1611/11411: Contemporary Art & Criticism: NY by 1611 11411

1611 11411 2

Contents

Contemporary Art and Criticism: New York Winter 2011

Museums..........................................................6 Galleries..........................................................26 Artists..............................................................36 New York City..................................................42

Contributors: Nick Briz

Samuel Lipp

Janice Cho

Maggie Lugano

Natalie Clark

Hannah Manfredi

Paul Dressen

Pamela Miranda

Louis Doulas

Francisco Cordero-Oceguera

Ron Ewert

Clara Parrillo

Andrew J. Greene

Lou Regele

Dana Major Kanovitz

Cait Stephens

Kristie Lee

Contents

Contemporary Art and Criticism: New York Winter 2011

Contributors: Nick Briz

Samuel Lipp

Janice Cho

Maggie Lugano

Natalie Clark

Hannah Manfredi

Paul Dressen

Pamela Miranda

Louis Doulas

Francisco Cordero-Oceguera

Ron Ewert

Clara Parrillo

Andrew J. Greene

Lou Regele

Dana Major Kanovitz

Cait Stephens

Kristie Lee

Stop, Repair, Prepare: by Lou Regele

MoMA

My hopes were high as I walked into that huge atrium in Moma. A woman is going to play a piano from inside the piano and move around the room. What an awesome idea. The piece is called “Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on Ode to Joy for a Prepared Piano” and was created by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. I have many fond memories in that atrium from the past summer and so in the same spirit had picked a wall and got a good lean going to be ready for the show. I didn!t see where the woman who was about to play the piano walked out from but when she went inside the piano a few people started to crowd around. She played the beginning to Ode to Joy which only made the sound that the keys make when you push them, as the corresponding strings were missing due to the hole created for her body. I could still see her from where I was leaning at this point. As she continued, the note range broadened and Ode to Joy echoed through that big atrium.

Amanda Ross-Ho, Irreconcilable Indifferences 2010

Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography by Maggie Lugano Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography has been on view at the MoMa since May. The exhibition consisted of photographs taken by women since photography had first been around up until the present. Majority of the photographs were black and white and hung on white walls in a gallery style format. When I first entered the room, I was overwhelmed by all the photographs hung just inches apart from each other almost in a salon style format instead. The space looked slightly cramped and like there was no order to the photographs and the separate rooms did not divide the photographs into categories but instead just felt like a maze. However the content of the show I thought was outstanding. There were photographs by everyone from the countess Clemintina Haywarden to Sally Mann, Kiki Smith and Cindy Sherman film stills. All of the photographs were perfectly chosen and I don!t think they forgot about any female photographers, I found all of my favorites throughout the show. Although the exhibition felt slightly clustered to me, it could have been intentional by the curators, or maybe a show about the history of female photographers is just too big for the third floor of MoMA. Yet overall it was great to see so much powerful work in one place. 6

Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla Stop, Repair, Prepare: Variations on “Ode to Joy” for a Prepared Piano, 2010 Within the blink of an eye tourists swarmed around her. They can!t be called people for all rational thought and consideration for others, including the performer, were thwarted by their desire for a picture. They dashed around each other, pushed, shoved, got right up in the performers face for just a quick snap shot. Then the performer started slowly moving. With each step she took, the tourists faces revealed they questioned whether they were in her way being only 2 feet in front of the direction she was moving. They doubted for a second whether they needed to move, then looked around for a way to move and found it very difficult because everyone behind them was shoving them forward trying to get the picture they had just took themselves. This continued for the entire performance. I couldn!t see anything and I refused to be a part of that monstrosity mob behavior. Damn those people. They ruined what I thought that piece could have been. I left the atrium before the piece ended. I also watched the performance an hour later from a balcony and watched from above the exact same thing happen. I know that there was music in the piece but I can!t remember it due to all my thought being consumed by the hatred of everyone crowding around. This piece became about the disgusting common desire to get a close picture of any spectacle. It blows my mind that people feel behavior like that is acceptable and warranted in any circumstance. I enjoy Moma but I will not be 7 going back on free Friday nights.

Stop, Repair, Prepare: by Lou Regele

MoMA

Amanda Ross-Ho, Irreconcilable Indifferences 2010

Ab Ex at MoMA by Paul Dressen Though the intent of “Abstract Expressionist New York” at the Museum of Modern Art could very well have rooted from the noble intent of giving the post-war New York art scene a little bit of context, it was presented like a gaudy jewelry ensemble resurfacing from the safe to adorn a diva going through an identity crisis. In concept and content, the show succeeds as it establishes tangible roots for the fourth floor Gorky, Pollock, Rothko, Kline, Hoffman, etc. paintings by displaying prints and drawings by the same artists alongside fantastic sculptures from people like Louise Nevelson and Seymour Lipton on the second floor. The conceptual bases for the paintings are then sketched out on the third floor with John Cage scores and Frank O!Hara poems before finally bringing the viewer to the Promised Land on the fourth floor with countless rooms of indulgent, enormous canvases covered in paint. I personally have no problems with any of the individual pieces in the show because who can denounce any of the incredibly substantial works included in the exhibit? The problem has nothing to do with the work. The problem lies in the sheer scale of the amount of work presented and in the answer to the unavoidable question, “Why here? Why now?” While the barrage of Ab Ex work shouldn!t have been a surprise after seeing every other inch of the building cluttered with work or packed with huge crowds of foreign tourists, who Jed Perl labels as MoMA!s new target audience, it is the lack of modesty in displaying the work that keeps the viewer from engaging in any single piece. It instead presents MoMA!s “target audience” with an egotistical reminder of the trophies that would normally rest in their vault during better economic times. It is ironic that “Ab Ex N.Y.” happened to be up at the same time as the Guggenheim!s “Classicism and Chaos” show because, though I!d gladly take the work of post-war America to that of wartime Europe, I couldn!t help but recognize Abstract Expressionism as a movement just as consistent as the European return to classicism. MoMA does nothing to distinguish the individual!s experience with the ideals of Abstract Expressionism and instead goes fishing for compliments while forcing its visitors into frenzy of American nationalism.

PS1: The Talent Show Entrapment and Escape by Francisco Cordero-Oceguera In the MOMA PS1 exhibition “The Talent Show” there was a piece by Argentinean artist Graciela Carnevale. It!s not the piece itself, but collected archives of an action that took place back in 1968 in the city of Rosario, Argentina as part of the Experimental Art Cycle. Hanging on the wall are a couple pictures, a newspaper clipping and a handout given to the public at the end of the action. The piece consisted of entrapping the audience in the gallery at Carnevale!s opening and locking the doors. Carnevale left after the entrapment but left a couple of friends outside to document the outcome of her action through the glass windows. Her expectations were to have her imprisoned audience react in a violent way and break out through the glass window, all this in the midst of a military dictatorship that had made street gatherings illegal. The escape initiated from the outside and by a passerby who smashed the glass window to free the audience. Leaving all political context aside I started to think of recreating the action in a New York Gallery. The action would be the same, to unsuspectedly trap an audience during an opening. I!m pretty sure the reaction would be different though. From a shallow perspective New York is a superficial city. In that aspect it is a perfect city for art but not for Latin-American angst. I imagine Carnevale!s action in Chelsea and waiting hours for a reaction of revolt but I can only imagine people inside having all the commodities for a great night of drinks and oeuvres. Even with the walls and the empty space no one would question the absence of work during the opening. I can!t picture anyone having the initiative to break out or break in not because of a lack of motivation but a simple “Why should we?” Everything is fine the way it is. It is. Everyone is comfortable. Art is the audience of a beautiful crowd. I notice all the artists we meet are attractive. They all have style and good looks. No one Peter Campus Shadow Projection - 1974 10

mentions that as part of the road to success. New York is a place for good looking people, no doubt about that. Who would want to break out of that? 11

Feng Mengbo Long March: Restart 13

New Museum Can You Have it Both Ways? by Nick Briz A long-held assumption of mine was that a well- curated exhibition of art served as both an aesthetic as well as an historically-educational experience. Though it is certainly a possibility to achieve both in one quality exhibition, the likelihood of a harmonious balance now seems more unattainable. During our week in New York City, there happened to be an unusual juxtaposition of three divergent exhibitions on view. All three centered around pre or post WWII art- all European and American, and highly political. On view were the Guggenheim!s exhibition Chaos and Classicism; MoMA!s Abstract Expressionism; Minus Space!s Becoming Modern in America. The historical relevance of and justification for art made throughout the interwar period in Europe was the focus of Chaos and Classicism, however the artwork seemed to serve as more a visual aid to the history lesson than anything else. A great deal of care was put into creating a dialogue surrounding the psychological impetus for artmaking in reaction to political and societal changes, which was successfully accomplished. However, as we reached the top of the Guggenheim!s spiraling exhibition trail, we became aware of the secondary role that the artwork played in the exhibition. On the contrary, MoMA!s "Abstract Expressionism! somewhat evaded the historical and political content. It is undoubtedly a beautiful and elaborate display of artwork, with an abundant program of gallery talks and special events to speak to the historical context. However, within the exhibition itself, little historical context was provided, and curation appeared to be disassociated with any sense of time or movement. The aesthetic experience of Abstract Expressionism was exceptional, and perhaps as a result of the context-light presentation, was highly visceral. Minus Space!s Abstract Expressionist-themed exhibition was quite the opposite. Historical context was really all that was on display. "Becoming Modern in America! centered around one piece from Loren Munk, "The Roots of the New York School!, a site-based map of the New York School artists and their interconnections. The work was displayed with supplementary articles from Times Magazine, providing plentiful historical context, but little artwork. All three exhibitions were fairly well-curated, but none of the three managed to achieve a successful balance of aesthetic and context. Could these three very different art experiences have been more powerful had they filled in the full picture? Or is it best to do one thing well, and leave the rest out?

