WILLIAM STONE AT JAMES FUENTES LLC, 2007
On 7/8/07 1:32 AM, JS wrote:
> Also, is it possible to get a shot of the outside of
> the gallery and a little something on the social club history? I could imagine
> Bill’s show being the interior shots with captions for the pieces, a paragraph
> on Bill and then a little history of the gallery and then a history of James’
> organizational approach.
>
> Bill thought an interview between him and James would be good. That’s another
> interesting direction. Who’s going to be the writer? It should be an artist.
AOA: Can you give us a paragraph about your organizational approach to obtaining gallery spaces and structuring art events? JF: The program consists of artists that have shaped and propelled my career from the start. I can safely say I would be in another line of work were it not for crossing paths with these artists. There is a core group of 6 or 7 and the other half of the program is one off project based exhibitions. When I came across this new gallery space, I had no desire to-reopen a gallery at the time. My lease was up on my apartment on Canal Street in Chinatown, I wanted to stay in that neighborhood so I scoured downtown for “for rent by owner” signs. I took a wrong turn on the way to Tribeca and that is when I happened on St. James Place and this odd looking building. When I looked through the storefront window that late night, I imagined it activated by people and art, I could see it very vividly. The sign said there was an apartment upstairs too, so it was a win win situation.
AOA: How does Bill fit into your overall program of organization. How do you feel about allowing artists that work with you into your organizational process?
JF: Bill Stone’s approach, which is reflective on the mediums he utilizes, rife with metaphor and poetry, like a magic trick, and seamlessly executed compliments the program but also provides a really significant anchor as it’s informed by close to two decades of exhibition experience. An artist who showed prior to Bill for instance was astounded by how he was able to transform the space. I have a good feeling that the dialogue between the artists in the program and the community surrounding the gallery is destined to create something great that I can¹t fully explain, in fact that’s already the case.
James Fuentes LLC is currently located south of the Bowery and borders City Hall, South Street Seaport, Wall Street, Tribeca and Chinatown but exists within an almost autonomous zone that stands as the last remaining working class enclave in downtown New York. One of the important contexts that the gallery provides is being reflective of the community that it is situated in. The program also reflects the social and political environments of its time, is conceptually rigorous yet aesthetically accessible and embraces a multidisciplinary approach to art. Stone’s practice is steeped in poetics and mechanics resulting in works that enhance perceptual possibilities, giving the most familiar objects new meaning. His exhibition at James Fuentes LLC consisted of new sculptures including altered readymades, fabricated readymades and works that address the core of functionality, exhibition and design in a subversive manner. His approach to the space was responsive to the gallery¹s architecture utilizing inherent fixtures ranging from the tenement windows, radiator and electrical conduit and exterior.
JF: It was important for Stone to be one of the first exhibitions at the new gallery as he was chosen to create the last exhibition for my first gallery closed in 2000. You can find a video of that project on this page which includes images, press and biographical information: http://www.jamesfuentes.com/artists_pages/stone_frameset.htm
June 12, 2007
La Biennale Di Venezia Sante Scardillo posting from this year’s Venice Biennale Cautionary note: this review is informed by the views and biases of its author and his practice as a militant artist in the past two decades. Every pretense of objectivity is purely casual.
I have long detested the great periodic gatherings for the artworld (in a gamut running from actually important artists to sycophantic hangers on who just want to be part of the party, whatever and wherever it is) with denizens converging from the 4 cardinal points on certain geographic spots, generally every other year, though the ones in Germany, possibly due to the development of thought that ensued Kantian Idealism, work on longer spans: Dokumenta anywhere around 5 years, Munster Sculpture Project every 10.
This year is an “astral alignment” year: once in a decade, Venice Biennale, Kassel’s Dokumenta and Munster Skulptur Projekte, inaugurate at a few days lapse from each other, making it possible for the truly committed (or sycophantic, or both) to attend all three celebratory bashes, not to mention the Basel Art Fair, scheduled right in the middle. This is no easy feat, I must commend those who manage: it requires military-like planning and discipline, diplomatic skills and actual means and import: it is useless to go without the proper invitations, after the expense of travel, foraging and lodging, one will be left out of the gatherings that justify the trip.
