Spread ArtCulture2013-05-19T06:26:10-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=spread-artcultureCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Spread ArtCultureGood old fashioned elbow grease.A Short Jaunt Through the Whitney's Meat & Bone Collectiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7863912010-11-20T12:29:48-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kisa Lala
"Charles LeDray (b. 1960), Ring Finger, 2004. Ivory, gold, 1 x 5 1/8 x 1 inches (2.5 x 13 x 2.5 cm) Collection of Robin Wright and Ian Reeves. Photograph by Tom Powel. Courtesy of Sperone Westwater"
Charles LeDray's works at the Whitney Museum are that of an obsessive-compulsive genius who has created a universe in the miniature. Inside a glass display are stacks of porcelain vases, 2000 of them, each individually shaped from a potter's wheel to replicate styles of pottery throughout history. The display (Milk and Honey) is mind-boggling not only in its sheer collective power but because they are all of diminutive scale and perfectly described in their miniaturized detail.
The most arresting artworks from the show are tiny sculptures - 'ivory' buttons, a strand of wheat (made to 1:1 scale) and a vertical column of stacked chairs, all of which appear captivating for their precision and virtuosity alone, until one realizes they are also made of human bone - the source of which the artist is apparently reluctant to divulge.
"Charles LeDray, Cricket Cage, 2002. Human bone, 3 3/8 × 3 3/8 × 1 7/16 inches. Photograph by Tom Powel. Courtesy of Sperone Westwater"
Orrery (1997), which is a tiny mechanical Victorian representation of the known universe, displayed in a glass bell jar, shows the rotation of the planets in the solar system and symbolically connects the minute to the intangibly large. The caption has a quotation from Scott Carey, the character in Incredible Shrinking Man(1957), "So close, the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet like the closing of a gigantic circle."
His tailored doll-sized clothing designed around the stereotypes of masculinity (sports clothing, military and air force outfits, and security guard uniforms) are intentionally scaled down and has the effect of feminizing them, exposing the silks and stitching that make them vulnerable and toy-like, and play with notions of identity. It appears though that it is the artist's own sexuality that is at play here, and the artist makes many references to the role of gay men in society; twenty four hats at the entrance to the show "Village People," which references the band known for their camp alter-egos - addresses the uncertainty of gay identity. Additionally, LeDray used to display his miniature clothing and artifacts, like that of homeless buskers and street vendors on the pavements of Astor Place, in the East Village to emphasize labour as a basic need for survival.
Continuing on to more fleshy pieces, on a different floor at the Whitney, is an exhibition of Paul Thek's, work, the first room of which is a collection of the artist's 'meat pieces' from the 1960s, made while traveling with his lover, Peter Hujar in Sicily.
The title of the exhibition, "Diver," also refers to Paul Thek's serene sketches of divers, swimmers, surfers; painted in Yves Klein-blues, they offer another side to the artist's identity. Thek also worked in Paris with theater director Robert Wilson, who now administers Thek's estate. The artist died in 1988, at the age of 54, from AIDS. It is interesting that both these gay artists, generations apart, living and working at some point in the East Village, have had such different and diverse discourses relating to their physical and emotional connections to society - contributing a significant legacy to the history of New York art.
"Charles LeDray (b.1960), Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, 1993. Fabric, wire, vinyl, silkscreen, zipper, 26 ¾ x 54 inches (67.9 × 137.2 cm) overall. Private Collection, Houston, TX. Photograph by Tom Powel. Courtesy of Sperone Westwater"
Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork November 18, 2010--February 13, 2011 Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective - October 21, 2010-January 9, 2011
The Whitney Museum, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York City. Text:By Kiša Lala]]>Anselm Kiefer's Remembrance of Things Pasttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7831202010-11-19T16:21:13-05:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/ By Kisa Lala
To experience Anselm Kiefer's new exhibition at Gagosian Gallery is to enter a monochromatic forest with walls of flaking, mud-encrusted canvases that transport us into a world at times foreboding, at others, shamanic and mystical.
Through this organic web of 'memories,' both historical and personal, Kiefer evokes a sense of past. Faded photographs on lead plates hint at a militaristic epoch in which Kiefer appears making the Hitlergruß, the Nazi salute in front of historically significant landmarks that deliberately confront a troubled time.
"Anselm Kiefer speaking at 92Y Photo: K.Lala, 2010"
["Left Image: Anselm Kiefer speaking at 92Y photo: K.Lala, 2010"]
During his conversation at 92Y with curator and critic Sir Norman Rosenthal (who co-curated Sensation during his tenure at London's Royal Academy), Kiefer said that his painted photographs incorporate several levels of histories. "The photograph is a moment. It's interesting to combine the two because there is a tension between a moment and history."
The artist seemed unruffled by much of the interviewer's rhetorical line of questioning. When Rosenthal remarked that his paintings evoked graveyards, Kiefer replied that they were in fact more about the living, that the past was a story written by the living: "Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning."
["Left image: Sir Norman Rosenthal and Terence Koh keeping each other company at Gagosian Gallery. Photo K.Lala 2010"]
In some of the paintings in relief hang empty dresses that retain memories of the shapes of their owners, implying the absence of the physical body (arguably recalling the discarded clothes of Holocaust victims). Kiefer is drawn to the grandness of decay, the remnants of lost cultures, things left in the wake of civilization that implicate us.
Kiefer has studied the Zohar, and weaves in elements from the text on Jewish mysticism. In several glass vitrines, some 20 feet tall, the artist references Kabbalah, and the Sefiroth, symbolizing the energetic systems of the body. These monolithic shrines of glass and steel contain assemblages of decaying matter; lead, ash, organic remains, burnt texts, snakeskin, dresses and an aircraft's fuselage - that together construct an arcane narrative.
Rosenthal, citing Kant, asked at one point, "Do you think art is a moral imperative?" Kiefer responded by saying that morals change, so art can at one moment be moral, at another, amoral. What is imperative is relative to survival.
For Kiefer, the creative process is the most important act, and many of his paintings remain unfinished. "Do you know when a painting is finished?" asked Rosenthal. "Sometimes I know... sometimes I need the money," Kiefer quipped.
Indeed, such quick deflections might come naturally, as the artist claims to have had studied sophism in his early years. But Kiefer admitted that back then, "I knew, that I knew nothing." "If the intellect isn't combined with emotion," he went on, "then it becomes abstract."
Julian Schnabel, who attended Kiefer's talk, later discussed Kiefer with Rosenthal, and said, that in his own view, he did not separate intellect and feelings. Asked what he thought of Kiefer's show, Schnabel replied glibly, "I thought it was pretty good." He felt that he and Kiefer both have the soul of a six year old.
For Kiefer the connection to his art is spiritual. "I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth."
"Life is an illusion," concluded Kiefer. "I am held together in the nothingness by art."
The vintage worlds of fairgrounds, Victorian curios, cultural detritus and memorabilia have been Sir Peter Blake's passion for most of his life. He is considered the grandfather of British pop art, and is known for his most recognizable work, the iconic sleeve of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Now, at the age of 78, Blake still has not slowed, and with a couple of concurrent shows in London this month, he is on a rebound after his self-professed retirement following his Tate retrospectives in London (1983) and Liverpool Tate (2008) -- which he once presumed would cap his career. When I spoke with him recently at his London home, he told me that collecting has been his obsession since he was fourteen years old.
