Modern Painters. February 2016

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LAURA
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BEHIND HER WORK
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February 2nd – 26th, 2016
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F E B R UARY CONTENTS
52
Theodore
Boyer in his
52
Showcase
Introducing
Theodore Boyer
64
Features
Pier Paolo
Calzolari
Comment
91 Reviews
An overdue Martin Wong
Brooklyn by Michael Slenske Q&A retrospective at the Bronx
studio, 2015. by Juliet Helmke Museum, experiments
in sound at Carnegie
56 Introducing Mellon’s Miller Gallery,
Lauren Seiden
by Scott Indrisek
68 Mu Xin the Asia Pacific Triennial
A new museum in in Brisbane, Lucy Dodd,
China traces a Mark Leckey, and more
60 Spotlight dissident’s legacy
by Hunter Braithwaite
Sara Cwynar
by Ariela Gittlen
74 Laura Poitras
G R E G K E S S L E R . C OV E R : P R A X I S F I L M S
79 Camilo Fuentealba Q&A

modernpainters
BLOUINmodernpainters
PIER PAOLO
CALZOLARI’S
MATERIAL
WORLD
An exclusive portfolio by Noelle Bodick
KAWS
toys around
INSIDE THE
MU XIN
MUSEUM
JOHN MILLER
KRISTEN MORGIN
SARA CWYNAR
THEODORE BOYER
LAURA
POITRAS
THE SECRETS
BEHIND HER WORK
ON THE COVER:
Laura Poitras, photographed in 2014.
BLOUINARTINFO.COM FEBRUARY 2016 MODERN PAINTERS 7

F E B R UARY CONTENTS
56 RIGHT:
Lauren Seiden
Shield Wrap 12,
2015. Graphite
on paper,
41½ x 32½ x 11 in.
68 BELOW:
A view of the
new Mu Xin
Art Museum in
Wuzhen, China.
79
ABOVE:
Camilo
Fuentealba
A photograph
from the series
“New York, New
York, It’s a Hell of
a Town,” 2014–15.
60
LEFT:
Sara Cwynar
432 Photographs
of Nefertiti, 2015.
Collaged UV-
coated archival
pigment prints
mounted to
Plexiglas and
Dibond, 54 × 43 in.
Portfolio Reports Departments

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31 Newsmaker 41 Ins & Outs 26 Hey, Don’t I Know You?

John Miller Artist moves Parties, people, openings
and other news
33 Music
48 Studio Check
43 Hit List
Animal Collective Things we like
Kristen Morgin
34 On Our Radar 45 Biopic
Fawn Krieger KAWS
35 New Media 88 Culture+Travel

When in Mumbai
Jason Rohrer
104 Parting Shot
Leslie Stein
Modern Painters, ISSN 0953-6698, is published monthly with a combined July/August

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CONTRIBUTORS // FEBRUARY
Sarah Cowan Hunter Braithwaite Noelle Bodick Ariela Gittlen Camilo Fuentealba
Brooklyn-based Cowan For this issue, A reporter for A graphic designer and Canadian and Chilean
works as a video editor Braithwaite, a Modern Blouinartinfo.com, Bodick writer, Brooklyn-based photographer Fuentealba
at the Metropolitan Painters contributing previously served as Gittlen is a regular has lived in Melbourne
Museum of Art and has editor, traveled to an assistant editor at contributor to Elephant and Montreal and is
contributed to The Paris Wuzhen, China, for the $UW$VLD3DFLÀF magazine magazine. On page 60, now based in New York.
Review and the online opening of the Mu Xin in Hong Kong and lived VKHSURÀOHVDUWLVW6DUD With a focus on portraits
art forum Hyperallergic. Museum, an institution there during the time Cwynar, whose use of as well as candid photo-
She spoke to Ron Nagle, KHSURÀOHVRQSDJH Laura Poitras, whom she commercial photography graphs, his work was
on page 34, about his and also spoke with interviews on page 74, struck a chord. “These short-listed for the
admiration for fellow artist John Miller on ZDVLQWKHFLW\ÀOPLQJ images exert a massive Photobook Melbourne
artist Giorgio Morandi page 31 on the occasion Edward Snowden for her LQÁXHQFHRYHURXU 2015 Photography
on the occasion of their RIKLVÀUVW$PHULFDQ Academy Award–winning desires,” Gittlen says. Award, and he recently
two respective shows museum retrospective documentary, Citizenfour. “It’s hard not to view UHOHDVHGKLVÀUVWSKRWR
overlapping in New York at ICA Miami. Cofounder Bodick spoke with the them cynically, but book, Shanghai 24. A
last fall. “Nagle speaks of the magazine the DUWLVWDQGÀOPPDNHU Cwynar has such affec- portfolio of the work that
of Morandi with touching Miami Rail, Braithwaite in her Manhattan studio tion for her subjects, has taken Fuentealba
reverence and unique has a current fascination about her exhibition she makes it easy around the world—from
insight. Comparing with the connections at the Whitney Museum to understand why the tar sands of Northern
F R O M L E F T: K AT H R Y N A L L E N H U R N I ; H U N T E R B R A I T H WA I T E ; J O H N J E R V I S ; J U L I A GA N G; S E R A C A R UA N A
their work dusts off between experimental of American Art, on they matter.” Alberta to the streets
Morandi’s canvases and and noise music of the view through May 1, of Bali, Shanghai,
casts Nagle’s sculptures VDQGVUDS which “blurs the line and Australia—can be
in historical light,” coming out of Memphis, between journalism and found on page 79.
says Cowan. where the writer art, detaining visitors
is based. in the museum and
displaying portions of
the Snowden archive.”
“Morandi is one of “The Mu Xin “I’m drawn to “Looking at the “Street

my longtime loves, Museum raises art that, broadly transcript, I noticed photography
and he’s an artist interesting speaking, Cwynar and I is to me
whose work is questions about reflects on history used the word what music is
arcane enough how China is and memory.” love more than a to a dancer.”
that it’s always using art to dozen times—the
exciting to ind navigate the color mint green,
fellow admirers.” darker elements Maggie Nelson’s
of its history.” writing, and
process stories
among the
beloved items.”

L O U I S A M C E LWA I N 1953 - 2013
Be Thou Strong My Habitation, 2012, oil on canvas, 48 x 72
505.995.9902 EVOKEcontemporary.com 877.995.9902

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512 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011 www.thekitchen.org
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LETTER // FEBRUARY
Authority
AN ARTIST FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE didn’t want us to include a portrait because
it might imply “causality,” presumably between the maker and the made. The
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SDLQWLQJDQGVFXOSWXUHDVSURGXFWVPRUHRIWKHEUDQGWKDQRIWKHKDQG7KLV
position, it seems to me, is consonant with what is known as post-Internet art—it
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DA NIEL KUNITZ, EDITOR IN CHIEF

KRISTINE L ARSEN

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ARTSY DINNER AT Scott Lipps Andrew Gori RESIDENCES AT SHORE CLUB
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#YPDISCO2015 AT THE MIAMI BEACH EDITION Mohaded

ANRI SALA:
ANSWER ME
February 3–April 10, 2016
Anri Sala, Long Sorrow
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Free. For All.
FEBRUARY 3 –
MARCH 27, 2016
Angel Nevarez and
Valerie Tevere
Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere, Memory of a Time Twice Lived, 2015, production still. Courtesy the artists.
FEBRUARY 3 –
AUGUST 14, 2016
Rodney McMillian: Rodney McMillian, A Migration Tale, 2015 (ilmed 2014), single channel video. Courtesy the artist and
Maccarone, New York.
The Black Show
118 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Major support for Rodney McMillian: The Black Show has been provided by The William Penn Foundation. icaphila.org
Additional funding has been provided by Dorothy H. & Martin N. Bandier, Maccarone, New York, Norma &
Lawrence S. Reichlin, Lori W. & John R. Reinsberg, Stephanie K. & David E. Simon, Brett A. & Daniel S. Sundheim,
and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Funding for Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere is provided by
Christina Weiss Lurie. Marketing is supported by Pamela Toub Berkman & David J. Berkman and by Lisa A.
& Steven A. Tananbaum. Free admission is courtesy of Amanda and Glenn Fuhrman.
144 West 125th Street | New York, NY 10027
studiomuseum.org
Stanley Whitney: Dance the Orange | Photo: Scott Rudd
PHANTOM BODIES The Human
Aura in Art
TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS // PORTFOLIO
John Miller in
2013 at the
Artist’s Institute in
New York.
NEWSMAKER
JOHN MILLER
THOUGH MILLER HAS spent 30 years I’ve had two surveys there before, at Le the Structuralists and Post-Structuralists
examining American consumer culture—from Magasin in Grenoble back in 1999, and then in were similar to what Speculative Realists are
game shows to reality television, from 2009 at the Kunsthalle in Zurich. [ICA curator] doing now, apart from the embrace of
mannequins to paintings of shopping bag– Alex Gartenfeld didn’t want to repeat what’s language, or looking to language as a structure.
laden pedestrians—his work hasn’t been been done. He’s been digging out lesser-seen I guess my answer to that is yes and no. It
the subject of an American museum exhibition works. He’s talked about it from the stand- would depend on who was looking at my work.
until now, with “I Stand, I Fall” opening SRLQWRIÀJXUHVDQGÀJXUDWLRQEXW,WKLQNKH Take a writer like Alain Robbe-Grillet.
February 18 at the Institute of Contem- may be thinking about it in terms of object- His idea was to try and reduce anthropo-
porary Art, Miami. The show, which oriented ontology, or Speculative Realist ideas. morphism in narration. His writing was the
includes more than 75 pieces, is an in-depth HB: Is that where you’re coming from as an model for Roland Barthes’s Writing Degree
retrospective that looks at Miller’s evolving artist? Zero. On the one hand, the goal of making
WUHDWPHQWRIWKHÀJXUHDQGVXEMHFWLYLW\ JM: In some ways, with my background, I’m a a completely literal language is delusional in a
Here, the artist, writer, and musician speaks little bit invested in what the hard-core way, which is kind of the way he pushed it
to Hunter Braithwaite about several bodies Speculative Realists oppose—a linguistic in his later work, but he did reduce the way
of work that will be on display, how his approach, which they would see as being too that metaphor conventionally functions.
paintings occasionally make people sick, and anthropomorphic. When I was in school, HB: The show is titled “I Stand, I Fall.”
THE ARTIST’S INSTITUTE
writing about his friend Mike Kelley. that was what was theoretically really What are the ideas behind those four words?
exciting. I got into it and studied linguistics JM: It has to do with this thing between
HUNTER BRAITHWAITE: Tell me about at Brown. A lot of what I’ve done is informed horizontal and vertical axes that plays out in
what’s included in this survey. by a linguistic approach. In that sense, some of my work. I would say that the
JOHN MILLER: We want to do something what I’m doing is opposed to that, but then paradigm for that is Jackson Pollock. You
different from shows I’ve had in Europe. I try to point out how some of the goals of know, making work horizontally, and putting

PORTFOLIO // TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS
NEWSMAKER
it up in a vertical orientation. I guess I’m

especially interested in when it starts to have
to do with stature and the act of standing as
the existential posture. That becomes explicit
in the work of someone like Robert Morris;
some of Gilbert & George’s work has to do
with that, too—this kind of odd quality of
standing, which is a very basic state of being.
HB: A couple of years back, you and Liam
Gillick were talking in Bomb, and the
discussion touched on the Occupy movement.
Is this idea of standing politicized in any way,
or is it more of a formal thing?
JM: It probably was—I hadn’t thought of it
that way, to tell you the truth. You know,
it’s funny to compare that to the older notion
of the sit-in, where it’s a much different
posture while occupying space.
HB: Well, now we have die-ins, the completely
horizontal. Anyway, how are you going to
occupy the space of the ICA, which is in Miami’s
Design District?
JM: I suppose I’ve thought about the atrium,
which is unusual architecturally. We’re
still not sure if I’m going to do a labyrinth
down there or not.
HB: Is that The Bog of Eternal Stench [2008]?
JM: It might mutate into a completely different
piece. These mazes have to be designed to VROXWLRQWRREHFDXVHLW·VPRUHOLNHDÀJXUH in terms of sublimation and the Freudian
the space that they’re going to be in. They can’t more like a minotaur. So, I don’t know if it idea that the artwork was a kind of sublimated
just be transposed from one spot to another, makes sense to maintain the same title if we anal impulse. I was thinking of that in
XQOHVVLW·VDKXJHÁRRURUVRPHWKLQJ6RLIZH FKDQJHWKHÀJXUDWLRQDQGWKHFHQWUDOÀJXUH terms of some of Marcuse’s ideas about subli-
do the maze in Miami, it’ll be a completely HB: Could you tell me a little bit about mation and desublimation.
redesigned one. In the Japan version, the concepts behind your work incor- Especially if you’re looking at it with a
I have a ball covered with plastic John Miller porating gold? 1960s lens, desublimation was often
ABOVE:
fruit in the center. That may or may JM: I don’t know if you’re familiar associated with liberation, wanting to have
Installation view of
not be in my storage out in Brooklyn. A Refusal to Accept with this period of brown impasto pleasure here and now rather than deferring
I was talking to Gartenfeld about Limits, 2009, at work I did. It was intended as a it to a kind of higher end or something.
Kunsthalle Zurich.
LWVD\LQJ´,IZHFDQ·WÀQGWKHEDOO provocation, where the brown So, I used this motif with the idea not that
,FRXOGVXEVWLWXWHDTXDVLÀJXUHWKDW BELOW: impasto would have an excremental, something could really be desublimated,
I covered with fruit.” He thought Installation view or shitlike, quality. At the time, but I was gesturing toward the paradox that
that that would actually be better of The Lugubrious I was playing around with psycho- presents, because conversely—and this is
Game, 1998,
than the ball, and after thinking at Belkin Gallery analytic and linguistic ideas, so probably where I would part company from
about it, that that might be a better in Vancouver. what I wanted to do was look at that hard-core Freudians—I don’t think subli-
mation works absolutely. It seems like it’s
DSDUWLDOÀ[$Q\ZD\WKDWZDVWKHLQWHQW
of the brown work, and then when I was
doing that work, I did a few gold pieces that
I considered contrapuntal gestures. I did
a couple pieces—a globe covered with
F R O M TO P : S T E FA N A LT E N B E R G E R ; H O WA R D U R S U L I A K
gold, a phallus. It was kind of like the logic
of displacement.
HB: You started exhibiting the brown works
in the mid 1980s. How were these received?
JM: When I was doing them, people were
much more puritanical, especially in the U.S.
Even though it was just acrylic paint on
SODVWHUDQGPRGHOLQJSDVWHZKHQ,ÀUVWVWDUWHG
showing the work, some people would come
up and say, “You know, I just have to tell you,
your work literally makes me sick.” Part
of my idea was to make something that had
characteristics in common with excrement,
but which could never be mistaken for it. It

MUSIC
was a symbolic gesture, so I thought that it was

funny that people would have a visceral
SPLASHY SONGS
reaction to it. It wasn’t the case in Germany. Animal Collective paints, sonically
There, that work was embraced. So, early
in my career I had more attention in Germany. “PAINTING HAS MORE (Around 2006, member each of the group’s
HB: How does this relate to your paintings freedom to be abstract David Portner suggested, members (Portner’s is
inspired by reality television? than music,” says Brian unsuccessfully, that they pictured here).
JM: I suppose that if I think of a show like
Weitz, a member of change the name of the The distorted per-
Hoarders, it’s desublimation vis-à-vis
repression or liberation. I’ve only watched one indie-pop group Animal band to the Painters.) spectives of Cubism and
episode of that show, and it was way more Collective, in advance Recorded in Los Angeles, Dada are what ultimately
hard-core than anything I’ve ever done in my of the band’s 10th album, the songs they were influenced the content
work. In one episode a woman had put all Painting With. “You can writing had a “splashy” of the record most
of her hoardings in her bathroom, and started be popular and very quality that reminded profoundly, the group
urinating and defecating in another room,
which structurally damaged her house. She
had layers of stuff that was infested with rats
and excrement. The show ended with her
being institutionalized. That was the
intervention of the Hoarders team. There was
this horror all around, but there was this
desublimation for a vicarious entertainment
purpose that ended in a kind of real
institutional repression. For me, that’s a
sign that the stakes are much different than
what I thought they were in the 1980s.
HB: <RX·YHDOVREHHQDSUROLÀFZULWHUIRU
GHFDGHV/DVW\HDU$IWHUDOOSXEOLVKHG
\RXUERRNRQ0LNH.HOOH\·VVFXOSWXUH
Educational Complex
JM: Just dealing with his suicide was an
undercurrent to the whole thing. It was also
intellectually quite an interesting process
because sometimes if you’re close to someone
or something you might not see as much
of it, or see it as objectively as an outsider. When
Afterall invited me to write about a work of
Mike’s, I started thinking how (GXFDWLRQDO
Complex represents a real turning point in his
work. I think it really is his most important
work. It’s funny, too, because it’s an unchar-
acteristic one. It doesn’t have the feeling
of excess or preposterousness of the works
leading up to it, or the works that followed it.
There were rhetorical claims that he had
attached to the piece, but basically, you’re
just given fairly anonymous architectural
models and left to deal with that. I think
WKHEDODQFHLQWKDWSLHFHLVUHDOO\VLJQLÀFDQW
Part of the idea of going to art education
as a kind of model (Mike never used the term experimental in painting.” them of a “messy says. The latter gets
apparatus, but I think since he was so in- The line between pop painting.” In the studio, a direct nod in the title of
ÁXHQFHGE\%XUURXJKV,VHHLWDVDQ and experimentation they started to look “FloriDada,” the album’s
apparatus, and as a repressive mechanism
B R I A N D E G R AW A N D D O M I N O R E C O R D S
is one that the band has more closely at the first single, but it also
that operates through a supposedly
liberal mandate—you know, “you’re an straddled over the past work of their friend the informs the band’s
artist, just be yourself,” kind of an impossible 15 years with relative Gang Gang Dance creative process in
mandate in a way), I think it really goes to success. Throughout, member and painter general—the simple idea,
the heart of the problematic of being an artist the idea of painting kept Brian DeGraw, who ended as Portner explains, “of
now. How does one look at what one does
returning. Their latest up contributing the taking something common-
systemically? All those things are implied in
that work. As much as I like the work that album, released this three different versions place, like a pop song,
followed, I think that point is made strongest month, is the first to name of Painting With’s cover, and then messing around
with (GXFDWLRQDO&RPSOH[. MP this inspiration explicitly. fractured portraits of with it.” —CRAIG HUBERT