Knowing my limits, I am only focusing on Venice, where I have some strengths: language and culture (I am a native Italian, raised and educated there) and a background, since begrudgingly, this is my third Venetian tour of duty. It is an amazing scene: if one is determined, one can go to the most incredible receptions and meet the most normally unapproachable people: a number of Museum directors and important collectors can be met in one night, that a working artist at the bottom of the feeding chain like I am, would otherwise meet in 20 years, if that. But the inevitable question, once one has proven a certain brilliancy in conversation, exhales from the mouth of the illustrious counterparts: “Do you have any work here?” and that is when the earth should open, since it is clear that in spite of all, the conversation will never bear tangible fruit. But this is the first year I really could not care less: I am 47 years old and the only reason I came here is that the Love of my life wanted to and I had a perfect alignment of travel and lodging circumstances: we got frequent flyers seats without a problem, in spite of calling for the first time 2 weeks before departure day; the friend who is our host in Venice will leave here in a year or so (this was our last chance to benefit from his generosity) and I know so many people involved in the show that it was not too difficult to sum up the invitations necessary to attend at least a few events and have a relatively free range. I hate the feeling of exclusion and that is why I would rather not go to these things than not be welcomed with open arms and this year, for the first time, I have noticed a real crackdown on people trying to get into parties and even in the show itself during the preview days, without having the proper paperwork of multiple invitations.
Should I really call them “crashers”? What’s the sense of making people travel all this way with an invitation, only to discover that they do not possess all the right types of invitations, that a card is missing and it was the one necessary to go to the cocktail-dinner-post dinner-whatever other occasion? But few things ever make sense in Venice, though the crumbling city holds a spell on all participants, bystanders and locals alike. It is the only place in the world where I get Stendhal Syndrome: it is a codified condition (by Italian Psychologists, of course) resulting, in certain individuals, in physical sickness
(think euphoria to the point of nausea) deriving from overexposure to art and beauty. After a week or so in Venice, I start feeling seasick, in spite of never travelling on boats. And the only way of curing the symptoms is to leave, at least for me. I guess one reason for the organizers to be more selective, is evident in the volume and “quality” of the crowd I encountered inside the shows and the parties: there are the denizens of the artworld, whom I know from New York, Italy, Paris, London and other places; but they are outnumbered 100:1 by those who clearly have more power, access, money, swagger, or whatever else it takes to be here than taste and appreciation for what the main reason to be here should be. The artworld is becoming a victim of its own success: as art becomes more palatable for the masses (in whatever aspect or form), the masses are pushing at the gate and filtering in, if not outright deluging.
It’s not a matter of being elitists, culture is so by its very definition, art even more so; and when the money starts coursing through the artworld at the ridiculous pace it has been lately, which makes the 80’s look like a period of somber moderation, it is inevitable that the Trump wannabees should find it a natural haven. It is just sombering to see this happening in the flesh and sad, when those who really have very little to do with art and culture, but are attracted to the buzz and glamour of the Biennale events, manage to have prelation on those who have no choice but being attracted. Nationalistic bias apart, it is universally recognized that Venice provides the most desired and clamoured for exposure of any other art event of its kind. And this is the reason why, outside of the anointment of officialdom, but with various formulas entitling them to use the Biennale Logo, all kinds of entities and individuals organize art events of the most diverse nature, hoping for at least a fraction of the public to see them. There are at least 100 parallel advertised shows and events this year, an absolutely impossible amount, especially given the geographic layout and transportation options the city offers. In all fairness it is impossible even to see in depth everything inside the two locations of the official show: it would take weeks, especially with the open floodgates of Chinese video art, a major onslaught this year.
Yang Fudong has a featurelength video broken up and projected in 5 large rooms coursing through the center of the immense (think ¼ of a mile long, 180 feet wide) main exhibition space, like a dark river. Like many other artists, once invited to the most desired vitrine for their work, he doesn’t seem to understand (or maybe deliberately ignores it) the demands it makes on the public, which will be stampeding through a show with hundreds of installations by different artists, all on the same monumental scale of a one person show in a major gallery or museum. It is, in my view, self defeating to count on work that doesn’t have an immediate and powerful visual impact to make an impression. Though it is understandable that given the (very possibly) once in a lifetime chance, many artists would tend to go overboard.
