Joy Garnett has a round-up of the coverage of this show focused on the RAF (aka the Baader-Meinhof Group) in Berlin.

My favorites:

Claudia Weber at Momenta Art, installation

Claudia Weber at Momenta Art, large detail of installation

Claudia Weber at Momenta. Quoting from the press release:

Claudia Weber’s work presented at Momenta began with a photograph that the artist took at a construction site. The photograph, optically stark and ostensibly formal, records the transformation that took place when a classical balustrade received an unceremonious backdrop of a sheet of particle-board. Riffing off of this image, the artist re-contextualizes two other cultural forms from vastly different sources: a pre-fabricated bookcase and a heavily reproduced painting by the German Romantic Caspar David Friedrich.

She uses simple materials like Styrofoam, aluminum foil, wood, and wire to create these sculptural installations. We talked with a friend along for the ride about the use of such materials in sculpture. As we walked around a rapidly changing neighborhood like Williamsburg, we saw bits of these same materials scattered about, but to create a moving work of art out of them seems more of a leap than what is accomplished using a medium like paint or marble. I’m not arguing that this makes her more of an artist, but I think people are more prepared to view a painting as “art” than they are an installation of what appears to be torn up construction detritus. I loved it.

At 31 Grand, my favorite work was actually in the back — some drawings by Carol “Riot” Kane, and a couple of collaged soldiers by Michael Cambre.

Le Petit Prince at AG Gallery. This gallery, in the back of a cool store, has had several great shows, and given that the store hours are later than most galleries, makes a great stop at the end of the day, before or after dinner at Relish. My favorite works in the show are the paintings of Christopher Reiger, and the “Action Painting” video by Ryouga Katsuma, which is one of my favorite videos of the year so far. His paintings and drawings are good too. There is a “Valentine’s Eve Afternoon Tea Party” at the gallery with sweets and tea on Sunday, February 13th from 3-5pm.

Eric Hollender’s works on paper at Dam, Stuhltrager. He uses silkscreens as if they were brushes or stamps to create compelling images of the competitive pigeon flocks of Williamsburg.

The wall drawings by Brynna K. Tucker in the Confluence show at Open Ground were my favorite works of that show.

There was a lot of good work in the Buy It Now show at Black and White, but the show is over now. There are some images on the web site, including the press release page. I liked all of the work, but the video by Danielle LaPlante and the Photoshopped images of Saraw Sweeney really stood out.

[images from James Wagner]

If you’ve been meaning to visit some of the galleries and art spaces of Tribeca, this Wednesday (February 9) would be a good time. Check out the web page for more information.

Much madness is divinest sense at Cohan and Leslie, particularly the drawings of Mike Paré and the site specific wall drawing and other drawings by Dasha Shishkin. We first saw Mike Paré’s work in a group show at ATM Gallery, and first encountered Dasha Shishkin in a group show at 5BE curated by Lital Mehr.

James Hyde at Brent Sikkema.

in words and pictures at Murray Guy. A smart group show (mostly) dealing with art incorporating texts.

Betty Woodman at Max Protetch. This show is the best work I have seen from her.

Don Doe at Oliver Kamm. Old Master-style skill applied to outrageous paintings and drawings of pirate women.

Aaron Spangler (large-scale intricate wood reliefs) and Ryan Johnson (compelling paper sculptures) at Zach Feuer.

Rueben Cox, Scaly Mountain, NC, 2004, C-print

Thank goodness for Roberta Smith. I probably would not have heard of this show without her review in today’s New York Times. My favorite part (which refers to the image above):

Exhibit A is the flame-haired belle in the flowered dress, pastel boa and extravagantly painted lips who has flung herself across a patch of green cow pasture as if it were the seamless paper in Richard Avedon’s studio. A half dozen oblivious cows grace the horizon.

Rueben Cox photographed drag and transgendered subjects in New York, New Orleans, Memphis, and Nashville in 2004. I have to try to get there before it closes on Saturday. It’s on 17th Street in the space once occupied by Rupert Goldsworthy Marcus Ritter.

