MAY 2017 Modern Painters

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modernpainters MAY 2017

JOSHUA FERRIS SPRING FICTION

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NATALIE FRANK ON FAIRY TALES AND FASCISM

LOUISE LAWLER

A PORTFOLIO OF NEW WORK

Mira Dancy, Samuel Levi Jones, Mernet Larsen

THE COFFINS OF PAA JOE AND

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

OPENS JUNE 24TH 25 BROAD STREET KINDERHOOK NY

Dish 2016, oil on linen, 36 x 36 inches*

Linden Frederick night stories May 11 – June 30, 2017

f i f t e e n pa i n t i n g s a n d t h e s t o r i e s t h e y i n s p i r e d anthony doerr andre dubus iii louise erdrich j o s h ua f e r r i s

tess gerritsen l aw r e n c e k a s d a n l i ly k i n g dennis lehane

lois lowry a n n pat c h e t t lua n n e r i c e richard russo

elizabeth strout t e d t a l ly daniel woodrell

* This painting inspired a short story by Elizabeth Strout.

475 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022

(212) 355 – 4545

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CONTENTS

MAY 2 017

Mernet Larsen Committee, 2007. Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 36 x 68 in.

28 32

Spotlight

52

Supernatural spectrum

by Juliet Helmke

by Margaret Carrigan

Art History

61

by Rachel Corbett

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Mira Dancy

Samuel Levi Jones

Jasper Johns

Q&A Marta Minujín by Juliet Helmke

modernpainters

F R O M TO P : R O G E R PA L M E R ; LO U I S E L AW L E R A N D M E T R O P I C T U R E S , N E W YO R K

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Features

Showcase

modernpainters

Mernet Larsen On changing perspective

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Louise Lawler

80

Joshua Ferris

An exclusive portfolio

Comment 42

Magical Thinking Natalie Frank on the lessons of fairy tales

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Reviews Kat Larson’s otherworldly shamans, the preserved legacy of David Ireland, geometric abstraction in Regio Emilia, and more

New short fiction

MAY 2017

JOSHUA FERRIS NEW FICTION

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NATALIE FRANK ON FAIRY TALES AND FASCISM

LOUISE LAWLER

AN EXCLUSIVE PORTFOLIO

Mira Dancy, Samuel Levi-Jones, Mernet Larsen

ON THE COVER: Louise Lawler, Modern Painting, (adjusted to fit), distorted for the times, 2003/2017.

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#LAfriqueDesRoutes

www.quaibranly.fr

Exhibition 31 / 01 / 17 - 12 / 11 / 17

GREAT PATRON

m-ticket - FNAC Tick&Live - Fnac 0 892 684 694 (0,40 ¤/minute) www.fnac.com - Ticketmaster 0 892 390 100 (0,45 ¤/minute) www.ticketmaster.fr - Digitick 0 892 700 840 (0,45 ¤/minute) www.digitick.com Masque cimier © musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, DR

John Craxton Autumn Landscape with Hills, Spetse, 1946 Gouache on canvas 31.75 x 47.5 in.

BRITISH

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CONTENTS

MAY 2 017

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52

RIGHT:

BELOW:

Mira Dancy Psychic Fall Out, 2016. Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 80 in.

The installation of Marta Minujín’s original Parthenon of Books in 1983.

32 LEFT:

F R O M L E F T: C O L L E C T I O N B I L L K AT Z ; M A R TA M I N U J I N A R C H I V E ; A DA M R E I C H , M I R A DA N CY, A N D D E R E K E L L E R GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K

Jasper Johns Bread, 2012. Painted paper, lead, copper, wood, and epoxy.

Portfolio 17

Newsmaker

Reports 27

The intrepid Jessica Mitrani

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Biennial Iraqi art in Venice

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Books

Ins & Outs Your cheat sheet for art world news

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Curator’s Choice Mark Olivier Wahler

Departments 34

Biopic Julian Stanczak

109

Top Galleries

152

Last Laugh Dan Perjovschi

Cooking with William Wegman

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On Our Radar Julia Jacquette

Modern Painters, ISSN 0953-6698, is published monthly with combined Winter (December/ January/February), March/April, and June/July issues by LTB Media (U.K.) Ltd., an affiliate of BlouinArtinfo Corp, 80 Broad Street, Suite 606/607, New York, NY 10004. Vol. XXIX, No. 2. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER, Send address changes to: Fulco, Inc., Modern Painters, PO Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834-3000.

