Bellwether Gallery
134 10th Avenue
212-929-5959
September 8 to October 6

The beginning of the season has brought us two remarkable shows at either end of the tenth Avenue gallery corridor. The shows beg for comparison. Both women work in what is, by now, a genre, text painting, or at least make paintings that include words and phrases in them. Both are working at the intersection of language, symbol and abstraction. They each have impressive credentials, make no bones about or make issue of their Jewishness; Kass-“It’s Hard Being a Jew”, Frankfort-“Star of David (orange)”. It’s a sort of beyond post-feminist double whammy.

Kass reminds me of old New York, the New York of the Thalia Theater and the New Yorker Bookshop. Highly intelligent, cynical, wise cracking, and fast fast fast. Her paintings which combine signage of iconic modernism and phrases of city argot or lyrics derived from Broadway musicals are hilarious and also like a punch in the stomach or on the arm, really hard. “Oh Come On” and “Enough Already “ are good examples of the former and “What I did For Love” and “Sign Out, Louise” of the latter. In “Painting With Balls” Kass spells out Cojones repeatedly painted in the grisaille style and font of an iconic Jasper Johns work that actually includes two balls. In “Daddy I Would Love to Dance” Kass spells out that phrase in bold block letters done black or white drip style (a la Jackson Pollock) against a camouflage (a la Warhol) background.

The famous Kenneth Noland target is emblazoned with the phrase “Nobody Puts Baby In the Corner”. References to other famous artists, linguistic and stylistic, obvious and subtle, are all over the place. Kass is not about to earnestly canonize any patriarchal figure. This is a serious game and Kass’ sure graphic hand and knack for over the top color consort to make the work something more than jokes. The occasional strange choice of lyric and graphic combination strikes an odd note and feels like pop psychology. “Let The Sunshine In” is in this category. For the most part the work has teeth and will most likely have ”legs” as well.

Dana Frankfort’s show at the super-cool Bellwether Gallery is more finite about the nature of words and more painterly in touch. Simple words or phrases are left to do their own work of resonation and cross-reference. Don’t be deceived by the seeming simplicity, these paintings are every bit as subversive.   “Crack” and “Stuff”, and “Possibly Permanent” are examples of the sort of word-phrases used as a springboard for Frankfort’s paintings. She is more in doubt of the efficacy of the word and the word is sometimes painted over itself several times making it almost unreadable, bringing to mind the ineffability of much of what we intend to communicate and the multiplicity of meaning without context. Frankfort also has a sure graphic touch but it’s one we don’t recognize yet, it’s more underground and slightly street. Her color is often near impossible, even lurid, yet sly and funny in it’s own knowing way. In “Lines” and “Lines (transformer)” the seraphed font moves top to bottom, seraphs top and bottom making an onomatopoeic representation of the word. Sometimes as in “Word” the scale of the font jumps around in size and space. It included a Star of David indicating that symbol can take the place of the word. The soundtrack for this work is far from Broadway. It is more abstract, dissonant and propulsive…. Several generations away from Kass’ “Do You Wanna Funk With Me”.

The implications and issues raised in both of these shows are far ranging and quickly become quite deep. They are both a lot of fun and offer several fertile fields for painting to grow in. Don’t miss them before the shows come too thick and fast to detect an issue or an implication.

The post Deborah Kass: Feel good paintings for feel bad times and Dana Frankfort: DF appeared first on artcritical.

Through April 30, 2005

The German artist Martin Kippenberger, who died in 1997, is being celebrated with three shows in New York right now. The most interesting of these is a show of self-portraits, in various mediums, at Luhring Augustine Gallery. Kippenberger was “an 80’s artist”. That is to say he was a New Wave type, worked in many mediums (painting, sculpture, photography, graphic design, performance) and bought the cult of personality package whole. Warhol is said to have been his inspiration, but comparison to any of the 80’s mega-maniacal personalities will do. Kippenberger was a terrific prankster and most of these self- portraits are intended to be funny. The show includes a wall of exhibition posters. Kippenberger loved to design posters, which always involved himself in one guise or another or some complex reference to himself through a system of symbols of personal iconography. One stand-in image for Kippenberger is Fred the Frog. A character shown here crucified, as a sculpture. Fred’s cross is made of stretcher bar wood and he clutches a beer mug, a not so subtle statement about the artist as victim and slave. The beer mug, cans of beer, cocktail glasses and many other references to alcohol are throughout the show. Kippenberger was the proverbial pathetic but lovable alcoholic and using the domesticated vernacular of drunk jokes openly admits it and makes fun of it at the same time. He’s playing the fool  (in the Shakespearean sense) and the unrepentant punk. The fact that Kippenberger played briefly in a raucous rock band is no surprise. What is a surprise, however, is how beautiful and even deeply poetic much of the work is, especially the paintings. They are all made in the eighties or early nineties and even though they have a lot of the look of painting of that period; dry (rather like David Salle), thick brush work (rather like Julian Schnabel), distorted  (like any number of people), they also have a lot of graphic punch and real pathos. The color is generally off key and intense enough to create optical frisson. The drawing is either close to realistic or cartoonishly abbreviated. The artist is usually pictured trying to perform some kind of work related impossibility or at the edge of mental dissolution. His appearance in the self- portraits varies wildly from overweight confused old nut to svelte post punk prankster. The props depicted in the paintings include the stand by cocktail glass, a hangman’s noose and artists’ tools, all are a menace. Kippenberger never hesitated to make a monkey out of himself and he’s more beloved than ever for doing it.

