The Armory Show: Theme 1

This past week was ridiculously crazy with all the art fairs, but if you get into a rhythm you can really enjoy yourself and see a lot of good (or forgettable) art. I was only able to see part of the Armory this year due to the fact that I had multiple other plans and was then derailed by the necessities of living: the ever pesky activities of doing laundry and grocery shopping.

The Armory this year was all about volume. In order to turn a profit in a post–stock market crash economy, galleries displayed many smaller, less expensive works, that if I had a job that paid a bit more, I might theoretically be able to afford. (Recently my coworkers and I have suggested, jokingly, that we pool our resources, buy art and rotate it around our offices. We would also be willing to give tours, do loans, and create didactic material. Basically we want to crowd-finance art purchases.) If I were an art consultant I would really have helped collectors clean up with some choice work...but alas.

There is no absolutely no way to characterize the entire show, but it can be fruitful to pick out individual works or to identify subtrends observable in hundreds of art booths. Trends can be useful for multiple reasons: they can indicate the kinds of themes that

are of interest to galleries, and possibly buyers, or they can potentially reveal thematic psychological, societal undercurrents (if one believes in the art to signify beyond itself, which I do. Art as symptom, one co-constructed by multiple parties). One such trend seemed to be art that was related to the idea of shallowness. Work after work created the illusion of depth, but to a limited degree. Far reaching, illusionistic, penetrating vistas have long departed most of the contemporary art in (at least) New York art galleries. And in fact it is well known that this trend toward flatness began around the 1860s, if not before. It was then that depth began to be eschewed for a focus on the picture plane, most famously in the paintings of Manet [Check out this interesting take on one of Edouard Manet's paintings]. This trajectory came to culmination in the work of the Greenbergian modernist painters of the 1940s and 50s. Since then, painting has greatly lost its prominence, though it never has died, nor should it in my opinion. In the Armory, what was fascinating about many works was that they seemed to have returned to the idea of painting, and of the idea of slight depth, but in other mediums.

German artist Herbert Hamak's 2009 resin and pigment works S. T. H1137N and S. T. H1139N (notably on canvas) that seem like blocks of ice, their depths unfathomable when viewed head on, but obvious when viewed from the side. Their obvious lack of depth revealed from any oblique angle is somewhat countered by the sense of murky depths when approaching the work head-on. A slight commentary perhaps on the ways in which viewpoint can seriously alter perception. Comparisons to Roni Horn's blocks of glass are formally relevant, but Horn's works are more about the clarity of the material (glass), the singularity of the material as weighty sculpture, and their allusiveness to clear waters. Hamak's, meanwhile, seem to be rooted in the relationship of other material to painting. Even their small size roots them on the wall, though the orientation of one of the works on display at the Armory jutted so far out into the field of vision that it could neither easily be termed painting or relief, but rather wall-sculpture. Hamak's use of resin is a method of suspending pigment, to focus on the color itself, rather than of the interaction between the two. Still, the resin serves to blunt the pigment's vibrancy, creating a matte quality that blunts the metaphorical connotations of clear sightedness.

Peter Zimmermann's works (e.g., Bud, 2008), made of epoxy resin on canvas, look like colorful oil slicks, with one layer slightly overlying the next. Although joyful in their vibrancy, there is a slightly menacing quality to these works. Based on real-world images, Zimmermann lowers the melting point of abstraction. No Morris Louis or Helen Frankenthaler reinforcing the idea of paint on canvas, in these works the epoxy denies the canvas base on which it lies. Reminiscent of high gloss car paint, these works could be conceived as inadvertent cautionary statements to the nations that valorize oil. But that is perhaps going to far. What is certain is that there is a fetishistic quality to Zimmermann's work that sucks you in, just like the rainbow colors on a oil slick. The most apropos comparison would be to Lynda Benglis's poured colored latex, whose rejection of the canvas altogether took the idea of painting off the support. But whereas Benglis's works have unfortunately not physically withstood the effects of time (many of the works unfortunately now look dirty), Zimmermann's are all timeless perfection. He has transformed Benglis's floor spills into controlled pictures abstracted from reality. In this he has ties to Gerhard Richter and his effacing of underlying images, though without Richter's obsessive attention to all kinds of images and also without Richter's cutting critique or inquiry into representation. Although I admit that I very much like Zimmerman's work, it is enticing, I feel its twisting of the legacy of Benglis's floor pieces, which deliberately flouted location (made in whatever studio she could find), material (latex was a slightly unusual material at this time) and the idea of the vertical painting (floor pieces) is dubious.The colors slide too easily over one another, creating ever-so-slight shadows that wash away thought.

