Collier Schorr & Mark Bradford in Los Angeles
On October 10, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will host a public conversation between Collier Schorr (Season 2) and curator Christopher Bedford in conjunction with the exhibition Contemporary Projects 11: Hard Targets-Masculinity and Sport. The public program begins at 7pm.
The premise of the exhibition, which opens on October 9, is artists who revise the archetype of the male athlete as an aggressive, overtly heterosexual, hyper-competitive, and emotionally remote subject. Hard Targets includes works by Schorr, Mark Bradford (Season 4), Harun Farocki, Brian Jungen, Shaun Leonardo, and Joe Sola. ”Each examines the way masculinity is characterized and performed in a sporting context, and each suggests the existence of complex systems of desire and identification that accompany the way we view and consume athletes and sporting events.”
Bradford’s 2003 video Practice is included in the exhibition. In 2006, an article in LA Times Magazine quoted Bradford:
“Practice was a personal piece. At its core it was about negotiation and desire. I set up a proposition, a metaphor, in which I really simply wanted to play basketball. That’s it. But I had constructed this huge structure that was going to encumber me. I couldn’t control it, and doing what I wanted to do was a struggle. In some ways, that’s sort of how my life can be. I also knew that by taking the Lakers uniform and making it into a dress, that’s iconoclastic. I’m always interested in dismantling or questioning our icons. I want to make them problematic, awkward and uncomfortable.”
Watch a clip from Bradford’s Art:21 segment in which he discusses Practice:
Hard Targets is on view through January 18, 2009.
Do-Ho Suh at Louis Vuitton in Paris
On view at Espace Louis Vuitton through December 31, 2008, Metamorphoses: Korean Trajectories features Korean-born artists who work with ideas of transformation, particularly in the human figure, society and architecture.
Since the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, Korea has continued to evolve economically and technologically, and has simultaneously witnessed the rise of contemporary artists, reflecting the country’s dynamic growth. Metamorphoses explores “a wealth of metaphors for a post-modern humanity in which humor and the absurd serve to question the representation of man.” Curated by Hervé Mikaeloff, the exhibition includes Do-Ho Suh (Season 2), Beom Kim, Hyungkoo Lee, Ham Jin, Sookyung Yee, Yong-seok Oh, Heryun Kim, Jeon Joonho, Suejin Chung, and Flying City Collective. The Collective, which consists of artists who interpret the city as a mental map and apply their interpretations to urban reality, has created an installation based on an imaginary metropolis in a window of the Maison des Champs-Elysées.
L’Espace Louis Vuitton is located at 101 Avenue des Champs-Elysées.
Kerry James Marshall in Southern California
An exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Kerry James Marshall (Season 1) is on view at Koplin Del Rio Gallery in Culver City, California through October 24, 2008. PORTRAITS, PIN-UPS And Wistful Romantic Idylls is Marshall’s sixth solo exhibition at the gallery.
Marshall describes the new work: “This continues my over-arching project of representing aspects of Black Culture rarely made visible in contemporary picture making. Secondarily, I am also interested in foregrounding the black figure in popular genres of painting not usually associated with the socio-political frame in which much African American art is seen through. For example, in the big coffee table book survey, The Great American Pin-Up, published by Taschen, not one of the sexy, dream girls is Black. Likewise, what are the chances of encountering a portrait (imaginary) of John Punch; Angry Black Man in any of the major museums of Los Angeles.” According to the press release, John Punch was an important figure: the first person in American history to be condemned by a State Court to a life sentence of slavery in 1646. Marshall’s John Punch; Portrait of an Angry Black Man is among the new paintings to be featured in the exhibition.
Kelley and Pettibon in Political Correct
On view through October 25, 2008, Blondeau Fine Art Services(BFAS) in Genève, Switzerland presents the exhibition Political Correct. Taking Martin Kippenberger’s 1994 painting Ohne Titel (Political Correct III) as its starting point, the exhibition is comprised of works that might be deemed politically incorrect in content or just “tough to swallow.” Subject matter runs the gamut from war and genocide to sex and nudity, racism, and AIDS.
The 31 artists in the exhibition (mostly American) include Mike Kelley (Season 3), Raymond Pettibon (Season 2), Chris Burden, Sarah Charlesworth, Larry Clark, Michael Cline, Jason Fox, Group Material, Daniel Hesidence, Richard Kern, Edward Kienholz, Louise Lawler, Justin Lieberman, Robert Longo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Jerry Phillips, Charles Ray, Matthew Ronay, Kay Rosen, Martha Rosler, Peter Saul, Stephen Shames, Jim Shaw and Ivan Witenstein, Adel Abdessemed, Maurizio Cattelan, General Idea, Erik van Lieshout , Dominic McGill, Jean-Luc Verna, and Johannes Wohnseifer.
Read the exhibition text by Hudson, from Feature Inc., New York here.
21 at the Brooklyn Museum
On September 19, more than forty pieces from the Brooklyn Museum’s expanding collection of contemporary art will go on long-term view in a newly renovated 5,000 square-foot space. 21: Selections of Contemporary Art from the Brooklyn Museum is organized by Eugenie Tsai, the John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art, and Patrick Amsellem, Associate Curator of Photography. This installation marks the first time in a decade that the Museum has dedicated space to the long-term display of its contemporary art collection.
