Art Fag City

Updating RSS Feeds

2007-04-11T16:52:00.000-07:00

Olav Westphalen, Extremely site-unspecific sculpture, 2000
Image via: Public Art Fund

If you're reading this message, chances are you haven't updated my new RSS feed to your newsreader. To do so just follow this link, and in about two seconds you'll be set up! Those who have missed a few of the latests posts will be sore indeed: From the loins of youtube, Making Vindaloo, a soft core bollywood music video, and my the latest Reviewing the Reviews, whidh discusses the New York Times piece Selling Himself and Prints Too. It's a lot to do at once, but I'll hazard a guess and say I think my readers can handle dry humping and the NYTimes at once.

Also note that I'll be closing this blog down shortly so all links here will simply redirect to Art Fag City.

Art Fag City Has A New Home

2007-03-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

Today we move to our new home and due to a bit of poor planning on our part some of you have to move with us. Specifically I am speaking to maybe 100 readers who subscribe to our current rss, as I did not set up a portable feed when I began blogging a year and a half ago. Don't worry though the change should take all of two seconds: simply add this link to your reader, remove the blogspot rss feed, and you're done. For the rest of you surfers, the typing my updated url couldn't be easier: www.artfagcity.com. Come check out the new digs!

UPDATE: Please be advised that in a week or two this blog will disappear, which means any links leading to specific articles on this site will no longer work. For those of you who list reviews I've written of your work on your resume, simply remove "blogspot" from the url address, and the link will work.

The Making of the Doctor Who Soundtrack

2007-03-16T10:19:00.000-07:00

This video comes to you via the delicious feed of Wizard is Hungry, who currently has a great digital pog on the front page of his blog. Naturally this find led me to seek free mp3s of the Doctor Who soundtrack, though predictably the best I could come up with was this two dollar ringtone.

House Cleaning

2007-03-15T18:00:00.000-07:00

It's official: The Art Fag City relaunch is slated for Monday morning. Following Tyler Green's request for updated or omitted urls, please also send them along to artfagcity[AT]gmail.com with the subject title blogroll. Sunday night marks our deadline as well.

Artworld Salon Meet Art Fag City

2007-03-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

Screengrab AFC

I haven't visited any blog over the last week without seeing a link to Artworld Salon, the newest Internet site run by art news journalists. The most weighty of those links (due only to readership numbers) comes from Walter Robinson at Artnet, who calls the site "the new blog for art world insiders", undoubtedly aware of the it because author Marc Spiegler writes for him occasionally.

Now, generally I find the print world in html form to be a fairly limited representation of the Internet, and while Artworld Salon has some good moments, (I liked their post on exhibition catalogs for example) as Anaba points out their general lack of web savvy leads to a lot of ignorant commentary on the subject. Witness Marc Spiegler's and Ian Charles Stewart's comments on ArtReview's myspace blog.

My view is that the MySpace product looks amateurish, functions poorly and may be rejected by the MySpace community for invading their space under false pretences. (Ian Charles Stewart)

I’m not a MySpacer, but I’d hazard a guess that at this point they are pretty used to people hijacking their “community” for commercial purposes. And the magazine seems to have plenty of friends, including Hans Ulrich Obrist (or an e-impostor - judge for yourself here.) (Marc Spiegler)

Has Ian Charles Stewart even been on myspace? What false pretenses does he think ArtReview has? If you don't have a myspace account it may be tough to grasp why people use it, but I would think that at this point most people have the basic understanding that users seek to increase their professional visibility as opposed to simply meeting friends and seeking a quick lay (in fairness Stewart does give artreview's myspace blog credit as a PR device, though the comments above would seem to contradict that sentiment.) I frequently cite the fantastic 2nd Cannons, a publishing company located in LA, as a great example of the effectiveness of myspace networking tools, as I would have never found them as early as I did without the help of myspace. As press, I would think the folks at Artworld Salon would have particular interest in the tool as it can be used to find stories nobody else has. Myspace performs inconsistently on this level, but for this reason alone you simply can't dismiss it.

Following this thread, Marc Spiegler goes on to condemn ArtReview for the design of their myspace page, saying, "Design wise, I’d say Art Review needs to take a look at how their MySpace page looks on a laptop. Right now, it requires all sorts of lateral scrolling and their logo is consistently covered up by random ads, including one for “THE BEST MODEL SITES!”

The level of snobbish condescension in this comment demands an annoyed retort from us, because while nobody's going to defend myspace for its design - it clearly sucks - you can't dismiss the value of a web tool on aesthetics alone. Ebay looks like ass, people still manage to sell $20,000 Warhol prints on the site, and it doesn't effect the price of the print. Why should ArtReview be taken any less seriously because it decides to place more stalk in social networking and lump a cookie cutter design? What's more, Artworld Salon is in no position to be commenting on website design, as they are working with one of the more uninspired blog templates on the web. I'm not a fan of the flash masthead as the slow fade in logo seems unnecessary, and the font Western-meets-computer-age renders two perfectly good styles horribly inelegant as one.

Spiegler's comments however, seem to have less to do with design than a general disdain for the mixing commercial products with art. Those who find the site off putting for its snootiness will certainly find ample reasons to feel this way as this philosophy frequently rears its head on the blog. Author András Szántó for example, recently complained about a J. Crew ad featuring student art in the background, and an unrealistic depiction of clean artists in a studio. Personally, I find it refreshing that representations of artists have progressed to the point that we don't all have to look as though we've just come out of some art battlefield. The glamorization of the artist may not be entirely positive, but I'll take that over having to sleep on a futon the rest of my life because I can't afford anything better.

Ultimately the reason I find the upturned nose of some within the "fine art" establishment so distasteful, lies in the fact that old fashioned ideas about how art should function, are almost always connected with the kind of lifestyle an artist should maintain. The price you have to pay to maintain that kind of life is unnecessary and frankly much too high.

Additional note: As anaba also observes it bears reflection that the artreview blog pretty much exclusively talks about art. This, to my mind, is the most important aspect of any websites in this field. By any standards, very little examination of art itself actually goes on at Artworld Salon.

Art Since 1960 (According to the Internet)

2007-03-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

Internet nerd that I am, I actually recorded some of last Thursday's lecture by Hanne Mugaas + Cory Arcangel titled Art Since 1960 (According to the Internet.) Count yourself lucky for not having to listen to that file though, as the documentation of two people surfing the web doesn't exactly translate well into aural sensation. Somewhat predictably, in lieu of this media I've chosen merely to summarize the most important point I got out of the lecture: There is less and less difference between canonical art works and any other cultural products on the web.

Countless examples reinforcing this point followed, most of which were at the very least entertaining, and often much more than that. The best video comparison cited came from a post Arcangel had curated on Hanne's blog early this January.

Don't let the length of the second video confuse you, as the relevant comparison of falling figures happens in the first few seconds of the video.

On some level, you either buy work such as this as a valid investigation of how art and culture merge on the web or you don't, but for those who are wondering why they just bothered watching those videos, I have to grant that it's not a bad question. That said, it's also unanswerable. Nobody knows precisely what this leveling of fields means for art or art history, which is why we have to pay really close attention to what's being made. If, as Warhol suggests, there really is little difference between the art of Jasper Johns and his lunches, then we at least need to be able to at least identify it.

Following the surfing talk, Hanne Mugaas + Cory Arcangel posted an intimidating list of links (with no anchors so lazy surfers such as myself complain about having to copy and paste these urls into their browser.) I recommend following as many as you can.

Wearing Your Heart Around Your Neck

2007-03-13T07:15:00.000-07:00

We're still very busy around here, so the five million stories we're supposed to be reporting on will have to wait. In the meantime I encourage you to consider The Blood Scarf.

The long awaited fusion between the body mod crowd and Make Magazine geeks is upon us.

Art Fag City at the Reeler: Meme: Romanticism

2007-03-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Carlo Zanni, The Possible Ties Between Illness and Success. Film still. Photos EFA

Perhaps in loose keeping with the theme of memes, my article for The Reeler can be read on not one but two sites. Of course for the full version of the piece below, you'll have to click through to his site, a worth while use of your reading time to be sure.

I have to admit I find the now-popular intellectual act of turning one's nose up at the overly highbrow while championing mass culture a bottomless pit of good conversation. Three years ago, for example, it would have been hard to sell anyone on the idea that you could find more substance in Internet chain letters and memes than such life-changing intelligence as the kinkiest place you’ve had sex. Web geeks, however, would have told you well before then that the phenomenon held more significance. And while the idea of a meme as information exchange may not sound so radical today with the ubiquity of Internet use joining hacker culture to the mainstream, for this same reason Meme: Romanticism, an exhibition currently on view at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, makes an especially timely appearance; even if you’re not familiar with the practice's terminology and techniques you’ve probably experienced enough viral media by 2007 to have a basic understanding of the concept.

Now I know this seems like a bold statement to be issuing in mid-March, but I’ll be surprised if I see a better exhibition this year. Though not all the work in this show is Web-based – some works are purely video, others are photographic stills - the pieces share technological aesthetics that together represent a new school of contemporary filmmakers and artists whose art parallels the age of Romanticism. Similarly defined by a reaction to the trumpeting of reason -- often by simply working against the objective and disinterested biases of technology -- Meme: Romanticism not only stresses emotion as the source of aesthetic experience, but defines this experience as paradoxically continuous, contagious and fleeting.

To read more click here.

Posting Notice

2007-03-08T11:24:00.000-08:00

Photo copyright Neil Rough

I think God is punishing Christians by keeping the technical knowledge from their faith that would allow them to create embeddable videos without an automatic start function. I've removed the video from the post below because having it run every time I loaded my web page it annoyed the fuck out of me.

In other news, deadlines are pending so you won't see much on the site today. In the meantime enjoy the work of Neil Rough.

Bananas and the Most Important Women Artists of the Century

2007-03-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

The Atheist's Nightmare, an argument that design of banana is a testament to God's existence showed up on the Christian answer to YouTube recently, GodTube. Representing what has to be the greatest waste of breath I have seen in a long time, (and thereby naturally appealing to us,) the infomercial like video explains the genius of God's banana. "The maker of the banana, Almighty God, has made it with a non-slip surface" and "as with soda can makers they place a tab at the top, so God has placed a tab at the top." Youtube hosts a rather predictable response, though I notice that remarkably no one has made reference to the fifteen different sexual jokes that immediately pop to mind when watching this.

Link via Kriston Capps et al.

It's always annoyed me that posters of this Bellmer inspired series are not available. Copyright Cindy Sherman.

In a tenuously related search, the National Bureau of Economic Research concludes based on the number of times an artist has their work reproduced in textbooks that history judges Cindy Sherman to be the greatest woman artist of the twentieth century, followed in order by Georgia O'Keeffe, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and Frida Kahlo. I'm fascinated by the methods used to draw these conclusions, particularly as they seem to have no bearing on reality. Rather than take on the discussion of who should be on this list and in what order though, I would note that photography reproduces better than any other medium, and probably has some effect on the choice of image that are reproduced in textbooks. So beware Marisa Olson: if you start making scads of animated gifs studies like this will screw you out of your rightful place in art history.

Massive Links! Art Pics Edition

2007-03-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

David Shrigley's faux naive style of art making isn't always my thing, but you can't go wrong tucking weiners into bed.

Via Nasty Nets

Putin scratches. A top gif, if there ever was one. The full thread here.

Related:

Via Hanne's Art Blog

The Dancehall Priest.

All Data Is Created Equal

2007-03-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel uttered the title of this post many years ago, and it still surprises me that the quote hasn't circulated more. Wikipedia surely fails us today, as I notice the entry sorely lacks these words.

In other news, posting will be lighter than normal this week, as we prepare to relaunch Art Fag City. Thankfully the day draws near when you no longer have to read about what a piece of shit I think blogger is.

Brand Expands Product Line to Customizable MP3's Which Play The Sound of The Earth's Surface

2007-03-02T07:40:00.000-08:00

Screengrab AFC

G-Player, a device conceived by artist Jens Brand "plays the world in the same way a record player plays the earth", by combining a topographic database that contains the altitudes of the surface of the planet, and a dynamic database that calculates the orbits of any public-use satellite. The result? A lot of silence. The earth's surface consists primarily of water, which reads as zero altitude and no translatable sound to the G-Player.

I rather like this aspect of the work, but Brand's ever expanding line of G-based products address the concerns of customer from a variety of angles. As such, he now offers G-BEE (The Global Bee Liner), which allows you to choose two spots on the planet to create your own personal track (choosing a route over land will create a set of unique sounds.) Similarily G-One gives you the chance to choose from a variety of satellites and have your own mp3 made (vinyl coming soon.)

Brand's site launches March 3rd, at which point you can purchase your own track at a cost 5 euros per 5 minute. However, the artist has extended a special offer to Art Fag City readers, as between 7pm to Midnight March 2nd, these items will be available for free (according to the artist, paypal connections will not be running during this time.) I suggest checking in early though, as I suspect these are Central European times.

Note: The website does not launch until tonight, so the link I've provided will not work until then.

Related: The Little DiVA that Couldn't at The Reeler.

Welcome Back Choire!

2007-03-02T07:10:00.000-08:00

Via Page Six: Gawker reassigns editorial assistant Heather Snodgrass to "internal research" for inappropriate behavior at events and happenings. It's a brand new year with Managing Editor Choire Sicha on board.

The New Yorker Conference: New Speakers, The Same Problems

2007-03-01T14:12:00.000-08:00

Screengrab AFC

Why aren't people bored with making old news? Running May 6th-7th, The New Yorker Conference describes itself as a "dynamic conference...of new ideas, forward thinking and eye-opening innovation," currently defining these words with a list of 24 speakers only 3 of which are women. I don't believe that women contribute only 12.5 of "forward thinking" ideas, and I doubt The New Yorker shares this sentiment either, but their current list of panelists certainly suggests this.

Having spent some time myself as a curator, and on various review boards, I can tell you that almost without thinking about it, you can find ways to account for the poor representation of women. For example, I commonly hear, "we invited an almost equal proportion of men and women to this conference," a line that quells the worries of many when faced with depressing statistics. However, anyone who has been on a selection panel knows that the names you start with are rarely the same as the ones you end up with, so unless conference organizers make equal gender representation a priority it's simply not going to happen.

I say this not because I believe there are less talented women than men working today, but because as individuals we have to work with the awareness that our inherent cultural biases lead us to trumpet male performance over that of females. I'm not going to bother providing lists of statistics we're all aware of, particularly since this sort of thing leads to comments like "your assertions maybe correct, but you'll need real evidence to support it not just a headcount." but I will cite the following example to support this statement: Personism's List of Women Speakers for Your Conferences, has been linked to on several occasions by Internet celebrities such as Kottke.org, and the Design Observer, in addition to heavy weights such as We Make Money Not Art, Modern Art Notes, Design Sponge, blogher, and yet, despite all this coverage, The New Yorker conference planners either didn't know about it, or didn't use it. Now, granted, CNN has not yet linked to the post, but it would seem to be me that largest indicators that these biases exist, reveal themselves when the resources available to correct the problem don't remain in our consciousness long enough for them to be used. The New Yorker has some time to fix this problem - let's make sure they do it.

Related:
The Tokion Conference Gender Debate (outgoing links to all key players within this post)
CBC News: Where are all the women writers? "When it comes to the magazine business, why is Harper's so bizarre about women writers?"
The Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art now has a blog.

AFC New York Art Fair Ratings

2007-02-28T14:32:00.000-08:00

Paul Pfeiffer, Morning After the Deluge, 2001, Video Projection loop
Image copyright Thomas Dane Gallery

I have a number of "final" observations about the art fairs before we get to our final ratings, but given the amount of coverage we've already published on this blog I'll be very brief. First, I assume this comes as a surprise to no one, but the exposure of New Media art over the last weekend seems to be limited to animated films and Make-like projects. This kind of art is okay, but it represents a limited vision at best of the medium. I noticed Rhizome did not participate in any fairs this year, a decision I have to commend them for because at present there are no venues that adequately address the specific requirements of the medium. In theory, DiVA, who's focus lays primarily in digital and video art would fill this void, but their exhibitors performed poorly this year, and their choice of local continues to be a problem. If Scope threw out their curatorial programming in exchange for a few good New Media pieces, they might become a more viable venue, but as long as Gabe Martinez is suffering the cold in the name of art, there's really no point in institutional participation.

Also not surprising but noteworthy none the less; while I have certainly seen good and bad art addressing the Iraq war, I find it slightly disturbing to observe that almost all of it has been filtered out for this occasion. I understand that collectors may not want to have this kind of work on their walls, but given the amount of bad transgressive art that made its way into the fairs you'd think there might be at least some market for these pieces.

Regardless of all of this, the fairs remain a good way to see a lot of art in a small amount of time. Assuming you don't lose site of the fact that painting and photography represent only a portion of the field of art making, you'll be fine. Keeping this in mind, here are this years art fair ratings listed from best to worst.

1. Pulse
Clinching the number one position for the second year running, Pulse offers virtually everything you would desire in a fair. Good art, good viewing conditions, and tasty beer. Make blog has an excellent flickr set of this fair.

2. The ADAA Art Show (Art Dealers Association of America)
Observe unparalleled quality in art at the ADAA art fair (notwithstanding emerging artists.) It also wins the top prize for best lit booths.

3. LA Art
Ultimately having the space to view art trumps what fairs like the Armory have to offer; primarily size. Also, the work exhibited was very strong.

4. The Armory
Well, it's big. Good for trend spotting.

5. Scope
Probably the fair with the biggest heart. But I hate art-with-its-heart-in-the-right-place. It's almost always bad.

6. Red Dot
Featuring the smallest hotel rooms I've seen in my 7 years of art fair attendance Red Dot boasts the title of largest temporary storage space for bad paintings.

7. DiVA
A lot of bad art featured in obscure locals. Sadly, it's generally not worth your time.

8. Fountain
Too small to evaluate on the same terms as the others, though it does provide an unexpected mix of coffee shop art and conceptual art. See t.whid for more on this fair.

Comic Con and The Art Fairs

2007-02-28T10:45:00.000-08:00

Comic Con at the Javits Center. Photo: AFC

As a counter point to New York art fairs this weekend I also visited Comic Con at the Javits Center. Talk about a totally different fan base - trophy wives with breast implants meet the Comic Con corset wearing crowd. Both are equally scary representations of their respective demographics.

Detail from the corset stand. Photo AFC.

For the most part though, I found the differences in approach to be a welcome change of pace. For example, probably my favorite aspect of comic-con represents one of the more taboo artist activities at a fair: all the comic book artists were compulsively drawing at their booths. The fine art world tends to find this tacky, and while I suspect this comes from an obvious connection to street vendor art, it's an idea I wish we'd put behind us. Not that I think artists are lining up to draw in their dealer's booths, but it'd be nice to know you wouldn't be laughed out of town if you did.

The only other major contrast in the respective fair cultures that isn't so obvious it's not worth noting lies in the fact that the Comic Con artists man their own booths, so if you ask them what they've seen they're likely to list off a number of good fast food delivery options in the neighborhood. Fine artists thankfully prove to be better resource than this as there is an unspoken understanding that your value as an artist is in part determined by your ability to spot talent within the profession. As such, ask the best artist you know what work they thought stood out at the fairs, and you'll get the best answers.

Left: Syncopated Comics, Photo AFC Right: NYCMech's Andy MacDonald, Photo NYCMech

Speaking of bests, my favorite booths during the day came from Brendan Burford, who writes the skillfully crafted narratives at Syncopated Comics and Andy MacDonald at NYCMech (I am particularly taken with his armored duck.) As far as deep prose explaining the work, this is about as much as you're going to get today as I have a number of other posts sitting in the queue to attend to, however, the nice thing about comic book artists is that they tend to have exhaustive websites. Good luck keeping your websurfing hours down.

The Best Website Hack of 2007: MoMA ecards Take a Hit

2007-02-27T17:21:00.000-08:00

Screen grab AFC

This may well be my favorite web project this year: A hacker taking the voice of Jenny Holzer sends a selection of truisms to MoMA president Glenn Lowry in the form of a MoMA ecard. I can't imagine Lowry, who just last week was reported by the Times to have received an undisclosed 5.35 million dollars in addition to his regular pay check will be pleased to have such a viral form of media propagating across the net with his letterhead on it. Any bets on how long the card will remain on the site? UPDATE: The Jenny Holzer ecard disappeared even before this post went up, as Tyler Green linked to it shortly before I did. The letter itself disappeared around 9:15 pm)

The letter transcribed below for your convenience.

From: Jenny Holzer

Dear Glenn,

It's been a while since we've talked. I miss you. We'll have to do lunch next time you're downtown.

Just because we haven't spoken lately doesn't mean that you haven't been on my mind. I mean, it's been impossible not to think of you recently--what with all that pesky news coverage about trustees and tax forms and influence and whatnot. (Don't worry; it's not that bad. Even though it was on page 1 of the Times, it was below the fold. Hardly anyone looks down there.)

Anyway, I just wanted to drop you a quick note to tell you that you're still tops in my book and that you're frequently in my thoughts. I was actually thinking about you while I made this little e-card for your marketing department. I guess that means that you've become my muse! Thanks for the inspiration. I hope you enjoy the piece.

Love,

Jenny

DiVA New York Flounders

2007-02-27T16:30:00.000-08:00

Blurry photo courtesy of yours truly

DiVA Miami and DiVA New York share the same banner font, but this and their consistently poor choice of location mark the only unifying forces between the two fairs. To their credit, the video and digital art fair managed to produce a giant sign nobody could miss that hung from the side of the front wall of Embassy Suites Hotel in Battery park this year, but having to cross the West Side Highway to get to a venue earns them no points in my books. I'd rather truck out to Williamsburg than suffer the "convenience" of Manhattan's Battery Park.

Now, probably the best indicator of the running success of most fairs comes in the form of returning exhibitors (Pulse being the obvious exception to this rule since Impulse ensures a spot for new galleries each year,) so DiVA organizers have to be worried. Of the roughly 16 participating galleries participating in New York, (not including those in the Chelsea containers), only three, Walsh Gallery, nt art gallery, and Galerie Grand Siecle, also toughed it out in Miami. This, in combination with the fact that this years exhibitors number slightly more than half those who participated last year in New York, do not bode well for the fair.

Photo copyright Troy Abbott

I don't want to sound overly dramatic, but it's really heartbreaking to see the venue flounder like this because it leaves the impression that video and digital art either have no place in the market or simply aren't making work that's interesting enough to warrant a full fair, neither of which is true. Most of the work featured at DiVA is too bad to even pick on, while other pieces simply inspire apathy. As if knowing I was already irritable, ALP Galleries inspired visible annoyance, as when I asked them what purpose the chipboard in Troy Abbott's birdcage served (since most of the wires appeared to be disconnected) and I was informed that it was a secret of the artist and that my hands, which were no less than 12 inches away shouldn't touch the art. I don't know why you'd bother exhibiting the art if you don't want to talk about it and it's so fragile even an Art Fag City glance might break it, but to each his own.

Interno3, Sky Tape #3, Photo via DiVA Catalogue

The only exception to a unilaterally bad group of exhibiting artists came from Interno3 at nt art gallery from Italy. Sky Tape #3 for example provides a much needed break from the fetishized painted surfaces at the armory, by using the equipment itself as the aesthetic object. Just how sexy are these arrangements of metal boxes? Not at all, which is what I like about it. I find it incredibly refreshing to look at art that resists dressing up these objects in art-wear (although I actually like these works, Paul Pfieffer's approach to presentation provides a good point of comparison) and simply works with the equipment for what it is. Meanwhile, the video of clouds itself presents a beautiful contrast to the hard edges of technology. I suppose you could draw rather superficial connections between imagination and the innovation it took to recreate moving images et al, but I think sometimes it's better to just enjoy the aesthetic arrangement of objects as is and let the rest of that sort of crap go. I like the boxes, I like the clouds, and that satisfies me just fine.

Related: Diva Miami

If You Build It They Will Come

2007-02-27T07:48:00.000-08:00

The ceiling of the Javits Center. Photo AFC

Why aren't the New York art fairs in the Javits Center? I can't vouch for the accuracy of statements made on the Craigslist list discussion boards, but this forum in Boston tells me the Armory had to shut down for two hours (presumably Saturday) due to crowds. Even if this proves not to be the case, the Armory clearly suffered for having a reduced space, and visitors don't necessarily want to be running all over the city to look at art. New York doesn't rival Miami, but it might have a fighting chance if it were in a space large enough to accommodate the number of exhibitors wishing to participate. As they say, "If you build it they will come."...because what we really need in this town are more trophy wives.

L.A. Art Doesn't Look Like A Fair

2007-02-26T00:20:00.000-08:00

LA Art Fair installation view. Photo AFC

Alright, screw those L.A. galleries and their exclusive fairs for putting together one of the best events in the city and keeping New York galleries out. Pleasantly, they don't seem to have anything against New York artists as I observed the work of several on display, so I guess only dealers get to whine about this.

Left: Victoria Gitman, Graphite on mylar, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Photo AFC. Right: A jpeg that will give you better idea of what the series looks like via David Nolan Gallery.

The best thing about the L.A. Art fair is that it doesn't look like an art fair. In fact, often times it looks more like a museum space; There is plenty of room to walk around and view the art, the walls aren't over hung, and the quality of the art exceeds that of most fairs. An excellent example of some of the more precious works at the fair comes from Victoria Gitman at Daniel Weinberg Gallery. For those who take interest in what's selling and what's not, the work had already sold by the time I saw it Saturday afternoon. I'm not sure that says anything about the work however past the point that its a salable object.

