From vacation. Will begin reviewing things pronto. but, notes:
- I have decided to review a wide variety of cultural products, in addition to art gallery offerings.
- books
- films
- and anything else I stumble into.
I shall see my readers shortly.
…and we’re back.
June 15, 2008Small break
June 6, 2008To all the esteemed reader: I apologize for having been away for the last few days, but I’ve been on a lovely vacation, eating lots of seafood and drinking heavily. I’ll be back in a few, and so will my incisive wit.
Aziz + Cucher at ClampArt
June 2, 2008D
Aziz + Cucher at ClampArt
One is unswayed by Messr.s Aziz and Cucher’s re-processing of digital photographs. Essentially, what they do is reprocess large images such that they become in a manner of speaking, pixelated, or even pointillized, composed of little segments of color generated by some algorithm or other. But, who cares.
Little is done to the images that was not present before (they were large and highly detailed), and the images themselves are of humdrum pastorality, of a sort of stock-photo level of professionalism. Additionally this critic tires of photography being manipulated, as if mastery of Photoshop were some creative achievement. I daresay such an approach is flimsy and crummy, and requires a strong hand to transcend the shabbiness of the approach; but no such conceptual heft is to be found here.
“In these works,” goes the PR, “the pixel is highly pronounced [...] to point to the fact that the world, like the body, is constructed of tiny particles and elements.” As you wish, however, this critic found the result lazy and unsuccessful in inducing in one an awareness of such digital existence. Persons of culture shall only become aware of yet another display predicated on wan conceptuality.
Robert Therrien at Gagosian on 24th
June 2, 2008
A-
Robert Therrien at Gagosian on 24th
Robert Therrien presents sculptures modeled after everyday objects (folding chairs, dishes, pots and pans), but in a scale several times that of the originals.
This critic judges it an intriguing and overall enjoyable display. My old enemy, spectacle, that well-dressed crook, makes sort of an appearance at Robert Therrien’s present work at Gagosian on 24th st. But he stays not long, and one forgets he was ever there, one’s mind being too busy noticing all the wonderful little surface and function details that the artist, in his fidelity, almost a purity of spirit, has rendered in his sculptures: the wear on the pots, the folding mechanisms of the chairs, et cetera.
Indeed the only works of indifferent consequence were sculptures modeled after kitchen plates. These I found too clean and plastic; at the very least, in comparison with the almost narrative, dramatic details of wear in the others.
Justin Craun at Fredricks & Freiser
May 30, 2008
C-
Justin Craun at Fredricks & Freiser
A talented young man who has yet to mature, one feels. Read the rest of this entry »
Stuart Hawkins at Zach Feuer
May 17, 2008
D
Stuart Hawkins
Zach Feuer
A certain tact compels me ab initio to clear my leftist credentials: I myself, a European, am left-wing as they come. Notwithstanding, I have not, do not now, nor will I ever acquiesce to praising softheaded presentations that agreeably caress my ideology, and neither should you. Read the rest of this entry »
