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Killer Opening For “Murdering The World,” Mark Greenwold’s Long-Awaited Debut at Sperone Westwater

THE EDITORS — Sat, 11 May 2013 19:57:27 +0000

Out and About with artcritical
Mark Greenwold: Murdering the World, Paintings and Drawing 2007-2013 at Sperone Westwater

Photographs by Robin Siegel, Installation shots by Allyson Shea, Report by David Cohen
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Installation shot, Mark Greenwold: Murdering the World, Paintings and Drawing 2007-2013 at Sperone Westwater, May 10 to June 28, 2013

A Mark Greenwold show is hardly less rare than a new painting from this OCD master of minutiae: to give the fellow a normal-sized show you pretty much need to stage a mini-survey. That’s what his new dealers, Sperone Westwater, have done for the veteran fantasy realist on the third floor of their Norman Foster-designed railroad gallery on the Bowery, in a show that takes its title from a line of Stanley Cavell’s hand-inscribed at its entrance: “The cause of tragedy is that we would rather murder the world than permit it to expose us to change.”

His admirers were out in force the Friday night of Frieze weekend, including a number of sitters in his bizarre psycho-dramas. Amongst the latter category were Chuck Close and James Siena who besides their visages and birthday suits also contribute to Greenwold’s visual vocabulary in the form of their trademark pictorial marks – Close’s lozenges, Siena’s algorithmic zags – that the artist uses as kind of thought bubbles hovering over his dramatis personae’s heads.

In his New York Sun review of Greenwold’s last survey, at DC Moore Gallery in the Fall of 2007, artcritical editor David Cohen wrote in terms that still apply that “Mr. Greenwold revels in capturing each hair on a dog, or each thread in a carpet, with a nutty regard for exactitude

Like psychoanalysis, around which these strange dramas revolve, Mr. Greenwold’s painting mode supposes that no detail is to be ignored and that time is no object. Psychoanalysis is the key — if not to decoding these bizarre, narcissistic soul dramas, then at least to understanding the strange genre in which they occur. For Mr. Greenwold’s pictures occupy an ambiguous space nestled between allegory and narrative. Each of the figures feels highly isolated, and yet each one plays a function in relation to the action unfolding around them all.

On view at 257 Bowery between Houston and Stanton streets, New York City, 212.999.7337 through June 28, 2013

Courtesy of Sperone Westwater. Photo: Allyson Shea

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Pro Bono: Drawing Center Honors Sean Scully

THE EDITORS — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 03:32:04 +0000

Report by David Cohen, Photos by Hal Horowitz

NEW YORK CITY: Wednesday, April 10. The Drawing Center honored Sean Scully at its annual gala this year in true Irish style with the artist’s buddy Bono proposing a raucous, poetic toast. The honoree responded in kind with a stirring tribute to his hosts. Bucking a trend in which institutions double their footprint or decamp to trendier locales as soon as the itch to expand takes hold, the Drawing Center, under long serving executive director Brett Littman, has remained true to their roots in SoHo, skillfully reshaping and upgrading their premises but staying put on Wooster Street and in the idea of drawing, albeit in a seemingly ever-expanding definition of the activity. Scully’s traveling exhibition, Sean Scully: Change and Horizontals, currently in Rome, focusing on a key transitional year in the 1970s, was organized by the Drawing Center, where it will show this fall. The gala, meanwhile, at the Tribeca Rooftop, attracted an assortment of the artist’s rock star friends, including one from the kitchen!

