by Jonathan Beer

You are Nature is Brooklyn-based artist Greg Lindquist’s most recent body of work currently on view at Elizabeth Harris Gallery. It is comprised of over 15 paintings completed since 2011, as well as two site specific wall paintings.

Spiderweb (If it's raining, no one can see your tears.) Oil on Linen.16 x 24.5 inches. 2012. (Courtesy of the artist.)

In a departure from Lindquist’s earlier work, this show features pieces more decidedly about painterly exploration than his prior interest in smart picture making. While intellect is surely habitual concern for the artist, the hallmark of this show is his temporary suspension of that theoretical backdrop to find enjoyment and intrigue in the act of painting.
As I viewed Lindquist’s work at the opening I could not help but remember a 1964 interview between Larry Rivers and David Hockney. Rivers asked Hockney which was more important to picture making; making something beautiful or interesting. Hockney replied “‎Perhaps the most beautiful paintings are beautifully interesting.” In the case of Greg Lindquist’s work I believe this principle holds true.
We inhabit a world stuck between analog and digital and this dialectic has permeated visual culture, its effect seen for the past two decades throughout the contemporary art world. Judging by the paintings in the exhibition this is a concern for the artist. He deploys many conceptual devices within the paintings to access this. Photographic formatting and cropping reminiscent of television screens frames heavily textured scenes of minimalistic ruins. Typical suburban scenery fills crusty airplane television screens.

Sunburn. Oil on Linen. 22 x 48 inches. 2012. (Courtesy of the artist.)

Brave New World (For we are where we are not). Oil on Panel, 32 x 48 inches. 2012 (Courtesy of the artist.)

Degradation and decay have been central to Greg Lindquist’s work for over 5 years, beginning with depictions of vacant or abandoned urban environment. Since that time his images have become increasingly enigmatic and formally sophisticated but for the first time that sense of degradation and decay are married in his paint application. He is noticeably more open to let chance enter his painting process in a way that mimics the visual surprises found in decaying civilization. A myriad of textures activate the pictures:  few of the paintings have more sophisticated and considered surfaces harking of Peter Doig, while others resemble Hipstamatic photos. Is Lindquist winking at us by including a piece depicting an IPhone with an all too familiar cracked screen?

You Are Nature is not to be missed and is an exciting step forward in this artists unfolding career.

Greg Lindquist is currently represented by Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York.

Ali Banisadr in the studio.

Since Expressionism artists have used painting to confront the interior world, wrestling to create with what German artist Willi Baumeister called “the self-engendered vision.”  Like a prospector, an artist searches through layers of self-made bedrock and sediment, mining for a vein to follow. Many artists are enchanted by this parallel interior place, a zone where the fabric of reality is twisted and altered by the subconscious, intersected by memories and augmented by the imagination. It is a constantly shifting place, populated by things which have no name. There is no guidebook. A thorough investigation of the psychological is found in both abstract and representational work, from the disconcerting worlds of Yves Tanguy and Kay Sage to the imposing paintings of Milton Resnick and Mark Rothko. Somewhere between abstraction and figuration the psychological has re-emerged in the painterly fictions of Ali Banisadr.

Banisadr’s paintings have the allure of another world; their surface is inviting and mysterious, poised between the limits of understanding and the possibilities of the imagination. And they are clearly worlds; the shimmering marks coalesce as figures in landscapes, slipping between formed and formless, recalling the frenetic scenes of Breughel or Bosch. The paintings seem to transmit sound, as if each character was reciting his story at once. According to the artist, the key to opening up this other world lies in suspending his knowledge for as long as possible. In a recent visit to his studio he remarked that abstract painter Milton Resnick said “painting is about not knowing for as long as possible,” an idea that sustains his practice. We discussed how he enters this unknown:

“I always look for openings, the part of the painting that welcomes me, the part that calls me in. It could be anywhere, and I start from there. And then it becomes a dialogue. Narrative and composition become the dialogue – I put something here and then ask ‘how is it going to work with this thing over here?’ From there it just goes and goes. On a good day that’s how it is. You just start a conversation with the work and hope to disappear.”

