Rachel Whiteread at Luhring Augustine (revision)

Rachel Whiteread is best known to many for her Turner Prize-winning 1993 sculpture “House,” in which the lone Victorian house to escape urban renewal on its block was filled with concrete and then pulled away and discarded, as if it had only ever been a mold for the sculpture. This striking concrete cast of an architectural interior shares a few similarities with her more recent work, but also seems more robust. “House” made the transparent concrete, and inverted the relationship of space to container, presence to absence, and in doing so commenting on its desolate surroundings.

In Long Eyes, her present show at Luhring Augustine, the artist does quite the opposite. The key pieces of the show are a series of casts of windows in clear resin. In “House,” the window had been the trickiest architectonic element because it was simply lost. The process removed any purposefulness or reason for interest in windows, since the interior space enclosed by the object – the house – became the object itself, and since all transparency within the visible space that a window offers was lost at the same time that perfect transparency through the architecture was achieved by its removal. The complex nature of a viewer’s relationship to “House” can be summed up rather well in the problems of the windows, a fact that is itself satisfying.

All this reference to “House” seems apt. While many of her subsequent works, including some others in this show, follow entirely different threads, Long Eyes returns us to vacant architectural space. The windows play their roles rather directly – they are transparent, though colored (the titles, things like Dawn, Daylight, and Dark, point to this coloring being a reference to natural light filtering through windows), and leaned along the wall. The sculptor intervenes more in this case, with the casts of either side being attached back to back to create a sort of composite anti-window. It would be hard to do this any other way, of course, since casting an open box leaves one side undefined, which Whiteread avoids. A side effect of this, however, is that we get the presence-in-absence as before, but of an imaginary and irrelevant space. In flipping and merging, Whiteread travels from simply capturing the space of an object-of-absence, to creating a new space out of an implied absence, one that is in ways antithetical to the spatial behavior of a window. That new space is strange in that it implies the entirety of everything other than the window. The gallery, the viewer, and everything else in our world, has become the window pane that pushes against it, while the object has become the exterior world viewed through it. The objecthood and otherness of the art piece has been reversed, to a certain extent, and while this is quite clever it would be better if it were somehow carried further; instead the objecthood of the piece is in every other way confirmed.

The connection between color and the sense of place that it creates adds a aesthetic element to the work, which is otherwise not very exciting to actually view. The color of light that fills a space gives it visual and affective identity. Here, that light is presumed to be daylight (or, as in the case of Dark, its absence), and its source the window that the pieces negate – this assumption is necessary to continue the binding of interior and exterior into one form. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. The colors fail to embody the light that they lay claim to, and the coloring does nothing to bring the light of a window along with the displaced object in any meaningful way. The light is neither trapped in the anti-window, nor passing out of it, and in a way, here is the biggest problem of the entire conceit – like the solid, opaque “House,” Dawn and Daylight have a awkward relationship to light since they render the transparent void solid. As a result, the colors seem decorative, and functional only for differentiating between pieces. Whiteread succeeds in calling to mind windows (of course it would be hard for her not to), but she fails to conjure any sense of the light that goes through them – the experience, in other words, of a window in action. This is an obvious result of taking something like a window, or a house, and rendering the transparent, empty parts concrete, and she would be better served by using it to her advantage than by fighting it with pleasant colors.

The anti-windows of Long Eye are most interesting as art commenting on art, since they reference the traditional connection between two-dimensional wall art and illusionistic windows. Though, just as they are a complete antithesis of a window and an object, they are also the opposite of a tromp l’oeil, showing the artifice of hanging an object on a wall and calling it a view. Unlike an illusionistic painting or a photograph, we can see right through them.

Comparisons to “House” are unfair since this is gallery work placed on walls, sold, and placed on other walls. The work comments on this, and so it works well. But that Whiteread makes such comments on the whole endeavor betrays her lack of faith in such saleable work. WC 876

"Drawn from Photography" at The Drawing Center (REVISED)

Drawn from Photography at The Drawing Center

The exhibition Drawn from Photography showcased the work of thirteen artists who painstakingly reconstructed and reinterpreted photographs of social turmoil. Consequently the photograph serves as a mediator between subject and rendering. The transformative nature of the exhibition’s themes, focusing on episodes of war, civil unrest and urban development, mirror the passage of its imagery from photography to the drawn composition.

Counteracting the hectic immediacy of wartime conditions and the emotional impact of its documentation, hand-drawn reproductions of widely available printed material slow the process of viewer reception by allowing one to experience these documents as products of human invention. Varying editorial choices by artists result in either heightened or muted viewer reception of the work. Karl Haendel’s Untitled (Birthday Drawing), consisting of an immaculately transcribed Russian newspaper page dating to the artist’s date of birth, transforms a banal public document into a signifier of identity through the personal associations of the artist. Likewise, ongoing reproductions of isolated news headlines and detailed renderings of deceased American soldiers by Emily Prince remove potentially powerful individual information from the deluge of (often passively received) media coverage to confront the viewer directly and in a timely manner. The continuous nature of these pieces, whose installations were updated periodically as international events unfolded, removes the time gap between the static art object and the subject it depicts.

Taking a more veiled approach, artists Ewan Gibbs and Andrea Bowers disguise their expressive hand by emulating elements of the print process, producing black and white drawings that take on the austerity of social documentation. Andrea Bowers’s Non Violent Protest Training series retains the distance between subject and rendering by presenting imagery that appears cropped from a pamphlet. Here, the brutal emotive potency of civil unrest is supplanted by sterile, haunting scenes with which the viewer cannot entirely connect. The slow, detailed process of reproduction employed by the artists in this exhibition culminates in a drastic interplay between time, distance and presence, affecting artist and viewer alike. That the pieces were not created at the scene of their depicted events creates space between artist and subject, while personal modes of representation and compositional/stylistic choices bring human experience even closer to the event than the photograph that initially captured it. Presentation of war photography, newspaper materials, posters and other printed media out of context and reformulated in the creative mind omits the overwhelming transmission of mass media. The artists’ attempts at outreach and personal empathy speak to the growing emotional and mental disconnect currently plaguing the public reception of wartime events.

El Museo Del Barrio (revised)

Expect nothing less than sophistication as El Museo Del Barrio’s latest exhibitions equally stimulate and bemuse the mind of the viewers with art created by both traditional and a new generation of urban Latin American artists. Voces Y Visiones: Signs Systems and the City present markedly different forms of abstraction that collectively and perceptually address issues of social and political degradation. The other notable exhibition on display at El Museo Del Barrio is the collective works of Luis Camnitzer. His politically works deal with language more explicitly with relation to urban development in Latin America.

