The Importance of Being Ernesto

Ernesto Neto
Anthropodino
Seventh Regiment Armory
Park Avenue and 66th Street, New York
May 13 - June 14, 2009

In Brasil, to call someone or something "ginga" (pronounced ZHEEN-ga ) is to offer a high compliment. Ginga connotes an intuitive, mystical quality of movement and attitude that Brasilians like to think is uniquely theirs, permeating the way they walk, talk and dance, part of everything they do. It is a synthesis of mind and body, a state of corporeal grace informed by intelligence, creativity and rhythm. Most frequently applied to the "beautiful game" evinced by the star players of Brasilian fútbol, ginga is also evident in the Escolas de Samba, and in the other athletes, musicians, actors and artists who are the pride of Brasil.

When Ronaldo fakes out a defender with his splendid footwork and executes a somersault kick into the net, this is ginga. When Caetano Veloso sings and plays guitar on "O leãozinho", this is ginga. And now, Ernesto Neto, a true Carioca, an artist who lives, works and takes inspiration from his hometown of Rio de Janeiro, has successfully exported ginga to New York for his month long playground and sculptural installation in the huge Drill Hall of the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue.

Anthropodino, Neto's biomorphic sculpture of stretched, translucent Lycra, is a purposefully subversive intervention, a curved, sinuous expression of the body in the otherwise foursquare, "regimented" space of the Armory. It is a physical realization of the Jonah and the Whale archetype from the Bible, allowing us to walk within the belly of the leviathan, to mischievously peek out from under its ribcage. A maze of arched tunnels, given their tent-like structure by what the artist facetiously calls "dinosaur bones", lead to a central cupola, an allusion to the Crystal Palaces of the late 19th Century. These imposing architectural wonders enlarged on the basic idea of the greenhouse - glass panes, steel frames and struts - to enclose yawning spaces with cathedral ceilings (much like the Armory itself) that were used for large social functions like train stations, botanical gardens or pavilions for international expositions.



Highly engineered yet voluptuously free, Anthropodino plays with the dualities of nature vs. nurture, of the machine in the garden. This duality continues formally in the very construction of the piece, which is not only built from the ground up but also hangs from the Armory's trussed ceiling. Complementing the leviathan/dinosaur on the distressed plank floor is a vast, suspended, diaphanous membrane punctuated by long "stalactites" of the same stretchy fabric, weighted with sand and various powdered spices to terminate in sac-like nodes and pods. The overall effect is mysterious and primeval, like vestigial life forms discovered in a forgotten Amazonian rain forest.

Both floor and ceiling work are, in fact, familiar aspects of Neto's consummate oeuvre. The hanging element goes back (at least) to 2001, when O Bicho (The Animal) was shown during the 49th Venice Biennale. It continues as a centerpiece of the Margulies Collection in Miami. And a prototype of the floor construction was included in Neto's last show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York in October 2008. But never before have the two elements been synergistically combined in a tour de force installation. Or rather just once before: curator Tom Eccles indicates that a similar melding was exhibited last year in Rome. Still, the synthesis of floor and ceiling working together helps to fully exploit the scale and complexity of the Drill Hall as a container for art.

I have been able to view Anthropodino three times: once while it was still under construction, then at the press preview, and finally at the evening vernissage. During the morning press event, Neto gave an extended talk, although the word "extended" barely suffices to describe the range of free associations and voluble intellectual concerns displayed by the artist in these impromptu sessions. He is like a jazz musician, riffing on a theme. Once he gets started it is both impossible and counterproductive to try and stop the flow. But his generous curiosity is a great boon to any critical discussion of his work. My reactions to some of the issues he raised during that talk will inform the rest of this review.



1. Is Brasil a "Western" country? During his residency at the Calder Foundation in France, Neto was amused to learn that Brasil is not considered "Western" by many Europeans, due to the African and Native American (non-European) sources of its culture - although similar conflations in the United States, for example, do not interfere with our nation being perceived as "Western". But rather than viewing this as a fundamental tragedy, Neto chooses to interpret the misunderstanding as essentially liberating. He can now be happily non-Western, no longer constrained by a potentially deadening aesthetic tradition.

The title of the show, Anthropodino, is Neto's punning reference to Anthropophagia, a modernist aesthetic theory celebrating Brazil’s history of cultural cannibalism: that by ingesting and assimilating elements of other nations, Brasil is able to reinvigorate itself and assert independence over European colonial hegemony, in much the same way that the rite of cannibalism strengthened the autonomy of certain indigenous tribes. The Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibal Manifesto) was written by concrete poet Oswald de Andrade in 1928, although some of its application came years later in the art and music of 1960s Tropicália: musicians like Gilberto Gil, Jorge Ben and Veloso, and artists such as Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark.

2. Making art should not be such a "serious" endeavor. Neto does not wish to conform to the solemnity of careerism, which he feels is ultimately dependent on guilt. Art should revolve about play, improvisation, intuition. See "ginga" above.

