Edgardo Aragon, Family Effects (2007-9), Solo projects by Rey Akdogan, Edgardo Aragón, Ilja Karilampi, and Caitlin Keogh. MoMA PS1, 2012

Last weekend, PS1 initiated (or more revived) their concept for a project exhibition space, showcasing solo projects by predominately young emerging artists who have not previously shown in New York. This summer’s PS1 projects are Rey Akdogan’s off set (b. Germany, 1974), Edgardo Aragón’s Efectos de Familia (Family Effects) (b. Mexico, 1985), Ilja Karilampi’s The Chief Architect of Gangster Rap (b. Sweden, 1983), Caitlin Keogh’s Good Value, Fine Quality (b. United States, 1982) are presented in four individual rooms to mimic the notion of the artist studio. Edgardo Aragón’s Family Effects (2007-9) is not to be missed: a 50 minute film projection set in Mexico depicting the younger generation of his family (cousins, nephews, etc) acting out (or rather, reenacting) episodic scenarios in which family members of older generations have been murdered due to drug trafficking, corruption and the like. Some sequences are explicit while some remain abstract in rendering the tales of untimely death attached to illicit wrongdoings that have plagued his family – and symbolically Mexico as a whole – through the actions of his adolescent performers as semi-ignorant puppets. Another noteworthy work is Rey Akdogan’s 35mm slide projection in which she assembles slides by way of collage, rather than photographic processes, from mundane materials such as plastic bags or theater lighting gels. She works with these individual materials until they are exhausted, creating a uniquely varied composition in each slide, allowing the amount of the medium to dictate her end point. He work deals with transparency and the manner in which light adds a happenstance dimension to her deliberate process.

Esther Kläs, (5) RA (2012), Concrete, pigment, wire mesh, 86 1/2 x 12 1/2 x 17 1/2 in, courtesy of MoMA PS1

On the third floor, Esther Kläs:Better Energy  (b.Germany, 1981) presents a solo exhibition of sculptures that reflect the artist’s body. The majority of her pieces mirror the artist’s own height and stand as a vacant rectangle structure. With works such as (5) RA (2012), the sculptures entomb the negative space and thus evoke the body in its body-perfect dimension. Many of her castings include color as an initial process: pigments are added to the setting cement or resin, which adds an aspect of unpredictability to the final piece. The crude structures and abstract sensitbility of her pieces are reminiscent to Phyllida Barlow, Eva Hesse and stylistically l’art brut of Jean Dubuffet.

Installation view of Lara Favaretto: Just Knocked Out at MoMA PS (Sunnyside) (2012), Photo: Matthew Septimus.

On the main floor, the blockbuster exhibition of the season is Lara Favaretto: Just Knocked Out, a presentation of works from the past fifteen years as well as new works created particularly for the show at PS1. In an array of installations, sound and video pieces, Favaretto’s (b.Treviso, 1973) work highlights her medium – among other things – and the inherent qualities therein. At first glance, her works are playful, whimsical or even humorous, yet an aspect of failure and destruction lie beneath the skin of frivolity. This aspect becomes particularly clear with works such as Sunnyside (2012), a work made entirely of green paper confetti – no glue or adhesives of any kind is included – made to eventually deteriorate due to the weight of itself in it’s compacted nature. The self-destruction of the work is what provokes the question of fragility, ephemerality and it’s place within an institution – what if it were to fall and the art object were to diminish? Lara hopes for this to eventually happen.

Same thing goes for her installation entitled Plotone (Platoon) (2005-ongoing) where sixty compressed air tanks on timers blow a burst of air at random intervals through a party whistle, an action that is self-exhaustive and will eventually terminate the installation (though for all intents and purposes, the air tanks will be replaced until the end of the exhibition running). This mechanized action, almost as if fulfilling a commandment, speaks to the automated actions performed by the military. It also speaks to a modern day  insidious relationship with technology and the manner in which it becomes imbedded within the body to control our actions, thought precesses or interactions with others.

