SEPTEMBER 2016 Modern Painters

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BLOUINmodernpainters SEPTEMBER 2016

GETTING DRESSED WITH

K8 HARDY & SUSAN CIANCIOLO > ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS BUILDS A WALL MARGAUX OGDEN’S STUNTED LANGUAGE DAVID ADJAYE THE ART WORLD ARCHITECT

ROBERT BORDO WITH AMY SILLMAN & CECILY BROWN

NEW YORK

PARIS

HONG KONG

SEOUL

909 MADISON AVENUE

76 RUE DE TURENNE

50 CONNAUGHT ROAD CENTRAL

5 PALPAN-GIL, JONGNO-GU

DANIEL ARSHAM ”CIRCA 2345“ 15 SEPTEMBER - 22 OCTOBER

TAKASHI MURAKAMI 10 SEPTEMBER - 23 DECEMBER

YUXING HUANG “AND NE FORHTEDON NÁ” 1 SEPTEMBER - 15 OCTOBER

GREGOR HILDEBRANDT “BILDER MALEN WIE CURE” 22 SEPTEMBER - 12 NOVEMBER

BHARTI KHER 18 OCTOBER - 23 DECEMBER IMAGE: TAKASHI MURAKAMI sketch /( homage to Francis Bacon) © 2016 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Bullet, 2016, bristol paper cut out, 36.02 x 87.4 x 2.17in. (91.5 x 222 x 5.5cm)

SEÇK¡N P¡R¡M HYPOCHONDRIAC SEPT 15 - OCT- 29, 2016

560 WEST 24TH ST. NEW YORK, NY 10011 WWW.C24GALLERY.COM

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Here is where the ordinary becomes extraordinary Here is The Met

metmuseum.org

#dianearbus

catalogue available

Now through November 27

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The exhibition is made possible by the Alfred Stieglitz Society.

Additional support is provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

Diane Arbus, Jack Dracula at a bar, New London, Conn. 1961. © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

S E P TE M B E R

86 David Adjaye The new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

54

Roundtable

A L A N K A R C H M E R A N D A D JAY E A S S O C I AT E S

painters

GETTING DRESSED WITH

ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS BUILDS A WALL MARGAUX OGDEN’S STUNTED LANGUAGE

ROBERT BORDO WITH AMY SILLMAN & CECILY BROWN

Abraham Cruzvillegas

From autobiography to autoconstrucción by Michael Slenske

68

72 BLOUINmodernpainters

60

Chris Kraus and Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer with Annette Weisser

In Conversation Amy Sillman and Cecily Brown dig deep with painter Robert Bordo

K8 HARDY & SUSAN CIANCIOLO >

Features

Showcase

78

The conceptual fashion of K8 Hardy, Susan Cianciolo, and Eckhaus Latta

How Should I Live? An exclusive excerpt from a new book about Rilke and Rodin by Rachel Corbett

Dress Up

Comment 97 Reviews The ninth Berlin Biennale, non-Western modernism at National Gallery Singapore, Candida Höfer in Hong Kong, Ryan Gander, Alicja Kwade, and more

by Thea Ballard

86

David Adjaye The architect the art world loves

by Courtney Willis Blair

DAVID ADJAYE THE ART WORLD ARCHITECT

ON THE COVER: Susan Cianciolo, photographed at Yale Union in Portland, Oregon, for Modern Painters by Scott Indrisek, 2016. She wears a shirt designed by Eckhaus Latta and Waggy Tee.

BLOUINARTINFO.COM SEPTEMBER 2016 MODERN PAINTERS

7

VITO ACCONCI: WHERE WE ARE NOW ( WHO ARE WE ANYWAY?), 1976 Through September 18 MoMA PS1 22–25 Jackson Ave Queens, NY momaps1.org Image: SHADOW-PLAY, 1970. Courtesy Acconci Studio.

CONTENTS

S E P TE M B E R

103 RIGHT:

Cosima von Bonin Installation view of The Bonin/ Oswald Empire’s Nothing #5, at Glasgow International, 2016.

48 ABOVE:

C LO C K W I S E F R O M TO P L E F T: R U T H C L A R K ; A M Y B E N N E T T A N D R I C H A R D H E L L E R GA L L E R Y, S A N TA M O N I C A ; I C A R U S F I L M S; S C OT T I N D R I S E K

Amy Bennett Nothing New Under the Sun, 2016. Oil on canvas, 32 x 40 in.

78 RIGHT:

Susan Cianciolo Detail of one of the artist’s mixedmedia kits in an exhibition at Yale Union in Portland, Oregon, 2016.

30 LEFT:

John Berger, the subject of a new documentary spearheaded by Tilda Swinton.

Portfolio 27

Inspirations

Reports 39

Art & Finance Michael Mandiberg

41

Your monthly cheat sheet for art world news

Robert Longo

28

Ins & Outs

Departments

48

Hit List Design and beyond

45 Studio Check

Biopic Margaux Ogden

Amy Bennett

29

Upstate Debut September gallery

31

112

Last Laugh Matthew Thurber

History Lessons Qin Feng

Modern Painters, ISSN 0953-6698, is published monthly with a combined June/July issue and a special Fall issue by LTB Media (U.K.) Ltd., an affiliate of BlouinArtinfo Corp, 88 Laight Street, New York, NY 10013. Vol. XXVIII, No. 8. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, Send address changes to: Fulco, Inc., Modern Painters, PO Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834-3000.

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11

Arch designed by James Stirling. Image selection: Pablo Bronstein. Photography Luke Hayes.

London

Regent’s Park 6–9 October 2016 New Preview Day Wednesday 5 October frieze.com

VOLUME XXVIII, NUMBER 8

Scott Indrisek

David Gursky

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curt neitzke design • roger popwell photograph

MICHAEL DUNBAR

ride, sally, ride 2016 bronze

Ball State University, Fine Arts Building, AR328 2000 W. University Ave. Muncie, IN 47306 office: 765 285-5242

20th EDITION

10.13 NOV 2016 GRAND PALAIS

AMY BENNETT September 10 - October 29, 2016

18

Sean Wehle

Chris Kraus

Rachel Corbett

Gabriela Jauregui

Taylor Dafoe

A Ph.D. student in the department of history of art and architecture at Harvard University, Wehle has a particular interest in the corporate aesthetics of 1950s European and American modernism. He traveled to Berlin to contribute the review of the German city’s ninth bienniale that appears on page 101, and is currently at work on a collection of cultural criticism focusing on YouTube videos.

Modern Painters’ newest contributing editor is a ilmmaker and author of iction (including I Love Dick, Aliens & Anorexia, and Summer of Hate), non-iction, and criticism, and founder of Semiotext(e)’s Native Agents imprint. Her conversation with German artist Annette Weisser and curator Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer—on the event of Weisser’s solo exhibition at MiM Gallery—can be found on page 54. The discussion, Kraus recalls, “continued among audience members for an hour after we’d inished.” Based in Los Angeles, Kraus is inishing a critical biography of experimental novelist and performance artist Kathy Acker.

Corbett, who joined the editorial team of Modern Painters this past spring as executive editor, is the author of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin, out this month from W.W. Norton. Her book, from which the article on page 72 is adapted, tells the story of how the young poet found an unlikely mentor in the older, already famous sculptor, who led Rilke to his own artistic epiphany. Corbett has also written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Art Newspaper, and New York magazine.