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This exhibition is made possible by Major support is provided by

The Leadership Committee for Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim is gratefully acknowledged for its generosity, with special thanks to Trustee Chairs Denise Saul and John Wilmerding, Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson, Bill and Donna Acquavella, Rowland Weinstein, Arnhold Foundation, Peter B. Brandt, Dorothy and Sidney Kohl, Mnuchin Gallery, Elizabeth R. Rea in honor of Michael M. Rea, Lyn M. Ross, Elliot and Nancy Wolk, and those who wish to remain anonymous. Funding is also provided by the William Talbott Hillman Foundation. Peggy Guggenheim at Art of This Century, New York, ca. 1942. Photo: AP Photos. Vasily Kandinsky, Composition 8 (Komposition 8), July 1923 (detail). Oil on canvas, 140 x 201 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift 37.262. © 2017 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Visionaries: Creating a Modern Guggenheim

More than 170 masterworks from the Guggenheim collection Through September 6 guggenheim.org/visionaries

VOLUME XXIX, NUMBER 2

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ABSENT FRIENDS

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Louise Lawler

Joshua Ferris

Mernet Larsen

Natalie Frank

Anna Tome

Since the 1970s, the work of Lawler has focused on the strategies of display that inform art’s reception and the way it changes meaning depending on the context in which it is presented, from museums and commercial galleries to private collections and auction houses. Lawler’s work has become pivotal in the development of new theories of representation and the field of institutional critique. A major exhibition, “Louise Lawler: Why Pictures Now,” opened at MOMA on April 30. Her exclusive portfolio for Modern Painters, beginning on page 70, showcases some of her newest work.

Ferris is the author of three novels: Then We Came to the End, 2007, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and Barnes & Noble Discover Award; The Unnamed, 2011; and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, 2014, which won the biannual International Dylan Thomas Prize. His collection of short stories, The Dinner Party, comes out this month. “Maniacs,” which appears on page 80, is included in “Night Stories,” an exhibition at New York’s Forum Gallery that brings together paintings by artist Linden Frederick and short fiction by 15 contemporary American writers.

Artist Larsen came to a turning point in her practice in 2000, when she began a series of wry, vertiginous paintings of deliberately artificial analogs of everyday life. On page 61, she discusses her spatial tactics and the sources for her geometric characters. Larsen’s work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum, Carnegie Mellon, LACMA, and the Walker Art Center, among other institutions around the world. A monograph on her work, with an essay by John Yau, was published by Damiani in 2013.

Frank is a New York–based painter who enjoys bringing literature to life through drawing. Her first book with fairy-tale scholar Jack Zipes, Tales of the Brothers Grimm: Drawings by Natalie Frank, 2015, accompanied her show at The Drawing Center that same year. Her most recent collaboration with Zipes, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, marks the first time she has made paintings that focus on men. On page 42, Frank reflects on this latest body of work in light of the current political climate in the U.S.

Writer and researcher Tome has contributed to The Brooklyn Rail, C Magazine, and Hyperallergic. She recently served as writer-inresidence at the CUE Art Foundation and Art21, and is currently a research fellow with the Hans Hofmann Trust and is working toward a masters in art history at Hunter College in New York. On page 100, Tome reviews a thematic installation of David Ireland’s works on view in the late artist’s historic residence in San Francisco.

“What else could I do?”

“My first look at Linden’s painting brought to mind an old shabby Tom Thumb around a bend on U.S. 1, and all the thieving we did there.”

“I wanted to paint old-fashioned narrative paintings while taking into consideration the insights from my more abstract paintings of the previous 30 years.”

“With the dangerous and inane rule of Trump’s administration, a dialogue examining the rise of authoritarianism— the subject of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice tales—couldn’t be more necessary.”

“I love to visit the conserved homes of artists whenever I am traveling. Being in the David Ireland house was exceptionally engaging and unique.”

