Wishlist Wednesdays, II

Wishlist Wednesdays–I’m just going to go with it–Part Deux!

This week I’m totally obsessed with (ok, it’s been longer than a week) ceramics by Scott Duncan. 

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Fresco, Pompeii, ca. 70 ACE

Duncan, aka @ol_slamzee on Instagram, is a ceramicist, but again, woah, what an understatement. Are you familiar with the term, trompe l’oeil? Trompe l’oiel is a French term that literally translates to “fool the eye”. You’re actually probably more familiar with it than you think: any kind of optical illusion can fall under the umbrella of this term. Traditionally, it applies to the presence of said optical illusion in an artwork, often, using two-dimensional imagery to express a three-dimensional object. The muralists at Pompeii employed trompe l’oeil to depict believable, seemingly tangible, doorways and windows, bowls of fruit and naked nymphs, all on a flat, 2-D surface. 

Duncan is a sculptor who creates both functional objects and objet d’art (another fancy French term meaning “art objects”) out of ordinary clay that he imbues with all of the characteristics of cardboard. When I first happened upon his work, I thought I had found an amusing and surprisingly endearing take on cardboard-as-art-media, which was maybe, a commentary on the Capitalist culture in which we live or the cycle of disposability it requires. I was, and am still, thoroughly astonished by the fact that Duncan’s pieces are completely rendered of clay. The skill with which he is able to impersonate a cardboard box that once transported bananas to the grocery store in clay, replete with little snags and tears, staples and stickers, is extraordinary. The sculptures are mind-boggling in their attention to detail, humor, and personality–how could you not love that little banana dude (Rusty Banana)?!– and I am utterly enchanted. I cannot wait to add a piece to my collection, but for now, I’m content lusting after them and posting the occasional “🔥” in Duncan’s Insta comments. My advice, go do the same, his feed offers a literal treasure chest of truly remarkable work.

Scott Duncan, Rusty Banana | Image courtesy of the artist

Scott Duncan, Saturn Devouring His Son (After Goya), 2021 | Image courtesy of the artist

Scott Duncan, Face Ripper, 2020-2021 | Image courtesy of the artist

The Tattoo Bug

I have two small tattoos on the inside of my left wrist–both memorial pieces–but I want more. I got the first nearly 15 years ago, and I was struck, bitten by the tattoo bug, and I still want another. I am fascinated by the endless possibilities presented by the concept of skin as canvas, the intricacies tattoo artists can render on a seemingly unforgiving surface, the idea of carrying around my own, singular piece of artwork forever. I also cope with the near-constant onslaught of tattoos and tattoo imagery in my daily life: on the corner, about to cross the street is a woman with an actual garden painted from shoulder to fingertip, a man with an assembly of skulls and words and spiders and stars and pin-up girls across the flat of his bare back, a girl with gems and delicate chains flung over the expanse of her collarbone, and I can barely restrain the impulse to pull them near and trace my fingertips over the avenues of imagery on their skin. I am so curious and so affected by the beauty of their personal paintings. 

Linda Smith, Modern Aphrodite, 2014, Ceramic, 22 x 13 x 9.5 inches | Image courtesy of the artist

I am relieved to know that I am not alone in this fascination, that were she here in New York with me, Linda Smith would be standing there gawping at them, too. Perhaps more constructively, Linda uses members of the tattooed population as inspiration for her work, immortalizing them in ceramic and preserving the art on their bodies forever after. I love the aura and the attitude of this piece, Modern Aphrodite, a contemporary reinterpretation of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. That’s why it’s my Pick of the Week.

Once upon a time. . .

 . . I was kicked out of MoMA.

For those of you not familiar, the acronym MoMA stands for one of New York’s most revered contemporary art museums, the Museum of Modern Art. MoMA is truly one of the foremost institutions for contemporary art past, present, and future. It is home to one of the world’s most impressive permanent collections and to many, many exhibitions known for pushing boundaries, for championing artists, and for provoking thought and discussion. It’s also one of New York’s most crowded, suffocating, tourist-rife (I know, tourists make the world go ‘round, I know), blockbuster museums–in every sense of the word, does anyone remember their Tim Burton exhibition from a few years back?–in the world. As such, excursions to the museum must be carefully planned and strategized in order to maximize experience and minimize frustration. It is sometimes exhausting.

