visible intruder

thomas hirschhorn's gramsci monument

975 tinton avenue

bronx, new york.

july 1, 2013 - september 15, 2013

swiss artist thomas hirschhorn is an international star, whose work has been shown in the venice biennale 2011, the current icp triennial, and is also part of permanent collections of moma and the tate modern in london.

i happen to like some of his work, probably because of the political content. for example, the disturbing but penetrating video, touching reality, 2012 (refer to my icp triennial post) and his "fill a room with shit" installations, such as concordia, concordia at chelsea's gladstone gallery last year. i like his art because it displays a particular interest in the political implications of consumption (material and immaterial) and the conditions which produce and surround them. 

so i consider myself a semi-fan. and since i read some of marxist theory for my thesis research, i had to visit the artist's new project, gramsci monument, dedicated to the 20th century italian thinker. this is the last of hirschhorn's monuments after the spinoza monument, 1999, deleuze monument, 2000, and bataille monument, 2002. 

gramsci monument is located on the grounds of forest houses, a public housing area in the east bronx near 163rd street. in writing and his opening day speech, the artist repeatedly emphasizes that he did not choose the location, but the community chose him. he deliberately sought a non-central location (as opposed to manhattan's highline, etc), but he attributes the specificity of the forest houses to an invitation by erik farmer, president of the forest houses tenants. hirschhorn recalled that, during their early meetings, he told farmer, he is "not interested in making art for the community, but with the community." the artist has given great attention to the aspect of collaboration--he does not shy away from mentioning farmer's name multiple times, giving credit to other members of the community. 

and the efforts show: from the appearance of the construction (graffiti tags and murals by locals decorate the wooden facades, hand-written signs here and there overflow with the appearance of homemade-ness..) to the selection of activities (wednesdays are poetry readings, thursdays are fieldtrip days, sundays open mic..), i get the sense that the residents are co-creators of this project. they also print a daily newspaper for the community--profiles of residents, local news, copy-and-paste blurbs on gramsci, hirschhorn's interviews on the monument--and air a radio station run by locals. they play the music they want, have on-air interviews/conversations with residents on various topics. during times when there are no events scheduled, the radio plays through the speakers on stage. its seating area and adjacent "gramsci bar" provide hang out spots.

i went on two consecutive days: monday the 1st, the opening day, and tuesday the 2nd. the experiences of each were very different. thank god i went on both.

my first visit made me angry. i liked the idea of a "living" monument created with the local residents. it is not a stand-alone object that purports to represent gramsci or his work, but a 2.5-month long meditation of his ideas on the level of practice. gramsci believed that education should be close to life--some of the monument's various events, such as the lectures by marcus steinweg and seminars led by a rotating roster of scholars, are obviously pedagogical, but other activities, such as tuesdays' "running events," open mics, and radio blend "life" and "education" seamlessly together.

but because it was opening day, there were a lot of non-resident visitors. i had unpleasant flashbacks to my time in venice: members of the elite art circles reuniting in foreign territory. or rather, foreigners intruding upon a life and community already present. 

the bare-minimum construction of the "temporary pavilion" added to this ambience: the raw wood boards bear no alterations besides murals and graffiti, sofas are covered in brown tape, white plastic lawn chairs labeled "gramsci monument" litter the stage area. 

what got me offended was this "ghetto" mock "pool" with a sad projection of water spewing into a small square lined with blue plastic. are children supposed to swim in this thing? it was worse than sprinklers in public parks or playgrounds--surely they had funds to make a basic fountain or other mechanism that emits water. was the messy taping and cheap blue plastic so necessary?

