Ellen Gallagher. “Deluxe 2004–5 (detail, Wiglette).” Courtesy Tate Modern. © Ellen Gallagher.

In this week’s roundup Ellen Gallagher plays on black vernacular, John Baldessari considers crowds, William Wegmen displays vintage prints, Ai Weiwei addresses his detention, and more.

• Ellen Gallagher‘s first major solo exhibition in the UK is on view at Tate Modern (London). Ellen Gallagher: AxME explores recurring themes in the artist’s work. The title of the show is, according to an article in The Guardian, “a play on the fictional Acme corporation that supplied Wile E Coyote with mail-order gadgets in the cartoon Roadrunner, as well as a reference to the African-American vernacular for ‘Ask me.’” Public programs scheduled in conjunction with the exhibition include “Afrofuturism’s Others” on June 15. AxME is on view through September 1.

• John Baldessari has collaborated with Mixografia on a show at ForYourArt (Los Angeles, CA). Works on view depict individuals gathered together in formation or haphazardly while captivated by the unknown. Soldiers, onlookers, harem girls, and a wide assortment of people become participants in an event that was undoubtedly defined before the artist altered the image. John Baldessari: Crowds runs through June 16.

• Ann Hamilton is half of a two-artist exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art (Lawrence, KS). Hamilton and Cynthia Schira were commissioned by the museum to create the room-sized works of art in An Errant Line: Ann Hamilton / Cynthia Schira. Using digital technologies to explore the essential nature of cloth and the ways museums organize and maintain material legacies, the artists considered the role of the hand and thread, and the meanings of gesture and notations. The show closes August 11. 
  

• William Wegman has an exhibition at Marc Selwyn Fine Art (Los Angeles, CA). William Wegman: He Took Two Pictures. One Came Out presents the artist’s text-based black-and-white photographs from the 1970s. The show features vintage prints, as well as prints made from recently discovered vintage negatives. The exhibition is on view through July 6.

• The Artist’s Voice: Fred Wilson in Conversation with Lauren Haynes will take place at The Studio Museum in Harlem on May 30 at 7pm. The program will begin as a discussion about Fred Wilson‘s installation Local Color—originally created in 1993 for The Studio Museum exhibition Artists Respond: The “New World” Question—and then make connections between this installation and Wilson’s project Black Now. Seating is limited and RSVP is essential.

Continue reading »

Do Ho Suh. “Karma,” 2012. Courtesy Sydney and Walda Bestoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans Museum of Art.

In this week’s roundup, a new Do-Ho Suh sculpture rises in New Orleans, Ursula von Rydingsvard talks about woodwork, Ai Weiwei pays homage to Pablo Neruda, William Wegman creates an animated GIF, and much more.

• Do-Ho Suh’s Karma, a twenty-three-foot-tall monumental stainless steel sculpture, recently made a 1,300 mile trip from the Polich Tallix fine art foundry in New York to the New Orleans Museum of Art in Louisiana. The piece consists of 98 cast and metal sintered figures, each figure descending in size from the bottom to the top. Now part of the museum’s permanent collection, Karma is installed in their Sydney and Walda Bestoff Sculpture Garden.

• Beryl Korot: Text and Commentary is on view at the Whitworth Art Gallery (Manchester, UK). The exhibition features Beryl Korot‘s groundbreaking work Text and Commentary (1976-7) comprised of weavings, videos, and paper-based scores. When first shown in 1977, Text and Commentary “moved the video medium beyond the television’s frame and into art installation.” Closes June 9.

• Ursula von Rydingsvard‘s Woodcuts is being presented in conjunction with Against the Grain: Wood in Contemporary Art, Craft and Design at the Museum of Arts and Design (NYC). The show opens tomorrow and closes September 15. A video featuring von Rydingsvard follows.

• Ai Weiwei unveiled a 900-square-meter mural dedicated to poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda. Titled A Pablo (To Pablo), it runs along a wall of Parque Cultural Ex-Cárcel in Valparaíso, a prison turned park located in the Chilean port where Neruda lived. Read more about the painting over at Art Daily.

