A view of Greg Barsamian’s installation at Pierogi Boiler (mobile phone photo)

Greg Barsamian at Pierogi Boiler

I’d never heard of the New York-based Gregory Barsamian but now I’ll definitely notice his name. His kinetic sculpture “Artifact” (2010) is the main attraction in his solo show at Pierogi’s industrial Boiler space, and it was originally commissioned by the very odd — in that millionaire-opens-contemporary-art-museum kinda way — Museum of Old and New (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania. The resulting work is a head that seems to have toppled from some monumental ancient sculpture and landed in Williamsburg. The metal sculpture is lit from inside and light spills out of the carefully placed crevices and holes on the exterior.

Only when you peer inside the massive head do you understand how special this sculpture is. In what I can only describe as a 1920s version of a dreamscape on acid, birds, hats, eggs and other forms whirl around inside to create the illusion of three-dimensional animation. The movement creates a sound like a film projector and its syncopated rhythm.

I shot a very short video with my mobile phone only because I knew it would be near impossible to describe it (it is posted above). The true power of the work became evident to me a few days later when I couldn’t stop thinking about the animation inside and the sensation of wonderment I experienced staring at the scultpure, something I rarely encounter nowadays.

Greg Barsamian’s Private View is on view at Pierogi Boiler (191 N14th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn) until July 31.

Shari Mendelson at Sideshow Gallery

A view of Shari Mendelson’s carefully crafted objects at Sideshow Gallery (photo by the author) (click to enlarge)

One of Mendelson’s impressive large scultpures covered with what may be melted wax. (photo the author) (click to enlarge)

You’ve got two days left to see the Translations in the Ubiquitous Largesse show with Paul Baumann and Shari Mendelson at Sideshow Gallery, so you better run. While the whole show is intriguing, Mendelson — as always — stands out. She has taken plastic refuse (mostly disposable bottle parts from what I can tell) and created rather intricate objects that resemble Roman, Byzantine or early Islamic glass or rock crystal vessels. But beyond what could be construed as an environmental gimmick, Mendelson’s objects don’t only provide eco-commentary but feel more attuned to a futurist sensibility that is not weighed down by doom and gloom.

Her small sculptures remind me of African folk objects that are fashioned out of tin cans or other unorthodox materials on hand. Some of the pieces are covered with wax (or resin? not sure) that hides the seams of its construction. Mendelson’s objects are tapped into some skewed pseudo-futurist vision where trash will be revered for its beauty — a form of neo-punk utopianism that we don’t see enough of today.

In an esssay that accompanies the show, Matthew Seidman accurately describes the objects as, “Vessels warty, monstrous, elegant.” He goes on to make an interesting observation:

Two things are said to be the sign of human cilivization: the handmade vessel and organized waste. The womb and the asshole. Our hole life. And human desire is said to bend around itself. In speech.

I know, I can’t stop laughing at the “hole life” part but — while it obviously simplifies civilization for poetic effect — it seems accurate. There’s a yin-yang in these objects that make them fascinating.

Shari Mendelson is showing in Translations in the Ubiquitous Largesse at Sideshow Gallery (319 Bedford Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn) continues until THIS SUNDAY JULY 18!

A somewhat blurry photo of Jim Herbert’s “Nakes People” (2010) (photo by author)

This year, I found many artists participating in the 2010 Bushwick Open Studios are overlaying faces and bodies with bright splotches, fluorescent dabs, and other patterns. Such “fauvist tattoos” — as I like to call them — spice up these figures, while making them look more provocative and enticing. Fauvism is a term with some historical baggage but I think it articulates the colorful zest many artists are layering onto skin — it’s like they are covering their figures with painterly tattoos. After a decade epitomized by airbrushed photographs that cast the face as a smooth, even and perfect plane of color, these artists are rebelling with wickedly raw and vibrantly colored skin. It was a welcome surprise.

Jim Herbert’s “Naked People” (2010) is painted in oil and hang on the back wall of the English Kills Art Gallery. This detail demonstrates just how many layers of color Herbert can pack onto skin. An analogy to Oskar Kokoschka is tempting but his brushwork creates a thicker density of color and his symbolism invokes a rawer less sublimated take on sexuality.

Hagopian’s portrait of androgynous vocalist Laurel Katz-Bohen of all girl David Bowie cover band, Ziggy Starlet. Maro Hagopian, “Ziggy Starlet” (2008) (via marophotography.com)

Maro Hagopian (aka Miss Maro) may not be a painter but the photographs on the wall of her studio echoed this fauvist tattoo trend. One of the recurring themes in her work is the outlandish masks that people create with makeup. For example, her photo “Ziggy Starlet” (2008) depicts the lead singer of an all girl David Bowie Tribute Band. The use of pink make-up far exceeds the typical light rouge on the cheeks. Another photo by Hagopian depicts Lady Gaga before she catapulted to fame. There is a deep exchange between the face in contemporary painting and the cutting edge of street fashion.

Left, Heather Garland, “Thirty” (2010); right, Timothy Rollin Rickerill, “Dead 19” (2009) (photos by the author) (click to enlarge)

Heather Garland’s fluorescent self-portrait “Thirty” (2010) was hung over the weekend at Arch Collective (18 Wyckoff Avenue). Marking her 30th birthday, its rich layers of neon colors and random splatters form into her face. Matisse and the Fauves never explored this radioactive side of the color spectrum. Garland is taking Fauvism in a more disco-colored direction, which feels fresh, even it is obviously steeped in the lessons and history of 20th C. painting.

On the second floor of 119 Ingram studio complex, Timothy Rollin Rickerill gazes at the darker side of war. His oil painting “Dead 19” (2009) is based on a photo of a war corpse. His stylized depiction of rotting flesh is not for the feint of heart, but it was another formally commanding depiction of an abnormal and unusual face. Although the fauvist label doesn’t match the more gothic tones and mood of the work, it reflects a similar artistic boredom with the perfected face of fashion magazines. The influence of English painter Francis Bacon is evident in his work but so are other influences, like Native American masks.

