Author: jameswagner

I’ve displayed a severely limited color spectrum on this site lately, and I’m sorry that this shot isn’t much of a stretch from those black and white images sitting just below it.
But I think that it does manage to represent a decent view of a very satisfyingly recondite installation at Haswellediger by the Dutch/Swiss artist Bob Gramsma.
I want it. But my appetite is obviously bigger than my stomach.
The gallery describes the complex monochromatic maze which almost totally dominates its exhibition space in this excerpt from the press release:

For Tanstaafl [the only slightly abstruse title of the show*] Gramsma will exhibit Schwamendingen, OI#0485, a multi-layered architectural structure of some two hundred glass windows and doors from an old house in Zürich in conjunction with several objects including a source of light. As with past projects, Gramsma continues to subvert the function of vehicles, passageways, ports and other “A to B” systems as a means of paralleling our present climate of disinformation and mistrust. The structure pits true and artificial light against one another like fact and fiction as the viewer maneuvers its periphery in a somewhat ironic attempt to decipher or reach its true core. The entire room continues this subtle atmosphere of conflict as rays of light,are bounced off of one another, while mediated and distorted through the glass panes of the doors and windows.

Oh yes, we were assured that the suburban villa which gave up its wonderful old windows to the artist still stands – now wearing modern replacements.

*
see the complete press release for some clarity on this appellation

Maybe it’s the times, maybe it’s the season, but there is a lot of fun and a lot of heart to be found in the Chelsea gallery blocks these days. The latest example is the group exhibition which opened at Julia Friedman last night, where Alejandro Diaz could be seen seated against a wall cranking out his signature cardboard signs while cradling his small mastiff, Diego.
Each of his works is available at the unprecedented rate of exchange of only $20. Disclosure time: We had already been enjoying two from this continuing series for years, and for our visitors they have always been among the most literally remarkable pieces to be found on our walls. Last night we came home with three more.
In the image seen above Diaz is seated below:

STRAIGHT MAN
TRAPPED IN A GAY
MAN’S PARTY

He’s finishing up:

WORLD’S
LARGEST
PECAN
3 MILES [bold arrow to the right]

The other artists or designers included in the show are Feral Childe, Christine Hill, Derek Sullivan, Vexed Generation and Judy Werthein.
The gallery describes an installation which is as seasonal and political as much as it is a not uncomplicated delight to shop:

As a functioning store, “THE GIFT boutique” features a gift wrapping station, a selection of books, CDs, magazines, wrapping paper, packing tape, and clothing, all created by artists and designers whose play on the “boutique” model belies their sensitivity toward commercial practices, and in ways that both laud and critique this association. The presentation in a commercial gallery not only reinforces how easily these artists and designers assume corporate identities, but how each redefine the parameters of the boutique to create personal exchanges between themselves, their “products,” and the consumer.

waiting for a copy

You have five more days to join in what will surely be remembered as one of the strangest and most delightful gallery experiences of the season, Gelitin‘s performance/installation at Leo Koenig on West 23rd Street.
From the Performa 05 website:

Viennese art collective Gelitin (Ali Janka, Wolfgang Gantner, Tobias Urban, and Florian Reither) will install and inhabit Tantamounter 24/7 a giant “copy-duplicator-transformation machine” for seven days and nights at Leo Koenig Gallery. The machine will be operated by the Gelitin artists under close supervision of a bankrupt psychiatrist. Visitors will be invited to insert any object, idea, or smell into the entry port, for duplication in the machine, and after an announced waiting time the input object and its duplicate will be ejected through the exit slot. The machine will be a sealed chamber of creativity with no connection to the outside world for the duration of the installation.

This afternoon Barry and I visited the box, intent on avoiding the weekend crowds*. Each of us was carrying an offering for the machine. Looking around for a precious posession, as we were advised by a friend, we first had the idea of bringing Sweetpea in his little traveling box. In the end the thought of the possible shock for either parakeet or artists made us look elsewhere.
We brought a neat old wind-up alarm clock and a favorite small houseplant. The clock went into the magic hopper first, and within twenty minutes or so it came back out accompanied by a truly wonderful, whimsical imitation, . . . err, tantamount, which boasted an old blue beer cozy for a housing, hand-inked numbers, two twisted paperclips for hands, two rubber feet from a small appliance, and, composing a top alarm shut-off button and controls for the back of the new “clock,” various odds and ends of the kind found in the bottom of what my mother always called the junk drawer.
The plant was in the box for a much longer time, but the lovingly-crafted copy we found behind the door when the light went on was really spectacular. The Tantamounter had even accounted for the bits of perlite visible on the surface of the real soil by including some glossy dots and one tiny mother-of-pearl drop embedded in the Sculpey-soil.


insert object when light goes on


which one will need the sun?

*
actually, although the installation is open 24/7, as advertised, I think much of the fun is watching other folks come into the gallery with their own objects, and then seeing what eventually comes out of this extraordinarily imaginative machine

ADDENDUM: I’ve added images of the alarm clock and its tantamount below.


faces


behinds

Josephine Meckseper Shelf #31 2005 mixed media on metal shelf 23.75″ x 60″ x 14″ [large detail of installation]

Josephine Meckseper’s show at Elizabeth Dee was the highlight of a Chelsea afternoon on Saturday, and I hadn’t even prepped.
Total serendipity.
Barry and I still had a lot of catching up to do after being away for a few weeks, and because of a seven-hour time change we had been pretty much out of it for a week or after that. The result was that we were kinda focused on shows which were closing that day or in the near future when we saw the faux shop windows on either side of the entrance to the gallery on 20th Street.
From the press release:

Starting with the façade, Meckseper will alter the windows of Elizabeth Dee Gallery to resemble the dramatic display windows of an upscale department store. Mixing semantic codes, the objects on display in one window will seem to sell a vision of current American politics, while the other will offer images of an oppositional culture of protest and references to the women’s correctional facility across the street. Vinyl lettering suggests the monolithic encroachment of a homogenizing globalism in a leveraged buyout and merger of New York’s most prominent museum, gallery, and exhibition sponsor.

Meckseper’s elegant, ironic installation seductively addresses twenty-first century American consumerism and power, in a not-so-subtle mockery especially of the two things we still do better than anyone else: shopping and shooting. There’re also some good bits about the commodification of women, workers, race, relationships, sex, art and even ideas themselves.


Meckseper State of the Union Address to Senate and Nation 2005 glass, mirror, newspaper, chrome, metal mesh, found jewelry 42″ x 18″ x 12″ [installation view, with three other works, Clearance Sale, Untitled (50% Off) and Untitled (Mirror Wall), in background]

Meckseper Untitled (Vitrine) 2005 mixed media in display window 46″ x 46″ x 18.5″ [installation view]

Meckseper [installation view of a piece introduced to the show late; its details are not yet available]