olafur eliasson

On a recent trip to San Francisco, I was delighted to find several fresh exhibitions on the upper floors of SFMOMA. Among them was a retrospective of Jeff Wall's photography, displayed in very large format on light boxes. Complementary to these works, there was a thorough survey of historical and contemporary photography which, curiously, housed a 90's era (still fresh) Rirkrit Tiravanija video depicting post pubescent Scots and Brits dancing and acting awkward in front of the camera while trying to connect to the house music in another room.
On the top floor, Danish artist Olafur Eliason's works fill the space, splayed out like the very guts of our planet. A lovely architectural feature of SFMoMa's top floor is the suspended walkway with grated floor that must be crossed before entering the top floor exhibition space. On the ascent, you'll pass remnants of a Matthew Barney action, climbing wall pegs and a scrawled drawing in a place that can only be reached by rope. When you reach the top level, a blue red spectrum, crystalline cave/tunnel await your entry and on the other side, you've entered Olafur Eliasson's world.

Eliasson's work is friendly, interactive, and at points as I wound my way through the exhibition, I felt a bit more like I was at Epcot Center or a science fair than at a major artist's exhibition. In the same breath, the integration of engineering, technology or science is an element of dialogue in fine art that I find very valuable, because it is both populist and accessible due to the mass appeal of popular science and the cross-over audiences that it attracts on the one hand, and on the other because some of the optical effects that are wrapped up in cognitive science's discoveries are really, really cool. One of the coolest examples of cognitive op/art/science in effect in the exhibition is the Room for One Color. In this room, once your eyes have adjusted and you can actually believe that you're perceiving what you're perceiving, everyone and everything that you see, excepting the light of course, appear black and white! In an adjacent room a hole is cut in the wall... you stick your head through the hole and it is a hall of mirrors framed in the blackness of an endless chasm. You can see yourself and whoever sticks their head through the hole, and the light coming through the hole itself thousands of times in every direction, becoming more faded and smaller as images of your moving self in real time move into infinity. These two pieces described were the greatest works of the show in my opinion. But the whole show wouldn't be complete without all the parts. What might have been better undone? The wooden plank room in the back. Phenomenal, but a little gimmicky.
On the whole, Olafur Eliasson, a refreshing populist artist who wants to make people happy.

About Joe Deutch

The infamous UCLA performance/body artist, Joe Deutch who brought a shotgun into Chris Burden's classroom, performed at Telic Arts Exchange this Halloween. Joe is also a participant in a group show at Marianne Boesky gallery in New York. Jerry Saltz recently reviewed the Boesky show, describing it cumulatively as prescient and expressive of both being in loads of trouble on the macro level and strangely calm on the inside. He singled out two artists, Joe Deutch and Jeffrey Wells as the artists responsible for making the show.
Deutch's performance at Telic Arts was agitated, dangerous, and I have to agree with Saltz that Deutch seems almost "obscenely" turned on by danger and violence.
When I walked into the room, the space was packed and Deutch was lying on his back beneath a door, cutting his stomach or his hand with a knife. This was concealed from the majority of the audience but we were crouched down on the edge of the stage. After getting some blood flowing he reached around and sharply knocked on the door a few times. He stood up with the door, footed it, held the door knob and swung the door about, over the heads of some of the audience. He was mumbling or reciting a rhyme when he pulled out the knife and stabbed through the back of the door as violently as possible. He stabbed himself in the process but didn't let it affect the performance.
Then he sat down and began filling glasses with water and dropping them so shattered glass surrounded him and finally he selected a syringe, a spoon, some powder, some spit and a leather belt from his waist and injected something into his arm. This was the end of the performance. The only evidence of the piece was a sheet of paper that he had repeatedly wiped his blood on.
Body art and performance art have always been about the most radical media and have always involved mutilation, body fluids, s&m, and violence. The attraction is both the self sacrifice for arts sake and the visceral effect of viewing such a personal and destructive acting out of the human experience. In viewing Deutch's performance, I can't say I liked it. It worried me in a parental way, but as with many good exhibitions, I'm still thinking of it and for me, that's the experience I need to have to know that something is effective.
It was the way he ended the performance, without fanfare, without drama, walking away, almost disappearing that struck me as being representative of Saltz's assessment of the group of artists at Boesky this month. Deutch's performances are a bit terrifying and truly life threatening. He's seems to play on the edge of oblivion and anything could happen during one of his performances. But when it's over, he walks away in an undisturbed manner, as his catharsis is not his own, but one reflecting the catharsis of society itself.

