On a Saturday evening a few weekends ago, several artists, performers, activists, and writers gathered at an apartment in Chelsea to discuss their relationship to the city-wide process of gentrification.
Jennifer Dalton
Posted inArt
Art Between Image and Text
To appreciate the group exhibition Thanks for Writing at 601Artspace, you must be prepared to savor the written word. The show highlights diverse considerations of the relationship between language and visual art with 14 artists addressing disparate topics and working in different media.
Posted inArt
Connecting the Dotts at Winkleman Gallery
Winkleman gallery’s newest exhibition Cool Guys Like You by Jennifer Dalton is a must see. You should go and get a 25 cent temporary tattoo, and check out her disarming info graphics about media talk show media coverage.What really excited me though wasn’t the headliner, but the playful, color blasted back room of the gallery.
Posted inOpinion
Social Media Art’s Social Revolution
This month’s ARTnews includes an extensive feature by veteran arts writer Barbara Pollack on social media art. This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in understanding the emergence of social media art and how artists are using the medium to create work.
Posted inArt
Milk Does a White Body Good
Artist Nate Hill’s new project, “White Power Milk” (2011), pushes the boundaries of race, sexuality and commodification. He explains, “I named it ‘White Power Milk’ because I’m selling people that access to white girls from powerful families. Those are the hardest white girls to get access to. They are the powerful.” I interviewed him about his latest art work.
Posted inArt
A Populist Attack on the Art World Pulls Punches
According to Eric Doeringer, the artist-curator of I Like the Art World and the Art World Likes Me, the exhibition’s title—a nod to Joseph Beuys’s 1974 performance “I Like America and America Likes Me”—is meant to convey the “fraught relationship between emerging artists and the art-world establishment,” one marked by a simultaneous desire to criticize the art world’s excesses and to be recognized by it. Art about the institutions of art, both physical and discursive, is hardly a new phenomenon, but unlike Marcel Broodthaers and Hans Haacke, cited by Doeringer as predecessors for the work included in this exhibition, what emerges most clearly here is not “institutional critique” but a sense of anxiety or anger about the artists’ own marginalization and lack of mainstream success.
Posted inArt
Brooklyn’s First Art Fair
When the Verge art fair launched Verge Brooklyn, many Brooklyn galleries were peeved that the DUMBO-based event would take away from local galleries scenes. Why would they have to pay to be in an art fair in their own borough when Armory week was the only time they could get out of town collectors to their spaces? Even if the Verge Brooklyn fair began with a bumpy start it was able pull of something no one has tried before, an art fair in Brooklyn
Posted inNews
Are Plutocrats Collecting Art or Collecting Artists?
Felix Salmon just posted an incandescent piece on the State of the Art World seen through the lens of Davos. At a meeting of plutocrats and artists, Salmon sees collectors buying art not for its aesthetic quality but for its aura: the respect and awe that comes with owning something really expensive.
Posted inOpinion
What Others Are Saying About #Rank
Earlier this month, I sent out a call for comments on #Rank, a project created by artists William Powhida and Jennifer Dalton, who were the masterminds behind #Class (Winkleman Gallery, February 2010).
The following are the responses we received from across the country and around the world. Some are by event participants, while others from observers (both in Miami and remotely). They represent various perspectives on#Rank (with minimal editing and in no particular order).
Also, tonight there is a post-Miami #Rank discussion (6-9pm) at Winkleman Gallery for those who would like to continue the discussion.
Posted inArt
Why Ed Winkleman Did #Rank at the Seven Miami Art Fair
How many of the estimated 46,000 artists, dealers, collectors, and lookyloos that checked in at Art Basel Miami Beach actually made the 35-minute car trip from the stunning South Beach to industrial Wynwood for the Seven Art Fair is still unclear.
Seven was to Basel what Independent New York was to the Armory Show. An art fair (ok fine, temporary exhibition forum), yes, but set up as a museum-like display rather than sales booths, more concerned with theme and content than commodity object. Curatorial considerations made intelligent relationships between artists from different galleries, instead of an “art world greatest hits.” Because of the elimination of sales booths, the pressure was off. Here, dealers seemed to be interested in discussing ideas.
Posted inOpinion
What Did You Think About #Rank?
We’re collecting reactions to last week’s #Rank event at the Seven Art Fair. Did you attend? Lead an event? Stumble upon it? Watch the livestream or follow it via Twitter? Which ever way you noticed it or tuned in, I want you to share your comments or story for a post later this week as we reflect on what it was all about.
SUBMIT YOUR COMMENTARY HERE
Posted inOpinion
Kill Famous Artists at #Rank
We already warned you, so it should be no surprise that Paul Steen’s art world-ized open source video game based on Assault Cube, but injected with 150 of the “most important living artists” according to Artfacts.net, is awesome.
In his virtual world you can roam PS1 or the Istanbul Biennial or at a Jeff Wall show at the Kunstwerk in Berlin gunning down famous artist to win the game. This isn’t a kumbaya game, people. You need to kill to win.
But I have to admit that there’s nothing more fulfilling than reading “Damien Hirst fragged Jasper John.” Download the “Art Assault” modification here: paulsteen.se/aa.html And enjoy!
