interviews March 03, 2020

Rivane Neuenschwander

Fitting that this conversation was made possible through translation: The Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander’s oeuvre, spanning some thirty years, is dotted with experiments in the misuse, repurposing, and dislocation of language. Our interview was anchored by the words carta, residue, and fear. Echoing the approach of her room-size installation Work of Days, 1998, which was recently on view in “Surrounds” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, this text gathers some of the threads and effects of pieces she has recently shown and plots them against the grid of her career.

THE FIRST WORK I

print March 2020

Luis Camnitzer

An unsettling presence pervades Luis Camnitzer’s El mirador (The Observatory), 1996, a room-within-a-room whose components—including a stained pillow, an enamel plate, a few magazines, and a (mostly) empty bottle of wine—suggest an inhabitant. Have they died or, in some mysterious way, just disappeared? The sliding metal gate above a shelf built into the installation’s inaccessible door—through which that dish might be slid back and forth, full or empty of food—likens these quarters to a prison cell. Surveillance could be facilitated by the fist-size horizontal gap running at eye level along

books February 2020

LEAVES OF GRASS

SCROLL WAS FIRST USED AS A VERB in the 1600s to describe a particular method of writing. Its current definition, having more to do with the navigation of text than with its creation, was introduced in the early 1970s, at the same time that Michelle Stuart finished her first banner-like frottage of a patch of ground—in this case, in Woodstock, New York. In the contemporary context, scrolling is so effortless—requiring just the touch of a finger to touch pad or screen—that it hardly seems to qualify as an action. But centuries ago, it might have involved slowly unwinding yards of parchment from

interviews September 10, 2019

Mona Hatoum

Many of Mona Hatoum’s installations employ just one or two materials (barbed wire, cement and rebar, steel, hair) to transform recognizable symbols and forms (maps, globes, spheres, cubes) into portentous iterations. The results can be seen as succinct metaphors for the world as it is—or as models of the future. In an exhibition at White Cube in London titled “Remains to be Seen,” on view from September 11 to November 3, 2019, Hatoum is debuting several pieces that move further in the latter direction, bringing together images of the world lit up by fire, a shattered map of floating continents,

previews September 2019

KAARI UPSON

Curated by Elena Filipovic (Basel)

Curated by Kathleen Rahn (Hannover)

Kaari Upson’s disquieting new video for her Kunsthalle Basel exhibition transports viewers to the dusty lot of her childhood home in San Bernardino, California. The sound of a giant pine being sawed to bits overwhelms the nighttime scene. Upson appears in the frame, spotlit, wringing her hands, attempting to speak over the noise of the machinery. Despair and confusion characterize the best of Upson’s oeuvre, which will be surveyed in a nearly concurrent show at Kunstverein Hannover. This dual presentation is fitting for an

print September 2019

Olga Balema

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 . . . The integers titling Olga Balema’s thirteen works, all produced this year, descended unsteadily in a clockwise direction from Bridget Donahue’s entrance. Each number corresponded to a diagrammatic composition of thin elastic strips, some of which were stretched out in lengths of up to forty-five feet, raised slightly above the floor by the nails and staples that held them in place. In some areas the strands were split in two or glued together to create intersections, mostly at right angles; elsewhere, extraneous bands curled underfoot, like crimped ribbons or dried flora,

picks July 10, 2019

Rachel Libeskind and Carmen Winant

The announcement for Rachel Libeskind and Carmen Winant’s show tells us that the artists “practice feminism and motherhood,” as if these were optional items on a menu of exercise regimens. Yet both of them do attempt to grapple with the historic packaging and narrativization of women’s bodies and psyches.

Winant’s memorable installation at the Museum of Modern Art last year, My Birth, 2018, required the viewer to pass through a long hallway plastered with pictures of newborns, pregnancies, and women in labor. Here, her collages focus on found material about “embodied treatments”—such as dance or

print May 2019

Sonya Blesofsky

After Sonya Blesofsky’s show at Spencer Brownstone Gallery closed, the gallery’s walls had to be reconstructed. The bricks, concrete blocks, two-by-fours, heating ducts, electrical outlets, and insulation that had been temporarily revealed through cutouts in the Sheetrock and scraped-away paint were entombed once more. In 1933, the current site of the gallery was just a yard appended to the address of 172 Suffolk Street and zoned for commercial use: “monumental works and showroom,” according to a legal certificate. In 1945, the lot’s use was clarified for the “display and sales of monumental

print May 2019

Liz Magor

A gesture that recurs in Liz Magor’s recent work is the needy and desperate embrace—the full-bodied attachment of a subject to an object of comfort. In her 2017–18 show at Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York, the hybrid stuffed animals of Oilmen’s Bonspiel (a kitty-faced monkey) and Pembina (a pig-headed teddy bear), both 2017, each hugged a heavy knit sweater around the waist. More recently, at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, a creature the size of a Beanie Baby grasped the tails of a soft coat in Closet (fur), 2018, while silicone casts of larger plush beasties held

picks March 28, 2019

Aki Sasamoto

The trio of spherical glass volumes in Aki Sasamoto’s installation here are reminders of all that is circular in her work: the wall drawings in performances such as Strange Attractors, 2010; the toilet paper rolls of Under/Over, 2015; the rotating washing machines of Delicate Cycle, 2016; the doughnuts in her newest video (on view here), Do Nut Diagram, 2018; and even the suggestive displacement of “Past in a future tense,” the title of this exhibition.

