artforum.com / critics' picks 7/13/10 5:08 PM login register ADVERTISE BACK ISSUES CONTACT US SUBSCRIBE search ARTGUIDE DIARY PICKS NEWS IN PRINT FILM 500 WORDS VIDEO PREVIEWS TALKBACK A & E BOOKFORUM 中文版 CRITICS' PICKS San Francisco CURRENT PAST links New York Miriam Böhm RATIO 3 Pieter Hugo 1447 Stevenson Street Pablo Bronstein March 12–April 24 “Landscapes of Quarantine” Miriam Böhm’s first solo exhibition, “Inventory,” consists of Catherine Opie photographs of nondescript rectangular packages, mostly wrapped in brown paper and bubble wrap, which the artist “Beyond Participation: Hélio Oiticica and Neville has arranged, photographed, cut out, and rephotographed D’Almeida in New York” against vaguely bureaucratic backgrounds that evoke the “Your History Is Not Our doldrums of office cubicles. The resulting works are like History” Dutch still lifes reimagined in a UPS store. As the show’s Carol Bove title suggests, Böhm’s exacting vision is deployed as a Michel François critique of the art object: its reification and reduction into so Josh Kline and Anicka Yi many packages that are distributed via a myriad of avenues Jackie Gendel both old and new, including shippers, art handlers, dealers, galleries, museums, fairs, websites—in short, all the Walt Cassidy accoutrements of the ever-expanding art-world machine. “Solace” Adrian Paci As a grouping, Böhm’s photographs read as vanitas Meredith James paintings for the post-boom age, invoking Barthes’s critique Lynette Yiadom-Boakye of a world become object. In this sense, the work shares its “Nachleben” critical edge with Merlin Carpenter’s currency paintings (and “Who’s Afraid of even with Warhol’s dollars, for that matter), echoing neo- Ornament?” Marxist grumblings on the persistence of the (pristine) art Tom McGrath object. It’s somewhat of an irony, then, that Böhm’s works Miriam Böhm, Inventory VI, 2010, color Eirik Johnson are themselves so alluring. There is a strong painterly quality that emerges in perusal that renders each piece photograph, 27 1/2 x 20 3/5”. From the series Scott Teplin “Inventory,” 2010. Risham Syed unctuous and enigmatic. In a strange way, this is also the Dirk Braeckman and Bill work at its most affecting, as the photographic is haunted by Henson the history of painting. This is evident in the mannered arrangements and trompe l’oeil, with their Thomas Struth echoes of Flegel and van Beijeren, as well as German still lifes, and also through her play with Tamar Halpern perspective in the lure of those impossible spaces “behind.” Böhm’s is a poetic dissonance that stops short of pastiche, and it is here that the studied banality becomes tremulous, resonating with some of Liz Magic Laser the fundamentals of representation: the fallibility of perception, the rapture of the surface. It proves to “A Relative Expanse” be potent magic for such tidy little parcels. “Resurrectine” Alisha Kerlin — Franklin Melendez “Solid-State” Tucker Nichols PERMALINK TALKBACK (0 COMMENTS) E-MAIL PRINT Carolee Schneemann Nashashibi/Skaer David Goldblatt Los Angeles Libby Black Jack Pierson MARX & ZAVATTERO Stanya Kahn 77 Geary St., Second Floor Rachel Whiteread March 20–April 24 Dennis Oppenheim Economic crises have, thankfully, given artists a reason to Moris restyle the lens through which we view luxury brands. Even Macha Suzuki Takashi Murakami favored Zen over Louis Vuitton in recent Chris Martin work. Libby Black carved out a career during recent years Cayetano Ferrer tracking consumer aspiration by re-creating (or inventing) Michael Dopp designer-label objects—Chanel surfboards, an entire Kate Robin Rhode Spade boutique––from paper, hot glue, and acrylic paint, as “Las Vegas Studio: well as imperfectly redrawing well-selected fashion Images from the Archives magazine ads. Her niche might be called psychologically of Robert Venturi and charged DIY consumer satire, and her work reflects real Denise Scott Brown” desires and disappointments. It’s heartening to report that Alice Neel Black’s latest exhibition of sculpture, painting, and drawing http://artforum.com/picks/section=us&mode=past Page 1 of 21 artforum.com / critics' picks 7/13/10 5:08 PM Alice Neel Black’s latest exhibition of sculpture, painting, and drawing “Support Group” aptly limns a moment in which global consumers trendily Ginger Wolfe-Suarez downscale back to the land. Goyard Recyclable, 2009, for Andrew Lord example, is a modestly scaled gouache-on-paper depiction of a pricey handbag filled with organic veggies, while two San Francisco other works—one drawing, one sculpture––depict little Miriam Böhm garden shovels with monogrammed handles. It’s amazing Libby Black how the thought of soil cuts the glare of conspicuous “Group Show” consumption—as do reduced price points (see Vans Ewan Gibbs Shoebox, 2010). Libby Black, Me And Bobby McGee, 2010, Lucas Michael This time around, Black also reveals more personal sides of pencil on paper, 33 x 25". Rune Olsen consumer motivation. Forbidden Fruit Basket, 2010, is a Atlanta sculptural