October 10 to November 22, 2015
260 Richardson Street (at Kingsland Ave.)
Brooklyn, 646 729 4682

Nicola Ginzel’s recent solo exhibition at Brooklyn’s Cathouse FUNeral featured a considerable amount of small-scale mixed media objects and embroidered works on paper. Occasionally framed but mostly hung directly on the wall, these works were shown in close proximity and at an unusual height. Allowing only a tall viewer to peruse them at eye-level, works could easily be inspected both frontally, as well as slightly from below. This made for an intimate acquaintance between viewer and subject, serving Ginzel’s work particularly well. Rooted in the playful mixture of eclectic materials, her enchanting concoctions aim to not only disguise but to reinvent the familiar; she adds value not where it was lost, but where it hardly existed in the first place.

Hybrids between sculpture and painting, Ginzel’s objects involve a staggering amount of found, fragmented, and usually random ingredients. The latter can range from tea bags, mohair, wax, thread, gaffers tape, wasp nest, felt, clothing remnants, rubber band and gold leaf, to dirt. Mixed, re-matched, and altered, the remnants are stripped off their former functionality and everyday context. However, that does not equate with a loss of meaning. In fact, Ginzel’s hand-sized objects can exude an almost shamanistic quality. One might easily imagine them playing an important part in some ritual. The fact that some of the materials involved are gathered in specific places, including dirt from the music haven Muscle Shoals in Alabama, for example, enhances this notion.

In addition to her three-dimensional works, Ginzel also continuously embroiders various scraps of paper. These can either be discarded snippets of mass-produced candy wrappers or popcorn packages, for example, or involve more personal notations, such as schedules, index cards, or specifically selected book pages. Stitch-by-stitch, these mundane items are elevated from the commonplace to the carefully considered. By tenderly abstracting her materials, Ginzel helps them to obtain a sense of preciousness and even an air of Romanticism.

In order to provide a comprehensive overview of Ginzel’s oeuvre, “My Bed is Made of Atoms” presented a selection of works from the past 15 years. In that period she has consistently found inspiration in mainstream culture. However, it is the elegant execution of her work, as well as her careful handling of her materials, that reveal a high regard for craft. She is interested in interacting with her subjects in a simple and yet profound way, or as she has pointed out: “It is in the simplicity and interaction, where the essence of life’s breath resides, not in the end result or goal achieved.”

The post Retrospective Scraps: A Survey of Work by Nicola Ginzel appeared first on artcritical.

March 8 through June 7, 2015
11 West 53 St (between 5th and 6th avenues)
New York, 212 708 9400|

Stephanie Buhmann: So here we are, two longtime Björk fans, who went to MoMA with our 16-month-old daughter in tow, hoping for an incredible event. What were your first impressions after leaving the museum?

Todd Simmons: I was a little confused about what exactly the curator, Klaus Biesenbach, was hoping to accomplish with this presentation of Björk’s extraordinary audio and visual work. What kind of an expectation did you have about what a visual retrospective of her work would be?

SB: I was skeptical from the get-go, doubting that a retrospective of a musician, no matter how innovative and groundbreaking, could be pulled off by a visually focused museum. Björk certainly is an exceptionally gifted artist in her medium — which is primarily music but also extends toward digital innovation. She is, of course, famous for her costumes and makeup, but there isn’t much there in terms of sculptural objects, drawings or anything else traditionally considered fine art, even in a loose sense. I was curious to see how MoMA was going to pull that off. I was also curious whether Björk had a traditional visual oeuvre (drawings, photographs, collages, etc.) in private, something many musicians do. That doesn’t appear to be the case. I walked away thinking that this show was an artificially constructed installation of minor visual objects, failing to truly celebrate — or enlighten us about — the non-material work that makes Björk the incredible artist she is.

Some of the most interesting objects on view were largely ignored: the pipe organs, for example, were installed in the downstairs lobby. They are fantastic instruments and unusual objects so why are they not part of the main exhibit?

TS: And they were only heard intermittently and it’s very easy to miss both the objects and their sound if you enter the museum at the wrong moment. I was there for three hours that day and only heard the instruments played briefly. The Tesla coil mounted on the foyer ceiling roared so abruptly that I saw a group of people jump out of their skins. That’s actually the kind of visceral experience I’d hoped for; only it never happened again that I noticed. I wanted to walk in off the street and be immediately captivated by the dynamic sound of Björk. But I had to fight my way into a cramped wooden structure to do so. She should have been given much more space for her thrilling music to soar in. Not merely a claustrophobic fort. For the show’s subject to have her sound get lost in the overall museum chatter is a significant problem.

SB: That name of the show sounded to me like a reference to Australian Aboriginal culture. In the Aboriginal belief system, a “songline” defines a path across the land. By singing songs in the appropriate sequence, Aborigines could navigate vast distances through the desert. It’s a way to navigate and to remember and pass on history, a concept that must resonate with Björk. The fact is that we learned too little. When it presents a pop-cultural icon, the museum promises two things: to enlighten us about the work of this artist and to convey a sense of the person, the mind behind it. This show is an empty promise; neither of these tasks were accomplished.

So what’s the original intent of this show? Is it trying to get us closer and more familiar with the artist or veil her further into mystery?

TS: There were partial attempts towards the personal, by including scattered diary entries, for example.

SB: Right, but although interesting on a personal level, the diaries and notebooks are not really visually engaging.

There are some interesting things to discover, like the wall of sheet music underneath several flat screens showing her performing on stage, but this is used as a mere backdrop in the waiting area. These musical notations, which reveal how elaborately layered and carefully arranged Björk’s music is, are in themselves beautiful abstract drawings — so why are they cast to the side at MoMA?

TS: It’s a mistake to have them displayed in a corridor when you’re queuing up to get into a room where the promise of a unique experience awaits. You can’t help but feel the push of the crowd and the promise that a “real” experience is going to be around the corner. It’s a fleeting flirtation, which is frustrating when you’d like to savor these details, but you’re being pressured to advance to the next station. You couldn’t feel good about lingering because you’d be holding up the line. It made me wonder: is it ill-advised to dub this bottleneck “Songlines,” in a city as crowded and impatient as New York is, and in a museum designed to process throngs of humanity every hour?

