Julie Mehretu: Studio Assistants

DOWNLOAD VIA ITUNES | SUBSCRIBE VIA RSS

Episode #097: Filmed in her Berlin studio, a group of Julie Mehretu’s assistants — Sarah Rentz, Damien Young, Erika Fortner and Harmony Murphy — discuss how they each bring different areas of expertise to the process of making paintings, from fine art backgrounds in printmaking and illustration to furniture polishing techniques and administrative skills.

Julie Mehretu’s paintings and drawings refer to elements of mapping and architecture, achieving a calligraphic complexity that resembles turbulent atmospheres and dense social networks. Architectural renderings and aerial views of urban grids enter the work as fragments, losing their real-world specificity and challenging narrow geographic and cultural readings. The paintings’ wax-like surfaces—built up over weeks and months in thin translucent layers—have a luminous warmth and spatial depth, with formal qualities of light and space made all the more complex by Mehretu’s delicate depictions of fire, explosions, and perspectives in both two and three dimensions. Her works engage the history of nonobjective art—from Constructivism to Futurism—posing contemporary questions about the relationship between utopian impulses and abstraction.

An exhibition of recent works will be on view as part of the exhibition Julie Mehretu: Grey Area at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (May 14 – October 6, 2010). The 15th in a series of commissions by Deutsche Bank and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the works were inspired by Mehretu’s time spent in Berlin. As critic Brian Dillon writes in the accompanying catalog essay: “If there is an archaeology of the recent past in Mehretu’s work, it is the archaeology of an atmosphere charged with the dust of demolition and rebuilding. There is a new grayness and indeterminacy in these paintings that it would be trite to conclude is merely melancholy or phantomic: Mehretu’s grey is rather the color of possibility, of the inchoate and unrealized. In this sense, the ruin points no longer towards the recent past but towards a potential future; the ruin passes away and comes into being at the same time.”

Julie Mehretu is featured in the Season 5 (2005) episode Systems of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch the full episode online via iTunes (opens application).

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Ian Serfontein. Sound: Paul Stadden. Editor: Lizzie Donahue, Paulo Padilha & Joaquin Perez. Artwork Courtesy: Julie Mehretu. Special Thanks: Erika Fortner, Harmony Murphy, Sarah Rentz & Damien Young.

Julie Mehretu | Workday

DOWNLOAD VIA ITUNES | SUBSCRIBE VIA RSS

Filmed in her Berlin studio, Julie Mehretu discusses the ups and downs of her daily studio practice. Mehretu is shown working on the painting Middle Grey (2007-2009), one work in a suite of seven paintings commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim as part of the exhibition Julie Mehretu: Grey Area, which travels to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York later this year (May 14 – October 6, 2010).

Mehretu’s paintings and drawings refer to elements of mapping and architecture, achieving a calligraphic complexity that resembles turbulent atmospheres and dense social networks. Architectural renderings and aerial views of urban grids enter the work as fragments, losing their real-world specificity and challenging narrow geographic and cultural readings. The paintings’ wax-like surfaces—built up over weeks and months in thin translucent layers—have a luminous warmth and spatial depth, with formal qualities of light and space made all the more complex by Mehretu’s delicate depictions of fire, explosions, and perspectives in both two and three dimensions. Her works engage the history of nonobjective art—from Constructivism to Futurism—posing contemporary questions about the relationship between utopian impulses and abstraction.

Julie Mehretu is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Systems of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Ian Serfontein. Sound: Paul Stadden. Editor: Lizzie Donahue & Paulo Padilha. Artwork Courtesy: Julie Mehretu.

Julie Mehretu & the Problem of Shooting Big

In our new column, On Location, Art21 Director of Production Nick Ravich breaks his silence and gives you the scoop on Art21’s production comings and goings including, among other things, straight-from-the-set reports on recent shoots and some (hopefully) enlightening discussions on those areas where television production and contemporary art collide. And if we’re lucky, Nick will expand his column to include some non-Art21 related musings, reviews, interviews, and other ephemera on the world of production and art in general. — Ed.

In a previous blog post, I had talked about a recent Art21 online video shoot with art teacher Lucia Vinograd’s rather amazing students at Besant Hill School in Ojai, California (Lucia is part of our Art21 Educators professional development initiative.)  At the time, I was only able to post a couple of screen grabs from the field footage, but now I’d love to give you an actual video sample. So below is a short but inspiring scene with Besant Hill School student Julie Yu painting with a very unconventional brush, assisted by fellow student Griffin Davis.

