fyi

i don't update my blog that often and not many people read it anyway, but i figure at least some explanation of future going-downs might help for those who care:

i am taking some time off from the real world (or maybe virtual world) for a while, i'm not sure how long. could be just a few weeks, or few months, but i will be gone and probably have very little opportunity to update my blog or even communicate via phone, email, etc. during this time.

now don't miss me or my writing too much.
i will be back at least by the fall.

FOIL

 

The Ungovernables, 2012 New Museum Triennial at 235 Bowery
Feb 15 - April 22, 2012
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If the crowded and stiff (and overrated?) biennial at the Whitney uptown somehow adheres to a tame and sophisticated art-world sensibility, The Ungovernables, New Museum’s 2012 triennial resists it: much of the work in the exhibition—by a total of 34 artists, groups, and collectives—are political in nature in one form or another. All floors of an entire museum dedicated mostly to political art can prove a risky endeavor; political art, by definition, suggests taking a specific stance on a topic in debate, with which every viewer may or may not agree. However, the range of subjects and forms that the curator, Eungie Joo, and her assistant, Ryan Inouye, have chosen provide an excitingly new perspective on a variety of political views that demonstrate a powerful dynamic between each assembled under the same roof.

Of course, such a large number of works cannot agree to everyone’s taste, including mine, and some I found to be absurdly unappealing. For example, a corner on the second floor was densely occupied by a series of objects and diagrams/drawings that were part of the Times Exchange series by José Antonio Vega Macotela. The Mexican-born artist’s working method essentially consists of exchanging favors with the inmates of a prison in Santa Martha Acatitla. Since the artist is able to move freely around the outside world, the prisoners ask the artist to teach a daughter how to read, beg a father for forgiveness, etc., while they do what Macotela asks, such as record their movements within the prison throughout the day, let the artist take a fingernail sample from each, etc. The results on display are mundane keepsakes: densely collaged cigarette butts, clothes preserved in wax, and so on. Macotela’s project, sure, is noble; but from an artistic point of view, the work strikes me more like a scrapbook from a Peace Corps expedition than art that can stand firmly on its own. The only element that adds any interest to this series is his philanthropic gesture; unfortunately, the actual objects themselves show nothing of this elaborate back story.

Some works did stand out, one of which is Dark Day, 2012, by New York-based artist, Abigail DeVille, a piece that is installed halfway down the John S. Wotowicz Stairs, which connect the third and fourth floors of the museum. Almost as soon as I set foot on the first step, the persistent murmur of the visitors’ chatter ceased, replaced by what sounded like construction noise heard through a closed apartment window that acted like a prelude to what I was about to see. I could still hear these sounds as I walked down the isolated staircase then paused in front of an old, zip-locked copy of The Stargazer Handbook that had been stuffed into a rectangular hollow of the same size in the wall as if to stop a leak. I laughed as I recalled the prints from Lutz Bacher’s The Celestial Handbook scattered throughout each floor of the Whitney that were neatly framed. This recollection proved to become a large influence in my experience of the main installation, located a few steps lower, that looked like Beetle Juice’s demolished and abandoned closet in the projects at some ghetto-ized borough of New York City.

An opening had been carved out of the wall opposite the window side and the space inside was a complete dump, where most of the surfaces were painted in crisscrossing as well as parallel black and white lines. A torn piece of a wall leaned against one side, behind which was a collection of about 35 empty vodka bottles, a heap of a wooden fence-like structure leaned across a corner, parts of what remained of a spring bed mattress with other pieces of destroyed furniture hung helplessly from a broken ceiling, and a ray of uncannily warm domestic light shone down from what would be the floor above. This sight (site), familiar to those who pass by any run-down neighborhoods, still exists on the periphery, just like the way in which urban housing issues are pushed to the side by city councils in favor of more “pressing” ones; after all, the work doesn’t even get an actual floor for display, but the artist had to dig out and create a space for it. However, through its contextualization within an art exhibition as well as the painted lines that force the viewer’s attention to an otherwise common trash hole, DeVille’s installation demands serious inquiry into why and how such sights/sites exist. Then a pristinely intact painting of a woman holding a small rabbit also positions the work within an art-historical context: art is always a product of its societal conditions.

Once I made it to Brazilian artist, Cinthia Marcelle and Tiago Mata Machato’s, O Seculo (The Century), 2011, I realized that the noise I heard in the staircase was not from DeVille’s work. The 9:37-minute video begins with a view of a run-down but still empty section of a street. The camera remains fixed there, while for about five minutes, various objects—ceramic bowls, florescent lights, chairs—are thrown furiously into the frame and smashed to pieces by invisible hands from the right. Later, smoke appears from the same side, while the fixed frame still does not allow the viewer to see its source. The loop ends when its blank canvas becomes filled with chaos.

Another: London artist, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s 2011 portrait series is something of a rare specimen in the midst of new-media-installation art that fills most of the triennial. The initial impression of its out-of-placeness immediately gives way to the beauty of each painting; hiding in a fairly monochrome palette of brown, black, and other dark tones, the faces peer out at us, each eye reflecting that striking glimmer of titanium white. As if only the presence of whiteness can mark the existence of otherwise dark bodies, her larger canvases also leave small areas of the blank canvas exposed.

Overall, The Ungovernables offers a solid and diverse selection of works, without leaning heavily toward any singular political position. There is something for everyone, that is, unless you still believe in the concept of a pure and autonomous art. That said, The New Museum’s triennial is not for the naïve art-lover: be prepared to come face to face with difficult questions.

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.