Weekly Roundup

Charles Atlas, "Son of Sam and Delilah", 1991. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

Greek tragedy, cross dressing, cooking shows, needlework, rowdy teens, storytelling, nighttime walks, and a few mystery plays in this week’s roundup:

• Virtuoso Illusion: Cross Dressing and the New Media Avant-Garde at the MIT List Visual Arts Center explores how experimental art has been enlivened and advanced by artists who cross dress as part of their conceptual process. “The show is not intended,” according to MIT, “as an exploration of identity issues specifically, but more as an in depth look at current and historical strategies of cross dressing as an art of the irrational, the unexpected.” Artists include Charles Atlas, Matthew Barney (both Season 2), Claude Cahun, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, Marcel Duchamp, Michelle Handelman, John Kelly, Katarzyna Kozyra, Kalup Linzy, Ma Liuming, Manon, Pierre Molinier, Yasumasa Morimura, Brian O’Doherty, Ryan Trecartin, and Andy Warhol. Atlas created video mock documentaries about the evolving twentieth-century performance avant-garde during the years he collaborated with Merce Cunningham. In Son of Sam and Delilah (1991), Atlas provides “a transporting view of a flock of gender indiscriminate performers.” Virtuoso Illusion, organized by guest curator Michael Rush, former director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, is on view through April 4.

• The highly anticipated exhibition Kiki Smith: Sojourn opens at the Brooklyn Museum this Friday. Smith (Season 2) draws on a variety of experiences in the cycle of life, from the milestones of birth and death to the daily chores of domestic life, with particular attention to the lives of women artists. An eighteenth-century silk needlework by a woman named Prudence Punderson that inspired Smith’s installation is on loan to the museum from the Connecticut Historical Society and included in the exhibition. Via the museum website: “Punderson’s stark depiction of a woman’s journey from childhood to death in the years leading up to and immediately after the United States gained its independence intrigued Smith because rather than following the stereotypical rites of passage in a woman’s life of the period…this young woman chose to depict a life of the mind for her subject, presenting a woman engaged in creative work.” Smith will install her work in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art as well as in two of the museum’s eighteenth-century period rooms. Sojourn closes September 12.

• Works by Laylah Ali (Season 3), Kara Walker (Season 2), Ghada Amer, Shary Boyle, Amy Cutler, Chitra Ganesh, Wangechi Mutu, Annie Pootoogook, Leesa Streifler, and Su-en Wong are on view at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in Ontario, Canada. The exhibition, titled Pandora’s Box, offers a new twist on the myth of Pandora in which it is no longer about what is hidden inside of the box, but what is metaphorically reflected on the outside. Pandora’s Box continues through March 21.

• Through February 28, Tank.tv is showing two works by Season 5 artist Paul McCarthy: Family Tyranny and Cultural Soup. Both works — cut from two days of taped performance at a community television studio in 1987 — feature Season 1 artist Mike Kelley. Tank.tv calls the videos a “disturbing tableaux of familial horror, steeped in the stomach turning abjection” of McCarthy’s practice. Performed within a “barely credible domestic set,” the format and characters in the videos enact several tropes of television entertainment: the unruly teenager (Kelley), and the how-to format of cooking and DIY programs.

• Fifty photographs of nocturnal landscapes by Robert Adams (Season 4) are on view at Matthew Marks Gallery in the exhibition Summer Nights, Walking. These images of trees and houses, mountains and streets, fields and sidewalks captured between dusk and approaching dark were made between 1976-1982 near Adams’ home in Longmont, Colorado. Adams first showed photographs from this series in 1985. He recently said of editing his night pictures: “When I have looked again at the photographs that I might have chosen but did not, it has seemed to me that if I had included a wider variety, the result would have been, though less harmonious, more convincing, closer to our actual experience of wonder, anxiety and stillness.” This exhibition celebrates the publication of Summer Nights, Walking, co-published by Aperture and the Yale University Art Gallery, a revised and updated version of an earlier book. The exhibition continues through April 17.