3. There is a certain elegance in compactness and portability, a lesson Neto claims to have learned from the itinerant merchants of Rio, who unpack their wares and assemble impromptu stores right on the street. Similarly, the artist is capable of creating vast installations after unpacking the contents of three shipping crates. All the elements for Anthropodino, the fabric, the "bones", the thread and tools, are contained in a fairly modest package. This strategy recalls musician Robert Fripp's self description as a "small, mobile, intelligent unit". Neto's economy of means is a decidedly "green" assertion of his overall biomorphic gesture.

4. Neto advances two distinct models for making sculpture. Carving marble involves a maximum initial effort. The material is relatively obdurate, hard to fashion. But once you complete a work, it will last forever without much maintenance. It is, as it were, carved in stone. Then there are more pliable materials, like wood, bamboo, even living vegetation. These can be shaped quickly and easily, but will also rapidly devolve. Their intrinsic entropy will require frequent, fundamental maintenance, a sort of micromanaging. Neto apparently favors the latter model in his own work, and is constantly fine tuning, fitting things together, making everything work. He is a tinkerer, a bricoleur, Dionysian rather than Apollonian. His artistic synthesis accepts both creation and decay as touchstones.



5. Children and adults coexist in the "real" world. They should also do so in the art world. They maintain two intersecting dialogs under one social umbrella. At gatherings of family or friends, kids generally run around while the adults sit and talk and drink beer. Like his curator Eccles, Neto is a happy dad, and the two have conspired to make Anthropodino "kid friendly", with autonomous, adjunct, "domestic" constructions that play off the central leviathan. There is a carpeted area, several enclosed padded pavilions for tumbling and cocooning, and a swimming pool where the "water" is connoted by a sea of small blue spheres.

6. Brasil is a culture of the body. Nakedness, or an exceptional degree of bareness on beaches or at Carneval, unites with a visible tradition of outdoor performance. Culture is often experienced in mass and in public. Neto tends to incorporate interactivity in his large installations precisely to activate that sense of communal joy and the poetry of mass participation. This links him to the larger practice of Relational Aesthetics.

7. Neto posits a dialectic between the sexy and the sensual. Buying and selling stocks in periods of economic prosperity, busy commerce, chatter and social glitter - these things are sexy. But the sensual is slower, rooted in a fundamental sadness, in tragedy. The artist contrasts the two, remembering his last visit to New York in October 2008, when the market was crashing and tragedy was in the air. With his brooding animal and vegetable forms, Neto seems to favor the deeper, more pensive approach of sensuality.

Finally, a word on the spices. Neto is an amiable practitioner of gesamtkunstwerk, and his efforts at "total art" extend in Anthropodino to a palpable sense of smell. He used nearly a ton of powdered cumin, clove, coriander, black pepper, ginger, turmeric, chamomile and cayenne to weight, stain and effuse the various Lycra pods and nodules that hang from the ceiling or inside the ribbed leviathan, creating a heady scent within the large confines of the Drill Hall. Beyond a desire to enchant us with the good air, I detect a whiff of Candomblé or Macumba, the Afro-Brasilian versions of Santeria, in the choices and distributions of the spice, something owed to the non-Western part of his Brasilian heritage. As I am not versed in local tribal practices, the best I can cannibalize from my own cultural referents are the chakras of Kundalini Yoga, wherein certain colors and symbols are used to represent the energy centers and spiritual nodes of the body. When I asked Neto about the spice, he indicated there was a system in play, culminating in cayenne, the densest, most redolent spice, at the very heart of the installation, to "raise the emotional temperature".

(A slideshow of Anthropodino is now online. See Comments.)

Le Petit Versailles: An Homage, a New Season, a New Exhibition

Le Petit Versailles
346 East Houston Street, NY
(between Avenues B & C, additional entrance at 247 East Second Street)
Aurelio del Muro, 7th Avenue, through May 31, 2009


Aurelio del Muro, Twins, 2009

A sure sign that Spring has arrived in the East Village is the opening of the regular season of outdoor events at Le Petit Versailles, which generally runs from early May through October. A community garden and public art space, LPV is the brainchild of a pair of artists, filmmakers, performers, gay/queer/trans activists, green guerrillas and co-conspirators, Peter Cramer and Jack Waters, who are also amalgamated as Allied Productions, Inc., a non profit arts organization established in 1981.

East Second Street gate

Allied Productions continues its independent work in film, performance and public art, but LPV is their ongoing signature project, sunk into the bedrock and topsoil of a neighborhood where they have lived and worked for decades. Like Candide, they must cultivate their garden, still viable in a rapidly changing city where many other squats, gardens and grass roots initiatives have fallen under the bulldozers of real estate development.

LPV has the singular virtue of compactness. It was founded in 1996 as part of Operation GreenThumb, whereby empty lots that once housed tenement buildings (since condemned and razed) were to be used as green spaces for the community. In an imprint no larger than twenty four by sixty feet, Cramer and Waters have engineered a small miracle of DIY ingenuity, sweat equity, recycled materials, volunteer labor, regular composting, raking and landscaping. Their support comes from New York State Council for the Arts, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, and contributions from friends and neighbors like you.

