Sunday, March 29, 2009

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Donald Judd @ L & M Arts through April 18, 2009

Part of the appeal of Judd's manufactured, modular aesthetic is that nothing mass produced could ever attain this level of finish. The works do not contain technical flaws or happy accidents. His objects are far too meticulously unemotional not to evoke emotion.  It's the mission statement of minimalism. The viewer is pressed with order, precision, color theory and math to project meaning.  Two signature columns of boxes, one copper and clear plexi, one galvanized steel and red plexi are without gesture, but not without a hard fought expressionism. They are so physically exquisite as to belie their purported neutrality. 


Friday, March 27, 2009

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Richard Tuttle @ Pace through April 25, 2009

Each work was composed of two long, horizontal panels of fabric, grommeted so that they overlapped slightly in the center.  As always, Tuttle varies everything it is possible to vary, the apparent level of transformation of the fabric, the two panels' visual similarity, the saturation of hues, even the number of dimensions fluctuates in more than one way: the suggestion of landscape is dangled and snatched away,  while perfectly non-pictorial works are pierced by roughly woven strands. He maximizes the tension between the object itself and its aesthetic value by dialing up and down the appearance of artistry.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Art-99: a 99 word review.

Harry Roseman Utopia Parkway @ Davis and Langdale through March 28, 2009.

In these twenty 11 x 13 7/8 inch photographs of Joseph Cornell from the last three years of his life, his home features prominently. Clapboard siding appears in 15 works, and the faux Dutch architecture of Flushing is at odds with Cornell's originality.  There are no pictures of Cornell's work, which stands outside any New York school tradition. These photos aspire to be art themselves, diagonal compositions, extreme foreground, ploys reminiscent of Bellmer's self portraits, reflections in the home's windows. In eight of the works the master is seated or asleep, reminding us he's at the end of his life.




Art-99: a 99 word review.

James Castle Drawings @ Knoedler & Company through April 25, 2009

Every mark in these drawings was made by accumulation of unsteady smudges and scuffs. Despite the crude materials used, a wobbly precision delineates the ambitious subject matter. With soot and spit Castle takes on challenging vistas, interior perspective studies, Ansel Adams like nocturnes, an ornate door. The notation within the lines and planes is troubling because it indicates excessive effort. At the same time it serves the atmospheric perspective and the wear and variation on surfaces that defines naturalism. But a lack of  line straightness and a clipped range of line quality suggest the work of a child.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Art-99; a 99 word review (expanded to 499 words).

Monica Bill Barnes @ 92nd Street Y Harkness Dance Festival through March 8, 2009

Barnes knows that movement is identity. Here, a single character is fractured into four parts longing for mutuality. The evening opens with a solo performance characterized by the repetition of truncated lunges, giddy smiling and mild exhibitionism. A lunatic air threatens the joy of comedy. This series of steps and expressions reappears in sequence after sequence, first possessing a duet, then another solo, then a trio and so forth. Throughout the work, the dancers attempt to influence each other's behavior and bring it into line with their own by demonstration, entreaty or physical compulsion. The theme of compliance is pushed through several variations, from dance-offs, to teaching a few steps to people pulled from the audience. These variations are part of an attempt to link up all the parts, all the movement and sequences into a perfectly unified dance. Even the solos seem to occur in the context of synchronization. We learn that the joyous outbursts of one dancer are the pain and consternation of the others. Barnes studies the difference between authentic behavior and doing what you're told. She has the dancers perform the same movements with and without conviction. This simple ploy raises the problem of identity. If a gesture is performed with belief, authentic character is revealed, if not, character is concealed. These are the stakes for a choreographer. The problem is expanded from dance to all behavior by the sequence with the audience. The willingness of the "dancer" to learn not only the steps but the psychological cause underlying them, is rewarded with love. With long closed-eye hugs and assuring words in the ear, Barnes expands the jurisdiction of choreography to just plain hoping people will behave. The coalescing goal of all this persuasion is to get four parts dancing in unison; at many points it's clear that happiness is contingent upon it. Barnes has expanded the range of her facial expressions over the years. Once all anger and vengeance (though there is still plenty of that) she now emits a longing and heartbroken look that is almost too much to bear. The saddest sequence in the show is one where Barnes attempts to influence the movement of Rowlson-Hall. In the first diagonal cross, her efforts are unseen: Barnes dances briskly behind her as she walks away. In a later cross, Barnes follows her as she walks backward to keep a distance. Barnes points at the foot of Rowlson-Hall, catching up, and stopping it with her hand, then, placing her foot on top of it, making explicit the connection between position and identity. By making an issue of physical compliance, Barnes intentionally conflates surface and depth.  At two points dancers refuse to move at all, while another literally carries them to a new place on stage. Barnes deconstructs synchronization and discovers the chemistry for transmittable happiness.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Walter De Maria, The Earth Room, 1977 @ Dia (141 Wooster) permanent installation.

