ArtNews kindly asked me to write about ten artists of the trans experience • but because there are so many I keep mental notes on • here instead are 25 • lists can sometimes feel so detached and I’m very attached to this subject • so for each I thought it might nice to highlight a personal memory about or experience with the artist or their work • all of them are truly artists in the fullest meaning of the word •
Read more of our Pride Month coverage here.
While Art Basel tends to be known for the multimillion-dollar paintings and sculptures on view in the convention center, there is a history of provocative performance works in and around the fair. In 2008, for instance, Marina Abramović did a performance in which she lay for hours beneath a human skeleton.
This year brings an event that promises to be just as edgy, and even potentially controversial: the artist Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo, known as Puppies Puppies, is staging a performance after Ana Mendieta’s 1973 performance Untitled (Rape), in which Mendieta used her own body to stage the aftermath of a rape. The event comes with a warning that it not accessible to those under 18.
According to Kuriki-Olivo’s Paris gallery, Balice Hertling, she refers to what will transpire as a “constellation” of performances that will open with a two-and-a-half-hour-long “experimental lecture about her work and traumatic experiences such as rape,” after which she will recreate Mendieta’s original performance for three hours. Then, someone will drape the artist’s naked body in a transgender flag.
The event is curated by Samuel Leuenberger. Balice Hertling is presenting it, and an accompanying sculpture by the artist, in partnership with gallerists Francesca Pia, Barbara Weiss, and Hannah Hoffman.
Mendieta originally did the performance in April 1973, in her apartment in Iowa City, as a response to the rape and murder of a nursing student the previous month. Through a partially open door, viewers saw Mendieta bent over a table, her underpants around her ankles and her buttocks and legs covered in blood. The performance is known primarily through photographic documentation.
Mendieta, who died in 1985 (her then husband Carl Andre was tried and acquitted for pushing her out the window of the couple’s New York apartment), later said of the student’s rape that it “moved and frightened” her. On a different occasion, she said that she did the performance “as a reaction against the idea of violence against women.”
In addition to the reenactment, which is scheduled to take place at the Scala Basel on June 18, as part of Art Basel’s “Parcours” program, Puppies Puppies is showing a new, life-size bronze sculpture of a trans woman in the style of ancient Greek statuary. Its title refers to transphobia and fighting for the rights of trans women. The piece is to form a kind of coda to the performance: draped in the flag, the artist plans to walk from Scala to the sculpture, apply makeup and lipstick to the sculpture, and kiss herself.
Jade Kuriki Olivo, an artist who works under the moniker Puppies Puppies, has won Toby’s Prize, a biennial award given out by the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland in Ohio.
In the past, the award came with $50,000, $25,000 of which went toward a new commission by the museum. The museum’s announcement did not state how much money Puppies had won, however, and a representative for the institution said that the artist had requested that the amount not be listed.
Named after Toby Devan Lewis, a philanthropist who has provided frequent funding the museum over the years, the award is set to go to five artists over the course of a decade. Puppies Puppies is the second artist to receive the award, after Sondra Perry, who won it in 2019.
Puppies Puppies’s work has tended toward sculptures and has dealt with a vast array of topics, including gun violence, SpongeBob SquarePants, and her own blood. Pervading all these projects was an arch, sly sensibility coupled with a genuine interest in pressing social issues. Appropriation of ready-made objects and footage has shown up frequently in her work, and occasionally, performance has played a role.
Since her transition in 2018, Puppies Puppies has dealt head-on with her identity as a mixed trans woman, and her work has increasingly begun to ponder the realities of being a queer person of color. She has also teased a change soon to come in her art. A 2021 exhibition at the Kunsthaus Glarus in Switzerland bore a lengthy title that concluded with: “Trying not to let my trauma take over but still be kind to yourself Jade. This is the end of a decade • a new way of working coming soon. Sincerely, Jade Kuriki Olivo.”
For her MOCA Cleveland exhibition, Puppies Puppies will bring on two artists to show their work: Jerome AB and Jesse Hoffman. Both are set to present new art as part of the show.
Megan Lykins, the interim executive director of MOCA Cleveland, said in a statement, “We are thrilled to be working with Jade, Jerome, and Jesse on these new, exciting projects, which beautifully address moCa’s current seasonal essential question (which guides our engagement strategies and programmatic work): what does it mean to share?”
Friday, June 11
Mitchell-Innes & Nash Opens Seasonal Aspen Space
Mitchell-Innes & Nash in New York has opened a seasonal exhibition space in Aspen, joining a wave of galleries, from Almine Rech to White Cube, that have recently opened pop-ups in the Colorado city. Located near the Aspen Art Museum, Mitchell-Innes & Nash’s 1,000-square-foot space will be open to the public from June 18–August 15. It will be inaugurated with a show of new works by Keltie Ferris, Gerasimos Floratos, Karl Haendel, Chris Johanson, Eddie Martinez, and Jessica Stockholder, in addition to a series of thematic presentation of gallery artists. The first thematic show will be trio of Pictures Generation artists: Jack Goldstein, Annette Lemieux, and Cindy Sherman.
Thursday, June 10
Kasmin Now Represents vanessa german
vanessa german, whose practice spans installation, photography, performance, sculpture, assemblage, and more, has joined Kasmin, which will present her work at Art Basel OVR: Portals and its High Line Nine space in New York this month. german examines the histories and legacies of white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and misogynoir in her art, and her work can be found in the collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art in Atlanta, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and other institutions.
Museum of Arts and Design Names New Director
The Museum of Arts and Design in New York has appointed Timothy R. Rodgers as its next director. Rodgers currently serves as the director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum and previously served as director of the Wolfsonian-Florida International University in Miami. Prior to the Wolfsonian, he served concurrent terms as director of the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and vice president of the Scottsdale Cultural Council. Rodgers will assume his new position on September 15.
Harvard Art Museums Appoints New Curator of American Art
Horace D. Ballard will join the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as curator of American art on September 1. Ballard is currently curator of American art at the Williams College Museum of Art, where he worked as assistant curator from 2017 to 2019. Among his curatorial credits at the Williams College Museum of Art are the exhibitions “Sam Gilliam In Dialogue” (2018) and “James Van Der Zee: Collecting History” (2019).
