SanArt

Armando Andrade Tudela
Marcahuasi, 2009-2010
© Armando Andrade Tudela, 2010

Museu d’Art Contemporani
de Barcelona (MACBA)

This exhibition heralds a new approach to considering the production of work in the setting of the Capella MACBA. All the exhibitions will share the common denominator of having been specifically produced to be shown in this space. The work produced by Armando Andrade Tudela, Peruvian artist living between Berlin and Saint-Étienne (France), includes two 16-mm films (transferred onto DVD) recently made and a wall piece Untitled (Two frames #2) (2010), all framed by an architecture also designed by the artist for the occasion.

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Thierry Goldberg Projects
5 Rivington Street, 212-967-2260

East Village / Lower East Side

March 11 – April 18, 2010
Opening: Thursday, March 11, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Thierry Goldberg Projects is pleased to present Unspecific Objects, a group exhibition with works by Martin Basher, Jona Bechtolt, Daniel Ellis, Rashawn Griffin, David Scanavino, and Takayuki Kubota.

Making a reference to “Specific Objects,” Donald Judd’s seminal essay of 1965, the show brings together a group of six artists, who approach art-making with a fresh take on the process of reduction. It is through this reduction that the artists reinvest minimalist art, what Judd located as “neither painting nor sculpture,” with a voice specific to their own time and attitudes.

Through these artists’ ironic sense of touch, they deflect any sense of nostalgia. As this particular brand of Minimalism has been incorporated into the mainstream of fashion and music, these six aren’t just looking back, but looking towards the contemporary culture and economy of a style.

Martin Basher confronts painting and sculpture with an ironic take on desire and disappointment. His casual handling of ready-made materials can be seen in his installation piece where a poster of a Claude Monet landscape is affixed to a vertically stripped hard-edge painting. He undercuts notions of escape by the harsh fluorescent light propped against the painting. Both attracting and deflecting the viewer, the fluorescent tube is part Dan Flavin part bug-light.

Best known for his band Yacht, Jona Bechtolt primarily works with sound and video. His piece NTSC-YA animates what is typically the static field of a standard TV test pattern. Where Minimalism and Colorfield paintings once focused on uniformity, Bechtolt’s video disrupts and transforms the standard by infusing it with a sense of play, as a childhood Chimalong.

Minimal and monochromatic, Daniel Ellis’ paintings capture networks of regular repeating patterns. The patterns, on the one hand, articulate the surface of the painting and, at the same time, soften the solid backgrounds. His work deals with the tension between subtle affects via regimented graphic elements.

Though spare in composition, Rashawn Griffin’s work is loaded with references brought by his materials. His paintings feature fabrics, second-hand and new, bringing their own associations and histories to the minimalist object, so often devoid of the personal. Free standing, and sometimes suspended, his work speak to the sculptural presence of painting.

Parts and wholes are consistent players in David Scanavino’s work. For instance, his sculpture Untitled (rope cast) makes two parts of one length of rope while his Untitled (one square foot) makes one form of equally sized parts. His use of common materials as standards keeps their transformations articulate and arresting.

Takayuki Kubota presents sound in the format of painting. He unravels and splices together reels of tape-recorded readings or atmospheric sound and adheres them to panels. In this way, the work becomes a sonic portrait of a space or literary work.

Takayuki Kubota was born in 1985 in Kobe, Japan and currently lives and works in Tokyo. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Temple University, Japan Campus. His work has been recently shown at the Laundromat Gallery in Brooklyn and at Gallery Q, Tokyo, Japan.

David Scanavino was born in 1978 in Denver and currently lives and works in New York. He holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Yale University. His work has been shown at Klaus Von Nichtssagend, Newman Popiashvili, Southfirst, Satori, and Gavin Brown’s Passerby – all in New York.

Rashawn Griffin was born in 1980 in Los Angeles and currently lives and works in Kansas. He holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Yale University. He has participated in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem; Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin; Marianne Boesky, New York; Arndt & Partner, Berlin; John Connelly, New York, Smith Stewart, New York; Thomas Erben, New York; and Galerie Eva Winkeler, Frankfurt.

Jona Bechtolt was born in 1980. He is an electronic musician and multimedia artist based in Portland, Oregon. He has played with The Blow and The Badger King before founding YACHT, what he calls “a Band, Business, and Belief System” and has performed pieces commissioned by P.S.1, Rhizome, and the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art.

