I like: The Tate Modern's Turbine Hall

I Like: The Juvet Landscape Hotel in Gudbrands, Norway

I Like: The Eames Case Study House #8

The Third Mind

A few weeks back I went to see the show 'The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia' at the Guggenheim.

Once inside the atrium, immediately to your right was the installation 'a circle of microphones clustered around a block of melting ice'. Paul Kos combined conceptual art and sound art when he conceived of this piece back in 1970. (...and it's wonderful.)

While the many microphones witnessed the silent act of solids turning into liquid, up above a quiet whoosh, occasional whirr, and sporadic chime emanated from Ann Hamilton's installation that wound its way up (and floated its way down) the solid structure of the rotunda's inside rails.

It's cliché, and everyone says it, but one of the fundamentally fantastic things about the Guggeheim is that you walk in a spiral--it's an opportunity for a curator to closely control your experience. Walking the path, you let everything unfold before you as you make your way up and around.   It was interesting to see the selected artists side-by-side (what are Georgia O'Keefe and Allen Ginsberg doing so close together?), and to see them in the context of their Asian influences.

 

The show was massive:  over 100 artists that included sound artists Lori Anderson and John Cage, writers and poets Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and conceptual artists Adrian Piper, Yoko Ono and Tehching Hsieh.  I'd never seen Teching Hsieh's work before, but his one-year performance was completely mesmerizing.  From April 11, 1980 to April 11, 1981 Hsieh performed a 

work where he punched a time clock every hour on the hour. In a hall off the rotunda-you could see his punch cards from that year's work--with each day's card accompanied by a daily self-portrait(more work of his can currently be seen at the MoMA).

I heard some complaints from friends about this show:  that it was impossible to see how the pieces were all interconnected, that it was an overload, a hodge-podge.  However, I really loved it.

Jenny Holzer

Whenever I feel like my name doesn't lend itself to being taken seriously, I should remind myself of Jenny Holzer. Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger hold a special place in my heart insomuch as they manage to take simple, idiomatic language and make it at times funny, profound and provocative.  Other artists that use language as their medium, such as Lawrence Wiener or the sometimes text-centric Ed Ruscha don't really get me all that excited, but Jenny Holzer does--and every time.

Last summer I saw Jenny's installation at MassMoCA, and yesterday at the Whitney I saw her latest show PROTECT PROTECT. If you remember her redacted US Government documents that she projected onto buildings in NYC back in 2005, then you'll get to see her expand on the themes of exposing use of torture, U.S. war crimes, secrecy, and semantics.  Part digital showcase of truisms and part venue to illuminate US policy & treatment of Iraqi prisoners--it's really not to be missed.

**Small footnote** Full Disclosure: One of Ed Ruscha's paintings, Brave Men Run In My Family (1983) that hangs in the main dining room of the Ivy at the Shore in Santa Monica, has made me giddy since about 1990. So, I guess he can get me a little excited.

Murakami at the Brooklyn Museum

Why is there a Louis Vuitton store in this museum?

Richard Serra Goes Vertical

Richard Serra's new show "Monumenta" has opened in Paris.

For the work housed within the Grand Palais, "Promenade", he has fashioned vertical sculptures to work specifically with this venue.

The sculptures within the palais are made out of Cor-Ten steel. They are each 56 feet high, 13 feet wide and 5/12 thick. They each weigh 73 tons. As the sun streams through the glassed ceiling, dancing shadows are cast across the gallery floor.

Outside, in the Tuileries garden, you can find "Clara, Clara" (named after his wife Clara). More in the vein of his classic curved steel work, he has placed two bowed pieces of steel forming a backwards and a forwards "C". Between them lies the tension of weight, while the human observer is impacted by the emptiness and shadow created by the shadow of these giants.

On June 7, in the Tuileries garden, Philip Glass will perform select pieces for the piano.   Perfect.

Here's a quick look around the hall (please forgive me, I'm a terrible camera-person):