Art

(Play this with a 1 second pause for the best effect.)

This performance/installation, curated by Daria Brit Shapiro, is part of White Box’s summer Six Feet Under series. The exhibitions are meant to be seen through the window from the street after the opening, and features six curators choosing six artists over six weeks.

Ryan was blasting metal, e.g., Iron Maiden, for this two hour performance. Here is a quote from the press release:

For his play on the theme of Six Feet Under, Ryan Humphrey will use White Box as an indoor freestyle BMX facility where he will regress to his creative years before becoming a fine artist. He will assault the architecture with his bicycle, try new maneuvers, mark up the walls and leave skid marks on the floors thus signaling the demise of the clean white gallery space and the economic system that fuels it. Bring on the death of capital. Bring on Mad Max. Bring on the demise of western civilization and say goodbye to your precious art objects.

I should note that Ryan shows with my friends at DCKT Contemporary.

Updated: James has a post on Ryan too.

Gae Savannah
Tiskitte, 2000
plastic claw clips, styrofoam, fabric
31” × 34”

Apparently I’m not the only one who doesn’t care for John Currin. In this hiliarious Q&A with our friend Gae Savannah, she says:

What single work of art would you most like to destroy?
John Currin, but I wouldnÂ’t make the effort.

In the previous post, I forgot to mention that Eric’s Matthew Barney Show will be at SF BOCA (Bar of Contemporary Art) down the street from SF MOMA’s Matthew Barney show.

Updated: Eric has some photos of the show.

James is quoted in an article in Variety Weekend about Eric Doeringer. I have to say it’s better written than most press I’ve read about Eric’s work. Some choice quotes:

“I love the humor in the work,” says longtime collector James Wagner, who, with partner Barry Hoggard, has a large collection of contemporary pieces with political and humorous themes. “We don’t buy Eric’s work instead of other art. We buy it because we enjoy the conceptual strategy behind it and the politics that seem to address issues of branding and star systems.”

That idea finds even greater clarity in Doeringer’s “Cremaster Fanatic,” a faux fan site devoted to Matthew Barney, the art-world superstar best known for his inscrutable, epic-length films.

“Barney epitomizes the notion of an artist as a celebrity,” says Doeringer. “And there’s this whole notion that the art world is supposed to be intellectual and above something like rabid fandom.”

Ironic? Sure. That’s why Doeringer tends to invoke Andy Kauffman rather than Andy Warhol in describing his influences. “With the best of [Kauffman],” he says, “you were never really sure if it was made up or the real thing.”

Via Culturebot I just learned about ArtHome which sounds like a good organization for artists to investigate.

ArtHome helps artists build assets and equity through financial literacy and home-ownership.

We foster long-term stability in the American Arts and Culture sector by harnessing the economic power of real estate and equity on behalf of individual culture workers.

Through our dynamic financial literacy and home-buying curriculum, and through the creation of home buying programs, access to innovative loan products and down payment assistance, we are building a unique and complementary support structure for American culture.

The founders are the theater artist Aaron Landsman and Esther Robinson of Creative Capital fame.

Reto Boller
Untitled (AC-06.2), 2006
Acrylic lacquer on aluminum
30.7 × 38 × 0.2 inches

I saw this in a group show titled I may be some time… at James Nicholson. It was my favorite piece, and made me very annoyed that I missed his solo show at the gallery. Here is an installation shot from that show:

plus a Brooklyn Rail review.

John White Cerasulo
Untitled, Near Litchfield, 2005
watercolor on paper
26 × 19 inches

This watercolor was in Air, a group show curated by Amy Sillman, at Monya Rowe.

Simone Huelser
Untitled, 2006
Color copies, wheat paste
Dimensions variable

This was in a group show at Hudson Franklin titled Best Played with a Straight Face. According to the gallery, the artist photographs different buildings, digitally manipulates them, has color copies produced and then wheat pastes them to the wall to achieve the pattern she wants.

[All photos courtesy of the respective galleries.]