Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look. - John Cage, 1961

When the news came across the internet of RR's death on Monday, I felt like a someone hit me with one of those punches you read about in old timey boxing stories. Robert Rauschenberg is one of those artists that has always been in my personal "cannon" as it were, if not for the enormous body of impressive work, but for his bravery in the materials the he used to produce it.

I remember in my first year at VCU when Jim Baumgartner taught us the technique that RR used the make image transfers from newspapers and magazines. That same week, Richard Carlyne ran a movie for a class where we watch RR get shitfaced and show his latest work - the cardboard series, told the story about asking Willem deKooning to have a drawing that he could erase, and finally a Merce Cunningham ballet that he would design a set for. I guess you could say that unlike many other artists, I was aware of the value of his thinking about his work, no matter how impulsive it might have seemed. Recently most of the artworld traveled to the met to see his combines and literally saw how powerful and interestingly enough, how fresh they seemed when compared to what we see in galleries today. That surprised me. Because, truth be told, I had been taking him for granted for too long and had forgotten just how great that work is.


Robert Rauschenberg Pilgrim, 1950, mixed mediums with wooden chair, ca. 79 x 54 x 19 in.Hamburger Kunsthalle

I'll admit that there is a period of his work (late 80's and 90's) where I wasn't as interested in his approach, it seemed old and dated. Recently he had a bit of a comeback with his more photo-oriented collage work, and the cardboard work had been given new life with a traveling show.

There is a period in time, when New York was at the height of it's power as "the place where art was made" and RR was there. I'm referring to the Castelli gallery, along with Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Frank stella, et al. this group of artists, along with the major abstract expressionists defined American Art to the world for the late 20th century and many would say they still are. Rauschenberg was one of the truly original artists of his time.

I'm glad I can still see his work, but I miss him already.

RR film clip about the "Erased deKooning drawing"

Labels: 60's, Death, Galleries, New York

I'm even more shocked than you are. JW Mahoney has written an article on the state of art in DC. It's a fairly comprehensive overview and I was fortunate enough to have one of my images published. Articles like this one make me realize just what a great and under-rated city Washington is for the Arts.

Quick Art-o-matic update
Opens this friday evening at 1200 1st street NE - I'll be there, come by and say hello. I'm on the 5th floor. If your coming take the metro - NY Ave station is one block away.

Labels: Galleries, Matthew Langley, Washington DC

The other day I mentioned I has going to participate in AOM - last time was so good to me, I figured why not? I still feel that way. I have been thinking about what I would do - rehang some of the work from my DCAC show? or something different?

I think I'm going the different route.

I have recently been doing quite a few white on white pieces and think this might be a good place to present a very tightly focused group of my work. I'm pretty excited about this. I hope you can come by my booth (D7 on the 5th floor) and say hello.

One More Artomatic Note: the building is brand new and really nice. Last years show was on two floors and little bit cramped - this year its on something like 5 floors and feels like it will be very spacious. Hope you can make it.

Labels: Galleries, Matthew Langley, Painting, Washington DC

So enough with my trails and tribulations about the house/studio. Lets move on to some better news but, before I start, Sorry for being away for the last 10 days or so. I was just caught up in the finals of the regular season (Go Caps!) and spent too much time at the rink and in front of the TV.

Solo Show in Philadelphia this September
Doug Witmer has been kind enough to set up a casual showing of my paperworks at Green Line Projects. I'm thrilled to be having even a cafe show in another city by someone who I have admired from a distance. I'll talk more in the later months.

Collected by Ernst and Young
I recently had a painting purchased by Ernst & Young. Sunflower was featured in The Washington Post Sunday Source section when the show at DCAC was opening. For me it's the first sale of my work to a major corporation.

Art-O-Matic
AOM was so good to me last time that I just cant resist doing it agin this year. One of the things I really like about AOM is the ability to show a group of artworks as opposed to one of those shows with 50 works by 50 artists and no one remembers anything.

Labels: Galleries, Matthew Langley, Painting, Philadelphia, Washington DC

Thanks for sticking with me today while I continue talking about William Christenberry's current show at the Katzen Art Center at American University. I have been thinking about a discussion that arises with the idea of the grid and how it relates to WC's art in an era that could be defined as reductive - by this I mean the early seventies and into the very early eighties, the early stages of his mature artistic output.