Martin Basher was born in 1979 in Wellington, New Zealand. He currently lives and works in New York and New Zealand. He holds an MFA from Columbia University. Basher has shown at Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand; Susan Inglett, New York; and Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand. He was recently awarded an artist residency at the McCahon House Trust.

Thierry Goldberg Projects
5 Rivington Street, 212-967-2260

East Village / Lower East Side

March 11 – April 18, 2010
Opening: Thursday, March 11, 6 – 8 PM
Web Site

Thierry Goldberg Projects is pleased to present Unspecific Objects, a group exhibition with works by Martin Basher, Jona Bechtolt, Daniel Ellis, Rashawn Griffin, David Scanavino, and Takayuki Kubota.

Making a reference to “Specific Objects,” Donald Judd’s seminal essay of 1965, the show brings together a group of six artists, who approach art-making with a fresh take on the process of reduction. It is through this reduction that the artists reinvest minimalist art, what Judd located as “neither painting nor sculpture,” with a voice specific to their own time and attitudes.

Through these artists’ ironic sense of touch, they deflect any sense of nostalgia. As this particular brand of Minimalism has been incorporated into the mainstream of fashion and music, these six aren’t just looking back, but looking towards the contemporary culture and economy of a style.

Martin Basher confronts painting and sculpture with an ironic take on desire and disappointment. His casual handling of ready-made materials can be seen in his installation piece where a poster of a Claude Monet landscape is affixed to a vertically stripped hard-edge painting. He undercuts notions of escape by the harsh fluorescent light propped against the painting. Both attracting and deflecting the viewer, the fluorescent tube is part Dan Flavin part bug-light.

Best known for his band Yacht, Jona Bechtolt primarily works with sound and video. His piece NTSC-YA animates what is typically the static field of a standard TV test pattern. Where Minimalism and Colorfield paintings once focused on uniformity, Bechtolt’s video disrupts and transforms the standard by infusing it with a sense of play, as a childhood Chimalong.

Minimal and monochromatic, Daniel Ellis’ paintings capture networks of regular repeating patterns. The patterns, on the one hand, articulate the surface of the painting and, at the same time, soften the solid backgrounds. His work deals with the tension between subtle affects via regimented graphic elements.

Though spare in composition, Rashawn Griffin’s work is loaded with references brought by his materials. His paintings feature fabrics, second-hand and new, bringing their own associations and histories to the minimalist object, so often devoid of the personal. Free standing, and sometimes suspended, his work speak to the sculptural presence of painting.

Parts and wholes are consistent players in David Scanavino’s work. For instance, his sculpture Untitled (rope cast) makes two parts of one length of rope while his Untitled (one square foot) makes one form of equally sized parts. His use of common materials as standards keeps their transformations articulate and arresting.

Takayuki Kubota presents sound in the format of painting. He unravels and splices together reels of tape-recorded readings or atmospheric sound and adheres them to panels. In this way, the work becomes a sonic portrait of a space or literary work.

Takayuki Kubota was born in 1985 in Kobe, Japan and currently lives and works in Tokyo. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Temple University, Japan Campus. His work has been recently shown at the Laundromat Gallery in Brooklyn and at Gallery Q, Tokyo, Japan.

David Scanavino was born in 1978 in Denver and currently lives and works in New York. He holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Yale University. His work has been shown at Klaus Von Nichtssagend, Newman Popiashvili, Southfirst, Satori, and Gavin Brown’s Passerby – all in New York.

Rashawn Griffin was born in 1980 in Los Angeles and currently lives and works in Kansas. He holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from Yale University. He has participated in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem; Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin; Marianne Boesky, New York; Arndt & Partner, Berlin; John Connelly, New York, Smith Stewart, New York; Thomas Erben, New York; and Galerie Eva Winkeler, Frankfurt.

Jona Bechtolt was born in 1980. He is an electronic musician and multimedia artist based in Portland, Oregon. He has played with The Blow and The Badger King before founding YACHT, what he calls “a Band, Business, and Belief System” and has performed pieces commissioned by P.S.1, Rhizome, and the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art.

Martin Basher was born in 1979 in Wellington, New Zealand. He currently lives and works in New York and New Zealand. He holds an MFA from Columbia University. Basher has shown at Starkwhite, Auckland, New Zealand; Susan Inglett, New York; and Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand. He was recently awarded an artist residency at the McCahon House Trust.