Left: Goetz Diergarten, Fassaden IX, 1997, at Rose Gallery, Right: Russell Crotty, Sandstone Formation with Wildfire Diffusion, 2007 at Shoshana Wayne Gallery
Photo AFC

Amongst my other picks in this show the work of Goetz Diergarten at Rose Gallery, and Russell Crotty at Shoshana Wayne stood out. Interestingly, in looking up additional work by Diergarten, I ran across a post written by Joerg Colberg at Conscenstious several years ago condemning the fact that he won a Hasselblad Foundation grant for work that looks too similar to that of his teacher Bernd Becher. I see the formal similarities but frankly I'm not sure why I should be bothered by the influence since as far as I can tell, the award does not signify Diergarten's overshadowing of his uber famous professor. Of course, if anyone thinks the work is so derivative it deserves no attention feel free to write me and explain why.

On the subject of Russell Crotty whose art is also pictured above, it took me all of two seconds to identify his work as CRG Gallery launched a stunning exhibition of his oversized books of last May. Crotty's globe lacks the monstrous size of some of his book work and maps, which seems appropriate given the purpose of the object. The globe has all the handmade charm of old timey maps you might find at the New York Public Library, which tends to just endear it more to me.

Unfortunately, as far as closings go I'm afraid I don't have much for this post. You can look forward to a full report on DiVA Tuesday, as well as a wrap up of the fairs (including comic-con.) However I'm down for the count Monday. There's only so much art fair blogging a person can do, and it's clear I've reached my limit.

The ADAA Trumps The Armory (Even Though ADAA President Roland Augustine Says It's Not a Competition*)

2007-02-25T20:15:00.000-08:00

Uttering words I couldn't agree with less, dealer Paul Kasmin expresses his thoughts on the fairs to ArtInfo. "The [ADAA] fair uptown is now the one that’s going to have to find its way again. [The Armory Show is] bright, colorful and noisy, while uptown they’ve got smaller, quieter pictures and, to be honest, they’re looking a little too quiet."

Marian Goodman's Booth at the ADAA

Now, I'm not an exhibitor so I can't speak to sales, but having attended both of these fairs two years running, I can tell you that this year's ADAA show not only far out weighs the last, but exceeds the quality of the Armory by a level of magnitude. Without a doubt, the best work I've seen this week was exhibited at the ADAA fair, (a sentiment that appears to be in contradiction to my post on Pulse, but let's keep in mind that this blog focuses on emerging art, and thus displays a bias.) As is the case with the secondary market, there are times when there are better works of art available on the market than others, so certainly that plays into the success of the fair, but not entirely, as many members deal in the primary market, and further, a good show is always determined by a lot more than who has what.

Jim Hodges at CRG Gallery. Left: Detail, Right: Installation view.
Photo AFC

In the case of the ADAA, sometime between this year and last, their members really improved the look of their booths, which for me marks the most interesting aspect of the fair phenomenon - the developing aesthetics of exhibition design. CRG gallery for example, treated their booth as though it were the same as their chelsea space, and custom designed a plinth to display the sculptures of Jim Hodges. The work couldn't have been exhibited successfully without the lift, and even though Hodges work has never bowled me over, I had to admit that his chain cobwebs appealed more to me both as a material of gay culture, and as an object of beauty than they ever had previously.

And this to my mind indicates that the closer these booths come to approximating exhibition spaces the better. I suppose on some level it's all personal taste. I've never been the kind of shopper who likes rooting around in a bin to find the item I'm looking for, so it stands to reason that I wouldn't be overly interested in walking around a giant art fair filled with crap, in the hopes of finding a needle in the haystack. Simply hang the art well, curate it carefully, and you'll have my attention.

Anish Kapoor, Untitled, 2006
Mirrored plexiglass, 69 x 69 aperture
87 x 81 x 21 overall
Photo: AFC

In any event, for those who just want to know what I liked in the show, I will say that I particularly enjoyed the Anish Kapoor at Gladstone Gallery. Having the outward appearance of a sheet of plastic produced at Canal Plastics, this sculpture actually sits 21 inches into the wall, and reflects the sound of your voice back to you. For me the experience was fairly disorienting as you sound as though you are elsewhere, though I asked one of the salesmen at Gladstone if he had this trouble, and he assured me he found it a pleasure to work beside the piece all day. What a surprise.

Related: Bloggy, James Wagner

*Roland Augustine opined that the Armory and the ADAA were not in competition during his opening remarks to the press last Thursday at the Armory fair.

Red Dot: Not That Great

2007-02-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

The Red Dot Fair wins points with me for having identified their building well. I'm not someone who works with a stellar sense of direction, so things like giant signs advertising the location of the fair go over well with me. As far as the quality of the sales event, I've seen better, I've seen Bridge Miami, and at least it improves upon that.

Markus Linnenbrink, Runthevoodoodown, 2006, Epoxy Resin on Wood 20.25 x 20 inches at Roy Boyd Gallery

The biggest complaint I have about this fair stems from the fact that there's more painting than you can shake a stick at, and most of it isn't any good. I gave up counting the number of artists in Red Dot who thought that every surface should be coated in Resin. A clear shiny surface appeals to me just as much as the next person, but viewing five hundred permutations of the technique just turns the work into Crate and Barrel art. Speaking of which, table cloth inspired canvases that feature stripes of paint dripping off the canvas seemed to be particularly popular. I observed no less than six galleries selling nearly identical work by different artists, none of it compelling in any way.

Left: Dave Choi, Hogar Collection, Right: Thomas Doyle, Pentimenti Gallery

The few sculptural works at the fair tended to stand out, though again, most of it fell flat. Dave Choi's hilarious sculpture at Hogar Collection stood out as a clear winner, as did the work of Thomas Doyle, at the Philadelphia Gallery, Pentimenti. I particularly enjoy the use of the text "I'M NOT OKAY WITH THIS" on the billboard within one of Doyle's domes, because while there are any number of interpretations of that sentiment, the idea that those within domes might not be all that cool with their placement adds a dimension to the piece that wouldn't otherwise be there.

Unfortunately, other than this, I don't have any deep thoughts on Red Dot. It's a poor to mediocre fair that with only a few exceptions inspires little discussion.

Pulse Comes out on Top

2007-02-25T11:00:00.000-08:00

It's pretty easy to endlessly compare the various fairs to Miami, but a lot of time it's a pointless endeavor because the participating galleries and spaces are so different. Of the sixty plus galleries that are participating in Pulse New York for example, roughly twenty of those were not in Miami. In addition to this the location is completely different, the Miami fair suffering from a railroad like layout. Nothing kills an art viewing experience faster than having to walk through it as though it were a terminal.

Any number of qualities explain the success of Pulse, which for the second year running wins our Best in Show Award. Exhibitors light their booths well, the floor plan provides ample corridor space so a viewer can actually view the work, and most importantly the art on display is largely excellent. The fact that I have about twice the number of notes for this fair than any other is a fairly good indicator of just how much more successful it has become.

Jennifer Coates, Clipper, 2007 at Kinz, Tillou & Feigen

Don't get me wrong, it seems all fairs are plagued with at least a few completely decorative works worth little time, (Fred Tomaselli's wallpaper in the case of Pulse,) but this one seemed to exhibit less. For example, Kinz Tillou & Feigen have a great Jennifer Coates painting hanging in their booth titled Clipper which sits somewhere between abstraction and landscape painting. If there's great intellectual thought behind this work I've missed it, though I'm not overly concerned. I don't know why the little tiles of color make clouds, I'm just happy they do. Also, I'm partial to the thought that color might need to be cradled and released, such as the mist in this painting suggests.

Oliver Boberg, Seite 5 / Page 5, 2006, Lambda print, edition of 5 + 2 AP, 69 x 105 inches at DCKT Contemporary

I also thought the work of Oliver Boberg at DCKT contemporary wasn't bad. There seem to be a few artists like Boberg who construct models and then photograph them, Thomas Demand and Gregory Crewdson most notably, but I rather like that the juxtaposition of images enriches the meaning of the work. There's a real sense of loneliness in these shots - abandoned spaces that may still function as architectural forms - their use value long past exhausted. The point of creating all these fictionalized places as opposed to simply going out and finding them remains slightly unclear to me, but since all of them are devoid of people, it would seem there may be at least one practical reason for the complicated set up.

Andy Diaz Hope, Merry Go Round, 2006, Catherine Clarke Gallery

DKCT's neighbors Catherine Clarke Gallery feature pill landscapes which to my mind represent the worst that digital technologies bring us. Just because we have the ability to print on anything doesn't mean we should. [Editors note: A tipster informs me the artist cuts up multiple copies of the same photograph and hand-rolls individual bits in the pill capsules until they lined up, forming the final image. I don't think it makes the piece much better, but the original description was inaccurate]Merry Go Round feels gimmicky and devoid of substance. General Idea worked with pills years ago, but better. So did Damien Hirst, but I'm not what you call a fan.

Left: D'nell Larson, (installation), Right: Heather Cantrell

Finally, one of my favorite spaces this year, sixspace, lands in the Impulse section of the fair, which is open to all galleries wishing to propose a project, (Pulse culls its exhibitors by invitation.) The curatorial statement will tell you this exhibition is bring artists together who deal with "relating" and "relationships", but that thread as a thematic seems weak to me as virtually any artist can meet those perimeters. Mostly I'm interested in the fact that someone thought to put these two images together and made it work. I suppose on a formal level white beards and white snow connect the two but they really are quite desperate pieces. Portraiture and abstract Ivy forms are the result and I like it.

Look forward to more fair coverage later in the day, in addition to some discussion of this years comic book convention!

Scope Fair Suffers From Narrow Aisles

2007-02-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

"Scope sucks. As an artist I found it depressing" said one attendee I over heard at Pulse yesterday. He's not wrong, but it may be a less charitable than warranted given Scope's new and improved home. Now at Lincoln Center's Damrosh Park the fair makes a valiant effort at shedding the broken elevator, shoddy floor, walls in danger of falling over look. What's more, their exhibitors seem to have taken a much needed art installation 101 course because the spaces are almost all hung well. Finally, the art can shine!

Gabriel Martinez outside Scope's front entrance

Not so fast. Sadly, Scope's Achilles heel of presentation and poor curatorial efforts continue to be a problem for them. The aisles between booths are too small, there is no place to sit if you get tired of looking at art and most annoying of all, there's performance artist Gabriel Martinez "blowing my mind" in the front foray wearing an Andy Warhol inspired silver suit and pretending to be dead or dying for having carried so much art to the fair. The environment still provides far too little for their exhibitors.

Left: At Yancey Richardson Lisa Kereszi, Gael dressing, State Palace Theater, New Orleans, LA, 2000, Chromogenic Print, Right: Steinar Jakobsen's Look Back in Puzzlement, at Galleri K

While no art stood out in this fair, it warrants observation that the most successful booths at Scope were hosted by the galleries specializing in photography. Yancey Richardson (booth 57), Yossi Milo (booth 71), and Andrea Meislin Gallery (booth 69), all put together spaces that looked something similar to what you might see in their Chelsea homes. Galleri K (booth 30) from Oslo exhibited the one of maybe two solo shows at Scope this year, and though Steinar Jakobsen's uniformly sized paintings hung in a grid format feels like a contrivance, the booth still looked better than most.

Othergallery.com (Booth 15)

Finally, othergallery.com may not have been the best exhibitor at Scope this year, but the virtual gallery turned fair exhibitors deserve a shout out for showcasing new talent from Winnipeg. Paul Butler, the gallery director, explained that his online presence and fair participation provided a way for artists in the small community to gain exposure they might not get otherwise. A news flash to all of us I'm sure, but apparently the negative temperatures in Winnipeg don't draw great crowds of tourists.

Head Butting at Pulse

2007-02-24T11:12:00.000-08:00

Photo AFC

A detail from the cock gateway at Pulse suggests there might be some connection between the fair's name and loads of sex. A base observation I know, but someone has to make it.

More on Pulse later.

Art You'll Either Love or Hate at the Armory

2007-02-23T13:15:00.000-08:00

"This is the forest where Walt Disney witnessed a rape" the director of Johann König tells me, winning the prize for most awkward introduction to an art work at the fair. Jordan Wolfson's video was the work described, and while it merits attention I mention it primarily as a heads up, as it features prominently in one of the first booths you're likely enter at the fair.

Given the fact that I've already posted three times today, and I have yet to make my rounds to other fairs, this post will follow the "jpeg and quip" format. In light of my earlier post on this year's Armory fair I trust this will suffice.

Best In Show

Paul Pfeiffer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (15), 2004, The Project

Editors note: This particular photograph was not featured in the show though it was found on the galleries website so it is presumably available. The photograph I took was unfortunately unusable.

I feel guilty for awarding established artists best in show awards since they already have the support and don't need mine, but Paul Pfieffer's work stands out in this fair. It helps that it can be found in at least three booths at the Armory, (The Project and Thomas Dane Gallery most notably,) but the work deserves the merit because it exhibits all the characteristics of great art. It's intelligent, it's well made, it's moving. What I like about Pfieffers 2005 series Four Horseman of the Apocalypse is that unlike countless artists who are photoshopping objects in and out of photographs, the purpose behind these actions is much more deliberate and thought out. It's not just that he removes various figures and objects in the dunk competition to underscore the religious aspects of the sport, but that these images often make direct reference to 16th century paintings working with the same subject matter. The feelings the photographs and paintings evoke are uncannily similar.

Best New(ish) Artist

Andrew Guenther, We Don't Believe in Gravity, 2006
Courtesy of Greenberg Van Doren Gallery

Looks like painter Andrew Guenther no longer shows at Perry Rubenstein Gallery - a loss they must be feeling given his newest work. Now at Greenberg Van Doren, Guenther seems to be making quite a splash, as his painting lists amongst roughly 24 images the armory has chosen to distribute to the press.

This work reminds me that only this fall I mentioned there being some difficulty in pulling off drip paintings as they are fairly out of vogue these days, and while thinned dissolving paint may not seem overly "drippy" it's very easy for paintings such as these to look contrived. His don't. Guenther creates unexpected compositions and figures, and unlike some of his earlier work which at times felt too boy-hipster for my tastes, We Don't Believe in Gravity never feels overly zeitgeist.

Disclaimer: I went to grad school with Andrew Guenther, so you can feel free to disregard these remarks if you think this makes me impartial.

Most Desperate Plea for Attention.

Vanessa Beecroft at Galleria Lia Rumma Naples
Photo AFC

Vanessa Beecroft at Galleria Lia Rumma wins the award for trying the hardest to get attention with "controversial" images. I'll admit that I often find Beecroft's photographs visually appealing, but I have never been convinced that she has a real grasp on the subject matter she tries to tackle. No matter. Formalism trumps all thought in an art fair.

Best Use of Pringles in an Art Piece

Michel Fancois, Arbre a Chips, 2006 at Thomas Dane Gallery

Gold pringles. Need I say more?

Most Visible Emerging Trend

Left: Tony Craigg, Not Yet Titled, Wood, 95 x 105,120 inches, at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Right: Wim Botha, Generic Self Portrait as Inflammatory Word, 2007, Carved Paper at Michael Stevenson Gallery
Photos AFC

Laser cutter art. Not a new device, but it would appear sculptors have "discovered" it.

Roberta Smith Phones It In

2007-02-23T11:24:00.000-08:00

I'm just going to say it: I don't trust the opinions of Roberta Smith, and I don't think she's a great writer. Let me refresh the memories of the people who endlessly rain praise over her with a quote or two from her recent review of Eve Sussman's The Rape of the Sabine Women. “Extravagantly beautiful, endlessly noble” she proclaims. Experiencing the film “is like eating a chocolate chip cookie made of nothing but the chips.”

Come on. Is this the New York Times, or Daily Candy? You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel if all you've got are food metaphors.

Related: My thoughts on Sussman's film here.

The Armory Show: New Digs, Same Fair

2007-02-23T10:30:00.000-08:00

Pipilotti Rist, Small Homo Toes The Line, Kleiner Mensch ist zu einem Vorhaben bereit, 2006
Video still, ink print on rag paper, sheet size: 23 1/4 x 16 1/2 inches
Courtesy of the Artist, Hauser & Wirth Zurich London and Luhring Augustine, New York

The Armory Show hasn't exactly been advertising the fact that they lost 35,000 square feet of floor space when they moved this year, but the change remains visible none the less. No longer broken up over three buildings, the Armory now sprawls across one giant floor space at Pier 94. Booths larger than most mid sized New York apartments no longer permeate the fair, and railroad like floor plans that practically advertise how much you pay for your space disappeared with the new digs as well.

Even with all these changes though, the fair remains essentially the same. This year I left the building wondering which of maybe a dozen average art works I would discuss, and what I could possibly say that wouldn't simply be a repeat of last years coverage. Those posts can be read here and here but distilled to two sentences read as follow: It's hard to know what to think of anything. Everything looks like you should buy it.

Simon Evans, Buy Me, I'm at an Art Fair, at White Columns
Photo AFC

I suspect those sentiments weigh heavier than we recognize, as not even a year ago, you could still expect to see at least three or four text based works by artists that sneered at the economy of the art market. This year, Simon Evans', Buy Me, I'm at an Art Fair, represents the only self conscious work remotely of this nature, and though it does not attempt criticality, it would still appear to be more thought on the subject of shopping than we like, as it is relegated to a prime position next to an exit sign in a small corner of the fair near a pile of junk leaning against a wall. The fact that art like this tends to be no good on the surface may in part explain its position, (the price of the piece relative to the value of the real estate it hangs on certainly plays a role as well,) but you don't have to think about the matter too long before you remember that people will show all manner of crap so long as it's salable. Few people seem to think work critical of the market merits engagement these days though, so the community disengages. Artists don't make the work, nobody cares that it's missing, and you're stuck with 175, 000 thousand square feet of salable work you're supposed evaluate on merit increasingly defined by the market.

Mayor Bloomberg addresses the press at the Armory yesterday
Photo AFC

In case there was any doubt that this should be the criteria for evaluation, Mayor Bloomberg's opening remarks focused primarily on how much money the fairs would bring in to the city. His offices estimate approximately 50 million, so you won't find much surprise that he choses to focus on this aspect of the fairs. Meanwhile, the scope of these fairs seems to be expanding to represent virtually any form of art that can be commodified. The Armory features the dubiously artful dump truck covered in mirrors as a possible sale object, (the merit of which Bloomberg was asked to expound upon at the press conference, which resulted in a long and rambling non-response that closed with the thought that his floors probably couldn't support the weight of the truck) where as near by fairs display countless works best suited for coffee shops. At some point you have to ask yourself how far the field of Fine Art can be stretched in the name of commerce. I get the feeling we haven't seen the half of it yet.

An Interview with founder Phil Grauer of CANADA: Part Two of Two

2007-02-23T07:42:00.000-08:00

Sheep Self Portrait at CANADA
Photo AFC

In the second part of our interview series with CANADA owner Phil Grauer we continue to discuss the gallery's unconventional tactics to garner their inclusion this year in the Armory Show in addition to art fair aesthetics. Be sure not to miss part one of this two part series!

AFC: It seems like it’s really difficult for a gallery to survive without doing an art fair.

PG: Yeah, you hear that line, and I guess it’s sort of true. We sort of did. We survived for a long fucking time before an art fair. We didn’t thrive. I guess it sort of helps. It exposes you to people who wouldn’t otherwise come down to Chinatown to buy art. We will in one week at the Armory get more exposure than we’ll get in six years of being down here.

AFC: Do you see fairs as being part of your advertising? Or part of your programming, like part of your exhibition program?

PG: That’s a good question. I think you strive to make it something valid. It’s funny. I have a couple of different takes on this, sometimes the dealers try to make the art fair booth into a statement, into an installation. And sometimes it’s actually pretty successful. I’ve had a pretty good time at art fairs looking at some pretty decent installations. I sort of like when that occurs. I also understand them as strict trade fair, you know, group show. Here’s the leftovers from my showing year, you know, come and get them, and I also admire that. I like both. You know, where it’s this cool, installation, meta-show, and sometimes the work is site-specific even, and it’s an installation of the art market, and it’s kind of okay, you know. Or it’s my installation about the art market, and it’s a hodge-podge, cracker barrel hanging, come and get it, ‘cuz I’m just at a stupid art fair anyway, you mothers. That was what we did at NADA [The New Art Dealers Alliance fair in Miami]. I wasn’t going to do some hot shot, okay, you’re on, do your solo show at NADA. A little bit of everything that we do, and that is helpful because with a wide group show, you can introduce a bunch of stuff to people who kind of want to see something. It’s kind of more democratic of me to cover more, every artist, and to give them the opportunity to make some dough and have their work seen. I think it can kind of interfere, that kind of cracker barrel hanging requires a viewer who can kind of see…

AFC: Do you think viewers are getting accustomed to art fair hangings?

PG: I’m hoping…

AFC: Well, it’s sort of a whole aesthetic, right?

PG: Yeah, I like this conversation, the subject of the art fair hanging, and whether the work can still be seen. The weird context, whether it can overcome the context of this hanging and this environment. And I like to think, sure fuck, if it’s good stuff, it can…

AFC: It can hold its own?

PG: That’s always where my hope is…

AFC: But certainly some galleries achieve these goals better than others because there really is it’s not hung, you can’t sell it sort of aesthetic.

PG: Yeah, or the dealer is really fidgety and like things really clean, dealers that probably see their galleries as an extension of themselves or their home, and need this aesthetic, you know, in their booth.

AFC: Those who will lay in a brand new floor...

PG: Yeah, take the carpet out because the sculpture looks better. I think we’re all different. Dealer people come from different places, and they have different ideas of how the work should be and look. So, good luck, you get yourself a booth at an art fair and you have ten or fifteen artists that you represent…

AFC: And you’ve got a day to put it together…

PG: Good luck to you. You got yourself into it, you filled out the order form. You went over to London to badger your way into this thing, and I think that’s fair enough. I’m willing to take on that burden.

AFC: Did you go over to London specifically to badger people?

PG: Yes

AFC: Really?

Sarah Braman (codirector of the gallery): Yes. We scrounged together money to put him on a plane. Went to Target and bought a new pair of pants.

PG: Got my Target pants and got on the airplane, because it was at this critical moment. We already lost this bum artist because we didn’t make it into the Armory fair, so we were fucked. So it was like, we’re going to do this, wrestle our way, fuck our way into this thing. Or we likely be ignored by it because they don’t need to care. It’s sort of humiliating. To have to introduce yourself. You know you sort of want people to come to you, you don’t want to have to go to them, but whatever.

AFC: But now it worked out, right?

PG: Yeah, but now we’re in the thing, and it’s awkward. You just want it to be worthwhile and decent. It’s just sort of weird to be invited to the garden party late because you badgered your way into the wedding.

AFC: Right, yeah…

PG: I didn’t even think about art fairs until some of the artists started going to them with or without us. And then it was like, by gumbo, we got to get into one of these art fairs. So at first, we talked to NADA because they seemed kind of youthful, and then last September, we applied to a Swiss fair and we finally got to Europe, which was useful because you get to show up in Europe. Say the artists have been in Paris or Berlin or London, showing their stuff and finally you show up too. We were a little late in getting there, like, oh you guys, I thought _______ showed with ________, who the hell are you? Showing her too? A lot of this sort of stuff, so you’re in Switzerland and you have to straighten out the story because the secondary dealers who show your artists don’t really talk about you. They don’t really care. They’ve got this work, it’s important, it’s selling. They don’t really talk to their collectors or curators about where it emanated from. Who showed it first? Until you the dealership show up, you finally get to make a case for yourself. Because it’s not a very big community…

AFC: I know, it’s tiny. I mean are you sure there's a connection between your getting in and the badgering? I mean, the gallery over the last couple of years has become much more high profile.

PG: I think they needed their cage rattled a little. I’m not certain of that at all. This is the problem I have I think the committee is likely too small and likely too old to be able to really discriminate and know what the hell’s going on downtown. They’re very busy people. They’re doing their own damn shows. Their neighborhood in Chelsea, all on Gideon. I don’t think it’s the mandate really to kind of go into the outback to find the dealers and the galleries that are doing the heavy work.

AFC: Unfortunately it’s not really necessary for them to do that, so you have to kind of make it necessary…

PG: Yeah, you do. It’s a weird thing. I’m not sure of this yet, but I think that these art fairs have an impact, like going back to the advertisement thing, like your name on the list or your position in the fair be it in the coach or whatever has some bearing on why someone might choose to take your artist to a museum show or buy them or whatever. I think, yes, likely it helps. I don’t know how that should be decided on, whether this board of five Europeans and two New Yorkers should have all that the authority because it does advertise and change the currency and demand likely of the work here. They have quite a lot of power, it turns out. I’m not sure exactly how it should work. You know, it’s like, I want an ad in Artforum, I call up Knight Landesman, and say, here’s your $2000, can you run this ad? And it will happen. But if I need to get into the Armory fair, it’s not just because I filled out the form and gave them the $500 fee. There’s some other voodoo going on. And good luck, to decoding it, if it’s your ambition. I think a lot of galleries probably just say, ah, fuck the Armory, it’s a queer garden party and I ain’t going anyway. Yeah, okay, good luck, that sounds cool too. But I think for those who think it’s useful and that the New York art fairs should be something significant and are important to the New York art world, then fuck. I hope the fair does some justice in the future for the galleries that are deserving, that’s all. That’s my one hope, and I’ll watch them. When I head this gallery or that gallery got in one year and out the next and what replaced them and why, it’s curious. Who did we replace? Who got knocked out when we got in?

