Brian D.'s Profile

7/3/2014

This is one of New York's great neighborhood museums, and it's been on a roll lately with a series of adventurous group shows detailing the far-out regions of black artistic imagination. There was one about Afrofuturism, science fictions, utopia/dystopia in the winter, and on my last visit I saw "When Stars Begin To Fall," about folk and vernacular art and how the visual language of that has influenced "professional" artists. i want to put the last part in quotes because the exhibition as a whole makes you wonder what that even means, especially when the unprofessional work, in many cases, looks better. There's just a freshness or spontaneity or freedom about it that lots of artists have a hard time preserving when they go through the system of schools and galleries and adapt their vision to conventions of mediums and art histories--things that folk artists never have to think about, unless of course they want to--though of course the best artists always manage to do that, and some of them are represented here. I won't detail everything I saw, but one particularly memorable installation was by Jacolby Satterwhite, who framed and hung drawings by his mother (an "outsider artist" of sorts) of strange variations on familiar household objects, over a wallpaper he made of 3D digital renderings of those objects, alive in a raucuously colorful montage landscape that he imagined around them. It felt like the heart of the whole exhibition, a place where the relationship between folk arts and the world of museums was an intimate, familial one of loving kin.

I'd like to give the Studio Museum five stars but the architecture of the galleries is not that great. The central gallery has a plopped-down feeling that makes work installed there feel random, and it's wreathed by a balcony of uneven width. The narrow corridor on the balcony's east side is always used for small shows unrelated to what's going on around it, and the shape of it (one long wall) poses a real challenge for anyone who wants to develop a story in art that's more complex and compelling than a this-then-that, one-after-another sequence. The balcony also casts shadows, or maybe it's just the yellowness of the lights they use that make everything feel dimmed. Anyway, I realize these are not simple problems to solve, and despite them I will keep coming back to the Studio Museums and doing my best to enjoy the great exhibitions here.

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  A piece I liked at "when the stars begin to fall"

  A piece I liked at "when the stars begin to fall"

6/29/2013

If you want to chill hard in Chelsea this summer head to Tanya Bonakdar!! Every gallery is going to be air conditioned of course but the back room of "ambient," a group exhibition on view until the end of July, is a dark icebox with a soothing projection by Seth Price--an ocean of digital swells, black and tinged at the crests of their ripples with all the thousands of hues of the Photoshop gradient rainbow. They roll and roll, an endless and endless moving surface--slightly unnerving but not enough to interrupt a relaxed contemplative mood, especially when there are comfy armchairs set up for viewing, with little end tables next to them (bring an ice coffee to put on them, ha). The rest of the show is pretty good as well.

1/9/2014

Very fancy. Have you seen Elysium? I just watched it last week on my flight to LA so it was hard not to think of it while walking around the Getty campus--this pristine, verdant paradise of beauty and leisure perched high above the swarming world below, like the satellite nation in the movie. The nice thing about the Getty (unlike Elysium) is its openness to we plebes. It welcomes anyone who can pay $15 for parking, or take the bus.

The panoramic views of LA, from downtown to the Pacific, are spectacular, and the gardens a delight. A friend said he thought the gardens didn't have enough natural messiness for him. But I thought the sequences of contrastive geometries to the flower beds, and the spilling of certain plant species from one area to another, gave a sufficient sense of spontaneity in its perpetual struggle with harmony. Just like in the materials of the buildings of the campus--the alternation of synthetic, smooth beige cubes and the rough-hewn blocks of rock, also beige. Hmm.. now that I make this comparison I'm starting to wonder, are the gardens too overdetermined after all?

Strolling around the campus and enjoying the serenity is the highlight of a visit to the Getty. The art collections are not quite so spectacular. I did enjoy a temporary exhibit in the galleries of the Research Institute, featuring old books with maps of the world, and detailed drawings of ancient Greco-Roman structures in the Middle East, or etchings of Egyptian mummies by 18th century French explorers. The grand size of the books and the exploratory nature of their contents conveyed a sense of wonder at a planet that hadn't yet been entirely photographed and GPSed. But nothing wow'ed me that much in the galleries of the permanent collections. They are fine, but seeing as how this is a relatively young museum they just don't have the treasures of the Met or the Hermitage or what have you. However, seeing all the paintings of Italianate landscapes, the rolling hills, the rocky slopes, the villas standing in for Palestinian houses in Renaissance religious paintings and the fragments of Roman edificies dotting the landscapes of the Romantics, gave me a sense of how the Getty imagines itself with regards to the past, and even a speculative glimpse of its future... it'll make a beautiful ruin someday.

