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ARTES MAGAZINE New York’s White Box Gallery Held Ground-Breaking Contemporary Art Exhibition T he Project Birch Forest Series: 'T he Waste Land' & 'Stirrings Still' Set an Art World Standard Posted on 15 January 2013 | By Edward Rubin Every once in a while—and I cannot remember the last time this has happened—an art exhibition adopts a provocative, never bef ore seen, truth-telling-concept and executes it so brilliantly that viewers are f orced to take stock of what is happening in the world around them. I am not talking about themes which are a dime-adozen, but a singular structural device, a single thought, if you will, that not only captures a great many truths, but hems them in f rom all sides, allowing f or those who are still able to think f or themselves, no escape. Project Birch Forest series, the brainchild of Russian born, Bridgeport, Connecticut-based artist, entrepreneur Tatyana Stepanova, is a perf ect example of one of those all-too-rare art exhibitions that mince no words. artes f ine arts magazine
Tatyana Ste p ano va, Lame nt, 2006 d ip tyc h, 100 x 42”, ac rylic o n c anvas .
Presented in 2010 at the White Box Gallery, in two contiguous exhibitions entitled, The Waste Land and
Stirrings Still, Project Birch Forest was an incendiary, double-headed spectacle that took no prisoners and stands as a def ining event in contemporary art exhibitions. Situated on two f loors, ground and basement, each edition, curated respectively by Raul Z amudio and Juan Puntes, f eatures the work—paintings, sculptures, videos, installations, and occasional musical perf ormances—of some sixty artists f rom around the world. T he pièce de résistance of both exhibitions, Stepanova’s conceptual genius in f ull view, was a score of ceiling-dangling cardboard poles acting as trees within which live—well-hidden at that—a great many artworks waiting to be discovered (see above, right). T he trick, like Little Red Riding Hood, is f or the viewer to negotiate this f orest without being eaten alive. White Box was, and still is, arguably, the most political—one might even say subversive—art gallery in New York City. Diminutive in size, big in both reputation and ambition, it was the perf ect space in which to have
mounted Project Birch Forest. T he magic of both of these back-to-back exhibitions began in the gallery’s small ante-chamber, a kind of waiting room that served both as an introduction to the exhibition and a stern warning f or the viewer – aided and abetted by the powerf ully insistent art on view – to leave any preconceived thoughts about what they are going to see at the door. The Waste Land f eatured twenty artists. It was a no-holds-barred, in your f ace side-show. Stirrings Still, the title taken f rom a contemplative Beckett essay, with f orty artists, steped back a little—if only f or a moment—f rom The Waste Land’s ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ display to allow the viewers to catch their breath. T he Waste Land T he Waste Land, the inaugural exhibition of the Project Birch Forest series, took its title from T. S. Eliot’s kaleidoscopic, ground-breaking poem, and—thanks to the unerring eye of curator Raul Zamudio who peopled the exhibition with some two dozen powerful works of art—the exhibition more than fulfilled Eliot’s poetic promise to “show you fear in a handful of dust.” In the ante-chamber, which set the stage of what’s to follow once reaching Stepanova’s primeval arbor, the work of several artists demanded close attention; meaning more than just a superficial gaze was required to get the full blast before the obvious hits you. Adroit at combining elements of pop art, abstraction, expressionism, digital, photo-realism, along with touches of the surreal in her work, Tatyana Stepanova has an uncanny ability to create mood-evoking paintings that pull one’s eye and mind into her canvases. Another of the artist’s trademarks is ambiguity, meaning, that while her visuals might be simple to read, the many moods that they trigger, the number of ideas embedded in her work —not to mention a myriad of possible narratives, all open to interpretation—are anything but. In Top 10 Billionaires (200
8-2009), right, London-based artist, Gordon Cheung, using photos taken f rom Forbes Magazine, garishly re-presented f ront page super elites, some with more wealth than a small country, in slick, psychedelically painted hues. Of course, Bill Gates and Warren Buf f et presented as pseudo-religious Sun-Gods melting under their own radiance, were at the top of Cheung’s list. Taking up the entire top half of one of the f ront gallery’s f our walls are two highly resonant diptychs, Purple Ocean (2006), and Lament (2010), painted by Russian born, Bridgeport, Connecticut based artist Tatyana Stepanova. Adroit at combining elements of pop art, abstraction, expressionism, digital, photorealism, along with touches of the surreal in her work, Stepanova has an uncanny ability to create moodevoking paintings that pull one’s eye and mind into her canvases. Another of the artist’s trademarks is the ambiguity —meaning, that while her visuals might be simple to read, the many moods that they trigger, the number of ideas embedded in her work, not to mention a myriad of possible narratives – all open to interpretation – are anything but. In the right-sided panel of the Purple Ocean, a large yellow moon hangs ominously over a purple-painted sea. T he artist could be drawing our attention to the polluted waters of the world. Or maybe just pointing out that lif e is a mystery, a deep one at that. In the lef t-sided panel, sketchily painted in gray, we see the contours of woman’s f ace. Her mouth is open, head f lung back. Is she in agony or ecstasy? Is she alive or dead? Perhaps the artist, whose diptychs have a strong story-telling quality—the panels can be read as
