“One picture leads to another,” Alec Soth tells the two filmmakers in Somewhere to Disappear (2011), a documentary that follows him around during the last two years that he worked on his photographic book, Broken Manual (2006-11). Later, in the film, he says: “I want to be carried.” Soth yearns for a subject to overwhelm his curiosity, leading him into places and situations that he couldn’t have otherwise foreseen. Photography is his means of discovering both the self and the Other, and where the two meet. It is how he finds “a path through the world.”
Art
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Breaking into Prison: Gómez + González Get the Inside Story
The Spanish artists Patricia Gómez and María Jesús González, who exhibit under the moniker Gómez + González, fashion works from the vestiges of soon-to-be-demolished places. In these architectural spaces, they put their training as printmakers to use, creating monoprints of walls and doorways, using a modified version of strappo, a technique used in the conservation of frescoes. Instead of a copper plate or lithography stone, the matrix for the print is provided by the building itself, whose outer skin is transferred to a thin, transparent fabric. The prints are complemented by photographs and video documenting the process and the sites.
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Ways to Proceed
Allison Miller is a young abstract painter who lives in Los Angeles, a city of few pedestrians. It is a vast, sprawling circuitry of vehicles and traffic jams, of getting from one place to another in the shortest and most efficient manner. You can still find neighborhoods to live in, but you cannot walk very far. Poor people take the bus. Taxis need a GPS. Wandering is not permitted.
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Down and Out at 75th and Madison
I left the 2012 Whitney Biennial with a feeling of leadenness that no amount of free coffee (available at Monday’s press preview, and many thanks for that) or Werner Herzog’s video ode to beauty (“Hearsay of the Soul,” 2012) could alleviate.
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Klaus Biesenbach Explains Why Kraftwerk Deserves a MoMA Retrospective
Last week, Kraftwerk-loving New Yorkers were in tears as tickets to the German electronic group’s upcoming retrospective at MoMA sold out at lightning speed. One friend told me she was poised with multiple browsers when tickets went on sale, but she was still out of luck, as they disappeared in the blink of an eye. Despite the fact that MoMA welcomes over three million visitors a year, the institution’s outsourced ticket vendor appeared to be caught by surprise, and thousands of fans were left disappointed in the wake of Kraftwerk-gate — OK, not exactly a controversy, but everyone was peeved by the whole process.
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The Volume of the Everyday
Zimoun is a Swiss sound and kinetic artist whose installations incorporate hundreds of everyday objects and simple movements to create a foreign experience for the viewer. He asks questions like, “What are the aesthetic and tonal qualities of cardboard in motion?” Traveling recently to see Volume, his first solo show in New York, I was oddly excited to find out.
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The Curious Desert Memorials of Western China
LOS ANGELES — Deep in western China, in the deserts of Xinjiang Province, artist Lisa Ross photographed curious and colorful memorials, and she’s showing them this month at UC Berkeley.
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Her Storybook Universe
To view Sarah McEneaney’s new show at Tibor de Nagy Gallery is to behold a storybook universe. Her colorful paintings sparkle on the wall like a diamond ring.
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Werner Herzog: Whitney Biennial Contributor, But Don’t Call Him an Artist
Art lovers in attendance at last night’s conversation with Werner Herzog at the New York Public Library were fortunate enough to hear a little of the backstory behind Herzog’s participation in this year’s Whitney Biennial. The inclusion of the celebrated filmmaker in the exhibition took many art-worlders by surprise when the list of participants was announced in December.
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The Brucennial Defends Nothing, Represents Everything
Since it’s founding in 2001, The Bruce High Quality Foundation has been using performance and pranks to critique the art world. The collective prides itself on “developing amateur solutions to professional challenges.” I’ve admired their irony, even envied their sense of anarchy.
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Art Rx
This week, it’s time to prepare for the New York art fairs! Well, not quite yet. Until that frenzy begins we suggest you sit down, read this list and consider doing something more cerebral, like two art tours in Brooklyn, a quirky -nnial known as the Brucennial, retrospectives by Dr. Seuss and Edward Gorey …
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Smashing the 80s Away
LOS ANGELES — We all want to be rid of certain things. Prized possessions that have fallen out favor. Mementos of love lost and embarrassing youths. But it’s hard to part with what we own. D3: Object Divestment Services aims to assuage this need to leave the past behind us
