More from NYC: the New Museum

The New Museum had a lot of great shows, too, with exhibitions of work by Klara Lidén, Tacita Dean, Nathalie Djurberg, Phyllida Barlow, and others; I think my favorite was Lidén's, though perhaps partly because her work was new to me. My photos are here; apologies for the spotty quality; again, these are more a sketchy record than representative of the work shown.

Jeff Gibbons at OFG

. . . for those who don't live in Dallas; for those who do, call Oliver Francis Gallery at 817-879-8231 for an appointment.



(For more re- a previous work by Gibbons, see here.)

Ellen AltFest at the New Museum

This image is not of a whole painting. I think like it better cropped.

At the New Museum thru 6/24.

The Armory Show, and a Few Observations

So here, finally, are my photos from the Armory Show 2012 – the "Contemporary" pier only. I saw lots of wonderful work, although I can't say anything totally blew my mind this year, either here or at the other shows seen on this trip; but that may have more to do with my previously perhaps-somewhat-retarded state of understanding of contemporary art, and the fact that art in Dallas may be catching up with the bigger art centers, than with any deficiency in the art on offer in these shows. (In fact, it seemed to me that, on a per capita basis, there may be as much or more great contemporary art being made here as in NYC.) A few general observations. Admittedly, it may be that what I noticed had a lot to do with the interests I went in with, which lately trend toward big-picture, substantive concerns . . .  

1. Complexity. While minimalism gave us (among other things) an appreciation of how much info is actually embedded in or implicated even by sensory fields that appear quite simple, art now seems to reflect our attempt to process how complex our world has become and to come to grips with complexity itself. We're deluged with more info, faster than ever before, and must not only process the individual bits, but try to understand how info in different areas of experience interrelate – how things intersect or are layered, reflected or echoed, how that makes them appear from different points of view, and what kinds of over-arching order can help us interpret and manage them without over-simplifying them, etc. [My apologies that I failed to note the artist or other info re- the work shown at left; if you can enlighten me, please do, and I'll update this post.] 

In contemporary art, this seems to me to show up not only in the kinds of juxtapositions of various, often incongruous styles and subject-matters characteristic of post-modernism, but also in the presentation of lots of detail in ways that are very inter-related and layered, both substantively and often in quite literal, physical ways – often while evincing a retained, minimalistic awareness of how much info is actually carried by even the most basic elements within the work. In addition to the image at left, see, e.g., the mobile by Pae White starting here, at the Independent Fair. Many works that embody or refer to this kind of inter-relatedness, intersection, layering, and/or reflection also seem to me to refer to issues of dimensionality.  

2. Multi-Dimensionality. As some of you may be aware, I'm very interested in such questions as: what can exist in which dimensions; how are or might things that extend into higher dimensions be perceived in or otherwise affect things in lower dimensions, and vice versa; what are the relationships among the dimensions themselves; etc.? Art has in the past been concerned with the fundamentals of manufacture and perception; the pendulum's been swinging back, and/or has perhaps now come full circle, to concern itself with metaphysics. (Installation at right: Jonathan Schipper, Slow Room in Miami (2011); a related video shows an even larger roomful of furniture being slowly pulled toward a similar hole in the wall.) I think of time as the fourth dimension – I understand that's appropriate from a scientific point of view – but in addition to points, lines, planes, spatial volumes, and time, I'm also thinking of, e.g., virtual spaces, such as in imaginative or conceptual, mental realms, or in cyberspace, or in the realm of data generally – the latter three seeming like more or less the same thing. More of us are actually living our lives more and more fully and more collectively in these virtual realms.  

One artist dealing with both complexity and dimensionality is Mary Reid Kelley (mentioned in my post on the last Site Santa Fe biennial here), whose b&w videos emulate the look of slightly surreal graphic novels, i.e., 2-D, though obviously shot in 3-D and recorded in 4-D, with titles and settings that literally invoke the imaginative dimensions of ancient myth and somewhat more recent history, and with relatively wordy, rhyming scripts that remind one a bit of epic poems. Dimensionality was also explicitly invoked in the work shown starting here, at the Independent Fair. (Still at left from Kelley's The Syphilis of Sisyphus (2011).)  

3. No Monopoly on Truth. There are many aspects of the dimensional inquiry that interest me, but, e.g., the virtual or conceptual realm sometimes seems to exist outside of time and space, even if we can only experience it from within time and space; e.g., clichés seem true at nearly all times, everywhere; ditto math. And my own insights and artistic inspirations sometimes seem to involve not so much my personal creativity as my somehow simply accessing stuff that already existed in some timeless, etheric realm; and I suspect many scientists feel the same way about their discoveries. (Image right and the following two show works by Michael Riedel; see also here et seq.) Until recently, intellectual property law recognized that, while you can copyright a tangible expression of a fact, or patent a device or process that deploys it, you cannot own the fact itself; in a quite literal sense, no one could have a monopoly on truth, at least not for long. Now, of course, over-reaching extensions of law permit corporations to patent actual gene sequences and lock up inspirations for lifetimes after the artists who expressed them died.  

