MICKALENE THOMAS AT THE BROOKLYN MUSEUM

                                                

Mickalene Thomas' first solo exhibition, The Center of the Universe, at the Brooklyn Museum offers multiple presentations of the African-American feminine identity. Through the combination of collage, photographs, decorated and furnished interiors, and a short documentary Thomas reveals complicated relationships with her subjects. The physical separation between the photographs and collages from the decorated interiors inhibit interaction between the two spaces but ultimately do not exclude the viewer from participating in Thomas' dialogue about African-American identity.

The references to Western art history begin before the viewer steps into the exhibition space with the show's title, an allusion to Courbet's Origin of the World (1866). The first third of the exhibition features large scale collages and photographs that Thomas worked from. Thomas' photographs are sensitive portraits that hold their own beside her glittering collages. These collages make explicit references through composition to paintings by Modernist masters such as Manet, Courbet and Matisse.

In another room are a collection of furnished interiors decorated in the 1970s American style of Thomas' childhood. These installations focus primarily on social rooms, such as the living room or den of a household where family members would gather and guests would socialize. Moving from the flashy and bright collages to the quiet interiors is awkward and initially they appear unrelated. Exploration of this confusing transition proves fruitful because Thomas' domestic interiors provide an alternative presentation of the African-American female identity when juxtaposed with the collages. Opposed to the flashy subjects that Thomas places in glamorous settings, the interiors construct quiet and livable spaces that realistically depict a 1970s American lifestyle. The final third of the exhibition presents a short film about Thomas' mother, who models in some of her larger works. The documentary creates a personal link to the interiors and collages, which I interpret as cultural rather than personal commentary. By introducing one of her muses and showing the places she grew up in the Thomas provides the viewer with an intimate portrayal of her identity.

Thomas' collages, arguably the centerpiece of Origin of the Universe, catch the viewer's eye with their bright colors and large scale. Thomas draws her audience in with a pleasurable “ah-ha!” moment of correctly identifying the reference and hopefully holds them as they contemplate the issues raised. A Little Taste Outside of Love alludes to Eduard Manet's Olympia and the art historical tradition of the reclining nude. In Olympia Manet depicted the black woman as a servant, a role in which people of African descent were mainly portrayed in throughout Western art history. Here Thomas places an African American woman front and center against a background filled with patterns and glitter. Is this a boost to the status of African American women, or a comment on the sexualization of African Americans in popular culture? Thomas is an African American lesbian, so while she is closer to the subject than Manet was, sexual desire remains a component of her depiction of women. This element of sexualization either becomes neutralized or more complicated when it is her mother posing.

As Thomas' first solo museum show, Origin of the Universe addresses the depiction of African-American women, Thomas' personal identity via her complicated relationships to her subjects and even Western art history, as the vehicle through which she makes some of her commentary. The juxtaposition of Thomas' collages with her decorated interiors raise a thoughtful question about the portrayal of African-American women versus the reality of their lives. 

A DOG REPUBLIC AT LUDLOW 38

A tremendous group of artists recently gathered at Ludlow 38. The artists Jean-Baptiste Decavèle, Nico Dockx, Helena Sidiropoulos, the architect Yona Friedman, the musician Krist Torfs, and invited guests, including the graphic designers Camille Henrot, Molly Nesbit, Vanessa Place, Rirkrit Tiravanija, gave life to this effective collaboration. This group of works of great diversity converged at a point of real interest. The transhuman and complex nature of the social man is represented through an extension of the artists themselves, socializing and inhabiting isolated places, this time by animating bodies of stray dogs.

When viewers enter the gallery, they may feel attracted to the final dark space wherein dwells ‘Demonstration #1’, the video projection of the collaboration of these artists. It is a black and white video, almost naïve, which reflects how simple and basic is our existence as human beings, where in a specific plane there is no distinction between men and dogs.  As the camera moves through an abandoned railroad in Bangkok, very thick lines drawing an animation by Jean-Baptiste Decavèle appear, which shares a common aesthetic in relation to the sketches of Yona Friedman in his utopian proposals for the city of Paris. The main video piece shows a pack of dogs, a group, a collective body, and likewise a human group, they establish a social parallel structure. These drawings in their ambiguous composition might be characters or typographies from the eastern world. As they are fast and basic drawings that recall Pollock’s dripping paintings, they acquire life and generate dialogues between them, generate constructions, and hence they generate communication. The fast morphing process of characters to dogs takes the viewer to contemplate how these dogs walk, some of them on two legs while others carry protest posters. The video is hypnotizing and penetrates deep into one’s memory; it feels familiar and connects with the most primitives and inner properties of the human kind.

