PIQUES

ROADTRIP TO NEBRASKA sometime between mid-June through Sept. 15, anyone?!

hyperallergic:

An Artist Makes Rainbows Over Omaha

A successful test of McKean’s rainbow over the Bemis Center (all images courtesy the Bemis Center)

A Fresh Whit.

Girlie Gagucas

5/4/12

Hailed as a “new and exhilarating species of exhibition” by the New York Times, visitors are promised with much ambiguous praise commensurate with grand expectations at the 2012 Whitney Biennial.  But upon entry and exploration, these standards are easily unassuming.  To say the least, there are several highlights worth one’s full immersion rather than mere seconds of fleeting consideration.  From the immense hall on the fourth floor reserved for dance, music, and plays to the most intimate and strangely hand-made objects, this year’s assortment draws from the personal and away from the mechanical.  Artists are even sufficiently acknowledged for their work and thus have a lingering presence that diffuses much enigmatic affectation.

Werner Herzog’s contribution of expressionist landscapes by the lesser-known Dutch artist, Hercules Segers, was a pleasant encounter.  Albeit Herzog’s denial of being called an artist and admittance to a fear of museums, his participation only betrays his sustained passion for nature and humanity.  With his unprecedented and breathtaking 2010 documentary, “Caves of Forgotten Dreams,” the Van Gogh-like images are astonishing inclusions by knack.  Furthermore, these multiscreen landscape projections are accompanied by Ernst Reijeseger on cello and organ—-a most engrossing installation in solitude or otherwise.

In an adjacent room hangs abstract paintings by Forrest Bess, a Texas fisherman with a relentless fixation on becoming a pseudo-hermaphrodite.  Also centered at the back of the room is a display of Bess’s written and photographic documentation of his self-surgeries.  As unsettling and equally fascinating as these records are, Bess’s wish was at least finally realized—-to exhibit his medical theories alongside his paintings.  Due credit belongs to sculptor Robert Gober for illuminating a life tinged with poverty, sickness, and creativity.  Moreover, Bess’s dedication to expressing a unification of opposite forces (female and male, conscious and unconscious, light and dark) alludes to a kind of innocent conviction; perhaps his desire to conquer and equalize violence in the world through such experimentation is anything but schizophrenic.  Once aware of Bess’s personal life, one cannot simply view his symbolically-charged paintings as they are.  It is quite a relief to believe that his emotionally-laden life was mitigated by the lucidity of his art—-a life unbalanced and rescued by virtue of it being so.

Matt Hoyt’s small handcrafted objects are another intimate and intuitive collection.  Their tiny scale immediately suggests the possibility of the artist as a local purveyor.  And from a distance, they can also be easily dismissed as found objects.  Yet detections of tactile manipulation of each object suggest that they are too precious to be sold even to the art connoisseur.  Having previously seen these sculptural fragments at Bureau, it suffices to note that they retain a meaning independent of context.  Whether on view at a private gallery or a spacious museum, they remain as diligently engineered to organic sophistication yet perpetuated by questions of origin.  Were it not for their diminutive size, their command for reverence may be depreciated.  Moreover, greater scales would simply imply an over-glorification of materials whereas scaling down may not visibly yield transformative miens.  

On the third floor is an ongoing piece by Sam Lewitt involving the substance ferrofluid—-magnetic rocket fuel developed by NASA.  Art critic Peter Schjeldahl precisely offers a proper response when he concludes, “I don’t know what that’s about.”  Every other Sunday, Lewitt pours new fluid onto plastic sheets placed on the floor.  On these plastic sheets are various metal weights which stimulate the fluid to clump together.  Aided also by tiny swiveling fans, these gleaming coagulations are plain eerie…could they be the beginnings of an alchemical coup to destroy the existence of humanity?  Or will these evil organisms ultimately seep into the depths of our brains and alter our souls?  Well, most likely not.  However, these ideas were worth entertaining insofar as ferrofluid’s ubiquitous and unbeknownst presence in the technologies we utilize daily.  Too often do we overlook the essential components of objects, let alone fully comprehend their functions; Lewitt proposes this notion as well as invites us to imagine other realities.

Moseying about the vast emptiness of the special fourth floor was not as disconcerting as was expected.  Though it would have been more special to see or partake in a live performance.  Nonetheless, the space itself was dynamic—-a limbo-like reality in which one is left to imagine what has been and what will be within its confines.  In sum, this year’s edition was as enterprising as the curators themselves.  Jay Sanders and Elisabeth Sussman assembled a show rich and personal in material without the typical overt references to politics and such.  Seger’s landscapes, Bess’s mythology, Hoyt’s reworked fragments, and Lewitt’s lifelike ferrofluid all manage to be thought-provoking and accessible.  Other standouts not elaborated on for length’s sake are as follows: Tom Thayer’s installation of paper puppets, a bottle-rack sculpture made of synthetic animal horns by Joanna Malinowska, Wu Tsang’s gaudy “Green Room, ” and Lutz Bacher’s “possessed” Yamaha organ.  Needless to say, a second or thrice visit to the 2012 Whitney Biennial is rather obligatory; after all, it is surely “not like the other ones” (The New Yorker).

Beginning of Project Nanang and Tatang: Welcome to America!

My future pet, the Black-footed cat.

“Legends 

An incredibly tenacious little cat, the natives have a legend claiming the ‘Anthill Tiger’ can bring down giraffe. While this is untrue, it pays homage to the fierce determination of these feisty little felines.”

vaycay #1