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IFAcontemporary

Welcome!

Hello everyone! Welcome to the brand new website for the IFA’s Contemporary Art Consortium. We are so excited about this new publication, and we invite… Continue Reading Welcome!

Esteban Vicente’s Collages: On Display and In Discussion

Concrete Improvisations, Grey Art Gallery

The collage works of Esteban Vicente, the only Spanish-born member of New York’s Abstract Expressionists, take center stage at a current exhibition at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery and were the focus of an accompanying talk by Daniel Haxall held last week at the Institute of Fine Arts. Teaching at NYU and the New York Studio School, among other colleges and universities, and renting a studio on East Tenth Street, Vicente was a major player in the downtown art scene. On view at the Grey through March 26, Concrete Improvisations: Collages and Sculpture by Esteban Vicente literally and physically reinserts Vicente’s works into this scene. Curated by Lynn Gumpert, Edward J. Sullivan, and Ana Martínez de Aguilar, the exhibition and its programming are bringing deserved recognition to an influential artist. The curatorial team reintroduces Vicente to New York audiences through his collages and small-scale sculptures, and takes great care to communicate Vicente’s involvement in the development of Abstract Expressionism.

Christian Marclay’s The Clock

Christian Marclay’s The Clock at White Cube

“Somehow this suggests that the cinema offers an illusive or temporary escape from physical dissolution. The false immortality of the film gives the viewer an illusion of control over eternity – but ‘the superstars’ are fading.” – Robert Smithson

After having debuted last fall at White Cube in London to a torrent of critical acclaim and popular fanfare, Christian Marclay’s The Clock enjoyed no less flattering a response during its run at the Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea. Indeed, few works on view recently in New York have attracted such a degree of attention. Arriving at the gallery at about ten after two on a weekday afternoon during the last week the show was open, I had to wait in line for more than half an hour to be admitted. Apparently the lines grew to at least two or three times that long by the end of the week.

So what was all the fuss about? The work consists of a single-screen continuous 24-hour video montage composed of a vast array of movie clips, with source films ranging from yesterday’s Hollywood blockbusters to early- and mid-century foreign classics. The scene in each clip occurs at a distinct time of day, which is made known to the audience by a clock in the background, the dialogue, or some other means. Marclay presents these clips in such a way that the time in each corresponds to the actual time of day in which it appears on-screen. So, for example, when the clock in the background of a clip reads 2:30, it actually is 2:30, and the time in whatever clip comes up five minutes later will read 2:35. The work is thus, to a certain extent, exactly what the title says it is – a functioning clock – although not the kind one would want to live by, for its references to time are frequently somewhat hidden, encoded, or otherwise obscured.

3.3.11

Transparency in the market: can we have more of it… Art Industry Summit, Presented by The Art Newspaper in association with ADAA Thursday, March 3,… Continue Reading 3.3.11

Comment: Learning from Las Vegas

The following is adapted from a longer presentation by Brett Lazer at the IFA In-House Symposium on January 22, 2010.

Learning from Las Vegas and the Antinomy of the Postmodern Manifesto

Along with Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966), Learning from Las Vegas (1972) forms Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s classic articulation of a new path for architecture in the face of late Modernism. The basic assertion of the book is a turn towards the vernacular – not a vernacular of gables and dormers, nor Modernism’s industrial vernacular, but rather the commercial vernacular, with its apotheosis in the neon lights of the Las Vegas strip. Venturi and Scott Brown see the Modernist rejection of history, ornament, and denotative symbolism as irresponsible, empty, boring, and inappropriate. The expressionistic use of space and light that Modernism requires is incommensurate with the scale of American society, reformatted in recent years to the automobile and the highway. As Venturi puts it, “articulated architecture today is like a minuet in a discotheque.”[1] However, taking on Modernism is no easy task, requiring rhetorical contortions that call into question the very foundations of Venturi and Scott Brown’s project.

Found: Textile and Tradition

Photo: Matthew Septimus

For Sergej Jensen’s “first American museum survey,” MoMA PS1 has put on an exhibition of over twenty recent works that Jensen constructed with many types of fabric and colorants, from burlap to cashmere and chlorine bleach to acrylic paint. Most of Jensen’s textiles are found, and his use of them is analogous to his use of found conventions, as he interprets inherited modernist traditions through scavenged fabrics. This acknowledgment of disorder and process renders Jensen’s works moving in their honest exploration of fraying edges and uneven seams.

The 2008 piece Blessed presents this function most directly. Two pieces of cashmere are sewn together and pulled taut, unevenly stretching the warp and weft. At the single horizontal seam, which is neatly stitched, the irregular end of each piece is clearly visible through the thin textile. Fabric edges are usually hidden and tucked away—similar to folding the end of wrapping paper, hemming is a way to disguise the imperfect sides of cut or torn material. But here Jensen displays both realities simultaneously: the polished product and its unrefined components.

2.25.11

Installation Art: Who Cares? Screening of a new film produced by the Inside Installations project in Europe. 6:00 pm Friday, February 25, 2011 New York… Continue Reading 2.25.11

3.5.11

Gary Tinterow on Picasso Saturday, March 5, 11:00 am The Park Avenue Armory After the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum has the most… Continue Reading 3.5.11