Category: Culture

COOL “EVEN BY THE STANDARDS OF WILLIAMSBURG”


moving party

The quote is from Bloggy, reference is to the smart Brooklyn gallery we are about to lose to Los Angeles, and the occasion for this post is this Sunday’s “moving party” benefit.
Champion Fine Art is nearing the end of the New York half of their two year exhibition series of artist-curated group shows.
Drew and Flora are asking a modest $25 donation for the party, but you can walk home with part of their Williamsburg history if you can spring for another $75. The $100 entitles guests to participate in a drawing of works by artists Champion has exhibited or by the curators who brought them to the space. Since the curators are all artists, it looks like a chance for a double indemnity.
See the gallery site for details.

[image from AUSTIN BUSINESS COMPUTERS, Inc.]

I had never seen Brian Ulrich’s photographs before he sent me an email commenting on my site. He’s going to be included in a group show, “Unframed First Look,” hosted by Sean Kelly Gallery beginning the 28th of this month. The show is described as “A juried salon for photographers without New York representation.” All sales wil benefit ACRIA, and the jurors are Adam Fuss, Jack Person and Cindy Sherman. I’m sure we’re now going to be hearing a lot about Ulrich.
His own site includes countless wonderfully-nuanced images related, in his own words, to [the peculiarly American?] “shopping and consumer culture since 2001.”

I take photographs with the hope to show how we appear caught within the excesses of a consumer-dominated culture. In 2001, consumer culture was redefined to include larger political and global implications: post 9-11, citizens were admonished to take to the malls to boost our economy through shopping. My photographs of excessive, corporate, and sometimes hyper-real retail spaces document the everyday activities of consumption. By scrutinizing these rituals – ones we often take for granted – I hope to help us evaluate the increasing complexities of our contemporary world. As world events grow beyond our control, is this how we will cope?

Most of the photographs seem to capture the environment centering on his adopted home, Chicago. The technique is stunning, but it’s the melancholy beauty of his subjects and the tenderness of his own gaze which holds the eye and the soul of the viewer. In spite of the project’s description, this is not a cold social commentary.
Two more previews from notifbutwhen.com, and then you can go look on your own:





[images from notifbutwhen.com]

Julianne Swartz Can You Hear Me (2004) installation view, PVC pipe, mirror, Plexiglas, existing architecture and participants

I like what the New Museum is doing this summer. The plucky, real estate-blessed institution has sold its building and closed its doors while it re-builds itself on the Bowery. Although the images that street name has evoked for more than a century are dissolving rapidly, those blocks still wear their history and the Museum seems to want to slip into the neighborhood with some grace and respect.
Its perambulatory exhibition, “Counter Culture,” opened last night in a number of venues on and just off the Bowery. We braved the party, which commandeered a local bar, only long enough to grab the map of the installation locations, and then we were off. Because of another commitment in Williamsburg however, that night we were only able to have a quick look at what two of the artists were doing.
Marion Wilson has set up a snappy little pushcart in front of the Bowery Mission, and in this conception, called “This Store Too,” she was showing and selling merchandise that was a collaboration between herself and the men who are served by the Mission’s programs.
With “Can You Hear Me,” Julianne Swartz has constructed a bright yellow sculptural system of pipes and mirrors outside and entering into the facade of the building which houses the Sunshine Hotel. The result is an opportunity for interaction between residents of the hotel and passersby.


Ivan Navarro You Sit You Die (2000) installation view, fluorescent tubes, electric cables, and list of people executed by electric chair in Florida 33″ x 24.5″ x 48″

Who still doubts the power or the aesthetic of so-called political art? All art is political by definition, especially in this culture, but when it’s as good as what we saw in Brooklyn later last night it should not be scorned – or missed.
We had ended the artier part of the evening in Williamsburg at Roebling Hall, where there was a lively opening reception for their group show, “Bush League.” We will have to go back for a better experience of the individual works, even though we had already seen some of them bedfore. I believe most are by artists who have shown in the gallery. Especially if the curators had to work with a limited number of names, the results are pretty impressive.

