhm's pictures of paintings, or pictures of pictures of paintings, which made me laugh while thinking about distance and remove)
The New Museum was under construction, so we got in for half price. The galleries that were open contained great things: "Charles Atlas: Joint's Array", which was gorgeous--an array of televisions all playing loops of video of Merce Cunningham's flexing and rotating joints, with a soundtrack of John Cage's ambient city sounds (touching/ poetic). There were moments when the images on a group of monitors would sync up for a brief interlude, and those moments took my breath away. Upstairs was "Ostalgia", a sweeping and eclectic survey of more than 30 artists from more than 20 countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. My favorite piece was Mladen Stilinović's Dictionary--Pain, which spanned the perimeter walls of a room--each panel contained a list of words with the original definitions scratched out, replaced by the word 'pain'). There was also a video piece about Marxist educational practices in East Berlin before the wall fell--there was propaganda-style footage of a class debating the exploitative nature of capitalism, as well as an interview with a former student/ party member who moved to Hungary before the wall fell. I would have liked to have stayed to watch the whole thing, and I wish I could remember the name of the artist! We also went up to the roof balcony and reflected for a bit (actually, my fear of heights and love of sweeping views mauled each other internally, but that's kind of like reflection...), and then I agonized over which books I could actually afford to buy out of the 12 or 15 I would have liked to horde. I chose 2: Inside the Painter's Studio (which has been on my Amazon wish list forever) and Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century (which was just too apt to pass up).
And then I took the weekend to recuperate/ re-organize my studio
Sunday, June 12, 2011
New York Excursion
I took a brief whirlwind sojourn to NYC on Friday and got back late Saturday night. I saw friends, Andrew Bird in Prospect Park (fo' free), and, of course, more art than was probably sane. Let's try to recall some of that art, shall we?
On Friday my bus got in 2 agonizingly long hours late, so I didn't have time to hit up William Kentridge at Marian Goodman or de Kooning at the Midtown Pace (but that is up through July 11th, so we'll see if I can't make it back in time...). I did get to MoMA (also fo' free) to see the German Expressionism show and a little taste of Cy Twombly sculpture. The German Expressionism show was really great. It confirmed 2 things, primarily: first, that reproductions are for shit (Kirchner's Street, Dresden contains blindingly vibrant orange, pink and acid green, which you would never know unless you are punched in the face by it upon entering the exhibition. In case my word choice is making my position unclear, I fully endorse being punched in the face by it--it's an enlightening experience); secondly, that the German Expressionists were all a bunch of creeps, and I adore them for it. Otto Dix especially. There is an entire wall of his drawings, and my only regret is not being taller so that I could examine the topmost row, which contains the most revolting image of a rotting, wormy skull I have ever glimpsed from below and wished I could stare directly in the eye. Also, I melted in front of a Schiele drawing, as is customary--it was a really simple sketch of a nude prostitute (natch), but her entire body consisted of maybe 3 lines--soul-wrenchingly elegant.
I was really excited about seeing some Cy Twombly sculptures. As you may know from looking at older posts, I'm a fan of his paintings, so the idea of seeing what he does in three dimensions was enticing to say the least. I always get this perverse kick out of seeing some unexpected aspect of an artist's practice--their sketchbook, drawings, anything that acts as a gateway into their mind during their process. There were only seven sculptures in the installation, which was kind of disappointing at first, but it ended up being exactly the kind of intimate glimpse I'd wanted.
Saturday started at the Met. Standing in a line that stretched through Cyprus and Mesopotamia, waiting to see "Savage Beauty", the Alexander McQueen show, was a surreal and mentally straining 30+ minutes of my life. I was basically seeing the show because my friend really wanted to see it, and I was happy to go along. There was also an element of morbid curiosity--I was skeptical, expecting to have a Rococo-level internal struggle about it. Let's see...how do I even begin to explain this...I have very mixed feelings about the seductiveness of opulence in art. I mean, who doesn't want to indulge in the maximum limits of pleasure and decadence? The catch is that indulgence seems to carry with it this element of social irresponsibility, ignorance, lack of deeper thought/ investigation, and I personally think there's a dangerous trap in endorsing the notion that unmitigated pleasure and beauty are what art is for or about. Plus, there was an unsettling level of consumerist energy in the air--standing on line, waiting to be funneled into the rooms that would contain our taste of consumable Culture for the day. But that's more of a treatise on the institutionalization of art than anything--the fashion aspect was just an extra ingredient that made me hyper-sensitive to the systems already at work. That said, I was completely blown away by the show. Everything was exquisite--curatorially and physically. The crafting of the atmosphere was really well done, and the intricate detail and careful craftsmanship that clearly went into each garment is something I couldn't help but admire and respect. I found myself identifying with Alexander McQueen--quotes by him were peppered throughout, interspersed among the labels for the pieces. That was a nice touch--it really gave a sense of his goals and mindset, which made him more relatable as an artist with a vision. My skepticism would make the occasional doubtful noise whenever there was some overarching thematic vein regarding beauty, the defiance of traditional beauty, beauty coming from within, etc. The fact is that he used the fashion industry as his medium. The fashion industry is not one concerned with inner beauty. I'm not really in the mood to get into a diatribe on body image right now, I just feel the need to assert my lack of patience for individuals who like to pretend that they're the exception within the larger machine.