• John Baldessari, Rashid Johnson, and Mike Kelley were recently featured in the Wall Street Journal. Baldessari was one of six ”luminaries” asked to weigh in on the topic of color for the monthly feature The Columnists. Johnson was interviewed for the “The Art of Inspiration,” an article about his upcoming curatorial project Hard-Edge Paintings 1963-1966. And Kelley is the focus of “The Escape Artist,” an account of his ”extraordinary life” and “troubled last days.”

• Louise Bourgeois‘s Crouching Spider sculpture is on yearlong loan from the artist’s estate to Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH). Part of the campus-wide initiative Year of the Arts, the piece is installed at Maffei Arts Plaza, in front of the new Black Family Visual Arts Center.

• Barry McGee‘s first mid-career survey opens at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA) on April 6. Simply titled Barry McGee, the show will feature over 30 works, including rarely seen early works on paper; reassembled works from key installations; a tower of video pieces; a massive three-dimensional cluster of drawings; paintings and photographs. Closes September 2.

• Charles Atlas has been specially commissioned by Frieze New York for this year’s program of sound works. Atlas and the collective New Humans will extend a previous collaboration into “a new aural experience” of “electronically fractured vocals…the soundtrack and backdrop for urban island life.” Frieze New York 2013 takes place May 10-13 on Randall’s Island (NYC).

• William Wegman has created his first ever animated GIF. Go to the artist’s blog to watch his sleeping puppy spin hypnotically in a bowl.

Kara Walker. “The Theater” from “Rise Up Ye Mighty Race,” 2012. Courtesy the artist and the Art Institute of Chicago.

In this week’s roundup, Kara Walker exhibits in Chicago, Ann Hamilton shows new prints inspired by textile techniques, Fred Wilson receives the New York City Mayor’s Award for Arts and Culture, and more:

• Kara Walker has an exhibit on view at the Art Institute of Chicago. Titled Rise Up Ye Mighty Race, it includes five large framed graphite drawings and 40 small framed mixed media drawings along with cut paper silhouettes. The title of the show refers to comments made by Barack Obama in his 1995 book, Dreams from My Father, about the challenges of community organizing in Chicago. The exhibition closes August 11.

• Ann Hamilton and artist Cynthia Schira have realized a collaborative exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art (Lawrence, KS). An Errant Line: Ann Hamilton / Cynthia Schira—which consists of room-sized, site-specific installations—makes use of digital technologies as a means of exploring the fundamental nature of cloth, and the ways museums organize and maintain material legacies. Hamilton and Schira consider the role of the hand and human practices that reveal and conceal. Their installations are on view through August 11.

• John Baldessari has work on view at Galerie Michael Janssen (Singapore). Keep It Simple. Keep It Fresh. comprises a series of collaborative works by Meg Cranston and John Baldessari where Baldessari supplied the text and Cranston supplied the color. The title of their exhibition comes from Baldessari’s 1968 text Advice to Young Artists in which he states: “Whatever you decide to do, remember to keep it simple, keep it fresh, and have some idea of what you are going to do.” In a recent joint interview, published in Trebuchet magazine, the artists provide insight into color theory, the secret of emerald green, and more. Their exhibition closes March 13.

• Human Wave: The Videotapes Of Raymond Pettibon marks the first time that Raymond Pettibon‘s feature-length videos have been shown together in the UK. Crudely shot using home video equipment, each video profiles a different radical subject drawn from the last twenty years of West Coast subculture. This work is on view at Space Studios (London) until March 17.

• Trenton Doyle Hancock will show new work later this month at the Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (London). Commissioned for their space “The Box,” this unique architectural setting consists of a floating white cube set inside a black vertical opening. For this, the gallery facilitates new projects with important emerging and established artists. Hancock’s work will be presented March 16–April 27.

• Allan McCollum will present work at the MFC-Michèle Didier (Brussels, Belgium). The Book of Shapes will explore the artist’s use of shapes and forms. According to the press release, this show comes directly from The Shapes Project (2005) that was initiated by McCollum and “provides a system for producing shapes, each different, and each destined to be assigned to a single individual.” The exhibition is on view March 22–May 18.

