The Olivetti typewriters coated with automotive paint and vinyl on shelves in Bozidar Brazda’s installation in the project room at Bortolami Gallery bespeak a past without nostalgia. In “Typewriters,” as in Brazda’s past exhibitions, he establishes a narrative of ridiculous connections, thereby creating a space in which that exposed (and absurd) narrative is shattered. One can almost hear the clanking sounds made by typing Cold War era Eastern-bloc bureaucrats and members of the nomenklatura. More importantly, Brazda creates the heavy feeling inherent with those patron-client relationships in a milieu in which loyalties and favor supersede ideals and merit. Born in Canada, Brazda’s family had settled there after emigrating from Eastern Europe in 1968—the year of Prague Spring’s elusive promise and a traumatic purge in the Polish United Worker’s Party in the wake of “March events” (wydarzenia marcowe). One could also ponder the noisy rows of IBM Selectrics (and the minions toiling upon them) at the same time in the bowels of U.S. corporations and institutions.
Living and working in New York, Brazda participated in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and has performed at The Kitchen. Describing his work as semi-autobiographical, he consistently references aspects of his East-West upbringing in narratives—whether written or not. These narratives mold his multimedia installations such as “Typewriters.” Additionally, recurring themes of East-West politics and culture embed these installations—regardless of whether they include sculptures, wall texts, music, video, or in combinations thereof. In “Typewriters,” Brazda brings fluidity and spontaneity to discarded and heavy relics of another epoch. While the installation’s arrangement is powerful in toto, the pieces also work as standalones and allow viewers to divide the context.
Again, Brazda has presented us with another postminimal, rough-hewn exhibition in which somewhat autobiographical narratives bring to bear “charmed arrangement” and “imposed logic.” His yarns—spun with whimsy in conflated, mutable, and even conflicting discourse—expose his representations of “objective” history as art. The possible, resultant undermining of our presumption can be refreshing, if not liberating.
[“Now Letting Go Installation, 2007-2008,” 49 pieces, mixed media on manila folders, William Downs]
Well-known for his infiltration and occupation of spaces with narratives deriving from a particular interpretation of automatic drawing, William Downs sits down with a stack of paper and makes one drawing after another until a theme emerges.This modus operandi is accompanied by use of “found paper” such as masses of old library cards or piles of obsolete forms from some forgotten corner—or “paper that has a history of its own” as he puts it. To this “history” Downs adds some of his own.
Use of manila folders is interesting on many levels: Used to contain and transport information, they are ubiquitous to the nine-to-five corporate and bureaucratic worlds. Yet, with information digitized they are often cast off if not reused. Further they were derived from material coming from a former U.S. colony. Downs has unleashed found manila folders in “A World I Never Made,” his solo exhibition at New York’s Slag Gallery through May 9.
Downs has brought his process a step further through his interest in and use of “minimal” materials such as ink wash, charcoal, grease, lead and ebony pencils, and chalk in “Now Letting Go,” an immediate collection of black and white drawings hung in a grid that can be viewed individually or in total. Like the folders used by Downs as a support medium, these minimal materials would be easy for him to transport between New York and Baltimore (where he teaches drawing at the Maryland Institute College of Art).
Tellingly, Downs shared his creative ideas and process with 15 high school age arts apprentices. Together, they collected paper, old books, magazines, and typewriters and experimented with collage, paint, ink, and various drawing tools. Their outcome: an assembled combination of various images and text through which a personal narrative was expressed. Collectively, the individual narratives became a multifaceted gallery installation. Presto!
Raised in Greenville, South Carolina, Downs lives and works in New York City. His past exhibitions have consisted of hundreds of small drawings installed in chapters or as multiple vignettes: a personal take on a storytelling tradition for which the South is known. While often playful, his subjects can veer to the dark side. Though clumsy, Downs' drawings are reminiscent of brief songs and verses calling forth fears, memories, fantasies, travels, and death.
Process is primary in “A World I Never Made,” bringing the viewer into the very act of creation. As with Downs’ work, where that creation leads is another matter. Regardless of destination, he brings the viewer across varying landscapes and terrains, both imaginary and psychological. Furthermore, this installation is interesting in terms of the gallery’s name and purpose:Slag is an industrial waste product that is highly recyclable. What may be worthless in one context (such as cast off manila folders and forms) has meaning and life in another.
[“What I Got for a Buck” (Chromogenic print) 2003, John Arsenault. “Two X-Rays of Mark Morrisroe with Embedded Bullet” (two gelatin silver prints) 1989, Mark Morrisroe (1959-1989). “Nan at Her Bottom …” (Cibachrome) 1988, Nan Goldin. “Untitled (Frat Boys #7)” 2005, Brian Finke.]