Voces Y Visiones exhibits works that evoke a yearning for everlasting societal change, showcasing a myriad of conceptual and stylistic approaches. Ranging from floor installations, two dimensional, and three dimensional styles, all the works provide a perceptual microscope into each artist’s own personal viewpoint. The group of artists’ involved primarily focus on redefining the very term of “abstraction” and “representation” in art; Oscar Munoz’s Ambulatorio (2003) reflects quite abstractly the grid work of his photographical floor piece, while shattered glass laid over the four photographs presents a bleak aerial representation of an urban landscape with the glass evoking a dangerous and hap-hazard environment. Similarly, Alexander Apostal’s Skeleton Coast IV (2004) presents a bleak portrayal of urban life in Latin America. The main focal image is a partially constructed building complex that has seemingly been abandoned in the foreground. In contrast a noticeable white building stands diminishingly small, yet vividly, in the background in the bottom left hand corner. The geometric dynamism of the isolated building activates the entire composition, the metaphorical message conveyed is ominous; the message being that governmental negligence is seemingly all too common within urban development in Latin America.

Vargas-Suarez Universal’s Virus Americanus XII (2003) is a large panel consisting of multiple overlapping marks and forms rendered on several panels. Universal’s affinity with science, particularly astrophysics and organic chemistry is distinctly reflected in his overly methodically clustered system of mark making which bare similar resemblances to chromosome testing charts, while the numerous overlapping forms wholly resemble a satellite- like image of a geographical region or structure. Furthermore Universal’s red and white palette reflects red and white blood cells, while compositionally the painting harmonise abstraction and representation. Unlike the rigid structure employed by Universal, Caio Fonseca’s Ultramarino (2008) utilises colour forms sparingly affording the viewer to “breathe” in the colour field painting. Fonseca’s forms are irregular but like Universal’s use of a limited colour palette, Fonseca’s choice of ultramarine derives from a personal passion for classical music. Fonseca’s economical use of his blue is most likely attributed to the artist’s adoration for classical music, more precisely the music of Bach. The sincerity and energy that each blue colour form encapsulates, radiates vividly against the dirt beige colour field triggering a melodiously soothing overtone. Despite the paintings’ abstracted representation of musical notes, Fonseca claims that he does not intend to re-tell or recreate a particular story or event. In fact the artist believes that each viewer will find it in themselves to construct their own story or message in his artworks many shapes and lines.

Luis Camnitzer however does afford an explicit narrative concerning the political temperature in Latin America. Camnitzer’s self titled solo exhibition includes an eclectic range of works that reflects the artist’s attitude in what can only be described as upfront- the works perceptively voicing a “…sense of wanting to change society.” The meaning of change is one that viewers are intended to query by constructing and deconstructing the works reflecting on individual perceptions, assumptions, and the self consciousness. Most, if not all, of Camnitzer’s works explore the relationships between images, objects, and texts creating for a language that tackles issues of power and oppression. For instance Compass (2003) is a single compass pointing in a northerly direction. The picture conveys the essence of time; the past, present, and the future. The compass symbolises a periodical time and direction that has remained unchanged today since colonial Latin America. While Compass meanders between language, image, and concept, Camnitzer’s etching titled Horizon (1968) tackles language and conceptualism. With the word Horizon printed, one can discern an immediate sense of precariousness and disorder. The bold typewriter font conveys a level of attentiveness with the word Horizon conjuring visual imageries of infinite time, even the future; its incompleteness heightens the viewer’s awareness of an ominous signifier of a failure, even perhaps a prosperous and pragmatic future that was once to be, is now unforeseeable.

Though all the works are political in subject matter, they are intelligent in execution. The message that El Museo Del Barrio ultimately presents to the international community through Voces Y Visiones and Luis Camnitzer isn’t one of political equality, nor is it one that calls for social equality. The message is purely nationalistic; to reflect on a history that was once rich and vital, but has now succumbed to decline and obscurity. To develop and enrich that history into the future is as vital as remembering and preserving it in the present is a message that translates through both Voces Y Visiones and Luis Camnitzer.

Singular Visions at The Whitney

The Whitney has provided an installation that intensifies the viewer-artwork relationship. Singular Visions, a twelve-piece summation of contemporary art’s forty-seven year journey to its current condition, has renovated the viewing experience by giving each piece it’s own room to accommodate its size, technique and concept. This regal approach allows the artwork to properly marinate within the viewer. The Whitney re-released these pieces from their permanent collection to remind the art community of its accomplishments and challenge it to reinvent some of its expired practices. The journey of contemporary art is best memorialized by the work of Gary Simmons, Ree Morton and Edward Kienholz.

Gary Simmons’ “Step Into the Arena completed in 1994 is similar to his previous “erasure” work, which incorporates white chalk drawings on slate painted surfaces. However, the artist incorporated his drawing technique to sculpture, which resulted in a white boxing ring with a black canvas floor, theatrically lit from above as if something greatly entertaining just ended. In it’s own space, the ring transforms the innocent viewers into suspicious spectators of a ghostly sport. The floor of the ring is marked with chalked foot instructions to the Cakewalk, a dance popular during the years plagued by slavery. Pairs of black tap shoes are tied to the roped perimeter of the ring increasing the feeling of recent abandonment. With adequate reflection it becomes clear that the installation is loaded with the racial and social disadvantages heavily burdening Simmons. A white cage has been made to entrap the black flooring. The chalk marks, although fine and two dimensional, lay heavily on the elevated, stage-like flooring. The rich blackness of the floor is polluted with the smeared white chalk and bound by the immaculate white structure around it. Simmons also includes a secondary commentary addressing the oppression of essentialism; a philosophy that claims everything has a definite purpose cementing them to a painfully narrow existence. Like a boxer, Simmons found himself defensive and fighting to break free of his imposed singular definition.

“Signs of Love” first exhibited by artist Ree Morton in 1976 is a piece that brilliantly displays the benefits of the one-room one-piece arrangement currently utilized by the Whitney. Morton entered the art world late in her life and did so with originality and sincerity. Her ten years of creative construction was interrupted by an untimely death in 1977. However, Morton’s work continues to pulsate with her artistic energy. “Signs of Love” is as bold as a broadway set design, but emits a sensitivity typically felt in the warmth of a home or in the innocence of new love. Materials ranging from wall paint and tape to ladders and garland make the installment an interesting piece serving as both a painting and a sculpture. The freedom in which she handled mediums allowed for honest, interactive and penetrating artwork. The attention given to decorative elements such as bow ties and picture frames, make the piece visually poetic; it’s revealing yet still obscured by its minimalistic approach. Undeniably feminine, “Signs of Love” seems to make an individual rather then political statement. It reads as a personal reflection of how love and womanhood are experienced based on the experiences unique to the artist.

