Bottom floor of the Berlin Biennale, "Occupy Berlin," photo courtesy http://universes-in-universe.org

To transport an Occupy movement to the sanitized dominion of a museum is, as my art historian friends would say, problematic.  This year’s incarnation of the Berlin Biennale (the seventh) has thus far received anemic reviews, with some hinting at real vitriol.  The exhibition is partly as curator Artur Zmijewski envisioned it; full o’ problems.  In interviews Zmijewski offers cryptic monologues about equally cryptic solutions.  I think there are plenty of strategies to be found in the Biennale, but they are buried beneath sprawling and lofty ambitions, making it feel, as Frieze writer Christy Lange writes, like “an awkward slog.”

The impulse to undermine traditional artistic hierarchy by including documentary filmmakers, self-identified social activists and other non-artist-artists is good and worthy and exciting.  And there are moments in the Biennale where ideas ignite and excite viewers to imagine a world with a more porous understanding of art and the things it can accomplish.  The Biennale is awash in beautiful gestures: Lukasz Surowiec transplants trees from Auschwitz-Birkenau,  Yael Bartana stages the first ever international congress of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland, Khaled Jarrar creates postal and passport stamps for the non-existent state of Palestine.

But these gestures are at times overshadowed by an exhibition layout at Kunst Werke that is heavy-handed and foggy.  It’s like it was curated by the gruff classist landlord of a turn-of-the-century New York tenement: the poor students and occupy protestors have the ground floor where they take care of the garden, ride a solar revolution bike and lead wacky seminars about street art and self-sustaining garden communities.  They conduct casting calls for a porn movie, make mandalas out of tobacco shavings and read leftist literature on the ragged arms of a hand-me-down couch.  There are no museum guards there (trust!) and the offices of Kunst-Werke employees are conspicuously ajar (transparency!).  It’s a dirty little utopia in the middle of one of the richest streets in central Berlin, a hypocritical, twingy concession in a district full of wealthy patrons and designer yogurt.

Meanwhile, the “real” artists can be found on the remaining 3 floors.   This architectural caste system is no exaggeration; the participatory element ends with the blackboard paint (which covers the entire ground floor).  Suddenly the walls become the shade of primeval white that we as gallery attendees are accustomed to.

 Marina Naprushkina’s oversized comics hang in the stairwells on the way “up.”

*Sorry, I don’t want to indulge in this super easy metaphor; I’m just really tired (maybe the curators were too?).

Marina Naprushkina with newspapers © Olga Karatch, image courtesy artnet.de

Naprushkina’s pieces are lovely and sincerely concerned with gender inequity and Russian nationalism in Belarus.  She uses graphic works to disseminate information, and last year created a comic newspaper documenting the police brutality that took place against protestors in Belarus in December of 2010.

Naprushkina is one of few object-makers in the Biennale, as the Biennale is focused largely on ephemeral actions and intervention (and the resulting footage of said ephemeral actions and interventions).  Pawel Althamer combines these pursuits with his beautiful if somewhat staid exercise in communal creation; a draw-in called “A Draftsmen’s Congress” at the St. Elisabeth Church.

This Biennale was one of the more anticipated in recent years, in part because it was helmed by controversial Polish artist Artur Zmijewski along with the Russian activist group Voina acting as associate curators.

Zmijewski received quite a bit of attention for his short film Berek, which was pulled from an exhibition at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin last year.  Zmijewski includes Berek in the top floor, offering one of the Biennale’s most affecting statements.  In it we see men and women of various ages, naked, engaging in a game of tag inside a former nazi death camp gas chamber.  Their child-like delight at the game borders on manic glee, an emotion belied by damp and ghastly surroundings.  Their nudity, innocent and liberating, forces us to imagine those for whom nudity was neither innocent nor liberating.

Artur Zmijewski "Berek", 1999 (Videostill), Foto: © Artur Zmijewski, Courtesy Foksal Gallery Foundation

Occupying most of the top floor is Berlin-Birkenau, an installation and acccompanying video by Polish artist Lukasz Surowiec.  Surowiec brought 320 Birch trees from the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau to Berlin, planting many of them in front of Kunst-Werke, enlisting the help of local students in his effort.  Surowiec offers Biennale visitors the chance to take a birch sapling with them, along with a certificate of ownership and directions for its care.  He asks that participants report the final location so as to be included in a “living  archive” of repurposed history.  Maybe it’s a bit treacly, but watching German kids plants those trees made me cry.

I wish I had equally touching reactions to the other videos screened at Kunst-Werke, but the majority were installed next to each other in one giant room, with cries from Tahrir Square co-mingling with anti-capitalist chants from European Action Day.  I would have liked to spend more time with each video, but instead I just got annoyed at the buzzing amalgam of multiple videos sonically invading each other.  And I think this might sum up the Biennale; it’s full of great moments, but the noise around it can be deafening.

Rigo 23. Autonomous InterGalactic Planetarium, 2009-12; installation view, REDCAT, Los Angeles, 2012. Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco; Pedro Pica Piedra, Beto, Santiago Marcial, Monserrat Blanco, Gabriela, Marcos Sanchez, Domingo Santiz Ruiz, Mia Rollow, Paulina, Adrian Quiroz, Manuel Hidalgo, Ivan Pablo Soria, Pablo Milan, Miguel Hidalgo, Caleb Duarte, Jacobo Lagos, Erwin, Salvador. Photo: Scott Groller.