Exhibition#3, at Primrose Hill's Museum of Everything, "is a show about wanting to share everything", said Blake who put the exhibition together with curator James Brett. One of the highlights of the show is Potter's room, after Walter Potter, whose collection of Victorian taxidermy -- begun in 1861, Blake had helped retrieve. The collection which forms a curious tableau of stuffed animals has contributions from many Potter enthusiasts, including Damien Hirst.
Blake tells me he began his collection of Victoriana by rummaging scrap-yards after school as a teenager and had later become a habitué of flea markets in London's Chiswick and Portobello Road, where he is a familiar face to many stallholders.
"Homage 10x5," is an exhibition of Blake's own artworks in tribute to the ten artists who Blake feels have most influenced his art, like Joseph Cornell, Mark Dion, Damien Hirst, Henri Matisse, Jack Pierson, Robert Rauschenberg and Kurt Schwitters, among others. It opens at Waddington Galleries in London on November 17th, 2010.
Blake has always loved making collages, and his technique of appropriation is also a way of honouring artists who have inspired him. He uses butterflies, often associated with the artist Damien Hirst, in collages like Butterfly Man to create vintage postcard landscapes.
From my telephone conversations and meetings with Sir Peter (he does not like email), I had suspected he was in the camp of Luddites who eschew the digital world. Blake explained to me that he uses computers as a tool to assist him in the production of certain artworks, but emphasized that it was not the source of his imaginative process. As more and more of our recent history is digitized, our memories, correspondingly, build from digitally recorded sources (as expressed in the works of many digital artists, musicians and DJs today), but Sir Peter's art is a celebration and a sampling of found objects from the real world.
Sir Peter Blake,Waddington Galleries 11 Cork Street, London W1S 3LT, 17 Nov--11 Dec 2010
Exhibition#3 can be seen at Museum of Everything Text: Kiša Lala ViewSpread ArtCulture]]>Simon Says, It's Open Housetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7783902010-11-03T17:40:08-04:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/ Simon de Pury, turning law and reason on its head, in front of Maurizio Cattelan's Frank and Jaime, 2002. Edition of 3. Estimated at $1-1.5 million. Photo credit:Kisa Lala
Let the drum-rolls begin -- Simon dePury, the market-savvy chairman of Phillips de Pury & Company, was at hand to christen the new Park Avenue location for the inaugural preview of the Part 1-Contemporary Art Evening Sale. The collection, entitled 'Carte Blanche,' curated by Phillipe Segalot, former international head of Christie's Contemporary Art, is scheduled for auction November 8, 2010, with a low-estimate of $80,000,000.
Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy) 1998-99.Ektacolor photograph. Edition of 2 plus artist proof. Estimated at $1-1.5 million
Phillips' move uptown to the new 25,559 square feet space at 450 Park Ave will extend their buyers' circle beyond the Meatpacking District, and bring them closer to their bidding rivals Sotheby's and Christie's. "The sale will be a game-changer in the way auctions are being prepared," said Simon de Pury.
Simon de Pury looking pleased in front of the inverted cops' of Maurizio Cattelan's Frank and Jaime. Photo credit: Kisa Lala
Left: Paul McCarthy, Mechanical Pig, 2005. Edition of 3 +1 AP. Estimate $2.5-3.5 million
Though the collection contains some gems, the higher-estimate values will test the market's demand for contemporary art, which in today's moody climate can turn south on a dime. Some of the highlights include Maurizio Cattelan's delightful roving robot Charlie, and Stephanie (commissioned by Stephanie Seymour's on-and-off again husband Peter Brant; a true trophy-wife's bust, the pride of any collector's), Koons' Caterpillar Ladder, Paul McCarthy'sMechanical Pig, worth its pork in gold, and Richard Prince, who is in the exclusive club of upper-tier artists whose photographs sell for over a $1 million.
Takashi Murakami, the poster child for the show is his own best salesman. Riding high on his Versailles exhibition, he currently commands high prices (listed estimate of $4-6million for Miss KO2), but his work, though astonishing at first, can quickly turn dreary on the twentieth reiteration. It's unfortunate for Warhol that his career ended before the Age of Reproduction fully took hold, because with the multiplicity of editions that abound, even Walter Benjamin would be baffled by the soaring and undiminished value of an 'original'.
But sometimes, a reproduction, as in the case of Cattelan's Stephanie, maybe a better bargain than its original.
Maurizio Cattelan, Stephanie, 2003. Edition of 3 + 1 AP Estimate: $1-1.5 million
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #153, 1985. Edition of 6. Estimate: $2-$3 million
View of Phillips de Pury's space at 450 Park Avenue with upper tier skyboxes for premium clients. Photo: Kiša Lala
For further information on sales:Phillips de Pury Text:Kiša Lala]]>Interview: Filmmaker Ruth Hogben Revamps the Fashion Videotag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7753922010-11-02T12:28:32-04:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kisa Lala
"Video Still, "Joie de Vivre" by Ruth Hogben for Gareth Pugh, Courtesy of Ruth Hogben, 2010"
At the opening of Paris' Fall fashion week Gareth Pugh opted out of the usual runway display and showcased his designs instead with an eleven minute video done in collaboration with filmmaker Ruth Hogben. Hogben came to my attention through her earlier work for Celine and Pugh with her original use of lighting and texture, which emphasized the sensuality of both the fabric and the wearer.
Hogben had worked with Nick Knight on Alexander McQueen's last show, and also on videos for Lady Gaga's recent stage performances. I asked the young filmmaker about her inspirations and aspirations for carving out a new medium for herself.
KL: How did you first start assisting Nick Knight? RH: I studied photography first; I wanted to be a photographer since I was twelve. I was very persistent and we went to the same secondary school and it was probably my winning letter that I wrote. I always wanted to learn from him. I had two or three years of assisting others and learning from my mistakes. And then I finally applied and worked for Nick - worked very, very hard for a few years. I was the motorized magazine rack - give me three seconds to reload the film ...
When Nick went to digital, I had to take a step back - you didn't need four people to change the lens on a Hasselblad and so I had to reinvent myself. [Later], I was at a Visionaire shoot, and kept looking through the view-finder and Lily (Cole) was playing with motion and light, and I said to Nick that I thought there was some really nice footage there, and could I edit it? I then spent half a day in the studio learning Final Cut. Nick and Charlotte (his partner) were very supportive and let me use the footage and the soundtrack; they gave me a lot of freedom - then, it was two years of editing, of trying and playing, and working hard.
KL: Are you inspired by the architectural forms in Gareth Pugh's designs? RH: The third film (Joie de Vivre) was influenced by art deco architecture. That was how I approached the film, making her into a building, making her very tall. But then she moved so well - and gave me so many varying poses, it meant I could go wild when I had an amazing soundtrack. The audio is by Lukid. I talked with him about the film I wanted to make and he went away for a couple of weeks and came back with something that fit so perfectly that we decided to go with it instead of starting from scratch.
KL: What's the difference between this work and making a music video? RH: Fashion drives my inspiration. I'd be quite scared to be led by music; it's not how I really work. I work with the beat but as a way of accentuating the work.
"Video still from Director Ruth Hogben's film for Celine"
KL: Do you choreograph the movement? RH: For Celine (Perfect) I was led by the lines of how the coat moved. But with the leather jacket, when she rolled her shoulders, the leather just moved in this sexual way...The movement is a fine line between the freedom of expression in the way the model feels as a woman inside the clothes, to how I think the movement should be communicated.
KL: The movement when it is slowed down is very erotic. You get to really see how the human body moves. RH: I never really thought about how I slow things down. But sometimes I just feel the viewer needs to appreciate what I am showing them, and in real-time you don't get to appreciate a crease or a movement; it gets the audience time to breathe it in. But it does push it away from reality, which is sometimes right for certain films - or sometimes isn't. I also repeat, I accentuate... I am not a trained editor and don't follow conventions of the film genre.