Edward Kienholz’s “The Wait,” is a main attraction in this group exhibition. There is an immediate curiosity that is only nurtured by the questioning observers. The scene is familiar but unnerving, composed of aged materials, furniture and other oddities. Kienholz, who lives and works in New York City, collected from piles of discarded objects deemed unfit or useless to the owner with the intention of making recognizable scenes that swell with social criticism. A scene that can only be viewed from the front forces the viewer to confront the central figure whose lifelessness is haunting but delicate. The observers are positioned outside the woman’s space but the desire to intrude surges as you silently investigate. A woman made of animal bone and completed with a small, glass-covered photograph as a head, sits below a sizeable portrait of her husband. The title suggests she is waiting, but for what? The portrait of her husband seems to memorialize him. The fullness of his mustache and liveliness in his eyes makes him younger then his widow who continues to live, but does so painfully alone. Kienholz subject is a victim of her seemingly endless wait for death and the universal loneliness that erodes the human spirit in death’s wake. The barely recognizable objects, once members of homes and families, stand renewed and transformed as reminders of the dark realities of humanity.

The Whitney has taken a step forward in changing the way people interact with art. Twelve pieces, chosen for their unique representation of contemporary art from the past forty-seven years, occupy twelve different rooms. Allowing an individual piece to be the singular focus of a room permits the art to stand in its most powerful state. The observer’s personal reflections are intensified by this exhibits purity. Gary Simmons’ “Step Into the Arena (the Essentialist Trap),” Ree Morton’s “Signs of Love” and Edward Kienholz “The Wait,” are evidence of such success. The grand scale of the work is matched by their compelling concepts, making them suitable for such an imperial exhibit.

David Altmejd at Andrea Rosen Gallery (revision)

David Altmejd’s two large Plexiglas works fill up the main room at Andrea Rosen Gallery. The works are large, approximately 2 x 4 square meters each, located on low pedestals they shimmer like aquariums in the dimly lit space. In the exhibition there are also wall pieces made of plaster, freestanding sculptures and other Plexiglas works in the gallery’s inner room and entrance.

The two Plexiglas works are titled "The Vessel" and "The Swarm", they are beautiful and ethereal in their transparency. The spaces inside the boxes are divided into smaller parts by intricate constructions of Plexiglas levels and walls. In, between, and through the Plexiglas pieces run bits of sewing thread. Most of them are white; creating architectural lines that connect the Plexiglas pieces with each other. Some of the threads are in the colors of rainbow— from yellow to green or yellow to red— and together they pierce through the Plexiglas pieces to create different kinds of forms. The forms are reminiscent of highly stylized flowers or electrical wires. There are also small objects of white plaster incorporated in both constructions; some of them look like lumps and an assortment of human body parts. They are all integrated in to the large aquarium-like boxes, like dioramas people can walk around and see in detail.

In "The Vessel" there are stacks of Plexiglas, creating different shelf like spaces. One of them is covered with plaster noses in bright colors displayed like jewelry in a store window. The overall shape is mimicking the form of one or several swans through the various materials contained within it. This makes the Plexiglas box more of a display case, showing us an extraordinary creature, or parts of bird species. Inspecting the overall appearance of this piece requires time; all the details together in this large work demand the viewer to look slowly and thoroughly.

In the bottom of the Plexiglas part of the sculpture are white plaster hands which seem to have dug out pieces of the pedestal. The podium incorporated with the piece makes the whole work relate more to the floor and the space it is situated. The wall pieces seem to depict the same kind of the human hands, body and the negative space of a human body, but since they are going in and coming out of the galley walls the connection to the space is more obvious. The transition between the Plexiglas pieces and the plaster sculpture is a little awkward, the plaster sculpture is not as delicately handled, and it is actually quite the opposite. The material is lumpy and grotesque, like a child playing with clay.

"The Swarm" is the other large Plexiglas piece. It combines sculptures of ants and ears in a maze of levels and thread. It is livelier, with more colored thread, but it does not have the same overall shape within the box like "The Vessel". "The Swarm" becomes more of a laboratory where we can see ears and ants, in a labyrinth of threads, trying to escape or breaking in to the Plexiglas box. It is exciting because both "The Vessel" and "The Swarm" give the viewer room for imagination; we can place it in our own narrative and put it out of the gallery context.

"Architect 2" is installed in the inner room of the gallery. A larger than life body seems to be dug out from the wall with big angel wings. At the end of the narrow space the angel-like figure is centered similarly to how Jesus figures in churches are placed. This is one of the several white plaster sculptures that are in the exhibition. It is also made in the lumpy and awkward style. Where the Plexiglas boxes have as an otherworldly quality the sculptures are literal in the religious reference. In front of the plaster piece is a Plexiglas box containing stones and minerals. The minerals in the glass box, together with the angel like shapes, brings nature and religion together in a way that make me think of “New Age” aesthetics. This work seems to be more kitsch-oriented than the other Plexiglas boxes suggest.

Altmejd’s older work is a lot of freestanding sculptures in a kitsch aesthetic with polyester hair, heavy painted flesh surfaces and deconstructed bodies. He also has a body of Plexiglas work that has a cleaner and more controlled aesthetic. The plaster sculptures in Andrea Rosen Gallery have a visual connection to Paul Thek’s work; a bizarre, disgusting and intriguing language, fresh in my mind from the Whitney Museum exhibition. For Thek, that language was more about the artist himself and his relation to his body. In Altmejd’s work the language seems more calculated to evoke a reaction from the viewer. The freestanding sculptures are not made in the same aesthetic language as the boxes; there is a disconnect between the works but maybe an intended one. When the Plexiglas constructions take on a clean, perfected style with a lot of beautiful details the contrast between the heavy molded sculptures are too big to feel connected. The gallery is not an environment that helps that relationship either, these works do not seem to exist in the same world. If the works were installed in a different environment, a church, in nature or a laboratory, it would be easier to see them as an installation, in relation to each other but still disconnected.

Paul Ramirez Jones (revision)

Paul Ramirez Jones’ The Commons, takes a form of art that has become banal and radically updates it. The artist has made an equestrian statue without a rider, functioning as a corkboard for public discourse, and placed it in a gallery. The result is engaging and entertaining, but very odd.

