2005

May 7 - June 18th at Lurhing Augustine
531 W. 24th St.
(212) 206-9100

Through May 21st at White Cube
48 Hoxton Sq.
London N1 6PB
UK
+44 20 7930 5373

May 21 - July 1 at Gagosian Gallery
456 N. Camden Dr.
Beverly Hills, CA
(310) 271-9400

Posted by Todd at 07:45 AM | Comments (1)


Allen Frame at Gitterman Gallery

The contemporary black and white photography show seems to be a rare event these days, but Gitterman Gallery is showing Allen Frame's terrific stark, grainy portraits. Unlike a lot of contemporary portraiture, Frames' subjects are caught in medium and long shots and often in silhouette.

Through June 4 at Gitterman Gallery
170 E. 75th St.
(212) 734-0869

advertiser links

303 Gallery
http://www.303gallery.com/

Alan Koppel Gallery
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Barbara Gladstone Gallery
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Catriona Jeffries Gallery
http://www.catrionajeffries.com/

Cheim & Read
http://www.cheimread.com/

Conner Contemporary Art
http://www.connercontemporary.com/

Corvi-Mora
http://www.corvi-mora.com/

D'Amelio Terras
http://www.damelioterras.com

David Zwirner Gallery
http://www.davidzwirner.com

Deitch Projects
http://www.deitch.com

emilyTsingou gallery
http://www.emilytsingougallery.com/

exhibit-E
http://www.exhibit-e.com

Fisher Landau Center for Art
http://www.flcart.org/

Gagosian
http://www.gagosian.com/

Haunch of Venison
http://www.haunchofvenison.com/

I-20
http://www.i-20.com/

Julie Saul Gallery
http://www.saulgallery.com

Lehmann Maupin
http://www.lehmannmaupin.com

Leslie Tonkonow
http://www.tonkonow.com/

Lisson Gallery
http://www.lissongallery.com/

Luhring Augustine
http://www.luhringaugustine.com/

Marian Goodman Gallery
http://www.mariangoodman.com/

Matthew Marks Gallery
http://www.matthewmarks.com

Mitchell Innes and Nash
http://www.miandn.com/

Mixed Greens
http://www.mixedgreens.com

Moti Hasson Gallery
http://www.motihasson.com/

PPOW
http://www.ppowgallery.com

Public Art Fund
http://www.publicartfund.org

Richard Levy Gallery
http://www.levygallery.com

Robert Miller
http://www.robertmillergallery.com/

Ronald Feldman
http://www.feldmangallery.com/pages/home_frame.html

Rose Gallery
http://www.rosegallery.net/

Serpentine Gallery
http://www.serpentinegallery.org/

Studio La Città
http://www.studiolacitta.it/

TASCHEN Books
http://www.taschen.com/

Tate
http://www.tate.org.uk

Victoria Miro Gallery
http://www.victoria-miro.com

WPS1
http://www.wps1.org/

Yancey Richardson Gallery
http://www.yanceyrichardson.com

Zwirner & Wirth
http://www.zwirnerandwirth.com

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Advertisement for the game show, Name That Painting

ART
Roberta Smith

The origins of modern life and art are viewed through a British lens in two museum exhibitions opening this week. "ALL THE MIGHTY WORLD: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF ROGER FENTON, 1852-1860," at the METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART (starting Tuesday) is the first major American survey of one of the founders of British photography, best known for his stark images of the battlefields of the Crimean War. But Fenton (1819-1869) was a full-service photographer with an instinct for majestic compositions, technical clarity and superb uses of light. His subjects included the Thames, Salisbury Cathedral, the brooding Welsh landscape, sundry stately homes and river views, the royal family and, in one especially abstract instance, Queen Victoria's target - suggesting startlingly good marksmanship. A selection of photographs owned by Fenton's descendants can be seen at Hans P. Kraus Jr. 25 East 77th Street, (212) 794-2064, through June 10.

A Fenton photograph also appears in "MONET'S LONDON: ARTISTS' REFLECTIONS ON THE THAMES, 1859-1914" at the BROOKLYN MUSEUM (starting Friday), an exhibition that follows Britain's great waterway through 140 works by nearly 50 European and American painters, printmakers and photographers. The big theme show is something of a museum formula these days. This one documents artists responding to the vistas, traffic and weather of the Thames in a medley of styles.

Meanwhile, a small stunning PICASSO show at ACQUAVELLA (18 East 79th Street, (212) 734-6300) through June 1 highlights modernism of a more recent, more French variety. Two unfamiliar paintings of DORA MAAR are especially notable. A small 1939 oil renders her nude body as a choppy, almost tweedlike patchwork of pastel strokes. A 1937 portrait has features splayed in the extreme and a sinuous left hand, with bright red nails, that slithers up the neck like a friendly serpent.

May 19, 2005    
Maurizio Cattelan



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Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company


Directions

Art of the Undone

Published: May 22, 2005

Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator of the Modern Art Museum of the City of Paris, is a tremendously productive interviewer: thousands of hours of conversations with artists, videotaped in their studios, at cafes, in taxis and on planes, have yielded magazines, bricklike volumes, even exhibitions. Yet one of Mr. Obrist's favorite interview topics is what doesn't get made - an artist's dearest unexecuted projects. "Unrealized projects by even the most well-known artists are often unknown, unpublished or forgotten," he said. On June 23, Mr. Obrist will conduct a 24-hour "Interview Marathon," which will be simultaneously transcribed and designed into a book, at the Theater of the World Festival in Stuttgart, Germany. In the meantime, here are a few of the unrealized works he has helped to reveal in past interviews.