I have always thought of the work as documentary in style and presentation - while I still find this to be true, I'm starting to think about the serial nature of the places that are photographed in Christenberry's work. Why for instance have I seen more that 10 different versions of The Palmist Building, The Green Warehouse, Sprott Church, and The Bar-B-Q Inn. Certainly these images could create a grid of changes to the location or even a timeline of the same, however could we now start to see that structure as a formal 3 dimensional grid that could represent; image of the location, deterioration of the location, year of the location, anthropological uses of the location. An x,y, and z axis if you will. This grid (or cube) could now start to also work in other disciplines - his drawings, paintings, and sculptures of the locations (or details thereof) of said subject combined.

There is a secondary question to this that needs to be asked as well - Is this an intention of the artist or is this something that has sprung from reading the output of his practice. Or is it a combination of both, in my mind, probably both. While this says nothing definitive of WC's work, it does raise a curious thought about art we (especially in the DC area) have grown very accustomed to.

Clearly this post is as much me thinking aloud as it is definitive theory - I have been kind of rolling the idea around for the last couple of days just to see where it might stick.

Labels: DC Galleries, Galleries, Painting, Photography, Sculpture, Washington DC

There is a body of Christenberry's work that I have been interested to see for quite a while. The installation is called The Klan Room. I only knew of The Klan Room by stories I had heard at the Corcoran when I was attending there in the early eighties. The stories were about G.I. Joes dressed up in Klan robes interacting with each other - and still holding a powerful presence - almost like the sculptures were as evil as the people they represent. I believe this show happened at the Corcoran in 1977.

Then the story starts to change.

1979 Christenberry's studio was burglarized by people who stole the entire contents of what constituted The Klan Room installation. Nothing else was taken, the intruders even locked the door on the way out. 20 years worth of artwork suddenly disappeared. Christenberry started over. He would expand the size of The Klan Room installation to three times its original.

At the same time WC's fans would ask, why pursue a subject so painful and divisive, galleries and museums have shied away from showing it due to corporate sponsorship concerns, others would say its not the right time or the right place. Others would say it's not a proper subject to make art about. All the while Christenberry has pursued this part of his work regardless of its desirability. The work that comprises The Klan Room is deadpan and in your face. It is some of the most shocking and shameful artwork I have ever seem that documents the United States.

The amount of The Klan Room shown in the current show at the Katzen is relatively small, however it packs quite a punch. WC is best known for a body of work that is both documentary in style and concerned with a history of story, and place of memory.

My wife joked about the current curatorial initiative at the Katzen when on the way over she said "Last time we got to see the torture at Abu Grahib - and now this - you really are quite the winner at choosing a date for the two of us...

I hope to discuss the rest of the show later this week, frankly there is so much to discuss.

Some research for this entry was gathered from Aperture #96. Copyright 1984, the Aperture Foundation.
Photo from the Klan Room are by me sneaking them when I was told of no photography for this show, my apologies to all.

Labels: DC Galleries, Galleries, Photography, Washington DC

Just a quick reminder about the craigslist show opening at Civilian Art Projects this Friday from 7-9 pm.

Jointly curated by Andrea Pollan of Curator's Office and Jayme McLellan of Civilian, the show features three artists that use the Craigslist web-site as part of their artistic practice. artists included are Joseph Dumbacher & John Dumbacher, Jason Horowitz, and Jason Zimmerman. The show runs until April 26th.

I am a fan of Jason Horowitz's work - he is showing images from the Corpus portfolio, its interesting work and worth looking at. One last bit of JH news, he recently received an Individual Photographer's Fellowship grant from the Siskind Foundation.

Civilian Art Projects
406 Seventh Street, NW
Third Floor
Washington, DC
202.347.0022

Labels: Galleries, Photography, Washington DC

ARTOMATIC 2008
May 9 - June 15, 2008
Capitol Plaza building, located at 1200 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002

This year's Artomatic, occupying 200,000 square feet at Capitol Plaza, will be the largest to date.

For more information go to Artomatic.org

Labels: DC Galleries, Galleries, Washington DC

I was recently pointed in the direction of Blinky Palermo by JW Mahoney, who thought that I would enjoy his work because of the titling of his work as well as the geometric approaches of his work. Well when someone is right, they're right. Palermos work has connected with me in a lot of ways recently. I have been compulsively reading and re-reading the book Palermo which as a catalog of the recent show at Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, this has proven to me to be a gold mine of discussion and thought about an artist who was for the most part, unknown to me. As a cherry on top - I've learned quite a bit about artists that I knew a good deal about.

