Art Hag

Doug Wheeler | David Zwirner

I'm an impatient person.  I hate to wait.  So when I first tried going to the Doug Wheeler exhibit at the David Zwirner gallery three Saturdays ago and saw the long line outside, I was discouraged.  When a gallery employee came out after a few minutes to inform all of us on line that the wait would be at least two hours, I immediately gave up and fled.  The following Saturday I returned thinking if I got to the gallery a few minutes before they opened, I would out-smart all the other gallery goers.  I was mistaken. Arriving at 9:45 that cold and wet morning granted me a two hour wait in line—about an hour and a fifteen minutes standing outside in the rain/snow, and another forty-five minutes waiting inside the front of the gallery with approximately thirty others. The gallery allowed groups of ten people into Wheeler's installation at a time for 15 minute intervals.  Before entering, everyone must take off their shoes and put on white paper slippers with elasticized ankles.  All the long lines, the waiting, and the footwear changing was totally worth it. Wheeler's new work, SA MI 75 DZ NY 12 (2012), is an amazing, breath-taking experience.

This is only the fourth "infinity environment" Wheeler has ever exhibited in public (the first was at a gallery in Milan in 1975, the second at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 1983, and the third at the Guggenheim Bilbao in 2000).  Like the first three installations, his current work "manipulat[es] architecture with neon and fluorescent lighting, creating entire luminous rooms in which the viewer experienced the sensation of entering an infinite void," (from the show's press release).  It "explores the materiality of light while emphasizing the viewer's physical experience of infinite space."

When I finally got to approach the installation, my eyes were immediately challenged.  I initially thought the wide entranceway was a wall, and hesitated walking through it.  Inside the installation, the large, empty, white space has no corners or edges.  The lighting, which slowly transitions from day to night, creates an ephemeral, hazy effect.  Looking at the work straight on is like looking into a white abyss—never-ending whiteness.  My first impression was of being inside a cloud, and then I thought of all the scenes in movies where characters walk into a magnificent white light symbolizing death.  I heard others describe Wheeler's work like being inside a spaceship or what they'd imagine heaven to be like.

Wheeler was born in 1939 and started off as a painter while attending what is now the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.  Like his current work, his paintings explored space, light, and perception.  He was a part of the "Light and Space" movement in Southern Californina in the 1960s and 1970s and his work was featured in the terrific Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970 exhibit at David Zwirner in 2010.  

While I may be impatient, I did not mind waiting to see Wheeler's SA MI 75 DZ NY 12.  In fact, I went back a third Saturday and waited a mere hour and a half to see it again.  The second viewing was no less effective or awesome. It is definitely worth the effort to see Wheeler's work at Zwirner.  It is a unique sensory experience.  Go see it before it closes this weekend!  Learn more at Davidzwirner.com. Through February 25th.

SA MI 75 DZ NY 12, 2012

SA MI 75 DZ NY 12, 2012

David Byrne | Under the High Line (508 West 25th Street)

David Byrne seems to do it all -- music, writing, art, filmmaking -- and he does it all very well, indeed.  Following up his 2008 Creative Time-commissioned installation, Playing the Building, The Pace Gallery presents Tight Spot, Byrne's site-specific art installation under the High Line at 508 West 25th Street.

Consisting of a 48 x 20 foot inflatable globe, reminiscent of the ones from elementary school days, the representation of the planet is overblown and crammed snugly under the High Line bridge, warping the pastel, plasticky orb.  Emanating from the center of the malformed earth is a low-frequency vibration that Byrne created using his own voice, tweaking and distorting it to make it unrecognizable and give it an otherworldly, sonic sort of vibe.  The mysterious, warbling sounds can be heard around the block and from the High Line above, luring visitors to the installation. 

Always proving to be daring and innovative, the former RISD student, frontman of Talking Heads, and author of Bicycle Diaries (and designer of bicycle racks around NYC and Brooklyn), Byrne has a knack for creating exciting, original, and intelligent visual and sensory work and experiences.  Tight Spot is on view for two weeks only.  Closes October 1st.  Learn more at thepacegallery.com.

Tight Spot, 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)

Hunter Reynolds | Participant Inc

Artist and activist Hunter Reynolds' site-specific installation Survival AIDS, currently on view at Participant Inc, features work from his key projects spanning the past twenty years.  Reynolds, a member of ACT UP since 1989 and a co-founder of Art Positive which fights homophobia and censorship in the arts, has been HIV positive since 1984. 

