Triple Diesel

International Column Day

2007-03-04T18:54:00.000-05:00

Rape of the Sab...sab...zzzzzz

2007-02-28T11:52:00.000-05:00

The Triple Diesel posse brushed off the dust of the Art Fair Weekend and made it to the sold-out screening of Eve Sussman/Rufus Corporation's "Rape of the Sabine Women" or "The Rape of Europa" as an old lady in line called it.

The video unfolds with gravitas and grandeur. No actor speaks nor smiles. All move slowly or in slow-motion, or both. Sound effects splice with the soundtrack, which is primarily percussive, beginning with the coughs dominating the first two or three hours of the video. This segment (1) is set in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Extras from "The Matrix" amble between sculptures and their visual presence is welcome after the lengthy, aforementioned chatter of disembodied coughs, which possibly, cynically signify "the dustbin" of history, which is archived in an archaeologically-inclined venue such as the Pergamon. Via Sussman, the museum's visitors, all male, dressed alike, anonymous, echo the museum's preserves: objects made by interchangeable males carrying out the monotonous drudgery of building art history.

This position becomes more insistent as suited men fill up an airport in segment (2), checking their watches (like we were), noting the passage of centuries of repetition. It's more likely that she's commenting on the French Academy, and not on the Pergamon itself. And although she has a point - French Academic painting was patricarchical and occasionally monotonous - the criss-crossing trajectories of art history are thrilling, stimulating, and informative. At least to us. But maybe we're being hostile and paranoid; it's possibly that she is simply taking us back into history and trying to generate a context while also setting up her narrative. If that's the case, then we're impressed by this multi-tasking.

The next segment (3) is at the Scope Art Fair: crowded, noisy, and filled with peripheral shouting in foreign languages. Women get abducted here, presumably by DIVA Fair staff desperate to increase attendance - by any means necessary.

But seriously, the key here is a spontaneous, mutually agreeable, hot make-out scene in a kitchen, which contrasts the impending violent, forced rape scene soon to follow. When it happens, though, it doesn't convey the terror and brutality of rape, as seen in Bergman's "The Virgin Spring," Noe's "Irreversible," or Kaye's "American History X." It's more like a "theoretical" rape, sort of choreographed and artificial.

Next, we're deposited at a Greek, modernist cottage in segment (4) that looks like one of Hockney's L.A. villas. Women in brightly-colored dresses lay around, occasionally stand up and look at something, or shift in their seats. The Matrix men return and do the same thing. Some of them smoke or drink brandy. This "party" is slow but tense and potentially fun but actually an unprecedented drag. An uptight Eurotrash collector whispers to his girlfriend, only to be interrupted by a younger, peppier collector. These three continue throughout the night, flirting and probably taking turns outwitting each other. Everyone else slowly gets drunk and dances. We think of the party scenes in Anderson's "Boogie Nights" and appreciate them for their love triangles, hierarchies, and shifts, or in the proto-party masterpiece "Rules of the Game," both films far richer and more engaging. In our opinion.

Sussman takes us "into the machine" and tours us "behind the scenes" through the set, the crew, preparations for a shoot, the actors milling around, herself calling the shots, the dressing rooms, the laundry facilities, and the fucking piece of spinach on some gaffer's tooth. This is a way of "revealing the process" and calling attention to the means and not just the end. Which, though painful, is actually pretty interesting, because for Poussin or David to make their respective paintings, lots of studies and preparation are conditions to the production of a masterpiece. But why not just let a boom drift into the scene, or maybe have a P.A. walk in front of the camera? Why drag us through the 4 or 5 hours that this felt like? Should we cook dinner after this or are we better just picking up something from Taco Bell? Also, didn't that lady over there model for our drawing class one time?

Finally, FINALLY, we're in an amphitheatre where "the Romans" and "the Sabines" are squaring off to fight. We still prefer the Jets vs. Sharks in "West Side Story" or the Greasers and Socials in "The Outsiders" or the Mods vs. Rockers in "Quadrophenia" or anyone in "The Warriors." The battle is more like a moshpit, set to screaming siren women. The Sabine women intervene in their 60's drag and all we think about are the B-52s on the Rock Lobster sleeve. Here, we get the giggles. Giggles continue as more and more perky breasts slips out of the 60s dresses. Dust is back in the air, the snake eats its tail, the museum guys cough.

20 years ago

2007-02-22T00:23:00.000-05:00

Twenty years ago today, Andy Warhol died. God, it makes us crazy to wonder what he would have done with 20 more years. A new body of work? A clothing line? Likely. Web magazine? Surely. Reality TV? Of course. Blog?

Or was he already too decadent to foster any creative drive? Maybe he would have just churned out society portraits till everyone got tired of it. Warhol, the famous, artist-turned socialite. A boulevardier posing for tabloids and gawker, clutching a puppy and surrounded by wide-eyed boys. But the wrinkles and decrepit hobble would be so unglamorous - he couldn't pull off the "weathered" look like Clint Eastwood. Of course, he'd get work done - as he did for his nose.

What about AIDs? Would he have continued to steer clear?

Would he be as famous alive as he is dead? No way. At any time, t, in the world, w, a Warhol exhibition is happening: t(w) = warhol is everywhere

What would he have said about:

9/11
Kurt Cobain
The Strokes
Ecstasy
Bjork
Damien Hirst
Cecily Brown
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Monica Lewinsky
Rodney King
Forrest Gump
Crash
Princess Di
Lost in Translation
Red Bull
Rudy Giuliani
MySpace
Deitch Projects
Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen
Dash Snow
Jason Rhoades

Atkins' Art kits

2007-02-19T00:25:00.000-05:00

The Triple Diesel posse checked out Wayne Atkins' paintings at Taxter & Spengemann. This is Atkins' second show at the gallery; we missed the first one; anyway, seems exhibiting has not distracted him from his MFA studies at CalArts. Anyway, we hear Yale was your grandpa's MFA program and Columbia your parents, but CalArts is the new "it" school because California is the new New York.

For pictures, you have to go to the gallery's web site.

Wayne Atkins' send-ups of art history are as hilarious as they are clever. Each painting depicts existing, famous works of art, and depicts them in galleries loosely governed by perspective, proscenium format. So each painting is a miniature gallery.

Also, Atkins' vocabulary is that of art history. His paintings, if essays, would be filled with footnotes, asterisks, and ibids.

Lots of people make art about art. Amy Wilson recently showed watercolors at Bellwether gallery, for example, combining famous art objects, viewers, and handwritten script signifying and recounting internal thoughts of the people viewing the art, surrogates for real-life viewers or maybe allegorical devices contrasting with the art objects.

But Atkins recontextualizes the art he selects by surrounding it with idiosyncratic and surprising objects. For example, in "Goat," Rauschenberg's famous "Monogram" is extracted from its vitrine and shoved against a wall, making it look like leftovers from last night's Satanic sacrifice, propelled by the graffito pentagram that corrupts Sol LeWitt's otherwise rational-and-otherwise-innocuous concentric star wall drawing. Other paintings feature textbook-quality art pieces sharing rooms with buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, sticks, gas cans, severed arms, bits, scraps, and pieces.

So Duchamp's "Fountain" loosened and expanded the conditions of an art object, and Atkins infuses into those conditions a slacker, smartass, possibly metalhead sensibility. Only he illustrates everything, via representational painting, rather than demonstrating, performing or presenting the thing itself. References to popular culture compound this dissipation of art-category boundaries, such as the beloved character Johnny 5 from the great film "Short Circuit." In Atkins painting by the same title, J5 pokes fun at the painterly stroke by painting a line along the walls while simultaneously zapping his surroundings with a green laser beam, the same color as the brushstroke. Therefore, brushstroke = laser beam. Johnny 5 zaps everything, including the floorboards, which are no doubt a reference to the T&S floor, as well as to Magritte's persistent, recurring use of floorboard planks, which was emphasized in the current LACMA show on Magritte, only a short drive from CalArts. One of Mike Kelley's wood plank/floor board paintings, drove the point home. But actually, Atkins was doing wood floors before that show, so we can't suggest that he bit the idea from the LACMA show. Just an interesting connection. Especially because Atkins paints about paintings, while Magritte painted despite painting (i.e. he was a proto-conceptualist using painting, more like On Kawara or Baldessari, less like a painters' painter like Bacon or Dana Schutz).

But isn't this just a juvenile, facile satirization of art? Illustrate or replicate great art to make fun of it? Jerry Saltz once warned us in a lecture, "Don't go after the canon." We always wonder what he meant. Because it's futile? Canonized artists can't be dethroned because of their indelible impressions on history? Or is it more like a market thing?

We started to frown at these paintings, just as quickly as we had laughed, and felt frustrated that Wayne Atkins is a mere clown, poking fun at art by reducing it to oddity and rubbish. But then we looked at his painting, "Life During Wartime," which is upstairs at Taxter and which features an Albers painting. (Bear with us: this is tricky and we're working from memory, so we might be slightly off, but you'll get the point.) One of Albers' revelations in "Interaction of Color" - canon reading - is that a color plane, placed behind another color plane, will subtract itself from the color it is placed behind. So a blue plane behind a purple one will make the purple one look red. Anyway, in this Albers via Atkins, there's a gray plane in front of a blue one. So the blue should be subtracted from the gray, making it look orange. And we noticed in that gray field a little smudge of orange paint. This proved that Atkins really understood Albers, and wasn't just making fun of it. That sold us. Atkins' satires are simultaneously homages, just with a wink along with the applause.

Green grass

2007-02-12T21:06:00.000-05:00

The TD posse recommends the following event to all emerging, struggling, starving, dedicated artists who want to sound off on ways to make the grass greener. Come tell the Rema Hort Mann Foundation how it can expand its services to artists.

Conversation w/Artists: New Directions and Programs
The Rema Hort Mann Foundation

Tuesday, February 13, 6 - 8 pm
Moti Hasson Gallery
535 West 25th Street

www.motihasson.com

Open to all visual artists.
Please arrive promptly since we expect to use the entire two hours.

Everything We Needed to Know...

2007-02-10T22:18:00.000-05:00

We learned this week:

1. Drawing on acetate sucks. Nothing sticks to it and it might even be an allergen. Mylar, on the other hand, is sweet. Polypropylene promises added excitement.

2. If a curator wants to visit, invite him immediately, even if you don't know what he's done before and even if you are really busy working on other stuff. He might want to put you in a show he's co-curating for the Armory Show, potentially granting you unprecedented exposure and allowing you to show next to artists you really admire, like Richard Aldrich and Laleh Khorramian. If you keep him waiting, he'll forget about you and move on, and you'll be profoundly dismayed for several days.

3. Sometimes rationalization works: "Yeah, but actually it's better not to be in that show, you might disappear in the chaos," or "Remember there's next year." Sometimes it doesn't.

4. Terrence Koh's new assistant seems to be Kadar Brock. Kadar Brock was formerly the director of Rare Gallery, has showed paintings at Buia Gallery, and gotten the short end of Charlie Finch's stick and ink from Roberta Smith. Do you know him? Interesting how many lives one can have in the art world.

5. David Zwirner now represents R. Crumb. Maybe Crumb is like our Rousseau? Except more like a cultural critic? We hope he'll make a market for Los Bros Hernandez, too.

Canaletto Lives

2007-02-02T15:49:00.000-05:00

The Triple Diesel crew quit working 9-5 and now commits to the studio, which leaves a) little time for blogging and b) unreliable access to computers. However, the posse managed to catch a few shows this week.

First, TD caught Ryan Steadman at envoy gallery. On panel, the paintings feature precisely ruled "spaces" in enamel paint, rigid in geometry and loose in specificity. They look like chess boards or pixellationsville, with mushy impasto figures falling or moving to indicate which way is up. Otherwise, these are more like theoretical spaces, unburdened by such specifics as clues to "exterior" or "interior," although one features figures falling from a building. Some polygon "squares" have been knocked from the grid, producing a trompe l'oeil effect of holes in the picture plane. Steadman seems interested in Modernist questions of the depth of picture space and its untenable position as a window.

The patron saint here is Il Canaletto, whose Venetian vistas vanish to a perspective point, aligning lavishly detailed architecture to uncompromising visual principles. The figures in his paintings, however, are usually little more than a daub and swab of orange paint on a dark scribble, more like anomalies in a geometrical matrix, functioning only to catch sunlight. Not that we are a scholar; this is just what we've observed.

Ian Davis is next door at Leslie Tonkonow, and sort of offers the same ideas as Ryan Steadman - figures moving through geometrical landscapes. Davis repeats the figures, distributing them in rows, columns, lines, and concentric circles. Most of them are redcoat soldiers, U.N. officers, or high society players - either way, their "uniformity" comes through in their "uniforms." As in some Minimalist art, he builds his pictures using primary units: but instead of a silver cube or white sphere, he uses a WASPy man who varies from his peers only in his density of hair. Unlike Steadman, Davis seems to have fun dwelling on trees, chairs, architecture, and more sophisticated perspectival tricks - a more thoroughgoing examination of geometry.

Pass this On

2007-01-20T21:22:00.000-05:00

The Knife

Simmering hot

This song was on the Deep Cuts album, which actually came out about two years ago. However, on our last three nights out, DJs have dropped the tune to stir up the dance floor into a simmering hottitude. It's like the anti-crunk, inspiring a slow groove, similar to what's seen in the steamy video, which reminds us of Jean Genet and maybe Hedwig.

We're also posting the clever live version.

2007-01-20T21:20:00.000-05:00

The Knife - Pass this on(

The Whitney Loves a Goth

2007-01-17T23:09:00.000-05:00

We can't measure the breadth of Warhol's megavalent insemination. We also wonder why it coincides so much with the Whitney. All three artists on that magazine cover have been prominently featured at the museum: Dash Snow and Dan Colen at the last Biennial and Ryan McGinley in his 2003 Whitney Show. And as the Terrence Koh shoh opens Thursday night, we recall how Banks Violette filled the same space about a year ago. And BV curated TK into his recent show at Bortolami Dayan, the cherry picker of Chelsea. And BV was in the 2004 Biennial before that, and was in that big Gladstone show 2 summers ago, "Bridge Freezes Before Road," which also featured Dan Colen.

So does the Whitney just love a goth? Sue De Beer at Altria? Liz Craft in the 2004 Biennial? Seems that if you want a show at the Biennial, listen to Bauhaus often. Who will be the next young artist featured in the lobby space? a)Gardar Eide Einarsson b) either of the Liden girls c) Dan Colen (not goth but goth by association) (but it won't be him because he is foremost a painter and the last two Biennials suggested that Biennials restrict painting) d) Aaron Young (also not goth but clad in black)

Or does the Whitney just love the Lower East Side? Would a studio on Ludlow increase your success?

So speaking of LES and of Warhol's children: Terrence Koh's 4-story loft on Canal St is painted pristine white everywhere, with ultraminimalist design. Rumors say that he resisted even having kitchen appliances, which would corrupt the virginal white space. It's vacuum-like, similar to the interiors in "2001: A Space Odyssey." The basement is all black enamel, however, like an S-M dungeon (with a refrigerator). It's disorienting, like the first 20 minutes of "Irreversible." Casa Koh has abundant gallery space, studio space, and office space, and also two bathrooms. Terrence and his talented partner, Garrick co-hosted (koh-hosted?) a bash this week complete with 60 fresh lobsters, endless bottles of Moet, and other favors as the night continued. Despite the heavy-hitting art-world attendance roster, the vibe was mellow, most revelers reclining or squatting cross-legged on the white floor, sharing cigarettes, aglow from the glowing neon cock on the wall. We wondered about this generous hospitality: after posting his income on his blog and after seeing his earnings announced in New York magazine, was this Koh's way of sharing the wealth? Earnestly greeting each visitor, Koh seemed sincere. Or more like tree-whacking to stir up some action?

So this must be the emergence of our generation's Factory. Pristine white instead of foil? Vitrines filled with modified readymade knickknacks instead of Brillo boxes? A flamboyant but polite but naughty Asian instead of a soft-spoken but manipulative but vulnerable Pole? Skinny white boys aged 17 covered in white powder instead of Joe Dallesandro or Jed Johnson? Who will be Koh's Velvet Underground? Both Koh and Warhol told white lies to the media, both produced publications (thoh Koh's are artist's books and not a big magazine), and Koh even indicates an interest in producing films (or at least porn films). Of all the supposed "Children," Koh seems the most legitimate.

Who's going to shoot him then? Or will the only killing be Koh's growing scene, squashed dead by such speculation and mainstream press attention?

Maybe think about it while waiting to get into Deitch Wooster tomorrow for Koh's "Winter White" performance.

Capture the Rapture

2007-01-11T00:57:00.000-05:00

Ostensibly, Ryan McGinley's new photos at TEAM Gallery are about Morrissey. But they are also about Elvis or Axl Rose or Michael Jackson – or any rock star with an international following numbering into the hundreds of thousands. But they aren’t actually about rock idols.