Layton Hower, “Entitlement” (2003) (via LaytonHower.com) (click to enlarge)

Layton Hower’s acrylic painting “Entitlement” (2003) provoked a fight between me and another man at the Archive on Saturday night. (The Original hangs on the second Floor of 1 Grattan Studio Complex.) As I showed him this glowing neon portrait of George and Laura Bush on my digital camera, he said that it just did nothing for him. His tone suggesting that it had no deeper substance and implying Bush was a terrible president.

I liked it more the way I appreciate Warhol’s clever color and haunting hollowness. The speckles of blue across Bush’s face, the pink and red patches in Laura’s hair, there was so much going on. It really beat the standard boring naturalism of most US Presidential portraits — though John F. Kennedy did have his painted by Elaine de Kooning.

Kazuo Ooka, “Thinker No6” (nd) (via soymonk.com)

Kazuo Ooka’s massive studio on the fourth floor of the 2 Harrison Street complex featured his recent oil series of multi-chromatic figures modeled after Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” (1902). “Thinker #6” is among the strongest in the series. The figure’s musculature is lavishly developed by streaks of green, red, and orange. It’s hard to pull off a background that is bright colorful but still doesn’t compete and divert attention away from the focus of the picture. Ooka knows how to strike a careful compositional balance that produces a wonderful paintings.

It has been 105 years since Louis Vauxcelles coined the term Fauvism when he encountered bright, vivid (and arguably garish) colors at the 1905 Salon d’Automne. Nevertheless, a hundred years later and across the ocean in Brooklyn, an intense burst of bright color still goes a long way. Pink jolts and green streaks danced on these skins like tattoos. Matisse is back from the dead and training artists at an underground Tattoo Parlor in Bushwick.

View of Ellen Letcher’s multimedia installation featuring St. Sebastian (via the author) (click to enlarge)

What made the 2010 Bushwick Open Studios so phenomenal was the chance to stomp through hundreds of studios and draw connections. I was surprised by how various artists who may have never met each other are all re-envisioning the Old Masters with a playful and lighthearted streak.

At Norte Maar, Ellen Letcher’s 2010 multimedia installation featured recurring images of St. Sebastian. A cluster of posters were collaged on the wall. Many of the reproductions of the Christian Saint were overlaid with speckles and blobs of paint. This montage spilled down from the wall onto the leather couch. It was playful, light, and fun.

Norte Maar’s director Jason Andrew and I launched into a fascinating conversation over what role the Old Masters play in contemporary art. Andrew spoke about how Letcher brought these Old Masters up to the next level. He casted it as a kind of artistic upgrade – the way DJs breathe new life into a disco classic by giving it a dumph-dumph beat and some extra spunk and effects. And he’s certainly right that contemporary artists can freshen up these well-known icons, but I still think we can go a little deeper than this remix/upgrade metaphor, and talk about how artists precisely “make them better.”

Letcher’s installation struck me as charmingly irreverent. One of the greatest limitations of Renaissance Art is that it always feels so serious, severe, and formal. There is a whimsy, an ease, and an informal joy that jolts out from Letcher’s mixed media installation. You feel like St. Sebastian finally loosened his collar and let loose. And it was so appropriate to see him in this more capricious light, given how many people admire him more for his alluring physique than his courageous acts.

Shawn Gallager’s studio on the 2nd floor of the 2 Harrison Street complex likewise offers a far less serious take on an Old Master. In his impressive oil painting, surprisingly titled “Untitled” (2003), Nicholas Poussin’s “Et in Arcadia ego” (1637-38) stands on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in its Star Trek: The Next Generation incarnation. Four crew members stand around looking solemn. The environment of high-technology and the tense uniformed poses makes Nicholas Poussin’s paradise appear more alluring and bucolic. It’s such a comic and funny juxtaposition but with an air of seriousness. It also evokes the enigmatic and ironic realities of Poussin’s original painting, which injects the pastoral scene with an air of death.

Shawn Gallager’s “Untitled” (2003) Nicholas Poussin/Star Trek history painting (via flickr.com/hragv) (click to enlarge)

This over-the-top campy combination also works because there is something just a little “off” about Gallager’s colors. If he painted straight naturalism, his works would feel as tacky as bad fan art. But there is this subtle brown infused throughout the picture like it had aged through the centuries. At first, I thought something was wrong with my camera when I was trying to capture an image and the image wasn’t coming out right. It’s a testament to his skill that it confused my digital eye. The irony that he is painting what is now vintage science fiction with the reverence of a great historical moment is not lost on the viewer. This stylistic effect gives his painting another dimension beyond its subject matter — so it didn’t just feel like another one-liner.

David Pappaceno, “Famethrower” (2010) (via the author) (click to enlarge)

At the English Kills Art Gallery, another oil painting, this one by David Pappaceno, “Famethrower” (2010), places two Baroque figures (or are they Rococo?) into a forest of faint gray trees. A vibrant plaid pattern hangs over some of the picture plane like a tattered curtain. There is a great sense of variety — some sections are totally abstract and dreamy like the gray sky, while others are more representation and concrete. The gray pollinates the colors that surround it by making them appear more vibrant and luscious in comparison to the dull hue. Once again, it’s a marvelously laid back and fun inclusion of an older painting style but without the crushing weight of history.

It is refreshing to see these familiar faces from art history liberated from their calcified formality and overdramatized severity. Lechler, Gallager, and Pappaceno all riff off the Old Masters and respect their strong affinity for carefully planned color, but inject them with a visual playfulness that makes them thoroughly contemporary. All three avoided falling prey to visual one-liners, and — at the risk of sounding like a 19th C. connoisseur — all three artists demonstrate a strong style that rewards close looking.

A work by Robert Morris from the 1960s (above) and a space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968 (bottom)

This past Thursday at the Philoctetes Center on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, sculptor John Powers presented several excerpts of his ambitious project “Star Wars and Modernism: An Artist Commentary.” Accompanied by composer R. Luke Dubois, who scored the project, and Columbia Art History fellow and Triple Canopy senior editor Colby Chamberlain, who provided editorial assistance, the project is an original and provocative look at Star Wars (1977) not merely as a Hollywood blockbuster and mythic narrative, but as an art object.

This art object, Powers informs us with his skillful voice-over, must be viewed as a film, “made by a specific group of people, at a specific time in history.” This is Powers’ jumping off point and he makes no bones about Star Wars’ service as a metaphor: the war in the title is the Vietnam War, and the evil Empire is indeed America.

