AC
Art Circles is a Public Service Project for the Documentation of Art
New York Edition May-June 2004, # 0 Published by Codex Now LLC
Publisher: Holly Crawford
Editors: Holly Crawford and Peter Frank
Lower Manhattan
“Concrete Realities”: The art of Carmen Herrera, Fanny Sanin and Mira Schendel, latincollector, 153 Hudson St, April 14-May 29
Three of the best known geometric artists from Latin America, where constructivism has long had a toehold. Cuban Carmen Herrera is author of stark, elegant, near-minimal compositions. Colombian Fanny Sanin (New York-based like Herrera) paints prismatic compositions anchored by an architectonic symmetry. The late Swiss-born Brazilian Mira Schendel’s soft edges and perky forms tend toward the animate rather than the pristine. The similarities – especially in color – as well as differences among the three women emerge in this show. – Peter Frank
“Rock’s Role (After Ryoanji,” curated by Ron Kuivila, Art in General, 79 Walker St, April 24-June 26
Neat and appropriate solution to the problem of overlapping noise in sound shows: sequence the pieces (assuming they’re all of limited duration) and have them emit from discrete speakers. All the works are based on John Cage’s Ryoanji, itself derived handled gently notationally from the Zen rock garden in Kyoto, so the speakers sit like island clusters in an expanse of white stones. Two or three soundworks at a time, by the likes of Maggy Payne, Stephen Vitiello, Ed Tomney, Barbara Held, and other musician-artist-intermedialists, emit from the speakers; as everyone has picked up on the meditative quality of the original garden (and Cage’s own Zen spirit), the effect is engaging, invariably calming, and occasionally amusing. – P.F.
SoHo
“Grapefruit: Yoko Ono in 1964,” curated by Midori Yamamura, Ise Cultural Foundation, 555 Broadway, April 2-May 15
Grapefruit, the hand-sized anthology of Yoko Ono’s proto-conceptual pieces, culminated Ono’s tumultuous “Tokyo period,” during which her artistic voice – faced with a public hostile to the very idea of a woman doing avant garde art – evolved from introverted and intimate to demonstrative and public. The exhibition traces that evolution and documents the transition in personal and artistic terms. The ever-present feminist theme drives the curation but does not obscure the works’ native wit and formal radicality. – P.F.
Joyce Melander-Dayton, “Back and Forth,” June Kelly Gallery, 591 Broadway, April 23-May 22
Organic-geometric abstractions with rhythmic, floating orbs and strong curvy vertical bars, reminiscent of early Pat Adams but deliberately less elegant. Many linear factors are actually rendered with yarn, inferring that this (supposedly) craft- and woman-identified material can build strong, muscular pictures. – P.F.
Jon Kessler, “Global Village Idiot,” Deitch Projects, 76 Grand St., April 24-June 5
What delights the most in this new series – barrage, really – of multimedia constructions by one of the New York art world’s premier tinkerers is the marriage of elaborate technology and knock-together, do-it-yourself technique. Kessler engages his cameras and monitors and found objects and toys and all the other “media” devices in hilariously overblown visual tautologies, goosed with goofy interactive properties. These urban-funhouse formulations are supported by so much jerrybuilt carpentry, designed with a deliberate visual (but not structural) clumsiness. If anything, Kessler is a Global Village Idiot Savant. – P.F.
T.L.Solien, “Hollow,” Luise Ross Gallery, 568 Broadway, April 24-June 5
Rather than succumb to post-modernist catch-all meaninglessness, Solien’s image implosions make a kind of dreamlike surrealist sense. His large paintings of interiors and exteriors, riffing on the tattered gentility of an invisible, but clearly impoverished, soul – an artist? a mental patient? – suggest there is method and even magic to the madness of isolation and deprivation. – P.F.
