The Point Almost Poked My Eye Out

My latest I'm With Stupid post on Glasstire: A look at girls of all ages in funny outfits. Beauty Knows No Pain: Images by O. Rufus Lovett and Leah DeVun at the Houston Center for Photography in Houston.

I'm With Stupid

Dear, patient, tolerant WhinyBabyLand readers:

As you may have noticed in past months, there hasn't been much to read here. I've let you down, and I'm sorry. I know that many of your lives have been darkened by sadness and pain--pain that can only be caused by the lack of solid, self-absorbed, rant.

But for those of you who were wondering if there would ever again be a place to read the maudlin musings of a frustrated faux Erma Bombeck/Fran Liebowitz/Andy Rooney/David Sedaris wannabe-type, wonder no more! I'm With Stupid is the new avatar for WhinyBabyLand!

Same great taste, Different location--Here's my maiden post on Glasstire.

Enjoy!

I was more fun when I was blogging, but whadda gonna do?

I miss writing my REAL whinybabyland shit, just because I don't have to be professional and I can be, like, all fucking snotty, and man-o-man do I miss hurling the insults. There's just not time, what with all of these bloody Glasstire reviews! Damn their oily hides. Anyway, I've got 2 new pieces on there (new to me, anyway--I think one of them's been there for a while): NeoHooDoo: Art For a Forgotten Faith @ the Menil Collection, Houston, and Mark Fox's Dust @ the Rice University Art Gallery.

Go! Read! The only excuse you could possibly have is that, if I were you, I probably wouldn't bother...

That's a Negative

Holly Andres, “Behind the Old Painting,” 2007, C-Print at Quality Pictures Contemporary Art.


Portland-based artist/photographer/writer (formerly of Houston, TX) Chas Bowie, who once brought us the totally awesome blog YOUR DAILY AWESOME is back in the blogging business. For those of us who were bummed when Bowie quit showing us cool shit (even though it was probably taxing to find something cool every single day, we can now be happy again. According to Bowie, "The goal of That's a Negative is to provide a voice of critical discourse about the medium, to examine the lineage of contemporary trends, and to attempt to make sense of the practice and theories of global photography. I am exposed to photography in Portland more than anywhere else in the world, so the site will also serve as an ongoing record of photographic activity in Portland."

He's already got some great stuff up, so check it out.

Another Wonder of the World Wide Web

OK, at the beginning of the year I said that I was taking myself off of MySpace
and Facebook because I felt too old to be doing such hoo-la-la. I mean, when one of the friends' 14 year old kid asked me to be her friend on Facebook, I felt like a big loser. But hey! What was my problem? What's wrong with having friends not simply of all races, creeds, and colors, but of all ages, too? Heck, bring it on.

So anyway, I actually did take myself off of MySpace, but it's simply not that easy to do with Facebook. I couldn't do it, anyway. But I can't seem to send off a personal message to a single person without accidentally sending it to 50 people. Oh, but there are so many joys to Facebook! Now that I'm back on it, I can piss off half the day by playing Scrabulous. And I can discover the joys of the Edinburgh-based comedy stylings of Idiots of Ants:



More importantly, I can keep up with loads of people I haven't seen or even thought about in years! One such person is Robin Jones, a guy that was going to the University of Houston when I was in the Creative Writing Program there and was teaching Comp 101 as a teaching assistant. Talented Robin was always popping up in the most unexpected places. Once he burst into my classroom, tap-dancing and singing about wanting to know about gerunds. Another night in some late '80's December, I was sitting in Cafe Express with a couple of friends, and a Santa Claus freaked me out when he made a run for me and sat on my lap. Needless to say, Mr. Claus was, in actuality, Mr. Jones.

Well, he's one of those people I hadn't seen or thought about for years. No, that's not true. Every time I've thought about gerunds, or Santa, for the past 20 years, he's the first thing that pops into my head. So now we've found each other again on Facebook, and the magic's back in my life! I thought that I was the biggest pop-culture geek on the planet, but I've found my match. Robin Jones has three pretty amazing blogs, and they all address everything from Robert Culp to Mannix. It's well-written, pretty entertaining stuff, and if you get bored with Facebook, you can always spend hours watching old TV trailers. I know I do:

Your Fiend Mr. Jones
Mr. Jones Challenges You to Cast a Fictitious Remake
You Know the Face...
He's a real find.
Even if he doesn't know what a gerund is.

It's Old. It's Weird. It's at the CAM. And on Glasstire.

Yee-haw. I've written a review on The Old, Weird America at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston on Glasstire. Y'all click on over. It's more fun than a barrel full o' angry beavers.

Patrick Phipps' "It Took The Night to Believe" @ Domy Books, Houston: May 9-June 27

A long time ago, my niece got this thing for Christmas that was something like the Visible Man anatomy model. Except this was just a visible head, kinda. It was clearly not meant for educational purposes; if you pushed a button, viscous green goo would trickle from its nose. I think all of the orifices did something of the same nature, but I remember the runny nose the best. My niece was like, "Cool!" I hadn't seen anyone get so worked up over a toy like that since a Power Ranger.