The Portuguese artist Ricardo Gouveia, or Rigo 23, might be best known for his series of larger-than-life, one-way-sign-inspired murals, painted on buildings across San Francisco, where the artist has lived since the 1980s. For the better part of the last decade, however, Rigo 23 has produced a series of projects with underserved and underrepresented communities. The latest of these, Programa Espacial Autónomo InterGalactico (Autonomous InterGalactic Space Program), has just docked at REDCAT, CalArt’s theater and gallery space in downtown Los Angeles.

The culmination of more than three years of coordination and labor by Rigo 23 and artisans from Chiapas, Mexico, as well as members of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), Programa Espacial represents a convergence of multiple worlds.¹ When Rigo 23 met with the members of the Good Government Junta of Morelia, Chiapas, to propose a collaborative art project between himself and artists from the region, he asked, “What would happen if they got an invitation to attend an intergalactic meeting somewhere other than the Milky Way; how would they travel?”² The junta members accepted this proposal but made it clear that the project was not a priority and would only be accomplished if he won the support of a local artist.

Because Programa Espacial is a collaborative project between an artist and various indigenous communities, and because those communities are under the jurisdiction of the EZLN, the exhibit brings up questions of commodification and appropriation, but these questions seem to have been of lesser interest to Rigo 23 than the question of positionality. The spiraling path a viewer takes through the exhibit evokes (within the limits of California’s fire code) the curve of a snail’s shell, creating interplay between a viewer’s sense of being sympathetically “inside” the EZLN looking out, or an outsider looking in.³

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Phyllida Barlow, untitled: 21 arches, 2012, Polystyrene, cement, scrim, paint & varnish, variable dimensions, Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

The majority of her sculptures are towering structures that dwarf the spectator as if one were standing in a forest. Barlow dilutes the nature of her mundane media by her exquisite use of color, whether included by virtue of fabric, electrical tape or spray paint. For siege, Barlow exhibits her characteristically massive structures as similar to pieces I have seen previously, such as untitled: 21 arches (2012) and untitled: crushed boxes (2012). In pieces such as untitled: balcony (2012) and untitled: broken stage (2012) however, she adds more of a tangible architectural thread that differ slightly from her conceptual-based sculptures. Her work mimics the urban environment in both materiality and the nature of the imposing structures that swallow – or impede upon – the viewer.

Phyllida Barlow, untitled: crushed boxes, 2012, Polystyrene, cement, scrim, paint & varnish, variable dimensions, Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

With pieces such as untitled: crushed boxes (2012) Barlow depicts weight through the manner in which her boxes pile upon a fabric cushion, thin or bulging in parts, depicting the sensation of being crushed. Her work maneuvers within a certain corporeal consciousness similar to the work of Eva Hesse or Robert Morris in which the weight – or the interior – of the body is made manifest through the use of material. With aspects of both Arte Povera and Minimalism, Barlow’s work is sensational in its rawness, and though I rather missed the space at Hauser & Wirth London that added an irreplaceable dimension to her work, Barlow’s structures are not to be missed in the immense setting of the New Museum’s spaces.

On the third floor, Tacita Dean’s (b. 1965, England) exhibition entitled Five Americans explores the theme of preservation and memoriam through filmmaking as it intersects with various artistic mediums such as painting, writing and dance. By way of 16mm films, Dean features five influential American artists spanning several generations: Julie Mehretu, Cy Twombly, Leo Steinberg, Claes Oldenburg and Merce Cunningham. Works such as Edwin Parker (2011) and Manhattan Mouse Museum (2011) follow artists Cy Twombly and Claes Oldenburg respectively in their studios, spaces that despite the aura attached to these renowned artists by name are places of quotidian banality of comings and goings.

Tacita Dean, Manhattan Mouse Museum, 2011, 16mm film, color, optical sound, 16 min, Courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris and Frith Street Gallery, London

There is an aspect of prescience in Dean’s works, as each are bound by a common thematic thread that deals with the notion of expiration. For instance in The Line of Fate (2011), Dean sits with art historian Leo Steinberg as he finishes his last book about Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo before his death months later, a fact unknown at the time when making the film. This is a similar case with Edwin Parker in which Dean films Cy Twombly in his studio amongst what would be his final artworks during his last months alive. Even in her other works albeit more subtle, the theme of preservation becomes contingent upon the cognitive artistic process that she poignantly captures.

The Parade presented by Nathalie Djurberg (b. 1978, Sweden) with music by Hans Berg (b. 1978, Sweden) is found in the museum’s next-door space ‘Studio 231’. In an eccentric field of dazzling puppetry, a parade it is. A snaking trail made up of hundreds of exotic and fictitious birds scatter the floor under spotlights, frozen in mid-preen and warble. Each bird installation – whether sparrow or human-sized – has the craftsmanship of a Julie Taymor theater prop, with each muslin feather painted in an ombré of fanciful hues. Alongside her puppets, five animations are projected on the walls playing to the discordant melodies of Hans Berg’s compositions.

