Luke Murphy at Canada

CANADA

Luke Murphy
Certainty Shelter
April 2- May 3, 2009
Opening Reception: April 2, 6-9pm

We are proud to announce Luke Murphy's third solo show at CANADA. In one room with three large digital projections, a central pedestal holds three Geiger counters with their probes pointed at what appears, at first glance, to be an innocuous glass vase. That vessel however is made of Vaseline glass, also known as uranium glass, which glows with UV fluorescence. The glaze used on Vaseline glass is a mild beta emitter that naturally decays and releases fast-moving electrons and positrons. Each of the three Geiger Counters detect the charged particles and sends a unique signal to a computer, which responds by generating the speed, color, placement, and transitions in the three projections. Unlike work that uses random number sequences, which are not 100% random, Murphy harnesses uranium’s decay to create “perfect randomness”. The use of randomness, the aleatory (from the Latin to roll dice), and chance elements or sources has a long history in art. From the Lascaux cave drawin!! gs where the forms of the animals seem to result from the rock formations to Alexander Cozens and his “New Method” of random blots to Strindberg, the Surrealists, Duchamp and Cage, the relation of the artist to the random has moved from suggestion and inspiration to a kind of anti-esthetic. Murphy believes there are roughly three models of randomness as part of the artistic process: suggestion, inspiration, and subversion. Common to all however is that the random is a strategy to circumvent our normal controls and frames of reference. It is a cipher for nature itself both as a generative and as a destructive force, in other words, the sublime.

“The time between ticks of the Geiger counter is the wholly unknown that makes up the fabric of the universe. It is the emptiness and unknowability of the machine. The computer translates that sublime unpredictability into a new sublime of information by taking the truly random intervals and making them true random numbers. Confronting the fact that no tick interval can be predicted is like accepting the reality of a vacuum. It exposed the limits of language and imagination.”

CANADA
55 Chrystie Street
NY, NY 10002
212 925 4631

• Art

  Time Out New York / Issue 653 : Apr 2–8, 2008

  Culture report: gatekeepers

  No man’s De Land

  The art world tries to carry on a legacy.

  
  

  By T.J. Carlin

  

  Photograph: Courtesy powerHouse Books

  Legendary New York gallerist Colin de Land (1956–2003) inspired devotion by championing experimental work (like allowing artist Gareth James to close the dealer’s gallery, American Fine Arts, for a month to protest the art world’s focus on money). While no one dealer today fills his shoes, his followers are out there shaping the scene.

  In 2001, Peter Nesbett and Shelly Bancroft founded Harlem nonprofit Triple Candie. The couple (whose controversial “David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective” featured photocopies of the artist’s work) says they focus on how institutions affect the perception of art, questioning the establishment the way De Land did.

  “I think about De Land almost daily,” says artist Austin Thomas, who last summer started Pocket Utopia. Open twice weekly, the gallery is a hangout for area artists, much as De Land’s LES space was.

  At Orchard, the “shows” are as likely to consist of seminars as art. “We started with a desire to fill the void left by Colin and [his wife] Pat [Hearn],” says the gallery’s director, R.H. Quaytman. A three-year project, Orchard will close in May. Here’s hoping another idealist venture takes its place.

  For more, check out the brand-new book Colin de Land: American Fine Arts, edited by Dennis Balk.

Cynthia Bloom Namenwirth

Small oil on canvas, this would have been her 76th birthday rest in peace.

EQUUS MAXIMUS Gregory de la Haba

Over-the-top doesn't quite capture the incredible vulgarity of it all. Gregory de la Haba's Equus Maximus is unabashedly pagan. Grand carnal passions ignite in a full-scale installation of barbarism and gaudy frills. It is the decadence of Rome and the unquenchable greed of recent years. It is primitive hunger and lust, unbridled—the return of the repressed.
This show at Jack the Pelican is so over the top, it seems completely incomprehensible to this viewer that it has not received more critical attention/ The artist told me this piece was five years in the making and was driven down to Miami for the art fair this December by himself. At one point the cops stopped his Uhaul at the midtown tunnel and were taking pictures of his black stallion that was on it's back with 20" hard on pointing skyward. In the Gallery we find Black Stallion with two white females all life-size (Horse scale) with humanoid vaginas. They are all on a real craps table from Las Vegas covered in sequins. Jack the Pelican has done some pretty wild shows over the years, but this one may take the cake. Where is the New York Times, they have not written anything about Williamsburg in a couple years. Lazy Legs must be the reason. These horses were skinned to perfection by the artist. Nancy Grave's camels would run for their lives if they saw them. Joesph Beuy's coyote would have licked his chops at the realism of the armature's. With sexy music and draped transparent shims hanging from the ceiling this installation is a perfect whorehouse for our pathetic pathos. The question here is what does an artist have to do? Richard Tuttle merely presented a few simple forms in the early seventies and had the whole board of the Whitney Museum bent out of shape. Today have we seen it all? Sometimes less is more, not in this case. If you want to get shocked out of your depression having lost half your never had net worth go see it. Mary Reed