SB: I know what MoMA can get out of this exhibit. I don’t know what Björk is gaining from the experience, as it has not been pulled off well.

TS: A deeper level of credibility or acclaim that she already has? No. She’s arguably one of the most experimental pop stars of her generation. She’s not an artist that you would think is in it for the exposure. One can only speculate what her motivation was to do this. As Biesenbach has said, the museum asked her to do something as long ago as 2000 and she declined. Then in 2012, according to him, Björk decided that she was in a place where a mid-career retrospective was more appropriate. But there’s no explanation why such a show is more justified now than in 2000 or 2030.

SB: Beyond being a let down for fans like myself, I think MoMA missed the opportunity to show a significant artist with respect to her craft and Björk’s work wasn’t able to help MoMA succeed in branching out towards new media. Björk’s work might not be your taste, but I think she is one of the first and few artists who have successfully used computer technology to talk about how human we are. This exhibition doesn’t reveal this at all. I would have liked to see an entire floor in the museum be dedicated to dark rooms and only sound.

TS: It just didn’t have a specific character to it and there were strange spaces in between the objects and galleries, such as a corridor that didn’t lead anywhere. I constantly wondered if I missed sections of the exhibit and reexamined the program to investigate. But I hadn’t. It felt both claustrophobic in the rotunda and scattered in the other parts, including the display of instruments from Biophilia, which is also the first app in MoMA’s collection. You might have noticed the instruments if they happened to be playing when you walked by, but if not, you could have easily missed them.

The show is supposed to be a “cutting edge, audio experience.” MoMA staff greeted us at the beginning of the exhibit, effectively explaining the audio device we wore on our ears and hanging around our necks. The advanced technology tracks you and senses where you are in the exhibit and triggers the audio, obviating the need to look down to device and fumble with it, which is smart.

SB: The concept sounds incredible, but in reality I found that songs and storylines were switching up too fast and unpredictably. As soon as I was getting into a song and turned, the next track started and pulled me out of the moment. It didn’t flow organically.

TS: I was confused by the narrative, which I assumed as I walked through was a story of Björk’s life as a child emerging into womanhood, only to find out later that it was actually a made up narrative made up by an Icelandic writer, one of her friends. It was simply fiction posing as an autobiography and what confuses me about that is some of the early stages in the exhibit had personal photographs, journals and writing, which made it very easy to assume that the narrative was equally autobiographical. I felt deceived afterwards. Why do we have to make up a narrative and if we have to, why don’t we take it even further? Björk’s songs always push boundaries.

But I think of Björk also as a visual artist — nearly as much a pioneer in her visual presentation as she has been in music. She has an incredible daring in her experimentation with video and certainly in her fashion sense and costuming. there is always collaboration in her projects — with Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Alexander McQueen, etc. — however, she is a visual vessel.

SB: She’s a great sourcer and channeler. She taps into a certain kind of zeitgeist and then finds very interesting collaborators to create something unique. In a way her albums can be considered curated exhibitions, not just in terms how the music unfolds from song to song, but how she goes about developing the accompanying imagery.

TS: You would never want to start one of her songs in the middle for example. You want to drop the needle at the beginning and play it all the way through. But “Songlines” only gives sporadic snippets of her music, partially drowned out by an invented narrative in voiceover, written by somebody else. And, as we were talking about earlier, there’s no complementary focus on objects. Those on display serve as mere props to her art. There’s the infamous, ridiculed swan dress she wore to the 2001 Oscars — but is that’s not what she’s really about. Things like that feel quaint. Why show her swan dress, when showing the process of creating Dancer in the Dark (2000) would be so much more enlightening?

SB: I wanted the installation to reflect what Björk is about, but also to capture some of the unique sense of spectacle she creates.

TS: It seems a jarring contrast that this inadequate presentation of her work would coincide with the release of her ninth solo record, Vulnicura (2015) which resonates with an almost painful depth of catharsis and courageous personal exploration. We understand that one of the album’s songs, “Black Lake,” is essentially an expression of the dissolution of her union with Matthew Barney and the fracturing of her family. That’s pretty much the most blatantly autobiographical Björk has ever gotten in her work. And one can only imagine the impact of the live experience of this album in concert. But the contrast between the album and “Black Lake” in particular and this cramped cluster of exhibit rooms was jarring. Two different leagues entirely.

SB: I think that “Black Lake” is incredibly moving and shows Björk at her best: A beautiful song about a heartrending story, framed by a stunningly desolate Nordic landscape, and yet with a glimpse of optimism at the end.

TS: No question in my mind that the video for “Black Lake” was the highpoint of the show, because it was an uninterrupted experience with dynamic, masterful sound design by Marco Perry, who uses 49 loudspeakers divided into groups around the room. It’s the one instance of this show utterly nailing something. Sitting through it on the floor, taking in the video amid a mind-blowing sound system, took my breath away. It was sensational. A totally immersive experience. Perry told me that the objective for him and Björk in that space was to create “a rarefied atmosphere, like walking onto the moon and hearing the sound of the stars.” Something tells me the entire exhibition would have been electric if the rest of it had honored that objective.

SB: I think that it was the only successful collaboration between Björk and MoMA. The museum commissioned it and stuck to her natural medium: music with a narrative video. I was moved by the rawness of emotion you find in the lyrics and her voice, as well as on film. In it, we see Björk age: she portrays a middle-aged woman now finds herself left vulnerable and alone, lamenting the death of her family, as she knew it. This is not a young girl or a vain attempt to cling to youth. It’s an incredibly gutsy project for that fact alone. Some people might say that some of the scenes seem melodramatic or lean towards kitsch, but those who’ve experienced a similar emotion at some time in their lives will know better. It’s a pretty sober portrayal by Björk’s standards and that was probably the most surprising discovery of the show for me.

TS: “Black Lake” succeeds on many levels. It offers a magnificent experience. We got a sustained piece of music. The sound in the room was truly immersive and powerful and detailed. They did a phenomenal job of bringing the potency of her music to vivid life without it being uncomfortably loud. Perry explained to me that it was as elaborate of a sound set-up as was possible for a room that size. The sound is literally all around you in a way that I have never experienced before.

