New Works from New York at the Currier

By Elizabeth Marzloff
HippoPress.com

Curator Nina Felshin finds quality in art "where content and form merge in a graceful way."

As guest curator of "New York, New Work, Now!" at the Currier Museum of Art, Felshin's interpretation of quality is evident at every turn. An overall sense of aesthetic value paired with social concern ties together the widely divergent styles and mediums representing more than 25 artists, many of whom openly acknowledge their debt to the history of 20th century art.

The new exhibit runs through Jan. 12.

Felshin has previously worked with a number of artists in the show, and a few are under-represented in the big-name galleries, but almost all are influential, well-recognized, and culturally relevant in New York and among international art audiences. The themes treated in the works span from issues of widespread social concern, such as racial discrimination in popular culture and the criminal justice system, to the societal causes of international warfare. Other themes look more closely at art history, such as traditional understandings of movements like abstract expressionism and minimalism, and the role of women in the arts.

The opportunity to pull together such an ambitious exhibition, one that claims to represent the full spectrum of artistic production happening now in what can reasonably be called the international capital of modern art, thrilled Felshin: "In New York I could never have this opportunity to do a survey of New York art. In New York, everyone has already seen these artists." That's what makes Manchester the perfect place to make a statement about art happening now in New York, she said.

In New Hampshire, "contemporary" does not exclusively refer to the avant garde, and we see less avant-garde art in our galleries. Many local artists prefer to work with strictly traditional painting, photography and sculpture, and seek a more classical training than most art schools offer. In part this may be due to our strong respect for craft, but we are also culturally less metropolitan, less diverse, and less concerned with "the newest thing" than New Yorkers.

Nonetheless, contemporary art both in New Hampshire and New York also references a long tradition that dates back to the French artist Marcel Duchamp putting a urinal on display as a work of art at the Armory Show in New York in 1913, and other daring acts of artistic intent throughout the previous century.

While you may disagree with Duchamp's approach, this show is an opportunity for New Hampshire residents to get a close-up look at "the newest thing" affecting the history of art on an international scale and learn some deeper lessons about art and our society at the same time.

Lorna Simpson, Dread Scott, Glen Ligon, Renée Cox, and Kara Walker are four widely exhibited African American artists who are known for their forthright exposure of racial issues. Their works vary in approach and medium from Dread Scott's intimate documentary photography and audio recordings of prison inmates to Kara Walker's "through the looking glass" style illustrations and false-artifacts of the antebellum south.

RenÈe Cox's large-scale self-portrait powerfully asserts the nude African American female into the canon. Her large-scale photo critiques the late 19th-century French painting by Eduard Manet, "Olympia." Manet's painting is emblematic of what art historians call "the male gaze," in which female nudes passively offer their sexuality for the consumption of the viewer (a small reproduction of the Manet painting is on display in the gallery for comparison). In counterpoint to "Olympia," a youthful white nude, Cox appears confident in her role as the female artist, not gazing at the viewer as if drugged, but instead possessive of her surroundings.

The subjective experience of history, art history in particular, compels several of the artists in the show to express the contradictions of daily experience. Arnold Mesches' sweeping landscape/history painting, "Anomie 1992: Landscape Painting," depicts the signs of a society with a grim future, as he envisioned it at the close of the Gulf War. On the reverse of the same wall, three of his collages serve as testament to his witness of World War II and the social ills that contributed to its development. Mesches is self-taught, and currently enjoying the late-in-life success of a big show at New York's contemporary art gallery PS1, in which he exploits his 800-page F.B.I. file recently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
Currier Museum curator Andrew Spahr sees the tendency to question history as part of a larger ongoing discussion in academia. The notion of history as always biased toward one perspective or another is at the root of post-modernism. In this light, self-representation then becomes the only legitimate history, the only version that speaks truthfully.

Perhaps this questioning explains the willingness of so many young artists to make art about art, endlessly fascinated by their own interpretations of historical precedent. Dan Walsh's abstract paintings and Elana Herzog's "Untitled #1" invite you to stay for a while and enjoy the guilty pleasure of color and pattern, to witness the brush strokes and staple marks that prove that the hand of an artist created this object. These works delve into traditions of abstract painting and sculpture that began in New York in the 1950s and 1960s and remain strong half a century later.

Even more bold are the small scale series called "Bootlegs," copies of works by the latest big-name artists, made in duplicate, by Eric Doeringer who sells them on the sidewalks outside major art galleries in the Chelsea area of New York City (an area abuzz with art). He thinks of them as a record of "who's hot" now in New York. They make up a mini-exhibit within the exhibit, questioning the relevance of originality and authorship in contemporary art. And yes, a few of the copies are icons of works by other artists in the show!

In the vein of self-representation, much like Dread Scott's documentary photographs and audio interviews of inmates, Polish-born artist Krzysztof Wodiczko manipulates the latest technology in video and video projections to allow individuals to publicly relate their stories. His photographs of his 1999 projection performance "The Hiroshima Projection, A-Bomb Dome, Hiroshima City," convey the quiet stillness of a pair of elderly hands folded neatly over the surface of a reflecting pool. The projection, in front of the last remaining structure still standing after the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, took place during a ceremony commemorating the anniversary of the attack. Other works by Wodiczko allow victims to publicly grieve on an architectural scale, and manipulate technology to unite the private and the public experience in one moment in time.

Wodiczko's use of the photograph to present his performed works to a broad audience owes a debt to the efforts of the conceptual artists and curators who, in the 1970s, strove to make careers out of fragile, momentary works of art. Many of these works are performed and need to be documented in order to produce a product to sell (artists need to earn a living). Documentation and supporting materials such as drawings also provide a means to display their works without laboriously recreating them every time an exhibition opportunity arises. In turn, this kind of documentation of performance art inspired new approaches to other mediums, particularly photography.

Lorie Novak and Ann Hamilton, for example, use site-specific installations to create their photographs. Drawing from both the careful staging of commercial studio photography and the more expressive example of outdoor performances by Ana Mendieta in the 1980s, the performance becomes a means to achieve a more meaningful photograph. Hamilton's "Reflection" series bejewels one wall of the gallery with the subtle light changes as seen through a green wall of glass. Hamilton installed the wall at the 1999 Venice Biennale, photographing herself through its blurred surface every five minutes from noon to 1 p.m. Novak layers projected images onto surfaces and other photographs to create poetic montages of family snapshots and old European travel albums.

New York City has become an emblem of survival and patriotism since last September. The diverse works in this show-including also Tony Feher's thoughtful tribute to Sept. 11, Janet Biggs' video installation about aging and medication, several humorous works by Beverly Sims, Barbara Pollack, and Nancy Davidson, and a few examples of Internet art-are a tribute to the vitality and complexity of New York City, a wonderfully distorted microcosm of our national culture.

"New York, New Work, Now!" runs through Jan. 12 at the Currier Museum of Art at 201 Myrtle Way.

Hours of operation are Mon., Wed., Thurs., Sun., 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Fri. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. until October 17. After October 17, hours are: Mon., Wed., Fri., Sun., 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thurs. 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.

Non-member admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and students and free for children under 18. Free to all on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information call 669-6144, ext. 108 or check the Web site at www.currier.org.

Elizabeth Marzloff can be reached at hippo@hippopress.com