Jauregui has worked as a correspondent for BBC World Service’s The Cultural Frontline, and is a contributor to Artforum and ArtReview. On page 99 she reviews Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione’s exhibition at Parallel Oaxaca in her home base of Mexico City. A poet, musician, and iction writer, Jauregui’s work “seeks to ind a balance between aesthetic experimentation and political engagement.”

Brooklyn-based Dafoe is a staff writer for Blouinartinfo.com. He reviews Alicja Kwade’s exhibition at 303 Gallery on page 97, and gives us a preview of Jessica Stockholder’s new steel constructions on page 28. With a particular focus on new media, his essays and interviews have appeared in ArtSlant, Artcritical, Bomb, and the Brooklyn Rail. He is also a photographer, currently engaged in an ongoing portrait project featuring artists in their studios. Earlier this year, he organized a site-speciic group exhibition in the hallways of a residential building in Fort Greene.

“The Berlin Biennale made me consider the possibility, or impossibility, of experiencing humor and sincerity in contemporary art.”

“I’ve followed Annette Weisser’s work with interest and admiration for years.”

“‘How should I live?’ is a question young artists always want answered—I love that Rilke wasn’t too afraid to ask.”

“A beautiful show at a really great contemporary art space, this exhibition also afforded me the opportunity to learn more about geophagy.”

“I love the mixture of heady references, formalist explorations, and subtle humor in Alicja Kwade’s work.”

MODERN PAINTERS SEPTEMBER 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM

F R O M L E F T: S E A N W E H L E ; N I C A M ATO ; R A I N E R GA N A H L ; S A N T I AG O S A N C H E Z ; TAY LO R DA F O E

CONTRIBUTORS // SEPTEMBER

25 April 2015, oil on canvas, 54 x 46

LYNN BOGGESS

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THE FIFTH INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION OF CONTEMPORARY & MODERN ART

22-25 SEPTEMBER 2016 CHICAGO | NAVY PIER

PARTICIPATING GALLERIES Galería Álvaro Alcázar, Madrid Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York AND NOW, Dallas Anglim Gilbert Gallery, San Francisco Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach Bortolami, New York Borzo Gallery, Amsterdam Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco The Breeder, Athens Browse & Darby, London Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Lugano CarrerasMugica, Bilbao Carpenters Workshop Gallery, London, Paris, New York casati gallery, Chicago David Castillo Gallery, Miami Beach Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel Aviv CONNERSMITH., Washington, DC Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago CRG Gallery, New York Alan Cristea Gallery, London Galerie Crone, Berlin, Vienna Crown Point Press, San Francisco Douglas Dawson, Chicago Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago Flowers Gallery, London, New York Forum Gallery, New York, Beverly Hills Honor Fraser, Los Angeles Geary Contemporary, New York Graphicstudio, Tampa Alexander Gray Associates, New York Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, New York Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica GRIMM, Amsterdam Kavi Gupta, Chicago Hacket | Mill, San Francisco Leila Heller Gallery, New York, Dubai Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles Galerie Ernst Hilger, Vienna Nancy Hofman Gallery, New York Rhona Hofman Gallery, Chicago HOSTLER BURROWS, New York

Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York, Zürich Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, New York Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York Kayne Griin Corcoran, Los Angeles Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin Alan Koppel Gallery, Chicago David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles Pearl Lam Galleries, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore Landfall Press, Inc., Santa Fe Jane Lombard Gallery, New York Diana Lowenstein Gallery, Miami MACCARONE, New York, Los Angeles Matthew Marks Gallery, New York, Los Angeles Marlborough, New York, London, Madrid, Barcelona Marlborough Chelsea, New York The Mayor Gallery, London McCormick Gallery, Chicago Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco moniquemeloche, Chicago nina menocal, Mexico City Laurence Miller Gallery, New York Robert Miller Gallery, New York THE MISSION, Chicago Gallery MOMO, Johannesburg, Cape Town Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel MOT International, Brussels, London Carolina Nitsch, New York David Nolan Gallery, New York Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin, Stockholm Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco Richard Norton Gallery, Chicago Claire Oliver Gallery, New York ONE AND J. Gallery, Seoul P.P.O.W, New York PACE, New York, London, Beijing, Hong Kong, Paris, Palo Alto Peres Projects, Berlin Galerie Perrotin, New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Seoul

POLÍGRAFA OBRA GRÀFICA, Barcelona Galeria Joan Prats, Barcelona PROYECTOSMONCLOVA, Mexico City R & Company, New York ANDREW RAFACZ, Chicago Regen Projects, Los Angeles Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen ROSEGALLERY, Santa Monica rosenfeld porcini, London Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles Salon 94, New York Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin Eduardo Secci Contemporary, Florence, Pietrasanta Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Beverly Hills Lisa Sette Gallery, Phoenix William Shearburn Gallery, St. Louis Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco Sims Reed Gallery, London Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinnati Louis Stern Fine Arts, West Hollywood Allan Stone Projects, New York MARC STRAUS, New York Galeria Carles Taché, Barcelona Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York Tandem Press, Madison Galerie Tanit, Beirut, Munich team (gallery, inc.), New York, Los Angeles Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris, Brussels Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York Vallarino Fine Art, New York Various Small Fires, Los Angeles Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles Weinstein Gallery, Minneapolis Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, New York Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Chicago Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York David Zwirner, New York, London

EXPOSURE 11R, New York Alden Projects™, New York ARCADE, London ASHES/ASHES, Los Angeles Piero Atchugarry, Pueblo Garzón Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Los Angeles DITTRICH & SCHLECHTRIEM, Berlin Edel Assanti, London half gallery, New York The Hole, New York Horton Gallery, New York Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles Kimmerich, Berlin Josh Lilley, London Efrain Lopez Gallery, Chicago LUCE GALLERY, Torino MARSO, Mexico City MIER GALLERY, Los Angeles On Stellar Rays, New York PAPILLION ART, Los Angeles ROBERTO PARADISE, San Juan Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco VAN HORN, Düsseldorf WALDEN, Buenos Aires Kate Werble Gallery, New York Yours Mine and Ours, New York

Editions + Books devening projects + editions, Chicago DOCUMENT, Chicago Paul Kasmin Shop, New York No Coast, Chicago only photography, Berlin Other Criteria, New York, London The Pit, Los Angeles RENÉ SCHMITT, Westoverledingen

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gallery program artists program information

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LETTER // SEPTEMBER

Hyperbole, sure, but in the interest of romanticizing a very worthy calling—and a reckoning in which artworks are less salable objects than spells, cast from a distance. Rachel Harrison’s excellent “Perth Amboy” installation, on view at the Museum of Modern Art earlier this year, also had magic on its mind. In 2000, the artist traveled to the titular New Jersey town to document a strange phenomenon. The Virgin Mary, as she is wont to do, had seen it to cast her image upon an ordinary house’s street-facing window; believers flocked to press their ingers against the holy pane. Harrison snapped images of these pilgrims, and the photographs form the heart of “Perth Amboy,” along with a series of modest sculptures in which rinky-dink kitsch plays a major role. The work, as it was contextualized at MOMA, played with notions of faith: Who’s the bigger rube—the Catholic earnestly communing with Mary-in-the-Jersey-window, or the chin-scratching intellectual in the white cube? The former flock was free to manhandle Mary’s image (for a fee, I’d imagine), but of course the same rules did not apply to Harrison’s own sculptures. Made of cheapish junk as they were, perched on plinths, they possessed the holy aura of the institution (Do Not Touch The Art…Idiot!) A few months after Harrison’s show opened, heavyweight Gagosian artist Urs Fischer was moonlighting at the tiny Lower East Side space JTT, where he had installed a sculpture modeled on Aristide Maillol’s 1943 The River (a cast of which, coincidentally, is displayed in MOMA’s garden). Fischer’s version was in plasticine. And unlike most wizard-produced art objects, this one was intended to be fucked with: torn apart, remolded, augmented, and otherwise debased. The transgression was satisfying, and not just because it allowed any schmuck off the street to imagine himself a collaborator, a critic, a puerile molder of mostly phallic appendages. Fischer’s sculpture, after all, was just stuff—material in physical space—and, like most stuff, any magical qualities it might have were largely the product of projection or delusion. So are artists wizards? Is the art world magical? Every now and then—but perhaps not every day—there’s a new reason to believe, some of which I hope you’ll ind in this issue of Modern Painters. We keep pressing our hands to the glass, waiting to be changed.

