the omnipresent force of darkness

“But the omnipresent force of darkness – whether it hovers threateningly, annihilates the background, or appears in shadowy splotches to sculpt her blunt arrangements of mundane household objects, furniture pieces, and cars – endows her work with its dramatic edge.”

source: Travis Jeppesen reviewing Ricarda Roggan @ German Bundestag, artforum.com

Art Baloney Collection #1

elevating the cultivation of their own skin cells

“Then there is a ‘theater-body,’ as described by the epistemologist Roberto Marchesini, that welcomes otherness, which flares up in a network of hybridized relationships, both on the symbolic level of performance, as in inthewrongplaceness, 2005–2009, by Kira O’Reilly, and on a phenomenological level, in works like Artists’ Skin Cultures, 1996–1997, by Art Orienté Objet, who elevate the cultivation of their own skin cells to the rank of artistic medium.”

source: Eugenio Viola reviewing “sk-interfaces” @ Casino Luxembourg, artforum.com

perhaps even shrouds or cerements

“Edges, whether sewn seams of clothing or the borders between triptychs, insinuate themselves as metaphors for the limits of thinking. They are ‘critical’ Kantian paintings in this sense, although ones concerned less with cognitive bounds than with the multidimensional cartographies of consciousness that lie between, that is, with painting spinning thoughts and their unraveling. The Derridean thread metaphor seems apt for an artist who so self-consciously plays with the tissue of the canvas and the warp and weft of timeworn linens, trawling spare threads across paint like errant lines of drawing. Sacks’s textiles also suggest the gauze of bandages, the wounds of body and time, perhaps even shrouds or cerements.”

source: Leora Maltz-Leca reviewing Peter Sacks @ Paul Rodgers / 9W, artforum.com

the complex meaning and motivations of our inferiority

“The intuitive processes of using emblematic imagery and the implications of dreams, as well as an exploration of the intermediary attributes of shamanistic beliefs filtered through everyday experiences, yield grounds for the artist to steer, unravel and exorcise the complex meaning and motivations of our inferiority.”

source: press release Min Kim @ ATM

Hitting the art baloney jackpot: Leora Maltz-Leca

“Paper gains mass and volume in Kirsten Hassenfeld’s exhibition of recent sculpture: It shimmers and swirls in the low-lit gallery at David Winton Bell, drawing the viewer into a luminescent world of alabaster baubles and dangling airy chains. [...] Hassenfeld toys with scale in this elaborate installation—lunar not only in its weightlessness and its spectral glow but also in its call to Dionysus and the gods of all paper party favors—inflating gems to the size of boulders and making cameos for a giant. Yet despite the nimbuslike aura summoned by both the work and its title (meaning, idiomatically, ‘to have one’s head in the clouds’), both beauty and lust circulate freely through this fantasy space of platinum light and paper diamonds. Hassenfeld’s enlarged bibelots speak to a grotesque desire for objects: as if a penumbra of insatiability––the dark side of the moon––lies just beyond the visible in these delicate, ethereal forms, whose ghostly silhouettes gesture to the elusiveness of possession.”

source: Leora Maltz-Leca reviewing Kirsten Hassenfeld @ Cade Tompkins Editions and Projects

multicolored broomsticks

“The combination of multicolored broomsticks fashioned into a fragment of a rug and reflected into a right-angled mirror re-creates a Smithsonesque non-site, though the site represented is that of the domestic sphere.”

source: Chelsea Weathers reviewing Greely Myatt @ Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

Amazing – A gallery press release we can believe in!

“Paintings of hats: alone, on heads, in still life, indoors and out – funny and serious.”

That’s it. Really. That’s the full press release. No, we’re not making it up: press release Judith Zeichner Parker @ Noho Gallery

struggling with both the ordinary and the immense issues of the day (aka the thinking contemporary artist’s burden)

“Co-mingled tropes suggest the conflict of the thinking contemporary artist struggling with both the ordinary and the immense issues of the day.”

source: press release Nicole Eisenman @ Leo Koenig Inc.