SB: I experienced the sound very physically. It was almost as if it pulsated in my veins, as is if it infiltrated my body.

TS: Absolutely. It was such a potent sound design that even outside of the room you could still feel that whole section of the museum vibrate from the low frequency components. It rumbles the glass balcony and lends an inadvertent excitement to other sections of the exhibition without you knowing where it’s coming from.

SB: The use of two-channel projection worked well, too. You have to choose which one of the synchronized screens to watch, but the effect is that you always have a light source behind you. You are sandwiched between the content of “Black Lake,” which is inescapable.

TS: That’s a good point. It all feels very exposed. You watch an intimate scene you might rather not be witnessing, but you can’t pull yourself away from it either. It reminds me of Fassbinder or Cassavetes‘s anguished scenes of human emotional breakdown; but you also see her striving to avoid being crushed completely. For Björk to allow herself to be exposed like that is brave.

SB: And this sense of raw exposure is also reflected in the fact that her upcoming New York concerts are all being held during the day. It’s an unusually sober hour for rock n’ roll shows.

TS: Yes, one of the seven concerts is going to be at noon at Carnegie Hall, for example. You have breakfast, walk into the concert in broad daylight, and exit into daylight. That’s very unusual in rock. Her new album Vulnicura is heavily electronic and it was produced by two young London-based musicians: the Haxan Cloak and the Venezuela-born DJ Arca. It will be interesting to see if they will join Björk in concert or if these performances will reflect the stripped and raw quality we find in “Black Lake.”

SB: I wanted to see more of this raw quality at MoMA. Maybe the problem was that the bureaucracy that comes with the realization of a major museum exhibition proved stifling to Björk, for whom MoMA is not the ultimate temple for her particular craft. Maybe the problem was that MoMA mainly aimed for a blockbuster, weighing the success of David Bowie’s retrospect at the Victoria & Albert, Alexander McQueen at the Met and Christian Marclay’s “The Clock” at MoMA, along with Björk’s internationally famous name.

TS: I’m sure that this retrospective couldn’t have had Björk’s full attention. It felt like in some ways she had a hand in it, but in other ways she let them lead, and because of that it felt somewhat half-baked. The collapse of her family and the construction of a new album that documented that very painful chapter in her life must have taken up most of her attention and energy during a time when this show was coming together as well. Albums as detailed and elaborate and passionate as hers do not happen over night and it must have taken her attention away from focusing on her art museum debut and retrospective, which seems to belong more to Matthew Barney’s world than hers. It’s a strange dichotomy to present what feels like a fairly frivolous retrospective in conjunction with Björk’s most personal and gutsy album, Vulnicura. Presumably, her music will transcend MoMA’s squandered opportunity.

The post Björk at MoMA: A Conversation with Todd Simmons appeared first on artcritical.

On June 6, the three-day preview of dOCUMENTA (13) officially began with an afternoon press conference with artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and an evening reception at Kassel’s city hall.  The world’s largest contemporary art marathon, the event will run for 100 days total, through September 16. In contrast to its humble post-war beginnings, recent editions have transformed Documenta, which takes place every five years, into a multi-million-dollar affair that is expected to exceed a million visitors this year.

dOCUMENTA (13) has a wider grasp on the city than any of its predecessors. In addition to the usual installations in such local museums as the Fridericianum, Ottoneum, Orangerie, Documenta-Halle and Neue Galerie, artworks are also shown in scattered pavilions in the Karlsaue (the old royal city park), the old train station, a hospital and various commercial buildings. dOCUMENTA (13) also embraces off-off sites in Kabul. In Kassel, over twenty venues showcase more than 160 artists, many of whom specifically created works for the occasion. To view this grand art discourse also means to explore Kassel and its rich historic make-up.

Kassel is indeed a place proud of its cultural heritage. The Fridericianum is the first public museum on the continent, established in 1779, and the Brothers Grimm lived and collected most of their fairy tales here in the early 19th Century. But Kassel has also been the site of utter destruction. A center of Nazi Germany’s war production, the city was a prime target for Allied bombing attacks and in 1943 ninety percent of its 1000-year-old center was erased. The establishment of Documenta in 1955 by artist and educator Arnold Bode marked an attempt to re-introduce culture.

This history all makes Kassel a particularly suitable venue for presenting art that looks at both the past and the future. In fact, various editions of Documenta have focused on cycles of creation, destruction and renewal. dOCUMENTA (13) is no different in this respect. It is the dominant theme introduced by Christov-Bakargiev, former chief curator at P.S. 1 in New York and director at Castello di Rivoli in Turin.

Rather than providing a curatorial statement, Christov-Bakargiev offered a storytelling “Letter to a Friend.” Part-travel diary, part-press release, her letter ponders the general importance of questions over answers. Her exhibition is also a multi-faceted, at times fragmented, and yet astonishingly cohesive meditation on how human tragedies can inspire individual mythologies that can then offer a wide discussion forum. It is a curatorial outlook that pays homage to the beloved Documenta director of the past, Harald Szeemann, who spoke of “individual mythologies” as a motif for his Documenta 5 in 1972. To Christov-Bakargiev as to Szeeman before her, it is important to allow for loose ends to linger.

The essence of this concept is well illustrated at dOCUMENTA (13) by the work of German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-43), examples of which are installed on the upper floor of the Fridericianum. While hiding from the Nazis and before being murdered in Auschwitz at age twenty-six and five months pregnant, Salomon created her epic “Life? or Theater?”, a body of work comprised of 769 gouaches. Layered with text and with musical and cinematic references, her drawings manifest as a personalized code. They meld political history with the artist’s personal memory and intimate thoughts. Though they express a sole individual’s tragic life, they have become a universally applicable song of suffering.

