Category: Culture

POST CARD


Iris Bernblum 3 pm 2005 video [large detail of still from installation]

In the same show, Iris Bernblum showed this stunning video. That mid-afternoon desk break will just never be the same again.

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Rä di Martino Not360 2003 16mm film transferred onto DVD [still from video installation]
Rä di Martino has a wonderful video in a terrific group show, “The Mind/Body Problem” at Artists Space. I wish every film packed as much into a feature’s length as this Möbius-Strip-like piece does in just seven minutes. I stood in the room and watched it, I think, four times. It’s still playing somewhere inside my head.

Karen Heagle Bound Man 2005 oil on panel 61″ x 68″ [pretty large detail]


Kaen Heagle Low Tide at Rialto Beach 3 (Lone Starfish) 20o5 oil on panel 45″ x 42″ [detail]

Karen Heagle’s show opened I-20 gallery’s very impressive space on 23rd Street tonight and the beauty of both the work and the opening-night crowd represented a certain aesthetic and intellectual nobility not sufficiently represented in large Chelsea shows these days.
I’ve been hooked on Heagle’s imagery for years, but until now I’ve always felt I had to work very hard to find it. Actually it was even a number of years after I first met and talked to the artist before I even discovered that she painted.
These canvases and these drawings are really extraordinary, and extraordinarily sophisticated, in spite of a style which might initially appear conservative, even primitive. Surprisingly, in spite of their simplicity, they never suggest the faux-naif. So is this the twenty-first century?
The portraits, and they are portraits (even if the sitter may be a turkey or a starfish), or at least that’s where they start, are ennobled by the sensitivlty and brilliance of the more-or-less abstract “landscapes” which frame the subject.
May I be excused if I say that those are absolutely the sexiest starfish I’ve ever seen (not that I’ve really ever thought that way about echinoderms before)?
For more on Heagle, see the wonderful Ed Winkleman.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.