It is useful for the non completely schooled in the intricacy of this Byzantine art show to understand its curatorial dynamics. It started in the 1890’s as a vetrine for art of the turn of that century, still ruled by academia, which was in turn ruled by the rulers of the then “important” countries in the world, all but one, monarchies. Each was invited to build a pavillion in a newly developed area, the last (and newly developed) available dry land in Venice, and to staff and decorate (with the art of one or more prominent artists from that country) it every two years, to show the rest of the world what was important to it esthetically. Over the course of many years, the show has reached its present (and ever changing) formula: the ”Italia” Pavillion (the biggest by far) is the seat of the show that has come to represent the point of view of the organizers: a survey of whatever meaningful art is being produced at that time as seen through the eyes of a curator they chose for that specific edition. The show, too big to fit only in that location, traditionally overflows to the former seat of the Arsenal of the Venetian Republic, an industrial area of the XIV century (expanded as the fortunes of the Venetian Republic did throughout the XVII century), whose massive (think walled city) perimetral walls are not too far from the pavillions area inside the city park called “Giardini della Biennale”, complete with dry and wet basins and amazing, enormous industrial groundfloor spaces. The task befalls one curator (or more) that is carefully selected in order to maintain a balance in the artworld and has been, in the last 2 decades, not an Italian, as Italians are presumed guilty of making choices pandering to this or that local power, upsetting all others. A foreigner is (historically, as it happens, and in all of Italy) considered to be a less partial arbiter.
The chosen, this year is Robert Storr (formerly of New York MoMA) and I must, again begrudgingly say that there is something else that is new this year: the show is actually interesting in its apparent curatorial statement. Storr has chosen a line that celebrates the classics of the contemporary art scene, Ryman, Ellesworth Kelly, the recently deceased Sol Lewitt and many others of their caliber and relevance in the Italia pavillion. And continuing the streak of grateful tributes (and, it seems, of subtle criticism germane to the choice of the Cuban, dead gay Aids victim artist Felix Gonzales Torres to represent the United States of America in its pavillion, not curated by Storr: each government, through its official branches in the artworld. chooses a curator for its own pavillion). Storr’s exhibition (the survey of “Art in the Present Tense”), whose redundantly pompous title is not worth mentioning here (why not quit altogether with the insistence on naming a show that already carries the most revered name of any recurring show?), shows a solid, consistent curatorial vision. And one that I cannot refrain from lauding: in spite of seeing how popular the kind of work I have been making for decades has become in the past couple of years and how many people take credit for making “political” work now that it is fashionable, most of the work is weak and murky in its statements. But this is what I appreciated: Storr seems (to me) to be saying: in these dark times, if you want to say something criticizing power, you have to be shrewd, understated and circumspect, for fear of consequences; so, some of the “strongest” antiwar statements are obliquous<
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Emily Prince makes a gigantic map of the United States on the wall (25 X 120 feet roughly) using a fraction of the index cards on which she had drawn pencil portraits of “American Servicemen and Women who died in Afghanistan and Iraq, not including the wounded and Afghanis or Iraqis” (ongoing project since 2004), leaving most of them in archival boxes under a glass case, also part of the installation. Paolo Canevari, made a video called “Bouncing Skull” where a boy is juggling a soccer ball, but at closer inspection is the the object described in the title, the setting is the ruins of the United Nations Building in Belgrade, bombed in 1999. Even the boisterous Rainer Ganahl, unabashed in his condemnation of the Iraq war and the horror leading to and resulting from it in the last years 4 years, has been chosen for and invited to show work that predates that position and although challenging of the power structure, is much less disruptive. I still think that if a curator wants to make institutional and social critique, being more obvious (and using artists whose message is politically more obvious) is a better direction to take. But the message is interesting and I found a certain elegiac, forlorn continuity in the tribute to the bygone greats, as well as the timid contemporary: I see a timid appeal to our bygone (or by-going, bye bye going?) civil rights and liberties, which are becoming rapidly part of that same illustrious past that the demised greats of art may also symbolize.
It is remarkable that what I read as a consistent, unrelenting, if not strong to my liking, critique of what America means today (especially under the global political profile) comes from the first ever American curator of a Venice Biennale. Everything seemed subtly political: even the choice to give the lifetime achievement Golden Lion prize to a 72 year old black muslim from Mali (one of the poorest nations in Africa, where he has been the village photographer for 6 decades) was a subtle and unimpugnable jab to the “market” way of understanding art, though one that the market will easily absorb into its way of going about itself.
There is also what seems as pandering to the “emerging” nations, in a coincidental meeting with emerging economies: Brasil and Argentina have a large presence in Storr’s show, with some of the best work. It was almost shoking to see Leon Ferrari’s Christ crucified on a 1;10 model of an F 111 fighter jet (Title of the 1965 sculpture, suspended from the ceiling: the Christian Western Civilization), after seeing it weekly in MALBA, Buenos Aires main contemporary art museum, all winter long. It is impossible not to wonder which market powers are going to benefit from these choices, as naturally the Biennale is a life and career changing event in the life of every single artist that is chosen to participate. China, aside from a pervading presence, also got its own “pavillion” (a fuel deposit inside an enormous XIX century industrial environment), whose most interesting features were the settings and what the artist Yin Xiuzhen did with them: an installation of life size, horizontally set dozens of mid-eval lances (think knight tournaments, with the two shining armors on horses clashing against each other’s multicolored lances. The multicolor schemes here are provided by old sweaters stretched around the objects they masterfully cover.) floating at different heights (starting at 30 feet) in a pervading manner. And outside, a gigantic air-conditioned igloo with a bunch of laptops on the Second Life website, purportedly showing a movie produced “there”. Africa also had what purported to be its own pavillion, though its concept was at best nebulous, its inclusion of Miguel Barcelo`, Jean Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol at best dubiuos and its scope inscrutable, as well as the captions to its consistant video section. But it was also the one with the highest density of visually stimulating work, my favorite was a wall covered in small movie anouncements, called the best of the best.
