print May 1997

Dexter Gordon

On six discs that sound exactly right, Blue Note has reissued all of DEXTER GORDON’s original sessions with the label, recorded between 1961 and 1965. Blue Note’s distinctive hard-bop sound, a melodic mix of down-tempo bebop, gospel, and blues, became so popular it got to be synonymous with jazz. Especially in the hands of Gordon—a tenorman who knew his way around a song like few other players before or since. You listen to a cut like “Willow Weep for Me,” on disc four, and it’s as though he had simply figured out how it was meant to be played all along.

Smooth and fluid, but never reluctant to

print May 1997

Münster Sculpture Show

ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING aspects of the Münster Sculpture Show in 1987 was simply walking around, trying to find the work. Since the site-specific pieces were frequently designed to blend in with their surroundings, subtly commenting on the various public spaces of this resurrected university town (like many German cities, Münster had to be largely reconstructed after World War II), one was forced into an intimate acquaintance with the city while hunting for the art. Ten years later, this summer’s installment of “Skulptur: Projekte in Münster” promises to remake its host once again. According

print May 1997

Dennis Balk

Charting the points where the outer limits of theoretical physics meets the out-there limits of the metaphysical, Dennis Balk has created objects to go along with a discourse that hovers between real science and a science of the Real. Balk’s drawings on vinyl and Masonite sure look like science: there are computer-generated pictures of electromagnetic anomalies with names like “Houdini knot,” complete with impenetrable commentary, scrawled Magic Marker notations about “appearance frequency,” and plasma fields; there are rows of numbers and graphs where the y-axis equals time and the x-axis equals

previews May 1997

Stenberg Brothers: Constructing a Revolution in Soviet Design

In the early days of a triumphant Russian Revolution, when the avant-garde seemed the best hope for leading the way toward the future, the brothers Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg foresaw a workers’ utopia that would be equal parts dynamism and gloriously hard work. Together they set out to design the cutting edge, working on projects from theater sets and costumes to bridges and automobile plants. Curated by Christopher Mount from MoMA’s architecture and design department, the Brothers Stenberg’s first retrospective features around 100 posters, paintings, drawings, and “spatial constructions” in

previews May 1997

Truce: Echoes of Art in an Age of Endless Conclusions

Focusing on the fast-approaching end of a rather hectic century, Francesco Bonami, US editor of Flash Art known for curating “Campo,” a show of photo-based work by young artists at 1995’s Venice Biennale, is assembling an international cast for the second biennial at SITE Santa Fe. Emphasizing the newly global and necessarily multicultural community, Bonami is gathering works by twenty-seven artists from twenty countries and six continents, ranging from installations by the Romanian artists duo Subreal and allegorical boat pieces by Cuban artist Kcho to the low-key portraits of American Elizabeth

previews May 1997

L’autre

Since 1991, the biennial in Lyons has featured the art of both well-known and emerging artists from around the world. Always structured around themes, previous biennials have explored the shifting paradigms of what constitutes art (“Et tous ils changent le monde,” 1993) and showcased work in new media (“Cinema, Video, Informatic,” 1995). For this year’s installment, artistic directors Thierry Raspail and Thierry Prat have engaged legendary curator and Documenta veteran Harald Szeemann for “L’autre,” which examines myriad forms of alterity, otherness, and difference—personal, political, physical,

previews May 1997

David Hammons

From the snowballs he once hawked on a street corner to his installation that blended in among the wares of a Tribeca store specializing in African and Asian artifacts, David Hammons’ ephemeral and quotidian work has mixed wit and biting social commentary. His project in Bern, organized by Kunsthalle director Ulrich Loock, represents a departure of sorts: rather than objects for display, it’s a series of site-specific sound installations. What’s there for the visitor is a set of musical environments, explorations of blues, jazz, and rap. May 16-June 29

previews May 1997

Bruce Nauman: Image/Text 1966-1996

Few figures in contemporary art cast a longer shadow than Bruce Nauman. As his recent traveling retrospective showed, for the last three decades he has staked out a range of concepts and practices while the rest of the contemporary-art world seemed to follow in tow. Now, curator Christine Van Assche of the Centre Georges Pompidou has brought together fifty-two of Nauman’s works, offering a specifically European perspective on the artist. Arranged thematically, the show focuses on the artist’s relationship to language—written, oral, and musical—across various media, including sound and video,

print April 1997

Low

For a while there, LOW was pretty much the best band that you’d never heard of working in America. Like a secret that the indie-rock world was keeping, this spare and lovely thing hid quietly amongst a million screaming guitars. Some people heard them, maybe, on that Joy Division tribute album Means To An End, where they did this version of “Transmission,” at once lugubrious and beautiful, slowed down well beyond even Ian Curtis’ depressive tempo. Or maybe people bought Long Division or I Could Live in Hope. But apparently none of them worked for Rolling Stone or MTV. So you didn’t hear much

print April 1997

“PUSH-UPS”

On a certain level, the Athens Fine Art School was the most appropriate possible setting for Emily Tsingou’s group exhibition of recent video installations and projections by nineteen artists entitled “PUSH-UPS.” Essentially a DIY project put together over a period of years by the students and teachers who took over this broken shell of a building, the school is an immense and beautiful open space reclaimed from the ruins of an abandoned industrial zone. In the same way, as the title implies, “PUSH-UPS” presented a wide range of contemporary video practice within a larger framework of DIY

print April 1997

Americana Websites

Back in the good old days, America produced cars that consisted of tons of Detroit steel and tail fins and backseats that you could rent out as condos. Back in the good old days, plastic was the novelty of the future—magical stuff that could be anything, in any color you wanted. Back in the good old days, our heroes drank like fish and smoked like chimneys and were totally unapologetic about it; they had names like Dean and Frank and Clint. We wore plaid Bermuda shorts when we went abroad waving our almighty greenbacks. No one told us we looked like idiots when we did these things: people feared us with our gas-guzzling autos and ugly clothes and boring, monochrome money. Because America ruled the world then, but that shouldn't stop any of us now from indulging in a little cheap-jack nostalgia for the good old days. Hence, this month's theme: Americana.

Mark Van de Walle writes regularly for Artforum.

print March 1997

Work Sites

There’s this ongoing argument around my house about whether or not time spent on the Web constitutes work time or play time. To get around it, whenever anybody starts looking over my shoulder, I get rid of The Quake Stomping Grounds, and immediately go to one of these sites—pre—opened on a separate browser. Here, to help in your own quest for that hard—at—work feeling (and actual information), is this month’s Hot List.

Mark Van de Walle writes regularly for Artforum.