Selection. Oil on Linen, 66 x 88 inches. 2011. (Courtesy of Gallerie Thaddaeus Ropac ©)

At first glance the glimmering surface of his paintings might not reflect his subject matter, which he says, “is based on three things: the history of myself, the history of our century, and the history of art. These things aren’t going to change much.” Yet those layers of paint evoke the denseness of history and speak to the simultaneous unfolding of events we witness in our interconnected world. Through technique, Banisadr infuses these layers with poetry that communicates far beyond his ideas, allowing the audience to find their own fiction in the picture.

His best works push beyond simple aesthetic delight, moving into a zone where the imagery becomes flexible in its meaning, giving the painting an ability to say many things to more people. “I don’t make things that have names. I don’t make identifiable things – like here’s a tree or a rock or a car, I just don’t make things that way. The painting doesn’t communicate to me that way, because its paint. As paint, it’s telling me different things and those things are unnamed things. When you have a dream, there’s visual stuff going on in your subconscious you can’t really get a hold of – you can’t weigh it down and say what it is; you can’t.”

Similar to dreams or hallucinations, threads of subconscious stories that emerge in one painting are often found in others. “While one piece is ending or even mid-way through, I start to think about what I want the next piece to be like. As one piece becomes something and finishes, I find the things that I’ve learned from that painting that I want to apply to the next painting.” When viewed together his paintings become epic sagas – color and form spill from each canvas, innumerable stories running together, endlessly separating and reforming.

Rock the Casbah (2). Oil on Linen, 36x30 inches. 2011. (Courtesy of Gallerie Thaddaeus Ropac ©)

Today’s media driven culture issues an endless stream of shallow imagery, cementing a trend of instant visual gratification. Painting maintains an upward trajectory through the detritus, asking for focus and contemplation from its audience. Ali Banisadr’s pictures declare that painting is very much alive, and proves that there are still certain things only paint can do. His work reinforces the endurance of the painted image, each picture announcing that uniqueness and imagination still fuel the human mind. As long as artists remain curious, art will always be a perpetual act of opening up.  We eagerly await the new worlds that will emerge in Banisadr’s work.

Ali Banisadr is represented by Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Europe.

http://www.ali-banisadr.com/

Quotes are taken from an interview with Ali Banisadr, Jon Beer and Lily Koto Olive at Ali Banisadr’s studio on December 10^th, 2011.

Forty Part Motet by Janet Cardiff, Installation at MoMA PS1

As an atheist, my list of religious experiences is rather short, comprised of events that had a profound effect and that I never could’ve anticipated. I now happily add Janet Cardiff’s ‘Forty Part Motet’ to the list.

It was by chance that I saw this work during a recent trip to PS1, MoMA’s contemporary art space. I was there with an artist friend to see a performance related to Anthology, an exhibition of work created by Clifford Owen, PS1’s artist-in-residence this past summer. With some time before the performance we made our way through the museum, moving through the September 11 exhibition currently occupying the entire second floor. Near its end, we found ourselves in a large room lined with windows, barren except for an oval of 40 freestanding speakers with a solitary bench in the center. Three or four other people populated the silence of the room, as we walked with unease between the speakers, unsure what to expect and puzzled by the faint whispers issuing from them.

In an instant the atmosphere of the room changed. Sound poured from the speakers and forty voices began to sing Janet Cardiff’s reworked version of ”Spem in Alium Nunquam habui,” a 16^th Century Latin choral piece composed by Thomas Tallis. Unknowingly we entered at the perfect time – the early afternoon light streamed in from the windows framing the ring of speakers; they in turn encircled four weight-bearing columns, forming a kind of altar around the solitary bench in the room. Within moments this sparse setting assumed the air of a cathedral. Positioned within the oval of speakers we were surrounded by voices; suddenly part of a fluid, undulating and surprisingly physical space of sound and emotion. As different parts of the chorus chimed in the sound jumped back and forth between speakers, building in intensity as it echoed around the room. The voices carried us as if on a wave coming into the shore, emotion building like the crest of a wave, and as all the voices come together you are slammed onto the shore, emotionally overwhelmed, powerless to resist being pulled back into the ocean of sound.
Each person in the room was transfixed with a strange kind of reverence — I stood enraptured, mouth agape as I glanced around to see the reactions of others. One woman sat down heavily on the bench, overcome, others walked among the speakers in a contemplative trance.
Each note reaffirmed the power and beauty of the 14 minute long piece. Upon its conclusion, we filed out slack-jawed and a little weightless, still reeling from the otherworldliness we’d unexpectedly encountered.
As we continued past the other pieces in the September 11 exhibition I began to understand the Forty Part Motet among the other work. Originally created in 2001 before the attacks, it has been installed in numerous other venues and it is now part of the permanent collection at National Gallery of Canada. Its strength is in its flexibility, changing meaning depending on its context. In its current iteration it provides a transcendent refuge amongst works that offer a more direct connection to the painful realities surrounding 9/11.

