With work by Alex Bag, Conrad Bakker, Brainstormers, Lizette Kabr� with Elmgreen & Dragset, Andrea Fraser & Jeff Preiss, David Hammons, Jason Irwin, Lee Lozano, James Mills, Elena Nemkova, Carl Pope, William Powhida, William Bryan Purcell, Mira Schor, and Amanda Trager. Guest curated by Sasha Archibald
Momenta Art is pleased to present Air Kissing: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art about the Art World, guest curated by Sasha Archibald. Air Kissing explores the double-bind faced by artists � who are forced to navigate their desire to work (and succeed) in a world they hold in low regard.
Using self-deprecation, humor, sharp criticism, and a deliberate mix of high culture with low, the artists in Air Kissing give voice to a number of legitimate grievances about the art world. Works in the exhibition by Andrea Fraser & Jeff Preiss, Elena Nemkova, and William Powhida take up artists� relationships with collectors; Mira Schor�s paintings compulsively document the lack of studio time for making work; Alex Bag�s video parodies the plight of young art students; and Conrad Bakker and William Bryan Purcell speak to the stratification of institutional funding, particularly the fact that struggling non-profit galleries rely on donations from emerging artists no more flush than the gallery. Carl Pope and Amanda Trager�s works each address the phenomena of art world fame, while the Brainstormers� graphs and charts make explicit continuing gender inequities in Chelsea gallery exhibitions. Commercial signage by James Mills bespeaks the frenzied art market, as does Jason Irwin�s minimalist cube turned racecar, as well as the behind-the-scenes work of art handlers. David Hammons takes a canonical monograph on Duchamp and rebinds it as the Bible, suggesting (among other things) the art world�s predilection for accepted dictums. And Lizette Kabr�s photographs of the opening celebrations of Elmgreen & Dragset�s Prada Marfa project � a Prada boutique in the Texas desert � poignantly capture the partygoers� isolation. This insularity highlights the art world�s biggest problem, a handicap that leaves it not only embarrassingly homogeneous, but unaware of its own narrow confines.
All irony aside, what�s to be done? The painter and conceptual artist Lee Lozano took this question seriously, beginning an art world boycott at the height of her fame in the late 60s that she continued for nearly thirty years. Lozano described the strike as �the hardest work I have ever done.� As the works in Air Kissing attest, staying in the New York art world isn�t easy either.
Sasha Archibald is a Brooklyn-based writer and curator. A graduate of New York University�s Museum Studies program and a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, she was an editor at Cabinet magazine for many years and is now assistant to the artist Fred Wilson, currently working on a collection of his writings.