L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast
A weekly column by Catherine Wagley

Mai-Thu Perret, "Migraine," Installation View, 2011. Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

A river of blood runs through the history of womankind,” wrote cultural critic Caitlin Flanagan, with so much dramatic sway that the truthfulness almost got lost in the motion. “That river stops, more or less, with the installation of [a] shag carpet.” The carpet in question—lush, blue and all the rage in the 70s—was installed by Byllye Avery, a “grassroots realist” and the first to open an abortion clinic in Gainesville, Florida. It covered up easy-to-sterilize, drab tiling, the kind medical facilities swear by, and, while it may have been unabashedly decorative, it sent a pragmatic message. “You wouldn’t put that kind of rug on the floor if it was going to be ruined,” said Avery.

Tiles have the unfortunate ability to make messiness, in some contexts even bloodiness, seem immanent. But a voluptuous blue shag carpet? That can soak up bodily vulnerability better than Donna Summer can smooth out anxiety.

The carpets in Swiss artist Mai-Thu Perret’s work may more moderate than the one Avery described, but they serve similar functions. They manage to soften austerity and absorb bodiliness at the same time, containing the visceral within a calculated cerebral frame.

Mai-Thu Perret, "Migraine II," 2010, acrylic on carpet, mounted on board, 72 x 96 inches (182.9 x 243.8 cm). Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

Mai-Thu Perret, "Migraine II," (detail) acrylic on carpet, mounted on board, 72 x 96 inches (182.9 x 243.8 cm). Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles.

Perret’s current show at David Kordansky Gallery, fittingly titled Migraine, includes an impressive array of mostly abstract work but, somehow, doesn’t feel overhung. Perhaps this is because the pieces are all self-enclosed, each imperfect but almost perfectly so. When I noticed that the board bearing one of the large Migraine paintings, acrylic Rorschach marks spread out on off-white carpet, had bowed out from the wall, I half expected all the others to bow out too.

Geneva based, Perret has responded to—and crafted her own—literary sources since she began exhibiting nearly ten years ago. Her references manage to include utopian optimism and French decadence, and she has written a layered story, called The Land Crystal,  that serves, in some ways, as the backbone for much of work she’s made. The story tells of young women coexisting in a man-free commune (writer John Miller described the place as “post-pubescent and pre-menopausal: young, sexualized, yet abstinent,”  “outside the concerns of any real-politik”), not so much for militant as for confidence-building reasons. They’re trying to learn how to exist by themselves. It’s not necessary to understand this narrative, or even know about it, in seeing Perret’s work. It seems, rather, as an impetus for working. As novelist Zadie Smith put it, “Whenever you set up these structures, you realize after . . . that you could remove them, but it’s not good knowing after the fact. It’s what you need to give the [work] form.”

Mai-Thu Perret, "I could speak, I could speak," 2011, glazed ceramic, 24.8 x 34.25 x 7.87 inches (63 x 87 x 20 cm). Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

With the exception of the Rorschach paintings, most of the works in the show are glazed ceramics. Eggs, arranged in calculatedly ornamental ways that mute their organic qualities, recur as a theme. In one piece, As for resembling, it certainly resembles; but as for being, it certainly is not—Perret’s titles can be more exhausting and longwinded than Milan Kundera’s—nine eggs are impeccably arranged on a mid-size rectangle that, two-thirds of the way down, dissolves into butchered trails of doughy beige clay. In another, called I Could Speak, I Could Speak, what looks like a fragment of a fossilized skull protrudes from the surface while a mysterious, primordial looking imprint sinks down beside it. These shapes are flanked by eight eggs, so exactly placed they look like particularly round rivets.

When I think of craft, communes, and a “river of blood through womankind,” Womanhouse, the 1971 feminist experiment in radical homemaking, comes to mind. The house, where each room served as an installation space, had fried eggs sculpted to look like breasts on the kitchen wall, and a menstruation bathroom.  If in possession of the blue shag rug, Womanhouse’s residents might have opened up a space down the middle so the river of blood could flow right through its fibers. Perret’s work, in contrast, controls fluidity, emphasizing the design and structure of feminine decoration over the hands-on craftiness. And while it may still cause migraines, the desire to know fluids aren’t going to overrun you doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

"TELLUSTools", 2001, Double-LP, The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York. Gift of Harvestworks. Cover Art by Christian Marclay. Produced by Carol Parkinson, Harvestworks. Image courtesy Kanji Ishii

Where were you when the Music Television Channel was first introduced in 1981? I was seven years old and had a babysitter who, in her early twenties, was the coolest person I had ever met. I would follow her around just in the hopes that this perceived “coolness” would somehow rub off on me. It was through her that I was exposed, for the first time, to the brand-new phenomenon of the music video. Her family had just gotten cable and we would sit around and watch this small American network running loops of film shorts that visually illustrated the concepts and narratives of song by popular musical bands at the time. What we didn’t realize at the time, was that visual and popular culture as we knew it was changed forever.