Village/NoHo
“Worldscapes: The Art of Erró,” curated by Lynn Gumpert, Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Sq. E., April 13-July 17
Done right, an Erró retrospective would be three times this size, so as to encompass all his themes – and the visual overload piled into each painting. But any (re)- introduction to America of one of Europe’s leading, most prolific, and least apologetic Pop artists is welcome, as is the survey of his early work – neo-Dada collages, Masson- and Matta-inspired nightmarescapes – done in his native Iceland. In France, Erró has churned out his impossibly dense pastiches of international cartoonery for nearly half a century, conflating sex, art, politics, and consumerism – or, rather, demonstrating through excess how they already conflate in modern life. Added bonus here: continual monitor play of his wacky films. – P.F.
Chelsea
Catherine Opie, “Surfers,” Gorney Bravin + Lee, 534 W. 26th, March 13-April 10
Photographic seascapes of the Malibu coastline, demographically diverse subjects share the common context of their surfing community. – Nicole Haroutunian
“Uncharted Territory: Subjective Mapping by Artists and Cartographers,” Julie Saul Gallery, 535 W. 22nd, March 5-April 10
Maps painted into, meticulously drawn, collaged, and humorously rendered. Highlights are the satirical New Yorkistan (a recent New Yorker cover by Maira Kalman and Rick Meyerowitz), Gonzalo Puch’s depiction of a burning telescope as a photographic homage to Vermeer, and the addition of real water to Abe Morell’s mapped lake. – N. H.
Zwelethu Mthethwa, “Lines of Negotiation,” Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 W. 20th, March 18-April 17
C-prints of South African sugar cane harvesters. Dressed in layers of tattered clothing, the men seem to stop mid-machete swing to confront the viewer / photographer. – N. H.
Jean Shin, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, 535 W. 22nd, March 19 -April 17
Brilliant installations of decontextualized everyday objects; bifocals embedded in the wall become windows to the outside, flayed leather shoes form hanging lattices. – N. H.
“Finnish Tango Show and Finland Station,” curated by Victor Zamudio-Taylor, White Box, 525 W. 26th, March 19-April 17
A strong, cohesive show of film and photography. Jari Silomaki overlays photographs with personal and international current event captions, while Sari Tervaniemi’s photo poem tells an edgy painful love story. – N. H.
Tracey Baran, “Red,” Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, 535 W. 22nd, March 6-April 22
Photographs exploring the power of the color red, mostly through the red of hunters’ protective gear and the red blood of the deer they kill.
– N. H.
Martin Honert, Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 W. 22nd, March 6-April 24
Multi-media sculptures based on drawings by the artist when he was a child. The craftsmanship is more spectacular than the final product. – N. H.
“Art History: Photography References Painting,” Yancey Richardson Gallery, 535 W. 22nd, March 25-April 24
Photographs draw on works by painters ranging from Thiebaud to Velasquez to Ingres to Eakins to Rothko, some more successful than others but all visually captivating. – N. H.
Vincent Szarek, Sandra Gering Gallery, 534 W. 22nd, March 30-April 27
Fiberglass sculptures, one installed with a car radio. The color, chrome, and music of a sports car without the functionality; vehicles reduced to their most fetishistic forms.
– N. H.
Rinko Kawauchi, Cohan & Leslie Project Room, 138 10th Ave, April 1-May 1
C-prints capturing carefully composed and specific moments, a child’s silver fillings, a crack in a watermelon, a spoon of tapioca. – N. H.
Thomas Kiær, “Double Paintings,” DCA Gallery, 525 W. 22nd, April 1-May 1
Serigraphics applied to canvas and painted over. Each work imbued with a narrative and a strong sense of mood. – N.H.
Rosemary Laing, “One Dozen Unnatural Disasters in the Australian Landscape,” Gallery Lelong, 528 W. 26th, March 25-May 1
Large scale landscape photography, devoid of humans but replete with their influence. Artificially brilliant orange colored furniture and natural rock formations of the same hue unite the images. – N.H.
Jim Lambie, “Mental Oyster,” Anton Kern Gallery, 532 W. 20th, April 1-May 1
Transformed by incessant stripes of black vinyl tape, the gallery buzzes, revealing glittering surprises behind makeshift walls and human eyes cosied inside birds’ nests on the wall. – N. H.
