Annette Kelm, Untitled, 2012. Courtesy Marc Foxx and the artist.

We had just left Marc Foxx gallery, where Annette Kelm’s delicate C-prints look like illustrations from the most deadpan Children’s book ever, as if everything but tufts of grass had been excised from, say, Make Way For Ducklings. We were still in the little enclave of galleries off Wilshire Boulevard when a woman confronted us in something of a panic. She wore heavy, layered, unwashed clothes and a ribbed pink hat. She had lost her carpet, she said. “It’s blue and has four threads missing,” she said. “It was just here. Please help.” She sounded like someone who’s discovered the kid she’s been charged with wandered away. But everything about her suggested she was unhinged, and we couldn’t engage. “We’re sorry,” we said, in a concerned, confused way, then slipped into ACME gallery.

Lutz Braun, "Akira," acrylic on carpet and wood, 2012. Courtesy ACME.

“This would be a bad place for her to come,” said my friend, when we saw we were in a room full of carpets, some placed on thigh-high wood boxes, one hanging low enough on the wall so it trailed on the floor. Berlin-based Lutz Braun had painted on these with acrylic. The one he calls “Murdering the Season” was grayish with a fire-ravaged forest depicted on it. The one called “Bludgeon” was a white carpet with a watery landscape crossed out in the middle and an abstract triangle on the right. They were expressive in that the marks were loose in an expressionist style, and they had “visceral” iconography like skeletons and burnt trees. It’s also sort of gross to put paint, a gooey liquid until it dries, on carpet. But despite all this, Braun’s paintings managed to feel aloof and disengaged. Each shape, mark and figure — even garish, skeletal ones — seemed to have been rendered with restraint.

We left ACME and walked through the parking lot, where the woman had retreated to a little corner by the parking attendant’s booth, where some of her belongings were spread out. She came out to talk to us, her hat off, her hair somehow better kept than it had been before. “She found it,” she said to us, very seriously and eagerly. “But she really did need help. She’s not well. I helped her.” It took us a moment to realize “she” was the woman we’d talked to earlier, the same woman we were talking to now, only she seemed to have split into a different personality. We told her we were happy she’d helped and walked away — I was thinking that the blue carpet with four missing threads, something I hadn’t actually seen, would stick with me longer than anything I had seen so far that night.

Alex Israel's set for "As it Lays"

Later, we ended up at the Jim Henson Soundstage, where artist Alex Israel was debuting his series of celebrity interview videos at an event presented by MOCA. He calls the series As It Lays after Joan Didion’s iconic Play it As It Lays, a novel about Hollywood, depression and driving, and he’s talked to people like Vidal Sassoon, Jamie Lee Curtis and Larry Flynt. Israel asks deadpan, generic questions, wears sunglasses and doesn’t crack smiles. This night, he did a few live interviews. I missed his talk with surfer Laird Hamilton, but heard him with actresses Molly Ringwald and Melanie Griffith. While Ringwald played along, Griffith kept trying to crack Israel from the start. She wouldn’t answer questions sometimes (like when he asked her what she orders at Inn-and-Out and she instead told him about how she went there just the night before and why, and who she went with), and would interject, “You’re so cute, Alex,” and comments of that kind. It didn’t work — Israel didn’t crack — but it made Griffith likable, because she wanted a human interaction that wasn’t posed and restrained, that had room for slip-ups, detours and cracked smiles.

Spread from Paul Thek notebook #63, 1974; Courtesy Watermill Center Collection and Alexander and Bonin, New York; Photograph © Estate of George Paul Thek; Photograph Jörg Lohse

As part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, approaches to translate the subjective experience into the artistic process were explored in In the Shadow of the Hand and Back to the Things Themselves. Questions were raised on the nuances and distinctions between notions of the subjective, personal and self-indulgent. These borders disintegrate in the exhibition Paul Thek – ‘If you don’t like this book you don’t like me.’, on show at The Modern Institute till 2 June 2012, where fragments of the life of an artist, as narrated through pages of notebooks, become a part of the works on display.

Paul Thek; Untitled (cityscape with twin towers), 1972; Acrylic on canvas; 241.5 x 165 cm; Courtesy Watermill Center Collection and Alexander and Bonin, New York; Photograph Ruth Clark

In the past two decades, there has been an explosion of exhibitions and publications on Paul Thek, perhaps as part of an effort to re-insert him into the history of art. Though well-received in Europe during the 1970s, he died in relative obscurity in 1988 after his return to the United States. Thek’s name is often cited in relation to the Technological Reliquaries or “meat pieces”, a series of works made in the 1960s where body parts appearing as chunks of flesh were presented in geometric vitrines, a revelry of one’s fleshly mortality within the confines of the composed exterior of minimalism. While these sculptures were solid and dense, he also made works from ephemeral materials with collaborators, creating immersive environments that lasted for the duration of the exhibition. While little documentation remains of these installations, about 80 of Thek’s notebooks were retrieved and carefully preserved after his passing.

Paul Thek - If you don’t like this book you don’t like me. Installation view, The Modern Institute, Glasgow; Courtesy Watermill Center Collection and Alexander and Bonin, New York; Photograph Ruth Clark

The Technological Reliquaries are materially absent in the show. Knowledge of it is acquired through the supplementary reading materials provided. The artist’s notebooks, usually occupying this secondary position for signposts to an artist’s intentions, instead forms the core of the show, presented in the main artery of the gallery space alongside several of his paintings, and photographs by Peter Hujar in the gallery’s upper level.