PS: We know it’s tough to be a thinking contemporary artist – but someone has to do it!

evading consistent rhythms and aligned harmonies (aka bridging a rift in the art-bullshit continuum)

“Evading consistent rhythms and aligned harmonies, the sound track also uses overdubbed voices that reference topics as disparate as ancient creation myths and twin-brother baseball players.”

source: Emily Weiner reviewing Matthew Ritchie @ Andrea Rosen Gallery, artforum.com

PS: If the art works in question, in the words of the reviewer, “elegantly bridge a rift in the art-science continuum”, then the review itself surely and elegantly bridges a rift in the art-bullshit continuum.

the epistemological and the psychological

“In this cacophonous family romance, Zanisnik’s sire and stand-in negotiates equally the epistemological and the psychological with bemused forbearance and grace.”

source: Joseph R. Wolin reviewing Bryan Zanisnik @ Sunday, artforum.com

We are not alone!

“Writing about fine art is an art in itself. Too often though, writers get away with murder by hiding behind art’s amorphous, subjective and intangible qualities to justify vague, contradictory and nonsensical writing. Call us old-fashioned but we believe writing should be legible and clear with a point.” write BlackLab (here)
If we may be blunt for just a second: Fuck, yeah!

nearly two tons of birdseed

“The recurrence of symbolism in Orozco’s work is fairly explicit in Turista, a photographic sequence depicting a bicycle wheel spinning through a vehicle graveyard, but also makes an appearance in Loop, an installation consisting of a living canary in a room occupied by nearly two tons of birdseed, underlining the disproportion between availability and necessity.”

source: Francesco Stocchi reviewing Ariel Orozco @ Federica Schiavo Gallery, artforum.com

a volley of determinate ‘play’

“He dramatizes the schism between art’s requisite sophistication and the quirky naivety of primary creative tools, and herein the paintings stage a volley of determinate ‘play’ against dense and developed adult practice.”

source: press release Greg Parma Smith @ Khastoo Gallery

slapdash, serene and lurid commingle

“Delicate and blunt, intricate and slapdash, serene and lurid commingle; painstaking ornamental elaboration turns into the impatient, sweeping gesture that would wipe the slate clean; abstract forms and spontaneous effects bump up against precisely rendered images, not without surprise but certainly without antagonism.”

source: Barry Schwabsky as quoted in press release Donna Moylan @ Michael Steinberg Fine Art

in his search for symbols and metaphors

“He employs the textured and improvisational qualities in his work, imbued with a poetic amalgam of abstraction and reality in his search for symbols and metaphors that explore ideas of spirituality, space and motion, expanding the boundaries of art and consciousness.”

source: press release Wosene Worke Kosrof @ Skoto Gallery

not to mention frozen inner thighs

“Her pratfall is defused by the viewer’s prolonged anticipation and becomes a memorial to inevitable defeat––not to mention frozen inner thighs.”

source: Glen Helfand reviewing Bessma Khalaf @ Steven Wolf Fine Arts, artforum.com

Criticism: Why postmodernism is bullshit

“‘postmodernism’ is bullshit for the following reason: Assume that the central tenet of postmodernism is that there is no such thing as truth or that the word ‘true’ is no more than a clever cover for whatever beliefs or attitudes are generally accepted in some culture (and that is accepted due to concealed coercion). The problem is this: If there is really no fact of the matter as to what is true and someone may become conscious of this, then there can be no honest speech and no lying; this is because, as [Harry] Frankfurt holds [in "On Bullshit"], assertion and lying is characterised by aiming to say what is true and aiming to say what is not true, respectively. Being fully aware that there is no truth either way, no-one can honestly assert anything (or lie) at all; without truth, assertion looses its goal. All that can remain of speech, if there is no truth, is bullshit or pretending to assert (although just pretending to assert would require at least the idea of truth and truthful assertion to remain, itself a tension in the postmodernist’s position on truth).” – Ben Kotzee

all in a seemingly never-ending recombination

“His work simultaneously suggests the not-quite- finished, the in-transition, the nearly-emerging, the slowly-evolving, the near-end, and the move-toward-erasure – all in a seemingly never-ending recombination.”

source: press release Franklin Evans @ Sue Scott Gallery

something elusive, irretrievable and sacrificed to the past

“The images of familiar yet unknown and unidentified settings create a visually intertwined narrative as a means to explore a wistful and uneasy yet lyrical nostalgia for something elusive, irretrievable and sacrificed to the past.”

source: press release Tina Hejtmanek @ Blackston

slippery tableaus that frankly investigate

“Best known for his vertiginous sculptures made from found and collaged wood furniture, Robinson’s work explores issues of race, politics, and aesthetic formalism all through an incisive eye and with a keen sense of humor. In addition to his sculpture, Robinson works with photographs, video, and drawings to frame slippery tableaus that frankly investigate the construct of race and cultural vernacular while simultaneously rejecting any reductive interpretation. This conceptual rigor and intellectual stubbornness underscore a larger conversation about art and artifact — a central concern to the artist and one that frames his interest in the freighted psychology of history and the study of semiotics.”

