LOOK INTO MY OWL

The large silkscreen prints of Michelangelo Pistoletto make up the current show at Luhring Augustine.

The surface for these prints is mirror polished stainless steel. Pistoletto has been experimenting with mirrors since the early 1960’s. His technique has risen to the point of nearly flawless representation leaving the focus of these works to their content.

The life sized characters that make up this current work invite the viewer into their world, literally. It’s not often that the gaze in a work of art is your own. This addition of the audience to the picture plane operates in several ways from the feeling of being watched to the keeping of unusual company.

Michelangelo Pistoletto
Trans Border Trans Limit Trans Gression
15 November - 20 December 2008
Luhring Augustine
NYC

A new documentary film by Megumi Sasaki has begun making the rounds at film festivals. Herb and Dorothy is the story of two unlikely art collectors that have changed the face of contemporary art. So far the film has played at the Hamptons International Film Festival and at SILVERDOCS: AFI/ Discovery Channel Documentary Festival. If it doesn’t make it to a town near you keep an eye out for the eventual DVD release.

The tag line for the film begins “He was a postal clerk. She was a librarian.” The Vogel’s have an unquenchable thirst for art. In the early 1960’s when little to no attention was being paid to Minimalist and Conceptual art, Herb and Dorothy began collecting.

Some people collect art as an investment. Some collect for prestige. Our favorite collectors do so because they love art. Herbert and Dorothy Vogel fit into this last category and by collecting what they love they will never be disappointed.

Over the years the collection grew to the point where every inch of their Manhattan apartment was filled. They could have sold a small part of the collection and moved to spacious living but chose instead to donate the bulk of their works to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

The generosity of this historic couple did not stop there. The following was taken directly from the website for the film.
“After the National Gallery of Art accepted 1,000 artworks and found out the collection has far more works to absorb, the Museum and the Vogels decided to launch a national gift program. The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: 50 Works for 50 States offers 50 artworks to a selected museum in each of the 50 states. By the end of 2009, Herb and Dorothy’s collection will find a permanent home and be shown to the people throughout the United States.”

Enjoy the trailer.

Hiroshi Sugimoto is currently showing two bodies of work at Hemphill Fine Arts.

The photographs from the “Drive-In Theater” series are long exposure shots of entire films caught on one still frame. Sugimoto closes down the iris of his large format camera and opens the shutter at the beginning of a film and releases it when the credits roll. The result in the still black and white photographs is a screen that glows white from light provided by the length of the motion picture. These images also operate as unique historic preservations of the nearly extinct outdoor cinema.

Originally I prepared to limit my post to the “Drive-In Theaters” series until I realized that Sugimoto’s portraits of the famous were taken in wax museums. The combination of these portfolios make for an interesting exhibit of the stars and where they are seen.

Hiroshi Sugimoto
Drive-In Theaters & Portraits
8 November - 20 December 2008
Hemphill Fine Arts
Washington, DC

The upstairs gallery at Fifty24SF is hosting a solo show from Jeremy Fish. “Ghosts of the Barbary Coast” is a collection of more than 35 recent works including large scale woodworks from Indonesia.

Jeremy Fish researched the history of the city that he calls home in order to complete these designs. The theme of the exhibit is centered on the adventurous spirit of the pioneers that laid the foundation for San Francisco and the residue of their efforts that can still be seen today. On the dawn of the west coast Fish states, “Young men and women were finding millions in gold, just as fast as they lost it at the gambling table, or to a thief.”

Through this work the artist leads you on a virtual tour of the historic bars of the area including “The Fierce Grizzly” where a live bear was chained to the wall and “The Boars Head” that featured unsavory acts with swine.

Jeremy Fish
Ghosts of the Barbary Coast
4-30 December 2008
Fifty24SF
San Francisco

The voyeuristic photographs of Michael Wolf are showing in San Francisco. “The Transparent City” is the current exhibition at the Robert Koch Gallery.

