Friday, May 16, 2008

Cass Bird



Cass Bird is a photographer whose work confronts gender roles in our mainstream world. The women in Cass Bird's pictures are pushing at the edges of their defined space: they are sexual, defiant, and open. Additionally, Cass bird has an easy eye for a moment, so her subjects live in unique and very real worlds-- sunlight angling in, dust, strange looks, complexities.

Listen to her Artist Talk at Brooklyn Museum here.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

fresh kills



Fresh Kills, Curated by David Kennedy Cutler, at the Dumbo Arts Center, March 15 - May 4, 2008. Beautiful, fascinating, important...

Monday, March 24, 2008

The Vogel


Amy Vogel at Larissa Goldston, Feb 29 - March 29, 2008. Amy Vogel works with both pencil and paint on special plaster surfaces which are smooth and inviting. She seems to work differently with the two mediums; her painting big general tones (lines which recall trees, or wires, or shadows), her drawing delicate specifics--a rope tied quietly to a post. There is emptiness in these paintings, and an unfinished quality which works.

Eddie Martinez





Seeing so much interesting work, I am just going to Show rather than Say for a while and get the work up.

Eddie Martinez is at ZieherSmith March 13 - April 12, 2008. I like the space; the crowded plane and jumbled items introduce Philip Guston, while the handling is updated for our modern times.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

why Not?






The paintings of Chris Martin are not to be liked. Awkward, alternating between visionary and goofy, they are rumpled, bumpy, expressionistic, bold, quiet, and most importantly, seeming to defy all labels, expectations and codes of behavior.

There is something adept and convincing about Martin's work: one has the impression of his total freedom, from himself first and foremost. His surfaces are alive, and seem to be arrived at effortlessly, and he embraces the ugly and wrong joyfully. As a result, his work stands as a testament to the virtues he admires in others.

Roberta Smith on Chris Martin: review here.

Chris Martin is at Mitchell-Innes & Nash January 26th–March 1, 2008.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

As absent as if we were asleep



Above image, Spencer Finch, Cloud (H20).

The work of Spencer Finch explores the intersection of actual/ perceived (physical, sensory), remembered (constructed inner experience), physical/ empirical ('actuality' of objects as objectively recorded), and individual/collective emotion (loss, shared psychology). It asks the questions: what is the objective representation of a subjective phenomenon? As well, Finch points out: in between the objective, and the subjective, there is the feeling of loss.

Working alongside the philosophers, Finch examines the relationship between outer (perception, experience, sensation) and inner (memory, emotion). Does replication of an exact visual experience (the ceiling above Freud's couch, the light in Emily Dickinson's garden) allow the viewer to enter the inner experience of a participant?

The relationship between recorded/empirical 'data' (photographs and images, light, scientific data, etc) and the subjective experience which occurs because or in spite of such 'data' is at play. In the work "Trying to Remember the Colour of Jackie Kennedy's Pillbox Hat", 1995, a series of 100 drawings present 100 parts of the exact pink the former first lady was wearing on the day of her husband's assassination. This marriage of 'hard evidence' (exact color pink) to our collective memory: that pink is forgotten, but now we are returned to it, and there is something poignant about seeing the objective within an experience that emotional and collective.

In "Sky over Cape Canaveral (Challenger)", 1994, Finch presents us with the exact location in the sky where the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986. Again we cannot separate our experience of the visual 'data' from our emotional inner scape; we see the sky anew, surprised at how blue it was.

Spencer Finch "What Time Is It on the Sun?" is on view at Mass MOCA through Spring 2008.

To read more on "What time it is on the Sun?, an eloquent review in the NYTimes by Bridget Goodbody: Review here.