Abstracts: Jack Pierson

[“The Shrine of Luxury & Pride” (2009), metal & neon. “Abstract #10” (2008), metal & paint. “Abstract #11” (2008), white neon & metal. “Abstract #15” (2008), plastic & metal.]

Multimedia artist Jack Pierson shows his powerful and immediate abstract sculpture at Cheim & Read through November 14, 2009. While Pierson’s last exhibition at the gallery was in 2006, the work in “Abstracts” was exhibited at Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga (Spain) from June 19 to September 27, 2009. Working across such media as photography, video, installation, drawing, collage, assemblage, and sculpture, Pierson is well-known for re-appropriating commercial signage and large-scale vintage lettering—creating evocative word sculptures and installations in their wake.

In this particular show at Cheim & Read, Pierson draws together recent abstract sculptural work using these trademark signage materials. By repositioning letters and other signage details—such as broken pieces, numbers, and symbols—Pierson radically alters this narrative. Pierson strives for—and achieves—universality by removing the hierarchy of language and its immediate associations. Without having to rely on words to communicate, a more visceral action is provoked. Twinges of nostalgia , melancholia, memory, and loss are referenced and reinforced by Pierson’s use of roadside ephemera. While imbued with poignancy and disillusionment, they also convey a distinctly American essence and space.

Pierson’s work is ultimately autobiographical, though balanced with a sly irony and humor that allows viewers to identify with his imagery. While an emotional sensibility remains in his sculptural abstractions, inherent themes are less explicit. The works in “Abstracts” are intentionally nonobjective and non-literal. A given word might still exist in a reconfigured fashion, but its signification is diffused. Yes, these abstract works are related to the artist’s more “readable” word sculptures, but Pierson attempts—with the work presented in this show—to move beyond singular interpretation. He does this by questioning the construction of meaning through a visceral (and sometimes brutal) deconstruction.

Beauty abounds in Pierson’s abstractions. Some works are calligraphic while others exude bright colors. The viewer will find works referencing Minimalism, while noting the Pop pedigree of others. Pierson’s repositioning, recontextualizing, and recycling reset viewer expectations and generate works resembling totems and constellations. While the retinue of raw letters and symbols are recognizable, the compositions found in “Abstracts” require suspension of assumption to cast a different reading.

Among Pierson’s books are Real Gone (1994), Traveling Show (1995), Sing a Song of Sixpence (1997), All of a Sudden (1999), Every Single One of Them (2004), and Self Portrait (2003). His works have been shown at the Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Miami), Le CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, Edition Schellmann (New York), the Neuberger Museum (SUNY Purchase), the Menil Collection (Houston), the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), the Barbican Museum (London), Hamburg Kunsthalle, Frankfurter Kunstverien, and many other venues.

Abstracts: Jack Pierson

Through November 14, 2009

@ Cheim & Read
547 West 25th Street, New York City 10001

Self-Portrait as a Building: Mark Manders

[“Living Room Scene With Enlarged Chairs” (2009). Wood, painted epoxy, iron, four enlarged chairs, painted aluminum, brass & rope. “Silenced Drum” (2004-2009). Painted wood, painted iron, painted ceramic, painted epoxy, rubber, carpet, & twine. “Landscape With Colors” (1997-2009). Painted wood, glued sand, painted epoxy, & iron.]

Whether through installation, sculpture, drawing, or projected imagery, the multidisciplinary practice of Dutch artist Mark Manders expands upon his ongoing and unique project of self-portraiture through architecture or a “self-portrait as a building.” In this second solo show by Manders at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery—up through December 19—arrangement of random objects elaborate on his expanding and ongoing conceptual project. Described by the artist as inspired by his initial interest in writing and literature, Manders’ first artistic investigation explores self-utilized language and written word. In defining these innermost perceptions and understandings of his world, Manders appropriates a sculptural form in his investigation of meaning and narrative. Belonging to a generation of post-Minimal sculptors whose work swims in such meaning and narrative, Manders stands with such peers and precursors as Robert Gober, Juan Muñoz, Kiki Smith, and Miroslaw Balka. Yet expressed narrative is far from boundless within this cohort: There is an absorbed skepticism.