These photos are really about idol worship. They capture the rapture of a messiah onstage, wooing and rallying the fervent masses, while seeming to connect with each individual, who internally affirms, “I know it; he’s singing to me…”

The devoted fans depicted in Irregular Regulars have memorized the lyrics, heard the B-sides, and charted the collaborations: “Yeah, and then Johnny Marr formed ‘Electronic’…” So the performance for them is a transfiguring, intimate interaction with their idol and a unique, irreplaceable tab in the history of their performer - and maybe even music in general. More importantly, however, it’s a visceral whirlwind that sweeps them into a serotonin flood of musical catharsis. We see the fans’ hands reach into the air, pawing for contact, receiving good vibes and sending them back as blessings.

In fact, the fans appear so moved that these photos could be from an evangelikkkal youth revival: in the Astrodome, with an impassioned minister preaching the words of our Lord and Savior.

It just proves that being uplifted is a content-free process. Some find salvation in the lyrics of Morrissey, some in the verses of Matthew. McGinley wisely acknowledges this and universalizes his images by skirting subcultural contingencies – dress, ornamentation – and focusing on facial expressions and body language. Likewise, Morrissey’s face doesn’t really appear, except in “Morrissey 1,” where we see only his shadowy visage – and also McGinley’s own face. By restricting the specificity of both the performer and his audience, McGinley allows everyone in to share in the joy.

Given that, the strongest photo in this show is “Morrissey 16,” where a pale fog encloses the enraptured fans, a misty pictorial stand-in for the blissful emotional buzz of crying, “And if a double decker bus, crashes into us…” (Or, “Hallelujah!”)

This is also the most colorful photo, with an aurora of violet and blue countered by a gold nebula among the heads of the fans. Most of the others feature one or two colors, as lusciously as a Rothko. In “Morrissey 17,” Morrissey himself – or his silhouette – is a black tower lit from above in white gold. “Morrissey 11” is the cleverest entry here, with a stern looking lad in strawberry red – it could be the cover to a Smiths album.

Lads prevail, despite the occasional angelic nymph, and we remember that McGinley rose to fame by documenting gay lovers and friends, even offering a new genre of “Sexy Boy” against the reigning Chelsea boy movement. His boys were skinny, wide-eyed, wasted, scarred, and unibrowed.

Formally, McGinley is in the same grainy-film processing that we saw in his 2004 show at P.S. 1. That goes with the snapshot aesthetic he continues, which is perfect for candid documentation, to which he seems equally committed. Although his underwater athlete portfolio brims over with tantalizing shades of blue, the manic, artificial, saturated colors here seem new to his oeuvre - although overstimulation does not.

Exchange Rate

2007-01-05T23:22:00.000-05:00

1 Million Photos, 1 Euro Each

Never mind the bad exchange rate from dollar to euro. We're too busy to count, preoccupied with clapping for artists such as A.L. Steiner who make the most of their exhibition space and time and do things like conducting public discussions during their shows on issues addressed in their work. ALS has too much to say to just put up pictures, hang 'em and leave 'em. Indeed, she is also a co-founder of Ridykulous, with Nicole Eisenman, another artist too restless for a monomedium practice.

3 PM, Saturday, Jan 6th: A special warming discussion, "Body of a Lesbian Woman," featuring Nicole Eisenman, K8 Hardy, Faye Hirsch, A.L. Steiner and Dr. Laurie Weeks. Pussy galore!

Come ask them, "What is the deal with the lesbian utopia we see everywhere?" (Take JD Samson and Hilary Harkness below, for example.)

Artforum Cover

2007-01-05T11:11:00.002-05:00

So what do you think of this new Artforum cover?

The TD crew finds it strange that AF's cover is the press/publicity/poster image for Bong Joon-Ho's film "The Host." ("The Host," a disaster/monster film, is the highest grossing film ever in Korean cinema, and will open in NYC in March. Gary Indiana wrote a bit about Joon-Ho in this issue.) Why a big movie, and why a poster image?

So let's just pretend for a minute that AF isn't already a portfolio of ads, and actually carries significant, informative art writing. Of course, it does do that, but try ripping out all the ads and see what happens.

Then its use of a press image for its cover just makes Artforum look like a participant in the publicity machine of "The Host!" Just like "Vogue" putting Julianne Moore on the cover when she has a new movie coming out? ("Don't you just love her?" "Yes, and she looks great!")

Apparently, AF considers "The Host" to be so culturally compelling that it deserves front-cover honors. So this relation between "The Host" and AF doesn't reduce AF to a publicity rag; instead AF elevates a popular culture event to the realm of art, where sophisticated discourse is appropriate.

But why not use a production still or frame enlargement, as in the "Zidane" cover? That would be like using a detail of a painting, as in the Brice Marden cover. It must be the case that the poster image carries a special meaning that a frame enlargement would not. We think it's because "The Host" is an meta- and mega-spectacle. Its form is a big-money cinema sensation. Its content is a disaster story. So with all this spectacularity, its whole is more important than its parts and the press poster is like a token or icon of that whole.

Reason for the Season

2006-12-25T03:17:00.000-05:00

Otherwise, Happy Holidays! The TD crew is in California for seasonal festivities, but will try to cover some red hot L.A. action. Otherwise, our brains will atrophy in NYC's younger, dumber coastal analogue. Perhaps the Baldessari-designed Magritte show at LACMA? Is Magritte still relevant? Of course, he is.

Not James Brown!

2006-12-25T03:12:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth Peyton

2006-12-20T12:08:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth Peyton! You are 41. But you still look great!

You are in the contemporary canon and no struggling artist's complaints about your skills (anyway, it's a deskilled age), scope of subjects (anyway, focused is as good as eclectic), and Hamptons-hopping (anyway, "the studio" is dead) will nudge you from the top tiers of stardom. We know that the fashion magazines spin you as more a dreamer than thinker - much like us - but we also know that your brand of shoegazer pop was culturally relevant in the late 1990s context of art meeting fashion, the cult of celebrity-worship and fabulosity, and in the context of youth-fetishizing art.

We met you once at a gallery and you were nice. Happy birthday!

Old and New Art

2006-12-18T11:26:00.000-05:00

From today's NY Times article about Saatchi's new myspace site for artists:

"The diverse offerings have caught the eye of contemporary-art experts like Olivier Varenne, director of the Museum of Old and New Art being established in Tasmania, the island state of Australia."

We can't get enough of that name! Can the Met borrow it for a year? Also, are those separate departments? Is someone "Chief Curator of Old Art?" Is the "Director of New Art" his protege? Anyway, isn't "Old" a little un-P.C.? Triple Diesel recommends "historically endowed."

We think the Museum of Old and New Art has an old and new web site here.

The Humphries Dance

2006-12-14T17:00:00.000-05:00

Jacqueline Humphries must hang out with Christopher Wool and his wife, Charlene von Heyl. The influence is obvious. Here is the tape that von Heyl flashed in her recent show at Petzel, along with the scrubbed, unpainted style that von Heyl swaps with Wool.

Charlene von Heyl pioneers gestural abstration, (aka AbEx), albeit atmospheric, slick, and programmatic; instead of heavy, crusty, and spontaneous. Although her paintings document a decision-making process - a record of thought - they also expose an architectural, plan-driven mode of thinking - appetitive but distilled. This is evident in the use of tape, because one can't apply tape in a gesture. Materially speaking, it takes a few minutes of care and measurement. Intellectually speaking, the voids left by the taped areas interrupt the gestural areas, revealing a sensibility that contests the primacy of gesture.

Christopher Wool's spray-painted abstraction is both renegade and ascetic, like a noir hitman bachelor of few words, or even Batman. Pared down to black and white, he withholds from himself and the viewer the sensual possibilities of painting: no emotive color, no bravado brushwork, no bold/audacious/libidinal/fucking rock star painting. Just spray paint, the tool of the graffiti artist, and drips or scrapes - which he uses more like litter or leftovers than Pollock-ian action. Wool's paintings are pared-down and nihilistic, aware of decline and degeneration.

While Wool brings home the bacon, von Heyl wears the painter's pants in the family. But both have vowed to challenge the gesture. CvH does it by negation, by physically interrupting the gestural stroke with non-gesturally applied tape and the consequent voids of action. Wool does it by revising the gesture as vandalistic and stoic, instead of romantic, action-packed, or pastorally sublime. Isolating and reimagining the gesture in order to review it, positively or negatively, is part of Rauschenberg's seminal "Factum I/II" diptych, Lichtenstein's frozen brushstroke sculptures, Siskind's "Homage to Franz Kline," Serra's cross-medium "Molten Lead" toss, Ann Craven's Bambi reincarnations, Warhol's impersonal grounds for divorcees, Richard Aldrich's scrutinized scribbles, and many others. Part of the subject matter are the appearance of and connotations of the Good Old American (or European) Gesture, which is supposedly spontaneous, willful, immediate, direct, and ungoverned.

So Jacqueline Humphries produces for her show at the excellent Greene Naftali gestural, scrubbed, taped abstractions in silver, even with some spraypaint. Hot off the series of "black light" paintings seen in New York at Nyehaus and Elizabeth Dee, JH continues to challenge the sufficiency of paint on canvas to transport the viewer and therefore, submits her palette and surface to unusual optical effects. The silver glistens and competes with the other colors. From ground to surface to material to subject, the silver dances and prances while bedazzling you to overstimulation.

These paintings are kinky, raunchy, and gauche. Imagine Marilyn Minter gone nonrepresentational. These works listen to Motley Crue, fuck you in fishnets, claw you with their black polished nails, and put out cigarettes on your nightstand. They would go down on you in the theater. The paint is slathered on, then scraped, scrubbed, and scratched in a fury. It pools in excessive puddles, then drips away, leaving eroded layers behind. Meditative restraint and sparse economy, employed by Joan Mitchell, have no place here. We're closer to Cecily Brown's libidinal relentlessness, where every inch of canvas seems battered. Yet that relentlessness is unlike the early AbEx painting, which was driven by an urgency netted by the subconscious flow. These are mannered and stylized. The masking tape masks, but with frequently irregular tapering and imprecise, leaking seams. So while the tape regulates, it is still a little reckless. Like a conspiring chaperone.

Dimensions Variable: Meaning Field Yields Meaning

2006-12-13T13:44:00.000-05:00

The TD crew has a soft spot for craft and a hard-on for dematerialization. Readymade is so tired, modified readymade is a pick-me-up, but dematerialized or even invisible is intoxicating!

So we stumbled into Anton Kern's new Annex, formerly Andrew Kreps' space, to see the new show, "Attic." Several young artists are included and most of them fit well with the John Bock context rising like sulphur from two stories below. But the entry that got us hot was Brian Clifton's "The Meaning Field." In the checklist, it appears like this:

Brian Clifton
The Meaning Field, 2006
Book

Brian Clifton
The Potential for an Infinite Distortion in a Meaning Field,
2006
December 6 – December 22, 2006.

Brian Clifton
Explanation of “The Potential for an Infinite Distortion in a
Meaning Field, 2006”, 2006

And it looks like this:

So the book ($15) contains Clifton's theory about space. The gallery space - restricted by the dates of the exhibition - contains the phenomena described by Clifton's theory. And the "Explanation" contains a verbal transfer of the theory from Clifton to a collector.

Summarized by an Anton Kern insider: "The show on the 3rd floor is titled "Attic" and was organized by Erin Somerville. It is at face value a group of friends who appreciate and support each other's work. Essentially everyone's first time showing in Chelsea. Clifton's book, "The Meaning Field," outlines a theory in which meaning can be quantified in a similar matter as gravity, and subsequently open to the same mathematical tricks like black holes, etc. He has declared the attic exhibition "The Potential for an Infinite Distortion in One's Meaning Field." The book is available online for $15 and the space itself is non-saleable, but [Clifton] is also providing the opportunity for collectors to purchase time spent with him to elaborate on the meaning field."

Another insider tells us that to purchase "Explanation" costs about $1000 for a one-hour session, ideally over dinner - or free, if you seem really interested.

So you see how clever it is to use the calendar restrictions of the exhibition as part of the "quantification" of Clifton's meaning about meaning. That means the medium is the dates of the exhibition, December 6 - December 22, 2006. Does that mean "The Potential" can only exist when exhibited? What if it's in the Biennial? Is that a different edition? And does that render the annex space, or even the entire show, a mere illustration of the theory? Also, doesn't that mean that "Explanation" doesn't exist unless it is purchased? Sort of like a fabricated sculpture? Brian, if you are out there, please fill us in - maybe you can comp us?

Meanwhile, rock on for your material/immaterial (subject) matter; Erin Somerville for organizing a cool show; and Anton Kern for lending free space to artists ready to show off their mates.

The Chosen Cans

2006-12-11T11:39:00.000-05:00

Paul Lee goes for great eschatological themes: love and the body. The TD crew usually frowns on sentimentialism, but the formal rigor dignifies this show of collages and assemblages, art forms based on joinery - on coupling.

His materials include soda cans, washcloths, twine, lightbulbs, coal, and photocopied images. In the philistine, mundane real world, each of these objects can expect an uninspired, brief life of being produced, being consumed, and being discarded. They have no agency, only a passive role in a cycle of drudgery.

Paul Lee resuscitates them, The Chosen Trash, saving them from their predetermined path of banality, and recycling - resurrecting - them as art objects. Though revitalized, the cans are painted only black or white, ascetic and undecorative colors. These flat, opaque colors obscure the cans' marketing labels and previous content. Now empty, they are no longer vessels auxiliary to their contents. Absolved of these burdens, they stand freely as objects, purified and independent of a mercantile purpose, which fades into a vestigious trait.

The cans and bulbs flaunt rigid, consistent geometry and smooth, unfettered surfaces. But they are challenged by the sagging, eccentric washcloths with unpredictable textures. We think of the body, with its strong parts and vulnerable parts, clean parts and dirty. Through Lee's transfiguring hands, these refigured figures are odd dolls, soft and hard, fragmented but unified, sturdy but delicate.

Transfigured, the cans no longer have design, but now anatomy. Cylindrical, they are phallic and ostentatious. But the prominent hole at one end is an orifice, either an entry or an exit. It is also a window into a hidden, unadvertised world. Some are dented, a clever pun on the word "crush," but more poignantly, this expresses damage, injury, or dysfunction. Finally, the black-and-white pictures of faces pasted on the cans are anonymous. They aren't recognizable or distinct people, just males. It adds gender to the figures without adding personality - although the inherent melancholy is undeniable.

A wall of washcloths takes on issues in painting, similar to Tuttle's experiments in eliminating frames, stretcher bars, rectangular shape, and balanced display. But Lee surpasses this formal project to comment on relationships. First, each cloth, like each can, previously lived an uninspired life. It cleaned and occasionally was cleaned. It may have even joined its owner on a trip to the bathhouse, ostensibly for hygiene.

Second, each "cloth painting" is made from two halves spliced together from other cloths. They cling together, splayed open on the wall by gravity. We think of Felix Gonzales-Torres' Perfect Lovers, the parallel mirrors next to each other, or the analog clocks ticking away; and Apollodorus' explanation in Plato's Symposium: love is the result of a person finding his or her estranged other half. And Aristotle: "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies."

Cheyney follow-up

2006-12-08T09:13:00.000-05:00

Oh, and it turns out that Cheyney Thompson has risen to such great heights in popularity that he appears not only in Lucy McKenzie's drawings, but even in a Vonage ad.

Grainy Cheyney

2006-12-05T14:56:00.000-05:00

We remember a loft party where Cheyney Thompson and Pieter Schoolwerth were DJs, spinning goth and darkwave obscurities and less-danceable singles from Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Despite the murky music, partiers still danced when they heard even the slightest beat. This proved a relativity of danceability. Just as a monochrome painting attunes us to the subtlest of color modulations, an all-goth DJ set sensitizes us to detect traces of rhythm and vitality.

Cheyney Thompson's new show at Kreps stumped the brave TD crew. On unprimed canvas, pointillist grisaille paintings towered over us. Stepping back to look at the paintings, we bumped into a table, one in a series of gray-scale tables. Contemplating that tables have become a Thompson trope, we followed the line of tables to their destination at the back of the gallery: the storage space. This storage space is "documented" in framed, grainy prints of almost-the-same-photos reduced into CMYK separations and installed in permutated clusters where each pseudo-unique image gets a chance to be C, M, Y, or K.

Reproduction seems to be a central concern here, and not just a method. Rodin cast and recast his figures to make group scenes. Rauschenberg's "Factum," where he painted an identical twin of an existing painting, is an example. Ann Craven's practice, defined by repainting her old paintings, follows this. Cheyney Thompson offers paintings, prints, and tables as fields in which he uncovers the hair-thin differences that occur in reproduction. The paintings contain blips and ticks that occur on photocopy machines. The tables differ only in their value of gray. And the prints of the storage space are identical, except with slight replacements of the stored objects depicted. We can also treat the storage space is a nod to the ideas "stored" in Cheyney's brain, from which he retrieves themes and materials used in previous shows. Storage spaces are in the air - did you see Sarah Oppenheimer's recent show at PPOW?

Gray is a color, but its lack of chroma equals neutrality. This makes it anonymous, reclusive, and ambivalent. Gerhard Richter showed us how gray is, like, negatively connotative, meaning that its neutrality can describe/depict/report something without bias or judgement. Cheyney uses gray to strip painting of its prize properties: design, drawing, and color. The xeroxed sources seem arbitrary and random, which precludes the calculation and regulation of design. And although the images hint at form and space, no lines or washes are present to document a drawing process. The pointillist daubs of paint were presumably applied by hand, but they are more mechanical than human.

