ALTERNATIVA: “Materiality” and “Wyspa: Now is Now” at The Wyspa Art Institute.

May 26 to September 30, 2012
Doki 1.145 B. 80-958 Gdansk, Poland.
open Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 7pm.

Gda?sk is one of the 20th Century’s most pivotal cities. Strategically located along the placid waters of the Baltic Sea, it was here that the Second World War officially began.  In the 1980s this centuries old city (Danzig in its German incarnation) became a hotbed of revolutionary ferment. It was here in the hometown of Lech Walesa and the birthplace of Solidarinosz that a  major blow was struck upon the Iron Curtain’s seemingly impenetrable armor.

But now the vast Gdansk Shipyards, scene of the momentous  August 1980 strikes, stand idle, a crumbling red brick ruin, slowly being reclaimed by the forces of nature. Interspersed among the trees and tall grasses that make this former symbol of communist productivity resemble an urban park, the Wyspa Institute of Art stands defiant.

Wyspa’s history, like so much of its surroundings, is intimately tied to the 1980s. It was during this period that sculpture students from the Fine Arts Academy, among themGrzegorz Klaman, Kazimierz Kowalczyk and Beno Osowski, began exploring the ruins of Granary Island, a section of Gdansk untouched since its destruction by allied bombs in the 1940s. In their hands the island was clandestinely transformed into an open-air experimental exhibition and studio space.

This alternative space, where the history of the city is made palpable by the exposed layers of the ancient structures surrounding them, eventually gave rise to a more formalized vision: the Wyspa Progress Foundation.  A non-profit organization launched in 1994Wyspa is committed to exploring varieties of artistic practice and art in public spaces.

In 2004, the WPF founded the Wyspa Institute of Art in a former technical college in the shipyards. Since 2010, under the directorship of co-founder Aneta Szylak, this “laboratory of new thinking” has sponsored ALTERNATIVA, a series of large-scale international exhibitions, performances, publications, and meetings.

The current exhibition “Materiality” is a jointly curated investigation into how “different generations of artists, thinkers, and cultural operators have reconsidered their approach to materiality and its turbulent political history.”  Housed in the spectacularly renovated Hall 90b, over 30 works range from the coldly conceptual to the invitingly tactile, the massive space echoing  to the ubiquitous sound of clicking slide projectors.

Katarzyna Krakowiak’s Reconstruction of the Shipyard’s Broadcasting Center (2012), which involves the artist transforming herself into a human antenna, is part video documentary, part historical display. A slickly edited film features Krakowiak precariously balanced along the roof of Hall 90b. Clutching a hand-held transmitter, she broadcasts snippets of sound from the archives of a former shipyard DJ. The LPs, tape reels and other ephemera from the archive are tactfully arranged within a vitrine next to the video monitor.

This fitting introduction to “Materialty” lays bare its central critical problem: How do artworks exist in the present tense? Like several of the pieces in the show, Reconstruction of the Shipyard’s Broadcasting Center assumes a documentary character that has problems transcending the weight of its own past. Hiwa K.’s Nazhad (2009/12) encounters a similar problem.  The film records the activities of an Iraqi man who melts the spent remains of military conflict into ingots to sell. The documentary, along with the attendant photographs of the craftsman at his forge, are thoroughly engaging. But the intense physicality of the process, the heat, sweat and hard work required to turn bullets into bars, are vaporized by the immateriality of the photographic medium. What remains underscores the fact that these moments are now lost in time.

Actuality in the past does not guarantee a work’s status as art in the present. Undoubtedly this sentiment is an intended consequence of the exhibition, but it gets repetitive. Even the most compelling documentary examples, such as Sally Gutierrez’s Organ Market (2009), a horrifying film that explores the market for paid organ “donation” in the Philippines, feel insulated from attempts to engage with attributes other than the ideas they represent.

To the curators’ credit, “Materiality” genuinely seeks a dialogue between multiple approaches to contemporary art-making. The show gracefully balances its more cerebral aspects with several beautiful displays that accentuate the physical properties of the artist’s chosen medium.

Lex Pott addresses the passage of time in the present tense in his simple but powerful work Transience (2012). A series of 14 silvered mirrors arranged horizontally across the wall, each section is progressively darkened by the application of sulfur as an oxidizing agent. The result is a color spectrum that ranges from silver through golden amber to a deep purple-blue. Its unit-based structure recalls Judd and Andre, but the stress appears to be less on the literalness of the object than its effects upon the reflected imagery. Gazing at the mirrors, one feels an increasing detachment from the reflected space as the oxidized surface darkens. Pott’s work strikes a somber tone.