The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg, 2012, exhibition view: New Museum

Immediately upon entering the space, the menagerie comes alive with the eerie tinkering of chimes, a soundtrack that gives life to the nightmarish aspect of Djurberg’s mad animals and sinister animations. Her animation videos typically depict women as the central character in an anti-heroic role, often times as victims of absurd cruelty flecked with sexual overtones. Her videos feature handmade puppets both animals and humans, crudely rendered from clay, fabric, string and dolls hair, with lumps, bumps, spidery limbs and clownish faces. The Parade as a body of work exists in a similar abject vein as her various other works, yet in this exhibition she focuses on the avian rituals of flocking, mating and pageantry. Her videos portray explicit aspects of cruelty, betrayal and greed, in which her characters – both animal and human – play out instances of physical and psychological savagery.

The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg, 2012, exhibition view: New Museum

Djurberg’s work is brilliant in its manner of transparency. I am taken with the way in which she casts a light on the undesirable or abject aspects of human and animal behavior as the cynosure of her métier. And as usual, Berg’s musical compositions coupled with Djurberg’s claymation videos and theatrical installations presents a captivating mastery that dutifully emanates from their projects time and time again.

Phyllida Barlow’s siege runs through June 24^th, Tacita Dean’s Five Americans runs through July 1^st and The Parade by Nathalie Djurberg with Hans Berg runs through August 26^th. For more information visit the New Museum’s site.

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.

David Shrigley, How are you feeling today? (2012), billboard, 25 x 75 feet, courtesy of Anton Kern Gallery

Running alongside Tenth Avenue for approximately twenty blocks in Chelsea, The High Line has become a household term amongst Manhattanites since 2009 when it first became accessible as a public park. Since then – and especially within the last year – The High Line has ignited widespread murmur relating to its breathtaking architecture, imaginative urban integration and more recently its emergence as the local gallery district’s – if not New York’s – most imaginative sites for exhibiting contemporary art.  Opening April 19^th was The High Line’s first ever group exhibition entitled Lilliput which included the works of Oliver Laric, Alessandro Pessoli, Tomoaki Suzuki, Francis Upritchard, Erika Verzutti and Allyson Vieira. Alongside this exhibition, Uri Aran’s sound installation opened on the same day only then to be followed by Alison Knowles’ public performance Make a Salad on the 22^nd. David Shrigley’s How are you feeling? (2012), presented as a giant billboard over West 18^th Street, and Sturtevant’s Warhol Empire State (2012), a video projection that starts at dusk of Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964) video, debuted earlier in the month to launch the Friends of the High Line’s 2012 Spring Art Program and High Line Commissions program for public art. The openings this month, surpassing the previous years in numbers of art pieces alone, has proven that this year’s arts program is making a vigorous effort to present art to the public with a bang.

Sturtevant, Warhol Empire State (2012), video projection, image courtesy of the artist

The High Line as we know it today exists upon the skeleton of a freight line that once was the manifestation of a public-private project called the West Side Improvement during the 1930s. However, that was the date that the freight lines were lofted 30 feet above street level after having existed as street-level railroad tracks some odd eighty years prior. During this time, The City and State of New York agreed to take on this massive industrial project due to the fact that Tenth Avenue became known as Death Avenue, a nickname indicative of the innumerable deaths caused between street traffic and the railroad. This was no small project, not least of all financially as it was quoted to be a $150 million dollar expenditure then, and that’s more than $2 billion dollars today.

Building the high line, November 20th 1932. Image courtesy of www.thehighline.org

Trains of food freight and both manufactured and raw goods ran until 1980 at which point the ensuing minimization of the railroad became obsolete due to redundancy and the upsurge of trucking transport. In the face of threatening demolition, Friends of the High Line was established in 1999 as a non-profit by Joshua David and Robert Hammond to preserve the historical lineage and neighborhood aura that the High Line had solidified. An all-star architectural and landscape design team made up of James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro (along with a large selection of horticulturists, gardeners, etc) was chosen in 2004 and by June 9^th 2009 the first section (Gansevoort Street to West 20^th Street) of The High Line as a public park opens, with the second section (West 20^th Street to West 30^th Street) to follow in 2011.

Allyson Vieira, Construction (Rampart) (2010), Bronze, 14 x 14 x 18.5 inches, courtesy of Laurel Gitlen Gallery, New York

Since 2009, The High Line has become known as a trendy jaunt-spot in Chelsea where the ultimate people-watching activities and pleasure strolling can be had. This year the public will see the launch of a program called High Line Commissions with the opening of the first ever group exhibition Lilliput to be held on The High Line. This exhibition will present the works of six artists working internationally with, as the title would suggest, small sculptures placed along The High Line’s pathway. This title is taken from Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels in which the imaginary country of Lilliput is home to gnome-sized people no bigger than six inches. The various diminutive sculptures are set within the various niches of landscape along the park walk and offer a sort of Easter-egg hunt of sorts, inviting the public to uncover the various works of art.

Pieces such as Allyson Vieira’s Construction (Rampart) (2012) respond to the local vegetation and ecology of the area with her pyramid of bronze cast paper cups that fill with rain or fallen leaves from the garden bed above. Other works such as The Seduction (2012) by Francis Upritchard are less so adapted for the localized flora but speak to the Lilliputian theme of fairyland idols with two miniature-sized apes frozen in an explorative embrace. Also apart of this spring’s High Line Commissions is Uri Aran’s sound installation Untitled (Good & Bad) (2012) provides a spoken list of arbitrarily categorized animals into “good” or “bad” that billows from gardens below. Coming in May, a much anticipated installation of Thomas Houseago’s sculpture Lying Figure will be on view under The Standard.