Artists have been exploring these issues for quite a while now, but they remain unresolved and continue in evidence in contemporary works. Perhaps no one can have a monopoly on truth not only because expressions of it are to some degree relative to particular contexts, but also because there's a sense in which truth "wants to be free" – though we all also want those who provide useful expressions of it to be able to make a living. And of course, many of the efforts of governments or corporate management to hoard or otherwise control the flow of info seem to many of us tragically wrong-headed at best, and more often than not, as Julian Assange has suggested, evidence of corruption. As devastating as many of our wars have been, there's perhaps no greater conflict now unfolding than the infowar, the struggle between old and new power structures over who will control access to information (as evidenced in the ongoing efforts to shut down Wikileaks and whistleblowers, promote our reliance on the Cloud, and otherwise control the internet). These issues seem part of Michael Riedel's concerns in his large images (resembling crosswords and QR-type codes; and consider the actual texts {as usual, click on any of these images for larger/more legible versions}, including the way they were installed (look at their "reflections" in the purple "surface" – something's wrong . . . ).  

4. Our Interdependence Within the Virtual World. Other aspects of the virtual that I think we're wrestling with have to do with ways in and the extent to which our "real" lives are being supplanted, absorbed, and consolidated into our virtual lives, and our dependency on one another and on the technologies and organizations that make our virtual lives possible. In "real" life, even though you might not want to live as a total hermit, it can be done, at least in some parts of the world. But our lives in cyberspace can't exist at all without the many other people and organizations that make and maintain the necessary hardware, software, energy sources, etc.  

As you can see from the images within this post, some of my favorite works seem to address more than one of the areas mentioned above. With respect to our dependence on "clouds" of other people and technologies, some works deployed literal images of clouds; Leandro Erlich's Cloud Collection (2011) aligned 2-D layers to create clouds, while Philippe Parreno's Marquee, Atlas of Clouds (2012) similarly layered 2-D neon "pages" in a "book" – in both cases, the results could be interpreted either as 3-D but not 4-D or vice-versa; i.e., each complete cloud could represent either a set of 2-D cross-sections of a cloud in one shape in 3-D, all at the same, single instant in time, OR a series of images of a cloud captured in 2-D only but taken over a period of time, as its shape changed. In the case of Parreno's work, of course, the title suggests that what he had in mind was a series of images of different clouds; yet the book format seemed to me nonetheless suggestive of a flip-book, with the possibility that the images might in fact be of one cloud that morphs to become something different at each moment in time. 

 5. New Media. In another vein, forgive my complaint that, while there's been an explosion of exciting video and other new media work during the last ten years and more, we're still getting to see very little of it. The Armory and the Whitney tried to address the problem by offering seated screenings of compilations of videos. This does not put the videos thus shown on par with works in other media, since the videos were shown just once or, at best, a few times, while works in other media were shown continually for the entire duration of the exhibition. The arrangement seems esp. paltry given that video, by its very nature (≥ 24 FPS, with audio), can encompass more info than works in other media – i.e., good video can require as much or more viewing than works in other media, not less. The Moving Image Fair is commendable; but much more needs to be done. You can find my posts on the other 8 fairs or shows I saw on this trip (with links to photos) here (scroll down to get past a repeat of this post).

R.I.P. Thomas Kincade

(Thanks, Paul!) More customized paintings at Something Awful.

Independent Fair

Fair website here; NYT review here; my photos here. There was lots of great work; but if I had to pick one work that's really stuck with me, it was the 16mm film by Daria Martin, Closeup Gallery (2003), from Maureen Paley gallery, London. I was also happy to get to see another video by Laleh Khorramian, whose work I'd admired in the 2010 Site Santa Fe biennial. Additional posts on the NYC Armory week shows here.

 

Dependent Fair

So you heard about the Independent Fair; but there was also the Dependent Fair, occupying 6 floors of a Comfort Inn on the Lower East Side. The offerings varied widely; OWS even got a room.

The rooms were small and plagued by darkness, glare, and color reflected from yellow walls; nonetheless, many galleries managed to mount interesting mini-exhibitions. I esp. liked the shows installed by Audio Visual Arts, Foxy Production, and Silvershed.

The first image (right) shows part of the "Ministry of Lamination" installation from AVA; the second, a frame of a video by Michael Bell-Smith, from Foxy; the third, offerings from Silvershed. Good articles with photos at Art Fag City and eyes-towards-the-dove; more of my photos here.

More posts on the 2012 Armory week art fairs here.

Spring/Break Art Show (NYC Armory Week)

Spring/Break Art Show was a new, curator-driven "this can be a fair," located in Old School, NoLIta and featuring projects by 23 curators; and it may have been my favorite of the shows I saw during Armory week. Among the curators were the fair's founders Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly, Natalie Kovacs, Patrick Meagher, Eve Sussman, and Chen Tamir. The theme was "Apocalist: A Brief History of The End." The show also has a Facebook page with some photos here; Artinfo has an article with some good photos; Vernissage TV has a 6.5-min. video tour here; and my photos, such as they are, are here.