Lara Favaretto, Platone (Platoon) (2005-2012), Compressed air tanks, pressure regulators, timers, electrovalves, whistles, and plastic cables, dimensions variable, courtesy the artist and Galleria Franco Noero, Turin. Photo: Lizzie Gorfaine. © 2012 Lara Favaretto

Her installation Homage to Albert Dadas (2010), a bed of dirt that is strikingly similar to Walter De Maria’s Earth Room (1977), introduces her exhibition as the access point to the show’s main galleries. The earth is laid in a bed of brass framework that extends to the gallery’s walls. Underneath the layers of dirt lies a small box holding an unknown object that Favaretto buried upon the initial installation. She names the work in reverence to a French man named Albert Dadas, who lived in Bordeaux during the end of the nineteenth century and was diagnosed with a obscure disease called dromomania. This disease caused him to slip into arbitrary unconscious states where he would wander boundlessly, deserting his family and job. This theme of commemoration, the anti-monument and concealment is omnipresent in Favaretto’s work, from her swamp installation at the Giardini at the 53^rd Venice Biennial to honor disappeared historical figures to her sandbagging intervention at the Dante Alighieri (1896) statue in Trento.

We see the similar commemorative act with a disjoined grid made of scaffolding tubes linking the exhibition spaces through the walls, a structure inspired by Piet Mondrian’s painting Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue (1921). Favaretto fills the hollow scaffolding tubes with wool yarn – a very specific yarn made in Italy – with black, yellow, blue and red to refer to the grids in the painting. This is a meta-homage of sorts: Favaretto is referencing the site specificity of her exhibition through honoring Mondrian’s painting that honors New York by way of replicating Manhattan’s city grid.

Rey Akdogan, Single slide from Carousel #5 (2012), Solo projects by Rey Akdogan, Edgardo Aragón, Ilja Karilampi, and Caitlin Keogh. MoMA PS1, 2012

For your visit: Don’t miss works by Rania Stephan & Frances Stark, and permanent installations by James Turrell, Janet Cardiff, Sol LeWitt, Alan Saret, William Kentridge, Pipilotti Rist and many others. Starting at the end of June, the 13^th edition of the Young Architects Program (YAP) of New York will present the winning design by HWKN (Matthias Hollwich and Marc Kushner, New York) named “Wendy” in the courtyard and will be on view through the summer. Also, join PS1 for their Warm Up series starting July 7^th, an outdoor program of various DJs performing each Sunday. In short, it’s just a huge party. M. Wells Dinette will be in full swing by the end of the month (though their cooking up impressive fare already!) with cookouts during Warm Up. Be sure to savor a banana-peanut butter muffin, or roasted carrot soup with gnocchi.

Laura Favaretto: Just Knocked Out is on view through September 10^th, Solo projects by Rey Akdogan, Edgardo Aragón, Ilja Karilampi and Caitlin Keogh and Esther Kläs: Better Energy are on view through September 17^th. For more information about MoMA PS1, click here.

Phyllida Barlow, untitled: 21 arches, 2012, Polystyrene, cement, scrim, paint & varnish, variable dimensions, Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

The majority of her sculptures are towering structures that dwarf the spectator as if one were standing in a forest. Barlow dilutes the nature of her mundane media by her exquisite use of color, whether included by virtue of fabric, electrical tape or spray paint. For siege, Barlow exhibits her characteristically massive structures as similar to pieces I have seen previously, such as untitled: 21 arches (2012) and untitled: crushed boxes (2012). In pieces such as untitled: balcony (2012) and untitled: broken stage (2012) however, she adds more of a tangible architectural thread that differ slightly from her conceptual-based sculptures. Her work mimics the urban environment in both materiality and the nature of the imposing structures that swallow – or impede upon – the viewer.

Phyllida Barlow, untitled: crushed boxes, 2012, Polystyrene, cement, scrim, paint & varnish, variable dimensions, Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

With pieces such as untitled: crushed boxes (2012) Barlow depicts weight through the manner in which her boxes pile upon a fabric cushion, thin or bulging in parts, depicting the sensation of being crushed. Her work maneuvers within a certain corporeal consciousness similar to the work of Eva Hesse or Robert Morris in which the weight – or the interior – of the body is made manifest through the use of material. With aspects of both Arte Povera and Minimalism, Barlow’s work is sensational in its rawness, and though I rather missed the space at Hauser & Wirth London that added an irreplaceable dimension to her work, Barlow’s structures are not to be missed in the immense setting of the New Museum’s spaces.

