Artinfo.com | July 2008

New York Summer Group Shows

July 10, 2008

NEW YORK—You could devote a lifetime to the study of the sociological and aesthetic factors that go into curating group shows, and many have. But the summer group show? It’s less conducive to scholarly analysis, and for good reason. The summer show complies with only two guidelines: cram as much work as possible into the gallery, and have a blast. As a result, some patterns have developed over the years. The artist-curated show is an old favorite, as is “pick a medium or subject and stick with it — no matter what.” Other themes come and go depending on the climate: “political” was hot two years ago (though its absence from the current crop is a little surprising, given that this is a presidential election year), and “ecology” was last year’s hit.

So far, 2008 seems to be the year of the apocalypse. In June, Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road was judged superior to all other books of the past 25 years (by Entertainment Weekly, no less), and this summer’s blockbuster film Wall-E, one of Disney’s darkest yet, has met wild critical and popular success despite (or because of) being set on a dismal, depopulated planet Earth some hundreds of years in the future. So what does it mean about our current outlook that this year’s hot theme is gloomy science fiction? We’ll leave that one for the scholars to debate. It’s time to head to the beach.

Disclaimer: Although I would have liked to, it was impossible to check out every show in New York, including those with such fantastic titles as the intriguing “A Rictus Grin” (at Broadway 1602) and the hilarious “Journey to the Center of Uranus” (at Canada), so consider this just a small sampling of some of the best summer exhibits up now, organized according to category.

Artist as Curator

"Not So Subtle Subtitle" (curated by Matthew Brannon) at Casey Kaplan, through August 1

With artist-curated exhibitions, it often is impossible not to try and discern the artist’s aesthetic among his or her choices. Matthew Brannon’s solo show at Friedrich Petzel was one of the best shows this spring, largely because his witty and expertly designed prints so successfully evoke (and poke fun at) a younger generation of artists who, while already jaded with the gallery scene, still struggle to find a successful foothold within it. Brannon’s selections at Casey Kaplan reveal a penchant for the light and playful, particularly when accompanied by cool graphics. Guy de Cointet’s Russian Constructivist riff, You Don’t Know the Russians (1983), as well as Jay Batlle’s untitled drawings on fancy stationery, embody these criteria perfectly.

"Deep Comedy" (curated by Dan Graham) at Marian Goodman Gallery, through July 30

Don’t let the title fool you. “Deep Comedy,” which first appeared at Ballroom, a nonprofit gallery in Marfa, Texas, is neither funny nor especially deep. But it does have its charms and is perhaps most compelling for exploring commonalities among artists in curator Dan Graham’s milieu. Most of the participants in the show — who include John Baldessari, Rodney Graham, Allan Ruppersberg, Michael Smith, and William Wegman — came of age, like Graham, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and all share a predilection for self-deprecating, deadpan humor. This is perhaps best articulated, surprisingly, by Vija Celmins’s Pan (1964), an early realist painting depicting what appears to be a waffle iron as it begins to smoke. But for a true laugh-out-loud experience, don’t miss Christian Jankowski’s The Matrix Effect (2000), a video using children to impersonate artists such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Glenn Ligon, and Baldessari, each spouting emotional truisms about their work.

“Slow Glass” at Lisa Cooley Fine Art (curated by Františka and Tim Gilman-Ševcík), through August 3

Co-curated by Františka and Tim Gilman-Ševcík, Brooklyn-based artists and writers, “Slow Glass” (the title a sci-fi reference, fittingly) manages to be thoughtful and spare without seeming austere. Indeed, this inspired show, which is almost entirely made up of text-based work, has an appealing lightness that’s just right for summer, perhaps due to works such as Lizzie Hughes’s artist book, in which she wrote a short essay recalling her youth in her native Wales, then had it translated into Welsh, which was then translated back into English, and so on until the final text, in English, bears almost no resemblance to the original. A large wall piece by Emma Kay records all of the objects listed in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams; a similar piece by the same artist notes all of the objects named in the bible. (The section for the New Testament begins “Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh.”) But the show’s crowning object is Heather Rowe’s elegant sculpture. Hanging from the ceiling, a series of painted wooden frames curves languidly through the gallery, with shades of blue flashing from mirrors positioned above.

