Bryan Graf, Lake Accumulation 2010, c-print, 13 x 19 inches- Curator, Kate Greenberg & Hilary Schaffner

I love how far the term “curate” has fallen. Once particular to egg-headed museum types who cared for collections of rarities, now curating, at least in marketing terms, means nothing more than making a kind of fancy or personalized choice. Instead of plain old dinner and a movie, you can now curate the best locavorian burger and artisanal fries while selecting a companion film from your finely tuned Netflix queue.

In the art world, strains of this populist streak were found in Roberta Smith’s recent assail against New York museums’ predilection toward chilly post-minimalism. Coining the term “curator’s art,” Smith called into question the blitz of retrospectives of artists like Roni Horn, Robert Smithson, and Gabriel Orozco that as she put it, “share a visual austerity and coolness of temperature that are dispiritingly one-note.” She added that while she liked these shows, she also wants to see shows by artists whose work belies an intense personal necessity. I took this to mean that she wants to see the same level of passion on museum walls that some employ in everyday decisions such as where to eat.

With this criteria in mind, I judged Young Curators, New Ideas III to mostly be heading in the right direction. Each curator or curatorial team was given their own section of the gallery that they treated like an individual show.  The overall result looks like your average M.F.A. Thesis exhibition, but there were a couple of standouts.

Bryan Graf, An Encyclopedia of Gardening, 1969 2010, two panels of hardcover book covers, 24 x 32 inches each - Curator, Kate Greenberg & Hilary Schaffner

Broken Lattice, featuring the work of Bryan Graf, curated by Kate Greenberg and Hilary Schaffner, feels both cohesive and well varied. Graf uses a multitude of photographic techniques to convey a distant sense of place and memory.  He borrows heavily from the James Welling playbook, but it’s OK, as his intention feels pure and the curators seem humble. The works are given just enough space to breathe easily and the relaxed pace of the installation is completely in sync with the laid-back vibe of Graf’s photography. You can get lost in a floor piece, peer into a smaller work, and lean over a table of seemingly found snapshots—in total, a satisfying experience.

Jan Tichy, Installation No. 5 (Threshold) 2008, three-channel digital video projection, one hundred 250g white paper objects, variable dimensions- Curator, Gabriella Hiatt

Another respite from the competing voices in this show was Jan Tichy’s Installation No. 5 (Threshold), curated by Gabriella Hiatt. Here, four walls of a darkened gallery are adorned with common cardboard tubes and cylindrical lids. After languishing in the dark for a while, the walls are blasted with rectangles of projected white light that transforms the tubes into what looks like the austere post-minimal abstraction of, say, Gabriel Orozco.  Then a layer of black lines snake onto these objects and transforms them once again. Although it’s a bit theatrical, I like how the references in this work slip between DIY craft, high abstraction, mapping, and biological systems.

The rest of Young Curators/ New Ideas III feels a bit scattered. Some of the work that I liked, such as Victor Vaughn’s digital prints, suffered from bad placement and odd context.  Too much of the other work on view bears the heavy influence of grad school obsessions like Marcel Broodthaers, Felix Gonzáles-Torres and Christian Marclay. While it is difficult to know whom to blame for the less successful parts of the show, the artist or the curator, in the best installations it feels as if the curator simply placed the work into a complimentary context and then got out of the way.

Maybe all of the hardworking museum curators out there are over-thinking it. For instance, we shouldn’t need to read a laborious wall label to experience great art. Although Young Curators, New Ideas III misses in parts, it spares us from heady essays and shows how selection, placement, and juxtaposition can go a long way.

On our final day of our latest week-long series, Summer of Utopia, DailyServing discusses the utopian ideals embedded in the building a new city and the economy attached to it. By delving into the work of Solomon Graves, we can take a look at preservation and lost information, truth and fiction and where utopia ends and reality begins.

The wilderness and wetlands that would later become the city of Miami ignited a utopian aspiration in one woman’s imagination, the aspiration to create a metropolis in the subtropical marshland. Cleveland native Julia Tuttle, the original owner of the land upon which Miami was built, moved to the Biscayne Bay region after inheriting land from her father in the late 19th century. Recognizing the need for transportation, Tuttle convinced American tycoon Henry Flagler to expand his railroad to this part of Florida. Initially, he declined her requests, but when the orange groves in that area survived the winter of 1895 and the rest of the state’s citrus crop was destroyed, Flagler allegedly saw the economic potential in Miami. The landscape was transformed.