AFC: Yeah, I hadn’t really though about that.

PG: Yeah, it’s a bit of a musical chairs.

AFC: It’s every year too, it seems like the Armory gets bigger. Although that’s really not the case, it’s just art fairs are getting bigger.

PG: There more satellites. Like you were down in Miami…

AFC: That’s insane. I get the sense that it’s going to be less insane here, than it was last year.

PG: This is the bigger story, really, because of the musical chairs thing. Is it getting bigger or smaller? And how long does the party get bigger? This is the other question that people are all asking. Is the bubble going to burst? And all this crap. I don’t even know, I’ve never been aware of a bubble. I’ve just been doing this thing, but apparently there are a lot of galleries and a lot of art being sold on the market. And I guess there is the community to support that. We’ve broke even or done well at all these things somehow, still sort of shocks me. But that’s because I’m Canadian.

AFC: (Laughter) I know about that.

PG: Selling art is still a slap in the face. I still can’t believe it. (Laughter)

AFC: Like it’s hardwired into us.

PG: It’s the last thing you buy. Nobody buys art.

AFC: Unless you’re Ken Thomson.

PG: Right. And isn’t he dead? [Editors note: Ken Thomson died in June of 2006]

An Interview with founder Phil Grauer of CANADA: Part One of Two

2007-02-22T18:30:00.000-08:00

Phil Grauer of CANADA New York at the Armory Show

This week my colleague Steven Stern details CANADA's fight to get into the Armory Show in Time Out New York. The article reveals no real scandal or conspiracy, but it does shed some light on the pitfalls of the art fair selection process. I similarly interviewed the gallery founder, Phil Grauer prior to the show's opening as part of our fair programming, and as such have a few words to add to the developing discussion. What you are about to read constitutes the first of a two part interview.

Art Fag City: So, tell me the story!

Phil Grauer: Which one?

AFC: The one about how you fucked your way into the Armory!

PG: (laughing) Slept my way…

AFC: Yeah.

PG: No, it’s not really a big story. There were a couple of Europeans that were showing our artists, some New York-based kids that we had done solo shows with, you know... introduced these artists to the Parisian dealers. And then…Rosson Crow would show up at art fairs we weren't at and that kind of thing. And so it just gave me a reason to kind of go up to the committee members, and tell them…

AFC: Are they based in Paris?

PG: The Armory committee?

AFC: Yeah…

PG: No, no the committee’s just made of…I don’t know much about how this committee gets chosen....Um, but they’re dealers, so I went over to Frieze and complained to the committee,. The committee’s just like Anton Kern and Lisa Spelman, whatever, you know, the guys, right? [Editors note: The 2007 selection committee members are Ciléne Andréhn, Stockholm, Matthias Arndt, Berlin, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, Anton Kern, New York, Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, Stuart Shave, London] And so I went over to Frieze because that’s where they’re all congregated, so I can go talk to them all...I was trying to get myself off of a wait list.

AFC: Wait, were you at Frieze? Were you showing there?

PG: No, no, I was just a tourist.

AFC: Just visiting…

PG: Yeah, I was just a backpacker. European ehhh…

AFC: Backpacker at the art fair?

PG: Yeah, Eurorail pass.

AFC: AWESOME.

PG: And so I got to Frieze, and there they all were, so I could just kind of go like, the problem I’m having with your Armory thing, folks, is that my artists are now being shown at the fair without me through these European dealerships, and it’s a sort of a misrepresentation of where they come from and who engineered their beginnings. So could you stop doing that or let me in your fucking fair? (Laughter) It just gave me an argument, rather than, oh please, but we have such fine art, which I think is the problem a lot of galleries likely have. It’s like then they likely have great works that should been seen and sold at art fairs, but I mean, this is the avenue that we kind of took. The New York art fair is kind of eroding the young New York dealers and gallerists and galleries like this one. Because it’s misrepresenting, it’s not covering this work that’s already being seen internationally.

AFC: Right.

PG: So what the fuck, sort of thing. And I think that they sort of had to go, oh, that’s a pretty good point. Oh yeah, that would suck, if I was in your shoes, that would suck. So then they kind of rethink it. I don’t think it’s a conspiracy or anything of the like. I don’t think they are trying to pull, and I’m a paranoid person by nature, so I start to think, oh, this is about suppressing me. It’s removing the guts of my program, the bread and butter from my table. You suddenly start feeling, because if you don’t get into the international art fairs, you’re going to lose your artists to these dealers, because you’re a gallery that can’t swing with the sharks. They might as well split, which did happen to us, you know, that sort of scenario did happen to us. I also had that to say, “I’ve already lost an artist,” you know this artist, and they’re like, oh yeah, because of your art fair…You know, the artist is going to say, “oh you didn’t get into the Armory? What the hell? I’m a great artist, I’m a superstar. My work’s in the Whitney Biennial, and my art gallery’s not in the Armory, well fuck you…"

AFC: Yeah, "I want my work to sell…"

PG: “I want my work to sell, and I want to be really famous. I want that room at MoMA. I’m the guy, and my art gallery’s not in the Armory. Fuck ya’ll,” so then they walk. Like sure, some artists aren’t going to do that and are going to fight kung fun style the dealer until we get into the fairs or don’t or whatever, but I think a lot of the artists are looking for the exposure that they see coming to the other artists at these fairs, be that the Armory or Basel or whatever. So it becomes part of the criteria to maintain a staff of artists, this type of exposure becomes …that was the thing, you have to, it seems, get in there, and I just didn’t think the New York art fair of all art fairs should be eroding the kind of landscape of young art dealers by using their artists but not using the galleries, like what the hell’s that? You know I’m the poor sucker who sat down here on the Lower East Side in the cold showing this motherfucker without a track record four years ago, and now that he’s in the Whitney Biennial and showing in Europe or whatever, you know, you’re able to use him and I can’t or something.

AFC: Right.

PG: That kind of imbalance.

AFC: Do you know how many galleries from this neighborhood are going to be at the Armory?

PG: I have no real idea, probably none.

AFC: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.

PG: Well, this is the thing. It’s hard for me to throw tomatoes because I got into the thing. So, it’s like, ooh, shit, you know…

AFC: And you want to get in next year…

Look forward to Part Two of Two to appear shortly.

The Rape of The Sabine Women: An Empty Vessel

2007-02-22T09:30:00.000-08:00

Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation
Grayson Rises
Photo by: Bobby Neel Adams for The Rufus Corporation

The Rape of the Sabine Woman by Eve Sussman and The Rufus Corporation screens at IFC February 22-27 and at The Armory February 23-26

Three years ago you couldn’t open a magazine or browser window without reading something about Eve Sussman’s 89 Seconds at Alcazar, which according to critics constituted the only redeeming work in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. The 12 minute film recreated the same moment that Velazquez captured in his famous painting "Las Meninas” in a Williamsburg basement, in addition to the time before and after the captured scene. Pretty much everyone you read will provide some variation on the thought that she breathes new life into the painting, and while the work is good, I’ve always found the discussion overly aggrandizing as it essentially places the possible scenes Velazquez doesn’t depict as an equal to a painting some believe is the best in the Western world.

Now, setting aside the obvious overestimation of the value of this work, there are plenty of reasons 89 Seconds at Alcazar is successful, and having seen her latest film made with the collaborative team the Rufus Corporation, The Rape of the Sabine Women, two in particular stand out; One the length of the piece matches the length of the story, and the length of time a viewer is likely to spend in front her video, and two all the visual information you need to understand the narrative already exists within the painting and the film. The Rape of the Sabine Women gives you neither, so not only are you faced with a piece that so obliquely draws from the myth of Romulus that it is best identified through a press release and builds from the painting The Intervention of the Sabine Women by Jacques-Louis David that appears once at the end of a feature film, but you’ve got more than an hour to spend with a movie whose duration has little to relation to the length of the story.

Not that I found this background illuminated Sussman’s piece in any great way, but the fable she works from begins with the Roman abduction of their neighbors’ daughters, and the subsequent Sabine attack to retrieve their loved ones, and ends when the kidnapped women (many of whom had by now wed and bore children) stood between the fighting men as peacemakers, not only stopping the war, but uniting the factions and marking the beginnings of the Roman Empire. The Rape of the Sabine Women uses government agents to represent to the Romans and casts butcher’s daughters as the Sabines, though the film doesn’t follow enough of a linear structure to discern much more than that. Comprised of five musical acts Sussman begins with the wolf of Romulus out front the Pergamon Museum, shots inside the building of an old guard dragging his foot across the floor, a bunch of classical statues, and some suited men who cough an awful lot. Act two most notably showcases a number of the men reading their papers in a terminal, and by the third act we witness the abductions and rape of the butcher’s daughters. Scenes in an inert modernist bungalow similar to the Barcelona Pavillion populate the fourth movement, and the final portion of the movie is defined by the chorus and subsequent fight inside the Herodion Theatre.

Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation
Girls at the Pool
Photo by: Benedikt Partenheimer for The Rufus
Corporation

To be completely honest I don’t know what to make of the sum of all this, because the conflict between the desire to create a shifting, non narrative Art film while using a linear myth that works against these biases is too great to over come. Even the most basic elements of storytelling breakdown in this film as it is unclear from scene to scene if you are looking at the new characters played by the same actors or characters who have been transformed by the events you witness. This isn’t interesting, it’s just confusing.

Compare this to Stan Douglas’s Inconsolable Memories, a film I reviewed just last month at The Reeler, and observe that the possibility exists to combine non sequential scenes and successfully if the artist applies a consistency of approach and technique to the subject matter. Here too, the references were not all at my fingertips - certainly Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's 1968 film Memories of Underdevelopment, finds itself more obscure than commonly known - but the piece holds together because the visual associations are clear, and the structure of the source material, which moves back and fourth in time, suits the adaptation.

Of course, the best aspect about that piece lies in the fact that the filmmaker restrained any impulse he might have to thread shots of himself throughout the movie. The Rape of Sabine Women can not boast this great feat, and as such, the work features meaningless footage of Sussman and her crew both at the beginning and end of the film. The artist discussed an affinity for the idea of “being pulled into a fiction and then sucked back out again” at a press conference earlier this month, but the mere intellectual interest has never been enough grounds to include a sequence in the work; some consideration has to be paid to whether it has any relationship to thematics already present.

If you can manage to put all this aside, you may be able to grant that individually there are one or two scenes in Sussman’s work that communicate a clear message. The best example of this comes from the flatly shot scenes in a modernist bungalow somewhere in Europe which Sussman populates with a cast of men and women in 60s’ designer clothing. Not much happens; a woman lies still on the floor of the living room, others sit passively on the white couches around her. But there in lies the point. The stagnance and sterility of an environment we would otherwise almost instinctively respond to positively reveals an undercurrent of failure that runs just below the slick surface of modernism.

Jonathon Bepler, best known for his work on Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle, also contributes a soundtrack to this piece that represents some mildly redeeming moments in the film - most notably a percussive mix of sounds created on and off set during a scene featuring men reading their papers in the airport. But there is a limit to what sound orchestration can do for a piece, and it stops at the ability to solve all the other problems this film has. The Rape of the Sabine Women references the cinematic movement Italien neo-realism, it is an allegory of the myth of Romulus, it uses the painting The Intervention of Sabine Women by Jacques-Louis David as inspiration. So what? Even if you know these historical and cultural references when you watch the movie, you’ll be hard pressed to know what do with them. And that’s an awfully big step down from 89 Seconds at Alcazar, a movie that similarly borrows the cannon of art history, but actually manages to add something to it.

See you Later, Decorator! An Interview With Scope Artist and Top Designer Ryan Humphrey, Part Two of Two

2007-02-21T18:00:00.000-08:00

Ryan Humphrey, SuperStore

Artist, Scope art fair participant, and Bravo Top Design TV reality star Ryan Humphrey continues to discuss the design world with Marie-Adele Miniot. Look forward to such quotes as "I just think there are really some things going wrong. But so did our founding fathers, that’s why we’re here.", and "I don’t think thinking is something that’s inherent." Sentiments to write down in your Daily Journal dear readers....

Marie-Adele Miniot and Ryan Humphrey: An Interview in Two Parts

AFC: So do you think your experience in the design world has moved your art even further in a more conceptual direction as a reaction against that?

RH: I’m a fighter. Like it or not, you take a lot of shit by being on a reality TV show. So for me like to sit there and kind of say, hey, it was all grand and fun and dandy, and it was, but there’s also a whole other deeper, psychological thing that occurs. I’m not even speaking about myself. It was like getting a close-up, it was really an eye opener for the mechanisms that run our society. It was like a model, on some level.

AFC: The sort of cut-throat element of it or…

RH: No, it really wasn’t cut-throat. A lot of the people on the show, it was like going to boot camp, you know, you bond. I think some of those reality shows are pretty harsh. I’ve seen some shows where there are a lot of physical challenges, and that’s when people turn into animals. I don’t feel like that occurred on this show at all, and I actually learned a lot about interior design, and a lot about what people have to go through. I have a huge respect for these people. They are incredibly talented and creative people. And good people. I don’t know if you saw the press release, it’s pretty abrasive, and that’s just because that’s the world I come from. The art world, you say things, and you don’t really round off the corners too much. They’re kind of sharp. I think the interior design world, and you can look at the publications and magazines, they don’t really go there. There’s no socio-political anything. There’s no, okay, if you do this, this is how it’s going to resonate here. They’re not going to tell you that the wine cellar they created out of an old slave’s barracks. They’re not going to tell you that, but that’s an incredibly important thing and an interesting thing, and I think you can address stuff like that. Somebody lives in a renovated shoe factory that might have been a sweatshop, it might have this long history, and I think you kind of can explore that in interior design. But oftentimes, it’s like, okay, no, it’s a blank slate. Maybe there’s some markings on the wall or paint on the floor, we’ll save that, that’s history. But you never really get into the history of it.

AFC: Do you know of any designers who are working in that model that you’re talking about?

RH: No, and the thing is, I’m not an interior design expert, nor would I ever claim to be. I have an Eames chair that I found on the street, that’s been in so much water damage, it looks like a barn antique. There might be something going on there, you know, you hear about music theory, and I’ve read art theory. I don’t know if there’s interior design theory, it would be interesting if there was. There’s architectural theory, but interior design is a little bit more afraid to go there. I’m sure there are artists who’ve done it, in terms of critiquing museums and that sort of thing. But in terms of interior design, you know, it’s a tough place to be because you would literally have to have a client who would appreciate that and continue to rehire you every time they bought a house.

AFC: Right, and want to live with that.

RH: You know, Frank Lloyd Wright had the famous doctor who was always like, okay, it’s several hundred thousand dollars over budget, it’s okay, Frank.

AFC: Right, do what you want.

RH: Kind of, you almost need a patron. But if somebody said, look, I want you to redo my townhouse, I’d say, okay, but I’d have to maintain some autonomy. I would try to reach a middle ground. They might want me to do their guesthouse first because they’re not really going to live there. They might have to treat it as an event…

AFC: Showpiece… What are your plans after Scope, after you finish the installation? What’s on your calendar for the next few months?

RH: I go to Dallas, I come back. I have a lecture in Dallas on Tuesday, and I come back Wednesday morning and start installing. And then, I’m going to do a show called Sensorium in March, and that’s with this guy Kevin Ryan. He’s a photographer, but he’s putting together this show. That’s really all that’s on my roster. And making some new work, as usual.

AFC: Great. One other question I have because I’m sort of curious about this sort of thing: It says on your bio that you’re an extremely hard worker, and I think that’s very evident in your work because it’s very detailed and all those things. But I was just wondering what your schedule is like, what are your work habits? I’m very interested in artists’ work habits.

RH: I wish I kept a defined schedule. Today I should be working on some things for the Scope fair, and I will, but there’s this backlog of emails and people who need photographs and phone calls to make, interviews to do. Pretty much, for me, I get up, and I’m thinking about artwork or stuff surrounding the installation or moving or the exhibition of artwork as well as making it. I basically get up and work and then go to sleep. And there are things I have to do in the meantime, like you have to figure out a way to survive, to make money. And I’ve been pretty fortunate selling some work this year, but you know, at Christmas time, I bought an entire truckload of old Schwinns in Ohio. My hometown is like a Schwinn mecca. An old factory there made a lot of parts for Schwinns, so they’re everywhere. So every time I go home, I buy them off this guy who, I don’t know where he gets them, yard sales or whatever. He’s retired. I buy all of his bikes; I throw them in my truck; and I come back to New York and I sell them for a huge profit. And it pays for my trip home, and my time off while I’m home, that sort of thing. It’s worth my while. And here I am dissing capitalism, and that’s what I’m doing: finding a niche market and catering to it. (Laughter) I’m not ready to get my motor home out in the middle of the woods and forget about society. Don’t get my wrong, I think it’s a great society that we live in, I just think there are really some things going wrong. But so did our founding fathers, that’s why we’re here.

AFC: Well, that’s a good place to wrap up, I think…

RH: Oh, I wanted to tell you. There’s going to be an AC/DC – do you know anything about the exhibition?

AFC: At Scope?

RH: Yeah, I was reading about it this morning. It’s If You Want Blood, You Got It? Is that the title?

AFC: Yeah, it’s an AC/DC song.

AFC: Okay.

RH: I can’t really talk about the title too much, and who it’s directed towards, but I think you can put two and two together.

AFC: Right.

RH: That album cover is really interesting. If you read about it, that’s the first record that they came out with after their first singer died. And I really like that it’s an all black cover. It’s a memorial in a way, without saying so, and it’s probably one of their most popular records. That vitality, that need to survive, and not only survive, but come back and be as good as they were before. I think that ideal alone, using that as wallpaper, really says something about the person who would have that as wallpaper first of all. But second of all, you put something like, it’s a simple idea; it’s dumb idea; it’s a pop culture idea. And you put that next to some Laura Ashley flowery nothing print. That’s the type of urgency, that’s the type of pressure I’m interested in. I think Laura Ashley is like, oh, you want big flowers, flower wallpaper, and color swatch books. And none of that’s bad, it’s just kind of empty in my opinion. I just wanted to get that out there a little bit, and I don’t know if the press release really talks about that. I’m relying heavily on people like yourself to sort of expand on that.

AFC: Yeah, it sounds like….I would imagine this moment in particular for you as a working artist, it would be important for you to express some of the results of the show. I don’t know, I see the meaning there…

RH: The results of the show really have nothing to do with it…

AFC: Well, the impact on you specifically, or the lack of impact as the case may be…

RH: I think, how should I phrase this? It’s going into press…

AFC: No, self-editing!

RH: Yeah, no self-editing…I just want to say that, I have higher aspirations for people, I guess. I think there’s a lot of people exist in a spiritual void, and they try to fill it with consumer goods. Whether it be the latest, coolest, most rare Nike tennis shoes, or the highest end, five thousand dollar loveseat, I feel like these are things that are just not necessary. I think you’re trying to fill a hole with some of this stuff, and maybe you should take some time to get to know yourself, and make conscious decisions. And I think people are taught how to think. I don’t think thinking is something that’s inherent.

AFC: Yeah, and one big problem is it’s never enough. If you’re trying to fill it with objects or things that are around you, it’s just never enough...

RH: Yeah, didn’t Ivana Trump have like a million pairs of shoes or something ridiculous?

AFC: I wouldn’t doubt it.

RH: Don’t get me wrong, money is a really great tool. It’s an awesome thing to have, to be able to do what you want, I just wonder what the hell people are doing with it. Whatever, I could go on for hours and hours, and sooner or later, I will contradict myself. Better quit while I’m ahead.

AFC: Well, this is great. Thank you very much for taking the time out. I look forward to checking out the installation.

See you Later, Decorator! An Interview With Scope Artist and Top Designer Ryan Humphrey, Part One of Two

2007-02-21T15:40:00.000-08:00

Ryan Humphrey, Vantasy, 2005-2006, Mixed media or…1971 C-10 Chevrolet van, BF Goodrich tires, Cragar S/S wheels, Bondo rubberized undercoat, automotive paint, clear coat, Plexiglas, 78 x 170 x 14 inches

In addition to our regular art fair coverage this week we will be featuring interviews with a few of the newer art stars in the New York area. First up, Top Design participant and Scope artist Ryan Humphrey, discusses his latest work, the interior design world, and our desire to accumulate more crap than we already have with my colleague Marie-Adele Miniot. We won't know the success of the gun sculptures he tells us "hold the mirror up to society" until Thursday, though I trust we can all prejudge those words.

Look forward to our Armory primer tomorrow as I discuss the politics of art fairs with exhibitor and gallery co-owner Phil Grauer of Canada.

Marie-Adele Miniot and Ryan Humphrey: An Interview in Two Parts

AFC: Tell me a little about the project you’re working on for Scope.

RH: Well, it’s a very sensitive topic.

AFC: Oh, is it?

RH: I think I may have lost some friends over it with the press release, but we’ll see how that pans out. I kind of dug into the interior design world a little bit, and I don’t know if I’m going to be successful with my project, but I’m going to give it my best shot. There’s like a lot of stuff I’m trying to juggle, and the space hasn’t even been erected yet. It’s basically a tent.

AFC: Right.

RH: It’s loosely based on an interior, but it’s more like installation work I’ve done in the past. And it’s a little edgy. There’s a big display of gun sculptures, and spears that have been made from brooms, and paint poles, and mop handles, and the brooms have been cut with…they’re steel, and they’ve been cut out with a plasma cutter, so they’re very accurate. It’s kind of an idea about arming the domestic worker. You know, what happens when your maid starts to rebel?

AFC: Okay...

RH: So, and the bigger picture, I’m kind of holding a mirror up to society right now, and saying, what do you value and why do you value it? I kind of feel like a lot of people’s desires, some people might consider them needs, are highly based on, I guess I’ll call it advanced peer pressure, what marketing companies decided people need to have. They sell people to those products; they don’t sell products to people anymore. Like you gotta have, don’t have walk into a – did you hear that?

AFC: Yeah, what was that?

RH: Some guy on the street saying, “Yo, you fucking idiot!” (Laughter) Beautiful, only in New York. Wow, what’s going on here? Like you can’t have a knock off Louis Vuitton bag, you know what I’m saying? It still functions as a bag; it gets you across town; it carries your keys; it carries your wallet. The difference is really…there isn’t much of a difference. I’m sure there’s a difference in terms of quality and materials, but it’s still a bag. And the fact that you have to have a knock-off of another bag says something, a lot about the psychology of people who exist in, and I’m not talking about capitalism in a bad communist sort of way, but like, capitalism has to continually create markets in order to survive. Bringing all that back to my installation, I’m trying to use iconography that really is a common denominator that really resonates with people on some level. I’m not saying guns are good or bad, I’m just saying this is a thing that we value or we don’t value. And when we put this next to your, whatever SUV’s in style this week, there’s a lot of questions asked, I would think. Am I making any sense?

AFC: Absolutely, you are.

RH: I’m rambling on.

AFC: No, it makes a lot of sense. Are these ideas that you’ve kind of thought about for a while, or has the show (Top Design) further developed them for you? How has that sort of relationship existed…?

RH: I really looked at the show as an extension of some of the performance work I’ve done. It’s hidden in there, and I think somebody who’s conditioned to studying art, and looking at art, and asking a lot of questions, can pick up on things and see it. But I think a lot of what I was talking about or trying to do has been made for TV, it’s been edited. But I feel like I fought the good fight.

AFC: What were the sort of events that led up to the show?

RH: To the show?

AFC: Yeah, for you personally as an artist?

RH: Actually I saw an ad on Craig’s List on a Saturday morning.

AFC: Good old Craig’s List.

RH: Yeah, isn’t that funny? I do primarily installation work, and in my opinion – I think they even put this on the TV commercial – I don’t think interior design has had its rebellion yet. It hasn’t had its Ramones, or its Dead Kennedys or its NWA. It hasn’t had something that’s kind of turned on it yet because I think everyone in that community – and this goes for the art community as well, and the fashion community – I think there’s a lot of people, as long as they continue to keep pushing on that bike pimp, everything stays inflated. And they’re like, okay, if I keep inflating it, and you keep inflating it, and you keep inflating it. And I’m not talking in financial terms. I’m talking in terms of keeping this big thing afloat. You know, at some point, I don’t know what it’s going to be, it’s probably not going to be an artist or a fashion designer or an interior designer. It’s going to be a plague or some giant economic collapse in China that’s going to pop it. But something’s going to come along and pop it. So, what was your question again?

AFC: I was wondering, what sort of led up to participating in the show?

RH: On the TV show?

AFC: Yeah, sort of what internally, and externally, you were kind of…

RH: Basically I do this installation work, and it has to do a lot with taste and what people consider good taste and bad taste, or high art or low art, or high culture or low culture. And, you know, I grew up in a burned-out industrial town, and what’s actually considered low culture here, is on some level considered high culture to me and to a lot of my friends growing up. So, I guess basically I looked at this Craig’s List advertisement, and thought, you know what, I could go and really do something with this interior design thing. I think most of it’s like bad airports, and computer beige, and doctor’s offices. You know, there’s some amazing stuff going on out there, I won’t discount it entirely. I just think it’s a weird, weird world, and I felt like, you know what, this is some place I can have an impact. It would be like a new genre for my artwork, like television. It’s like Andy Warhol 101.

