Weekly Roundup

BMW Art Car. Jeff Koons, 2010. Photo courtesy of BMW Drives.

Back after a two-week hiatus Art21 blogger Nettrice R. Gaskins takes the Weekly Roundup baton, so to speak.  In this week’s roundup you’ll read about Cindy Sherman wall decals, crying, cranky babies at the Whitney, Jeff Koon’s art on a BMW and the wall of a CT scan room, and much, much more (it’s been a very busy summer).

• BMW Drives selected Jeff Koons (Season 5) to join the likes of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Jenny Holzer (Season 4) in creating an Art Car for the 2010 The 24 Hours of Le Mans, the world’s oldest sports car race held annually near the town of Le Mans, France.  The 17th BMW Art Car, customized with “a rainbow of good vibes” by Koons, led the competition in aesthetic appeal but was forced to retire early due to an incident on the track. “It’s unfortunate,” said Koons, “but it’s part of racing.”

• Koons‘s art has been permanently installed in the main CT scan room at Advocate Hope Children’s Hospital in Chicago, in cooperation with RxArt, a New York-based non-profit whose mission is to “bring contemporary art to hospitals, transforming otherwise sterile environments, which are often frightening and alienating to patients, to more comforting, meditative and positive environments.”

• The Getty Museum and artist Mark Bradford (Season 4) unveiled Open Studio: A Collection of Artmaking Ideas by artists, a new project conceived by Bradford to provide free online arts activities for for K-12 teachers to use in their classrooms.

Continue reading »

Weekly Roundup

Andrea Zittel, "Indianapolis Island", 2010. via Indianapolis Museum of Art.org

In this week’s roundup you’ll find two island exhibitions, some curiosities of Monaco, a photographer who pushes buttons, and a group of artists who keep it real:

• Indianapolis Island, a floating habitat by Andrea Zittel (Season 1), was commissioned by the Indianapolis Museum of Art for installation on the lake inside of 100 Acres, one of the largest museum art parks in the country, and the only one to feature the ongoing commission of site-specific artworks. Two students of the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis will live on the Island for six weeks. Michael Runge and Jessica Dunn, who will graduate from Herron next May, will move into the piece by June 20, the park’s opening day. Follow them as they chronicle their experience on the IMA blog “Give and Take.”

• Clasp, a solo exhibition of works by Zittel, is on view at Sadie Coles Gallery in London through July 31. Here’s an excerpt from the artist’s exhibition statement: “The works in this show present a study into the four dynamic modes of experience –pure (or what I call native) experience and the three methods of its representation: A representation of the experience (Factish Depiction); an idea of an experience (Ideological Resonator); and the result of an experience (Material Manifestation). In all of the works presented there is the common denominator of touch. Touch is the single mode through which we physically negotiate and impose our will on the world around us and on those who reside with in it. It is the prosthetic activity of our brains. In the case of this exhibition the strand is seen as the extension of this touch – as a ligament of will, control, and support.” Continue reading about Clasp.

• Mark Dion (Season 4) has created a piece for EMSCHERKUNST.2010, the biggest art project of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010. Scheduled to last 100 days, the project is staged on Emscher Island, which is in the process of being transformed from “a grim by-product of the industrial revolution” to the new Emscher Landschaftspark. It is currently the largest nature restoration project in the world. Forty artists have created 20 public works on the island, including a “singing” rock, a community garden, and an itinerant Punch-and-Judy puppet show. EMSCHERKUNST.2010 runs through September 5.

• Works by Louise Bourgeois (Season 1), Kiki Smith, Gabriel Orozco (both Season 2), Arturo Herrera, Mike Kelley (both Season 3), and Julie Mehretu (Season 5) are included in the Whitechapel Gallery exhibition Keeping it Real. The exhibition, which will be installed in four “acts,” explores the way that artists have used materials to look at the relationship between art and reality. The objects are drawn from the D. Daskalopoulos Collection based in Greece. Bourgeois and Smith are featured in Keeping it Real: Act 1: The Corporeal, which continues through September 2010. Kelley, Mehretu, Orozo and Herrera are included in successive installations, namely Act 2: Subversive Abstraction, and Act 4: Material Intelligence.

