It's that time of year when seemingly every publication/blog, art- and otherwise, does a 'best-of', 'year-end', 'top ten' list. Artforum did like a thousand of these. And so can I. While my writing is far more rudimentary than what you may read elsewhere, you can rest assured it is my highly subjective, slang-riddled, personally-experienced opinion. And with that:
My TOP TEN LIST-worthy cultural events of 2009 (in chronological order, b/c further ranking would be too masochistic)
1. Josh Smith "Currents" @ Luhring Augustine
What I said then:
02222009: Noise noise noise. JOSH SMITH! Whole lot of pixellated/abstracted palette canvases + superflat collages (60x48" + 48x36" respectively) jammed in here. JOSH SMITH! Nature, dragons, fish, fauna, the artist's own bloody name scrawled/hidden amid the noise. JOSH SMITH! What the hell is going down here, exactly, + why do I dig it so much? JOSH SMITH! Is this like the #1 show in W Chelsea now, as Christopher Wool's was (@ this same gallery) last year? JOSH SMITH! Yes, quite, very well could be.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Check Smith's site. I dare you. Peruse the 81+ pages of paintings (just paintings!, not even collages, prints, drawings etc). The man is an animal! He's also the slightly older, though still 'younger than Jesus', artist, who anchored an otherwise flighty eponymous inaugural triennial @ the New Museum (unlike Holland Carter and lots of bloggers, I did NOT care for Ryan Trecartin's fussy, meth-lab-chic installation cut w/ Youtube-quality video). He also enjoyed a very good show at Luhring Augustine. His stuff is all sort of samesies, in categories of smeared abstract paintings and superflat mixed media 'collages', yet each element is totally unique. Smith's style is industrial in the manner of printmaking, but his hand is obvious in each work (as is his name, oftentimes, which is why that echoes so much in my original writing).
2. "Shinjuku Ecstasy: Independent Films from the Art Theatre Guild of Japan" @ Japan Society
What I said then:
02222009: As in, Japanese New Wave cinema. What, you didn't realize Japan had a New Wave film period? Have you read Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood"? Or for that matter, to get more visceral, Ryu Murakami's "Almost Transparent Blue" (for more sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll)? Yes, there was indeed La Nouvelle Vague in Nippon, w/ such auteurs as Shuji Terayama, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Koji Wakamatsu and Nagisa Oshima — and 12 of the iconic films from that period (like mid-'60s to early '70s) are screening here, once each, through Mar 1. 12 films. One screening per. Not like Netflix-able either. Will they sell out? What do you think.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
My first full-out exposure to Japanese New Wave cinema was a doozy. I wish these bijoux weren't so damned limited! Basically we had like one chance each to see these rare beauties, like Shuji Terayama's genre-blasting barn-burner "Throw Away Your Books, Let's Go into the Street" (think sort of JLG's "Two Or Three Things I Know About Her"), like Kazuo Kuroki's haunting "Silence Has No Wings", like Hiroshi Teshigahara's super trippy, stark "Pitfall", which if you thought "Woman of the Dunes" was claustrophobic and bleak, you haven't seen the 1/2 of it. Point being: each of these films, and their directors, follow the art-house theme of experimentation, controversy and innovation, but each stands on its own as a unique voice in the movement. If Akira Kurosawa's period dramas don't grab you, and you think Nagisa Oshima's the only '60s-period envelope-pusher, take another look.
