tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51933130040147281562011-07-31T05:30:08.261-04:00New York City Artworld NotesSean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.comBlogger241100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-71924410978880891532011-03-05T11:48:00.002-05:002011-03-11T19:29:51.250-05:00

Video art takes time. It can take a lot of time, in fact, so I made sure to show up early for the debut of 'Moving Image - An Art Fair of Contemporary Video Art' (a somewhat redundant title--isn't all video art contemporary?), in its sleek and spacious home at the Waterfront Tunnel, a block-long cavernous corridor in the northern strip of Chelsea, home to a former nightclub and the occasional art

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-48147699317698073552010-01-30T18:44:00.003-05:002010-01-30T18:48:19.223-05:00

The famous riddle goes something like: "What crawls in the morning, walks on two legs during the day, and three legs in the evening?" The answer has something to do with Tino Sehgal's latest installation-slash- performance-slash- social sculpture now at the Guggenheim Museum. There is no physical artwork in the main rotunda; on my visit, the museum was amok with children, groups of teenagers, and

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-88449456226453099212009-11-19T02:26:00.007-05:002009-11-19T03:32:38.689-05:00

An interesting but tepid panel discussion held at the Fashion Institute of Technology took a surprising (yet somehow predictable) left turn during the Q&A session. The ostensible subject of the symposium, titled 'Intangible', was to explore the diverse marketplace realities of so-called ephemeral art, mainly related to performance and media art since the 1960s. Seated on the panel was dealer/

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-80803438070909486452009-11-07T12:36:00.016-05:002009-11-07T13:25:14.159-05:00

What is the State of Video Art? The field known as video art covers such a range of activites and formal strategies that it's impossible to make a totalizing statement about what video art is or isn't. The same goes with painting, sculpture, and every other art medium, but folks seem to have a harder time getting a handle on video, which can be difficult. For one thing, it's durational. Most

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-75800503353444745192009-03-14T13:08:00.005-04:002009-11-07T12:35:49.266-05:00

The only thing worse than superficial conceptualism is superficial conceptualism that poses as social activism...not for a specific socio-political cause, mind you, but rather for the very soul of the social itself. That sounds abstract enough to be defensible, right? The phoney-baloney, egotistical nonsense that the art world tolerates and validates under the various descriptors of "

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-7433983347645671682008-05-16T16:33:00.006-04:002008-05-16T17:11:29.432-04:00

On this ex-treme-ly rainy, blustery spring day in New York--really, just the kind of weather I enjoy, especially for gallery hopping in Chelsea--I find my sensibilities regarding the life-affirming power of Art under assault.First at the Yoko Ono installation at Lelong, in which viewers are invited to take a Polaroid of themselves limb-f*cking a perforated canvas. In a way, also, mourning the

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-15235233309677506292008-05-06T02:36:00.011-04:002008-05-15T14:22:40.758-04:00

Speaking of boring gays and expensive art (see previous post), here are some musings about shows that all opened in the same time-frame last month in New York, representing a spectrum of high-end/low-end art production models and art world fagiolis in general..Ryan McGinley @ Team!The best part of Ryan McGinley will always be his openings---eww, no, that's not what I mean! I mean all the fabulous

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-56868256938651141952008-05-06T01:02:00.005-04:002008-05-06T02:34:12.716-04:00

Last week I had an interesting conversation with a certain favorite gallerist of mine in which he bemoaned the loss of an interesting, radical queer culture in favor of the current assimilationist, overly-capitalized attitudes of the gay scene. Always one to carry on two conversations in my head, the other one concerning the 'Art and its Markets' issue of Artforum, I chirped at the parallel

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-61719689060390805462008-04-01T03:09:00.014-04:002008-04-01T15:04:29.903-04:00

One of the neat things about Volta is that galleries are allowed only one artist per installation. This makes it feel more like an exhibition and less like a trade show. From the viewer's perspective it certainly eases the fatigue of art-fair visual overload, and hopefully it presents the taste level of the gallery in a more accurate light which ultimately attracts longterm collector interest---

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-91895328678891275282008-04-01T02:43:00.004-04:002008-04-01T03:09:20.450-04:00

Here are some highlights from the Volta fair, which everyone--quite justifiably--told me to attend after the somewhat dull viewings at Scope (don't get me wrong, there was a lot of really nice work on view, it just didn't feel like--well, like art was happening).Above, Jacin Giordano's fabulous toilet seat cover column and glitter painting at Baumet Sultana.Above, these sculptures from Kevin

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-62398411844190619172008-04-01T02:11:00.004-04:002008-04-01T02:43:50.028-04:00

Assume Vivid Astro Focus at the Armory! Yay!!This is about all I paused to enjoy at the Armory show, after sneaking in--kind of--thanks to the good grace of my friend from VideoArtWorld who was in town to host a series of really interesting panels and screenings at Whitebox for DiVA (the Digital Video Art Fair, now revamped as a series of individual installations in several shipping containers

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-66643505670537702212007-06-29T15:58:00.000-04:002007-06-29T17:30:35.644-04:00

(Disclosure statement: I haven't yet seen the show, but I am an admirer of his past works, and I'm looking forward to it. This post is more general thoughts about the review the artist's work in general.)In looking at the A/V tour provided by Roberta Smith at the NY Times online, I'm struck again by the artist's intentional workings on idea of ornament, environment & surface adornment, notably