The genesis of this urban paradise is a historical narrative; a literary embodiment of a past experience. Solomon Graves (an alias of the artist Raul Mendez), asserts on his blog that “objects and stories belong to all of us, in the now and beyond.” In his enigmatic exhibition, The Society for the Preservation of Lost Things and Missing Time: Florida Arcane, the artist investigates methods of remembering, analyzing, and preserving the past. As the Society’s website states, “It is our Mission to Thwart the all too common Demise of Things./ Stories, Ideas, which may not fit History’s Master Narrative./ We crave the Archaic and Arcane, the Strange, the Paranormal…those Things imbued / with Magical Properties, the Folkloric, the Homemade, the Story-told, /the Other World-ly./Left-Field.” Need I say more? Florida Arcane, currently on view at the Miami-Dade Main Library, consists of objects, ephemera, archival materials, and other fragments from Florida’s past. The objects are combined with descriptive and imaginative tales, which reference notable figures in the early history of Florida, but have little to no historical fidelity. Mendez cleverly utilizes the venerable institution of the library, a venue for scholarly research, to bolster his exhibition design. A two dollar bill is inscribed with the unwritten rules amongst hermits and derelicts in the Florida Keys at the end of the 19th century. A collection of optical and aviation instruments once belonging to Jacqueline Cochran (a native Floridian), and other evidentiary relics are here as well.

The artist combines documentation and historical fiction in a series of color photographs depicting a concrete modernist structure curiously situated in the middle of a swamp (seen above on the left, click here for detail). The structure is described as Mr. J.E. Lummus’ Failed City in the Swamp. In the accompanying text, J.E. Lummus, an individual associated with building the City of Miami, is described as an eager entrepreneur, whose jealousy over Tuttle’s success with Miami drove his desire to erect “a world class city of industry and culture in the midst of a swamp” for himself. According to the story, the winter of 1895 halted construction, and plans were never resumed. In reality, the structure, which resembles an interstate overpass, is the Shark Valley observation tower located in Everglades National Park, as noted in the Miami Herald. The magical mixture of historical and apocryphal information infuses the dusty discipline of history with imagination and thought, offering valuable insights into our broader processes of cultural interpretation. A speculative and philosophical presentation, Florida Arcane is obscure and difficult, but simultaneously enjoyable and entertaining.

Merging documentation, fiction, and art, Florida Arcane prompts the perceptive viewer to question the construction of history and thus reality, both past and present. The curator deviates from established histories, igniting learning with imagination. At the opening reception on June 24th, Raul Mendez, a.k.a Solomon Graves, theatrically continued his mission to “destroy ideological darlings” while sitting at a desk in the exhibition area. His costumed presence, which now exists only as a photograph, reminds us that awareness of imagination is a principle, and potent, feature in the formation of reality. In the subjective space between his materials and information, Mendez invites the viewer to experience experience itself, rather than experiencing a description of reality.

At six o’clock on Saturday evening in SoHo, Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman made public their intent to fill the hole that Jeffrey Deitch’s trans-continental career move created in the world of New York art, which is no small undertaking. The two former directors of Deitch Projects opened a much anticipated new space at 104 Greene Street, aptly titled The Hole. The inaugural exhibition, Not Quite Open for Business, was directed by Taylor McKimens and showcases unfinished works by over twenty artists, including Nate Lowman and Rosson Crow.

When their originally planned exhibition fell through mere weeks before the scheduled opening, Grayson and Coleman decided to make the best of what others might deem an impossible situation. They solicited their artists to “Give us an incomplete piece…Give us a drawing that you just cant bring yourself to finish from your flat files. Put half your makeup on and give us most of a performance!” In a press release littered with intentional “typoos,” Grayson and Coleman clarify that this is not about the process of the artist, or the deliberate incompletion of work, but about “being caught with your pants down and your lipstick smudged and your armpits sweaty because you didn’t have time to take a shower before YOUR FIRST GALLERY SHOW.” A personal and self-deprecating tone replaced the more traditional formality of this document. The opening was a straightforward and unpretentious debut for Grayson and Coleman, making up in energy what it lacked in polish.

