City, Country, City Paintings by Gandy Brodie.

The Painting Center.

This latest compilation of works on canvas by Gandy Brodie is something of a mini survey that focuses on the artist’s relationship to his immediate environment. This is a relevant concept since Brodie was always tuned in to local nuance, whether it was a dead bird on a sidewalk of SoHo, or a fictional tree falling in the vegetive density of a forested picture plane. 

Later on in his life Gandy did divide his time between New York and Vermont, but my feeling as a former student at his atelier in Newfane, was that he felt more at home in Vermont.
He and his wife Jocelyn owned a modest bungalow in Townsend, close to the barn he rented in the center of Newfane.
The barn had two stories. The students worked downstairs in various niches that may have once stored hay, or corralled livestock. Gandy had his own working area upstairs, a dark little rafter that suited his nesting instinct nicely.
I recall watching him paint on a self-portrait that had been in progress for many years. In typical Brodie fashion the paint had been relegated to a state akin to the historical layers of an archeological dig. What may have started as an innocent reflection of facial symmetry had now become a thickly brooding notion of insightful trepidation. What had he wrought? A visage worthy of Rembrandt, yet rooted in a profoundly insecure and vulnerable personality. Gandy always said he would’ve only taken lessons from Rembrandt or Cézanne, but I think that bravado may have masked a deeply ingrained belief that he and his art were riddled with idiosyncratic faults.
I watched in awe that summer as the self-portrait gradually glazed over into an image of a bumpy icicle, reeking with metaphorical implications.  
Gandie’s lower east side origins never left him; he loved the dense architecture of life in a busy metropolis. I was told in no uncertain terms that to be a real painter I had to leave Vermont, and go live in a cold-water loft in New York.
I only knew Gandy in New York for a couple of years before he died, but this exhibit revisits his earlier tenure in the mean streets to good effect. Much of the work from the mid fifties and early sixties was done before he lived in Vermont, and employ a gritty persona of figurative compositions that exude a tough, bluesy poetry.
The city tree theme encompasses a pervasive sense of the struggle for renewal in Brodie’s perpetual duality of self/nature in conflict. The epic tale of Brodie’s legacy is not so much a sweep, as it is the plodding progress of inspired determination.
The epitome of Gandy’s oeuvre culminates in his floral paintings. The workman-like stance that inhabits his cityscapes, combines in these still lives with a reverence for the natural world. Pigment bubbles up like some gurgling spring, exuding the essential essence of a delicately fragrant sensibility.
Yet these blossoms are encrusted with substantial weight. Their surfaces mask a tremendous burden, exhausted by an exquisite finality. Its as if the slightest additional mark might result in a psychic collapse. This art has reached a peak state of painting that cannot be exceeded.       
I believe Brodie was a naturalist at heart. His figurative work (both animal and human) inevitably leads to a humanist celebration, but always in the context of architecture as a naturally occurring phenomenon.      
Kudos to Steven Harvey and Jennifer Samet for making this exhibit happen. I was particularly impressed by the wonderful catalog available for free, due to the generosity of the Wolf Kahn, Milton Avery, and Hans Hoffman foundations. 
Brodie’s work is now way over due for a major museum retrospective. I know there are hundreds more paintings and drawings that could be assembled for an in-depth survey of this artist’s invaluable contributions to twentieth century painting.   

A link to the exhibition catalog: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/50gi6im6b29wkn1/brodie_2_14_2014_lower%20res.pdf

I don’t know if Gandy ever witnessed this event himself, but I’d that guess he did. The Birth Of A Fawn series resists conventional sentimentality and representational coyness, in favor of investigating the mysterious sensations of birth and origin.  

Socrates Sculpture Park; 2013 Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition

“Socrates SculpturePark was an abandoned riverside landfill and illegal dumpsite until 1986 when a coalition of artists 
and community members, under the leadership of artist Mark di Suvero, transformed it into an open studio and 
exhibition space for artists and a neighborhood park for local residents.”

Socrates is certainly one of the more engaging art viewing destinations east of the East River. Di Suvero’s studio lot lurks large adjacent to Socrates. His massive steel sentinels peer in upon the park with an impervious, yet benevolent gaze.