SCOTT INDRISEK, EDITOR IN CHIEF

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:

Self-portrait taken within the magical aura of a James Turrell installation. A photograph from Rachel Harrison’s “Perth Amboy” installation, recently on view at MOMA. Members of the public enjoy a hands-on experience with Urs Fischer’s Ursula at JTT earlier this year.

C LO C K W I S E F R O M B OT TO M L E F T: T W O I M AG E S , S C OT T I N D R I S E K ; R AC H E L H A R R I S O N A N D G R E E N E N A F TA L I , N E W YO R K

“Artists are wizards,” London gallerist Sadie Coles recently told us. “Who wouldn’t want to assist a wizard?”

Kunsthalle Wien

25/6 – 16/10 2016 Exhibition

Artists Kasper Akhøj Heba Amin Monica Bonvicini Mark Boyle Andreas Bunte Tom Burr Thomas Demand Werner Feiersinger Karsten Födinger Cyprien Gaillard Isa Genzken Liam Gillick Annette Kelm Hubert Kiecol Jakob Kolding Miki Kratsman

Museumsquartier

Susanne Kriemann David Maljković Jumana Manna Ingrid Martens Isa Melsheimer Olaf Metzel Maximilian Pramatarov Heidi Specker Ron Terada Tercerunquinto Sofie Thorsen Klaus Weber Tobias Zielony Curators Vanessa Joan Müller Nicolaus Schafhausen

www.kunsthallewien.at

Cecily Brown Rehearsal OCTOBER 7 – DECEMBER 18, 2016 3 5 W O O S T E R S T R E E T N Y C 10 013 | 212 219 216 6 D R AW I N G C E N T E R . O R G H O U R S : W E D S – S U N 12 – 6 P M | T H U R S 12 – 8 P M @ D R AW I N G C E N T E R

Cecily Brown, Untitled (After Bosch and Boldini) (detail), 2015. Watercolor and pastel. 79 x 51 1/4 inches. Courtesy of the artist.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS: PAINTINGS FROM THE 1970S AND 1980S BY ROSS BLECKNER, ERIC FISCHL, AND DAVID SALLE THROUGH OCTOBER 16 The paintings that would define their work for decades

Parrishart.org 631-283-2118 Unfinished Business: Paintings from the 1970s and 1980s by Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl, and David Salle is made possible, in part, by the generous support of The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Fund for Publications; the Joseph and Sylvia Slifka Foundation; Jennifer Rice and Michael Forman; Helene & Ziel Feldman & HFZ Capital Group; The Muriel F. Siebert Foundation; Per Skarstedt; Lorinda Ash, Ash Fine Art; The Hilaria and Alec Baldwin Foundation; The Broad Art Foundation; Suzanne and Bob Cochran; Calvin Klein Family Foundation; Mary Boone Gallery; Ninah and Michael Lynne; and Galerie magazine. Public Funding provided by Suffolk County. WSHU is the exclusive radio sponsor of Unfinished Business. Photo: Courtesy QT Luong/terragalleria.com

TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS //

PORTFOLIO

Robert Longo Mike Test (Head of Goya), 2003. Charcoal on mounted paper, 72 x 96 in.

R O B E R T LO N G O A N D M E T R O P I C T U R E S , N E W YO R K

INSPIRATIONS

SHADES OF GRAY THE PHOTOREALIST draftsman Robert Longo never imagined he’d show with his two artistic heroes, Soviet ilmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and Spanish painter Francisco Goya. But when he was invited to exhibit at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow he found himself “always talking to the curator about these two artists and how much they influenced me,” he says. Still, he didn’t expect much to come of it— “I mean, these are giants,” he marvels—until

he paid a visit to the former Museum of the Russian Revolution in St. Petersburg. “There were these leather saddlebags there. They opened them up and there were etchings by Goya, and they were fucking miraculous,” he says. “It was like they were printed yesterday.” Longo also knew that Eisenstein made “incredible drawings” and he secured 30 never-before-shown sketches from the Russian state archives to exhibit in “Proof,” on view September 30 to January 22.

Next he had to “igure out the common denominator among the three of us. Then it hit me: We all work in black and white,” Longo says. Alongside the historical works, 40 of his own drawings will be on view, along with seven of Eisenstein’s ilms, slowed down to almost imperceptible movement so they appear like images. “Every great artist is like a rung on a ladder,” Longo says. “These guys are monumental rungs, and I’ve been stepping on them for a long time.” —RACHEL CORBETT

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OUT THERE

TROPIC OF CANCER A Grecian crustacean invasion coincided with a full moon for the irst time in nearly 50 years this past June, and the Italian artist Roberto Cuoghi was waiting for it. To celebrate this historic shift into the sign of Cancer, he installed nine homemade kilns on the Greek island of Hydra, and ired hundreds of ceramic crabs as part of

the exhibition “Putiferio,” on view through September 30 at the Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art’s project space on the island. “This is supposed to be an invasion of crabs,” said Cuoghi, on a break from the flaming heat of the kilns. It is also a kind of revenge fantasy for the island’s namesake, Hydra, the nine-headed monster

who was decapitated by Heracles in Greek mythology. The crab had tried to help Hydra, Cuoghi explained, but was crushed under Heracles’s foot. How did Cuoghi, who has never worked in ceramics before, learn to manufacture kilns? “YouTube,” he shrugged. “I just improvised. There used to be one more, but it collapsed and fell down the hill.” —RC Roberto Cuoghi Installation view of “Putiferio” at the Deste Foundation’s project space in Hydra, Greece.

Jessica Stockholder Detached Detail, 2016. Mixed media, 57½ x 46½ x 60 in.

RECOMMENDATION

HOOKUPS A sculptor loses control JESSICA STOCKHOLDER’s new show at MitchellInnes & Nash in New York, “The Guests All Crowded Into the Dining Room,” on view through October 1, is a departure for the artist, who primarily uses found or purchased objects in her work. For this exhibition, focused on her “Assists” series, the works are constructed of steel, and fabricated by others. They are made of four interchangeable parts that cannot stand on their own, and together form a complete sculpture only when hooked to another separate object, like a piano. “There’s a lack of control,” says Stockholder, “control I’ve given to someone else. What’s interesting is the intersection between my thoughts and processes, and the systems that are embedded in that trade, the ways in which an object is made, and, most importantly, the person who makes it.” —TAYLOR DAFOE

ART & FINANCE

GO FOR BROKE Cataloguing failure, one bank at a time “THE CORRECT NUMBER is 527; a few more have failed since information about the project came out,” says artist Michael Mandiberg, counting the number of insolvent banks he has catalogued as part of his installation FDIC Insured. Mandiberg has repurposed investment guidebooks, printing the logo of a U.S. bank that has oficially “failed” and been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on their covers. He began the project in 2008, “walking around New York City noticing the growing number of books I was seeing left out on the street,” he says. “It was a particular time where books were losing their use value, their exchange value, and some of their sentimental value, too.” At the same time, another kind of depreciation was well underway: “I was watching the economic crisis unfold, watching banks implode.” Mandiberg has collected the books into a more than 500-volume library, to open on the 15th floor of 40 Rector Street on September 15, the eighth anniversary of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy iling. —JULIET HELMKE

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Michael Mandiberg A repurposed manual from FDIC Insured, 2008–16.

