Category Archives: contemporary art

Contemporary Tibetan Artists Transform Tradition

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Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond makes a strong case for the awesomeness of the Ruben Museum and the vibrancy of Himalayan art. Nine contemporary artists from Tibet created works who handle the Tibetan art traditions passed down to them with a knowledge, use, and comment on the West. The differences between the Western world where these artists practice and their Tibetan roots is a major theme, as one can see in one of Gonkar Gyatso’s self portraits above. All the artists showed some very strong work, both in its own right and in conjunction with the rest of the Rubin museum, which provides such a great background on the tradition that these artists have inherited.

Losang Gyatso has some beautiful work up, including my favorite, above. His latest digitally manipulated prints glow with bright, unfocused colors. This image was inspired by a traditional piece in the permanent collection.

Tsherin Sherpa, Untitled, 2010

Sherpa’s work, above, reminded me strongly of the recent Takashi Murakami exhibition at Gagosian. Murakami also includes a plethora of brightly colored skulls in this large scale painting that references Japanese Bhuddist tradition (detail left). It is not uncommon to see dancing and smiling
skulls in traditional Tibetan Bhuddist art, although perhaps not in neon hues. While in Sherpa’s work, each tiny skull is painted, Gonkar Gyatsu often uses skull stickers and others materials to create images based on traditional presentations of the Bhudda.

If you haven’t made it to the Rubin Museum yet, try to check it out while Tradition Transformed is still on view–through October 18.

Kiki Smith: Sojourn at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

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As a part of the Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Kiki Smith: Sojourn exhibition is nearly perfect in how it compliments the collection and the space. It arcs, or triangulates rather, around Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party in a series of small rooms. The choice of using rooms was designed by the artist to mimic the traditional sphere of woman.

This exhibition view of the first room suggests the interaction between the varied pieces. It places Smith’s works, of woman, birds, light bulbs, chairs, and sticks, in delightful relation with each other, making the entire effect of each room greater than the sum of its parts. Overall, one gets an impression of pale, fragile, fluttering, glittering movement that feels ethereal while a sort of earthy honesty in her drawings and the rough materials she often uses keeps the work grounded in the real.

The woman of these pale images are scratched out as portraits rather than archetypes. The figures are presented large, full length, and often with serious or reflective expressions that suggest a gravitas at contrast with the light, crumpled paper they are drawn on. On the other hand, her sturdy sculptures take on the monolithic cast of ancient goddesses, and also serve to ground work that might float with with glitter and light. Interspersed with these representation of women are sculptural installations of glitter light bulbs and flowers painted on glass.

The final room of the exhibition centers around a pine casket opened slightly to reveal glass flowers springing up. The mix of solidity and delicateness is in line with the other works, but here seems much more pointed and affecting. 

In ending the show with this work, Smith also hearkens back to the 18th C. needlework by Prudence Punderson placed near the beginning of the exhibition, which illustrates a women’s journey from birth to death. Some things never change.

 Prudence Punderson, The First, Second and Last Scene of Mortality,1776-1783

Kiki Smith: Sojourn is up through September 12 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

The Disappointment That Was Skin Fruit

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Chris Ofili, Charles Ray, Kara Walker, Paul McCarthy, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, Tino Seghal, Seth Price, Janine Antoni, Richard Price, Urs Fischer. It’s a roll call of blue chip artists and by that very merit ought to have more resonance than Skin Fruit, the exhibition currently up at the New Museum, does.

A lot has been made, justly, of the museum using the collection of Dakis Joannou to create a show. After all he is a Trustee of the New Museum–creating a bit of a conflict of interests. Conflict number one being whether to show so much unappealing work; conflict two being whether the show benefits more himself and his cohorts rather than the public. The show is curated by Jeff Koons, who just so happens to be collected by Dakis Joannou, and just so happened to include himself–via the basketball–in the show.

One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank, 1985

But let’s put that aside and move on to the fact that between Dakis Joannou and Jeff Koons the worst taste ever demonstrated is on display. Judgment call? Yes, but how they can make artists I like (Chris Ofili, Charles Ray, Cindy Sherman) look so bad is beyond me. It takes a special sort of taste: one that prefers feral humanoids liberally sprinkled with fur and confuses brash ugliness with boldness.

To compound the problem, the works were stuffed in together so that it was hard to “appreciate” any of them. If anything, it seemed like a Nouveau Riche Victorian households where costly bric-a-brac crowd the mantle. I mean, if you are watching somebody climb up a crucifix (Pawel Althamer’s Schedule of the Crucifixion), you don’t want to have to weave your way through glass and chocolate structures to get an unobstructed view of the performance. The show was certainly not the best choice for my first art experience back in NYC. I left generally disgusted and more than a bit enraged that the New Museum continues to disappoint. On the bright side, the show ends June 6.