From our friends at Big Red & Shiny, today we bring you a review of Cullen Washington Jr.’s paintings at 808 Gallery at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts. Author Shawn Hill points out, “Washington has embraced the American tradition of the readymade (Duchamp) and junk art (Kienholz) in creating these paintings, which draw from the past but refer to the still-charged state of race relations and cultural politics in the present day.” This article was originally published on February 26, 2014.

Cullen Washington Jr. Untitled #4, 2013; canvas, paper, tape, found materials; 7.5 x 7 ft. Courtesy of Boston University, College of Fine Arts.

Cullen Washington Jr.’s enigmatic large-scale paintings, constructions, and prints amply fill half of the cavernous space at 808 Gallery (the other half is given over to a group show comprising mixed-media works and performance). Washington Jr.’s paintings have to speak loudly to compete with such a frequently frenetic setting, and they hold up quite well.

If I allude to several previous artists in this review, it is not because I find Washington’s work derivative. Rather, I think he’s working in the established tradition of modernism/postmodernism, and that he’s as conscious of these influences as I am. Some of those called to mind are due to techniques of style and execution. Others because they, like Washington, confronted issues of race in America while trying to construct a self-identity revealed at least in part through their art-making processes.

Read the full article here.

The typical museum experience is controlled. A pathway describes a route from one artwork to another, each illustrated by its label and narrated by an audio tour. However, three exhibitions currently on view in Chicago invite the visitor to engage in a less predictable process.

Detail of Academic Connections: Media Atlas, 2014, an undertaking of Professor W.J.T. Mitchell’s Theories of Media class students, in a gallery at the Smart Museum of the University of Chicago. Photo: Saul Rosenfield.

At the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art, visual-culture scholar W.J.T. Mitchell and the students of his “Theories of Media” class have colonized a gallery to realize a contemporary version of German art historian Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas (1925–1929). The result is what Mitchell calls a “media atlas.” Each student was invited to choose an image, describe why, and tack the image and the description to a wall covered in black fabric. Warburg sought to uncover the interconnections among forms and around themes that he observed resonating throughout history. Like Mitchell’s students, he pinned images of paintings, sculptures, buildings, and cultural ephemera, including magazines and newspaper photographs, to black panels. The resonances among the images on a particular panel might be more or less obvious, and during the utopian project (which was unfinished when he died), Warburg constantly moved images and revised relationships. As an undertaking, the Mnemosyne Atlas stands as a monument to the processes of visual association, history making, and memory,^[i] and, as Mitchell puts it, “helps frame contemporary questions about how we use and understand images.”[ii]

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Not long after disassembling Yayoi Kusama’s infinity rooms, which had New Yorkers queuing up in polar conditions from the beginning to the end of their six-week run, David Zwirner Gallery now offers another buzzworthy, limited-capacity affair: a “rotational horizon work” by light-and-space artist Doug Wheeler. The wise will consider making a reservation in advance this time.

Doug Wheeler. LC 71 NY DZ 13 DW, 2013; reinforced fiberglass, flat white titanium dioxide latex, LED light, and DMX control. Photo by Tim Nighswander, Imaging4Art © 2014 Doug Wheeler. Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery, New York/London.

Housed in the commodious ground floor of the gallery’s 20th Street location, the work resembles a giant igloo. It consists of a slightly convex circular platform, about twenty yards in diameter, rimmed with a bright band of light that bathes an encapsulating dome in the lavender hues of early dawn. Waiting in the narrow antechamber, where visitors are outfitted with shoe covers to prevent scuffing the immaculate environment inside, one feels as though preparing to pass on to the next world.

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Get Nexcited! So beckons the label of Nexcite, an aphrodisiac beverage once produced in Sweden. When it first came out in the early 2000s in the United States, it was sold under the moniker Niagara, and it was wildly popular. Shortly afterward, Pfizer filed a lawsuit claiming copyright infringement (the name is similar to Viagra), forcing the beverage to be renamed Nexcite. It was never able to regain its popularity, leading to stockpiles of the stuff lingering in warehouses—like the one in nearby Opa-Locka that Nicolas Lobo recently stumbled upon. For his show Bad Soda/Soft Drunk at Gallery Diet in Miami, he rescued tens of thousands of bottles of the love potion.

Nicolas Lobo. Bad Soda/Soft Drunk, 2014; installation view, Gallery Diet, Miami. Courtesy of the Artist and Gallery Diet. Photo: Jaime Martinez.

Starting this review with a description of the beverage is necessary, because it’s one of two highly charged substances taking center stage in the show. The other is napalm. Certainly, mentioning either napalm or a discontinued, neon-blue aphrodisiac beverage in a press release is guaranteed to garner a raised eyebrow from even the most jaded art-world savant. But the substances’ inclusion in this show creates a brilliant contrast: one (supposedly) libido-enhancing, the other a violent incendiary known for wreaking destruction in the Vietnam War.