C LO C K W I S E F R O M L E F T: R AC H E L C O R B E T T; J E S S I C A S TO C K H O L D E R A N D M I TC H E L L- I N N E S & N A S H ; C C BY- S A 2 0 0 9 M I C H A E L M A N D I B E R G

THE SUMMER SOLSTICE

BIENNIAL

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD Gwangju looks to its troubled past THE 11TH EDITION of the Gwangju

UPSTATE DEBUT

MORE THAN A MONTH

Gallerist Kristen Dodge, left, with colleagues Amber Esseiva and Annie Bielski.

September comes to Hudson living upstate is our goats,” asserts Kristen Dodge, the former Manhattan-based art dealer who has relocated north to Hudson, New York, where she now helms September gallery. (In addition to her newfound livestock, Dodge also cites “the incredible community of badass women—artists, actors, musicians, writers, chefs, and small business owners—who relect a community that I didn’t know I was missing.”) September, located in a roughly 1,800 square space on the same street as Zach Feuer and Joel Mesler’s Retrospective, opened this summer with a group show, “Blue Jean Baby,” which remains on view through October. While Dodge isn’t spotlighting the issue with any self-congratulatory fanfare, it’s impossible not to notice that the exhibition’s lineup is entirely composed of women artists—Brie Ruias, Laurel Nakadate, Kim Gordon, Rachel Foullon, and many others—as is September’s programming through 2017, which includes a solo from Taylor Davis (opening in November) and another survey, “Witches,” with Anna Betbeze, Rosy Keyser, and Marianne Vitale. Dodge is also helping curate the art component of the local Basilica Soundscape music festival, September 11 through 13, which in previous years has featured stage backdrops from blue-chip talent like Sterling Ruby. “I’ve chosen Cal Lane, who works with steel, light, and dust,” she tells us. “Her piece will be part pile, part performance—part immovable, part temporal.” Don’t expect Dodge to return to the New York City grind anytime soon. “Hudson is an incredibly supportive community,” she says. “Almost everyone I’ve met has their heart in something creative, off-base, and on-point.” —SCOTT INDRISEK

F R O M TO P : Z I A A N G E R ; D O R A GA R C I A

“THE BEST THING ABOUT

Biennale opens this month with a new logo that “visualizes a ‘breakaway’ from the existing frame,” say organizers. But curators Maria Lind and Binna Choi are taking their inspiration largely from the South Korean institution’s past. “We have been drawn to the fact that the Gwangju Biennale was initiated as a living memorial to the May 18, 1980 Democratic Uprising,” says Lind of the anti-authoritarian movement that paved the way for democracy in South Korea. Spanish artist Dora García is installing a replica of the historic Nokdu bookstore, which served as a refuge for student activists during the rebellion. The installation will host a series of discussions about the 1980 events throughout the course of the biennial, which runs September 2 to November 6. Meanwhile, the American artist Doug Ashford’s paintings, photos, and texts will look more broadly at systems of trauma and power. “Prior to any other question, we are asking ‘What does art do?’ ” says Choi. “This is less about the deinition of art or identity, or a utilitarian approach to art, and more about the performativity and agency of art.” —RC

Conceptual sketch for Dora García’s Nokdu bookstore installation, realized in collaboration with Olga Subirós.

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PORTFOLIO // TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS

PUBLIC ART

WAYS OF SEEING BERGER

BUCKET LIST

Tilda Swinton on a legendary critic

A satirist ponders death

watching John Berger on screen is watching him listen. In The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger, a new documentary that’s less about the writer than an extension of his ideas, the titular essayist, artist, critic, and poet—he prefers the catchall term storyteller—proves to be, above all else, an engaging audience. When he speaks, his words are chosen carefully; when he’s silent, his face is animated, alive to possibilities. It was this mode of “enlightened conversation” that led his friend, actress Tilda Swinton, to make a film about him. “We realized that any film we might make featuring John would place him, and an engaged chinwag with him, at its heart,” she says. The film’s first section, “Ways of Listening,” shows Swinton and Berger in discussion across the kitchen table at Berger’s home in rural France, and was initially conceived as a standalone piece. “We realized we were hungry for more John and conceived the idea of three further conversations through

SHOPPERS ALONG MANHATTAN’S posh Fifth Avenue are being confronted with an unusual shopping list: a 17-foot-tall granite tombstone engraved with words like cheese, tampons, and cleaning stuff. Best known for his satirical illustrations, David Shrigley has deviated from his usual practice with Memorial, installed in Central Park’s Doris C. Freedman Plaza September 7 to February 26. It is his largest sculpture to date, realized David Shrigley Memorial, 2016. The with support from the Public Art Fund, though later this artist’s sketch for his month he will install an even more monumental work, a public sculpture. 32-foot-tall thumbs-up, in London’s Trafalgar Square. “I think if you can laugh at something, then you instinctively understand it,” Shrigley says. A shopping list and a memorial serve the same function—to remember—and they tap into the human desire for resonance. “Often when people are taken away, they’re just taken away. Without any great glorious reminder of who they were under the circumstances in which they departed,” he says. “Death for most of us is just something that’s a part of life, and it’s very ordinary.” Memorial valorizes one of life’s most quotidian objects—a shopping list—to raise some of its fundamental questions. “Maybe,” he says, “the small things in life are just as important as the big things.” —REBECCA L. CONNOLLY

THE THRILL OF

STAYING POWER

FIT FOR PRINT Printed Matter turns 40

Still from The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger.

three further seasons,” Swinton says. The following sections feature Berger in dialogue with other companions, including writers Ben Lerner, Akshi Singh, and filmmaker Colin MacCabe. Each takes a topic close to Berger’s heart—animals, politics, history—and explores it from different perspectives. For Swinton, Berger represents “a compassionate and inspired belief in the innate dignity of human beings and a refusal to settle for anything less.” She continues to marvel at his “boundless curiosity and heart of joy.” —CRAIG HUBERT

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WHILE SOME cynics pronounce the book industry dead, Printed Matter, New York’s preeminent nonproit artist bookstore, is currently celebrating its 40th anniversary and is staging the 11th edition of the New York Art Book Fair this month, September 16 to 18. “The book has been relegated to the dustbin of history, but in fact we’re seeing a real resurgence in artist-book publishing and in public interest, as witnessed by the huge popularity of the L.A. and New York Art Book Fairs, which have reached the scale of rock festivals,” says Printed Matter

executive director Max Schumann. Last year the fairs drew 35,000 to 40,000 attendees each. To celebrate the anniversary, the shop is dedicating a show to the late, “completely underknown book artist” Printed Matter’s Robert Jacks, a close Lispenard Street friend of Printed storefront in 1981. Matter cofounder Sol LeWitt. Instead of selling the minimalist rubber-stamp books he produced, Jacks often traded them with other artists and amassed an extensive collection from the likes of Bruce Nauman, Hanne Darboven, and Ed Ruscha, whose irst editions now sell for upwards of $5,000. Jacks’s historical collection will be shown alongside his own books in “Available to Everyone: Robert Jacks and Printed Matter,” September 10 to October 22. Printed Matter’s history is “a story of survivals,” Schumann says. Founded in 1976, it weathered the transition from publishing to distributing, as well as the digital age and, most recently, Hurricane Sandy, which in 2012 all but destroyed its archives. And Schumann should know: He’s been working at the store since 1989, when he was hired as a book packer for the holidays.—RC

