Gillick animates the space in his recent show at Case Kaplan Gallery with colorful aluminum benches he calls “Discussion Bench Platforms” and with sixteen unique, inkjet prints which juxtapose traces of a verbal narrative with early woodcut imagery. A video in the back room, Everything Good Goes, shows the artist working on a 3D rendering of a building, which is understood to be the factory from the film Tout va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, 1972); the soundtrack is a phone conversation between the artist and the Fly collective, elaborating on the challenges of representing Gillick’s process of building the 3D computer model of the factory. This is information one can only learn from the press release. Gillick’s show is cerebrally engaging and visually interesting, but the visual and cerebral components are inherently disjointed, never coming together to form a layered experience.

The Discussion Bench Platforms are reminiscent of Gillick’s red benches in the show last year at Parsons, Democracy in the Age of Branding, curated by Carin Kuoni. In that multidisciplinary show, Gillick’s benches were meaningful  and integral as they fostered discussions about surrounding works. The very concept of having benches in a gallery space where discussions and interactions could take place was significant. The benches were circular, creating a small, utopian space where “democracy” in a large sense of the word was represented and furthered.  Discussion Bench Platforms are not activated in the same manner. In the comparatively limited, sterile space of Casey Kaplan gallery (Parsons’ gallery has a window opening to 13th street, which was designed to create a more open, inviting environment ) the rectangular benches face the walls of the gallery. Thus, the benches function more as a place to take a break and view the drawings, rather than become platforms of discussion.

The graphic works are by far the most striking element in the show. With imagery appropriated from German renaissance woodcuts and ironically juxtaposed with contemporary dialog between a barkeeper and a customer, these establish a striking contrast to the aluminum benches, emphasizing the constructed nature of the situation that Gillick sets up in the gallery space. The tension between the form, in a printed, poster format, combined with words that are dissociated from the images, engages the viewer aesthetically and conceptually. The narrative is derived from Gillick’s play, A Volvo Bar and each image/text functions on its own, pointing to Gillick’s constructed world, in which he creates incongruities using time and space. The viewer, drawn into the work, can then produce a variety of meanings from this simple yet poignant body of prints, realizing the show’s premise of triggering thought and discussion.

The video, projected on to a wall in a connected section of the gallery is quite unwelcoming. The idea of becoming an accomplice to an artist, through seeing a quasi-document of the workings and makings of a thought, has potential, but the extremely dense recorded phone- conversation soundtrack frustrates engagement. The disparity between the sound and the visual components of the video works against the content that could be more accessible to the viewer. While the tension in the visual language of the drawings is poignant yet elegantly subtle, the video is incoherent and esoteric, preventing the viewer from interacting with and interpreting the work.

Gillick’s show of three such different bodies of work fails to achieve the kind of organized chaos that could trigger the viewers to discuss vehemently  and is impermeable through the very cerebral experience that it tries to engender. Sometimes, simpler is better.

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In Stitches, the ambitious group exhibition at the Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery, is open until December 19. We need all the time we can get to grasp its many facets.This survey includes artists from very different geographic and professional backgrounds, united by the medium of stitching, broadly defined.

Ghada Amer’s Painting to Trini’s (2006) is one of most poignant pieces in the show. The artist’s use of thread is visually abstracted yet somehow anthropomorphic through the engagement of simple colors and forms: the painting has a weight that seems to be gravitating from the ceiling towards the floor, reminiscent of a hunched person. The three-dimensionality of the threads strips the painting of any remnants of pictorial illusion, interacting instead with the viewer’s space. The assumed fragility and the disconnectedness of the threads transform this relatively large painting into a precious, private object.

Pooneh Maghazehe’s sculpture, Hair Suit (2009), is positioned on the floor in a way that accentuates its intimacy. The use of threads and the half-exposed wire mannequin seem to belong to someone whose space has just been invaded, lending the piece a voyeuristic pleasure. There is a  disturbing element in this object that looks as if caught in arrested transformation. The sculpture reveals itself slowly but with increasing punch; the vibrantly colored yarn, projecting into the viewer’s space, seems at first ominous yet reveals itself to be innocuous, an engaging contradiction.

Tracey Emin’s 4 x OH and She Did What is a much more conceptual take on the medium of stitching. Emin created pieces of fabric that are scarcely decorated, reminiscent of the artist’s smaller drawings. Emin appropriates the craft of stitching, most commonly associated with women, and subverts the medium to challenge notions of femininity and social constructs of gender. The rudimentary skill level of her stitching arguably furthers Emin’s critique of delineated gender roles.

Andy Warhol’s Outdoor Bench (1976-86) is loosely connected to the rest of the show and – Warhol being Warhol – it is impossible to disregard the implications of having this piece next to the other artists. The four silver-gelatin prints, stitched to each other by thread, is a deviation from the mass-produced methods that Warhol usually employed. The punctures on the gelatin silver prints turn these photographs into worthless objects or reproductions that Warhol haphazardly puts together. The domestic implications of the stitching transform this relatively small Warhol piece into more of a private object, involving the artist and his hand in a way that seems to contradict Warholian principles.

The dense hang of this exhibition style is determined by limitations of a small gallery space housing so many pieces and yet one feels the organizers could have taken fuller advantage of the creative license of a salon hang. The over-saturated space is somehow not full enough and the arrangement of the pieces is not exactly eloquent. Although there are definitely metaphorical as well as formal threads in the show, none of these threads are pushed to their ultimate limits. The show, including works from over fifty artists, is not dissimilar to a game of hopscotch, skipping around without ever getting to  homebase.

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Adel Abdessemed’s first solo show in New York uses all three gallery spaces of David Zwirner Gallery, creating a fragmented experience. The different pieces in the show never truly coalesce to generate meaning while the intensity and immediacy of the pieces vary so dramatically that the viewer eventually becomes disengaged.

