Artificial Light

Artificial Light, curated by John Ravenal, is at VCU's Anderson Gallery through October 29th. I'm glad I went to the opening, with all the people, and also later on when it was mostly empty. Most of the work in the show is better experienced without a crowd.

This show is so dark... I didn't know John Ravenal had such a dark side. I think I was expecting more of a mellow new-agey experience, like a Turrell or that big sun, but this show is political.

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla are showing a frankenplant being given just enough stimulus to keep it alive, the blue light emitted from a non-stop upward flow of Jenny Holzer's truisms - "symbols are more meaningful than things themselves", "the idea of revolution is an adolescent fantasy". This plant will now do anything that Jenny Holzer commands.


Iván Navarro has two black-light neon chairs, side by side in a pitch black chamber. Totalitarian design, awe and dread.


This is the shadow of an electrical cord cast by Nathaniel Rackowe's Dead Reckoning. He's built a corridor along which a bare electric bulb slowly tracks back and forth; as the bulb travels loops of slack cord are pulled up and the shadow noose tightens.


The corridor.


There are slats in the corridor, not wide enough to pass through, but you can walk all around the whole thing as shafts of light sweep through the space... LOOKING FOR YOU.


Spencer Finch's Kaaterskill Falls is the one piece that was better experienced with a crowd of tourists and tiny honeymooners. I like this piece (especially with people), but whereas before I was thinking this was the odd piece out, now I am thinking of it as the perfect complement to the rest of the work in the show. Interrogation, torture, and execution... with an American classic. Kaaterskill Falls is in the first room, so it is both your first and last impression of the show.

maybe more later... ?

paintings

This is my new favorite place to hang my paintings, underneath the face of Jesus. None of these are done, I am waiting for a sign.


The Face of Jesus!!

Ron Johnson

Ron Johnson is showing at Reynolds Gallery. Sorry about these photos, the color is much brighter in reality. Opening the door and seeing those two paintings on a bright day... they were very crayola.

These pieces are done on two or three sheets of layered mylar... the pooled paint could be on the front surface, on the reverse, or somewhere in the middle... also the drawing. They are hung a little bit off the wall, and the color I most noticed at the reception was the reflected oranges, purples, and yellows on the white walls behind the pieces. Kind of like light through stained glass.

The second visit was the one where I was struck by the bright crayola colors, and the scribbliness. These seem so refined, and then so child-like. They are also sort of creepy.. I start to see ghosts.. I don't know why but I start to think "cemetary", maybe because of all the orange and yellow Halloween stuff I'm seeing at the stores now. I've had this reaction before to Ron's colors though, thinking they were vampirish, from the batcave, and that was in a February.

The one above is like an orange skull.


Here is a ghost, rising up from a misty cemetary. Boo!


Upstairs are some pieces on panels. The one on the right is nice.


Like a body, but not a fresh one. A few days later... grey and leaking.


The strips that Ron uses... usually colored on one or both sides.


Thumbs-Up from Eric Sall! Really!

art market

old Richmond art market.


new Richmond art market.


Page Bond Gallery has opened at 1625 Main Street. This space is huge, so Chelsea... more Chelsea than most of Chelsea, even. Page's husband is an architect, I think he designed the space.


I'm not getting too close to the art with these pictures - not into any of the artists she shows - except maybe Andras Bality. You can go to the website and see all of the artists and their work.

too interesting not to note: Page and Sandy's daughter's father-in-law is the president of the Robert Lehman Foundation.

as seen in RVA!!!

Hey! I'm in this month's (September) issue of RVA Magazine! Goest is also in this issue!

RVA is now FREE, and if you are not in the RVA you can see the whole issue here, as a PDF EBOOK (scroll down to see each page).

RELATED: Goest on anaba 3/10/2006, 3/12/2006, 6/15/2006, 6/19/2006.

Paul DiPasquale

Paul DiPasquale's Neptune, installed at Virginia Beach. This thing is awesome.. look at how Neptune is palming that turtle! That turtle is like, "Uh oh, I am about to get DUNKED".

Some interesting comments left on that last post on Paul DiPasquale. Bill Gusky said it reminded him of Ray Harryhausen flicks from the '60's... Beq mentioned Salvador Dali, probably in reference to his Dream of Venus.

I am still impressed thinking about how he got the Arthur Ashe statue up. What would DiPasquale do here? Neptune kind of reminds me of Puppy.

Jack Kirby

Very happy to see Jack Kirby in the NYTimes on Sunday, and that the Masters of American Comics show has come to NYC; at the Jewish Museum and the Newark Museum (that's a pain, two different places). The Jewish Museum has a concurrent exhibition called Superheroes: Good and Evil in American Comics... Yay!