On the third floor, Tacita Dean’s (b. 1965, England) exhibition entitled Five Americans explores the theme of preservation and memoriam through filmmaking as it intersects with various artistic mediums such as painting, writing and dance. By way of 16mm films, Dean features five influential American artists spanning several generations: Julie Mehretu, Cy Twombly, Leo Steinberg, Claes Oldenburg and Merce Cunningham. Works such as Edwin Parker (2011) and Manhattan Mouse Museum (2011) follow artists Cy Twombly and Claes Oldenburg respectively in their studios, spaces that despite the aura attached to these renowned artists by name are places of quotidian banality of comings and goings.

Tacita Dean, Manhattan Mouse Museum, 2011, 16mm film, color, optical sound, 16 min, Courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris and Frith Street Gallery, London

There is an aspect of prescience in Dean’s works, as each are bound by a common thematic thread that deals with the notion of expiration. For instance in The Line of Fate (2011), Dean sits with art historian Leo Steinberg as he finishes his last book about Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo before his death months later, a fact unknown at the time when making the film. This is a similar case with Edwin Parker in which Dean films Cy Twombly in his studio amongst what would be his final artworks during his last months alive. Even in her other works albeit more subtle, the theme of preservation becomes contingent upon the cognitive artistic process that she poignantly captures.

The Parade presented by Nathalie Djurberg (b. 1978, Sweden) with music by Hans Berg (b. 1978, Sweden) is found in the museum’s next-door space ‘Studio 231’. In an eccentric field of dazzling puppetry, a parade it is. A snaking trail made up of hundreds of exotic and fictitious birds scatter the floor under spotlights, frozen in mid-preen and warble. Each bird installation – whether sparrow or human-sized – has the craftsmanship of a Julie Taymor theater prop, with each muslin feather painted in an ombré of fanciful hues. Alongside her puppets, five animations are projected on the walls playing to the discordant melodies of Hans Berg’s compositions.

The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg, 2012, exhibition view: New Museum

Immediately upon entering the space, the menagerie comes alive with the eerie tinkering of chimes, a soundtrack that gives life to the nightmarish aspect of Djurberg’s mad animals and sinister animations. Her animation videos typically depict women as the central character in an anti-heroic role, often times as victims of absurd cruelty flecked with sexual overtones. Her videos feature handmade puppets both animals and humans, crudely rendered from clay, fabric, string and dolls hair, with lumps, bumps, spidery limbs and clownish faces. The Parade as a body of work exists in a similar abject vein as her various other works, yet in this exhibition she focuses on the avian rituals of flocking, mating and pageantry. Her videos portray explicit aspects of cruelty, betrayal and greed, in which her characters – both animal and human – play out instances of physical and psychological savagery.

The Parade: Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg, 2012, exhibition view: New Museum

Djurberg’s work is brilliant in its manner of transparency. I am taken with the way in which she casts a light on the undesirable or abject aspects of human and animal behavior as the cynosure of her métier. And as usual, Berg’s musical compositions coupled with Djurberg’s claymation videos and theatrical installations presents a captivating mastery that dutifully emanates from their projects time and time again.

Phyllida Barlow’s siege runs through June 24^th, Tacita Dean’s Five Americans runs through July 1^st and The Parade by Nathalie Djurberg with Hans Berg runs through August 26^th. For more information visit the New Museum’s site.

David Shrigley, How are you feeling today? (2012), billboard, 25 x 75 feet, courtesy of Anton Kern Gallery

Running alongside Tenth Avenue for approximately twenty blocks in Chelsea, The High Line has become a household term amongst Manhattanites since 2009 when it first became accessible as a public park. Since then – and especially within the last year – The High Line has ignited widespread murmur relating to its breathtaking architecture, imaginative urban integration and more recently its emergence as the local gallery district’s – if not New York’s – most imaginative sites for exhibiting contemporary art.  Opening April 19^th was The High Line’s first ever group exhibition entitled Lilliput which included the works of Oliver Laric, Alessandro Pessoli, Tomoaki Suzuki, Francis Upritchard, Erika Verzutti and Allyson Vieira. Alongside this exhibition, Uri Aran’s sound installation opened on the same day only then to be followed by Alison Knowles’ public performance Make a Salad on the 22^nd. David Shrigley’s How are you feeling? (2012), presented as a giant billboard over West 18^th Street, and Sturtevant’s Warhol Empire State (2012), a video projection that starts at dusk of Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964) video, debuted earlier in the month to launch the Friends of the High Line’s 2012 Spring Art Program and High Line Commissions program for public art. The openings this month, surpassing the previous years in numbers of art pieces alone, has proven that this year’s arts program is making a vigorous effort to present art to the public with a bang.

