Author: Dennis Nawrocki Page 2 of 3

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Richard Prince: Portraits @ MOCAD

On November 14, 2019

“Richard Prince: Portraits,” Installation image, 2019 – Image Courtesy of MOCAD

Richard Prince, who invented “rephotography” back in 1977, is still at it in 2019, apparently undeterred by any number of litigious skirmishes and accelerating technology. The 91 works on view in Portraits, his plainly titled exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, have been appropriated from Instagram (IG), the mega-expanding social-media platform, founded in 2010, that now counts some 600 million plus users. That number alone offers the omnivorous Prince a mind boggling trove from which to lift, enlarge, and revamp the posts of swanning millennials and Generation Z’s from which he draws his subjects.

As curated by director Elysia Borowy-Reeder and installed in the largest of MOCAD’s galleries, the hang is an unexpectedly old fashioned one: Salon style, cheek by jowl in multiple tiers, canvases ganged nearly edge to edge, blanketing every square inch of wall space available. Moreover, the format from image to image is identical, the portrait looms at the top followed by multiple lines of text: up first is often a description drafted by the Instagrammer, then the greedily coveted tally of “likes,” #hashtags, comments from sundry “followers,” and a concluding cryptic blurb by Prince or one of his handles (@joankatzz, for example). The whopping impact of 90-plus ink jetted canvases of widely different sizes is pretty overwhelming, the antithesis of a standard line-up of worthies stationed at eye level.

“Richard Prince: Portraits,” Installation image, 2019 – Image Courtesy of MOCAD

Prince rather vividly narrates in a wall text and poster how the immersion in IG posts is like scurrying down a rabbit hole for hours on end following a gazillion leads, threads, and hashtags in pursuit of portrait material. In an excerpt from his journal Birdtalk, he lays out the raison d’etre of his motives and practice: “I can start out with someone I know and then check out who they follow or who’s following them, and the rabbit hole takes on an outer body experience where you suddenly look at the clock and it’s three in the morning. I end up on people’s grids that are so far removed from where I began it feels psychedelic.”

“Richard Prince: Portraits,” Installation image, 2019 – Image Courtesy of MOCAD

Embarking on a similar process, museum visitors pan across the fatiguing (periodic pauses are recommended) array of images; espy known (Miley Cyrus, Brooke Shields) or unknown subjects; parse texts replete with non sequiturs, truncated spellings, made-up words, and innuendoes; identify recognizable operatives (Jerry Saltz, New York art critic, John Sinclair, Michigan activist); overlook absent punctuation, dismiss absurdities, treasure pearls of wisdom, decode overabundant emojis, and so on.

Richard Prince, “Untitled (@gab3),” Ink jet on canvas, c. 2015-19 Image Courtesy of DAR

AND marvel and revel in the visual audacity, weirdness, and sexiness of poses, gestures, facial expressions, props, costumes, and locales, from @psytranceclub’s transformation into an elegant, horned human and animal hybrid to embody her belief in the bond between species, to the surreality of the necklace of shoes that circles the torso of @violetchachki, or the rarified identity between owner and pet in @katevitamin, in which both mistress and hairless cat sport blond bobs. A visitor might also be moved by the sad young men backdropped by a Los Angeles sunset in @gab3; one wears a Hello Kitty sweatshirt, the other hangs a cross on a chain over a skull emblazoned top. Alternatively, an onlooker might be swept along by @barbaraperezw, a bronzed surfer with wind-blown hair blithely skateboarding to her destination. Hair, big or razor sharp, figures in @afropunk and @fatalbert69: perhaps she calls to mind Diana Ross or Angela Davis as commentator @joankatzz snidely trolls (while also name-checking John Sinclair); and he, via a mirror, simultaneously displays both a tousled hairstyle head on and a sharply etched zig-zag design on sides and back.

Richard Prince, “Untitled (@barbaraperezw),” Ink jet on canvas, c. 2015-19 Image Courtesy of DAR

Taxing as surveying these and other abutting panels is, MOCAD’s installation and Prince’s modus operandi further ramp up the impact of Portraits. The austere white walls of the gallery, the bright, shadow free fluorescent lighting, and the absence of any ancillary furnishings—benches, pedestals, or caption labels—plus Prince’s smooth, toothless canvas in a brilliant white–manufacture a crisp, chilly white on white perimeter. The fusion of Prince’s art and the museum’s style of display heightens the focus on the IG subculture (per Prince’s nomenclature) and the performative, narcissistic display of its followers.

Richard Prince, “Untitled (@afropunk),” Ink jet on canvas, c. 2015-19 Image Courtesy of DAR

Portraits exists, simultaneously, as a group display of appropriated Instagram accounts (two thirds of and by women); and a showcase of Prince’s enlarged screenshots which he hijacked by appending strings of obscure, laconic comments; and as recollections of the portraits/self-portraits vaingloriously posted by the initial Instagrammers. That’s three shows in one generated by the umpteen intersecting and overlapping dynamics of these pieces, so it is no surprise that Prince refers to his portrait spawn as “friendly monsters.”