3. Jenny Holzer "PROTECT PROTECT" @ Whitney Museum
What I said then:
03222009: Holzer is a true poet-artist and her idiomatic, punctuation-less phrases resonate stronger now than ever. The fact that some of the words in this mid-career retrospective (or whatever you want to call it) originated in '77, or like during the Reagan administration, only confirms their presence and viability when discussing the Iraqi wars and contemporary society. This awesome exhibit also works really well b/c the gallery gave it some breathing room, space for the electronic LED signs to flow their respective texts and emit their respective light (coolly threatening, warmly enchanting, hot and cautionary). Which is what I always thought the Lawrence Weiner career retrospective needed. I loved that the Whitney did it but it always felt way too crammed and chaotic for my liking. Not Holzer's, it's perfect. Mind you, there are "only" eight LED pieces on display across the fourth floor gallery space, plus a bunch of Holzer's signature Warhol-like blowups and silkscreened de-classified U.S. military documents from the latest Iraq war, her "redaction paintings". The first new LED piece, "For Chicago", greets you like a shimmering orange field soon as you step off the lift, or climb the stairs to the exhibit — the LED panels are incredibly skinny and flattish and level w/ the floor, so it's like the floor itself is glowing. Then the deluge of words begins. "Green Purple Cross" and "Blue Cross" is the one instance where the museum paired two pieces together, and I think it works in this case, the one floating above the other in a cross-cut pattern in a corner, the words "I cannot stand it" flowing by as the walls light up cool blue and green. The massive "Monument" against the other wall is like a NASDAQ ticker on cocaine, whole lines of type overlapping one another in a riot of greens, reds and purples across the cylindrical tower. The room of redaction paintings is a palate cleanser and a chance to relax the eyes, but your senses are probably hyperaware now (perhaps Holzer's intent) so you can't help but read the type of the blown-up military docs even closer, even the parts blacked out or otherwise obscured, testimonials of Iraqi prisoners on their arrests, autopsy reports during detainment. Some are so blacked- or whited-out they become minimalist art — albeit creepy as that sounds — like a drawing by Barry Le Va or Ellsworth Kelly. The stair-step LED "Red Yellow Looming" and the white hot "Thorax" echo the words of the redaction paintings, while the vicious "Purple" — this long floor-to-wall cylinder — spills out overlapping interrogations machinelike, almost to the point of obscurity. But you'll catch yourself unable to pull away as you latch onto a word or phrase, a detainee's answers to his questioner whether he was fed today, or beaten.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
The Whitney struck that fine balance b/w informed elegance and intellectually rich installation in Holzer's fine retrospective. Each piece had a wealth of space to interact w/ the air and the viewers, so it didn't feel like info/stimulus overload like Lawrence Weiner's fine, overdue retrospective two years ago. Nor did it come off as stretched thin and precious, like Roni Horn's beautiful, but very quiet, exhibition. And the art: but no one can grab you like Holzer's scrolling LED signs, and just when you think you've seen it all she drops one on the floor like a shimmering carpet of prose. And the actual words, many of it military-related, could not be more timely and relevant.
4. Sophie Calle "Take Care of Yourself" @ Paula Cooper Gallery
What I said then:
04262009: An absolutely brilliant show that debuted at the 2007 Venice Biennial, centered around a breakup email Calle received. The artist took the letter to over 100 women of various disciplines, backgrounds and ages and they systematically take it apart and respond to this Mr. X. The gallery is filled with typographically diverse responses from fiction writers, justices, schoolteachers, teenagers, philosophers, artists, mothers, scientists with (self?) portraits of the responders and video. It helps if you know French but the show is so visually intriguing as it is that you'll get the gist of most of it. And for additional help Calle enlisted a translator's response, so you can read the bastard's original email in translated English.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Calle's installation was, visually, incredibly appealing — and I think this goes for all sorts of backgrounds. Mine as a graphic designer, I was attracted to the typography and the way the texts reflected the hundred women subjects and their respective life paths. The proliferation of French did not dissuade from the clear, necessarily diverse message of tactile support to the jilted artist. You left Calle's show feeling some of what she felt, and what these women felt for her, Calle's asinine ex-beau, and the general situation.
