December 29, 2015 to January 17, 2016
312 Bowery (between Bleecker and Houston)
New York, 212 466 1100

It’s a photography show that isn’t. At least, that’s the conceit. “Not a Photo,” which opened at The Hole in December, collects works that look like or employ photography, but can’t themselves classically be called photos.

It’s a kind of a sister show to “Not a Painting,” at The Hole this past summer. That show, while similar in concept, explored the sustained aesthetic and compositional influence of painting on a younger generation of artists to whom the confines of genre and medium are largely irrelevant. “Not a Photo,” though ostensibly having similar aims for its chosen medium, does not operate in this way.

Tellingly, the works shown in each exhibition are not dissimilar. Many of the artists could easily have been in either one, such as Adam Parker Smith, who was in both. Smith is perhaps the best example here of the fluidity of medium. His work in the show, Crush (2012), is a photograph of a woman printed on canvas, blonde human hair sewn into the surface and blown amiss by a household fan in front of it. It’s a clever play on active imagery, like an animated gif come to life.

To the show’s credit, Smith is not the only example of humor. Susy Oliveira, who turns photographic prints into origami-like sculptures, contributes a blocky bouquet of flowers that look like low-quality computer graphics circa the late ‘90s. And Eric Yahnker’s piece, iFire (2015), the face of the show, is a pencil illustration of a pulpy man, mustache’d and shirtless, having his cigarette lit by an iPhone Bic lighter app.

There’s also a current of wry conceptualism. Ryder Ripps has one of his Ho portraits—appropriated from someone else’s Instagram, digitally manipulated, and then re-rendered in paint on canvas. Mark Flood includes one of his photomosaic prints. A meme of memes, Flood has arranged found images from the dark corners of the web to spell the word “KEK,” itself an Internet idiom, semi-synonymous with “LOL.” These works, if interesting (and the jury’s still out), are little more than a joke here, removed as they are from their larger conceptual contexts.

Indeed, much of the work is hindered by this problem: they’re stripped of their intended framework, or held in relationship with other works which, altogether, do not work in concert. Individual artists stand out in the show, both good and bad, but not because of the curatorial direction. The show’s conceit — that these artists use the medium of photography as a launching point or otherwise important step in their process — might be true, but only because it’s true for most artists. The strongest works here utilize the power of photography — namely its verisimilitude, or the print — to extend the reach of other mediums, and vice versa.

Letha Wilson is a good example. Her work here features emulsion transfers of landscape photos onto hunky concrete slabs, pleated like a handheld fan. They simultaneously bring a sense of physicality to photographs, and a lightness to the sculpture. She’s in conversation with folding photogramers like John Houck, and concrete-based artists like Sam Moyer. Contemporaries of Wilson, Kate Steciw and Rachel de Joode, have works hanging nearby. (These three were also in a strong three-person show at Martos Gallery that ran concurrently, and closed in mid-December.) Steciw’s pieces here, triangular photo-sculptures collaged from found images and hung from the ceiling, act as a kind of unavoidable visual obstacle in the gallery — a suitable metaphor for the profusion of visual media her work explores. Kate Bonner, too, is cut from a similar cloth: her work featuring digital images cut up, rearranged, and layered with a distinctly Photoshop feel. And while these works are strong independent of each other and represent a recent trend of colorful photo-sculpture, there is perhaps an overindulgence of this type of work.

Finally, there is Matthew Stone, whose two pieces actually help to justify the curatorial limitations of the show. His works, which look like cheap knock offs of Richter’s scrape-paintings are actually digital facsimiles of thereof. Stone paints on glass, photographs the result and digitally alters the images, then prints and collages them hodgepodge, one here on canvas, one on a translucent surface. The resolution of Stone’s prints is great enough so that from a distance the texture of paint translates seamlessly, and it’s not until you’re up close that you realize they’re prints. Viewed digitally though, they appear to achieve impossibilities of depth and contour. Like you can’t actually picture what they might look like in person. It’s the clearest and best example here of an artist using the camera as a way of changing the way the art works, while also considering the work as a digital image, which is how most of us are going to see it anyway.

