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1. Minh-lan Tran, Devotion disorder, Francis Irv
MMMMThere are only three paintings in the show, but one sees the beginning, the climax, and the flameout of a Buddhist life cycle. Was it divine choreography or self-immolation? Tran brings a creator’s quest for immortality upon remains of rituals and scripts from icons. For a painter who intentionally expands the perimeters of Western religious hegemony in the realm of contemporary art, Tran also is challenging the notion of taboos and political oppression in Asia. 2. Laura Owens, Matthew Marks
Neither Laura Owens nor Matthew Marks strikes me as maximalists but they read the room correctly - a blockbuster show these days needs to show opulence, tactility, crafts and if the technology allows, it should be interactive. Laura Owens pushes both the artistic and technical boundaries of the form of a high-production fashion show while still maintaining a mischievous spirit of her art. 3. Melike Kara, was uns bleibt, Bortolami
Melike Kara paints motherhood with circular lines resembling threads into carpets, but the show is far from any organism idea of “being motherly”. The crimson red on the silver surface reminds me of an image of a femme fatale putting on lipstick on her mask of steel - a perpetual denial of individuation but an unmistakable thirst for drama. The German-Kurdish-English cutout wallpaper fades away in the background as it becomes completely indistinguishable. 4. Cy Twombly, Gagosian
Once again, Poetry finds Twombly. From 1968 through 1990, Twombly made works that redefined “mark-making on blackboards”. What stood out to me were “Condottiero Testa di Cozzo” and “Five Day Wait at Jiayuguan” , his rarely seen drawings reflecting Russian and Central Asian deserts. He seemed to manage a miraculous paraphrase from figures to landscapes and vice versa. 5. David Diao, Put to the Test, Greene Naftali
With respect to David Diao’s oeuvre, I must say I dislike the show and the press release hardly explained the artist’s brilliance. The risk of showing David Diao now is that he might have just missed the boat. The work says a lot about being excluded when it was important for him to get recognized as an American painter, whereas, in today’s decolonizing lens, his works lack criticality to the Western gaze. The curation of the show further worsened this feeling of intellectual claustrophobia by only focusing on the colors, the abstraction, and all the non-Western references fall into a semiotic haze.
This awkward experience brings me back to another Greene Naftali show titled “Passage by Dynasty” by Chinese artist Zhao Gang in 2019, playfully portraying Qing dynasty figures in opium dens. The show took the opportunity and exploited the subject matter, neglecting the ironic rhetorics that the artist deployed to mock racism as well as his self-deprecation. 6. Jilaine Jones, A Walk With D. Ann, 15 Orient
Jilaine Jones’ sculptures are architecturally so brilliant that I wish they could all get turned into habitable spaces. Masses, planes, and pipes can make a palace of happiness. Jones masterfully suggests spaces in terms of proximity, parallel, ascension, and arching, soaring with a high spirit of modernity. Her sculptures elegantly and proportionally occupy the exhibition space, composing a nice contrast of yet-to-be and have-been. 7. Raoul De Keyser, Touch Game, David Zwirner
This extensive presentation of works by Raoul De Keyser from the 1980s to the 2000s was put together neatly, summarizing his enigmatic practice in a sequence that highlighted the internal dynamics and the tonal subtlety. Raoul De Keyser was known for his unassuming and economic gestures. However, it is hard to resist a literal reading of what is going on there - he almost seemed to be piecing together broken continents on maps, tracing footsteps in the snow, or making pseudo-mathematical patterns on scrap papers. He imbued these personal games for idle time with his full confidence, coinciding with the premise of endless possibilities which the canvas game also set for a painter. 8. Leah Ke Yi Zheng, I-Ching/Machine, Mendez Wood
Although many artists attempted to transcribe I-Ching hexagrams into paintings, Leah Ke Yi Zheng most poignantly put the probability of synchronicities at stake. If divination can truly reveal a universal truth (天机), then the revelation itself would be the factor that might end up altering the result. Does I-Ching function like a mechanical cog in the clock that regulates the natural correlation or a human error with the odds that always leads to a parallel universe? 9. Kenneth Tam, The Medallion, Bridget Donahue
The Medallion, or should I say the curse of the Medallion, gives a glimpse of how New Yorkers are quietly suffering from the economic debt, the rising living costs, and the fraudulent promises made by the city government. Taxi drivers here are portrayed as resilient men gently moving their bodies and narrating their miseries. A floor installation made of wooden bead cushions with broken vehicle components scattered keeps the visitors alert while walking. Be wary of the beads rolling underneath. 10. Marc Kokopeli, Reena Spaulings
At first seemed like a Post-pop substitute for an emblem of domestic bliss, Marc Kokopeli’s television surgically deconstructed its symbolism for media frenetics. If Nam June Paik used televisions in art to call for cultural studies of the new media, Marc Kokopeli sets a dystopia stage where the technology is fleeing from cultures and driving the world into a war between mineral frenetics, leaving the moving images on screens like lost charms from the last century.
It is getting dark out there, but the humor is even darker.
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