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F R O M L E F T: LO U I S E L AW L E R ; B E O W U L F S H E E H A N ; M E R N E T L A R S E N ; R O B E R T B A N N AT; Z AC K GA R L I TO S

CONTRIBUTORS // MAY

SOEY MILK KIOKADA 기억하다

Nuri, oil on canvas, 40 x 30 (detail)

Opening Friday, May 26th, 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. through June 24th, 2017

® 505.995.9902 EVOKEcontemporary.com 877.995.9902 550 south guadalupe street santa fe new mexico 87501

PERSPECTIVE IN ART is about creating illusions. Vanishing points, horizon lines, low and high views all manipulate the way we see what’s in front of us. Politics—especially this year—is also an exercise in manipulation and illusion. It can cause distant dangers to suddenly seem near, and flat stereotypes to turn into threedimensional walls. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the artists featured in this issue, which we began planning shortly after President Trump took the oath of office, have turned overwhelmingly to themes related to perspective, truth, and the malleability of reality. In her essay on experimenting with perspective, the painter Mernet Larsen offers a subtle analogy to the recent presidential election. She discovered some years back that reversing the vanishing point—so that objects get bigger in the distance, rather than smaller—caused a disorienting yet familiar “psychological situation.” It reminded me of how some Americans, feeling overlooked in their own country—their “foreground”—this past election cycle, inflated far-off Others into big looming giants, perhaps in Mexico or the Middle East. The seminal Pictures Generation artist Louise Lawler took a more explicit political approach with the portfolio of new images presented in this issue. Like a spin doctor, she distorted a series of photographs into twisted versions of the originals, evoking our current landscape of “alternative facts.” Artist Natalie Frank discovers another allegory for authoritarianism in her new illustrated book, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, which demonstrates how women, people of color, and other oppressed groups might look to fairy tales to locate paths of resistance that are better suited to our new climate of fantastical news and magical thinking. Books of all kinds are crucial during times like these. That’s why we’ve highlighted two artists who each use them as their mediums, but to near opposite effect. Marta Minujín celebrates the democratizing power of knowledge by constructing a Parthenon of Books outside the Fridericianum during Documenta; Samuel Levi Jones, meanwhile, deconstructs books to expose how their histories have long excluded non-hegemonic and minority narratives. In every case, the artists in these pages challenge us to look at the world from different perspectives, a skill we need to practice now more than ever.

R ACHEL CORBETT, EDITOR IN CHIEF

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Mernet Larsen The Salad, 2013. Acrylic and mixed media on canvas, 69½ x 39½ in.

AT R I G H T: JA M E S C O H A N GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K

LETTER // MAY

TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS //

PORTFOLIO

Rossy De Palma performs Jessica Mitrani’s Traveling Lady at Florence Gould Hall, New York, for Crossing the Line Festival in 2014.

NEWSMAKER

S A S H A A R U T Y U N OVA

EXPLORERS CLUB WHEN A FRIEND suggested to artist Jessica Mitrani that she recruit Rossy De Palma— famed muse of Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar—to be the voiceover in her 2013 short film based on the sumptuous, sedentary life of the Catalan Countess of Güell, Mitrani laughed, thinking it was out of the question. “De Palma had been a hero of mine. I saw all the Almodóvar films,” she says. Yet, Mitrani, who hails from Colombia though she’s been based in New York City for almost two decades, was set on having a thick, Spanish-inflected female voice tell the story. So, she took a chance and reached out to De Palma. To Mitrani’s surprise, the actress readily agreed. It was while shooting in Mitrani’s studio that De Palma began poking around, discovering the another of the artist’s

inspirations: Nellie Bly, the renowned late19th-century American journalist who made a record-breaking trip around the world in just 72 days at the age of 25 with nothing but one dress, a specially designed coat, and a compact suitcase in which the biggest item was a jar of cold cream. Mitrani had already made a suite of work about Bly, including a series of collages and a chic, updated version of the journalist’s leather bag with myriad accoutrements for the modern woman. But she wasn’t done. “I kept thinking about her youth, her determination, her practicality,” Mitrani says. In the sparse collection of items Bly carried with her, the artist saw an issue that continues to vex women. “No matter how contemporary one is, you always face this question of how to put your femininity

somewhere—where to fit it in.” Mitrani wanted to expand her investigations to a film and a performance, and upon hearing of her plans, De Palma told her, “whatever you do, count me in.” The result is their collaborative project, Traveling Lady, which comes to Dallas on June 1 as part of the Soluna performance festival. Part film, part performance, the video is projected atop the experimental work’s live elements, including the dresses worn by De Palma, who acts in the feature role. Although Bly is the subject, ultimately it’s a contemporary tale “about the expectations put on women,” Mitrani says. About how, and where, women are permitted to go, and how they are supposed to look while going there— told by and through three powerhouse female explorers in their own right. —JULIET HELMKE

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PORTFOLIO // TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS LIFESTYLES

IN DECEMBER 2015, Josh Citarella and

Ultraviolet Production House 700 MONARCH magnetic levitation (Symmetry through imagination), 2017.

