Banksy @ The Simpsons

On Sunday evening, Banksy hijacked the opening sequence of  The Simpsons.

Brilliant idea?

OR

The sad absorption of an outsider artist into the mainstream?

Deep Water @ Causey Contemporary

I just had to write about this exhibit of works by Ran Ortner before it closes on October 11th. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend swinging by to see it. I literally stumbled upon it, and felt it was truly remarkable.  Though initially I thought it was a pretty uncomplicated photography exhibit, this was not the case at all. I was wrong. This is a small show of really intense works that highlight Ran Ortner’s exceptional talents as a photorealist painter. 

courtesy Causey Contemporary

I write ‘really intense’ because of the paintings large-scale, field of vision format that works exquisitely to absorb you.  These waves don’t just hit you they blind side you. You see, the trick (I shouldn’t really say ‘trick,’ since it’s a very purposeful and very well done technique) of these works is in the inordinate minute detail that Ortner paints, but you only notice these upon closer inspection.  From across the gallery they simply look like photographs taken of natural waves.  It is through this dynamic that Ortner successfully explores not only photorealism and captures the ephemeral light of the sublime, but drags you in like the undertow of the wave itself.

Karel Funk @ 303 Gallery

I got the cold shoulder today at 303 Gallery. Karel Funk’s (through May 15th) realist works are a sort of portraiture, but his subjects aren’t acknowledging your presence. You know that the works are of people, but in these the figures are only defined by the folds of their jacket and a few stray wisps of hair. It just makes you want to get to know them better, you’re yearning for these people to just turn around.

Each work is a highly detailed and realistic portrait of the back of a figure wearing some sort of jacket or coat on a plain white background.  The coat backs become large abstracted swaths of saturated color, with only tiny details of zippers and logos cluing you in to their function.  Funk’s failure to title his works continues to impede any identification of his sitters.

Upon entering 303 Gallery’s large exhibition space, one feels as though they’ve arrived at Funk’s opening reception only to be ignored by your fellow party goers.  The works are huge in scale and are widely spread out along the walls. This curation is imposing, and visitors are made to feel very small and lonely in this space. As you gaze up at these figures’ backsides, you’re wondering what does he/she look like? And where is he/she going?  Making these works your own, enables you to come up with your own answers to these questions.

Marina Abramovic @ MOMA

In stark contrast to the Tim Burton exhibit at the MOMA, I LOVED the Marina Abramovic exhibit, The Artist is Present (through May 31^st, 2010). This is a retrospective of Abramovic’s long career of performance art.  Now, how do you do a retrospective of Performance Art? And more importantly, how do you do one well? MOMA has figured that out, the institution has gone as far as to hire live actors who are ‘re-performing’ some of Abramovic’s most famous works.  Now, one of the most inherent aspects of Performance Art is its’ temporality. There’s the fact that the art was performed and now it’s over—and if you missed it, you missed it—or so you may have thought. Here, the MOMA provides these fabulous reenactments and combines them with original videos, photographs and artifacts of many of her past performances to not only give the viewer a real impression of Abramovic’s accomplishments, but to also let today’s  visitor experience being there for and participating in that original performance.

The exhibition title, The Artist is Present, refers to the work Abramovic is performing downstairs from the retrospective. In the main foyer, Abramovic is seated at a table facing another empty chair. She arrives each day before the museum opens, takes her seat and progresses into a trance like state. Abramovic remains in that state until after the museum closes. There are no bathroom breaks here! Museum patrons are invited to sit opposite Abramovic for as long as they can stand it and engage her in any way they’d like (minus touching her). I’ve read about visitors sitting opposite the artist and sketching her, or wearing similar garb and mirroring the artist herself (artsjournal.com/culturegrrl) .The piece is a true testament to her endurance, and it lends authenticity and legitimacy to her retrospective upstairs.

