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Jump Cuts: Venezuelan
Contemporary Art, Colleccion Mercantil
Americas Society
By Lily Faust
Culled from the
extensive Mercantil collection, this exhibition, curated
by Tahìa Rivero, Jesùs Fuenmayor, Lorena Gonzàlez
I. and Gabriela Rangel, brings together Venezuelan artists
whose work is full of social and poetic references. Exploring
the art image, both as a by-product of the society in which
it is produced, and as an end-product of the visual process,
the artists in this show share artistic art political concerns
with their contemporaries in other parts of the world. The
title of the show, Jumpcut, is a term based on the French
cinematographer Jean-Luc Godard's technique of cutting to
a slightly later action (or a different angle) in a filmed
scene. In this case, the term becomes a vehicle to encompass
a spectrum of attitudes that articulate a critique of the
Venezuelan cultural and social landscape, while establishing
a shifting framework to question the artistic canon of the
past. Completed between 1990 and 2004, the work by 29 artists
in this show (28 if we consider Aziz+Cucher as a single
item) is grouped along four basic themes.
A manifesto titled
Homage to Necrophilia, which was produced by a group of
radical Venezuelan artists in the 1960s, utilized the metaphor
of sexual engagement with corpses, implicating the dead
values of an antiquated system of life. The �Necrophilia�
grouping in this exhibition consists of younger artists
who question the establishment and established notions of
art, with the intent of critical and aesthetic re-consideration.
An anthology of videos by Sandra Vivas from 1994-2004 shows
her candid look at every-day situations, masterminded by
the artist. The narrative dimensions of her work stem from
stereotypical gender roles. In one instance, the artist
urinates while musing, out loud, on the possibility of controlling
menstruation. In another, she asks a diverse group of women
to reveal their secret fantasy. The humor inherent in these
encounters underscores the absurdity attaching societal
norms to individuals. Another example from the �Necrophilia�
group is a drawing by Mariana Buminov, whose autobiographical
work, The Only Thing That My Dad Ever Paid Me, (Country
Club Receipts) delves into issues of wealth and security,
intimacy and family relationships. On a background collage
of bills, glued end-to-end, from a high-end social club
in Caracas , Buminov has created an ink drawing of a doll-house
which shows gables without a roof. The pastel shades of
the bills, in pale yellows, pinks and blues, create a pleasing,
fragile quilt of color, which contrasts with the forlorn
drawing of the house outlined in dark ink. The expensive
items charged on each receipt, perhaps with the intention
of purchasing love and happiness, further underscore the
work's psychological, and possibly, autobiographical, references.
Also in the �Necrophilia� group, the three-dimensional
objects of Emilia Azcarate, made with beeswax, dung, hair,
and other organic materials, appear to have a specific yet
obscure purpose. Recalling ethnographic artifacts from a
tribal past, these curious items of questionable purpose
subvert the idea of functionality, much like the digital
images of technological products created by Aziz+Cucher,
who borrow from the vocabulary of industrial design and
advertising in presenting futuristic artifacts.
Another grouping,
described in the show's catalogue as From the Object to
the Mode of Representation, includes artists whose work
focuses both on the art image as well as on the source of
the image. The phenomenological experience of objects is
crucial to this group of artists. Alexander Apostol's hybrid
images in Residente pulido (Polished Images) read as a quirky
survey of 1950's urban modernist architecture. By digital
manipulation, Apostol alters the buildings' structure, eliminating
entranceways, doors and windows, thereby denying access
to the public. Its function thus undermined, the building
remains as an ornamental structure, an absurd icon of futility.
By affixing titles on the buildings, such as Royal Copenhagen
or Meissen (well-known brand names for fine china), he construes
the buildings as specimens of fine porcelain, further underscoring
the mismatch between the perfection and fragility of form,
and its unsuitability for function. Like fine china for
the majority of the population, the buildings stand remote
and inaccessible.
Specific narratives
are crucial to the third group of artists, dubbed, The Modern
Vernacular group. In Juan Araujo's work, titled Libro de
Alejandro Otero (Book of Alejandro Otero) a series of �book
pages� constructed from paper and wood synthesize appropriations
of text and images. Carla Arocha's acrylic painting, Nausea,
initially appears to be an Op-Art influenced painting, made
with a dizzying array of black sinuous lines and elliptical
dots on a silver background. The work apparently alludes
to a terrorist attack in Tokyo , in which sarin gas, which
causes night vision and nausea, were used. This fact re-contextualizes
the painting, revealing layers inserted into its deceptively
formalist vocabulary.
