this week in art

ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM

Edward Tufte, “Magritte’s Smile,” aluminum casting, 2009 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

258 Main St., Ridgefield, CT
Tuesday-Sunday 12 noon – 5:00 pm
Sculpture garden tours with Edward Tufte: Saturday, April 3, 2:00 & 3:15
Admission: $7 (Tuesdays free)
203-438-4519
www.aldrichart.org

It’s promising to be a beautiful weekend, so it’s a great opportunity to make a little detour north and see the wonderful Aldrich Contemporary Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The indoor part of Edward Tufte’s “Seeing Around” exhibition closed January 17, but his show in the outdoor sculpture garden is still up through April 17, although deinstallation will begin April 5. On April 3, Tufte will be on hand to lead tours at 2:00 and 3:15, discussing such intriguing pieces as “Skewed Machine,” “Porta the Dog,” and “Magritte’s Smile.” The group exhibition “Paying a Visit to Mary” (through June 6) examines the perception and interpretation of reality through works by Dexter Sinister, Melissa Gordon, William Oorebeek, Guido van der Werve, and others. “Tom Molloy” (through June 13) is the first museum survey of the work of Irish artist Tom Molloy, who repurposes existing objects and images to make social and political commentary. “Swarm” consists of folded dollar bills placed into the wall (in an unintentional flaglike pattern that echoes the nearby “Flag”). “Globe” is a small, crushed-up map that dangles from the ceiling, encouraging visitors to “blow the world away,” as Molloy told us at the opening. And the blood dripping from “Sweep” is indeed the artist’s own. Also on view is Jo Yarrington’s site-specific color installation “Ocular Visions,” Jeanne C. Finley + John Muse’s multimedia “Sleeping Under Stars, Living Under Satellites,” and Adad Hannah’s video project “Masterpieces in Motion.” The Aldrich is a charming, very manageable museum in a quaint part of town, making for a terrific little excursion from the city.

MoCCA ART FESTIVAL: JIRÔ TANIGUCHI

taniguchi

69th Regiment Armory
68 Lexington Ave. between 25th & 26th Sts.
April 10-11, $10/day, $15-$20/both days
212-254-3511
www.moccany.org
www.ponentmon.com

No, Japanese sensation Jirô Taniguchi will not be at this year’s MoCCA Art Festival, but it’s the best place to find his latest books. For forty years, Taniguchi has been creating some of the most beloved manga series and novels. Now sixty-two, he has been discovered by America, piling up awards as his works get translated into English. We first found out about him a few years ago at the festival and have been devouring his remarkable books ever since. In THE QUEST FOR THE MISSING GIRL, Taniguchi tells the inspiring tale of a man who is determined to find his late friend’s fifteen-year-old daughter, who has suddenly disappeared. The narrative takes readers from the stunning Himalayas to the seedy back alleys of the big city. Taniguchi returns to the Himalayas in THE SUMMIT OF THE GODS, illustrating Yumemakura Baku’s two-part story of photographer Makoto Fukamachi’s search for the body of mountaineer George Mallory, who went up Mount Everest in 1924 and was never seen again. The book opens with a beautiful six-page color spread by Taniguchi. In the two-part A DISTANT NEIGHBORHOOD, written and illustrated by Taniguchi, forty-eight-year-old businessman Hiroshi Nakahara wakes up to find that he’s fourteen again, back home the summer his father mysteriously left the family and was never heard from again. Taniguchi, who seems to have a thing for lost people, has also released such books as THE WALKING MAN and THE ICE WANDERER and, with writer Natsuo Sekikawa, is in the midst of a multivolume retelling of Natsume Soseki’s classic 1904 Japanese novel BOTCHAN. We can’t wait to see what gems Taniguchi’s English-language publisher, Fanfare / Ponent Mon, will be bringing to this year’s MoCCA Art Festival.

mocca art festival 2010

This year’s MoCCA Art Festival runs April 10-11 at the 69th Regiment Armoy, featuring such participants as Kim Deitch, Emily Flake, Jaime Hernandez. Neil Kleid, Peter Kuper, Hope Larson, Frank Miller, Paul Pope, Dash Shaw, Gahan Wilson, and Klein Award recipient David Mazzucchelli. Single tickets are $10 in advance, $12 day of show, with weekend tickets available for $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

ARTEXPO NEW YORK 2010

Stanley Agbontaen’s “Village Market” will be among the thousands of works at Artexpo this weekend

Pier 94 on the Hudson
Twelfth Ave. & 54^th St.
March 26-27, $10-$15
www.artexponewyork.com

After two days open just to the trade, the thirty-second international Artexpo welcomes the public Saturday and Sunday, with more than three hundred exhibitors as well as educational events and special art-related programs. On Saturday morning at 10:00, Free Arts NYC will sponsor a children’s mural painting benefiting underprivileged youths; at noon, Ben Angotti, Marthalicia Matarrita, Andre Trenier, and Julie Freil will fight it out in a live art battle in the sculpture garden; and Michael Pacitti will lead the “In Living Color” seminar at 4:00. On Sunday at 11:00, Eric Smith will moderate a panel discussion on “The Future of the Art World” with Anthony Deljou, Nan Miller, and Robert Reeder, followed at 1:00 with Smith lecturing on “Marketing 101: What They Didn’t Teach You in Art School.”

