Top Five Art Moments of 2007
Yes, I'm doing my own Best Of lists. Future posts might include such classic gems as "Best Music of 2007," "Best Books of 2007" and "Best Amy Sedaris Quotes of 2007." Yes, you're going to enjoy them, and that's that. Don't give me that attitude or we'll turn this blog right around and go home.
That's better. On to the not-at-all-comprehensive recollections of a totally amateur yet enthusiastic art seer/goer/observer/taker-in-er!
My year in art started at the Museum of Modern Art's Richard Serra exhibit, Sculpture: Forty Years in June. (I know, my "year in art" didn't start until halfway through - see "amateur" comment in previous paragraph.) As the title implies, this was a comprehensive survey of the artist. Serra's smaller sculptures seem to flout gravity and physics, making heavy metals seem as light as a penny and fragile as glass. But the real story is Serra's work with sheet metal. Huge, sprawling slabs are erected in swirling, angled mazes that, again, seemingly defy the laws of nature. As you walk through the twisting halls, your own sense of balance becomes compromised. This isn't art that forces the audience to question or engage with their relationship to it - this is art that will literally get inside your head, flicking your equilibrium like a light switch, as if reminding the materialistic modern world to appreciate and be awed by its powerful industrial roots.
I missed MoMa's Jeff Wall exhibit by about three weeks, so I was glad to catch it when it showed up at the Art Institute of Chicago. Wall's large, back-lit, incredibly detailed photographs often look candid but many are in fact staged, employing casts, crews and special effects. While some seem genuinely spontaneous, like Mimic, and some stretch the suspension of disbelief while still looking downright cool (for lack of a better word [and why shouldn't "cool" be good enough a word to describe art, anyway?]), like Milk, pictured above, in some the artist insinuates himself to the forefront.
Sure, The Flooded Grave, pictured left, looks great, with its open grave filled with sealife, but you can't help noticing the falsity of the moment. Is that the point? Even more distracting is the inconsistent seams that appear through the exhibit in Wall's larger, panoramic works. Some had clearly visible seams, some didn't. Were they unintentional? Or just more of Wall making us question not just the art itself, but the process of how he created it? (As opposed to say, Barry Frydlender, exhibited at MoMa at the same time as Serra. Frydlender's large, digitally composited photographs were perfectly seamless.) Worthwhile questions, to be sure - I still haven't figured out how I feel about it all. Like filling, stick-to-your-ribs food, this is stick-to-your-mind art, provocative not just for the (often beautiful) end product, but the means Wall used to get there.
In a stroke of a good luck, another photographer, Richard Misrach, was showing at the AIC at the same time as Wall. The AIC was the first museum to collect 20 of Misrach's beach-themed photographs into an exhibit that began a two-year tour. On the Beach showcased large, color photographs of seaside portraits, with the photographer somehow magically floating above the scenes at incredible heights like a voyeuristic angel. The photos often have no horizon and just one or two people either on the sand or floating in the water, presenting a beautiful, strangely peaceful post-apocalyptic (post-9/11?) world. Walking through the narrow halls of the AIC's basement, surrounded by Misrach's expansive shots of endless waves of water, it was serene, melancholy and creepy all at the same time.
On a cold November evening, my friend Laura and I hopped over to the River East Arts Center for Red Bull's The Art of Can exhibit. Yes, you read that right. Red Bull, the liquid crack of energy drinks, hosted a touring art exhibit with sculptures primarily featuring - what else? - Red Bull cans. This appealed on numerous levels: using the Official Sponsor of Underagers, All-Night Ravers and Wannabe Playas to make pop art; the contrast of a cheesy, nasty-smelling, chemical-laden beverage and the occasionally beautiful art made out of its cans; and the potential awfulness of it all. High on a mixture of invigorating winter chills and numerous vodka and Red Bulls (smells like feet!) provided by the gallery, Laura and I toured the many attempts of making treasure out of trash. Some succeeded, like the hovering, fluid, mythic dragon, and some failed, like the uncreative flower-blooming-out-of-a-Red-Bull-can. (Seriously? That's all you could come up with?) These mostly small, shiny objects were like DIY toys - not all art has to take itself seriously, right? But we were the real winners, as where else could you get drunk enough to both enjoy product placement art and blatantly mock said art under the alibi of said drunkeness?
My year in art closed recently with a quick bus ride over to Western Exhibitions, a small studio space in an isolated Chicago warehouse. John Parot's Biological Exuberance, influenced by and named after Bruce Bagemhi's book documenting gay behavior in animals, explores the mating rituals of modern gay men. Multimedia wall art featured cookie-cutter, mask-like faces (using the eyes and mouths from pictures of real-life models and porn stars cut out of magazines) playing out predator and prey roles. Floor installations group Diet Coke cans, whiskey and wine bottles and porn tapes, memorializing clichés that become even more interesting when tied to pink ropes attached to the wall, as if they're bait used to lure the unsuspecting. Most disturbing is Parot's use of color and 80's reference points: black paint drips down over Dead Can Dance and Velvet Underground paraphernalia and very 80's colors like hot pinks and electric blues, like how the death scare of AIDS began to overwhelm gay nightlife in the 80's. An interesting, if not entirely original, concept (human mating rituals mimic those found in nature) is served with a twist, if you will.
Okay, we made it! That wasn't too bad, was it? Everyone get out and take a bathroom break because we have a few more Best Of lists to go, coming up soon.
Also check out: Black and White and....
And: Blood, Boys and Bambinas.