Sturtevant, Warhol Empire State (2012), video projection, image courtesy of the artist

The High Line as we know it today exists upon the skeleton of a freight line that once was the manifestation of a public-private project called the West Side Improvement during the 1930s. However, that was the date that the freight lines were lofted 30 feet above street level after having existed as street-level railroad tracks some odd eighty years prior. During this time, The City and State of New York agreed to take on this massive industrial project due to the fact that Tenth Avenue became known as Death Avenue, a nickname indicative of the innumerable deaths caused between street traffic and the railroad. This was no small project, not least of all financially as it was quoted to be a $150 million dollar expenditure then, and that’s more than $2 billion dollars today.

Building the high line, November 20th 1932. Image courtesy of www.thehighline.org

Trains of food freight and both manufactured and raw goods ran until 1980 at which point the ensuing minimization of the railroad became obsolete due to redundancy and the upsurge of trucking transport. In the face of threatening demolition, Friends of the High Line was established in 1999 as a non-profit by Joshua David and Robert Hammond to preserve the historical lineage and neighborhood aura that the High Line had solidified. An all-star architectural and landscape design team made up of James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro (along with a large selection of horticulturists, gardeners, etc) was chosen in 2004 and by June 9^th 2009 the first section (Gansevoort Street to West 20^th Street) of The High Line as a public park opens, with the second section (West 20^th Street to West 30^th Street) to follow in 2011.

Allyson Vieira, Construction (Rampart) (2010), Bronze, 14 x 14 x 18.5 inches, courtesy of Laurel Gitlen Gallery, New York

Since 2009, The High Line has become known as a trendy jaunt-spot in Chelsea where the ultimate people-watching activities and pleasure strolling can be had. This year the public will see the launch of a program called High Line Commissions with the opening of the first ever group exhibition Lilliput to be held on The High Line. This exhibition will present the works of six artists working internationally with, as the title would suggest, small sculptures placed along The High Line’s pathway. This title is taken from Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels in which the imaginary country of Lilliput is home to gnome-sized people no bigger than six inches. The various diminutive sculptures are set within the various niches of landscape along the park walk and offer a sort of Easter-egg hunt of sorts, inviting the public to uncover the various works of art.

Pieces such as Allyson Vieira’s Construction (Rampart) (2012) respond to the local vegetation and ecology of the area with her pyramid of bronze cast paper cups that fill with rain or fallen leaves from the garden bed above. Other works such as The Seduction (2012) by Francis Upritchard are less so adapted for the localized flora but speak to the Lilliputian theme of fairyland idols with two miniature-sized apes frozen in an explorative embrace. Also apart of this spring’s High Line Commissions is Uri Aran’s sound installation Untitled (Good & Bad) (2012) provides a spoken list of arbitrarily categorized animals into “good” or “bad” that billows from gardens below. Coming in May, a much anticipated installation of Thomas Houseago’s sculpture Lying Figure will be on view under The Standard.

Francis Upritchard, The Seduction (2012), Bronze, 18 x 9 x 8 inches, Courtesy of Kate MacGarry, London

Friends of the High Line have initiated other programs such as the High Line Performances, High Line Billboard and High Line Channel that serve as varying avenues whereby art mediums can be exhibited. Opening on April 5^th, David Shrigley’s 25-by-75 foot billboard How are you feeling? presents a short dialogue in black and white speech bubbles, hovering over a parking lot at West 18^th Street. Shrigley’s dry and melancholy humor severs the socially fabricated fluff in monotonous conversation and pinpoints exactly what we all may be feeling but are too nervous to say: “I’m feeling very unstable and insecure […] I am in a bit of a rut creatively as well”.

