Discussion of Ryan Trecartin’s work usually brims with a recurring set of buzz words: nonlinear, hyperactive, cut-up, frenetic. Any Ever, the Los Angeles-based artist’s latest exhibition at MoMA PS1, retains the psychedelic schtick that characterizes earlier works but adds higher production values and an expanded cast of actors.
Reviews
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Mack Attack! The 2011 Southern Open
New York, I feel your pain. You’re hemorrhaging under the weight of your artistic success and accomplishments, bleeding out talent like Jackson Pollock after the car crash. I know it’s hard to keep all your children around while the rents keep rising and the scene gets hyped into the next century while it struggles to hold on to what it had in the last. Times are tough! But your loss is Louisiana’s gain …
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Notes From Bushwick: Jules de Balincourt’s “Itinerant Ones”
Artist Jules de Balincourt has achieved considerable recognition in the last six years since his inclusion in Greater New York at PS 1 in 2005. I love that he’s still involved in his community, and his selection of artists for his Itinerant Ones show at the Storefront in Bushwick seemed like a kind of intimate snapshot of a corner of the Brooklyn art scene. The end result, however, is a different story.
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LOST on the Lower East Side
From L to R: Marianne Vitale, “Model for Burning Bridge (1)” (2011), reclaimed lumber, 68 x 18 x 22; Yamini Nayar, “Strange Event” (2009), c-print, 30 x 40; Leah Beeferman, “Journey into the unknown machines attempt a construction of the skies” (2010), digital animation with sound (All photos by author) Some people look at the […]
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Grant v. Lee: The Battle Continues
150 years after the conflict began, the Civil War provides the subject matter for a group show at the Good Children Gallery in New Orleans. But far from being a mere exercise in nostalgia,”Grant v. Lee”, curated by Sophie Lvoff, gave artists the opportunity to “gently and subtly evoke the times and culture of the Civil War while bringing up significant questions about race and nationalism that we continue to ask today.”
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Projecting Female Identities
Following the passage of the same-sex marriage bill in New York and a recent weekend of LGBT pride, it just felt right to attend curator Bradford Nordeen’s “Dirty Looks.” The series is a monthly platform for experimental queer film and video that Nordeen affectionately describes as “roaming”—June’s event was held at P.P.O.W. Gallery in Chelsea, though it takes place in various venues across the city.
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Summer in DUMBO: A Visit to the Sharpe Foundation
The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation’s “Space Program” offers seventeen emerging artists a year’s worth of studio space and a summer show in DUMBO. Here’s a look.
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Too Many MFAs Spoil the Zine
Birdsong, the local Williamsburg zine now in its 15th issue, is a blend of short stories, poems, drawings, collages and photographs: it is primarily a literary magazine that features artwork woven between each written piece. Birdsong’s appeal can be summed up nicely by the resumes of the artists and writers who contribute to it …
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Thinking About Art and Devotion
Art as a messenger of belief is nothing new. From the obvious ostentatious examples like the Sistine Chapel, to the much more ephemeral Buddhist sand mandalas, faith has often driven artistic creation. Yet, can art be a system of belief in itself? The artists in Architecture of Devotion at the Gowanus Ballroom definitely put a lot of faith in their own creative views as they all respond to this history of artistic devotion.
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An Abstract Moment in Chelsea
Checking out the Chelsea gallery scene last week, my results were surprisingly mixed — from overly offbeat summer shows to nonsensical group exhibitions, the galleries just didn’t seem to have it together. But one thread did emerge in my wanderings. I discovered that Chelsea was having a brief love affair with big abstraction, wall-size pieces that dominated their respective art spaces. Works by Sol Lewitt, Keith Haring, Li Songsong and Garth Weiser all packed a refreshing amount of visual punch, brightening a hazy summer day.
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Art21 Fails to Provide an Open Bar
Art21 has launched a new documentary series. Called New York Close Up, the series, according to Art21’s informative website, “provides an intimate look at the next wave of artists- artists close up.” Clearly they’ve set the bar on clever titles. New York Close Up launched with a party at the Ace Hotel’s Liberty Hall last Thursday. While not as nice as fellow intern’s assignment at The Standard (screw you, Alex), it was still a fairly fancy party filled with very attractive people sipping very expensive drinks. I brought “a photographer” aka my friend Laura, in order to avoid standing by myself not talking to anyone. Instead, we stood together and didn’t talk to anyone. After a half hour-long search for one of the overworked waitresses, we were finally able to order some nasty raspberry Stoli for eleven bucks each. The lack of open bar was devastating.
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When a Social Circle Became an Art Movement
The artistic avant garde is often a pretty insular group — when you’re doing something new, odds are that few people besides your immediate friends and collaborators know what’s up. A jewel box of an exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts proves just how small the art world is with Modernist Photography 1910-1950, a show that’s just as much about the aesthetic (and physical) interrelationships between artists as it is about the advent of modernist photography in the United States.
