Recently by Julie Fishkin
The New People Are Already Here
Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov
Deitch Projects - 76 Grand St, New York NY
Russia is a country of many contradictions. The rich live lavishly, adorned with Chanel and BMW SUVs that often come with a driver and a body guard. The poor, on the other hand, live in dire straits because the vestiges of a dead regime following the dissipation of the Soviet Union left them with nothing more than pathetic pensions that are not a far leap from Soviet bread lines and empty shelves in department stores. In fact, according to the Forbes list of the richest men in the world, number three, following Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, is the Russian mogul Roman Abramovich. Fine, he is actually number 11, but at the age of 39, his net worth is $18.2 billion. And yet the tight fists of the neo-dictators, who rule this multifarious and expansive land, seek to rid the country of criminal activity that has been so conducive to the "oligarch" status the wealthy men of business have acquired. The less fortunate masses view former president, now prime minister Putin's Czar-like persona with the same ambivalence that marks this nation; after all, while he has tacitly extinguished any potential opposing voices (read: killed off all the journalists who dare to speak any brazen truth), he has equally quelled the fires of mafia wars that raged in Russia through the 1990s. With business management and democratic politics under their belt, elite Russians have turned to art as the category of knowledge that can buy them a certain level of sophistication. In fact, Sotheby's recently shipped a collection of works to Bavrikha, a high end mall of sorts on the outskirts of Moscow, where the oligarchs buy their Gucci and their Fendi, and now, can browse the de Koonings, Hirsts and Warhols.
Winning is Not For Everyone
Mike Quinn
Perry Rubenstein Gallery - 534 W 24 St
27 March - 17 May 2008
Obsessions tend to be unhealthy. Though often personal and familiar to the soul, obsessions occupy so much space in one's mind that living with them becomes obvious, even manageable. Over the years, if an obsession does not wane, the best thing to do is focus your creative energy on it, milk its potential for inspiration and use it to your advantage. After all, it's clearly not going anywhere. I've learned to make mine into vital subjects that I can dissect, expound upon, rethink and recreate. If, however, life becomes a heavy burden, overwhelmed by obsessive tendencies in any direction, things can get increasingly complicated. No one is devoid of problems; scope and gravity may vary, but corrosive tendencies are never wholly unfamiliar. Mike Quinn's new solo exhibition at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery, Winning is Not for Everyone is a personal exploration of some of his more somber thoughts, their resolutions, and an obsessive love for basketball.
31 under 31
Curated by Lumi Tan and Jonathan Feinstein
3rd Ward - 195 Morgan Ave Brooklyn NY
1 March - 28 March 2008
If we need a month to commemorate the achievements of women across cultures and generations, then it’s only fitting that an exhibition should sometimes fall under a thematic conception as loose as this month’s dedication. 31 Under 31, currently on view at 3rd Ward, is an exhibition that brings thirty-one women under the age of thirty-one to show one photograph each. Though a vast and expansive criteria and an equally vague thematic structure, curators Lumi Tan and Jonathan Feinstein have selected thirty-one impressive and striking photographs that proudly display the talent and astute vision of thirty-one very different young women. The parameters of sex and age have nothing to do with artistic skill, personal taste or creative vision and yet, when given these basic guidelines under which an artist can showcase her work, the end result is clearly multifarious and wildly eclectic, which lends itself well for photographic interpretations. Because an age group cannot reflect an aesthetic predisposition and because age can only speak about the number of years passed, all the other personal motivations for every photograph presented are as different from the next as each photographer’s background and personal history.
The Size of Thoughts
Julia Weist
295 10th Avenue
7 February - 4 March 2008
Our bodies are defined by certain physical perimeters and constraints. While we can't transgress the material possibilities which constitute those bodies, we often challenge and explore their potential for the sake of pleasure, pain, or even pain for pleasure. When art asks us to position our bodies, that irrefutable mound of mass that we can't shake or change too drastically, in relation to the work at hand, the arising conflict is immediate because no inanimate object could ever be a distinct source of comparable measure to any of our basic faculties. Julia Weist's exhibition, The Size of Thoughts, presents a physical barrier to the work, specifically the glass window that blocks our immediate path to the objects on view. Weist's exhibition at 295 Tenth Avenue, a site curated monthly by Lumi Tan, presents sculptures made of discarded and reconfigured paperbacks and asks us to size up our own material presence in relation to these once narratively inscribed objects (books and images) that are here sculptures intended for distanced inspection and investigation. In this work, thoughts become material objects as the once immaterial narrative form of the novel is turned into shredded pieces of repurposed wood, the basic foundation for the paper upon which these words were printed is reduced to its constituting stuff. The piece, titled Lumber, made from ripped margins of discarded romance novels, is a new take on MDF, an industrial wood reborn as M.D.F, "Made of Discarded Fantasies."