Extending beyond the film’s mere metaphoric qualities, Powers intends for the viewer to regard Star Wars as engaging in a dialogue with modernist art practices, specifically Minimalism, as well as the artists, critics and even the political climate of the era in which the film was made.

Compositionally, Powers constructs his projects as a series of chapters (Introduction, Film as Object, and the cleverly named Spiral Jedi) that mimic the scenes and chapters of the original film. Employing a dual-channel effect, Powers splices scenes of the original film above still shots of minimalist art and architecture, narrations of seminal art history tracts, and photographs of a wide variety of artists and critics. Finally, Powers asks us to view George Lucas’ Star Wars as a willful misinterpretation of perhaps the greatest science-fiction movie ever made, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

In many ways, Powers’ project is unfit for review due to the sheer amount of material and research he has compressed; a proper review would require several parts. I fear that ignoring even one of those tangents might compromise the review as a whole, but this is leavened by the fact that Powers screened only three of 14 episodes during the event — the project is as yet incomplete. I should also add that I am very familiar with the source material and though a bit younger than Powers the film too was always in “the background of my life,” as Powers said during the presentation.

I had always accepted the mainstream view of Star Wars as mythic mass-entertainment so it was at first jarring to be exposed to a countervailing view that Star Wars functioned, for Lucas and the team of people he surrounded himself with, as a critique of 60s and 70s America, Cold War politics, and modernist art. What other reaction can one have when a singular piece of childhood nostalgia and influence is held up to severe critical telemetry?

Casting Star Wars Modernism

This discomfort does not interfere with the enjoyment of the film though. Powers skillfully employs humor that lightens the mood even as he goes about the dirty business of equating Darth Vader with the image of the “ugly American,” and Nixon-era paranoia with the activities of the Galactic Empire. In fact, one of the funniest moments arrives when Powers casts critic Clement Greenberg, high-priest of Abstract Expressionism and prominent critic of Minimalism (he called it “pedestrian”), as the Emperor (with corresponding visual cue), Greenberg’s intellectual heir Michael Fried as Darth Vader, the Minimalist artist Robert Morris as Obi Wan Kenobi, and Robert Smithson as Luke Skywalker. Donald Judd is “just a droid, probably C3P0.”

2001: A Space Odyssey (above) and Star Wars (below)

The heart of the film, he says, is not in illuminating Lucas’ left-wing critique of America and the Cold War, though that seems to be a prevalent concept that is never far from Powers’ reading of the film. In fact, the heart of the film is how Star Wars and its artistic predecessor 2001, engage with and react to Minimalism. Whereas Kubrick’s film loyally respected Minimalism’s precepts: its repetitious forms, its symmetry, its “lack of traces of process, abstractness, general wholeness” as Powers says quoting from a 1967 essay by artist Robert Morris, who was a leader of the Minimalist movement, Lucas flaunted these conventions. Instead of replicating the coolness and severity of Minimalism, he assigned Minimalist Art to represent the Empire, specifically in the construction, design and overall aesthetic of its Star Destroyers, the uniforms of its Stormtroopers, the monolithic Darth Vader (its chief gangster), and of course, the Death Star. At the same time, Lucas employed a separate palette and aesthetic to the Rebels and the Jedi. Minimalism is white, black and gray, clean, orderly; everything in its right place. The Rebel Alliance and their Jedi brethren are dirty and unkempt; their ships are aging and rusty, the palette of their wardrobes range from tans and yellows to greens, the color of earth not Le Corbusier.

The way that Powers discusses Lucas’ work as an engagement with Kubrick is fascinating as well. From Powers’ initial essay in Triple Canopy, “Star Wars: A New Heap,” which presaged the more ambitious presentation:

Kubrick’s 2001 environments were cohesive and balanced, informed by architectural theory and late-60s aesthetics … By contrast, Lucas willfully mashed together minimalism, modernism, and NASA design. Two visual rhetorics are at war on-screen: The first is that of an industrial superpower; the second is that of a rogue fringe of misfits and mismatches.

There is a certain kind of glee at seeing an image of the Death Star placed next to stills of 70s architecture (aerial photos of the World Trade Center’s construction almost exactly mimics the look of the Death Star’s reconstruction in Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi with its craggy outcroppings and fractured spires). This glee comes from the immediate understanding that Lucas was indeed engaging not only with historical myth and narrative constructions but with contemporary art and politics.

It is hard not to hear oneself say, “but of course” during Powers’ discussion of Kubrick’s obtuse black monolith in 2001. He refers to 2001 as a supreme piece of Minimalist art. Furthermore, Kubrick’s black monolith, when interspersed with images of Darth Vader’s first appearance in Star Wars: A New Hope, a giant, hulking figure in black blotting out the serene whiteness of Princess Leia’s Blockade Runner, and New York’s United Nation’s building, only solidifies the obviousness of both Lucas and Kubrick’s allusions.

Darth Vader

But here is also the problem with Powers’ work. In his conflation, the “rogue fringe of misfits and mismatches” in short “The Irrascibles” are the Jedi. Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Hans Hoffman, Willem de Kooning are at once the faces of Abstract Expressionism, which Powers likens to “the force.” Their work, on the other hand, made possible a certain “benevolent propaganda” to be used by sinister cold warriors like Greenberg, the statesman and politician Nelson Rockefeller, and MOMA’s first director, Alfred Barr, as examples of American superiority in the arts, as well as politics and economics. An audience member brought up this contradiction, citing Clement Greenberg’s lifelong Communist sympathies (which he never recanted), and asked Powers how Greenberg could be cast as a Sith, an astute point which Powers clearly expects. He knows the contradiction is there, and though he parried the question by explaining that he was referencing the writings of Max Kozloff, and furthermore that he was forced into at least some generalizations by his project, the point remains. To this writer, this is the reason first to see the film and then to engage in what is sure to be a long and heated, yet entertaining, debate. In short, Powers has a triumph on his hand, one that even without viewing in its entirety I know I’ll return to again and again.

Lastly, I cannot, in good faith, sign off without mentioning R. Luke Dubois’ powerful score which, like Powers editorial and even Lucas-like editorial style, engaged the original Star Wars score by John Williams, while mashing it up with the minimalist style of Phillip Glass. It is the perfect music for Powers’ splendid project.

