Violet Hopkins Heavens Above 2006 colored pencil and acrylic ink on archival paper 80″ x 100″ [installation detail]
There’s no way a photograph can begin to describe Violet Hopkins enormous dark drawings installed at Foxy Production in a show titled “Entoptically Yours“. The image above is a detail of a subtle [really!] pencil drawing which is more than eight feet wide. The area shown is approximately one third of the framed piece. The image which continues on the paper above and to each side is a solid not-quite-blank slate drawn with black pencil alone. The plexiglas covering enclosed by the frame only adds to the mystery and complexity of the work, displayed here in perfectly-focused and subdued lighting.
[view of entire drawing]
Incidentally, the largest drawing, more than twelve feet wide, takes up much of one wall of the gallery. If you miss the current Foxy show, you might soon have a chance to see it in Miami, where it will become part of a huge and extremely important private collection regularly open to the public.
[lower, thumbnail image from Foxy Production]
Author: jameswagner
Sterling Ruby waiting in the wings at Foxy Production
Sterling Ruby drawing
Yeah, maybe Chris Martin, Xylor Jane and now Sterling Ruby. I don’t know that they would show so well together in a curated physical space, but they definitely can and do share a brilliantly-appointed chamber inside my own head and heart. Ruby’s images, and his choice of medium, are both just perverse enough to make his inclusion as a part of this imaginary trio seem less like a natural, but like that of the other two, his work strikes me as effortlessly grownup in a way even Peter Pan would be comfortable with.
Anyway.
No, Ruby does not currently have a show at Foxy Production; I just happened to spot this exciting piece (brilliant gold paper slashed with crimson nail polish, mounted behind plexiglas for bonus shadow) the other day when I ventured behind the magic “curtain” which separates four wonderful Violet Hopkins drawings from the gallery desk area.
sentence first – verdict afterwards
“Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first — verdict afterwards.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of having the sentence first!”
“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.
“I won’t!” said Alice.
“Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.
“Who cares for you?’ said Alice, (she had grown to her full size by this time.) “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”
Surprise! contrary to what most of us may have assumed, there is no verdict yet in the political show trial of Saddam Hussein even if the sentence has arrived, fabulously, just in time for the American voting audience.
[thanks to Barry for the news tip, to Google and Billmon for pulling up the Lewis Carroll text, and to ebbemunk for the John Tenniel image]
painted to be seen
untitled (traffic bucket) 2006
Joyce Pensato at Parker’s Box
Joyce Pensato Homer 2006, charcoal and pastel on paper 120″ x 130″ [installation view]
Joyce Pensato Hello Stranger 2006 enamel on linen 90″ x 72″ [installation view]
[detail]
Joyce Pensato This Must Be The Place 2006 charcoal and pastel on paper 60″ x 40″ [installation view]
Joyce Pensato opened a stunning solo show, “This Must Be The Place”, at Parker’s Box on October 20. I’ve often said it before, but I still can’t even begin to undestand why Pensato is not more widely known and more higly prized than she is. I’d stand in line for this installation, but instead Barry and I were given a surprise private tour by the artist herself when we stopped by the gallery on the afternoon after the opening.
Unfortunately I was so distracted that I neglected to pick up a checklist while I was there. I found information on the gallery site, but one of these images will therefore have to remain pretty much unidentified for now, but like his strange friends this off-Donald seems to be able to speak very well for himself.
“Dangling Between” reviewed by TINSQUO
Mark Roth and Janna Olson of TINSQUO (there is no status quo) have published a review of “Dangling Between The Real Thing And The Sign In The Window“. It’s so laudatory it’s embarassing, but not so embarassing that I won’t point to it here.
As Barry just wrote on Bloggy, we will both be at the gallery this Sunday afternoon from 3 until 6, to welcome and talk to anyone who wants to stop by.
anti-terror jack-o’-lantern
This is my second Hallowe’en post. This one’s the opposite of grumpy. So I’m thinking, the times are already scary enough; this year a goofy jack-o’-lantern may be just what the doctor ought to have ordered.
[I really should be bringing home bigger pumpkins; you can’t be very imaginative when you have only five and a half inches to work with]
come Tueday, Republican goblins gonna get us again, maybe
NOTE: After I had completed a political post last night I accidentally deleted it – irretrievably. I didn’t think then that I would try to reconstruct it, but the subject keeps knawing on me and it definitely couldn’t be much more timely than it is this week, and perhaps specifically tonight.
(one way, or another, they’re gonna get ya )
It’s a very scary story, but it has two parts. The first has to be familiar to anyone who hasn’t been living in a cave. It’s the second part that surpasses anything you’ll find outside in the Halloween darkness tonight. The story is briefly recounted in The New Yorker this week in a piece by Hendrik Hertzberg. Sadly we are already acquainted with the impressive litany of plagues which have visited us since Bush was selected President in 2000, but Hertzberg’s prose is a frightening reminder:
That the record is appalling is by now beyond serious dispute. It includes an unending deficit – this year, its $260 billion – that has already added $1.5 trillion to the national debt; the subcontracting of environmental, energy, labor, and health-care policymaking to corporate interests; repeated efforts to suppress scientific truth; a set of economic and fiscal policies that have slowed growth, spurred inequality, replenished the ranks of the poor and uninsured, and exacerbated the insecurities of the middle class; and, on Capitol Hill, a festival of bribery, some prosecutable (such as the felonies that have put one prominent Republican member of Congress in prison, while another awaits sentencing), some not (such as the reported two-million-dollar salary conferred upon a Republican congressman who became the pharmaceutical industrys top lobbyist immediately after shepherding into law a bill forbidding the government to negotiate prices for prescription drugs).