• Recent works by Season 3 artist Fred Wilson are on view at Mitterrand+Sanz in Zurich. The objects were selected by Paris-based curator Ami Barak who has helped to “transfigure” the artist’s language of institutional critique for the gallery space. Included in the display is Regina Atra (2006), a copy of a diadem made for the coronation of George IV, in this case, constructed of black diamonds; a bust representing Ota Benga, the Congolese pygmie who was exhibited in the Saint Louis World Expo of 1904, with a white scarf obscuring his ethnic identity label; and a series paintings of flags of African and African diaspora nations, stripped of color and reduced to their graphic forms. Fred Wilson closes July 24.

• From June 18 to September 19, works by Sally Mann (Season 1) will be on view at The Photographer’s Gallery in London. Mann’s first solo show in the U.K., it will include images from various series made throughout her career, such as Immediate Family (1984-94), Deep South (1996-98), and What Remains (2000-04). On the occasion of the exhibition, titled The Family and the Land, Blake Morrison of The Guardian talked to Mann about why she likes “pushing buttons.” Read Morrison’s article Sally Mann: The naked and the dead.

• Models, sculptures, photographs and videos by Season 5 artist Yinka Shonibare MBE are on view at Nouveau Musée National de Monaco through January 16, 2011. With this exhibition, Shonibare embarks on a new series entitled Looking up…™ Alongside Shonibare’s own works are recently restored works belonging to the artistic history of the Principality of Monaco, many presented for the first time. These include the Visconti Maquettothèque of the Monte-Carlo Opera (a collection of model set designs), the Bosio brothers’ sculptures and etchings, Eugène Frey decors, the Marquis du Périer de Mouriez’s collection of transparent paintings, religious boxes from the de Galéa Collection, and many other “artificialia” that evoke the cabinets of curiosities of the 17th and 18th centuries. Looking up…™ will be accompanied by a 180-page French/English full-color catalogue.

Better Than Ketchup and Vaseline

Artist at work: Matthew Barney, Art21 production still, 2001

Twice recently I have been contacted by teachers who have run into some trouble sharing Art21 videos with their classes. In both cases these teachers were called by parents (and in one case, a principal) who were surprised and angry that the teachers would share “questionable” and even “highly provocative” material with their classes. In both cases teachers were left explaining (and explaining, and explaining) to these parents the reasons for sharing artists such as Sally Mann and Kara Walker with their students.

In both cases, these teachers would have done themselves a huge favor consulting the Art21 educator guides and previewing the films before sharing them with their classes.

I know this sounds like an obvious thing, but let’s say it anyway: Never, ever share video of any kind with a classroom full of students unless you have seen it first and created a lesson that anticipates some of the questions and misinterpretations that may pop up. Both of the teachers mentioned above never fully previewed the segments they shared, nor did they have the educator guides to refer to when planning. While both teachers clearly had good intentions (I know, I spoke with both of them), the necessary steps never occurred to ensure that students would clearly understand the reasons behind what they would see.

Preparing students in advance to see complex and easily misinterpreted works by artists such as Sally Mann, Kara Walker, Paul McCarthy, or even Matthew Barney, to name just a few, allows them to come to class anticipating what was discussed in the last class session vs. being surprised, jumping to conclusions, and then reporting wild stories to their parents and friends. And while I cannot say that I have had the opportunity to incorporate Matthew Barney or Paul McCarthy’s segments into my own classes just yet, you can be sure I will be ready for student reactions when I do.

Besides, it’s a lot better than explaining to a parent why ketchup and vaseline are legitimate mediums for artists.

Weekly Roundup

Barbara Kruger, "The Globe Shrinks" (video still), 2010. Dimensions variable, Four-screen digital video installation. Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery.

• A new video installation by Season 1 artist Barbara Kruger is now on view at the Chelsea location of Mary Boone Gallery. The Globe Shrinks (2010) is a multi-channel piece that, according to the press release, “continues Kruger’s engagement with the kindness and brutality of the everyday, the collision of declaration and doubt, the duet of pictures and words, the resonance of direct address, and the unspoken in every conversation.” The Globe Shrinks continues through May 1.

