Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 12:42:07 -0400
Subject: Mob Rule Monthly Mailing:


>From: Mobruleny-AT-aol.com
>Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 11:43:46 EDT

>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Subject: Mob Rule Monthly Mailing:
>X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by is2.nyu.edu id LAA22702
>Status: U
>
>Mob 14: Art with a capital P
>
>This month=92s mob included Florence Lynch, gallerist; John Newsom, artist; Mark
>Giglio, artist; Michelle Lopez, artist; and was held at the ArtNation Projects
>space at the Downtown Art Exchange Show.
>
>-  Who saw Exploiting the Abstract at Feigen Contemporary?
>-  I made a list of the first thing that popped into my head for each
>work.
>-  Let=92s hear it.
>-  Fandra Chang, OK computer; Diana Cooper, too much like Fabian
>Marcaccio.
>-  No way.
>-  It=92s just the first thing that came to mind.  David Craven, blue
>figuration; Noel Dolla, cigars and alcohol; Dominique Figarella, cucumber
>sandwiches; Joanne Greenbaum, art school; George Herold, models and dioramas;
>James Hyde, it was all about the case; Shirley Kaneda, mishmash; Bill Komoski,
>gross.
>-  I loved that piece.
>-  ...Jonathan Lasker, rocks!
>-  yuck
>-  ...Judy Ledgerwood, quilts; Thomas Nozkowski, art school; Matthew Ritchie,
>puzzled; Mira Schor, Lilith, their tour; Alan Shields, clever;
>-  Alan Shields, he=92s from three generations ago.
>-  I should change my list from =93clever=94 to =93sixties guy.=94
>-  So he=92s just some burnt out painter.
>-  How about, Christopher Wool, get the fuck out of the gallery? Christopher
>Wool=92s show of a couple years ago at Luhring Augustine with the =93Get the Fuck
>Out of My House=94 work was some kind of pinnacle. It was like Prince with
>Purple Rain. He claimed so much territory with that work. Now He=92s back to
>canvas and he=92s ripping off Donald Baechler and it is so =93get the fuck out of
>the gallery.=94
>-  He has a moneyed constituency to whom he has to sell paintings.
>-  Just because you are becoming a millionaire painter doesn=92t mean you cannot
>be ballsy; he should be ruthless.
>-  It=92s the gallery.
>-  Maybe this stuff is great and I=92m just not seeing it. But the =93Get
>the Fuck Out of My House=94 work was so beyond seeing it.
>-  Or maybe it is commendable that he is leaving the other work behind. =93Get
>the Fuck Out of my House=94 felt end game.
>-  Anything, though, after two years, is decoration.
>-  We don=92t agree on half of these opinions.
>-  The Bill Komoski work stood out, it went beyond abstract. The abstract
>borders on boring.
>-  Diana Cooper and Bill Komoski are so lyrical and inventive, where as a lot
>of the others seem derivative. Their work has a playfulness.
>-  The way Diana Cooper uses non art materials does not get on my nerves like
>it might because she seems so involved.
>-  Her show at Postmasters was good.
>-  She is imaginative
>-  And lastly, Jessica Stockholder, creative...
>-  Boring. I think Jessica Stockholder needs a new vocabulary.
>-  This points to the whole argument about having to leave behind an
>established language and move on to the next level.
>-  Which brings us to the David Reed show at Max Protetch.
>-  Did you see the sheet that served as an explanation of the show?
>-  Is there an excuse?
>-  How long has he been doing the gel smear, since the 80=92s?
>-  It doesn=92t matter. It was cool but he should have let the plant
>rise. The plant was rising but then it got stuck and now it=92s going down.
>-  David Reed=92s paintings are an ingrown plant.
>-  That=92s quotable.
>-  But now he is using Las Vegas and the video idea to update his work.
>-  That wasn=92t an idea. That was promotion.
>-  Jonathan Lasker comes out on top from that group.
>-  Has anyone seen the LA painting show at Deitch? Each one looked like a part
>of a Lari Pittman painting, and if you put them all together, you would have
>one Lari Pittman work. The amount of influence he has on LA artists is
>amazing. It is like Schnabel in NY in the 80=92s.
>-  Did you see that same thing in the show?
>-  It struck me how architecturally bound the LA artists are.
>-  Most group shows have too much information.  That show could have had half
>the work.
>-  It is like the Pop Surrealism show at the Aldrich.  Too much
>information.
>-  The 3rd floor, wipe it out.
>-  The same argument applies to the show at Feigen.
>-  Kaneda could have stuck with one of the categories she presented in her
>curatorial essay and that would have been enough.
>-  I don=92t know why Shirley Kaneda keeps painting. She is such a fan. She
>should stick to the writing; she does it well.
>-  I saw that she had put herself in the show and I went =93ugh.=94
>-  What do you think about curators putting themselves in their own shows?
>-  You shouldn=92t put yourself in your own show, ever.
>-  The only one that can do it is Kenny Schachter. I think he can organize it,
>write about it, promote it, put himself
>in it, and it is great.
>
>-  What about the Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler show at Metro Pictures?
>-  Oh, that was good.
>-  The show involved their history at Cal Arts and, in that, had
>something to do with disorder.
>-  I think Oursler is more direct on his own.
>-  It was a nice exercise, but none of this work seemed great like some of
>their own individual work can.
>-  The parallel show in SoHo (at Lehman Maupin) had some nuggets, some good
>ideas, but it was coy.
>-  Kelley should have put more shit in the show. He should have shit on those