C LO C K W I S E F R O M TO P R I G H T: DAV I D S H R I G L E Y A N D A N TO N K E R N GA L L E R Y; N A N C Y L I N N ; T W O I M AG E S , I C A R U S F I L M S

FILM

HISTORY LESSONS

HARMONY AND DISCORD IN LA SERENISSIMA A Chinese ink artist in Venice past May, following a year of planning, Chinese ink artist Qin Feng debuted “Waiting for Qin Feng,” a multifaceted exhibition credited to two curators and spread across three outlying Italian islands. The symbolically rich show played off the city’s history as terminus for the Silk Road along with the surroundings of its main venue, the monastery on San Giorgio Maggiore. Andrea Palladio designed a pair of courtyards there as well as the refectory, for which he commissioned Paolo Veronese to paint his monumental Marriage Feast at Cana, 1562–63. While Napoleon had that work brought to the Louvre more than 200 years ago, a recently mounted high-tech reproduction conveys how well the raucous celebratory scene fit within the architect’s vast, hushed space. All these details and more factor into the artist’s diverse interventions. “I wanted to represent the entire history,” said Qin through a translator shortly after the installations were unveiled, “but do it using my own more abstract language.” The show, which closed in July, included large glazed ceramic vessels in Palladio’s colonnaded courtyard and dozens of folded calligraphic journals at a monastery on San Lazzaro. Regrettably, the work that best engaged its location was removed shortly after its creation at an opening-night performance. Covering the 30-by-100-foot loor of the refectory with cloth and installing a cellist at its center, Qin then danced about the room wielding a moplike brush with an energy that was by turns ecstatic and violent. At the end, working within a section whose dimensions matched those of the Veronese, the artist mapped out that composition’s underlying structure, revealing therein the Chinese

IN VENICE THIS

Qin Feng Installation view of the exhibition at San Giorgio Maggiore.

characters for people, enter, and home. “I use such signs to try to find a common language between civilizations,” says Qin. This work was then cut in three pieces to mimic the way Veronese’s masterpiece was cut to facilitate its transport to France. While in our interview Qin emphasized how he expanded upon Veronese’s wedding theme with words expressing hospitality and hoped that the piece might eventually be cut up and sold to benefit refugees finding their way to Italy, Umberto Vattani, the president of the Venice International University and one of the show’s curators, spoke repeatedly of the “extreme pain Qin suffered” during its trifurcation—and by extension the insult Italy suffered through France’s “desecration of Veronese.” Finally, after several recitations of this interpretation during tours and panel discussions throughout the show’s inauguration, lead curator Achille Bonito Oliva objected. As the discussion between the Italians turned to whether the artist’s work better represented the Confucian or the Taoist tradition, the exchange became more heated, until Oliva stood and walked out. Though it all, Qin sat quietly on the dais, undisturbed by questions of his own opinions. —ERIC BRYANT

“earliest memories of meditation and consideration of self,” so it’s perhaps not surprising that she’s chosen to revisit the window’s simple form for a new series of simple, colorful paintings, opening this month at the TESSA PERUTZ is thinking Brooklyn apartment-gallery hard about windows. “How can In Limbo. (She’s sharing you reduce a painting to the the space with painter Jordan most necessary forms,” she Kasey.) When she’s not ponders, “and therefore open working through the formal it up to the most possible properties of windows, associations?” The speciic Perutz inds herself fasciwindow she’s referring to is nated by the rich geometric one that she recalls from the potential of punctuChicago home she Tessa Perutz shared, as a teenager, Ampersand with ation—ampersands, with her large family; Black and Yellow hashtags—as well as Chevron, 2016. repeating interlockgazing through its Oil on canvas, ing shapes. Chains are panes provided her 15 x 18 in.

F R O M TO P : F R A N C E S C O A L L E G R E T TO A N D Q I N F E N G; T E S S A P E R U T Z

ON OUR RADAR

COMPLEX SIMPLICITIES

a favorite, and the subject of a pair of canvases included in a Joshua Abelow-curated group show on view at Jack Hanley Gallery in New York, also this month. Further on the horizon, a solo outing at Pablo’s Birthday in November will showcase a series of vibrant landscapes—think Etel Adnan with the saturation levels cranked up even higher—based on drawings made in Iceland. “In a way, I’m a populist,” Perutz says. “I want to make work that’s easy for anyone to read or relate to, and then use that formal simplicity to create ininite references— which curiously makes the work very complex.” —SI

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NEWSMAKERS

SECOND ACTS Deitch reopens with 1980s pulp painter JEFFREY DEITCH IS inaugurating

his new— and former—New York gallery on Wooster Street this month with a 35-year survey of work by Walter Robinson, a fellow mainstay of the downtown 1980s art scene and a painter of pill bottles, hamburgers, and catalog models, rendered with burning, near pornographic desire. “I remember Jeffrey as a real sort of Pollyanna-ish art lover,” Robinson says of his first encounter with Deitch, in 1974, when the dealer was working at the front desk of John Weber Gallery. “I was a typical cranky twentysomething; he was always positive. He’s probably the biggest art lover on the planet.” Soon after, Deitch wrote his first critical essay, on the artist Christopher D’Arcangelo, for Robinson’s now-defunct magazine, Art-Rite. Robinson went on to found the online publication Artnet Magazine, which he edited for 16 years, and Deitch would later serve as director of the Los Angeles Museum

of Contemporary Art. After both those tenures had come to an end, the two reconnected last year in Miami, where Deitch, in conjunction with Larry Gagosian, included three of Robinson’s paintings in a show of figurative art at the Moore Building. Robinson will show nearly 100 canvases in “Paintings and Other Indulgences,” September 17 to

ABOVE:

Walter Robinson Amboy Dukes, 1981. Acrylic on Masonite, 29 x 24 in.

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October 22, an exhibition that originated at the University Galleries of the College of Fine Arts at Illinois State University in 2014. “Walter painted Nurse Paintings before Richard Prince and Spin Paintings before Damien Hirst,” Deitch has said. The artist’s “modest manner and disdain for aggressive careerism have left his work less recognized than it should be.” But recent success could be changing that. “Back when I was just a writer, I was interested in everything,” Robinson says. “Now I’m becoming much more interested in myself!” —RC

F R O M L E F T: W O L F GA N G W E S E N E R ; WA LT E R R O B I N S O N

Walter Robinson in his New York studio, 2015.

Vera List Art Project Exceptional Prints by Celebrated Contemporary Artists Buy Your Limited Edition Signed Print Today and Support the World’s Leading Performing Arts Center Art.LincolnCenter.org 212.875.5017

Richard Serra Still from “Hand Catching Lead”, 2010

JUST RELEASED! John Baldessari Four Hands and a Baseball Bat, 2016 © 2015 John Baldessari

Selected artists include:

Donald Baechler | John Baldessari | Matthew Brannon | Vija Clemins | Chuck Close | George Condo | Sharon Core | Jim Dine | Helen Frankenthaler | Glenn Goldberg | William Kentridge | Guillermo Kuitca | Glenn Ligon | Robert Longo | Jules Olitski | Robin Rhode | Carlos Rolón/Dzine | Richard Serra | Lorna Simpson | Terry Winters The Vera List Art Project was created with a gift from Albert and Vera List. Major support for the List Art Project is provided by Agnes Gund.