In the fourth
group of artists, specified as Art-Thought, visual thinking
is systematically dissected. David Palacios, one of the
artists in this group, uses statistical methods to specify
the nature of art and art objects. His Infography (Four
Posters Project) summarizes the art objects of a private
bank collection in four segments. Rendered in the colorful
precision of poster graphics, the collections of contemporary
pottery, geometry as avant-garde, 18th century virgins and
contemporary art are lined up as common specimens; with
height, date, title and image summarily presented. Reduced
to mere pictographs, the objects appear dwarfed by the process,
which utilizes the same tools of analysis and advertising
that marketing experts employ in promoting art.
The different
attitudes evident among the 28 participants reveal prevalent
issues in the Venezuelan cultural and social landscape.
As with much post-modernist art, things are not what they
appear to be; depending on how much one is inclined to engage
the subject matter, the Platonic inquiries just beneath
the deceptively calm surface could easily multiply, exponentially.
Through
5/21.
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AIPAD 2005, The
Photography Show
By Joel Simpson
This year's AIPAD
(The Photography Show), which took place in New York last
month, seems to have revived from a three-year trend that
increasingly favored vintage over contemporary works. Having
said this, one must still recognize the preeminent historian
among vintage gallery owners, Parisian purist Serge Plantureux,
who always has some new discovery on hand. This year he
offered Man Ray's first �rayograph� (photogram), the
unique 1922 Monsieur...,Inventeur, Constructeur, 6 seconds
in which the eyes look like a pair of breasts, but which
are probably ocular sun protectors. More visually impressive,
however, were rich solarizations of wild plant life by Robert
Doisneau. Plantureux publishes his own collectible catalogues
raisonnés every year describing the historical significance
of his wares (in French). This year's edition pairs quotes
from French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan with each of his
featured vintage photographs. To be sure, there are too
many wonderful images to discuss here; but for the record,
what follows is a short-list of some of the particularly
outstanding works that found their way into this year's
show.
Charles Cowles
Gallery ( New York ): new Edward Burtynskys: immense,
lushly detailed prints, including China Quarry #2 with its
monstrous hewn marbles angles, adorned with surging ladders
and snakelike ropes and tires. Even more epic in scope is
the beached tanker in Bangladesh , a rusting hulk looming
on the horizon, from which a serpentine stream of locals
make a livelihood salvaging scrap metal.
Robert Koch Gallery
( New York ): Michael Wolf: taking large format architectural
portraiture in a slightly different direction than Andreas
Gursky. Wolf's massive apartment houses are chosen for an
imponderable anti-gravitational quality, such as his Hong
Kong building that seems to be a series of columns dangling
from some invisible skyhooks.
Paul Kopeikin
Gallery ( Los Angeles ): David Maisel: gripping aerial
views of lakes, reservoirs, irrigation complexes and river
systems, in which the water assumes bizarre colors, from
the chartreuse to mola red, catching an iridescent tinge
from just the right angle of light. It is worth noting here
that New York 's Von Lintel Gallery (see Chelsea Listings)
also showed Maisel in the same month.
Catherine Edelman
Gallery (Chicago): Terry Evans: engaging aerial views
of the American Mid-West in square format, her images feature
urban diagonals, wilderness curves, reclaimed landfills,
late afternoon shadows and especially arresting: Oak Street
Beach, two layers of Lake Michigan waves like roiled green
glass, fronted by foam, upon two layers of wet sand, the
beach marked off in parallel horizontal sandgrooves; all
very abstract and appealing.
Zabriskie Gallery
( New York ): Spanish photographer Joan Fontcuberta: Miracles
of Correlative Deconstruction, an ironic spoof on the �teaching�
of miracles (for profit), at a fictional monastery on a
fog-shrouded Finnish island. Fontcuberta depicts himself
in the guise of an Eastern Orthodox monk performing a series
of miracles, from the classic levitation and weeping blood,
to post-modern ones such as dolphin surfing and �Cephalopodization,�
or having one's head turn into an octopus. This gallery
also showed Tomoka Sawada, Japan's young acolyte of Cindy
Sherman, who began by photographing her head in multifarious
guises in a photo booth (800 images in identical groups
of four, overall measurements 50x39), and who has progressed
to donning various costumes; flight attendant, nun, B-drinker,
sales clerk, receptionist and geisha.