adding to the ethically questionable nature of the architectural aesthetic was of course the presence of the visitors who clearly lead lives very different from the residents who built the monument "from bottom to top" (a recurring phrase in the monument's daily newspaper and other writings around the project). remember that these are the PROJECTS in the east bronx, housing members of a struggling but also tightly knit community (i, at least, got the impression that the families there all knew each other) and not necessarily a destination (there are no major shopping malls nearby for example, a culinary gem, or landmark architecture. this is a fairly residential neighborhood). this is not to say that some of the "white folks" present are not struggling to get by, but being able to call oneself a "lover" and knower of art is a privilege. not many have the opportunity to learn why picasso's paintings are considered "high" art or the leisurely time to visit a museum with an entrance fee, or travel out of their way (unless they live nearby) to see some artist's project on a monday afternoon. would these two crowds--art world "foreigners" and residents--bump shoulders otherwise? probably not. and i got the sense that they were not just "bumping shoulders" but that the fairly sizable gathering of their own kind turned the scene into a sort of cool and fun "fieldtrip" with friends (and, perhaps, enemies, but familiar ones) and the locals simply provided the labor to create that opportunity. maybe i'm committing my own racial profiling, but i thought i saw the same faces i've seen at other show openings and even venice. in one case, i had met the guy (an editor at frieze?) at my mfa program when a professor invited him to speak to the class.

 the very first 5pm "philosophy lecture" by steinweg annoyed me even further. the questions "who is he speaking to? who is this for?" ceaselessly popped into my head. he made references to gilles deleuze, jacques lacan, plato and the classical tradition, marguerite duras… under the assumption that the audience understood them. although there was a fair sprinkling of residents near the stage prior to the lecture, they disappeared altogether once he began speaking into the microphone. it didn't help that his manner of speaking was very boring and that he had an accent. i found myself falling asleep at the front row. would non-insiders be willing to expend so much energy straining to decipher his jargon?

it was as if the locals labored to build the monument, but ultimately for the enjoyment of a select few who were not part of their community. build the stage, but the show is not for them.

the insider-ness of the opening day, i admit, is inevitable, since hirschhorn is a superstar and all. of course he's going to draw a crowd of friends and fans.

and, although i complain about the elitism of art a great deal, i am guilty as a semi-member. i am not "friends" with cindy sherman or larry gagosian, but i, too, enjoy the privilege of visiting the forest houses on a monday afternoon "for the sake of art," as i also had the leisurely time and money to visit venice, not on a travel grant for a journalistic assignment. as boring as his lecture was, i understood and recognized the steinweg's jargon and references--possible as the result of a privileged education and time to read all those books.

when i returned the next day, i got my reality check: i was the foreign intruder, "objective" ethnographer. 

let's say that on the first day, people took the time out of their busy schedules to commemorate the monument's opening in the late afternoon. but people have lives and real jobs (apparently except me). on the following day, i was the only non-resident there, aside from the artist and his crew and maybe one or two friends of the artist's people. when i arrived around 3:30pm, i saw a group of young men gathered outside the radio studio, watching a friend speak to the dj and suggesting songs to play. mothers were sitting in the plastic chairs, telling their children to be careful. girls were gossiping about people at school and showing each other pictures they took of themselves with their cellphones. one boy somehow got a sock stuck on a basketball hoop and an older girl had to rescue it with the end of a broom.

my presence felt inappropriate there. even as thoughts materialized in my head, i hesitated to pull out my notepad or camera. i did not receive many strange looks because the residents had probably been warned about visitors, and had already experienced the flood of foreigners invading their grounds the previous day. but i still felt self-conscious--there is no such thing as being an invisible observer. i am as present and a participant as much as anyone else there.

the intimate nature of tuesday's ambience and the constant presence of the artist (he has temporarily moved to the neighborhood for duration of the project) changed my mind. that day's "running event" was a showcase by "the forest houses steppers," a dozen or so kids dressed in red t-shirts and red bandanas around their heads. they were notified at the last minute about their performance (as i overheard, some were only told the previous day) so they frequently stopped in their steps (HA!) in confused deliberation as to the next move. but the audience members, all familiar to the performers (except me), were supportive and cheered them on. after a while, the kids gave up trying to stick to their choreography and formed a circle to have freestyle solo dances. as they chanted, "go tanny, go tanny, go tanny," a skinny boy twisted his shoulders and skipped his feet rapidly to the beat, spun around and landed in a split, followed by others' enthusiastic cheers. another one stepped up, and then another. i cracked a nostalgic smile: it brought me back to my high school days when i gave awkward performances of the harlem shake while my friends chanted the same "go candy, go candy" and showered me with the same cheers ("a" for effort? i can only do a grotesque parody of the shake).