Cramer with ladder

Tiny and tidy, LPV is replanted every year and contains a dense infrastructure of flora and facilities, including a raised octagonal platform/stage; a trellised bower with picnic table and bench seating; a utility shed and compost heap; various paved paths, railings, and all weather seating; a red brick barbecue pit; and a "great lawn", which this season has been morphed into a marbled mini terrace. It has electrical power and lighting. Unlike some indoor venues which shut their doors at the hint of a storm, the show must go on at LPV. Like the proverbial postman, they are undaunted by rain, wind and dark of night, and have jerry-rigged a system of tarps and scaffolding to keep things relatively dry, assuming you don't mind the occasional errant drop during a downpour.

My point: these guys are troopers. Over the years, they have hosted art exhibitions, live music, film and video screenings, dance, theater, spoken word performance, workshops and community projects. They have brought in artists from around the world and around the corner, a fundamental application of the dictum to "think globally, act locally".

The tone and subject of the events has varied from the scholarly semiotic to the balls-out homoerotic, from organic urban farming initiatives to Weimar Republic-ish "decadent" naughtiness, from Indian ragas with extended electronic drones to guitar based singer/songwriters, from art films to film camp, from sound compilations to holistic advice on diet, cleansing and fasting, from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. The word "eclectic" might have been coined to define their wide ranging interests. Some memorable projects are captured in this short sampling of announcement cards:

This year kicked off with an exhibition of carved stone sculptures by Aurelio del Muro, an artist from San Luis Potosi, Mexico who has been working in New York for thirty years. It opened on a thematically appropriate day - May 5, 2009, Cinco de Mayo - and received support from the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York.

Del Muro began carving stone in 1983. His work has obvious pre-Columbian, Aztecan influences, as well as a contemporary, post-modern playfulness. The current show is based on an ancient ceramic figure from Tlatilco called the acrobat. In many ways, the particular combination of folk elements, craft and figuration, the singular appropriateness of carved stone in a garden setting, and the informal, "outsider" status of both venue and artist, is illustrative of the idiosyncratic relationship that LPV maintains with the gallery-bound art world of Chelsea and 57th Street.

Those who wish more information on Le Petit Versailles, its 2009 schedule of events, and the possibility of exhibiting work or volunteering there, should consult its website or use the following contact information:

petitversailles@earthlink.net

Allied Productions, Inc.
P.O.Box 20260
New York, NY 10009
Tel: 212.529.8815
Fax: 212.353.0250
http://www.alliedproductions.org
info@alliedproductions.org

Adel Abdessemed's "Usine": Inhumane?

Adel Abdessemed, RIO
David Zwirner Gallery, NY
April 3 - May 9, 2009

Adel Abdessemed, the 38-year-old Algerian born, French educated artist who now lives in New York, has been a curatorial darling for the past several years. He was included in Rob Storr's 2007 Venice Biennale, and given solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Art Institute, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, the List Visual Arts Center at MIT, and at P.S. 1 in Queens. His current gallery show in New York, spread over all three of David Zwirner's expansive Chelsea galleries, reveals a shape shifting, confrontational artist who works in all media and all scales.

There is a room filling installation of several airplane cockpits and tailfins twisted together like a huge pretzel. There are small drawings of proposed projects. There is a steel oil drum that has been morphed into a music box which plays a bit of Wagner when it rotates around a motorized axle.

But the one piece that has achieved the greatest notoriety is Usine, (2009) a minute-and-a-half color video loop that records the interactions among a group of predatory animals - scorpions, iguanas, tarantulas, snakes, pit bulldogs, fighting cocks etc. - who seem grouped together in a concrete pen for the express purpose of fighting and killing each other. And just in case they cannot be roused to combat, some "victim" species - white mice, frogs - are thrown into the mix as food. The fact that the action loops in continual replay emphasizes the "no exit" aspect of the artist's bleak worldview.

The video has many in the New York art world up in arms, accusing Abdessemed of exploitation and brutality, as noted in a recent column by Jerry Saltz in New York Magazine.

When I saw Usine several weeks ago (a few days after the opening), I was so aghast I called one of the co-directors (Zwirner has ranks and ranks of them) out onto the gallery floor to justify the exploitative nature of the work. Of course he trotted out the usual, expected rationalizations: that cruelty to animals, however we view it, is an established part of the world; that the pen of predatory species already existed in Mexico; that action movies typically mine violence and sadism in much more sensationalist and commercial ways; that the "factory" of brutality ("usine" means "factory" in French) advanced by Abdessemed in his video is an examination of society's larger hypocrisy regarding violence, its titillations and victims. Blah blah. All the rationalizations in the world do not change the simple fact that the artist is presenting an arena of cruelty to shock and dumbfound us; he is using the suffering of beasts to promote his vaunted rebellion, to advance his career and reputation.