From 1989-1993, Reynolds cut out every HIV/AIDS and LGBT-related article printed in the New York Times (ie:  stories about discrimination, Derek Jarman's last film Blue, Robert Mapplethorpe's banned 1989 Corcoran Gallery exhibition, and obituaries for people who passed away from AIDS-related causes) for series titled Dialogue Tables and Activist Media Installations which were displayed on tables, projected onto walls, or read aloud.  After being kept in storage for the past 17 years, the newspaper clippings have reemerged in Reynolds' new Photo Weavings series.  The artist scanned, laminated, grouped, and stitched the articles together into twenty 60 x 48 inch quilt-like works that document the early days of the HIV virus and the discrimination the LGBT community endured two decades ago.  In the early 90s, Reynolds performed pieces in which he extracted his own blood, dripping it onto paper and "scanning it to create perfectly shaped spots of blood, reclaimed in his artwork ever since," (from the show's press release).  Some of these Blood Spot works commingle with the newspaper articles in Reynolds' Photo Weavings.

Reynolds' Mummification performances involve enshrouding the artist in layers of plastic, tin foil, and duct tape which are carefully cut from his body and reshaped to serve as "reminders of the many re-embodiments of the artist over time."  Reynolds' project Memorial Dress featured the artist posed on a spinning platform for hours a day whilst wearing a dress printed with the names of over 25,000 people who have died of HIV/AIDS. 

Survival AIDS is a moving, powerful, and important exhibit.  It's impossible to not want to read every single newspaper article chronicling the onset of AIDS and the hate and ignorance of conservative politicians and right wingers.  It's hard to believe that people thought and behaved this way only twenty years ago.  While we've made some progress, AIDS and discrimination still exist — we've still got a ways to go for acceptance and equality for the LGBT population.  Bold, outspoken artists like Hunter Reynolds help lead the fight with compelling, indelible, evocative work.  Learn more at participantinc.org and hunterwreynolds.com.  Through June 5th.

Rachel Feinstein | Lever House

Interpreting Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen, Rachel Feinstein has transformed the lobby of The Lever House into a whimsical fantasy world.  Inspired by the children's story, the artist explores themes of beauty, fantasy, and ruin via massive sculptures and installations featuring toy soliders, roses, children, ice, and a gilded coach. 

The Snow Queen's Room is a vast, cold, white space that can be viewed outside through the exterior windows or in the lobby through intricately decorative alcoves containing ornate, dynamic sculptures of characters from the story.  Adjacent to the installation is The Soliders, a colorful parade of giant toy soliders, hand-cut and hinged together like an enormous folding screen.  The Mirror Room is a two-sided room featuring floor to ceiling mirrors embellished with painted images of "architectural ruins in a bucolic, sweeping landscape" that "suggest[s] nature overpowering the presence of man," (from the exhibit's press release).  Outside in a wintry barren planter rests Golden Carriage, a smashed, golden, 19th-century royal Austrian coach "constructed of joined and curved pieces of wood that have been cast in metal and brightly gilded."  Sitting in a green, leafy planter inside the lobby of the building is Flower Girl, an odd sculpture that looks a lot like a child's Play-Doh creation.  Feinstein's quirky works transport the busy worker-bees shuffling through The Lever House's lobby to get to their offices temporarily to a magical fairy tale world.  Learn more at leverhouseartcollection.com and check out this recent NYTs article to get a glimpse into Feinstein's fabulous life with husband, painter John Currin, and their three young children.  The Snow Queen is on view through April 22nd.

The Soliders

The Snow Queen's Room

The Snow Queen's Room close-up

The Mirror Room

Golden Carriage

Flower Girl

Hiraki Sawa | James Cohan Gallery

Hiraki Sawa's installation O immerses viewers in a serene, dreamy environment that "abstracts the notion of time by the simultaneous depiction of interior and exterior spaces, meditations on the moon and the earth, and suggestions of the present and distant past," (from show's press release).  On view at the James Cohan Gallery, the sound and video installation consists of three large-scale projections displaying beautiful images of vast landscapes and ocean scenes, flocks of flying birds, and the interior of an unoccupied house accented with the artist's animations of birds, a moon, a ferris wheel, and a rustling tree.  Ten small monitors scattered throughout the darkened main gallery play black-and-white videos of everyday items like a bell, cup, mug, pitcher, lightbulb, and top spinning around and around as if possessed by an otherwordly force.  All the trance-like imagery is hauntingly punctuated by audio emanating from custom-built speakers.  Created by the Organ Octet, minature organs soundtrack the larger projections while the sounds of tinny or ceramic objects whirling on hard surfaces accompany the smaller screens.

The Japanese-born, London-based Sawa's elegant and meditative work converys both natural and supernatural elements, creating an enchanting and mesmerizing atmosphere.  Learn more at Jamescohan.com.  Through March 26th.

