RYOJI IKEDA the transfinite

Had three minutes to stop by the opening of Ryoji Ikeda's new installation at the Park Avenue Armory, which was probably best because the place was packed! I am looking forward to heading back on an off day and having the place to myself - I imagine it will be somewhat formidable in that big drill hall, in the dark, with alien-like music coupled with the mad-scientists like movement of the numbers and lines, but I am totally up for the experience. Enjoy some videos below, sorry I am not a better videographer.   www.armoryonpark.org 

Performa 2011

Elmgreen & Dragset AND Ragnar Kjartansson both signed-up for Performa 2011 - this is going to be one god damn amazing fall! 


See the Press Release HERE 

Performa 09 in Times Square 

Link to Performa's website 

Gallery Line Up

This Saturday we're hitting West Chelsea - below is our top 22 of the weekend - hoping to make it to all, aggressive, but doable (need to keep the drinking at a minimum at brunch). 


Donald Judd at David Zwirner
525 W 19
http://www.davidzwirner.com/ 

Foreclosed at The Kitchen
512 W 19
http://www.thekitchen.org/

Cao Fei at Lombard-Freid
518 W 19
http://www.lombard-freid.com/

Donald Lokuta at Hpgrp
529 W 20 2W
http://www.hpgrpgallery.com/

Tim Knowles at Bitforms
529 W 20 2nd Flr
http://www.bitforms.com/index.php

Square Dancing at Nyehaus
358 W 20
http://www.nyehaus.com/

Aaron Young at Bortolami
520 W 20
http://www.bortolamigallery.com/

Keith Haring at Gladstone
530 W 21
http://www.gladstonegallery.com/

Sol LeWitt at Paula Cooper
534 W 21
http://www.paulacoopergallery.com/

Locations at Paula Cooper
521 W 21
http://www.paulacoopergallery.com/

Kara Walker at Sikkema
530 W 22
http://www.sikkemajenkinsco.com/

Philippon and Lecoq at Demisch
542 W 22
http://www.demischdanant.com/

Chamberlain at Pace
545 W 22
http://thepacegallery.com/

John Chamberlain at Gagosian
555 W 24
http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2011-05-05_john-chamberlain/

Martin Kipperberger at Luhring
531 W 24
http://www.luhringaugustine.com/

Mary Henderson at Lyons Wier
542 W 24
http://www.lyonswiergallery.com/

Gunderson at ClampArt
521 W 25
http://clampart.com/

EV Day at Salomon
526 W 26 #519
http://www.salomoncontemporary.com/

Harma Heikens at Witzenhausen
547 W 27 #530
http://www.witzenhausengallery.nl/exhibition_detail.php?idxEvent=299

Chris Marker at Peter Blum
526 W 29
http://peterblumgallery.com/exhibitions/2011/passengers

Cleon Peterson at Joshua Liner
548 W 28 3rd Flr
http://joshualinergallery.com/exhibitions/peterson_white_flag_may_17_2011/

Live from Detroit at Fred Torres
527 W 29
http://www.fredtorres.com/exhibition-space/2011-04-14_live-from-detroit/

Los Angeles Spring 11

Los  Angles Recap

It wasn’t a weekend defined by art (that will come in October for http://pacificstandardtime.org/), but we covered a lot of ground in three days. The weekend started out with MOCA PDC to see the Rodarte: States of Matter exhibit. The PDC branch of MOCA is great as it’s in the middle of West Hollywood and a small space – perfect for a pop-in, which we did after breakfast at Urth and on our way to Santa Monica.  The exhibit was haunting with almost death-like black dresses and costumes from Black Swan suspended from the ceiling with very minimal, eerie lighting. This was the highlight of the exhibit as it was a true transition from the blazing Southern California sun into this dark world. Your eyes hurt from the drastic shift in perception. When I was in LA last fall, I felt the same way about this ground floor space with Ryan Trecartin’s exhibition, the upstairs just doesn’t cut it for some reason. This time the lighting, which was at least a few dozen two-foot long halogen boxes on the floor was not working. I imagine the space feels completely different with the lighting and therefore we glanced at the three vignettes of white and red dress – a clear separation between ethereal, virgin-like frocks and blood-red devilish ensembles. We rolled out in 15 minutes flat – which I knew we would.