• Delusion, a new work by Laurie Anderson (Season 1) will premiere at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company, February 16-21. The piece is described as “a series of short mystery plays” populated by “nuns, elves, golems, rotting forests, ghost ships, archaeologists, dead relatives and unmanned tankers.” Delusion was commissioned by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and The Barbican Centre in London. Tickets can be purchased here.

• The lecture series Critical Conversations at the Roski School of Fine Arts in Los Angeles features talks by visiting artists, curators, theorists, writers, and other cultural producers, who engage in open conversations with graduate students and attending members of the public. Season 4 artists Mark Dion and Mark Bradford will speak on February 23 and March 2, respectively.

• Season 5 artist William Kentridge will lecture at The Cooper Union in New York City tomorrow, February 9. The event begins at 8pm and is free and open to the public.

• BMW has announced that Season 5 artist Jeff Koons will design their 17th art car. Read more about the project here.

Grand Canyon Journal 2: Let’s Get Medievalist on that Crevasse

With the haunting mix of bodily certainty and existential confusion that characterizes a case of morning wood, the naked, supine torso of Ed Harris comes to sudden erection in a primeval forest, shooting up into the verdant frame like a rake that’s been stepped on. The shot is a crucial one in the opening sequence of George A. Romero’s Knightriders. The precipitousness of the montage conjures up both the identification of man and nature, as figured by Harris’s out-of-body “crow’s eye view” flight through the forest as well as his sudden awakening to the central conflict between the Rousseauist utopianism of the merry band of Medievalist motorcyclists he leads versus the alienating threat that modernity and capital pose to their way of life.

While this image may seem an unlikely entry point into the Grand Canyon, the proliferation of Arthurian place names in the Canyon (Excalibur Tower, Modred Abyss, Lancelot Point, Holy Grail, Gawain Abyss, Bedivere Point, The Dragon, Guinevere Castle, Merlin Abyss, Elaine Castle, and Galahad Point) speaks otherwise. Moreover, Ed Harris’s ontological sit-up echoes the axial leap of the horizontal geological striations that spatialize time along the canyon’s walls to the arbitrariness of the names (an arbitrariness that we will hungrily feast upon) that identify vertical rock formations and voids.

Geological section of the Grand Canyon covering roughly 1.5 billion years of sedimentation

Let us rewind for a moment to the Edenic state of nature envisaged before “the rise” of Ed, if you will. During the “crow-cam” sequence that opens Knightriders, we can now imagine Ed Harris lying down naked, out of frame, presumably asleep or dreaming on the forest floor. In this as-yet-unseen state, the Ed Harris-to-come is a kind of pure potential, a horizontal being that has yet to emerge from the plenitude of the forest. This avatar of Ed Harris finds his mirror image in the horizontal geological strata exposed on the walls of the Grand Canyon. Whereas Ed, in his latent form, is being as pure potential, the spatialization of time and temporalization of space that characterizes the geological stratum make it a crucible for the materialization of being as history in which space and time are co-extensive. In the layers of the Grand Canyon, space and time refine and compress one another. Being travels further and further away from pure potential until it almost sublimates into it; hence, the feeling of irreality that, like the veils of smog that descend into the chasm during peak season, tends to both intensify and obscure the experience of the Canyon.

What does it mean to point to time? Could we point to the Middle Ages on the geological calendar wall of the Grand Canyon? Does the tip of Excalibur Tower, which is said to look like King Arthur’s legendary sword, contain the moment when its namesake was thrust into a soon-to-be-slain dragon? Does Guinevere Castle house a temporal room in which the Queen scandalously gave herself to Lancelot? The answer is no, since even the uppermost strata of the Canyon are approximately 200 million years old. Kim Novak’s character from Vertigo would have to ethereally drive a few hundred miles away from that ringed redwood in order to ethereally point to a time that would approximate that temporal distance.

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Weekly Roundup

Ida Applebroog, "Group A #9", 1969. Ink on paper, 10 5/8" x 8 1/4". Courtesy Hauser & Wirth.