O, 2009

O, 2009

O, 2009

O, 2009

O, 2009

O, 2009

O, 2009

O, 2009

Jeppe Hein | 303 Gallery

Danish artist Jeppe Hein creates interactive sculptures and installations infused with elements of surprise and playfulness.  When approaching his current exhibit at 303 Gallery visitors notice a telescopic lens poking out of the gallery's exterior wall.  The title of the work, Upside Down, says it all—when peeking into the lens the view reflected is the interior of the gallery flipped over in reverse.  Inside the gallery on the back wall, another work, You, also features a peep-hole tempting visitors with a look-see.  Instead of spying something juicy or provocative when peering through the hole in the wall, viewers see a reflection of their own eyeball staring back at them.  Haw-haw!  Hein's two works play "gotcha" tricks on your curiosity and vision and surprisingly don't leave a practical joke-style, dark ring around your eye after leaning in on the peep-holes.

Light Pavilion, the centerpiece of the exhibit, features eight long strings of lights hanging in a bunch from the center of the gallery's ceiling.  Slowing the lights begin to open up wide like an umbrella, and then slowly close in tight again. Visitors can walk under the light work when it's open and around it when closed.  Venturing to the rear of the gallery where the desk is you'll discover a gallery employee pedaling away on a stationary bicycle, activating "the kinetic energy which animates the light itself," (from the press release).  What an ingenius way to stay fit while at work!

Hein's clever, inclusive artwork "breaks down the wall between creator and spectator, and the artistic process itself is sidestepped in favor of collective experience."  The Berlin-based artist's works offer interactive, lighthearted, and unexpected experiences.  Learn more at 303gallery.com and at the artist's website Jeppehein.net.  Through March 5th.

Light Pavilion II, 2009

Light Pavilion II, 2009

Light Pavilion II, 2009

Light Pavilion II, 2009

Yoshitomo Nara | Asia Society

I made it back to NYC in time to catch the final day of Yoshitomo Nara's Nobody's Fool at Asia Society, the first major retrospective of the artist's work in New York.  The excellent exhibit which was divided into three themes: Isolation, Rebellion, and Music, and featured over 100 works from the 1980s through 2010, helped me see Nara's work in a new light.  Instead of just seeing sinister and adorable kids and puppy dogs, I learned that the work of the king of "kowa kawaii" is much more than simply "creepy cute." 

Nara was born in Hirosaki, Japan in 1959 to working parents who often had to leave him home alone as a child.  This ingrained in Nara a sense of isolation which he extensively explored in his work when he moved to Germany from 1988-2000.  During these twelve years, Nara explored emotions and vulnerabilities in children and animals, whom he finds interchangeable and representative of "loneliness and solitude, and signs of innocence and its fragility."  The "submissive obedience" of a dog "sadly" reminds the artist of children (from the show's notes).  To personalize his work even further, Nara once stated that the use of dogs in his work was a result of a failed attempt to adopt a stray when he was young.  The use of children, dogs, and solitary houses symbolize the artist's lonely and isolated childhood.

Highly influenced by music, especially punk bands like The Clash and Ramones whom he listened to in the 70s, Nara's work exudes a punk spirit of independence and rebellion.  Many of his works from the 90s include scrawled words "that express anger, frustration and the resolve to stand up to the challenges of life."  In 1991, his painting The Girl with the Knife in Her Hand introduced Nara's pared down style featuring canvases focusing on a single subject on monochromatic, empty backgrounds. 

One room in the exhibition is devoted to Nara's obsession with music, featuring ceramics emblazoned with lyrics from some of the artist's favorite songs.  Also showcased in the room are 100 album covers selected by Nara from his extensive record collection illustrating his favorite album art and giving viewers an idea of his musical inspirations.  His selected record sleeves include: Joni Mitchell's Clouds, Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren, The Doors' Morrison Hotel, Jethro Tull's Stand Up, The Beatles' Revolver, The Rolling Stones' Flowers, Donovan's HMS, Loudon Wainwright III's Attempted Moustache, and Dan Penn's Nobody's Fool whose name Nara borrowed for the exhibit.  Nara himself has designed album covers for Jim Black, REM, Shonen Knife (Happy Hour), and the Japanese punk band The Star Club.  According to the show's notes, a possible reason for Nara's more recent characters appearing more contemplative rather than angry may be due to his current playlist of American folk and soul music.  The program booklet for the show includes two playlists that "reflect Nara's most current interest in music"—the first list featuring rock selections from bands like Small Faces, The Flamin' Groovies, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Turtles, and the second list featuring picks from singer-songwriters like Dan Penn, Donovan, Mary Hopkin, and Vashti Bunyan.