The vertical city of Chicago is the setting for these recent prints from Michael Wolf. Each window holds mysterious promise. Regardless of the amount of technological contact via telephone, television or internet; Wolf imagines his subjects as alone. Despite the crowds and excitement city life can be a solitary existence.

Michael Wolf
Transparent City
6 November 2008 - 3 January 2009
Robert Koch Gallery
San Francisco

“Draco”, an exhibition of the artistic efforts of William Hundley opened this past weekend at Kinsey/DesForges. Photographs, sculpture and on-site installations will be on view as part of his first solo show in Los Angeles.

Hundley encourages a light hearted approach when interacting with his photographs. His intent is to forge a dialogue with his audience wherein the viewer projects their prejudice on the fluttering forms. Personally, I react to the way the charged elements react with the static environment.

It should be noted that these are click and print photographs. No form of digital manipulation was incurred to create these stunning works. Draped models were shuttered at the apex of their leap. William Hundley sets the stage and depends on luck to some extent to produce results.

William Hundley
Draco
22 November - 20 December 2008
Kinsey/DesForges
Culver City, CA

Kojo Griffin is displaying a diverse selection of his artworks from the past eight years. “Swing States of Mind” is the current show at Quality Pictures in Portland.

The nature of Griffin’s earlier work (from the first half of this decade) was mainly narrative. Against stark fields of color anthropomorphic figures were depicted in moments of social conflict. The exaggerated facial features of the masked characters offered a heightened sense of humanity to the dramatic scenarios.

The latest paintings from Kojo Griffin mark both departure and return. For a while he broke away from figurative work in favor of abstract concerns. The characters are back and noticeably changed from new experience. In these recent pieces the living forms appear as apparitions dominated by the environments they inhabit. This focal reversal of form and field arrives as a welcome evolution extending the possibilities for future endeavors.

Kojo Griffin
Swing States of Mind
6 November - 23 December 2008
Quality Pictures
Portland

David Choe has a couple of prints in production and they should be ready to drop before the end of the year.

“Exodus from Land of Play” (above) is a 13 color serigraph depicting the 5 x 6 foot painting that was recently on view as part of the “Outsiders” show that Lazarides Gallery held on the Lower East side. Here is a bit of insight from the artist on this piece.

“in the land of play ,the skies rain fried cheese bread, there is non-stop fun and unlimited freedom, children are encouraged to commit acts of vandalism, fight, drink beer out of unicorn horns, smoke cigars that turn into bubblicious, and gamble and never lose, nuns show you their shaved vaginas and preach, up all night , sleep all day, where everyone plays and never works, where a kid can be a kid, and also where a man can also behave like a kid, do what you want, whenever you want there’s no responsibilities, no cops, no rules, no repercussions, and no consequences to any of your actions, but all good things must come to an end, I won’t tell you what happened, but everyone has to leave immediately, get the fuck out now! So our heroine and androgynous vamp, donning royal robes and Axl Rose gear, leads a parade of donkey eared miscreants and ne’er –do wells armed with customized super soakers filled with gummy worm juice and milk from coco crispies (I won’t name them all, but Darth Nihilus, razorback, and Beta ray Bill are up in the mix), out of Cockaigne, maybe to wander the earth forever?”

Dave may be losing his mind but it’s a fun slide.

“Dark Circles (Get Some Rest)” (above) will be the first print from one of Choe’s watercolors. The fine art giclée is also expected to be released before 2008 is up.

KAWS has opened a solo show on Fifth Avenue. An exhibition of sculptures and paintings is on view at the Gering & López Gallery.

I gave up on television years ago, so much of the inspiration for these works is lost to me. My approach to the pieces is based primarily on color and form and that seems to be enough as the art is successful on these merits. I searched for spongebob on youtube and found that I could not persevere more than a few seconds. But I like the paintings. Curiosity demands to know if the TV savvy public are really entering the works or merely humming a theme song. It is fair to suppose that it doesn’t really matter because with KAWS you can’t have one without the other.

