Stamina. It’s a good quality for an artist to have in any economy, let alone a Recession. And Ward Shelley’s had it all along. In 1998 he teamed up with 2 other artists to live on a moving ‘Voyage Platform’, exposed to the elements in Socrates Sculpture Park. Their mission: to get from one end of the 4-1/2  acre park to the other, deconstructing, and reconstructing the Platform itself as they went. In 2007, Shelley slept, ate, showered and otherwise inhabited “Flatland,” a four-floor, two-foot-wide structure covered with “walls” of clear plastic that allowed viewers to see his (as well as the five other participating artists’) every move. The latter was housed, in Long Island City’s Sculpture Center, within the context of a larger high-concept group show (“The Happiness of Objects”). Years from now, few will remember the premise of that show. However, chances are they’ll remember Shelley. Pitted against hifalutin’ curatorial theory, ‘Flatland’ just had more staying power.

These days, however, if you are looking for Ward Shelley, you will probably find him asleep, inside a large cardboard box of his own construction, sited inside the back room of his one-person show at Pierogi gallery. (It should be noted that the larger box is also sited inside a hoard of smaller boxes—the latter part of an unrelated “Archive” installation that Shelley has co-created with artist Douglas Paulson).

If his ostensible state-of-hibernation may seem a little anti-climactic, it’s a rest he’s earned. The front room of the gallery is filled with 12 impressive, labor-intensive “Timeline” drawings, each of which takes the artist at least two months to research and complete. Shelley’s gone through three versions, for instance, of his graphic rendering of the state and evolution of art’s Avant Garde (“Who Invented the Avant Garde”); Media Role Models (2009) is a funny, and honest (not to mention chromatically interesting) mapping, in tree form, of the various role-model influences on Shelly’s life (everyone from Pink Floyd to Leave It to Beaver).

The drawings are funny, fascinating; they succeed both as artwork and visual document. That said, seen in concert with the Sleeper the show as a whole comes off as a bit disconnected. Viewers sense they’re looking at two very different manifestations of Shelley’s approach to processing information (almost like right- and left- hemispheres of the same brain) and turning it into art.  Still, they don’t quite jibe.

An important point is that Shelley isn’t simply sleeping in the gallery; in fact, Shelley, ever geared for stamina, isn’t getting much rest at all. He’s only sleeping during the day, while visitors roam the gallery. At night, he’s up and about having the gallery to himself, and making drawings (as per the gallery’s press release, he’s exhibiting and adding these new artworks to the show over time). Holes have been cut inside the walls of his cardboard-box bed to admit a pair of speakers, so that while Shelley’s sleeping (and while we’re watching), he can listen to computerized versions of texts submitted by visitors to the show (one can write to sleeperexperiment@gmail.com; or visit www.wardhshelley.com to participate). And, then, it’s on these texts that he’ll base his drawings. An accomplished draftsman, Shelley’s able to work pretty well under the constraints of his performative programme. That said, the day I visited, Shelley had let two whole days pass without completing a drawing. Even stamina has its limits.

Should we just let Shelley transition into being solely an artist who makes finite works on paper (albeit ones that describe infinitely interpretable data)–and let that be all? Or should we hold his feet to the fire, and assume he must constantly be taking on impossible tasks–and figuring out how to turn them into experiences we can share?

For the time being, we must simply stand in the gallery, thinking up what to say to Shelley through those speakers; while Shelley, the artist, is sleeping and dreaming up what to make. And ne’er the twain shall meet. Except, of course, in his future art.

The post Ward Shelley: Who Invented the Avant Garde (and other half-truths) and The Sleeper Experiment at Pierogi appeared first on artcritical.

Armory, First Day Weigh-In

What’s the best way to cope with a Recession–if you’re in the artworld? Expand. And how must you behave? With utter nonchalance, of course.

Hence the Armory–not content simply to be the behemoth fair of contemporary, primary-market work, now has added many mre thousand square feet of secondary-market work (“Modern” and “historically significant” are the official terms). All installed at Pier 92.

Think of this as the ADAA Fair for the ADD set. I, for one, found it much harder to concentrate on a sweet little Vuillard and a sort-of-fierce Jean-Michel Basquiat (both hanging in Boulakia of Paris’ booth) knowing the hooplah of Pier 94 beckoned nearby. For this critic, the splendor of the Armory on Park Ave (not to mention the classier air of Sanford Smith’s house management!) makes all the difference. That said, let me feed you a little “footage” from the artcritical Armory-Cam, as it does a 360-degree pan from the aisle: a Louise Nevelson on the wall of Locks of Philadelphia’s booth; a Sean Scully hard by at Hackett-Freedman of San Francisco; an (always-welcome) Philip Guston (from his later Woodstock years, of course) at James Goodman. No, our camera doesn’t exist; but if it had X-ray vision, you could also include a Wesselman or two, no doubt.
No big surprises.

Still, a nifty video installation from the Starn Twins at Stockholm’s Wetterling Gallery did delight. In it, you’ll watch a massive bamboo structure get built, then climbed-over–only to be dismantled from behind; all the better for the structure as a whole to expand forward, without taking up too much material. A good metaphor, that.