MoMA Appoints First Director of Institute Focused on Built and Natural Environment
The Museum of Modern Art in New York has named Carson Chan as the inaugural director of the Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment. Additionally, Chan will serve as a curator in the museum’s department of architecture and design, where he will oversee initiatives focused on ecology and sustainability in collaboration with each of the museum’s curatorial divisions. Chan will begin his new position this summer, and among his first projects is an exhibition centered on the growing importance of ecological thinking in architecture, which is currently planned for 2023.
Lulani Arquette.
Wednesday, June 9
United States Artists Announces 2021 Berresford Prize Winners
United States Artists has named the winners of the 2021 Berresford Prize, an annual award recognizing “cultural practitioners who have contributed significantly to the advancement, wellbeing, and care of artists in society,” according to a release. This year’s winners are Lulani Arquette, president and CEO of the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, and Roberto Bedoya, cultural affairs manager for the city of Oakland. Arquette and Bedoya will each receive $25,000.
Veronica Terriquez to Lead UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center
Veronica Terriquez has been named director of the Chicano Studies Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, which supports the research, scholarship, programming, and advocacy related to Chicanx, Latinx, and Indigenous communities. Terriquez will be the first woman to lead the institution in its 51-year history. Terriquez will also hold joint appointments in UCLA’s Urban Planning and Chicana and Chicano and Central American Studies departments. She is currently an associate professor of sociology at UC Santa Cruz.
Sobey Art Award Releases 2021 Shortlist
The Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada have announced the five artists hailing from Canada’s five regions who have been shortlisted for the 2021 Sobey Art Award. They are Rémi Belliveau (Atlantic); Lorna Bauer (Quebec); Rajni Perera (Ontario); Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory (Prairies and North); and Gabi Dao (West Coast and Yukon). Each artist will receive $25,000 and be featured in an exhibition opening in October at the National Gallery of Canada.
Almine Rech Now Represents Haley Josephs
Almine Rech, which maintains spaces in New York, London, Paris, Aspen, Shanghai, and Brussels, now represents Haley Josephs in Europe, the United Kingdom, and China. Her vivid paintings present fantastical environments that explore notions of transformation, power, and femininity. Josephs has been exhibited in group shows at Almine Rech’s New York and London locations. She will have her first solo show with the gallery, which will feature new paintings, at its Brussels location in September.
Danielle Mckinney, Sixth Sense, 2021.
Tuesday, June 8
Night Gallery, Marianne Boesky Gallery Now Represent Danielle Mckinney
Night Gallery in Los Angeles and Marianne Boesky Gallery, which has locations in New York and Aspen, have announced their co-representation of artist Danielle Mckinney. Her stark figurative paintings play with dramatic lighting to create dreamlike vignettes of intimate moments among individuals and groups. Mckinney’s work has been featured in group exhibitions at Half Gallery in New York and the FLAG Art Foundation in New York. Her exhibition “Smoke and Mirrors” is currently on view at Night Gallery through June 19. An exhibition of new works at Marianne Boesky Gallery in Aspen will open later this month.
Counterpublic Annouces Curatorial Team for 2023 Edition
St. Louis’s Counterpublic, a triennial that launched in 2019, has announced the curatorial team for its next iteration, which will take place in summer 2023. The team includes Allison Glenn, associate curator at Crystal Bridges; Diya Vij, associate curator at the public art organization Creative Time; Dream the Combine, a collaborative practice between Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers centering art and architecture; New Red Order, an Indigenous collaborative collective led by artists Zack and Adam Khalil, and Jackson Polys; and curator Risa Puleo. The event is organized by the nonprofit arts platform the Luminary and will take place in commercial and public venues across St. Louis.
LeRoy Neiman Foundation Donates $100,000 to New York City Arts Nonprofits
The LeRoy Neiman and Janet Byrne Neiman Foundation will give four surprise grants of $25,000 each to arts nonprofits serving youth in New York City. The organizations that will receive funds are Publicolor, Creative Art Works, ProjectArt, and Free Arts NYC. The announcement coincides with what would have been LeRoy Neiman’s 100th birthday today.
Bonahms in Paris.
Monday, June 7
Five Nepalese Sculptures Withdrawn from Bonhams Auction
According to a report by the Art Newspaper, a consignor has pulled five gilded bronze Nepalese sculptures from an online auction of Himalayan and Buddhist art at Bonhams that runs through June 10. The works, which depict Hindu gods and date to the 18th century, were reportedly stolen from the Taleju Bhawani Temple in the Kathmandu Valley. The estimates for the works ranged from €3,000 to €5,000 (about $3,700 to $6,100). The sculptures were looted along with seven other works from the temple gate, where they had been part of a frieze 40 years ago.
Tel Aviv Museum Receives $15 M. Gift
In honor of the institution’s 90th anniversary, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art has received $15 million from the Paulson Family Foundation in support of a renovation of its main building. The gift will fund the installation of environmentally efficient systems within the 270,000-square-foot space, as well as expand programming. It will also fund an endowment for the museum.
Hannah Hoffman Gallery Now Represents Puppies Puppies
Puppies Puppies, an elusive artist known for pondering issues related to the LGBTQ2S+ community and pop culture in her installations and performances, has joined the roster of Los Angeles’s Hannah Hoffman gallery. Past works have dealt with mortality, trans identity, and forms of power. In one of her most well-known works, shown at the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the artist, who also goes by the name Jade Kuriko Olivo, had men dress up as the Statue of Liberty and pose for extended periods. Her first show at Hannah Hoffman will take place in 2022.
Joy Bivins Named Director of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Curator Joy Bivins has been named director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, the New York Times reports. In 2020, Bivins joined the Schomburg, a part of New York Public Library network and an archive repository for materials related the history and culture of the African diaspora, as an associate director of collections and research services. She will begin her tenure on June 21, becoming the first woman to lead the center since 1980. Before that, Bivins had served as the chief curator of the International African American Museum in Charleston and the director of curatorial affairs at the Chicago History Museum.
Installation view of “Caisson, Diver, Charmer,” curated by Tyler Murphy and Commercial Street, at Jenny’s in Los Angeles.