Mario Batali, Michael Stipe, Bono and Sean Scully at the Drawing Center Gala, April 10, 2013. Photo by Hal Horowitz

Sean Scully, Brett Littman, Corban Walker (front) and David Cohen at the Drawing Center Gala, April 10, 2013. Photo by Hal Horowitz

Waqas Wajahat and Elizabeth Schwartz at the Drawing Center Gala, April 10, 2013. Photo by Hal Horowitz

Nova Benway, Lisa Sigal, Lucy Freeman Sandler and Irving Sandler at the Drawing Center Gala, April 10, 2013. Photo by Hal Horowitz

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At Dorian Grey’s for Artist and Editor Extraordinaire Walter Robinson

Ilka Scobie — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:37:48 +0000

The intimate East Village gallery Dorian Grey overflowed March 1st with fans of Walter Robinson, artist and editor extraordinaire, for his new show, Indulgences. Since the demise of Artnet magazine last summer, its founder-editor has been busy in his studio. Robinson’s small fluid new paintings and gouaches celebrated pulp romance, pin-ups, quotidian comestibles, pharmaceutical sundries and booze bottles. The enthusiastic crowd included Roberta Smith, Jerry Saltz, Donald Kuspit, Rene Ricard and myriad other downtown admirers. Robinson’s recent exhibitions have been at Metro Pictures, Chicago’s Firecat Projects and Haunch of Venison. 437 East 9th Street between 1st Ave and Ave A, through April 7th.

Photos by Manuel Arjona

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Jeff Wright and Jerry Saltz

Samantha Heaps and Luis Accorsi

Walter Robinson, Dorian Grey Gallery, March 1, 2013. Photo: Manuel Arjona

Room Service: Sophie Calle at the Lowell Hotel

Robin Siegel — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 19:48:28 +0000

A photo report by Robin Siegel of a visit to Sophie Calle’s Room at the Lowell Hotel, New York, October 2011

Sophie Calle, Room, 2011. Lowell Hotel, October 2011. Photograph © Robin Siegel.

What is it about French artist Sophie Calle, beds and hotel rooms? There was The Sleepers, (1980) The Hotel, (1981) Room with a View, (2003) Exquisite Pain (2003) and now, Room. For one weekend in mid-October, Calle took up residence 24/7, so to speak, in Suite 3A at the Lowell Hotel on New York City’s Upper East Side. Room, a new installation by Calle, was commissioned by the French Institute Alliance Française as part of their “Crossing the Line” annual contemporary art festival.

In order to construct Room, Calle very deliberately strewed a stuffed cat, banana, wedding dress, embroidered sheets, black brassiere, red bucket, blond wig, Polaroids, and all sorts of printed ephemera, including love letters, notes and a certificate for a cemetery plot she purchased in Bolinas, California throughout the suite’s three rooms. She manipulates and blurs the line between fact and fiction. Many of the items Calle culled for this installation have been seen in her previous installations and books. In true-to-form Calle style, each object was accompanied by what appeared to be an autobiographical text by Calle typed out on an index card, often expounding on her relationships with men, family members; sometimes revealing events that took place in her life or even her very own perceptions of herself. Visitors milled about the suite quietly reading the copious text while scrutinizing the objects.

Adding a rather strange dimension to the already odd feeling of being a voyeur in a stranger’s hotel room was the artist’s presence, itself, in the suite, at times. At one point Calle burst into the room, speaking French to a young woman watching guard over the installation, and then plopped down on the couch, beginning to busily type away on her laptop, French news blaring all the while from the nearby TV. No one addressed her at all. She jumped up at one point and walked into the bedroom and then back to the living room. It was difficult to know if no one spoke to her due to not recognizing her, or for lack of desire to break through that fourth wall.

A handwritten message on a board off to one side of the living room proclaimed:

What happens is always so far ahead of us, that we can never catch up to it and know its true appreciation.

Indeed. Or, as they say in French: certes.

Sophie Calle, Room, 2011. Lowell Hotel, October 2011. Photograph © Robin Siegel.

Accompanying text card reads:

When I was fifteen I was afraid of men. One day, in a restaurant, I chose a dessert because of its name: “Young Girl’s Dream.” I asked the waiter what it was, and he answered: “It’s a surprise.” A few minutes later he returned with a dish featuring two scoops of vanilla ice cream and a peeled banana. He said one word: “Enjoy.” Then he laughed. I closed my eyes the same way I closed them years later when I saw my first naked man.

