Dan Graham, Figurative (1965)

Dan Graham, Figurative, 1965

as it appeared in the March 1968 edition of Harper’s Bazaar

Ceal Floyer, Monochrome Till Receipt (White) (1999)

Ceal Floyer, Monochrome Till Receipt (White),  1999

Ink on paper
240 x 60 mm
on paper, print

Collection Tate, purchased 2009

At first glance, this work seems directly related to Dan Graham’s Figurative, 1965. (See above.) However, unlike Graham’s magazine-based work, which plays on multiple meanings of the word “figure,” Floyer conceptually evokes something else, something that may or may not exist in the world outside the frame: the assemblage of all-white products as denoted by the grocery receipt—the “monochrome” referred to in the title.

Conjuring an old chestnut of Conceptualism—”if something exists in language, does it need to exist in another form to be a legitimate work of art?”—Floyer’s work is also deeply connected to the history of painting, gesturing to the monochrome paintings of Ryman, Rauschenberg, Reinhardt, and Klein (not to mention the “achrome” paintings of Manzoni). The “still life” suggested by the objects listed in the receipt also conjures Morandi.

Graham’s word-play mash-up brings together the discourses of accounting (where numbers are “figures”), art history (where a form positioned in relation to a ground is said to be “figurative” and the term “figure” also refers to the body), literature (in which we have “figures” of speech), and places them in the context of print media, which can be said to engage all three, albeit with “populist” or commercial intentions. In another nod to the intellectual concerns of Conceptualism, even the generalized act of thinking is denoted by the word “figure”—as in, “I figure this thing that looks like an ad in a magazine might be a work of art!”

Robert Barry

Robert Barry at Yvon Lambert

From the press release:

“Yvon Lambert Paris is pleased to announce the opening of American artist Robert Barry’s solo exhibition Word Lists. Barry has shown with Yvon Lambert for more than 35 years and this exhibition marks his twelfth solo show with the gallery.

One of the pioneers of conceptualism and minimalism, Barry‘s (b. 1936) work has always been focused on space and the space between: between objects, between time, between artist and viewer. To him, the “idea” of an artwork is as important as the actual art object. The manifestation of this credo has led Barry to work in a variety of unorthodox and sometimes intangible media: magnetism, thoughts, ultrasonic sound and inert gases. Recently, the artist has been interested in the more traditional mediums of painting and sculpture.

Words are an essential element to Barry’s work. They evoke mental states of flux or contemplation and declare to the viewer a temporal and psychic intangibility. In this show Barry will utilize the walls and floor of the gallery space to exhibit individual word-based works, playing with proportion and scale both real and metaphorical. A large floor piece made of chrome colored cast acrylic letters spell out words like “tenuous”, “remind” and “expect.” The walls will contain several large paintings (178 x 178 cm) as well as vinyl and hand painted lettering. One particular wall work will replicate the composition of the sculpture Red Cross recently exhibited at the New York gallery.”

Via Contemporary Art Daily

Click here for gallery listing, additional images, and press release

What strikes me on first glance is how the wall and the floor are metonymically aligned with the space of the page and how the words are allowed to resonate with the “white space” around them, their signification affected by color, position, and proximity to other words. In addition, the list suggests syntax without using actual sentence structure. A list of words can be thought of as a sequence, an accumulation, and/or a graphic arrangement and read accordingly. Language as material.

Yvonne Rainer

Performance image of Yvonne Rainer’s RoS Indexical, featuring Emily Coates, Sally Silvers, Patricia Hoffbauer, and Yvonne Rainer.

This work is a wonderful meditation on how we experience art, using recordings of Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring (with commentary) and combining daily and extra-daily movements as if to suggest both the familiar and the unfamiliar. At one point, presumably as a gesture to Rainer’s ongoing critique of the performer-audience hierarchy, members of the audience (obviously planted, as some were dressed in homage to the original Rite of Spring) began to heckle and shout at the dancers (who at that point wore what appeared to be kleenex boxes on their feet) and invade the stage. Phrases like, “Go back to Scarsdale!” and “This isn’t art!” could be heard before the “irate” viewers returned to their seats. The effect was quite funny and unexpected.

At one point, a number of banners dropped from the ceiling and unfurled to reveal various words printed on either side. Spinning slowly, they made a kind of ever-shifting poem in the air.

Seth Price

Just bought Seth Price’s book Poems, published by onestar press from Printed Matter, New York, among other wonderful things…

David Wojnarowicz

I wake up every morning in this killing machine called America, and I’m carrying this rage like a blood-filled egg.

David Wojnarowicz, Close to the Knives

Julio Cortázar and his cat

Julio Cortázar and his cat.

A great writer about music and art. Probably a great dancer about architecture.

On Kawara, JUNE 16, 1966

On Kawara, JUNE 16, 1966, “Two Tankers and two tugboats crashed in a fiery disaster in Lower New York Bay,1966, from Today series, 1966—present. © On Kawara. Photo: Bill Jacobson. Courtesy Dia Center

Excellent essay by Lynne Cooke here

Hanne Darboven, Today Crossed Out (1988)

Hanne Darboven, “Today Crossed Out, a Project by Hanne Darboven”, Artforum XXVI/5 (Jan. 1988): 72.

Piero Golia I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me (2009)

Piero Golia

I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we foresake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship…
2009
12” Lacquer
12 x 12 in.

From Lord of the Rings, Aragorn’s Speech at Black Gate:

I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails; when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship… but it is not this day! An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the Age of Men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand! Men of the West!

Seems like a speech Barack Obama might be tempted to give. Los Angeles-based Italian artist Piero Golia’s work is concerned with heroism — and its obverse, failure — on a grand scale. In Tattoo, 2001 he convinces a stranger he met on the street to have his face tattooed on her back.) Golia co-founded The Mountain School with artist Eric Wesley, whose work also plays with notions of success and failure, especially in relation to the identity of the artist in society. (Neither of Golia nor Wesley completed graduate school but are working and thriving as artists in Los Angeles, a city rich with world-renowned art schools; in fact, Golia’s training is as a chemical engineer.)