Response to Charlie Finch’s “Tuna Fisch”

 

Andy Warhol‘s Tunafish Disaster (1963) went unsold at Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Evening Sale last night. Apart from Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s Brother’s Sausage (1983), estimated at $9,000,000 but which also failed to sell, Warhol’s work was one of the most expensive at this auction. Telling the story of two Detroit housewives who died from fish poisoning after eating canned tuna, Tunafish Disaster has clearly been subjected to Warhol’s typical aesthetic treatment and references the prevalent theme of capitalist consumerism (and in this case its tragic effect). However, his artistic subversion of this subject is not the only aspect to the work, as Charlie Finch would have us think in his recent artnet article (from 4th November 2009). The work also highlights the fleeting fame of those plucked from obscurity after their violent and unforeseen deaths.

Warhol’s fascination with death and the celebrity is well-known and evident in plenty of his works – he only began producing his Marilyn silk screens after her suicide, for instance. The press photos he selected for Tunafish Disaster are set within an unromanticized context of real life but, rather than deeply alienating, is the work not simply forcing us to confront a stark reality? Granted, the concern of harmful supermarket food is still rife today, so the work remains to be relevant in that sense. Whether it is still radical however, is another thing. Radical perhaps only in its estimated price of $8,000,000 at last night’s auction.

Finch’s comparison with Urs Fischer‘s current exhibition at the New Museum (“Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty”) is also somewhat lacking. His claim that the show is full of one liners simply suggests Finch’s lack of imagination and stating that it is purely market driven by one collector seems a rather trivial point. In fact, it is also an incorrect point, there was not just one single collector who supported the show, there were a number of financial backers (it is far from uncommon for collectors, foundations or even galleries to support the budget of big museum shows). Even Warhol wouldn’t have got as far as he did if it weren’t for the support of his collectors. What’s more, there is no guarantee that the collector will reap any rewards in future auctions; there is always the risk that the work could flop as demonstrated last night.

Fischer’s floor of “shiny boxes” (Service à la française (2009)) goes much further than simply rehashing Warhol’s Brillo boxes, as Finch suggests. Requiring more than 25,000 photographs and over twelve tons of steel, the end result is 51 reflective, chrome monoliths onto which not just one but a huge variety of images have been silkscreened. In navigating through this optical labyrinth, set out like a city-grid, Fischer has constructed a disorienting landscape that both engulfs and dwarfs the viewer.

We essentially enter into Fischer’s multifaceted universe which eschews fact or fiction and are immersed in his theater of the absurd. His work reveals a fantastical, at times nonsensical tableau that is subtle in its altering of viewer’s perception and unpredictable in its exploration of materials, scale and distortion. In attempting to drive home an angry point about market relations and consumerism, while comparing two dramatically different artists, Finch has ultimately bitten off more than he can chew.

 

“Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty,” runs until February 7, 2010

Hanging Fire – Asia Society

Although acclaimed back home, most of the 15 Pakistani artists in “Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan” at the Asia Society are somewhat obscure by Western standards. The contemporary works on show reflect an impressively wide diversity of mediums as well as influences and this exhibition is the first ever major survey of work from Pakistan in an American museum.

Zahoor ul Akhlaq‘s dark works on canvas open the show with a haunting presence, made even more emotive by his story which cruelly ends with his murder in 1999. Eschewing a specific genre, these large canvases show elements of modernist abstraction as well as architectural structures and, as suggested by the title A Visit to the Inner Sanctum 4 (1996), Sufi influences.

Some of the strongest influences in the show other than religion are from the Mughal Manuscript tradition as well as socio-political issues, both of which which can be found in the work of Imran Quereshi, Mahreen Zuberi as well as Faiza Butt. Of these three artists, Faiza Butt’s work proves to be the most interesting. Using polyester film as the surface material, her works teem with Western and Eastern imagery, much of which derives from her everyday life. Her Western counterpart may be the German duo Abetz/Drescher, whose canvases are equally brimful, with strong influences from 60s psychedelic pop posters.

Imagery from the everyday can also be seen in Huma Mulji‘s tremendous piece High Rise: Lake City Drive (2009) which features a taxidermy water buffalo (an ubiquitous creature particularly in rural Pakistan) atop a Romanesque column (more common to urban architecture). This incongruous juxtaposition demonstrates the conflict between the rural and the urban, the traditional and the forward-thinking, with the two often awkwardly intermingling. Rashid Rana, one of the most renowned artists in the show, also presents this discord in his composite photomontages. Rana builds a pixelated mosaic of images, featuring buildings and Persian carpets, out of smaller images of bloody animal carcasses and slaughterhouse employees.