KL: Maybe you are creating a new genre - it's more like a performance. RH: Whatever edit rule I use, I just feel it. It's a visual language that pleases me. I just follow my instinct.
I am building on something already incredible, and I make it more graphic or sumptuous with backgrounds, makeup, movement and wind. I am communicating through a performance, a film. I adore working with Gareth; his work is so strong. In the initial stages he spends a long time speaking about how he feels about his work, then he lets me react to it...With Gaga it was more fashion oriented...there were art pieces embedded in the concerts - but she also gave me a lot of freedom.
KL: Do you think the artist in you takes over - or are you just showing the clothes to the best advantage? RH: That's a bit tricky. I try to improve on my past work. I've been working with a great DOP, Simon Chaudoir and learning a lot, playing with lenses, feeling more confident...
But the communication between Gareth and I hasn't changed. I refine the communication, and with film it is a lot more direct than with a still photograph. I fine-tune the communication with the pace of the edit and movement. I don't think as an artist I overtake his work, but knowing the medium more, helps improve what and how I communicate his vision.
I spent 4 months working with Gaga, and when I finished I needed to do a film that was purely just for me. It was self-funded. It will go to some festivals, and I love how it is presented and shown at Showstudio; I love working with the team there, and I get a lot of control of how the film looks.
[In my videos] I try to show what type of a woman she is in a thick heavy wool coat; or a flowy see-through dress. It all means something and I try to understand what that means and communicate it on a whole new level.
"Martin Margiela's "Wig-Coat," in Make Up Your Mind, directed by Nick Knight and Ruth Hogben"
KL: You communicate that without clothes too, through the movement of flesh. Showing women's bodies in a different way is challenging because it's one of the most exploited subjects in art. RH: Those two burlesque dancers were so much fun to work with (See Buttocks above). I love fashion and I love women. I study skin moving - making it look like milk and being inspired by Man Ray's daylight nudes. I am lucky to live in this time with this new medium - this touchable way of using digital formats. [And also] having all these exquisite artists to be pulling on like Man Ray, Helmut Newton and Allen Jones - but putting my own spin on them. It's important that we question ourselves as women, about equality - I think a lot about whether a stripper is an object or is she something to be desired, and whether that's powerful enough. I'd like to do a lot more work in exploring women and their bodies, and whether they are just pieces of meat or whether they are something to enjoy in splendour and celebrate. There is a fine line between exploitation and celebration. I am lucky to be working in this time where fashion film has a platform.
Ruth Hogben video for Phillipe Starck
KL: Is your work just part of the fashion world - or do you consider yourself an artist. RH: I don't know how to answer. I did a film for Phillipe Starck - a still-life of a chair- shot and lit in different ways with calligraphy writing; it abstracted the shapes...brought out the form of the chair and then faded away...I don't quite know what that is, or what I should call myself - I love it and feel it and put my heart and soul it.
The new independent film Space Land and Time: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm, directed by Laura Harrison and Elizabeth Federici is a biography of the renegade architecture outfit Ant Farm that operated in the 60s and 70s counter-culture movement and pioneered the use of many architectural design devices, technologically ahead of their times.
In Europe there were other radical /guerilla architecture organizations around like Archigrams (UK) and SuperStudio (Italy) whose theoretical inventions were then put to practice by AntFarm in the USA. Their subversive, alternative ideas fertilized the possibility of overturning old-habits. As an 'underground' collective, Ant Farm, funded most of their own projects and focused on urban designs that were temporary, nomadic and malleable - opposite of the dominant style. They were also exponents of Buckminster Fuller's assault against the right angles of traditional architecture.
"Richard Buckminster Fuller, Shoji Sadao Dome over Manhattan, ca. 1960 Silver gelatine print, 34.9 x 46.7 cm Courtesy: The Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller"
"Ant Farm (Chip Lord, Doug Michels and Curtis Schreier) Clean Air Pod, 1970 Polyethylene, dimensions unknown Chip Lord, Courtesy Ant Farm"
Many failed projects and architectural follies now seem more technologically feasible with today's new plastics and smarter, durable skins. Concepts like Dolphin Embassy a project used to envision one living space for multiple species, in this case, marine and human, can be of potential use to natural history museums. Highly poly-urethaned carved wood molded interiors can be seen as style influences today in Marc Newson's Aqua Riva speed boat. And Cargo parachutes, supported by wind, used to create living spaces, can be seen as early evolutions of modern inflatables-technology.
Consider other modern day off-shoots of these early precursors in nomadic structures and inflatables such as the Water Cube - Olympic stadium in Beijing, Diller Scofidio's Bubble, an inflatable event space planned for Hirshhorn Museum, the temporary structures of the Burning Man event, Zaha Hadid's Chanel mobile art pavilion, and the many pop-up stores and exhibition spaces of today.
"Dolphin Embassy, 1974, Drawing by Ant Farm - Photo: François Lauginie Courtesy Frac Centre."
"Diller Scofidio's Bubble, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, museum expansion: Washington DC, 2012"
More on the history of inflatables and architectural groups: Raumlabor, Ant Farm
Text: By Kiša Lala]]>Patricia Piccinini's World Of Creatures Great & Smalltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7681132010-10-21T11:42:17-04:002012-04-18T05:12:01-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kisa Lala
Australian artist Patricia Piccinini's silicone rendered mutants are on display at Haunch of Venison in New York. Piccinini, in her mid-40's, is warm and open when we meet, and offers to lead me through her show describing the myriad creatures that populate her post-human world.
"Left: Patricia Piccinini The Observer 2010 - silicone, fibreglass, steel, human hair, clothing, chairs"
The first installation in the gallery titled, The Observer, is of a child tipped over a stack of Ikea chairs curving in a centipede-like spine.
"We've created this precarious environment, an ecology for our children built of these mass produced goods...and we've placed our children in this space, and they are just observing," says Piccinini. Though the child is not in immediate danger the work seems to ponder the possibilities of the outcome. "It's talking about balances," suggests Piccinini.
Her silicone and fibre-glass creations have human hair on their painted skin-like veneers, punched in one at a time by hand. To create life-like creatures with blushed skin tones that give them the verisimilitude of real skin, she employs a team of eight specialized apprentices at her studio in Melbourne.
"The germ for Cascade," she says, showing me a work hanging on the wall "came from me being pissed off with images of women where they are sexualized - but in a homogenous way." The sexualization of women, she felt, rarely encompassed their fertility or fecundity. In this piece the hummingbird appears to be pollinating the growth of hair flowering at the women's pudenda. "It's pulling at this - symbol for fertility, [it is about] lushness and beauty," says Piccinini, describing it as a metaphor for the weaving and embroidery traditionally associated with women.
"Patricia Piccinini Cascade 2010 - silicone, fibreglass, human hair"
"Patricia Piccinini, Litter - 2010 silicone, fibreglass, steel, fox fur"
So far the show is grounded in the real, but the rest takes us into the fantastic possibility of creatures formed from an alchemical blend of nature and technology. Describing a litter of three transgenic babies (Litter, a play on 'garbage'), she remarks, "Here, this nature has become technologized. These are all natural forms. There are canine, simian and human forms in here, but put together in a technological way to make a new creature."
"Patricia Piccinini The Stags 2008"
In The Stags we see a couple of dueling Vespa scooters (skilfully molded by an automotive modeler) transmogrified into deers: machines behaving as animals. Here Piccinini portends the naturalization of technology. "Same idea but flipped. Same world and the relationship to technology but different sides," says Piccinini.