• Fred Wilson has received the Mayor’s Award for Arts and Culture for his outstanding contribution to New York City’s cultural life. The Mayor’s Awards for Arts and Culture were created in 1976, when the Department of Cultural Affairs was founded, and given annually until 1994. Mayor Bloomberg revived the awards in 2004 to acknowledge the role the arts play in creating a vibrant and economically healthy city.

• Allora & Calzadilla are working with the Sydney Dance Company and Kaldor Public Art Projects (Australia) to create new and unique choreography for their artwork Revolving Door. This is part of Kaldor’s Public Art Project #27, entitled 13 Rooms, which “brings together 13 famous artists and more than 100 performers to present an innovative group exhibition of ‘living sculpture’ within 13 purpose-built rooms.” Revolving Door will be performed by a rotating cast of 40 local dancers over the 11 days of the exhibition. Performances take place April 11–21, 11am–7pm daily. Entrance is free to the public.

• Paul McCarthy will mount his largest United States installation to date at the Park Avenue Armory later this year. WS is a raw re-imagining of the Snow White story set in a huge artificial forest; it will appear to float like a sound stage in the armory’s cavernous drill hall.

Art21 season 6 educator guide

During a recent conversation I was asked, “Where do you come up with the questions featured in the Art21 educator guides?” I didn’t know what to say. The “Before Viewing” questions, which promote active viewing of Art21 films, are a combination of long conversations and focused emphasis on particular thematic strands. Collectively, we try to come up with questions that will not only promote discussion about contemporary art in the classroom but also stimulate thinking about the big questions featured in the segments. For example, if you simply look through the most recent seasons, you’ll come across questions such as:

• What are the qualities or characteristics that define something as art, versus something that is not art? How and why are these definitions established? (John Baldessari, season 5).
• How are rituals created and how do they change over time? (Pierre Huyghe, season 4).
• What are the differences and similarities between making a portrait and a landscape? (Catherine Opie, season 6).
• How can the process of drawing and painting, like sculpture, be both additive and subtractive? (Julie Mehretu, season 5).
• What is the role of the viewer of an artwork, or the reader of literature? How are these roles similar and/or different? (Tabaimo, season 6).

If you are seeking a mountain of good questions and ideas to give you a boost in the classroom, Art21 educator guides are a great place to start, and they are available as FREE downloads here. You are also sure to enjoy the way Before, During and After viewing questions make the process of sharing Art21 films more productive. Afterward, “Create” suggestions allow for students to make material sense of their learning, as well as articulate how viewing Art21 films changes their approach to making art.

There are lots of phenomenal reasons for working with Art21 teaching materials. Art21 educator guides can make teaching with contemporary art more enjoyable for teachers and students alike.

John Baldessari. “Learn to Dream,” 2013. Courtesy of Arts Matter and the Los Angeles Fund for Public Education. Photo by Victor Treato.

In this week’s roundup, John Baldessari’s artwork covers L.A. buses; Kara Walker, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Carrie Mae Weems, and Mark Bradford say it loud in West Palm Beach, and lots more.

• John Baldessari‘s artwork now wraps around twelve metro buses in Los Angeles that have been redesigned to look like traditional yellow school buses. One side bears Baldessari’s saying “Learn to dream.” The other side bear the phrase in Spanish, “Aprende a soñar.” This public installation is part of the Arts Matter campaign for the nonprofit Los Angeles Fund for Public Education.

• Nancy Spero‘s work is on view at Galerie Lelong (NYC). From Victimage to Liberation: Works from the 1980s & 1990s is the first solo presentation of Spero’s work in New York since her death in 2009. It features female figures that run, dance, crawl, tumble, and strut across the gallery space. The exhibition runs through February 16.

• Kiki Smith will be the featured speaker at the annual Nasher Lecture Series presented by the University of North Texas College of Visual Arts and Design. The lecture will take place January 29 at 7:00 pm. A limited number of tickets are available.