Sophie Calle, Room, 2011. Lowell Hotel, October 2011. Photograph © Robin Siegel.

The text on the card reads:

I had three cats. Felix died after having been accidentally locked in the fridge. Zoe was taken from me when my younger brother was born; I hated him from that moment on. Nina was strangled by a jealous man who had, some time before, given me the following ultimatum: to sleep either with the cat or with him. I opted for the cat.

Sophie Calle, Room, 2011. Lowell Hotel, October 2011. Photograph © Robin Siegel.

Text from Calle’s Appointment with Sigmund Freud, (2001):

I was six. I lived on a street named Rosa-Bonheur with my grandparents. A daily ritual obliged me every evening to undress completely in the elevator on my way up to the sixth floor, where I arrived without a stitch on. Then I would dash down the corridor at lightning speed, and as soon as I reached the apartment, I would jump into bed. Twenty years later I found myself repeating the same ceremony every night in public, on the stage of one of the strip joints that line the boulevard in Pigalle, wearing a blonde wig in case my grandparents should happen to pass by.

Urbanology: The BMW Guggenheim Lab

Maddie Phinney — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:02:35 +0000

BMW Guggenheim Lab at First Park

August 3rd to October 16th, 2011
Houston and 2nd Avenue
A New York City Parks Property

BMW Guggenheim Lab. Exterior view from East First Street. Photo: Paul Warchol

August 3rd marked the activation of an ambitious nine-year Guggenheim Foundation initiative: the BMW Guggenheim Lab, an urban installation aimed to investigate issues of sustainability, adaptability, and comfort in the built environment. The nine-year project has been divided into three “cycles,” each with a separate advisory committee and commissioned structure. Beginning in New York’s East Village, cycle one will make stops in Berlin and Mumbai in order to examine the theme of Confronting Comfort.

The lightweight mobile structure currently on view on 1st Street was designed by Tokyo-based collective Atelier Bow-Wow, and is nestled squarely into the surrounding urban landscape. Built on two levels, the bottom half is left open-air, outfitted with a theatrical rigging system displaying flat-screen monitors and spotlights for evening events. The upper level is swathed in fiber mesh to conceal additional chairs, lighting and supports, creating what the designers call a “traveling toolbox.” The compact structure is the first ever to contain an internal framework made entirely of carbon fiber. It stands at a compact 2,200 feet square and accommodates 300 people.

Guggenheim curators Maria Nicanor and David van der Leer conceived of The Lab, partnering with BMW for what they call a “cultural cooperation.” The cycle-one advisory committee is composed of prominent designers, policy-makers, and artists who are charged with nominating an interdisciplinary team of emerging educators and activists appointed to design the public programming. The NYC team has embraced a DIY aesthetic, evidenced by the graffiti-covered brick of the tenement next door and the timber snack shack (catered by beloved Bushwick eatery, Roberta’s) across the street. Any opulence or luxury associated with the Guggenheim foundation or BMW brand has been ostensibly erased for the installation—formally substantiating the project’s commitment to sustainability and localization. The partnership worked closely with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation who own the 1^st street property. The once-vacant lot was stabilized and paved for the installation and surrounding sidewalks were replaced. The project also funded the installation of new wrought-iron gates and fences surrounding the property.

The structure is set to house a series of 100 free interactive programs, video screenings and lectures. A user-activated game entitled Urbanology invites visitors and passerby to build their own city by answering a series of questions that speak to transportation, sustainability, livability, and other urban issues. Comfort—a theme often associated with domestic space—is brought into the public domain to interrogate the ways in which cities can be most responsive to the needs of a community. All programs are free and open to the public as well as accessible online at bmwguggenheimlab.org. The following two cycles will be announced at a later date and will each feature a different structure and set of programming. After the completion of the first cycle, the Guggenheim in New York will exhibit the findings generated by the Mobile Lab.