Usine is one of several pieces in the show that suffer from a similar ailment: a self conscious, casual violence in the service of the artist's pervasive, nihilistic, essentially kneejerk gesture of rebellion. There is a soccer ball constructed from razor wire (regard the fruits of nationalism and hooliganism!); three shelves of notebooks containing transcriptions of the Bible, Torah and Koran penned by prostitutes (the sex trade and organized religion, mixing like oil and water?); men without arms or legs trying to draw a circle on the ground while suspended over it by a hovering helicopter. Abdessemed's extremism comes too easily. He is a rebel without a point. Like the Brando character in The Wild One: when asked what he was rebelling against, he sneers: Whaddya got?

Most critics seem to agree that the work in the current Abdessemed show is not particularly strong. Its scattershot gestures of rebellion are too facile and showy, its casual cruelty too self aggrandizing. But the real moral point is not just that the torture of animals is bad, but that the torture of animals to advance a careerist agenda is reprehensible. Which is an issue any critic must also face when he chooses this particular artwork as his ambitious subject. Saltz has recently parlayed the video sidebars of New York Magazine online in an effort to project himself as the art world's new action hero. Now he seems to be using Abdessemed's video as a catapult, to become our new Facebook hero.

Addenda on Abdessemed:

1. The artist's turbulent biography - he fled Algeria for France to escape persecution by Islamic fundamentalists during a period of civil unrest - is often cited as a "cause" for the unrelenting brutality often found in his work. He has stated in interview: “Birth is violent. Death is violent. Violence is everywhere."

2. Despite this, the current show is named after his daughter, Rio - a sweet but incongruous moment of sentimentality. Or not. "The show is called Rio, meaning river. I observe the world with the same fascination that my daughter, Rio, contemplates the big animals in the zoo that are thirsty and hungry."

3. Abdessemed is no stranger to controversy. His February 2008 exhibition in San Francisco, ironically titled Don't Trust Me, was shut down by animal rights activists who protested the inclusion of videos showing farm animals killed by blows to the head with a sledgehammer. During an extended period of public debate, the artist received several death threats. Seemingly, the current New York gallery show has passed without prompting such reactions.

Reflections on "Younger Than Jesus"

The Generational: Younger Than Jesus
New Museum
235 Bowery, New York
4/8/09 - 7/5/09

Younger Than Jesus is the first edition of The Generational, the New Museum’s new signature triennial. It includes work of fifty artists from twenty-five countries. The artists cannot be older than 33; none were born prior to 1976. The show is curated by Lauren Cornell, Massimiliano Gioni and Laura Hoptman.

The texts below are based on a number of comments I posted on the blog of a local magazine. Dates and times of their original postings are included, as are images found online.



Here's a show that begs to be loved. Anything less would be like kicking a puppy at its first sniff of art stardom. So I knew Jerry Saltz's carefully constructed persona - zeitgeist-er, confidante, ear to the ground, eye on the sparrow - would necessitate a thumbs-up review of this show and on the inauguration of the Nu Mu's ambitious triennial project. Even if he has to hedge his bets with phrases like "flawed but tantalizing" and "despite its clinical spaces and a couple of misfires". Even if he includes a polemical, cautionary first paragraph that states the problem - "received ideas about appropriation, conceptualism, and institutional critique...a cool school, admired by jargon-wielding academics who write barely readable rhetoric" - and then pretends the Nu Mu is the solution to this problem rather than one of its prime exemplars.

Just saw the show today (two days after the press opening). My first (admittedly cursory) impression was of an inert busyness on the second and third floors - the fourth was airier - and a humorless fustiness throughout. This was partly due to the installation - here the curators must assume full blame for an aurally and visually confusing hodgepodge - but also to some of the work itself, which often feels dutifully referential yet only partially formed, surer of its antecedents and of hitting the right art historical talking points than of formulating a fresh or original statement. Artists whose work I have previously admired, like Cory Arcangel and Matt Keegan, look anemic and derivative in Younger Than Jesus. Poor Keegan: does he not realize David Robbins made "Talent" 23 years ago? Dineo Seshee Bopape seems to be filtering Kalup Linzy's antics through the institutional critique of Marcel Broodthaers, but to what end? Ryan Trecartin's helium-chuffing motor mouths, ensconced in the detritus of a two room thrift store, just seem to be trying too hard.

Saltz saves his praise for work with gimmicky performance parameters - Chu Yun and Liz Glynn - but I do agree with him on Cyprien Gaillard's amazing thirty minute video, set among the crumbling, brutalist facades of Eastern Europe's postwar residential tower blocks: mass action orchestrated with a vengeance, solemn heroics and a sense of foreboding majesty, backed by the haunting dirge of Koudlam's electro-operatic score.

04/09/2009 at 9:59 pm


Cyprien Gaillard, still from Desniansky Raion

addenda/errata

Bopape: Interesting intimations of the "other", of cargo cult collage (similar to the cross cultural throw-ups M.I.A. executes in pop music), where unusual juxtapositions of objects can synthesize new context and meaning.

