Art in America articles from November 2008

Art in America archives from November 2008

New leaders for Major NYC Museums.(FRONT PAGE)
November 1, 2008... For months, art-world observers had made a parlor game of speculating about who would replace long-time Metropolitan Museum director Philippe de Montebello and Guggenheim Foundation head Thomas Krens. The suspense ended in September. And the...

From the studio to your monitor.(FRONT PAGE)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... If you've ever wanted to visit an artist's studio for a revealing chat, now is your virtual chance. Over the last several months, both PBS's Art:21 and Independent Curators International (iCI) have introduced online videos featuring artists...

Conversation with a Pop-Art Maestro.(Robert Indiana)(Interview)
November 1, 2008... EAT The Electric EAT, 1964-2007, aluminum and lights, 78 by 78 by 7 inches. All photos this article, unless otherwise noted, courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York. This interview was compiled from several conversations with the...

Slippery slopes in the dolomites: a premier mechanism of cultural exchange across Europe's porous, post-Cold War borders, Manifesta has, in its seventh version, ventured to a remote region of Italy.(MANIFESTA)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The 7th edition of Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, consists of four exhibitions conceived by three curatorial teams led by Adam Budak, Anselm Franke and Hila eeleg, and the Delhi-based Raqs...

NY galleries.(Directory)
November 1, 2008... CHELSEA Aperture Gallery 547 West 27th Street, 4th FI, New York, NY 10001 Tel: 212.505.5555 Fax: 212.5053527 Email: publicity@aperture.org Website: www.aperture.org Tuesday-Saturday: 10:00-6:00 November...

Faith-based initiatives: curator Franklin Sirmans's look at the spiritual side of contemporary art takes its cue from a writer's vision of religious expression in folk culture.
November 1, 2008... According to Franklin Sirmans, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Menil Collection in Houston, "'NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith' grew out of a desire to examine the multiple meanings of spirituality in contemporary art." The...

Sue Williams: David Zwirner.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... In 1999, Sue Williams told Grady T. Turner, in Flash Art, "My images will probably always start with a line that's part of a body. That's the compulsion behind the line." With the seven large oil paintings and eight drawings in ink and acrylic...

Matthew Day Jackson: Nicole Klagsbrun and Peter Blum.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Given the barrage of references--historical, literary, scientific, cultural, artistic--in this pair of exhibitions, it is a surprise that the young, Brooklyn-based Matthew Day Jackson manages to put a personal stamp on such a broad...

Byron Kim: Max Protetch.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] Byron Kim's exhibition, "The UN Building, Irwin's Disc and Other Paintings," offered relief from the eyeball-sizzling juvenilia local art often feels mired in. Kim's paintings (all 2008) do not lend themselves to a...

Alix Pearlstein: The Kitchen.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Streaming across four big screens in the Kitchen's gallery space were the waxing and waning interactions of eight youngish performers locked in a circular pageant of hectic intrigue and confrontation. Alix Pearlstein's four-channel video...

Keith Edmier: Friedrich Petzel.
November 1, 2008... Imagine the opportunity to revisit your childhood home, not as it would be today but pretty much as it was when you were four years old. This is the fantasy Keith Edmier has fulfilled with "Bremen Towne," an installation produced for a recent...

Martha Rosier: Mitchell-Innes & Nash.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... The problem with activist art has always been the passivity of viewers. Having considered the issue from a number of angles, Martha Rosier decided to install, for this exhibition, a turnstile requiring visitors to deposit a quarter before...

Thomas Nozkowski: PaceWildenstein.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Veteran abstractionist Thomas Nozkowski showed some 20 paintings in the main space here, oil on linen on panel, all of them 22 by 28 inches. In an adjoining room was an equal number of oils on paper, all a uniform 22 by 30 inches. Nozkowski is...

Helen Miranda Wilson: DC Moore.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Wilson calls her recent series of small oil-on-panel paintings, none larger than 20 by 16 inches, simply "Stripes"; but she does not embrace the minimalistic attitude this generic title implies. We learn from Hayden Herrera's catalogue...

