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Volume One, Issue 15, January 5 - 11, 2007
Fred Charles, additional rendering Doug Aitken Studio. © 2006 Doug Aitken Forecasting the art season ahead By Shane McAdams In profiling art dealers over the last few months for Chelsea Now, my open-ended inquiries of gallerists’ tastes and experience have yielded more than just laundry lists of art exhibitions to see. We’ve gleaned information about the restaurants they frequent following their openings, their preference in pets, movies, even world capitals. We’ve also heard a lot of colorful thoughts about art fairs and the logistics of keeping a gallery moving forward, and, of course, become better informed about dozens of gallery and museum exhibitions. Alas, the mercurial activity that spawned such great conversations has ground to a halt, as it does every year at this time. While Labor Day signals the opening of the art world in earnest, late December marks the beginning of its short hibernation. But January ushers in what might be considered the start of the season’s second half. Although the winter weather usually doesn’t allow for the rollicking street festivals that befall Chelsea on September evenings, the cloud cover above us now has a silver lining. The art world’s notables have recovered from Miami, had some eggnog, and returned to their regular sleeping schedules, while the vast majority of the fair-weather Heineken scavengers continue to lie dormant until fall rolls back around. For the hearty and dedicated, January and February are good months to see art. With all the excitement coming down the chute, here is an abbreviated and informal list of what to anticipate in the coming months. Diana Cooper, “New Works” Since Diana Cooper discovered her secret penchant for doodling in graduate school, she has taken the practice from the napkin to the studio all the way to the gallery. Her original experiments with fastidious ball-point designs on Post-it notes have continually evolved into bigger, more-complex compositions. It’s always interesting to see how Cooper will expand on what originally seemed to be a fairly limited conceit, but she always has, and I expect her to do it again.
Orlaineta finds new sculptural purposes for discarded, disposable industrial materials in the manner of Tony Feher and Tara Donovan. But like both artists, Orlaineta has interjected his own voice into the conversation about consumer waste. His work leans more toward structurally inventive and architectural work than hypnotic repetition, and he’s best when he’s simple and direct, though even his very worst is impressive. This is the kind of show that postmodern architectural theorists and their six-year-old sons and daughters would appreciate to equal degrees. Gary Hill Gary Hill was video when video wasn’t cool. That’s probably why his work has developed organically and has always avoided the pitfalls of over-indulging in the media itself. Hill employs the attributes of video and sound as metaphors for social interaction in his art, especially as they represent communicative feedback loops. His current show has already exhibited at the Cartier Foundation in Paris and word is that it is more politically topical than his previous work. But expect the commentary, no matter how pointed, to be subtle and sophisticated, generated through metaphor rather than declaration. Doug Aitken, “Sleepwalkers,” Billed as his first large-scale public art work in the United States, “Sleepwalkers” will be projected on the massive exterior wall of MoMA above the Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. I’m reminded of another great artist, Krzysztof Wodiczko, who’s had a long career of projecting his own subversive works onto public institutions. If “Sleepwalkers” is anything like Aitken’s work in the past, its subversion will be the sort that integrates the available architecture, encouraging a reinterpretation of the space. And with such a high profile, culturally significant, and unusually generous architectural palette, Aitken should pull off something special.
In light of the current works-on-paper boom, this promises to be a great drawing exhibition. Schall’s technically virtuous landscapes contain an Albert Bierstadt-like grandeur, but the destiny that is manifest in his environments is more foreboding. The masses of rock and earth that tower over the human element here are not evidence of transcendence, but humility. Dwarfed by geological formations are the ruins of a vanished intelligent society. What remains is a ghostly shell of a lost civilization, and, in turn, a subtle commentary on its current status. This is Schall’s first show at Pierogi, but if his last show at Dam Stuhltrager is an indication, this will be worth a trip across the East River. Gordon Matta-Clark Some artists deserve more examination than others simply because their practices are less definite and harder to circumscribe. This February, the Whitney opens a retrospective of Gordon Matta-Clark, an artist who exemplifies the indefinite approach of combining art and life. Matta-Clark wasn’t an art-as-lifer in the manner of Alan Kaprow, for whom the two were inseparable, but his art was nevertheless a direct product of his cognitive confrontation with the world in front of him. His art work combines all of the detached, analytical rationalism that was so prevalent in New York in the late ’60s with a wry, conceptual humor that anticipates contemporary artists like Tom Friedman and Tim Hawkinson. My idea for a radio station when I was young was one that would play only “good songs.” They would play across all genres, but all of the music would be the best of what that genre had to offer. If there was a gallery today that functioned like my fantasy radio station, it would be Tanya Bonakdar, and true to form, her winter rotation lives up to this billing. Like his work or hate it, you won’t leave the gallery in March without a mess of opinions about Mark Manders in your head. I’m often not interested in having artists turn their dreams, memories, and personal histories into a collection of artifacts, but with Manders it’s different. The Scope Art Fair It’s depressing when the chatter about the art market starts to rival the tone of Jim Cramer’s on CNBC, but it’s also hard to ignore. We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the strength of the art market and, specifically, a lot about China. It’s a shame that economics forces this kind of exoticizing, and it seems that the feeding frenzy at the art fairs contribute to this tendency. But maybe all the work will be good, and then we won’t have to worry, because good work can outlast any slump.
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Edgar Orlaineta, “Introductions” 
Michael Schall 