Works range from Andy Warhol’s Fragile Dress (1966) to more recent works like the painting above, A Little Taste Outside of Love (2007), by Mickalene Thomas. Other artists represented in the installation include Art21’s Kiki Smith, Do-Ho Suh and Kara Walker (all Season 2), and Valerie Hegarty, Amy Sillman, Olafur Eliasson, Nari Ward, Chester Higgins Jr., Sol LeWitt, Kehinde Wiley, Hew Locke, Terence Koh, Seher Shah, Simon Norfolk, Jules de Balincourt, Donald Judd, and Claes Oldenburg.
Visit the Brooklyn Museum blog for the latest and best behind-the-scenes information.
Ann Hamilton Wins Heinz Prize
Artforum.com and Bloomberg.com recently reported that Ann Hamilton (Season 1) is among the winners of the Heinz Family Foundation’s 2008 Human Achievement Awards. The Heinz Awards honors those who have distinguished themselves in the arts and humanities, the environment, technology, the economy and by improving the human condition. Hamilton won the $250,000 award for her installations that often use items culled from flea markets and warehouses. She’ll receive the award on October 21 at a ceremony in Pittsburgh, where the Heinz Foundation is based. Congratulations, Ann!
Hubbard/Birchler: No Room to Answer
Hubbard/Birchler: No Room to Answer is the first major survey in an American museum of works by Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler (Season 3). The exhibition is on view from September 14, 2008 through January 4, 2009 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.
No Room to Answer presents key works made by the duo since 1991. Their most recent video, Grand Paris Texas (2008) debuts with this exhibition and will become part of the Museum’s permanent collection. The video is named after The Grand, located in Paris, Texas. According the press release, the tiny East Texas town became famous by way of the German filmmaker Wim Wenders’ movie, Paris, Texas (1984). However, the “cold architecture and barren desert landscapes” in Wenders’ film’s were filmed in and around Houston, the desert area of West Texas, and Los Angeles, “reinforcing the film’s bleak theme of social isolation in America in a way that the wooded landscape of the real Paris would not.” Grand Paris Texas is a study of the physical and social space in that geographical location, which has been described as “the middle of nowhere.”
“One of the most important things for us,” Hubbard and Birchler explain, “is that we have always left the authority of reading the work up to the viewer and there’s got to be active interpretation that’s not just asked for, but is somewhat demanded.”
Louise Bourgeois at Cheim & Read
While the major exhibition Louise Bourgeois is still on view at the Guggenheim, a display of recent sculptures and gouaches by the Season 2 artist recently opened at Cheim & Read. The sculptures, entitled Echo, date from 2007 and are anthropomorphous like the artist’s early Personages of the 1940s and 1950s. “Cast from discarded clothing that Bourgeois has variously stretched, sewn, draped and piled into abstract, organic forms, the bronzes are then painted white to give a ghostly aura to the textured surfaces.” Bourgeois began using her clothing as material for her art in the mid-1990s.
Also dating from 2007, Bourgeois’s gouaches depict the processes of motherhood, from conception and pregnancy to birth and beyond. Her blood red paint is “at once bodily and ethereal—the paint, applied ‘wet-on-wet,’ was allowed to bleed and coalesce, leaving a range of organic, accidental marks that complement the corporeal nature of the imagery.” Read the complete press release here.
Echo, on view through November 1, is accompanied by a full-color catalogue with writings by the artist and an essay by Dave Hickey.
Arturo Herrera at Gallery 16
On view from September 12 through November 7, 2008, 15 years of Gallery 16: These Are the People in Your Neighborhood celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of Gallery 16 in San Francisco’s SoMA district.
Artists from the past, present, and future of the space participate in this special event, including Arturo Herrera (Season 3), William Kentridge, Stephen Hendee, Rex Ray, Xylor Jane, Jim Isermann, Michelle Grabner, Gedi Sibony, Lynn Hershman, Deborah Oropallo, Harrell Fletcher, Shaun O’Dell, Darren Waterston, Libby Black, Rebeca Bollinger and others.
Artist Griff Williams founded Gallery 16 to function as both contemporary exhibition space and fine art press. The exhibition program was not born from curatorial efforts, but a commitment to artists support and with the notion that a gallery should be “a place for radical ideas, not strictly a retail market for high priced goods.” Mr. Williams says, “We don’t create exhibitions around thematic curatorial agendas, but extend an invitation to artists we trust and challenge them with opportunity to present their ideas without restrictions.”
A reception will be held at the gallery on Friday, September 12 from 6 to 9pm.
Raymond Pettibon at Regen Projects
On September 13, 2008, Regen Projects in Santa Monica, California will open the first segment of a two-part exhibition dedicated to works by Raymond Pettibon (Season 2). Part I, entitled Seminal Work (1978-1988), is on view through October 18 and features many drawings that appeared in Pettibon’s early ‘zines. They highlight a range of topics including film noir, politics, hippie culture, religion, and music.
Part II, entitled Recent Work: Cutting Room Floor Show, opens on December 13. This segment will feature a selection of recent work that, according to the press release, is ”generally more densely layered…addressing topical issues of the day.”
Elsewhere in California, Pettibon is included in the exhibition The Wizard of Oz, currently on view at the CCA Wattis Institute in San Francisco. Read more about it here.