Katarzyna Jozefowicz also applies a modular  approach to composition in her hanging installation Sights (2010/12). Composed of hundreds of hand-stitched, clear vinyl envelopes – each containing small images of homes, streets, or landscapes — the work is a rumination on dreams, a kind of scrapbook for events that have never occurred. Jozefowicz tackles time, space and material in subtle and sophisticated ways. By collapsing the distance between these elements and reordering them in a non-linear fashion, she allows for the creation of new narratives generated by the physical presence of the sculpture rather than merely by the artist’s claims on its behalf. Sights is one of “Materiality’s” most impressive statements.

Across the cracked pavement from Hall 90b, in the Wypsa Institute of Art’s rear gallery space, curators Ewa Malgorzata Tatar and Dominik Kurylek have re-imagined the WPF archives as the companion exhibition “Wyspa: Now is Now”.

Organized around four major themes  that define Wyspa as a cultural force — labor, location, meeting, myth — the films, photos, books, objects, and stories that represent 30 years of activity (including the decade prior to their foundation) are laid out in a series modular square sculptures. Theoretically this aids the viewer in experiencing “the archive as a present”. In practice, the materials used possess the patina and authority conferred by age and only act to assert their historicity.

This, of course, is not necessarily a bad thing. “Now is Now” may not live up to its curatorial premise, but the experience of the show is remarkably haptic. The darkened gallery feels damp and a faint musty odor permeates the space. The peeling walls and aging concrete floors set the stage for a thoroughly immersive experience of the past in space that exudes its own history.

It is tempting to label ALTERNATIVA as yet another festival that ends in ‘A’, but unlike dOCUMENTA or Manifesta, ALTERNATIVA bills itself as a kind of “anti-festival”, spread out over a series of years rather than days.  ALTERNATIVA is perhaps best envisioned as an ongoing experiment — albeit one that appears incredibly well funded — that began in the heady days of the 1980s. By emphasizing not just display, but also art’s social role in the accumulation and distribution of knowledge, “Materiality” and the Wyspa sponsored exhibitions that have preceded it remain true to the roots of its host city.

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If you’re prone to fits of acrophobia, the 25^th floor of the John Hancock Center may not strike you as the ideal location for an art gallery.  But staying abreast of the latest shows in Chicagoland requires precarious treks across neighborhoods, dizzying sprints up skyscrapers, and even trips across time-zones, all while maintaining your balance.  On rare occasions, it means facing your fears. Lately, several exhibitions have been worth the anxiety.

“Objects/Objectivity” at the elevated Valerie Carberry Gallery features the work of eminent octogenarians Philip Pearlstein and Ellen Lanyon. Conceived around their shared love of collecting, the show – selected by the artists themselves – examines their working relationships with the objects they accumulate.  The 12 pieces are a snug fit for Carberry’s intimate space and though both artists proceed from observation, the worlds they construct demonstrate a fundamental difference of approach.

Pearlstein’s large-scale paintings are dry, stoic affairs. The merciless cropping, irregular perspectives, and dense compositions the artist is renowned for are softened in the selections for this exhibition. But the augmented atmosphere creates a high-pressure pictorial stasis. The figures in Mickey Mouse, White House as Bird House, Male and Female Models (2001) are nearly as inanimate as the objects that surround them, and Pearlstein’s tendency to touch the surface in a one-dimensional manner further reduces an already sluggish pace. Observing the similarity between the flesh of the model in Two Nudes, Rabbit Marionette (1997) and the leather of the Eames chair upon which she rests, Pearlstein’s figure barely registers as human. While the artist’s eye may acutely perceive the objects around him, it seldom penetrates their surface.

By contrast, Ellen Lanyon’s work bristles with movement and tension. Spatial dislocations brought on by a modernist’s knack for composition provide the jolt of lightening that rouse her slumbering objects.  In Majolica Tea (2010) Lanyon fuses her props into an undulating alternative reality where subjects advance and recede, jostling for position among the pulsating greens and bitter oranges that permeate the picture plane. Compared with Pearlstein’s more sedate approach to surface, Lanyon’s Hanafuda (2010) shimmers and crackles with a dusting of iridescent paint. The dimensions of the canvases themselves – five of the six on view are squares – contribute to the reverie. When asked about the intentions behind her use of this notoriously challenging formant, the gracious Lanyon – who happened to stop by during my visit – shot me a wry smile and replied, “they were on sale.”

