Very excited to be getting in a few more words these days (a cumulative 1850 words). . . recent reviews include:
"The Spectacular of Vernacular" at The Walker Art Center in Art Lies, Issue no. 68
This show will be coming to the The Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston in July, will take a slightly different form there, and it should be interesting to see how it changes in this context with the very different (but equally strong) vernacular style and tradition of Texas.
. . .and an article in Newcity on the panel discussion, "How Chicago are you?" which was at the Graham Foundation in mid-May. The panel consisted of eleven artists, musicians, architects and designers from Chicago including, Alex Lehrnerer, Pamela Fraser, Jimenez Lai, Geoff Goldberg and Damon Locks. Good stuff.
"What's to Like about this place?" in Newcity, May 19 edition.
Also had the wonderful opportunity to write about Huma Bhabha's work in Newcity, just a short review, but really got me interested in her work and process. There is a great interview of Bhabha by Julie Mehrehtu in the catalog for Bhabha's exhibition at Peter Blum Gallery. My review of Huma Bhabha's show at Rhona Hoffman appeared in the April 11 edition of Newcity.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Winter/Spring Reviews. . .
After a brief reprieve from writing while making new work for the show "Pushing Paper" at Dominican University (Jan.26-Feb.26) and taking a week long trip to New York, I am back to writing. Here is a list of my new and upcoming articles:
"Philip Vanderhyden's Outside Group" at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Newcity, February 2011.
The bulk of my writing time in the past month has been dedicated to my first 1000 word review in print in Art Lies. This show at the Walker is raucous and far-reaching with 40 artworks by 25 different artists:
"The Spectacular of Vernacular" at The Walker Art Center, Spring/Winter Print Edition.
In March look for my first review in the new online journal, Art in Print.
"Philip Vanderhyden's Outside Group" at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Newcity, February 2011.
The bulk of my writing time in the past month has been dedicated to my first 1000 word review in print in Art Lies. This show at the Walker is raucous and far-reaching with 40 artworks by 25 different artists:
"The Spectacular of Vernacular" at The Walker Art Center, Spring/Winter Print Edition.
In March look for my first review in the new online journal, Art in Print.
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
List of Fall / Winter Reviews. . .
I have been terrible about keeping up my blog lately, but am still doing lots of writing. I published several reviews this fall of shows in Chicago. I decided to write about each of these artists because their work either utilized everyday objects in a new way (see Stephanie Syjuco and Alberto Aguilar), or because I was amazed by their intensive process (see Anthony Pearson and Zach Mory), or because their two-dimensional work created a different type of experience for me in the gallery. I am interested in two-dimensional work that engages the gallery, not as installation, but using the relationship between the drawings/paintings and the gallery (both as a literal space and conceptual framework) to expand certain ideas in the work (see Deb Sokolow and Hilary Wilder). These themes just evolved over the course of a few months as I continued writing. Here is the list and links. Enjoy!
"Deb Sokolow at Western Exhibitions," Newcity, December 2010.
"Hilary Wilder's Ornament and Crime at The Suburban Gallery," Art Lies, Fall/Winter 2010. (In print only).
"Light and Air at The Coalition Gallery" (Robin Dluzen, Zach Mory and Connie Wolfe), Newcity, November 2010.
"Things to be next to . . . at Three Walls" (Alberto Aguilar, Peter Fagundo, Warren Rosser and James Woodfill), Newcity, November 2010.
"Anthony Pearson at Shane Campbell Gallery," Newcity, October 2010.
"Stephanie Syjuco's Particulate Matter at Gallery 400," Newcity, September 2010.
"Deb Sokolow at Western Exhibitions," Newcity, December 2010.
"Hilary Wilder's Ornament and Crime at The Suburban Gallery," Art Lies, Fall/Winter 2010. (In print only).
"Light and Air at The Coalition Gallery" (Robin Dluzen, Zach Mory and Connie Wolfe), Newcity, November 2010.
"Things to be next to . . . at Three Walls" (Alberto Aguilar, Peter Fagundo, Warren Rosser and James Woodfill), Newcity, November 2010.
"Anthony Pearson at Shane Campbell Gallery," Newcity, October 2010.
"Stephanie Syjuco's Particulate Matter at Gallery 400," Newcity, September 2010.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Summer Studios Temporary Installation
In the end of July and early August, I assisted Adia Millet in the building of three installations for the Summer Studios project at Threewalls and the Sullivan Galleries at the Art Institute. For a week I was an interloper at the Sullivan Galleries after Adia invited me to fill one of the spaces she had been allocated with an installation that responded to her adjacent installation, "Blood, Sweat & Tears." For more information about this piece you can read Adia's entry about the Summer Studios on the Studio Chicago blog.