watching this brief performance, i felt the love and warmth of a close community. the monument did provide a space for them to gather, bond, and share; it was not "just" an outsider artsy fartsy white guy's "profound" project. and even if it was, he seemed almost a part of that community as well. i saw him greeting everyone there like long neighbors. even as he flipped through odd pieces of wrinkled paper labeled "to do" in thick marker, he turned to ask a resident about how her son is doing or waved at a kid running between the chairs. i have more respect for this artist. good thing i did not judge based solely on the opening day.

i plan to visit the monument a few more times over the course of its run. i do not have a clear idea yet of how specifically gramsci's ideas are being realized there, its impact on the residents, or what this means for art. will this create a bridge between two worlds? will it be an "enlightening" pedagogical device for "non-art" locals? for example, i still hold mixed feelings about the philosophy lectures. 

but perhaps i will find out over the next few months. i will post updates on the gramsci monument in between those on other shows.

olympia, concubine muse, live!

paul mccarthy life cast

at hauser & wirth 

32 east 69th street

may 10, 2013 - july 26, 2013

the sight of an objectified female body has never really been strange to the art histories of civilizations. for my purposes i am generalizing to refer to "the east" (japan, etc) and to "the west" (from ancient greeks to the northern american locale in which i reside). classical statues of the female nude and old japanese prints of shy, white-faced virgins are images of female objectification that we take for granted. heaps of sprawled and sexualized bodies in our advertisements and television may trigger disgust for some, but rarely much surprise--their history is too long.

viewed from that context, paul mccarthy's life-sized silicone women (or multiples of the same woman) would not shock--especially in relation to the artist's past works, which rarely allowed the viewer to remain in passive comfort. but when i saw these synthetic women (ah, so many walk about us nowadays), i felt extreme discomfort. i had goosebumps running up and down my body as i walked by each one. i have terrible eye sight (yes, i wear up-to-date prescription contacts and glasses but i still can't see clearly) so i usually have to get very close to the work to see what others could probably see without putting their face so close. i drew near the first sleeping figure--t.g. asleep, 2012-2013--and quickly pulled back. i saw small hairs on her arms, the thin strands around her forehead wavering slightly under the gallery's a/c. my fear was that she would wake up any moment--and when she did, i would be the creep who had been watching her sleep, counting the number of moles on her neck, examining the folds around her vagina.

an observation: americans (or other "westerners") who are immune to sexualized images tend to cringe when they first hear about (and see) life-sized silicone sex dolls popular in japan. this is because they look too "real." from convincing hair fibers and twinkling eyes to detailed renderings of vaginas made for optimal pleasure, the experience with these figures blurs the line between wishful fantasy and realistic engagement with a passive victim. if the internet explicitly manifests the realization of what lacan once wrote--"there is no such thing as a sexual relationship"--interactions in the "physical" world, too, display themselves as perverse realizations of the fantastical projections of our narcissistic desires. we live through the camera, the image, the screen--every sensory experience mediated, fantasies achieve physical form. 

despite the possibilities of blurring, some people still seem to prefer the presence of some indication that a fantasy is a fantasy, an image is an image--a reminder that they may break free from the dream at any point, and remove it from their "real " experience. but mccarthy's naked women are "too real," more real than many sex dolls. i felt embarrassment and shame while looking at her body, her legs spread at various angles. she may blink at any moment, and accuse me of looking upon her as an aesthetic object.

  

life cast's eroticism refers a great deal to art history (in my opinion) and the role of the male artist, the male gaze, in relation to the female body as object, muse, and artistic/sexual/life drive. horizontal, 2012, a likewise life-like replica of mccarthy himself, accentuates the sexualized role of female bodies in the history of art and representation: his looks like it belongs more in a morgue than in an art gallery, whereas the side-turned head of the sleeping woman secretes the concupiscence of the male hands that made her. in the four-channel video installation around the drawing table, the female hand (and body) is a passive and aesthetic object in striking contrast to the male hand, a dominant creator and lustful agent. as a hairy male hand (with grimy fingernails) traces with graphite the outlines of a cleanly manicured, white female hand on the table, the former momentary pauses and rubs against the latter. i have never seen so much lust drip from a frame with two hands and a writing utensil (i haven't watched much fetishistic porn). 

