Terry Winters, Cricket Music, 2010. Oil on linen, 88 x 112 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

Comprised within two of Matthew Mark Gallery’s Chelsea gallery spaces, Cricket Music, Tessellation Figures & Notebook presents Terry Winters’ most recent paintings and a collage series that makes a debut in the United States. In an impressive selection of 14 large-scale paintings, Winters’ patterned canvases display brilliantly pigmented tessellations in an array of lattice structures. Also working from a fascination with knot theory, the works posses a lyrical movement by virtue of meticulously layering both pictorial form and coloration.  However, with a method such as this – the multiplication of form and layering of paint – gives way to a meditative process that rather than articulates depth, which the paintings insinuate, flattens the composition and renders it irrevocably horizontal.

Terry Winters, Notebook 30, 2003-11. Collage, 11 x 8 ½ inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

The viewer is immediately confronted with works such as Tessellation Figures (6) and Tessellation Figure (7) (2011) that appear pleasant largely due to an accomplished placing of complimentary colors, which is not convincing enough for me. While Tessellation Figures (6) is vaguely reminiscent of – though in a blown-up, pixilated version – Henri Matisse’s The Goldfish (1912) or Claude Monet’s Nymphéas (1920-26), this work and others unfortunately verge on the decorative. Similar to his older works, Winters’ paintings depict a fluid intermingling of organic and scientific phenomena, where abstract form takes on the uncanny appearance of figuration. Though in works such as Tessellation Figures (4) the abstract-figurative conglomerate seem oddly unsuccessful. However, Winters does successfully develops a language of formulaic process that harnesses both the notion of the natural and the mechanical, for example in Cricket Music (2010) where he masters the fluidity of sound in abstract form.

Terry Winters, Notebook 120, 2003-11. Collage, 11 x 8 ½ inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

In the gallery’s additional space, Notebook presents a series of small-scale collages conducted from 2003–2011. As never exhibited in the States, these works reveal the sketchbook-style process essential for the artist. Made up of layered found images – many of which exist on transparencies – the Notebook collages depict the same integration of figurative and abstract, natural and mechanical that informs Winters’ paintings.

Terry Winters, Tessellation Figures 6, 2011. Oil on linen, 80 x 76 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

This array of serial works offers a likeness to Winters’ paintings, especially noting the range of color and abstraction. Found images, often from newspaper leaves, act as a backdrop upon which a printed transparency is laid. Here, Winters touches upon the very genesis of abstraction: taking two recognizable images and through a simple process of manipulation, he dictates that which becomes illegible and detached from discernable visual ques. Winters’ tessellation paintings work within the same bounds, whereby the mosaic-esque formation of elements can be recognized and indecipherable all at once.

Most noteworthy, however, is that the collage works possess a more curated sense of color placement, as many pieces are monochromatic and as a series it is better off for the lack of the vast assemblage of color. It is obvious that the Notebook series proves to be a necessary element to the Tessellation Figures and the rest of Winters’ paintings, as it provides a much-needed depth to the exhibition as a whole. Winter’s exhibition will be on view through April 14, 2012 at Matthew Marks Gallery.

Maurizio Cattelan. "All." Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. November 4, 2011 - January 22, 2012.

People seem to either love or despise Cattelan’s retrospective All, on view through January 22^nd at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Roberta Smith of The New York Times suggests, “[w]hatever their strengths, the individual works are radically decontextualized and diminished in this arrangement.” The arrangement to which Smith refers is the suspension of 128 works – the entirety of Cattelan’s artistic production (apart from two works owners refused to loan) – within Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic open rotunda. Works ranged from giant slabs of carved granite and models of dinosaur skeletons to photographs, canvases and the smallest of sculptures, subtly and unexpectedly placed throughout. Anyone looking at this exhibition cannot deny that – at the very least – it is a feat of engineering genius.

Maurizio Cattelan. "All," 2007. Marble. As installed at the New Museum, New York.

I had previously seen several of the works displayed at the Guggenheim under more “conventional” circumstances. A series of nine Carrara marble sculptures resembling bodies under sheets, All (2007) was displayed almost alone in a gallery at the New Museum for the 2010 exhibition, Skin Fruit. In this context, the work was arresting, a disquieting reflection on the history of needless and anonymous death. A similarly serious tenor surrounds the installation of Ave Maria (2007), a series of three highly realistic saluting arms projecting from the wall, at Tate Modern. Presented amidst a gallery of stunning post-Impressionist paintings and classical marble sculpture, the work functions ambiguously, disrupting our reception of the neighboring works with questions of political violence and hierarchy. Untitled (2009), a taxidermied horse on its side with a wooden sign reading “INRI” protruding from its abdomen, was included in Tate Modern’s Pop Life. In the gallery preceding Cattelan’s piece was Andrea Fraser’s controversial work in which the artist videotapes herself having sex with a collector. To immediately follow this emotionally charged experience with a giant taxidermied horse felt like a delightful respite. I was struck by the work’s humor and absurdity, an ironic play on the illustrious history of the equine in art.