Old News Mexico Jacob Fabricius,

The Last Newspaper Show by Cait Stephens I found myself in the New Museum on the final day of The Last Newspaper show, co-curated by Richard Flood and Benjamin Godsill. The show was up for three months, and many of the pieces were cumulative, meaning they grew over the exhibitions durations, so the final day was the day to see everything. I went expecting to see artists re-invent and incorperate the newspaper, and that is what I saw. The highlights of the show were Hans Haacke, Jacob Fabricius, and the New Museum itself, who!s staff worked in the gallery to produce an array of newspaper!s for the public, daily. Haacke produced a satellite connected typewriter, which typed out the feeds from 30 different blogs, piling the paper into a tangled, unreadable mass. Fabricius in Old News Mexico, invited artists to alter existing papers to make a new paper for distribution, also for takeaway from the museum. Next to art paper bundles, Karl Holmquist!s reads and sings on vinyl record, a piece about youth!s and the news, entitled, “Old News.” The show left me with the state of information today- completely fleeting. Even the art works that recorded and reflected on the news of the day could not digest it, with perhaps the exception of Nate Lowman. For his piece, “Black and White and Read all Over,” He delivered a new painting to the gallery every week based on the newspapers of the past seven days, resulting in the media!s consumption, and a subjective and artful interpretation for the public. The Last Newspaper suggests as we all know the death of the printed media, and our inability to process new information on a daily basis. 15

Old News Mexico Jacob Fabricius,

DIA Dia:Beacon Janice Cho & Natalie Clark Arriving in Grand Central Station and anticipating a 2 hour long train ride towards an area of New York many of us have never stepped foot into, we students were undoubtedly filled with unexplained emotions and anticipation for what we were about to encounter. Intrigue and curiosity created absent and scattered expectations that slowly evolved into a calming reliance and trust upon the knowledge and expertise of Michelle and Shane as we left the rest of our day into their hands. The train ride towards the Dia:Beacon was nothing but ordinary as the Hudson River graced us all with its remarkable beauty. Little by little, it revealed the hidden secrets of lives that exist outside of New York City as it grew an introspective process within all of us quietly riding towards our Mecca for the day. Releasing us from the tensions of city life, we were on our way to intentionally explore what our destination had to offer. When instructed to really take our time in order to take in everything we saw, what was unveiled was one of the most extraordinary curatorial presentations executed. Pushing forth conceptual, line driven work, an enchanted world of ever evolving avant-garde minds from the 1960s and on were presented in a way that left us pursued, understood, in awe, and charged to rethink our current surroundings and the work that lies ahead of us as artists. Questions such as, “Could we do things just as remarkable as this?” and “What is a collective idea that us artists need to be pushing in a society like today?” were just some of the thoughts that floated within our minds throughout the museum. With artists displayed such as Walter De Maria, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Fred Sandback, and Robert Ryman to name a few, what was pushed forth upon us spectators were inspiration, perspective, courage, and hope. Ultimately concluding in wishing to drive point of view, craftsmanship, and intellectual stimulation amongst our peers who are looking towards the same goal of producing great art. Dia:Beacon proves to be an ideal institution. Forfeiting a flashy outer architecture and opting for a non-attention seeking industrial building creates sustainability in the coming years where the focus is undoubtedly on what is contained within. Accessibility for tourists, artists, critics, etc. alike emphasizes intention upon every visit -- a small but major factor that not many institutions have the luxury of holding. Space that is limitless when addressing curatorial creativity pushes curators to think and work harder to create remarkable shows worthy of the trek each visitor will take in order to arrive at Dia. The Dia:Beacon has challenged the art world to reconsider what is being done today within institutions and has spoken loudly through its actions of where they stand when addressing the question of “What does a great museum look like?” 16

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

NOTES: ART AFTER THE OBJECT ART IN THE MUSEUM CONTEXT by Louis Doulas It is important to consider the following document as unfinished and ongoing. Though, very brief, this text hopes to illustrate some of our problems and experiences with art objects within the museum context. When visiting the prestigious museum, we are confronted with the impulse to see as much artwork as wean within a constrained period of time. The fear of knowing we might not ever get another opportunity to visit again leaves us with little time spent with art we were afraid of missing in the first place. Our need to visit museums and to see the objects inside of them is not unlike a failed sports player!s display of old trophies. These objects sit dusty on shelves, activated only as a reminder to himself and visitors that at some point in life he was once successful. Proof, he was a champion. Traveling and paying the entrance fee to the best art museums act as proof to ourselves and to others that we are culturally sophisticated champions. We came, we saw and we conquered. What did we really gain though? Art objects, it seems, are becoming increasingly unnecessary in the art experience, merely good excuses to visit the world!s best. Museums allow ourselves the satisfaction in knowing we got to see Important Art. Existing as a crossed off item on a checklist for many people as opposed to a deep committed philosophical investigation. Our experience in museums, is thusly, based on the awe of the object as opposed to the potentially life changing ideas said objects represent. Museums function as spectacle. Viewing art in the museum context means making your way through large crowds, spending only seconds looking at everything and sneaking attempts to snap just one photo. Looking at a work of art in such a context, leaves one feeling self-conscious, for there isn!t enough time to â&#x20AC;&#x153;get itâ&#x20AC;? because you might be blocking someone else!s view if you stood there to ponder a minute more. The fact that major museums are located in major cities means access to such institutions is limited, for they require a generous amount of time and money for people situated outside of them to come visit. Spending time with an artwork in a museum also means understanding the reality that you might not ever see it again. But, is materiality really still necessary for art? Every encounter with an artwork is met with our ownneed to connect with it, to relate to it on a cognitive and emotional level. Our quench for information and connectivity within the museum context is emphasized by wall text, headphone tours, and carrying around notepads in hopes of documenting any stray thought. When one does stumble upon a work that elicits profound feeling and thought, the conversation is still resonant after the museum visit. Though, never knowing when one will return again to see the object, ideas of the object are carried out eternally within your mind. Images of the art object via the Internet reinforce the dialogue the object elicits. These images, or digital documentations, with time, replace the object altogether, for they become the most accessible vessels through which viewership is granted an infinite number of times. If we understand artwork to be a host that attempts to communicate ideas or information then the physical art object becomes an ornament in the process of information extraction. No longer needed to propel ideas and dialogue, objects therefore, truly fulfill the role of commodity within an art market dominated by capitalism. 18

Michael Heizer, North, East, South, West: The Collaboration Between Institutional Display, Artist!s Intentionality and Viewership in the Definition of Meaning by Andrew J. Greene

The display of artworks within the institution affects how a viewer perceives the meaning of said artwork. The result of this affectation now defines the aesthetics of institutional critique and post institutional critique embedded in a contemporary art making practice. These now marginalized aesthetics force a viewer (in 2011) to reconsider the intentionality of the display of artworks within the institution. This reconsideration of display asks a viewer to take into account the shift in meaning that takes place when artwork is displayed and viewed in a context that differs from the context the artwork was created in. The aestheticized use of materials like plexiglass, pedestals, vitrines, empty frames, plinths, and glass broken and unbroken by contemporary artists urges this reconsideration. As viewers, we bring contemporary baggage to the viewing of art objects created in a context (or era) that did not consider the aesthetics of institutional and post institutional critique in the definition of meaning, and in doing so we warp the intentionality (and in turn the meaning) of these objects in order to place them in our contemporary context. I choose to examine the display of Michael Heizer!s artwork, North, East, South, West, based on the set of constraints outlined above, because it is problematic to separate the piece!s intentional objecthood from its installation due to the work!s utter site-specificity. The work consists of four geometric negative spaces built into the floor of Dia!s galleries, operating simultaneously as sculpture and as architecture. Surrounding the work is a waist high, clear glass, fence which operates obviously as a safety precaution (so that viewers do not fall into the cavern-like negative spaces) and then secondarily and potentially more importantly as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;vitrineâ&#x20AC;? keeping the viewer at a dissatisfying distance from the artwork. It is distinctly possible that this secondary read is the product of my experience and interest in the aesthetics of institutional critique, but in acknowledging this fact, we must also acknowledge the impossibility of an unhindered art experience. The more pervasive a contemporary aesthetic is to a viewing population the more the intent of the artist will be warped.