"Machines are taking over a lot of responsibilities - my children are playing a lot more with computers than trees. This is an idea that they could be a natural force - and that they are fighting and autonomous scares us; something we can't control might not be so positive."
To support this extrapolation into the future, Piccinini offers that we are already disassembling what it means to be human, "My computer has a personality; I can talk to my car."
I tell her I feel less akin to these magical stags than the babies: They are more machine than nature. Piccinini explores our sense of empathy and tests the degree to which we can relate to the 'other,' by betraying our innate tribal, familial instincts that bind us to our own race, colour, species. The vulnerability of children and the device of using anthropomorphized creatures, push at our boundaries of acceptance of things that appear alien.
Even as the artworks probe the limits of our most primitive ethnocentric biases, they affirm our place on the planet as the dominant species - having the power to discriminate over other life forms. Piccinini seems to be laying a moral path for our responsibility towards our medical creations. And yet, we are unable to even ensure the existence of creatures that already exist on the planet, so this scenario seems to me rather a distant future. "You can't talk about nature today unless you talk about extinction," she says about the accelerating pace of change, "that wouldn't have happened thirty years ago - this is a recent thing."
"Patricia Piccinini -The Young Family 2002-3 - shown at Venice Biennale 2003, Courtesy of Artist"
There are a lot of children depicted in the show, and she uses them as a device to elicit emotion. I ask if she is inspired by children's stories.
"I have children now, and have renewed respect for Dr. Seuss," she says. "There are children in my work because they have no prejudice and they bring out the best in us. Why would you change nature/have artificial nature - I make these creatures because I want people to engage with them, empathize with them, pick them up."
Indeed her creatures appear monstrous but cuddlesome. Monster, she reminds me is a medical term. Teratology is the study of monsters. "I don't want to shock people because that stops them from thinking." When we reference the Chapman Brothers in conversation, and suggest that her work is more 'feminine,' she says, "I love them, but I don't want my work to be sensational. I want my work to be loved and embraced. I feel therefore I think."
"Patricia Piccinini sitting beside her artwork The Comforter 2010. photo: Kisa Lala"
In The Comforter, a hirsute woman (an actual genetic condition that led to the bearded lady once popular in freak-shows and French courts), cradles an eyeless creature conceived of as an udder with a large mouth. The mouth is needy, but also a sensuous organ of expression. In this, the maternal instinct of the 'woman' is celebrated without prejudice. The woman loves this grotesque creature because it is her own.
In Balasana - the Sanskrit name for the yogic child pose, a little girl lies on a Turkish carpet, with a taxidermied albino wallaby - they die quickly because they get sunburned, I am told. "This work is about my desire or fantasy for a relationship with nature that is so intimate. In the child's pose, you can have someone lie on your back and do it the other way." The relationship is intuitive, connecting the two in symbiosis.
"Patricia Piccinini Bottom Feeder 2009 - silicone, fiberglass, fox fur"
Bottom Feeder, pictured above, is a most pathetic looking creature with a rear-end that mimics a face of Buddha-like benevolence, a device often used as a decoy against predators, in this case a disarming tactic adapted against humans to give them pause for thought or at least evoke a smile...
"Patricia Piccinini The Strength of one Arm (Siberian Ibex) 2009 silicone, fiberglass, human hair, clothing, Siberian Ibex"
The Strength of One Armis based on a dugong - (a fork-tailed manatee) that sailors, she tells me, used to mistake as mermaids. And here the creature is doing acrobatics on an Ibex. "If it was an adult - we might think of him as a show-off. We've always wanted animals to perform for us. It makes us feel a little self conscious." Questioning the attributes of what it means to be human, here the artist probes the boundaries of what we find sensual.
Movie productions have asked to license her creatures, but she says she is wary as they underestimate the ability of the viewer to take on complex ideas. Patricia Piccinini feels an attachment to her creations, they are her cherished off-springs after all, "My work needs to have a home where it is really loved. I do want to know where they all go."
Patricia Piccinini, 'Not As We Know It,' on view till October 30, 2010 Haunch of Venison, New York, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10020
All images above courtesy of Haunch of Venison and/or artist where noted.
Text: Kiša Lala]]>Resampling Jean Cocteau at the Guggenheimtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7627002010-10-14T11:35:30-04:002011-05-25T18:00:30-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kisa Lala
"Portrait of Jean Cocteau by Irving Penn"
As part of the Guggenheim's "Chaos and Classicism" exhibition, curator Charles Fabius had organized a theatrical performance Coup De Foudre, based on Jean Cocteau's film, The Blood of a Poet (1930). Paul Miller (DJ Spooky) had rescored the original film with his music to Melvin Van Peebles' spoken word accompaniment and choreographer Corey baker's (of Ballet Noir and Fela!) dance performance.
" Corey Baker - COUP DE FOUDRE/Performance Photos by Enid Alvarez"
"Jean Cocteau - The Blood of a Poet, Film still by Sacha Masour"
Cocteau had made this film with the support of Coco Chanel after having just come out of opium rehab. The film itself is a patchwork of metaphors, at times a puzzling reflection of the artist's exploration of art and dreams,"a descent into oneself," as Cocteau once put it. The artist enters his own psyche through the metaphoric device of a mirror, opening doors to his own subconscious imagination into childhood memories, dreams, sexual ambiguities and fears, which lead to exhaustion and a flirtation with death. Eventually the artist recovers and destroys the muse of his imaginations. Yet, this poetic film's premise remains open to speculation.
"DJ Spooky -Paul Miller, Melvin Van Peebles, Corey Baker at Guggenheim, October 10, 2010, photo: Kisa Lala"
While Melvin Van Peebles translated Cocteau's poems with a contemporary bent, Cory Baker added his own body movements as gestural vignettes to emphasize and reinterpret the actions of the film. Baker said after his performance, that he studied the main character, and in order to interpret the fluid movements of the film, he decided on making his gestures supple, less angry, approaching it with an actor's perspective, infusing the production with 'choreographic paragraphs' - as opposed to creating one long piece.
"A still from Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet. Photograph: Kobal Collection"
In the era of silent films, the actor's movements and gestures were naturally amplified. Cocteau having worked with Diaghliev and Ballet Russes, was a master of movement, and also, ahead of his times as a multi-disciplinary artist.
Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky), just returned from the North Pole, offered his interpretation: "The film is actually a poem: Cocteau is thinking of the film set as a code made into poetry, made into an architectural, physical space," posited Mr. Miller, in a statement as equally opaque as the film.
Miller's score began with a live solo cello played by the Telos Ensemble, and an electronic mix, which he 'conducted' using his iPad. His wonderful score actively paced the film's non-narrative flow.
"Cocteau's film was post geographic," said Miller. As a DJ and musician, the era between the wars was a source of many inspirations - as disparate as Kurt Weill, Josephine Baker and Apollinaire. "The war had shattered everybody's sense of continuity, and jazz was the soundtrack," stated Miller.
The DJ also believes that his use of audio montage is in parallel to our 'collage, non-linear imagination.'
"Sampling" he says,"is playfulness with memory; no one remembers anything exactly the same way."
Whoever has the economics has the power to transform memory. The notion of regionalism, geography and limitation had passed: "For 21st century purposes anything goes." Miller said. "We are bombarded with masses of nothingness like a Bush speech." For Miller, it is about culling rhythm out of the chaos.