SEVENTY YEARS GRANDMA MOSES

Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, “Going to Grandma’s,” oil on board, 1944 (© Grandma Moses Properties Co., New York)

A LOAN EXHIBITION CELEBRATING THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARTIST’S DISCOVERY
Galerie St. Etienne
24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday-Saturday through April 3
212-245-6734
www.gseart.com

Seventy years ago, Galerie St. Etienne held a solo exhibition of the work of a self-taught painter from upstate New York. The eighty-year-old artist, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, chose not to attend the opening of “What a Farmwife Painted” because she was already familiar with all the canvases. Also known as Grandma Moses, she painted idyllic scenes in a folksy style, Americana as seen through a primitivist lens. One of her earliest champions was Galerie St. Etienne founder Otto Kallir, who collected outsider art in addition to such German Expressionists as Egon Schiele, Käthe Kollwitz, Emil Nolde, and Oskar Kokoschka. Kallir’s granddaughter Jane, who now runs the gallery, is celebrating the seventieth anniversary of Grandma Moses’s entrée into the international art world with a revelatory retrospective that will change everything you ever thought about the famous octagenarian.

Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, “When Leaves Turn,” oil on board, 1943 (© Grandma Moses Properties Co., New York)

Nearly seventy works are on view, in addition to archival photographs and some of Moses’s tools. Using oil paint on board or pressed wood, Moses created charming landscapes of her town, horizontal images often with small figures in the foreground, houses and barns in the middle of the canvas, and sky in the upper third. Bathed in spring greens or winter whites, the pictures depict such activities as taking in the laundry, celebrating weddings and holidays, making apple butter, flying a kite, and sledding through the snow. The peaceful settings are interrupted in several works by storms that have hit or are on their way. Two of the most vibrant pieces are “The Quilting Bee,” which features her boldest use of color and is the only painting set indoors, and “When Leaves Turn,” dominated by gorgeous fall hues. The show reveals that Moses was no mere curiosity; she was a skilled painter with a unique visual language. As the excellent exhibition essay concludes, “After seventy years, Grandma Moses’s achievement endures. This, in the end, is the mark of artistic greatness: the ability of the work to survive in multiple shifting contexts and remain forever fresh.”

SKIN FRUIT

Kiki Smith’s “Bowed Woman” tries to hide in the corner in shame for being part of Jeff Koons show at the New Museum (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

SELECTIONS FROM THE DAKIS JOANNOU COLLECTION
New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bowery at Prince St.
Wednesday-Sunday through June 6
Admission: $12 (free Thursday nights 7:00 – 9:00)
212-219-1222
www.newmuseum.org

For “Skin Fruit,” the new multimedia exhibition at the New Museum, guest curator Jeff Koons rounds up many of the usual suspects — Matthew Barney, Charles Ray, Urs Fischer, Chris Ofili, Terence Koh, Cindy Sherman, Paul Chan, Takashi Murakami, Paul McCarthy, Kara Walker, Richard Prince, Franz West, and Jenny Holzer — but has chosen some of their uglier work, resulting in a monstrosity of a show. The sculptures, paintings, video, and performances were all selected from the collection of New Museum trustee Dakis Joannou. Of course, while it is possible that Koons didn’t really have that much to work with and that the show is more indicative of Joannou’s tastes than Koons’s, that doesn’t excuse this uninspired, crowded wreck, perhaps exemplified by John Bock’s first-floor installation, “Maltratierte Fregatte,” centering on a purposefully smashed bus, or even more by Kiki Smith’s “Mother/Child” sculpture in which a man is playing his own skin flute. There are a couple of excellent rooms, however, one designed by Robert Gober and the other pairing Maurizio Cattelan’s “All” white body bags with a woman singing “This is propaganda,” then telling visitors that it is by Tino Sehgal. “Skin Fruit” pales in comparison to the other current celebrity-curated show in town, “Size Does Matter,” the two-floor FLAG Art Foundation exhibit put together by basketball star Shaquille O’Neal. Coincidentally enough, Koons has included in “Skin Fruit” his own “One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank,” the first artwork acquired by Joannou and one that features a basketball suspended in a tank of water. (Koons has also curated the current Ed Paschke exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Ave., which runs through April 24; Koons worked as an assistant to the late Chicago painter, explaining, “Ed Paschke taught me what it meant to be a professional artist.”)