September 29

NEW YORK Hans-Peter Feldmann at 303 Gallery

September 15

WELLESLEY, MASSACHUSETTS Anni Albers at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College

September 28

BRUSSELS Ron Gorchov at Albert Baronian

LONDON Peter Wächtler at Chisenhale Gallery

September 16

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NEW YORK Robert Polidori at Paul Kasmin Gallery

September 8

September 9

DETROIT Sanford Biggers at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit September 9

C LO C K W I S E F R O M TO P L E F T: DAV I S M U S E U M AT W E L L ES L E Y C O L L E G E ; D O N N A H UA N C A A N D T H E Z A B L U D O W I C Z C O L L E C T I O N ; H A N S - P E T E R F E L D M A N N A N D 3 0 3 GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K ; R O B E R T P O L I D O R I A N D PAU L K A S M I N GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K ; S A N F O R D B I G G E R S A N D DAV I D C A S T I L LO GA L L E R Y, M I A M I B E AC H ; P E T E R WAC H T L E R A N D D E P E N DA N C E , B R U S S E L S ; R O N G O R C H OV A N D A L B E R T B A R O N I A N , B R U S S E L S

PORTFOLIO // TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS

AROUND THE WORLD

LONDON Donna Huanca at the Zabludowicz Collection

ANTWERP Luc Tuymans at Zeno X Gallery

C LO C K W I S E F R O M TO P L E F T: S T U D I O L U C T U Y M A N S A N D Z E N O X GA L L E R Y, A N T W E R P ; S E B A S T I A N P I R A S A N D GA E TA N O P E S C E , N E W YO R K ; F R E D R I K N I L S E N A N D DAV I D KO R DA N S K Y GA L L E R Y, LO S A N G E L E S ; R O B M U R R AY A N D TO M E L L I S ; R A S H I D J O H N S O N A N D H AU S E R & W I R T H

September 7

LOS ANGELES Gaetano Pesce at the MOCA Pacific Design Center

NEW YORK Rashid Johnson at Hauser & Wirth

September 3

September 8

DALLAS Kathryn Andrews at the Nasher Sculpture Center September 10

...AND DON’T MISS LONDON Tom Ellis at the Wallace Collection September 15

O Viennacontemporary September 22–25 O São Paolo Biennial September 10–December 11 O London Design Fair September 22–25  O Taipei Biennial September 10–February 5, 2017 O ABC – Art Berlin Contemporary September 15–18 O New York: Affordable Art Fair September 28–October 2 O Portland, Oregon: Time-Based Art Festival, September 8–18

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#NoMansLandDC nmwa.org |

Washington, DC

Isa Genzken, Schauspieler, 2013; Mixed media, 72 1/4 x 18 1/2 x 10 1/2 in. This exhibition is organized by the Rubell Family Collection, Miami. Presentation of the exhibition at NMWA is made possible through the generous support of Clara M. Lovett. Additional funding is provided by the Judith A. Finkelstein Exhibition Fund, Stephanie Sale, and Share Fund. Creative: Tronvig Group

INS OUTS YOUR MONTHLY CHEAT SHEET FOR ART WORLD NEWS

1 Fergus McCaffrey, currently of New York and St. Barts, had been searching for a Tokyo location for several years before ÀQGLQJWKHVTXDUHIRRWVSDFHORFDWHG in the neighborhood of Omotesanto, “a FXOWXUDOKXEÀOOHGZLWKWKHPRVWDYDQW garde architecture and innovative design in the world,” the gallerist extols. The new location will open in November with a solo exhibition of Toshio Yoshida. McCaffrey is no stranger to the Japanese scene, already working extensively with artists and estates from Kazuo Shiraga to Sadamasa Motonaga.

F R O M L E F T: W E R N E R B U T T N E R A N D M A R L B O R O U G H C H E L S E A , N E W YO R K ; Y U R I PAT T I S O N A N D M OT H E R ’ S TA N K S TAT I O N L I M I T E D, D U B L I N

2 A Houstonian by upbringing, Rebecca Rabinow heads to the city’s Menil Collection, returning after a 26-year stint at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She cut her teeth at the Menil back in 1988, a year after the institution opened, and fondly recalls archiving John DQG'RPLQLTXHGH0HQLO·VFRUUHVSRQGHQFH with the likes of Max Ernst and Rene Magritte—an experience, she contends, that jump-started her museum career.

for Artists’ Estates, which launched earlier this year. It might not seem the sexiest topic, but there’s intense interest in the intricacies of estates, and a dearth of reliable guidance. On September 14 and 15 in Berlin, the organization will present its ÀUVWFRQIHUHQFH´.HHSLQJWKH/HJDF\$OLYHµ covering a broad range of topics crucial to this art world niche.

5 It’s becoming increasingly hard to tell which New York neighborhood serves as the city’s current art epicenter. Galerie Perrotin has announced a relocation to the Lower East Side, while neighboring Dominique LévyH[SDQGVWRÀOO3HUURWLQ·VYDFDWHG Upper East Side space; Anton Kern Gallery is ditching Chelsea in favor of Midtown Manhattan, on 55th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues; and Hauser & Wirth, originally on 18th Street, moves to the former Dia building a few blocks north.

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7 Photo buffs rejoice! The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)—home to the Pritzker Center for Photography, the largest space devoted to photography in any U.S. museum—will welcome Clément Chéroux, formerly of the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, to helm that expansive collection early next year. This news coincided with the announcement of a major gift of photographs from Lisa and John Pritzker of 78 works by 25 artists including André Kertész, Lee Friedlander, Philip Lorca diCorcia, and Paul Graham. SFMOMA’s symposium, “The Photographic Event,” runs September 23 to 24.

8 The Brooklyn Museum continues to right the often uneven gender balance in the art world. New director Anne Pasternak has brought on Kimberly Orcutt as the Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art. The appointment comes on the heels of the arrival of Nancy Spector (formerly of the Guggenheim), who joined the museum as chief curator this year.

4 “To date, there has been no central reference point for information on the management of artists’ estates,” points out Loretta Würtenberger, cofounder of the Institute

If you’re keeping score of who reps who: David Zwirner recently picked up William Eggleston, as well as the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation; Gagosian Gallery now represents Katharina Grosse; Dominique Lévy added painter Pat Steir to the roster; and Marlborough Chelsea expanded the fold with Werner Büttner, Ansel Krut, and Aïda Ruilova (a welcome woman artist in a stable that is admittedly dude–heavy).

Lastly, here are few deserving people to be jealous of. This year’s Baloise Art Prize was awarded to Sara Cwynar and Mary Reid Kelley, with a cash grant of $31,000 for each artist. Yuri Pattison was named the winner of the 2016 Frieze Artist Award; his new installation will be on view at Frieze London next month. Film London, in association with Channel 4 and Whitechapel Gallery, has announced the nominees for the 2016 Jarman Award: Sophia Al-Maria, Cécile B. Evans, Shona Illingworth, Mikhail Karikis, Rachel Maclean, and Heather Phillipson. Their work will be featured in an exhibition touring the U.K. this fall, after which the winner will be announced. MP

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Yuri Pattison Sketch for Insights (crisis trolley), 2016. Werner Büttner Detail of Alles, so herrlich zu sehen, so schrecklich zu sein... (Everything is so wonderful to see, so terrible to be), 2011. Oil on canvas.