This week Art21 artists depict nether regions, play with light and space, bundle and fuse old toys, mirror the dandy, reimagine rooftops, photograph electricity, and display cookie cutters by the thousands:

• Beginning January 19, a new body of work and major installation by Season 3 artist Ida Applebroog will be on view at Hauser & Wirth in New York. Central to the exhibition, titled Monalisa, is a collection of more than 160 drawings of the artist’s crotch based on reflections of herself in a mirror. Applebroog made the drawings in 1969 during her nightly bath ritual. Packed in a basement and forgotten until studio assistants discovered them in early 2009, they are now key in her Hauser & Wirth installation. Applebroog has created a room-sized wooden structure covered with more than 100 new drawings made from her original vagina images, which she has scanned onto handmade Gampi paper, enlarged, digitally manipulated, and enhanced with washes of color. The exhibition will also include a selection of the original drawings. Monalisa will be on view through March 6. Read more about the exhibition here.

• The Visible Vagina, on view concurrently at David Nolan and Francis M. Naumann Fine Art galleries in New York, is inspired by Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. As the exhibition title suggests, “the show is designed to make visible a portion of the female anatomy that is generally considered taboo―too private and intimate for public display.” Works by Art21 artists Jeff Koons (Season 5), Kiki Smith (Season 2), Laurie Simmons, and Nancy Spero (both Season 4) will be included. The Visible Vagina is on view January 28-March 20. A panel discussion with artists in the exhibition, moderated by Anna Chave, will be held at David Nolan Gallery on January 30.

• Through February 6, works by James Turrell (Season 1), Robert Irwin, Doug Wheeler, Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Laddie John Dill, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken, Helen Pashgian, and De Wain Valentine are on view at New York’s David Zwirner Gallery. Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970 surveys the diverse art practices that flourished in 1960s California and are often placed under the umbrella term “Light and Space.” The selection of works in this show are intended to capture some of the more specific aesthetic qualities of the Los Angeles scene during the 1960s. A guided walk-through of the exhibition with co-curator Tim Nye will take place on January 23 at 11:30am.

• Two sculptures by Season 2 artist Maya Lin made from recycled toys (titled Toy Asteroid: Boy and Toy Asteroid: Girl) are included in Animamix Biennial: Visual Attract and Attack at MoCA Taipei. The exhibition presents the most recent developments and trends in Animamix art, or “contemporary comic aesthetics” from across the world. Featuring works by nearly 300 artists, Animamix Biennial is hosted simultaneously by three other museums in China and Taiwan: MoCA Shanghai, Today Art Museum Beijing, and Guangdong Museum of Art. Visual Attract and Attack, according to the New York Times, only features about 50 artists, not all of whom are from Asia. Other artists hail from Japan, Italy, France, Israel, Russia and the United States, showing “the international spread of the Animamix language.” The exhibition is on view through January 31.

• Shapes from Maine (2009), a project by Season 5 artist Allan McCollum, is included in the exhibition Vertically Integrated Manufacturing at Murray Guy Gallery in New York. Shapes of Maine is an extension of an earlier Shape project, for which McCollum developed a system to generate over 30 billion unique shapes, at least one for each person on the planet. McCollum worked over the internet with Holly and Larry Little, founders of Aunt Holly’s Copper Cookie Cutters, a home business in Trescott, Maine, to create this installation of over 2,200 one-of-a-kind works. Vertically Integrated Manufacturing brings together works by artists who, like McCollum, respond to changing processes of labor. Continues through February 20.

• Since the 1980s, a number of Art21 artists have been commissioned by The Stuart Collection to create permanent works for the grounds of University of California San Diego. Most recently, Season 2 artist Do-Ho Suh proposed Fallen Star — his first major permanent outdoor installation in the United States — for the Collection. At the center of his proposed piece is a small house which has been picked up by some mysterious force (such as a tornado) and has “landed” seven stories up atop the Jacobs School of Engineering. The house is cantilevered out over the edge of the building and can be entered from the roof, or roof garden (also part of the artist’s design). The actual structure might serves as a student/faculty lounge or meeting room. See images of Fallen Star here.