talking to each other—inf orming us that the woman has drowned in the adjacent purple sea panel. In Lament (see opening image, above), Stepanova positions the solitary f igure of a woman next to a panel with three women in motion. Is the solitary f igure a dancer, a high f ashion model? Is the tattered dress that she is wearing hinting at violence? Or is she wearing one of Jean-Paul Gaultier’s wild creations? And what about the three women who appear to be singing and dancing? Are they celebrating some holiday or are they part of a f uneral procession? Again, the artist, exploring the dualities of lif e, leaves us to our own devices to solve the mystery of what we are observing. T he work of Mexican artists Gabriel de la Mora and Miguel Rodriquez Sepulveda, and New York-based artist Richard Humann, were eye-f ooling f usions of method, material, and idea. De La Mora’s two delicate line drawings, one of skulls, the other a quirky, somewhat humorous, skeletal self -portrait of the artist as a chicken (see left) , at f irst glance look like f inely executed ink or pencil drawings but turn out to be—adding a touch of the macabre—drawings made with human hair taken f rom artist as well as members of his f amily. Equally intriguing, and as subtly deceptive, were Miguel Rodriguez’s Sepúlveda’s beautif ully craf ted landscapes f rom his 2008 series The Irresistible Persistence of Memory. Using water mixed with the human ashes of a woman who was born and died in Columbia, the artist draws comparison between the ‘f orced’ disappearances of over 25,000 Columbians by paramilitary groups, lef tist guerillas, criminal gangs and drug cartels in the last twenty years, to the disappearance of Columbia’s rural landscape. Right: Miguel Rodriquez Sepulveda, Untitled (Columbian Landscape), 2008, 9 ½ x 7 /14”, uses water mixed with ashes of woman killed in Columbian wars, on cotton paper. Richard Humann’s miniature bass wood sculptures f rom his series You Must Be This Tall, a subtle blend of f unf illed f lights of f ancy with harrowing hard boiled f acts, made me think of T he Joker, Batman’s nemesis, behind whose duplicitous smile lurks a vicious and calculating killer. Here, Humann using typical crowd-pleasing entertainments like the shooting gallery, dunking the clown, and testing your strength with a hammer, f ound in amusement parks and carnivals the world over, turns our mind towards the sinister by ending each of his small, intricately constructed side-show entertainments with the possibility of somebody’s death. Dunk The Clown (2008) ends by hanging. In Test Your Strength (2008), left, the guillotine takes your head. Such morally questionable amusements—the dark side of f un—replete with historical execution devices, is not too f ar adrif t f rom watching the Gulf War being f ought on CNN, or f or that matter, the real lif e executions that surf ace every once in a while on T V and on the Internet. Entering the main gallery at White Box, one’s mood is automatically recalibrated by low lights, a f orest of f oreboding trees, and a scattering of undecipherable sounds. A dozen of Providence, Rhode Island-based artist China Blue’s twinkling blue f iref lies in jars, strategically placed throughout the f orest-f illed exhibition immediately inf orms the viewer, as Dorothy says in the Wizard of Oz, that we are no longer in Kansas, but in an eerie world of ominous-looking trees where just about anything that can be thought, can, and usually does, happen. T here are, though, a f ew moments of mental rest, meaning that a particular work,
though perhaps inwardly threatening, is outwardly light on the visually horrif ic. Venezuelan born, Barcelona-based artist Ruben Verdu’s designer LV Trash Bag (2009) discretely placed on the f loor, though it could be hiding a bomb, was but one of the more f ormidable examples. In f irst spotting the bag high f ashion comes to mind, this immediately f ollowed by the saying: If you see something, say something, a terrorist warning prominently posted on every New York City subway and bus. Above right: China Blue, Fire Fly Jar, 3 ¾ x 4 ¾” pager motor, guitar strings, Water bottle, wings, and F-LED. Yearly Dosage (2010), below left, an installation by T he Social Art Collective, a group of New York Citybased public health workers, artists and writers, exposed the nature of drug packaging, branding, and the pervasiveness of drug addiction, by af f ixing a year’s worth of used heroin glassine bags—365 collected f rom the streets of various New York City neighborhoods—onto the gallery wall in grid-like f ashion. T hese images, taken f rom popular culture, are advertorial-designed heroin bags, many embellished with playf ul symbols, decorative colors, and glamorously seductive names like ‘Last Temptation,” “Kicking Ass, “Lady Gaga.” Some bags are even stamped with Barack Obama’s silhouette, making it clear that where competition abounds, no section of commerce is lef t untouched. Such visually f etishistic romanticizing normalizes the use of heroin in a casual way, one of the many points that T he Social Art Collective is stressing. Particularly intriguing is Venezuela-born, Amsterdam, Madrid-based, Abdul Vas’s menacing C-Print Capeman (2008), right, a photograph of one of his leather-jacketed f riends on which he has painted the head of a chicken. In many of his paintings, drawings, and wall murals, Vas presents the chicken as the exterminator of the human race, the irony being that in actuality it is the chicken, the icon of the kitchen, who is the victim of f ood stuf f genocide. Addressing politics, Vas’ chicken-headed f igures, of ten seen with ref erences to the National Rif le Association, American baseball teams, and SUVs, are stand-ins f or the masculine element of the American cowboy culture. Executioner and victim, his chickens, just like the human race, use f orce, exercise hate, and perpetrate violence that both f rightens and charms. For those who still shudder at the very mention of Hitler and the evil that f ollowed in his wake, Lithuanian, Paris-based artists Svai and Paul Stanikas’s large tabloid-like poster, Magda Goebbels Queen of the Bones (2009) left, image detail, is a chilling reminder, more timely than ever, of one man’s mesmerizing power to lead an entire nation to death and destruction. It is also the story of Magda Goebbels,the wif e of Hitler’s Propaganda Minister. Here, among images of bones and bodies and related documentation, laid out in pristine white, are her six children that she murdered by poison bef ore she and her husband committed suicide outside of Hitler’s bunker. Her unrepentant last words, written to her son f rom her f irst marriage, “Our glorious idea is ruined and with it everything beautif ul and marvelous that I have known in my lif e. T he world that comes af ter the Führer and National Socialism is not any longer worth living in and theref ore I took the children with me, f or