source: press release Marc Andre Robinson @ Tina Kim Gallery

Americana, natural phenomena, cosmology, etc. etc. etc

“Suggestions of subject matter – Americana, natural phenomena, cosmology, weather maps, calligraphy and the primordial – seem to blend at junctures, becoming traces of their former selves.”

source: press release Kylie Heidenheimer @ 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel

symbolically a cleansing

“The Charmin’ series, mainly landscapes made of woven and faux-woven bands of silk made to look like toilet paper, is symbolically a cleansing, dressing as well as an adjusting of the country as both geographical and aesthetically re-imagined place.”

source: press release Andre Juste and Vladimir Cybil Charlier @ Skoto Gallery

halting halfway across the page

“Afro Margin One, 2004, feels tentative, its vascular array of lines revealing marine forms and topographic perspective but halting halfway across the page.”

source: Ian Bourland reviewing Chris Ofili @ David Zwirner, artforum.com

not to mention the nails

“Despite the air of Oldenburgian Pop lent by the scale of the sewn pieces, not to mention the nails, the overall effect remains far more abstract than representational, far more playful than social realist, far more Richard Tuttle than Dorothea Lange.”

source: Joseph R. Wolin reviewing Rachel Foullon @ Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, artforum.com

bubble, pool, and crackle

“Stripes, squares, and circles spray-painted with varying levels of intensity are allowed to bubble, pool, and crackle, yet their aphoristic titles, taken from Situationist-inspired street graffiti, deflect further formal analysis onto the realm of the social and the historical.”

source: Claudine Ise reviewing Philip von Zweck @ Threewalls, artforum.com

the taut pull between surface and skin

“Ruins manifest narrative in their decrepitude: how much their present form differs from what had once been pristine and new. Perhaps the narrative then resides in that gap and in the taut pull between surface and skin.”

James Glisson reviewing Melanie Schiff @ Kavi Gupta Gallery, artforum.com

the experience of duration and repetition, beyond the humor

“The work sustains a tension that goes beyond the experience of duration and repetition, beyond the humor, fear, anxiety, or lust of witnessing sexual performances: it is a tension inherent in male desire and the abiding fictions that seek to both define and sublimate it.”

source: press release Sterling Ruby’s The Masturbators @ Foxy Production

tummy folds humorously anthropomorphize

“Rise, 2009, a mattress bent upright at the waist and meticulously inlaid with rows of glittering glass tile, stunningly conflates a cushioned heft with a hard, faceted surface. Bulging tummy folds humorously anthropomorphize the tilt of its slouching posture.”

source: Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer reviewing Ry Rocklen @ Parker Jones, artforum.com

ruminations on the creation and destruction of the world

“Finally, scenes of cloud-like forms in anthropomorphic configurations, enlivened by vivid chromatic shading and animated crosshatching, speak to the cosmic mysteries depicted by Gustave Dore and William Blake in their respective ruminations on the creation and destruction of the world.”

source: press release Richard Wright @ Gagosian

the oppositional austerity of Arte Povera

“In the sequel “Monochrome Age,” he offers a synthesis of modernism thoroughly subsumed together with the oppositional austerity of Arte Povera through his use of color (monochrome) and the specular power of reflective surfaces (chrome) as derivated from humble materials.”

source: press release Anselm Reyle @ Gagosian

a circular jumble of large-scale Mikado sticks

“Jota Castro, who curated the project, also contributes with Shanghai 2, 2009, a circular jumble of large-scale Mikado sticks, whose warlike qualities encapsulate his curatorial endeavor.”

source: Miguel Amado reviewing “The Fear Society—Pabellón de la Urgencia” @ Arsenale Novissimo, artforum.com

know-how in the face of great tragedy

“Surrounding the video are a series of cobbled-together objects—a bench for viewing, a plastic palm tree sheltered from a blowing fan by a Plexiglas sheet, a mechanical sculpture in which a panel of fake grass rises to a peak and then falls with a crushing bang—that together evince a survivor’s optimism and know-how in the face of great tragedy.”