While working in the studio, our conversation kept returning to the issue of indeterminacy: what you can't see but know is there, and the limits of what you can ever really know, understand, or identify. There is a sense of uncertainty, ambiguity, potential that lingers in Adia's installation in which an old wooden chest sits beneath floating, irregularly shaped circular forms. A single light casts shadows against the gray walls multiplying these forms and making it nearly impossible to tell whether the rings are coming or going, filling the chest or emptying out. In an adjacent installation, I addressed similar ideas in different materials: a granite rock (not from Plymouth, but close) is tightly wrapped in paper ribbons opposite a pile of sand from Cape Cod that buries an unfurling cream-colored bow. These two objects have a reciprocal relationship in that the rock will eventually dissolve into sand and the sand will someday be compressed into stone. Casting shadows on the rock and the sand is a web of pearl-organ-blobs cut from plastic sheeting. Together they created a strange landscape of plastic, stone and paper that I plan to keep working with. Thanks to all who made this improvised project possible.
Monday, August 09, 2010
Residency at the Harvard Forest
Just recently completed an artist residency at the Harvard Forest near the Quabbin Reservoir in Western Mass. The residency was a time to talk with biologists and ecologists at the Harvard Forest about their research, understanding and view (quite literally how they see the forest). It was also an opportunity to look at the photographs in their archive of the damage that the 1938 Hurricane caused in the forest. I was interested in how scientists photograph the forest versus artists, are they looking for or looking at different aspects of the woods? Are scientists as interested in making a whole, unified image of the forest as a landscape photographer would be? As conversations evolved, the questions shifted more to how does the perception of the forest as ordered or disordered, balanced or imbalanced impact the images that artists or scientists make of the woods?
I was joined on this residency by Jeremy Lundquist, we collaborated on an installation in Fisher Museum at the Harvard Forest. The museum describes the changes that have taken place in the forests of New England over time through dioramas, photographs, and graphs. We worked with the documents that were already on display in the museum and within the conventions of display that existed in this natural history museum. Images of the project will be compiled into a book and posted on our website: http://www.drawnlots.com/
Monday, May 17, 2010
Chicago Art Excursion no. 1: U of C
On my first weekend in Chicago, I took a bus to a train to a bus down to Hyde Park and the University of Chicago. I made the trek for a symposium on the films of Marcel Broodthaers, but also to see "The Seductiveness of the Interval" at the Renaissance Society and to delve into the bowels of the Seminary Bookstore. The "Seductiveness of the Interval" is a series of low, small, interconnected rooms with different types of seating: from the seats on a bus, to the wooden seats in a school auditorium. The chairs all face a screen on which is projected a video. The exhibition includes work by three artists: Stefan Constantinescu, Andrea Faciu and Ciprian Muresan. While their strategy for inserting videos inside an installation in a very minimalistic way seems important in advancing the dialogue about medium-specificity v. installation art, I did not find the videos compelling enough to want to sit through, perhaps because I had been blown away by Broodthaers' films. The most interesting piece in the show was the garden on the roof of the structure, which you reached only after climbing steep steps that raised you up above the gallery lighting. Although reminiscent of Francis Alys' lofted space in 2008, what I like about seeing shows at the Renaissance Society is that the work always gets you experience the space in a new way.
It is hard for me, just days later, to gauge the impact of seeing so many of Broodthaers' films together, a rare occurrence. While I like Broodthaers' work, I primarily went to the conference to hear Benjamin Buchloh and Bruce Jenkins speak about his work. I was therefore unprepared to be totally charmed by Broodthaers' films. I had no idea how funny they were. Broodthaers, I learned, was influenced by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, borrowing strategies from silent film to poke fun at the bourgeoisie, as well as himself. I must admit that most of my knowledge of Broodthaers' work comes from Krauss' book, "A Voyage on the North Sea" and my research into Tacita Dean's work (see my post on the The Artist's Studio at the MCA). While I can't rehearse Buchloh's lecture here, in his talk he re-examined the connection between Broodthaers' work and Benjamin, by linking Broodthaers' more closely to Guy Debord, and describes his films as a critique of "The Spectacle". With films like Le Bataille de Waterloo (1975) this connection seemed quite clear to me, less so with his earlier works like La Pipe Satire (1970). While I know this is quite a leap, after spending time last week researching the Yes Men for another article, I couldn't help but think they share the same dead pan humor directed, perhaps, at the similar targets. Broodthaers' films also reminded me of early works by Frances Alys such as Paradox of Praxis, where Alys pushes a melting block of ice through the streets of Mexico City. In this work, like Broodthaers' film, Eau de Cologne in which he sits on a folding chair in front of a cathedral holding a potted plant as it blows wildly in the wind, there is a mixture of the poetic and the absurd, as each artist incorporates their own bodies into a kind of physical comedy.