Rico Gatson Dark Matter at Ronald Feldman

Still from video projected on pedestal on floor Spirit, Myth, Ritual, and Liberation 2008

Nigeria Power, painted wood and glitter 48x48" 2009

(detail) magic stick 1 2009 96x5.5x1" painted wood (click on images to enlarge)

RICO GATSON

DARK MATTER

February 13 – March 14, 2009

In this exhibition Gatson takes multiple forms of art: video, sculpture, and painting and brings them together in a social and racial critic. Darkness or rather Blackness pervades the gallery offset by white, gray-silver and sparkles taking a secondary place to create graphic op arty hybrids. Two of the wall pieces come supplied with their own hand painted light sources. Seamlessly moving between medium this artist uses his message to carry the form. In this work is felt a triumph of spirit perhaps now with our new kinda of Black President will
come the hope and confidence so desperately lacking in our sad times. I think that good art reveals itself on the surface as well underneath. The attention to the skin that rapes is made more powerful in it's refection.

press release

For his fifth exhibition at the Feldman Gallery, Rico Gatson will exhibit a large-scale video installation, sculpture, paintings, and works on paper that continue his exploration of racial issues and shared cultural histories. Gatson uses conceptual and other artistic strategies to distance emotionally-disturbing events and injustices which can never be fully understood or forgiven. The exhibition suggests that coming to terms with the grief of the past may only be possible through a process that takes place over time. With his eye for geometry and its orderly laws, Gatson balances the dark side of his subject matter.

The exhibition features a reconfiguration of Spirit, Myth, Ritual and Liberation, 2008, a site specific video installation created for the New Orleans biennial art exhibition, Prospect.1. It was shown at the historic location of the African American Museum in the Treme section of the city, the first community of freed slaves in the country. The videos, consisting of fast-paced, kaleidoscopic patterns appropriated from films, include the murder scene of Meredith Hunter from Gimme Shelter (1970), projected on white Plexiglas panels; and a theatrical scene of violence from Jean Luc Godard’s socio-political film, Sympathy for the Devil (1968) which is projected on the floor. Gatson’s sound track includes The Upper Room by gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and Death Letter Blues by the Delta blues singer and guitarist, Son House.

Black sculptures, fashioned from wood and other vernacular materials, include Magic Sticks, a cluster of upright snake-like forms, referencing native, religious-based artifacts and confronting the notion of early twentieth-century sculpture based on the “primitive.” Nigeria Power, a wooden wall panel, conflates the aesthetic design of a target with its sinister function. Several works on paper depict hand-drawn lines in African colors and patterns radiating from photographs of well-known, African American activists, suggesting an historical perspective and the power of words that have a life of their own.

Rico Gatson has had recent one person exhibitions at Steve Turner Contemporary (Los Angeles), Pocket Utopia (Brooklyn), the MCAD Gallery at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and the Cheekwood Museum of Art (Nashville). His work has been exhibited at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Exit Art, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and MIT List Visual Arts Center.

For information contact Sarah Paulson (212) 226-3232 or Sarah@feldmangallery.com.