they are too good f or the lif e that would f ollow.” Coming upon Dutch born, New York and Netherland based artist Liselot van der Heijden’s powerf ul 3-minute looped video, Feast. Homage a Marcel Broodthaers (2004), right, solved the mystery of the scattering of undecipherable sounds that permeated the gallery’s f orest. Looking down f rom their high perch on the wall— f ilmed f righteningly close up at that—is a clutch of vultures, with terrif ying bird-screams, f erociously f ighting over a piece of meat. Flashing across the screen, just as we are trying to f igure out what it is that we are looking at —all we glean f rom sight and sound is murderously horrif ic—are the words,” T his is not political” f ollowed a f ew seconds later by, “T his has nothing to do with oil.” Our f irst reaction is to laugh, albeit knowingly. T hen reality sets in. T he warring vultures may be ref erring to the Middle East oil saga—a newbie in the scheme of things —but the larger message here is the ever-present violent nature of mankind. Directly across the gallery is Z hang Huan, Shanghai/New York City-based artist’s video Pear Blossom Grove (2003) left. Filmed in a dog meat processing f acility in the mountains of China’s Shandong Province, especially known f or its white blossom f lowering pear groves, it is the most unsettling work on view. T he artist f ocused on the primitive f actory’s meat processing procedure, where the dogs are wet down by a hose, then murdered by an electrif ied pole wielded by a worker. Most horrif ying is the look in all of dogs’ eyes—those that are caged, as well as those about to be killed. T he f ear in their eyes, not unlike the f ear in the eyes of Warsaw Ghetto and World War II concentration camp victims, and prisoners of war targeted f or execution, is overwhelmingly painf ul to watch. Seeing the dogs—on the way to being turned into f ood— knowing that they are going to their death and that nothing can save them, hits close to home. It is painf ul just thinking about such slaughter. T he same probably can be said about the meat processing f actories that slaughter millions of cows, and lambs the world over. Of course these practices, taken to heart by many vegetarians, are well-hidden f rom the meat-eating masses. Occupying a small walled of f space at the back of the gallery—seemingly an exhibition unto itself —were two intricate installations, each transmitting its message in a dif f erent manner and speed, by Polish born, New York City-based artist Wojtek Ulrich. T he simpler of the two, Concentration Garden (2003-2004), f eatured the ubiquitous wire f ence, the type used to protect people and property, as well as hold prisoners in jails, and in displacement and detention camps around the world. By adding colorf ully lit, iridescent neon wires to the dull gray chain link f ence, the installation stoped us in our tracks. One part of our brain, triggered by the seductive blue waves of light, wants to jump Ulrich’s f ence and party, the other more cautious part, knowing f ull-well the ugly history electrif ied f ences, remains at arm’s length. Right: Wojtek Ulrich, Tower of Babel (48 Channel Cross) 2004, 48 LED monitors, DVD players, satellite dish with live video feed. Wojtek’s Tower of Babel, (2004) , monolithic electronic sculpture shaped in the f orm of the ubiquitous religious cross, was by f ar the most intricately constructed work of art on view. It was composed of 48 small LED monitors, DVD players, and a satellite dish that picked up countless television stations f rom around the world, all of
which served to overwhelm the gallery viewer in a great many languages and subjects, by a dizzying cacophony of banal and totally useless audio visuals f rom around the world, emanating f rom the sculpture’s many screens. In cross breeding the addictive nature of the television with the history laden Christian cross, the artist is pointing out that T V—and by extrapolation, the computer screen and other social electronic devices—is the new church on the block, one that has us looking to a technology based “ higher power,” f or our next ‘Breaking News’ f ix. Situated in the basement of White Box—think of the space as a decompression chamber to bring an overstimulated brain to a more even keel, allowing a switch of gears f rom the most extreme downsides of lif e to the beauty of the ethereal, and sublime—was Exiles of a Shattered Star (2006), left, Canadian born, UK-based, Kelly Richardson’s 30 minute video. It was one of a handf ul of works in The Waste Land that appeared to be courting multiple interpretations. T he piece opened on a peacef ul lake, nestled among a range low lying mountains, not unlike a pastoral scene f rom a Hallmark greeting card. Suddenly, a f lurry of brightly burning debris, shaped like small comets with f laming tails, starts f alling f rom the sky. What are we to make of it? Are these meteors? Is this an invasion of aliens f rom another planet, angels descending f rom heaven, or a shattered star, as the title implies? Whatever conclusion you come to, the video’s placement at the end of the exhibition is a canny, not to mention sophisticated, curatorial touch, allowing the viewer the possibility of leaving the f orest with a bit of beauty and a smidgen of hope. Stirrings Still While Raul Zamudio’s curatorial leanings in T he Waste Land was heavy with its “in your face” and “take no prisoners” approach, Stirrings Still curator Juan Puntes’ hand took a more subtle and philosophical approach, one that ponders the question,as White Box’s press release states, “…whether we have arrived or not at a moment in time where we need to thoroughly question the social and cultural value of our incessantly increasing production.” To this end, Puntes, with the help of curatorial collaborators Isaac Aden, Robin Wallis Atkinson, and Andrea Monti, whose video program was a small exhibition itself, had assembled the work of forty international artists whose work, some influenced by Stirrings Still, Beckett’s gentle, contemplative essay, explored many of the same issues as T he Waste Land artists, albeit in a considerably tamer way. Stirrings Still began at the entrance to White Box gallery with This Skin (2010), far right, Canadian born, New York City-based artist Carl Skelton’s projected moving word puzzle which took up the entire street f ront window of the gallery. Using the word ‘skin’ along with other f our letter words taken f rom the King James Old Testament—all electronically displayed in continually changing stacked pairs—Skelton’s window display aped the stop and go, and sudden twists and turns, of Beckett’s complex writing style, f ound in his essay Stirrings Still. Directly to the right, on the outside wall f acing the gallery entrance, was Grace Kim’s Threshold of Nothingness (2010), above, near right, a poetic series of short videos f eaturing anonymous people, close up and at a distance, in-f ocus and out, alone or mated, as they talk, walk, stop and look, come and go. A sense of sadness invaded our senses as we watched each passerby, seemingly isolated and on automatic pilot, executing their daily routine.
