May 19 to June 30, 2012
525 West 24th Streeet, between 10th and 11th avenues
New York City, 212-627-6000

Josiah McElheny, a wizard at merging conceptual art with high craft, has consistently looked to historical contexts in a variety of fields to shore up and expand his beautifully made glass containers. In his current show at Andrea Rosen, he has built human-height vitrines to present his assemblages of glass sculptures created in response to a wide variety of artists, modernist heroes such as Popova, Fontana, and Schlemmer among them. Everything about the exhibition is keyed to its contextualization, which adds a distinct layer of complexity to the works in the wood-and-glass boxes. The show, entitled “Some thoughts about the abstract body,” relates to the way clothing and costume design have been abstracted, transforming the person into an abstract entity as much as possible. McElheny has come up with variants on this idea, enclosing within eye-level vitrines and glass sculptures that respond subtly to the inspiration of the artists named in each work’s title. According to press materials, the general idea of experiencing abstraction through the medium of the body might result in a dialogue about the original intentions of those committed to such a transformation.

But the problem, as has happened before in McElheny’s art, is that sometimes the context seems so removed from the actual art that it fails to elucidate the artist’s strategies and motivation. Clearly, McElheny is a master artist, someone capable of creating most anything in glass. Yet the relations of his conceptual bias to his artworks are sometimes obscure. For the less historically minded among us, the artist has produced a marvelous show whose impulses have to do with form rather than the history of design. But, even so, the subtle changes from one glass work to the next depend upon the conceptual frame with which the artist has formed his undertaking. Maybe McElheny’s art is best understood as possessing levels of accessibility, in which one may experience the design as forming a ladder of ascending intellectual difficulty. If we look at the vitrine entitled Models for an abstract body (after Delaunay and Malevich) (2012), we see an upright construction with an austere steel pedestal supporting a box made of wood and glass. Within the box are two examples of hand-blown and carved glass, ostensibly created in response to the works of the two artists mentioned. The two shapes, one rather cone-like and the other molded in an hourglass form, are stunningly beautiful. Still, it is hard to gauge just how the glass forms adapt to the art history brought to bear on their construction.

This is not to question the genuine achievement of McElheny’s projects, generally speaking and including this one. It is just to say that like any good works, McElheny’s art can be understood on different levels. The level of craftsmanship is remarkably achieved, with black and brown vertical striations creating moire patterns that delight prolonged study of the glass. One box is particularly attractive—the one containing works influenced by Delaunay, Rodchenko, and Vialov. Here the vaselike forms, given dark vertical stripes, demonstrate a gracefulness and sophistication that places them in the highest reaches of design and art—and this would be true even if they were not related to the art of historical artists. All in all, it seems the complexity of McElheny’s historical understanding of the abstract body works in two directions: pulling his art back, toward the legacy of modernism; and pushing it forward, toward a statement unified by its context, which enables the artist to do whatever comes next in his imagination. The artist even has some wearable art: life-size, mirrored, vertically oriented rectangles anyone can wear with the help of straps attached to the inside of the art. McElheny’s notions of modernity and democracy in art are put to good use in his sculptures, and now we have a fine show to consider his ideas.

The post Context is Key: Josiah McElheny at Andrea Rosen appeared first on artcritical.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/201582806″ params=”color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

David Grosz, Carol Kino and Roberta Smith joined David Cohen to review Gillian Carnegie at Andrea Rosen, Lisa Hoke at Elizabeth Harris, Josiah McElheny at Museum of Modern Art, Philip Taaffe at Gagaosian and Corban Walker at PaceWildenstein

The post February 2007: David Grosz, Carol Kino, and Roberta Smith with moderator David Cohen appeared first on artcritical.

As Marx claimed, in the introduction to his Critique of Political Economy, consumption is production. Taking this as his premise, Bruce Ferguson, Dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, has curated a show which is at once understatement and spectacle at Mary Boone .  In the world of art and leisure, commodity and concept collude to leave behind artifacts, treasures, objets d’art.