Now in its 75th go-round, The Whitney Biennial is still the big kahuna, the show every American artist wants to be in and every art lover wants to see. This year the career-boosting show includes no Philadelphia artist.   We had representation in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008 — so much for that trend.  Instead, the curators went to Chicago, Oregon, Los Angeles and, of course, New York for the 55 artists, more than half of them women (a first) and many of them under the national radar.

One of the 28 women featured in this year's biennial, Aki Sasamoto, performed at the press preview. Strange Attractors, 2010. mixed media, dimensions variable, collection of the artist

The show is a somber parade, with some work that’s tedious and some that’s breath-takingly beautiful. A surprising number of artists are channeling anthropology ala Margaret Mead this year, a trend among Philadelphia artists as well — see Zoe Strauss, Sarah Stolfa, Phil Jackson and Gabe Martinez for starters.

Sharon Hayes. Parole, 2010. multi channel video, color, sound, 36 minutes. collection of the artist; courtesy Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin

Whether intended or not, this is a populist show dealing with issues of war, gender, alienation, the slipperiness of truth and longing – things very much on people’s minds. War victims show up in photographs of a disfigured American soldier by Nina Berman. Stephanie Sinclair’s photos of desperate Afghani women who self-immolate are stomach-wrenching. Sharon Hayes’ multi-channel videos about political protesters create a kind of faux-reportage that questions the reality of the news. The artist, a chunky, tousle-haired young woman, who appears throughout, exudes no star power but she’s charismatic. She’s the anti-Christiane Amanpour.

Rashaad Newsome. Untitled, 2009. silent single channel HD video, 8:07 min. collection of the artist: courtesy Ramis Barquet, NY

Some of the documentary films are mesmerizing, like Rashaad Newsome’s two silent videos of  “vogue” dancers — athletic young men in t-shirts and jeans who spin, twirl, prance and contort themselves for the camera from small prison-like rooms.  One of the dancers makes eye contact and just won’t break — it’s a challenge to pull yourself away. These silent pieces force you to concentrate on the dancers’ personalities and gender identities. Their stylized movements are not seductive but the perpetual motion alone casts a spell.  It’s all very poignant.

Edgar Cleijne and Ellen Gallagher BETTER DIMENSION, 2010. This cave-like installation, with a hollographic JFK head spinning above a music disc surrounded by projections of slides that look like they're of tissue samples — weird and satisfying. Silkscreened wood panels, four ektapro slide projectors, one 16 mm eiki projector, resin and steel projection screen. 102×236x276" courtesy of the artists, Gagosian Gallery, NY

Ari Marcopoulos’ video, on the other hand, is static, colorful and loud. But it, too is hypnotic. The piece documents two teenage boys making noise music in their Detroit bedroom and, in a nice touch of curatorial pairing, the sonic screeches of Marcopoulos’ video wash over the nearby photographs of suburban tract houses by James Casebere — the very houses this noise might be coming from.

Josephine Meckseper. Mall of America, 2009. video, color, sound, transferred to DVD, 12:48 min. collection of the artist, courtesy V6 Bild-Kunst, Bonn

The bone-rattling machine noise soundtrack of Josephine Meckseper’s video “Mall of America,” turns what is a rather beautiful (albeit ham-handed) slap at capitalism into something mesmerizing as well. Maybe I didn’t have enough coffee the day we saw the show but I felt myself grow roots when watching this one even though I knew its message was nothing new.

Roland Flexner, a work I saw at Gallery Joe in 2007. untitled 2007 sumi ink on paper 5 3/4 x 7"

Roland Flexner’s wall of small sumi ink landscapes is the oasis into which you can escape. These drawings (like some of Flexner’s I’d seen Gallery Joe) are dark, dreamy paradise scenes. Sublime with a bit of threat they are not afraid of beauty or the infinite, something we’re very much in need of.

R.H. Quaytman R. H. Quaytman, Chapter 12: iamb, 2008. Oil, silkscreen, and gesso on wood, 32 3/8 x 20 in. (82.2 x 51 cm). Collection of Laura Belgray and Steven Eckler; courtesy Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York. Photograph by John Berens (Image of representative piece)

Tedium sets in with several inclusions that seem to be there merely to toot the museum’s own horn. I have to believe Maureen Gallace’s chalky and standard-issue landscape paintings are there to call attention to the Whitney’s Edward Hopper and Milton Avery holdings (you can see Hopper in the Whitney Collects show on the museum’s fifth floor.) R. H. Quaytman’s photo collage prints, which feature the museum’s Marcel Breuer-designed windows, likewise seem geared to feature the museum as much as the artist.

