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.
Some Thoughts on China + Transformation
Mu Li "The Fruits of Blue Lotus Flower"
In the final week of the Transformation series, I’ve asked a number of people with diverse points of view to offer their thoughts on the topic.
To kick things off, I introduce Ellen Pearlman, a Brooklyn & Beijing-based writer, curator, critic and film maker, who shares her thoughts about the notion of Art + Transformation in regards to China’s art scene:
Cao Fei, one of the featured artists on Art21, came of age during China’s accelerating transformation playing out through Second Life scenarios issues of fragility, loss and alienation. Other young Chinese artists are also delving into issues of their country’s transformation. International cities like Shanghai just had its first gay festival and though Beijing remains the art hub, second tier industrial and provincial regions like Wuhan and Sichuan and Hangzhou are also adding their voices into the mix. Instead of the block buster exhibits mounted by more recognized artists experiments are exploring themes of infantilism and powerlessness with new Chinese Anime, existentialism and ennui with WAZA, and issues of cultural dislocation and transgression with O Zhang.
O Zhang, "Daddy and I" No. 16
New Flash Points Topic: Fantasy
Cao Fei, "A Mirage (COSPlayers Series)," 2004. Digital c-print, 29 1/4 x 39 1/4 inches. © Cao Fei. Courtesy the Artist and Lombard-Freid Projects, New York.
In celebration of the fifth season of Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century, premiering this fall on PBS, the current round of Flash Points topics correspond to our upcoming four thematic episodes: Compassion, Fantasy, Transformation, and Systems.
After a few weeks of Compassion, up next is Fantasy. The signature question for this topic is:
Does art expand our ability to imagine?
Additional questions to ponder include:
- How might personal dreams and cultural taboos shape our vision?
- How does our desire for perfection control us?
- What role does technology play in wish fulfillment?
Throughout this time, we’ll publish in-depth posts about the artists profiled in the forthcoming Fantasy episode — Cao Fei, Mary Heilmann, Jeff Koons, and Florian Maier-Aichen — as well as feature musings from our roster of guest writers, extending the theme beyond the series to real world correlations, questions, and perhaps even discomforts.
Help us start the conversation by leaving a comment below. Feel free to note other artists whose work addresses the theme of fantasy — we’d love to collectively envision a broader landscape of how it is considered in contemporary art practice. And save the date for the Fantasy episode which debuts nationwide October 14, 2009 on PBS!
Mary Heilmann, "Go Ask Alice," 2006. Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches. Photo by John Berens, © Mary Heilmann. Courtesy the Artist, 303 Gallery, New York and Hauser & Wirth Zurich London.
(L) Jeff Koons, "Bear and Policeman," 1988. Polychromed wood, 85 x 43 x 37 inches. © Jeff Koons. Courtesy the Artist; (R) Florian Maier-Aichen, "Untitled," 2007. C-print, 91 x 72 2/5 inches. © Florian Maier-Aichen. Courtesy Blum & Poe, Los Angeles and 303 Gallery, New York.
Weekly Roundup
Martin Puryear, "Untitled I", 2002. Aquatint etching. Ed: 40. Courtesy of Barbara Krakow.
- The Cincinnati Art Museum has announced an exhibition of prints by Season 2 artist Martin Puryear. The show is scheduled to open December 2009.
- Barbara Kruger (Season 1) is included in the forthcoming exhibition of work by women artists at the Centre Pompidou. Read about this ambitious display in the Los Angeles Times.
- Seven works by Ursula von Rydingsvard (Season 4) will be installed at the ancient site of Pilane, Sweden for the annual exhibition, Sculpture at Pilane. Opens June 6.
- The MacDowell Colony, a leading artist residency program, will present their annual medal to Season 2 artist Kiki Smith.
- Season 1 artist Richard Serra has received a 2009 honorary degree from Yale University.
- Louis Vuitton; A Passion for Creation at the Hong Kong Museum of Art features a selection of objects from the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création. Pierre Huyghe (Season 4) is included in this display of works by European, American and Chinese artists.
- Work by Andrea Zittel (Season 1) is on view in U.F.O. Art and Design at the NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaf in Düsseldorf. Continues through July 5.
- The 2009 edition of Art-Athina–Greece’s leading international art fair for contemporary art–will include work by Kara Walker (Season 2) and William Kentridge (Season 5) in a collateral event/exhibition, entitled Praise of Shadows. Through July 26 at the Benaki Museum.