source: Annie Buckley reviewing Neïl Beloufa @ Chung King Project, artforum.com

Criticism: On Bullshit

“The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides [...] is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it. [...] When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all [...] except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” – Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit, p. 55f., our emphasis

something like Lolcatz viewed on an iPhone while riding in a maglev train

“To apply this dialectic to contemporary terms, the thesis = eternal youth, antithesis = totalitarian enslavement and synthesis = something like Lolcatz viewed on an iPhone while riding in a maglev train, which Google notes when advertising some Lolcatz mousepads.”

source: IMG MGMT: Hubris/Nemesis/Whatever, published by Aftfagcity

another “wonderful” example of Obvious intellectual bullshit that makes very little (if any) sense

question the skin we are in

“In the space of the exhibition, Deodorant Types form a peculiar landscape of vertical bodies, crouching and prostrate figures, some of which are placed directly on the floor and others atop pedestals – together they create new discourse [sic!] and, as curator Eric C. Shiner states, forces [sic!] us to ‘question the skin we are in.’”

source: Osang Gwon @ Arario Gallery

the transformative spiritual power of wildly colored enclosures

“Made from birch ply and stacked blocks of multi-colored glass, the model has been made anew to reflect Taut’s belief in translucency (not transparency) and the transformative spiritual power of wildly colored enclosures.”

source: press release Josiah McElheny @ Andrea Rosen Gallery

our human susceptibility to the processes of time

“What was hidden is now revealed, and the empty space within his subjects speaks to their potential fullness. At the same time, that new vision brings with it an unsettling awareness of our own inner workings, our fundamental material essence, and ultimately, our human susceptibility to the processes of time.”

source: press release Steve Miller @ Robin Rice Gallery

Baloneyology: The Emperor’s New Clothes

Part 3: The Emperor’s New Clothes

We’re the first ones to admit this: This category is very much subjective. It’s our “you’ve go to be kidding me” category. Calling out bullshit that is trying to pass as art: A dog pissing on canvases that were layered with metal, which then corrodes (here).

If you disagree with any of the examples we find in this category, you need to explain why the Emperor is not naked. Good luck.

messianic distance, illusion and Ganzfeld perceptive sensations

“The term ‘cognitos’ plays on paradigmatic existential expression (cogito or consciousness) and more familiar cognition (going back to source, the product of these processes), integrated and grouped into a plural. This body of work then marks both a teleological endgame to the original textured abstractions (the last of the Howell panels), and the crescendo of a new discovery of planetary presence, both within and without. Each work teases out the in-betweens, to discover a ‘new’ experience or understanding hidden away in the peripheries of memory and recognized relationships. The Cognitos, with their reflective terrain of particularized built-up color and boundless perimeters, literally delineate a series of spatial events, to be exposed to physically in perspectival totality, through shifting daylight and passing time. And as much as their iconic quality reflects messianic distance, illusion and Ganzfeld perceptive sensations, the ebb and flow of personal and private knowledge perfectly grounds each moment into everyday reality. Here the cosmos mirror nature, vice-versa, and beyond; heterogenous self-examination pervades as we reenter our Platonic cave and beat out a shadow above the Minimal and Radical.”

source: press release June Wayne @ Khastoo Gallery

Baloneyology: Obvious intellectual bullshit that makes very little (if any) sense

Part 2: Obvious intellectual bullshit that makes very little (if any) sense.

Almost self-explanatory. See, for example, Edgar Martins’ recent “explanation” of why he lied to the New York Times: “However, whereas the fires (like many of the subtler constructions created for this commission) function as allegories – representing the metamorphosis that each and every reality undergoes every time it is observed (could this be another Romantic appropriation of Heisenberg’s UP?) – the doubling/mirroring of certain images serves another function. Reality is fragmented, repeated and polarized. The doppelganger is introduced.”

This kind of art baloney is a spill-over from philosophy departments: Juggling with meaningless, yet grandiose sounding concepts. Mostly harmless when confined to philosophy departments, yet noxious when escaping.

Obvious intellectual bullshit that makes very little (if any) sense is very popular with some critics, because it sounds academic: you can wrap the most banal statements in layers and layers of grandiosity.

Baloneyology: Enumerations of all-encompassing, sometimes vague, and often even contradictory concepts

New feature: We call it “Baloneyology”. We will try to explain the different types of art baloney. Part 1: Enumerations of all-encompassing, sometimes vague, and often even contradictory concepts.