The highlight of the show can be found in the beautifully installed bronze severed head self-portraits of the artist. There are 33 unique colors in all. Usually bronze is not painted because if an artist works in the medium they want it to be evident in the final product. The “candy coating” that has been applied forces the viewer to realize that there is more to KAWS than surface appearance.

KAWS
6 November - 23 December 2008
Gering & López Gallery
NYC

It is an unusual experience to spend the night alone in a public building. Any janitor or security guard will testify to the palpable sensation of having that much architecture focused on an individual. Carsten Höller’s entry into “theanyspacewhatever” at the Guggenheim Museum offered the public an opportunity to rent his “Revolving Hotel Room” for a night. The installation boasts all of the amenities (minus bathroom) that a hotel room would offer ergonomically arranged for the comfort of the guest. The “room” is fully booked for the duration of the exhibit.

Art reporter Jerry Saltz was one of the lucky few that spent the night and he wrote about the experience in his column for New York Magazine. The article offers insight as to why the author was disappointed his wife couldn’t join him in the “ecstasy machine”. Always nice to see respected art world professionals let their hair down. It’s not on the level of Henry Geldzahler on a raft in a pool smoking a cigar but kudos to Mr. Saltz.

“theanyspacewhatever” is made up of the collaborative efforts of several talented artists including Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. This show was more than four years in the making during which time chief curator Nancy Spector worked closely with the artists to consider site specific pieces that accounted for the exhibition as a whole.

Carsten Höller
Revolving Hotel Room
theanyspacewhatever
24 October 2008 - 7 January 2009
Guggenheim Museum
NYC

There is always something new coming from Dick Frizzell. His latest style has been introduced as the show “Walking Back to Happiness” at the Gow Langsford Gallery in New Zealand.

This work represents a return to the artist’s self proclaimed “misspent comic book youth”. There is nothing new about enlarging old comic imagery and placing it in a gallery setting; however, Frizzell has an interesting take. Normally “low” sources are used to make a statement on the external but in this case, the artist considers these images to be full of personal irony. Beyond this, I admit, they are fun for the eyes.

Dick Frizzell
Walking Back to Happiness
11 November - 5 December 2008
Gow Langsford Gallery
Aukland, New Zealand

Yes, that really is the title of the current show from Aleksandra Mir at the Mary Boone Gallery. The works displayed in this post are all large scale marker drawings on paper.

The gallery has kept the press release simple. The sum total is this hilarious quote from Waldemar Januszczak’s review of the 2006 exhibition “USA Today” at the Royal Academy in the London Sunday Times.

“… Aleksandra Mir, from Lubin, in Poland, is another maker of new maps of the USA, across which she declares the Cold War to be Hot Stuff, in the style of a mustard advert in a hamburger outlet…Young America is a bottomless source of the stuff. This entire display stinks of stupidity and an absent education. Has anyone here read a book or studied history or looked at a Botticelli or questioned a technique or patiently thought their way through an artistic conundrum? Not a chance. This is a generation of paint-happy knownothings brought up on hamburgers and porn, a talentless bloom of post-pop trailer trash that makes our own Brit Artists look like a parade of Einsteins by comparison.”

Aleksandra Mir
WHITE HOUSE PURPLE HEART WHITE HOUSE IVORY TOWER WHITE HOUSE RED NECK WHITE HOUSE BLUE DEVILS WHITE HOUSE YELLOW SUBMARINE WHITE HOUSE AGENT ORANGE WHITE HOUSE BLACK POWER WHITE HOUSE GREEN THUMB WHITE HOUSE PINK DOLLARS WHITE HOUSE DUMB BLOND WHITE HOUSE GOLDEN SHOWERS WHITE HOUSE SILVER LININGS
30 October - 20 December 2008
Mary Boone Gallery
NYC