Glynn: The notion that Rome CAN be built in a day (or even twice in a day) and then quickly reduced to cardboard rubble is cute visual slapstick, a contradiction of the old platitude. I don't join Saltz in finding it that "exciting". But I do like the photo documentation and banners on the backing wall.

Missed the Keren Cytter video. Must go back for that and for a full viewing of Gaillard. Also for the acousti-guide.


Keren Cytter

Few people I have queried find the title Younger Than Jesus anything but pretentious folly and sensationalist borrowed interest. It is confusing and misleading. The show has nothing to do with organized religion, nor with Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. In Roman times, the average lifespan was much shorter: about 45-50 years. Jesus did not die a young man. By the standards of his day, he was middle aged.

Whatever. Since tomorrow is Good Friday, it might be an appropriate moment to reflect on a show that seems hung up with Jesus, even if for all the wrong reasons.

04/09/2009 at 11:51 pm

Ryan Trecartin

A lot of this show is DOA. Its ageist agenda does not locate a generational zeitgeist, it just reveals unfortunate careerism and imitativeness in the youngest tier of artists. Which is kind of heartbreaking, to see so much art where the antecedents are cloyingly obvious. This is not a harbinger of new freedom going forward, merely an indication of clever students who have learned their lessons well. A lot of the work smacks of "art for teacher" by recent MFA grads.

Also, note the many the New Museum banner ads for Younger Than Jesus. While editorial and advertising should be kept quite separate, and there is no indication that NY Magazine is confusing the two, can you imagine this sort of ad commitment running opposite a negative review by Saltz?

04/10/2009 at 9:21 am

Mohamed Bourouissa

@ Hayward:

>>The fresh and young are immune to this older, more experienced generation's influence and are likely not to act as an obstacle.<<

Not really. The young have always cavorted for the pleasure of their elders. So it is in show biz, in the art world, even in the 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. It is nothing new to heed the judgment of rich and powerful patrons, to learn how to please them. Only the strong, pliable and clever prosper. It is a deadly art of survival and advancement.

Also: Lauren Cornell, who Rhizomed her way into an Adjunct Curator post at the New Museum, is of similar age to some of the artists in YTJ. As is Massimiliano Gioni. Do they represent a peer group affirmation for the pool of artists? Or are they playing the same game of pleasing their elders?

>>Can we convince these organizations to shuffle things a bit and get some younger meat to lend their perspective, I wonder how that would go over with everyone.<<

Good luck getting the curators to give up their hard won perks, their power and privilege, to younger "meat".

04/10/2009 at 9:56 am


Wojciech Bąkowski

To paraphrase NYCPrivateCollector, YTJ is "primarily a testament to its curators wishful desire" to assert their importance and control the discourse. It is a career move, a power grab. Hence the sensationalist title and the obvious institutional challenge to the Whitney, a Nu Mu "Generational" triennial to outflank the hipness of the established Biennial.

But rather than feeling like a breath of fresh air, what we note is the familiar parade of art world mandarins jealously staking out claims and waiting to see who blinks first. Returning to the Nu Mu on Easter, the significance of "Jesus" in the title became clear: as an icon of resurrection, Whitney Lite on the Bowery, even the off kilter block architecture suggesting the inverted Breuer ziggurat uptown. There's nothing wrong with the Whitney, but for the Nu Mu to suggest it represents a significant alternative is hogwash. They are just elbowing their way to the art world poker table and claiming a seat. Fly the curators to various European and Asian biennials and art fairs and they will bring back some of the buzz for exhibition here.

It's not unexpected that a "new" institution with "younger" pretensions wants to be seen as an agent of change. But critics who claim to see a zeitgeist shift in YTJ are merely being lazy and acquiescent, executing their own deft career moves while flirting with power. Once you get beyond the advocacy of certain trendy curators and critics, who seem to pick artists for how well they will look "wearing" them, there is some interesting and original work at YTJ scattered among the more "correct" choices. I will list them for later consideration: Cyprien Gaillard, Tris Vonna-Michell, Wojciech Bąkowski, Keren Cytter, Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, Mohamed Bourouissa.

04/13/2009 at 5:20 am

On Kippenberger at MoMA: fragments, notes, preservation of posts

Martin Kippenberger, The Problem Perspective
Museum of Modern Art
February 24 - May 11, 2009

>>>Since my various comments as alphanumericcharacter have started to mysteriously disappear from another website, I am preserving them here for future elaboration and editing.<<<

In the MoMA lobby during the reception for the Martin Kippenberger show, there was a moment of unplanned performance art, bad behavior that some found a testimony to his enduring legacy.

People fed up at the long coat-check line began piling their coats on the floor, and, two hours into an open bar, a few began diving under, creating a writhing lobby octopus. Security guards broke it up, one noting to the applauding crowd, "This is not part of the Kippenberger exhibition. This is about people drinking too much."

But if I might say, the entire Kippenberger oeuvre is fundamentally about one person drinking too much, and everything that follows from that. As Holland Cotter noted in his review of the show:

As an artist he was a performer, an entertainer, a provoker, as he was in life. At punk bars and biennials he was the juiced-up guy who made scintillating speeches, picked stupid fights and periodically dropped his pants. He was the same person in his art.

