Weekly Roundup

May 7th, 2012
Ai Weiwei on Skype for the Richard. J. Massey Award for Arts and Humanity, at the White Box Spring Benefit 2012. Photo by Chris Reed.

Ai Weiwei on Skype for the Richard. J. Massey Award for Arts and Humanity, at the White Box Spring Benefit 2012. Photo by Chris Reed.

In this week’s roundup Ai Weiwei is honored, Barry McGee highlights the Mission School, Mike Kelley’s homestead is screened and more.

  • Ai Weiwei was honored with the first Richard J. Massey Foundation White Box and Humanity Award, at the White Box gallery in New York City. Ai accepted the award from Beijing via a Skype call. He could not receive the award in person because authorities in Beijing are constantly monitoring him. The award included an art piece created in his honor by Chilean artist Ivan Navarro.
  • Hiroshi Sugimoto: From Naked to Clothed is at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan. According to the exhibition notes, in creating and/or assembling the thirty-odd works on show, Hiroshi Sugimoto “sought to uncover the essence of what it is to be human.” At the center of this exhibition is the photographic series Stylized Sculpture, which showcases the fashion of such seminal 20th century designers as Gabrielle Chanel, Yves Saint-Laurent and Rei Kawakubo. The exhibition is on view until July 1.

  • Barry McGee organized a special exhibition at the Paule Anglim Contemporary Arts Centre (San Francisco). This show displays work from 1990s artists who were part of the now coined “Mission School” movement.  Over 40 artists were invited to participate in this event, which closes May 19.
  • Mark Bradford‘s retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts features  more than 50 works from 2000 through 2010, including Detail, an ark-like sculpture and the Rat Catcher of Hamelin, a large-scale four–panel mixed media collage created for the Istanbul biennial. 50 billboards collected from all around South-Central Los Angeles form the basis of this socially charged abstract art. This work is on view through May 27 at YBCA and June 17 at SFMoMA.
  • Mike Kelley‘s feature-length video installation Mobile Homestead will be screened  as part of the Whitney Biennial. Kelley built a life-size sculptural replica of the small ranch house where he grew up in a blue-collar Detroit suburb, attached it to a tractor-trailer and had it driven through the streets of Detroit as a symbolic reversal of the “white flight” that helped depopulate the city. This anchors more than three hours of documentaries about the stretch of Michigan Avenue that cuts through the West Side of Detroit and its working-class suburbs. This work will be on view May 16 – 20.
  • Maya Lin will be featured as this year’s speaker for the Visionaries Series at the New Museum (NYC), supported by the Stuart Regen Visionaries Fund. The series honors leading international thinkers in the fields of art, architecture, design, and related disciplines of contemporary culture. The event will take place on May 30, at 7pm.

 

Weekly Roundup

April 30th, 2012
Maya Lin, Dew Point 18 (detail), 2007, blown glass; © Maya Lin Studio, Inc., courtesy The Pace Gallery; Photo courtesy The Pace Gallery.

Maya Lin. "Dew Point 18 (detail)," 2007. Blown glass. © Maya Lin Studio, Inc., courtesy The Pace Gallery. Photo courtesy The Pace Gallery.

In this week’s roundup Maya Lin invites and challenges viewers, Alfredo Jaar makes history, Mike Kelley, Pepón Osorio, Carrie Mae Weems, and Jessica Stockholder explore everyday things, and more.

