There and Everywhere - the Here and Elsewhere Exhibit at the New Museum

Wael Shawky, b. 1971 Alexandria, Egypt, The Cave (Amsterdam) 12:45 min., 2005

After a whirlwind tour of varied media art pieces on four floors, I would say that “Here and Elsewhere” lives up to the exhibit’s title in two particular video installations, exemplifying the Jean Luc Godard reference. The two videos play on both the cinema verité style (making aware the presence of the camera) as well as Godard’s canonical style (the metaphysical questioning of language, image interpretation, and reality construct of the moving image).

In The Cave (Amsterdam), artist Wael Shawky recites a long religious episode from the Qu’ran in Arabic. He strolls in a grocery store in a black tie and suit (with a ticker tape news flash transcription at bottom) with European whites shopping in the background oblivious to the significance of his religious prayer and pushing the viewer to reconsider his/her own gullibility of this faux documentary presentation.

Abdel Abidin’s music video reworking of songs commissioned by Saddam Hussein, are sung in transliterated Iraqi by English only singers, and here the piece communicates an original narrative from the Here and Elsewhere video – which is “Why is that we were not able to see and listen to such simple images? … Without any doubt, we know neither how to see nor how to hear?” The lesson: as seductive and believable video is, we must reexamine our methods of constructing reality and deriving information about “other” people and narratives from video.

Abdel Abidin, Three Love Songs, Video, Color, Sound, 8:41 min, 2010

James Bishop at David Zwirner Gallery

James Bishop at David Zwirner Gallery

         The show features the abstract works of American artist, James Bishop, abstract works, painted during the 1960s to the early 1980s. From the moment viewers enter the exhibition, the framework and simple horizontal-vertical configuration of squares grasps their attention. As much as his works are compressed and abstracted, the impact from the simplicity is direct and powerful.

His squared and repetitively divided pictorial spaces look similar and blended, when seen from a distance, but when you get close enough to see them, each subsquare in his paintings has distinct individuality. They have differences in brightness, hues, and even in shapes. Those are minor, but exist, and make viewers feeling the paintings more organic. Another notable point is that Bishop’s concretely divided surfaces are not flat, and the many textured painted areas actually reflect the lights. Through the reflections, his brushstrokes become alive and vivid, and it makes his ostensibly static paintings more interesting.

According to the author of Recent Drawings, Elke M. Solomon, Bishop is one of the minimalist artists who has the most limited and repetitious formats in his work, but within it, there is great richness and subtlety of design. No individual squares are the same, and no divided spaces are symmetrical, so we can see the minimalist artist’s abstract works are not as nearly simple as they seem.

Artists may hide underlying meanings in their paintings, but viewers are not always able to completely understand the artists' ideas in abstract works. As abstract paintings often ask viewers for their own interpretation or even assumption, James Bishop's series of works also need such participation. 


(Photo courtesy of the David Zwirner Gallery) *REVIEWED

Lily van der Stokker: Huh at Koenig & Clinton

Lily van der Stokker’s cartoonish Huh show currently on view at Koenig & Clinton is both a soothing and fun experience.  The solo exhibition, an installation of all large-scale pink three-dimensional objects, globular-shaped wall paintings, and matching pink custom-made furniture presents a greater discussion about femininity, beauty, and vacant optimism as well as relationships between artists, critics, and equality between the sexes.  

At first glance the room is an almost an overwhelming blast of saccharine cuteness, however there are underlying subtle messages of deprecation throughout the show. A pink cloud-shaped retail sign affixed to the wall stating: only yelling older women in here- Nothing to sell is one message in particular breaks up the seemingly calm feeling of the room making a bold statement on being an older female artist today. The large wall paintings that engulf the space also seem to communicate with each other in the context of the exhibition space. For example two large pajama inspired blobs stand side by side with pink bubbles stating both nice being here on the right side and nice being here on the left side. At the center of the gallery the large irregularly shaped box sculpture is covered in doodles, perhaps referencing pieces of hair, as well as pink flowers and looks to be oozing cartoon paint on to the floor.

Huh plays with the comforts of feminine decorative flatness while making direct references and statements to the art world, but does so with graceful humor boldly requesting that the viewer question both the substance and seriousness.

(Image source: Jeffrey Sturges/Koenig & Clinton, New York)

Cao Fei's "La Town" at Lombard Freid Gallery

Viewing Cao Fei’s newest video work, La Town, is an experience that consists of equal parts enchantment and confusion. Cao’s film draws the viewer into a dark, seedy and crumbling town: La Town. In La Town Cao highlights both the mundanity and vice of contemporary society through the creation of an obviously fake, alternate world modeled on our own.