I’m also posting this short, unedited clip as a very informal way of inaugurating a new strand of Art21-produced video releases of (appropriately enough) more informal, off the cuff, backstage-revealing moments—stuff that’s a little less polished and structured than our “Exclusive” videos.  After two plus years of diligently producing online-intended video content, the staff here was looking to create a regular home for these moments that, for whatever reason, sometimes don’t make the final cut.  Additionally, the hope is that these clips point, in some way, to the behind-the-scenes production process, while also previewing future video “Exclusive” releases.

Julie Mehretu. Art21 production still, 2009.

And in keeping with today’s theme of amuse bouche video, I’m posting an uncut clip from an ambitious web-only video shoot that I know I definitely haven’t mentioned. We had the very good fortune to shoot the installation and final painting of Julie Mehretu’s monumental ten panel work at the new Goldman Sachs building in lower Manhattan (the initial creation of this painting in Berlin was an extensive part of our original broadcast segment on Julie.)  Last fall, over the course of a month, Julie and a team of studio assistants and a professional installation crew uncrated, unrolled, stretched, hung, and further painted the work, on site, in the Goldman Sachs lobby. And we were able to shoot some key moments along the way. So below is a video of the painting fully hung, but not yet finished, from the unique bird’s eye view of a scissor lift.

Now, part of the reason I’m posting this is because, well, it’s just plain cool and I wanted to make sure our viewers saw it, as well give them a quick look at the kind of stuff they’ll be seeing in our soon-to-be-released “Exclusive” segments drawing on this footage. But the other reason is a little less self-promotional. This particular shot – a vertiginous, downward angled tracking shot on a 20-foot plus tall painting that elongates the top “foreground” painting elements but compresses the bottom “background” painting elements – points to a much bigger issue: the difficulty of fairly, accurately, faithfully shooting art on video. Part of Art21’s mission is not to just represent contemporary artists “in their own words” (i.e. in as unmediated way as possible) but to represent their artwork in as a similarly undistorted way as possible. For modestly scaled, easel-size works, this is a relatively easy thing to accomplish. But for works the size of Julie’s – in this case an 80 x 23 foot painting installed in a narrow corridor — it’s basically impossible. There’s literally no position we could put the camera in that would give us a wide shot of the full painting, and certainly not one that wouldn’t create the kind of classic edge distortion – key stoning effects where right angles seem to bend at the tape — that typically happens when shooting wide angle. Additionally, the graphic complexity and density of Julie’s imagery – the tremendous variety of line, shape, and color – wreak havoc with interlaced video’s sometimes crude ability to give a stable, color-uniform image.

So what to do?

Continue reading »

Weekly Roundup

Ellen Gallagher, "bling bling", 2001. Rubber, paper and enamel on linen, 96" x 120." The Eli Broad Family Foundation, Santa Monica, CA. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York. Photo: Tom Powel.

This week Art21 artists illustrate NASA’s history, depict child’s play, map the Black Atlantic, render galaxies in glass, leave their mark on the last decade, and reflect on our future:

• Opening January 29 at Tate Liverpool, Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic is the first major exhibition in the UK to trace the impact of Black Atlantic culture on Modernism. Works by Ellen Gallagher (Season 3), Kara Walker (Season 2), Chris Ofili, Walker Evans, Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, and others show visual and cultural hybridity in modern and contemporary art that has “arisen from journeys made by people of Black African descent.” Inspired by Paul Gilroy’s landmark book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), the seven chapters of the exhibition run from early avant-garde movements such as the Harlem Renaissance to current debates around Post-Black art. Afro Modern will close on April 25.

• Through March 7, work by William Wegman (Season 1) is on view at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in the exhibition NASA | ART: 50 Years of Exploration. Organized by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (in cooperation with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the exhibition explores NASA’s history and pioneering legacy and the impact their achievements have had on American artists. NASA | ART includes more than 70 paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures and other forms. “Scientists, astronauts, and artists have one important quality in common,” said Smithsonian co-curator Bert Ulrich. “All share the inclination to explore, whether by means of scientific investigation, a mission to the moon, or a paint brush…After all, art is often an important byproduct of any great era of history, including the space age.” 