An experience of traveling has been taking place in the MINI/Goethe-Institute Curatorial Residencies - since 2011 at Ludlow 38 - with its different cultural cooperation and international projects. This Project followed the same spirit; the meetings of this group of artists were instances of generous dialogues between participants who flipped the process towards a common experience. The artists themselves were protagonists of this project; they talked and listened to each other.  They understood the system of signs, where the topics of language and meaning are explored, and, in particular, how language organizes society, and who actually formulates social rules and laws. This is shown in the second less interesting space - the reception of the gallery – which contained a series of photographs and videos of the meetings, in which Yona Friedman, Jean-Baptiste Decavele and Nico Dockx held talks.

As for 'A Dog Republic', our more evolved nature and simultaneously more primitive features are reflected in the example of stray dogs. “Let’s Talk Peace!” - the subtitle for this event - refers to generating a system based on the idea of freedom. This project refers to a possible sustainable identity, where languages face needs and crisis in local communities around the world. Is not a matter of barking or talking. They conceive a relationship that is an altar and refuge: a relation that is founded in communication. The success of this project is in the translation and comparison of men with dogs. Just as simple as it sounds, our essence as social beings.

JESÚS RAFAEL SOTO at Bosi Contemporary

Soto Unearthed at Bosi Contemporary takes the discovery of a rare 1968 film of Venezuelan artist Jesús Rafael Soto as inspiration for an exhibition of five works Soto created in 1968-71. As art historian and curator Ariel Jiménez notes, these works represent “classic” Soto. The minimal, geometric sculptures are attempts at creating “vibratory situations,” a sense of energy beyond the works’ physical forms. As Soto claimed, “Every single line is looking for its dematerialization, all the time.” Thus, his pieces are meant to merge and interact with both their space and their viewers, to be both an environmental experience in and of themselves and fellow participants in that experience. Unfortunately, at this show visitors are not permitted to touch the sculptures, which detracts from the physical and spatial impact the artist intended them to have.

One of the first pieces in the show, 1968’s Rombo Cobalto, is a transitional one in the artist’s movement away from two-dimensionality. On the wall hangs a painted, diamond-shaped wooden panel. From the top point of the diamond, a thin rod extends from which falls a curtain of nylon threads, ending in a mobile-like sculptural creation consisting of dainty blue wires suspended in space. One immediately thinks of a puppet on a string, an object by definition intended to be manipulated rather than rigidly still. The threads invite touch, like the strings on an instrument or a cascading waterfall, and indeed, just a few feet down the wall, a film shows the artist running his hands through a similar river of nylon in another piece.

The 1968 film SOTO, created for the artist’s solo show at the Marlborough Gallery in Rome, depicts the artist literally immersed in his work—sometimes seeming to float with it in open space, sometimes with his face layered behind the work’s vibrating rods, sometimes strumming the pieces like instruments or caressing them like pets. The soundtrack of the film, which is allowed to echo freely around the gallery, is composed entirely of sound effects created by the pieces themselves. The artist’s voice occasionally intervenes, as he recites a poetic manifesto regarding contemporary art’s relationship to humanity. He sees “participation,” active engagement with the artwork, as imperative—not just for the artist, but for the viewer as well.

This desire for participation is nowhere more evident than in Soto’s Penetrable series. 1971’s Penetrabile Sonoro consists of a wooden frame holding a forest of hanging silver metal rods. This is the heaviest piece in the show, with its thick, squared-off rods standing in contrast to the delicacy of Rombo Cobalto. Nonetheless, both the film SOTO and the vintage exhibition catalogues on display show that spectators were just as delighted to engage with this piece as with similar installations of more insubstantial materials. This demonstrates that even with such a weighty presence, the addition of viewer participation brings about “dematerialization.” The piece dissolves into and merges with its environment and its viewers’ experience of the world, rather than being a static object. It is regrettable that visitors to Bosi Contemporary cannot have such an experience, but must make do with seeing historic photos or watching it on screen.