Juxtapositions of rough-hewn “clay” sculptures—rendered in epoxy— of household furniture, architectural forms, and other miscellaneous objects provide an avenue for Manders’ poignant and mysterious tableaux in his investigation of a perpetually unrealized whole by scrutinizing philosophies of time, location, and biography. These intricate—though sparing—configurations of unrelated objects challenge preconceptions, transform the spaces they inhabit, and turn the gallery into a landscape in which a psychological sense of otherness is evoked. Manders’ work doesn’t stop here, however: It also evokes absence rather than presence while setting forth a critique of subjectivity and identity.

Rodents, a recurring motif in Manders’ work, have assumed varying degrees of representation in his installations, whether by including actual taxidermied rats or imposition of large, abstract, biomorphic rat-like forms. One finds them in this show in his work “Silenced Drum.” Here two stylized, limp rodent forms are held against the body of a dismembered red drum by a rubber strap. In this combination, various elements—whether animal or man-made—“conspire” to give form and meaning to the sculpture as a whole and reveal their own poetry in arrangement of disparate, everyday objects.

Although absolute silence reigns in his installations, there is palpable life beneath the stillness. This is especially true in "Room with Chair and Factory" with its collision of human, domestic, and architectural considerations. Such collision is visceral in “Large Figure with Book and Fake Dictionaries”—presenting as it does a multiplicity of components in the artist’s use of architectural means to achieve portraiture. In this work there is a disjointed quality and ambiguity in its conveyed identity, time, and place.

Chafing under language’s limitations as a medium Manders moved toward architectural structure in his narrative rather than highlighting specific content. This progression has brought immediacy to Manders’ work by underlining suggested physical and psychological relationships in these constructed worlds. Yet this choice has not erased the his works’ literary richness: These works are obviously informed by a cast of cultural sources including the incomplete legacy of Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the clarity and awareness of George Orwell (1903-1950), and the Minimalist (if sometimes bleak) perspective of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989).

Mark Manders—who lives and works in the Netherlands and Belgium—has shown his work at the Aspen Art Museum, Jarla Partilager (Stockholm), the Douglas Hyde Gallery (Dublin), The Carrillo Gil Museum of Art (Mexico City), Kunstverein Hanover, Bergen Kunsthall (Norway), S.M.A.K. Ghent (Belgium), Kunsthaus Zurich, The Hayward Gallery (London), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh).

Mark Manders

Through December 19, 2009

@ Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

521 West 21st Street, New York City 10011

Challenging Distinctions: New Work by Rebecca Campbell

[“Daddy Daughter Date” (2008), oil on canvas. “Sleep Walker” (2009), oil on canvas. “Charlie in Forest” (2009), oil on canvas.]

The second solo exhibition of new paintings by Los Angeles based artist Rebecca Campbell is up through December 5, 2009 at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe. Known for her bold, figurative paintings, in this show, Campbell explores the unconscious with surreal images challenging distinctions between representation and abstraction and reality and fantasy. The artist’s interest in crossing autobiographical subject matter with allegorical material—in drawing on experiences from her own life as well as images from her dreams—was the inspiration for this body of work. In describing the “organic” development of her creative process, Campbell writes that it “[evolves] into an experiment where the tangents and desires of the unconscious become my motivation. Happily, wading into the surreal enlarged my process into a poetic call and response.” By injecting childhood phantasm into quotidian rites and circumstances gave her a new perspective on both.

