"Slow Glass" at Lisa Cooley Gallery

(originally published 7/28/08 on ArtSlant.com)

“You’ll never get it if you don’t slow down, my friend.” This sly warning, from Mario Garcia Torres’ "11 Years Later/11 Minutes Later (2006)", is one viewers of "Slow Glass", a group exhibition at Lisa Cooley, would do well to heed; though containing only a handful of works, this is a show to spend time with.

Heather Rowe’s "The Space Above the Ceiling" (2008) serves as a meandering guide down the length of the slender gallery. Hanging overhead, its elegant execution causes it to rise like a balloon even as its negative space bears down on you like a heavy conscience. It’s impossible to escape its presence for a second.

Lawrence Weiner’s "AT THE SAME MOMENT" (2000), perches just inside the storefront window, its content and placement immediately referencing the material for which the show is named: science fiction writer Bob Shaw’s magical glass that slows down light, thereby trapping scenes and allowing them to be transported and viewed from an entirely new setting.

Lizzie Hughes’ and Emma Kay’s works build on this by exploring themes of translation and de-contextualization, respectively. Hughes’ "Untitled (Translation Piece)" (2008) demonstrates how language can become garbled in a veritable game of Telephone. Kay’s works distill two influential narratives, The Bible and "The Interpretation of Dreams", down to the objects that appear in them. The objects become signifiers, talismans, keys to a set of beliefs. There are hundreds of articles listed; all of them will carry you off on a giant tangent.

Mario Garcia Torres’ slideshow "11 Years Later/11 Minutes Later" (2006), is the final piece in “Slow Glass”. Its subtitled dialogue (originally written by Paul Auster for the film Smoke) is shelled out slide by slide at a tantalizing pace, the methodic click of the carousel bouncing off the walls of the gallery. That sound, Rowe’s looming sculpture, and the rhythm of all those words on display eventually conjur a weird, lethargic suspense, leaving you feeling deliciously time-warped.

"I'll be your mirror... so you can break into endless shards" at Heist Gallery

(originally published 7/28/08 on ArtSlant.com)

"I’ll Be Your Mirror… So You Can Break Into Endless Shards", on view through August 10th at Heist Gallery, located on a busy stretch of Essex Street, is an uncanny reflection of the Lower East Side itself. The show is a cacophony of colors, textures, faces, youth, sex and religion. John Travolta makes an appearance in a cowboy hat, as does a lit-up bodega Virgin Mary, and there are plenty of empty pill bottles, wounds, and underwear to go around. All of this teeming life and raucous offering is crammed together tenement-style into one tiny room.

The exhibition as a whole, starting with the title, is achingly earnest, the combined output of approximately thirty churned-up artists, and has the feel of an end-of-semester art school crit. Some works, like Ryan Watkins-Hughes’ installation of prescription meds and blurry sickbed portraits, "Love is a losing game, but who gives a shit?" (2008), and Christopher Martino’s gouache and graphite rendering of a man surrounded by blacked-out windows, "Apex" (2008), aim for a world-weariness but still come off as vulnerable. Amongst these are wide-eyed photographs where you can feel the artist holding their breath: Jeanne Mischo’s quiet "Family Moments 1" (2008) and Jonathan Feinstein’s solemn "Portrait of Amani" (2007).

There are many works that turn said mirror onto the outside world, offering social commentary on the passing strange (fast food America gets a nod in Conrad Kofron’s "Untitled" (2007), and an over-the-top oligarch moll is haloed in Tatiana Kronberg’s "Mariya 3" (2006)) and the perversely fascinating (Marta Edmisten’s "Blind Dating" (2007), which places grainy surveillance shots of awkward suitors alongside their bravado-laden personal ads.

"I’ll Be Your Mirror" falters from the volume of work that curators Julie Fishkin and Matt Lucas included; there are endless shards indeed, some duller than others, most notably David Smith’s too literal bad joke "Velvet Polyester" (2008). But a solid group of these artists reveal messy, tremulous, and feverish interior lives, and they are compelling to watch.