AFC: Yeah, I just think it’s really interesting because there are so many similarities right now between the interior design world and the art world.

RH: Well, more and more so. That’s kind of one of my frustrations, and I could name a name, but I won’t do it. But you can pick one of the top five galleries, and almost all of the painters that show there, it’s just decorative. Conceptually there’s not much there, it comes down to style and technique, and concept is just missing. It’s a market, and I’m not going to say if it’s good or bad, but in my opinion, that’s not what I think artwork should be about. To me, that’s like a whole other place, and it has its place, and some of these painters I know, and I’ll tell them that to their face. I’ll be like, come on, is this what you’re studying in school, really? And I don’t mean that in a bad way.

AFC: Yeah, and it seems like such a byproduct of a strong market, that you know there are so many collectors, maybe not necessarily educated collectors who want work that looks good with their couch.

RH: A lot of the pieces end up over mantels.

AFC: Right.

RH: They are considered as one little component in an interior, like a wall treatment or a window treatment or a lamp. And I feel like art should be considered differently, and I don’t have the answer for how, but that’s something I’m always pushing for in my own work. If I had the answer, I’d be done, my search would be over.

Look forward to part two of two tomorrow, in addition to a dizzy amount of fair coverage.

Posting Notice

2007-02-21T07:30:00.000-08:00

We're out for the day, but you can expect to hear from us through out the rest of the week and into the weekend as we cover the New York art fairs.

Editors note: Scratch that. We're back. Interview above!

This Week in Art: Like Drinking So Much You Puke and Then Going Back into the Bar for More (Part Two)

2007-02-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

Last year around this time I titled my post similarly because only during this time of year in New York you can see so much poorly exhibited work in one place. Yes, that's right, starting tomorrow with the ADAA, the art fairs open around the city. Unfortunately we do not yet have an art fair district, so you can count on making several trips around town.

As it stands now I am most looking forward to the press preview at the Armory, as they promised the Director of MoMA, and center of scandal Glenn Lowry will be present. Hopefully Culturegrrl will be there to harass the poor man so that loathsome job doesn't fall on me.

For a full fair list see bloggy.

The College Art Association: A Two Session Round Up

2007-02-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

I've drawn up a few notes for those of you who attended the College Art Association Conference and weren't reading their blog, or for those readers who have done neither, but wouldn't mind an update. First, if you like discourse about the "aesthetic criteria of compression" or "virtuality as the ontology of art", then this conference will suit you well. The quotes are two of the more comprehensible phrases I managed to glean out the session Virtualities: Contemporary Art between Fact and Fiction, with star panelists David Joselit of Yale University, Vered Maimon of Columbia University, Tim Griffin editor of Artforum International magazine, Mark Godfrey of Slade School of Fine Art and Hannah Feldman of Northwestern University. Not that these positions mean much of anything if the majority of papers presented litter attendees ears with inpenentrible academic jargon. David Joselit and Tim Griffin proved to be the two exceptions to this problem, and though their essays were not providing particularly ground breaking information, I thought they were well thought out, and clear. Vered Maimon on the other hand, presented writing so dense it was very difficult to know what she was saying. It did not however escape me that she managed to give an entire talk on Walid Raad and The Atlas Group, an archive of fictional Lebanese war documents without mentioning the fact that Raad casts a Lebanese film star in The Bachar Tapes, a video that poses as the translated diary of an arab prisoner who apparently sports a ridiculously fake accent. The fact that the entire country of Lebanon is in on that joke while we aren't would seem to be a fairly significant content point in the work particularly on a panel titled Between Fact and Fiction.

There were however, panels and papers that weren't quite so flawed and certainly the best example I experienced came from a session that took the form of a Q&A. Living up to our expections expressed here, A Faustian Bargain: Emerging Artists, Critics, and the Market, hosted dealer Jeffrey Deitch, collectors Mera and Don Rubell, and critics Peter Plagens and Jerry Saltz, managing to fill a medium sized conference room with 300 plus people (this is an estimate - I have no idea how many people were there, only that most of them had to sit on the floor.) The conference blog offers a brief synopsis of the session which I recommend reading, though I have a few additional points to add. First, to my mind, by far the most interesting comment came from Jeffrey Deitch who about mid way through the session explained that the rise of importance of auction houses has meant the creation of an art history cannon dictated almost wholly by the market. Backing this sentiment up, he pointed out that the limitations of the contemporary evening sales are such that the work of roughly ten artists from every decade are available for purchase, and that that the dominance of these corporations means that that those ten practitioners have come to represent the most important figures of their time. I doubt Deitch is the only person to have thought that auction houses play a greater role in defining a cannon, but it was the first time I had heard a concrete example of exactly how it might effect the way we consider art. Deitch clearly seemed to think that the market alone should not determine what constitutes the most important art, which led him to the sentiment that critics are in fact, not powerful enough. He suggests blogs, myspace, and other web publishing tools that don't have any cost to them as a possible avenue for independent critics, and while I tend to support that thought, I also notice the increasing difficultly for individual bloggers to compete for traffic as large publishing houses move over to the web. These days, if you don't know the name you are looking for, Google brings up an array of heavily linked articles that predictably come from mass media sources.

Jeffrey Deitch also put forth the idea that we beyond the art market, and now part of the entertainment industry. This predictably set conservative critic Peter Plagens off, as he responded by asking Deitch if he planned on paying an penance for this. The quip served as comic relief, though notably there were a number of pious members in the audience incensed with the thought that Fine Art might reach a larger audience, and picked up on that thread in the question period. My thoughts on this particular matter have never been that participating in larger entertainment market some how taints art, since good art should remains so regardless of how it packaged, but rather, that as a profession we need to become much more savvy in order to be seen. To use a rather old expression, we are in bed with an elephant.

Outside of Deitch I got the most satisfaction from the clever one liners and occasional banter between the panelists. Jerry Saltz offered a number witty remarks, most nobably his response to Jeffrey Deitch's assertion that critics need to do more. "I agree," said Saltz, "though sometimes I feel like a Democrat being asked whether I have a plan to get out of Iraq." This statement was consistent with Saltz's earlier claim that critics didn't have any power, and if they did Martin Eder would not continue to have such a strong exhibition history. We'll all have to check this artists auction results this spring to see if Saltz's comments hold water.

The Rubells provided a good counter point to the panel as they were a little less intellectual in their approach to evaluating art. Mera Rubell's description of her feeling of periodic doubt in her belief in the golden age of art provides a good example of this, "It's like everyone's having sex and you're not!" she said "You're sitting at home alone." Appealing sentiments like this were quickly eclipsed however when she express the thought that their choice to live in a "dangerous" neighborhood in Miami, somehow put them in a better position to evaluate the art they purchased. Nobody called her on that statement, but it was so problematic even she seemed to realize it probably wasn't something she should have said out loud. Interestingly, she closed out the session, expressing the desire that Saltz be able to collect and escape his three figure salary (his words). Her thoughts came from her own appreciation of art and her wish to share it, though she had clearly never considered of the conflict of interest involved in critics sharing her practice.

And on that note I leave you, (albeit abruptly.) Keep in mind that next year's CAA conference will be in Dallas, which means all us New Yorkers will have to ditch a cheap subway ride in favor of air transportation.

A Small Amount of Additional Information on MoMA Director Glenn Lowry's Sweet Pay Check

2007-02-19T07:47:00.000-08:00

Late last Thursday the New York Times reported that between 1995 and 2003, a trust created by David Rockefeller and Agnes Gund paid Glenn Lowry, the Director of the Museum of Modern Art and one of the best compensated museum officials in the business, a total of $5.35 million in unreported funds*, in addition to his 1.28 million dollar yearly earnings. You don't have to be a financial whiz to know that this represents fairly shady business practice, and that Lowry's position may well be in jeopardy. And well it should be. Since when should a museum pay out additional sums of money to a director without making that information available to the public?

It would appear that in the mid 90's Lowry's trust allowance was much bigger than in recent years. The New York Times sources a supplemental document found on guidestar.com, a website that provides data on nonprofits, which MoMA provided to the IRS upon their request on January 5th 2007. The Times doesn't list the amounts allotted to Lowry by year, but in case you're interested in doing a little number crunching, I've listed the amounts made available on guidestar.

1999 $397,867.17
2000 $ 50,640.70
2001 $129,990.79
2002 $178,787.12
2003 $ 35,000.00
2004 $ 0.00
2005 $ 0.00
2006 $ 0.00

Assuming the total number of additional unreported funds received is correct, this means that Lowry received about 4.56 million between 1995 and 1998 from the trust. I'm not sure this is really breaking news, considering most of this information is already in the Times article, but for those of you who find any numbers news, the above breakdown should be appeal to those senses.

For additional information read Tyler Green and Culturegrrl.

*Unreported funds speaks only to what the museum submitted prior to Jan. 7th 2007. Not surprisingly, The New York Times reports that Mr. Lowry paid income taxes on the money he received from the trust. Evading personal income tax is a very quick way to get yourself in trouble.

Timothy Buckwalter: Bury The Ones You Love

2007-02-16T07:08:00.000-08:00

I have to be honest - this is not the best week I've ever had. In the past two days I have missed three trains as a result of the weather and spent close to four days either without an Internet connection or with one of those near useless ones that block nearly any site you'd want to look at for objectionable content. As a result I feel nervously out of touch, lazy for having watched enough Law & Order to identify virtually every working New York actor in the city, and sadly, even mildly lonely. Please blame corporate America for denying my access to every site but the Apple store, and the fact that even though I curated a show of drawings for Timothy Buckwalter early this week, and it's only now that I have the opportunity to mention it.

My write up for the show below:

By Timothy Buckwalter

In honor of Valentines Day I selected drawings by Timothy Buckwalter that speak to bad people and those who love them. It’s the age old story of the girl who unjustly left you when you told her it was lesions that were affecting your mood. Or something like that. Bury The Ones You Love is about the underbelly of romance, and the contempt we feel towards those who inspired the term.

AFC Quickie

2007-02-15T07:16:00.000-08:00

Screengrab AFC

In a bizarre turn of events it appears as though the corporate world does have some use for me and I will remain out of town until Friday. Almost as unbelievable as that nugget of information is the fact that Exit Art finally redesigned their website. Gone are the days where you can't find material of any kind on the site without experiencing blurry text and a boy who whips the sense out of you as you scroll links to pages you might follow. The only downside to the retirement of whipping boy is that I'll have to find something else to complain about during slow news days. Thanks a lot you guys.

In other other news, Tyler Green writes a rare personal post on Valentines day, attributing his love for art to his mother. It's very touching. Via Bloggy.

College Art Association Annual Conference: Session Picks

2007-02-14T09:15:00.000-08:00

Image copyright College Art Association

WEDNESDAY

Do No Harm: The Role of the Curator
February 14, 9:30 AM–12:00 PM
Beekman Parlor, 2nd Floor, Hilton New York
Will these curators repent for all the curatorial sins of exhibitions past? Go find out. Chair is Steven Rand from apexart. Other participants include independent curators, Olga Kopenkina and Joshua Decter, and Elizabeth Schlatter of University Museums, University of Richmond.

Metro Poles: Current Art at the City’s Limits
February 14, 2:30 PM–5:00 PM
Gibson Room, 2nd Floor, Hilton New York
This panel promises to represent Queens and the Bronx in finding out where art lives beyond Chelsea. Chair is Erin Donnelly from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Speakers are Edwin Ramoran of the Longwood Arts Project, Bronx Council on the Arts, and Heng-Gil Han of the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning.

THURSDAY
ARTspace: CAA Services to Artists Committee
Does the Art World Have a Political Bias?
February 15, 12:30 PM–2:00 PM
Murray Hill Suite, 2nd Floor, Hilton New York
Everything has a political bias. Check out how this outspoken panel elaborates on the title's question. Co-chairing this session is Stephen Lamia of Dowling College and Thomas Kleese of the University of Wisconsin, Richland. The session also features James Panero of The New Criterion and the inimitable Martha Rosler of Rutgers.

Art Spaces Archives Project
The Transition/New Directors and Old Organizations: Creative Approaches to Organizational Art History of the 1970s to the Present
February 15, 12:30 PM–2:00 PM
Rendezvous Trianon, 3rd Floor, Hilton New York
With a maze-like title, this panel brings together a collection of New York's nonprofit administrators. Perhaps they'll discuss their admirable shared commitment to showing emerging artists. Chair is David Platzker of Art Spaces Archives Project. Participants include Anne Pasternak of Creative Time, Debra Singer of The Kitchen, Matthew Higgs of White Columns, and Benjamin Weil of Artists Space.

FRIDAY
Virtualities: Contemporary Art between Fact and Fiction
February 16, 2:30 PM–5:00 PM
Mercury Ballroom, 3rd Floor, Hilton New York
Featuring presentation titles with words and phrases like "staging," "compression," "a journey that wasn't," "utopia," and "improbable fictions," this session addresses a very relevant trend in contemporary artmaking: artists messing with the line between fact and fiction, truth and untruths. The roster is full of big shots, and co-chairs are T.J. Demos of University College, London and independent critic Margaret Sundell. Yale's David Joselit, Columbia's Vered Maimon, Tim Griffin of Artforum International, Mark Godfrey of University College, London, and Hannah Feldman of Northwestern University round out the heady talk.

The Art Market as Medium of Cultural Transfers
February 16, 2:30 PM–5:00 PM
Madison Suite, 2nd Floor, Hilton New York
End Friday with this panel about the market as cultural highway. Presentations cover a long, long timeline of art history, and consider the cultural forces that keep the market in check or let it skitter out of control. Co-chairs of the session are Michael North of the University of Greifswald and Christian Huemer. Speakers include John Ott of James Madison University, Arshiya Mansoor Lokhandwala, Christopher R. Marshall, Midori Yamamura, Mary K. Coffey of Dartmouth College, and Hans Van Miegroet.

SATURDAY
International Association of Art Critics
A Faustian Bargain? Emerging Artists, Critics, and the Market
February 17, 12:30 PM–2:00 PM
Beekman Parlor, 2nd Floor, Hilton New York
An esteemed group gets together to discuss a very current issue for working artists and the critics who love them: the big, green art market. Chair is independent critic and filmmaker Amei Wallach. The panel includes gallerist Jeffrey Deitch, collectors Mera and Don Rubell, Jerry Saltz, critic of the Village Voice, and independent artist and critic Peter Plagens.

Please note: The above sessions require admission to the conference. A day pass costs $150. The rest of the fare schedule is available online.

AFC News

2007-02-13T08:35:00.000-08:00

CAA News
Betye Saar is receiving CAA's 2007 Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work. Saar's assemblages are still vibrant. Don't miss her talk with African American art scholar Camara Holloway on Friday at ARTspace.

Bring it, Doggies!
Tired of planning for CAA and next week's fairs? Take a break with Magnum and Slate's pooch pictorial marking the start of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. Also check out the show's blog for all the backstage drama.

ArtCal - Triple Candie - Limelight, Coffeehouse and gallery, 1954-61
The only thing we know for sure about this exhibition is that you can get a cup of coffee for 25 cents. It might be a send-up of the Limelight or it might be an homage. Read the press release and decide if the original exhibition actually existed.

Sleepwalkers Mashup
I Like Nice Things tags Aitken's work for their own and uses videos of people you might actually see on your daily commute (instead of Chan Marshall).

Stay tuned for tomorrow's session picks for the College Art Association Annual Conference.

Posting Notice

2007-02-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

Photo copyright Neil Rough

I'm traveling for the next couple days, so updates will be a little thinner than usual around here. Look forward to a few posts full of great links in my absence.

Additional Weekend Links

2007-02-09T17:30:00.000-08:00

Linda Nochlin,
Image copyright Brooklyn Museum

I like to complain about the MoMA website, but you have to hand it to them for stocking it with so much content. For example, videos for each of the speakers at the January 26-27 symposium The Feminist Future: Theory and Practice in the Visual Arts, are now online. This is particularly useful given that the event had been sold out for months. Now if you haven't seen the event your only excuse is that you haven't made the time.

Screengrab AFC

In case you are wondering what the Texas art website Glasstire has to do with the New York Art Scene, the answer is two fold: One as I mentioned a while ago, New York seems to show a number of great artists from that state, and the scene seems to be very healthy. Two, they are the most comprehensive US art web publishers outside of New York, and therefore naturally of interest to us. In any event, Glasstire redesigned their site and added a few new features we'd like to note. For those of you who don't use news readers, the site now has a section titled US Art Headlines. Links to The New York Times, Modern Art Notes, Rhizome and the Village Voice are provided. Not to over state the importance of blogs, but people do read them, so we like that they now have them. Finally, their article archives now date back to 2001 and are fully accessible, which means their value as a research resource will grow. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have added RSS feeds to their site. I guess we'll have to boo at them for that.

Stan Douglas at David Zwirner: How to Build Upon Something Good, With Something Much More Complicated

2007-02-09T16:34:00.000-08:00

Stan Douglas, Still from Klatsassin, 2006
Video installation for 1 screen with numerous permutations
Image copyright David Zwirner

I really want to like Stan Douglas's latest film Klatsassin currently on display at David Zwirner and a lot of this has to do with the fact that I spent three days in January decoding his similarly approached 2005 film Inconsolable Memories. But taking the good concepts of one film and simply exaggerating them in another rarely makes good work and Klatsassin is no exception.

Like Inconsolable memories, a film based on Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's 1968 movie Memories of Underdevelopment, Douglas this time draws from Rashomon, a murder mystery told from several perspectives. Rashoman however told many stories in the space of 88 minutes, whereby Douglas teases his historical recount into a nearly 70 hour non-sequential narrative recounting trial and execution of the Aboriginal Tsilhoqot'in chief during the gold rush. Now, I'm not going to say that a confusing three day long piece is a liability to an artist (though it frequently is,) - the issue with the work stems more from the fact that there doesn't appear to be any good reason for the length. As he did in Inconsolable Memories, the artist uses multiple reels to create the film thereby increasing its duration, only this time, rather than employ two he uses eight. Douglas can explain to you how he employed quick time videos to mix his many looping scenes, but it's not very interesting, and seems rather excessive if the point is merely to create multiple stories.

But assuming you can figure the storyline out, there's enough there to maintain the attention of the viewer. Not that it matters though, as the production issues are too great to ignore. For example, why go to the trouble to mimic cinematic conventions of picture composition and scenic transitions, if you're not cast good actors? There wasn't a soul in Klatsassin who uttered their lines convincingly, the wooden delivery reaching points so awful, I felt like leaving the room. The score also constituted an problematic element to the work as it frequently felt ill matched with the scenes. I suspect Douglas laid the music over the shots with some sort of algorithm that matched the film loops, but if the results have limited conceptual appeal, and aren't any good formally, you might as well build greater structure into the sound design.

Much like the people we encounter every day, I guess you could ration that we're not meant to respond to each scene in this film. The argument doesn't go very far with me though because I'm not particularly interested in wasting my time waiting for a sequence I think works for me. And why should I bother? Stan Douglas said himself he hadn't watched the movie in it's entirety, and while it's clearly not important to him that people stay for the three day duration, the statement would seem to indicate that the pleasure of figuring out the mechanics of the film were of greater importance than the experience of viewing it.

AFC News

2007-02-09T12:29:00.000-08:00

AFC note: No pictures this time, but I trust you can make it through this one post without the "news" visual aid.

LRB - Peter Campbell Reviews Wallinger at Tate Britain
Try to a resist a review that ends with, "It’s better to acknowledge that grand narrative is dead. If that’s what you’re interested in, go to the movies instead." Campbell discusses artist Mark Wallinger's reconstruction of materials accumulated by Brain Haw in his bold protest of Britain's policies in Iraq. Exhibit at Tate Britain.

ARTnews - Interview with Linda Nochlin
Linda Nochlin follows up her landmark, 1971 article for ARTnews with this sit-down for the mag's February issue devoted to new Feminist art. She has a great vocabulary, including definitions for "feminisms" (plural) and "anti-painting."

Cabinet Magazine Online - A Poet of Cloth
This essay about dandy George "Beau" Brummell and the art of the cravat was published in Cabinet's print mag last year. Discover it in honor of Fashion Week.

...might be good - Interview with Robert Pruitt
Nicole J. Caruth hosts an interview with Houston-based artist Robert Pruitt for this contemporary art biweekly. Pruitt discusses his drawings on view at Clementine Gallery, bridging the gap between African tradition and contemporary practices, and his fondness for cheap, accessible materials.

Mattersofart
India's self-proclaimed first ezine of art covers large museum shows, interviews with artists and curators, and shout-outs to AFC. Note the interview with artist Noah Fischer, who makes Art Fag City's Best Art of 2006 as a bonus pick.

Adi Nes at Jack Shainman

2007-02-08T15:35:00.000-08:00

Adi Nes, Installation View, 2007
Photo copyright Jack Shainman

Adi Nes
Biblical Stories
Jack Shainman Gallery
January 5 - February 3, 2007 (Sorry, folks, the show's down, but the collection is noteworthy. Check out the review.)

Known for his provocative, staged photographs of Israeli youth, Adi Nes often recasts contemporary characters in classical settings. In Biblical Stories, actors playing the homeless and disenfranchised get starring roles as the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Old Testament. Unlike so many large-scale photographs, these images make sense in their heft. They deftly represent mythical, Biblical subjects in a cinematic language.

With poignant images like Abraham and Isaac and Ruth and Naomi Gleaners, Nes overturns the fallacy of homeless life and reveals its harsh truths. Abraham and Isaac move by shopping cart, a mobile home stuffed with cans, wood blocks, and plastics bags. They’re collectors, like Ruth and Naomi, who are captured at work, bent over, and gathering cast-off fruit. Other images capture characters as prostrate or static. In Elijah, a wizened, white-bearded man lays on a concrete bench, while crows surround him in a strange, stage-set construction. A similar composition also exists in Abel. Nes’ actor poses in a fetal position on the sidewalk, where he’s highlighted by thick streams of artificial light and a creepy poster in the background. These photographs all tell a coherent story of homelessness, one that is less about aimless wandering and more about hard work and fundamental survival.

Theater is a given in these portraits, but some of the photographs affect a more commercial bearing than others. What looks deeply moving in arrangement, lighting, and characterization in one image seems overly false in another. In David and Jonathan, the latter looks like a model who just stepped off the soccer field setting of an advertisement. He boosts David, his “teammate,” like a brother, but the gesture skips past the intimacy of their bond as drawn in the Bible and testily debated by thumpers and scholars. So too Nes’ collection tosses out certain myths of homelessness only to reconstruct other Biblical fictions. The photographs look glorious together as a pictorial narrative, and when the images veer towards fantasy, they reflect the unreliability of all myths.

Upgrading to "We"

2007-02-08T13:00:00.000-08:00

In an effort to make the use of the word "we" accurate around here, I've finally solicited a little bit of help. Initially I figured this would mean I'd have a jpeg assistant, but I quickly discovered my colleague’s talents far exceed that particular skill set. As such, Marie-Adele Moniot will provide links to relevant art news a couple of times a week, and pen the occasional review. Please note the irrevocable change to the site, since not one but two people will now read all praise and hate mail.

Marie-Adele's first post will appear on the site later today. Take it easy on her.

Art Fag City at The Reeler: The Painted Whale

2007-02-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

Jacco Olivier, Whale, 2006, Animation on DVD
Triple screen, dimension variable, duration: 7 minutes
Installation view

Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York

This week at the Reeler I discuss Jacco Olivier's animated films at Marianne Boesky Gallery. I imagine the piece will, in particular, appeal to those interested in the field of painting, and those who think Boadwee's ass to be a particularly low moment for artmaking.

At some point you have to ask what more an artist can do with the surface of a canvas. Over the last century, art makers invented fractured perspective as a means of depicting objects, gestural mark-making to represent emotion, created monochromatic, photorealist and commercially inspired works -- the list goes on. It's not too surprising that by the '70s, the number of ways you could approach the medium seemed exhausted and that people were declaring the medium dead. Little did they know that we'd have to wait 20 more years for Keith Boadwee to shit enema bags of paint onto a canvas before we could hammer the final nail in that coffin.

I'm half joking of course -- we've obviously seen good painting since Boadwee -- but I bring the subject up because the field feels narrow, and only a few artists like Jacco Olivier, whose current painted films can be seen at Marianne Boesky Gallery, among them, have been able to find a working method that pushes the medium forward. Of course, fine art animation strikes no one as new, but Olivier’s fusion of painting and video, while coming out of a tradition best exemplified by William Kentridge’s charcoal drawing stop-motion films, separates itself from its predecessors by abandoning stop-animation for fluid cinematic techniques and being much more concerned with formalism than narrative.

To read the full piece click here.

Red Studio, MoMA Podcasts by Teens

2007-02-07T07:28:00.000-08:00

Jasper Johns, Flag. 1954–55
Encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood (three panels)
42 1/4 x 60 5/8" (107.3 x 154 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

We're out for the day, but boy do we have a link for you! Thanks to a tip from an art educator yesterday, I was alerted to Red Studio MoMA, a program for teens now hosting their podcasts about MoMA's Painting & Sculpture galleries. It's a project that has the potential to be an utter bore, but I have to say, the kids really pull it off. Their thoughts are better articulated than most adult visitors I over hear in that building, their discussion both insightful and hilarious! I personally recommend Jasper Johns Flag. Podcasters Karina and Alexandra found a choice Johns quote to use in their talk.