5. Charles Ray "Early Sculptures" @ Matthew Marks Gallery
What I said then:
05162009: Lots going on in this nearly empty room, courtesy of three of the artist's vintage seldom-exhibited '80s sculpture. "Spinning Floor", a rotating floor tile, is the most apparently approachable, though I have to wonder what would happen if you stepped on it, I mean there was no like caution tape surrounding the spinning tile nor a gallery staffer stationed nearby. "Moving Wires" is a little freaky and a little funny, two long wires move in and out of the wall at like chest-height @ varying speeds. And though it's mechanized it doesn't FEEL mechanized, in person, due to the sort of chancey movement of each wire, like there's somebody stationed behind the wall actually pulling them manually. Now "Ink Line" is the coolest and harbors the most risk, and by risk I mean inevitability for a huge mess. This 'sculpture' appears, in photos and intriguingly in person, at first, as a long black string extending from ceiling to floor, but that's where the staticness ceases. Let your other senses go to work, as in smell: there's like a strong odor of ink when you first enter the gallery, even though this piece is like way off to one side, and hearing: you don't even need to be right up on this one to hear the trickling stream of ink from point A to point B. That's a live cascade of black fluid coming from a dime-sized hole in the ceiling, pouring into a similar-sized hole in the floor, and if you look close you'll detect fluctuations in the stream. This stuff is REAL, and no need to use your remaining two senses to test "Ink Line"s realism, like grab at it and the results will mimic the poor fools who slapped the 'top' of Ray's "Ink Box" and realized the piece was like brimming w/ ink. Oops.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Three delicious rare 'interactive' sculptures from the constantly status-quo-defying artist. You had to experience this w/ your five senses, take in the sharp odor from "Ink Line" (like a gas station) and the subtle sounds coming from the same and "Spinning Floor". In fact, an empty room w/ just "Ink Line" would have sufficed, as this piece, in its debut display, had so much going on, from the subsurface gurgling noises of the ink pooling somewhere before the floor to the whole mechanics of installing the thing, a shimmering black stream flowing from way up in point A to way down in point B. The freaky "Moving Wires", w/ its seemingly random timing and propensity to surprise, especially if you approach the thing dead on and don't catch the gleaming wires, was a playful third. No other sculpture this year, in my opinion, so elegantly stacked up to Ray's three oldies.
6. "Twee as Fuck" concert @ Cake Shop
What I said then:
06212009: Oh my, this is going to be singularly big like a solar eclipse. Brooklyn's indie heavyweights The Stilts and The Pains together at last, tucked away in a crowded basement on the LES beneath a vegan-friendly coffee shop. Let's do a role-by-role comparison w/ caUSE co-MOTION, just to psych ourselves up. Best vocalist? If i'm feeling seriously moody, Brad's (Stilts) tongue-in-cheek deadpan rules, but it's a win b/w the Kip/Peggy (Pains) earnest harmonizing over Arno's (caUSE) nasally delivery. Guitar? J.B. (Stilts) can shred and Kip (Pains) rocks out, but Alex's (caUSE) jangly surf riffs are pretty neat-o. Bass? Liam (caUSE) thrashes and Alex (Pains) pummels, yet Andy's (Stilts) melodic basslines remind me of Mickey Finn. Keys? This is b/w Kyle (Stilts) and Peggy (Pains) b/c caUSE co-MOTION don't have a keyboard player, so sorry Kyle, but Peggy wins this by a mile. Drummer? This is a tie: Kurt (Pains) adds a machinelike muscularity, Jock (caUSE) pounds quite elaborately on a stripped-down set, but Frankie Rose (Stilts) has speed and 4dexterity on her side, plus she usually drums standing up a la Maureen Tucker. Verdict: MAYJAH.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
Easily the best concert I attended in 2009. Everything worked out, from the stress of obtaining advance tix (Cake Shop notably only sells tix at the door except special events, like this one, where I trekked out to sister venue Bruar Falls in Wsburg to nab my seemingly hand-drawn Twee as Fuck ticket from the bartender's envelope; in retrospect I wish I could've kept it, totally scrapbook-worthy) to arriving at the show after my evening Japanese course w/ time to navigate the swelling crowd so I could locate the ideal vantage point for maximum satisfaction. English lads Hatcham Social led the evening, these four floppy-haired blokes w/ hangdogish grins and nonchalant demeanor, but they played the hell out of their instruments (incl the standup drummer), kicking through track after track of Pulp-era proper '90s pop. I slid up to the front-left of the stage to dance to caUSE co-MOTION!, who came close to inciting a twee moshpit. Liam was leaping all over the place, colliding w/ Cake Shop's low ceiling but never losing the groove on his basslines. Arno and Alex played like it wasn't no thang. When Crystal Stilts took the stage, and everyone was sweating by this point, all the lights went out and somebody stage-left used a handheld projector like a spotlight/disco ball, so the Stilts played their trundling, glammed-up Velvet Underground tunes in what turned into one of their older tracks, a "Prismatic Room". So absurdly cool. And everyone lost their minds when The Pains of Being Pure at Heart came on. Peggy reinstated the 'ooh - ooh - ooohhh's that added such exhilaration to "Come Saturday", amid the swirling guitar distortion, and her co-vocalization w/ Kip was on point. And Kip led the band w/ a casual mastery that belied their relative newness to the scene. They played "103" too, which was a teaser of the great tracks to come in the next few months ("Twins", "Higher Than the Stars"). Perfection.