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-74065634381396137942007-06-29T14:08:00.001-04:002007-06-29T15:14:10.653-04:00

I recommend this writing which is found on the always entertaining and frank artblog run by gallerist Ed Winkleman. This post reveals the mysteries of the artist/dealer 50/50 sales split and tries to answer the question, What Is It That Galleries Do Anyway?, which is just a super question to ask when you consider that a gallery really is a business and not a public service or retail space and

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-45160611196314360962007-06-28T14:41:00.000-04:002007-06-29T13:46:02.397-04:00

Here's some Brooklyn art with no depictions of owls--can you feature that!!I guess one doesn't grow in Brooklyn after all: (Unless it's a high-rise condo, that is.)i-Dicted, Ha ha This waggish iPod ad parody was spotted on a construction wall on Bedford Ave, apparently it was a one-day installation only, too bad.And speaking of street interventions, I am flipping out over the increasing volume of

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-2733874632393200032007-06-28T11:37:00.000-04:002007-06-28T15:24:35.900-04:00

This is a repost from Rhizome: a neat little interview with Steven Sacks (founder of NY-based New Media gallery Bitforms and softwareartspace.com), conducted by Domenico Quaranta. Here's an excerpt:DQ. About experiencing the work, you talk about a dedicated machine, "asoftware art station". It seems to me weird and provocative at the sametime. At the beginning, Net Art and Software Art tried to

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-67664641788003850752007-05-08T12:01:00.000-04:002007-05-08T16:04:22.776-04:00

NY-based design agency GHaVisualAgency creates a lush multi-screen video wallpaper 'Nokia in Wonderland' (also click on the 'Multiscreen Version' for the true experience) for the Nokia flagship store. The screens in these stores display some surprisingly abstract work and has developed an interesting approach to environmental media in a branded commercial space, featuring work by other newmedia

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-30726528381103273082007-05-08T11:33:00.000-04:002007-05-09T16:54:35.661-04:00

A lovely, experimental video (also made in Processing) by Argentinian-based dynamic duo i2off.org (Ivan Ivanoff) & r3nder.net (Jose Jimenez). These guys are extremely process-oriented and energetic, and their respective sites and projects are bewilderingly imbricated in one another, so if you visit - and you should - be prepared to do some digging. I'm starting a Supernature inspiration award and

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-79973726133530240442007-05-08T11:11:00.000-04:002007-05-08T12:28:28.352-04:00

A clever commercial installation developed in Processing by the collaborative team of i2off.org + r3nder.net.

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-83041320977455855752007-04-26T13:53:00.000-04:002007-04-26T16:51:35.569-04:00

These amazing images came from the USGS Astrogeology site, presenting highly aestheticized false-color renderings of planetary topologies. I'm not sure of the depth of scientific information that these poppy, expressionist graphics convey, but they certainly are an example of how the universe (to paraphrase) is "stranger than we can imagine" and at least as strange as the imaginations of

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-74956619795367883852007-04-24T10:56:00.000-04:002007-04-24T11:59:47.898-04:00

above (L to R): Fern Space; Sparkle Bomb.I just came across the work of Chris Natrop via dataisnature, and don't know how it could have stayed off my radar. Natrop creates intricate hand-cut paper sculptures and wall pieces that make careful use of the space, light, shadow, and application of surface materials such as wall paint, nail polish, and watercolor. The installations bring to mind both

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-29593720466782740752007-04-18T22:50:00.000-04:002007-04-18T23:44:25.775-04:00

Jorge Pardo, the whimsical & prolific artist/designer, has a solo exhibition of objects & paintings now through April 21st at Friedrich Petzel Gallery in Chelsea.Pardo is popular for his multidisciplinary installations which blur the distinction between 'design' and 'fine art', although I feel that's more because he chooses to show his work in galleries and because his 'design' work--furniture,

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-61838453831465845382007-04-17T16:33:00.000-04:002007-04-26T16:52:01.682-04:00

The built environment of New York City is undergoing a radical transformation. With a rush of new development, the city is going to experience a rapid evolution over the next decade. As New York Magazine reported, a city larger than San Francisco is now being “built on top of the city that we know.”This show features a 'future map' of architectural projects on a large aerial shot of the city, and

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-3987214151883558122007-04-14T00:56:00.000-04:002007-04-18T23:43:26.148-04:00

When I was in Toronto recently I visited YYZ gallery in the amazing 401 Richmond complex (a converted factory space with five floors of media centers, galleries, shops, gardens & arts organizations). They publish some great books including this one:Crime and Ornament: The Arts and Popular Culture in the Shadow of Adolf LoosOpening the book is the original text from Loos' incendiary (and quaintly,

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5193313004014728156.post-53146903069411447602007-04-13T23:28:00.000-04:002007-04-18T23:42:21.231-04:00

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------(click image to view larger)I first came across Cal Lane's amazing 'rust dust' patterns at Scope Art Fair and most recently at the Museum of Arts & Design awe-inspiring 'Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting' show. Ms. Lane is an artist who hand-welds intricate and delicate patterns and filigrees into

Sean Caponehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09352287834934434837noreply@blogger.com1