Born and raised in Salt Lake City—the youngest of seven children in a strict Mormon family—Campbell began to develop a critical eye to her surroundings and upbringing. She questioned the parameters of the church in which she grew up—particularly the role it ascribed to her gender. Refusing to bow to its pressures and demands for conformity, Campbell spent her teenage years developing her passion to make art and honing her techniques in sculpture, installation, painting, and drawing. She left Utah to study art and returned to Salt Lake City where she worked for a period as an independent exhibition curator.

Campbell develops her ideas by taking photographs of staged subjects, which she then proceeds to render as drawings or small studies before translating those images to larger canvases. Each painting is grounded in a single vibrant color that embodies the work from its very base. Upon this base Campbell juxtaposes thin washes of translucent colors: Thick impastos and sweeping brushstrokes build upon this composition.

The artist is a member of L.A. Art Girls, which has produced several collaborative projects such as: “Strange Love” (2005), a “remake” of Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”; Total Art Performance Event (2006), a series of Fluxus-inspired performances; a radio show called “String Theory”; and “Overflow” (2008), a reinvention of “Fluids” (1967) by artist Allan Kaprow. While there are over 30 members of the L.A. Art Girls at this time, a lesser number participates in the collaborative projects on a self-selecting basis. Meanwhile, all members of the group pursue their own practices as contemporary artists and participate in meetings and studio visits as they choose. The group evolved from informal gatherings and studio visits, which started in 2004 as a means to encourage substantive discourse on contemporary art. Voluntary and nonhierarchical, L.A. Art Girls provides inspiration, support, dialogue, and feedback to one another.

New Works: Rebecca Campbell

Through December 5, 2009

@ Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe

525 West 22nd Street, NYC 10011

L.A. Art Girls

Laberintos: William Cordova

[“Prophets” (p.l.o. d.c.)(2009), gold leaf, graphite, watercolor on paper. “Laberintos (after Octavio Paz)” (2003-09), appropriated vinyl records from undisclosed ivy league institution in response to that institution’s refusal to return 200 Inca artifacts from Peru after it originally borrowed them in 1914. “Untitled (the Echo in Nicolás Guillén Landrián's Bolex)” (2008-09), mixed media collage. “Untitled (Sacsayhuaman, Mukden, Bayon de Libertat)” (2003-09), imitation gold vending machine chains.]

"Laberintos," an exhibition of new works by William Cordova, will be up at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. through December 5, 2009. Embodying a duality of rural and urban aesthetics that is central to his oeuvre, Cordoba’s work emphasizes unintended links between practices and people. Multilayered, elusive, and allusive, the work of this artist is inspired by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’ novel “Laberintos” (1962) and the Nobel-prize-winning Mexican writer Octavio Paz’s collection of essays “The Labyrinth of Solitude” (1950). Borges (1899-1986) was said by J.M. Coetzee to have “renovated the language of fiction.” In the latter work, Paz (1914-1998) sought to put into perspective the encounter between pre-Columbian culture with Conquest and Colonialism in Latin America.

A brochure featuring an essay by Andrés Estefane, a noted writer and historian based in New York and Santiago, accompanies the exhibition—translated by Alex Branger. Estefane focused on “how Cordova’s drawings, collages, sculptures, and installations offer a preliminary answer [to] the questions raised by the Borgesian labyrinth.” He poses that—in our first imagination—the labyrinth is always a place of conflict. It is always a place where two moral forces that write the story of a victory and a defeat confront each other.”

Populated by landscapes, text, and collections of found everyday remnants, Cordova combines imagery from popular culture with gold leaf—with his pictorial space further enhanced by a juxtaposition of drawing and structural linguistics. Combined, these elements create setting with potential for new and inspiring occurrences. The works are sometimes interrupted by strips of electrical tape, blocked-out areas, drawings that extend a topological plane, or free verse from anonymous authors. The artist’s palette is reminiscent of the static found on a television screen—imbuing Cordova’s works with an unpredictability both unsettling and compelling. Tied to an urban ecology of obsolescence, disparity, and displacement, busted cars, trashed tires, discarded shoes, machetes, speakers, and yellowed books provide material support and iconographic program for Cordova’s drawings, collages, and installations. For Cordova, such material choices reference lived experience, as opposed to the spectacle of culture and mass-production for constant consumption. The fluency with which Cordova traverses media and remixes cultural signposts confirms his visual multilingualism.