It fascinated me and weirded me out simultaneously, but, like my niece, I was like, "Cool!"

I had the same feeling when I studied Patrick Phipps' new sculptures in It Took the Night to Believe over at the Domy Bookstore. The sculptures, fashioned from plaster bandages, newspaper, masking tape, airbrush colors, acrylic paint, gesso, and model railroad landscaping supplies, have this odd fragility and a distinctly human quality. That is, if you're human and you've just been knocked around enough to require medical attention, and then, having gotten it, you had a dozen more mishaps.

It's interesting how his work has evolved from his drawings and paintings. His 2D stuff always had a rough, visceral feel; the way he let his paint drip, and his use of graphic materials and subject matter, done with such painterly flair, was done with such immediacy, you always knew you weren't far away from the artist himself.



One gets the same feeling here, but one also gets the feeling that, perhaps because they each have such a presence, that these are a band of Phipps' monstrous, misshapen, but still treasured children.

Phipps admits to having been influenced by both Franz West and Rachel Harrison, but I think there's more West here. Harrison's work has that blobbed-out look to it, but she tends, especially lately, to coat her objects with layer upon layer of paint, and I like Phipps' work more in this respect. (Keep in mind, people, that I spent a month in RachelHarrisonville, and I'm pretty sick of her stuff.) Phipps' work feels, despite its blobby misshapen quality, extremely delicate and fragile.

I hadn't seen Patrick's work for a while, and was really looking forward to seeing what he's been up to. It Took the Night to Believe came as a real surprise--like, Ewww, Cool.

Some People

Kickasssss artist Harrell Fletcher, co-creator of the awesome online (and ongoing) project Learning to Love You More , brings us yet another way to relish in the richness of our communal existences. Some People, a new project that we're invited to join in on, is described thusly:

Some people get to be well known and other people live their lives in obscurity. For this project you get to choose and present someone that you think other people should know about by making a documentary about them. Your documentary can take any form that can be presented on the web — video, sound, images, text or any combination of those things. The hope is that this will eventually become an archive of interesting people that previously were not well known, from all over the world.

So this will be a good opportunity to prove that your Aunt Dottie is infinitely more interesting than Paris Hilton--because we all knew she always was--by participating in the project. Or you can just do it to show how cool your ex-wife is, as Peter Max Lawrence did with Virginie Falquerho. Who knows? The person you choose to immortalize may well become the subject of a series of strange videos by Japanese people. It worked for me.

And They Call Themselves Christian

It's just sad that, after waiting for hours in line to get into the Vatican, women who are missing a leg, or men who are missing a forearm or a stubby hand, will be turned away.

ho ho ho

I've sold my soul to Glasstire!! I wrote a review on Lifting, a new show at Texas Christian University's Contemporary Arts Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Shit, I figured if I had to go to Fort Worth, I had to get paid for it. It only stands to reason. Why else would you go there?

Anyway, I'm proud of my re-entry into the world of art whoredom, so if you go to Glasstire Articles you can read about it. It's really a great show. Maybe there is a reason to go to Fort Worth after all.

paradise

Nail salons are just weird.

Because It's Come to This...

I gotta be honest: I don't know how people find me, and I don't know why they take interest in me, but for some reason they do, and they do. For the last couple of years, I have been hearing from a 22 year old musician named Olaolu Winfunke from Locust Grove, Georgia.

I don't know what he thinks a moon-faced whitey like myself can do for him, but he runs a business called AfricanConnect, where he hawks his music and wares. I go to his website every time I hear from him, but when I saw the "Street Team" on his website, I decided that I liked him and his pals and their electronic Afro-pop, if only for "Street Team" member "Whitney".

Hell, I've never been so enterprising. So there you go, Olaolu. You've worn this milquetoast suburban-raised middle-aged woman who wouldn't know a rap from an ankle bracelet right down. Persistence is obviously the key to winning a plug on the internationally renowned and prize-winning WhinyBabyLand!

Now He Tells Me

I was recently alerted to a website called The Two Percent which kinda takes the tedium and dirty work out of gallery hopping in maze-like districts like Chelsea. The video's informative and funny, and although I don't completely think that the method accounts for all tastes, I think that it does a pretty good job at painting a wide and informative brush stroke. I just wish I'd known about it while I was up there this time; it seems that sheer fatigue prevented me from seeing some really good stuff.

I also liked the "about" section on the website's founder, David Behringer:


Originally from Seattle, David currently resides in Manhattan. All information presented in 'the two percent' is gathered and qualified only through his regular gallery viewing experiences. David is 30 and has no pets.

Now, there's a man you can trust.

When the Political is Beautiful

Ya know, I tromped all over NYC looking for good art last month. I did see some, but for the most part, a lot of it started looking the same. I don't know whether that had to do with the current zeitgeist (crap aesthetic, current war or pre-teen inspired skulls), or the fact that I'd just seen too much of it.