ON OUR RADAR
FAWN KRIEGER
A sculptor makes wearable
alternatives
“MY CONSTRUCTIONS ARE experiments in holding
materialist, feminist, and socialist ideals
simultaneously,” says New York–based Krieger of
her approach. “I’m interested in what alternate
economies can look and feel like.” In 2007, she
opened her first exhibition-as-commercial-
enterprise at Art in General, a store selling ironic
facsimiles of everyday objects that doubled as a
collaborative stage for performative transactions.
“I’m drawn to moments where audience INSPIRATIONS
inadvertently become performers,” Krieger explains,
“but not in a manipulative way—in an inclusive, RON NAGLE’S MORANDI WORSHIP
ecstatic way.” Drawing from Cold War–era consumer An Italian master whispers to an American ceramicist
practices, she revisits this approach for “Outfit,”
opening at Soloway in Brooklyn this month, where “I don’t think he was a are burdened with the The Tempramentalist
she will premiere a line of genderless work wear. yuk-yuk funny guy,” bourgeois categorization is Nagle’s most straight-
says quirky ceramics of the still life. Over a forward tribute to the
Turning the gallery space into a boutique—a move
master Ron Nagle when span of 50 years, these Italian painter. A gleam-
that also raises the question, she notes, of “how we I ask if he imagines simple objects got ing golden shape sneaks
participate in gentrification, as visual artists, as Giorgio Morandi VKXIÁHGDURXQGDEDUH between two monoliths of
intellectuals, as workers, as communities, as shared his oddball sense WDEOHWRSÀUVWOLQHGXSDV stucco gray. There, as
F R O M L E F T: FAW N K R I E G E R ; R O N N AG L E A N D M AT T H E W M A R K S GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K ; A R T I S T S R I G H T S S O C I E T Y, N E W YO R K A N D S I A E , R O M E
institutions”—her line will include two prototypes: of humor. “But when if accused, during the in Morandi’s best work,
an oversize black tunic and a jumpsuit. Once the someone comes back war years paraded the border is an entity
with a quick retort, very off-frame like an army, unto itself. There’s friction
show closes, the collection will move to mail order.
understated but pro- and ultimately, huddled where things meet, in
While the clothing items themselves may seem found, that, to me, is a absurdly at the canvas’s that living edge not
impersonal in their modularity, “Outfit” is attentive form of humor, and he center, bound tight like inherent to each object.
to experiences of intimacy within this constructed had that.” I had called to white Italian asparagus. Morandi’s bouquets
economy. Krieger designs and produces each piece discuss a happy coinci- 1DJOHÀQGVFDPDUDGH of vessels cast ambiguous
dence: Just as Nagle’s rie in Morandi’s knack shadows. “He’s fooling
of apparel in her own living space: “I felt a desire
solo show at Matthew for putting what’s meant the audience,” says
to respond to this materially by working with Marks Gallery in New to be functional to Nagle, who, working in
supplies and technical processes that have a direct York closed, an exhibition alternative use. He views three dimensions, can
history with labor in the home,” she says. The on Morandi—somewhat the artist as a precursor afford more outlandish
garments will also be displayed on oversize sculptural counterintuitively, his to the modern ceramic inventions while remain-
hangers adorned with faces, greatest admitted movement: “It ing beholden
Fawn Krieger Ron Nagle’s The
LQÁXHQFH³RSHQHGDWWKH wasn’t about to gravity.
Individuals wearing “quiet portraits” of friends. “They’re Tempramentalist,
clothing prototypes Center for Italian the pot. It was 2015, above The two artists
for apparel in a gesture at audience-making,” Modern Art in New about the pot left, with Giorgio measure equidis-
“Outit,” an she says, “a tapestry of witnesses Morandi’s
upcoming show
York, where it remains as a format for Still Life, 1963.
tant from what’s
at Soloway. I love.” —THEA BALLARD on view through June 25. expression.” But easily recogniz-
,WZDVQ·WORYHDWÀUVW he insists, “I’m sure he able, creating enigmas
sight, Nagle admits, could have done it with tied to a tabletop. But
having been introduced any form. My main thing Nagle asserts, “Morandi
to Morandi’s paintings for him is the feel.” did it better than
via slide projection. Morandi’s strokes double anybody, because those
“Seeing it in books is back on themselves in paintings are magic!
what got me converted currents that leave They have a presence
completely,” he says. “In behind a surface un- about them, without
retrospect, it has to do kempt, like fur in wind. being bombastic. At
with the scale that I feel About his own diminu- a time when people like
most comfortable working tive sculptures, Nagle Kline and de Kooning
at.” But it could also says, “If I can capture and Pollock were making
be that to see more than that feel, which is looser, big, powerful paintings,
one Morandi painting more unassuming, in the here’s a guy who could do
is to understand his work, which is very labor- it with a whisper.”
commitment. His bottles intensive, I’m happy.” —SARAH COWAN

DESTINATION
MADRID
THE COSMOPOLITAN CITY plays host to ARCOmadrid
February 24 through 28, as the contemporary
art fair celebrates its 35th year. We turned to its
director, Carlos Urroz, for his advice on savoring
the best of Spain’s capital city.
To start a day right in Madrid, FROM TOP:
he says, head to Magasand (Calle Galeria Mario

Sequeira’s booth
de Columela, 4; magasand.com), at ARCOmadrid
Urroz’s preferred coffee spot. More in 2015.
substantial fare is on offer at La The exterior of
the Museo Reina
Manduca de Azagra (Calle de Soia.
Sagasta, 14; lamanducadeazagra
.com), known for its excellent humorous selection from
traditional Spanish cuisine; the her oeuvre, as well as a
kitchen obtains its fresh produce retrospective of postwar
from Azagra daily. Then there Polish artist Andrzej
is La Trainera (Calle de Lagasca, Wróblewski’s paintings, on
60; latrainera.es) for classic no- view through February 28.
frills seafood dishes done right, as Finally, art lovers
F R O M TO P : A R C O M A D R I D; M U S E O N AC I O N A L C E N T R O D E A R T E R E I N A S O F I A ; JA S O N R O H R E R A N D DAV I S M U S E U M AT W E L L E S L E Y C O L L E G E , M A S S AC H U S E T T S
well as the rooftop lounge of should not miss out on

Hotel ME Madrid Reina Victoria’s two districts that are
Ana la Santa (Plaza de Santa peppered with numerous
Ana, 14, 28012 Madrid; melia.com) top-quality art galleries:
for cocktails and tapas. Calle del Dr. Fourquet
What about the city’s vibrant art scene? Urroz spotlights and Chueca. For the former, Urroz’s impressively long
Fundació Mapfre Recoletos (Paseo de Recoletos, 23; list of gallery recommendations includes Galería Bacelos, Casa
fundacionmapfre.org), an under-the-radar space within a SinFin, Espacio Mínimo, García Galería, Helga de Alvear,
charming 1880s heritage building. Out of the three museums that Maisterravalbuena, Marta Cervera, Moisés Pérez de Albéniz,
make up Madrid’s famous Golden Triangle of Art, Urroz most and Nogueras Blanchard. Among his favorite Chueca
favors the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía galleries are Casado Santapau, Elba Benítez, Elvira González,
(Calle de Santa Isabel, 52; museoreinasofia.es) for its staggering Heinrich Ehrhardt, Juana de Aizpuru, La Caja Negra,
collection of 20th-century fine art. Running until March 21 is Max Estrella, Rafael Pérez Hernando, Sabrina Amrani, and
German video artist Hito Steyerl’s “Duty-Free Art,” a darkly Travesía Cuatro. —LOW LAI CHOW
Jason Rohrer
NEW MEDIA A still from the 2010 video
game Sleep Is Death.
KEEPING SCORE
A video-game artist gets a museum survey
IN THE PAST decade, Jason RohrerDSUROLÀF career is documented in a new book, The Game
video-game designer, has scored some unique :RUOGVRI-DVRQ5RKUHU, penned by Michael
honors—like having work acquired by MOMA— Maizels (new media curator at Wellesley
DQGQRZKH·VVHWWREHWKHÀUVWVXFKGHVLJQHU College’s Davis Museum) and Patrick Jagoda
to have his craft extensively spotlighted (cofounder of the University of Chicago’s Game
by a museum. Rohrer’s games range from one- Design Lab). An accompanying exhibition
player tactical shooters in crisp, pixelated neon at the Davis Museum opens February 10, and
mazes (,QVLGHD6WDUÀOOHG6N\) to two-player remains on view through June.
online strategy games in which players bet While he’s an astute scholar of the work of
for real money (&RUGLDO0LQXHW—a heady enter- his gaming peers, Rohrer cites an unexpected
tainment that unfolds with themes drawn from LQÁXHQFHWKHÀOPVRIZULWHUGLUHFWRUVOLNH
ancient mythology and includes an abstract Miranda July and Lars von Trier. Always, the
sequence depicting fragments of the uncon- goal is “deep, rich game design that is
scious mind). The gaming artist’s 17-work thematically audacious.” —STEVEN CANAVAN

Q+A
NO MORE TABOOS
Brad Phillips paints against the Puritans
CANADIAN ARTIST Phillips has always unusual sex life, but primarily
made bold, erotically charged work—so when we’re just having fun. If there’s any
he messaged us to say that his latest was information that might help, it’s
borderline pornographic, on triple-X par with that this is a show made by a
Jeff Koons’s infamous “Made in Heaven” self-admitted pervert, with another
show, we were understandably intrigued. pervert involved.
Many of these pieces were included in
“Honeymoon Rehearsal,” at Oslo’s Rod Bianco What do you gain in adapting a
(a gallery helmed by provocateur Bjarne photograph into a painting?
Melgaard), including explicitly themed oil It amazes me that there are still
paintings and photographic diptychs that philistines—not you—who have
pair prurient images of his partner, Cristine an issue with painting a photograph.
%UDFKHZLWKVKRWVRIZLOWLQJÁRZHUV6FRWW Peter Doig blathers on about this.
Indrisek spoke with the Toronto-based Typically, if I make a painting from
Phillips about Alex Katz and oversharing. a photograph, I took that photo-
graph precisely to paint it. For me,
What are the distinctions between art that it’s not translation so much as
deals with sexuality and actual pornography? transmutation. I am not a photoreal-
There’s the occasional misconception that ist. In turning the photographs
my work is sexist. My work has always depicted into paintings, I’m able to do multi-
intimate parts of my life; my life has always ple things: crop out what I don’t
involved being in relationships with women; want; change the colors, the lines;
and those relationships are also sexual. Bjarne exaggerate aspects and mute aspects.
asked me to make the most sexually provoca- If I decide to make a photograph
tive show I could. Once I saw it all hanging into a painting, it lets me spend more Brad Phillips Do you ever fear you’re sharing
FROM TOP:
in the gallery, it really seemed less like pornog- time with it, and in some strange too much?
Moroccan Vacation,
raphy, and more like intimacy and romance. way it causes me to feel like I own 2015. Oil on canvas, I’ve always said that my work
I’ve always liked the way Alex Katz paints the experience depicted in the photo- 24 x 18 in. is faux-confessional. I’m interested
his wife, Ada; I saw these images as being JUDSK6RQWDJVKLW,WKLQNLWFRPHV in trying to construct a persona,
Honeymoon Rehearsal II,
related to Katz’s, but with a heavy dose of from loss. My father died when I 2015. Digital C-print
or an idea of what my life might
sexual perversity and without the bed death. was young and I didn’t have many (composed of two be like that reads as genuine
photos of him. While spending hours images), 16½ x 23½ in. but is sometimes insincere. I relate
What should we know about your relationship and hours painting, I’m keeping a lot more to literary tropes,
in order to approach the work? myself inside a memory, and refashioning ÀFWLRQDODXWRELRJUDSK\EHLQJWKHELJJHVWRQH
I suppose people could know that Cristine that memory into something that feels more I want to make work about subjects that peo-
makes work that also deals with sex, and that like the real experience than the source ple perceive as shame-laden, because I’m more
we have what maybe some would see as an photograph depicts. interested in connecting with my audience
emotionally than intellectually. If I can make
myself vulnerable and make art about, say,
being in rehab or having mental illness, and if
this can help one person in Vermont who sees
it online feel less alone in the world or not as
ashamed, then to me this is a beautiful thing.
Is your partner a collaborator in the making of

these works?
I’ve never collaborated with anyone. I’m too
much of a control freak. If I were ever able to
collaborate with someone on visual art though,
LWZRXOGEHZLWK&ULVWLQH6KH·VWKHRQO\
woman I’ve known who shares some obscure
sexual interests with me, things like the
design of spanking magazines from the early
B OT H I M AG E S: B R A D P H I L L I P S
’80s. That being said, we have signed a deal

to publish a novel, and we’re doing that
together and it’s entirely collaborative. I don’t
want to spoiler it, but essentially we’re
writing an incest novel where we’re a brother
and sister who found each other after
years of being separated, and fell in love.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN
4TH STREET & INDEPENDENCE AVENUE SW, WASHINGTON, DC
November 7, 2015–September 18, 2016
Experience the first major retrospective of the artistic career
of Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee, b. 1935). The exhibition features
more than 65 of her most notable paintings and drawings,
including her hallmark diptychs and monumental
landscapes of Native places.
The lavishly illustrated, 208-page book, Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist,

is available at bookstores nationwide or at www.nmaistore.si.edu.
Or call 1-800-242-NMAI (6624).
New Mexico Desert, 2011, Oil on wood panel,

40 x 80 x 2 in. Purchased through a special gift
www.AmericanIndian.si.edu
from the Louise Ann Williams Endowment, 2013. #KayWalkingStick #KWSAmericanArtist
AROUND THE WORLD
S-CHANF,
SWITZERLAND
Anna Dickinson
at von Bartha
February 17
MANCHESTER, U.K.
Nico Vascellari at
C LO C K W I S E F R O M TO P L E F T: R O B E R T H A L L ; M A R T I N A R GY R O G LO A N D GA L E R I E B U GA DA & C A R G N E L , PA R I S ; E S TAT E O F H A Z E L L A R S E N A R C H E R A N D B L AC K M O U N TA I N
the Whitworth
February 26
C O L L E G E M U S E U M A N D A R T S C E N T E R ; S I K K E M A , J E N K I N S & C O., N E W YO R K ; M I C H A E L R O S E N F E L D GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K ; N A S H E R S C U L P T U R E C E N T E R , DA L L A S
LOS ANGELES
“Leap Before
You Look: Black
Mountain College
1933–1957,”
including work by
Anni Albers, Hazel
Larsen Archer
(whose Merce
Cunningham
Dancing, ca. 1952–
53, is at left), and
Josef Albers, at the
Hammer Museum
February 21
ATLANTA
Vik Muniz at the
High Museum
of Art
February 28
DALLAS
Doris Salcedo
at Nasher
Sculpture Center
February 27
SARATOGA SPRINGS,
NEW YORK
Alma Thomas at
the Tang Museum
February 6

BIRMINGHAM,
U.K.
Dinh Q. Lê
at Ikon
January 27
C LO C K W I S E F R O M TO P L E F T: D I N H Q . L E ; YA L E U N I V E R S I T Y A R T GA L L E R Y, N E W H AV E N , C O N N E C T I C U T; P E T E R F I S C H L I A N D DAV I D W E I S S A N D T H E S O LO M O N R . G U G G E N H E I M M U S E U M ,
NEW HAVEN,
N E W YO R K ; T H E E S TAT E O F W I L L I A M N . C O P L E Y A N D A R T I S T S R I G H T S S O C I E T Y, N E W YO R K ; C L A U D I O A B AT E , J A N FA B R E , A N D R O N C H I N I GA L L E R Y, LO N D O N
CONNECTICUT
“Everything Is
Dada,” with work
by Kurt Schwitters,
Francis Picabia,
and Sophie Taeuber-
Arp (whose 1937
Turned Wood
Sculpture is
pictured here), at
Yale University
Art Gallery
February 12
NEW YORK
Peter Fischli and
David Weiss at the
Guggenheim
Museum
February 5
...AND DON’T MISS

O New York: Anri Sala at the
New Museum, opening February 3
O Zurich: Ian Cheng at Migros
Museum für Gegenwartskunst,
opening February 20
O London: Mark Wallinger at Hauser
& Wirth, opening February 26
LONDON O Brussels: Daniel Buren at
Jan Fabre at the Center for Fine Arts Brussels,
Ronchini Gallery opening February 19
February 12 O Madrid: Almudena Lobera at
Galería Max Estrella, opening
January 30
HOUSTON
William N. Copley at the
Menil Collection
February 19