"Corey Baker performs at COUP DE FOUDRE/Performance Photos by Enid Alvarez"
Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918-1936, Jean Cocteau, The Blood of a Poet (Le sang d'un poète), 1930 - 35 mm black-and-white film, with sound, 50 min. can be seen at the Guggenheim Museum, New York City. October 1, 2010-January 9, 2011
Text: Kiša Lala]]>Interview: Eve Sussman - On The Making Of Her Film, Rape Of The Sabine Womentag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7512212010-10-11T14:06:09-04:002012-04-18T05:12:01-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kisa Lala
"Production Still, Rape of the Sabine Women, Marilisa on the Floor Photo by Eve Sussman & Ricoh Gerbl, Courtesy of Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation"
Eve Sussman's film Rape of the Sabine Women is an operatic vehicle set in five locations - the first two segments shot at Pergamon Museum and Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, with its stylized treatment of austerely dressed men parading within the high-design decor, has the appearance of a Gucci commercial; these are followed by scenes shot in the Athens meat market, then, a modernist summer house, and finally the Herodion Theatre in Athens, where all the sophistication of the former scenes collapse, and the denouement, driven by the film's title, takes place.
The theme is taken from the story of the founding of ancient Rome, where the men of Rome steal the women from the neighbouring Sabine tribe - here rape has the connotation of a kidnapping or an abduction, as represented in many of the renaissance paintings, originating from the Latin word rapere from which rapt or rapture is derived.
"Film Still, 89 Seconds at Alcázar, Courtesy of Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation"
Her earlier film 89 Seconds at Alcázar, was an enactment of Velasquez' Las Meninas, in which she synthesizes a past and future from the moment depicted in the painting. Just as in that work the artist paints himself into the picture looking directly at us, Sussman offers us a surveillance gaze that implicates the viewer. In Rape of the Sabine Women, often the camera seems to capture the actors in unguarded moments and frequently the crew intrudes upon the film-set, crashing through the fantasy world Ms. Sussman so painstakingly creates.
I asked Eve Sussman about her cinematic interest in breaking down the fourth wall.
"I was interested in the play between what was filmic fiction and what was the reality was, with the makers of the film being in the film. And yes every now again the fourth wall breaks down and you see the crew, you hear the camera go by the frame. You are reflected."
In the scene set in Nikos Valsamakis' 1961 iconic modernist summerhouse, we see stylish men and women who allegorically represent civilization at the height of Rome, flirting and conversing in front of the camera, but there is a tension in the dynamic between the sexes, which ostensibly leads to a fight scene in the last act.
"It was as if we were surveilling an extended family or a group dynamic in this affluent summer house. It was all about letting the actors improvise for 2 or 3 hours and watching them. We never really called action, or said cut, and they never really knew when the camera was rolling or not."
She explains the film's plot, "these women are stolen and the men who steal them, turn on each other. Love triangles develop...And everything falls apart, the architecture, the fashion, the hairdos, all the accoutrement of 20th century better living through design, dissolves into nothing. It was all about letting the actors improvise and create those relationships; and it was between real life and fiction - watching them unfold in front of you and filming it"
"Wives of the Patricians, Rape of the Sabine Women, Eve Sussman, Photo by Bobby Neel Adams"
Jonathan Bepler, who also worked on Matthew Barney's Cremaster films, collaborated on the music. Bepler creates a wonderful accompaniment with the sound of knives and a coughing choir that builds threateningly to sync with the tension of the film and the final fight scene, in which all sound is turned abruptly, violently off.
Having come in at the end of the film, which was on rotation at the gallery, just as the fight or "rape" scene was unfolding, I found the action evolving in slow motion instead to be eroticized and sensual, where men grab and tussle and the women's clothes get ripped in an orgiastic mélange of bodies down the steps of the Greek amphitheater, and which as voyeurs we witness, becoming invited participants to the theatrical staging before us.
Eve Sussman says, "the fact that you could have that reading is also really interesting - I never spoon-feed the audience everything - it's not TV, people can develop their own readings of it, even if you have watched it out of order, it still works. That confusion is very interesting. You would think of it as a contradiction."
The scene, she explains is "a decrescendo, the denouement of everything that has happened before it; the build up and heyday of Rome; these women becoming trophy brides, the beautiful houses, clothes and hairdos - and it all falls apart. To me it is more about the allegory of 'be careful of what you wish for', dust-to-dust idea. And if you watch it from the beginning it is clear. But if you come in towards the end you may get the reading that you had but both those readings are interesting."
"Annette with Rabbits, from Rape of the Sabine Women by Eve Sussman, Photo by Benedikt Partenheimer"
There is a more reality-based rape scene that takes place in a butcher shop with painterly carcasses of hares hanging on the walls. Sussman decided to include this in keeping with the modern more violent meaning of the word. "Because the modern meaning is violent and sexual we felt that we had to address that, and that's why that scene is in there," she states.
Sussman's cinematography, with its often formalized compositions brings to mind the rigid framing techniques of Peter Greenaway's films, another director who has worked with light and the filmic adaptations of painting, and indeed, Sussman's own background in photography inclines her towards composing her shots with beautiful precision; sometimes all the action is set in the lower third of the frame, pushing elements to the edges of the film.
"Production Still, Women in the S-Bahn, Photo by Benedikt Partenheimer, Courtesy of Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation"
Ms. Sussman said that though she had taken Renaissance and Dutch still-life paintings for inspirations, she had also researched media and films from the 60s, "Gimme Shelter, the Rolling Stones at Altamont and old LIFE magazines. "It wasn't only about trying to replicate paintings," she clarifies, "it was about trying to look at that idea of the iconic period in western history where gender roles were very clear, where there was this great shift in architecture and fashion, and it was also the first time where we started to be sold a lifestyle. In 50s and 60s in Europe and America, where there were these lifestyle magazines, there was the beginning of the idea that you could be sold the concept of better living through design - that you can design the perfect future."
Deducing this theme of unfulfillment, I ask the film-maker if her work was about unconsummated desire. "Yes it's part of human nature - you can look at any point of history but certainly in modern times it is something we grapple with: How do we make the next best thing happen? Who is going to be controlling, what the latest technology is. The power wars in the world are about who controls the oil and water. It's all about desire for that power. You've nailed it when you say its about unconsummated desire, a lot of my projects address that, but through very different ideas, a very different look and a very different way of film-making."
"Video Still from Rape of the Sabine Women by Eve Sussman"
Her next film, White on White, with footage from Yuri Gagarin, the Russian cosmonaut's office and referencing another painter, Kasimir Malevich, is based on a futuristic film noir set, and I ask Sussman if would carry a similar trajectory.
"In certain aspects it is a very different project and has a different look, primarily shot in grainy b&w - film as well as video, in central Asia, and post Soviet architecture. But it does again address the idea for the quest for the perfect future. Idea of transcendence through trying to control the future." She sums it up: "Again," she says, "be careful what you wish for."
Eve Sussman's film Rape of the Sabine Women (2007) can be viewed at Haunch of Venison, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, 20th Floor, from 16 September - 30 October
Interviews & text: kisalala.comAll photographs courtesy of Eve Sussman and Rufus Corporation]]>The Rebirth of Jeff Koons: 'Made in Heaven'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7581112010-10-11T12:06:14-04:002011-05-25T18:00:30-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kiša Lala
"Jeff Koons, Hand on Breast, Courtesy of Luxembourg and Dayan Gallery"
It has been twenty years since Jeff Koons' show Made in Heaven opened at Sonnabend to busloads of cruising tourists - unleashing endless debate, was it art, was it porn, and did it successfully titillate...the mind?