Panning across the spectrum of impetuosity to poignancy are the bold, chaotic, and compelling images in “Kids Behaving Badly” at ClampArt. In capturing the inimitable and powerful energy of youth, these rich works by Larry Clark, Karlheinz Weinberger, Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Jack Pierson, Mark Morrisroe, Ryan McGinley, Jill Greenberg, Brian Finke, John Arsenault, Marc Yankus, Michael Meads, Janine Gordon, and Collin Lafleche focus upon the pleasures and terrors of pushing societal boundaries during one’s formative years.
To say, as has the New York Times, that Nan Goldin “forged a genre” is understatement!Unfalteringly honest, Nan Goldin has carved out a place all her own. Represented in Kids Behaving Badly by several pieces, she never fails to create images that take the viewer on a rollercoaster ride. Her narrative sense is impeccable. While the works by Goldin in this show, such as “Nan at Her Bottom …” are from her earlier works in which primal themes of love, gender, and sexuality come to the fore in their most virulent forms, her work retains its immediacy and passion across subjects.Whether capturing drag queens, Bowery scenes, raw sexuality, obsession, dependency, and violence—or landscapes and family life—Goldin is part of their flow. Every shadow includes her for good or bad. Viewing her work is a transcendent experience.
Elements of drawing, painting, collage, sculpture, and assemblage find themselves in the eye and camera of Jack Pierson. His layered photographs defy description and incorporate various artistic disciplines.While the charming and beautiful photograph “Eric in Miami, ‘89” (1997) is, perhaps, not the best example of this, his larger body of work–when seen in their various “segments”—cannot be viewed solely as photographic.They are indeed sketches, paintings, sculptures, and collages. This is clearly seen in Pierson’s 1995 book “All of a Sudden,” in which every piece stands on its own in respective artistic canons.
Influences are richly layered in John Arsenault’s “What I Got for a Buck” (Chromogenic print, 2003). Attracted to the courageous openness of sexuality in the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and Duane Michaels, Arsenault’s work appropriates crisp personal examination, ritual, and routine in studies of sexuality and masculinity without fantasizing and fetishizing. When one form fails Arsenault, he moves on:Color film was the answer when black and white imagery no longer lent itself to the vibrancy, energy, and reality he tried to capture. Upon his move to New York and enrollment at the School of Visual Arts, Arsenault came under the spell of Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Jack Pierson to whose work he is aesthetically related. Indeed, as with those three artists, John Arsenault’s work has been forged in personal travails big and small.The 2000 bias assault upon Arsenault and his boyfriend altered the animus of his work: After this experience he sought to absorb his role within family and community—yet always with affection or a sense of humor. Importantly, Arsenault’s work has absorbed Goldin’s honesty and translation of feelings. While not off the Richter scale—as is the case with Goldin—the movement, aggression, and feeling are palpable. Smartly, he crops the faces in that body of work—anonymity accelerating the movement and tension.Arsenault has said that he became a voyeur in capturing these images: The same cannot truly be said for Goldin in capturing hers.
Thankfully, a number of works by Mark Morrisroe are represented in “Kids Behaving Badly.” Beyond important was 2007’s “Mark Morrisroe (1959-1989)” at ClampArt—an exhibition of photographs, films, and ephemera by the late artist and the first solo show of his work since that at Pat Hearn Gallery in 1999. Notably, “Two X-Rays of Mark Morrisroe with Embedded Bullet” truly represents the frappé of life and work by artists in “the Boston School” of which he was the unofficial leader. Including Goldin, David Armstrong, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Tabboo!, Gail Thacker, and Jack Pierson, that group of artists attended either the School of the Museum of Fine Arts or Massachusetts College of Art between 1971 and 1984. In this work, one can view the poignant rhythm of Morrisroe’s life:The bullet lodged deep within his chest was inflicted by a disgruntled john when the artist was in high school. Morrisroe was as compelling in real life—in which he walked with a cane and a limp—as he and is work are in retrospect. Now understood as autobiographical photography, Morrisroe’s contribution to this canon is least known as compared to his circle of colleagues and friends due to his death in the AIDS epidemic at the age of 30, though he is revered by them personally and artistically. Having created some of the most important and influential photographic images from the late 1970s through the 1980s, one is tempted to ponder where Morrisroe’s work would have headed had he only had the time. Alas, that is not possible, and we can be grateful for this diaristic body of work that will speak across the decades.Those of us who experienced Morrisroe in life can smile ruefully at the very freshness of his work—the technical imperfections of his Polaroids and photographs highlighted with scrawled texts along the borders and other signature retouching.