Christov-Bakargiev does not shy away from including many works that traditionally would have been dismissed as craft, such as ceramics and tapestries. The rotunda of the Fridericianum, which she has described as the “brain” of the exhibition and which for many visitors is the first space to visit, offers an eclectic and well-integrated mix. A group of still life paintings by Giorgio Morandi and sculptures by Giuseppe Penone, for example, are contextualized with objects damaged during the Lebanese Civil War and ceramics by Juana Marta Rodas and her daughter Julia Isidrez, two ceramicists who live in a small village located in the countryside of Paraguay. One floor up, tapestries by Swedish artist Hannah Ryggen (1894-1970) radically comment on the political climate and social conflicts of her time. Her works from the 1930s, which tell of the rise of fascism in Europe, are part historic document and part general warning of society’s apathy.

Ryggen’s work finds an interesting counterpart in a large tapestry by contemporary Polish artist Goshka Macuga. Of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not 1” is based on a digital collage in which groups of people find themselves snowed-in amidst the ruins of a grand building. A strong sense of alienation colors the overall mood. None of the people are looking at each other or at the two obvious disturbances: the destroyed building and a threatening, larger-than-life snake. Woven and rendered in black, white, and shades of gray, Macuga’s collaged scene seems to stand particularly still.  Disassociation has become timeless and is therebyeven more oppressing.

Macuga’s tapestry sits well with Geoffrey Farmer’s monumental sculpture “Leaves of Grass”, which consists of thousands of cutout photographs from Life Magazine, images that span Life’s five decades (1935-1985), providing snapshots of what defined many Americans’ view of the world during that time. Displayed like finger puppets on thin wooden sticks and arranged in close proximity like a lush, overflowing bouquet, these political and pop-cultural images take on a sense of playfulness that liberates them from their traditional context and translates as a re-organization/re-thinking of history.

Two of the least predictable installations can be found in the Orangerie, Kassel’s Museum for Astronomy and Science. A main room features the technical engineer Konrad Zuse, who in 1936 constructed a “mechanical brain” in his parents’ apartment. His discoveries led to the invention of the computer, but he also created fine but hardly original paintings that evoke the architectural abstractions of Lyonel Feininger, an artist he admired. Simultaneously displayed, Zuse’s watercolors, paintings and machines pose the question that it might in fact be the imagination that is art rather than particular objects. Zuse’s true creativity unfolded when rethinking arithmetical concepts and in regards to his machines which is what really makes him an artist.

Nearby, an exhibition of sound machines, notebooks, records, and video clips of performances by Erkki Kurenniemi ponders this conundrum further. The Finnish mathematician, nuclear physicist and expert in digital technology was also a pioneer of electronic music. The installation centers on his Electronic Music Studio, which he had established in the Department of Musicology at Helsinki University in 1961-62. It served as an experimental laboratory of sorts, in which electronic sounds formulated a new language. Neither Zuse nor Kurenniemi would have viewed themselves as artists in the traditional sense. However, they both were innovators who opened paths on which many have traveled since. If the ability to open doors and point towards undiscovered territory is at art’s core how can we draw the line in Zuse’s and Kurenniemi’s case?

Much of dOCUMENTA (13) navigates in similar vein between past and present innovations, attempts at re-invention, and above all questioning our possibly antiquated understanding of art and artists.

One treasure is to be found at the core of Mark Dion’s project at the Ottoneum, Kassel’s Natural History Museum. Dion has build an elegant structure that houses the Schildbach Xylotheque, a wood library that is part of the museum’s permanent collection. It was crafted by Carl Schildbach between 1771 and 1779 and consists of 530 books made from and describing 441 local trees. These books, which are actually boxes, are made from the trees they specify. Their spines are shaped through pieces of bark while inside each box are three-dimensional representations of the tree’s life cycle composed of dried plant parts and wax replicas. Again, Schildbach would not have viewed his work as art but science. However, Dion’s structure has turned the library into the wunderkabinett that it is

Christov-Bakargiev has stated that dOCUMENTA (13) is not about destruction but healing. It is an exhibition that implies that art can be the medicine that can change us by altering our perception of the world. Because of its sheer size and international reach, dOCUMENTA (13) might be misunderstood as an assessment of current tendencies, styles and aesthetics. The works assembled certainly reflect many of the international political and social conflicts that have shaped recent consciousness, but this is only one aspect. In many ways, dOCUMENTA (13) is a love letter to the artistic mind, the inspired soul and the undefeated spirit.

The post Allowing Loose Ends To Linger: dOCUMENTA(13) appeared first on artcritical.

February 17 to July 1, 2012
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street
New York City, 212-685-0008

When we think about the work of Dan Flavin (1933-1996), his drawings are hardly the first thing to come to mind. Instead, it is the fluorescent light sculptures that had the enduring impact on 20th- century art, making him one of the most significant minimalist visionaries.  But his works on paper remain little known. Curated by Isabelle Dervaux, this elegant, concise yet comprehensive exhibitionit reveals that Flavin cherished drawing, embracing it as a daily practice. This first drawing retrospective comprises over one hundred sheets from each phase of Flavin’s career.  By also presenting drawings by others artists from the artist’s personal collection, this excellent show allows the audience to recognize the extent Flavin to which found inspiration in both the act of drawing and in viewing examples by contemporaries and predecessors.

Flavin equally valued literal and abstract depictions of a subject. Over the years, his stylistically eclectic drawings ranged from abstract expressionist watercolors completed in the 1950s to pastel renditions of sailboats made in the 1980s. Some of his more traditional drawings date from the 1960s and 1970s. Usually made outdoors from observation, these depict the Hudson River landscape or the Long Island shoreline, places where he lived or spent much time.Realistically capturing the scenery with its waterscapes, rock and tree formations, they prove Flavin a fine draftsman. Though their inherent vocabulary differs strongly from his abstract sculptures, these drawings reflect the artist’s ongoing quest, through attention to detail, to establish a distinct sense of atmosphere based on nuanced observations of light and shade.

And yet, compared to his sculptures, which remain groundbreaking in their transformation of industrial materials into installations that contemplate notions of transcendence, most of Flavin’s drawings are surprisingly conservative, particularly in their use of materials. There are no experimentations with collage, for example. In fact, in many of Flavin’s drawings, his radicalism seems replaced with an affinity for classicism.

