In Space Cubes, Hegarty measures the interior of Sol LeWitt’s Open Cubes (1” x 1” x 1”) and creates her own blocks of space from compacted paper to resemble images from the Hubble telescope.  The artist then arranges these paper chunks of space in a typical LeWitt building block formation which begin to unfurl as the structure grows in height.  The piece reveals Hegarty’s reverence toward rigid form and its relationship to philosophical and mathematical concepts yet it belies her instinct to admit that elements of chance, irrationality, and  chaos inspire the creation of such scientific systems.

Valerie Hegarty received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002. She has shown internationally including solo shows at Guild & Greyshkul, New York; MUSEUM 52, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and CTRL Gallery, Houston. Additionally, she has been included in group exhibitions at the Depart Foundation, Rome; The Drawing Center, New York and White Columns, New York. Her work is currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum as part of their permanent collection and at the Highline as part of their public art program. Hegarty lives and works in Brooklyn.

Hegarty’s show “Cosmic Collisions” will be at Nicelle Beauchene until April 11, 2010.

VIDEO LOUNGE:: Shannon Plumb, ‘Olympics (Track and Field),’ 2005

Shannon Plumb’s film based on the summer games of the Olympics channels the spirit of slapstick comedy and the physical humor of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and particularly Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia.  Plumb portrays her version of the athletes in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, track and field game sports, and warm up exercises. Employing a low-fi aesthetic by using Super-8 film, stationary camera shots, and hand-made props and costume, Plumb  exaggerates the emotions of heroics, anxiety, and pomp and circumstance that accompany the games..  Olympics is a one-woman show starring the artist as all of the characters and acting as the creative force behind  the film.

Plumb’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence; and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City amongst others. Her films have been screened at festivals internationally. In 2007, her Ocularis at 10 was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The self-proclaimed “most important survey of contemporary art in the world ever” opened this week in at 350 West Broadway in SoHo, New York.  The Brucennial 2010 edition, titled “Miseducation,” is presented in a 5,000 square foot space temporarily donated by the real-estate mogul and art collector Aby Rosen and supposedly “brings together 420 artists from 911 countries working in 666 discrete disciplines.”  But who’s counting?  The creative art collective behind what is seen as a parody version of the Whitney Biennial is made up of five mysterious guys known as the Bruce High Quality Foundation.  Although the Foundation participated in the recent “1969” exhibit at P.S.1, Brucennial remains the collective’s signature celebrated program since the founding of the event in 2008.

Focused on reshaping the art world via a more democratic and DIY approach, the Foundation places some of its more visible functions, like PR and the organization of exhibtions, into the artists hands.  Perhaps the result can best be described as a visual cacaphony.  The Brucennial’s rather lax entry standards (an email asked prospective participants to “either dredge something up or create something new…As fast and as loose as you like”) is a refreshing juxtaposition to the supposed stringent selection criteria of the Whiteny’s Biennial.  With a “sharing is caring” attitude and limited wall space artists move their pieces around in order to make room for new arrivals.  Neither first-come basis nor celebrity secures an artist a better spot, and emerging artists as well as blue chip artists (like Julian Schnabel) display their pieces side by side.  The title “Miseducation” and its press release offer insight into the Foundation’s desire to question the politics and institutional protectionism that seem to run the art world. However, one has to wonder how “lax”  and rebellious the event can remain with heavy-hitter curators Francesco Bonami and Vito Schnabel involved with curating the event.

The Brucenial 2010: Miseducation runs through April 4 at 350 West Broadway, SoHo, with projects also on view at Recess at 41 Grand Street.  The event also includes performances and a literary supplement.

With the title “Size Does Matter”  for his debut show as a curator, one has to wonder if Shaquille O’Neal is talking about the size of one’s wallet, connections, ego, or one’s preference to bra size.   With the opening of the show at Chelsea’s FLAG Art Foundation the famous basketball player, actor, and rapper can now add “art curator” to his ever-expanding resume of accomplishments.   The exhibition includes work by 39 different artists, or “artstars” to be more accurate, whose works explore the myriad ways that scale affects the perception of contemporary art.  The scale theme is extremely fitting: weighing 320 pounds and standing 7’1 atop his size 22 shoes, Shaquille O’Neal has described his own size as “monumental” and he has the ability to dwarf just about everyone in his presence.

