Notes and observations by karley klopfenstein
Loose Talk Costs $$$
Marlene Dumas, Reinhardt's Daughter, 1994. oil on canvas, 78 3/4 x 39 3/8 inches. Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery
Can sharing a bit of gossip cost you $8 million? It might if you are high-powered art dealer and gallery owner David Zwirner.
It all started when Miami collector Craig Robins resold a painting, Reinhardt’s Daughter, (1994) by Margaret Dumas through David Zwirner’s Chelsea gallery in 2004. Zwirner apparently told the South African artist about the sale, and she forbid him to sell any of her paintings to Robins. Dumas currently has a solo exhibition of major works at David Zwirner, and when Robins wanted three of them, he was denied.
Robin’s lawsuit, filed on March 29, in Manhattan federal court, is asking for $3 million in compensatory damages, plus $5 million in punitive damages for the breach of confidentiality in the sale of the painting.
Accusations are flying—Zwirner told Dumas about the sale in order to curry favor to become her exclusive dealer, Dumas has “blacklisted” Robins from purchasing any primary market works, Zwirner made promises to Robins to sell him any works that didn’t sell to museums.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Multi-million dollar back-biting and name-calling in the art world is nothing new, but this takes he-said, she-said to a whole new level. 04/01/10
Becky Beasley wins MaxMara Prize
Becky Beasley, Glen Herbert Gold, 2009. Black American walnut, brass, green acrylic glass, 147 x 57.2 x 62cm, Edition of 2. Courtesy of the Artist
The biennial MaxMara Art Prize for Women has been awarded to Becky Beasley. The other shortlisted artists for this year’s prize, organized in association with the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, were Andrea Büttner and Elizabeth Price.
The prize, which was launched in 2006, includes a six month residency in Italy, an exhibition at the Whitechapel in Spring 2011 and an opportunity for the work to be offered to Collezione Maramotti for acquisition. The Maramotti family are owners of MaxMara and benefactors of the prize.
The selection panel consisted of Iwona Blazwick, Director of the Whitechapel; artist Fiona Banner; gallerist Alison Jacques; art collector Valeria Napoleone; and art critic Polly Staple.
Becky Beasley’s quietly haunting photographs and sculptures take their reference from a close study of the body and the writings of Bernard Malamud and Thomas Bernhard, as well as her own writing. The works are emphatically silent; bluntly refusing to give up a single meaning or reading. Recent works have involved the multiple reconfiguring of a piece of wood based on the length and joints of her father’s arm.
Andrea Büttner uses a variety of media, including some traditional methods such as woodcuts, glass painting and flower pressing to explore myths surrounding the figure of the artist, the fetishization of the artists’ hand and the areas where art and religion overlap. Her prints usually contain text that is self-depreciating or about failure – “I don’t know what to do” or “I want to let the work fall down”.
Elizabeth Price’s conceptual work grows and shrinks through time. In a piece titled “Help,” (2001) Price hand wrote all the invitations for an exhibition, documented the process and showed the subsequent 5-hour video in the gallery. Another piece, titled “Trophy,” (1996) is engraved with the names of each venue as it exhibited, growing a little bit each time. Similarly, “Mummified Dog with a Mummified Rat in its Mouth,” (2004) changes over time since the artist never wraps the plinth animals are displayed upon when it is shipped. Subsequently, the base is damaged a little more each time and shows just as much of the evidence of the passage of time as the disturbing creatures.
Ordway Winners Announced
Hazma Walker, writer/curator, and Polish video artist Artur Zmijewski are the winners of the 2010 Ordway Prize. The award, named for naturalist, philanthropist and arts patron Katherine Ordway, comes with an unrestricted $100,000 cash prize. It acknowledges the contributions of a mid-career curator/arts writer and artist whose work has had significant impact on the field of contemporary art, but has yet to receive broad public recognition. An international panel of Nominators and a Jury of leading arts world figures-led by Jennifer McSweeney, Director of Creative Link for the Arts, and Richard Flood, Chief Curator at the New Museum-selected the Ordway Prize recipients from a global pool of nominees.