After Alexander McQueen, I wandered next door to the relatively neglected Richard Serra drawing retrospective. I had a similar level of giddiness about seeing Richard Serra's drawings as I'd had about seeing Cy Twombly's sculptures, and I was not remotely disappointed. I was mesmerized the entire time. I was thrilled to look at his sketchbooks, and to read his list of verbs (which I transcribed into my own sketchbook, so that they could mingle with mine). I bought the exhibition catalog for good measure, hoping to figure out how the hell he made those deliciously textural oil stick pieces.
Anyway, after the Met, it was pouring rain outside, so we took a cab down to Chelsea and darned our rain-ready attire. First on the list was Donald Judd at David Zwirner, which was the perfect palate cleanser in a way. Austere, definitely. But I love Minimalism's uncanny ability to focus everything back to the bare essentials (form, color, material, line, space)
There was a surprise Sol Lewitt show at Paula Cooper right next door to Keith Haring at Gladstone. I saw both. Maybe I shouldn't be talking about them in the same paragraph--it places too much pressure on each of them...
OK, so Sol Lewitt at Paula Cooper: I only popped in for a minute because I was on a pretty tight schedule, but it was a classic Sol Lewitt project--the direction was written in the upper right corner of the wall (something like, 'all variations of 2 curved lines in a square') and the variations were methodically listed in corresponding drawings below. I appreciate Sol Lewitt. I feel like we probably have more in common than I think we do.
Keith Haring was a favorite of the day. There were three mural-sized drawings that the press release explained were "created in conjunction with a series of Bill T. Jones performances held in 1982 at The Kitchen...Executed in real time during Jones' dance performances--functioning as active set pieces with the sound of Haring's brushstrokes serving as the only audio accompaniment". My favorite thing about the show though was the display of selections from his early sketchbooks, which included notes, puns, and a whole series of drawings through which he tried to discern the best place in New York to draw penises. I wrote down something that made me feel in good company, mentally. It's like a geometry proof for art-making:
Kippenberger at Luhring Augustine made me wish I could have seen the pieces in their original context.
Richard Tuttle at Pace was kind of a let-down actually, in an obscure way that I can't quite articulate. I think I hyped Richard Tuttle up too much in my head and then it wasn’t the work I wanted to see…Maybe if I’d spent more time with the pieces. I did really appreciate the varied textures/materials/colors going on, and the vibe of the show was good--very invitational.
On Friday my bus got in 2 agonizingly long hours late, so I didn't have time to hit up William Kentridge at Marian Goodman or de Kooning at the Midtown Pace (but that is up through July 11th, so we'll see if I can't make it back in time...). I did get to MoMA (also fo' free) to see the German Expressionism show and a little taste of Cy Twombly sculpture. The German Expressionism show was really great. It confirmed 2 things, primarily: first, that reproductions are for shit (Kirchner's Street, Dresden contains blindingly vibrant orange, pink and acid green, which you would never know unless you are punched in the face by it upon entering the exhibition. In case my word choice is making my position unclear, I fully endorse being punched in the face by it--it's an enlightening experience); secondly, that the German Expressionists were all a bunch of creeps, and I adore them for it. Otto Dix especially. There is an entire wall of his drawings, and my only regret is not being taller so that I could examine the topmost row, which contains the most revolting image of a rotting, wormy skull I have ever glimpsed from below and wished I could stare directly in the eye. Also, I melted in front of a Schiele drawing, as is customary--it was a really simple sketch of a nude prostitute (natch), but her entire body consisted of maybe 3 lines--soul-wrenchingly elegant.
I was really excited about seeing some Cy Twombly sculptures. As you may know from looking at older posts, I'm a fan of his paintings, so the idea of seeing what he does in three dimensions was enticing to say the least. I always get this perverse kick out of seeing some unexpected aspect of an artist's practice--their sketchbook, drawings, anything that acts as a gateway into their mind during their process. There were only seven sculptures in the installation, which was kind of disappointing at first, but it ended up being exactly the kind of intimate glimpse I'd wanted.