Frank Magnotta, Cohan & Leslie, 138 10th Ave, April 1-May 1
Large-scale graphite on paper. Crisp, fantastical architectural drawings commenting on faith, relationships, real estate, and commercialism in the landscape. – Nicole Haroutunian
Stephen Prina, “Homo Faber and the Exquisite Corpse,” Frederich Petzel Gallery, 535 W. 22nd, April 3-May 1
Three diptychs and six double-sided wall mounted compositions on delicately fibered paper. Connections and allusions are oblique. – N. H.
Stephanie Pryor, “New Paintings,” CRG Gallery, 535 W. 22nd, March 27-May 1
Ink and acrylic on paper; paintings’ small scale renders grand scenes from the opera, symphony, and theater jewel-like yet not at all precious. – N.H.
Shava Mogutin, “No Love,” RareArt Properties, Inc., 521 W. 26th, April 3-May 8
C-prints, color-saturated homoerotic scenes involving bondage and pornography reveal humor and irony as well as aggression and lust. – N. H.
Carl Ostendarp, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, 545 W. 20th, April 4-May 8
Acrylic on canvas. Large fields of bright candy colors sparsely marked by too-cute cartoonish squiggles, hearts, stars, and moons, recalling Míró. - N. H.
Joe Andoe, “Out on the Perimeter,” Feigen Contemporary, 535 W. 20th, April 1 – May 15
Oil on canvas. Cars, sex, drugs, and growing up in Tulsa. Predominantly monochromatic reductive works depict the simplicity, not the complexity, of adolescence. – N. H.
Dove Bradshaw, “Nature Change Indeterminacy,” Volume, 530 W. 24th, April 27-May 22
Small, delicately mounted survey of Bradshaw’s limited edition sculptural and book objects going back to 1969. Focuses on her interest in natural material and process, in the immateriality of thought, and the relationship between the two polarities. – P.F.
Lincoln Schatz, “Convergence of Memory: Variable Media Studies,” bitforms, 529 W. 20th, April 15-May 29
Dense web of information conveyed both through interactive video and elaborate, quasi-architectural structures. The works are clearly designed for public spaces, but require time to take in, so the likely spaces in question are waiting and holding areas – lobbies, airport lounges, etc. – P.F.
“Reality Check,” Spike Gallery, 547 W. 20th, April 7-May 29
Oil on canvas. An uneven showcase by emerging and established artists. Maria Gilbert, Dimitri Cavender, and Tim Case present decent work, but Martin Mull’s nostalgic family scene is a highlight amidst the haphazard collection. – N. H.
Jim Richard, “Décor,” Oliver Kamm/5BE, 504 W. 22nd, May 7-June 5
New Orleans-based Richard has painted bourgeois interiors and exteriors in a weird detailed-Pop manner since the ‘70s. His new work goes for baroque, mining the excesses of the nouveau riche and coming up with almost painfully dense visual fields full of mirrors, chandeliers, and frou-frou. The anonymous modern art still pops up incongruously, however, as does the occasional faux-brick fireplace. – P.F.
William Scott, Works from the Scott Collection 1950s-1970s, Denise Bibro Fine Art, 529 W. 20th, April 8-June 5
One of the most important abstract painters in postwar Britain but infrequently shown here, Scott actually bestrode the boundary between non-objective and referential form. Best known for his stylized renditions of kitchen utensils, Scott fused painterliness and ordered, almost constructivistic composition into a distinctive, quietly profound style. – P.F.
Do-Ho Suh, “Paratrooper-I,” Lehmann Maupin, 540 W. 26th, April 30-June 5
New York-based Korean artist produces another of his obsessive figure-centered, poetical, and ultimately conceptual installations. Suh has hand-stitched more than 3000 signatures onto a skein of linen suspended on the wall. Each name connects by a thread to a little soldier figure on a pedestal in the middle of the room. The skein becomes his parachute. – P.F.
Bernar Venet, “L’Hypothèse de l’arc,” Robert Miller Gallery, 524 W. 26th, April 29-June 5, and Prints, Drawings & Sculpture, Jim Kempner Fine Art, 501 W. 23rd, May 6-June 12
Even at the immense scale they assume at Miller, Venet’s curved and clustered beams read like drawings in the air, slow scribbles given body – and, now, a Serra-like heft. The magic is in the translation from paper to industrial metal, as the Kempner show demonstrates, but the power is in the physical presence and the conceptual obsessiveness. – P.F.