This year’s itinerary for the High Line Performances will include performances by three female artists (Alison Knowles, Channa Horwitz and Simone Forti) on and around the High Line, the first of which was preformed last Sunday April 22^nd by Alison Knowles’ Fluxus score Make a Salad. Originally performed in Baltimore, Maryland in 1962 has been performed several times around the world and includes the preparation of a salad for a large group of people. Launching the High Line Performances program, Knowles’ piece included the preparation of locally sourced salad ingredients tossed from the upper level to the lower level of the walkway and then served to the public. Though it was a rather cold and rainy day, otherwise unpleasant to be frolicking out of doors to eat a salad, the performance was lively and ignited a grouping of people of all ages in an appropriately themed Earth Day get-together.

Alison Knowles, Make a Salad (1962–present), Image: Tate Modern, London (2008)

I have to applaud the work and organizational efforts of the Friends of the High Line for their inception of the public art programs, and not to mention their unmentioned but as equally remarkable endeavors in the realms of music and food. The High Line as a public park has provided the support for not only a exceptional pleasure destination, but also a cutting-edge platform for contemporary art. I am always fascinated with the seemingly pervasive dialogue relating to the inaccessibility of contemporary art and thus I have always been an advocate for the commissioning of public art. Public art, as inconspicuous or ostentatious it may be, has the power to engage a public (a cross section in a vast demographic) who may not otherwise seek out an interactive relationship with art. Pieces such as the ones mentioned above all own that quality of engagement: the characteristic of calling forth a questioning, a reflection or even a happenstance double take, and sometimes that’s all an art piece needs to fulfill its role in the social sphere.

Please visit  www.thehighline.org/art for a schedule of past, current and upcoming exhibitions and performances on The High Line and additional information on artists. Please visit the site for further information regarding The High Line’s events, public programs, memberships and history.

Kim Dingle, This is not ever going to end is it (2011), oil on linen, 72 x 84 inches (183 x 213,4 cm), Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York

Dingle’s naughty dollies sit at long kitchen tables, subjects who emerge from her prototypical characters named “Fatty” and “Fudge”, or “Priss Girls”, whom she has depicted in earlier works, both in paintings and sculpture. Each child dons a pristine frock yet they are pictured drinking beverages out of wine glasses (some unidentified liquids, and some explicitly merlot-toned), toting bottles and kitchen utensils, draping themselves over (or through) chairs unabashedly displaying their child knickers, while some even lie forlornly passed out in their porridge. One cannot help but giggle at the site of such absurdity, yet the works emit an undertone of poignancy, the kind of disappointed sadness that I imagine would be provoked by a coming-of-age wrongdoing by your child, for instance stealing or drinking. This is precisely the crux in which Dingle puts her audience: straddling the emotional line of child/adult transformation and the sometimes seemingly absurd fluidity of progression and regression in relation to childhood and adulthood.

Kim Dingle, What do you think? (2012), oil on linen, 84 x 72 inches (213,4 x 183 cm), Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York

Dingle’s doll characters comment on the state of mindless behavior that human beings, perhaps (this being the operative word in this case, depending on your view of nature vs. nurture) learn as we grow into adulthood. Dingle’s characters are girls and this is comprehended by virtue of deliberate gender specific cues. Having been categorized as a feminist artist, her work is also taken as a survey of female childhood (see bio in Brooklyn Museum) and the representation of violence in relation to frivolity and the legacies thereof. In the negative space where the lack of politesse is depicted, Dingle’s works provoke the question of being raised within societal bounds and the weight it carries in social situations as a projection of self and discipline.

Kim Dingle, Untitled (Birthday) (2007), oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches (152,4 x 121,9 cm), Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York

With the exception of Untitled (Birthday) (2007) in which a figure wearing a party hat drowns her face in a cake of comparable proportion to herself, the compositions are devoid of any sort of food things despite the table settings filled with bowls and plates. With the symbolic dominance of food deleted from these works, which is dissimilar to Dingle’s past works which feature food stuffs, the characters seem to act out a pantomime of consumption (minus the moments of splashing wine glasses). In several works, likewise with her older paintings, she pictures many of her dollies wearing chef hats, which further solidify the palpable sentiment of frivolity and clamor because they underline the notion of utter incompetency.