As usual, I'd have liked to have had more time here – everything I saw seemed to warrant it – but the evening ran out before I made it through the whole thing. Out of the works I saw, some faves were:

1. An installation featuring work by Eve Sussman – the labelling was a bit confusing to me, so I'll quote it: "Eve Sussman, Waiting for an Icon, 2012. Crazy Daisy, 2012, 3 channel site-specific video round with Patricia Thornley, Jeesu Kim, Leslie Thornton, Bat Or Kalo. Eve Sussman's site-specific work at Old School is inspired by a stained glass artwork she has brought back to life, animating it with the projections of several singers attempting the title song from the film Pull My Daisy. The musical rendition of the Neal Cassidy [sic], Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac poem was featured in Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's 1959 film." You can view the 26-min., classic Pull My Daisy at Ubuweb; the title song lyrics actually modify those of the poem; both are weird and suggestive; and the melody is wonderfully discombobulating and, I'd say, hard to sing. Sussman's projection onto stained glass was flanked on each side by projections of video'd windows through which you sometimes spied a young woman, apparently washing dishes or the like – the "glass" was frosted, except for a circle framing the young woman's head (see here for the layout).

2. Sp33dGuided Art Tour by Dora Budor + Maja Cule was a charming, thoughtfully goofy, iPhone-narrated tour with guide and guidee cuddled awkwardly on one Segway, purportedly touring the art in the show but in fact limited to the courtyard and an attempted trip around the block, although in my case we turned back after a close call involving a tree root and a fence. The artists explained they'd always wanted to try a Segway; me, too! The tour launched from a room featuring twin projections of Earth, positioned like views through a pair of binocs, except the planet spun differently in the two views; but I think this was a separate work.

3. In Sea of Fire by Fall on Your Sword (2012), an antique piano had been hooked up to video equipment in such a way that, in its default mode, the video showed one of those fake statue guys dressed up like the Statue of Liberty; but when you pressed one of the organ keys, this was interrupted by a clip from a disaster movie, with each key seemingly triggering the destruction of the Statue by a different, apocalyptic means – bombing, a tidal wave, alien invasion, etc. It was, simply, awesome. Trailer here; but it's nothing like being able to trigger a Liberty-annihilating tsunami with a key stroke.

I also saw a piece in which purported art objects were incorporated into an improvisational, audience-participatory art performance, which was a lots of fun; apologies that I can't say who deserves credit, except I think it may have been hosted by ArtLog? (I've requested more info and will update this if I get it.)

(Posts on other 2012 Armory week art shows here; three more to come.)

"Bridged"

This exhibition of works by DFW-area MFA candidates took place in an interesting old warehouse property at 500 Singleton in Dallas during the weekend of the "Bridge-O-Rama" Peggy Hill Bridge celebrations. The show was organized by Stephen Lapthisophon; more details at the FaceBook page for the event or at its website, 500WEST.

I shot these photos right before leaving town and unfortunately didn't include much labelling; my recollection is that maybe it was a little harder to find than usual? Sorry about that. Given what I take to have been part of the exhibition's premise of working with and responding to an existing building or place with its own character, however, it was in fact satisfying to explore the show the way you would any other place, rather than as a series of discretely identified sub-experiences.

Maybe 2/3 of the way through the show, the power went out; so, starting with P1130029.JPG (red spray-painted graffiti on a white-panelled wall), there was no light other than my camera flash or natural light.

I greatly enjoyed the allure and complexity of the piece that starts here – the piece started calling you as soon as you stepped into the building. Once you found it, it was just dam' beautiful, with lots of intriguing components. To start, what was the salt-white powder on the floor? And I liked the slyly humorous suggestion of a little old t.v. skidding to a stop with the aid of braking parachutes, like a race car or the batmobile – also implicating the velocity with which t.v.'s transmissions enter our minds, often bypassing our critical faculties to a greater degree than, say, the contents of texts (see, e.g., here). All this kept me in the room long enough to discover the aperture revealing the small painting of a cat (Schrödinger’s?), sleeping or dead, in a small, painted room very like the room in which the t.v. sat, all configured in an arrangement not unlike a diorama – was the cat run over, or dreamed, by the t.v.? or is the t.v. the dream of the cat? or did the painting represent a history or future of the room to which it was attached, or an alternate reality? is this reality semi-fractal? Among many other intriguing details and possibilities. Unfortunately, the audio was a bit unclear for me, and I never managed to decipher just what it was calling. (UPDATE: I've been informed by Randall Garrett that this installation was by Jeff Gibbons – thanks!) (FURTHER UPDATE: Jeff's told me that the audio says, "The sun will come out . . . "; more in his comment below.)

I also enjoyed the piece that starts here (in the first photo, the actual piece starts to the right of the white door) – I appreciated the combination of references to the art of meditation and the ultra-orderly science of math, and the chaos and aesthetic appeal of deterioration and trash; and I especially liked the way the audio both surprised me and drew me around the far edge into a dark corner with small light sources and more, not-fully-visible detritus – with an implication that maybe this nook was the most important part of the installation; yet you weren't sure what if anything much were there. (UPDATE: I've been informed by Ali Starr that this piece was by Matt Heller – thanks!)

And there were other fine works. This seems as good a time as any to mention that Lapthisophon has organized a pretty long series of pretty terrific exhibitions lately, and to say thanks! and that I hope he and his collaborators will keep doing interesting things here.

New Museum Triennial: "The Ungovernables"

Exhibition website here; a very helpful NYT review here, with a slide show with some beautiful photos; my own photos here; and Art Fag City has a good slide show here.