For more information on John Powers and his ideas, please visit his blog Star Wars Modern.

And here is the introductory clip from Powers’ YouTube channel.

Mads Lynnerup, “If You See Anything Interesting Please Let Someone Know Immediately” (2007) (click to enlarge)

Wherever money is exchanged in massive volumes there is an excitement and buzz in the air. It’s a kind of highly oxygenated sense that something extraordinary is going to happen. Casinos, trading floors and art fairs are awash in this kind of electricity. This year Art Chicago wasn’t one of those places. To the contrary the preview had all the energy of a funeral home decorated in an array of polite artworks in gilded frames.

One of the first things to catch my eye was a gigantic Julian Schnabel self portrait. I didn’t get close enough to read the label, but I assume it could only be titled the “The Apotheosis of the Artist by Himself.” We’d barely arrived and already my colleague was wondering aloud as to the whereabouts of a rope and a convenient place to hang herself.

It wasn’t entirely bleak. A highlight was Partisan, a project curated by Rachel Funari and Karsten Lund, independent curators based in Chicago. Immediately outside the project space a screenprint by Mads Lynerrup read “IF YOU SEE ANYTHING INTERESTING PLEASE LET SOMEONE KNOW IMMEDIATELY!” Obviously it’s a play on the homeland security warning signs, but within the context of the fair I assumed that meant they’d take steps to remove the interesting object. I suppose if I were in a more generous mood I might have also read it as a humorous sales pitch.

Partisan also included Josh Azzarella’s digitally manipulated images in which familiar scenes from the war on terror are rendered commonplace when the artist meticulously removes the central elements from highly charged political images and replaces them with vacant landscapes. In this case vacant skies seemed eerily threatening simply because of the suggestion that they might be filled with airplanes intent on delivering death and destruction. Young blonde women flirt with soldiers at the Republican National Convention while the rest of the country looks weary and worn down in Alec Soth’s photographs documenting The Last Days of W. In Brian Alfred’s animation It’s Already the End of the World familiar images of subways, airports and razor combine in a threatening montage. Brian Crites contributed a collection of interesting portraits of the criminal element with his series of Mugshot paintings. It’s a show we’ve seen many variations on in the past decade, but it still managed to feel fresh and within the context of the fair even a little challenging.

NewCity, a Chicago Alternative Newsweekly, did a feature and a small exhibition called Breakout Artists 2010: Chicago’s Next Generation of Image Makers.  It was a little crowded and uneven, but they did have some interesting drawing of bizarre homoerotic occult rituals by Elijah Burgher, an artist whose work is based on the rituals of secretive men’s societies and fraternal organizations. Burgher was introduced to me in a studio visit the previous day with Terence Hannum another Chicago artist not in the show, but worth paying attention to. The two had collaborated on the beautifully produced zine Cataract of Fire and Blood.

Club Nutz’s space at Art Chicago (photo by the author) (click to enlarge)

I had my fill when I overheard one dealer dismissing a pair of collectors because they supported “emerging art,” although she did concede that “somebody had to.” Being one of those people I took that as my cue to head downstairs to NEXT, Art Chicago’s ersatz “alternative fair” for “emerging” galleries and artists.

In comparison to Art Chicago proper, NEXT was a raucous breath of fresh air. It was anything but staid and polite.  It didn’t take long until a pair of young women approached us and asked us to sing a song in honor of the fair. I might have heartily joined in, except that it was set to the tune of “Old MacDonald” and I wasn’t prepared to infantilize myself just yet. Next year I’d suggest they set their lyrics to a rousing sea chanty or drinking song.

One of the first things to capture my attention was Charlie James Gallery, a relatively new space in LA’s Chinatown. It helped that he had Steve Lambert’s humorous and brightly lit signs pointing to the booth as well as a number of absorbing pieces by William Powhida, explaining and exposing the art world, all displayed in a prime spot as you stepped off the elevators.

Dorsch Gallery from Miami had an interesting series by Kyle Trowbridge where he had printed out the code from a series of JPEGs downloaded from porn sites and made notes in the margins as if he were annotating works of literature. At Morgan Lehman Gallery, I discovered works by photographer David S. Allee, who makes haunting images of urban and suburban landscapes at night.

A sign at Club Nutz, which describes itself on Facebook as “It’s a website/TV show and a comedy/music label that’s an actual club.” (photo by the author) (click to enlarge)

If you are an artist or musician I’d recommend taking a look at Harold Arts. I don’t have a lot of details, but it looks like an interesting project. It’s based in Chicago, but every summer it culminates in a sort of residency/convergence on a thousand acre farm in Southeastern Ohio.

One of the strongest sections of NEXT was something I came to think of as the Relational Aesthetics Ghetto. I heard contradictory reports, but either through the generosity of the fair’s organizers, or a need to fill space, a number of young galleries, alternative spaces, ’zine publishers, and other assorted art world riff-raff were given booths along the fair’s far back wall.

Notable among these were Milwaukee’s Club Nutz the world’s smallest comedy club, run by Scott and Tyson Reeder. When I visited they were hosting Bernie Circuits the Robot Comedian. His delivery was a little flat, but the jokes were funny. Oakland offered up the Poemstore a project where Zach Houston writes poetry on demand, and a The Present Group, a quarterly “art subscription service” a cross between a ’zine and an edition publisher. Chicago’s 12 Galleries,  a roving exhibition project was there and Oak Park’s The Suburban invited Olof Olsson a performance artist from Copenhagen to offer advice for a fee at their booth. Together this group made the far back corner of the fair a noisy and engaging spot that was often choked with people.

It may not have been the energy generated by vast amounts of money changing hands, but NEXT certainly had a buzz about it. Maybe it’s the kind of energy generated by interesting new work.

David Altmejd, “Untitled” (2009) (Image © David Altmejd Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery, NY, Photo by Jason Mandella) (click to enlarge)

Pimply teenage boys have cared for and tended pterodactyls for so long. Up in the attic, these flying dinosaurs soar on their posters and swoop into action scenes of their beloved b movies. But, if I may be so poetic, the stench of unwashed clothes appears to be forcing the beasts out of their nests.