Back to Palermo. Adopted and his name changed to Peter Heisterkamp (1943-1977) he later assumed the name of the American gangster and boxing promoter and became known to the world as Blinky Palermo. The namesake Palermo was famous at the time for "owning" Sonny Liston, who would later be defeated by Cassius Clay (Later to be known as Mohammed Ali)

Probably most famous for his initial works - spare monochromatic "fabric paintings". These "paintings" would be stitched together and then stretched over a traditional canvas stretcher, where they resonate with the works of Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Rothko, Albers and Daniel Buren (to name a few) later his work would shift to a triangle motif for a few years and then move into installation type works. One of the most interesting parts of his work was the fact that these installations were subtle and easy to miss, a fact not missed by many looking (and not finding) his work.

What I'm finding most interesting is that his work keeps opening like a flower and is multi-layerd like an onion. His sense of humor is evident in almost all his work in an age where reductivist work was so very earnest, clearly we have an artist who is thinking in ways that not everyone else is, while at the same time covering similar issues in ways not thought of by his contemporaries.

I'm just really getting to know this artist, I suggest you take a look yourself.

The Palermo catalog has a cast of thousands in it as far as the writing and interviews go (27 different artist and writers contributed) is a great read - and frankly less of an exhibition catalog - but all the better for it.

One last quirky note: Did you know that Donald Judd based a portion of his work on the colors of Harley-Davidson motorcycles? Neither did I.

Labels: 70's, Europe, Galleries

Poster and catalogue for a major exhibition to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Hamilton's definition of Pop Art designed by Graphic Thought Facility and Peter Saville. I just think it's a great piece.

Granted the post is a little late...

Labels: Design, Galleries

this is quite an idea and while I tend not to be too interested in seeing a represented past, however I think of all the early "minimalist" shows this is one to see. The 1964 Green Gallery show was a coming out party of sorts for Flavin an artist who would repeatedly say, "... my own proposal has become mainly an indoor routine of placing strips of fluorescent light. It has been labeled sculpture by people who should know better." However the past is easy to forget, the Green Gallery show of 1964 was poorly received and sparsely attended while at the same time canonized.

It's been curious to note (and see) that the most groundbreaking piece of that show, The Nominal Three (to William of Okham) has been displayed in relative sizes over the years - but always shown in units totaling three (rather obvious, I know). One of the things about the earlier Flavin shows (I was lucky enough to see his exhibition at the Corcoran in the mid eighties) is how intensely spare the installation of the shows were. This is especially true if you look at the almost jewel like installation of his retrospective at the National Gallery a couple of years ago (even more so when the show was in Chicago).

Dan Flavin: the 1964 Green Gallery Exhibition is at Zwirner and Worth (32 E 69th street) through May 3rd.

Labels: 60's, Galleries, New York

A few of you may remember that I checked in with Jason a few months ago, well here is a quick update. Blue Sky Gallery in portland is showing his work through the end of the month. (I think - because I'm just not sure when the show ends) Anyway, it hardly matters, I'm a fan of Jasons work and I think its worth looking at. One of the things that is really interesting to me about the work is that is has to be seen in person, this is really one of those art as experience versus art as a jpeg.

Jason seems to have had a pretty good turnout for his opening - he sent over a photo of the installation as well.

My last post about Jason is here.

Labels: Galleries, Photography

Thanks go out to Kriston Capps for his review of my show in the Washington City Paper today. You can even read it online here.

Labels: Galleries, Matthew Langley, Painting, Washington DC

A big thank you to Kelly Rand of DCist who reviewed my show for the DCist web site. Follow this link for the story.

Also I had a brief mention on the Washington Post Web site by the "Going Out Gurus" in the Got Plans? section of the website. I guess this is a transcript of a conversation held on Thursday, Jan 17, 2008. I'm mentioned in a question about 1/3 of the way down. Follow this link.

Labels: DC Galleries, Galleries, Matthew Langley, Painting

At Hillyer Art Space - runs through Feb. 22. I've seen parts of this collection before at the building museum - it's a fun show. I mean it's not going to change your view of the world or anything, but I really enjoy the focus of the collection. A set of more than 400 items, inherited from Washington collector and hardware-store pioneer John Hechinger.