Broodthaers reading the newspaper through glasses dipped in whipped cream in Berlin oder ein Traum mit Sahne (1970).
And lastly, the amazing book I found in the catacombs of the Seminary Book Co-op, a history of Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Gallison published by Zone Books.
It is hard for me, just days later, to gauge the impact of seeing so many of Broodthaers' films together, a rare occurrence. While I like Broodthaers' work, I primarily went to the conference to hear Benjamin Buchloh and Bruce Jenkins speak about his work. I was therefore unprepared to be totally charmed by Broodthaers' films. I had no idea how funny they were. Broodthaers, I learned, was influenced by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, borrowing strategies from silent film to poke fun at the bourgeoisie, as well as himself. I must admit that most of my knowledge of Broodthaers' work comes from Krauss' book, "A Voyage on the North Sea" and my research into Tacita Dean's work (see my post on the The Artist's Studio at the MCA). While I can't rehearse Buchloh's lecture here, in his talk he re-examined the connection between Broodthaers' work and Benjamin, by linking Broodthaers' more closely to Guy Debord, and describes his films as a critique of "The Spectacle". With films like Le Bataille de Waterloo (1975) this connection seemed quite clear to me, less so with his earlier works like La Pipe Satire (1970). While I know this is quite a leap, after spending time last week researching the Yes Men for another article, I couldn't help but think they share the same dead pan humor directed, perhaps, at the similar targets. Broodthaers' films also reminded me of early works by Frances Alys such as Paradox of Praxis, where Alys pushes a melting block of ice through the streets of Mexico City. In this work, like Broodthaers' film, Eau de Cologne in which he sits on a folding chair in front of a cathedral holding a potted plant as it blows wildly in the wind, there is a mixture of the poetic and the absurd, as each artist incorporates their own bodies into a kind of physical comedy.
Broodthaers reading the newspaper through glasses dipped in whipped cream in Berlin oder ein Traum mit Sahne (1970).
And lastly, the amazing book I found in the catacombs of the Seminary Book Co-op, a history of Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Gallison published by Zone Books.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Eggleston in Texas and Chicago
Since my arrival in Houston in September, one artist has more influenced my thinking than any other—William Eggleston. I have encountered his work several times this year, and each time its importance multiplies. Eggleston's photographs tell you something about Texas that you just can't understand until you have lived here awhile. I can only describe this something as the way that time seems to lingers here, ceasing almost to move forward until it lapses itself.
This passage of time is told through Eggleston's photographs individually and in series. Much of Eggleston's entire body of work is currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago in the exhibition, The Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 (until May 23rd). Although Eggleston's printing techniques have changed from dye-transfer to digital and the scale of his photographs has shifted from 8 x 10 inches to 20 x 30 inches, his subject matter and his approach to it remain unchanged. Eggleston articulates this approach in an interview from 1988, as he describes driving through Mississippi, pulling over, getting out of his car with his camera and looking out at a dried up field. Even though, as he says, "it was one of those occasions when there was no picture there," he made one anyway. Eggleston describes this decision as a choice to photograph "democratically."
In this interview and in the series The Democratic Forest, Eggleston confronts one of the oddest experiences in photography—that moment when you look around and find nothing visually compelling enough to photograph, but you make an image anyway. This moment is uncomfortable, even depressing, as you stand bluntly looking out at a space where absolutely nothing lends itself to becoming an image. There is something strangely subversive about making a picture of "nothing," of "no place," or of that which is non-descript to the point of failing to cohere into an image. In photographing "democratically," Eggleston's images run counter to the idea that a photograph should narrate an event; nonetheless, Eggleston's images also avoid becoming sublime images of nothing. These are not spectacular images of voids, as many recent photographers like Trevor Paglen and Hiroshi Sugimoto have delved into. Eggleston's "democratic" approach to photography leads to images of "nothing" that are often boring and mundane, but for this reason they are remarkably, and also uncomfortably, familiar.