Ali Raza‘s collages continue this notion of extracting and reinterpreting the commonplace, along with Hamra Abbas‘ slick, winged rocking horse, which takes the popular imagery of the Buraq (Mohammad’s steed) and re-brands it into a life-size toy. The controversial re-imaging of the character, pushes it over the edge from serious religious icon to trivial plaything. Similarly, in Spine (2008), Naiza Khan has taken the traditional two-piece choli (attire worn by women at their wedding) and reformulated it into a steel and leather bondage corset, highlighting the sexual yet oppressive nature of the garment.

For a country which is continuously in the political section of the news (only this week Hillary Clinton‘s comments hit front pages after claiming she found it hard to believe that no one in Pakistan’s government knew where al Qaeda leaders were hiding) the art coming out of Pakistan broaches political as well as social tensions on a global as well as local level. This “hanging fire” or postponing of judgments, however, somehow doesn’t seem to ring true here. More burning than hanging, each artist appears to be clearly voicing strong opinions with almost every work presenting layers upon layers of contentious subtext.

The exhibition runs until January 3, 2010

Mark Bradford & Kara Walker – Sikemma Jenkins & Co.

Mark Bradford - The Middle Path - 2009

Multi-hued litter collages by Mark Bradford and the aggressive characters of Kara Walker‘s works are casually juxtaposed in Sikkema Jenkins & Co‘s current exhibition, running until October 17th.

Mark Bradford’s canvases and pile of paper-mache footballs present an assemblage of found paper from the streets of his neighborhood in Los Angeles. Appropriating low economy advertising, Bradford uses sections of posters as well as billboards to paste onto the canvases. He also often uses mason string to delineate lines or text onto them, such as in the piece Untitled (2009), where the words “Now Hiring Security Guards” are boldly outlined in red over three colorful, collaged figures. These gritty paper traces of ghost economies stand between the individual and the community. Although subtle enough to appear scattered and abstract, the works capture iconic societal memories which could easily flit by unnoticed.

Kara Walker’s presentation includes a variety of collaged canvases, delicate paper sculptures, gouache collages and two shadow-puppet film animations. The simple addition of the tied ends of a head scarf in the paper sculpture Thicket Parts 1 & 2 (2009) immediately places the figures within the narrative of an Old South drama, a recurring theme in Walker’s work. We instantly recognize the era, race and supposed social standing of these silhouettes. Her imagery is consistent: violent masters, lynched slaves and uncensored sex pervade each piece. However, there is also a tragicomic element in the films through the puppets’ stilted movements and a contradictory aspect to her addressing of race: it is not simply white versus black but also black versus black.

Moving from an integrated Californian suburb to Atlanta (where integration had not fully taken place in the minds of the locals) at the age of 13, Walker likely had to confront opposing social conditions which now reflect in her work. Bradford, on the other hand, is from a family of what he describes as “merchants” (seamstresses, hairdressers and mechanics with their own businesses) and serving all echelons, which has influenced his perception of social roles and economies.

With only 5 years between them, they both explore racial, social, political and cultural concerns, particularly in their critiques of blackness as well as whiteness and negotiating power within the community. However, what proves more interesting are their differences in examining these topics.

Bradford’s pieces are almost impersonal in comparison to Walker’s, whose work is also far more representational in its depictions. Whites and clusters of vibrant reds often dominate Bradford’s canvases which contrast starkly with Walker’s predominantly black and white collages. Their influences are also determinedly different. Echoes of Robert Colescott‘s reflections of African-American culture, Adrian Piper‘s social interventions and William Kentridge‘s silhouette puppet films are all apparent in Walker’s compositions. While, elements of city grids are easy to imagine in some of Bradford’s works, such as Red Painting (2009) resembling a semi-abstract map it bridges the architectural chaos of a Julie Mehretu painting and the architectural coolness of a Mondrian painting.

Due to the layout of the exhibition, with the artists’ artworks taking up wall spaces opposite each other or in separate rooms, it is particularly challenging to find any real dialogue between the pieces themselves. Bradford’s work seems to take a dominating role, not only in the size but also in the weight of the canvases, with their layers upon layers of paper. They almost swamp Walker’s fragile paper sculptures, which might easily blow away if it weren’t for the vitrines. It ultimately leaves one wondering whether the varying treatment of subject matter necessarily needs to be forced together in this way and if it would not have been better to have given the artists more space to call their own.

The exhibition runs until 17 October 2009

James Ensor – MoMA

Skeleton looking at Chinoiseries - 1885, altered in 1888

Visitors unfamiliar to James Ensor‘s work may well feel disappointed when first entering his current retrospective at MoMA. A brown wash of small, muddy landscapes and still lifes appear to fill the room on first glance. It is not until half way round the room on coming across The Scandalized Masks (1883) and inspecting it more closely that I felt a clear sense of relief. Not just by the subject matter (a witch-like figure with hollow eyes enters the room in which a man with an over-sized nose is seated), where the viewer imagines multiple, potential scenarios playing out, but also in realizing that his earthy tones are actually full of light and life.