The viewer is engaged with the piece by it’s being a bulletin board, where visitors can read notes left by others and post their own. This is an amusing, interactive activity. It takes place entirely on the plinth, though, leaving the horse as a prop. It itself is best described as a corkboard in the shape of a statue, since very little effort is made to hide the artifice or bring it to the standards of a sculpture proudly erected by the state. The sculptural form that the corkboard takes is a signifier of a public monument and not one in itself.

What’s striking is that this archetypal equestrian statue is riderless, a revision of its meaning, since what parts remain of the artwork are those that are normally used as a predicate to indicate the greatness of the mounted subject. The leader is gone, leaving us with a sculptural archetype that is description of nothing, or with the description itself as referent. The artist intends this as a celebration of the common folk who are the vehicle that propels the leader. That would make this a statue of the multitude, which at once symbolizes their power and also enables it to be exerted as they post their notes on it. Yet it doesn’t really work that way, since what the horse has become is only a sign of absence. The emperor is not atop the horse, but neither is the multitude.

The Commons’ location is also jarring. The commons are physical places that host the public sphere, in the street, in print or online. Alexander Gray Associates is not public; it is a private space opened to the public. The Commons takes a sculpture out of a plaza, where the masses must pass by it, and places it in an interior space that people only go to in order to see the piece. This displacement changes far more than that of the rider. On the one hand, it removes the politics almost completely; it is ineffective as a locus of public discourse and all notes on it will only go between members of a relatively homogenous group of gallery browsers. In this context the missing leader is the artist himself, who has simply provided a blank wall on which the viewers create their own show. WC: 436

Glenn Ligon, America

The mid-career Retrospective of New York artist Glenn Ligon currently on view at the Whitney Museum of Art (March 10 – June 5, 2011) showcases approximately one hundred works by the artist spanning nearly three decades of innovation. The wide array of media, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawing, video and sculptural installation, and depth of source material focus broadly but unflinchingly on the cultural understandings of race in the United States. Taking inspiration from nearly every corner of popular culture, Ligon imparts his vision in a dramatic, multi-directional approach that activates and educates the viewer, encouraging him to take an individual point of view. Though dedicated to the state of the contemporary Black American, Ligon’s emphasis on history and transformational events places the work within a context of American experience that relates itself to an audience of all ages, races and sexualities.

Many of Ligon’s large canvases, including six paintings containing passages from African American author James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village,” powerfully portray the emotional turmoil behind the literary discussion of race by obscuring, smearing, and loading their text with heavy traces of oil and coal dust. The words on the canvas appear legible in sections, but attempts to follow Baldwin’s accounts of life in an all-white tribal village are ultimately met with Ligon’s impenetrable veiling. The choice of a black and white color palette mirrors not only the racial issues being discussed but the austere, scientific nature of Baldwin’s documentation. Ligon’s approach to the comedy of Richard Pryor, handled in a later series of paintings, shows a similarly heavy-handed display of text but shockingly activates the technique through the use of bright, contrasting colors. Though less difficult to decipher than the previously discussed Baldwin canvases, the Pryor quotations require a strain from the viewer that relates directly to the tension of its content, which oscillates between funny, offensive, poignant and disturbing. Ligon’s intrusive use of color and texture upon these transcriptions add significant weight to their already potent literary sources and their play between document and abstraction exposes conflicting mental states at work in the understanding of racial prerogative.

Another powerful piece, Notes on the Margin of the Black Book, continues Ligon’s process of commentary through appropriation. Here, images from Robert Mapplethorpe’s iconic Black Book series are displayed alongside contemporary public reactions and reviews, as well as reminiscence from Mapplethorpe and his subjects. The wide variety of opinions juxtaposed with Mapplethorpe’s beautiful yet provocative photographs, including the iconographic “Man in a Polyester Suit” adds a pointed historical rootedness to the work that emphasizes the threatening cultural response to the black man at the time of its production. This implication, though absent from the timeless, classicizing aesthetic of the original Black Book, is crucial to the understanding of sexual and racial roles within the scope of artistic creation in America. Ligon’s kinship with the subjects of the photographs as African American individuals and his sympathy with Mapplethorpe as a fearless creator place him in a mediary position, which allows him to empower both groups through the addition of his meticulously chosen text.

Finally, the neon sculptural installations, one of which, “Negro Sunshine” was especially commissioned for the show, provide a seemingly simple yet deconstructed view of Ligon’s America. In a darkened room, three neon sculptures reading “America” encircle the viewer as if to offer some sort of advertisement. The first installation appears conventional in its depiction, though the guise of its commercialism is somehow disturbed by the haphazard hanging of cords. However, as one looks across the room, he is met with the oddly disturbing sight of the word “America,” spelled entirely with backwards letters. Here the objectivity of Ligon’s text has dissolved into commentary on the empty promise of a forward-thinking society. Ligon’s manipulation of the language is striking here in its stark compression of legibility and incomprehension.

Though the exhibition’s more pictorial representations such as the iconic 1970s style coloring book series and runaway slave posters are successful in their juxtaposition of stereotypical black imagery with banal, sometimes humorous language, it is Ligon’s textual representations that pack the most punch at his Whitney mid-career Retrospective. By offering qualitative information in a manner that is illegible, confusing or absurd, Ligon presses the viewer beyond the simple reception of words and into a deeper understanding of their underlying cultural, historical and artistic intentions. In this way, he challenges the viewer to take in not only the sights and sounds of the American experience, but the tense feelings of inner turmoil, strength and transformation central to his understanding of Black culture.

Mirar Sin Pagar Es Robo (Looking Without Paying is Stealing)

Through May 29^th, 2011 El Museo del Bario visitors can leave with a signed art print from the retrospective show of world-renowned artist Luis Camnitzer for just twenty-five cents. In the center of the main exhibition space is Camnitzer’s 1996 work Autoservicio. The piece consists of several stacks of standard office paper proclaiming various slogans and statements written in Spanish. Each stack of paper is comprised of identical pages printed with the slogan. A label near each stack offers the English translation. One telling example is Mirar Sin Pagar es Robo, or Looking Without Paying is Theft. On one end of the podium is a pad of ink and a rubber stamp of Camnitzer’s signature. There is also a slot cut in to the podium and a sign asking the viewer for twenty-five cents. The piece relinquishes all control of the artist to the audience participant who is free to select which slogan he or she will buy, and then is free to “sign” the paper wherever he deems fit and how ever many times she chooses. Of course, viewers are not forced to pay, or to select only one print, but the ever-present museum staff give an approving nod or a curt “thank you” when someone participates in the work honestly. Although Autoservicio raises questions about commodification and homogeny, each page remains unique because every participant contributes nuanced variation during its constant modification. The selection process, the pressure applied to the ink pad and paper, how much is paid and how often, what happens to the page after it is removed from the podium, and an innumerable amount of other, slightly different, interactions and combinations of actions constantly alter the work.