INS
DUBAI DEBUT ARTIST HOPS
OUTS
In New York, Andrea Rosen Gallery announced representation of Simon
Leila Heller has been Fujiwara; painter Jonathan Gardner joined Casey Kaplan; Taymour Grahne
visiting the UAE annually Gallery signed Brooklyn-based Maia Cruz Palileo; and Alice Aycock will now
for Art Dubai and Abu show with Marlborough Gallery. Meanwhile, James Cohan added septuagenarian
Mernet Larsen to its roster, Doug Fogelson joined Sasha Wolf Gallery,
Dhabi Art for a decade. and Garth Greenan nabbed Roy McMakin. Across the pond, London’s Offer
Late this past November, Waterman will represent the estate of William Turnbull, and Zurich-based
Hauser & Wirth has taken on the estate of David Smith, while in Reykjavík,
she opened an outpost of Simon Fujiwara
i8 Gallery will now show Arna Ottarsdóttir.
her Chelsea, New York–
based gallery in Dubai’s
Alserkal Avenue complex POWER MOVES
with a show of Belgian Judy Hecker now helms the International Print
artist Wim Delvoye Center New York as director, while Stefanie Böttcher
and Egyptian Ghada has taken on that role at Kunsthalle Mainz, and the
$PHU³WKHODWWHU·VÀUVW Musée d’Orsay in Paris has a new chief curator, Sylvie
major show in the region Patry. Raphael Gygax will be the new curator of Judy Hecker
in more than 20 years. projects for Frieze London. Ursula Davila-Villa is the newest partner at
“Since the New York’s Alexander Gray Associates, while Booth Gallery opened in
early 1980s, Hell’s Kitchen. And the University of Pennsylvania School of Design’s
my New MFA program welcomed David Hartt and Sharon Hayes to the faculty.
York gallery
has had a
tremendous CLOSE-UP
Leila Heller
emphasis The Los Angeles–based Centre Pompidou amazing work by Louise Lawler, which is
Foundation, an American organization entitled Life After 1945 (Faces), from her “adjusted
on promoting art from established in 1977 to support the work of the WRÀWµVHULHV7KLVZRUNLVVSHFLÀFDOO\SURGXFHG
the Middle East and Centre Pompidou in Paris through donations to adjust in size to where it is exhibited. It
Southeast and Central and acquisitions of works of American art, is a variation and extension of the main theme
has appointed its new curator of American art, explored by the artist since the beginning of
Asia,” says Heller. “As Florence Derieux, to work in her career: the context in which works
a woman of Iranian tandem with the institution. The of art are displayed and the way
French curator, now based in we look at art. Life After 1945 (Faces)
heritage, I have always New York, was previously at Palais is a particularly poignant example
attempted to promote
C LO C K W I S E F R O M TO P : S I M O N F U J I WA R A A N D A N D R E A R O S E N GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K ;
de Tokyo in Paris, the Picasso of the artist’s recent explorations.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L P R I N T C E N T E R N E W YO R K ; L I S A O P P E N H E I M ; L E I L A H E L L E R GA L L E R Y
cultural understanding Museum in Antibes, and the FRAC How does your role function in
Champagne-Ardenne in Reims. relation to both the foundation
with our exhibition She spoke with Juliet Helmke and the institution?
program; the new gallery about the particular strength of the I’m curator of American Art of the
collection and her new role bridging Centre Pompidou Foundation and
brings that mission foundation and institution.
Florence Derieux
curator-at-large of the Centre
full circle.” The largest Tell me about the Centre Pompidou’s Pompidou. That means that I’m a member of the
commercial gallery collection of American art. museum’s curatorial staff, so I’m a part of all
,WYHU\PXFKUHÁHFWVWKHKLVWRU\RIWKHPXVHXP curatorial meetings and acquisition committees.
within the Gulf region and the various opinions and interests of the It sounds like a very close working
of Bahrain, Kuwait, successive curators there. One of the most relationship between the two entities.
interesting aspects is the remarkable represen- The fact that the foundation was created in the
Oman, Qatar, Saudi tation of American female artists. Our recent same year that the museum opened tells a
Arabia, and the UAE, acquisitions reinforce this characteristic lot about the extremely strong links between the
the 15,000-square-foot with works by Louise Bourgeois, Lygia Clark, two. Today, the ongoing dialogue between the
Anne Collier, Agnes Denes, Barbara Kasten, foundation’s chairman, Steven Guttman, and
space will host a solo Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Ana Mendieta, the museum’s director, Bernard Blistène, allows
show by Iran-born, New Adrian Piper, R.H. Quaytman, Kiki Smith, for an even more direct collaboration between
Hannah Wilke, and Francesca Woodman. the foundation and the museum’s curatorial
York–based Y.Z. Kami Your favorite among them? team. This enables us to act independently, but
throughout March. It has to be the foundation’s latest purchase: an with the aim to match the museum’s goals. MP

Walker Art Center
HIPPIE MODERNISM:
THE STRUGGLE
FOR UTOPIA
walkerart.org
Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia is organized by the Walker Art Center, and assembled Media partner Hotel partners
with the assistance of the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film
Archive. The exhibition is made possible by generous support from the Martin and Brown
Foundation, the Prospect Creek Foundation, and Audrey and Zygi Wilf. Support for the exhibition
catalogue is provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and
a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of Walker Art Center publications.
Media partner Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.
©2015 Walker Art Center Haus-Rucker-Co (Günter Zamp Kelp, Klaus Pinter, and Laurids Ortner) Environment Transformer / Fliegenkopf (Environment Transformer / Flyhead) 1968 Photographer: Ben Rose Courtesy Archive Zamp Kelp
HIT THINGS WE LIKE
LIST
2
1
I N N U M E R I C A L O R D E R : A N TO N I O B A R R E L L A , S T U D I O O R I Z ZO N T E R O M A ; M E R E T E R A S M U S S E N A N D PA N G O L I N LO N D O N ; W O R K A DAY H A N D M A D E ; N E S S L E E ; C O L D P I C N I C; O N M E X I C A N S U M M E R ; I M B U E T E A ; J A R E D H O F F M A N
1. A SERPENTI
BRACELET/WATCH,
CIRCA 1965, FROM THE
BULGARI HERITAGE
COLLECTION, INCLUDED
IN “BELLISSIMA: ITALY
AND HIGH FASHION
1945–1968,” OPENING
FEBRUARY 7 AT THE
NSU ART MUSEUM
IN FORT LAUDERDALE
2. A BRACELET BY
MERETE RASMUSSEN
3. A CERAMIC VESSEL
8
7 FROM WORKADAY HAND-
MADE 4. AN ENAMEL
SUMO MAN PIN BY
NESS LEE 5. A WOOL
3
SHAG RUG FROM COLD
PICNIC’S “PRIVATE
PARTS” COLLECTION
6. PLAZA, THE NEW
RECORD FROM QUILT,
WITH COVER ART-
WORK BY KEN PRICE
7. IMBUE TEA, A
MAGNETIC TEA-INFUSING
VESSEL DESIGNED
BY STUDENTS AT
WESTERN WASHINGTON
UNIVERSITY 8. AN
OFFBEAT ADULT COLOR-
ING BOOK BY JARED
HOFFMAN FOR THOSE
WHO DID INHALE

METAMORPHOSIS OF DIVINE ENTANGLEMENT
PAINTINGS BY OSCAR LUIS MARTINEZ
REVELATION, OIL ON CANVAS, 66” x 66”, Private collection of Susan and James Hurst
SEPTEMBER 24, 2015 - APRIL 30, 2016
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF PUERTO RICAN ARTS & CULTURE

3015 West Division Street Chicago, IL 60622 | 773.486.8345 | info@nmprac.org
BIOPIC
Small Lie, 2013.

Afrormosia wood,
33 x 15¼ x 14 ft.
KAWS
The story behind an artwork, in the artist’s own words
SMALL LIE was the starting point to a table and stare at them. I wanted to expand Outdoor sculpture has the power to stop
conversation that led to my upcoming exhi- on that, to create a wood sculpture that you for a moment and take you out of your
bition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I makes you feel small, but at the same time, normal chaos. I’m not sure where the
showed it at the Clare Lilley–curated Frieze I want the viewer to feel like they should SRVWXUHFRPHVIURPEXWZKHQ,ÀUVWVWDUWHG
6FXOSWXUH3DUNLQDQGLWZDVWKHÀUVW somehow help or console the work despite making drawings for it, I was thinking
outdoor sculpture I exhibited in England. its towering size. Not understanding what about how crazy this world can be. MP
When creating Small Lie, I was thinking of has happened to it or what it has done,
the relationship I had to wooden toys growing you still sense it might need a bit of care KAWS’s exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture
up, and the feeling they have when you hold and understanding. It’s easy in our busy Park in West Yorkshire, England, is on view
K AWS
them in your hand or place them on a shelf or day-to-day lives to ignore our surroundings. from February 6 through June 12.

FREE
UNLIMITED SEARCHES OF
5.7 MILLION LOTS
DATING BACK TO 1922.
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STUDIO CHECK
Kristen Morgin
TEXT BY JULIET HELMKE | PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF M C LANE
AN UNUSUAL LINE of questioning inspires the sculptures and VWUHQJWKHQHGE\ÀULQJWKHUHVXOWLQJZRUNVDUHH[WUHPHO\GHOLFDWH

assemblages of the Los Angeles–based Morgin. “What happens Morgin’s studio abounds with the results of many visits
when Joey Tribbiani and Chandler Bing [from the TV show Friends] WRHVWDWHVDOHV*RRGZLOOVWRUHVDQGÁHDPDUNHWVDQGWKH
switch places with the Hardy boys; what would Eliza Doolittle objects (as well as their clay counterparts) bear the physical
do if she found herself in a galaxy far, far away; and what new markings of their past. Garage-sale stickers, scribbles typical
context happens when SpongeBob SquarePants boards the of a toddler let loose with a permanent pen, and names or initials
Titanic?” asks the artist. A bowl featuring that porous animated of former owners grace the many assorted items. Morgin is
TV-show character is at the center of one of Morgin’s sculptural investigating systems of value: How does worth change over
amalgams she calls still lifes in her upcoming show at Anthony time and with wear? Is something fragile made more valuable by
Meier Fine Arts in San Francisco—on view February 19 through its meticulous crafting, or less by its breakability? What is the
March 25—encircled by objects including a Mickey Mouse Pez relationship between the handmade and the mass-produced?
GLVSHQVHUDEDE\-HVXVIURPDQDWLYLW\VHWDÁDWWHQHG&DUO·V-U It’s this thread that runs throughout Morgin’s myriad, disparate
paper cup, Hedy Lamarr’s biography, Ecstasy and Me, and a cutout cultural references. The pieces in the show, she says, “are tied
picture of Buster Keaton taped to a piece of cardboard. Or, rather, together more by randomness than by commonality. It’s more
the objects appear to be these things—all are, in fact, trompe l’oeil a mismatched cacophony of pieces that are layered with ideas,
UHFUHDWLRQVPDGHRXWRIXQÀUHGFOD\WKDWLVH[SHUWO\SDLQWHG1RW making a kind of recontextualized collaged soup.” MP

PERFECTING
ARRANGEMENTS
“I make conigurations of
objects that I move
around until I am happy
with one. Then, not unlike
with a still-life painting,
I slowly create a ceramic
version of every object
in the coniguration.”
ON THE WALLS HOLY DUET

”In addition to older “The irst part of the title of
works such as the my large still-life piece
mixed-media collaged Heart & Soul or The
cups, I keep a lot of Garden of Delights, comes
random junk around, from these Mary and
like the Santa, the Joseph igurines seated
sunglasses, and Silly shoulder to shoulder
Putty, as well as some at a toy piano looking as
sentimental objects. though they are playing
My father made the the popular piano
wooden Kristen sign.” duet ‘Heart and Soul.’ ”
NEW WORK
“Most of these pieces
will be in the upcoming
show, though objects
like the Charlie Chaplin
and the Goodyear tire
may eventually become
parts of other works.”
STILL LIFE
”This piece, Heart &
Soul or The Garden of
Delights, is made up
of about 200 objects.
With the exception
of the chair and some
pieces of wood,
everything is unired
clay and paint. The
piece takes the
second part of its title
from the well-known
Hieronymus Bosch
painting. Like that work,
the devil is in its details.”

RXART
WALEAD BESHTY
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Chicago, IL
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INTRODUCING // THEODORE BOYER
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JPL#7, 2015.
Sanded grout
and acrylic
on canvas in
maple frame,
68 x 46 in.
T H E O D O R E B OY E R
OPPOSITE:
Theodore
Boyer in
his Brooklyn
studio, 2015.

INTRODUCING // THEODORE BOYER
“I took to grout
because it
has a certain
texture that
simulates
the surface
of the earth.”
gestures that leave some space for an
artistic correction to the technology that
provides him with his imagery.
His mark-making “remnants” echoing
the trajectories of the probes exploring
3OXWRVLJQLÀHGE\SXUSOHOLQHVRU
cars navigating Google Maps (charted
by thick, digital blue, yellow, and white
OLQHVDUHLQWHQWLRQDOO\WZHDNHGIURP
the ones beamed down from outer space,
which we blindly take for gospel as soon
as it appears on our devices. “Everyone
has access to this mapping technology,
maybe not at the level of JPL ,” says Boyer,
who also sees a problem with our reliance
on satellite-fed information. For him,
the paintings are an investigation of
old-world exploration versus high-tech
mapping. “It’s almost like when you
look at the map and get lost, and realize
you made a circle that doesn’t have
any relationship to the road. That’s how
I drive myself: You don’t always want to
stick to the path.”
In addition to a selection of new
paintings, Boyer plans to make some
sculptures cast from rock samples he’ll
collect from the New Mexico and Arizona
deserts—home to JPL rover-testing
to Black Canyon. “I look at rocks from a exists elsewhere in the cosmos,” says sites and many earthworks icons—on
very close perspective, and interestingly Boyer. “It’s the kind of stuff that makes his cross-country road trip from New
enough, when you look at something me want to create art about it—very York to Los Angeles. If the paintings
from a distance and then really close up, honestly and simply.” are meant to evoke what you’d see from
there are a lot of similarities,” says Boyer. Honest, sure, but Boyer’s work is far above, the sculptures are representations
“I try to bridge the gap between the two.” from simple scale modeling. Despite its of what you’d see at ground level in the
Another one of Boyer’s preoccupations rough edges, his paintings draw heavily images he pulls from science journals
is the recent controversy over the from the technical experiments of his and the Internet.
supposed alien life on KIC 8462852, a SVASURIHVVRUVDQGWKH&DOLIRUQLDÀQLVK “All these motifs are tied together
ÁLFNHULQJVWDUORFDWHGPRUHWKDQ fetish artists he grew up admiring. “At a through technology, man-made industrial
light-years from Earth, in the Cygnus certain point in the process the materials materials, landscapes, and the earth
constellation. Though MIT researchers totally take over and the images are no itself,” says Boyer, who argues that what
put a damper on the extraterrestrial longer relevant. There’s a lot of alchemy he’s really creating is new “evidence”
Nevada #2,
T H E O D O R E B OY E R
speculation this fall, the initial concept involved—the colors blend together on of seemingly understood lands, charted
2015. Sanded
grout and of habitable planets proved interesting their own—but with every piece I learn in potentially misleading fashion. Whether
acrylic on enough to inspire David Bowie’s new a little more,” he says, noting his “JPL” Boyer’s sculpted evidence leads to revela-
canvas in
maple frame, album, Blackstar. paintings, which he began working on tions about our cruel, crazy, beautiful
40 x 28 in. “Everything that exists here on Earth last year, are all marked with sprayed world, well, that’s another story. MP

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INTRODUCING // LAUREN SEIDEN
the wall, conjure myriad associations,

from the bodily forms of couture to spiders’
webs. (The obvious art historical reference
might be the resin-soaked rope works
of Eva Hesse.)
“I’m still using a drawing medium,”
Seiden says, when I ask her if this new
method of working has moved her further
from her foundation in mark making. “I
always want to challenge a preconceived
limitation of what something can’t do.
And I don’t want to create these works
as just surfaces for graphite; they’re more
like three-dimensional line drawings.
It’s not that I’m done with using paper,
but I wanted something really tactile,
almost like working with shredded paper.”
The incorporation of metal—not as an
armature, she stresses, but as an integral
component of the sculpture itself—came
about entirely by accident. Seiden was
moving an in-process thread piece down
the hallway of her studio building when it
became tangled with a piece of steel mesh,
its small internal diamond structure as
unforgiving as a cheese grater. At that
point, Seiden was wildly receptive to new
directions for the work; she let the twist
of metal remain, a glinting, coiled
presence in counterpoint to the seductive
sheen of the graphite-coated thread. Now,
the mesh (an outdated type formerly used
for construction purposes but increasingly
hard to source from retail stores) has
become a pivotal component of many of the
sculptures, either as an element snagged
DPRQJWKHÀODPHQWVRIWKUHDGRUDVD
more structural skeleton providing form.
For her February exhibition, Seiden
is thinking in terms of a cohesive
installation, with a series of the thread-
based wall sculptures joined by two
other key pieces. One is a low-lying pool,
its perimeter composed of beveled marble,
Precarious Weight ÀOOHGZLWKDIHZLQFKHVRIZDWHUORDGHG

with raw graphite powder. The gray powder
—at rest, or when the water’s surface
A graphite-obsessed artist chases a new thread
is disturbed—shifts and recombines into
BY SCOTT INDRISEK shapes that, for Seiden, suggest a type
of marbling pattern. Also on view will
be a roughly seven-foot-tall pillar, hewn
WHEN I MEET Lauren Seiden in her Gallery in New York, Seiden has been from stacks of newspaper that the artist
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, studio, she’s applying the same prodigious quantities has blackened with graphite. It will be a L AU R E N S E I D E N A N D D E N N Y GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K
clad in a smudged white bodysuit, like of graphite to new surfaces—namely, “monument, a memorial, to information—
an astronaut on leave. It’s a necessary ZHEVRIKDQJLQJWKUHDGWKDWDUHÀ[HGLQWR or recycled knowledge,” she says, one
protection for an artist whose practice elegant, at times brutal, compositions, that aims to look both incomplete
involves, as she says, almost “literally folded over or around the occasional swath (additional stacks could always be added
bathing in” her chosen medium of of steel grating. The artist begins working to the column) and, like the thread
graphite, which she applies—layer after with large panels of hanging thread, sculptures, has “a clumsiness, a kind of
painstaking layer—to crumpled, folded, which she then manipulates, adding a precarious weight,” she says.
and artfully mangled pieces of paper, OD\HURIFOHDUPHGLXPWRÀ[LQGLYLGXDO Such precariousness is also something
creating sculptural drawings whose threads into place. She then coats thread that Seiden values in both the paper
Shield Wrap 12, nuanced skins can resemble marble or and metal alike with graphite, applied that she molds and bends and the thread
2015. Graphite
on paper, metal. Most recently, in anticipation by hand and using a pencil. The resulting VKHVKDSHVÀ[HVDQGGUDZVXSRQ
41½ x 32½ x 11 in. of a show opening February 28 at Denny pieces, which hang from a single nail on “They’re hard, but they’re fragile,” she