Francis Upritchard, The Seduction (2012), Bronze, 18 x 9 x 8 inches, Courtesy of Kate MacGarry, London

Friends of the High Line have initiated other programs such as the High Line Performances, High Line Billboard and High Line Channel that serve as varying avenues whereby art mediums can be exhibited. Opening on April 5^th, David Shrigley’s 25-by-75 foot billboard How are you feeling? presents a short dialogue in black and white speech bubbles, hovering over a parking lot at West 18^th Street. Shrigley’s dry and melancholy humor severs the socially fabricated fluff in monotonous conversation and pinpoints exactly what we all may be feeling but are too nervous to say: “I’m feeling very unstable and insecure […] I am in a bit of a rut creatively as well”.

This year’s itinerary for the High Line Performances will include performances by three female artists (Alison Knowles, Channa Horwitz and Simone Forti) on and around the High Line, the first of which was preformed last Sunday April 22^nd by Alison Knowles’ Fluxus score Make a Salad. Originally performed in Baltimore, Maryland in 1962 has been performed several times around the world and includes the preparation of a salad for a large group of people. Launching the High Line Performances program, Knowles’ piece included the preparation of locally sourced salad ingredients tossed from the upper level to the lower level of the walkway and then served to the public. Though it was a rather cold and rainy day, otherwise unpleasant to be frolicking out of doors to eat a salad, the performance was lively and ignited a grouping of people of all ages in an appropriately themed Earth Day get-together.

Alison Knowles, Make a Salad (1962–present), Image: Tate Modern, London (2008)

I have to applaud the work and organizational efforts of the Friends of the High Line for their inception of the public art programs, and not to mention their unmentioned but as equally remarkable endeavors in the realms of music and food. The High Line as a public park has provided the support for not only a exceptional pleasure destination, but also a cutting-edge platform for contemporary art. I am always fascinated with the seemingly pervasive dialogue relating to the inaccessibility of contemporary art and thus I have always been an advocate for the commissioning of public art. Public art, as inconspicuous or ostentatious it may be, has the power to engage a public (a cross section in a vast demographic) who may not otherwise seek out an interactive relationship with art. Pieces such as the ones mentioned above all own that quality of engagement: the characteristic of calling forth a questioning, a reflection or even a happenstance double take, and sometimes that’s all an art piece needs to fulfill its role in the social sphere.

Please visit  www.thehighline.org/art for a schedule of past, current and upcoming exhibitions and performances on The High Line and additional information on artists. Please visit the site for further information regarding The High Line’s events, public programs, memberships and history.

Nina Katchadourian, "Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style #18-19," 2011. C-print. Edition of 8. Diptych: 7.157 x 6 inches each.

The thing about traveling on an airplane is that we take for granted how phenomenally absurd it is. There we sit, unfazed, hurdling through space at 500 miles per hour, 30,000 feet above the ground in a metal tube, surrounded by complete strangers whom in all likelihood we will never see again. There is also the unspoken airplane etiquette that we all hope the stranger sitting next to us will follow: please don’t talk, don’t move, don’t get up…basically please do everything you can to appear as though you don’t exist. With these restrictions, an airplane in flight is a very difficult place to do anything more than sleep, read, stare out the window or watch movies with only the most watered-down content. Unless you are Nina Katchadourian.

For Seat Assignment, her fifth solo show at Catherine Clark Gallery, Katchadourian culled from a body of work made on more than seventy flights over the past two years. Now, artists reading this might be terrified by having their workspace confined to the miniscule square-footage of an airline seat and the plane’s lavatory. For Katchadourian, it is a pragmatic opportunity to bring her “studio” with her. Using only her camera phone and the materials at hand, she creates everything from improvised classical Flemish self-portraits to miniature composed landscapes and worlds.

Nina Katchadourian. Excerpt from the Extreme Sports series, 2010. From the Seat Assignment series.

As its title suggests, the series Lavatory Self-Portrait in the Flemish Style uses objects such as inflatable neck pillows, napkins, bits of plastic and whatever else Katchadourian has on hand to make self-portraits in the style of classical Flemish paintings. Window Seat Suprematism references the fundamental geometric forms of the early 20th-century Russian movement. The images in the series, taken of the planes’ wings through the window, create compelling minimalist, geometric compositions that even Malevich could approve of.

Nina Katchadourian, "Meteor," from the Disasters series, 2010. From the Seat Assignment series.

In-flight magazines supply some of the most fruitful material. One work from Landscapes uses black sweater lint to turn a snow-covered mountain into a smoldering volcano. In Disasters, pretzel crumbs become a devastating landslide off mountain road. Black lint makes another appearance, with the addition of other various detritus, in Birds of New Zealand, adorning the heads and bodies of exotic birds and giving them an even more elaborate flare. The strangest thing about these images is how believable the compositions are. While it may be obvious that the pretzels on the road are indeed pretzels and not rocks, or that a bird does not have a cashew shaped appendage on its head in real life, the objects give a genuine moment of pause, plus the feeling that while absurd, it could be real.

Nina Katchadourian, "Wigeon" from the Birds of New Zealand series, 2011. From the Seat Assignment series.