Willem de Kooning, A Centennial Exhibition, curated by David Whitney, Gagosian Gallery, 555 W. 24th, April 24-June 19
We still get a thrill when we see Bill. As usual, Gagosian borrows some of the best, and best-known, stuff and intersperses it with better examples of the lesser. In this case, the historic highlighting concentrates not on the women but on the 1950s landscapes, showing how their fluidity and expansiveness maintained right through to the open, half-empty fields of the 90s. – P.F.
Elena del Rivero, “Nine Broken Letters,” Cristinerose/ Josee Bienvenu Gallery, 29 W. 20th, May 19-June 19
Written in an extended fit of post-9/11 insomnia, del Rivero’s nine letters are presented as illegible handwriting piling in on itself and turning into drawing; very legible hand calligraphy on handmade paper; and a recorded recitation. The letters themselves – each preceded by a choice epigraph (by Baudelaire, Shakespeare, et. al.) are fraught with anxiety and paranoia, but also with longing and dreamy fantasy. – P.F.
Jerry Jofen – Thomas LAnigan-Schmidt, “Stapled to the Soul,” Pavel Zoubok Gallery, 533 W. 23rd, May 19-June 19
This collage-assemblage-centered gallery inaugurates its Chelsea space with Lanigan-Schmidt’s heady glitter-and-glister-filled concoctions, as gaudy and ecstatic as gilded icons, and the late Jerry Jofen’s superbly wrought
neo-Schwittersian stapled-paper pieces, all rhythm and cartoonish wit tempered with a subtle mordancy and a perfect sense of color and composition. – P.F.
Midtown
Anthony Newton and Barry Senft, "Urban Faces," curated by Karin Willis of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fountain Gallery, 702 Ninth Avenue, April 8-May 13
With an array of simple yet vibrant colors Anthony Newton depicts the mood of his subjects in a series of small paintings. The work of both artists unveils the complexity of the human soul while bringing about the beauty of life itself. – Kellie-Ann Myrtle
“Subway Style: Architecture and Design in The New York City Subway”, curated by John Kriskiewicz, UBS Art Gallery, 1285 Ave. of the Americas, April 8-June 15
A compact – if anything, too-brief – overview of buildings, devices, signs, and other structures and paraphernalia beneath our feet (and over our heads), this display is short on actual objects but long on lucid documentation. In effect it’s a midtown pitch for the Brooklyn-based New York Transit Museum, from which all the images and objects are borrowed. Which is cool, but no wonder there’s no graffiti. – P.F.
57th Street
Guy Dill, Peter Findlay Gallery, 41 E. 57th, April 10-30
In the last decade or so Los Angeles sculptor Dill – not to be confused with brother Laddie John – has become something of a classicist, or at least classic modernist. His bronze sculptures can be called neo-constructivist, but even more than Joel Shapiro, Dill tweaks the “look” of constructivism by animating his structures. They bend and swoop like dancers where you’d expect them to stretch and soar stiffly; indeed, they manifest an oblique but readily sensed formal relationship to the human body. – P.F.
James Barsness, “You Belong Here,” George Adams Gallery, 41 W 57th, April 1-May 15
Normally a master of excess and broad cartoon caricature, Barsness has never been so visually dense and so casually obscene as he is here. In his hands, the inevitable marriage of R. Crumb and H. Bosch blows up in our faces. And, cute as they may be, Barsness’ new little sculptures also tweak us in the sensitive areas. – P.F.
Phyllis Bramson, “Seasonal Pleasures Provided by the Kindness of Women,” Littlejohn Contemporary, 41 E. 57th, April 15-May 15
What seems at first like flat, decorative Japanoiserie quickly reveals itself to be a topsy-turvy world of natural impossibilities and personages (usually female) who blithely allow themselves to be buffeted by the aberrant behavior of birds and winds. By being acted upon, Bramson’s geishas and maidens act upon us and pervert our notions about what constitutes “pretty.” – P.F.