Dr. Lakra, detail of installation

Matthew Marks on 24th Street opened its doors Wednesday on night to a gem of a show, “Deliver Us From Evil,” curated by Matthew himself. I includes the work of four bodies of artists who seemed to be working out of territory carved a century and a half earlier by their fifth colleague, Honore daumier. It was a masterly selection in every sense.
The contemporary artists include R. Crumb, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Dr. Lakra and Keegan McChargue. The names we recognize right off the bat betray the theme of societal caricature which runs through all the work shown, most of them executed on paper.
In the center of the gallery space are several plinths displaying exquisite small sculptures, including the pieces by the inventive young Mexican artist which are shown in the image above. The Chapman Brothers meanwhile had made a standard McDonalds Happy Meal their very own, as seen in the image below.


Jake and Dinos Chapman, installation view

The crowd was almost as diverting as the art, even aside from our pleasure in running into our friend Hiroshi Sunairi, who introduced us to Yuh-Shioh Wong, whose work we have been excited about for some time, and Yukie Kamiya, newly-appointed as an assistant curator with the New Museum. Here is part of the scene on opening night, standing in front of the one wall which included a mix of the work of all the artists included in the show:

Peter Corrie untitled (2004) 11″ x 14″

Barry and I actually stopped by twice on Saturday at the Dumbo space of the TAG Projects show, “Death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people.” We left in triumph with the piece shown above, by the young artist and curator of the show, Peter Corrie, and we still expect to add one or more small works by other artists to our cart once we can pin down the details.
There was a great deal to like about each of the dozen or so artists who had contributed work. While certainly and unapologetically politically-driven, this is art which can stand very strongly on its own both at this moment and in the eden for which these people are working.
My most-savored (or at this moment most-remembered) images are, in no particular order, the wall installations of Noah Lyon and Peter Corrie (who can’t stay on paper alone). Corrie’s provocative sculpture, “Dear W,” is a small found suitcase filled with a simulated bomb assembled largely from art supplies. The infernal machine would be in our apartment at this moment except for the problem of space associated with most sculptural and installation art.
John Jodzio’s imagination could make any neighborhood a legend, and his two large exciting works on paper (sharpie pen and watercolor) do a very good turn for Jersey City.
Leah Meyerhoff’s (triptych-y?)video, “Packaged Goods,” seems to offer one proposal for dealing with the fascist world of the show’s title, and it’s as painful as it is fascinating to witness. Great installation.
Alex Barry’s 19 drawings, each assigned a title beginning with “I Wish I was . . . ,” hold back as much as they deliver. I’m trying to say they’re all keepers.
Drew Liverman presented a beguiling collage assembled with cut-outs from printed vinyl inflatable toys. As far as I could determine, the piece offered less menace or malice than any other in the show. So, is that something like a reversal of the kind of impulse which will sometimes contrive a deliberate mistake in an otherwise perfect work?
Jeff Swartz creates small, pretty, exquisitely-crafted melancholy images of military hardware.
Tim Kent has refashioned a child’s doll (ok, it’s actually G.I. Joe), and its labelling, and returned it to its bubble-wrap packaging. The figure is now costumed as the standing, black-hooded figure in Abu Ghraib Prison which will be etched in our brains forever.
Spy pins a home-made stuffed white rabbit to a column and in its “hand” are three useless playing cards. Just below the figure is another, separate work, a white marker image on black paper of the devil holding a rabbit upside down. The title of the piece with the stuffed rabbit? “He’s Got Jack.”
We’re very sorry once again that we only managed to get to the gallery space on the last day of a one-week show run. We’ll do better next time, and I certainly hope, and expect, there will be lots of nexts. We want to watch this good stuff happening.


Noah Lyon drawings, installation detail


Peter Corrie Dear W (2004) mixed media 3′ x 2′ x 4′


Drew Liverman untitled (2004) 6′ x 4′ printed vinyl & plastic sheeting


Spy, installation view, with He’s Got Jack (2004) 2′ x 1′ fabric, stuffing and playing cards; and untitled (2003-2004) 14″ x 11″ marker on paper

One more note about both the people who are TAG Projects and the artists shown in this exhibition: Many if not most of them are as dedicated to and creative in music as they are in their visual work.
And if anyone’s still wondering about the inspiration for the title of the show, copied in the first paragraph above, it’s a quote from the Symbionese Liberation Army. For more of an immersion in extreme activism, and only slightly less extreme sex, check out Bruce LaBruce‘s new film, “Raspberry Reich,” a brilliant film tool for seducing homos on behalf of the revolution.