Focusing on the matter at hand remains a challenge when looking for the next exhibition. After all, a work such as SIS was not meant to be stored under my bed; it's not easy finding an exhibition space that will give me 1000 square feet with power and suspending capabilities. Adding the difficulty that this work would ever be sold (to whom?), I often hear, "Thank you, but it doesn't fit our program". I've applied to a number of exhibition prospects in the US and abroad, and I think something's gonna give; the reaction when people see it is that they're rapt, and that's what's driving it.
Similar was when I walked into a gallery some months ago and saw Joel Shapiro's work at the Pace on 25th Street. Frozen in space were a series of rectangles--boxes and beams; nice to see that the gallery also exhibited a prototype--just as balanced, just as beautiful.
Another Thursday evening a few weeks later, I went to Moving Image, a huge exhibition employing light in various forms to create art pieces. Some were transmitted through monitors hanging from the ceiling of the cavernous warehouse, others were projected onto screens from projectors rigged to the iron beams of the Chelsea Tunnel.
Some of the content was innovative, and some predictable. However the sheer size of the place--and some of the works in it--were astounding and absorbing. There were some smaller rooms off the main space but the long gallery was the experience to behold.
In full contrast, a small group show in an apartment on Roosevelt Island featured "Game Over", an installation by Iris Xing. Upon looking at her bio, she's a student at my alma mater, the Photography and Related Media MFA program at SVA.
In a darkened bedroom of the apartment, the viewer is invited to project images suspended from the ceiling using the light on their smart phone. The images are of the closing slide of phone games--Game over--of which the artist is critical, commenting that lives nowadays are thrown away on the stupidity of electronic entertainment rather than using travel time more efficiently--even if used for reflection (enter Walker Evans' subway portrait series). Spent tapping away on a phone, buried in a crossword or in a mere trance, time lingered in transit is suspended animation. Moving while not; transformed into another being when deposited in another location, awakened in new surroundings.
BTW: What I didn't shoot myself I liberally borrowed fro the Internet and the MoMA Library.
Similar was when I walked into a gallery some months ago and saw Joel Shapiro's work at the Pace on 25th Street. Frozen in space were a series of rectangles--boxes and beams; nice to see that the gallery also exhibited a prototype--just as balanced, just as beautiful.
Another Thursday evening a few weeks later, I went to Moving Image, a huge exhibition employing light in various forms to create art pieces. Some were transmitted through monitors hanging from the ceiling of the cavernous warehouse, others were projected onto screens from projectors rigged to the iron beams of the Chelsea Tunnel.Some of the content was innovative, and some predictable. However the sheer size of the place--and some of the works in it--were astounding and absorbing. There were some smaller rooms off the main space but the long gallery was the experience to behold.In full contrast, a small group show in an apartment on Roosevelt Island featured "Game Over", an installation by Iris Xing. Upon looking at her bio, she's a student at my alma mater, the Photography and Related Media MFA program at SVA.
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In a darkened bedroom of the apartment, the viewer is invited to project images suspended from the ceiling using the light on their smart phone. The images are of the closing slide of phone games--Game over--of which the artist is critical, commenting that lives nowadays are thrown away on the stupidity of electronic entertainment rather than using travel time more efficiently--even if used for reflection (enter Walker Evans' subway portrait series). Spent tapping away on a phone, buried in a crossword or in a mere trance, time lingered in transit is suspended animation. Moving while not; transformed into another being when deposited in another location, awakened in new surroundings.
BTW: What I didn't shoot myself I liberally borrowed fro the Internet and the MoMA Library.