Sci-Fi

"The Future of Disruption" at the Kitchen, through August 1

One downside of the summer group show is that, while the press release often boasts a juicy theme and a titillating title, the exhibition rarely delivers on those promises. "The Future of Disruption" is an exception. Not only are the artworks all great, but they all fully support the premise, which, after all, is relatively simple: artists who incorporate science-fiction tropes to comment on an uncertain future. There’s even a nice subtext, to boot — racial politics as envisioned many years hence. One standout work is Simone Leigh’s video featuring the intriguing “Star Trek” character Uhura, who, I never realized before seeing this piece, was essentially the Starship’s secretary, a role that is offensive on so many levels.

"Landscapes for Frankenstein" at Sara Meltzer Gallery, through August 1

Though maybe not science fiction per se, this tightly curated grouping still taps into an anxiety regarding a future in which everything, even nature, is mediated (of course, some might argue that day has already arrived). Mary Shelley’s monster is evoked for his sad, lonely wanderings across Europe, and a Romantic thread runs throughout the show. Kim Keever’s dramatic photographs portray sharp peaks and desolate valleys that turn out to have been constructed by hand in aquarium tanks. Peter Rostovsky takes on the photography-versus-painting debate by juxtaposing a miniature sculpture of a man against a painting of a sublime landscape, which the man attempts, in vain, to capture with his minute camera. And Steve Robinson’s superbly detailed and textured paintings deconstruct the famous Ryoanji garden in Kyoto (a Zen rock garden that is itself a meditation on the act of looking at landscape) by reducing tourist photos of the site to masses of pixels and then building an image out of the digital detritus.

"The Left Hand of Darkness" at the Project, through August 15

Taking its title from the first feminist sci-fi novel (by Ursula LeGuin in 1969), this show attempts to comment on gender and identity, but the end result is a bit of a mixed bag. There are some good works, such as Michael Portnoy’s endearing and suggestive abstract sculpture made of felt, Pieces of Us Are Moving (a game for 2 persons) (2008), and Matt Greene’s seductive painting The White Shoes (2008). As a whole, “The Left Hand” fails to be more than the sum of its parts, but it wins points for convincingly pulling together disparate works by an unlikely group of artists to illustrate a complicated idea.

Single-Minded

"The Culture of Collage" at Pavel Zoubok Gallery, through August 8

For pure visual delight, you can’t do better than this excellent show. Granted, Pavel Zoubok has an edge on this field, since collage is his specialty, but the opportunity to see delectable works by historic masters of the medium such as Al Hansen, Jacques Villegle, and the ever-enticing Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt paired with new pieces that are both witty and stunningly well-executed by Michael Cooper and C.K. Wilde is simply too enjoyable to miss.

"You Can Go Your Own Way" at Renwick Gallery, through August 2

This show had me already with the Fleetwood Mac title, but even that didn’t prepare me for how good it is. The only organizing principle here is the can, a concept so simple and brilliant that I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before. "You Can Go”’s list of knockout works begins with Martin Kippenberger’s beer-can handcuffs and Lucas de Guillio’s Can Barnacles (2008), a rusty dented can covered in barnacles, but the show is more than a playful romp. The lowly aluminum can, held aloft by fine art, takes on new meaning and depth thanks to its appearance in works such as Rachel Harrison’s Very Young Small (2005), which incorporates a can of very young small peas, and David Hammons’s This and That (2001), in which cans of Alpo dog food surround a sleeping cat. Richard Prince, who once had a studio on Renwick, an out-of-the-way, one-block street in Tribeca, made a new piece for the show: a basketball backboard with a cascade of cans pouring from the hoop. This show presents great work by great artists — a trick that is harder to pull off than it sounds.

"The Guys We Would Fuck" at Monya Rowe, through August 1

Yes, this show was curated by an artist, so it could have gone in the “artist as curator” category, but its unique focus on a specific subject was too good not to go in the “single-minded” group. While other galleries take a medium and run with it (see Matthew Marks and Greene Naftali’s joint painting show for a prime example), curator Nayland Blake went with an idea (well, really more like a happy fantasy) and took it to another level altogether. Curated in the daisy-chain style, with each artist asking a friend to participate, who in turn asks another friend to participate, and so on, each member of this limitless group (which includes Catherine Opie and Marlene McCarty) is asked to submit a work conforming to the guidelines suggested by the show’s title. The results are surprising — not many pin-ups in this bunch, and more than one abstract interpretation. And the show changes each day, as Monya Rowe dutifully mounts each 8 ½ by 11 sheet of paper as it comes in, both on the walls of her gallery and on her Web site, where all of the works are available to the masses to print out and compile into a zine. It’s perfect for when you have the summer lazies, but still have a hankering for art.

—Claire Barliant

To read this article in its original context, go here.