Among the pieces I found exciting was a video by Wu Tsang, The Shape of a Right Statement (2008; still, right, from Clifton Benevento gallery). In it, Tsang re-speaks a text I found fascinating, from the second part of a video manifesto by autisim rights activist Amanda Baggs, embedded below. Thoughout the 5 min. run of Tsang's piece, he does not blink, a feat which, for me, greatly heightened the intensity of the work.

I saw this piece before encountering Tsang's other work, including Wildness in the Whitney Biennial. Various commentators have expressed concern w.r.t. many contemporary works that one needs a lot of info extraneous to the work itself in order to begin to appreciate it. While Tsang's work draws heavily from its sources and context, for me, it's a great example of a piece that was sufficiently arresting in its own right to make me go look for that info; and I'm glad I did.

Another of my favorites was The Propeller Group's project, TVC Communism (2011), from which two pieces were shown. First was a video installation comprising synchronized video on 5 large screens arranged in an inward-facing circle. Each screen showed one individual in a meeting in which the Propeller team collaborated to develop p.r. to re-brand Communism. Unfortunately, viewers seemed to enjoy being the apparent center of the virtual attention of the Propeller team so much that, while I was there, the area within the 5-screen circle was full of chatting museum-goers, making it impossible to hear the the audio "conversation" among the characters in the videos. The second piece shown from the project was the resulting commercial ad.

It's hard to resist comparing the Triennial and the Whitney Biennial. Perhaps the main observation yielded for me so far is that there was more socially- or politically-engaged work at the New Museum. Given how much of the most exciting art made during recent years has had overtly political concerns, the relative paucity of the political at the Whitney seems striking.

Below is Amanda Baggs' manifesto:

Brucennial 2012

Self-described as “Harderer. Betterer. Fasterer. Strongerer,” the Brucennial was probably my favorite fair for quality per square inch; photos here. Legible attribution was sometimes hard to find, and I got tired of looking after a while; plus, again, I wish I'd shot more; my usual apologies for all deficits.

The Whitney Biennial

The show was mobbed, though I went on a weekday. I left with fewer photos than I'd have liked; you can see 80+ here.

Pieces I wish I'd shot but didn't include LAST SPRING: A Prequel, by Gisèle Vienne with Dennis Cooper, Stephen O’Malley, and Peter Rehberg; Green Room by Wu Tsang; Sarah Michelson's Devotion Study #1–The American Dancer; and RP47 by Lucy Raven. I also really enjoyed Werner Herzog's video installation, Hearsay of the Soul, with its powerful audio of music from his film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams.

My photos also don't do justice to many of the works, e.g. Sam Lewitt's "self-organizing" installation comprising magnets, fans, and a pool of sticky-looking ferrofluid; or Nick Mauss's installation, which included, in addition to the twin-doored vestibule he built and "painted" with sewn fabric, a number of not-obviously connected objects: a small projection plus works by Andy Warhol, Gary Winogrand, Ellsworth Kelly, Charles Demuth, Ira Delaneaux [sp?].

Additional informative audio and bits of visuals re- the exhibition are available at the Whitney's site; more images at PaperMag.

(Image left: detail from installation/performance set by Georgia Sagri.)

Roberta Smith has a glowing review in the NYT, with an excellent slide show here. A couple of aspects she identifies are that (1) the biennial includes lots of modes of art, including an impressive array of time-based works in video, music, dance, and performance as well as painting, sculpture, and installation – without particularly privileging any of them (although I don't recall much photography, unless you count photographs used in larger works, such as Dawn Kasper's installation, which comprised the entire contents of her living quarters/studio); and (2) the show is artist-centric, in that it focusses to an unusual degree on artists' processes and in some instances had them curate other artists into the exhibition.

These aspects seem so sensible and right that I confess I didn't notice them 'til I read Smith's review after seeing the show; and I'm glad she praised them. (Now that I think of it, even the cover image for the biennial {above right} seems to reflect an ambition to make the museum a more transparent vessel for its contents.) And I did notice, as I think Smith also mentions, that the written explanations of the works were unusually helpful.

I personally wish that more of the video had been easier to see. With respect to most of the videos as well as performances, each was only presented at certain times and for only a few days during the run of the exhibition, making it impossible to see all unless you can return multiple times over a 13-week period.

I saw only a few minutes of Wu Tsang's Wildness in his Green Room installation (video embedded below), which was packed.

I also saw the dance performance choreographed by Sarah Michelson. The set and costumes were relatively simple (you can see a few images and another review here), and for the vast majority of the near-90 minute piece, four or less of the same 4 dancers walked rapidly backward in mostly counter-clockwise circles, all more often than not tracing the same basic movements and path while separated by a more or less fixed distance, with occasional pauses that seemed necessary in order to give the dancers much-needed breathers. During the latter part of the performance, a 5th dancer wearing a (race-?) horse's head strolled through, lingered briefly – observing? – and left. The audio consisted of the same, musically interesting but short loop throughout, without any variation in instrumentation, tempo, or volume, etc. – except that, at the beginning of the piece, there was additional audio of a relatively brief conversation, seemingly between Michelson and a male artist, with the male doing most of the talking, mostly about feeling uncertain whether he'll manage to come up with anything much for his current commission; plus other bits of Michelson's voice near the end, enjoining the dancers to "make it very beautiful" and then relating a story of God's other child Marjorie, in which I'm afraid I got a bit lost, between acoustics that were, for me, less than crystal clear, plus being by then fairly stupified by the monotony.