• Through August 15, photographs by Kiki Smith (Season 2) are on view at Henry Art Gallery in Seattle. I Myself Have Seen It: Photography & Kiki Smith shows how photographs play a central role in the development of Smith’s work. The exhibition features hand-made composites, diaristic snapshots, video collaborations, and the artist’s unique takes on computer-based techniques. Read about the show in the California Literary Review.

• Women of the Chrysler: A 400-Year Celebration of the Arts, now on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, celebrates the role of women in the arts. Drawn entirely from the museum’s permanent collection, the show comprises more than 150 works by women painters, sculptors, photographers, silversmiths, glass artists, and printmakers. Through four chronological sections and three centerpiece installations, the exhibition traces the course of women’s ever-expanding contributions to the arts worldwide. Work by Season 5 artist Cindy Sherman is included in the section on modernist women in the age of feminism. Women of the Chrysler closes July 28.

• Galerie Lelong in New York is displaying new sculptures by Season 4 artist Ursula von Rydingsvard in the solo show ERRĀTUS. The exhibition title means “wandering” or “roaming” in Latin. Among the works on view are Blackened Word (2008), an undulating, free-standing wall that stands nearly seven-feet tall; Unraveling (2007), an elaborate wall “drawing” in cedar; and the wall piece Splayed (2009), made of cup-like shapes that protrude and drape. ERRĀTUS closes May 1.

• Mark Dion (Season 4) and Robert Williams have organized An Ordinall of Alchimy, the first in a series of exhibitions presented by the art journal and gallery space Cabinet. Artists are invited to assemble work under one condition: everything installed in the gallery must have been acquired on Ebay for a total of less than $999. When the show comes to an end, its contents are offered for sale as a single item, once again on Ebay. Dion and Williams, along with their students at the Pennsylvania artists’ colony Mildred’s Lane (Matt Bettine, Joey Cruz, Kathryn Cornelius, Gabriella D’Italia, Scott Jarrett, Aislinn Pentecost-Farren, John Wanzel, Laura E. Wertheim, and Bryan Wilson), used the invitation from Cabinet as an opportunity to explore the theme of alchemical transformation. An Ordinall of Alchimy comprises the objects they assembled. The exhibition opens March 30 at Cabinet in Brooklyn, New York.

• James Turrell, Bruce Nauman (both Season 1), and Jenny Holzer (Season 4) are included in the first Biennale for International Light Art, Open Light in Private Spaces. Staged in the eastern Ruhr metropolis, and held in conjunction with the annually designated European Capital of Culture celebration/RUHR.2010, the Biennale presents works in sixty residential and private spaces in the cities of Bergkamen, Bönen, Fröndenberg/Ruhr, Hamm, Lünen and Unna. Open Light in Private Spaces continues through May 27.

• Season 1 artist Mel Chin is in Baltimore with his Fundred Dollar Bill project. The artist will lecture about art and social reform at Maryland Institute College of Art on March 31, and present two workshops on April 1. Chin will return to Baltimore the second week of April to present at the National Art Education Association’s national convention at the Baltimore Convention Center, as well as to pick up the local Fundreds in a celebration and parade titled Fundred Extravaganza. Read more about Chin in the Baltimore City Paper.

• The Gibbes Museum of Art has announced the Short List of Finalists for the third annual Factor Prize, an annual cash prize award of $10,000 to an artist whose work demonstrates the highest level of artistic achievement in any media while contributing to a new understanding of art in the South. Sally Mann (Season 1) is among the six artists short-listed this year.

• Summer Nights, Walking, the Robert Adams (Season 4) exhibition now on view at Matthew Marks Gallery, was reviewed in the Wall Street Journal. Critic Richard B. Woodward says: “Mr. Adams is our leading photographer of landscape because he doesn’t ignore the human hand in its shaping and maintenance…His is a more realistic view of our role as custodians of the planet, even when we fail at the task, than one that yearns for wilderness in its prelapsarian state. He sees that even the suburbs, those most loathed of real-estate developments in postwar America and elsewhere, are nature preserves of a sort.”

• Calvin Tomkins has profiled Season 5 artist Julie Mehretu for The New Yorker.

• Visit PortlandArt.net to read a two-part interview with Season 4 artist Inigo Manglano-Ovalle.