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Culture Clash: Rave at Brooklyn Museum Versus Twilight Dance at the Botanical Gardens

Patricia Milder — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 19:01:13 +0000

Members of a canari torso perform Paradis by Yanira Castro at Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Photo by Kevin Kwan

Just as it was starting to get dark, the limited audience for Paradis was led across the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens into the Cherry Esplanade. We wandered through the wide lawn, lined with cherry trees, until we saw toward the back left—between the last few trees next to the wall separating the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens from the Brooklyn Museum’s parking lot— Michael Dauphinais playing softly on a lone white piano. It was a beautiful image, coming across him there, but the music he was creating live, which was intended to be a quiet and introspective accompaniment to the dance to come, couldn’t really be heard. That’s because the Brooklyn Museum’s First Saturdays event, a well-attended party with a live DJ spinning house music outdoors with plenty of speakers and a loud base, drown him out. When the white-clad dancers emerged against the deep green of the garden, the crowd tried to focus on the performance; one couldn’t help thinking, though, that they were having a whole lot more fun next door.

The choreographer, Yanira Castro, visibly dismayed about the situation, stopped the performance about halfway through: this was the right decision. The work might or might not have been successful without the sonic interruption—there was a confusing bit of audience interaction that at certain points felt forced, or over-acted, but one can’t be sure this wasn’t due to the dancers’ sense that they had to compete for our attention. Once they made their way in lovely leaps, diagonally criss-crossing the esplanade toward the audience, who milled about near the piano, the performers made their way into the crowd and worked individually wrought motions around and in front of each of us. Shayla-Vie Jenkins is such a lovely dancer that when she was near me, it was easy to bring my focus squarely to the moment and the energy of the bodies moving around bodies in the strange, dim light. Others were less engaging. In any case, it isn’t fair to review a work that had to be stopped mid-way through. This was a lesson in the dangers of site-specificity, and the frustrations of bad communication in institutional planning. The flip side, however, is clearly and happily: how bad can any evening in the empty Brooklyn Botanic Gardens ever really be? A bit of nature at dusk, for this city-dweller at least, can never be called a waste of time.

A New Species at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden: Live Performance at Twilight

Patricia Milder — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:26:59 +0000

Yanira Castro/ a canari torsi: Paradis at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

June 2-4, 8pm. June 5 rain date
1000 Washington Avenue
Brooklyn

Peggy H. Cheng, Luke Miller, and Shayla-Vie Jenkins, members of a canari torso, perform Paradis by Yanira Castro at Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Photo by Yi-Chun Wu

For the first time ever in its 100-year history, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden will host site-specific performances on its grounds. At twilight, director/choreographer Yanira Castro and her interdisciplinary arts organization “a canary torsi” will present the three-part piece Paradis in two locations in the garden: the Desert House in the Steinhardt Conservatory and the Cherry Esplanade. Paradis is inspired by the final section of Jean-Luc Godard’s 2004 film, Notre Musique, and it promises an unusual role for the audience, whose actions will be tracked to generate a specific sound, light and movement environment. It will include live piano by Michael Daupinais and a solo dance performance by Peter Schmitz.

Tickets $20, very limited seating, purchase at dancetheaterworkshop.org or over the phone by calling 212.924.0077

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When in Rome: A photographer does the photography show

Robin Siegel — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 21:52:33 +0000

This photo essay complements Robin Siegel’s report on the AIPAD Photography Show New York, March 16-20, 2011. click the image below to activate the slide show.

Picasso is watching you! A display of Irving Penn at the AIPAD Photography Show New York, Park Avenue Armory, March 16-20, 2011. Photo by Robin Siegel

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Armory and Leggery: Glamor and Style at the 2011 Fairs

THE EDITORS — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 06:38:41 +0000

Paparazzi take note: artcritical is recruiting. We have had it with the current guy: he is simply no Bill Cuningham. This is what he came up with from an afternoon’s clicking at the piers.

