SNOW BLIND

Patrick — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:19:29 +0000

Posted by Kristan Kennedy.

I started the my annual trip to NY happily trapped in South Brooklyn, where snow plows feared to tread and where there wasn’t a Q train or a loaf of bread available for four days. At least my sister was there to lighten the mood.

When I did make it into the city, all of the galleries were still closed from the storm. Luckily, the Housing Works Authority Thrift Shop was open, because there I found two books that I expect will change my life forever. One was about Miss Piggy and her private collection, the “Kermitage.” See her here in a fetching Mondrian inspired frock:

And then there was “Northwest Originals: Oregon Women and Their Art,” published in the 80s. It was great to see Christine Bourdette, Nanda D’Agostino, Laura Ross Paul and others at the beginnings of their auspicious careers. The glamor shots accompanying each artist bio inspired me to embrace my frizzy hair and gave me a historical reference other than Sally Jessy Raphael for current Northwest Original, Krystal South‘s new glasses.

While waiting for my colleagues from PICA and around the world to join me in New York for the Under the Radar Festival, I took a trip out to New Jersey to visit the studio of former Portlander, Derek Franklin. It is only three months into his time as a MFA at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, at Rutgers, and the walls and flat files were full of really good work. Who needs Chelsea when Newark is killing it?

Then it was off to Philadelphia, where I had both the Mutter and Mummer museums on my itinerary. I knew that I had a week of overwhelming art viewing ahead, so I focused on the weird and wild. The Mutter gives new meaning to the phrase “fresh eyes,” and it was the perfect place to re-frame my brain for some intense looking-at and thinking-about art.

Finally, my PICA peeps were here in town, and Patrick Leonard (Communications Director, PICA) Scott McEachern (Development Associate, PICA) and I formed a field trip trio, running from museum to gallery to hole-in-the-wall hand-pulled noodle joint each day before meeting up with the rest of the PICA staff in the evening for performances. Here are the highlights:

I think the guards at the Whitney were getting tired of trying to stop me from taking photographs of this painting from Paul Thek’s retrospective. On my fifth visit to the show, I still felt the overwhelming desire to cry. With one crystal tear in each eye, I took one last, longing look at the life of an artist, undervalued during his time and unbelievably relevant to artists working right now.

Bob Nickas’s Annual Looking Back at White Columns did not disappoint. I almost ripped this Chris Vasell off the wall; I wanted it for my own show that I would be installing at PNCA’s Feldman Gallery the day I returned from the East Coast.

We hit Ruby Sky Stiler’s opening at Derek Eller, where she had a modest but compelling group of relief carvings with geometric patterns, further breaking apart the already fragile picture plane.

On the train from someplace to someplace else, I was struck by this ad, boasting classes in “Law and Ethics in the Art Market.” This ad space—usually reserved for Dr. Zizmor, the “subway dermatologist“—now seems to be harnessing the growing interest in all things Miami Art Basel.

At Green Naftali, the Richard Artschwager’s still look good to me, especially this one called Untitled (Black Beauty). It makes me think about horses, which makes me think of the first 20 minutes of the movie Black Stallion.

In other semi-related news; did anyone else hear that Jay Sanders, formerly of Green Naftali and Portland, will be one of the next curators for the Whitney Biennial? I am over the moon! Congrats Jay! And to the haters who think a former gallery director can’t be objective: don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Also from the show Filmschoenheit at Greene Naftali was this painting, which makes me terribly nervous, and therefore I love it.

Hands up! Raise the roof! That is the reaction we all had when we saw these goofy and subversive ceramics by Sean Bluechel at Nicole Klagsbrun. Everything we’d seen in the city up until this moment had seemed so serious, but this pulled the heart strings in a new way. Or rather, it gathered them in its hands and went, “snip, snip.” Totally disarming. HOORAH! Officially my new favorite.

Despite the snow having melted down to nice, surmountable hills, most of the galleries were totally unprepared for their openings that night; shipments had been delayed, employees were still stranded in the outer boroughs. As we walked through Chelsea in the late, late afternoon, it did not look good. Everyone was still hanging and the clock was tick-tocking. So it was a surprise to walk into Luhring Augustine and see it so pristine and austere with giant paintings hanging proud.

This Josh Smith has my mouth watering, but not as much as…

…this delicate marrow in a heavenly bowl of soup from Hung Ry.

After a long day of hoofing it all over town, we met some old friends at La MaMa to see a much-anticipated show by Gob Squad.