Bright, artificial colors, and the sort of omnipresent night and severe lighting one might find in a neo-noir film characterize the film. Roughly hewn, yet vividly human wax dolls and plastic buildings act as substitutes for real actors and locations. Intense music and vague voiceover narration enhances the films dark mood. Whispered voices discuss La Town’s dark fate in broken, nebulous phrases, only ever half-informing the viewer of La Town’s fate and history

At the beginning of La Town the words “this simulacrum remains unsurpassed in its invocation of the real” flicker across the screen. With this, Cao acknowledges the unreality of La Town, while affirming its credibility as a stand in for reality. Though it may be composed of no more than dolls and plastic toys, Cao asserts La Town’s validity as a representation of reality. By distilling the experience of contemporary society and transposing it onto an obviously unreal realm, she challenges the viewer to question similarities between La Town and the real world.

Image Source: http://www.lombardfreid.com/cao-fei/

Jason Rhoades PeaRoeFoam

Jason Rhoades’ PeaRoeFoam is an arrangement of installations about mass production, spirit, and space. The hodgepodge of interdependent consumer items on display obscure boundaries between the utilitarian and the artistic.

The installation’s title indicates Rhoades’ innovative material of green peas from his family’s garden, salmon eggs, and white beaded foam. Adhered together with non-toxic Elmer’s Glue, the individual elements form a complex and unitary whole. Rhoades “kebab skewers” displays PeaRoeFoam as dense objects and the veiled light wall disperses little clumps of PeaRoeFoam throughout.

The actress Marilyn Chambers image holding an infant is featured on the scattered boxes of Ivory Snow Detergent filled with PeaRoeFoam. Chamber’s image is also  displayed throughout the exhibit on cardboard with a circular hole cut-out in the place of her mouth. The proximity of the images creates tension between advertised wholesomeness and vulgar fantasy.

The Grand Machine/ Areola toys with functionality and the concept of a creative space. The skeletal metal structure congested with mass produced objects doubles as a karaoke center. Do it yourself kits, shrink wrapped pallets,  and tools among other replaceable commodities animate the factory setup.  

There is nothing random about the installation; the overwhelming presence of the objects, the dichotomous back stories and word play, the viewer’s physical awareness of space, and the variety of ways PeaRoeFoam is used contribute to a profound visual and conceptual experience.

image from http://wsimag.com/art/10899-jason-rhoades-pearoefoam 

Sigmar Polke in Moma

Moma is spending almost its entire second  floor to exhibit Sigmar Polke, who is considered as one of the most experimental artists in the last century. The show covers nearly five decades; the amount of works are numerous; the medium widely varies, which includes painting, drawing, printmaking, film, photography and film, among many others. If we only talk about the body scale of the artists’ work, it has been really impressive, which delivers a very clear message--this is one never be tired of making new work.

The works in the atrium give the audience the first impression, which include a sculpture, several large scale paintings and a film. The large scale work name “Season’s Hottest”(2013) is made by mixed fabrics on wooden frame is a quite late piece in Polke’s career , which is totally different from his early drawing works showed in the gallery next to the atrium. This piece has totally abandoned brush, ink or other artistic color materials which was frequently used by the artist; three kinds of fabrics collage on a empty 300cm*500cm wooden frame, which create a strong visual power, which is more about “less is more”, compared with his many other painting pieces. 

   © 2014 The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. All works by Sigmar Polke © 2014 The Estate of Sigmar Polke/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany

The gallery behind the atrium shows drawings of his early time, mostly from 1960s and 1970s. There are several notebooks from different periods, 1965 to 1999. It is hard to say that the small water color drawings in these notebooks are great art pieces, but for some reason I felt quite enjoyed when I read them. These rough and visually unattractive drawings record the moment  when the artist’s experimental ideas were just born in his mind, and also reflect how strong of the desire of creation the artist has. Through these notebooks, the audience can even kind track the thinking process of the artist: in the 1960s, the drawings are simply sketches by ink and brush; in the 1980s, a notebook only contains how a chair can be put on different position of a space; in the 1990s, one notebooks was fully painted by different dotes. The curating of displaying the original notebooks and digital images together also helps the audience to get the full picture of these under-table ideas.

     Mao                                                                                                                                                                     Photo Source: Internet

Visiting the rest galleries, it is really surprised to see how wide of different media and subjects the artists has explored. In the gallery six, there is synthetic polymer paint using the image of Mao from 1972, when Mao was frequently in the news and pop-art works; on the wall of somewhere, there is a collection of pink photography which is experiment by placing radioactive uranium on photographic plate and further treating in the printing process from 1990s, when the atomic energy had been the new hot issue because of the Cold War;  in the last room, the recent work covers a four-channel slide projects from 2000, several enamel on polyester works, and a digital slide show of the commission work for the windows for the Grossmunster church in Zurich, which was the project he worked until one year before death in 2010. In this project, he worked with local stained-glass artisans, and stained-glass was right his major when he was a young man before he went to art.