William L Schaeffer,
a private dealer from Chester , Connecticut , showed three
tintypes by Nathaniel W. Gibbons, including one of a pond
surface. Tintypes were cheaper versions of ambrotypes, and
they were used in the 1850s for portraits. The medium is
a thin iron plate rather than the more fragile and expensive
glass of the ambrotype. A wilderness image in a tintype
is a prima faciae incongruity. The somber browns and blacks
and delicate shadings present a fresh three-dimensionality
to a familiar subject.
Perhaps the increased
competition among so many new art fairs today has ratcheted
up the energy level, or perhaps dealers simply seem ready
to take more risks; but whatever the reason, this year's
AIPAD photography show signals a welcome new vitality in
one of the oldest photography fairs running.
2/10 through 2/13.
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Dennis
Geden
Remy
Toledo
By Mary
Hrbacek
As
a genre, the symbolic narrative typical of Surrealism offers
a broad scope for political and philosophical musings. Canadian
artist Dennis Geden uses this form to full advantage, embedding
his paintings with visual and linguistic symbols that engage
cultural issues, environmental concerns, and raise metaphysical
questions.
Geden
presents ironic insights with skillful, visual clarity.
In the painting, Family with Trophy Head (2001), he depicts
"yuppies" who champion the preservation of nature
(see images of clouds and trees on their tee-shirts), but
who seem to "safe-guard" resources through control
and exploitation. In additional layers of irony, the perfect
wife and two children, each sporting a designer haircut,
are the trophies of the absentee father (symbolized by the
moose-head that lies on the floor), who is in turn a trophy
for his wife. From pictures on shirts to antlers on the
picture frame, the message is that preserving nature means
bringing it under human subjugation. Within layers of paradox,
we see the moose-head dreaming about its natural habitat,
pictured in a visual bubble of isolated wetlands.
In
the painting, A Young Woman with the Source of Pulp and
Paper Products (1998), a woman hugs a chopped tree trunk
that is set in a room cluttered with discarded books, magazines
and papers. The image seems to suggest that all life is
interconnected; insofar as good intentions for the environment
mean little unless people make an effort to conserve resources.
In
Lost River (2004) Geden presents broken antique figure sculptures
painted to resemble reclining bodies of a herd of sheep.
The intermingling of individual identity and group behavior
is emphasized here, while in the distance, two smoking edifices
evoke the " Twin Towers " debacle, aligning the
towers with lost architecture of antiquity.
In
his finely articulated still-lifes, Geden includes such
details as fingers and toes along with symbolic objects
that stress the interconnectedness of all things in the
cycle of birth and death. The simplified forms and geometric
shapes resonate with Italian Renaissance artists Piero della
Francesca and Paolo Ucello. Cloth curtains create dramatic
diagonal spatial divisions signaling theatrical underpinnings,
while Geden's cool color palette evokes northern Canadian
light.
These
highly realized, masterful paintings present layers of irony
and paradox through ideas embedded in symbolic visual imagery.
There is nothing haphazard, impulsive or accidental here;
in a twist on the Surrealist narrative these carefully researched,
methodical pictures, focus on the real world instead of
the world of dreams.
1/15
through 2/26.
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Nancy Graves
Ameringer &
Yohe Fine Art
By Jack Savage
Conceptual artist
and sculptor Nancy Graves has quietly carved an important
niche for herself in the world of contemporary sculpture.
Graves ' deceptively whimsical work not only establishes
a crucial (and highly informative) link between Surrealism,
Modernism and Post-Modernism, but stands on its own as fully-realized
�Earth Art� turned inside-out.
Utilizing a variety
of media that encompasses painting, sculpture and film,
she constantly hints at darker truths relating to a given
society's insatiable appetite for commoditization; and how
this encroaches upon nature with potentially disastrous
results. Graves does not exclude the art world from her
rat race critique.
This conceit stirs
the imagination on a variety of art-historical, social and
economic levels, and opens up a dialogue about the evolution
of 20th century sculpture. Just as Duchamp, Picasso and
Oldenburg immortalized the ephemera of everyday life by
removing objects from their rational context (or casting
them in bronze or synthetic material) Graves transforms
the �found objects� of nature by imagining a new life
for them as sculpture.
Her dialogue goes
on to satirize the work of her contemporaries; �Earth
Art� legends such as Robert Smithson, Christo and Robert
Morris. By uprooting large-scale natural specimens and ecological
milieus and re-casting them as contemporary art, Graves
pokes fun at the quaint idealism of non-commercial, organic
artistic endeavors.