• Dutch wax fabrics, Victorian dress, decorative arts, and child’s play merge in the Yinka Shonibare MBE (Season 5) installation Mother and Father Worked Hard So I Can Play, now on view at the Saint Louis Art Museum. Child-sized, headless figures dressed in Shonibare’s signature costumes are installed throughout the museum’s period rooms with the idea of hide-and-go-seek, or treasure hunt in mind. The artist transforms these spaces into a series of “multi-layered tableaux” that collapse time and challenge histories. The figures, who play marbles, jump rope, perform cartwheels and more, are presented as youth who have benefited from the hard work of their ancestors. However, the origins of these ancestors are rendered unclear. Mother and Father (which debuted at the Brooklyn Museum in 2009) continues through March 14.

• Design Boom has posted preliminary sketches of the new stained glass window for The Museum at Eldridge Street, designed by Kiki Smith (Season 2) and architect Deborah Gans. The window depicts “a galaxy of golden stars against an undulating blue firmament that recalls the painted murals already on the interior.”

In year-end and decade roundups:

• Jeff Koons (Season 5) is named “the comeback kid of the 2000s” in Artinfo.com’s Decade in Review.

• Gabriel Orozco (Season 2), Mark Bradford (Season 4) Cindy Sherman, Julie Mehretu and Mary Heilmann (all Season 5) are mentioned in Martha Schwendener’s Village Voice list “The Decade’s Best Art.”

• Part II: Cutting-Room Floor Show, an exhibition of works by Raymond Pettibon (Season 2) at Regen Projects in Los Angeles, made Juxtapoz Magazine’s list of the top 100 moments of 2009.

• Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle cites Ballast (2004), a sculpture by Richard Serra (Season 1) installed on the Mission Bay campus of University of California San Francisco, as a high point of the last decade.

• James S. Russell of the Wall Street Journal closed the year with “Chinese-American Past Rescued From Chop Suey Cliche,” a review of the Museum of Chinese in America in New York designed by Maya Lin (Season 2).

• Linda Yablonsky of New York Times Magazine thought 2009 a “lackluster” year for art with the exception of 10 exhibitions or events. The first on her list was Stop, Repair, Prepare by Season 4 artists Allora & Calzadilla (which Yablonsky admits to seeing six times).

• Tim Leberecht of CNET News.com chose to focus less on the past by borrowing a list of quotes about the future compiled by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. Art21’s Cao Fei, John Baldessari (both Season 5) Matthew Barney (Season 2), Nancy Spero, Allora & Calzadilla; and Pierre Huyghe (all Season 4) are included in this lineup of forward thinkers.

• And in a bit of shameless self promotion, our documentary television series Art:21-Art in the Twenty First Century made The Daily Loaf’s list of the top 10 phenomena in visual art since the year 2000!

Inhale. Exhale. Whew.

Marisa Olson, "Assisted Living," 2008. Performance still. Courtesy the Artist.

In the New York Times video Copenhagen 101, reporter Tom Zeller asks people in Times Square what they know about the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) in Copenhagen. You know how these things go—Americans are, for the most part, painfully unaware. And to tell you the truth, had Zeller approached me, I would have been as clueless as most of the folks he interviewed. Like them, I’m conscious of climate issues and try to do my part. Yet I hadn’t bothered to find out what was taking place during this critical 12-day forum with worldwide ramifications.

Upon reading more about the UNCCC, I realized not only how large and multifaceted the discourse (“climate change” and “global warming” are umbrella terms for a range of environmental and social problems), but also how scientific. To try and wrap my mind around the issues at hand, I attended two public forums: Global Warming: Artists on Climate Change at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; and the New York City Food and Climate Summit (NYCFCS). I also chatted with artist Marisa Olson who was slated to participate in New Life Copenhagen, an art festival and social experiment organized to coincide with the UNCCC; it was in our conversation that some of the dots began to connect.

Olson was invited to Copenhagen by the artist-run community Wooloo.org to engage the “social architecture” of the UNCCC, and Wooloo’s corresponding hospitality art project. Working with a team of volunteers, they prearranged free stay for more than 3,000 activists and climate campaigners in the homes of local residents. I had hoped to get a feel for what was happening in Copenhagen from Olson. However, due to unforeseen circumstances she was unable to attend. (Her friends, The Yes Men, took her place.) Still, her upcoming performance in New York City, in addition to a few earlier works, responds to the natural world far beyond the UNCCC.

