late

better late than never, some photos finally retrieved from my phone.... all stuff i liked from a nyc visit last fall -


Patrick Hill, Forming, at Bortolami - excellent show... maybe i can add more later.

nice installation shots here.


Lady Pink and Jenny Holzer, Tear ducts seem to be a grief provision, 1983, from I Am As You Will Be, at Cheim & Read.

More Jenny Holzer + Lady Pink images here.... and here's a good image of one. Ilona Granet did the lettering for Jenny. I'm not sure how it works credit-wise, who the "artist" is... the Cheim & Read show label said the piece was by Jenny Holzer and Lady Pink, the Monika Spruth Philomene Magers listing says they are by Holzer, with credit to Granet for the lettering and no credit to Pink. Lady Pink's paintings are AWESOME...

Jenny Holzer's flaming rocker. Jenny Holzer utilized by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla.


Marcel Broodthaers, Femur d'une Femme Francaise, 1965, from I Am As You Will Be, at Cheim & Read.


Wendy White, from The Show's So Nice, at Monya Rowe - like the edges...


Charles Searles, at GR N'Namdi Gallery.

Jenny Holzer

Jenny Holzer at Mass MoCA...

Strange to see how intimate she has managed to make this huge space... it was like opening the door to a dollhouse. The space is practically empty, she's done it all with lighting and scale... the projected words are in fact huge, but from across the vast hall you don't initially realize it... and the beanbag chairs are as big as cars, but again, standing at the door of the darkened space they're like clumps of mushrooms.

The experience is so relaxing and pleasurable, I'm not sure what to make of sinking myself into a giant soft pillow and being soothed by war poetry... or rather, soothed by scrolling atmospheric lights, because I can't say I focused on trying to read much of the text.

The projected text scrolls along the floor and ceiling, wrapping around at the walls... in effect you are sort of embraced by the text while laying flat on your back, cuddled by the soft chair... lulled into passivity. People enter the space, weave around a little, and drop... bodies scattered everywhere.

It is impossible to consider this show without comparing it to the almost-Buchel show; Buchel's unsuccessful attempt to fill the space as densely as possible, Holzer's emptiness... Buchel's bodies required to investigate and navigate a labyrinthe, Holzer's motionless bodies... Buchel's need to push and provoke, Holzer's willingness to aid in time of need (even the Holzer books and merchandise for sale in the shop area have been donated by the artist).

RELATED: Cate McQuaid for Boston Globe, Charles Giuiano's Maverick Arts, Ken Johnson for NYTimes.

Fantastic Four 2007

Neither of my two most indelible art things for 2007 are "art"... maybe. I'm not sure. Both might be art, yet neither is currently claimed to be art by either involved artist.

1. Christoph Buchel/Mass MoCA, culminating in the motion hearing - almost art, or art?

2. Richard Prince's Second House, after being struck by lighting - once was art, is it still?

When does something become art? When does something stop being art? How much does artistic intention matter?

- i want to articulate more - about liminal sites and situations, social sculpture, aura, context, architecture, failed projects, trespass, hubris - but am not feeling clear-headed. maybe later, maybe never.

3. Jenny Holzer's participation in, and contribution to, Hoosick Rocks. From her signs pasted in public spaces, through her spirit of collaboration and community, to her engraved granite benches, this was quintessential Holzer, and I don't think it is part of any edition. Someone got something really special.

4. Empire State Plaza - this is not new, but I hadn't previously realized how fantastic it all is. I went back again last week, and will be posting more photos soon.

some favorite shows, and favorite works from group shows -

John Beech
Herman 'Ray' Davis
Rosalyn Drexler (scroll down)
Michael Hakimi
Patrick Hill - at Bortolami
Jack Whitten (scroll down)

also Jo Baer, Charlie Hammond, Lauren Luloff, Sarah Peters, Lamar Peterson, David Shapiro, Haim Steinbach, Bryan Zanisnik.

in group shows - Shirley Jaffe, Jon Kessler, Al Loving (photos to come), Andre Masson (not really a group show), Joe Overstreet, Meyer Vaisman, Roger White, Wendy White (at both John Connelly and Monya Rowe).

WORST art stuff -

1.White Columns under Matthew Higgs - post one, post two, post three.
2. gross Paik thing...
3. Molecules that Matter, at the Tang Museum.
4. Gentle Wind Project's magic craplastic instruments, at Feature. Here is a follow-up after speaking to Hudson.

UPDATE: i forgot so many good art things... here are some more.

oooh, wicked

Did you see Christoph Buchel's Protect me from what I want Jenny Holzer reference, hidden under the schoolkid's desks of his Hauser & Wirth Miami Basel installation? I noticed it in the photo from the NYTimes slideshow.

Buchel's installation is called Training Ground for Training Ground for Democracy, a coda to his Mass Moca peter-out, and has reportedly sold for $250,000 to the Flick Collection. Jenny Holzer is the artist whose work currently occupies the Mass Moca space abandoned (held hostage? sabotaged?) by Buchel, the first artist to do so.

It's good to see Buchel back at a scale he is happily able to handle, on familiar artfair ground. He's also got a bunch of limited edition prints of his Mass Moca legal correspondence on exhibit at Maccarone's booth, beside McCarthy's chocolate Santas (as advertised in Vanity Fair). Maccarone is the anti-market gallery, or something. I'm not sure..

Make sure you click on Christoph Buchel... it's necessary to keep the world's first google image search sculpture alive.

Jenny Holzer Auction BARGAIN

Jenny Holzer's chair went for $5,000 at the Hoosick Rocks auction...


BARGAIN! Somebody got a treasure. I don't think it was part of an edition.

UPDATE: another person at the auction says it went for $6,100.
UPDATE: someone else says it was sold to someone who works for Jenny, in which case it may have been a way for her to help bring attention to the auction, contribute, and still be able to keep the piece.

Jenny's show at Mass Moca opens November 18th. CultureGrrl has info on the Mass Moca benefit auction and party next week in NYC.

Hoosick Rocks... PLUS

Hoosick Rocks now has a website... Meet the Rockers!


Susan Coons' Liberace rocker.


Thomas Moses' rocker.

They're still working on the site, not all of the rockers are pictured yet, and I'm not sure exactly when the auction is. I want the Jenny Holzer... the sky is the limit.

PLUS:


Liberace Loved Me, 1978. I was only ten.

Hoosick Rocks!!!

Hoosick Falls is doing a chair-ity auction of artist-painted rocking chairs... they are in all the windows, and inside shops.




Key Bank.


The blue one is by Roy Egg. He does everything eggs.






The seat says Protect Me From What I Want.


The back says For Grandma Moses.

It says Action Causes More Trouble Than Thought across the top of the front.




For Rent Fo Rent...

I'm excited about this auction... it's in October. All the money goes to cystic fibrosis and to help maintain an old house. There is a massive beech tree in front of that house, it's gorgeous.

Here is my Hoosick Rocks flickr set. Thomas Moses has one, but I haven't seen it yet.

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... ?