Just across the river in Fulton Market, Linda Warren Gallery is highlighting two distinct – but related – bodies of work by veteran painter Ed Valentine. In the main room, his large-scale paintings propose solutions to the problem of presenting street art in the environs of a gallery.  While some artists are content with importing the look of 1980s Brooklyn-style graffiti indoors – where it inevitably looks naïve – Valentine adopts the painted language of the street, its immediacy and its visceral force, while deploying it in the service of a traditional format:  the portrait. His use of the spray can delivers a wire-frame line that imparts a cartoonish appearance to Untitled Spray Portrait with Blue Painted Eye and Four Blue Drips (2011) but the caricature is undercut by audacious painterly swipes beneath the mouth and right eye. This is not to suggest that these works are easy to love, but the freshness of a painting like Untitled Spray Portrait with Painted Eye and Green Drip (2011) is undeniable.

More immediately likeable, the numerous small oils displayed along Warren’s back gallery witness the artist responding to the sheer joy and materiality of paint. In Untitled Portrait with Red-Orange and Brown Painted Eye (2011) Valentine autopsies the last 150 years of painting, tipping his hat to every major development in the modernist tradition without a hint of cynicism or irony. In addition to the strokes, spatters, and Stella-like stripes that comprise works such as Untitled Portrait with Orange Ear and Purple Drip (2011), Valentine locates his subjects in an ambiguous space that expands and contracts. These spatial alterations cause his figures to simultaneously hover along and beneath the picture plane, either dominating their environment or playing victim to it, depending on scale. Taken as a whole, the paintings’ analogous temperament  threatens to blur them together, but with time and patience the works assert their individuality, becoming a rogues’ gallery of characters that you’d swear you recognize.

2011 has yielded a bounty of quality shows around the city and two additional cases feature artists whose works on paper investigate the built environment. In River North, Amy Casey’s exceptional “Boomtown” at Zg Gallery closed in August, but an echo of the exhibition reverberates in the gallery’s office space through the end of October.  The glorious detail and individuality of the industrial buildings, homes, and urban structures that encompass pieces such as the acrylic, City Blocks (2011) make you feel as though you might actually pass them on a stroll along Euclid Avenue. Farther afield, Matthew Woodward’s monumental graphite on paper abstractions take glimpses of the urban environment as a starting point and evolve into a grayed, ethereal space. His “Tremendous Alone” exhibit, comprising an outstanding collection of drawings, is at the Elmhurst Art Museum, located just 15 miles west of the Loop. Worth the trip, if you can maintain your balance.

Philip Pearlstein and Ellen Lanyon: Objects/Objectivity at Valerie Carberry Gallery, 875. N Michigan Ave #2510. September 16 to November 5, 2011.

Ed Valentine: Untitled at Linda Warren Gallery, 1052 W Fulton Market #200. September 9 to October 22, 2011

Amy Casey: New Paintings & Etchings at Zg Gallery, 300 W Superior Street.  September 9 to October 29, 2011

Matthew Woodward: The Tremendous Alone at the Elmhurst Art Museum, 150 S. Cottage Hill Ave. Elmhurst, Il.  September 16 to December 31, 2011

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Louisville, Kentucky has something that other cities covet. Unlike the countless urban centers praying that an eleventh hour investment in the creative sector will deliver them from an ailing economy, Louisville’s support and (blue) grassroots enthusiasm for the arts is well established.  Recently, the local arts community, displaying impressive vitality and channeling their own brand of the Arab Spring, took to the streets in a protest that helped unseat the reigning CEO of the city’s Fund for the Arts.

The confrontation began in February with a seemingly innocuous letter extolling the virtues of public support for the arts.  In addition to the well-worn tack of linking arts and culture to everything from higher math scores to economic expansion, the letter, signed by the directors of the Speed Art Museum, Frazier History Museum, and the Louisville Visual Art Association (LVAA), suggested that simply donating to the Fund for the Arts (FFA) wasn’t enough. Not all arts organizations benefit from FFA funding, the statement continued, and some that do, do so only very little.

Shortly after the letter’s publication in the weekly Louisville paper Business First LVAA director Shannon Westerman received a terse voice-mail from FFA CEO Allan Cowen which included, among other things, a perceived threat to Westerman’s status as director.  Apparently angered by Westerman’s signature on the open letter, Cowen ended the message by wishing him “good luck in (his) future career”.  On March 11^th, after Westerman went public with the intimidating voice-mail, incensed members of the Louisville arts community staged a lively protest outside the offices of the FFA and demanded Cowen’s ouster.

Though he’s been viewed as a mercurial figure, Cowen’s accomplishments at the FFA speak for themselves.  Under his watch, the annual campaign grew from a lightweight $600,000 to a staggering $8 million. Cowen is also credited for increasing FFA assets from $43,000 to holdings worth over $25 million today.  But less than two weeks after the demonstration and subsequent internal debate, on March 21st, the FFA announced that Cowen would be retiring after 30 years of service.  It seems fitting then that a city whose recent intrigue would make the House of Borgia proud should play host to an important work by the Italian artist known for his tumultuous life.