A detail of Altmejd’s “Untitled” (2009) (click to enlarge)

Some artists have discovered that this flying reptile have some real cross-over potential. At first, this sounds like an awfully kitschy idea, but when this airborne creature is refracted, distilled, and boiled down into a raw winged shape, it really sings rather than squawks.

Altmejd Takes Flight

David Altmejd’s recent pterodactylian sculpture in a glass case at PS1 was so entrancing. It had so many small vivid details to take in and relish, including hundreds of threads of shimmering gold, stark white, and stridently bright colors were fastidiously interwoven to form the creature. An elaborate system of transparent plastic trusses suspends the threads in mid-air and defies gravity to articulate a truly uncanny anatomy.

The room at PS1 was dim with the case brightly illuminated, pumping up the sculpture’s colors with Caravaggesque intensity. The work took that familiar experience of gazing at a skeleton in a glass case in a whole new direction. And it didn’t curdle into something that felt campy or like it was trying too hard to be scientifically precise, which is usually how appropriations can disappoint.

As a disclaimer, the work is untitled. Despite its chimerical ambiguity, it displays a corporal center, a head, legs, and wings that stretch out. It is fair to say that the work hits the pterodactyl’s semiotic dartboard — even if it’s not a bull’s-eye.

Stephen Holding, “Millennium Theory” (2007) (image courtesy the artist) (click to enlarge)

Holding Abstractions

Stephen Holding paints the abstracted wings and tail of the pterodactyl in his 2007 multimedia piece “Millennium Theory,” recently on view at Art Connects New York gallery in SoHo. The abstract shape had this sense of motion like a twirling boomerang. The soaring wing chevron formation grabs the eye and leads it across the picture plane in a “U” trajectory. The mix of highly saturated colors was perfectly complimented by the blank void that surrounded them. Other works by Holding lacked this calmer area, which helps balance out his impulse towards ambitious and dense patterns. Horror vacui can be overwhelming in a bad way — like a guy who pairs a polka dot tie with a plaid shirt and pinstripe paints.

Strong compositions that cascade colors without feeling messy, pack it all into an interesting shape, and still manage to strike a graceful balance are hard to get right. “Millennium Theory” reveals the potential of a young artist who is still learning how to do what he does best without getting carried away.

Taking risks with unusual shapes can reap some handsome rewards. It was a formidable challenge to pull off the pterodactyl without it turning kitschy or weird. But when artists handle references right, like Altmejd and Holding do, you respect them more for playing with fire and not getting burned. As Scottish writer Thomas Caryle once succinctly wrote: “No pressure, no diamonds.”

Stephen Holding’s “Millennium Theory,” (2007) was part of the Feed the Kitty show at the Spattered Columns Art Space in Soho (March 10, 2010 – April 7, 2010), organized by Art Connects New York. David Altmejd’s Untitled Sculpture (2009) was part of Between Spaces at PS1 (October 25, 2009 – April 12, 2010) curated by Tim Gossens and Kate McNamara.

Parker Ito, “The Most Infamous Girl in the History of the Internet” (2010)

Hyperallergic contributor Artie Vierkant is in San Francisco this weekend; here are some of his top picks for art events that are not to be missed.

If you happen to be in San Francisco this weekend, now is the time to head out and see some truly great exhibitions.  Friday through Sunday is packed with some very unique events.

Friday 16 April
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery – RGB Forever, Solo Exhibition by Parker Koo Ito

Parker Ito has been getting significant attention on the Internet and in galleries for his striking takes on Internet culture (and an artist statement that could very well define a generation of Internet artists).  From the gallery’s website:

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery is pleased to present RGB Forever, Parker Ito’s first solo exhibition. The title refers to RGB color space, an additive color mode viewed on all computer screens in which red, green and blue, combine to create over 16 million different colors. RGB is also Ito’s metaphor for new mindsets and attitudes about contemporary culture that have emerged out of the pervasiveness of the Internet. For Ito, the Internet is an abyss of readymade artifacts open for excavation, interpretation, and reclamation. In the Backroom Gallery, he will present painting and video works in which Internet ephemera salvaged from both high and low Web culture is translated into new forms.

One highlight of this show will be Ito’s painting “The Most Infamous Girl in the History of the Internet” (2010), the second in a series of paintings of JPEGs commissioned by the artist from art-outsourcing companies in Asia. “Most Infamous Girl” is an oil rendering of a JPEG that many people may be familiar with without even realizing it: one of the most widely-used stock photographs on the Internet, a photo of a smiling girl carrying a backpack — described by Ito as Warhol’s Marilyn for the Internet age.

Saturday 17 April
NOMA Gallery – AVATAR 4D, curated by Caitlin Denny and Parker Ito (as JSTChillin’)

Avatar 4D Poster

Over the last year, Parker Ito and Caitlin Denny have run JSTChillin’, an Internet-based curatorial project seeking to collapse the boundaries between artist and curator.  The project instantiates its first exhibition in an IRL-gallery space this Saturday at NOMA Gallery (simultaneously presented at Reference Gallery in Richmond, VA), featuring performances and other works by:

Ann Hirsch, Ben Vickers, Brad Troemel & Lauren Christiansen (The Jogging), Bryan Morello, Chris Coy (Seecoy), Duncan Malashock, Elna Frederick, Guthrie Lonergan, Iain Ball, Jon Rafman, Justin Kemp, Michelle Ceja, Mitch Trale, Petra Cortright, Ryder Ripps, Zach Shipko, PWR PAPER, Brenna Murphy, Lindsay Lawson & Stewart Uoo, Caitlin Denny, Parker Ito.

Rich Bott, image from Telegraph Shake Down series (2010)

Sunday 18 April
2nd Floor Projects – STILL AT LARGE STOP LAST SEEN AT MIRA MESA CHILIS STOP, Solo exhibition by Rich Bott (closing reception)

Rich Bott gained notoriety in the 1990s as one half of the video art duo Animal Charm (with Jim Fetterley), sampling and remixing mass media from television and VHS tapes into savvy, irreverent takes on popular culture and American consumerism.