Weekly Roundup

Sally Mann, "Candy Cigarette" from the series "Immediate Family", 1989. © Sally Mann. Courtesy: Gagosian Gallery.

In today’s roundup you’ll read about three kids in Switzerland, political defiance, Latin American photography, a map upstate, Opera House sails, the nature of light, and airborne balls:

• The Family, The Land is the first museum exhibition in Switzerland devoted to the work of Season 1 artist Sally Mann. The controversial photographs of her three children, published in the 1992 book Immediate Family, will be on view along with recent works, some of which picture her children in adulthood. The artist, according to the museum, “questions memory and the ephemerality of life,” or as Mann has stated, “what remains.” The Family, The Land is on view at Musee de L’Elysee through June 6.

• On March 11, a conversation between Julie Mehretu (Season 5) and Pat Steir (moderated by Susan Harris) will take place at the RISD Museum. Both artists will discuss the central role of drawing in their work, with a focus on issues specific to women artists of their respective generations. The event (free and open to the public) is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line, on view February 16 through July 3.

• Art21 artists Barbara Kruger (Season 1), Laurie Simmons (Season 4), Cindy Sherman, and Jeff Koons (both Season 5) are included in Your History is Not Our History — a group exhibition organized by artists David Salle and Richard Phillips for Haunch of Venison. The show features works produced in the 1980s by artists working in New York City. Phillips says, “We reject the sterilized view that is offered…and hope to offer a more accurate portrayal of the energy and experimentation that was permeating the city during that time.” According to Haunch of Venison, “Salle and Phillips believe that the best work of the 1980s shares a belief in the necessity to take forms, ideas, and content to their extremes.” The exhibition continues through May 1.

• Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line at Malmö Konsthall in Sweden brings together work by artists John Baldessari (Season 5), Simon Denny, Mario Garcia Torres, Thomas Kratz, Falke Pisano, and Ryan Siegan-Smith. The title is borrowed from a 1973 work by Baldessari in which the artist repeatedly documents his attempt to toss — with geometrical precision — three balls in the air. This piece has guided the entire exhibition, which explores an artist’s own self-awareness in the conceptual and pictorial dimensions of their work. Throwing Three Balls is on view through April 11.

• Works by Gabriel Orozco (Season 2) and Alfredo Jaar (Season 4) are on view at the Museum of Latin American Art in the exhibition Changing the Focus: Latin American Photography (1990-2005). Comprising over 75 works created by 35 artists from the four regions of Latin America (Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean), Changing the Focus explores personally-charged response to local and global issues grounded in the contemporary Latin American experience. The exhibition, which continues through through May 2, is the first survey of Latin American photography and photo-based art generated between 1990 and 2005 to be presented in the Los Angeles area. Read the LA Times review.

• Living Under The Same Roof, an experimental exhibition at the Bard College Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), is organized by Curator-in-Residence, Ana Paula Cohen. Over the course of the exhibition, the CCS museum will in effect become a laboratory activated by the audience. Visitors are presented with a map of the entire Marieluise Hessel Collection — some 2,000 objects — developed in collaboration with Paris-based Brazilian artists Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain. The public is invited to select works from storage to be seen in a viewing room in the museum space. The works will then be displayed in a rotating system according to weekly requests. A series of related artist talks have been organized in collaboration with Bard College undergraduate studio arts professor and Art21 artist Judy Pfaff (Season 4). Speakers include Pfaff, Nicole Eisenman, Robert Longo, Matt Mullican, Martha Rosler, and Stephen Shore. View the complete schedule here.

• Works by Bruce Nauman (Season 1), Kara Walker (Season 2), and Paul McCarthy (Season 5) are included in the group exhibition Abstract Resistance, on view at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis through May 23. The show focuses on artists working from the 1950s to the present who have revolted against the aesthetic orthodoxies of their times. Starting with Michel Foucault’s assertion that “where there is power, there is resistance,” curator Yasmil Raymond argues that art made since World War II has been shaped by traumatic historical events in complex ways. Such art, she says, is “resistant to interpretation; it withholds information, it tends to evade identification, and certainly it protests interrogation.” Abstract Resistance proposes a new framework for art that is “aesthetically inventive, ethically engaged, and politically defiant.” In conjunction with the exhibition, the Walker will publish a collection of essays that will be available online in April.