7. New York Asian Film Festival 2009 @ IFC Center + Japan Society
What I said then:
06212009: I am fiend for film festivals, and NYAFF in particular. There's like 40 films this year, running the gamut from the ultra-violent and sexually explicit to the heart-warming and -rending, from serious dramatic/historic pieces to fractured romantic comedy. I mean, we have everything from "Ip Man", the sepia-tinted Hong Kong production based around Bruce Lee's wing chun grandmaster, to the centerpiece presentation, a violent li'l number by Yoshihiro Nishimura descriptively entitled "Vampire Girl v. Frankenstein Girl". And there are special screenings of Korean Short Films, two nights of Japanese Pink Eiga (which translates sort of into 'softcore porn', but it's not quite that), and a special 3+ hr "Tokyo Gore Night" on June 27. Take a deep breath. You can bet this will be dope. If y'r on Facebook, you've probably received a special NYAFF 2009 invite from moi, listing the shows I'm attending (currently about 20) and other juicy info. If y'r not, check out the site for the full schedule and ticket info. And get on this, b/c Asian films are go!!!!!!!
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
So the NYAFF is practically a shoe-in for LIST BEST OF-inclusion. Why? B/c it epitomizes what my LIST is all about: the marriage of high art (serious drama/romance like Kim Ki-duk's "Dream" and Nick Chin's "Magazine Gap Road"), high action (Wilson Yip's "Ip Man" and Ryu Seung-wan's "Dachimawa Lee") and high violence/sex/nudity/etc (Yoshihiro Nishimura's "Vampire Girl v. Frankenstein Girl", whose original Japanese title "Kyuuketsu Shoujo tai Shoujo Furanken" is just as wicked, for one). B/c it included Sion Sono's mind-melting magnum opus "Love Exposure", a four-hour treatise on religion, family, cultism and pornography that married Ravel's "Bolero" so wonderfully. B/c it included multiple nights of hard-gore Japanese film, unlike anything you've ever seen (and even if you caught Nishimura's "Tokyo Gore Police" at last year's, trust me they go even further than that). B/c the quieter moments, like Eriko Kitagawa's "Halfway" and Lee Kyeong-mi's "Crush & Blush", really shined. And b/c I'm already beginning to meditate in preparation of next year's no-doubt beyond-awesome festival.
8. Underwater Peoples Records Showcase @ Market Hotel
What I said then:
08252009: Can we say MAYJAH? I am really really into the DC-based Underwater Peoples label, which bears that fuzzy lo-fi brilliance of Brooklyn's Woodsist and Captured Tracks labels but maintains this almost (dare I write it?) 'West Coast' sunniness in their artist roster. Like you can listen to all these bands and you're instantly transported to the beach (Long Beach, in this case, or at least the Rockaways). Their summer showcase is a big HELLO to this late-emerging seasonal weather and comes w/ my strongest recommendation. Come early for guitar-loopy Ducktails (aka Matt from Real Estate) and the singularly fantastic Beach Fossils (and rock the beach!), stay for Alex Beeker & The Freaks (aka Alex from Real Estate), Air Waves and headlined by Jersey's finest indie-rockers Real Estate — heard of them?