  • Maya Lin recently launched What Is Missing?, as part of the fifth, and last, of her memorial projects, which began with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1982. The web-based, multimedia memorial coincides with her exhibition in the Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum of Art. The show closes May 13.
  • Richard Serra‘s, Kiki Smith‘s and Martin Puryear‘s works are currently on view in Inside|Out at the Speed Art Museum (Louisville, KY). The exhibition illustrates how art and nature connect at the “New” Speed when the Museum reopened after its renovation and expansion project. Inside|Out looks at sculptures and prints made by these artists, among others. The exhibition closes September 23.
  • Jeff Koons lent his entire body of work to designer Lisa Perry’s latest collection of apparel and accessories. Perry’s art-inspired collection featuring Koons’s work is available at her boutique and on her website. Some of the proceeds will go to the Koons Family Institute, an initiative of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
  • Alfredo Jaar is featured in Making History at Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt, Germany). The exhibition addresses how photographs shape our view of history as well as the images that are withheld from us. Jaar’s photographs investigate the potential effect and ideological power of published photographic icons in his work, as well as in a large-scale installation. This show runs through July 8.

The Weekly Roundup

April 16th, 2012
Rashid Johnson. Triple Consciousness (2009). Courtesy MCA Chicago. Collection of Dr. Daniel S. Berger, Chicago.

Rashid Johnson. "Triple Consciousness," 2009. Courtesy MCA Chicago. Collection of Dr. Daniel S. Berger, Chicago.

In this week’s roundup, Rashid Johnson was on the diamond, Lynda Benglis to be featured at Boston RAW, Kalup Linzy pays tribute to Cindy Sherman, and more.

  • Rashid Johnson threw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field before the Cubs-Brewers game last Thursday. This was tied to the opening of his new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago. Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks explores the complexities and contradictions of black identity, rooted in his individual experience, through photographs, sculptures, videos, installations, and paintings. This work is on view through August 5.
  • A film clip from a still-in-progress documentary on Lynda Benglis will be previewed at Boston RAW Menagerie a day before Benglis’s segment from Season 6 of Art in the Twenty-First Century broadcasts on PBS. RAW directors select and spotlight local artistic talent in film, fashion, music, visual art, hair and makeup artistry, and performance art. Including artists from all genres in each showcase, RAW events come together to form an amazing one-night circus of creativity. This week’s showcase takes place on April 19; Benglis’s Art in the Twenty-First Century episode airs Friday April 20.
  • Lynda Benglis and Kara Walker were newly elected by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The annual induction and award ceremony will take place in mid-May. An exhibition of art, architecture, books, and manuscripts by new members will be on view in the Academy’s galleries from May 17 to June 10.
  • Kalup Linzy performed a tribute to Cindy Sherman to the tune of Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Linzy recounts his earliest encounters with Sherman’s work as an undergraduate student, and her role in getting him a grant. The exhibition Cindy Sherman is now on view at MoMA (NYC) in conjunction with the film exhibition Carte Blanche: Cindy Sherman, through June 11.

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  • Barry McGee is one of twenty-six artists featured by SFMOMA (San Francisco) for the Google Art Project that provides Internet access to high-resolution images of selected paintings, sculptures and photographs from museum and gallery collections around the world. Twenty-nine of the partners, in sixteen cities, are in the United States, with four of those just added in California.

Weekly Roundup

April 9th, 2012
LaToya Ruby Frazier (b. 1982), Where is Emergency Care for Braddock?, 2010. Gelatin silver print, 16 × 20 in. © LaToya Ruby Frazier; courtesy the artist.

LaToya Ruby Frazier (b. 1982). "Where is Emergency Care for Braddock?," 2010. Gelatin silver print, 16 × 20 in. © LaToya Ruby Frazier; courtesy the artist.

In this week’s roundup LaToya Ruby Frazier curates and demystifies, Ai Weiwei goes worldwide, Andrea Zittel and John Baldessari have “must-click” websites, and more.

  • Inheritance: LaToya Ruby Frazier and Tony Buba at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) is a curatorial effort by LaToya Ruby Frazier that includes never before seen artwork. With documentary filmmaker Tony Buba the artist spans 20th and 21st century socio-economic change in Braddock PA. This show is on view until May 19.
  • LaToya Ruby Frazier‘s work can be found on the 2nd floor of the Whitney Museum (as part of the Biennial) through May 27, and on May 11 she’ll be giving a performance, Demystifying the Myth of the ‘Urban Pioneer.’ She will be joined by filmmaker Tony Buba, artist Martha Rosler, and composer and sound artist Damian Catera for a multimedia exploration of the myth of the “urban pioneer” within her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. This event is free with museum admission, which is pay-what-you-wish on Fridays from 6–9 pm; there are no special tickets or reservations.