But, ahh, Pier 94 is full of buzz. And indeed, if there is a market bust, the work looks better than in recent years. White Cube of London’s booth bristles with the sort of high-end-ware-energy you want from the Armory Experience: a Damien Hirst dot painting; a Sarah Morris abstraction (which never does much for me, sorry); a Sam Taylor-Wood photo. Latin-American artist Doris Salcedo’s stainless steel chair is crumpled has no back; Antony Gormley’s metal lounge/bench is tortuously poked through with spiky holes. Ouch. Well, collectors are feeling a certain discomfort these days. Best to put it out in a cathartic way, and see if they can make themselves at home. Call it furniture for our uncertain times.

Thanks to Mexico City dealer Patricia Ortiz Monasterio for speaking with us so candidly in her (impressive) OMR gallery’s booth. “I’m not fooling myself,” she said of her expectations for sales. As for her wares, Peruvian-born artist and editor Aldo Chaparro’s text sculptures said what was on our mind. “Chaos” reads one; “Vertigo” another. The former, made of carpet, was colorless and somehow calming. Unrest is underfoot for sure; but there are shades of grey to every situation.

postscript: a couple of snaps each at Pulse and Volta

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Before seeing this show, I’d been giving a great deal of thought to one of the art verbs I hate most: “curating.” How can it be done better? And what does it really mean, anyway? Generally, I’ve thought it best to leave artsy participles (like, say, “painting”) to the truly creative people – artists – who deserve them.

That said, MoMA’s current show, “Rebus,” was probably the best “curated” show in town. For one thing, it’s conceived and spearheaded by an artist, Brazilian conceptual trickster, Vik Muniz. It made me re-think the current trend of curator-as-artist; it made me see MoMA’s amazing collection in new ways (yes, that old cliché). Plus, it even made me laugh out loud.

“Rebus” is the latest manifestation of a MoMA series called “Artist’s Choice” – an  ongoing exhibition series in which the Powers That Be at MoMA give an individual artist free rein to do as they wish with the museum’s permanent collection. (Everything – even  the major playlist items – seems up for grabs.) In past years, Elizabeth Murray, Chuck Close, and Scott Burton took turns to good result. But this version, for 2008-2009 seems particularly freeing. Muniz’s own artwork is fueled by phenomenological tricks, playing as it does with the visual expectations of a typical art-going audience; and indeed, that’s just what gives “Rebus” its frisson: objects are not as they (first) appear.

Thanks to Muniz, some of the crustier things in MoMA’s coffers came alive. For instance, Doris Ullman’s photogravure of a negro chain gang at work (circa 1929) does formal, as well as social-comment duty when we view it, as we do here, next to a prison window sculpture by Robert Gober.  Gober’s vertical bars nicely echo the stripes on Ullman’s poor prisoners’ garb, even while continuing the prison theme. Meanwhile, to the right of Ullman is Marcel Duchamp’sIn Advance of the Broken Arm (original, 1915). How cool is it to feel that now-iconic shovel relinquish its Readymade status for a moment, while in our mind’s eye, we can’t help but imagine how heavy a shovel might be, laden with dirt (like in that photo); how unpleasant it would to be to have to wield it, under a watchman’s eye, against one’s will. For black men, back in Ullman’s Depression Era, did racism feel like a huge, inescapable fact? A big, American “ready-made”?

Muniz gave us lighter fare nearby when he exhibited Erno Rubick’s famous invention –Rubik’s Cube – next to Alberto Giacometti’s Hands Holding the Void (Invisible Object) (1934).  To the right of Giacometti’s sculpture is nothing more or less than an empty paper bag on a plinth. First, you imagine Giacometti’s figure holding Rubik’s Cube (a truly fun moment). But then, you wonder just what you’re supposed to think of the “void” inside that bag. Did some museum employee forget to throw away their lunch bag? Hardly. Throughout “Rebus,” Muniz delights in hauling little wonders out of MoMA’s Design collection – in this case Flat-Bottomed Brown Paper Grocery Bag (1883) by Charles Stillwell – and make us realize just how much we take them for granted. Seeing something as ubiquitous as a paper bag, showcased on a sculptural plinth in a place as fancy as MoMA is strange. So darned strange, in fact, it’s enough to give you an existential shiver. That bag isn’t empty at all. It’s the bag itself that’s Giacometti’s “Invisible Object.”

Other moments of fun-mixed-with-formal-rigor abound. A superb black and white photograph from 1979 by Zeke Berman, of yet another void. Reflections in a shop window by Eugene Atget echoed by the likes of Roy Lichtenstein and Martin Kippenberger. And my favorite, the one object in the whole show I missed: a standard EXIT sign (designed by Interloop Architecture).

Coming as it did at the tail end of the show, and hung high – as any real EXIT sign would – it was understandable that I might miss it. Yet, I couldn’t quite forgive myself. So attuned did Muniz make my senses to the art, he actually made me forget myself – not to mention my mistrust of the act of “curating.” Instead, like that EXIT sign, Muniz, the curator, was hiding in plain view the whole time – (escape) artist that he is.

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