IxD+

Contemporary Interior Design

2009-08-14T13:50:00.001-07:00

It is interesting to think of the car as a vessel where the construction of desire occupies a special place in our world. The car as an organism, anthropomorphism definitely occurs in the distribution of objects in a kind of inner space existing beyond the division of inside and outside. Nowhere is this more clear than in the skeleton of its assembly.

Christian Marclay

2008-07-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

Credited as one of the champions of "turntablism", outside of hip hop, Christian Marclay continues to provide much more than listening pleasure. Thanks Marc.

Tony Feher at PaceWildenstein

2008-07-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

My first review of an artist published in NYArts Magazine. I enjoyed the experience. Thanks to all those who offered their help.

Somewhere along the east wall of PaceWildenstein’s 57th Street Gallery tin foil lies on the floor, rolled up in a small ball. With a step or two, you find a grid of eight columns and eight rows of diagonally cut pieces of silver painted wood arranged in no apparent order on the ground. If you look back up, in any direction, you see a few mundane objects strung from the ceiling. They hang; some are literally composed of hangers. This is what Tony Feher presents as his first solo exhibition at PaceWildenstein. Concurrently, an exhibition of his earlier work runs at D'Amelio Terras Gallery and the Public Art Fund project in Brooklyn at the MetroTech Center.

It is revealing that Tony Feher admires such a proto-conceptual heavyweight as Marcel Duchamp: he understands the power of the readymade and goes beyond it. He picks simple objects like connected black plastic bags that he hangs from the ceiling (ever so slightly spinning counterclockwise-clockwise-counterclockwise-clockwise). The ingenuity of his selections is quite amazing. In one case, he crushes Budweiser cans, places marbles on top of them, surrounds the cans with nickels and dimes, and then arranges all of these elements in a circle. In its vicinity, he tears off white masking tape placing several of the adhesive strips against the gallery wall forming another circle. Simple in its neutrality, this formal device is one he frequently references. In fact, he does exactly the same thing on the opposite side of the exhibition space, only this time the circle is formed of several pieces of torn blue tape stuck to a window.

With a nod to minimalism and conceptual art, his simple compositions feel detached, and rightly so. He does this by transforming the selection of the readymade and its possible arrangements. He utilizes repetition and transparency, both of which have important roles to play in his work. They allow a certain vocabulary to emerge from within his formal and conceptual choices. He arranges objects like glass marbles, glass jars, plastic bottles, plastic berry baskets, metal screw lids, and even food coloring. These arrangements recur, but they are also oblique to our understanding of how certain objects like bottles, for instance, can be arranged.

There is much to Tony Feher's work. He is a couth artist that cannot easily be classified. His work is both creative and personal: he lives with these objects for some time before he displays them. The result is a beautifully installed exhibition replete with subtlety. If a second look isn't granted, it will be hard to notice the small moments, such as the small tin foil ball, resting simply against a wall.

On Kawara

2008-05-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

Gabriel Orozco

2008-05-14T11:41:00.001-07:00

Dark Wave
2006
Calcium carbonate and resin with graphite
119 11/16 x 154 5/16 x 541 5/16 in. (304 x 392 x 1375 cm)

Barry Le Va

2008-05-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

Barry Le Va, Bunker Coagulation (Pushed from the Right), 1995/2005. Installation view, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, 2005.

Mel Bochner

2008-05-06T09:25:00.001-07:00

Portrait of Eva Hesse, 1966

Lili Dujourie

2008-04-30T11:30:00.001-07:00

Sonate: 63 x 79 x 37 cm, 2007

Douglas Huebler

2008-04-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

Variable Piece #70 (in process) Global, Crocodile Tears "Woody Wright", 1981
photostat xerox paper collage, text, oil on canvas
paper: 19 7/8" x 32 1/4"
framed: 21" x 33

Hans Haacke: Condensation cube 1963–65

2008-04-24T10:19:00.001-07:00

Lynn Hershman Leeson

2008-04-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

Found Objects
April 26 - May 31, 2008
bitforms gallery nyc
Opening April 25th

Lynn Hershman Leeson returns to bitforms gallery in NY with the first showing of a new series, Found Objects, April 26 - May 31.

