Art in America - Most Recent The Scene Posts

At Radio City, Antony is a Shaman

Faye Hirsch — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:30:00 +0100

An enraptured audience stood applauding and whistling for five full minutes, without a curtain call or encore, following "Swanlights," Antony and the Johnson's performance at Radio City Music Hall Thursday night, commissioned by New York's Museum of Modern Art. For some 90 minutes, Antony, his distinctive vocals complemented by a coordinated light show and evocative sets, delivered new arrangements (by Rob Moose, Nico Muhly and Maxim Moston) of songs selected from the course of his career.

Dean Valentine and Craigslist Sex at Art LA Contemporary

Paul Soto — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:00:00 +0100

The crowd gathered outside of Santa Monica's Barker Hanger last Thursday for the preview of Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC) was heavy on volunteers. Dressed in matching white workman jumpsuits, these young men and women were arranging blocks of dry ice into ziggurats and laying out flares for a restaging of Judy Chicago's Disappearing Environments (1968/2012), an installation that shrouded the fair's entrance in red-lit fog. Displayed out of its original context—Century City, the L.A. neighborhood then rapidly rising with finance and entertainment high-rises—any hint of its original critique was relinquished.

PST Causes Explosions Over Los Angeles

Paul David Young — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:15:00 +0100

It's rare for a rifle to be shot at an art event, Chris Burden notwithstanding. The mechanical violence of gunfire seems anathema to the presumed humanism of the arts. Yet the resurrection of French sculptor, painter, and performer Niki de Saint Phalle's 1962 "tirs" was somehow amusingly gun-centric. Titled for the French verb tirer (to shoot), the re-performnce was part of this month's Performance and Public Art Festival, held in conjunction with the vast Pacific Standard Time shows sponsored by the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Da Vinci Show Causes Lines, Surprises

Caroline Elbaor — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:40:00 +0100

"Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan," at the National Gallery in London [through Feb. 5], restricts itself to the commissioned esthetic output of the scientific innovator. Nonetheless, the show is full of surprises and accomplishments. Here, specifically, is why Ludovico Sforza, the powerful Duke of Milan, named Leonardo the official artist of the Milanese court.

Bearing Witness: A Week of Performance at CANADA

Paul David Young — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:00:00 +0100

"I, Bear," a week of performances at CANADA Gallery on the Lower East Side, is a musical series with video, or more precisely, a leisurely party with video and, eventually, some music. The performances occur in the gallery's back room, where looped video is projected on one wall as well as on a piece of fabric suspended from the ceiling. The video includes footage by Black Dice, Young Chung, Cecilia Dougherty, Leah Gilliam, EE Miller & Bernardine Mellis, Aimee Worms Hirschberg, My Barbarian, Nguyen Tan Hoang and Tony Stinkmetal. A set of Stinkmetal's videos are also being shown in the front room.

Shiny Happy People Take Miami

David Ulrichs — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:00:00 +0100

Over 260 galleries took part in the utopian colony that was the 10th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach. Everyone showed up, no one said the R word or seemed concerned about the global economy, and there was so much to do no one was left out. Even Eigen+Art's Judy Lybke, controversially left out of the Swiss edition, was there, telling me during the opening about a legendary party a few years ago where, apparently, Sofia Coppola launched a new Taschen book while wading in a swimming pool with Benedikt Taschen. "That was some years ago, but I heard Coppola might be throwing a party again this year," Lybke noted.

A More Manageable FIAC Takes on Frieze

David Ulrichs — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:15:00 +0100

Tickets for the first official VIP slot were rare at this year's 38th edition of Parisian art fair FIAC, allowing the 168 participating gallerists to spend quality time with each collector. Paris dealer Karsten Greve spoke of a "successful start" at the opening, but some gallerists were irritated at the tactics of some of their colleagues, who snuck French billionaires and art collectors Bernard Arnault and François Pinault a day early, during the fair's gala dinner hosted at the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. "At Art Basel this would mean the exclusion of the gallery that had given the collectors access," Berlin gallerist Martin Klosterfelde told A.i.A.

Benelux Gangs Up On Berlin

David Ulrichs — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 10:00:00 +0100

In spite of scheduling conflict with a major Berlin art event for the second year in a row (this year, abc), 34 gallerists in Brussels combined forces to stay open the entire weekend for the fourth edition of the Brussels Art Days. Organized by dealer Elaine Levy and former art dealer Frederic Desimpel, participation at the gallery weekend—admittedly a copy of Berlin's hugely successful Gallery Weekend Berlin—was a steal at roughly $2,500, compared to over $10,000 at the original.

Lisson Toasts The First Supper in Milan

David Ulrichs — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 09:00:00 +0100

This past weekend, after 44 years in business, Lisson opened a gallery in Milan, its first-ever space outside the U.K. "Why Milan?" was the question burning in everyone's mind. "This is our secret," Lisson founder Nicholas Logsdail to told A.i.A., standing in (and referring to) the gallery's backyard, which it shares with the 15th century Atellani Palazzo, da Vinci's retreat garden during the period he painted The Last Supper (permanently on view across the street at the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie).

The Dutch Take to the Streets

David Ulrichs — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:00:00 +0100

Last week at Rotterdam's Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, artists, collectors, curators and a handful of dealers celebrated the opening of "Melanchotopia," a group exhibition organized by the institution at public and commercial locations across the city. The show comes on the eve of severe national budget cuts that will affect the Netherland's cultural sector (although the structure of Witte de With, which is in part privately financed, will remain largely intact).