Looking at Music 3.0., now at the Museum of Modern Art, New York through June 6, 2011, is an in-depth look at this moment in time and its effect on our cultural history. The third in a series of exhibitions exploring the influence of music on contemporary art practices, Looking at Music 3.0, focuses on New York in the 1980s and 1990s and the birth of the “remix culture.” The exhibition features 70 works from a wide range of artists and musicians: Beastie Boys, Kathleen Hanna and Le Tigre, Keith Haring, David Byrne, Miranda July, Christian Marclay, Sonic Youth and Run DMC.

Spike Jonze, Sabotage, 1994, Music by Beastie Boys. The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of the artist. © Capitol Records, Inc.

The exhibition begins with the German band Kraftwerk, positing that with tracks such as Trans-Europe Express, 1977, they had a large influence on the decades of music to come with their pioneering usage synthesizers and computer-speech software. It then expands into a wide array of issues and movements that were occurring during this time:  the birth of hip-hop and its growing strength in voicing the ongoing discrimination against the black community; activist movements seeking to counteract the AIDS epidemic and the increasing drug usage that was threatening New York; the introduction of art theory to new music as well as the rise of the digital domain; and the growing voice of artists commenting on the complicated relationship between commercial entities and its control of mass communication and the shaping of modern culture.

Le Tigre, "From the Desk of Mr. Lady," 2000, CD. Cover Art by Kathleen Hanna and Johanna Fateman. Image courtesy Le Tigre Records

A highlight of Looking at Music 3.0 is the in-depth look into the wave of Feminism that was grounded in the riot grrrl capital, Portland Oregon, in the 1990s. On display are photocopied zines and posters by artists Miranda July and Johanna Fateman, as well as audio tracks from the band Le Tigre. These recordings serve as examples of the impromptu punk bands that were forming all over and the band’s usage of humorous lyrics and electronic dance music to confront a myriad of social ills that existed in New York.

Anyone interested in the history of music and visual culture will enjoy this exhibition. But for those of us who remember where we were when the music video was first introduced, you will walk out asking yourself, “What happened to the revolution?”

Today’s video is from our friends at ArtStars*, a traveling show about the contemporary art world, out to uncover the 7 Unsolved Mysteries of the Art World — one art scene, one country at a time. In this video, host, Nadja Sayej, talks with Parisian artist Cyprien Gaillard about his installation at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. The installation involves hundreds of cases of beer and lots of eager Berliners. Let the fun begin.

Image courtesy of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Image courtesy of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Image courtesy of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

Hidden within the hard facts are things too complicated and involved to be considered with too much precision. Economists and scientists choose what to measure when running their reports with good reason: if they eliminate the extraneous data than the utility of their predictive models increase.

This process hides what Gabriel Kuri calls “soft information in hard facts.” His sculptures are attempts to reclaim that soft information. Kuri’s pulls from singular sets of materials: advertising spreads, deli tickets, building materials and soap samples. Receipts form the core lexical basis for the exhibition playing roles as temporal markers, financial indicators, relics, and mimetic repositories. The entire show is spasmodic, an irregular and patchy incorporation of numerous bodies of work, but within that chaos are moments of real elegance.

Gabriel Kuri, Recurrence of the sublime, 2003. Bowl, avocados, and newspaper. Dimensions variable. Edition 2 of 3. Courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City, Photo: John Kennard

One body of work seems to draw equally from the “luxury” condo market and hotel bathrooms. Slabs of countertop materials lean against the walls, attractively conjuring up 70’s minimalism. What distinguishes these from the ghost of minimalism-past are the soap samples placed on top of them. These odd inclusions into the white cube are an example of him releasing his authority to something other than his handiwork. In the past, he has gone so far as to allow for visitors to hang their coats on his sculptures in order to explore the limits of what artists should control.

Gabriel Kuri, Complementary cornice and intervals, 2009. Marble slabs, courtesy cosmetics, 149.5 x 182 x 8 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Franco Noero Gallery, Turin. Photo: John Kennard

His plastic bag amoebas, 2004’s Thank you Clouds, blow around on the ceiling holding nothing. Their bodies are herky-jerky billowing sacs that do not deny their everydayness. Locked down to the ceiling, unable to blow away, their tormented movement is more forced than 2008’s Model for a Victory Parade, a rolling energy drink on a conveyor belt that greets people to the exhibition. While formally simple, these works demand that the viewer engage intensely with the work. This may be Kuri’s central strength and problem. He forces a level of engagement that isn’t always possible outside of a tightly programmed solo show or a catalog with lots of supporting materials. I think that some of the work rewards intense reading, but some do not.