A stroll through it’s relatively unimproved environs features a landscape littered with leftover remnants of industrial detritus. Yet there is an element of quietude that envelops the place. Hidden nooks and crannies are scattered about, and then the grand vista of the sprawling East River, framed by Socrates’ own little beach, contribute to a hushed contemplation at the intersection of art, architecture and nature.

Wandering about the hardscrabble grounds is always an art adventure. The eclectic nature of Socrates’ installations ranges from the overt (politically as well as visually) to the nearly invisible. (As an aside to social stratification, KennethPietrobono has interred innocuous looking plants that blend into the background scenery in his park-wide installation Selections from the Modern Landscapes.)

Celebrating a low-tech revisionist vision of colonialism, and race relations, JustinRandolph Thompson’s tour de force Brutus Jones, inspired by Paul Robison’s boisterous visage, integrates insurgent guerilla theatricality, with a fond sentimentality for the black cultural icon of quilting. 

 

Dredging up a 1949 Dodge Power Wagon similar to one Robison used in a performance during the Peekskill riots of 1949, the artist invokes all sorts of connotations relating to black rural agrarian traditions, as well as a scathing indictment of racist intolerance.

Quilting installed under a floppy awning serves as a kind of abstract bulletin board or storefront, relating a visual throwback narrative that evokes Gees Bend gentility. 

Thrusting across the ramshackle flatbed is a crossbeam based on a Roman battering ram, encrusted with quilted barnacles, and mounted with the head of Paul Robison instead of the traditional ram horns. 

This configuration could be considered in an allegorical context. Portraying Robison’s visage as an heroic symbol may belie manipulation by Soviet propagandists, but he was indeed a champion of civil rights, and his voluptuously booming voice served as bullhorn for mid century black autonomy.

Although Thompson may have overloaded Brutus Jones with polemic, I’d think that was the point. This is art that revels in a zeal for confrontation; the artist as an impassioned ideologue wherein agenda takes priority. Perhaps if he had embedded a more literal historical narrative, viewers might have taken away a more succinct perception of Thompson’s protest.

But to his credit the artist has avoided overt agitprop, and fashioned a visually compelling sculpture as set design that morphs in and out of stridency. Brutus Jones could work perfectly well purely as an existential jungle jim on a playground derived from the artist’s psyche, and encompass a notion of cultural identity that might trump his earnest activist intent.     

Thompson’s art succeeds from an aesthetic standpoint with a kind of funky outsider look, even though the artist received a formal education. His rejection of traditional art media helps sustain rebel credibility that rubs up alongside a populist pundit sensibility seen in Thompson’s predilection for performance video. His enthusiastic axing of a podium during a performance on the Power Wagon could've been an amusing reinvention of Who guitar smashing.


BrutusJones - Trailer from Bradly Dever Treadaway on Vimeo.

Yet I doubt Thompson endeavors to become an art/rock star. This underground artist seems to inhabit a nether region of the art world mostly neglected by a predominately white collector base. As such its good to see art created by one of the precious few African American descendents in the contemporary art scene.

I hope we will soon be seeing more of Thompson’s uncompromisingly entertaining commentaries on Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

You MyungGyun’s monumental dollop of sculpture eschews social dogma for a commentary on nature and the moment. 

This South Korean artist joins the ranks of a burgeoning movement of Asian artists that have injected a freshness of spirit into contemporary art.

Like his compatriot Jong Il Ma’s 2008 installation at Socrates, Gyun has made a large scale sculpture that transforms its bulky architecture into an expansive ode to nature and contemplation.

Fabricated from the ubiquitous blue plastic re-cycling bag, still photos don’t capture the ethereal monochromatic flutter as the feathery plastic coat catches a breeze. The textural nuance gained from such innocuous art supplies infuses the surface with a suppleness that transcends the mass produced matériel.

The ponderous form achieves a kind of lumbering grace, perhaps the way a dinosaur would graze on the upper reaches of a tree. It’s massive frame remains connected to the ground, yet somehow gains lift, perhaps a billowy, airy blue pillow yearning for the sky. 

TamaraJohnson’s sly brand of humor seen in A Public Pool jolts our sense of place into a disjointed perception of where things should/could be.