GERHARD RICHTER In a gesture to Duchamp, Mr. Richter wanted to exhibit a ready-made object: "A motor-driven clown doll, about 1.5 meters tall, which stood up and then collapsed into itself. It cost over 600 Deutsche marks at that time, and I couldn't afford it. Sometimes I regret not having bought that clown."

MICHAEL ELMGREEN AND INGAR DRAGSET This Scandinavian duo, whose subway-station installation is currently on view at the Bohen Foundation in the meatpacking district, was drawn to the Grace Building on West 42nd Street: "We'd love to do a huge white-paint pour down the facade," Mr. Dragset said. "I don't think it'll ever happen."

MAURIZIO CATTELAN This prank-loving Conceptual artist, whose early projects regularly involved subjecting his dealers to various forms of humiliation, wanted to dress Stefano Basilico, then a new gallery owner, in an elaborate costume for an entire month. Before breaking out on his own, Mr. Basilico had worked for the dealer Ileana Sonnabend. Mr. Cattelan wanted him to wear "a very complicated dress, a sort of carnival costume: it would have seemed as if Ileana Sonnabend was carrying a little Stefano on her shoulders." (See above.) Mr. Basilico refused the piece.

PIERRE HUYGHE In a project to be called "The Family Film Series," Mr. Huyghe, the French video and installation artist, planned to reprogram an abandoned small-town cinema to show the residents' home movies continuously. As he explained it, "Doing that in a small city, so that everybody would show up in each other's films, the neighbor in the background, a co-presence and a collective auto-portrait of a town."

 

The New York Times


May 20, 2005

Art Listings

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art.

STURTEVANT: 'PUSH AND SHOVE' Sturtevant, who eschews her given name Elaine, began copying works by artists like Warhol, Johns and Lichtenstein in the mid-60's, to the annoyance of some in the art world who failed to see the point of her attack on the romance of originality. She went on to replicate works by Joseph Beuys, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Robert Gober, among others. Now in her mid 70's and living in Paris (they love her in Europe), Sturtevant is having her first New York solo in almost 10 years. (A retrospective called "The Brutal Truth" is currently at the List Visual Arts Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.) The cavernous installation in Rubenstein's 23rd Street gallery features her rendition of Marcel Duchamp's 1,200 burlap coal bags hanging overhead like so many giant scrotums - an effect the ribald punster Duchamp surely intended. Spotlighted around the gallery are her found versions of his readymades, including the bicycle wheel, the snow shovel, the urinal (above) and the bottle rack. Also there is a brief Cubist film of a live female nude descending a staircase. (Most works are dated between the late 60's and the early 90's.) Meanwhile, Rubenstein's 24th Street pocket gallery presents a recent seven-channel video, in part of which Sturtevant impersonates Paul McCarthy's demented Abstract Expressionist clown. If you like to philosophize about art and creativity, Sturtevant is for you. (Perry Rubenstein, 527 West 23rd Street and 526 West 24th Street, Chelsea, (212) 627-8000, through June 18; free.) KEN JOHNSON

Museums

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: 'ANCESTRY AND INNOVATION: AFRICAN AMERICAN ART FROM THE COLLECTION,' through Sept. 4. This selection of quilts, paintings, sculptures and drawings by several generations of self-taught artists jumps with color and talent and reflects a sharp curatorial eye. 45 West 53rd Street, (212) 265-1040. (Roberta Smith)

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: 'SELF AND SUBJECT,' through Sept. 11. From Grandma Moses's view of herself beguiled by infant descendants to A. G. Rizzoli's rendition of his mother as a Gothic cathedral, this refreshingly offbeat show of 20th-century self-taught artists covers a vivid range of portraits. (See above.) (Grace Glueck)

ASIA SOCIETY AND QUEENS MUSEUM OF ART: 'EDGE OF DESIRE: RECENT ART IN INDIA,' through June 5. A highly selective, multigenerational survey of different kinds of contemporary art being made in India; embracing craft, folk and tribal traditions as well as popular culture and academic modernism. The smaller portion is at the Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400; the more expansive and varied section at the Queens Museum of Art, New York City Building, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, (718) 592-9700. Also at Queens: "Fatal Love." (Holland Cotter)

BROOKLYN MUSEUM: 'BASQUIAT,' through June 5. Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-88) wrote, painted and drew his way to fame (usually on the same surface) with a loquacious style that mixed mediums and gave visual voice to the glories, history and pain of blackness. Despite a few glitches, this generous retrospective provides an exhilarating account of his short innovative career. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, (718) 638-5000. (Smith)

BROOKLYN MUSEUM: LUCE VISIBLE STORAGE/STUDY CENTER Sleek vitrines house 1,500 objects from four departments, representing 15 centuries of art and design of the Americas. (See above.) (Smith) COOPER-HEWITT NATIONAL DESIGN MUSEUM: 'EXTREME TEXTILES: DESIGNING FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE,' through Oct. 30. Don't look for aesthetic pizazz in this intensely tech-y show of industrial fibers and fabrics; but don't rule it out. The show's raison d'être is solely use, but a lot of what's on view, in the first museum display of material made to function in extreme conditions, is visually exciting. 2 East 91st Street, (212) 849-8400. (Glueck)