C LO C K W I S E F R O M B OT TO M L E F T: T W O I M AG E S , R E G I N A M O G I L E V S K AYA ; L AU R E N S E I D E N A N D D E N N Y GA L L E R Y
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE:

says of the latter
Seiden in her
sculptures. “Without Greenpoint, Brook-
at least one support, lyn, studio, 2015.
the whole thing would Unraveling Void,
collapse. With the 2015. Graphite
and mixed media
paper, so much of it on silk and
LVDERXWÀQGLQJSRLQWV polyester thread,
that can remain 76½ x 19 x 13 in.
secure—to have these The Future Is Lost

folds and breakage in Yesterday’s
News, an in-
points but to stay progress work
stable. With the thread, incorporating
LW·VDERXWÀQGLQJKRZ stacks of news-
paper covered
the piece secures itself, in graphite.
and I’m not totally in
control of that.” While
Seiden’s graphite-on-paper and graphite-
RQ0\ODUZRUNVÁDXQWDGHFHSWLYHO\
tough exterior—a relatively soft surface
presenting as something hard, even
URFNOLNHXSRQÀUVWJODQFH³WKHWKUHDG
pieces retain a sense of tenuous, almost
liquid delicacy. “It’s important to show
what things are,” she says, “especially
if they’re masquerading as something else.
Even with the paper, it is what it is—
I’m not trying to pretend. It’s just different
ways of seeing.” MP

Somogy Art Publishers since 1937
w w w. s o m o g y. n e t
SPOTLIGHT // SARA CWYNAR
Sara Cwynar in her

New Haven studio.
SHOOTING THE ARCHIVE

Between photography and design
BY ARIELA GITTLEN
THE CONSUMMATE VANCOUVER native, Sara Cwynar on view through March 7 in MOMA PS1’s “Greater New
meets me at the New Haven, Connecticut, train station <RUNµVXUYH\UHÁHFWVWKHDUWLVW·VDIIHFWLRQIRUGHVLJQ
in a Toyota hatchback with both a roof rack and a techniques and methodology. “Graphic design gives you
bike occupying the backseat. It’s easy to imagine that DJHQHURXVV\VWHPIRUÀWWLQJWKLQJVLQWRWKHLUSODFHµ
the work space of this quiet and capable artist would she offers. Typography appears often, as does a tendency
be minimal and orderly—with not a pencil out of to collect and categorize; source images are borrowed
place—a notion I am disabused of in short order. On and tweaked. Display Stand, No. 64 Cons H. 8¼" W. 24"
ÀUVWJODQFH&Z\QDU·VGHQVHO\FOXWWHUHGVWXGLRORRNV D. 16½", 2014, is based on a found photograph of a chew-
like the place where aging kitsch goes to retire. Every ing-gum display from the artist’s archive. The original
VXUIDFHLQFOXGLQJWKHVFDUUHGFRQFUHWHÁRRULVFRYHUHG image, along with its bold, sans serif caption, has been
with a motley assortment of objects: mannequin parts, rephotographed, printed, and reassembled using a tiling
SLQNPHODPLQHWHDFXSVERXTXHWVRIVLONÁRZHUVDQ method familiar to graphic designers; look close and
overturned vase, power tools, pegboards, velvet drapes, you’ll see the subtle seams where the tiled prints are
and shower poufs. The walls are similarly crowded, misaligned, resulting in an image that seems at once
EHDULQJLPDJHVRIDURVHEORRPLQJÀYHIHHWKLJKD fractured and complete.
drugstore’s chewing-gum display, a manicured hand Cwynar’s peripatetic studies began in English liter-
SARA CWYNAR
reaching for a telephone. The room feels like an ature at the University of British Columbia, before she
archive of images and objects whose origins lie some- GURSSHGRXW´DZKROHEXQFKRIWLPHVµÀQDOO\ODQGLQJ
where in the faded commercial past. in the graphic design program at York University in
Much of Cwynar’s work, including the photographs 7RURQWR6KHIHOOLQORYHZLWKWKHÀHOGEXWORQJHGIRU

a more conceptual approach than her classes offered.
Now, just a few months from graduating with an MFA
in photography from the Yale University School of Art,
her winding path through academia seems, in retro-
spect, to have a certain logic. (Cwynar continues to
work as a commercial designer in tandem with her art
practice—she served a three-year stint as a graphic
designer at the New York Times Magazine—and this
is occasionally uneasy territory: “It’s funny how, if you
make art critiquing certain corporate structures,
those corporations will often call you up and ask you to
work for them. Sometimes it’s hard to say no.”)
&Z\QDU·VÀUVWDUWSLHFHZDVHVVHQWLDOO\DOVRDZRUN
of design: Kitsch Encyclopedia, a book that collects
the writings of Milan Kundera, Jean Baudrillard, and
Roland Barthes, as well as the artist’s own thoughts
on the titular subject. Illustrated with rephotographed
images of wildlife, religious iconography, and the Grand
Canyon, among other things, it explores the relation-
ship of kitsch to images. Like Kundera, who declared it
an integral part of the human condition, Cwynar sees
kitsch as something unavoidable, even necessary—
something we need in order “to continue forward in the
world.” (She comes by her enthusiasm honestly. Along
with her twin sister—Toronto-based curator Kari
&Z\QDU³VKHVSHQWKHUFKLOGKRRGDVDFRPSHWLWLYHÀJXUH
skater, circling the rink in sequined costumes designed
by their mother. “Yes!” she declares, smiling. “Figure
skating is just pure kitsch. It’s like sentimentality
as a sport.”) Kundera’s work provided a springboard
for Cwynar’s early explorations, culminating in that
book-length volume. “I was struck by how much The
Unbearable Lightness of Being dovetails with ’80s
image theory, with Baudrillard and Barthes: an image
culture that has replaced real-world experience, where
we see everything through idealized images,” she says.
“I thought, ‘Here’s something in theory and literature
that feels like it can be visual and exciting.’ ”
Since then, Cwynar’s process has been elliptical in
both senses of the word: deliberately obscure as well as
circular. Her personal archive, which is always growing,
comprises photographs, on which she exerts any number
ABOVE:
of alterations and interventions, and physical objects
432 Photographs
that she organizes and photographs in her studio. of Nefertiti,
She spends hours in the dustiest parts of libraries, in 2015. Collaged
UV-coated
basements where obsolete reference books are stacked, archival pigment
and on eBay, where her searches take on an obsessive prints mounted
on Plexiglas and
dimension. She’ll start with a found image, often a
B OT H I M AG E S : S A R A C W Y N A R A N D F OX Y P R O D U C T I O N , N E W YO R K
Dibond, 54 x 43 in.
commercial photograph from what she refers to as the
FAR LEFT:
“era of high modernist idealism.” For a recent piece, Display Stand
titled 432 Photographs of Nefertiti, Cwynar began with No. 66 WIRE H. 20½"
W. 24" D. 11¾",
a photograph from an encyclopedia discovered at the 2014. Chromo-
Columbia University library: a bust of the Egyptian genic print
TXHHQVKRZQLQSURÀOHEHIRUHDSRZGHUEOXHEDFNGURS mounted on
Plexiglas, 30 x 36 in.
(Cwynar was drawn to the image because it was one
of the few depictions of a woman in the volume.) She
then scanned the photo and began making hundreds
RIODVHUSULQWV%HFDXVHWKHÀOHVL]HZDVWRRODUJH
the printer tended to malfunction, resulting in
incomplete images of varying sizes and crops, 432 in all.
6KHUHPDGH1HIHUWLWL·VSRUWUDLWRQWKHÁRRURIKHUVWXGLR
reassembling the famous face as a tiled collage and
photographing it from above with a large-format
camera. Cwynar then scanned the resulting negative,
edited it digitally, and reprinted the image, which

SPOTLIGHT // SARA CWYNAR
subject. “That was much more clear in this era of high

modernist idealism—what you’re supposed to want.”
Cwynar’s recent work in video, a new medium for her,
is far more explicit in this regard. In Rose Gold,
2015, the narrator covets the rose-gold iPhone, then
immediately wonders, “What is a good life, when
something you desire is actually an obstacle?” We
watch as skin is pressed and swiped with prodding
ÀQJHUVLQVHDUFKRIDWRXFKVFUHHQDFROOHFWLRQRI
disparate plastic objects are organized in a grid, and
HPSW\URRPVPRPHQWDULO\ÀOOZLWKVKRFNLQJSLQNOLJKW
At the moment, Cwynar is preparing for a group
exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Milan, curated
by Thomas Demand and opening March 10. She has
been collecting lousy photographs of popular modernist
SDLQWLQJVLQFOXGLQJDVHWRI)UDQFLV%DFRQSULQWV
which she plans to translate into wallpaper. She hopes
WRKDQJDFWXDO%DFRQSDLQWLQJVRQWRSRIWKHZDOOSDSHU
HIIHFWLYHO\PDUU\LQJWKHORÀUHSURGXFWLRQVWRWKHRULJL-
nals. In a way, it’s the ultimate postmodern party trick,
presenting both the authentic original and the degraded
copy, then demanding that we privilege the latter. Or
perhaps the effect would be gentler than that: We might
look at the copy and be touched by its familiarity, like
running into an old friend whose face we’ve seen hun-
dreds of times before. Cwynar’s affection for her archive
may be easy to overlook, but her love of these images
is central to her practice. “Part of the reason my work
is so obsessive and has so much labor visible in it is
because it’s easy to tip into insincerity or cynicism when
you’re talking about kitsch or using really obvious
popular commercial imagery,” she stresses. “There have
to be certain cues that make it clear how much I love
this stuff. And I genuinely just love it so much.” MP
ABOVE:
resembles a computer screen on which hundreds of
Encyclopedia
Grid (Bardot), windows are opened, proliferating ad nauseam.
2014. Chromo- A more deadpan approach to the archive can be found
genic print
mounted in the “Encyclopedia Grids” series, in which similar
on Plexiglas, but distinct photographs of a single subject are organized
40 x 32 in. in a grid. Encyclopedia Grid (Bardot), 2014, shows
RIGHT: 24 publicity shots of the eponymous actress resting on
Liquify Grid 5,
2015. UV-
a yellow background. There’s a ruler running along
coated archival the base of the composition, lending the arrangement
B OT H I M AG E S: S A R A C W Y N A R A N D F OX Y P R O D U C T I O N
pigment WKHORRNRIDVFLHQWLÀFVSHFLPHQRUDQH%D\DXFWLRQ
print mounted
on Plexiglas, LPDJH$VLQJOHWDSHUHGÀQJHULQWUXGHVLQWRPDQ\RI
42 x 28 in. WKHLQVHW%DUGRWSKRWRVVXJJHVWLQJWKDWWKH\KDYH
themselves been rephotographed or altered in advance;
LW·VXQFOHDUZKHWKHUWKHÀQJHULVFRQFHDOLQJSRLQWLQJ
to, or simply announcing the presence of the artist. The
DSSURSULDWHGSKRWRVRI%DUGRWRQFHKDGDVWUDLJKWIRU-
ward commercial purpose, but in this new context their
meaning seems diffuse and maddeningly elusive.
Many of the commercial photographs that Cwynar
collects suggest the good life, an ideal to be chased.
“That’s what’s really conveyed through this kind
RILPDJHU\µVKHVD\VDFNQRZOHGJLQJWKHLQÁXHQFHRI
FXOWXUDOWKHRULVW/DXUHQ%HUODQWRQKHUDSSURDFKWRWKH

Q&
A with
Pie
r Pa
olo
Cal
zol
ari
One of the seminal igures during the

mid 1960s in what became known as
Arte Povera, Pier Paolo Calzolari has lived
the life of a near-recluse since his relocation
in the late ’80s to the small town of Fossombrone
M I C H E L E A L B E R TO S E R E N I , P I E R PAO LO C A L ZO L A R I ,
in the Marche region of Italy. In 2012, after years of
A N D M A R I A N N E B O E S K Y GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K
gentle persuasion, Marianne Boesky Gallery organized
the artist’s irst New York exhibition in nearly 25 years. It
garnered attention not only for bringing Calzolari’s work back
to the fore, but also for the effort that saw Boesky partnering with
Pace Gallery to present the show across their respective spaces,
breaking through a wall in their abutting locations to do so. After several
shows with Boesky, Calzolari is now gearing up for an exhibition of new work,
slated for this May in the gallery’s Chelsea location. The artist spoke with Juliet
Helmke of Modern Painters—with his wife, Karine Arneodo Calzolari, translating—about
the ideological underpinnings of his work, which spans a career of more than 50 years.

m k e
H e l
uli et
B y J
Untitled, 2014–15.
Pigments, flower
petals, milk
tempera, and
canvas on wood,
8½ x 16½ x 16½ ft.

somewhere. Nowadays, even if you are retired and living in a
remote area, you’re not out of the information loop. You have
technology that provides all the information you need. But there’s
not really a social life—not really an opportunity to have a
discussion with someone on art or literature. In a way, it makes
it easy to concentrate on your work. You don’t have distractions,
you don’t have the publicity or overwhelming images, or even
MXVWWKHSDFHWKDW\RXÀQGLQFLW\OLIH<RXGRQ·WKDYHWKHFRQWDP
LQDWLRQRIIDVKLRQDEOHZHOOEHLQJZKHUHWKLQJVDUHFKDQJLQJ
all the time. Obviously, that doesn’t mean you aren’t conscious
of these changes, but you have your distance. It’s distilled.
That, of course, differs from when you started making

art during the 1960s, when you were working in Bologna,
New York, and Paris. Tell me about that time.
Casting my mind back that far is like archaeology. You have to
consider what was happening in Europe after the ’50s: Bourgeois
culture had disintegrated, and during this, there wasn’t an
immediate new artistic expression. Italy was in disarray; part
of the country was a colony because it had lost the war. The
fracture of this moment presented a great opportunity, and
so for my generation at the beginning of the ’60s, we had
JULIET HELMKE: Tell me about the 2012 show that was the opportunity to move without the heavy weight of the past,
presented at both Marianne Boesky and Pace galleries. to explore a lot of directions. And see, we needed to explore at
PIER PAOLO CALZOLARI: I did it because Marianne was that time to rediscover the meanings of things—everything
really effective in pushing me to do it. She insisted. It had been had collapsed, the old values had collapsed. So in that moment,
a long time. I live what I call semiretired in the countryside in ZHKDGWRGHÀQHDJDLQDQHZWKHYDOXHRIZKDWZDVDURXQGXV
Italy, and for a long period, almost 30 years or so, I had no real Obviously, I have to acknowledge what else was happening then,
interest in exhibiting, especially in doing big shows. Marianne such as the work Alberto Burri was doing, as well as French
has a great capacity to involve you in the project. And so because 1HZ5HDOLVP$WWKDWWLPHWKHWUDIÀFRILQIRUPDWLRQZDVYHU\
of her persistence over a few years, I accepted. The show was different; we did not have art magazines to inform ourselves.
about a different period of my work; it was older works as well as The way to receive information was like the game of telephone.
recent works. A mixture of different things, but very sculptural. For example, Gutai was from Japan, but with our communities
talking about it, we felt very close to the work. This method
How did you feel about the reaction to it? of knowing what was going on in the world was important for
It was a happy surprise. It had been so long since I’d faced a Italian visual artists at that time, as well as for certain writers
U.S. audience. When I said OK to doing it, I didn’t know of literature and poetry, like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.
the audience would be so enthusiastic. It was really great, and So you can see why then, community was imperative. Today
a really strong moment to live. we don’t have such community. But it’s also important to note
that I, and my fellow artists, we’re not like a group, we were
How did you get people to knock down their walls? more like stray dogs. What was moving us toward information
I did nothing! I believe it was all due to Marianne’s efforts. Do and toward a way of working was not just curiosity but a
LO R E N ZO PA L M I E R I , P I E R PAO LO C A L ZO L A R I , M A R I A N N E B O E S K Y GA L L E R Y, F O N DA Z I O N E C A L ZO L A R I
you know the story of Jericho? The Israelites raised a great QHFHVVLW\WRVXUYLYH:KDWIHOWLPSRUWDQWWRXVZDVUHGHÀQLQJ
shout and caused the walls of the city to fall—perhaps it was the use of material. So, for example, here are two glasses,
something like that. It was important for that to happen, to make regarded for their use, and their design. [Loudly clinks glasses
the show what it was. To have this long visual perspective for together.] But for us, the stray dogs, it was about this noise
the works with the two connecting spaces, and this project became made between two things.
an integral part of the show. The reaction at the opening was We strove to see things in the world on a primary level and
surprising. The idea to crash down the wall to make one show to reject the past, the formal view of things that were already
between two different galleries seemed to shock a lot of American established. Or perhaps not reject, because the present was
people. In Europe, it would not be such a big deal. In the U.S., QRWQHFHVVDULO\LQFRQÁLFWZLWKWKHSDVWYLVLRQEXWLWZDVERWK
because there is often more discordance between the galleries, RIWKHVHOLYLQJWRJHWKHU6RWKHYLVLRQDWWKDWWLPHZDVDGHPR
I guess people assumed it would be a hard thing to do. But for cratic vision of the world. The question was how to reinvent
Europeans, it’s something that can happen, two galleries working the palette from the world.
together for a big show. And I think, from working on the project,
the relationship between the two galleries seemed relaxed. And how do you feel about being grouped with the
movement of Arte Povera?
Being semiretired, as you say, what does that mean for I have to be very clear, the way things are written by art
your practice? What does a usual day for you look like? historians and critics can be very different from how things
My life is like that of a monk. I wake up in the morning, I exist in reality. Arte Povera has never been a movement, really.
Calzolari at have my breakfast like a normal person. I go immediately to It was a constellation of many individuals, all of us strays,
his studio in WKHVWXGLR7RVD\LW·VDVWXGLRLVSHUKDSVPLVOHDGLQJ,W·VÀYH as I was saying before. And while we were going in the same
Fossombrone,
Italy, 2014. big places—just to walk through them is how I get my exercise. direction, we were very much single entities moving alone. We
I work all day in these different spaces. When I’m done, I KDGDFRPPRQYLVLRQRIWKLVQHFHVVLW\WRUHGHÀQHWKHZRUOG
OPPOSITE:
Untitled, 2015. go home, I read, I watch TV, and I inform myself about what I participated and worked as though in symphony with some
Lead, dyes, is happening in the world. It’s a calm and quiet life, and where of these artists. But we had no common ideological project
burned nuts,
and paper, I live is very tiny, a village really, so sometimes when I feel together, even if the critics say that we did. In fact, after six
66½ x 68 x 4½ in. too retired, I take an airplane or taxi and I go to meet people or seven years of this psychological communion, we all began

