Don't miss the opening (reopening?) of the Reynolds Center (AKA the Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum.)

See you next Wednesday...

As noticed earlier in the spring I commented on how museums are rehanging the collection in order to avoid the costs of the blockbuster show - the Whitney is going for it with a full advertising push - including the 5th floor hanging of Edward Hopper (clearly a crowd favorite) The Whitney's Hopper works are supplemented by loans, including the Art Institute of Chicago's "Nighthawks" and the Museum of Modern Art's "New York Movie". Also on view is Alexander Calder's "Circus", one of the museum's most beloved works, is displayed in the Lobby Gallery, in a brand new installation.

I love the fact that the Whitney is using banner ads as well (see illustration below)

Happy birthday to the artblog - its been a really exciting year. Thanks for sharing your time with me. Coming up this year interviews with artists as well as more dedication to discussing shows and individuals that are in my little mind, interesting.

Mentioned earlier this month during my month of book buying (which is not over by a long shot, BTW) I received the Richard Prince oriented annual report - and my previous description was pretty much correct. Think of it as a working sketch book complete with note and phone numbers - I'm pretty sure Arto Lindsey's address and phone number is here as well. Your looking at about 150 pages total its pretty complete. I've noticed that Mr. Prince goes by the name Dick (just like Nixon did). I've shot a few pages quickly with the digital camera they are below - sorry in advance for the poor image quality. You can get this for free by filling out a request form on the ringier web site. www.ringier.ch

Richard Tuttle's signed and numbered book "I Thought I Was Going on a Trip But I Was Only Going Down Stairs" is 100 dollars from Printed Matter.

www.printedmatter.org

This is continued from yesterday, you might want to scroll down for the earlier post...



Eric Brown at Goff+Rosenthal
Beautiful presentation - very interesting use of volume and space. Faint echoes of Italian Futurism and modern architecture. Super clean lines, smart transparency with touches of the human hand. That said for some reason the show left me a touch cold and I'm not sure why, because in theory I should like this show a whole lot more than I do.



Keith Haring at Alona Kagan Gallery
I love Keith Haring - especially his early work and this show of 6 or 8 drawings were produced during December 80 and January 81 - this is the critical time period of Haring's ascending star. 4 of these are subway drawings - one is actually a movie poster with comments on Haring's work next to the drawing. This is a fun show - it's not going to change your mind (about Haring in either direction) but it does give a view of what was to come and where it started. Recommended.



Bodo Korsig at Cynthia Broan
I found this to be an interesting show of personal iconography - really nothing universal but at the same time deeply personal. Black reliefs that seem to come from a background of cave painting modernized to somehow connect with a viewer living in modern times. Interesting...



Mapplethorpe/Warhol @ Sean Kelly
This is really a Mapplethorpe show - the Warhol's are primarily Polaroids and seem like prep images for portraits. To me the true stars of this show are the two portraits of Patti Smith that were out takes from the "Horses" album cover session. Since I'm a complete sucker for that record and Patti Smith in particular - I was curious to know what a secondary Mapplethorpe would go for - $18,000. Interesting show but really mostly a celebrity picture show. Not terribly interesting unless you resonate with a particular image as I did with the PS portraits. Your mileage may vary.

I spent some time wondering around Chelsea (ok - I started at the bottom and serpentine'd my way up to 29th st.) and a big shocker - I have some things to say.



Three new artists for new to dote on:
Johnnie Winona Ross at Stephen Haller Gallery.
JWR has a touch of Agnes Martin (in all the good ways) but where Martin would back away, Ross moves forward. These are reductive images as presented, but the images themselves are heavily steeped in process. I'm talking about details here as well, multiple layers (and by multiple I mean as many as 30 sanded and repainted layers) really fine finishing of the work, as well as perfect presentation. To illustrate the point - JWR uses hand made cooper nails to attach his work to the stretcher - this little touch has a hint of Robert Ryman as well - not the hand made nail part, but including the viewer in on seeing the support behind the image.

I really think this is a must see show, esp. if your interested in reductive/minimal work. Spend a little bit of time and you will be rewarded with some great work.

Johnnie Winona Ross at Stephen Haller Gallery through June 27.
www.stephenhalllergallery.com



Howard Fonda at Mixed Greens.
I walked into Mixed Greens not really knowing what to expect - the gallery seems young but forward thinking and has a great vibe - Fondas work was in the back gallery and it immediately knocked me out. The imagery was of trees - spiky very architectural trees with broad bands of color going through the back as well as at times moving into the foreground. This is a really poor description of really well painted work. The paint handling is what turned me on the most however, it was loose and comfortable yet exact and clearly thought out beforehand - I was speaking to Steven the gallerist who was showing me some other work and I said that it reminded me of Neal Jenney's "bad paintings" but that it had been pushed even farther and refined. (those of you who read here know of my love of those paintings)

Well worth checking out.
I forgot to get a show card, but Mixed Greens is at 531 west 26th street
www.mixedgreens.com



Shai Kremer at Julie Saul (part of "Infected Landscapes")
I like this work a lot. It comes across as really banal, but really interesting - especially seeing the encroachment of the landscape. I was thinking why I liked these and the basic thought I had was that these are landscapes with a protagonist. More than that it shows me someone who seems to be thinking past traditional thoughts of landscape - to me thats a great thing and well worth rewarding.