Making a label type conclusion for the body of work by Sigmar Polke does not really make sense. The numerous works in his whole life tells a fact: just like one of his favorite materials --potato, if there is a little sunny and water, the desire of creation just grows and blooms. All the things around him, different materials, hot social matters, scientific issues and many other things all became his nourishment. In terms of the definitions and classifications, the panel discussion of Moma gave a nice title “Who Cares if it’s painting.”

Hans Schabus, Lower East Side in Simon Preston

Austrian artist Hans Schabus presents in the Simon Preston Lower East Side location the site specific body of work profoundly titled Lower East Side. By using his obvious wits and humor the artist manages to address both conceptual questions regarding barriers and exclusivity within the art world, but also to facilitate an intense physical experience, since the objects that he is presenting in the gallery are extremely dominant within the space, forcing through special composition, size and scale an interesting interaction with the viewer. There is weird sense of awkward discomfort since the works are too large to be seen, at least in such a small space, and therefore they can be experienced by the visitor more like sculptural walls than images.

Being consistent with his interest in principles of order in architecture and society and the role that architectural structures play within the social realm the artist exhibits three facades, three sculptural copies of the gallery's glass entrance. All three, standing in a row, are facing their original, blocking the viewer entering the space instead of inviting him, reversing the function of an entrance. The first one is an almost identical copy constructed by the same material as the actual storefront. The second one, built out of plywood is the structure that was actually used by the gallery when the glass entrance was removed from its original place to become a readymade sculpture for the booth of the gallery in the 2013 Art Basel Miami. The third one, standing last in the row, is a 1:1 scale drawing of the entrance on a canvas that becomes a sculptural construction itself as it is presented as a free standing three dimensional object, the same way as the other two constructions do.
On the walls of the gallery the viewer comes across photographs (digital c-print, 9 x 12 in.) documenting the process that the artworks have been through, their previous life as functional objects or in the case of the canvas as a work of art that was meant to be site specific, but was built in a different space (the artist's studio in Vienna) and only achieved its site specificity when it encountered its alternative versions, the ones that once were functional. Through that the artist creates a narrative that seems potential fictional to some of its aspects. Therefore the audience becomes intrigued by the back story, seeing the physically powerful structures, artworks by themselves, as ephemera of an action, witnessing an intriguing duality. The same way the works function all together, each one individually is both real and unreal, public and personal, inside and outside.

By reversing the function of a gallery's storefront, creating blockades instead of entrances the artist presents a view at the art world's power structures in an attempt to undermine and question them. Even if the galleries in general and Simon Preston in particular do not follow the pattern of physical intimidation through architecture that other institutions(museums, libraries, et al.) do, the gallery as a power structure in the world of art can often become a blockade, a barrier to self expression. This condition creates a sense of discomfort to creative individuals who will often search for ways to present their work outside the tight circle of the gallery system. Hans Schabus manifests this discomfort in physical space and in the process creates an intriguing environment, worth experiencing.

 

Ellie Ga at Bureau

         

Four Thousand Blocks, Three Channel Video, 23:40 

                Ellie Ga’s exhibition Four Thousand Blocks consists of four pieces in a number of different media addressing the history of a lighthouse. Ga created a three-channel video, which almost feels like a documentary, featuring photographs, film, interviews, and sound recordings of her experiences and investigation of an ancient ruin, the Pharos of Alexandria. Ga’s work explores the landmark—one of the seven wonders of the ancient world located on the Nile delta in Egypt.  It was a Greek monument built in the 3^rd century B.C., which was later, damaged by a number of earthquakes. Ga unfolds these historical facts and other in-depth research while enrolled in the Maritime Archeology Program at Alexandria University.

            The highlight of the show is the video, shown in the back of the gallery. The screen on the right shows footage of typesetter’s letter case, to the left is of a darkroom in which the artist develops photographs, and the center screen contains footage of the artist’s journey towards understanding the mystery of remaining of the lighthouse. Ga is clearly interested in archival aspect of obtaining as much information of the remaining, with the aid off archeologists and natives of Pharos.   In the center screen she uses a light-box and lays down transparencies of drawings, photographs, documents and other ephemera collected in Alexandria. In a way, Ga is trying to emulate the idea of a myth by layering images over each other. The central screen is like a storytelling device, and at the same time a diary entry from the use of both personal and historical memory. 