• Sur le dandysme aujourd’hui: From Shop Window Mannequin to Media Star, on view at the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporáneo, reveals concepts and strategies developed by nineteenth-century dandies in the work and attitudes of contemporary artists. The curator considers how iconography and themes of dandyism remain significant. The show takes George Bryan Brummell, Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde (with passing references to Jules Amadée Barbey d’Aurevilly, the Countess of Castiglione and Joris Karl Huysmans) as its point of departure. Season 5 artists Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, and Yinka Shonibare MBE are included in a roster of more than 40 artists. Sur le dandysme aujourd’hui runs January 15-March 21.

• Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3) is featured by Wired Magazine Online for his new series of electricity volt photographs, while his seascape photograph on the cover of U2’s album, No Line on the Horizon, has ranked #48 in Art Vinyl’s annual album cover awards.

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!

Weekly Roundup

Kara Walker, "A Warm Summer Evening in 1863", 2008. Wool tapestry with hand cut felt silhouette figure, 5' 9" x 8' 2". Edition of 5. ©Kara Walker. Courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, Banners of Persuasion, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

This week in Art21 artist news we have two tapestry makers, a silk archway, the master of Cremaster, an artist who likes to do laundry, a magical sound installation, environmental issues, creative explosions, and more.

• Opening January 8 at James Cohen Gallery, Demons, Yarns & Tales features hand-woven tapestries created by thirteen contemporary artists: Kara Walker (Season 2), Shahzia Sikander (Season 1), avaf, Peter Blake, Gary Hume, Jaime Gili, Francesca Lowe, Beatriz Milhazes, Paul Noble, Grayson Perry, Fred Tomaselli, Gavin Turk, and Julie Verhoeven. The exhibition was created by the London-based art organization, Banners of Persuasion, who commissioned each artist to design a tapestry, a medium foreign to his or her usual practice. Walker’s A Warm Summer Evening in 1863 uses an image published in Harpers Magazine during the American Civil War, captioned “The Destruction of the Coloured Orphan Asylum on 5th Avenue.” A black silhouette of a lynched female figure hangs in front of this scene. The exhibition will be on view through February 13.

• Renaissance Unframed, an exhibition at Carolina Nitsch Project Room in New York, consists of twenty-five encaustic drawings on muslin and two companion bronze sculptures by Season 3 artist Richard Tuttle. Tuttle’s drawings “explore fabric as a medium to receive color and as a tool to direct its movement” and the bronze works “represent the antithesis of the fabric on the wall.” The fabric pieces are rotated every 2 weeks with only five works being shown at a time. The exhibition is on view through January 9.

• On January 13, Season 2 artist Matthew Barney will speak at the Detroit Institute of Arts and discuss his newest project Khu, a performance and film loosely based on Norman Mailer’s 1983 novel, Ancient Evenings. Barney updates Mailer’s plot from an ancient Egyptian narrative to a present day account of reincarnation and rebirth set in an American landscape. Each chapter will be set in a different city and correspond to the seven stages of the soul’s departure from the body according to Egyptian mythology. The first chapter was performed in Los Angeles in 2007. The latest chapter takes place in Detroit. Barney’s lecture begins at 7pm; a (free) pass is required and can be obtained here.

• Through January 17, work by Season 1 artist Kerry James Marshall is on view at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art in the exhibition Heartland. The show features site-specific installations and performances as well as drawing, photography, and video by artists and collaboratives working in, and in response to, Detroit, Kansas City, and other cities and rural communities across the region. Also included in the exhibition are artists Carnal Torpor, Compass Group, Cody Critcheloe, Jeremiah Day, Detroit Tree of Heaven Woodshop, Design 99, Scott Hocking, Greely Myatt, Marjetica Potrč, Julika Rudelius, Artur Silva, Deb Sokolow, and Whoop Dee Doo.

• Gate (2005) by Season 2 artist Do-Ho Suh is now on view in the Los Angles County Museum of Art’s Korean art galleries. Made of translucent silk, the piece is a full-size rendering of one of the gates to the artist’s childhood home in Seoul. Suh’s father, the artist and scholar Suh Se-Ok, built the house based on the design of traditional Korean architecture of the 1880s.

