Nightwalks

"This is thy hour O Soul,
thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art,
the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing,
pondering the themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars."

-Walt Whitman (1819-1892), "A Clear Midnight"
(from "Leaves of Grass")

Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2007

ArtCal Zine Review: Ugo Rondinone

My review of Ugo Rondinone's exhibition, "Big Mind Sky," is posted at the ArtCal Zine. (Click here to read.)

While you're there, I encourage you to read some of the other recent reviews and write-ups. The contributors are a good bunch and I'm hoping the zine might become a regular stop for art readers.

Gallery Report: October 17th, 2007

Jill Greenberg at ClampArt


Jill Greenberg
"Untitled #7"
2006
Archival pigment print
Edition of 7
80 x 43 inches
ClampArt: Few animals possess more totemic significance than the bear. For many hunter-gatherer peoples, the bear was the supreme incarnation of Nature. But today our encounters with members of family Ursidae are contrived: we watch polar bears dully divert themselves in a zoo compound; our circuses doll up black bears in tutus and fezzes; we place cuddly, stuffed teddies in our infant's crib. Contemporary humans have enervated the animal, but the power of an enraged bear and her long, annual slumber are no less awesome or mysterious.

With "Ursine," Jill Greenberg gives these proud animals the celebrity treatment - the photographer specializes in the sort of hi-contrast, saturated images we see on billboards or in advertisement-thick glossies - but her photographs capture a range of expression in the faces and (pardon the pun) bearing of her subjects. The grizzly bear pictured in "Untitled #7" the strongest photograph in the exhibition, rears up his hind legs and lets loose a growl from a gaping, intimidating maw. Admiring those yellowed teeth, the moistened, fleshy lips, and the mottled tongue, I can almost smell the stench of being. No tutus for this fellow; this is the bear restored, a benevolent monster of the human unconscious.


Jill Greenberg
"Untitled #4"
2006
Archival pigment print
Edition of 7
43 x 50 inches
+++++

Patte Loper at Lyons Wier Ortt Gallery


Patte Loper
"We Had Pierced the Veneer of Outside Things and Scattered into a Diaspora of the Amazing"
2007
Oil on paper
80 1/2 x 58 inches
Lyons Wier Ortt Gallery: The paintings and drawings in Patte Loper's exhibition, "A New Way North," are technically commendable but lack emotional or intellectual substance. The flat, photographic color and ugly architecture featured in some works - "Glorious Predators of the Natural World," for example - are objectionable. To be fair, this may be the artist's intention. The press release informs readers that "Loper explores the pictorial and cultural intersection of glamour, modernism, cold war paranoia, and alienation." But Loper's work remains too indebted to the source material; no new life is breathed into these spaces or events through Loper's "appropriation and reproduction."

One painting, however, is exempt from such criticism. In fact, the strength of the exhibition's centerpiece, "We Had Pierced the Veneer of Outside Things and Scattered into a Diaspora of the Amazing," is what compels me to so harshly critique the other works Loper includes. "We Had Pierced..." outshines its siblings, much to their detriment.

In the painting, a large white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) rests atop a dark, Antarctic outcropping. In a glacial valley beyond, we see a partially snow-covered geodesic dome, presumably occupied (or once occupied) by human researchers. The title of the painting and the dome's construction call to mind the scientific optimism of the mid-20th century and the promise of the future. We now hold that promise in low regard and the optimism has evolved into unrestrained globalization, bringing with it the accelerated transport of contagions and so-called "invasive species," those creatures transplanted in new lands that are able to find a foothold, often displacing native niche specialists in the process.

The deer appears in all of Loper's works, included, according to the artist, "to interrupt narrative expectations," but in the case of "We Had Pierced..." the deer's presence raises questions about the work of the scientists below. Whoever lives (or lived) inside the dome "belongs" to this remote place now, as does the deer. This wasn't always so. The humans and the deer have come to this location (or were brought), and so the landscape is altered, but to what end? The slow groan of geology cradles the new inhabitants. All remains in flux. Loper's painting is a tribute to Nature's awesome compass and to our species' relative insignificance (both physical and temporal). It is as celebratory as it is ambivalent.

+++++

Keith Tyson at Pace Wildenstein


Keith Tyson
Detail of "Large Field Array"
2006 - 2007
Mixed media
Dimensions variable
Pace Wildenstein: Keith Tyson's "Large Field Array" is an exceptional work, deserving of many return visits. Though I have thought about the installation a great deal these last two days, everything I write fails to convey the work's dynamism.


Keith Tyson
Detail of "Large Field Array"
2006 - 2007
Mixed media
Dimensions variable
For all of its color, its scale, and its varied concepts, the viewing experience is a quiet, internalized one. "Large Field Array" is a polymath's revery, a virtually inexhaustible field of potential poetic connections. Tyson's worthy raison d'etre, the "joyful exploration of how everything in the world is connected," has impelled him to oversee a project that is much more than he could have hoped for. The European curator Hendrik Driessen is quoted in the gallery's press release, saying "it is a truly generous work of art." Indeed it is. In a more comprehensible, less globalized world, the work would be considered a masterpiece.