The Museum of Modern Art, 53rd street entrance | Image courtesy of MoMA

So, once upon a time I was kicked out.

Back when I was attending graduate school at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art we spent some time exploring artist intention. When an artist creates something, no matter how conceptual or polished or ambiguous, most, if not all artists, have an objective, an intention, as to how that piece is to be experienced. Some artists are very specific: “this painting is meant to evoke a feeling of awe, an experience of confusion, a sensation reminiscent of post-war America in South Dakota at 6:17pm.” Other artists prefer to leave interpretation entirely to their viewers, “there is no specific meaning attached to this piece, other than what you, a singular entity, experience of it.”

In December of 2009, Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, opened his first career-long retrospective at MoMA, no small feat. A solo exhibition at MoMA is a testament to an artist’s success, firmly cementing their place within the history of art. It is a platinum record, a spot on the New York Times’ bestseller list, an olympic gold medal. Orozco’s work varies widely, from sculpture and performative work, to painting and found object assembly. His self-titled exhibition included the sculpture Mobile Matrix (2006), a real skeleton of a massive gray whale, excavated from Guerrero Negro in Baja, California, which he then covered over in thousands of concentric penciled circles. The exhibition also included manipulated currency, plane tickets, envelopes and more embellished with gold leaf and egg tempera. It included found objects representing readymade sculpture.

Gabriel Orozco, Empty Shoebox, 1993, Installation view | Image courtesy of MoMA

One such readymade, Empty Shoebox (1993), is simply that. A plain, white, unadorned and unlabeled shoebox, sitting in its lid, open and on the floor. Perhaps the exhibition’s most innocuous object, the shoebox provoked more simultaneous ire and admiration than any other piece in the show. MoMA is not a free museum, it charges admission, and nothing enrages people more than the belief that they have paid for something that did not deliver, or perhaps, did not exist in the first place. Something that is unchallenging, in effect, something that is ordinary. I understand, I too have been “victim” to artwork and exhibitions that appear to me to be an utter waste; a waste of time, resources, and ultimately attention. I have walked out of shows wondering what it was I was supposed to come away with, wondering what the actual point was.

Before I had learned anything about Orozco and his work, I likely would have felt the same bewilderment and disappointment at this unremarkable object placed within a context that insists all of its objects are extraordinary. In studying Orozco, I came to understand that the object, this shoebox, was not the actual artwork. The shoebox served as a vehicle for the concept of the artwork. On view here in Orozco’s retrospective is his concept, which is to say that the shoebox is not art, in and of itself. The shoebox serves to highlight the tension between viewed and viewer. We often walk into galleries and museums expecting to see ancient artifacts encased in glass, so precious that even a breath from our pedestrian mouths might serve to destroy the piece ever after. The shoebox is exactly that ancient artifact’s opposite. In fact, in a number of lectures given and conversations had, Orozco has stated that the shoebox’s purpose is to create confusion, to be picked up and puzzled over, to be moved, to be kicked across the room, to be ignored. Its rather obvious placement in a gallery in MoMA makes it impossible to ignore–really, what the hell is that thing doing there, is this a joke?

This is all very well and good, but to get to the point, I kicked the shoebox.

As a kid I was taught the “One Finger Rule”. My parents assumed that if I touched something with one finger I could not break it. When we went to museums or other people’s homes or stores, any place a kid could cause destruction, my sister and I would be sternly informed that the “One Finger Rule” was in effect and if we disobeyed, we would suffer consequences. Needless to say, I often disobeyed. Fast forward many years later, I still disobey. I am an adult with a very serious touching-that-thing-there-in-front-of-me-that-I-should-not-touch problem. I am the reason that museums and galleries employ those implacable, immovable guards. I should point out that I am well aware of the damage that can be caused by touching–chemical reactions caused by the oils of a fingerprint, microscopic shifts in pigment caused by a deliberate breath of air, aura removed by my brazen refusal to give the artwork its space–and of course, I care. My career in the art world has also taught me how to flout the rules safely (if, indeed, such a thing can exist). I know better, but I know how to do it right.