Continuing through the exhibition, the works become more absurd and grotesque: masks become a regular occurrence and skulls as well as skeletons begin to pop up more frequently until numerous, sometimes farcical, theatrical dramas weave in and out of the works, with the drawings quite often being far more ephemeral than the paintings.

The location of Ensor’s studio, in the attic above his family’s curiosity shop, indicates an evident progression of him being inspired by the view from his studio window, then by the objects such as masks and fans found inside his home, until finally exploring his own internal imagination on the canvases. One work, which straddles these latter two periods, is Skeleton looking at Chinoiseries (1885, altered in 1888), featuring a skeleton slouched in an armchair, leafing through an album of Japanese prints, with his studio as the backdrop. Formerly, it had included a person rather than a skeleton but the addition of a skull, almost like a mask in this instance, as well as the skull in the bottom left became a recurring motif in his work following the death of his father in 1887.

The light, entering the room from the skylight at the top left, seemingly dissolves the contents of the room with whites, reds and blues suffusing the lines on the canvas. If we compare this to a later painting such as The Skeleton Painter (1895/6), we see the lines becoming a lot stronger with more restrained brushstrokes. Although remaining colorful, the dramatic change in dynamic of Skeleton looking at Chinoiseries after the skull additions, takes on a turbulent, fantastical memento mori role. We question why Ensor went back to this particular piece, whether the figure may have been his father or even a self-portrait, and does this mask-like skull challenge or surrender to death?

What is clear, through this work and the exhibition as a whole, is Ensor’s illustration of being tormented by demons. It is easy to imagine him as a lunatic hidden away in his family’s attic, devouring the pop culture surrounding him through the weekly broadsheets, the shop below and the view from his window. However, his later prints and paintings depicting satirical scenarios, humorously disrupt the contemporary social and political hierarchies. Essentially indicating that Ensor had complete control over his ‘delusions’ and was ultimately strategic in his unconventional societal depictions.

The exhibition runs until 21 September 2009

Allora & Calzadilla – Temporary Kunsthalle

Allora & Calzadilla - How To Appear Invisible - 2009

The Temporary Kunsthalle in Berlin is currently in the midst of inter-office strife with the entire Artistic Advisory Board resigning, including the director Thomas Eller, just weeks before the opening of Allora & Calzadilla‘s exhibition. Prefacing the show’s press conference with a curt message, Dirk Luckow (also formerly on the board) made clear that no questions would be taken regarding the intended programming of the Kunsthalle. Despite this disorder, however, the fourth exhibition seems to be the most successful yet.

Diminishing the space of the Kunsthalle, by dropping the ordinarily cavernous ceiling to an almost claustrophobic 2.9 meters, Allora & Calzadilla’s installation Compass is disorienting for those familiar with the room. Within moments, a tapping sound begins to resonate from overhead as one of the tap dancers, brought in by the artists, begins their syncopated shift. A creeping feeling of entrapment takes over, as though we are under the floorboards listening to the sometimes rhythmic, sometimes arrhythmic choreography that maps a sonic path across the ceiling.

Remapping space also takes place in their new film How to Appear Invisible where a German Shepherd dog navigates through the ruins of the Palast der Republik, as if searching for signs of the iconic monument that once stood. A common sight for Berliners over the past year has been the gradual disintegration of the former GDR political headquarters and Allora & Calzadilla are not the first artists to document it’s deconstruction. However, the inclusion of a dog wearing a Kentucky Fried Chicken cone collar disrupts any sense of nostalgia and monumentalism, instead creating new, more erratic associations with American fast-food culture and placing importance on the building site itself.

The only contentious aspect is the effectiveness of Allora & Calzadilla’s questioning of site-specificity: The location and history of Berlin hangs heavy in the film, and the installation perfectly fits the Kunsthalle’s dimensions – the artists would be hard-pushed to find an identical space in which to fit this work. Yet their attempt to realign space in these meditative pieces is ultimately successful through the removal of sentimental or transcendental elements, so that both sites essentially become architectonic cadavers.

The Pavilions – 53rd Venice Biennale

Elmgreen and Dragset - The Collectors - 2009

A summary of the 2009 Venice Biennale‘s key pavilions.

Beginning with a London outpost and its first unusual appearance at Venice, Hannah Barry‘s Peckham Pavilion features 20 young artists who all present fresh perspectives on Venice’s cultural impact on the world. Young artists seem to be more prevalent during this biennale, with Ciprian Muresan at the Romanian Pavilion and Ahmet Ögüt at the Turkish Pavilion, both of whom featured in the New Museum‘s Generational: Younger than Jesus exhibition. In his work Exploded City, Ögüt traces buildings, recently ruined due to political insurgencies, to build a fictional model city constructed from tragic memories.