She is adept at counter-intuitive association; a pool filled with grass, density encroaching on space, or memory impeded by distraction. There could also be a sardonic poke at suburban largess; you can almost feel Dustin Hoffman’s alienated Graduate soul buried in dense layers of dirt and irony.

Johnson’s work recalls the familiar, and then alters our experience of that certain reality by distorting an expected syntax. The concept appears simple enough, but could only have been conceived in a minds eye dedicated to disruption. 
Anyone up for a dip?
 

 
Atlas On Her Shoulders (3:35) 2011 from tamara johnson on Vimeo.

Aida Šehović’s Obstacle Course: Patriot Challenge offers a rousing dose of irony and could be symbolic of nationalist fervor. A native of Bosnia-Herzegovina, I’d think she knows whereof she speaks concerning the dangers of ethnic militancy.

There seems to be an interpretive intent going on, the course is set up so that viewers can undertake their own attempts at basic training. Perhaps this is a strategy to humanize the military mindset and help us appreciate the individual dedication and sacrifice of those committed to making the world a safer place.

The artist may also be expressing a cautionary morality tale concerning the risks of social conditioning and violence as a means to an end.

Is it surprising that Thordis Adalsteinsdottir’s woodsy ode to a love bite from nature has created such an astoundingly prudish uprising (pun intended) among the ranks of the good citizens of Queens? Or is the old adage that good fences make better neighbors at work here, or perhaps a case of out of sight, out of their minds? 

 

Another cliché may also apply; that bad publicity is better that no publicity. Although a Chelsea gallery exhibits Adalsteinsdottir, she is by no means a household name. Revenge may be best served here if this crudely erotic, tempest in a teapot results in her becoming better known.

Disclaimer: I had the adventure of shipping one of her pieces to a collector.  Getting the reindeer into my truck without snapping off one of the delicate antlers was tricky, but the beast never complained and arrived no worse for wear. 

The 2013 EAF pieces are a stimulating bunch of offbeat, oddball selections that amuse as much as inspire. Socrates is probably one of the art world’s most egalitarian and eclectic exhibition venues. New York’s art exhibition hierarchy is anything but a meritocracy, so when a program like the EAF comes along that’s not all about whom you know, authenticity and diversity have a chance to thrive.  

Post Script:

Speaking of diversity, another reason to visit Socrates is their semi feral cat colony. They are not too skittish, and some of them will come right up to you expecting pets.

  

Mike Kelly PS 1 MOMA

Kelly is a handful. This exhaustive, and exhausting memorial compendium is akin to an art world colonoscopy. And like the medical procedure, this exhibit examines and purges pop culture dregs inhabiting the art market’s intestinal tract.

Kelly’s unimpeded libido meanders about pretty much aimlessly; indulging in darkly brooding mediations on repressed memory and trauma, then tossing in dumb trivialities like fake vomit and comic book covers. 

Was he an artist without any discernable boundaries, a dysfunctional wild child who was never told ‘no’, exorcising his tantrums and demons? Or was it all an act? From the Kelly Crow article in the WSJ:

“Stuffed animals? Minutes later, a local reporter approached George (Mike Kelly’s older brother) and asked if his little brother had ever been sexually abused. George nearly threw a punch. Their parents were strict and so were the nuns at school, but he knew of no such trauma. George told his brother what had happened. He also apologized for chuckling at first glance. Kelley slapped him on the back: "Good, it's supposed to be funny."

From then on, the art world demanded autobiography from Kelley. Rather than quell the scrutiny, he stepped fully into the role of provocateur—toying with critics and waffling continually between memory and myth in his life. In an essay first published in Architecture New York in 1996, Kelley wrote, "I had to abandon working with stuffed animals for this reason. There was simply nothing I could do to counter the pervasive psycho-autobiographic interpretation of these materials. I decided, instead, to embrace the social role projected on me, to become what people wanted me to become: a victim."

A cynical take on Kelly could be that he was corrupted by big art largess, and ended up producing shock value schlock to generate big returns in the inflated bubble era.