Kim Dingle, Still life (2012), oil on linen, 84 x 144 inches (213,4 x 365,8 cm), Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York

Dingle’s still lives aims to make her audience laugh (refer to press release) and that it does. Her paintings conjure the childhood wonder of what your dolls (or stuffed animals) do when you are gone. It also astutely reflects those certain moments within adulthood where we may all act like naughty little children (I know that a snap shot taken at one of my dinner parties wouldn’t be a dissimilar image), which makes her works successful in pinpointing a grain of psychology that is as omnipresent as it is supressed. Kim Dingle’s still lives will run through April 28^th at Sperone Westwater in the Lower East Side.

Paul Graham, 53rd Street & 6th Avenue, 6th May 2011, 2.41.26 pm (2011), pigment print mounted on Dibond, 56" x 74 1/4" (diptych), © Paul Graham 2012

Filling the spacious Chelsea Pace Gallery, Paul Graham: The Present displays vignettes that reflect quotidian ritual in New York City. Graham’s large-scale photographs hang at street level and mimic his theme of pedestrian rhythm. Smaller photographs, likewise in an array of diptychs and triptychs, are hung at eye level and also play a role in highlighting the voyeuristic perspective of the viewer, who is both the artist and the gallery audience. Rather than capturing a sea-like crowd of public, each photograph presents a focal character or characters that stands out from the monotony of the masses. Graham contextualizes each vignette by the specific location in which he becomes the ultimate voyeur.  By virtue of his photographs – as they are hung in solitary groupings rather than a vast assembly – Graham elucidates the manner in which a narrative is subject to alteration by the subtlest instances of movement, whether it is light or physical movement of a subject. An anonymous passerby becomes the subject of the frame only then to be replaced by his doppelganger in what seems to be the blink of an eye, for instance in works such as 8^th Avenue & 42^nd Street, 17^th August 2010, 11.23.03 am (2010).

Paul Graham, 8th Ave & 42nd Street, 17th August 2010, 11.23.03 am (2010), pigment print mounted on Dibond, 28" x 37 1/2" (diptych), © Paul Graham 2012

As Shakespeare astutely put it: “all the world’s a stage […]” and Graham’s photographs testify to this very notion. Both the manner of characterizing the unknown and the capturing of natural light lend to an exquisitely theatrical cadre. As similar to the old masters of photography like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, Graham emphasizes the lyrical nature of light just as much as he accentuates his subjects, as seen in works such as Fulton Street, 11^th November 2009, 11.29.10 am (2009) and E53^rd Street, 12^th April 2010, 9.45.55 am (2010). Due to light, the theatrical aspect of Graham’s photographs serves as a mechanism for spotlighting not only his characters within the frame but also the interplay of details that structure the composition.

Paul Graham, Fulton Street, 11th November 2009, 11.29.10 am (2009), pigment print mounted on Dibond, 56" x 74 1/4" (diptych), © Paul Graham 2012

In what seems to be a subtextual homage to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment”, in works such as Fulton Street, 11^th November 2009, 11.29.10 am Graham elucidates the intuitive moment of capturing an instant when life lends itself to a compelling composition. In this particular diptych, we watch a girl go from strolling to sprawled out onto the street. The audience is privy to the cause of this girl’s accident, though it is clear that in that brief moment she was not. In many of his other prints, Graham renders a two or three framed story in which the audience is granted the time to comprehend the various details – many of which are speckled with both the mundane and frivolity – that occur in one second in a city. Paul Graham: The Present will show through April 21^st at Pace Gallery 545 West 22^nd Street, New York and is accompanied by a hardcover monograph published by MACK. Graham won the 2012 Hasselblad award in early March.

The Present, Installation view, courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery

Werner Herzog, Hearsay of the Soul, 2012. Installation: four channel digital projection of twenty etchings by Hercules Segers; music by Ernst Reijseger. Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum.

This year, the Biennial acts as a platform – or even a forum if you will – for comprehending the expanded fields of contemporary art in relation to performance, film, literary, multi-media and curatorial praxis. Whereas the Biennial in 2010 acted as an acknowledgment of a benchmark – that being the year 2010 – taking its thesis from the roots of retrospection. It looked towards the history of the Whitney Biennial since its inception in 1932, in honoring the structure and legacy of the Biennial, while also commenting on the political and social structures of rehabilitation that were propagated from certain instances such as the presidential election of Barack Obama. Unfortunately – and probably at the fault of an overly expansive thesis – the 2010 Biennial fell flat, quite simply, and was remarkably unmemorable for me. However, the 2012 Biennial this year not only commands more cohesiveness in both content and intention, but its presentation of works from fifty-one artists – a list edited more so than any Biennial to date – granted a substantial significance to the curation as a whole production.

