an Interview with Neo Rauch
Two things are immediately apparent when you look at the art of Neo Rauch: his technical skills are virtuosic and the paintings are consistently enigmatic. Visually, there is much to see. The paintings and large drawings are activity-laden; every character in his compositions is doing something, the kind of work that moves objects around but to no evident purpose and with no apparent outcome. Structures get built, costumes are put on, men and women pay rapt attention to what they are doing. But for the viewer nothing adds up to anything that could be declared a readable narrative. Keep Reading
an Interview with Ross Bleckner
Ross Bleckner admits that the idea of beauty has always been a personal fascination, and the result of his compelling interest is the production of bodies of work that aspire towards and achieve the condition of the radiant and the sublime. At the core of his expression is a profound affirmation of the human spirit, and one of its deepest manifestations is a spiritual dimension that has little to do with conventional religiosity and everything to do with an unwavering humanist epistemology. His most recent exhibition, “Ross Bleckner: Pharmaceutria” at Petzel in New York, included 15 paintings, all large oils on linen, that, taken together, are a measure of where he sees himself and the medium that has been his primary focus from the time he left CalArts with his MFA in hand in 1973 and returned to New York. Keep Reading
The Various Arts of Wangechi Mutu
A successful collage is synthetic, its disparate component parts adhering as a rational whole. It would be impossible to imagine any other configuration of its diverse elements, recombinant and now perfect. Wangechi Mutu’s luscious, fantastical, multivalent, clamouring collage works hang together as intense composites— evidence of mind wrestling with matter. Prodigious, complex visual presentations, what they are not is static or fixed. Not one is a lullaby to sleep by. Keep Reading
An Interview with Rebecca Belmore
Rebecca Belmore is among the most compelling and mesmerizing performance artists working anywhere in contemporary art. But “performance” is too limited and maybe even misleading a term. What she does when she performs is to embody a state of mind. She resists words like “ritual” and “ceremony” to describe her actions. What engages her is the time it takes to work through an idea, and nothing mediates the concentration necessary to achieve that purpose. Keep Reading
Carolee Schneeman Remembers James Tenney
The painter, performance artist and filmmaker Carolee Schneemann met composer James Tenney in New York in 1955 and they maintained contact with one another until his death in 2006. Their relationship was especially intense in the mid-’60s, during which time they collaborated in a number of ways; in Fuses their lovemaking formed the core of a film that remains an enduring expression of both art and love; Tenney created the sound collages for Viet Flakes, 1965, and Snows, 1970, and performed in the New York production of Meat Joy, 1964, Schneemann’s orgiastic celebration of the expressive body. Keep Reading
An interview with Mel Bochner
I can’t begin this introduction to our interview with Mel Bochner by saying, “What interests me about his work is …” because everything about his work interests me. What I’ll address in particular, however, is, for me, the Gordian knot, the conundrum of his repeated assertion that “Language is not transparent.” The statement appeared first as a four-part work in 1969, bearing that phrase as its title. Keep Reading
An interview with Rosa Barba
Rosa Barba doesn’t settle. The Italian-born, Berlin-based artist is constantly shifting her way of thinking about the art she is making. She is primarily a filmmaker and sculptor, and her inclination is to see how much expansive pressure she can put on the formal confinements of the two disciplines. Keep Reading
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