SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

Modern Art Obsession Talks about Art Chicago - The Private Art Collection of Richard And Ellen Sandor

2008-05-09T21:17:46Z

Modern Art Obsession, a blog well worth visiting and reading, is written by a dedicated collector of photography (Mike, a "youngish NYC Art Collector, working on Wall Street by day, and a total art fanatic by night and weekend" as he describes himself). It does, however, occasionally feature other media as well. He recently wrote about visiting Art Chicago

"Possibly the best thing about going to Art Chicago this year for MAO, was the VIP program, and getting to see the Richard and Ellen Sandor Art Collection. These events were mostly very well organized ~~drinking~~ events, but they also included several amazing collection visits. By total luck.. MAO got to visit possibly the nations most impressive historic photography collection..at the Chicago gold coast home of Ellen and Richard Sandor. (Yes .. we know, it's hard to believe this collection is actually West of the Hudson River !) ..."]]>
Not only was the photography collection a total knock your socks off MAO WoW.. but Richard and Ellen could not have been more gracious hosts. These walls were filled to the brim with Cindy Sherman, Arbus, Curtis, Prince, Man Ray, Vik Muniz, Penn, Burke-White, Kertesz, Steichen..etc.. they have 2000+ images (and it's almost all on the walls..like how obsessive is that!).. you probably couldn't name an important photographer who wasn't well represented in the collection.

It was also amazing to see such bright, obsessive, and generous art collectors being so nice.. like how Non-New York City is that ?? Just, think.. rich, important collectors being nice to the little people... Who would have guessed it was possible? Only in Chicago! ..."

Read the rest of the post here, and his blog in general, here.

Sharkstock 3

2008-05-02T17:19:02Z

Photo credit: Dana Johnson
]]> Photo credit: SNS Photo Photo credit: Mark Kinsella Photo credit: Mark Kinsella

Meeting Joe Fyfe at Felix Lehner's Casting Foundary

2008-05-02T14:39:11Z

Joe Fyfe painting

Felix Lehner and Hans Josephsohn

I've been meaning to write about this for some time, but kept getting sidetracked by other events. Last summer, I met the very interesting painter and "writer on art" Joe Fyfe.
]]> Kunst am Bau is rather flaccid, decorative geometric nonsense or quasi-event neo-conceptual entertainment novelties). Nevertheless, it doesn't hold together well and is ageing quickly and poorly.

Fyfe was doing a visiting artist/scholar residency at Felix Lehner's wonderful fine art casting foundry, a place I should hype more. St. Gallen, Switzerland is fortunate to have two of the world's best artisans-serving-fine art: Urban Stoob, a famous and remarkable stone lithographer about whom I'll write another time, and Felix Lehner.

In the Sitter river valley, a small yet dramatic drop from the surrounding area, west of the city, an industrial (more formerly than now) area is located. Here, a former textile dyeing factory was converted by Lehner into a foundry. Within 10 years it had international renown. Over a dozen expert artisans assist artists in the production of sculptural works as well as occasionally restoring important historical bronzes. And generally of very large proportions.

Felix Lehner, the founder and boss of the foundry is highly knowledgeable of contemporary art. Furthermore, he is the initiator of the "Sitterwerk" a permanent conglomeration of a handful of buildings forming a private art center (link), including a monographic museum, Schaulager and library. One area is dedicated primarily to Hans Josephsohn, a unique sculptor who you should google. The Sitterwerk and Foundary's website in English is here. The site for the Josephsohn museum, situated in the former boilerhouse, hence called the Kesselhaus, is here.

Fyfe, besides painting his own works, was there to research and rewrite an essay for Art in America on Hans Josephsohn. Fyfe had just returned from an extended stay in Southeast Asia, which he blogged about here.

Joe is, in fact, a fine and inveterate blogger. You can check in on him here, where, under July 18th, he wrote about our meeting.

Fyfe does some highly unique artworks wherein I see shades of Blinky Palermo cavorting with the soul of Matisse. Generally described, he stitches and glues found fabric together, abutting the elements rather than collaging them, and then applies very sparse strokes of paint. Very atmospheric, clear-sighted, elegant and historically aware. His writing is similar. Some bio minutiae: Fyfe was born in NYC in 1952, received his BFA from the University of the Arts in 1976. He has had recent solo shows of his paintings at JG Contemporary in New York City, and at Mai's Gallery in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He has been in recent shows at Tracy Williams Ltd. and Cheim and Read in NYC, Galerie Pitch in Paris and The Myers School of Art in Akron, Ohio. He has taught at Parsons, VCU, Temple and UT, Knoxville. He has received grants from The Pollock-Krasner and Gottlieb Foundations and he writes for Gay City News, Art in America, Arts AsiaPacific, Art on Paper and Artcritical.com.

You can read articles by Fyfe at artcritical here.

