Common journalistic wisdom has it that it takes three examples of a phenomenon to make a trend. 1) Kitty City, a metropolis/playground for cats that was built at Flux Factory in May and unveiled with a kitten adoption drive the first weekend in June; 2) The Cat Show, an exhibition devoted to cats, also with adoption drive (two!) and a zine, opening June 14 at White Columns; 3) Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt, a long-term installation opening later this summer at the Brooklyn Museum that will explore the role of felines in ancient Egypt. And I didn’t even mention last year’s Internet Cat Video Festival, which organizers will reprise this summer, or the Grumpy Cat Art Project at a studio in Alabama.
Art
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Social Media at the Helm of Performance on Governors Island
On a muggy Saturday afternoon, a crowd of modern dancers in tie-dye shirts, clown-glam costume wearers, bemused children, art-aware observers, and curious members of the general public gathered on the parade ground of Governors Island. As the assembled mob grew, a tweet was read aloud, a command: “Prancercise meets Pina Bausch then fast forward yoga alternating with slo-mo dog panting.”
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The Impossible Desire of the Encyclopedic Palace
VENICE — After all of the seeing and being seen, it was a huge relief to enter Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace), curated by Massimiliano Gioni, the youngest artistic director of La Biennale in 110 years. This museum-like exhibition featuring work from over 150 artists from 38 countries made throughout the past century is split between two massive locations: the Central Pavilion at the Giardini, and the Arsenale, which is roughly twelve times the size of an American football field.
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George Sugarman’s Unrecognized Greatness
I am tired of critics characterizing George Sugarman (1912–1999) — whose work was either overlooked or marginalized during his lifetime — as an idiosyncratic sculptor. By labeling him in this way, they are able to suggest that the neglect was partially his own doing, and to imply that he wasn’t interested in formal issues thought to be integral to sculpture, and which had been explored by his innovative forebears: Constantin Brancusi, Julio Gonzalez, Alberto Giacometti and David Smith. If those are the measures of idiosyncrasy, then he clearly wasn’t that at all. In fact, the opposite seems more true to me — he was at the center of things, but hardly anyone dared to notice.
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Why Jeff Koons Made Michael Jackson White
I still remember the ripples of titillation — occasionally marked by muffled, satisfied guffaws — that spread predictably through the art world when Jeff Koons first exhibited his shiny white and gold porcelain sculpture, “Michael Jackson and Bubbles” (1988) at Sonnabend in 1989. The sculpture was part of the series, Banality, which became a definitive step toward garnering the kind of attention Koons has always craved.
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Wishing Upon a Star: Dan Colen’s Escapist Fantasies
The spirits that I called at Oko is Dan Colen’s first solo exhibition in New York City since his disastrous Gagosian show in 2010.
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Reading the Writing on the Wall at #OccupyGezi, Part 2
ISTANBUL — ‘Look at all the things a few trees can do!’ reads this graffitti near Tünel on Istiklal Boulevard. Erdoğan infamously dismissed the protests in a speech where he said ‘This is all too much for a few little trees.’ Of course, the trees were symbols of the general policy of the AKP government of sellling public land to private coorporations without public consent.
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Is Neon the New Black?
On the evening of May 10th, Greenpoint’s art spaces were abuzz. It was the first Friday night when everyone agreed to stay open late, a coming of age moment for the district.
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Overheard in the Art World
What we “overheard” at Art Basel Hong Kong, the 55th Venice Biennale, the 2013 Bushwick Open Studios, and elsewhere.
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Animals Suspended in Animation with Paint and Resin
Using just acrylic paint and resin, Singaporean artist Keng Lye shapes three dimensional depictions of animals that seem suddenly frozen in time.
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The Sensory Worlds of Memory
TORONTO — Lost in the Memory Palace sticks with you long after you leave the museum. It crawls under your skin and creeps into your head. Don’t be surprised if it even starts popping up in your dreams.
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Shock of the View: Seeing and Scene at the Venice Biennale
VENICE — Nothing quite captured the absurdity that is the vernissage of La Biennale better than Ragnar Kjartansson’s fishing boat, the S. S. Hangover, floating through a barrel-vaulted and colonnaded boat parking structure carrying six horn players performing British composer Gavin Bryars’ “White’s SS” (1977) as Tilda Swinton looked on elegantly from a grassy beach at the end of the massive Arsenale. Yes, I actually saw Tilda Swinton. I died.
