More LA Art Please.

Jimmy Baker, Potential Unlawful Combant @ Roberts And Tilton

It was another good year for the LA Art Fair. My impressions are posted over at ArtCal Zine as part of their special art fair coverage.

Good Night, Gracie. Good Morning, Whitney.

Image via Creative Time's The Plain of Heaven website.

Demolition is scheduled to begin today at 820 Washington Street. This was the building that housed Creative Time's The Plain of Heaven. It'll be the spot for the Whitney Museum's downtown location (If all goes well. Blahblahblah.).

Don't Miss The Boat.

If you're at PULSE near the end of the day today you'd be crazy not to catch the latest Creative Time project, Matthew Buckingham's beautiful Muhheakantuck: Everything has a Name , now showing on . . . NY Water Taxi! It's an amazing piece of work. The juxtaposition of the present and the past, and the aerial view on the screen and the water level view from the boat is almost unbearable. I mean that in a good way. More later, but I saw it last night, and it's running @ 7 & 8 PM today, tomorrow, and next weekend. I didn't want you to miss the boat.

Space Is The Place.

Gina Ruggeri, Crevasse, acrylic on mylar, 61" x 42"

I'm gonna be jammin' the art fairs like crazy all weekend and writing them up for ArtCal Zine's special coverage, BUT I can guarantee you that I'm going to take time out to go to the opening for The Outer Space at Pluto tonight. First of all, a painter I much respect, Pedro Barbeito, is curating the affair. Barbeito is a smart guy with great taste so I'm willing to bet that it's going to show up on the walls. The inclusion of Gina Ruggeri is all the proof I need of that. Her work has been consistently kicking me in the ass since I first saw it about seven years ago. And secondly, Pluto knows how to throw a great party. 10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2...1...

Post-opening update: Seriously good show!

Shift.

Duccio di Buoninsegna, Crucifixion Scene from the Maestà Altarpiece

Don't even miss David Hockney's piece, Pictures and power, in the Guardian. For me it runs slightly parallel to Hugo's argument in Hunchback about the death of architecture being hastened by the invention of the printing press. Technology shifts power. Hockney suggests--among other things--that we just might want to pay attention to that fact. One of the Guardian commenters criticizes the painter for being all over the place. So what? So are we.

This Time.

I pretty much stay away from politics on Heart As Arena, save for the times that I've openly prayed for George Bush's idiocy to leak into the part of his brain that controls the involuntary muscles. But this time I'm going to make an exception. I love the gallery giving the benefit, Alexander Gray Associates. I like the candidate, Barack Obama. What's not to post?

Smith Street.

unfinished painting in the foreground

I did an interview with wildly good painter René Smith Monday night for the launch issue of Gotham Digest. I first came across her work when Libby Rosof tipped me to it a couple years ago. This summer Smith curated a solid group show at Subdivision in LIC. Recently she put together another show for them, Dreamer of Pictures, and it's up through April 28th. Chances are pretty good that it's excellent.

Your Daily Dose Of Irony.

The header from the online front page of the Times reads . . . "Redrawing the Art World: Women who are changing the boundaries of the art world."

Redrawing the art world my ass. I'm on my way out the door, but judging from this photo and a cursory glance at the article it seems that Miuccia Prada, maker of ugly shoes, is sketching with the same thick pencil used by those who came before her. Happy Easter, Poppa.

Please be aware that this post went from my noticing the balance in the photo to the actual posting in 5 minutes so I totally might be flying off the handle here. I'll take a closer look when I get back from brunch. In the mean time, I'm pretty confident in my loathing of the cock-heavy group photo. And don't get me started on the "Introducing . . ." poses by Francesco Vezzoli and John Baldessari. Oh thank you Great Fathers. Thank you for clearing the way for the little girls. They couldn't have done it without you. Seriously. Does the Times think before they do anything?


Post Easter Brunch Coma Update: Naah. My first impression holds. The article is mostly about the boys she's supported over the years. Surprise. Surprise.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but between 1993 and 2007, only 3 out of the 25 artists exhibiting at Fondazione Prada were women. How do you say Jennifer Dalton in Italian?

Escape.

The Preparation with Green Sky

Between my stops at PEER and Winkleman last night I happened upon Ashley Bickerton's show of new work at Lehmann Maupin. Um. Holy fucking shit! Bali-livin' muthafuckah knocks it so far off the island they're going to have to build another ocean to catch it.

A few hours of post-work Maundy Thursday drinking were immediately washed out of my system when I stood in front of these paintings. That tends to happen when you get hit with a big wave. You wake up, and you wake up fast. I had one of those art experiences where everything and everyone around you disappears. The head and the heart get very, very still. It's just you and the painting. You are gone, and you are there. And I can't imagine a better place to be than in the realm of one of Bickerton's paintings.