A fine interview with Joe and Merlin James titled "This Wonderful Exile of the Artist" was in Modern Painters (no kidding! A painter interviewed in Modern Painters!). It is available on the web here.

A review of Fyfe's paintings by Stephen Maine, originally in Art in America, is available here.

And while we are listing links, Fyfe is represented primarily by JG Contemporary, website here.

I felt an immediate affinity with Joe, and a similarity of perception, strangely enough, as our individual aesthetics are superficially so different. I would have liked to talk longer and repeatedly with him. Well, another time!

Its Really Not Her Fault. Kilimnik: What George Bush Is To The Neocons, She Is to The Institutional/Academic Purveyors of The de-Skilled

2008-04-29T07:32:45Z

A dupe, a puppet, this is the real role of this earnest yet utterly insipid and awful painter. A way of having painting while denigrating it by definition- by de-skilling it, thus raising the importance of its 'conceptual' underpinings/'context'- as in text- written in reams of sameness by academics/curators in order to further their various ambitions within the climes of todays art world. All, while marginalizing the role of art, the artist in the whole rancid equation.]]>
Well, I guess it is possible for even a shark to get burned out on attacking some hapless victim -and if there was ever a hapless painter -Killimnik is it. I should be writing about the Gordon Matta-Clark You Are The Measure exhibition -complete with a curatorial tweaking from Lynne Warren, but others more adroit -and more interested (not that I dont find the work compelling -I do) than I have written extensively about this guy.....I will say this, its night and day from the trendy crap Dominic Molon involves himself with when it come to this really uninteresting painter of such low skill/talent levels......

Why are we showing this mediocre local NYC artist here in Chicago? Can't we be more original than this? This is the only real question that this absolute mess of a disaster asks.

At the Chicago Art Fair, I visited with one of the really top New York dealers of the last 30 years ....who will remain unnamed. This persons comment to me, was "what has happened to Chicago? What happened to the good galleries?........I mention this as somehow, I see a correlation, a connection between this observed truth and what we are seeing programed into one of our leading institutions.......

James Kalm: Kilimnik (No Photos Allowed)

2008-04-20T09:22:19Z

James Kalm: Karen Kilimnik (No Photos Allowed) at 303 GALLERY

Kalm maps the process as he tries to comply with proper protocol for access to Kilimnik's current show. In the end, to file this "Report", Kalm again goes on the "low-down" for exclusive unauthorized footage.]]> James Kalm celebrates the one year anniversary of the "Kalm Report" with this documentation of some of the challenges faced by your humble reporter.

Joanne Mattera on Paintings She Likes in the New York Fairs

2008-04-17T19:24:26Z

"I went into the New York fairs knowing that I couldn't do the same kind of reporting I'd done in Miami. In fact, I really wanted to view rather than report. But as I started to see work that interested me, the camera came out. Perhaps not surprisingly, ..."

Read more at her blog.

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Adrian Ellis: Museums should beware of being used as marketing tools

2008-04-16T19:30:18Z

The Art Newspaper presents a very sensible article on the topic of ethics concerning museums' frequent role in increasing the financial value of art work through their exhibitions. The piece is written by Adrian Ellis, the director of AEA Consulting. Link here.

Edward Winkleman has a post about it, which will probably generate a very interesting discussion in the comments, as his posts usually do. Link here. ]]>
"Decisions made by art museums about what objects to acquire and what to exhibit affect the prices that those works of art and others related to them can command in the market. In the case of "related" works of art, the mechanics are very straightforward..." Continue reading.

Sharkforum Praise: Dawoud Bey

2008-04-15T06:40:56Z

Yes, we can also point out and extol the virtues of artists we admire.

One of the greatest treasures Chicago has is the photographer Dawoud Bey.

Bey was one of my surprise discoveries last year when I was in the Chicago Art Fair. He came to my booth, we talked, I found him very interesting. Back at Wesley's where I was staying, I googled him, my favorite spy tactic. I was amazed at how outstanding his photos were! I had suspected that he would be a good artist, but here I was presented with a great one. His works unite a strong humanism (that disgraced word) with striking formal qualities in service of an art at once aesthetically challenging, sociological (in the best sense) and personal. And all that depth is carried lightly, under a mantel of (seemingly) direct image making.

His most recent works feature pictures ...]]>
On another note, his essay "The Black Artist as Invisible (Wo)Man" is erudite and historically important. It was published in the catalogue for the important exhibition "High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-1975" (organized by Katy Siegel and David Reed and discussed on Sharkforum in several past posts).