Brad Troemel started Ultraviolet Production House, an online store they run through Etsy, a peer-to-peer marketplace for artisanal and craft goods. Instead of creating work prior to listing it online, however, the artists merely mock-up finished products using composited images drawn from online stock photography. They don’t produce the physical work until a collector purchases it and, most of the time, the buyers must assemble the work themselves. The artists will debut a selection of new work—all recently purchased by one collector—at Detroit’s Bahamas Biennale gallery in their exhibition “Showroom,” opening May 27. They included the cost for their time and labor

to fabricate the final products in the sale of the works, which means they will be on site to manufacture the objects themselves—a first in their practice. By cutting out the middleman between artists and collectors— galleries—Citarella and Troemel are creating a market that better benefits artists. “Galleries can plan shows a year out and there’s no guarantee the work will sell even then. But my Fannie Mae bills show up every month,” says Troemel. For gallerists, too, the UV sale model could be convenient. “One of the hardest things about planning a show is shipping logistics,” explains Citarella. “With our work, it’s just a one-click order. The galleries could even mark up the price on it for re-sale without having to cut in the artist.” —MARGARET CARRIGAN

BIENNIAL

ON THE FRONT LINES Iraq’s past and present at the Venice Biennale THE WORD “ARCHAIC” suggests something old and fragile, both descriptions true of the status of Iraq today. The Baghdad-based Ruya Foundation chose “Archaic” as the title for the exhibition it commissioned in the Iraq Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, May 13 through November 26, which will showcase 40 ancient artifacts borrowed from the Iraqi Museum, paired with contemporary works by Iraqi artists. “The pairings aren’t direct ones necessarily, but the selection of the pieces cover the themes we have chosen for the commissions of the contemporary artists,” says Tamara Chalabi, cofounder of the Ruya Foundation and co-curator of the pavilion. “For example, there are several pieces that relate to sound and music from the artifacts that echo the work of Sherko Abbas, or that relate to water, which complement Nadine Hattom’s work.” The foundation also invited an outside perspective into the pavilion with the inclusion of a new commission by the Belgian-born, Mexico City–based artist Francis Alÿs. Alÿs visited Iraq twice in the past year, first in early 2016 to work with artists in refugee camps for an ongoing

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project called “Creativity for Survival,” and again in October, embedded during the Mosul campaign with a Kurdish battalion near the front line. “His work is a result of this trip, and a

meditation on the role of an artist at the front line of this important war on ISIS and on violence,” Chalabi says, “and the movement—exodus—of people from their homes, fleeing for safety.” —RACHEL CORBETT Ali Arkady The Land Beyond War, 2017. Photograph from photobook project.

F R O M TO P : U LT R AV I O L E T P R O D U C T I O N H O U S E , J O S H UA C I TA R E L L A A N D B R A D T R O E M E L ; A L I A R K A DY A N D T H E R U YA F O U N DAT I O N , B AG H DA D

GETTIN’ PAID

William Wegman with his dogs at home.

BOOKS

EAT YOUR VEGETABLES William Wegman’s Charoset Toast with Minced Apple, Concord Grape Juice, Poached Figs, Pecans, and Balsamic Drizzle

F R O M TO P : J U L I A S H E R M A N ; M I C H A E L R O S E N F E L D GA L L E R Y L LC , N E W YO R K

1¼ cups (125 g) pecan halves, finely chopped 2 teaspoons plus 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling Sea salt Juice of ½ lemon 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger Grated zest of 1 tangerine 1 crisp sweet apple such as Fuji or Gala, cored and minced Seeds from 3 green cardamom pods 4 dried Calimyrna figs, coarsely chopped 2 Medjool dates, coarsely chopped 6 tablespoons (90 ml) unsweetened Concord grape juice (not from concentrate), or Beaujolais wine 1 loaf miche (French sourdough) or your favorite bakery bread Ground cinnamon Fresh horseradish root, peeled and thinly shaved with a vegetable peeler Extra-fancy balsamic vinegar Freshly ground black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Spread the pecans on a baking sheet and toss with one teaspoon of the oil and a pinch of salt. Toast in the oven for eight to 10 minutes, until fragrant and toasty. Leave the oven on. 2. While the pecans are toasting, put the lemon juice into a large bowl and add the ginger and half of the tangerine zest. Add the apple and toss with the remaining tablespoon plus one teaspoon oil. 3. Add the pecans to the bowl and stir to combine. 4. Crush the cardamom seeds with a mortar and pestle into a coarse dust. In a small saucepan, combine the figs, dates, grape juice, and cardamom and cook over medium heat until the fruit has absorbed most of the liquid, five to seven minutes. Add to the apples and stir to combine. This recipe is one of many from Julia Sherman’s Salad For President: A Cookbook Inspired by Artists, a collection of conversations with contemporary artists and their favorite salad recipes, out this month from Abrams Books. ALL’S FAIR