Tom Gregg at George Billis gallery

While this is the kind of show or gallery that would normally find itself on this blog the artist has been showing almost every year with George Billis for many years and tells me he never got a review so we take the challange. Let me give a little background information Gregg went to Yale with the likes of Lisa Yuskavage her show at David Zwirner mentioned below, John Currin, Richard Phillips, Moyna Flannigan, Kyle Staver, Matvey Levenstein, Dik F. Liu, Joe Begonia, Jim Mcshea, Charles Long , Mathew Barney, Sean Landers, Barbara Galluchi, Don Doe, to name a few that might be familiar. The first name signed in the book was William Bailey who at the time was pushing the figurative painting thing really hard, and a few of the above obviously caught the message. Tom Greggs paintings have taken the masters lessons to heart, and in these new paintings take the incredibly quiet world of still life with it's slow slow attention to detail and thrown it into the realm of the big bang. The backgrounds undulate, no percolate with simmering hues of chroma setting their objects ablaze. The only thing wrong with this show is George Billis ability to cram crappy realist painting of an artist painting fairly similar scale still life painting onto a facing wall in the hallway causing pathetic distraction to Tom's craft. Take Greggs paintings and swap them with Yuskavage at Zwirner or Currin's at Gagosian and boy will you have some art criticism. Combining watermelons, hand grenades, plastic toys, cheesy animals, and tea cups and painting them with he same cool distance makes
the fiction completely timeless. Animals in still-life will probably be the next thing, as they are a wonderful metaphor for our own reduction in the humanity department. Placing of explosives
on the table furthers the message pretty graphically. The context inside the picture is perfect and outside could not be more wrong.

Real Life

Casting a 1x1x1.5" pixel in plaster artMovingProjects converted into studio.
Newspaper on floor from a great show at Capricious Gallery Brooklyn. Painting: Marcin Ramocki "Facebook Portrait"
See show online here: www.clubinternet.org
Curated by: Laurel Ptak and organized by: Harm van den Dorpel
Club Internet's assignment "Reverse Engineering."
Participants include: Mark Callahan, Martijn Hendricks, Jon Rafman, Damon Zucconi, Aleksandra Damanovic, Robert Wodzinski, Marc Kremers Philipp Otto, Chris Collins, Constant
Dullaart, Vadik Marmeladov, Joel Holmberg, Miltos Manetas Nathan Havenstein, Charles Broskoski, Dennis Knopf, Tom Moody, Alexindr Skarlinski, Laura Brothers, Justen Kemp, Thomas Traum, Oliver Laric, Travis Smalley, Pascual Sisto, Jam Robert Leegte, Kevin Bewersdorf, and last but not least Guthrie Lonergan whose piece was one of my favorites.
This show was made by the artists in 4 hours starting at 4.00p.m . It was D.J.ed by Harm
and I had the opportunity to sit between Kevin and Jon who were 2 of the 4 or 5 who worked at the gallery- the rest worked outside. The audience included: Heather Rasley and Casey Pugh among a few others who came and went. As performance this was really quite amazing. Like most things made from the web it's presence lives comfortably at the club. The evening before
found a panel discussion that suffered from talking geek head- but I heard Paddy Johnson from ArtFagCity made some good points.
(any names spelled wrong please comment and will correct)
Mary Reed

Severed Ways

Marc Horowitz with Tony Stone at after party to William Stones show at James Fuentes
Photo: Aron Namenwirth
This is the most amazing movie I have seen in a while.. Brooklyn DIY aside/
Everything that one is supposed to do...... the formula is thrown out the door. Tony Stone does everything you are not supposed to do in a movie including taking a close-up of his ass squatting shit coming out- a hugh endless shit. Then wiping with little green leaves that are not suited to the job. The camera is either obscured, running through the woods or out of focus and the dialogue is completely non- existent except for a few lines in a language of the vikings that can not be understood. "We better move or we are toast" or something like that. The sound osillates between a beautiful lyric, sounds from Vermont and Newfoundland nature and heavy metal death viking rock. This is a story of transformation, life, and death. It will rival the best in cult films the like of David Lynch's "Erasurehead" and Elias Merhige's "Begotten" Because of Stones DIY effort, filmaking will never be the same.
Mary Reed

MAGNET/MAGNOLIA present A TONY STONE FILM

SEVERED WAYS: THE NORSE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA

soundtrack featuring MORBID ANGEL - POPOL VUH

BURZUM - DIMMU BORGIR - OLD MAN’S CHILD

BRIAN ENO - QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE

and JUDAS PRIEST.

Angelika Film Center March 13-19.