Flavin’s traditionalism in drawing might spring from insecurity. He was self-taught and never received a traditional art education. His sketches from nature and portraits tell of his passion for the act of drawing, but they also indicate a need to prove his skill. He had a deep appreciation for artists who could capture transcendental ideas through the mere use of line and light. Though he achieved the same in sculpture, his works on paper lack such higher aspirations. Instead, many of his drawings were products of an ongoing note taking. He usually carried a notebook and ballpoint pen to be able to jot down thoughts quickly and wherever he was at the time. These sketches do not embody finished renditions of original ideas, but rather appear as extensions of thought, often including written notes, numbers and dates.

Some of Flavin’s most accomplished works on paper refer to his sculptures. In these, fluorescent tubes are depicted as colored lines on plain grounds or else use words to designate color. They are characterized by a unique delineation of space through a minimal use of line and occasional color accents. They differ from Flavin’s “final finished diagrams”, which he began in 1971 as visual records of each installation. These records, made with colored pencil on graph paper, are distinctly less inspired and less immediate. In fact, later many of them were not done by him, but by his first his wife Sonja and their son Stephen, following his instructions.

Flavin’s personal collection illustrates how much he appreciated skill and draftsmanship in drawing. Above all, he found it in Japanese drawings, as well as nineteenth-century American landscape drawings. His interest in the latter began during the 1960s after he moved to Cold Spring, in the Hudson River valley, and continued through the late 1970s when he acquired a large number of works by Hudson River school artists on behalf of the Dia Art Foundation for the purpose of displaying them at a planned but unrealized Dan Flavin Art Institute in Garrison, New York. Flavin also collected 20th-century drawings: there are stunning examples by Piet Mondrian, Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt in the exhibition.

Flavin became famous for works that did not reveal his hand: using factory-made fluorescent tubes, his sculptures were assembled by electricians. This exhibition, however, gathers works that show direct mark making and document the artist’s thought process when observing a subject, providing unprecedented insight into Flavin’s creative inspiration. For all that he is considered a minimalist, an abstractionist and even a conceptualist, in this not-to-be-missed display we encounter a different, private side of the artist, a man who was moved by romanticism and aspired to develop craftsmanship.

The post A Radical’s Romantic Side: Dan Flavin’s Drawings at the Morgan appeared first on artcritical.

September 16, 2011 to January 8, 2012
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, (718) 638-5000

During the past decade, Eva Hesse (1936-1970) has finally begun to find the institutional attention she deserves. This resurgence was sparked by the traveling retrospective organized by the San Francisco Museum of Art in 2002, whose success soon prompted several specialized exhibitions such as those focused on Hesse’s drawings (Drawing Center and Menil Collection, 2006) and even her improvisational studioworks (Art Gallery of Ontario, 2010, and Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, 2011). It seemed like most chapters of Hesse’s brief career had been tackled, but  for a few early paintings the artist made in her mid-twenties. By featuring nineteen of these, Eva Hesse: Spectres 1960 manages to examine yet another nuance of this stunning oeuvre.

While the spectres do not compare in sophistication or innovation to Hesse’s mature work, they still reveal the searching spirit of an exceptional talent. Hesse had originally set out to become a painter, studying at Cooper Union and Yale University. It was not until after her graduation in 1964, when she and her husband at the time, the sculptor Tom Doyle, were invited by the textile manufacturer and collector F. Arnhard Scheidt to create works in his German factory, that her focus shifted towards wall-constructions and sculpture. While she continued to work on paper until the end of her life, she promptly turned away from traditional oil painting.

Keeping this in mind, one has to view the spectres as what they are: experimentations of a young artist. While not studies as such, they reflect Hesse’s struggles to formulate a language of her own. And yet, the paintings reveal an intriguing sensibility for composition. Though abstraction was favored during the time of their origin (Hesse studied with Josef Albers at Yale), the spectres are somewhat radical in that they incorporate figurative elements. By fusing representational with abstract forms, Hesse signals an aim to break with both the past and the currently fashionable. In the years to come, even her most minimal, truly abstract works would retain associations with the human body and its rhythms.

Despite their stylistic and material dissimilarities, the spectres’ use of palette already hints at Hesse’s most mature work. Overall de-saturation with occasional accentuation of primary color allows these paintings to seem subdued and yet to also glow. Their radiance emerges from the subtle contrasts of grays, creams and red, for example, in CITE WORK AND DATE, and provides them with a mysterious aura. At the Brooklyn Museum, the installation consciously enhances this attribute by veiling the works in dimmed, warm light.

E. Luanne McKinnon, director of the University of New Mexico Art Museum in Albuquerque, who organized the exhibition, is responsible for the term “spectre” , referring to an “image or apparition” in this body of work. While these paintings are far from minimalist, they are reductive. The suggestions of figures and human outlines partially dissolve into oceans of color. Overall, one can distinguish two general tendencies within this body of work: intimately scaled and loosely brushed paintings and larger canvases that feature a sole subject . In the first group, despite their spatial relationships the figures appear disconnected from each other. One of these compositions depicts a faceless bride in the background while a grey ghostlike creature hovers in the foreground to the left. Is this a Munchian rendition of the same individual, depicted through various stages of time? These compositions are dreamlike, half here and also nowhere. They do not render concrete scenarios, but capture a psychologically charged undercurrent.

In contrast, the larger paintings might be self-portraits or perhaps renditions of the interior life of fictitious female protagonists. As the shape of a sole figure dominates the plane our perception shifts towards the individual. Anonymous and yet with a clear sense of presence, they seem to embody Hesse’s attempt to turn the inward outward and to give shape to something as ethereal and abstract as human emotions. It is this inherent notion of humanity that makes Hesse’s work, no matter how abstract, deeply personal. Hesse was not simply a minimalist; she was a distiller, able to filter out anything unnecessary that could distract from the essence of form, movement and spatial relatonship. In her early and later works alike, there is nothing too much or too loud. Her abiding ambition to achieve self-contained harmony can be traced to the spectres. Here, she is beginning to articulate the concerns that would characterize gestures to come.

