On Mock-Ups

At the Storefront for Art and Architecture.

On Mock-ups, Home Videos and Housekeeping: a video exhibition in 3 parts Mar 25 2008 - May 3 2008

1- Mock-Ups in Close-Up

March 25 2008 - April 5 2008

Architectural Models in Cinema 1927 – 2007 A video project by Gabu Heindl and Drehli Robnik, 2008 (105', running on loop).

2 - Come to Israel: It's hot and wet and we have the Humus

April 8 2008 - April 19 2008

Role Playing in Military Practices, Sexual Practices and Videotaping Video works by Ruti Sela & Maayan Amir and Yossi Atia & Itamar Rose Curated by Joshua Simon.

3 - Koolhaas Houselife

April 22 2008 - May 3 2008

Stories from the daily life of Guadalupe Acedo, caretaker and housekeeper of the House in Bordeaux designed by Rem Koolhaas A film by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine (70', running on loop).

Takashi Murakami

From the Brooklyn Museum's website:

"The most comprehensive retrospective to date of the work of internationally acclaimed Japanese artist Takashi Murakami includes more than ninety works in various media that span the artist’s entire career, installed in more than 18,500 square feet of gallery space.

Born in Tokyo in 1962, Murakami is one of the most influential and acclaimed artists to have emerged from Asia in the late twentieth century, creating a wide-ranging body of work that consciously bridges fine art, design, animation, fashion, and popular culture. He received a Ph.D. from the prestigious Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he was trained in the school of traditional Japanese painting known as Nihonga, a nineteenth-century mixture of Western and Eastern styles. However, the prevailing popularity of anime (animation) and manga (comic books) directed his interest toward the art of animation because, as he has said, “it was more representative of modern day Japanese life.” American popular culture in the form of animation, comics, and fashion are among the influences on his work, which includes painting, sculpture, installation, and animation, as well as a wide range of collectibles, multiples, and commercial products.

The exhibition © MURAKAMI explores the self-reflexive nature of Murakami’s oeuvre by focusing on earlier work produced between 1992 and 2000 in which the artist attempts to explore his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity, as well as through self-portraiture created since 2000. Two works examining these subjects were a part of a group show, My Reality: Contemporary Art and the Culture of Japanese Animation, presented at the Brooklyn Museum in 2001.

Among the works included in this large-scale survey tracing the trajectory of Murakami’s artistic development are many of his acclaimed sculpture figures including the 23-foot-high Tongari-kun (2003–4); Miss Ko2 (1997), a long-legged waitress who has become one of the artist’s signature characters; and Hiropon (1997), a Japanese girl jumping a rope created by milk spurting from her gargantuan breasts. Among the paintings on view will be Tan Tan Bo (2001), as well as Tan Tan Bo Puking—a.k.a. Gero Tan (2002). "

The New York Times has a lengthy review here.

Making it Together

From Karen Rosenberg

“More, please” has been the critical response to “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” the survey of pioneering feminist art currently installed at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center. The Bronx Museum of the Arts anticipated the demand with “Making It Together: Women’s Collaborative Art and Community,” which focuses on the groups and collectives that linked feminist art to a larger social context.

Organized by the critic Carey Lovelace, “Making It Together” occupies part of the lobby and a small adjacent gallery. Conventional art objects are few and far between: pink-painted walls display archival photographs, manifestoes and other ephemera. The show is much smaller than “WACK!” but includes a wealth of historical material, much of which would be better served by a book or documentary film.

The theme is timely, at least; the current Whitney Biennial is rife with collaborative projects. For female artists of the ’70s and ’80s, collective practice had several advantages. In keeping with the anti-authoritarian spirit of the times, it played down the roles of the individual artist and the marketable artwork. It also turned the stereotype of women as inherently conciliatory and cooperative into a source of strength."

More here.

Sigalit Landau

From the MoMA's website

"Sigalit Landau (b. Israel, 1969) has produced several works that explore her native Israeli landscape in a performative way, primarily through a video trilogy that experiments with circular movements and the act of spinning. In DeadSee (2005), Landau floats in a spiral of green watermelons until the coil slowly unravels. The intensely red flesh of the fruits is revealed as they disappear, leaving the azure surface of the water nearly monochromatic. In addition, a constellation of sculptural lamp-like objects made of barbed wire have been submerged in the salt-saturated Dead Sea and dried in the desert sun, forming a crystallized surface. The exhibition is lit by the self-illuminated moving images and salt-crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling." Thru 7/28.

View the Online Exhibition here.

Review here.

