Art Hag

Do Ho Suh | Lehmann Maupin

Artist Do Ho Suh moved from his native Korea to Providence, Rhode Island in 1991 to study at RISD.  Feelings of displacement made the artist measure spaces "in order to establish relationships with his new surroundings," (from the press release).  This obsessive-compulsive habit came in handy a while later when Suh used the measurements to "replicate and transport spaces" in his artwork.  Home Within Home, currently on view at Lehmann Maupin, features a series of works by Suh that examine "cultural displacement and the co-existence of identities, as well as the perception of our surroundings and how one constructs a memory of a space."

Suh meticulously "constructs a memory of a space" with painstaking detail as evidenced in the centerpiece of the exhibition, Fallen Star 1/5.  The dollhouse-like piece represents the artist's experience relocating from Korea to New England, which he's described like being "dropped from the sky."  The work's narrative has a tornado carrying Suh and his childhood home in Korea to Rhode Island, dumping the artist, the house, and its contents onto his new home in Providence, merging the two houses and Suh's two worlds.  The catastrophically remodeled, miniaturized Rhode Island home is perfectly dissected in two, as if a giant took a chainsaw to the quaint New England dwelling and hacked it in half.  Viewers can easily be looky-loos and peer into the various rooms of the house.  Suh spared no detail in his scaled-down dreamhouse with the unconventional addition, showing fully furnished living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens with stocked refrigerators and cupboards.  There are Lilliputian bicycles in hallways waiting to be ridden; band posters hanging on the walls of a teenager's messy bedroom; cleaning products waiting to be used; newspapers and catalogues strewn on coffee tables; paperwork cluttering desks; as well as the debris and wreckage caused from the Korean home's crash-landing Wizard of Oz style onto the Rhode Island house.  Instead of a crushed wicked witch's stripey socks poking out from underneath, a released parachute lying flaccidly on the gallery floor provides evidence of the abode's airborne journey.

Along with fabric reproductions of random household items (a thermostat, a door knob, holiday lights, and more) around the artist's current home in New York, Suh presents the ghost-like Home within Home, another merging of his two homes -- this one a cleaner, conjoined model made of translucent resin and cut into four parts.  Suh, who now divides his time between New York, London, and Seoul, presents personal works that invite viewers into his homes, revealing hints of his past and his psyche.  Learn more at Lehmannmaupin.com.  Through October 22nd. 

Fallen Star 1/5, 2008-2011

Fallen Star 1/5, 2008-2011

Fallen Star 1/5, 2008-2011

Fallen Star 1/5, 2008-2011

Fallen Star 1/5, 2008-2011

Fallen Star 1/5, 2008-2011

Fallen Star 1/5, 2008-2011

Fallen Star 1/5, 2008-2011

Fallen Star 1/5, 2008-2011

Fallen Star 1/5, 2008-2011

Home within Home, 2009-2011

Home within Home (detail), 2009-2011

PS1

This past Saturday, I headed up to Queens to check out MoMA PS1 before the party crowds converge for the kickoff for the popular Warm Up music series starting its 14th(!) season on July 2nd.  There's a whole lot of video art currently on view at PS1. In the first floor galleries is Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever, the artist's first large-scale exhibition in New York.  Trecartin created seven immersive environments filled with household and office furniture, gymnasium bleachers, gym equipment, airline seats, and more, to screen his series of seven films.  Each darkened room features a large screen projecting his films with ample seating and puffy headsets scattered about.  The films deal with tweens, identity, and "transumerism"—"consumerism driven by experience," (from the exhibit's notes).  The colorful, psychedelic films were shot in Miami and cast with friends, artists, young actors, and Trecartin himself. The actors voices are altered to sound like the high-pitched, squeaks of Alvin and the Chipmunks - magnifying the young age of many of the actors and emphasizing their vacuous tween jabber.  Watching Any Ever feels like a trippy, bad dream one might have after a long, hot night of consuming way too many sugary, alcoholic drinks.  Learn more at ps1.org.  Through September 3rd.