“Laberintos” consists of five projects that include drawing, sculpture, and video. These indicate a shift towards a nuanced reinvestigation of the iconography in the artist’s new works. For example, in “Untitled (Huaca)” (2009), various objects (reclaimed wood, a primary school textbook, a feather, and two Polaroid photos) are assembled axially in a Constructivist manner that also reflects the syncopation of an Andean musical composition. The 100 drawing suite, “Untitled (The Echo In Nicolás Guillén Landrián's Bolex)” (2008-2009), acknowledges that the artist’s traditional linguistic elements—image, text, and materials—are only credible in the present when they are anchored within a preexisting social system of communication. In describing his work, Cordova states: “The stories that one tells somebody else around the family dining room table: Those are the stories you pass on and you learn that way, so that it remains sacred. That is one of the things I want to convey in my work: the concept of sacredness.”

As Estefane pointed out in his accompanying essay: “The limits of laberintos are tested as a political reflection. If the object is to negate the absence of presences, the negation of presences, and the imposition of narratives that exclude, Cordova’s wager seems to be effective… Perhaps, that is why the synchronic and the diachronic meet here with unusual gracefulness.” Indeed, impacted by issues of transformation and interpretation since his youth and transitions between cultures, nations, economies, and languages—Cordova has hovered around and landed in weighted issues like the summary murder (with two shots fired point blank into the head) of Illinois Black Panther Party deputy chairman Fred Hampton by Chicago police on December 4, 1969. Ironically Cordova’s show closes practically on the 40th anniversary of this outrage.

Born in 1971 in Lima, Peru, Cordova’s work has been exhibited at P.S. 1, the Fleming Museum (Burlington), Artspace (San Antonio), Threewalls (Chicago), Menil Collection (Houston), the Nasher Museum (Durham), the Whitney Biennial, and the Venice Biennale.

Laberintos: William Cordova

Through December 5, 2009

@ Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

530 West 22nd Street, NYC 10011

Imaginary Numbers & Other Calculated Fictions: David Colosi

[“The Proof” (2009), mixed media installation. Other various mixed media installations.]

Psychographic drawings stand adjacent to analytical assemblages—and previous site-specific installations are reinterpreted to fit a new environment—in David Colosi’s first solo exhibition in New York. Running through January 1, 2010, “Imaginary Numbers and Other Calculated Fictions” embraces Colosi’s terminology of “Three-Dimensional Literature” to define his cross-disciplinary work in visual art and literature. In the way that a collection of stories may include those that have been published previously, this exhibition includes those previously exhibited elsewhere—standing amid those that have not. The artist’s recent drawings and small-scale sculptures become an ensemble in the vein of Bruce Conner (1933-2008), the artist once associated with the “Beat community” whose first solo shows featured assemblages, collages, drawings, paintings, prints, and sculptures.

Colosi’s work has explored the intersection of mathematics and literature in the tradition of English author and mathematician Lewis Carroll (1832–1898), Italian journalist Italo Calvino (1923–1985), and French poet and novelist Raymond Queneau (1903–1976). The latter two were members of “Ouvroir de littérature potentielle” (Workshop of Potential Literature)—more commonly known as “Oulipo.”Oulipo was an informal “consortium” of primarily French speaking writers and mathematicians using constrained writing techniques to create works. [Calvino was a major exception vis-à-vis language as he was the most-translated contemporary writer in the Italian language at the time of his death.] Objectified math and grammatical symbols from Colosi’s installation “The Proof”—a project previously sponsored by the “Swing Space Program” of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council—have been repurposed to anchor this exhibition at Cueto Project. As in that previous show, objects of mathematical calculation share this gallery environment with the viewer.