Whatever the case, Anthony Thompson Shumate's Stations at Apama Mackey Gallery is a really refreshing change. "Stations", of course, refers to the stations of the cross, and the theme here is faithful in every detail to Catholic iconography; but in this case, the "stations" are actually filling stations: Gulf, Shell, Mobil, etc. One would think that an approach like this would be more than a trifle heavy-handed. But with the exception of a couple of over-the-top details (the wine and wafers offered at the entrance, for example), this show is so well executed, one gets the political references that are not diminished by the beauty of the works.


Hung in the dimly lit gallery are lit, faux-stained glass panels either portraying an oil company's logo or a view of a service station's sign. Each panel is brightly hued and indeed looks like a panel of stained glass. I was surprised to learn that each was constructed of plastic and resin. The atmosphere is strangely cathedral-like, and projected on the center of the floor is an animation mimicking the Roman Catholic insignia, but with the company logos neatly incorporated into it. One half expects there to be one of those "aaaaaahhhhh" sounds--you know, the ones they have in movies when Jesus appears before you--transmitted throughout the gallery, but instead it is appropriately silent. You just get that "aaaaaahhhhh" feel.

In the back part of the gallery, there are novena candles with the same images of the stations on them, along with a number of candles. Like the front gallery, it's solemn. It feels like you should get down and do some serious genuflecting. At first, I thought that this detail, like the wine and wafers at the front, was a little too much, but when I sat with it, I changed my mind. This exhibition is so well-executed, you find yourself a tad confused. Why do I get this feeling of solemnity and worshipfulness in a place with a bunch of oil company logos? Why do I come this close to saying a prayer before a bunch of kitschily decorated candles?


It's all in the atmosphere. I probably woulda gotten the same feeling from signs that said Pepsi and Target in that setting, though the "Stations" theme, at once almost too clever, becomes sublime. I mean, we all know that we're a nation of blindly worshiping gas-guzzlers; it's not as if we need a work of art to tell us that. And generally, when it does, I for one roll my eyes and run for the hills. But, like I said, Shumate makes it work here by presenting such a nice product. You get it, and that's good. But it's elegant and put together quite nicely, so the message feels less pounded into you than placed before you in an artistic sleight of hand.

On another note, I'm quite taken by Apama Mackey's funky, galleristic transformation. I thought that her last space was quite lovely, but this new spot on 11th, with its affixed shipping containers and semi-enclosed porches, feels really Houston. Kind of like an upscale ice house. I'm always interested in what Mackey's up to. She has a passion and enthusiasm that crosses over any line that could be considered practical, and it seems like she's not afraid of anything. Sure, sometimes she's up, sometimes she's down, but she's always looking for new things to show, and she's always fearless in her endeavors. Of course, most gallerists can't afford to do what she does, and I have no idea how she keeps her projects afloat (although working with the Clayton Brothers was most certainly a savvy move) but she's got the kind of energy that Houston needs. I mean, you can do anything here. That's one of things that makes being here more interesting than New York. It's too bad most people don't remember that.

And Finally...

Well, I leave here tomorrow. This past week was packed with all kinds of peeps here for all of the fairs. My friend Francesca Fuchs came up from Houston for a few days to witness the mayhem, and fun was had by all. Of all of the fairs, the Armory Show was the best, although that's not saying too much. A fair's a fair's a fair. Even the best work would look better if it were hung on the outside on the pier; there's just no romance in those rows of stupid booths. Maybe if we were allowed to shoot at balloons with pop guns or throw ping pong balls at bowls of water so that we might take home one of the goldfish that came in them. Maybe if we could just stroll around gingerly licking at a wad of cotton candy. Ah, now that's my idea of a fair. Fuck, if the Pulse fair had just a funnel cake or two, the fact that their stopped-up trailer restrooms, and comically bad performance art would have been forgivable.

The fair that people were talking about, and that we trotted over to 34th street to take in, however, was the Volta fair. It was probably one of the worst things I've ever seen. Granted, it took place in a swanky office space, and it had beautiful, sweet-smelling restrooms and plenty of foam cubes to sit on when you got tired, but I swear I did not see one thing that was decent. The galleries at the Volta, unlike the other fairs, did not place out a sampling of its various artists' wares; instead, each gallery put on a solo show by a single artist. It sounded like a great idea, but the choices the galleries made on who to show was appalling. There wasn't one single interesting thing going on in there, which was just bizarre. How could so many galleries from around the world get it together so that they ALL showed something bad? Mind-boggling. We should get these folks on foreign affairs.

At least at the other fairs you saw an interesting piece here and there. I was in shock. But at least they didn't charge $30 like they did at the Armory. That would have set me off. I'm sure of it.

There was other stuff going on. Scope was at Lincoln Center this year. And there was something called the Bridge Art Fair that sounded a bit promising but which I lacked the energy to attend. Everything starts looking the same after a while. You get eyeball burn.

This is my last post, at least until I get to Houston and find something to snarl about.