• A new publication dedicated to the work of Season 3 artist Hiroshi Sugimoto has been released. Nature of Light focuses on Sugimoto’s recent investigations into the science and presentation of photography. Published to coincide with his upcoming exhibition at the Izu Photo Museum in Japan, it also offers detailed documentation of the artist’s architectural and landscape redesign of that space. For more information, visit the RAM Publication website.

• Laurie Anderson (Season 1) and her husband Lou Reed (of Velvet Underground) will co-curate this year’s Vivid Sydney in Australia. Previously called Luminous, the live performance festival is partly inspired by the illumination of the Sydney Opera House sails. This year’s festival (only the second in its history) includes large scale light installations and projections; music performances and collaborations; creative ideas, discussion and debate. Reed said: “We see Vivid as being a critical, high-value anchor event in Sydney’s calendar for years to come. Something that has been built and is owned by Sydney, [it] can’t be bid away and will drive those visitors and those dollars and that image of Sydney around the world for many years.” Vivid runs from May 27 to June 21.

• John Yau has written about the work of Robert Ryman (Season 4) for the Brooklyn Rail. Ryman’s exhibition Large-small, thick-thin, light reflecting, light absorbing is on view at Pace Wildenstein through March 27.

Sally Mann’s “Proud Flesh”

Sally Mann, "Was Ever Love," 2009. Gelatin silver print, 15 x 13 1/2 inches (38.1 x 34.3 cm), Ed. of 5. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

“I am not too sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamt it.  Memories quite as much as dreams arouse in me the strongest feelings of the unreality and ephemerality of the world.” — Eugene Ionesco, Past Present, Present Past

There are times when Sally Mann’s photographs seem to hover in a state between private dream and shared memory, simultaneously conveying a sense of the personal and the communal within the same pictorial field. This liminal aspect is on full display in Proud Flesh, the artist’s current exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in New York.  The show consists of thirty-three photographs by Mann, who has turned her photographic gaze exclusively toward her husband of four decades, Larry.

Using her signature wet-plate collodion photographic process, Mann photographed her husband over a six-year period. Shooting in close-up as he posed nude in her largely unadorned and rustic studio, the resulting images depict fragments of Larry’s naked body—and often little more—in a shallow pictorial space. The simplicity of Mann’s images is balanced by her use of the wet-plate process, which adds a warm tone to the surface of the photographs and leaves a distinctive layer of residual marks, pocks and other imperfections, all of which introduce an air of delicacy and ephemerality to these nude studies.

The outward simplicity of these photographs, however, belies a deeper complexity, for on the one hand, they are intimate studies of her husband’s naked, vulnerable body (Mann has described these images as being “like one big caress”), yet they also somehow remain familiar, accessible. What allows for these otherwise private portraits to read as familiar is, I propose, twofold.

First, Mann’s wet-plate process, and its strong associations with nineteenth-century photography, imbue her photographs of her husband’s body with a sense of a remote yet familiar past. It is as if one were regarding anonymous nineteenth-century photographic portraits in a museum or archive, where the absolute anonymity of the individuals depicted grants a certain freedom and license to the viewer’s scrutinizing gaze.

What further renders Mann’s otherwise intimate photographs readily accessible is their insistently referential, albeit elusive nature. This is to say that alongside the effects of Mann’s technical means, a sensation of vague familiarity is fostered in the photographs by the artist’s particular positioning and cropping of Larry’s naked body. The result is a series of nude studies that register as oddly familiar, referring as they do to Edward Weston’s soft-focus pictorial studies, nineteenth-century postmortem and war photography and, further, to classical tradition, specifically to the statues and statuary fragments of antiquity depicting stoic, dying figures (the titles of Mann’s photographs of her husband abound with evocative references to the antique and especially to classical myth). It is precisely these evocative associations with tradition, but yet to no one source in particular, that lends these intimate and private photographs of Mann’s husband an air of the familiar, public.

Continue reading »

Weekly Roundup

Sally Mann, "Hephaestus" (2008), Gelatin silver print. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

• Proud Flesh is up through October 31 at Gagosian Gallery.  Sally Mann‘s (Season 1) new body of work focuses on a photographic study of her husband, taken over a period of six years. Proud Flesh “suggests a profoundly trusting relationship between woman and man, artist and model that has produced a full range of impressions – erotic, brutally frank, disarmingly tender, and more.”