The pointillist dots connect to the pixellated prints via the dot/pixel/point. According to the press release, Cheyney's prints "also partake in values and terms which could be said to belong to painting, i.e., composition and color. If the prints have internalized the problems of painting, then the paintings in this exhibition have absorbed printing protocols." But color is a tricky game, because color is relative. Nothing is yellow, but rather "more yellow than..." or "less yellow than...". And since Cheyney reduces the prints to their CMYK components, each component piece is, at best, a monochrome; and otherwise, just a mere part of a color, a "subcolor," passive and dependent, rather than a color itself.

Discourse about the hierarchy within painting of design, drawing, and color used to polarize the French Academy into factions. Despite the contemporaneity of Cheyney's methods, he's joining arguments that are almost 200 years old - which is fine with us.

Back to the press release: it reproduces the one used in a recent show in Germany. We thought, "What, New York doesn't deserve its own Cheyney Thompson press release?!" Indignant, frustrated, we kicked the book shelf - "Don't be a dick, Cheyney!" - and brought our thinking caps tumbling down from their top-shelf perch. Then it occurred to us: if a premise of the show is the problem of originality in the face of reproducibility, then why not reproduce the entire show's press release?

Britney In Dialogue

2006-12-03T22:01:00.000-05:00

Britney Spears, in an unprecedented, Nauman-esque application of her own body as art object, recently and heroically thrust herself into a history-spanning dialogue about nudity, vulnerability, and physiological processes. Does her beaver shot provocatively essentialize and reduce the female body to a single organ? Or is this seeming reduction actually an editing process to focus a celebration on localized anatomy, and via vaginal apotheosis, an elevation of womanhood?

Courbet surpassed his predecessors in frankly and bluntly presenting in a fine art context the distinctly female vagina. Others have followed: Magritte, Valie Export, Carolee Schneeman, John Currin, and countless others. However, Britney surpasses all, in a staggering, simultaneous projection of self coupled with appearance of disinterest; the latter functioning in a successful attempt to deny narcissisisism.

Moreover, Britney offers a new dimension of Rosalind Krauss' famous "expanded field." Eschewing an expansion of the object to architectural space, Britney expands to popular media, filling blogs and publications with her performance. But beyond this formal innovation, Britney also makes an existential proposal and contribution to identity art. "All the world's a stage," she surely thinks as she pushes the performative space into the shared public. We are always performing!

This is all, no doubt, a series of conceptual strategies, and not accidental or a case of overindulgence. Britney is underrecognized and it's time to reevaluate her outpuss - er, output.

Factory Grrr

2006-12-01T14:19:00.000-05:00

Gay Pearce plays a good guy, as in "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert," but he is a lousy Warhol. Way too dashing and angular, and too forward in manner. Warhol was more into mumbling and awkward gestures, with a pinkish, bulbous nose and bad skin. We know, we've seen footage and we prefer him for all those traits.

Bowie did it better.

Factory Girl Trailer

Currin Rakes It In

2006-11-27T09:46:00.000-05:00

The sexual imagination of the Heterosexual Male is John Currin's playground. All women submit to His gaze, as irresistible as X-ray as it undresses its subjects, elaborating on the lace lingerie. In these paintings, women are pleasant scenery or fine china, literally: sharing a table top with the settings of a Dutch still life, a gangly model escapes Egon Schiele's studio to pose for Currin. Still, she's just another object, albeit less shiny. Yet simultaneously, Currin's fleshy nymphs, ladies, and broads brim with vivacious personality.

Each woman is oblivious to her sitting-duck objectification, too busy aching for a substantial man to appear and pound away her aching desire. Or she dreams of a buxom blonde. Girl-on-girl is just fine (as long as we can watch and as long as they are not ugly lesbians). But don't look for Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar. Same-sex pairings evade men in Currin's new paintings; a second man never appears to compromise our champion.

Either way, the man is on top and the women are on their backs. One exception is "Copenhagen," a menage a trois in which one woman straddles the man. On top, she seems dominant. Another woman steers her onto the man's erection, empowered in this directorial role. So the man appears to be doubly submissive. These women so dominate the pictorial space that they swallow his head (er, both heads). But his erection prevails, refusing to surrender. It's like the ubiquitious folk poster, "Never Give Up."

Male painters easily make misogynistic mistakes, real or imagined. Currin trudges through this minefield oafishly, yet manages it with panache. He exposes his sexism, loud and proud. Like a butcher sizing up stock, Currin counts only the choice parts: perky tits, doe eyes, plump lips. And like Picasso, Currin tries to cram all the good stuff into the picture. Currin's dolls share a gaze that looks spacey, vapid, and needy. You don't laugh with them, you laugh at them.

On the other hand, Currin lovingly relishes the curves and bulges of the female figure. He models and renders form, and the figures burst from Currin's silvery palette, reminiscent of the lush "Barry Lyndon." All this care suggests sincerity that neutralizes his ironic tendencies. Compare to David Salle's murky, bland photorealism or Cotton's superacademic, hyperkitsch models, available in chocolate or strawberry. Meanwhile, DeKooning battered women down to fluid scribbles and angular strokes.

Does Currin love women or hate them? Rather, what does he love/hate about women? He said in a Flash Art interview: I don't love women, I just think about them all of the time.

I love to look at women; they stimulate my imagination and not just in a sexual way.
I used to love watching women hobbling in their new shoes down fourteenth street.
I saw myself in them. I get a perspective on myself when looking at a woman, her beauty, her ugliness, her failures.

Six or seven paintings - less than half of the show - are sex pictures. The others are "chick paintings," including a portrait of his fully clad spouse, in "Federal Rachel." Another clothed woman is the fruit-bearing brunette in "The Christian," a hilarious prude suffering the fornicating heathens. More hilarious is "Anna" a Christopher Guest-cast nerd in her late 30s who smiles all too warmly from behind a candlestick and ripe banana.

The clues to a narrative arc are two portraits of Currin's son, Francis, and a future portrait, "2070," where Francis appears as a post-sex old man. This, and the neighboring baby portrait are bookends to the chapters of adult sexual adventure of Francis, something like Hockney's or Hogarth's "The Rake's Progress" - maybe that's what Francis 2070 is reading! Alas, like Father, like Son; Francis likes his whores, but loves his Madonna - again, "Federal Rachel." He may be a womanizer, but our polyester-suited, gallant gentleman still courts his women with white wine and a sunny day.

Sea and Seams

2006-11-19T22:04:00.000-05:00

Jennifer Steinkamp and Barnaby Furnas. Can you believe that these two shows simultaneously coexisted in Chelsea? Sweeping swells + spectacular scale = Sublime. Don't take our word for it; look here!

Jennifer Steinkamp's LCD projections are innovative, but embrace art historical concerns. Take the ubiquitous garment study, for example. Her tumbling handerkerchiefs twist, roll, and fold in a straight line from ceiling to floor over quasi-bodily shapes, thereby mapping those shapes, twinkling in the light of the projection. Steinkamp shares our vulnerability to some paintings from the 16th-19th century, which get us hot from just the deftly-rendered drapery contained in their rectangular borders!

Tacita Dean won

2006-11-15T00:24:00.000-05:00

Did we call it or did we call it?

Place Your Bets

2006-11-14T15:43:00.000-05:00

Who will win the Hugo Boss Prize? We'll know tonight and we're betting on Tacita Dean. Whom are you betting on?

In the meantime, check out the sexist Web site, on which all nominees are represented as men playing pocket pool.

Legion edition

2006-11-13T15:59:00.000-05:00

Edition preview:

ANDREW KREPS GALLERY
525 W 22ND ST.
TEL (212)-741-8849
www.andrewkreps.com
Monday, November 13,2006
6-8pm

LEGION
project 08 edition of 5
Derrick Adams, Fia Backström, Michael Bilsborough,
Peter Coffin, Kati Heck, Frank Haines, Rose Kallal,
Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman, Shane Munro,
Robert Melee, Elizabeth Neel, Alexandre Singh,
Allison Smith, Erik Parker

LEGION is pleased to announce a limited edition of original prints generously created by the LEGIONAIRES to raise funds for a new site specific project at the NADA Art Fair 2006.

Each of the five wrapped boxes contains 14 signed and numbered 22”x 30” archival prints on Arches Infinity Paper. The edition is available to view by appointment and jpegs are available upon request.

Thank you,
The Legionaires
http://jointhelegion.blogspot.com

Maps

2006-11-10T16:59:00.000-05:00

A Brief History of Mapping in Art (not counting maps for driving by)

Alfred Barr, Piet Mondrian, Andy Warhol, Mark Lombardi, Beth Campbell, Dave Muller, Loren Munk

Excited Times

2006-11-09T17:00:00.000-05:00

You know the Times is excited when it uses all-caps, 18-point style in its headlines! It's like gleeful shouting. SHOUTING!

McCarthyism

2006-11-08T12:43:00.000-05:00

Who is your favorite living American artist? Bruce Nauman. Okay, second? Paul McCarthy. And maybe David Hockney... But Nauman and McCarthy are king and king of influence. Both are multidisciplinary, use the body as material, and often antagonize their audience. Nauman is a polyglot of materials, McCarthy a multilinguist of tones, styles, and attitudes. Nauman comes from the heavenly realm of ideas and body-in-space, McCarthy from the dirty soil of experience and body-in-excrement. Milan Kundera defines "kitsch" as "denial of shit," Koons defines it as knick-knack and tchotchkes; McCarthy swallows both ideas and produces filthy playthings.

For Alfred Barr, Apollo and Dionysus survived in Mondrian (and others) and Pollock respectively. We agree, although no artist is distinctly one or the other - it's more like a Kinsey scale.

Still, Roberta Smith said in a recent review of the show "Yes, Bruce Nauman:"

"It begins with a juxtaposition of early body-oriented videos by Mr. Nauman and Paul McCarthy, who, quickly following Mr. Nauman’s lead, was in his studio in Los Angeles videotaping home-alone performance pieces by 1970. The contrast is pure Apollo-versus-Dionysus. In 'Flesh to White to Black to Flesh' from 1967, the lean, handsome Mr. Nauman is all classical mandarin restraint, as he sits in a chair, methodically smearing his torso with white, then black body color.

On the opposite monitor, the pudgy Mr. McCarthy lies face down on the floor wallowing in a thick trail of white paint, his interest in a generally gross Expressionism-in-the-round apparent. Mr. Nauman tends to leave Expressionism to others. For his 1987 video 'No, No New Museum (Clown Torture Series),' which is in this show, he hired an actor to humiliate himself..."

On the other hand, Jerry Saltz counted McCarthy among the "abject-meets-the-Apollonian" artists in the Whitney show "Full House."

About 25 drawings at Nyehaus, mostly from the early 1990s, suggest how Dionysian McCarthy is. They are filthy, populated by assholes, shit, anal sex, and boners. McCarthy works from the ID! He draws like a bad kid, following a stream of consciousness, evading censorship, filtering, or regulation. His Sharpie scrawls, scribbles, and streaks - scatological shit-smearing, Saul Steinberg with a runaway libido and lockstep fixation on the Ass. Ranting and muttering! The titles include "Ass Hole," "Daddy Fucked You," and "Black Blood" (though most are untitled).

But then we start to see the strategist. Much like Richard Prince (is he your favorite artist?), McCarthy uses styles and images from editorial cartoons. In one, he collages the cartoon source to the paper, copies the drawing, and alters the caption, "Well so much for me."

This appropriation is a conceptual, methodical (i.e. Apollonian) approach to the drawings, counter to the more ejaculatory works (i.e. Dionysian).

We also notice a "girl" with braids - recalling the star of his collaborative video, "Heidi" (1993). Either he is strategically appropriating himself, or Heidi has planted herself in his subconscious, and emerges as a McCarthy icon. So is he a strategist, planning meaningful appropriations? Then how do we negotiate the seeming expressive impulsivity of the drawings?

We think that McCarthy actually is a strategist making work about expressive impulsivity. In "Full House," an early video showed him swinging a wet canvas around the studio. This is a conceptual (calculated) statement about gesture (noncalculated). So the seemingly Dionysian drawings are actually about Dionysian drawing, making them more Apollonian.

Good riddance!

2006-11-08T10:51:00.000-05:00

Among other things, the Triple Diesel faction applauds the expulsion of the culturally atavistic Rick Santorum. Good riddance, motherfucker.

Rules for Artists

2006-11-01T11:40:00.000-05:00

Other blogs and reviews have joked, groaned, and seethed about the Art Review "Power 100" list. Artists, women, and woman artists are underrepresented, for example. "ArtReview's annual "Power 100 List" and Art + Auction's "Power Issue," both considered art world jokes since they first appeared in 2001 and 1996, respectively. Recently each came out with a list; both were based on money and as self-interested as ever," said Jerry Saltz in 2005. "It would be a hoot if it weren't so craven."

The TD crew understands how "the market" can be an arbiter, more so than critics, even. However, we firmly believe that artists are the primary movers, and no artist will even enter the market without the approval of other artists. (Maybe we're naive.)

Check out Rule #1 from Irit Krygier's "Rules for Artists."

To: Sol Re: sagely wisdom

2006-10-30T12:25:00.000-05:00

March 18, 1965
Eva Hesse to Sol LeWitt:

"So I sit now after two days of working on a dumb thing which is three-dimensional. Supposed to be continuing with last drawing. ...but I don't know where I belong so I give up again. All the time it is like that...Everything for me personally is glossed with anxiety....How do you believe in something deeply? How is it one can pinpoint beliefs into a singular purpose?"

April 14, 1965
Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse:

"You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don't! Learn to say 'Fuck You' to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, gasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, rumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose-sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long-waiting, small-stepping, evil-eying, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding grinding grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO."

Think Ink

2006-10-27T12:17:00.000-04:00

The TD crew completed an inkjet print for an upcoming project. Inkjet printing, formerly called "giclee" - French for "spray" or "squirt" - has made its way forward from cheap, high-edition printing to unique, prestigious art. Justin Lowe's current show in Italy features several inkjet "paintings" on canvas; Peter Coffin exhibited an inkjet print of a newspaper ad in L.A.; Kelley Walker sold inkjet prints - and digital files - at Paula Cooper; Guyton/Walker did at Greene Naftali, too; Richard Prince's Nurse paintings; Jorge Pardo - and who can count the photographers making inkjet prints, the archival inks of which can outlast C-prints?

Of course, our project was an edition and not a unique product, which makes it like a deskilled print.

We started with a drawing on paper, 22" x 30." The final print would be on paper that size, although the printed area would be smaller. Our drawing was too big for a flatbed scanner; scanning each quarter and reassembling in Photoshop was a failure. Nothing lined up correctly. So a friend shot 35mm slides, which we thought we'd run through a slide scanner.

But it turns out that for our output dimensions, a 4x5" transparency would be more successful. We got one, took this to Duggal for a drum scan, and received a tiff file 7565 x 9963 pixels, which at 300 dpi means 215.6 MB! Big.

Then we went to see another friend who has a huge Epson printer, like as wide as an SUV. The seven prints took 2.5 - 3 hours, time killed with chocolate-covered pretzels, Stella Artois, and iTunes.

That's Saul, Folks!

2006-10-24T09:03:00.000-04:00

The TD crew recalled a panel discussion with Peter Saul and Jim Nutt at Parsons last year, moderated by David Sandlin. Jim Nutt spoke measuredly and softly. Peter Saul, on the other hand, ranted and bellowed, chasing tangents and digressions. Apollonian Nutt was soft-spoken, offering placid reflections on his work, while Dionysian Saul was a rambunctious raconteur. Laughing, we couldn’t tell if he was serious, or just putting us on. Either way, he was hilarious, and seeing him made us like his work more.

Saul’s new work at Leo Koenig, Inc. proves us right about liking his work more and wrong about the Dionysian thing. The surfaces are smooth and unfettered and not gestural or frenetic. Controlled, planned, and dappled layers model his grotesque figures, and localized sheen on some darker colors proves the care with which he paints. He is crazy, but he’s a crazy craftsman.

Typically heavy-handed, Saul takes on President Bush, relations with Islam, and identity crisis. "Sardanapalus" reworks the Delacroix masterpiece and conveys our perception of Islam as brutal, bad with women, and eventually self-destructive - all we need now is a portrait of Pope Benedict reading medieval texts. In "Bush at Abu Ghraib," the President grins next to a head turned to cottage cheese by bullets. And in "Self Portrait as a Woman," Saul's gender identity crisis reminds us of our rapidly improving awareness of men, women and those in between, and the roles they play. In the end, Saul proposes that interpersonal conflicts cause permanent changes, usually morbid, violent, and freakish. Saul’s existential commentary isn't forlorn or hopeless, however, and instead takes on an attitude of raucous self-deprecation and absurdity.

The Beacon Beckons

2006-10-23T10:45:00.001-04:00

The TD crew embarked on an adventurous expedition to the Hudson hinterlands of Beacon. Popular demand brought an encore of Joan Jonas' performance, "The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things," so we seized the opportunity to experience it.