• Kiki Smith and Dr. Alexander Nagel of the Institute of Fine Arts will engage in conversation about the medieval manuscripts in Crossing Borders: Manuscripts from the Bodleian Libraries, on view at The Jewish Museum (NYC). Smith and Nagel will use their individual artistic and research practices to frame the discussion. The event will take place January 17 at 6:30 pm. Tickets to the event are free with museum admission.

• Kara Walker, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Carrie Mae Weems, and Mark Bradford have work in a group exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, FL). Say it Loud!: Art by African and African-American Artists in the Collection features paintings, sculpture, photographs and works on paper by artists who either reside in Africa or are of African descent. All works are held in the museum’s collection, and span the 20th and 21st centuries. The show runs through March 3.

• Roni Horn‘s work is on view in Gespräche über persönliche Themen: Miroslaw Balka and Roni Horn (“Conversations About Private Themes”) at Galleria Raffaella Cortese (Milan, Italy). The double solo show features sculptures and portraits by the two women. Set up in the same room, they collide in an uncomfortable tête-à-tête. The show closes February 9.

• Louise Bourgeois, Mike Kelley, Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, and Paul McCarthy (among other artists) have work on view at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh, Scotland). From Death to Death and Other Small Tales: Masterpieces from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the D. Daskalopoulos Collection includes many objects that have never before been seen in Scotland. The show explores the diverse ways in which 20th and 21st-century artists have approached the subject of the body. The exhibition runs through September 8.

• The Louise Bourgeois Church was commissioned in 1994 but remains a little-known pilgrimage site for lovers of the late French-American artist. Located at Couvent d’Ô (Bonnieux, France), the church houses a series of sculptures that Louise Bourgeois created specifically for that space.

• Hiroshi Sugimoto has designed Christie’s new Tokyo office. The space was unveiled in December 2012 with an exhibition of selected works by Japanese contemporary artists, as well as ancient and contemporary pieces from Sugimoto’s personal collection. In his spatial concept, Sugimoto has maintained the architectural details of the original structure and incorporated new wood and metal elements into the design.

• David Altmejd is one of the many artists included in the National Gallery of Canada’s Builders: Canadian Biennial 2012. Presented here are more than 100 recent and significant acquisitions by emerging and established artists who have been instrumental in shaping perspectives in Canadian art today. Builders is on view through February 18.

• Trenton Doyle Hancock‘s work will soon be on view at the Columbus College of Art and Design in the Canzani Center Gallery (Columbus, OH). The exhibition will run from February 4 – March 14.

Ai Weiwei. “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads,” 2012. Photo courtesy the artist. © 2012 Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

In this week’s roundup Ai Weiwei’s Chinese zodiac heads, Erin Shirreff’s light works, Laurie Anderson’s book collection and more.

• Ai Weiwei‘s first U.S. retrospective is on view at the Hirschhorn Museum (D.C.). Ai Weiwei: According to What? occupies the museum’s entire second level and part of the third with installations, sculpture, photography and video and audio works. A catalog featuring his most significant works since 2000 can be downloaded here. The show closes February 24, 2013.

• Ai Weiwei‘s outdoor sculpture Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads is on view at the Hirschhorn. The installation, which features twelve bronze animal heads representing the signs of the Chinese zodiac, each of which stand approximately ten feet high, will be displayed around the perimeter of the fountain in the Museum’s central plaza. This work is on view through February 24, 2013.

• Erin Shirreff: Available Light is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Canada, on view at Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston). The show is an investigation of how light and form unites Erin Shirreff‘s approach to different media. The show is on view until January 27, 2013.

• To Beauty: A Tribute to Mike Kelley, an exhibition featuring the late Mike Kelley‘s work, is on view at the Frost Art Museum (Miami). The pieces are mostly from a local collection and gives visitors a chance to study some of the more subtle art in the artist’s spectrum. The exhibition runs through February 24, 2013.

• Trenton Doyle Hancock was interviewed by ARTINFO about his “radical autobiography” and …And Then It All Came Back To Me on view at the James Cohan Gallery (NYC). The show closes December 22.