O’Neal made sixty-six selections for the show, which features works ranging from the ginormous billboard-sized Andreas Gursky’s photograph Madonna I to the microscopic work of Willard Wigan.  It is rumored that the works were chosen from over 200 images that FLAG founder Glenn Fuhrman and director Stephanie Roach showed him over dinner after a game.  O’Neal has also admitted that he is a great friend of Donald Trump who has four or five Picassos on his plane that O’Neal likes to look at when flying with him.  And with that, viola, a curator is born.  Describing the process of picking the works to include in the show, O’Neal explains, “Art is a process of delivering or arranging elements that appeal to the emotions of a person looking at it.  It’s what you feel.  I picked those things because they were beautiful.”  With this criteria in mind it is not surprising that another theme of the show could be “half-naked women,” or “ginormous breasts,”  as pieces by Richard Patterson, Dr. Lakra, and Lisa Yuskavage graphically illustrate.  O’Neil also plays the role of the muse for the show inspiring works like Willard Wigan’s  Micro Shaq,  Mark Wagner’s Shaq by Marq and Peter Max’s Portrait of Shaquille O’ Neal. These pieces embrace the famous basketball player’s happy-go lucky attitude, goofy grin, and larger than life attitude.

“Size Does Matter” is on display from February 19, 2010-May 27, 2010 at the FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea. Shaquille O’Neil is best known as a center for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Cleveland’s controversial best-selling author James Fray, who has written extensively on art, has an accompanying book for O’Neal’s art show that features installation images and an essay.

Courtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

The first floor of the two-floor exhibit consists of clusters of rooms comprised of a simple wooden framework supporting large projection screens.  Each room allows for the viewer to stand in front of projected light, thus causing the light to fracture into colored shadows on the wall.  These projections, like much of Eliasson’s work, causes the viewer to re-examine even the most common familiarities, such as light, with renewed appreciation and wonder.  Eliasson is particularly interested in how we understand, see, and experience space. Multiple Shadow House does not disappoint on this level. The user negotiates and constructs his or her own surroundings while experiencing subtleties of color, thrill of participation, and magic of science.

The theme of perception of visual imagery and viewer involvement is continued upstairs in Intangible Afterimage Star (2008).  Six spotlights project geometrical forms in magenta, blue, yellow, green, magenta, and turquoise onto a wall, layering and intersecting.  As explained in the press release, “the intense projections fade in and out, and complimentary afterimages stay on the visitor’s retina and appear to multiply the color compositions.  As a result, the film is only partially produced by the spotlight’s projection; the rest is contributed by the viewer.”

Also upstairs is a stunning collection of what appear to be studies in color, sequences, and shape done in watercolor and pencil on paper.  Minimal and intimate, these stationary works are a refreshing change from the rest of the exhibition.  Configured in sequences, the watercolors use ellipses and circles as narrative exercises on the perception of space and movement.  Another piece, Colour Experiment no. 3, is a circular oil painting that at first glance appears to be a basic study in color or a large color wheel.  However, the painting is actually an expansion of the traditional model of a color wheel, wherein each of the 360 degrees is painted in one color and corresponds to its complementary afterimage located directly across from itself.

Eliasson has cited the work of close friend Einar Thorstein, a philosopher, scientist, and engineer, as a constant source of his visual vocabulary.  He has found inspiration in Thorstein’s spatial ideas such as geodesic domes, fivefold symmetries, spiral spheres, towers and pavilions, the golden ratio, and kaleidoscopes.  Eliasson uses these concepts to create works like Multiple Shadow House which exist as experiences more than material objects.  Presented via transparent means of constructions, these experiences illustrate the nature of perception-based stimulation as well as the artist’s ability to manipulate the experience.

Current solo exhibitions for Eliasson include Olafur Eliasson: Your Chance Encounter at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan and Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia.

Bortolami Gallery in New York City is currently featuring works by London based artist Peter Peri.  Peri’s show, which includes drawings, sculptures, and paintings, revolves around three figurative themes:  head, seated man, and reclining woman.  Although Peri uses these themes in each medium, his execution in each material is startlingly different.  The level of obsession and detail in the fine drawings which are created through a congestion of graphite lines on unbleached paper hint at a larger interpretation.  Upon further investigation the viewer discovers tiny obscure writing, miniature cartoon-like doodles, and his charming “Odalisque” drawing is a mirror-image rendering of Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres‘ painting with the same title.

The three sculptures in the show, however, have an element of precariousness about them.  Each is an engineered replica in steel of objects Peri originally composed using mundane objects from his home: rolls of masking tape, cassette boxes, chess sets, and calculators.  Unlike the drawings, there does not seem to be any secret code or arcane meaning in these sculptures.  The basic geometry of each of these objects serves as the most obvious choices for Peri’s figurative assemblages; circles become breasts on a reclining woman, thick rectangles serve as a man’s body topped by a circle for a head.

Peri’s paintings successfully combine both the obsessive mark-making in his drawings with the spontaneity of his sculptures.  Described as “skewed mappings of an unknown atmosphere” by the gallery, these gloomy canvases are broken up by razor-sharp line work and tonal highlight.  The background is full of haphazard drips and variations of grays, silvers and blacks, while the geometry of the lines call to mind the mathematical rigor of artists like Jack Tworkov and Sol LeWitt.

Peter Peri received his MA in Fine Art from the Chelsea College of Art in London and his BA in Design at Central St. Martins School of Art and Design.  His show at Bortolami Gallery in New York is open until February 20, 2010.