The 2012 Biennial, poignantly dedicated to the late Mike Kelley who passed away earlier this year, presents artists at all points in their careers, in a vast array of media from painting, sculpture, photography, installation, music, theater, film and dance. Not only did curators Sussman and Sanders instigate the notion of the “expanded field of the arts”, but they very much emphasized the connective points between one practice to another, or similarly one profession to another. As quoted in the 2012 Biennial press release, both Sussman and Sanders remarks that, “[…] a number of artists are functioning as researchers and curators, drawing on the histories of art, design, dance, music and technology. Artists are bringing other artists into their work – a form of free collage or reinvention that borrows from the culture at large as a way of rewriting the standard narratives and exposing more relevant hybrids”.

Dawn Kasper, THIS COULD BE SOMETHING IF I LET IT, 2012 (from the series Nomadic Studio Practice Experiment, 2009– ). Three-month durational performance and multimedia installation. Dimensions variable. Collection of the artist. Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of the 2012 Biennial is the 6,000-square foot performance arena designed on the fourth floor. Complete with viewing bleachers, this space is dedicated to musical, dance, theatrical (et al.) performances through the end of the Biennial. Performances directed by choreographers such as Michael Clark and Sarah Michelson, as well as various musical acts such as the experimental rock band The Red Krayola and soprano singer Alicia Hall Moran, turn the fourth floor space into a theater of expansive talent, blurring the boundaries between context and vocation.

In relation to the subject of context, Dawn Kasper will transform a back gallery on the third floor into her personal studio and living space, entitled THIS COULD BE SOMETHING IF I LET IT (2012). Reminiscent of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Bed-Ins during the Vietnam War era, albeit not necessarily in activist intent, Kasper speaks about the dichotomy present relating to the immediacy of human connection in an otherwise very intimate space, such as a bedroom or artist’s studio space.

The unparalleled presence of film and thus the artistic dialogue centered within filmic studies is a noteworthy supplement to this year’s Biennial. The film program, co-curated by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, strives to point out the significant advances in film and video within the past decade in conjunction to those in contemporary art. From short, experimental video pieces such as Hearsay of the Soul (2012) by Werner Herzog and selected works from George Kuchar’s Weather Diaries (1977–2011) series, to lengthier features such as The Oath (2010) by Laura Poitras (who was nominated for an Emmy, an Academy Award and an Independent Spirit Award for her post-9/11 film My Country, My Country (2006)), exemplify the vast conglomeration of video art and film. And what is a Biennial dedicated to Mike Kelley without a substantial serving of Mike Kelley? Three of his films from the series Mobile Homestead (2010–11) present a vignette of Detroit’s civil history as the narrative to his public art project in his hometown. With the film and performance programs initiated this way, viewers can return several times to attend the array of performance acts, which insures an extended interaction with the public, a relationship to whom an institution is always beholden.

SamLewitt, Fluid Employment, 2012. Ferromagnetic liquid poured bi-weekly over plastic, magnetic elements and fans. Dimensions variable. Collection of the artist.

Some of my personal favorites were photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier in her Homebody series (2010) in which she dons her deceased grandfather and grandmother’s personal (and intimate) items, such as pajamas or blankets, in their abandoned apartment as an act of lamentation. Sam Lewitt’s installation entitled Fluid Employment (2012) made from poured ferromagnetic liquid elucidates the medium’s immaculate traits in its imminent usage in electronic devices such as hard drives. The peripheral retrospective curated by artist Robert Gober on Forest Bess (1911–1977) – which, in the very act of his curation, acted as a perfect extension to Gober’s own practice – was astounding in content. Exposing the enigmatic and mentally unstable modern artist Forest Bess, Gober paints a character sketch of Bess by virtue of paintings, extensive wall texts, archival letters (exchanges between his New York dealer Betty Parsons) and photographs. If a large painting of a unicorn didn’t attract me enough, it was certainly the psychosis that manifested itself in hermaphroditic self-mutilations that sealed the deal for me. Installations by Lutz Bacher, Cameron Crawford and Luther Price’s handmade and manipulated film slides are not to be missed either.