Check out his website. Go see his shows. This is a great artist to be extolled, supported and presented. http://www.dawoudbey.net/

Some facts about him stolen from his bio:

Dawoud Bey began his career as a photographer in 1975 with a series of photographs, "Harlem, USA," that were later exhibited in his first one-person exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. He has since had numerous exhibitions worldwide, at such institutions as The Art Institute of Chicago, The Barbican Centre in London, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT, the Walker Art Center, the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven, CT, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, where his works were also included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial

The Walker Art Center organized a mid-career survey of his work in 1995 that traveled to institutions throughout the United States and Europe. A major publication, Dawoud Bey: Portraits, 1975-1995 was published in conjunction with the exhibition. Aperture has just published his latest project Class Pictures.

Dawoud Bey's works are included in the permanent collections of numerous museums, both here in America and in Europe, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the High Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, National Portrait Gallery in London, Whitney Museum of American Art, Yale Art Gallery and many others.

He has received numerous awards and fellowships over the course of his career including fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Since 1992 he has completed a number of collaborative projects working with young people and museums. These projects have involved young people, museums and cultural institutions together in a broad dialogue that seeks to create an engaging space for art making and institutional interrogation. These projects have also been aimed at broadening the participation of various communities in these institutions.

His critical writings on contemporary art have appeared in a range of catalogues and critical journals throughout the United States and Europe. He is the author of several groundbreaking essays, including the recent essay, "The Black Artist as Invisible (Wo)Man" in 'High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-1975,' which places the work of African American artists Al Loving, Joe Overstreet, Howardena Pindell, and Jack Whitten within this important moment in art history. He is also the author of "David Hammons: In the Spirit of Minkisi," which was the first essay to place this important African American artist within the tradition of Black Atlantic cosmological tradition. This essay appeared as the catalogue essay for Hammon's survery exhibition at the Salzburger Kunstverein in Vienna. "Authoring the Black Image" appeared in the Art Institute of Chicago's book, The Van Der Zee Studio, accompanying the exhibition of the same title. Dawoud Bey has taught at colleges, universities, and other institutions for the past thirty years, and is currently professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago. He received his Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University School of Art, and is presently represented in the United States by Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

Poem of the Week: "This is a Story You Won't Tell the Kids We'll Never Have" by Melissa Severin

2008-04-14T12:23:23Z

Melissa Severin lives in Chicago and works in search engine marketing. She earned her MFA in Poetry from New England College, and her poems have appeared in MoonLit, The Alembic, Seven Corners, 42opus, and The Cultural Society. She is also the managing editor of Switchback Books. Brute Fact, her chapbook, was released from dancing girl press, 2008.

This is a Story You Won't Tell the Kids We'll Never Have

Hood of your mouth
scraped with saguaro carcasses
]]> eaten tin cans in the bed of a pickup.
That dry scab umber your tongue won't ignore--
what it looked like leaving me:
a dead taste bud, marble putti, corpulent
corpse. My sweet wraith screamed for life. All my life.
passed fast: a kidney stone lasered to oblivion,
a virus on course, those nights more sleep is needed
and it's morning instead. Our chimera rejected me first,
as an only child only could. Last
act of rebellion haywired fallopians.
I was a tar pit for your love
of little things: little coats, little shoes, little bloomers.
Little did you know I'm more geyser
festooned with the obvious bric-a-brac
of breasts and thighs. The same page--
even Gutenberg would be proud--
until I pressed hard, knocked some letters
about, ruining the recitations of a Green humanist
raconteur. I sing this fate with a ship of fool
geologists who know where to hide a body,
not to let on when I whistle lullabies
to cactus wrens sewing my lips shut with cat gut,
prickly pear to cauterize. Our smashed June bug
aglow in an incinerator, some smokestack chute,
turning smoke signal,
intent to rise.

The title is a line from the Jawbreaker song, "Sluttering (May 4th)."

Neoteric Art E-Zine

2008-04-10T13:50:03Z

Sharkforum contributor Norbert Marszalek and frequent Sharkforum commenter William Dolan have delightfully announced the launch of a new blog e-zine about art: www.neotericart.com. Titled "Neoteric Art," the two painters say it has been created to encourage open dialogue between painters concerning work, issues and the art world.

Neoteric is a pleasing adjective meaning "modern; new; recent." It would be a wonderful term to replace the currently overused "contemporary" and the now-historically placed "modern," as well as to get around the politically loaded "postmodern." Sharkforum wishes them well, and wishes Bill in his Artists' Project booth good luck too. Visit the site here. ]]> Check the site out.

FEEBLE PAINTING (Hamann/Brandl Feeding Frenzy Cartoon)

2008-04-08T23:59:45Z

(Click on image to view larger)]]> Yes, Kilimnik and Krew.

Significant Article, Link

2008-04-08T07:47:12Z

Time Magazine, and website, writer Richard Lacayo has had it with curatorial dialectic syntax, as exemplified in the Whitney Biennial. Link.]]> "I know this is a small gesture, but deprived of this tiny arsenal [of jargon], half the bad writers in the artworld would be disarmed."