A NEW WORLDVIEW Frieze NY shortens its schedule but sharpens focus FRIEZE NEW YORK returns to Randall’s Island

Barbara Chase-Riboud Bathers, 1969. Aluminum and silk, 80 x 120 x 11 in.

Park for its sixth stint May 5 through 7. This year’s edition will be a day shorter than previous iterations, which may be a relief to participating galleries who have noted the fair stays largely quiet outside of the VIP preview and opening day. Despite the shortened timeframe, Frieze NY will boast roughly the same number of galleries, as well as its usual three sections: Frame, for emerging galleries; the specially curated Focus portion that extends throughout the fair’s grounds; and an expanded Spotlight section for solo artist presentations. Toby Kamps, modern and contemporary art curator at Houston’s Menil

Collection, assumed direction of this year’s Spotlight, which he says will showcase significant artists from the 1960s to present day, along with many that haven’t necessarily been recognized within the art historical cannon. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, for instance, is showing sculptures by American author and artist Barbara Chase-Riboud, who has been better known in the U.S. for her literary work, and Fleisher/Ollman presents the work of the self-taught Cuban-American Modernist Felipe Jesus Consalvos. According to Kamps, “This part of the fair offers a rare opportunity for collectors and visitors to see work by established artists whose careers maybe deserve more attention.” —ASHLEY PETRAS

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PORTFOLIO // TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS ON OUR RADAR

PLAYING WITH PERCEPTION The allure of advertising

Julia Jacquette The Mouths of Four Gorgons, 2014. Oil on linen, 48 x 48 in.

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hyperrealistic paintings is recognizable yet unplaceable. Often drawn from commonplace magazine ads and brand catalogs, the artist zooms in on a specific detail from her source material before magnifying it to near abstraction: the edge of an ear, a sparkling cascade of necklaces, a close-up of floating glitter. It doesn’t matter what’s being promoted in these ads—at this macro scale, all that’s left is an aura of opulence so familiar that you realize you’ve already been sold. “Unrequited and Acts of Play,” a survey of Jacquette’s work now on view at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, dives head first into the artist’s propensity for upsized iconography. The exhibition—which will remain on view through July 2 before an abbreviated version of it travels to the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in September—features two site-specific commissioned murals, each 12 by 16 feet, which greet visitors as they enter the galleries. With the help of six Hamilton College students, Jacquette rendered the pristine, sparkling waves of a pool scene in a J. Crew catalog and a Secrets resort ad, respectively, at near pool-size dimensions. The result is an immersive introduction to the mid-career artist’s oeuvre. “Over the past 50 years, advertising has largely been the medium by which we learn

MODERN PAINTERS MAY 2017 BLOUINARTINFO.COM

beauty,” says Jacquette. “Art became kind of skeptical of beauty when it turned toward the abstract and conceptual.” In her obtuse representations of expertly evocative ads, the artist says that she is confessing to her own seduction. “In the critique I provide, I’m admitting my own defeat. I’m a sucker for these images. I find them beautiful.” The exhibition also features a selection of Jacquette’s gouaches, which often serve as studies for her larger works. “For me, demystifying how an artist works is really important,” says Tracy L. Adler, director of the Wellin Museum and curator of the show. “Julia has never exhibited her gouaches before, but I think showing these works illuminates her practice in a new way.” Also on view are several of the artist’s food paintings, which depict in grid form (à la a grocery store circular) idealized renderings of desserts, cuts of meat, and salads. The images are overlaid with text that expresses the artist’s inner fears and doubts about her work as if her vulnerability is the price of the everyday comestibles. Jacquette’s work is undeniably indebted to Pop art. It’s easy to draw formal allusions between her paintings and those of James Rosenquist or Andy Warhol. Yet the self-doubt and diffident humor she deploys adds another— perhaps distinctly feminine—layer of meaning to her work. “There is a mythical, perfect, unattainable existence that the media puts forth, often specially targeted at women,” says Jacquette. “I’m fascinated by my own relationship to it.” “She was one of just a few women doing this kind of work for a long time,” Adler says. “She pushes the overwhelmingly masculine vibe of Pop art through a feminist lens.” A second part of the exhibition showcases Jacquette’s childhood upbringing in graphic memoir form. A series of 60 gouaches on paper, “Playground of My Mind,” explores the adventure playgrounds of New York City in the 1960s and ’70s on which the artist grew up playing. Like her painting, the memoir—which was published by Prestell in conjunction with the exhibition’s opening—reflects upon the conflicted emotions and idealized aspects of the past; and how both our physical and media environments can indelibly alter our perception of the world. —MC