Meanwhile, Dias & Riedweg's work Each thing his place. Another place, another thing (2009), a grid of nine photographs, each showing a similar division of two shelves of suitcases gives just enough depth to give the slight illusion of being actual shelves set into the wall. The display clearly references Andy Warhol's critique (or celebration, depending on your viewpoint) of consumerism in his Campbell's soup can and Brillo box series and the use of photography plays on the idea of whether photography can really index reality (a common usage for photography). Here this effect is used to fool the eye to a heightened degree, almost negating itself as photography and presenting itself as reality. The breaks between the photographs are almost unnoticeable, as the eye at first reads them merely as spaces in the lines of objects. These breaks can perhaps be read as the devices that reveal the way in which a visual logic of capitalism has become so embedded in our mode of seeing, that we literally

don't see the cracks in the reality or the representation. Most significant for this work is the identity of the items: suitcases, things in which people put their possessions to take them along with them. Just as we store and take with us objects, we store and take with us our modes of seeing. The shallowness here serves as a mimic for the lack of depth in object display and our mechanisms of interpretation.

Finally, Joris van de Moorte. (A quick caveat. This work may not actually be by Van de Moorte. The name was written at the bottom of the wall on which this piece was hung, but it may have referred to another work on display. Unfortunately for the gallerist, such methods of fixing object with artist can easily be misunderstood. If someone knows who did this, please let me know. The work has affinities to the Hamak sculptures, and at first glance appears to be

either glass behind glass or some kind of illuminated resin. Upon closer inspection it appears to be tarp--a cheap disposable material used for anything from gardening to trash bags. By framing it and illuminating it from behind, the artist has elevated this detritus to icon--something that shows only itself. By mounting it behind glass, it is coded as precious or t least worthy of protection. The slight depth allowing it maintain its three-dimensionality. In all, the character of slight depth seemed to be something of interest to various artists throughout the show, allowing them to explore variations of this term's meaning, allowing them to work in-between or among mediums, and promoting an examination of modes of viewing.

Skin Fruit?

The other night I attended the opening of Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, curated by Jeff Koons, on view at the New Museum of Contemporary Art (Hell, Yes!). Having heard terribly negative things flitting about on Twitter (second-hand of course, via my friend. Statements made on Twitter have a tendency to ring as truisms, unfortunately before the fact), I was looking forward to a good showing of terrible art. And indeed some of it is quite awful. But much of it is not awful at all. The problem with this show is that it has a leveling effect on the art displayed, reducing everything to a base (and basic) level.

As not-too-subtly alluded to by the exhibition title, Skin Fruit is about sex and sensuality, and well, let's just come right out and say it: poo. If there is something that could possibly be construed as abject or morbid, it is. But whereas the New Museum's Unmonumental had a similar quality and feel to it (for example, both shows include(d) the work of Urs Fischer), there the work was decidedly UN-monumental, whereas here, monumentality and garishness appear to be mandatory. There are a few understated works throughout the museum, but they are unfortunately overshadowed. "There is supposed to be a lot of genitalia in this show," my friend warned me as I sighted a half-naked alien boy by Takashi Murakami (not a bad work in and of itself, and actually quite a surprise for me and my conception of Murakami's art). "Not that there's anything wrong with that," I hear my inner Seinfeld tell me. But an apropos warning it was.