Up on the second floor is Laurel Nakadate's Only The Lonely, which reminded me of that girl in school who tried to be rebellious by flirting with older men and getting herself into some bad situations.  Nakadate meets male strangers and asks them to take her to their home to make a video.  The first of these works, Happy Birthday (2000) features three separate, ordinary, older, mostly non-creepy-looking men whom take Nakadate to their respective homes in Connecticut to have a pretend birthday celebration with her.  Nakadate's only instruction to the men is to sing Happy Birthday to her as she lights up candles on a birthday cake.  She then cuts into the cake and sits awkwardly with each man as they eat it.  Her second video piece involving strange men she picks up is titled Oops... I Did It Again (2000).  Nakadate again finds three men in Connecticut to go home with—this time to reenact the dance from the Britney Spears' video of the same name.  Equipped with a Hello Kitty boombox (of course) to blast the annoying pop tune (which will be stuck in your head the rest of your time at PS1), Nakadate dances around the men in their cramped homes.  Two gamely dance along with her while one stands stiffly and uncomfortably motionless.  In one of her Exorcism pieces, Exorcism 3 (Dancing in the Desert for Britney) (2009), Nakadate dances suggestively in a bikini top and cut-off shorts in Salt Flats, Utah in an "attempt to exorcise Britney Spears' sadness."  365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears, is a year-long (started on January 1, 2010) photographic series in which Nakadate shoots herself in various states of undress, crying.  Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind features five large-scale shots of Nakadate's panties flying out a train window taken while she traveled across the U.S. to Canada on an Amtrak train.  In Good Morning, Sunshine (2009), Nakadate shoots three young women in their bedrooms as she instructs them to undress.  Only The Lonely looks like the sexually-charged shenanigans of a young girl trying really hard to be provocative.  It also feels like it exploits its older, male participants—the ones who may actually be lonely.  Learn more here.  Through August 8th.

Up on the third floor is Nancy Grossman: Heads, leather-wrapped sculptures of heads created by the artist from the 1960s - 1980s.  Carved of wood and covered in scraps of leather from clothing, boxing gloves, or equestrian gear, the heads are said to be self-portraits though they do not resemble the artist.  Inspired by the 60's, Grossman's heads were a response to the "violence and upheaval of the era and address the anxiety and turmoil in contemporary society."  The 14 fascinating, carefully crafted pieces are very masculine and look like S&M masks.  An old, unsexy visitor tried impressing his young, female companion by telling her he had a similar mask.  Haha, ew...  Learn more here.  Through August 15th.

And out in the PS1 courtyard is the twelth annual Young Architect's Program winner, Interboro Partners of Brooklyn.  For this summer's project, Interboro Partners created Holding Pattern, featuring rope and sails forming a white canopy fluttering above a collection of picnic tables, chaise lounges, ping pong tables, a foosball table, a sandbox, wading pools, a lifeguard chair, chess tables, trees, and more.  While these items will undoubtedly get much use over the summer months, they will all be recycled after the Warm Up series wraps up.  The objects will be donated to the community to various local businesses and organizations including a taxi cab company, elder and day care centers, high schools, a ballet school, a library, a greenmarket, and the local YMCA.  Learn more here.  Through September 26th.

A scene from Ryan Trecartin's film K-CorealNC.K

A scene from Ryan Trecartin's film K-CorealNC.K

Scene from Ryan Trecartin's film Temp Stop

Interboro Partner's Holding Pattern

Interboro Partner's Holding Pattern

Interboro Partner's Holding Pattern (wading pools)

Interboro Partner's Holding Pattern

Interboro Partner's Holding Pattern (life guard chair and chess tables)

Interboro Partner's Holding Pattern (life guard chair and mist platform)

Interboro Partner's Holding Pattern (sandbox)

Interboro Partner's Holding Pattern (entrance to "urban wood" in side courtyard)

Interboro Partner's Holding Pattern ("urban wood" in side courtyard)

Interboro Partner's Holding Pattern ("urban wood" in side courtyard)

Russian Constructivism | Tony Shafrazi

Vladimir Tatlin's iconic model of 20th century revolutionary art, Monument for the Third International, is currently on exhibit for the first time in the U.S. at Tony Shafrazi Gallery.  Tatlin, considered the father of the Russian Constructivist movement, worked on the scale model of the monumental structure from 1915-1920.  The building, intended to serve as the headquarters of the Communist International, was to be erected in Petrograd, the birthplace of the Russian Revolution.  The Monument was to be constructed of iron, steel, and glass, standing 1,300 feet, "more than 300 feet taller than the Eiffel Tower or the approximate height of The Empire State Building," (from the press release).  Sadly, the architectural and engineering complexities of the project, along with political unrest and a shortage of steel doomed Tatlin's ambitious project to be unrealized.