Ukraine
Juergen Teller
Lehmann Maupin Gallery - 540 W. 26 St, New York NY
7 February - 15 March 2008
Arriving at the Juergen Teller opening at Lehmann Maupin last week, I stared in horror at the huge crowd of people clamoring to get inside what seemed — and proved an impeccable assumption — a giant clothing ad disguised as an art exhibition. Luckily the crowd was smarter than I had anticipated. I pushed my way past the greedy looking eyes queuing up for their free Lufthansa sponsored sausage — because everything tastes better when it's free and corporate sponsorships allows one to justify this type of blind consumption. It's funny how popular this show was considering I didn't recognize anybody, despite their coy poses for the photographers who chased all the skinny c-listers with fur trimmed coats. The fur looked like cheap shit rabbit but at least she was tactful enough not to get her sausage bits all over the cases that held the photographs, unlike the other cow whose blatant disregard I secretly admired. Clearly someone decided that a photograph enclosed in what functions like a large table was both a practical and resourceful approach to exhibition strategy. I could not agree more. What was shocking however, was that Marc Jacobs had no hand in the show. If the patron saint of corporate sponsors heard my prayers, he would have sent copious MJ swag — or at least perfume samples. As a Board of Advisors "prime cut" member, even on the Phillips de Pury staff, we got diminutive plastic baggies that came in shiny shades shamrock and olive drab for us lucky female employees to choose from. The made-in-China tag was smaller than the MJ logo so everyone was thrilled. But for Juergen Teller — nothing, not even an appearance!
I airkissed my way to the door, finished my beer, complained about the traffic to the exit being worse than the L train at rush hour, and left with no lasting impressions except for the delightful image of one Ukrainian whore with a Third World boob job and a scar to show that was quite possibly worse than the one on Britney's vagina in that most memorable celebrity photo of 2007. Too bad Juergen didn't shoot that one. It could have been so much more poignant.
Every year, this auspicious time rolls around as we challenge our willful memories to conjure up the outstanding moments that differ from last year’s and resolve to abandon certain baneful tendencies. The end of the year, whose certainty is as conclusive as, that’s right, death and taxes, also coincides with Miami Basel and the cornucopia of worthwhile and not so worthwhile art displays, contiguous fairs, pompous presentations and the inevitable Deitch party. I’m not even including Miami in my top ten this year, and not only because I didn’t go. This year was particularly fecund as all the major art world happenings coincided: the lavish Venice Biennale brought back the yachts and palazzo parties, Documenta 12 exploded in Kassel with another every-five-year grand scale presentation, the Münster Sculpture Project, which only occurs once a decade returned, and the increasingly brilliant Performa biennial of performance art saw its second incarnation as well as the usual suspects in Miami and Basel. With so many choices in New York alone another top-ten list to end the old and bring in the new means some discerning thought and careful culling. In no particular order, I present my list of the ten best things from this past year.
Performa returned this year for its second incarnation to emulate the previous effort with a bigger, more impressive variety of performances and events. One particularly notable performance (that I reviewed in a previous post), was Nathalie Djurberg’s whose musical score, set to her twisted claymation world, was the perfect live accompaniment.
Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation Tour proves that defining a style really can be ageless, especially when a legendary band has found the ultimate secret to eternal youth. Sonic Youth has been a cultural avatar for the New York underground since their inception and only reaffirms their status time and time again. I thank them for this album, its remastered version, and their consistent incarnation of the very notion of indie rock.
performance and installation view.
Courtesy of John Connelly Presents.
Early Worm Gets the Bird
Brian Chippendale, Jungil Hong, and Kevin Hooyman
16 November - 30 December 2007
Cinders Gallery - 103 Havemeyer St., Brooklyn NY
Skinny punk rockers don't just inhabit a solipsistic world of their own personal minds. Theirs is a closed world, sure, but one that triggers the common curiosity and sends it to wander through the landscape of visual bombardments that comprise their persona. If, after all, behind the facade, there lies a phantasmagorical place of monsters, creatures, and colorful incarnations of fleshy beings that stem directly from the well-earned street cred of any respectable rock star hipster, then art and life have just converged in the most auspicious of circumstances. Cinders, the small and clever gallery in Williamsburg that consistently boasts art and cool that is as visually entertaining as its spectators and openings parties, brings us an exhibition titled "Early Worm Gets the Bird" with new work by Brian Chippendale, Jung Hong, and Kevin Hooyman. The artists share their infectious fantasies and deep-rooted obsessions of all the creatures, characters and fantastical places that embody the cornucopia of colors and shapes in the exhibition. The work is about ingesting, expelling, conceding to all things scary and insidious while intimating all the potential for new life through regeneration.