Although somewhat out of the way, Martin Boyce‘s No Reflections at the Scottish Pavilion is well worth a visit. Boyce explores Venice’s labyrinthine, aqueous, reflective landscape and revitalizes the almost abandoned palazzo with black, constructivist chandeliers and autumn leaves scattered between concrete wedges, which snake through the central room as if forming stepping stones across a now dried-up pool.

Examining the multiple layers of our shifting consumer existence at the Australian Pavilion, Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro‘s Life Span is composed of a monumental stack of 195,774 VHS video cassettes. The total running time of this now almost obsolete technology equates to the average person’s life span of 66.1 years. Liam Gillick, on the other hand, attempts to create new forms of address by breaking the traditional confines of architecture. He completely opens up the German Pavilion to the public and has constructed a kitchen-like structure to function as a utilitarian space, previously lacking in the pavilion, with an animatronic cat disrupting the conventions of the site. Although unusual, presenting a non-native is far from exceptional (Mark Titchner showed at the Ukranian Pavilion at the last Venice Biennale) and whether this truly integrates the visitor is somewhat questionable.

More effectively reconsigning the social space, Roman Ondák transplanted the gardens, surrounding each pavilion in the Giardini, into the Czech and Slovak Pavilion. By continuing the grey, gravel path, connecting each pavilion, into the space, visitors enter slightly disoriented. Ondák forces us to take note of the real and recognize our physical surroundings by nurturing a section of the grounds frequently left unnoticed and in tatters.

Conversely, Ivan Navarro creates optical illusions in the Chilean Pavilion using neon and mirrors to create fictional thresholds, making us question what lies beneath the surface without being able to physically access it. His bicycle Resistance is attached to a mobile, fluorescent light chair which illuminates when cycling, the 13 multicolored neon-lit doors of Death Row create an illusion of multiple corridors, while his white neon Bed sculpture reflects in a way that the word seems to continue endlessly into a well.

Finally, Elmgreen and Dragset‘s curatorial presentation at the Nordic and Danish pavilions is the highlight of the entire biennale, making it particularly disappointing, although certainly predictable, that Bruce Nauman was awarded the Golden Lion for his show at the U.S. pavilion.

Entitled The Collectors, the setting for each pavilion, conveniently located adjacent to each other in the Giardini, is a troubled collector’s home. Reconfiguring the art space into a domestic one, visitors are taken on a tour of the ‘homes’ by a real-estate broker. The Nordic Pavilion takes on the form of an LA bachelor pad with art reflecting his sexual identity, including works from Hernan Bas, Terence Koh‘s David, Wolfgang Tillmans and Tom of Finland, as well as a collection of swimwear from ex-lovers. We discover that his fate has come to an unfortunate ending when we find his body floating face-down in the pool outside.

Next door, a broken family home provides the setting for the Danish Pavilion, and although an attempt of order is apparent, signs of small accidents and a burnt-out room suggest a troubled relationship with the daughter, who apparently left at a young age. Not only collecting artworks by artists such as Jonathan Monk, this (evidently European) family also collects numerous files as well as Weimar porcelain.

Elmgreen and Dragset cohesively bring together numerous contemporary artists while broaching questions of collecting and the incentives behind it. Whether defining one’s sexuality, orderliness, cultural ambitions or vanity, the property essentially establishes the identity of the owner within the structure of the home.

Scenario #5 – fake or feint

Daniela Comani - Eine glückliche Ehe - 2003-07

In its fifth scenario, fake or feint, presents a group show with works from three artists discussing the body and language and their place within the social.

Keren Cytter narrates short stories through film and in Der Spiegel (The Mirror) she applies her usual tactic of fast-paced, monotone soliloquies, interrupted by multiple voices from a chorus, that seem more like stream of consciousness than typical film dialogue. Overly poetic and ending in tragedy, this tale, relating to longing, love and betrayal, seems more appropriate on a Dionysian stage than in front of a wobbly camera that continuously turns a figure of eight and culminates in the camera being knocked to the floor. There is a disconnect between the verbal and the visual in this unrealistic, anti-aesthetic, staged piece. The stilted exchanges switch between the intimate and the trivial as well as German and English at notable points in the drama. Similarly, repetition is a key factor to the circulative plot so by filming at floor level at the beginning and end Cytter enables the work to loop smoothly.

A single, empty room in a Berlin apartment takes the form of the stage for this claustrophobic drama, providing a blank canvas for the main action. The actors’ outfits are equally plain, as they are either scantily dressed in white (the chorus) or naked (the lead protagonists). The 40-something female lead views herself as a 16-year-old, believing that this is the ideal age for the man she loves. Initially attempting to conform to popular belief, it is only when she sees the reality of her age in the mirror and is bombarded by the cynicism of the merciless choir that her perception breaks down.