Katy Moran: Andrea Rosen.(NEW YORK)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... The excellent young British painter Katy Moran made her solo American debut with a series of small, discreet, tasteful paintings. Rather than shout for attention with novelty, they seem meant to look--with their accomplished brushwork and...

Peter Tollens: Margarete Roeder.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Cologne-based Peter Tollens's nominally monochrome paintings are full of quiet dappled light. His recent New York exhibition constituted something of a survey, with works dating from 1991 to 2007. Most were very modestly sized rectangles,...

Sarah Braman: Museum 52.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Though she is well-known among habitues of the Lower East Side, sculptor Sarah Braman is no city slicker. In her central Massachusetts studio, she typically works in series ("batches," she calls them) that are defined by a particular unifying...

Sudarshan Shetty: Jack Tilton.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Mumbai-based Sudarshan Shetty, who has been showing internationally for some time, recently had his first New York solo exhibition at Tilton. The eight mechanized sculptures (all untitled, 2008) seemed to extend the scope of the automated...

Al Taylor: Zwirner & Wirth.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... This elegant, witty show offered access to the early work of the late, underknown AI Taylor through an engaging assortment of found materials, including broom handles, woodshop scraps and lengths of wire variously joined, suspended, drawn taut,...

Mark Dion: Tanya Bonakdar.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... For his fourth show at Bonakdar, Mark Dion made a Wunderkammer--a cabinet of curiosities, an encyclopedic collection of objects, focusing on the historical, geological, archival, natural and archeological. Such collections began in the 16th...

Larry Poons: Jacobson Howard.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Friedel Dzubas Leslie Feely [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Two recent, concurrent exhibitions--"Larry Poons: Throw, Pour, Drip, Spill & Splash, Paintings 1971-1980" at Jacobson Howard Gallery and "Friedel Dzubas: Paintings of the 1970s and...

New York Cool: Grey Art Gallery.(NEW YORK)(New York Cool: Painting and Sculpture from the NYU Art Collection)
November 1, 2008... Revisionist history is setting its sights on the 1950s and '60s, decades often described in broad strokes, both artistically and culturally. "New York Cool: Painting and Sculpture from the NYU Art Collection" was a small but ambitious show that...

Ophrah Shemesh: Freight + Volume.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... In figurative paintings executed in oil and egg emulsion on linen, the Israeli-born artist Ophrah Shemesh uses visual devices that reference photography, such as the close-up and dramatic cropping, blurriness and jumps in scale. Shemesh's...

Bruce Nauman: Sperone Westwater.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Few living artists have anything close to Bruce Nauman's stature. Like Duchamp and Warhol, he is legendary for having had every good idea first and, like them also, for being massively--that is, paradoxically--elusive. This welcome, bracing...

Warren Isensee: Danese.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... This midcareer painter's previous solo show here, in 2006, was widely noted for its marriage of effulgent color and workmanlike, featureless surfaces. Isensee has further refined his vocabulary of shapes and broadened his chromatic repertoire....

John Chamberlain: PaceWildenstein.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... John Chamberlain's latest show at PaceWildenstein was such a tour de force, rve been wondering if the 81-year-old sculptor isn't the Rodney Dangerfield of the art world. Does Chamberlain get the respect he merits? Sure, he's been feted at...

Andro Wekua: Barbara Gladstone.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Andro Wekua forges tableaux that promise glimpses into his personal psychology while stopping short of establishing any clear narrative. "Blue Mirror," his second solo show at Gladstone, was a multifaceted rift, combining large ceramic vases,...

Silvio Wolf: Robert Mann.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... "Voyager," Silvio Wolf's exhibition of large-scale chromogenic dye coupler prints, aimed for mystical heights. The Milanese artist's statement tells us that the show was conceived "as a literal and metaphorical journey through the gallery...

Seton Smith: Winston Wachter.(NEW YORK)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Seton Smith's photographic work in "Doors and Windows Outside" is devoted to forested landscapes and details of aluminum and glass doorways and storefronts. These are largely monochromatic, in muted, near opalescent...

Paolo Ventura: Hasted Hunt.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'Winter Stories," the title of Paolo Ventura's latest series of photographs (2007), refers, literally, to the season depicted, but also, more figuratively, to the final season of one's life. Ventura conceived of the...