• Sally Mann is also in the group exhibition Hide & Seek: Picturing Childhood at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which opens this Saturday.  The show focuses on photographs of children “as collective memories of childhood itself—a phase of life to which we can never return.”  This long history represented in Hide & Seek also includes images by Lewis Carroll, Gertrude Käsebier, Lewis Hine, Helen Levitt, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Emmet Gowin, Wendy Ewald, Sage Sohier, Julie Blackmon and Gloria Baker Feinstein. Through Feb. 21, 2010.

• The 10th Biennale of Lyon opened last week and includes projects by over 50 artists, including Art21′s Oliver Herring (Season 3) and Barry McGee (Season 1). Themed The Spectacle of the Everyday, this year’s situationist version is curated by Hou Hanru. Through January 3, 2010.

• James Turrell‘s solo show Large Holograms is up now through October 17 at Pace Wildenstein Gallery.  Fifteen unique large-scale works by the Season 1 artist explore the phenomenon of light itself, letting it become the object while capturing it’s normally fleeting qualities.

• The Guardian UK website has a great section called the Guide to Drawing in its Art and Design pages. Here’s a nice little slideshow of graphite portrait drawings by Shahzia Sikander (Season 1), and a few notes on how Jeff Koons (Season 5) articulates his ideas through draughtsmanship.

• The big 20th anniversary exhibition of the beloved Armory Center for the Arts opened this past weekend with Inside/Out.  The venerable teaching institution in Pasadena has been around since 1947, but has been programming dynamic exhibitions only in the last twenty years since moving to its current location in an old National Guard building. The anniversary show’s lineup includes artists such as Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman (Season 1), Daniel Buren, Betye Saar, and Barry McGee.  Through December 31.

• This Saturday, September 26 at 3pm, Stanford-based ecologist Gretchen Daily and artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Season 4) will share their ideas about value, ownership, biodiversity, the art world, and political economies of participation in the Conversation series at the Berkley Museum of Art. The talk is part of the Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet exhibition currently up at the museum.  Artists in Human/Nature visited remote, fragile places in the world and present their responses. Other participants include Mark Dion (Season 4), Diana Thater, Xu Bing, Dario Robleto, and Ann Hamilton (Season 1).  The show ends this Saturday, September 26.

Weekly Roundup

Mary Heilmann, "Two Lane Blacktop" (below) and Tony Oursler, "Five Take Radius" (above), 2009. Courtesy of AIR, Art International Radio.

• Site-specific installations by Mary Heilmann (Season 5), Tony Oursler, Todd Eberle, and Sabina Streeter are currently on view at the Clocktower Gallery in Manhattan. This is the first group of installations at the space since it became the home of Art International Radio in January 2009. For Two Lane Blacktop, Heilmann has painted white lines down a black floor, turning a corridor of the Clocktower into “a displaced highway.” Just above her piece, Tony Oursler has lined the ceiling with eleven over-sized filament light bulbs that brighten and dim as recordings of the artist’s voice emanate from speakers overhead. The Clocktower is open to the public on Thursdays from 12pm to 5pm or by appointment.

• On the occasion of their 95th anniversary, Montclair Art Museum has mounted Out of the Vault. This year-long exhibition celebrates the Museum’s American and Native American art focus. Works by Barbara Kruger (Season 1), Kara Walker (Season 2), and Jenny Holzer (Season 4) are included in the 60 piece display.

• From August 25-November 21, Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois will present Reflection, a one video per day program featuring works by five artists: Andrea Zittel (Season 1), Phyllis Baldino, Patricia Esquivias, Alex Hubbard, and Glenn Ligon. Each video is scheduled for a specific day of the week; Andrea Zittel’s Small Liberties will screen on Fridays.

• Kandors (2000), a video by Season 3 artist Mike Kelley, will be shown in Switzerland as part of the 10-day St. Moritz Art Masters contemporary art program. The festivities begin Friday, August 21. Kelley’s work will be the focus of a panel discussion on Sunday, August 23.

