Fixation

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”In 1979 Andy Warhol presented Shadows at the New York City gallery of Dia Art Foundation cofounder Heiner Friedrich. The installation featured the environmentally scaled painting in multiple parts, which the artist created between 1978 and 1979. As “one painting,” Shadows consists of 102 equally sized canvases hung edge to edge and low to the ground (but not too low to be kicked, as Warhol noted in his review of his 1979 show for New York magazine). While fixed by these physical terms, Shadows is nonetheless contingent in its presentation. Since the number of panels shown and the order of their arrangement varies according to the size of the exhibition space, the work in total contracts, expands, and recalibrates each time that it is installed.” [source]

I don’t know about you, but I think it would make a super cool wallpaper.

Andy Warhol || Shadows (1978–79)

Dia:Beacon

July 15th, 2019

Four Single Chairs

The Humble Fabulist2 Comments

You’ll need to sit down if you are to watch Bruce Nauman’s Mapping the Studio I (Fat Chance John Cage) (2001), where six projectors each display six hours of footage that track the activities of mice, cats, and other creatures as they run through the artist’s work space.

”What triggered this piece were the mice. We had a big influx of field mice that summer in the house and in the studio … They were so plentiful even the cat was getting bored with them … I was sitting around the studio being frustrated because I didn’t have any new ideas, and I decided that you just have to work with what you’ve got. What I had was this cat and the mice, and I happened to have a video camera in the studio that had infrared capability. So I set it up and turned it on at night and let it run when I wasn’t there, just to see what I’d get … I thought to myself why not make a map of the studio and its leftovers … it might be interesting to let the animals, the cat and the mice, make the map of the studio. So I set the camera up in different locations around the studio where the mice tended to travel just to see what they would do amongst the remnants of the work.” [source: Bruce Nauman: Mapping the Studio I]

The reference to John Cage, in case you were wondering, is from an earlier work of Nauman’s, a telegram sent to the London gallerist Anthony d’Offay in response to a request for a work related to Cage. The telegram was misunderstood and was not exhibited; still intrigued by the expression ‘fat chance’, Nauman decided to reuse the words. [source: the Tate]

Dia:Beacon

July 15th, 2019

In Beacon

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In daylight, Beacon is even quirkier than in the dark.

Fish Kill Overlook Falls
Howland Cultural Center
Howland Cultural Center
Lori Merhige || Soft Collapse, 2017 || Fabric, reinforced gypsum, aluminum
The Howland Cultural Center, Beacon 3D 2019
Ed Benavente || Starting from Scratch, 2005 || Cement, stainless steel, paint
The Howland Cultural Center, Beacon 3D 2019
Is it possible that someone lives here…?
Beacon’s Dummy Light has its own history and page on Facebook
Fish Kill Overlook Falls
Fish Kill Overlook Falls

Beacon, N.Y.

July 15th, 2019

All Eyes and Ears

The Humble FabulistLeave a comment
Tal Streeter || Endless Column, 1968 || Painted steel
David Smith || Portrait of a Lady Painter, 1954/1956–57 || Bronze
Siah Armajani || Gazebo for Two Anarchists: Gabriella Antolini and Alberto Antolini, 1992 ||
Painted steel and wood
Anarchist # 1
Anarchist # 2
Alexander Liberman || Adam, 1970 || Painted steel
Louise Bourgeois || Eyes, 2001 || Bronze, silver nitrate patina, and electric lights
Mark Dion || Brontosaurus, 2016 (detail) || Mixed media installation
Ionic Columns, circa 1834, originally part of the Armstrong Mansion at Danskammer Point, New York

Storm King Art Center is a 500-acre outdoor museum located in New York’s Hudson Valley, where visitors experience large-scale sculpture and site-specific commissions under open sky. Since 1960, Storm King has been dedicated to stewarding the hills, meadows, and forests of its site and surrounding landscape. Building on the visionary thinking of its founders, Storm King supports artists and some of their most ambitious works. Changing exhibitions, programming, and seasons offer discoveries with every visit. [source]

Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY

July 13th, 2019