POST CARD
an extremely photogenic installation
Jeffrey Deitch is currently hosting a collaborative show by Jim Drain and Ara Peterson in the Wooster Street space. The very long run of this show will end on Saturday.
Author: jameswagner
Cory Arcangel at Monkeytown
the auteur confesses once again, “I heart Garfunkel”
Cory Arcangel entertained a packed room at Monkeytown last Saturday night.
We were treated to an evening of some of his wonderful, idiosyncratic videos, all of them accompanied by the kind of engaging personal remarks that have helped attract an enormous fan base to this very generous young genius.
It’s just a thought, but there’s no telling how far that Mathew Barney guy might go if his videos could be shown with a director’s commentary.
delicious
untitled (highlight) 2006
Tamy Ben-Tor at LFL
POST CARD
Tamy Ben-Tor The Artist In Residence 2005 DVD [still from installation]
The New York-based Israeli artist Tamy Ben-Tor showed five videos and regularly performed live during the run of her recent show at LFL. That last bit seems like an excessive demand for anyone’s gallery show, but Ben-Tor, who has been described by Jerry Salz as “a hair-raising fusion of Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, Alex Bag, Kafka, the Yiddish theater, and Greek tragedy” seems to have been up to it, by all reports. What I saw on the monitors was totally engaging and I wish I could go back now, especially for the live acts which I missed altogether.
Confession: This particular image probably made the cut for this post based on the singular color of the artist’s costume alone.
Barbara
POST CARD
Niclaus Gerhaert von Leiden reliquary bust of Saint Barbara c. 1465 ashwood with polychromy [detail]
It’s a totally weird story, but her legendary beauty has inspired gorgeous work by artists for more than a millenium, including this one which grabbed my camera on my last visit to the Metropolitan Museum.
The attraction of the Catholic faithful to human beauty has ever been thus, and the current Roman pontiff appears to be no exception, judging from stories and pictures documenting the charm of his personal secretary.
some of the group at Oliver Kamm/5BE
Joe Ovelman [detail of installation]
Oliver Kamm’s 5BE is another gallery which is a part of the new life on 27th Street. I was there the night of the opening of the current group show, mostly hanging out in the back gallery where the work of Joe Oveman and Tom Meacham can be spotted for the next couple of weeks. The large and lively crowd at the reception is my only excuse for having to limit my comments at least for now to the work of these two artists.
Ovelman’s piece is actually described in the check list as an 8 x 11 inch color photograph with the slightly ungainly title, “James Baldwin on the Dick Cavett show: ‘I know as Malcolm X once put it . . . The most segregated hour in American life is high noon on Sunday'”. Since the huge wheat-pasted piece shown in detail above doesn’t appear on that paper at all, and Joe is out of the country right now, I have to assume that it must have been intended to serve primarily as the environment for the much smaller image mounted on the wall to the right: That photograph displays the text of the title hand-drawn on the back of two identical old tombstones planted in a cemetery. I think I understand what’s going on here.
Tom Meacham The Real McCoy 2006 acrylic on canvas and wood sculpture 90″ x 60″ x (not indicated) [installation view]
The meaning of Tom Meacham’s piece is perhaps a bit more obscure, but after looking at the press release which accompanied his gallery show last fall, I’m thinking he probably wouldn’t have a problem with my adjective. I have to say however that I do like what I see.
Alyson Shotz
POST CARD
Alyson Shotz Arnolfini 360˚ x 12 2006 twelve domed surveillance mirrors, hardware 132″ x 120″ x 14″ [large detail of installation]
Alyson Shotz is one of the artists included in the strong group exhibition which inaugurates Derek Eller‘s new space on a reborn block of West 27th Street.
sort of like post cards
Too many things, and I mean too many images of artists’ works, are slipping through because I don’t sit down often enough to do some kind of blog with an accompanying text.
I’ve decided to introduce a new form of post, one which would be no more than an image or two with a few scribbled words, although each item will also include a link to more information whenever possible.
As they turn up, I’ll designate each of these miniatures with the sub-head “POST CARD” below the subject line at the top.
Barry and I get to see a lot, but we never have enough time to show or talk about most of it. I’ve always regretted that what finds its way onto our sites is only some of what either of us might find worthy of sharing. Sadly, even the work we do show isn’t necessarily the most outstanding we’ve seen, since much depends on a good camera image, a decent focus on our responsibilities as witnesses, the pressures of a larger schedule, or in my case at least, simply an absence of mind.