Autoservicio is just one of the many complex pieces from the German-born, Uruguayan-raised artist included in the show. However, it is an excellent representation of his work as a whole because it is an engaging, heavily conceptual, print-sculpture hybrid. While heralded as a conceptual artist, Camnitzer almost exclusively uses printmaking and sculpture to create his works. Both methods of art making are often thought of as complimentary disciplines because they frequently share materials (such as metal, wood, paper, and plastic), they offer artists the ability to make multiple copies of an original work, and they are both frequently used in commercial and corporate art, fine or “high” art, crafts, and decorative arts. It is no surprise then that Camnitzer prefers these modes of art make making. His oeuvre almost exclusively comments on, critiques, explores, and deconstructs the art world’s pretensions and politics, the relationship of the artist to the viewer and/or the gallery, and various other contentious encounters. Camnitzer craftsmanship is as notable as his concept and often the two are inextricably linked. His clean, bold aesthetic choices (such as blank backgrounds, strong lines, neutral tones as well as black and white, the scale of each work) and his choice of wording work together to create bold and simple statements that suggest an ocean of subtext. The extent to which his the meanings in his pieces are accessible varies greatly from the seemingly obvious Mirar Sin Pagar es Robo to the more clouded The Instrument and its tool from 1976. The instrument and its tool is part of a series of small framed objects from small tools, blobs of paint, a tiny bottle of collected eraser shavings, and in this case, a pencil. In The instrument and its tool, the pencil’s graphite center appears to be extracted, or stretched out from its casing like a piece of unraveling thread or a single strand of spaghetti. Toward the bottom of the frame it breaches the frame’s glass and leads the viewer’s eye to a brass plate with the engraved words “EL INSTRUMENTO Y SU OBRA” (the title of the piece in Spanish). The objects presented (the frame, pencil, and name plate) are banal and accessible, but the way they are modified and the words assigned to them instantly render them foreign and perplexing. The audience is left to wonder whether the wood of the pencil, the graphite, or the text are the instrument and tool in question. The life-like to small scale of both Autoservicio and The instrument and its tool offer the viewer a safe intimate environment in which to consider the works while the meaning is alienating. This slippage of meaning is typical of Camnitzer’s work and serves to engage his viewer beyond a cursory glance.

Camnitzer currently lives in New York City. Since the mid 1960’s he has been exhibiting work around the world. Notably, he has had representation in New York, Los Angeles, Cuba, Zürich, Sweden, and Brazil. Camnitzer is also featured in the permanent collections of several prestigious New York museums, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Additionally, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires, and the Museu de Arte Contemporanea in Sao Paulo own a number of his works. During his career Camnitzer has received numerous awards, fellowships, and accolades including two Guggenheim Fellowships (1961, printmaking and 1991, visual arts) and numerous purchase prizes. Camnitzer has studied in Uruguay and Münich, and has taught at the State University of New York since 1969.

Malevich Paintings and His Influence at Gagosian Gallery

In early twentieth century Russia Kazimir Malevich was one of the pioneers of abstract art. He is associated with the style of severe geometric abstraction known as Suprematism, which lead to the development of Constructivism. The art movement influenced the styles of artwork that followed throughout the twentieth century. His work was suppressed in Soviet Russia in the 1930s and remained almost unknown during the following two decades. There was a renewed interest in his work in the West in the mid-1950s as seen in the paintings of Ad Reinhardt and in developments such as Zero, Hard-edge painting and Minimalism. His work was most widely seen by Americans in his 1973 retrospective exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. One of the purposes behind this exhibition is to highlight Malevich's influence on American art in the later part of the century. To illustrate his influence the exhibition also features works by modern and contemporary American artists including John Baldessari, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, and Cy Twombly. Although the varying art forms in the show were each created during different periods of the turbulent twentieth century they relate to each other through the artists' interest in non-objective style using geometric form drawn from Malevich.

Artists believe that by creating a better and more beautiful environment new and better people will emerge from it. Suprematism, Constructivism and the Dutch movement "De Stijl" were formed based on this idea. Artists involved in these movements, except for Malevich, rejected the traditional fine art concepts as being sufficient unto themselves. They believed that art and design needed to combine to create an applied art, an art for everyone, which did not involve subjectivity and individualism. These movements were nearly the opposite of the preceding Art Nouveau or Surrealist styles. Suprematism and Constructivism dealt with infinity and the absolute. Suprematism was the more mystical side and Constructivism was more concerned with the future and technology. The result is dynamic pictorial structures striving for utopia. Malevich had a more spiritual approach to the Suprematist ideas.

The Gagosian Gallery is featuring six rare and pivotal paintings by Malevich. In the first main exhibition room are four of Malevich's Suprematist paintings three of which are from 1915, first exhibited in 1916. The strong Suprematism, 18th Construction (1915) is a small (20 7/8" x 20 7/8") square painting that simply depicts a cluster of rectangles that are floating diagonally. His paintings do not represent real objects. Malevich's paintings attempt to get beyond the physical world; he is trying to reach beyond the third dimension with pure abstraction. Malevich's Suprematism is an art of pure form. His art aims to show the superiority of and utilize the basic tools of art: color and form. Geometry is used as the universal language in an attempt to convey the supreme reality of existence: what he called "pure sensation". His passionate paintings attempt to convey weightless vibrating textures in an infinite expanse.

The first large exhibition room, featuring the most Malevich's in one room, (previously mentioned above) is an excellent way to start the show. The exhibition allows the space and time to get a close view of the paintings. These paintings are a pleasure to look at. Malevich uses rectangles, triangles and other signs on a white infinite space to create magical dynamic motion. When looking closely at the work one sees the artist's hand in the canvas: pencil marks, smudges, and uneven paint. The nails along the side of the canvas fastening it to the wood frame make you think of the force and perspiration that Malevich used to create his paintings so many years ago. The small size of the paintings creates an intimate experience, versus some of the American works, which are overwhelming in size.

Further into the exhibition Malevich's Desk and Room from 1913 is featured. The painting reveals Malevich's earlier interest in Fauvist and Cubist art. The colors and forms are heavy and laborious. Also in 1913 Malevich painted Black Square on a White Ground, which seems to directly influence Ellsworth Kelly's Black Square and White Square from 1953, which are in the show. Black Square on a White Ground shows that during that time Malevich was learning to control and drastically change his painting style.