Anne Daems' Parsley and Pearls

(originally published 6/30/08 on ArtSlant.com)

At first glance, Anne Daems’ exhibition at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery looks almost like a group show. Three grainy photographs are hung immediately to the left of the entrance; they each depict a single, young, attractive person on the streets of New York, from Daems’ series "72 girls (and some boys) that could be models". Then, rather abruptly, is a long stretch of works from "Scribbles for Drawings Make New Drawings". These look a lot like someone photographed the pen scratch pads at art supply stores, and in fact they are prints of Daems’ color-test doodles. Interspersed with "Scribbles" are more photographs from "72 girls"; four small graphite drawings with text; and finally a 35-minute video titled "My father’s garden".

Unfortunately, most of the show is dedicated to the "Scribbles" work. Daems is an artist interested small moments, often finding poetry in them. It’s understandable to extend this purview to her doodle pads, but ultimately it’s overly precious. Not every art mark is worth preserving.

Daems’ other drawings—"The woman had always some parsley in her bosom" (2006), "Kenneth’s beauty spots" (2007), "2 rubber bands to hold her stockings" (2005-6), and "A woman with high heels came back from the park" (2008)—however, are lovely; bemused studies rendered in simple lines with a smattering of color and typewritten text. They’re strange and infectious and I could look at a hundred of them.

"72 girls" (2007) doesn’t add anything to the catalogue of lonely moments captured by photographers on the streets of New York; instead they demonstrate an intense need on Daems’ part to crawl inside the minds of these beautiful creatures (it’s a much more subjective series than, say, Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s "Heads"). Daems exhibits the same inquisitiveness with extended close-ups of children’s faces in "My father’s garden" (2008). Because these lingering takes happen over a span of time, they are more successful than the still photographs in making us privy to her subjects’ inner dialogue.

"My father’s garden", shown in several parts, dovetails all of Daems’ interests: simple rituals (there are quiet sequences of a Japanese tea ceremony, a man patching holes in a tree, and a woman doing laundry), youth (the aforementioned meditations on children’s faces), and small absurdities (a balloon decorated with pigtails and a face slowly whirling in front of a window). "My father’s garden" yields what the disparate elements of the rest of the exhibition do not—inspired tropes that reflect back solidly on Daems’ position as fascinated observer.

File Under Philippe Gronon

(originally published 6/30/2008 on ArtSlant.com)

Philippe Gronon’s exhibition at Yossi Milo Gallery, comprised of highly rendered photographs of safes, elevators, and card catalogues, is a room of doors waiting to be opened. One’s fingers itch to spin the combination locks and tug the handles. Behind the wall, ropes would pulley and cylinders would tumble and then cavities would appear, holding passengers, jewels and cash, unfamiliar air.

The setup is deceptively simple—there are five photographs of safes hung in a row on the east wall of the gallery; across from them, three photographs of card catalogues, and on the north and south walls, single photographs of elevator doors. All are silver gelatin prints scaled to the actual size of the objects they depict. Whether or not Gronon’s aim is to create an illusion or simply represent the objects with absolute accuracy, there is a definite photography-as-sculpture aspect to his work. All of the photographs are printed full bleed and most of them are hung unframed, effectively repositioning them as 3D objects (one photograph, "Safe" (1991), has even been trimmed flush with the curved edges of the lockbox itself. Ceci n'est pas une pipe !). There is a great amount of detail; shooting with a studio camera, Gronon captures the cold texture of steel and the softness of worn wood, and chips and scratches in metal surfaces are indistinguishable from imperfections in the emulsion. The only thing working against a complete mirage is the lack of color.

The strongest piece in the exhibition—Gronon’s first in the US—is "Elevator, Lyceum Kennedy, New York" (2005). Standing in front of this life-sized photograph puts the viewer in the funny position of waiting for an elevator that will never arrive. There is a humid handprint the shiny door, and a smudged window just above eye level acts as a portal to another layer altogether. This piece especially evokes the vertiginous quality of a movie set—buildings and trees and fire hydrants that turn out to be flat when you peek behind them. Gronon’s show manages to possess both the dispassionate principles of New Objectivity and the whimsy of Alice In Wonderland, and for that reason alone it’s worth seeing.