>videos and put Van Halen stickers on them and cruised.
>-  Perhaps.
>-  I think the idea of trying to revisit their past work and ideas didn=92t make
>for a great art exhibition, but it made for a great project. I=92m really glad
>they did it.
>-  The problem with art shows in general is that they are so fucking
>arty. The Exchange Show is art with a capital A.
>-  It is art with a capital P. That is P for painting, that is my
>bitch and complaint.
>-  Everything is so clean.
>-  Well, it is commodification.
>-  What do you think of this year=92s show?
>-  For me, the problem is that this year it looks like just another art
>fair. In the years before each gallery had a unique office space.
>-  It is not just another art fair. The space is raw and everything is
>all over the place; this is the je ne sais quoi of the Exchange Show.
>--  The quality this year was the worst; though there were exceptions.
>-  It is important to establish the criteria for the galleries that are
>to be accepted.
>-  We are all here based on how the fair did the last two years.  How it did
>with the press and the general public and collectors. At the beginning stages
>of organization everything seemed to be going in the right direction but then
>it became clear that some of the people who had been involved last year were
>not involved this year.
>
>-  I was supposed to go see Andrea Zittel at Andrea Rosen but first I went to
>the Travel and Leisure show at Paula Cooper. And there was an A-Z Escape
>Vehicle owned and designed by Andrea Rosen.  It was this super sexy, luxurious
>little Winnebego with its own champagne glasses. It was more interesting than
>the show at Rosen.
>-  Why did she have to explain Raugh?
>-  It was best when the naked models were there at the opening.
>-  She should have left all of the debris from the opening; all the
>junk, the champagne bottles.
>-  Do you think there was a point to the nude figures?
>-  It was a kind of urban primitive gone awry.
>-  It was gratuitous.
>-  There should have been a whole family completely naked.
>-  Were they all girls?
>-  Two guys and a girl.
>-  None of them were that good looking and that was great.
>-  This show seemed to be the opposite of what she has done in the past, which
>was a lot about controlling behavior. Here she was saying =93Wouldn=92t it be
>great if everything and anything were all right, just the way it is?=94
>-  That is why all of the trash should have been left from the opening. I saw
>people there knocking into waiters and breaking glasses. I think the show
>should have been dirtier.
>-  The Kelley/Oursler show seemed to be a lot about that issue of that kind of
>dirtiness.
>-  The Zittel show really points out how clean the gallery is.
>-  She should have had the show before Rosen=92s new space was finished, when it
>was raugh.
>-  You look at how things were cleaned up after the opening and that seems to
>have more to do with the gallerist=92s agenda than the artist=92s.
>- I went to LiebmanMagnan to see the Tracey Baran and it seemed that Andrea
>Zittel could have seen this photo show first and then just used the photos as
>a model for the debris and indifference she put into her own work. Of course,
>there was no connection.
>-  Both shows had a real cynicism.
>-  Both were white trashy.
>-  The white trash show seems to be a current topic.
>-  Tracey Baran=92s work was very much like Richard Billingham=92s work.
>-  That show of his photographs of his family was amazing. =93Ray, He=92s a Laugh=94
>or something.
>-  Metallica meet Home Improvement.
>-  Billingham did those works three years earlier; Baran claims she knew
>nothing of the work.
>-  I=92m insulted by that show.
>-  She got her mom and said =93Mom, we=92re white trash. Pick your nose so I can
>take a picture.=94
>-  Gummo is already out there.
>-  Everything was a little too perfect.  It was as if the shots were
>set up and then they were told not to look at the camera.
>-  Well, I did like the carpet shot.
>-  It was confessional work. =93This is where I=92m from.=94
>-  A kind of white trash identity politics.
>
>-  The problem of who was first is interesting.  I was surprised when I looked
>at the Marc Quinn pieces at Gagosian to learn that the flowers in frozen
>silicon were from 1988 and predated Damien Hirst=92s vitrine work. I don=92t think
>Quinn will ever be the artist that Hirst is but it brings up the problem of
>the importance of being first.
>-  Or the dumbness. And how different is any of that work from the floating
>basketballs.
>-  It=92s all about Jeff Koons, it=92s all about Jeff Koons, it=92s all about
>Jeff Koons!
>
>-  It was good to see the annual Basquiat retrospective at Tony Shafrazi.
>-  It was?
>-  Why?
>-  There was one painting I hadn=92t seen before.
>-  Do you think someone out there is making new Basquiats?
>
>-  You know, talking about Chelsea again, the galleries there are not neutral.
>They are such minimalist statements in themselves that I cannot look at the
>artwork.
>-  I fucking hate Chelsea.
>-..Would you prefer Exit Art?
>-..There has to be something in-between.
>-  The Chelsea galleries are beautiful. There has never been anything like
>them in New York.  These galleries are ready to go; it is the artists that
>need to step up to the plate.
>-  The galleries are too intimidated to show anything innovative.
>-  I think the burden is on the artists.
>
>Compiled and edited by Erik Bakke, Ward Shelley, and William R. Kaizen.
>E-mail us at mobruleny-AT-aol.com
>




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