Made in Heaven has come back down to earth, to the Upper East side gallery, Luxembourg and Dayan where it is celebrating its 20th anniversary incarnation, and remains if not new, surprisingly timeless. The gallery has released a catalogue of the works with an informative essay by Alison Gingeras in which she posits that Koons' career can be dissected in terms of what came before and after the exhibition of these paintings. "With Made in Heaven he broke away from the aloof and ironic sphere of the art world 'brat pack' into a perilous zone of full exposure," she says. Although Koons' reputation for cheekiness was already established by such works as Michael Jackson and Bubbles, (1988), and his stainless steel Rabbit, (1986), he catapulted into celebrity after his collaboration with Illona Staller (better known by her porn-star moniker, Cicciolina) who was already at the time a championed porn-star member of parliament.
"Jeff Koons, Violet Ice (Kama Sutra) 1991 Colored Glass, Courtesy of Luxembourg and Dayan"
"Left: Jeff Koons, Ponies, 1991 Oil inks silkscreened on canvas228.6 x 152.4 cm (90 x 60 inches)"
By weathering the controversy as well as he did, Koons solidified into his persona of invincibility. I recall Koons discussing his paintings years later at Columbia University over a slide show of Ilona Staller's parted bottom, when he silenced a hall full of snickering students by his deadpan remarks on the generosity of his then, ex-wife's rear-end. By the purported innocence of his biblical fantasies with its garish backgrounds along with his choice of medium, painting, and price (they are oil inks silkscreened on canvas, having sold for as much as $2-3million), Koons astutely distances himself on many levels from prosaic pornography. Still, so many years later we find ourselves unable to reproduce (definitely on the web) most of the works from this collection, which elevates timeless human lovemaking into celestial heights, both spiritual and kitsch.
Despite the high and lows of his relationship with Staller, and the custody battles over his son Ludwig, Koons remained faithful to his original, sinless vision. And one hopes that Ludwig, now nearly twenty years older, also celebrates his well-documented conception, having been so lavishly conceived out of a union made in heaven.
Jeff Koons' Made in Heaven, Paintings are on view at Luxembourg & Dayan October 6, 2010 - January 21, 2011 - Monday through Friday, from 11AM to 4PM - 212 452 4646 Text: Kisa Lala]]>Interview with Edward Burtynsky: Photographing a Planet on the Edgetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7475372010-10-01T17:28:10-04:002011-05-25T17:55:20-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kiša Lala
Photographer Edward Burtynsky is drawn to waste and contemporary ruins, to the flotsam and jetsam of our vanities leftover in the wake of capitalist progress. I spoke to him recently about the photographs he took from a Cessna, flying over the gulf spill - a part of his documentation of 'man-altered landscapes' - but instead, our conversation veered alarmingly towards a discussion of our planet's critical equilibrium.
"Left: Edward Burtynsky Oil Spill #15, Submerged Pipeline, Gulf of Mexico, June 24, 2010"
Oil - is the single most powerful source of energy on the planet. And Burtynsky has been telling the story of its use and our capitalist manufacturing processes by way of photographs of places - that lie outside the tourist path.
On display at his New York gallery are b&w prints developed from a set of negatives that had partly disintegrated from humidity, which were saved from his trip to Bangladesh in 2001, while documenting the ship breaking process. This alien graveyard is captured in his film, Manufactured Landscapes (2006).
Burtynsky explains that after the Exxon Valdez accident, insurance companies refused to insure single hulled ships, which were more permeable to damage than double hulled ships - and these oil tankers, the largest moving man-made objects on the planet, had to be broken down - so they were sent to places like India and Bangladesh.
"Asbestos and PCB oils are inert when they are held together in these vehicles but when dismantled, they become toxic - the same as computers. They don't kill us while they are sitting there, but you try and melt it, recycle it, and you end up with a toxic situation."
"Left: Edward Burtynsky, Shipbreaking # 11, Chittagong, Bangladesh 2000"
Most people remain indifferent to the process by which objects in our daily lives are manufactured, and have just as little curiosity about where things go once they are discarded.
"Literally, there's three segments of history to everything," says Burtynsky, picking up a marble disc on a table in front of us. "Look at this," he says, "there is no origin to this. Where is this coming from, this stone? There are plants that turned it into this. But then there is the history of the life of this object in our lives - and then when we are tired of it, we discard it - and that is the third history. We only engage with it when it is in our possession. We don't care for it before or after. But it is our lack of awareness that can get us into trouble. There's consequences to everything; my photos are mostly of the first and third history - we are already familiar with the second."
"Left: Edward Burtynsky, Oxford Tire Pile #9b Westley, California, USA, 1999"
I count myself amongst those living in ignorant bliss, unable to fathom how a pen is put together or how the paper I write on evolved from a plant.
Burtynsky continues, "If my car breaks down in the highway I used to know it's that - but now you look under the hood it makes no sense!"
Throw it away. Make another one! I tell him I sense a building concern for the environment expressed in areas of contemporary art, and it is perhaps triggered by this subconscious fear of our inter-dependency and in the lack of control over our own survival.
"Edward Burtynsky, Silver Lake Operations #1 Lake Lefroy, Western Australia, 2007"
ON ART
"Artists have always done that in society," says Burtynsky. "Who else reflects on what we do? Philosophers and artists - the rest of us are usually engaged in life. The job description of an artist is not just in crafting materials and working in the world of physicality, but also in expanding consciousness to explore new ways in which that material can be used - or in using that material to tell stories and raise our consciousness in ways that hasn't happened before - to speak of our time...Who does that? Writers and artists."
"Edward Burtynsky, OilFields #19ab, Belridge, California, USA, 2003"
ON OIL
"It was around '96 - I had my oil epiphany," says Burtynsky. "I realized that oil was under the surface, it was under my steering-wheel, my windshield; my car, my rubber tires, the asphalt road; my clothes are synthetic...I am surrounded by oil."
"Oil became a theme. Oil delivers energy like our blood does. It's almost like blood because when we see it we know we have a problem. It's the hidden energy source that keeps everything humming."
I mention the sense of disconnect in our world between the oil we use to fund our survival and the consequences of how it is refined for us. Burtynsky's photographs tries to bridge that disconnect.
"There is a disconnect - more than it is healthy for any society to be. No society has ever been so dependent on one thing in the history of this planet: Oil. We are of course dependent on water. Two scary things just on the edge: peak oil, or running out of water. I can just sense those things just out there. When we hit them, we are going to be a very different world. It headlines quickly, but bad is going to worse quickly."
"Edward Burtynsky, Silver Lake Operations #2, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia, 2007"
We're very lucky to exist at all, with the right distance from the sun and steady seasons; the last meteor hit us 85 million years ago. But with all the natural gas, coal and oil we use to keep ourselves humming, we're dumping 250 million barrels of C02 a day into the air. Citing Al Gore's film, Burtynsky reminds me that the atmosphere is just a bit of saran wrap around the planet -"a thin margin of life that makes the difference between a habitable and an inhabitable planet. I don't know if people see the urgency enough. We can lose control over the whole and it would be our fault for not paying attention," says Burtynsky.
ON WATER
Following up on his oil project, Burtynsky is focusing on water. (For more, see National Geographic)
"I am looking at places where water is getting close to becoming critical," says Burtynsky with calm conviction, "India has serious problems. It's a dry large country - they are draining the aquifers [underground lakes] faster than they are recovering, like Owens lake ... [soon it will be like the] end of the malt shake with the straw - there's suddenly no more water."