Gary Hill at Gladstone Gallery

2007-02-06T10:12:00.000-08:00

Gary Hill, Frustrum, Installation view
Image copyright Gladstone Gallery

I had planned on reviewing Gary Hill's exhibition at Gladstone for The Reeler this week, only to discover that the amount of the thought required to damn the show would be more than it deserved. I won't bore you here either (especially since its already been covered elsewhere), except to say that it consists of two works; Frustrum, a poorly animated eagle that flaps its arms in front snapping a few electrical wires in its path and a giant pool of oil, and Guilt, a piece whereby Hill mounts coins with his own portrait undergoing scenes of torture on rotating pedastols around the gallery and presents a number of telescopes to view them with. Decoding this mysterious work of art was difficult, but I eventually managed to come up with the following: US occupation in the Middle East bad. Torture bad.

More annoying than the show itself was the act of experiencing it, as someone actually took Guilt seriously enough to inform me that I was obstructing his telescopic view of a coin. In doing so, he could have easily marched up to the work itself and inspected it, but I suppose nothing beats the experience of looking at rotating currency through a real life Gary Hill lens. My friend kindly informed him that we were part of the interactivity of the piece, so if he was asking us to move we weren't going to. Normally I'd feel like too much of an asshole not to say something to cushion that response, but in this case I just couldn't muster the effort. The show inspires utter apathy.

Salon Launches New Culture Blog "The Fix"

2007-02-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

Claiming to improve on blogging, Salon's newly revamped culture column now "anti-blog" The Fix updates once each morning, so people who are looking for ways to waste time at work need only look at their site once. Wow, there's a winning concept if I ever heard one.

Doug Aitken: Additional Thoughts

2007-02-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

Doug Aitken: sleepwalkers.
January 16-February 12, 2007. A Joint Project of Creative Time and The Museum of Modern Art. Pictured: Donald Sutherland © 2007 Doug Aitken

There are a few loose ends I wanted to address visa vi Doug Aitken's Sleepwalkers, most of which were brought up by Tom Moody last Friday. My original write up can be read here for a bit of background, and the Q & A begins below!

TM: If the piece is supposed to be about a day in the life of ordinary New Yorkers, isn't that ruined by using celebrities such as Cat Power, Tilda Swindon, and Donald Sutherland, in the roles? If Aitken wants to flout the conventions of cinema, why use movie stars? Is Sutherland's "dancing on top of a cab" something ordinary people do, or only Michael Jackson?

Sleepwalkers is more about the symbiotic relationship that the body has with the city (both being nervous systems of a sort) than it is a day in the life of an average New Yorker, though ordinary characters represent "the body". I'm not going to take issue with the fact that he's used celebrities to play these roles, as I can suspend my disbelief, but I am rather skeptical of his practice of employing stars in light of his professed interest in thwarting the conventions of cinema. He talks about distrusting the "safety of the screen", but I remain unconvinced that his choices are risky. The work reminds me of the suburban raver phenomenon, or "alternative music" in the 90's, in the sense that he flouts conventions conventionally.

TM: Isn't a "non-linear narrative" the ultimate art world cliche at this point? What does this piece do to surmount that?

Nothing.

TM: How do the moving images on sides of buildings differ from the corporate displays a few blocks over in Times Square?

Sleepwalkers is put together better than the average ad, but it never surmounts the connotations associated with being a projection on the side of a building. Were it projected on the apple istore, the piece would be indistinguishable from a mac ad. As it stands now the video is a promotional piece for Douglas Aitken's thoughts on what video art should be, and while his thoughts on the subject may be more complicated than the piece, he really presents a limited vision at best of what video art can be.

Guthrie Lonergan's 2001<<<>>>2006 Still Waiting For Reblogging

2007-02-05T07:22:00.000-08:00

What is a Reblog? Blogging software that makes it easy to preview and republish articles, web log posts, and web links from other sites. The goal is to allow individuals and organizations to filter content and republish material that is most useful to their respective audiences.

It seems a little odd to me that Guthrie Lonergan posted the first great art piece that manipulates YouTube software last Monday on Nasty Nets (my description here), and it hasn't received institutional support from either of the new media reblog sites in the city. Don't get me wrong, it's great that five hundred new sites have been added to the Rhizome ArtBase -- Sonya Nielson's Antediluvian Fragments of Memories; thank God her "interaction with squares" was brought to my attention via the reblog -- but there's a problem in the way a reblog is set up when that work appears on the main page and Lonergan's does not. In Rhizome's defense "Professional Surfer", (a show that considers web surfing an art form) includes the site nasty nets, and by extension the Lonergan piece, but the exhibition suffers from the same problem any link in a side bar has -- nobody pays attention to it for long. Certainly, I have not had calls from the artists I included in the Emerging Artist Series thanking me for the attention they continue to receive as a result of being listed in mine.

As for Eyebeam, their reblog remains at the mercy of the interests of the current reblogger, which means the only thing predictable about the site is that it lacks consistent coverage of items of importance to the new media community. In theory Eyebeam news would help address this issue, but the institution uses it only to list their own events and listings, which means a lot of good work gets missed. Probably the easiest way to address the problem would be to maintain two blogs, one maintained by a professional blogger presumably employed by them, and the other by their invited guests. I am told that a site redesign is in the works, so we can all hope this is something they consider.

Meanwhile, Tom Moody has written a great post explaining why the Lonergan work is significant and who's picked it up? No one, that's who.

The Perfect Viewing Distance

2007-02-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

Photo: AFC

Tara Giannini stands in front of Marc Handelman's painting Instruments of Power From America Today during a rare quiet moment at the artist's opening at Sikkema Jenkins & Co last Friday.

Jerry Saltz and Jeffrey Deitch in a Room Together at Last

2007-02-02T13:50:00.000-08:00

Even though it means I have to travel most years to attend The College Association conference, I like that they hold it in a variety of cities to democratize the amount of time their members end up spending on a plane or car. I also like that this year the conference takes place in New York, so I only have to worry about what subway line I will take.

The event itself tends to be something you know about if you teach since their fair is a networking heaven for academics and a high profile venue to present important papers. Outside this professional circuit though it seems like the conference flies under the radar of those involved with art, which is a shame because I think arts culture as a whole would benefit from seeing a little more integration between the fields of academia, gallery spaces, and journalism.

Not that the following panel speaks specifically to that sentiment, but it certainly looks like something to put your calendar for the 17th. A Faustian Bargain? Emerging Artists, Critics, and the Market, chairs Amei Wallack, an independent critic and filmmaker, and invited panelists Jeffrey Deitch, Deitch Projects, Mera and Don Rubell, private collectors, Miami, Jerry Saltz, critic, Village Voice, Peter Plagens, independent artist and critic, will all speak.

Given the amount of written material Saltz has been generating lately that is critical of the art market, and the fact that Jeffrey Deitch not only represents this, but in my encounters with him has proved to be an ass, I can't think of a discussion I want to see more. Throw in the Rubells, a family that holds one of the most important and controversial art collections in the world, and have even been labeled taste makers into the mix, and you've got some very interesting points of difference. However, there is a cavat: The price of a one day pass to the conference will set you back $150 bucks. For all of us poor people, that means if we see it, it will be because someone decided it was worthy vlog material and posted it.

Full disclosure: I worked at CAA during their 2005 conference in Atlanta. Feel free to dismiss my opinions if you feel my brilliant management of slide carousel loans makes me impartial.

Art Fag City at The Reeler: The Trouble With Sleepwalkers

2007-02-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

Doug Aitken: sleepwalkers.
January 16-February 12, 2007. A Joint Project of Creative Time and The Museum of Modern Art. Pictured: Donald Sutherland © 2007 Doug Aitken

Like most of the art world, generally speaking I am a fan of Doug Aitken. I am not however, a fan of everything he does, and Sleepwalkers is one such example. The multichannel projection has it's ups and downs, but to read about all of them you'll have to visit The Reeler. The teaser below.

I defy anyone to travel in this city for more than a few miles without seeing or hearing some mention of Doug Aitken: Sleepwalkers, the immense video installation projected on the MoMA façade through Feb. 12. Admittedly, the presentation is stunning: Spanning virtually every flat exterior surface the museum has to offer, viewers have the opportunity to watch anywhere from one to four channels at a time, typically from locations such as West 53rd or 54th Streets, in an adjacent lot often used to corral visitors on busy days, within the MoMA Sculpture Garden and, for those who don’t mind exchanging a good film experience for a small amount of warmth, through a very glare-friendly window inside the MoMA Design Store across 53rd. Ryan Donowho, Seu Jorge, Chan Marshall (the musician Cat Power), Donald Sutherland and Tilda Swinton respectively play the roles of a bicycle messenger, electrician, postal worker, businessman and an office employee, and the film traces their rise in the morning and journeys to various locations around Manhattan. The soundtrack for the piece comes from the city itself, and the narrative construct, like most art videos, remains mostly non-linear.

Those are the sounds of a blockbuster hit if I ever heard one: Virtually no dialogue; no plot; no action; and it’s about 30 degrees outside -- surely droves of people will flock to see this movie. Indeed, I met about eight outside the museum, each of whom asked the same question I had: Why does sleepwalkers have to screen in the middle of winter?

One MoMA employee told me the choice was a deliberate attempt by the city to recapture the economic success of Christo and Jean-Claude's self-funded The Gates, which generated an estimated $254 million in economic activity during typically dead tourism months in New York. While the city did not directly commission Aitken, it did fund Creative Time (an arts organization that commissions artists to create public works), which then partnered with MoMA. The organization acknowledged they were encouraged to present a piece in January as opposed to the already tourist-rich month of December, though they claim the project was always intended to be launched in the winter.

To read the full review click here.

The Future was Posted Four Days Ago

2007-02-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

Guthri Lonergan, Nasty Nets, 2001<<<>>>2006
Screengrab AFC

It's funny how good it feels to watch our cloudy destiny. Such is the case with Guthri Lonergan's newest work 2001<<<>>>2006, which embeds a YouTube video by a couple of teenagers with a love for the mirror tool in Photoshop and the music group Queen, into a larger clip from 2001 depicting an ominous future and the time travel of Dr. Frank Poole. As the video suggests, we could be sinking into a dark hole, but these days we'd cheerfully be singing the lyrics of sad songs as it happened.

The piece works on a number of levels, not all of which I'm going to go into (you can see my colleague Theodor Adorno for that,) but I particularly like that it pairs the popular use of digital software to facilitate envisioning the future, with Kubrick's highly effective and decidedly low tech filming techniques. The juxtaposition speaks to the philosophy of a school of net artists who tend to value older technology as a method of working, or at the very least are critical of the fetishization of gadgetry.

Interestingly, the response to the work while positive, tends to mimick the very things the community questions. For example, Kottke, obviously laying out 2001<<<>>>2006 for propagation, used the unfortunate description of CSS positioning, to link to the piece Monday, which resulted in one or two posts about the greatness of CSS, and little else. As it is clear the blogger well knows, for better, and often for worse, you can always count on Internet nerds to endlessly discuss how to make "cool things"....but usually without ever considering why you're creating it in the first place.

Upcoming: Marc Handelman's Eye of The Empire at Sikkema Jenkins

2007-01-30T11:15:00.000-08:00

Marc Handelman, Trusted, Independent, Powerful, 2006
Oil on canvas , 108 x 216 inches

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
Empire of the Eye
February 2- March 3, 2007
Opening Reception: Friday, February 2, 6-8pm

Last year I interviewed painter Marc Handelman for the online startup Fanzine, and as it undoubtedly became the most interesting conversation I had about painting in 2006, I was naturally quite curious when he told me about his upcoming at Sikkema Jenkins. We spoke about a variety of topics, but the most interesting part of the conversation to look at now involves how he saw his work evolving, because of course you can see everything he discusses in his now work, (at least in as much as you can tell from the five jpegs on the gallery website - but what a set of reproductions.) I have quoted an excerpt from the interview below where Handelman speaks about moving away from landscapes and his interest the pathology and desire for power and space.

Screenshot AFC

PADDY JOHNSON: In your last show at Lombard Fried, the work very often depicted landscapes as some sort of barrier to light. There was a sense that growth was happening all around you, and you had no control over its direction or what it did. They are strange, bittersweet fantasies. In your newest body of work, landscape seems to play a far less dominate role. What prompted the change in your paintings?

HANDELMAN: I suppose I thought about the paintings themselves as a kind of barrier or void—an obfuscation to some wholly other event. But for me, the light and the darkness are always the same. They both collapse into the same kind of abyss. But I’m less interested in a relationship to nature than in landscape painting as a framework for pathologies and desires about power and space. So “nature” in my work is always a foil. I think the first time I really started thinking about Luminism was when I painted “Soft Ascent”—that execution viewing window and architectural facade. I had initially painted in a curtain, wanting to eradicate the view altogether. Maybe that kind of speaks to that “barrier to light” that you just mentioned, but then I painted it out with this warm peachy radiant light like a Sanford Gifford painting. There’s this feeling in Gifford’s work, of everything just vanishing—the mountains, the trees, the distance and even the viewer. And it’s such a clean annihilation too, not like [J.M.] Turner or [Frederick] Church’s sublime. It’s a dissolution that’s totally disarming and beautiful and I thought maybe that’s the feeling you might have from, say, a lethal injection.

PADDY JOHNSON: You are obviously thinking about painting and the history of painting quite a bit. You mention Luminism, and your work references the Hudson School of Painting, as well as Abstract Expressionism. I would imagine those who deal with landscape and propaganda are of great interest to you. Do the prints of The Steinberg Brothers have any interest to you? Who else are you looking at?

HANDELMAN: I’m only superficially aware of The Steinberg Brothers. Unfortunately, I missed the show at the MOMA too. I’m always thinking about design, but it’s a much less focused or researched area for me, which is fine. I sort of approach it more intuitively. In terms of structure, I think there’s an interesting relationship between the American Precisionists, and even O’Keeffe’s early city-scape paintings and a lot of early 20th century design work—the Bauhaus and, of course, political propaganda. There’s this fascination with machines, the geometry of modernity, the monumental and especially light. Paul McCarthy has been really important to me for a while, which says very little actually, as he’s so influential. But I’m particularly interested in the relationship between kitsch, monumentality and fascism in his work. I’m also interested in the way McCarthy uses space, its inversions, voids and its disorientating functions. Its kitsch is of such an American flavor too. Kara Walker’s work has also been incredibly influential, it’s a constant model. I’ve also been reading and looking at as much Ruscha as possible. He’s definitely part of my daily thoughts in the studio. But most recently, I’ve been thinking about Riley and Op art. Perhaps there’s this space in the physiological response to an image that has some pretty disquieting implications and ideas regarding the manipulation of agency and rationality in the viewer.

To read the full interview click here.

Fantagtastic: 5 Things Meme

2007-01-29T12:18:00.000-08:00

Not that I haven't come up with my own less than stellar titles, but I would like to point out that I had no part in naming this particular headline. You can blame either photographer Brian Ulrich at NOTIFBUTWHEN or Paul Schmelzer over at the Walker Art Center for the pun, and the following meme. Here are five things about myself that readers don't necessarily know.

1. Contrary to what the name of this blog suggests I am neither a dude nor gay. Apropro of nothing though, the new AFC mandate for 2007 is to stop looking like a blogger. This basically entails wearing boots when I go out. Riveting information, I know.

2. I spent a good deal of time in the summer of 2005 Google image searching Unicorns - a research project that culminated in the above horned porn (I can no longer find the original site the jpeg came from,) and this site. I'm not sure that I find the image disturbing as much as I think it VERY weird.

3. I have an imaginary favorite TV station called the 90's Lady-Bitch channel. 90's Lady-Bitch airs material made by or about women in the late 80's and 90's who are bitchy and full of attitude. It's not necessarily good programming, but it does archive that small period of time when feminism was actually marketable. Shows include Madonna videos (erotica), Tank Girl, Roseanne, and about two other women whose names I can't think of who managed to squeeze some money out of those years.

4. Speaking of TV, during grad school I spent an enormous amount of time sculpting noses out of plastercine with a friend so we could attach them to our screen when we watched our favorite soaps. The composition of every scene becomes much more interesting when you have to watch people arrange themselves around the nose. I cheered for men whose profile shots lined up perfectly with the nose for more than 2 seconds.

5. As it turns out there has not been much research done on how alcohol and drugs effects the mood and reflex time of women on their period, so in the fairly recent past I spent a good chunk of time getting drunk and high for a living. The majority of my day was spent either standing on one foot or filling out questionnaires about how I feel. "On a scale of one to ten rate "overjoyed","cheerful", and "ready to fight" you are," the survey would ask. I'm no linguist but questionnaires that ask you to quantify "Overjoyed" on a numerical scale strike me as imprecise. Am I saying I am unhappy if I give myself a 2 out of 10 for overjoyed, or am I actually saying I am a little exuberant? How does this compare with how others fill out the survey? It's quite a lot for a drunk person to ponder - that is, assuming I was actually drunk. To ensure the knowledge of what you ingested didn't inform your behavior, the researchers disguised everything they gave you in a peppermint flavored drink. I assume I was intoxicated at least once though, as I recall my answer to the question "How are you feeling?" being something to the effect of "Like I should be in a room full of people and chatting with all of them."

Interestingly, the job only rates as mediocre in my employment history. The worst job I ever held was as a sorter of office garbage at the local dump. You wouldn't believe how much used porn rides by on those conveyor belts.

Tagged:

Rhizome.org
Gawker
Gridskipper
Screens
We Make Money Not Art

Lost Posts

2007-01-28T23:56:00.000-08:00

If you are wondering where today's post is you can send your complaints to blogger, as it would appear the system has eaten three hours of work. How is it that a product this terrible is ~~developed~~ owned by Google?

Ponytailed Man Spotted in Cheslea Assuming an Air of Bullshit

2007-01-26T07:10:00.000-08:00

McKendree Key

"McKendree Key uses the detritis of human civilization in this work" says Slicky McPonytail, describing a collage with a few pylons in it to a group of middle aged collectors at Caren Golden Fine Art yesterday. You know, I'm really looking forward to a time when the art world can reclaim the word garbage so we don't have to suffer through the needless use of terms like detritus. The fact that there are people who find it necessary to trump it up further with direct objects such as "human civilization" is just lunacy. I don't like to feel like I'm part of some sort of language sanitization, intellectual foofery machine.

Incidentally, McKendree Key's her latest work isn't as bad as it looks. Don't get me wrong, it's no Lake Champlain photograph, but the collage becomes more sculptural in person which benefits the art. Probably the result of changing to a flat medium, the work as a whole feels transitional, and not fully resolved. However, since this exhibition marks the first work she's ever made that I haven't liked, I'm feeling like I should let it slide. There are always exceptions to this, but for most artists switching mediums requires a lot more work than people usually take into account.

Note: John Stoney shares the exhibition space with McKendree Key. His intricate paper sculptures that are easily amongst the best I've seen amongst those working with the material.

Posting Notice: Art Fag City Runs Around

2007-01-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Image copyright Neil Rough

Admittedly we are running a little low on content this week, but unfortunately there are times when unbloggy business dominates what you do. It's not like we don't have stuff to talk about but most of it will probably have to wait until next week. Until then, enjoy the now standard absentee photo courtesy of Neil Rough.

Art Fag City at the Reeler: The Rape of Europa

2007-01-24T11:55:00.000-08:00

Göring gifts a painting to Hitler
Image courtesy The Jewish Museum

Upon the recommendation of Tyler Green earlier this month on Modern Art Notes, I attended the premiere screening of The Rape of Europa last week at the Jewish Museum. My review of the documentary now finds a place over at The Reeler, but I've included the first two opening paragraphs here to give you a taste of what you will be reading.

Given the huge number of World War II films in constant rotation in theaters, on DVD and the History Channel -- a glut of titles retelling the heroic acts of men in the midst of tragedy -- I'm almost surprised when I discover features that bring something totally new to the table. Take The Rape of Europa, a documentary about the systematic plunder of art by the Nazis during World War II and Allied efforts during and after the war to minimize the damage. Having had its premiere last week at the New York Jewish Film Festival (and screening several times in the upcoming months, most notably on March 4 at The National Gallery of Art in Washington before reaching PBS this fall), the film feels especially current as the Iraq War continues and countless priceless treasures are lost.

One obvious advantage to making a documentary on a war that ended more than 60 years ago lies in the fact that we know more about the invasion plans than we do about those of the present war. This is a key point in Europa, which cites numerous examples of art pillaged by the Nazis that remains disputed or missing, eventually establishing the connections between the Nazis' interest in fine art and their conquest strategies; directors Bonni Cohen, Richard Berge and Nicole Newnham note the strategic invasion of the museums of Florence and Rome, the merciless destruction of Polish architecture and other art believed to be "degenerate" and the pillaging of invaluable treasures from the State Hermitage in Russia. Once the magnitude of Nazi plundering is established, the film discusses the role of Allies like the Monuments Officers -- Americans assigned the responsibility of finding and returning art hidden by the Germans -- and Rose Valland, a French art historian who worked at the Jeu de Paume Museum, a central German art storage depot where she secretly recorded from where and to whom stolen art work came and went.

To read the full review click here.

Artists Speak Up About Radness

2007-01-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

Leisure: An Art Journal: Issue #0, a questionnaire

Brian Kennon and Bobbi Woods at 2nd Cannons Publications land the subject of yet another post here at AFC, releasing my new favorite journal, Leisure: An ArtJournal: Issue # 0, a questionaire. In this series, Kennon and Woods ask artists, writers and gallerists to discuss radness and artistic production. The questions are as unexpected as many of the answers, and the work once again takes on the alluring 2nd Cannons Publications trademark look. Typically characterized by a hip image made more "fun" through graphic design and text, the publishing house does an excellent job of creating books that are carefully curated and frighteningly clever. Of course, you can feel free to take all of this with a Paddy Johnson grain of salt, as I am one of the contributors to the first issue. 2nd Cannons published a number of the responses from artists like AA Bronson and Michael Smith on their site, but if you want to read what I have to say on the subject of radness, Wegman, and other pressing issues, for once you'll have to pay for it. It's counterintuitive I know, but look at it this way: You need a book with a skateboarder on it to round out your collection.

Favorite Q&A
Q: What is your name? Automatron@earthlink.net
Q: Radicality or total radness? Bitchin'
Q: How does radness fit into your practice? PRAC-rad-ICE-ness
Q: What is wrong with Entertainment? What is wrong with you?
Q: Have you ever personally seen a mystic truth? Coincidence
Q:Total deconstruction or total destruction? Fuck You
Q: Avant-garde or Avant grad? Gradually avante
Q: Name the funniest piece of art ever created. Ok..."I just farted", mixed media, 2006
Q: William Wegman: Great artist? Or the greatest artist? I love dogs. Who doesn't love dogs?

Participants are: Evan Holloway, Bruce Hainley, Lawrence Weiner, Michael Smith, Bruce LaBruce, Darren Bader, Mayo Thompson, AA Bronson, Jess Holzworth, Corrina Peipon, Brian Bress, Julie Lequin, Meg Cranston, Natascha Sofia Snellman, Monique Prieto, TRUDI, Drew Heitzler, Elk, Christopher Russell, Tom Allen, Catherine Taft, Betty Tompkins, Kathe Burkhart, Michael Ned Holte, Paddy Johnson, Ami Tallman, Daniel Hug, and lastly, Jason Meadows (whose answers we found insulting).

Massive Links: We've Got Three

2007-01-22T13:30:00.000-08:00

Image copyright Taschen

MAO reports on the Taschen Warehouse book sale, calling it a huge disappointment. Having gone to the store myself this weekend I have to agree. It seems Taschen can't get rid of their books on Lady Di or Playboy, so I image there are still five million of those books left, but anything you'd actually want to own was not on sale. I was lucky enough to find an Eric Kroll book worth picking up, but I'm only nominally convinced it was worth the effort. He's no Richard Kern but ultimately I felt it would be a mistake to dismiss a woman with hands down her pants.

The Reeler has a great story on Amir Bar-Lev's documentary My Kid Could Paint That which screened at Sundance this week. There appears to be some controversy over whether child art prodigy Marla Olmstead actually made the paintings she became famous for or if she has just developed poorly as an artist over time. The family says they are deeply hurt by the documentary, which does not seem like a good sign since a documentarian would have to ask questions of authorship in light of the fact that the work has changed significantly over the past two years. I haven't seen the movie, though my initial reaction was one that assume Marla Olmstead had painted the works, but much like the countless child actors who performed brilliantly at 5, once self conscious lost all "skill".

A minor point, but one we enjoy regardless: Modern Art Notes has a brand new design. Here's hoping that future incarnations of artsjournal blogs will have white backgrounds, as this really helps the viewing of art (jpegs). For now though, I'm happy that their RSS feeds provide at least the first couple of lines in their posts.

Kevin Zucker Steps Up To the Web 2.0 Plate

2007-01-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

Kevin Zucker, Encyclopedia, 2006, Acrylic transfer on Canvas, 96 x 160 inches

I suppose the biographical notes of artists have little to do with their work, but at the same time I loath to omit the fact that at the age of 30, painter Kevin Zucker has already had two solo shows at Mary Boone, with his most recent exhibition, Search Within Results, opening at Greenberg van Doren this past Thursday. I have not yet seen the newest work, but having just been forwarded his artist statement I now know I need to make the trek out.