Again, welcoming us into the f irst room of the exhibition, the socalled ante-chamber, as she did in the T he Waste Land, were two stunning Tatyana Stepanova works – Metamorphosis 2 (2010), below left, a single-f igured painting, and Dream (2006), a diptych, replete with f igures of two women, and an aerial view of a seashore. In the two-paneled Dream, shown f irst at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2006, the artist induces a f eeling of weightlessness to our viewing experience by joining a lighter than air black and white close-up painting of two f emale f aces—with their eyes closed and mouths partially open—to a tranquil blue sea. It could be dreaming, or like mermaids, resting at the bottom of the sea. In Metamorphosis, a ballet dancer and a graf f iti artist are busy at work. T he dancer, suspended in mid air like a spider, is portrayed in black and white, while the young man, in f ull color, is seen busily painting images onto a green wall. Both are oblivious to each other. Or are they? T he picture, hung upside down, subverts our normal way of viewing as well as thinking. T here is a tension between the f igures. But, whatever is happening between them, if anything, is indeterminate. Occupying the entire lef t wall of the chamber, all eight-by-sixteen f eet, was Joel Simpson’s mural-sized photograph, Ramaria, Martha’s Vineyard (2005-2011), below right, f rom his series Empire of Illusion, named af ter Chris Hedges’s 2009 book, describing the polarities of the two societies that we live in, one based in reality, the other rooted in f antasy. Echoing the same sentiment that things are not always as they appear, were Simpson’s beautif ully-blooming vines—in reality a f ast-growing f ungus which Simpson likens to the overgrowth and overextension of the U.S. Empire, branching out uncontrollably, while wreaking havoc around the world and in our economy,here at home. In Command Center, another Simpson photograph—this one placed in an ornate f ake gold f rame in the basement bathroom—the artist uses the image of the common celery root to portray the grotesque, intricately-connected growth of our military-industrial complex. New York City based artist/architect Allan Wexler’s digitally-derived painting Shadow-Table (2009), below left, f rom his series On the Art of Building in Ten Books, engages similar eye-to-mind-challenging ideas, which just might explain why Puntes placed Wexler’s painting smack dab in the middle of Simpson’s mural. Wexler, using the same techniques with paper that a f urniture builder uses on wood – gluing, polyurethane sanding, waxing and buf f ing, has painstakingly constructed, layer by layer, a miniature image of a table, complete with a competing shadow leading us to question whether or not this solid, simple generic table projects the shadow of itself , or does the shadow project the table. Even more provocative is the question, what is more real the table or the shadow? T he obvious answer might be that they are equal, but opposite. In his video, Money (f ilmed 2006, edited 2008), below right, Finland-born and based artist Jaakko Heikkilä, known f or his videos of minorities in small communities, links an of f -the-cuf f comment made by an elderly, long-time Harlem resident with the world-weary f acial image of celebrated drummer Dennis Davis – during one of Davis’ gigs at St Nick’s Pub in Harlem. One moment we are watching a jazzy, upbeat perf ormance, the next we hear the elder’s voice, timed to the
regimented beat of Davis’ drums, announce “It’s all about money, money, money, if you do not have money you ain’t nothing.” Repeated over and over again, what started out as a musical reverie became a soulf ul conf ession, as well as a damning mantra f or the poor, unemployed, and unemployable. Just as Richard Humann’s smaller constructions of amusement park rides, which he turned into devices of torture and capital punishment in The Wasteland, his, Wave Swinger (2008)—the largest and most provocative bass wood sculpture in his series, You Must Be This Tall—combines the ideas of public spectacle and private experience (left). Using the basic shape and f orm of the ride Wave Swinger (also known as the Chair-OPlane) the artist replaced the chairs that spin around with the Roman crucif ixion device, the cross. Like all of the works in Humann’s series, his monotone natural treatment of the wood has a neutralizing ef f ect that hides the f act, at least initially, that what we are looking at is an instrument of f orce and repression, in this instance the iconic Christian cross. T he artist seems to be saying that the church is taking us f or a ride. T he question of whether this ride is a good thing or bad, is lef t up to the individual. Lit by a small spotlight, giving it the look of a religious work of art, was Footstep (the first), Mexico-based Rodrigo Imaz’s 2010 roughly-hewn clay sculpture of astronaut Neil Armstrong, complete with of his f ootprint imbedded at the base of the work (right). At f irst glance, this iconic image that has been embedded in our consciousness, as well as every school book, f or the past f orty plus years, appears be celebrating man’s f irst step on the moon. On closer examination, there we see the totemic mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb hovering above his head, an American f lag in his hand waiting to be planted, and hundreds of pennies, which f rom af ar looked like dirt, surrounding his f eet. T he artist seems to be saying that this “one step f or mankind” in reality was the United States signaling to the world that it is all-powerf ul. We have the money, the will, and the power to conquer any territory. Canadian-based, multimedia artist Eldon Garnet, a thinking man’s artist— meaning that there is a lot more than meets the eye—is represented by two ten f oot long sculpted stainless steel works f rom his Small Sculpture Statements series, and a light jet print f rom his Dominion series f rom 2009. T he two sculptures, A Brilliant Blast of Darkness (2006), and Present But Out Of Focus (2004), both poetically titled, capture the artist’s existential thoughts about the transitory nature of lif e. In his photograph Dominion (2009), far left, an ordinary man in a suit, with hands clasped, is seen quietly sitting on a park bench. It would be an everyday scene except that the man is totally surrounded by plastic orange f encing, the type that is used to keep people f rom entering the space. Totally hemmed in, literally and f iguratively, he has nowhere to go. Circumstances, social, political, and economic, if you care to f ollow any one of those jail sentences, are keeping him in place. Complimenting Garnet’s sculptures, is Texas-born, New York-based artist, Ray Kelly’s metal rebar sculpture, Head on Hands (2010), near left, which echoes, in metal script, heads on hands, words taken f rom Beckett’s essay.