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
What a brilliant way to end a humid summer of dope live music! Braving the muggy temps and high percentage of rain and hauling out on the J to Bushwick, to the AC-less Market Hotel above the Mr. Kiwi grocery store next to the elevated line! That was like 10% of the fun, the remainder when to the cheap ticket price and the enormous roster of summer-friendly woozy, surf-rock bands from DC's Underwater Peoples label. I arrived during Big Troubles' set and it was hella loud, garage-rock style, raw but catchy. Ducktails' Matt mesmerized the audience w/ his deceptively simple setup of FX pedals and guitar, like he always does, and we were lulled to like a soporific translucence (perhaps also courtesy of the contact high in the air) before he ended his way too brief set. Liam the Younger surprised w/ a pretty spot-on, dirty cover of Nirvana's "Territorial Pissing". Beach Fossils had everybody dancing; you can't listen to 'em and NOT dance. My first brush w/ Fluffy Lumbers (which got me absolutely hooked on his hook-driven "Cruisers") and Family Portrait (ditto to "Mega Secrets") and Real Estate brought the whole sultry late-summer night to a lovely conclusion.
9. Anselm Reyle "Monochrome Age" @ Gagosian + Takashi Murakami
What I said then:
09292009: Much as I lauded the subtler shows in last week's LIST (Anthony Pearson, Chris Ofili and James Turrell for three), I do love a spectacle. And Reyle, the youngish German neo-Abstract Expressionist, is by definition a spectacle: his oeuvre consists of high-gloss sheen, new-car colors, techno patina and lots of chrome and sharp stuff. This exhibition, a mix of his works throughout the years, is a head-scratcher b/c really I don't know how he pulls off some of this stuff. The monochromes, oil-slick canvases abraded w/ various detritus, are like Max Ernst-style frottage/grattage works on Creatine. The silver metallic bales of 'hay' are fibre-optic styled. That much I get. But the mirrored tower of doom, this multitiered crystal piece that emanates some vague spicy scent through its glowing orifices, that I don't get. Nor the massive crinkly jewel-box, like a large crumpled bit of wrapping paper, that phases through an iridescent spectrum as you pass by it and observe it from different angles — I don't know how the hell he made this one, but it's absolutely gorgeous.
+ Takashi Murakami "Picture of Fate: I am but a Fisherman Who Angles in the Darkness of His MInd". The preceding is just the name of Murakami's one-piece show, viewable in the side room to Reyle's delirious gallery-filling affair. The title of the four-panel Murakami contribution, however, is "A Picture of the Blessed Lion Who Stares at Death", and it's a beauty. Murakami mostly eschews the pop-flowers and cartoony-ness you might best know him by, focusing instead on the mythology of the Karajishi ("China-lion") and its ritual and survival. The sheer detailing of this gigantic piece, the Karajishi and its cubs moving about a human-skull bridge against a patina-rich background (I immediately thought 'blotter paper') is breathtaking.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
I'd already fallen in love w/ Reyle's spectrum-conquering eye candy before this sort-of retrospective, but the show cemented by appreciation for the German artist and his kind of neo-Abstract Expressionism. I run short on adjectives for his art: ecstatically colorful, future-perfect shiny, enraptured junk-sculpture, yummy shock-bright bijoux. He's comfortable w/ both multitoned Mylar and paint-coated found objet, w/ neon, mirrors and like sharp adaptations of Piero Manzoni's "Achromes". His art can run as glossily manufactured as Jeff Koons', but it retains a twisted quality signature to Reyle. And Murakami's tasty, patina-drenched "A Picture of the Blessed Lion Who Stares at Death" acted as sort of old-reliable psychedelics to Reyle's designer drugs.
