This blog is not dead. Despite a lack of updates over the past few months, I have been seeing amazing things, most notably, the Michael Jackson Fan Festival this past December and Mark Bradford’s retrospective at SFMOMA and YBCA, including a reunion with Mithra (now rightly renamed Detail). Post are forthcoming but delayed. In the meantime, here are some recent New American Paintings post for those that have not already seen:
I review Sarah Awad’s commentaries in museum space and the space Storm Tharp creates through an unlikely pairing of figurative and abstracted works on the New American Paintings Blog.
Storm Tharp: Nosebleed, 2011, Ink, Fabric Dye on Stretched Paper, two panels 84” x 33 ¾” Image courtesy of James Harris Gallery.
Mad Homes, the spectacle-filled, mixed bag, out-in-the-world installation on Seattle’s Capitol Hill closes this Saturday. My write up and interview with participating artist Ryan Molenkamp about the process of working on this project is on New American Paintings blog.
I visit Seattle painter Kimberly Trowbridge’s lush retreat, in the unassuming neighborhood of Top Hat, for the latest post in the “Artist vs. Studio” series.
Kimberly Trowbridge, Plantlife, Oil on Canvas, 2010, 60 x 68 in. Image courtesy of the artist.
Julia Freeman wrapped Gallery 4Culture in hand-painted and collaged floral wallpaper; life-sized cutout photographs of shrubs and dark, amorphous masses float aimlessly within its center, intended to be pulled and arranged within the space by viewers. My write up of the experiential result is here.
Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God would be at home in a window on the Wynn Las Vegas’s Esplanade. The Esplanade is an oversized arcade of designer stores, flanked by flowers and butterflies, bulbous chandeliers and draped satin, all created in highly saturated hues and an oversized scale. In line with the tone set by the resort-casino’s brand, nearly every store and restaurant is merely a name: Louis Vuitton, Stratta, Dior, McQueen, Bartolatta. The Wynn Art Gallery was fittingly replaced by a Rolex store in 2009, due to lack of attendance.
The change of the resort’s name to Wynn aptly demonstrates its relationship to art: originally to be called Le Rêve after casino developer Steve Wynn’s famed painting by Picasso, Wynn changed the name to something more recognizable by his clientele. As a resort intended to shed the themed environments characteristic of the 1990s Las Vegas Strip, “luxury” became the focus of the new casino. This form of luxury differed from the version Steve Wynn created for his earlier Bellagio, which evoked the eighteenth century Grand Tour and included art as one component of the luxury experience though its art gallery (more on the Bellagio in a forthcoming post).
The new Wynn, in contrast, rebranded luxury as name cachet, created for those knowledgeable enough to have an understanding and association with the names comprising the stores, restaurants and hotel itself. Paul Verhoeven’s Las Vegas-based Showgirls (1995) showcases the difference between the various Las Vegas audiences though the lower class character Nomi’s initial mispronunciation of Versace and lack of awareness of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck’s Spago restaurant, in contrast with lead, affluent dancer Cristal Connors’s “in the know” disposition.
Wynn’s reconstruction of luxury’s signifiers was effective in both enabling his new resort to become one of the costliest on the Las Vegas Strip, and contributing to the “de-theming” future resorts, as seen in more recent casino constructions in CityCenter Las Vegas and the Cosmopolitan.
Damien Hirst. For the Love of God. 2007. Image from wikipedia.org.
Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God would be the ideal for the Wynn Esplanade because of its parallels to the developer’s own history and role as a constructed status symbol within the contemporary art field. The sculpture’s surface appearance alone aligns with the overstated opulence that characterizes the most expensive hotels on the Las Vegas Strip; however, the Wynn’s Esplanade supplies the most concentrated collection of high-end, designer shops that serve as status symbols within American society. The inclusion of a Ferrari dealer and gallery in the Wynn brings this brand of luxury to a visual pinnacle, an American status symbol recognizable by almost anyone who walks into the casino; similarly, Hirst’s use of 8,061 diamonds as an artistic medium and noted £14 million in production costs to construct an art object that immediately bestows a status of wealth and extravagance upon it purchaser. The Ferrari dealership makes high-end vehicles instantly available for the Wynn’s high rollers to purchase with their newfound winnings; how fitting it would be for For the Love of God to be on hand for a similar whim.