still life of zippered Hermès coin purses—Claes Oldenburg meets Carmen Miranda—but when seen in context with a series of gouaches of lesbian pulp novel covers (one titled Libby), desire “Substitute Teacher” is pinpointed, and superbly evoked, particularly in the pencil drawing Me and Bobby McGee, 2010, a Austin nude self-portrait of the artist as a bead-wearing Janis Joplin. That celebrity was an icon, and here she seems appropriated the way the Gap used a khaki-ed Steve McQueen in past advertisements. Black’s Katy Horan ownership of Joplin points to an investment more valuable than endorsement fees. “Desire” Ben Ruggiero — Glen Helfand Boston PERMALINK TALKBACK (0 COMMENTS) E-MAIL PRINT Gina Dawson Chicago “Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out” “Group Show” Jessica Labatte JACK HANLEY GALLERY Daniel Albrigo and 395/389 Valencia Street Genesis Breyer P-Orridge April 3–April 28 Cincinnati For the past two decades, dealer Jack Hanley has perhaps been the Bay Area’s unofficial goodwill art emissary. He has “Starburst: Color Photography in America: not only brought important contemporary artists to San 1970–1980” Francisco—back in the early 1990s he introduced Jack Pierson, Karen Kilimnik, Zoe Leonard, and others––but he Healdsburg has also done much to activate and to popularize, “Endgame” particularly at art fairs, a funky brand of Conceptualism emerging from the studios near his Mission District gallery. Houston The fact that Hanley is shuttering his West Coast operations The Yes Men to focus on his Watts Street space in New York is cause for “An Exhibition of reflection. Fittingly, the final exhibition in the San Francisco Proposals for a Socialist gallery focuses on recent works by nine artists who currently Colony” live and work in the neighborhood, or got their start in Emilie Halpern and Eric Hanley’s northern-California outpost. Zimmerman The group show is a modest but aesthetically cohesive Miami expression of Hanley’s adventuresome inclinations and JJ PEET hippie-utopian roots, which add a hearty rock-’n’-roll spirit and penchant for easily obtainable materials. Highlights New Orleans include pleasing geometric abstractions on found wood by Quintron and Miss Alicia McCarthy; a robotic tree sculpture by Kal Spelletich; an earthy, rust-hued Tauba Auerbach painting; and a Chris Johanson, Focus Your Energy Away Pussycat from There to Here Where It Is Better, 2010, collage depicting stalactites by Leslie Shows. Other Shawne Major acrylic and house paint on found wood, 32 x standouts include digital prints by Shaun O’Dell and the 21”. Portland palimpsest of a magazine-appropriated home interior by Ditch Projects Carter. Toshiko Okanoue Chris Johanson, though, sums up the show’s spirit best in one half of a diptych that includes a circular Natascha Snellman cutout, within which he has scrawled the title: Focus Your Energy Away from There to Here Where It Is David Shaner Better, 2010. Possibly made for the show, the piece, which also includes a second panel with an Providence exploding burst of color, makes a fitting sendoff to a city witnessing the departure of a dealer with similarly youthful verve. Carey Young — Glen Helfand San Antonio Alejandro Cesarco PERMALINK TALKBACK (0 COMMENTS) E-MAIL PRINT San Diego Ruben Ochoa Seattle Ewan Gibbs Elias Hansen SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART “Kurt” 151 Third Street January 16–June 27 http://artforum.com/picks/section=us&mode=past Page 2 of 21 artforum.com / critics' picks 7/13/10 5:08 PM Washington, DC January 16–June 27 The not-unfounded stereotype of northern-California fog is Mia Feuer well suited to Ewan Gibbs’s modestly scaled, labor-intensive Toronto graphite drawings, which previously depicted famous buildings and anonymous hotel rooms. This exhibition Marcel van Eeden comprises eighteen works, commissioned for SF MoMA on Vancouver the occasion of its seventy-fifth anniversary, and are titled as a group San Francisco, 2009. They show tourist views— B. Wurtz think snapshots from Flickr instead of postcard-perfect shots Mexico City of Coit Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge—that subvert image conventions through their conceptual strategies. Pedro Reyes Gibbs constructs his works through the repeated inscription Joachim Koester of a single mark. This method translates into thousands of “The Traveling Show” tiny slashes or circles, notations borrowed from knitting London patterns, which in turn form pale, monochromatic views of the streets of San Francisco. The British artist’s visual Ben Rivers tropes echo Photorealist strategies; the results look Markus Selg something like pint-size versions of early Chuck Close Nick Hornby works crossed with Robert Bechtle’s paintings of impassive “Unto This Last” Bay Area abodes. Paris Gibbs’s quietly demanding output reveals itself slowly—most Ewan Gibbs, San Francisco (detail), 2009, Pierre Malphettes emphatically in his wan rendering of the Transamerica graphite on paper, 11 11/16 x 8 1/4".