The film that inspired this exhibition adds indispensable depth to viewers’ understandings of the sculptures on display, as well as to Soto’s artistic practice as a whole. The film also has the effect, however, of inspiring desire to touch these pieces, to be as immersed in them as was the artist, but sadly, such immersion and participation is not permitted. This policy goes against the artist’s own goal to have his art “transform…into energy,” thereby frustrating a richer experience of the work.

ERICA BAUM AT BUREAU

Erica Baum at Bureau

Erica Baum’s second solo show at Bureau invited the viewer to explore a thoughtfully-curated and somewhat mysterious pictorial narrative.  In “Naked Eye,” Baum displayed a series of photographs of the pictures that illustrate several weathered paperback books.  Each snapshot creates a somewhat alarming disconnect between that which is contained in the pages of the book and the book itself.  The photographs are closely-framed images of the fanned-out pages of each book, flattening the three-dimensional object and leaving the observer to sort out exactly what is being viewed.  These compositions resemble carefully constructed collages of black and white portraits placed among strips of brightly colored vertical page edges.  Baum recontextualizes printed pictures, taking these common paperback books and adopting new perspectives as a way to encourage the viewer to derive his or her own narrative from the collection of unsettling images.

Immediately upon looking at each photo, similar themes begin to emerge, linking each picture to the other.  There’s something strangely sinister about each photograph: a cropped image of bare legs, a man bound to a chair - it’s as if you’ve stumbled upon a peep hole and you know your presence may be unwelcome.  The theme of desire develops in the nudity, sexuality, and drama, and is ultimately mirrored by our desire to see more of the picture in each frame.  In Shift, for example, the viewer is permitted to slyly peak into the world of a woman who does not notice her observer, though her expression alludes to a knowledge that she is being watched.  She glances over her shoulder in such a way as to invite the desires of the viewer.  Continued observation is allowed because her entrapment inside the pages of the book will never expose the voyeurs.  

Erica Baum, Shift, 2012

The display of the photographs at Bureau is straightforward and not overly crowded.  Had the gallery decided to display more images, the dramatic aspects of the desire present in the images may have gotten lost in an excessively complicated narrative.  Giving the viewer an ample opportunity to interact with a photograph like Shift allows the imagined narrative to progress.  Baum’s compositions enhance the voyeuristic theme that winds its way in and out of each abstracted frame.  Because we are not looking directly into the book that was photographed, and are ultimately unable to confront the subject directly, the point of view becomes a somewhat jarring, uncomfortable glimpse into this printed world of “Naked Eye.”  

NOW DIG THIS! ART AND BLACK LOS ANGELES 1960-1980

Spanning three decades and involving thirty-three artists, Now Dig This! Art and Black in Los Angeles 1960-1980 at MoMA PS1 presents a collection that chronicles the social, cultural and political experiences of African Americans during a particularly tumultuous period. The exhibit opens with Charles White’s Love Letter #1, a display of letters and a lithograph which narrates the artist’s plea to free UCLA professor and activist Angela Davis, who served 18 months in jail before being found innocent on the charges of kidnapping and murder. Love Letter #1 sets the tone for the show by introducing viewers to socially oriented art that functioned to both share tales and to incite action.

Focusing on the marginalized African Americans, a majority of the work on display sheds light on overlooked stories of injustice. White makes another contribution on this front with his Birmingham Totem, a charcoal and ink drawing that shows a boy shrouded in cloth and sitting atop a mountain of scraps. An ode to the victims of a church bombing in an Alabama town by the Ku Klux Klan, the pile of debris depicted covers faceless victims, pointing to how easy it is to forget such tragedies. The reference to a totem pole reveals the White’s motivation to immortalize the massacre.