In this group show, the aesthetics of interior design expose the world of exchange contemporary artists find themselves compelled to compete in.  The logic is simple: people buy things.  Lamps, chairs, pots and various vessels, et cetera, even art.  It’s clear that, despite their initial appearance as everyday items, these are Artworks, meant to be appreciated for their application of skill and judgment, but not used in any functional sense.   They are precious.

In the gallery, one feels the splendid quality of what money could buy.  Art, here, reflects the domestic object, taking its outward appearances, such as table or bench, but dispensing with its more bodily functions.  The discourse on the found object comes to a grinding halt and we wallow in the allure of style itself.

Everything fits snugly into a decorator’s paradise.  Ken Price’s erotically charged clay pieces are colorful in a ruinous way.  It is Rodin by way of Ren and Stimpy, their forms spotted with a sensual leper-like skin of paints. Sachio Hitare’s immaculately lacquered “Obi Bench” is an orange form curving and bending along the floor recalling the luxury of custom car culture in its precision and ease.  Josiah McElheny’s “Total Reflective Abstractions” lingers in the ether of decadent pleasure: mirrored objects on a mirrored tabletop, pristine and perfect to the point of fascination, which is arguably what the obsession is all about.

These items are selling themselves.  The rich surfaces and studied arrangement excite desire as they mimic the representations of actual objects, objects whose use value has been omitted, art objects by default.

Two artists stand out as voices of clarity in the muddle of desire.   Tom Friedman’s school chair, drilled into skeletal oblivion, sits dolefully on the edge of the gallery.  It seems unconcerned about attracting buyers (though a $95,000 price tag and subsequent sale does affirm the position of the artist and gallery).  It’s a morbid irony that the violence he inflicts on an ordinary chair has been trophied to such a degree.  The addition of Lee Bontecou’s work seems odd at first.  Bontecou’s rough-hewn formalism spits in the eye of décor yet in this setting becomes theatrical prop, adding a dose of agitation to the ether of opulence. The work is subject to adoration and adulation, hung on the wall as a symbol of deeply felt sentiment coupled with the ethos of the struggling artist.  It’s meant to anchor the mood and tenor of a room that is otherwise too clean, too surgical, too meticulous.  Its inclusion transforms it to an object of subjugation, effectively transforming Bontecou’s work into an interior design device, retro-fitted to the same rigors of fashion, seasonal tastes, and charms.

The show is great for those seeking an affirmation of values based on exclusivity and the attainment of “high” goods.  Ferguson has definitely exemplified the sense of slippage that exists today between art forms and craftwork.  That alone could be the most redeeming quality of the show.  But this is a manipulation of the senses, a filling of the void of unease and uncertainty created by the slippage we experience, with objects of desire.  This is what commercialism is largely about, but not necessarily art.  The show does not provide a forum for the contemplation of ideas on objecthood or the function of art versus, or in dialogue with, functional design.  With the exception of Friedman and Bontecou, whose works do address the fundamentals of form and our expectations of functionality, the show exemplifies a marketplace where the tools of production satisfy the accumulated tastes of the elite.  Not many people would posses such finery, even in today’s luxury-oriented market.

This is what exposes and undoes the potential strength of the show, what Kant refers to as a lack of “delineation”.  What does it mean to curate if not to pass judgments on taste?  What does it say of taste, or judgment, when we find the purely sensational on parade? There is simply no interrogation to be found.  The exhibition presents art as decoration without challenge.   Which seems rather flip. One hopes that the overseers of the art world retain the gumption to engage us in our consumption of the beautiful in a meaningful way, rather than merely purvey fine goods.  We sit in awe of the exquisite but undergo a loss of power; it is grist for the slippage, however neatly organized.

The post View Eight: A Few Domestic Objects Interrogate A Few Works of Art appeared first on artcritical.