Triptych: A Roundtable Discussion with Angela Choon, Bellatrix Hubert, and Hanna Schouwink of David Zwirner Gallery

(published Spring 2008 in Spread ArtCulture Magazine; photograph by Matthew Montieth)

The name on the door might be David Zwirner’s, but behind the man everyone in the art world is talking about are three savvy women so essential to the gallery’s soaring success that David Zwirner made them partners. Spread ArtCulture joined directors Angela Choon, Bellatrix Hubert, and Hanna Schouwink for an exclusive roundtable discussion.

Lauren Knighton: The gallery’s website states that the focus of the gallery is showing the work of emerging artists. Many of the latest additions to your roster—Chris Ofili, Lisa Yuskavage, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia—hardly fit that description. Is the focus of the gallery changing?

Angela Choon: We need to change the website! When we opened [in 1993], our artists were all emerging. Then the gallery and artists grew together.

Bellatrix Hubert: We have some artists that are more well-known in Europe than over here. But we’re not at all a young gallery.

LK: You have a reputation for being very hands-on with your artists.

AC: One of the gallery’s strong points is that it’s always been artist-centric. I’m always surprised to hear what other galleries don’t do for their artists.

BH: The key is to make sure our artists can work. We don’t bombard them with too much, and we act as a barrier between them and the world. We don’t want them to accept too many shows because then the work gets watered down. We want to make sure they have a good studio, the best possible environment to create work. And we don’t say yes to everything. Every time I get a request, I ask myself if it’s good for the artist’s career, and try not to just be flattered by another commission.

LK: What goes into preparing an artist for an exhibition?

BH: Generally, it’s a two-year process. We’ll go to their studio and start a dialogue, but the artists at this point really know what they’re doing.

AC: Often they have a theme or idea that they want to do. For Luc [Tuyman’s] last exhibition, he wanted to show work about Walt Disney and found utopias, so all the paintings related to that concept.

BH: We never really question the artists; they have total freedom over their shows. We’re not going to say, ‘Oh this painting isn’t good, you can’t show it’.

LK: You each have your own group of artists that you work with. How are artists “matched up” with each of you?

BH: When an artist joins the gallery, we’re all really fair; there’s never been a situation where we’ve fought over anyone. We see which of our personalities best fit with the artist’s.

LK: How does the gallery choose which artists to take on?

Hanna Schouwink: A lot of people, especially mid-career artists, come to us from other very established galleries. So many people want to work with us now; we have to be very critical.

AC: A lot more artists want to work here than we can take on. It’s a nice position to be in.

BH: We decide as a group, we vote. It’s a democracy.

HS: But we can’t veto, only David can veto.

BH: It’s really his decision, ultimately, but we participate.

LK: It’s been a little over a year since the gallery tripled its exhibition space; what has it been like?

BH: Triple work! Triple fun! Triple rich! [laughs] No, it’s been really important, because I believe we have to grow and be a step ahead of the artists. You don’t want these great artists to show in the same space over and over, you want them to be challenged by the environment. It’s great to tell Thomas Ruff that he has two times the space for his new show.

LK: There are endless articles that rank galleries and use competitive language to create a cutthroat portrait of the art world. Do you find it to be as bad as is reported?

HS: I think it’s much friendlier than people think.

BH: Generally, it’s very human—I think it’s the last non-corporate environment.

HS: I always find it really offensive when people say we steal artists [from other galleries].

BH: On the contrary, I feel like we are missing opportunities because we don’t have that kind of mentality. I just heard that Richard Tuttle went to Pace Wildenstein. He’s one of my favorite artists and I was thinking if I had known he was unhappy at Sperone Westwater, I would have loved to offer him a place here. So, like Hanna said, we really wait for the artists to come to us, we’re really respectful of our colleagues.

HS: If there is a rumor that an artist is courting other galleries, then we do something about it. But some people have pigeon-holed us, and it really disturbs me because we act quite ethically here.

LK: People enjoy the sensationalism.

HS: No press ever writes about how artists are kicked out by galleries. It happens all the time, if a certain success is missing… and we have never done that. We support our artists through difficult times.

BH: I think that makes a big difference to an artist who is considering our gallery.

LK: What are some beliefs you held about art that have changed since you entered the business of art?