Including the premiere of the sex doll installation, "Olympia: Fictive Projections and the Myth of the Real Woman," a provocative and updated version of Edouard Manet's notorious painting, "Olympia".

February 2008, New York, NY - San Francisco-based artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson returns to bitforms gallery in New York for a new solo exhibition, Found Objects, running April 26-May 31. With a body of work that spans over 35 years and ranges from early conceptual and performance pieces to artificial intelligence robotic works and films, Hershman Leeson is one of the most influential artists working in new media today. Updating the notion of "readymade" introduced by Marcel Duchamp, Found Objects is a new series that features assembly-line produced female sex dolls to examine issues of projected fantasies and the mythology of artificial women. With the installation, "Olympia: Fictive Projections and the Myth of the Real Woman," Hershman Leeson restages Edouard Manet's "Olympia," projecting images of the painting on a doll to offer a provocative, updated version of the notorious artwork. Also on display are several digital prints in which the dolls appear to be emotionally involved in their predestined situations.

In 1865, Edouard Manet's painting, "Olympia," shocked the art world by depicting a naked woman who, it turned out, was a prostitute. She lay down, unabashed about what she wanted, looking at the viewer, part invitation, part dare. Incorporating the scandalous history associated with Manet's painting, "Olympia: Fictive Projections and the Myth of the Real Woman" exposes both the cultural practice of representing women as object (lost or found), and an art historical predilection to create objects of displaced desires. Hershman carefully selected the doll's various body parts so that it would closely resemble Manet's painting - a process that took 7 months. The installation consists of the sex doll reclining on a longue chaise, exactly as in "Olympia," while images of the painting are continuously projected on her body. The use of a traditional slide projector displaces and updates Manet's "Olympia," thereby creating today's readymade in a Real Doll version.

The Found Objects series continues the investigation of artificial women Hershman Leeson began with the "Roberta Breitmore" project in the 70's. As for her preceding fictitious and virtual personas - which included dolls such as "CybeRoberta" (1970-1998) and "Tillie" (1995-98) - Olympia's true reality surfaces through her artifices. The exhibition will also feature a series of original digital prints that explore the elements of fear and horror, contained in Olympia and brought forth through the photographic medium. These include "No Body," "Warning," and "Olympia Rising," among others.

In conjunction with bitforms gallery's solo exhibition, 17 pieces from Hershman's Roberta Breitmore series will be on display at PS1 Contemporary Art Center (NY) as part of WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution - the first comprehensive, historical exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art (February 17-May 12, 2008). Her exhibition No Body Special is currently on view at the de Young Museum, San Francisco.

About Lynn Hershman Leeson
Over the last three decades, artist and filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941) has been internationally acclaimed for her pioneering use of new technologies and her investigations of issues that are now recognized as key to the working of our society: identity in a time of consumerism, privacy in a era of surveillance, interfacing of humans and machines, and the relationship between real and virtual worlds.

(Thanks Sarah for the email)

CITATIONS, Yinka Shonibare, MBE: Prospero's Monsters at James Cohan Gallery

2008-04-18T16:42:00.000-07:00

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Epilogue of THE TEMPEST

Haim Steinbach

2008-04-16T14:22:00.001-07:00

One Minute Managers V.2 1990
2 plastic laminated wooden shelfs, aluminum alloy stock pots, leather medicine balls
72.5 x 445 x 355 cm
Murderme Ltd, London
© 2006 Haim Steinbach

William Pope L.

2008-04-15T10:13:00.001-07:00

The Polis or the Garden or Human Nature
1998-2005
Painted onions on shelf (aged for 2 months), mirror,
custom shelf dimensions variable

Tom Wolfe: On Conceptual Art

2008-04-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

"…there, at last, it was! No more realism, no more representation objects, no more lines, colors, forms, and contours, no more pigments, no more brushstrokes. … Art made its final flight, climbed higher and higher in an ever-decreasing tighter-turning spiral until…it disappeared up its own fundamental aperture…and came out the other side as Art Theory!…Art Theory pure and simple, words on a page, literature undefiled by vision…late twentieth-century Modern Art was about to fulfill its destiny, which was: to become nothing less than Literature pure and simple"

Bergesen, Albert (January 1979). "The Painted Word".
American Journal of Sociology 88: 1021–24. In Shomette 1992.