The site-specific, multi-media performance is inspired by Aby Warburg's writings and Jonas' "ongoing concern with the subject of ritual and performance." Indeed, she seemed like a witch doctor or shaman while drawing, dancing, and speaking.

Through interpretation of Warburg's writings and her own visits to the Hopi Indians, Jonas invokes Warburg's celebration of uncharted frontiers for its ability to foster man's essential needs - something the modern city can not do. Video segments and physical acts in "The Shape" evoke the relentless, meaningless clatter of industrialization; the excessively rapid, high-maintenance sprawl of cities; and the Sisyphian cycles of building and destroying civilizations. One segment presents desert landscape as an atmospheric site for meditation, then abruptly jumps to garish, flashing lights - Las Vegas - gaudy excess - while a fragile teepee is tossed about by the technological tempest. The piano accompaniment illustrates this violent upheaval. The suggestion is that Las Vegas, our bastion of entertainment and adventure, and a rapidly growing city, encroaches on the peaceful kingdom of the Natives. But Jonas doesn't stumble into a foolish Romanticism. Her video allows in some of the boredom inherent to the slow desert pace (though she excludes anything about the way Native American Reservations can profit from casinos).

The dramatic climax ties everything together and opens up the Hudson River site as another layer of significance in the performance.

We would praise Jonas for tackling this physically demanding and ambitious project even at age 70, but we don't have to. Although age seems prerequisite to her wisdom; "The Shape" is a tremendous accomplishment for an artist of any age.

Epilogue:

Subterranean Sublime
The museum closed early for a VIP tour, so rather than leaving and having our full experience rent from our tender palms, we invited ourselves to join the tour. The highlight was getting to approach and then peer into Michael Heizer's holes, North, South, East, and West. We all laid on our stomachs to reduce our vulnerability of a misstep and subsequent bloody, mangled-up landing at the bottom.

Kings and Queens, Anima and Anime

2006-10-20T11:46:00.000-04:00

We are buzzing about Keith Mayerson's new show, Kings and Queens, opening tonight at Derek Eller. We are familiar with Keith's work, have seen him lecture, and even had a group crit with him. He teaches at NYU and SVA. When we write a book, he'll have a chapter. (We're pretty sure our over-eagerness gets on his nerves, despite his hippie/saint kindness, but we still like him.) Since around the year 2000, Keith's paintings have been idols - stars and scenes significant in pop culture - rendered in a soupy, gunky manner and muddy, pukey palette. His previous work has included abstract tunnels, "Pinocchio the Big Fag," and "Horror Hospital: Unplugged," with Dennis Cooper.

Keith funnels together semiotics, Jung, Warhol, Kilimnik, and Surrealism and Abexism:

With semiotics, he understands pop icons as symbols of the surrounding culture's appetite;

With Jung, these icons are archetypes and probably our collective Anima and Animus. Arch villains like Darth Vader are our shadow. And the many heroes - Robin Hood, Harry Potter, Princess Mononoke - employ Jung's concept of the Hero Myth. (We've also heard Keith praise Joseph Campbell). Keith's twist on this is to select many gay icons and divas - Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift, Rimbaud - cleverly confusing the gender-specificity of Jung's concept;

Jung also informs his painting style, driven by improvisation and intuition. Though he bases his paintings on photos, they brim with spontaneity and individuation, as if made from memory. So the pop image seems to have bubbled up from the collective unconscious, just as spooky creatures and orifices would bubble into an early surrealist, "Automatic" drawing by Pollock or Gorky;

Like Warhol, Keith uses the pop icon. But Keith does it to examine the needs of the culture. A culture celebrating Keanu Reeves as its champion is different than one celebrating John Wayne (see Hero Myth, above);

Kilimnik, Keith's kin, also mixes handwritten text and image, and renders pop figures in "bad" manner, as opposed to neat rendering and harmonious palettes, bypassing their glamour as a means to commenting on it. This takes us back to Pop Art, before it was shiny, glossy, and hard-edged; and instead messy, woody, and scrappy;

We mentioned Surrealism and AbEx painting because those artists tried to channel the collective unconscious into their work, or at least to abandon rationality and pursue irrational, intuitive approaches to their work.

Thus, Keith's iconography is actually our culture's iconography; his heroes are ours, despite the culture wars. We're waiting for a Village People painting.

In his past, Keith rocketed out of UC Irvine's grad program with the aforementioned "Pinocchio," a narrative about Pinocchio in a sexual crisis propelling him through a range of characters and places, almost like Dante's Inferno. His "Pet Paintings" were Soutine lite, expressively painted pups with hilarious twists, like a well-hung chihuahua. Other work brought him into prestigious places such as Jay Gorney, Luhring Augustine, and Mary Boone. "Illuminations" might be based on his return to Southern California, and how interesting to see those landscapes return in his "Forbidden Planet," 2002...

Anyway, why are we saying so much? Surely, you can see it yourself.

Elbow no!

2006-10-18T11:10:00.000-04:00

Steve Wynn KOs Picasso.

See yesterday's post, which turns out to be more timely than we imagined.

Good Corners

2006-10-17T13:36:00.000-04:00

The TD crew seriosly considered buying something at last night's k48 auction. We were convinced that it was among the most compelling images there. However, we were dissuaded by superficial damage. The corners were dented.

We recalled a friend telling us about a collector who reneged on buying a drawing because a corner was dented. He even admonished her to be more careful next time. But why? A painter working canvas can scratch and scrape with abandon. Rauschenberg sculpted junk, Basquiat drew on debris, and Warhol prints had everything from bullet holes to piss stains. Terrence Koh tried the piss thing, too. Duchamp's broken Large Glass. Hirst's shrinking shark. Hesse's decomposing rubber. And how about the Met's Duccio? Charred by votive candles. And certainly some Serras are seriously bloodstained.

The hand of the artist? The life of the object? Sometimes you leave a fingerprint. Sometimes sex stains sheets. (But that's no reason to turn down Natalie Portman or vintage River Phoenix.)

Anyway, we are still in the wake of dematerialization and Conceptual Art. So the art object is really just a demonstration or record of an art idea. Slight damage shouldn't matter. We should have bought it.

K48

2006-10-16T09:46:00.000-04:00

The TD crew will be at the k48 party tonight. Scott Hug is raising funds to pay for fancy paper in the upcoming, sixth issue of his zine; so it's for a good cause!

Altruism aside, you'll see cool art, drink free beer and rock out to music by Michael Magnan, who notoriously kept the dance contest party at B Bar happenin for three years. (One time, we tried to breakdance on the floor, but while uprocking, stomped on a girl's foot. She shrieked and fled, and as we reached out to apologize, we accidentally knocked a fresh pint from a towering bloke's hand. He blamed someone else, and they started fighting. Bouncers rushed in, chaos! But that was years ago.)

Snow in October

2006-10-11T11:52:00.000-04:00

The TD crew is a hung jury on Dash Snow's show at Rivington Arms.

The collages are weathered, assembled on yellowing paper and remnants of used books, some covered in dusty, second-hand frames. They include newspaper text, vintage porno pics, and weapons arranged in serpentine totems. The limited palette makes the images more iconic and sinister. However, they seem to carry a juvenile, priapic fixation on sex and weapons. The swastikas don't help. (Actually, we didn't count them, but sense that they were ubiquitous.) You probably knew someone in high school obsessed with knives, spiked bats, and Rotten dot com.

The assemblages are almost formless. Snow continues his book installations, first unveiled at the Whitney Biennial. The used paperbacks, about psychopaths, serial killers, satan-worshippers, and weirdos, are stacked in the back room as walls of a fort, with a blanket canopy hanging above. He's also used books as pedestals for vitrines containing more objects, and then there's the glass-covered box with hypodermic needles, boner-shaped lighters, knives, cigarette butts, and prescription medicine bottles (also recently used by Sarah Sze and Jean Shin). It's kind of like snooping in the desk drawer of a white-trash meth addict (or maker) and you can imagine him making a list of these transgressive trinkets.

Snow seems the anti-kitsch; everything is gross and rotting and severely wounded. But then it's all so easy and obvious, it becomes its own variety of kitsch. Thomas Hirschhorn's use of bullet-ridden bodies seems far more terrifying and poignant.

So what does it all mean? Snow fixates on and aggressively thrusts forward an underground/underbelly/viceland of sex and drugs and misanthropy, a world available only by the black market, dark alleys, and knowing where to look. Does the new work function like his Polaroids, as ambassadorial reportage from the fronts of drug-fueled parties and vandalism? Or is he simply searching out and pasting together shocking content, no better than Marilyn Manson? And how do we equate the bin Laden and Hitler imagery with the far less destructive drugs, guns, and porn? Or is this a critique of Bush's America, abrasive and aggressive only because it's, like, really frustrated?

We raise the questions but also hesitate because Dash Snow is a scenester. Here is Ryan McGinley's photo, "Dash Cutting Up Lines," and Dash Snow's response, a Polaroid of RMcG blowing lines off of a flaccid dick:

He boasts in interviews about parties and coke. (Of course, that could just be media manipulation.) He's a poster boy for AG jeans. (That could also be media manipulation.) He's a Menil. (Carlo McCormick claims that Snow never uses that familial connection, but can we really believe that?)

Jackson Pollock game

2006-10-10T16:22:00.000-04:00

We don't know if you've already seen this, but it's kept the TD crew consistently off task all day long. And boy are the bosses pissed!

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

Bercowetz & Bua Builders

2006-10-09T11:03:00.000-04:00

Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua accumulate and assemble ramshackle, jheririgged structures from detritus. They are grotesque, awkward, and loaded with meaning.

Supporting these wretched arrangements are complex channels of history, conspiracy theory, and myth; and the architectural sites at which these narratives surface. For example, in "Can Jet Fuel Melt Steel?" a bowling ball perched atop a towering web of wooden skewers conveys skepticism about the collapsed World Trade Center towers. "Architectural Additions" hosts images, text, and an audio recording of David Nash, who tried to "occupy" Governor's Island for his imaginary, one-person political party. Nash sounds rational, if undereducated, and aware of the apparent craziness of his act - yet still convinced of its validity. Our analyst friend jokes, "The Neurotic builds castles in the sky; the Psychotic lives in them." Nash's theory about "king genes" is accompanied by a jingle about "king jeans."

Accumulation is the key to their process. The artists must have spent months in research: looking, absorbing, collecting, and filing information. Likewise, the range of materials involved suggests that they spent months (or years) combing through rubbish, storing it, and fishing it out later. There is a 1:1 ratio between research and materials. So "Raising the Dead," about Lazarus and sunken ships, is about itself as much as other things. The artists have resurrected discarded and forgotten objects - and ideas.

Another key is exposure. Like the conspiracies and myths exposed by their tellers, each structure's construction is fully exposed - trails of hot glue are as prominent as the kebab skewers they connect. Extension cords pile up. Nothing is hidden.

Formally, the artists fit (jam) into the "Clusterfuck Esthetic" coined by Jerry Saltz. And their typically male interest in history and conspiracy theory rounds up typically male-dominated legends. And how many men does it take to change a Bercowetz/Bua show? Still, their low-tech, pothead rubbish retreats from high-production clutterers like Mike Kelley and Jason Rhoades, and from architectural artists like Sarah Sze. In fact, they are the anti-Sze, because of their chaotic and anarchitectural structures, more like rusty exoskeletons than space-station map-o-zoids. Jon Kessler flaunted the kling-klang buzz and hum of thousands of TVs and miles of wires in his PS1 superproject, but Bercowetz/Bua use sound for interviews and music, viewer-activated via timer dials and played on second-hand boomboxes. "To Fry or Fly" is different - it's an overstimulation chamber in which the user can turn on a cacophony of senses-shattering alarms, like Jim Carrey's most annoying sounds in the world. Our sympathy to the gallery staff!

The late (offed?) Mark Lombardi designed dizzying maps of intercontinental exhanges and in-bed-with-the-devil partnerships including Western millionaires, the mob, Arab tycoons, and more - often exposing the market-driven, selective disapproval of terrorist funding. His text-based maps are modest as objects though abundant as carriers of information, owed to years of obsessive research. Lombardi splices the clues, editing indices of unlikely relationships. Bercowetz and Bua spend more time on a few individual events, and likewise spend more time on their complex structures. They are less like detectives, and more like curious, armchair journalists. But their output is almost masterful.

Do it, Pruitt

2006-10-04T10:45:00.000-04:00

Rob Pruitt, our great Phoenix, rose from the ashes of his 1992 Leo Castelli show, when, at 27, he and Walter Early crossed the Mason-Dixon line of Political Correctness with a seemingly racist show. Consequently, NYC exiled him for 7 years. (Looking back, this "misstep" turns out to be prescient and rich, now that Eminem is behind us and Kelley Walker sells racially sensitive work with no problem.) Later, Pruitt got revenge, salvation, and exposure with "Cocaine Buffet," a powder-propelled party and event at another artist's studio. Following that were the solo shows "101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself," "Pandas and Bamboo," and many group shows. Panda paintings in the 2004 Biennial cemented his complete comeback.

The new show is more Home Depot than Pearl Paint, as Pruitt uses construction materials like poured cement and foil-covered insulation. And he uses repetition in the self-sufficient sculptures, like in the radiating can-can dancers. Construction materials? Repetition? No pedestals? Sounds like minimalism. And it is! But instead of impenetrable, glossy surfaces of steel, his sculptures are crusty concrete and aged denim. They are casual, vernacular, and "slacker," rather than formal, systematic, and "ideologue." They're a cool dude (or chick) chilling on the beach, miles away from an ivory tower and math books, probably snacking on potato chips from a Kevin Landers sculpture. Doubt it? How about "Minimalist Sculpture for My Dad," a sculpture shown last year at Nicole Klagsbrun, which Roberta Smith claimed "contrasts weight and featherweight, butch and femme, with a Juddian plywood box." And it was covered with potato chips!

Minimalism is infamous for its macho rigidity and austerity. And so is AbEx painting, another theme addressed by Pruitt. He's taking the most manly methods and castrating them. Vintage denim is often sold unisex, and anyway, these legs are gender-free. And the paintings are almost Liberace, dressed in flamboyant pink and dazzling silver. Mixing glitter into the paint crystallizes how gay these paintings really are; this is magnified by their large scale. Using the mural proportions of AbEx painting and its broad, bold gestures, Pruitt simultaneously subverts that school of painting. With the gauche glitter and puffed-up palette, the entire thing becomes a gaudy disaster, mocking the self-important pretenses of action painting.

The sculptures allude to the body, as well. One knows by looking that the cement is heavy, which emphasizes the weight of these sculptures. They aren't just space. They would make an impression in your bed. Felix Gonzalez-Torres also tuned into the importance of weight; some of his candy sculptures were amassed according to the weight of Ross, his lover and inspiration. Pruitt's viewers will ride the jeans to a place where the sculptures seem to have personality, self, and familiarity. Everyone owns jeans, and probably does fun things in them on the weekend. Warhol spoke of Levi's 501s as the perfect attire for a young person.

Some of these materials also stir up Pruitt's own history. He used denim in some early work with Early, and he may have picked up the insulation idea while customizing his headlining house upstate, also a topic in a 2003 show.

A Guy Called Gerald

2006-10-02T09:22:00.000-04:00

Don't look back in anger, Gerald Davis. Your nostalgia is tainted by resentment, fear, and victimhood. Indeed, you must have felt so helpless against the fear of death. Late Cold War paranoia, death in the family, and acknowledging your fragile physiology made you so vulnerable, it's no wonder that your drawings are so tender, despite the formal restrictions you impose: monochrome, diptych format, obsessive rendering, and nice, big paper.

You relish some cultural, historical signifiers, like the "Vuarnet France" logo, E.T. and LaCoste polo knits. But most of your memories are darker. Other kids bully you by pushing you in a closet and writing "Fag Boy" on your chest; a family member scrutinizes and condemns your joy in Disney animation; your Grandmother passes away; you get lost in the woods; your body feels absurd and exposed; Armageddon arrives and people are processed in a fiery, intestinal hell. Your apocalyptic outlook belies your youthful innocence. "How can someone so young, say words so sad?" sang Morrissey.

This end-of-the-world obsession fuels "Watching 'Testament,'" the 1983 film about nuclear armageddon. You remember yourself watching the film and relating to Scottie Wetherly, fatally ill from radiation. Horrific demons slither and ooze between your thoughts and organs. You understand your mortality, which makes the film so poignant, and you understand the film, which makes your mortality so terrifying. A vicious cycle.

Has it gotten any better?

Mixer

2006-09-29T16:43:00.000-04:00

Did we already mention that we are doing a studio residency program? Well, we are. Last night was the "mixer" that brought us together with artists in other NYC residency programs. We ran into curator Geir Haraldseth, from Oslo, who recently graduated from Bard's Center for Curatorial Studies. He told us about the book he's writing on art and music collectives. We also stumbled into the studio of someone named Aaron Johnson, who was making big, grotesque paintings that are just plain awful - in a good way.

Look at those wacky colors, like mashed berries and potato soup. The octopus tendrils and dripping, oozing forms stir up Steve DiBenedetto and Peter Saul, as if they were painting intestines and mashed up food. There's a "decorative grotesque" at work, like Chris Ofili, and the frequent use of patterns invoke an op-art contingency; so Aaron Johnson is like Bridget Riley taking acid, meth, and testosterone simultaneously. The acrylic pigments stick to translucent vinyl stretched just like canvas, so the pictures kind of float in their frames. We didn't get to meet him, nor Alison Elizabeth Taylor, whose studio was mostly empty, because she has a show at James Cohan, but we wanted to. So if you see them, please say hello for us.