Saturday started at the Met. Standing in a line that stretched through Cyprus and Mesopotamia, waiting to see "Savage Beauty", the Alexander McQueen show, was a surreal and mentally straining 30+ minutes of my life. I was basically seeing the show because my friend really wanted to see it, and I was happy to go along. There was also an element of morbid curiosity--I was skeptical, expecting to have a Rococo-level internal struggle about it. Let's see...how do I even begin to explain this...I have very mixed feelings about the seductiveness of opulence in art. I mean, who doesn't want to indulge in the maximum limits of pleasure and decadence? The catch is that indulgence seems to carry with it this element of social irresponsibility, ignorance, lack of deeper thought/ investigation, and I personally think there's a dangerous trap in endorsing the notion that unmitigated pleasure and beauty are what art is for or about. Plus, there was an unsettling level of consumerist energy in the air--standing on line, waiting to be funneled into the rooms that would contain our taste of consumable Culture for the day. But that's more of a treatise on the institutionalization of art than anything--the fashion aspect was just an extra ingredient that made me hyper-sensitive to the systems already at work. That said, I was completely blown away by the show. Everything was exquisite--curatorially and physically. The crafting of the atmosphere was really well done, and the intricate detail and careful craftsmanship that clearly went into each garment is something I couldn't help but admire and respect. I found myself identifying with Alexander McQueen--quotes by him were peppered throughout, interspersed among the labels for the pieces. That was a nice touch--it really gave a sense of his goals and mindset, which made him more relatable as an artist with a vision. My skepticism would make the occasional doubtful noise whenever there was some overarching thematic vein regarding beauty, the defiance of traditional beauty, beauty coming from within, etc. The fact is that he used the fashion industry as his medium. The fashion industry is not one concerned with inner beauty. I'm not really in the mood to get into a diatribe on body image right now, I just feel the need to assert my lack of patience for individuals who like to pretend that they're the exception within the larger machine.
After Alexander McQueen, I wandered next door to the relatively neglected Richard Serra drawing retrospective. I had a similar level of giddiness about seeing Richard Serra's drawings as I'd had about seeing Cy Twombly's sculptures, and I was not remotely disappointed. I was mesmerized the entire time. I was thrilled to look at his sketchbooks, and to read his list of verbs (which I transcribed into my own sketchbook, so that they could mingle with mine). I bought the exhibition catalog for good measure, hoping to figure out how the hell he made those deliciously textural oil stick pieces.
Richard Serra's "Verb List Compilation: Actions to Relate to Oneself"
[1967-1968]
It's really strange to go through and compare them with my words. His are so sculpturally oriented/ practical by comparison. I should compile mine into a cohesive list...[1967-1968]
Anyway, after the Met, it was pouring rain outside, so we took a cab down to Chelsea and darned our rain-ready attire. First on the list was Donald Judd at David Zwirner, which was the perfect palate cleanser in a way. Austere, definitely. But I love Minimalism's uncanny ability to focus everything back to the bare essentials (form, color, material, line, space)
There was a surprise Sol Lewitt show at Paula Cooper right next door to Keith Haring at Gladstone. I saw both. Maybe I shouldn't be talking about them in the same paragraph--it places too much pressure on each of them...
OK, so Sol Lewitt at Paula Cooper: I only popped in for a minute because I was on a pretty tight schedule, but it was a classic Sol Lewitt project--the direction was written in the upper right corner of the wall (something like, 'all variations of 2 curved lines in a square') and the variations were methodically listed in corresponding drawings below. I appreciate Sol Lewitt. I feel like we probably have more in common than I think we do.
Keith Haring was a favorite of the day. There were three mural-sized drawings that the press release explained were "created in conjunction with a series of Bill T. Jones performances held in 1982 at The Kitchen...Executed in real time during Jones' dance performances--functioning as active set pieces with the sound of Haring's brushstrokes serving as the only audio accompaniment". My favorite thing about the show though was the display of selections from his early sketchbooks, which included notes, puns, and a whole series of drawings through which he tried to discern the best place in New York to draw penises. I wrote down something that made me feel in good company, mentally. It's like a geometry proof for art-making:
"Composition is defined by form • form is defined by boundaries • boundaries are defined by relationships • relationships are defined by isolated forms • isolated forms are defined by the relationships between boundaries • the relationships between boundaries is realized by composition • composition is realized by isolation • isolation is defined by association • association is realized by observation • observation defines composition • composition is defined by boundaries • boundaries are defined by limitations • limitations are defined by relationships between isolated forms • relationships between isolated forms existing within limitations and realizing boundaries defined by observation defines composition • composition is realized by association/ observation within given limitations/ boundaries"Next was Jack Smith at the other Gladstone, a really excellent suggestion from one of my professors. My favorite parts were the audio piece that greeted you at the entrance: a diatribe against the institutionalization/ commodification of art, and a text/audio/video piece by A.L. Steiner that underscored Jack Smith's aggressive vision for a more radical world.
