The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics: The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics

The Stephen Hawking like computer generated “singing” emanating from Alexei Shulgin’s 386 DXI, is the first thing you notice walking into The Art Happens Here: Net Art’s Archival Poetics at the New Museum. The show, presented by Rhizome, is a showcase of net art from the past two and half decades. 

386 DXI, declared the “first ever cyberpunk band,” consists of a 1990’s PC and two computer speakers on a wooden shipping pallet taking shade under a rainbow umbrella, and a small coffee cup stuffed with a few dollars in front.  Green text scrolls left to right across the screen asking the viewer “SPARE SOME CHANGE FOR A POOR COMPUTER!”.   

The power of the piece comes from its ability to engender both empathy and bemusement.  The unidentified song being recited in the text-to-speak robotic voice has the rhythm of a sea shanty or old timey ballad, but somehow feels sadder. Located on the ground in the corner of the gallery the bulky busking outdated tech is positioned like a homeless person or gutter punk.  The absurdity of the computer positioning itself as human by asking for “spare change” while acknowledging its own object-hood as a machine, forms a perverse joke about late capitalism. ‘If robots replace human workers, leading to unemployment and poverty, what happens when those robots are replaced by their upgrades’?

Alexei Shulgin, 386 DXI, c. 1998

Programmed at the Whitney

The Whitney’s Programmed is an exhibition of instruction-based/procedural and digital work split into two sections, one of which focuses on conceptual art. Within this, there is a conversation that takes place between work by Sol LeWitt and Casey Reas. LeWitt and Reas create pieces that are interpreted and recreated to look different each time, but one is analog and the other digital. They both explore how the concept behind the work is the art itself, while the physical or digital creation can be automated or outsourced.

LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #289, 1976, uses a list of instructions performed by others who execute them in order to produce the work that is exhibited. The resulting graphic work is a series of white lines on a black background. Reas’ {Software} Structure #003 A, 2004 and 2016, creates a digital, animated series of monochromatic lines and dots responding to various rules in the coding of its program in Processing. These works were created and conceived by different people, decades apart, and in very different media.

LeWitt’s background is black while Reyes’ is white. LeWitt’s line’s points of origin are focused and static while Reyes’ are variable and moving. These two pieces are complementary and as they are both recreated over and over again they will continue to have a dance of changing forms while being conceptual siblings.

Lewitt Wall Drawing #289, 1976

Reyes {Software} Structure #003 A, 2004 and 2016

Andy Warhol - From A to B and Back Again, The Whitney

Andy Warhol - From A to B and Back Again sprawls through the Whitney, a retrospective that immerses the viewer in the work of one of America’s most celebrated artists. On the first floor, a darkened room is covered floor-to-ceiling with commissioned portraits of celebrities, artists and models. Each of their faces is lit by a bright square, evoking the feel of a camera flash. On the upper floors, one of the first rooms of the show is plastered with the bright 1964 “Flowers” series set over the 1966 “Cow Wallpaper [Pink on yellow].” The room, a striking example of Warhol’s intense iterative practice, was packed with visitors taking advantage of the instagrammable nature and of the space, their photos becoming yet another iteration of the image.


True to its title, the show spans an incredible range of topics and techniques. As the gallery’s layout guides you through Warhol’s career in a somewhat chronological path, the subjects of the work shift frequently, jumping quickly from identity to branding to brutality. Coming to the end of the exhibition, the walls are taken over by images of violence and his late large-scale abstraction, reflecting the shadow of death brought on by the AIDS crisis. From pops of color and consumer culture to intimate looks at gay life, From A to B and Back Again shows how Warhol's interpretation of America still feels incredibly timely today.

Bonnie Collura’s Prince at Smack Mellon

Bonnie Collura’s Prince at Smack Mellon showed sculptures throughout the gallery space, hung from the ceiling and on the ground. The sculptures are made of colorful, often soft or organic materials such as quilts, that are then shaped into figurative forms. Many of the pieces incorporate mannequin-like casts, taking the forms of male characters such as Jesus, St. Sebastian, C3PO, or Abraham Lincoln. Collura flips the classic relationship of male artist and female model, and I found her choice in material to be spot on for this. While we envision much of art history’s sculptural representations of women as idealized bodies constructed by male artists out of hard materials such as marble, Collura uses historically feminine modes of creating, often pigeonholed as 'craft,' such as quilting and embroidery. In the works that incorporate harder materials, it also seems that there is some type of role-reversal at play. For example, in Golden Droid/Scout/C3PO she uses wood- an organic material- to construct the metal droid, whereas in Matriarch/Heavy Metal/Jesus she constructs Jesus, who is more commonly carved from wood, out of metal. Religious and political figures like Jesus, St Sebastian, and Abraham all gender-bend in multiple ways: through their hats, skirts, titles, and/or gestures. Each figure's structure and title both seem to be in a state of motion or evolution, or even construction, which prompts the viewer to think about the representations of these characters throughout history.

Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again

Andy Warhol — From A to B and Back Again at the Whitney Museum broadly show up Andy Warhol’s various kinds of unimaginable works. Because he is considered as one of the most prominent people of representing American art, showing his great artworks at New York, where the center of an art market in the US, has a significant meaning. Warhol’s process of creating and choosing the content, are always controversial and challengeable to the traditional artistic value. His works lead people to think about what is the essential value of art and the criteria of the high and low that conventionally set.