Bust of Tomb Figure (Paul Thek) 1967/2010; Pigmented ink print; Sheet 51 x 40.6 cm, image 47 x 32 cm; Photograph Peter Hujar; Courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York

His notebooks reveal repeated scribbles of self-motivational phrases to meticulous lists and copying of religious texts.  Illustrations, drawings and watercolor works suggest a mind filled with both doubt and idealism, on the possibility of fulfillment within one’s earthly existence and a continual search for a higher spiritual being. Enclosed in vitrines, most of the notebooks are spread open to specific pages. Several remain shut. While the open pages disclose paradoxes, exuberance and anxieties that intimate the intentions behind the hybrid approach to the form and style of his works, it is the pages withheld from view that provokes one to consider the subjective voice of the hand behind how one is to like the book, and Paul Thek.

Cover of Paul Thek Notebook #68, 1978; Courtesy Watermill Center Collection and Alexander and Bonin, New York; Photograph © Estate of George Paul Thek; Photograph Jörg Lohse

Today’s feature is brought to you by our friends at Beautiful/Decay. Read below to find a recently released artist interview with Los Angeles-based painter Justin John Greene.

Los Angeles has always held a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans, but for most it exists in an almost fictional capacity.  Hollywood isn’t a real place – it’s a postcard, a huge sign on the side of a mountain bracketed with strategically placed palm tree silhouettes.  Certainly not a place to call home, but for artist Justin John Greene that’s exactly what it is.  Hollywood is a part of his heritage, and the work reflects that.  Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, Greene’s work is strongly imbued with the history of the most romanticized industry in American culture.

In his most recent solo show at Actual Size (an exhibition space he co-runs in the Chinatown gallery district of east L.A.) the influence of the film industry is in full focus.  You Oughta Be In Pictures is a comprehensive installation that utilizes painting, sculpture, and video to create a truly immersive experience for the viewer.  Installation may seem like a bit of a leap from Greene’s primarily two dimensional practice, but a closer look into the artist’s process bridges the gap seamlessly.  His work is a distinctly enjoyable blend of sly historical references, direct compositional tactics, and cleverly applied humor.  If you have the opportunity to see the work in person I strongly encourage you to do so.

View full interview

TENT in Rotterdam asked fifteen artists to think about the concept of a secret garden and make a work for their current exhibition. They interpreted the secret garden not just as a hideaway or a place of contemplation, imagination, mystery and beauty, but also a place of debauchery, derelict and danger. The secret garden is shown as a place that evokes sensuality – brilliantly depicted in the stylishly pornographic images by  Schilte en Portielje – or the deserted home of a cannibalistic tribe.

The secret element of these gardens is taken very literally by Diederik Klomberg, in the work Kura Di e Mente/Garden of the Mind, 2012, which consists of plant pots, mirrors and hallucinogenic drugs. This three-dimensional installation uses light effects to unveil a hidden breeding ground for mind-expanding experiences and shows the secret garden as the kind garden you find in attics and basements, and occasionally in newspapers after a police raid. It is, obviously, the kind of secret garden you’d expect to find in Rotterdam. In the same room is a video animation by Olphaert den Otter, entitled Drawn, 2012. It reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a friend, about a book in which bacteria are seen as the species at the top of the food chain which will eventually kill and survive all other living animals (my conversations with friends are generally quite cheerful). The hand-drawn video animation shows the slow, natural changes of a desertlike piece of land. There are some remnants of human presence – skulls and bones – but generally it shows the planet after human life has gone.

Another work worth mentioning is the spectacular installation by Guiseppe Licari, called Humus, for which the roots of several medium sized trees were cut off and attached to the ceiling. The lights in the room are dimmed, and walking around the room it feels like you’re underground, like a mole making it’s way through the soil. There is something sinister and exciting about being in the underbelly of the forest, surrounded by the roots of dead trees.

These gardens are fantastical places, literally gardens of the mind. They show the dungeons of the artist’s imagination, and make you walk through their nightmares and dreams. They’re brilliant for a thoughtful meander, but they’re not great places for cups of tea.

Reception 7, 2011. Digital c-print. Edition of 3 + 2 AP. 8 x 12 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Mark Moore Gallery.

What makes a tale “twice told”? For Nathaniel Hawthorne, who published a collection called Twice Told Tales, these were stories that had already lived one life by having been previously printed.  And for William Shakespeare, who coined the phrase, a “twice-told tale” was the most tedious tale of the lot, borrowed and uninspired. Shakespeare, however, had not met Stephanie Washburn.

Reception 2, 2011. Digital c-print. Edition of 3 + 2 AP. 30 x 40 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Mark Moore Gallery.

In the case of Washburn’s “Twice Told,” on view at the Mark Moore Gallery in Los Angeles, the tales that repeat belong to the endless stream of images and narratives available through the television set.  Washburn, a painter, breaks the fourth wall by reacting to this stream, turning the television on and smearing her screen with not just paint, but everyday household items like butter, tape, bread, and potatoes. She then sets up a Hasselblad digital camera, and snaps a picture.