Auction Action II

2006-09-27T17:02:00.000-04:00

The TD crew was in full force at last night's SVA Auction (read previous blog entry), as were many prominent artists: Elizabeth Peyton, Mary Heilmann, Spencer Sweeney, Jonathan Horowitz, TJ Wilcox, Tim Rollins, John Arsenault, Robert Melee, Lisa Kirk, and many more. Dealers, too! Andrew Kreps crept, looking closely at works in the silent auction. Jeanne Greenberg coached a collector bidding on a Sue Williams drawing in the "elite art" live auction; this collector bowed out at $7000. Elizabeth Peyton's watercolor portrait of Pete Doherty stirred a bidding battle between telephone bidders, but ultimately sold for $42,000 to a mysterious dark-haired man. The auction followed a ceremony honoring Elizabeth Peyton the distinguished alumni award, and Mary Heilmann and James Moffatt another distinction.

But don't take our word for it! ArtInfo has the scoop~

TD crew headed up to MoMA for a party, and then to a drag queen performance at Barracuda, which was boring, which was convenient, because it was time for bed!

Auction Action

2006-09-26T12:34:00.001-04:00

Tonight is SVA's auction, made to benefit its Alumni Fund, raise scholarship money, and add cocktail-party glamour to the institution. The TD crew has its eyes on a few scores, like Jutta Koether's gothasaurus drawing, Ricky Sears' wan dollhouse, Dylan Stone's postcards, Lynda Benglis' print, and A.L. Steiner's dreamy photo. With sufficient funds, we'd compete with the Horts for Mary Heilmann's little painting, but we have rent to pay.

Catskill Aktion

2006-09-26T11:45:00.000-04:00

Frank Haines and Lisa Kirk pulled it off this weekend, with Frank's Autumnal Equinox performance. Frank converted a country side barn in the Catskills into a veritable performative space, building walls and sculptural accoutrement to support his ceremonial, ritual spectacle. Candles, a skull, a memento mori from his grandfather, fog, banners, light boxes, and a corncob-topped staff were among the objects created/used. Frank also recorded original, electronic music for his chants and dances - one passage sounded like "Neon Lights" by Kraftwerk - and Frank's dances included running-in-place and a spastic version of the Robot: kind of like embracing control and release, rigid and free, tight and loose, at the same time. The performance concluded with a chant and gesticulation that appeared to be a blessing, and then several minutes of silence.

Later, a collaborative dinner, rotating DJs, rocking dance floor (literally), and continuous bonfire kept the equinox revelers up all night. Travelers from NYC, LA, Chicago, and Providence - including artists Peter Coffin, Robert Melee, Justin Lowe, Rose Kallal, Rachel Mason, Bengala, Mark Golamco, Michael Bauer, Naomi Fisher, Jim Drain, Keegan McHargue, Takeshi Murata, and others - bunked in tents, cars, and crammed beds. The rain generously, miraculously held off until Sunday afternoon. (We remember Frank invoking Isis, so maybe she had something to do with it.)

Autumnal Equinox-a-go-go

2006-09-22T16:10:00.000-04:00

Anyway, speaking of all this mysticism and occult such-and-such, our friends head 2.5 hours upstate this weekend to Casa Kirk for a performance/ritual by Frank Haines, an artist from San Francisco, now in NYC. Frank uses magic, occult ideas, and cinema as sources for his practice, based mostly in performance and elaborate sets/installations. We hear that Frank is real-life witch, a soothsayer, a medium, an exorcist, and a great cook.

Full report pending...

Occult, Martians, Weirdos

2006-09-21T12:22:00.002-04:00

Ursula von Rydingsvard's architectonic, primitive forms got the TD crew thinking about civilization and then extra-civilization and then space exploration. And John McCracken has a show up.

Can artists really respond to supernatural, occult, or extraterrestrial topics? Isn't earth-bound material enough?
John McCracken's mirrored planks relate to extraterrestrial life. "I do try to make things that look like they come from somewhere else-from a UFO or a futuristic environment or another dimension," he says.

Ian Cooper, in a 2005 show at CUE Foundation, incorporated E.T. and Elliott's machine for phoning home.

And Budd Hopkins compromised his career as an AbEx painter by becoming a leading researcher and spokesperson for UFO research. On the profundity of extraterrstrial life, he says, "On the most profound level, it means that an intelligence which is a controlling intelligence, which can see into our mind, so to speak, which would mean a total end to the privacy that we each have inside our heads right now." Of course, we don't need aliens for that - we just need President Bush to keep at it.

But how about the occult? Of course, there's Tom Friedman's "Curse," a spherical curse placed eleven inches above a white pedestal. And the recent Creative Time show, "Strange Powers," included art "made to actually have a paranormal effect on the world, including spells, talismanic objects, and apparitions conjured and transcribed."

We know Kandinsky responded to music, but he also made paintings related to theosophy. So did Kupka, Mondrian, and Malevich. Supposedly. One teacher at SVA told us that these painters developed palettes inspired by human auras. We think Mondrian had more reductive, formal concerns, however, with his management of primary colors. And remember that "3x Abstraction" show at Drawing Center? Those drawings with spiritual purpose?

But if we take theosophy as a religion, or at least some "faith," then we also have to think about Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist art. Then it's no big deal to have "theosophist art" because faith-inspired art fills history books about art and architecture.

Skeptical pragmatists that we are, the TD crew welcomes these interpretations only in our earnest purpose of learning more about the artists. But we kind of chuckle to ourselves about all the ghost and alien stuff.

Mad-About-Art Square Park

2006-09-19T09:08:00.000-04:00

Madison Sq. Park, under the Flatiron Building, is currently an oasis of public art. This week, United Technologies installed huge prints by Chuck Close, Mitch Epstein, and Dayanita Singh. Chuck Close presents daguerrotypes of immigrants, Mitch Epstein images of Boston, and Dayanita Singh black-and-white photos of Hartford. Ivan Chermayeff designed the installations. We still prefer last year's edition, with billboard paintings by Gary Hume, Alex Katz, and Lisa Sanditz. Although we're happy any time the public gets to see contemporary art, these photos aren't very challenging, and are kind of a bummer.

On the other hand, Ursula von Rydingsvard's monuments have been in the park for several months. "Damski Czepek" is like a craglike womb or big cave, translucent, cast in polyurethane resin. "Czara z Babelkami" is like a tower of Babel constructed from Jenga blocks, its bricklike units protruding out in various directions. (We wonder about the title and how it is pronounced. "Sara Zee?" "Sarah Sze?") UvR's sculptures combine architecture with a raw, pseudo-primitive approach - units stacked into a larger form - which is perfect for an urban park, where skyscrapers filled with suits and BlackBerry machines meet children running in grass.

Jared Buckhiester

2006-09-15T13:05:00.000-04:00

TD crew is looking forward to Jared Buckhiester's new show, opening tonight at envoy gallery. Jared's narrative watercolor drawings mingle together children at play, rural life, and budding sexuality, all at work within a faint application of paint and wistful drawing style.

Jared was in two recent group shows: "Kamp K48" at John Connelly Presents and "Not Gay Art Now" at Paul Kasmin. He also made T-shirts, although we don't know if he still does.

Catching up

2006-09-13T16:24:00.000-04:00

The TD crew has been grossly neglectful of its nest on blogspot. This is mainly due to an overamped work schedule and subsequently much-needed weekend r&r. But no excuses. To catch up:

*If you haven't seen The Everyothers play a live show, and you like rock, then check them out! Kill Rock Stars label. They offer a tight, lean/mean, and gleeful show. It's kind of like The Strokes, but without the shrug, and with much more glam and blues fuel. Fun.

*Check out Chris Martin's sublime abstractions at SVA: 209 East 23rd St. Tom Huhn, PhD curated the show, which also includes Gary Stephan, Richmond Burton, David Humphrey, Matthias Ludwig, Jeff Gaunt, and Amy Wilson. We wish we could buy a Chris Martin for our ceiling, and look at it every night after climbing into bed.

*If you're shopping for drafting tables, check out Nationwide Drafting. The 60-inch Alvin Workmaster we bought was $40 cheaper than at Utrecht. Both offer free shipping, unlike Blick Materials, whose prices lead you to believe the savings are great, but they aren't, because shipping costs a fortune.

Peace out!

RIP Willi Ninja

2006-09-05T09:43:00.000-04:00

We met Willi Ninja one time on the subway after a day at MoMA. He was soft-spoken and sweet, yet brimming with confidence and towering in his high-heeled boots.

We even talked on the phone a few times after that. He invited us to a spring fashion show, which we didn't attend; we invited him to a summer group show, which he didn't attend. Missed connections. And then today, we learned of his death this weekend. Willi was only 45 years old. And at 45, he still worked, lissom and graceful as he was in "Paris is Burning," where we first found him...

http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/2006/09/02/willi_ninja_rip

http://jasmynecannick.typepad.com/jasmynecannickcom/2006/09/in_loving_memor.html

Nan Goldin in "Full House"

2006-09-04T12:15:00.000-04:00

What's behind Nan Goldin's pursuit of those men? You know, the sweaty, smoking, tattooed, moody, drunk, damaged, and violent men? We're asking in earnest, in order to understand her work. Is it simply the "bad boy" thing? Or is part of her apparent self-destructive tendencies?

Nan Goldin is one of our favorite artists, but sometimes we feel suspicious. The "bad boy" was isolated and subverted by Richard Prince, and the "victim girl" by Cindy Sherman. She's unmatched in her efforts to document the NY demimonde and essential in the snapshot aesthetic, acutely intimate, a master of seizing "the moment" and maximizing photography's ability to reveal telling nanoseconds of drama. Books about AIDs should include her for her revelatory documentation of the disease's toll. We watched her slideshow, "Ballad of Sexual Dependency," 700 images, two-and-a-half times in the freezing cold room at the Whitney's mezzanine.

That underworld resists the passive role of the documentee, and instead reaches back out. It fucks her, loves her, gets her high, and beats her. And the male culprits populate her images, unchecked, unchallenged; everything is romantic, like the misogynist street thugs in a Genet novel. Instead of challenging problematic masculinity, guys gone wild, Goldin gets seduced and has bruises to prove it. Yet we wonder if she kinda likes it, after seeing her self-inflicted cuts and cigarette burns in "Sisters, Saints, and Sybils."

Distracted

2006-08-29T12:42:00.000-04:00

We'd like to update today, but our day job has us on a tedious task, tabulating results of a survey. Good thing our graduate degrees are in "Counting: Units and Measurement." We're getting quick with Excel, but we'd rather be writing. How do we escape from this misallocation of our skills?

a) Kill selves
b) Tell boss to shove it - we're great artists, after all!
c) Take psychedelic drugs, pretend we're surfing
d) Take antidepressants, deal with it
e) Other (please specify)

P.S. The graffiti event went down, for those who inquired. Mission complete.

Bomb the Serra?

2006-08-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

Has anyone heard about this? Can you explain it? We don't understand.

Invisible Graffiti: Magnet Show
Aug. 27 Sun. 7-11 am

We are proud to showcase the work of 17 intrepid artists who have responded to a call for magnetic art and invisible graffiti. Invisible Graffiti is a secretive act in public space. It is an act of resistance against the architecture of behavioral and spatial control. Its possibility rests on mimicry and invisibility, copying both the style and strategy of its adversary.

On the Bronx waterfront at Port Morris is a rigging company and in the lot is a Richard Serra Torqued Ellipse. There are many others like it, in museums, and collections all over the world, but this one is in hiding, waiting. This large-scale sculpture has enclosed a space of possibility. Sculpture is a found site. The Invisible Graffiti Magnet Show will be installed on the Ellipse.

If questioned, maintain that you do not know who is in charge. Criminals are people who get caught.

Driving Directions
Take 278 over the Triborough Bridge. Take Bruckner Expressway/ 128 E Exit 47 toward New Haven. Take Bruckner Blvd exit toward 138th. Stay straight on Bruckner Blvd. Left on 138 St. Right on Walnut. Left on 134 St. Park your car a few blocks from where 134th dead-ends at a fence.
Subway + Walking Directions
Take Bronx 6 Train to Cypress Ave and 138th St
Walk on 3 Blocks on 138 St, passing Jackson Ave, the Bruckner overpass and Willow Ave. Take a Right on Walnut. Take a Left on 134 St, after Locust Ave, 134 Street turns into a parking lot. There is a storage building on your left, walk quietly toward the left hand corner of the fence.

THEN: When you get to the fence at the end of 134th you will see the sculpture to your left just past a low fence. Use the wood block, climb over the fence and walk inside the Torqued Ellipse.
Precautions: Make sure we have your cell phone number before August 27. We will text message you if there are any changes in the plan.
Please be careful and keep a low profile while walking to the site.

We Heart Fag Art Fag City

2006-08-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

We also want to thank Art Fag City for the generous shout-out last week, for our post about Jason Rhoades. Thank you, AFC! You rock.

Happy Birthday, Mitch Epstein

2006-08-23T10:01:00.000-04:00

We remember seeing "Chalmette Battlefield, Louisiana 1976" at Marianne Boesky, in a group show about 1970s color photography. We agreed that it was riveting and it is still one of our all-time favorites.

'"Untitled, New York" from The City, 1998' seems like a variation.

Happy Birthday, Mitch Epstein.

James J. Williams, III

2006-08-22T16:40:00.000-04:00

We are back from our staycation, during which we had minimal computer access, during which we put in serious studio time, during which we caught up on many shows (see previous posting).

In our Chelsea crawl, James J Williams III caught our eyes at Envoy Gallery, a rising favorite on our list, for its optimistic program of cool, emerging artists. James' installation of drawings, paintings, furniture, photos, clothing, and bric-a-brac largely suggests an art practice based on living life: dating girls, collecting objects, drinking Scotch, and potentially harming his feet by wearing worn out shoes.

Then again, James makes drawings, paintings, and photos, which seems like evidence of a "trying" to make art (rather than just living it). Plus, his list of artists suggests an elevation of the artist above other people.

But then again, the casual execution of the work - spontaneous, shoegazer, scrappy - proves that James makes little departure - no trip from life into art. And by mingling his pictures with his belongings in a somewhat nonhierarchical manner, it seems a level playing field.

James seems a sensitive, dandied, and eccentric young man. But he's still a young man. In a twist on Jack Pierson's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Part II," itself a twist on Carl Andre, James covers a wall with names and phone numbers of women; we assume these were trysts and one night stands. Couple this with the Scotch and, were he older, he might seem like a drunken womanizer. But his diminutive drawings and general aesthetic of a shrug, rather than a grand gesture, keeps him charming.

Freeing the Line

2006-08-15T12:56:00.000-04:00

We’ve been on vacation and away from our computers, so it’s a real treat to blog a new entry. Yesterday, we finally caught the Dada show – Paris and Cologne – saving Berlin, Zurich, and Hannover for Wednesday. We also caught Douglas Gordon’s videos, and reminisced about the day we saw his “Real Time” video, with the elephants, at Gagosian. This was our first Chelsea experience. We were stumped.

After MoMA, we dodged tourists on Fifth Ave, heading up to Marian Goodman, where the promise of Richard Tuttle and Eva Hesse beckoned us in "Freeing the Line," curated by Catherine De Zegher - who else? (Neither of them blew us away here, after seeing the great EH shows at Jewish Museum and Drawing Center.) Precedents to this show seem to be Richard Tuttle and Niels Bohr.

But Ranjani Shettar’s “Vasanta” was a real treat: a color field drawing in space, a matrix that twists into a vortex, its integral wax beads slowly shifting in their airy web from blue to yellow. A sign warned us not to enter the sculpture, but we did, anyway. Just for a second.

We also dug Joelle Turlinckx “Volume of Air” sculptures, variations on a cube-shaped frame supporting wood shafts, plastic strips and other thin, light materials. The sculptures incorporate pedestal, sculpture, and content into one simple assemblage. Reminded us of B. Wurtz, showing at Feature Gallery this month. To sculpt air also reminded us Duchamp’s “50 cc of Paris Air” in the Dada show.

Finally, 8.6 km, about 4.5 miles, of masking tape, black and white were enough for Monika Gryzamala’s awesome installation, stretching across a window, along the wall, choppily transforming from white to black, and then forking simultaneously around the wall and also around a support column.

Inspired, we used tape today to conceal the seams between our new air conditioner and the walls around it.

Gravy Train!!!!

2006-08-07T10:42:00.000-04:00

Chunx

Funx

Hunx

Junx

These are the members of Gravy Train!!!! Who rocked Knitting Factory last night with high camp hijinx and talking dirty. The group's instruments include a keyboard set to "Hammond Organ," a guitar, and a single cymbal. The sound and style owe a lot to the B-52s, although GT!!!! bring a lot more g-string braggadocio.

We were surprised by the mosh pit, expecting more of a dance-happy crowd, but dove in nonetheless, and found ourselves covered in sweat within a minute.