In “Imaginary Numbers & Other Calculated Fictions,” these symbols appear between the “cracks” of narrative objects. Normally in this position, arrows, parentheses, and equal signs would cement a relationship between the variables at their sides—invisibly performing service roles. In this show at Cueto Project, they help to bring disparate stories together into a unified narrative—though still not negating the story “fragments.” What results is a cohesive installation of independent works that recall the poetry and undercurrent of the work of Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904– 1991), better known as Dr. Seuss. The artist’s work takes this a step further. Viewers are reminded that a “proof”—like any mathematical calculation—requires both their action and participation in order to function.

Adrian Piper—who brought a great deal of texture and bite to Minimalism and expanded the vocabulary of Conceptual art—is another obvious influence on David Colosi. Piper had “tremendous respect for any institution that would take the risk of giving its stamp of approval to work that is difficult, disturbing, confrontational, politically volatile, and of uncertain market value at best.” She felt that such institutions must believe in such work for its own sake. Indeed, that is what the viewer will find at “Imaginary Numbers & Other Calculated Fictions.”

In addition to his installation in the LMCC Swing Space Program, the work of David Colosi has been exhibited in such venues as Galerie Catherine Bastide (Brussels), Art Statements at Art Basel (Switzerland), Art Positions at Art Basel Miami Beach, the Floating Gallery (Tokyo), and Highways Performance Space Gallery (Los Angeles). His poetry has found “homes” in “Laughing Blood: Selected Poems 1987-2003” and “From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multi-Cultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002.”

Imaginary Numbers & Other Calculated Fictions: David Colosi

Through January 1, 2010

@ Cueto Project

551 West 21st Street, New York City 10011

Lower Manhattan Cultural Council

Project Space
125 Maiden Lane, 2nd Floor
(between Pearl and Water St.)
New York, NY 10038

The Center for Three-Dimensional Literature

Recurring Dream: Nick Mauss

[“Pavilion” (2009), video projected on wood. “Occasion” (2009), wood & silk ribbons. “Insert” (2009), wood, paper, & ink.]

303 Gallery is running its first exhibition of new work by Nick Mauss through December 5. Elements of drawing, painting, video sculpture, and installation have been corralled by the artist into this intermittently visceral “experience.” Walking through this exhibition—“suspended” as it is over boundaries and responses on the spectrum from positive to negative—can offer viewers any number of interactions. Introduced through various two and three-dimensional works in the show, ideas are more easily insinuated and absorbed. Mauss attempted to arrange this installation as if walking over notes that had settled over time—as in a recurring dream in which “the ceiling drifts repeatedly to the floor at regular intervals like some enormous, contour-less sheet of paper falling silently…”

While the artist has often thought of ways to arrange an exhibition that induces a choreography for the viewer, in this show he has attempted a space into which the viewer is transposed as the central figure. A wood frame supports a sheet of stretched paper at the entrance of the gallery, a jagged geometric form carved out of its center—this passageway standing as a figurative and permeable sentry. A series of drawings are etched into silver leaf—drawn, erased, and retraced. Their reflective surfaces merge with their quasi-hieroglyphic inscriptions, allowing material and manipulation to coalesce into each other with varying degrees of intensity in this fluid if not volatile suspension. Precariously balanced on plinths almost flush with the gallery walls, Mauss’ drawings function sculpturally as well: caught between being hung and being left behind. Other drawings are strung together—like sentences—with images confusingly inserted into each other. To create this “architecture of windows,” these drawings are displayed on low platforms on the floor or affixed directly to the wall.