While driving through the desert in Morocco once I came to a place where the air swarmed with flying plastic bags. Like thousands of suspended jellyfishes, they floated aimlessly in the air. I saw a future of bag-chasing lepidopterists. I asked Burtynsky whether he was interested in photographing human trash - what about the floating rubbish in the Pacific Ocean? Or what about the space trash, in our cosmic junkyards?
"I have photographed some," he says, "but I try to also photograph things that capture our imagination - that aren't just records of something. There is a transcendent quality to the pieces that transport us away from reality to a world of wonder - [I want to be] able to show a place that is familiar yet unfamiliar."
"Edward Burtynsky, Rock of Ages #7-Active Granite Section Wells, Lamson Quarry, Barre, Vermont 1991"
ON POPULATION
Burtynksy who is Canadian, was born in 1955 right in the epicenter of the baby boom.
"When I was born the world population was 2.5 billion," he says, "and every decade we have added a billion. It took all of life and creation to get to 2.5 billion -and we tripled it in 40-50 years. We are rogue species..."
"Oil was the key revolution, not the green revolution. It used to be that one person in the field can support two persons outside. Over 50% used to be agrarian all the time. Now 2% of the population of America produce all the food with excess. With the mechanical advantage of oil and machinery - they don't even need a farmer in a tractor in California - the tractor can run precise patterns with ploughing on GPS."
"Left: Edward Burtynsky, Ferrous Bushling No. 9, Hamilton, Ontario 1997"
Burtynsky does not make any judgments in his photographs and he is careful to point this out. "The narrative is open. People ask me if I am an environmentalist - and I say no, I am not. It's not that I don't have environmental concerns, but the environmental movement has generally failed. It hasn't educated people in the right way. It's been over-powered by other forces with money."
"Still," he says stoically, "it's about messaging. It's not about indicting - not about BP or Exxon being bad - somebody's going to do that work - there'd be another logo there. We are human beings and it's about - we need oil."
Even though his pictures rarely contain people, there is a sense of responsibility and ownership when we look at them.
"We are implied. There is an empathetic moment in my work. I see it as a thirty year lament at the loss of nature at our hands, at the expense of our expansion. Underneath every picture is the fact that nature is being pushed back and our footprint is just getting bigger.And I am that edge...trying to show that we are taking over, more and more..."
I conjecture that his job would get easier: there won't be any more natural landscapes to photograph anyway, I predict.
"We are going to be hovering over these concrete worlds, no trees - like Star Wars - an all built-up world. We will go to tree museums..." Burtynsky laughs.
"Edward Burtynsky, Oil Spill #4, Oil Skimming Boat near Ground Zero, May 12, 2010, chromogenic print, Courtesy Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto, and Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, New York"
Text: Kisa Lala Photographs: Courtesy of Edward Burtynsky's Studio
]]>Sperone Westwater Gallery Moves Into the Bowerytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7364452010-09-23T17:18:04-04:002011-05-25T17:50:22-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kisa Lala
"Sperone Westwater Gallery -- Norman Foster Designed Building at 257 Bowery, NYC"
The Bowery is undergoing a renaissance and facelift with new restaurants and hotels sprouting along the once seedy avenue - Peels, Boulud's DBGB, the Bowery Hotel, the New Museum, and now today, Sperone Westwater gallery has switched allegiance over to the Lower East Side, and moved into their new Norman Foster designed building at 257 Bowery.
After circumventing troupes of PR people at the door I entered a beautifully lit narrow space filled with collectors turned out in handsome attire. The polite, rarefied atmosphere within was in contrast to the hustlers outside generally kept at bay by the price of admission at the New Museum next door.
"Sperone Westwater Opens on the Bowery Photo: Kisa Lala"
"Sperone Westwater Gallery - Norman Foster Designed Building at 257 Bowery, NYC"
The building, designed by Foster and Partners, features a 12 by 20 foot moving gallery that connects four floors and allows visitors to move between the many levels. This specially designed moving room also allows the exhibition space to be extended in the vertically inclined building of 8 stories.
Norman Foster says:
Like a kinetic addition to the street, it is a lively symbol of the area's reinvention and a daring response to the Sperone Westwater's major program. I hope that artists will be inspired by the gallery's new spatial and structural possibilities.
I imagine their daring will also be measured by the gallery's ability to assimilate and embrace the energy of the LES, which such galleries as Lehmann Maupin, Eleven, and Salon94 have successfully done.
The inaugural exhibition in the moving room is of Guillermo Kuitca's, Le Sacre (1992), comprising of maps painted onto 54 mattresses, and for the first time, these beds are being vertically displayed as originally envisioned by the artist. The beds cover the wall's surface, while the room, much like a palatial elevator, moves slowly between the 2nd and 3rd floors.
"Guillermo Kuitca Installation View at Sperone Westwater"
"Guillermo Kuitca Installation View at Sperone Westwater"
Guillermo Kuitca: Paintings 2008-2010, Le Sacre 1992
22 September 2010 through 6 November 2010 at Sperone Westwater Gallery 257 Bowery, NYC
Photography: Courtesy of Sperone Westwater Gallery and Nigel Young/ Foster & Partners Spread ArtCulture Magazine ]]>Jeff Bark Photographs Lucifer Falls - A Beautiful Place to Dietag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7217642010-09-20T20:30:58-04:002011-05-25T17:40:20-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kiša Lala
Jeff Bark, Lucifer Falls, Courtesy of artist and Hasted Hunt Kraeutler Gallery
In Jeff Bark's new series, Lucifer Falls, the water falls like a jug of milk poured over rocks, cascading down, eerily quiet in a landscape made unfamiliar - as though a gateway into a magical Shangri La - and not the parks of upstate New York, where they were actually shot.
I asked Jeff Bark why he chose waterfalls, a subject favoured by kitschy calendars and difficult to make original. Obsessing with control over his environment, Bark had toiled in his studio, building sets for 'landscapes,' whose unsurprising outcomes led him to take the project to the road. Bark wanted to reach beyond the scope of traditional nudes and landscapes, "I wanted to take on something that was overly done. Anyone can take a picture of a waterfall - the only way I could make it different was by controlling the light."
Light and lakes were what he grew up around in Minnesota, and so when with the help of a location scout he came to this place in Northern New York near Canada, he felt a sense of connection with the landscape. Just as he was leaving a state park he saw a tiny sign pointing to 'Lucifer Falls.' The name spurred him on.
"There are a lot of colleges; it's near Cornell, and tons of students commit suicide. They plunge themselves into the gorge..."
"Jeff Bark, Lucifer Falls, Courtesy of artist and Hasted Hunt Kraeutler Gallery"
It seems a beautiful place to die. In this place, surrounded by the majesty of the falls, Jeff Bark's photographs communicate the anguish of ending one's life. "It also makes you feel how small you are, how fragile; nature comes back so fast...plants overtake the earth; here there is also the purity of cleansing yourself," says Bark.
Bark would shoot when it was raining out, or about to, and when everything was saturated in the evening or first thing in the morning, 5am, when there was no light. Sometimes he triggered smoke bombs in the valley to mist the air. "You have to walk in at night, he continues, "the sun rises so fast sometimes and if the light touches the picture it becomes more like those clichéd pictures - I did take some, but I wanted to shoot a landscape with emotion," says Bark.
"Jeff Bark, Lucifer Falls, Courtesy of artist and Hasted Hunt Kraeutler Gallery"
In one picture, I observe a girl with a stone tied around her neck, and in another, a figure suffocates under a sheet of plastic. Bark points out that under a waterfall one can't breathe very well, it's overwhelming; they are struggling on the verge, glimpsing at eternity.
