Carroll Dunham Opens Windows for New Talent

For painter (and alum, class of 1967) Carroll Dunham, Phillips Academy Andover's production of all-star artists, among them Frank Stella, Peter Halley and Carl Andre, is not merely written in the stars. Generations of accomplished artists might remember the school's Addison Gallery of American Art, which was the first American museum to show Josef Albers and boasts a permanent collection of important works by American artists ranging from Sargent and Whistler to Pollock. In recent years, the museum and has hosted exhibitions by Kara Walker, Alex Katz and William Wegman—to name a few.
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Josephine Meckseper Drills to New York's Dark Center

This spring, Josephine Meckseper brings the pernicious quest for black gold to New Yorkers' backyard. "Manhattan Oil Project," the artist's first foray into monumental public sculpture, opens Mar. 5 at The Last Lot, a project space at 46th Street and 8th Avenue administered by Art Production Fund. The kinetic sculpture consists of two life-size steel oil pumpjacks, modeled after mid-20th-century rigs the artist found in Texas.

"Last fall, I made a trip to Texas to look at how oil pumpjacks were still being used," Meckseper told A.i.A. on the evening before the concrete foundations for the sculptures would be poured. "A lot of the jacks are not being used now, so what I saw in Texas was almost more of a cemetery for oil pumpjacks-like a science fiction monument to the past."
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In Both Bi- and Triennial, Wu Tsang Talks Community

Wu Tsang was born to reform. Working in installation, film and event planning, Tsang's work is a pioneering example of art and activism. The only artist included in both "The Ungovernables," the upcoming New Museum Triennial, and the Whitney Biennial—as well as MoMA's Documentary Fortnight—in the next few weeks Tsang will deliver a trifecta of projects that combine the artist's critical interest in the interstice between individual and community. "With my work, I'm always asking ‘what does it mean to speak for oneself, but on behalf of a group?'" says Tsang.

This question is thoroughly fleshed out in Tsang's first feature length documentary film, to be screened as part of the Biennial's cinema series, and premiering at Documentary Fortnight on Feb. 22. Tsang has titled it Wildness, for a weekly party he threw from 2008–2009 at the Silver Platter bar, popular among Latin trans and queer people. "The Silver Platter is a home space for a lot of people; people celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving there," says Tsang, who attended the Art Institute Chicago for undergraduate and received his MFA from UCLA in 2010.
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Conceptual Pioneer David Lamelas Works All the Angles

When they enter "New York Exists in 8.5 Billion Sq. Ft.," David Lamelas's exhibition at New York's Maccarone gallery, visitors are confronted with a violent stream of white light. Two back-to-back 16-mm projectors without film, which the artist has placed in the gallery foyer, produce the light. One projector shines right at the door onto the street; the other casts a small square of white light onto the gallery's front wall. "I made this piece up in my mind when I was a little child," the 66-year-old Lamelas told A.i.A. at the gallery. "When I was young I loved the cinema, and what impressed me the most was to look back and see this abstract stream of light that would become an image on screen."
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