No Hal Foster or RF Outcalt, included... oh well, can't have everything. Versions of Outcalt's The Yellow Kid have shown up in my stuff... here and more literally here, for example. Kirby inspiration many many times.

Here is an interview with exhibition co-curator Brian Walker.

RELATED: Jack Kirby on anaba - 10/14/2004, 4/5/2005 (Jack Kirby and Grandma Moses should be in the Whitney Biennial), 7/14/2005, 12/13/2005… PLUS – the Meatballs of Others exhibition!!!

some older paintings

I'm scanning some slides of older paintings. This one isn't very old... it's from 2003. The slide isn't the greatest, but I love this painting. My brother and his wife have it now. There is a rainbow in the background... toooo many rainbows and skulls in painting was talked about on PaintersNYC the other day.


Here is a detail of the center of the painting. Tiny tiny cut-paper figure crossing a tiny tiny bridge of thread.

Here is another rainbow one. I don't have any slides of this painting; the people who own it are selling their house, and I went to the open house last week and took this picture. They also have Rosemarie Fiore, Susan Jamison, Bruce Wilhelm.. and others. It was interesting to see their old art and prints with the newer stuff. Definitely thanks to John for creating and guiding local collectors.

No nice slide of that second rainbow painting, but here is a good detail shot of the figure... and here it is with Peter Halley!


Honeycomb is from 1999. This is the one Lois Dodd posed in front of, while it was still in progress, at the Vermont Studio Center. Last time I saw this painting it was hanging in Plum Gallery... I don't own it anymore.


Here is a detail of Honeycomb.

I can't believe I can't find any skulls in any of my paintings! I think these two images from the twenty-piece One Day in the Garden are the only ones... can that be true? Oh! Here is one, kind of, from way back. There must be more.

Rie is the star of all of these... she is the little figure on the bridge, the figure under the rainbow, the face in Honeycomb, the happy attackers in that second One Day image. She is the bees knees!

RELATED: Tom Moody looks back at his old work too!

two things

There are so many things I mean to post and never get around to, until it is (almost) too late.

Artists/Curators/Collaborators, propose a show at 1708 Gallery - 1708 Gallery invites artists, collaborative groups, & curators interested in proposing exhibitions at 1708 Gallery to do so at this time. 1708 is a cutting-edge, non-profit art gallery interested in all genres and contemporary approaches to art making.

Proposals are due for our next bi-annual review session at the gallery by 5pm, Monday October 2, 2006 for consideration during this fall’s proposal review session. Proposals are now being considered for the 2007/2008 season. Proposal Guidelines are on the 1708 web site: http://www.1708gallery.org/ under Exhibitions/Proposals.

LAST CALL to participate in JT's Artists Interview Artists project - I keep thinking I will do this, but... . Chris Ashley, Carol Es, Deborah Fisher, Joanne Greenbaum, Christine Tillman, and Douglas Witmer have all done it. Fiona Ross was just on it!!!

Don Crow

Don Crow is showing at Plant Zero. Some of these new works incorporate photographs... maybe photographs he has taken himself in Qatar? The photos are black and white, not glossy, printed on some kind of paper or foam. They have a dusty feel, or maybe that is just from all the dusty scenes being photographed.




This one is constructed like the pieces from his Reynolds Gallery show. All painted Kraft paper: painted paper frame folded and stapled over painted paper ground, stapled with painted paper shapes.

i wrote more but it has been eaten by the computer... aaargh. i am tired now. maybe tomorrow.

Gregg Carbo, Don Crow, and Amie Oliver are showing together at Plant Zero through September 2oth - ONLY THREE MORE DAYS!!

fartist sighting

I saw the fartist last night at the opening of John Ravenal's Artificial Light. The fartist is smooth; last time I saw him he was with some girls under Rachel Hayes' installation, now here he is taking an imaginary photo of a girl in front of Spencer Finch's Kaaterskill Falls (the colors don't show up in my photo, sorry). This seem so perfect, two children taking pretend honeymoon-like photos in front of artificial falls.

RELATED: Here is an interview with John on the show.

Bonus!: John Ravenal in Rachel Hayes' piece.

Travis Conner

Travis Conner is showing at Nonesuch this month. This is the second show of his that I've seen, and this one is as rewarding as the first.

The beautiful young girl rising up out of the water above is the daughter of the woman in the smaller picture.


These two are maybe my favorites. The one on the left is very hard to see, even in the gallery. It is of somebody jumping on a trampoline, but the trampoline is not in the picture and the person is bent over... with the sun in the background you can only make out arms and legs. It is just a blurry glimpse of an anonymous person, mid-air, enjoying life. The mostly bare trees and sunlight are very specific. I keep thinking about time and the passing of time with these works, especially this one. I like that it is a struggle to see.