--Keith Haring, 2/5/79
Kippenberger at Luhring Augustine made me wish I could have seen the pieces in their original context.
Richard Tuttle at Pace was kind of a let-down actually, in an obscure way that I can't quite articulate. I think I hyped Richard Tuttle up too much in my head and then it wasn’t the work I wanted to see…Maybe if I’d spent more time with the pieces. I did really appreciate the varied textures/materials/colors going on, and the vibe of the show was good--very invitational.
Li Songsong at the other Pace was pretty awesome—it reminded me of what I love about paint, which is something I think I’ve needed to be reminded of lately, so I was happy to have that.
By the time I got to see Louise Bourgeois' fabric works at Cheim & Read, I was running kind of late, so I don’t feel like I gave enough attention/ energy to it. They were mostly smaller pieces with a very quiet presence about them (maybe because they're made of fabric), except for one in the back that had a more violent energy--it was a dark gourd-shaped object being punctured by many sewing pins. I liked that one.
I definitely rushed through Robert Mapplethorpe's “50 Americans” at Sean Kelly. I was stressed about possibly missing my bus. I was aware of thinking about how devastatingly hot Lisa Lyon is, and that the show itself was kind of a cool concept…that’s about it.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Last-Minute Recollections
So I'm back in Boston, and before classes start up again, I want to mention some of the note-worthy art experiences I had over break.
I took a day trip to New York to go back to MoMA (last time I only had 20 minutes to see the Ab Ex show before I had to catch my bus). SO glad I did! The sheer quantity of paintings in that show is astounding. During our journey through the show, my roommate asked me which was my favorite abstract expressionist, and I must have given her at least five different answers. "Oh man, JOAN MITCHELL, OK, she's my favorite"..."Oh no wait! Sam Francis..." "Mmmmm, DeKooning"...""OH GOD A ROOM OF ROTHKOS!!!! Alright, Rothko might really be my favorite..." And so on for a seemingly endless stretch of rooms. Endless in a good way-- it could have gone on forever, and I still would have been captivated. (The Ab Ex show is up until April 25th, so you have plenty of time to go and be seduced by paint. Just...please don't be a tool and pose obnoxiously in front of the Barnett Newman...we witnessed that happen, and it's the only time I've ever felt really happy about someone being yelled at by the guard)
Also at MoMA that day, we got to see On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, which incorporated a pleasing array of media. There were many fantastic pieces by many amazing artists (our friend Ms. Schneeman even made an appearance), but the one that stood out most for me was actually the one at the entrance, Just a Bit More by Ranjani Shettar, which consisted of pigmented beeswax balls held together by tea-dyed thread. I got yelled at for trying to take a picture, but here are some photos someone else was allowed to take, brought to you via the interwebs:
I stared and walked around this piece for about 15 minutes (true, I was waiting for my roommate to return from the bathroom, but it was still pretty damn captivating regardless). I started to see the slight variations in color that created a sort of journey for the beeswax balls, which started to feel like matter or water particles, or networks, or webs. I really really wanted to touch it or duck under and stand amongst them. I'm pretty sure I would've gotten more than yelled at if I'd done so though...(You can see On Line through February 7th)
Oh yeah! On our way upstairs to see On Line, we were distracted by the sound of piano music. It turned out to be Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on "Ode to Joy" for a Prepared Piano, a performance piece by artist team Allora & Calzadilla in which hired professional pianists stand in a hole cut in the center of a grand piano and play the song upside down and in reverse, while simultaneously roaming around through the crowd of onlookers (the piano is on wheels). It was very funny, and it certainly caught the attention of essentially everyone in the museum. I took a picture of the crowds lining the stairwell balconies, looking down on the performance:
and here's a visual of the actual piano-playing:
On Friday, I went with my Mom to the PMA to see the Michelangelo Pistoletto show, which was a pretty excellent retrospective. My favorites were the mirror paintings that implicate the viewer as a victim/ co-conspirator in the action:
Vietnam
Man Shooting
Noose
Cage
and Orchestra of Rags:
For this piece, tea kettles are surrounded by walls of rags and covered with a layer of Plexiglas. When they go off, their trilling disrupts the space, and the condensation from the steam creates shapes on the Plexiglass. We were lucky we got to see it in action--the guard said they only turn the kettles on twice a day!