Yun Gee and Li-lan: Jason McCoy.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... "Experiences of Passage: The Paintings of Yun Gee and Li-lan" included paintings representative of the careers of a father and daughter. Yun Gee (1906-1963), one of the first Asian-American modernists and increasingly appreciated as a painter...

Marianne Weil: Kouros.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... "Los Millares: Recent Bronzes and Monotypes," Marianne Well's third solo exhibition at Kouros, featured 14 sculptures, 12 wall reliefs, half a dozen monotypes and a watercolor (all 2007). The installation's juxtaposition of the various mediums...

David Smith: Gagosian.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Fifty years ago David Smith made his first spray work with the recently invented aerosol can. He was aware of the prehistoric cave paintings of Altamira. Smith and the cave artist created images by blowing or spraying paint while shielding the...

Jacques Roch: Kim Foster.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... Jacques Roch's series "Le Dejeuner sur I'herbe" (2007) consists of 15 abstract acrylic paintings overlaid with silkscreen imprints of Edouard Manet's favorite model, Victorine Meurend, as pictured in his famous plein-air dining scene. Roch...

Per Kirkeby: Michael Werner.(NEW YORK)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Ever since he was ushered to international attention by 1980s Neo-Expressionism, Danish painter Per Kirkeby has burrowed ever more deeply into techniques of gestural painting, deploying its inchoate, visceral and...

Gary Panter: Clementine and the Aldrich Museum.(NEW YORK AND RIDGEFIELD, CONN.)
November 1, 2008... Gary Panter had two shows this year--a New York solo of various work from 19722001 and his first museum show, which featured paintings, sketchbooks (three dozen of them from 1980 to 2007) and music. Add to this his illustrious reputation in the...

Nathalie Miebach: Nielsen.(BOSTON)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art, where she earned an MFA in sculpture and an MS in art education, Nathalie Miebach bridges the worlds of art and science in her work. The 11 sculptures in her first solo...

Taiyo Kimura: Branch.(DURHAM, N.C.)
November 1, 2008... This first American solo by Tokyo-based Taiyo Kimura shows humor, skill of hand and a youthful fixation on intimate body parts in a variety of figurative works. He makes droll observations on pop culture and daily life by working in primarily...

Sheila Pree Bright: High Museum of Art.(ATLANTA)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What does it mean to be an American in the 21st century? Sheila Pree Bright has explored that question with a diverse group of individuals between the ages of 18 and 25, and what those Generation Y'ers have to say is...

Sam Spiczka: St. John's University Art Center.(COLLEGEVILLE, MINN.)
November 1, 2008... "It's harsh. It's a really difficult place to be... it's just people scratching out an existence in a world that's constantly trying to kill them." This is how Sam Spiczka describes central Minnesota, where he lives and makes sculpture. When...

Suh Se-ok: Museum of Fine Arts.(HOUSTON)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There's nothing more thrilling than to walk into a museum or gallery and encounter work by a fantastic artist previously unknown to you. This happened to me recently at a concise survey of ink paintings by Suh Se-ok...

Justin Quinn: Conduit.(DALLAS)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Beginning in 2005, what Justin Quinn describes as his "quasi-monastic" studio practice has involved transcribing the text of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick using only the letter "E." The process renders the eponymous...

Peter Sarkisian: James Kelly.(SANTA FE)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For nearly 15 years, Peter Sarkisian has been absorbed by the spatial and atmospheric possibilities of video. Until recently, he was best known for introspective, perception-bending video sculptures incorporating...

Mitzi Pederson: Hammer Museum.(LOS ANGELES)
November 1, 2008... Mitzi Pederson's modestly minimalist work is steadily attracting attention, both on the West Coast, where she has been based since coming to San Francisco for graduate school (she received an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2004),...

Yvette Gellis: Kim Light.(CULVER CITY)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In this group of primarily large-scale paintings (all 2007 or '08), renderings of architectural structures crossbreed with highly expressive abstraction. Beginning with interpretations of photos depicting exaggerated...