A loud whirring sound emanates from three centrifugal fans; the wind is channeled through coiling HVAC ducts that are connected to three large

interviews March 26, 2019

Nina Katchadourian

The categories of work listed on Nina Katchadourian’s website include “uninvited collaborations with nature,” “charts and systems,” and “language/translation.” Stemming from these topics, the artist’s highly structured experiments often begin with found objects and absurd situations that she disentangles, only to find that they are part of the larger webs of identity and relationships. Her current exhibition at Fridman Gallery in New York, “Ification,” includes several of her best-known pieces in addition to The Recarcassing Ceremony, 2016, a video that revisits an old recording of a childhood

print February 2019

Marcel Storr

One can imagine self-taught artist Marcel Storr (1911–1976) in 1964, his head bent low over the Paris streets he was employed to sweep, as he studied the staggered patterns of the cobblestones. Back at his home in the ninth arrondissement, not far from the ornate Église de la Sainte-Trinité and the historic Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, he would dream up his own extraordinary ecclesiastical sites through a series of graphite and colored-ink drawings, roughly sixty-four in total, that he produced over the course of his lifetime. Though the significant gap in information about Storr’s life prohibits a

picks January 18, 2019

Eleanor Ray

I am standing in a sparse room, looking out a window. The view is familiar because of its frequent depiction. The bright light outside dictates harsh shadows, dark triangles within the concrete boxes of Donald Judd’s sculptures arranged elegantly on the plains of Marfa, Texas.

The painting I describe, Marfa Window, 2017, is one in a group of works by Eleanor Ray. I stand close enough to her small panels that the images break down, becoming a series of soft geometric forms. The compositions have the tightness of photographs, and the light is plein air. Art and earth play shadow games. A window

print January 2019

CLOSE UP: IN ANOTHER VEIN

A KNIFE PUNCTURES FLESH. The blade enters a nasal passageway, and the camera shakes with every cut. Tweezers penetrate the frame and tug out a lump of bloody tissue and bone. “Nothing to worry about,” the surgeon says. Quivering atop a piece of medical gauze, the extracted substance resembles a slug, or a sliver of tongue. “Who are you?” the young patient asks, frowning. “We are your inferior turbinates,” the lump replies, now personified by a pair of adolescents wrapped in pink sleeping bags. Thus begins the young patient’s nightmare, starring a giant papier-mâché nose—a proxy for her own.

previews January 2019

“WONG PING: GOLDEN SHOWER”

Curated by Elena Filipovic

Do you know why love is shown in the shape of a red heart? The narratives in Wong Ping’s beguiling animations revolve around obsessions not only with every kind of human appendage—long noses included—but also with things: Popsicles, sweat, teeth, turnstiles, and videotapes. It’s exciting, then, to hear that Wong’s first institutional solo exhibition will focus on his wonderfully visceral videos (including the sequel to Wong Ping’s Fables 1, 2017, which will debut here) as well as on his bemusing sculptures and installations, existing and newly commissioned.

print December 2018

EJ Hill

A white neon sign announced the subjects of EJ Hill’s “An Unwavering Tendency Toward the Center of a Blistering Sun”: HERE STOOD HE, / STOICALLY AND VALIANTLY, / FOR THOSE WHOSE BURDENS LIE / DARKLY / IN EVEN THE HIGHEST OF NOONS. / JUNE 3 – SEPTEMBER 2, 2018. Given that the sign was rendered in capital letters, a viewer might have first thought that “he” referred to the almighty “Him.” The dates also suggested that this could have been culled from a eulogy. Both references are useful, as those days bracketed Hill’s performance at the Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A. 2018” this past summer, for

print November 2018

Brian Dario, Liza Lacroix, and Vladislav Markov

The palette of this three-person show was dominated by brown hues: in the crude-oil-like sheen of paintings by Liza Lacroix, the grimy residues of sweaty hands and raw materials in sculptures by Brian Dario, and the delicate gradations of burnt umber to dark tan in an installation by Vladislav Markov. Materially, each work was in some way stained. The protective panels of suede in Dario’s Foam, 2018—a foot-and-a-half-high stack of eighteen single, used work gloves—looked rough, teased into a texture resembling sandpaper. Markov’s long sheets of old toilet paper, xC, 2017, which had

picks October 02, 2018

Dorian Gaudin

In the center of Dorian Gaudin’s current show is The coffee cup spring (all works 2018), a giant yellow conveyor belt that forms an elaborate loop through the space—a rectangular prism with additional horizontal, vertical, and upside-down segments. The belt itself is composed only of two chains, which carry not consumer products but two lone objects rendered in fiberglass: a disposable coffee cup and a houseplant. Jerking along endlessly at a rate slower than a moving sidewalk, the objects almost mount a commentary on postconsumer waste. (Perhaps the brown planter could be made from the recycled

interviews October 2018

1000 WORDS: WILL RAWLS

AT THE START of each of his “Cursor” performances, Will Rawls introduces the working concept for the series: “Cursor, from the Latin root meaning ‘run’ or ‘runner,’ is a movable, usually black, and blinking figure that indicates the position on a screen where the next character will appear, or where user action is needed.” He then proceeds to the rear of the audience, where, taking a seat, he begins typing into a document that is projected at the front for all to see. Sometimes enunciating each letter and symbol as an individual sound, some-times pronouncing whole words or syllables, Rawls’s

picks September 05, 2018

Richanda Rhoden

Richanda Rhoden’s story ended like many others. Her husband’s work found its way into a permanent collection after his death, following a life full of admirable exhibitions and honors. His New York Times obituary mentions her only as his wife. Her obituary in the Brooklyn Heights Press (the Rhodens’ neighborhood publication) mentions him, his work, and finally her “very beautiful paintings,” most of which never left their house—aside from the dozen or so that were selected by her neighbor, Emily Weiner (one of Soloway’s cofounders), for this posthumous first exhibition.

Such a story could easily

Mira Dayal