One of Abramovic’s most famous works is only shown in part at the MOMA, though Rhythm O, was originally performed in 1974 in Naples, Italy. It involves a table and a sign and again, the artist herself. On the table are 72 various items that are meant to be used on Abramovic’s person, and there’s a sign that alerts the audience that this is the case. The items range from feathers to a bullet and gun. When it was originally performed the public started by tickling her with roses, and then progressed to cutting her clothing off and sticking her with the thorns of that same rose.  Eventually it escalated to patrons putting the single available bullet into the gun, pointing that loaded gun towards Abramovic’s head. She remained there for a total of 6 hours, and when that time was up she simply stood up, but found that her audience were not up for the task of facing her. The original work illustrated the power of ‘group think.’ Those patrons, decided en masse to hurt a passive woman just standing there by exploiting her vulnerability.  Like many others in her catalogue raissone, Rhythm O also serves to blur line between audience and artwork, viewer and viewed art object.  Today, as you may have guessed, Rhythm O isn’t currently being ‘re=performed’ at the MOMA, understandably because of safety and insurance issues concerning having a gun and ammunition at the MOMA, though the table, 72 items and sign are displayed.

Back in the corner of the first gallery and next to the table of items meant to titillate and taunt Abramovic back in 1974, there is a pair of nude actors facing each other locked in each other’s gaze. Instead of expressing embarrassment at their nudity, again, they simply stand there passively. Here, in the re-performance of Imponderabilia (originally performed by Abramovic and Ulay in 1977 at a museum in Bologna), patrons are again invited to squeeze between the nude pair. They ignore you as you brush past their skin, but it certainly serves to make the passage into the next gallery a bit awkward for shy visitors. (Though I dare say that many New Yorkers have squeezed passed fellow subway passengers in much the same way, but I personally don’t recall any of them being nude) The major difference between this ‘re-performance’ and the original is that there is a second entrance into the next gallery here at the MOMA. Visitors aren’t forced to walk through the nude pair, but can simply walk around the galleries’ dividing wall. In the original, patrons had to walk between the pair in order to enter the museum. This serves to blur the line once more between audience and performance making them one and the same for a few moments in time.

Some of you may recall that one of Abramovic’s performances was featured (or parodied, depending upon how you look at it) in an episode of Sex and the City. It’s the episode where Carrie is dating a Russian artist, played by Mikhail Baryshnikov, after they meet in Charlotte’s Gallery. In it, the artist lives in a very simple and sparse set at Charlotte’s gallery for the length of the exhibition, and patrons are invited to view her there at all hours of the day or night.  On a whim, at 3 am Carrie and ‘The Russian’ decide to check if the artist is really still there, and miraculously, she is.

In the actual work, The House with the Ocean View at the Sean Kelly Gallery in 2002, Abramovic lived and fasted for 12 days in the same sparse series of rooms hovering high above the floor. The Gallery extended its’ hours so that viewers could see her exist in this space at any given hour, nothing was off limits to the viewing public. The set used, complete with the knife slatted ladders that leaned up against it, is also on display here at the MOMA. There isn’t a live actor ‘re-performing’ the work for the length of the exhibit, but since Sex and The City already beat Abramovic to the punch, perhaps this is for the best.

Liz Engelhardt @ 571 Projects

Yesterday I paid a visit to Sophie Brechu-West at her very own 571 Projects (http://www.571projects.com/). Sadly, I had missed the very successful opening she held last week for her latest show: Silentscapes by Liz Engelhardt, and I couldn’t resist a private viewing.

One the whole, the works themselves evoke Impressionism, even being created en plein air, but the color palate Engelhardt imposes on these landscapes speaks more to black and white photography capturing a moment in our natural history.

The gallery space is small and intimate, but the pair of large windows that practically fill one wall provides intense natural light that makes the space seem much more grand. This sunlight floods in and only serves to highlight the gradations of color (black, white, gray with touches of blues) inherent in these seemingly monochromatic landscapes. These gradations of color serve to unite the works, though they were taken from disparate locations. Some were done in Cape Cod, Massachusetts and others were created on location in Long Island, New York, but you’d never know it.

Sophie has an excellent eye for curating these works. They complement and speak to one another seamlessly. The landscapes almost create a narrative as your eye moves around the gallery, like the illustrations of a children’s book. As they speak to one another, one doesn’t want to interrupt the conversation, and at the same time you want to take a few with you to see what they have to say in your own home.