JENNY’S/COMMERCIAL STREET
The Los Angeles–based artist Tyler Murphy started his gallery and curatorial platform Commercial Street out of the basement of a Provincetown, Massachusetts jewelry company, where he has so far presented two summers of programming, working with the likes of Puppies Puppies, the now-shuttered New York gallery Off Vendome, and the artist Cooper Jacoby. This summer, the project is temporarily moving to the other side of the country, taking up residence at the L.A. gallery Jenny’s, where Murphy is staging a trilogy of group shows alongside a few one-night exhibitions at the Glendale, California bar the Capri Lounge, the first of which takes place this Saturday with the artist Megan Plunkett.
“I’m from Cape Cod originally, and I’ve always wanted to do shows in Provincetown because it has a really interesting history as an art town,” Murphy told me recently over the phone, pointing to the late painter Hans Hoffman as one famous former resident of the area. Also, the artist noted, the exhibitions have “kind of functioned in some ways as an excuse to go back home for a few weeks.”
As way of backstory, a friend’s father—Günter Hanelt, who originally hails from Düsseldorf–owns the store Exuma Jewelry in the center of town, which includes a basement area that lies dormant in the summer. The process of securing the space was relatively straightforward. “I asked him if I could do projects there,” Murphy explained. “He said yes.”
Of the shows staged, a 2017 collaboration with Puppies Puppies, in which the artist fashioned the facade of the gallery’s entryway to look like a nightclub, but only after 10 p.m., stands out as one highlight. “So there’s like a pride flag, a stool to imply a bouncer and then disco lights that could be seen through the window,” Murphy said. “So people are sort of trying to get in all the time.” There was no actual club. “John Waters said it looked like the bouncer went to go take a shit, which I thought was really funny,” Murphy continued.
The gallery’s move to Jenny’s, which is located in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, halted a third consecutive season in Cape Cod. “I had been planning on doing the project again in Provincetown, but then Matt and Jenny of Jenny’s asked me if I wanted to sublet from them while they go to London,” Murphy said. “And I couldn’t pass up that chance.” (Jenny’s is organizing shows in the British capital this summer.)
Over the summer, the project—which will retain the Commercial Street moniker—will offer three group shows, each with its own rough conceptual theme, all tethered to a broader idea of, according to Murphy, how “artists use their practice to create agency or autonomy within larger structures of control.”
The first exhibition, which is on view through July 1, is titled “Caisson, Diver, Charmer” and features five artists, most based in Los Angeles, working within the loose theme of “facade or structure or malfunction.” The second two exhibitions deploy a similar vagueness, dealing with concepts like inversion, abstraction, and recontextualization. According to Murphy, within these broad concepts, “the scope of what I’m talking about is really affected by each of the artist’s work.” In the first show, this means a singed leaf made out of leather and yarn by Min Yoon and Tim Eastman’s There is a Balim in Gilead–a sculptural work made with a ceramic bowl and clothespins—among other pieces.
Asked about the Capri, Murphy said, “It’s sort of this dive-y, wood-paneled, old-timers drinking haunt. They have these really nice walls and I think it’s just a beautiful space to do a sort of singular exhibition, and also it’s exciting to continue the programming outside of a formal exhibition space.” He mentioned that the Glendale venue shares its name with Martin Kippenberger’s legendary haunt in Venice Beach, which was called, simply, Capri. Kippenberger was a partial owner of that bar and restaurant, and in a confrontational style that was something of a hallmark for him, he would routinely camp out in the establishment’s entryway and berate his own customers.
In contrast, the Glendale Capri seems to be a much more hospitable operation. One Yelp reviewer called it a “fun funky little spot” and referred to one of the bartenders and owners as “extremely personable.” The space came recommended by Plunkett, who has work in the first Jenny’s group show and who will be showing a series of photos of dogs culled from Craigslist and printed out in the style of an aspiring actor’s headshot at the Capri. “I had a drink without asking them, in the middle of the day, just to feel it out,” Murphy said, of his first experiences with the bar. “And I went back and asked them and they were totally interested and really down for it.”
He continued, “They seemed totally down to put nails in the wall and give us free reign in a way, for one night.”
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies: Barriers (Stanchions),” 2017, at T293, Rome.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND T293, ROME
Today’s show: “Puppies Puppies: Barriers (Stanchions)” is on view at T293 in Rome through Saturday, May 27.
From the press release:
Puppies Puppies hates to fly, even more so as they get older. I don’t completely understand why. They tell me that it has to do with how unnatural the experience is, that humans only accept being stuffed into a tiny box with stale air and strangers and sometimes violent shaking because they’ve been trained to do so by brutal corporations. That’s true, sort of, but I know that they hate flying for some other reason. Their mother does too, and apparently it’s gotten worse as she’s aged too.
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies: Barriers (Stanchions)," 2017, at T293, Rome.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND T293, ROME
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies: Barriers (Stanchions)," 2017, at T293, Rome.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND T293, ROME
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies: Barriers (Stanchions)," 2017, at T293, Rome.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND T293, ROME
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies: Barriers (Stanchions)," 2017, at T293, Rome.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND T293, ROME
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies: Barriers (Stanchions)," 2017, at T293, Rome.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND T293, ROME
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies: Barriers (Stanchions)," 2017, at T293, Rome.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND T293, ROME
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies: Barriers (Stanchions)," 2017, at T293, Rome.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND T293, ROME
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies: Barriers (Stanchions)," 2017, at T293, Rome.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND T293, ROME
Puppies Puppies, Liberté (Liberty), 2017.
MATTHEW CARASELLA
At this year’s Whitney Biennial, between a disturbing Jordan Wolfson virtual-reality work, two flashy Jon Kessler sculptures, and a smelly Pope.L installation involving rotting baloney, it’s easy to miss Puppies Puppies’s contributions.
In the main galleries are the artist’s “Triggers” sculptures, for which Puppies has displayed just the shooting mechanism of a gun, with every other piece removed. They’re poetic works about gun violence, and that can be sort of jarring, given that Puppies’ work usually lends itself to outright weirdness. But, in true Puppies Puppies form, around the museum lie surprises of other kinds.
On the eighth floor is a performance by Puppies called Liberté (Liberty). It’s fairly straightforward: a performer, forced to endure unusually cold March temperatures, dons a green gown and crown, and stands like the Statue of Liberty on a terrace. Call it freedom in the form of a durational performance. Then, downstairs in the museum gift shop, Puppies selected foam crowns of the variety worn by tourists making their way to Liberty Island to sell among the books and tchotchkes, each available for just $5. They’re displayed on a spinner, which, a label tells us, was hand-picked by Puppies for the occasion.
