The neon sign over the door by Paris-based collective Claire Fontaine suggests a Dante-esque Divine Comedy awaits.

“Part consortium, part collective,” is what Independent art fair called itself, as launched by gallerists Elizabeth Dee (X Initiative, N.Y.) and Darren Flook (Hotel, London). Making use of the former Dia Art Foundation’s handsome West 22nd Street building, the free-of-charge venue offered artist projects, public programs and commercial galleries showing artworks without the defining “walls” of traditional booths.

SMELL A RAT?

Packed in for Thursday’s party-atmosphere opening, viewers were met with a 12-foot-high inflatable rat muttering recorded aphorisms such as: “Only one thing counts in this life/Get them to sign on the line that is dotted.” Responses seemed affable.

RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Murray Moss with Michal Fronek and Jan Nemecek’s, Illuminated Crucifix, 2010, and Thomas Struth’s, Stanze di Raffaelo II, Rome, 1992, behind.

SoHo design store Moss paired with Westreich-Wagner art advisors, in an attempt to create 12 “dialogues” between disparate objects that were “never intended to be together,” in Murray Moss’s words. The results should be “subjective,” he explained, “like the circumstances of our lives.”

CALLING A GHOST TO THE TABLE

DRESSED FOR SUCCESS

“She knits a sweater about political or current event, then wears it around,” explained Nelson Hallonquist, of the Florida gallery. Overheard viewer comment: “It’s like shopping in a mall with small stores.”

SIMPLY RED

THE NEW PAGANISM

DON’T FENCE ME IN

ART CRITICISM FOR SALE

CALLING DR. STRANGELOVE

Known for her motion pictures, Sussman here presents an exact replica of Russian Yuri Gagarin’s office, the first man in space.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Artists Space promotes its screening of Make It New John, a documentary about carmaker John DeLorean by Glasgow-based filmmaker Duncan Campbell.

AN OFFER YOU CAN’T REFUSE

TILT-A-WHIRL

Move over Olafur Eliasson and Anish Kapoor. Danish artist Hein did more with less, as his optical contraption beguiled audiences with its dislocation of gravitational reality.

FLASH OF HISTORY

One couldn’t help but feel the presence of the Dia Art Foundation and its illustrious exhibition history in the building’s earlier incarnation—before there was such a thing as The Chelsea Gallery District, or, for that matter, a contemporary art world driven so ruthlessly by art fair culture.

The post The Independent Show (West 22nd Street) A photo journal appeared first on artcritical.

The MIT List Visual Art Center presents The Annual Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art.  This year’s forum, titled Parody, Politics and Performativity, brings together several practicing artists and experts on performative practices.  The 2010 Wasserman Forum will include a panel discussion with artists Tino Sehgal, Tania Bruguera and the collective artist Claire Fontaine, moderated by writer and curator Jens Hoffmann, with respondents Dorothea von Hantelmann, Frazer Ward and Joan Jonas.  The forum will examine a variety of artistic practices in which the relationship to the viewer and the passage of time are significant. Unlike art objects that are characterized by a physical presence, many of the works created by the panel participants undermine and question, often in humorous ways, the common forms of more traditional art.  Also significant is the new way in which institutions present, collect and display art today.  This is exemplified by Tino Sehgal’s current Guggenheim performance piece, This Progress, until March 10.

Parody, Politics and Performativity will take place on Saturday, March 13 at 3 pm followed by responses beginning at 4:45.  The forum, free and open to the public, will take place in the Ray and Maria Stata Center, Room 123, at 32 Vasser Street, Cambridge, MA.  For more information call 617 253 4400 or visit http://listart.mit.edu/

The post Panel Discussion at MIT examines Performative Art appeared first on artcritical.