Back to the shoebox.

Gabriel Orozco, Empty Shoebox, 1993, Cardboard shoebox | Image courtesy of MoMA

I read the transcript of one of those lectures Orozco had given in which he specifically tells his viewers to physically interact with his shoebox. In effect, Orozco had given me explicit permission to kick his shoebox. Walking into the exhibition and spying the shoebox felt like coming across an old familiar friend. “Shoebox! How are you?! It’s so great to see you!” I looked around the gallery for the usual “Do not Touch” signs and found that there were none. I tapped a guard on the shoulder and asked him if I might touch the shoebox and was instructed to, “read the sign”. I told him that there were no signs and asked him again. He again informed me to read the sign, which I again told him I could find no trace of. I asked him a third time if I could please touch the shoebox–by this point, his reluctance to answer the question should really have been answer enough for me, but I was being disagreeable and I admit it–and he did not answer me at all. I took this as my cue. I stepped back. I wound up. I soundly booted the box across the room. The aforementioned security guard appeared at my side and grabbed my upper arm and yanked me away from the box. He radioed to his other security guards, whom I assume radioed their superiors, while squeezing my arm and scolding me. I was indignant. “But I know that that is how the artist wants me to interact with his piece. SIR, I know this is what I’m supposed to do.” At this point, my entire class and several curious bystanders surrounded me and the flock of guards who were all furiously and alternately yelling at me and at each other. A classmate of mine, a former lawyer, began to try to defend me and my basic human rights by shouting legalese on top of the already rapidly escalating situation.

My story has already run much longer than it should have. I got carried away. Clearly, I got carried away–I was physically removed from the gallery and then from the museum by two security guards who each held one of my arms and unceremoniously escorted me outside. And that, friends, is how I got kicked out of out MoMA for “touching” the art.

Claes Oldenburg

I learned today that legendary sculptor, Claes Oldenburg, famous for his irreverence, his ability to subvert the mundane and elevate it, is an alumni of my high school. So is Nancy Reagan, by the way–I find the timing, like many moments in my life terribly, conveniently, coincidental.

I try to spend time each month wandering around New York's gallery neighborhoods to remain engaged with the goings on within, to scout for shows and talents that surprise me, to find artwork that speaks. Typically, I do not set an itinerary, I have no set plans, no specific places to be, I often happen on things, which is honestly the way I like to do things best.

Last week I happened upon Claes Oldenburg's Shelf Life at Pace Gallery. . . I know, I know, blockbuster artist, blockbuster gallery, how can one happen upon it, but I tend to keep my distance from blockbusters because I find that they offer little in the way of surprise. And I was surprised–surprised by how much I enjoyed the show and by the nostalgia that Oldenburg's shelf-sized assemblages awoke within me.

California Hallway, c. 1940 | Courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago

Growing up in Chicago I was fortunate to have had access to some of the world's foremost cultural institutions; chief among them the Art Institute of Chicago, which I insisted on visiting not because of the quality of the artwork therein, nor the importance of their private collection, but because of the Thorne Miniature Rooms. Hidden away by the educational resources room and the bathrooms is a collection of 68 miniature rooms built and decorated to represent a series of different interiors of homes from the Western world. 

The Thorne rooms kept me enthralled, no matter how many times I had been to see them, no matter how many minutes or hours I spent in their presence. I admit they still do today. I can recall pressing my nose to the glass behind which they were displayed to try and see into corners and behind doors, I could spend an entire day imagining the worlds contained within those tiny rooms–many of which are scarcely bigger than a foot in a half in any direction. 