COOPER-HEWITT NATIONAL DESIGN MUSEUM: 'HELLA JONGERIUS SELECTS: WORKS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION,' through Sept. 4. Shifting through the museum's outstanding holdings in embroidered samplers, the innovative Dutch designer has selected a wonderfully reverberant show and also based a series of new wall hangings on sampler motifs. Their combined display diagrams the fraught but essential symbiosis of old and new. (See above.) (Smith)

EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO: 'MEXICO, THE REVOLUTION AND BEYOND, PHOTOGRAPHS BY CASASOLA 1900-1940,' through July 31. This extraordinary show of work from a photo agency established by Agustín Victor Casasola in Mexico City has the span of a Greek epic and the nested themes and subplots of a picaresque novel, with Revolutionary heroes and a vivid cast of everyday people. 1230 Fifth Avenue, at 104th Street, (212) 831-7272. (Cotter)

SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: 'DANIEL BUREN: THE EYE OF THE STORM,' through June 8. Mr. Buren has devised a lumbering 81-foot-tall construction, mirrored floor to ceiling. Imagine a glass office tower slammed through the front of the building. The spiraling ramps and circular roof complete themselves in the mirrored reflections; there is not much to the work beyond that. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500. (Michael Kimmelman)

SPANISH INSTITUTE: 'FROM GOYA TO SOROLLA,' through July 30. More than 75 pictures from the Hispanic Society, celebrating its centenary; starting with Goya's grave portrait of Pedro Mocarte, they track an arc to figures like Francisco Núñez Losada and salon virtuosi like Ignacio Zuloaga and Joaquín Sorolla. 684 Park Avenue, at 68th Street, (212) 628-0420. (Kimmelman)

INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY: 'LARRY CLARK,' through June 5. The controversial creator of two influential photography books - "Tulsa" (1971) and "Teenage Lust" (1983) - and director of the brilliant movie "Kids" (1995) has his first retrospective. The provocative Mr. Clark specializes in the dark and seamy side of American youth culture and his best works are unnervingly intimate, morally disturbing and beautiful. 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000. (Ken Johnson)

JAPAN SOCIETY: 'LITTLE BOY: THE ARTS OF JAPAN'S EXPLODING SUBCULTURE,' through July 24. Masterminded by the artist-writer-entrepreneur Takashi Murakami, this eye-boggling show traces the unexamined legacy of World War II as played out in Japan's popular culture. With Godzilla and Hello Kitty presiding, it reveals how this culture was twisted and darkened by the otaku, or geek, subculture, which has in turn influenced younger artists. 333 East 47th Street, (212) 832-1155. (Smith)

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'DIANE ARBUS REVELATIONS,' through May 30. Arbus could be cruel, but tenderness and melancholy were her finest modes of expression as she captured a moment, the anxious 1950's and 60's, and captured New York. Appropriately, she is given the royal treatment at the Met, including some absurdly theatrical galleries, where her work reveals that in the end we are all drawn together by our different flaws. Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710. (Kimmelman)

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'THE BISHOP JADES,' through Feb. 12, 2006. Jade has been treasured since ancient time, though the almost preposterously exquisite objects on display in the Met's reinstalled galleries for Chinese decorative arts date from the 18th century, when the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) brought Chinese jade work to a peak of virtuosity. (See above.) (Cotter)

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'DEFINING YONGLE: IMPERIAL ART IN EARLY 15TH-CENTURY CHINA,' through July 10. Sequestered in the exquisite Chinese decorative arts galleries, this show is both perfect and messy. Its porcelain, metalwork, embroidery and ivory highlight the astounding craftsmanship of the imperial workshops under the Ming emperor Yongle, and reflect the miscegenation of Asian cultures at a time when most roads led to China. (See above.) (Smith)

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'MAX ERNST: A RETROSPECTIVE,' through July 10. Despite and because of Ernst's being one of modernism's mystery men, he remains of interest, and there are intriguing things in this survey: from early Surrealist paintings, to near-abstract images generated by chance techniques, to the collage-style books some consider his masterworks. But only when he responds to specific events, like war, does his art snap into focus. (See above.) (Cotter)

MUSEUM FOR AFRICAN ART: 'RESONANCE FROM THE PAST,' through May 29. Roughly 90 sculptures, along with a few bead and fabric pieces, from the African holdings of the New Orleans Museum of Art. They make a savory anthology, with plenty of textbook staples, and some surprises. 36-01 43rd Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 784-7700. (Cotter)

MUSEUM OF BIBLICAL ART: 'COMING HOME!: SELF-TAUGHT ARTISTS, THE BIBLE AND THE AMERICAN SOUTH,' through July 24. A new small museum devoted to art related to the Bible gets off to a lively start with a big show of artworks by 73 untrained Southern Christian evangelists. Many names familiar to followers of 20th century folk and outsider art are on hand including William Edmondson, Minnie Evans, the Reverend Howard Finster and Sister Gertrude Morgan. 1865 Broadway at 61st Street, (212) 408-1500. (Johnson)

MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK: 'EL BARRIO: PUERTO RICAN NEW YORK,' through June 12. A snapshot of El Barrio - East Harlem, or Spanish Harlem - as seen through archival images and pictures by the contemporary photographer Hiram S. Maristany taken at a revolutionary political moment in the 1960's and early 70's. 1220 Fifth Avenue, at 103rd Street, (212) 534-1672. (Cotter)

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: 'THOMAS DEMAND,' through May 30. A generally stellar midcareer survey of the 40-year-old German artist, who makes life-size reconstructions of scenes, often ones he has come across in photographs, taking his own cinematic works. 11 West 53rd Street, (212) 708-9400. (Kimmelman)