Friday, March 26 A Proposition by Rodney McMillian: 13 unrelated ideas, lecture, $8, 7:00

Saturday, March 27 A Proposition by Rodney McMillian: 13 unrelated ideas, guest speaker response at 12 noon, performance featuring McMillian, Tracie D. Morris, and Chicava HoneyChild at 3:00, $8

Thursday, April 1 Get Weird: Mick Barr + Infinite Body, $12, 7:00

Saturday, April 3 First Saturdays for Families — Skin Fruit: Why Trash It?, free, 10:00 am

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: SHEETS OF EVIDENCE

William Kentridge, page six of SHEETS OF EVIDENCE, watermarked cotton, 2009 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Dieu Donné
315 West 36th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Monday-Saturday through April 24
212-226-0573
www.dieudonne.org

One of the myriad delights about South African visual artist William Kentridge is that he follows no conventions; he does things his own way, resulting in engaging and unique films, drawing, operas, one-man performances, and stereoscopic installations. For the past several years, he has been collaborating with Dieu Donné on an ambitious series of limited-edition books. Through March 27, SHEETS OF EVIDENCE, his latest such work consisting of unusual watermarked images on special handmade paper, is on view, offering an exciting glimpse into the mind and working process of the ingenious creator. The small gallery has laid out all eighteen sheets of images and text, each one propped against a lightbox so they can be more easily seen; the sparse scenes primarily depict a man and a woman experiencing love, eroticism, and death. Some of Kentridge’s studio materials can be examined at the front desk; be sure to ask the person there to explain how it’s all done, as the procedures are fascinating. Dieu Donné is also displaying THINKING IN WATER, a three-piece suite made by using copper wire and watermarks, and RECEIVER, a book consisting of twenty-three Kentridge etchings that accompany poems he selected by Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska; it’s so fragile that you have to wear white gloves in order to page through it. Whether you know anything about Kentridge or not, this show is a must-see.

PUBLIC ART TALKS

Art lovers will be rushing to see a host of special talks and discussions this month, including Alexey Titarenko at Nailya Alexander

The last week of this month is filled with some intriguing, exciting public art talks all around town, offering insight into specific exhibits, artists, and movements. On March 23 (free, 6:30), photographer Barbara Probst, who takes pictures of created scenes from multiple angles at the same time, will speak at Aperture as part of the Parsons Lecture Series. Also on March 23 ($15, 6:30), architect Shigeru Ban, composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, and artist Mariko Mori join moderator Stefano Tonchi at the Japan Society for “Conscious Inspiration: Juxtaposing Nature & Art Form,” a panel discussion about art and environmentalism. Béatrice Coron, who is included in the excellent “Slash” show at the Museum of Arts & Design, will participate in the latest “Rock, Paper, Scissors!” gallery talk at FIAF on March 24 ($15, 7:00), discussing “The Silhouette World of Béatrice Coron.” Also on March 24 ($15, 7:00), the Photographer Lecture Series at ICP focuses on JoAnn Verburg, who will speak with Phillip S. Block in conjunction with the opening of her latest exhibit, “Interruptions,” at Pace/MacGill, and Deborah Hay will present a Lecture on the Performance of Beauty in the Great Hall at the Cooper Union (free, 7:00). On March 25, Freedom Riders Joseph Charles Jones and George Bundy Smith will participate in a civil rights panel discussion with Blanche Wiesen Cook, Dr. Victoria Pérez-Rios, Bettina Carbonell, Lisa Farrington, and artist Charlotta Janssen at the closing of Janssen’s “Freedom Riders & Bus Boycotters” painting exhibit at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (free, 6:30). Also on March 25, Ghada Amer will speak with curator Sam Bardaouil at the Swiss Institute as part of the Across Histories series (free, 6:30), Dan Cameron will talk about Project New Orleans at the New York Academy of Art (free, 6:30), and Alfredo Jaar will screen his new short film, THE ASHES OF PASOLINI, followed by a discussion between him and David Levi Strauss at the SVA Theatre (free, 7:00). The New School will be hosting the illustration symposium “The Artist as Author” on March 27 (free, 3:00 – 8:30), featuring Ben Katchor, Patricia Mainardi, Emily Lauer, David Kurnick, and Jerry Moriarty. On March 30 (free, 5:30), photography fans can Meet the Artist at the Nailya Alexander Gallery, talking to Alexey Titarenko about his stunning series “Saint Petersburg in Four Movements.” Also on March 30 ($10, 7:00), Craig Dykers lectures on “Conditions of Architecture & Current Works” at Scandinavia House, a companion lecture to the exhibition “SNØHETTA: architecture – landscape – interior,” and Sanford Biggers and Lorraine O’Grady will speak with PERFORMA founding director and curator RoseLee Goldberg in the latest installment of MoMA’s Among Friends series, followed by a cocktail reception ($35, 7:00).