Reception 10, 2011. Digital c-print. Edition of 3 + 2 AP. 15 x 15 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Mark Moore Gallery.

The resulting images, which Washburn calls “television drawings,” don’t look much like drawings; nor is the television screen easy to spot. From a distance, many look like abstract expressionist paintings. The spaghetti strewn across the screen in Reception 2, 2011, and Reception 9, 2011, initially calls to mind the gestures of Jackson Pollock, although thoughts of the fleshy materiality and subversive humor of many 1970s feminist artists follow quickly.

Reception 3, 2011. Digital c-print. Edition of 3 + 2 AP. 30 x 40 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Mark Moore Gallery.

For many of the images, including Reception 4, 5, and 13 (all 2011), it’s almost impossible to make out any specific background image beyond a field of color. The television’s tell, of course, is its glow, and that glow permeates Washburn’s images: warm in some and cool in others, at times penetrating swathes of paint and at other times merely strengthening the shadows of dimensional objects.

Reception 12, 2011. Digital c-print. Edition of 3 + 2 AP. 12 x 18 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Mark Moore Gallery.

This interplay of the television image and Washburn’s interventions occurs not just formally (in terms of light and shadow, or scale), but figuratively. In Reception 1, 2011, a rubber-gloved hand creeps onto the scene from the bottom left of the image; blending almost perfectly with a group of three hands in the background, except for the fact that the intervening hand (the gloved hand) has a deep shadow to emphasize its physicality.

Reception 1, 2011. Digital c-print. Edition of 3 + 2 AP. 15 x 15 inches. Image couresy of the artist and Mark Moore Gallery.

The beauty and power of Washburn’s work comes from how effortlessly the images marry both formal and conceptual references to a variety of traditionally “opposed” relationships: digital and physical, visceral and cerebral, touch and sight. It’s no wonder that the series is called “Reception” – Washburn’s photographs don’t just rework old narratives and images into new forms, but challenge us to consider our role as media consumers in the 21st century.

“Twice Told” is on view at the Mark Moore Gallery in Culver City, Los Angeles, through May 19, 2012.

Zachary Buchner, Untitled (JYS 08), 2012. Plaster, acrylic, and tempera on canvas. Courtesy of Andrew Rafacz

Looking at Zachary Buchner’s one-man show of mixed media plaster paintings at Andrew Rafacz Gallery entitled, Just Say Yes, I couldn’t help but think of Julian Schnabel’s sculptural plate paintings from the 80’s. In both cases, the dense treatment of the surface straddles the line between sculpture and image while exploring painting as an idiomatic language. Unlike Schnabel, Buchner doesn’t go in for representation or introduce any narrative or iconographic elements that would distract from the purity of this investigation. He’s not building a surface over which to paint a picture. The way Buchner layers paint and plaster creates an integrated whole that preserves the basic characteristics of each. The materials are always distinguishable from one another. They exist in the same plane – over lapping, covering – though there is never a breach of material autonomy.

Buchner’s work is very much in the tradition of painting about painting. That’s not meant to be a de facto criticism, but it does suggest a strategy for approaching the work that requires a certain openness on the part of the audience.

Buchner’s investigation is distilled to a few key concepts; specifically, the boundaries of integration through material engagement, surface density, the interplay between “neutral” material colors like the white of the plaster or beige of raw canvas with the vivacity of saturated hues – all within the confines of a specific rectangular format. The mark making is generally restrained and absent of much expressiveness or lyricism, and shapes curb toward organic round-ish blobs. Color becomes a real source of energy within the work. In Untitled (JYS 08) (all works are from 2012) a splotchy layer of white plaster rests over tones of warm green, bright yellow, and silver. Shards of blue painted plaster imbedded in and framed by the white pops out in front of the acidic background like icy ruptures.

Kim Dingle, This is not ever going to end is it (2011), oil on linen, 72 x 84 inches (183 x 213,4 cm), Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York

Dingle’s naughty dollies sit at long kitchen tables, subjects who emerge from her prototypical characters named “Fatty” and “Fudge”, or “Priss Girls”, whom she has depicted in earlier works, both in paintings and sculpture. Each child dons a pristine frock yet they are pictured drinking beverages out of wine glasses (some unidentified liquids, and some explicitly merlot-toned), toting bottles and kitchen utensils, draping themselves over (or through) chairs unabashedly displaying their child knickers, while some even lie forlornly passed out in their porridge. One cannot help but giggle at the site of such absurdity, yet the works emit an undertone of poignancy, the kind of disappointed sadness that I imagine would be provoked by a coming-of-age wrongdoing by your child, for instance stealing or drinking. This is precisely the crux in which Dingle puts her audience: straddling the emotional line of child/adult transformation and the sometimes seemingly absurd fluidity of progression and regression in relation to childhood and adulthood.

Kim Dingle, What do you think? (2012), oil on linen, 84 x 72 inches (213,4 x 183 cm), Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York

Dingle’s doll characters comment on the state of mindless behavior that human beings, perhaps (this being the operative word in this case, depending on your view of nature vs. nurture) learn as we grow into adulthood. Dingle’s characters are girls and this is comprehended by virtue of deliberate gender specific cues. Having been categorized as a feminist artist, her work is also taken as a survey of female childhood (see bio in Brooklyn Museum) and the representation of violence in relation to frivolity and the legacies thereof. In the negative space where the lack of politesse is depicted, Dingle’s works provoke the question of being raised within societal bounds and the weight it carries in social situations as a projection of self and discipline.

