James Wagner

Jenny Saville Shift 1996-1997 oil on canvas 130″ x 130″ [large detail]

She doesn’t need this humble blog to attract attention; she’s already there. But after a visit today to, well . . . okay, I’ll admit it, the vast halls of Gagosian, I couldn’t resist broadcasting this gorgeous detail – even if it’s a very poor substitute for being there with the paint.


Jenny Saville Shift 1996-1997 oil on canvas 130″ x 130″

[lower image from Gagosian gallery]

Ara Peterson/Forcefield Third Annual Roggabogga Motion Picture 2002 video 6 min. 7 sec.


Ara Peterson 12 Ball 1997 video 2 min. 51 sec.


view of Justin Samson installation showing Nandor the First and Treebeard (2004 mixed media) in the foreground, Bactroban (2005 record cover collage with yarn) mounted on the wall behind


Justin Samson Visitors 2004 collage on paper 16″ x 10″ (19.75″ x 13″ framed)

John Connelly Presents continues to balance shows in two separate gallery spaces on the tenth floor of 526 West 26th Street, and they’re always eye-openers, even for the most jaded art boulevardier. This month is no exception, with eleven abstract videos by Ara Peterson in one room, and Justin Samson’s extravagant installation in his reconstruction of the main space.

Michael Ashkin Adjnabistan 2005 recycled cardboard and gypsum 46″ x 132″ x 252″ [large detail of installation]

Michael Ashkin’s new large-scale piece, Adjnabistan, represents a significant departure from his handsome earlier work, which at least appeared to be about realism, even if it enclosed an angry conceptual core. The latest work, which almost entirely fills Andrea Rosen‘s project room, is both fundamentally and apparently conceptual, even if it retains enough of an element of realism to seduce the child in all of us.
From the press release:

“Adjnabistan” is the name of the anti-nationality I invented with a friend while traveling through the Middle East in the late 1970s. Derived from the Arabic “adjnabi” (meaning “foreigner,” “stranger,” or “other”), this land of impossible origin proved useful, especially in Iran, where, as an American, one needed to avoid treacherous political discussions. If said with the proper lightness of tone, “Adjnabistan” could provoke a smile or even be accepted without question. In any event, we could not be accused of lying or insincerity; in fact, the more I used this word over the months, the more I came to develop mental images of this shadow homeland. These images varied widely and, like a dream, spanned numerous geographies, but empathetically included aspects of the political and economic neglect evident in the landscapes through which we passed.
To illustrate the most extreme version of the schism between ideas and means, Ashkin imagined Adjnabistan as a community at the far end of exclusion, i.e., as a squatter/refugee/concentration camp built from used or abandoned shipping containers, situated in a fringe wasteland. The physical piece developed accordingly, with three forces asserting themselves: the inhabitants’ hopes and aspirations, the social, political and economic constraints they encountered; and finally, the artist’s own interests in developing a work of art. As the piece developed, fences were built, torn down and rebuilt. Watch towers became guard towers. Family compounds became prisons then perforated by fresh doorways. Structures too grandiose were dismantled and scavenged. The town underwent cycles of overflow and attrition. Populations thrived, perished or set themselves adrift in the surrounding desert.

Omigosh, I don’t think there’s ordinarily a connection between the two rooms, but I just realized the brilliance of a decision which brings together Ashkin and Andrea Zittel, who is showing work in the gallery’s main space, part of the latter’s continuing real and conceptual explorations of “the limitations of living space.”

John F. Simon, Jr. Endless Victory 2005 software, Apple Powerbook G4, acrylic plastic 28″ x 28″ x 3.25″ [detail/screen still]

Sandra Gering showed only two modest-sized works by John F. Simon, Jr. in the show which closed on Saturday. Either one however could stand in for an entire art collection, since each of the two computer screens mounted in exquisite cut and engraved Plexiglas frames presents an infinitely-changing image. The one shown above is Simon’s take, in the words of the press release, “on the endless merging, dividing, overtaking, turning, starting and stopping motions” of the city which inspired Piet Mondrian’s unfinished 1943/44 Victory Boogie-Woogie.
No image in either work will ever be repeated on the screen, so the pieces will be renewing themselves forever. You may not be able to afford one of these jewels, but if you could, you’d never have to buy another work of art for novelty alone.
The gallery installation showed four pieces from each of the two editions, only beginning to suggest the endless variations produced by the software.
There’s really a lot going on here. The screen images are never entirely abstract, they regularly mimic three dimensions, and their inspirational sources are a balance of humanistic ideals and conceptual purity.

The second edition, Endless Bounty, emerges from the tension between Simon’s urban lifestyle and his longing for nature. The software flips between the two ideals displaying maps, drawings, photographs and three-dimensional models in a continual effort to capture our gaze.

I’m really attracted to the intelligence and creativity of Simon’s art, but he adds something most artists who work with computer code do not have: He knows how to draw, and it’s always a part of his “machinery.”


John F. Simon, Jr. Endless Bounty 2005 software, Apple Powerbook G4, acrylic plastic 23″ x 17.5″ x 3.25″ [detail/screen still]

[lower image from Sandra Gering Gallery]

They’ve made landfall and explored Roosevelt Island but in the end it’s apparently not quite what they or any of us thought it would be.
Jesse Bercowetz, Matt Bua and Carrie Dashow continue their investigation of the weird mythologies of a half-forgotten, long narrow island lodged in the middle of New York’s East River with an installation at Jessica Murray. This is a project begun last year whose first forms “in which the artists assumed the role of underworld crypto-zoologists” were exhibited under the title Under Gone at PS1 in the fall.

In order to explore the island and its treacherous surrounding waters once known as “The Hell Gate” they [subsequently] launched a makeshift raft into the East River. In their new installation Pent-Up and Under Gone, Bercowetz, Bua, and Dashow explore their findings, as well as the Island’s oral and written histories, and are led to a new interpretation of the land as a growing monster of unpredictable powers, with a life of its own, undetermined by humans.

There’s no way any image can prepare you for what they’ve installed, and as usual the work leaves me speechless (in a good way). Don’t miss their huge “book.”
You’re going to want to see it all, but you’re going to have to find the gallery first: The huge 11th Avenue building was already partially veiled by a construction canopy, but the three artists have gone a step further. They’ve almost entirely covered the entrance to Jessica’s neat minimalist rooms with boards and pallets which look much like the scrap wood you’d expect to find on parts of Roosevelt Island’s muddy shore. Still, you should be able to just about make out the red lettering if you’re on foot.


dust thrown up by gusty (West) river winds outside the gallery


one of the two “enhanced” gallery windows as seen from the inside


Jesse Bercowetz/Matt Bua Pent-Up and Undergone (panel) 2005 mixed media 64″ x 88″ x 18″ [detail]