Later that day we hit LACMA for the Human Nature exhibition, a David Smith retrospective and Firooz Zahedi’s photos of Liz Taylor in Iran. I was excited to see the pavilions again (the new Renzo Piano “Resnick Pavilion” just opened in the fall) and to see the new pieces at the Broad. Human Nature obviously featured some great Bruce Nauman works (as he has used that phrase in a lot of his themes and works). In addition, there were considerable pieces from new artists I had not heard of again. Besides the quintessential Nauman’s, there was a great Muslim prayer mat made out of small needles with a compass in the middle – a great, tactile piece that really spoke to current cultural issues. The show started off really strong with the heavy hitters but got continually flatter the more we moved through it. The show ended with an oversized kitty litter box that was bigger than a king bed – reminded me of Charles Ray but it wasn’t.

The David Smith exhibition was the highlight of LACMA. He is an artist I am familiar with but have never seen a collection of his work to this extent. It was great to see all the varied pieces, the geometry of the works and his inspiration. Also, the Piano-designed galleries were amazing – the way the light was diffused and the scale of the spaces really were the perfect backdrops to see such influential works.

Finally, we went to the Ahmanson building to see the Liz Taylor photographs. I was surprised to see how outdated the building was – it felt like I was back in an old college library with wood-paneled walls and dropped ceilings. It was weird and somewhat alarming as the Renzo Piano buildings obviously cost tens of millions of dollars, yet the existing buildings need a serious makeover. It’s unclear to me why they’d spend so much on new buildings but leave the existing ones in 1970s conditions. The Liz Taylor photos were great and worth the pop-in, but nothing amazing.

Later that night, we ran over to Regen Projects for the opening of Walead Beshty. Since the bf and I are considering an eventual move west, to follow all the art luminaries who have already started the Western migration, we were excited to see the crowd and the set-up of an LA gallery reception. The crowd was a good mix of real people, LA hippies, hipsters and art lunatics with a surprisingly small percentage of homos. When we entered the exhibit I was surprised to realize I had already seen his work at MoMA in the New Photography series last fall (another reminder I am entering full-on artfag status). The art was very interesting – striped down works. Per the press release:

Beshty's large-scale "Black Curl" photograms are seductive and elusive works that refer to both the analog beginnings of photography and mine the gaps in the medium's historical narrative. 

They look like color spectrum, beautiful large sheets of paper – the size of a single mattress (not sure why all the bed references) with the edges of the paper still slightly curled – a great effect I really embraced. He also had a series he called The Copper Surrogates, which were in a way photographic molds of the spaces in his gallery – but made out of copper. The pieces were very tactile yet smooth and rough at the same time, very simple works with a lot to say. My favorite, however was the “Make-Ready” series made from discarded paper used for the catalog compressed together they made landscaped works that were simple, elegant and somewhat earthy in their color and texture, like a desert landscape on the wall. I don’t know if I’d want any of these pieces in my home, but found them interesting and refreshing.

The same night of the Regen opening, MOCA was opening the Art in the Streets exhibit at the Geffen – still one of my favorite spaces in LA  (I can still remember the impact seeing Altered States there in 2005). We couldn’t make it downtown as we had dinner reservations on the Westside, but on Monday, we found time to shoot downtown and see the exhibit. The show was impressive and it was pulling in a crowd that probably wouldn’t be at Walead Beshty but I found the whole thing to be very noisy and chaotic and not focused or sophisticated. Now this is graffiti art, so what should I expect, right? In hindsight, I think that’s the best part about the Geffen, its rambling space and towering ceilings provide a lot of flexibility for curating. In full disclosure, by the time we got there, I’d been on three restless nights and so I wasn’t as focused as I should have been and more of a sourpuss than I normally am – which is not cute. I think I would have learned more had I been more focused, but due to a restless haze, I became increasing annoyed at the amateur feeling to the show. But honestly, there were some beautiful works – intricate, colorful, mind-blowing works that really did wake me up. As is the theme in my life, I wish I would have had more time to linger, but we had to run to a dinner back on the Westside.

That was it for our LA art adventures. I still didn’t hit L&M (http://www.lmgallery.com/exhibitions/?view=losangeles) or Bergamot Station in Santa Monica (http://bergamotstation.com/) but if the financial gods align, I will make our fall trip for Pacific Standard Time an all-out art expedition followed by some downtime in SF and Napa.