Right screen of Three Channel Video

            While Ga narrates in the central screen, she continues to insert letter into the letterpress holder constructing text on the right screen.  In the beginning of the video, Ga tells the story of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom, the inventor of writing and measurement of time as a lunar deity. The legend entails a dialogue between Thoth and the King of Egypt concerning Thoth’s invention of writing. He claimed  “it will make humans wiser and improve their memories”. The recipe for memory has been discovered.  The king replies, “ What you have discovered is not the recipe for memory, but the drug of reminding. With your invention they will be taught, but they will not be wise.” Alongside the video in the gallery, Pharmakon, a letterpress on paper is a text of the dialogue between them and a brief description of Thoth. Accompanying the piece, Projector Harbor, a gelatin silver print of dice, which also depicts Thoth invention of magic and dice.  Adjacent to the photograph is the work It was Restored Again, which consisted of two slide projectors showcasing text and iconographical images of the history of Pharos of Alexandria.

Projector Harbor, Gelatin Silver Print, 2013

            The theme of translation is evident in every piece in the exhibition especially seen in the three-channel video. Firstly Ga narrates about the various symbols that were carried on from ancient Egypt to ancient Greece. Secondly, the site in which the ruin once stood was a place of translation translating the bible into Greek. Thirdly, in her video, Ga conducts interviews with Egyptian archeologist in which translation became a problem.

            Ellie Ga’s interest in lighthouses branched from her past work The Fortunetellers. In that work she began to trance the etymology of lighthouses leading her back to the island of Pharos in Egypt. Ga’s obsession with archives and the use of mythology, philosophy, and archaeology is entwined in all her pieces. During her voyage to Alexandria, Ellie Ga learned a volume of information and through her experiences she reveals a vast amount of hidden history to the art world. 

Jasmina Cibic's Fruits of our Land at LMAK Project

                

Jasmina Cibic brings to LMAK Project's manhattan gallery a painfully staged dramatization of a 1957 Slavenian parliamentary debate.   The video (which represented Slovenia at the 55th Venice Bienniale in 2013) portrays a committee selecting artwork for the People's Assembly building in Ljubljana Slovenia.  The film is placed amid a curious installation of beetle wallpaper and photographs.  The rest of the installation along with the fact that the show is in an American gallery lend the video a new context and a new layer of content.  The title of the film and installation Fruits of Our Land betray the artist's acute awareness of what it means to represent one's country abroad.     

Upon entry of the gallery the viewer is swept past photographs of well groomed people in 1950's apparel.  These characters are absorbed in the discussion of an architectural model.  The lighting and the ambiguous setting within the photographs are reminiscent of the stills one finds in the program leaflet while attending a play, or the dramatic shots that line the corridors of theater houses. 

 The photographs are set against an installation of peculiar wallpaper. The walls are bejeweled, floor to ceiling, with illustrations of beetles of various shapes and sizes.  The press release explains that the beetles are all of the genus anophthalmus hitlari. The anophthalmus hitlari beetle failed as a Slovenian national icon due to the unfortunate name, which was given to it by a Nazi sympathizer in the WWII era.  The presence of the beetle in the wallpaper installation speaks to the augmenting connotations of nationalist symbols over time.  The poor beetle has been dethroned from its place as a patriotic icon, not by any fault of its own, but due to shifting ideologies and the scars of a darker time, the record of which can never be expunged. 

Moving past the strange wallpaper and photographs the viewer passes into a darkened room where the video is playing.  The space is just light enough to reveal that the walls bear the same beetles that infested the previous room.  The voices that occupy the darkness have the air of authority and diplomacy that is familiar to anyone who has sat through a committee meeting of any kind.  They belong to the same cast of well groomed diplomatic types seen in the photographs.  However, now they appear in a video being screened at the far end of the space.   The viewer is thrust into all the frustrations of such meetings.  Opinions are stated and restated with varying volume and conviction, tracing the infuriating circular conversation.   

They are discussing proposals for artwork for the Peoples Assembly, the submissions for which are never presented to view.  Instead the viewer is left with what he can glean about the work from the conversation.  This device is brilliant.  It fictionalizes a real artwork by reducing it to what the bureaucratic gatekeepers say about it.   Continued use of the word 'decorate' reiterates the irony of the limited way in which bureaucracy views the art it is selecting.  There is a enthralling dichotomy taking place between the decorative appearance of the wallpaper (being itself fine art) and the conversation of the characters in the film discussing art as simple decoration (not fine art).  This facetiously cynical representation portrays an art at the mercy of power structures that don't understand it.  At once a parody and a tragic truism, Cibic's installation embodies the age old maxim that 'a camel is a horse designed by a committee.'