 

  • Ai Weiwei set up a Weiwei cam website a year after police in China locked him up for 81 days, showing feeds from four live webcams in his Beijing home. This is in reference to the 24-hour police surveillance he has been subjected to since his detention and the camera feeds can be viewed by anyone online.
  • Beryl Korot is at btforms gallery (NYC) and this is the artist’s first solo exhibition at this venue. Beryl Korot Selected Video Works: 1977 to Present features her landmark video installation Text and Commentary (1977), and the show also includes two of Korot’s more recent investigations into the medium, Florence (2008) and Yellow Water Taxi (2003). The show closes May 5.
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Weekly Roundup

March 19th, 2012
Computer rendering for Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2012. Courtesy Cai Studio.

Computer rendering for Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2012. Courtesy Cai Studio.

In this week’s roundup, Cai Guo-Qiang plans a close encounter, several artists’ works are best in show at AICA, Jenny Holzer and Kiki Smith are in Fashion Moda, Glenn Ligon’s work is reviewed, and much more.

  • Sarah Sze, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Lari Pittman, and Ai Weiwei and Glenn Ligon (upcoming Season 6 artists) will receive awards from the Art Critics’ Association (AICA). Sze’s Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat) and Ai’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads won Best Project in a Public Space. Ursula von Rydingsvard: Sculpture 1991-2009 won Best Show in a Non-Profit Gallery or Space. Lari Pittman: New Paintings and Orangerie won Best Show in a Commercial Gallery Nationally. Glenn Ligon: AMERICA won Best Monographic Museum Show in New York. Awards will be presented at a ceremony at the Asia Society in NYC on April 2.
  • Jenny Holzer and Kiki Smith among several other artists have work on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College (NY). The Fashion Moda Stores, 1982, Selections from Documenta 7 is an exhibition of approximately thirty small sculptures, wearable art, and ephemera that were made in multiples and sold in the Fashion Moda “stores” at Documenta 7, the modern and contemporary art exhibition held periodically in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition will be on view through May 6, 2012.
  • William Kentridge: Five Themes explores the key themes of William Kentridge’s career from the 80s until today and is on view at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). The show includes the artist’s direction of The Magic Flute and the animated films he developed for a 2010 production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. There are 60 works on display ranging from animations, drawings and prints to theatre models, sculptures and books. This exhibition closes May 27. Continue reading »

The Weekly Roundup

February 27th, 2012
Charles Atlas. The Illusion of Democracy, installation view (2012). Photo courtesy Luhring Augustine Bushwick.

Charles Atlas. "The Illusion of Democracy," 2012. Installation view. Photo courtesy Luhring Augustine Bushwick.

In this week’s roundup, Charles Atlas projects videos with numbers and grids, Rashid Johnson is honored, Sarah Sze to represent the U.S. at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Mike Kelley is honored in LA, Maya Lin re-creates nature, Jessica Stockholder will create a Chicago color jam, a Barry McGee cocktail drink in Miami (!), and more.

  • Charles Atlas has a new exhibition at Luhring Augustine Project Space in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. The Illusion of Democracy features video installations and projections that combine mathematical and diagrammatic images with art historical precedents to create moving vistas of floating numbers and grids. This work is on view until May 20. A user-generated video posted online documents the show:

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  • Mark Bradford is at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through June 17 and at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts through May 27. This is Bradford‘s first major museum survey of paintings, sculptures, and multimedia works to be presented on the West Coast. The selection of works captures the development of the artist’s sensibility, from modest-sized canvases to monumental public projects, and from purely formal investigations of material to engagement with sociopolitical questions.
  • Rashid Johnson had been named a winner of the 2012 David C. Driskell prize by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The prize is annually presented to an artist who is “in the beginning or middle of his or her career whose work makes an original and important contribution to the field of African-American art or art history. Continue reading »

KAWS Passing Through the High Museum of Art

February 20th, 2012

 

KAWS (Brian Donnelly). Down Time (2011). Photo courtesy High Museum of Art.