I forgot to get a show card (again), but Julie Saul is at 521 west 21st street


Other things worth noting:
Eva Hesse at the Drawing Center
To me the Drawing Center is routinely missed in peoples art viewing itineraries - I think thats because of its SoHo location - It hardly matters though because the Eva Hesse show on view right now is a real gem - especially for the working artist. I found it to be a open door to her process and approaches.

James Lee Byars at Mary Boone, Perry Rubenstien, and Michael Werner
JLB is a great artist however I found this show on the whole to be not so interesting - however the installation at Mary Boone of "The Spinning Oracle of Delphi" was just what the piece needed. The vessel filled the room as much as it could and the viewer was forced to navigate around the room and object. Perfect.

On reflection I think the show is so sprawling that with multiple galleries in 6 different locations - nothing has the chance to resonate with each other, then again the work is so big, its probably the only way to show his work outside of a museum space.

Oliver Boberg at DCKT Contemporary
These are images of a solitary suburbia. Approached with a multiple frame sequence that reminds me of split screen movies of the sixties. The images are like snippets from Douglas Couplands suburban landscape of "Girlfriend in a Coma" no one to see, nothing to do, but it all looks so interesting. These are interesting.

The photographs are of photographed models - super realistic models with all the details that you would expect. Maybe no one needs to know - it sure isn't obvious to the viewer. I hope I haven't spoiled them for you. Sorry to report that the show closed this weekend.


I'll get the rest of what I thought was noteworthy up on wednesday.

I just stumbled across Margot Quan Knight's photography at the Aperture web site. All I can say is I'm impressed. MQK has a series of photos called "Taking Care" which to use the curatorial language - explore the transgressive and transformative potential in the interaction of animate and inanimate objects.

I don't know about all that, I just know that I had an immediate reaction to these artworks.

The "Taking Care" images show images of a solitary woman with pieces of her body apart from her but at the same time, being cared for by her. The seem quiet and profound - artworks worthy of much more attention.

She has a web site as well: www.margotknight.com.

Please understand that I have had a slight change in my family schedule, Catherine (my wife) has broken her ankle, and it is leaving me running around pretty darn busy right now and I'll admit the blog is a bit behind.

Expect some new photo's on the blog in a couple of days

On the studio turntable
Robert Quine / Fred Maher - Basic
Alan Vega - Saturn Strip
The Fleshtones - Hexbreaker
Television - Adventure

Edward Steichen, Heavy Roses, Voulangis, France, 1914, is said to be the last photograph he took in France before the Great War (that would be World War I). This image has a rich painterly quality––and it should, it was taken when Steichen still had aspirations to be a painter.

Following the war Steichen returned to Voulangis and destroyed all of his paintings.

Heavy Roses, Voulangis, France, 1914. Edward Steichen. Image size: 8” x 10”. Matt size: 20” x 16”. Hand-pulled dust-grain photogravure. Printed by master photogravure printer, Jon Goodman. Numbered. Edition of 400 and no artist’s proofs. Perfect condition, kept in Aperture’s vaults since date of printing.

$500

Follow this link

Come see my work in Baltimore.
I'll be showing my work at Smith Content during a special "Hon Fest" opening. So come on by.
Saturday June 10 12 - 6,
Smith Content
904 West 36th Street
Baltimore MD

Do you use apple widgets? I don't but I know I'm about to upgrade my OS - especially now since apple has made available a digital version of Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies" cards. I've had a couple of different versions of these decks and use them in my work from time to time. I think they are really interesting and allow a little bit of thinking room in the creative process.

A Brief History of Oblique Strategies
The Oblique Strategies are a deck of cards. Before the world went digital, they were easy to describe. They measured about 2-3/4" x 3-3/4" and came in a small black box which said "OBLIQUE STRATEGIES" on one of the top's long sides and "BRIAN ENO/PETER SCHMIDT" on the other side. The cards were solid black on one side, and had the Oblique Strategies printed in a 10-point sans serif face on the other

The deck itself had its origins in the discovery by Brian Eno that both he and his friend Peter Schmidt tended to keep a set of basic working principles which guided them through the kinds of moments of pressure - either working through a heavy painting session or watching the clock tick while you're running up a big buck studio bill. Both Schmidt and Eno realized that the pressures of time tended to steer them away from the ways of thinking they found most productive when the pressure was off. The Strategies were, then, a way to remind themselves of those habits of thinking - to jog the mind.

It is not clear from any sources I've run across that the cards were intended to be a "single instruction/single response" kind of "game". The introductory cards included in all three versions of the first versions of the Oblique Strategies suggest otherwise. It seems clear, also, that the deck was not conceived of as a set of "fixed" instructions, but rather a group of ideas to be added to or modified over time; each of the three decks included 4 or 5 blank cards, intended to be filled and used as needed.

Most of the content from todays post was cribbed from Gregory Taylors website here

The 3rd annual Atlantic Avenue Artwalk - tour of open studios, public art projects, gallery shows, etc. in Brooklyn. ArtWalk is a relaxed event and includes recent work from: David Ellis, Limor Gasko, Donato Giancola, Mike Houston, Karen Ingram, Dean Landry, Martin Mazorra, Chris Mendoza, Chris Piazza, Mac Premo, Yuri Shimojo, PK Williams, and more. Events nclude artist talks, music, films, readings, workshops and demos.

Follow this link for more information

I'm looking for back issues of a magazine called "The Manipulator" it was printed during the eighties and its size was something like 22" x 17" printed on good quality newsprint (high end newsprint) Can you help? email me at: mlangley@mediastudio.com - thanks