The monumental sculpture Telle mèr tel fils (2008) is a braid of three airplanes and measures sixty-five feet, taking over one of the gallery spaces. The cockpits and tailfins are originals, while the fuselages are reconstructed from felt and air. The tension between the metal body of the plane and the felt, combined with the seemingly malleable body of the vast vehicles is poignant; the artist plays with the form of the plane to defamiliarize and destabilize the viewer. The sculpture subverts the Duchampian readymade as the braided planes do not belong to the space both in size and function and yet the planes are the medium that the artist uses to create a new, alien form.

The artist mobilizes the space with the overbearing presence of the planes and it is the inherent spectacular nature of the work that draws the viewer in. He plays with ideas of destruction/construction/reconstruction in a playful, infantile way that thrills the viewer. It is precisely for this reason that the association with Joseph Beuys becomes problematic. It is impossible to look at felt used in making an airplane without thinking about the origin myth that Beuys created for himself. Abdessemed’s art historical references throughout the show and in particular this one, are unnecessary and somewhat irrelevant as the pieces depend on a more immediate reaction from the viewer. The title of the work, translated as “like mother like son”, also fails to take on meaning and becomes a confusing reference to the common phrase “like father like son”, which is a linguistic reversal that has no real bearing on the work.

The extraneous references to art history take on a more visual role in the most recent piece of the show, The Sea (2009). In this looped video segment, the artist is balancing on a slab of wood on what seems to be the open ocean, writing the words “politically correct”. The futile action of trying to write while balancing on water becomes comical yet meaningful as the viewer is able to appreciate Abdessemed’s self-critical perspective. However, the visual language used is too heavily borrowed from the Raft of the Medusa (1818-19), acquainting the artist’s work with a medium and formal vocabulary that diminishes the work rather than the legitimizing the work, which is what  the artist seems to be aiming for.

Abdessemed’s show is an exhilarating introduction to his work as the artist’s “acts” (as he calls his works) have a truly visceral resonance for every viewer. Yet, the show suffers from the ubiquitous interests of the artist, his “fascination with the world” as he himself identifies it. Although Abdessemed’s investment with any and every thing in the world does lead to instances of immediate and powerful experience, the loose curation and the overt references take away from what could be an encompassing experience. Abdessemed’s work does not need the pedantic embellishments nor does the show require as many pieces and spaces. One yearns for the initial phases of this work before it got to where it did.

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1 Freeman Alley, off Rivington Street
Lower East Side
New York City, 212 529 7400

Lorna Simpson’s two-part exhibition at Salon 94 and Salon 94 Freeman has a quiet tone. The content of her art is somber. She deals with such issues as gender, identity, war, and torture. All of these subjects are explored by Simpson with a formal sophistication that generates provocative yet ambiguous works.

In the uptown space, two bodies of work are exhibited, Photo Booth (2008) and Heads (2008). Simpson’s drawings of the backs and sides of women’s heads put a special emphasis on hairstyles. Simpson transforms hair into abstract forms. These are not simply representations of specific “heads”. They are multiplicities containing poetic signifiers that go beyond the visible world. They are reminiscent of Rorschach tests and yet they never become non-descript inkblots that are open to any interpretation. The drawings are based on photographic imagery and by interpreting these found images through the drawing process, Simpson discovers new forms and ideas that are not contained in the original material

The hand of the artist plays a very different role in Photo Booth (2008). These images are of black males from the 1940s. The intimate images are reminiscent of Carrie Mae Weems’ work, but instead of creating narratives, Simpson juxtaposes these images to form a cloud-like shape on the wall. This shape takes on a life of its own and an element of abstraction and ambiguity is introduced within a context that in and of itself only has historical value. The overall form created by the accumulation of individual photographs appears to be more important than the individual images and Simpson reiterates this notion by interweaving inkblots among the photographs. The inkblots become weird surrogates for the photographs, filling gaps to complete a “big” picture. The artist becomes a mediator of found images and the marks she makes. The viewer is responsible for interpreting this tapestry consisting of personal images of men who are self consciously posing for snapshots.

The tensions between intimate and public, between information and interpretation, found in the uptown space, take on a different meaning in what Simpson calls the “orchestrated theatrical disaster” of war. At the Freeman Alley venue, a piece called Long, Slow, War (2008) are juxtaposed with a set of drawings of interior spaces from the same year; these latter took their titles from the motif depicted in each drawing. The graphite drawings, on sheets of graphing paper, reminiscent of interior design sketches, are based on published images of war (either disseminated by the government or the soldiers themselves). The drawings emphasize the ubiquitous quality of war imagery in our culture, but when viewed all together, there is something uncanny about their barrenness. The mental spaces created by these drawings could be defined as a heterotopia; the viewer is not completely detached from the reality of the images from which these drawings are reproduced and yet the drawings do not make the reality of the events taking place pertinent.

The disorientation caused by the drawings urges the viewer to take them in in conjunction with the two video projections presented in the same gallery. The video projections are footage from Thomas Edison’s Railroad Smash-up (1904) and Fourth of July fireworks along with the aural element of slowed down sounds of train crashes and fireworks. Simpson’s criticism of the “spectacle of war” is more direct in the video works, whereas the drawings give the viewer more room for private deliberation and free-association.

The subversive beauty that has been present in Lorna Simpson’s work since Waterbearer (1986) has reached a new level of refinement in the private world of her new drawings and “collected” imagery. These new drawings address critical issues that are important to the artist while giving the viewer just enough mental space to experience precious moments of deliberation. It is the melding of formal sophistication with the artist’s honest yet poignant perspective on critical issues that makes Simpson’s work transcend boundaries and definitions and any and all expectations.

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