Rashid Johnson - No mojo

Rashid Johnson's show "Rumble" at Hauser & Wirth is as culturally bland as a soda cracker. It's really hard to beleive that he is one of the six finalists for the 2012 Hugo Boss Prize.

Johnson born in 1977 is similar to contemporary artist Kara Walker in two ways: Both were raised by a parent who was in the academic world and both deal with race as seen from an African American perspective. One thing that sets the two apart though is that unlike Walker, Rashid Johnson has a direct connection to his subject matter which turns “the” black experience to “a” black experience.

The only problem is that his experience floats on the surface of a far deeper pool.

Shea butter, incense and hip-hop mean about as much to white America as it does to any person of color…well maybe not the Shea butter, I’ll give him that. You see, Mr. Johnson is 35 years old which means he was coming of age in the mid to late 80's just when the great multicultural wave began to sweep over the collective mindset of this country. 

Take boxing for instance, a sport that Johnson references in the shows title. Johnson recalls going with his father to watch the fight between Mike Tyson and Michael Spinks in 1988 which means that by the time little Rashid was a mid teen, heavyweight boxing was fast moving from being an Afro-American thing to being a sport saturated by a flood of European fighters. In fact, the heavyweight boxing division has been dominated by the very white Klitschko brothers for the past 15 years or so. This reference is not simply an afro centric one anymore.

Leaning too heavily on race would seem to be a very perilous choice in this day and age (thankfully) but it seems that Johnson is squeaking by anyways.

I do not think history will be kind to this artist’s work unless he can stand on his own two feet and move the content closer to an experience that has more layers; one example would be his use of the CB radio, this is a not so obvious object that is tied into a more complex personal history. This could prove to be a much more interesting direction rather than traveling the well worn route of cultural cliches...I quote Funkadelic: Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow. 

Green Apple (Another One Bites the Dust)

The art world is a place where one encounters minds that work on a level that is quite different from the main stream population and with that comes a price; artists are prone to being irrational, illogical and might I even go so far as to say delusional... and this is a good thing. Erratic behavior from artists can be seen as an occupational hazard but when it comes to critics in this field, we tend to expect a certain coolness that can only come from a analytical mind that has seen it all, read it all, heard it all...or at least has some experience.

Flexibility is of paramount importance when engaging a multitude of personalities and issues and we writers need constant human stimuli as material. The paradox is that writing is both a solitary as well as social act and if one is not careful a short circuit is inevitable.  With this being said, Facebook is a platform in which the writer can not easily hide behind the editing process and this can present some problems for a vulnerable psyche. One must be quick on ones toes but more importantly one must have thick skin. Real time debate is a slippery slope and if you cannot navigate this terrain you could easily fall victim to "Dickishness”. One good thing about Facebook is that it allows ones true colors to come through.


A recent example of this is my exchange with the blogger (critic) Tyler Green.


I challenged Green on an article he wrote in which he felt that the lower-middle-class could not afford to pay $21 for an event. Tyler touched on other issues in his article as well but this specific assessment was weak, exaggerated and presumptuous to say the least. Green had issue with my retort but instead of entering into discussion with a fellow critic he opted to attempt to reprimand yours truly on civility. This was regarding my use of the word "pal" in response to another person's comment; I was quick to counter but the "censor queen" Green removed my following two comments in what could be seen as editing (?) We have all experienced frustration over bone-headed moves like this…

When a bruised ego has no solid response to being criticized the next step is to try and save face by focusing on the opposer's delivery, or site a "hostile" spirit or cry "troll" or a variety of bogus accusations in order to create a smoke screen.  It's a cheap move and I expect more from a "professional" word-man but there are always exceptions. What Tyler Green needs to develop is some tough skin or run the risk of limiting his audience because when it comes to Facebook, everyone is watching.


There is a far more sinister implication in all this that goes deeper than some scant FB exchange. A writer that is quick to suppress discourse on a Facebook thread in lieu of being proven "wrong" regarding a seemingly minor issue would most certainly use similar tactics behind the scenes on more important issues. The anthropologist Robert Ardrey made this painfully clear in his writings on the scientific community which had been commonly viewed to be rational and objective but were found in many cases to suppress information, twist facts or even fabricate content all for professional gain...one must always read between the lines. 

Note:  Ironically, Jerry Saltz wrote in an article back in 09 of Green's language as being "...scolding, scornful, condescending, and smug, tinged with a verbal violence that was a little scary." 

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/11/saltz_on_defending_the_new_mus.html

Here is the full Town vs  Green exchange (judge for yourself) : 

Tyler Green

‎"The striking, sad irony of the exhibition 'Zoe Strauss: 10 Years' at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is that the people Strauss photographs can’t afford to go see the museum’s exhibition of her work."