“
Venice. Pinault owns three different important works by me; one
Wh was bought recently and two haven’t been exhibited before, and
to u at fe
they will be in the entrance space. This is an especially important
exhibition for me because, though I was born in Bologna, I grew
l
the s was t impo
up in Venice, and because I didn’t go to school, I spent so much
WLPHÀQGLQJP\ZD\DURXQGWKHFLW\:KHQ,ZDV\RXQJWKH
Palazzo Grassi was a place that had been partly destroyed and
use red r ta was being used for storage. I used to go there when I was a child.
of m efin nt Why didn’t you attend school?
ate ing I didn’t grow up with my parents. I was raised by my grandmother,
”
and we moved constantly. Because of that, and because my
rial grandmother was such a special person, she didn’t want me to
. go to school and so I was educated at home. I was born in ’43

during the war, and during that time things were very different.
I was actually not registered to the state when I was born,
and so for many years I technically had no nationality, or really
DQ\RIÀFLDOH[LVWHQFH
naturally to evolve away from each other. By ’72 what was known
as Arte Povera was over, though we were all working and When were you eventually registered?
had not had any radical break from each other or the ideas. In ’67, when the Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino asked me to
become a teacher. They needed documents from the place where
How have the ideas you formed during those years I had lived. Well, you see, I had never lived in one place. So
carried through in the work you do now? they asked the church, but I never went to church and so nobody
That, for me, is really a metaphysical answer. I have a way had any information to provide. So at that point, I eventually
of speaking about how I make work that has been consistent ÀOOHGRXWDOOWKHSDSHUZRUNDQGDSSOLHGMP
through these years. It comes in the form of
questions. First: Who made me an instrument?
Then the second question: Who is playing me as
an instrument? And so, what I feel I do, is be in
the situation of listening and waiting to be played.
I can give cultural, literary explanations, but
I prefer to give this reading on my work. For me,
LW·VGLIÀFXOWWRWDONDERXWVW\OH
I also keep a lot of my own works. I’m very
jealous of my works, and I like to live with them
and see them regularly. So I’ve even bought some
of my own works back over the years. It’s not
a very good economic deal! Of course, you can’t
hang on to everything—you have to sell some
things. But occasionally I will return to a work
that I made in the ’80s or something and modify
it, because I’ve been living and working around
it and my vision for it changed. So it will have
two dates. Because my works are not traditional
painting—they’re made of different materials—
they have the sense of time passing. Sometimes
they need an intervention. Then at the end, works
PAO LO S E M P R U C C I , P I E R PAO LO C A L ZO L A R I , A N D M A R I A N N E B O E S K Y GA L L E R Y
are like music. And you like to listen. These

ÀYHGLIIHUHQWVWXGLRVWKDW,KDYHDOOKDYHGLIIHUHQW
functions. Some need to be very clean; another
VSDFHLVIRUZRUNLQJZLWKPHWDOÀUHDQGOHDG
for example. So I work between them, and it’s like
moving from one sound to another.
Tell me about what’s planned for the

upcoming show at Marianne Boesky.
7KLVZLOOEHDQHZERG\RIZRUNWKDWÁRZVIURP
DGHJUHHH[SORUDWLRQDQGIURPDUHÁHFWLRQ
on the history of art as a whole. The focus shifts
from Mannerism to Baroque, from the analysis
of Japanese decorative arts to the remaining signs
of Cretan and Pompeian paintings, and even
primitive African. These “paintings” are made
IURPOHDGG\HVEXUQHGIHOWDQGSDSHUÁRZHU
petals, and pigments on paper and canvas.
In April I’ll also be included in a group show
at Palazzo Grassi, François Pinault’s foundation in

Exile’s Return
A view of the east façade of
the museum from the
canal that separates it from
the town of Wuzhen.
The new Mu Xin Art Museum honors the life and work of an artist, writer, and political prisoner By Hunter Braithwaite

T
A B OV E: M U X I N A R T M U S E U M . O P P O S I T E: B OT H I M AG E S , S H E N Z H O N G H A I A N D O L I A R C H I T E C T U R E P L LC . P R E V I O U S S P R E A D : S H E N Z H O N G H A I A N D O L I A R C H I T E C T U R E P L LC
he remarkable life of artist and writer Mu Xin has a narrative historic district was renovated around 15 years ago, it is an odd
arc that charts well alongside China’s past century—its place. It is both the apotheosis of traditional Chinese culture
tumultuous arrival at modernity and recent efforts to reclaim its and its negation—a place that couldn’t exist if it weren’t for
cultural soul. Born in 1927, Mu Xin was raised in Wuzhen, centuries of heritage, but one that also depends upon the modern-
a historic water town in Zhejiang province, just southwest of izing forces that allow for things like package tours, a network
6KDQJKDL+HZDVHGXFDWHGLQERWK&KLQHVHDQG:HVWHUQ of mini-trams, and a reentry system based on scanned thumb-
FXOWXUHV\HWKLVIDPLO\·VDIÁXHQFHPDGHWKHPDWDUJHWGXULQJWKH prints. As such, it’s an interesting place for a museum dedicated
Cultural Revolution, when zealots sought to level the class to the work of an artist heralded as a paragon of 20th-century
hierarchy, almost always by force. The artist was imprisoned Chinese art—someone who, in Guggenheim curator Alexandra
VHYHUDOWLPHVPRVWGUDPDWLFDOO\LQDÁRRGHGDLUUDLGVKHOWHU Munroe’s words, achieves “the single imperative of modern
and held under house arrest and constant surveillance before $VLDQDUWLVWV«WRGHÀQHDVSDFHWKDWDEVRUEVWKHFXOWXUHVRI
OHDYLQJ&KLQDLQIRU1HZ<RUN&LW\+HUHWXUQHGDVDQROG traditional Asia, the Classical West, and of modernity.”
PDQLQWRKLVKRPHWRZQZKHUHKHGLHGÀYH\HDUVODWHU The artist’s given name was Sun Pu—Mu Xin is just one
This past November, a museum opened dedicated to his life’s of many pseudonyms he used over the years, in part because
work—an acclaimed, if obscure, body of writing and visual art that FUHDWLQJDUWZDVH[FHSWLRQDOO\GLIÀFXOWGXULQJWKH0DRLVWSHULRG
spans traditional Chinese cultural history and Western modernity Eight years before he was born, the May Fourth Movement, a
and speaks to the ability of art to survive in a ruined world. That series of student protests, had called for an international, modern
said, the work’s presence in a museum sanctioned by the same state Chinese culture. Studying at the Shanghai Fine Art Institute
WKDWLPSULVRQHGWKHDUWLVWUDLVHVTXHVWLRQVDERXWWKHOHJDF\RIWKH in the 1940s, Mu Xin was educated within this mind-set. In those
Cultural Revolution, and how it is absorbed in the contemporary years, Shanghai was as cosmopolitan as it is now, with young
moment. On the one hand, Mu Xin didn’t consider himself a Chinese exposed to Western movies and fashion. But the Commu-
dissident artist, thinking of dissent as just another form of ideology. nist takeover in 1949 had disastrous effects on the young man.
Art—and by proxy, the artist—must remain separate. On the other, In the 1960s, his personal cache of 20 book-length volumes of his
is it doing a disservice to the work and to the period to ignore the writing—handwritten works of prose, novels, dramas, poetry,
obvious political implications of literature written while in solitary DQGHVVD\V³ZDVFRQÀVFDWHGDQGGHVWUR\HG+HZDVMDLOHGWKUHH
FRQÀQHPHQWRUSDLQWLQJVFUHDWHGLQVHFUHWZKLOHXQGHUKRXVH times, sentenced to seven years’ hard labor, and placed under
arrest, even if their subject matter isn’t explicitly political? KRXVHDUUHVWIURPWR+LVFDVHLVIDUIURPXQLTXH
The result of an effort by Chen Xianghong, founder of the local but while countless other artists and writers stopped their
organization Culture Wuzhen—which also funded the project—the work, and were often driven to suicide, Mu Xin continued. It’s
PXVHXPKDVEHHQLQWKHZRUNVVLQFH'HVLJQHGE\+LURVKL that constant output that sets him apart—and the fact that
2NDPRWRDQG%LQJ/LQRIWKH$PHULFDQÀUPOLI (both Okamoto the former political prisoner is now being enshrined in a museum.
and Lin previously worked with I.M. Pei) and directed by Chen 7KHVSDFHLVVTXDUHIHHWSHUFHQWRIZKLFKLVEHORZ
'DQTLQJDFORVHIULHQGRIWKHDUWLVWDQGDQDFFODLPHGSDLQWHU grade, with purposely underlit galleries (perhaps in acknowl-
in his own right, it can be reached by a bridge set low above water edgment of Mu Xin’s imprisonment). Within its eight galleries,
WKHFRORURIPXGG\MDGH:LWKLWVUHÀQHGYROXPHVPDGHRIDZDUPO\ SHUPDQHQWGLVSOD\VRIKLVDUWDQGZULWLQJWDNHXSÀYHZLWK
hued concrete that retains the grain of wooden formwork, the the remainder being devoted to temporary exhibitions related
PXVHXPLVDJUDFHIXOELWRIPRGHUQLW\ÁRDWLQJLQVSDFH,QVKDUS to the artist. Mu Xin donated 600 paintings and thousands
contrast, Wuzhen is a 1,300-year-old town along the Beijing- of manuscripts to the museum. Currently, it is displaying
+DQJ]KRX*UDQG&DQDOGHVFULEHGE\PDQ\DWUDYHOJXLGHDV 100 paintings and 50 manuscripts, dating from the 1970s to the
WKH9HQLFHRI&KLQD:LWKLWVJRQGRODSOLHGZDWHUZD\VTXLUN\ V7KHZRUNVKLQWDWDSUROLÀFOLIHWKURXJKSURQRXQFHG
cobblestone pathways, historical reenactments, and the passage of stylistic differences, though the collection is far from exhaustive.
some 7 million tourists a year (nearly all domestic Chinese) The Yale Art Gallery has held on to an important series of 33
balanced against a population that was largely relocated when the landscapes that he painted while under house arrest in the 1970s,

FROM TOP:
A Breeze, 1999.
Color ink on
paper, 3¾ x 21¼ in.
The museum’s
entrance hall,
looking toward
the Wuzhen
West District.
View of the
auditorium
lounge and
reading room.

and then there is the matter of his destroyed manuscripts. however, his most lasting work was completed in that air-raid
Progressing through, one is made aware of a sense of intimate VKHOWHULQ6KDQJKDLZKHUHKHZDVKHOGLQVROLWDU\FRQÀQHPHQW
relations. While the architects didn’t feel the need to respect from 1971 to 1972. Using the ink and paper provided by his
the adjacent district’s historic surfaces, they do pay homage to its captors for weekly self-criticisms, he composed a collection of
KXPDQVFDOH6XEWO\WKHJDOOHULHVFRQWUDFWDQGH[SDQGDVRQH VKRUWHVVD\VDQGLPDJLQHGGLDORJXHVZLWKÀJXUHVOLNH6DLQW
comes to terms with Mu Xin’s legacy. Though his visual output Augustine. Collected as the Prison Notes, these writings, which
WRXFKHVXSRQPRGHUQLVWÀJXUDWLRQWKHVZRRSLQJKLSVRI0DWLVVH are on display at the museum, stand alongside better-known
IRUH[DPSOHDQGSXUHQRQREMHFWLYLW\KHLVDWKLVVWURQJHVW works done in captivity—from Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the
with a series of diminutive landscapes that manage to suggest Flowers to Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.
both 19th-century photography and the Surrealist rockscapes Reading them, one has the inescapable feeling that Mu Xin was
RI0D[(UQVW7KH\DUHKRZHYHUÀUVWDQGIRUHPRVWLQNVFUROOV writing to save his sanity, and his life. However, they are not self-
deeply in tune with Chinese art; that they were created SLW\LQJQRUYLQGLFWLYHUDWKHUWKH\DUHVWRLFUHÁHFWLRQVRQWKH
LQH[LOHLPEXHVWKHPZLWKDPL[RIQRVWDOJLDDQGPHODQFKRO\ relationship between art and life. He attempts to summon works of
The artist grew up near Hangzhou, a center of Chinese art, literature, and music. In “Who Is Truly Fearless?,” responding
A B OV E: M U X I N A R T M U S E U M . O P P O S I T E , B E LO W: S H E N Z H O N G H A I A N D O L I A R C H I T E C T U R E P L LC
landscape painting for nearly 800 years, and as a result, his to a remembered bit of Wagner, he writes that “music is a form of
connection to historic literati painting is so strong that he art constituted of its own vanishings. In its essence of depth,
frequently referred to past artists as his “blood roots.” The ink-on- music is thus closest to ‘death.’ ” Deprived of music, surrounded by
SDSHUZRUNVDUHERWKH[SDQVLYHDQGFRPSDFWFDSWXULQJZKDW death, he still managed such insights. Or take his essay “Happi-
<DOHDUWKLVWRULDQ5LFKDUG0%DUQKDUWLGHQWLÀHVDVWKHSULPDU\ ness,” in which he concludes that the emotion “looks like a painting
illusion of Chinese landscape painting, “a thousand miles within a by Cézanne. Happiness is painted one brush stroke after another.
few inches.” Though only several centimeters tall, they possess Cézanne himself, his wife, they were not happy.” Written one pen
a remarkable level of detail due to Mu Xin’s use of decalcomania, a stroke after another, the NotesDUHDÀQHH[DPSOHRIFDOOLJUDSK\
technique that involves pressing ink between two pieces of paper, under duress. Only slightly larger than asterisks, some characters
with the result being random yet hypnotically naturalistic. are illegible. Still, he managed to conceal the papers in the
In a piece like Morning, 2000, with its gentle sloping wash of lining of his clothing, and they survived intact upon his release.
blue ink cut through with rivulets that just barely suggest foliage, While the writing itself is fundamentally apolitical, anything
or rivers seen from above, Mu Xin catches a landscape in its called Prison Notes demands a level of political consideration,
PRPHQWRIGLVLQWHJUDWLRQ7KHKD]\ÀHOGEHWZHHQDSSHDUDQFHDQG especially when its author was needlessly imprisoned by a brutal
disappearance—that moment the fog lifts, or falls—has long been regime because of his views on art and philosophy. “He was born
a pictorial standard in Chinese landscape painting, but keeping during that time, so we cannot talk about this particular body
LQPLQGWKHFDWDFO\VPVWKDW0X;LQZLWQHVVHGLW·VGLIÀFXOWQRW of work without talking about the time behind it,” Chen Danqing
to read this work as a landscape of a disappearing world. Other told me. Still, it is unclear how the museum intends to talk about
works from this period, with titles like The Beach After the Tide WKDWWLPH,WVRSHQLQJZHHNZDVPDUUHGE\DQRIÀFLDOGHFLVLRQ
and A Deserted Valley, inspire the same feeling of calm eulogy. to remove a display of bibles that was included. It was a relatively
7KHPXVHXPGRHVDÀQHMRERIFRQYH\LQJWKHIDFWWKDW0X;LQ minor gaffe, but one that raises concern about how censorship will
was as gifted a writer as a visual artist. Living a life of reclusive KDPSHUWKHPXVHXP·VDELOLW\WRH[SORUHLWVLPSRUWDQWFROOHFWLRQ
H[LOHLQ1HZ<RUNKHSXEOLVKHGZLGHO\LQKLVODWHU\HDUVJDLQLQJ One hopes that it will not take a cue from the facsimile water town
UHQRZQLQWKH&KLQHVHGLDVSRUD+LVVKRUWVWRU\FROOHFWLRQ across the canal, repackaging Mu Xin’s legacy as something tidy,
An Empty RoomZDVSXEOLVKHGLQ(QJOLVKLQ,QPDQ\ZD\V sanitized—something for tourists of history. MP

FROM TOP:
Morning, 2000.
Multilayered
inks on paper,
4½ x 18¾ in.
View of the
entrance bridge
and the
museum across
Yuanbao Lake.