Burgoyne Diller, “The 1960s,” Michael Rosenfeld, 20 W. 57th, March 18-May 15
A contemporary of the abstract expressionists, Diller was an unregenerate, American-Abstract-Artist-type constructivist. Here, however, we find out that, in the pared down compositions and stark color contrasts of his late work (he died in 1965), he was a minimalist avant la lettre. Mondrianesque rigor, monumentality that would do David or Tony Smith proud, and a no-nonsense palette even more austere than Ellsworth Kelly’s conspire to form a cool, compelling valedictory oeuvre. – P.F.
Sean Foley, Michael Oatman, “Some Assembly Required,” Mary Ryan Gallery, 24 W. 57th, April 8-May 15
Collagist Foley and painter Oatman both reference the world of do-it-yourself, whether cartooning or assembling guns and airplanes(!) But there’s no DIY shabbiness to their fantastic rhapsodizing , Oatman’s in a highly sophisticated – and abstracted – cartoon mode and Foley’s in a narrative collage manner that neatly marries Max Ernst to Dick & Jane. – P.F.
William Kienbusch, “in Black and White,” Kraushaar Galleries, 724 5th Ave., April 17-May 15
His work a kind of missing link between John Marin’s loose landscape fantasies and the broad brushing of the abstract expressionists, the late William Kienbusch took inspiration his whole career from the Maine coast. A gifted colorist, Kienbusch proves how gifted he was with these black and white paintings, their restricted palette answering a formidable challenge: can you make a no-color painting not look like a drawing? – P.F.
Lynda Benglis, Ceramic sculpture, Franklin Parrasch Gallery, 20 W. 57th, April 16-May 22
The juicy, elastic forms, twisted and torqued and daubed with color, on which Benglis has relied for so much of her sculpture recur here in clay. And whether it is the material’s brittleness, its ability to hold and display color, or the simple excitement of these convoluted, muscular shapes, clay proves a specially pliant and yet sturdy medium for Benglis’ blithe torture. – P.F.
Conrad Marca-Relli, “Collages on Paper,” Washburn Gallery, 20 W. 57th, April 22-May 28
Stylistically Marca-Relli fused American abstract expressionism and European art informel, specifically the (mostly Italian) material manipulation of Burri, Fontana, et. al. Marca-Relli’s collage thinking works equally well – but, of course, differently – on a large and a small scale. His collages seem at first to be about shape and material, but reveal themselves to be studies in space and nuance. – P.F.
Henry Varnum Poor, “Portrait Busts,” Garth Clark Gallery, 24 W. 57th, April 13-May 29
Best known as a painter, especially of portraits, post-Ashcan figurative artist Poor often turned to ceramics. In the medium of clay his small heads and portrait plates take on a certain aura of caricature without losing the delicacy of personality. – P.F.
Irving Kriesberg, “Changeable Paintings,” Jan Müller, “The Mosaic Paintings, 1952-1955,” Lori Bookstein Fine Art, 37 W 57th, May 5-June 18
An unusual format Kriesberg returned to over a 12-year period (1956-68) was the painting composed of multiple, moveable, variably combined panels. Whether he was painting flocks of odd little creatures, single big (but no less peculiar) creatures, or (nearly) abstract compositions, Kriesberg was willing to subject them to the compositional whim of the viewer. For their part, Müller’s 1952-55 neo-pointillist mosaic paintings were the most abstract, and perhaps most luminously beautiful, in the German-born painter’s brief career. They perfectly conflate fin-de-siècle European modernism – from Monet to Klimt – with abstract expressionism. – P.F.
Peter Halley, Mary Boone Gallery, 745 5th Ave., May 1-June 26
As ever, you sense the dour philosophy behind the too-bright, too-textured un-minimalism of Halley’s citric neo-geo paintings – but that dourness cuts usefully through the paintings’ loud hues and dopily straightforward compositions. There may be something cynical in the formula, but there is also something dogged and art-historically wise. – P.F.