There is nothing resembling a conversation here, although the characters may be responding to each other, their passive deliveries seem detached leaving the audience even further distanced from the events. This work is performance as an object in itself with real people performing a script in which they report rather than express emotions. Revealing feelings in this way, however, ultimately means that we are unable to identify with the characters and the work fails to generate any empathy in the audience.

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The second artist involved in the exhibition is Heiko Karn whose work architecturally responds to its occupied spatial environment, creating a broken vocabulary that explores the visible in socio-political scenarios. The work, Separate Together, focuses on the furniture normally defining authoritative public interactions where the view is open, revealing the interior of lecterns as well as podiums and combining them with a normally private space, the voting booth, thereby confusing the interior and the exterior. Furthermore, they stand alongside oversized office blinds clearly denoting concealed, administrative activity.

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However, the most compelling work came from Daniela Comani‘s masterful photography series Eine glückliche Ehe (A Happy Marriage), in which an ordinary-seeming couple are portrayed at different stages in their daily life. This includes vacation photos, cooking in the kitchen, shopping together as well as more intimate moments, all credibly located within the everyday. However, on closer inspection the viewer notices an overarching, disquieting resemblance between the man and the woman and we realize that it is in fact the same person. Comani herself plays both roles and suddenly the whole context completely changes and questions of identity, narcissism, gender issues and existential doubling arise through this overload of images.

Through the constructed symbiosis, Comani peels away multiple levels of the social and the individual in this exploratory photography narrative, suggesting the artificiality and stereotypical predictability of a relationship through meticulous staging and post-production digital montage.

Exploiting relationship clichés, Comani uses visual identifiers to recreate gender ontology. The viewer deduces, through attire, haircuts, vacations and home, that the couple are comfortably well-off and liberal, while facial expressions suggest a grim seriousness from the man and cautious devotion from the woman. Through their outfits, postures and positions, their identities meld into a single template which we automatically assume has been enforced by the male. The repetition of images attempts to affirm this couple’s actual existence but also simultaneously reinforces historical as well as current gender issues. By disrupting the order, Comani succinctly unveils the often predetermined mechanisms of the relationship.

The exhibition runs until 13 June 2009.

Keren Cytter’s Der Spiegel is also included in the New Museum‘s exhibition The Generational: Younger Than Jesus until 5 July 2009.

Gallery Weekend Berlin

Domestic homes for animals, obscure angles, reconsidering historical documentation and mathematical formulas are themes which reoccur in the current field of contemporary art in Berlin. Below is a breakdown of some of the attractions according to their art district.

Carsten Höller - Gesangskanarienmobile (Singing Canaries Mobile) - 2009

Linienstrasse‘s main features are Carsten Höller‘s Vogel Pilz Mathematik at Esther Schipper and Simon Starling at Neugerriemschneider. Höller’s movable mobile is made up of seven birdcages, each with a resident canary, and makes an aural impact prior to impressing visitors in Schipper’s main room. Balancing the cages according to the division of the square, Höller provides a reference to his starting point in the same room with three square paintings, while the fuchsia walls simultaneously provide a colorful backdrop for the birds.

Simon Starling reverses stereotypes in his solo show by using Carrara marble to make a copy of cheaper Chinese marble. Although their market prices are dramatically different, the costs of sculpting and shipping are identical, and, creating ties between conventionally disconnected cultures, Starling poetically depicts these economic conditions.

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Amy Sillman - Hinterhaus - 2009

The Markgrafenstrasse collection is a little more disappointing. Amy Sillman‘s zum Gegenstand exhibition at Carlier Gebauer includes paintings, drawings and a fanzine. Body parts, blocks of color, a childlike sun and scribbled charts combine to suggest Sillman’s usual schematic disorder and breakdown of the physical but they have lost the intricate delicacy that her previous works displayed so sensitively.

Although Carsten Fock‘s wall piece in his solo September show, entitled The Devil, is particularly effective in its hypnotic reference to color field painting and Suprematism, the paintings and drawings are predictable in their attempt to transcend the earthly with frenzied scribblings and demonic figuration.

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Jan Dibbets - Land and Sea Horizon - 2006

Lindenstrasse proved to have the largest collection of engaging exhibitions starting with Jan Dibbets‘ alternate-perspective photos on the ground floor at Konrad Fischer. In Dibbets’ cut-and-paste Windows series, he removes the window from a photograph and places it at the center-point of a monochrome background, while his Land And Sea Horizons levels out the skylines of flat, green landscapes and calm seascapes at alternating angles.

Zbigniew Rogalski‘s large, empty aquarium paintings upstairs at Zak Branicka also consider obscure angles and optical fallacies. Each aquarium has its glass painted white, preventing the viewer from a clear view inside and reminding us that the painting can only offer a certain depth of perspective and reality.