Lips of Heaven

2006-08-04T15:51:00.000-04:00

Jason Rhoades (JR): Open those gates! Part those lips, baby!

St. Peter (SP): Introduce yourself, please.

JR: I'm Jason Rhoades! Whoo-hoo, what a ride! Look at the view from up here! Hey, where is the scaffolding to support this place?

SP: Heaven needs no scaffolds, Jason. Heavenly souls are weightless.

JR: Sounds great! So where do I sign in?

SP: Jason, heavenly souls must be accepted. What are your qualifications?

JR: I've shown installations in some of the best galleries, kunsthalles, and museums worldwide; exhibited in the Venice Biennale and the Whitney; and I've even collaborated with Paul McCarthy.

SP: Yes, but why should we let you into heaven? What good deeds have you accomplished?

JR: Well, I contributed to art a simultaneous celebration and deconstruction of masculinity. I examined American consumerism, exposing our material excesses and messy, crowded, decentralized ideals and lack thereof. Formally, I encompassed the last 50 years of art, invigorating a legacy dating back to Duchamp.

SP: I've heard from the others about your "meccatuna." Why such irreverence? Is this colonialism, or at least insulting to Islam? And the profane colloquialisms for the female reproductive organ - misogyny?

JR: No, no! Of course, tuna is a joke about vaginas, but it's also a joke at the expense of masculinity. You know, as if men have one-track minds. Think of the legos involved - boys' toys. The entire installation drips with machismo - the machines, cords, tools, hot and noisy atmosphere...

SP: Why challenge masculinity? Shouldn't men retain their dominance over the lesser sex?

JR: No, that's a dated ideal, Pete. But I just use machismo as a vernacular, and an entry into American cultural criticism. I act out the American and take on the American. You know, like Richard Prince's Marlboro Man photos.

SP: Right, right...we keep forgetting about that. 2000 years of patriarchy make for a habit hard to shake. Okay, but why can't you just make a simple sculpture? Rodin brought some wonderful sculptures...

JR: Yeah, but a scattered - decentralized - installation is more contemporary, reflecting how our monolithic beliefs have been shaken, and how a pluralistic culture has flooded the vacated space. You can link this to Thomas Hirschhorn, Jon Kessler, Robert Morris, Eva Hesse, Duchamp...

Plus, to fill a space is more phallic. It's like "clogging" a void - filling a hole.

SP: (nervous chuckle) Okay, Jason. It's sounds as if you accomplished a lot. And in such a brief period of time! I suppose the art world - though filled with heathens and greedy wastrels - will miss you. Sorry for the grilling, but some of you artists can be very recalcitrant. But you can enter heaven. Enter here.

Above: Triple Diesel, "Jason Rhoades Entering Heaven (Various Virgins)," 2006

Kiki Gallery

2006-08-02T11:25:00.000-04:00

The TD crew took the time to see Lawrence Rinder read from his new book and answer questions from Bill Arning, AA Bronson, Andrea Fraser, and the audience. We noticed his favorable mention of the late Kiki Gallery: he said it inspired hope. We had only heard of it previously from Keith Mayerson, who showed his UC Irvine thesis project, "Pinocchio the Big Fag," at the space. If the Kiki people had the foresight to show Keith, and if Lawrence Rinder liked it so much, then we should look into it.

According to this site and this other site, Kiki Gallery was a small gallery located in San Francisco’s Mission District. It was a provocative, intelligent presence in the Bay Area art community from 1993 to 1995. Kiki’s founder and director, Rick Jacobsen, shaped a lively program of exhibitions, readings, and performances by emerging artists. The conﬂuence of innovative art, gay culture, and performance that was distinctive to Kiki had its antecedents in the mid-1950s projects of King Ubu Gallery and Six Gallery. (In these pioneering artist-run spaces, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Jess, Wally Hedrick, Jay De Feo, Allen Ginsberg, and others presented and supported one another’s work. The same creative energies efﬂoresced in the theatre of the Cockettes, in the conceptual art and performance movement of the 1970s, and in the rich history of alternative art spaces in the Bay Area. These energies had a brilliant, though brief, ﬂowering at Kiki.) The gallery became highly regarded for its director’s imagination and fearlessness in presenting challenging new work.

In its existence of only twenty-two months, Kiki was known for many memorable shows and events, beginning with the exhibitions Caca @ Kiki and ending with Piece: Nine Artists Consider Yoko Ono. The archives includes: exhibition catalogues (Sick Joke, Fresh Produce), publicity materials (Late Night with Joan Jett Blakk), performance stills (David E. Johnston’s Gone Dollywood), original art (Keith Mayerson’s Pinocchio the Big Fag), Catherine Opie, and Nayland Blake.

Unknown, Joan Jett-Blakk and Babette: Hosts of talkshow/performance series produced by Rick Jacobsen, circa 1993
Gelatin silver print
KIKI GALLERY COLLECTION

Top of Page: Keith Mayerson, "Lampwick and Pinocchio" and "Island of Boys," 1993

I'm melting!

2006-08-01T14:46:00.000-04:00

Death + weather = Deather
Hot + humid = Hominid
Public urination + heatwave = Manhattan stinks

Feels Like Walking On...

2006-07-23T03:06:00.000-04:00

The TD crew wonders what's with the broken glass. We recall how deer were en vogue two years ago, all over printed t-shirts, graphic design, and even painting. Now broken glass is taking over.

We first noticed Rob Pruitt's glitter-on-canvas painting, "Cocaine," in the group show at Paul Kasmin. This painting looks like shattered glass (or a spider web).

Then we noticed Josephine Meckseper's broken mirror in the group show at Andrew Kreps.

And in L.A. today, we stumbled upon broken glass in Nate Lowman's "Action Jackson" at Peres Projects, and Seth Price's sculpture at QED. Craig Kalpakjian's photo also looks like broken glass...

Of course, Barry Le Va's shattered glass is a highlight in the Whitney's "Full House" show. Oh, and the "Bride Stripped Bare" is another predecessor, albeit accidentally.

What does this mean? Art as menace? Degeneration of morality? Destabilization of the picture plane?

Missing Dung

2006-07-07T14:03:00.000-04:00

At the opening of "Into Me/Out of Me" at PS1, we got a hearty laugh out of Tom Friedman's "Untitled," a sculpture consisting of a flea-sized piece of poop atop a pedestal. Nearby was Manzoni's can of shit, and surrounding were John Miller's phallic stool, a Warhol piss piece, and other excrement-engaged art.

We returned last weekend to review the show, and noticed that the dung disappeared, the feces fled. Pedestula rasa.

We thought about a show we read about, in which Brancusi's pedestals were the focus.

A security guard shrugged when we told her about the shuffled shit, and then walked away. The receptionists were more receptive, and one joked that now it was Friedman's "Curse" piece.

Donnie & Travis

2006-06-28T16:50:00.000-04:00

Pierre et Gilles, Gilbert & George, and now... Donnie & Travis. The Williamsburg-based couple got their bearings by printing for Ryan McGinley and styling performers such as Fischerspooner. Now, they transform their talent into a fine art practice.

The artists photograph their friends, mostly queer, and then print the photos on silk, using a cyanotype process. They embellish the image with embroidery and then design a space around the figure with washes of textile dye, producing a foggy, murky space that feels substantial and claustrophobic around the featherweight, ghostlike figures. Most figures are alone, but some interact in ambiguous activities with mates.

Donnie & Travis argue that these are not paintings, because a) no paint is used, b) the process is more textile than painterly, and c) you can wash the piece you collect. (We're unsure how many collectors wash their collections, but okay.) Of course, painting has encompassed so many variations in pigment vehicles: watercolor, oil, acrylic, enamel, wax, and tempera - not to mention urine, feces, and blood. D&T seem to have a narrow definition of "paint," which can be an obstacle. Moreover, they stretch the silk like canvas, and exhibit and distribute the work in a tradition occupied by painting.

Andy Warhol began portraits with a print and then applied pigment. However, his portraits are monumental faces in abstract, high key spaces. D&T are different because their subjects are people and not just identities, and because the environments around them are more like tangible landscapes, even if unspecific. Moreover, the mood in their scenes brings them closer to the decadent dreaminess of someone like Hernan Bas.

Among other embroidery artists, Michael Raedecker achieves a more acute sensitivity and technical aptitude and Ghada Amer makes a stronger assertion about sexuality. Orly Cogan is playfully perverse and more flexible with materials. However, D&T seem to be on an upward wave. They recently completed a High Desert Test Site project, and are preparing a group show of textile-based work to follow their own debut show.

Knitting Factory

2006-06-24T15:33:00.000-04:00

We spent hours at Knitting Factory last night, watching performances by Dynasty Handbag and Erase Errata.

Dynasty Handbag is a rising phenomenon; her outlandish persona covers self-critical, neurotic, internal dialogue and then gothic, cathartic frenzy.

Erase Errata hadn't played NYC in three years. What were they up to? We're guessing it was rehearsal, because they rocked our socks off.

Twig n Berries

2006-06-23T09:21:00.000-04:00

We dropped by I-20 last night for the opening of "Men," organized by Ellen Altfest. All night, people joked, "Have you seen Ellen Altfest's Penis?"

The discipline-specific show, featuring paintings by women of men, covers a range of representational painting. Chie Fueki's "Super" depicts a bodybuilding strong man, shimmering in a matrix of glitter, colored paper, and acrylic pixels. Ellen Altfest's "Penis" is an intricately detailed, indexical, naturalistic examination of a fellow painter's twignberries. Another anatomical detail, more vestigial perhaps than the essential organ, surfaces in Catherine Murphy's "Harry's Nipple." It's like a physiological transposition of Kenneth Noland or maybe Jasper Johns, in its concentric-circle composition.

We were excited to find Hilary Harkness' "Matterhorn" (1995). We remember reading recently in the Times about a painting HH made, as revenge for a harsh critique delivered by mathy Mel Bochner in their days together at that one school in New Haven (rhymes with "sale!"). And here it is: MB getting buggered by a she-bull with a strap-on.

Our favorite in show is the Clare Rojas construction.

Riederer Reconstruction

2006-06-20T12:32:00.000-04:00

Last summer, the TD crew was privy to one of Jerry Saltz' lectures at SVA.

He described how "the paradigm had shifted." "The boys in black are back," he said, and cited the Barbara Gladstone show, "Bridge Freezes Before Road." This includes Dan Colen, Dash Snow, and then Adam McEwen, Aaron Young, and Banks Violette. These artists crossed paths frequently thereafter in shows at Nicole Klagsbrun, Perry Rubenstein, Bartolami Dayan, and Deitch Projects, and also the last two Biennials, and earned the favor of David Rimanelli.

We think the boys in black are those JS bemoans in "Reconstruction Zone," his recent review for the Voice. In that article, he describes in an unwelcome tone the testosterone/nihilism/post-adolescent/punk aesthetic. This seems to correspond to the "boys in black" idea.

In 2004, JS wrote about "termite art," catching that paradigm before its peak. In 2005, he forecast the "boys/black" movement. So we wonder if he casts the "Riederer Reconstruction" (RR) as a new paradigm. (And we wonder if we are accurately retracing his steps.) One hint may be the "Dereconstruction" show upcoming at Gladstone (the paradigm place?), curated by Matthew Higgs.

Some of the terms in "Recon. Zone" sound familiar: "Painstakingly reassembled all the fragments" reminds me of "labor-intensive," "obsessiveness," and "gestures, bits, and pieces;" from the "California Earthquakes" (2004) review. But maybe the painstaking/fragments dimension is secondary - not intrinsic - to the mission of reconstruction. Moreover, it's significant how RR chooses reconstruction, while termite art undermines and destroys.

Eye on Eisenman

2006-06-15T10:14:00.000-04:00

Nicole Eisenman is a painter's painter, with many enthusiastic fans in NYC. Her new murals at Leo Koenig, Inc. examine the tumultous creative process, a life in art, and a dialogue with feminism. A series of intimately-scaled portraits add more autobiography to the show. The murals are entitled Progress: Real and Imagined, which expresses uncertainty about forward movement.

Eisenman depicts "Real" progress in the left panel, where an androgynous artist scribbles with a plume into a large sketchbook. The artist is hunched over, face nearly pressed to the page, with "his" legs sprawled. He is surrounded by painting accoutrements - Bustelo cans, Turpenoid, and jars of mediums - and a "real" palette sits in the foreground, with thick, crusty gobs of paint on the canvas' surface.

Between the painter's Converse sneakers, we find a shattered lightbulb: a busted idea. Loose pages drift around. Are they unfinished drawings, memorabilia, or passing influences? Between the broken bulb and loose pages, we sense the transience of ideas, that they can be adopted or discarded quickly.

Either way, the artist here is in distress, drawing his way out of a sinking ship. In the distance, an Icarus figure grasps a life preserver and in the foreground, a man tries to pull his mate back on board. If the crew of the Medusa could have been saved by an earnest painter, this hero(ine) would be the one. Despite the near-disaster, the artist continues to work, displaying commitment and perseverance. The painting says, "Hard work is a virtue" or "Where there's a will, there's a way." Or maybe it describes the ways that painting can consume the artist, making him oblivious to the surrounding world, placing him into the realm of his imagination.

Progess "Imagined," according to the same painter's vision, unfolds in the other panel, a frozen landscape inhabited by Amazons developing an agricultural/economical system that appears to be based on artificial insemination. Gangs of women port around the testicles of a slaughtered, giant male whose head rests in the open. Some women carry rifles; others ride horses and supervise hunting dogs. Eisenman has used glacierscapes in the past, as in "Sloppy Joe Party" (2000), "The U.S.S. Williamsburg Crashing into the Shores of Fame" (2003), and the "Mining" paintings (2005). These pastoral scenes indicate a utopia, where people follow natural ideals and live off the land - Rousseau, Gauguin, etc. But Eisenman's utopia is frozen, and therefore, infertile. A tree grows in "Imagined," but it is barren. Thus, Eisenman's lesbian utopia is almost uninhabitable.

In "Imagined," we see more of Eisenman's personal iconography. In a cave, a figure resembling the Fantastic Four's "Thing" sadly reviews a letter. A similar figure appeared in "From Success to Obscurity" (2003). This self-critical melancholy is assuaged by humor. In the cave above, a vagina-headed figure pets a phallic-shaped cat. Above that is a cartoon drawing of a bulldyke with tits and three penises, saying "There's Some for Everybody." A Bergman reference pops up in a nearby game between a woman and death - they are playing "Sorry." Here, the "game" is maybe a pun on the game that women hunt - men. Death sits with his legs crossed and head resting in hands, a pose Eisenman has used in numerous previous paintings to indicate observation or dejection. Death may be losing this game.

"Progress: Real and Imagined" is a diptych, essentially. It features an ambiguously gendered, but apparently male, artist generating an imaginary land. In this land, men are compromised, reduced to currency - only useful for survival, merely necessary. They are like nutrients or shoes. However, the artist conceiving this world is apparently male. As a creator, he masters this universe and reigns supreme. Yet, he is still created; created by a female artist, who is making a painting about making a painting, and who is aware of her power as a painter.

True Love 4 Eva

2006-05-30T12:05:00.000-04:00

We finally saw Eva Hesse's work in person. We had seen plenty in slide lectures, web photos, and magazines, and always admired it. This show also led us for the first time to the Jewish Museum.

Accretion looked great in the space. A slight reveal between the wall and floor creates a thin black line behind the fiberglass tubes, helping to emphasize their silhouettes and the voids between them.

Sans II stretches across the long wall, five modules cast in fiberglass and resin. As each of the modules is in a different collection - two at the Whitney - they deteriorate at varying rates. On the wall, we can see the color change through the series, like East Coast pallor to Mediterranean tan. Evidence of her studies with Josef Albers? We can also see the surfaces weathering, becoming flaky and reptilian.

The turds/meatballs on the grid of Schema reveal a truth about EH. She occupies The Grid - geometric, orderly, rational - and subverts it with all-too-human imperfections - unusual forms, secondary and tertiary colors, and messy textures.

We struggled with the wall label for Contingent. EH said, "I wanted to get to an art non connective, non anthropomorphic, non geometric, non, nothing, everything." How can she deny the anthropomorphic content of this piece? The color connotes flesh, as does the texture - as it is in most of her work at this show. In Connection, the individual components hang like Peking Ducks in Chinatown. This piece also makes special use of gravity in its construction, as the fiberglass relies on dripping for its formation. It's a record of its own construction, something we rarely find in sculpture, but often in painting.

Creating something that records its own progress and records gravity brings Hesse into painting, face-to-face with Pollock. Everyone knows the connection betweenUntitled (Rope Piece) and a Pollock drip painting. We can review how they use space: Pollock announces himself in space by his mural-size scale. Hesse infiltrates three dimensions - four if you count light. The ropes connect one wall to its perpendicular neighbor, and then to the floor, which they reach down to kiss. Shadows cast all over, creating a one-dimensional doppelganger of the sculpture. Individual ropes defy gravity, others bend to it, and the entire structure seems to float. Or explode. The ropes reach above the viewer and beneath the viewer, like a giant spiderweb lunging forward.

Dungeon Art

2006-05-23T10:58:00.000-04:00

The Triple Diesel crew stumbled into this readymade, post-Minimalist, goth sculpture.