a four-channel installation in another room shows the process of making the casts: photographing the model holding skin, eye, and tooth samples next to her face, heaping the rubber mold on her body, her emerging from the hardened shell. in between the "documentary" cuts, the videos also show the model just sprawled or leaning back on the work table in various poses--something like live nude paintings. the same poses and compositions in oil paintings could pass as "artistic studies" of the body, but in mccarthy's work, they become voyeuristic, intrusive, perverse, and of course, erotic. 

this is the process of making art. eros is the life and artistic drive. as i watched her lay still, heaving occasional sighs and blinking her long lashes, i was reminded of a scene in the french film, renoir, 2012. sick and aging renoir finally finds his muse and inspiration to paint nudes again when a young woman suddenly appears at his door one day. at one point, he says to his son something like, "doesn't she have the most luscious ass?" old pervs make great artists, and vice versa, maybe.

mccarthy also has a large-scale video and set installation at hauser & wirth's chelsea location titled rebel dabble babble. the same female model also appears there, which made the already disturbing work more disturbing. this show is concerned more with pop psychology, the spectacle of reality television, stages, obsession with oedipal household drama, in a strange blur of 50s film, 90s tv series, and of course porn. i will probably elaborate on this show in a later post.

crumbling atlas

when i finally emerge from a winter-long sleep, i usually find it very difficult to leave the house "just because" the weather is nice--there must be a destination containing some element that is "useful" or "relevant" or conducive to "productivity." so i make extensive plans (which i rarely adhere to, except maybe a very small fraction of it). the other day, i decided to look up the public art installations along the high line at chelsea, and used it as an excuse to enjoy the sun. of course, i didn't bring with me the exact locations of anything, nor did i remember whose art was there. nevertheless, i passed by a few that i didn't find interesting enough to stop me in my tracks. then, there it was: el anatsui's broken bridge ii, 2012.
it probably helped that it was large. spanning 37 by 157 feet, it is supposedly the largest piece made by the artist. anatsui is a nigeria-based artist, born in ghana in 1944. he is known for making large-scale work with recycled materials. the work in question is made of mirrors and tin that cover maybe the entire top half of the building on which it has been installed.

from afar, the work resembles a blown-up section of a map. one can discern three groupings of mirrored surfaces in the midst of densely packed sheets of rusted tin. the sleek mirror reflects the clear blue sky, while the uneven surface of perforated tin evokes a rough terrain. the young trees lining the path make it difficult to get a clear view of the entire work, but through the spring green and blossoming pink, a peak here and there provides a closer look. hiding behind the colorful barricade hovers the massive atlas, holding steadfast to the top of the building, its pieces crumbling away toward the bottom.
the sheets are surprisingly thin, in contrast to the heaviness that their deep, earthy brown color conveys. the strips criss-crossing the two canals in the center and right sway with the riverside wind at times. yet the sheets exude a sense of mortal obstinacy: some parts wrinkle like old leather or aging skin, some are raised like stubborn scabs. the rows of rectangular sheets waver between an unsettling close-up of elephant hide to red brick tiles of a roof, lining the top of a house some place warm, perhaps.

on the other hand, the panels of mirror (obviously) appear strikingly sleek and industrial, not unlike the facades of other newly erected buildings in the neighborhood. yet, not entirely--it avoids the monotony of a clear-cut factory look through its slightly uneven surface. the various (and very faint) dips and rises give the impression of a living body of water, an occasional chelsea breeze rippling across it. the mirrors coexist with the surrounding skin-earth--at times contesting it in vehement contrast, at others in harmony like a placid lake cradled by its surrounding landscape.

on a clear day, the mirrored panels--especially those on the far left, unobstructed by bending strips of tin--provide an oasis in a bustling city, in the busy traffic of the springtime high line. but the waters will reflect a gray sky on an overcast day. and during the night, they, with the cracking rust, be swallowed up by the indiscriminately indifferent darkness. here, human products--hand-made and industrial--bend to the natural cycles of time. how long will they last? probably, as long as our pride allows them.

installation on view until summer 2013
chelsea high line (along 10th ave), between 21st and 22nd streets

the it in the photo

Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective
Guggenheim Museum
June 29 - October 8, 2012

My first encounter with this artist’s work: I fell in love, it moved me to tears.