In February, Olson will present Whew Age at PS122, in which she’ll play a guru-type character dressed in “somewhat weird, neon, futuristic yoga clothes.” As her self-made relaxation videos play in the background, she will lead audiences through a series of relaxation techniques and visualization exercises: “Picture yourself next to a cool melting glacier.” Inhale…exhale. Olson’s directives serve as a platform to talk about climate change — the relationship of the body to the air you breathe — as well as the role stress and anxiety, as some theorists suggest, play in our climate, and the power of positive thinking. “I don’t really think that people sitting down and meditating and saying ‘om’ for five minutes a day is going to fix things,” Olson says, “but it’s a way to have a conversation.”

Continue reading »

Weekly Roundup

Jeff Koons, "Triple Hulk Elvis I", 2007. Collection of William J. Bell. © Jeff Koons. Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (via White Hot Magazine).

In this week’s roundup of Art21 artist news you’ll read about a forty-million dollar art collection in Las Vegas, a major exhibition of work by Korean and Korean American artists, an installation made of yogurt caps, a massive concrete sculpture in Canada, and more:

• On December 17, Season 5 artist Jeff Koons will sign copies of his book Jeff Koons: Hulk Elvis at Gagosian Shop in New York City (988 Madison Ave). The 2009 publication features Koons’ painting series, Hulk Elvis, in which he creates large works of the Incredible Hulk, inflatable monkeys, geishas, birds, and the Liberty Bell; a text by Scott Rothkopf, and an interview between the artist and Hans Ulrich Obrist. The event begins at 6pm. Contact Gagosian Gallery for more information.

• Faces & Facts: Korean Contemporary Art in New York commemorates the 30-year anniversary of the Korean Cultural Service of New York (KCSNY). The exhibition of more than 60 works by 54 Korean and Korean American artists — including Art21’s Do-Ho Suh (Season 2) and Kimsooja (Season 5) — is spread across three venues: the Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery, KCSNY’s Gallery Korea and the Queens Museum of Art (QMA). Faces & Facts is on view at the first two venues through February 19, and closes February 21 at the QMA.

• Grey Area, the Deutsche Guggenheim exhibition of new paintings by Season 5 artist Julie Mehretu, has been reviewed by art critic Brian Dillon of The Guardian. Dillon writes: “It’s easy to conclude that Mehretu makes history paintings of a sort, intricate tableaux of the recent geopolitical past. But that would be to ignore her commitment to painting as such, and to miss the extraordinary graphic transformations that her source images undergo.” Read the entire article here. And to watch a video (produced by Vernissage TV) of Mehretu discussing the works in Grey Area, click here.

• CityCenter in Las Vegas, a new 67 acre luxury complex on the Vegas Strip, boasts the first major permanent collection of art in Las Vegas to be integrated into a public space, as well as one of the world’s largest corporate art collections in existence today. Works by Art21 artists Maya Lin (Season 2) and Jenny Holzer (Season 4) are included in this collection that, according to USA Today, amounts to roughly $40 million.

• Works by Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) and Richard Serra (Season 1) are on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art S.M.A.K. (located in Ghent, Belgium) in the exhibition The Artists in their Own Words. The show is entirely dedicated to Gagarin, the first international magazine of artist’s texts, and brings together the zine’s entire oeuvre with a selection of related works from in the museum’s collection. The editorial lay-out of Gagarin is based on a quote by Season 5 artist John Baldessari: “Talking about art simply is not art. Talk can be art, but then it is not talking about art.” The Artists in their Own Words continues through March 14, 2010.

• Serra’s outdoor sculpture Shift has been granted heritage status by the Township of King, located just north of Toronto, Canada. This early 1970s sculpture consists of six concrete walls, each five feet long and eight inches thick but of varying lengths. It spans two hills and encompasses more than 15 acres. Serra has said of Shift, according to Yorkregion.com: “When you walk it measures your distance in relation to the landscape so it allows you to understand the shift in elevation as you’re walking because there’s no set horizon there. The boundaries of the work became the maximum distance two people could occupy and still keep each other in view…The intent of the work is an awareness of physicality in time, space and motion.” The sculpture’s new status was declared in response to a development proposal by Hickory Hills Investments, owner of the land on which it is located, that threatened its safety. Read the full story here.