Kim Dingle, Untitled (Birthday) (2007), oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches (152,4 x 121,9 cm), Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York

With the exception of Untitled (Birthday) (2007) in which a figure wearing a party hat drowns her face in a cake of comparable proportion to herself, the compositions are devoid of any sort of food things despite the table settings filled with bowls and plates. With the symbolic dominance of food deleted from these works, which is dissimilar to Dingle’s past works which feature food stuffs, the characters seem to act out a pantomime of consumption (minus the moments of splashing wine glasses). In several works, likewise with her older paintings, she pictures many of her dollies wearing chef hats, which further solidify the palpable sentiment of frivolity and clamor because they underline the notion of utter incompetency.

Kim Dingle, Still life (2012), oil on linen, 84 x 144 inches (213,4 x 365,8 cm), Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York

Dingle’s still lives aims to make her audience laugh (refer to press release) and that it does. Her paintings conjure the childhood wonder of what your dolls (or stuffed animals) do when you are gone. It also astutely reflects those certain moments within adulthood where we may all act like naughty little children (I know that a snap shot taken at one of my dinner parties wouldn’t be a dissimilar image), which makes her works successful in pinpointing a grain of psychology that is as omnipresent as it is supressed. Kim Dingle’s still lives will run through April 28^th at Sperone Westwater in the Lower East Side.

David Hockney, "A Bigger Splash," 1967. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of the Tate Museum, London.

The New York City Department of Education drew all kinds of mockery last week after someone leaked a list of 50-plus banned words off of one of its Request for Proposals (RFP).[1] In this case, the RFP had been sent to a variety of publishers the city hoped might revamp its standardized English and math tests.

The banned words were meant to spare New York students from topics “controversial among the adult population, [...] overused in standardized tests or textbooks, [or...] biased against (or toward) some group of people,” but the NYC D o’ E found itself widely criticized for being overly ‘politically correct.’[2] Perhaps the most damning accusations were those that insisted that such tests would remove a child’s ability to think critically when pushed outside his or her comfort zone. The Department of Education’s statement indicated that it feared these words might “distract” students.

List of subjects to be banned on standardized tests in the city of New York, issued by the New York City Department of Education, March 31, 2012.

We here at #hashtags whole-heartedly agree. Who needs the distraction of a phrase like “homes with swimming pools” when you’ve been raised without one? One need only look at the work of David Hockney for an example of the dangers of this kind of confrontation. After over twenty years in England, Hockney visited California in the mid-‘60s and was so struck by the plethora of pools that the object became a regular feature in his work, from its first appearance in the corner of California Art Collector, 1964 to its presence in composite Polaroids like Brian Los Angeles Sunday 21st March 1982, 1982.

And the story deteriorates from there – instead of sticking to images of unattainable, unpopulated swimming pools amidst modern architectural surroundings, Hockney also found himself “distracted” by the eroticism of the bodies that moved in and out of the water – in his case, male bodies.

David Hockney, "Brian Los Angeles Sunday 21st March 1982," 1982. Composite Polaroid.

Yes, when it comes to depicting the limpid and chlorinated pools of the Southern Californian upper-crust, Hockney’s body of work remains proof that still waters run deep. God forbid that any child with a New York public-school education be forced to meditate on the socio-economic differences between homes with private swimming pools and homes without, the relationship between the swimming pool and the history of integration and race relations, or the swimming pool as a site of sexuality and eroticism. You never know when that child might end up embracing his or her new relationship to such an object and re-shaping its cultural narrative. [3]

Installation view, "Evil Dead 2," 2012, courtesy Horton Gallery

Horton Gallery, with its evocatively titled two-person show Evil Dead 2, pays homage to Romero’s glorious second stab by exploring expansive and ever-mutable revision.  The setup seems sitcom-like; two artists and friends from Brooklyn display their process-heavy paintings shoulder to shoulder in a kind of Oscar/Felix cohabitation.  Matt Jones is deep and celestial (the messy one), while gallery-mate Kadar Brock aims towards a final inanimate cleanliness (Felix).

Kadar Brock, "deredemitsdi," oil, acrylic, flashe, house paint & spray-paint on canvas, 2009-2012, courtesy Horton Gallery

Brock’s canvases are the result of violently scouring and gouging older works to reveal a brittle, bone-colored surface pitted with holes.  Not strictly subtractive, Brock adds synthetic neon sheens reminiscent of mini golf courses, Myrtle Beach and the mottled underside of skateboards.  These nostalgic associations, aimed so heart-wrenchingly at the 90’s shaped hole in my heart, are belied by the obsessive and superficially embarrassed gesture of Brock erasing his past.  The older work (colorful patterned paintings with compositions derived from Dungeons and Dragons) is literally expunged or “whitewashed” from his youthful oeuvre.  Brock’s paintings are in a constant state of flux, and this latest iteration seems like the fragile and abused last stop.  But maybe it’s not.  The cheery anchor to Brock’s practice is that his constantly shifting system of reuse avoids preciousness, entropy and stagnation.  Which is not completely unlike Romero’s lingering, pervasive spirit world.