AC: I never thought I’d work in a commercial gallery. But David’s is quite different from the typical model. Commercial galleries are always looked down upon as the “money-making” venture of the art world, a shop, as opposed to the museums, which are held in very high regard.
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BH: But we’re the ones taking the risks now. I mean, Jason Rhoades’ Black Pussy installation, no museum would take the risk of showing that. What I find very exciting is that we’re really a new part of the art world, in a way. Historically, if you think of Leo Castelli as the father of the contemporary gallery system, and after him Marian Goodman, and [Larry] Gagosian… [David Zwirner Gallery] has evolved from there; we’re re-defining the system. Galleries were never so involved before. We’re real facilitators.

AC: It’s sort of a “gallerist” versus “dealer” thing.

LK: Those seem to be very loaded words; people tend to be sensitive as to whether they are called a “gallerist” or a “dealer”.

BH: It’s really a problem if you get stuck on that kind of stuff, it limits you. I would hate to say I’m a dealer and not a gallerist, or I’m a gallerist and not a dealer.

HS: It’s hypocritical. If you’re just a gallerist, then there are certain things you cannot do for your artists. We’re expected to be active on the secondary market; if we’re not, we’re considered wimps. It’s important for the sake of your artists to support the market.

LK: So there are a lot of theoretical concerns about the gallery’s function, its legacy, and your roles within that. On top of that, you are part of an art market currently run amok. How do you keep the art itself your primary focus?

AC: The legacy of these artists is where they show and what private or public collections they end up in, after all of us are gone. We try to have the works go into a good institution or place.

BH: It’s the most important thing for the artist, to be in a public arena. When work is in a private collection, you can lose track of it.

HS: Of course there are also private collectors who have very public roles. Someone like Joel Wax, he has a rather small collection but a very good one, and he makes people enthusiastic about the art. People like him are very important, because they talk to the curators.

BH: They’re like diplomats.

LK: What shows were milestones for the gallery?

BH: I thought Neo Rauch’s last exhibition was really important, for him and for the gallery.

HS: I always think of the first Jason Rhoades show. That show was the reason I wanted to work here. The Chris Ofili show was so good and so different from what we expected. Lisa Yuskavage’s first show here was extremely exciting. There’s so many.

BH: The idea with every exhibition is to take the artist to the next level. Christopher Williams’ last show was so important for his career; within two weeks every institution had to own his work. And it’s not like he’s a new artist, he’s been doing very rigorous work since the late 80s.

HS: You start recognizing these moments and it’s very exciting that we can contribute to changes in an artists’ career.

LK: Are there any art movements emerging around the world that you believe in?

BH: Sure, there are, but I don’t know that they’re that interesting. It’s so market-driven right now, it’s really hard to find an authentic voice. There’s a lot of hipsters and—

AC: People getting out of school and trying to get their first show. You used to not be able to do your first New York show until you worked.

BH: Selling out your first solo show is the easiest thing. The problem is the second, third, fourth show. Are people going to continue collecting your work, are institutions going to start collecting your work: those are the challenges.

LK: Describe your personal collections.

HS: We get a lot from our artists—we don’t tell David how much, this is off the record! [laughs] They are incredibly generous, it’s amazing.

BH: It’s nice—after working with them for so long, you might own an early work that you’ve developed a history with.

LK: Where do you see the gallery in five years?

HS: Oh dear.

BH & HS: Not in China.

AC: I’m sure there will be expansion possibilities.

LK: Does that mean opening another location? Or expanding the space on 19th Street even further?

BH: Five years goes super fast. We are already working on shows that will take place five years from now, including retrospectives and big museum shows. There’ll be more exposure for the artists, whether or not the gallery space is bigger.

HS: When we expanded last year, it seemed completely crazy. It seemed like such a huge amount of space and now it’s so normal to me, I can’t even remember what it was like before. But then people who we haven’t seen in over a year come in and they can’t believe it. So in five years—who knows what will happen by then.

On The Double: Kate Atkin and Becky Beasley at Museum 52

(originally published 5/19/08 on ArtSlant.com)

W, Kate Atkin and Becky Beasley’s exhibition at Museum 52, is a dialogue between two very smart artists thoroughly savoring a collaboration that, like their exhibition’s theme, could double on forever. At first glance, the work appears formal, minimalist, and deeply enthralled to theory. All of those things are true, but happily, most of the work is also beautiful, rife with pensive literary references and whimsical details. Museum 52’s unique two-story space is the perfect playground for Atkin and Beasley, and viewers would be wise to traverse both levels a couple of times, to fully experience the effects of a cleverly-hung show.