Andy Warhol, Shadows, 1978-79

Michael Heizer, North, East, South, West: The Collaboration Between Institutional Display, Artist!s Intentionality and Viewership in the Definition of Meaning by Andrew J. Greene

Andy Warhol, Shadows, 1978-79

Review of Andy Warhol!s “Shadows” @ DIA: Beacon Ron Ewert New York City proper is clearly jammed full of artwork. There is a seemingly religious pride in the quantity and density of cultural production in such a concentrated area, accompanied by a firm yet desperate faith in the enveloping structures of aesthetic exchange value. To travel 60 miles north to DIA: Beacon signifies pilgrimage, and for myself coming from Chicago, a sort of meta-pilgrimage. Approaching the museum it reminds me of my middle school, a circlish drive, some trees, and a one-story entrance that quietly disguises the sprawling Mecca of minimalism that extends beyond. It turns out my middle school looks a lot like my childhood church, and much like the dual function of contemporary religious complexes, Beacon is both a cathedral and an educational institution. The building, a former cracker factory, is flooded with light and seems almost destined for the display of large-scale installations of iconic minimalism. The collection is the definition of canonical, displaying work from Judd, Flavin, Serra, Smithson, LeWitt, Ryman, Martin, and De Maria, just to name a few. The Galleries at DIA: Beacon sharply contrast the density, variety, and speculative values of Chelsea and the Manhattan museums. Both a minimalist shrine, and an Art History lesson, the majority of the work on display seems to have an applied spirituality that contradicts the ideological, formal and linguistic interests inherent to the time of its creation. While the ambitious scale and material execution of much of the work is undeniable, I can!t help but sense a recourse to subjectivity dressed up in the language of objectivity; an escapism as aesthetics, elevated to mythological levels. It is precisely because of this general evasion of emotion, the abuse of emptiness, and the implied dogmatism, that Warhol!s “Shadows” stands out so dramatically. Warhol!s moody “abstract” installation fearlessly embraces a territory best described as simulacra. Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation succinctly articulates the relevance of shadows in the formation of identity. “But they are also, one knows, "metaphors! of the soul, of breath, of Being, of essence, of what profoundly gives meaning to the subject. Without an image or without a shadow, the body becomes a transparent nothing, it is itself nothing but a remainder”(148) Produced in 1978, “Shadows” consists of 102 canvases each with a screen print of an ambiguous form, ostensibly a shadow, the source of which we will never know, and is hardly of significance. As a concept, the piece is incredibly literal, per usual for Warhol, involving the binary opposition of light and dark, or positive and negative. The duality ends there. Every element of the piece that follows is half casual; each canvas is different from the next, and the order appears to be random. What emerges on the whole is a vague decorative sequence, an indecipherable language of subtle variables. Despite its many material flaws, the piece still feels helplessly relevant. The solid or clumsily brushed on grounds vibrate pure hues: magenta, cerulean, silver, red, white, umber and turquoise.

The brush strokes signify painting, the print signifies reproduction, shadow signifies darkness, and the canvas signifies history. The stretchers are readymade and slightly irregular, the canvases are sagging on the corners, and yet the honesty with which the project was undertaken oozes to the plastic surface. There are no illusions here, this work was produced by “factory” workers, and seems ideally suited, even more so than the self illuminated Flavins, to an industrial space, with skylights to save on electricity, not to illuminate artwork. This work does not comment on, but simply exists within a logic of commodity, production, and capitalist exchange. Warhol made this work as the cultural world began to navigate the post-industrial landscape, know ng that culture was the new primary industry of the west. Unlike his work using popular iconography, or graphic imagery, this work appropriates the language of minimalism, and empties it of its ideology, its meaning, and in so doing casts both a somber light, and an ominous shadow on the role of art production as the 20th century entered its final quarter. The result I would argue is a genuine emotional charge, alternately melancholy and terrifying in its vacuous rhythm. The work as a whole evades determination; the shadow itself is detached from its cause, the subject. The shadows, isolated and refracted through the process of screen-printing on canvas, subvert both the notion of the painting as autonomous and the print as a serial reproduction. The sign of the shadow mingles with reproduction, repetition, inversion, and the index of the maker to invoke something other, beyond all the individual parts. Something is reflecting back from the canvases, but we are unsure of its source. This other could be seen alternately as Freud!s notion of the uncanny or what Baudrillard terms “Simulation”. “…In fact, this whole process can only be understood in its negative form: nothing separates one pole from another anymore, the beginning from the end; there is a kind of contraction of one over the other, a fantastic telescoping, a collapse of the two traditional poles into each other: implosion – an absorption of the radiating mode of causality, of the differential mode of determination, with its positive and negative charge – an implosion of meaning.”(474) This eradication of meaning goes beyond a structural play, it comes to bear on our own internal systems of spiritual identification. The dislocated ambiguous shadow, the sign without a signified, serves to crystallize Warhol!s methodology and implications within contemporary art making. The irony of Warhol!s statement is that in attempting to empty the archetypal symbol of it!s meaning, he creates another enduring symbol, that of an eternal melancholy of absence, an absence of ideology and an absence of symbolic significance that endures to this day. It is not a pleasant picture, yet its paradoxical honesty is persistent. Much like Jeff Koons today, or any other artist that embraces the seductive nihilistic qualities of fashion aesthetics or commodity value, Warhol easily assumes the role of villain, not in the mythological/ moral sense, but in the self-conscious structural sense. As an archetype, the shadow has a long redundant past. Poignantly, Shakespeare dramatically ends Richard III!s famous soliloquy on narcissism and villainy with these words on light, reflection, and shadow. Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, That I may see my shadow as I pass.

Dear Zoe Leonard; As I walked through Dia:Beacon, I was peculiarly struck by your installation, “You See I Am Here After All.” I!m told the work consists of nearly 4,000 postcards of Niagra Falls, making it just as massive as the large-scale works by predominantly male artists on display in the adjacent spaces. Yet it didn!t feel that way, perhaps because it drew me in so quickly, beckoning for some intimacy. I had to get close in order to understand that the postcards were creating a narrative through their seemingly infinite variations. It was this narrative, more than any other experience that day, that has stuck with me. The narrative began with a comment on iconography. A postcard of Niagra Falls is something which can be easily considered a cliche, and yet there was something about the large collection of personal postcards that forestalled the possibility of being dismissed as trite. All variations on the same image, some literally the same while others were different photographs taken from the same exact spot, only discernible through changes in the color of the sky or cloud cover. The theme of variations is carried over in the collection of messages found on the postcards, each individually written and yet all more or less the same sentiment, “You see I am here, after all.” Halfway down the wall I began thinking about this human tendency to send postcards or take photos as a kind of “proof-ofvisitation.” Dia:Beacon has a strict no photography rule, made clear by all the signs and enforced by the guards, so I had to be stealthy about photographing your piece on my iPhone. Then I started to wonder why I had the strong desire to do so. Like the postcards on the wall, I wanted my own “proofof-visitation.” I put my phone away and continued down the wall. By the time I reached the end I was thinking about a documentary I had seen once on Niagra Falls. It said that the Falls had been slowly eroding over the years, and it would continue to do so, moving its location further back and eventually out of the United States and entirely into Canada. This is fitting, since the last comment made by this collection of postcards was on the theme of entropy. But was this an archive? A document of the erosion? Or perhaps an attempt to stop it and freeze it in time? Sincerely, Nick Briz

The Whitney Paul Thek retrospective, Diver Dana Major Kanovitz Paul Thek!s work is the artifact of his thought. Thek!s retrospective is aptly named Diver after his fairly crude gouache-on-newsprint painting of a figure diving in space. The painting mimics Yves Klein!s La Vide photograph. While Klein addresses society and Thek challenges the self, both artists revel in the paradoxes of art, artist, life, and language. Without allegiance to style or craftsmanship, Thek!s works manifest in latex, paint, paper, Plexiglas, wood, wax, clay, leather, junk, and hair. They are figurative sometimes in form, and always by inference. Empty, altered chairs miss occupants, quick paintings still long for the hand, realistic wax and latex slabs of flesh seem to flinch at the departure of life unlived. Thek!s works are brave and humble. It looks as if they fell out of him one after the next, from the crevice where his body met his stunned realization that since there is no decoding, what remains is only to reveal and beautify the code. Hippopotamus Poison transcends the absurd to stand parable-like between life and nonlife, sense and nonsense. Here, a realistic wax slab of flesh, including the dermal layers, is encased in a glass box that evokes both laboratory and museum. The textual message etched in the case embodies the paranoid panic that death results from life with apropos desperation and absurdity. The named and unnamed killer in the faux flesh is life itself, or language. Perhaps, the work posits, the two can!t be separated. His paintings on untreated leaves of the International Herald Tribune, the edges of some galleys still showing, give the same sense. Life, the gesture of the body, and the painter!s stroke, overcome language, but not quite. The newsprint will take the painting with it when it eventually rots away. Thek uses his materials with the same play of transparency and opacity, meaning and nonsense, which a good writer employs with words. Still, his works are so uncontrived that this writer suspects Thek of divine inspiration, or at least innocent curiosity combined with driven self-allegiance. Nothing demonstrates this better than his newsprint substrates, at once haphazard and profound. Diver is a retrospective of Thek!s visual language, which he uses to tell us about ourselves by telling us about himself.