Should that not sate your appetite for Puppies’s weirdness, don’t miss a billboard outside: an oversize image of Sauron’s dragon-like eye, from the Lord of the Rings movies. It’s called Untitled (Sauron), 2017, and it stares you down as you enter and exit the museum.
A performance of Todd Gray’s Iggy Pop Tried To Kill Me, at Art Los Angeles Contemporary.
GINA CLYNE
“Most learned spirits, I must confess, I hated jazz,” said the artist Todd Gray, who had just entered the theater at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica as part of a procession that included a tall woman in white, two musicians in West African dress, and a guitarist in a hoodie. This was the first full day of Art Los Angeles Contemporary, and the theater was surprisingly full for a Friday afternoon. Artist Kenyatta Hinkle, dressed colorfully and regally, sat beside Gray, presiding over an odd trial: Iggy Pop, otherwise known as Jim Osterberg, accused of attempted murder. The trial also seemed, less directly, about blurry cultural appropriation and the theft of other people’s stories.
“Rock is the white man’s theft,” Gray said, quoting his father, who had been a jazzman and resented his son’s attraction to the devil’s music of the 1960s. As a new kid in middle school in Los Angeles, Gray met a kid named Danny Sugerman, a wannabe bully who attacked his future friend with racial epitaphs. Later, as the two boys became inseparable, their fights would be about things like the merits of Rimbaud. A “tiny slave trader gun slinger who isn’t worth shit,” in Gray’s opinion. “I don’t care what Patti Smith says.”
They were grown up and living in the Hollywood Hills, Sugerman as the manager of the Doors, when the alleged crime occurred. They went to dinner with Ray Manzarek, Iggy Pop, and Timothy Leary, who insisted that Gray “should listen to music by black people.” (“Have you heard of Miles Davis?” Leary asked). Then Manzarek and Sugerman went to the airport, Gray went to house sit for Manzarek, and Pop disappeared, not to be seen again until Gray awoke in a fume-filled house, barely able to breath.
The fair’s events curator, Marc LeBlanc, who titled this year’s series after the William Onyeabor album Anything You Sow, said he chose artists whose work has “a strong sense of narrative, and whose approach to making work largely personalizes the political and politicizes the personal.” Puppies Puppies laid a red-suited body on a red carpet the night of the opening for visitors to sidestep as they arrived. Except for that, the programming had an introspective feel.
View of L.A.’s Club Pro booth with an installation by Devin Troy Strother, at Art Los Angeles Contemporary.
WILL RICHTER
Now in its eighth year, ALAC opened on Thursday, the first major art event of 2017 in Los Angeles. The past year was a significant one for L.A.’s art infrastructure—new private museums opened, as did multiple international galleries—and the crowd size reflected that growth. By 6 p.m., just an hour into the VIP opening, the aisles had filled. Carlye Packer, the director of the young Los Angeles space Club Pro had trouble getting into her own booth at one point. The artist Devin Troy Strother, showing with Club Pro at the fair, had set up a vintage silver office desk for Packer to sit at, her presence part of the installation. To her left, two office water coolers held red and purple substances: Long Island Iced Tea in one, soda mixed with cough syrup in the other. Strother’s collages filled a big bulletin board behind her.
Megan Bradley of Montreal–based Parisian Laundry had come to ALAC four years before, and found the energy this year different—fuller and also more inviting. She had visited a number of local collections and found their approach “more pleasant and sincere than in New York.” On Tuesday, she had opened a group exhibition called “PDA Lovers” at Four Six One Nine, the West Adams space that consultant and curator Simmy Swinder leases to out-of-town galleries. Bradley saw her presence in L.A. this week as part of a long game. She’s watched Canadian artists leave their Canadian galleries once their careers take off. She would like to keep her artists, and exposing them to new markets seems like one way to do it. Both her booth and the offsite show included loosely figurative, sometimes crass painted portraits of women by longtime Winnipeg–based artist Janet Werner.
Installation view of Montreal’s Parisian Laundry’s booth, at Art Los Angeles Contemporary.
MICHAEL UNDERWOOD
Adam D. Miller of L.A. gallery The Pit sees the fair as part of a long game, too. An artist-run outfit, the Pit announced its first official roster last autumn, and its booth featured quirky sculptures by Nick Kramer and Erik Frydenborg alongside a subtle abstraction by Allison Miller. “For us, it really benefits the gallery in a big-picture sense,” Miller said, “providing exposure for the artists, and creating more sales opportunities for the year overall, opposed to just during the run of the fair.” He added that the turnout felt larger this year, but sales were about the same as 2016, The Pit’s first year at ALAC.
Like Parisian Laundry, Jessica Silverman Gallery of San Francisco had returned to ALAC after a four-year absence. “I love the curators here and the institutions here are growing rapidly,” Silverman told me. “We wanted to insert our voice into all the great things happening.” Alongside lush, repetitive new abstractions by Dashiel Manley hung a 1970s abstraction by Judy Chicago and 1960s paintings by Suzanne Blank Redstone, with glimpses of sky through architectural shapes. Redstone’s composites of shapes, architecture, and landscape had been received well in L.A., Silverman said. “I think although Redstone made this work on the East Coast, she was well aware of the Los Angeles scene in the late ’60s,” she said.
Sometime after 8 p.m. on opening night, four women, part of the new, anonymous GAR collective, walked through the fair with signs to protest the gender imbalance of exhibitors. “GAR insists that galleries and collectors expand their vision and give women and people of color steady and equal representation,” reads a press release the group distributed via email before the fair opened. One member explained that they had planned their action quickly, propelled by the energy of Saturday’s women’s marches, and they saw the fair intervention as a first step toward more Guerrilla Girl–inspired interventions.
Installation view of L.A.’s The Pit’s booth, at Art Los Angeles Contemporary.
