August 2007 Archive

New York today

Hello summer campers, Libby and I are off to New York today. Whitney Museum for the Rudolph Stingel and the surveillance exhibits and International Center of Photography for the Stephen Shore. Stuff in Chelsea is there’s time. See you when we’re back!

Growing toys for growing boys at Bambi

Terrence LaRagione, Ruminations, oil on panel Some of the toys in Terrence LaRagione’s paintings in “Some Assembly Required” at Bambi have gone retroactive and nearly radioactive. This latest outing by LaRagione takes on the charm of old-fashioned comics, thereby transforming the hyperlit toys into something slightly sinister against dark, oily, old masters backdrops. Think early Disney meets Rembrandt here. Terrence LaRagione, Have No Fear, oil on panel Yet the work is not too scary to put in a kid’s room. It’s almost like LaRagione has captured the creepiness of the Teddy Bear’s Picnic, without losing the hug factor. Terrence LaRagione, ... More » »

Weekly Update – Bulletin Boards as art

[This week's Weekly has my essay on bulletin boards as art. Below is the copy with a picture. I'll put another picture in later. And if you have a picture of your bulletin board/refrigerator art, why not send it in and we'll run a little photo post about your art statements.] Pin-up ArtistsCubicles are installations by and for the people. Somewhere in your personal space—the kitchen, office, bedroom, hallway—there’s a bulletin board holding notes, postcards, photos, a calendar or other miscellanea that help organize and define you. Whether you’re conscious of it or not, you’ve designed and authored personal installation ... More » »

Report from Documenta 12: some details

Post by Andrea Kirsh [This is part 2 of a two-parter. Part one is here.] Romuald Hazoume Self-Portrait 1995 made of plastic container. All photographs in this post by Andrea Kirsh. Documenta XII’s curators were extremely catholic in their taste: abstract as well as figurative painting, sculpture and photography; video, textiles and installations; sixteenth-century Persian calligraphy and a post-card of a Manet painting (yes, a post card, of his 1867 view of the Universal Exposition in Paris, hung in a vitrine and labeled like any other work in the exhibition). In addition to a particularly international roster of artists, they ... More » »

Report from Documenta 12: an overview

Post by Andrea Kirsh [This is the first of a two-parter.] at Fridericianum – Iole de Freitas: detail of an untitled installation; the piece had one component that hung from the building on the outside; the yellow piece at the left is by Charlotte Posenskeall photos in the post by Andrea Kirsh Documenta directors are always compelled to stake out a theoretical position and Documenta XII was no exception. The rhetoric–of the “exhibition as a medium, the move away from representation towards production” and “the three leitmotifs of the exhibition – questions on modernity, bare life and education”–made neither more ... More » »

Intervention on the run

artblog correspondent Emily Regier dropped this tidbit into an email she sent us: I…was jolted back into artblog mode by a recent run in Fairmount Park. I am not much of a runner, but for a variety of reasons I attempted to try it out on this day. Finding it quite painful, I was determined not to quit, and persevered for (what at least seemed like) quite a time, until I happened upon this delightful graffiti ahead of me scrawled on the path: “Why are you running?” it asked. This was interventionist art (if I might call it that) that ... More » »

Print Center curator named

The Print Center has named John Caperton its new curator of prints and photographs (isn’t that all they show there, anyway?), starting Sept. 5. John’s previous experience includes Locks Gallery and the Fairmount Park Art Association. I think this is really good news!

On the road again: windmills and history

We took Stella to Pittsburgh this week for the start of college at University of Pittsburgh. On the way home we stopped in Carlisle to see Max who’s starting law school at the Penn State/Dickinson. The trip was a two-day whirlwind and here are just a few pix and some comments.Windmills of your dreamsAllegheny Ridge Wind Farm, seen from the car, traveling east on the PA Turnpike around Somerset. They appear to be silent as you pass them on the Pennsylvania Turnpike near Somerset but you know the windmills–turbines in contemporary energy parlance– must make a racket. How could they ... More » »

Surfing sofas and other ideals by John Lightfoot Greiner

The sofa at the end of the hallway is a video projection that’s part of a larger installation by John Lightfoot Greiner I didn’t take off my shoes when I saw the sand. It covers the floor of a long, narrowing hallway that ends in a pink/lavendar glow of light, in one of John Lightfoot Greiner’s installation at Flux Space. Down where the glowing is, a sharp left turn reveals a sofa projected on the wall, bouncing up and down. (I could swear the sofa was a generic orange-brown, the sort of color you see in some student living space, ... More » »

Highlow is here

That’s what I’m going to call it. The new wonderful interweaving of all art genres in magazines and exhibits here there and seemingly everywhere. You probably saw the cover of this week’s New Yorker with the Kara Walker image “Post Katrina-Adrift.” Wonderful image, great artist, a “high” art powerhouse, and she’s got her first big solo museum retrospective opening at the Whitney in October. (Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, on view October 11, 2007-February 3,2008). Kara Walker’s cover in this week’s New Yorker magazine. And if that’s not great enough, P. 74 of the same ... More » »