Artnet
American Spirituality
(8/12/2003)
“Half Air,” July 8-Aug. 29, 2003, at Marianne Boesky Gallery, 535 West 22 Street, New York, N.Y. 10011
With an exhibition titled “Half Air,” the temptation is to talk about spiritualism. Spirituality in art has of late been so overwhelmed by Eastern ascendancy and Stonehenge incantations that it’s hard not to chime in with some down-home American flaky-isms. “Half Air,” however, is not about anything so constricted as organized theisms. The show invokes an awe more fundamental — one that precurses religious dogma.
Seven small oils on canvas by the reclusive visionary artist Forest Bess (1911-77), spanning an eight-year period, form the backbone of the show, which also includes works by Glenn Branca, James Bishop, Charlemagne Palestine, Jack Smith and a double film projection by Ken Kobland and the Wooster Group. The curators — Clay Hapaz, Elisabeth Ivers and Jay Sanders — have gone in for a curatorial cross-pollinating of artistic eras, mixing work from as early as 1949 (Bess) to as late as 1993 (Bishop). In a sweltering August quarto, “Half Air” pursues themes of death, sexual identity, prayer and ceremony…
Plastic Fantastic
(07/22/2003)
Ian Dawson, “Tilt Trucks and Free Fliers,” June 26-Aug. 8, 2003, at James Cohan Gallery, 533 West 26th Street, New York, N.Y. 10001
It’s the tilt trucks first. Twenty-four large dumpster-like bins block out the front room at James Cohan Gallery. Contorted by heat and jammed together with a force that suggests the formation of a young planet, the bins are further distressed by melted protuberances which appear in a measured randomness.
The emptiness of these joined bodies immediately brings to mind environmental themes of humanity’s waste. The multiplicity of the tilt trucks asserts, as well, the ongoing and repeated nature of the output of the present age. Beyond the specificity of green environmentalism, Ian Dawson’s works also address the biological form. The melted elongations that extend from Dawson’s plastic bodies suggest a porcupine-esque protection, and the inherent vulnerability therein. Dawson’s melded bins are reminiscent of a protean multi-celled animal — thriving in the soup of contemporary existence. Moreover, with the candy colors of the bins, Dawson points to our own intake — and our breeding of this sort of plastic amoeba to indulge our guilty if unhealthy pleasures. Burns on the skin of Dawson’s protuberances supply wincingly credible evidence of toxicity, and formulate the question, “As life becomes plastic, what happens to us?”…
Gentleman and Dissembler
(12/20/2002)
Duncan Hannah, “New Work,” Nov. 7-Dec. 21, 2002, at James Graham & Sons, 1014 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y., and “Nudes,” Nov. 7-Dec. 21, 2002, at JG Contemporary, 505 West 28 Street, New York, N.Y.
At first glance, the wistful pictures of Duncan Hannah, an art veteran of 20 plus years, feel distinctly out of place — even at James Graham & Sons on the Upper East Side — in a contemporary moment when politics have made sentimentality particularly distasteful. And yet, while the works are smooth and gentlemanly, on further examination they are snappish and cunning, and as grainy and earthbound as the sand Hannah mixes into his pigments. Hannah’s meditation on colonialism and conformity couldn’t be more at the core of today’s political question — how should/does the Western economic model relate to that part of the world that is yet unconverted?
Indeed, Hannah’s world is so very small that, in it, one can literally see the curvature of the globe.
Hannah’s nostalgic patina is so convincing that his “realism” is often the subject of casual misinterpretation. His paintings have been described as “charming” and “romantic” and, as one critic stated, “the quality of his yearning seems real enough.” Nonetheless, even the most docile of viewers will realize that Hannah’s primary concern is not the past itself, but a relation to the past, in terms of how the past has brought about the present, yes, but also in terms of how the present recreates the past. Hannah is not so much living in the past, alone, as with all of us. His assertion is one of continuity. Yes, he describes himself as being “out of time,” but is quick to add, “we all are.”…
Space Invaders
(10/10/2002)
Michel Majerus, “Leuchtland,” Sept. 15-Oct. 19, 2002, at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, 536 West 22nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10011
Upon entering Michel Majerus’ Leuchtland (in English, “Lightland,” or, perhaps, “Luminousland”) at Friedrich Petzel, one is immediately confronted by a large acrylic and silkscreen work that replicates the somewhat malevolent invasion force of the Space Invaders videogame. Majerus — himself a bit of an invader in his first U.S. solo show — sets the tone for an analysis of singularity versus multiplicity by reminding us that not even these invaders are originals. They too are inherently derivative — indeed, one realizes by the title, Space Invaders 2, that the space invaders represented herein are not even a part of the initial invasion force (arcade game), but the subsequent follow-up invasion force (arcade game).
In simultaneous critique and homage, Majerus asserts that inspiration is not merely the isolated act of the individual — nor is it a striving for genius. It is, rather, evolutionary, and motivated ulteriorly — an argument advanced in the second work in the show, an abstraction of happenstance accumulation, Splash Bombs 2...
Birds & Beasts
(09/23/2002)
Ann Craven, Sept. 4-Oct. 5, 2002, at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc., 524 West 19th Street, New York, N.Y. 10011
At a time when rebellion is the primary form of conformism, and most of us have been shocked so many times that we barely jerk when we are touched by the enlightening intentions of some new cattle prod, Ann Craven’s paintings of birds and deer are genuinely disarming. Having indulged ourselves and suffered through every spectacle, most of us, on the Chelsea amble, are prepared for just about any eventuality. Except this. Cute, big-eyed, brightly painted animals.
One may attempt to fit these 17 paintings into the generally approved kitsch category. Other birds have touched down lately — such as, in stark contrast to Craven’s birds, John Newsom’s sado-birds. (More related to Craven’s subtle anthropomorphism is Michael Joo’s current show at Anton Kern, which includes many four-legged coyotes and a single five-legged one.) Cultural sentimentality is always an appealing target, whether it is bulls-eyed in the form of iconographic personas or objects, or pop-culture signifiers. Yet Craven’s animals, for all the outward corollaries — the brightness, the adorableness — extend no invitation to an interpretation of sentimentality, and, therefore, no juxtaposition of irony…