• Collected Stories: Books by Laurie Anderson, now on view at the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), samples Laurie Anderson‘s collection of publications, ranging from a 1971 wordless picture book about a mysterious package to a more recent illustrated dream journal. This exhibition closes February 3, 2013.

• Kimsooja and John Baldessari have works on view in Now Here is also Nowhere, Part I at the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle). The show is billed as a survey of how “artists continually question and destabilize the nature of the art object.” The exhibition closes January 6, 2013.

• Alfredo Jaar talked to ARTINFO UK about site-specificity, thinking versus making, and his plans for his first stay in Algiers as part of the artist residency in Algiers (aria) pilot residency program.

• Rashid Johnson was interviewed by the BBC’s Alastair Sooke as the artist put the finishing touches on his recent show at the South London Gallery. The video can be viewed here.

• Cai Guo-Qiang staged an explosion event in celebration of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery’s 25th anniversary.

William Kentridge in collaboration with Philip Miller and Catherine Meyburgh. “I am not me, the horse is not mine,” 2008. © Courtesy the artist.

In this week’s roundup William Kentridge’s collaborative video, John Baldessari’s double life of objects, Allan McCollum’s perfect couples and more.

• Louise Bourgeois, Topiary: The Art of Improving Nature is on view at the Fayetteville University of Arkansas Fine Arts Center. The show celebrates Louise Bourgeois’ Topiary, a portfolio comprised of nine large-scale copper plate etchings. The Fine Arts Gallery is pleased to display this portfolio in its entirety. The exhibition runs through December 13.

• William Kentridge: I am not me, the horse is not mine is on view at the Tate Modern (London). William Kentridge‘s eight-channel video installation is projected simultaneously across the gallery walls, each film is played on a continuous loop to create an immersive audio-visual environment, which resists the establishment of a single narrative. This work is on view until January 20, 2013.

• John Baldessari has work on view at the Marian Goodman Gallery (NYC). Double Play presents all new work by Baldessari, including a series of paintings on canvas that aim “to make the unimportant important.” Song titles from the likes of Tom Waits mingle with the visual fragments Baldessari pulls from sources ranging from the 18th to the 20th century, prompting exploration of the objects’ double life. This show closes November 21.

• Richard Serra is on view at the Gagosian Gallery (NYC). In addition to Richard Serra‘s new show, a drawing catalogue is available here. The exhibition closes December 22.

• Allan McCollum‘s The Shapes Project: Perfect Couples is on view at the Barbara Krakow Gallery (Boston). In this show McCollum has expanded the scale of his interest in the complexity of social relationships to objects by initiating an excursion into picturing tens of billions of unique shapes, and imagining the task of creating singular unique objects that could be distributed to each person on the planet. This show in on view through November 24.

• Barry McGee talks about his creative process via MOCA TV. The online channel enlisted filmmaker Alex Kopps to document McGee’s installation of his mid-career retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The show closes December 9.

Wayne Thiebaud. “Park Place,” 1995. Color hard-ground etching with drypoint, spit-bite aquatint, and aquatint. Plate: 29 ¼ x 20 ½ in., sheet: 39 ½ x 29 ¾ in. Publisher and printer: Crown Point Press, edition of 50. Image courtesy Crown Point Press, San Francisco.

In 1959, young Kathan Brown stepped off of a freighter in San Francisco with an antique intaglio press and expert printing skills to match.  Freshly trained in the French hand-wiping technique of intaglio printing (which, she frequently notes, differs in its precision from the expressive approach then dominating American color etching) at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, Brown possessed tireless dedication to her chosen medium.  She remains today a self-proclaimed “proselytizer for etching” (e-mail interview) and this passion has guided both her professional activities as well as that of her press.  It also transformed the history of intaglio printmaking.