Untitled (Soccer): The 12th Istanbul Biennial

Brian Boucher — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:00:00 +0100

The large contingent of heavily armed police guarding the hotel where members of the press were staying while visiting Istanbul for the 12th Istanbul Biennial, and the crowd of locals screaming "Allahu akbar"across the street late on Wednesday night, had nothing to do with theshow. The crowd was razzing members of the soccer team from Tel Aviv whowere staying at the same hotel.

abc Learns the Fundamentals

David Ulrichs — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:00:00 +0100

Last week, Berlin's difficult-to-classify abc exhibition, now showing 130 artists in a booth-less curated fourth edition titled "About Painting," almost got off to a late start. Workmen crammed till the last minute painting the show's provisional walls, leaving some of the dealers, especially in the second hall, without much time to organize themselves before the VIP preview. Vienna heavyweight Georg Kargl hunted down a table and chair to conduct business, finally hijacking a beer-bench from the café.

Social Ambitions on the Lower East Side

Alexander Adler — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:30:00 +0100

Sometimes, an event on the Bowery has the capacity to attract an art historian of the reputation of Hal Foster, allegedly dragged in by Guggenheim Museum director Richard Armstrong, scenesters Glenn O'Brien and Leo Fitzpatrick—and a slew of bums. Such was the case this week, as BMW and the Guggenheim launched the first cycle of their Lab, a freewheeling, multi-platform urban study program, in a vacant lot on Houston just off Second Ave.

20 Years Later and Without Basquiat, Gray Hits the Bowery

Nick Hallett — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:00:00 +0100

Founded by artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Michael Holman in 1979 at the height of Downtown New York's No Wave moment, the legendary band Gray played only a handful of shows at places like the Mudd Club before losing focus sometime around 1981. Basquiat performed on synthesizer, clarinet, drums, and guitar, and a young then-artist Vincent Gallo was a member for a time. One memorable performance included the band enmeshed in a huge scaffolding structure they had built, called the "Ignorant Geodesic Dome."

Roman Holiday: The Sculpture Biennial That Might Have Been, And More

David Ebony — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:00:00 +0100

Generally not known for its contemporary art scene, Rome has lately made some bold attempts to compete with Milan, Turin and Bologna in that arena. Two recently opened institutions for contemporary art, MAXXI and MACRO, demonstrate the serious commitment of private and public interests in the field. In addition, the Richard Meier-designed galleries of the Ara Pacis Museum, which opened five years ago to much controversy, now host engaging shows of modern and contemporary art.

Elmgreen & Dragset Get Tough in AIDS Show

David Ulrichs — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:30:00 +0100

"I lived with being HIV positive for six months, when I first got tested," artist Michael Elmgreen told A.i.A. at the opening of "You Are Not Alone," an exhibition of AIDS-related works (through Sept. 18). "Thankfully, the test procedure was underdeveloped and proved false."

Top-Down at Liste

David Ulrichs — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:30:00 +0100

"It's the first time I have ever witnessed four collectors racing up the stairs at Liste," Patricia Kohl, co-owner of Berlin gallery and third-time fair participant Sommer & Kohl, Berlin told me during the opening of Art Basel's most important satellite fair.

VIPs Deluge Art Basel

David Ulrichs — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:00:00 +0100

"Prices are up—the crisis is over!" Jan Coene and Luc Haenen, two Belgian collectors exclaimed without irony during the VIP opening frenzy of this year's 42nd Art Basel. My first stop during this preview was Galerie Jan Mot, which, before I got there, had already sold Time (1970), a small-scale black-and-white photograph and instructions for a performance by David Lamelas for a very respectable $85,000. I guess I don't have the legs of a hardcore collector. At Perrotin, Takashi Murakami's Jesus (2010) was also gone, sold for $1.1 million; downstairs L+M Arts were happy with the sale of an untitled 1959 Mark Rothko painting that added roughly $5 million to their coffers.

Welcome to the Hotel Catalonia

David Ulrichs — Tue, 24 May 2011 14:00:00 +0100

"We sold the work even before the VIPs were let in," Adi Gura, director of Tel Aviv's Braverman Gallery, told A.i.A. of this year's LOOP Barcelona. This seemed unlikely on the eve of a video fair-particularly one in Barcelona, scheduled to run just fifteen hours over three afternoons (May 19–21, 4–9 PM). Pre-preview sales are only really reported for Art Basel and Frieze, but nonetheless, the 43-gallery-strong fair, in its ninth year at the Hotel Catalonia, seems to be doing something right. Back in Berlin, Ivo Wessel, a fair regular and media art collector, sang LOOP's praises, saying, "The focus is on the work, not on the people."

Art for Troubleshooters: 7 on 7 at the New Museum

Gillian Sneed — Tue, 17 May 2011 12:00:00 +0100

How long does it take to come up with a new idea? The New Museum thinks 24 hours should just about do it. Rhizome, the New Museum's online affiliate for technology-based artistic practices, launched Seven on Seven in 2009. This past weekend saw the second iteration of the event, which seeks to merge the seemingly disparate languages and methodologies of art and science. Seven artists, each paired up with a technologist, were given 24 hours to develop something—anything—new. Saturday's 5-hour affair featured presentations by each team in the New Museum's theater.