Anne Truitt at Matthew Marks Gallery
Anne Truitt, First Spring, 1981, acrylic on wood, 72 x 8 x 8 inches
First introduced to Truitt’s work when I was helping organize a show of Minimalist work at Vivian Horan Fine Art, I immediately fell in love with the simplicity of the line, form and color in her work. It is amazing to me how such seemingly banal works trigger emotion in me. Unable to see the retrospective of her work at the Hirshhorn last year, I was thrilled to see the current show at Matthew Marks. As the press release states, “Thirteen of Truitt’s sculptures, made between 1962 and 2004, will be on view, making this the most comprehensive exhibition of Truitt’s work in New York in almost 20 years. Sculptures could be triggered by colors she associated with friends or nature or memories of her childhood. She infused her art with these experiences through a labor intensive process—applying many layers of paint by hand to each piece and sanding the surfaces to a fine finish—and the bands of rich color that cover her sculptures, liberated from the traditional two-dimensional plane of painting, prompt viewers to make their own associations with her work. Although critics have attempted to group Truitt with the Minimalist sculptors or the Color Field painters, her marriage of painting and sculpture resulted in an oeuvre that eludes simple categorization.” If you have a chance, you should go to this show.
Lee Bountecou: All Freedom in Every Sense at MoMA
Lee Bontecou, Untitled, 1980-1998, Welded steel, porcelain, wire mesh, canvas, wire, and grommets, 7 x 8 x 6' (213.4 x 243.8 x 182.9 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Philip Johnson (by exchange) and the Nina and Gordon Bunshaft Bequest Fund. © 2010 Lee Bontecou
I have never been a huge fan of Bontecou’s but I so enjoyed this small exhibit of works on paper and sculptures. Best-known for her wall sculptures made from old conveyor belts stitched together, these works allow a more intimate view of the artist’s creations. Often made with soot, the drawings are otherworldly and less “gas-mask-like” then her familiar sculptural work. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a delicate mobile that casts shadows on the base below as it slowly moves. The show is well worth seeing on a visit to MoMA.
Dead or Alive at the Museum of Art and Design
Nick Cave, Sound Suit
Sanford Biggers, Ghettobird Tunic, 2008
Marc Swanson, Antler Pile, 2010
Throughout history charms and talismans made from natural materials were given spiritual power or were believed to transmit that power to their human owners. Artists in this exhibition make art from once living materials which act as reminders of death and decay and help us to create narratives about the world and our place in it. Highlights for me were a very cool light fixture chandelier-type piece made out of silk cocoons by Angus Hutcheson; a self-portrait by Cuban artist Fabien Pena made up of four lightboxes with images of the bones of a hand, foot and skull as well as a heart made up of cockroach wing fragments; “Spice Skulls” by Helen Altman includes 49 different types of spice in the creation of the grid of skulls so its scent captures the viewer; Susie MacMurray’s “Flock” from 2010, an installation of black rooster feathers, creates a claustrophobic interior space that is pretty and decorative but also quite disturbing. Of course there is the obligatory Hirst butterfly paiting from 2008, a sound suit by Nick Cave, and then two works by artists in the exhibition that is currently up at the gallery I work at–Sanford Biggers has “Ghettobird Tunic” and Marc Swanson has “Antler Pile.” Overall the work was not particularly challenging but it was fun to see what some people use other than the traditional media of paint and ink to create works of art.
Xu Bing talk at the Museum of Arts and Design
Xu Bing, The Opening, 1998
The Chinese artist, Xu Bing, currently has a work on view in the “Dead or Alive” exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design. The acclaimed artist Xu Bing has worked in a variety of media throughout his career. His works are original and creative and often related to materials from the natural world. In broken English he spoke about his many projects starting with a piece from 1998 called “The Opening” in which he arranged mulberry tree branches and placed 500 silkworms on the leaves. After two days, the worms had begun to weave silk and the leaves were gone so the arrangement took on a totally different look.
The Dust
Another work called “The Dust” was based on a Zen Buddhist poem from the 7th century whose last line is “Where does the dust itself collect?” Bing collected dust from the World Trade Center site after 9/11 and blew the dust into a sealed off room. The letters were then formed by cleaning the dust off of the floor. This piece, he explained, is about how the material world is related to the spiritual world.