Matt Jones meanwhile, displays large meandering starscapes that relay a surprising illusory depth.  His “Energy Paintings,” made onsite, hint at a deeper, mystical method of mark making.  On his website, Jones states:

“We live in a universe piled on other universes, each expanding a multiverse of near infinite possibilities and potential.”

Matt Jones, "Energy V," acrylic & urethane on canvas, 2012, courtesy of Horton Gallery

Jones’ paintings seem like the natural outpouring of a curious adventurer who is still convinced that art is porous, open and navigable.  The immediacy of his process is echoed by works that are seemingly unencumbered/unconcerned by their size and objecthood.

The artists’ paintings enjoy a kind of playful fraternity, hung glibly over doorframes and directly next to one another.  Both are invested in capturing a zeitgeist of spirit through games of process and chance.  And both distance themselves from the cynicism of art production to arrive at a surprisingly sweet and reverential take on painting.

Mad Men Season 5 Billboard in West Hollywood. Courtesy DailyBillboard.blogspot

“It was mainly about trying to escape my own good taste, or good taste in general,” said John Baldessari, when asked why, in the 1970s, he first took his own photographs, then had someone take photos of him, then started using photos he’d found. Fashion matriarch Miuccia Prada has said the same thing, more or less: she’s always battling her own tastefulness to come up with something different, and new.

The fifth season of Mad Men, a show that’s tastefulness has won it accolades for art direction and design, premiers on Sunday. This means everywhere in this city and others, there are pictures of Don Draper staring at two mannequins in a window display. The girl mannequin is naked; the guy wears a robe and slippers. A married couple? A man and mistress? Don’s back is to us, but we can see his face reflected in the glass. As usual, he looks cool, untouchable, though slightly dubious. “This is a dreamlike image,” Matt Weiner, who conceived the show and designed the poster, apparently said. He thought it looked sort of like a De Chirico painting, and I suppose he was thinking of the Italian artist’s renderings of sculpted, bald, faceless figures that loom on pedestals. “By the end of the season… I guarantee you’ll know what it is about.” Weiner and AMC clearly trust theirs viewers to want to know. It’s such a vague and high-handed teaser, so full of  “significance”: Don, the ad man, looking at an ad, a fantasy version of the coupledom that keeps eluding him, while his reflection stares back at him. It feels kind of like a soap, which means it’s let its tastefulness slide. But not in a provocative way.

Still from 'The Good Wife' on CBS

Sometimes, tastefulness shouldn’t be “escaped.” Right now, I am particularly fond of  The Good Wife, a CBS show where everyone is a little bit prettier than anyone in real life.  Julianna Margulies plays a lawyer married to a politician. She always has a cagey facial expression and hardly ever says anything about herself.  But unlike in Mad Men, where unpacking Don Draper’s tight-lipped demeanor is part of the schtick, the maintenance of Margulies’ control is key to keeping up the show’s appearance. This actually makes The Good Wife seem self-aware: instead of delving into flimsy personal side plots, like so many so-so law dramas do, the characters’ resistance to such detours defines the show. In a recent episode, a lawyer from a rival firm, played by Michael J. Fox, tries to woo Marguiles’ character to his firm. She wants the extra money, but not to leave her current firm. So uses his offer to leverage a fairly significant raise. All this happens without no exposition. She never tells anyone how she feels, just acts smoothly. Her overly big eyes make you think she’s flinching a little inside. But you’ll never know for sure, because the plot is too doggedly tasteful to go there.

Mark Bradford, "Smite," 2007, mixed media collage on canvas. Hammer Museum, Promised gift of Susan and Larry Marx. © Mark Bradford. Image courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Collectors Susan and Larry Marx have good taste. Because they have pledged their art to the UCLA Hammer Museum, the museum stated the exhibition Intimate Immensities, to show off their collection. None of the work is very big, and all of it is concisely composed. Even the Joan Mitchell painting, only 27 x 26 in. and with all its drama pulling your eye to the middle, feels particularly efficient. The Ed Ruscha topography pieces, the Cy Twombly drawings, and the Mark Bradford collage look more modest and “aesthetically appealing” in this show than they usually do.  Wrote William Poundstone on ArtInfo, “[E]very artist and work is a smart, relevant choice. (There aren’t many single-collection shows for which you can make those two claims.)”

If collecting is itself a medium of expression — and, of course, it is –, then the Marx’s are aware of and comfortable with  the medium’s limitations. By not trying to stretch themselves beyond their own, consistent taste, they’re actually exposing more about the partial, confining nature of human desire and perception than they would otherwise.

I have grown to love a television program entitled American Restoration, which chronicles a Las Vegas shop that restores rusty, beat-up items to their former beauty. After recently marveling at the rebirth of a 1940s USPS mailbox, it became evident that my fixation on these objects has little to do with the items themselves, but is instead tied to the stories I fashion for them in my mind and believe must be accurate.

Erin Rachel Hudak. Installation of "Promiseland," Ochi Gallery, Ketchum, ID. February 17-March 7, 2012.

Promiseland – Erin Rachel Hudak’s new body of work – responds to notions of storytelling, considering the ways individual narratives can be insinuated into more collective notions of cultural and national history. She mines Americana for her imagery, incorporating quilt patterns, lanterns and baskets, among others, into her paintings and collages. Her images immediately evoke an almost innate rehearsal of American folklore. At the same time, her slight subversions of these original symbols – coupled with the use of opened ended phrases like “this is where we begin” – invite a more personal interpretation of these signs.