IN FOCUS

MAKE IT NEW IT’S COMMONLY BELIEVED that the word

Andrea Grützner Tanztee (tea dance), 2015. Pigment print, 23¾ x 31½ in.

“photography” was coined by Sir John Frederick William Herschel in a meeting of the Royal Society at Somerset House in 1839. It’s fitting, then, that the venue is also the home of Photo London, one of the largest photography-specific fairs in the world, some 175-plus years later. The fair returns to the historic Neoclassical compound located on the River Thames for its third edition this year, taking place from May 18 through 21. Despite the fair’s steady growth in status, the number of exhibitors has hovered around 80 each year because of the limited space. For the same reason, it has become more competitive: The fair’s curatorial committee, led by the former Christie’s director of photographs, Philippe Garner, turned down more than 70 applications this year. “We quite regularly get requests from people saying, ‘I don’t care, give me a corridor, give me a space next to the toilet, give me the janitorial closet,’” says fair co-founder Michael Benson. “And we just have to say, ‘No, sorry.’” The fair prioritizes newness, explicitly asking galleries not to propose work they’ve shown extensively—especially at other fairs—or prints of work that are well known. “What’s been interesting, because of this imperative, some galleries have said, ‘We don’t really have anything new, so we’ll take a back seat this year,’” says Benson. Traditionally, photography has had a complicated relationship to the market. Its ability to be printed and copied has limited it from bringing in the figures that painting, sculpture, and other “one-of-a-kind” commodities fetch on the market. “I think through the curatorial rigor and the education and programming we’re doing, we’re beginning to address this problem,” Benson says. —TAYLOR DAFOE

F R O M L E F T: S H I N J I OTA N I A N D J U L I A JAC Q U E T T E ; R O B E R T M O R AT GA L E R I E , B E R L I N

THE IMAGERY OF Julia Jacquette’s

CURATOR’S CHOICE

TRICKS OF THE TRADE Marc-Olivier Wahler looks to magic for museum inspiration FOR MARC-OLIVIER WAHLER , the new director of the Eli and Edyth Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, artists are like magicians: They transfigure normal objects into something that transcends their material reality. It comes as no surprise, then, that Wahler’s first exhibition at the Broad MSU, “The Transported Man,” which runs through October 22, is based on a 19th-century-era magic trick in which a man is teleported from one place to another. Wahler sat down with Modern Painters associate editor Taylor Dafoe to discuss the show, as well his progressive

beliefs about the role of art institutions today. Can you tell me more about your idea of the museum as software? The technological evolution of computer software is interesting: the way it freed itself from hardware—from something concrete—and obtained its own identity. From the beginning, museums have developed in the same way—as hardware, that is. We know museums must change in this day and age, and everyone is trying to figure out what the next step is. I’m interested in viewing the institution as software.

The hardware of the Broad—with its Zaha Hadid–designed building and identity as an institution built around a private collection—is relatively famous itself. It seems like it could be more difficult to distance yourself from the “hardware” here than at other institutions. Perhaps, but it’s a university museum. It’s not like a typical private institution where you have a board of trustees. It’s part of a research university: You’re expected to do research. You have the flexibility to take chances.

E AT P O M E G R A N AT E P H OTO G R A P H Y

How do you navigate the line between trying to reinvent the way we think about museums and maintaining the institution’s role as an educational resource for the community? I don’t see them as being mutually exclusive. Because the idea is to go beyond the museum, we can develop projects outside the hardware that are still within our identity. Part of the identity of the museum is about collaborating with scientists and different types of communities—architects, builders, wildlife departments, and so on—while also trying to give the art world something that goes beyond the simple object. Ultimately, we want to extend the reach of the institution.

Marc-Olivier Wahler, 2016.