The art scene in the Bay Area was small but robust when she opened Crown Point for business in a Richmond storefront in 1962.  In addition to a handful of professional museums and galleries, there were a number of important artists on faculty at the newly renamed San Francisco Art Institute (formerly the California School of Fine Arts); among the most prominent of these was Richard Diebenkorn.  As luck would have it, he was looking for a technique that could provide a fresh perspective to his work and decided to further explore drypoint, a medium in which he had previously dabbled.  He had heard about Crown Point’s weekly life drawing sessions, where participants drew directly on a metal plate with a needle, and called Brown to join the group.  The printing did not interest him (it was a task he happily assigned to Brown), but the challenge of working on the reflective and unwieldy surface did.  After awhile, Brown offered some prepared plates for his use in the studio.  The result was the press’s first publication, 41 Etchings Drypoints, issued in 1965 in an edition of 25, which began a long relationship between printer and painter that endured nearly three decades until Diebenkorn’s death, producing some of the most astounding color aquatints of our time, including Large Bright Blue, 1980, Green, 1986, and High Green, versions I and II, 1992.

Continue reading »

Hans-Peter Feldman, “Lips”. Image: qompendium.com

I have always been interested in the way certain artists, more so than others, have the ability to take us by the hand (or the eye) and walk us through works of art very deliberately. Because the “subject” is often about the whole work and not a single focal point, these artists persuade us to compare and contrast, and see the small differences as well as the commonalities.

While I was waiting out Hurricane Sandy like so many others, I did a lot of reading. In the process I had the opportunity to re-read last summer’s issue of Aperture magazine and came across a wonderful article featuring the work of Hans-Peter Feldmann, whom I was actually surprised to see since his work always struck me as that of a collage artist vs. a photographer (Feldmann prefers to be known as a “merchant” and not an artist at all). His collections of arranged photos had me visually walking through the images in a much similar way to how I experience John Baldessari’s work, as well as other artists such as Mark Dion and Joseph Cornell. Seeing the relationships and subtle differences between the photographs one begins to realize what Baldessari talks about when he refers to experiencing “the space between things”. Continue reading »

Judy Pfaff. “Humming in 5 Parts,” 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist and Ameringer McEnery Yohe.

In this week’s roundup Eleanor Antin reads from her memoir, Judy Pfaff presents her work, Cai Guo-Qiang to appear at the NY Public Library, Rashid Johnson explores new typologies and more.

• Eleanor Antin will be “taking over” Art21′s Twitter account on Friday, October 26 at 2:00 p.m. EST. Through posts of 140 characters or less, the artist will ”read” stanzas of a story from her memoir, Conversations with Stalin, before embarking on four New York-based performances (see below). The artist encourages audience participation throughout, and will respond to questions submitted by audience members following the live Twitter “reading.” The event will take place from 2:00–3:00 p.m. EST on Twitter. Follow along with@Art21 and the hashtag #AntinCWS, ask questions, and see what else Eleanor Antin has to say.

• Eleanor Antin will also present a four-part series of readings from Conversations with Stalin, about growing up in Cold War–era New York in a dysfunctional family of first-generation Jewish immigrants. Readings will take place at these locations: October 28, 2:30pm, The Jewish Museum; October 30, 7pm, Columbia University School of the Arts; November 1, 7pm, Brooklyn Museum; and November 2, 6:30pm, Whitney Museum of American Art.

• Judy Pfaff is showing her work at Ameringer McEnery Yohe (NYC). This exhibition highlights the artist’s use of steel, glass, florescent lights, found objects, root systems of trees, paper and other materials. Her work is “ordered in the way that nature is ordered, without boundaries.” This show is on view through November 10.

• Cai Guo-Qiang will participate in a discussion and book signing for Cai Guo-Qiang: Ladder to the Sky at the New York Public Library. The book features a rich sampling of Cai’s diverse oeuvre, from never-before-published early works to new works commissioned for a major exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art. This event will take place October 30, 6pm–8pm. This event is free and open to the public.

• Rashid Johnson presents new work at the David Kordansky Gallery (Los Angeles). Coup d’état, Johnson’s second solo exhibition at the gallery, features new works in a variety of materials, in which wood, mirrored tile and wax are used as grounds for a series of mark-making strategies; as well as a series of floor-based works that use rugs as supports for further gestures. Among these are several works that represent new typologies for the artist. The show closes November 10.

Continue reading »