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Jennifer Coates Grotto 2005 acrylic on canvas [detail from installation]
[full view]
Jennifer Coates is showing fanciful “landscapes” figured with extravagant abstractions in the front gallery at Feigen. Can an abstraction be surreal? Regardless of tags, they’re absolutely terrific.
Author: jameswagner
Jenny Holzer at Cheim & Read and Yvon Lambert
Jenny Holzer WHITE 2006 Nichia white LED’s mounted on PCB with aluminum housing 192.25″ x 216.5″ x 5.25″ [capture from moving light of installation]
Jenny Holzer HAND yellow white 2006 oil on linen in eight panels 33″ x 25.5″ each panel [detail of installation]
Jenny Holzer BIG CONTAINER yellow white 2006 oil on linen triptych 103.5″ x 80″ each panel [detail of installation]
Jenny Holzer shows us what “freedom of information” looks like in a show at Cheim & Read. It’s not pretty, but its more compelling than a car wreck. The installation is part of a collaboration with Yvon Lambert, across 25th Street, where “Night Feed”, a series of very different text-based works has been installed.
From the Cheim & Read press release:
In her newest work, Holzer negotiates the political landscape after 9/11 and traces the debate over covert operations, ghost detainees, prisoner abuse, and war tragedies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay through the directives, emails, and testimonies of policy makers, soldiers, and prisoners. The documents, many of which were classified at the time they were written, originated in United States government and military agencies and have been made part of the public record through the landmark Freedom of Information Act.
It’s almost impossible to imagine how banal, or how horrible, are the parts which our government will not let us see.
Holzer’s art will not let us stop trying – to imagine, yes, but more importantly, to free the information.
Brooklyn College lost, destroyed MFA artists’ work
going through the debris
Eighteen Brooklyn College MFA students were not only dispossessed of a graduate thesis exhibition when the New York City shut it down and padlocked the doors in downtown Brooklyn. On Saturday, five days after their school itself had precipitously, foolishly and cowardly removed all of their art from the gallery, hauled it away in open trucks and dumped it back on the campus, they were permitted to enter the hall where it had been unceremoniously dropped by campus workmen.
There they discovered that much of the art, the product of months of work and the focus and culmination of their graduate studies, was missing and a good percentage of the work that was there had been damaged or destroyed irreparably.
This is a large excerpt from the press release which appears on the students’ site:
At 9am yesterday [Saturday, May 13] students arrived at Roosevelt Hall on the Brooklyn College campus prepared to inspect their work together. The students were surprised to find that Mr. Little had ordered the officers to allow students access only one at a time. This caused the process to last until 6pm yesterday afternoon.
Under the supervision of Brooklyn College CUNY security officers and with the aid of Graduate Deputy Karen Giusti, students found their work improperly packaged in garbage bags, much of it irreparably damaged and some pieces missing.
Carrie Fucile, who built a 7′ x 8′ x 10′ wooden house as part of an installation, could find barely a trace of the large structure among the two rooms in which the work was stowed. A few pieces of the dismantled installation were used as packaging for other works of art, others were later located out by the loading dock for raw materials and trash.
Marni Kotak could not find over 10 original drawings, the video documentation of her live performance at the show opening, and most of the elements of her 10′ x 20′ site-specific installation. She found two chalkboard drawings irreparably destroyed. Tamas Veszi could not find his entire site-specific installation, and could only find two damaged paintings and three destroyed sculptures. Neither Fucile, Kotak nor Veszi were allowed to adequately document their site-specific works prior to their demolition.
Augusto Marin’s large folding chair and wall sculpture and Yejin Jun’s foam and pins sculpture were found in pieces, and the work of John Aveluto, Megan Piontkowski, Susan Dessel, Carla Aspenberg, Pamela Gordon, and other artists suffered damages. Most of the approximately $20,000 worth of digital equipment utilized for the exhibition was found jumbled together in large boxes or trash bags without the proper carrying cases. Several artists also reported missing personal items such as a video camera, DVD players, and original personal documents.
I know that at least one of the students has very recently removed all his work and materials from his Brookly College studio, “because the school is starting to scare me”.
This college is sounding more and more like the school from hell. Anyone who has an interest in exorcising its demons should get involved before the damage becomes irreversible. An academic institution cannot survive on a formal accreditation certificate alone, and when enough incompetence is involved, even a valuable piece of paper can be lost.
There are additional pictures on the Plan C site.
[image, which I believe is of Augusto Marin looking at his work, from Plan C]
Glen Fogel at Momenta
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Glen Fogel is showing a new magical video [no title given] at Momenta which sort of documents Christian rock warm-up bands at the Billy Graham Crusade in Flushing Meadows Park last summer. There is absolutely no sound, but the imagery which he assembles, in sandwiching layers of waving believers between himself and a giant screen projecting the acts, produces a mesmerizing music of its own, complete with the unavoidable creepy ostinato of zealotry.
Two points of information unrelated to each other: One, the ghost image in the still shown above is in the moving video itself; and two, I thought it more than curious, considering Graham’s own racism, that his [acolytes?] all appear here to be people of color.