Hazma Walker is the Director of Education and Associate Curator at The University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society and on the faculty of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has written for Artforum, New Art Examiner, Trans and catalogue essays on Darren Almond, Rebecca Morris, Giovanni Anselmo, and Katharina Grosse, among others. Notable past curatorial projects at the Renaissance Society include “Several Silences” (2009); “Katerina Seda” (2008); “All the Pretty Corpses” (2005); and “New Video, New Europe” (2004). He is currently planning the first US exhibition of the works of Antwerp native Anne-Mie can Kerckhoven in late 2010.
Artur Zmijewski was born in Warsaw, Poland, where he currently lives and works. His film and photographic work uncompromisingly examines contemporary moral issues, challenging out sense of what should be made visible and what should remain invisible. Zmijewski’s seminal work Repetition (2005) revisits the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, where volunteers are designated either and guards or prisoners and allowed to play out the situation. His latest film Sculpture Plein-air. Swiecie 2009 was presented as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s Project 91 series. In 2008, his film Oko za Oko (An Eye for an Eye) was included in the New Museum’s “After Nature” exhibition. He participated in Documenta 12 in 2007 and Manifesta 4 in 2002. He was selected to represent Poland at the 50th Venice Biennale. March 31, 2010
Literally, the End of Metaphor
The downtown Brooklyn gallery, Metaphor Contemporary Art had its final show in March 2010. The owners, Rene Lynch and Julian Jackson, have been wearing two hats since the gallery space opened in October 2001—those of artist and dealer/curator. After almost a decade of the balancing act of “being both” they have decided to dissolve the physical gallery dimension of Metaphor.
Dissolve is the right word. The gallery is part of the husband and wife team’s studio and home on the 11th floor of the 382 Atlantic Avenue location.
Over 80 exhibitions have been mounted in the space, many of them emerging artists or underrepresented mid-career artists. Their curatorial style, with an artists eye, was noticed by artists and critics. Group shows with interesting curatorial titles like “Slippery When Wet” (2009), “Back to the Garden” (2008), and “Mischief” (2006), were interspersed with solo shows by Mary Ting, Mia Brownell, Lindsay Walt, Ryan Mrzozwski, and more. An especially notable show was “Ward Jackson: A Life In Painting 1928-2004” curated by Julian Jackson, nephew of the late artist, in 2007.
The couple plans to redirect their energies toward their studio practice and an increasingly busy individual exhibition schedule. They both have upcoming solo shows in Germany. They plan to continue their curatorial practice on a project basis, and have already received an overwhelming number of requests, according to Lynch. Updates will be posted on their website, www.metaphorecomtemporaryart.com
Artists Design Themes for Google’s Chrome Browser
Chrome, Google’s flashy new web browser, is now offering themes designed by artists such as Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Tom Sachs and Dale Chihuly.
What’s a theme? It’s the thing behind the webpages you are looking at. All you usually see is that little strip on top, a gray bar. New themes by artists, designers and fashion celebrities can spice up that little gray bar for you. You can see more of the theme when you click on the “add a tab” button on the top of the page, which shows you your most visited sites in smaller thumbnail images and exposes more of the background.
The Jeff Koons theme is three shiny rabbits on a multi-faceted blue background. Jenny Holzer’s theme looks like one of her light pieces.
Additional theme options were created by Donna Karen, Todd Oldham, Kate Spade, Oscar de la Renta, Karim Rashid, Dolce & Gabbana, Wes Craven, and Michael Graves. In total, the new gallery features over 90 themes, ranging from simple photographs (Mariah Carey’s face) and patterns to elaborate custom-made designs.
Google offered the artists no compensation for using their images, relying instead on the appeal of having the images seen by millions of people. Most artists declined the opportunity.
