Bitter People Hate Art, Life

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 death of the Polaroid, what a bummer!


In need of refreshment with a snack and magazine, New York Magazine informs me that 1 in 10 people who kill themselves in New York come from out of town specifically for that purpose, in this article on Suicidal Tourism. Yo, Gypsy wasn't that bad! At least now I have 'The SuicideTourist' as a name for my autobiography. Ta for the title.



Finally, a scary xerox clown-head warns aspirational pedestrians against art school...(click to view larger).

New York is trying to tell me something, but the message arrives too late!

Collecting Software Art: the Swapable Gallery

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, "a
software art station". It seems to me weird and provocative at the same
time. At the beginning, Net Art and Software Art tried to introduce new,
democratic ways to experience art: but, entering the art market, they
usually lost this visionary approach, looking for more traditional,
“materialized” interfaces (prints, videos, sculptures and so on).
softwareARTspace seems to look for a viable way to re-propose that
visionary approach. Do you think that we are now ready for totally new
ways to experience art?

SS. There are some very simple reasons why we are all ready for a
change. Access and price. It is now very easy to access computers and
screens and the prices have dropped dramatically. The thought of having
2-3 screens devoted to software or video art is not unreasonable and in
fact will broaden and diversify most people's collection. Also, for some
works of art it is ok to rotate between pieces on one screen which also
offers collectors a nice option for easily and quickly changing their
surroundings.

DQ. What I buy when I buy one of your multiples? Is it like buying video
art? Or more likely buying a software or a game? Why do you make
editions of 5000 instead of 50? Is it still art, when it costs 125 $?

SS. It is not video. It is code - Software Art. The work is on a CD and
must be viewed on a computer with a decent graphics card.
This is not about “collecting” and value. It's about experiencing a
sample of work from important software artists. When these artists
produce more “fine artworks” they will have the attention of a wider
audience who may be interested in smaller editions or unique objects.

This is pretty much right-on and an idea I have been playing around with myself, in devising ways to put my own work out into the world in a non-gallery context. When it comes to 'New Media Art' and 'Net Art', I don't really get all the hand-wringing that usually accompanies discussions about the preciousness of quote-fine art objects-unquote and why this method of object creation needs to necessarily be dismantled. Does it matter if this object is encountered in an art gallery as opposed to, say, a design gallery such as Moss or Moroso? Does it matter if the methods of distribution of a video or software piece are more similar to that of a design-commodity, when you in fact have many artists working today who straddle that precipitous line between design and art already?

The interesting thing about 'Software Art' (or art that is otherwise generative or digitally interactive in nature) is that it is a (sometimes disharmonious) marriage of Visual and Conceptual practices. That is to say, there is a visual, collectible artifact which is a result of an idea manifested in the labor of code and the hand of the artist who either established the parameters or guided the results. Unlike much Conceptual work, which is tied to a performance, unique act, or free-floating meme, this work is potentially mass-producible, archival, and non-degradable---pending viruses and crashes, of course.

Filmmakers, photographers, printmakers, sculptors, and every other creative who works with editions, multiples, and reproductions--by the very nature of that practice--don't have to defend the uniqueness of their work or its value. However, it would be very cool if some of these Factory-style artists, who just churn work out, could take a cue from the design world they emulate and offer some cross-affordable editioned artwork as well. I don't feel this undermines the (quite necessary IMO) role of the collector to own unique slices of the artist's overall vision. The question from the interview "Is it still art if it's only $125" is quite (excuse the pun) priceless in this regard. Is the value of the idea diminished if it's distributed across a greater spectrum of audience?

While I'm on the subject, what's the big deal about making democratic art anyway? Is there some kind of crisis in people's ability to enjoy and view art? The art world is an economy of uniques, really. I don't believe this country is suffering from a lack of more things, more pleasure, more consumption opportunities. There is more creative stuff being made available right now than, like, ever before. I think many folks are throwing around the word 'democratic', thinking they are using it to mean 'participatory' (another over-used term the art world needs to get a grip on), when really they mean 'freedom to consume.' Or something like that.

Discuss.

Takashi Murakami and Matthew Ritchie In HighSpeed Collision on the Moons of Jupiter

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 contemporary pop and graffiti artists.

Chris Natrop's Fabulous Hanging Gardens

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 the rich decorative objects of Tord Boontje or Petah Coyne and the swirling, myth-infused psychogeographies of Matthew Ritchie.

above (L to R): Landscape Blossom Pop; Pink Dimension

Some of the smaller works have an almost devotional or altar-like composition; Natrop's process is both meditative and poetic without being cloying or precious, and responds to (in the artist's words) the visible but 'hidden essence' of his home of Los Angeles, an overpowering sensual environment of extreme urbanism infiltrated by a relentless efflorescence.
Visit the artist's website here, and read an interview with him here.

Jorge Pardo @ Friedrich Petzel

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, lighting, interiors--seems vaguely more conceptual and part of a process of working in which the artifact or fabrication is more an outcome rather than a goal. As such, the works in this exhibition create the ambiance of a not-completely-finished boutique hotel lobby.
The main feature of the show are a couple dozen milled-PVC chandelier pendant lamps hanging at various lengths from the ceiling. While variants of this design can be seen in multiple trendy boutiques right now, closer investigation reveals a form less akin to traditional ornament and something a bit edgier and aquatically primal--think Ernst Haeckel vs. Tord Boontje.
The paintings are actually silkscreen & applique on unprimed linen, and draped with fabric garlands, bringing to mind the large-scale collages of Beatriz Milhazes. The gay floral patterns are diffused somewhat by the dourness of the surface material.
Rounding out the show are a group of wine-storage credenzas with custom hinge fixtures and a series of bizarre clocks made from contoured layers of corrugated cardboard and wood. Pardo's work here as elsewhere playfully makes a statement about the sheer aesthetic experience of architecture, objects and spaces. While the objects are wonderful and exuberant in their own right, however, this presentation seems strangely unalive.

Another Nifty Book

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 Loos

Opening the book is the original text from Loos' incendiary (and quaintly, queezily racist) 'Ornament is Crime' diatribe, which laid the ground for the Modernist repudiation of decoration. The authors seem to take a pretty broad view of these ideas as they lay out their theses and projects, but so far it's a great read & a wonderfully designed little tome...the layout & type is actually quite classic & clean, rather ironic, I thought...

Cal Lane: Metal Lace Artist

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(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 steel beams and surfaces. Her work exists at a fascinating intersection between craft, fine art and industrial production; and on another level as a historical confrontation with the feminine 'decorative arts' and the macho heroic-sculpture monuments of Modernism.

Quoted from Ray Cronin, Curator at Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, from the catalogue of Lane's sculpture exhibition 'Fabricate':
"By cutting into the beams, reproducing the patterns of lace, Lane seems to be pointing out the limits of Modernity's asceticism. In this reading the lace patterns work as ornament, a decorative function that undermines the structural integrity of the beams...Is ornament eating away at the modernist purity of the towers? ...I suggest that the decorative is indeed a corrosive."