Labels: DC Galleries, Galleries, Washington DC

You could have knocked me down with this one. The other day I received a call from the mysterious "B" Stanley at DCAC. He and I were talking about a couple of logistical things related to my show. He casually mentioned that "the Post" requested photos and didn't say much more. I of course was hoping for something to come from that - but was not expecting anything. So the color image of one of my paintings and a "Cant Miss" tag with it - pretty much has made my week. It has possibly added to my anxiety level a little bit as well - don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.

Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive - I'll name names at the end of the week.

(click on the image to see a larger, more readable size)

Labels: Galleries, Matthew Langley, Painting, Washington DC

You might remember that I'm having a show starting on the 18th. This is what the invite looks like, and please consider yourself invited.

Labels: Galleries, Matthew Langley, Washington DC

Lloyd Wolf shot my work for the DCAC show (January 18) on monday and here is a peek at one of the new images.

I have a great piece of news abut Lloyd as well - see you tomorrow.



No One Receiving, 2007, oil on canvas, 60" x 50"

Labels: Galleries, Matthew Langley, Painting, Washington DC

I'll be having a one-person show at District of Columbia Arts Center (DCAC) of new paintings and paperworks. JW Mahoney has been kind enough to take the curatorial reigns on the show. Lloyd Wolf is doing some photography for me in the next week or so and as soon as they are ready I'll post a preview or two.

Interestingly enough, I was asked to propose the show after Art-o-matic, with everything people say one way or the other about AOM it has been a tremendous success for me and has opened doors I would not have thought possible.

The show opens January 18th - I hope to see you then,

Labels: Galleries, Painting, Washington DC

Johnnie Winona Ross at Stephen Haller
JWR's latest show at Stephen Haller clearly extends the vocabulary of approaches involved in building images in a reductive vein. JWR has placed his emphasis on the process as well as the final image, allowing the viewer to become engaged in the making of the artwork since it literally sits on and slightly below the surface. Concerns about the attachment of the canvas to it's support are as evident as always via handcrafted tacks showing along the side of the stretcher.

The show, titled, Deep Creek Seeps, is a series of quiet paintings, that upon closer or longer inspection reveal themselves in unexpected ways, suddenly you become aware of just how much detail and concern is placed in each image. It may take a moment, but once you start looking, the artworks become as busy as the desert that they are so obviously inspired by. Let me take a moment to unpack that a little, the desert, to the average viewer is just that, sand maybe a cactus every once in a while. Once you start looking in depth at the desert you find a complex system of life, it's always been there - you just have to look for it and possibly wait for it.

I'm always amazed at how many different elements actually make up a single piece in JWR's work.

Extended play
JWR has just had hist first monograph published. Covering JWR's work from 1995 to the present with writing from Carter Ratcliff and Douglas Drieshpoon only add to this gorgeous book. Published by Radius books, and designed by Skolkin+Chickey it is available in two versions - one a standard hardbound edition and the other a clamshell including the book and a limited edition print. It is available through Stephen Haller Gallery as well as being distributed by DAP.

The show runs through November 24th.



Jaq Chartier at Schroeder Romero
Jaq Chartier mixes science and art in creating cerebral and sensual artworks. Clearly the art side (painting) is the primary concern mixed in with a strong experimental approach to the images and the chemicals that make them. I've spoken about JC's work here before so it should come as no surprise to see it mentioned here. The latest show at Schroeder Romeo continues with works from the "testing" series. These are the images that initially interested me in JC's work, I think you will find them interesting as well.

The show runs through November 24th.



Richard Prince at the Guggenheim
This show was everything I wanted it to be. That said, I've talked about RP way too much over the last couple of months - so this will be short. The best pieces for me are the car hoods. I've read interviews that RP thinks that maybe the car hoods are to minimal - and he's right, they are. However, they are stripped down and out of step with the rest of the work, and to me that speaks volumes about the core subject of the artwork and the changes that have been made and will continue to be made in the future.

I once read a review of the girlfriend images and the author referred to them as the sexiest images of women she had seem in a long time. I realized that she was right, I wish I could remember who wrote that.

The show runs through January 9th.

Labels: Galleries, Jaq Chartier, Johnnie Winona Ross, New York, Richard Prince

Joel Shapiro, untitled, 2002-2007, bronze, 13' 4" x 27' 9-1/2" x 12' 11"

I hate the fact that MoMA is closed on tuesday's (and that the Gugenheim is closed thursday's) this really does start to tweak my plans in ways I was not expecting. That said, I did not see the Martin Puryear show, I'll have to settle with seeing it when it comes here. I was really pleased by the amount of minimal and post-minimal work on display this month.