The unfinished theme pervades, and the space resembles a construction site overtaken by creatives. Painted scrap lumber, an industrial ladder, bare studs and unfinished sheetrock share the space with art. Works on paper are mounted with thumbtacks. A half painted logo contributes to the the display’s impromptu, work-in-progress quality, disarming the viewer and generating unlimited interest in future progress.

Not Quite Open for Business will remain on view until August 14th. As mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article written by Erica Orden, upcoming exhibitions include a solo show by Mat Brinkman and an installation by Kenny Scharf and the collective Dearraindrop. Other projects in the plans for The Hole include a book store in the back room of the gallery, Holey Books, and a dating service for artists, purportedly titled Hole Lotta Love. We’ll keep you posted.

Courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, Photo credit: Zeno Zotti

A myth is a foundational narrative that may be based in truth or fiction but either way it tells a story of who we are. Thus self-consciousness is constructed by a shared narrative and helps us to give shape and even name our identity. If we think of identity in the usual terms of religion or nationalism, some examples of these mythological narratives include the King James Bible or the story of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree. But in the art world, there are strains of mythology that are built on identity formations like artist, curator, or critic.

Photo: Zeno Zotti

Maurizio Cattelan is notorious for using unabashedly bad-boy black humor to resist easy classifications of identity. He does so through imagery and institutions that are deeply tied to religion, nationalism and the art world. In his exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston, Is There Life Before Death, Cattelan has worked with the curator Franklin Sirmans to explode the distinctions between a number of categories. The exhibition includes art objects that are situated as “interventions” in the galleries of Byzantine, African and Surrealist art, culminating in a haunting set of works in dialogue with Arte Povera works from his native Italy. As a result the work is both art object and its context within the museum. In this sense Cattelan plays both artist and curator.

This blurring of boundaries is one of many attacks against authority that Cattelan perpetrates. But as Sirmans notes in the accompanying catalog, Cattelan has a long tradition of work in and out of normative roles. In addition to making sculpture and installations, Cattelan also worked on the publication Permanent Food and acted as curator for the Wrong Gallery and the 2006 Berlin Biennial along with curators Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick. This kind of interdisciplinary activity cuts against the grain of traditional divisions of labor in the art world. The myth of these divisions is based on the notion that artists are dumb mute expressionists who use innate talent to make objects that are interpreted by critics, bought by collectors and arranged by curators. By resisting this mythology, Cattelan capitalizes on the expansion of artistic practice by many artists of the twentieth century such as Duchamp and Warhol found in the Menil Collection.

Courtesy Kunsthaus Bregenz, Photo: Markus Tretter

But Cattelan also challenges more traditional mythologies such as Christianity. His Untitled, 2009, a taxidermied horse on its side with a wooden sign reading INRI staked in its flank, was placed in a dark gallery of dreamy Magritte paintings. This obviously references the Latin acronym inscribed on Jesus’ cross declaring him to be king of the Jews. But placed on a dead horse, a symbol of foolishness, what does this mean? In the Menil’s comment book there were some Christian visitors that were very much offended by this work, assuming that is was heretical along with Untitled, 2007, a sculpture of a woman face down and crucified in a shipping crate.

Photo: Hester + Hardaway, Houston

These gestures cause controversy because they rupture the fragile fabric of our expectations. When these Christian visitors walked into the Byzantine section of the Menil Collection they were looking for something old and true. They were expecting artifacts that would deliver on the promises of their identity’s myths. Instead they were confronted by a Trojan horse, an object that trafficked in similar iconography but proposed something less clear and concrete. This was the true heresy, for mythology cannot tolerate ambiguity and skepticism. Myths are made to describe truths and their reproductions and meant to reaffirm them. But artists like Cattelan use mythology along with the strategies of artistic, critical and curatorial practice to reveal that a story is only as good as its teller.

Opening Thursday, May 6th, We have as much time as it takes is the final thesis exhibition of the Curatorial Practice program at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. The following interview was conducted for the exhibition catalog between curators Nicole Cromartie and Courtney Dailey and two members of Red76. It is the first in a series of interviews to be published at Daily Serving with artists from the exhibition. The catalog is available as a free downloadable pdf at www.wattis.org/whamtait.