In recent years, Bott has begun to make a name for himself as a solo artist. The works presented at 2nd Floor Projects come from several separate but related series, all possessing the same layered cultural critique that gave Animal Charm its lasting impression. For instance, “Mission Tan” (2010) is a large charcoal drawing (with a difference — the charcoal drawing is layered over a large-format digital print, lending an eerie noir realism) depicting an inherent irony: a popular tanning salon located in the heart of Southern California. In his Telegraphic Shake Down series, Bott presents a similar irony: a grouping of typed telegraph messages openly making reference to the Internet, iPods, and other staples of contemporary technology that seem deliberately out of place in Bott’s absurd constructions.

A map showing all five gallery locations, including Postmasters Gallery (far left), Flux Factory (top), Janet Kurnatowski Gallery (center right), Storefront Gallery & Grace Exhibition Space (both bottom right). (click to enlarge)

It was Friday, April 2, and my mission was five gallery openings in one night: Postmasters in Chelsea, Flux Factory in Long Island City, Janet Kurnatowski in Greenpoint, and two Bushwick venues, Storefront Gallery and Grace Exhibition Space. It was an ambitious list to accomplish but my goal was set.

Accompanied by Hyperallergic publisher (and my husband) Veken, we dashed over to Chelsea to start the night. On the way to Postmasters’ Mirror, Mirror we ran into the ubiquitous Zach Cohen who warned us it was already full inside. We walked in and I immediately saw William Powhida chatting with Magdalena Sawon of Postmasters. He had a glazed look in his eye that was probably due to exhaustion caused by last minute preparations for the work he had on display. With his emerging fame comes the stress of constant production, and without studio assistants, Powhida was constantly under the gun. I remember thinking, “I hope he gets a studio assistant soon.”

When I finally spoke to Powhida, he pointed at the drawing “Cosmology Number 1” (2010) that included my photo in a Dungeons & Dragons matrix of character alignments. He had placed me on the Chaotic Neutral axis, safely away from the demigods who game the system (Larry Gagosian, Jeffrey Deitch) and across from fellow online pundits (Barry Hoggard, James Wagner) who inhabited a more Lawful region. In the drawing, I look boney, vampiric, and it scared the crap out of me that I was placed between Walter “I think bloggers suck but I write online” Robinson and Elizabeth “X-Initiative is my response to the recession” Dee — I didn’t really want to know what it all meant but I asked Powhida afterwards via tweet & email and I almost wish I hadn’t.

Artists William Powhida and Matthew Langley at Postmasters’ “Mirror, Mirror.” (Click to enlarge)

“You have to be very careful using names in the art world,” he started after telling me that he has a newfound interest in witchcraft. “It’s probably more dangerous than summoning a demon by name, but on several occasions, I’ve made the terrible mistake of summoning the lesser blog demon Hrag Vartanian through the Internets without drawing a restraining circle. Now that I clearly understand his demonic nature, I carry a piece of chalk in case I need to make contact with him about art. I’m sitting inside a circle right now. I may have made him very angry.”

I admit he pissed me off so to get back at him I called Sotheby’s the next day and told them I wanted to sell the one piece by him I own and I made them promise it would go for under $500 and kill his market prices … lesser demon, indeed … MWAAAAHAHAHAHA! Ok, I admit I didn’t do that. I will say though that his work has never looked better and it is a great thing to see an artist hit his stride. There is an aesthetic exuberance in Powhida’s work nowadays that wasn’t there as recent as his Schroeder Romero show last year (nowadays they are Schroeder, Romero & Shredder). At The Writing Is On The Wall exhibition in the spring of 2009, his work appeared monastic and austere. It felt like a rejection of the art world in general, like he was fed up with making pretty things. Today, some of that frustration seems tempered by more positive emotions.

Sawon offered her own take on the “Cosmology … ” piece: “[New Museum director] Lisa Phillips — This quote pisses me off the most, ‘Your drawing was merely a nuisance. We control the conversation,’ NO YOU DON’T!”

I ran into artist Yevgeny Fiks, whose Communist Party USA series was on display. Painted in a social realist manner, they are depictions of the truly marginal in America. Victims of a system that rages against them even when they don’t pose a real threat anymore. They are people who are verbally attacked every night on Fox News as unAmerican. Here they are all framed in a similar way and they come across as minor utopian heroes — lesser utopian heroes, if you will — that represent the power of the human will to forge its own path. They look empowered even though they live well outside the halls of American power.

A view of some of Yevgeny Fiks’ Communist Party USA series at Postmasters (click to enlarge)

I ran into others I knew from other shows and friends who I run into at such things: Erik Sanner, Brent Burket, Olympia Lambert, to name a few. This was a crowd I saw more often online than in person. I spotted Jerry Saltz at the opening and I didn’t want to deal with him considering Powhida had drawn me with my provocative quote about Saltz that I tweeted a while back. I knew he hated that quote. I’m sure it was one of the reasons he de-friended me on Facebook.

A work by MOMO perfectly placed in the chaos of Queens Plaza. (click to enlarge)

I collected Veken and we darted out with Sanner to the E train and ran into Marisa Sage of Like the Spice gallery who showed up to support Jenny Morgan, one of the featured artists in the group show. Flash forward and half an hour later we surfaced in Long Island City, where we immediately came across a large piece by street artist MOMO on an abandoned building at a busy intersection. It was perfectly placed and his geometry worked perfectly in the crazy chaos of that corner that included overhead subway tracks, streets that shot into each other at every angle imaginable and what felt like an endless cluster of quirky industrial buildings. We stopped for a moment to take in the scene and then walked over to Flux Factory for Man Bartlett’s first New York solo show.

Artist Man Barlett talks to a visitor at his Flux Factory show (click to enlarge)

Barlett was at the space and when we arrived he was happy to see us. The place looked clean and a little solemn. Small ink drawings were placed under glass on a table, burned wood pieces hung on the wall, one large drawing was sitting on a drafting table, and another sculptural installation stretched across one wall. There was a constant trickle of people coming in to look at the art and everyone seemed receptive. Bartlett’s work was sparse and controlled. They were equal parts cerebral and emotional, no one side dominated the other. Veken and I shared a can of beer and lingered to see how the work would change. It felt a little religious, but I’m an atheist, what do I know.