10. Urs Fischer "Marguerite de Ponty" @ New Museum
What I said then:
11242009: It's a safe bet many of us art-lovers (and sometimes-enthusiasts) have been anticipating Fischer's gallery-filling solo show. Maybe for his gleeful irreverence to standing architecture (aka 'investigation of space', as in the floor-razing "You" at Gavin Brown's Enterprise a few years back), maybe for his multitalented mixed medium works (melting candle figures, cast-aluminum 'soft' sculpture, anti-Dada 'readymades'). Lots of scare-quotes here, sorry, but it's necessary. And Fischer's exhibition, of works from the past few years, exceeds in expectation whilst simultaneously lifting his cred as a serious artist. The sole hole here, the advert-spoiler "Noisette", is a motion-sensitive tongue that thrusts itself out a tennis ball-sized wall gash: it's a bit of a raspberry to his naysayers, maybe, but it's playful, innocent, innocuous, and by far the best thing. Start from the 4th fl, amid the towering cast-aluminum abstract forms, and decide for yourself what they mean. Maybe "Ix" is a horse-head (the missing head from Mauricio Cattelan's famous "Untitled"? Or Berlinde de Bruyckere's unsettling taxidermy?), or the stunning "David, the Proprietor" a primeval sea beast lashing up from the ocean's depths, or the eponymous "Marguerite de Ponty" a stately, voluptuous lifeform? The other bits in this room, the Robert Gober-esque (in a terribly surreal way) "The Lock", w/ its truncated subway bench and hovering cake, and the bizarrely-titled "Violent Cappuccino" (more aluminum and paint, in the guise of a skeleton fighting off 'cardboard boxes'), are cool to look at but are recurring characters in Fischer's past works. The 3rd fl is trippy, nearly empty save for the aforementioned "Noisette" and a melting (cast-aluminum again) piano. But the great surprise here is the site-specific environment, the collaborative effort w/ graphic designer Scipio Schneider, an installation where the empty gallery was exhaustively photographed and then reprinted as wall- and ceiling-paper. The result: soft pinks, purples and greens w/ trompe l'oeil shadows, sky-light, and public-safety signs. You need several minutes to really take in the unsettling effect — leave the floor if necessary but come back to see it again. He's done this before (the doubled "Who's Afraid of Jasper Johns" environment in Tony Shafrazi Gallery last year, replete w/ Shafrazi 'guards', was a trip), but the sneak-up quality here exceeds the earlier works. The 2nd fl, beginning or preferably the end, is Fischer's new multipart work "Service à la Française", but what this means is dozens of mirrored chrome boxes, silkscreened on all surfaces w/ a single object each: a sofa-sized tennis shoe, a milk-crate-sized Balenciaga strappy heel, a canoe-sized sausage. This piece works so well: it's Fischer having fun again but it's a joy to explore. Check the repetitions: halved red Bartlett pear here, rotting red Bartlett pear there; wax-candle cupcake here, deliciously-rendered chocolate-frosted cupcake (replete w/ sprinkles, naturally) there. The effect of it all, and seeing glimpses of yourself in the mirrors as you dash from one objet d'art to the next, is stimulus-overload, exhilarating, thoroughly recommended.
Why it is LIST TOP TEN-worthy:
I summed up Fischer's worthiness above, but then I began noticing the NEW ads for the exhibit. They still include that raspberrying "Noisette" only now the tongue (and surrounding hole-in-wall) are superimposed on a blanked out version of the museum's exterior, shot elevated and from across the street as if a 20' version of the rascally installation was protruding from the wedding cake-tiered white box. Of course this is not the case. The casual viewer will see this ad and laugh, perhaps nervously, and then, interest appropriately piqued, will see the show. The informed viewer, knowledgeable of Fischer's craft and past tomfooleries, will smirk "oh that Urs, up to it again, eh?" all bemused-like, and then they'll see the show. That's all well. But "Noisette" and what it implies (holes in walls, childlike destruction, wagging tongues) is but a mere blip in this fascinating, mature suite of newish works. The space-defying wallpaper on the 3rd floor is evidence alone of this young artist's continued sophistication. The labor-intensive chrome-box installation on the 2nd floor is further proof. Hot stuff.