He came from a working middle-class family in Detroit MI. After attending U of M at Ann Arbor, he got involved in the local heavy-metal punk scene. Kelly then managed to get into CalArts, honing his conceptually punked-out performance bad boy persona enough to get noticed by museum bigwig Richard Armstrong, who purchased a piece out of his senior show.

Maybe it would have helped if he’d been in NY. It seems incongruous that such an amped-up, up and coming art star would settle in mellow LA, home of alfalfa sprout and avocado sandwiches. Perhaps the nitty-gritty nastiness of the East Village would have better suited his tumultuous process. 

But once you get past all the ranting, raving, and screaming Mimi’s there may be still enough work of substance in this show to sustain the image of a tortured genius, yet I believe there is also room for reasonable doubt.

The large-scale installation Kandors is a silly, ill-conceived (and probably over-budget in typical Hollywood style) rock opera take on Superman’s home planet which most likely ended up padding the pockets of DC comics, while picking the pockets of free-spending, big shot collectors who didn’t know any better.

Remove your shoes?! Please...

Kelly’s multi-plexed and perplexing video installation, Day Is Done, personifies all that is bothersome about the overwrought, over-stimulated, and under-edited film loop mania saturating up-scale gallery spaces. Particularly amateurish is the oft-repeated scene featuring a trio of slinky leotard-clad mime ‘dancers’, prancing and gyrating about high school hallways for no particular reason other than to flaunt cheerleader sex appeal. They could just as well be selling used cars.

On the flip side there are the inspired stuffed-animal assemblages, his most popular work made early on in his career. Cast-off toys, sewn together in messy clumps, they combine a painterly palette with sculptural mass. Seen in the installation, Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites, they brilliantly bridge the pop/conceptual divide. These inventive pieces encapsulate a visual playfulness within an autobiographical context, springing from the artist’s youthful fascination with sewing and textiles.

Although the hung-from-the-ceiling aesthetic might now seem quaint, this was an innovative concept in the day, and succinctly suits the interaction of viewer and art object.

Kelly’s written screeds document his angst filled, dream-like visions, and are compiled in an unhinged, Burrows-esque sketchbook diary format. His visceral prose lends credibility to the overall context of his oeuvre. He would have fit in well with the Beats, and their anarchic archetype.   

Despite all the distractions, on occasion he managed to settle down and harness his deft comic book illustration influenced draftsmanship abilities. Particularly engaging are the two grey tinted night landscapes. Depicting dreamy quietude, they seem an all too brief respite from the cacophony.   

Kelly’s inclination towards poster art and larger scale silkscreen make good use of his blunt didactics. Text and graphics interface effectively in the tradition of 60’s political protest with a hint of psychedelic. 

His decorative skills are diligently employed in the Memory Ware group. Glitteringly dense, these wall panels transcend the folk tradition from which they emerged. The picture plane could almost have been poured in, but notions of formal abstraction permeate subliminal configurations.

Black Out is a well-intended homage to the artist’s hometown of Detroit. However, clunky execution of the clumsy looking astronaut dilutes most of the pathos. Still, the use of Detroit River detritus is a clever conceit. The most successful section appears as a to-scale, flyover view of urban glass towers. 

This was as close as I came to appreciating Kelly’s architectural modeling efforts. All the foam core cutouts struck me as ill-advised attempts at seeming relevant to minimalist architectural doctrine. I’m assuming none of them were actually made hands-on by Kelly, and even if they were, the whole idea comes off as pandering to some kind of suave urban planning ideology that doesn’t seem to coincide with the artists inherently irreverent intellect.         

Kelly’s over reliance on appropriated imagery comes off as dated. Its one thing to create a montage/collage effect that resonates with irony, but when it’s continually glommed on as a shortcut to meaningful content it quickly becomes tiresome.

Without access to all of Gagosian’s wheelbarrows of gold, perhaps he would have had to become more economical and efficient. Kelly was certainly proficient and prolific, which I think is key to his experimental prowess. However like most artists he was in dire need of an editor. I suspect he rarely heard criticism.

Kelly may very well have been a victim, but mostly of his own success. When fashion rules the roost, slavery is not far behind.