Francis Alÿs: “When Faith Moves Mountains” (2002)

2008-04-11T13:46:00.000-07:00

Scooping up sand, five hundred laborers worked alongside each other in the parched dunes adjacent to Lima, Peru. Their effort moved the sand dune 4 inches. The documentation of the performance exists in video, photography and written documentation.

2008-04-10T16:09:00.000-07:00

John Armleder

2008-04-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

© John Armleder
Galerie Van Gelder
Furniture Sculpture 189, 1988
acrylic on canvas:110 x 270 cm /
silent drum kit: 91 x 86 x 66 cm

JUDD FOUNDATION: MARFA, TEXAS

2008-04-08T18:37:00.000-07:00

From it's website:

Marfa, Texas
Located in West Texas approximately 200 miles southeast of El Paso, Marfa is situated near the Chinati mountain range of Presidio County, the second-largest county in Texas.

Judd Foundation holds and maintains artist Donald Judd’s private living and working spaces in Marfa, Texas. Comprised of a total of 15 spaces, these include studios installed with artwork—by Judd and others—living quarters, ranch and architecture offices, and libraries.

Architecture Studio
101 North Highland Avenue
Purchased by Judd in November 1989, this prominent building in downtown Marfa was formerly a bank, which Judd renovated to create an architect’s studio. The building contains early paintings and drawings by Judd that have been installed throughout two stories and more than 15 rooms. An extensive collection of modernist furniture and paintings by prominent 20th- century artists and designers are also featured in the building.

Cobb House & the Whyte Building
104 West Oak Street
The Cobb House and Whyte Building and their gatehouse were renovated by Judd in the early 1990s. The Cobb House is installed with early Judd paintings dating from 1956 to 1958 along with Judd’s collection of early 20th century Swedish furniture. The Whyte Building holds four important paintings from 1960 to 1962 and furniture pieces by Rudolf M. Schindler, which were commissioned by Judd in 1991 specifically for this space.

Architecture Office
102 North Highland Avenue
Across the street from the Bank Building is the Architecture Office, which was purchased by Judd in January 1990. The street level of this two-story structure was renovated for use as an architecture office. The building contains furniture and objects designed by Judd, as well as plans and models of his architectural projects, including the Basel Bahnhof and his former Swiss residence, Eichholteren

La Mansana de Chinati/The Block
400 and 416 West El Paso Avenue
As Judd’s residence and studio in Marfa, The Block is the site of some of his first large architectural projects and installations. It measures one full city block. Donald Judd first used The Block in 1973 when he rented one of the two former army buildings and began installing the property with his art. In 1974, he bought the entirety of The Block, which also includes a rectangular two-story home, formerly offices of the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster Corps. The property is enclosed with adobe walls, which use local construction techniques, as is the interior courtyard, which is landscaped with cactus gardens and Judd furniture. Also on the property are a Judd-designed swimming pool and private garden; two large, permanently installed spaces that house the artist’s studio; and a personal library comprising more than 10,000 volumes.

The Print Building
104 and 108 South Highland Avenue
Donald Judd purchased this large, two-story building, formerly a hotel during the 1930s and ‘40s, with the intention of creating a print museum. He intended to install the complete collection of his prints, spanning the years from 1951 to 1994 in the thirty rooms on the top floor. The façade of the structure has recently been restored.

Art Studio
124 West Oak Street
In March of 1990, Judd purchased this former Safeway grocery store and converted the facility into an informal studio. The open area contains long worktables and shelving, which display Judd-designed prototypes and samples for fabrication. These materials and installation make it possible to trace the artist’s concept development and work process.

Vanessa Beecroft

2008-04-07T16:08:00.000-07:00

«VB 50», 2002
© Vanessa Beecroft

Plaza de Toros Mexico city: Olé

2008-04-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

Although I would rather see a bullfight in the immense Plaza de Toros, it was still refreshing to experience the energy of 50,000 people doing the wave and chanting Olé. The event was international motorcross freestyle. While the crowd heckled the American extreme sport athletes (a Swiss won the competition), it wasn't surprising for one American athlete to stick both middle fingers up. As if that wasn't enough, he had to grab his crotch for added effect. The announcer sympathized with him. He said: "it's not your fault, it's Bush."