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: 'CHRIS MARKER,' through June 13. Made entirely on the computer, "Owls at Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men" - a two-channel, eight-screen DVD with which this French underground film legend makes his New York debut as an installation artist - gives the horrors of World War I an eroded beauty and haunting pertinence. (See above.) (Smith)

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN: 'FIRST AMERICAN ART: THE CHARLES AND VALERIE DIKER COLLECTION OF AMERICAN INDIAN ART,' through April 2006. That American Indian art can provide the same aesthetic and emotional pleasure as European and American Modernism is the premise of this show, made up of 200 objects from the Diker Collection, and it affirms American Indian art's worthy aesthetic place in world culture. 1 Bowling Green, Lower Manhattan, (212) 514-3700. (Glueck)

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN: 'GEORGE CATLIN AND HIS INDIAN GALLERY,' through Sept. 5. The portraits and landscapes here give an account of Plains Indian life in the 1830's in wonderful and sometimes harrowing detail. Viewing it is a remarkable experience. (See above.) (Glueck)

NEUE GALERIE: 'PORTRAITS OF AN AGE: PHOTOGRAPHY IN GERMANY AND AUSTRIA, 1900-1938,' through June 6. More than 100 faces shot by 35 photographers. It's a savvy show that homes in on the changing ways people presented themselves in an era of rapidly turning social values. 1048 Fifth Avenue, at 86th Street, (212) 628-6200. (Glueck)

P.S. 1 CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER: 'GREATER NEW YORK 2005,' through Sept. 26. A youth-besotted, cheerful, immodestly ingratiating, finally disappointing survey of contemporary art, perusing a scene whose wide stylistic range, emphasis on drawing, persistent teenage infatuations and overall dexterousness are firmly entrenched characteristics of the marketplace. 22-25 Jackson Avenue, at 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 784-2084. (Kimmelman)

STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM: 'BILL TRAYLOR AND WILLIAM EDMONDSON AND THE MODERNIST IMPULSE,' through July 3. The work of two self-taught proto-modern artists whose beautifully complementary achievements argue against the usual dualities, but offer further evidence that African-American folk art is as great as any art, or music, this country has produced. Also at the museum: "Chris Ofili: Afro Muses 1995-2005." 144 West 125th Street, (212) 864-4500. (Smith)

THE UKRAINIAN MUSEUM: 'ALEXANDER ARCHIPENKO: VISION AND CONTINUITY,' through Sept. 4. This rare retrospective of work by the Ukrainian-born sculptor opens the handsome, much-expanded new quarters of this museum. The most exciting part is a beautifully illuminated room of Archipenko's most radical pieces that inspired later artists like Henry Moore. 222 East Sixth Street, East Village, (212) 228-0110. (Glueck)

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART: 'TIM HAWKINSON,' through May 29. On the gee-whiz meter, Mr. Hawkinson skews high. His midcareer retrospective, like a mad scientists' fair of screwball contraptions, hopscotches from one dexterous tour de force to the next. 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street, (800) 944-8639. (Kimmelman)

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART AT ALTRIA: 'SUE DE BEER: BLACK SUN,' through June 24. In a walk-in pink castle, "Black Sun" is a two-screen video about teenage girlhood, which alternates passages of lyrical visual beauty and emotional poignancy with periods of aimless tedium. 120 Park Avenue at 42nd Street, (917) 663-2453. (Johnson)

Galleries: Uptown

JACK GOLDSTEIN A hero of the Pictures generation revered by the new Pop artists and theorists of the 80's. His films from the early 70's (from 20 seconds to five minutes long) have a cool, deadpan quality recalling early videos of William Wegman. Ed Ruscha-style paintings of lightning storms from the 80's, here and at Metro, are thrillingly cinematic. Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 1018 Madison Avenue, near 78th Street, (212) 744-7400, through June 11. Metro Pictures, 519 West 24th Street, Chelsea, (212) 206-7100, through May 27. (Johnson)

'PROVIDING FOR THE AFTERLIFE: BRILLIANT ARTIFACTS FROM SHANDONG' The archaeology boom in China continues, and the 50 objects from Han dynasty tombs in this show are being exhibited in the United States for the first time. China Institute Gallery,125 East 65th Street, (212) 744-8181, through June 4. (Cotter)

RICHARD WATHEN A young British artist plugs some 21st-century energy into 18th-century portraiture, painting with a matte, flat delicacy that gives familiar poses a new-born freshness, and not only when clothing is subtracted. Salon 94, 12 East 94th Street, (646) 672-9212, through June 16. (Smith)

Galleries: 57th Street

'EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY' Among more than 70 narrative paintings, drawings and prints by a wide range of 20th century artists are works by Max Beckmann, James Ensor, John Heartfield, Kathe Kollwitz, Sue Coe, Martha Rosler and Eric Fischl. Galerie St. Etienne, 24 West 57th Street, (212) 245-6734, through May 27. (Johnson)

'WILDER' This tribute to theLos Angeles dealer Nicholas Wilder, (1937-1989) presents works by 28 artists who were shown at his gallery between 1965 and 1979. The all-star lineup includes Dan Flavin, Agnes Martin, John McCracken, Richard Tuttle and Cy Twombly. Parrasch and Washburn galleries, 20 West 57th Street, (212) 246-5360 and(212) 246-5300, through May 27. (Johnson)

