December 2008 Archive

The Analog Stupa–Bonnie Brenda Scott and Michael Gerkovich at Padlock Gallery

Bonnie Brenda Scott and Michael Gerkovich, installation detail, The Analog Stupa at Padlock Gallery. I keep going to friends’ houses where they’ve cleared out their old tvs, their old stereo systems, and moved on to the next generation. Hey, we all have done this to some degree. I have files on old floppies that are lost for eternity–the floppies and the software that created them obsolescent. Every year, it’s not so much that we’re losing neurons; it’s that we’re not expanding enough gigabytes of memory for our creaky old systems. Bonnie Brenda Scott, Hands Triptych, 2008, top (I think), ink, ... More » »

Fear, loathing and lady photographers in New York

Like children staring down a box of candy and a bowl of oatmeal we went straight for Chelsea Dec 12 instead of to the museums. The day was sunny and brisk and we took our chances wandering in candyland. Trenton Doyle Hancock at James Cohan. We knew before we walked into James Cohan Gallery that we were ready to love Trenton Doyle Hancock’s show. His works excite us with their combination of extreme inward-looking eye, paranoia and turgid visuals. In a cool world Hancock sizzles. His manic layering, repetitive imagery, gazillions of words, and push to decoration give us great ... More » »

James Castle, outsider and perhaps, a happy man

Post by Michael Andre James Castle, artist of word play and sewing, from the PMA’s show. Take a look at James Castle’s retrospective at the Art Museum. Castle (1899-1977) was an outsider who spent his life on his family’s farms in Idaho. He used spit and soot and sticks to draw. He uses all sorts of common papers. Then, more interestingly, he recycled cardboard logo-smeared commercial packaging. He sews such cardboard into a flat sculpture which winningly evoke, say, a Marisol maquette. James Castle’s materials, string, rags, sticks…from the PMA show. When I arrived at McGill in 1964, I rambled ... More » »

The 2008 Liberta Awards

It was an ok year. In general, much of what we saw was ok. The Whitney Biennial is always an ok group show but it’s the ok group show we don’t want to miss–just in case. This year the Carnegie International became ok. All in all we’d rather be in Philadelphia where young artists and not so young artists are moving in and new galleries continue to open. Better than ok is the Bolt Bus which we’ve learned to love. Yippee. This is the year Liberta got a ridiculous number of awards — two!! — just for being them. The ... More » »

Weekly Update — Vox Populi’s Members’ Puzzles

This week’s Weekly has my review of Vox Populi’s December shows. Below is the copy with some pictures and added words. See Libby’s post for more about the show. Vox Populi’s December members’ show is a conceptual outing that—with the exception of Amy Adams’ sparse but evocative “Our Boat That Is Made of Flowers”—is totally puzzling. The newly married Adams is the former executive director of Vox and now works as the director of Fleisher-Ollman Gallery. Her installation is about power, love, war and peace, triggered by her recent honeymoon to Europe where she saw many old paintings of battle ... More » »

Never too late

Well sometimes it is too late. Here are a couple of things I saw that I didn’t get up before they closed. But I really liked what I saw, so I had to share, anyway. Michael Coppage at Crane Michael Coppage, A Mature Pair, mixed media drawing on pegboard, a detail from Coppage’s installation 1) Michael Coppage’s show in the so-called Archive Space at the Crane Arts Building is the first I’ve seen in that awful alley that found a number of ways to rise above the constraints of space, the aggressive daylight streaming in through the window, and the ... More » »

Paper at Projects

Itsuki Ogihara, Population Series, digital prints, each 17 x 17 inches This is the last call for the Paper show at Projects–there’s a bunch of really great stuff in it, including Itsuki Ogihara’s Population Series, 17-inch squares of wallpaper encoded with demographic information, each square representing a different city. The squares include racial info, population wealth, etc. It’s fun to look at, fun to decode, fun to compare the information, fun to figure out what each little figure and each little color means. All in all is enormously entertaining and thought provoking. Plus it’s great looking. I have to confess ... More » »

Delirious architecture at MoMA

Post by K-Fai Steele The Dreamland show in the Architecture and Design Drawings Gallery (third floor, MoMA) celebrates the 30 year anniversary of Delirious New York, written by Rem Koolhaas in 1978. The show features drawings and models dedicated to utopian experimentation since the 1970s. Unfortunately, the show was lacking in explanatory text, so one had to either have some knowledge of Koolhaas and architecture history, or be able to gumshoe information out. Koolhaas (b. 1944) founded the OMA (Office of Metropolitan Architecture) in 1975 with his wife Madelon Vriesendorp, and another husband and wife team, Elia and Zoe Zenghelis. ... More » »

Nick Cassway talks a tiny little bit about Nexus Radio

I’m sorry I didn’t get this up before Nick Cassway’s radio show, Xavier Cougat and Friends at a Cocktail Party (Dec. 12, 3-6 pm). I’m sure it was a smashing success and I hope everyone in the vicinity of the Crane Building tunes in to 1650 AM to hear what else is coming between now and Feb 6. There’s a full calendar of the shows here. The one that seems the wiftiest (and thus a must-listen) is the burning Yule log Dec, 24 and 25, 10 am through midnight both days! From the calendar: “a sound loop of a burning ... More » »

Sitting Down with Art; Mary Heilmann at The New Museum

Installation of Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone; all photos courtesy of The New Museum. I’ve been thinking about how we interact with art, prompted by yesterday’s visit to Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone at the New Museum (through January 26, 2009; it was organized by Elizabeth Armstrong of the Orange County Museum of Art). The exhibition includes not only the paintings for which Heilmann is known and a number of ceramics (reflecting her initial training) but also a number of the artist’s chairs: plywood cubes not unlike Donald Judd’s chairs (well, sufficiently unlike to be his worst nightmare; these have ... More » »