You can smell the 280,000 pounds of dirt when you enter the Soho townhouse.  The work's title has poetic power but it's more than a room.  An open plan (from Wooster to West Broadway) is divided only on your far right by a small room and an open doorway; whole space weighted with 22 inch deep black dirt.  A two foot high glass plate bridges the viewing doorway. Two iron pillars disappear into the mass. The formless, worthless material is shaped and elevated by the preexisting interior. The piece both expands the address and posits a constricted microcosm of the natural world. 

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Franz West @ Zwirner and Wirth through April 25, 2009.

The sculptures are not figural, biomorphic, geometric or ready-made. They are as unshaped and craftless as aggregate rock. Craggy, brittle textures are slathered with hues, treatments and finishes which seem to bind the work together. The amorphous stumps and trunks fail to justify their complex surfaces. In some cases it's questionable whether they are objects at all. The shabby armatures and pedestals suggest a sculpting class calamity. With 2-D modified anouncements for previous shows, the subject of the art world is at issue. The art object is hollowed out or supplanted by the activities attendent on studio practice.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Art-99; a 99 word review.

For Life: The language of Communication @ Jack Tilton through March 28, 2009

Despite the title, it's not a self help seminar.  The "language of communication" (redundant) in the press release is vague and righteous in its hope for political transformation.  Obama's election does not make all curatorial choices good ones.  It is thin justification for a show of selections from Tilton's contemporary program and second market estates. There are 30 works by Ruth Vollmer which couldn't have less to do with Tuttle's craftless, caught in a storm drain constructions or Berman's sexy beatnik iconography.  Between her perfect minimalist drawings and sculptures evocative of extra-terrestrial geometry, there is a solid solo show.


Art-99; a 99 word review.

Philip Guston @ L&M Arts through February 28, 2009

L&M presents seven large oils from the 50's.  The most beautiful look like magnified American impressionism, the ugly ones a collision of hues, impasto and wet on wet technique.  Each notation seems to have been its own idea. Shapes are slathered forth by forceful gestures meant to describe the brush being used. A jangling color scheme dominates the pallet: red and green are common to all with sky blue intruding here and there.  The works are obstinately flat and unpictorial, while the titles are suggestive.  To Fellini proves the more marks, the harder it becomes to avoid figuration.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Joe Fyfe @ James Graham and Sons through March 7, 2009

Graham, relocated to 32 East 67th after 56 years at 1014 Madison, reinvigorates its contemporary department with the help of Brooklyn savant Joe Fyfe. Fyfe curated last summer's Color Climax, an audacious assault on MoMA's Color Chart and presently opens a solo show in two large rooms. In one, restraint is the order of the day: a long series of monochrome fabric collages identically sized and spaced, its variation confined to straight horizontals and verticals. In the other room, an antic mood smiles.  Textiles of joyous coloration are joined in jaunty patchwork compositions like irregular grids.  Even polka dots pertain.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Diana Kingsley @ Leo Castelli through February 28, 2009

At first glance they look like accidental exposures by Tina Barney. But the problem of nature confronted by the decor it inspired, emerges from these suburban interiors and exteriors. The figure is excised almost completely.  Just two hands appear among these large prints, both gloved, both holding cigarettes up to foliage, insulated from nature and what they hold. Floral prints (and their reflections) cast an accusing finger at the remove from which we experience the natural world.  A toy horse concurs.  Likewise, a lump of bleu cheese is more alive than the floral pattern sofa on which it sits.

Art-99; a 99 word review.

Ellen Kahn Alice Revisited @ 440 Gallery through March 29, 2009

The layering of texts and imagery (from Lewis Carroll's works) with nets of gesture in innumerable qualities belies the word picture in these drawings and paintings that both look familiar and seem more complicated than we remember. Some of the undulating lines, which penetrate the atmosphere between layers of notation, suggest foliage, elsewhere a web, or something more ethereal, abstract, or metaphysical. In the oils, the use of impasto adds an almost impossible depth to works of such graphic excellence (that a digital origin might be suggested). The effects of harmonious color schemes lull but refuse to ground apprehension.