Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao's New York: Assembled Realities

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao’s New York: Assembled Realities at The Museum of the City of New York features forty large-scale panoramic images of the urban landscape of the concrete jungle. The work displays the city’s allure but, aside from displaying technological innovations in photography, Liao’s conceptual content appears lacking.

Duffy Square, Times Square, Manhattan, 2011. 

JEFF CHIEN-HSING LIAO/MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

By digitally stitching together over 200 images of an iconic location in each work, Liao aims to capture the movement and vitality of The Big Apple. The final product becomes a hyper-real image that is impossible for the artist to capture from one angle. One marvels at the crisp images that display Liao’s technical prowess with photo editing software. The photographs’ content, however, could illustrate more complex subjects than pedestrians and buildings. It is uncertain if the work could be considered significant if shown outside the context of a space devoted to New York City.

Feast of San Gennaro, Little Italy, 2011. 

JEFF CHIEN-HSING LIAO/COURTESY OF MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

As technology continues to develop and infiltrate culture, Liao has adapted his artistic practice to create work that has that “wow” factor. Like the work of Jeff Koons or Takashi Murakami, Liao’s work displays technological advancement playing to humans’ attraction to bright, eye-catching imagery. If one attempts to peel back the work’s shiny exterior, little information exists to inform the viewer or alter the romanticized view of The City that Never Sleeps. 

Half Empty at Grennan & Griffin Gallery

 

I had a chance to see HALF EMPTY exhibition at Brennan & Griffin Gallery. There were three artists’ pieces in this exhibition, but Mateo Tannatt’s sculpture Untitled interested me. The piece was a mixed-media sculpture that mixes a painted canvas, rag, and a cast chicken head positioned on a wooden pallet. I could see only one piece of his work in this gallery, but it was necessary to look up his previous works to be able to understand his world of art. The materials for his work mainly include everyday objects such as a carpet, a mannequin and kitchenware. Most of his sculptures are in a simple form which looks to be of great importance to him. His works are minimal and meticulous arrangements with a sensitivity for material texture and geometry. While viewing his exhibition, I started to think about art and objecthood. Setting feeble material up against a wall or installing an object in a risky manner or arranging objects that have different characteristics intrigues viewers and invites their concentration even for a moment. Perhaps, his work is completed by the participation by viewers instead of a visible piece if work itself? I am looking forward to his new works in the future.

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao at the Museum of the city of New York

                               Jeff Chien Hsing Liao’s - Flatiron Building, Manhattan

                               2010

When I walked into Liao’s at the Museum of the city of New York, I felt like I just entered an urban area. Most of the pictures were city views; however, I started noticing some special qualities to the images that aroused my interest. They didn’t look like Daido Moriyama’s traditional city pictures, but instead each picture has its own character and main focus, it’s obvious because a video in the exhibition unfolds this process. Many of his digital works were done with multiple exposures and focal points inside one frame. An image of the Flatiron Building caught my attention the most with the clear exposure of people walking under the blur building.

According to the composition of a picture, the Flatiron Building itself was supposed to be the main character; however, it was out of focus with an outline of its shape in which left only a trace of its iconic form. On the other hand, the street’s citizens, tourists, lamps and vehicles were clear and emphasized. Besides, many of the tourists were looking at the camera, as with the two men standing in the middle right. Some tourists were even taking pictures to the direction of where Liao took the picture. I felt a little embarrassed looking at those eye contact.

The sky was a dark blue shade that made the city looks cold. However, street lamp was bright and strong that its yellowish nature was spreading out to the environment. Accompany by the blur of diffused yellow light from the building, I could feel the warm inside such a cold city.

All in all, the practice of Liao is mainly related to “stitching images”. His practice created different focal points under one frame. The imperfection within the gaps somehow performs as a role of transitional zone between objects that also successfully bought out the iconic shape of the “blur” objects. Liao’s practice promoted the infinite development and possibility in digital photography.

Zabriskie Point at Jack Hanley Gallery

Was the point of the countercultural revolution to be able to pull a battlecry from headlines, put it on a canvas, and sell it for $20,000? Jessica Jackson Hutchins work, Protest Painting, in which she painted “WE CAN’T BREATHE” may indicate that she thinks so.

The statement released by Jack Hanley Gallery regarding Zabriskie Point indicates a clear frame of reference through which the viewer should experience the show. Namely a 1970 Antonini film entitled Zabriskie Point shot in Death Valley, California. The gallery calls the viewer’s attention to the surreality and displacement of the film and claiming a parallel to the works in the exhibition. However the film depicts student protests, a housing development dreamed up by old white businessmen, cop-killing, psychedelic free-love in the desert, and tarnished naïveté. Having watched the film and seen the exhibition, I find no need to use the film as a referent and doing so takes away from the show. The works presented stand on their own well enough.

For a group show, the artworks play nicely together. The common use of wood, plastics, concrete, and light bulbs as ingredients for sculptures prevails. Personally, B. Wurtz’s works don’t do anything for me. With the exception of the trite Hannah Fire Island, a banal assortment of overworked snapshots showing a woman topless at the beach, Ryan Foerster’s works are contemplative and rich. Other stand-outs include: Letha Wilson’s emotive works of c-prints transferred on to concrete; Sarah Brahman’s sculpture of a rhomboid cube atop a tree trunk topped with a dining counter and a potted fern; and David Benjamin Sherry’s photographs of Death Valley showcase his use of color, pushing cyan, magenta, and yellow to their extremes.

Although it is a successful group show, Zabriskie Point should be a warning to let the works stand on their own without such an overbearing premise.

J.E. Molly Seegers

Nature is A Discipline

James Benning & Peter Hutton

Nature is a Discipline, 2015

Installation view

Miguel Abreu Galley is showing American filmmaker Peter Hutton and James Benning’s work At Sea (2004-07) and Tulare Road (2010) on 88 Eldridge Street; and Hutton’s Three Landscapes (2013) on another location, 36 Orchard St. In order to create the distinct approaches as Hutton and Benning did in filmmaking before 1970s, the exhibition are displaying as a three-channel-video installation. Begin with the question that is there a certain reason for displaying Hutton and Benning’s work next to each other rather than Hutton’s or Benning’s own work alone in one space?

                                     
                                                      Peter Hutton, At Sea, 2004-2007
                                      Three-channel- video installation, 60 min, Edition of 6

At Sea (2004-07) is a real time documentation of Hutton’s life as a Merchant Marine. From left to right, the three screens depict the construction of a ship; the cargo’s travelling view; and a rusted ship landed on the shore. In filmmaking, those three different sections are supposed to showing one after the other. However, Hutton decided displaying them at the same time, so the viewer review time messages at one time.

Benning’s Tulare Road (2010) is next At Sea (2004-07) in the second room. At first glance, I almost consider they are still images until the rising sound of the cars and trucks passing by the landscapes. The minimalism of Benning’s video work attracts me by its sublet manipulation. As my eyes look at the three screes longer, I started to notice the differences between them, such as the weather is slightly change from dense fog, cloudy day to blue sky.

Successfully, the exhibition juxtaposes Benning and Hutton’s work in one space, allowing us to experience the interconnections about time and space of their video works.  

James Benning, Tulare Road, 2010

Three-channel- video installation, 18 min, Edition of 6