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May 13 – September 25, 2011
Invalidenstraße 50-51,
10557 Berlin, Germany

Ademeit, who passed away last July, spent most of his life in Cologne and Düsseldorf. He first trained as a house painter.  Following a brief period of working in textile design, he became a student of Joseph Beuys in 1970. Beuys’ belief in art as an omnipresent part of life that was accessible and could be practiced by all significantly informed Ademeit’s outlook. He also turned his focus on the immediately available: everyday objects, news, and confinements. In addition, Ademeit’s work entails the more obscure attempt to register what he referred to as “cold rays” and invisible radiation. But how to document a notion or fear of something ungraspable? In Ademeit’s case, the solution meant to combine visuals with intellectual content.

In fact, all of Ademeit’s photographs are obscured by the application of handwritten notations. This mesmerizing assemblage of data was painstakingly gathered from electricity meters, thermometers, compasses, clocks, and other measuring devices. But Ademeit’s observations were not limited to the factual. He also recorded sensual impressions and thoughts. His notes on smells, sounds, atmospheric characteristics, and moods, provide a glimpse of the artist’s emotional reality.

Ademeit’s works are visual but also contextual records of specific places as the artist experienced them at a distinct moment in time. Despite the accounting of neutral information, they are also personal musings, a fact that is enhanced by Ademeit’s focus on the familiar. Throughout his career, his preferred subjects remained his apartment building, its basement and yard. It was only after the excessive study of his most immediate environment that he extended his interest to the neighborhood at large, including construction sites, parked automobiles, bicycles, and garbage piles. In “o.T.” (an abbreviation for “ohne Titel” or “Untitled”), Ademeit investigates two bikes with the incredulous eye of a detective. He notes that the second bike was parked at 9.58 PM, that handcuffs are hanging from the frame and that it has been chained to the fence. In Ademeit’s world, nothing was trivial. Mystique and conspiracy were constant companions

This exhibition reveals that Ademeit only slowly expanded his world. In 1990 however, he made a major adjustment. He shifted from photographing objects and interiors to printed media. Each day, he set up measuring instruments and a compass on his newspaper and photographed the still life. In the end, this series involved 6006 works. “5805” is a typical example of this body of work. It shows two opened pages of the Bild Zeitung, a daily German newspaper notorious for its sensationalist reportage. Like the New York Post, the Bild signifies a media outlet that draws its readership’s attention by means of shocking headlines. Ademeit contrasts this superficial gathering of information with his personal, highly detailed notes. Fused together into one picture plane, his observations and the newspaper’s heavily illustrated subjects transform into a vivid and highly detailed index card of the day at hand: September 24, 2003.

When viewed as a large group, Ademeit’s photographs manifest as an elaborate archive of everyday information. Within this complex system, each work reveals the artist’s ambition to thoroughly decipher his place and time. They tell the story of an individual in emotional turmoil, who was seeking to establish a sense of order in a seemingly chaotic world.

The post Mystique and conspiracy: The Polaroids of Horst Ademeit appeared first on artcritical.

February 17 – March 19, 2011
525 West 19th Street
New York City, 212 727 2070

In the past decade, Marcel Dzama has largely become known for intricate figurative drawings in which, with an unusual blend of charm, humor and bite, he depicts a vast array of distinct characters and fabled creatures. Walking trees, owls, nurses, bats, bears, cowboys, ghosts and even snowmen are among signature protagonists that inhabit a world rich in exotic adventure. Scenes range from somewhat whimsical to outright dark and it is Dzama’s strength that he is able to stage a complex spectrum of emotions. His figures can find themselves entangled in both moments of tenderness and extreme tension – the latter usually defined by sexual aggression or even lust for murder.

Though “Behind Every Curtain” remains true to Dzama’s vocabulary, the exhibition documents the artist’s continuous search for new twists and ways to channel his vision into different media. To start, his new drawings reveal an increasing affinity for complexity and density. Most are made of adjoined sheets of paper or scrolls. In addition, large clusters of figures fill out almost the entire picture plane and evoke mysterious patterns. The backgrounds, which were formerly left spare, now contain inscriptions, fragments of linear structures and charts. By layering his compositions, Dzama introduces a notion of spatial depth that is further explored in his dioramas.

Closely related to the drawings, these captivating objects also assemble large groups of figures. Organized on different planes and depicted mainly in shades of red and gray, they form a stark contrast to the architectural structures, which are left white. Much of Dzama’s oeuvre translates as a serious study of play and the dioramas function as miniature theaters, onto whose stages the artist projects his imagination. But Dzama has never been interested in presenting his audience with ordinary narratives. His characters might have personalities, but they hardly serve as storytellers. As is the case in dance, it is primarily the expressiveness of their gestures that conveys meaning. Their actions seem rooted in the abstractions of a dream rather than in reality. This makes for a Surrealist undercurrent, from which Dzama’s increasing interest in Operatic drama emerges.

Over the years, Dzama has repeatedly avoided categorization. Even during his formative years in Winnipeg as a co-founder of The Royal Art Lodge, an artist collective whose members would collaborate weekly on drawings and sculptures, Dzama was devoted to versatility. Be it due to simply embracing unabashed experimentation or the more conscious striving for creating a Gesamtkunstwerk, Dzama’s quest is without doubt always genuine.  That does not mean that all his ventures have been equally successful. His paintings for example always felt a touch awkward, trying to translate the drawings into the new medium but lacking the same technical finesse. In contrast, his dioramas appear as a natural extension of the language he originally set up on paper and his films have also quickly gained in sophistication. The music video he directed with Patrick Daughters for the band Department of Eagles in 2009, being one of the most prominent examples.

This exhibition culminates with “A Game of Chess”, Dzama’s fourteen minutes long homage to Marcel Duchamp’s favorite board game. Incorporating Dada references, Bauhaus aesthetics, and nods to Oscar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet of 1922 and the Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin, Dzama’s dramatic black & white projection depicts performers dressed in geometrically designed costumes. Concealed by elaborate masks, they dance across a checkered board, each delicate ballet step registering like a staccato. The film has its entrancing moments, aided by the fact that the music weaves together seamlessly with the visuals. Again, the narrative gives way to an overall orchestration of emotions. However, the weight that the exhibition puts on this work is distracting. “Behind Every Curtain” leads the audience through rooms filled with drawings, dioramas and rotating sculptures, finding its crescendo in a large screening room in the back. This layout transforms Dzama’s other works into mere props to his latest film. This does not serve Dzama well, as it is his unique trail of thought, not one sole work that is the most impressive.