The Tobacco Project, Shanghai
The “Tobacco Project” was comprised of many small works and a huge installation at Duke University where tobacco is a product grown in the state but where there have been many reports of related cancer. Five years later Bing did the tobacco project in Shanghai and made a huge tiger skin- looking rug out of 660,000 cigarettes called “The Carpet: Honor and Spelndor” because those were both names of cigarette brands in China. The work not only demonstrated what the Chinese desired and found cool at that time but it also had an intense smell and visual power strongly impacting viewers.
Backgound Story, 2010
Related to the work Bing has in the group show at MAD, he has created paintings out of trash, bricks, branches and natural materials which he affixes to the back of a lit surface so the image the viewer sees is cast in shadow–the result looks like an ink on paper landscape scroll. He makes copies of Asian scroll paintings of the past, but in this unique medium. In this work he explained that he is asking, “What is Chinese art’s connection with nature? What would Western art’s connection to nature be?” These works are soft and unexpectedly beautiful.
Phoenix Project, 2010
He ended his talk speaking about his latest project, “The Phoenix Project” in Beijing. He was commissioned to create a work for the World Financial Center’s atrium. He does not typically do commissions or public art but when they agreed to financially support the students at the academy where he teaches, he acquiesced. He spent some time with the workers who created the building, and he was intrigued by the contrast of the luxurious new building and their harsh environs so he decided to make two flying cranes out of the debris from the construction site. Cranes are auspicious in CHinese culture, but they are also ridden on one’s way to heaven so they were not a good choice for the owner of the building as he is very old. Bing altered his flying beasts to create two phoenix instead. It turns out that each dynasty had its own representation of the phoenix and after his research, his will be the closest to the Han dynasty’s in appearance. Each phoenix is 90 feet in length and very difficult to make. The works of art ended up being very architectural, almost like enormous buildings–he utitlized cement mixers and shovels and cranes. Using manmade items to imitate the natural and living world these figures are stunning. He placed LED lights strategically on them and therefore at night they look like a constellation from afar.
Kiki Smith: Lodestar at Pace Gallery
Kiki Smith, Lodestar, Installation Shot
In this period when art can be a bit shall we say out there and hard to understand, the imagery on mouth-blown stained glass panels that Kiki creates for this show is refreshing and brings us back to our most basic humanity. Reminiscent of Mary Cassatt, the female figures at different stages of life are easy to digest and relate to. They help us get in touch with the wonder of life and the aging process–wisdom, knowledge and love and loss. These images are not specific portraits but represent every person. The tender embraces and the details of the wrinkled faces allowed for a contemplative experience in an otherwise frenzied Chelsea visit and typical day in NYC.
For a link to a video of the show click below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYYRlQWMzgU
Hans Op de Beeck: Silent Movie at Marianne Boesky
Mirror Ball 2010
Not at all what I was expecting, this show did not include a film but an installation-like experience with a couple of sculptures and a number of black and white watercolor works that left me breathless. With subjects of settings (both interior and exterior spaces) devoid of people, there is a haunting quality to the work of this artist. All of the work is in black, white and/or gray which adds to the unease it created for me as the spectator.
Christmas Tree, 2010
My favorite works were “Mirrorball,” “Christmas Tree,” “Sea Morning,” and “Fountain.” The viewer wonders what has gone on before in these empty spaces Op de Beeck creates and what narrative is just about to take place.
Mark Bradford Talk at MoMA
Photo: Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of Art
What a lovely two hours! I really enjoy Bradford’s work so looking at slides of a survey of his work currently on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts was great, but it was his energetic personality and down to earth take on life that was the pleasant surprise. Born in 1961, Bradford grew up in Santa Monica but his mother’s hair salon was in South Central Los Angeles. Before becoming a visual artist 10 years ago, he was also a hairdresser for twenty years.
Bradford’s large-scale works deal with racial and economic issues and his work has been included in major exhibitions across the globe. In his short career he has won many major awards including the pretigious Bucksbaum from the Whitney Museum in 2006. Bradford traveled a lot in his 20s and he always enjoyed turning experiences into abstract events. While in Muslim communities, he preferred to round the corner to listen to prayers as opposed to seeing images of the people. He attempts to turn everything into an abstraction by isolating details and fragments which lead to something quite different in both his life and in his art work. Standing at 6 foot 8 inches from the age of 15, people often tried to label him so he tried to put a spin on that and change the situation by brodening people’s views of him. Based on his own experience being boxed into the isolation of South Central as well as his globetrotting, Bradford examines themes of place and identities associated with place in his paintings. He does not steer clear of ifficult topics in his work, in fact, he feels he cuts right to the chase and confronts these issues head on in a David and Goliath type manner.