At Volker Diehl, each of Frauke Eigen‘s timeless, placeless photographs pervades a sense of calmness but also captures intricacies in the everyday that would normally be passed by. However, Florian Neufeldt‘s first solo installation at Galerie Opdahl disrupts any tranquility, with an unseen machine unpredictably moving across a fake MDF ceiling and sporadically drilling holes through the wood. The lowered ceiling and the erratic movements of the indiscernible machine, that intermittently penetrates our realm, combine to create a both disorienting as well as sinister environment.

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Rei Naito - Pillow for the Dead - 2000

Up behind the Hamburger Bahnhof, Albert Mertz‘s meticulous works in Andersen’s Contemporary‘s Project Room are minimalist in their formal experimentation with various materials and geometric forms. While next door, an equally unembellished exhibition is hidden at the back of Loock Galerie with work from Rei Naito. Her ephemeral Pillow for the Dead, a tiny, silk pillow, is one of three works which expand Naito’s interest in recreating the matrix space, a luminescent, almost transparent, in-between position that only exists in certain states.

Julian Rosefeldt‘s sneak-preview of American Night, at the northern Arndt and Partner, is a panoramic five-channel film installation which, in the style of a Western, compares the ‘founding’ of America with the recent destruction caused by the US in the Middle East. Heavy with political references (with the former and current US Presidents farcically depicted as puppets) it reveals the flaws of printed history, Western movies’ depictions of the Wild West as well as recent military events.

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Johannes Wohnseifer - Canon (ref: 5) - 2009

Arndt and Partner’s Zimmerstrasse location features new works from Ralf Ziervogel, entitled Young German Art. His drawings, although still predictably explosive and disquieting, are less hectically detailed than his earlier works and come across as being slightly rushed with the heavy incorporation of black spray paint. However, the sculptures such as RZAH are polished and deliberately formulaic, rather than ephemeral and fantastical, in their conception.

A few blocks away on Dessauer Strasse, Johann König is presenting a solo exhibit with Johannes Wohnseifer, including photographs of coffee-table books on Africa, Gerrit Rietveld-inspired sculptures and aluminum wall pieces. Although not immediately evident, the works are linked through the questioning of their cultural relevance and functionality within the domestic while also alluding to Germany’s dubious colonial history.

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Connected Things Collected - Haubrok Sammlung

The final exhibition worth mentioning is curated by Jonathan Monk and had its vernissage in March but was also open during 7×2, where a collection of galleries were invited to present their artists for one day in the same building as the Sammlung Haubrok. Entitled Connected Things Collected, Monk has simply assembled works which particularly interested him from the Haubrok collection as well as his own. However, the ensuing exhibition is compelling in bringing together a fascinating collection of artists, such as Alighiero e Boetti, Ed Ruscha and Jerry McMillan, as well as revealing a close relationship between the curator/artist/collector and the collectors themselves.

Hernan Bas – Lehmann Maupin

Hernan Bas - Ubu Roi

Last night’s opening at Lehmann Maupin‘s Chrystie Street space in New York was particularly engaging. The Dance of the Machine Gun & other forms of unpopular expression, features nine new paintings by Hernan Bas which, although distinctly his style, reverberate with Leipzig School reflections, Futurist ideas and Russian theater influences.

Bas taps into F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, not only referencing it in the title of the show but he also ties together the idea of the absurd with visionary thinking in the works. In addition, the manifesto’s claim that there is no masterpiece without an aggressive character, aptly applies to each of these dynamic paintings.

Fantastical landscapes certainly dominate the canvases, as they often do in Bas’ works, but this show lacks the nostalgia that is often present in his earlier works (many of which are currently on view in the Brooklyn Museum). Instead of singular dandies or couples sensuously placed in a lush countryside glade, angular, complex structures and a variety of characters take over mountainous landscapes.

Ubu Roi‘s central figure in bizarre costume leads a line of dancing figures along a precarious platform away from a theatrical city backdrop. Ubu Roi, the title of Alfred Jarry‘s play and the name of the lead character, is both greedy and immature – satirizing the bourgeois’ abuse of their success – who vulgarly disrespects royalty, religion and society by childishly acting out but who ultimately affects no one.

Disaster through war is also apparent in The last protester at the last monument to war and through flood in Mystery Bouf which references Vladimir Mayakovsky‘s play, mocking religion and describing a struggle between the “Clean” upper class and the “Unclean” working class. Furthermore, these paintings both bear resemblance to the Leipzig School style, perhaps most obviously to Neo Rauch, but the explosive elements of David Schnell can also be seen in Colored plastic complex of noise + dance + joy“.

Although part of Bas’ palette may have brightened, the escapism as well as violence distinctly remains and the skyline retains a threatening imminence in each work. The complex tapestry of these paintings provides a fictional overview of destruction through war, global warming and social instability that can easily be related to contemporary society today.

The exhibition runs until 10 July 2009.

Hernan Bas: Works from the Rubell Family Collection at the Brooklyn Museum runs until 24 May 2009.