• On December 10, The New School (in collaboration with Aperture Foundation) will hold a public talk titled Confounding Expectations – Photography in Context: The Projected Photograph. Paul Pfeiffer (Season 2) and Krzysztof Wodiczko (Season 3); George Baker, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Vice-Chair of UCLA, Department of Art History; and Andrea Geyer, artist and Assistant Professor of Fine Art at Parsons will discuss projection and installation strategies used by contemporary artists to create immersive and cinema-like experiences. The program begins at 7pm and is free and open to the public.

• More Mergers & Acquisitions at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center is a continuation of the Center’s earlier exhibition, Mergers & Acquisitions (December 2008 – January 2009), which brought together works by modern masters and contemporary artists. The second installment is organized into four themes: Figure-Ground, Collaboration, Un-Natural, and Familiar Faces. Work by William Wegman (Season 1) is included in the latter, a variety of funny or disturbing head shots of, for instance, Osama Bin Laden, Farrah Fawcett, the Man in the Moon, and artist self portraits. More Mergers & Acquisitions runs December 10 through February 14, 2010.

• Building on a Cliff at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. features work by Arturo Herrera (Season 3), Matt Connors, and Merlin James. The exhibition title is taken from a painting by James and meant to reflect the works on view. “These three artists,” according to the press release, “work at the edges of abstraction and modes of representation to create bodies of work that are both familiar and unsettling at the same time.” Herrera’s steel sculptures based on ink drawings; large wall works from small found photo images; and collages will be on view. Building on a Cliff opens December 10.

• Gabriel Orozco (Season 2) and yogurt lids were the focus of a recent article in The New York Observer; read it here. Orozco’s retrospective exhibition opens at the Museum of Modern Art, New York on December 13.

Weekly Roundup

Art21 artist Barry McGee stands in front of one of his geometric creations. Courtesy Wallpaper.com.

From the west to the east coast and over to Taiwan, Art21 artists are involved in a number of new and large-scale exhibitions:

• Works by Barry McGee (Season 1) and Philip Frost are the focus of mindthegap, the inaugural exhibition of Prism, a three story gallery located on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Curated by P.M. Tenore, founder of RVCA clothing company and the associated publication ANP Quarterly, the display includes embellished baseball bat and surf board sculptures, paintings, film and interactive installations. Flip through images of the show at Wallpaper.com.

• Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities is currently on view at the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta. The all-star artist roster includes Ellen Gallagher (Season 3), Cindy Sherman (Season 5), Renée Cox, Lyle Ashton Harris, Lauren Kelley, Mequitta Ahuja, Kalup Linzy, Wangechi Mutu, Lorraine O’Grady, Gordon Parks, Lorna Simpson, Renée Stout, and Mickalene Thomas. Undercover runs through December 5; a closing reception will take place December 10. Read Rebecca Cochran’s review of the exhibition for Artforum.com.

• Days and Giorni, two sound installations by Season 1 artist Bruce Nauman, are on view at The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) through April 4, 2010. These works made their international debut in Bruce Nauman: Topological Gardens, the exhibition organized by PMA in conjunction with the Universitá Iuav di Venezia and the Universitá Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, to represent the United States in the 53rd Venice Biennale. Days and Giorni at PMA marks the first time in seven years that Nauman is showing new major installations in the United States. Film and video works made by the artist in the late 1960s — Dance or Exercise on the Perimeter of a Square (Square Dance); Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk); and Wall-Floor Positions — are also on view.

• In more Philly news, the PMA and the Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) will present Fallen Blossoms, a multi-site exhibition of works by Cai Guo-Qiang (Season 3). A series of four gunpowder drawings and a sculptural installation will be on view inside the PMA in a presentation titled Light Passage. Two newly commissioned works, Time Flies Like a Weaving Shuttle and Time Scroll, will be on display at FWM. One of Cai’s signature “explosion events” has been commissioned for the exhibition and will take place at both sites on opening day, December 11.

• Hanging Out in the Museum is Cai’s second collaboration with the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan. The retrospective exhibition features new gunpowder drawings, and the site specific installation Cultural Melting Bath (1997), which invites audiences to join a medicinal bath located in the museum’s outdoor courtyard. Hanging Out in the Museum remains on view through February 1, 2010.