Made up almost exclusively of links, the 1980 version of this statement would undoubtedly be intolerable as it would consist of footnotes to texts a reader would never look up. The genius of Zucker's document lies in the fact that it becomes the vast archive that his paintings and drawings depict. I have published it below, as I find the narrative flow of these links not only illuminating and political in nature, but also pretty damn fun.

[Editors note: Apologies for links that run over the blog roll. There is no way to maintain the integrity of the statement and have the format fit within the blogger column width.]

I. Intro
_____A)http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/bigrigsotrr/review.html
_______________1)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goFO09RUF4U

II. Morgues
_____A)Wayback Machine http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html
_____B)http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePage
_______________1)http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ancientpages
_____C)http://mydeathspace.com/smf/index.php?topic=839.0

III. Completists
_____A)Shields http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/?p=140
_______________1)http://www.soundportraits.org/on-air/worlds_longest_diary/diary_entry1.gif
_____B)Diderot, Chambers, Larousse, Isadore, etc.
_____C)Soane, C.W.Peale, Imperato, Settala, Vincent, Calzolari, surrealists
_____D)Yates, S. http://www.thecolorofpaloalto.com/Content.html
_____E)http://www.orange.fr/bin/frame.cgi?u=http://photos.mappy.com/h/xy?ville=75199056;templ=frame;templ_photo=photo;planville=1;fwdto=/mcxsl/;map_sign=3viy9rC8t/dQmjgsesRu4m7GpVQ2Vj6WvoEz161/NJLd2ZTPmavtakRbW/5oVD9KwAasQkDJLqu
_____F)http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/,Wikipedia, etc.

IV. Crate and Barrel
_____A)http://medien.akbild.ac.at/armin/crates_and_barrels/
_____B)http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/41.html
_____C)The final shot in Raiders of the Lost Ark

V. Not Quantifiable
_____A)ThematicApperceptionTest
_______________1)http://www.esc.auckland.ac.nz/people/staff/rmel005/thematic_apperception.html
_______________2)http://web.utk.edu/~wmorgan/tat/tattxt.htm
_____B)Microexpressions http://www.artnatomia.net/uk/index.html
_______________1)http://www.cio.com/archive/120104/faces.html
_____C)MMPIhttp://www.pearsonassessments.com/tests/mmpi_2.htm
_____D)PainAssessment http://www.anes.ucla.edu/pain/assessment_tools.html
_____E)OAV questionnaire (measures consciousness impairment along axes such as “oceanic boundlessness,” “visionary restructuralization”and“dread of ego dissolution”)
_____F)LeBrun,conference sur l’expression générale et particulière
_____G)Rorschachcheatshttp://www.deltabravo.net/custody/rorschach.php

VI. Placeholders
_____A) Language
_______________1)LoremIpsum http://www.perbang.dk/orcapia.cms?aid=101
_________________________a.http://lorem-ipsum.perbang.dk/
_______________2)asdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asdf
_______________3)http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/quickbrown.txt
_______________4)etaoin shrdlu http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_262a.html
_______________5)metasyntacticvariable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasyntactic_variable
_____B) Models
_______________1)UtahTeapot http://www.sjbaker.org/teapot/
_______________2)StanfordBunny http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/people/faculty/greg.turk/bunny/bunny.html
_______________3)CornellBox http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/online/box/
_______________4)etc. http://www-graphics.stanford.edu/data/3Dscanrep/
_____C) Images
_______________1)Suzanne
_______________2)Lenna http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/lenna.shtml
_________________________a.http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/nsipg/nsi.html
_______________3)more test images
_________________________a.http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~sis04djt/image/
_________________________b.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_test_image
_________________________c.http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~sis04djt/image/
_____D) Facial recognition datasets
_______________1)http://vismod.media.mit.edu/vismod/demos/facerec/basic.html
_______________2)http://dailyburrito.com/projects/facerecog/FaceRecReport.html
_______________3)http://www.imagequery.net/face1/imageHunt65/library/
_______________4)http://www.facedetection.com/facedetection/datasets.htm

VII. The Appearance of Meaning
_____A)http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html
_______________1)http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/
_____B)http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

III.Varieties of Religious Experience
_____A) Art Bell/ George Noory
_______________1)Mel’s Hole http://turbo.peteronline.net/melshole/
_________________________a.http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=melshole14m&date=20020414

VIII.(Approaching) Eternity
_____A)Correction: An article in Science Times on Tuesday about a new exhibition of mechanical puzzles at Indiana University included an incorrect estimate from a collector for the time it would take to solve his 65-piece Chinese ring puzzle. At a rate of one move per second, the 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 moves would take nearly 585 billion years, not 56
billion.”http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F1081FF63F5B0C768EDDAE0894DE404482
_____B)“kill screens”
http://www.twingalaxies.com/index.aspx?c=19&id=1165

IX. Science Fiction
_____A)Burgess, The End of The World News
_____B)Sterling et al.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Twilight_Zone_episodes
_____C)Borges
_______________1)“The impious maintain that nonsense is normal in the Library and that the reasonable (and even humble and pure coherence) is an almost miraculous exception.”
_______________2)An English Version of the Oldest Songs in the World

X.Worse Than the Disease
_____A)http://www.virtuallybetter.com/environ.htm
_____B)Dacryphiliahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacryphilia
_______________1)http://www.deviantdesires.com/dcforum/DCForumID9/64.html
_____C)Propranololhttp://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.18/01-ptsd.html

XI. Illusion
_____A) Croy, O.R., Leichte Fototricks Fuer Jedermann, Halle; Wilhelm
Knapp,
1937
_____B)http://www.amazing-optical-illusions.com/index2new.htm
_____C)Ames
Roomhttp://www.psychologie.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/ames_room.html
_______________1)http://www.errolmorris.com/commercials/quaker_ames.html
_____D)Anaglyphs http://www.d3.com/flash/gallery2.html
_____E)http://matemilano.mat.unimi.it/visita/tour.htm
_____F)http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=caa1785fa791f9ec2c861d15c8fdfe05
_____G)http://www.korthalsaltes.com/

XII. Practical F/X
_____A)http://youtube.com/watch?v=oWLPIT-geTs
_____B)http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/hbp_huyghe/

XIII. Modern Art
_____A)Sketchuphttp://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=sculpture&btnG=Search&start=84
_______________1)http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=86210dada901d828c8fa1bac10c58a93
_______________2)http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=74770661d202401886f9b439bcc4296
_____B) Second Life
_______________1)http://www.stanford.edu/~segerman/2ndlife.html
_______________2)http://sl-art-news.blogspot.com/
_______________3)http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmirliss/sets/72157594327190749/show/
_______________4)http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/Snapshots.aspx?type=tag&tag=sculpture

XIV. Architecture of the Apocalypse (RH)
_____A)Blitz
_______________1)http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1560757
_______________2)http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=162093
_____B) NY http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1295493
_______________1)http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=130434
_____C)Titanic http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2098339
_____D)Tricorn
Centrehttp://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=168312

XV. Ideas Are Places, Too
_____A)http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/info_landscapes.html
_____B)http://www.cybergeography.org/atlas/web_forager_large.jpg
_____C)http://www.cs.unm.edu/%7Edlchao/flake/doom/

XVI.Bewersdorf, Google Image/ Flickr Definitions, e.g.:
_____A)http://images.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;q=tragedy&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
_____B)http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=cliche

XVII. Some Perils of Translation
_____A)http://www.lyons42.com/seminars/HofstPunsAndHumor.html
_____B)http://www.yisongyue.com/shaney/
_____C)http://www.fabjectory.com/index.php/secondlife/
_____D)http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:MSsbBSaGTikJ:www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~gritchie/papers/lrec06.pdf+jape+martin+joke&hl=en&gl=us&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;ct=clnk&cd=3&client=safari
_____E)http://www.unc.edu/~mumukshu/gandhi/gandhi/hofstadter.htm

XVIII. Error/ Exception
_____A)404
_______________1)http://www.smackthemouse.com/error404#h2-12
_______________2)http://www.plinko.net/404/area404.asp
_____B)SoDs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_of_Death
_____C)http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html
_____D)http://www.appleerrorcodes.com/

XIX. US Social Realism
_____A)WalterMurchhttp://images.google.com/images?ndsp=18&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&q=+site:
www.fulltable.com+walter+murch

[…]

--. Conclusion
_____A)Beige http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2013
_____B)Deuxexmachina http://www.staples.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StaplesProductDisplay?prodCatType=0&storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;langId=-1&productId=130700&cmArea=SEARCH
_____C)Beckett MMPORG “Recently, members of the community have noted that it can be difficult to find other players in The Matrix: Mega City,” read the message to players. “The current level of population density can limit opportunities for socializing with other players which are such a key part of our worlds...”http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/matrixonline/news.html?sid=6130058&mode=all

Short Changing Exhibitions and Publications With Small Blurby Write-Ups

2007-01-19T14:15:00.000-08:00

In an attempt for year end closure, this post covers the few outstanding art related exhibitions and publications in my cue. The premise of this piece probably appears a kin to DVD extras, but having a personal relationship to each write up, naturally I tend to regard them differently. In most cases the pieces that have longer lead times (re: remain drafts for long periods of time) are the result of having more to say on the subject than I can work out in the free time that I have. Providing these short write-ups is less than these works deserve, but preferable to the alternative; no post.

Mike Broady, from The Tones of Dirt and Bone,
Image via These Birds Walk Proudly

These Birds Walk Proudly
Publisher and artist Paul Schiek contacted me in December about the Kin Subscription Series, a series four books each representing a different artist. Made up entirely of polaroid images, and hand held in size The Tones of Dirt and Bone, by photographer Mike Brody, constitutes the first in this series. The work superficially feels slightly hipsterish in nature, but it doesn't take much to realize that they have a gritty sophistication that can not be lumped into the trend. Schiek's series draws connections between Brody, his own work and emerging photographers Ari Marcopoulos and Jim Goldberg, all of whom capture the preciousness and personal beauty within the malaise of the 20 something lifestyle. Frankly, I think $75 dollars of a limited edition series of four books, is something of a steel. It's only available online here.

Image via Craft

Craft
Hipster knitting projects aren't necessarily at the top of my list of things I want to cover, and yet, I have to say I genuinely enjoy Make's newest partner publication. I suppose part of this has to do with the fact that I've always wanted a pair of functional AND fashionable knitted boots, and the first issue of the magazine shows you how to do this. The only thing the magazine hasn't solved is my inability to follow instructions properly. Of course, the likelihood of anyone solving that problem would be on par with creating world peace.

Paul McCarthy, PotHead, 2002, Silicone, 33.5 x 42 x 48 inches
Image via Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

The Rubell Family Collection, Miami, Red Eye
I've got three paragraphs and about 5 million pictures on a borrowed computer in Miami on this collection and there it stays. I suppose one of the benefits of not having posted on the exhibition lies in the fact that I have had time to reflect on it. On the flip side, I'm not sure I can call my memories "fresh" anymore.

Another benefit of having waited so long to express my thoughts is that there are now plenty of published opinions to respond to on the subject. The exhibition received a wide range of reactions ranging from Peter Schjeldahl's best in show praise, explaining that it "posits a blooming tradition of gorgeous and impolite styles keyed to psychosocial provocations...", where as Tyler Green took a radically different stance calling it "an atrocious show that said far more about the collectors (and their plenty-apparent lack of taste.)" I found my own reaction to be somewhere in the middle of these two poles. Some of the "older" (a relative term to be sure, since some of these works were done in 2002) works in their collection were really strong, in particular a Paul McCarthy brown rubber dildo explosion similar to PotHead. I can't think of a piece that better captures the abject and excess of sex and culture while blurring material and sexual fetish. On the other hand, there seemed to be plenty of art in the show, for example the sculptures of Jason Meadow that felt like reiterations of work that already exists, or Thomas Houseago's contortionist skins that have only the fact that there are a lot of them going for them, that left much to be desired.

Though critics covered the thematic interests of these artists fairly well, the aspect of comparable collections went largely untouched (the Times ran an article here), which surprises me since it's not like the Rubell's are the only family in history to exhibit their holdings. In that respect, the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation in Toronto first comes to mind, which though radically different in public approach, touches on some of the same themes of excess and sexuality. I recall a group exhibition launched circa 1996 at the Hendeles Foundation in particular that included the work of photographer and scultor Sarah Lucas and (the obnoxious) Tony Oursler, and in retrospect seems to be the 90's incarnation of the Rubell's Red Eye. The importance of collection comparing may seem a little unclear, but given the recent talk of collectors gaining sway in the arena of taste making, it makes sense to follow a few of these high profile collections, and watch what happens over the next couple of years. If father and son goat fucking becomes fashionable (another Paul McCarthy work in the exhibit) I guess we'll know the theory holds water.

Image via Regina Rocke

Regina Rocke
An artist you may not have heard of because she travels primarily in dance circles, I promised both myself and Regina I would discuss her work at great length. I suppose if you define "great length" as 200 words, I will have full filled that promise. The extraordinariness of Rocke's work lies her ability to take cliche material from both high and low culture and bring meaning to it. For example, she uses the tired method of reading aloud artist writings such as those by Coco Fusco, she speaks and moves with "purpose", and she booty dances to the beat of a popular dance tune. Regina Rocke mixes a variety of performance crap I would never want to see into something I could watch almost indefinitely.

Image via MoMA

Eye On Europe (closed January 1 2007)
Eye On Europe received a surprisingly small amount of coverage from the press given the quality of the exhibition. Who knows why this happened, perhaps people had seen enough Dieter Roth what with his giant retrospective two and a half years ago at MoMA and PS1, but it's not like he made up the whole show. Paper fetishists all over the world had plenty to celebrate with this exhibition, as detailed wallpaper by Sarah Lucas, Peter Kogler, and Damien Hirst, stood out in the first half of the exhibition, and the number of prints and books by European artists by Hanne Darboven, Mangelo etc on the sixth floor, could leave a viewer with very little time to do anything else if they were to carefully look at each work. For my tastes, I found there to be more material than I could absorb, and would have enjoyed a little more editing, but most print and publishing people I talked to about the show did not have that problem. Of course, the publishing world is not so ubiquitous that it makes up the majority of their audience, so conceivably, I'm not the only person who had this issue.

Taschen Book Sale

2007-01-18T12:20:00.001-08:00

Image copyright Taschen

Great news via a tipster: Taschen will be selling thousands of slightly damaged and display copies this weekend. Not that I necessarily need any more books, but really, who doesn't find the words 50 to 75% off seductive? Critical sale details below.

January 19th - 21st,
Friday and Saturday 11 - 8
Sunday 12-7
Location: 107 Greene Street

Character Reference at Bryce Wolkowitz

2007-01-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

MTAA, Infinite Smile, Video Loop

Character Reference
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery
601 West 26th Street, Suite 1240
January 19 - February 24, 2007
Opening: Thursday, January 18, 6:00PM - 8:00PM
Full release here

I will spend most of today anticipating Character Reference, an exhibition at Bryce Wolkowtiz that opens tonight. Already off to a good start in my books , the portrait show has a title that does not involve the word portrait or face puns. In particular, I am looking forward to seeing the work of MTAA in this show, as in the midst of a snark roll last year, I condemned a similarly themed piece at Artist Space and now wish to compare the two. To quote myself,

In an effort to close down SoHo for good as an art district, "Ten People Smiling", a performance by Vlatka Horvat and Tim Etchells will be held at Artists Space. Yes, as the title suggests ten people will be smiling...for sixty minutes in a gallery space. I guess the term performance art was redefined as a boring party game when I wasn't looking. The issue I have with work like this is that it poses as an intellectual investigation of social behaviour, when the methods employed to measure this behaviour most likely start and end with a video camera. Spending Friday night with the DSM IV manual looks to be just about as interesting, and undoubtedly more informative. Link to full post here.

About ten minutes after publishing this piece, t.whid of MTAA sent me a link to Infinite Smile, which I loved, but momentarily sent me into a mine field of self doubt. Had I been unfair? If not, is this piece actually better? Do I merely privilege the video loop?

No, yes, and well, maybe.

To be honest, the investigation of the happy/agonized smile always sounds like a trite premise to me, but MTAA successfully makes the idea compelling. Formalism certainly goes a long way in helping the group achieve this, as their video looks great. In fact, it turns what could be a simple gesture into something that is at once elegant and whimsical.

Notes on Triple Candie

2007-01-17T07:10:00.000-08:00

I had considered writing yet another list titled "Top Ten Stories We Missed in 2006", but I eventually decided that five sets of year end lists should be enough for one blog. Instead we'll just try to wrap up coverage on a few items we promised last year by the end of the week and be done with the matter.

In other news, in case you missed Edward Winkleman's post on Triple Candie yesterday I highly recommend stopping by to read it. He discusses their latest Lester Hayes show, an exhibition of work by a fictional artist and cites "John Dogg" as an analogous example. To his list, I would add Nat Tate, a fake biography which at its time of release actually had some reputable dealers claiming they knew the artist. Winkleman goes on to discuss their companion show, "The Matthew Higgs Society", an exhibition put together (possibly) at the expense, and certainly as a "ribbing" (to borrow Winkleman's turn of phrase) of the ubiquitous curator Matthew Higgs. Winkleman notes that Higgs has been getting a lot of press lately, and having written a review of his show at Murray Guy last year for flavorpill, I can say with some degree of authority that I agree. I happen to think its warranted, but the fact that you have to think about that is also what I like about the show concept: He's not so famous that the joke becomes easy or already played out. I'd like at this juncture, to point out that I have not yet seen the show, but fully intend on doing so. I think Triple Candie has experienced enough coverage from journalists this past year who never bothered to see the shows they were discussing prior to issuing opinions on them. That story reblogged in full via NEWSgrist.

Notice: This will be it for posting today, as I am out of town again.

The Worst Art of 2006

2007-01-16T16:00:00.000-08:00

As luck would have it, we tend to forget most of the bad art we see. For this reason, this year's lists of the worst art remains shorter than the rest. It's not that there's less of it -- in fact we know the opposite to be true -- but I'll be damned if I'm going to make a point to remember bad art, just so that I can compile it in a year end list.

THE WORST ART OF 2006

Steve Mumford, Dying Insurgent, 2005, oil on linen, 48 x 60 inches

5. Steve Mumford at Postmasters, (October 21 - December 2 2006)
Generally speaking I'm not a fan of war art because it so often addresses the subject matter in a literal and didactic way. I'm particularly not pleased with work that lives up to this stereotype when reputable Chelsea Galleries exhibit it because it means the attachment of hefty tickets to art that if shown anywhere else would be worth a fraction of the price. Steve Mumford's paintings at Postmasters this November depicting soldiers, insurgents, and tanks (etc.) are probably an improvement on his last show (which was also inspired by the Iraq war and can be seen here,) but exhibit at best average paint handling skills, and use little imagination. The most annoying aspect of this series and those like it though, comes from the fact that while the work fails to illicit an emotional response, the viewer is either supposed to feel like a bad a citizen for not reacting to it, or intellectualize the return as a desensitization to the subject matter, rather than just acknowledging that the paintings aren't very good.

4. Scope NY, March 10-13, 2006
I have some guilt in listing Scope in the worst of 2006, having met the executive director Alexis Hubshman on several occasions, and genuinely liking him, but I just can't ignore the physical reaction that Scope NY induced - that being to literally make me want to bolt the fair. There is just far too much bad-art-with-its-heart-in-the-right-place at that fair. You have to draw the line somewhere and mine is at Clusterfuck. They are an easy target, but make a lot of noise while driving a motorcycle that carries a scantily clad women around the fair, and you can be sure I'll aim to take it down. Full review here.

3. Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint 9, backed by Barbara Gladstone, Premiered March 28th at MoMA
I wrote about this movie in detail last winter, but the main points of the review are this: Barney's endless Cremaster logos feel intensely ego gratifying this time around, his latest investigation of petroleum feels like a rehash of other work he's done, casting Bjork in DR9 was a mistake because she's too much of a pop star to play any one other than herself, and he should stay away from CGI because of his many great skills as an artist that isn't one of them. 2 plus hours of boredom later, I suspect you too will come to the same conclusions I have.

Image via My Ordinary Life

2. The Whitney Biennial, Day for Night. (March 2 - May 28th)
You have to grant that curating the Biennial is a tough job, after all finding a lot of really good artists to fill a huge space can't be all that easy. In fact, were it not for successful survey shows such as Frequency you might think the task is impossible. Why can't the Biennial come up with a good mix of artists? I don't know, but I suspect the answer is simpler than we think. I'd start by excluding feel good art from the mix. That means no more peace tower.

Image via The Museum of Moving Image

1. ArtStar, A reality TV show sponsored by Deitch Projects, Premiered May 12th 2006
Typifying everything I dislike about the art world, ArtStar pretends to be about artists, but in reality is no more than a vehicle to promote the wares of the gallery. Don't get me wrong I'm happy that galleries sell art - they should keep doing that - they (Deitch Projects) shouldn't however pretend that commerce has nothing to do with why ArtStar exists. I have no desire to listen to why Keith Haring would have approved of this show, when the only reason his name has relevance is because the gallery sells his work, nor do I find interest in the multitude of educational and self growth purposes that are attributed to the TV series retroactively. Personally, I'd be much more interested in watching an apprentice like show for the world of gallerina's than I am the next art star search. Compete for the job of head sales director at Gagosian, Mary Boone, and David Zwirner, and illuminate the world on how full of sharks the art world really is. Now that's a reality show worth watching. My full review of the series here.

A Year In the Internet 2006 Launches Last Week

2007-01-16T07:12:00.000-08:00

You'll have to excuse my long silence over this weekend, as I caught a horrible case of the flu Friday, and was out of commission for the next several days. Unfortunately, the mere fact that I happen to be asleep does not stop news from occurring, so it was during this time that some of my favorite Internet professionals/curators took to reflecting on 2006. This year, the participating list makers of A Year In the Internet 2006, expanded from 14 to 16, which brings roughly 30 more links than last year if you include the new bonus section. I've picked out a few of my favorite links below, but before I get to that, a couple of brief observations about this year's picks vrs last year's.

First, virtually everyone included video footage of some kind, which marks a big change from last years heavy gif/jpeg link collections. Notably, there appears to be less interest in the DIY projects such as camera hacks, and retro computers, (not that it has disappeared mind you) . These links have been replaced with archive and reference sites, and a few more welcome links than usual to net art projects. Finally, I'll observe that while I spent the majority of this weekend in bed, the few hours I was outside of that location were spent following the links in this list, which is to say, this years list is easily as good as last years. Of course, perusing roughly 140 links over the course of the day may be a little more than your employer will permit, so here are a few of my favorites to start you off.

Image via John Michael Boling

Pick via Ed Halter
A Night of Bush Capturing. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the Middle East does hate Americans. They've made video games to prove it. (Additional note: Ed Halter also made mention of cats getting too much play on the Internet. Hear hear!)

Pick via Charles Broskoski
28 years in the implicate order - video by Pascual Sisto. This video creeps me out for some reason.

Pick via John Michael Boling
Guthrie Lonergan's nine short music videos. They are all great.
And the Dark Side of the Food Pyramid . How awesome is that?

Pick via Brett O'Conner
Shoes. Probably the best music video I've seen all year. Well, that and the okgo treadmill video, but we've all seen that.

Pick via David Moore and Nicholas Reville
Paper Toilet. So satisfying.

Pick via Simon Carless
This sex pot Pet Shop Boys cover is a little ridiculous, which of course is why I like it.

Pick via Cory Arcangel and Hanne Mugaas
So Awesome. Glenn Gould discussing the art of Fugue.
Basshunter. For the avid pop culture consumer. It's not so bad it's good, but it's almost there.

Pick via Guthrie Lonergan
Lego knitting machine movie. It's the soundtrack more than anything that makes this movie astonishing.

A Year in the Internet 2006 is a project spearheaded by Michael Bell-Smith and Cory Arcangel.

Posting Notice: We Return After the Weekend

2007-01-12T07:10:00.000-08:00

Image copyright Neil Rough

And here I thought I'd be able to whip off the last portion of the web lists for you by the end of the week. No such luck. I'm out of town today, and unfortunately feeling slightly ill.

The Best Art of 2006

2007-01-11T16:30:00.000-08:00

Thwarting any expectation that our year end list making activities may have been completed, over the last two weeks we've been compiling a list of what we think are the best and worst exhibitions and talks of the year. The list obviously can only include those exhibitions we've seen, so if you are wondering why, for example, the Goya show at the Frick, Amy Sillman at Sikemma Jenkins or "Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran,
Tourism and the American Landscape", Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum have been slighted, please bear in mind the inherent fallibility of a list put together by one person. You can only see so many shows, and sometimes you have to miss exhibitions you know you shouldn't.

THE BEST ART OF 2006

10. Aaron Williams at Baumgartner Gallery, (January 14- February 15, 2006)
In January 2006, Baumgartner Gallery launched emerging artist Aaron William's first solo show which consisted of 6 mid to large sized abstract paintings. For the most part the exhibition seemed to be overlooked by the press, and while we're not sure why, (though we do speculate,) we are happy to reiterate some of sentiments we expressed last year about the exhibition - namely that while the surface of these paintings is undeniably seductive, it is merely a packaging device for the larger ideas behind the work. To quote myself:

While all the works in the show demonstrate a high degree of painting skill the most successful are those that most specifically depict a moment of decision that leads to transfiguration...The Judge [for instance] suggests that the weight of human experience is balanced on something unseen or unknown. There is a sense that judgment is impending and that it will come from a source outside of us, and greater than us.