Whitney Biennial 2010 catalog — with the majority of pages devoted to other biennials.

But really, the Whitney Biennial has always been about the Whitney Museum. As if to prove that point, the show’s catalog ($45, softcover) devotes more than half its pages to past biennials. This book is a big disappointment. With eight shiny card stock “billboard” pages inside showing nothing but a horrible concentric square design in black and grey with a photo (in green and white) of the sitting American president at the time of biennials in 1930, 40, 50, etc, the book is borderline annoying.  And with more than half of it devoted to press clippings about past biennials — and pages and pages of lists of names of who was in each and every biennial — the book seems an almost desperate attempt at institutional cheerleading.  I don’t know, maybe you have to remind people how wonderful you are when you’re in the middle of a big capital campaign.

Charles Ray, Untitled, 2009. Ink on paper, 47 x 31 1/2 in. (119.4 x 80 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (Image of representative piece)

The biggest disappointment of the Biennial is Charles Ray’s drawings of flowers, or something that looks like flowers drawn by a teenage girl who just got a new set of magic markers. I read Peter Schejldahl in the New Yorker (see and hear his audio slide show here) and I’m not convinced. The work is slight and bad to look at, and this from an artist whose sculptures can knock it out of the ballpark. I don’t get it.

Robert Williams The Inside Out House, 2009. watercolor on paper. 14×17" collection of the artist; courtesy Tony Shafrazi Gallery, NY. We saw works by Williams at Art Basel Miami. Asking price, $10,000 each. I am not shocked to see them in this show. We saw lots of Biennial artists' works at the NY art fairs.

Biennials are a way for museums to claim the leadership they once had from the marketplace (art fairs/auctions) which has taken over defining what’s good and worthy. There should be more biennials. That said, no curated group show is “the answer” to the big mystery of what is art today. But, bottom line, a curated show will give you more satisfaction than the art fairs will.

More photos at Flickr.
>>Whitney Biennial 2010, to May 30. Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Ave. at 75th St. New York, NY 212 570 3600

On Spatial Detournement

Since the 1950s, guerrilla sign ontologists, situationists and psychogeographers have delighted in using the power of the map to decode the urban landscape. They have explored Manchester using a map of Milan , wandered Newcastle guided by a map of the Berlin U-Bahn, and explored Hackney with a map of the moon. This re-use of maps may at first sight seem to be a simple economy measure, but these were in fact experiments aimed at creating spatial détournements, subverting the commodified image of the city. By the intentional misreading of city space, the city would “be experienced not as a thing at all, but as possibilities”. Our ritual walks are in contrast to the concept of the dérive meaning an aimless walk that follows the whim of the moment, sometimes translated as a drift.

French philosopher Guy Debord used the dérive idea to encourage readers to revisit the way they looked at urban spaces. Rather than being prisoners to their daily routines, living in a complex city but treading the same path every day, he urged people to follow their emotions and to look at urban situations in a radical new way. The notion was that most of our cities are so thoroughly unpleasant because they were designed in a way that either ignored their emotional impact on people, or indeed tried to control people through their very design. The basic premise of the dérive is for people to explore their environment without preconceptions, to understand their location, and therefore their existence. The flaw in Debord’s notion is that town and rural planners now use very sophisticated methods of emotional route-manipulation to move consumers through a series of consumables. The radical way to counter this manufactured routing is not to rely on emotion to guide us, but instead to devise more precise and radical methods of rambling. A better way to explore space is instead to adapt another of Debord’s concepts, that of the détournement, where an artist reuses elements of existing media to create a new work with a different meaning, often one opposed to the original. Détournement is similar to satirical parody, but often employs more direct reuse or mimicry of the original works rather than constructing a new work, which merely alludes strongly to the original. Another technique we suggest is to adapt the cut-up or fold-in technique to design walking routes. William Burroughs and Brion Gysin applied this to printed media and audio recordings in an effort to decode the material’s implicit content, hypothesising that such a technique could be used to discover the true meaning of a given text. Burroughs also suggested cut-ups may be effective as a form of divination saying, “When you cut into the present the future leaks out”. Burroughs also further developed the fold-in technique as a method for altering reality. Burroughs’ explanation was that everything that could be recorded could be edited. Later the CrimethInc Ex-Workers Collective developed behavioural cut-ups as a method of changing one’s life by performing activities which are created by cutting up two socially acceptable, routine behaviours and recombining them to form an new more amusing activity. The intention is that you perform a series of cut-ups for a long period until it becomes second nature and your behaviour is altered significantly. Détournements, fold-ins and cut-ups may all be contrasted with recuperation, in which originally subversive works and ideas are themselves appropriated by mainstream media.

