Art and Institution

1. What are some examples of institutional critiques that seem hypocritical?

2. What art is separated from the institution?

3. 

Art and Globalism

1. Why is there so much interest on globalism right now?

2. Is America the only country "fearing" the globalist trend?

3. What is the difference between globalism and globalisation?

4. After all the doors are opened, would we really become a homogenous culture?

5. Is it western arts standards and values that are taking over the international art scene? or is it just the western art's language that everyone else started using?

Art and Identity

1. Is there any art that says nothing about the identity of the artist?

2. What are some reasons for using identity for the subject of art?

Art and the Quotidian Object

Choi Jeong Hwa

Choi Jeong Hwa

Art + Abstraction

Armory Review

Armory 2010 Review

Jaeman Shin

 

                Walking through the crowded isles with absolute visual overload of colors, lights, and sound, my first reactionary thought was that this is not how art should be shown or viewed.  I am aware that the main purpose of the Armory show is the buying and selling of the art, yet the carpet flooring and the cubicle divided galleries take away a lot from the true experience of the artworks.  There were many great artworks at the show yet most of the times my eyes were so numb from the massive scale of the exhibition, I found my eyes spending the most time on “loud” attention grabbing artworks of big scale, bright lights, or illusionary aspects.  And these eye grabbing artworks just may be the current trend in the world wide art market since I saw plenty of them at the Armory show 2010. Trying to make a connection between the current artworks by meaning, method, or aesthetics is an extremely difficult if not impossible task with the artworks seeming to come from random points in modern to post-modern art. 

Hyper realistic artworks were popular among many galleries. Out of all the massive hyper-realistic paintings at the Armory, Deborah Poynton’s nude female and male paintings were very powerful and felt new and different from many other hyper-realistic figure paintings that I have seen before.  Among the many different subject matters excruciatingly rendered on gigantic canvases, There was also a creepy hyper-realistic sleepwalking life size sculpture by Tony Matelli. Similar to last year’s Armory show, series of mirrored neon light sculptures and neon text were everywhere. The one that stays on my mind is Bert Rodriguez’s play on Bruce Nauman’s Sculpture which reads “The true artist makes shit for rich people to buy.”

Some of the many other “genres” of art at the armory show were pop art reminiscent works like the yellow room installation I Am Curious Yellow by Adam McEwin, Interactive art like spray to forget , body painted lady performance,and political works like the tar covered scrooge and the live cam 360 degree view of an oil pump. 

My favorite artworks were the kinetic sculptures especially the incredibly simple yet beautiful sculpture serpentine by Zilvinas Kempinas. Zilvinas uses weighted magnetic tapes floating and twirling in the corner of the cubicle by a couple of fans. The magnetic tapes resemble sea snakes or eels diving deep under water and felt so alive I must have stared at this artwork for at least ten minutes, which is a very long time to spend on one artwork at the armory. Elias Crespin’s Tetralineados circular was a very well crafted and subtle yet powerful artwork made with multi-colored plexi-glass squares suspended in a ring shape formation slowly moving in waves. The suspended sculpture felt like a mixture of Donald Judd and Olafur Eliasson. Conrad Shawcross’s Pre-Retroscope VI, a boat like structure with paddles and a projector and screen running on a circular track on top was a very nice artwork, and a perfect example for the physical projection project in the new media course. 

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the Armory show was seeing big name artists from cubicle to cubicle, and many times the works were less known and slightly different from the works the artists were known for.  Olafur Eliasson showed his photographs and Rhomboid Kaleidoscope, and it was exciting to see a completely different type of work from an artist that I really like. Sarah Sze known for her huge installations but she had a small windex lamp and table sculpture which was positioned in an awkward spot easily passed by unnoticed for many viewers. The Armory show’s convention/mall type setup makes it almost impossible for installation artists like Olafur Eliasson and Sarah Sze to show their works, besides it would be pointless since installations are not really sellable artworks.

A noticeable amount of “magic eye” like illusionary sculptures and paintings/wall mounted works could be seen again and again throughout the piers. These illusionary effects were achieved using a wide variety of rather new technologies like the live interactive video work by Lozano-Hemmer Rafael. Rafael’s The company of colours is a flat panel screen which converts the viewers in front of it into color sample panels like what you see on a photoshop type software or at the paint store. Also, L.E.D.s, laser cut paper or plexi-glass, and even holographs were used to create the visual illusions. 