Reviews

Hyungkoo Lee at Arario Gallery thru 4/19. Review

Angelo Filomeno at Galerie Lelong thru 4/12. Review

Dike Blair/Noah Sheldon at D'Amelio Terras thru 5/3. Review

Martha Wilson at Mitchell Algus Gallery thru 4/26. Review

Katy Moran at Andrea Rosen Gallery thru 4/19. Review

Ai Weiwei at Mary Boone thru 4/26. Review

"From One O to the Other" at Orchard thru 4/20. Review

Adrian Piper at Elizabeth Dee thru 4/19. Review

Three Reviews

Among these six reviews, you'll find opinions on:

Marcel Dzama at David Zwirner thru 4/19

Anna Craycroft at Tracy Williams Ltd. thru 4/25

Franz West at Gagosian thru 4/26

When Cool Turns Cold

The Whitney Biennial, chockablock with bloodless M.F.A. product, is a little too smart for its own good.

By Jerry Saltz

"At the Whitney, 2008 is the year of the Art School Biennial. Not because the art in the new Biennial is immature or because the artists all went to art school—although I bet they did—but because it centers on a very narrow slice of highly educated artistic activity and features a lot of very thought-out, extremely self-conscious, carefully pieced-together installations, sculpture, and earnestly political art. These works often resemble architectural fragments, customized found objects, ersatz modernist monuments, Home Depot displays, graphic design, or magazine layouts, and the resultant assemblage-college aesthetic, while compelling in the hands of some, is completely beholden to ideas taught in hip academies. It’s the style du jour right now. (It also promises to become really annoying in the not too distant future, but that’s another column.)

Perhaps the show is so inclined toward the current art-school moment because its curators, Henriette Huldisch, 36, and Shamim M. Momin, 34, were in part selected for their youth. I was thrilled that the Whitney was prepared to give itself over to young curators. No sooner had they been named, however, than Whitney director Adam Weinberg pulled back the reins, announcing that the two would be “overseen” by the museum’s chief curator, Donna De Salvo, and that they’d “worked with” the advisers Thelma Golden, Bill Horrigan, and Linda Norden. If you’re going to entrust young curators with your signature show, you ought to give them enough rope to do it. (Plus enough time: Huldisch and Momin had all of thirteen months to pull this show together.)"

Read more here.

The Topic Is Race; the Art Is Fearless.

From Holland Carter for the New York Times

"Campaigning politicians talk solutions; artists talk problems. Politics deals in goals and initiatives; art, or at least interesting art, in a language of doubt and nuance. This has always been true when the subject is race. And when it is, art is often ahead of the political news curve, and heading in a contrary direction."

Much more here.

The New York Canon

From Jerry Saltz for New York Magazine's 40th Anniversary

"A canon is antithetical to everything the New York art world has been about for the past 40 years, during which we went from being the center of the art world to being one of many centers. I skipped some art in which New York itself figured prominently—I hated Christo’s The Gates, and I didn’t like Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc either—and instead chose artists who threw New York curves, who changed the context of making art here. I left out the influential German artists who landed here en masse in the eighties, like clowns from a Volkswagen. There were too many, and they weren’t our clowns. I could have added Julian Schnabel; he’s a great New York huckster who gives people fits, but Jeff Koons goes him one better. Paula Cooper opened the first Soho gallery, and the Guerrilla Girls changed institutions—but omit an artwork in favor of a dealer or a group? In the end, an individual thing that made me open my eyes anew always won."

Read his list here.

Twombly in the Land of Michelangelo

From the New York Times:

"A new museum is under construction in Rome, nicknamed Maxxi, designed by Zaha Hadid. A museum opened not long ago in Bologna called Mambo. (Italians love their acronyms.) The Prada Foundation has just bought an exhibition space in the south of Milan; Rem Koolhaas will be that architect. And in the north of Milan there’s Hangar Bicocca, a vast former Pirelli factory devoted to gigantic installations; Anselm Kiefer’s, an awesome series of towers built of tottering concrete blocks, has justly become a pilgrimage site.

In Naples, Madre, a contemporary museum, does first-rate shows. Now it has a new place. So does the Maramotti family, which owns Max Mara, a clothing company. This winter the Maramotti children opened a foundation in a converted factory on an improbable stretch of loveless industrial and office buildings in Reggio Emilia to house the collection of their late father.

More is happening in Turin, where the Castello di Rivoli has long reigned as the premier museum of contemporary art in Italy. And after years of dawdling, Venice has recently turned its customs house over to François Pinault, the French billionaire who already has the Palazzo Grassi and says he will use them both to show off his collection. That’s hardly the best way for any city to take up new art, but it says something about Italy that Pinault chose Venice over Paris, which wanted him."

Read More Here