The post Ceci N’est Pas: “Not a Photo” at The Hole appeared first on artcritical.

March 30 – April 24
312 Bowery, between Bleecker and Houston streets
New York City, 212-466-1100

Walking into E.V. Day and Kembra Pfahler’s delightfully campy exhibition at The Hole is like teleporting into an alternate reality.  Lines between real and fake are not merely blurred but altogether irrelevant.  The artists, assisted by a grant from Playboy, have transformed the gallery space into a delirious recreation of Monet’s gardens at Giverny.  Day had spent the summer of 2010 at Giverny after receiving the Munn Artist’s Residency from the Versailles Foundation: her only instruction was to be inspired by the gardens.  The Giverny that the artists have constructed on the Bowery is a utopian intersection of art and artifice, where sensory overload is de rigueur and childish delight the only appropriate reaction.

A gravel path winds through the gallery, cutting a noisily crunching swath through AstroTurf knolls and living flowers.  Mulched flowerbeds feature tulips and roses. Goldfish swim in a lily pond spanned by a comically short arched bridge.  The illusion is completed by a Sunday painter working away at an easel, churning out landscapes suitable for a Starving Artists sale at a Marriott.  Day’s photographs are hung on vinyl wallpaper emblazoned with lush weeping willows.  Some of the large-scale works are brightly lit and prominently displayed, while other small- scale works are tucked away in unlit corners, making for delightful discoveries.

Day invited performance artist Kembra Pfahler to join her at Giverny, where she photographed her in character, as the Playboy Femlin-inspired frontwoman of  glam-punk band The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.  Pfahler is naked save for hot-pink body paint, thigh high pleather bondage boots, and a towering wig.  Her painted skin perfectly matches the pink lilies, while her shiny boots reflect in the glimmering pond.  It takes a minute to notice the eerie symmetry of some of the photographs, where Day has digitally manipulated the images into perfect mirrors of themselves like hallucinatory Rorschach tests.  The unsettling effect boldly emphasizes the artifice of their mise-en-scène.

The exhibition’s melding of nature and artifice, human and botanical, history and present, is thoroughly refreshing.  Gallery visitors can sit on the fake grass and smell the flowers.  Curious tourists pop their heads in the door, exclaiming to one another “there’s a garden in there!” and, farther inside, “she’s naked!”  The artists relate an amusing anecdote in the press book at the front desk.  As Pfahler and Day worked alone at Giverny, posing and shooting after the thousands of visitors had left for the day, Pfahler, unaccustomed to the lack of an audience, complained of the solitude.  A solution presented itself when they discovered a group of gardeners spying on them from the bushes.  Invited to participate, the delighted gardeners posed for pictures with the painted performance artist, no doubt appreciating her vibrant colors and exuberant demeanor as much as any of the blooms they tended daily.

Pfaler appears to own her environs like a futuristic wood sprite or a new species of plant-fembot hybrid.  The audacity of Day’s inspiration to transport this doyenne of East Village punk to Monet’s storied garden seems oddly like the most logical choice in the world.  Of course, Monet’s Impressionism once shocked people too.

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Michèle C. Cone,  Ana Finel-Honigman and Anthony Haden-Guest joined David Cohen to review exhibitions of Ai Weiwei, Slater Bradley, Sarah Sze, and Lola Montes Schnabel.

The post January 2012: Michèle C. Cone, Ana Finel-Honigman and Anthony Haden-Guest with moderator David Cohen appeared first on artcritical.

Monday, June 27, 2011
312 Bowery, between Bleecker and Houston streets
New York City, 212 466 1100

Just one day after NYC’s monumental Gay Pride Parade, the flag shed its cloth and lent its colors to an evening of naked horror.  A sizable crowd of sexy misfits gathered Monday night at Bowery’s newest venue, The Hole, for a brief yet remarkable piece, The Wall of Vagina, a rare performance by The Girls of Karen Black (GOKB).

