by Paddy Johnson on October 24, 2016
Brace yourself: Pretty much every museum in the city has a major show launching, from The Met’s Kerry James Marshall show, to the Whitney’s Immersive Cinema survey, to the Rhizome and New Museum’s Net Art Anthology launch. We’re excited about EVERY. SINGLE. SHOW. Why? Because they are all historical shows in some way, attempting to chart a history of important art works and movements. This is important work.
Oddly enough, Historicizing seems to be a broader theme for the week in general—well, in at least one show. Saturday Elizabeth Dee will launch a mammoth show that attempts to look at the East Village scene of the 80’s and where those artists are now. This is a must-see exhibition, so between this, the museum shows, and everything else we have listed you’re going to be busy.
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by Paddy Johnson on June 24, 2015
Bryan Zanisnik’s “Green Owls Manhattan Bridge” is all illusion. In reality, this apparent flat collage is actually an elaborately constructed set, complete with foregrounds and backgrounds, stools, digitally printed wall paper and even windows to the outside world. Through July 1st, Zanisnik’s studio was located on the 8th floor of 20 Jay Street in DUMBO, (only a few floors above our office) with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. The artist waited until sunset to shoot his still lives, which created that perfect blueprint blue you see in the shots of the bridge above. The set itself was photographed under studio lights.
This approach reminds me a little of Artie Vierkant’s digital manipulations of his exhibition documentation—in both cases, the artist’s statement seems to be that the documentation is the work. But it also seems a break from artists in the early aughts whose work relied mostly on various photoshop filters. Lucas Samaras’s self portraits and Cory Arcangel’s Photoshop gradient instruction paintings might be the highest profile example of such work, but there are plenty more examples. Is this new interest in physical illusion a shift away from digital manipulation?
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