Seeing, is believing! NOW FESTOONING THE COVER! of ART IN AMERICA! And, NOW! At The MCA, The Consensoriat's Idea Of Interesting Painting, With Accompanying Essay (Bootlicking) by, Curator Dominic Molon. Behold, The Genius That Is, Karen Kilimnik

2008-04-05T14:34:04Z

Come step right up! And take a long hard look at the crap you can own for about $200,000.00 of that hedge fund account- its truly mind boggling!

]]>

Karen Kilimnik
Prince Desiré on a Break from Sleeping Beauty Out at Petrossian's for Dinner 1998 $198,000 Phillips, de Pury & Co. May 11, 2006

Curating Kilimnik, et al. --- J. J. Charlesworth: Narcissistic Display of an Uncertain "Me Me Me"

2008-04-04T12:28:59Z

One of the continuing problems creating such academic idiocy as the promotion of Feeble Painting and the likes of Kilimnik lies in the usurpation of the role of the artist by curators, especially of the "independent" and "international" variety. I wrote about this on Sharkforum long ago in the post "Artworld Pyramid Shift."

J. J. Charlesworth has written a scholarly article about this problem, one bearing very much on our Kilimnik and Feeble Painting, Neo-Conceptual Art debates. Charlesworth is the exhibitions curator at the Herbert Read Gallery, University College for the Creative Arts in Canterbury, thus he has a very direct experience of the ills now besetting his profession. Additionally, he has a very uncommon analytic and ethical clarity about them.

Some excerpts:

"If the term 'curator' has been around for as long as there were bodies of objects and bodies of knowledge to preserve and perpetuate, its more active derivative 'curating' is a neologism so recent that dictionaries have not yet caught up."
]]> "Curators continue to exist and perform the task of curating, yet judging by the recurring and often circular discussions about the nature of curating, the identity of the 'artist-curator', the role of the independent curator, and the politics of 'self-reflexive' curating, all exist in a state of ongoing perennial uncertainty, in which fundamental questions are rehearsed, mantra-like: where does the distinction lie between artist and curator?"

"As Paul O'Neill ironically observed ... '[we] are becoming so self-reflexive that exhibitions often end up as nothing more or less than art exhibitions curated by curators curating curators, curating artists, curating artworks, curating exhibitions.' "

"Such examples go against the tendency of consensus and deferral that underpins the culture of curatorial uncertainty."

"If curating is to be more than a narcissistic display of an uncertain 'me, me, me', caught between wielding power over the presentation of art and the desire to produce it, a less self-reflexive discussion about institutional power, cultural freedom and artistic value is necessary."

Originally presented in the magazine Art Monthly, it is now featured on encyclopedia.com. Go read the clear-sighted critical assessment in its entirety:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-159863693.html

Noel Sheridan: Shopping, Inability, Banality and Steely Ambition; Karen Kilimnik reviewed in Ireland

2008-04-03T20:47:26Z

Ireland's Circa art magazine has an excellent review on its on-line edition by the late, erudite actor and artist Noel Sheridan. He allowed the words of consensus curatorial blather to frame the artist's work. Give them enough rope. The italicized words are Sheridan's. Peruse these excerpts, then read the complete piece at Circa. Link below.

Karen Kilimnik: Fairy Battle, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, September 27, 2002, to February 2, 2003

One of the things Karen Kilmnik's ... installation ... does, because of her extreme take on form and content, is separate the...

The what? Getting a handle on an answer to that...

]]> The work is an animated representation of the artist's interior life; all her wishes, dreams and desires are gathered here: ballerinas, charming fairies, wistful photos of snow scenes, over-the-top velvety paintings of flowers, spangly horses and...

This feels like shopping. ...

Kilmnik presses the Warholian envelope; ...it is that the signs of 'kitsch', technical awkwardness and formal ineptitude, may similarly signify as art.

This artist, however, is no out-of-control casualty of an uncaring world.

She orchestrates the prestigious setting; painting walls exotic colours to valorise tiny pictures...

This is banal.

Seldom has banality had a more passionate advocate. Her velvet-gloved, steely ambition...

Read the piece at
http://www.recirca.com/reviews/kkilimnik.shtml
Circa Art Magazine: http://www.recirca.com/

CIRCA is Ireland's leading magazine for contemporary visual arts. Appearing quarterly, its 112 full-colour pages contain news, reviews, previews, interviews, feature articles and a host of images. The magazine is dedicated to reflecting visual culture as it unfolds throughout Ireland while also reporting on important developments further afield.

Noel Sheridan, an artist who worked in a variety of media passed away in 2006.A trained actor turned artist, Noel was Director of the National College of Art and Design in Dublin from 1979 to 1999 and again, after a break, until 2003. Always bigger than life, he had a vast knowledge and understanding of the visual arts and the arts in general, but he wore this knowledge lightly and shared it generously.