The imposing, towering model was exhibited in Petrograd and Moscow in 1920, and then again, in Tatlin's absence, in Paris at the World Exhibition of Industrial and Decorative Art in 1925.  The last time the model was displayed before Tatlin's death in 1953 was in Leningrad in 1930, and all models disappeared by 1932.  In 1967, Pontus Hulten, Director of Stockholm's Moderna Museet, received permission from Tatlin's widow, Aleksandra Korsakova, to recreate the model with T.M. Shapiro, one of Tatlin's original collaborators.  This model was debuted in the 1968 Vladimir Tatlin exhibition at the Moderna Museet.  This is also the same model that is currently on view at Tony Shafrazi.  Of the three existing versions made after Tatlin's death (one replica was made for the Center Georges Pompidou and another was made for Moderna Museet), the sculpture currently on display in New York is the only one "created under the supervision of Shapiro... and is the most accuarte rendition of his original 1920 design."  Tatlin's magnificent scale model with its intricate, complex details and revolving center is renowned as "the defining symbol of Constructivist sculpture and architecture."  Learn more at Tonyshafrazigallery.com.  Through July 29th.

On view alongside Monument for the Third International is Revolutionary Film Posters: Aesthetic Experiments of Russian Constructivism, 1920-1933, an exhibit of 95 Russian film posters from "the great era of Constructivism."  In response to the Russian Revolution, Constructivists tried to create order and "a more stable and harmonious society."  In their attempts, they developed "rigorously experimental aesthetics" that were "applied across the entire social spectrum of contemporary experience to every mode of creative endeavor..."  The graphic and surprisingly very modern posters feature some famous, old-school, western actors (i.e. Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) as well as electric colors, energetic imagery, bold graphics, and several pained and overwrought facial expressions.  They're all pretty stylized, severe, and exciting.  If only movie posters today could be as creative and interesting.  Learn more at Tonyshafrazigallery.com.  Through July 29th.

Vladimir Tatlin, Monument for the Third International, originally conceived 1915-1920

Vladimir Tatlin, Monument for the Third International, originally conceived 1915-1920

Left to right:  Anatoly Belsky, Annenkov, 1933; Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, The Girl with a Hat-Box, 1927

Clockwise from top left:  Alexander Naumov, The Stolen Bride, 1925; Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, The Knight's Move, 1927; Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, The Knight's Move, 1926; Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Shanghai Document, 1928

Alexander Rodchenko, Battleship Potemkin, 1929

Anatoly Belsky, Pipe of the Communards, 1929

Left to right:  Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Ninich, 1927; Mikhail Dlugach, Electric Chair, 1928

Clockwise from left:  Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Arsenal, 1929; Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Yankee Consul, 1927; Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Daddy's Boy, 1927

Left to right:  Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Fragment of an Empire, 1929;  Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Which of the Two, 1927

Left to right:  Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Gossip, 1928; Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Adventures of an Abandoned Child, 1926; Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Starushka, 1929

Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Man with a Movie Camera, 1929

Clockwise top left:  Zim, Spartakiade, 1927; Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Mystery of the Windmill, 1928; Georgii & Vladimir Stenberg, Sporting Fever, 1928

Left to right:  Anatoly Belsky, Five Minutes, 1929; Grigori Borisov & Pyotr Zhukov, Living Corpse, 1929

Clockwise top left:  Atelier Levenstein, Dr. Mabuzo, 1927; Unknown Artist, Her Way, 1928; Nikolai Prusakov, Ranks and People, 1929

Anatoly Belsky, Private Life of Peter Vinogradov, 1934

Greater New York and Pole Dance | PS 1

PS 1 presents its third installment of Greater New York, a comprehensive survey of emerging artists based in New York that takes place every five years.  Taking over the whole building and focusing on the "creative process" as well as "the final artistic product," selected artists have been invited to "use spaces as studios to shoot photographs and video, create books and catalogues, rehearse performances, and experiment in various media to test the boundaries of art and its making" (from show's notes).