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the watermill center

robert wilson’s 75th new york patron weekend october 14 - 16, 2016 including the new york premiere of letter to a man @ BAM www.watermillcenter.org/events image: lucie jansch

HIT LIST

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DESIGN AND BEYOND

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1. SEBASTIAN BERGNE’S PLASTIC LANDSCAPE BOXES 2. A PAINTED SUITCASE BY JOHN WESLEY, 1964–65, ON VIEW IN THE ARTIST’S EXHIBITION AT WADDINGTON CUSTOT IN LONDON, OPENING SEPTEMBER 16 3. A LAMP DESIGNED BY JEAN-PASCAL GAUTHIER 4. NICOLAS GUAGNINI’S THE CARD PLAYERS, 2016, WHICH BORTOLAMI

I N N U M E R I C A L O R D E R : S E B A S T I A N B E R G N E ; WA D D I N GTO N C U S TOT; J E A N - PA S C A L GAU T H I E R ; B O R TO L A M I GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K ; PAU L K A S M I N GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K ; D O N A L D W O O D M A N , J U DY C H I C AG O, A N D J E S S I C A S I LV E R M A N GA L L E R Y, S A N F R A N C I S C O ; L U X ’ E L L E N C E ; R & C O M PA N Y, N E W YO R K

GALLERY WILL BRING TO THE EXPO CHICAGO FAIR, SEPTEMBER 22–25 5. A PIN FROM PAUL KASMIN 8

GALLERY’S PK SHOP, MADE IN COLLABORATION WITH THE WILLIAM N. COPLEY ESTATE 6. AN ACRYLIC-ANDCAST-PAPER WORK BY JUDY CHICAGO THAT JESSICA SILVERMAN GALLERY WILL BRING TO EXPO CHICAGO 7. THE TRIAN CABINET IN BRASS, COPPER, AND 4

TIN, DESIGNED BY MAXIME SENES FOR LUX’ELLENCE, AT THE 100% DESIGN FESTIVAL IN LONDON, SEPTEMBER 21–24 8. A TWO-HEADED TABLE FROM 1969, DESIGNED BY WENDELL CASTLE, WHICH R & COMPANY WILL SHOW AT EXPO CHICAGO

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Smack Mellon is a non-profit visual arts organization with a mission to support emerging, under-recognized mid-career, and women artists in the creation and exhibition of new work, by providing exhibition opportunities, studio workspace, and access to equipment and technical assistance for the realization of ambitious projects. Smack Mellon presents solo and group exhibitions featuring artists who tackle subjects that challenge us to reflect on the changing world we live in and inspire us to take action.

Of the people Curated by Erin Donnelly June 17 - July 31, 2016 Opening Reception: Saturday, June 18, 5-8pm Artists: Daniel Bejar, Guy Ben-Ari, Brooklyn Hi Art Machine (Oasa DuVerney and Mildred Beltre), Isabella Cruz-Chong, Peggy Diggs, Esteban del Valle, Nicholas Fraser, Emily Greenberg, Jeremy Olson, Sheryl Oring, Ben Pinder, Brittany M. Powell, Kate Sopko, and Leah Wolff The exhibition Of the people reflects of-the-moment political opinions shaping the 2016 presidential race in the United States. From a do-it-yourself election campaign office to launch your own candidacy to insider’s video tours of Cleveland communities shielded from view by the mainstream RNC event, artists have created projects that make space for public participation in a broken election system. Other artworks included in the exhibition consider domestic issues such as immigration, income inequality, and metadata collection, all topics hotly debated on the televised stage and during the long primary season leading up to the two dominant parties’ conventions in July. Please visit smackmellon.org for information about public events planned in conjunction with this exhibition.

92 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201 | T. 718.834.8761| www.smackmellon.org [email protected] | Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Sunday, 12-6PM

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Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild, Courbet, 1986 © Gerhard Richter

BIOPIC Time Evil Time, 2016. Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 66 in.

Margaux Ogden The artist on her painting Time Evil Time by some of the text in my paintings. Using acrylic on raw canvas, I work around stunted language— confessions and memories, jokes and observations, dates, random mark making—that both tempts and dodges narrative. Though essentially impersonal, the pieces are presented as confessional, goading the voyeur (and the exhibitionist) in both viewer and artist. They start as abstracted fragments from something I’ve previously written down, but ultimately the paintings aim to be inclusive, humorous, and diaristic. I ind embarrassment interesting because it is less about the self and more about the self in relation to others. Much of what I write in these paintings I want to erase; however, since I’m working on raw canvas, I’m not allowed to edit. When I can get away with it, I cross out a word or two. It’s just thin acrylic on canvas, nothing else. There is no real underpainting, no unpainting. I focus on one painting at a time, and each work evokes

KRISTINE L ARSEN

I’M SLIGHTLY EMBARRASSED

a delicate balance between content and substrate, allowing the canvas to be as much a compositional component as the paint. The painting becomes performative in that it feels hyperpersonal, risky, and precarious, with the raw canvas unforgiving of any mistakes. One could trace the compositions back to some modernist moment when geometry began to skid. Similar to the edited language, the spatial and perspectival shifts create a freefall effect, dissolving any system beyond that which is contained in the frame. The only constant is the unpainted lines of bare canvas, which rebound through the painting, ultimately providing the structure. This bare, exposed framework seems analogous to the unguarded overexposure that exists in each painting’s written elements. MP Margaux Ogden’s work is on view at Embajada in San Juan, Puerto Rico, September 3 through November 5.

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How and Nosm, Reflections, 2012 for No Longer Empty, This Side of Paradise, April 4–June 5, 2012. Photo credit: Whitney Browne.

Sassetta, San Sepolcro Altarpiece (detail), The National Gallery, London

Regent’s Park, London 6–9 October 2016 New Preview Day Wednesday 5 October frieze.com

STUDIO CHECK

AMY BENNETT BY JULIET HELMKE | PHOTOGRAPHS BY KRISTINE LARSEN IF NOT FOR rapidly rising Brooklyn rents, Bennett’s last series of paintings might never have come to fruition. “Space- and money-wise, my husband and I felt pushed out,” the artist, who earned her MFA at the New York Academy of Art in 2002, explains. Hunting for a new place to call home, the painter found herself spending hours “just LPDJHVHDUFKLQJVSHFLÀFWRZQVDQGORRN ing down at them in Google maps.” By the time the couple and their young son

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decided on Cold Spring, in Upstate New York, she “had the impulse to just build my own town.” But for Bennett, that meant doing so at 1:500 scale, or what she calls “Monopoly size.” This makes sense, considering that all RI%HQQHWW·VFDQYDVHV³VRPHÀYHIHHWZLGH others no more than the size of a postage stamp—begin their lives as miniature models. She likens the process to a form of still-life painting. A previous series, “Sore

Spots,” encompasses scenes of activity inside DGRFWRU·VRIÀFHDUHVWDXUDQWDWKHDWHU and a churchyard. “Neighbors,” 2005–07, appeals to the viewer’s secret voyeur, depicting snapshots from the private lives that make up a neighborhood of 11 houses. It’s no surprise that a monograph on Edward Hopper can be spied on her studio bookshelf. The photographs of James Casebere and Thomas Demand, both of whom shoot from complex models, also come to mind.

Small figurines, below, and models used for the series “Sore Spots,” right.