Emilie Clark: Elizabeth Leach.(PORTLAND)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Emilie Clark often engages with textual sources, past and present. In 1998, she co-founded the journal Shark with poet Lytle Shaw to publish writings by visual artists; in 2004, she provided monoprints for a book of...

Junko Yamamoto: IMA.(SEATTLE)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Junko Yamamoto presented her continuing "Shunyata" series (ongoing since 2006; the term is Sanskrit for "emptiness") in an exhibition of 12 oils, mostly 30 to 46 inches square but ranging from 18 to 84 inches to a...

Hans Scholten: Huis Marseille.(AMSTERDAM)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] What kind of artist would travel to Asia and the Middle East to photograph concrete in all its states--parking lots, residences, commercial structures, constructions of unidentified intent, demolition in process and...

Enrica Borghi: Alberto Peola.(TURIN)
November 1, 2008... Pure coincidence placed Enrica Borghi's exhibition "Patchwork City" on view as Italy's garbage scandal mounted, with no end in sight to the accumulation of heaps of refuse in Naples. Borghi's paradigm was actually Calvino's prescient...

Sang Nam Lee: PKM Trinity Gallery.(SEOUL)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Sang Nam Lee's midcareer survey, consisting of 81 abstract works (46 large paintings and 25 smaller canvases, plus 17 drawings, all made between 1997 and 2008), inaugurated PKM Gallery's new Trinity space in the...

Tan Dun: Chambers.(BEIJING)
November 1, 2008... Last spring, in anticipation of the debut of a new musical work at the opening ceremony of the summer Olympic Games, New York-based composer Tan Dun offered a solo visual art exhibition, his first in Beijing. In two darkened rooms,...

Rob Cherry: Mary Newton.(WELLINGTON, NZ)
November 1, 2008... Rob Cherry's exhibition, "I've Let You Down and I've Let Myself Down," consisted of 47 freestanding and wall-mounted assemblages. In this throng of diminutive works (the biggest just over a foot high, all 2008), each eccentric assemblage...

The John O. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced 25 MacArthur Fellows in the arts and sciences for 2008.(Awards & Grants)(Tara Donovan and Mary Jackson are amoung the recipients of MacArthur Fellows grant)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... The John O. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced 25 MacArthur Fellows in the arts and sciences for 2008. Winners receive $500,000 over the next five years. Visual arts recipients are sculptor Tara Donovan, whose midcareer survey...

Ann Hamilton is the arts and humanities winner of a $250,000 Heinz Award.(Awards & Grants)
November 1, 2008... Ann Hamilton is the arts and humanities winner of a $250,000 Heinz Award, given by the Heinz Family Foundation.

The Japan Art Association recently presented five Praemium Imperiale prizes, worth about $140,000 each, to individuals in the arts.(Awards & Grants)(Richard Hamilton, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, and Peter Zumthor are among the recipients of Praemium Imperiale prizes)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... The Japan Art Association recently presented five Praemium Imperiale prizes, worth about $140,000 each, to individuals in the arts. Among the recipients are Richard Hamilton (painting), Ilya and Emilia Kabakov (sculpture) and Peter Zumthor...

Mark Dion has won the $25,000 Lucelia Artist Award.(Awards & Grants)
November 1, 2008... Mark Dion has won the $25,000 Lucelia Artist Award, given by the Smithson-Man American Art Museum.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts recently presented its first Curatorial Research Fellowships to support travel, archival research, interviews and other activities for scholarly exhibitions of contemporary art.(Awards & Grants)(Kellie Jones, Laurel Reuter, Jose Roca, RoseLee Goldberg, Leslie King-Hammond, Bennett Simpson, Rasha Salti, Sunil Gupta and Anthony Spira, Yasmeen Siddiqui and Edwin Ramoran are presented with Curatorial Research Fellowships)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts recently presented its first Curatorial Research Fellowships to support travel, archival research, interviews and other activities for scholarly exhibitions of contemporary art. The winners, who...

The Garage, Center for Contemporary Culture Moscow (GCCC Moscow), a nonprofit institution, recently opened in the city's northern district.(Moscow's Garage)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... The Garage, Center for Contemporary Culture Moscow (GCCC Moscow), a nonprofit institution, recently opened in the city's northern district. Featuring a vast hall encompassing some 91,500 square feet of exhibition space, the GCCC is situated in...