Gut of the Quantifier @ Lisa Cooley Gallery

Many of you might remember Lisa Cooley from Houston as the director of the ill-fated (I don't know if it was ill-fated...it's not like it got into a car wreck or anything) Mixture Gallery. However, Lisa's recently opened her own place on Orchard, Lisa Cooley Gallery, on the lower East side, and she's really got it goin' on. Her second show Gut of the Quantifier (apparently this title comes from lyrics by The Fall: I'm telling you now and I'm telling you this/Life can be an onward, downward/ Chip-chit-chip-chit-chip--and noooooooo I'm not hip enough to know something like that. I learned that bit of lore from Scott Calhoun) is elegant, subtle, and well put together. Gut, at first glance, seems nearly monochromatic; there are no screaming yellow zonkers anywhere in sight. Use of color in these pieces is quiet, almost sly. I can honestly say that there's not a bad piece in the show, by artists Tauba Auerbach (cool website), Barb Choit, experimental filmmaker and visual artist Paul Sharits, Scottish visual and performance artist Sue Tompkins , Matt Sheridan Smith, Lisa Oppenheim, Dan Estabrook, painter, poet, novelist, and all-round genius Brion Gysin, Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, and, last but not least, Fred Sandback. That lineup in itself is like a who's who of cool in the hipster pages. Like I said, all of it was good. However, there are a few in there that really blew me away.

I particularly liked works by Matt Sheridan Smith (crappy photo above). Using figures found on various nations' currencies, Smith (and I'm winging it here, I didn't take notes when I was told about the process) silkscreens the images, coats them with a layer of the silver scratch-off stuff used on lottery tickets, and proceeds to scratch the image off onto the paper. The other images looked more like people you'd actually see on currency: royalty, historic figures. I couldn't figure out where this guy came from until it was pointed out that it was probably a soccer player.

Hey! How come other countries get cute soccer players on their money? Now that David and Victoria Posh-Spice- Beckham live here, couldn't we have them on some money? Photographed by Juergen Teller? By the way, I liked that show at Lehmann Maupin. There's something to be said for shameless commercialism.

But anyway, Smith's work was cool.



My favorite drawings were Sue Tompkins'. They were really simple, but elegant--lightweight paper (newsprint) with clean creases, and unassuming text tucked near the folds. You look like China, one of them reads. I also like the way they're installed, which allows the paper to flutter and float from the wall a bit. These pieces, I think, are emblematic of the subtle beauty that pervades this show.


Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez' collages, from the series Weights Measures and Prices are also remarkable. Collage is a medium that can so often go bad if not done properly, but these are exquisite. She plays with notions of decor and design in an unsettling but effective manner. It's too bad that I can't take a decent photograph...sigh.

Like I said, this exhibition has nary a stinker. The arrangement is thoughtful, and the line-up itself is thorough, well-researched, and nicely put together. Cooley's is a small space,

and only about the width of a couple of bowling lanes, but she uses it well. And I have a lot of faith in Lisa Cooley's ability to maneuver through the New York art scene. Her first show, a two-person with Andy Coolquitt and Frank Haines, was a success, and Gut has been listed as an Artforum critic's pick.

I keep trying to get Lisa to run out in the middle of Orchard St. and, a la Mary Tyler Moore, toss her hat in the air.

Check it out--it even looks like her.

working title:

So, this is how I wound up here on Sunday, March 16, from, roughly, 11 a.m. till 6 p.m.:

Last spring I met artist/curator Jacob Robichaux in Houston. Before I came up to NY, I told Jacob I was coming through and he told me he had a show up at Museum 52 on Rivington: ...bell, string, whistle, cube...

After seeing the show, a series of assemblages and wall pieces, I emailed him and said, Hey, congrats! So he emailed back and asked me to do a performance there.

Huh? I've done a lot of things, but performance isn't really one of them. I envisioned someone in a leotard doing interpretive dance with one of the objects in the installation. I cringed. But I went ahead and said yes, since no one would know me, anyway.

I borrowed the cruddy card table and chair from the apartment I'm subletting, found a manual typewriter in a weird shoe store on E. 72nd St., bought a kitchen timer and a pile of paper and set up shop. The performer was required to select one of the four black envelopes at the entrance of the installation; I got number three:

These were the objects from the assemblage, above. Using the various objects (twine ball, fabric, ring, box, book, painted sticks, bag), I went to work. After five minutes of writing about one or a combination of the objects, I'd crumple and toss my work.

The response, I noted, varied: most of the people who came in or went by clearly thought I was the gallerina, although I couldn't figure out why they would think that the gallery was so cheap that they couldn't afford at least an electric typewriter. Others came in and, noting the frustrated nature of my tossed off pages, asked if I was ok. My favorite response, however, was with the neighborhood kids--I noticed, after a while, that they were clapping and pointing every time I threw a sheet of paper. Look! She just threw one!

I'm gonna go out and buy those kids a TV. They're obviously desperate for entertainment.

The result? 54 vignettes, some interesting; many, predictably, not, beginning with the words "working title". I was ready to throw that fucking typewriter through the window after an hour, though. How did secretaries in the 1950's do it?