What does her
work look like? Bronzed pretzels, crayfish, pig intestines,
drain spouts, wrenches, pleated lampshades, warty gourds,
lotus pods, ginger roots, scissors, jackfruit, bulbs of
fennel and a Shaker rake; not to mention a life-sized camel's
skeleton, put together with in-tact skeleton fragments as
well as imagined forms. For this ambitious piece, she relies
on anatomical studies and real fossils as a springboard
for her imagination. A thought provoking artist whose work
deserves a second look, Graves ' unique perspective shines
through in this timely retrospective.
2/17 through 4/2.
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Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Central Park
By Nicollette
Ramirez
The rolled "cocoons"
of orange fabric unfolding at the opening of artists Christo's
and Jeanne-Claude's The Gates in Central Park worked like
a metaphor for the unfolding of yet another dream in the
ongoing love story of this whimsical pair. Born on the same
day of the same year, these Gemini "twins" have
created a signature style that takes the physical features
of the world and adds a human touch to the divine. From
the Pont Neuf Wrapped in Paris France to the Valley Curtain
in Grand Hogback, Rifle, Colorado, this duo has been collaborating
on public works of art for over forty years.
Each realization
of their unwieldy dreams has a long gestation period; The
Gates have been on the drawing board for over a decade,
waiting for the political winds to shift in the pair's direction,
the idea tucked away like a giant ship waiting for the right
moment to sail.
The initial reaction
of one spectator to The Gates on this blustery winter day
is, "Why didn't they do this when it was warm?"
After spending
time among The Gates, however, there is the a hint an the
answer. The flapping orange fabric comes alive and transports
the viewer to a fantasy land. One is immediately outside
of the bustling city and planted like Alice in Wonderland
into an orange other-world. The heat, the light, the intensity
of summer feels close enough to touch; but it's only a magical
illusion conjured by the sweeping orange curtains set against
the bleak wintery afternoon.
From any street
with a clear view of Central Park one could not miss a glimpse
of the meandering curtains; sometimes the Park appeared
to flicker in an orange glow, like a warm fire. To look
down from a nearby penthouse, one could see the greys of
winter enlivened with vibrant orange, running like a golden
river through the stark skeletal trees set against a frozen
sky.
At twilight and
at night the wind among The Gates could be somewhat eerie.
The playful absurdity of it all transported the soul to
another place, outside Central Park, outside New York City
, outside America , outside the world.
2/12 Through 2/28.
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Stuart O'Sullivan
Daniel Cooney
Fine Art
By Joel Simpson
South African
photographer Stuart O'Sullivan returned to his native country
in 1998, after having lived in New York for ten years. With
the end of the Apartheid system, O'Sullivan now sees his
country through fresh eyes; and we can, too, knowing that
a great historical weight has been lifted from the people.
His photographs
depict domestic and recreational scenes, peopled mostly
by Caucasians, which would hardly be remarkable, except
that there is no longer an immense invisible hypocrisy looming
in the background. We see a man by himself, in a three-foot
backyard pool; an aerial view of a wedding on a rough field
overlooking mountains; two young women relaxing by a diving
board; three family members out on a sand dune.
We see a country
that is now finally like any other; diverse populations
etched in banal normality. There is little hint of the townships,
of the social problems that no doubt remain. But O'Sullivan
seems keen to celebrate the sense of possibility in a place
where history has taken a new and uniquely civilized direction.
Through 3/26.
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Karine Laval
Bonni Benrubi
Gallery
By Gu Huihui
French photographer
Karine Laval presents two diametrically opposed series of
works in this show; the sun-filled Swimming Pool and the
snow-bound White/Gray. The former and older series is comprised
of freeze-frame images of vacationers at swimming pools.
The saturated, high-key colors suggests that this work could
have commercial origins. There is, however, more going on
in terms of how Laval frames this work within an art historical
context, one that makes specific reference to painting.
Bathers represent
an important theme in Western culture and, indeed, the Impressionists
and Post-Impressionists have made the subject of bathers
into an instantly recognizable European-associated genre.
The decision to depict the human figure as such strips the
figures of specific national and social references; literally.
In fact, one could say Swimming Pool develops an international
(albeit occidental) language; shot in several European locations,
without the aid of the title, the viewer would not know
that these interchangeable bathers hail from France , Norway
, Portugal and Spain .