+++++

Photo credits: Jill Greenberg images courtesy ClampArt, New York City; Patte Loper image courtesy Lyons Wier Ortt; Keith Tyson images, Hungry Hyaena, 2007

$$$ and Sense

The Colorado Rockies have secured a spot in the 2007 World Series and the Cleveland Indians are their likely opponents (barring an incredible turnaround by the Boston Redsox). I'm not a fan of either team but I root for underdogs and so am pleased to see these two clubs experiencing success.

My pleasure is dampened, however, by the constant fretting of so many sports commentators and journalists about the "problems" with "small market teams" vying for the championship. Sure, Major League Baseball's executives (and those at the invested television networks) are more worried about "the numbers" than they are a good sports story, but those men and women are the suited vultures, the "money men," a tribe I hold in low regard. Why should the commentators echo their concerns?

I'm not usually one to romanticize sports history - nostalgia is a refuge of the deluded or the defeated - but it wasn't long ago that popular sports mythology was built around icons and iconic achievement at the individual and team level. Frustratingly, our contemporary culture celebrates the sports investors almost as much the records, players, and managers. The much caricatured, beer-gutted fan sprawled in his recliner is today as concerned with salary caps, free agency moves, and team revenue as he is batting average and stolen bases. Off season dealings are as much a subject of water cooler conversation as the break-out rookies or outstanding team efforts. Indeed, contemporary sports talk might be confused for a stock portfolio review.

These are the times we live in, and our mercenary understanding of sports just one more tell, but for a more poignant take on contemporary apathy (and what it represents or portends) link over to James Wagner to read his "Good Germans" post, a response to Frank Rich's op-ed in the October 14th Sunday New York Times.

Ethical food choices...for cars

Each fall the Major League Baseball postseason reintroduces me to alcohol and automobile advertising. Advertising is our most popular art form and, as a result, every American is comfortable critiquing commercials (even those who remain reluctant to discuss paintings, novels, or films). As a stubborn idealist, I'd rather opt out of the conversation altogether, but I'm compelled to comment on Chevrolet's recent alternative fuel vehicles television spots.

Like the other major motor companies, Chevy is ramping up alternative fuel advertising in an effort to earn "green" stripes, but (no surprise here) they fudge the facts. For example, in the commercial for Chevy's e85 ethanol line, a user-friendly spokesman tells a group of children that the biofuel vehicle is "vegetarian." That label is disingenuous. No matter what the captains of industry claim, biofuel is not an environmentally sensitive option. George Monbiot, a vigilant activist and journalist, has been crying foul on this front for years, even when most environmental groups were still touting biofuel as a promising alternative.

But, among environmentalists, consensus is slow in coming and, having been reached, even slower to result in an about-face. Because Americans and Europeans are at last embracing gasoline alternatives, environmental activists are nervous about backtracking, even as news from the lands of palm and sugarcane grows more dire. Consider this recent piece from the Manchester Guardian.

"Until now palm oil - of which 83% is produced in Indonesia and Malaysia - was produced for food. But the European Union's aim of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, partly by demanding that 10% of vehicles be fuelled by biofuels, will see a fresh surge in palm oil demand that could doom the rainforests.

That is likely to kill off the 'flagship species' of wildlife such as the Asian elephant, the Sumatran tiger and the orang-utan of Borneo which are already under enormous pressure from habitat loss. Plantation owners regard the orang-utan as pests because it eats the young palm oil plants and hunt them down ruthlessly."

I stopped eating meat - i.e., became a vegetarian - because of the wasteful, unethical way meat comes to the plate in our time. Given the equally destructive reality of biofuel production, I wince as I watch the Chevy commercials, worried that most well-meaning people associate the vehicles with positive change rather than, among other sins, the slaughter of orangutans by hungry have-nots.

Sure, the car is vegetarian. Industrialized capitalism, however, is anything but.

Photo credit: ripped from ABC Australia

Signals

"...it seems that something new is emerging on our planet. It is true that technical progress in modern times has linked men together like a complex nervous system. The means of travel are numerous and communication is instantaneous - We are joined together materially like the cells of a single body, but this body has as yet no soul. This organism is not yet aware of its unity as a whole. The hand does not yet know that it is one with the eye."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, pilot and author of The Little Prince

Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2007

Gallery Report: September 26th, 2007

Paul Villinski at Morgan Lehman Gallery



Paul Villinksi
"Ardor"
2007
Found aluminum, wire, lead and soot
60 x 60 x 11 inches
Morgan Lehman Gallery: Paul Villinski's solo outing, "metamorphosis," proves true the maxim that one can have too much of a good thing. The works Villinski includes - groupings of wall-mounted butterflies, "cut by hand from discarded aluminum cans," and a similar installation using vinyl LPs - are part of a series I was introduced to in July of 2006, when the artist included one sculpture, "Departure," in a summer group show at Morgan Lehman. At the time, I applauded Villinski's willingness to flirt with preciousness. I wrote, "[the sculpture] risks being dismissed as a one-note, kitsch celebration of reincarnation or transformation," but concluded that the work was stronger for taking that risk. "Departure" toed the line successfully, forcing the viewer to question his jaded mistrust of a sincere, simple gesture.