Agnes Martin, Recent paintings, PaceWildenstein, 32 E. 57th, May 4-June 30
At 92, the doyenne of minimalism has put aside her tenebrous grids in favor of a positive-negative – and in certain cases figure-ground – geometry that takes her (and us) back to the stark formulas of the 1950s. One last look back at the work of her salad days? No, one last consideration of an unexhausted, or at least readily renewable, formula – now infused with the delicate touch Martin has perfected in the intervening decades. – P.F.
Uptown
Brice Brown & Don Joint, “A Marriage in Paint,” Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, 22 E 80th, April 2-May 22
What happens when a geometric painter and a painterly expressionist try to merge their efforts? Perhaps the basis of both Don Joint’s and Brice Brown’s compositions in still life help them collaborate; their palettes, rhythms, and lines otherwise make them opposite. But opposites attract, and perhaps it’s their life-partnership that makes their combined efforts on canvas as strong, if not quite as resolved, as their individual works. – P.F.
Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison, March 11- May 30
Crime: the art of 108 artists was stolen by the bad design of its display. I think, for instance, of the slightly deflated balloon on the roof that looked like it got away from its Thanksgiving Day Parade handlers, and could only be seen from one spot several blocks away. The Quonset hut with a video playing to rows of empty benches, even on a crowded day, appeared to address itself to ghosts and detritus from a deserted Pacific island. Beyond that the show felt over-crowded and chaotic, especially on the third floor around the one-at-a-time parade of installations. It is surprising the Fire Marshal was not on hand to meter the flow. If the curators’ concept was to throw together a not-too-memorable art fair-cum-amusement park, then form did follow function. Otherwise, Adolf Loos could be heard spinning in his grave all the way from Vienna. – Holly Crawford
Sarah Austin, “Tribute,” Kimberly Venardos & Co., 1014 Madison Ave., April 22-May 29
Austin’s multilayered shadowboxes, realized in the wake of Pop and in anticipation of narrative art, pay homage mostly to the great figures of artistic modernism – who back then weren’t all the usual suspects they are today. Austin’s crowded boxes, influenced by but nothing like Cornell’s, are effectively historical pageants. She also honored literary figures and even political events. – P.F.
Arthur Tress, Color Installations of the 1980s, Hunter.Fox, 35 E. 67th, April 22-May 29
Tress, as versatile in his imagination as in his technique, produced several remarkable series of “fabricated-to-be-photographed” images in the 80s. Some are unapologetically neo-surrealist in their unlikely conjunctions, others are wildly abstract expressionist reconfigurations of interiors, and all reflect Tress’ close attention to contemporary models (e.g. Jerry Uelsmann, Jon Divola). More importantly, however, they manifest his ability to make those models his own through sheer optical and subjective extravagance, infused with a knowing optical grace. – P.F.
Eduardo Paolozzi, Works on paper and collage, Flowers, 1000 Madison Ave., May 4-June 12
Paolozzi, far too little known on these shores, is a vital and important veteran of British proto-Pop. How vital, and how veteran, can be seen in these collages and prints, some of which go back to 1946. Paolozzi’s roots in surrealism are evident here, but by the early 50s, when he was doing funny-critical collages with Time magazine covers, his Pop persona was already emerging. – P.F.
Anton van Dalen, “The Living Room,” Adam Baumgold Gallery, 74 E. 79th, May 7-June 12
A central figure in (perhaps the concierge of) the East Village scene – before, during, and after its heyday – van Dalen’s hard-edged but playful imagery captures the grit of the street and the contrasting elegance of city life, infusing both with his own wit and stylized but cartoony imagery. (Some of the exhibited pieces are in fact games.) Van Dalen calls this compendium of work in many media his “living room” because it brings together interior and exterior life, opening up the house to the street (as they do in van Dalen’s native Holland) and vice versa. – P.F.
John Constable, “Constable’s Skies,” Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, 20 E 79th, May 5-June 25
By concentrating on Constable’s informal works, including studies entirely of clouds, this show demonstrates his roots in Rembrandt and the Venetians, and his anticipation of Barbizon. Of course, Constable was too well-behaved, even here, to prefigure impressionism; leave that to Turner. But the older Briton was no less a magician in paint. – P.F.