Red76 is a multi-artist collective founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2000. The project they conceived for We have as much time as it takes was executed mainly by two of its members, Sam Gould and Gabriel Saloman. Counter-Culture as Pedagogy: Pop-Up Book Academy is a yearlong series of events that take place in a variety of venues. The latest edition of The Journal of Radical Shimming, available for free in the gallery, includes interviews and a counterculture index created for this exhibition. It will accompany the project’s next iteration at the Walker Art Center this summer. Learn more at www.red76.com.

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The self-proclaimed “most important survey of contemporary art in the world ever” opened this week in at 350 West Broadway in SoHo, New York.  The Brucennial 2010 edition, titled “Miseducation,” is presented in a 5,000 square foot space temporarily donated by the real-estate mogul and art collector Aby Rosen and supposedly “brings together 420 artists from 911 countries working in 666 discrete disciplines.”  But who’s counting?  The creative art collective behind what is seen as a parody version of the Whitney Biennial is made up of five mysterious guys known as the Bruce High Quality Foundation.  Although the Foundation participated in the recent “1969″ exhibit at P.S.1, Brucennial remains the collective’s signature celebrated program since the founding of the event in 2008.

Focused on reshaping the art world via a more democratic and DIY approach, the Foundation places some of its more visible functions, like PR and the organization of exhibtions, into the artists hands.  Perhaps the result can best be described as a visual cacaphony.  The Brucennial’s rather lax entry standards (an email asked prospective participants to “either dredge something up or create something new…As fast and as loose as you like”) is a refreshing juxtaposition to the supposed stringent selection criteria of the Whiteny’s Biennial.  With a “sharing is caring” attitude and limited wall space artists move their pieces around in order to make room for new arrivals.  Neither first-come basis nor celebrity secures an artist a better spot, and emerging artists as well as blue chip artists (like Julian Schnabel) display their pieces side by side.  The title “Miseducation” and its press release offer insight into the Foundation’s desire to question the politics and institutional protectionism that seem to run the art world. However, one has to wonder how “lax”  and rebellious the event can remain with heavy-hitter curators Francesco Bonami and Vito Schnabel involved with curating the event.

The Brucenial 2010: Miseducation runs through April 4 at 350 West Broadway, SoHo, with projects also on view at Recess at 41 Grand Street.  The event also includes performances and a literary supplement.

Marilyn Minter, Crystal Swallow (2006), Promised gift of Jeanne and Michael Klein to The Blanton Museum at the University of Texas at Austin

Now showing through April 25^th at The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is the group exhibition Desire. Curated by Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Blanton curator of American and contemporary art and director of curatorial affairs, Desire features fifty works from an international grouping of contemporary artists working in a variety of media. The concept of the exhibition is to present the many ways artists have explored the notion of desire and its many facets within their work. The thought of this concept being visually displayed is tantalizing, yet, it is only with the multiple video works that the exhibition’s guard comes down. Isaac Julien’s Long Road to Mazatlán (1999), a video collaboration with the choreographer Javier de Frutos, is a stunning visualization of the yearning of two cowboys “dancing” around their mutual attraction and the stigma that often comes along with it.  Cauleen Smith’s Elsewhere, is a sensual film of a woman standing absolutely still while another person slowly unravels her sweater by a single thread.

Amy Globus, Electric Sheep (2001 - 2002), Blanton Museum of Art, Purchase through the generosity of the 2004 Blanton Contemporary Circle

However, it is Amy Globus’s video installation Electric Sheep (2001-2002) that will make the viewer blush. Set to Emmy Lou Harris’ rendition of Neil Young’s, Wrecking Ball, a large octopus is filmed in slow motion as it makes its way from one confined space to another. While watching the piece the viewer is likely to feel all the accoutrements of desire simultaneously: longing, lust, sensuality, fantasy, rejection, sexual identity, passion, intimacy etc. Also not to be missed is Mads Lynnerup’s Untying a Shoe with an Erection (2003), a tongue-in-cheek performance of presumably a man untying his shoe with his penis. The exhibition is able to transcend being merely an exercise of artists implementing the theme of desire, perhaps a bit unwittingly, with the dominance of these video works. The question that lingers long after leaving the museum is exactly how much of a continued role visual media plays in defining our collective idea of desire.

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin, housed in a recently completed two building complex, is one of the foremost university art museums in the country. The museum’s collection is the largest and most comprehensive in Central Texas and comprises more than 18,000 works. It is recognized for its European paintings, modern and contemporary American and Latin American art, and an encyclopedic collection of prints and drawings.