KAWS (Brian Donnelly). "Silent City,"2011. Photo courtesy High Museum of Art.

I recently attended an event with Brian Donnelly, aka KAWS, who joined Michael Rooks, the High Museum of Art’s Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, to talk about the current show KAWS: Down TimeDuring the conversation, KAWS took Rooks and the audience on a trip back in time, covering his progression from doing graffiti tags and pieces on walls, to billboard/bus shelter/phone booth advertisements, toys, large canvases and public works. KAWS had a early interest in urban art and communication–i.e., as a skateboarder and budding illustrator traveling the streets of Jersey City and NYC and reading the information around him as he passed through. The theme of “passing through” is often conveyed in Donnelly’s work. For example, a large sculpture from his Companion series, called Companion Passing Through, is sitting in the piazza near the entrance to the museum.

KAWS. Installing Companion Passing Through at the High Museum of Art (2011).

KAWS (Brian Donnelly). Installing "Companion Passing Through" at the High Museum of Art in 2011. Photo courtesy BAPE Nerd.

In the early years, KAWS was exploring parts of the city while receiving a mobile, visual and commercial art education. Rooks noted that the experience must have been like sensory overload. Indeed, many of the artist’s paintings are an explosion of simple visual elements that overlap and interlock on the picture plane in complex ways. Skateboarding through different neighborhoods and using different subway stops as destination points to create art enabled KAWS to learn more about graffiti in city space. Donnelly himself refers to this in the talk:

You start to think about different areas or missed areas or opportunities.  You think more about the world we live in and how you can be part of it.

More recently, graffiti and street art has had a revival in popular culture and in the art world, as seen in exhibitions such as MOCA Los Angeles’s Art in the Streets (which I wrote about on the Art21 blog in April 2011)and MoMA’s Looking at Music 3.0. Events such as the Re-Bomonti Street Art Festival in Istanbul, and the work of the Boa Mistura collective in Spain show the global reach of graffiti. However, when KAWS was passing through urban neighborhoods in the 1990s, graffiti was still mostly underground. Growing up at that time, with a historical knowledge of graffiti and access to city walls and trains, had a tremendous influence on the direction KAWS took. He became a part of local and international communities of artists who were often collaborating and trading photos of their work. During the talk, the artist spoke about first wanting his graffiti to reach people in a four-block vicinity, while Rooks noted that his train pieces could also be viewed as moving exhibitions that hundreds, maybe thousands could see.

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Talking with Art21 Educators: Jethro Gillespie and Jack Watson

February 15th, 2012

Jethro Gillespie, his son and some friends at a TASK event

Over the past few weeks I’ve thoroughly enjoyed talking and e-mailing with two more of our current Art21 Educators, Jethro Gillespie and Jack Watson. Jethro teaches Studio Art, 3D Design, Ceramics and more at Maple Mountain High School in Utah while Jack teaches 2D Art and Art History at Chapel High School in North Carolina.

Similar to Julia Coppersmith and Maureen Hergott, whom I interviewed a few weeks back, Jethro and Jack have an infectious passion for the the things they teach and accomplish with students. Both look for ways to better engage their classes on a consistent basis and avoid “window dressing” projects that may look pretty but aren’t necessarily about very much…

Since participating in the summer institute, could you describe a significant change, improvement or extension of your teaching practice? Has the experience also in some way affected your own art making?

