Screenshot from Adrian Searle's video review of 11 Rooms; Xu Zen's "In The Blink of an Eye"
- The Pace Gallery was a shitshow last night, and I wish I'd been there. (Low-hanging fruit, but irresistible). What seems to have been a very successful performance by Kate Gilmore consisted of five women in flower dresses clawing away at an enormous block of clay over the course of two hours. Unfortunately we can only see the action as a slideshow, but the aftermath is on display at the 22nd Street Pace through August 26th.
- Another exciting performance event that I will not attend is 11 Rooms, taking place at the Manchester Art Gallery through July 17th. Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of the Serpentine Gallery, and Klaus Biesenbach, of P.S.1, curate 11 performances by highly influential artists including John Baldessari, Marina Abramović, Allora & Calzadilla, and Joan Jonas. The “durational encounters” minimize the barrier between viewer and performance; they occur simultaneously and continuously throughout the eleven rooms of the gallery, which the viewer can browse at his or her own pace. You can experience a quick tour online with Adrian Searle's voice in your head.
- Victor Enrich's architectural illustrations are nuts.
- When he's not making guerilla art or an award-winning documentary, Banksy farts around the apartment reading Juxtapoz. In a hilarious series of photographs, With Banksy, conceptual artist Julia Kim Smith imagines what it's like to live with the notorious, black-hooded street legend. She zooms around him with a vacuum cleaner as he stoically hunches over a beer, takes out the trash, and examines the nutritional facts on his cereal box.
- Though he's been banned from leaving Beijing for a year, Ai Weiwei has accepted a position as a visiting professor at Berlin University of the Arts. He's still not allowed to speak to the media, and limited reports reveal nothing, but we hear he is “very happy” about it. So that's good.
- Sometimes it’s also good to take a break from art. The electro/rock band Ratatat delivered yet another mind-fucking synthesis of electronic sound and video manipulation last night in Central Park. Especially titillating is their collaboration with artist Carl Burgess, in which Getty stock video is unsettlingly reedited. Remixes of Predator and Jason and the Argonauts are also arousing.
- You have to give the media props for unwavering dependability in its delivery of “But is it art?” stories. This week it's avant-gardeners.
- Notably, no one is making a case for flower art that turns out to be crystal meth. When can we have that conversation?