I go back and forth in regards to Bickerton's work, and judging from a number of conversations I've had over the years most of you do the same. There was no back and forth for me here though. No place to hide. Only escape, and all the weight that it carries.


Famili

Editing Nature

I'm thrilled to bring you the news of Sebastian Lemm's first solo show in NYC. It opens tonight at PEER Gallery on 26th Street. I started to fall for his work when I came upon it in a group show at BANK in downtown LA a couple years ago. When I bumped into it again in Pierogi's back room my tumble was complete.

William Kentridge in Times Square.

Just the fact that I was able to write that post title proves the utter awesomehood of Creative Time's ongoing project, The 59th Minute. I just posted the photos over on my Creative Time blog. If you're ever in Times Square on the hour, look UP. Here's the link to the The 59th Minute project.

131.

Dude. You are SO getting that $15 entrance fee waived for the rest of the year. Hello 131 million! That buys a lotta Biennials, yo.

Swept Away.

With just an hour left in the run of the show, I spent some quality time with Joy Garnett's paintings at Winkleman Gallery on Saturday. I gotta tell ya . . . I was ready for the sweep, but I wasn't ready for the anchor. These paintings were unexpected machines that worked me over and took me in. Wicked good.


What I couldn't see in the online jpegs was how the paintings worked. They flow hard. Standing in front of them, I found that the great rush of Garnett's strokes was held down by these small, slightly incongruous--almost isolated--sections. These visual moments set up a hearty tension between the details and whole picture. Color me all kinds of swept away.

CNBC, 4:17 AM

Send In The Clowns.

Exits and Entrances

WTF? I like this. I like this a LOT. The clowns are illin'. Who is (the late) Edith Neff and why did I just find out about her? There's something gloriously off about these paintings. Hat tip to Miller for the introduction.



Figures at a Park Bench

All That Money Wants.

If you've been reading me for any length of time you know about my strange love for David Patrick Columbia's New York Social Diary. A recent post included two of my favorite photographs of the Whitney Biennial. Turns out all that money wants is a room of its own.


Really excellent photos obviously by DPC.

Cut.

Photo by Thomas Brinkmann

Don't miss this Thomas Brinkmann interview from XLR8 This, for me, is where the sound and the visual come together. Partly because the music is so visual, partly because the artist is so clearly inspired by visual art, and partly because of Brinkmann's tight focus on the design aesthetics of his releases. It might also have something to do with his label name as well: Max Ernst. His working methods encompass appropriation, collage, cut-up, and a healthy worshipping of the glitch. Brinkmann is in serious genius territory. Go there.

Money quote . . .

"Art is art and everything else is everything else, like Ad Reinhardt said. But I also agree with Joseph Beuys or John Cage by saying the contrary, [that everything can be art]."

Hat tip to David at Playing By Ear for pointing out this interview AND for turning me onto Brinkmann's music 11 years ago.

Hacking.

Hans Hofmann Fermented Soil

Hey, kids. New policy here at HAA. Every post comes with an excuse or apology or maybe even both. I will resume posting about art that I've actually seen when I stop coughing up Color Field paintings. Bronchitis SUCKS! Avelox is my god.

Theraflu Biennial.

I rolled out of bed at 10:30 this morning, pumped myself up with massive amounts of Theraflu and went to the Whitney Biennial press preview. Here's a bunch of pics. I'll add the artists' names when I wake up tomorrow (hopefully with a fever that has finally and decisively broken).


Fia Backstrom


Phoebe Washburn


Walead Beshty


Jedediah Caesar


Mika Rottenberg


Mary Heilman


Flora Wiegman

At the Armory . . .


The big room.


Michael Queenland


Bert Rodriguez


Ellen Harvey


Dexter Sinister


Kembra Pfahler


Olaf Breuning

Lull.

Joy "Very Much NOT In A Lull" Garnett, Harbor (2)

Sorry about the lull this month. I've been away on the weekends and haven't had too many opportunities to actually see art. This weekend I wound up with a wicked cold, and didn't make it out. Not to worry. The quiet will be ending with the Whitney Biennial press preview on Tuesday. Look for pics on Tuesday night.

For the record, if my head hadn't felt like a cantaloupe filled with cement I totally would have been making a B-line to Winkelman to see Joy Garnett's show. Last time I saw one of her paintings it was wrapped in bubble wrap in Winkelman's backroom and even then the painting's colors and sweep were busting through the plastic. I meant that metaphorically. I mean, like, the plastic part.

On a related note, I about coughed up a lung laughing at Ed Winkelman's recent middle name reveal on his blog . Trust me. You don't want to miss this.