Again, it isn’t clear what the promotional purposes of such choices where, but it was the most vital section of the show and the one that received the most plaudits in the very informal survey I conducted with colleagues, friends and other professionals of the field.
All this said, the most provoking things I have seen are at opposite ends of the scale: One, the result of an obviously genereous production budget, is a multiple video projection. The other, a couple of uninvited artists who worked in secret: a year ago, they buried under the gravel of the Giardini a bunch of round, relief signs made of cement all around the pavillions area (especially the American pavillion): The United Nations logo, a picture of the earth, the @ sign, a soccer ball and many others, loaded with meaning evident in the title of their piece: Symbols in the Dirt. On the day of the press opening, they went around with rake, shovel and wheel-barrel unburrinng them, tagging them with signs they brought along, unchallenged by the organizers, who did not want to regale them with the success de scandal that an arrest would have granted. Only to find the works gone by the next day: the personnel had been forced into unschedulled (and heavy duty) overtime, to dislodge each 200 pds cement pour from its unauthorized lodging. Staying in
the same geographical area, a plaudit also to the whimsical (and official) favela model built in front of the American pavillion (a scale model of the White House in yellow brick, how appropriate a corniche for Felix Gonzales Torres) by an invited collective of Brazilian artists staid on, providing a humorous counterpoint.
The video, is by Francesco Vezzoli, an Italian artist who made a brilliant juxtaposition of fake, 1 minute campaign commercials, facing each other on giant screens in an imaginary election night round room: surrounded by soundproof curtains and filled with red and blue ballons, on the opposite screens are the imaginary (but totally realistic) candidates Patrick and Patricia Hill, each with their own web site listed at the end of the short message. Ms. Hill’s, played by real life actress Sharon Stone, was off line when I tried to connect (I had originally identified her as Glenn Close, because her performance here smacks of the deliberately calculating one Close delivered in Stephen Frears’ unforgettable “Dangerous Liasons”. I have only seen two movies Sharon Stone is in, and only one I would look at again, though not for her scenes: Martin Scorses’s Casino)
The title of the piece, Democrazy, I have had for years in my notes as a possible title for several pieces. These artists made me jealous: their ideas, I wish I had realized myself. I think it is the best compliment I could pay to a work of art.
Homage to Nam June PaikSaturday April 14, 2007, Directed by Larry Millier, Performers & assistance: Kirby Gookin, Bibbe Hansen, Jessica Higgins, Michael Maxwell, Josh Selman, Gillian Wilson, Cello: Lucy Railton, Piano: Jessica Chen, Production Manager: Sean Carrillo, Video Documentation: Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra, Joan Logue, Sine tone tape and consultations for “Random Access”: Stephen Vitiello, Random Access Instrument Constructions for: Sean Carrillo, Gillian Wilson and Larry Miller, Fluxus Champion Contestants: Robert Ayers, Peter Grzybowski, Hee Soo Kim, Patrice Lerochereuil, Dalius Naujo, Jeff Perkins, Diane Torr, Series graphics: Sara Seagull, Special thanks to: Mina Cheon Kroiz and Gabriel Kroiz, Cole Green, Andrew Gurian, Estate of Charlotte Moorman, Sara Seagull, Arthur Solway, Ginger Cofield, Laurie Harrison, James Cohan and the gallery staff
Above photo from FLUXSONATA performed by Nam June Paik, 80 Wooster Street, NYC,
March 17, 1973, Photo by Larry Miller copyright 1973/2007
JAMES COHAN GALLERY
533 West 26th St. NYC
212 714-9500
PURPLE HAZE: The Brooklyn Museum’s opening
of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
I arrived last Thursday evening at the Brooklyn Museum with Jessica Higgins having certain expectations. On a lead from my editor, I thought that I would encounter the quintessential artist organizer himself, Ryszard Wasko, at the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art that night. With the idea of seeing Wasko again at the museum openings, and being asked to cover the event for Artist Organized Art, I also knew I would be seeing Judy Chicago’s iconic, large scale project “The Dinner Party,” for the first time. Although I had read the press release about “Global Feminisms,” co-curated by Maura Reilly, the Sackler Center’s curator, and Linda Nochlin, I still anticipated seeing other seminal works of feminist art from the 1970’s onward and was initially disappointed. My preconceptions of what I would see was confronted with an enormously ambitious, unexpected exhibition in the galleries surrounding “The Dinner Party” that places the work being made by younger women, born since 1960, from 50 countries, together for the viewer to assess the present moment of “Feminism(s).” The experience was one of confusion at first, but in retrospect feels like an appropriate take on the female voice which the Feminist Revolution and it’s early activists began to make audible.