ArtTrek 3: The Whitney Biennial: Boy Is My Ass Tired

I did my second pass over the Whitney Biennial today. You know, I really hated the 2006 Biennial, but looking at this year's batch, I now realize that the 2006 Biennial was better simply because it was so odious. It seemed like everywhere you looked, you went, "Ew. Weird. Ick." And the way it was crammed all together like some bizarre salon-style of shit? There was some good stuff, of course, but the overwhelming contrariness of the thing was just baffling. Well, like I said, I hated it. But at least hate's a response.

This year's show, for the most part, made me round just about every corner with a "Hmmm. Golly. Look's like Art, I guess." Oh, 2006! I miss you so!

Mixed in with the Oatmeal of Art that was this year's Biennial, however, there were a few chewy, chunky raisins full of wholesome goodness and flavor to keep me from rushing the guards and demanding a refund.

Unfortunately, none of these chunky-chewies happened to be paintings. I guess it's just the way of the post-post-post-modern art world, but this year's selections made me think that painting really is dead, at least within the architecture of the contemporary art space. Even works by artists I like--Mary Heilman, for example--looked dated and out of place. Hung at waist level on the 2nd floor in front of the elevators, their bright hues and painterly strokes just don't gel with the surroundings. As I was looking at them, I thought back to her exhibition of paintings at the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston. They didn't look good there, either. I wondered why such good paintings always looked like shit. After I was through scouring the Biennial, I went all the way up to the 5th floor to see the permanent collection. On view there was a Heilman, in a nice, intimate, clean & well lighted space with a few other paintings of similar size. It looked good, and it looked right at home. I wondered if that was the problem with some of the other painters I saw.

Robert Bechtle (above) was another example of good painters hung bad. I really like this guy's work, but again, it looked out of place. After seeing the Heilman painting upstairs, it occurred to me that Bechtle's work would have been best served had it been put in a gallery with other paintings, preferably, again, of similar size. I'm thinking he woulda looked great in a room with a Hopper or two.

One of my biggest disappointments, however, was the room devoted to Karen Kilimnik's work. Oh, I think we all know how I generally feel about Kilimnik's work. Remind me to tell you, sometime, about the time I tried to stalk her at 303 Gallery. With four or five small, characteristically sloppy paintings installed in a space adorned a fancy chandelier glittering at just-above-eye-level, however, Kilimnik's work, which she usually artfully throws together with aplomb, looked stripped-bare. When Karen's done properly, as she so often is, her splashes of fancy contrast her pathetic painting style and make a statement that only a reclusive, celebrity-obsessed woman can make. Here, though, it's too much to be effectively minimal, and not enough to draw the viewer into her fantasy world. Boy, was I bummed. Now I'll have to track her down and kill her.

But! I've learned my lesson. My inclination is to do a lot of bitching and save the best for last, but seeing as how my computer screwed me over and I lost half of one of my previous posts, and I had decided to save the best for last that time, I shall avoid that pitfall. It's really hard for me; bitching about things is so damned fun. And I will say, without elaborating, that Rachel Harrison and Jason Rhoades suck some huge, major, horribly stinky ass. Rachel got a brief reprieve for a piece or two in the Unmonumental show, but really, Rachel, in the immortal words of the Simpsons' groundskeeper Willie, back to the loch with you, 'Nessie.

But I did see some great shit, so I'll talk about that now and leave the worst (for the most part) where it ought to be.




My favorite piece in the entire show was a 4-channel video by Omer Fast, The Casting. Told on four screens in a series of silent tableaux are two stories narrated in voiceover by a U.S. soldier in Iraq. One is a rather bizarre tale, in which he meets and dates a German girl, only to find that she's a self-mutilating nut who drags him in to meet her disapproving family and then practically kills them driving home. The other is a story in which he, one of several soldiers stuck on a deserted road, accidentally shoots an Iraqi civilian. The stories intertwine seamlessly, and the actors, in seeming freeze-frame, blink and breathe as the camera dwells on their individual moments of horror. The narration switches from one scene to the next without a hitch, exploring the complexity and incomprehensibility of how memories mingle in one's psyche, and how terrifying events somehow resonate equally with absurd, less harmful situations. The beginning, as well as the end, shows the narrator pitching his story before a small group of filmmakers, only to be told that his tale is too long, that something like that couldn't possibly engage an audience. Relating it like this makes such a framework come off as pat, but the chaotic nature of the intertwining stories, in contrast with the mock stillness of the actors in each frame really does mimic the nature of subjectivity and memory. It's a disturbing, gorgeous work.

Matthew Brannon's installation, also occupying a room of its own, was the model of economy. Even the small--probably 8-10' wide and maybe 8' tall--partitions installed to exhibit his modestly scaled letterpress prints seemed perfectly planned for the space. There was a lot going on in this room, yet it neither felt crowded nor overwhelming. His letterpress prints, clean and spare, generally had one or two images, stark, clean, iconographic shapes, with often hilarious text. A lone shape, mimicking a piano as seen from above, reads, guess. no guess again, and then continues to relate how the writer fucked some guy in a piano bar years before.

Another completely hilarious text talks about how the artist suddenly realizes the absurdity of his own being whilst standing in line at an art supply store. There he is, buying art supplies, standing in line at an art supply store, amidst crafters, students. His mildly paranoiac meanderings remind me of the time when I was pulling into Texas Art Supply and I saw Hiram Butler in the parking lot. I said to him, jokingly, Hey! Only artists are allowed to be at Texas Art Supply! To his credit, Hiram drily replied, Real artists don't shop at Texas Art Supply.