Erin Rachel Hudak. "Promiseland," 2011. Acrylic on canvas. 58” x 66". Courtesy of the Artist and Ochi Gallery, Ketchum, ID.

While the works’ subject matters may initially appear benign – seemingly playful due to their bright colors and use of lighthearted materials such as glitter – there are often underlying political implications. The title painting, Promiseland, reconsiders the American Seal, presenting the bald eagle holding arrows, but missing the corresponding olive branch – that which nods to our preference for peace. The lightly colored wing on the left stands in stark contrast to the ominous, dripping black characterizing the right wing. I am particularly intrigued by the repeated appearance of fire in these works. What at first seems to be an innocuous allusion to a campfire – the quintessential site of storytelling in American culture – also references a headdress and crown, intimating those narratives often concealed from public consciousness.

Erin Rachel Hudak. "Love You Forever" as installed in Festival Meadows, Sun Valley, ID. 2012.

Concurrent with her exhibition at Ochi Gallery, Hudak created the on-site installation, Love you Forever, in Sun Valley’s Festival Meadows. First presented beneath the Brooklyn Bridge with gold and silver mylar balloons, Hudak has reimagined this installation for the rugged winter terrain of Idaho. Constructed of pink and gold fabric, the letters whimsically mark the meadow’s otherwise white landscape, a reminder to appreciate one’s environment. While the installation is not a formal extension of her gallery exhibition, the work certainly represents a consistent interest in using form and text to prompt self-awareness. As Hudak explains, “[w]e need the moments between our thoughts to understand art and to understand ourselves. Public art can give you that opportunity when you least expect it.”

Promiseland is on view at Ochi Gallery in Ketchum, Idaho through March 15. Her installation Love you Forever was installed on February 17 in Sun Valley. Keep your eyes peeled for information on her outdoor installation at the DUMBO Arts Festival in September 2012.

Werner Herzog, Hearsay of the Soul, 2012. Installation: four channel digital projection of twenty etchings by Hercules Segers; music by Ernst Reijseger. Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum.

This year, the Biennial acts as a platform – or even a forum if you will – for comprehending the expanded fields of contemporary art in relation to performance, film, literary, multi-media and curatorial praxis. Whereas the Biennial in 2010 acted as an acknowledgment of a benchmark – that being the year 2010 – taking its thesis from the roots of retrospection. It looked towards the history of the Whitney Biennial since its inception in 1932, in honoring the structure and legacy of the Biennial, while also commenting on the political and social structures of rehabilitation that were propagated from certain instances such as the presidential election of Barack Obama. Unfortunately – and probably at the fault of an overly expansive thesis – the 2010 Biennial fell flat, quite simply, and was remarkably unmemorable for me. However, the 2012 Biennial this year not only commands more cohesiveness in both content and intention, but its presentation of works from fifty-one artists – a list edited more so than any Biennial to date – granted a substantial significance to the curation as a whole production.

The 2012 Biennial, poignantly dedicated to the late Mike Kelley who passed away earlier this year, presents artists at all points in their careers, in a vast array of media from painting, sculpture, photography, installation, music, theater, film and dance. Not only did curators Sussman and Sanders instigate the notion of the “expanded field of the arts”, but they very much emphasized the connective points between one practice to another, or similarly one profession to another. As quoted in the 2012 Biennial press release, both Sussman and Sanders remarks that, “[…] a number of artists are functioning as researchers and curators, drawing on the histories of art, design, dance, music and technology. Artists are bringing other artists into their work – a form of free collage or reinvention that borrows from the culture at large as a way of rewriting the standard narratives and exposing more relevant hybrids”.

Dawn Kasper, THIS COULD BE SOMETHING IF I LET IT, 2012 (from the series Nomadic Studio Practice Experiment, 2009– ). Three-month durational performance and multimedia installation. Dimensions variable. Collection of the artist. Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the 2012 Biennial is the 6,000-square foot performance arena designed on the fourth floor. Complete with viewing bleachers, this space is dedicated to musical, dance, theatrical (et al.) performances through the end of the Biennial. Performances directed by choreographers such as Michael Clark and Sarah Michelson, as well as various musical acts such as the experimental rock band The Red Krayola and soprano singer Alicia Hall Moran, turn the fourth floor space into a theater of expansive talent, blurring the boundaries between context and vocation.

In relation to the subject of context, Dawn Kasper will transform a back gallery on the third floor into her personal studio and living space, entitled THIS COULD BE SOMETHING IF I LET IT (2012). Reminiscent of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-Ins during the Vietnam War era, albeit not necessarily in activist intent, Kasper speaks about the dichotomy present relating to the immediacy of human connection in an otherwise very intimate space, such as a bedroom or artist’s studio space.