The act of nesting images within other images, texts within other texts, and songs within songs is viewed by Mauss as an appealing way to convey variety within a single utterance, simultaneously encased within different aspects. In the center of the gallery, an equivocal—if not enigmatic—video of a scroll being pulled through a pair of still hands is projected onto a wood plank. The projection echoes isolated frames found in the figuration of the drawings, which could be read as renderings of other projections. The constantly moving scroll recalls a film leader or printing press as it perpetually moves through the stillness. The artist references a photograph of Orphism art movement co-founder Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) “demonstrating” a copy of “La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France” (Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of the Little Jeanne of France). Her body is covered entirely by an unfurled scroll on which the text of the poem is engulfed by her designs so that only her hands can be seen holding it up for the photograph. “If the scroll had been endless, and continued beyond the frame, beyond the time at which the photograph was taken, it might have looked like this.”

The pieces or series of pieces in this show are caught in their own dualities. They also communicate with the pieces around it—creating a sort of constellation of objects, or a new terrain in the gallery space. The viewer is implicated in its navigation, and allowed to draw personal paths and fill in the illusory blank spaces. The artist intends to obscure sources here so that the lineages of these works are indirect.

Currently included in the exhibition “Compass in Hand” at MoMA, the work of Nick Mauss has also appeared at the Chelsea Art Museum, Kunstverein München, Magasin (Grenoble), and the Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart.

New Works: Nick Mauss

Through December 5, 2009

@ 303 Gallery

547 W 21st Street, New York City 10011

www.303gallery.com

Murder in Tehran: Siah Armajani

Conceived and created in the months following the June 12, 2009 Iranian presidential election, “Murder in Tehran” is an important new work of sculpture by Siah Armajani. Running through December 23rd at the Project Space of Max Protetch Gallery, this installation is a powerful political and formal statement. While it represents an act of outrage and solidarity with the Iranian people, it combines elements of sculpture, architecture, and literature.

Composed of glass, wood, gravel, cast body parts, felt, masonite, paint, and applied and poetry from contemporary and Iranian poet Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000), “Murder in Tehran” scrutinizes sacrifices made by women in the 2009 protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s “reelection” to the Iranian presidency. This sacrifice was illustrated most starkly in the shooting of Neda, whose death was broadcast throughout the globe. The installation also commemorates the way in which Iranians took to their balconies to denounce the government and the policies of the Revolutionary Guard in the days following June 12.

Featuring a balcony-like structure supporting a “human” figure, the tableaux of “Murder in Tehran” recalls the popular uprising of Iranians on their rooftops. With its long history of martyrs losing their lives in pursuit of freedom and justice, Armajani’s work recognizes their various roles in Iranian history.

At the base of this sculpture, the viewer will see scattered casts of body parts littered among the gravel—a reference to the mass shallow graves found in various corners of Tehran in the weeks following the unrest. In the midst of the body parts is a bloody hatchet, an illustration of the Shamlou poem whose text is inscribed on the sides of the piece: “The man who comes in the noon of the night/has come to kill the light/There the butchers are posted in the passageways/with bloody chopping blocks and cleavers…” In placing a sculptural illustration in proximity to the text itself, Armajani employs a technique found in ancient Persian miniatures that contain illustration, description, and poetry on a single page. Additionally, one finds seven pencil-on-mylar drawings in the show entitled “Murder in Tehran (After Goya)”

The works of Minneapolis-based Siah Armajani have been seen in such prestigious venues as MoMA, the Guggenheim, Walker Art Gallery (Denver), MAMCO (Geneva), the Stedelijk (Amsterdam), the Hirshhorn, Museum fur Moderne Kunst, the Nelsen-Atkins Museum (Kansas City), and Madrid’s Reina Sofia. While Siah Armanjani might be best known for having designed the Olympic torch pressing over the ill-fated 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, he has also created “Between the Lakes” (an installation exploring the various teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson) at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Gazebo for Two Anarchists: Gabriella Antolini and Alberto Antolini (an architectural sculpture in Mountainville, New York), and “Fallujah” (a modern take on Picasso’s “Guernica”).

Murder in Tehran: Siah Armajani

Through December 23, 2009

@ Max Protetch Project Space

511 West 22nd Street, NYC 10011

www.maxprotetch.com