Galleries: SoHo

TINA BARNEY The photographer known for her large, sumptuous color photographs of rich people often caught in situations of subtle psychological tension presents portraits shot in Spain and Germany that are included in her book "The Europeans." Janet Borden, 560 Broadway at Prince Street, (212) 431-0166, through May 27. (Johnson)

TERAO KATSUHIRO, SHINKI TOMOYUKI, YOSHIMUNE KAZUHIRO, YUMOTO MITSUO Four artists, from a Japanese facility for the artistically talented mentally disabled, appear possessed of naïve but intense imaginations and formal predilections bordering on compulsive. Phyllis Kind, 136 Greene Street, (212) 925-1200, through May 31. (Johnson)

Galleries: Chelsea

VICTOR BURGIN: 'THE LITTLE HOUSE' A video meditation on architectural beauty and conflicting male and female desire by a veteran English artist is one of the best, least didactic works of his career. Christine Burgin, 243 West 18th Street, (212) 462-2668, through May 28. (Smith)

DEAN BYINGTON Skillfully blending the hand-made and the mechanical, the paintings of this San Francisco artist use patterns suggestive of lacy wallpaper and images from 19th-century engravings to evoke landscapes and their not always peaceful inhabitants. Leslie Tonkonow, 535 West 22nd Street, (212) 255-8450, through June 18. (Smith)

IAN COOPER With a series of works that focus on the child-star of the "Poltergeist" movies, this young artist adds his distinctive preoccupation with popular culture and the spirit world to the black-on-black, Goth-leaning current in new art. Cue, 511 West 25th Street, (212) 206-3583, through June 4. (Smith)

CHERYL DONEGAN: 'OLD, TEMPORARY' While video-projected images of colorful cheap toys unfold on the wall, a woman's maniacally cheerful voice recites a rapid-fire litany of affirmations composed for Amway salespeople: "I am the best at what I do. There is no one better. I get the job done," and so on. It is funny and scary. Oliver Kamm/5BE, 504 West 22nd Street, (212) 255-0979, through June 4. (Johnson)

ROBBERT FLICK: 'TRAJECTORIES' With the cinematic idea that successive views give a dynamic sense of place, Mr. Flick mounted a video camera in his car window. He packs the results in grid formation on big sheets that give off the vibes of a country road, a city street, a desertscape. The whole is more than the sum of its tiny parts. Robert Mann, 210 11th Avenue, near 24th Street, (212) 989-7600, through June 18. (Glueck)

AMY GARTRELL: 'HOT HANDS, COLD HEART' The tribulations and infatuations of youth are the subjects of drawings, felt banners and an installation involving faceted glass charms and a lugubrious tree that would have done Edward Gorey proud. Daniel Reich, 537A West 23rd Street,(212) 924-4949, through May 28. (Smith)

JAMES GOBEL: 'RIDICULE IS NOTHING TO BE SCARED OF' Fat Rococo-era fops pose on a striped floor against a background of snow-covered rocky peaks in a campy, mural-scale confection made of neatly assembled pieces of colored felt. Kravets/Wehby, 521 West 21st Street, (212) 352-2238, through May 27.

(Johnson)

'L.A.' A group show that reflects the sprawl and vitality of the Los Angeles art scene is also so desperately crowded that it seems superfluous, especially given the high profiles of half of the 48 artists. Schoormans, 508 West 26th Street, (212) 243-3159, through May 27. (Smith)

NEETA MADAHAR Large, handsome, eerily unreal color photographs of real birds attracted to a free-form grid of tree braches by a shifting cast of birdfeeders. Julie Saul, 535 West 22nd Street, (212) 627-2410, through June 11. (Smith)

RICHARD PRINCE A well-chosen assortment of works from the past 25 years by the influential Neo-Pop semiotician includes joke paintings, car hood sculptures and photographs of scruffy upstate New York landscapes. Gladstone, 515 West 24th Street, (212) 206-9300, through June 18. (Johnson)

'SCULPTURE' This judicious small selection of three dimensional works includes a rustic dream house by Vito Acconci; videos showing through an antique Asian iron gate by Nam June Paik; big, smooth white birds by Hiraki Sawa; and an amazing, life-size stainless steel tree by Roxy Paine. James Cohan, 533 West 26th Street, (212) 714-9500, through June 25. (Johnson)

QIU SHIHUA: 'INSIGHT' At first, the canvases by this painter from Shenzhen, China, look like nothing more than slightly scuffed expanses of raw fabric. Look again and you discover peaceful, luminously misty landscapes realized with amazing subtlety. Chambers, 210 11th Avenue, at 25th Street, (212) 414-1169, through May 28. (Johnson) JOHN F. SIMON JR.: 'ENDLESS VICTORY' Mesmerizing, animated patterns driven by sophisticated software programs and running on laptop screens; they would make excellent screen savers. One plays inventive variations on Mondrian's "Victory Boogie Woogie." Sandra Gering, 534 West 22nd Street, (646) 336-7183, through May 28. (Johnson)

Other Galleries

'GLASS, SERIOUSLY' This fine selection of artworks in glass, picked by the independent curator Lilly Wei, includes tear drops by Kiki Smith; hand grenades by Kristin Oppenheim; vessels that spell "invisible" by Rob Wynne; a kind of stained glass window made of stacked found wine bottles, by Jean Shin and Brian Ripel; and an elegant bowed panel of frosted sea-green glass by Christopher Wilmarth. Dorsky, 11-03 45th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 937-6317, through June 27. (Johnson)