- Season 5 artist Yinka Shonibare has enlisted children to assist with his piece for the National Gallery, London. Read the Times Online article.
Catching Feelings
I’ve been trying to ignore all of the panic and mania surrounding swine flu, since as far as I know anxiety has not yet been proven to afford protection against infection and death. An article in yesterday’s New York Times, however, caught my attention, noting the ways in which Mexicans have become particularly marked by the stigma of the flu even though cases have appeared throughout North America and Europe. Apparently healthy Mexican travelers were placed under quarantine in China; several Latin American countries suspended flights from Mexico; groups seeking to limit Mexican immigration to the U.S. have been referring to the virus as “Mexican Flu” in the media.
What struck me about all of this is that it is nothing new. Remember the Gay Plague, anyone? What is important here is not the transmission of disease, but rather the transmission of affect: anxiety, fear, disgust. I drudged up NBC’s very first coverage of the “gay cancer” (1982), which had not yet been identified or named as HIV/AIDS. Right from the start “lifestyle” was named as the cause of the illness, a way of life as disease vector.
In contrast, a 1976 public service announcement from the CDC about swine flu emphasizes the ways in which anyone can catch it, and anyone can transmit it. We should all be scared into vigilance and personal responsibility.
All of this brings me around to thinking about Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whose artworks involving stacks of posters or pieces of candy free for the taking enact the spread of a virus from a single source. His 1991 work Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) perhaps most directly links the transmission of infection to the transmission of affect. As viewers take a piece of candy from the 175 pound pile (the weight of the artist’s lover Ross in health), they symbolically take a piece of the lost lover’s body as it wastes away at the hands of AIDS. They also take a bit of melancholy-tinged shiny sweetness, a communion with the beloved in joy and death.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, "Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA)," 1991
This morning I found my piece of gold-wrapped candy from an installation of this work. I still can’t bring myself to eat it. Maybe I can’t make the move from melancholia to mourning? I seem to be resisting the work’s designed disappearance. But then again, the work is also designed for constant renewal; the pile of candy is replenished to its original weight each morning. Perhaps if the work were permanently installed around the corner with its promise of a breath of life each day, I could take that sweetness and loss into my mouth.
My shiny piece of "Portrait of Ross" in LA
U.S. Embassy in Beijing
On the occassion of the 2008 Olympic Games, the new American Embassy in Beijing opened last Friday with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Though not as prominent as the architectural “monuments” of Rem Koolhaas or Herzog & de Meuron, the eight-story embassy is the second-largest U.S. diplomatic post in the world.
A display of contemporary art inside the embassy includes Art21 artists Louise Bourgeois and Maya Lin (both Season 1), Martin Puryear (Season 2), and Cai Guo-Qiang (Season 3). Works by Yun-Fei Ji, Hai Bo, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark DiSuvero, Ellsworth Kelly, Jeff Koons, and Betty Woodman are also on view. The Art Newspaper reports that the $800,000 spent for art on the Beijing project is the largest sum ever for a U.S. embassy. The State Department calculates its art budgets based on a building’s square footage.
Cai’s gunpowder piece Eagle Landing on the Pine Branch (2007) is, according to China Daily, especially significant: “the motifs of eagle and pine trees were chosen for their symbolic value in both China and the United States, representing the friendship and cooperation between the two countries.” Catch a glimpse of the piece in a New York Times video titled “The Pyrotechnic Imagination”.
The building was designed by the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Click here to view the firm’s image gallery for the project.
Sound and Vision: A Night with Barry McGee, Japanther, and PAPER RAD
A full roster of public programs accompany Life on Mars, the Carnegie International 2008. On Thursday, July 24th Douglas Fogle, curator of the 55th Carnegie International, will host a conversation with Art21 artist Barry McGee (Season 1). McGee will discuss his work as well as artists’ response to the phrase “life on Mars.” For the exhibition, McGee has transformed an ordinary hallway with his mixed-media installation using bold colors and dynamic geometric shapes. Following the talk will be performances by Japanther, Extreme Animals [Paper Rad], and Centipede E’est with DJs Cutups and Edgar Um in the Sculpture Court. This event titled Sound and Vision will not disappoint.