Sometimes the references to the sexual are well done. The issue is really that it seems as if Koons has selected each work for its connection to a kind of transgressiveness, abjectness, or dirtiness that does not do credit to all of the individual artists' projects. A Cindy Sherman (1992, I believe) in which a mud-covered Sherman's head becomes the left (sinister) eye of another face, simultaneously converts her face into a vulva; her mouth, with bared teeth, the vagina dentata; and a wound on her arm the "wound" of the female's genitals. This work could easily be slotted into a history of the abject (a traditional reading of these Sherman works), but, importantly, Sherman does not picture any nether-regions whatsoever. Her exploration of the way in which bodies are coded and read as sensual conflates vision with a kind of rape. The mud that covers her face codes her as abject, but it also protects her, blocking vision and serving as a second skin.

Kiki Smith's works, of which there are several on view, are unfortunately placed in the context of other works that make them seem to be mostly about the profane and demonic. While Smith is certainly interested in the way in which people (mostly women) can portrayed as evil, she is definitely extremely interested in the holy nature of the human body in pain. Smith's work is also generally talked about in terms of her relationship to the abject, for example, her long bronze unrolled intestine is quite obviously a reference to a line of shit, but in transforming this trace of the body into bronze, she memorializes it and turns it into a relic. The latter essential elements of Smith's work are somewhat lost in this exhibition. Similarly, the fact that a Smith work of a woman crouching on a wall with her hair hanging down is partially about the ways in which women have been treated or positioned as evil (see her Lilith work), is obscured by placing it near a truly gigantic Roberto Cuoghi sculpture of an Assyrian demon that, at least according to the wall label, is partially to be seen as a representation of the end of American dominance.

Unsurprisingly works by John Bock, Nathalie Djurberg, and Paul McCarthy (and surprisingly even Paul Chan) also seem to have all been selected by Koons for their connections to the abject and/or orgiastic sexuality. And the numerous Chris Ofilis? Just google "Chris Ofili" and "Sensation" and you'll figure out how his talented artist unfortunately is made to fit in (although to Koons's credit, he has also selected multiple blue paintings by Ofili that cannot be connected to that famous scatalogical controversy).

It's not that Koons's selection is de facto poor. Koons (and his obsessive attention to detail) is an artist I respect for his focus on machinic craft and the idea of compulsion. Koons has indeed isolated an important nasty undercurrent in much art in this show. His own exploration of the kitsch nature of 18th-century Rococo sexual tropes shows that he is interested in the transformation of this theme through time. The problem resides in how the theme comes to define the works, setting them up as illustrative examples. They fit too neatly into the framework, which anchors them instead of encouraging them to reveal their nuances.

Nevertheless, some works in particular transcend the show's stifling contextual box. Christiana Soulou has a striking series of delicate drawings that gently explores the connections between bodies, clothing, and dance. Smith's Untitled (Skin), with its metal repeated squares with their skin impressions, is a touching riposte to her father's Minimalism. Meanwhile, David Altmejd is represented by Giant. Although Altmejd's work is generally strong, this work seems outlandish. I cannot however decide if it is truly terrible or sheer genius: its styrofoam, mirrored, glittered form is crawling with stuffed squirrels. Altmejd is often discussed in terms of his creation of a fantastical otherworld in either the distant past or the far future in which there are only remnants of now long-gone civilizations. Here the squirrels serve up a dash of humor, undercutting the seriousness of the decaying (again abject) quality of the figure.