Ultimately, there is much to discover in “Behind Every Curtain.” While there is a large group of simply stunning works, the most crucial realization one takes from the exhibition is that Dzama remains an artist with a wide-open path ahead. He has set his stakes high by breaking away repeatedly from what he knows. One can expect that this approach to art making will lead him to both repeated success and error. Considering that the former came to him early, while still in his twenties, it is refreshing to know that he allows himself to find the latter as he matures. He occasionally might stumble, but he certainly will get stronger as well.

The post The Orchestration of Emotions: Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner appeared first on artcritical.

October 21 – November 27, 2010
514 West 25th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues
New York City, 212 941 0012

Stephen Mueller’s paintings and works on paper radiate colors that sweep us off our feet. Those fearful that a palette that embraces such saturated and domineering purples, pinks, turquoise and yellow could veer towards kitsch, or cause sensory overdose, will be pleasantly surprised by this exhibition. It takes experience and a finely nuanced sense of balance to avoid such pitfalls. Mueller is equipped with both these virtues and, without shying away from spectral indulgence, applies them with exhilarating finesse.

At Lennon, Weinberg, Mueller’s compositions vary considerably and yet, the group is unquestionably cohesive. Like a family, among whose members essential differences exist, recurring signature characteristics assure an unbreakable bond. One such rather ethereal characteristic is atmosphere, the realization of an illusionistic space generated by contrasting opaque shapes with translucent, thinly layered backgrounds. Like a cosmic close up, these crisply delineated forms emerge from —or retreat into— infinite spheres. They are at once floating and fixed. It seems as if Mueller managed to capture them just in time, during a brief moment of pause in an otherwise never-ending state of flux. It is this notion of motion turned into stillness that causes these shapes to assume an iconographic presence.

But what are they exactly? Inspired by art historical references and cultural objects of the past, they function as emblems for hidden truths and tokens of mysterious philosophies. They are symbols for something unknown and possible keys to deeper understanding. One realizes their significance, their inherent urgency and yet, their only immediate importance resides in their physicality, how they are described through color and form. As centers of concentration, these shapes draw much attention, gain personality and hence, rather appear as protagonists than as compositional elements.

In his first New York solo show since 2006 and his first with this gallery, Mueller stresses a sense of theatricality by elaborating on one particular compositional element. In several of his new paintings, side banners of solid color evoke an immense stylized curtain. Pulled to the sides, it is the gateway to all action, allowing a better look at the drama that will unfold on the painter’s stage.

Mueller’s work reflects an array of eclectic interests and influences. There is an evident affinity for the symbolism found in Northern European Romanticism, for example, or the formal structure of Far Eastern mysticism. Mueller’s touch and care in regards to rendition should imply an appreciation of Renaissance masters, while his focus on color alludes to various ethnic decorative patterns. However, the challenge here is not to figure out the ingredients that make up Mueller’s vocabulary or to decipher the dense mélange. What matters is what we see, the composition with all its facets and how it unfolds as our eye travels from element to element and from one section to the overall plane.

Mueller’s exhibition finds itself in great company in Chelsea this November, with Thomas Nozkowski’s newest body of work displayed at Pace Gallery right next door and Brice Marden’s two installations at Matthew Marks on 22nd Street. Mueller’s show is thus a wonderful intervention in a gallery-to-gallery symposium concerning the nature and experience of abstract painting.

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For the art world, June is synonymous with Art Basel. Each year, countless international galleries and art professionals flock to Switzerland to exhibit, sell or buy art. Besides its commercial appeal, this, still regarded as the most prestigious art fair, offers something much more important: a global overview. Together with the proximate and concurrent Scope, Volta and Liste fairs, Art Basel provides a solid introduction to what is shown in galleries from Tokyo to Bochum and from Lausanne to Los Angeles. Thanks to its geographic range, trends emerge, whether in regards to art movements, favored genres or aesthetics.

My quick take on 2010: Though there might be less photographs on display than ten years ago when Gursky and Ruff began dominating the international scene, there are still significantly more now than in the past three years, in particular by photographers from Leipzig. In addition, even if the Whitney Biennial might have tried to convince us otherwise, there is a distinct decrease of video works, but an overall re-awakened embrace of sculpture.

A general tendency towards simplicity stood out. In place of glitz, gold and sparkle there was a striking focus on purity, coming for example in the form of monochrome paintings by Günter Umberg at Galerie Nordenhake (Stockholm, Berlin) and Studio Invernizzi (Milan) or Gotthard Graubner at Galerie m (Bochum). Along these lines, a large array of black and white works formed a thematic undercurrent: for example, Marlborough (London, New York, Monaco) offered four of Ad Reinhardt’s rare “Black Paintings,” Acquavella (New York) showed a fantastic 1964 black and white sunset by Roy Lichtenstein, and Galerie Thomas offered an exquisite Gerhard Richter “Tubes” painting from 1967. This trend along with recent auction results, might also explain the remarkable amount of Group Zero and Arte Povera works at the fair. While good examples of Lucio Fontana’s work are increasingly rare, paintings by Piero Manzoni, Enrico Castellani and Jan Schoonhoven were prominently displayed in several booths. The most attention, however, was given to the German artist Günther Uecker who in the 1960s began to employ nails as an artistic means of expression. Several examples of his white kinetic paintings covered with nails could be found around the fair, but a work propped on a pedestal with two connected round charts entitled “Weisse Muehle” (1964) at the Mayor Gallery (London) stood out.