It was nice to see works by a few familiar names like Tauba Auerbach, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Tamar Halpern, Rashaad Newsome, and Zak Prekop and learn a bunch of new ones too.  Of the 68 participating artists, ones that stood out include: David Adamo, David Brooks, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Zipora Fried, Tala Madani, Hank Willis Thomas, Naama Tsabar, and Conrad Ventur. 

Adamo's Untitled (the rite of spring), 2008 is a carefully and meticulously laid out installation of hundreds of wooden baseball bats covering a small gallery's entire floor, mimicking a tatami-like floor that visitors can gingerly tread across.  Brooks created a two-story, decaying Preserved Forest, 2010 using nursery grown trees, earth and concrete to protest deforestation.  Frazier presents a series of haunting, oddly retro-looking documentary photographs.  Fried stabbed Armoire, 2008 in the back with hundreds of assorted knives and attached hundreds of glass bottles to the underside of a table creating the "udderly" Chere Maman, 2008.  Madani screens her Accident Series, three darkly humored and mesmerizing painted animations.  Thomas' Unbranded Reflections in Black Corporate America, 2005-2008, a series of actual adverts targeting African-Americans from 1968-2008 with their original text and logos digitally removed is a clever and fascinating examination of how the advertising industry "reinforces generalizations surrounding race, gender, and cultural identity" (from show's notes).  For Untitled (speaker-wall) Tsabar used rows and rows of bookshelf speakers to create two massive, playable bass guitars that produce deep sounds and core-rattling vibrations.  And Ventur's This Is My Life (Shirley Bassey), 2009 is a hypnotic 3 channel video piece using rotating crystal pendants dangling in front of the video projectors' lenses creating multiple, ghostly, spinning images of Bassey as she emotionally belts out the tune This Is My Life.  Greater New York is a great introduction to a number of up-and-comers whom we'll surely be seeing a lot more from in the future.  Learn more at ps1.org.  Read Roberta Smith's review and see pics at nytimes.com.  Through October 18th.

Architecture firm Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu is the winner of MoMA and PS1's eleventh annual Young Architects Program.  Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu's urban landscape titled Pole Dance was installed in PS1's spacious courtyard June 25th, just in time for the kickoff to PS1's 2010 Warm Up outdoor concert/party series on July 3rd.  The interactive environment is composed of an "interconnected system" of "25-foot-tall [fiberglass] poles on 12 x 12-foot grids connected by bungee cords whose elasticity cause the poles to gently sway..." (from ps1.org).  "Each grid contains a number of playful activators, such as hammocks, pulls, misters, and rain collecting plants."  Eight of the poles hold an audio device "that measures the motion" of its poles and "converts it [the motion] to sound."  A net is draped over the entire structure to stabilize the poles' movement and hold giant colorful balls.  A small wading pool and a sandpit complete the environment.  Learn more about Pole Dance, the Young Architects Program and Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu at ps1.org and see my pics below.  Through September 6th.  Check out the full Warm Up schedule here.

David Brooks, Preserved Forest, 2010

Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu, Pole Dance

Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu, Pole Dance

Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu, Pole Dance

Solid Objectives - Idenburg Liu, Pole Dance

Eero Saarinen | Museum of the City of New York

I'm a fan a mid-century design, and a major figure in that period is architect/designer Eero Saarinen.  The Museum of the City of New York has a comprehensive survey of Saarinen's work featuring models, films, photographs, documents (his high school yearbook and passport), sketches, drawings, and samples of his famous furniture designs.  Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) was a celebrated and controversial architect who lent his unique vision and space-age, mid-century style to some unlikely clients like corporate headquarters, universities, and airport terminals. 

Saarinen "sought to expand modernism's vocabulary beyond what he called 'the measly ABC'.... He also frequently moved away from simple, abstract compositions in favor of exuberant visual effects and historical references" utilizing "new materials, innovative construction techniques, and sculptural forms" (from eerosaarinen.net).  Saarinen believed in a "total environment" and through collaborations with friends and associates, his works successfully "synthesiz[e] architecture, landscape, and interior design."  Though Saarinen was surprisingly criticized for "inventing a new style for every job" (that's a bad thing?), "his diverse and sometimes unabashedly theatrical designs attracted powerful clients who played pivotal roles in trends that transformed the culture of the time."

