Art Review

Am I looking at an image of a dress on the ground covered with leaves? Is it from a lover’s tryst, or is something more sinister going on, and why would I think that?

On the whole, media and society have turned darker and more aggressive as we’ve moved into the 21st century. Being besieged with nominally factual content has constrained us all to a different type of viewing, more of a true-crime voyeurism than ever -- inundated with reality or its simulacrum on television and computer screens on a daily basis, we wonder how we ended up here. When did we start needing to see unedited live-steamed reality of life’s most horrific moments? The true-crime program America’s Most Wanted premiered in 1988. I remember it well because I was studying video and art history for my undergraduate degree at Tufts -- it was hard to ignore the fact that a social boundary had been crossed when watching videos of real criminals being hunted down for horrible crimes, as well as listening to their victims and families reliving events for an audience hungry for only its most salacious details.

I have often wondered if contemporary American artists accept the idea of a "point" in their work as being at all legitimizing. Preferring the physical presence of the work to be its own witness. Perhaps it's the legacy of the "semiotexters" in colleges and art academia. Identifying and discrediting as they go forcing 'fabulists! Like David Humphrey to dance clear of any obvious "read".

Heide Hatry's show at Ubu Gallery is a series of portraits made from cremated ashes based on photographs of the deceased selected by family members or loved ones who have provided her with their ash remains. These are objects made in the spirit of the Consolatio, the ancient tradition of honoring the dead and consoling the mourners.

A Fine Line

"A Fine Line," the inaugural exhibition for the newly launched Gallery 100 New York, presents an amalgamation of the varied but related works of four international artists, who use straightforward natural materials with telling effect. The show curated by gallery director Michelle Loh, features Wang Huangsheng, Oliver Catté, Mahmoud Hamadani, and Alan Sonfist. An express emphasis on paper unites the installation; there is an aura of purity emanating from the white paper of the drawings on view that permeates the space. Color plays an important tandem role; hues glitter in conjunction with the brown cardboard works, and in the nature-based leaf piece entitled "Leaves Frozen in Time: Spring." The abstract drawings explore the essential delicacy of paper as it comingles with ink flowing irregularly over the surfaces, while the creative potential and durability of cardboard come sharply into focus in cityscapes that radiate urban exuberance. Traditional underpinnings resound through the exhibition; the use of ink, which is made from tree bark, is a medium used for millennia in Asian and Middle Eastern cultures.

In November I was at LICHTUNDFIRE joining in with the many artists and collectors for their first year celebration and it was exactly as I expected an event that showed the unity and support I stick around for in the New York art world. Oh have I surprised you?  Well yes, its hard to see it in the break neck virtual pace of todays self promoting internet everything but at one point there was a great deal of support amongst us all involving hard work with heavy with compassion and a physical presence out there among fellow contemporary dealers and the artists that they represented. This is what makes LICHTUNDFIRE unusual in the sense that it is a computer platform that attracts a community presence.

On occasion Linus Corragio resorts to commercial mores, such as with his motorcycle, "chopper," motif, and with his forgivably money making furniture. But, on the whole, he has an absolutely intuitive natural talent for design and composition as well as an artisan's tactile sense for material applied with abstract expressionist fluidity. 

Grafting To: Joohyun Kang

Gallery d'Arte presents "Grafting To: Joohyun Kang," an exhibition of wall works, paintings and ink drawings that display natural imagery imbued with mythological motifs, narrating tales which source the genesis of humanity, and our struggle to forge beauty and meaning in life despite inexorable odds. Paradoxically, the works sparkle with sequins and beads, materials that suggest inspiration from the fashion industry. It is as if the insights of fashion and art fuse to express an expanded statement. Although the artist has lived in the US for twenty years and received an MFA from a Korean University as well as from Pratt Institute, the forms in this body of work clearly originate in Korean culture. Kang taps various references including beautifully articulated knobby tree trunks and roots that comingle with domestic pagodas. Dragons, which are a Korean power symbol, chase each other in circular movements in an endless feud to establish dominance. These forms symbolize her experience of establishing herself in a demanding life in a new country.

The exhibition "Woman: Mother, Daughter, Wife, Friend," curated by Thalia Vrachopoulos, investigates the diversity and complexity of women’s multiple roles in their private and public lives as they confront societal constraints, requirements and misconceptions with their own strategies. The participating artists, George Pol. Ioannides, Orestes Kourakis, Lena Morfogeni, Dongyeoun Lee, Vangelis Rinas, Frandy Jean, Jason River and Helene Pavlopoulou, respond to the theme with images that resound with deep sincerity, sympathetic rendering, and uncliched, unbiased depictions. The eight international artists, who hail from Greece, Haiti, America and South Korea, bring their individual cultures into focus, bypassing the generic stereotypic impact of "globalization" in art. There is no trace of the usual gratuitous images of sexuality or abuse, ubiquitous when women’s issues arise. There are no nudes on view.

Bong Jung Kim

Bong Jung Kim is a Korean-born artist living in the New York City area. He is a skilled artist who merges discarded high-tech materials with pictures of black, blossom-like shapes that might be flowers, or more erotically, pubic hair or even female genitalia. His series is called “Addiction,” a problem with obsessively observing pornography that he candidly acknowledged in conversation. The electron parts he attaches, usually to the center of the flowers, also indicate addiction -- in this case our helpless dependence on high technology, the cyber world, and the Internet. Interestingly, the honesty with which Kim acknowledges his dependence on sex videos flies in the face of the traditional Korean culture, whose sexual probity is well known. But Kim is living and showing in America, where it is acceptable to express one’s desire openly. His "Addiction" series not only opens up a set of issues that for polite, middle class Korean society is more or less taboo, it also presents the predicament of a man overwhelmed by the open sexualization of culture, in a place where porn has become, more or less, a mainstream part of the American experience. Without judging the desire of the artist, we can contemplate the success of his paintings/assmblages, which are neither explicit nor hidden but take a middle ground, presenting openly the interface between sex and modern culture.

Currents In Photography comprises five adventurous artists in a thematic exhibition that explores the boundaries of photography; what a camera can do, or perhaps what the word photography even means. How far can one step outside of the box and still be in it? I needed to ask if Kaethe Kauffman's work was part of the exhibition, thoroughly confused as to whether it was a photograph at all. The work looks like collaged charcoal drawing on paper. Turns out charcoal drawing is employed along with several other techniques, photographed and reproduced by an inkjet printer, then worked back into again. The resulting mystical images are neither directly figurative nor abstract. Those leaning more towards abstraction still appear to be some thing -- perhaps visions experienced by the meditating figure pictured in the other works. His or her corporeal form is seated Buddha style surrounded by a shattered aura that bursts into monochromatic fragmentation. Paired with Ms. Kauffman in the placement of artworks, Bert G.F. Shankman's close up shots of flowers are plainly photographs, yet they strive toward ethereal, other worldly exotica -- like a shamanistic vision. Can art be both subtle and bold? It seems so.