(Image right: detail from collage by Robert Hawkins.)

All in all, I enjoyed this biennial and found it well done and rewarding of time and attention, though it could perhaps have been more exciting.

Here's the trailer for Wildness:

NYC Art Fairs 2012, and "It's the Political Economy, Stupid"

Pulse may have decided, wisely, that the field's gotten too crowded; they've moved to May.

Within four days (Mar. 3 - 11), viewers were offered the Armory Show, Scope, VOLTA, the Moving Image Fair, the Independent Fair, the Dependent Fair, the Fountain Art Fair, the Spring Break fair, and the Brucennial; not to mention the Whitney Biennial, the New Museum Triennial and plenty of other shows, most of which could only be viewed Wed. thru Sun., i.e. mostly the same days the fairs were open, and mostly only during roughly the same hours. Given that most exhibitions include a lot more video and other time-based work than they used to, any hope of seeing and doing justice to all the work shown has become even more remote.

I saw (in no particular order): the Armory Show – just the contemporary Pier and some of the Armory Film programs; the Moving Image Fair; the Independent; the Dependent; Spring Break; the Brucennial; the It's the Political Economy, Stupid show at the Austrian Cultural Forum; the Whitney Biennial; and the New Museum Triennial.

I shot lots of photos, which I'm in the process of culling and putting online. The first up are from It's the Political Economy, Stupid, curated by Gregory Sholette and Oliver Ressler. The exhibition borrows its title from Slavoj Žižek's twist on Pres. Clinton's old campaign slogan. (Image above from The Bull Laid Bear (2012), video, 24 min., Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler, from this show.)

As you may know, I've followed the economic situation for a while and am concerned that economic reform is essential but that few non-experts understand the problems well enough to know what should be done about them. But the problems aren't all that hard to understand; it's just that the perpetrators have done a terrific job obfuscating them. (My own grasp happens to be a little better than average, since I happened to write a paper on Glass-Steagall back when it was being repealed, and I've also had experience with commercial loans that were rolled into the kind of securitized mortgage pools blamed by some for the economic meltdown.)

The works in Political Economy were really brilliant, using various documentary and imaginative strategies to greatly further this discussion. More info at the Austrian Cultural Forum; and there's an excellent review of the show on the art:21 blog.

UPDATE: Posts on the other shows I saw will be available here.

Report #3 from P.2: A "Pearl" Greater than the Sum of its Parts

Another of my favorite components of P.2 New Orleans was the satellite show curated by John Otte, "Constant Abrasive Irritation Produces the Pearl: A Disease of the Oyster" - Lenny Bruce.

The setting for the show is The Pearl, a residence-speakeasy-restaurant-exhibition space further described by Eric Bookhardt at The Gambit as "a 200-year-old farm house posing as a nondescript Bywater residence. It has served as a private salon and performance hall for owner Jay Poggi (aka MC Trachiotomy) and his friends for more than 20 years . . . . "

Otte found The Pearl packed with what looks like the most intriguing detritus from numerous lifetimes. He decided to work with the existing stuff, rather than against it; the results are magical. As he writes in his curatorial statement, "[s]culptures and two-dimensional works are strategically placed to interact with already existing assemblages and vignettes. . . . Videos are ceiling-mounted, wall-mounted, projected, and embedded throughout the space in a nod to the vast proliferation of tv screens and video projections currently found in many public spaces . . . . "

The show includes work by AdrinAdrina & Elliott Coon, Jonathan Bouknight, Susannah Bridges Burley w/ Katie Tabor, John Curry, Dawn DeDeaux, Lee Deigaard, Courtney Egan, Margaret Evangeline, Fereydoon Family, Jessica Goldfinch, Dave Greber, Brian Guidry, Sally Heller, Ingridmwangiroberthutter, Kathleen Loe, Aristides Logothetis, Jennifer Odem, John Otte w/ Jeff Dahlgren, Anastasia Pelias, Kim Phillips, Michele Schuff, Gary Stephan, Paige Valente, and Delona Wardlaw.

The work is highly eclectic; hence, at least in part, the show's title, which might apply to any "pearls" of art resulting from social or other disturbances, or to any art that seeks to disturb.

While most of the disturbances in the show merit attention on their own, I realized there were a few I might normally have felt less than thrilled with (for reasons having to do with, among other things, how some video art doesn't seem to exploit the medium's potential sufficiently to justify the kind of sustained attention the medium tends to demand from viewers [which, as a video art maker, I find frustrating insofar as it turns people off to the medium]) – but as installed, most of the pieces were thrilling; and nearly all benefit from their encystment among objects that, old and odd as they were, made the "art" more luminous.

By thoughtfully utilizing Poggi's curated detritus (which itself draws from the output of numerous intentional and perhaps unintentional artists), Otte's taken curation-as-art-practice to the next level.