• Rethink: Contemporary Art & Climate Change (part of the official culture program for the United Nations Climate Change Conference) is a collaboration of the National Gallery of Denmark, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, and Moesgård Museum. The exhibition includes more than 25 artists spread across the four venues. Each space is dedicated to a different theme: Relations, The Implicit, Kakotopia, and Information, respectively. At the Nat’l Gallery of Denmark, A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear, a 2008 film by duo Allora & Calzadilla (Season 4) presents viewers with three scenes: gently flowing images of a lush river landscape, a dilapidated interior in an abandoned house, and footage of a young man who drums rhythmically on the slats of a Venetian blind. The piece, shot in New Orleans and on the Mississippi Delta, draws attention to the remaining wreckage of Hurricane Katrina. A Man Screaming Is Not a Dancing Bear is on view through April 5. (Note: each theme/venue closes on a different day; check the website for more information.)

• Season 2 artist Maya Lin unveiled her new video, Unchopping a Tree, in Copenhagen last week. This is the latest iteration of Lin’s larger and last memorial project, What is Missing? The video addresses deforestation prevention and sustainable reforestation to reduce carbon emissions and protect endangered species and habitats — watch it here.

• In Roberta Smith’s review of Days and Giorni by Bruce Nauman (Season 1) — two sound installations on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art — she writes: “Each piece consists of 14 recordings of seven people reciting the days of the week. Their voices are broadcast from 14 wafer-thin white speakers, around 23 inches square, arranged in seven facing pairs, one for each person’s voice. Each speaker is simply clipped to two wires strung tautly from floor to ceiling. It’s like paintings by Robert Ryman hanging on Fred Sandback’s string sculptures, and the effect is magical. Read more here.

• “A countdown began two minutes out. 90 seconds. One minute. 50 seconds. 40. 30. And so on. And then: fireworks! And then: fire! The blossom burned, glowing orange against the museum and the now dusky sky, and dark smoke billowed into the air. The crowd oohed and aahed.” Click here to read more about the recent “explosion events” by Season 3 artist Cai Guo-Qiang (as reported by Kris Wilton of Artinfo.com).

• Congratulations to Art21 artists Vija Celmins (Season 2), and Judy Pfaff (Season 4) who have been granted the United States Artists annual award for $50k.

• Season 4 artist Jenny Holzer has shared her morning routine, favorite household chore, travel rituals, and more with Times Magazine. Read her witty profile here.

• More on the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition of works by Gabriel Orozco (Season 2): Man of the World, The New Yorker; Pic of the Day: Gabriel Orozco’s Home Run, Flavorwire; and Gabriel Orozco: The Art of the Readymade, WNYC.

Art and Nature at Storm King

Flash Points Editor Rachel Craft interviewed David R. Collens, Director and Curator of Storm King Art Center, about the institution’s focus on the relationship between art and nature. —Ed.

Mark di Suvero, "Pyramidian," 1987/1998; "Mon Pere, Mon Pere," 1973-75; "Mother Peace," 1969-70; Storm King Art Center

Rachel Craft: In the description of Storm King on your website, you emphasize the surrounding environment of the Hudson Highlands, and how that panorama is essential to the overall viewing experience. How does this interaction with the landscape factor into your planning and curation of exhibitions at Storm King?

David R. Collens: The magnificent setting of the Storm King Art Center, surrounded by the Storm King and Schunnemunk mountains, is like no other. To understand the place today, it is important to understand its history. Fifty years ago, Peter Stern and Ralph “Ted” Ogden, who were business partners, and the great landscape architect Bill Rutherford worked together to realize their singular vision for a place that brought sculpture and landscape into a sublime union.

The landscape plays a central role in all curatorial decisions: Each of the 100-plus sculptures installed at Storm King is carefully sited with an eye to its relationship with the surrounding landscape, which includes verdant fields and meadows, some seeded with native grasses, as well as allées, rolling hills, and woodlands. Like its landscape and vistas, Storm King’s collection, which today spans the years from post World War II to the present, has evolved over time. Our first sculpture acquisition was a work by Austrian artist Karl Pfann. After extended discussion, Ted Ogden and Peter Stern decided to install it outdoors. As Peter has said, with that gesture, “the dialogue between art and nature opened.” Another early acquisition was Henry Moore’s resplendent Reclining Connected Forms (1969), which is sited on the lawn that surrounds the museum building. An important turning point was the acquisition of a group of thirteen sculptures by David Smith. They were originally installed as the artist had grouped them at his place in Bolton Landing, New York. However, we came to realize that thoughtfully positioning the works where they could interact with the landscape showed them to their full advantage.