• Cleveland Cavaliers center Shaquille O’Neal has added curatorial work to his resume. His forthcoming exhibition Size DOES Matter will explore the idea of scale in contemporary art through works by Tim Hawkinson, Paul Pfeiffer (both Season 2), Fred Wilson (Season 3), Jeff Koons, and Yinka Shonibare MBE (both Season 5), among others. Hosted by the Flag Art Foundation in New York, the exhibition is scheduled to open February 19, 2010. In Lindsay Pollock’s report for Bloomberg News, O’Neal says, “As a curator, I have a responsibility to the artists, who are my ‘teammates.’ We all have to make each other look good — no different than what I do on the court.’’

• The new home of the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) — designed by Season 2 artist Maya Lin — opened to the public in September. The 14,000 square-foot space incorporates environmentally sustainable design solutions, and features a sky-lit courtyard that “harkens back to the memory of a traditional Chinese courtyard house.” Lin says, “MOCA’s new space focuses attention on individuals and families of Chinese heritage who have made their homes throughout the country, and who are very much a part of the fabric of this nation. The space was designed to show the dynamic presentation of the Chinese American story, as an integral part of the greater, and continually evolving, American story.” Read more about MOCA’s new building here.

• Season 1 artist Richard Serra is included in the group exhibition 1969 at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York. Serra’s work was highlighted (along with Nauman’s) in Peter Schjeldahl’s review for The New Yorker. Schjeldahl states, “The year’s most original artists were the post-minimalists Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra…Nauman and Serra addressed a culture in which “artist” was becoming a job description, at once secure and drained of meaning. Having nothing to do, but having to do something, they made the situation clear and just a little bit dramatic.” Read the entire review here.

Weekly Roundup

Julie Mehretu, "Berliner Plätze", 2008-2009. Ink and acrylic on canvas, 120 x 168 in. © Julie Mehretu

Where in the world are Art21 artists?

• In Germany — where the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago today — a new suite of paintings by Season 5 artist Julie Mehretu is on view at the Deutsche Guggenheim. This specially commissioned body of work, titled Grey Area, evokes the “psychogeography” of the city of Berlin and its past, raising matters of erasure, decay, and liminality. A number of programs will be held throughout the exhibition, including a lecture by culture journalist and author Magdalena Kroener; and a commissioned concert by Jochen Neurath based on Mehretu’s new paintings. Get the complete schedule here.

• Also in Berlin, an exhibition of works by John Baldessari (Season 5) will open at Sprüth Magers Gallery on November 20. In Hands And/Or Feet (Part Two) Baldessari takes these extremities as his focus in five large-scale diptychs of found photographs or media images, characteristically painted over and colored in by the artist.

• In London, Stephen Friedman Gallery is displaying works by Season 5 artist Yinka Shonibare. Several “meaty” images of Shonibare’s new photographic and sculptural series, which is based on both Arthur Miller’s protagonist Willy Loman, and an early photograph of a fatal car crash, are available on the gallery’s website.

• Circling around to California, beginning November 14 new paintings by Jeff Koons (Season 5) will be on display at Gagosian Gallery Beverly Hills. “At first glance,” reads the press release, “the works may seem abstract and gestural, but at the same time they are embedded in the traditions of figurative  painting. The brush strokes, which are photorealistic in their application, are actually fake brush strokes in the style of Roy Lichtenstein.” On view through January 9, 2010.

• Down in Atlanta, Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2) will deliver a lecture at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) as part of their inaugural deFINE ART festival, which celebrates the SCAD School of Fine Arts. The event takes place on November 11 at 7 pm.

• Here in New York there’s a lot happening as usual: On November 12 Stitches opens at Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery in  midtown. This large group exhibition, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody, will feature works by Louise Bourgeois (Season 2) and Kiki Smith (Season 2) among others.

• Opening that same day at Paul Kasmin Gallery (in the Chelsea art district) is an exhibition of new paintings by Walton Ford (Season 2). Works on view include In The Island, a painting conjuring the paranoia that caused Tasmanian settlers to hunt thylacines into extinction in the 20th century. The show continues through December 23.

• And last but not least, the exhibition Roni Horn aka Roni Horn at the Whitney Museum of American Art has been reviewed by Roberta Smith of the New York Times. She writes of Horn (Season 3): “She has expanded the art of drawing with works that swing dramatically between intimate and monumental. Her method involves splicing two or more smaller sheets with nearly identical images into a single very large one — a process that cannily combines carving, cartography and quilting. In breathtaking photographs she has documented the terrain, shoreline and geothermal wonders of Iceland, whose strange, isolated beauty is one of the mainstays of her art.” Read the entire piece here.