(I enjoyed using my secret weapon {camera flash} to unveil some of the mysteries supporting Otte's construct; and confirmed that The Pearl's contents emulate the larger world's in that, the more you see, the greater the mystery as well as the meaning. But they were extra-fun to discover, via the occasion provided by the videos and by overcoming the darkness required to show them.)

I sent Otte some questions and have incorporated his answers about particular works into an online gallery of visuals from the show, here, and below are his answers to a couple of more general questions:

C: Some of the pieces seemed to me greatly enhanced by their physical locations and contextual elements, e.g. Susannah Bridges Burley's, Brian Guidry's, and Dave Greber's (in a building entrance, on the floor). I'd be curious to know which if any of those aspects they'd include if the work were shown in a completely different setting.

Otte: You would have to ask the artists that question. It would be great to know what they retain from this show, and end up using from this experience. I suspect many will continue to show these and similar pieces in the future as discreet autonomous pieces.

Most of Dave Greber's videos employ wonderfully heavy frames that relate to paintings as well as windows. I originally cut out a plywood "window" frame for Dave's piece: Join Us Today as it was initially shown on a very nice Samsung 24" flat screen tv. In fact, it was first displayed lying in a nearby wood pile. However, the concentrated humidity in the air of New Orleans and the horizontal positioning ended up destroying the flat screen tv after about a month's time. I had an understanding with Dave that the piece would probably change form during the course of the show due to its precarious installation. I also let him know that I would immediately inform him of any necessary changes, and get his O.K. before proceeding with the changes. And, I can tell you that with each artist, I carefully considered a multitude of aspects with regard to content and context as well as micro and macro scales. I am constantly considering the meanings that result from various placements and media arrangements. In fact, that's a major driver behind this exhibition. I feel that the white-walled detached gallery/museum experience seems so played-out at this point. I believe that 21st Century viewers require many other things to inform our experience of art these days. Very few artworks have any resonance for me when isolated from everything else. Let's take the Renaissance for example - just think of the massive artistic egos of those such as Michelangelo and Raphael. Yet, they were (seemingly) enthralled by the chance to include their own masterpieces among the art, architecture and music of countless other artists, artisans, musicians and architects. Regardless, that was just the way things were done then.

I certainly believe the element of sound plays a crucial role here, especially in the interaction among the works of Brian Guidry, Dave Greber and Anastasia Pelias - they all have interpenetrating soundtracks which add up to one grand composition according to my aural perception. It is also exciting to visually apprehend various combinations of the videos from different vantage points.

C: I get the idea of art resulting from and functioning as an irritant in the oyster of life, and these works generally seem to question important aspects of the way society operates; but there are arguable exceptions, such as Courtney Egan's or Dawn DeDeaux's pieces, and the work otherwise seemed pretty eclectic. I'd be interested if you could share any further thoughts about how and why you selected the works included.

Otte: On one hand, the artworks are the 'pearls' that I've extracted from the oyster (the world). On the other hand, they are like punctuation marks in the larger composition of The Pearl - they serve as contrast elements to the rest of the space, images and accretions of objects.

I was directed to a number of the artists by Anastasia Pelias, who seemed to have a very good idea about what I wanted to do as a curator, and who ultimately turned out to be a very reliable source for me. In the end, I had to really ride the dynamics of the system already extant at The Pearl. The Pearl suggested so many possibilities and offered so many opportunities for a wide spectrum of visual and aural experiences that I knew I wanted only to add to the mix rather than take away from it too much. Well, mostly . . . I found that simply clearing paths for viewers to get from one place to another really seemed to help a lot. And, the act of "carving away" some of the chaotic messes only seemed to enhance other chaotic messes! Before installing the show, I spent a lot of time in the backyard pruning and 'defining' the plants, deciding which outgrowths to keep and which to get rid of. Sometimes it was really hard to decide which sets of weeds were interesting and which were not. When this difficulty persisted, I simply left them alone.

The decision to work primarily with video offered the opportunity for as much life as possible to continue on unabated at The Pearl. The videos, as much as possible, stay out of the way - not entirely, but a lot of the time. Of course, all of this technology is so precarious and vulnerable and dependent upon electricity. And, by the way, I must admit my indebtedness to technology - I am also a DJ. So, I'm often confronted with the question: what happens when the power goes out? Well, the answer is I'm TOTALLY F*CKED with all this dependency on technology! I absolutely admire the emphasis in this town of singing and playing and doing things with non-electric instruments and whatever's at hand. I love the use of candles, etc. I love oil paint and marble. I love it all, really. I just feel the need to constantly recognize the precariousness of all life at the dawn of this New Millennium, and especially with regard to this show. Call it a 'diseased' state if you will. Yet, in the end, it's probably no more diseased than at any other period.

Finally, I would have to say that I am most proud of the fact that this sprawling amorphous exhibition is just so . . . expansive. It is a spectrum of experiences, leading one down many different paths and potential paths only to turn back on itself. Many aspects of this exhibition are so stupid (in my mind) and silly beyond comprehension. I really feel this way. In fact, I must include my own stupidity in so much of it. In my opinion, only a few (and certainly not my) pieces contain moments of 'High Art' brilliance, and everything else is somewhere caught in between. But, that's really the point of this show. It's all stuff that's potentially interesting . . . and not. It's like a great big wonderful party where lots and lots of people are invited. Everyone's babbling away, but only some have 'important' things to say. Yet, who knows? What's important, in the end, can only be decided individually. I guess you had to be there . . .