Erró, “Femmes Fatales,” Goethe-Institut, 1014 5th Ave., April 14-July 16
Augmenting the retrospective downtown, this cross-section of works from 1987 to `95 shows the Iceland-born Parisian making overt – through excessive reiteration and sly deconstruction – one of pop culture’s main themes: the fetishized apotheosis of the female body. Exotically garbed super-heroines explode (with perversely male energy) throughout these politically charged, appropriation-filled canvases, Freudian implications splattering left and right. – P.F.
Armand Guillaumin, Berry-Hill Galleries, 11 E 70th, May 18-June 25
One of the least innovative among the impressionists, Guillaumin was still one of its better painters, notable for a particular acuity to the details of landscape, which he limned with both care and flair. This show is especially helpful, and engaging, for its inclusion of some very good later works, wherein Guillaumin reveals himself responsive to fauvism and Cézanne. – P.F.
Lee Bontecou, Drawings 1958-1999, Knoedler & Co., 19 E 70th, May 6-July 30
In the wake (and anticipation) of her enthusiastically received retrospective, this survey of Bontecou’s drawings strongly infers that her thinking begins with drawing. Her images and her shapes, her sense of menace and her sense of nature’s grace and elegance, jump off every page. – P.F.
Bronx
AIM 24, Bronx Museum, 1040 Grand Concourse, April 15-June 30
Group show at the Bronx Museum consisting of paintings, sculptures, videos, photographs, and installations by participants of the Artist in the Marketplace program. Highlights of over 30 works include: Alfonso Cantu's Zabriskie Point, enamel painted on chip board in fragments which evoke the explosion from the film; Kris Sabetelli's humorous single-channel video of awkwardly choreographed cars with plants on their hoods; and Haegene Kim's installation of exquisitely rendered graphite portraits on ping pong balls. – Chris Kasper
Brooklyn
Pier Art Show, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists’ Coalition, 499 Van Brunt St., Red Hook, May 8-June 27
Three hundred Brooklyn artists, from a large contingent of Orthodox Jewish women to public school children, show their work salon-style in a stunning waterfront space. The focus is on making a living more than making fine art, but the environment and concept override any artistic shortcomings. – N.H.
“Open House: Working in Brooklyn,” curated by Charlotta Kotik and Tumelo Mosaka, Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, April x-August 15
Coinciding with the inauguration of the Brooklyn Museum’s new façade, this show samples art being made in every corner of the borough. Works by two hundred Brooklyn artists, from recent art school grads to the legendary Louise Bourgeois, are displayed in two main galleries and throughout the museum in conversation with the permanent collection. Within the extraordinarily diverse exhibition, several themes emerge. A current of political dissent runs from Marc Lepson’s mediation on an INS detention center to Wendy Giu’s stunning stairwell installation United Nations – United 7561 Kilometers, woven of human hair from around the globe. Technology is a presence both conceptually and in the prevalence of video and multi-media installations such as Perry Hoberman’s Your Time is Valuable, which is equipped with a sensor to tabulate how effectively the work holds a viewer’s attention. The art world, the prison system, the family, race, and gender issues are also frequent subjects of examination. Not surprisingly, the lived experience of Brooklyn infuses the entire show, from David Shapiro’s re-imagining of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to Chris Doyle’s large scale watercolors of himself in his art studio. Hoberman’s installation would agree that “Open House” is a thoroughly captivating show. –N.H.
Williamsburg
Eve Sussman, “89 Seconds at Alcazar,” Roebling Hall, 390 Wythe St., April 24-May 17
The still and moving images are support materials for Sussman’s Whitney Biennial piece, a live-action choreography on the theme of Velazquez’s Las Meninas. As we see her process, Sussman becomes as present in her work as Velazquez is in his. – N. H.
Robert Burke, “Every Occupation in America,” Black & White Gallery, 483 Driggs Ave, April 30-June 7
In an ongoing project, Burke is setting out to document photographically one female and one male in each occupation in the country. He shows equal reverence for taxidermists, coffee shop clerks, and baseball players. – N. H.
