Where is it?
I’ve been waiting for maybe 2 years now for the long-overdue re-release of this title, and now they’ve pushed it back another year!!! Seriously, I demand an explanation. Michael? Gerhard? What is preventing you from putting this out right now?
I’ve been enjoying the comforts and inspirations of my new art studio as of late, and one side-effect is the ramped up activity going on in the creative half of my brain. I’m still struggling with my blueprint process, but I think I may have had a minor breakthrough whilst dicking around on the computer. I’ve posted three photos below. The first is of my studio with a recent blueprint of my kitchen. The second is the blueprint as it looks documented on my computer, and the third is the blueprint flattened and desaturated. When I converted the image to black & white, the piece finally started to speak to the beauty of the light and space that I was originally trying to describe. In the first two states I find viewers often get too hung up on the process (and blue-ness) of the work and never really look at just the image. But is this just because the conversion to black & white translates the work into a more familiar (and therefore less unique) visual language? I’m curious to see what other people think–please, let me know…
I haven’t check out Pitchfork TV that much, but after watching their Dinosaur Jr. segment, I find it to be refreshingly original and exhibits high production value. Wasn’t there a channel on regular TV that used to be music oriented???
*partially written prior to the weekend
I’m totally skipping out on the art-fair craze this weekend, opting instead to take advantage of the warmer weather and visit Beacon, NY; home of the Dia and apparently where the film Super Troopers was filmed. I did, however, manage to get around Chelsea this week to see a few photo-related shows.
My first stop was at David Zwirner to check out the Philip-Lorca diCorcia show ‘Thousand‘. I don’t really care for the book, and when I saw PLdC’s ‘A Storybook Life’ work at the Art Institute of Chicago, I wasn’t too impressed. This exhibition, however, really works for me. The exhibition of 1,000 Polaroids (varying between the smaller pack-film images and 4×5″ ones) in a single row gives the viewer the impression that they are examining an enlarged film reel. Super clean lines, a simple and logical flow, and the decent quality of the images all make for a pleasurable experience. There are no hits or singles in this show, which is partly due to the fact that there are 1,000 photographs on display; for the most part, they all blend together, which is actually quite relieving. With sooo many photographers striving for big great images, it’s kind of nice to see a show full of small OK ones…not that anyone could pull this off. ‘Thousand’ works because it’s by diCorcia (we can use the pictures to reference his other well known works), and it’s full. Overall, a really unexpected and pleasant surprise.
(photo stolen from chelseaartgalleries.com)
Next, I was off to Galerie Lelong to see the Alfredo Jaar piece ‘The Sound of Silence’. Normally I’m a pretty big fan of anything that references photography and Simon & Garfunkel, but Jaar’s piece seemed a bit over-dramatic to me. The main piece consists of an intimidatingly strange theater space in which one outside wall is completely covered with florescent lights. Inside, a short film of Jaar’s loops in which he recounts the story of troubled photojournalist Kevin Carter. The story is mightily depressing, so perhaps the lights on the outside are a small attempt at relieving the sadness. Regardless, I still felt pretty down leaving the show. A small, square framed print with the text ‘WHY?’ in white on a black background kind of summed up the cliché-ness of Jaar’s worst work for me. I also didn’t care much for ‘Searching for Africa in LIFE’, but I like the dialog it creates around photojournalism. It’s worth a stop in…the show is heavy on content but comes up a bit short on form, which is kind of Jaar’s thing, so, if you’re into that…
Last stop was Wallspace to see Walead Beshty’s ‘Popular Mechanics’ show. I feel like I’ve been seeing Walead’s work everywhere since I moved to New York, from the Whitney Biennial to The Sculpture Center to various group shows in Chelsea–seriously, the guy is all over the place! And for the most part, everything I’ve seen has been pretty knock-out amazing, too. But I guess all good runs have to come to an end, and the current show at Wallspace is exactly where it ends. A combination of Beshty’s popular color photograms of folded paper is juxtaposed with black & white portraits of ??? I’m lost–I don’t get any of the references, and the press release is just as obtuse as Beshty’s ‘vague referents’. I’m sorry, but if an MFA graduate and art-history drop-out can’t get your references and clever in-jokes, it should probably stay in the studio. Even the installation seemed bad in a forced-cleverness kind of way. I still think Beshty is capable of producing some of the most exciting contemporary photographic work today, but this latest show was a big flop. If anyone wants to fill me in on the references, please do–I think I was initially too upset with the show to do the research, and now I’m just lazy…