It's like Nayland Blake and Banks Violette, or even Sol LeWitt after a night at the Batcave. The yellow pillow killed us. And it's on wheels!

It was alone there, on the sidewalk, under the spooky spotlight of the streetlamp.

Hue Go-Bots

2006-05-18T15:18:00.000-04:00

The TD crew attended audio-visual presentations at the Guggenheim last night by Hugo Boss Prize nominees Damian Ortega and Aida Ruilova. 2006 marks the tenth year since the inception in 1996 of the biennial award.

We knew Aida Ruilova pretty well from her 5-monitor installation at the 2004 Whitney Biennial, Greater NY, a show at Greenberg Van Doren, and drawings in places like Scott Hug's K48 magazine. But she's been in major shows all over the world - even the Venice Biennale and current Berlin Biennial. We didn't see Julian LaVerdiere - are they still boyfriend and girlfriend?

Aida isn't much of a public speaker, but her videos are riveting. Throughout her oeuvre, percussive and rhythmic sound adds as much structure to the videos as the editing, even essential in some videos, like the inhaling exhaling waves in "Untitled." Gasps and ejaculations repeat until they become beats, turning the videos into aural fugues. Her new video - the longest so far - honors her mentor Jean Rollin, a French director of horror/vampire films: Rollin, Ruilova's Rosetta. In this video, Rollin plays dead on a bed while a young woman mourns him. She mounts him and unzips his pants, suggesting fellatio and necrophilia. It's Elektra complex and the anxiety of influence, via the macabre. Interspersed through this narrative are shots of cemeteries, castles, and a scholar's library, along with creepy dead girls. In this video, Ruilova indulges more in the vampire imagery she had earlier evaded. That evasion validated her horror aesthetic, by shaking the genre stereotypes. Here, we suppose it's okay, since she's doing an homage to Rollin.

Damian Ortega, new to us, really knocked our calcetines off. His presentation began with "Tired Pickaxe," a sculpture of an axe bent along the handle. The pickaxe lays on the sidewalk, yet isn't prostrate - it curves up, as if struggling to get up, or maybe resigning after a long day. We thought of that bent streetlamp done by Martin Kippenberger.

This surrealist, sculptural strategy surfaces again in the series of Coca-Cola bottles blown to imitate female figures. Other work was more rule-based and Minimalist. 50 numbered cinderblocks were stacked in a grid. Onto this wall, he painted an auto battery bearing the name "America." Then he reordered the grid in varied directions, which caused the battery image to become reconfigured. And then in other projects, he examines how function separates an object from a sculpture "Obelisk on Wheels" is a moving - so unreliable - landmark. "Cosmic Thing" disassembles and then suspends the components of a Volkswagen Beetle, an apotheosis from mundane vehicle to sculptural spectacle.

Still convinced about "the expanded field," we appreciate how Ortega's sculptures merge with architecture and wonder if Ruilova's efforts in film and music suggest an analogous "expanded field" for video.

Google trends

2006-05-17T14:18:00.000-04:00

The TD crew has had a blast with Google's new feature, Google Trends. One can search for something and then see who else searches for it.

"Sex," naturally the first choice, seems to attract Islamic countries: Egypt, India, and Turkey.

"Andy Warhol" is popular in Pittsburgh - the Museum - and then UK cities. New York is only the fifth highest Warhol seeker. But it's numero uno in searching for "Edie Sedgwick" and "Candy Darling."

"Kippenberger" is most popular in Europe, especially in Berlin, Cologne, and Hamburg; again, NY is fifth.

Denver, Philadelphia, and San Diego lead searches for "Sistine Chapel." "Van Gogh" is sought after by Santiago, Amsterdam, and Buenos Aires. "Ana Mendieta" is popular in Miami, NYC, and London. The top ten searchers for "Piero della Francesca" are in Italy, except for Paris.

"Triple Diesel Crew" produced no results; same for "TD Posse" and "TD Krew." We'd like to hear how you fared.

"The Searchers" is popular in Birmingham, UK; London, Manchester, and Sydney. Nothing in the U.S. Western states, except for L.A.

Congratulations, graduate

2006-05-11T11:07:00.000-04:00

The TD crew occupied seats at Radio City Music Hall yesterday for the graduation ceremony.

The President's speech criticized the Brooklyn Parks Department for closing and censoring Brooklyn College's MFA thesis show and confiscating, damaging, and losing student artwork. He also condemned Brooklyn College for submitting and not defending its students. We silently thanked him for mentioning the students' blog and reminding the audience members of the threat of philistinism in powerful places.

We had an hour to kill after the ceremony and visited the Biennial for the second time. Awesome cartoonists Matt Madden and Jessica Abel were there, checking it out. The TD crew dug Matthew Monahan's sculptures, Robert Gober's photos, Mark Bradford's epic collages, Urs Fischer's macabre candles, Paul Chan's tragic projection, and Jutta Koether's liquid glass paintings. After our next visit, we'll try to post something more substantial about the Biennial.

Yeah, so graduation. All done with our grad program. How is it that we are still such simpletons?

Outside the Box

2006-05-09T11:04:00.000-04:00

We keep thinking about the Donald Judd mini-retrospective at Christie's. It was our first time seeing so many Judd sculptures in sequence.

Prior to this experience, we saw in Judd only the cool, mechanical, precise, architectonic, analytic, orderly, and measured qualities - "typical male." It was like talking to an engineer in the family.

But atop the Simon & Schuster building, in a freshly painted, loft-like space with brick walls, the tranquil atmosphere and wealth of natural daylight illuminated Judd in ways we had missed.

Judd understood color. A seemingly black plexiglas panel bounced color around the interior of a steel box, unveiling evergreen, purple, and blue, complementing the nearby echoes of an orange panel. A wall piece made of green boxes and red boxes reflected each on the other producing rich grays where they met. The glass panels in "Untitled" (1990) were prismatic, capturing the light rays passing through the room, and when we stooped low to look up through the sculpture, we discovered a mesmerizing moire of metal and mirrors. Pacing back and forth before "Untitled" (1974), was like inspecting Army privates in rank and file. The steel and red interiors took on personality (or antipersonality?), becoming square-jawed soldiers called to impenetrable attention, each barking the same hearty-but-rigid response.

Judd cobbled with the details. His socket screws are not aligned, but the others, as in the steel sculptures, are. How contrary to the masculine "grand gesture," to twist bolts into rows, yet how paternal to oversee and maintain these orderly systems. Yes, it's about macho intimidation, but it's also about a patrician standard, like an obsession with hygiene and habits.

It was funny to see scuff marks on "Untitled" (1988), a red plywood and Plexiglas object on the floor. Our detective proposed that visitors had poked at the piece with their feet, like tires on a car at an auto dealer.

We always enjoy the auction house preview exhibitions, for the chance to see work up close, to catch it before it disappears into someone's living room or warehouse. But this afternoon was extra special.

Sing Sing (Ain't Got that Swing)

2006-05-08T14:34:00.000-04:00

The TD posse took a fast train to Sing Sing Prison this weekend. We were in big trouble!

Actually, our friend is a volunteer art teacher at the prison, and invited us to see the inmates' art exhibition and stage show. The event was produced by an organization called "Rehabilitation through the Arts (RTA)" the name of which explains itself. Aside from making art, some inmates even earn college degrees while serving time (although no MFAs). Drawings and paintings ranged from tightly rendered, illustrative caricatures of rappers to poignant reflections on the prison experience. One prisoner drew the scene from his window, and then placed a box over the drawing, leaving only a narrow slot for viewing the picture. We understood the statement about constriction, and also recalled Duchamp's "Etants Donnes." One inmate even adhered found objects - a bundle of sticks (a faggot?) - to paper. This year's stage show was based in dramatic improvisation and music, but previous episodes featured "12 Angry Men" and even plays authored by inmates.

Naturally, but regrettably, cameras are prohibited of visitors to Sing Sing, as are sketchbooks and pencils. Actually, everything is prohibited. So use your imagination, as we use our memory.

The experience was a moral dilemma for us. We admired the inmates' rehabilitative efforts and earnest performances before strangers. On the other hand, we felt animosity towards these men who had committed violent crimes, and worried about how their victims' families. In the end, we concluded that we could support the rehabilitative programs, if not the inmates.

Geometric non-serendipity

2006-05-04T11:50:00.000-04:00

Triple Diesel tries hard to avoid "absolute" responses. No art is utterly hopeless and bad, and no art is unspeakably triumphant and great.

So here are some things we liked about Brian Alfred's paintings at Mary Boone Chelsea:
1.)Internal Scale: it's exciting to see how composition can add monumentality to a painting, even in the face of modest subject matter.
2.)Commitment: Alfred is unwavering in his commitment to clean, sterile spaces and surfaces in his razor-sharp city- and landscapes. Why? Dunno, but "commitment" is a content-free attribute.
3.) Titles: despite the impersonal paint application, Alfred selects heartfelt titles that reveal wonder and surprise: "The Saddest Day of My Youth" and "The Most Beautiful Night I Can Remember."

On the other hand, terms like "beautiful" - especially in a title - betray a conservative view of aesthetics and possibly philistinism. What is really beautiful? Daisies? Elizabeth Hurley? It's an underdefined term that nobody - especially an artist - should use it, except as a shorthand in persiflage. Anyway, a night sky is more "sublime" than "beautiful."

Brian Alfred's paintings explore the same things as American Modernism and Regionalism: the post-industrial city, dynamic cityscapes, and technological progress. We can think of Benton's "America Today" murals, Sheeler's precisonist pictures, or Demuth's, and even Stuart Davis abstractions. But someone like Sheeler was able to cultivate that clean control and order without stifling the image. His precisionist interiors and exteriors are still murky and mysterious, smelling of soot. The Ford Motors Plant photo series elaborated this ability. Stuart Davis' geometric abstractions never suffer the suffocating sterility of these Alfred paintings. The Davis' are lively jazz pieces, buzzing with vitality.

Brian Alfred's contemporaries include Benjamin Edwards and Kevin Zucker. The polygon and perspective zones of Edwards are dazzlingly complex. And Zucker's analytic, ascetic mixed media interiors and furniture pieces tune in to architecture more astutely, as well as challenging the conventions of painting. How about Kristin Baker's Nascar crashes, where acrylic patches slip over each other and only suggest the larger picture, like through a prism? We could even consider Lane Twitchell, who implodes city-inspired images into kaleidoscopic, multi-layered, labor-intensive collages that look like butterflies, tribal tattoos, doilies, gazebos, veils, and the sun, all processed through a blender and fractal transmogrifier.

But Brian Alfred just settles for programmatic application of his acrylic colors and large scale. That's why we struggle to avoid our least favorite adjective - "boring" - and hurry on to another show. These paintings can go in a bank lobby.

Geometric serendipity

2006-04-30T23:31:00.000-04:00

Behold this glimpse of sublimity, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum. Only steps away from this geometric serendipity is Ellsworth Kelly's slanted canvas and Joel Shapiro's brick red ballerina. Life is great.

Naughty Nathalie

2006-04-27T13:18:00.001-04:00

Aristocrats enter a checkerboard-floored ballroom and prepare to dance. G-men in black suits and shades, a la "Men in Black" or "The Matrix" rush in, guns blazing and a mutual massacre ensues in this scene worthy of Tarantino.

A bourgeoisie girl enjoys afternoon tea, only to be interrupted by a visiting jungle boy out tree-climbing. He teases her, she taunts him, and they begin to fight over the girl's plate of lemon cake. She debriefs him and pokes his penis with a stick, until the housemaid clears things up.

A tiger licks a bather's bottom till she is wooed to bed.

A Black duke cavorts with three mistresses in bed, then eats a banana.

Nathalie Djurberg's "Lowlife Scum and Freaks" videos, sardonic comedies in clay, pit men against women in sexually charged, vulgar, and violent scenes. She depicts people at their most animal - humping, panting and fighting - despite their civilized surroundings. In fact, many characters mix with animals, like the woman and her rimming tiger, or the boy who torments his cat till it bleeds. Trouble arises when she equates that black duke with an ape, however; some of us may squirm when the dirty jokes go so far.

The videos are guided by art historical references: the gun battle could have been a Watteau, the interracial orgy any of the Olympiae from the 18th century, the lemon cake struggle a Gainsborough. But the raw humor and transgressive acts counteract this, and each force makes the other even funnier. We sense some Mike Kelly and Paul McCarthy here; one character even looks like their "Heidi."

Hans Berg composes the "score" to each video. It's like Danny Elfman meets Atari; the music is delicate and emotive, yet whimsical and absurd. Djurberg lights her scenes in naturalistic ways, and edits in a dynamic way, keeping in mind the cinematic aspects of her product.

Djurberg's women have big, frizzy hair and pouty, swollen lips. Her men have huge noses (a device common among European cartoonists and illustrators)and troubled expressions. All have the wide eyes and clumsy movement we see in "South Park," but not "The Simpsons." In this clay world, tears, snot, and blood are the same substance as skin and hair - and the word balloons that take a few seconds to unfold. This use of material - rather than just illusion - places Djurberg in the overlooked medium of stop-motion animation, which is sculpture as much as it is video.

It's like Magid

2006-04-26T15:23:00.000-04:00

Gina Magid paints on satin, using pencils, paint, and glitter. The drawings depict gesturally dashed animal drawings and abstract streaks. An owl flies into disembodied, cupped hands, a tiger lurks in a shimmering lake, and a cheetah or something eats a deer. The drawings are as static as traced drawings, and the layered interaction between images is unattended and meaningless - no suggestive associations, as in Salle; no virtuosic braggadacio, as in Walton Ford; and no apparent conceptual spin, as in Ann Craven.

Most of the drawings look like bad fashion illustration. Magid's glitter and satin - "girly, gaudy, glamorous," she says - confirm this fashion-inspired superficiality, which often produces base bijoux that remind viewers of embarrassing one-night stands. (Our morning-after pill was Amy Sillman's ambitious, vigorous paintings at Sikkema.)

The one exception is "BMX/Ghost Rider" with a more daring adventure in black & white. She may have consulted Franz Kline.

Gina Magid's paintings would have looked great in the downtown Vice clothing store (is that closed for good?) or maybe a Bedford Avenue coffee shop. It's outdated hipster art - deer and "nature" imagery vanished from hipster handbags and T-shirts a year ago. This just doesn't supplement the fashion-conscious scenes of Elizabeth Huey, the dystopic glamour of someone like Rita Ackermann or the melancholic glamour of Jack Pierson.

Holiday Crews 2006

2006-04-24T12:57:00.000-04:00

Xavier Cha's "Holiday Cruise 2006" encompasses a series of readings, performances, and events at Taxter & Spengemann. The artist dons a complex, sculptural costume and anchors each event, sometimes as a passive object, elsewhere as a performer - but always a spectacle. Currently, she masquerades as a giant cornucopia, filled with fruit, vegetables, and her feet.

In "Feast for the Decadent," Lisa Kirk served pork, absinthe, and fruit to dinner guests/artists Robert Melee, Julie Atlas Muz, Elizabeth Neel, and others. She assigned each gastronomic guest two cards. On one card, the recipient wrote his or her possible last words. Phrases included "You are a handsome pig," "What IS Robert's problem?" and "Eat my pussy." After exchanging the cards, these phrases became the mandatory script for the night. The other card contained a number, 1 - 12, and when the sugarcubes-as-dice rolled your number, you determined whether the group drank, ate, danced, or all three.

This rule-based performance held its structure for about 30 minutes but soon dissolved into a mere foodfight. A failure? Hardly. The invitation called for "Dionysian" behavior, and Lisa Kirk's events often rely on the unpredictable relations between observers and participants. Her "Greatest Show on Earth" (2002) assembled an eager crowd at Participant, Inc. The climax of the event depended on some curious attendee flipping a light switch, which actually detonated a cake decorated like the Whitney Museum. The event became its own afterparty; guests enjoyed a slice of sweet cake. This undirected, but hoped-for spontanaeity is a key element in a Lisa Kirk project.

Xavier Cha continues her project as a mass of cornrow braids (The Addams Family's "Cousin Itt" meets rastafaria) and a polyhedron deity (a psychedelically geometric druid).

Absinthe-minded

2006-04-23T13:25:00.000-04:00

Absinthe is justifiably illegal. The TD crew was turned upside-down by two glasses of the green mean.

Play-by-play of the fallout:

7p: Finished drinking. Apparently, TD dined at Giovanni's pizza, but can't remember.

7:15p: Couple at next table snapped at TD for being annoying. TD apologized, possibly cried.

8p: TD staggered to Envoy for the Amanda Lear party, an hour late for 7-pm meeting with a friend. Inside, we bellowed, slurred, and chortled our way through conversations, eventually staggering back out.

8:30-9:30p: Unaccounted for. Possibilities include a) running laps around 23rd St, b) sleeping in a nearby elevator, c) dipping feet in Hudson River, d) loitering on 14th St in search of transsexual hookers.

9:30p: Arrived 90 minutes early for nearby housewarming party, pounded on door, encouraged to return later.

10p: Reunited with friends at Passerby, got kicked out.

10:08p: Lost.

10:30p: Reunited at Gansevoort Hotel bar. Kicked out.