One piece that stood out as particularly fascinating was Pawel Althamer's Schedule of the Crucifix (2005). For this piece, people who have volunteered periodically go behind a small screen, change clothes into the vestments that many people might associate with Jesus (a loincloth and crown of thorns) and climb up onto a crucifix, held up by some straps and their own muscles, and and seated on a bicycle seat (hidden when the people are seated). The volunteers are supposed to stay in the position of Christ on the cross as long as they can, and then descend. Looking up at this piece, I immediately thought it was a lifesize wax sculpture, a kind of easy, kitsch representation of a venerable religious tradition. However, then I saw the figure twitch and adjusted my interpretation: it had to be a strange animatronic plastic figure, in which Jesus was moved by hidden machines and computer processing chips; a literal deus ex machina. "Decidedly creepy," I thought. But then I realized it was a real person. Someone living. Breathing. Having difficulty holding the pose, his muscles had begun to move involuntarily. This touching performance humbly makes each person the figure of God on Earth. Living, flesh. The miracle that was promised and finally made real. The descent and reascent of different people ennobles the individual and brings to life something that many cynical New Yorkers (and beyond) often easily dismiss as myth. No simple laudation of Christianity or mysticism, Althamer's work asks the viewer to empathize with another human being--not one specific human being, but each singular one--and to think of him or herself as both suffering and divine.

Jonathan Schipper @ The Boiler

Jonathan Schipper's current show, Irreversibility at The Boiler, Pierogi (191 N 14th, Greenpoint/ Williamsburg), is great: sad, thoughtful, and more than a little fun. The show is comprised of just two works, The Slow Inevitable Death of American Muscle and Measuring Angst, both of which slow down violent events to make of them poetic ballets.

The main work on view The Slow Inevitable Death of American Muscle pits two cars, one (in this particular match) a beyond totally awesome Firebird, the other a maroon car that I would now be able to identify and probably even appreciate had it not been for the amazingly gorgeous and distracting Firebird, against one another. Schipper has rigged the two cars so that they collide, extremely slowly, over a period of six weeks. At the opening, the cars had just touched and were beginning to collapse into one another. Over the course of the exhibition, the two cars will push farther and farther into one another, usually until one overtakes the other, pushing over the collapsing hood of the other, and destroying both in the process. Of course, the title of the work indicates that the work can be seen as a commentary on the slow death of the American automobile industry, muscle car machismo, or even the capitalistic enterprise in general. In the age of spectacle, it is lovely to see an event take place over such an extended time period, one that defies viewing in a single go and necessitates that the viwer return to the scene. This isn't just a one-time, never-to-be-seen-again piece, it is comprehended over time and can even be restaged (between different cars). It's a high-octane crash at the speed of boredom. And yet, the crash itself, the destruction of the two cars, allows them to become actual anthropomorphic protagonists whose death is almost torturous. The Firebird, whose scent of lived-in-ness necessitated the artist placing an air-freshener inside, came complete (when purchased) with a picture of a young man, inscribed on back (according to someone who had looked at it) with a message to the youth's father (click on image to enlarge). The car is thus the receptacle and the embodiment of lost dreams. The two cars--locked in an embrace, a kiss, a love that leads (of course) to death--prompt an inevitable sense of mourning and loss.

The other work, Measuring Angst, is composed of a mechanism that holds together the pieces of a Corona beer bottle (reminiscent of the spider-like machine that puts together Leeloo in The Fifth Element). The machine slowly catapults the bottle across the space, then slowly pulls the bottle part (as if it had hid the wall), and then pulling it back together again and rewinding/resetting. The repetition could symbolize the desire to undo things done and reassemble that which is broken. Of course, the irony is that the process just repeats itself over and over again, forever breaking, forever reassembling, again like love--this time a love ( tinged by anger and violence) gone completely wrong.

Lara Schnitger @ Anton Kern

Lara Schnitger's current show at Anton Kern is a gothic perversion of the already perverse Baroque. The presentation features creepy paintings, unstable sculptures, and a flawlessly executed web that catches the works like flies in a trap.