It is no secret that even a decade later September 11^th remains an extremely sensitive subject. This poses a challenge to any curator that endeavors to put together highly visible exhibition together based on the topic. Almost two-thirds of the artwork chosen by curator Peter Eleey was created before the attacks — a bold move that deftly avoids curatorial narrowness by excluding work directly addressing 9/11. He produces instead a sophisticated and thought provoking show incorporating work by 41 artists such as Christo, Barbara Kruger, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres. At first choosing such diverse work might seem questionable, but in fact it all speaks to larger ideas of chaos, tragedy and loss. Eleey places 9/11 in a larger context that encourages growth beyond the paralyzing events of that September morning. Perhaps this show can allow 9/11 pass gracefully into history, acknowledging that it will never be forgotten while allowing us to focus on the ways we remember it.

On a quiet Sunday morning a buzzing anticipation abounds as museum-goers descend en masse towards the cavernous entrance of the year’s most anticipated show. De Kooning: A Retrospective, on view at the Museum of Modern Art through January 9, has transformed MoMA’s 17,000 square foot sixth floor into a mecca for Willem de Kooning enthusiasts. Nearly 200 paintings occupy every wall, and span every period in the artists’ seven decade career, from his highly technical training at Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Technique to the last paintings of the 1980s.
The exhibition proceeds in a roughly chronological fashion, opening with two early paintings, Seated Man (1939) and Seated Woman (1940), which introduce de Kooning’s continuous journey between the tradition of figuration and avant-garde abstraction. The first room also displays two academic drawings completed as a student at the Rotterdam Academy, irrefutable evidence of the impressive facility he relied on throughout his life. From the onset of his career there are signs of an artist with an endlessly flexible imagination; de Kooning flirts with many styles and subjects, always moving between representation, abstraction, and formal play.

Overall his paintings are fraught with internal turbulence, each work a new battle in an endless war where de Kooning fights himself, vying for an advantageous position. Some pieces are a bloodbath, like the famous Pink Angels, a compulsively agonized-over portrait punctuated by a virtuosic command of his intention.  Incisive marks divide and subdivide its glowing golden surface; a surface that permits a glimpse of the tumultuous energy underneath.
The confident line work and aggressive paint handling that characterize a de Kooning belies the ‘slowness’ of his work, each piece is a tribute to the long read. Before William Kentridge or even Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning epitomized the archetypal Sisyphusian artist; pushing through many veils of experience in each piece. The quick glance does insult to the weight and history harbored within every work. Moments of quiet contemplation permeate the cacophony if given time, slowly revealing some of its secrets. An eye peeks through; a grimace materializes, Cheshire-cat like, smiling from some frightening dimension. As one gazes at the works they come alive, the echoes of de Kooning’s push-pull technique can be felt from across the room.
With each succeeding room the intensity of the exhibition mounts, adding more complexity the codex of de Kooning’s artistic vocabulary. Excavation (1960,) a landmark painting for the artist is given center stage. In the next room the ‘Woman’ period begins, and the exhibition walls resound with the manic and intense brushstrokes of Woman I (1950-52.) Deep emotion rises to the surface during this period, the pictures are worked and reworked, each more ferocious than the last. The glimmering colors from ‘Full Arm Sweep’ period are boldly enigmatic, abstract landscapes created after time spent in East Hampton. A few steps further and we are immersed in his next period, greeted by the slippery surfaces of paintings done in Long Island, like Woman, Sag Harbor (1964.) Here the new found landscape of Long Island melds with the figure, inextricably intertwined on the slick canvas. Larger, more erotic and frightening pieces hang slightly above the crowd, with the unflinching gaze of some half-demented deity.
As the exhibition nears its end the space formerly occupied with two dimensional works acquiesces to the bronze sculptures de Kooning experimented with between 1969 and 1978. During the same period his interests turned to lithography, creating over 20 works between 1970 and 1971, and incorporating his painter approach into the process.
1975 marked the artists’ return to painting, which he pursued until his death in 1997. Unpredictable as ever, de Kooning’s painting changes radically for the final time; the swirling and viscous paint of his previous work shifts into cleaner and more minimal compositions. The agonized pictures of earlier periods give way to graphic works of quiet majesty, and effortlessly beautiful line work reemerges. Harmonic color pairings show a gentler but equally focused de Kooning at work. Controversy surrounds these later pictures; in the 1980s de Kooning was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and critics have wondered whether the works were done by an artist still in possession of his identity or simply in possession of what remains after a lifetime of rigorous aesthetic and artistic exercise, the learned hand absent its master. No matter how faint, a glimmer of artist’s persistence shines from the depths of these works. Like his life, they are moving and light, lost yet determined.