Jack Watson: There are lots of little ways that the Art21 experience works its way into my classroom – visual brainstorming with post-its, discussion prompts, the “parking lot” – but I think the most significant change to my pedagogy is reframing my curriculum within central questions, as opposed to objectives.  Like most teachers, I was trained to construct lessons rooted in standards with clearly defined objectives.  This is useful if you want your students to produce the same result, but frustrating and limited for working with open-ended ideas and contemporary art practices.  A framework of central questions opens the space to dialogue, ideas and possibilities.

As for my own practice, I’ve learned to embrace chance, and to focus more on the process than the product.  I think in particular of our visit to Oliver Herring’s studio in Brooklyn.  His work is so process-oriented, and he made such a strong impression on all of us that week.  I was most surprised that his studio was devoid of any of the trappings of a traditional artist’s studio: no easels, paints, etc.  Aside from some photos and a pile of TASK artifacts, I remember it being an open space full of possibilities- much like the classrooms we’re trying to create.  He might resist this metaphor, but it left an impression on me!

Jethro Gillespie: The most visible change in my own teaching since the summer institute is the inclusion of TASK parties. I’ve organized various TASK events with my own students at school and at 3 different conferences for fellow art educators since the summer institute. And to echo what Jack said, meeting Oliver Herring was for me probably the most memorable and inspiring part of that experience.

For me, TASK is so simple and so brilliant- I think the underlying, formative ideas behind TASK have to do with the relationship of the participants that engage with it, and also focusing more on the process than the product. As a teacher, having a TASK party with my students (right at the beginning of the school year) demonstrated and nurtured a genuine trust between me and my students, especially when it came to issues of power and control in the classroom.

In my first few years of teaching I tried to “manage” my class with some admittedly top-down, almost militant strategies in order to try and ‘control’ different situations. This ultimately left most kids feeling dis-empowered and often led to power struggles that I didn’t want to deal with. I’ve since tried to examine and focus my teaching practice on building a healthy and generative class environment in order to help students feel more empowered- especially when it comes to creating meaningful student art projects. Being involved with TASK has really helped me to re-examine my own teaching practice concerning these issues of relinquishing control in order to form relationships of trust with my students. And as an art teacher, TASK has also helped me shift my focus away from simply getting students to produce things, and towards getting students more involved with the process of creating.

Continue reading »

Weekly Roundup

January 30th, 2012
Kiki Smith. Blue Moon III, 2011. Cast 1 of 3. © Kiki Smith/ Courtesy The Pace Gallery Photo courtesy of Melissa Christy / Walla Walla Foundry.

Kiki Smith. Blue Moon III, 2011. Cast 1 of 3. © Kiki Smith/ Courtesy The Pace Gallery Photo courtesy of Melissa Christy / Walla Walla Foundry.

In this week’s roundup Kiki Smith explores interdependence, Paul McCarthy delves into expressionism, Laurie Anderson sees the future, Cindy Sherman deals with fiction/depiction, and more.