One could argue that Eggleston's consistent approach to the same subject matter appears staid over time, yet through this process Eggleston reveals what has remained the same in the Southern United States since the 1960s: beneath the ordinariness of daily life and cleanliness of domestic spaces lies a sense of uncertainty about the future. Singularly his sparse compositions appear easy to read, but upon viewing the images as a series you begin to realize that this simplicity belies confusion. This tension is heightened when Eggleston photographs the space around whatever should be at the center of the scene. The center could be the owner of the home in Greenville, Mississippi who never appears in the photograph that Eggleston took there on a sunny afternoon; all we see is an empty seat on the sofa beside a window. Without this center, Eggleston's image instead becomes a document of all of the forces that shape our identity as individuals and as a nation.
From this image of a quiet parlor in Mississippi are hurtled questions about how we define prosperity, happiness, safety and convenience. Above all, once we have settled upon these definitions we must then ask, what of this is sustainable? Despite the urgency of these questions, the viewer never feels as if they are looking at the crux of the problem, but somehow seeing it from the side, which makes it more approachable. Eggleston's approach, oddly enough, reminds me of Kara Walker's decision to use silhouettes as a way of allowing her and her audience to confront fantasies of race and gender that would otherwise be too "ugly" to depict (this is her word, from the Art:21 interview, "Insurrection!" from 2003). While Eggleston certainly is not as critical in his work of the fantasies of race and gender that Walker seeks to expose in her silhouettes, he does, to an extent, allow us to confront our own expectations about life in America by showing us the periphery rather than the center.
This passage of time is told through Eggleston's photographs individually and in series. Much of Eggleston's entire body of work is currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago in the exhibition, The Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 (until May 23rd). Although Eggleston's printing techniques have changed from dye-transfer to digital and the scale of his photographs has shifted from 8 x 10 inches to 20 x 30 inches, his subject matter and his approach to it remain unchanged. Eggleston articulates this approach in an interview from 1988, as he describes driving through Mississippi, pulling over, getting out of his car with his camera and looking out at a dried up field. Even though, as he says, "it was one of those occasions when there was no picture there," he made one anyway. Eggleston describes this decision as a choice to photograph "democratically."
In this interview and in the series The Democratic Forest, Eggleston confronts one of the oddest experiences in photography—that moment when you look around and find nothing visually compelling enough to photograph, but you make an image anyway. This moment is uncomfortable, even depressing, as you stand bluntly looking out at a space where absolutely nothing lends itself to becoming an image. There is something strangely subversive about making a picture of "nothing," of "no place," or of that which is non-descript to the point of failing to cohere into an image. In photographing "democratically," Eggleston's images run counter to the idea that a photograph should narrate an event; nonetheless, Eggleston's images also avoid becoming sublime images of nothing. These are not spectacular images of voids, as many recent photographers like Trevor Paglen and Hiroshi Sugimoto have delved into. Eggleston's "democratic" approach to photography leads to images of "nothing" that are often boring and mundane, but for this reason they are remarkably, and also uncomfortably, familiar.
One could argue that Eggleston's consistent approach to the same subject matter appears staid over time, yet through this process Eggleston reveals what has remained the same in the Southern United States since the 1960s: beneath the ordinariness of daily life and cleanliness of domestic spaces lies a sense of uncertainty about the future. Singularly his sparse compositions appear easy to read, but upon viewing the images as a series you begin to realize that this simplicity belies confusion. This tension is heightened when Eggleston photographs the space around whatever should be at the center of the scene. The center could be the owner of the home in Greenville, Mississippi who never appears in the photograph that Eggleston took there on a sunny afternoon; all we see is an empty seat on the sofa beside a window. Without this center, Eggleston's image instead becomes a document of all of the forces that shape our identity as individuals and as a nation.
From this image of a quiet parlor in Mississippi are hurtled questions about how we define prosperity, happiness, safety and convenience. Above all, once we have settled upon these definitions we must then ask, what of this is sustainable? Despite the urgency of these questions, the viewer never feels as if they are looking at the crux of the problem, but somehow seeing it from the side, which makes it more approachable. Eggleston's approach, oddly enough, reminds me of Kara Walker's decision to use silhouettes as a way of allowing her and her audience to confront fantasies of race and gender that would otherwise be too "ugly" to depict (this is her word, from the Art:21 interview, "Insurrection!" from 2003). While Eggleston certainly is not as critical in his work of the fantasies of race and gender that Walker seeks to expose in her silhouettes, he does, to an extent, allow us to confront our own expectations about life in America by showing us the periphery rather than the center.
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