Gabriel Orozco

2008-04-03T10:40:00.001-07:00

Mis Manos Son Mi Corazón, 1991

John Baldessari

2008-04-01T18:24:00.001-07:00

House Beautiful

2008-03-31T18:30:00.000-07:00

ln her April 1953 issue the editor of House Beautiful came forward with a ringing editorial denouncing the ' Threat to the New America ' . The gist of the editorial was that a sinister group of International Stylists, led by Mies, Gropius, and Corbu, and supported by the Museum of Modem Art, was trying to force Americans to accept an architecture that was barren, grim, impoverished, impractical, uninhabitable, and destructive of individual possessions, as well as of individuals themselves. There was a hint or two that Communists were behind the whole thing. A list of International Style characteristics was published to warn readers of House Beautiful against the 'threat' - much in the same way that the F.B.I. warns the public against the 'ten most wanted' criminals of the day.

Mies van der Rohe, Architecture and Structure

by Peter Blake

Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964, pp. 85-89.

Hussein Chalayan

2008-03-29T17:11:00.001-07:00

Lawrence Weiner

2008-03-28T10:08:00.000-07:00

A SQUARE REMOVAL FROM A RUG IN USE

Nr. 054, 1969

Dramatic Subtraction

2008-03-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have felt the acute pain of a stiletto, Antonio Berardi's ingenuity in removing its cause while maintaining its height (and some will argue "sexiness") is nothing short of remarkable.
Price tag: €2,400, special order only, by Antonio Berardi

Studio Museum Harlem

2008-03-26T10:31:00.000-07:00

From its website:

FLOW

Flow is the 21century exhibition focusing on art by a new generation of international artists from Africa. These artists are uniquely conscious of, and responsive to, recent African history, global economics and the idiosyncratic culture of the new millennium. Presenting approximately seventy-Þve works in all media by approximately twenty emerging international artists under the age of forty, this exhibition will feature models of imaginary architecture, wall sculptures of beads and decorative elements, digital photography, new video, paintings and site specific installations, among other media. The artists, who hail from eleven African nations, reside mainly in Europe and North America and travel to and from Africa regularly. The majority of them have never been included in major U.S. museum exhibitions and are virtually unknown in this country. Modeled after Freestyle, our landmark 2001 exhibition, which was followed in 2005 by Frequency, Flow will illustrate the individuality and complexity of the visual art produced by a dynamic generation of young artists, this time with a global perspective.

(Thanks Gayla for the email)

A Revealing Statement by Marcel Duchamp

2008-03-25T17:17:00.000-07:00

"I believe that art is the only form of activity in which man shows himself to be a true individual...Only in art is he capable of going beyond the animal state, because art is an outlet toward regions which are not ruled by space and time."

--Marcel Duchamp, in James Johnson Sweeney,
"Eleven Europeans in America," Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, pp. 19-21

Robert Morris

2008-03-24T16:58:00.000-07:00

scatter piece

Dan Flavin

2008-03-22T18:50:00.000-07:00

monument to V. Tatlin

Robert Mangold

2008-03-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

acrylic and pencil 'X Within X Orange', 1981
62 x 62 in.
The Phillips Collection (Washington D.C.)

La Sape

2008-03-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

This is an oldie; I thought I should post this. Seven years ago, I and a close friend wanted to do a feature on la sape for a publication we worked on together. However, the world trade center tumbled down. A reality check to say the least. So I've decided to post a BBC 4 interview.

Director-producers Cosima Spender and George Amponsah talk about Papa Wemba and the cult of the cloth.