Brian Chippendale, whose collages have the neon putridness of a Crayola box, reminds us that colors range indefinitely while their actual nature is toxic and plastic, much like the subject matter of his loud compositions. Chippendale, who drums with his bassist and second half of Lightning Bolt, is no stranger to noise. Loud, pulsating rhythms prevail through amped up antics of life-affirming passion that let you lose control again. Such is his music and such is his art because a true artist conflates and converges while upholding the hardcore credo of his essence with utter honesty. Jung Hong, who shares a warehouse with Chippendale in Providence, RI, brings her lust for life in the most literal sense onto the visual canvas. Each construction encompasses a terrarium that hosts a living plant as it grows and battles for survival amidst the maelstrom of hellish obstacles. Apparently, she has over two hundred plants at home, bringing life to her industrial home-scape and to each art work she undertakes. Hooyman's all-over drawings reflect the obsessive hand of a deft precision that makes each work stunningly worthy of some serious inspection. Incidentally, he lives in the town of Climax, NY, a happenstance that adds such poignancy to an otherwise overlooked convention.
Cinders, whose mostly affordable prints, t-shirts, zines, pins, and imperative "Slingshot" organizers keep its simple concept afloat never disappoints. Each group show is as energetic and PBR-filled as the previous, and as colorful and imaginative as the subsequent will probably be. This year, the gang has the pleasure to participate in the Aqua Fair in Miami during the weekend of Miami Basel. Although I'll still be stuck in somber Brooklyn, jealous as hell of my friends who'll be sipping their roadies on the beach, I'm thoroughly excited for Cinders to bring a chunk of our Brooklyn to the sunny art world overload of Miami. Until they go, you can still check out this show at the gallery.
Kids & Dogs), 2007. Courtesy of New York Magazine.
This past Sunday I had the pleasure (and mild pain) of attending the opening night of Swedish artist Nathalie Djurberg's newly commissioned claymation film and performance at the Zipper Theater. Like all of Djurberg's cleverly disturbing, whimsically simple, yet insidiously horrifying, claymation films this one was equally replete with dismembered body parts, graphic violence, gory guts, genitals, and of course a motley melange of dogs, kids, and sexy nurses. Hans Berg and Pascal Strauss accompanied the raunchy action on toy drums, plopping ketchup bottles, pots, pans, household items, slashed cantaloupe, and banging kitchen utensils while lavishly clad in handmade Prada costumes resembling a couture marching band on crack, primly clad with medals of honor and all. Meanwhile Miuccia Prada herself sat among the crowd of spectators who came to see Nathalie's short but sickly sweet performance.
white china marker on grey green tinted paper, 17 x 35 inches.
Courtesy of Klaus von Nichtssagend
Jenny Ping
Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery - 438 Union Avenue Brooklyn, NY
21 September - 28 October, 2007
The Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery is a true artists' gallery, upholding the fervent sensibilities of the practitioner-proprietors whose love for art and their fellow artist colleagues begets some brilliant exhibitions. The "nicht" in the Nichtssagent literally means "nothing." The owners, RISD grads fed up with the stale state of affairs in the art world, wanted to see artists up that they simply weren’t seeing. In the spirit of artistic progress and creative ingenuity, they joined forces and started their own exhibition space that they aptly dubbed with the most pretentious sounding name they could imagine, equally offset by its own ridiculous non-meaning. The only rule at the space is a refusal to show their own work in order to mitigate the already painful tendencies of the art world's blatant self-indulgence. The name of the space was their clever antidote to the dilemma of artists showing artists. Call it a wink at the art historical -isms and self-reflexive considerations all their favorite German authors and professors taught them (I miss you, Buchloh!). The three founders and co-directors, Sam Wilson, Rob Hult and Indgrid Bromberg Kennedy, call it a "labor of love." Located just off the Lorimer stop in Williamsburg, the Klaus Gallery sits conveniently next to Dumont where the strategic placement guarantees pre-brunch art viewing.
A good deal of calories later, helmet on head and smile on face, I went to my first exhibition at Brooklyn Fire Proof titled “Post Retro.” The exhibition examines the reassessment of trends and styles when they are seen in retrospect; like when something dead and gone suddenly resurfaces (think bell bottoms) and a present trend owes its tendencies to a retro influence that is often re-used and recycled. This notion, of course, applies to fashion and cultural tastes as well as to art. My full belly needed to digest much like this rather complex curatorial theme; both were loaded and full of diversity. Filled with cultural references to our society of plenty in desire for more, this show offers a veritable smorgasbord of art, replete with bright colors, clever installations and a really cool photograph by Carter Mull that presents the messy wasteland of the present. Mull’s nearly obsessive abstractions are assembled collages of little bits of what can be detritus, scattered about in cluttered chaos yet put together in perfectly constructed cohesion. His piece evokes our rambunctious lives, replete with noise and dissonance but always somehow aligned and composed to give the illusion of structure.