The Generational: Younger Than Jesus – The New Museum

Luke Fowler - What You See Is Where You're At

The Generational: Younger Than Jesus exhibition at the New Museum in New York has been causing a stir with its plethora of artists born around 1980. The youngest artists, AIDS-3D, are just 22 and 23 years old, and plainly exhibit their youth through their work which presents the common webspeak phrase, OMG, in blue neon at the top of a black plinth and surrounded by candles in a ritualistic, almost mocking, altar. In one way or another, and whether they embrace it or not, many of the artists are evidently products of their generation and, like many of these products, one questions their longevity.

Some have a higher profile in advance of this show, such as Cory Arcangel, whose Photoshop color gradient image, although harking back to a dated minimalist aesthetic, seems to lack any substance outside of its practical, inherent usage. Another is Ryan Trecartin, whose two elaborate yet strangely cozy rooms, one the interior of a plane the other a living room, exhibit two of his turbulent films which, in their half-depressing hotel room, half-digital otherworldliness, contort the characters’ identities and erratically consider the current financial crisis.

However, the artists that prove to be the most interesting go beyond simply using the world to build new narratives, and instead adopt a role of social researcher and present their analyses accordingly. On the second floor, this turned out to be a whole corner of works, including the artists Mohamed Bourouissa, Tala Madani, Luke Fowler and Liu Chang. Bourouissa’s gritty images from the Parisian banlieues, entitled Périphériques, are filled with ambiguous tension. The photographs capture the interactions of those living in the French projects, each oblivious to the camera and each somehow involved in a gripping discussion. The viewer creates their own clichéd story which then begins to unravel after inspecting these staged documentations more closely.

Madani’s delicate, small paintings with their soft palettes, humorously and provocatively depict Middle Eastern men in sexually ambivalent activities. Her controversial pieces are almost child-like in their questioning of the pastimes behind the closed doors of the male domain. In Fowler’s video works, which explore the documentary in filmmaking, he builds an unexpectedly informative montage of new and archival footage as well as interviews and photographs. In this case, the subject is R.D. Laing, the psychiatrist who encouraged the schizophrenics, housed at East London’s Kingsley Hall, to develop their thought processes rather than suppress them. Through this collated material we are presented with an intelligent, head-strong man alongside images of the system he was trying to break as well as that which he was trying to create.

Buying Everything on You is the centerpiece of this corner by Liu Chang, with three wide plinths openly displaying the belongings of three strangers. Approaching random people on the street, Chang bought everything on their person at that moment and now displays them in a way that resembles a natural history museum exhibit. We are presented with the artifacts of contemporary life, from underwear to sticker photos in their wallets, making once-intimate objects into documented observations.

Finally, one other artist bears mentioning on the third floor: Cyprien Gaillard, who combines an ethereally triumphant soundtrack with footage of concrete blocks in the Ukraine, Russia and France (the latter features dramatic light shows projected onto it, only to be demolished minutes later). Using the inner-city monolith, from the landscape of our everyday, Gaillard creates dramatic backdrops for fantastical imagery while simultaneously addressing the social impact on society.

The exhibition runs until 5 July 2009

Spring Exhibitions – Artists Space

Ilana Halperin - Physical Geology

Artists Space opened their Spring trio last night with solo projects from Saul Becker, Ilana Halperin and Francesco Simeti. The works by the three artists, although separated into different areas, intermingle effectively within the entire space as they all discuss nature on a topographical or animal level.

In Nature Preserves, Saul Becker collects and documents the most overlooked plants of all: weeds. Electroplating each sample and placing on pedestals within fictive landscapes, the oft-disregarded plant becomes aestheticized. The weed’s natural power against human constructions is admittedly impressive, however, one questions whether Becker’s attempt to bring the underdog to the public’s attention and idealize it is truly effective. It is easy to forget that although defying concrete, weeds play a similar role as humans in killing other plants. Furthermore, Becker’s semi-scientific focus within a fictional environment, means the work becomes a purely aesthetic object, thereby preventing the passing on of this botanical knowledge of the urban landscape to the viewer and losing it’s touch with the real.

Francesco Simeti’s wallpapers usually introduce collages of hard-hitting images from the media into the home, aggressively propounding ideas and discursive arguments concerning current politics and contemporary life. In this latest project, Volatili, his work initially seems more appropriate for a child’s room or as illustrations in a children’s book. However, to create this piece Simeti worked with ten mentally disabled patients, together drawing images of birds. Symbolizing complete freedom, denied to these patients, the work also reflects Simeti’s continued interest in the ornithologist John James Audubon‘s work. Although more subtle than earlier works, there is a delicate yet restless undertone to Volatili.