Maurizio Cattelan, Errotin, le vrai lapin (a), 1995. Cibachrome, photograph by Lionel Foumeaux, plexiglass. 33.5 x 23.5 inches. Courtesy of Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin.

The unorthodox installation at the Guggenheim affords an entirely unique and site-specific experience of Cattelan’s work, making incredible use of the museum’s architecture. For an artist who touts himself a practitioner of relational aesthetics, the exhibition approach was particularly fitting. One experiences every vantage point of a given work, a perspective untenable with traditional methods of display. I found myself ascending the ramp more slowly than the way I walked through the galleries of the deKooning retrospective the day before at MoMA, intrigued by the unusual juxtapositions that revealed themselves with each step; works that may otherwise have been separated by several rooms could be seen simultaneously across the atrium, allowing the viewer to dictate what comparisons or relationships were most relevant to him or her. The physical distance this installation creates between viewer and work encouraged me to look more closely, perhaps less so at individual works, but again, more at how they related to one another. I was especially pleased by the tongue-in-cheek positioning of small-scale pieces like the tiny bug (Untitled (1995)), which was placed on the head of the elephant in Not Afraid of Love (2000). This is certainly not what people anticipate when they hear “retrospective.” Then again, expecting the norm from an artist known for his humor, irreverence and subversion seems a bit foolish.

This retrospective marks the end of Cattelan’s career as an artist. But who knows? If Barbra Streisand’s two farewell tours is any indication, we may see this artist again sooner than we think.

It’s no big shocker that we are not at our finest economic hour, but John Baldessari may have stumbled upon a solution to our money woes. All this time we have been trying to make more money, when maybe we should have focused on making bigger money.

Just look at Baldessari’s new installation towering over 18th Street in New York, an $100,000 bill board entitled ‘The First $100,000 I Ever Made.’ At 25-by-75-feet, this grand-scale gravy is big enough for everyone to enjoy, in some capacity at least.

The $100,000 dollar bill was issued in a previous attempt to assuage financial hardships during the Great Depression when 42,000 were circulated. Today they are illegal, though some have been kept in the Smithsonian Museum and Federal Reserve. But big problems need big solutions! Bring back those bills and supersize them, please.

Baldessari is known for his conceptual work toying with the relationship between narrative, language and image in art. What is he saying here? Are we in a Greater Depression? Is this the final equation of art and capital? Or was the whole ‘bill board’ pun just too good to pass up? What do you think?

Laney at 5th, Federal Building, 2011. Image on Endura transparency, unique photograph 33 1/2 x 28 1/4 inches. Courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery.

Every photographer has wished, at some point, that they could substitute the lens for their own eye. John Chiara does the next best thing: he crawls inside his homemade camera, the size of a small Uhual trailer, in order to make unique photographs. He may not be able to be the camera’s retina, but he can certainly inhabit its brain. The results are monumentally large (Chiara develops the prints in a large sewage pipe), and the intuitive process unpredictable and time-consuming. Chiara’s anachronistic imaging system maps the landscape in front of him, laying bare photography’s own inner workings in doing so.

For Fort at Lime Point,  John Chiara’s second solo exhibition in New York City at Von Lintel Gallery,  the San Francisco based photographer has crafted some of his most subtle and uneasy work to date. Chiara has long chartered the sublimity of nature and its sometimes uneasy cohabitation with the structures upon its surface; this body of work, however, is anchored to a site of specific historical gravity.

Funston at Cascade, 2011. Image on Ilfochrome paper, unique photograph 33 1/4 x 28 1/4 inches. Courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery.

Fort Lime Point is a little known military base, established on the San Francisco Bay during the Civil War. However, due to a lengthy litigation, the military was unable to begin excavating the site until a year after the war was over, in 1866. They did so by leveling the found with 24,000 pounds of gunpowder, attempting the level a base at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Rubble still exists there, left over from the blast over a century ago. The site is a reminder not only of extreme intervention with natural resources, but a failed attempt at creating a military defense base. It is a telling choice of location, and one that reflects back nicely on Chiara’s medium and process; this site, like the haunting photographs that depict it (and neighboring areas) in this show, is a waking memory of its own flawed history. And like the images, the place decays and morphs in front of our eyes.

Bunker Road at Coastal Trail, Fort Barry Range (Right), 2011. Image on Ilfochrome paper, unique photograph 33 1/4 x 28 3/4 inches. Courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery.

Oak at 4th, Federal Building, 2011. Image on Endura transparency, unique photograph 32 1/2 x 28 inches. Courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery.

The images are square, and slightly smaller than I’ve seen Chiara work in the past — both effects are welcome, and passively eerie. Many of the photographs are also inverted, which also add to their ghostliness and sense of self containment. Chiara has allowed for more mistakes and imperfections to abstract and obfuscate (a third of his image has been exposed and is thereby blank in Starr King: Coral: Beacon), and the results are, at points, painterly. In the age of high resolution, it is becoming hard to imagine that a photograph could record so subjectively.

Chiara reminds us of the simultaneous complexities and profound simplicity of the photograph process. It is a box and a lens. But, by pairing it with a site of historical consequence (or non-consequence, as the case may be), it is also the keeper of our memories made manifest.

Fort at Lime Point will be on view at Von Lintel Gallery through January 7th, 2012. Chiara’s work is also on view at Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco through December, 16th, as part of the exhibition HERE. Pier 24 Photography recently released a video featuring Chiara discussing his recent works and unique photographic process.

Installation View, Greater LA.

Is this a throwdown? It’s tempting to think so, since the title, Greater LA, is obviously a riff on the seminal P.S.1 survey Greater New York, and is installed in the same type of beat-up SoHo loft where major New York art history went down in the 1960s and ‘70s. But don’t get too excited. Any sense of bi-coastal competition erodes  quickly when you realize that many of the artists on view are already well-represented and accepted commodities here in New York.  Also, unlike Greater New York, which was a wild, not-for-profit showcase of up-and-comers, Greater LA is a commercial show and there really isn’t too much here that can’t be seen during a typical afternoon in Chelsea or the Lower East Side. So stop frontin’, y’all.

Alex Israel, Property, 2011.

If it were a throwdown, however, Sterling Ruby would be in the heavyweight class. With a group of stacked rectilinear forms, he adds color, a sense of the handmade, and illusion to minimalism’s airtight vocabulary.  Lofts like these have always been the perfect setting for minimal forms, and Ruby’s piece dominates a show that suffers from too many freestanding walls and too large a roster of artists. Token appearances by highly saleable artists (Mark Grotjahn works on paper, anyone?) give the show an art fair vibe that renders the whole “snapshot of exciting new LA art right now” thing nearly laughable.  A handful of great pieces amidst acres of empty loft space would have been way more effective.

Installation View, Greater LA.

Alex Israel’s Property, however, provides a sophisticated moment. A Grecian figure stands in front of a group of lockers, as if you had accidently stumbled into the employee lounge at the Getty. This pairs well with Jonas Wood’s chunky paintings of Grecian urns.  Wood, who lives in Los Angeles but grew up in Boston, went to school in St. Louis, and already has a strong presence in New York, also seems out of place here. He represents the sort of omni-local artist who pervades today’s scene, the type that makes it hard to discern any real conceptual or aesthetic differences between Los Angeles and New York.

Personally, I would have loved to see more space devoted to artists who are not represented by New York galleries, to get at what, if anything, really distinguishes the two cities’ art ideologies. But I suppose you can’t blame the curators for playing it a little safe and including their bankable stars. Their kitchen sink approach and all-over-the-place-career-wise roster seems to say that no matter where you set up your studio, every artist stills wants and needs to show in New York. We throw down harder, and Los Angeles knows it. Otherwise, they would have just had the show there.

FOLKERT DE JONG The Balance: Trader's Deal 9, (detail) 2010 Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam Photo: Jason Mandella Copyright the artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

Michael Tomeo: I’m really into the Trader’s Deal pieces. From the moment we learn about it in grade school, Americans laugh at how foolish native people were to sell the island of Manhattan for a bunch of beads. You make the pitch made to the native people seem goofily transparent and demeaning, like some sort of song and dance.  But there’s also an oddly hypnotic quality in the stares of the offerers. It’s like they’re half street hustler, half visionary. Could you elaborate on these?

Folkert de Jong: The Trader’s Deal pieces are about unfair deals, profiteering, colonialism and imperialism. I based the character on the monument for Peter de Minuit, the Dutchman who purchased Manhattan for beads and mirrors. The figures in the artwork are all copies from one character…a 16th/17th century trader, that I created out of many figures from history: The painting “The Nightwatch” by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, and characters such as Pedro de Alvarado, Peter de Minuit and Hernan Cortes. All the figures in the artwork are copies made from one mould, from one single character. The clones are trading with themselves, their own kind, ripping off each other and facing their destiny; self-destruction.

FOLKERT DE JONG: Operation Harmony, James Cohan Gallery, 2011 (exhibition view) Photo: Jason Mandella Copyright the artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

MT: Coming from the Netherlands, were you taught a different view on the di Minuit transaction than children in the U.S. are?

FdJ: Well, if you look at the propaganda machine that promoted the 400 years Dutch-New York connection, I would say that still not much has changed. The Dutch seem to be very proud of their historical conquests. For me as a kid growing up here, they are like adventurous stories, with costumed characters as in Hook and Peter Pan. What disturbs me most is the interference of governments and the Royal Families in the manipulation of the historical myths. But I guess that is what happens with all nations, if you can change the cause of history into your own advantage, it simply becomes more profitable.

MT: What’s the symbolism behind the cubes and other polygons in your work? The people in the Trader’s Deal pieces offer strings of them and the half figure in Hail the One is sort of crushed by one.

FdJ: The shapes are references to dices, or mathematical forms. I am interested in the element of chance. How science has been always trying to simplify natural processes, and how uncontrollable nature actually can be.

FOLKERT DE JONG: Operation Harmony, James Cohan Gallery, 2011 (exhibition view) Photo: Jason Mandella Copyright the artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

MT: You often mix colonial imagery with contemporary objects and you combine traditional sculptural techniques with industrial materials. Is there a “those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it” sense of moralism at play here?

FdJ: In a way, yes. I believe that there are timeless natural cycles. The costumes and setting looks different every time, but the people and their behavior remains the same.

FOLKERT DE JONG Operation Harmony, 2008 Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, pearls 340 X 700 X 230 cm Photo: Jason Mandella Copyright the artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

MT: What inspired Operation Harmony? In part, I’m getting a Goya’s Los Caprichos for the 21st century vibe…

FdJ: Yes, I am fascinated about the role of Goya as an artist reflecting upon his own time. There is a timelessness in his work that reflects upon the fear, and fascination for human nature at work.

MT: I love the works on paper in this show. Often incorporating text, they have more of an unburdened sense of humor than the sculptures.  How does your mindset change when making the drawings?

FdJ: Thank you. The drawings are coming more out of an uncontrolled stream of thoughts, flowing out on the paper, telling thing about my fascinations…more uncut maybe?

FOLKERT DE JONG The DeWitt Bodies, 2007 Marker on paper 16 1/2 X 23 1/2 inches Photo: Jason Mandella Copyright the artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

MT: Do you see your sculptures as monuments of sorts?

FdJ: Not deliberately, but there is a strong reference to the powerful meaning and function of monuments in my work for sure. Maybe they’re monuments for the moral subjects that are unspoken around the glory and heroic and fame of our history and time?

Folkert de Jong’s work can also be seen in Cryptic: The Use of Allegory in Contemporary Art with a Master Class from Goya, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, from May 20^th to August 14^th, and Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture, The Saatchi Gallery, London from May 27^th to October 16^th.

The Keys, 2010, 150 x 370 cm

Stitching together digital, sculptural and natural ephemera, Israeli artist Ilit Azoulay makes photographs that hover between the miniature and the gigantic. She gathers small abstract accretions of wire, plastic, shells or stone that have been cast aside, left in the shadowed hollows of street corners and alleyways. These finds are organized along with old pictures into groupings that follow the loose grids of shelves, boxes and files. At this stage, the work resembles a mad Cartesian impulse to make order out of disorder, creating an archive of objects endowed with an aura, despite their seeming inconsequence.

Tree for too one, 2010 (detail)

As Azoulay painstakingly photographs each image and its ground, this archaeology of knowledge is fueled by an archive fever that goes beyond the mere physicality of order. Each object, each scrap of torn weathered paper, and each discrete portion of the ground on which they sit is documented, resized and pieced together to create a new landscape in which scale and perspective are modified into an aggregate of visual information.

Tree for too one, 2010, 150 x 500 cm

Like other contemporary artists such as Daniel Lefcourt, Leslie Hewitt, and Ruth Van Beek, Azoulay’s predilection is toward using photography as a method to unpack the performative qualities of an archive. In this sense, the photograph foregrounds its potential to act as both a document and as a picture of the structure through which these documents are understood. We are lulled into a belief of fact while constantly jolted awake, reminding ourselves that these facts are constructed pieces of a larger story.

Telegram 24, 2010, 100 x 160 cm

Azoulay, who recently received her MFA from the Bezalel Academy in Tel Aviv, at once affirms and denies any easily essentialized connections between the archiving impulse and her national identity. Israel is a country that recognizes the deep relationship between archaeology and national memory, as a result there is a modernist shrine in Jerusalem that houses the dead sea scrolls. Archive fever also drives the volumes of holocaust survivor testimonies at Yad Vashem. But because of the everyday materials that seem to have no overt historical value or political symbology, Azloulay leans more on the transnational impulse to picture an archive of the everyday. Her work is a picture of a picture, an image of an idea that resists framing, because it is a frame itself.

Azoulay’s upcoming exhibition at Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York City opens June 23, 2011.

Cosima von Bonin and Moritz von Oswald, The Juxtaposition of Nothings, Installation View.

This show reminds me of the time I danced for hours at a club in Cologne, caught part of an arthouse film next door, and then somehow ended up at a bar where a bunch of people I didn’t know were drinking like it was the end of the earth. Ok, so that never happened. But I feel like Cosima von Bonin’s current show, The Juxtaposition of Nothings at Friedrich Petzel is a close approximation of that experience.

Cosima von Bonin and Moritz von Oswald, The Juxtaposition of Nothings, Installation View.

Von Bonin has always balanced her killer soft sculptures and fabric wall pieces with a deep investment in context and place-making. At Petzel, in collaboration with musician Moritz von Oswald, the focus is less on individual works and more on a sort of behind the stage/back alley voyeuristic adventure where the spectators are exhausted and drunk with cultural consumption. A puppy lies limp, arms laid out flat, staring at a video on loop. A floppy eared pimp-like bunny character with an eye patch appears to have found a friend in a bright red dog.  Even the light post is out for a smoke, as this show is at once chuckle-worthy and noir.

Cosima von Bonin and Moritz von Oswald, The Juxtaposition of Nothings, Installation View.

Viewers accustomed to the almost clinical reimagining of minimalist form in Von Bonin’s previous work might be put off by the glut of audio and video equipment on display here. But the sound is sharp and deployed with precision.  Each tightly contained audio zone adds a different layer to the show as pulsating dance beats blend into more spaced out jams. Moving around the gallery, you become part of the orchestration, as most of the animal sculptures are either on a sound stage, absorbing a video, or emitting a sound track of their own.

Cosima von Bonin and Moritz von Oswald, The Juxtaposition of Nothings, Installation View.

The back room seems to unwind from the activity of the main gallery like a club that lets out into the street at the end of the night. Sophisticated cardboard sculptures of a mailbox, café signage and a street lamp hang on the wall. A slumped over bloodied bird sits alone on a bleacher—here, the alienation of today’s technological self-absorption sets in.  While this theme isn’t terribly new (think Kraftwerk, Radiohead, or Kanye), von Bonin and von Oswald play the space between the handmade and the machined perfectly. While a lot of technological collaborations seem to blast off with an über-corny futuristic vision, the artists here spare us the space travel allusions.  The characters in this little drama are too busy livin’ to know that they don’t have a future anyway.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marilyn Minter, Little Girls #3, 1987. Enamel on canvas. Two panels. © Marilyn Minter Courtesy Team Gallery

Appropriation, commodification, and the body are some themes from the ’80s art-world discourse that artist Marilyn Minter embraced in her paintings from that time period, a selection of which comprise a new exhibit at New York’s Team Gallery. The pieces on display are taken from two bodies of work, Minter’s Big Girls/Little Girls series and her Porn Grids, a representation of “money shots” from porn flicks. Minter’s ben-day dot images on enamel and metal surfaces of glamorous women, prim girls, and erect penises are suffused with an undercurrent of dark optimism. While her images were controversial when first shown in the mid-to-late ’80s, her intent was to explore the pro-sex feminism that was just beginning to take shape earlier in the decade. Click through for a slideshow of some of her best raunchy, glam, and always rigorous output.

Click here to view more images.

Karen Kilimnik, Installation view at 303 Gallery, New York 2011.

Karen Kilimnik’s current show at 303 Gallery in Chelsea is refreshingly spare and conceptually tight. Centered on a multimedia installation from 1989 titled The Hellfire Club Episode of the Avengers, the show also includes a few drawings from the late ‘80s and a handful of paintings and photographs from 2011. The disparate elements on view gel to create a sort of mini-opera, complete with a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Right before you can scream “kitsch!” the show stakes the claim that performing arts-style drama is relevant in contemporary fine art, and it’s utterly convincing (unless you hate Sofia Coppola and Black Swan, then don’t bother, and p.s. you’re boring).

Karen Kilimnik, Master Hare, 3rd Lord Grantham 2011.

Carrying much of the dramatic weight here is the audio track in the Avengers installation. Re-mastered to be louder and clearer than the original, the track includes snippets of Madonna, Haydn, and the Rolling Stones, among others. It weaves its way into your experience, tying it in with a mood that could be described as “retro-sinister.” Apparently, the installation is based on a particularly saucy and controversial episode of the British cult classic spy TV series by the same name — but you don’t really need to know that to be drawn into the work. Unlike many installations that still feature the stultifying Bill Viola “art hum,” (a.k.a. pretentiously creepy mouth breathing sounds), Kilimnik understands the power of a good soundtrack. The audio, which is at turns catchy, ambient and suspenseful, lends a bit of drama to a trio of fairly pedestrian full moon photos, and overall imbues the show with a dynamic narrative that would otherwise be absent.

Karen Kilimnik, The Hellfire Club episode of the Avengers, 1989, mixed media Installation view at 303 Gallery, New York, 2011

The simplistic term “Scatter Art”, for which Kilimnik became known at the outset of her career, fails to describe how varied and formally acute The Hellfire Club Episode of the Avengers really is. Despite the staging and use of prop-like materials, Kilimnik knows how to throw stuff around in a way that feels way more considered than clusterfucked.  For instance, a faint white chalk drawing of an Edwardian manor on black paper ever-so-gently peels away from the black wall. A black velvet curtain on the same wall leads to nowhere, casually adding an unseen dimension.  Plastic axes and Halloween-grade cobwebs are manipulated in a way that transcends a haunted house aesthetic without stripping them of their store-bought oomph.  Although it might sound corny, a group of photos, Xeroxes, empty picture frames and shards of glass flesh out what is an immersive theatrical experience.

Karen Kilimnik, The Family in Scotland, 2011.

Few artists assimilate such disparate personal fetishes into their art as seamlessly as Kilimnik does.  In any given piece, she implicates widespread historical eras, painterly techniques, and psychological states.  The Ragamuffin of Kiddington Hall is as fey and dashing as any Fragonard, but with a touch of Brit rock attitude. Her drawings, which take their cues from advertising and employ a speedy illustrative touch, are impossible to date. They have a ‘60s vibe that looks simultaneously current, yet they were actually made in 1989.  Kilimnik’s signature knack for turning animal portraits into fetching character studies is also present in dog and cat paintings that are both fragile and endearing.

Karen Kilimnik, entre acte photo, 2011.

In essence, this show seems to be about the fleeting nature of… well, nature. It’s almost like if you were to stare at some of the works too long, they might dash off the wall or fade away like a passing trend. Kilimnik can be equally hard to pin down. According to the current issue of Interview magazine, she recently relocated to Montana from her longtime home in the Philadelphia suburbs. Who knows, maybe this accounts for the spaciousness of the installation. A full moon photo called My Walk in the Woods at Night underscores the noir vibe that prevails in this show, in lieu of her usual regally saccharine interior worlds. This time we’re outside, sort of… under the chandelier-lit night sky.

Untitled (Montanas), Gabriel Kuri (2011).

Armory Arts Week has become an annual event held March 3rd through 6th, centered on The Armory Show.  Competing venues have multiplied throughout the city of New York, including The Art Show, Pulse, Scope, Independent, Verge (Art Brooklyn), Moving Image, Red Dot and Fountain.  Headlining these fairs, The Armory Show 2011 continued its dual focus on both modern and contemporary art with Pier 92 focusing on the 20th century and Pier 94 accommodating nearly two hundred contemporary art exhibitors.  The fair’s limited program included Armory Focus:  Latin America, comprised of eighteen galleries highlighting Latin America’s contribution to contemporary visual art.  The Armory’s annual commission to create a visual identity for the fair went to Mexican-born conceptual artist Gabriel Kuri.  Also associated with the fair were Art Projx Cinema and Volta NY, a fair which presents solo artist booths in a smaller format.

DailyServing brings its readers highlights from The Armory Show and Volta NY.

Subway (2010), © Leandro Erlich, Courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, NY

The Armory Show: Sean Kelly Gallery

Sean Kelly Gallery in New York presented Leandro Erlich‘s Subway (2010), which placed a sterilized version of New York’s urban transit reality within The Armory Show.  It struck an apt contextual note – much like his piece, The Boat, did during Art Basel Miami Beach 2010.  Both works form part of Erlich’s video window series and consist of an architectural element combined with video.

For Subway, Erlich sets a life-sized stainless steel door within a wall and positions video as window into a subway car.  The video becomes a realistic extension of the architecture and evokes great depth to create the illusion of looking ‘through’ it extending into the distance.  Three passengers sit in the immediate car, avoiding eye contact and lost in their own thoughts.  The figures are quiet and self-contained much like the video throughout its brief (1 min. 30 sec.) loop.  The light changes as the subway bumps and shakes along its track. Renaissance paintings offered a window into another world; in a similar way, Erlich uses the moving image to depict an imagined, realistic 21st century environment.

Last Meal on Death Row 'William Joseph Kitchens' (2010), Courtesy the artist and Blaine|Southern Gallery, London.

The Armory Show: Blain|Southern Gallery

Blain|Southern Gallery in London filled their booth with a selection of work, including Mat Collishaw‘s series of C-prints, Last Meal on Deathrow.  In this haunting fact-based series, Collishaw depicts the last meals requested by recently executed American death row inmates.  Drawing largely from the state of Texas and Jacquelyn Black’s documentation in Last Meal, Collishaw examines the ritual of eating before execution in a quiet, somber way.

Content is secondary upon first viewing one of these prints.  One is initially drawn in by an aesthetically pleasing arrangement of food, silver and glass – all of which was cooked and prepared by the artist.  The viewer is lulled by an apparently reticent image before reading the caption and learning of the context.  Collishaw’s series is visually inspired by Flemish Baroque still lifes.  Such a visual influence is evident in the dark backgrounds and supporting surfaces, which provide contrast for illuminated objects.  Just as layered meaning exists within the Baroque still life, the seemingly innocuous prepared food serves to reveal deeper meaning about the societies and individuals they reference.

Trees of 40 Fruit (2009-2011), Sam Van Aken, Photo: Bill Orcutt, Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY.

The Armory Show: Ronald Feldman Fine Arts

Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, NY exhibited a solo installation by artist Sam Van Aken featuring his ongoing New Eden project, which filled the booth with vegetation. New Eden features a genetically altered orchard of trees or natural ‘sculptures’ that have been manipulated by the artist and painstakingly grafted to bear peach, plum, nectarine and apricot fruits.  Branches of blossoms on each tree indicate the presence of these disparate elements.  Part of the installation were synthetic mutations of grafted fruits and a display stand with hybrid vegetable seed starters.  Along the walls, prints of mixed seed packets and seed packet collages completed the booth.

While the installation initially seems to emphasize the unexpected aesthetic pleasure of genetic modification, its presence within the gallery space is intended to raise the profile of increasing scientific infringement on the natural world.  Van Aken starts a critical dialogue about genetic modification, which he views as futile.  As the artist told Art Newspaper ‘any change that you make is temporary’.  Mother nature proves stronger in the end and ultimately rejects human interference.

Cartografia Interior # 35, Courtesy the artist and Espaivisor-Visor Gallery.

Volta NY: Espaivisor-Visor Gallery
Espaivisor-Visor Gallery in Valencia, Spain exhibited new and recent work from the series Cartografia Interior by artist Tatiana Parcero.  In this series, Parcero redirects the contemporary trend of imagined geographic mapping onto the body in order to position it ‘in relation to time and place, science and thought’ further indicating that the body is ‘the container that holds everything’ including history, culture, and geography.

The ancient images appear like tattoos at first glance, which underscores Parcero’s view that the historical thoughts contained in the images are indelibly linked to the body.  The tattoo-like writings and drawings are taken from extensive research.  The artist has collected and photographed documents including pre-Columbian codices, ancient maps, cosmological charts, and anatomical engravings.  Parcero then printed her findings onto transparent acetate and layered them over intimate, corresponding photographic images of her body.  The ancient world and the artist’s own flesh visually bind and are re-imagined as one.

Winter Dreams - Table, courtesy the artist and MA2 Gallery.

Volta NY:  MA2 Gallery

MA2 Gallery displayed new and recent work by Ken Matsubara, which was recently part of Winter Dreams, a February solo show at the Tokyo gallery.  Matsubara’s Winter Dreams series is defined by his continued exploration of memory as both a collective and personal phenomenon.

MA2 Gallery’s booth was filled with small-scale mixed media works that invited intimate viewing.  At first glance, many of the objects could be readily encountered in the everyday world.  Purposefully weathered, framed shadow boxes and mirror boxes mysteriously presented moving images of simple motifs.  In Winter Dreams – Table, a ghostly, empty table covered by a white table cloth stands alone and spins.  Likewise, Winter Dreams – Cloud reveals an emanating cloud of smoke beneath a faded, silvered surface.  The artist’s emphasis on mirrors, in the form of aged, reflective surfaces points to the essence of memory as it is formed by the often hazy impression of experiences and dreams on our consciousness.  The open-ended nature of the images allowed them to be experienced by many viewers.  Finally, in Bottom of Buddha’s Hands, two shiny hands holding a crystal ball connect the concept of memory to humanity’s beginnings.

FORCE OF FAILURE: DailyServing’s latest week-long series

Lynda Benglis, Phantom, 1971.

Lynda Benglis is a fearless artist. She added a much-needed sense of humor to first-generation feminism and imbued late 1960s/early ‘70s Post-Minimal sculpture with an even more needed sense of color. But a lot of her work is kind of awful. Her legendary status as an artist who went toe-to-toe with the biggest male egos in the New York art world is well deserved, and I’ll take her slumping blobs of polyurethane as examples of entropy in sculpture over Robert Smithson’s lame mirrors stuck in dirt any day. The nearly uniform praise for her current retrospective at the New Museum, however, feels like it’s based more on her historical status than on the work itself.

Lynda Benglis, Installation View, New Museum, 2011. Photo by Benoit Pailley.

The Fallen Paintings (Benglis’ signature poured latex floor pieces) are by far the best in show. Slabs of poured paint yield to gravity as they diffuse Minimalism’s rigid structure with Colorfield’s floating orbs and Jackson Pollock’s subconscious process. These works call to mind a sophisticated sense of order, like Merce Cunningham’s low center of gravity choreography.  However, the chicken wire, glitter, paint and plaster construction of the wall pieces, which was probably shocking in the ‘70s, just seems amateurish now. They don’t extend the properties of the material to anywhere near the same degree that the floor works do. They look good in reproduction, but in person they disappoint.

Lynda Benglis, Sparkle Knot V, 1972

As you move forward chronologically, Benglis’ work begins to reference the body in increasingly flat-footed ways and her forms get more cheesily symbolic. The Peacock Series from the late ‘70s/early ‘80s consists of vaguely vaginal decorated fans hung on the wall. Chiron, from 2009, is a big glowing pink egg. Even Phantom, five dramatic glow-in-the-dark dripping mountains (shown here for the first time since 1971) give off a distinct Led Zeppelin “Houses of the Holy” vibe. They’re cool in a geeky sort of way, but by the time I got to Primary Structures, (Paula’s Props), a room-sized installation of blue velvet drapes, some fake trees and Greek columns, I began to question Benglis’ taste for real.

Lynda Benglis, Installation View of Primary Structures, (Paula’s Props), New Museum, 2011. Photo by Benoit Pailley.

Where she completely kicks ass, however, is in her randy sense of iconic self-promotion. The photos of her at work on her floor pieces are classics, and the notorious advertisement from the November 1974 issue of Artforum, where she appears nude with slicked back hair holding a dildo between her legs, is still shockingly strong. Even though it’s been written about ad nauseum and reproduced a zillion times, it still packs a punch in person. Shot from below, Benglis appears as monumental as Michelangelo’s David and her image turns about 2,000 years of male-dominated Western Art History on its head. Set against a stark black rectangle, it’s as if Benglis is literally turning the page on Minimalism’s colorless form and gender hierarchy in the most in-your-face way possible. So what if feminists at the time hated it—Benglis was likely the first female artist to consciously construct a heroic artistic persona, and that took bigger balls than just throwing a vaginal reference or two into her work.

Centerfold by Lynda Benglis published in Artforum magazine, 1974.

If many of her wall sculptures don’t quite live up to her outsized rep, there are videos and Polaroids on display that certainly do. The Amazing Bow-Wow, 1976, is an uncannily watchable short film about a hermaphroditic human-sized dog that enters into a fateful love triangle full of jealousy and lust. It’s as unflinchingly gutsy as any Paul McCarthy, but with way more heart. Displayed next to the video is a series of Polaroids called Secrets that combine pornish images of Benglis and Robert Morris with close-ups of flowers. Here, the collusion between nature, sex and overlapping bodies is as palpable as it is in the floor sculptures. Rarely exhibited, the photos’ old wooden frames have the vibe of pre-boutique-era SoHo. Nostalgic art relic nerds, get ready.

Lynda Benglis, Advertisement from Artforum magazine, April 1974.

All of Benglis’ work might not stand the test of time. She’s like a classic rock band that put out three or four great albums with timeless cover art. Like a lot of those bands, Benglis synthed out in the ‘80s and never quite recovered, but it doesn’t matter. The lesson here is that she full-on embraced failure in her work, through both an entropic use of materials and by taking risks that few artists today would even consider. For all of her posturing and dildo-ing around, she still feels human and extremely relatable, and she’s more than paid her dues. Every New Yorker knows that she’s one of ours, so if she makes criminally bad art, it’s cool. We just look the other way.

Josh Smith, Installation View.

If, on some level, art really is about what you can get away with, then Josh Smith, known mainly for painting his name over and over, has been robbing us blind for years.  Perhaps he senses that the gig is up on the name paintings because his current show introduces leaves, fish, bugs and butterflies, as well as an impressive foray into sculpture.  It seems as if his transformation from boy-obsessing-over-his-name to kid-turning-over-rocks-in-search-of-lizards is nearly complete. Watch out, folks! Next thing you know, he’ll be asking to borrow the car.

Josh Smith, Untitled, 2010.

There’s so much natural history museum style art out there—taxadermic specimens, hyper-realistic fake plants, and 19^th-century illustration look-a-likes—yet Smith manages to stay in the realm of, for lack of a better term, art. This is mostly due to his messy mash-up of production techniques like silk screening, ink-jet printing, and direct painting.  None of this is especially new, however, and many of the paintings at Luhring Augustine either juxtapose retro advertising with accidental brushwork à la Albert Oehlen or evoke the swashbuckling bravado of George Baselitz.  But with all of the autumnal decay on view, there’s a somewhat solemn tone to the show. It feels like new territory for Smith and goes well with his trademark sense of experimental play.

Josh Smith, Untitled, 2010.

Ever since his installation/assemblage at the New Museum’s Unmonumental in 2007, it’s been clear that Smith can hold down a large expanse of wall.  And his current show has a fat dose of theatricality to it, which I like. Hung floor-to-ceiling with standard-sized paintings, the back room is awesome. Previous shows of Smith’s were linearly installed, each painting equidistant from the others, making it tough not to focus on weak links in the chain. There’s strength in numbers in the current show, as individual works work together to form a coherent whole. The Stop Sign paintings, for example, probably wouldn’t knock your socks off by themselves (actually, they’d suck), but as resting spots in a vast conglomeration, they do the trick.

Josh Smith, Installation View.

But it’s Smith’s sculptures that really take the cake here. Basically, they’re stages lit with clamp lights and adorned with blunt but effective name paintings as backdrops.  There’s nothing super fancy about them, and like the rest of Smith’s best work, they contain an attractive dose of nonchalance. You feel the urge to clamber aboard, yet I don’t think Smith is going for the performative or relational thing. He knows that’s played out. Their precedents include John Bock’s plywood platforms and basically everything by Rirkrit Tiravanija, but the mindframe of Smith’s sculptures is more photographic than physical. You can’t help but imagine your foto-booth experience with his name as the backdrop. But the intimation of use is much more alluring than actually touching these things. Calling them Stage Paintings, Smith might be toying with the idea of theatrical backdrop or just exploring a painting off the stretcher. Either way, he’s deviating from his norm, which is good.

Josh Smith, Untitled, 2010.

As a matter of fact, this show marks a turning point for Smith, where subject matter might actually have, um… weight. Regardless, what it all comes down to is whether or not you like his style. Obsessiveness is often an excuse for artistic legitimacy, and Smith certainly benefits from this. But it’s good to see that he can dig beneath the surface a bit without losing himself in the process, a.k.a. you can alter, erase, or obliterate it, but as long as you scrawl your name really big on it, it’s still yours.