QA &
with
LAURA
POITRAS IN JANUARY 2013, Laura
Poitras—already lauded
By Noelle Bodick
This head-spinning work
built on her documentary
for her feature-length interests, from the war on
documentaries investigating terror and occupation of
the post-9/11 American Iraq to the U.S. drone program
state—received her irst and Guantánamo Bay.
encrypted e-mail from This month, the Boston-
Edward Snowden. It would born ilmmaker has found a
ultimately make her into new outlet to bring home
one of the key players tasked the realities of the surveillance
with connecting the exiled state to Americans. She will
whistle-blower to the public. open her irst solo museum
The ilmmaker went on to exhibition, called “Astro
help publish Pulitzer Prize– Noise,” at the Whitney Mu-
winning reports drawing from seum of American Art in New
Snowden’s leaked classiied York. Noelle Bodick visited
F R O M L E F T: K H A L I D A L- M A H D I ; C O N O R P R OV E N Z A N O
documents and make the ilmmaker, journalist, and
the Oscar-winning 2014 ilm artist in her Manhattan
Citizenfour, bringing the studio to talk about working
National Security Agency’s between journalism and art,
mass surveillance programs and how to represent the
into public consciousness. Snowden archive visually.

W
alk me through how encounter people in the story and your Basically, with anything that’s dealing
this show came about. relationship to them. With this installa- with the archive, we’re taking it through a
When I started getting e-mails tion work, however, the audience is separate journalistic process: confronting
from Edward Snowden, I the protagonist rather than just a viewer. the government, making sure it’s in the
didn’t know his identity. I thought this public interest, et cetera.
person would always remain an anony- Does the viewer, or protagonist, move
mous source. While I was receiving these through a narrative over the course Has there been pushback from the
e-mails, I started journaling about how RIWKHH[KLELWLRQ" Whitney with regard to displaying
I might work with this material—what I There’s an arc: a beginning, a middle, and leaked NSAGRFXPHQWV"
was hearing about and imagining. All the an end. I didn’t want to create a passive I think they’re nervous, but they’re OK.
journal ideas suggested more installation- experience; I didn’t want people to just be You should ask them. I mean, I have
EDVHGZRUNUDWKHUWKDQDIHDWXUHÀOP looking at walls. Those are the parameters to say, they’ve been incredible. When
because I doubted I would ever meet him that I knew going in. Right now, I’m they reached out to me, I was in Berlin,
DQGP\ÀOPVXVXDOO\IROORZDQLQGLYLGXDO organizing the show around themes of the unsure of when I would come back to
over time. So this presented something CIA , the Iraq War, Guantánamo, and the United States. There was a question
different from my previous work. the NSA. There are six installation-based as to whether the government would try
pieces, which involve some NSA docu- to bring charges against [journalist]
What do these new installations open ments, documentary footage, and also Glenn Greenwald or me. So, it was bold
up for your work, and what are you PLUURUV%XWWKHÀUVWWKLQJWKHYLHZHU of them. There’s a lot of risks in reporting
drawing on from your experience as ZLOOVHHHQWHULQJWKHHLJKWKÁRRUDUH on material that the government doesn’t
DGRFXPHQWDU\ÀOPPDNHU" visuals from the Snowden archive that want public. That’s just the way it is.
ABOVE:
This show has allowed me to work with correspond to a certain program called My experience working with institu-
Two images of
ideas that I’d been exploring in more “Anarchist.” It makes for a good title, tions frequently revolves around the Poitras ilming
abstract, emotive, and atmospheric ways so this piece is called Anarchist. question “What is the worst-case scenario?” the NSA Utah
Data Repository
than the literalness initially demanded by And their job is to imagine those, because construction
the Snowden archive. I shifted gears. With Are you breaking the news of this it’s completely new territory. So what in 2011.
ORQJIRUPÀOPPDNLQJ\RXDUHFUDIWLQJ SURJUDPLQWKHPXVHXP" we’ve been doing is really grounding OPPOSITE:
a journey or arc based on techniques of No, I’m not trying to use the Whitney to a parallel track with journalism stories Still of Abu
storytelling and ability to identify with break the news. I did with Citizenfour— and going through the journalistic Jandal’s eyes in
rearview mirror
FKDUDFWHUV,·PYHU\LQWHUHVWHGLQÀOPLQJ there were a couple of news stories that procedures, which include confronting from The Oath,
things in the moment as they unfold FRLQFLGHGZLWKWKHUHOHDVHRIWKHÀOP,·P anyone who’s named, making sure 2010, the second
feature in Poitras’s
and following something over time. And as working with a journalist on stories using the information disclosed is in the public 9/11 trilogy. HD
a viewer, the experience is one where you the material that comes up in the show. interest, ascertaining the facts. video, 90 min.

5HFHQWO\\RXPDGHDÀOPDERXW
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dissidents restuff stuffed-animal
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and a USBFRQWDLQLQJWKHSUHYLRXVO\
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of amnesty for dissidents?
I don’t think Ai Weiwei is a dissident
looking for refuge. He’s an extraordinary
artist, and one who is engaging with
political realities. But there is certainly
a freedom to be expressive in that art
Are your artmaking and journalism surveillance more than they did before. context. When I was organizing the teach-
separate projects in your mind? That’s a good thing. It’s not an end goal. in with Jacob [Appelbaum] in 2012, for
I don’t see them as separate. But it is example, we were pretty nervous. We were
certainly an unusual set of circumstances 'RHVWKHDUWZRUOGRUWKHDUW going to be talking to the former technical
in the sense that there are lots of print LQVWLWXWLRQRIIHUVRPHWKLQJWKDW director of the NSA , who hadn’t spoken
journalists who would work with this RWKHUFUHDWLYHRUMRXUQDOLVWLF much at that point. We were like, “What’s
material in a news-driven way. My work platforms don’t? going to happen?” But we felt a little bit
has just always gone in a different Cinema is a very populist medium— shielded by the museum context.
direction. I’ve always been interested in HYHU\RQHORYHVPRYLHV<RXKDYHDÀOP
storytelling and moods. How do you convey like Hunger Games, which I totally want :KDWSRZHULVRULVQRWDIIRUGHGWKH
Guantánamo, not just through the facts? WRVHH,W·VDÀOPDERXWUHEHOOLRQDQGDQ PXVHXPJRHULQWKLVVKRZ"$QGZKDW
How do you communicate it on an emotive LV\RXUUHODWLRQVKLSWRKLPRUKHU"
level? We all know that Guantánamo is <RXJHWWRGHFLGHZKHQWRJRIURPWKLV
still open. That’s not news. There’s nothing scene to that scene. I don’t have to control
to be said there. I do think that there’s all those relationships, and it’s really
something that has not been communicated. great. Again, the viewer is the protagonist.
But there are other ways that we need
to understand, to grapple with in order to
“The work is The viewer gets to navigate it. Do you
want to stay in this room? Do you want
understand. That’s where I feel my work
has always been located. I’m not always
asking people to not to stay in this room? I’m not trying
to make a political statement by allowing
interested in breaking news with my
work. I’m interested in reaching people
imagine the that. It’s a shift. The pieces can work in
different ways.
empathetically, with complexity.
And I absolutely believe our public
realities in post- But that said, my relation to the
viewer is slightly confrontational, and
has a right to know what our government
is doing. I don’t think it’s a healthy sign
9/11 politics.” that’s a way to get at issues. In a sense,
this is a safe space—a museum—and
for democracy that there are secret I aim to provoke. There are certain
interpretations of laws. I think we should details I don’t want to divulge yet, since
have informed debate. I don’t think it’s ,ZDQWLWWREHH[SHULHQFHGÀUVW%XWLW
correct that I should be put on a terrorist will become clear to you. I am interested
watch list and detained every time I independent female protagonist, and is in detaining people at the museum. Do
ABOVE:
Still of encrypted travel. How do you communicate that also very subversive. It’s political in that people resist? Do people not resist? Why
communication through different means? That could be sense. But some things I feel I’ll be did you not question authority in that
between Edward
Snowden and sound, that could be images, that could able to do better in a museum context, situation? This is really fertile space to
Laura Poitras in be characters, that could be information, and you can be a bit more confrontational. be a bit provocative. Everyone decides
Citizenfour, 2014. a whole spectrum of things. And yeah, I When I did the Whitney Biennial in where the line is. There are artists whose
HD video, 114 min.
have to get the facts right. So the jour- 2012, for example, I organized a teach-in work I love, but I probably wouldn’t have
OPPOSITE, FROM TOP:
nalism has to be good. I don’t feel them on surveillance where, working with a crossed the lines theirs does. Something
Still of Captain
Scarcliff patrolling as being in contradiction. I want my work performance company called Stimulate, like Sophie Calle’s Address Book, which
in Baghdad to be relevant not just when it’s released we interrogated people before they entered reconstructed a portrait of the unknown
during Iraq’s
2005 election in but in the future. the museum. We made them line up and owner of an address book found by
My Country, My ,FRQVLGHUP\VHOIDÀOPPDNHUDQG give us their documents. That’s something Calle by calling each person listed. I
Country, 2006,
the irst ilm in the
DUWLVWÀUVW<HV,·PLQWHUHVWHGLQSROLWLFDO WKDW·VKDUGHUWRGRDWDPRYLHWKHDWHU<RX just couldn’t have done that. But I very
9/11 trilogy. HD issues, but it’s not a means to an end. It can push boundaries in an art context, much appreciate it as a work of art.
video, 90 min. is its own end. Those are my interests. and that’s made possible by the fact that
Installation view I’m not trying to change political realities. there is space. I can direct people, and ask :HUHWKHUHOLQHV\RXIHOW\RXZHUH
RADIUS -T WC
of “Laura Poitras: I don’t have no interest, but that’s not them to do things, make them vulnerable, FURVVLQJLQWKLVH[KLELWLRQ"
9/11 Trilogy”
at Artists Space in the purpose. That’s not what motivates and make them have to cross thresholds. There’s one element that involves a bit
New York, 2014. the work. I’m glad people care about Toning down is not what I’m interested in. of a feedback loop, and I am creating

some parameters around it for myself,
like not recording the information. But
I’m not interested in a passive viewing
experience. I’m interested in if, for
example, people feel uncomfortable being
in a small space—that’s good! You
should feel uncomfortable. I’m interested
in provoking to get at these issues around
surveillance, torture, occupation. Those
are things I am concerned that the public
doesn’t really comprehend. For instance,
the drone program: What would Ameri-
cans think if China was shooting
people from the sky over Texas? How do
you pivot material so people can shift
perspectives like that?
Are there questions you hope to

incite in the minds of visitors?
I do think it’s very experiential. When
you encounter these images at the
beginning and when you loop past them
again at the end, you’ll understand them
differently because of what you learned,
what has been revealed. I would say all
the work is trying to ask people to imagine
the frightening realities in post-9/11
American politics. I want people to
have to imagine those and contend with
them differently. That’s always the
goal. More understanding. What are the
repercussions of what’s happening? MP
F R O M TO P : J O S H W I L L I A M S ; DA N I E L P E R E Z

CAMILO
FUENTEALBA ARTIST’S PORTFOLIO
THE NEW YORK–BASED ARTIST HAS A ROVING AND EMPATHETIC

A L L I M AG E S : C A M I LO F U E N T E A L B A
EYE. “MY PHOTOGRAPHS ARE ABOUT HUMANIT Y, THE STRUGGLE

OF EVERYDAY LIFE, AND THE BEAUT Y AND IRONY THAT GO
ALONG WITH IT,” HE SAYS. “IT’S THE SIMPLE IDEA OF CREATING
SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL AND, HOPEFULLY, CONSTRUCTIVE.”
ARTIST’S PORTFOLIO: CAMILO FUENTEALBA



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ASIA PACIFIC // BRISBANE
NORTH AMERICA // NEW YORK // PITTSBURGH // WALTHAM
EUROPE // LONDON REVIEWS

Christian
Thompson
Trinity I, 2014.
C-print,
39 x 29½ in.
BRISBANE
Asia Pacific Triennial
of Contemporary Art 8
Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of
Modern Art / November 21, 2015–April 10, 2016
AT THE FIRST edition of the Asia

Q U E E N S L A N D A R T GA L L E R Y A N D GA L L E R Y O F M O D E R N A R T
Pacific Triennial (APT) in 1993, Doug

Hall, director of the Queensland
Art Gallery, noted how Australia’s near
northern neighbors were still in
common parlance exotically known
as the “Far East.” The following years
have seen this exhibition morph
through eight iterations, including
editions with work from more than
160 artists and a pared-down version
with just 17. Meanwhile, Brisbane
has also seen the opening of a new
venue, the Gallery of Modern Art
(GOMA)—which more than quadrupled
the existing exhibition space and

REVIEWS
family-pleaser, a playground embedded with lights and sensors

inviting visitors to interact. For Ils vous regardent, 2015, Nicolas
Molé projects a vibrant animated forestscape on the walls of
a third-floor gallery, which contains, in the form of a traditional
Kanak hut, a more contemplative inner room lined with slow-
moving figures on flat-screens and scented with an earthy
pandanus-leaf flooring. Rosanna Raymond’s SaVAge K’lub project,
2010–ongoing, usurps the stereotype of colonial gentleman’s
clubs with an installation and performance space made in
collaboration with the K’lub’s 19 members, and Lawrence English’s
droning sound installation, Audition, 2015, changes drastically,
depending on where the listener is situated in relation to the
concave objects at either dimly lit end of the room. These
environments make possible an experiential involvement with the
themes at play, prompting a cultural submersion of sorts for visitors.
This triennial is flexible in the demographics it anticipates,
serving multiple audiences—both art world types and locals
experiencing firsthand the continuing shift in their country’s
regional identity. The curators’ treatment of place displays a genuine
engagement with visualizing and deining what it means to live
in and be from this newly designated area. In a region marked
by fluctuating political lines, and in a nation that still struggles with
the ramifications of its own violent colonial history in a unified
territory once made up of hundreds of indigenous countries and
distinct language groups, the organizers of this exhibition should be
acknowledged for their transparent attempt to incorporate the
F R O M TO P : A S I M WAQ I F; Q U E E N S L A N D A R T GA L L E R Y A N D GA L L E R Y O F M O D E R N A R T
societies and cultural groups that make up the place we are coming
to understand as the Asia Paciic.
More often than not, the artists here cannot name one single
place to identify with, having left their irst home for any number of
reasons, from political strife to furthering their education. And
those who do have a place to call home are often exploring other
cultural influences wrought by history of place, access to global
communities brought on by rapid changes in technology, trends in
immigration, and family legacy. Examples include Thailand-based
Paphonsak La-or’s painted landscapes made from Google Maps
aerial footage of the Fukushima area; Juan Davila’s paintings,
which draw from both his Australian and his Chilean heritage; the
London-based, native Australian (hailing from the Bidjara people
of Western Queensland) Christian Thompson’s video and photo-
graphs that merge international pop culture with his indigenous
heritage; and Paciic artist Len Lye’s ilms and sculptures, which
owe as much to the patterns he encountered in Maori culture as
they do to the kinetic art scene he was involved in beginning in the
1930s. As what it means to be a part of the relatively new desig-
ABOVE: was built with this hallmark exhibition in mind—as well as the nation Asia Paciic becomes more sophisticated, APT has followed the
Asim Waqif
growth of the institution’s reputation as the foremost leader in dialogue, exploring this larger identity and those it encompasses
Installation view
of All we leave acquiring and exhibiting work from the Asia Paciic region, tangible through such wide-ranging cultural production. —Juliet Helmke
behind are development that speaks as well to shifts in the consciousness of
the memories,
2015. Reclaimed
a viewing public.
timber from In its eighth edition, which includes 83 artists from 36 countries
demolition sites (including, notably, Mongolia, Nepal, and the Solomon Islands), the
around Brisbane,
interactive show has no unifying visual thread, nor does it seem that artists
electronic and hailing from the same country share much of an aesthetic with
acoustic system, their compatriots. For the first time, however, a suitably nebulous
and metal
hardware, curatorial theme, movement and the body, unites the work. It
187 x 29½ x 52½ ft. could be this development that makes the show feel both visually
RIGHT:
diverse and curatorially tight—one in which Filipino artist Maria
Khvay Samnang Taniguchi’s monochrome brick paintings might be recalled when,
Rubber Man, two floors up, viewers encounter a conveyor belt carved with
2014. Ink-jet print
on Hahnemühle traditional designs by Gunybi Ganambarr, or where David Medalla’s
photo rag paper, dish-soap sculpture will bring to mind the snakelike plastic tubes
31½ x 47¼ in.
trailing behind the motorbikes seen earlier in UuDam Tran Nguyen’s
three-channel video installation Serpent’s Tails, 2015.
Immersive environments—often collaborative or performative in
nature—recur throughout. Dominating GOMA’s central, three-story-
high gallery and visible from every floor is Asim Waqif’s All we
leave behind are the memories, 2015, a clicking, vibrating installation
made of rough timber common to Queensland architecture. It’s a

NEW YORK
Miranda July
Brooklyn Academy of Music // October 7–10, 2015
IT’S EASY TO FORGET how deeply weird