Seeing American artists in the context of this Russian master creates the link between the artists and their work. Placing an ultraviolet fluorescent light piece by Dan Flavin within the context of the show makes the connection between the two artists that one doesn't always think of. Malevich's influence and impact on American artists of the later twentieth century are evident. Common in the works are clean long lines representing technology. Copper and stainless steel sculptures reflect materials used in architecture. The universal language of geometry fills the walls of the gallery. The show allows you to understand the roots of the once radical art movements of the fast paced twentieth century. You sense the flow of admiration and inspiration among the artists who created the work. They share a common philosophy that is represented in their many forms. Malevich paved the way for artists of the twentieth century to detach from the visible world. His paintings show a sense of the coming of an age of technology and a wanting to have a hand in shaping it. He added a spiritual beauty to our sense of technology.

Dr. Larka (Revision)

The Drawing Center's hard wood flooring and central Romanesque columns create a room that feels much more monumental then is possible for Wooster Street. However, this elegant space properly pays homage to primitive art techniques that unite all creators of art's past. This meditative center lowers your voice and dilates your pupils to best observe of the delicate work of pencil and ink on paper.

The Drawing Center is the ideal place for Mexican artist Dr. Larka to debut his raw, instinctual work to New York. The series of drawings on paper explores the inter-stirrings of humanity’s primal urges, which are often censored to secure the social/ moral order impressed into our existence. The artist manifests these impulses as ink drawings similar in style to traditional tattooing and early cartooning. Unambiguous and legible, the seemingly preliminary work is assisted by the medium allowing it to hang as a complete thought. Viewers receive enough pictorial information and understand the fine characteristics of the medium utilized. The artists' ability to acutely monitor the weight, length and width of line with ink is challenged by the medium’s unforgiving, permanent nature. Dr. Larka's imagery shows premeditated ideas that he willingly allows the medium to manipulate. His trusting use of black ink and white paper allow for a visually translated, unedited stream of consciousness for the viewer to pore over. Each drawn object offering itself as a piece of another object makes these compositions puzzling, however, the final map of Dr. Larka’s channeled impulses offers the viewer art to identify and sympathize with. “Sketch 6”, specifically conspicuous because of the wide exposing mouth and breasts that are deserving of a permanent place on any sailor’s body, when closely observed reveals a spectrum of emotions that are gently drawn but are the product of an deeply mindful artist. The work is held in balance by the duality of a soft, minimalistic medium and an emotionally saturated subject matter.

When visiting the Drawing Center and observing the visual expressions of artist, Dr. Larka, it is important to digest the experience slowly and fully. What might appear as incomplete and expired is in fact loaded with poetic brushwork and steaming with an inner dialogue that boils within us all.

Richard Serra's Metropolitan Retrospective (Revised)

Untitled, 1972
Charcoal on paper; 29 3/4 x 41 1/2 in.

Black shapes become a dominant force in Richard Serra’s Drawing Retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Heavy applications of oil stick on varied supports create an architectural and sculpturally inhabitable place for the viewer. Serra is one of the best known living Minimalist sculptors, and the Met has allowed us a glimpse at the drawing work that shows his talents in creating physical spaces within a two dimensional format. The connection of Serra’s sculptures and drawings is evident in this retrospective in many ways.

Upon entering in the galley we are faced with some of his earliest works on paper and linen. They are much smaller than the drawings that occur later in the exhibition. Untitled, 1972, a drawing executed in charcoal on paper begins to show his Minimalist language as well as how his drawings influence his sculpture. This drawing is heavily worked, showing erasure and redrawing, as well as the maker’s fingerprints and smudges. The labored process of this drawing creates movement and makes its trapezoidal shape vibrate. Although this drawing is fairly small in comparison to the rest of the exhibition, it creates an illusionistic space by the use of perspective and gesture where as the oil stick drawings, because of their size, create a physical space. Untitled utilizes all the corners of the paper, creating great tension as if this shape were going to bust out of its surface and exist in the third dimension. In many respects this work parallels his early sculptures that have this uneasy tension where they feel as though it might fall on the spectator.

Blank, 1978, is an imposing two-panel oil stick drawing on linen. Both panels are a little over ten feet by ten feet and are placed on opposite walls. Upon entering this space one can see the marks left by the oil stick on the rough linen and smell the odor of the thick oil stick. Blank creates an inhabitable sculpture. One feels enveloped by the black sheet; when one stands between the two panels they begin to close in on you and make you aware of your body in relation to them. Drawing usually does not have this effect on a viewer, the size, material, and color all create this effect and truly make this drawing a sculpture. As a Minimalist Serra’s work seems devoid of representational content, however, it seems that by creating this type of drawing he is commenting on the history of drawing, and what drawing can be. Serra is pushing the boundaries with these large black panels and making the viewer think more deeply about what is sculpture and what is drawing or does that question even matter in a contemporary art world? Blank is not the only one of these mutli-panel drawings it shares many characteristics with drawings such as Pacific Judson Murphy, Abstract Slavery, and others in their surface and grand scale.

Serra’s framed horizontal multi-sheet paper drawings such as The United States Government Destroys Art, 1989, are some of the most appealing works in the exhibition. This drawing references his court battles of the eighties in relation to Tilted Arc located in lower Manhattan, funded by NEA, and removed after a long court battle because of some complaints from tenants in the federal buildings which surrounded the plaza. This work has two large squares put together and one is tipped at a slight angle. Putting two pieces of paper together one at an angle creates visual tension, in relation to the title we can read into this minimal work more clearly. This drawing is reminiscent of Malevich’s Suprematist work with squares and rectangles in black and white. The United States Government Destroys Art, is drawn with oil stick, and like the Blank has a heavy texture and smell. The large drawings are reminiscent of his steel sculptures especially in their tactility by way of oil stick. This texture is achieved through multiple layers of application of the oil stick. The oil stick is applied in a vertical and horizontal application in layers to build up the surface. This build up shows the history of the mark and upon further investigation reveals the detailed and concise making of the surface. These multi-panel vertical works (Weight and Measure IX) seem to reference Rothko. The black is more feathered along its edges and has a white (blank) center like many of Rothko’s paintings. In many respects these drawings become more contemplative compositions. They aren’t as hard edged as the enormous oil stick drawings that reference sculpture. Works like The United States Government Destroys Art are more approachable for a viewer and the title gives the viewer more insight into the artists’ intentions, or comments on Serra’s own situation.

This retrospective works on many levels, it shows us his earliest drawings, sketchbooks, his large sculptural drawings, as well as drawings that seem to reference art history through the work of Malevich and Rothko. Even though Serra is considered a Minimalist, there is a lot of content to be read into his works, formally, art historically, and Serra’s own court battle. The connections of Serra’s sculptures are evident in his drawings, and show the confluence between medias. Many times retrospectives can be dull and monotonous, but the scale of the work and his varied formats keeps the viewer interested and wanting more.