“Zoe Strauss” is a good start, PMA must do more | Tyler Green: Modern Art Notes | ARTINFO.com

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Tyler Green If you click through to the piece, you'll see how remarkably easy it would be for the Philadelphia Museum of Art to address its inaccessibility problem.

about an hour ago · Like

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Justin Town ‎$104 (plus parking) for a family of four for a cultural event is beyond the reach of the overwhelming majority of Philadelphia families i.e., the lower-middle-class. This is a gross exaggeration. If $21 per person is unaffordable then my question is what does it cost to feed a family of four at MacDonalds?...culture costs. lol

about an hour ago · Like

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Jacq Crowley Um, yeah. In DC all the museums are free, so I'm spoiled but $21 per person is ridiculous...

39 minutes ago · Like

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Justin Town six flags general admission: General Admission $59.99
Child Under 48" $39.99

39 minutes ago · Like

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Justin Town ‎...not including parking

38 minutes ago · Like

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Justin Town that's entertainment!

37 minutes ago · Like ·  1

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Jacq Crowley I expect entertainment to be expensive...

36 minutes ago · Like

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Tyler Green Justin: Six Flags is not a tax-exempt, educational non-profit organization. Please read the post and the links.

31 minutes ago · Like ·  1

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Justin Town I did and I know exactly where you are trying to go with this Tyler. The community benefits from this type of venue over the long hall, but that is beside the point. I am specifically addressing your views on what a lower middle class family can or can not afford.

28 minutes ago · Like

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Jacq Crowley Lower middle class does not mean you eat at McDonald's and go to theme parks....geez, stereotype much?

23 minutes ago · Like ·  1

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Justin Town stereotype? Look up the stats pal

22 minutes ago · Like

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Tyler Green Justin: Be civil or be gone.

16 minutes ago · Like

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Justin Town Repost: Civil? Whaaaaat? You are prone to exaggerations. Watch your tone with me Tyler. (listen, if you are going to censor my responses to your nonsense then kindly remove ALL of my posts) thread manipulation is creepy. lol

a few seconds ago · Like

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            BLOCKED 
A Facebook informant sent me a copy of Green's altered, edited, censored (save face) post minus my actual request.
Tyler Green - Justin asked to be blocked/removed, so he was. I've said this before: I insist on civility here. Name-calling and rudeness toward other commenters will not be tolerated.
Yesterday at 10:54am · Like ·  1 

(Quick pick #2) Walton Ford: Alpha male fail

Walton Ford really has a hard-on for cocks; this was blatantly apparent in his show back in Nov. 2011 at Paul Kasmin gallery where we saw about a half dozen male members crammed in one room by way of primate portraits. The artist also spewed a massive King Kong triad in the main gallery which was the epitome of over compensation. Sadly the only feat this strongman could muster with this show was to render a 9 foot by 12 foot size watercolor/gouache of a gorilla visually impotent; bigger is not always better guys. A few years back Walton had the idea of moving from animal to human portraits, he scrapped that idea and opted to continue milking his familiar cow. The man needs a new direction, in fact I always felt he should go nautical...I imagine Moby's dick would be pretty damn impressive!

Justin Town on Roberta Smith on Damien Hirst

All you young critics stop what you are doing and peek the master work that is: “Hirst, Globally Dotting His ‘I’ by ROBERTA SMITH”

Sometimes a critic is put between a rock and a hard place by having to write an inflated review of an obvious flop, and must then sell it to an informed art world without coming across as a sell out…this is no piece of cake but clever critics like Roberta can have their cake and eat it too; The article is a masterpiece in this regard. Roberta’s genius bobs and weaves around a tough opponent that is the banal content of Hirst’s paintings which leave one with little room for critical maneuvering.

Gotta give the old gal respect, she had to reach deep into her bag to find a positive focal point…and she actually pulled it off by suggesting of all things a collaborative spirit via outsourcing to assistants. “…multiple decisions made by different minds” What a brilliant twist! To insinuate as Roberta has that each of these paid workers added some type of aura to these incredibly limited, superfluous paintings is ludicrous and clever. Roberta, you could sell me the Brooklyn Bridge…

This is artful bull**** at its finest! …read and weep. 


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/arts/design/damien-hirsts-spot-paintings-at-gagosian-in-eight-cities.html

Kara Walker's true colors

Kara Walker via Facebook:
"Amtrak to DC riding in White Male Professional Class. There is only one empty seat, and it is next to me. #uphillbattle."

What a delusional, paranoid statement. Talk about profiling. Lady, if you don't like the company of males or whites or whatever is out of your comfort zone...take the bus. Bigotry and sexism knows no bounds.