Weekly Roundup

Paul McCarthy, "(White Snow) Dwarf Heads (detail)", 2009. Set of 7 drawings, pencil on vellum, tape. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth.

• White Snow, a solo exhibition of work by Season 5 artist Paul McCarthy, opens at Hauser & Wirth, New York on November 5. The gallery will debut pieces from a new body of work that draws upon the famous 19th century German folk tale Snow White (Schneewittchen), and comments on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney’s 1937 interpretation of the story. A reception will be held at the gallery on Thursday, November 4, 6-8pm.

• McCarthy’s work is also on view at Dean Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland. His 1995 video Painter, a satire of the artist as lonely genius in his studio, is shown next to the gallery’s permanent installation Paolozzi Studio, a recreation of Scottish artist Eduardo Paolozzi’s working space. By juxtaposing Painter and Studio, the gallery aims to “cast a second glance at how museums present the making of art.” Continues through February 14, 2010.

• Opening November 17 at Hauser & Wirth, London, After Awkward Objects brings together works by Louise Bourgeois (Season 1), Lynda Benglis, and Alina Szapocznikow. The exhibition is inspired by Awkward Objects, a presentation of pioneering women artists at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw earlier this year.

• Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis, at the newly remodeled El Museo del Barrio, highlights key artists from the Caribbean and Latin America who lived in New York City before World War II and participated in the development of the American avant-garde. A sculpture by Season 1 artist Pepón Osorio titled La Cama (The Bed) is pictured in the New York Times review. Nexus New York continues through February 28, 2010.

• The first major exhibition of works by Jenny Holzer (Season 4) to be held in a Swiss museum is on view at The Fondation Beyeler through January 24, 2010. The exhibition includes important works from various phases of Holzer’s career, but focuses on recent works, some of which will be shown in Europe for the first time. In addition to the museum space, the exhibition will extend to the public, with light projections planned for buildings and sites in Basel and Zurich.

• Moving in Place is an exhibition of 25 paintings by Season 3 artist Susan Rothenberg at the Museum of Modern Art Fort Worth, Texas. Though Rothenberg is best known for her horse paintings (the Obamas have borrowed one from the National Gallery of Art for the White House), the Modern’s Chief Curator, Michael Auping says, “Rather than focusing on Rothenberg’s famous early horse paintings as the beginning of a symbolic, figurative evolution, we are looking at the artist’s work from a more holistic, formal standpoint, identifying her unusual way of organizing pictorial space, regardless of the figurative content.” Continues through January 3, 2010.

• Works by Gabriel Orozco (Season 2), Roni Horn (Season 3), Francis Alÿs, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Rodney Graham, On Kawara, Thomas Nozkowski, Laura Owens, Dieter Roth, and Franz West are included the exhibition Continuous Present at Yale University Art Gallery. Sebastian Smee of the Boston Globe writes, “Everything that is most endearing about the current state of contemporary art and much that niggles rises to the surface of Continuous Present.” Read Smee’s review here.

• Over the weekend, Krzysztof Wodiczko (Season 3) was also featured in the Boston Globe for his video installation, The Veterans Project, at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston. Wodiczko has focused on veterans engaged in active combat in Iraq, as well as Iraqi civilians, looking at their shared experience of chaos and confusion brought about by the war. On Veterans Day, November 11, ICA Director of Programs David Henry will moderate a discussion between Wodiczko and project participants.

• Five Themes, a solo exhibition of work by Season 5 artist William Kentridge, opens at the Norton Museum of Art in Miami on November 7. This comprehensive survey gathers nearly 75 works of animated film, drawing, print, sculpture and other forms, and is structured around five primary themes in Kentridge’s work, such as apartheid and imperialism. Co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), a web-based interactive for the exhibition is available on the SFMOMA website. Five Themes is on view at the Norton through January 17, 2010.

Weekly Roundup

Matthew Ritchie, "Line Shot" Installation (detail), 2009. Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery.

• The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) will host a talk with Season 3 artist Matthew Ritchie and brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner (of indie rock band The National) on Saturday, October 31 at 6pm. The event is held in conjunction with their collaborative performance The Long Count, which opens at BAM on Wednesday, Oct 28. Ritchie’s work is currently on view at Andrea Rosen Gallery in the solo exhibition Line Shot.

