Camera No. 1 by Miroslav Tichý. Photo by Roman Buxbaum. Part of the exhibit Tichý, at the International Center of Photography in NYC, through May 9. (Image courtesy of ICP.)
- In NYC: A month-long screening of Helen Leavitt’s 15-minute film, In the Street, on the anniversary of her death, at Laurence Miller Gallery, starting today.
- In NYC: Boris Hoppek and Alex Diamond: Damage Control at Factory Fresh, opens Friday at 8pm.
- In Philly: Dead Flowers, a group show, at Vox Populi, opens Friday at 6pm.
- In Portland, Ore.: Melody Owen, Letters from Switzerland, at Elizabeth Leach, opens Thursday at 6pm.
- In L.A.: Ali Prosh, Travelers’ Suite, at The Company, opens Saturday at 6pm.
- In L.A.: Rachel Whiteread: Drawings, at the Hammer Museum, through April 25.
- In L.A.: A signing with Uglydoll creators David Horvath and Sun-min Kim, at Giant Robot, this Saturday at 3pm.
- In Toronto: Ryan Dineen and Jacques Oule, Cityscrapes, at Show & Tell Gallery, opens Friday.
Self Immolation in Afghanistan: A Cry For Help, by Stephanie Sinclair. Part of 2010, the Whitney Biennial, opening today in NYC. (Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum.)
- In L.A.: American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life 1765-1915, at LACMA, opens Sunday.
- In L.A.: David Navas at Garage Gallery, opens Saturday at 8pm.
- In Chicago: William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, at the Art Institute of Chicago, opens Saturday.
- In Chicago: Matt Saunders, Parallel Plot, at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, opens Sunday at 4pm.
- In NYC: The Five Year Anniversary Show at Jonathan LeVine, opens Feb. 27 at 7pm.
- In NYC: Konstantinos Stamatiou, Refused Reused, at Black & White, opens today at 6pm.
- In NYC: Projects 92: Yin Xiuzhen atMoMA, through May 24. This looks amazing.
- In Rome: Auschwitz Through the Lens of the SS, a photographic exhibit, at the Complesso del Vittoriano. The New Yorker had an incredible story about these pictures back in 2008.
- In Tokyo: Medicine and Art at the Mori Art Museum, through Feb. 28. More on that show here.
And it’s pretty funny.
***
Update: Unfortunately, the Kinkade profile has been blocked by PS1. But here’s a screengrab of part of the cached page, in case you’re dying to see what it looked like.
Untitled Sound Suit, by Nick Cave. From the exhibit, Meet Me at the Center of the Earth, at UCLA’s Fowler Museum, through May 30. (Image courtesy of the Fowler, via LAT.)
- In L.A.: Art Los Angeles Contemporary kicks off at the Pacific Design center this Thursday.
- In L.A. & Madrid: Alexandre Arrechea, the City that Stopped Dancing, at Casado Santapau in Madrid, opens today. Plus: Arrechea and Alejandro Almanza Pareda at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, opens Thursday; artists reception on Sunday, Jan. 31st, at 2 p.m.
- In Miami: La Colección Jumex at the Bass Museum of Art, through March 14.
- In NYC: The Visible Vagina, at Francis Naumann (open Wednesday) and David Nolan (opens Thursday).
- In NYC: Bruce Conner at Susan Inglett, opens Thursday.
- In NYC: David Maisel, Library of Dust, at Von Lintel, through Feb. 27.
- In NYC: Culture Wars, an art trivia competition hosted by Art21, at the 92nd Street Y, this Thursday at 6:30pm. Should be nerdarrific.
- In NYC: Jef Aerosol, All Shook Up, at Ad Hoc Art in Brooklyn, opens Friday at 6 p.m.
- In Milan: Os Gemeos at Galleria Patricia Mocida, through March 25.
Southern California, 1985 by Henry Wessel. Part of the exhibit The View From Here at SFMOMA. (Image courtesy of SFMOMA.)
Guggenheim Museum. (Image courtesy of Ruud Raats.)
Hey Folks: I’m cooking up a little mischief over at WNYC. For the upcoming Tino Sehgal exhibit at the Guggenheim — which will consist entirely of “constructed situations” (a.k.a. performances) — we’re inviting one person to join me at the press preview on January 28th to take in the madness and then tell us what you think about it. It will no doubt be incredibly weird. Sign up at WNYC’s website by leaving a compelling, pithy comment on why it should be you.
xox,
C.
Extra olives with a light dusting of acetone, please: Gabriel Orozco’s pizza crust, part of Working Tables, 2000-2005. See the piece in context here. (Photo courtesy of MoMA.)
If there is something that absolutely inspires the art nerd in me, it’s the totally whacked out materials used by some artists. Blood. PeaRoeFoam. A stuffed angora goat. Which is why I was quite excited to find a pizza crust in the Gabriel Orozco retrospective when I visited MoMA last week. The above crust, part of the piece Working Tables, resides in the museum’s stately permanent collection. (It is very important crust.) Which got me wondering: what exactly does a museum do with crust? Is it Orozco’s original crust? Or is it replaced regularly with fresh crust? And what about crust munchers like roaches and mice?
For answers to these burning questions, we turned to MoMA’s associate sculpture conservator Roger Griffith, who has worked in the museum’s conservation lab for more than a decade. Griffith, it turns out, has some experience dealing with art objects made of food. Among them, Janine Antoni’s Gnaw , an installation that consists of 600 lbs. each of chocolate and lard that has been gnawed by the artist. (No doubt a joy to maintain). He was also the man in charge of caring for a small block of artist-made cheese fabricated from human breast milk at a temporary MoMA exhibit several years ago. (”My job was to make sure it didn’t mold,” says Griffith. “I would just take it out of the fridge, pat it down, salt it and put it back.”) He was kind enough to give us the lowdown on pizza à la Orozco:
- The Crust is O.G.: This is Orozco’s original crust which has been with the museum since MoMA acquired it in 2005 from the Marian Goodman Gallery.
- It’s Part Plastic: Part of the reason this crust (which is at least five years old) still looks good — and hasn’t been attacked by critters — is because it was treated by the museum’s staff upon arrival. When MoMA acquired Working Tables, the crust was a normal, everyday crust. But once it entered the museum’s conservation lab, it was bathed in acetone (”to remove the fatty acids, the parts that cause degradation,” explains Griffith) and then soaked in a solution of acrylic known as B-72. The acetone dissolves the fat; the acrylic replaces it. To keep it looking natural (acrylic has a tendency to shine), the conservation department spritzed it with an acetone mist to eliminate unnatural sheen. Voilà! Plasticized pizza dough that looks totally real, yet barely ages. (Like some Upper East Side ladies I know…)
- It’s Stored in Highly Secure Packaging: When the crust isn’t on display, it’s put away in marva-seal, which according to this website, is the same packaging that the U.S. military uses to wrap its MREs (or Meals Ready to Eat). Which strikes me as incredibly handy, because if all hells break loose, we can always drop Orozco’s crust somewhere over Afghanistan — solving all manner of foreign policy woes.
Joe, by Richard Serra at The Pulitzer in St. Louis. See more frosty goodness on the museum’s Flickr feed. (Image courtesy of The Pulitzer.)
Maibild, 1925 by Paul Klee. Part of the don’t-even-think-of-missing it exhibit Bauhaus 1919-33: Workshops for Modernity at New York’s MoMA. (Image courtesy of MoMA.)