Ozier Muhammad / The New York Times -- From left, works from 1989: “The United States Courts Are Partial to the Government,” “No Mandatory Patriotism” (center) and “The United States Government Destroys Art.”

Since 1971 Richard Serra has focused on large-scale drawings as an art form separate yet linked to the large site-specific sculpture he is known for. The Richard Serra Drawing Retrospective cohesively collects these 40 years of drawing into one exhibition for the first time. The works in the show offer a special insight into the artist’s thoughts and conceptual process, including pieces created in a variety of formats and materials. Much like his colleagues Sol Lewitt and Cy Twombly, Richard Serra confidently shows the unprecedented and unique results that arise when drawing, sculpture, and installation overlap. He reminds us that when mastered, elements of space, form, and material together can create a transcendent experience.
On a fundamental level Serra’s work deals with contradictory relationships. Light versus heavy, open versus closed, imposing versus inviting, black versus white. He doesn’t simply address these concepts, but pits them against each other. Like the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, Serra creates contradictory spaces that are bound by an inverse law of physics, pitting our preexisting knowledge of space against that of perception. In early Serra works, monolithic sculpture, whose steel structure implies its impenetrable and unyielding nature, is shown to be malleable and open. Serra’s drawings are no different in their resistance to logic. Here, Serra favors black oil stick on paper, imbuing the fragile paper with the qualities of steel. The drawings’ heavy, pitch black surfaces somehow creates space instead of swallowing it. They are not dissimilar from the removable rabbit hole in Bugs Bunny cartoons, creating the illusion of an abyss but alas are deceptively solid. Openness and obstruction build a tangible space that denies the possibility of comprehension. Serra’s work challenges our trusted conceptual foundations of spatial understanding, and by actively undermining our intuition about space Serra is free to manipulate it how he wants.

In the 18^th century the Sublime emerged in the philosophical treatises of Kant and Hegel, it was described as an encounter between the individual and the immense universe, a spiritual oneness with nature.  19^th Century artists Caspar David Friedrich and John Martin may have been some of the first to represent the search for the Sublime moment within their epic landscapes, juxtaposing a fearful humanity against a natural world that is both beautiful and indomitable. Clearly Friedrich and Martin depicted the concept of the sublime and while Serra grapples the actual thing. Instead of translating experience into a picture he attempts to create the experience within the work. Serra is not the first contemporary artist to reference a vision of the Sublime, Anselm Keiffer and James Turrell are other contemporary examples of artists who engage it in their own work. In the past Nature provided mankind with a singular spatial experience and its only outlet to the Sublime. Serra’s sculpture and drawing succeed in manufacturing an artificial portal to the Sublime. The physicality and subversion of standard spatial relationships in a site specific context constructs an interface for the public to access the Sublime. In this way the artist underscores the loss of connection to a Nature-based Sublime experience; showing that this man-made Sublime moment is just as effective.