Ukraine-born, New York City based, Anton Kandinsky is known f or his ironic poster-like paintings. Be they portraits of celebrities, political f igures, or even still lif e—actually there is no subject that the artist doesn’t paint or f or that matter photograph—most every work is inf used with humor and themes of political corruption. In his painting, The Shadow of Melamid (2008), right, inspired by an article in the New York Times about the upcoming United Russia party election, Kandinsky tackles the popularity of Putin by recreating a winter street scene complete with an enormous pre-election Putin campaign poster, the type that f looded the city of Moscow. By adding his f riend Alex Melamid’s shadow to the scene, Kandinsky ref erences the early 70s Sots-art movement, which ef f ectively used the social realist style stereotypes and myths to counter Soviet rhetoric. T he painting makes clear that the movement Melamid and artist Vitaly Komar gave name to in 1972, is now nothing more than a shadow dwarf ed by Russia’s current Putin-dominated political system. Moving away f rom the political, we f ind ourselves immersed in Gosha’s Tales, an animated f ilm and painting collaboration between Russian based f ilmmaker Irina Margolina and her artist-son Gosha Likhovetsky. Using ten years of Likhovetsky’s paintings, the basis f or Margolina’s ceiling-viewed animations, Gosha’s Tales with music by the Russian singer and musician Yakov Yavno, is one of the f ew stops during this exhibition where enchantment holds sway. T hough both artists have their own careers in Moscow – Margolina is an internationally known f ilm animator and the director of Studio M.I.R in Moscow, and Likhovetsky an artist and a stage designer at Sphera T heatre – pooling their talents in this collaboration, they created what is essentially a Likhovetsky retrospective set to music. No doubt the world of animation has inf luenced both subject and the naïve style of Likhovesky’s paintings, as a childlike innocence inf orms the mechanics of his drawings and paintings. “I depict the world as I see it. Mine is curious, cheerf ul, and mostly kind. I like to see people smile and always be in a good mood. My f lowers are like colors themselves, every bouquet is a painting,” the artist inf ormed me. True to his word, each of the artist’s six delicately painted gouaches, all with storybook titles like Rabbit called Tolik (2001), above left, Girl with a Mouse (2003), and Parrot (2001), are f illed with the purity, joy and optimism, coming as naturally to Likhovetsky as they do to children. T he work of caraballo-f arman, a two-person team composed of Iranian born, Montreal-based, Abou Farman and Argentina born, San Juan, Puerto Rico-based Leonor Caraballo, f eatures two types of public activity, a peacef ul protest and a suburban entertainment arcade, the type that caters to f amilies looking f or f astpaced, unique attractions. In their video, Contours of Staying (2004), members of Falun Gong are peacef ully protesting some undef ined cause in f ront of the Chinese consulate in New York City. We watch the wind and snow-battered f aces of the protestors, whose central tenets are truthf ulness, compassion, and f orbearance, have been banned in China where the movement originated. As they f ace yet another travail, this one is brought to them by nature. Also on view is a f luorescent-colored photograph entitled, No Exit f rom the duo’s Black Light series (2008-2009), right. Taken in low light at a laser tag and mini golf arena, the otherworldly photo, an actual door with the directional words ‘No Exit’ written on it, conjures up many thoughts and situations, one being Jean Genet’s play of
the same name. In his jet prints, New Orleans based artist Stephen Collier, uses Silly String, a children’s toy of f lexible, brightly-colored, plastic string propelled as a stream f rom an aerosol can, to replace what would be if lef t untouched—the individual’s f ace. His intent is to examine how the material af f ects ones identity. In Black Hoodie (left) and Pledge Your Allegiance (2006), the ‘would-be f aces’ of two individuals, one wearing a leather jacket, the other a hooded sweatshirt, is both f unny and threatening. T he f unny ‘ha ha’ is in recognizing the hairy-looking silly string hanging f rom where the f ace should be. Not knowing what lives behind the silly string or who you are dealing with—is this a real person or a sculpture—adds an ominous twists to each portrait. At f irst glance, Brooklyn, NY sculptor David Opdyke’s painted plastic, wood, and f oam maquettes appear to be nothing more than highly accomplished architectural renderings. On closer examination, then, the artist’s take on lif e that nothing is exactly as it seems shows its resonate hand. In Memorial (2008), a barn-like, gray house rests on a pedestal attached to the wall. With light coming through the upper f loor windows one is compelled to examine the house’s interior. Much to our surprise, a large bald eagle—to many symbol of U.S .imperialism—is seen getting ready to embark on yet another venture. Turning to landscape, Opdyke’s The Public