JEFF MCLANE
Also spurred by current conversations about activism, Jonathan T.D. Neil of Sotheby’s Institute had pulled together a Friday afternoon panel called “Art in the Age of Donald Trump.” It felt raw and undirected—unsurprising, perhaps, given how young the “Age of Donald Trump” is. “My paintings can’t vote,” said Christine Wang, whose recent show at Night Gallery in L.A. was a religious apocalypse on canvas in which Angela Davis appeared as a saint and most other politicians (Clinton, Trump, Sanders) were tangled up in a Bosch-like scene. She said she thinks that artists to organizing and art-making, that being political through art alone is not enough. “We have a certain kind of organizing debt that we have to pay for,” she noted, adding that “alternative facts” and refugee-related disasters have existed well before this week. “Reagan made up this alternative fact of trickle-down economics,” she said. “I really hope that we can ride our feeling into action.”
The difficulty of acting might have been one subtle theme throughout the weekend’s performances. On Saturday afternoon, 23-year-old artist Jasmine Nyende wove the poetry of others into her own writing about growing up in Los Angeles and learning to care for herself, as both a person and an artist. “I’m going to be completely OK,” she said, quoting the poet Michelle T. Clinton. “All I have to do is calm down and change completely.”
Todd Gray’s trial of Iggy Pop ended without a verdict. After he woke up in the gas-filled house, threw up on the stairwell, opened windows, and turned off all four stove burners, Gray said, he found Iggy face down on the floor, thankfully alive. Bacon, raw and cooked, was on the floor and walls, remnants of “the most ridiculous breakfast ever.” “You asshole, SOB, cocksucker, shit bag, you nearly killed me!” Gray wanted to yell. Instead, he left a note for Iggy, whom he always called by his given name: “Jim, last night you nearly killed me. I did not appreciate that.”
HANDWRITTEN TEXT BY ALEXANDER DUMBADZE
Welcome to Part 2 of ‘How to Fix the Art World.’ If you are just now tuning in, here’s a link to Part 1, and here’s a little background:
Back in August my staff and I embarked on an epic project: we wanted to know what inhabitants of the art world think is wrong with it and how they would fix it. In the ensuing months we spoke with more than 50 individuals—artists and curators, critics and historians, art dealers and an art fair director—to gather a range of perspectives. Some wrote longer essayistic responses; some artists responded with visuals. We finished our research and put the Winter 2017 issue of ARTnews to bed on the eve of the U.S. presidential election. Subscribers will receive the print edition later this month. Because some of our respondents wanted to speak about what’s right with the art world, we are posting a portion of the many responses in these days before the Thanksgiving holiday. We hope you will read them with the same great interest, and the same open mind, with which we did when we received them. We hope that you will continue the conversation. —Sarah Douglas, Editor-in-Chief, ARTnews
(Please continue reading the other parts of this feature: part 3 and part 4.)
CONTENTS
| Puppies Puppies | Marc Spiegler |
| Rose Marcus | Adriana Zavala |
| Carlo McCormick | Liam Gillick |
| Stefan Simchowitz | Alexander Dumbadze |
| Pope.L | Barbara Rose |
| John Miller |
Bas Jan Ader, I’m too sad to tell you, 1970.
©2016 THE ESTATE OF BAS JAN ADER, MARY SUE ADER ANDERSEN, AND ARTISTS RIGHT’S SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK/COURTESY MELIKSETIAN | BRIGGS, LOS ANGELES
Marc Spiegler
Global Director, Art Basel
The art world and all its players—from curators, collectors, and artists to museum leaders, arts critics, advisers, and beyond—are more international, interconnected, and hyperextended than ever before. We throw ourselves into a state of perpetual motion, forever shuttling from the newest museum’s opening to the next must-see biennial. That vibrant development is great, but the accelerated pace places a tremendous pressure on artists to be in a constant state of creative production. Yet artists need time and space to fully develop, and the frenetic atmosphere tempts too many artists toward overproduction, with long-term risks for the quality of their work and the longevity of their careers.
Of course, we all take part in shaping this hyperactive environment—fairs such as Art Basel included. This is one of the reasons why we place such a priority on works not made merely to feed the market (like those in Unlimited, our film series, and performance programs). We also aim to highlight especially those galleries that try hard to insulate their artists from the market’s pressures—for their own good and for all of us who love to see great art coming from all over the globe. In the long run, a slower-paced, content-driven art world is more rewarding than a jet-set treadmill. (Back to top.)
Rose Marcus, Girl, left (legs with Imagine circle), 2015.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND NIGHT GALLERY
Rose Marcus
Artist
Warren Buffett said, “Never invest in a business that you do not understand.” The art world is replete with problems but, here, I will address class. There are some artists who can continue to make work without becoming established because they have a financial safety net or have decided to make art that requires no overhead. Fine, but an inept system should not determine our work, its means, or the source from which it is made. Artists who have not made it into the top tier of the market cannot live on their art. These artists often work multiple day jobs, and often in the form of precarious freelance labor without benefits. If they are lucky, these day jobs are “flexible,” yet artists have to pay—in the form of time off to work—to meet the demands necessary for being a part of the market. This leads to compromised work. By the nature of making things, usually in a studio, artists’ life expenses are doubled and their stable income is partial.
These numbers simply do not make sense. If we define Buffett’s word “business” here as art, then artists know they are participating in a system in which they are not fully valued (or again in Buffett’s terms, understood). Therefore, they have one option, to opt out, or follow Duchamp’s advice: “go underground.”
Let’s treat radical ideas as living things, ones that deserve to thrive, or at least be sustainable, regardless of the market’s temperament. The art world increasingly favors highly productive individuals who make explainable objects. This is not congruent with making art; it is linked to the logic of the greater economy. Artists should not be defined as part of the “creative class.” Artists make work from messiness, from not knowing what they are doing, from trial and error. Time spent doing nothing is required in order to unwind the construction of daily life, which is so tightly wound.
At the national level, benefactors and consumers of art should be required to invest in livelihoods, not just specific objects. If one dollar were added to every institutional entry fee and every collector were required to devote an additional percentage in proportion to their total annual purchases, we could create a consistent stipend for artists. This would not be a government program; it would be the art industry investing in its own future. If this won’t work, let’s figure out what will, or follow Duchamp’s advice. (Back to top.)
Adriana Zavala
Director, U.S. Latina/o Art Forum
Notwithstanding the art world’s so-called global turn, institutions across the board (museums, galleries, art fairs, biennials, and universities) are still not reflective of this country’s, much less the world’s, demographics. The Euro- and Anglocentric canon and the Occidentalist norms and hierarchies of difference that sustain it still dominate.