MFA show shut down for reference to Cheney sex?
Lèse majesté? Was sex the beard for political censorship?
From a story in the Fine Arts section of the NYTimes on Friday:
In addition to the hand-and-penis sculpture, works in the show included a video with sexual overtones in which women are dressed as nuns, and a watercolor of a man’s torso, with an accompanying narrative about a sexual encounter between two men, one of whom used the computer screen name Dick Cheney.
I don’t know about you, but I suspect what really might have done it for our self-appointed middle-aged, white male Parks Department guardian of public morals and social orthodoxy wasn’t the penis or the nuns (I can doubt whether Julius Spiegel cares much about either); it was more likely the combination of homosex and the Vice President of the United States.
We love Carl Ferrero’s art. Everything I’ve seen him do is mighty fine, when it’s not actually breathtaking.
I still don’t know exactly which offending image or images of Ferrero’s is/are in the show summarily shut down on May 4, but the entire world will be able to see his work and that of all the Brooklyn College MFA candidates when it re-opens in DUMBO; there will certainly be a media presence. The [second] reception will be on Wednesday May 24th from 6 to 9 at 70 Washington St. (down under the manhattan bridge overpass) in Brooklyn.
ADDENDUM: See this related story which appeared on the last page of today’s print edition of the NYTimes:
China Orders Art Galleries to Remove Paintings With Political Themes
Several galleries in this city’s thriving arts district were recently ordered by government officials to remove more than 20 paintings, apparently because they dealt with political themes, artists and gallery directors here said.
[images from Carl Ferrero]
Elise Engler at Cynthia Broan
Elise Engler Rapture 2005 pencil, colored pencil, gouache, watercolor on paper 22″ x 30″ [installation view]
[detail]
It’s been a good five-week run, but “Tax-onomies“, Elise Engler’s show at Cynthia Broan closes tomorrow. Unfortunately however the actual “rapture” of our sophisticated fighting machines and and somewhat less sophisticated wars will continue.
Engler’s inspiration for the title of this show of beautiful, painstakingly-crafted drawings is an accounting of the materials the government purchases with our tax dollars, but there is much more than hard weaponry in her inventories. From the press release:
Larger works in progress are symbolic depictions, with names and ages, of each of the over 2500 Iraq War coalition casualties and over 13,000 Iraqi civilian casualties, a small fraction of the unknown actual number.
The image at the top is one of a number of more recent drawings:
The exhibition also includes a new series of works on paper that portray newspaper clippings, internet flyers and other sources of information, with related drawn and painted elements. Articles from New York Times are meticulously recreated in pencil and gouache, the surrounding painting portraying a more editorial, depiction of stories such as funding for jet fighters, Rudy Giuliani dancing in drag, NYC Emergency Preparedness advice, and arrests made around Times Square during the Republican Convention.
The truly obscene caption below the pencilled reproduction of a NYTimes photograph reads: “The Raptor, the most expensive fighter jet in history at $259 million per plane, may be scaled down as the Pentagon tries to offset Iraq war costs.”
[The price of the [F-22] Raptor has since gone up. At the moment the estimates are closer to $350 million per plane. Somewhere I just saw a reference to the Air Force asking for 339 of them. As they say, pretty soon we’ll be talking about real money.]
Mark Schubert at Monya Rowe
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Mark Schubert Penguin Pusher 2006 mixed media 47″ x 24″ x 26″ [installation view]
Mark Schubert Wheelbarrow Rose 2006 mixed media 63″ x 21″ x 22″ [installation view]
Monya Rowe is showing five “life-size” [my phrase] sculptures by Mark Schubert in a show titled, “Yard Work”. Delicious, even without what felt to me like a visual reference to ice cream. In fact the media the artist uses is somewhat less digestible: the press release tells us that “Most of the materials can be seen in a suburban yard: wheelbarrows, plastic lawn chairs and lawn ornaments.”
A really smart lawn wouldn’t want to live with these ornaments.
on the Brooklyn College massacre, Riverdale Press rocks!
[this editorial is too good to stay in the Bronx; Barry reformatted it from a PDF so I could upload it here]
THE RIVERDALE PRESS Thursday, May 11, 2006
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The return of the censors
In 1988, Chicago police arrested a painting; last week, New York City jailed an entire art exhibit.
In both cases, the offending art was student work on display in the year-end show that is a college art departmentâs equivalent of a thesis.
In both cases, the authorities acted precipitately and in violation of the fundamental right of artists to express themselves and of our fundamental right to make up our own minds.
In both cases the academic institutions that should have defended their students and the faculty that mentored them instead beat a craven retreat.
It took a federal court to rebuke the Chicago authorities for confiscating David Nelsonâs mocking portrait of the cityâs late mayor Harold Washington clad only in a bra and panties.
Will it take a court to stand up for the students of Brooklyn College, who, shortly after celebrating what they thought was a successful opening, saw months of work sequestered?