• Songs of Ascension by Ann Hamilton (Season 1) and Meredith Monk (also currently at BAM) was featured in a New York Times music review last week. Read the article here.

• For Performa 09, Mike Kelley (Season 1) will present three short dance/performance pieces inspired by his film and video installation Day Is Done (2005). These performances bring to life some of the characters featured in the film, all of whom are based on found photographs of extracurricular activities from American high school yearbooks. Premiering will be Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #33 (Ladder Piece), a work involving 13 people assembled on and around a large ladder playing music on horns. Kelley’s show runs Nov 17 – Nov 19 at Judson Memorial Church. Purchase tickets here.

• Between Being Born and Dying, a site-specific installation by Barbara Kruger (Season 2), is on view at Lever House through November 21. Bloomberg.com describes the installation: “Kruger’s aphorisms are written in massive black-and-white letters all over the Lever House’s atrium, both inside and outside. They are printed on vinyl panels covering the floor, windows, walls and columns. The results are striking but disorienting. The 17-foot-tall letters are so big you can’t take it all in at once–or at all.”

• Season 2 artist Paul Pfeiffer has created a special project for the 3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. The project opens with Vertical Corridor, in which Pfeiffer encourages the viewer to peer through a tiny peephole in the wall of the gallery. The peephole is the only access to an immense space, and questions “the validity of the spectacle … reminding the viewer that every such spectacle must bow to the limits of one’s perspective.” This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Russia.

• Kara Walker (Season 2) will introduce a screening of the 1926 film Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed) at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York on November 11. Directed by the German animator and film director Lotte Reiniger, it is the earliest feature-length animation still believed to exist, and considered one of the greatest animated films of all time. The program — part of MoMA’s To Save and Project festival — begins at 8pm.

• Season 2 artist Trenton Doyle Hancock will speak at James Cohan Gallery Shanghai on Tuesday, October 27 at 5pm. Two print portfolios Fix (2007) and The Ossifies Theosophied (2005) will be on display in conjunction with the event. Hancock is featured in the exhibition Young Americans at James Cohan Gallery Shanghai through November 15.

• Mirror, Mirror: Contemporary Portraits and the Fugitive Self, a new exhibition at the Brigham Young Museum of Art in Utah, features works by 32 artists, including Oliver Herring (Season 3), Rebecca Campbell, Hasan Elahi, Harrell Fletcher, Douglas Gordon, Nikki Lee, and Takashi Murakami. The exhibition explores the influence of rituals, facades, social media, and the family on the formation of individual identity. On view through May 2010.

• Art critic Tyler Green talks to MoMA curator Connie Butler (organizer of the feminist exhibition, Wack!) about Season 4 artist Nancy Spero, who passed away last week. Read the interview on Green’s blog Modern Art Notes.

• Work by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Season 4) is included in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago exhibition Learning Modern: Bauhaus Legacy in Downtown Chicago. Building on the legacy of László Moholy-Nagy and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Learning Modern features projects by artists and architects who continue a legacy of interdisciplinary innovation for better living, while exploring the central role of experiential education in the modern vision. Continues through January 9, 2010.

• Willy Loman: The Rise and Fall, the fifth exhibition of work by Yinka Shonibare MBE (Season 5) at Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, is on view through November 20. The earliest known documentation of a fatal car crash provides a pictorial metaphor for Shonibare’s new body of photographic and sculptural work. Photographed in 1898, the image records death as a spectacle for the first time; a crowd surrounds the carcass of a motor vehicle. Shonibare has created a similar scene in the gallery, a sculptural dramatization of the death of Arthur Miller’s infamous protagonist, salesman Willy Loman. The installation suggests a parallel between Miller’s 20th century examination of greed and the human condition, and the present day.

• Now on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Focus on Artists celebrates the museum’s 75th anniversary, and its close ties with modern and contemporary masters as demonstrated by works from their collection. SFMOMA holds a number of sculptures by Season 5 artist Doris Salcedo; pieces from her Unland (1995–98) and Untitled “Cabinet” series (1989-present) will be on view. Continues through May 23, 2010.

• On the occasion of Grey Area, a new work by Season 5 artist Julie Mehretu commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim, the current issue of ArtMag (the online art magazine of Deutsche Bank) focuses on artists who investigate urbanism and cultural identity. Joan Young, curator at the Guggenheim Museum, has contributed an essay about Mehretu’s recent work. Read it here.