Katchadourian views a situation that most of us find claustrophobic, boring and tedious as a challenge to highlight both the fantastic and mundane aspects of air travel. The sense of humor and improvisational genius that make up Seat Assignment exemplify an artist setting certain parameters for herself and successfully working within them to create work that is both complex and light hearted.

Seat Assignment will be on view at Catherine Clark Gallery until May 26, 2012.

Wearing has been very attracted to the lives of others and seems interested in breaking down the common, frosty perception of strangers in the public realm. Prelude (2000) shows video footage of a vagabond who Wearing had filmed just before her death. The audio narrative, touchingly told by the deceased’s twin sister, tells of her struggles with the bereavement while images of her sister smiling and flirting with the camera play on. Much of the artist’s work contravenes against everyday apathy with the telling of such personal stories. The artist put out a local ad in Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry, You Will Be In Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian…(1994) and a series of videos is its result. Admittedly, some confessions are less inviting and a bit uninspiring. The work’s purpose ends at the relief or amusement of the confessor, and they were clearly chosen only for their racy content. Yet, others draw you in.  One of the most poignant confessions comes from a man in a scraggly black wig and heavy red lipstick who reveals heavy-heartedly his enjoyment in wearing women’s clothing and the pain it causes his loved ones.

Gillian Wearing, Dancing in Peckham, 1994, Colour video with sound, 25 min. Courtesy of the Artist; Maureen Paley, London.

How are we expected to act in public? Everyday public interaction is certainly a collection of learned behaviors based on expectation. Wearing’s Dancing in Peckham (1994), pokes fun at such conformist social expectations. In the video-performance Wearing famously dances in public (vigorously) to a beat that exists solely in her head. The iconic image may be familiar, but one might be surprised to learn that the work was not as much a social experiment, but rather, a re-enactment, inspired by an actual woman whom the artist witnessed in a similar unstaged performance.

Probably the most haunting and beautiful series is the array of massive family portraits lining the walls of the upper gallery. They seem both sentimental and idealistic on the surface, yet are completely unsettling. We see an uncle, a father, a daughter, a mother – the portraits of anyone’s family, scrounged like forgotten ghosts from a dusty, abandoned shoe box. Generational features appear, revealing that these are the faces of the artist’s family…right? The doll-like faces bear unnaturally smooth swathes of skin, and imperfectly aligned eyeholes a divulge grotesque, silicon artificiality. Beneath the mask, a repeated flicker of life peaks through: the gold brown eyes of Gillian Wearing. The Album series are really self-portraits, the artist exploring her own identity by familial impersonation with the aid of realistic masks.

Gillian Wearing, Self Portrait as My Mother Jean Gregory, 2003, framed black and white print. Courtesy the artist.

Wearing’s personal display is also universal, effectively evoking thoughts of one’s own aesthetic ancestry. In browsing through ancient family photographs, who of us has not had the uncanny shock of seeing one’s own face staring back? Feeling both violated and enchanted, we realize that the time and place captured in film belongs to strange doppelganger we have never met. This person is connected to you, looks like you, but is not you.

Gillian Wearing, Self Portrait of Me Now In Mask, 2011, framed c-type print. Courtesy the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Maureen Paley, London.

Wearing also wears masks of her own face, masquerading as herself in her past lives – or current ones. Self Portrait at 17 Years Old (2003) and Self Portrait at Three Years Old (2004) reveal a second leaf to theses universal inquiries about identity. If we are as different as we are similar to those families from which we descend, it is certain that we are also different people at different ages. The impossibility of meeting oneself as a three-year-old thirty years on is as impossible as knowing oneself as a three-year-old thirty years on. Most interestingly, Wearing also chose to pose as her contemporaneous self: Self Portrait of Me Now in Mask (2011) a gesture as simple as it is complex, (upon which a psychoanalyst could write the most tiring of books.) But perhaps Gillian Wearing wearing a mask of Gillian Wearing doesn’t seem as satirical and ironic as before, we are all strangers to our outer selves, the masks we wear everyday might be as strangely unfamiliar as those uncanny blood relatives who somehow cloned us before we even existed.

Jean Fouquet - Madonna Surrounded by Seraphim and Cherubim (1452)

Although I’d like to believe that we’re on the verge of a shift in mentality there is no getting away from the fact that we live in a consumerist society where we are constantly bombarded with images trying to manipulate us into buying things. The Image is very powerful in this respect, and often more powerful than the Word because it easily triggers our brains to make associations. Marketers know this, and use images in lies to sell us goods. Artists know this too, and use images in art to make us think and reflect. This slight difference explains why I rather spend time in museums than in supermarkets.

The exhibition currently on show at MAS (Museum on the Stream) explores the history of the image over the last five centuries in Antwerp. The currently underappreciated Belgian city played a pivotal role in the creation and distribution of the Image in Western Europe, especially during its heyday in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. As a consequence, according to the exhibition catalogue, Antwerp has a unique understanding of the function of the image. MAS calls this one of the city’s biggest qualities and chose it as the concept behind the show. It’s a very fluid concept to build an exhibition around, and arguably not especially profound, but the execution of the project is interesting and definitely worth mentioning and seeing.

