There is much to look at in an exhibition from William Pope L. called “landscape + object + animal”; not just the live performer wearing pajamas, a Barack Obama mask and standing at the end of an inclined ramp made from bags of soil; but also the plush animals doused in coffee and scattered throughout the gallery, the signs that proclaim “Negro Ideas” and drawings made on vinyl banners.
Much to think about and feel too: the live performer is holding a cup with a green ink which could signify different things I suppose, but I’m not sure it’s possible to read them this way. The action itself is important, the colors, the movement, the associations, the composition. And taking it all in can take some time, but offers up an internal tension related to our understanding of identity and racial politics that could prove worthwhile. …read more
One of Dorothea’s favorites is back on view at D’Amelio Terras Gallery with a new installation titled Trouble Everyday. Called “quasi-cinematic” by Jacob Proctor, Associate Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art at the University of Michigan Museum of Art where this work was first shown, it forces the viewer to reorganize their perceptions of space while moving through it.
Heather Rowe
Trouble Everday
D’Amelio Terras Gallery — 525 West 22nd
until June 19, 2010
Following an experience of David Hammon’s work at Ace gallery in 2003 one visitor stated: “There was no music after the opening, but noise filtered in from the street; audience members found themselves more or less on their own. As they explored unknown architectural space, shadowy characters emerged and disappeared down mysterious corridors that faded into the perpetual black of this underworld. At any moment, pervasive calm could be transformed by some unexpected rupture.” — Artforum, 2003. …read more
Christian Boltanski presents No Man’s Land commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory for it’s Wade Thompson Drill Hall, NY’s newest monumental art space.This installation is the second in Boltanski’s ongoing series that began with Personnes that was on view at the Grand Palais in Paris from January-February 2010.
Although the Holocaust is often referred to in Boltanski’s work, he says No Man’s Land “can equally suggest ‘natural’ events such as the recent disaster in Haiti and how these events affect us as both individuals and as a community of human beings.”For many visitors, it’s the tragedy of 9/11 that comes to mind.…read more
Doug and Mike Starn’s Big Bambu installation on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is (or will be) a huge 50 foot high organic sculpture composed of bamboo trees constructed into a walkable tower that will continue to grow and change over the course of it’s six-month run. Titled “You Can’t, You Won’t, You Don’t Stop” (Beastie Boys!), this particular incarnation is a condensed version of a work the artists have been concerned with for years. …read more
Don’t miss Alix Pearlstein’s latest videos Talent (2009) and Finale (2009) on view at On Stellar Rays til this Sunday, May 23rd.Don’t just take my word for it, go to the gallery website and read critics praise in New York Times, The New Yorker, Village Voice, New York Magazine, and more!
As Nate and I experienced when we first saw her work at The Kitchen in 2008, you quickly become drawn in by the familiar yet unusually choreographed human drama played out in an new context: the black-box theater merged with the white cube gallery space.…read more
This is your final weekend to take advantage of the much discussed and celebrated exhibition of new paintings by Amy Sillman at Sikemma Jenkins Gallery. She expands on the show’s title, Transformer (…or, how many lightbulbs does it take to change a painting?) with imagery that unfolds slowly and with colors that evolve and mix and go from grey to saturated color and back again all as you walk through this show of large works. …read more
“The Universe is built from a simple form. That form is commonly understood to be an atom and the shape of that form is commonly understood to be a sphere. For my purposes, I would prefer to see that shape as a beard…” And so begins Greg Smith’s statement about his current exhibition at Susan Inglett Gallery, a fun and colorful amalgamation of absurdity that makes you wonder … why beards?
That explanation is given, but as I recently read somewhere ‘the world is full of explanations and I’m tired of them.’ It’s much more fun and interesting to experience the new universe and in this exhibition the artist presents the objects and backdrops from the film he created (part of which is on view in the sidebar at the right). …read more
“Pilgrim”, the new work by Kiki Smith on view at Pace Gallery is made of 30 hand-painted stained glass panels that depict women in various stages of life.
Pilgrim implies a journey, here it’s the journey from birth to death. The idea of this journey being a common denominator for us all is apparent through the artist’s use of different models who, according to the gallery’s press release, are the artist’s friends. Not exactly portraits the gallery says, but “as stand-ins for various states of a person, or a person’s wandering pilgrimage through life.” I can relate to that. …read more
A small group of works by Carrie Mae Weems are on view at Jack Shainman Gallery. They include out-of-focus images of female performers, film stills from the 70’s exploitation flick called Mandingo, video projections and photographs of women in New York.
In Slow Fade to Black #1 (Eartha Mae Kitt), 2009-10, the image of Eartha Kitt is recognizable, yet seems to be just beyond our ability to focus on, to understand. At first, you fight to bring it into focus, long for it to make sense. Spending time with an image like this, you begin to think this is how Eartha should look, the image might even rewrite memory, change history.
Kitt died last year, and in her obituary from the Associated Press, she is reported to have said: “I don’t carry myself as a black person but as a woman that belongs to everybody. After all, it’s the general public that made (me) — not any one particular group. So I don’t think of myself as belonging to any particular group and never have.” …read more
There is much to look at in an exhibition from William Pope L. called “landscape + object + animal”; not just the live performer wearing pajamas, a Barack Obama mask and standing at the end of an inclined ramp made from bags of soil; but also the plush animals doused in coffee and scattered throughout the gallery, the signs that proclaim “Negro Ideas” and drawings made on vinyl banners.
