Jeff Gibson at LMAKgallery

Jeff Gibson´s solo installation Hard Sell is located in LMAKgallery´s outdoor courtyard, comprised of five white sandwich board signs covered in images of various products. Each board holds a different variation of a color scheme, such as beiges, greens, or reds and blacks. Additionally, the images chosen for each board also follow a pattern in form and shape. The visual categorization of each board delivers an organization of color or shape that tricks the viewer into accepting the absurd image groupings. At first glance, pairing fried chicken with hair pieces and microphones with raw beef seems totally natural.

Each of Gibson´s signs could easily pass on a busy and plastered New York sidewalk without gathering many second glances. Even just walking a few steps outside of the gallery, I noticed an aesthetically similar promotional sign in front of the deli next door. Perhaps this isn´t even so specific to New York, but instead is one of the linking factors to cities around the world. Gibson´s bio states that he grew up in major urban centers in the United States, Germany, and Korea, and received his MA at The Royal College in London before moving to New York. This knowledge might lead one to connect that a baseline common denominator between cities across the globe, despite their seemingly disparate cultures, is the imagery used in street advertisements outside of local markets and corner stores.

Gibson´s work appropriates the mundane yet vibrant commercial imagery of products and assembles them in a way that essentially defeats their meaning beyond that of their value as an image. The groupings that he creates in his work lead viewers to consider both the power of imagery as well as their everyday-ness, as we are constantly inundated with images, like visual white noise in the background of our daily lives.

Lucian Freud: Monumental

Lucian Freud: Monumental showcases Lucian Freud’s well known naked portraits. Freud is a figurative painter; inspired by the impressive physicality of performance artist Leigh Bowery, Freud began a series of works that emphasize the physical presence of models. For him, the portrait begins with his idea that for all human beings, the naked body is complete honesty.

Arguably, his handling of the surface of the paintings is one of the essential elements to savor in his works. The thick brushstrokes emphasize the intensity of the subject, which encourages the viewer to focus on observing the subject immediately rather than the external judgment. The weight derived from this application of paints organizes and balances the tension of the whole painting. In other words, the rough and thick texture of his brushstrokes is not like a traditional Renaissance painting’s embodiment of figure as a seamless surface, but his work exposed the figure itself as a powerful being that pulls the physicality of the figure to confront the viewer. Furthermore, confronting the figure by physical application of paint with the spectrum of colors between the cold tone of colors on shadow part of bodies and warm tone of colors on the bright part of figures brings the subject matter plainly that causes the sense of honesty of bodies that Freud intentionally wanted to evoke.

Except in some of the paintings of closed-eye figures, the people in his paintings are staring straight of the viewer with serious, seemingly intimidating look. The expression of gazing of these figures existing between strange beauty and unattractiveness, almost seems like visual aggression, even give the uncomfortable feelings to the viewer. These are his devices to emphasize the existence of the figure itself, not the creation of aesthetic value through the beautification. Notably, his consistency of translating his immediate perceptions of figures onto the canvas without the beautification of body, cause the portraits that are complete honesty as the figure is.

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