[Image from the gallery’s web site]

Daria, who curated the wonderful Twilife show at Caren Golden, has just become the director of Clair Oliver Fine Art. I think that gallery just substantially increased its odds of being worth a stop. I trust this will also mean that I am unlikely to experience another ugly front desk incident at the gallery.

There is an event at Eyebeam tonight as part of their Produced at Eyebeam: Work in Process exhibition:

January 26, 6:30-8:30pm – An Evening with the Artists
Please join us for an evening with the Artists in Residence exhibiting in Work in Process. Following an overview by Benjamin Weil, Eyebeam’s Curatorial Chair, the public is invited for an informal tour and reception. The artists will be on hand to talk one on one about their process and their ongoing projects.

Also, on February 1st at 7pm, at the Swiss Institute, Cory Arcangel will be doing a performance. Those are always great fun, so don’t miss it.

Imagine living in a country where the defense minister tells the Vatican to stop meddling with gay marriage. Imagine living in a country where only one member of the cabinet is religious. I’m ready to move to Spain!

From 365Gay.com

Spain’s Socialist government Tuesday told the Vatican to stop butting in on affairs of state. The warning came from Defense Minister Jose Bono.

The Vatican has publicly rebuked the government for bring in legislation on same-sex marriage and for streamlining laws on abortion and divorce.

“Faith is not something a government can impose. It is not something that it is up to the state, but rather to people,” Defense Bono told Spanish radio.

That the criticism came from Bono was particularly noteworthy. He is the only practicing Catholic in the government.

In the radio interview Bono said some of the church’s positions, such as its opposition to homosexuality and the use of condoms, go against the message of Jesus Christ.

“Today, Christ would be more worried about the 25,000 children who die each day of hunger or in wars. I think Christ would side with those who are peaceful,” Bono said.

Regarding that last post, Luke Murphy should be commended for a good web site. Many people skilled in Flash create web sites which are nearly unusable, with the inability to bookmark internal pages, and a general lack of respect for those coming to an artist’s site except for the gee-whiz factor of the site implementation itself.

I hate writing about shows after they are closed, but nearly a week of having the flu messed up my schedule in a big way. Happily for this artist, the Flash-based work I want to write about is available for viewing on his web site. In fact, I love that the description of the medium on the gallery checklist is “file on disk.” I’m illustrating with stills from James.

Luke Murphy Cascade 2004 file on disk, (slow-shutter) still from installation projection

The first work, titled Cascade, uses an algorithm to animate and rotate the shovels of the piece, which show different images as their backgrounds within the outline of the shovel shape. The sound is also algorithmic, with different tones coming from different shovels as they hit a certain angle during rotation.

Like the other work, it is an algorithm designed so that no viewing of the work is like another. You are not merely watching some playback of the artist-designed animation.

Luke Murphy Porno Painter/Eroloop 2004 file on disk, still from installation projection

The second work, titled Porno Painter / Eroloop, animates words found in the meta tags of porn web sites. Meta tags are information inserted into the HTML code of a web page. They’re meant to be read by things like search engines, not humans. Since the dawn of Google they seem to be less important than they once were, but sites that want to be found by people using search engines still use them. The version on his web site reacts to one’s mouse cursor, but the version we saw at the gallery did not. The gallery version becomes quite dense at times, as you can see from James’s still. The work also has an attractive electronic soundtrack designed by Murphy.

A lot of artists are working with technology and art, but I don’t think that many of them pull off using the strengths of technology, such as writing a program which then generates the art (possibly in random ways like a high-tech bow to John Cage), rather than just using it as a useful animation or painting tool. I think Luke Murphy does pull off that feat. The works are engaging and beautiful, plus there is an intelligence to them that one can appreciate.

Some other people I admire who are working in a related vein include John F. Simon, Jr. and Mark Napier. Simon often creates computer works that appear as endless videos which never repeat. I have never talked with Mark about his work (I know of it through Liza Sabater who describes herself as his ‘better half’), but from what I understand, many of them use algorithms to generate the painterly images visible on his site. The end result, such as a digital painting or print, becomes the artist’s “product” for public consumption, not the program which created it.

Despite knowing Cory Arcangel for a while, I still don’t have a feel for where his Nintendo work fits into the burn-in-exactly-what-I-want vs. algorithmic scale. Maybe that’s another post.