An interesting story about people trying to get to see James Turrell's "Roden Crater". Here are the basics; no one is being invited these days to see it. very few people have seen it - most of them are by invite only. Flickr has a few images. Thats the story - here are the links to the images:

very1silent
Heide Pollock

The whole story is here.

Labels: 70's, conceptual art

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 paused before I wrote anything about Sol Lewitt recently because to me he was truly an influential artist in helping develop my approach to image-making, in particular image-thinking.

My first intentional encounter with his work came when I was working for Nancy Drysdale in the early eighties. She was selling some of his wall drawings and asked Chris Bailey and myself (we both worked for Nancy at the time) to produce the work in accordance to the directions of the drawing. At first I thought it was quite a cop out - how could an artist not do his own drawings (I was young and more than a bit naive). The one thing it made me do, was to start thinking and looking at how these works could vary just by the installer. Later as the wall drawings became more colorful, I thought they were becoming more about the implementation of the work than the concept of the work.

What I came to realize was that the implementation is/was the concept. I still think that is pretty interesting.

His approach became infinitely scalable. Here is an example of the directions of a drawing. This one is from the NGA's Vogel collection:

Wall Drawing #65 / Lines not short, not straight, crossing and touching, drawn at random using four colors, uniformly dispersed with maximum density, covering the entire surface of the wall.

The interpretation is wide open, yet at the same time it is defined within structural limits. It is open and closed at the same time.

Every once in a while I'll talk to someone about my work and I will talk about how I'm interested in a "non-specific exactness", this approach comes directly from thinking about these early wall drawings.

Labels: conceptual art, Death, Drawings

I love it when the world is thinking about the same thing avery once in a while. Yesterday, I posted the Nate Harrison thing while over at Pretty Goes With Pretty, A whole rash of turntable type stuff was posted. Also a decent post on "Mingering Mike" who is a DC "Legend" for his imaginary recording career.

For your pleasure today I have a few Christian Marclay posts from YouTube, after that I will stop putting the needle on the record for a bit.

Christian Marclay
For those of you new to the party, CM is a visual artist and musical composer who is exploring the pattern languages connecting sound, photography, video, and film.

CM uses records and turntables in musical performances, and was one of the earliest and one of the most notable musicians to do so outside a hip hop context. Marclay sometimes manipulates or damages records to produce continuous loops and skips as well as using the album - both art work and object to make other art objects.

Mini Ducumentary / 5.5, from Trio

Live Performance / 9.9, From Roulette TV

Video Quartet Excerpt #1/ 2:49

Video Quartet Excerpt #2/ 0:53

Labels: conceptual art, music

Jasper Johns is probably the greatest painter in the second half of the twentieth century. That is quite a statement, I know. However when you look at the body of work into the 1970's you will see many of the critical approaches stemming from work he pursued. I'm talking specifically about; Pop, Minimal, Conceptual, and Pattern and Decoration. Artists from each of these movements all owe at least a strong nod to his work, especially when you look at the way he used systems and approaches to breakdown and re construct painting.

Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965 goes on view January 28th.

By the way, Target is the sponsor of this show. I'm sure that is no accident. Lets hope that the corporate meat grinder is unable to completely co-opt artwork that has far greater meaning (or lack of meaning, if you know what I mean) as opposed to simply becoming a shill for the newest version of Kmart. (Please don't tell me how they love design, because we all know that as soon as that sales ploy ends, the whole "we love design thing" is gone)

Labels: conceptual art, general notice, Museums, Painting

"One is liable to see things in maps that are not there. One must be careful of the Hypothetical monsters that lurk between the maps latitudes."
- Robert Smithson

The CLUI straddles a curious position between research and art practice. It was this idiosyncrasy that interested me last year at the Whitney Biennial.

The CLUI has never made any claims as to being an art practice (that I know of) or even creating a project that is labeled "art". They are however watched as well as granted money by arts foundations as well as land use organizations (in fact the CLUI has received a NEA grant - noteworthy in itself for a "non-art" organization). Practitioners from related fields, as well as academics are not quite as quick to accept the CLUI because of the less than traditional methods that are used. A quick case study about the CLUI could be made for the Nevada desert, in particular the area we know as "Area 51" and The Nellis Range.

Nevada has the greatest expanse of restricted land in the country - as well as some of the most secretive parts of military industry. The Nellis Range is operated by the Air Force which uses the area to conduct live tests (cluster bombing fake villages and the like) as well as who knows what else. An interesting note, parts of The Nellis Range don't even officially exist on the map. Employees stationed at the range are flown in from a private terminal in Las Vegas airport. To get access to the site The CLUI conducted over 9 years of research which ended with photographing signage claiming restricted access. The centers assessment of the area ended up relying on detailed descriptions of closed gates and guard houses. It should be noted their method never once involved hoping the fence - instead they circumnavigated the range, while noting that there is a good view from the fence.

I think that it is this part - mapping the unmapped is what interests me most.

Some other events they have directed include "The Tour of the Monuments of the Great American Void" including the Bonneville Salt Flats and, "Margins in Our Midst: A Journey into Irwindale" A tour bus outing in which they told the passengers; "We will be going to some of the most banal and dramatic landscapes of Los Angeles, and by the time we are done, we won't be able to tell the difference."

The Center is notorious in not taking a political or should I say accountable stand in the actual use of land. The mundane of the administrative is really the focus - this acts as a substitute for the drama of the tangible (or the beautiful). This approach - using some of the smaller strategies from conceptual art and looking at the edges of our cultural use of the space we live in is the open ended map that The CLUI is creating.

Worth noting:
The CLUI has a newsletter - The Lay of the Land. This should be interesting reading in the long term - in the sort term I suggest you try the web site http://www.clui.org

Labels: conceptual art, Los Angles

This is a quick link to the always amazing UBUWEB.

Excerpts From Speculation (1967-1970)
Mel Bochner

For a variety of reasons I do not like the term “conceptual art.” Connotations of an easy dichotomy with perception are obvious and inappropriate. The unfortunate implication is of a somewhat magical/mystical leap from one mode of existence to another. The problem is the confusion of idealism and intention. By creating an original fiction, “conceptualism” posits its special nonempirical existence as a positive (transcendent) value. But no amount of qualification (or documentation) can change the situation. Outside the spoken word, no thought can exist without a sustaining support.

Read the whole thing here

Labels: conceptual art, light reading, Mel Bochner, UBUWEB

This is an unfortunate show for the most part, although there are two highlights that I think deserve mention.

1.Mathieu Briand, "UBIQ, A Mental Odyssey" is lacking in its virtual reality goggles and immersive artificial world - the installation, a direct quotation of Stanley Kubrick 2110 A Space Odyssey is spot on. I just enjoyed walking through that space more than the actual technological experience.

2. Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, "Opera for a small room" is an installation in a room inside the space - feeling like the unabombers cabin but stocked with turntables, records and speakers. This mechanical performance is the most engaging of the entire exhibit. It's use of technology - not for the sake of technology but to use the technology to go beyond the presentation is quiet and spectacular.

Most of Sensorium felt like a science experiment masquerading as art - these two pieces are the standouts of a poorly executed and lackluster curatorial approach to the experiential nature of art. I hope part two is quite a bit stronger.

Labels: Bad Review, Boston, conceptual art