It is important to mention that each visit to Storm King is different, depending on the season, time of the day, changing light conditions, and weather. People return over and over, as no two visits are the same. Moreover, because Storm King is best experienced on foot, visitors are encouraged to hike right up to the sculptures and engage with them. It’s quite wonderful to see the works in the distance and approach them from different angles, then look back to where you came from. I enjoy watching visitors approach the monumental works and seeing how they react when they realize just how massive the sculptures are.

Our ongoing goal is to continue to enrich the collection and deepen the experience for our visitors while maintaining the unique Storm King experience.

RC: You describe how the sculptures are affected by changes in light and weather. What are your favorite viewing conditions?

DRC: While each viewing condition is extraordinary in its own way, morning and late afternoon light are particularly interesting times to view the works. Every day, every hour, even every minute offers a new and unique revelation. Light, the quality of the sky and clouds, and the weather devise fresh encounters and perspectives. Sometimes, because of the mountains and climate, we get mists, fogs, and frosts which can be quite wonderful. I have been at Storm King since 1974, and each walk I have taken through the landscape has been and continues to be exceptional.

RC: How does the interaction between art and nature influence the programming and educational goals of the institution?

DRC: The interaction between art and nature informs the core of Storm King’s programming. With 500 acres of pristine landscape, we are more than a museum. We want our visitors to be inspired and delighted by a holistic experience. We want them to consider art in a new way, against earth and sky—exploring sculptures individually and in relation to works around them, all within the context of nature. We also strive to contribute to the understanding and appreciation of outdoor sculpture generally and within the art world community specifically; its creation, installation, conservation, and preservation.

Our public programs take full advantage of the setting, with docent-led walking and tram tours, hikes on the wooded trails, concerts, readings, talks, panel discussions, and family activities. We’ve even had kite-making and flying programs which add an element of fun to the enjoyment of the collection, particularly for budding art-lovers.

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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.

Flash Points: Art and the Environment

Spencer Finch, "White (Niagara Falls obscured by mist, April 17th, 2006 5:30pm)"

Today we launch the next Flash Points topic, Art & the Environment. We first addressed this issue in Season Four’s episode, Ecology, which delved into the work of artists who relate their work to nature in distinct ways. Over the next two months, we’ll expand upon these concepts and further explore how art is reacting to the environment, how the environment reacts with art, and everything in between.

From sustainability and alternative energy solutions, to green-collared jobs and maintaining a low carbon footprint, environmental concerns and how our world is addressing them is an ever-present issue. As artist Mark Dion stated in the episode, “We have a test ahead of us in terms of our relationship to the natural world. If we pass the test we get to keep the planet, but I don’t really see us doing a very good job of that right now.”

Take American national parks, for example. We’re reminded not only of how valuable these landscapes are as a national resource, but also how tenuously they hang in the balance. The parks were established in opposition to the commercialization of our country’s natural wonders—Niagara Falls being an often-used example. This place is still symbolic of both the beauty of our natural landscapes, and what happens when we try capitalizing on them.

Alec Soth, "Rainbow Inn," from the series "NIAGARA," 2005

Art as both a reaction to our environment, and as a method for building public awareness, aren’t new concepts. Carleton Watkins enticed Easterners in the 19th century to see the spectacular landscapes of Yosemite with his photographs. Artists of the Land Art movement of the 1960s and 1970s rejected the idea of the museum or gallery as a place to perceive art, and instead traveled to the remote outreaches of the U.S. and used the land as their medium. These ideas continue with artists today, who both showcase the natural world and react to the many environmental concerns that constantly threaten its survival. This includes artists such as Maya Lin, whose work immerses the viewer in the environment, inviting us to examine our own relationship with it.