"Long Eyes," Rachel Whiteread at Luhring Augustine

[I just saw that someone already did this show - I'm under the impression that that's not a problem so long as our reviews are on the same week and independent of each other. I'd start over but that'd be a lot of work at this point; though I can redo this if it is a problem.]

Rachel Whiteread is best known to many for her Turner Prize-winning 1993 sculpture “House,” in which the lone Victorian house to escape urban renewal on its block was filled with concrete and then pulled away and discarded, as if it had only ever been a mold for the sculpture. This striking piece shares a few similarities with her more contemporary work, as may be seen at Luhring Augustine through the 30th of this month, but also seems fuller. “House” made the transparent concrete, and inverted the relationship of space to container, presence to absence, in doing so commenting on its desolate surroundings.

In Long Eyes, her present show at Luhring Augustine, the artist does quite the opposite. The key pieces of the show are a series of casts of windows in clear resin. In “House,” the window had been the trickiest architectonic element because it was simply lost. The process removed any purposefulness or reason for interest in windows, since the interior through the barrier of the object – the house – became the object itself, and since all transparency within the visible space that a window offers was lost at the same time that perfect transparency through the architecture was achieved. The complex nature of a viewer’s relationship to “House” can be summed up rather well in the problems of the windows, a fact that is itself satisfying.

All this reference to “House” seems apt, though it is hardly the defining piece of Whiteread’s, merely one of her best known. While many of her subsequent works, including some others in this show, follow entirely different threads, Long Eyes returns us to vacant architectonic space. The windows play their roles rather directly – they are transparent, though colored (the titles, things like Dawn, Daylight, and Dark, point to this coloring being an abstraction of the light that comes through windows in situ), and hung along the wall. The sculptures are more mediated in this case, with the casts of either side being attached back to back to create a sort of composite anti-window. It would be hard to do this any other way, of course, since casting an open box leaves one side undefined, which Whiteread avoids. A side effect of this, however, is that we get the presence-in-absence as before, but of an imaginary and irrelevant space. In flipping and merging, Whiteread travels from simply capturing the space of an object-of-absence, like an archeologist at Pompeii, to creating a new space out of an implied absence. That new space is strange in that it implies the entirety of everything other than the window. The gallery, the viewer, and everything else in our world, has become the window pane that pushes against it, while the object has become the exterior world viewed through it. The objecthood and otherness of the art piece has been reversed, to a certain extent, and while this is quite clever it would be better if it were somehow carried further; instead the objecthood of the piece is in every other way confirmed.

The connection between color and the sense of place that it creates adds a aesthetic element to the work, which is otherwise not very exiting to actually view. The color of light that fills a space gives it visual and affective identity. Here, that light is presumed to be daylight (or, as in the case of Dark, its absence), and its source the window that the pieces negate – this assumption is necessary to continue the binding of interior and exterior into one form. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. The colors fail to embody the light that they lay claim to, and the coloring does nothing to overcome the artifice in any meaningful way. The light is neither trapped in the anti-window, nor passing out of it, and in a way, we are here given the biggest problem of the entire conceit – like the solid, opaque “House,” Dawn and Daylight have a awkward relationship to light since they directly contradict the parameters that allow it to enter the environments they reference. As a result, the colors seem decorative and functional for differentiating between pieces. Whiteread succeeds in calling to mind windows (of course it would be hard for her not to), but she fails to conjure any sense of the light that goes through them – the experience, in other words, of a window in action. This is an obvious result of taking something like a window, or a house, and rendering the transparent, empty parts concrete, and she would be better served by using it to her advantage than by fighting it with designer colors.

The anti-windows of Long Eye are most interesting as art commenting on art, since they reference the traditional connection between two-dimensional wall art and illusionistic windows. Though, just as they are a complete antithesis of a window and an object, they are also the opposite of a tromp l’oeil, showing the artifice of hanging an object on a wall and calling it a view. Unlike an illusionistic painting or a photograph, we can see right through them.

Comparisons to “House” are unfair since this is gallery work, meant to be hung on walls, sold, and hung on other walls. As such, it works well, commenting on its condition as such. But that Whiteread makes such sarcastic comments on the whole endeavor betrays her lack of faith in that media. “House” also commented bleakly on its existence, but in doing so it spoke to a greater dialogue than simply art.

Rachel Whiteread - Long Eyes

Inhabiting the Luhring Augustine gallery for the eighth time, Rachel Whiteread presents her latest exhibition, Long Eyes. London-based Whiteread has a distinguished career. Emerging in the early '90s as a successful yet understated member of the Young British Artists, Whiteread gone on to receive numerous accolades including the prestigious Turner Prize in 1993. Best known for her inverse cast resin process, Long Eyes presents a number of sculptures of that genre while introducing a few more recent works.

Casting a warm yellow impression, Threshold II exemplifies the play between material and shadow. At over six feet tall, the life-sized sculpture leans simply against the gallery wall. Constructed in two parts, the goldenrod colored sculpture is a model of Whiteread’s well-known technique. By casting both sides of a household door in resin and fusing them together, Whiteread creates an imprint of negative space; that is to say, a physical representation of the exterior area of the door. In this alternate universe, recessed panels become protrusions, and expected hardware fixtures become sunken depressions.

Whiteread is known to draw upon everyday objects that hold significance in her life. For example, a recent installation at the Tate Modern consisted of mountains of negative spaced cardboard boxes made from polyurethane. The artist remarked her inspiration for the work came from her mother’s recent death, and the unending amount of packing and moving boxes involved with such an event. We can perhaps assume such biographical inspiration lies at the root of objects such as Threshold II. Yet, what makes Threshold II conceptually attractive is its ability to transcend the artist’s personal reflection and encapsulate language in an objectified form. If we read Threshold II as part of an artistic language it most certainly conveys a message of action, a transition. The work contains an inherent sense of dynamism. It prompts a desire in the viewer to perform a routine action, opening a door, yet not only is the work a false door, it is an anti-door. This contradiction cuts viewer’s reading of the work mid-stream, creating energy similar to a bisected diagonal line. Indeed the presentation of Threshold II – simply leaning diagonal against the gallery wall – evokes similar sentiment. It recalls scenes of home improvement, the simple task of repainting or striping a door. Yet Threshold II, a vestige of a door, has no home to be rehung, it has been disconnected from our reality.