A big thank you to all the sartorially expressive visitors and exhibitors he snapped. But there is a limit to what a fellow can do with an iPhone, especially if he knows nothing about clothes, tends to ignore one of the sexes, suffers from the psychological disorder known as limbphomania, and is trying to look like a respectable art critic while on the prowl for art world elegance and chic.

Candidates for his position should submit one captioned photo of a glamorous visitor or exhibitor of this week’s fairs. Winning submissions and runners up will be posted, and terms negotiated. No suite at the Delano offered for the Miami fairs, alas, but we can come to an arrangement. We need your talent.

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Please submit photos to editorial@artcritical.com. Also, subjects: please help us with captions, names, fashion details, etc.

The Armory Show 2010: A photo journal

John Zinsser — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:56:18 +0000

AGAINST THE WIND

Huddled art masses brave the Hudson River elements.

CHAMPAGNE ON ICE

Public Lounge and launch point.

A remarkable swell took place after the doors opened, and not just fare-goers making for the various courtesy bars. The powerful and glamorous A-list crowd amassed quickly, imbibed, and prepared to consume art. The mood was generally upbeat and optimistic, if not exactly replicating the feeding frenzy of the “bubble” years.

INEFFABLE OBJECTS OF DISPLACED DESIRE

General audience member seeks the joys of nonspecific gratification.

THE SWEET SMELL OF TRANSGRESSION

Richard Phillips at White Cube.

Power Londoner Jay Jopling’s White Cube was right at the entrance, with a “real” Damien Hirst skull painting, a wall-scaled Gilbert and George and a seductively ominous work by New Yorker Phillips.

DEEP CONVERSATION

Artist Adam McEwen with dealer Nicole Klagsbrun.

Perhaps they are discussing how you can display a giant yellow swastika and not have that be offensive. McEwen’s solo, “I Am Curious Yellow,” complete with matching carpet, aimed only to please.

SHIVER ME TIMBERS

A towering aluminum pirate from Peter Coffin.

Paris’s Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin continues to showcase flashy theatrical work from a cutting-edge international stable, very art-fair friendly. New Yorker Coffin’s absurdist hero was one of the few literally over-the-top pieces to be seen this year.

HAVE NUDE, WILL TRAVEL

John Wesley packs for the road.

Veteran master of pop figuration Wesley made a statement with this utilitarian suitcase at the booth of Chelsea gallerists Fredericks Freiser.

GERING IN FLIGHT

Silhouetted dealer moves within her Todd James.

57th Street dealer Sandra Gering, now partnered with Madrid’s Javier Lopez, showcases a range of punchy, graphics-oriented work, including this wall-scaled gouache and graphite piece by James.

PYROTECHNICS AND PASSIONS

James Nares with recent soulmate Elizabeth Blake, igniting affect.

Nares strong solo at the large, centrally-positioned booth of Chelsea’s Paul Kasmin, featured huge iridescent iconic brushstrokes isolated against dark saturated colored grounds. One of Nares’s movies, with its percussive formal manipulations, was also on hand, adding ambience.

STRIPES AND STRIATIONS

Painter Eva Lundsager launches her solo.

In from St. Louis for a brief 36-hour stay, abstractionist Lundsager was working with Greenberg Van Doren Gallery to plan her solo exhibition, slated for the weekend. A representative work hangs behind her in the storage closet. “I love being here,” she said of New York and its buzzy environs, formerly her home.

A DISCERNING EYE

Painter Paul Pagk stares down the competition.

I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR

Augusto Arbizo of Eleven Rivington catches some light off of his Jacob Kassay paintings.

“They’re acrylic with silver plating,” he explained. “They’re very temporal.” Best of all, “they kind of record you,” he elaborated. This might explain their popularity. Both works were sold—and Kassay is among the fair’s “hot” young artists.

ALL DRESSED UP AND…

No place to sit. The VIP Lounge runneth over.

It turned out the lattes were free, if you know Armory Fair-founder Paul Morris, or had another “in.” It seemed like more people were “VIP” than not, judging by the shortage of seating. We’ll see how many make it to the MoMA party, still standing.