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November 6 to December 24, 2004

Strangely there are currently a number of shows around town of 80’s art. One of the best is Matthew Marks show of Terry Winters paintings and drawings from 1981 to 1986. These are some of the earliest paintings that Winters showed in New York. The palette is dark and the feeling of the primordial ooze, from which life springs, is all over the place. Winters was, at the time, very involved in botanical and other scientific illustrations as source material.

In the age-old controversy over the supremacy of drawing or color in painting Winters would definitely be in the drawing camp. Even the areas of so-called background a draftsman’s hand is evident. Using the scientific illustration as a springboard Winters improvises, combines, extrapolates and revises forms often to arrive at a hybrid or even new species. Pine cone, limb, stem and cell structures sometimes become insect or even human forms. This is not really the stuff of anthropomorphic grace but rather some weird science drawn and redrawn out of the forming miasma. The levels of layering and redrawing become a kind of bildungsroman of the creation myths.

All of the drawings and paintings in this show were done years before the work Winters showed in a big exhibition at the Whitney museum in 1991. By that time color had become of greater importance in the work and form had become clearer. “Point” in the present show, for instance, is a harbinger of things that followed. The Whitney show received less than enthusiastic critical response in some quarters. Daunted but not undone, Winters work began to give form to binary information systems. The soundtrack started to include European jazz systems. In short the less lyrical work of the past ten years was born.

The point of this background information is to demonstrate that painting is not merely a process in itself but that the artist is also involved, garnering and responding to information and to life. The current show at Marks provides a rare glimpse of some of the beginnings of a beautiful process.

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June 10 to July 17, 2004

Burt Barr’s work is, in many ways, unique in the field of video art. His work is technically polished and full of wit and reference to film arts of all types. Three recent pieces make up his current show at Brent Sikkema. Two screened pieces are featured in the main gallery. “Roz”, and “The Mile: Running Time 7:25”. “The Fan”, in the back Gallery, is not strictly speaking a video piece, though it does incorporate a video DVD.

“Roz” seems to be a pretty straightforward color video. Roz (Roz Leblanc, who is a beautiful African American performer) stands in the shower and begins to lip Sync to a soundtrack which is Otis Clay singing a soulful version of “The Banks of the Ohio”.

The classic film genres evoked quickly become complicated. Hitchcock bounds to mind at the sight of the tiles in the shower and Roz’s wet hair. The framing of the shot is reminiscent of Warhol “Screen Tests”. Something in the camera’s steadiness and the crisp color recalls Godard. The fact the she is lip syncing (she looks like she’s following instructions) to a man’s very deep voice becomes remarkable. The fact that she’s singing a song about the murder of an unwilling lover becomes outright spooky.

“The Mile: Running Time 7:25” is just that. A woman jogs on a foggy Dune road. The soundtrack is her breathing and footfall. The time is counted down in the corner of the screen.

“The Fan” consists of a shiny oscillating fan on a wooden pedestal, onto which a video of the same fan (in operation) is projected. This produces a shadow-and-film double image. Sometimes the oscillations of the real fan and the projection coincide and sometimes they don’t. In addition the projector light on the real fan creates a spinning reflection on the walls as the fan moves back and forth. This is a really beautiful post-minimalist installation sculpture. The three make quite a provocative stop off on a hot afternoon.

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May 10 to June 19, 2004

This is Daniel Richter’s first show in New York. In Germany and elsewhere in Europe he is a big deal and much, very much, has been written and said about this provocative work. It seems Richter was an abstract painter for a short while and has recently taken to making politically charged figurative paintings of urban confusion, ritual and violence. These are very large-format paintings done in an apocalyptic-illustrational style. Well versed in the conventions of nineteenth century history painting, from France to Russia, Richter uses this format to capture enigmatic moments in seemingly staged or ritual events of violence and confusion.