Carl Andre at Paula Cooper
I'm a fan of Carl Andre's work. However this installation just didn't have the immediacy that I have grown accustom to in his installations. There was some very smart interplay with the floor's construction and the placement of four floor pieces that worked inside the grid they set up and then re-inforced that in the grid of the floor. That was an unexpected approach to energizing the entire space.

Joel Shapiro at Pace
So I walk across the street and stumble into Jeol Shapiro's show. It's been awhile since I've seen a show of his and I really forgot just how fully occupied the room becomes with just a few objects. On top of this there is this amazing craft in all the work - even the rough edged ones. The show is centered by this great piece with a long cantilevered extension that just does not allow you to look away. Highly recommended. On a different note, it's really great to see a gallery showing sculpture in a way that you can actually walk around the entire object - sculpture is just so much stronger when it is not pushed into a corner or against a wall (unless it is supposed to be pushed against a wall). I'm seeing far to many shows everywhere where this is becoming the norm. It's really short sighted for the work and does the view a disservice.

Barry Le Va at Sonabend
Continuing with the amazing thread of minimal and post-minimal work, I was thrilled to see Le Va's show - it really spoke of a different time; work on construction paper with binder clips, xerox's, dimestore photographs, and transparencies. If a younger artist was making this work today it would be done in photoshop and then output in a color inkjet, and then shown ten times the size these are - losing exactly the delicate nature of the objects - however keeping the approach intact. For the viewer this delicate approach is the visual thing that kept me looking.

Four Friends (Jean-Michael Basquiat, Keith Haring, Donald Baechler & Kenny Scharf) at Tony Shafrazi
This show for me was a real guilty pleasure, It brought back memories of the mid eighties when I was in school and these artists were just getting some recognition. But really as much as I like these artists, it was the Donald Baechler works that really took the limelight from the others. A year or so I spoke of how it seems that the JMB artworks that are available seem to be secondary - this trend is continuing - sadly.

Tomorrow I talk about work made in the current century - Johnnie Winnoa Ross, Jaq Chartier, and Richard Prince's show at the Guggenheim.

Labels: conceptual art, Galleries, New York

I have just been offered a show at DCAC in January, which I accepted. So please pencil in January 18, 2008 in your calendars for the opening. I'll have more on this later - however I'll try not to be all about me for the next few months.

I had a studio visit with Jason Horowitz, and I just need to find a few minutes to write it down. It was really eye-opening - not just about his work but it got me thinking about my work as well. Look for that Monday or Tuesday.

Labels: Galleries, Washington DC

Matthew Collings
Regular readers know of my enjoyment of Matthew Collings dairy in Modern Painters. Here's a pretty good interview with him on Artnet (amazing how they interview their own writers as an article - but that's another story) Here's a quick snippet.

writer: You made your reputation with TV programs and books on modern and contemporary art, but more recently you've turned your attention to Matt's Old Masters, and now you've remade Sir Kenneth Clark's Civilization. It would seem that you really do hate contemporary art these days.

Matthew Collings: I know a lot about art and want to talk about it. But knowing about it isn't the same as feeling you have to mindlessly support it and say the accepted things about it to show you're in a creepy club, or that you can intimidate people who don't know about it. That's the theme of all my books and programs. The new series is about how we might understand "civilization" today (that is, if we think we've still got it). It goes from the Greeks to now, but it's all from the perspective of now. The book that comes out of the series is more diaristic and confessional; it's about my tragic parents and so on, what I thought yesterday, etc., as in Blimey. There's also some stuff about Clark and the whole idea of TV arts programs. But the true focus of both the book and the TV series is the anxieties and uncertainties of art now, taking "art" as a kind of culture or constant, ongoing discussion, not just a collection of individual objects or shows.

Glenn Branca
A couple of days I alerted readers about a GB performance of Symphony No.13: Hallucination City for 100 electric guitars. Well it seems that PGWP saw this performed in LA about a year os so ago.

Follow this link to the story

Johnnie Winona Ross
One of my favorite artists, JWR (above: Sand Bend Draw, 2005) has a new show in New York this week at Steven Haller Gallery. I'll review this later in the month. But don't wait for me, exhibition is from October 18 - November 24.

Lori Nix
Randall Scott Gallery is showing Lori Nix (another favorite / below: The Majestic, 2006) along with Dane Picard right here in Washington DC. Exhibition is from October 27 - December 8. I'm missing this opening, however do expect a review.