Claes Oldenburg, Shelf Life Number 10, detail

I felt twinges of that old curiosity walking through Oldenburg's Shelf Life. I delighted in the cameos made by some of his most famous piece–a mini version of his iconic Floor Burger, a minute and sketched version of the apple core sculpture that lives at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, a palm-sized, monochrome homage to the slice of blueberry pie that once sat on New York's Metropolitan Museum's roof. I was thrilled by their presence, a direct reference to the power of nostalgia as a tool to reach out and touch viewers through the vehicle of personal experience. Not unlike a paintbrush, or a blob of clay, nostalgia is a media unto itself that is powerful enough to connect viewers of all hearts and minds. It sounds crazy; how does a piece of crumpled up paper made to resemble a hamburger make one feel nostalgic for childhood? I answer that it does not, not the object itself, not the paper, not the hamburger, no, but the unit as a whole. Oldenburg's venture into the small-scale, in opposition to his career-long exploration of the monumental, could be too referential to his past work to stand on its own. I believe however, that that is where Oldenburg's "genius" lies, in taking that chance, and in speaking to my 8 year old self, using the smallest of gestures.

Claes Oldenburg, Shelf Life Number 11, 2016-2017 | Mixed media, 20 x 29 x 12 inches

Water Double v. 1

The first thing that struck me about Roni Horn's Water Doubles was the near total silence that blanketed them. The stillness of the room and the stillness it seemed to require of its viewers. The atmosphere was reverential, as if I had happened upon ancient artifacts or hallowed talismans. The barrel-like Water Doubles cast a preternatural glow in an otherwise darkened room, they seemed to vibrate at a frequency just above hearing.

I hadn't bothered to read any of the accompanying exhibition materials so for a moment the illusion was complete. I was unsure whether or not the barrels held water or a clever facsimile as their name seemed to indicate. 

I have an almost irrepressible urge to touch. I always have. True story: touching the artwork has gotten me kicked out of MoMA (more on that later). So, encountering Horn's Water Doubles was an exercise in extreme and painful self-restraint. I felt an actual ache within me to tap the containers to see if the surface would move. The exhibition's environment (and the two guards assigned to yell at people like me) was such though that I had to subdue the impulse. I did, however, allow myself to lightly blow across the Double's "oculus" to see if I might disturb the surface. It did not.

Water or not, the forms themselves, simultaneously delicate and monumental, ethereal and wholly physical, spoke to the character of water itself, and the way we perceive it. I once read that one cubic foot of water weighs 62.5 pounds. The Water Doubles recalled the memory of watching the East river, loosed from its banks, as Hurricane Sandy surged through lower Manhattan and onto 14th street. At the time, the sight struck very real terror into me. The water no longer flowed in an orderly fashion from north to south, it was alive, behaving of its own accord, and roamed free. It poured itself wherever it pleased, flooding not only my apartment building's basement and first floor but those of thousands of other buildings, parks, enclosures, and shopping centers.

The comparison of that memory and my current experience of Horn's gorgeous receptacles was staggering. Akin to the experience of encountering a lion in the wild and a tame cat in a home. I was deeply aware of the havoc these silent giants could wreak if allowed to escape their confines. An awareness that awakened within me a distinct and palpable awe. Roni Horn indeed captured elements of the wild and of the tame, and in the process, imagined the sublime.