Miranda July is—how much she remains
a proudly hard-to-categorize outlier,
despite the populist appeal of her inter-
active online art projects or social-media
DSSVRUWKHWDONLQJFDWLQKHUODVWÀOP
Her performance work New Society,
part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s
Next Wave Festival, is an excellent
UHPLQGHURIWKHULVNVWKLVSUROLÀFPXOWL
K\SKHQDWHDUWLVWLVVWLOOZLOOLQJWRWDNH
New Society is not a play, or a one-woman
show, or a stand-up routine, or an
experiment in relational aesthetics, or a
team-building exercise, or an arts-and-
crafts hour, but somehow a tragicomic
and malleable mix of all these, a skeletal
structure that, while orchestrated by
July, depends on its audience to move
DQ\ZKHUHDWDOO
The performance begins with a fuck-
up: July, under a spotlight, forgetting
what she has come onstage to say,
H[DFWO\6KHVWDPPHUVODXJKVQHUYRXVO\
tries to talk through her apparent
DQ[LHW\6WUHWFKHGWRDQXQFRPIRUWDEOH
length, it’s hard to tell whether or not the
ZKROHWKLQJLVVFULSWHG-XO\DSRORJL]HV
for her mental lapse; she tries to distract
herself with some languid modern-dance
PRYHV,WVXGGHQO\VHHPVSRVVLEOHWKDW her green blouse—a self-conscious nod to a toddler, whose photo she shows on her Miranda July
Performance
we are actually witnessing a breakdown, Yoko Ono’s classic Cut Piece, which L3KRQH0RVWRINew Society is like this, documentation
that July will retreat backstage and leaves the artist’s midriff exposed for the wobbling between the silly and the of New Society
VWDUWWKHVKRZRYHUDJDLQ,QVWHDG UHPDLQGHURIWKHSHUIRUPDQFH sincere; it’s July’s skill to wrong-foot you at the Brooklyn
Academy of
she changes course: Rather than doing 7KHHDUO\\HDUVRI1HZ6RFLHW\DUH like this, to build a charming veneer Music, 2015.
whatever it was she had originally IXOORIRSWLPLVPWKHVKRZFRPSUHVVHV EHIRUHVODPPLQJWKHSDWKRVKRPH(YHU\
planned, and has since forgotten, why not several decades of the audience’s “life” in time we are enjoined to sing the New
enact a radical social experiment? Why the BAMWKHDWHULQWRURXJKO\WZRKRXUV 6RFLHW\DQWKHPLWEHFRPHVVOLJKWO\PRUH
not have everyone in the theater decide to 7KLQJVJRGRZQKLOOVZLIWO\6WDJHOLJKWV HOHJLDF&RQVWLWXWLRQDOODZVZULWWHQ
just stay there, together, forming new dim to signify the falling of night, the by audience members are amended and
communal associations, economies, and passing of time; July’s clothes are ripped PDGHZHDNHULIQRWGRZQULJKWVLQLVWHU
ZD\VRIEHLQJ³D1HZ6RFLHW\" further, as if she’s been mauled by a ´%DE\6PLWKµWKHVROHFKLOGERUQVLQFH
And so we’re right where July wanted ZROI7KHUHDUHVKHVD\VIHZHUQDWXUDO the society’s founding, suddenly dies
us to be all along: in the throes of a resources in the theater than we had DWDJH,DPE\YLUWXHRIVLWWLQJLQWKH
quasi-satirical, hippie-utopian project, H[SHFWHG:HDUHVKHVD\VPLVVLQJ front row, given the honor of playing
one in which she will act as a benevolent WKHORYHGRQHVZHOHIWEHKLQGRXWVLGH %DE\6PLWKZKLFKPHDQVVORZO\H[SLULQJ
dictator herding the ideas and impulses ,QLWLDOO\LWKDGVHHPHGOLNHVXFKD onstage before being carried off by the
RIWKHDXGLHQFH6XGGHQO\WKHUH·VVRPXFK great idea: to stay here, together, DUPEDQGZHDULQJWHDPRIPHGLFV
WRGR³DÁDJWREHGUDZQDYROXQWHHU IRUHYHU´)RUHYHUµLVDURPDQWLFDOEHLW Meanwhile, the outside world carries on
trots down to sketch a design on a gigantic melancholic, theme for July, unrealistic as before: global warming, species
tarp with an equally gigantic marker); and boldly naive, as if we might leap H[WLQFWLRQQHZDQGWLQLHUFRPSXWHUV
DQDQWKHPWREHZULWWHQD\RXQJPDQ beyond death simply because we believe July escapes, struggles to reunite with
JHWVÀYHPLQXWHVRQDNH\ERDUGWRZRUN KDUGHQRXJK her now-grown son and his wife; chastened,
out a melody to accompany the lyrics While one might expect a Lord of the VKHUHWXUQVWRWKHWKHDWHU$QHZ
´'RQ·WJRKRPH6WD\ZLWKPH1HZ Flies scenario here, with audience OHDGHUWDNHVKHUSODFH7KHXOWLPDWH
A L L I M AG E S : R E B E C C A G R E E N F I E L D
society”); a currency to be established members suddenly sharpening sticks, the meaning of this performance becomes less
GXEEHG´NUXSHHVµDQDPDOJDPRI SUREOHPVRI1HZ6RFLHW\DUHPRUH political or universal and more a pro-
rupees and kroner, and made by ripping LQWHUSHUVRQDODQGVH[XDO&RXSOHVEUHDN grammatic explosion of the artist’s
out an image of July’s face from the XSDQGUHIRUP-XO\KHUVHOIVWDJHVD own preoccupations, anxieties, desires,
SHUIRUPDQFHSURJUDP$JURXSRIPHGLFV lesbian affair with one audience member DQGLQVHFXULWLHV7KRVHPLJKWQRWIRUPD
is chosen to assist in case of any emer- whose disgruntled boyfriend is forced solid foundation for a workable New
JHQFLHV7KH\QHHGDUPEDQGVWRLGHQWLI\ WRREVHUYHDQGQDUUDWH7KHVDFULÀFHV 6RFLHW\EXWWKH\·UHSHUIHFWIRUDSLHFH
themselves, so July asks two other required to form this collective are of theater bent on breaking our expecta-
volunteers to scissor away big swaths of made stark: July herself has left behind WLRQVRIWKHIRUP —Scott Indrisek

REVIEWS
NEW YORK
Martin Wong
The Bronx Museum of the Arts // November 4, 2015–February 14, 2016
ORIGINS, BOTH BIOGRAPHICAL and ontological, haunt this irst

museum retrospective of the late American artist, who
passed away in 1999 at the age of 53. Wong began his
career as a sidewalk painter, offering snapshot
portraits as the show’s titular “Human Instamatic,”
but he also dabbled widely, as a certain kind of
rootless genius often does. Raised in San
Francisco by parents of Chinese and Mexican
heritage, Wong stuck around the Bay Area for
the irst three decades of his life, joining a
gay theater troupe and traveling in Asia as
a dealer and collector of the continent’s
antiques. A visit to New York in 1978
turned into an impromptu immigration,
and Wong would become a model
student of his adopted city. Decades
later, he would return to the Bay
Area to die, quietly painting his mother’s
plants as he succumbed to AIDS .
The exhibition’s irst room documents
these early days in New York, when the
artist shacked up in a cheap hotel in
Lower Manhattan—modest lodgings he
would render in 1984’s My Secret World
1978–1981, an intimate, Van Gogh–inflected
composition. Wong’s sui generis sense
of interiority and exteriority hums on some
remote yet brilliant wavelength; his sign-
language paintings, of which there are several in
the show, are the masterpieces of his peculiar
cognition. “Son of Sam Sleeps,” reads the painted
text on one such painting, circa 1983, with bulbous
hands signing mutely against a black chalkboard
surrounded by a red brick pattern and “framed” in painted
wood grain. This layering of framing and enframing, its play
with language and signiiers, speaks in pizza-parlor textures a formal
and conceptual language all its own.
Turning this same perception outward, Wong delivers the
exhibition’s lodestar in a corner of its large main gallery: La Iglesia
de Dios, 1986, a 13-foot-long painting of an accordion-gated
F R O M TO P : T H E B R O N X M U S E U M O F T H E A R T S ; T H E M E T R O P O L I TA N M U S E U M O F A R T, N E W YO R K
storefront church façade, all somber planes of gently mottled blue,
green, white, and black. Curators Sergio Bessa and Yasmín Ramírez
included this work in a section that pairs Wong’s storefront
paintings with his paintings of prison scenes, an astute decision
that pits suspended business with a different sort of suspension,
the indeterminate violence of incarceration.
Writ large, “Martin Wong: Human Instamatic” speaks to the
shortcomings of the critical-curatorial apparatus when faced with
an artist who defies caricature periodization or an easy critical
shorthand. Prior to this exhibition, the institutional dues paid
to Wong had been devastatingly scant, and largely oriented around
his identity (gay, Chino-Latino, HIV -positive) and friendship with
grafiti artists: The Museum of the City of New York showed his
grafiti collection in 2014’s “City as Canvas,” while the artist Danh Vo
displayed grafiti and ephemera from Wong’s personal collection as
part of his 2012 Hugo Boss Prize exhibition at the Guggenheim. These
are critical elements of his life and work, to be sure. But it’s telling
that he recycled his only direct artistic collaboration with grafiti
artists—Sharp and Delta 2—as the backing for a later solo painting.
Martin Wong Attorney Street
A clearer picture of his legacy emerges instead at the Bronx Museum,
FROM TOP: (Handball Court with that of a gifted paper-bag poet, who spoke, as he did on one such
In the Studio, 1992. Autobiographical scrap displayed in a rear gallery, of “one trembling moment distilled,
Acrylic on linen, Poem by Piñero),
30 in. diameter. 1982–84. Oil on canvas, like the sweet vermouth we once got for some copper cables.”
35½ x 48 in. —Mostafa Heddaya

NEW YORK
Lucy Dodd
David Lewis // October 27–December 20, 2015
THE ONLY CONCRETE-seeming structure faded paisley couches, one of which (including a number of anonymous
in Dodd’s “Wuv Shop,” her second ultimately props up a canvas; drying personal mixtapes) slowly unpacked
solo exhibition with David Lewis, is an remnants of an orange peel on a window- IURPFDVHVVFDWWHUHGDURXQGWKHÁRRUDQG
enclosure built from adjoining square sill; around Halloween, festive jack- played. During a visit a few weeks
canvases nearly the height of the gallery. o-lanterns; jars of spirulina powder and after the opening, some were stacked
Stained, like all of the paintings on Manic Panic hair dye; power strips on a projector, or arranged in a disorderly
view here, with an assortment of organic and extension cords. There’s something but mythological-looking circle atop a
materials (used in the show are squid pleasant, almost banal, in how Dodd’s speaker, but by early December, the
ink, kombucha, clay, and hematite, among practice is made transparent, a canvas- magnetic tape had been pulled out of
others), the raw, abstract works provide LQSURJUHVVVHWRQWKHÁRRUWKHDUWLVW most. The material, holding this now-
a shielded home base of sorts for Dodd as sometimes wandering the room. Across a inaccessible collection of sounds charting
she occupies the space for the show’s series of visits, she felt less like some moments in time, is piled into buckets
duration; around this semiprivate, semi- character put on view than a quiet host. and strung up to decorate the room
static cube, movement unfolds. Her arrangements and rearrangements like party streamers in metallic contrast
A cast of new paintings—mostly smaller, have a ritualistic quality; pigments to Dodd’s painting—a sort of ecstatic
many shaped in irregular quadrilaterals, and rose petals laid out in the triangular analogue for the sense of time she
splotched and swirled with ashy black, space between a couch and a corner cultivates within the space.
violet, blue, and green—populate the seem like components in a casual altar. Perhaps too kooky to fall into the
room, but don’t quite play their prescribed What’s contained here evolves, but it category of institutional critique—besides,
role as individual objects commanding does so at a strange pace. One revisits not this work is anything but didactic—
the viewer’s attention. Maybe-peripheral to see new work but something akin to there’s still a sense that Dodd is imagin-
things brought in from Dodd’s Upstate QHZVSDWLDOÀJXUDWLRQV7KHRQO\GHWDLO ing a future here, using the gallery
residence accumulate and migrate day whose progress is easily charted is a large as a space for care and accommodation.
by day around the space. There’s a set of collection of cassettes found Upstate —Thea Ballard
Lucy Dodd
“Wuv Shop,” 2015.
L U CY D O D D A N D DAV I D L E W I S
REVIEWS
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
“Aftersound: Frequency, Attack, Return”
Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University // August 21–November 22, 2015
COMPOSER AND SOUND pioneer Maryanne Amacher’s idea of one’s hands on the ive wall-mounted copper “tongues” of the
aftersound—produced by the reverberating mechanisms of the Subharmonic Sparks, 2014, a viewer alters the sounding sculpture’s
inner ear after it receives sound—theorizes the body as an composition by moving the tones through his or her body.
instrument. The work of Amacher and John Cage, who understood Paul DeMarinis, meanwhile, visualizes sound through a system
silence as part of the landscape of sound and experimented of oil lamps, mirrors, and lyrical tubes that pulse with sound
with chance to generate scores, provides a map of the conceptual produced by flame-heated air. Framed by dramatic black curtains,
territory of this exhibition which explores the ways that sound DeMarinis’s installation re-creates the 19th-century experiment
has been visualized and spatialized by artists, composers, and of Hermann von Helmholtz to evoke the acoustical properties of
others. A choice selection of installations moves sound through and ancient Roman theaters. In the haze of the mirror, lamp flames
around bodies, turning the viewer’s body into a sensitive receiver. flicker to produce an image of a sound wave. Conversely, Marina
Victoria Keddie’s “Headbanger” compositions from 2015 best Rosenfeld collaborates with Caroline Record to explore the
exemplify both Amacher’s and Cage’s ideas. Thinking of the body materiality of sound. Rosenfeld displays her 16-year archive of dub
as a percussive instrument, Keddie used EKG readings measuring plates. Every day for the duration of the exhibition, a song is
the vibrations made by children with rhythmic movement disorder, transferred into a digital ile. Each time the dub plate is played, the
also known as “headbanging,” as they unconsciously slam their fragile acetate is etched away by the needle of the record player.
head against mattress or headboard while sleeping, to generate The object-performance is a study of entropy that speaks to the
musical scores. Keddie performed these scores live while translating ephemerality of sound as a medium.
the produced audio into video. Sergei Tcherepnin also explores the Alongside such contemporary installations, the exhibition also
body as a receiver, a conduit, and a producer of sound. By placing features a selection of musical scores that illustrate innovation
to graphic notation standards since the 15th century: A page from a
15th-century illustrated manuscript, the earliest work in the show,
marks the beginning of written notation. Karlheinz Stockhausen’s
Tierkreis, 1974–75, takes the 12 houses of astrology as its organizing
principle. Cathy Berberian’s Stripsody, 1966, notates cartoon noises
in a pictorial score that parallels Pop art. Iannis Xenakis’s score
for Psappha, 1975, parallels innovations to dance made by members
of the Judson Dance Theatre by removing narrative and affect
from the composition process, reafirming John Cage’s relationship
to choreographer Merce Cunningham. Scott Kiernan’s video
The Devil’s Triangle Reprise, 2006, departs from paper entirely
to use flight patterns from U.S. domestic flights from the Midwest
to the Bermuda Triangle as the means to score a song for harp.
As much a history of technology and graphic notation as it is an
exhibition of recent art practices engaging with sound, “After-
sound” interweaves these three threads to construct a holistic and
comprehensive review of the medium. —Risa Puleo
F R O M TO P : V I N C E N T Z E N G; M I L L E R GA L L E R Y AT C A R N E G I E M E L LO N U N I V E R S I T Y
FROM TOP:
Michael Johnsen
Installation
view of Folk-
Telharmonium,
2015. Recycled
consumer
electronics, sink
traps, magnets,
beeswax, steel
wool, cinnamon,
stapler,
36 x 36 x 18 in.
Jesse Stiles
IR Chorus, 2015.
Candles, infrared
sensors, digital
oscillators,
transducers,
24 x 24 in.

