Mid year senior show, preview

Cool kids making art

My friend recently sent me this article about Dash Snow, and it got me thinking about art scenes and the art they produce.  Figures like Dash Snow are encased in such huge a mythic aura, they are  celebrities. If you google image his name you get an assorted collection of mostly Polaroid images of him and his friends fucking around, getting fucked up, or actually fucking. A white guy blowing a line off a black penis, a sad looking threesome, some one shooting up, more naked sad looking strung out girls... this is not to say that he didn't produce anything of value. The article lists a couple working ideas like : skull cum shots (he literal cums on skulls) and puts glitter on them to in his words "make them pretty". Or his hamster nests where he and his friends would take a bunch of drugs and destroy a hotel room, shredding phone books to make a hamster nest (I like the hamster nest idea better then the skull cum shoots...)

                                        From right to left: Dash Snow, Ryan McGinley, and Dan Colen.

But anything he did create only further feed a legendary image of himself. He lived a crazy life of his own choosing.  I can't help but be pulled in the the romantic, self destructive, liberating, rebellious nature of it all. there is something so appealing about people who live out our fantasies for us. Instead of living a normal, well adjusted life that follows the pattern we have all grown so accustom to, some people, like Dash Snow, live an alternate reality full of drugs & partying that runs up against a mortality that normal people run away from. As I was looking up stuff about him on the web, I found a lot of sites commenting on his "shocking" death - while his death is tragic, especially because he leaves behind a daughter, I wouldn't say its all that shocking or even surprising. he and WE understood the risks he was taking and we watched. Art scenes sell vicarious living. What the scene creates is a myth, an aura, which can be sold as the art it self. Its the ultimate form of representation. The representation of a life style. As the watching audience, we can live out our self destructive fantasies that we are too scared to realize, all from the safety of our normal, well adjusted lives.

Finally saw the biennial...

Finally got around to going over to the Whitney to see the biennial. overall, quite enjoyable. I went during a performance by Lars Jan and it was a free Friday so the place was packed. But I escaped the frenzied lobby and was greeted by James Casebere's sublime suburban landscapes. He photographed scale models of Duchess County, NY depicting them as almost uninhabitable, utopic, surreal American landscapes. I was transported right away.

A lot of video pieces.  I wasn't a huge fan of them all. but I did like Kate Gilmore's Standing Here, a performance video that shows her enclosed in a tiny closet like space and her subsequent violent attempts to escape. the film was taken from above, looking down at her, but was projected on to the wall in a room with the remains of her constructed closet, creating a wonderful sense of disoretation.

Also liked : Couch for a long time by Jessica Jackson Hutchins
-Newspaper clippings of Obama covering the TV receptical. Lumps of clay ready to be molded.

Also Aurel Schmidt's garbage Minotaur is amazing. check it out: http://www.whitney.org/Exhibitions/2010Biennial/AurelSchmidt

Wait I have to take it back, my FAVORITE PIECE was definitely Michael Asher's work to keep the Whitney "open to the public" (wait, dose that mean FREE?!?!) for 24 hrs for a whole week (they shortened it to 3 days, May 26th to May 28th.) I am so going at like 3 am!

kkkoooky koons part du

So I just watch the art21 on Jeff Koons and had to recommend it. He is in the episode titled "Fantasy" in season 5 which you can get on netflix. He talks about his show at Versailles, which is insane. He literal mounted a bust of himself in one of the galleries. But his explanation is so rooted in a quest for legitimacy that I kinda get it. he seems very very connected to the historical. he own private collection is full of old masters. and this is how he is solidifying his legacy.

He also talked about his lobster hanging from the ceiling of another gallery, he equated it to some one burning at the stake. he said something like, to be in the spot light like that for so long meant inevitable persecution, which has a unique irony with Mr. Koons' current chill reception in the art world.

ALSO - my teacher pointed out Koons' photographs in the Sunday Times Magazine. He thought they were much more interesting then Koons' recent sculpture and I agree! (not only because they are sooo freakin cute!!) they seem to be more honest to Koon's declared intention of making everyone proud of their own personal cultural history (as stated in the art21 piece.)

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/magazine/04animals-t.html

By Jeff Koons, please don't sue me....

KOONS

"sausage fest" is a good description for it. The Village Voice used this phrase to describe "Skin Fruit," the Jeff Koons curated show of Dakis Joannou's art collection at the new museum. The preoccupation with shock/disgust/perversion and the ever present phallus felt inauthentic, unoriginal and just plan creepy. The Village Voice, the Times, along with the art community in general, have completely panned this blatant display of art speculating. The showing of a private collection in a museum (that plays an undeniable role in setting the canon) leverages the value of the collection and perpetuates the belligerent, bloated art market. although the idea of opening up the opaque world of contemporary art collecting is, in theory, a democratic concept, the reality is the value of Joannou's collection just doubled. also if making a private collection public was the intention, why can't I take pictures douchebag!