BBC Four: As your documentary shows, the members of La Sape are fiercely devoted to designer clothes. Could you elaborate on the symbolic importance of high fashion for the sapeur?
George: The Sape emerged from the chaos that was the Congo during the reign of Mobutu. It was really one way of coping with a society that had broken down. For a young person growing up at that time, there wasn't much to grasp hold of to help you feel better about yourself. Politics was out, so you found a lot of cargo cult religions in the Congo. The Sape is essentially one of these. The distinctive look of the sapeurs was also a rebellion against one of Mobutu's dictatorial decrees, which was that everyone was expected to dress in a very traditional, standard African costume - the abacost.
Cosima: The sapeurs in Paris and Brussels are using these European status symbols not to integrate into European society but to 'be someone' back home in the Congo. This separates them from European fashionistas. They aren't so much concerned with proving anything to the outside world but rather to one another, among their own community. These people have grown up with no kind of social structure to rely on. The Sape is a mini-state providing its own social strata: president, ministers, acolytes and so on.

BBC Four: At what stage in the production did you find out that Papa Wemba, the King or President of Sape, had been arrested for smuggling illegal immigrants into Europe for a profit?
Cosima: We had just got the money and were literally about to start shooting. We were petrified! It was lucky that we had already spent two years establishing a relationship with him because by the time he came out of jail he didn't want journalists around him. We wrote to him in jail and spoke to his manager on a regular basis so he trusted us and knew that we weren't sniffing after a scandal, rather that we wanted to make an in-depth documentary about his art and his position in the community.

BBC Four: It must have given you the opportunity to see first-hand how jail had changed him. The impression is that he grows from preaching the religion of the cloth to Christianity, which obviously alters the direction of the Sape and your film itself.
George: We were really capturing a transitory moment in the story of Papa Wemba and the Sape. We had it fixed in our heads that we were making a film about the cult of cloth, the cult of elegance. As you can see in the film's archive footage, this is a man who had declared clothing and fashion to be a religion. Then suddenly he was coming out preaching God, Christianity and the Bible. We were thinking, he's not supposed to be saying this! It was scripted that he should be saying something else. But that's what happens with documentaries. This is a film about real people and real life and as we know, people are changing constantly.

BBC Four: There's a lot of posturing among the sapeurs in the film.
George: That's part of the ideology of the Sape. It's all about self-aggrandisement, that's the sapeur way. What's interesting about these guys is that on the one hand they're very much about showing off and about being seen - it's the cult of appearance - but on the other hand there's a clandestine element too because there is so much going on that's on the margins of the law and of society. It's a constant dichotomy.
Cosima: That self-aggrandizement enables them to escape and feel good about themselves. It's serious positive thinking, you know? We came back from the shoot without having translated everything that we had filmed and it took us about a month to find the right translator who could understand all of their slang. When we did, there were whole new discoveries. Take Anti-Gigolo, who was always boasting that he was Papa Wemba's closest friend. It wasn't until we came back and translated the meeting between him and Papa Wemba that we realised that no, he was not Papa Wemba's favourite after all. The fact that we didn't speak Congolese might have hindered our access to the underground world but it also enabled us to film things they didn't think we'd be able to understand or wouldn't bother translating. So it protected us in a way.
George: When we showed Papa Wemba the first cut of the film he seemed genuinely taken aback by how far under the skin we had managed to get and by how, in a sense, he had come out a little bit naked. This is not what Papa Wemba or any of the sapeurs are really accustomed to.

BBC Four: Papa Wemba's musical performances in the film are extraordinary.
Cosima: We were lucky he was doing the new record because it revealed so much of the mechanics of how the sapeur world works and how the status of the sapeurs is defined. Those studio sessions became the magnet for all the sapeurs throughout Europe, who came to pay their respects to the king.
George: We really wanted to focus on that dynamic between the king and his court and establish that relationship from each perspective.

BBC Four: Watching the film I was struck by the similarities with the US hip hop scene, specifically the sapeurs' love for designer labels, the names they choose for themselves, the jet set lifestyle to which they aspire and especially the rivalry between sapeurs in Brussels and those in Paris.
George: We started the film with that as a focus point because there's actually a rivalry between Papa Wemba and another Congolese musician with his own group of supporters. We were told that comparisons could be made with the Biggie/Tupac relationship. It's true that there is an element of gang warfare to the Sape but the difference is that there is no bloodshed. It was explained to us by sapeurs themselves that resorting to violence just isn't elegant. If you can't let your clothes do the fighting then you're not even to be considered a sapeur.

(Thanks S. Johnson for the link)

I fell for an organza today!

2008-03-19T17:20:00.000-07:00

I feel blithe today. so i'm posting the lyrics to "Already one" by Neil Young.