Born in Finland in 1910, Saarinen's creative family emigrated to the United States in 1923. His father, Eliel, was a world-renowned architect, his mother, Louise, was a textile designer and sculptor, and his older sister, Eva-Lisa, was a designer and interior decorator.  Eero graduated Baldwin High School in Birmingham, Michigan in 1929.  He studied sculpture in Paris at the age of 19 and received his BFA in architecture in 3 years from Yale, graduating one year early in 1934.  After graduation, Saarinen traveled the world, visiting architectural landmarks in Europe, Egypt, and Mexico.  Early in his career, Saarinen worked alongside his father until the elder Saarinen passed away in 1950.  One of their most successful projects was their "1939 winning submission for the prestigious Smithsonian Gallery of Art to be built on the Mall in Washington, D.C." which unfortunately was never realized.  As if he wasn't busy enough, Saarinen also collaborated with designer Charles Eames and created some iconic pieces of furniture.

Saarinen understood "architecture’s value in creating a company’s image, often using new building technologies to help brand forward thinking corporations."  Eero Saarinen and Associates based in Bloomfield, Hills, Michigan (which was rumored to be open 24 hours, 7 days a week) "designed the first mirror glass curtain wall and the world’s thinnest exterior wall panel.  Saarinen also pioneered, and ultimately mastered, the development of a new office typology: the corporate campus. Occupying pristine rural settings, these business complexes reinvented the traditional country estate and the American college campus in terms of modern corporate programs, similarly evoking power and authority." General Motors Technical Center in Warren Michigan, completed in 1956 and composed of 25 buildings, was Saarinen’s first example of this model [IBM's Manufacturing and Training facility in Rochester, Minnesota (1956-58) and Deere and Company's Administrative Center in Moline, Illnois (1957-63) followed].  For college campuses, like Yale, Vassar, and Brandeis, Saarinen sought "to balance student comfort and privacy with amenities that encouraged social interaction."

Probably best known for works like the United States Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (or the St Louis Gateway Arch), JFK’s Trans World Airlines Terminal, Washington, D.C.'s Dulles International Airport Terminal, and New York City's CBS Building (his only completed skyscraper at 38 stories), as well as his pedestal tables and chairs, Saarinen has undoubtedly created some of the 20th-century's most iconic structures. His designs have stood the test of time and are still breath-taking today.  It's hard to imagine how progressive and extraordinary his works must have seemed back when they were first introduced.  Eero Saarinen was a daring, visionary, brilliant talent.  Learn much more at eerosaarinen.net (where I found most of the info for this post) and mcny.org.  Ends soon on January 31st.

Model of the CBS Building, New York, 1960-65

Model of David S. Ingalls Hockey Rink, Yale University, 1956-58

Model of Dulles International Airport Terminal Model, Washington, D.C., 1958-63

Photo of an interior stairway at General Motor's Technical Center, Warren, Michigan, 1949-55

Photo of one of the few residences Saarinen created, The Miller House, Columbus, Indiana, 1953-57

Photo of TWA Terminal's rear elevation viewed from tarmac, by Ezra Stoller, 1962

Rendering of lounge of TWA Terminal by Eero Saarinen and Associates, circa 1956

Model of TWA Terminal, JFK Airport, 1956-62

Rendering of an unrealized transport system for U.S. Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, no date

Photos of Eero Saarinen with model of the U.S. Jefferson National Expansion Memorial by Renyold Ferguson, circa 1958

Model of winning submission for Smithsonian Gallery of Art competition, Washington D.C., 1939, unbuilt

Womb chair and ottoman, 1964-1965

Grasshopper Chair, 1946 (front) and High-back armchair (behind) by Saarinen and Charles Eames, winner of MoMA's Organic Design in Home Furnishings Competition in 1940

Storage unit, by Saarinen and Charles Eames, 1941 (from The Future at Home: American Furniture, 1940-1955 exhibition, also at MCNY)

Knoll Associates advert for a pedestal chair