The GCCC was founded late last year by Dasha Zhukova, a 27-year-old Russian heiress.(Moscow's Garage)(Garage, Center for Contemporary Culture Moscow)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... The GCCC was founded late last year by Dasha Zhukova, a 27-year-old Russian heiress, fashion designer and socialite girlfriend of billionaire collector Roman Abramovich, who made his fortune in oil, steel and mining. The inaugural exhibition, a...

San Jose Museum of Art.(People)(Susan Krane new executive director of the San Jose Museum of Art)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Susan Krane, executive director of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art since 2001, is the new executive director of the San Jose Museum of Art. She replaces Dan Keegan, who is now head of the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Yerba Buena Center.(People)(Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco appointed Roger M. Buergel as chief curator and deputy director for programs)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Betti-Sue Hertz, since 2000 curator of contemporary art at the San Diego Museum of Art, has been named director of visual arts at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The Miami Art Museum has appointed Roger M. Buergel as its...

James Gallery at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.(People)(Linda Norden was recently appointed curator of the James Gallery at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Linda Norden was recently appointed curator of the James Gallery at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She was formerly the curator of contemporary art at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum and commissioner of the U.S. pavilion at...

Walker Art Center.(People)(Darsie Alexander is the new chief curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Darsie Alexander is the new chief curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, replacing Philippe Vergne, who is now director of the Dia Art Foundation in New York. Alexander had been senior curator and department head of contemporary art...

Peabody Essex Museum.(People)(Trevor Smith has been named curator of contemporary art at the Peabody Essex Museum)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Trevor Smith has been named the first curator of contemporary art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. From 2003 to 2006 he was a senior curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. The PEM also recently appointed Phillip...

Andy Warhol Museum.(People)(Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has appointed Eric C. Shiner as curator of art)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has appointed Eric C. Shiner as curator of art. Among other posts, he served as an assistant curator for the inaugural Yokohama Triennale in 2001.

Armory Show.(People)(Armory Show has named Deborah Harris as managing director )(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... The Armory Show has named Deborah Harris as managing director of its new modern section, debuting in March 2009. Harris was previously publisher of Modem Painters and advertising director of A.i.A.

Obituaries.(Obituary)
November 1, 2008... Alain Jacquet, 69, French Pop artist known for large-scale compositions that include images appropriated from iconic art-historical works, died of cancer on Sept. 4 in New York. Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Jacquet studied architecture and was...

LACMA gets more big bucks.(ARTWORLD)(Los Angeles County Museum of Art has received a gift of $55 million from Lynda and Stewart Resnick)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has received a gift of $55 million from philanthropists Lynda and Stewart Resnick for the second phase of the LACMA campus renovation and expansion, designed by Renzo Piano (Lynda Resnick is vice-chair of...

Tunnel vision.(ARTWORLD)(Leo Villareal had begun on project including an installation of lights)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... For the past 10 years, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., has sought an artist to cast in a new light one of its most heavily trafficked yet essentially unnoticed spaces: the underground passageway between the museum's east and...

New museum buys neighbor.(ARTWORLD)(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... Joining the ranks of recently expanded museums that want to keep expanding--Tate Modern and the Museum of Modern Art among them--the New Museum in New York announced on Sept. 9 that it had acquired an adjacent six-story building for $16.6...

Buenos Aires Art Center reopens.(ARTWORLD)(Fundacion Proa in Buenos Aires )
November 1, 2008... Fundacion Proa in Buenos Aires will reopen in an expanded and renovated facility on Nov. 22. The $7.5-million building redesign was conceived by the Milan-based team of Giuseppe Caruso and Agata Torricella, who restored the original...

LeWitt writ large.(ARTWORLD)(Sol LeWitt )(Brief article)
November 1, 2008... A few years before his death in 2007, Sol LeWitt began working with Jock Reynolds, the director of the Yale University Art Gallery, on what would become "Sol Lewitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective," which will open Nov. 16 at Mass MoCA and remain...