In reality, For the Love of God resides far away from the Las Vegas Strip, supposedly purchased by a consortium that included Damien Hirst himself, in a performative display of art market manipulation. Reportedly sold at its projected value of £50 million, the purchase of For the Love of God was covered by news outlets worldwide as an authentic sale, despite the questionable lack of documentation and public details surrounding the sale. This maneuver bears strong resemblance to Steve Wynn’s performance-like implosions of historic casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. The casino developer’s demolition of the Dunes in 1993 included coordination with the pirate-themed Treasure Island, then also a Wynn property. The implosion’s constructed narrative included the image of a cannonball shooting from Treasure Island to detonate the Dunes. Unlike many closing casinos, Wynn also opted to include the iconic, 18-story sign in the destruction, demonstrating an overt lack of reverence for the earlier hotel’s cultural significance and clear statement of his view on the future of Las Vegas.
Wynn attempted to solicit footage of the Dunes implosion to cinematic studios, to no avail. Ultimately electing to shoot the footage himself, the filmed explosion afterwards became sought after and sold for use in multiple Hollywood films. Martin Scorsese’s 1995 Casino featured one of the most memorable inclusions of Wynn’s footage, in which the implosion represents the Las Vegas Strip’s transition from control by organized crime figures to the corporate branding of casinos. As a result of Casino and other media portrayals of Las Vegas’s shift towards family oriented experiences in the 1990s, Wynn’s filmed representation became the reality; his themed casinos replaced “classic,” adult-oriented environments, and Americans bought into the rebranded city enough to start bringing their children to indulge in the pirate ships, tropical waterfalls and oversized castles of the “new” Las Vegas, thus making Wynn’s imagery a reality.
The new Wynn Las Vegas differs significantly from the initial version of Las Vegas he set out to create though the Dunes implosion; the influence the casino developer established through his performative destructions allows his powerful image to proliferate, to the point that his name alone is now enough to attract thousands of individuals to his casino daily. Likewise, Damien Hirst’s performance surrounding For the Love of God brought his name the forefront of the media and American consciousness through a similar medium and a comparable level of success within the contemporary art field. The value of a diamond is only a small fraction of the value of a name; it is safe to assume both Hirst and Wynn know this all too well.
Claire Cowie’s colossal multi-panel work on paper, Dead Reckoning, turns the smallest of gallery spaces into a deceptively vast environment. The artist’s new show at James Harris Gallery contains only a handful of works: a twelve-panel painting, acrylic and collage works, and several thematically tied sculptures and small works on paper. Each piece features heavily layered compositions of imagery, techniques, and materials that coalesce into an immersive, physical experience for the viewer. My interview with the artist here.
Claire Cowie., Dead Reckoning, , 2010, Gouache, acrylic, watercolor, India ink, and collage on paper, 100 x 90 inches. Courtesy James Harris Gallery, Seattle.
Seattle-based gallery SOIL’s March shows Flat & Bright and The ghosts of Joey Veltkamp provide an antidote to the city’s dominance by heavyweight painter Picasso in recent months. I write up these two shows on New American Paintings Bloghere.
Andy Arkley and Julie Alpert, Flat & Bright. Photo: Amanda Ringstad.
Joey Veltkamp. The Ghost of La Libertine. Photos: Amanda Ringstad
Spencer Finch‘s The Light at Lascaux (Cave Entrance) September 29, 2005 5:27 PM beckons from behind a corner inside Western Bridge. Although only visible through its reflected light prior to physically entering its gallery, the glow of the piece would dominate the entire art space, were it not sequestered. This is because all of the works on view in group show Light in Darkness incorporate light in some form, while also providing the only light in Western Bridge; all utilitarian lights in the space are extinguished for the run of the show.
Spencer Finch, The Light at Lascaux (Cave Entrance) Sept 29, 2005 5:27 PM, 2005 , fluorescent light fixtures and theatrical gels, 15 3/8 x 240 in., Edition of three, Image by justinkrol on flickr.com.