Last Thursday, Brooklyn Parks Commissioner Julius Spiegel abruptly locked up the war memorial in Cadman Plaza Park, which for the last five years has served as an art gallery and the venue for Brooklyn Collegeâs year-end art exhibit.
The commissioner-turned-critic apparently didnât like the image of a penis with homoerotic overtones or a video on Biblical themes that included sexually-charged footage of Eve in the garden. Next thing the students knew, a locksmith was changing the locks on the gallery, effectively impounding their work.
It took the college the better part of a day to decide how to respond. Then it issued a statement trying to have it both ways: âIn keeping with the public nature of the space, as well as its position as an honored war memorial, Brooklyn College has respectfully decided to move the entire student exhibit to our campus. Brooklyn College has a long tradition of educating fine artists. Throughout, the administration of the College has supported our studentsâ rights to freedom of artistic expression. We are proud to display our student art here at the College.â
Not good enough, said the students. Told the exhibit would be moved to the college library, Marni Kotak, the studentsâ spokeswoman, noted that many of the 18 works were site-specific and others were too large to be exhibited effectively in the library.
âClearly the administration of BC is thinking only of covering themselves ⊠rather than taking any kind of stand at all to defend the hard work of us students,â she wrote in an e-mail. âWe are generally infuriated by this tactic and are determined to either have our show reopened at the War Memorial or hold BC responsible for covering all costs for moving and reinstalling such an exhibition in another appropriate venue.â
According to city Parks Department spokesman Warner Johnston, the city had an âexplicit agreement with the college that because itâs a war memorial and public space, it had to be appropriate for families.â Asked for a copy, he paused, then said there was no written agreement, but a verbal understanding. Colleen Roche, the head of a public relations firm hired by the college, refused to answer questions about the agreement and whether, if it existed, the art department or anyone in the current administration knew of it. The students say no one ever told them about it.
In any event, it is sad to see an institution of higher learning forget the lessons of the past. Only seven years ago, the city was rebuked for trying to intimidate and punish another Brooklyn institution, when a federal judge told Mayor Rudolph Giuliani that he couldnât force the Brooklyn Museum to abandon the âSensationâ show.
The Giuliani administration then made an argument much like the one the Bloomberg administration is making now. Rejecting the contention that the museum broke its contract with the city to educate school children by showing work not fit for children to see, Judge Nina Gershon wrote, âThere is no federal constitutional issue more grave than the effort by government officials to censor works of expression and to threaten the vitality of a major cultural institution as punishment for failing to abide by governmental demands for orthodoxy.â
The job of a university is to educate not only its students but the society it serves. In failing to stand up for its studentsâ exhibit, Brooklyn College lost an opportunity to explain the role and the nature of art. And it failed in an even more important task: to tell New Yorkers that itâs their job as citizens to judge public expression, and that no matter how provocative or potentially offensive it may be, the government has no business intruding on our ability to do so.
walking away from Donald Judd
Donald Judd’s Untitled, 1990 (90-2b Menziken) left, and Untitled, 1991 (91-5 Donaldson) right
We really had intended to see the display at Christie’s of the 26 Donald Judd works which the Judd Foundation had decided to de-accession, but we had completely forgotten about going until we ran into Tony Feher just as we arrived at ART ROCK yesterday. He told us we had a few minutes before the doors closed, in a certain way and for all practical purposes, forever. We thanked him and ran off towards 6th Avenue.
We passed on last night’s auction itself, but only because the current configuration of our walls (works competing with each other salon-style) just wouldn’t be able to offer a proper setting for the work. Oh, and were those estimates in the six and seven figures? Where are people putting this stuff?
I had captured this one image before a guard politely asked me not to take pictures. I was then so intimidated that I didn’t even point my camera toward the (sparkling-clean) 21st-story windows to bring back images of the many roof gardens still decorating the higher planes of Rockefeller Center three quarters of a century after it was begun.
This stuff has now been sold, so I didn’t think a peek at some of the merchandise could do any harm now.
ART ROCK 2006 at Rockefeller Center
“WERSUPPOSEDTOACTIMPRESSED” is Wayne White’s cheeky contribution to ART ROCK 2006, which opened on the plaza above the golden Prometheus in Rockefeller Center last night. The sign hovers just in front of and above the central pavillion of an art fair which is more than a match for its elegant surroundings. There’s great comfort in knowing that White was chosen to represent Clementine, the gallery which is behind this wonderful midtown visitation, now in its second incarnation. Presumably Abbie and Elizabeth are cool with their artist’s delicious sarcasm.
But the show is impressive, both for the fact that they’ve pulled it off – again, and for the quality and frequently the great fun of the art which awaits the huge variety of people who pass through the plaza at Rockefeller Center each day.
The show continues through May 21.
Here are some more installation images, adding up to only about half of the sixteen artists shown:
Kristof Kintera on the right and Susan Giles on the left, both details
David Noonan
Stephen G. Rhodes detail
Sanford Biggers detail
Shannon Ebner detail
Larry Mantello detail
Brody Condon detail of video still
Karin Weiner detail