AURIE RAMIREZ A remarkable self-taught artist creates a candy-colored but complex universe (in watercolor) of androgynous dark-haired beauties who usually wear frock-coats and pinstriped pants. Her first show anywhere dovetails nicely with smaller debuts of the bristling cannibalizations texts, images and found materials by Peter Gallo and the collage drawings of an artist known only as Carter. White Columns, 320 West 13th Street, West Village, (212) 924-4212, through June 11. (Smith)

Last Chance

JOSEF ALBERS/DONALD JUDD: 'STRUCTURE AND COLOR' Despite the 40-year age difference, this vivacious museum-quality show of two geometric abstractionists - one proto-Minimalist, the other Minimalist - is a call and response echo chamber of levitating squares and rectangles of color. Brooke Alexander, 59 Wooster Street, (212) 925-4338, closing tomorrow. (Smith)

'COLLAGE: SIGNS AND SURFACES' Joseph Cornell, Romare Beardon, Jess, Robert Rauschenberg and other big names in collage history are on hand for this show of works by more than 70 artists. But many of the most intriguing works are by lesser knowns, like Arch Connelly's pearl-encrusted "Self Portrait" and Michael Cooper's "16 Yellow Things," a gridded arrangement of a ticket stub, a Lego block and 14 other small items. Zoubok, 533 West 23rd Street, (212) 675-7490, closing tomorrow. (Johnson)

WILL DUTY Mr. Duty uses a computer and scanned photographs to generate subtle, flickering compositions of stars, bars and flames, but he translates the imagery by hand and pencil onto paper, to dense, richly sensuous effect. Jeff Bailey, 511 West 25th Street, (212) 989-0156, closing tomorrow. (Johnson)

KELLY KACZYNSKI A graduate of Bard College makes a debut with an apotheosis of art-about-art and optical illusion in which seemingly formless sculptures, viewed through a peephole, coalesce into an image of one of Marcel Duchamp's best-known works. Triple Candie, 461 West 126th Street, Harlem, (212) 865-0783, closing on Sunday. (Smith)

LINDA MATALON: 'MIDDLE FALLS' A suite of 36 drawings that catalog, but mainly commemorate, as many recent sculptures turn a room into an evocative installation full of glimpses of fragmentary forms in mysterious spaces. Wynn Kramarsky, 560 Broadway at Prince Street, SoHo, (212) 966-6601, closing tomorrow. (Smith)

LAUREL NAKADATE: 'LOVE HOTEL AND OTHER STORIES' In videos of private performances, the young, fetching and scarily adventurous Ms. Nakadate toys absurdly with men who tried to pick her up and then agreed to make art with her. Danziger, 521 West 26th Street, (212) 629-6778, closing tomorrow. (Johnson)

'3 X ABSTRACTION: NEW METHODS OF DRAWING BY HILMA AF KLINT, EMMA KUNZ AND AGNES MARTIN,' This fascinating and beautiful show presents mostly abstract, geometric drawings by three women thought to have been motivated largely by spiritual purposes. Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, (212) 219-2166, closing tomorrow. (Johnson)



RE: Yoda speak

From an old textbook:

'Every language has sentences that include a Subject (S), an Object (O), and a Verb (V), although some sentences do not have all three elements. Languages have been classified according to the "basic" or most common order in which these occur in the language.

'There are six possible orders--SOV (Subject, Object, Verb), SVO, VSO, VOS, OVS, OSV--permitting six possible language types. Here are examples of some of the languages in these classes.

'SVO: English, French, Swahili, Hausa, Thai
'VSO: Tagalog, Irish, (Classical) Arabic, (Biblical) Hebrew
'SOV: Turkish, Japanese, Persian, Georgian, Eskimo
'OVS: Apalai (Brazil), Barasano (Colombia), Panare (Venezuela)
'OSV: Apurina and Xavante (Brazil)
'VOS: Cakchiquel (Guatemala), Huave (Mexico), Coeur d'Alene (Idaho)

' . . . . If a language is, say SVO, this does not mean that SVO is the only possible word order. Yoda, the Jedi Master from the motion picture "Return of the Jedi," speaks a strange but perfectly understandable style of English that achieves its eccentricity by being OSV. Some of Yoda's utterances are:

'Sick I've become.
'Strong with the Force you are.
'Your father he is.
'When nine hundred years you reach, look as good you will not.

(Fromkin and Rodman: An Introduction to Language, 5th ed. 1993: pp110-112)

http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/movies/starwarsepisodeiii/index.html?offset=223

May 20, 2005    
Douglas Kelley Archive

A detail from "Abraham and the Three Angels," a small panel of a biblical scene by Rembrandt, at the Met now through 2007. One of the angels turns out to be God.


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CRITICS' PICKS New York

New York

· Julie Mehretu

· Michael Rakowitz

· Neo Rauch

· Jack Goldstein

· Miranda Lichtenstein

· Aïda Ruilova

· "L.A."