Discovering new names in a sea of artists is a pleasure, but so is working out which established artists are being hyped, the definition of which, in art fair terms, is being showcased in various galleries despite their differing programs. Though Gerhard Richter continues to fall in this category, the group this year also included Jaume Plensa, Anish Kapoor, Rebecca Horn, Markus Schinwald and the Bulgarian Nedko Solakov. The works by these artists have little in common. Plensa has become increasingly known for his ethereal figurative sculptures, some of which involve strings of words. An example of one of his mesmerizing marble heads could be found at Galerie Alice Pauli (Lausanne), which will host a solo exhibition this October. Represented by the New York powerhouse Gladstone Gallery and London’s Lisson Gallery, among others, Kapoor is by no means little known, but one does get the sense that the best is yet to come. The quality of his work is solid and he often manages to stand out in juxtaposition to other artists in a booth. Though the oeuvre of German sculptor and installation artist Rebecca Horn is multi-faceted, it was her nature-inspired kinetic works that could be found in various galleries. Blue butterfly wings animated by ominous little machines and parrot feathers that are moved by mechanics like a hand fan (as seen at Galerie Lelong, Paris/ New York) make for an interesting symbiosis of nature and human control and manipulation. They are as stunningly beautiful as they are disturbing and one wishes that one of Horn’s works would have been included in the important “Dead or Alive” exhibition at New York’s Museum of Art and Design (through October 24).

The work of the Austrian painter Markus Schinwald stands out for its embrace of classicism. Schinwald’s paintings, great examples of which could be found at Yvon Lambert (Paris/New York) and Galleria Gio Marconi (Milan), fuse 19th-century academicism with hints of psychoanalysis and gore. Schinwald appropriates antique oil paintings, which he restores, by outfitting them with unidentifiable appendages that suggest 19th Century medical braces or medieval torture devices. Dvir Gallery (Tel Aviv) was one of at least three galleries, where the ink drawings of Nedko Solakov could be found. Solakov represented Bulgaria at the 1999 Venice Biennale after its three-decade long absence and showed at Documenta 12 (2007). His drawings at the fair, most of which belonged to a body of work entitled “99 Fears,” which each address a personal worry, are striking in their simplicity and humor. Solakov’s attitude hits the nerve of our time. As the world we know seems to be threatened daily and anxiety mounts, what better to keep in our toolkit than a unique sense of humor?

The post It’s June so it must be Basel appeared first on artcritical.

March 5 to April 10, 2010
534 West 25th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues
New York City, 212 929 7000

It has been decades since Joseph Beuys was the subject of a major New York exhibition, including the Guggenheim’s retrospective in 1979. Considering this lack of recent coverage, one cannot help but wonder why this effort has now been made by a gallery rather than by a museum. After all, the impact of Beuys’ oeuvre on contemporary art could not be more evident and many of the currently celebrated talents, such as Urs Fischer or Thomas Hirschhorn, openly owe a great deal to their predecessor.

Though by no means a retrospective, this exhibition still manages to provide an excellent introduction. In that respect, it is targeted especially at those fairly new to Beuys. Besides incorporating twelve rare sculptures that date from the 1950s to the mid-1980s, the exhibition primarily focuses on contextualization. As Beuys’ oeuvre entails sculptures that relate to the artist’s staged happenings called Aktionen, thorough documentation of the latter is in fact a much-appreciated feature here. Over ninety black and white photographs by Ute Klophaus – who was one of only a selected few allowed to capture these legendary events – are on display and succeed in telling a vivid story in frozen frames. In addition, four Aktionen can be watched in full length on film in a separate screening room, which showcases rare footage and interviews, and also functions as a true study center.

In life, Beuys was a force and even in death, his work seems to remain inseparable from the shamanistic persona he created. His medium of expression and his message might have differed from that of a Jim Morrison, yet Beuys did and still does enjoy somewhat of a rock star status. He was mysterious, nurtured a touch of darkness, and was constantly courted by followers, many of whom were art students. Beuys’ teaching were a large part of the draw and one of his key beliefs is embodied in a mixed media work from 1977 entitled “Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler (Make the Secrets Productive),” which fuses text and sculptural elements. Beuys was convinced that everyone was an artist and that everyone possessed the ability to access their unconscious mind and deepest secrets to create powerful works of art. But this particular work spells it out more specifically in Beuys’ own handwriting, proclaiming the art of creation as the most potent vehicle for both social evolution and cultural revolution.

It was not until 1962 when Beuys encountered the Fluxus movement that he began to engage in performance art. Until 1986, the year he died, he staged seventy happenings. In the exhibition, the films and photographs of the Aktionen expose Beuys’ confidence in himself as a teacher and crucial political activist, whose mission it was to educate and enlighten his audience. Performance art offered him the tool to engage with the audience directly, and yet it also allowed him to stand apart from the masses. Within this structure, he was as concerned with the moment as he was focused on the future. On of his most famous works, created for Documenta VII in 1982 (he was invited to five Documentas during his lifetime), reveals Beuys’ consideration of time as a significant factor. For Documenta VII, he had arranged a large arrow made of basalt stones that pointed to an oak tree he had planted. He then requested that the stones should not be removed unless an oak tree was put in their place, leading to the planting of 7000 oak trees in Kassel. Despite addressing ecological concerns, “7000 Oaks” was also a monumental social sculpture, which while created by Beuys, was realized by many people for the people, in order to be enjoyed in everyone’s daily lives and for generations to come.

Ultimately, the capturing, preservation, and recycling of life energy might have been Beuys’ strongest concern and along these lines the sculpture “Tisch mit Aggregat,” 1958/1985, serves as an interesting metaphor. The energy source here is depicted literally as a large battery that is sitting on a table. Rather than being presented on a silver platter it is placed on a table that brings to mind everyday activities, family gatherings or the rituals of breakfast, lunch and dinner. Just like food, energy is offered for consumption. But rather than spending and losing energy, two long electric cables that connect the battery with two bronze balls on the ground, assure that it is stored. The balls are energy depots, anchored to the ground through gravity. But what are they really? One cannot shake the impression of cannon balls or some kind of explosive devices. Thinking of Beuys’ teachings, they might signify exactly that: if enough of life’s creative energy, which comes from all people, is accumulated and concentrated, it will explode the status quo and give way to the cultural revolution.

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