NEW ORLEANS
Jacqueline Humphries
Contemporary Arts Center // November 19, 2015–February 28, 2016
THE VERBIAGE SURROUNDING Humphries’s large-scale abstract

paintings—including the two series here, of silver-pigmented works
and canvases with ultraviolet paint that glows under black light—might
lead you to believe that she’s an artist consumed by seductive special
effects. “I think a painter’s first job is to get someone to look at a
painting,” she notes in the press materials for this museum survey in the
city where she grew up. This straightforward and honest statement,
however, belies the visually complex surfaces that characterize her work.
Downstairs, canvases bring to mind the metallic glint of Warhol’s
“Silver” works, the smudges of Christopher Wool, and the recent
markmaking tendencies of Julie Mehretu. Humphries is acrobatic in her
use of varying patterns and techniques. Visible throughout is a struggle
between orderly, bounded geometries and more expressive marks,
erasures, gouges, and drips. Color contrasts are stark, pitting black and
shining silver against reds and purples. One work, ( ), 2015, is covered in
a staticky pattern of crimson, like a hazy rain of blood falling down the
painting’s surface. Elsewhere, Humphries’s compositions are illed with
row upon row of hole punch–like painted black circles, which appear
mathematically precise from a distance but, up close, are often irregular.
WALTHAM, MASSACHUSETTS O, 2015, is the standout in the room: Its grid of thick, tarlike circles is
scratched and disrupted, and the background itself is covered in densely
Lisa Yuskavage repeated symbols—including what appear to be irst-generation
The Rose Art Museum // September 13–December 13, 2015 emoticons, like :) or :/.
Upstairs, a gallery outfitted with black lights provides a coolly
WHILE YUSKAVAGE’S earliest critics denounced Lisa Yuskavage psychedelic environment for a series of canvases painted with ultraviolet
Big Agnes,
her work as a form of misogyny, curator enamel pigments. What might have been a nifty gimmick is instead
1994. Oil on
Christopher Bedford writes that the artist linen, 64 x 50 in. an awe-inspiring, alien experience, bringing to mind everything from
participates in a vocabulary of empowerment. Gerhard Richter’s brash 1980s palette to the high-impact graphic nature
This retrospective exhibition covering Yuskavage’s 25-year of skateboard design and the fuzzy glow of one of James Turrell’s spaces.
career instead presents a more complicated relationship The colors here are thoroughly unnatural, the hues of Mountain Dew
to the female nude, mediated through issues of class, kitsch, or Orange Crush. One canvas in a ghostly, ghastly green resembles a
pornography, and beauty. By focusing on the artist’s multi- computer monitor that has imploded or blown out, left to emit a swelling
panel series of diptychs, triptychs, and “symbiotic,” or glow. With these works, Humphries shows the ways in which she’s
PXOWLÀJXUHVFHQHVWKHH[KLELWLRQHPSKDVL]HVKHUHQJDJH influenced a younger generation of abstractionists, from
ment with the relational aspects of power. Jacqueline Patrick Brennan to Keltie Ferris. These are paintings that
Naïveté takes on double meaning in Yuskavage’s paintings. Humphries indeed encourage and demand looking, but they move
O, 2015.
The faux innocence of her subject’s simpering faces is Oil on linen, beyond the retinal into registers that are more sensual, and
representative of a femininity complicit in its own subju- 100 x 111 in. even physical. —SI
gation, the same means by which her subjects manipulate
F R O M L E F T: DAV I D Z W I R N E R , N E W YO R K ; JAC Q U E L I N E H U M P H R I E S A N D G R E E N E N A F TA L I , N E W YO R K
power. Each of the earliest paintings in the exhibition,

a quartet of color studies from the series “The Ones That
Don’t Want To,” 1991–92, features a woman whose face and
SXELVHPHUJHIURPDVIXPDWRKD]HRILQWHQVHO\VDWXUDWHG
purple, pink, red, and green. Each face displays a pout
RUDSOHDWKDWPRUSKVLQWRDEODQNIDFHGVWDUHRIGHÀDQFH7KH
Penthouse sexuality of Yuskavage’s women paired with the
VDGZLGHH\HGIDFHVRI3UHFLRXV0RPHQWVÀJXULQHVUHRUJDQL]H
the terms of submission and domination by topping from the
bottom and bottoming from the top simultaneously.
The artist’s masterful handling of the medium borders on
naive painting, engaging with the stylistic tropes of kitsch
and pop-culture aesthetics. References to dated pornography,
too, are found in more than just the subject matter, as with
her approach to light in Day²ZKHUHDÀJXUHLQD
room awash in yellow sunlight is illuminated from behind
as she lifts her shirt to examine her exaggerated anatomy.
Her Technicolor sunsets also nod to animated and illustrated
graphic traditions from the 1970s. Set against such a lurid
backdrop, Piggyback, 2006, negotiates comfort at its turn into
GHSHQGHQF\E\GHSLFWLQJWZRÀJXUHVZKRVHWLJKWHPEUDFH
makes their position on the edge of a cliff precarious. Through-
out her oeuvre, Yuskavage introduces a cringing discomfort
that implicates us as viewers in the roles that we perpetuate
in looking and in life. —RP

REVIEWS
Mark Leckey
Dream English Kid
1964–1999 AD, 2015. 4:3
digital film, surround
sound, 23 min.
LONDON
Mark Leckey
Cabinet // October 16–December 19, 2015
I DON’T KNOW WHEN it started: Such is the by the English comic Kenneth Williams titled
density of Leckey’s new ilm Dream English Kid “On Pleasure Bent,” the title of Leckey’s 2013
1964–1999 AD, 2015, the thick pattern of its exhibition at the Hammer Museum in Los
rhythm, that I could no more identify its irst or Angeles)—Dream English Kid is also threaded
last frame than I could the start or end of a with internal interconnections. Among the
drum loop. The exhibition’s sole work, Dream multiplying leitmotifs, circles, orbs, and disks
English Kid is a collage of new and found phantasmagorically appear and reappear—
footage and sound that—along the lines of in amateur footage of a lunar eclipse; a Frisbee;
Leckey’s iconic 1999 reenvisioning of the U.K. a midcentury rendering of a flying saucer;
rave scene, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore—posits and the shape of a wall-mounted mirror in a
the self as a matter of sampling. Thus, vintage voyeuristic vignette of a woman getting dressed,
footage of the shop front of a forgotten home- a scene that feels like the work’s libidinally
appliance retailer named Electrics cuts to a wall charged core, its Rosebud moment.
scrawled with the word leccy (British slang If there is a psychosexual implication to this,
for home power meters, which, of course, also it’s not a new one: You could compare the
recalls the artist’s name). The film’s title fugue-like recurrence of these images to devices
(another name for Leckey himself ) emerges in the novels of Georges Bataille or the ilms of
MARK LECKEY AND CABINET
momentarily in its soundtrack like a spell, David Lynch. In a way, though, this jarring feeling
each constituent word snatched from songs by of familiarity, of a certain kind of inescapability,
John Lennon, Marianne Faithfull, and the or threshold to subjective experience, is
Pretenders, respectively. precisely the work’s compelling interest, and
Referring in this way back to the artist’s its real achievement. Look forward or think
persona and his existing corpus (among the back, Leckey teases—you’ll end up, either way,
records seen in footage from a vinyl store is one at the same unseen place. —Matthew McLean

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REVIEWS IN BRIEF NEW YORK
Jim Lambie Jason Simon Isabel Legate

Anton Kern Gallery // November 7–December 19, 2015 Callicoon Fine Arts // November 8–December 20, 2015 Motel // November 20–December 13, 2015
A welcome pop of Liberty Green hosts a soul and funk show on Freestanding
irreverence and color, this a public radio station in Upstate New York; sculptures play with
Scottish artist’s latest her listeners include inmates at local state and the logic of retail
L E F T TO R I G H T, TO P TO B OT TO M : J I M L A M B I E A N D A N TO N K E R N GA L L E R Y; Z I N E B S E D I R A , P L U T S C H O W GA L L E R Y, Z U R I C H , A N D TAY M O U R G R A H N E GA L L E R Y; M A R Y H E I L M A N N A N D 3 0 3 GA L L E R Y; JA S O N S I M O N A N D C A L L I C O O N F I N E A R T S ;
outing features potato- federal prisons, and their correspondence fixtures, combining
chip bags engorged with over the years has come to shape the show’s shiny metal poles and
foam, paint-drenched format and direction. With a subtle hand chains with melted-
TAO C H E N G WA N G A N D C O M PA N Y; VA L E R I E S N O B E C K A N D E S S E X S T R E E T; M OT E L ; FA B R I C E G R O U S S E T, T H E E S TAT E O F A L I N A S Z A P O C Z N I KO W/ P I OT R S TA N I S L AW S K I , A DAG P, PA R I S ; G E N E V I E V E H A N S O N A N D H AU S E R & W I R T H

books, and a model train and an elegant sense of place, Simon offers a and-flexed sheaths of
jutting violently out of the layered document of the intersection of mass Plexiglas, whose
wall. The chip bags have culture and mass incar- surfaces are excised
a shiny veneer—purple, Hot Sky, 2015. ceration with found with simple shapes
turquoise, and a silver objects, photographs (clouds, or flowers, or Untitled, 2015.
that seems to allude to Warhol’s famous clouds. of the radio station and minuscule stars). In this
Another piece stitches bicycle inner tubes into Green’s home, an instal- tiny gallery—whose floor the artist has redone
a hanging mobile that floats like a tangled lation displaying a with a layer of pink-and-white checkerboard
molecule over a stack of primary-colored books, selection from the more linoleum—Legate plays with transparency
their titles and contents effaced by layers than 8,000 letters Green and delicacy, with a dose of goofy slapstick,
of pigment. A wall-mounted work—composed has received, and audio caption tk caption tk thanks to bloated “blackberries” and puddles of
of just a rock and a cheap belt—demonstrates offering an archival spilled resin juice strewn here and there.
that Lambie can exercise comparative restraint. sample of the radio show. Detail of 2LGA5, 2015.
Alina Szapocznikow
Zineb Sedira Taocheng Wang Andrea Rosen // October 31–December 5, 2015
Taymour Grahne Gallery // Company // October 18–December 20, 2015
November 12, 2015–January 16, 2016 The late Polish-born
This new body of work uses subtly detailed sculptor infused formal
This mini-survey ink paintings to build a narrative reflecting on experiments in resin, cement,
of Sedira’s the Chinese-born artist’s time working at polyurethane, and found
conceptually driven, a massage parlor in Amsterdam, where she’s materials with an intensely
image-based based. Through mini-portraits of her female psychological approach,
work is a compact coworkers and male clients—many broaching (dis)embodying the human
introduction to her the tension between the human intimacy form in unsettling and
research-based inherent in such a profession and the ways even dissociative ways. This
Sugar Silo I, 2013.
practice. Selections men receiving massages will sexualize their collection of pieces from
Illuminowana (L’Illuminé)
from series that document abandoned ships masseuses, who tend (Illuminated Woman), the 1960s and ‘70s sees
1966–67.
in Mauritania and surviving French colonial-era to be young Asian representational elements—
lighthouses in Algeria, though merely the tip of women—we also are a swath of grass, a photo-transfer of a
the iceberg of those particular subjects of privy to a diary-like young woman’s face—emerging out of waxy,
investigation, well illustrate the artist’s interest view of the embodied oozing shapes. In the gallery’s back room,
in producing a visual language around forgotten experiences of a series of colorful lamps conjoining male
or invisible geographies. A standout video closeness and and female anatomy highlight, in their
in the gallery’s basement is a formally hypnotic alienation Taocheng imaginative physicality, an exploration of
portrait of cars torn apart in a U.K. junkyard. experiences in desire and its complications.
A Client Felt Headache After He
Received Massage Treatment, 2015. this environment.
Mary Heilmann Mark Bradford

303 Gallery // November 5–December 19, 2015 Valerie Snobeck Hauser & Wirth // November 7–December 23, 2015
Essex Street // October 29–December 13, 2015
This show puts forth Two video works—one
a casual, handmade This sparse installation of molded blown-glass featuring joyously
geometry, with paintings vessels takes a potentially precious medium and skittering roller-skate
of unassuming size— gives it the look of dingy, half-crushed found wheels, the other
some irregularly shaped— objects. In cloudy translucent white fading into repurposing an Eddie
that contain right-angle patches of antifreeze blue, marked by yellow Murphy stand-up
zigzags or intersecting stains and trapped dust, the sculptures each routine—bookend this
Cups on a Table, 2009–15.
squares. Heilmann’s possess a wiry show of new works. But
textured application of acrylics and oils, in black tail of sorts the main event here
bright primaries or murky earth tones, aspire to and are displayed is a series of the artist’s
neither total flatness nor intense physicality, atop industrial characteristically
and a few especially playful works see metal counters—an gnarly multilayered Waterfall, 2015.
the addition of ceramic plates to canvas. unsettling marriage painting-collages, whose
Her refreshing approach to abstraction doesn’t of urban detritus scratched, abraded, scuffed, and lively surfaces
Reservoirs with Stains, Dust, and Burns
attempt to break away from lived realities. and clinical stillness. (Wedges and Jams), 2015. really need to be observed nose-close in person.

REVIEWS IN BRIEF MIAMI // LONDON // FRANKFURT
MIAMI LONDON FRANKFURT
Martha Friedman Joy Gerrard Yuki Kishino

Locust Projects // November 7, 2015–January 9, 2016 Peer // October 8–November 28, 2015 1822-Forum // November 10–December 19, 2015
In “Pore,” Friedman The figures in Gerrard’s drawings of protest On my first visit to this show I left immediately,
infuses performance with crowds are tiny dots—just splotches of as I thought they were still installing. The
a pre-Enlightenment ink on paper, washy little smudges. Take a space is empty, but its minimalist adjacent frame
understanding of the step back, though, and these huge, monochrome structures deserve a closer look. The young
human body, by way pictures resolve themselves into astonishingly Japanese artist (who studies at the celebrated
of Postminimalist, detailed depictions of recent rallies and uprisings Städelschule) based them on the programming
Detail from “Pore,” 2015.
process-based sculpture. in cities from New York to Sana’a, Yemen. The term logical OR operator, which is used to create
Friedman divides elevated perspective is reminiscent of CCTV or logical expressions in which only one of two
L E F T TO R I G H T, TO P TO B OT TO M : Z AC K B A L B E R A N D G I N G E R P H OTO G R A P H Y I N C .; S I LV I A R O S ; DAV I D C A S T I L LO GA L L E R Y; J OY G E R R A R D A N D P E E R ; R O D R I G O M AT H E U S , I B I D, A N D GA L E R I A F O R T E S V I L AC A , S AO PAU LO ;
Locust Project’s main galleries with four droop- aerial news footage, yet also conveys something values has to be true for
ing rubber sculptures that blend architecture more grandiose the overall expression to be
and biology. Each is color-coded to correspond and epic: an valid. The architectural
to one of the four humors: blood, phlegm, homage to the and conceptual signature
bile, and black bile—bodily fluids once thought power of repre- of his professor Peter
to govern temperament. Activating the space is sentation, in both Fischli is omnipresent, but
choreography by Silas Riener, who dances a political and it’s certain Kishino’s
among the works while wearing similarly artistic sense. career will stand on its own.
constructed costumes. —HUNTER BRAITHWAITE Protest Crowd, Rio de Janeiro, 2015. —GABRIEL COXHEAD —MIRTHE MARIA BERENTSEN Surface No. 1, 2015.
Rachel Harrison Rodrigo Matheus Ade Darmawan

Bass Museum of Art // Ibid // October 13–December 5, 2015 Portikus // September 19–November 15, 2015
October 13, 2015–January 10, 2016
Dried seahorses, chandelier pendants, medical The work of Dar-
This show spotlights a equipment, antique fans, keys, bells, shells— mawan and his artist
single 58-part work, these are just some of the vast array of collective, ruangrupa,
Voyage of the Beagle, objects fixed to steel brackets that branch is closely entwined
Two, 2008, a reflection from a long, horizontal, wall-mounted bar, the with the political,
F R A N C I S C O V I DA L A N D T I WA N I C O N T E M P O R A R Y; Y U K I K I S H I N O; A D E DA R M AWA N A N D P O R T I K U S ; D O M I N I K M E N T ZO S A N D W I L L I A M F O R S Y T H E
on menhirs—enigmatic arrangement like some sort of jumbled cultural, and social is-
“standing stones” allegory about progress or evolution. In another Installation view of “Magic sues of contemporary
Centre,” 2015.
whose provenance Voyage of the Beagle, Two, 2008.
installation, the lineage becomes even more Indonesia. “Magic
and utility are often chaotic, with bric-a-brac suspended haphazardly Centre” focuses on an Indonesian publisher from
a puzzle. The series, arranged in a long line and from the ceiling in a huge net. the 1960s by the same name. Its books, with
meant to be read left to right, has a strange, Matheus’s point, about how titles such as Hipnotism Praktis and Menik Mati,
goofy rhythm to it. There are many faces, none modernity and industrial- promised to enhance the reader’s intellectual
of them human, though some reside uncom- ization tend to atomize and abilities at a time when Indonesian politics were
fortably in the uncanny valley. Harrison, often fetishize material culture, is marked by nationalism and the development
comedically, jumbles casual photographs of a familiar one, yet made with of capitalism. This colorful patchwork of a show
stones, monuments, mannequins, masks of vari- an endearingly ramshackle is a visual and critical ode to a country in
ous types, dolls, a corrugated-cardboard cutout sense of ebullience. —GC Portraits, 2015. transition, where form and color prevail. —MMB
of a Canadian Mountie, and a can of Wolfgang
Puck’s tomato-basil soup. —SCOTT INDRISEK
Francisco Vidal William Forsythe
Tiwani Contemporary // MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst //
Sanford Biggers November 13–December 19, 2015 October 17, 2015–January 31, 2016
David Castillo Gallery //
December 1, 2015–January 31, 2016 Painted in bright, powerful Around 200 pendu-
colors on sheets of paper Vidal lums hang from
A facedown, partly has made himself, his finished the ceiling and swing
deflated vinyl likeness works consist of multiple in a rhythmic, almost
of Fat Albert anchors panels stapled across the meditative state.
this drifting, melan- walls and ceiling, sometimes Forsythe, a choreog-
cholic exhibition. Titled overlapping each other several rapher who produces City of Abstracts, 2000.
Installation view of “Matter,” 2015.

Laocoon, 2015, Biggers layers deep. The result is site-specific installa-
Free No. 8, 2015.
drops the umlaut from an immersive environment, an tions for his dancers, has made an environment
the Laocoön of antiquity for a racial pun to match intoxicating riot of figurative, typographic, and where ideas and experiences are prioritized
the devastating implications of this compact solo abstract forms that refer to his Angolan heritage over authorship or ego. Here, he enters into a
exhibition, which accompanies a simultaneous and the history of colonialism. There’s so much dialogue about the boundaries of the body,
show of photographs by Xaviera Simmons. With going on that it’s hard to know where to look, engaging with pieces by the likes of Bruce
one foot in the zeitgeist—Bill Cosby, Black Lives but perhaps the most striking elements are Nauman and Teresa Margolles. Not just physical
Matter—and another in his own polyphony, Biggers his depictions of cotton flowers on supports made movement or objects, Forsythe’s work offers
riffs movingly on abjecthood and objecthood, from metal machetes, like windows somehow a way of thinking, a medium with which to shape,
matter and substance. —MOSTAFA HEDDAYA carved from the dizzying maelstrom. —GC analyze, and transform existing contexts. —MMB

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PARTING SHOT // LESLIE STEIN
A page from
Leslie Stein’s
Bright-Eyed at
Midnight, 2015.
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and by that I suppose I mean “art made
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mostly hung against bare white walls”?
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NORMAN BLUHM / BLACK CARD (1961) / Oil on canvas / 84” x 72” / $40,000–60,000
MODERN ART & DESIGN

Featuring Frank Lloyd Wright’s George D. Sturges Residence and property
from the Estate of Jack Larson to benefit The Bridges/Larson Foundation
FEBRUARY 21, 2016

BOND # 7900405194
Also including Fine Art from an Important West Coast Collection with select works by
Norman Bluhm, Nabil Nahas, Steve Roden, Lawrence Carroll, and James Havard
PETER LOUGHREY, DIRECTOR | 16145 HART ST., VAN NUYS, CA 91406 | 323-904-1950 | LAMODERN.COM

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