 Paul McCarthy's Boink fest

 Here are my notes:
-Absurd and Ironic to the point of nihilism, which is ok, but felt too worked/trying too hard/sad
-I don't like Chris Ofili, sorry, just don't
-Although the collection includes artist I like and admire, Richard Prince, Kiki Smith, Matthew Barney, Urs Fischer, Mike Kelley,  I found their pieces to be disappointing and for me, not their best works.
-I DID LIKE: Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Tauba Auerbach, Tim Noble and Sue Webster's "Masters of the Universe," (the cave couple encircled by the art space, frozen mid stride) and Cady Noland's "Bluewald" (see below)

Its fairly impossible to say anything new about this show so here are some quote I find to be the most illuminating:

" "Skin Fruit" is totally the wrong show for our times in just about every possible way. An exhibition of million-dollar works curated by a celebrity artist inside a museum that was, until only recently, a haven for underdog art, the ensuing display can't help but look as mean (and irrelevant) as a rack of opera minks hung out under the Darfur sun."-village voice review

"With an ever-present warm smile and the comforting tones of a guidance counselor, he has spoken about how art 'lets you kind of control physiology and the secretions that take place within the body,' how his art operates in 'a morality theater trying to help the underdog,' how his balloon-based sculptures, at least sexually speaking, 'really try to address whatever your interests are.' "

- Randy Kennedy Times Article on Jeff Koons

"Depending on your point of view this exhibition may or may not have an air of complicity, but it definitely has the look of complacency." - Roberta Smith's times review

Armory

Barbara Probst's work in the crowd at The Armory Show

So I gave myself two days to digest but I don't know if that's enough time to even begin the process of thinking through this apex of spectral we call the art fair. Let me tell you, this place was ginormous! The fair is such a monolithic, sprawling structure itself that one cannot help but boggle at it’s cultural weigh. Each little read dot on each sold work carries with it not just an insane amount of hard currency, but  a hefty dose of legitimacy and cultural capital as well. astonishingly, piers 92 & 94 are still afloat, hehe dumb joke. 


How is one supposed to take in a show of that scale anyway? It is so astronomically huge that one literally and figuratively does not know where to begin (only complicated by multiple entrances :). It’s kind of purposefully impossible to see the whole thing. and it’s physically, humanly out of the question to see all the pierces’ in the fair. thus some, actually almost all, fall by the way side. its a brutal art world out there, survival of the fittest. or more correctly, survival of the well established and well positioned. 

Olla von Brandenburg

The rampantly capitalist underpinnings of the show are made quite clear for the beginning. The pieces are nicely labeled $$$ half the time and if not, you can just ask the semi-friendly gallerina's for the cost in cold hard cash. I overheard a lot of people (especially in the modern area) asking for prices. One wife was telling her husband "Its only 30,000 for the 3,"he looked green. (note: about the same cost as my education for one year)

Richard Hamilton 

The people watching is actually fairly captivating. They was a great mix : art world old school characters with tortoise shell glasses, yuppie couples with their baby strollers (really guys, you had to bring the baby?), The bridge and tunnel / nuevo riche, the international out of towners including: the beautifully tanned Mediterranean women who kiss checks and might be slightly euro trash and the tall Nordic male models mixed in with a ny scene : cool looking girls who make you wonder whats her life like? and the beautifully scruffy artist boys (my favorite). WE saw Naomi Campbell. she didn’t even pretend to look at the art. But I guess what was I looking at when I was looking at her? wasn't art. 

John Baldesarri 

BUT back to the ART: I got my ticket for free because of my class, but within 30 sec of us entering the fair we were completely on our own. I stuck with my friend Maddie, who is a lovely person to see art with, and we simply SLOOOOWWWWED down. Allowing ourselves to look for a beat, in front of a work that had caught our eyes. This viewing is to me the only human way of witnessing this fair. It felt like just resisting the flow of viewing momentum was a task. The vectors of spectatorship were hard to resist and you felt your self being lulled to one object or another by a cultural undertow. In some way it felt like an act of rebellion to move against the current by slowing my pace, although perhaps in the end our destinations were the same. The works with magnetic / human / visual pull got us all. But it was worth it to break with the manic speed of the carnival. By pausing to taking notes on artists I felt more able to absorb and process the abundance of information being thrown at me. I feel like I am  learning a community. I'm approaching it almost as an anthropologist. De-marking the terrain, the customs, the gestures of meaning.  

Adam McEwen

So we were there for 4 hours until it felt like our eyes were bleeding and we some how crawled our way to the nearest exit. I wish I had some more pictures. I think ideally I would have liked to have two days to see the thing. One day to take part in the hectic walk through. The next to see the work. I hope I don’t come off as VERY cynical about fair. I actually loved the show. I deeply enjoy beginning to see and comprehend parts of this ever-expanding art system. Seeing international work makes me wonder about what Allan McCollum said to art21 about a “universal system of meaning.” Something about the international work  felt opaque to me. Often I feel like I can’t read the social marks as easily, but this frequently makes the work all the more appealing to discover. I'm a an idealist , like Allen McCollum and I hope a skeptical hope for universal communication. I want to make works that  un fold some  of our constructed boundaries. I am not so naive to think that  I will not create my own boundaries, but I won't give up on the aspiration. In the end, I came away eager to make. and take part.  and communicate. I was fundamental, utterly inspired.