Good (2007), right, of f ers us an idyllic, tree-lined park in miniature. In the middle of the park, towering over the trees is a tall, thin monument composed of dozens of vertically-stacked desks, each with a vase of f lowers resting on its surf ace. A solitary man is seen contemplating this strange conf iguration. What he is thinking, and what the artist is saying, is open to a myriad of interpretations, f rom the man’s own past lif e of sitting behind a desk f or f orty years to the various bureaucracies responsible f or erecting countless monuments whose very purpose and meaning have long been lost to the viewing public. Widely known f or his staged, videotaped public demonstrations, complete with banners, badges, f lags, and vans painted with compelling logos critically examining such f ar-f lung subjects as the inf luence of the media and the toxic additives that pervade toys and f oods, is Trento, Italy-based Stef ano Cagol. Here Trento, reveals his elegant and quiet side. In REM (2003), left, a black and white video, with literary nods to Kaf ka and Beckett, the artist f ocuses his lens on a single stag beetle lying on its back. In a slow motion that visually brings to mind any number of Beckett’s plays, we watch, as well as identif y with, the poor insect helplessly f laying it legs as it tries to right itself . At one point, then, emerging f rom its body, a second beetle appears. Now we have two beetles f aced with the possibility of their very mortality. In Book of Life (2004), right, New York/Finland based artist Osmo Rauhala’s compelling video letters f rom the alphabet come at us like meteors raining down f rom heaven. T hese pulsating images call to mind visions of the Milky Way, perhaps even human cells observed under a microscope. However, and I did have to inquire of him, it is the story of DNA, the various amino acids which constitute the heredity material in humans, thus explaining the mystery of the letters A, T, G, C, which f ly about beautif ully in the video. T hey are the chemical bases in which the inf ormation in DNA code is stored. In addition
to having a studio in New York, Rauhala runs a f arm in Finland that specializes in organic production, explaining his interest in genetics. “Now, f or the f irst time in history,” he related in a recent email, “we have built enough nuclear waste and weapons to destroy this code. We have spread billions of tons of chemicals through f arming and f ood industry to ourselves and our surroundings…without knowing the long term ef f ects of all this.” Korean based artist Boyun Jang deals with the passage of time, memory, and real lif e experience—both her own and that of an unknown man whose 1968, 35 mm slides she f ound in an abandoned house. Calling the unknown man ‘K’, and using his detailed notes written on the sides of each slide, Jang, visited the same cities, with camera in hand, that K had visited f orty years earlier. Playing with visual history on her computer, the artist subtracted the images of K and his f riends f rom his photographs, adding them into her own. In Four Days and Four Nights – a series of letters not on view here – to f urther immerse her in this project, the artist proceeded to describe her own experiences f rom K’s perspective by setting herself up as ‘K’ and writing letters to herself . In two photographs on view, 1968, Summer at the Beach, and The Deads, left (both f rom 2009), she positions K and his f riends, incongruously dressed in business attire, on a sandy beach. By photographically merging K’s experiences with her own, the artists links her present to K’s past, by deliberating collapsing the years that separate them. Lumber (2010), right, New York City-based artists Mary Mattingly’s and Rosemarie Padovano’s inventive video collaboration was one of the more playf ul works on view. Adding to video’s f un and boosting its potency is the f act that the video, which starts in a small f orest and ends at a lake, is hidden among Stirrings Still’s very own f orest of tree tubes. So what we get is a f orest within a f orest. Filmed in Maine by artists Claudia Salamanca and Scott Wiener, Lumber lets us f ollow, visually and audibly, the shenanigans of Mattingly and Padovano, who both— af ter having turned themselves into trees by strapping branches to their arms and crawling into a brown, 12 f oot, f abric covered tube—proceed to roll through a deciduous f orest, down a giant hill into a cow pasture, across a highway and several f ields. In the process, bef ore arriving lakeside, the tubes break apart. With legs and arms exposed, like a butterf ly emerging f rom a cocoon, they begin to ponder this new horizon line. Stirrings Still Video Program The only place to sit down and rest our weary legs, a respite from our forest wanderings, was in a small darkened room cum theatre at the back of the gallery. With some twenty seats facing a large screen, viewers were treated by curator Andrea Monti to a 70 minute, continuously running video program, featuring the work of 12 American and European video artists, who all, on some level—structurally, aesthetically, metaphorically or emotionally—attempt to speak to Stirrings Still, Samuel Beckett’s last work. In Adrift (2010), left, Elle Burchill’s (U.S.) 5 minute video, a group of sightseers are canoeing in New York City’s East River. In the background of this scenario are rapidly f lickering images of New York City’s ubiquitous skyscrapers, the most prominent being the Empire State