· Matthew Buckingham and Joachim Koester

· Ian Cooper

Los Angeles

· "Facing the Music"

Toronto

· Kristine Moran

London

· Dorothy Cross

Milan

· Urs Fischer

· Christian Boltanski

Vienna

· Karin Frank

Shanghai

· Sookoon Ang and Susanne Winterling

Elsewhere

· Sharjah Biennial 7

 

Julie Mehretu

PROJECTILE GALLERY
37 West 57th Street, Third Floor
May 05–June 04

 

This large selection of Julie Mehretu's drawings—most of which are roughly two-by-three-feet, horizontally oriented, and hung salon-style in the gallery's main room—possesses a vibrancy and complexity that begins to match her widely acclaimed paintings. This is a marked improvement upon the last batch of works on paper New Yorkers saw, in "Drawing Now" at MoMA in 2002, which seemed curiously inert. Here, she has added splotches and washes of color to her signature dense whorls, arcs, and lines rendered precisely in black ink. These works seem to lack the architectural plans and other representational elements hidden in her paintings, and, like a lot of abstract art, the drawings encourage you to pick your metaphor. Most imply the word "global": The tangled lines could be a visualization of information networks; the colors could stand in for meterological data. You can get as imaginative as you want: Fifteen of the thirty drawings in the front room feature variously sized and brightly colored circles scattered across their surfaces, and to me, at least, they resemble maps excised from the back of a Constructivist in-flight magazine.

Brian Sholis

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Untitled, 2005.

 

Michael Rakowitz

LOMBARD-FREID FINE ARTS
531 West 26th Street, 2nd floor
April 21–May 28

 

Given New York's current Freedom Tower-related dysfunction, Michael Rakowitz's architectural propositions seem especially timely. Rakowitz is best known for his paraSITE pieces, portable shelters custom-made for homeless tenants from plastic bags that inflate via the warm air emitted by urban buildings' HVAC systems. The centerpiece of his current exhibition of inflatable architecture, drawings, and mini-monuments is Dull Roar, 2005, an imposing inflatable scale model of the ‘50s Minoru Yamasaki-designed Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis that was demolished before a cheering crowd in 1972. The artist simulates its construction and destruction: The model is filled with air from the gallery's vent before deflating, and then the process begins anew. Rakowitz's focus is the decline of modernism as glimpsed through its crumbling architecture, and he renders Yamasaki's post-St. Louis project—the World Trade Center—pathetic with Last Gasp, 2005. Consisting of a hand dryer with plastic attached to the nozzle, Last Gasp transforms into a Canal Street-style kitsch souvenir when the dryer is activated: Two phallic towers sprout from the previously deflated plastic, a reminder of the dubiousness of our scramble to erect the tallest building in the world.

Nick Stillman

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Dull Roar, 2005. Installation view.

 

Neo Rauch

DAVID ZWIRNER GALLERY
525 West 19th Street
May 09–June 18

 

Jamaica Kincaid once said of her native Antigua that it is a place where the past feels like the present and the present often feels like the past. You get the same sense looking at the work of Neo Rauch, whose latest painterly conflations embrace the history of Germany on an even more epic scale than his earlier ones. Using his signature Pop-cum-Social Realist-cum-Surrealist style, he compresses figures representing Old and New Germany, East and West, into spatially irrational compositions. The Romantic brooding of Goethe and Friedrich collides with Communist ennui; the heroic worker is replaced by the exhausted one—represented, in more than one work, by the painter himself, crafting history in his cramped little cave (the historical origin of painting, naturally), literally spiked with stalactites. Despite the fact that Rauch's work is in some ways stylistically conservative—even regressive—he is a master who captures his context in an idiom perfectly, almost preternaturally suited to his subject.

Martha Schwendener

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Neue Rollen (New Roles), 2005.

 

Jack Goldstein

MITCHELL-INNES & NASH / METRO PICTURES
1018 Madison Avenue / 519 West 24th Street
April 29–June 11

 

In two current exhibitions of paintings, short videos, and seven-inch sound-effects records from the mid-‘70s to the mid-‘80s, the work of Jack Goldstein (1945–2003) is just as conceptually acute as it is easy on the eyes. At Metro Pictures, Goldstein's gorgeous yet dissonant paintings seem to be based on photographs capturing nature at its most awe-inspiring (lightning flashes, volcanic eruptions). But does nature really exist in such luscious Technicolor? Uptown at Mitchell-Innes & Nash are several more paintings, nine handsome 7-inch discs, and an exceptional loop of his beautiful, spare videos. Obvious precursors to the work of contemporary artists like T.J. Wilcox, Goldstein's videos reveal the artist steeped in the same concerns that would later inform his paintings. White Dove, 1975, shows the futile attempt of a pair of hands to clasp a perched dove, which flutters away before it can be captured. The hypnotizing The Jump, 1978, presents rotoscoped stock footage of divers. The glitzy effect transforms the athletes into pixilated jewels, their lithe bodies spinning and twisting from highboards before disappearing with a splash into a black void. Goldstein's exceptional body of work elucidates a state in which beauty is experienced second-hand, inside the pages of magazines and television screens, and locates something more complicated than spiritual bankruptcy therein.

Nick Stillman

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Still from Some Butterflies, 1975.

 

Miranda Lichtenstein

ELIZABETH DEE GALLERY
545 West 20th Street
April 30–May 28

 

Miranda Lichtenstein's new photographs portray young, educated, contemporary Westerners' quest for enlightenment and healing outside traditional avenues (like organized religion). Each photo represents a potential path: meditation, shamanism, sensory-deprivation, yoga/pilates, and so on. Interestingly, the pictures are so stylistically various that it's as if a different photographer had taken each one. In the same way earlier generations ushered in large-scale color prints and unprecedented intimacy, Lichtenstein, along with peers like Roe Ethridge, is bent on breaking the current model and turning away from serial photography, from groups of work easily recognizable as a "whole" (like Hiroshi Sugimoto's new photographs on view two blocks up at Sonnabend). What's sacrificed is the lulling comfort of moving from one photo to the next and knowing, on a formal level, what to expect. But the lacunae between photographs fit the subject—and the moment. Pluralism is integrated directly into the work: One photographer exercises many options and still holds it all together.