  • Visionary Sugar: Works by Kiki Smith will be on view at the Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College (NY).  The exhibition includes new large-scale drawings, collages, tapestries, multi-colored gilded reliefs, and metal sculpture. In this work, Kiki Smith explores the interdependence of all living things, “representing and embracing the vitality of an animistic, spiritually-charged universe”. The show will run February 4 – May 6.
  • Tommy Hartung & Uri Aran reflects the two artists’ years of exchange and collaboration, revealing their parallel interests in storytelling and varied notions of desire, sentimentality, and sadness. The exhibition is accompanied by a published conversation between Hartung and Aran. This show takes place at White Flag Projects (St. Louis) and closes February 18.
  • Kerry James Marshall‘s Black Night Falling: Black holes and constellations will soon be on view at the Monique Meloche Gallery (Chicago).  This work is part of the gallery’s on the wall series, a rotation of projects viewed from the street through floor to ceiling windows. This series is intended to engage the community and challenge the white cube notion of viewing.  Marshall’s work will be on view February 4 – May 12.
  • Laurie Anderson was interviewed in the January 2012 issue of Believer magazine about her vision of art in the future.  Anderson sees a future in which “[w]e’ll be able to be in the present more effectively” and no longer need to make art or have museums, say five thousand years from now. Anderson raises interesting questions for artists: Will art still be made in the future? If so, what will it look like?
  • John Baldessari: Class Assignments, (Optional) features student works that are responses to a series of notes/instructions provided by John Baldessari, who first used them in 1970, when he was a professor at California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts).  The project and exhibition reflect Baldessari’s ongoing interest in pedagogical and conceptual approaches to art making.  This show is at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts and closes March 31.
  • Cindy Sherman‘s work is on view in Blind Cut at the Marlborough Chelsea (NYC).  This group exhibition spans several generations and addresses questions regarding identity, authorship, originality and reality.  The work includes diverse notions of fiction and depiction and will close on February 18.
  • Yinka Shonibare MBE will be exhibiting at the James Cohan Gallery (NYC) with a multi-part exhibition of new sculptures, photographs and the premiere of a new film.  Shonibare’s Addio del Passato explores the concept of destiny as it relates to themes of desire, yearning, love, power and sexual repression.  This exhibition will run February 16 – March 24.
  • Vija Celmins, upcoming Season 6 artist Ai Weiwei, and 53 other artists have work in Lifelike, an international group exhibition at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) that features artists “variously using scale, unusual materials, and sly contextual devices to reveal the manner in which their subjects’ “authenticity” is manufactured.”  The show will run from February 25 – May 27.
  • Mark your calendars for the Barry McGee retrospective exhibition at the University of California’s Berkley Art Museum.  This show will celebrate over 20 years of work from McGee.  Sponsor the Andy Warhol Foundation donated $100,000 to the event, which is a testament to McGee’s work. This exhibition will run August 23 – December 9.

Weekly Roundup

December 19th, 2011
Barry McGee. Mural at Fifty Years of Bay Area Art.  Image courtesy of SFMoMA and the artist.

Barry McGee. Mural installation at "Fifty Years of Bay Area Art," 2011. Image courtesy SFMoMA and the artist.

In this week’s roundup Barry McGee, Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari and Bruce Nauman make an impact, Laylah Ali draws inspiration from her notes, and more.

  • For the Fifty Years of Bay Area Art retrospective, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) is displaying fantastic work by past SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art) award winner Barry McGee (among several others), an artist who in recent years has had dramatic impact on contemporary art. A McGee video and mural is on display until April 03, 2012.
  • Laylah Ali: Note Drawings showcases 39 works of art by Laylah Ali now on view at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI.  The artist drew inspiration from and linked drawing, language and writing found in snippets of overheard conversations, media sound bites, and her own thoughts—all of which she collected on scraps of paper.  She then drew loosely-related or contrasting figures over the text, sometimes incorporating the written words in the drawing and other times obscuring them.  The exhibition closes April 1, 2012.
  • The Wedding (The Walker Evans Polaroid Project) With Roni Horn pairs 83 of Evans’s Polaroids of American vernacular architecture—funerary monuments, faded Victorian gingerbread cottages—with photographs from “Bird,” a body of work made by Roni Horn between 1998 and 2007.  This show is at Andrea Rosen Gallery (NYC) and is on view through January 14, 2012.
  • Rashid Johnson has been nominated for the Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss Prize which is given to an artist whose work represents a significant development in contemporary art. The award sets no restrictions in terms of age, gender, nationality, or medium, and the nominations may include emerging artists as well as more established individuals whose public recognition may be long overdue. The 2012 prize carries an award of $100,000.
  • Watch as artist Richard Serra and Gary Garrels, SFMOMA’s Elise S. Haas Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture, go behind-the-scenes of Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective, on view at SFMOMA from October 17, 2011, to January 16, 2012.

 You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Central Utah Art Center posted a A Mid-Opening Performance by Mariah Robertson, a video about Robertson playing with projections by parading a tabletop through the gallery space: