In the Archives: Lowell Boyers

Red Boat, White Paint, Still Travelling, 2010

Going through my drafts archives, I found this unposted image of a Lowell Boyer's painting. More of the artist's mixed media works on paper and canvas can be found on his website, all a bit phantasmagorical, beautiful layered, even decorative like a China pattern gone wrong. I believe I saw this at the Von Lintel Gallery's booth at an art fair last year...but much like the figures in these works, the memory is unclear.

Christian Marclay's The Clock

I stood in line the next to last day that Christian Marclay's The Clock was screening at Lincoln Center, and I really lucked out. The line was only 2 and half hours. My friend from Georgia was suitably impressed by the lengths New Yorkers will go to for an experiential art film.

The film consists of thousands of spliced clips from cinema, put together so that each minute is filled with references to that minute, with clocks and watches, which is then played on that minute of the day, in a 24-hour cycle. The clips were largely English and French films, old black and white, last year's blockbusters, and some b-cinema with a few Asian or Swedish film clips thrown in.

Remarkably, what ought to have been a disjointed, jarring experience by the very nature of it proceeded with some degree of flow and linearity, largely owing to the great sounds transitions, which were carefully managed. This makes sense; the person ahead of me in line shared some of the artist's early sound work in the 80s. He spliced mechanically rather than digitally then.



I saw 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm, always hyperaware of the time. The clips made me wonder "Is this what people do a 6:30? Miss trains? And do they eat soup at 8 o'clock? Is this life?" I enjoyed recognizing the clips. Immediately one knows so much even in never-before-seen clips--who the protagonist is, roughly when it was filmed, the mood of the piece. It's remarkable and would create a magnifiscent time capsule for someone to discover in 1,000 years, so much of our common consciousness is bound up in it.

I enjoyed, or rather disenjoyed, the continual interruption of the narrative, which would begin to drag you in only to end. It harasses the viewer with his status as a viewer, never letting him forget what and where he is. Or, of course, when it is.



And naturally everything you can think to say about the nature or passage of time is relevant to this piece which makes you hyperaware of the passage of time as you live it.

Also, see twitter for a variety of bad or better puns and jokes on the meta-ness of having to wait for hours to see this film.

Johannes Girardoni: Print in Yellow

Johannes Girardoni's pieces at Tomlinson Kong at Pulse struck me as being incredibly contemporary and well executed. I don't even really go in for this sort of flat, Baldessari-like stuff.

Yet somehow I especially like this print in yellow.

Exposed Icon #4, 2011, c-print with commercial paint mounted on aluminum, 60 x 40"

Exposed Icon 50, Exposed Icon #42, Exposed Icon #42, 2011, c-prints with commercial paints mounted on aluminum

Box o' Yarn at Pulse

Chris Duncan, Halsey Mckay Gallery at Pulse

So much yarn and string lately, including at Pulse, and so in lieu of a proper post consider this my summary.

Ugo Rondinone's spirit level

Sprawling over 2 gallery spaces and featuring the works of 19 artists, artist Ugo Rondinone curated "the spirit level," a beautiful show that ended April 21st. Lots and lots of pictures of the installation below. This show exemplified great curation to me. The works keyed off each other beautifully, and the environment itself became a work of art, as it were. There's a nice review of it in the New York Times here.

Above and below is the entrance to the 24th Street Gladstone gallery, with Ann Craven’s large, dark paintings on the wall and Latifa Echakhch’s “Frames”, rectangular rugs with the centers cut out, on the floor. 

Andrew Lord's ceramic vessels

Saul Fletcher’s tiny quiet Polaroids

Jay DeFeo’s charcoal drawings

 

Sarah Lucas's penises

Bronze reclining nudes by Hans Josephsohn, canvas pyramids by Alan Shields, and a mural-sized suite of Amy Granat’s photograms of flowers.

In the 21st street gallery, the lower room held Peter Buggenhout’s enormous, dust-covered sculptures.

Sam Gilliam’s “Wall Cascade” and “Close to Trees,” two equally huge swaths of fabric hung from the walls.

Joe Bradley's star canvases.

Hans Schärer. Love the teeth so much.

Upstairs room at the 21st St. gallery was filled with Vienna actionist Rudolf Schwarzkogler's tortured photograghs alongside Al Hansen’s cigarette-butt Venus torsos on panels.

 

The Rare Graffiti Tree and Other Urban Species from photographer Mitch Epstein

Photographer Mitch Epstein's work at up Sikkema Jenkins through this past weekend couldn't come at a better time. Outside, the first really Spring (or perhaps Summer?) weather had set the trees in bloom, and inside Epstein's homage to New York was similarly alush.

Epstein spent a year photographing the great trees of New York city (as you can see in the detail below NYC boasts the rare urban Graffiti Tree species). The trees, rather than people or buildings, become the focus of the shots.

Unfortunately the trees seem to be trying to kill me right now. All the blooming means seasonal allergies are here, and I am sneezing my head off. Find more information about the show here and more information about Epstein on his website http://www.mitchepstein.net/.

Cloud Maker Berndnaut Smilde

Nimbus II, 2012

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde has been creating clouds! (This gets a exclamation point because I love these in a very geeky way.) These temporary, artfully lighted bits of smoke and moisture are installations that the artist produced first in 2010 and earlier this year. In an statement about Nimbus (2010), the artist said: 

On the one hand I wanted to create an ominous situation. You could see the cloud as a sign of misfortune. You could also read it as an element out of the Dutch landscape paintings in a physical form in a classical museum hall. At the same time I wanted to make (for once) a very clear image, an almost cliché and cartoon like visualisation of having bad luck: “Indeed, there nothing here and bullocks, it’s starting to rain!” -Interview with Smilde.

Watch Nimbus II in action in this video to see how the artist prepares and sets off the cloud in the above photo. More of the Smilde's work can be found on his website.

Nimbus, 2010

Bottle caps, paintbrushes, and nails: Will Ryman

 

Will Ryman, of roses fame, had new work up at Paul Kasmin in Chelsea in a show that just ended. My first impression as I walked into the gallery of the large figure wrapping around the room was that it was like a large Buddha in a temple. However, this large plaster head doesn't look nearly as serene, his blue t-shirt is surfaced with sneakers, and his glittering arms are made of bottle caps. Lots and lots of bottle caps. Everyman is like a Bart Simpson version of the Buddha.

Going under the statue's head, the viewer walks into a new environment, a labyrinth created with high vertical stacks of paintbrushes. Like the shoes and bottle caps, there are some great textures being created here. I wish these environments came through better in photographs. The windings go nowhere in particular and turn you back around to the sleeping (dying?) figure in the next gallery.

Around the corner, a third new work by Ryman, one more suited the public display like his roses were, presides over Kasmin's new exhibition space. Bird is made up of real and fabricated steel nails, some of them enormous.

I became more than a little fascinated by the size of the nails, and the hollow interior of the structure. The materials Ryman uses in all these installations never lose their original identity, the way the materials used by Tara Donovan do. Instead, their existence as bottle caps or paintbrushes or nails never gets lost even as through multiplication and shaping they take new, bigger forms.

Marilyn [sic] Monroe according to Philippe Parreno

Marilyn Monroe, in preparation of a spiritual tension (5 parts) is a new work by Phillipe Parreno that was on view at the Armory at the Pilar Corrias Gallery. I typically don't think words are used well in art pieces, but these are an exception. These dreamy images were beautifully done.

The Algerian-born artist lives and works in France. There's a nice interview with Parreno from 2010 in the Guardian that discusses the enviorment-based works he more typically creates. Objects like these drawings are rarer for him, and he says that "'Art is filled with things that aren't so much objects but quasi-objects.' What are they then? 'Objects whose existence is dependent on their context'." These drawings still suggest an involved story without the extensive environment he sometimes creates.

I saw more examples of the artist's work on the Pilar Corrias website, including these (involving penguins):

We might be soulmates. ;)

Chalk and Pins at the Armory

A different use of chalk as a medium at the Armory. I'm on the train to Philadelphia at the moment for a work conference, so just a quick post. Chalk and pins L, 2010 by Pascale Marthine Tayou was up at the Galleria Continua booth at the Armory. More about the artist on the gallery's website. By the way, if you have a reccomendation about where to get a Philly cheese steak sandwich near the city center area, please let me know!

Awesomeness: Jens Schubert at Volta

Whew, the art fairs have ended. I was laid low with a stomach bug for most of it, but I did get to catch a bit of Armory, SCOPE, and Volta (which was more than enough, thankyouverymuch). To begin with my new favorite: printermaker Jens Schubert was represented by Galerie Kleindienst in one of the solo-artist booths at Volta. These colorful, densely layered prints filled me with glee. I really enjoyed looking at them; I thought the compositions were fantastic and allusive; I even liked the planets, above, which are very much not my thing. In a word: awesome. Bonus points for the textured plastic floor you can make out in the photograph below.

"With the vivid and impasto variegation of his paintings, the striking forms and particularly with the repetition of motifs Schubert`s formal language sometimes reminds the viewer of folk art. Masks, animal motifs, floral and architectonic elements, as well as abstract ornaments are interwoven to puzzling and mythical figures. Not a realistic depiction or story telling is decisive, but the expression focuses on a strong emotional charge of the pictures. The prints are extremely complex. Either Schubert compiles varied motifs on one plate or he puts several layers above one another on his large size prints, so that different individual motifs form a new figure." -Volta website