The Fortune Teller by Caravaggio is the heart of an exhibition at The Speed Museum that examines the lasting impact of the Milanese master’s accomplishments by juxtaposing The Fortune Teller with works from the Speed’s permanent collection. (The Speed Museum’s exhibition of the painting is the second of three stops in North American following the Italian Cultural Institute in New York in May, and a last stop at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa) .

Dated 1594, The Fortune Teller depicts an alluring gypsy entrancing a young cavalier while purloining his golden ring. It’s an image that possesses an eerie, almost modern quality. The surface, devoid of any trace of the brush, is free of craquelure and is gently speckled as if pigment were mixed with sand.  Cropped scarcely below the pelvis, the actors in this tale of beauty and betrayal inhabit a space just beneath the surface of the picture plane, resulting in a photographic quality that makes The Fortune Teller appear more akin to a grouping of figures by Degas than Caravaggio’s contemporaries.

Speculation about Caravaggio obtaining his heightened realism via the camera obscura has grown in the past decade and an x-ray image also on display does nothing to dispel the conjecture.  In addition to exposing the remnants of a subsurface painting by another artist, the x-ray reveals a total lack of underdrawing. It’s not only the composition that gives this work an incredible sense of veracity, but also the subtle facial expressions and the studied gestures of the figures. It’s little wonder that this picture was eagerly sought out by painters of the time; its space and sharp naturalism must have been startling to 17^th century eyes.

The most notable examples of Caravaggio’s influence in the show are two early 17^th century paintings; Ecce Homo, attributed to Gerard Douffet, and an image of St John in the Wilderness by an unknown painter.  Douffet’s Ecce Homo depicts Pontius Pilate presenting Christ to the mob, (a theme tackled by Caravaggio himself around 1609) A brilliant, single-source light illuminates the flesh of a tormented messiah, drawing the eye down and across the surface to the posed hand of Pilate.  The figures, carved out of light and dark, are close-cropped below the waist and pressed against the surface of the picture; all traits that give Caravaggio’s work its characteristic vérité. Douffet’s homage falls short only in his handling of the skin. In contrast to Caravaggio’s mastery of delicate shifts of hue that contribute to a depiction of life-like flesh, the figures in Ecce Homo seem to be made of wax. The unknown artist’s St John in the Wilderness shares similar qualities, but where Douffet’s composition benefits from areas of bold color, St John’s limited range of hue gives the sense of being a provisional, if refined, study.

Also on view, works by Rembrandt and Johannes Verspronck are compelling examples of Caravaggio’s impact across Europe. Compared to the previous paintings however, the execution of these works show the reach of Caravaggio in a diluted fashion.  Is the emphasis on contrasts of light and dark descended from the earlier master’s innovation? Undoubtedly, but these artists paint too much with their own brush to be considered followers in any meaningful sense of the word.

The Speed Art Museum is just one of Louisville’s varied and growing arts institutions. The city, home to the boutique 21c Museum Hotel, the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays, and the aforementioned dynamic local scene, is fast becoming a cultural hub that eclipses neighboring large cities.  And despite the somewhat tense atmosphere generated by this year’s public row, the parties involved have agreed to put their difference aside and are moving forward for the greater good of the community.  If not, expect artists in the streets.

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Twenty-one years since the Contemporary Arts Center fought, and beat, obscenity charges stemming from images in Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, the City of Cincinnati and its arts community want you to know that times have changed and they’ve moved on. But not everyone is convinced.  “The chilling effect that manifested itself directly after the trial continues today” observes Jerry Stein, a 38 year veteran of art reporting for the Cincinnati Post and witness for the defense during the 1990 trial. “You may not get art directors and curators to admit that, but anyone who suggests that they don’t consider the ramifications of the police showing up at a gallery, is in denial.”   As a metropolis that has historically maintained a tense relationship with anything cutting edge or socially progressive, one might think that the current artistic milieu emphasizes landscapes, still lifes, and above all else: safety.  But contrary to Stein’s remarks, the reality of the situation seems far different. When it comes to big name, even contentious artists, lately, Cincinnati is awash in them.

