Sculpture Center

Two exhibitions at The Sculpture Center

The Space of the Work and the Place of the Object: Walead Beshty, Melanie Gilligan, Gabriel Kuri, Michael Rakowitz, Blake Rayne, Karin Schneider, Simon Starling, Carey Young. Through March 22.

“a group exhibition that considers the status of the art object within the context of its production. The featured artists build on the ideas and critical positions of Process Art and employ methods that range from documentary to literary, but the emphasis is on a direct engagement with the materiality of the object. The artists in this exhibition all make objects that reflect the facts and fissures of their production. Each artwork is concerned with the conditions in which art and meaning are made and circulated, turning them to their own advantage, or sometimes ignoring or disrupting them. Accident presides alongside necessity as determining factors for this work, which further highlights the central concepts of systems of production, display, and distribution.”

In Practice Winter ‘09: Carey Ascenzo, Becket Bowes, Tyler Coburn, Wojciech Gilewicz, Samara Golden, Rachel Mason, Amy Patton, Peter Simensky. Through March 22.

“The works in this exhibition are commissioned through SculptureCenter’s In Practice project series, which supports the creation and presentation of innovative work by emerging artists. The projects are selected individually and reflect the diversity of approaches to contemporary sculpture.”

 

Samara Golden’s ‘Yes no party’

Brooklyn

From New York Magazine, The New Factory: In Brooklyn, an Industrial Artists’ Colony.

“The future of New York art smells like vanilla and resides on the Sunset Park waterfront in sixteen massive buildings called Industry City. The smell is courtesy of Virginia Dare, maker of food-flavor products, which has had a factory there since 1923. The bohemian spirit is from the 57 recently opened artist studios, the vast empty floors ready for avant-garde performance, and Lise Soskolne, a Bard-educated artist who happens to work for the landlord, Industry City Associates. Last year, Soskolne persuaded the landlords to carve out 45 “incubator” studios for emerging artists and twelve market-rate studios for more established ones out of the 6 million square feet of space left partially vacant by the dwindling maritime trade. If you build it, artists will come, she reasoned—and after them, perhaps, a deluge of new market-rate commercial clients. “

Read the rest here.

Four Reviews

The New York Times has reviews for the following shows here.

Fred Sandback at David Zwirner through Feb. 14 and Zwirner & Wirth through Feb. 28

Trenton Duerksen and Aaron King: Sculptures at Guild & Greyshkul through Jan. 31

Nick Cave: Recent Soundsuits at Jack Shainman through Feb. 7

Stanley William Hayter in America: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, 1940-1950 at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art through Feb. 20

 

White House Redux

From the New York Times, Change You Can Only Imagine takes a look at the Storefront for art and Architecture’s White House Redux competition.

“IMAGINE a White House where the Oval Office faces an interactive media wall filled with live commentary from citizens and visitors. Or a White House that is raised and lowered according to poll results, with an unpopular president brought down to the level of disgruntled constituents. How about one that changes colors according to the Homeland Security Advisory System? Or that has been emptied of human content and made into a central server for United States democracy?

 

However intent he is on change, even Barack Obama might draw the line at trading the Lincoln Bedroom for a situation room at the bottom of an abyss or a glass monument in the shape of a W — a couple of the other proposals generated by White House Redux, a recent call for ideas centered on a simple question: What if the White House, the ultimate architectural symbol of political power, were to be designed today?

“I realize the White House will always be there, but I thought it would also make a very fascinating brief,” said Joseph Grima, director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture in Lower Manhattan, which sponsored the competition last year with Control Group, a computer-design consulting firm. “I can’t think of any other house anywhere around the world that has so many questions built into it.”

The Storefront recently held a monthlong exhibition of the contest submissions. (The prizewinners and other entries can be viewed at whitehouseredux.org.)

In a companion book, “White House Redux: 123 Ideas for a New White House,” Mr. Grima writes, “Perhaps because it is the home of the world’s most powerful individual, the White House is a universally recognized symbol of political authority.”   Read the rest here.

Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave at MoMA through February 16, 2009. Read the New York Times review here.

From the website  “This exhibition of the work of the acclaimed painter Marlene Dumas, the first of its scale to be mounted in the United States, is organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in association with The Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition includes approximately seventy paintings and thirty-five drawings, providing a comprehensive examination of the work of one of the most thought-provoking and fascinating artists working today.”

Guide to New York Galleries

Back in November, the New York Times published lengthy overviews of four NY gallery neighborhoods.

Roberta Smith writes about Chelsea: Art Chockablock With Encyclopedic Range . “… Chelsea provides an ever-humbling, close to encyclopedic survey of ways of making and showing art. It runs the gamut from blue chip to schlock, die-hard hip to clueless, and good to pedestrian to egregious, often within close proximity. There are two- and three-gallery franchises (Gladstone, Gagosian, Paula Cooper, 303, Matthew Marks) and tiny holes in the wall, especially on 27th Street. Galleries continue to arrive as others relocate to the Lower East Side.

The array reminds you that the No. 1 rule for looking at art is: no rules. You must be willing to be betrayed by your taste, or put another way, to let yourself be dazed and confused by art that runs counter to your most dearly held ideals, agendas, prejudices and so-called standards.”

SoHo: Provocations, Reflections and Abstractions by Ken Johnson.

Upper East Side: Linger (Quietly) for a While by Karen Rosenberg. “Simply put, the Upper East Side is a quieter, more idiosyncratic art neighborhood. Particularly in the cloistered townhouse galleries off Madison Avenue, you have the sense of walking into someone’s living room. Chelsea can make you feel rushed, herded from one concrete-floored box to the next; uptown the atmosphere is much more conducive to lingering. You will often be the only visitor in the gallery, even on a Saturday.”

and Lower East Side: Art Shoehorned Amid Charm by Holland Cotter. “Among the art neighborhoods of Manhattan, the Lower East Side is by far the most picturesque. With its dusty synagogues, squeezed-together tenements, anarchist graffiti and shop signs in Yiddish, Spanish and Chinese, it’s a visual event whether you’re visiting galleries or not.

But the essence of a city is change, and this neighborhood is changing. The synagogues and signs are disappearing, along with the anarchist spirit and artist-friendly rents. Chic little bars and boutiques speak of rampant yuppification, although at the moment — and a sullen economy could prolong this — old and new are still trading places.

Art has its part in that negotiation, and always has. It both reflects and facilitates change. For more than a century the Educational Alliance on East Broadway has democratically provided instruction, studio space and exhibitions to artists. Important careers have emerged from it. Yet the sculpture on view in the alliance gallery now, though varied and energetic, smacks of an earlier generation. Contemporary Chelsea feels far, far away.”