Now Dig This! then goes on to break up art movements that emerged during the time, including Post-Minimalism and Assembling. While both were obviously significant in the L.A. scene, the quick shift from one to the other seemed disjointed within the small confines of the space. Of the mixed media art, David Hammons’ pieces shine the brightest. In The Wine Leading the Wine, a commentary on the rise of alcoholism in adult males, Hammons literally puts himself onto the canvas with his body print technique of slathering oil on his body to produce imprints of two men in the process of inebriation. Bag Lady in Flight intrigues the eye in a similar way, a close look at chunks of human hair stuck to greasy paper bags causing immediate aversion yet revealing refinement in the movement of the origami-like pleats when seen from afar.

Although comprehensive, the sheer number of work gathered at the show caused some of the more interesting pieces to disappear into a cacophonous background. Nevertheless, the wealth of strong visuals makes for a collection that pierces through very poignantly. And while it’s easy to leave with the uncomfortable residue of oppression in mind, the best take-away message comes in the form of Charles Gaines’ triptych of Faces: Set #4. A breakdown of a black and white photograph of black man to racially indistinguishable colors and shapes, one walks away with the realization that perhaps the reason the stories presented resonate so strongly is because at the end of the day, we are simply all the same.

NOW DIG THIS! AT MOMA PS1

On view at MoMA PS1, Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, comprises works by African American artists from an era rife with friction. During this time of fighting for civil and human rights, African American artists created works that would procure them a place the Los Angeles art community. The show covers a spectrum of issues faced by African American communities, referencing political, social and sexual issues of the day. In the work of two artists in particular, Senga Nengudi and David Hammons, the body becomes the prime creative outlet in relaying sexuality and issues of stereotypical African American behavior, while also offering a perspective that was not well-known in white-dominated art community of Los Angeles.

The sculptures of Senga Nengudi are often placed in corners and made of sand-filled, twisted nylon pantyhose that carry a substantial weight. Nengudi’s 2011 recreated nylon and sand piece, “Only Love Saves the Day”, rests in a corner of the room’s entrance, creating a visual embrace with its long extensions, reaching out to the incoming viewer. However, upon closer inspection, the contortions of the open-legged pantyhose, the breast-like sandbags and the sensual stretch of the fabric produce images of palpable sexuality, an aspect that may become off-putting to some viewers. The weight of the sand in the nylon creates the illusion of female curves, alluding to a long history of sexuality in the black female, while at the same time using the long extending limbs to take this derogatory notion and push it aside in order to welcome not only the viewer, but also a new age of comfort in one’s own body.  

                This body-as-art aspect extends into other media as well. David Hammons body prints, created by the artist smearing himself in either grease or margarine and pressing his body to later coat that impression with graphite, exemplifies a novel process that engages an intense physicality. Hammons’ “The Wine Leading the Wine” from 1969 depicts two figures in profile, one drinking from a paper bag, the other directly behind, leading the drinker, presumably to no moral ends. While this piece references a social issue (perhaps even stereotype) of African American males’ drinking problem, because of Hammons’ awareness of the social issue it also creates a dialogue for change.

                By showcasing these two artists, this exhibit was able to accommodate multiple points-of-view and to deliberately acknowledge two issues faced in the African American community. Senga Nengudi and David Hammons are able to use their own ideas of physicality to produce inspirational works that create a bridge between the traditionally white-dominated art community of Los Angeles and the African American community that deserved to be part of the group. 

     

JEAN-MICHELE OTHONIEL AT BROOKLYN MUSEUM

My Way, a retrospective of the work of French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel, covers the period of the past twenty-five years. Upon traveling through the exhibit, a transformation of Othoniel’s style is apparent. The exhibit begins with his earlier works, which include small wax sculptures of various orifices and genital shapes. The sculptures are intimate and challenge the viewer with grotesque images of the human body. Over time his works become less unappealing in their representation of the body and more decorative in nature.

            Othoniel’s most recent sculptures involve large-scale beads of blown glass.  He creates necklaces, knots,  strings of beads that hang from the ceiling, and adornments on bedroom furniture. He identifies these magnified necklaces and knots as stand-ins for the human body, calling them “shadows of a missing person.” His concept involves transformations of the body or disappearances, and the human scaled necklaces evoke this message. 