"Jeff Bark, Lucifer Falls, Courtesy of artist and Hasted Hunt Kraeutler Gallery"
Bark tells me, "I always thought photography was so easy...if someone else can take the picture than I am not trying hard enough." Brash though he might be, Bark follows through with his bite. He can bend something provocative to a work that is poignant and amusing.
He says he controls his palette by limiting it, building the set say, around the colours of a dirty baby carriage he finds, which forms his code base for the series.
That is perhaps why his photographs are governed by a dramatic sense of light, a Caravaggio light that makes the passage from dark to the pale ethereal bodies the light exposes so revelatory; he reveals veins underneath skin, "there is no light on the people, I light the air around them, but it never really touches them... The illumination of the whole picture comes from the body."
The figures appear transcendent, psychically displaced. Their faces are hidden, and they are wearing the same tunic, as though they had just left the hospital, or have found themselves awake in their nightgowns in a dreamscape.
"People have said that it was taking pictures of something they already had in their brains, like a dream, and I was showing them the picture of it..."
"From 'Woodpecker' by Jeff Bark, Courtesy of Artist and Hasted Hunt Kraeutler Gallery"
Bark is working on several other projects, one called "Drunk Dad," is built around tales people tell, where he gets performers or choreographers to perform, to tell a story straight, and again, after six drinks, and then, after twelve to see how things unfold. Another named "Jesus Kicks Back," started a couple of years ago is photographed around Big Sur and Carmel overlooking the cliffs and oceans and deserted freeways.
What's it about? I ask.
"If Jesus didn't want to be Jesus anymore and just wanted to surf," he says.
Jeff Bark had always wanted to be a photographer since he was twelve, "I used to write to photographers in New York and never heard back from them - now since I've been doing this - almost everyday I get a call from some kid," he says. The imperfections in his photographs speak to people.
When he did become successful as a fashion photographer, it was the lack of freedom in his professional life that led him to react against the standards of perfection imposed by the industry. When his London gallery suggested he focus on faces, he did the Flesh Rainbow series, deliberately obscuring the faces of his portraits with bags and bathroom plungers. "The reason I do this (art)," he says, "is because I don't have anybody to tell me what to do with it."
"Left: Jeff Bark, From 'Flesh Rainbow' Courtesy of Artist and Hasted Hunt Kraeutler Gallery"
"The most beautiful you can be," Bark says, "is maybe for a week when you are seventeen. If you're touching stuff up, it kind of fucks everyone's head up. No one really looks like that. And you're constantly judging yourself against something that's not realistic.
"In my art photography I wanted to show people how they are. People seeing the Abandon series, might feel better about themselves after. You can see the beauty in a roll of skin, a patch of hair, so you don't feel as bad about yours or you can be forgiving of others. I was never interested in nude photography, to me it seems stupid..."
Flesh Rainbow is a series of funny-sad portraits with a comic-strip-like narrative. The captions diffuse the overly macabre subject and add an impish quality, "Otherwise they are quite brutal," says Bark, "like the girl with the plunger... but with a caption maybe she's Pinocchio."
"Left: From 'Abandon' by Jeff Bark, Courtesy of Artist and Hasted Hunt Kraeutler Gallery"
Bark describes the series, Abandon, "It makes you feel a voyeur. If you're in the room by yourself you are totally relaxed, but if someone else was in the room you wouldn't do it, if your boyfriend was in the room, you wouldn't do it...it's about the most intimate time when you are alone, and it's a record of it."
A sense of quest and solitude pervades his images, from optimistic waterfalls to people alone in their rooms protecting some intimate little secret. Bark sums it up, "Everyone wants the same thing out of life I think, everyone's kind of lonely, everyone's down, seeing it in a picture, you feel you're not alone."
Interview with Jeff Bark: Text: Kisa Lala, Photographs: Copyright Jeff Bark
Jeff Bark'sLucifer Falls is on view at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler Gallery, September 9 - October 16, 2010, 537 West 24th Street, New York City
]]>Yul Love These... Yul Brynner Photographstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7167252010-09-15T16:49:00-04:002011-05-25T17:40:20-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kiša Lala
"YUL BRYNNER The King and I, Self-Portrait, 1956 color print, 30 x 40" (paper) - Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NY"
Victoria Brynner, daughter of the late Yul Brynner, has published a four-volume book of the actor's photographs, and the Lehman Maupin gallery is exhibiting excerpts of them to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the actor's death.
Brynner, who is known for his roles in such films as The King and I, Westworld, and The Ten Commandments, took candid images of friends, family, and many of his Hollywood co-workers on and off the film sets.
"YUL BRYNNER, Salvador Dali painting Amanda Lear, Spain, 1971, Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NY"
"YUL BRYNNER, The Ten Commandments, Cast Members, 1956, color print 16 x 20 inches, Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery, NY"
Taken from each of the four volumes, the images "Lifestyle," "Life on Set," "1956," and "Man of Style," depict such scenes as a running Frank Sinatra, just descended from a helicopter; Elizabeth Taylor relaxing poolside; Audrey Hepburn in a gondola; and portraits of a pregnant Mia Farrow. All shot in either nostalgic 1950s colors or a more gritty black and white, they bring to light Brynner's latent talent as a photographer, and his skilled eye for capturing public performers in rare, unguarded moments.
Reception for Victoria Brynner, Sunday September 12, 2010 3-5pm at Lehmann Maupin 201 Chrystie Street, New York]]>Exhibition: Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin Relive Their Past Togethertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7091032010-09-11T12:55:36-04:002011-05-25T17:35:19-04:00Spread ArtCulturehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/spread-artculture/By Kisa Lala
"Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, 2010. Portrait by Brigitte Cornand"
Before her death recently at the age of 98, Louise Bourgeois had just finished work on a series of prints with Tracey Emin, which they had collaborated on during the last two years of the artist's life. Bourgeois had composed a series of 16 profiled torsos in gouache and Emin had 'responded' by adding drawings over them with text and ink.
"Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, "Looking For The Mother"
Their work together began when Ms. Bourgeois had agreed to meet Ms. Emin at her request. Despite Ms. Bourgeois' reputation of being a formidable woman, according to Emin, they had got along well and had agreed to take part in a drawing project. Ms.Bourgeois had always been surrounded by young people, and in spite of the age difference they found their work had many themes in common.
"Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, "A Million Ways To Come"
Louis Bourgeois had once declared, "Art is the experience of, the re-experience of trauma," and much of Emin's work revists the past. When I interviewed Emin just a few months before Ms Bourgeois's death, we spoke of her relationship with the elder artist and I had suggested to her then that Ms. Bourgeois' work was interior like her own, revolving around ideas of wombs and wounds.
"We both work with recurring themes as well. Things that come again and again in our life, that don't go away. The damage may be done and you forget it, then it comes back again," she said.
"Reliving one's painful past" Emin continued, "is pretty healthy. You're not holding it inside you; you are letting it go into the ether. "
The show of their collaboration opens at Carolina Nitsch gallery entitled, Do Not Abandon Me, 2009-2010, and a book is published of the works in a limited edition of 1,500
"Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, 'Just Hanging'"
Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin - "When My Cunt Stopped Living" Do Not Abandon Me, 2009 - 2010, Courtesy of Carolina Nitsch Gallery
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All images Courtesy of Carolina Nitsch Gallery
Carolina Nitsch Gallery, Do Not Abandon Me, 2009-2010, September 9 - November 13, 2010, Carolina Nitsch Project Room, 534 W. 22nd Street, New York City, Opening September 9, 6-8pm