His work is filled with repetition and gestural lines that are covered over with twine and paper that he sands. He is constantly attempting to get rid of the mark of the hand and gesture of the artist. He effectively paints with paper using a painting vocabulary but paper as his medium. He used to predominantly use found paper but as a response to the increase of the digital age, he now has paper made in order to use it in his works. He went from 100% of materials from the street to now roughly 30%. Paper from the streets carries social messages with it that demonstrates the climate of a community at a certain time so he is very selective about what he gathers as materials. Early works utilize end papers used in salons on hair. This material gave him a platform from which he could comfortably jump. With influences like Agnes Martin, Jackson Pollock, Brice Marden, Mimmo Rotella and Phillip Guston, Bradford is aware of how art history factors into his creations but he has a strong yearning to create his own thing, not to replicate anyone else’s line or process. He has used bleach, a caulking gun and sanders in his art making. Paper is less forgiving than paint. He recognizes that there is a certain amount destruction that will occur in the creation of his paintings because he is using imprecise tools–he likes that imperfection.
Bradford not only maps the temperature of the culture of a particular area, he also looks at works as maps–there is a definite topographical nature to a lot of his work. Self-proclaimed to be obsessed with structure and order, he uses line in his work to rein him in from chaos. He always makes a preparatory drawing and then builds upon that using string to create some relief. Next he layers papers and uses them as a painter uses the brush and paint–certain areas are translucent or opaque or certain colors. Once that is laid down he uses sanders of different sizes to erase areas. This helps him get back to the order of the work. He loads a work with social information and “detritus” and as he sands, he attempts to bring forth the conversation about painting instead of all of the other aspects of the work.
As Christopher Bedford, the curator of exhibitions at the Wexner Center who has most recently worked with Bradford, told the audience, Mark Bradford has a strong work ethic. He goes to the studio every day, arriving early and staying late. He has a tremendous body of work for only 10 years of production. Bradford does not see what he does as work per se. It is the practice of being an artist that he loves. He learns from every work he creates and he seems to take all of the hoopla surrounding him in stride. He does not forget the salon he grew up in as it is a part of him. My favorite thing he said is that it baffles him when people ask, “How do people in the hair salon react to your work?” His response is, “Like everyone else.”
Louise Bourgeois 1911-2010
I never met the artist Louise Bourgeois but the stories I heard made me wish I had. Full of life and working up until her final days, I admired her feisty spirit and the love and emotion she poured into her creations. I was introduced to her work with the spider that filled the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern back in 2000. I then followed her work and attended the retrospective of her work at the Guggenheim in 2008. I have been a huge fan of her work since that first introduction but it wasn’t until her death that I learned how tremendously influential and important she was to art history. In 1982 she had the first retrospective of a woman at the Museum of Modern Art. The Kiki Smiths and Lynda Benglis of the world might not have existed had it not been for Bourgeois and her organic, phallic, and sexually charged art work. Her work will live on but the spunky pint-sized woman will be sadly missed.
Christian Boltanski-No Man’s Land at Park Avenue Armory
Christian Boltanski - No Man's Land 2010
Last year the Park Avenue Armory had a wonderful installation by Ernesto Neto. This year, the artist Christian Bolatnski has taken over the space with an installation called “No Man’s Land.” With the constant din of heartbeats, low lit biscuit tins, and the piles of clothes lit by neon lights, the viewer steps into an eerie other world. A crane hovers, cherry-picking clothes at random and dropping them back into the large pile in the center of the building. To be honest, it felt a bit like being in someone’s musty basement.
The night of the opening many people said that the work reminded them of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. I too, felt that way, and it is true that Boltanski was deeply influenced by that traumatic event. He states, however, that this work is not particularly about the Holocaust but all “natural” events that impact humanity. For Boltanski, clothes symbolize people and those selected by the giant claw is a matter of chance. He sees the claw as the “finger of god”. Though I see what he was trying to get at, I personally was not able to glean it during my visit. The beauty of art is that perhaps for someone else, this work will have more resonance and meaning.
Up through June 13th at Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street