On a subdivided floor in the contemporary architectural structure that houses the museum, paintings by Jan van Eyck and Jean Fouquet (both considered Belgian’s master painters) are placed next to old Roman coins as well as video installations and sculptural works made in the 1960’s and 1970’s. ‘Art’, as the wall text says at the beginning of the show, ‘is a means for artists to communicate their relationship with the world.’ Images are used to visualise this relationship and to show how we see ourselves, the world we live in and our place within it.

Marlene Dumas, Blind Joy (1996) - foto Syb'l. S. - Pictures, collectie M HKA

Religion, saints and sins were crucial in our relationship with the world five-hundred years ago, but we increasingly started to look for meaning in human emotion, natural products and seemingly banal everyday objects like urinals or bread rolls. Seeing works from all these different times in the same space, not necessarily chronologically, but intermingled in order to see the similarities, made me reflect not only upon the history of art but on the history of humanity and what crazy animals we actually are. Whereas art has changed substantially, humanity at it’s core seemed to have some sort of stability. We live and experience things and we like to document these; we use the world as our source of inspiration, reflect upon it and try to relate to it. We can embrace what we see, or oppose it and fight against it, but either way we like to translate our feelings about it into something visible and tangible, captured for later generations to reflect upon and explore.

In this, MAS is right, the role of the image has remained the same. The need to capture our relationship with the world is inherently human, it’s only the way in which we do this that changes over time. That is, at least, in art. Whether it applies to supermarkets too, only the future will be able to tell.

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.

Saul Leiter, Red Umbrella, c. 1958, Chromogenic Print, 14 x 11 inches, © Saul Leiter Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York.

‘It’s just too much, don’t you think?’ asks Saul Leiter as he walks around his own exhibition, on view until April 15th at Hamburg’s Deichtorhallen. The video documenting Leiter’s reaction accompanies over 400 photographs and paintings that fill the soaring spaces of this re-purposed industrial complex, now a centre for contemporary art and photography. With room after room after room of images that riff on favoured themes and compositions, it’s a serious question. But it’s also part of Leiter’s characteristic modesty. After a lifetime in relative obscurity, his recent fame—following a series of shows at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York, from which almost all the works come, and the Steidl publication Saul Leiter: Early Color—must be overwhelming, or at least a little bewildering.

Saul Leiter, Snow, 1960 © Saul Leiter Courtesy: Saul Leiter, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter, Straw Hat, ca. 1955. © Saul Leiter, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York.

Leiter was born in Pittsburgh in 1923, and came to New York on a midnight bus at the age of 23. The city offered a new start, removed from his Jewish orthodox upbringing, and, it would seem, a lifetime of visual inspiration. Largely self-taught, his first love was painting, and his affinity not only to the movements that defined the era, abstract expressionism and colour field painting, but also to Picasso, Mondrian and Vuillard is evident in both paintings and photographs. Though the paintings are interesting in relation to the photographs, the blocks of vivid colour and flattened, geometric compositions take on a different dynamism when cropped from New York streets.

Saul Leiter, Mondrian Worker, 1954 © Saul Leiter Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter, Through Boards, ca. 1957 © Saul Leiter Courtesy: Saul Leiter, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Leiter’s photographs speak not only to the dominant aesthetic concerns of the time, but also, and with arresting elegance and agility, to the newfound capacity of colour photography to depict everyday life. For Leiter, these are often literally reflections, found in urban mirrors and windows, and punctuated by recurring motifs: hats, umbrellas, shoes. These stylish accessories, which bely the rise of consumer culture, extend into Leiter’s formal work as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, and more personal images of his long-time partner and once-model Soames Bantry.

Saul Leiter, Shopping, ca. 1953 © Saul Leiter Courtesy: Saul Leiter, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter, Soames Bantry, Nova, 1960 © Saul Leiter. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

While Lieter has continued make pictures, he’s resisted the trend for large scale work, and  a gallery of recent prints is only vaguely discernable as contemporary—more so by a perceptible lack of the period style that graces the earlier work. Like the photographs recently unearthed by Vivian Maier, Leiter’s work, particularly his color images from the 1950s and ‘60s, has set curators and photo-historians clambering to show his pictures and adjust the canon to accommodate his achievements. But Leiter, of course, is very much alive and involved in this process, and his humorously misanthropic personality undercuts the institutional efforts to claim him as living legend:  ‘Maybe I’ll go back to being a failure,’ he quips in one interview, ‘it was a nice time.’

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.

He Xiangyu Artist beside his work Skeleton (2010) Courtesy of Pearl Lam Gallery, Shanghai Photography: Garry Trinh

There are numerous contemporary works in which the artists’ choice of physical ‘matter’ contains within it their intended meaning. Xu Bing’s poignant ‘Where the Dust Itself Collects’ made from dust collected in the streets of Manhattan after the destruction of the twin towers falls into this category, as does Marc Quinn’s self-portrait made of 9 pints of the artist’s own frozen blood. Sydney artist Shoufay Derz used silkworms and indigo in her elegiac work ‘Depart Without Return’. And from Warhol and Wang Guangyi to the urns inscribed with the Coca Cola logo by Ai Weiwei, artists have used iconic commercial ‘brands’ as signifiers, making works intended as a critique or sometimes a celebration of western popular culture.