He had me there.

Brannon also has a nice installation on the largest wall in the Room. Painted in a flat black are a couple of blocky grids, with drapes of sea-foam green hung neatly to the sides. This guy's a genius with color. Somehow, the work screams color and design, yet doesn't feel like a misplaced thesis by some interior design grad student. A small pink shelf, hung impossibly high and stocked with pink books and bookends, adds to the i'm fucking with your ideas of arrangement sensibility. Nice.

The closest thing to a successful "painting" installation was by Lisa Sigal. Using a wall, including the door, of what looks to be something ripped out of some dead granny's house before demolition, Sigal tacks on a battered awning from an old circus tent. The effect comes off as less vintage than canvas with an aged patina. I found myself looking at this installation with even more interest the second time around.



I guess the smartest way to approach painting in this show was with a tad of irony, as Ellen Harvey did in her installation Museum of Failure. This work is first met with a large black plexiglas wall, with cartoony-looking (think of a gallery wall in a Pink Panther cartoon) wainscoting and painting-less picture frames. One "frame" is cut out to show a red wall painted with tromp l'oeil frames, still-lifes, and scenes from what could be the artist's studio. This red wall is also painted with faux wainscoting, as is the rest of the room. I suppose that any romance one would have about this wall of "paintings" behind the wall of plexi "frames" is shattered by the harsh fluorescent lights installed on the back of the plexi wall. Although each of the "paintings" is realistic, it is executed rather ham-fistedly and doesn't really pretend to represent painting at all, but, rather, emphasizes how one chooses to look at that kind of work.

I've recently taken to loathing things that look purposely thrown together, random, or crappy. Mitzi Pederson, taking crappy- or found-looking objects and with a single element transforming them into pieces of purely poetic abstract sculpture, really makes one re-evaluate notions of formalism. I couldn't really find an image on the web that illustrates the genius she demonstrates with her assemblage of broken cinder blocks. On each raw, busted edge of concrete, Pederson applies a thick, furry layer of charcoal and black glitter. This touch effects a strange metamorphosis on the bricks; they seem weightless, as if, with a swift boot, one could scatter them across the gallery.

Another memorable (perhaps because it was so bloody weird) video installation was by Mika Rottenberg . Installed in a walk-in barnyard structure are (I think) 5 videos of women with impossibly long hair (think Crystal Gale) milking goats to make butter or cheese, collecting water to wash their impossibly long hair, or scampering about trying to herd their cheesemaking goats. Each task the women tackle, whether it be gathering up animals or their own tresses, is almost comically laborious. One woman lies on a high wooden plank whilst the rest ceremoniously thread her locks between suspended metal rings; another scene shows the same woman with her hair cascading a story downward while her co-workers dutifully squeeze water from her just-washed hair into a vessel. Every act is one of economy and ridiculously long hours of work. An entire afternoon produces only one square of cheese, one washed head of hair. Even though, at first, it seems as if you're watching something from another era--like visiting Amish country--settling into the work makes you feel that one thing never changes: a woman's work is never done.

Amanda Ross-Ho's enormous blue plastic catbox, complete with litter, was also a special treat. Mmmm...somehow the words "treat" and "catbox" shouldn't go together. But no matter. Ho's sensibility, somewhat ironic but still crazy with '70's-ish pop references--giant silhouettes of macrame hangings cut from thick black canvas, cruddy prints from little-kid tee shirts (a petulant looking cartoon bear is labeled "stubborn"--think of the little cartoon devils saying "I'm a lil' devil")--is paired with what seems to be random clutter. A framed white-painted bulletin board, riddled with phantom tack marks, sports a snapshot here, a flyer there. You can really feel Ho's playful and self-deprecating spirit here. She's a lil' devil.



Finally, the last (and not least) work I was pretty crazy about was Olaf Bruening's video installation, Home 2. The viewing room, decked out like a scene out of Kon Tiki: screen lashed to a bamboo frame, seating of bamboo benches, set the stage for the travels of Brian Kerstetter, an wild n' crazy white guy out to "experience" the world.

Kerstetter's one of the best things I've ever seen. Fearless, entitled, and naive in that upper-middle-class white guy way, he travels around the world--to Japan, New Guinea--striving for a real experience with the natives. This guy's unbelievable (and unless he's actually a spawn of Satan or a genetic anomaly, he's wearing insanely light blue contact lenses, which make him seem even whiter and creepier); the kinda guy who goes everywhere making everybody laugh. Hilariously extroverted, he communicates with everyone in a grandiose pantomime. He buys a huge bunch of bananas from a native market vendor, then chases her around and around the market as she laughs and screams. He persuades a group of Japanese youths to sport Pokemon masks and march through the streets of Tokyo. He meets some wealthy Arabs (?) in a Japanese hotel and somehow persuades them to tie each other up, as if taken hostage by terrorists, and pose for pictures.