In the upper gallery, each piece slowly reveals all of its tricks; no possible inversion has been left unturned. The Left Door (2004/2007), a dreamy, black and white photograph, is replicated twice over from the same (flipped) negative, and the two editions face each other across the long room. In between them lie Plank I and Plank II (both 2008), which, while not the most visually stimulating sculptures, engage the space like two ends of a magnet attracting metal filings. Both The Left Door and Plank I and II explore duplication and reproduction, almost entirely for the sake of demonstrating that no piece is ever really the same.

As proof, Atkin and Beasley pointedly show the artist’s hand, relishing the imperfections that make each work unique. This is most literal in Maw and Maw (Replica) (both 2008), two somewhat sinister drawings that bring to mind the yawning visages of Lee Bontecou’s sculptures. Atkin drew Maw, which is hung upstairs, and then made a drawing of it, Maw (Replica), on display downstairs. The concept is intellectual, but the execution is expressionistic—the surfaces of both drawings are riddled with Atkin’s heavy strokes and painstaking patterns.

More subtle is Beasley’s Green Ream (L.J.N.Y.) (2008), a small box fashioned out of the same American walnut veneer as Plank I and II and stuffed with 500 sheets of Prairie Green paper. It’s a rather blank construction, but the snug fit of the paper into the box provides a weirdly satisfying friction, that, over time, as the paper fades and decays, will evolve. Green Ream also provides the only shock of color in the whole show.

Many artists have long explored the themes that dominate W, and it’s obvious Atkin and Beasley are self-conscious about adding to the conversation in a serious way. Despite some of the old-fashioned concepts (and given the many cynical dalliances of their art world peers with said concepts), Atkin and Beasley’s youthful enthusiasm, thoughtfulness, and deft use of materials make W a breath of fresh air.

After Effects: Valeska Soares at Eleven Rivington Gallery

(originally published 5/19/08 on ArtSlant.com)


The effect of viewing Valeska Soares' exhibition After, currently in its last week at Eleven Rivington Gallery, is not unlike walking into a room that someone has just left and smelling their fragrance still hanging in the air. Soares’ works—Love Stories II, Afterimages, Duet, and For To (all 2008)— explore nostalgia, love, and longing by way of still-warm beds and yellowing pages, and she best achieves her themes with Duet, a simple but loaded sculpture which bears an obvious human trace. Soares has sculpted the impressions of two sleepers into pillows fashioned from marble and placed them side by side on the gallery’s floor. The voyeuristic birds-eye viewpoint and intense intimacy of the piece recall another artist’s disarming sculpture, Ron Mueck’s Spooning Couple, a miniature of a man and woman lying in bed. In Duet, all that remains are their ghosts.

The viewer then looks up, at Afterimages, an installation of twelve photographs hung high on the gallery’s far wall. Each photograph depicts the same patch of sky, seen from one angle down in Soares’ garden, and the way the series is displayed places the viewer squarely in her shoes. The press release will tell you that the number of photographs refers to the months in a calendar year, which is an unnecessary and slightly hokey detail. It’s better to simply regard the changing clouds and light flickering across this tiny landscape as a slow, romantic animation seen through Soares’ eyes. Artists try all sorts of tricks to portray their personal experience of something; here, Soares nails it simply and eloquently.

Afterimages is the only introverted piece in the show; Love Stories II and For To, like Duet, place the viewer back out in the realm of universal experience. Love Stories II expands on an ongoing project where Soares replicates books containing the word ‘love’ in the title. Each book contains the exact number of pages as its real world counterpart but the stories themselves have been erased. 250 of these books are arranged on two shelves with titles facing outward, bound in neatly cadenced colors of gray, gold, and blue. As a whole, the piece is clever but not as transcendent as Soares might wish it to be. For To, collages of dedication pages that Soares has excised from various books, feels the same way. It’s charming to read the long-lost dedications, but it doesn’t go much deeper than that.

This is Soares’ first solo gallery exhibition in New York, and it’s a brave one because of its unabashed embrace of sentimental, messy themes. Subsequently, the work fares better when it escapes the confines of Soares’ more cerebral, one-dimensional concepts.