Todd knopke: Feature Inc, CEC (changing everything carefully)

Galleries

Dana Major Kanovitz

Derrick Snodgrass

Art through 3D Glasses By Natalie Clark and Janice Cho

Upon a suggestion from a local friend, we pushed our ways to the back of a crowded and pretty unspecial-looking bar in search of some art opening that was supposed to be good. The bar, Lit in East Village, was dive bar, dance party and gallery space in one, which didn!t sound too promising. As we started to catch glimpses of the exhibition space on the looong trek through the bar, we realized we may have judged too quickly. The exhibition Gone/Gone Beyond/Gone Beyond Beyond by artist Derrick Snodgrass was actually pretty great. The works on view consisted of collages featuring icons of 1980!s kiddie pop culture convening in breakfast table scenes, holograms of kittens having tea, and colored pencil drawings of Dance Dance Revolution and weaponry; dioramas of space ships and dinosaurs; everyday-monster action figure sets. 3D glasses were provided for an enhanced viewing experience. Snodgrass! artworks were not particularly well-crafted or well-designed in the traditional sense, and could easily be written off for being overly kitschy. However, they were clever, subtle and tremendously engaging. The exhibition was also a welcome antidote to a number of rather stuffy gallery visits that preceded it. That, along with an abundance of similar surprise art encounters, contributed to perhaps the most delightful New York experience. It backed up the reputation- there really is great art all over New York City.

Todd Knopke!s flexible sculptures populate all six possible surfaces of lower east side gallery Feature Inc., the project of an intrepid gallerist with one name, Hudson. The impact of the show arises from the synergy between the work, the artist, the gallery, and the gallerist. Hudson described in an interview that when Knopke delivered the work, the two collaborated and improvised to install this show that meets Hudson!s criteria for engaging art, the physical space!s features and character, and the artist!s vision. Knopke!s imagery is at once historically laden and civilian, specific in absurd and obscure details, and available for profound interpretation. The work presents itself as a narrative of how the main character gives himself. It is unclear whether he gives himself to other people, or to a god, or a calling, or an imagined recipient. Knopke!s character is perhaps a soldier, or a patient of one variety or the other. The imagery functions so that in order to interpret this character the viewer must consciously superimpose the self. Of course it is easy to overlay any narrative onto a visual substrate, and in the end we can only have the primary experience. This work leaves the viewer wondering what it says about herself as much as the artist or the art. Inside depicts the character undergoing a trance-like, surgical process. A variegated yellow passageway springs from his chest, and extends perpendicular to the piece, into the center of the room, inviting the viewer doubly into its visual imagery sewn entryway or under its actual cloth transom. The viewer must decide which is the “real” passageway. In Drive (a back and forth through time to save lives) the character lies prone, as Andrea Mantegna!s 1501 Dead Christ which marks both this death and the birth of the Renaissance, the birth of the rebirth. His shoes in the foreground, on a levitating bed, the extraction process seems to take place by way of the character grasping the handles of a low-tech, basement surgery analog exsanguinator. But he looks resigned if not actually content to siphon his blood and vital organs to glass jars that read “Donate,” some of which have incomplete labels, and read simply “ate” or “o.” Through stream of consciousness loose rendering and construction, combined with seemingly certain divine intervention, these works instantiate the elusive mundane experience of the Divine. It!s a feat and a gift to experience this moment in any life, and a positively herculean one for an exhibition to bring the viewer to it, and hold her there as a protracted experience. Pamela Miranda This New York based artist creates large fabric sculptures made out of recycled materials that he collects from the salvation army, fabric stores, and old family clothes. The creator of these 3-dimensional pieces calls himself a shopkeeper. These non-narrative works are all about color, the physical weaving of being attached to each other and the way they hang together as pieces. The artist intent is to create more work that serves as an example of what there should be more of in this world. From the moment you open the glass doors of the gallery you are placed inside the artists world of fantasy, light and color. You might feel overwhelmed by the amount of random fabrics that are sewn together to create the illusion of being outside surrounded by nature. The gallery owner spoke about how skeptical he was about showing mr. Knopkes work because he simply did not understand it!s meaning or what the pieces stood for. The artist decided to create another collection of these drawings made out of fabric and the owner decided to allow for the work to be shown in his gallery, which has received good reviews. However, for the artist good reviews are not as important as creating whatever he wants. He says that he always starts a project with an idea in mind but at the end it turns into something completely different. During an interview Todd said,

“ the artwork is much richer and wiser than the poverty of the artist intent”.

Todd knopke: Feature Inc, CEC (changing everything carefully)

Galleries

Dana Major Kanovitz

Derrick Snodgrass

Art through 3D Glasses By Natalie Clark and Janice Cho

“ the artwork is much richer and wiser than the poverty of the artist intent”.

Printed Matter(s) by Cait Stephens

Joe Bradley at Gavin Brown and CANADA: by Andrew J. Greene The figurative abstract expressionist painting at Joe Bradley!s show, Mouth and Foot Painting, at Gavin Brown!s Enterprise starkly contrasts the black and white graphic figurative paintings displayed at Bradley!s concurrent show, Human Forms, at CANADA gallery. I choose to examine the two shows as a unified conceptual effort less interested in paint application or a puritanical abstract painting approach, but rather a discussion between how the mark making of an abstract painting and the support (substrate) for the mark making of an abstract painting relate to complete a predictable circuit. If digested in this way, the aesthetics of the paintings themselves flatten out, and become almost a signifier for painting or more simply become a signifier for what may constitute as an “art object.” While the paintings at Gavin Brown seem to be able to exist as singular formally interesting art objects, without the necessity for some elaborate conceptual framework, the works at Canada do require a conceptual framework to make up for what they lack aesthetically. For this reason I can substantiate the relationship between the two shows; the seriousness of the painting at Gavin Brown provides a context for the work at Canada to exist within. Despite the fact that the substrate of the paintings in Bradley!s Mouth and Foot Painting reveals itself very obviously as canvas drop cloth, I would be able to ignore the content embedded in such a “low” material (and accept the works as earnest paintings) had I not seen the show at Canada whose serialistic display of graphic figurative imagery negates any sort of argument for the existence of a singular art object. The insight Human Forms provides into the read of both shows makes the work seem ironic and in this way does the work a disservice. That being said, I think the strategy of opening two very distinct shows problematizes how the viewer places importance on the intent of individual art works, possibly forcing a viewer to get more out of each work when viewed in conversation.

Wandering the cold Chelsea blocks in search of art, I came upon Printed Matter. Half gallery, half bookstore, it!s easily the most stimulating thing for ten blocks in all directions. The store is packed, (so much so, to see the books you have to dig) with a collection of zines, artists books, magazines, tapes, records, and all thats in between. On the walls and in cases lay originals, multiples and vignettes by such notable artists as Vito Acconci, Yoko Ono, and Tom Sachs, to zine makers you!ve never heard of. In few galleries are you allowed to touch, read, and afford so much. Their material is a selection from a pool of open submissions in editions of 100 or more. Everything is sold by consignment. Printed Matter is a store where you are so distracted by the art on the walls to notice your tripping over a pile of books. Looking into a glass display case, you!ll notice all the stuff behind you in the reflection. You!ll pick up a zine, and notice another underneath that looks even better. It!s a place you could spend all your time and money. More than a bookstore or gallery, they offer internships and have a huge staff who seem to be busy cataloging, buying, and organizing, and of course, selecting the music to play.