Friend response: "none of them has the privilege to sit next to you"

William Brovelli at Kim Foster

Extras aka "Look at me, don't you look at me"

This is William Brovelli’s first solo exhibition with Kim Foster Gallery and what does the conceptually driven artist think up…appropriated photographs…what? My initial reaction was instant recoil as I have had it up to my eyeballs with borrowed things but combine this with photography, forget about it! Now seeing as I was turned on to an earlier “anti-commodity” project that Brovelli successfully pulled off in Miami a little over a year ago I decided to give his new endeavor a peek; I was curious to see how far this guy could fall. After all, Kim Foster is not a cerebral gallery by any stretch of the imagination. That might explain why this split solo with “borrowed” Stux artist Margaret Evangeline finds Brovelli riding shotgun by way of the gallery’s project space…the poetics of this arrangement is comically tragic.

Extras aka “Look at me, don’t you look at me.”  Is a portrait series of movie extras culled from selected film stills produced between 1925 through 2010. I guess I should lead off here by establishing the well known fact that artists working with pre existing film is nothing new, I am reminded of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills from 1977-80 or David Reed’s “Vertigo Project” 2005 or even more recently Christian Marclay’s 2010 “The Clock”… but don’t let my cross referencing turn you off; Brovelli has managed to reinforce this film based trajectory with a series of work that is both original and thoughtful.

Brovelli’s approach to the appropriated image is pretty straight forward even minimalist in some respects, at least in light of the aforementioned artists. His process involves the solitary act of first watching a selected film in its entirety and then revisiting the film to find the right moment from which to digitally capture the extra. I should also add that the artist takes one extra per film and no movie is repeated. Each image, most of them color some black and white, is converted to a unique single edition archival print framed at 16”x16” with the image area at a bite size seven inches square. The artist insists on keeping the overall picture size equivalent to that of his studio computer monitor, the very monitor on which he spends the many hours “hunting and gathering”. Brovelli makes no claims to being a photographer; in fact, securing the image is done not with the click of a camera but with a click of the keypad.

Some of the movies in this series had been seen by the artist prior to the project but even if the film had already been viewed, it is viewed again. This real time step is a bonding element by which the artist spends time with the film first as a traditional spectator before acting as an aesthetic procurer. There is a certain amount of patience and discipline required here. I can imagine the anxiety of catching a glimpse of a potential “keeper” only to have to wait for the end of the movie to get to work or even the frustration over a sense of time wasted if the extra could not be found after all. The thing to consider with this process is that the artist seems to have painstakingly combed scenes in order to find and crystallize the right moment in time in which the stopped image becomes radically disconnected from the moving image and this yields some surprising results.

What I came to appreciate through spending quality time in the gallery with these wall flowers is how the faces carry the hazy background atmosphere with them to the center stage; this makes for a photograph that reads more like a watercolor or gouache.

Many of the portraits transcend the context of the films as well, for example: “The Onion Field” 1979/2011 looks as if the subject was lifted from a medieval court scene even though the setting was a contemporary funeral and “Pulp Fiction” 1994/2011 looks like a resurrection scene or an electrified shroud of Turin, even though the portrait is of a woman sitting in a diner; one would never guess that this came from a Tarantino flick. Brovelli is able to pull rabbits out of hats in this regard. “The Phantom of the Opera” 1925/2011 is another good example; this is a portrait taken from an eighty-seven year old film that winds up looking strikingly similar to the 1970’s T.V version of Wonder Woman. My favorite of the bunch though is “Santa Sangre” 1989/2011, this piece really stands out. It gives us a zombie-like headshot of a young man who because of a heavy crimson shadow under his chin appears to have had his throat cut. Brovelli ensures me that this is not the case…I’ll have to watch the film again to be sure.

For the most part the chosen films run the gamut from artsy to cheesy, classic to obscure and a few foreign as well. The extras also have variety; there is a mix of men, women, old, young, bald, hairy, blondes, brunettes, redheads, and a nice selection of races. …the whole “everybody in” thing is deliberately cosmopolite; nevertheless it works perfectly well in this context. The portrait that best exemplifies this inclusive format is taken from Werner Herzog’s 1972 film “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” in which the artist chooses to use a monkey as an extra; This choice is timely in light of a recent NY Times article sighting restrictions on federally financed experiments involving chimpanzees as being attributed to sciences recognition of chimps as relatives. This fun twist hints to the notion of relations between others by way of "spooky action at a distance". The historical ties to each film are a connecting factor yet the nameless players retain an underlying sense of mystery; it gives us the sensation of flipping through a stranger’s old high school yearbook.

Speaking of old school, Remember those Spaghetti Westerns when the cowboy says “There ain’t enough room in this town for the both of us” Well, that stance just doesn’t hold weight today. Over the past three decades the Western mindset has been conditioned to receive input from a wide array of voices. With formats like YouTube, Face book, blogs and reality T.V giving a central voice to the “common man” it is no great wonder that the idea of hero, genius or the chosen few has been left far behind. Brovelli seizes on this contemporary phenomenon with Extras. Everyone is now larger than life, the telescope has been widened and the stars don’t seem to burn as bright anymore…but I think if one is intent on catching the splendor, it might simply be a matter of readjusting the focus.

Above image: (Extra) from Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song , 1971/2012