Roni Horn aka Roni Horn, at the Whitney through January 24, 2010, doesn’t feel like a museum exhibition. It feels more like several gallery shows in one place at the same time—in a good way. Many solo museum shows can be overwhelming, or hinge around some giant work/s that skew the scale of the rest of the exhibition, often diminishing the intimate stuff. But Horn’s show, on two floors, is delicate, textured, multi-layered, and politely demands that viewers pay very close attention.
That’s not to say that Horn, born in 1955, doesn’t go quietly monumental here, as she does in a set of cast glass geometric shapes whose transparency and glossiness contradict their tonnage. read more
In the summer, the art world reverts to a kind of school semester mentality. Galleries shut on Saturdays if they’re even open to the public (and even then, close altogether in August), and often mount group shows based on whimsical themes. Museums, however, are obliged to stay open and service the hordes of visitors, but even they may tend to show art of a less academic nature, such as photography, or graphic or industrial design. With featured installations by two artists, the New Museum has managed to strike a balance between preferred summer art mediums and a historically and politically relevant conscience. David Goldblatt’s photographs of apartheid/post-apartheid South Africa occupy two floors, and Emory Douglas’ graphic designs for the Black Panthers fill another. read more
It seems fitting that an exhibition of Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare’s work is being shown at the Brooklyn Museum, located in a borough where more cultures meet daily in the Atlantic/Pacific subway station than in high season in a trading port of call.
A signature of Shonibare’s work is the use of Dutch wax fabric, African-inspired, vibrantly colored and patterned yardage goods produced in Europe and sold in Africa and elsewhere. The fabric is a rich and effective symbol for the intersection of cultures, from a sociological standpoint and commerce-wise. Shonibare (who, not insignificantly, uses the honorary title MBE after his name) creates elaborate colonial costumes with the prints, boldly mixing them and sparing no detail. read more
There’s a lot happening on Museum Mile these days. Among many highlights, the Met just opened their new American Wing, with a cascade of period rooms and galleries of decorative and functional objects orbiting around the huge Charles Engelhard Court, an atrium showcasing sculpture and stained glass. And up the street, the Guggenheim is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an overview of work by its dad, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).
At first glance, the two seemed only tangentially related, tied by opening date and only the broadest of tags. The Met’s new American atrium holds some familiar sculpture and stained glass, but the sparse installation also served as a reminder of how Euro-centric the museum’s holdings are. The many cases of household items—pewter, porcelain, silver—are now sandwiched in a relatively glamourous mezzanine between the court and Central Park. read more
This Spring, two museum shows pegged to age groups are facing off from each other across the length of Manhattan. Downtown, through July 5, the New Museum of Contemporary Art is presenting the first in its series of “generationals”—tri-annual surveys of contemporary artists aged 33 and under—titled “Younger Than Jesus.” Uptown, through August 2, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is offering “The Pictures Generation,” a historical look at the artists—most famously Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince—who re-introduced representational art to the Conceptualism-heavy New York art world of the late 1970s and early 1980s. (The Met round-up takes it name from the seminal 1977 exhibition, “Pictures,” in which some of these artists made their initial splash.) It’s tempting to see the concurrence of these shows as a demographic smackdown—Baby Boomers vs. Millennials—but more relevant, perhaps, is the fact that both shows betray a similar conceit: That artistic expression is inevitably a byproduct of whatever visual technologies are shaping society at the time an artist comes of age. This isn’t a new idea, exactly: It’s easy to see how, in retrospect, Impressionism was sparked by the advent of photography in the mid-19th century. But lately, the role that the media play in shaping aesthetics has become foregrounded as a curatorial conceit. In this sense, “The Pictures Generation” and “Younger Than Jesus” seem to represent art in the ages of television and the internet, respectively. read more
Aside from the thorny subject of race, there’s perhaps been no other aspect of the national culture more contested and argued over than the American West. Even before the spread of photography, dime novels and steel engravings transmitted legends of gamblers and gunslingers, and indigenous natives who were at once noble and bloodthirsty. But it was the camera that revolutionized our ability to mythologize the West, to capture not only its winners and losers, heroes and villains, but also its magnificent natural beauty. And while still technology eventually led to motion pictures and an entire industry getting its start with stories of Cowboys and Indians, one can argue that the singular photographic image has remained vital to defining the West and our ever-changing notions about it.
“Into The Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American” at the Museum of Modern Art through June 8, provides plenty of ammunition for such an argument. One view are over 150 original prints, dating from 1850 to 2008. Depicting the West old and new, they are hung next to or near one another without regards to chronology. The effect overall—beyond the host of questions raised by placing, say, images of nomadic Native Americans in the same room as a group portrait of Hells Angels—is to re-inforce the familiar notion that the West is less of a place than it is a state of mind. read more
Martha Rosler’s concise show at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Great Power, encapsulates the weird state of our country, facing extremes of peace and war, prosperity and poverty. The most powerful element confronts the visitor straight away: a Dance Dance Revolution machine sits across from the gallery’s entrance, which is accessed by a 25¢ turnstile. Take your choice: escapism or reality. (You must pay, but the money goes to charity. Although I saw one guy jump the turnstile.)
In a series of photomontages, battle scenes from Iraq and Afghanistan are layered with chic fashion models. read more
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