Labels: DC Galleries, Fontana Mix, Galleries, Lori Nix, New York, Painting, Photography

Palais De Tokyo is presenting "The Third Mind" September 27 through January 3rd. These three words are loaded for they speak directly to a seminal work about artistic process written by William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin.

I will not be in Paris during this event, however I learned a lot from "The Third Mind" when I read it initially (as well as when I re-read it). The book or series of writings introduced the world to the idea of collage as a writing tool. It has become (to me) the definitive writing on the power of collage and chance in artworks.

William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin worked out the cut-up method which consists of cutting up and reassembling various fragments of sentences to give them a completely new and unexpected meaning. The Third Mind is the title they devised following this method. They were so greatly impressed by its contents that they felt it had been composed by a third person, a third author, a synthesis of their two personalities. 1+1 = 3.

About The Show
Ugo Rondinone sets out to cut up and remix the contemporary artistic landscape to allow a new meaning to emerge from it. A new artwork(s) composed from the assembled works of thirty-one different artists, constitutes a fully fledged work in its right, a new, spectral work created by a third mind, a third artist, the product of the meeting between Ugo Rondinone and his selections.

For more information:
www.palaisdetokyo.com

Labels: Europe, Galleries

I stumbled over this web site the other day, I'm sure most of you already knew about it - Geoform.

Anyhow to make a long story short, I found this very in-depth interview with Chip Richardson. Many of you know that I regard Chip as one of the best painters on the east coast. The interview focuses on the history of his work and some the directions it's taking now.

Well worth the read.

Above: Unfolded Sphere, oil & alkyd on canvas, 91 x 91 cm (36 x 36 in), 2006

Labels: Galleries, Painting, Washington DC

Do you need something art related to do this week? Tired of openings? try these if you in the NYC area this week.

The Art Parade - Sat 9/8 (4pm), West Broadway (btwn E Houston & Grand St.)
Deitch Projects, Creative Time, and Paper magazine bring the Art Parade to the masses.

Howl! Festival - Wed 9/5 - Sun 9/9, Tompkins Square Park
Howl! comes back to New York. Named after and in the spirit of Ginsberg's revolutionary poem, bringing together literature, music, and other creativity in celebration of everything that makes the East Village and Lower East Side a national icon of "counterculture".

Labels: Galleries, New York

Danny Lyon - At the Whitney (NYC), opens September 7
Larry Clark - At Luhring Augustine (NYC), opens September 8
Mark Stockton - At Acuna Hansen (LA), opens September 1

I've been meaning to point out this article on Lori Nix for the last month or so.

Labels: Galleries, Photography

I was checking out Flash Art this AM and came upon this article (heavily excerpted below) about the current Orange County Museum of Art California Biennial being heavily skewed towards the science fiction edge of the world. This is really not so new - especially when you consider Robert Smithson's heavy use of Sci-Fi in and around his work. On the other hand, is science fiction really that far removed from daily life? We now live with moving sidewalks, communicate with telephones that don't use wires, and now have robots available as vacuum cleaners and pets. So how different are the worlds of science fiction different than what we now live in?

Anyway, I don't really have a overwhelming point of view here - I just found the article really interesting...

And I quote from Flash Art Online:
"The consensus emerging from the 2006 Orange County Museum of Art California Biennial is that young artists on the West Coast are operating in an idiom closely linked to science-fiction. The concerns that have characterized this genre over the years are all accounted for: the imagination of future and alien civilizations (Leslie Shows); interplanetary and/or time travel (Scoli Acosta); the colonization of, or invasion from, the alien outlands (Pearl C. Hsiung); the encounter with the other (Christian Maychack); the redefinition of the idea of the human in response to the other, either alien or homemade (Sterling Ruby); the technological transformation of the human as such (Andy Alexander); the social functions of disaster, apocalypse (Marie Jager); utopia versus dystopia (My Barbarian), and so on. Even those who strive for a measure of documentary verite (Sergio De La Torre, as well as the collaborative teams Bull.Miletic and The Speculative Archive) employ the everyday as a foil for the strange. Perhaps most significantly in regard to our present moment, that quintessential sci-fi theme of communication breakdown and its inevitable outcome, war, is pervasive."

Part one of the article is here.

Labels: Galleries, Los Angles

Michal Rovner's 1997 film, Border, screens at 10:00 a.m. and 1:15 p.m.