Instrumental to the success of any artistic experience is the consideration of the viewer during creation. In that role, the viewer is immensely important in completing the intended experiential circuit of each piece. Departing from the innate cloistered relationship between onlooker and art, we are no longer just a witness but an indispensable part of Richard Serra’s work. Process-based art grants access to the artist’s investigations; towering torqued ellipses and cavernous drawings are physical documents of this contemplative journey. They exceed the standard experiential limitations of traditional artwork by enabling a closeness that is physical as well as emotional. Despite the fact that this axiom can be applied to all of Serra’s work, the drawings compound this intimacy. This actual interaction and its unavoidable distortion of standard spatial experience distill Serra’s intent. The physical object serves as a vessel or a conduit that must exist in order for the viewer, the drawing, and the environment to seamlessly meld together into a singular experience. In contrast to the immense presence of his sculptural work, the drawings are scaled to the body, enhancing their power to elude perception. We interact with a fossil of Serra’s Sublime moment, and we confront the Sublime through our contact with the work.

While artists are often expected to pander to the confusion of post-Modernism, making work that reflects a similar confusion, clarity can always be found within the oeuvre of Richard Serra. With grace and efficient articulation, Serra shows us that the possibility for transcendent experience is never lost.

Francis Alÿs. Untitled, from When Faith Moves Mountains. 2002. Color photograph. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of The Speyer Family Foundation, Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr., Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro, The Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf, and Committee on Media Funds. © 2011 Francis Alÿs

During the off season of the Chelsea galleries in New York, Art lovers from all parts flock to the lineup of summer exhibitions at the big museums. The program for this summer is nothing to scoff at – the Met boasts a Richard Serra Drawing Retrospective and Alexander McQueen exhibition that have museum-goers queuing up, while MoMA shows off Graphic Impulse, an impressive show of German Expressionism that has been a big hit. The hype from Graphic Impulse may pull attention away from another gem currently on view at MoMA; an exhibition entitled Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception.

The title of the show couldn’t be more appropriate. Alÿs’s work is indeed deceptive, presenting itself with the aura of being serious and relevant in a deadpan fashion but leaving you with a measure of skepticism about its sincerity. It is a puzzling yet provocative experience of artistic semantics that is not unlike an essay by the Post-modernist philosopher Jean Baudrillard.

Hailing from Belgium originally, Alÿs came to Mexico City in the 80’s as an architect seeking work after 1985 earthquake. His choice to reside in Mexico clearly left an impression on him as a young artist, exposure to ideas of crisis, provocation, satire, and social constructs formed the foundation of his conceptual practice. Known for working in a variety of formats, this survey features a mixture of drawings, small paintings, short films and projection installations done mostly after 1990. Walking into the exhibition the viewer is overloaded with work – there is no easing into Francis Alÿs.
Each room represents a different project, coupling the finished work with studies, notes and other studio ephemera.  Although trained as an architect, Alÿs thinks more like a conceptual video artist with illustrative tendencies. He constantly shows his hand by displaying the collaged preparatory drawings and removing the illusion of the final piece. It is a sacrifice that deftly reveals the fundamentally constructed nature of our society. That said there is no denying the elegance in some of his finished pieces.

One such example is When Faith Moves Mountains, one of the central pieces in the show. It is a film documenting a performance in which Alÿs recruited 500 volunteers to move an enormous sand dune in the Peruvian desert by shoveling in unison. In the same breath he succeeds in showing us the futility and existential meaninglessness that accompanies grand undertakings while tempering it with the authentic determination of the volunteers realizing his vision. He underscores this theme in another piece where he pushes a block of ice through the sweltering streets of Mexico City reducing it to a small ice cube. Weaving so many ideas into the fabric of his work it seems we will never truly know his agenda. Alÿs depends on the power of ambiguity; we are constantly questioning the meaning and interpretation of each piece. In Re-Enactments he carries a handgun in plain sight through the streets of Mexico City, until he is eventually arrested. As the film progresses, Alÿs repeats – or rather reenacts – the performance but with approval of the authorities. Is this the proverbial artistic sell-out or is Alÿs flaunting his role as artist? We are deceived again.

The work of Francis Alÿs is an interdisciplinary conversation spanning topics of irony, satire, futility, politics; each intriguing in their own right but its captivating power arises from the twisting narratives he creates with those themes.  The complexity and layering of information makes for a variety of readings, each just as mysterious and important as the other. He separates himself from other artists working with similar themes by not looking for Truth outright, but rather embodying the archetype of the Fool and exposing the world for what it is.