Find me over at ARCHITECT Magazine.
Where I take a look at what’s going down with the sprawling MOCA architecture show that may be on the verge of being killed — and the architects who’ll be left holding the bag if it is.
Calendar. 05.01.13.
A painting by Zak Smith. From the artist’s solo exhibit, Maximum Everything Always, at Fredericks & Freiser in New York. Opens Thursday, in Chelsea. (Image courtesy of the artist and Fredericks & Freiser.)
- NYC: I, YOU, WE, at the Whitney Museum. Through September 1st. (This show is totally bangin’. GO SEE IT.)
- NYC: Anselm Kiefer: The Morgenthau Project, at Gagosian Gallery on 21st Street. Through June 8, in Chelsea.
- NYC: Nearby, a group show with Debra Bermingham, Michael Cline, Siobhan McBride, and Dushko Petrovich, at DC Moore Gallery. Opens Thursday, in Chelsea.
- NYC: James Esber, Fourteen Drawings and One Painting Perpetually Shown, at Pierogi. Through May 26, in Williamsburg.
- NYC: Kim Dorland, Ghosts of You and Me, at Mike Weiss Gallery. Opens Thursday, in Chelsea.
- NYC: Garrett Pruter, Interiors, at Charles Bank Gallery. Through May 26, on the Lower East Side.
- NYC: Sofia Maldonado, Into Gray, at Magnan Metz. Through June 1, in Chelsea.
- NYC: The Vibrant Future of the Creative Economy: Real World Value and Arts Thinking, part of the Ideas City Festival, at Old School. This Friday from 11am-5pm, in SoHo.
- St. Louis: Bad at Sports, at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Through Sunday.
- Portland, Ore.: Tools Folds Flight at Ampersand Gallery. Through May 26.
- L.A.: William Powhida, Bill by Bill, at Charlie James Gallery. Through June 8, in Chinatown.
- Pasadena: Beyond Brancusi: The Space of Sculpture, at the Norton Simon Museum. Through January 6.
Photo Diary: Teach-In at Cypress College Art Gallery.
Costumes worn by the Nationwide Museum Mascot Project (more about them here). I really dug these as pieces of sculpture.
A photo shows the SFMOMA mascot working the museum’s lobby.
With that crafty basket head and those plaid paints, the MoMA mascot was the design antithesis of its staidly modern namesake. (And way freakier than the museum’s Martin Kippenberger.) Would pay cash money to see this one wandering around the museum’s architecture gallery.
The MOCA mascot. The cardboard sign is a nice touch.
Plus: Marshall Astor’s Portrait of An Eye. The circle of videos was strangely absorbing (especially the ape playing the drums).
Okay, so I’m embarrassingly late to this exhibit. Unfortunately, it already closed. But if you live in the vicinity of northern Orange County, Cypress College Art Gallery has a student show opening on May 9.
Photo Diary: Susanna Heller at Magnan Metz in NYC.
From top: Rolling Thunder (Night for Day), from 2013; a series of sketches; and Waiting for Dawn, 2011.
LAST CHANCE: There is an absolutely stunning show of paintings by Susanna Heller on view at Magnan Metz in Chelsea. The show includes her signature brooding landscapes, but there are also a couple of walls of sketches (worth examining) as well as a suite of works that chronicle her husband’s illness. In these latter pieces, I almost felt as if I could smell the rubbing alcohol and hear the blip of the heart monitor. The machinery in these images seems to have a disconcerting life of its own. I simply couldn’t look away.
The works are absolutely staggering for their intensity, intimacy and visual punch. Do not miss this show.
Susanna Heller, Phantom Pain, is on view at Magnan Metz through this Saturday, April 20.
Calendar. 04.17.13.
Only the best art video…ever. (Via Hyperallergic.)
- L.A.: Crossfader: Listening like a Sonidero, with DJ Toy Selectah and Josh Kun, at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. This Thursday at 7pm, in Santa Monica.
- L.A.: Donuts and Clocks, a 24-hour performance installation with Dawn Kasper, held at ForYourArt, during the 24-hour screening of Christian Marclay’s The Clock, at LACMA (righ across the street.) This Saturday starting at noon, in Mid-Wilshire.
- L.A.: William Powhida, Bill by Bill, at Charlie James Gallery. Opens this Saturday at 7pm, in Chinatown.
- L.A.: David Korty, at Night Gallery. Opens this Saturday at 7pm, in downtown.
- Chicago: Untitled Feminist Show, by the Young Jean Lee Theater Company, at MCA Chicago. Opens Thursday. Buy tickets in advance.
- NYC: Sarah Halpern, Paper Plexus, at Microscope. Opens Saturday at 6pm, in Bushwick.
- NYC: Artists-in-Residence Open Studios, at the Studio Museum in Harlem. This Sunday from 1-6pm.