A view of Man Bartlett’s Systema Mundi show at Flux Factory. (click to enlarge)

We rushed out after checking our phones to realize time was ticking. After a brief debate about whether walking to Greenpoint from Queen Plaza or taking the G train was a better option — the G can really be THAT bad at times — we rolled the dice with the G and surfaced in Greenpoint 20 minutes later. By the time we arrived at the Janet Kurnatowski Gallery the place was packed. It was a star-studded crowd for Ben La Rocco and Craig Olson’s two-person show, Love’s Uncomprehending Smile. Painter Chris Martin was talking to Janet Kurnatowski, who was decked out and looking really fantastic. Brooklyn Rail publisher Phong Bui was darting around the room with a price list. Bui and I spoke briefly. He always shares short insights that help you see the work with a greater clarity. His encyclopedic knowledge of art helps you situate the work in a historical context.

I spoke to the artists and put my foot in my mouth with La Rocco when I admitted I couldn’t tell whose work was whose. La Rocco’s work can be very mercurial and change quickly and being unfamiliar with Olson’s work, well, I felt like an idiot. Claudio La Rocco was floating around and there were other familiar faces from the Brooklyn Rail and the milieu the publication covers extensively. It was the brainiest crowd I’d seen all night.

Looking into Janet Kurnatowski Gallery (click to enlarge)

The place was crowded but the work looked fantastic. La Rocco had started to fashion his frames to suit the paintings and some bulged, others were cut, and some works were odd shapes. Olson’s work was flatter and more linear. Stripes of bright colors zigged and zagged and one giant lemony eye forms appeared again and again. One even had a ring of incense sticks sticking out of it like eyelashes. I asked him if he planned to light it but he said Janet wouldn’t let him. With good reason, it would’ve probably asphyxiated the room full of culturatti.

Walking into a packed Kurnatowski (click to enlarge)

Kurnatowski does some of the smartest painting shows in Brooklyn, maybe even New York. If someone ever writes a book about Brooklyn’s own contribution to early 21st C. abstraction, I’m guessing this gallery would receive its own chapter. There has been so many great shows with dozens of artists (young, old, emerging, established) and they all feel connected by an aesthetic, though no one has been able to put their finger on what it is exactly.

One of Craig Olsen’s lemony eye works. (click to enlarge)

We walked out of Kurnatowski and found a yellow cab in front of the door right as it was letting out a hipster couple ready to join the fray inside the gallery. Bushwick from Greenpoint isn’t straightforward with public transportation so we sacrificed our dollars in the name of convenience and speed.

We exited at Storefront Gallery in Bushwick and immediately said hi to another dozen people who were preventing us from seeing Deborah Brown’s large canvases that used the urban fauna of the neighborhood as their source. A painter with a local studio, Brown’s work has simplified considerably and each work was dominated by one bright color that served as the ground for her artful line.

“I like these, they are more messy than she usually paints,” Veken whispered in my ear. And he was right. The lines felt free and overlapped easily. The matrix of steel fences were overlaid with the jagged loops of barbed wire and undulating vines. They felt modernist, traditional, and abstracted.

Deborah Brown’s large paintings easily fill Storefront Gallery (click to enlarge)

Deborah Brown’s fabulous shoes stuck out at her opening.

Deborah Brown was talking to Idiom Magazine publishers and art bloggers James Wagner and Barry Hoggard at one point and we were all staring at Brown’s fantastic shoes. They looked like they were marbelized. The humor of four gay guys (Veken was among the gawkers) staring at the artist’s shoes was pretty funny. I made sure to speak to gallery director Jason Andrew, he’s just lovely, sculptor Norman Jumblaut, artist Rico Gatson, Amy Lincoln, and Kevin Regan. Only Austin Thomas was not there though I wished she was. She’s a breath of fresh air in any room. Thinking of her I remembered to check out her new show at Ocketopia: a group exhibition at the Lesley Heller Work Space in the Lower East Side.

It was only 9:10 at this point and I only had one show left on my agenda, Rob Andrews’ performance at Grace Exhibition Space, which the invite promised would continue until 11:30 pm. We walked out with Wagner and Hoggard and tried to have dinner together at Roberta’s pizza restaurant down the street but the the host told us there would be an hour wait. We walked out of the establishment and Barry was the first to respond, “Bushwick is over.” He followed up with a tweet to let the art and tech worlds know. We parted ways soon after deciding that we didn’t want to settle for a mediocre meal at someplace like Life Cafe.

A vibrant mural in the Bushwick industrial park (click to enlarge)

Walking towards Grace Exhibition Space we continued our tour of street art and came across murals and pieces that looked familiar from various Flickrstreams I monitor but things I hadn’t yet seen in person. There was one stretch on our way to Grace Exhibition Space that instantly flashed me back to Bushwick of a decade ago as we walked down a block where we encountered wafts of marijuana smoke and sketchy men hanging out in or near cars parked on the street. I remembered how dangerous this whole neighborhood once felt at night and how this was the first time in years that I had felt I had walked into a possibly precarious situation. I didn’t miss that sense of fear that was once always part of nightlife in the neighborhood.

Rob Andrews performance at Grace Exhibition Space ended right before we arrived. (click to enlarge)

We walked into Grace and it was curiously quiet. We immediately saw artist Andrew Ohanesian and others from the English Kills Gallery crew, including Chris Harding and Peter Dobill. Ohanesian broke the news to us, “You just missed the performance.”

“But it’s only 10-ish,” I whined.

“Rob lost his voice,” he said. It turned out that the performance involved a musical serenade that stressed out Andrews’ vocal chords as he repeated a good morning melody. I was told that it was all an attempt to awaken an inanimate object that was spotlit on a small platform in front of the gorgeous windows overlooking Broadway. The space looked great. Recently they must have knocked down the studio that was near the windows. It felt more like the original space back in 2006, or whenever that was, before the makeshift studio was built.

A view of Grace Exhibition Space from the massive windows that overlook the Broadway El. (click to enlarge)

Daniel Aycock and Kathleen Vance of Front Room Gallery arrived after we did and they were just as disappointed as we were. Collectively we all sought solace in beer… it helped. Rob Andrews came out and apologized for ending so soon. It might have been the first time I saw him without a minotaur helmet on. I didn’t recognize him.

The night ended without a bang. We headed home to Williamsburg having covered more geography than one probably should in one night of openings. “What the hell did you do to us,” protested Veken at the end of the night. “It’s all in the name of art,” I told him. I knew I was a little nuts and over ambitious but I wasn’t going to admit it.