Martha Schwendener

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Shaman, 2005.

 

Aïda Ruilova

GREENBERG VAN DOREN GALLERY
730 Fifth Avenue
May 04–June 04

 

The newest twist on the old "what is art?" chestnut appears to be: What constitutes an installation as opposed to an exhibition of discrete objects? Aïda Ruilova's latest show raises the question with five monitors showing thirteen- to nineteen-second snippets of people saying "uh oh" or "um" or "alright," cut and looped and displayed intermittently on separate monitors, so that the action seems to jump rhythmically around the room. The references to avant-garde editing styles—Steve Reich's early tape works like It's Gonna Rain, 1965, or the jump cuts of Godard—and music are overt. More interesting, however, is the way that Ruilova disrupts the notion of "a" video or installation by presenting a show in which both the constituent elements and the aggregate whole are artworks in their own right. One wonders whether the market isn't driving this trend, and whether, should they be dispersed to different owners, all these separate-but-equal parts will function more like relics torn from a corpus or like a musical composition dismantled into its constituent parts. In any case, the conceptual fissure (between single and multiple) nicely accompanies Ruilova's visual and aural ones.

Martha Schwendener

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Still from UM, 2004.

 

"L.A."

LUCAS SCHOORMANS
508 West 26th Street #11B
April 01–May 27

 

The New York art world often looks upon Los Angeles with the same curious disdain it once reserved for Brooklyn—a lot of young, chaotic talent breaking like waves, but little in the way of a stable art force sympathetic to eastern interpreters. It is thus fitting that a show like "L.A." bombards the viewer with some seventy-one works by nearly fifty artists, proving that significant developments have been produced on the distant littoral, while also suggesting that Los Angeles may encompass certain aesthetic detours that need not always merge with New York's own preferred practices. Tate Dougherty, who organized the exhibition, did well to include a mix of well-known names along with a number of less familiar ones, and the clutter of artworks sweeping across the wall rhymes brilliantly for a city that prizes endless horizontals to New York's clean verticals and grids. Standouts are many. Mungo Thomson's "star map" markers the entire map of Hollywood blue, leaving only the star symbols white; the result is an astronomical map of constellations that loses any pedestrian accessibility. Liz Craft's watercolor of three large black spiders, marked with red abdomens to signal a poisonous variety, has the alarming delicacy of something that enthralls only to bite. Shirley Tse's sculpture of plastic electric towers connected in overtly sloppy power lines literally bisects the gallery space, cutting off any fluid navigation for jammed traffic and utterly failing to romanticize the wizardry of scientific advancement (Los Angeles was, in fact, the first city entirely lit by electricity). In the end, the artists represented here seem more concerned with geography and environment, a locale of disconnected spatial realities. Ultimately, it would seem that it is New York that appears far more enthralled with the Hollywood image machine than the young vanguard living so close to the studios and spotlights.

Christopher Bollen

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Exhibition view.

 

Matthew Buckingham and Joachim Koester

THE KITCHEN
512 West 19th Street
April 26–June 18

 

As in Matthew Buckingham's most recent film, which centers on the Hudson River and its "discovery" by European explorers, his collaboration with Joachim Koester, Sandra of the Tuliphouse or How to Live in a Free State, 2001, moves laterally rather than chronologically through history. The subject here is the anarchistic "free city" of Christiania in Copenhagen, colonized in 1971 by squatters who broke into an abandoned seventeenth-century military base. Framed by the perspective of the fictional character Sandra, the city-within-a-city becomes a springboard for meditations on a variety of phenomena: The military history of Copenhagen, the three-dot flag (inspired by the three "i's" in Christiania), the demise of armor after the introduction of gunpowder, wolves in Europe, Beowulf, and the case of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the Iranian refugee who arrived in France without a passport in 1988 and became a long-term squatter at Charles de Gaulle Airport (thereby inspiring several films, including Steven Spielberg's The Terminal). Spread out over five channels, the film underscores the fact that history can be narrated from multiple perspectives, and that citizenship itself, no matter how fixed it seems, is essentially a form of squatting.

Martha Schwendener

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Still from Sandra of the Tuliphouse or How to Live in a Free State, 2001.

 

Ian Cooper

CUE ART FOUNDATION
511 West 25th Street
April 28–June 05

 

The curator of Ian Cooper's first solo exhibition is Sue de Beer, of angsty-teen-punk-installation fame, and the similarities between the two are obvious. Both are obsessed with the dark side of adolescence and with how the transition from youth to adulthood is acted out in a variety of aesthetic statements, from bedroom décor to black fingernail polish to taste in music. Cooper's vision is more diffuse and abstract than de Beer's, however—and even more death-obsessed. The sprawling Wake, 2002–2004, includes photographs of Heather O'Rourke, the young actress who starred in the Poltergeist films (and died at the age of twelve), while Closed Circuit Faith Device, 2004–2005, with its circle of fabric simulating zipped-together sleeping bags, recalls teenage gatherings for games like Spin the Bottle and Truth or Dare. Cooper's most prevalent material, however, is the lifeline that links teens together: curly, rubber-coated telephone wire, which shapes the Gothic skull in Wake Tangle, 2004, and coils around the fingers of the faceless youth in the dual-channel DVD Constellations Align (BFF & GFF), 2005.

Martha Schwendener

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Wake, 2002–2004.

 
 

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