Alex Hubbard on the Abstract Labor of Video

"Somebody had to do it" is the title of New York-based artist Alex Hubbard's debut exhibition—referring cleverly if deceptively to the artist's pursuit by a number of the city's galleries and the anonymous, slapstick destruction of found objects in his videos. Though the artist's body is not present or even visible in the videos, his gesture and labor are palpable in the work's direct evocation of the body through altered still lifes. His paintings—drippings and textures in abstract, often heavy forms and wild colors—work to the same effect, and to no less quiet ends. Here Hubbard ties the seemingly disparate to connect these media:
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Fact Sheet: Laddie John Dill

The recent Tim Nye-curated "Primary Atmospheres" show at David Zwirner was something of a welcome resurrection for a group of California Minimalists known as "Light and Space" artists. So welcome, in fact,  that many of the artists—James Turrell, Robert Irwin, John McCracken—are already beloved, institutionally remembered figures, their mythos only amplified by the generally negligent care of New York exhibition spaces. One artist curiously devoid of a personal mythology is Laddie John Dill (b. Long Beach, CA, 1943), whose work in the show, a series of glass panels arranged in sand and lit from below by fluorescents, was consistently called the exhibition's Smithson. Dill's work, which he calles "light sentences," combines a mysterious treatment of light with natural and sometimes esoteric materials. Nye has given Dill a solo show, "Contained Radiance," at his own gallery.
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Irving Penn: Smaller Than Life

American artist Irving Penn (1917–2009) began his career working for Vogue as a fashion photographer, creating images with clean lines, crisp tones, and balanced compositions that garnered accolades in the worlds of art as well as fashion before Juergen Teller was even a flash in his mother's eye. In the early 1950s, the photographer began to expand his oeuvre; shooting in London, Paris, and New York, Penn started a series he called "Small Trades," the most comprehensive collection of which is now on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Taking tradespeople as his subjects, Penn photographed workers against a neutral studio background, each in full uniform with all of the accoutrements of their occupations. To a contemporary eye, the backdrop and staging make the images appear like sociological or anthropological studies.
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