- Water Mill, N.Y.: Alice Aycock Drawings: Some Stories are Worth Repeating, at the Parrish Museum (in partnership with the Grey Art Gallery at NYU). Opens Sunday, in the Hamptons.
- Plus: Kill Screen is organizing a conference related to video games in Brooklyn for May 11th. Get the deets here.
Miscellany. 04.14.13.
MoMA to the American Folk Art Museum: Drop Dead. (Photo by Dan Nguyen/Flickr.)
- MoMA, a museum that has built its reputation on promoting modern architecture, has announced plans to raze the old American Folk Art Museum building designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien…to put up more retail or another restaurant. Because what New York rilly needs is more retail or another restaurant.
- Part of the museum’s crazy pants rationale for removing this critically-acclaimed building is because the Folk Art Museum’s façade doesn’t match MoMA’s business-like glass skin. Ned Cramer in ARCHITECT writes: “It’s as though the board voted to incinerate a Gerhard Richter painting because it didn’t match the floor tile or fit through the doorway.”
- Critic Martin Filler has described the destruction as an act of “cultural vandalism.”
- Jerry Saltz, for one, hated the building — as he said back in 2011 — saying it was totally inhospitable to art. (I have to agree: while I’m in love with the façade, the gallery spaces were kind of a hot mess.)
- A great preview of the next round of Pacific Standard Time exhibitions: this time, it’s all about SoCal architecture!
- Is it me, or does this proposed building plan for the Domino Sugar Factory in New York look like a giant, 3D roller tag?
- From Mark Lamster, a very interesting bit about Phyllis Lambert — the woman behind New York’s iconic Seagram Building.
- Good slide show on the work of Oscar Niemeyer. This is a trip I would love to make.
- Hopi masks auctioned in Paris spark controversy and outrage. Comparing the eyes of a sacred mask to the logo of a Renault is pretty dang grody. European colonial attitudes: 1. Indians: 0.
- The decapitated Margaret Thatcher statue. I love everything about this story.
- Cracks and settling and bits that pop: the challenges of maintaining L.A.’s Watts Towers.
- Sensational art gets thoughtful consideration: Mary Louise Schumacher writes about Niki Johnson’s controversial condom portrait of Pope Benedict XVI.
- Coupla must-read reviews: Ben Davis on Basquiat and Christian Viveros-Faune on LaToya Ruby Frazier’s work at the Brooklyn Museum. Awesome writing.
- Crazy paintings that end up in museums, Frye edition. (Alternate story line: rich donor liked it, therefore it now shows in a museum.)
- Ripping off the artist: Art.com and Allposters.com, selling bits of art books as their own.
- Critical Riot has an open call for papers related to art, race and critical discourse — as well as pieces tied to the Ken Johnson review of Now Dig This!
- Sixty percent of PAC money is donated by 132 people. A must-watch TED talk from Lawrence Lessig.
- Children apprehended by immigration authorities often face judges without benefit of a lawyer. A staggering story.
- Shooting music videos in slums. It’s a thing. (Pairs well with the trend of street artists redecorating slums.)
- How the chess set got its look and feel. (Architect.)
Find me at KCRW.
This week’s awesomeness: 323 Projects, a gallery that’s nothing more than a phone line. This month and next, you can can dial in and get a few things off your chest to a close friend or family member — all courtesy of the artists JEFF&GORDON (that’s them, top left).
My story is now up at KCRW. Please click through! Find 323 projects here.
Calendar. 04.10.13.
A work in progress by Michael Ballou. Part of the artist’s solo exhibit Raw/Cooked: Michael Ballou, at the Brooklyn Museum. Opens Friday. (Photo by Pierce Jackson.)
- NYC: Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store (on the sixth floor) and Mouse Museum and Ray Gun (in the atrium), at the Museum of Modern Art. Opens Sunday.
- NYC: Photography and the American Civil War, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Through September 2.
- NYC: Tim Hetherington, Inner Light: Portraits of the Blind, Sierra Leone 1999-2003, at Yossi Milo. Opens Thursday, in Chelsea.
- NYC: B. Wurtz, History Works, at Bureau. Opens Sunday, at 6pm.
- Miami: Hernan Bas, Boys in Peril?, at Fredric Snitzer. Opens Friday at 7pm, in the Wynwood Arts District.
- L.A.: Takashi Murakami, Arhat, at Blum & Poe. Opens Saturday at 6pm, in Culver City.
- L.A.: Jennifer Pastor, at Regen Projects. Opens Thursday, in Hollywood.
- L.A.: Ernest Cole: Photographer, at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. Through July 7, in Westwood.
- S.F.: Amusement: New Works from Skewville, at White Walls Gallery. Opens Saturday.