As one of the brightest pieces of Light in Darkness, The Light at Lascaux‘s punch of light radiates from across the exhibition, providing the surreal suggestion of a window in an overtly windowless space. Inside the gallery, seven angled rows of fluorescent light fixtures covered in a variety of theatrical gels recreate the natural light environment of the work’s title. This simulacrum reconstructs a place and time beyond the present moment: the transitional light suspended between the darkened Lascaux caves and their surroundings, as day moved towards night on September 29, 2005. The resulting sensory experience is difficult for the human eye to process. When confronted head-on, the light itself seems implausibly created from this foreign, constructed structure, and consequently, gazing into its grid of color is mesmerizing.
Throughout the darkened Western Bridge, other individual works surface as pockets of light: Olafur Eliasson’s Neon Ripple slowly pulsates in water-like rings of light affixed to a disk on the ceiling; delicate bulbs similar in structure to a drink discretely fade and re-emerge in Claude Zervas’s Elba; the single incandescent bulb of Martin Creed’s Work No. 312 flashes from a balcony overlooking the space. This set up fosters a sporadic, attention-driven viewing of Light in the Darkness: as a light appears and disappears, our eyes and body follow the brief spectacle, seeking the source as though it were a spotlight roaming across the skyline. The combined effect of various light sources interchanging throughout the exhibition accentuates the way human perception of light changes upon its liberation from a utilitarian role.
Light’s ability to command attention as a spectacle manifests most prominently in the city of Las Vegas, where artificial light contributes to the creation of an intoxicating environment in the interest of casinos. Located in the middle of the Mojave Desert, in the daytime, Las Vegas is an unappealing place; piercing sunlight casts a whitewashing sheath over everything it touches, resulting in a highly undesirable cityscape difficult to sell as a vacation destination.
“1957 Las Vegas Strip,” YouTube video by gerlock11.
As the sun sets over the Strip, the casino signs quietly begin their nightly routine, culminating in an overblown spectacle of illuminated, animated words and symbols when darkness finally falls. Mid-century Las Vegas experienced the most complete transformation between day and night, from glaring intensity to hypnotic glow, through the use of neon signs to entice drivers from the road into the gambling oases. Similar to The Light at Lascaux’s recreation of a specific place and time, neon lighting enhanced the themed environments created within the casinos: the sky blue lights in a Greco-Roman font comprising the sign for Caesars Palace evoked the colors and appearance Americans, trained by popular culture, could associate with Greece and Rome.
Independently, each sign was a glowing, aesthetic spectacle, illuminating and darkening in such a way that passersby absolutely had to look. Together, the mass of flashing lights coalesced into a cloud of color and activity that transformed the city from a place unpleasantly bleached lifeless from the sun, into a series of intoxicating, coercive light forms that invited visitors to experience everything before them.
“1957 Downtown Las Vegas at Night,” YouTube video by gerlock11.
Contemporary Las Vegas casinos have largely replaced neon signs with LED billboards at the entrances to their resort complexes. Despite the spectacle inherent to overblown, new technology, many people yearn for neon’s return, seeing it as indicative as “authentic” Las Vegas. Although LED lights can more perfectly replicate specific images though digital projections, the recreation of a particular environment is lost through this more directly representational presentation. The LED lights introduce a harsh, chaotic barrage of images that fail to offer the attractive, hypnotic effect of repetitive, animated light sequences.
The unique properties of neon signage produce schematics of light and movement that cannot be replicated in another medium; the inherent nature of this form of light itself contributes to its attraction to the human eye and mind. Similar to the effect of The Light of Lascaux from across the building of Western Bridge, the delicate compositions of particular light formats draw the human eye to the light’s source, creating a relationship between light and viewer that goes far beyond the mere illuminated room.
Sumi ink, aluminum, western red cedar and Gore-tex comprise the unexpectedly diverse body of work by Seattle-based artist Victoria Haven in her new exhibition Hit the North (47° 60′N) at Greg Kucera Gallery. I write up this show as my first blog post for New American Paintings Bloghere.
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME, Victoria Haven, 2010, Ink on paper, 60 X 70 inches. Image courtesy of Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle.
THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME, Victoria Haven, 2010, Ink on paper, 60 X 70 inches. Image courtesy of 