Dan Bina@Studio

I was lucky enough to go visit Dan Bina’s studio (whom I represent) this past warm Sunday evening, and, of course, it was a fabulous time. He has lovingly devoted an entire room of his Brooklyn apartment to be his studio.  It’s currently overflowing with canvases—those completed and those still in progress. There is debris made up of cutouts from 1950’s and 60’s magazines spread across his desk: images of everything from birds to former presidential portraits; along with the usual paints and brushes. Dan’s talent lies in his exceptional technique. By looking at these finished works you know that his initial drawings must have been dynamically detailed and zealously worked out until he was satisfied.

Dan’s most well known for his abstract work, but this visit gave me an opportunity to finally see his realist works, like America the Beautiful: V- Twin. That, like most of his photorealistic work, is in black and white.  His technique lends a foggy dream-like quality to the works, which almost makes you think you’re looking at someone else’s hazy memory of a bygone era. He actually uses images of nostalgia quite often in his works of collage as well.  New collage works like, Goodbye Astroland, pique my interest in what he’ll create next with this new media.  Layering pages of magazine cutouts, he creates magical fantasy creatures that easily make any viewer look at least twice, as seen in, Bird People Vacation Too. Conversely, The Lesson Plan, and a few other collage works seem to pronounce stern commentary of the politics of the era itself. Whether Dan is working to create a playful or more serious message, that message always reads as a bit acerbic and probes the viewer to question the contradictions in his or her own experience.

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Burton @ MOMA

I tend to find that first impressions make all the difference, especially when it comes to exhibits. The fact that the Tim Burton exhibit at the MOMA (through April 26th) was so poorly curated struck me first and foremost. Why on earth would you line the hallway into the exhibit with TV’s showing Burton’s multiple animations? It just creates a bottleneck. You’ve got visitors trying to get into the galleries and as these same visitors rush past the TV’s they block other peoples’ views of those videos. Then you’re met by a room illuminated by black light, and viewers tended to linger here as though they had never encountered such an awe inspiring effect before. A black lit gallery, to me, is about as intriguing as it was in the college dorm rooms I visited way back when. I understand the intent: you’ve fallen down the rabbit hole into Tim Burton’s wacky world, but perhaps MOMA should have anticipated the large crowds or actually enforced their timed ticketing.

Once Inside, visitors line the perimeter of the exhibit basically shuffling sideways so as to see any of the works hung up salon style in the galleries. I won’t keep harping on how overcrowded and poorly planned the exhibit was, but the curators really could have designed an exhibit that fostered a more positive experience.

The myriad drawings on display were ridiculously detailed and it was amazing to see the inception of Burton’s creations throughout his career. The proof of his creative spark is everywhere, in frames, on plinths, and in glass cases. These forms of presentation certainly help to raise what are essentially movie making props and sketches into the high art arena that is the MOMA. At the same time, having already seen so many of these sketches and models come alive on the big screen, they lose so much of that magic sitting there static/stationary.

Additionally, I was, however, really psyched when I glimpsed Batman’s cape and Ed Woods’ white furry sweater. These are two of the greatest relics from Burton’s contributions to Hollywood, and I wish that there had been more items like them in the exhibit.

Judging by the crowds at the show and subsequent Facebook posts, I certainly know a lot of folk have seen this exhibit in recent weeks, in which case, I certainly invite your comments/impressions too!

Hello Art Lovers of the World!!

Welcome to my blog, my name is Lauren Fresco and you are currently reading my first ever entry! Let me introduce myself—I am a not-quite-thirty year old, art historian living in New York City. Having recently left an administrative position at an international auction house, I’ve finally and very happily found myself with the time and energy to get back to a major passion of mine– writing about art.
In a past life, I was the Art Editor of my university newspaper, and I’ve missed writing and editing art reviews so much since then (note the purposefully omitted graduation year so that you can’t calculate my exact age, thank you very much!). So here I am, Post Art Editor—Post Writing TWO Theses on Art Historical Topics—Post Gallery and Museum Hopping for a year in London and Post Master’s Degree—back at square one, writing about everything art.
I think we’re all very much over the hoity-toity reviews that abound nowadays, so I hope that these reviews are of the more colloquial variety. I want them to read as though I’m sitting on your couch chatting to you about this great/terrible art exhibit I just saw. Here’s hoping that you enjoy ‘em!