How does the “Transported Man” exhibition embody these ideas? What’s central to the “Transported Man” is the notion of belief. As with any magic trick, art is a trick of the mind. The skill of the magician is to trick your brain. The artwork is not so far from that. For me, ultimately, it’s an exhibition on the ontology of the artwork: why an artwork is an artwork, how a normal object can be transfigured into art, etc. It’s a question of language. We’ve been struggling for a hundred years now, since the advent of the readymade, to explain it. I think now is a fantastic moment to explore what the artist has always wanted to do: to make us feel that an artwork is not only an object stuck in one pole or another. Like electricity, energy is created by going back and forth. If it’s stuck in one pole, you have nothing.

BLOUINARTINFO.COM MAY 2017 MODERN PAINTERS

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PORTFOLIO // TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS

OUT THERE

HOMEBODIES A rooftop becomes a stage at Storm King

Installation view of Heather Hart’s Western Oracle at the Seattle Museum of Art, 2013.

AS PART OF Storm King’s fifth-annual “Outlooks” series, which features a specially commissioned seasonal installation, artist Heather Hart will create a large-scale, interactive rooftop sculpture on the grounds of the Upstate New York art center. “I see the domestic rooftop as an interesting liminal space,” Hart explains. “It’s in between the ground and the sky, public and private, safety and danger.” Opening May 13, the structure will also double as a performance space that will play host to events, artist performances, and community discussions through midNovember. Hart’s work—which spans sculpture, drawing, and printmaking—

often addresses issues of history, spirituality, and collective identity. “I started looking into the African and Native American histories of the Hudson River Valley area and thought, how can we better visualize and support those populations now?” says Hart. “I want all of these intersections to have to do with home.” Also among the events hosted on the rooftop will be The Black Lunch Table, an ongoing collaboration since 2005 between Hart and University of North Carlolina assistant professor of art and artist Jina Valentine. The project expands the whitedominant history of contemporary art by including the testimonies of living, working African-American artists. —MC

HISTORY LESSONS

JOHN DUNKLEY MAY BE one of the most important Jamaican artists of the 20th century, yet he has been largely overlooked beyond the Caribbean. The Pérez Art Museum Miami, however, is mounting the first solo show of his work outside of Jamaica. Organized by PAMM associate curator Diana Nawi with the help of independent curator Nicole Smythe-Johnson, “Neither Day nor Night” is on view from May 26 through January 18, 2018. The exhibition features roughly 30 of Dunkley’s paintings as well as a selection of his figurative carved-wood and stone sculptures. “The exhibition speaks to his personal life, his aspirations, his previous travels, and his day-to-day life,” says Nawi. “Perhaps most importantly, it reflects the social realities of his day.” Born in Savanna-la-Mar, Jamaica in 1891, Dunkley spent his young adult life traveling in search of work. “Like many West Indian men of that time, Dunkley went to Panama to work on the canal, but also other parts of Central America to work in the banana trade,” explains Nawi. In 1926, he returned to Jamaica at the age of 35, where he took up work as a barber in Kingston, while painting and woodcarving on the side. A self-taught artist, Dunkley developed a style that was highly imaginative. His paintings feature dark, tropical landscapes filled with strange

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MODERN PAINTERS MAY 2017 BLOUINARTINFO.COM

John Dunkley Banana Planation, ca. 1945. Mixed media on plywood, 28 x 16½ in.

creatures and lush vegetation. They are at once familiar, enigmatic, and almost allegorical. “The work has this incredible ambiguity,” Nawi says. The artist also addressed the harsh political realities Jamaica faced in the early 20th century. According to art historian David Boxer, “Dunkley was unavoidably entangled in the inherent racism of his day, which in reality was a true apartheid.” Until 1962, the country remained under British colonial rule and a deep social divide permeated relations between native Jamaicans and the British. Dunkley’s Sandy Gully, 1940, a small wooden sculpture of a Jamaican man, embodies this sociopolitical schism: Countless families and farmers were displaced from the town of Sandy Gully and its surrounding area after Britain and the United States stationed air and naval bases there during World War II. “I think it’s increasingly important to spotlight geographically marginalized artists like Dunkley to show that critical cultural production happens in many places and under difficult circumstances,” Nawi says. “Museums have a responsibility to bring that critical perspective forward and to share it with their publics, as well as to continually work to expand the canon of art history.” —AP