New Chief for Frick Reference Library
The Frick Collection announces the appointment of Dr. Stephen J. Bury to the post of Andrew W. Mellon Chief Librarian and the Frick Art Reference Library. Dr Bury has been at the British Library, the national library of the United Kingdom, as the Deputy Director and Head of European and American Collections, Maps, Music and Philatelic Collections for ten years. During that time, he helped to steer the British collection into the 21st century by overseeing the introduction of new technologies and staff training.
Dr. Bury brings vast experience in areas that are of special interest to the Frick, namely digitization of resources, collection sharing and greater use of new technologies by staff. As both an art historian–who understands the needs of those who teach, research and curate–and a librarian in a rapidly changing field, he has proven himself to be a great strategist. He received his PhD in Art History at Birkbeck College, London. He wrote his dissertation on art critic and social thinker John Ruskin.
He is interested in the practice of art making as well as its study and taught printmaking and book making in the 1980’s and 90’s at the Chelsea College of Art & Design, the Royal College of Art, Central Martins College of Art & Design and Chamberwell College of Arts. He has also curated several exhibitions of artists’ books, written exhibition catalogs and contributed to numerous art publications.
The Frick Art Reference Libray was founded in 1920 by Helen Clay Frick to make available to a broad community of researchers material for the study of art in the Western tradition.
Symposium explores Artists in Wartime
Daniel Heyman I Did Not Have a Beard 2008. Gouache and pencil on paper, 29 x 41 inches. Courtesy List Gallery, Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College presents Artists in Wartime: Bearing Witness / Shaping a Response, series of events consisting of two concurrent exhibitions, a symposium and poetry reading that explore the role of contemporary artists who focus on war and other crises of politics on Saturday, March 20.
The symposium, moderated by Janine Mileaf, Assistant Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College, brings together artists Daniel Heyman, Damian Cote, Juan Manual Echavarria, and Melissa Ho and documentary photographer Andrew Lichtenstein, to discuss the role of contemporary artists who address global welfare, related health issues and the effects of organized violence. The symposium takes place at 10 am at the Lang Performing Art Center Cinema.
At 1 pm, poet Nick Flynn reads at the McCabe Library, where a group exhibition, Printmakers Go to War is also on view. At the List Gallery, Daniel Heyman, a Visiting Associate Professor of Art at Swarthmore and the inspiration for the symposium, presents his exhibition: Bearing Witness, Recent Works. Heyman’s moving portraits and recorded testemonials of former Iraqi detainees, gathered over a four year period, capture a sense of human dignity without passing judgment.
All events are free and open to the public. The gallery exhibitions open March 4 and continue until April 10 (List Gallery) and April 9 (McCabe Library). Swarthmore College is located at 500 College Avenue in Swarthmore, PA. For more information call 610 328 8488. or visit www.swarthmore.edu/Admin/cooper.
Panel Discussion at MIT examines Performative Art
Claire Fontaine Change 2006. Twelve twenty-five cent coins, steel box-cutter blades, solder and rivets, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Neu, Berlin. Photo: the artist
The MIT List Visual Art Center presents The Annual Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art. This year’s forum, titled Parody, Politics and Performativity, brings together several practicing artists and experts on performative practices. The 2010 Wasserman Forum will include a panel discussion with artists Tino Sehgal, Tania Bruguera and the collective artist Claire Fontaine, moderated by writer and curator Jens Hoffmann, with respondents Dorothea von Hantelmann, Frazer Ward and Joan Jonas. The forum will examine a variety of artistic practices in which the relationship to the viewer and the passage of time are significant. Unlike art objects that are characterized by a physical presence, many of the works created by the panel participants undermine and question, often in humorous ways, the common forms of more traditional art. Also significant is the new way in which institutions present, collect and display art today. This is exemplified by Tino Sehgal’s current Guggenheim performance piece, This Progress, until March 10.