William Kentridge, “The Refusal Of Time” Metropolitan Museum

The typical art world video cave can be sort of creepy; folks skulking about in the dark watching leaves skittering along some grim black & white landscape, while someone slaps raw meat on their head. So it was fortuitous (if not incongruous) to encounter a more rewarding version of the hip video installation format at the MET.

Kentridge’s beehive of astronomical, astrological, post-mechanical, and colonial parodies, swarm around the walls, reminiscent of a Robert Wilson BAM extravaganza. The percussively propulsive score by Phillip Miller, and scientific consensus from Peter L. Galison, a professor of the history of science and of physics at Harvard, round out this ambitious collaboration.

Kentridge’s extensive experience in theater design has served him well here.

A large mechanical contraption made from wood, featuring pistons and valves in motion, dominates the proceeedings. The set is more cavernous than cave, and all who enter are incorporated into the moment. Seating is on vintage classroom chairs, randomly bolted to the floor. Viewers sitting down and getting up, milling around the space, become part of the temporal procession. The audience has become one with the play.
Black and white projections are distributed among the left, right, and front walls, along which are leaning large sections of freestanding panels with coded post-it notes attached that serve has a disjointed screen. The 30-minute loop opens with a tick-tocking metronome and morphs into an animated progression of abstract scribbled script, combined with live action actors portrayed in costumes conjuring up ode’s to surrealistically historical scenarios. Cosmological references to black holes are coupled with astrologically derived symbols drawn on books, leading into map overlays that could be metaphors for time-space. There is a throwback feel of silent movie gestures, and Muybridge sequences, which effectively integrates past and present with a seamless flow. 

 

Overall the visuals are compelling, and despite some overtly obvious references to Kara Walker, create effective sub texts relating to colonialism and apartheid. (Kentridge is from S Africa, and his parents were the equivalent of civil rights lawyers.) But what really makes this production click is the soundtrack. Heavily infused with tuba, what I’d guess is a base baritone sax, then injected with a strong dose of tribal imperative percussion, and sewn together within a digital polyphonic fabric, the musical dialogue becomes integral to the sensory totality.

This pseudo tragicomedy is memorable for its multi-faceted inputs. Plugged-in to a mega range of media, Refusal Of Time enthusiastically encompasses an epic sweep of entertainingly jumbled notions of cause and effect.   

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAWasq4jcHM

 

http://www.metmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/listings/2013/william-kentridge

Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson Pocket Utopia

Pocket Utopia’s pint-sized exhibition space squeezes the most out of an expansive, large-scale textile painting by Jónsson. Best seen to full advantage with a bit more elbow room, I was still glad to have the chance to get up close to these “subversive” works. 

At Pocket Utopia

In fact, Austin Thomas told me that she and Sharon Butler came up with that term during a discussion of this Icelandic artist’s work.

I think the idea fits. Jónsson’s pieces could be considered subverting painting not only by their pale, unbrushed chroma, but also by the craft technique used to fabricate them. These are not extroverted works. Infused by the Nordic sensibility they maintain a stoic, static flatness that characterizes a subdued, yet stately presence. 

From the Tang Museum exhibit.

 They emphasize a specific physical process of pigmentation and weaving, but contain a pronounced abstract approach that dissuades notions of conventional landscape imagery. They also challenge preconceptions of presentation; perhaps employing a dry bit of wit, since although they are not stretched on bars, they do appear stretched out. That is key to the artist’s crafty intent; the unique schema here could only be achieved on a loom. 

Yet these pieces are essentially rooted in the Icelandic landscape. Jónsson’s photos of the austere north Atlantic scenery serve as templates for the completed works. The photos share a commonality with Olafur Eliasson’s mystical reveries, and reveal an intimacy of scale I’d like to see more of in the larger scale canvases. 

Photo by Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson

Perhaps the artist’s architectural background contributes to the dried out schematics of her designs, but the blurry, diffuse aesthetic ends up engaging an appealing metaphor of drifting, intuitive map forms. 
This video provides a look at the artist at work:

  http://vimeo.com/62646272

 

http://www.pocketutopia.com/exhibitions/1484

 

http://www.hildurjonsson.com/

  https://tang.skidmore.edu/index.php/posts/view/777/