Educate to challenge timeworn hierarchies and values that sustain settler colonialism’s racialized and gendered cultural logic; this includes the framing of alternative narratives and histories in ways that ultimately serve only to perpetuate established hierarchies of value. Support organizations and individuals committed to developing and disseminating new conceptual structures that more accurately reflect our society and the world.
HANDWRITTEN TEXT BY ADRIANA ZAVALA
Carlo McCormick
Critic & Curator
These questions of what is wrong with the art world and how to fix it are ones we should probably have been asking ourselves more often in past years, but I suppose everyone was too giddy over the stupid money, blind ambition, greed, star-fucking, and petty gossip to spare a moment for crucial self-reflection. Despite the shadows of crisis that threaten a brutal contraction in the playing field, it is certainly not too late at least to ask them now.
Let us begin by being clear about what we are addressing. The art world is not the same as the art market, and this persistent confusion is at the root of our troubles. The art world is not such a big domain and, for all its dysfunction and sprawl, it is a cozy place in which many of us have made a comfortable home for ourselves, a community we share that ameliorates those forces that continue to make it somewhat colder, ruthless, and more alienating. The art market is as vast as it is soulless, the antithesis of the creativity, honesty, and empathy that both engender and define the very best in the arts.
Here are some of the most obvious suggestions:
Get rid of the speculators, they don’t give a damn about art and are profoundly detrimental to its health.
Get auction houses out of the contemporary art game. They are pure poison and you all know it.
Stop all the funny money floating through this unregulated market. The art market has always been complicit in the most egregious financial schemes, but it has only gotten worse and one of these days a bunch of you will rightly end up in jail.
Prevent flipping works by creating major penalties for the sale of them within ten years, especially for profit.
Bar the shipment of art directly to free holds for indefinite storage just so a bunch of vulgar monkeys can dodge taxes while moving around their wealth in portable lucrative commodities.
Stop writing about art as if it’s an investment. Its true value is one of usage, what it brings to the people who actually live with it.
Stop with all the putrid gossip about rich people and celebrities. They have nothing to do with the real conversation we need to be having. Put an end to clickbait on these brainless art websites. Refuse to reduce the chaotic and unruly nature of visual art to dumbed-down listicles.
Disrupt the patterns of ratification that make art so damn boring half the time. Greatness has never been found nor fostered by conversations among collectors who are all ears and no eyes. Remove the inherent conflicts of interest on the boards of most cultural institutions. Remember that art has never been served well by the academy, so stop trolling that short list of MFA programs that churn out market-ready, debt-burdened victims of our pathetic addiction to meaningless novelty. Look to the streets and other nontraditional venues for art, listen to those vernaculars that exist beyond the politesse of art-speak, and wonder for a change why there are so many artists out there who never show in galleries but have millions of followers and real fans who are deeply invested in what they are doing. You might be missing something a lot more vital and important than the next wave of empty formalisms. (Back to top.)
HANDWRITTEN TEXT BY LIAM GILLICK
Liam Gillick
Artist
There are two things guaranteed to undermine any self-respecting artist: One is the word “career”; the other is the notion of having a “career” in the “art world.” There is something wrong with the whole concept. A world-conquering imperialist claim that overreaches combined with a diminished sense that we are just part of a “world” within the world—a special bubble apart from reality. Maybe there is nothing wrong with art and artists and curators and galleries and collectors, but there is a big problem with this concept that there is an “art world.” There is an existing world and we operate within it. Maybe there wouldn’t be a perceived problem with the art world if we considered ourselves as operating within the world as it seems to be. The problem is that it is not that simple.
So let’s assume that there is art, and there are artists, and there are galleries and curators and institutions. And let’s assume that there are good ones and bad ones. Even when we do this, there is still the nagging feeling that there is also an art world, and there are problems with it, and that we need to fix them.
So the art world is a thing in itself. It is a malignancy that threatens the active artist. It has unique qualities. Yet those deep inside the art world bubble also complain about the art world. It is something exterior and interior simultaneously. We are of it and not of it at the same time. The art world is all the things about our work that we do not like. The art world is also other people; alongside them, it is all the things we can all agree are irritating.
There is no fix to something that we are in and simultaneously hate. It is an expression of self-loathing to complain about the art world, for when we do it we are complaining about ourselves. The art world does not exist unless we keep locating its presence and feeling its heat. The art world is a put-down. It suggests a place of pretension and frivolity in equal measure. The art world is all the bits and pieces, moments and tedium that surround our work.
Art world is a phrase that has been increasingly deployed as people who have no empathy or taste enter what they perceive to be a coded system. It is a term that can be used to identify new markets where experiences alongside art can be presented and consumed. The art world cannot be willed away through conferences and good deeds. It is a system that feeds off a deliberately weakened host. It surrounds the vulnerability of subjective art and conscious critique.
The art world creates stress and touchiness. It is not really a world at all, it is a state of anxiety. The best way to fix it is to shut your eyes and will it away. (Back to top.)
HANDWRITTEN TEXT BY STEFAN SIMCHOWICZ
Stefan Simchowitz
Art Dealer, Advisor, Agent, & Collector
The Swiss army knife: Sometimes a bottle opener, often a knife, many times a toothpick. The art business must adapt to a nonlinear environment in which traditional hierarchies are constantly in transition. This is a world where no one is actually in charge, much as it comforts us to think there is order and authority in fixed positions. This is the global position for all socioeconomic, political, and cultural environments. The art world is not comforted by this. The traditional system likes the new system about as much as the newspaper industry enjoyed the creation of the blog.
One can imagine the art business like a knife: blade, handle, sharp edge, point. An object with a simple and singular purpose and mission. It knows where it must be held and knows exactly where to cut or stab. However, the knife does not work when you are trying to open a bottle of wine or remove spinach from your teeth. The art world needs to transform itself into a device that does not define itself with the singularity and safety that comforts the elites who hold capital power and/or intellectual authority, a device that is highly responsive and adaptive to changing environments in which no one really has a grasp on what is truly going on. So in the words of Bruce Lee, my advice is simple:
“Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. Put it into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. Put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.” (Back to top.)
Alexander Dumbadze
Chair of Department of Fine Arts and Art History, George Washington University
You know, that’s a really tough one. The more I think about it, the more I think that how people feel about the art world is generational. When you are young, the art world is new and exciting; it’s still a world of wonder and full of possibilities. That said, I think there has been a malaise hovering over the art world for years. There’s too much going on. People are oversaturated, overcommitted, or simply tired.