and Chrysler Buildings. Back in the artist’s studio, a “happy computer accident” during the process of editing the f ootage, of f ered a totally unexpected video experience— jump cuts, slips, and f adeouts – that Burchill turned into a collaborative electronic work, between the artist and her tools. T he end product is a kinetic video that literally and f iguratively ref lects on the passage of time, the temporary nature of power, and the limits of control. Tim Geraghty’s (U.S.) Wolves (2010, 10 min), right, is composed entirely f rom ‘corrupt’ media f iles taken f rom f ootage of a television documentary on wolves. in what turned out as an inf ormative documentary with shots of wolves, elks, and cows, a rotting carcass, and men. Using alternating video clips with images of men and animals, in a horizontal, split screen f ashion, Geraghty turns Wolves into a harrowing dance between predator and prey. Wolves are hunting f or f ood; elks trying to save themselves f rom the wolves; and the men, some with cameras, others guns, are hell-bent on protecting their chattel. In the background, T V (or is it radio?) sound bites such as “killed while alive,” “he controls his time very well,” “everybody should have basic security,” and “backroom deals behind closed doors,” all but trumpet the cruelty of nature, as well as man’s inhumanity to animals and man alike. T he sheer number of images – there must be over 1000 – and the dizzying speed at which they f lash by on the screen in Jean-Gabriel Périot’s (Paris, France) 21.04.02 (2002-9 min) video, left, was simply electrif ying. Using contemporary and historical images taken f rom T V, f ilm, advertising, print media, books, library archives, and public and private photography collections, Périot re-presents the history of the world as a f ilmmatic collage. With tight, precise editing, he creates sequences of pictures, both beautif ul and horrif ic, that become social critiques on labor conditions, war, persecution, revenge, violence against women, and just about any other political and social issues that come to mind. Images of bloody murder victims, bathing beauties, concentration camp atrocities, f lowers, f amous paintings, Hollywood actors, and campus protests, all interspersed, f lash by at hundreds a minute. It is a visual trip not easily f orgotten. T he late Brooklyn-born, London-based f ilmmaker Stephen Dwoskin’s entire oeuvre is an attempt to explore the issue of voyeurism and of the relationship with the Other. Because of Dwoskin’s lack of mobility—as a young boy the artist contracted polio leaving him disabled, which he used to his advantage—he turned to mastering the closeup, a technique that allows him to turn the raw f lesh of humans into an abstract landscape. In Nightshoot 1 (2007, 10:30 min), right, part one of a trilogy, Dwoskin f ocuses his camera lingeringly on a prostitute that he is having sex with. We watch as she puts on her makeup, smokes what appears to be hashish, plays with her clitoris, and eventually straddles the photographer in an act of coitus. She is wearing a low-cut top with a jeweled cross dangling between her breast, and nothing below the waist. As the camera
slowly pans across the landscape of the body, bit by bit, part by part, we join the voyeuristic cameraman drinking in the details of her body. It is lef t to us to piece together the story he is telling. In Private Eye/l (2007), below left, Rick Niebe uses a short sequence taken f rom Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, with Humprey Bogart as noir detective, Phillip Marlowe, to create a mystery Beckett himself would have loved. Niebe isolates a moment f rom the movie where Marlowe leaves his house, then turns to see someone else leaving the house af ter him. He ducks behind the car secretly observing the f igure that is f ollowing him. By brilliant use of editing techniques and manipulation of the f rame ratio, Niebe creates a never ending circular narrative in which Philip Marlow (Bogart’s character) is being f ollowed by Marlow, who in turn is f ollowed by yet another Marlow. It is only at the end when Marlowe f inally drives away in his car that we are set f ree f rom the inf initely expanding sequence of past events. On the right wall of the staircase leading down to the lower level of the gallery was Anonymous, a photo montage exhibit organized by Tatyana Stepanova. Like curator Andea Monti’s video artists installation, Anonymous, which f eatures 30 photographs of Bridgeport, Connecticut photographer Nathaniel Plotkin, is an exhibition within an exhibition. Self -def ined as the f ounder of Accidentalism, Plotkin, bypassing complicated cameras “to capture the image f aster” works solely with disposable cameras containing ordinary (Kodak) f ilm. T he photos on view—a wide range of subject matter as well as locations – documented unsuspecting people during the course of everyday lif e, urban scenes, and architectural f ragments in Europe as well a the United States. One telling image catches three overweight men casually enjoying themselves at the Yankee Stadium. Another f eatured a graf f iti-f illed wall in Brighton England (right). Spray painted across the wall, a sentence which echoes this mini- exhibition’s title, are the words “T he man with no name returns with the Lords.” Also sharing the stairwell is Cat Woman, a 2010 self -portrait by St. Petersburg-born, Latvia-raised, Mülheim Germany-based artist, Natalia Ushakova (left). One of many self -portraits executed by the artist, Cat Woman, as Ushakova inf orms us “is a young woman in search of herself . She tries on several masks to see what happens and how they inf luence her lif e. One day when she will know who she is, she will not need any mask.” As we lef t the stairs and enter the gallery’s lower level, the f irst work to challenge our senses was Argentina-born, Paris-based artist, Susana Sulic’s video, Brook Bag Da Da (2007-10), right. Flickering images and muf f led sounds shoot out to us f rom an alcove placed small T V monitor. For a f ew seconds we are not sure what we are seeing or hearing. But soon enough, a distant skyline of an unidentif ied city, complete with twinkling lights, and sounds of planes streaking by, f ootsteps on gravel, muf f led voices, and much static, a well-remembered picture of disaster, past and present, materializes. With the addition of aerial maps, billowing smoke, and the sound of bombs exploding taken f rom T V, Internet, and environmental recordings by the artist—all imitating television’s f amiliar style f or delivering catastrophic inf ormation – we realize that Sulic, cleverly stringing together recognizable