Artinfo.com | July 2008

New York Summer Group Shows

July 10, 2008

NEW YORK—You could devote a lifetime to the study of the sociological and aesthetic factors that go into curating group shows, and many have. But the summer group show? It’s less conducive to scholarly analysis, and for good reason. The summer show complies with only two guidelines: cram as much work as possible into the gallery, and have a blast. As a result, some patterns have developed over the years. The artist-curated show is an old favorite, as is “pick a medium or subject and stick with it — no matter what.” Other themes come and go depending on the climate: “political” was hot two years ago (though its absence from the current crop is a little surprising, given that this is a presidential election year), and “ecology” was last year’s hit.

So far, 2008 seems to be the year of the apocalypse. In June, Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road was judged superior to all other books of the past 25 years (by Entertainment Weekly, no less), and this summer’s blockbuster film Wall-E, one of Disney’s darkest yet, has met wild critical and popular success despite (or because of) being set on a dismal, depopulated planet Earth some hundreds of years in the future. So what does it mean about our current outlook that this year’s hot theme is gloomy science fiction? We’ll leave that one for the scholars to debate. It’s time to head to the beach.

Disclaimer: Although I would have liked to, it was impossible to check out every show in New York, including those with such fantastic titles as the intriguing “A Rictus Grin” (at Broadway 1602) and the hilarious “Journey to the Center of Uranus” (at Canada), so consider this just a small sampling of some of the best summer exhibits up now, organized according to category.

Artist as Curator

"Not So Subtle Subtitle" (curated by Matthew Brannon) at Casey Kaplan, through August 1

With artist-curated exhibitions, it often is impossible not to try and discern the artist’s aesthetic among his or her choices. Matthew Brannon’s solo show at Friedrich Petzel was one of the best shows this spring, largely because his witty and expertly designed prints so successfully evoke (and poke fun at) a younger generation of artists who, while already jaded with the gallery scene, still struggle to find a successful foothold within it. Brannon’s selections at Casey Kaplan reveal a penchant for the light and playful, particularly when accompanied by cool graphics. Guy de Cointet’s Russian Constructivist riff, You Don’t Know the Russians (1983), as well as Jay Batlle’s untitled drawings on fancy stationery, embody these criteria perfectly.

"Deep Comedy" (curated by Dan Graham) at Marian Goodman Gallery, through July 30

Don’t let the title fool you. “Deep Comedy,” which first appeared at Ballroom, a nonprofit gallery in Marfa, Texas, is neither funny nor especially deep. But it does have its charms and is perhaps most compelling for exploring commonalities among artists in curator Dan Graham’s milieu. Most of the participants in the show — who include John Baldessari, Rodney Graham, Allan Ruppersberg, Michael Smith, and William Wegman — came of age, like Graham, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and all share a predilection for self-deprecating, deadpan humor. This is perhaps best articulated, surprisingly, by Vija Celmins’s Pan (1964), an early realist painting depicting what appears to be a waffle iron as it begins to smoke. But for a true laugh-out-loud experience, don’t miss Christian Jankowski’s The Matrix Effect (2000), a video using children to impersonate artists such as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Glenn Ligon, and Baldessari, each spouting emotional truisms about their work.

“Slow Glass” at Lisa Cooley Fine Art (curated by Františka and Tim Gilman-Ševcík), through August 3

Co-curated by Františka and Tim Gilman-Ševcík, Brooklyn-based artists and writers, “Slow Glass” (the title a sci-fi reference, fittingly) manages to be thoughtful and spare without seeming austere. Indeed, this inspired show, which is almost entirely made up of text-based work, has an appealing lightness that’s just right for summer, perhaps due to works such as Lizzie Hughes’s artist book, in which she wrote a short essay recalling her youth in her native Wales, then had it translated into Welsh, which was then translated back into English, and so on until the final text, in English, bears almost no resemblance to the original. A large wall piece by Emma Kay records all of the objects listed in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams; a similar piece by the same artist notes all of the objects named in the bible. (The section for the New Testament begins “Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh.”) But the show’s crowning object is Heather Rowe’s elegant sculpture. Hanging from the ceiling, a series of painted wooden frames curves languidly through the gallery, with shades of blue flashing from mirrors positioned above.

Sci-Fi

"The Future of Disruption" at the Kitchen, through August 1

One downside of the summer group show is that, while the press release often boasts a juicy theme and a titillating title, the exhibition rarely delivers on those promises. "The Future of Disruption" is an exception. Not only are the artworks all great, but they all fully support the premise, which, after all, is relatively simple: artists who incorporate science-fiction tropes to comment on an uncertain future. There’s even a nice subtext, to boot — racial politics as envisioned many years hence. One standout work is Simone Leigh’s video featuring the intriguing “Star Trek” character Uhura, who, I never realized before seeing this piece, was essentially the Starship’s secretary, a role that is offensive on so many levels.