The plush, high-contrast
colors reduce the palette by eliminating secondary colors.
These are not naturalistic photographs, despite the seeming
arbitrary nature of the moment. The artificial colors reinforce
the idea of the swimming pool as a natural element (water)
placed in a man-made environment. The emphasis on primary
colors, coupled with sparse geometric compositions, recall
early modernists paintings such as the Suprematists'. Bauhaus
promoted the use of primary colors, as well, to help create
an international style that would be accessible to all cultures.
In this regard, Laval 's compositions may have the most
in common with the Russian Constructivists in their love
of linear dynamism and economic distribution of forms.
The figures in
Swimming Pool function similarly to the cut-out photographs
of people who float in Rodchenko's photocollages. Ironically,
the photographs of the swimming pools rarely show water;
and when water is visible, it combines with the sky as one
high-key hue. It is the architectonic that dominates the
landscape. Whether the steep climb to the high-dive platform,
or the diagonal of the handrail against the sky, the subject
matter is less about people and their human relationships
than Laval 's preoccupation with the simple geometric forms
that dominate them. The children we see in Untitled #27,
Barcelona , Spain (2002), for example, are not depicted
as individuals, but rather one frame of a continual sequence
of movement. Likewise, in Untitled #18, Annecy , France
(2002) the work is aligned with paintings from Russian Constructivists
and Suprematists. Because of the worm's eye viewpoint, the
top of the ladder of the buoy looms monstrous in the picture's
foreground and is read formally as an oblique rectangular
form. Instead of remaining up front in one's vision, it
somehow recedes back, only a little in front of the sky/sea
ground; think of Malevich's Suprematist composition White
on White.
Formally speaking,
White/Gray is as strong as her earlier series, but the work
seems less rooted in art history and therefore, in some
ways, more straightforward. Under a blanket of snow, all
signs of human activity are hidden; including reference
to social status and national identity. Whereas water is
the common element in the Swimming Pool, in White/Gray the
setting is nature instead of a man-made simulacrum. The
aesthetic sensibility is the same, since Laval continues
to rely on the strength of simple geometry providing the
drama in these photographs. Yet, perhaps due to the absence
of the human body, these photographs become merely beautiful.
The idea of snow
is more often associated with Scandinavian than with other
European nations. Water in such a solid form communicates
less about universality than it betrays a specific national
or regional identity. Despite the change in direction, the
idea of historical precedent still figures importantly in
the more recent work. In one photograph, Laval literally
bridges the two series; in White/grey, #11 Norway (2003-4)
she superimposed an image from the pool series onto this
one. There is always a precedent, even if the precedent
is the artist herself.
Through 3/5.
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Link the World
Lunarbase Gallery
By Jessica Park
While established
Japanese artists, such as Takashi Murakami and Yoshimoto
Nara, have moved onto the next level of their careers, their
younger contemporaries have begun to emerge in art circles
in New York . Two such artists in this group show, Hisao
Sakai and Ninko Ouzou, newly arrived from Japan , offer
an interesting take on amine-inspired art; something we
haven't seen in Japan 's Pop art movement since the 1990s.
Although these former
comic book artists still work with cute cartoon characters,
their subjects show more texture, emotion and gravitas;
and less gloss than Murakami's DOB or Nara 's young girl
characters. Ouzou's latest character, Musume, a figure based
on the artist herself, has little facial expressions. Yet,
outside in the world where the girl is depicted the character
is charged with emotions that the viewer projects onto her;
a sense of curiosity, desire, pain, anguish, fear, hopelessness
and desperation. Despite her cute, wall-flower looks, there
is apparently much more going on beneath the surface.
One the other hand,
Sakai 's small-scale paintings seem intent to simply put
a warm smile on your face. The Little Blue Series consists
of a group of paintings (6 1/4" x 9" each), of
which the artist has made nearly one hundred since 2003.
Micro-organism-like, whimsical creatures flow around in
each tiny blue surface. A touch of thick brush stroke, on
each canvas, offers a hint of surface texture, contrasting
with the flatness of the pencil-drawn characters. Along
with the Little Blue Series, his other carefully executed,
child like drawings in the show evoke memories of a childhood
in which the word innocence conjured a deeper meaning..
Through 3/15.
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Jim Dingilian
McKenzie Fine Art,
Inc.