• A newly commissioned collaboration between Mike Kelley and Michael Smith, titled A Voyage of Growth & Discovery, will open September 13 at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, Queens. The installation comprises a two-and-a-half hour six-channel video of Smith’s character Baby IKKI, which he has performed for over thirty years. This is the first collaboration between Kelley and Smith who have been friends since 1975.

• On September 12, Bruce Nauman (Season 1) will bring his project Untitled (Leave the Land Alone) to fruition. Between 11:30am-12:30pm, the words “Leave the Land Alone” will be written across the Pasadena, California sky. Read more about Nauman’s project in the Los Angeles Times.

• Proud Flesh, a new book by Season 1 artist Sally Mann, investigates the bonds between husband and wife. Mann’s sole subject is her husband of 39 years, Larry. This body of nude studies, photographed over a six-year period, will be on view at Gagosian Gallery in New York beginning September 15.

• The Wall Street Journal and Artinfo.com report that Polaroid’s art collection will be auctioned off by Sotheby’s. Polaroid filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late last year. Their collection includes work by William Wegman (Season 1) who, like other well-known artists, used Polaroid’s large-format, 235 pound instant camera for special projects.

Weekly Roundup

Film still from Cao Fei, "RMB City," 2007. DVD, 6 minutes. Courtesy the Artist and Lombard-Freid Gallery.

• Currently showing at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, There Goes the Neighborhood explores the many aspects of community, focusing on the evolution of architecture and landscape as it is embodied within a neighborhood’s past, present, and future. The exhibition features Willie Birch, Amy Casey, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Eva Struble, Dionsio Gonzàlez, Leslie Grant, Nina Pessin-Whedbee, Catherine Yass, Kristin Bly, Matthew Kolodziej, and Season 5 artist Cao Fei. Through August 16.

• The International Center of Photography released the list of artists for the third edition of their upcoming triennial on photography and video art, thematically titled Dress Codes. Centering on fashion, the mix of 34 includes Art21 artists Cao Fei, Kimsooja, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons. The show opens October 2.

• The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women is on view at Cheim and Read. The show brushes aside the traditional “male gaze” and includes sculpture, painting, photography, installation and video by the likes of Ghada Amer, Vanessa Beecroft, Marilyn Minter, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Shirin Neshat, and Art21 artists Louise Bourgeois, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Sally Mann, Collier Schorr, Cindy Sherman, and Kara Walker. Through September 19.

• Send in the clowns! Send in the critics! Send in the clown critics! Ever wondered what a bunch of real clowns talk about while watching Bruce Nauman‘s (Season 1) 1978 video installation Clown Torture?  Your prayers have been answered.

• The Whitney Museum of American Art announced that it will open a retrospective of Roni Horn‘s works on November 6, integrating three decades of the Season 3 artist’s sculpture, photography, installations, drawings, and books.

• A retrospective of John Baldessari’s prints are on view now until Novermber 8th at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor. Over 100 prints are included in the exhibition that spans the four decades of the Season 5 artist’s post-painting period, 1970s to the present. Through November 8.

Weekly Roundup

Pipilotti Rist, "Open My Glade", 2000. Courtesy UNstudio. Photo: © Katrien Franken.

• Curators Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos/UNstudio have invited 12 artists to exhibit work at Fort Asperen, a 19th century defense tower in the Netherlands. “Retreat” is the central theme of the exhibition. Season 1 artist Andrea Zittel participates along with artists Pipilotti Rist, Tobias Rehberger, Frank Havermans, Ann Lislegaard, Absalon, A.P. Komen/Karen Murphy, Jerszy Seymour and others. On view through September 6. Read more here.

• Through September 6, you can see work by Sally Man (Season 1) in By Way of These Eyes: The Sublime, Exotic and Familiar at the New Britain Museum of American Art.  The exhibition, drawn entirely from collector Christopher Hyland’s private holdings, also includes photographs by Herb Ritts, Robert Mapplethorpe, Edward Weston, John Dugdale and Edward Steichen.

• “The master of transforming incidental gestures into art worth thinking about is Richard Tuttle,” writes David Pagel for the LA Times. Read what else Pagel had to say about the Season 3 artist in his review of Thunk, a group exhibition at Khastoo Gallery.