Printed Matter 195 10th Avenue New York, NY 10011

Adam Fowler “Trilogy”, Margaret Thatcher projects Lou Regele Margaret Thatcher Projects has a solo show of Adam Fowler!s work titled “Trilogy.” This show was my favorite show in New York this trip. It seems silly when I say that because the show was so simple and not related to what I!m normally passionate about, but I totally loved it. The pieces at first glance are all alike, lines of paper woven and stacked on top of each other on a white background and framed. They are rectangular in shape but the background doesn!t determine where the lines truncate, creating an odd sensation on the edge of something so detailed and intense. Once you stand in front of them they all seem very different. There are holes and different densities created by the stacking of the thin lines. Each one is meditative and quiet. I found them extremely beautiful and intelligent. Standing in front of them was like looking at a portrait of someone!s life story in a way. The visual difference between the dense places and how it transitions to the less dense made that come across. The crossing elliptical lines whispered tales of joy and despair, frustration and serenity. I was just so moved by these pieces. On the website it talks about the process to make these pieces and how laborious it is. I don!t think the process is obvious so it didn!t hold the focus of thought for me. After finding out how intense the process is I can see how that would make the pieces more respected in a way. The intense process doesn!t affect what I think or make me respect it more because he could have used technology to make these and saved time and mental sanity but to each his own process. I have no idea why or how the title “Trilogy” came to be. Nothing about the show had anything to do with a series of three. I researched to try to find a why for the title but came up empty handed. 28

Tom Sachs29

Printed Matter(s) by Cait Stephens

Printed Matter 195 10th Avenue New York, NY 10011

Tom Sachs29

Michaela Eichwald at Reena Spaulings by Hannah Manfredi Above a Chinese seafood restaurant on the corner of East Broadway and Essex, next to noodles and dumplings cafés where the cooks alternate slapping shiny white dough across the counter and steaming cuts of meat in hot broth, Reena Spaulings on the Lower East Side commands an audience who does not rely on Chelsea!s pearly white ambiance that calls money and class in order to appreciate the work and know what is good. The space is reminiscent of an urban barn with bare wood showing through and uneven floors and it smells like greasy fish. The crowd looked like they had taken the subway. In her second exhibition at Reena, Eichwald showed small sculptures cast in translucent resin using found molds such as kitchen gloves, plastic bottles, false eyelashes, fish hooks, rice noodles, sunglasses, pills and cups while across the room hung a thirty-seven foot long collage. Trophy-like, the objects barely stand up, displaying their chaotic insides. The collage combined oil and acrylic, fabric dyes, ink, graphite, varnish, resin, dirt and debris to form strange and seemingly ruined surfaces. At the show I ran into several SAIC alums including Kevin Gallagher who has been living in NY!s Long Island City since he graduated and left Chicago in 2009. He has shown once in the past year at a rooftop group showcase. He commented that Spaulings is hip and young. Also- According to an online New York Times article from 2005, Reena Spaulings is a fictional artist, performer and art dealer and the gallery is co-directed by John Kelsey and Emily Sundblad. Spaulings boasts a top quality excellent website primarily because the presentation of text icons is interesting- titles and fonts change depending on how you navigate.

Minus Space by Clara Parrillo Minus Space was an extremely well-presented gallery that currently exhibits very interesting and New York oriented artwork under the title, Becoming Modern in America. Matthew Deleget, one of the managers of the gallery, was extremely welcoming to SAIC students. He engaged them in conversation in which they could relate to; he asked them about their own practice, experience at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and their future career plans. Moreover, Matthew did an excellent job of explaining how the gallery found artists, what they looked for in artists and their stance as a slightly more “for profit” gallery. After hearing and seeing so many artists, art magazine employees, etc. act like money was their last concern in the world, it was nice to hear someone finally admit that money is, to some extent, a concern for this gallery. The exhibition itself, Becoming Modern in America, was a one-of-a-kind exhibit, as it directly explored how social networking influences the art world. Social networking is quite obviously a large part of the art world, as it determines how artists work off of each other, artists! statuses, galleries! success, etc, but never before have I seen an exhibition in which the social network of the art world has been diagramed out for any viewer- part of the art world or not- to understand. Loren Munk was the main artist of the exhibition and the artwork, aside from the subject matter being interesting, was also aesthetically peculiar. “The Roots of the New York School” piece was a diagram that looked like thread from afar, but it was actually very thick oil paint on canvas. The choice of oil on canvas for a concept presented in such a linear way was something new and different; there was a lot of writing, comic-like portraits of the artists that Munk wrote about, and many boxes, lines, and circles. These parts of the work are things one would expect to see done in pen or marker or print, rather than oil paint. Overall, it was a very nice gallery with a curious exhibition. 30

David Zwirner Gallery by Samuel Lipp Upon entering David Zwirner!s expansive gallery space on West 19th Street in Chelsea, one is immediately struck by the sheer size of the place--the gallery occupies three different adjacent addresses, each one of considerable size by itself. In conjunction, these three spaces make it painfully obvious that Zwirner is the behemoth of the Chelsea scene. Likewise, David Zwirner gallery represents only the heaviest-hitters of the contemporary art world, spanning from stars of the 70!s John McKracken and Donald Judd, to trendier artists of the day such as Isa Genzken and Tomma Abts. On this particular visit to the gallery, Zwirner presented Christopher Williams fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. Williams is a conceptual artist from Los Angeles who works consistently in the medium of photography. Once a student of John Baldessari, the spirit of conceptualism is maintained in Williams work, although now it is complicated, distorted and sublimated past the point of recognition. Indeed, where Baldessari!s work contained an often-transparent semiotic play between a conceptual title and an explicatory artwork, Williams! practice is much less decipherable. Perhaps this is the influence of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where Williams now teaches—the institution that has produced similarly laconic photographers Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff. The title of Williams! exhibition “Dix-Huit Lecons Sur La Societe Industrielle” (Eighteen Lessons on the Industrial Society), is both as vague and as inclusive as the imagery presented in the show. Williams hires professional photographers to create his glossy and crystalline images, usually of a single object staged in a studio or a perfectly banal setting (for this show a dry cleaner!s window and a hay stack are included). Photographic equipment figures largely in the work, as a physical subject matter and a conceptual theme. In the show!s press release, William!s writes, “Screwing on our Soviet-made lens to photograph a riot in 1977, for example, or a nude comrade in the morning, it seemed agreed that photography, too, was part of the experiment.” Williams! work examines photography!s complicity in the production of images and the role of the image in contemporary society. Williams! imagery often appears clichéd or factory made, and this is indeed the point—in a cultural moment where images are as pervasive as the air we breathe, Williams! work examines the latent conceptual meaning within every image and the apparatus that constructs them.

Jimmy Joe Roche @RARE Gallery by Nick Briz If the alternative arts scene in Baltimore can be compared to a brightly colored hippo squirming ecstatic synth-beats as it devours ice-cream, Wham city native Jimmy Joe Roche is its shapeshifting barbarian-wizard. Wrapped in cables and wires, he rides on the city!s back as he casts dreams and nightmares on those curiously watching below. For those unfamiliar with this scene, it!s characterized by loud, frenzied and colorful musical acts such as Ponytail and Dan Deacon (a long time collaborator of Roche!s) and alternative art events like Whartscape. In a solo show currently on display at New York!s RARE gallery, Roche presents videos, a mixed-media installation, and a hand-cut paper wall sculpture—a chaotic array that aptly reflects Roche!s propulsive, varied and interdisciplinary practice. His videos are a psychedelic collection of characters, scenes, noises, and moods— sometimes appropriated but usually hand-crafted — that join together in kaleidoscopic communion. The characters in his videos (performed by Roche) are constantly shaking, shifting, jumping, and jittering. They!re frantically working on tasks, which almost always require sharp objects and electric guitar pedals, rushing to finish them on time before the 2012 YouTube Apocalypse, all the while contemplating the mysteries of the pop-spiritual narrative that ties all of Roche!s work together. This mythical narrative, which I had previously encountered in Roche!s on-line videos, became real for me as I paid reverence to the spirits depicted in his life size hand-cut paper wall sculpture, “Deep Horizons.” Similarly, when I approached “Pulpit”, his mixed-media alter, I found an American eagle trucker hat, a home-brew mace, and a hard plastic vest wired with electronics, forever waiting for its preacher (or the “True Soldier of My Lord,” as was written on the pulpit) to take them up and lead the gallery!s visitors in media-doomsday meditation. Roche!s seemingly personal spiritualism is simultaneously a hyper-concentrated reflection of the iconographic landscape that makes up our on-line and off-line pop-media culture. And while it!s easy to get lost and disoriented, it never ceases to thrill.

Pulpit , Jimmy Joe Roche

Maccarone Gallery by Kristie Lee It was exciting to visit Maccarone gallery in the West Village of New York City where Ann Craven!s exhibition was being held after I had already visited her studio and heard about her recent artworks. Since she lost her paintings in fire, she has been trying to recreate them from her memory and other sources. She says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;the memory becomes more powerful when you lose it, you let it go or embrace it.â&#x20AC;? As I walked into the gallery and before I entered the main room, her flower watercolor paintings drew my attention. It seemed about sixty little flower paintings and they were presented side by side along the wall. Although I already knew that she creates each work comprised of two or three or more mirrored paintings of one subject matter such as animals, flowers, and landscapes, it was a whole different experience to actually see the artworks in the gallery space. Although each painting was a copy of the painting next to it and they shared likeness, they were never the same, every piece being the original. I enjoyed looking at the variations in color and brush strokes in every piece. As I entered the main room, I could see each body of work hung on the wall next to other body of work. They covered all the walls around in the room but I did not feel overwhelmed. The paintings were not framed so they could seem somewhat sloppy in a way but I thought there could be easier and more fluid interaction between the artworks and the viewer.