Following a similar vein is Daylight, another of Whiteread’s resin sculptures. Mounted to the wall, the four foot sculpture presents us with the negative space encompassing the upper and lower portions of a double-hung window. Cast in an mauve resin, the work is comprised mainly of squares and rectangles. This largely geometric composition recalls the minimalist sculpture of Donald Judd, not directly, but invites the comparison. Both artists are considered successful minimalist sculptors, and by examining the similarities we are able to see why, in addition to the reasons discussed earlier, Whiteread’s works are compelling. If we look to Judd’s work we often encounter cube forms. But these shapes are not closed. They are regularly opened up, revealing the interior space of the structure. This is accomplished by removing one or two of the sides of the cube permitting the viewer access to the normally imaginary interior space of a shape. By doing this Judd’s cubes become almost completely exterior. The sculptures are made up of mostly all external surfaces. Whiteread refines this concept further by using familiar objects, not abstract forms. The viewer knows what a door, or in this case, a window should look like. Whiteread uses the viewer’s inherent knowledge of what the object should look like to more successfully convey the notion that we are looking at a totally external object. To compound this concept of complete externality Whiteread uses a transparent or semi-transparent material for her sculptures. By allowing the viewer to see through the object any notion of possible internal space is dispelled. Of course, externality in itself is not the only criterion when judging a sculpture. Yet, from a formal perspective it does explore why Whiteread works are compelling.

An aspect that also plays an important role in Whiteread’s work is surface. In her 2010 work Squashed we see the role of surface come to the forefront of her interests. Seemingly a departure from her resin casts, Squashed presents two relief prints on hand made paper. Irregularly shaped and flat, they are mounted and hung in a frame. The two prints seem to present the remains of a squashed can or tin, as if found on the side of the road. An earthly rust patina covers the surface, and you are able to discern contour lines which, now flat, once defined its three-dimensional shape. Squashed relates to Whiteread’s other work in that it deceives us with its intended surface. It is a trompe l'oeil, a simulacrum, an object that is, and isn’t.

Whiteread’s work is strangely compelling; they have a simple gravity that draws you in. Long Eyes presents her well known resins works along with other resent experiments such as Squashed. With some effort, one can make the conceptual connection between the different styles of her work presented yet the exhibition does not aid us along that avenue. Relegated to the back room the non-resin works are presented as an afterthought. Nonetheless, Long Eyes, while not breaking any new ground does give us some insight on the direction Whiteread is heading.

LONG MARCH: Restart - Feng Mengbo, PS1 (Revised)

Enter the world of Feng Mengbo, a sanctuary where video games of the 80’s and 90’s are fused together and not only highly valued, but given new life and meaning. LONG MARCH: Restart is a video game installation at the PS1 MoMA in New York. It doesn’t take long for one to wonder what this kind of exhibit is doing at PS1. One might think that it would find a better home at a technology museum or the like. We know that design is a large part of the video gaming industry, but how does Feng Mengbo’s LONG MARCH: Restart qualify as art?

To start, the obvious answer would be that Feng Mengbo is an artist, a painter who would depict television screen shots onto canvas. Mengbo would capture screen shots from television and then paint them. He was always interested in technology and technology as art, however, what makes this particular work meaningful is in its content. The game brilliantly takes you, with ease, into the Communist struggle in China in the mid-20^th century. With a quick trigger finger you see the differences (and similarities) of Eastern and Western culture. And when you think you’re progressing through the game, you’re really progressing through one of the most monumental periods in modern Chinese history. LONG MARCH: Restart is much more than just a video game, intriguing us with the excitement of a child’s game, it is an entire journey through time.

Mengbo made a name for himself with his digital, political works, like My Private Album, and mainly worked in new media form from CD-roms to video games. What’s so unique about Mengbo is that his art isn’t about creating video games for recreation, he uses them as a communicative tool to tell the history of his nation. Mengbo grew up in the Chinese Revolution, which was also one of the biggest growths in modern Chinese history. And so, he pulls a lot from this when it comes to the content of his work. In the 90’s, Mengbo was a part of the contemporary Chinese art movement of Zhengzhi Popu (Political Pop), a movement highly influenced by Western political culture and Western Pop Art of the 1960’s. Although Feng Mengbo has become well known, his work has never been exhibited in China. While Feng’s work seems more appealing to an adolescent mindset, it is in this setting that one can more comfortably take in the political undertone of the Chinese Revolution in his work.

LONG MARCH: Restart is more than an installation, it’s an entire atmosphere. Walking into the Painting gallery at PS1 was like stepping into a different dimension. The large-scale projections, from floor to ceiling, faced each other and created a long, dark hallway. The life-sized imagery on the screens called you to attention immediately. The music was familiar and nostalgic and once inside the dark room, your eyes focused and instantaneously, one’s inner child was stirred. The awakening was that you had just entered the dream of every 80’s and 90’s wiz kid that ever existed. The bright lights of the screen were mesmerizing and immediate reactions were that of awe. The magnificence of the installation may not have been truly appreciated until one was handed the controller and told that this was more than just a show, it was interactive! You were able to assume the role of the hero, jumping around and killing the villains from games like Aliens, Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter and more, all rolled into one. And despite the fact that you’d probably already seen the PS1’s other lengthy exhibits and been there for nearly 2 hours, you didn’t want to leave. Not anymore. Feng had turned the entire room into a scene from The Wizard only instead of a Nintendo, you got the innovative and exciting technology of the XBOX 360.

Mengbo’s hero is a soldier in the Red Army defeating the evils of the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Long March is a pivotal point in the nation’s history. In 1934 the march began when the Communist Party of China, led by Mao Zedong, had to retreat and evade the Chinese Nationalist Party. Mao Zedong went on to become a revolutionary hero in the evolution of the People’s Republic of China. Althought we’re unclear as to who Mengbo’s hero is, perhaps he resembles Mao and runs around in the manner of a Mario brother sporting the uniform of a CPC soldier. While he has the usual arsenal of weapons any cool 80’s/90’s video game character would have, one of his more effective weapons is the Coca-Cola bomb- one of Mengbo’s representations of Western culture. Every element in Mengbo’s game is representational and there isn’t a more unique way to display this revolutionary point in China’s modern history.

The LONG MARCH: Restart isn’t your typical political work of art and some may not even see it as art. We rarely see a video game with as much depth as this has. It’s often hard to see the artistic qualities in such untraditional work, and very rarely, if ever, will you find a video game worthy of space at the MoMA, but Mengbo has proven that it is possible. He has proven that he can give depth and substance to a child’s game and use it as a platform for personal self-expression, give it a political voice and tell such a deeply important story.