In spatial détournement, a rambler reuses elements of a known territory to explore a new psychic space with a different meaning, often one beyond the boundaries of the “original”. In this case maps of outer space are folded into maps of terrestrial space. So our ritual walks are spatial détournements based on precise plans to overturn external temporal/spatial manipulation of our rambling. We have created our own walking system instead of being enslaved by another man’s. We do not advise others to follow these routes, but instead to create their own pathways of exploration. Looking at the patterns drawn on a landscape allows us to analyse their origins in the communication between human and animal life, technology and landscape. A detailed study gives us insight into how we remember our travels. Using GPS, a follow-up analysis of a created map provides a different perspective on how the Bodmin Moor Zodiac was organised. By looking at various data from above, below and within, moving through both time and space, we are able to make additional observations, analysis and conclusions regarding our rambles that might not be possible from ground level.

Independent is a new addition to the bunch of art fairs running concurrently to The Armory Show. It’s characterized by the organizers as part consortium, part collective, a contemporary art fair that lies somewhere between a collective exhibition and a reexamination of the art fair model, “reflecting the changing attitudes and growing challenges for artists, galleries, curators and collectors.”

The gallery list includes Ancient & Modern (London), Isabella Bortolozzi (Berlin), Rodeo (Istanbul) Boltelang (Zürich), Winkleman Gallery (New York), Zero (Milan), to name a few. There are no art fair typical booths, but custom spaces that are curated in relation to one another. Apart from the galleries’ presentations there are artist projects by The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Aaron Young, and others, and public programs such as a book signing with Ida Applebroog, performances and discussions.

Independent New York, Opening, March 4, 2010.

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Charlotte Posenenske
Vierkantrohre Serie D, 1967 (Reconstruction 2009)

Daimler Contemporary
12 March – 30 May 2010

The initial exhibition at Daimler Contemporary in 2010 will show major 1960s trends in German abstract art from the Daimler Art Collection: Constructivism, Zero, Minimal Art, Concept and Seriality. Starting with 1950s predecessors – such as Josef Albers, Norbert Kricke and Siegfried Cremer – the show considers abstract art developments in the cities of Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Krefeld, Stuttgart, Berlin and Munich, but also looks at contiguous Swiss positions.

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Johansson Projects presents The Velveteen Order, where powder and paint mask flesh in favor of fiction, serving up Rococo thrills yummier than brioche.

Christina Corfield crafts moving dioramas which flaunt the brush of a gaze and the stroke of a sword. Her videos hyperbolize the Old Regime’s pretend-sion, ignoring distinctions between historical documentation and fairy tale musings. Redundancy and stripped down actions append significance to the subtlest minutiae. Keer Tanchak’s aluminum glamscapes, which mix 1800’s lackadaisical malaise with the 2000’s self-awareness, quietly invite circumspection of modern wealth and frivolity. Tanchak’s exploitation of Old France’s artificial flavoring sweetens the modern epidemic dubbed “bourgeois ennui.” With seductive visuals and witty commentary, absolutism was never so liberating.

A 2003 MFA graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Tanchak completed her BFA at Concordia University in Montreal in 2000. She has exhibited extensively in Canada and the USA as well as London, Kuwait, Puerto Rico and Mexico City. Tanchak has received recognition and acclaim from publications such as UR Chicago, Montreal Mirror, and Vie Des Arts. Christina Corfield received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute along with a BA from the Glasgow School of art in 2003. She has exhibited in London, Glasgow, San Francisco, Berlin, and Chicago and her work has been written about in The Sunday Times and The Glasgow Herald.

Show Runs April 2 – May 15, 2010
Reception on April 2, 5-8pm

This is a first look at The Armory Show 2010. This year’s edition introduces Armory Focus, a new section that features an important art community every year. The new section is premiering with Berlin, presenting 21 galleries from Germany’s capital. In total, The Armory Show features 267 galleries from 31 countries.

The Armory Show 2010, Vernissage, March 3, 2010.

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Peter Friedl
Bilbao Song, 2010
Film still
Courtesy of the artist

sala rekalde
4 March – 6 June 2010

sala rekalde presents a solo show by Berlin-based artist Peter Friedl. The exhibition consists of a selection of recent works, ongoing projects and the premiere of his latest film installation.

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