Maya Lin, "Storm King Wavefield," 2007-2008

Another artist working in this vein is Eirik Johnson, who brings attention to the damage caused by national resource-based industry, and what this does not only to the landscape, but also to the people whose lives have been affected by it.

Eirik Johnson, "Elwha River Dam, Washington," from the series "Sawdust Mountain," 2006 – 2008

We’ll explore institutions that make it their mission to incorporate works of art with their surroundings, such as Storm King Art Center in upstate New York and the Chinati Foundation’s beautifully minimal desert, as well as the efforts made to protect both the art and the land.

Donald Judd, 5 untitled works in concrete, 1980-1984

Here are a few more of the questions we’ll be addressing over the coming weeks.  We’d love to get your thoughts, and any ideas you have for additional sub-topics, in the comments below:

• How does art factor into the conversation on environmental preservation?
• How do artists react to today’s environmental issues?
• Can art be used as a way to contextualize and understand environmental concerns?
• When art is placed within the environment, what kinds of steps are taken to ensure its conservation, if any?
• Can art and nature co-exist?

Weekly Roundup

Hiroshi Sugimoto, "Lightning Fields 145", 2009. Gelatin-silver print, 22.9 x 18.4 inches. Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery.

• New photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto (Season 3) are on view at Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco through October 31. Sugimoto’s latest body of work titled Lightning Fields depicts electricity. To create each image, the artist uses a Van De Graaff 400,000-volt generator to apply an electrical charge directly onto film. The result in each case is a unique, instantaneous image of an electrical current, sometimes resembling a meteor shower, or a “treeing effect” on the film.

• On October 21, Season 2 artist Walton Ford will sign copies of the popular edition of Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra at the TASCHEN Store in New York (107 Greene Street). Only 100 copies of the book will be available. The ticketed event begins at 7pm; reservations are accepted via telephone. New work by Ford will be displayed at Paul Kasmin Gallery beginning November 12.

• October 27 – December 23, two sculptures by Richard Serra (Season 1) — Blind Spot (2002-2003) and Open Ended (2007-2008) — will be on view at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea. These similar concentric structures each consist of six weatherproof steel plates. Open Ended was exhibited at Gagosian Gallery in London last year. The New York exhibition brings both sculptures together for the first time.

• On November 7, a new stage performance by Season 5 artist Cao Fei will premiere at Teatro Astra/Artissima 16 Theatre Project in Turin. RMB City Opera (part of Fei’s ongoing RMB City project in Second Life) is based on the “model dramas” (Yang Ban Xi) of the Cultural Revolution period. Yang Ban Xi were the only politically-approved types of performance at the time, as traditional opera was banned by Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing. Read more about RMB City Opera here.

• Art Review has released their 2009 Power 100 list, a look at “who’s who in contemporary art,” and a “guide to general trends and forces that shape the artworld.” Bruce Nauman (Season 1) comes in at #10; Jeff Koons (Season 5) holds the #13 spot; Mike Kelley (Season 1) is #20; and John Baldessari (Season 5) ranks #37. View the complete list.

• Paul Laster of ArtKrush has reviewed the “massive, energetic show,” New York Minute: 60 Artists on the New York Scene, which includes work by Barry McGee (Season 1). “Exploring street punk, wild figuration, and new abstraction, the artists in this colorful show represent a new generation of creative minds, responding to the world around them in rapid and unpredictable ways,” writes Laster. Read the entire piece on Flavorwire.

• Two concurrent exhibitions by Season 2 artist Maya Lin at Pace Wildenstein and Salon 94 have been reviewed by Justin Wolf (also on Flavorwire). He writes: “While not unimpressive, [Recycled Landscapes, at Salon 94] pales next to its Chelsea counterpart, but maybe that’s the point. Here the utterly polished gallery space has been transformed into an obsessive-compulsive’s playroom; refinement infused with touches of juvenility.” Read more…

• The new issue of Parkett (no. 86) features artists Josiah McElheny (Season 3), John Baldessari (Season 5), Carol Bove and Philippe Parreno. See excerpts and images from the publication here.