Bare and Bitter Sleep

Changing of the Guard

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:01:21 GMT

Stuart Horodner with sledgehammer at the Contemporary. You're next, Donald Judd! Photo: CNN Speaking of stepping down, the word is out now that Kay Kallos is leaving the Contemporary effective pretty much immediately. Her last day will be Monday, July 7th and she'll be in Dallas that same week. Here's the Contemporary's statement, (phrased as a positive rather than a negative in good PR style):

Stuart Horodner...

Red All Over

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 02:06:52 GMT
Title Unknown, Salvador Diaz It's tough all over for newspapers these days, and at the AJC the hemorrhaging just won't stop. Managing editor Hank Klibanoff just...

People's Stuff

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:13:11 GMT
I haven't heard much from Dearraindrop lately, but four or five years ago, that quintet of Virginia-based artists rode the crest of the wave of so-called "bedroom shows" that took over the art world for a minute. Generally the idea seemed to be to gather up as much crap as you could, cram it anarchically into a single room, and then sit back and watch the sensory overload. And everyone from Cory Arcangel to Michael Velliquette to...

Just Do It

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:50:00 GMT
Containing = Hate, installation view, Allison Rentz, 2006. Photo: Stan Woodard. My sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Klages, once told us kids an apocryphal story about how circus elephants are trained. Apparently, when the elephant is a wee calf, the trainer ties a rope around its leg and tethers it to a stake in the ground. At that age, the elephant is smarter than it is strong, so it realizes that it cannot move beyond a given radius and sooner or later it stops trying to do so. Elephants have emotional memories as long and as strong as any other higher mammal, and this turns out to be their...

Move, You're Blocking His View

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:45:01 GMT
Rendering of Rem Koolhaas's design for Dubai Waterfront City to be built on 1.5 billion square feet of artificial island. Is that a giant web cam?, Every day I toss in the garbage half a dozen links to national and international art news stories that I want to say something about, but never find the time. But I can't let this one get by. According to Time's Richard Lacayo, Rem Koolhaas speaking at a the Van Alen Institute spoke of the problems of the contemporary museum last week. So what do you suppose he singled out as the chief evil bedeviling...

Forget Me Nots

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:06:31 GMT
I've heard good things about "The Wreathmaker," Richard Sudden's 2005 site-specific installation at Whitespace. I wish I had seen that one, because then I might feel better about "For the Waters of Lethe," Sudden's current multimedia installation in the same space. I won't do a comprehensive description of the show--Local Ephemera does an admirable job of that here--but I will point out a few highlights and sore thumbs. Everything in the show looks good. Sudden's precisely wrought kayak hulls (based on plans he and his brother had ordered in the late 60s) remind me of some of Robert Witherspoon's fabrication intensive sculpture. And a series of mixed...

Written on the Body

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:45:36 GMT
Darren Saravis's "Body/Text Project" at Composition Gallery fails on almost every front. The conceptually thin conceit of projecting texts onto the bodies of female models is the weakest excuse for turning women into passive objects since Vanessa Beecroft marched her stilettoed fembots into the Venice Biennale a decade ago. Although some of the projected texts are written by the models themselves, they are rendered unreadable and therefore serve as a mere prop to justify the act of making a nudie shot. The texts are an extraneous crutch that give the work the superficial whiff of conceptualism, but deliver...

Factory Farming

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:58:31 GMT
The Mattress Factory Loft's open studio tour took place in the midst of last weekend's heatwave and none of those studios has air conditioning. I sweated it out though, in the name of art, and actually saw some promising work. Above is Esteban Patino standing in front of a recently finished piece. He's still trying to assimilate the influences of Dali and Miro, but is coming up with some interesting work. work by Matt Griffith

Something Like a Party

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:57:37 GMT
Study for "Never Scared", 18" x 24", mixed media on digital print After recovering from the heat of the day at the Mattress Factory, I dropped by Fahamu Pecou's Something Like a Phenomenon at Vaknin. The theme was speakeasy and the dress code was strictly 1920s, Harlem Renaissance, flappers, and gin joints. The party was pure spectacle, and it was impossible not to get infected by it. A room-sensitive DJ and a string of alterna-hop vocalists kept the energy going through the night.

Stepping Out

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 13:25:30 GMT
PACE, detail, 4" x 6", digital prints I remember the shock to my system when I first decamped from New York City to Austin in early 1997. It was the first time in my adult life that I had ever lived in a pedestrian-hostile city with poor public transportation. And 110-degree heat. Three months in, it became clear that I either had to get a car or lead a radically different and slower kind of life. I chose the car. Artist Hadley...