Finally, Ilana Halperin’s piece Physical Geology continues her fascination with the rapid movement of lava and the prolonged calcifying process that forms stalactites in caves. By juxtaposing imprints of lava medallions (magma pressed between forged steel plates) and limestone cave casts, Halperin, while balancing natural sculptures alongside each other, also captures two different time formations. The viewer approaches with their own time perception but the velocity of each material’s growth could not differ more from ours, whether faster or slower, forcing us to readjust our concept of time. Halperin’s heavily researched project illustrates her very personal curiosity in the landscape made easily accessible to the viewer.

The exhibitions run until 6 June 2009.

Martin Kippenberger – MoMA

Martin Kippenberger - The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika”

Martin Kippenberger‘s latest retrospective at MoMA, entitled The Problem Perspective, begins with The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika” in the open atrium. Impressive from all angles, this work is one of Kippenberger’s largest installations and the view from the upper floors makes the football field, on which it is modeled, along with the flanking stadium seats all the more apparent. Strategically placed on the field, however, are bizarre formations of desks with mismatched chairs facing-off against each other: Look-out posts, Eames chairs, children’s highchairs and lifeguard seats are just some of the assortment.

Haphazardly built, wooden mannequins sit at desks with lot numbers, obscure images are projected onto oversized books and an overturned desk further reveals Kippenberger’s penchant for collectibles (in this case, ashtrays), all adding to the disruption of his voyeuristic employment agency. The formality of the job interview is made into an absurd spectator sport in this chaotic piece and eclipses Klara Liden‘s installation in the neighboring room, Projects 89, where urban detritus has been tidily arranged atop a large, impenetrable, white cube.

On the top floor, Kippenberger’s exhibition route takes us from his model Spiderman Studio, calling into question the idea of the artist as superhero with his bottle of vodka and pack of eggs hanging out the back window, through a sweeping, although slightly cursory, overview of his life’s oeuvre.

Each section is separated by a sculpture, whether a metal lamp weaving through the wall, his imaginary portal Entry to Lord Jim Loge for his secret society, or his life-size, self-deprecating model Martin, Into the Corner, You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself. Further works comprise key selections from the Dear Painter, Paint For Me series, as well as his cluster of sculptures Peter. The Russian Position and multitudinous drawings on hotel stationary. Others which aren’t often exhibited, but of note, include Three Houses with Slits, with their heavily political, yet humorous, architectural elements as well as Now I am going into the big birch wood, my pills will soon start doing me good. The final works from The Raft of The Medusa series, made shortly before his death, complete the exhibition on a neatly foreboding note.

The exhibition runs until 11 May 2009

P.S.1 Spring Exhibitions

Lutz Bacher - Jokes (Bella Abzug)

Lutz Bacher‘s first ever museum survey at P.S.1, entitled My Secret Life, brings together many of her works dating back to the mid-1970s. One of the American artist’s key works from 1976 The Lee Harvey Oswald Interview, haphazardly depicts 18 panels with appropriated, collage-like images and text from Bacher interviewing herself on the subject of the assassin. The result is a convoluted impression of who Bacher imagined Oswald to be. This quest for identity, through shards of conflicting information, can be seen as an attempt to understanding Oswald but also self-reflexively, as in much of her work, to Bacher piecing together her own self.

Continuing this theme of identity, her 1989 work Jackie and Me reveals a paparazzo’s shots and account of Jackie Kennedy attempting to escape him. By simply running from the camera, despite wanting to hide, Jackie provides the photographer with plenty of material and ultimately reveals more about her self than she perhaps intended.

Bacher’s interest in surveillance is also apparent in the 40-minute video Closed Circuit of the daily occurrences at Pat Hearn Gallery over a period of nine months. While Manhatta also has this observation element it distorts the original view by running an aerial shot of Manhattan backwards.

Her black-and-white photographs of celebrities and politicians with somewhat amusing balloon-bubble comments as well as the 1960s Vargas girls’ soft-porn images combine with the other works to make a hodge-podge exhibition. Although allowing a personal insight, the works in this context almost seem to be made on an erratic whim by someone who has yet to figure out where their real interests lie.

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Florian Slotawa - Pier and Water

The one exhibition that particularly stood out was Florian Slotawa‘s solo exhibit, with his work entitled Pier and Water. The Berlin-based artist collected the distinctly minimal, German furniture from his apartment and has precariously rearranged it into an extravagant sculpture in homage of Mondrian‘s oval paintings entitled Pier and Ocean from 1915.

Not only depriving his home of practical appliances and furnishings, Slotawa has recontextualized their domestic usage into an art form that seems to lose it’s personal intimacy in this new context. The furniture strangely and suddenly becomes useless, neutral and impersonal in this mammoth form, completely losing its original meaning.

To provide the viewer with more context, Slotawa also presented small reproductions of Mondrian’s works on the opposite wall. And although Mondrian’s oval influence is harder to spot, stepping back from the piece and with the framework of the white wall behind, an abstract painting with strong lines and geometric forms appears.

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Both exhibitions run until 14 September 2009