"Landscapes for Frankenstein" at Sara Meltzer Gallery, through August 1

Though maybe not science fiction per se, this tightly curated grouping still taps into an anxiety regarding a future in which everything, even nature, is mediated (of course, some might argue that day has already arrived). Mary Shelley’s monster is evoked for his sad, lonely wanderings across Europe, and a Romantic thread runs throughout the show. Kim Keever’s dramatic photographs portray sharp peaks and desolate valleys that turn out to have been constructed by hand in aquarium tanks. Peter Rostovsky takes on the photography-versus-painting debate by juxtaposing a miniature sculpture of a man against a painting of a sublime landscape, which the man attempts, in vain, to capture with his minute camera. And Steve Robinson’s superbly detailed and textured paintings deconstruct the famous Ryoanji garden in Kyoto (a Zen rock garden that is itself a meditation on the act of looking at landscape) by reducing tourist photos of the site to masses of pixels and then building an image out of the digital detritus.

"The Left Hand of Darkness" at the Project, through August 15

Taking its title from the first feminist sci-fi novel (by Ursula LeGuin in 1969), this show attempts to comment on gender and identity, but the end result is a bit of a mixed bag. There are some good works, such as Michael Portnoy’s endearing and suggestive abstract sculpture made of felt, Pieces of Us Are Moving (a game for 2 persons) (2008), and Matt Greene’s seductive painting The White Shoes (2008). As a whole, “The Left Hand” fails to be more than the sum of its parts, but it wins points for convincingly pulling together disparate works by an unlikely group of artists to illustrate a complicated idea.

Single-Minded

"The Culture of Collage" at Pavel Zoubok Gallery, through August 8

For pure visual delight, you can’t do better than this excellent show. Granted, Pavel Zoubok has an edge on this field, since collage is his specialty, but the opportunity to see delectable works by historic masters of the medium such as Al Hansen, Jacques Villegle, and the ever-enticing Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt paired with new pieces that are both witty and stunningly well-executed by Michael Cooper and C.K. Wilde is simply too enjoyable to miss.

"You Can Go Your Own Way" at Renwick Gallery, through August 2

This show had me already with the Fleetwood Mac title, but even that didn’t prepare me for how good it is. The only organizing principle here is the can, a concept so simple and brilliant that I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before. "You Can Go”’s list of knockout works begins with Martin Kippenberger’s beer-can handcuffs and Lucas de Guillio’s Can Barnacles (2008), a rusty dented can covered in barnacles, but the show is more than a playful romp. The lowly aluminum can, held aloft by fine art, takes on new meaning and depth thanks to its appearance in works such as Rachel Harrison’s Very Young Small (2005), which incorporates a can of very young small peas, and David Hammons’s This and That (2001), in which cans of Alpo dog food surround a sleeping cat. Richard Prince, who once had a studio on Renwick, an out-of-the-way, one-block street in Tribeca, made a new piece for the show: a basketball backboard with a cascade of cans pouring from the hoop. This show presents great work by great artists — a trick that is harder to pull off than it sounds.

"The Guys We Would Fuck" at Monya Rowe, through August 1

Yes, this show was curated by an artist, so it could have gone in the “artist as curator” category, but its unique focus on a specific subject was too good not to go in the “single-minded” group. While other galleries take a medium and run with it (see Matthew Marks and Greene Naftali’s joint painting show for a prime example), curator Nayland Blake went with an idea (well, really more like a happy fantasy) and took it to another level altogether. Curated in the daisy-chain style, with each artist asking a friend to participate, who in turn asks another friend to participate, and so on, each member of this limitless group (which includes Catherine Opie and Marlene McCarty) is asked to submit a work conforming to the guidelines suggested by the show’s title. The results are surprising — not many pin-ups in this bunch, and more than one abstract interpretation. And the show changes each day, as Monya Rowe dutifully mounts each 8 ½ by 11 sheet of paper as it comes in, both on the walls of her gallery and on her Web site, where all of the works are available to the masses to print out and compile into a zine. It’s perfect for when you have the summer lazies, but still have a hankering for art.

—Claire Barliant

To read this article in its original context, go here.

Catherine Opie

"Harry Dodge," 2008
Catherine Opie