In just the past year, the Contemporary Arts Center has welcomed exhibitions by Pat Steir and Marilyn Minter; Selection from the Coleccion la Jumex;  and Shepard Fairey’s retrospective exhibition, Supply and Demand, which courted  minor controversy over the content of murals placed around the city. Perhaps the CAC’s biggest coup is the February debut of Keith Haring: 1978 -1982.  Organized in collaboration with the Kunsthalle Wien, this exhibition pulls together an array of rarely seen drawings, collage, flyers, and short films; among the most compelling are some of Haring’s earliest. Works from 1978 and 1979 illustrate a marked fascination with the all-over approach of Tobey and Pollock, and these pieces – nearly all untitled — present a young man invested in the exploration of art’s formal problems.  A selection from his journal highlights Haring’s interest in the way shape reads as isolated form or part of larger groups, and this examination gives rise to works such as 1979’s Untitled, a substantial ink and acrylic piece that echoes de Kooning’s 1950 masterwork Excavation.  As good as these initial pictures are, by 1980 there is a perceptible decline in quality. The lone holdout is Matrix, a 1983 ink on paper opus that fuses figuration and all over pattern into a seamless work in excess of 35 feet.  But as his style matures, Haring’s interest in compositional strategy wanes, and while his desire to circumvent the New York power structure and bring art into the public sphere is admirable, ultimately visual sophistication is sacrificed to get there.

Also on view, Rosson Crow’s Myth of the American Motorcycle brings together seven paintings specially commissioned for the CAC.  Her ambitious, loose depictions of neon signs, choppers, and biker bars, struggle under the weight of their size.  To handle this, Crow has devised a single effective compositional tactic: images that emphasize the horizontal, girded by overblown vertical drips and strokes of enamel paint.  It works, but when Crow deviates from the formula, as in The Boneyard and Motorbike Junkyard, the paintings grind to halt. Crippled by a shift in format and without the horizon of the canvas to guide her; Crow is out of her depth.  Densely packed around the edges, or jumbled in the center of the support, these paintings idle lifelessly.  Relevant as these shows might be, the Contemporary Arts Center isn’t the only venue featuring that which is new. The Cincinnati Art Museum has been getting in on the action with a show by Kara Walker and,  at present,  The Way We Are Now: Selections from the 21 c Collection.

Based in Louisville, Kentucky, 21c bills itself as the only museum – in actuality a boutique hotel – dedicated solely to the art of the 21st Century. Putting aside the thorny issue of a public museum validating the collection of a for profit hotel, the exhibition is a free-for-all of recent work that leans heavily on photography and sculpture.  A standout, and one of the few examples of painting in the show, is a group of small works by Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry.  Intimate oil on linen portraits, The Evidence of Things Not Seen features images of men arrested during the 1956 Montgomery bus boycotts.  A layer of transparent silk printed with the photographs of the 1956 mug shots hovers inches above the surface, creating haunting ghost images and a complex pictorial space.

The inclusion of part of the 21c collection in the museum atrium also yields some unintentionally awkward moments; in particular the juxtaposition of Kehinde Wileys’s The Prophet and The King II (part of the 21c collection) with the comparably sized and framed A Venetian Woman by John Singer Sargent (part of CAM’s permanent collection).  Rather than highlight Wiley’s connection to tradition, his limited formal vocabulary is brought into sharp relief by the painting’s proximity to the Sargent.  Wiley’s overreliance on flat pattern, lack of varied surface incident, and complete disinterest in conveying any sort of credible space is glaring.  Not only are these two not in the same league, they’re not even playing the same sport.  The Prophet and The King II may not be much good, but at least it’s new.

So how does one rectify Cincinnati’s current embrace of all things contemporary with Stein’s comments? “The evidence is in what you show”, claims the seasoned critic.  “Over the past twenty years I cannot pinpoint a single significant exhibition that equals the visual power and directness of The Perfect Moment.”  And in this respect, Stein might be on to something.  The Cincinnati Art Museum may have exhibited Kara Walker, but Harpers’ Pictorial history of the Civil War (Annotated) rates among her tamest and least interesting work to date.  Shepard Fairey’s Supply and Demand certainly brought massive attendance for the CAC in 2010, but his calculated politics, bland imagery, and empty sloganeering parody the posture of a confrontational artist.  Meanwhile, Rosson Crow is big for being, well, big, and while Keith Haring’s ubiquitous use of the phallus may ruffle a few feathers, his sincere embrace of the stance of the artist as activist hardly defies the values of Midwestern America.  These shows may draw large numbers from the general public, but for the discerning viewer, there’s little challenge to taste.  It’s possible that over the past twenty years, artists have simply set their sights lower (Stein admits as much), and major institutions, obsessed with the bottom line, are more interested in ticket sales than visual stimulation. While contemporary art may now be all the rage, when it comes to quality, Cincinnati might have further to go than it thinks.

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