MOCA: Three artists testing borders

The current exhibition at MOCA is popular, attracting busloads full of high school students, most regular gallery goers and some new explorers it seems. It's popular and safe enough for the public schools, but, among the three artists represented,Cosima von Bonin, Matthew Monahan and Gordon Matta Clark there's some interesting rule breaking and boundary testing going on. The most elegant and most punk rock (industrial) award has to go to the historical representative, Gordon Matta Clark, (shown above) whose works, many of them carved out of and through existing houses and buildings created a precedent in the art world that cut roads for current artists, like Tatsu Nishi. His work ties closely to other environmental and conceptual artists in MOCA's permanent collection like Smithson, Oppenheim and Kuseth, particularly in the 'note taking as art' component.

Meanwhile, Matthew Monahan is an enigmatic artist, and his work is doing something profound, even though he could easily be cast in to a 'new wave Picasso' genre that wouldn't do him service. His work, sculptures, made largely from drawn on paper and household building materials like sheetrock and spray foam, are intelligently and sensitively crafted. They maintain a gritty edge. The armature for the grit seems to be a combination of the classical form and psychedelic drugs. Everyone I saw, including myself walked into the room and their pupils dilated, opening to this work which was raw and powerful on a formal level, and in terms of the profundity of the distorted human form. It was both humbling and formidable. This young? artist is making a big splash now and I imagine he'll continue to be an important and valued influence. There's an art school element here that's been developed past its limits.

Finally Cosima von Bonin, represented by Freidrich Petzel Gallery in New York was the third artist on view.
The work was multimedia and reeked a bit to me of Mike Kelley, only more adolescent, stuck even more in a state of arrested development, with the exception of the wall pieces, which were sewn together bits of fabric and colored stitching that made drawings on the fabric. The formalist in me loved these works not because they were formal or because they were hanging on the wall as paintings would, but because they were so well balanced. I've seen sewn up paintings before, but these satisfied me.

Tatzu Nishi: Readymades, 2007

Blum and Poe gallery host an exhibition by Tatzu Nishi, a Japanese artist based in Cologne, Germany. Tatzu's exhibition catalogue is extensive. He is an international artist, orchestrating works all over the world. His works, the works he envisions and conceptualizes usually involve the collaboration of engineers, fabricators and builders.

In this particualar show at Blum and Poe, Tatzu has created a chandelier from five 25' street lamps, suspended upside down in an array. The lights descend through a skylight in the top of the middle gallery, with their posts projecting fifteen feet above the roof of the gallery. In the main gallery, Tatzu has made wall paintings as clocks, with actual synchronized clock movements on each. These walls, turned into clocks can be 'purchased' as a concept. Tatzu will come and install another similar clock on one of the walls of your home. This method of selling concepts reminds me of California artist, Ed Keinholtz, who sold all his work this way.

In other works, not represented at Blum & Poe, Nishi has built structures and completely finished and furnished rooms around roof ornaments, famous sculptures and street lights. He extends the context of the gallery and the upset of the gallery by the readymade to a new level by building the 'gallery' around objects that otherwise go unappreciated and unnoticed.

War suck man suck war

Two shows opening in LA Chinatown rekindle concerns for those of us removed and on the far edges of the culture of war. At High Energy Constructs, Karl Erickson and Andrew Falkowski render images from movies and television series about war to underline the way the media has used humor and cult of personality to obscure and reduce the bloody awful meaning of war. Lovely rendered acrylic paintings and psychedelic hydra headed drawings, taken from characters in the sitcom, M*A*S*H inhabit the space at High Energy. Michael Smoller donned high fashion yesterday evening in one dashiki of a jacket. Bravo.

Meanwhile, at Chung King Project, a German curated, six artist show explores the theme of male fantasy, which as evidenced here, normally proceeds towards war, sex, war and sex and gloom and doom. Oh, and an occasional escapist abstraction. The work with the most tooth in this show were a series of Nazi photos that had been refurbished by the artist Martin Dammann, depicting gay Nazi men in various idyllic poses, sets and circumstances. Equally strong were pencil/ink drawings (shown above) by Damien Deboubaix.

I will work with Wangari Maathai

Benjamin Butler's New Trees

Karen Lovegrove gallery presents Benjamin Butler's "New Trees". Benjamin has explored tree forms for approximately five years. He told me that prior to the tree motif, he painted mountains. The painting's impact hits me when I engage with the subtle, spatial brush work. Lots of sensitive dry brushing of equally thick, equally spaced lines. The sharp edge of Benjamin's sables distinguish the body of his muse, the trees.
I was struck with the similarity of the new works on view this month in Los Angeles, with Mondrian's transitional works, the tree deconstructions in particular. Benjamin told me that his work was inspired by minimalism, and though it isn't minimalist, it seems to be a frozen moment akin to that stage referred to before in Mondrian's development. It's nice to see the kinship here, but it makes me wonder as well. Mondrian was moving on. Where is Benjamin Butler moving onto next?