The unparalleled presence of film and thus the artistic dialogue centered within filmic studies is a noteworthy supplement to this year’s Biennial. The film program, co-curated by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, strives to point out the significant advances in film and video within the past decade in conjunction to those in contemporary art. From short, experimental video pieces such as Hearsay of the Soul (2012) by Werner Herzog and selected works from George Kuchar’s Weather Diaries (1977–2011) series, to lengthier features such as The Oath (2010) by Laura Poitras (who was nominated for an Emmy, an Academy Award and an Independent Spirit Award for her post-9/11 film My Country, My Country (2006)), exemplify the vast conglomeration of video art and film. And what is a Biennial dedicated to Mike Kelley without a substantial serving of Mike Kelley? Three of his films from the series Mobile Homestead (2010–11) present a vignette of Detroit’s civil history as the narrative to his public art project in his hometown. With the film and performance programs initiated this way, viewers can return several times to attend the array of performance acts, which insures an extended interaction with the public, a relationship to whom an institution is always beholden.

SamLewitt, Fluid Employment, 2012. Ferromagnetic liquid poured bi-weekly over plastic, magnetic elements and fans. Dimensions variable. Collection of the artist.

Some of my personal favorites were photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier in her Homebody series (2010) in which she dons her deceased grandfather and grandmother’s personal (and intimate) items, such as pajamas or blankets, in their abandoned apartment as an act of lamentation. Sam Lewitt’s installation entitled Fluid Employment (2012) made from poured ferromagnetic liquid elucidates the medium’s immaculate traits in its imminent usage in electronic devices such as hard drives. The peripheral retrospective curated by artist Robert Gober on Forest Bess (1911–1977) – which, in the very act of his curation, acted as a perfect extension to Gober’s own practice – was astounding in content. Exposing the enigmatic and mentally unstable modern artist Forest Bess, Gober paints a character sketch of Bess by virtue of paintings, extensive wall texts, archival letters (exchanges between his New York dealer Betty Parsons) and photographs. If a large painting of a unicorn didn’t attract me enough, it was certainly the psychosis that manifested itself in hermaphroditic self-mutilations that sealed the deal for me. Installations by Lutz Bacher, Cameron Crawford and Luther Price’s handmade and manipulated film slides are not to be missed either.

Forest Bess (1911-1977), The Noble Carbunkle, 1960. Oil on canvas. 30 x 49 1/2 inches (76.2 x 125.7 cm). Private collection; courtesy of Amy Wolf Fine Art, New York.

Conclusively, the 2012 Whitney Biennial was a concisely edited and masterfully conceptualized project. A well-grounded understanding and use of the various spaces within and around the museum give Sussman and Sanders a virtuosic credit. I am relieved to see that a spotlight has finally been shown on both performance and filmic arts, in all of their realms and sub-categories, especially in a biennial setting. Several members of the Whitney staff exclaim the serendipitous team that Sussman and Sanders made in numerous paragraphs in the press literature and it is clear when experiencing the materialization of their collaboration. This is a biennial that has me delighted in saying that I will return several times. The Whitney Biennial will run from March 1^st through May 27^th. Live  performances, public programs and film screenings will run through the end of May. Refer to whitney.org for more information on events and tickets.

Mark Bradford, Potable Water, 2005; billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, and additional mixed media; 130 x 196 inches; collection of Hunter Gray; © Mark Bradford; photo: Bruce M. White

In the scholarship regarding his work, much has been made of the condition and location of Bradford’s studio practice. He grew up (and still lives) in South Central Los Angeles, a mainly black neighborhood mythologized for its urban decay. Bradford worked at his mother’s hair salon before attending art school, learning skills that he would adapt to his practice: hard work, repetitive actions and tactile processes. He gleans his materials from the posters, billboard papers, and hair salon permanent-wave end papers that are still part of his environment. And while all this information surely contributes to an important analysis of his work based in socio-economics, race and culture, it ignores the physicality and lushness of the actual surfaces and the connection of Bradford’s work to textiles.

Mark Bradford, Value 47, 2009–10. Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, carbon paper, nylon string, and additional mixed media on canvas; 48 x 60 inches; courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; © Mark Bradford; photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Up close, the dense materiality of each piece intrigues with a kind of sumptuous dissolution; there is tension between order and chaos, rigid geometries and decay. Layers and layers of papers and paint built up over time manifest the tactile nature of his working process, while the sanding between layers wears away the visible to the point of ruin. Each surface affirms Bradford’s physical presence, because these are techniques that can only be achieved by putting sinew and muscle in service of production. Though he calls them paintings, Bradford’s work more precisely exists in the productive space between painting, collage, and textiles. Many of the smaller and mid-scale collages are built on stretched canvases, allusions to the image-framing and containment of the traditional painting. However, several larger works are created on unstretched canvas that adds a layer of dimensionality to the form. For example, the surface of You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You) undulates like fabric—it’s not really flat at all—and the edges are ragged and crusted with cracked paint. Though I include a photograph of the work below, the camera fails to capture the tangible thicknesses at the edges of torn papers, the white areas sanded smooth, the divots and pockmarks in the grids, or the directional marks of a brush dragged through thick gel medium. These surfaces create the haptic character of the work.

Mark Bradford, You’re Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You), 2009. Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, carbon paper, acrylic paint, rice paper, and additional mixed media; courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; © Mark Bradford; photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Moreover, Bradford’s methodology and compositions echo weavings and piecework. As with textiles, the surfaces of Bradford’s work are created by obsessive repetition, much like a weaving is created by passing the shuttle back and forth on the loom. Bradford carefully slices billboard papers and posters into fine strips and layers them densely. From a distance, these arrangements of horizontal and vertical strips resemble the over-and-under patterning of a woven cloth. Likewise, the use of permanent-wave end papers in repetitive sequences across the surface calls to mind the geometries of quilts and other fabric constructions. Combining the visual motifs of textile forms with the visual tactility of the haptic creates a connection to textiles that other analyses have overlooked.