In “Tuwenig” a cabaret-style performer (boots, top hat, bare legs) entertains a pack of glaring wolf-dogs in a sylvan setting at night. In “Tefzen” a showgirlish befeathered circus performer poses-appliance model style-in the midst of what appears to have been a gladiatorial battle of the animals; the victors are still snarling, and the vanquished are rigid in defeat and death. This is theater of the absurd spectacle: cruel, sometimes solemn, and delivered with “what you see is what you get” bluntness, conveyed in a panoply of painterly technique and reference, from the deliberately awkward to the skillfully rendered.

The variety of paint applications is dazzling. Color ranges from psychedelic to fecal. The combination of elements in the paintings sometimes verges on the hokey. The political stance is never quite clear and Richter’s anarchistic response to query is fairly opaque. He’s determined to be socially engaged as well as a painter. This is fine, at least until the illustrators at Rolling Stone catch up to his madness.

The sources of these works range from famous news photos and sundry magazine clippings to children’s books. There is a feeling of familiarity about all the paintings even though the goings on are outrageous and sometimes deeply funny. There is a sense of inevitability in the proceedings, as if it has been enacted before and likely will again. This theatricality may be saying more about the cyclical nature of history than it wants to. For now the paintings pass as art and wicked entertainment.

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April 16 – May 28, 2004

For many reasons there has been a lasting mystique surrounding the work of Harriet Korman. She is revered by her peers as well as by older and younger artists. Her new show at Lennon, Weinberg is likely to perpetuate that particular regard. Early twentieth century abstraction or “non objective painting” as it was called then, comes immediately to mind. This however is not Korman’s aim or interest. Her work comes more out of conceptual-process work of the seventies. Abstract is the key word here. Illusions, allusions, light and space are assiduously avoided.

The compositions are improvised and unpredictable. They fall into two categories, curvilinear and rectilinear. There are also multi-panel and single panel works. The curvilinear based on a kind of looping line that creates overlapping shapes; the compositions work off the edge and confound conventional organizational logic by turning away from every readable image. The linear are arrangements of squares off set by triangles connecting oddly to the edges.

The astonishing feature in all of the work is the use of color. It’s pure out of the tube oil paint, evenly applied, in strong (and generally uninflected) color. Korman uses little white, except occasionally on it’s own. The result is a really intense color experience in stasis.

Korman’s colors are anything but ingratiating. Browns and other earth tones appear next to full force greens, different reds are combined with full force blue. The compositions are such that each color gets the opportunity to interact with four or more others. The color relationships are almost always unexpected. The paintings are mostly of a medium size and there are also a number of small ones. The smaller pieces are especially satisfying little blasts of active yet monastic feeling color.

A lot of people will look at and puzzle with these paintings. They are uncompromising and even what might be called difficult. The game plan is singular to Korman and will most likely remain so.

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September 9 – October 9, 2004

Ellen Phelan has taken a great many chances in her current show of paintings and watercolors at Ameringer & Yohe. First of all a she has chosen to work from photographs. Secondly they are family photographs. This is something that many inexperienced art students choose to do. They will often bring in a picture of Aunt Gussie (or someone) and proceed to make a perfectly awful painting attempting to copy the photo. As an experienced teacher Phelan knows this, and as an even more experienced painter ( thirty plus years) she has the finesse and temerity to “go there” and come out none the worse for the endeavor.

This is only the beginning of the chances she takes. The paintings literally involve smoke and mirrors. However, her intent is not to conceal or deceive, but to see more clearly things, which have been veiled by time. There is smoke in that she uses the Italian renaissance device known as sfumatto (smoke) enveloping the subject in a kind of haze of light and dark, and even darker tones. This results in a “through a glass darkly” sort of examination of memory and identity and perception. Artistically the venture calls to mind Whistler, Corot and even Eakins. For this viewer the results can be quite moving and always expertly executed.

Phelan’s techniques are her own and a mystery even to other painters. There is an elegant surety about placement and color. Perhaps the most beautiful painting here is a self-portrait, called Self-Portrait”, showing the artist taking her own picture in a mirror. This sounds corny (another risk) but the painting is astonishing. The works are all beautifully scaled. Whether or not Phelan wins the gamble, playing with narcissism and sentimentality as she does, is debatable. I found the show masterful and all the more so for taking the risks that she does.

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