Brian Finke’s work is awash with pheromones, stimuli, and uncertain boundaries. Aided by rich analog photography, Finke instinctually captures the intersection of primate instinct and sociological self-awareness without being pedantic and tedious. As is the case with 2005’s “Untitled (Frat Boys #7),” Finke’s vivid images betray ideologies of beauty while blurring lines between portraits and street photography. Complicated relationships between peer pressure and individuality are traversed in this body of work. As with Goldin’s use of available light, decisions on light use are paramount: In Finke’s case one finds interplay between artificial and natural light. Extant humor in Finke’s work heats up the ambivalence of these images, while acting as a Trojan horse to bring the viewer closer to issues of social behaviors and self-definition. One sees, in “Miro Smoking” (1999) by my ACT UP and Queer Nation comrade Marc Yankus, a moment in time in which mystic and romantic dimensions are tenuously brought together. Remaining consistent in his larger body of work, Yankus fuses tranquility and diffused light to elevate the mundane to the ethereal. Composition is central in the physically and emotionally charged work of Michael Meads. Like Yankus, Meads was trained as a painter and brings unspoken drama and intimacy to his photographs. “In Ryan With Clamps II” (Cibachrome) 2002 and “Ryan With Polaroids” (Cibachrome) 2003, we see raw and powerful portraits of Southern male culture—particularly bonding and antics on the primordial testing field. Originally created as studies for his drawing and painting, these private records of his world and those passing through it are electric.
“Kids Behaving Badly” taps into a photographic expression spanning nearly five decades and demonstrates the camera’s unique and impressive facility for documenting and interpreting life at its moments most messy and frenetic. The viewer is granted an entrée to varying levels of introspection that make this show a must see.
[La Chascona was the Santiago home of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda—a home in which portraits of Walt Whitman adorn the study]
At the feet of her Welsh mother, Denise Levertov (1923-1997) absorbed the works of Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, and Leo Tolstoy. Her father, an Anglican parson, had been raised a Chasidic Jew. Levertov sent some of her poetry to T.S. Eliot when she was 12 years old.His response? Two pages of “excellent advice” and encouragement to continue. Her first poem to be published appeared in Poetry Quarterly when she was 17.
During the Blitz, Levertov braved the bombings to serve as a civilian nurse in London. Her first book, “The Double Image” was released in 1946—leading to her identification with a group of poets called the “New Romantics.” The next year she married American writer Mitchell Goodman (later a codefendant in the 1968 Trial of Dr. Benjamin Spock)—moving to the States in 1948. Living in New York City, they spent summers in Maine. Upon moving to the U.S., Levertov was introduced to the Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau as well as the work of William Carlos Williams.
Through her husband’s friendship with Robert Creeley, Levertov became associated with the Black Mountain group of poets—particularly Creely, Robert Duncan, and Charles Olson—who had formed the fabled, experimental school in North Carolina dedicated to John Dewey’s principles. Springing forth from the school, these poets were joined by Jonathan Williams and Ed Dorn. An editor of the Black Mountain Review, Creeley acted as a bridge between this group and the Beat poets (such as Allen Ginsberg) when he moved to San Francisco. While Levertov was published in the Black Mountain Review and acknowledged the influences of her peers, she dismissed the idea that she was a member of any “poetic school.”
Levertov’s first American book “Here and Now” was published in 1956, the very year she attained U.S. citizenship. She had developed an open, experimental style—moving away from previous fixed forms—and became an important voice in the American avant-garde. Her output during the fifties and sixties gained the recognition of poets such as Kenneth Rexroth and William Carlos Williams as well as her “colleagues” Creeley and Duncan. “With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads” (1959) brought her into the canon of American poets—leaving her British origins behind.
We know Levertov as a deeply socially committed poet.This was established during the 1960s, when issues related to civil rights, the Vietnam War, social change, and feminism came to the fore in her work. “The Sorrow Dance” (1967)—with its two “psalms”—poured forth her respective rage and sadness toward the Indochina conflict and the death of her older sister. Her progressive credentials were firmly established: From 1963 to 1965 Levertov served as poetry editor of The Nation and from 1975 to 1978 at Mother Jones. With such colleagues as Muriel Rukeyser, she took on issues such as nuclear disarmament and U.S. intervention—even being arrested in civil disobedience actions.
It was, as a 16 year old, in 1975, that I discovered Denise Levertov. Her wonderful book “To Stay Alive” (1971) “called” to me from the shelf in the bookstore of Muskegon Community College.I was entranced by and fell in love with her highly lyric verses juxtaposed with bits of prose.It was the first book of poetry I ever purchased. Its vision, “conversations,” and weariness remain an inspiration.
Around the time I “found” Denise Levertov, she created “Freeing the Dust” (1975), which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Besides her 20 plus books of poetry, Levertov authored four books of prose and translated three volumes of poetry (including works by Eugène Guillevic, Alain Bosquet, and Jean Joubert). She taught at Stanford University from 1982 to 1993 and spent the last decade of her life in Seattle, Washington, during which time she published “Poems 1968-1972” (1987), “Breathing the Water” (1987), “A Door in the Hive” (1989), “Evening Train” (1992), and “The Sands of the Well” (1996).
For decades she had admired the work of and was influenced by Paul Claudel (1868-1955) whose verse dramas espoused his devout Catholicism and broached the sacred and sensuous. In a parallel to her father’s spiritual search and ultimate conversion from Chasidic Judaism to Anglicanism, Levertov made her own spiritual journey—being received into the Roman Catholic Church during those Seattle years. At the age of 74, she died from complications of lymphoma.