First things first. “The Dinner Party” absolutely surpassed my expectations. I was astonished by it’s beauty, detail and depth. I had seen reproductions, which didn’t come close to the experience of walking intimately, around the triangular, banquet tables, lovingly and ceremoniously set with 39 place settings, tributing historical women from mythical goddesses, to Emily Dickenson. Intricately embroidered table linens sit beneath golden chalices and utensils, around unique, porcelain plates created for each recipient, with radiating forms representing female external sexual organs, not unlike a Georgia O’Keefe, flower painting, who was herself a guest at the table. The lighting is intimate and inviting, with the names of almost 1000 other women written on the tile floor. One of the outlying galleries will rotate an exhibition, relating to the women Chicago highlights in her project.
Exiting this permanent installation you are once again confronted with the often sensatio
nal images in “Global Feminisms.” There is an over abundance of photography and video, and simplistic, single dimension quick takes, but numerous gems are interspersed as well. A stand out performance work which I believe was “Untitled,” 2006-07, was by the appropriately, one named, Sissi (1977) from Italy. She hovered above the opening crowd, portraying a calm, basic, mindfulness, sitting on a golden branch, in a golden knotted or crocheted body suit like a mythical contemporary goddess of youthful female discernment. I liked Amy Cutler’s “Army of Me,” 2003 (US) and Annika von Hausssolff’s (Sweden), Melanie Manchot’s (Germany), Ingrid Mwangi’s (Kenya), Catherine Opie’s (US), Lisa Reihana’s (New Zealand), Anna Gaskell’s (US) and He Chengyao’s (China) photography. Although I admit to watching very little of the video works, I dug Sonia Khurana’s (India), Salla Tykka’s (Finland) and Boryana Rossa’s (Bulgaria) videos. I always respond to Kara Walker’s (US), Shahzia Sikander’s (Pakistan) and Wangechi Mutu’s (Kenya) paintings. Otherwise lot’s and lot’s of difficult pieces and walk by’s a plenty. It’s an uneven show that for me spoke about the youthfulness of the movement itself. I did find it curious that certain, well known New Yorker’s work, of my generation, like Janine Antoni’s was not present. I did though witness a heart felt conversation she was having with Amy Silman, from afar, like a mini movement of it’s own. Another performative moment in the evening was Martha Wilson and her dance partner tearing up the floor to the music in the Museum’s lobby.
The “F” word and it’s first generation art and heroes of the late sixties and seventies have been by some looked upon as antiquated and taboo in the years of backlash that eventually followed, but we seemed to have come full circle with the present moment to a place that almost feels like it’s infancy again. This show of youthful practitioners leaves room for growth; for me and Jessica and the many other working artists (female and male a like) to fill in the many gaps left here. In that sense it is hopeful. One step backwards, two steps forward…
I loved Roberta Smith’s words in her otherwise scathing NY Times review of the museum’s opening night ensemble: “But feminism is not a style, or a formal approach. It is a philosophy, an attitude and a political instrument. It is more important than Pop, Minimalism or Conceptual art because it is by its very nature bigger than they are, more far-reaching and life-affecting. In addition feminism is not of itself an aesthetic value. It is an idea that can assume an organic force in some artists’ work…”
The cross-cultural worldwide “feminist solidarity/comparative studies model” coined by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, that the exhibition was aimed toward is a good place to examine where we are at. And thinking about solidarity brings me back to Ryszard Wasko. Although I missed him there (as well as Jane Fonda, Elizabeth A. Sackler and Gloria Steinem whom he was probably hanging with in the VIP room), his mentioning that he was attending, led to my spontaneously responding to the new feminist dialogue in the year of celebrating woman artists. So thank you Wasko, Artist’s Organized Art for it’s sudden awakening and woman artists everywhere.
Erika Knerr