Ann Craven 34

ARTISTS Carrie Schneider Janice Cho & Natalie Clark Some of the most relevant and anticipated parts of the New York study trip were the studio visits. The questions that are at the forefront of the minds of SAIC artists are, “How can I make this work?” and “What should I expect out of school when I am producing my work?” Different answers were given upon every studio visit but the very first visit to Carrie!s studio was memorable in more than just a few ways. When we all crammed into her studio, we observed her space intricately, looking at everything possible in order to clearly understand her use of the space. The photos of what she was working on covered one wall while experimental tapestry-like material guarded another. Her desk was surrounded with experimental photographs and we were first in line to hear about it. She had clearly maximized her use of the space she had which pushed us to think harder about how we use our own workspaces and to think of practical ways to improve them. More than her work itself, what was beneficial to many of us was listening to her life and how she had become resourceful in New York in order to make life as an artist a reality. Teaching, using the facilities where she teaches as workspace, the SAIC community she has to support her, how she networks, and even down to details such as paying for rent in New York City were all relevant and extremely helpful to those of us who aspire to move out to NYC and start careers as artists.

Angel Otero Cait Stephens Young artists are flocking to Bushwick, Brooklyn. The low rents of old industrial buildings are a haven for artists looking to set up studio. Angel Otero, a recent MFA graduate from SAIC just moved from Chicago to New York. He has had early success as a young artist, and it!s not surprising since he is so eloquent and articulate when speaking about his paintings. His love for the medium and history of oil painting is deep. At 28, Angel won a Leonore Annenberg Fellowship, that allowed him to move from Chicago and Kavi Gupta!s gallery to a huge Bushwick studio, where he is preparing for a show at Lehmann Maupin. But Angel is modest about his successes and more interested in talking about his mission through painting. Angel paints scenes and text from his memory onto massive sheets of glass, lets it dry, then scrapes it and adheres it to his large canvases. The results are colorful abstract wrinkles, an allegory the brain and memory itself. He shared his apprehension about his upcoming show with us. When we arrived he was setting up a scale model of the gallery to lay out his show. Having just been cleaned out by Art Basel in Miami, he had undergone quite a change in style, that is making Lehmann Maupin nervous. As a young artist, he is faced with the dilemma of making work the gallery knows they can sell, or making work that he feels necessary and challenging. It shows great character on Angel!s part to pursue his interests in the face of a big gallery telling him to keep churning out past successes. His pleasure in his work must come from his authenticity about making it, and as a result can be satisfied by the act of painting itself. 36

Paul Dressen After only just receiving his Master of Fine Arts degree at SAIC in the spring of 2009, Puerto Rican born, Brooklyn-based artist Angel Otero has already been rewarded for his fantastic work in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Lehman Maupin Gallery in New York, and The Armory Show in New York. He has had solo exhibits at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Center and now, a group of 20 SAIC students and I were able to talk to him just a month before his first solo show in New York City, where he plans to officially unveil his new “oilskin” paintings at Lehman Maupin Gallery on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in a show simply titled, “Memento.” Otero expressed to us his excitement for getting the opportunity to make his new current body of work that is much more about the physical materiality of paint and process of peeling, arranging, and placing his “oil skins” on canvas than his work in the past. He is using the same flower still lives and domestic scenes that were evident in his previous work that used recognizable imagery to convey a personal message or narrative however, those scenes now include an element of text and philosophy and are completely masked by painting in reverse on glass before peeling up the paint and arranging it on stretched canvas. This process references a history of painting because of the use of oil paint rather than acrylic (which would be the easier medium for making paint skins), while quoting domesticity with paint that almost reads as fabric. There is no denying the talent and personality of the young artist. He was extremely eager and excited to get the opportunity to speak to a group of students from his alma mater and articulately charmed us while remaining incredibly modest and humble, determined to keep the ambition that has made him rise so quickly in the contemporary art world.

Chris Dorland Kristie Lee Chris Dorland is a painter working in the neighborhood of Brooklyn. Although he did not talk about his background specifically, I could feel that he has lived a steady and stable life as an artist without financial hardships. But, he definitely seemed like a hard working artist as any other artists who produce artworks with passion upon their firm faith. He started doing his studio-based practice when the economic crisis arose in the United States and in these days he is doing shows again. He often chooses landscapes as the subject matter of his paintings. He says they are straightforward but limited landscapes. Rather than making representational paintings, he makes more image based paintings. In his studio, other paintings drew my attention too, which were graphic logo paintings. He called black shapes in his logo paintings are abstraction of shapes. He tries to develop bodies of work simultaneously rather than focusing on one artwork for a long period of time I think it is because of his thinking that meanings start to grow strongly when the paintings are placed next to each other. According to Chris, his influences have always been from videos that depict paranoia of ambiguity. He thinks about paranoia of the world he lives in and tries to create vocabulary through his work. Although I did not take it seriously at that time when I visited his studio, I think what he said about his challenge got stuck in my head. I keep thinking about the question he mentioned which he said it was his challenge as an artist: “What does it mean to make something?” 38

Shane Selzer Dana Major Kanovitz Both home and studio are usually sacrosanct to an artist, and unless you!re a buyer it!s a huge honor to be invited into either. Shane Selzer opened the doors to her Bedstuy livework space, and moreover she generously shared her experience and thoughts about her life and practice with this group of SAIC students. Her warm welcome and openness afforded us a detailed picture of how she builds her lifestyle to accommodate her deepest interests in ways that both cultivate her studio practice and nurture her personal life. Second story to a rather odoriferous Mexican restaurant (but most spaces have that one aspect the tenant has to overlook), Selzer!s open floor plan one-bedroom doubles nicely as a workspace. And, she explained, with no nocturnal neighbors, she can run her band saw in the night. Selzer!s degrees are in Sculpture and Visual and Critical Studies. She is a multidisciplinary artist whose curiosity takes her through drawing, fiber, photography, animation, and recently, clay. She is grappling with the question of “the shallow depth of field between what!s real and what!s possible,” especially as it presents in abstract expressionism, which includes mid-century American AbEx, and her own automatic doodles. An outsized 8! x 5! photocopy collage of her doodles and personal mail-art type ephemera lay on the floor as a thin and busy entry rug. The sense of serenity and good fun in the space seemed to dictate that it would be permissible to walk on the work. None of the students did, but in the middle of our visit, Selzer herself casually padded across it in sock feet. She described it as a think piece. A number of other iterations of her doodles double as home décor, including her coffee table which she fabricated to echo a recurring scribbled amoeba shape. Selzer!s explanation of the domestic in fine art is the most plausible and interesting this writer has come upon. She explained that her domestic fine art pieces, like the paper rug and table, occupy the same liminal space in the room that the actions and energies pulsing between the real and the possible occupy in a life. Both are present but not the main feature, and effectively invisible yet anchoring. Selzer is working with folding material in her explorations, and new folded clay sculptures based on the doodles, for which she has fabricated steel mounts, populate the surfaces of her living room work area. She showed her intentionally low-tech doodle animation, an experiment in artificially adding time to sculpture and drawing. The fact that Selzer!s intellectual curiosity is evident in both her discourse and her bookshelves models her practice of manifesting her interests in her lifestyle. Selzer is obviously open to her inner concerns and is equally engaged in social, professional, and material external experiences. As Selzer herself said, “I want to figure things out with my mind and my hands.” Hers seems to be an authentic and poetic life!s work, for which her live-work space is a lovely emblem.

Ann Craven

she feels when she is working rather than why she does what she is doing. She did mention that she started making copies of her work years after a fire destroyed all her paintings and to cope with it she began recreating those lost works through memory. The word “copy” makes her uncomfortable, she sees every painting as unique and precious as the original and has a hard time letting go and selling her work. But in the end she does.

Lou Regele Walking into Ann Craven!s studio, I was like "What the fuck?! There was a painting of what looked like Bambi, and flowers, and song birds, and they were bright colors. It resembled what a nine year old might paint. I didn!t understand. What was I not getting? Was the joke on me? Ann!s assistant seemed fairly prim and well mannered as well. I felt like some factor was missing. There was this huge elephant in the room and no one was acknowledging it. We are in New York City, in Harlem, and there is a giant painting of bambi. What the what? What holds this all together? Then Ann walked in. Long wavy blond haired long time new yorker harlem living hippieish woman. Boom. And she walks in excited to see a group of 20 college students with beers in hand. Ummmm….. yes, thank you New York. Sitting around on the floor like we were back in elementary school set the scene for a super relaxed, fun, and silly atmosphere. Immediately she!s making everyone laugh. She doesn!t treat any of us like "young students,! which was nice. She talked to us like we were people. I found Ann super inspiring. She wants people to just be who they are and make what they want to make. That explained a lot. She talked about being ok about failing, embracing it, and using it. Her intense love of what she does is refreshing. I often find artists who are indifferent about everything they make so to see someone have passion and actually say "I love this painting! and have it be their painting is rare for me. I deeply admire and respect it. The biggest impact Ann had on me was her just being her. Some of the details of what she said exactly escape me but her essence has made a serious impression.

