Went with jet-leg on the day of my arrival to the last day of Younger then Jesus at the New Museum. The new museum has been open for almost a year now and this is their big "young hot artist show" The NW wants very much to be Young & Hot.
A bit too much.
After having seen 3 big shows since they've opened, I am not very enthousiast.
First of all; the building; like many young and hot things; It looks great from the outside, but inside it's not that a interesting building.
It's just 4 gallery-boxes one on top of each other ; that's it.
It misses a challenging space, like the Guggenheim is or Whitney, PS1 or Moma have. It has a great view, OK, but there you go again; that's the outside.
To move from floor to floor you have to use or the elevator like in the Whitney or the staircase that feels very much like a fire-exit. Not very comfortable. I have seen so many amazing shows there 10, 12 years ago when they where on Broadway.
Nowadays you can just go to Chelsea to see that kind of quality shows. Especially the summer shows now in several galleries are very good.
Chelsea is not dead.
Ok; 3 great galleries closed again this month; Bellwether, Features Inc. and Caren Golden (where I did a show 2 years ago).
It's sad but these mid-galleries that don't represent at least one super famous artists, but have nice ground floor spaces (Very very high rent) have the hardest time.
A big gallery can become a little smaller and a very small gallery doesn't have very high overhead costs. The ones in the middle are the first ones to go down.
Big galleries can even still afford to make exhibitions where nothing is for sale (officially).
Two examples of great drawing shows now on view; 15 years drawings by John Currin at Andrea Rosen (all drawings from private collections) and Basil Wolverton at Gladstone (all drawings from one private collection).
I remember when Cokkie Snoei had a few drawings of Currin 15 or something years ago on the kunst rai. I liked them and asked the price. Was like 600 guilder. I thought about it..but a bit Too much..
(Argggggghhhhh!!! ).
I still like them and now I could have been a rich man.
In Europe he's not very popular. He paints extremely well, in a Courbet/Watteau style but his images look like 40/50ties playboy magazines images. It's irony , it's funny but very well made and sometimes he goes all over the top like, as it seems sometimes,only Americans dare to go.
Anybody ever heard of
Basil Wolverton? (1909- 1978)
I didn't. He was a artist working for MAD magazine and has now a big survey of his work at Barbara Galdstone (gallery of Jan Dibbets, Anish Kapoor, Shirin Nesat, Gary Hill, etc all artist that never worked with MadMagazine)
I was never a fan of Mad Magazine. Too american for my very french taste in those days. But over the years I have to admit it's a important cultural-institution.
Mad Magazine stands really for a certain attitude that I can not quite find the right words for. It's not punk, or "fuck you" , its harmless and silly. Very adolesent such as it's readers. No drugs,sex, etc. It's not underground or cool. Silly.
Suprising to see this in a super fancy gallery like this.
Basil is a amazing draftman and if you look at the work of P
eter Saul; Well, now you will know exactly where it comes from. So it's a great idea to do this show.
I read a great Klaus Kinsky quote; "the only fascinating landscape on this earth is the human face
So two funny exhibition but also one super groupshow at James Cohan Gallery called
White Noise.
It's not laziness , but I just paste the press release. A very inspiring, museum standard, divers exhibition in a gallery space.
No matter what you do, you're always hearing something. – George Brecht
A group exhibition featuring works that exist at the intersection of visual art, music and sound by artists of different generations. In the exhibition, there will be sounds to be looked at and objects to be heard. It will explore how sound can obliterate as well as elevate; how silence can involve both absence and presence.
Music and sound have been important influences on the visual arts since the cultural and social upheavals of the early 1960s. With the advent of performance art by Fluxus artists such as John Cage and Nam June Paik (who were both trained composers), expanded notions of music brought new elements to the creation of visual art. Additional influences such as rock and roll and the counterculture movement combined to create a revolutionary moment in which the boundaries of artistic disciplines were broken down.
Anchoring the exhibition are two iconic works from the 1960's:
Robert Morris' Box with the Sound of Its Own Making (1961), a seminal piece from early process-based art and
Joseph Beuys' multiple
Ja ja ja ja ja nee nee nee nee nee (1969), a stack of felt with an audio tape in its center that plays Beuys chanting the German words for "yes and no," thereby muffling the potential for discourse.
Themes represented in
White Noise are as diverse as the group of artists;
Christian Marclay's painting,
Brown Silence (The Electric Chair), 2006, takes off from Warhol's electric chair paintings by drawing a parallel between the "silence" sign over the doorway of an execution room and the "applause" sign in television studios;
Louise Lawler's audio piece,
Birdcalls (1972), employs the artist's voice to express conceptual musings on gender;
Lucas Ajemian's and
Jason Ajemian's
Untitled (2006), is a video piece that rearranges the Black Sabbath's song, "Into the Void" in a musical experiment that references spirituality and the occult; and
Laurie Anderson's
In the House. In the Fire (2009) is a sculptural work that presents a meditation on sounds in the world around us.
The wide-range of works in the exhibition are represented by a variety of media including sculpture, film, recordings, installations, photographs, paintings and works on paper by artists
Lucas Ajemian and Jason Ajemian, Laurie Anderson, Ronnie Bass, Joseph Beuys, Nick Cave, Anne Collier, Moyra Davey, Tacita Dean, Simon Evans, Brendan Fowler, Rodney Graham, Chris Hanson and Hendrika Sonnenberg, Jay King and Mario Diaz de León, Jacob Kirkegaard, Jutta Koether, Jim Lambie, Louise Lawler, Christian Marclay, David Moreno, Robert Morris, Yoko Ono, Raymond Pettibon, Jack Pierson, Jamie Shovlin, Robert Smithson, Meredyth Sparks, Reena Spaulings, Emily Sundblad, and
Fred Tomaselli.