Good to watch the kiddies create a coat pile/mosh pit in the middle of MoMA's lobby. Was it bad behavior in sympathy with Kippenberger's drinking or his performance-oriented "rebellion"? Or more likely their inability to wait on line while drunk? Either way, it reeks of revelation, a true zeitgeist moment.

Also amazing to learn that artists of all ages, colors and sexual persuasions actually attend museum openings. Hold your horses - can this really be true?

I have been waiting months for the Kippenberger show to arrive in NY, and will undoubtedly write about it elsewhere. K is a personal hero; I went drinking with him in Cologne twenty years ago at Spitz, Die Alter Wartesaal and Hammerstein's. But for now, here are some personal highlights:

K's 1994 Gesamtkunstwerk of chairs, tables and office furniture detritus, The Happy End of Franz Kafka's America, installed in the second floor atrium, is great. To be sure, it seems a bit more cramped that it was at MOCA LA - this according to curator Ann Goldstein - but its smaller horizontal imprint is more than compensated by the sheer volume of space in the atrium, which allows it to be viewed from various vertical vantage points above.

The floor of the installation is bright Astroturf, reminiscent of a pool or card table or the artificial surface of a football field. MoMA director Glenn Lowry sees it as "infecting the museum" by bleeding acid green into the space when viewed from multiple overhead perspectives.

Not one but two of K's banished-class-clown effigies - Martin, into the corner, you should be ashamed of yourself (1992). Brilliant. The original edition was three, then three more were made on commission. This one was particularly commissioned by MoMA.

Also an orgone box made according to specifications, one layer of organic material (wood) over one layer of inorganic (metal), but not big enough for a person to stand or sit inside. Rather for a stack of paintings, so that they might accumulate more Reichian energy. This piece, one of the many K created in tandem with Albert Oehlen, was slathered in brown paint and oat flakes. I had never seen it before.

Whole walls full of posters (from floor to ceiling) introduce the exhibition in the sixth floor lobby, testimony to K's unceasing (if dour) efforts at sarcastic self promotion.

My favorite: a 1978 b/w poster from Berlin, an image of K embracing an old tramp, with the legend: "1/4 Century of Kippenberger as one of you, among you, with you." A halo of words surrounds K's head with a litany of self definitions: show-off, hyper-voyeur, pretender, informer, organizer, ringleader, longtime painter, big spender.

Detail:



In situ (just below the show title graphics):



>>>Someone called the show a retrospective. I demurred.<<<

MoMA curator Ann Temkin might take issue with your use of the R-word. In her remarks at the press opening, she indicated the show is not a "true retrospective", as K's varied and copious production could hardly be contained in all of MoMA's galleries, even were they all available, so that his prolific output is "just alluded to" here.

I still go back to K's self definition of 1978 - braggart, ultra peeping tom, pretender, informer, organizer, ringleader, long-time painter, spendthrift - as his personal template of realization. During my time in Cologne twenty years ago, there was one epithet that many in the local art scene fondly threw at Kippie, and at each other, through the drunken haze: Spinner. Which translates variously as nutcase, flake, screwball, crank, weirdo, fruit cake, wacko, oddball.

Three Years in Prison for Iraqi Journalist Who Threw His Shoes at Little Bushie

Click here to play

Muntadar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi journalist who tossed his shoes at President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference on December 14, 2008, was sentenced to three years in prison yesterday.

Dozens of shoe throwing games and video edits were placed online in the days following this incident. Perhaps the most famous, Sock and Awe, appears above for your gaming pleasure. Thus far, over 90 million virtual shoes have successfully hit little Bushie in the face. He grimaces and turns a shade of purple when the shoe strikes; there is a yellow explosion graphic and a sharp, meaty slapping sound. All very cathartic and addictive. My high score is 15.

So take a moment to celebrate and try your luck. Although he no longer occupies the White House, this game allows you to connect with the ex-president in a resounding and satisfying manner.

Other shoe throwing games, video cut-ups, animated shoe-toss GIFs and slow motion/fast motion replays of the incident can be viewed (and played) here. An interesting one employs the Monty Python foot:

After tossing each of his shoes in turn and missing the fast-dodging little Bushie, Zeidi shouted "This is your farewell kiss, you dog!" in Arabic as he was wrestled to the floor by Iraqi security personnel.

It is alleged that Zeidi was tortured while in police custody, including being burnt by cigarettes and having a tooth knocked out.

Hurling a shoe at someone certainly has negative connotations in the West, although we tend to temper our reception of the action with a broad, slapstick humor. But it is taken as a serious insult in the Muslim and Arab world, where even pointing the soles of your feet at someone is considered an affront. Zeidi became a hero across the Middle East, where his case enlisted the support of many in the region. Large street rallies were organized in his defense. In Iraq a giant sculpture of a shoe was briefly erected in his honor.

Zeidi pleaded not guilty, claiming the incident was a justifiable response to the damage America had done while occupying his country. The charge against him, aggression against the head of a foreign country, carried a maximum fifteen years in jail.