By Joel Simpson
If archaic process
photography has reopened the possibility of visual fascination
with the ordinary by visually thickening the medium through
which we view it, Jim Dingilian has gone one step further.
He has taken studiedly
banal photographs of streets, trees, cars and parking lots,
and manually copied them with photographic literality onto
traditional beige elementary school desktops. One looks
at these images and swears they are photographs but is baffled
by the medium. The borders are precisely rectilinear. The
desk surface, slightly worn, frames them with precise margins.
To discover that they are in fact hand-drawn with blue markers
releases a spate of associations; the apotheosis of the
bored pupil ' s idle desk doodle as she or he dreams about
a drive in the family car to a nearby park. Or perhaps this
work may be construed as the ultimate �medium-is-the-message�
image, given the ordinary, mundane themes depicted. In any
event, Dingilian manages to confound and delight the viewer
all at once.
Through 3/19.
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Paul Furfaro
Robert Steele Gallery
By Joel Simpson
The message of
aerial photography has been received. We can now read those
organic abstracts of the earth as the beautiful products
of a clash of interpenetrating chaos systems � the sensuously
curving rivers, geometries of ploughed fields, the expanding
rorscharchs of ice, rock, surf and cloud. Graphic artist
Paul Furfaro creates powerful versions of these organic
abstracts utilizing India ink and various other near-monochromatic
dyes; like high-octane water color on rag paper. Having
emerged from the discipline of drawing the �intimate
structural passages� of seashells, he expanded his focus
over a twelve-year period to arrive at compelling images
in square format (nearly two feet on each side), that draw
on the aerial aesthetic, but in powerful blacks, dark sepias
and whites. Inside the square many of them are circular,
suggesting the earth as if seen through a monocular lens.
His sinuous fluvial curves, in dark grey, shape the black
spaces and propel the shadow-contoured whites, buttressed
by spin-off rills and freshets, into high glacial drama.
This work recalls William Garnet's black and white series
on Death Valley . Furfaro is all about water, however, and
the earth never looked so good.
Through 3/12.
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Ouverture
Ex Eggs
By Joyce Korotkin
The inaugural
exhibition of this new residency gallery in Lower Manhattan,
curated by Daniela Lotta, features the works of Italian
artists participating in the gallery's residency program;
all of whom all hail from the same region in Italy. The
program focuses on projects that deal with global issues
about lives and the tensions elicited between disparate
peoples and environments. Standouts in this show include
work by a collaborative team called ZimmerFrei, whose haunting
stereographic 3-D projection in three sequential cinematic
images (with sound, earphones and specially constructed
viewers) present loosely constructed narratives of power
and domination; more implied in the viewer's mind than they
are actually shown. Each scene is comprised of several superimposed
photographs shot from different points of view, creating
a faux cinema-verite moment of edgy, ambiguous interpretation,
with a palpable portent of violence. Anna Visani's installation,
on the other hand, combines her own private memories with
those of the random public; mixing objects from her own
childhood with those picked up from flea markets and from
the streets of various cities she has visited. This show
works as a quirky introduction to a different curatorial
perspective, offering hint of more good things to come.
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Inaugural Show
CVZ Contemporary
By Joyce Korotkin
This salon style
gallery, which recently opened in an old-fashioned Broadway
loft in Soho, presents a wide, eclectic range of works;
from video to painting, sculpture and, of course, installation.
Standouts in this
inaugural show include photographs by Giada Ripa di Meana,
whose work focuses on the dislocation of the self in an
increasingly nomadic society. Ripa di Meana roams the world,
inserting herself into local environments so as to seamlessly
melt away, ingesting the essence of her perpetually unfamiliar
surroundings. Here, in a particularly evocative work, she
trudges alone in the vast black lava desert of a volcanic
crater that suggests the beginning of time.
Patrik Graham's formal
portraits of bagels is particularly intriguing. He seems
intent on poking fun at both classical painting and modern
art; in one stroke. Utilizing impeccable Renaissance chiarascuro
painting technique, the nuance of each bagel is highlighted
against a dramatic, dark background. Hung as a series in
post-modernist squared formation reminiscent of Carl Andre's
and Agnes Martins' ubiquitous grids, the subject matter
is straight out of Pop Art.
Likewise, Diego Fuga's riffs on the staged countenance of
contemporary fashion photography is precious. His deadpan
photograph of a beautiful model's legs, interspersed with
the not quite so sexy legs of milk cows (shot from below eye
level), helps to keep matters in perspective.