The one on the right looks like cherry blossoms. In Japan we have hanami, everybody goes to spend the day admiring the cherry blossoms, they bloom and fall so quickly. The newspapers and tv even follow the "cherry blossom front", the wave of blooming blossoms from down in Okinawa up to Hokkaido.

painting

my painting.

FORGOT: forgot to say that this painting is a result of mentions of symmetry from the Erik Parker thread on PaintersNYC.

ALSO: Worlds in a world in a world in a sky in a sea beautiful and corrupt. lovely - someone sent an e-mail that said that. Thank YOU!

wooloo

Here is a nice site to put your work on - Wooloo. It's free, based in Germany. I can't believe I still haven't followed up on any of these other good sites yet... but here is the beginning of my Wooloo page.

Thanks, Whitney!

Diana Al-Hadid

Diana Al-Hadid is showing at Vox Populi, in Philadelphia, through October 29th. These look fantastic.








Roberta has some good pictures on her flickr set, maybe artblog will post on Diana soon. If I get to Philly I'd also like to see John Armleder at the Philadelphia ICA.

RELATED: previous posts on Diana - 4/12/2006, 3/26/2006, 8/12/2005.

Spahr Brothers

Sarah Alicia CAN'T BELIEVE she is sitting in a river of candy.


A stunned little prospector, panning for candy...


It's real!!!


Is it true? Am I dreaming? Am I really peeing in a river of candy?




The red disk is spinning around and he is being hypnotized... his head is spinning around following it. We are softly chanting "candy, candy, candy" in his ear.


If you have to see this show, make sure you bring babies.

James Siena and Window

James Siena and window, at Reynolds Gallery.

This reminds me of the Rudolf Stingel that was in Curator of Last Year's About Painting show. That was a a silvery painting hung in a hall between a door and a window, the silver-grey windowshade almost the exact texture of the painting.

The old Tang site had the entire show on-line, but it seems to be gone now. The only thing I can find is this little blurb (scroll down) by David Brickman for the Albany-based Metroland -

"With 67 artists in one exhibition, there are so many permutations as to defy drawing any real conclusions. Perhaps that’s the point of Tang curator Ian Berry’s overwhelming cornucopia of styles and personalities presented under the vaguely bombastic title About Painting (a smaller selection also on view in the museum titled About Sculpture is far more comprehensible, even if by design less comprehensive).

Two things, however, are abundantly clear: Berry loves paintings; and there is no shortage of artists out there who love to make them. What struck me as particularly odd is that, apparently, more than half of those painters worthy of consideration just happen to live in Brooklyn. An absurd instance of an all-too-prevailing attitude in the art world.

In fact, great paintings are probably made every day in just about every country and state. Here, there are 71 pieces, of which only a few could accurately be called great. I’ll leave it up to you (as does Berry) to contemplate the show and then decide which ones those might be. It’s a good bet you’ll enjoy the process."

That last part is true because as we saw this show we made marks next to each artist's name signifying our responses to the work; a circle by the favorites, an X by the unliked ones, and a wavy line by the okays and undecideds. We did enjoy the process, and happened to run into Ian, whom I think enjoyed looking at our marks. I forget who now, but there was one artist we had X'd of whom Ian said "you're wrong about that one" - so we went back and re-evaluated. It was interesting that he didn't say we were wrong about the other X'd ones.

BONUS: my David Brickman review!!

Curator of Last Year

Edward hasn't made any Curator of the Month posts in a while... so I will post on the Curator of Last Year.


This is Ian Berry.

Ian was the co-curator (along with Michael Duncan) of the Richard Pettibone show I saw last November at the Tang Museum. The Tang usually has three different shows up at a time, one in each of the two main galleries and a third in the small mezzanine gallery (sometimes they have a forth or fifth something happening in the lobby). Ian, as the "main" curator at the Tang, was also responsible for the two exhibitions running concurrent with Pettibone's - the co-curated (with Bill Arning) Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler show in the other big gallery and Kathy Butterly's exhibition in the mezzanine space. Each show was excellent, but it was on my second or third visit that I started to get how brilliantly they all fit together.

My notes are long gone... but I am remembering the miniaturizing and care of Pettibone with the very small and detailed Butterly sculptures with the tiny Rushmore "copy" and dollhouses of Ericson/Ziegler... the repetition of Pettibone with Butterly's pieces all lined up in one long row with Ericson/Ziegler's bars of soap, rows of jars, and small trains (which bring me back again to Pettibone's trains)... Pettibone's Shaker stuff with Ericson/Ziegler's cupboards and chests with Butterly's "teapots". Much much more.. I can't remember it all

So, Ian Berry is Curator of Last Year.

Frank Haines

from his installation/invocation/performance L Francis and The Fertile Grid.


a mobile from the fertile grid.

this is his flickr. this is his website. this is his blog. i found him through Triple Diesel's blog.

his next performance is September 23, 2006.