Parody, Politics and Performativity will take place on Saturday, March 13 at 3 pm followed by responses beginning at 4:45. The forum, free and open to the public, will take place in the Ray and Maria Stata Center, Room 123, at 32 Vasser Street, Cambridge, MA. For more information call 617 253 4400 or visit http://listart.mit.edu/
Jack the Pelican to fly no more
Published by anonymous (later identified as Charles Sarka)
A Song Without Music, 1921
Ink and watercolor on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches each page (total 40 pages)
The gallery scene in Williamsburg will get less colorful in a few weeks as. after eight years, Jack the Pelican Presents is closing its doors. When asked by artcritical about this decision, owner and former art critic Don Carroll gave the expected answer: economic downturn, drop in sales, and increased rent. In addition, due to the enormous cost of renting a booth, the gallery was not able to attend many of the popular art fairs, where in past years they sold well.
Jack the Pelican Presents has been at its Driggs Street location in Williamsburg since 2002. Its enigmatic name derives from an inebriated misprision of Jackson Pollock. The current and last exhibition is especially poignant for Carroll. Titled “The Sacred Comic Book,” it consists of a hand-drawn, unbound, illustrated story of an anonymous frustrated artist, his seedy existence, his community and his struggles in New York starting in 1921 and spanning 30 years. It’s central theme, “Just Keep Pecking Away,” is as close to a mission statement of the gallery as anything.
Some highlights over the years include the wildly popular David Shapiro show in 2003, where the artist filled the gallery with a bodega-sized collection of garbage, neatly organized on commercial shelves. This exhibition received critical acclaim and helped establish the gallery’s reputation. Another of Carroll’s favorite shows was the Icelandic Love Corporation, in 2004. Mixing video, performance, sculpture, and photography, this all-girl quartet used fanciful narratives combined with symbolic associations of materials of their Icelandic homeland to create narrative meaning.
With so much support from friends and artists, Carroll isn’t ready to quit the gallery game yet. He’ll be looking for a smaller space, probably in Manhattan. But as he hasn’t had a weekend off in 8 years, he might take his time about it.
“The Sacred Comic Book” will be up for a few more weeks, the actual date of closing is unknown at this time, so calling ahead is recommended. The gallery is located at 487 Driggs Street (between 9th and 10th) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and is open Friday through Monday 12-6. For more information, call 718 782 0183.
Bushwick SITE Fest set for March 6 and 7
Jill Sigman, who is also performing at SITE Festival this year, in a piece from 2009. cover FEBRUARY 2010 shows unnamed performers from 2009 outside the Jefferson Avenue L Stop. (more caption info welcome on this image!)
Arts in Bushwick celebrates the diversity of live art with SITE Fest: a rollicking two-day, multi-venue interdisciplinary art festival on Saturday and Sunday, March 6-7. Now in its second year, SITE investigates the Brooklyn neighborhood’s amazing variety of theater, dance, music and performance art enacted in an urban setting.
SITE Fest will take place at three main venues, each focusing on a different genre with a clear curatorial voice. Chez Bushwick (304 Boerum Street) will feature dance; Grace Exhibition Space (840 Broadway) will showcase duration and media-based pieces and 3rd Ward (195 Morgan Avenue) will highlight theater and short-form performance art.
Additional performances will take place in a variety of alternative spaces: apartments, studios, street corners and neighborhood galleries. Expect innovative street performers, circus dance parties and costumes at every corner. SITE Fest will open with a party at Bushwick’s Beauty Bar (921 Broadway) on Friday, March 5, starting at 9pm and conclude with an after-party at Page Not Found (76 Jefferson Street) on Sunday, March 7 starting at 7pm.
In conjunction with SITE Fest, Arts in Brooklyn presents ionSOUND, a two-day music festival at Goodbye Blue Monday (1087 Broadway) on Saturday and Sunday night, with performances starting at 7:30pm and 3 pm, respectively.
The festival was created to in response to the overwhelming number of performance or collaborative-based proposals that Arts in Bushwick receives each year for its BETA Spaces and Open Studios program. It also highlights the galleries, businesses and culture of this unique and much-loved Brooklyn neighborhood.
Arts in Bushwick also sponsors Bushwick Open Studios, which takes place the first weekend in June and involves dozens of artists.
Chie Fueki Ron 2009. Acrylic and mixed media on paper on wood, 60 by 72 inches. Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery, New York