The standouts are his untitled receipts made into handwoven Gobelin tapestry. Following a logical process of buying and ringing up the same objects from the same store three years in a row creates a distinct and conceptually tight readymade. Beyond the work’s rational, these are objects that are awesome. They ooze poise. Same with Trinity. The simplicity permits these works to just be. No wrestling matches with meta-historical, data-constructs, and oblique-historicisms. Just compelling artworks.

Gabriel Kuri, Trinity (Voucher in triplicate), 2006. Three hand-woven wool tapestries. Each 334 x 118 cm. Collection of Gordon Watson, London. Photo: John Kennard

Gabriel Kuri: Nobody needs to know the price of your Saab is at the ICA Boston from Feb through July 4, 2011. It was organized by the Blaffer Art Museum.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. —John 1:1

I don’t recall when I realized just how weirdly powerful the first sentence of the Gospel according to John is, but I remember that it was a thrilling experience. That short phrase contained a startling revelation: God was language.  It seems unnecessary to unpack this phrase any further—this isn’t an essay on God, after all—but it shows how meaningful language is to me.  At the age of seventeen, I could accept it as God.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I became interested in what is now termed historical Conceptual Art, which is to say work by artists who defined themselves as conceptual artists in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Three statements from this time—“Sentences on Conceptual Art” by Sol Lewitt (1969); “Untitled Statement” by Lawrence Weiner (1970); and “Untitled Statements” by Douglas Huebler (1968)—concern me here.

I have chosen these three statements to highlight the two points that fascinate me most about Conceptual Art. The first is that the idea (I use the term in a loose sense, rather than in the rigid sense given to it by Lewitt) is as important as whatever object might be produced from it. For Lewitt, Weiner and Huebler, neither the object nor the concept takes primacy; they are equal and can be seen as different only in that one is (usually) a material substance and the other is not.

Secondly, there is the idea that stating contains the act— rather, it is the act of creating. This differs from other notions of production, which emphasize affecting change upon materials.  Coming back to where I started (the realm of religion and philosophy), I find this act of creation similar to that described in Genesis: “God said let there be light and there was.” (Gen 1:3)

I can’t help but wonder – is this what Lewitt meant when he described conceptual artists as mystics?

Rosemarie Trockel: Drawings, Collages and Book Drafts presents almost 200 works at the Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh. Trockel’s explorations of artistic and social relations began in the 1980s, and her practice includes photography, film, sculpture and installation. Since 2004, she has embraced collage, opening the space for a recombination of ideas, motifs and materials.

Rosemarie Trockel, Hals, Nase, Ohr, und Bein (Throat, Nose, Ear, and Leg), 2009 Copyright: Rosemarie Trockel, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011. Image courtesy of Sprüth Magers Berlin London and Sammlung Goetz

Hals, Nase, Ohr, und Bein (Throat, Nose, Ear, and Leg) features a knitted piece, a familiar material that Trockel has drawn on in previous works, where patterns created with the aid of a computer and machines pull apart the associations traditionally made between women’s work and domesticity. Trockel fits the knitted piece within a printed illustration of a book cover, titled “Anonymous was a woman” with a drawing of a back-facing woman, perhaps alluding to the historical gaps surrounding authorship and gender. While the collage elements are connected through figurative sketches, the fully-suited androgynous figure appears as a contrast. The connotation of the leg as gestural and grounded, stands apart from the vocal and auditory qualities of the throat, nose and ear. Though resisting a clear narrative, the combination of these textual and visual elements  provokes thoughts pertaining to the nature of the presence, and absence, of female representations and voices.

Rosemarie Trockel, Vorstudie (Preliminary Study), 1989 Copyright: Rosemarie Trockel, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011. Image courtesy of Sprüth Magers Berlin London and Centre Pompidou Paris

Acts to expose and question depictions of gender and sexuality cut across a large section of Trockel’s work. The Academy where Trockel encountered opposition in a male-dominated environment in the 1970s is also a source for her investigations of alternative techniques to challenge established ideals regarding art making.

In Vorstudie (Preliminary Study), a painting of what appears to be a police figure is splashed with white. Patches and indeterminate shapes, where formlessness, as a product of chance, counters the rigor instilled by the Academy to remove signs of uncertainty in paintings.

Rosemarie Trockel, Klienkind mit Skelettierten Händen (Little Child with Skeletal Hand), 1991 Copyright: Rosemarie Trockel, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2011. Image courtesy of Kunstmuseum Basel and Dieter Koepplin

The rejection of definite boundaries in favor of ambiguity has led to Trockel’s anthropomorphic figures. The wiry, matted hair and tiny skeletal hands against the body of the child Klienkind mit Skelettierten Händen (Little Child with Skeletal Hand) bring together life and death, innocence and sterility, in a visual image which appears eerie yet compelling for the manner in which it reflects the contradictory manifestations of human nature.

Rosemarie Trockel (b. 1952) lives and works in Cologne, and is a professor at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. She represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and 2003, and has another ongoing solo show, at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin on view through April 25, 2011.