Forest Bess (1911-1977), The Noble Carbunkle, 1960. Oil on canvas. 30 x 49 1/2 inches (76.2 x 125.7 cm). Private collection; courtesy of Amy Wolf Fine Art, New York.

Conclusively, the 2012 Whitney Biennial was a concisely edited and masterfully conceptualized project. A well-grounded understanding and use of the various spaces within and around the museum give Sussman and Sanders a virtuosic credit. I am relieved to see that a spotlight has finally been shown on both performance and filmic arts, in all of their realms and sub-categories, especially in a biennial setting. Several members of the Whitney staff exclaim the serendipitous team that Sussman and Sanders made in numerous paragraphs in the press literature and it is clear when experiencing the materialization of their collaboration. This is a biennial that has me delighted in saying that I will return several times. The Whitney Biennial will run from March 1^st through May 27^th. Live  performances, public programs and film screenings will run through the end of May. Refer to whitney.org for more information on events and tickets.

Terry Winters, Cricket Music, 2010. Oil on linen, 88 x 112 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

Comprised within two of Matthew Marks Gallery’s Chelsea locations, Cricket Music, Tessellation Figures & Notebook presents Terry Winters’ most recent paintings and collages to make their debut in the United States. In an impressive selection of 14 large-scale paintings, Winters’ patterned canvases display brilliantly pigmented tessellations in an array of lattice structures. Also working from a fascination with knot theory, the works posses a lyrical movement by virtue of meticulously layering both pictorial form and coloration. However, with a method such as this – the multiplication of form and layering of paint – gives way to a meditative process that rather than articulates depth, which the paintings insinuate, flattens the composition and renders it irrevocably horizontal.

Terry Winters, Notebook 30, 2003-11. Collage, 11 x 8 ½ inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

The viewer is immediately confronted with works such as Tessellation Figures (6) and Tessellation Figure (7) (2011) that appear pleasant largely due to an accomplished placing of complimentary colors, which is not convincing enough for me. While Tessellation Figures (6) is vaguely reminiscent of – though in a blown-up, pixilated version – Henri Matisse’s The Goldfish (1912) or Claude Monet’s Nymphéas (1920-26), this work and others unfortunately verge on the decorative. Similar to his older works, Winters’ paintings depict a fluid intermingling of organic and scientific phenomena, where abstract form takes on the uncanny appearance of figuration. Though in works such as Tessellation Figures (4) the abstract-figurative conglomerate seem oddly unsuccessful. However, Winters does successfully develops a language of formulaic process that harnesses both the notion of the natural and the mechanical, for example in Cricket Music (2010) where he masters the fluidity of sound in abstract form.

Terry Winters, Notebook 120, 2003-11. Collage, 11 x 8 ½ inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

In the gallery’s additional space, Notebook presents a series of small-scale collages conducted from 2003–2011. As never exhibited in the States, these works reveal the sketchbook-style process essential for the artist. Made up of layered found images – many of which exist on transparencies – the Notebook collages depict the same integration of figurative and abstract, natural and mechanical that informs Winters’ paintings.

Terry Winters, Tessellation Figures 6, 2011. Oil on linen, 80 x 76 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.

This array of serial works offers a likeness to Winters’ paintings, especially noting the range of color and abstraction. Found images, often from newspaper leaves, act as a backdrop upon which a printed transparency is laid. Here, Winters touches upon the very genesis of abstraction: taking two recognizable images and through a simple process of manipulation, he dictates that which becomes illegible and detached from discernable visual cues. Winters’ tessellation paintings work within the same bounds, whereby the mosaic-esque formation of elements can be recognized and indecipherable all at once.

Most noteworthy, however, is that the collage works possess a more curated sense of color placement, as many pieces are monochromatic and as a series it is better off for the lack of the vast assemblage of color. It is obvious that the Notebook series proves to be a necessary element to the Tessellation Figures and the rest of Winters’ paintings, as it provides a much-needed depth to the exhibition as a whole. Winter’s exhibition will be on view through April 14, 2012 at Matthew Marks Gallery.