November 2009 Archive

Finley and Muse at Haverford and Hollis Frampton at International House

Imaginative Feats Literally Presented; three fables for video projection, an exhibition of Jeanne C.  Finley and John Muse’ work is on view at Haverford College’s Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery through Dec. 11. Muse teaches at Haverford and Finley at California College of Art and they have collaborated for many years. Like all fables, theirs deal with big ideas: vulnerability, fear, family, safety, truth and fiction, control.  The three works read as chapters of the same story, all set in the present when America is at war.  The exhibition leaves visitors uncomfortable, but these are not bedtime stories and they are not ... More » »

What’s it Worth? Works on Paper at Arcadia–the show

This is part 2 of a 2 part post. Part 1 is about the talk delivered by show juror Joao Ribas. Ribas’ choices for the Arcadia Works on Paper exhibit raise issues of sharing, reproducibility and loss of copyright control. They raise disturbing questions about the value of all art at a time when works on paper have never been more highly valued.

What’s it Worth? Works on Paper at Arcadia–the talk

The prestigious Works on Paper show at Arcadia, which opened Wednesday, raises worthy questions about the value of art objects in the year 2009.

Luc Tuymans-heavy lifting for the viewer but satisfying

Post by Lauren Whearty I have been to the Luc Tuymans exhibit at the Wexner Center at least 5 times in the past few months.  There are four or five galleries set up to exhibit different stages of the work, which progress in a mostly chronological order.  Each room, or section is curated to summarize or reconstruct past exhibitions of Tuymans work, and to place his retrospective in context with the time and place where it was created.  Reconstructing these previous shows is important in that Luc makes paintings with the consideration of installation, as each painting in a room ... More » »

Big pictures at the Ice Box

The long east wall in the Ice Box at the Crane Arts Center has so much wall space–25 x 100 feet–that founders Nick Kripal and Richard Hricko decided to make something even bigger of it– In a push to challenge video artists to take advantage of the enormous space, they have installed four computer-controlled video projectors capable of filling that wall, including creating a seamless image (a la Matt Suib and Nadia Hironaka’s The Soft Epic or: Savages of the Pacific West video installation there).  It’s hello Cinemascope times two.

Sweet horror trip

Dead of the Living Night at Space 1026 is a mash note for horror movies with a surprise psychedelic candy-coated center.

Jeanne-Claude of Christo and Jeanne-Claude dies, age 74

Sad news.  She of the flame red hair and peppery personality.  NY Daily News story. Thanks to Andy Carvin via Megan Wendell.

Techno wonders from Delaware

In a show that should attract all the techno-art hackers out there, the University of Delaware faculty show themselves able to out-techno the technologists. Feats of tech derring-do abound in video and mechanical and electronic wizardry. Things growl and click at you in this show and the art doesn’t stand still. Neither do you as it surrounds you in some surprising ways.

Beyond the Canvas: Francine Savard at the Musee d’Art Contemporain de Montreal

My brain was buzzing when I left the Francine Savard mid-career retrospective at the Musee d’Art Contemporain de Montreal (MACM) curated by Lesley Johnstone. The 60 works on display express intellectual and philosophical ideas with such refined and graphic precision. Savard’s work, obviously drawing from the local tradition of Plasticiens (a non-figurative movement which began in the mid-1950s in Quebec and included Stella-like works from artists such as Guido Molinari, Claude Tousignant and Fernand Leduc), incorporates text, typography, colour and structure in a reflective way that encourages the viewer to rethink art history, geography, analysis and representation.

In D.C.: “Portraiture Now: Communities” at the National Portrait Gallery and “Falnama; The Book of Omens” at the Sackler

Last week I visited Portraiture Now: Communities, at the National Portrait Gallery through July 5, 2010, with paintings by Rose Frantzen, Jim Torok and Rebecca Westcott.  It was organized around the idea of portraits of groups.  Not group portraits, but individual portraits of people connected by familial relations, friendship with the artist or by virtue of living in the same, small community.