[* substituted by moi.]

As for substantive themes in evidence at The Pearl and elsewhere in P.2, artists seemed concerned with issues having to do with social and economic justice, the corporatization of humanity and humanization of corporations, the power of p.r., social systems and interactions, the environment and our seemingly attenuating relationship to it, and our place in an ever-expanding universe, among other things.

Explorations of time, history, and real and virtual space were also much in view.

I was struck in particular by the prevalence in P.2 video of images of the ebb and flow of wind and water, and leaves' wavery shadows or reflections in water or elsewhere, e.g. in works by Dawn Dedeaux, Otte & Dahlgren, Jonas Dahlberg (see visuals starting here) and Pawel Wojtasik (see visuals starting here).

Of course, the water thing certainly makes sense in the wake (pardon the multiple pun) of Katrina; but I commented last year on the prevalence of the same motifs among NYFF "Avant Garde" films. By the fourth time you see it, it starts to feel clichéd; by the eighth, you're wondering about collective compulsion (by which I mainly mean that artists may as usual be being among the first to recognize that we're about ready to do some important work on something).

These videos are of course about various things, and perhaps it's a bit of a leap, but esp. in the context of other elements present in the works, the waving, bobbing imagery seems suggestive to me of such aspects of time and history as rhythm, periodicity, tides, drift, wavelength, arc length, etc., and perhaps even a sort of fractal view of time – video is, after all, esp. amenable to the exploration of issues relating to time.

Back in 2008, I tried unsuccessfully to talk my co-curators of The Program into considering a focus on time and/or history, which seemed to me prevalent concerns in work we'd seen.

My thoughts on the subject remain far from fully-formed – hey, ditto physicists' – but why wouldn't we be collectively obsessed with time? Among other accelerating developments, technology has increased our power over time a thousand-fold – while further enslaving us to the project of mastering it – and now holds out the prospect of virtual immortality. Why wouldn't we be obsessed both with our histories and the systems through which they're preserved or re-written, as we hurtle into the future carrying individual and collective pasts at once exploding in volume yet evidenced by physical relics that remain fragile and by virtual archives ever more easily deleted or revised with a few keystrokes?

This is the third of three reports from Prospect.2 New Orleans; for the others, click on the "Prospect.2" label below this post. Prospect.2 runs through January 29, with the exhibition at The Pearl open on Saturdays and Sundays only, from 5 - 9pm, at 639 Desire.

Below is a video by Susannah Bridges Burley about the show at The Pearl:

Report #2 from P.2: DeDeaux, CAC, Calle, NOMA, O'Grady, the Old Mint, & Wojtasik

As in Prospect.1, the works included in Prospect.2 were scattered among venues all over New Orleans, this time some 20 of them.

And as in P.1, the work was first-rate. There was substantially less of it this time (but still far more than I could see in three days, although I found the amount of empty space at the CAC rather striking); and what there was seemed heavily weighted toward U.S.-based and esp. local artists – presumably mainly because of the reported financial difficulties.

That said, some of my favorite works were made by New Orleans-based artists.

I especially enjoyed: (1) the Music Box (see my previous post here); (2) the exhibition organized by John Otte at The Pearl (more on that soon); (3) Dawn DeDeaux's The Goddess Fortuna and Her Dunces in an Effort to Make Sense of It All (2011) (see visuals starting here), based on John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces and located in and around one of the French Quarter's oldest courtyard mansions; (4) Jonas Dahlberg's single-channel video, Macbeth (2010) (see here and visuals starting here; according to a 2011 source, Dahlberg makes his work using architectural models; I found it impossible to tell if that were the case in this piece); and (5) the documentation of Lorraine O'Grady's 1983 relational performance (yeah, it's been going on at least that long), Art Is . . . .

The first photo in this post captures a moment in O'Grady's performance (courtesy of Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY). It's somewhat misleading, in that, as I understand, the performers were mostly using the golden frames to make the onlookers into "art," not just themselves. There was also a big parade float with a giant golden frame, which made art out of large chunks of the whole scene.

The second photo shows William Eggleston's Untitled (From The Seventies: Volume Two), circa 1970's (courtesy Cheim & Read, New York) (more visuals of Eggleston's works in the biennial start here).

The third shows Paweł Wojtasik's Below Sea Level (Uncle Lionel Batiste and Benny Jones in Front of Benny’s FEMA Trailer) (2009-2011) (image from the biennial press kit); the photo relates to a ca. 360º-surround installation by the artist showing various scenes from contemporary New Orleans (see visuals starting here).

More pics and vidis of works by various artists here (including some from Good Children Gallery – I'm not sure this show was officially part of P.2, but it included works by several P.2 artists).

I unfortunately could not be in New Orleans to see performances by two of my favorite new media artists, William Pope.L (see also my post here) and R. Luke DeBois (see also my post here). And although the truck used in William Pope.L's performance was still on exhibit, disappointingly, the "magic lantern" slide show that was supposed to take up its back panel wasn't working. You can find video interviews with Pope.L and DuBois about their projects at nola.com.