elements—created a f rightening f aux disaster, a metaphor, if you will, f or the real thing. It could be 9/11, bombing of Iraq, the war in Af ghanistan, or any such tragedy. Take your pick. T he artist seems to imply it’s all the same. To the lef t of Sulic’s video was Santiago, Chile-born, Great Neck, New York-based artist, Pablo Jansana’s philosophically resonant painting, Can I follow an idea for the rest of my life? (2010), left . Situated alone on a small piece of wall, the work —reminiscent of Jasper Johns’s gridded number and alphabet paintings f rom the late `50s—speaks tellingly to the seriousness of Jansana’s, or any artist f or that matter, ‘search f or meaning.’ As a viewer, Jansana’s muscularly painted question, tinged with violence and a sexual edge, led me to question where my brain has been and its direction, and if we even have a choice in such things. Perhaps, the answer is yes, f or regardless of variations, we are an idea, if not a self -f ulf illing prophesy, one that seems to sing the same song over and over again. Gracing two of the gallery’s downstairs walls was New York Citybased artist Ali Hossaini’s and Alexandra Lerman’s, 2-channel video projection, Memory Begins (2010), right. T he videos projected on adjacent walls, one f lush, the other skewed as if f alling f orward, were f ilmed by the artists in the lushly landscaped gardens at Water Mill Center f or the Arts, on Long Island, during the summer of 2008. T hough no particular goal was set during f ilming Hossaini inf ormed me that the f ootage became, like many passing summers, indelibly associated with his emotional state at the time: a sense of prof ound loss coupled with the excitement of change, growth and f resh adventure. T hough the video is non-verbal, its enveloping, twowalled structure, coupled with the beauty of the landscape, conjures memories of our own summer scenes of yesteryear. In The Hour of the Star (2010), below left, Mexico City/Tijuana-based artist Tania Candiani’s one-minute looped, black-and-white video, only the artist’s shoulders and hands are seen, as balloons humorously cover her f ace. She is pictured blowing up 19 balloons on which she has handsewn words—one on each latex balloon—taken f rom the opening lines of Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector’s (19201977) book of the same name. T he sentence reads, “Everything in the World began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and lif e was born.” T he intent of her video which was derived f rom her series, Tales and Other Nightmares (2010) in which she appropriates f irst lines or paragraphs f rom novels by authors such as Camus, Kundra, and Duras, She creates a totally new narrative, of f ering “the viewer two dif f erent narratives, one in the f orm of a text, and the other (which goes in some of the pieces, in an opposite direction of the text) in the f orm of a photo images, a drawing or f ilmed scene. Holding pride of place, in the middle of the f loor, was Isaac Aden’s installation, Stirrings Still (2010), below
right, arguably the most ocularly complex work in the exhibition, and the only work ref erring to Beckett’s essay by title. It is also the sole work that compeled you to look both up and down as you try to decipher what appears to be an act of magic. In reality the installation’s structure is simple—its f our dimensional ef f ects, less so. Af f ixed to the ceiling, in a black painted plywood box, is the word “still” spelled backwards in glowing white neon. Directly below is a black rubber tray of water that mirrors the word “Still” – no longer seen backwards of course – on its surf ace. Out of the viewer’s sight, on top of the box mounted to the ceiling, is a tray holding ice. As the ice melts, dripping water into the rubber pool, the ref lected text, disturbed by the rippling water, changes back and f orth, f rom readable to unreadable. T he negative space between the neon text and the pool of water adds a third dimension, while the recurring droplets, occupying the space between the two objects, suggests a f ourth. Editor”s Note: For art to matter, it must speak to the issues of the day. For art to endure, it must effectively address the human condition. The editorial decision to feature a story about an exhibition that took place over two years ago is based on the perception that the assembled works on display in Project Birch Forest represented a cogent and well-organized statement about issues and themes with currency in the world, accomplished in artful, yet sensitive ways. This is no accident. Curator, Tatyana Stepanova, together with White Box Gallery, skillfully arranged a cacophony of individual artistic voices into a unified chorus, raising awareness about themes that should matter to us all. Using literary reference by T.S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett as a framework for the exhibition, Stepanova recognized the stridency with which these early-modern writers addressed the cogent themes of cultural survival and global strife plaguing the dawning years of the last century. Dates have changed, but times have not. Writer, Edward Rubin characterized Project Birch Forest as “provocative” and “truth-telling.” Exhibition visitors were greeted by a forest of PVC tubes, hung from the ceiling, and metaphorically serving as the obstacles we all must navigate in our search for genuine answers to today’s problems. Once this gauntlet was run, the work itself then sounded alarms, by spotlighting motifs that unremittingly echoed the great hoped-for belief in civilization’s ability to right itself—if only the message would be received. Project Birch Forest was, and is , an event for out times…and a clarion call for awareness andd action. By Edward Rubin, Contributing Writer Visit New York City’s White Box Gallery f or current and f uture exhibitions at: http://whiteboxnyc.org/ ShareT his