Art in America - Most Recent Finer Things Posts

The NeoLucida: Artists Revive an Old Master Tool

John Anderson — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:45:00 +0100

When artists Pablo Garcia and Golan Levin launched their latest Kickstarter project on May 7, aiming to raise money to produce an updated camera lucida, the $30 NeoLucida, their big hope was to attract 500 backers before June. By midmorning on the next day they were fully funded.

Concrete Continuity

David Ebony — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:45:00 +0100

How do new generations of artists absorb the art of the past? "Concrete Remains: Postwar and Contemporary Art from Brazil," a compact show on view at Chelsea's Tierney Gardarin Gallery (formerly Cristin Tierney), through June 22, is, in one sense, an exploration of this question. It also encapsulates an important area of Latin American art, shedding new light on the ongoing preoccupation of 21st-century Brazilian artists with their nation's major contribution to 20th-century art: Concrete and Neo-Concrete art.

The Frieze Speakeasy Experience

David Riley — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:30:00 +0100

"Don't you know how to read? Show me your number!" barked the unseen doorman. I showed it to him. "I'm not even talking to you," he jeered. The man ahead of me was afforded entry, while the door shut in my face. It was a Monday afternoon on Randall's Island but I felt as self-conscious as if it were Friday night in front of a club in SoHo.

At the Altar of Saint Genet

Ryann Donnelly — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:00:00 +0100

Gold leaf, honey, tar, blood, wax, flowers, leeches, pheasants, arrows: such are the materials used by Seattle-based experimental theater company Saint Genet, whose new work Paradisiacal Rites opens at Seattle performance space On The Boards this week.

The Lookout: A Weekly Guide to Shows You Won't Want to Miss

AiA Staff — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:00:00 +0100

This week we check out Michele Abeles's photos at 47 Canal, geometric abstractions and sculptural tableaux by Elizabeth Neel at Sikkema Jenkins and Gedi Sibony's bare-bones assemblages at Greene Naftali.

McCarthy Spring

Austin Considine — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:30:00 +0100

It's the season of Paul McCarthy in New York. This spring and summer McCarthy's unsettling work—much of it a perverse reworking of children's fairy tales—will be the subject of six installations at five different locations around the city, not counting the Los Angeles-based artist's 21-year-old animatronic sculpture of a father instructing his son on the ways of love with a goat, which is already on view at the New Museum as part of the exhibition "NYC 1993" (through May 26).

Playing God at MoMA: Rain Room

Brienne Walsh — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:30:00 +0100

Rain Room, on view at MoMA (through July 28) as part of MoMA PS1's multi-exhibition Expo 1 initiative (through Sept. 2), was conceived by the collective Random International, which Koch founded in 2005 with Stuart Wood and Florian Ortkrass, fellow graduates of London's Brunel University. Known for creating high-tech immersive installations that respond to human presence, they first conceived of Rain Room as a way to explore what it would feel like for a human to be totally subsumed in a physical environment.

Feeling Human: Ugo Rondinone

Elisabeth Kley — Mon, 13 May 2013 11:30:00 +0100

During a spring 2010 interview on the Louisiana Museum of Art's internet radio channel, Swiss-born, New York-based artist Ugo Rondinone declared, "You never see any action in my work. It's a lazy work."

Double-Barrel Frieze-Week Jeff Koons at Gagosian and Zwirner

Tracy Zwick — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:00:00 +0100

Both "Gazing Ball," at Zwirner, and "New Paintings and Sculpture," at Gagosian, saw press previews canceled or abbreviated, personal appearances by the artist nixed, and openings that were delayed, rushed or prolonged. Despite these snafus and the rumors of Koons's possible defection from Gagosian that accompanied the announcement of the artist's first show at Zwirner, the two shows together provide a miniature survey of Koons's recent two- and three-dimensional output.

Pure Image: Jack Goldstein Retrospective to New York

William S. Smith — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:00:00 +0100

On view in New York May 10-Sept. 29, the retrospective is an appropriately bicoastal survey for an artist (1945-2003) who came of age during one of the most fertile periods for Conceptualism in Los Angeles before establishing himself as a canonical New York appropriation artist.

The Lookout: A Weekly Guide to Shows You Won't Want to Miss

AiA Staff — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:30:00 +0100

This week we check out photos, sculptures and a video by Erin Shirreff at Lisa Cooley; 14 new paintings by Ellsworth Kelly, spread out among Matthew Marks's three galleries; and Amanda Ross-Ho's oversize wall-hung T-shirts at Mitchell-Innes & Nash.

U.S. Debut, Forty-Five Years Later

Brian Boucher — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:45:00 +0100

Peter Roehr (1944-1968) created arresting minimalist works using everyday materials like punch cards and other office supplies, and made short films that looped brief, found segments, mostly of American television commercials. Despite dying at 24, Roehr used repetition and variation to create a large body of work in various mediums, including sound, film, collage, editioned works and texts.

Arnold Mesches in Miami: A 60-Year Retrospective

Shana Mason — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:30:00 +0100

Mesches's nightmarish visions of the modern world are articulated with dense fields of vividly colored brushstrokes. They are theaters of the surreal, grotesque and absurd, lamenting and satirizing society's elite and the horrors of human cruelty.

The Lookout: A Weekly Guide to Shows You Won't Want to Miss

AiA Staff — Thu, 02 May 2013 11:00:00 +0100

This week we check out Trudy Benson's splashy, computer graphics-inspired paintings at Horton Gallery, Cui Fei's thorn-and-twig "drawings" that resemble Chinese script at Chambers Fine Art, and "Better Homes," a group show exploring contemporary domesticity at Sculpture Center.

The Lookout: A Weekly Guide to Shows You Won't Want to Miss

AiA Staff — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +0100

This week we check out an exhibition of Gordon Matta-Clark's late work at David Zwirner, a two-gallery show of sculptures and site-specific installations by Tallur L.N. at Jack Shainman, and fascinating collaborative projects by painter/mystic Xul Solar and writer Jorge Luis Borges at the American Society.

How We See: James Turrell's Three-Museum Retrospective

Amy Abrams — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0100

In addition to major shows at New York's Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, a mammoth retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art opens May 26, showcasing six decades of Turrell's work, including his pioneering experiments in light projection, in over 33,000 square feet of gallery space.

Venice Biennale Collateral Events Announced

Brian Boucher — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0100

The ubiquitous Ai Weiwei presents Straight (2012), a project that will use steel reinforcing bars recovered from school buildings that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. That project is presented by Venice's own Zuecca Project Space.

Oldenburg's Pure Pleasures at MoMA

Ryann Donnelly — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0100

"Pastry and art are two forms of pleasure. If you combine them, you get two times the pleasure," Claes Oldenburg said at today's press preview for his two-part show.

The Glory of Decay: Cyprien Gaillard at the Hammer

Maxwell Williams — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:30:00 +0100

Gaillard, 32, began showing only in 2004, when he started setting off fire extinguishers in parks as a way to temporarily "graffiti" the land, in a commentary on the erosion and destruction of the urban landscape.

Rotten Tomatoes? Andrew Kuo at Marlborough

Alana Shilling — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:30:00 +0100

The 11 acrylic paintings on view reveal the Queens-born Kuo to be a master craftsman of Euclidian geometry, a charmer of pigment and a doyenne of merciless self-reflection.