A view of Jim Torok’s clown room at Pierogi Gallery in Williamsburg (click to enlarge)

If you walked into the backroom exhibition space at Pierogi you might be forgiven for thinking you had just walked into a children’s room decorated by Werner Herzog and John Waters, by which I mean it is a sordid, moody, desperate, joyous, and campy. No really.

Jim Torok, “Life Is OK, Except for the Clowns" (2010) (click to enlarge)

This half hidden show is the better half of a larger exhibition by Jim Torok titled You Are A Vibrant Human Being: Portraits and Clowns, which combines two very different bodies of work. The clown room is filled with … wait for it … paintings of clowns sometimes overlaid with hand painted letters that that are characteristic of Torok’s more jokey and satirical work.

Since the show opened, I’ve visited it at least five times and each time I find myself dashing past his more conventional portraits to stand in the middle of the clown room filled with joy. Some of the paintings scream out with feel good phrases informed by the Oprah age, “You Are A Sensitive Caring Person” or “You Are Fine,” while others are more ominous, “I Don’t Want to Die.”

Jim Torok, “Nobody is Perfect” (2010) (click to enlarge)

These paintings feel loose and easy, and you could be fooled into thinking they were whipped out in a few hours, but that’s not really the point anyway. These paintings are pure escapism. They seem more interested in exploring absurd emotions that verge on the surreal. Clowns are an endearing symbol of childhood and innocence, but clown paintings are a punchline in the art world. Sad clown paintings in particularly feel schlocky and kitsch, and Torok seems to enjoy that his canvases play with all those ideas. These paintings feel free to be whatever they want. They laugh, they cry, and they are always fun.

“Things Will Get Better Some Day” is my personal favorite. The grinning clown is skillfully painted but he or she seems trapped behind large letters that offers up a shot of optimism. Yeah, I know the clown is right, but that won’t stop me from being the first to shed a solitary tear when the exhibition ends in a few weeks and this room of moody jokesters goes away.

Jim Torok’s You Are A Vibrant Human Being: Portraits and Clowns exhibition continues at Pierogi (177 North 9th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn) until April 19.

An installation view of Stripped, Tied & Raw at Boesky with works by Donald Moffett (second from left) and David Noonan (far right) (click to enlarge)

Marianne Boesky, you saucy little wench! Mine eyes had never taken you for propagating such a meat market amidst such clinical settings. You always seemed more the proper uptown type, rather than mistress of Manhattan’s nether regions.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system … walking into Boesky’s current five-man exhibition I felt at any moment some Neanderthal would ambush me from the rafters to have his way with me. Focusing on the more brutish and texturally risqué works of Jorge Eielson, Donald Moffet, David Noonan, Steven Parrino, and Salvatore Scarpitta, Stripped, Tied and Raw is a wonderful exploration into the power of fabric as sexual metaphor and how a simple fold can be much more than the sum of its parts.

Steven Parrino, "Devil's Day" (1995) (click to enlarge)

Throughout the show, fabric and material is crushed, bunched, pressed, cut and expanded into shapes and scenarios that emphasize their carnal nature. In the side room, which contains Donald Moffet’s “Lot 103007X” (2007) and Steven Parrino’s “Glamracket” (1997), we are immediately confronted with a before and after of the activities of the lower groin. I was especially enthralled by the labial Moffet piece, which literally opens itself to Parrino’s agonizing, twisted mass of fabric on the floor. Seemingly teasing us with its feminine wiles. Parrino’s angry muddled pile seems to warn of the eternal damnation that will follow the plucking of Moffet’s petals before us.

In his short life, Parrino certainly embraced the motto of so many Team Gallery artists — ”Live hard, love harder” — and his rock star persona makes him the star of the show in many ways. Take the delectable wickedness of “Devil’s Day” (1995), a rumpled puddle of red set against a swathe of clean fabric, reminiscent of the morning after … pill. Maybe here is a hotel lay gone awry, blood pooling in the center of the crime. I asked myself who exactly is the victim here, or was there just a bit too much fun had with some Pinot at an afterparty?

Physical Narratives

Jorge Eielson's (left) "Quipus 24B" (1999) and (right) "Quipus 57 CR" (1985) (click to enlarge)

Another of the show’s strong suits lies in the complex knotted works of Jorge Eielson. Through his mastery of the ancient Incan craft of quipu, Eielson’s pieces are especially poignant due to the fact quipus was used as a non-verbal means of recording systematic communication by a people who had no literary culture. Here, every unmade bed has a story. The ties and splits of fabric reach out to the corners of the stretcher bars to give the viewer the sensation of literally being tied up, arms and legs splailed to and fro, not unlike a medieval torture chamber, or a dominatrix’s den. Perhaps a lesson in trust, or more likely, “How the hell did I get myself into this mess,” Eielson’s compositions in “Quipus 24 B” (1999) and “Quipus 57 CR” (1985), simply cannot be examined without focusing on the very human characteristics that are brought about by their appendages’ positioning through bondage.

Salvatore Scarpitta, "Mas Tres" (1959) (click to enlarge)

In contrast to the explicit behavior that is suggested in the art of Parrino and Eielson, Salvatore Scarpitta’s “Mas Tres” (1959) is a lesson in chastity — holding something beneath the surface, rather than letting it go. Plywood strappings appear in an almost sports bandage formation across the canvas. Scarpitta overlays the plywood again and again, until what once was a tiny Band-Aid is now covering what can feel like a gaping wound. You almost want to thank Scarpitta for appearing to be the lecturing overprotective father in contrast to the other artists, for he obviously has our best interests at heart.

David Noonan, "Untitled" (2009) (click to enlarge)

Where the show falls flat is in Australian artist David Noonan’s goth-punk silkscreens — far more likely serving as mere filler for a figurative narrative that is woefully unnecessary in this show, given the far superior concept works of the other four artists. There’s something to be said for a bit of mystery, and though a Martin Gore-like character behind op-art bars in his undies may be something I could deal with in another context, here it is woefully in need of being bound, gagged and asphyxiated. Perhaps he needn’t have looked much further than his own countryman, INXS’ Michael Hutchence, whose sad death by rumored autoerotic asphyxiation would have been a much better source of inspiration.