There is still good art being made, and a larger contemporary art world means that different types of people can participate. But with that world being nonstop, there’s also little room for experimentation. It’s hard for an artist to have a bad show, and to recover from that. Or just to goof around. There’s constant pressure. That pressure is mostly economic; critical pressure doesn’t hold much water right now. The idea of relevance is so short-term at the moment. It’s like quarterly reports; there’s no model for a slow burn.
There’s a lot of noise, and the problem is to find the signal within the noise. That’s one of the big challenges right now. It’s boring to talk about things in terms of the market because the market is always a problem. But there are too many art fairs, too many shows, too much pressure.
I don’t know if there is a structural fix to this. I think it’s really key for people to figure out what generates meaning for them personally. I often joke with students and friends that there are easier ways to make a living. So people are making art and writing about art for a reason. I think it is because they have a fundamental belief in art’s power to communicate. The mystery and wonder of art—those things don’t fade in the face of increasing professionalization, of the demand to produce.
What’s great about the art world is that it’s still really personal and it’s still face-to-face and people getting together, and those little communities matter. The way a show affects someone, or being in a studio with other people, matters.
I think people shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that making art and looking at art is an intellectual project. Maintaining a community and a discipline for a whole lifetime is hard, and it’s something that needs to be constantly rethought and reinvented.
In terms of a structural fix, perhaps the five biggest New York galleries should provide subsidies to the other galleries to help redistribute the money. Or maybe there should be an art sales tax that goes to a general fund to support the art world. Everyone’s trying to figure out how to pay their bills. (Back to top.)
Pope.L, What You Can Do With Advice, 2016, ink on paper.
©POPE.L/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND MITCHELL-INNES & NASH, NEW YORK
Once upon a time, in the land of fantasy, there was a boy with no front teeth, dirty glasses, and funny hair who became a rich and famous artist before he was 24 years old, internationally critically heralded and feted as a world champion painter. Believing they, too, could immediately roll in dough by learning the rules, ambitious future generations registered in MFA programs, seeing art as the springboard to a life of carefree luxury, Tribeca penthouses, sophisticated dinner parties with the likes of aesthete Aby Rosen, and the movable feast of the art fair–Biennale yacht and private-plane crowd.
ILLUSTRATION: ©KATHERINE MCMAHON
In the real world, however—or at least for Frank Stella—the story is somewhat different. Stella never went to art school anywhere. His parents were Italian immigrants. However, his mother was a painter and his father, sure the boy was destined to be a doctor like himself, or at least a lawyer, sent his son to top schools. At Phillips Academy, Andover, two of Hans Hofmann’s best students, Maud and Pat Morgan, passed on Hofmann’s lessons to the teenage wrestler, who spent perhaps even more time in the art studio than he did playing lacrosse. At Andover, he and his friends Carl Andre and Hollis Frampton discussed aesthetics, history, poetry, and music, as well as art.
He kept up this dialogue at Princeton University, where he majored in English constitutional history, with fellow art buff Walter Darby Bannard and philosophy student Michael Fried. He studied medieval art history and took classes with painter Stephen Greene and painter and curator William Seitz, as well as with art historian Robert Rosenblum. They took him to important art shows in nearby New York and introduced him to their friends, like John Bernard Myers, director of the Tibor de Nagy gallery. Upon graduation in 1958, Stella decided to move to New York rather than Montreal to play lacrosse—his other choice of profession. He lived in a one-room flat with Andre, Frampton, and a composer named Mark Schapiro, who worked at Nedick’s and supplied them with hot dogs. There was only one mattress, but Frampton fortunately worked the night shift in a photography laboratory, so he slept days, while Stella had the mattress at night. (Andre, forced to sleep in a sling chair, constantly complained of post-nasal drip.)
Stella got a job sorting scarves and began painting his “Black Stripe” series, which impressed Myers, who offered him a show in fall 1959 at Tibor de Nagy. When Myers, known to spend summers drinking at Harry’s Bar in Venice, never returned from holiday, Stella accepted Leo Castelli’s offer to have a show at the gallery he had just opened. Castelli usually got his information from other artists, who pointed him in Stella’s direction. On a visit to pick paintings, Castelli brought with him MoMA curator Dorothy Miller, who decided to include Stella, now 23, in “Sixteen Americans.”
Miller was used to making risky choices, but the critical reaction to Stella’s black paintings was extreme. Emily Genauer, a critic for the New York Herald Tribune, found Stella’s “huge black canvases carefully lined with white pin stripes [sic] unspeakably boring.” In agreement, Brian O’Doherty called Stella “the Oblomov of ennui.” Hilton Kramer wrote in 1966 that Stella’s Castelli show left him “with too great a sense of all that has been lost from the universe of artistic discourse.”
Stella sold a few black paintings to friends for $75 apiece, but Castelli couldn’t find any buyers for works in that show, nor for the next six annual shows he held of Stella’s paintings. His career sorting scarves cut short, Stella turned to painting over the cockroaches in Bedford-Stuyvesant cupboards. Castelli made it possible for him to paint full-time by agreeing to a monthly advance—a munificent $300—really all he could afford, since he was also advancing money to his other artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, John Chamberlain, and others, who did not make enough to pay their studio expenses, let alone to eat. Fortunately, Rauschenberg and Johns were both excellent cooks and often invited fellow artists over for Southern delicacies. Rauschenberg was famous for his gumbo, which, if you walked in at dinnertime, you were invited to share.
When Stella showed in 1961 in Paris at the Galerie Lawrence, the only collector who came was Joseph Hirshhorn. Hearing that Frank and I had just been married, he offered to send a case of champagne up to our suite. Embarrassed to tell him we were staying in a fifth-floor walk-up, I said, “My husband doesn’t drink, but we’d really appreciate it if you bought a painting.” He demurred. “No,” he said, “They aren’t speaking to me.” But was there anything we needed? “Frank,” I said, “can I tell him I don’t have a winter coat?” And then and there, Joe, always a sport, peeled a hundred-dollar bill off his wad. So I had a winter coat by the time we went back to Spain, where I had a Fulbright that allowed me to spend the days in the cathedral archives while Frank drew the paintings he would make for the next five years at a nearby café. We spent a lot of time looking at old masters in museums. Frank was particularly struck by Francisco de Zurbarán’s St. Hugo in the Refectory now in the Museum of Seville, originally painted for the Carthusian order founded by St. Bruno, which became the inspiration for his irregular polygons.