You find yourself laughing in disbelief at every escapade, and Kerstetter always includes you, the viewer, into his schemes as he whispers to the camera. It's as if you and your zany friends travel, Lonely Planet guide in hand, throughout the third world. The jungles are lush, or the hotels are full of things that look foreign and funny to you, and you can always count on the housekeeping or cooking staff to play along with a practical joke. You're laughing as he rather innocently (hey! he's just being friendly! he's just having fun) but completely condescends to these people.

The tone drastically changes, however, when Brian encounters a part of the third world that is neither lush nor charming with local color. Kerstetter is one of these guys that never sits down--his enthusiasm is infectious, and, therefore, so is his disillusionment and dismay. Upon encountering a site that is strewn with rotten garbage and where the natives are burning tires, he becomes so depressed, he tosses his money to passing children.

This work is brilliant; it's a perfect fit for this hyperactive actor, as his intensity magnifies our inability, as denizens of the first world, to remotely comprehend that of the third. And it's a lovely illustration of white liberal guilt, as is clearly demonstrated when Kerstetter dejectedly hands out his foreign bills. Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, followed that novel up with the less successful You Shall Know Our Velocity. In the second work, a novelist who has attained great riches and great success is so burdened by the guilt of having obtained so much money in what he perceives as a shallow way, travels over the world with a few buddies with the express purpose of giving all of his money away. He thinks that doing this will alleviate his guilt and will make him feel as if he's done good, but it does neither. Eggers' characters' adventure of ridding himself of the money, followed the the ensuing feeling of futility perfectly mirrors Bruening's work here. Why can't I make you people have a better life? And what makes me so sure I can give you one?



By now, if anyone has read this far, you're probably thinking: Who does this WhinyBabyLander think she is? Norman Fucking Mailer? Well, if we've all gotta throw our work into a huge vacuum, we might as well do it in a grandiose fashion.

Now, I will wrap up this preposterously long post with the Coulda Been Betters and the Couldn'ta Been Worse categories.

Spike Lee When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. Now, in all fairness, this was good. I think. I mean, who the fuck is going to sit through 244 minutes? It's practically impossible. The museum opens at 11, closes at 6. And they don't allow food in there. I mean, come on. I hope that someday I'll be able to see the whole thing on Netflix.


Carol Bove's airy installation, Night Sky over New York was lovely, but what makes her work really great and edgy, in general, is her ability to tie contemporary sensibilities in with her '60's Danish Modern twists. Coulda been better.

John Baldessari. I know I should be more respectful, but here: Bleccchhdessari.

Roe Etheridge: Who proclaimed these photographs interesting? Where can I find this person and stuff one of them down his or her throat?



Michael Smith: To be truthful, Michael Smith is the kinda guy who should, finally, get some real recognition. I mean, look at him! Everything about him and his work says, I'm a Good Guy!
And he's a clever guy. Although the video and Sears portraits shown here at the Biennial were already shown in the CAM's Nexus Texas exhibition, they seemed weightier here. Or maybe they just weren't surrounded by as much crud as at the CAM show. I really hated that show, and wound up calling it Blexus Texas, but you know how I love making up stupid nicknames. Unfortunately, his video Portal Excursion was projected on a big screen at the Whitney, and it just looked, production-wise, like shit. It is a clever piece, although I can't seem to shake the image of 60 Minutes' Andy Rooney out of my head when I watch it.

Phoebe Washburn: Washburn's installation here was neither particularly ambitious nor visually compelling. Some 2x4's here, a couple of gurgling fish tanks there. I'd seen it in L.A. in, what, like 1993? Also, there was something about this whole construction that made me want to point and say, Look, Pop! It's a Habitrail for environmental nuts!

Charles Long: I told you people to keep your crappy-looking papier mache shit at home.

Seth Price: Hi, I vomited up some shapes that kinda look like Africa. Let's trace 'em out and make 'em look like slick panels of polyurethane!



William Cordova: Whatever. Right around the corner from this crappy construction of 2x4's that undoubtedly held cryptic symbols of some ethnic identity, there was a pretty decent crappy construction with plywood and a few mirrors by Heather Rowe. Why must we be plagued with two crappy carpenters when just Heather would do just fine?

Sherrie Levine: Here's another one I oughta have more respect for, but just because I have respect for my Grandma doesn't mean I need to put her in a show.



Frances Stark: Great drawings, but lady, leave your PowerPoint lectures for the university lecture circuit! If you're saying something stupid, it's not going to be any less boring or stupid if it dances across a computer screen.

Leslie Hewitt: I don't get it. Oh, yeah. Maybe I'm not supposed to get it. Is it because I'm white and the references here are so post-identity politics that I'm supposed to assume that this random shit means something? I think I must be a racist.

Eduardo Sarabia: A bodega/warehouse type space loaded with oversized, fabricated items. Visually, this was actually one of the better installations. However, after looking through the free 'catalog' that I picked up inside the show, I realized that each object was actually a part of some huge project this guy has going on, including producing his own line of tequila. Cute, but somebody's obviously got too many production assistants on hand. It irritated me.