What can I do, what can I say
Running down this suspicious highway
I can't forget how love let me down
And when we meet it still gets in my way.

But we're already one
Already one
Now only time can come between us
'Cause we're already one
Our little son won't let us forget.

Your laughing eyes, your crazy smile
Every time I look in his face
I can't believe how love lasts a while
And looks like "forever" in the first place.

But we're already one
Already one
Now only time can come between us
'Cause we're already one
Our little son won't let us forget.

In my new life I'm travelin' light
Eyes wide open for the next move
I can't go wrong 'til I get right
But I'm not fallin' back in the same groove.

But we're already one
Already one
Now only time can come between us
'Cause we're already one
Our little son won't let us forget.

There is Still Good News

2008-03-18T19:00:00.000-07:00

In sharp contrast to the royal rumble this past weekend, I recently discovered an artist that caught my heart. Here.
(Thanks Jeremy for sharing)

The Museum of Modern Art

2008-03-17T10:46:00.001-07:00

Geometry of Motion 1920s/1970s
March 19 - June 23, 2008

Exhibition organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Chief Curator, Department of Media, and Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography

The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019
(212) 708-9400
http://www.moma.org

The Museum of Modern Art presents Geometry of Motion 1920s/1970s, on view in the second-floor Yoshiko and Akio Morita Media Gallery from March 19 through June 23, 2008. The phrase "geometry of motion" in the exhibition's title derives from the literal meaning of the French word cinématique. Taking cinematic experience as its point of departure, this exhibition uses fourteen historic works to trace the transformation of the art object from static image to fluid light projection within two artistic lineages: the unconventional optical techniques of the 1920s Neue Optik, or "New Vision," generation of artists, among them El Lissitzky, László Moholy-Nagy, Hans Richter, and Marcel Duchamp; and the situational aesthetics advanced by Robert Irwin, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Smithson, and Anthony McCall in the 1970s. All of these artists have explored new perceptual propositions for the geometry of motion, conveying indelible filmic events.

From 1919 to 1923, Lissitzky developed his Prouns, paintings and works on paper of translucent and opaque abstract planes, some of which were intended to be rotated or hung in any direction, and which evolved into fully three-dimensional installations. A few years later, Moholy-Nagy conceived Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Light-Space Modulator), a mobile light mechanism that materialized its creator's goal of "painting with light" into space. Also in the 1920s, Richter translated geometrical shapes into pure cinematic sensation. His pioneering abstract films, exemplified in the exhibition by the four-minute film Filmstudie (1926), codified a visual syntax based on rhythmical patterns of light and motion. Richter's interest in experimental cinema was related to Duchamp's abstract optical tests with rotary discs and afterimages that in 1926 resulted in Anémic Cinema (also on view at MoMA), a film alternating shots of rotating spirals w ith discs inscribed with erotic puns.

During the 1970s, a new generation of artists built on the earlier artistic experiments with light to tap into sensory perception. This is the case with Matta-Clark's anarchitectural projects that carved unexpected, vertiginous apertures of light into abandoned buildings, and with Irwin's light installations that heightened spatial perception. Concurrently, Smithson explored the idea of experiencing art as itinerant and filmic in his monumental Spiral Jetty, orchestrated in 1970 at the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The exhibition includes Smithson's film of the completed sculpture taken from a helicopter, capturing the moment when the sun's reflection hit the water at the exact center of the spiral. Looking directly into the sun is not unlike turning away from the screen in a movie theater to look into the film projector's beam. McCall draws upon this accidental occurrence, fusing the properties of film and sculpture in his slide projection Miniature in Black a nd White (1972), a precursor of his solid light films.

Geometry of Motion 1920s/1970s brings together historic light- and movement-capturing experiments that draw attention to the conditions and complexities of perception, both within the framework of institutional display and in outside surroundings. It also complements the survey exhibition Take your time: Olafur Eliasson (April 20 - June 30, at MoMA and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center) by offering context to Eliasson's protocinematic experiments with mechanisms of motion, projection, shadow, and reflection.