In 2002 and 2004, the ruling party avoided retribution for offenses like these by exploiting the fear of terrorism. What is different this time is that the overwhelming failure of the Administrations Iraq gamble is now apparent to all. This war of choice has pointlessly drained American military strength, undermined what had originally appeared to be success in Afghanistan, handed the Iranian mullahs a strategic victory, immunized the North Korean regime from a forceful response to its nuclear defiance, and compromised American leadership of the democratic world.
The fact that these horrors are finally recognized by an overwhelming majority of Americans, and just before midterm elections, should finally give us hope for emerging from the the dark and frightened society to which we have been reduced, but such a denouement is actually far from certain. Even if we could forget the role of dirty tricks, the continuing possibility of an October or November surprise, and the effect of an expected psychological, physical or electronic manipulation of the polls, we aren’t out of the woods yet. Unfortunately we are struggling within a fundamentally undemocratic system and there’s nothing we can do about it, no matter how many of us wish to throw out the fools and, indeed, the real goblins and demons.
In a normal democracy, given the state of public opinion and the record of the incumbent government, it would be taken for granted that come next Tuesday the ruling party would be turned out. But, for reasons that have less to do with the wizardry of Karl Rove than with the structural biases of Americas electoral machinery, Democrats enter every race carrying a bag of sand. The Senates fifty-five Republicans represent fewer Americans than do its forty-five Democrats. On the House side, Democratic candidates have won a higher proportion of the average district vote than Republicans in four of the five biennial elections since 1994, but – thanks to a combination of gerrymandering and demographics – Republicans remain in the majority.
I’m not holding my breath.
[Thomas Nast image from Wikipedia]
Xylor Jane at CANADA
Xylor Janes Ruin [installation view]
Xylor Jane So Long [installation view]
Xylor Jane‘s second solo show at CANADA is a knockout, and the more I learn (well, “learn” may be too presumptious; “read” or “hear” would be more appropriate) about the artist and her art the more I’m pulled into its beauty and its mystery. I feel a similar connection to Chris Martin‘s work, but it would take someone with far better creds than I to explain what that’s all about, or in fact what’s going on inside the work of either artist.
Even my camera seemed possessed when it had to deal with Jane’s paintings yesterday: The smaller images on the camera back and on the computer screen clearly revealed colors and shapes which were barely apparent to my naked eye when I stood in front of these two seemingly monochromatic paintings, and they are barely visible even in these uploaded shots. Incidentally, two of the three other paintings in the exhibition are more obviously colorful than the pair I’ve chosen to include here.
The works are each approximately three or four feet square.
Check the paragraphs from the press release included on the ArtCal event page. I’ve also included below the artist’s notes [punctuation and capitalization as found] for the two paintings represented by the images above, and after that, some of Jane’s general notes for all of the paintings.
Ruin
The strokes face either in or out, changing with each year along with the hue
584 weeks
11.22 years
Art Career in Black and Velvet
Failure misery demise
Time prison, blocks of years
So Long
structured on a 16-sided polygon that squares itself at the edge
8x16x32 it has a stutter that allows the seven hues to be in order (on the vertical and horizontal-) in both directions
it has 4096 strokes facing out
Strokes radiate from skewed center, growing larger.
Black rainbow waves an Infinite good bye
General info for all paintings
Brush is reloaded for each stroke
Each stroke represents one day
All begin at a center – clockwise moving
Each painting should be turned a quarter turn clockwise at each solstice or equinox marked on the side of the canvas so that the right side will indicate the season for that hanging direction
Monday = yellow
Tuesday = Green
Wednesday = blue
Thursday = indigo
Friday = violet
Saturday = red
Sunday = orange
Cliff Evans at Location One
Cliff Evans The Road to Mount Weather 2006 three-channel video [three stills from the installation]
Cliff Evans’s extraordinary three-channel video installation, “The Road to Mount Weather“, is at Location One until November 4. This ambitious and very impressive work, curated by Pieranna Cavalchini, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, was painstakingly collaged from images downloaded from the internet. For me it was like watching a vintage 3-strip Cinerama spectacle documenting the continuing dream-become-nightmare which is likely to be remembered as the culmination of the American imperium.
The sound design is, not incidentally, terrific.
This SoHo space devoted to exciting New Media work is always worth a visit, but because of the distractions of our current curating adventure Barry and I might have missed the very impressive current installation had it not been for a strong recommendation, and at least one subsequent reminder, from Jacques Vidal, one of the artists included in our Williamsburg show. I now appreciate both the reason for his enthusiasm and the connection between Evans’s work and his own.
From the gallery’s press release:
The Road to Mount Weather is an open animation, susceptible to hugely varied critical perspectives and interpretations. It shakes us out of our complacency. In a mock epic journey through capitalist Hell, Evans creates a baffling cascade of imagery coded in complex syntax. The large swath of information is presented in a loop shown at a slow and melodious pace. With each repeated viewing, the viewer becomes more intrigued, less complacent, finding new associations and symbols, and questioning the final meaning of the narrative.
Evans is one of a number of artists who have mined the form and content of appropriation and photomontage in their work. Among his notable predecessors are Georges Braque and the Dadaists. Images are treated almost like found objects, obtained from the vast reference library that is today’s Internet. They are cut up and scrambled, scene after scene, with deliberate order and disquieting disorder ultimately finding a perfect fit in the puzzle.
Evans reflects on America’s complex geopolitical situation and its impact on mainstream news where fear is a constant. [His] ever-expansive investigation is matched by an eye for detail as well as an ability to find humorous prank subtexts.