To read the full review click here.

Dave Choi
Jumbo, 2006
Plexiglas, epoxy, hot glue, foam, mixed media
56 x 88 x 32 inches

9. Diamonds Cut Diamonds, at Rare Gallery, (June 22 - July 29)
You can criticize sculptor Johnston Forester's Diamonds Cut Diamonds, for being overly zeitgeist, but ultimately the criticism will be limited because the participating artists exhibit too much skill to be a flash in the pan. David Choi's Jumbo, a giant flowered piranha is a tour de force of epoxy and man-made materials, the classical sculptures carved out of Polystyrene insulation by Morgan Herrin put sensation sculptor Marc Quinn's 2005 exhibition The complete Marbles at Mary Boone to shame, (not that this is overly difficult, but Quinn did receive a baffling number of positive reviews for a very easy show) and Brian Basnett's tiny soft sculptures made from found plastics are whimsical, but not at the expense of being personal and warm.

Image copyright Justin Strawhand and Marcin Ramocki

8. 8-BIT: A Documentary About Art and Video Games, (Premiered October 7, 2006 at MoMA)
Undoubtedly my favorite documentary of 2006, and probably the most important 8-BIT, represents the first attempt in the medium of film to treat video games as a medium separate from television, video, music, etc. The movie packs a lot of information about the genre at once, so while may take than one viewing to fully grasp all the concepts, but it's well worth the time spent. Artists and musicians discuss their work articulately and succinctly, and unlike many documentaries, 8-BIT by its very nature is not plagued by a bad soundtrack. To read my full review of this film click here.

Paul Slocum, Deep House for Symphonic Band and Choir, (Installation View), 2006

7.Paul Slocum, Vertexlist (October 14 - November 2006)

I believe I have a half written post that never got published about Paul Slocum's performance and exhibition at Vertexlist, which is a real shame because the work easily makes our top 10 list. I particularly enjoyed his performance which, involved a score he wrote and programmed into a game cartridge, so that if Slocum died in the course of playing the game, the piece would end early. It's the sort of piece that only succeeds if a) the music is good, and b) it builds in some way, since without which, viewer investment in the outcome of the game amounts to nothing. Needless to say I REALLY cared about Slocum winning the match. Also on display was Century Caller, (which appears to be turned off right now) and my personal favorite Deep House for Symphonic Band and Choir, 2006, a piece Slocum himself describes as a "dance club hit written for symphonic band and choir." Explaining the work further on his blog, he writes, "The music plays on the speakers in a loop (about 4 mins long) and the entire score for all the instruments is pinned to the wall between two Sylvania Gro-Lux fluorescents." Tom Moody likens the wall piece to a Sol LeWitt drawing, which was the first reference that came to my mind as well. You can read Moody's full review here, and listen to the piece here.

Marisa Olson, Image courtesy EAI

6. Net Aesthetics 2.0, (February 6th)
Normally, lectures don't meet the ranks of exhibitions, but we make a notable exception this year for Net Aesthetics 2.0, a discussion panel curated and moderated by the Executive Director of Rhizome Lauren Cornell, because it is now referenced so frequently by the net community. It's not that the discussion resolved the debate as to what this term really means - at least it didn't for me (if you missed the discussion as I did, you can listen to it here,) but it did shed some light on the different approaches artists are taking and how the web and net art is evolving. I was particularly interested in the last question of the evening that came from audience member Barry Hoggard, who aptly observed that at no point had any net artist invited discussed the role of beauty. A variety of responses were given, but it was clear that while the panelists have undoubtedly pondered the subject, generally speaking, it was not a dominant concern to their art making process. Just something to keep in mind...

Heather Rowe, Green Desert, 2006
Image Copyright D'Amelio Terras

5. Heather Rowe, at D'Amelio Terras, (July 13-August 11)
Here's an artist who's work does not document well. Rowe's Green Dessert hides beautiful fragments of moldings and mirrors within the scaffolding like structure, and showing that beauty can be found nestled within the nooks and crannies of suburban architecture. There is much more to these sculptures than a photograph will ever capture. Read my review here and James Wagner's here.

Art Basel Miami, 2006,
Photo AFC

4. Art Basel, Miami, (December 6th - 10th)
This fair is problematically situated at number 4 on our list as it means that we are essentially saying that established modern masters are not as interesting as those who grab the higher positions. Well, there's nothing to be done about that accept to acknowledge the issue, and move on: Admittedly fairs are not the best way to look at art, as the "if-it's-not-hung-you-can't-sell-it" aesthetic dominates these shows. However, Art Basel does provide an art audience with the unique opportunity to see large amounts of high quality art work at one time. This means that the fair centric insult lodged at art that inspires collectors to request to meet the artist, (to see just how smart they are) generally comes in smaller proportions at Basel. Also, despite the fact that the fair's labyrinth like grid had me lost in a matter of minutes, all of the galleries featuring emerging artists were placed around the circumference of the room, which gave them a decided advantage as markers (unless of course you happened to be located near Gavin Brown's booth, in which case you were probably overshadowed.) Read my full review here.

Michael Bell-Smith, Self Portrait NYC, 2006
Video Loop 2:00 min

3. Michael Bell-Smith, Foxy Production, (April 27 - June 3)
Michael Bell-Smith is having a good year at AFC, being mentioned twice earlier on our best of the web list, and now grabbing the number 3 position amongst exhibitions. Disappointingly, no major critic brought significant insight to the value of the video and ephemera showcased in Focused, Forward, though I suspect the mounting excitement about Bell-Smith's work will inspire more in-depth pieces in the future. I can't claim that we'll be able to bring any deep analysis to the work in this short synopsis, (though I invite you to read the three part interview with the artist, Tom Moody and myself here, here, and here,) though we will note that the video short Self Portrait NYC, (which can be viewed on the Foxy website here) is amongst the stronger in the show, and our personal favorite. The work features a cartoon version of artist as the city slowly transforms itself at night. Becoming cloud-like in nature the crowd behind him dissolves, and New York, though merely a flat stage behind him, feels oddly clean and endlessly desirable. I believe this can be attributed to the magic stars twinkling in the background.

Image copyright Malaspina.edu

2. Catherine the Great (Art Gallery of Ontario), October 1, 2005- January 3 2006)
I know, I know, the Art Gallery of Ontario rests outside the geographical area what we claim to report on, but then again so do the Miami art fairs, and they made our list too. What can I say? Excellence deserves record, regardless of its location.

Although Catherine the Great launched in 2005, it ran into 2006 for all of three days before closing, thus making it eligible for this list. Hosting some of the stunning holdings of the State Hermitage Museum certainly helped make this show great, (I was particularly impressed with a number of the portrait commissions and the Coronation Coach), but the curation and scholarship is what made this show so remarkable. "Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia (1729–1796), was one of history’s greatest art patrons – and one of its shrewdest political leaders." reads the press release, "For her, art and politics were inseparable. By her acquisition of important works of art from the past, and her patronage of the foremost artists of her time, she not only formed one of the finest collections in the world, but spectacularly transformed St. Petersburg into one of the cultural capitals of Europe." And each work exhibited underscores this thesis. You can't look at this exhibition and not draw connections between the role Hollywood has in American Culture, and the role Catherine the Great assigned to culture. As text for the show wisely concludes, "these works speak volumes about the power of culture and the culture of power"

Image copyright Printed Matter

1. New York Art Book Fair, (November 16-19, 2006)
While the event bills itself differently, The New York Art Book Fair hosts exhibitors who sell works that I not only desire, but can even, on occasion, afford. That's an achievement I would have thought impossible last year, since it's not like blogging gives us a huge budget to work with. Housed at the old New Museum location, the fair a variety of art, which in addition to books of all shapes and sizes included prints, photographs, drawings and sculptures. The downstairs featured all matter of fetish inducing printed material, which can be read about here in my full review, while the upstairs constituted renegade aspect of the fair, showing artist collectives, small art book publishers and oddly, Phiadon. There were also plenty of martini's opening night, which if nothing else, would have ensured this bloggers return in 2007.

Noah Fischer, Rhetoric Machine, Installation view, 2006

Bonus: Noah Fischer, Rhetoric Machine, at Oliver Kamm Gallery, (November 30-January 6th)

Last April or there abouts I saw Noah Fischer perform in a largish industrial space in Tribeca. In collaboration with three other artists, his performance using sequenced light was one of the best I had seen, but it never got written up here because I had foolishly not taken any notes, and every time I tried to explain it I made the work sound like a hokey theater production. Rhetoric Machine, which just closed at Oliver Kamm, is an installation that borrows many of the same lighting techniques he had used in that performance and building upon these devices to create a environment of speech making that highlights the construction of the political agendas they support. This work would be best showcased at The Kitchen, which has a long tradition of supporting political and performance based work.

Chelsea Openings Tonight!

2007-01-11T10:30:00.000-08:00

C5, The Perfect View, Installation Shot at Sanfrancisco Camera Work, 2005
Image copyright C5

If you are wondering what evening you can go to Chelsea and maximize your art opening attendance, tonight would be the night. There are probably more receptions than you'll be able to attend, so check out ArtCal for the full list. The show with the most buzz around it would have to be Foxy's, group exhibition Networked Nature which was listed in ArtInfo's "On the Horizon: Top Ten List for 2007", and this week's Flavorpill pick. Do new technologies effect and/or influence the way we experience the natural world? Is the sublime constant? San Jose artist collective C5 is either asking that question, or operating on the belief that it is, and therefore using the advice of geocachers to point them to locations across the United States that fit this description. I suppose we can all judge what the results of these investigations mean tonight. Networked Nature is organized by Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator, for Rhizome.

Later today: More top 10 lists.

Art Fag City at The Reeler: Animator Green Hollers in NYC

2007-01-10T09:20:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy Bellwether Gallery

Although I spoke to artist and filmmaker Brent Green at his Bellwether opening this Saturday, I unfortunately do not have any photos of the artist in an overcrowded space to post here. I guess you'll just have to suffer through this professionally taken installaton shot. My review of the exhibition can be found at The Reeler, but as always, I've included a few paragraphs to pique your interest.

Paulina Hollers, an exhibition comprising three homemade animated videos and a tall spindly clock situated at the entrance of Bellwether Gallery, doesn't appear at first to be so full of the unexpected. The work looks like a Tim Burton movie, it sounds like a combination of the spoken-word psychedelia of King Missile and the emo indie of Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst (his collaborators are actually blues rock band Califone and noise rockers the Majik Markers), it reads like a Virginia Woolf novel or a T.S. Eliot poem -- everything feels familiar in some way. Yet the success of this exhibition does not lie in the reinvention of the wheel, but rather that Green never confuses the maudlin with the poetic or inconsistency with falseness.

The three shorts all follow separate narratives that can be linked thematically to the paradox of the death and of life. The title film, the longest of these works at 20 minutes, tells the story of “an asshole kid” named Holler who goes to Hell for trying to kill a rabbit on the side of the road. His gardening, religious mother Paulina is distraught when she hears her child has been hit by a bus; she soon kills herself to retrieve her son from whatever exile he’s been sent to. But upon departing her 3D existence for the hand-drawn underworld, Paulina discovers she cannot escape as planned. So there she stays. No tidy ending completes this story, and Green leaves the viewer with only the suggestion that to forget the beauty that surrounds us may take us places we don’t want to go.

To read more click here.

Additional screening information:

Brent Green will present Paulina Hollers tonight at 7:30 at IFC Center, followed by a conversation with Filmmaker Magazine editor Scott Macaulay. Green's work will be featured at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival; a Jan. 23 screening at The Knitting Factory features live musical accompaniment by the Magik Markers and Brendan Canty from Fugazi.

More on Buzzfeed

2007-01-09T07:35:00.000-08:00

Screenshot AFC

I feel like a bit of jerk for not immediately recognizing the glory of Buzzfeed, but what can I say? It's hard to judge a site without any archives. Of course, interestingly enough, this would turn out to be amongst their better features (as T.Whid mentioned over at MTAA a while ago.) The site uses a calendar function that allows you to see virtually anything you would be looking for at a glance, (kudos to ~~Jason Kottke~~ Chris Johanesen for coming up with such a great the design).

Now we all know nobody is going to read a site just because it has a handy calender, but you'll definitely read it for the same reasons you go to the Onion. The headlines are fantastic. For example:

Saddam :(

Political Buzz People are responding empathetically to Saddam Hussein's execution. Totally crestfallen over Saddam Hussein's death? You're not alone.

Stickam

Tech Buzz New uncensored webcasting site is attracting a lot of MySpace users MySpace is fine for stalking from afar, but ever noticed how MySpace instant messaging barely works? With Stickam, its myriad of uses include video-conferencing with naked 15-year-olds and spying on your dog when you're not home. Web 2.0 has never been so versatile!

and this jewel from December's archive,

Animal Porn

Lifestyle Buzz Animals having sex has never been so cute or mindwarpingly hot. Hopefully this will inspire someone to make a porn version of cuteoverload.com.

Come on. Clearly, if animal porn doesn't win you over, I don't know what will.

The All-In-One Woodworking Tool

2007-01-08T11:10:00.000-08:00

Image via Sears

Alright art nerds, I hadn't planned on posting the rest of the day, but Make has made this impossible. Phillip Terrone has just posted Craftsman's latest woodworking tool, an $1800 computer controlled CNC machine. Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow describes it as a 3-D printer, which doesn't mean that it prints holograms on wood, but rather that you can rip, cross cut, miter, contour, joint and route, without having to own a separate tool for each job. Hello all-in-one printer of the woodworking world! Product description below:

"Compact, computer-controlled, 3-dimensional woodworking machine with an easy-to-use interface. It allows a novice to make a complete project without a shop full of tools.The unique configuration allows it to perform many other woodworking functions, including ripping, cross cutting, mitering, contouring, jointing and routing. The CompuCarve can work in most soft materials, including wood, plastics (polycarbonate or cast acrylic) and certain types of high density foam. Set includes CompuCarve machine, (1) 1/16 in. carbide carving bit, (1) 1/8 in. carbide cutting bit, CarveWright Memory Card, starter software package, (2) 1/4 in. bit adaptors, vacuum bag adaptor, bit removal tool, hex wrench, owner's manual and Quick Start Guide." - Link.

Miami: The Land of White SUVs, 12 Dollar Drinks, and Calf Implants

2007-01-08T07:38:00.000-08:00

Yes, the allure of Miami is undeniable, so for those of you who can't get enough of those 12 dollar drinks during art fair season, let me recommend the affordable Avalon Hotel. The hotel is right on the beach, but has the advantage of being slightly removed from the Miami Convention Center. This means that when you return to your room in the evening you are not still surrounded by drunk fair attendees. If you are lucky, you may also get a room with a view onto the water.

NOTE: Due to a large number of deadlines this week things may be a bit slow around here today.

Brian Ulrich's Copia Opens at Julie Saul Gallery

2007-01-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

Brian Ulrich, Smithhaven, NY, 2003 (Girl)
chromogenic print
Photo copyright Julie Saul

"There's a great scene for photographers in Chicago" artist Allen Frame tells me yesterday at Brian Ulrich's opening at Julie Saul. Frame does not live in Chicago, but Ulrich, who teaches there, had shared this with him on one of his many trips to New York. Expanding upon this statement, Frame explained that the community was very supportive of one another, and that Ulrich, (who is known for being very giving,) exemplified this in his generous lectures. I only spoke with Ulrich briefly yesterday, but in this short time I decided it must be true. There is no one quote I can relay that will definitively "prove" this, - I wasn't writing everything he said down - but it may not be a surprise to regular readers here that his general excitement about the web community, struck a chord with me.

Brian Ulrich, Bloomington, MN, 2004 (Final Sale)
chromogenic print
Photo copyright Julie Saul

As for the exhibition, Brian Ulrich's Copia, at its most basic level explores a popular theme amongst contemporary artists; shopping. The press release will tell you that these large scale photographs depict private moments in public spaces, which has some truth to it, but simplifies how the work functions. You can't, for example, look at a piece documenting an empty showroom floor and think that this represents an intimate moment for someone, but it does serve to support the larger thesis of the show; Copia evokes the striking feeling that the intensity that Westerners bring to the act of shopping is a kin to an out of body experience. Be it a line of carts in a personless space, or a portrait of a woman in a grocery store, these photographs depict a nations crack-like addiction, leaving its citizens startlingly alone.

The Worst of the Web, 2006

2007-01-04T14:00:00.000-08:00

There are no less than ten things the Internet brought us last year wish I could forget. They are thusly immortalized below.

THE WORST OF THE WEB 2006

Image via pluto.planetologie.de

10. Pluto is not a planet
Blogosphere aghast! Pluto demoted! You know what? Fuck you Pluto. Second only to the Iraq war as a pressing news item in August, this non-story dominated discussion on like, five million websites. How much discussion really needs to occur on what will eventually amount to one less tag on a flickr photo of this "non-planet".

Image copyright Location One

9. The Road to Mount Weather
In what has to be an odd clerical error of sorts, Barbara London, the associate curator of New Media at The Museum of Modern Art has placed Cliff Evan's video The Road to Mount Weather, at number two on her top ten list of the best films in 2006. The work culls and collages images found on the Internet to create 15 minutes of sophomoric conspiracy themed panoramas thus calling into question London's taste and virtually every other pick on her ArtForum list. A complete review of this video can be found at The Reeler.

Image copyright boing boing

8. Live 3D body scanning scanning online of supermodel Naomi Campbell etc.
Super high resolution shots of Naomi Campbell's body constituted a tech story in the last week of December at Boing Boing. This particular piece isn't "the worst" of the web, but representative of the meaningless tech fetishization that permeates the web. Witness endless ipod news, engadget, and of course, this.

Screengrab AFC

7. Armin Vit's Anti Woman rant on Speak-Up
When Tokion announced its list of speakers at their conference Creativity Now this past September there were no women speakers scheduled to attend. Not surprisingly, a number of people didn't think it was all that cool to host a conference on creativity and not include any women. Armin Vit, author of the blog Speak Up, and a graphic designer at Pentagram, took the opposite position, and was kind enough to grace us with these thoughts on the subject in the comments section of a post he titled "Dealing With "Women" Part One: The Rant",

My claim...is that neglecting and publicly bashing a conference about creativity (and its organizers) for its lack of women, despite their efforts to do so, is a backward-thinking proposition. Having attended the conference, there was inevitably a diverse range of point of views, the large majority coming from men. To claim that this diversity of point of views is unteniable – and detrimental to the conference – without women holds little ground.

Wow, what are the odds that there was a greater diversity of male view points at conference with 90% male participants? Idiot.

Screengrab AFC

6. Gawker
Who knows how long Gawker will be driving traffic if their site does not recover from the loss of editor Jessica Cohen. The blog is now an explosion of third person prose, constantly late on stories, and frequently boring as fuck. Prediction: Buzzfeed will eat Gawker alive. (I know, I know, it's a different kind of site - but there are more similarities than you'd think, and the writing is in a completely different league.)

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5. Culturegrrl
Admittedly Lee Rosenbaum's coverage of the Met Museum's admission hike over the summer was excellent as was the work she did with the contemporary auctions in November, but there is a limit to how much self promotion I want to read on a site, and Culturegrrl exceeds this quota daily. We know where we are, we don't need to be reminded every other post. We don't need to read an empty entries about what will be published in a few hours - (I have a newsreader thanks) and we don't need to read complaints about who's not linking to the site. We would however like to see something that supports the feminist roots Culturegrrl's name suggests (as does her first post.) I think it's slightly disingenuous to claim grrl status, and then rarely write about women.

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4. Lonely Girl15
Too great a waste of time to discuss.

Image via true2death

3. Banksy
The graffiti/guerrilla artist Banksy is to the art world, what Snakes on the Planes is to the field of entertainment: Not so-bad-it's-good. Nobody will remember this artist's poorly painted elephant, or childish Paris Hilton pranks, but this won't stop someone from thinking it's a good idea to write a book on the growth of his popularity due to the web. When print allows you to follow a link, this idea will have some merit, but until that time we can all sneer at the inherent stupidity of such projects.

Screengrab AFC

2. Artnet
While welcome rumors that Artnet will soon launch a site redesign and new services have filtered in here over the past month, (bloggy has an excellent post today detailing some of the companies business plans revealed on VernissageTV) nobody can fix the fact that the abusive editor Walter Robinson runs their magazine. Over the last year Robinson has sent numerous name calling emails to bloggers, blindly supported the laziest and most sexist writer in the art business, and continually publishes vapid art news reporting. All the design in the world can't correct that problem.

Screengrab AFC

1. Artinfo
When this site first launched I thought it was going to crush its competition. Artnet was in a vulnerable position, what with their website sucking and all, and ArtInfo could have offered a a real alternative. Well, so much for that idea. Blogger has more sophisticated publishing technology than these guys do, (not actually true, but their website is a mess and they don't have RSS feeds), and they can't seem to keep anyone on staff for more than a few months. If they want to stay alive, they have to demonstrate that they are an art authority. Nobody is going to believe that as long as they have cost cutting columns promoting the work of students who have yet to graduate. Call me old fashioned, but I think giving a student the space for their art to mature before launching them into the art world benefits everyone.

Reviewing the Reviews: Speak, Memory at the Village Voice

2007-01-04T10:00:00.000-08:00

If critic Leslie Camhi at the Village Voice has read anything about Stan Douglas's prior work, or even the press release, or wall text at The Studio Museum, why is she making statements like this about Inconsolable Memories,

"...The sometimes-blurry sound didn't help; it seemed both the result of a technical glitch and part of an artistic strategy to frustrate comprehension."

It's a rather large oversight by both the writer and the editor to omit the fact that artist uses two reels that occasionally overlap. Douglas is well known for his interest in technology; this should have clued someone at the Voice in that the review is at best incomplete without mention of this information and at worst flagrantly inaccurate.

Art Fag City at the Reeler: Inconsolable Memories

2007-01-03T07:11:00.000-08:00

Stan Douglas, Inconsolable Memories, 2005
Image courtesy David Zwirner

The worst of the web, and about five million other lists will be published here over the course of the week, but before we get into all of that, over at The Reeler I've written a review of Stan Douglas's exhibition, Inconsolable Memories. The work I discuss is currently on display at the Studio Museum of Harlem, which will overlap the opening for his latest film, Klatsassin at David Zwirner, on January 10th.

It took me three days to figure out what Stan Douglas's exhibition at the Studio Museum of Harlem, Inconsolable Memories, is about, which places it in the same company as David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. I harbored some initial reluctance to let that bit of information out of the bag -- of course, you always want to sound as though you are so cultured no reference goes by you -- but it wasn't long before I came to the conclusion that even with my hard-earned understanding of the piece, I wasn't going to fool anyone into believing that this came so easily. There may be some audience members who didn't have to immediately run home, rent the movie the exhibition is based on, Google about 500 key terms and then discuss the show with three of their closest friends before forming any kind of cogent thoughts on the work, but I'm not one of them.

For the two remaining readers dying to do this much homework for the sake of understanding an art piece, I have good news: It's worth your trouble. Douglas's two-part exhibition of photographs and video uses Tomás Gutiérrez Alea's 1968 film Memories of Underdevelopment as a starting point to explore the socio-political history of Cuba, while employing his mastery of technology to investigate the role memory plays not only in the construction of timelines, but the medium itself. The result is a surprisingly complex portrait of sexual relationships, race and national identity. Intermittently narrated by the psychologically stunted but erudite protagonist Sergio Corrieri, Alea's original film relates a lack of social awareness on an individual level to that of the culture as a whole. Sergio loses his job as a journalist and eventually has his apartments confiscated in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis; while he occasionally seems to have the awareness that he should leave Cuba, he irrationally remains unwilling to do so. His relationships fall apart, and he likens the failures he sees in the women he partners with to those of the country.

To read more follow this link.

The Best of the Web 2006

2007-01-02T17:26:00.000-08:00

Professional Internet publishers can define virtually any activity these days as work related, which can mean significant problems for your productivity. However, once a year, we have the opportunity to tally the results of our time wasting skills, which today means recapping the best and worst things we've seen on the web in 2006.

THE BEST OF THE WEB 2006

10. The Fishyawa - Bagagaga Bop!

At the end of August the Toronto Star ran a great article (* no longer available) on Animutation a form of flash animation that embraces the nastiest of graphics, and mutates the faces of pop stars. Probably the best of the videos I've seen in this genre, Bagagaga Bop represents an art form that developed naturally as a result of working with web tools and assets. No deep meaning can be found in this work, which is completely the point. Why struggle to find thought in a McGraphic? Deface a popstar, add a few babies, aliens and boats to a video, and back it with a song written in a language you don't understand. I've heard some grumbling that this form of animation is problematic because it exotifies Japanese music, and while I can't wholly dismiss the argument, I figure if I'm not bothered by the fact that somebodies face is being disfigured in the name of comedy, I might as well let this one go too.

Alec Soth, Candlelight Hotel 2004
Photo copyright Alec Soth

9. Alec Soth

Launched in September 2006, Alec Soth has quickly become the author of one of the most popular art blogs today. I suppose it helps that he's an art superstar, but let's be honest -- Wil Wheaton not withstanding -- most people don't read famous people's blogs if they suck. I subscribe to his feed because he's always writing about some really interesting subject I would not thought to write about. Most recent example: Photography used in book covers.