He Xiangyu’s ‘Cola Project’, showing at Gallery 4A in Sydney’s Chinatown, takes these elements of contemporary practice into new territory. His project does not use the iconic imagery of the brand, so representative of America in all its 20^th century wealth and power, but rather takes the product itself, its physical matter. He ‘cooks’ the cola in an industrial process, boiling enormous quantities of Coca Cola down into a black crystalline solid. This coal-like substance is piled in a heap on the floor of the gallery, smelling faintly toxic and looking dangerous. Gao Minglu, in his catalogue essay, ‘Cola Project as Anthropology’, comments on the paradox of this transformation of a product of consumer desire into something disgusting and disturbing: a reminder that the fast pace of urbanisation and technological change may come at the cost of our consumption and destruction of nature. The artist admits that he himself drinks cola every day, and has grown up knowing nothing other than the globalised, materialist, fast paced ‘new China’. He represents the ‘consumption culture’ which now pervades almost every corner of the globe in both a physical and a metaphysical manner.

Installation view at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art Courtesy of the artist and White Space Beijing Photography: Zan Wimberley

Other elements of the installation support this interpretation. Lying in a museum style vitrine, faintly glowing in the darkened space, is a jade skeleton. This very beautiful object has been partially corroded and destroyed by being boiled in Coca Cola.  What at first appear to be traditional ink paintings of misty mountainous landscapes on the walls of the gallery have actually been painted with ink made with Coca Cola: representations of China’s ancient culture literally painted with the global brand. In another glass case lie the tools, discarded gloves and protective clothing used by the artist and his assistants in the process, all covered with a viscous tar-like coating. Photographs of the industrial ‘cooking down’ process are reminiscent of Cultural Revolution images of heroic workers engaged in steel production – but they are actually engaged in this somewhat pointless act.

The documentation of the artist’s physical actions recalls Joseph Beuys, whose influence on contemporary art in China is enormously significant. It is also very deliberately a pastiche of science and industry, suggesting the museological display of the remnant artefacts of an ancient culture. While Ai Weiwei’s ‘Coca Cola Urn’ works of the 90s inscribed the iconic logo of western capitalism onto ancient urns representing the destruction of Chinese history and culture, He Xiangyu’s work suggests a more complex 21^st century reading of consumerist desire. No longer signifying the forbidden ‘other’, global brands take on new meanings in a world struggling to come to terms with the destruction wrought by modernity:  a kind of reverse alchemy, turning commercial ‘gold’ back into its base constituent element.

Installation view at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art Courtesy of the artist and White Space Beijing Photography: Zan Wimberley

Paul Graham, 53rd Street & 6th Avenue, 6th May 2011, 2.41.26 pm (2011), pigment print mounted on Dibond, 56" x 74 1/4" (diptych), © Paul Graham 2012

Filling the spacious Chelsea Pace Gallery, Paul Graham: The Present displays vignettes that reflect quotidian ritual in New York City. Graham’s large-scale photographs hang at street level and mimic his theme of pedestrian rhythm. Smaller photographs, likewise in an array of diptychs and triptychs, are hung at eye level and also play a role in highlighting the voyeuristic perspective of the viewer, who is both the artist and the gallery audience. Rather than capturing a sea-like crowd of public, each photograph presents a focal character or characters that stands out from the monotony of the masses. Graham contextualizes each vignette by the specific location in which he becomes the ultimate voyeur.  By virtue of his photographs – as they are hung in solitary groupings rather than a vast assembly – Graham elucidates the manner in which a narrative is subject to alteration by the subtlest instances of movement, whether it is light or physical movement of a subject. An anonymous passerby becomes the subject of the frame only then to be replaced by his doppelganger in what seems to be the blink of an eye, for instance in works such as 8^th Avenue & 42^nd Street, 17^th August 2010, 11.23.03 am (2010).

Paul Graham, 8th Ave & 42nd Street, 17th August 2010, 11.23.03 am (2010), pigment print mounted on Dibond, 28" x 37 1/2" (diptych), © Paul Graham 2012

As Shakespeare astutely put it: “all the world’s a stage […]” and Graham’s photographs testify to this very notion. Both the manner of characterizing the unknown and the capturing of natural light lend to an exquisitely theatrical cadre. As similar to the old masters of photography like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, Graham emphasizes the lyrical nature of light just as much as he accentuates his subjects, as seen in works such as Fulton Street, 11^th November 2009, 11.29.10 am (2009) and E53^rd Street, 12^th April 2010, 9.45.55 am (2010). Due to light, the theatrical aspect of Graham’s photographs serves as a mechanism for spotlighting not only his characters within the frame but also the interplay of details that structure the composition.

Paul Graham, Fulton Street, 11th November 2009, 11.29.10 am (2009), pigment print mounted on Dibond, 56" x 74 1/4" (diptych), © Paul Graham 2012

In what seems to be a subtextual homage to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment”, in works such as Fulton Street, 11^th November 2009, 11.29.10 am Graham elucidates the intuitive moment of capturing an instant when life lends itself to a compelling composition. In this particular diptych, we watch a girl go from strolling to sprawled out onto the street. The audience is privy to the cause of this girl’s accident, though it is clear that in that brief moment she was not. In many of his other prints, Graham renders a two or three framed story in which the audience is granted the time to comprehend the various details – many of which are speckled with both the mundane and frivolity – that occur in one second in a city. Paul Graham: The Present will show through April 21^st at Pace Gallery 545 West 22^nd Street, New York and is accompanied by a hardcover monograph published by MACK. Graham won the 2012 Hasselblad award in early March.

