19 June 2009 to 15 Aug 2009
Gallery Hours :Tuesday - Saturday, 10am - 6pm
Marianne Boesky Gallery
509 West 24th Street
NY 10011
New York, NY
New York
North America
p: 1 212-680-9889
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f: 1 212-680-9897
w: www.marianneboeskygallery.com
YOUR GOLD TEETH II : Curated by Todd Levin Installation View Marianne Boesky Gallery, 2009
June 19 – August 15, 2009 Opening reception June 18, 2009 6-8pm
jãnis AVOTIŅŠ, jean-michel BASQUIAT, alexandra BIRCKEN, alighiero e. BOETTI, james CASTLE, joseph CORNELL, thea DJORDJADZE, leonardo DREW, robert ELFGEN, roe ETHRIDGE, peter FISCHLI/david WEISS, melissa GORDON, Rodney GRAHAM, hannah GREELY, rashawn GRIFFIN, françoise GROSSEN, david HAMMONS, jay HEIKES, mary HEILMANN, barkley l. HENDRICKS, diane ITTER, sergej JENSEN, titus KAPHAR, marvin LIPOFSKY, john MCQUEEN, ed MOULTHROP, bruce NAUMAN, cady NOLAND, william j. O'BRIEN, george OHR, demetrius OLIVER, yoko ONO, paul OUTERBRIDGE, steven PARRINO, ed ROSSBACH, sterling RUBY, anj SMITH, shinique SMITH, gert & uwe TOBIAS, rosemarie TROCKEL, peter VOULKOS, franz WEST, toots ZYNSKY
Curator Statement For three years, starting in 1961 (the year I was born), the English literary critic A. Alvarez prepared a series of programs for BBC radio on the intellectual scene in America called "Under Pressure." In these broadcasts, various writers commented on the need for artists to create their own language. This is an extract of what poet Robert Lowell said to Alvarez: "Some artists have impatience with the prosaic, everyday things of life, that sort of whimsical patience that other people may have…they leap for the sublime…what one finds wrong with culture is the monotony of the sublime…Art is always done with both your hands…the artist finds new life in it and almost sheds their outer life.."
Whilst relistening to, and reflecting upon these radio programs recently, it became sadly apparent that facile irony had become one of the dominant philosophical stances of the art world, and that perhaps the artists and artwork I chose for inclusion in Your Gold Teeth II simply had to lay in wait until the Oligarch decade was over. Any artist can hide for a long time in the wilds of their own irony, never rising above the vegetation. But hipness, in the illicit art world sense, feels suddenly puerile, meaningless, a sham, another way of simply buying into the system. One is sick to death of all the posturing.
In contrast, within this group exhibition one senses that boundaries are being tested, and rules of art conduct are being subverted – not subverted where craft is cast aside in favor of studied simplicity such as in the recent Whitney Biennial and Unmonumental exhibitions, but subverted by craft itself. On the contrary, there is a 'muchness' to a great deal of the work in this exhibition. When the cultural bar has recently been lowered to the point of absurdity, the only revenge worthy of the name comes from reestablishing standards lost to laziness and expediency, putting into sharp relief the dreck that surrounds it.
So much of what one sees today is one-sided. Either it is cold and calculated, with a minimum of feeling, or it is a sloppy slum of terrifying emotion. Somewhere in the labyrinth the artists in this exhibition have found individual answers to this balancing act. To give this 'answer' in words is approachable, but ultimately impossible. What is involved is the union of an idea with emotion, precomposition with improvisation, discipline with spontaneity.
These artists have an affinity for the controlled yet significant gesture, the performed essence, a result of concentrated internal selection from a vast repertoire of expressive options. This stripped down approach to craft often obscures a wider technical command than is immediately apparent. If you're looking for order, you will find it. But even when these artists systematically subvert themselves for the devious pleasure of it, they still maintain a level of control where they strange can be made familiar - and vice versa. By eschewing displays of obvious virtuosity, the artist gains the advantage of a kind of mystery.
A good jazz improviser can make one note do the job of many. Incomplete utterances can fully communicate an idea. Imply, don't state. Artwork doesn't have a necessary end goal. Ideas, rendered in these artists' distinctive lo-fi argot, feel aired out and simplified without being rendered trivial. A sense of satisfactory unsatisfaction remains. The artwork featured in Your Gold Teeth II is about the opening up of ideas and approaches, not the pin-point sharpening of them. - Todd Levin, June 2009
Marianne Boesky Gallery is located at 509 West 24th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Our summer hours are Monday to Friday from 10am to 6pm beginning June 23rd. For further information or images, please contact Annie Rana at 212.680.9889 or annie@marianneboeskygallery.com. Download PDF (79 K)
Paula Hayes Excerpts from the story of Planet Thear Project Space & Gallery Rooftop
June 19 – August 15, 2009 Opening reception June 18, 2009 6-8pm
Throughout the duration of the exhibition, there will be guided tours of the rooftop installation given daily at 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.
In her first exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery, in cooperation with Salon 94 and R 20th Century, sculptor and landscape designer Paula Hayes will present new works for the gallery's rooftop and project space. The rooftop installation, Marianne Boesky Gallery's first, will be a garden which includes Hayes' silicone vessels and soft planters of various shapes and sizes set amidst a landscape of drifts and mounds. The installation is composed of industrial and agricultural materials as well as a carefully composed planted environment. The malleable silicone pots, with their surreal foot-like shapes, in fact expand to accommodate root growth, their forms flowing to function. Her new soft planters and a large scale Garden Necklace both exhibited for the first time, are made from roof membrane material painted with reflective paint. The installation will also include Hayes' sculptural aluminum bird nest trees and an ethereal bird bath cast in acrylic.
In the project space will be an assemblage of Hayes' delicate hand-blown glass terrariums, the vessels ranging from tabletop sizes to new giant proportions close to five feet tall. Each presents a carefully constructed landscape in microcosmic view enclosed in the amorphous glass. These portable gardens necessitate human attention and interaction, integral to the survival of their interior gardens. Hayes has also created new crystal terrariums which explore the physical and metaphysical properties of the crystals they encase. These works are connected to lunar charts, being 'planted' during full and new moons and are meant to receive periodic sun and moon baths in order to remain linked to the cyclical lunar phases. For these terrariums, Hayes has added a double layer of glass to the orb's surface, which acts as a magnifier of light and visual enhancement of the crystals within. There will be a looping 5 minute animated film as well in the project space, created in collaboration with Teo Camporeale. The film serves as a dynamic poem, illuminating the concepts that Paula Hayes employs in her artistic practice and sheltered spaces.
Paula Hayes lives and works in New York. She received an MFA from Parsons School of Design, NY and has had solo exhibitions at Salon 94, New York; Galerie für Landschaftkunst, Hamburg; and Eigen + Art, Berlin. She will have a solo show at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College in 2010.
Special thanks to Jeanne Greenberg and R 20th Century.
Marianne Boesky Gallery is located at 509 West 24th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. Our summer hours are Monday to Friday from 10am to 6pm beginning June 23rd. For further information or images, please contact Annie Rana at 212.680.9889 or annie@marianneboeskygallery.com.