Desolation Row

Once upon a time, a cabin-full of girls set out on their first overnight camping trip. They were 11 and 12 and 13 years old, and crazed, and silly, and nervous, and a little wild. They hiked through the backwoods of Wisconsin, pausing to eat bagged lunches, take pee breaks, and dawdle. The day grew long, and the sun hot, the girls grew tired as their packs began weigh on them. With supplies and morale dwindling, a compass and a topographical map for guidance, they realized they were hopelessly and irredeemably lost. Apprehension prickled at the backs of their necks–perhaps they'd been wandering in circles, perhaps they were no longer in Wisconsin, perhaps they'd gotten lost before they'd ever really gotten started. Finally, out of the haze kicked up by their boots a clearing appeared beside which lay a blessed lake. Whooping and screaming with joy the girls threw off their packs and began to make camp, practicing their newly acquired outdoor skills. Some girls set to pitching tents, others to gathering water, while the final few began to lay out kindling and firewood for their campfire. Carefully constructing the Teepee wood-lay out of the abundance of dry woods and grasses around them they had forgotten their earlier trepidation, shucking it off with their backpacks. As the match was lit, a breeze began to blow, lifting the hair up off of their sweaty necks, and breathing vitality back into the ragged group. The breeze breathed vitality into the small and winking flame of the match, which in turn gave life to the campfire that would steal life from acres upon acres of forest surrounding it. Several moments passed, and several more–the girls could never know that the land they had decided to camp on was privately owned, they could never know that the forest they camped in was in the midst of one of its driest periods in 30 years, they could never know that they had mislaid their Teepee until they knew. The fire burst free from its bounds. It devoured the grasses and woods the girls had laid too large. The fire devoured, as if it could never be sated, the ground at the girls' feet, a tent, several backpacks, the clearing, and finally, 36-odd acres of protected Wisconsin forest. The girls tried to fight the fire; they tried to bring water from the lake, they tried to dump sand to suffocate it, one ran miles up the road to find a phone, they took sleeping bags, and tarps, and even the shirts they wore to the fire in a furious attempt to beat it back until it was clear there was nothing to do but stand back and gape in abject horror as the fire they had birthed consumed everything it touched. Some could not endure the sight and fell to their knees. Most cried. A few turned away and into the embraces offered up to each other. One–I–did not. I did not cry. I did not scream. I stood, trembling and soot-stained with my burned through t-shirt in my hands, and watched. 

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Roxy Paine, Oscillation (Replicant), 2010 | Photograph by Jeremy Liebman / James Cohan Gallery © Roxy Paine, courtesy of Whitehot Magazine

Although we were cleared of any culpability, after all, we were just children, left neglected and unattended by our chaperones, we were forced to return to the burn site twice more. While embers still smoldered, we were made to stand and look upon the destruction we had so carelessly wrought. I grieved for what seemed to me a nearly limitless loss.

I thought the feeling, in the nearly twenty intervening years, was a memory. One rarely revisited, and rarely contemplated. When I walked into Paul Kasmin Gallery on 10th avenue in Chelsea, and into Roxy Paine's Farewell Transmission I found myself a trembling, 12 year-old again. Divided into three separate spaces were three separate scenes, the most poignant of which was entitled Desolation Row (2017). In the vein of table-top architectural models and grade-school dioramas, Paine presented a scene of complete and utter decimation that resonated deeply within my 12 year-old's heart. Spread over 13' lay a forest, burned out and devoid of any trace of life.

Roxy Paine, Oscillation, 2010, detail

I was familiar with Paine's work, having interned at a gallery that hosted an exhibition of his some years back, where a swirling vortex of his "replicants" of mushrooms had been installed on a wall. As a lowly intern I was tasked with the privilege of sitting at reception, fielding questions from gallery goers, and, more often than not, castigating those who touched the uncannily life-like mushrooms sprouting from the wall. Paine is an enormously skilled craftsman, with the ability to transform inorganic materials into organic forms realistic enough to fool even the most astute observer. Indeed, I could hardly believe the mushrooms were made of polymers and paint until I held one in the palm of my hand. 

Roxy Paine's skill at recreating the natural world around us is the reason that Desolation Row delivered such a visceral blow to me as I entered the room in which it was displayed. I felt again, profoundly, the grief of having had a hand in similar, albeit real, destruction. Even though, weirdly, there was no smoke, no scent of char, nor any real consequence like those we had faced as campers. Glowing orange diodes strategically placed in felled trees gave the impression that the coals could be fanned and the fire could flare again at any moment. They frightened me. Paine's heartbreaking commentary on the perpetual struggle between man and nature, and man's drive to conquer the unconquerable left me breathless.