Where High Gets Low.
Donald Judd’s Untitled, wood boxes from 1976, at the Dia: Beacon. (Image by the Dia Art Foundation, via ArtInfo.)
A boutique display window in SoHo. Making me think those Judds in Beacon would look smashing with some slutty heels on them. (Photo by Ben V.)
Daily Time Slices for MF, 2010, by Laurie Frick. Part of the solo exhibit Sleep Patterns at Edward Cella Art + Architecture in Los Angeles. (Image courtesy of Edward Cella; via the Los Angeles Times.)
SoundSuit in Motion, by Nick Cave. Part of the exhibit Nick Cave: Meet Me At the Center of the Earth, at the Seattle Art Museum, which opens on Thursday. (Image courtesy of SAM.)
First, A Little Self-Promotion: I’m speaking on a panel about the changing media landscape this Wednesday, March 9 at 6pm at the UJA in New York City, as part of an event organized by Smith College. The line-up includes lady journos from the New York Times, ABC, CNN and the AP. Admission is $30 ($20 if you’re a member of the Smith College Club of New York). If you’re into all things media, please come!
From Jon Rafman’s series The 9 Eyes of Google Street View, Berwick Rd. Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, which was on view as part of the exhibit Free, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, until late this last January.
Last month, I launched a semi-regular series devoted to the way the human figure is depicted in contemporary art. This month, I continue it by looking at a number of works I’ve seen recently in museums, galleries and even on the street.
I want to begin this particular round-up with a look at Jon Rafman’s work, which is pictured above, and explores, among other things, the nature of travel. Rafman has ‘traveled’ the world through Google Street View and brought back the screen shots to prove it. This series along with the rest of the show, raised a lot of questions about the future of our online lives: Namely, will we eventually experience art, travel, and relationships exclusively online? How will the virtual experience differ from real-life? How is our view of other people colored by the internet? Certainly, we’re still figuring out the answers to some of those questions. But Rafman’s found imagery speaks to the abilities as well as the limitations of the web.
Find other images after the jump. All photos by me unless otherwise noted.
Continue reading ‘The Figure in Contemporary Art: Miscellaneous Round-Up.’
A piece of Gordon Matta-Clark’s graffiti truck, from 1973. Matta-Clark was inspired by graffiti in the early ’70s — before it had caught on with the mainstream art world. (Photo by C-M.)
The 1970s were not kind to New York. There was a middle class exodus to the suburbs. The Son of Sam was terrorizing the town. The city was bankrupt. Which, in a way, made the place an ideal spot for artists — who could take over empty SoHo warehouses for dance performances and attack derelict buildings in the Bronx with chainsaws, all without anybody batting an eyelash. The current David Zwirner exhibit 112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970-74) examines this history — specifically, the story behind the alternative arts spot that gave rise to a number of figures, among them sculptor and conceptualist Gordon Matta-Clark. (Most interestingly, he was able to make a real live cherry tree grow in 112′s by-all-accounts-nasty basement.)
For those who relish examining a period when the city was entirely bereft of velvet ropes and gaggles of Sex and the City wannabes, this is definitely the show for you. It is heavy on Matta-Clark, containing evidence of some of his early building slicing experiments, but also has some compelling sculptures by Richard Nonas and Alan Senet. In addition, to anyone interested in the history of graffiti, the show is an absolute must-see. Matta-Clark had a heavy duty interest in the art form — letting Bronx teens tag up his van and documenting early tags on the subways in pieces he called Graffiti Photoglyphs. (See the photos below.)
You’ve got until the end of the week to catch the show. 112 Greene Street runs through this Saturday, Feb. 12.
Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: ’112 Greene Street’ at David Zwirner Gallery, in NYC.’
Untitled (5×5) (Sin Título [5x5]), 2006 by Alejandro Almanza Pereda at El Museo del Barrio. (Photo by C-M.)
Along with the rest of the world, I’ve spent the past week riveted by what’s happening in Egypt. Partially because both my parents come from countries where oppressive dictatorships have had their run of things. And partially because there is something exhilarating about watching people come together to say, Enough. Naturally, as today’s violent clashes showed, this will be no velvet revolution. Mubarak has run the country under an autocratic state-of-emergency fiat since he took office in 1981. Opposition members are routinely harassed, arrested and tortured. Mubarak, it appears, isn’t about to just slip quietly into the night.
All of these things were on my mind yesterday as I made my way around El Museo del Barrio‘s newly reorganized permanent collection galleries and came across the above piece by Alejandro Almanza Pereda: a row of light bulbs topped by a heavy concrete block. I’m not always a fan of his work (which can get grandiosely overwrought), but this piece seemed to speak to the protest zeitgeist.
Most interestingly, the museum has a program in which groups of local high school students develop the wall text that goes along with the works. Here is what Noel Vega, Rey Flores, Jordan Vega, Aaron Jones and Charmaine Sloan, from Emily N. Carey High, had to say about Pereda’s sculpture:
Alejandro described the light bulbs as the soul of the structure. Just like a building where columns hold up a structure, the bulbs are the columns and when lit it gives an allegory of stress and time. We feel that Alejandro’s pieces are very unique. They are interesting because of the way he sets up the heavy materials on top of lighter materials that anyone wouldn’t think would hold it up. The purpose of his work, we think, is to show that a single thing can’t hold up something heavy but if it’s in a group anything is possible.
Nicely done.
Canoe, WH ’10, a found-wood sculpture by R.L. Croft at Occoquan Creek in Prince William County, Va. See a local story on another work here. Or better yet, visit Croft’s website. (Image courtesy of R.L. Croft.)
Sculpture of an Andean mummy — a work of prisoner art. (Photos by C-M.)
While running around the northern highland city of Chachapoyas, we picked up a small sculpture of a skeleton posed as pre-Columbian mummy. (Many Andean cultures placed the dead in a fetal position prior to burial.) Along with numerous other crafts, the local souvenir stands feature boundless numbers of these mummy carvings in an array of sizes. Many of them are quite crude, but in a small shop near the market, we found one that was quite beautifully done, with a fine attention to detail and proportion. It’s every last vertebrae had been skillfully rendered and there was something poignant about its expression.
I asked the lady who managed the souvenir shop if she knew the name of the artisan who crafted it. She did not. These sculptures, it turns out, are crafted at a nearby maximum security prison, otherwise known as El Penal de Huancas. Apparently, the place is loaded with all manner of unsavory murders, rapists and narcos. A couple of days after we bought the piece, we happened to pay a visit to Huancas and went to see the prison. (From the exterior, since it wasn’t a visitation day.) And I tried to imagine the hands from which my little sculpture emerged.
Pix of the prison after the jump.
Continue reading ‘Photo Diary: Andean mummies and Peruvian prisons.’
Now up at WNYC. Complete with proprietary Marina Abramovic Heads Rating System™.
Happy New Year, everyone. And thanks for reading.
xox,
C.