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Now through April, the sprawling, rough-and-tumble brick spaces of Minneapolis’ Soap Factory are filled with installation projects by five artists—the Art(ists) on the Verge, as it were. It is not quite fair to consider Art(ists) on the Verge as a single exhibition, as there is no curatorial or artistic conceit to cement the various projects into a cohesive entity. The works on view are the result of a yearlong mentorship project that pairs young Minnesota media artists with mentors for feedback and critique. Art(ists) on the Verge presents these five installations as evidence of a process that aims to encourage work at the intersection of art and technology, and the five artists take very different approaches. From analogies between the physical and digital delivery of messages, to the astrological landscape at the birth of Christ, each of the projects takes on a subject and expounds on it in a physically expansive way. While not all of the projects seem to have reached their final states (some could use a push further in their current direction, and others a tug back), the intensity of their interaction with research, process, and materials is evident.

Alison Hiltner. Survival Tactics, 2014; mixed media, dimensions variable. Courtesy of the Soap Factory. Photo by Aaron Dysart.

Perhaps the most inviting installation is Alison Hiltner’s dangling Survival Tactics (2014). Hung in clumps from the Soap Factory’s high ceilings, Hiltner’s semi-translucent vines drape toward the ground. Coated in fleshy silicone, these electrified vines buzz and move very slightly. Visitors are able to feel the subtle mechanical drone through their fingers and hands as they make their way through the vines. Experientially enthralling (viewers at the exhibition’s opening seemed to gravitate toward these charged tentacles), Hiltner’s installation conveys her interest in botanical communication—the fact that plants “speak” with one another through ultrasonic vibrations and other means. Through electrifying these silicone filaments, Hiltner successfully anthropomorphizes them, creating a slightly eerie but enticing ambiance. Though it’s currently hung in distinct clumps in the Soap Factory’s space, it is easy to imagine this project having an even greater impact when installed in a smaller space, capitalizing on density to create a more charged milieu.

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In case you missed it, we’re pulling today’s Help Desk from our archives! Submit your question about making, exhibiting, finding, marketing, buying, or selling art using our anonymous submission form: http://bit.ly/132VchD. All submissions become the property of Daily Serving. Today’s article was originally published on March 18, 2013.

An art critic who writes for a local newspaper recently approached me. He wants to review a recent show I installed at a local gallery. He is essentially asking me to provide him with my thoughts on my work and, after reading several of his articles, it seems as if he will just quote me at length rather than provide an actual review of my work. On one hand this appears to be an opportunity to put forth some of my own ideas (however small), but on the other it seems it will be a watered-down version of a review that serves more to fill a column than actually respond critically to a body of work. Should I indulge him in my eagerness to gain press attention or decline in hopes of a future proposal from a more attentive critic?

I applaud your sincerity and rectitude, but in this case they are somewhat misdirected. Understandably, you’d like your show to be reviewed by someone who will take the time to get to know the work and write up his or her own analysis and interpretation. Knowing that you’re not going to get it is a bit discouraging, but one could easily grow old and die while waiting for a “more attentive critic.” I don’t want you to second-guess your values but when opportunity knocks, open the damn door.

What you’ve got to keep in mind is that your own integrity is not at stake. The best you can do is work hard to make something you believe in. You’ve made the art and sent it out into the world with some background information to accompany it on its way. You’re not responsible for what other people do with that information. A local journalist who lacks imagination or initiative is not under your control.

Francesco Vezzoli. Installation view of Olga Forever! The Olga Picasso Family Album at Almine Rech Gallery.

When you’re in a quandary, sometimes it helps to do some thought experiments. Imagine a critic who always pans the work that she reviews. Would you give her the same information about your show, knowing that she might use it to underscore her various arguments about how and why your work sucks? I suspect you would, because you’d at least have the consolation that she was spending time with the work and paying attention. Now let’s try another scenario: Would it make a difference to you if the reason this critic quotes at length from the artist is because he doesn’t trust his own evaluation of artwork? What if, instead of being lazy (and perhaps somewhat disingenuous), he is simply insecure and fearful? And lastly, even though he has a record of quoting at length, can you be absolutely sure he will do the same in this instance? People do change, and we can hope that perhaps he will start with you.

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Shotgun Reviews are an open forum where we invite the international art community to contribute timely, short-format responses to an exhibition or event. If you are interested in submitting a Shotgun Review, please click this link for more information. In this Shotgun Review, Maria Porges reviews Walter Robinson: Sic Transit Gloria Mundi at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco.

Walter Robinson. Exodus, 2014; Wood, fiberglass, taxidermy, glass, leather, sand
75 x 63 x 20 in. Courtesy Catharine Clark Gallery.

What are we to think about an Egyptian funerary boat powered by oars, piled improbably high with miniature, candy-colored shipping containers? San Francisco artist Walter Robinson has become well known for this kind of humorous, slightly disturbing disjuncture: a combination of conceptually and visually loaded elements, exquisitely realized and presented as a fait accompli. The title of Robinson’s solo show, Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, unites a vivid group of paintings, sculpture, and unsettlingly surreal installations. Loosely translated, this Latin phrase means “Thus passes the glory of the world,” reminding us not only of the fleeting nature of our existence here on earth, but that, as Douglas Huebler once said, “Things are only things.” Despite what the ancient Egyptians believed, we can’t take them with us when we go.

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