Othoniel creates a fantasy world with his new medium of blown glass. The ceilings drip with stringed beads that mimic rosaries and necklaces.  A gigantic double loop of black glass beads, Black is Beautiful, recalls a woman’s pearl necklace. The sensual curves and lustrous quality of the glass make the sculpture erotic by suggesting a female form. This fanciful jewelry can seem superficial, however, when compared to his earlier sculptures. My Bed is an intricately adorned bed covered in glass beads and lacy metalwork. The covers are embroidered with pink dots that resemble nipples. The piece is enticing and extremely sensual, but lacks the intellectual appeal of his previous works. 

The exhibit is pretty with its glittering bead work, but the viewer is left to wonder what idea is being communicated or if the idea matters at all. Othoniel’s older works provoke viewers to ponder human sensuality and desire through imagery that is sometimes gruesome. Contrastingly, his newer works of glass invite the viewer to admire the surface, distracting them from whatever message lies beneath. Othoniel’s past works seem more effective in propelling the audience to think, and although his transformative glass sculptures are similar in subject matter, it is not translated well through the medium. 

The last room of the exhibition contains Othoniel’s preparatory watercolors for recent projects and a short film. The film chronicles Othoniel’s process, and documents how his sculptures have been displayed in other settings. The once-empty necklaces gain meaning when they are shown draped over trees in New Orleans. They suggest a light-hearted Mardi Gras event but also the more sobering vision of African Americans lynched in those very trees. The film gives the sculptures some much-needed substance, which is lacking when they are displayed in the museum setting. 

REGARDING WARHOL: SIXTY ARTISTS, FIFTY YEARS

An intensive examination of Andy Warhol’s career and influence, Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years at The Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibits a large collection of Warhol’s paintings, silkscreen prints and films, including some of his most well-known works such as the Big Campbell's Soup Can. The curators assembled his works into five thematic groups -  “Daily News”, “Portraiture”, “Queer Studies”, “Consuming Images”, and “No Boundaries”. In each of these sections Warhol’s works are juxtaposed with works on related themes by a wide range of other artists including Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter and Ai Weiwei.  

As the viewer moves through the galleries, two opposite attitudes on the consumerist American culture can be sensed - at first criticism, followed by a warm welcome. Through the depictions of banal subject matters found in newspapers and magazines, the “Daily News” section presents Warhol and his peer artists as critics of the superficiality and materialism embedded inside the capitalist society. Warhol’s painting, Before and After I, 1961, for example, delineates the face of a woman in two side-by-side silhouettes, with the one on the right showing the desired result of plastic surgery. In a few fluid and dripping black strokes, the artist jeers at the pursuit of artificial beauty while standing in awe of the magical effect of cosmetic procedure. With a more explicit sense of disapproval, Tom Sachs’ Chanel Chain Saw, 1996 , a chain saw made of Chanel shopping bags, attacks the worship of commodity by combining money, power and violence into one piece. The element of sarcasm continues in Warhol’s portraits of Monroe, Elvis Presley, Liz Taylor and Mao, on view in the “Portraiture” section. Warhol’s use of bold colors and large compositions, combined with the charming, and sometimes confident gazes of his characters, seems a joyful celebration of fame, wealth and power. The fact that many of the portraits were created after the deaths or during the fatal illnesses of these celebrities, however, generates a dark undercurrent which prevents their facial expressions from being taken seriously. 

Nevertheless, to consider Warhol as a critic of the evilness of capitalism carries with it the danger of neglecting his other identity as a prominent “business artist”. As the last two sections of the exhibition make clear, Warhol’s representation of popular culture and his collaboration with commercial sectors removed the boundaries between art and business, which would often fetter a traditional artist. Marilyn Monroe's Lips, 1962, a silkscreen of more than ten dozen images of identical lips, indicates how Warhol welcomed the idea of producing art as if manufacturing any other consumer good. And his composition of dollar signs, displayed in the same room of Takashi Murakami’s commercially successful Kaikai Kiki, reveals his desire to generate wealth by taking advantage of the capitalist society. This exhibition, intentionally or not, shows Warhol’s entanglement with the prevailing culture of his time, a dance between acclamation and condemnation, embrace and rejection, love and hate...