Schnitger is perhaps best known for her fabric constructions that are part fantastic dada, part Surrealist uncanny, and part Snuffleupagus. They hulk and tower like the Skeksis in The Dark Crystal. The work on view, Azurite Folly (2009) is part peacock, part starry night, part carnival tent, and part oven mitt.

The paintings range from pretty to disturbing. Woman with a Crow (2009), Schnitger's recasting of Picasso's eponymous work gives the composition an ethereal, magical quality. Instead of presenting simplicity and a sense of the earthy, this work is a study in delicacy. The crow becomes a landscape of the night and the woman's shoulder is cast as intricate doily. But Cupidity (After Bronzino) (2009), in its redressing of Bronzino's sexually-inflected work as an orgy of animality, is a little obvious in its modern transposition of an Allegory of Lust (what the National Gallery calls An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, 1540-50).








The best part of the exhibition is the installation, for which Schnitger has created a black snowflake web that references the theme of femininity pervasive through the works on view through its material: hosiery.

"Vernissage" a fancy word for "Opening"

I have a small gripe: the word "vernissage." I'm not exactly sure when this word started to replace the more adequate and appropriate "opening" but armory week was filled with vernissages. "Oh, it's the preview!" a friend of mine said. "Ah! The Pre-View." Now that's a word that makes sense--the first view or view before the view...well, it kind of makes sense. What's the etymology of "vernissage"? It's French of course (which makes it fancier), from 1912, and it refers to the day before an exhibition's official opening when artists were able to put the finishing touches on their paintings and then varnish them (vernissage comes from varnish). There's not much varnishing going on at these private previews, just plain old beer and sometimes $12 glasses of wine. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy a good vernissage now and then, I'd just prefer to call it the preview...and I will. 

Also, a weird thing I MUST comment on is VernissageTV. I would love for someone to explain to me this blog's merits, but honestly, it's truly ridiculous! I cannot imagine anyone watching this stuff. Boredom is an understatement. If only VernissageTV were an artwork on the ennui of the art world, then it would be high satire and awesomely funny, but as is, it's an exercise in patience. Check it out right before you get into bed.

A few quick thoughts

So I said I'd say a few words on the two other works on view at the Boiler Room: Yoon Lee's JFK and Jonathan Schipper's 215 Points of View, and since I like to do what I say I'm going to do, here goes.

Lee's painting is dramatic, with its skeins of looping paint artfully choreographed across the surface of the 20-ft length of PVC paneling. The sense of energy and dynamism is impressive, and I appreciate the gesture toward the narrative through the title, the word "JFK" conjuring momentous unplanned disaster and violence. Yet, in this particular work the gray geometrical architecture that contrasts with the colorful curved lines evokes anonymous corporate architecture or, given the context in which this work was shown, as-yet-unfinished luxury Williamsburg condos. Is it that such architecture itself is the perpetrator of violence or the recipient? For though both title and composition might indicate disaster, they might just as well suggest youthful hope and promise, unbounded energy and joy. Although I actually quite like Yoon's painting and the way in which it draws on a video-game aesthetic, I worry that it's too close to mainstream graphic tee-shirts sold at Urban Outfitters.

Schipper's work is quite an attraction, and despite an awkward conversation with the artist in which he asked me repeatedly which way I would twirl the globe to uncoil the cord, which was twisted (not knowing he was the artist, I kept insisting that I was fine with the cord the way it was and that it needed no untwisting [see cord at left]), I was generally intrigued. The 215 surveillance cameras on the globe shot footage, feeding it back through the monitors, and viewers spent some time trying to locate which camera corresponded with which screen, and not a few enjoyed spinning the entire work in one direction or another (leading to the cord troubles alluded to above). The interactive element, whether actually condoned by the artist or not, was one of the best aspects of the work and heightened its ability to incite inquisitiveness. The sense of totalizing surveillance was underlined by the perhaps a-tad-too-obvious symbolism of the globe, but this heavy-handedness was softened by the object's beauty and its ability to encourage interest in how surveillance technologies work, and how insidious they can become. On its own, the work is a strong one. If the artist hadn't snipped "did you take physics? did you go to college? then tell me how to uncoil the cord?" I might have liked it more. alas.