I’m sure the modest innovation of an occasional POST CARD or two isn’t going to change everything, but I hope it will at least help me to feel less of a truant.
Gore calls it tyranny, and suggests impeachment
see, if you’re a Democrat they can make your oh-so-patriotic scads of flags quite invisible
Al Gore has disappointed me over and over again in the past, but what is that saying about a drowning man grasping at straws? Unfortunately in this case the threatened demise is that of an entire polity and its people aren’t even going to be in a position to see the straws before they go under.
I’ve just watched the entire video of the former Vice President’s very impressive speech delivered inside Washington’s DAR Constitution Hall yesterday. You can catch it here on C-SPAN [see “recent programs” under “video/audio”]. The written text is available here, corrected for the words actually delivered.
This major address, although brilliantly assembled and delivered, seems to have been largely ignored by the media – or, for that matter, anyone else who could profit from its warnings and its call to action. The NYTimes for one gave it only a passing mention in two and a half small paragraphs at the end of a page 14 story about lawsuits being filed against the Bush administration’s domestic spying program. What on earth is the matter with those people? I think they’ve totally lost it.
In any nation with a responsible government and press this speech would have been front page news. This was a major political statement (actually it was more in the way of a dramatic cry of alarm and outrage) presented on a monumental day and in an historic hall by a famously temperate politician who is arguably the leading spokesperson for the leading opposition party of a government and a nation which is in serious trouble. The content of this address even if it hadn’t included an accusation of executive tyranny and an implied call for the impeachment of a sitting president should be all the buzz in the halls of government and everywhere on the streets of the nation today and for some time to come.
But we have no real opposition party in America today, and people have to know about something before they can buzz. In the third century of his beloved United States we bear no resemblance to Jefferson’s ideal of an informed citizenry. I’m afraid our republic really is now beyond resuscitation. This puts me somewhat at odds with Gore’s optimistic conclusion, although I understand his is ultimately still a political speech.
Is this man running for president? But I thought we went through that already and it turned out he didn’t really want it after we gave it to him.
Anyway, I’m definitely not a politician; when I hear the thoughts I have already lived with for years echoed by the vice-president’s lines recorded just yesterday, I feel not hope but only despair:
Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is “yes” then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant, imprison American citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can’t he do?
The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch’s extravagant claims of these previously unrecognized powers: “If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.”
The fact that our normal American safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is, itself, deeply troubling.
Gore thinks we’ll wake up, come to our senses and restore the Constitution. But I’m thinking, the “safeguards” he speaks of were built into that document and they amounted to much of its substance but they didn’t work. I believe that no constitution can be reconstituted once it has been so easily trashed, We’ve certainly trashed ours, and for no real cause but an irrational fear, hardly a suitable building material for a free people.
If I have any other quarrel with Gore’s rhetoric or delivery on this occasion it is that even when he is describing the most egregious assaults on our historic liberties and fundamental law he still only begins to approach the fire his message demands.
And oh yes, not to be too picky about visual design, but did they really have to plant nine (9) American flags directly behind him for 65 minutes? I know, I know, we aren’t supposed to let the radical Right take possession of every one of our dear old war banners, but don’t we know yet that the Republicans will always win that particular numbers game? [see photo above]
[image by Susan Walsh from AP via Washington Post]
Adin de Masi at Projekt30
Adin de Masi Nostalgia Severed oil on canvas 60″ x 60″ x 2″
Adin de Masi Saint Angry mixed media on paper 52″ x 90″
Adin de Masi Blowing Boy mixed media on paper 60″ x 84″
I spotted these and other wonderful works by Adin de Masi on a casual visit to the artist-run virtual gallery Projekt30 a few days ago. Please forgive this New Yorker for observing that while Arizona can be a wonderful place (and I have the greatest respect for Art One Gallery for discovering and showing de Masi’s work), on the basis of these on-line images alone it shouldn’t be hard to find a gallery which could bring this remarkable young artist (born in 1980) to the attention of the world way beyond Scottsdale.
De Masi includes a charmingly ingenuous statement on the Projekt30 exhibit, but I think it only describes the occasion of his inspiration; everything else has been left to the drawings and paintings, meaning that for the viewer there won’t be any easy disengagement from these complex images. I prefer it that way:
I am very interested and bewildered by the daily drudgery/effortless ballet of relationships. Muttered insults, exasperating habits, whispered sweet-nothings, all-out debates and violent, delicious kisses become subject matter for these silly/ serious pieces.