12, 2:30, 5, 7:35, 10

12:30am Fr/Sat

In the 11th century, Vikings, Indians, and Irish monks collide on the shores of

North America in a historical epic adventure of exploration, personal glory, and

religious dominance. Abandoned by a Western exploration party and stranded in the

New World, two lone Vikings wade through a grand primeval landscape,

struggling for survival while still in the grip of their Norse ways

"Severed Ways is a thrilling concurrence of oppositions, its disparate

and unique blend of elements working together in constantly

unexpected ways. Its primal, rustic story is set to a soundtrack of

everything from Norwegian black metal to Brian Eno, while the

camerawork encompasses both classical compositions and stylized

digital techniques. It gives nods to filmmakers from Dreyer to

Bergman to Herzog, while updating the subtitles for its Vikings’ 11th

century dialogue to colloquial English. (“If we stay here, we’re

toast.”) It is somehow both deeply serious and strangely silly. First-

time director Tony Stone has created a film that is steeped in cinema

history and completely original, both timeless and thoroughly modern."

-Rachel Rosen, LA Film Festival

"'SEVERED WAYS' IS A VISIONARY WORK from one of the most promising new American narrative filmmakers in recent years." — Indiewire

"SOME OF THE RAWEST, MOST REALISTIC, DEEPLY PERSONAL INDEPENDENT FILMMAKING I HAVE EVER SEEN. It completely encompasses the true metal spirit." — All Metal Resource

"A MUST SEE" — LA Weekly

www.severedways.com

review n.y.times movies.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/movies/13seve.html

The N.Y. Post -

www.nypost.com/seven/03132009/entertainment/movies/cut_above_the_rest_in_odd_ways__few_word_159261.htm

A couple...3

(Detail)
Marc Horowitz (click on images to enlarge)
Twitter Drawings, 2009 - detail
100 drawings, Ink on paper
4 3/4" x 5 1/2" each (68" x 64" overall)
(unique-, full set available as limited edition book)

This artist made his life into art for three months by exposing it to the public via live feed.
These twitter drawings are best seen at the gallery. Video from I need to stop below.
www.ineedtostopsoon.com/

Kristin Lucas "The future is not what it used to be" Postmasters Gallery
In this floor installation Lucas casts candles in wax of antiquated relics of technology
and during the opening sets them alight. This has been the movement of the new media community, to take what is once ephemeral- code, electrons dancing on a screen, and make it into craft. Transform something that exists in the realm of the mind and materialize it in this world. Place it in the white box with purpose. Lucas uses her seniority or experience to accomplish this in triumphant fashion. These sculptures are both real and by nature ready to burn. They are both useless and full. They are both new media and Art with a capital A and so their place is successful. This well curated show is totally awesome, so if you have an interest in computers, or the internet your time spent here will be well rewarded.


Dan Kopp (Detail) HTML at The Volta Art Fair

Joe Mckay " The Fut..." Postmasters -Digital Print on Aluminum or Plexi (detail)
This is a great piece that I will not be able to explain completely, He uses google maps street views and the reflection of a van to create this image.
It takes technologies ability to see everything all the time and the absurdity of being able to see
is blindness if there is no comprehension of what we are looking at. Joe hope that is okay.
Anyway brillant, funny, profound this is the most overlooked artist working in new media today. Again, I feel experiencing his work at Vertexlist in the form of cellphones interactively and through installation, or outside in a field may suite him better than a cog in the wheel. The small photograph takes something warm and funny and cools it down.

Marcin Ramocki "The Future..." Postmasters
Still from animation with sound by Paul Slocum
This piece is a composite of animations posted to Spirit Surfers. Ummm It questions whether
something is as good as the sum of it's parts and whether transforming by changing it's context benefits use. Each of the parts in the format was created for spirit surfers and life on the internet. The collaboration is so strong that making a piece for the gallery, seems a daunting task. At the opening with the sound crippled by the crowd I was not sure about the piece. On returning it rocked along, but in retrospect writing this- I go back to the internet. Each element is so great as boon or wake hence, context rules, and the source spirit surfers wins. This is one of my favorite artists and have no doubt his next effort will totally blow me away. I write this after coming to the conclusion that new media artists don't take criticism well, more on this another time.
Detail: Kevin Bewersdorf Postmasters
This work is by an artist/guru and member of spirit surfers and creator of Maximum Sorrow.
I am not sure what to think when he makes stuff for the gallery, but on the internet Kevin has few that can hold a candle to him. Tom Moody would be such a person who would have been a nice addition to this powerful and nicely curated group show featuring web artists. As far as the piece above "it asks more questions than it answers"- Marcia Tucker and so elevates itself to this post. It challenges what our expectations of what well behaved art should do and for that super.