Queens
“F*ck Mother Nature,” King Fisher Projects, 17-17 Woodbine St., Ridgewood, April 16-19.
King Fisher Projects, the curatorial project by New York painter Matt Fisher, presents their third group show, exhibiting paintings, drawings and sculptures by 11 artists. Works examine a contemporary relationship with nature rather than the traditional idealized notion of Romantic landscape. James Davis’s “rock” sculpture is subtly humorous behind a veil of blunt pathos, manifested in a rock painted with grey enamel to look like… a rock. Peter Teaberry’s painting angler is an odd psychological portrait of a middle-American fisherman. –
C. K.
Long Island City
Dieter Roth, “Roth Time,” MOMA QNS, 33rd St. at Queens Blvd., and P.S.1, 22-25 Jackson Ave., March 12-June 7
One of the true artistic geniuses of the last half-century, Roth was a master of form and material – like Picasso, “pathologically inventive.” The truly exciting thing about his oeuvre, however, was his refusal to settle in to any one format, even any one medium, preferring instead to elide between image, object, sound, activity, and life – and never to take seriously himself or anything but the process of seeing the world and responding to it. No wonder, although he taught in the States so often, that Roth is so little known here (except among artists and graphic designers, who revere him): he resists labeling, packaging, and easy analysis. – P.F.
Dora Maar: Photographer, curated by Annabella Johnson and Marcello Marvelli, Dorsky Gallery, 11-03 45th Ave., April 25-June 28
We always read that Picasso’s most interesting mistress – the one who introduced him to surrealism – was a photographer of some gift, but we rarely get to see for ourselves. Here’s our chance. Maar passes the test, although she comes off less a shock-shutterbug than a versatile photographer who could segue from urban naturalism à la Cartier-Bresson to gentle moments of surreal strangeness (sometimes augmented with collage). – P.F.
“Treble,” curated by Regine Basha, Sculpture Center, 44-19 Purves St., May 16-August 1
22 artists, including Max Neuhaus, Steve Roden, Francis Alÿs, Jude Tallichet, Dario Robleto, Anton Vidokle, Joseph Grigely, David Schafer, Jim Hodges, and Joseph Beuys(!) contribute sound-producing devices, taped sounds, diagrams, musically referent objects, etc. There are either too many approaches to the manifestation of sound in art or too few pieces to cover the vast subject sufficiently, but many of the pieces are gratifying in themselves. The works installed in the downstairs crypts are especially effective in their sites, as is the courtyard speaker piece by Brazilian Paulo Vivacqua. -- P.F.
Lee Lozano, “Drawn from Life: 1961-1971,” curated by Alanna Heiss and Bob Nickas, P.S.1, 22-25 Jackson Ave., January 22-September 13
Lozano was legendary as much for her ability to harness her madness to her method as for her sociopathology. Her sexual fury manifested in her explosively obscene pop-expressionist paintings of the mid-60s, but she then redirected her energy into the rendition of muted, highly stylized, and very strange, monumental, and compelling minimalist abstractions. – P.F
Contributors:
Nicole Haroutunian recently graduated from Vassar College. She writes in the mornings and works with children at the Henry Street Settlement in the afternoons. She lives in Willamsburg, Brooklyn with her roommate, her easel, and a lot of oil paint.
Chris Kasper is an artist working and living in New York. He has an MFA from Yale, and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth. He recently completed an appointment as a Visiting Professor of Art at Wesleyan University. His current work consists primarily of fastidiously fabricated sculptures that employ a wide array of random and disparate materials.
Kellie- Ann Myrtle has a degree in Fine Arts from the College of Notre Dame and now lives in New York. She has pursued a career in magazines and publicity.
Editor Peter Frank was art critic for the SoHo Weekly News and
The Village Voice before he left his native New York for Los Angeles, where he is now critic for the L.A. Weekly and Angeleno magazine. Frank has also curated numerous exhibitions here and abroad and written many books and catalogues.
Publisher Holly Crawford is an artist, poet, and art historian who now lives in New York. Her many art projects are cross media and participation.