Here I must inform the reader of how unusual this reaction is, that I am one of the most negative, scathing, hateful of skeptics (never really with bad intentions), especially regarding photographic portraiture. I have seen too many pity-evoking photojournalistic propaganda—“Oh, look at this poor girl bloodied and crying over her dead mother’s corpse, isn’t this a horrible war, what terrible things are happening on the other side of the world”—that so many people equate with artistic insight and thereby talent. But Dijkstra does something different: she strips her photographs down to their barest; she rejects the popular props for superficial empathy (or just props in general to add layers of “symbolism”) and focuses on her job as a portrait photographer. It is she and her subject, not much else—and the result that we get to see is simply beautiful. It is beyond words because what makes them beautiful is that indescribable thing that we can’t attribute to a single visual element in the photograph.

I know what I feel as a result of seeing that thing—love, pain, awe...—though not a single one of these adjectives can fully describe the powerful emotion that sweeps through my entire body upon recognizing it. Maybe that thing—You know, it! It!—can never really have a name, but only be conveyed by an abstract game of charades with no right-answer card. Roland Barthes, in Camera Lucida, tries to put a name to something like this in a single “true,” “just” photo of his mother: the photo possesses her “air,” as he calls it. That’s not quite it with Dijkstra’s work; I don’t personally know the people she has photographed, let alone for an entire lifetime. But it is kind of similar; it’s a combination of what is inside the viewer (history? recognition? memory?) and what is inside the photograph—when you can’t separate the two to describe the it. It’s a miracle of two gears—each found in unexpected places, maybe at the opposite ends of the world—clicking together to make an entire machine come to life.

It, that thing, is there in the photograph. The thing that moved me to tears. And can it be—really?—just the artist’s love for her subjects that I felt through the portraits? Because I don’t know these people, I can’t judge how true or just these portraits are to them, how well Dijkstra captured their air. All I can feel is the artist’s will, her aching desire to do so, to capture something of these people’s essence in a single frame.

We catch a bit of that heart-wrenching investment fueling her artistic process in the five-channel film installation, The Krazyhouse, 2009. Each person dances in front of a white background for the entirety of a song (house/dance music, which tends to be a bit longer than other genres) and their movements—no matter how much they try to vary it for the camera in the beginning—become fairly repetitive. It’s easy to get bored. But eventually, after much patient voyeurism, the particular mannerisms of each person peek through. I say “peek,” because they’re all through very small gestures—Nicky reaching down slightly to pull down her dress without breaking her rhythm, or Philip softening the hardness of his eyes for a split second when he wipes the sweat from his brow—that we probably wouldn’t recognize as their particularities when we watch them for short amount of time in a club, or if Dijkstra had edited out any awkward moments. But once you catch them, you know this is theirs. It is the aha! moment for the artist, and through the installation, we, for ourselves, are privileged to witness that moment of recognition, when the artist sees who her subjects might be in their essence.

And beyond the artist’s devotion, it is probably her generosity to us, the viewers, that moved me. I cannot separate the raw insides of the person behind the camera from the resulting photograph in front—Dijkstra is necessarily present and exposed in her work. It is the combination of her love, respect for her subjects and in turn their trust for her (it’s easy to feel like a mere test tube bacteria for an artistic experiment, as opposed to an actual human being with thoughts and feelings), their willingness to let their guard down even for the smallest fraction of a second so she could capture it on camera. They, too, seem to feel her love and see that she may have this ability, at least an immense and genuine desire to recognize their essence. This is because Dijkstra doesn’t hide behind her camera; she uses it as a magical device that somehow captures that mutual trust and respect.

And I am the third component of her art: I am a witness as well as a grateful participant. I am the more grateful because the artist doesn’t try to take advantage of me either. I am moved not because of her manipulation of me and her subjects but because of her good grace. Dijkstra is an honest photographer, a truly rare specimen in the art world today.

haters will hate

 

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Nets

Whitney Museum
July 12 - September 30, 2012

To reduce Kusama’s work as a symptom of her mental illness is another extension of the long familiar, bitter response to modern art, “my two year old can do that.” The dismissive commentary essentially contests the very notion of authorship of a particular form that does not appear to result from extensive “artistic” training. The urge is a powerful one, especially when the motif is so common and the artist herself has admitted that she has had hallucinations of dots and flowers ever since she was a child. Other people have testified that they, too, see dots. But the difference: while one hallucinating 15-year-old is screaming for her mother in terror because the “dots are going to get her,” Kusama uses her dots to communicate more than her own fears and obsessions.