There's also an auxiliary installation devoted to Pistoletto's work with Cittadellarte, an organization that he founded in Biella, Italy in 1998, which focuses on projects related to art, economics, education, politics, ecology, and communication, fueled by his belief that "art is at the center of a responsible transformation of society". The separate gallery features his Love Difference Tables, which have traveled to cities all over the world in order to invite discussion and collaboration with various other institutions.
The PMA has been co-sponsoring various events and worshops in conjunction with the exhibition. You can read all about it at the PMA's website. So I guess that kind of makes up for not being allowed to touch Structure for Talking While Standing Up or Lunch Painting...
(All things Pistoletto end tomorrow! Go see them NOW!)
I took a day trip to New York to go back to MoMA (last time I only had 20 minutes to see the Ab Ex show before I had to catch my bus). SO glad I did! The sheer quantity of paintings in that show is astounding. During our journey through the show, my roommate asked me which was my favorite abstract expressionist, and I must have given her at least five different answers. "Oh man, JOAN MITCHELL, OK, she's my favorite"..."Oh no wait! Sam Francis..." "Mmmmm, DeKooning"...""OH GOD A ROOM OF ROTHKOS!!!! Alright, Rothko might really be my favorite..." And so on for a seemingly endless stretch of rooms. Endless in a good way-- it could have gone on forever, and I still would have been captivated. (The Ab Ex show is up until April 25th, so you have plenty of time to go and be seduced by paint. Just...please don't be a tool and pose obnoxiously in front of the Barnett Newman...we witnessed that happen, and it's the only time I've ever felt really happy about someone being yelled at by the guard)
Also at MoMA that day, we got to see On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, which incorporated a pleasing array of media. There were many fantastic pieces by many amazing artists (our friend Ms. Schneeman even made an appearance), but the one that stood out most for me was actually the one at the entrance, Just a Bit More by Ranjani Shettar, which consisted of pigmented beeswax balls held together by tea-dyed thread. I got yelled at for trying to take a picture, but here are some photos someone else was allowed to take, brought to you via the interwebs:
I stared and walked around this piece for about 15 minutes (true, I was waiting for my roommate to return from the bathroom, but it was still pretty damn captivating regardless). I started to see the slight variations in color that created a sort of journey for the beeswax balls, which started to feel like matter or water particles, or networks, or webs. I really really wanted to touch it or duck under and stand amongst them. I'm pretty sure I would've gotten more than yelled at if I'd done so though...(You can see On Line through February 7th)Oh yeah! On our way upstairs to see On Line, we were distracted by the sound of piano music. It turned out to be Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on "Ode to Joy" for a Prepared Piano, a performance piece by artist team Allora & Calzadilla in which hired professional pianists stand in a hole cut in the center of a grand piano and play the song upside down and in reverse, while simultaneously roaming around through the crowd of onlookers (the piano is on wheels). It was very funny, and it certainly caught the attention of essentially everyone in the museum. I took a picture of the crowds lining the stairwell balconies, looking down on the performance:
and here's a visual of the actual piano-playing:
On Friday, I went with my Mom to the PMA to see the Michelangelo Pistoletto show, which was a pretty excellent retrospective. My favorites were the mirror paintings that implicate the viewer as a victim/ co-conspirator in the action:
VietnamMan ShootingNooseCageand Orchestra of Rags:
For this piece, tea kettles are surrounded by walls of rags and covered with a layer of Plexiglas. When they go off, their trilling disrupts the space, and the condensation from the steam creates shapes on the Plexiglass. We were lucky we got to see it in action--the guard said they only turn the kettles on twice a day!
There's also an auxiliary installation devoted to Pistoletto's work with Cittadellarte, an organization that he founded in Biella, Italy in 1998, which focuses on projects related to art, economics, education, politics, ecology, and communication, fueled by his belief that "art is at the center of a responsible transformation of society". The separate gallery features his Love Difference Tables, which have traveled to cities all over the world in order to invite discussion and collaboration with various other institutions.
The PMA has been co-sponsoring various events and worshops in conjunction with the exhibition. You can read all about it at the PMA's website. So I guess that kind of makes up for not being allowed to touch Structure for Talking While Standing Up or Lunch Painting...(All things Pistoletto end tomorrow! Go see them NOW!)
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