Structural Patterns

Beyond the execution is the literary and metaphoric power of these paintings. The new works of Neo Rauch are amazing! Below is a selection of Neo Rauch current paintings at Zwirner.
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If there is a revolution in public practice happening today it is not in a conference at a private art college. Revolutions in practice can not be captured and summarized at a conference. The very notion of Creative Time Summit conference runs against “revolution,” “public,” or “practice” and mutes anything powerful or inspring about these terms, simply because it is curated and caters to a particular audience. In many ways it is a closed session. And the term “Revolutions in Public Practice” reads as hyperbole in the context of an art elite conference.

I was at a round table discussion at Conflux today and afterwards headed to a Lower East Side Bar to meet a bunch of friends who had been at the Creative Time Summit. Once there, I asked people how the Summit had been and it was the usual conference response… what’s the point? why are we here? it was the usual conference scenario… The usual reactionary responses to a conference. And my response to people is do not be duped by the catch terms “revolutions,” “public,” and “practice” as well as “summit” and “creative time.” This is my problem with such a title, it is not revolutionary or public, so please don’t misuse these terms; these terms have already lost so much meaning or power. Most of the people I spoke with didn’t go the second day, rather they tuned in and out from home.

Creative Time Summit is however an exceptional moment to network and hear a summary of evocative creative ideas and briefly exchange perspectives with like-minded individuals.

Sadly people buy into “The Creative Time Summit” as if it is a revolutionary agent, but it’s just another conference, put on by another institution that is far removed from anything revolutionary – whatever meaning that term can carry in relation to contemporary art that is safely nested in Western networks of capital.

I’m listening to an interview on NPR with the band OK GO talking about their new video featuring their “original” Rube Goldberg Machine. So I check out the video and see that it’s basically a rip off of “The Way Things Go” (1987) by Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Generally, I don’t use the term “rip off” and consider culture and ideas to be up for grabs, but when I hear the guy being interviewed say that to his knowledge there’s never been a Rube Goldberg Machine of the scale that they built, it just pisses me off.

Fischli Weiss – The Way Things Go, 1987

OK Go – This Too Shall Pass, 2010

Pop is cool, but it’s important to acknowledge precedents, particularly when they are more conceptually compelling. Fischli and Weiss primarily used house hold chemicals as the agents of force, to reflect on the strength and potential harm of these chemicals. The chemical reactions work with recycled goods to create the kinetic sculpture in time. “The Way Things Go” is an art classic, and it’s hard to believe that an arty pop band doesn’t know about the piece, particularly when the staging is so much of a replica. Also Fischli and Weiss’s version is much longer, about 15 minutes, more complex and didn’t cost $150K or use a team of engineers. It’s cool how the OK Go version is precisely timed with the music and they put themselves in it, but acknowledge where ideas come from! Judge for yourself (unfortunately, “The Way Things Go” is so long that only small portions are available).

My installation “On Transmitting Ideology” opened this past Friday at the artist run, Philadelphia gallery Vox Populi. The installation presents eleven wooden guns outfitted with radios broadcasting declarations on freedom and transformation in our society.

As I was listening to famous historical speeches concerning U.S. politics, I primarily became interested in the rhetoric that has established “Conservative” vs. “Liberal” ideology in the United States. Unfortunately due to the quality of sound of early 20th century speeches such as an excellent speech by Calvin Coolidge declaring the need for an imperial reach by the United States in the name of liberty, I narrowed the selection to speeches since the second half of the 20th century.

The broadcast is 18 minutes long and begins with the famous declaration by Barry Goldwater “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice and let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” The broadcast includes an excerpt from a debate between Buckley and Chomsky, and excerpts from speeches by Reagan, Martin Luther King, and Obama. For the most part I left the excerpts intact; it is only with King’s speech in opposition to the Vietnam War that I withdrew “Vietnam”, because his arguments against our intervention in Vietnam parallel all to well the current war in Iraq.

Pictured above, in the upper right corner of the gallery on a shelf sit a CD player connected to a miniFM transmitter. On each table are five hand-crafted wooden AK47s and Uzis (one is also mounted on the wall), each gun has an exposed pocket radio tuned to the transmitter.

The exhibition also features two recent video commissions that question the outcome of popular notions of freedom, liberty and the power of capital. “Arbol que nace torcido, nunca su rama enderece” (“Tree that is born twisted will never straighten”) is an animation created for the public commission “Carreta Nagua, Siglo 21” (2007) that tells a tale of immigration, aging and cultural and familial loss. Two aging television super heroes, Ultraman and El Chapulin Colorado take the voices of my parents as they look back upon their lives and consider the price of immigration. The video “El Rito Apasionado” (2007) (commissioned for 50,000 Beds) takes place in a hotel room where three Guevarrian Neo-Marxist Latino Terror Revolutionaries from Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico gather to prepare an act against the history of U.S. intervention.

“On Transmitting Ideology” will be open to the public Wednesday through Sunday noon – 6pm. For more information please contact Vox Populi: 215 238 1236

Obsessing about the sun – it’s history, power, influence in relation to the history of the United States – Manifest Destiny, Native American genocide, slavery… has led Shuan O’Dell to create a series of drawings that are visually dynamic on view at Susan Inglett in Chelsea.

The drawings at once bring to mind a diverse set of aesthetics from Aztec codices to traditional U.S. quilts conveying Quaker imagery to geometric abstraction but O’Dell manages to meld these different visual elements into works that invite the viewer to attempt to follow a narrative. These are stories of travel, exploration and discovery.

As O’Dell considered his personal history with the sun. He asked others to write him with their very earliest memory of the sun. He then took these memories to create a sun drawing pictured below.

And in a small room at the rear of the gallery, O’Dell inserted a video of the ball of fire burning. It’s an incredible image, unfortunately it doesn’t work with the rest of the exhibition and I believe detracts from the drawings, because it leaves an odd punctuation. The show will remain open until March 15th.