*Lawrence Weiner's bathroom doors labeled US and THEM... (ARTnews))
*In Helen Altman's Phoenix, the viewer can stare at a raw turkey carcass in an open refrigerator.
*Sun, a stark yellow panel that is 'electrically heated'... with an implicit invitation to touch ...
* James Drake's Zona Maresal is a 'laser disc installation' consisting of photos of prostitutes accompanied by bad poetry.
* Leandro Erlich's installation, Swimming Pool simulates what if feels like to stand in a swimming pool ...
* Kirk Hayes is also a master of trompe l'oeil, but he specializes in simulating masking tape, cardboard and plywood.
A BREAK FROM THE MADNESS:
The above FW Weekly reviews, ended with this comment: "Overall, this exhibition ... effectively demonstrates that most contemporary artists would be much better off with a royal patron or a commission from the Church to awaken creativity from its vapid sleep". Mark Caywood (Musea salutes you!)
*Mona Hatoum created a slippery map by placing 5,000 clear glass marbles on the floor, allowing each country's borders to disintegrate as a result of vibrations from foot traffic.
* Rivane Neuenschwander spread talcum powder on the floor, sweeping it into sensuous patterns that will gradually disappear over the course of the show due to air currents.
*Francisco Ruiz de Infante reconfigured the attic of SITE Santa Fe's building into a series of tunnels and passageways, providing a series of sensory experiences for those brave enough to climb the crude ladder leading to claustrophobic spaces.
*Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio transformed a room in the nearby Santa Fe Budget Inn into everyone's nightmare of a motel visit, complete with rattling coat hangers and a lamp shade that vibrates from the constant motion of a 'moth'. (DMN)
*Gail Fitzgerald's structures of thick, textured segments of color are inchoate mounds until you begin to see them as acrylic polymer and wire sculptures that resemble abstract paintings as three dimensional piles. (The MET)
* The smell of old rubber tires from which Chakaia Booker assembled her erotic wall piece permeates the gallerires. ...
* A Vik Muniz photograph is based on a drawing he made of Gericault's famous painting The Raft of Medusa. The drawing, done in the unlikely medium of chocolate syrup, no longer exists - Mr. Muniz licked it clean after taking the photo.
*Kim Dingle provides a souped-up version of a vintage 1963 MG car, Pale pink with white lace hubcaps, it rests on a fluffy down comforter ...
*Yukinori Yanagi's iconic sand paintings of American flags and one dollar bills are slowly being eaten away by live ants housed within their frames.
*Al Souza puts thousands of different jigsaw puzzle pieces together in fragmentary fashion to create dizzying 'landscapes' indicative of the world's precarious state.
*Paul Pfeiffer, a young New Yorker from Honolulu, rivets our attention on two tiny 3 by 4 inch screens. Both depict victims of stress - one a person tossed hither and yon by a vibrating sofa run amok, the other an angst-ridden basketball player who resembles a cross between Francis Bacon horrors and Edvard Munch's Scream (DMN, Janet Kutner, who commented on this show "Much of the work is refreshingly different".
A BREAK FROM THE MADNESS:
from NORMAN J. OLSON, ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS: "The only reason the issue of public funds for 'Sensation' style art does not come up more often - is that this modern aesthetic is irrelevant to Americans' daily lives. The practitioners and admirers of modern art are so tightly ensconced in their ivory tower that ordinary people rarely pay any attention to the art at all... Modern artists need the public trough because there is no market for their works. So as soon as the public money pipe is threatened, they cry 'censorship'. Then a big first amendment fight gets going between the arts mavens and the religious nuts... The thing is nobody ever addresses the more interesting question, 'How has an aesthetic that appeals only to a handful of culture vultures and has virtually nothing to offer the larger audience managed to dominate the American art scene for nearly half a century?'"
MUSEA offers these reasons why Modern Art is neither modern or art (and this from an insider,a painter who loves art with a fiery passion.
"(Great) painting is a language you can't translate - and don't have to." Art S Rev.
1. It blocks out real artists from fair recognition.
2. It blocks out real art from fair recognition.
3. It supports the worst of the elitest gallery - rich patron system of art commerce.
4.It makes a mockery of public money for the benefit of all the public.
5.It blocks out innovation that is based on artistic and technical genius, instead of goofyness and quirkiness.
6. It blocks out art that is not 'shockism'. Or what I also call Mock-iavellian art.
7. It's art that must be explained by the critic - not profound, merely foggy.
8. It is full of pomposity - large spaces, large canvases, even full rooms, wasted, ruined, and then foisted on the public - art that's bloated, self centered, and self-involved.
9. Let's call it what it is. This concept art is either bad sculpture, bad theater, or both.
10 Modern Art is the Salon art of our day. Now one for the road:
*Sarah Sze uses the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life to construct soaring fantasies with moving parts. (DMN)