Dhia al-Saadi, the senior member of the defense team, indicated they would be appealing the decision, claiming it does not constitute a crime. "It was an act of throwing a shoe and not a rocket. It was meant as an insult to the occupation".

Fair Game: On Armory Week, NYC 2009

The Armory Show 2009, Piers 92 & 94, March 4 - 8, 2009
Pulse New York, Pier 40, March 5 - 8, 2009
Volta NY, 7 West 34th Street, March 5 - 8, 2009


Bradley McCallum/Jacqueline Tarry, Detroit Boys, Michigan, July 1967, 2007

Although swimming in space on its West SoHo pier, Pulse basically sucks. There are exceptions to any rule, and Ms. Diaz is right to cite McCallum/Tarry. I would add Jim Lee’s wall sculpture/paintings at Freight & Volume, Vadis Turner’s femme/folk wedding fantasia at Lyons Wier Ortt, Eckart Hahn’s cross fixations at Pablo’s Birthday, and various work at Conner Contemporary, Magnan Projects, Daneyal Mahmood, Bravin Lee and P.P.O.W. Was also glad to see Constance Collins-Margulies given space for her non-profit Lotus Endowment Fund, a portfolio of photographs by women artists to benefit a Miami women’s shelter.

But Pulse was a general morass of post-student fiddlings, jejune installations and mindless decoration, not ready for prime time. Ironically, the Parsons MFA booth came off better than many of its surrounding “professional” counterparts. Or was I influenced by the spirited advocacy of Parson’s new Fine Art chair Coco Fusco? — we escaped the fair together by taxicab.

In additional to the asinine mechanical bull mentioned above, there is also the lingering bureaucratic bull of the Blue Menials, who have inexplicably been retained to “manage” Pulse’s PR. Quelle horreur!

Another problem for Pulse is its banishment to the Hudson River littoral. Even after arriving at Pier 40, it’s still necessary to skirt several soccer fields just to reach the action.

Alejandro Almanza Pereda, 153.68 Net Hours, 2007

Volta fares better with a central midtown location, a compact, concentric imprint and the elegance of its one booth/one artist rubric. I particularly enjoyed David Kramer’s satiric journey to the heart of American pop yearnings (at Aeroplastics, Brussels); Lisa Sigal’s collages/paintings on paper at Frederieke Taylor; Alejandro Almanza Pereda’s sculptures combining a meditation on strength of materials with formal strategies of repetition (at Magnan Projects - yes, they had booths at both fairs); Karen Heagle’s drawings and editions at I-20; and Trong Nguyen’s participatory pillory project near the elevator bank.


Trong Nguyen, Colección Whitney, 2009

But both fairs suffer from a zero sum deficit, due to the Armory Show’s expansion from Pier 94 to also include Pier 92: 50% more space than last year. Combine this with the economic downturn and a significant group of major players who are sitting it out this year - including Gagosian, Gladstone, Marian Goodman, Lehman Maupin, Greene Naftali, Andrea Rosen, Matthew Marks, Luhring Augustine, Metro, James Cohan, Petzel, CRG, The Project, Gavin Brown, Maccarone, Casey Kaplan, Postmasters, Patrick Painter, Blum & Poe, David Kordansky - and the potential for attrition is obvious. Exhibitors who could never hope for Armory participation in fatter moments are able to “move up” - if they can afford the tariff. This leaves slimmer pickings and a potential dilution of quality in satellite fair participation.

As the Dow quickly heads south and the Obama team attempts to jump start the economy with sudden (and hopefully necessary and sufficient) infusions of cash, the image of a flatlining patient, supine on the gurney and awaiting cardiopulmonary resuscitation, looms ever larger. It’s a relevant image not only for the severely injured macro sphere, but also for the bleeding, gasping art world. It makes one wonder what elements of “genuine surprise and authenticity” will prove an effective jolt to a patient in triage.

Christine Hill, The Volksboutique Armory Apothecary, 2009

Certainly Christine Hill’s botanica at the Feldman booth conjures up a ready metaphor for our current beleaguered zeitgeist. That’s why it has garnered such immediate attention. We all want to escape the pain, to place our faith in a fast and simple cure. We will accept the solace of theosophy, incantation and folk wisdom if it is correctly packaged and presented. No one actually expects Hill’s potions and amulets to work, but the modesty of her “nation of shopkeepers” gesture charms us into becoming her willing accomplices in performance/installation. We understand our belief is both conditional and consensual, and also recognize her underlying conflation of sincerity and irony: “if you feel, you’re healed” meets “caveat emptor” under the carny tent. But at $25-50 a pop, the cost effective price for a leap of faith, circa 2009, seems just about right.

Hill’s Apothecary is designed to signify as genuine. But it is anachronistic, self consciously embracing time-tested virtues that Andras also finds of value in the rickety, provisional stairs connecting the Armory piers. Funky = honest. Less slick = more authentic. Embracing the jerrybuilt and familiar is, not surprisingly, a nostalgic retreat back from the studied perfection that has become the paradigm of the art fair experience, but which does not suit the reduced financial expectations of the moment. We should understand, though, that “the authentic” is still a construct, as much a product of artifice as is “the slick”.