Unfortunately, when the gallery space includes only Villinski's butterfly sculptures, the work takes a sad tumble from sincerity into saccharinity. Butterflies, butterflies, everywhere! Even those visitors who rightly cling to the notion of the gallery as a cultural shrine will be forced to admit that an art gallery is first and foremost a boutique. This context undermines Villinski's labors. I left the show wishing I could view each sculpture apart from the rest because, on their own, they are quite nice.

+++++

Julie Heffernan at P.P.O.W. Gallery



Julie Heffernan
"Self Portrait as Booty"
2007
Oil on canvas
68 1/2 x 65 inches
P.P.O.W.: Julie Heffernan's large, lush canvases are a treat for contemporary painting aficionados. The works on display in her current solo show, "Booty," at P.P.O.W., provide ample evidence of her virtuosity, but are psychologically off-putting.

The paintings function as contemporary Vanitas pictures. Heffernan replaces the oft-used laden table with naked women - all self portraits - and gone, too, are the hourglass and silverware. The works are less meditations on life's temporality than restrained celebrations of ego and excess.

The press release states that the figure "does not stoop under the weight of it all" and possesses "extraordinary grace," but that grace can also be interpreted as ambivalent disregard. Did these women achieve their position, or is this merely their circumstance? In either case, the women are obscene; at best, they are quiet collaborators and, more likely, queenly orchestrators, present-day scepter bearers lording over choked empires and rampant consumption. I am saddened - even made uncomfortable - by these pictures. The artist is looking out at us. We're implicated.

+++++

Daniel Rozin at bitforms gallery



Daniel Rozin
"Weave Mirror"
2007
768 laminated C-ring prints, motors, circuits, custom software and microcontroller
57 x 76 x 8 inches
Edition of 6
bitforms gallery: Daniel Rozin includes three interactive sculptures in "Fabrication," his third solo exhibition with bitforms gallery. One of these, "Snow Mirror," is relatively forgettable, but "Peg Mirror" and "Weave Mirror" may well prove to be among the most engaging works I will see this year.

As their titles suggest, all three of Rozin's computerized sculptures are unconventional mirrors, limning the viewer in plastic rings, wooden pegs, or digitized "snow." The "reflected" images are fragmented or wraith-like. The reflection offered by "Weave Mirror," for example, more closely resembles a shadow than the familiar face in the medicine cabinet mirror. This "other" shadow has a power that our own, neglected shadow no longer possesses. "The Shadow knows," the popular 1930s radio program reminded Americans, and "Weave Mirror" emphasizes our corporeality by summoning the confrontational vestige, a hi-contrast Doppelganger that stares back at us as it mimics.



Daniel Rozin
"Weave Mirror"
2007
768 laminated C-ring prints, motors, circuits, custom software and microcontroller
57 x 76 x 8 inches
Edition of 6
All of Rozin's "mirrors" are playfully mysterious, but "Weave Mirror" is especially so. I circled the construction, and approached its face from all angles, low and high, trying to figure out its whining, clacking workings. I felt I was in the presence of something special, something at once "new" and ancient, magical and mundane. It is remarkable, too, for the method of its magic. It breaks apart the "whole" to transformative effect: revelation through pixelation.

The back of "Weave Mirror" is a plexiglas panel under which all the gears and wires can be seen. Even though Rozin reveals the mechanics of the piece, you need to be a contemporary tinkerer, engineer, or programmer to understand what's happening behind Oz's curtain. For the rest of us, the work remains invested with magic, what Julian Dibbell, writing on contemporary technology, calls "the logic of the incantation." I am, admittedly, something of a technophobe, but Rozin's engineering has all the appeal of steampunk alternatives.

+++++

Photo credits: Villinski and Heffernan images ripped from gallery websites (only due to time constraints); "Weave Mirror" images, Hungry Hyaena, 2007

"Natural Selections" Interview

When I'm not wearing my artist/writer hat, I'm earning steady income and health insurance working as a glorified secretary in a neuroscience laboratory at the Rockefeller University. This month, one of the Rockefeller publications, "Natural Selections," interviewed me for the "New York State of Mind" feature.

The short answers don't delve deeply into art or ecology, but enough so that I'm posting a link to it here.

ArtCal Zine Review: Adam Ogilvie

Link over to the terrific, new ArtCal Zine to read my review of Adam Ogilvie's "Oceans Between Us" exhibition, currently on view at Josee Bienvenu Gallery.

Political Compass: Where Do You Land?

I learned of the Political Compass Test a month ago, while reading Bill Gusky's ArtBlog Comments. It isn't a perfect measure of one's political positioning, but it serves as a useful litmus test.

Interestingly, as Bill points out, many art blog readers land in the lower left quadrant (economically "left" and socially libertarian). Take my score of -8.50/-6.36, for example. The test makers consider me a little left of the Dalai Lama on both axises. While I find that result somewhat surprising, I'm honored to be in such good company.

Take the test. Tell me where you are placed.