8. Pogs

What is a digital pog? I had no idea what this Michael Bell-Smith project was about until I read Tom Moody's description "Briefly, pogs started as illustrated milk bottle caps in Hawaii and grew into a kid-collectibles crazelet in the '90s. Digital pogs are 177-pixels-in-diameter GIF files that exist and can be "bartered" mainly via the Internet and web browsers."

Since the project's inception, there have been hundreds of submissions by artists, many of them hypnotic, and very desirable. Nobody, to my knowledge, has figured out a way to trade them though, which I think would ultimately make them a little more viral. (Some discussion already occurred on the top of competition which resulted in artist Guthrie Lonergan's pog marquee battle.) Really, I just want a way to feature a daily pog in my sidebar.

Personism
Screengrab AFC

7. List of women for your conference

For some reason, don't ask me why, I've managed to resist the urge to place a giant picture of myself as a representation of Jen Bekman's list of women in the arts on Personism. The title of her post pretty much explains what it is. It's not like this is the first time anyone's ever made a list of professional women working in the arts, but post has a permanent place in my sidebar under resources, because it's current, and is copy and pasteable.

Image via youtube

6. Mannequins on skateboards fall over

This short video featuring a mannequins on skateboard competition first appeared on Boing Boing this fall. I particularly like the sound design of this piece.

Screengrab AFC

5. David Cronenberg Interview on Rocketboom

In July of 2006, Andrew Baron interviewed director David Cronenberg about, Supernova, the Andy Warhol exhibition he curated for the Art Gallery of Ontario. The discussion began with a discussion about film and Warhol, and ended up discussing the future of film in the wake of Internet distribution. I talked about this video endlessly for weeks after I saw it.

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4. Tom Moody

I imagine Tom Moody is on virtually every net artists "best of list", but I think he deserves a lot more credit amongst the larger art community, (as does the net art community generally.) He's one of the few critics who talks about what he likes and dislikes in equal proportion, always giving the artist the courtesy of actually thoroughly considering the work before discussing it. Also, his animated gif show up at artMovingProjects last spring was excellent, and very much overlooked.

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3. ArtCal and The Reeler

These two Internet start-up companies have the fact that I work for them in common. I also happen to think they are amongst the best sites on the web.

On ArtCal: If you like to attend openings, but find you can't keep track of what's going on, then subscribing to ArtCal's weekly mailer is probably the best favor you'll ever do yourself (simply enter your email in the box above the subscribe button and you're done.) The opening listings are selective, which means you don't have to wade through endless listings of shows you'll never attend, and Barry and James even pick out a few of their favorite exhibitions for you. Since these guys see at least twice as many shows as the average reviewer, I find their picks to be more reliable than ArtForum.

On The Reeler: If you are a cinema buff and live in New York city, you probably read this site every day already. If you aren't, there is a good possibility you will become one after visiting. That's what happened to me. What can I say? I like well thought out criticism and everything published on that site is opinionated, well written, and thoroughly researched. Also, I have noticed my writing benefits when working with an editor. Some of my best work has appeared on that site.

Hasselhoffian-Recursion
Image via: Post Literate.com

2. The Year In the Internet 2005
Spearheaded by Michael Bell-Smith and Cory Arcangel, these artists invited 11 Internet mavericks to provide their top ten lists of great websites and web ephemera from 2005. It's all fantastic stuff but standout contributers include Brett O'connor's gif find titled Hasselhoffian-Recursion, and Gutherie Lonergan's link to FunFoodsUSA.com, which features a three layered rollover. Sadly, it looks like that feature is now gone...though it's still one of the ugliest sites I've seen. My own uninvited 2006 contribution to this project is this toilet gif. I guess I just share the Bemis.com belief that no bathroom graphic is complete without several toilet seats circling a globe. [Editors note: The company's slogan is one of the odder marketing choices I've observed in a while.]

Screengrab AFC

1. Cory Arcangel's Kurt Cobain vrs Google Adsense.
Hands down the best Internet art of the year. If you're not already aware of "punk rock 101", Cory Arcangel published Kurt Cobain's suicide letter word for word, and then set up Google adsense on the page. This is quite possibly the most brilliant subversion of the medium I have seen. The artist uses the death of a superstar, which is caused in part by the pressures of media , and couples it with Internet commerce. It's a good joke, but of course it's also a profoundly sad gesture that Cobain's death would later serve to increase ringtone sales. Presumably a result of being listed on the front page of Digg last year, Google got wind of the project, and forced him to remove the ads.

Screengrab AFC

Bonus pick: Rhizome.org
It's not really fair to put together a list of great art related material on the web, without mentioning the most important institutional web supporter working today: Rhizome.org. Rhizome typically doesn't host net art themselves, but they do sponsor it. Given that commercial galleries have not proven to be the best venues for artists working in this medium, Rhizome, has an importance to the development of net art that can not be understated (ie timeshares).
UPDATE: Ah, the glory of revealing your stupidity to the masses by forgetting things YOU'VE ALREADY REPORTED ON. Rhizome hosts net art (artbase).

Coming up next: The worst of the web 2006

Posting Notice: Darth Vader Vrs. Santa Claus Edition

2006-12-22T07:30:00.000-08:00

Photograph by Neil Rough

We're signing out for the holidays until the ~~27th~~ new year when we will return for our 2006 wrap up. Yes, that's right, in only a few days Art Fag City will become solely dedictated to the publishing of incomplete lists and seriously flawed hierarchical systems of evaluation.

Wooster Collective Give Themselves an A+ For Their Latest Exhibition

2006-12-21T07:38:00.000-08:00

Bo and Microbo, (Milan)
Photo copyright Wooster Collective

You know, I like the Wooster Collective, but their three day exhibition of ephemeral art, Wooster on Spring has turned their blog into a positive energy reporting, MoMA-comparing, jock expletive bonanza. There’s only so much self-love a person can take. Ask Sara and Marc if they knew the event would be “this fucking huge” (their words), and according to them you will expect their response to be "How can you ever anticipate that kind of madness? Of course not." Typically AFC doesn’t anticipate a reply that serves only to reiterate the promotional point that the event was well attended, but maybe w e aren’t the mcweb audience the collective seemed to have in mind when they penned that line.

“In truth,” they continue, “we knew all along that it was going to be this big.” And of course, regardless of whether they actually foresaw the size of the event, it has to be said that it really was a zoo out there this weekend. Wooster Collective explains the reason for this, graciously providing this illuminating quote from Grafitti artist Cycle on the quality of the exhibition,

"Damn, it's like a temporary MOMA in here. It's what MOMA should be, but unfortunately never will be. One of these days guys like Doze Green and others in this room will be in places like the MOMA. But until then, they're in here. I've never seen, or experienced, anything like this in my life "

Let’s not forget that Graffiti Basics is currently up at the Brooklyn Museum, so it’s not like “ephemeral” art isn’t enjoying some institutional credit. As if gratuitous MoMA comparison isn’t enough they follow the clip up with artist Doze Green’s PS1 sentiments,

"Nothing like this has happened in New York since PS1 opened back in the day. The energy of Haring and Basquait, you can feel it in these walls. This is truly something special that probably won't happen again in a long, long time."

Now, I’m not going to sit here and dismiss the sentiments of these artists -- if they think this exhibition is like an early PS1 or a temporary MoMA that’s fine with me -- but I will take issue with publishing such sentiments without making an effort to substantiate them. What specifically should MoMA be but isn’t? What did MoMA Queens as a temporary space fail to do, that Wooster Collective achieves? Where is this “energy” they speak of coming from, and why is it akin to that of Haring and Basquit? There are no answers provided to these questions, and quite frankly, I don’t believe the ones they would find would support the statements published on their blogs. Wooster Collective can support the statements of those who compare them to MoMA if they want, but they can’t expect that it won’t challenge their credibility if they don’t make an attempt to back it up with anything more than a few expletives and reports of large crowds and well known attendees.

Miami Will Never End: The Fair Ratings

2006-12-20T11:06:00.000-08:00

At some point the Miami art fair posting has to end, but there are a few things we have yet to tie up. The official AFC fair ratings for example, have until now, gone unpublished. We'll be referring back to these this coming Febuary during the New York art fair madness to evaluate fair performance so be sure to bookmark this post. From best to worst below.

#1 Art Basel - Great art, great organization, great breadth. My favorite thing about this fair: It's like looking at the physical curation of the 20th Century Art Book in that it pairs the most unlikely artists and galleries together for exhibition. The main difference between the two: Basel is decidedly less alphabetical in its heirarchy.
#2 Aqua - Excellent survey of contemporary art in a hotel. Very Miami. Points given for having a fountain the middle of their courtyard.
#3 Nada - Excellent range of contemporary art in an industrial space. Points for not being located in a hotel.
#4 DiVA - A failure as a fair, but the work was so great, it stays at #4.
#5 Flow - Sleeper hit of Miami. Flow is an invitational fair that exists primarly to accomidate those who were not accepted to Pulse due to this years large numbers. Ironically the overflow is far superior to the original fair.
#6 Scope - Much improved since the spring, but they are still plagued with galleries that could use an "art install 101" course. I believe it is part of Scope's initative to support these galleries by helping them get up to speed, which is an admirable quality, if only they could get a few more of these people on board. They are host to more New Media galleries than any other fair (barring DiVA), which I like.
#7 Pulse - Stale. Performed poorly particularly relative to last Febuary's New York fair.
#8 Bridge Art - Over all a bad fair, though I've been informed that I missed at least one gallery.

Everyone else: Apologies. I missed your fair.

Super Secret Santa

2006-12-19T23:10:00.000-08:00

Santa looking like a creepy George Lucas. Super Secret Santa by Jason Corace. Web Design by Jason Corace and Amy Finkel

I'm not really a fan of party reporting, but sometimes you have no choice. When I reported from Miami I did it primarily so I could complain about trophy wife culture, and trumpet a good DJ. Today, I report on my own Christmas party because I love robots. Super Secret Santa is a mechanical bot that records who's been naughty and who's been nice this year. His data was collected this Saturday at our annual Christmas party, and uploaded live to supersecretsanta.net for immediate voting. Yes, that's right, we leave it up to you to decide who's really been bad. The full story below.

Concurrent with the rising price of coal, so has risen the level of naughtiness within the general population. Santa can no longer afford to purchase such large quanties of coal, and must resort to giving those who are naughty a chance to get back on the nice list. He's pretty busy this year though, so Santa made a few robot clones to attend parties like ours, where there is sure to be more than a few evil doers in the bunch. Much like the Catholic church, you tell Santa your sin, and he absolves you of it. Unlike the Catholic church he uploads it onto a website so Internet nerds can judge how naughty you've really been. Do judge us harshly!

Art Fag City on The Reeler: Showing No Restraint

2006-12-18T23:02:00.000-08:00

Matthew Barney on the set of Drawing Restraint 9, the subject of Alison Chernick's new film No Restraint. Photo copyright Voyeur Films

I'm beginning to wonder if in time, there will be more written about Matthew Barney than art he's produced. It's a tough call of course -- you're pitting an army of whimpy art writers against a varsity athlete and hoping they can keep up -- but it's not an altogether outlandish concept either. Consider the fact that the search terms "art fag city" and "Matthew Barney", bring back ten plus pages of google results, even though we write about the artist fairly infrequently. Chances are, we will become one of countless people who attempt to either interpret or record the man's work. However, unlike a blog post, which tends to have a shelf life equal to that of a Bansky, Alison Chernick's No Restraint, a documentary on the making of Matthew Barney's latest movie Drawing Restraint 9, will probably not be forgotten. My full write up on the film can be read at The Reeler, but I invite you to pass judgment on first two paragraphs here before I send you clicking. Not that my clearly bias statements means anything here, but I happen to think the link is worth following.

After watching Alison Chernick’s No Restraint, a film exploring the making of artist Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint 9, I spent the following week trying to figure out what makes a good art documentary. It's more difficult than I expected; only a few days ago I would have told you there isn’t much point in making a traditional documentary about an artist if you’re not going to focus on his best work. I also would have said I was skeptical about any film that investigates only a few aspects of an artist’s creative process -- especially when that artist’s cosmology has been described by The New York Times's head art critic Michael Kimmelman as more complex than the Kabbalah.

Given these doubts, you can likely imagine my surprise when I found myself in the position of having to throw all of them away: After years of art world professionals and laypeople alike complaining about the incomprehensibility of Barney’s work, No Restraint (opening Wednesday at IFC Center) neither finds the meaning of his work obscure nor simplifies it to the point of becoming art pablum. Chernick uses a simple format, following Barney aboard the Nisshin Maru -- a Japanese whaling ship and the set of his 135-minute, virtually dialogue-free (and weakest movie to date) Drawing Restraint 9. It highlights the Japanese crewmen’s introduction to and interpretation of his art, the working relationship between Barney and his wife Björk (who also co-"starred" in DR9) and features Kimmelman, gallerist Barbara Gladstone and other experts who chronicle the rise of the star.

To continue reading click here.

Paper Thin Walls 2006 Mixtape: The Stocking Stuffer for the Consumate Web Surfer

2006-12-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

Image copyright Paper Thin Walls

I'm not going to bother to try and spin this as art related -- we're covering the music review website Paper Thin Walls because we’d be fools not to report on the fine tidings available for download at that site. Fresh as of this morning, PTW offers a double CD set featuring each reviewer’s favorite single of the year, and the equivalent of a masters thesis in write ups and interviews with each selected artist. "Our list is not ranked, not very scientific and not exhaustive at all. But every song on it is a number one to somebody." writes editor Christopher Weingarten, thus capturing the true spirit of the mixed tape. And indeed you do find the best of this art form at PTW: The compilation is personal, carefully curated, and most importantly, free.

Vaguely related: Tom Moody's Blip Festival cell phone message. Could you get a better sound bite?

Art Fag City at The Reeler: DiVA Miami

2006-12-15T07:07:00.000-08:00

Jens Brand, G-Pod, Image copyright Galerie Rachel Haferkamp

Given the amount of i-pod fetishization that proliferates the Internet, I am wholly uninclined to reproduce images of the product here for fear of irritating myself further with its presence. I make exceptions, only in the case of artists like Jens Brand who lightly mock the product with such works as G-pod, a portable device that allows you to listen to an aural mapping of the earth through the use of pre-existing satellites any time you wish. The humor of this piece is subtle because of course, it's not like we've all been waiting for someone to come up with a device that provides us the convenience of listening to hours of noise on the run, but it's clever enough that I actually enjoy featuring it on AFC. In fact, you can read about this, and all kinds of other great work like it at the DiVA art fair in Miami at The Reeler. The teaser begins below.

Even with the 3-year-old Digital & Video art fair (DiVA) now in town, it’s pretty clear that cinema and the digital arts are not a priority to this year’s various fair organizers. Reports of poorly attended and out-of-focus screenings plagued both Art Basel and DiVA, while Cinema Scope continued building upon less than substantial programming. Granted, the market for art video is relatively small compared to that of traditional media, which in part explains the overall lack of emphasis on the medium; as it remains relatively untapped among art fairs, the event planning is so splintered that only the most dedicated cinephile could capitalize on the screenings.

In theory, DiVA offers a solution to this problem with a focus exclusively on video and digital art. Founder and organizer Thierry Alet acknowledged this factor would likely explain the smaller audience. "I see DiVA as a destination show," he told me outside “the village” -- the fair local, which comprises 18 sea containers as exhibit spaces laid out in the form of two concentric semi-circles. He went on to explain that the people who attend the fair are specifically interested in video art as opposed to the more casual Basel art shopper. But how many of these “focused” people actually showed up? Artist Martin Ramocki (about whom I wrote here in October) uploaded pictures from the first day of the fair on his gallery’s blog vertexlistblog, documenting a total of three attendees. The numbers climbed in subsequent days, but you’d think that as a destination fair, it would have resulted in a single sale. Last I heard, though, the largest grossing gallery at the fair was boasting a $20 profit after having found a bill on their floor.

To continue reading the piece click here .

Remember, Giving is a Performance Art

2006-12-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

Hot on the heels of Regine at We Make Money Not Art, AFC throws a little support to our good friends at Rhizome. The online new media organization is currently raising funds for their end of the year community campaign. Your donations means greater support for new media artists, and more art for us to discuss here. Deadline December 31.

Photo copyright Vertexlist

Speaking of giving, Vertexlist's benefit party and raffle takes place tonight at 7. For a mere $200 dollars you can help the gallery pay its rent, and take home a great new media art work. Vertexlist has put together an online catalogue of art that has been donated, so that supporters know in advance exactly what they are getting into.

Participating artists include: Rene Allain, Mauro Altamura, Joe Amrhein, Lee Arnold, Mike Ballou, Roddy Bogawa, Brice Brown, Pam Cardwell, ETEAM, Biteditions (John Flear) , Matt Freedman, Doug Henderson, Mike Houston, JODI, Scot Kaplan, Mimi Kim, Maria Lopez & Ernesto Restrepo, Jillian Mcdonald, Tricia Mclaughlin, Jim Nolan, Joe McKay, Anja Mohn & Renate Aller, Luke Murphy, Aron Namenwirth, Jason Ogden, John Parker, Linda Post, Marcin Ramocki, Mauro Ceolin, Akiko Sakaizumi, Paul Slocum, Jude Tallichet, Jason van Anden, David Wells, CJ Yeh, Carlo Zanni

Things to Come

2006-12-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

Peter McDonald at Kate MacGarry Gallery at Nada
Photo: AFC

After all that excitement last week, things will be a little quiet around here for the next couple of days while we try to gather our bearings. Reflections will arrive later on in the week, but in the meantime, please enjoy the art above. I was finally able to retrieve the contents of my camera, which thankfully reminded me that I like all kinds of art that isn't map inspired.

A Window Into The Mind of a Collector

2006-12-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

Best collector quote of the fair:

"I loved it. I spent four hours straight at Art Basel, and I didn't get tired...if you were to spend that much time in a museum it would almost be boring"

Aqua Miami and Nada: Who Will Win the Prized Position of Second Best Fair?

2006-12-10T20:59:00.000-08:00

Aqua Miami 2006, Photo AFC

I might as well just get this over with now: Art Basel is the best fair I have seen in Miami. I have some guilt in saying so, since it feels a little like supporting Microsoft, but what can you do? The show looks really good, there's a lot to see, and it's well organized. You have to give credit where credit is due.

The question then, is who amongst the 14(ish) remaining fairs gets second prize? Most predicted that the runner up would be awarded to either Nada or Aqua, which is indeed correct, but the race is a lot closer than I would have expected. Even after our discussion about how the hotel room as an exhibition space is no longer a detriment to the viewing experience, I still prefer the traditional booth format at Nada to having to navigate an Aqua bed to look at some art. Surprisingly however, I enjoyed Aqua better. I can no longer judge if it is because the fair as a whole was superior - this is the last day of the fairs, I've seen a lot, and frankly, the two fairs are so close in quality it could go either way. Personally, I liked Aqua more because as a whole it seemed more laid back, and the most "Miami" of all the fairs (thank you blue and white exterior hotel walls.)

Now, chances are by the time I publish this, Miami readers won't be able to see either fair, but since there has to be some evaluation of performance, there is always reason to record a few thoughts. And so with that said, let the synopses begin.

Aqua

Matthew Cusick left, Darlene Charello right, Photo copyright Lisa Dent and Morgan Lehman

By and large the galleries in this fair put together strong rooms. Amongst those who stood out in this crowd, Matthew Cusick's Chasing the Dragon at Lisa Dent is at the top of my list. Given my review map lover Darlene Charnello's yesterday, Cusick's use of text, maps and paint, may seem like an obvious pick for me, and to be quite honest, I recognize that there are a lot of similarities. Both artists concern themselves with surface, fictionalized landscapes, and beauty. But I find I am slightly suspicious of the beauty in Charnello's work whereas I don't question this as much with Cusick (of course you'd have to see both works in person, because in the jpeg comparison above Charnello wins hands down.) It's possible Cusick has an additional edge with AFC because his work employs text, (which we tend to like) but I ultimately believe the appeal has more to do with more complex compositional choices since the artist's choice of words in these works is essentially random.

Jennifer Dalton, Wish You Were Here, 2006

Assuming there is some truth to the statement above visa vie our likes and dislikes, it follows that Jennifer Dalton's work at Winkleman/Plus Ultra Gallery is extremely pleasing to us. "Wish You Were Here", offers a small souvenir for collectors to buy at pro-rated prices that correspond to your spending habits in Miami. Spending over $10,000 on art this month? Great. You are an Art Benefactor and as such will pay $500 for your souvenir. Only buying this one piece? That's fine too. You are an Art Lover (scenester), so your price is $350. There are 2 to 3 other levels of giving that Dalton lays out. Dealer Edward Winkleman informed me that avid collectors were quite up front about their Art Benefactor status. I'm not sure if I see this as a predictable the-art-world-is-small-and-you-can't-fool-anyone response, refreshingly honest, or annoyingly ostentatious. Whatever the case though, I find the fact that all three options are reasonable interpretations of collector habits to interesting in and of itself.

Image via: Kim Dorland

Other galleries that peaked my attention are Howard House, who featured two works by the underrated Canadian painter Kim Dorland. Campsite and Big Foot both exhibit his signature chunky painting style. Aesthetically they have a lot on common with painter Andre Ethier, Nicole Eisenman and Canada Gallery's Michael Williams. Earlier in the year I had identified these works as having been derived from Dana Schutz's Frank paintings, promising a follow up post that never arrived explaining the connection. Part of this has to do with the fact that these artists have far more in common with each other than they do Schutz, so the link seemed a little more tenious than I had first thought.

Anne Mathern and Chad Wentzel, Alone in the Wilderness, crappy photo: AFC

On a less painterly note, a gallery with a name I thought was "restrooms", but in retrospect was probably just art I mistook for something else, featured a video documentation of a performance in Second Life titled Alone in the Wilderness by Anne Mathern and Chad Wentzel. Having spent a lot of time covering the art scene in Second Life, I was naturally very interested in the project, though in the end it was because it is the first bad art I've seen come out of that system. The performance is a soundless piece featuring two avatars dancing in the wilderness naked. Sometimes they swim. I'm not sure what this piece is supposed to be about past exploring the cliches of performance art, and since most of us aren't interested in that, whatever content the work has is lost to its audience.

NADA

Joe Bradley

First the disclaimer. All Nada pictures are stuck on my camera, and may not be able to be retrived until later on this week. If they weren't on my camera you'd be looking at a portrait by Judith Eisler at the Cohan & Leslie. More importantly you'd be looking at Joe Bradley titled Simian Run, at Canada Gallery. As some readers may remember, last year I discussed a jpeg from Bradley's solo show at Canada, and expressed some skepticism about the work. I never thought I'd be saying this about the half man made out of flat painted colored canvases, but the piece is really great. The piece deceptively appears to be minimalist (what with the blank colored canvases), but is much closer to a genre of art that has no name that I know of. It sounds like an oxymoron to call Simian Run of the successful ironic hipster movement of art, but this pretty much describes it. It's a really funny piece, that only translates in person. Why is this canvas person with only half a leg? Would it be too much trouble to add it? Obviously not, and that's the point. I also like that this piece uses the most basic construction methods in traditional media to represent the most basic of early computer imagery.

Marc Swanson Anyone, anywhere, anytime (psychic studies) still, left, Pleix, Birds, still, right

In addition to Canada Gallery's strong performance at Nada this year, Bellwether also put together a strong booth displaying, among other things selected photographs from Trevor Paglan's recent exhibition. The works are dark in mood, suggesting something both sinister and alluring in the secret operations of the American military. In contrast to this, a Marc Swanson video loops continuously, and irritatingly if you know that the original score (made just last year by Vitalic) appropriated, also began with a video that is by far superior to Swansons remake. I know it sounds crazy, but I prefer dogs jumping through lazers to some dude masterbating before he sets off for a disco. You too I'm sure would come to the same conclusion if you could view the two videos, but of course, Bellwether's new website doesn't include quicktime capabilities so you're stuck with the better version.

And this unfortunately is where I am going to have to leave things. There is more to say on both fairs, Miami, and the endless events here this past week, but I am forced to cut this short. Camera maintenance calls, and I'm once again short of time.

DiVA: The Digital & Video Art Fair

2006-12-10T07:49:00.000-08:00

Are collectors confusing DiVA with TiVo? It actually seems possible since DiVA isn't getting much foot traffic even though they are showcasing some of the most interesting work in Miami this year. Part of this might have to do with the fact that the only advertising I've seen for this fair seems to exist in the form of email. There are no signs around the city for DiVA and they are off the main fair trip so you have to know about them to get there. Illustrating the severity of this problem is the fact that I've heard more about Frisbee, a renegade art fair that is using a poster campaign to get people to come to their space, and according to one gallerist "doesn't officially exist", (whatever that means.) Despite the fact that said gallerist makes the fair sound like a product of The X Files, I doubt I'll make it there. Why should I when I already know that DiVA is amongst the best fairs in city?

Note: A full write up on DiVA will appear later this week on The Reeler.

Art Basel Miami is a Big Fair

2006-12-09T19:08:00.000-08:00

I took this photo of Art Basel from the skywalk in the Miami Convention Center today. The fair is massive as evidenced by this picture...documenting roughly a quarter of it.