How will all this inform the future of the art fair? If we need to increase the comfort level of the art market by more fully embracing a “constructed nostalgia”, then the organizers of the Armory seem right on target with their “Modern” pier. I am writing this at 6 pm on Sunday, an hour before the fair shuts its doors. So we will soon know whether the many Tom Wesselmann paintings and editions, and the plethora of mid-sized Louise Nevelson sculptures, have found new homes. But certainly one of the reasons that many major US galleries opted out of the Armory Show this year is that they were able to display their wares, less than a month ago, under the “constructed nostalgia” of the ADAA fair, a more modest, “authentic” and guild oriented experience.

This material originally published online on Artworld Salon.

On the P.S. 1 Spring Openings and the Post-Alanna Era

P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center
Lutz Bacher, My Secret Life
Jonathan Horowitz, And/Or
Kenneth Anger
February 22 - September 14, 2009

I might eventually write something more extensive on P.S. 1, but a first impression of the three shows that opened on Sunday, February 22 - Lutz Bacher, Jonathan Horowitz, and Kenneth Anger - was that it felt like a rather thin and tepid affair, the issue-oriented credentials and vaunted cultural semiotic concerns of the various artists notwithstanding.



Bacher's main gallery, which the press release defines as "the installation's frenetic epicenter", contains her alterna-captioned news photos, reformulating world leaders as kibbitzers (JFK with Barry Goldwater: "So you want this fucking job?") or focusing on the utter strangeness of Jane Fonda during her anti-Vietnam War days.

Bacher also appropriates, to tasty effect that both critiques and rewards the "male gaze", some Vargas girl pinups taken from Playboy Magazine. It is a heady send-up of America's heedless cultural hegemony and shameless vulgarity during the 1960s, particularly trenchant in light of our current moment of uncertainty.

But while there were other pithy cultural meditations on view - I particularly enjoyed the Jackie and Me series of low resolution b/w photos, purporting to document paparazzo Ron Galella chasing Jacqueline Kennedy through Central Park - the show suffered from terminal enervation in several of its peripheral rooms.

Admittedly, this enervation is often purposeful, and results from found imagery intentionally chosen to reveal its graphic degradation - through "signal disturbances, tracking problems, stoppages, burnouts and other artifacts of a corrupted or damaged videotape" - as per the text for Olympiad (1997). But I wonder whether a fashionably pessimistic, slacker aesthetic of precious graininess and graphic interference, a fetishization of media's inherent entropy (the seeds of its own destruction - hello Karl Marx!) is enough to carry our interest throughout the various rooms.



Horowitz can also be a hit-or-miss proposition. His Ben Hur/Rome mockumentary is an uncertain effort; one is never quite sure on which side of Irony Street he is actually standing. A bit better is his metaphysical conundrum/assemblage film, Silent Movie, which conflates film segments of deaf, dumb and blind protagonists like The Who's Tommy and Patty Duke's Helen Keller, all to the unmanned accompaniment of a player piano.

The political commentary of a publicity photo of Bush, framed and hung upside down (like the Antichrist), or a Vatican portrait of Pope Benedict torn in half is, well, obvious. As is the extended photo excoriation of gay-basher Anita Bryant.

A king-sized bed covered by a white duvet, under the neon sign of a double cross, attempts to locate the bedroom as the true locus of ingrained religious, political and sexual intolerance: sleep locally, act globally.

Tofu on Pedestal in Gallery is hilariously and precisely that; so is the photo of Britney's crotch. And it is easy to embrace the minimal, lockjaw humor of mon.-sun., a video monitor accompanied by seven VHS tapes that continually displays the text of the appropriate day of the week. But some of Horowitz's other gestures are either overly obscure, poorly enunciated, too deadpan, or perhaps just too understated to resonate.

No one would claim that an over-the-top, tabloid sensationalist like Anger suffers from similar understatement. But his eight films (including Invocation of My Demon Brother and Scorpio Rising) are miserably crowded into a single large second floor gallery, and suffer from a murky hodgepodge of vinyl coated floors and walls, alternating soundtracks, cubbyholes, dangling light bulbs, and other spooky ephemera. I'm sure the intention was to create an installation that was moodily dark and goth, a mirror of Anger's own rebel consciousness. Unfortunately it results in physical confusion and total incomprehension.

At this point, with the recent "leader out" forced march of Alanna Heiss, a major question circulating among the art pundit-ocracy is how the institution will fare. As I have pointed out in an earlier posting, Heiss has not been immune to missteps, to mounting obscure art and indulging in woefully failed experimentation. The three Spring 2009 shows are probably part of her continuing legacy, and were undoubtedly prepared under her aegis. So the jury is out on the essential question: Does P.S. 1 still need Alanna?

This text was originally published as a shorter alphanumeric-ism.