Francisco Cordero-Oceguera Ann Craven paints moons, birds, cats, deer, and flowers. Yes, she paints moons, birds, cats and flowers and has a large studio for doing and continuing so in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Her studio is part of her apartment and she likes it that way because she enjoys waking up and looking at her paintings in progress. She keeps a suitcase full of print outs and images of flowers, birds and other animals. Some of which were saved and sent newspaper clippings from her mom and her friends. She says she takes the suitcase everywhere with her. She mentions Georgia O!Keefe, and if I remember correctly, Monet as artists she looks up to. Ann Craven welcomes us to her studio to talk about her practice but she talks to us about her personal life and how passionate she is about living it. Craven is a very prolific painter. She repeats her own paintings by copying them, mirroring them and by painting stripes based on the original palettes. Her most recent show at Maccarone Gallery in New York shows a collection of accumulated watercolors of – flowers, cats, birds and owls. There is also a whole wall devoted to pensées (flowers) arranged in a grid, which Craven refers to as “the meaningful grid”. It seems that every action is meaningful to the artist, but meaningful in a way Emily or Charlotte Bronte would describe it as, meaningful as the moons she paints at night and as the lost cat she repeatedly paints out of memory. Ann Craven!s imagery clashes with her conceptual approaches. It seems there are two sides to the artist, the poetic woman who has a spiritual connection to nature and the intellectual conceptual artist. During our visit to her studio we met the poetic Ann Craven who talked more about what 40

Ron Ewert I!d seen images (reproductions) of Ann Craven!s paintings on the Internet and in the occasional art magazine, but never in person. After having spent a completive afternoon examining extensive permanent exhibitions of seminal minimalist art, and an overwhelming installation of Warhol!s most “abstract” paintings, I was eager to see Ann!s studio. I was ready for some oil paintings, some emotion, work in progress. It wasn!t until we got a look at her moderately large paintings, in her modest Harlem studio, that I began to realize that Ann Craven!s practice is a work in progress. We arrived before Ann, and were welcomed in by her studio assistant Heather, who explained how she was busy archiving Ann!s work. Our first stop before the studio proper was a peek into her storage room, filled to the brim with canvases large and small, each individually wrapped and tagged with a spreadsheet printout of all categorical information specific to the piece. I was impressed with the organization of it all, and the economical use of space. For such a prolific painter I expected something larger, but the detailed system suggested there was a lot of travel in store for this work. We made our way up narrow gray stairway to Ann!s workspace, separated from her living space by only a wall and a door. A sense of intimacy, simplicity and focus was reflected in the purposeful arrangement of studio furniture, a few chairs and a well-worked palette on a cart, as well as the few paintings of birds propped against the walls, and another few mounted on the wall. I looked around and investigated the work as Heather explained the system more in depth. Shortly thereafter Ann arrived, a little tired, with a case of beer to share with the class. Exceedingly generous with her time, our class of 20 students sat and listened while she elaborated on her process and discussed her almost childlike emotional investment in her paintings. Her generosity was evident in the honesty and quantity of her production, as well as her direct wet on wet application of paint. She explained to us her multiple concurrent projects, paintings of her old paintings, paintings of photographs of her paintings, paintings of memories of paintings, paintings of the moon, and abstractions based on her palettes from previous paintings. Each piece was an attempt to regain something lost, related to another work within her matrix of subjects, re-creations in an ongoing investigation into memory, sentiment, reflection, and replication. Her practice as a whole seemed very personal, much like the proximity of her living space to her studio, while also remaining committed to a complex conceptual model. These contrasting directions, that of the personal and the conceptual, are what generate the unique dynamic present in her practice. Far from ironic, the theoretical framework for her paintings of kitsch, stereotypically feminine subject matter: cats, pandas, birds, flowers, deer, and the moon; subverts their lighthearted façade. She seemed to be dealing with something that could not be regained through painting; however painting was also the only way express this particular desire. I cannot see the original in her work and cannot imagine the end of her process. Repetition, mirroring, and recreation take on an obsessive, and severely purposeful meaning. Unlike Warhol!s “Shadows”, whose repetition suggests a dislocated sense of dread; an invocation of emptiness, Craven!s repetition seems to infuse intimacy into otherwise generic imagery. When viewing her watercolors the next evening at Maccarone gallery, I was struck by a simultaneous sense of loss, and a determination to see, or make visible, something far from sentimental. 41

Ann Craven

New York City

Lou Regele I love this city. I lived here and it was the best year of my life. I will live here again after I finish school. That being said my New York experience is based on my knowledge of the city. My friends and I decided to go out, shocker. I don!t have to be up til like 1pm because the class is meeting at 2pm down the street so we can go out like we are used to going out: sitting in the bar through last call and the bartender putting up the chairs. We go to a bar they don!t often go to and I!ve never been. Its underground on Houston and Mulberry called Botanica. It!s a pretty great atmosphere, chill and not too crowded. It has one exposed brick wall and just a regular wood bar. Yes. And the drinks are reasonable. Double yes. Keke, my twin, always makes nice with the bartenders because she!s a bartender. So she!s exceedingly nice and a great tipper. But this bartender isn!t having it. He tells Keke she needs to be more mean because that!s how you get what you want. So we spend the rest of the night yelling at the bartender to bring us more drinks. Needless to say we stopped being charged about halfway through and just leave big tips--to say Keke always gets free drinks is an understatement. Time wears on, it hits 4am, the bartender shuts part of the front gate so cops can!t see in and gives everyone cups with water for cigarettes. Yep, its officially after hours now. I!m not a big smoker and neither is my sister, but when Lily comes in…oh what? You don!t know who lily is? Lily is the small Asian lady that goes around the entire east village and LES about every night selling cigarettes. So who comes a knockin! right at 4? Lily with some cigarettes. We buy them off her for only nine dollars. We sit in there for a while longer, I think until at least 5, just chillin! with the bartender. Slowly all the other people trickle out and its just my group of people. The bartender is counting his til and telling us how the bar is haunted. There!s a little girl who died in the bathroom who he sees sometimes and then there!s a guy in glasses and a top hat who sits at the bar and reads the newspaper. He was thankful we were in there while he was counting his til because he doesn!t like to be there by himself. I developed the saying “Only in New York” when I first moved here and was having the most magical and random experiences of my life. And I think it applies to this night as well. Cheers.

Hannah Manfredi New York is about knowing what is good and being able to pay for it. What is good is having time and knowing what to do with it. I spent an evening with Paul Dressen and my boyfriend, Asa Horvitz, watching the blog-honored acts, Xtra-life and Buke + Gass play the “stage” located in the large living room/corner kitchen at the dusty center of the house that is known as the Silent Barn- one of Brooklyn!s DIY music venues that brings to mind the ramshackle headquarters of an autodidactic art-punk collective. Huddled on the border between Bushwick and Ridgewood, the space doubles as a home for the organizers with shared bedrooms lining the front hall. The atmosphere is that of an organized house party with cheap cover charges and deteriorating walls that bear the marks of the tenants! creative endeavors which range from standard Sharpie tags to elaborate faux-textbook illustrations. The room was packed, the damp air was filled with cigarette smoke and the music was excellent. Extra Life!s lead singer, Charie Looker, was once an early music ensemble vocalist and now treads the line between that and experimental industrial pop. The name Buke and Gass comes from the bands premiere instruments- a Banjo/Ukelele and a Guitar/Bass, which they built themselves. 42

New York City

Reminicing on Where I!ve Never Been by Cait Stephens For some time I!d been harboring a romantic notion of NY, built on Woody Allen, Artforum, CBGBâ&#x20AC;?s, Sex in the City, and graffiti documentaries. Born and raised on the West Coast, I knew that my portrait of the city, dangerous and luxurious, was not what I would find today. I avoided NY so I could hold on to that ideal of it. My first impressions of the city were already far from my understanding. I arrived at Penn Station which was so crowded and bustling I was sure I was to be mugged or trampled. Those pretty much remained my two fears during the duration of the trip, though their application gets more metaphorical as we navigate the art scene. Trying to make my way to 9th st, and 5th Ave, the streets were littered with people and food. All of 31st street smells like hotdogs. The skyscrapers were not the same blank buildings of Chicago. They were all stores, recognizably branded, and in conjunction with the food and the foot traffic, I couldn!t shake the feeling I was in a mall. Manhattan was much safer then I anticipated, and cheaper (except rent- which you could never call cheap anywhere in NY). In the first coffee shop I ventured into in my search for a decent cup of coffee (which I eventually found in Everyman Espresso on 13th St), I sat down next to a man recounting his friend with a tale of his recent mugging and the progress of his screenplay. The conversation was so loaded with clichĂŠ!s, I just thought shit, maybe this is common place of NY life, like hailing cabs or buying groceries at bodegas. NYer!s sit down over coffee and talk about their work and where they last got robbed. Having your wallet stolen is just the price you have to pay to call NY home. After fourteen days, going everywhere NY, it was more like my concept of it than not, though CBGB!s is gone now, and nothing has really replaced it. There are two things I can say for sure about the city1. It!s impossible to go hungry there, with a range form the hottest happening new restaurant project, to $.99 cent pizza you eat standing up. 2. Graffiti is alive and well in America In Brooklyn, the Bowery, and The Lower East side, there is art on the streets and in the galleries, everywhere. The price having little to do with content or craft, and it!s value having everything to do with who made it, who likes it, and who bought it. NY is a feast for the eyes and the belly, but it seems like you can never get full.