The dismissal ultimately has in part to do with the source of her dots; but to focus only on the source is to deny the significance of any kind of art, which is how the artist uses her sources. Kusama’s use of her dots indicate the artist’s awareness of how they have functioned for her and their potential for others: as an “obliterating net.” The complexity in the these dots arises from their role as a screen that simultaneously protects and provides a view of the other side. Even if hallucinating infinite dots is a defense to all that is fearsome in the world outside the sick patient, manipulating the visual phenomenon so that it is no longer clear what is being protected from what (inside/outside ambiguity: Kusama’s nets sometimes seem to catch the world, not withhold her from it) while simultaneously giving a view of this world (a cat is still recognizable as a cat even if Kusama has covered it with dots) is clearly an artistic gesture that reaches beyond the psychological erasure of trauma. Kusama does not erase; she marks in order to see and confront. And this she generously shares with the rest of the world.

Her dangerously decorative paintings from 2009 to 2010 and recent collaboration with Louis Vuitton that brands her dots make our job more difficult. But the critic must always be generous and see, first and foremost, what is in front, then weigh the relevance of information that lies outside of the object.

 

not overrated

 

Cindy Sherman Retrospective at MoMA
through June 11, 2012
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“[T]he one thing I’ve always known is that the camera lies.” -Cindy Sherman (Respini 23).

To lie, here, means that the image produced by the camera may not necessarily correspond to the perception that we might experience directly, if we were immersed in that situation first hand, knew the context, if there was an element of time. The photographic image eliminates the temporal factor, which results in an isolated fragment of reality; this mere fragment of the larger picture provides the false impression of representing the entirety of an event or reality.

The camera also alters our perceptions of reality itself. The image created by the camera inevitably differs from the one created by our sensory perceptions; as long as we continue to experience the world through images, as we do now, the world through the camera lens becomes our reality, and the actual physical world starts to appear false. The camera is a device that continually deceives its unknowing victims.

But we do all know this, at least on a subconscious level. For example, we look at a picture of a friend and say, “Weird, that doesn’t look like you,” or “You look exactly like your father in this picture,” when the photographic image does not correspond with our own impression of the person. Some people even have special poses or facial expressions specifically reserved for the camera. This latter phenomenon in particular stems from an awareness that the image produced will be viewed, whether by oneself alone or multiple people; the impulse to pose is thus an attempt to project a type of image of oneself, what one deems may look attractive, etc.

And as Cindy Sherman indicates through the work she has produced throughout several decades of her career, these notions of what one believes will look good, desirable, etc., may enter our consciousness subliminally through the endless stream of images in the media, especially those of popular advertisements and film. The case in point: most of her images—even the fairy tales series, the disasters, and maybe the sex photos too?—appear familiar to us, even though Sherman claims that she rarely makes a direct reference to a specific image. This is because the artist pulls these images from our collective consciousness; we recognize them because they correspond with a certain pattern of images that exist in media representations of people, specifically women. When we learn that Sherman’s characters are not mere parodies of pre-existing images but a general enactment of types, we become stunned the way in which the images in our mass culture leave such strong impressions on our own perceptions, and in turn, the way we subconsciously use these patterns to project desirable images of ourselves.

While her early work, such as the Untitled Film Stills, 1977-1980 and other color cinema series from 1981, address the artificiality of the female image projected by the film industry, her later work, such as the head shot series, 2000-2002 and 2008 society series, critique the way in which these cultural ideals play out in our culture once they have already infiltrated and solidified within our collective consciousness. These latter portraits are humorous and disturbing: we laugh, wondering who actually thinks this kind of pose, makeup, orange air-brush tan look good, then realize we have seen people who present themselves in this manner. Regarding the head shots in particular, Eva Respini, in MoMA’s exhibition catalogue for Sherman’s retrospective, writes: “Whichever part of the country they’re from, we’ve seen these women before—on reality TV, in soap operas, or at the PTA meeting” (Respini 44). The women in the society series also “belie the attempt to project a certain appearance” while they pose for the camera (Respini 47). In both series, each woman is always conscious of the camera’s presence, trying her best to reproduce the desirable image of herself that has been fed by mass culture. Most of them, many will agree, look hideous: Sherman presents how the ideal female image can mutate to the point of oblivious perversion. Some are extreme cases, but others, not so much: we know people who have gotten botox, a new cosmetically altered nose, or spends hours getting ready to leave the house.

