untitled (South Cove lights) 2004
Summer in the Long Island City
PS1 and the members of Young Architects Program, responsible for the beautiful courtyard installation, should be delighted to know that the visitor pictured above, relaxing in one of their outdoor spaces, had made the art very much his own for part of the day. (We remembered seeing him earlier inside, very intent upon the work in the Special Projects and Studio Program rooms, but he may have been inspired by the sandy images in Ugo Rondinone‘s beautiful installation, “Sleep.”)
I nearly forgot to post something about our visit to PS1 on Sunday afternoon. We almost didn’t make it at all, since neither Barry and I nor our friend Karen were anxious to get the early start our day’s ambitions recommended. We started out with a pilgrimage to ATM Gallery in the East Village, hours before the current show was to be taken down. Half of the afternoon had evaporated before we squeezed into the crowd drawn to Long Island City for the Museum’s summer show, “Hard Light.”
It was a warm urban moment. Summer in the city. People were drawn by the art and maybe the music, but perhaps more than anything else, by each other.
We will have to return to get a good look at the work of some 40 or 50 artists and collaboratives installed in and around the rambling old school building, but judging from what we did manage to see, I’d say that anyone would have to be quite dead not to be delighted, surprised or challenged by much of what’s there.
The weekends on Jackson Avenue are great fun, but the weekdays are probably better for serious arties.
arties and friends having fun in the main courtyard on Sunday
defining Manhattan as island
untitled (from Wagner Park railing)
But this is not the only thing which separates us from the rest of the country.
for TAG Projects art is the personal and the political
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.
disorder in the court and confusion in the newsroom
the United States Supreme Court, showing nothing upstairs
More on today’s ruling from the Supreme Court.
The news stories which first appeared this morning have already been rewritten a number of times (the AP story I linked to in my own post no longer exists; its replacement bears a report which is almost a reversal of the original), reflecting the confusion which surrounds the justices’ “decision.”
I think most of us don’t have to be reminded that it was this same Supreme judiciary body which three and a half years ago installed the Administration which we see working so asiduously to re-create the remainder of the judiciary in its own image.* I don’t think we can expect “judicial review” to safeguard any of us from assaults waged in the name of the War on Terror.
Today’s decision says Bush has the right, under the Patriot Act, to arrest and hold both citizens and non-citizens indefinitely and without charges, although both citizens and non-citizens have the right to go to court to argue, apparently one at a time, that in their particular cases they are being held illegally. No one will be let out today – or tomorrow – and in fact the separate cases could be argued for years while the plaintiffs languish in camps, thanks to these (un)worthy judges.
However you look at what the Court did today, it has to be regarded as making bad law.
* One reminder which more of us actually do need: John Kerry, our great blue hope, voted for the war, voted for staying the course in Iraq, and voted for the Patriot Act.
[image from supremecourtus]
Supreme Court confirms Bush as dictator
Chaplin in “The Dictator”
We have no freedom.
I’m looking for the nearest door.
[image from DVDMaXX]
Cheney tells senator, “Fuck Yourself”
Big Time
Could this be the same newspaper whose editors have been major cheerleaders for the Bush administration for three and a half years? Starting even with their site headline, “Cheney Uses Major-League Expletive,” this delicious story from the Washington Post reads more like something you’d see on a smart progressive blog than what you might expect from a White House rag.
Among other helpful tips, the Post article reminds us:
As it happens, the exchange occurred on the same day the Senate passed legislation described as the “Defense of Decency Act” by 99 to 1.
Goodness!
[image from CONSPIRATION.CC]
from Chelsea to Williamsburg
A few quick shots of four shows enjoyed very recently, the first two in high Chelsea, the last two in lower Williamsburg:
Ryan Humphrey installation view, including (top to bottom, left to right, BMX for Japanese Hipster (Aztec Orange), BMX for Japanese Hipster (cavern Pool Green), Remember, Narrate and See (all 2004)
At Caren Golden Fine Art Ryan Humphrey shows a very personal selection of already playfully-seductive commercial products which he has intensely, even obsessively, individualized. They end up as the things without which the rest of us simply cannot go on. It looks like he started working on this show when he was seven – and I mean that in the best way.
The show has been extended through July 16.
Freecell, installation view
The collaborative Freecell is responsible for what may be both the most charming and most disturbing installation around this month. When you enter a small quiet room at Henry Urbach Architecture you are in a spaceship hovering among an unnatural miniature landscape where impossibly-high real skyscrapers are visible just outside the vessel’s large window. The environment is both abstract and, quite literally, very earthy, er . . . mossy. The conceptual implications end up mucking up your head even after you’ve returned through the air and time lock and travelled back to where you began.
While you are there, don’t miss the other side (in both senses) of this brilliant gallery, an elegant show of architectural photographs by Ezra Stoller.
Susan Jennings installation view Wood Corner (2002) c-print, plexi 26-3/4″ x 26-3/4″ courtesy of Michael Steinberg Fine Art
Nancy Shaver The Blue And The Gray (1989) antique frame with found clothing 37-1/4″ x 23-1/2 x 3″ courtesy of Feature Inc.
Jennifer Coates Adrift (2004) acrylic on canvas 30″ x 24″
Champion Fine Art just took down their “Exhibition #14: Grass and Honey,” curated by David Shaw, and it was up to the very high standards of an artist-curated series which began with #20 and which will end as it winds down to #11. The last ten exhibitions will be mounted in Los Angeles – our loss, the Angelenos gain. There were two fine works in this show by Susan Jennings, each photo-based. One jumped into the third dimension, all be it only one plane at a time.
Also within the space through yesterday, the Nancy Shaver and Jennifer Coates pieces were as striking as they are “photogenic” themselves.
William Powhida installation detail
William Powhida installation detail
You’ve probably seen him everywhere, and you’ve certainly read his work, now you get to see William Powhida‘s very personal art at Dam Stuhltrager gallery, on a small corner in Williamsburg, just west of the BQE. The title of the show, “Persona,” doesn’t begin to suggest how many of his roles you’ll find there. The wonderful video in the special “back room” in the middle seems almost to hold it/them together – if only for its (eminently-repeatable) four-minute duration.
tree cave
untitled (Roebling street tree)
loving the hibiscus
I have a certain awe and respect for the hibiscus, although I’ve never lived with one. My fascination began long ago in Oshkosh on my Aunt Lillian’s veranda and it was renewed soon after I first discovered the formal summer plantings above the Swan Boats dock in the Boston Public Garden. A glorious hibiscus “tree” stood at the center of a fascinating group of trailing and spikey plants in one of those giant iron Victorian urns popular at the turn of the 20th century.
The hibiscus always seemed to me to be a survivor from an earlier, gentler time, and it certainly had no place in the horiculturally-challenged garden of my mother’s house. It also seemed to be both exotic and surprisingly ordinary, depending upon which of its parts were being observed. Above all, it wasn’t the least bashful about its colors, and I loved them all.
Apparently Andy did too. I only realized recently that the Warhol image which probably most rivals that of the soup cans for its familiarity was inspired by the same hibiscus which decorated both Aunt Lillian and Boston.
The yellow specimen in the photo above was waving to me this afternoon from the edge of the sidewalk as I walked pass my local florist on 8th Avenue. I immediately captured it with my little magic camera, but I went inside to ask if there was a chance it would survive in the microclimate of our roof garden. The shopkeepers were encouraging, but a quick Google at home persuaded me it would be an impossible relationship.
Fate keeps me from living with either Warhol’s hibiscus or the living original, but it’s left me this image.