1968 | 2008
This is not the first time that Summer Olympics Games are embroiled in environmental and political controversies. In 1968, Mexico City, with its high altitude containing 30% less oxygen than at sea level, proved to be a controversial choice. The lack of air led to terrible results for some, while others were able to achieve world records. Forty years later Beijing is faced with massive air pollution as it completes the preparations for the Olympics. The world renowned Ethiopian runner Haile Gebrselassie has opted out of running in the marathon noting “the pollution in China” as a threat to his health. It remains to be seen how the environmental pollution in China will affect the athletes and the Games’ results.China is also plagued with its outrageous treatment of Tibet, resulting in massive protests around the world. Protest was also seen in Mexico City during the medal ceremonies when the two Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos “performed their Power to the People” salute. Peter Norman, the Australian silver medalist, wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge showing his support for Smith and Carlos.
Another athlete to cancel an Olympic Games participation was Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest chess players of all time, who passed away earlier this year. He had plans to play for the United States at the 1968 Chess Olympiad in Lugano, Switzerland and backed out when he saw the playing hall with its bad lighting.
As athletes were breaking records in 1968, artists were busy reshaping culture. Nancy Spero(Season 4) was working on her War Series (1966-70). Bruce Nauman (Season 1) produced his first video titled Pinch Neck. Romare Bearden, in addition to being involved in founding The Studio Museum in Harlem, also established Cinque Gallery with the help of Norman Lewis and Ernest Crichlow. Cinque provided support for younger minority artists.
1968 marked the passing of Marcel Duchamp and the coinage of “15 minutes of fame” when Andy Warhol stated “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Frank Zappa released his first solo album Lumpy Gravy and performed King Kong with the Mothers of Invention at BBC Studio in London. Chou Wen-chung, who had studied with Edgard Varese, completed Nocturnal (1961-1968), an unfinished piece by Varese.
In his 1968 Nobel Lecture, Yasunari Kawabata explained, “The excitement of beauty calls forth strong fellow feelings, yearnings for companionship, and the word ‘comrade’ can be taken to mean ‘human being.’ The snow, the moon, the blossoms, words expressive of the seasons as they move one into another, include in the Japanese tradition the beauty of mountains and rivers and grasses and trees, of all the myriad manifestations of nature, of human feelings as well.”
How will 2008 be reminisced forty years from now? What will be the low and high points in our cultural and social achievements? Will 2008 be a critical year marking a pivotal change in the way we treat the environment and each other?
China Haze. Credit. Provided by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE
Jörg Heiser at Austrian Cultural Forum
On Wednesday June 25th at 7:00 p.m., the Goethe-Institut New York and the Austrian Cultural Forum will co-host a conversation between Jörg Heiser and Brian Sholis, editor at Artforum.com. The event will begin with the presentation of Heiser’s new publication titled All of a Sudden Things that Matter in Contemporary Art. Earlier this year Heiser’s writing also appeared in another book, Romantic Conceptualism, featuring the work of Collier Schorr (Art:21 Season 2, Loss & Desire). The photographs of Schorr are also included in the exhibition, History Will Repeat Itself Strategies of Re-enactment in Contemporary Art, originally opening at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and now traveling to Goethe-Institut Hong Kong. For those who might not have visited the ACF building on 11 East 52nd Street, take the virtual tour on the menu to see the intriguing double-height theater located on the 2nd and 3rd floors. This narrow and dynamic building, designed by the Austrian born architect Raimund Abraham, is a poignant reflection of romantic conceptualism. The seating is limited to 80 and reservations for this free event can be made at 212-439-8691.
U.S. Embassy Makes Olympic Rings
These big metallic tulips aren’t just going to be on view in Spain, where they are permanently installed along the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao’s riverside façade, above. An edition of Tulips by Jeff Koons, as well as new work by Art:21 artists Louise Bourgeois, Cai Guo-Qiang, Martin Puryear, and Maya Lin are included on the checklist of 18 contemporary Chinese and American artists that will on view when the massive SOM-designed American embassy opens in Beijing, just before the start of the 2008 summer Olympics. Many of the pieces are either new commissions or site-specific works purchased by the State Department. According to The Art Newspaper, the State Department calculates the budget it will spend on art based on a new building’s square footage, and therefore $800,000 will be spent on art for the Beijing project — the largest sum ever splurged on a new US embassy.