With her clown series from 2002-2004, Sherman pushes her interest in life as masquerade to the extreme. While the characters in some of her other work pose and act in attempts to render an attractive self-image for social acceptance, clowns, both male and female, play the ultimate dress-up that marks them as outsiders of society. The characters in the head shots and society series, for example, use make-up to alter and mask features of their face that they wish to hide; clowns use make-up as masks—Sherman is barely recognizable behind the layers of powder and costume. Respini situates these series in the artist’s context:

The clown can be seen as a stand-in for the artist, who is often expected to entertain in the contemporary circus of society and is encouraged to act outside of codified norms. Perhaps the sad clown in Untitled #413 […], donning a silk jacket embroidered with “Cindy” on the chest, is an acknowledgment of the demands made on the artist to embody such a manufactured persona (Respini 45).

But the entire series continues Sherman’s overall line of thought on social masquerade and the construction of identity. Make-up, dress, pose, and facial expressions are utilized by many—especially women—as signs the evoke a particular image/aura. Sherman, through the clowns as well as through her other work, demonstrate that the societal demands to act in adherence to prescribed standards pervades all levels of society—low to high—and you, I, or even the artist herself is not an exception to their power.

black mirrors

Fred Wilson, Venice Suite: Sala Longhi and Related Works 

at Pace Gallery 510 West 25^th Street

March 17 – April 14, 2012

A quote by Patrick Mimran comes to mind: “Art doesn’t have to be ugly to look clever.” Fred Wilson’s series of glass works in Venice Suite: Sala Longhi and Related Works, at Pace Gallery consist of elaborate chandeliers, mirrors, and droplets, and are undeniably beautiful. He worked with local craftsmen to utilize an old glass tradition, from an emblem of Western European art history: Venice, the place known for its “unique visual feast.” Venetian art in the 18^th century is especially indicative of a preoccupation with aesthetic indulgence, a mindset not so far off from the modernist “art for art’s sake” that would come centuries later. However, the beauty of Wilson’s work derives from beyond the plastic surface of visual appeal: his social critique.

Fred Wilson was born in the Bronx in 1954. Over the decades, he has focused a large portion of his works on challenging the way by which institutions participate in and promote discriminatory ideological programs. His goal has been to offer the perspectives of those that had been thereby marginalized and excluded from the dominant socio-cultural narrative. His latest work addresses similar themes specifically through the Venetian lens—especially apparent in the direct link Wilson creates through his installation work, Sala Longhi, 2011 to paintings by Pietro Longhi at a museum in Venice. The artist utilizes the materials and techniques of a dominant culture to reveal what they have erased in history.

His version of the Sala Longhi—a room of paintings specifically devoted to Longhi—recreates the arrangement with framed reflective black glass surfaces that are punctured with scattered oval cut-outs. Placement of the cut-outs is meant to correspond with faces in the original paintings. As the frames do not have any back panels, the holes show what lies directly behind the glass: the painted white wall of the gallery. And are not all traditional exhibition spaces painted white? Here, the whiteness of the walls are made analogous to the whiteness of the faces in Longhi’s revered paintings: institutions still operate by an elitist mechanism.

As we peer through each frame, we also can’t help but notice our own hair disheveled by Chelsea’s riverside wind, dark circles from lack of sleep, a button undone, partially obscured by the scattered holes. The elaborate details etched onto his layered mirrors—Mark, 2009 and Bat, 2009—serve a similar function of disrupting what might otherwise be a clearer image of the already dim visage of the spectator. In this way, Wilson places the spectator—you, me, any art lover—into his work, but still as ghosts. At the same time, we realize that the original Longhis did not even allow room for ghosts to hover in the vicinities of their closed-off worlds, discrete samples of what he deemed the everyday Venetian life, and of his acceptance into the canon. As I watched Pace’s lone security guard adjust his tie in front of one frame, I marveled at how far we have come, and how much longer it will take for us to even start to resemble a utopian world.