The Present, Installation view, courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery

Sophie T. Lvoff & Nathan T. Martin, "Untitled (Primary)", 2012. Archival pigment print on newsprint. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Sophie T. Lvoff.

One of the most informative moments in SPACES, the latest exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, is a timeline of the birth of the St. Claude art scene handwritten in black charcoal pencil on the wall.

Born out of the reinvigoration of community action in post-Katrina New Orleans, bolstered by the adrenaline shot of Prospect.1, hard working artist collectives popped up across the city in 2008, including Press Street’s Antenna Gallery, Good Children, and The Front, which aggressively show many artists from the St. Claude District. While worlds of change have occurred in the microcosm of New Orleans in the last half-decade, the genuine and honest dedication to making and showing art by these three cooperatives has remained the same.  That is why SPACES, an exhibition bringing the work of these three collectives together under one roof, is disappointing; not for the art but for the lack of curatorial inspiration that should have highlighted this positivity.

SPACES showing Dave Greber "The Front on Display", 2012; Chris Saucedo "Pencil King", 1996 and Lala Raščić in cooperation with Sophie T. Lvoff "Posing Process", 2012. Courtesy the Contemporary Arts Center, Photo: Angela Berry.

While there is a boot-strap spirit to each of these organizations, they operate with very distinct tones. This highlights the first part of the problem with this exhibition: there is no clarity of form within the show.  Artists from each organization are scattered around the room, lacking a clear tone to unite the work. The exhibition brings together disparate conversations that are often at odds with each other.  For example, Sophie Lvoff and Nate T. Martin’s Untitled (Primary) is a lush archival pigment print of a purple tavern at dusk. Sophie Lvoff’s photograph speaks to the vibrancy of early American color photography through lens of New Orleans surfaces. Writer Nate T. Martin adds a short vignette that sketches a child’s perception of driving in a rental car with her father and waiting outside a bar. The combination of text and image paints a visceral picture of innocence and vulnerability in a mundane world. Lvoff and Nathan’s work is located next to Ryan Watkins-Hughes cynical installation See St. Claude. Audiences of the show are prompted to step up to the photo, snap a shot of themselves photo booth style and email the photo to see-stclaude.tumblr.com.  At this site the artist writes: “The See St. Claude photo booth allows gallery visitors to see the St. Claude arts District from the comforts and safety of the CAC.”  This satirical approach to bringing art lovers to St. Claude directly references the insulation of certain neighborhoods in the city. The combination of the work of Watkins-Hughes and Lvoff and Nathan is certainly thought provoking, but leaves the viewer in the uncertain position of attempting to connect these two very disparate attitudes.

SPACES, showing Generic Art Solutions (G.A.S.), "Monopoly (St. Claude Ave.)", 2012. Courtesy the Artist and Jonathan Ferrara Gallery. Photo: Angela Berry.

Using a 1969 exhibition curated by Jennifer Licht at the Museum of Modern Art as the model for this exhibition, the space is developed around innovative approaches to interacting with museum space. Licht described this show as “an exhibition in which the installation becomes the actual realization of the work of art and rooms must be planned and built according to the artists’ needs, challenging the usual role of the museum.” This may be the stated intention of SPACES, however, many of the works are plopped into the CAC’s space, rather than the gallery being formatted to fit the work. Case in point, only three of the over forty artists were asked to actually make site-specific installations; Rachel Avena Brown, Bob Snead, and Jonathan Traviesa. Brown’s installation is a collaboration with Antenna Gallery artist James Goedert.  D-Cern Space brings together stop motion animation and knitted yarn.  On a large tv monitor an animation of the floor plans of each participating gallery are brought together and torn apart. Knit green squares form patterns around the tv monitor, insinuating the shape of the Large Hadron Collider.  Brown and Goedert seek to define a new space, one in which these galleries work more closely in tandem. D-Cern Space suggests what this exhibition could have been if each artist included in this show had the opportunity to install a thoughtfully prepared work.

Rachel Avena Brown & James W. Goedert "D-CERN space", 2012. Acrylic house paint, copper wire, digital stop motion, yarn. Courtesy the Artists. Photo: Angela Berry

Dave Greber’s three channel video installation The Front on Display is a wiseass satire on the perception of the artist as a rock star. All the members of The Front trade quips on this video reel of a photo shoot. Teenage boy-bandesque statements are made such as, “that’s when people are really at their best- when they are making posters” and “I’ve got some stuff to say, and it’s really important.” The sarcasm drips from the tv screen onto the floor, unfortunately drowning out other works.  Any other surrounding pieces that aren’t 100% aggressive, such as Jerald L. White’s photographs, are easily overlooked.

The cultural history of New Orleans is by nature a collective one. The galleries represented in this show come out of the tradition of working within neighborhoods to achieve goals that bureaucratic inadequacies are unable to accomplish. Antenna Gallery, The Front, and Good Children Gallery have all leveraged the resources of their members in order to build a community around visual art. CAC’s curatorial job does this achievement a disservice by creating discordant tones. I trust though that these spaces will continue to do what they do best–make visually interesting and thought provoking works.