One of my very first PICA experiences was a Gob Squad show, when I was a lowly volunteer, who earned tickets by scraping fish guts off of a warehouse floor for one of the Dada Balls. BOY WAS IT WORTH IT! I have been dreaming of seeing this British/German collective again for more than a DECADE!

As one of the many offerings at the Under the Radar Festival curated by Mark Russell, (PICA’s former Artistic Director), Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You Never Had it So Good), was a sweet exploration of Andy Warhol’s films. Was it worth the wait? Yes. I won’t say more in the hope you will see it yourself someday soon.

Later still we made our way to the edge of the Bowery to the Abrons Art Center for Brave New Girl, the latest installment in Neal Medlyn’s teen dream-driven performances, and part of an exciting new showcase called American Realness. It was
hard to figure out where the Britney/Hannah/Neal began and end and we felt lucky to have seen ...HERS A QUEEN, his first installment, at TBA:10. The cuddle party scene gave us important context.

OK, where am I? I don’t know either. The days are blending into each other, each show and each bowl of delicious Chinese soup forming a brackish mixture of meaning. I will end here on my last day with the crew, when we saw Ohad Meromi’s installation at Art In General, which combined constructivist architectural assemblages with other transformative sources to form a playground for the revolutionary.

We then climbed the staircases and set off alarms at the New Museum. On the third floor, we rested to read and collect all of the printed ephemera scattered around like yesterday’s news.

And then, standing in front of Lizzie Fitch’s sculpture Pangea, I had one of those great moments in which I could look back and remember the nucleus of a good idea, formed in a bomb shelter in Portland, Oregon, and see it realized years later in a even better and bigger way.

I was anxious to get home and everything was making me think of Portland, where I hoped that crates filled with paintings would be waiting for me at the Feldman. Israel Lund will need to find the perfect house plant to accompany Elena Pankova’s paintings, and Morgan Ritter and the rest of the Feldman Preps will have to gingerly unpack and hang the new show. Oh wait, there they are. Hi guys! Here is to the new year and new shows.

Lizzie Fitch / Big Skin

pica-blogger — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:42:50 +0000

Lizzie Fitch / Big Skin
What Are You Wearing?
Posted by: Donald Allgeier

Photo: Aaron Igler

Walking into Lizzie Fitch‘s installation from a sun and heat-drenched outer world, I was a bit delirious. The underground space she had transformed only increased my disorientation. The room felt like a summer vacation fantasy of Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb from Silence of the Lambs. A series of exhibits consisting of linens, skins, sand, shells, easels, and makeshift human forms met at the crossroads of Martha’s Vineyard and a morgue.

On your way into the room, you get a peak through a window into the world you are about to enter. The snapshot could be from a family vacation except for the unattached skin adorning the scene. This is quickly followed by the video surveillance of the bed at the end of the room. The bed seems innocuous in comparison, but the camera watching it adds a sense of menace (the viewer will soon be in its lens, as well). You enter the room in front of a clothing rack that gives the impression of a staging area. A skin purse, two bags with earth images, a pair of pants with skin attached to the front, and a face in a bag set the tone for your journey into Big Skin.

The three central pieces in the first half of the room evoke a summer setting with lawn chairs, goldfish, a sun hat, and a sandy platform. The characters are an amalgamation of target designer clothing lines, body parts, and skin. The most affecting of these scenes is the sandy platform where goldfish swim in tiny glass worlds next to drooping skin and genitalia on top of worktables arranged like a house of cards. The whole image made me think of people peeling off their skin to go for a swim.

Throughout the installation figures are created from linen and skins. The meshing of so many body parts and accessories hammers home the idea of a human world transitioning into new levels of control over the body and consumer decor. What will you be wearing and what will you be buying to find some sense of beauty in this world? These scenes transition into the central feature of the second half of the room. A bed shrouded in curtains sits in front of a television displaying images of nature underneath a sky-like painting. The electronically watched bed area is in stark contrast to the rest of the installation. It seems somewhat sweet and peaceful. The comforting imagery is all a fake, though. The sky is a painting. The natural scenes are pixels. It is under surveillance. One is left with a disquieting sense of our removal from a traditional understanding of who we are and what comprises beauty. Fitch’s creation is well worth the visit to the lower levels of the Works. I recommend going on a hot day when the sun has stripped you of a certain amount of rational comfort. It can be taken in from 12-6 PM everyday until the 14th. After that, Big Skin will be showing 12-6 PM Wed. – Sat. until the 4th of October.

Lizzie Fitch – PICA

SNOW BLIND

Lizzie Fitch / Big Skin