DETROIT — This Thanksgiving you should pay attention to the texture of your food, how you use your tongue to lash out and taste your food, and how you digest your food. Why? Isn’t that kind of creepy? Um, yes, it is kind of creepy, and lusting over your food may upset your family members’ stomachs. But Brooklyn-based sculptor Martha Friedman is preoccupied with food and digestion, and she creates awesome food art, proving there is some real artistic value in food lust. Maybe you should leave it to the experts though.
sculpture
Posted inArt
Traveling the Visual Highway
Day trips beyond New York City for visual art can feel decadent, especially with all the spectacular shows we don’t have time to see. And although it might be a small hassle to get there, the Brant Foundation’s current solo show of David Altmejd is really worth every minute of the trip to Greenwich, Connecticut. With his hallucinogenic and kaleidoscopic aesthetic, Altmejd also seems to be asking viewers to take a trip.
Posted inArt
Coming to Grips With Matthew Barney at Gladstone Gallery
Matthew Barney, “Djed” (2009-2011) (photos by the author) Matthew Barney’s most recent exhibition Djed opened at Gladstone Gallery on September 17. Like everything the artist tends to do, the sculptures on view are of epic proportion. The objects themselves are extremely minimal steel and graphite molded constructions that are half early Richard Serra and half […]
Posted inArt
Seeing Through the Crowds at the 2011 Venice Biennale Part II: The Arsenale
The Arsenale and its Corderie (Rope Walk) compose the remainder of the curatorial effort of the Biennale’s director. It is the sprawling nasty sibling of the Padiglione Centrale, and is somewhat of a chore to tackle. The entire layout of the Arsenale this year feels disjointed. On a whole, I felt like there was a dearth of strong work. I believe Curiger had aspirations to move beyond the trends of participatory art and ostentatious work seen everywhere else in Venice and other art fairs.
Posted inArt
The Top 6 Trends at ArtPrize
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN — As an artist participating in ArtPrize myself, I had the amazing experience of not only visiting Grand Rapids for the first time, but also experiencing this mega-event for the first time. While walking around the city snapping pics, I was instantly reminded about my solo trip to the Venice Biennale in 2003 when I was just a college kid: feeling like an outsider to the local people, crossing bridge after bridge and trying to consume the overwhelming amount of artwork around me. As a cultural producer, I can’t help but analyze and tally the formal and conceptual trends that are present in such a saturated art environment.
So from the perspective of a dude like me, here are the Top 6 things I saw at ArtPrize 2011 …
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Delicious Eye Candy at Socrates Sculpture Park
The Emerging Artists Fellowship Exhibition at the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City is certainly worth the trek to Queens. The whimsical sculpture show, which launches a yearlong celebration of the park’s 25anniversary, was an excellent showcase for young talent. The diverse sculptures work in congress with the amazing view of Manhattan’s skyline to create an art viewing experience that is at once soothing and sublime.
Posted inNews
UPDATED: Ai Weiwei’s Zodiac Unveiled, Mayor Bloomberg Applauds Artist’s Courage
Today’s rain may have put a damper on the unveiling of Ai Weiwei’s “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads” (2009) at the Pulitzer Fountain, located at Central Park South and Fifth Avenue, but what certainly cast a pall over the event was the artist’s own absence. After over a month since his arrest by the Chinese government, we still haven’t heard from the dissident artist. The opening of “Zodiac Heads” was met with widespread support for Ai’s plight and for his politically contentious work, both from Mayor Bloomberg and the city’s influential arts community.
Posted inOpinion
Football Player Gets Lifesize Portrait Bust … Made of Chicken Salad
In your quirky art news of the day: a Midtown Manhattan Subway restaurant has created a lifesize bust of football player and NFL draft pick Mark Ingram Jr. The twist? The 40-pound sculpture is made of chicken salad, veggies and other non-traditional art materials.
Posted inOpinion
Photo Break: Urs Fischer’s Giant Yellow Teddy Bear
Stationed outside of the Seagram building at 75 Park Avenue between 52nd Street and 53rd Street is a giant yellow teddy bear. Oh yeah, it also has a lamp sticking out of its back and through its head. Urs Fischer’s monumental sculpture “Untitled (Lamp/Bear)” has already attracted attention for its unique appearance, but I took some photos to show the piece from a different angle.
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Sculpture Today: A Discussion with Joy Curtis & Rachel Beach
On Wednesday, I wrote about two painting shows (Kristine Moran & Gianna Commito) that I felt shared an aesthetic connection. Today, I wanted to draw your attention to two sculpture shows on Ludlow Street by two artists who I’ve been following for years, Joy Curtis and Rachel Beach. Both artists make sculpture and their shows made me wonder what it must be like to be a sculptor today. I decided to interview them together via email in order to understand their work through their words. The following conversation took place this week.
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Sculpting with Ruins or Imposing Force on Matter
For her second solo exhibition at Klaus von Nichtssagend, Empty is Run About Freely, Bushwick-based sculptor Joy Curtis has created several large sculptures comprised of casts she made of interior moldings and architectural details of 77 Water Street, an unused downtown Manhattan bank building, which the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council employed as studio space during Curtis’ residency in 2009. She has been working with the material collected during this residency almost exclusively for the past year. Speaking to the work on display, Curtis told me, “[As artists] we mine the world for materials, and then we impose a force on that matter. I am interested in showing the evidence of imposing force on matter, and showing the evidence of the passage of time.”
Posted inNews
Italian PM Gives Roman Statue a New Penis
It somehow seems fitting that the womanizing Prime Minister of Italy has suited an ancient Roman statue with a new penis: “Government officials confirmed today, however, that a valuable statue of the god Mars, on loan to the prime minister’s office, had been fitted with an artificial penis … La Repubblica said the transplant was carried out at Berlusconi’s “express request” and … it had cost the Italian taxpayer €70,000 (£60,000).” [Guardian]