As you might expect, I found the video art most exciting. There was a fair amount, and I liked a lot of it; but I expect to include more discussion of the video art in a forthcoming post on the exhibition at The Pearl.

Prospect.2 runs through January 29. The hours, generally, are Wed. - Sun., 11am - 4pm.

This is the second of three reports from Prospect.2 New Orleans; for the others, click on the "Prospect.2" label below this post.

UPDATE: If you clicked through my visuals at the link above, you may have noticed those of Robert Tannen's installation, Art by Committee, starting here. In this piece, visitors were invited to contribute to murals being painted on huge swaths of fabric hung on the interior walls of the Art House on the Levee, which swaths were replaced whenever full so as to make space for more contributions. I just got word that the resulting murals will be exhibited at Ideal Auto Repair Warehouse, 422 Girod St. in New Orleans, opening Sat., Jan. 14, 6 - 9PM. Let me know if you spot my contribution.

Goss-Michael Foundation

I finally put some photos up from the opening last Nov. of the Goss-Michael Foundation in its new space at 1405 Turtle Creek (Design District near Oak Lawn, Dallas, TX).

They have an exciting collection, esp. if you like the YBA's, as I do. More photos here.

Suite Art Fair

Includes some out-of-town galleries, as well as cool locals. These pics were taken at night; the light will be better during the day.

Check it out.

Dallas Art Fair 2011

Significantly bigger than last year. Photos here (apologies for lighting, glare, etc.).

Dallas Art Fair, Suite Art Fair, Etc.

. . . in Dallas this weekend. (Left: Chris Sauter, Microscope (detail; 2011), sheetrock; photo courtesy Cueto Project.) A few highlights in brief:

Thur., 4/7:

10 AM-6 PM Jim Lambie exhibition at Goss Michael Foundation opens, with a beautiful, newly-acquired floor installation. At 1405 Turtle Creek Blvd.; open Tues.-Fri. 10 AM-6 PM, Sat. 11 AM-4 PM (see the next post for photos from the preview).

7-10 PM Dallas Art Fair Preview Gala
Fashion Industry Gallery (f.i.g.), 1807 Ross Ave.
Benefits Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts and Dallas Contemporary. Tix are $200 per person and can be purchased by calling Ellen Fryer at (214) 219-9191 or emailing daf@buzzellco.com.

8-11 PM Suite Art Fair Preview Party
Belmont Hotel, 901 Fort Worth Ave.
Tix are $60 and are good for the entire weekend; tix can be purchased here (free t-shirt to the first 100 purchasers).

Fri., 4/8 - Sun., 4/10:

Dallas Art Fair
Fri. & Sat., 11 AM-7 PM; Sun. 11 AM-5 PM
Fashion Industry Gallery (f.i.g.), 1807 Ross Ave.
$20 per day or $40 weekend pass; tix can be purchased here or by calling (214) 220-1278.
Full schedule of events mentioned in this post and others relating to the Dallas Art Fair here. One highlight: at 5 PM on both Fri. & Sat. in the Becks Imaginarium (in the same building with the Art Fair), there will be a screening of Full Circle: Before They Were Famous, a new film inspired by stunning, recently-discovered photos taken by William John Kennedy of Andy Warhol and his milieu, with the photographer and Ultra Violet in attendance. Many of the photos can be seen in Colton & Farb Gallery's booth.

Suite Art Fair
11 AM-7 PM Fri., Sat., & Sun.
Belmont Hotel, 901 Fort Worth Ave. Organized by Brian Gibb of The Public Trust. $10 per day or $20 weekend pass; tix can be purchased here. (Right: Celia Eberle, Transbunny (2011), marble, jet, toys {photo courtesy Plush Gallery, an exhibitor at Suite Art}).

Sat., 4/9:

10 AM-4 PM, Symposium, THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY: Models of Urban Engagement & Creativity in the 21st Century
Bob Hope Theater, Owen Arts Center, SMU, 6101 Bishop. The symposium is a direct response to the research residency of New York-based public arts organization Creative Time, one of the 2009-10 Meadows Prize recipients. Through individual presentations and panel discussions, the conference will explore the relationship between artists, architects, activists and social justice struggles.

5-9 PM, Texas Biennial Party
CentralTrak, 800 Exposition. Works by Gabriel Dawe, Cassandra Emswiler, and Hillary Holsonback currently exhibited.

"Sustenance" Update

Lots more visuals of the exhibition here. (For a larger version of the image at left, click on it; the work is by Jesse Morgan Barnett.)

The exhibition includes works by Brian Fridge, Chris Hefner, Darryl Lauster, Devin King, Frances Bagley, Iris Bechtol, Jeff Zilm, Jesse Morgan Barnett, Justin Ginsberg, Kate Helmes, Kimberly Aubuchon, Kristin Mariani, Linnea Glatt & Jim Cinquemani, Lizzy Wetzel, Lou Mallozzi, Ludwig Schwarz, Matt Hanner, Michael Mazurek, Patrick Murphy, Sedrick Huckaby, Shannon Brunskill (with Courtney Brown), Tom Orr, and Temporary Services. Exhibition checklist and more at the Sustenance FB page or blog.