LEFT:

B OT TO M : A M Y B E N N E T T A N D R I C H A R D H E L L E R GA L L E R Y

Small Changes Every Day, 2014–16. Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in.

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STUDIO CHECK

RIGHT:

Models of varying scale, above, and an in-progress painting from the series “Small Changes Every Day,” below.

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The bird’s-eye-view town scenes that will be shown in “Small Changes Every Day,” at Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles, opening September 10, as well as the monotypes in her project room show, opening September 8 at New York’s Ameringer McEnery Yohe, also have a narrative arc, but in a much different way. Bennett set out not only to build a town but to develop a town, and that meant starting from the beginning, with empty land. “It’s hard to move to the Hudson Valley and not be inspired by the landscape,” she says. Bennett admits to never really loving the paintings of the Hudson River School, but on moving to the area, feeling a perceptible shift in how she thought about the landscape, “you understand how people have been moved by it.” So she began to build mountains and rivers and raw landforms, painting the environment she was creating. And then from those beginnings, building on her miniature acreage, cultivating the land with farms and small houses springing up (almost like a

MODERN PAINTERS SEPTEMBER 2016 BLOUINARTINFO.COM

pastoral version of the classic computer JDPH6LP&LW\ 7KLVÀFWLRQDOGHYHORSPHQW continued apace, until Bennett’s town uncannily began to resemble the area where her own studio sits. That studio is housed in a former science classroom in the old Beacon High School (converted into an arts center with studios, the workshops of furniture and instrument makers, and gallerist Ethan Cohen’s Kunsthalle Beacon). When I visit, Bennett’s handmade town, in the form of the eight-

by-eight-foot model, is on display, prompting an enjoyably vertiginous sensation when viewed from above. It provides the same thrill as a meticulously designed dollhouse or model train set. Although they’re a vital part of her process, Bennett insists that the models are not the main event. “They’re great for thinking through what my intentions are, for stumbling across accidents, and getting something that’s in my head out into the world,” she says, “but they’re all at the service of the painting.” Though the new work is devoid RIÀJXUHV³DÀUVWIRU%HQQHWW³WKHVWRU\ she tells with this series is still intricately tied to a fascination with daily life. “I moved into a house that was built around 1895,” she says of her family’s new digs. “It’s just crazy to think of all the people who had lived in that house before. 0HDQZKLOH,KDGMXVWKDGP\ÀUVWFKLOG who was, and is, growing so fast,” she says, with more than a small note of astonishment. ´,W·VGHÀQLWHO\DQH[SHULHQFHWKDWDIIHFWV your perception of time.” MP

TO P R I G H T: A M Y B E N N E T T A N D R I C H A R D H E L L E R GA L L E R Y

A Strange Hour, 2014–16. Oil on canvas, 48 x 68 in.

April 30–October 8 • Wednesdays and Saturdays 2:00PM-5:00PM July and August • Wednesday through Saturday 2:00PM-5:00PM

2016 25th Anniversary

Works on view by: Lynda Benglis, Dale Chihuly, Willem De Kooning, Eric Fischl, Bryan Hunt, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Jun Kaneko, Sol Lewitt, Enrique Martinez Celaya, Neil Noland, Yoko Ono, Marko Remec, George Rickey, Larry Rivers, Takashi Soga, Toshiko Takaezu 133 Hands Creek Road, East Hampton, NY 11937 • Phone: 631.329.3568 • www.longhouse.org Six Lines in a T II, 1964-79, stainless, 14.5 x 22.5’ blades are 18’, courtesy of the Estate of George Rickey

ROUNDTABLE

POROUS BODIES On a Saturday afternoon earlier this year, German artist Annette Weisser was joined in a conversation at MiM Gallery in Los Angeles by independent curator Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer and Modern Painters contributing editor Chris Kraus. They met to discuss trauma, false consciousness, and collectivity in relation to Weisser’s exhibition “Ghosts, Gates, Spills, and a Fog Machine.” SARAH LEHRER-GRAIWER: Let’s start with the title of your new monograph, Make Yourself Available. What do you imply with this phrase? ANNETTE WEISSER: I came across it in an HVVD\E\'LHGULFK'LHGHULFKVHQRQHÁX[ I found myself returning to the phrase again and again, connecting it to different constellations in what I perceive as the SUHVHQWPRPHQW7KHÀUVWOD\HURIPHDQLQJ would be the moral imperative to make \RXUVHOIDYDLODEOHIRUWKH´JRRGÀJKWµ 'RQ·WWKLQNRI\RXUVHOIÀUVWEXWSXWWKH less privileged at the center of your life, your work. Rather than writing a poem, go join the protest march. This is an attitude that I grew up with. It’s a moral imperative that, in my family, is at the intersection of Socialist political beliefs, a vaguely Protestant ethic, a rural tradition of “help thy neighbor,” and a deep disgust with how people had been stripped of their basic human rights during the Third Reich. Another layer of meaning is that the Western concept of self-contained, “unhacked” subjectivity seems to be outdated. There is the relentless urge to make oneself available on the job market, to become an entrepreneur of the self, with the artist being the role model for this, as has been succinctly researched and theorized over the past 20 years. With this enormous pressure on subjectivity, WKHTXHVWLRQLVZKHUHWRÀQGRSHQLQJVDQG ways out of this colonized self that

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might lead to a new concept of empathy, of solidarity. SLG: Precisely because of this new reality, if anything, I’d rather make myself less available. I’m at the point where I say I don’t need more friends, I cannot keep up with more people in my life. Can you expand on what you mean by empathy? AW: What I mean is that we have to be able to fully recognize ourselves in the other. Not in the sense of “Here am I, and you are over there, and I sympathize with your struggle.” But rather in the sense of “Your colonized self circulates through my porous body and vice versa.” We are constantly leaking—information, emotion—into each other. SLG: And this leaking that constantly pours everyone into one another is involuntary as much as it can be intentional. The interpenetrating happens largely through images and representation— pictures we see of the other that pierce and circulate inside us. Which reminds me of the woodcuts in your show: openings, KROHVÁXLGVSRXULQJRXW AW: Yeah, that’s certainly implied, but they’re also a pun on a vulgarized idea of the Freudian subconscious. SLG: What happens to the idea of solidarity in your scenario?

AW: It’s not that I have an answer, but I’m asking myself how solidarity can be organized around something other than DODUJHXQLÀHUOLNH´WKHZRUNLQJFODVVµ Under current conditions, everything conspires to create difference and competition. CHRIS KRAUS: I can see an expression of this in your video Karlas Lied. The piece is about the 2007 May Day demonstration by illegal immigrants from Central America in Los Angeles that ended in massive police violence in MacArthur Park. AW: It’s nice that you say this, Chris. I had just moved to L.A. the previous fall and was drawn into the events by accident, because I lived close to the park. So here I was, a German immigrant of the very privileged kind, who didn’t speak a word of Spanish, caught between screaming children and WKUHDWHQLQJORZÁ\LQJSROLFHKHOLFRSWHUV, was outraged by the police brutality, but at the same time I was very aware of the distance—economic, cultural, legal— between myself and the demonstrators, including the American activists. This is not my country, these are not my struggles, but yet here I was. I wanted to make a piece about this gap, about establishing a link, of solidarity perhaps, while acknowledging the distance, as a form of respect for the other. The piece is based on a newspaper photograph of a young girl, seen only from behind, who is giving her testimony of the events in front of a row of high-ranking

A N N E T T E W E I S S E R A N D M I M GA L L E R Y, LO S A N G E L E S

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