Posts from September, 2008

Rirkrit Tiravanija: Demonstration Drawings at the Drawing Center


There is a limited range of drawing styles, which tends to be competent enough but generally stilted, illustrative, and a bit nerdish. One wonders whether the difference in treatment that does come across is purely a matter of the individual draftsman’s hand or whether different speeds of movement in the scenes depicted — orderly placid drudging through dreary East European streets versus violent clashes with riot-geared police in some steamy tropical town — account for these differences.


Diana Al-Hadid: Reverse Collider at Perry Rubenstein Gallery


Al-Hadid has been hooked on towers for several years now, involved in what can be taken as a reverse Watts Towers syndrome — instead of transforming found, non-art materials to create an aspirational edifice, she deploys considerable artistry to depict with a literalist intensity state of the art, fabricated structures in a frozen instant of failure.


Geo/Metric: Prints and Drawings from the Collection at The Museum of Modern Art, New York


After being run through the pressure chamber of Conceptual Art, geometric forms for many artists working today are not indicative of a strict allegiance to any kind of school of non-objective thought or practice. From the storied history laid out in the rooms of “Geo/Metric” it seems that geometry in art has indeed reached its highest accomplishment: the freedom of eternal fresh starts.


First Annual Governor’s Island Art Fair, Organized by 4heads Collective


The art fair is billed as “organized entirely by artists, for artists—and the public’s enjoyment.” What a pleasant change of pace from most of our big art fairs, especially the various Armory Shows, which are organized by dealers and have nothing but booths named for dealers.


Robert Bordo: it’s always raining at Alexander and Bonin


His new exhibition, Three Point Turn, is on view through April 27


Su Xinping: Toasting


One does not want to exaggerate Su’s gloom, but an unspoken anguish works its way into most of his art. His paintings beckon toward an isolation that is as moral as it is esthetic, so completely existential is its underpinnings.


John Ashbery: Collages at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Mario Naves: Postcards from Florida at Elizabeth Harris Gallery and Trevor Winkfield at Tibor de Nagy Gallery


Is there something intrinsic to the appeal of collage to writers — to moving bits of paper around in startling, revelatory juxtapositions? The coincidence of two shows of collages by writers of markedly different ilk – a sometime poet laureate and a member of the third estate – begs the question.


If Love Could Have Saved You, You Would Have Lived Forever: Curated by Becky Smith


Like the bastard twin of metaphysics, we want art to tell us the meaning of it all.


Nature Interrupted: Curated by Elga Wimmer


Artists, like everyone else in the world, are worried about the consequences of global warming in the natural world; moreover, they realize that the damage is psychic and imaginative as well as terribly real.


Katya Mezhibovskaya: Access Excess


Mezhibovskaya’s art is the most devastating commentary on Art Since 1900 and the most original supplement to Duchamp’s ready mades and Danto’s commentary on Brillo Box that I have had the pleasure to discover.