Addendum. Apparently I did not speak to the artist....and hence I'm quite glad that I can now safely say I liked the work, as no personal affront was incurred.

Boiler @ Pierogi

The gallery with the bar-none tastiest name (Pierogi) opened an annex, the Boiler, on March 7. Located on 191 North 14th Street in Williamsburg, Boiler is part of that genre of art spaces that have the smell of cement, earth, and hardwater that people are most familiar with from their basements, or, if they live in New York, where they (might) do their laundry. Other fine examples include the most recent Whitney Biennial's use of the Armory Building's nooks and crannies, and PS1's moist bottom floor. If it's leaking and smells like mold, it's a hot place to display and promote art.
Boiler's location is particularly wonderful for its adjacency to Gutter. Who doesn't want to view some art and bowl a few? Boiler showcased three works: Tavares Strachan's The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (Arctic Ice Project), Yoon Lee's JFK, and Jonathan Schipper's 215 Points of View.

Strachan, who is soon to show at the ICA in Philadelphia, transported a 4.5 ton ice block from the Arctic, storing and displaying it in a glass-walled freezer. The project obviously invokes thoughts about global warming and ice-shelf melting, and it not without a touch of irony that the freezer is solar-powered. Though here the sun keeps cold that which elsewhere it melts, and thus a balance between freezing and melting appears to be maintained, the containment is still a futile process, with the situation being somewhat analogous to the misguided attempt to cool an apartment by leaving open a fridge door.

Formally, the ice block seems quiet and dare I say it, mysterious, with various cracks and colors ranging from blue-black to cerulean. It entrances and beckons like the ocean. Possessing an obvious unattainable beauty (the two so often being intertwined), it rests safe in its container.

But the project is more than just a conceptual gesture visualizing both distance and the loss such a displacement symbolizes, for flying above the freezer are Strachan's self-referential flags modeled on those flown by Arctic explorer Robert Peary. This is a signal to issues of authorship and identity. It is no coincidence that Strachan's piece is reminiscent of Marc Quinn's series of Self sculptures (begun in 1991). In Quinn's work the artist's visage, molded out of his own frozen blood, is contained in a freezer. The self for Quinn is contingent and momentary; it holds together only due to its surroundings and circumstance. Pull the plug...and the self disintegrates or rather, it melts like ice.

Tavares's references to the negotiation of self are more oblique, although on one level, pull the plug on the Arctic and we're all gone. To tease out the nuances of Strachan's work one must engage in the pursuit of history and the telling of stories (Strachan's titles themselves are nearly tomes): Peary claimed to be the discoverer of the North Pole, but whether or not he was remains an issue for debate. Another man, Frederick Cook, was most likely the actual discoverer; his overshadowing a story all its own. This claim to authorship and how certain people or places are overlooked in history is what makes the ice block a signifier of the social. Strachan, from the Bahamas, transported the ice block there and displayed it for children (overlooked art appreciators). The Bahamas, an island often overlooked for being anything other than a beach spot becomes in this movement the prime recipient of Strachan's art. His movement draws attention there instead of immediately to the New York art world. Subsequently, the block was further displaced to New York for the Boiler display. Here, a screen next to the freezer gives weather measurements in the Bahamas, quietly inserting this alterior narrative of an other place, another environment into Brooklyn, reminding us to not just look into the ice but outward to the world.

Strachan's cold heraldic block (with its literal heraldic flags) signals the entanglement of self, nation, and environment.

Soon...thoughts on the two other works at the Boiler, those by Lee and Schipper.

Top image: Boiler 

Middle: Detail of Strachan's work with Yoon's reflected in the glass.

Bottom: Michael Hall, Stamatina Gregory, Tavares Strachan