10:45p: Attempted Townhouse bar. Kicked out.

11p: Attempted rearrival with friends at nearby housewarming party. Kicked out.

11:30p: Successful attempt to occupy bar at Bette restaurant. Risked months of awkwardness by making out with friends.

12:15a: Ran home in the rain, fell asleep.

11a: Woke up, puked, went back to bed.

Amy Sillman

2006-04-18T09:32:00.000-04:00

With a flat brush or maybe an oil stick, Amy Sillman scrawls lines up, down, and across the canvas, then paints in blocks of color, then draws more. Figures often emerge from this process, and one finds appendages and heads emerging from the dense clouds of brushstrokes.

The ghost of Guston appears in many of the paintings. In "Untitled", the brushy blocks of color recall Guston's abstractions from the mid-60s. And then in "The Plumbing" and "A Bird in the Hand," Sillman connects to Guston's later fixation on outstretched arms clutching objects.

An abstract figure in motion in "The Elephant in the Room" reminds us of Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," or even a futurist abstraction. A blue triangle recurs at one side of the picture, and three pairs of legs repeat at the bottom. Finally, in "Them," Sillman stirs up something different, more like Ensor, as a gang of apparent men and women, at least one of them a giant, treks across a foggy landscape, leaving behind them a forest, or maybe a village. Their purple bodies and grotesque profiles are rendered in a lilting tangle of lines. With a solemn palette, Sillman also finds whimsy in the liberty taken with the figuration. And she enlivens the composition with a bold yellow brushstroke, reaching from the bottom almost to the top of the canvas, as if Barnett Newman visited her studio.

A contemporary worth noting here is Joanne Greenbaum, who also pursues abstract clusters of blocks and irregular forms. Greenbaum is geometric and diagrammatic, while Sillman procedes by vigorous drawing and scrubbing to achieve her paintings. And of course, there's Cecily Brown who similarly treads abstraction and figuration. We can also consider Charlene von Heyl, another abstract painter, simply to compare her relatively programmed process and cleanliness - more German - to Sillman's spontaneous, direct, and invigorating painting. It's like "good old American" abstraction. But does that mean "old-fashioned?" Possibly - although Sillman's cartooning and humor refreshes an aged paradigm. Or maybe oil-on-canvas painting is already so rooted in tradition that this becomes a moot point.

Girls Gone Mild

2006-04-17T11:35:00.000-04:00

Retreating to their bedrooms, Jocelyn Hobbie's young women preoccupy themselves by playing music, carving wood sculpture, or smoking cigarettes (despite the Surgeon General's warning).

The cinematic staging, moody light, and damsel-in-distress drama remind us of Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills and Hopper's interiors. Most of the women are frozen, wide-eyed, and vulnerable - deer in headlights. Veins protrude from their pale foreheads and arms, tears dribble down their cheeks, and one suffers bloodshot eyes. The distressed body reflects inner turmoil. Like zombies, they stare into space, and light carves pointed angles around them.

In "Feeder," a buxom woman smiles at infantile arms transcending the picture plane and canvas edge. We see a hint of the crib, but also wonder if these disconnected arms extend from the viewer, like those video games that include onscreen the hands of the gunman or martial arts fighter.

Another exception is "The Racks": before a stack of stretched canvases, a woman (who looks like Becky "Bellwether" Smith, oddly) crouches on all fours in pink, lacy lingerie. She appears cross-eyed and sticks out her wet tongue. The man, alone in this oeuvre, scowls upwards, clutching a dollar bill - either depositing or withdrawing it. He adjusts his jacket to either conceal or expose his penis, which twists like that of a pig. We assume a carnal exchange, but which is the client?

The canvas surfaces are smooth, but not polished, and her process probably involves much measurement and correction. She paints in thin layers and constructs the body by geometric forms. We observe some similarity with Ridley Howard, but can trace Hobbie's subjects back to Paula Rego and Balthus. Of course, Balthus' reclining nymphs are more passive than Hobbie's upright, rigid women. In any case, her attention to detail is her strength, proven by her rendering of delicate materials, anatomical minutiae, and specific character traits.

Nan: Still a fan?

2006-04-15T13:25:00.000-04:00

Nan Goldin's "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" brought images of downtown outcasts to many viewers for the first time: junkies, transvestites, drunks, and wastrels. It also pioneered the snapshot aesthetic - candid, spontaneous, grainy - that has trickled on through Wolfang Tillmans, Larry Clark, and Ryan McGinley. Goldin's work has continued to be heavy-hearted and sympathetic and snapping friends and acquaintances, she snaps herself in the process. In her more obvious self-portraits, Goldin depict herself as battered, intoxicated, or depressed.

In "Sister, Saints, and Sibyls," Goldin investigates the tragic suicide of her sister, Barbara, a teenager whose rebellion reaped institutionalization. Over a backdrop of Saint Barbara, a martyr, Goldin recounts the brief life of her elder sister. Barbara's eventual self-destruction haunts Goldin - physically and emotionally. We see patterns of self-destruction surface in Goldin, from her history of substance abuse to her self-inflicted wounds. "I intend to explore the relationship between the story of my sister, myself, and Saint Barbara," says Goldin.

It is hard to be critical of an honest, tender, and cathartic project such as this, especially considering the technical ambition - this is Goldin's first exhibited project involving moving images. Criticism here feels cynical.

But one might suspect Goldin, who seems to revel in her image of a suffering, self-destructive woman. The camera focuses on Nan looking hungover and morose. Her occasional smiles look manic and her voice in the video is flat and lifeless. Isn't she too old for this self-pity and melodrama? And is it vain to equate onself with a martyr? For which causes or communities is she dying? Or is this the mythical melancholy that chronically afflicts many great artists? Or are we too naive still, to understand how a grieving, recovering addict feels at age 50?

In any case, "Sisters" ignited tears and forlorn sighs from the audience in Matthew Marks' graded viewing space. The framed landscapes and portraits in the main space provided a decompression chamber, helping to diffuse the shock of leaving the dark viewing room for the sunny street outside.

Salo is aggressive and hostile

2006-04-05T10:57:00.000-04:00

We rented "Salo" by Pier Paolo Pasolini. This movie caused discomfort, nausea, insomnia, guilt, and depression. Based on Marquis de Sade's "120 Days of Sodom," it tells of old fascists who kidnap 19 children to a distant palace, where they debauch the children in lawless and inhumane ways. This includes beating, whipping, forcefeeding, raping, and killing them.

We tried to read it as dark humor, but that only went so far. And everyone says, "Pasolini indicts the viewer, the passive, entertained voyeur, aligning him or her with the villains, especially in the torturous climax." But that's nonsense, because the fascist villains don't just watch: they initiate and participate in the horror, and even couple with each other. The viewer responds with sympathy, helplessness, or the aforementioned nausea.

Ain't broke; why Fisk it?

2006-03-27T10:25:00.000-05:00

Lars Fisk's new show at Taxter & Spengemann includes a marble sculpture called "Trashcan." The piece looks like a trashcan, slightly smaller in scale than a real trashcan, and contains marble rubble.

One can imagine that the rubble pieces are the excess cut-aways - remnants of the process - now reincorporated into the piece. The piece could also be called "Recycle bin." It's much like Brancusi's sculptures, in which the rugged pedestal is part of the polished sculpture - physically inseparable.

There's also a Duchampian humor to the piece. Just as Duchamp selected a mundane object for his "Fountain," Fisk similarly chooses a banal item, which we usually ignore or deny, except when we need it. But to use the marble to present the trash can AND the trash is a kind of transfiguration - changing water into wine.

"Trashcan" has a dent in the side, so it leans to one side. This connects it to Renaissance marble figurative sculptures, in which the subject stands contrapposto. "Trashcan" also leans, shifting its weight, putting its best foot forward.

Plastic cups

2006-03-25T11:08:00.000-05:00

Tara Donovan's plastic cup installation, "Untitled (Plastic Cups)," looks like a topographic map or better, a snow-covered glacier.

We thought of Friedrich's "The Polar Sea," a landscape with plates and chunks of ice compounded atop each other, generating blues and yellows as the light filters through. Similar color variation occurs in "Untitled," despite the uniform cup selection. The translucent cups brew blues in the thin areas and yellows in the denser areas. It's like Ryman, painting in white, but enabling other colors via the bare canvas. Where the towers of stacked cups reach up to chest height, they bow and lean, radiating out, as if to bloom from the mass.

Three million cups make up the sculpture. Assembly took three days, completed by nine assistants. We bet that the cups will be used for drinking wine at the closing reception.

Rowing in Eden

2006-03-23T16:09:00.000-05:00

Youngsters at Judith Linhares' new show shared the same conversation: "Wow, these look just like Dana You-know-who..."

Both painters share relentlessly intense palettes; bold brushstrokes, and spontaneous drawing. Their figures are blocky, grotesque, and freakish. Both embark on flights of pastoral fantasy too ambiguous to be utopic. Mother nature and human nature can be refreshing, but also menacing.

Judith Linhares, in her 60s, has a fruitful career behind her - including 26 years in New York. Her work is in several museum collections. It's unlikely that she would opportunistically join Dana Schutz. On the other hand, this show's figurative work marks a departure from her previous oeuvre of still life paintings. Dana Schutz uses the figure almost exclusively. And with Schutz' vast press attention, surely Linhares is familiar with her work.

To avoid digressive speculation, let's just assume that Linhares and Schutz share similar influences, so similarity between them is inevitable. It may be more interesting to distinguish the differences between them.

Compare Linhares' "Starlight" and Schutz' "Reclining Nude." Both paintings feature a nude reclining under a vast sky. "Starlight" stars a pink, nude female leaning back on a Mexican blanket, admiring the night sky. She is flanked by two squatting figures. In "Nude," Schutz' hero, Frank, also pink from sunburn, relaxes in the sand, before an ochre ocean. Schutz emphasizes the monumentality of Frank by stretching him beyond the borders of the canvas. Linhares' pink figure is more contained, which establishes the cast scale of the sky, and the massive moon hovering overhead. Linhares also considers light - her figure glows under the moonlight, while Frank seems to evade any light source. Both figures respond to gravity: the pink pixie's head dangles preternaturally; Frank's flaccid penis drapes over his extended thigh, as relaxed as Frank himself.

Their use of light distinguishes one painter from the other. Aside from dappled light filtering through trees to reach the figures, Schutz' figures generate their own light. They beam hot pinks and bright yellows, although some peer out from the darkness. Linhares' figures, on the other hand, bathe in powerful light sources, like the threatening bonfire in "Wild Nights." The inferno in the paintings seems to rage outside the boundaries of the logs meant to contain it. And the fire itself is a bold abstraction, with giant brushstrokes zipping across the surface, like a Karin Davie abstraction. The marshmallow-roasting campers join the viewer in pausing to admire this painterly bravura.

"Fools for Love" is the strongest painting in the show, with a mysterious narrative. Linhares fan Larry Lockridge described "Fools" as being "post-Edenic." Four females occupy a large tree. An innocent naif sits at the base of the tree, gazing dreamily towards the sky. Two brave women stand precariously at ends of the branches, climbing upwards, but risking a broken branch. And at the top of this hierarchy is a vixen glaring down at the viewer. Her menacing face lurks against the dark tree trunk, lit from below in a hot orange color. The tree is a metaphorical upward climb, and suggests that a climber's progress depends on aggression, shrewdness, and intimidation.

Bring 'Em Home Now

2006-03-21T13:27:00.000-05:00

The TD posse visited Hammerstein Ballroom for this benefit concert. Performers included Steve Earl, Margaret Cho, Fischerspooner, Peaches, Devendra Banhart, Moby, Rufus Wainwright, Bright Eyes, and Michael Stipe (whose band included Joseph Arthur, James Iha, and more).

M. Cho described how right-wing hate-mailers have called her a "fat dyke." "I just don't see how that is an insult," she wonders aloud. "That means I would get to eat fried chicken AND pussy." ha ha

Fischerspooner seems more like a big rock show than the kooky electrotheatre we remember. Still, the wardrobe designs and choreography were awesome. Peaches waved a toy magic wand while chanting "Fuck the pain away" and then "Fuck the war away." Devendra B. wins the body language award, with his awkward gesticulations and childlike dancing.

Bright Eyes had the strongest set, totally incendiary with "When the President Talks to God." What a fox, that one.

Speakers included Cindy Sheehan, Air America's Laura Flanders, a pharmacist and translator from Iraq, and a young veteran of the current war, who contended with hecklers in the audience demanding to know why he enlisted in the first place.

Biennial

2006-03-02T10:39:00.000-05:00

Triple Diesel crew shudderd before the intimidating long line for the Biennial opening last night, but it moved more quickly than we expected. Inside felt was energetic and enthusiastic, but crowded and overstimulating. We frequently nodded our heads, making mental bookmarks about what to examine more deeply on a return trip, when we could actually focus on the work.

Painting seems thin; Peter Doig is crammed into a corner upstairs. But 2D work is everywhere. Carter covers a big wall with his drawings and Yuri Masnyj presents a sculpture based on his geometric drawings, like an El Lissitsky kind of thing. Daniel Johnston also has some funny, diminuitive drawings.

Time-based media offers the most spectacle. Urs Fischer's installation of candles dripping wax to make a venn diagram is eerie yet brainy. Paul Chan's projection of objects and people in silhouette refers to 9/11. And the Caligula video is a blockbuster (literally). With Karen Black and Benicio Del Toro, how could you be uninterested?

Many alumni from Neville Wakefield's summer show, "Bridge Freezes Before Road," resurface here. Adam McEwen contributes fake obituaries, which appeared at the Armory Show last year. Dan Colen is here, too, as are GNY artists Aaron Young and Matthew Day Jackson. DC was also in the show Adam McEwen curated at Nicole Klagsbrun, which included Dan Colen and Center for Land Use Interpretation, also in this Biennial. Speaking of Venn Diagrams! Anyway, we wondered about Adam Helms; he would have fit in.

The Wrong Gallery's project, "Down By Law," is dense, provocative, and political. Few women appear. Does an otherwise politically critical show make up for that oversight? Weegee, whose work we just saw at Mary Boone has several photos of dystopic urban life. A Cadmus drawing depicts a violent struggle between lynchers and a victim, the latter bleeding from lacerations and punches. The composition is dynamic and bursting out, and reminded us of Michelangelo's "Crucifixion of St. Peter." Across the room is a Marcel Dzama drawing of some violent ritual. The late Mark Lombardi's last drawing is in a corner, next to Jules DeBalincourt, and under a Leon Golub print. Above them is a surveillance camera and framed passport photos of 9/11 suspects. Below is a pipe bomb sculpture. "Piss Christ" is in the center of the room, opposite of David Wojnarowicz' incendiary "This Kid" poster, which is one of our favorite works ever, causing chills on each viewing.

After some return visits, we'll post something more detailed.

Snowmen in Dogpiles

2006-02-27T12:22:00.000-05:00

David Humphrey: painter/sculptor of cute cuddlies and couples, animals and Ike, arrangeur of afterparties. At Triple Candide - er, Candie - he stacks, aligns, and configures the snowmen into sexually-suggestive set-ups, a send-up of sports huddles, dance circles, and hot-tub hijinx.

We aren't sure how DH obtained the manufactured snowmen, but we like how he customized them. On some, he splattered paint in messy gestures, and on others painted pairs of eyes. The eyes appear especially on the hands and around the carrot noses. Is he hinting at autoeroticism by animating the hands? Also, many of the snowmen are upside-down - inverted - so the carrots appear where genitals might. It looks like snowmen with orange hard-ons, possibly sixty-nining each other. The dogpile along the wall could also be an orgy.

Male athletes embrace, slap asses, etc in a communal display of fraternity. The homoeroticism of this practice is obvious and Humpey - er, Humphrey - toys with it through his snowmen. Just like rugby players end a game with a communal keg; snowmen end a Christmas season with a swinging afterparty.

"Can You Hear Me Now?"

2006-02-23T15:47:00.000-05:00

Everytime I pass this corner, my phone rings. The caller hangs up before I answer. But I look up, and sure enough, the second-floor skull is looking on.

The Carpet Matches the Drapes

2006-02-22T11:11:00.000-05:00

This was the pinnacle in the recent Schiele retrospective at Neue Galerie. We get all of the merits of the artist: direct sexuality, structural yet seductive line, and feverish color. The piece is called "Girl with Black Hair," but it could be "Vagina."

The face peers out from a black nest, like labia protruding from a bush. The torso is a bulging shaft, like a hard-on - compare to Munch's "Madonna," described here a week ago. A tangle of overlapping vaginas occupy the remaining composition.

The black vagina, like a gaping laceration, stretches across the drawing, a waving flag or barbed claw reaching out. A white vagina reverses its black counterpart; like a vaginal yin and yang. Beneath this is the vaginal window, the meta-vagina, which spreads open to unveil the vagina proper, enshrouded in black curls. It is the apex of a three-hole arrangement, a triangle, supported by the two black holes at either side.

Schiele loads the drawing with sexual imagery, but stumbles into the typically male mistake of reducing the vagina to a hole or slit, as if it's a wound. They overlook the structural and external complexities. Could a man have painted a blooming, complex O'Keefe flower? Probably not, unless he studied gynecology.