8/4/2013

Definitely worth a peek if you've got some time to kill between your transfer from the G to L or vice versa, or at either end of your journey! It sells artists' books, zines, and other paper matter by independent publishers (some DVDs and CDs too). They are organized by publisher rather than thematically so you just have to release your inner browser, dive into a box and see what catches your eye. I picked up an old book of essays on video art and television from 1985, for $12, and a book of "Cell Phone Poems" which was a stack of thick manila sheets cut the size and shape of an iPad mini, or one of those big Samsung tablet phones, and printed with some washed out images and brief poems, held together with a big brass fastener (and a half dozen staples holding its legs down for good measure). The poetry didn't seem amazing but I liked it as an object and at $5 it was hard to pass up. A lot of the other handmade-looking things were in the high end of the single-digits so this thing seemed like a steal by comparison! The people who stop in here look like zine experts (when I went in there was a guy having a long conversation with the clerks, wearing marijuana-leaf printed socks and a snapback) but I think anyone can find something here to their taste if they give a try.

2/15/2014

I went to the Raqib Shaw show.

Um.

This is... some of THE tackiest shit I have ever seen in Chelsea.

Where to begin?

How about the butts. There is a fake cherry-blossom crawling with nude guys, well not exactly nude--their packages are tastefully (not) covered by these little brown thongs that frame their butts. And they all have animal faces, with maws open in squawks or yowlings.

The weird thing about this is that it is obviously going to sell for a lot of money and it took a lot of work by a whole studio of people, and some fabricators, and yet it's not even that good. It's not polished and doesn't wow me with craftsmanship. It reminds me of a diorama of cavemen I saw at a museum of natural history in Azerbaijan (not lying), with a bunch of blotchy pink half-naked guys chasing after some mammals. At Pace, as in Azerbaijan, the figures' skin is a crayola-peach hue, their butts have a grim dull glow. Is this supposed to be sexy?

In another room a mural covers a whole wall. Same garbage as in the other room but now it's flat and bedazzled--another sex-battle of bird head men. Again, this totemic animal imagery is probably supposed to come off as referential to myth and a cosmos of ancient archetypes. And yet, it just ends up being gross. The city walls that make the backdrop for the inaction sparkle with rhinestone and a palette straight out of a Thomas Kinkade store, or maybe a Hot Topic. Either way it belongs in a mall. Boo

7/31/2012

Times is a bar that is technically a kunstverein. It always has one work of art hanging over the bar. I have been to Times quite a few times. I really liked a work they showed by Harm van den Dorpel, a print that looked like a modernist abstract collage from a hundred years ago but was composed of some blank digital files, semi-randomly arranged. Another piece I saw was by Simon Denny. He took the first bill that the bar earned (five euros or something) that had been pinned over the working area and moved it to the art-display place. Or did he put up a different bill, to double the original? I can't remember. Either way, it seemed like a cop-out. But in the end it doesn't really matter, because hanging artworks at the bar is less about making exhibitions than it is about fostering a community of regulars, a way of keeping artists and their friends coming back to Times. And it's too dark to get a very good look anyway.

The events that Times hosts are probably more interesting as artworks than the objects that hang over the bar. This summer there was a pole-dancing contest where performance artists competed, and a show of artworks that were painted on a model's nails. She was just chilling at the bar until you asked to see the show and then she'd put her fingers under the light. These days there are a lot of museums that are connecting performance art to parties. This keeps up with trends in "time-based" art, and it's also a way of getting people to visit the museum repeatedly and spend their money there. I don't necessarily have a problem with this, but a lot of times when I'm at a museum I'm not really in the mood to be drinking and dancing. It just feels weird! So I'm glad there is a place like Times where this connection can be made without feeling forced. I would give Times five stars but it gets really smoky inside. Sorry to be the prudish American but I just don't like super smoky bars.