Lucas Samaras's 1969 film, Self, screens at 11:15 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

John Chamberlain's 1968 film, The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez, (starring Ultra Violet and Taylor Mead) screens at 12:00 p.m. and 3:15 p.m.

Agnes Martin's film, Gabriel, screens at 4:30 p.m.

The festival remains on view through August 24, 2007, Pace Wildenstien is at: 534 West 25th Street NYC.

Labels: Film, Galleries, New York

In Dogen's Shobogenzo Zuimonki students are taught not to worry about clothing or food and only to focus on "the way". After a few rounds of questions regarding the practicality of such an approach, Dogen responded that the important thing is to be focused on "the way", these other things are trivial in the whole of your practice.

Robert Ryman has said "It is not the what, but the how of painting that is important" (paraphrased).

More and more I come to believe that these ideas, thousands of years apart are for the most part some of the most important words ever said about the production of artwork (if they were even said about artwork at all). It is with this in mind I focused on my gallery tour through New York last week.



Andreas Gursky at Matthew Marks
Let's get to the meat about this show right off the bat. The critical tongue lashing that Jerry Saltz gave this show last week in New York made it hard not to think about the comment that he (Gursky) is delivering a lesser show than is expected. This may or may not be true - depending on your point of view. There is something to say (good and bad) about the artist that hammers the same nail over and over again - however the spectacle of these images is incredibly hard to resist. His artworks, I believe have started to embrace that spectacle more than anything else.

These new images re-establishes Gursky's love of ordered spaces and grids. This is true for the more organic pieces as it is for the overly geometric. As I look at the how of these images and the spectacle they deliver to the viewer, there is a lot to sit and digest. The other side of these images are lavish, enormous in size and detail and flawlessly executed. The images of race car crews in particular bring to mind late european salon style mannerism to mind, with the obvious staging and production these surely required.



Haim Steinbach at Sonnabend
As we discuss the artist that hammers the same nail for a career, Steinbach is much further along in that process than Gursky, however the lack of spectacle or even banality of Steinbach's work brings very different questions than does Gursky's. First off, we know that Steinbach is focused on the practice of questioning of domestic objects ability to be simultaneously functional, decorative and expressive, and I find that interesting - especially when I first saw his work at the Washington Project for the Arts in 1984. Unfortunately very little has changed with the exception of his works seeming to match in color palette extremely well. In this case, as much as I enjoy the combinations of relationships that occur in these works - it's time for a new framework to present these thoughts.

Andy Goldsworthy at Lelong
I know I'll get a lot of crap for liking this show - however Goldworthy's base in conceptual work with Arte Povera undertones really comes to the forefront with this installation. The show is titled White Walls, it consists of clay applied to the wall and allowed to sit, dry, and eventually fall. I attended around the halfway point of this show and most of the "wall" was at this point on the floor. This made for a real pleasure of ruins type moment. It also made me realize that his work is in the field and very rarely in the gallery.

The big complaint people have with Goldsworthy are the books of nature images/installations - and although I'm not one of those people who intensely dislike them, neither am I in love with them. This show, really does carry forward to me the thought that art is about the experience of looking and being in the same environment as the art itself.

Jean-Michel Basquiat at Van de Weghe Fine Art
As much as I am currently a little bit tired of JMB at the moment this is really a enjoyable show. Hung salon style as many as 4 high and on every surface of the gallery, this is a rewarding and slowly paced show - probably due to the hanging style of the show. The works are mostly works of words and some simple sketches - these are not his paintings and that's ok. I was expecting a real stinker and came away very happy.

2x4 at Luhring Augustine
Reinhard Mucha and Rachel Whitread steal this show with two great pieces. Whiteread with one of her white room based works, in this case a casting of a door (similar to her work on display at the Nation Gallery right now) focusing on the space occupied by the object than the object itself. Mucha with a sculpture of wood and canvas - that seems to be barely holding together - until you notice the small buttons keeping the structure inside contained. A small show that delivers great rewards.



Jim Dine at Pace Wildenstien
I'm always quick to discount Jim Dines work - especially after what seems like years of hearts and robes as images. However I have always loved the way he draws and sculpts - his sculpted venus figure I saw in Arizona (at the Bentley Projects) has really strong in how it help it's space and the way the form evolved to the viewer. However nothing prepared me for his current "Pinocchio" sculptures. These artworks are at once finished and rough - with the Disney version of Pinnochio as it's initial point of view. However that point of view is twisted just a little bit - let's call these the "Pinnochio for the disenfranchised".