Mark Bradford, Grey Gardens, 2010. Acrylic gel medium, carbon paper, newsprint, acrylic paint, caulking, and additional mixed media; 60 x 72 inches; courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York; © Mark Bradford; photo: Fredrik Nilsen

Since not much has been made of the work’s connection to cloth, I was eager to ask Bradford about this perceived reference to textiles. During our conversation in one quiet gallery of the museum, the artist confirmed this relationship, stating that his mother and grandmother were seamstresses. Bradford remembers his mother’s lessons of choosing fabric. “I grew up touching,” he told me. “I would find a fabric that looked good and [my mother] would tell me, no, it’s not good fabric, just feel it.” In the museum the eye acts as a surrogate for the fingers, passing over each ripple, raw edge, or smoothly sanded surface. The haptic nature of Bradford’s work combined with the compositional reference to textiles creates an altogether visceral experience of looking at weavings that are not cloth.

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Note: the exhibition Mark Bradford continues across the street from SFMOMA at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The work pictured here is on view at SFMOMA February 18 through June 17, 2012. The exhibition at YBCA runs from February 18 through May 27, 2012.

Rithika Merchant, Titanomachy, 2011. Gouache and Ink on Paper. Courtesy of the Artist.

Walking in Barcelona’s Espai B Galeria, Rithika Merchant‘s playful yet precise lines are immediately captivating. She depicts creatures that are humanoid in flat and floating world. Her repetitious line is used to build up pattern and fill in form rather than rendering them in space. Her large drawings are made on sheets of paper set in a grid or geometric design that symmetrically break apart the compositions with solid white lines.

A recent transplant to Barcelona, Rithika’s drawings seem at home here with the vibrant mosaics and whimsical architecture of the city. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Modernisme movement defined a Catalonian aesthetic in Barcelona. With a rich history of tile work of Moorish influence integrated with a visionary use of organic forms inspired by Art Nouveau, a fanciful urban space pouring with detail defines the present-day city. Being born in Mumbai, having studied in New York, and now living in Barcelona, Rithika has a unique worldview that is both conceptual and crafty.

Rithika’s characters are set in simple landscapes, allowing her obsessive ornamentation to shine. God-like creatures are repeated through her drawings, and build up to form narratives and reveal a personalized mythology.

Titanomachy, or the Titan War, makes reference to the Greek stories of battles fought between the family of gods before the existence of man. There is no clear winner in Rithika’s drawing, and the gods exist in a static moment before the action of battle has been resolved. Here, the gods are a green woman-creature and a woman on bucking horse. There are two seem like opposing forces, one trampling the other, but both make reference to the natural world. The greenish woman has big eyes like an owl, a woodland creature of the night. The reddish woman seems to ride with the sun, filling the night sky. An octopus, a creature known for its intelligence, blocks her sight. The horse seems to be taking the place of her female sex organs, and her body appears muscular, looking like a man entering battle. The rearing horse seems very phallic in this reading, its mouth spitting a cloud in ecstasy.

Rithika Merchant, Deus Otiosus, 2011. Gouache and Ink on Paper. Courtesy of the Artist.

Rithika’s Deus Otiosus, Latin for neutral or idle god, makes reference to the concept of an unacting or hidden god who takes no part in ruling the world. Here, the greenish woman-creature is seen again, and her depiction as a kind of bird in a nest is clear. Her hands form an open circle, at the spot of her Sacral Chakra, also the center of the image where four corners of paper converge. She sits in a region above the blue sky, in some kind of radiant vortex illuminated by her head. Her decorative face makes her immediately recognized as the trampled character from Titanomachy. Her face is distinctly labial, and sits in waiting or meditation.

The more that these drawings are examined, the more narratives can be drawn out of them, even if not exactly what the artist intended. Like characters in a dream, the explanatory process is what is important, rather than an objective or correct understanding of the symbols.

A Pagan or polytheistic worldview anthropomorphizes natural phenomenon. These kind of warring god myths were widespread through the ancient world and Middle Ages, found in the mythological traditions that spanned European cultures from Babylonia to Scandinavia, often having to do with the creation of the world’s features and humanity. Rithika’s appropriation of the mythological process allows her to create fictions that speak to human nature and dredge the subconscious for her own identity (and the viewer’s).

Drawings by Rithika Merchant are currently in Espai B Galeria’s “B-space” or back gallery where they keep a collection of works from artists that they have featured. Floor-to-ceiling displays of art are packed into the B-space, whereas their front gallery gives artwork the buffer of white that is the typical style of an art show. However, the B-space is what the gallery is really about—-keeping an abundance of work on display so that the art-seekers will find work that captivates them and a variety of Barcelona artists are kept accessible to the public.

Rithika has a number of activities to her credit, having shown in group and solo exhibitions in galleries across Europe and in New York, Mumbai, and Montreal. Rithika studied in New York at Parsons The New School For Design, graduating in 2008, and also attended the Hellenic International Studies in the The Arts program on the island of Paros, Greece.