¶
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André Kertész
The National Gallery
of Art , Washington
By Lola Sherman
The development of
photographer André Kertész's long career,
beginning in his native Hungary in the early 1900's, blossoming
in Paris in the twenties and finally settling (uneasily
at first) in New York City between 1936 until his death
in 1985, is richly documented in this exhaustive show, which
is scheduled to travel to the West Coast after this debut
in Washington DC.
Subtle, gentle, poetic,
Kertész's sensibility seems a twin to Eugène
Atget's in the fleeting glimpses of small figures caught
in the dim shadows of building facades. His earliest images
of the passing scene in Budapest and Paris , and of the
daily life of soldiers during the first World War, were
all rendered as contact prints (he did not own an enlarger).
For this exhibition, The National Gallery has chosen to
hang these miniature prints, which measure only one or two
inches. Although precious in the same way medieval manuscript
illuminations are, these tiny evocations inevitably suffer
through a loss of detail, their nuances too indistinct to
convey a legible impression. For example, Kertész
offers what should be a hauntingly evocative view of the
Eiffel Tower (1925). The tower, its forceful presence meant
to fade in the fog, instead vanishes from sight in this
two inch high contact image.
During his time in
Paris , Kertész tried various perceptual experiments,
and abstraction remained a persistent interest for the rest
of his life. Chairs, Luxembourg Gardens (1926) shows thin-slatted
garden chairs, accompanied by their cast shadows, receding
evenly along a path flanked by a finely-hewn wrought iron
fence. Stairs, Montmartre (1926) examines the interweaving
patterns made by descending steps and the reflections of
the thin supporting posts of the handrails. The repetitive
patterns, rather than the objects themselves, are the real
subjects of these two works.
The pervasive tone
of every one of Kertész's pictures is one of delicacy.
Subjects are frequently chosen with this characteristic
in mind, but even if the subject is not inherently dainty
or diaphanous, such as architecture, the treatment will
invariably de-emphasize its bulk. Kertész turns the
landmass of Washington Square (1954) into a meditation on
insubstantiality. He shoots the square from overhead on
a snowy day, a shaky fence winding around trees astonishingly
made to appear lacy against the powdery white ground.
In 1928 Kertész
began to use a Leica. This very popular camera encouraged
many photographers to adopt a "snapshot" style
because its small size, fast shutter speed and 35 mm film
that quickly advanced allowed them to respond to a scene
quickly and with immediacy.
Kertész’s Meudon (1928) would seem at first
glance to epitomize the transient nature of the snap-shot.
Enclosed between claustrophobic walls we see a man in the
middle of the street carrying a newspaper-wrapped parcel,
while other men walk in the opposite direction. In the distance,
a train speeds over two arches of a viaduct; deeper into
the background, cranes and other building equipment are
caught in a mist.
In 1936 Kertész and his wife, Elizabeth, moved to
New York City, hoping to make a living doing commercial
work. He tried his hand at some of the inventions of American
photographers. Armonk, New York (1941) scrutinizes every
hole in the trunk of a tree with Edward Weston’s microscopic
clarity. At other times he would borrow from Walker Evans’
repertory.
In 1936 Kertész
and his wife, Elizabeth, moved to New York City, hoping
to make a living doing commercial work. He tried his hand
at some of the inventions of American photographers. Armonk,
New York (1941) scrutinizes every hole in the trunk of a
tree with Edward Weston’s microscopic clarity. At
other times he would borrow from Walker Evans’ repertory.
Eventually he found
his way; in 1964 he was given a show at the Museum of Modern
art which was well received and established his name in
America . Nevertheless, he continued to return to the same
subjects and approaches that stirred him all his life, but
in a fresh manner. Somehow his work never looks dated. We
see the repetitive patterns of slim railings crisscrossed
by the strapped backs of chairs reappear in Mauna Kea (1974),
along with shadowy figures; though now depicted as proper
photographs, rather than the tiny contact prints that he
had to make do with before. Another composition from his
late period shows a shimmering glass bust in the foreground,
set against an outdoor scene of lacy trees that fan out
over a snowy field amid New York skyscrapers; so softly
shaded they resemble low-rise Parisian apartments. Like
the treatment of the Eiffel Tower in his 1925 picture, the
tallest and most assertive elements (two identical towers)
seem to dissolve into vapor. The picture is prophetically
titled Glass Sculpture with World Trade Center (1979).
Through 5/15.
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