Much like the wide variety of different cultures interacting in the globalized world today, the world-wide trend in art is also a mix of all different types of art. This could be viewed as complete freedom to do anything or complete confusion with no direction. I am not sure which of the two describes the art of now, maybe both.

                Walking out of the Armory show exhausted, I felt a little bad for the many artworks that were just buried by too much artwork. I know many hours and hard work were put into a lot of the works that I didn’t even glance at for more than five seconds. 

Whitney Review

Whitney Biennial 2010 Review

Jaeman Shin

 

From hearing negative review after negative review from people who have gone to the Whitney Biennial, I had to work very hard not to walk through the exhibition with a biased mind. Also, the incredibly strict “guards” at the Whitney did not help to make the viewing experience pleasant.  Looking at the Whitney Biennial as a whole, I don’t really see any theme or clear connection between the artworks. If I had to pick a theme that may fit these works, it would probably be “un-monumental” like the book I am reading for professor Bradford’s sculpture course. But there are definitely quite a few artworks that don’t really fit into the “un-monumental” theme. Many if not all of the sculptural and installation works were un-monumental yet, photographic works like the Burnt Afghan Women and many of the video arts do not seem to work with that theme.  There is also a political theme of America and it’s current state, like the ambulance We like America and America likes us or the president Obama newspaper couch by Jessica Jackson Hutchins. Nina Berman’s photo series of former marine Ty Ziegel are powerful and successful examples of this theme. If there were just a few more politically inspired artworks in the show, the theme could be America, but this theme is distracted by pockets of un-monumental or abstract-expressionist type artworks.

                One of my favorite from this exhibition was Kerry Tribe’s video projection H.M. The documentary style dual projection was about an old man who lost his short-term memory when he was in his forties. I believe he was an epilepsy patient who had an experimental brain surgery which resulted in him losing his short term memory because of the doctor’s mistake. If I remember correctly, while filming this old man, Kerry Tribe realizes that her neighbor was the doctor who performed the surgery on the man she was filming. There were many video works in this exhibition, most of them were dance choreography and home video style artworks which I couldn’t really understand or appreciate.

                In the photographic art area, two artworks stand out from the rest in my mind. Nina Berman’s marine photos and Stephanie Sinclair’s Afghan women. While both work deals with tragedy and renewal / recovery, I found Nina Berman’s photographs more successful because Stephanie Sinclair’s burn victims felt too graphic for unnecessary reasons and comes off as going for the shock value. This negative response to Stephanie Sinclair’s work may also have something to do with the installation artwork strange attractors that I had to walk through right before viewing Sinclair’s work. I think if there is an art work dealing with darker and serious subject matters, they should be presented in a well thought out point in the viewer’s flow through the exhibition. The strange attractors was a weird and funny looking installation with handheld video cameras in stockings hanging from the ceiling. I do not have a clue on what the installation is about but I don’t think it is the appropriate artwork to be right next to Sinclair’s photographs.

                I felt many of the sculptural works were of poor craftsmanship and weak at both conceptual and aesthetic levels. Theaster Gates installation sculptures on the bottom floor was probably the best sculptural work in the show. The wine rack looking metal sculpture on the second or third floor was one of the worst welding job that I have seen, and the two two-by-fours screwed together sitting on a pedestal was too much in my opinion and it makes me feel slightly sick to think about what the artist would have had to make up for in words to get that artwork into a show of this caliber.

                Although it was refreshing in a way to see new works from many artists that I have never heard of, the feel like the overall show was unsuccessful. There were some good artworks in the exhibition yet many if not most of the artworks were mediocre at best. After thinking through the exhibition once again while writing this review, I still think the theme is either America or un-monumental art. But, it feels like the theme that fits this biennial the best would be “randomness”

               

               

               

Art Nature and Technology, Questions + Images

Mark Dion

Mel Chin , Revival Field

1. What are some ways to use nature but not be about nature?

2. What is the difference between science and art?

3. Are things from nature readymades?

4. 

Manifesto