(Thanks Sarah for the email)

Wolfgang Laib

2008-03-16T17:21:00.000-07:00

Milkstone

Week End

2008-03-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

La Collectionneuse

2008-03-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

Bas Jan Ader

2008-03-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

I'm too sad to tell you - 13. September 1970

s/w-Postkarte
Privatsammlung, Amsterdam

Chris Burden

2008-03-13T19:45:00.001-07:00

Chris Burden
Still from Shoot
1971

Video with sound. 4 min.
Courtesy of the artist and
Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills.

Ionic column

2008-03-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

The Greek column impresses me as the greatest problem of form ever resolved by Human genius.
As I approach it, I become aware of one element which embraces all.
Here once and for ever are united all the quests of the spirit and the needs of the heart, the invitation of nature, the laws of numbers and the imagination of art; it is a unique fusion of matter and thought.

Lacretelle, Jacques de
Le Demi-Dieu p. 94. Translated by Hugh Chisholm

Sculptor for a tenure track

2008-03-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

We are searching for a sculptor for a tenure track position in the Fine Arts Department of Pace University. Our main campus is located in downtown New York, near City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge. I would appreciate it if you could post the attached description. The postmarked deadline for applications is April 10, 2008. More information on PACE Fine Arts is available on our website, www.pace.edu. Interested parties can also contactthe department directly at 212-346-1819, or wfraser@pace.edu. Thank you for your help!

Sincerely,

Linda Herritt, Chair
Fine Arts Department
Pace University
41 Park Row 1205B
New York, NY 10038

(Thanks Gayla for the email)

a glance at perfection

2008-03-09T16:48:00.000-07:00

Agnes Martin

Nothing personal. Just business.

2008-03-06T18:54:00.000-08:00

From its website: The Apprentice Africa will gather 18 contestants from across Africa and the diaspora who will compete for a lucrative corporate job with befitting perks and an annual salary of $200,000. Read More about the show: The Apprentice Africa

Xu Bing

2008-03-06T10:53:00.001-08:00

"The Installation "ABC" is comprised of a series of ceramic cubes reminiscent of oversized children's alphabet blocks, but marked with the artist's own "transliterations" into Chinese of the twenty-six letters of the Roman alphabet. The Chinese character(s) are carved on the upper face of each block in the form of a printer's stamp and the Roman letter represented by the characters is carved on the side. When pronounced, the characters render sounds approximating those of the English letters. For example, the letter "A" is represented by the Chinese character "ai", which means sadness, while "W" is represented
by the three characters "da", "bu", "liu" which mean big, cloth, and six, respectively. While this undertaking appears at first to be a perfectly rational exercise in linguistic communication, what ultimately comes across is an underlying sense of awkwardness and absurdity." Thanks Sarah for the email.

Detached Conceptualism

2008-03-06T07:43:00.001-08:00

Erik Wysocan's "Untitled (Frozen Moment)" brings to mind two artists: Marcel Duchamp and Michael Craig-Martin. Both artists, the latter inspired by the former, employed detached conceptualism, minimal construction, and the readymade as techniques to interrogate the experience of art. Michael Craig-Martin's "Oak tree" and Marcel Duchamp's "Air de Paris" taken together seem to be precursors to Wysocan's "Untitled (Frozen Moment)".

The Act of Mimesis

2008-03-05T13:35:00.000-08:00

Explicit performative. Those two words I believe define and give color to the work of South African born/Berlin based artist Candice Breitz. What do those two words mean? Well, if we take a "look" at Judith Butler's "Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", we might be able to take a peek at the "Explicit". Normatively, the word "Explicit" can refer to sex. But is there anything explicit in Candice Breitz's work? Conventionally, the answer is no. It is also easy to see that Breitz's work operates as "stylized bodily acts", they are performed. Here we can bring Judith Butler back into the thick of things and see that " these stylised bodily acts, in their repetition, establish the appearance of an essential, ontological "core" gender." Her choice of styling and wardrobe make impressions on our reading of "Sex" in normative ways, while still being subversive. Thus the production of identity and our ability to "identify" a representation is always already deferred, and here I'm thinking of the late Jacques Derrida.

Breitz work is poppy, humorous, because it introduces icons of femininity, while simultaneously bringing to the foreground distancing techniques like the theatrical, or more accurately pathos.