Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery (New York and Berlin)
An exhibition of twenty-eight truly incredible, even mind-boggling, drawings by an obscure outsider artist was hardly what I expected to find in the parquet-floored galleries of the Upper East Side. First of all, I must preface that I abhor the term “outsider art,” but Schroder-Sönnenstern certainly was never in the ‘front line’ of his contemporaries, and after a little research, I came to learn that he was socially obscure and ostracized. This is visible in his drawings on view (all pencil and colored pencil on cardboard), which are strange and fantastical. As Jean Dubuffet would describe Art Brut (or Outsider Art), these drawings were created from “unselfconscious imagery born of pure, uninhibited expression.” Continue Reading More »
Maria Petschnig "De Niña a Mujer" 2010 Digital video, 11:12 minutes (Video still)
I’ve had bad timing with viewing some recent exhibitions in the Lower East Side. I want to be able to write about the fantastic shows that I saw in order to encourage others to go and experience the same, however, they all seem to be closing this week!
I was lucky enough to catch Maria Petschnig at On Stellar Rays, which had already been extended through March 19. In the video, De Niña a Mujer, the viewer is invited into the apartment of Viktor, a Russian New-Yorker who produces elaborately-staged (yet with a low production value) softcore porn. His models, several thirty-something Russian women (who also include Petschnig), appear comfortable and relaxed with the gentle –even silly– man as he helps them put on, shall I say unique, costumes. Oddly enough, this is the sort of behind-the-scenes behavior I would expect on the set of a pornography, whether softcore or hardcore; the relationship between Viktor and the woman is desexualized, and almost familial. Viktor’s final product is a photograph, which seems cold and distant compared to the more intimate moments between producer and actress/model that Petschnig captures in this video. Continue Reading More »
Lena Dunham was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film”. She studied creative writing, likes to write and make movies, but her bigger passion seems to be twitter. Ms. Dunham’s feature film “Tiny Furniture” was awarded Best Screenplay Spirit Award this past February. I’ve just started to follow her tweets.
Vince Contarino is a New York based painter. His multi-layered canvasses explore the language of abstraction. From first glance there is something illusive in Contarino’s canvases, a tension between the forthright and the concealed. The artist often repurposes forgotten brushstrokes and colors, pasting them into his collages and works on paper. The result is something both beautiful and challenging, a floating soup of the painterly. Contarino’s belief in the ongoing relevance of abstraction is mirrored in his extracurricular activities. His most recent curatorial project, “The Working Title”, organized with painter Kris Chatterson, opens at the Bronx Art Center next Friday. I recently had the chance to speak with the artist over the phone. Continue Reading More »
Barbican (London) Opens New Exhibit: “Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s“
The work Laurie Anderson created while living in downtown New York City in the 1970s is inextricably linked to the place and time in which it was made. These are the focus of a new exhibit opening today at the Barbican Art Gallery in London titled Laurie Anderson, Trisha Brown, Gordon Matta-Clark: Pioneers of the Downtown Scene, New York 1970s.
The new exhibit, which runs through May 22, is the first major presentation to examine the experimental and often daring approaches—from dancing on rooftops to cutting fragments out of abandoned buildings—taken by these three leading figures in the rough-and-ready arts scene developing in downtown Manhattan during the 1970s. Anderson, choreographer Trisha Brown, and artist Gordon Matta-Clark were friends and active participants in the New York art community, working fluidly between visual art and performance. Continue Reading More »
Mobile phones were made for convenience, and cellular technology has universally transformed our engagement with the world. It is possible to remain completely solitary; physically, mentally, spatially, while simultaneously engage completely within your own mobile network. The notion of photography as an art form hasn’t changed but its mode of transmission and its potential for ubiquitous perception has with the rise of smartphones.
Since cell phones are constantly carried by their owners, they allow one to capture an image at any time, and with the undeniable prevalence of 3G internet connections, these images can be instantly shared with large audiences via social networking platforms. Mobile Uploads is an attempt to concentrate these images into a more intimate — yet still maintaining the live and constantly ‘uploading’ — environment. Continue Reading More »
Beginning March 29, The Bruce High Quality Foundation will take to the streets (and highways) on a five-week, 11-city, coast-to-coast road trip that crosses state lines and institutional boundaries to inspire and enable local art students to define the future of their own educational experience.
Traveling in a limousine painted as a school bus, BHQF will visit university art departments, art schools, art institutions, and alternative spaces across the nation, bringing together concerned educators, artists, arts administrators, and—most importantly—students to brainstorm on the future of art schools. What are they for? How should they be organized? If not for careers, what is the essence of art itself? These fundamental questions have long haunted artists, and the BHQF are interested in putting the questions back in the hands of students across America.
BHQF will kick off the trip on March 29 from 6:30–8:00pm at the Cooper Union in New York, and continue on to institutions in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, Denver, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland.
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