Dan Kopp at CTRL gallery Houston TX- Volta
These are incredible paintings that while they benefit from the concept of the Fair suffer from the Fair - that they are not really experienced with the space and time they could use. Kopp has the ability to make every gesture in his painting work. Basically using transparency and the lessons of Morris Louis he has re delved the depths of surrealism making Matta roll in his grave. One of the few painters today who can make heroic paintings that seem UP and philatelic yet not turn his back on the fact that we are totally fucked. These paintings are like William Blake if he could paint and draw and did not have a stick up his ass. Kopp has got it all content/color/ light - eastern- western@##$ it is like looking at the whole of art history, while getting cracked over the head with a wine bottle. Or getting off on the stained glass windows at the Vatican Cathedral while doing crack and getting it with a bottle of Absolute.




Postmasters
Eva and Franco Mattes (aka 0100101110101101.org)
Reenactment of Marina Abramovic and Ulay's "Imponderabilia" - Synthetic performance in Second Life , 2007
HD video, color, sound
running time: 8 minutes 40 seconds
Edition of 3 +AP
During the opening i was transfixed until realizing that this second-life online piece was not happening in real time and was a loop. What a let down as those characters went from the actions of people transformed into something static and dead. That said, hats off to Postmasters for bringing this important and under represented subject into focus in this unfocused moment of history.
Mary Reed

A couple...2

William Stone at James Fuentes

Matt Connors at Canada at The Armory

Compare and contrast- is there any direction in art in 2009- No. Above two examples of awesome art moving in opposite directions Stone- Conceptual/Lifestyle and Connors Formalism/Installation. Canada is one of the few galleries sticking to one artist in their booth at the Armory, with Matt making an formal tour de force with dealer dressed in yellow and white finishing off a tasteful squaring of colors. This singling of artist is explored at Volta and will be looked at shortly. Both Matt and Bill safely snuggle into conventional modes of modern art making, and this creates a very safe and comfortable experience. The Gallery in this case has the advantage of space and Stone's Chairs, Clock, and Lights in the back room breath here :) James Fuentes has taken advantage of the collapsing art market moving into a recently vacated space next to Bell Weather just for this exhibit- while B.W. is expelled from the Armory for lack of funds. This seems terrible that the Armory could not float the credit until B.W. could make the sales.
In any case. Stone makes a convincing case in questioning Plato. Is a chair a chair? No a chair is
Art. Duchamp lives in Stone. I was a little confused with Matts "Framed" thinking it was the other Canada artist who has favored the blank canvas, but it's tautness set me straight.
Time is always an issue especially during art fairs and the grandfather clock with live feed projected face reminded me that is running out for the old. Chelsea with it's great shows appeared like a scene from the day after. Strangely nothing is what it seems even the Armory is a pier.
Mary Reed

A couple of days in New York

Vanessa Beecroft "62019 vb" at the Armory

Lisa Yuskavage at David Zwirner

To compare the gallery experience to that of the art fair is a little like comparing going to gambling on a cruise to a solitary walk on the beach. They are both not easily forgotten and have pro's and con's unless you know what you want. Lisa's new paintings at Zwirner are on the medium large size and are dwarfed by the immense catacomb that occupies them, this being a good thing in that they reek of presence. I am afraid anything dropped on the floor in there would. But, these paintings are well made in that they have a convincing look that they somehow with some struggle emerged out of the process of their making. The light and color of there fantastic worlds has a creditability or believability and one would not argue the
necessity at this bleak moment. But then I wonder what is she and Vanessa Beecroft whose performance I missed at Deitch Studio's trying to say. I know it is about the woman as object,
in the former ideal the latter sexual, but i still can't help and wonder as my groin begins to quiver if they are playing the idea exploiting it or criticizing- this ambitiousness settles my
libido and makes me comfortable in Lisa's case that it is art. As Beecroft's photographs look more like antiquity they loose there edge.
(to be cont..)
Mary Reed

New place for Art Criticism

As the gallery is closed for the time being, I thought that the blog should be a place for art criticism. Therefore if anyone has something to say you are welcome to submit it to aMP.
Please submit to comments for review.