10/15/2012

There are people out there who have very little intellectual curiosity but still like to feel smart and Unix is a gallery that caters to them. I went there during the Miami Art Walk and there was a wax sculpture of Damien Hirst shooting himself in the head (displayed in a glass case, to make it look extra precious and valuable) and I thought, This is exactly the kind of thing that would appeal to a rich jerk who fancies himself edgy and savvy about art but actually doesn't know a thing about it. There was also a series of obnoxiously arty, large-format pornographic photos. Picture early Cindy Sherman, but with big naked tits and shaved vaginas. Garbage!

10/16/2013

I actually lol'ed when I entered this gallery. Raw concrete floors, exposed pipes and other utilities--I'd just entered from a corridor in a very nice Upper East Side office building but suddenly I could have been in Bushwick. Apparently that's the feeling that this gallery is going for, trying to import some grunge style to Madison Ave for cool points.

Unfortunately I can't even remember what the art here was, except that it involved the kind of big messy painting that you would expect to see in such a space. It was like the art was made for the brand of the place and beyond that it's unremarkable. Two stars is "meh" and that was how I felt about this gallery. First lol, then meh

10/22/2013

"Museum" is not really the right word for this place, as it has no permanent collection. It shows works by living artists and sells them. So it's a gallery that is subsidized by the city, as a way of supporting the local arts community. That's fine. Just not what I was expecting when I first entered this "museum." Most of the works deal with some Rhode Island-y themes: lots of beaches, views of Narragansett Bay, landscapes, etc. with various "modern" twists to them, as well as some crafts (i.e. jewelry). That's fine, too--but for me, ordinarily what catches my attention is edgier/more conceptual stuff. I did get bewitched, though, by a quilted piece by Michele Leavitt, a bay scene created from ragged, irregular scraps of fabric, with the bits of thread that hold them together hanging from the surface and adding to the already wild texture. So many different, vibrant hues of blue! I didn't pay much attention to the boat-shaped sculptures, assembled from big, found pieces of wood and metal, the maker of which--I learned from the museum's binder--taught engineering at the University of Rhode Island and started making art a couple of years ago, after his retirement. I was with my father--an engineer like the artist, and someone who doesn't usually look at art--and though I didn't pay much attention to the boats my dad said he really appreciated the craftsmanship that went into them. He actually lives in Warwick, so the museum is there for him, and that's a good thing.

3/3/2013

According to Yelp three stars is "A-OK" so this isn't a *bad* review. In fact I will start out by saying something positive: I am so happy that the Whitney's management has decided to move! They are opening a new location near the High Line in 2015, and that will be great for them. Maybe by now you can already guess what I don't like about the Whitney... it's that the building sucks. Every time I go there I feel depressed. It's a dark, heavy place, with the vibe (and smell) of a mid-century institutional building. When I'm on the stairwell between floors I have flashbacks to junior high and it's generally unpleasant.

But despite that I can't give the Whitney a bad review because they have (and especially lately they have had) so many great exhibitions! I'm always impressed when the artists manage to take the gross building they've been given a space in and turn it to their advantage. Last summer when Sharon Hayes was there the oppressive & somber atmosphere of the third floor--with its low brutalist ceiling--was actually a good accompaniment to her documentations of protests and interviews with ordinary people. The raised platforms that brought viewers even closer to the ceiling really emphasized that. Wade Guyton, who had a show on the same floor, made a series of mirrored U's in various sizes, and the cement squares that tile the ceiling turned into viscuously moving holes in the reflections. Plus the gallery was reorganized with temporary walls in a visually dynamic layout that made me forget about my surroundings. Also the recent Richard Artschwager exhibition was one of the best retrospectives I have ever seen, and his work is all about the psychology of interior spaces. It led me to think about how the Whitney's building has a bad effect on my psychology, which was better than just feeling it.

In short, there's almost always a couple of must-see shows at the Whitney and I hope that in 2015 when it moves seeing them won't be such a downer. I also hope they install working water fountains there. The water fountains here never eject more than a weak trickle and it's impossible to drink from them.