Nara recently began collaborating with the designer Hideki Toyoshima using the name YNG in creating shack-like structures typically built from found materials to showcase Nara's work.  Nobody's Fool featured three of their collaborative installations.  Untitled (formerly Home) (2010) is a little house you can walk into and see three recent works by Nara, a maquette for his White Ghost sculpture that was on view a few blocks down on Park Ave and a 1983 video montage.  Doors (2006) features five colorful doors of varying shapes and heights that you can enter to see assorted drawings, a sculpture, and a photograph.  Drawing Room Between the Concord and Merrimack (2010) is a large, site-specific, mixed-media installation that features a hallway displaying new paintings and older drawings from 1992-2000 that leads to recreations of Nara's studio, a concert stage, and a carnival tent—"familiar, exciting, and inviting" venues.  Prior to Nobody's Fool opening, Nara and Toyoshima held open studios at the Park Avenue Armory where they worked on rebuilding Home and creating new drawings.

Nara's Neo Pop, Edo period ukiyo-e print-influenced works are much more than cutesy kids with anger management issues and dreamy puppies.  Nara's work is deeply personal and emotional, exploring "feelings of helplessness and rage" and "loneliness and rebellion," emotions that the artist has harbored for years and that have influenced his work.  Learn more about Nobody's Fool at asiasociety.org.  Closed January 2, 2011.

*Photos weren't allowed, but I managed to get a couple of pics.  Also, see below for Shonen Knife's video Banana Chips from the band's 1998 album Happy Hour, whose cover Nara designed.  In the video, the band members are animated in a style strongly influenced by Nara (sorry if the song's chorus gets stuck in your head...).

Untitled (Lonely), 2008

Peace Sign, 2003, made from handmade stuffed dolls, from the installation Untitled (formerly Home), 2010

Dog sculpture (front)

Dog sculpture (rear)

 

 

Robert Irwin | Pace Gallery, 57th Street

In the early 1970's Californian artist Robert Irwin began working with fluorescent light tubes during a period when his work evolved "from matter to energy" (from the press release).  Light's ability to "articulate space" attracted the artist to the medium and he's been creating amazing installations since.  His current exhibit Way Out West at Pace Gallery's 57th Street location features six stunning new light works that "experiment with the perceptual qualities of light, playing with rhythm, texture, densities, temperature, and chromatic relationships." 

For his new pieces the 82-year-old artist, who was an integral part of the "Light and Space" movement, wrapped fluorescent tubes with colored gels (some with as many as ten layers!) to perfectly capture the "range of hues" he was seeking.  He then neatly assembled the tubes vertically onto walls in groups.  Some of the lights are turned on at full power while others are at dimmer levels and some are completely turned off—creating wonderful interplay on light, shadow, reflection and color.  According to the show's press release, "One light tube reflects on another, and the spaces between the light tubes allow two adjacent colors to refract, producing a vast range of hues."  The light, shadows, and colors emitted from the sculptures create varying moods and atmospheres—cool and otherworldly, warm and earthy, vivid and intense.  Irwin's seemingly simple structures composed of everyday fluorescent lights are incredibly emotive, dramatic, and powerful.  Learn more at thepacegallery.com.  Through January 29, 2011.

So. Cal, 2010

So. Cal (side view ), 2010

#3 x 6' - Four Fold, 2010

Little Jazz, 2010

Little Jazz (side view), 2010

Left to right:  Way Out West, 2010; Pacific Jazz, 2010

#8 x 8' - Four Fold, 2010

Pat Steir | Sue Scott Gallery

Though Pat Steir is best-known for her "dripped and splashed waterfall" paintings influenced by 19-century Romantic paintings, Abstract Expressionism, and Chinese landscape painting, the New Jersey-born, New York-based artist has been working with wall drawings and installations for many decades (from the press release).  The Nearly Endless Line, Steir's current show at the Sue Scott Gallery, demonstrates the artist's practice of including architecture into her work which allows her to paint off the canvas and into space, creating a three-dimensional, immersive experience. 

Employing light and line to create her current experience, Steir painted a long, horizontal brushstroke directly onto the gallery's walls, "around the physical space that the viewer can't experience from one spot or one room -- the line bends around corners and closes a loop around the gallery."  Viewers activate the installation as they move through the space. After passing through the heavy black curtains into the installation, you enter a darkened room resembling a nightclub subtly illuminated with blacklight.  "The darkness and mystery of the room allows the viewer to step out of reality and enter illusion."  The thick, snaking line twists and glides across the walls through two rooms.  Attempting to see the continous stroke in its entirety is impossible and almost frustrating, so viewers must follow the line and travel along with it through the gallery—indeed activating the experience and engaging with the work.  Learn more at Suescottgallery.com.  Through January 9, 2011.

The Nearly Endless Line

The Nearly Endless Line

The Nearly Endless Line

The Nearly Endless Line

Winter Group '91 XI, 1991, Winter Group '91 XVIII, 1991