Prior to the highly anticipated performance, the bare breasted GOKB cavorted under bright scrutiny of the gallery’s 7-11-style fluorescent lighting, mingling with guests while painted head to toe in either red, blue or purple and sporting thigh high stiletto boots, a towering red-glittered black bouffant wig and an occasional pair of black undies.  In contrast to the typical NYC “whaddya lookin’ at!” attitude, these stylish shock monsters welcomed the gaze of curious oglers.  One fellow crouched behind a GOKB to take a close up snap of her crack.  After the admirer gained her attention from a light tap on the back, she giggled and nodded in approval at the photo as her vanished lips widened, exposing a mouth full of painted-upon crushed black teeth.  A blend of Alejandro Jodorowsky and John Waters, the scene was a refreshing mix of sex, camp and horror.

Eventually the lights lowered and the sweaty crowd swiftly gathered towards a platform, constructed specially for the performance. Cell phone cams quickly shot up to catch the unique event (I had a partial-view seat between a Nokia and an IPhone) as the ladies strutted through the audience onto the stage.   Photographer, video artist and GOKB member Bijoux Altamirano photographed from below as five ladies (the highest pileup to date) climbed one by one facedown, spread eagle on top of each other, exposing their colored cheeks and shaven cherryless pits to the audience, last one on being the much adored Kembra Pfahler (lead singer of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black from which the GOKB and their newest transgender member, Siobhan Meow, are recruited).

The remaining member on stage leaned over and squirted the crack pile with a turkey baster filled with thick white cream.  Immediately, the arching spurts of goo beautifully married ideas of infection and sexuality, a delicious combo.  Pfahler, who prefers the more delineative titles Anti-naturalist and Availabist to commonly used “performance artist” (rejecting the title, she believes “performance art” should rather be called “_____”), explains a bit of the comical yet purposefully disgusting intention behind “The Wall of Vagina”, “It’s important to have a different paradigm…we’re making fun of female sexuality.”  And her well orchestrated rejections to standards of feminine beauty and seductiveness resonate even during quiet moments of the act as the women stood still, horrifying, wide-eyed and robotic, conjuring semblance to an army of demonic inflatable sex dolls.

The attentive crowd cheered as the ladies unpiled, knelt down on one knee and raised their hands high in the air, an appropriate bow from so glorious a group.  And just like that, they trotted right out the door and the simple and saturated gesture was over.  As it was a loosely enforced invite-only event, I assume a good portion of the audience were fans who had a general sense of what to expect, so I was happy to see the brief resplendent horror satisfy their eager expectancy.

After the show, the ladies ventured back in the gallery posing for pictures while straddling one of their own handmade sculptures…real art on art action!  The piece, a larger than life black cat, meshed well with the gallery’s current exhibition, simply titled “:)“  A colorful playground of inflatable beings and cartoonish sculptures, the first NYC solo show by Miami duo FriendsWithYou provided a nice backdrop to the fun and playful feel of the night as well as setting precedent for what will fill The Hole in the future.

In keeping with its Soho predecessor, the sensational Deitch Projects, The Hole is a charming antidote to the usual hoity-toity gallery vibe.  “I want to provide a space for all of us,” proprietor Kathy Grayson, a former director of Deitch, tells me, “and that includes the big community of people displaced by Deitch closing and all these great young artists that are part of my network… I mean to stick by those guys and continue to present great works by them.”  Pfhaler, whose latest album “Fuck Island” will be released this October, described Grayson as, “…heroic and very intelligent, a huge talent.”  Defibrillators of our time, these ladies are set on shocking the pulse back into Manhattan.

By the end of the night, happy attendees piled onto the streets bearing residual bits of glitter and colorful streaks.  The brevity of the actual performance made the mixing and mingling of the unique personas seem as much a part of the event as the actual performance.  Personally, my love for the city has always been about these brief, fantastic moments where a varied crowd can come together and pay witness to the joy and horror of it all.   Please excuse their beauty.

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