OK, I have officially started to look a bit like a mole. My eyes are becoming sensitive to the light.

Until I write again...

More News From the Girl's Room

I started this post when I was waiting for the cable guy to replace the cable box and the modem. Then I went to the gym, and the gym up here is kinda crappy. There's much to be said for Texas and its wide-open spaces. The machines are really close together--I mean really close together, and there was this fat guy on the machine next to me, and he smelled reallyreallyreally awful, and to make it worse, he kept grazing his arm against me. I almost screamed. Then, when he was done with his workout, instead of getting down off the machine like a normal human being and letting the rest of us breathe, he stood there and read for 15 minutes. Finally, I looked over to see what he was reading, since he hadn't turned the page for a while (how would I know? because he fucking touches me every time he turns the bloody page!) and it turns out that he's been reading an advertisement for handbags out of some newspaper circular.

Why do I bring this up? Well, I think that all 2 of you who read WhinyBabyLand know that I do not have an objective bone in my body, so this experience may well color any and all commentary I have. Maybe not. It's just a warning.

Just thank your lucky stars I'm not the president of the United States or somebody who could do real harm on a simple whim. Oh, wait a second--that is the president of the United States.

Anyway, I saw Shannon Plumb's Together at Sara Meltzer.


Plumb's videos, some of which can be seen on her website, with a slapstick sensibility, are generally pretty hilarious. In Together, which can be viewed on a '70's console from the comfort of a ratty pair of armchairs positioned on an equally ratty rug, Plumb explores the daily life of a couple whose lives were inspired by the artist's grandparents. Shannon Plumb plays both the tired, polyester-clad, constantly struggling wife as well as the rowdy and sometimes mean-spirited husband. She's genius in both roles, but it's the man that makes you laugh the most. Plumb is pretty convincing as the frumpy wife, but she looks nothing like a man in the role of the husband and succeeds only in coming off as a post-adolescent boy with a blonde caterpillar of a mustache. This shortcoming makes the character more than a tad ridiculous, but the artist indulges in the highly comic and makes Grandpa seem both absurd and believable. The video is divided by the days of the week, including Ash Wednesday, in which the wife is trying to pray, whilst the husband does what he can to distract her efforts. The greatest thing about this piece is that Plumb doesn't have any problem turning the narrative on its head to expose what little facade she's created for her characters. In the video's funniest segment, husband and wife sit at the table. Wife subtly annoys husband, and husband returns the favor by playing some sort of air-instrument on the kitchen table. The husband really gets into it, banging his head along to the beat, until Plumb's boy-wig goes flying across the room. The incident humbles him briefly, but as the story moves on to the next day of the week, you see that he's back to his old self.

Shannon Plumb is a funny, perceptive artist, and the silent war between the husband and wife has a lot of familiar aspects to it. For those who've resided with another and have turned around almost violently to find out why the other person insists on making that noise, (and we probably all have) her work, including her past videos, has an undeniable universality. And I don't know if plot or writing can account for all of it. Plumb's a really good actress, but she still seems to look like herself in a stupid wig in every role. There's a sweetness and expressiveness about her face that makes everything relevant and ridiculous at the same time.

I guess the incident mentioned in the beginning didn't make me bitchy as I thought it would. And I can't even smoke in the apartment I'm renting here, and I still didn't get nasty. I must've loved this stuff.

Everything Old is Really a Whole Lot Better Than Anything New Again

I usually pass Paul Kasmin Gallery by. The stuff they always have on display is so impossibly beyond blue chip, I've either seen too much of it, or I was never interested in it to begin with. Like whenever I pass by some place that has Jasper Johns or Robert Rauschenberg on display. Dare I say it? I don't care! Oh, I like a thing of Johns or Rauschenberg here and there; I really like Johns' sculptures more than anything else. But voice these sentiments aloud, and people treat you as if you'd just called Grandma a whore.

For me, however, there is an exception to the old timer rule. I never, ever get sick of Warhol. Go figure.

However, yesterday, when I was walking past Paul Kasmin (the place I always blow off, as previously stated), and I saw that they were showing Warhol drawings, and I just thought, in my slacker-y way, that I'd seen enough of him and needed to move on. I don't know why I turned around; I have a feeling it had something to do with the pale, pale, Pepto-Bismol pink shade they'd painted the front display wall. But inside were drawings, according to the gallerina, that had not been released by the Warhol estate until very recently.

All were delicate drawings of people of all ages, many of them executed with the ink transfer method he used on his original drawings. Each was of a modest scale--less than 20", which, of course, lent an air of intimacy. But it was Warhol's use of tempera and ink in muted pastels and faded grays--in some pieces filling the negative space around the line drawings, in others cascading down the page and through the lines--that made them so exquisite. I have seen (and loved) a lot of Warhol's drawings--the cats, the shoes, etc. But this set of drawings, all dated 1953, was something I hadn't happened upon before. It was a great surprise for me.

From here on out, I promise not to be closed-minded about all those old farts like--oh, God, what am I talking about? One should never promise to quit being disrespectful and irreverent if one has no intention of carrying that out.