Let’s assume we have to describe a bunch of paintings that contain various, round shapes, plus dots. “various, round shapes, plus dots” does not sound very good. Make that “eyes, amoebae, and other more indeterminate biomorphic forms abound”. Better. But what does that all mean? It’s always good to talk about death – make that “a preoccupation with mortality”. Then scoop up some grandiose nouns: “enlightenment, solitude, nothingness”. And to cap it off, add “everything and nothing” to cover all possible bases, except you want to call it “the mysteries of the physical and metaphysical universe.”

So we get “Kusama’s recent figurative paintings, in which eyes, amoebae, and other more indeterminate biomorphic forms abound, reflect a preoccupation with mortality, as well as with enlightenment, solitude, nothingness, and the mysteries of the physical and metaphysical universe.” (which we posted here earlier)

dialectical tension between the banality of the shelf itself and its physical size

“‘Bookshelves’ is a 5-panel, life-size photograph of Feldmann’s own bookshelves at his home in Düsseldorf. As an artist renowned for using found and discarded objects of others, ‘Bookshelves’ is a rare look at the personal world of a voyeur through the looking glass. The dialectical tension between the banality of the shelf itself and its physical size becomes paramount, as there is a counterintuitive ruse in showing an everyday object shown at a grandiose scale. This idea, however, is unexpectedly met with the fact that the everyday object exists in actuality at the same size. Feldmann mocks photography’s promise of a replica of reality, as the obvious impossibility of browsing a fake library (even at life size) becomes an endearingly cruel gag.”

source: press release Feldmann @ 303 Gallery

Hitting the art baloney jackpot: João Ribas

“We have both come to think of hands as instruments of transcendence, the source of our entry into the symbolic.” – João Ribas’s letter to Zipora Fried, used in/as the press release of Fried @ On Stellar Rays

Devolution and evolution

“Devolution and evolution are wrapped into one, a common theme in Carter’s work.”

source: press release Carter @ Salon 94

there will be a light source dangling from a thin rod

“There will be a form resembling a black orb hanging from the gallery facade. It will blow in the breeze. Inside the gallery, there will be a light source dangling from a thin rod, moving around exactly the same way as the form outside. The sculpture is based on the phenomenon of entangled particles, two particles that, when separated from one another, continue to behave identically, even at a great distance. If you stimulate one, the other reacts too. It is as though they are supernaturally connected.”

source: press release Tauba Auerbach @ Deitch Projects (again!)

being both HERE and THERE at once

“Being HERE vs. Being THERE, and being both HERE and THERE at once.”

source: press release Tauba Auerbach @ Deitch Projects

PS: “In the marrying of two conflicting states, the work is also about the number 2, a concept that is inherent in the remote interdependence central to the sculptural works in the exhibition.”

notions of solidity and airiness, and of two and three dimensions

“In the thread drawing Land Line, 2009, Brody uses a measurement system based on her telephone number to display an algorithmic pattern that is tightly structured but physically vibrant. While not on a grid like the other works, the pushing and pulling of the thread through tiny holes creates a unique rhythmic pulse that recalls the abstract tones of minimalist musical composition-not to mention the actual look of a written score. The forms in three smaller thread drawings, stitched with grey and white, have similar shapes that are nearly mirror images of each other. The arcing interplay of positive and negative space suggests sky and ground and water, which evoke notions of solidity and airiness, and of two and three dimensions, that are an integral part of Brody’s art.”

source: press release Nancy Brooks Brody @ Virgil de Voldère Gallery – thanks to our reader for spotting this!

crushing layers of grandiloquent ­hokum

“Curators need to beware of claiming too much for the artists they present. Contemporary art is mysterious enough for many people without setting them up for ­disappointment. The weighty rhetoric supporting Jean Luc Mylayne’s show at the Parrish Art Museum is a case study in mismanaging this tricky game of expectations. [...] But I’ve long suspected that Mr. Mylayne’s high reputation depended as much on the ­romance of his life and his fluency in artspeak (his degree is in philosophy) as on the quality of his photographs. [...] Just because an artist gets high on his own inflated oratory is no reason a curator has to participate in a folie à deux. The museum here neither serves a public skeptical about the opacity of contemporary art nor does Mr. Mylayne any favors by framing his modest, if persistent, achievement under crushing layers of grandiloquent ­hokum.” – Richard Woodward

Stay tuned…

Oh, we know, the Summer has been slow, but the new season is upon us, so stay tuned for a lot of fresh baloney…