F R O M TO P : AT T I L A B A R C H A ; N AT I O N A L GA L L E R Y O F JA M A I C A , K I N G S TO N

A JAMAICAN MODERNIST GETS HIS DUE

WHITNEY BIENNIAL

NOW ON VIEW THROUGH JUNE 11

Whitney Biennial 2017 is presented by

Major support is provided by

From top to bottom: Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Fall with Me for a Million Days (My Sweet Waterfall), 2016. Oil on canvas. Private collection; courtesy the artist and Mier Gallery, Los Angeles; Ulrike Müller, Some, 2017. Vitreous enamel on steel. Collection of the artist; courtesy the artist and Callicoon Fine Arts, New York; Sky Hopinka, still from Visions of an Island, 2016. Digital video, color, sound; 15 min. Courtesy the artist

Whitney Museum of American Art 99 Gansevoort Street whitney.org @whitneymuseum #WhitneyBiennial

AROUND THE WORLD

SYDNEY Brett Whiteley at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

BASEL Piero Golia at Kunsthaus Baselland April 28

LOS ANGELES Mai-Thu Perret at David Kordansky

May 19

WATER MILL, NEW YORK John Graham at the Parrish Art Museum

May 7

24 MODERN PAINTERS MAY 2017 BLOUINARTINFO.COM

NEW YORK Aaron Pexa at UrbanGlass

May 24

C LO C K W I S E F R O M TO P L E F T: W E N DY W H I T E L E Y A N D T H E A R T GA L L E R Y O F N E W S O U T H WA L E S , S Y D N E Y; LO U I S I A N A M U S E U M O F M O D E R N A R T, H U M L E B Æ K ; E R I C H KOYA M A , P I E R O G O L I A A N D GAG O S I A N GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K ; J O S H UA W H I T E ; A A R O N P E X A ; M A R E I K E TO C H A , M A I - T H U P E R R E T, A N D DAV I D KO R DA N S K Y GA L L E R Y, LO S A N G E L E S ; A D D I S O N GA L L E R Y O F A M E R I C A N A R T A N D P H I L L I P S AC A D E M Y, A N D OV E R , M A S S AC H U S E T T S

PORTFOLIO // TRENDS // SNEAK PEEKS // NEWSMAKERS HUMLEBÆK, DENMARK Tal R at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

May 20

May 5

LONDON Rory Pilgrim at Rowing April 28

TOKYO Akiko Kinugawa at Urano

C LO C K W I S E F R O M TO P L E F T: R O R Y P I LG R I M A N D R O W I N G, LO N D O N ; A K A H I R O I WA S A K I A N D U R A N O, TO K YO; GA L E R I E N I KO L AU S R U Z I C S K A , S A L Z B U R G; M A R I A N N E B O E S K Y GA L L E R Y, N E W YO R K ; D I C K I N S O N R E S E A R C H C E N T E R , M A N N I N G, N O R T H DA KOTA ; R O B C H U R M

May 20

AND DON’T MISS: New York: Collective Design Fair May 3–7 Frieze New York May 5–7

GLASGOW Rob Churm at Center for Contemporary Arts

SALZBURG Henrik Eiben at Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska

New York: 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair May 5–7

May 20

May 27

Newport Beach: California-Pacific Triennial May 6–September 3 Buenos Aires: Bienal de Performance May 12–June 4 57th Venice Biennale May 13–November 26 Wroclaw, Poland: WRO Media Art Biennale May 15–June 30

DENVER “The Western: An Epic in Art and Film,” including work by Albert Bierstadt (pictured), Sergio Leone, and Ed Ruscha at the Denver Art Museum

ARCO Lisbon May 18–21 Hong Kong: Affordable Art Fair May 19–21 Tokyo International Art Fair May 26–27

May 27

NEW YORK Jay Heikes at Marianne Boesky Gallery May 5 BLOUINARTINFO.COM MAY 2017 MODERN PAINTERS

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THE D R AWI N G CENTER

Exploratory Works: Drawings from the Department of Tropical Research Field Expeditions ON VIEW THROUGH JULY 16 3 5 W O O S T E R S T R E E T N YC 10 013 | 212 219 216 6 D R AW I N G C E N T E R . O R G H O U R S : W E D S – S U N 12 – 6 P M | T H U R S 12 – 8 P M @ D R AW I N G C E N T E R

CURATED BY

Mark Dion, Katherine McLeod, and Madeleine Thompson Else Bostelmann, Chiasmodon niger Stomach Contents (detail), Bermuda, 1931. Watercolor on paper. 11 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches (29 x 37 cm). Courtesy of the Wildlife Conservation Society Archives.

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