When we came back from Spain, it was to the tenement at 84 Walker Street that Frank had rented, where his studio was on the top floor and Virginia Dwan stored art and artists on the second.
We slept on the first floor in a double sleeping bag. I was pregnant and very ill, and there was no heat. Steve and Sigrid Greene took pity on me, and I took advantage of their couch until Frank convinced Leo to shell out an extra $100 a month to rent a telephone booth–size room (again a fifth-floor walk-up) until I had baby Rachel. Then it was my job to mooch the extra funds for diapers and formula from Leo.
Once again, with Leo’s aid, since Frank was selling no paintings, we were able to move to an actual apartment near Union Square. Frank made me a desk and the frame for a couch, which I topped with a slab of foam I bought on Canal Street. The old sling chair became the home for Andy Panda, the six-foot stuffed panda that Warhol brought as a gift for the baby. Our parents having written us off, it was the only baby gift we got. Clem and Jenny Greenberg had just had a baby too, and they gave us their English stroller, since we couldn’t possibly have afforded a carriage. Fortunately, Mickey Ruskin opened Max’s Kansas City a few blocks away, where he traded food for art, so we had a running tab when Frank traded him a painting.
Frank and I could never afford to go out without baby Rachel, who got to sleep through La Monte Young concerts and visit a lot of artists’ studios. Don Judd lived nearby and he suggested we might pay his artist neighbor $2 an hour so we could go to a movie. The artist turned out to be Yayoi Kusama, who stared at Rachel and said “very nice pretty little woman.”
All this happened in the art world before there was an art market. Then, in 1973, the Robert Scull auction turned into multimillions the peanuts Scull had paid artists for their work. Johns’s Double White Map, bought for $10,000, sold for $240,000. Rauschenberg’s Thaw, a combine painting purchased for $900, went for $85,000. Sounds like small change today, but it was proof that fortunes could be made trading contemporary art, which was suddenly converted to global bitcoin. Once art became big business, of course everything changed, and profit became the dominant, if not the only, motive. As for idealistic young artists and gallerists, greedy landlords have made sure they can’t survive in Manhattan, which is today a coffin for creativity.
Today’s art world is not the art market. Indeed, the two are growing further and further apart. There are groups of artists who form communities and support each other. Small regional and university galleries have exhibitions not geared to drawing as many people as would fit into a sports stadium. But there are no longer collectors like Dorothy and Herb Vogel because of the income inequality that is the scourge of the world today. The Museum of Modern Art, where the greatest artists used to learn from the greatest existing art, once had a rental gallery from which the public could rent excellent works for eventual purchase. Now they have showcases supported by “emerging collectors” who bid up highly publicized pieces at auction by “emerging” artists whose brands are granted the museum seal of approval. Nothing will be done about this state of affairs as long as the leisure class has no culture and the cultured class has no leisure, and until a different set of values “emerges.” (Back to top.)
John Miller, When I Kissed the Teacher, 1993.
COURTESY MUSEUM VOORLINDEN, WASSENAAR
The biggest problem, in my opinion, is the tendency toward monopolization. In the last several years just three or four big galleries have come to dominate the art market, squeezing out the small and mid-level galleries. This is fundamentally undemocratic, and it reflects the larger, global question of increasing income inequality. The economic reasons for this are complex, but one exacerbating factor is internet technology. Starting with Roman roads, all networks have served to consolidate power, i.e., to create hegemonies, but they do not do this unilaterally. Income inequality is also reproduced in our educational system in the form of high tuition costs. Internationally, the United States is the worst offender on this score. Vis-à-vis art schools, students increasingly tend to consider their practice in market terms, if only to pay off their student loans. The real estate bubble is yet another manifestation of this: What are the spaces for art? How can it be presented to a “public” and under what conditions?
In framing prospects for a solution, I’d reference two texts: First, Adrian Piper’s essay “Cheap Art Utopia” as a heuristic principle. Second, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century as a pragmatic critique and an outline for change. I don’t think any ironclad solutions are possible, but changes in public policy would be a good way to start. One of these possibilities would be to rethink the role of the National Endowment for the Arts. After the Culture Wars of the 1980s, conservatives effectively gutted sponsorship for individual artists and in that regard NEA policy has changed very little since. Ironically, many of the sexual issues that conservatives once considered so unacceptable and so transgressive have become more or less mainstream, but NEA policies remain bound to what has become an archaic battle. Most important, though, a renewal of NEA funding for individual artists would also help recast art making as a matter of public discourse, rather than one of personal accumulation of aesthetic goods. A second solution would be tuition reform. Low or free tuition would immediately help democratize art production and help foster a climate of critical artistic autonomy. (Back to top.)
A version of this story originally appeared in the Winter 2017 issue of ARTnews on page 62 under the title “How to Fix the Art World.”
Installation view of “Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict,” 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Pictures at an Exhibition presents images of one notable show every weekday.
Today’s show(s): Puppies Puppies is showing at Galerie Balice Hertling in Paris with with two semi-concurrent shows: “Puppies Puppies with Cédric Rivrain” (September 8 through September 17) and “Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict” (through Saturday, October 8). These exhibitions, which follow another pair of concurrent shows earlier this summer, are collaborations between the various artists.
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies with Cédric Rivrain," 2016, showing, Human Bones in Ikea Bag (blue) (yellow) (green), 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies with Cédric Rivrain," 2016, showing, Human Bones in Ikea Bag (blue) (yellow) (green), 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict," 2016, showing Will Benedict’s I AM A PROBLEM (2016), at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict," 2016, showing Will Benedict’s I AM A PROBLEM (2016), at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict," 2016, showing Will Benedict’s I AM A PROBLEM (2016), at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict," 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict," 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies with Cédric Rivrain," 2016, showing, Human Bones in Ikea Bag (blue) (yellow) (green), 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING
Installation view of "Puppies Puppies with works by Marie Angeletti and Will Benedict," 2016, at Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris.
COURTESY THE ARTISTS AND GALERIE BALICE HERTLING