A NYC EXPERIENCE by Samuel Lipp The city that never sleeps, the Big Apple, and a slew of other clichés can be used to describe New York City, but no single phrase can illustrate both the breadth and density of multifarious experiences that await here. New York City is an American city, but it is foremost an international city, harboring people and perspectives from every corner of the globe. The city is a giant marketplace, where experiences are the primary commodity traded. The maddening and exhausting over-stimulation of a Manhattan street is made sane by the wealth of titillating ways to spend your money—global cuisines commingle with designer wares and artistic venues. If you can dream it, you can buy it in New York. On a bitingly cold afternoon this January, I was compelled to investigate one of such purveyors of experience, the Russian and Turkish Baths on the Lower East Side. The very word bathhouse connotes seediness and sub-par hygienic conditions, but my companions persuaded me, and we paid the $30 for unlimited single day use. The facilities are intended for co-ed use, and spa sandals and shorts were provided. To begin we were given a tour by a stalky Slavic woman, who led us into a dingy basement-cum-steam room that was far too reminiscent of a dungeon for my taste. Here two men were thrashing the backs of two lucky customers with birch branches, and on the other side of the room a thin and flexible man was sprawled out on the floor. “Do not mind, this man does yoga,” said our guide in a thick accent. For the rest of the day we splashed around the various pools, cold and hot, and relaxed in saunas, some scented with mint or eucalyptus. After a few hours though, we were overheated and our skin was beginning to prune, so we headed to the roof deck to cool off. “I can!t believe I was cold outside before,” I thought to myself as I admired the skyline. The Russian and Turkish baths set out to provide an experience straight from the old Mother land, but it landed more in the vicinity of David Lynch. Either way, it was a uniquely hybrid experience of Old World and New.

Lost in the Meaningful Arbitrary Dana Major Kanovitz By the last day of the New York Winter Study trip I had clearly developed a cocky easiness with getting around Gotham. I!d spent 9 days directing myself through the tangle of subways and sidewalks with little help in the trenches from my iPhone, which told me I wasn!t where I was too often to be believed. When Michelle Grabner announced that we were to meet on the last morning at 98 4th Street, I barely jotted the address down. That morning I slept in so late that my feet were sweating, and I lazed in my hotel room, consigning my calculated journey to 98 4th Street to the last minute. I checked Google Maps from my laptop in the room, which suggested I perhaps meant 98 4th Avenue. Google has my number, so naturally, I agreed. I arrived confidently at 98 4th Ave in the Flatiron District just a few minutes past our 11:00 meeting time. The address was posted above a lovely double door rectory, and I knew I!d been had by Google. Undeterred, I set out to solve my problem like a local. I checked my iPhone, found that 98 4th Street was almost due east and fairly close. Ideal for a cab ride! I marched right into the Avenue with my arm up in the air (like I!d seen my ballsy friend Stephanie do a year after she moved to New York) and was soon on my myrrh-scented way. At 72 4th Street my cab become gridlocked behind a sewagepumping truck , so I paid him, hopped out, and hoofed it to 98. 98 4th Street is a mom and pop style dry cleaner. I was 30 minutes late, not in need of dry cleaning services, and defeated. I called Shane once, twice, and three times before he was able to take the call, to tell me that I was to be at 98 4th Street, Brooklyn, New York. Pride before the fall, with a healthy sprinkling of irony in that the meeting I missed was at a place called “Minus Space.” I was by then too hot in my down coat, having broiled myself with fast walking and the special brand of embarrassment you can only get by screwing up in front of your teacher. I was cursing Google Maps for its presumptuous suggestion, and myself for not being more thorough, when I flashed on Fred Sandback!s string sculptures. I!d seen them four days earlier at DIA Beacon. Sandback delineates space with string, creating visual volume and boundaries out of almost nothing in his stunning performance of meaning. The difference between a Street and an Avenue is meaningless except when you have to locate yourself. And the difference between New York and Brooklyn is likewise meaningless as genuine New York artists have to live in Brooklyn and beyond in order to be New York artists.

ART OBJECTS IN REVIEW by Louis Doulas During a short trip to New York, I took the time to observe our experiences with art objects in the gallery and museum context. I was interested in the aura surrounding objects and the way the art market capitalizes on this perceived singularity. It was a challenge for me to evaluate the individual works of each gallery and museum without thinking about each object!s economic and political role in the market. Below, are four quotes from various artists and writers all of whom hint at the dematerialization of art and the Internet!s role in cultivating an alternative method of distribution and viewership to the current art market. These quotes are a foundation to my own ideas and practice and are meant to initiate a dialogue we all somehow seem to neglect. They are part of my “review”, for they critique the objects and art economy that New York plays a more than substantial part in.

The object emerges as the ideal mirror: for the images it reflects succeed one another while never contradicting one another. Moreover, it is ideal in that it reflects images not of what is real, but only of what is desirable. In short, it is like a dog reduced to the single aspect of fidelity. I am able to gaze on it without its gazing back at me. This is why one invests in objects all that one finds impossible to invest in human relationships.” - Jean Baudrillard, “The System of Collecting.” Cultures of Collecting (Critical Views)

“In the Post-Internet climate, it is assumed that the work of art lies equally in the version of the object one would encounter at a gallery or museum, the images and other representations disseminated through the Internet and print publications, bootleg images of the object or its representations, and variations on any of these as edited and recontextualized by any other author. The less developed stratagem for pointing to a lack of representational fixity is that of taking an object to be represented (to be more direct, presented) as another type of object entirely, without reference to the “original.” For objects after the Internet there can be no “original copy.” Even if an image or object is able to be traced back to a source, the substance (substance in the sense of both its materiality and its importance) of the source object can no longer be regarded as inherently greater than any of its copies. When I take a moving image and represent it through an object (video rendered sculpturally in styrofoam for example), I am positing an alternative method of representation without ever supplying a way to view the source. A source video exists. The idea of a source video exists. But the way the object is

The problem is that situating the work at a singular point in space and time turns it, a priori, into a monument. What if it is instead dispersed and reproduced, its value approaching zero as its accessibility rises? We should recognize that collective experience is now based on simultaneous private experiences, distributed across the field of media culture, knit together by ongoing debate, publicity, promotion, and discussion. Publicness today has as much to do with sites of production and reproduction as it does with any supposed physical commons, so a popular album could be regarded as a more successful instance of public art than a monument tucked away in an urban plaza. The album is available everywhere, since it employs the mechanisms of free market capitalism, history!s most sophisticated distribution system to date. The monumental model of public art is invested in an anachronistic notion of communal appreciation transposed from the church to the museum to the outdoors, and this notion is received skeptically by an audience no longer so interested in direct communal experience. While instantiated in nominal public space, mass-market artistic production is usually consumed privately, as in the case of books, CDs, videotapes, and Internet “content.” Television producers are not interested in collectivity, they are interested in getting as close as possible to individuals. Perhaps an art distributed to the broadest possible public closes the circle, becoming a private art, as in the days of commissioned portraits. The analogy will only become more apt as digital distribution techniques allow for increasing customization to individual consumers.” - Seth Price, “Dispersion.”

“Related to this is the idea of provenance or the history of ownership of a work of art. If a particularpainting has been passed through the hands of famous collectors for centuries, what one would find auratic about the painting is not the alchemical effect of the artist!s application of paint to canvas, but rather the series of transactions from one historical figure or collecting institution to another over time. For example, if one can say that the Mona Lisa possesses any sort of aura for its viewers at the Louvre, it is not necessarily because they find it to be a particularly beautiful painting, but rather because of its history and prominence in the museum!s collection. Art historians and aficionados may be entranced by its formal qualities, but the aura of the work for the public is, in Benjamin!s terms, accrued through the painting!s testimony to its history.” - Gene McHugh, “Post-Internet.”

instantiated denies both the necessity of an original and adherence to the representational norms that follow the creation of “video” as both technical device and terminology.” 48

Artie Vierkant, “The Image Object Post-Internet.” 49

instantiated denies both the necessity of an original and adherence to the representational norms that follow the creation of “video” as both technical device and terminology.” 48

Artie Vierkant, “The Image Object Post-Internet.” 49