These are wooden sculptures of 5 - 7 feet in height, roughly sculpted and loosely painted. They seem at once new and old. The painting of the artworks is almost the way Neal Jenney painted his "bad paintings" - the color is used as an indicator, not as a stand in for detail. This is especially apparent in one piece where you can see the traces of the eyes painted in, only later to be smeared out.

To me this seems like Dine has started to recharge his work - in ways that seem to allow him to open up to newer and more interesting approaches. This is the kind of later career thing that I think Saltz is really trying to get to with his Gursky review. Highly recommended.



Richard Serra at MoMA
Here is the story of my getting kicked out of Moma. I didn't get kicked out of the whole museum - just the part I'm not supposed to be in. Here it goes. I was very interested to see the installation of the new Richard Serra retrospective that is currently being installed, and seeing as I was probably not going to be in town anytime soon, I decided to slip inside the installation and have a look around.

Let me say right now - this show is going to be the hit of the spring summer in New York.

Some of the things I saw - "One Ton Prop" - a piece I've wanted to see for some time as well as two of the lead plate and pole pieces (I think one of them was "Corner Prop Piece" a "Torqued Elipse" and some early pieces I just don't know by sight. Bottom line though is this is a fantastic installation even though it is in process.

So I'm looking around like the fanboy that I am and eventually someone step up to me and asks "What I'm doing here?" in my most nonchalant way I say "I'm checking out a couple of things" clearly this is not going to work when he replies - "like what?" It is at this point I'm asked to leave the area, and I'm escorted to the door. They were really pretty good about the whole thing and I was respectful too so it wasn't taken any further by the staff - to that I'm thankful.

So I was reading the interview by Kynaston McShine and I learned quite a little bit - one of the oddball things I liked - Serra used to have a small moving company called Low Rate Movers - here is the list of some of the workers; Steve Reich, Michael Snow, Chuck Close, Phillip Glass, and Spalding Grey. I knew that Glass was also a Taxi driver as well as Serra's assistant on some pieces - does this make him the hardest working man in avant garde New York?

Labels: Galleries, Museums, New York, Richard Serra

April 14th in Richmond:the Grand Re-Opening of Twelve by Twelve: A Record Bin Art Show, at Chop Suey Books, 1317 W. Cary Street from 6-8pm (full disclosure: I have some work in this)

April 20th in Baltimore: Zippy the Pinhead creator Bill Griffith will participate in a rare signing hosted by Atomic Books on 36th Street, from 6-7PM.

April 13th in DC (ok, Crystal City, VA): Artomatic opens. 2121 Crystal Drive, from 6-7PM. (full disclosure: I have some work in this also)

Labels: Baltimore, Galleries, Richmond, Washington DC

Staying up to date on the Artomatic thing. This weekend saw a bevy of activity from me. I painted the walls (above) and hung the show (below) and frankly I'm pretty happy with it overall. I also walked the show a bit and saw a few things I thought were pretty good.

I have no idea about these artists at all, however I thought the work looked good and I responded to it. Enormous credit to Susana Raab for being able to photograph the elusive Harlan Sanders.

Also big thanks to Sheri Evanoff for letting me borrow a big vehicle to transport my work.



Damien Gill


Susana Raab


Robin Walker

Labels: Galleries, Washington DC

I've decided that I'm going to participate this year. In the past Artomatic has kind of been the Art critics punching bag. (I don't expect that to change) However the thing that I've really started to notice that even with the lows (and there are) the highs seem pretty high. I'm going to have small articles for the next month or so - today's is more of a photo diary.



The space I'll be showing in (top), registration (above), the open area for installations (bottom). I will say the space for this is pretty great - the installation area has a great view of the potomac/airport. I should note that Artomatic is kind of split into two kinds of spaces, the 6th floor is mostly if not all older offices - so literally you will be able to duck your head in and out of a few hundred rooms, while the 8th floor is wide open with very few walls - just columns.

Labels: Galleries, Washington DC

I've been sick the last week or so and have avoided the computer at all costs during that time - sorry it was so quiet around here.

Later in the day I have a small interview with Isaac Layman that I will be posting and probably a tiny general gallery note - while the later is not going to change your mind about anything, the Layman interview, while brief is interesting, and I think you will enjoy it. In further news, look to see more artist interviews in the near future - as much as I like the sound of my own voice, sometimes it's nice to hear what others have to say.

Labels: Galleries, general notice, Isaac Layman