He reveals himself as a businessman, and it shows how art is becoming a branch of economic principles and the direction of the next step for modern art. Based on his machinic process of silk-screening, he used popular motif such as Campbell Soup cans or Coca Cola bottles that many are familiar with them. As like, regardless of rich or poor, everyone knows Coca Cola bottle, Warhol wants art should be the same as that. So, it could be considered as his controversial thinking of art and artworks satire the traditional art's world monopoly of evaluating good or badness of art. Through his various works, he keeps saying us to say there is no right and wrong in art.

Battlefield: the trend revolution.

We visited the Bric Biennial. Of all the works shown, I would highlight Animalistic Punk – Fish by the Chinese artist Yi Xin Tong. It is a tapestry which represents a collage of images from Tv of fishermen. It combines images of current fishers to reference the fishermen's revolution in the Song dynasty, which was an era of Chinese history between 960 and 1279.

This transdisciplinary artist uses art as a space for activism and global communication, specifically about the censorship of the internet by the Chinese government. Through his work, he reflects on media control and abuse of natural resources in China. 

By presenting a tapestry, the artist refers to a historical and ornamental art related to high culture. By doing this, he is appropriating a high culture format to display a history of the working-man, elevating their stories. He uses this traditional technique to attack the idea of art as an institution.

I wonder if, in this piece, the visual appearance becomes more relevant than its conceptual meaning. The message seems distorted by the ambiguity of its images. The intent of the work seems to be hidden under its image, which looks more concerned with achieving its validation as a work of art by taking advantage of a ”cool” aesthetic based on new technology, but with a clear intention to connect with art history. In any case, the work caught my attention because its appearence, and that is the most important thing these days, no?

Spellbound

Nari Ward dedicates his career to discovering and examining the history of slavery. He tries to use his innovative creation to connect the tragic events in the past with current life, showing how those memories in history embedded in modern America. One of his most recent work,  “Spellbound” is a great example. Decorated with hundreds of keys, the piano is not a simple piece of instrument anymore. It has been turned into a book without words, carrying stories and historical events happened in inaccessible or disused places that have been forgotten. Nari Ward added a short film on the back of this impressive object to reveal those hidden stories. The film focuses on presenting people and places in the African-American community in Savannah from cultural aspects. Nari offers us the key to touch the deeply buried memories that we should not forget, making "Spellbound" the most moving piece for in the exhibition. I heard people saying that this is a piano you don't know which key is the right key to play in.

'Iron Heavens'

Nari Ward has an impeccable approach to art. “Nari Ward: We the People,” comprises more than thirty paintings, sculptures, installations, and videos.The curatorial aspects of Ward’s exhibitions are deeply influenced by his innovative ideas and research. Ward managed to look into America’s history and curate his art to capture people’s ideas and feelings of the real world. The artworks and objects are developed intentionally to allow room for interpretations. The exhibitions are organized neatly and artifacts arranged properly for easier recognition by viewers. The chosen positions of the arts and installations are such that they attract people’s attention, which is an indication of excellent curating skills. The curatorial premises of Ward’s exhibition play a vital role in passing information to the public.The salient message passed by “We the People” artwork borrows its essence from America’s constitution preamble. The word “we” in the artwork therefore represents everyone under the Constitution's protection. Nari Ward uses his art to demonstrate the impacts of gentrification on democratization in the United States. Ward used “Iron Heavens” as a visualization to create a sky from a combination of pans. Bats and pans in “Iron Heavens” symbolize violence with the imagery borrowed from ancient traditions. Forms such as sculptures and architecture, along with language, may have been used to express power, identity and other factors that form the basis of people’s sense of belonging. He also addresses social issues affecting Americans through his curators’ creativity and innovation.

“We the People” Amazing Grace, Nari Ward, the New Museum

Used baby strollers, fire hoses, baseball bats and other abandoned objects create Ward's amazing installations. Ward is good at transforming daily objects into incredible art pieces.  The installation creates a special connection of personal memory and sensibility.  The installation, Amazing Grace, is an interactive design. Fire hoses create a route that people can walk in between an arrangement baby strollers. The spot lighting gives a more directional circulation on the installation. The thesis of death and hope is big and abstract. However, Ward by applying different physical materials and sound successfully present his view of the death and hope. Amazing Grace was originally at the New Museum installed at an abandoned gas station. Instead of using the old site, in the new location the special lighting design at the New Museum helps people to focus on the installation itself. 

The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth in Pioneer Works

The CryptoFuturist and The New Tribal Labyrinth by Atelier Van Lieshout at Pioneer Works was awe-inspiring. It was full of immersive installations and industrial machines. The artworks and space came together perfectly, so I imagined the place was also part of the work. I guess because of the high ceiling and brick walls.  The sculpture contains familiar domestic elements such as a kitchen. There were a toilet and chairs itself to the large industrial installation so the collision from the correlation occurred between familiar everyday objects and machinery atmosphere. According to the press release, the sculptures have "a visceral desire to return to the beginning of industry—the origins of Western culture, wealth..." The grand scale the objects combined with the sound such as from swinging pendulum led people to experience the tension between their bodies and the sculptures. The feelings of walking carefully between the small works and massive columns recall any fundamental problems happening in society today, the past and the future such as a DIY nuclear reactor or external political movements. I loved to look around the amusing furniture sculptures such as lamps and desks suggesting human body were displayed everywhere on the floor. For example, there was a table with a big rock on the bottom which reminds me of bigfoot and sculpture with an ellipse shape hole which suggests a mouth.