Tag Archives: exhibition

BORDERS Exhibition

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BORDERSfb BORDERS, an exhibition of nine American artists currently on Fulbright grants in Europe, is being curated by myself and co-curator and artist Trevor Amery. Exploring the notion of geographical and cultural boundaries, the BORDERS Berlin Fulbright Exhibition is the first-ever exhibition of Fulbright grantees. It coincides with the German Fulbright Commission’s Berlin Seminar, which brings together current grantees in all disciplines, and it gives the visual artists a chance to present their work to each other, the Fulbright community, and Berlin. We’re in the 20-day countdown, and I’m really psyched about how it is all coming together and that the good folks at Staycation Museum are hosting us.

Please check out the exhibition website and Facebook invitation and, if you’re in Berlin March 19th, I hope you will join for the exhibition opening!

Richard Serra Drawing at the Met

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The artist in his exhibition
My expectations were not high for the Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His monumental, simple sculptures hardly seemed likely to be very impressive in sketch form. But as the artist has mentioned in interviews, this body of work is separate from his sculpture–and his black or two-toned large drawings interact with the space and the viewer in some of the same ways his sculptures do and maintain the impressive scale one is used to in his work. For clarification, see above: those black walls enclosing the artist are the drawing.
Institutionalized Abstract Art, 1976

Altogether, walking through the galleries was a zen experience, and not just because the crowds from the Alexander McQueen show hadn’t stumbled in. The large shapes and neutral palate (more on his use of black below) gave focus to the experience of walking through the exhibition, and noticing how the works interacted with the space, and my space.

From an interview with the artist on Artinfo.com:

  • Could you tell me about your use of black in your drawings?

I think black is a property, a material. And as a property I think it’s the best way to articulate drawings where you don’t have to get into the metaphors present in the use of chartreuse or pink or anything else. And I studied with [Josef] Albers at Yale and I proofed his book and taught the color course and I really got it down to just dealing with black

  • And you see it as a material with a weight?

As a property. Because it absorbs light, it manifests itself as weight more than things that reflect light.  
[….]




  • How does this show relate to your 2007 MoMA retrospective, or how do you want people to relate the two shows?

It’s a different body of work. I’d like it to be seen as an autonomous body of drawing, good or bad, and just be judged that way, or be reviewed that way, or just be viewed that way. But if people start making relationships to the sculpture then they’re really missing the point. It’s about what they are in their definition as drawing. They’re not trying to redefine what the sculpture is, and they’re not pointing to the sculpture. They make spaces and places, but they’re not sculptural spaces and places in the way that sculptures make their own spaces and places.  



Serra’s comment on black having weight seems very true in this show. The works pictured here are mostly from the mid-1970s, when Serra started using black paintstick, a mixture of pigment, oil, and wax. He has continued to use paintstick to make thick black textured surfaces from the first ‘Installation Drawings,’ monumental works on canvas or linen pinned directly to the wall and thickly covered with black paintstick, to the work he created specifically for the Met’s exhibition in 2011.


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.