“Richard Prince: Portraits” remains on view at MOCAD through January 5, 2020

Inspired @ Pewabic Pottery

By Dennis Nawrocki

On October 2, 2019

In Ceramic

Inspired, Installation image, Pewabic Pottery, 2019 Photo: PD Rearick

Climbing the narrow, delayed-gratification-stairway to Pewabic Pottery’s second floor galleries, even for the umpteenth time, anticipation mounts until, at the top of the stairs, sightlines to left and right reveal the shiny artifacts of a new exhibition. The current show, confidently entitled “Inspired,” does indeed proffer an eclectic array of ceramic art created by four artists working in diverse, distinctive ways. The display, conceived and installed by Pewabic curator Darlene Carroll, features makers who lead ceramic programs that Pewabic’s co-founder, Mary Chase Stratton, played a role in establishing.

Inspired, Installation image, Pewabic Pottery, 2019 Photo: PD Rearick

First up, Susan Crowell’s Huckleberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), a single, gigantic, four lobed sculpture of a grain of huckleberry pollen (as seen under a microscope) measuring 12 ½ inches in diameter, is indeed “voluptuous,” as she declares. Its purply-blue glaze and plump, spherical forms embody the lush, caress-me allure and inkling of a tasty, delectable huckleberry. Other of Crowell’s jumbo flora include a lemon yellow cluster of Hazelnut Pollen (Corylus avellane), each pod about the size of a softball, and a nectar-from-the gods spill from wall to pedestal of fourteen, luscious pink Rose-Bay Willow Herb (Onagraceae) triangular pollen forms. Crowell has taught ceramics at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design since 2005, and at the Residential College since 1972.

Susan Crowell, “Huckleberry (Vaccinium myrtillus),” Stoneware with vitreous engobes, stains, glazes, 12.5 x 12.5 x 12 in., 2019

No less alluring is Jessika Edgar’s I want to touch you to be happy inside. A two foot tall ice cream treat—chocolate topping layered over an exotic coppery colored flavor-of-the-week—slumps atop an animate, tri-legged stool, itself ensconced on a glitzy, solid gold pedestal. This popular icon, centralized, pedestaled, and overblown suggests desire incarnate, as does the title, albeit meltingly short-lived in the end. Another suggestive Edgarian title—Get it while you can—coupled with an organic, roly-poly torso festooned with acrylic pearls resting on a mid-century biomorphic end table with canted legs, its top covered with faux fur, embodies as well the contemporary appeal of faux, formless, and real. Edgar is an assistant professor and coordinator of Ceramics at Wayne State University.

Jessika Edgar, “I want to touch you to be happy inside,” Ceramic, glaze, copper leaf, variegated metal leaf, osb board, 50 x 30.5 x 30.5 in., 2019

Ian McDonald, artist-in-residence and head of ceramics at Cranbrook Academy of Art, presents, among other examples of his ceramic practice, a trio of Shade Vessels, ranging in height from 12 to 16 inches. Severe and minimalist, with precise horizontal ribbing, two are glazed in hushed lavender hues, while the third sports a smoky greenish hue, soft palettes somewhat unexpected on such stark shafts. Hollow and formally composed of cylinder and bowl-like forms, they are however unitary, integral vessels, reminiscent perhaps of trees, umbrellas, or even observation towers that provide protection and shelter. Also on view is a suite of broad, darkly hued, table-hugging bowls (five to six inches in height and up to 17 inches in diameter) that McDonald dubs Low Works.

Ian McDonald, “Shade Vessels,” Stoneware with glaze, left to right: 16 x 10.5 x 10.5 in.; 12 x 7.25 x 7.25 in.; 15 x 11 x 11 in., 2017-18 Photo: PD Rearick

Assistant professor and head of Ceramics at College for Creative Studies, Ebitenyefa Baralaye weighs in as conceptualist and relief sculptor of this collegial foursome. Working in “raw,” unglazed terra cotta, Baralaye’s plaques of mazes, furrowed fields, and enigmatic phrases highlight transitional issues of “feeling, engagement, and displacement.” Real Feels reads a rectangle of raised text, 15 x 20 ½ inches in size. The vertically stretched out letters suggest an emotional tension or anxiety, a state corroborated by the inversion of the identical terms to “Feels Real” on a second plaque (not in the show). Another of Baralaye’s panels on exhibit (glazed white, as it happens) quietly and poignantly asks What Now. His words and low-key art serve as discreet prompts to action for both academe and audiences alike as a new semester and year loom ahead.

Ebitenyefa Baralaye, “Real Feels,” Terracotta, 15 x 20.5 in., 2019 (courtesy David Klein Gallery) Photo: PD Rearick

Inspired remains on view at Pewabic Pottery through October 21.

Dylan Spaysky “Gingo & Sticks” @ What Pipeline

By Dennis Nawrocki

On August 1, 2019

In Installation, Sculpture

There he stands, in orange hued suspenders and sunglasses, Gingo, the life size woven wicker avatar of Dylan Spaysky, welcoming one and all to “Gingo & Sticks,” the artist’s latest exhibition at What Pipeline gallery. Gingo, per Pipeline, “refers to the name of Spaysky’s childhood imaginary friend who inhabited the form of Mickey Mouse. Sticks refers to the materials used in his latest carvings.” Gingo, with an upraised arm, like a barker, or expansive host, and his trusty carved foam mascot Mickey Mouse, are surrounded by a trove of wall mounted “sticks” featuring a cohort of familiar images of childhood (Donald Duck), summer revels (sunglasses, flip flops), celebrities (Melania Trump), and fauna (dog, cat, duck, bear).

Dylan Spaysky, Installation image: “Gingo,” Wicker, foam, paint, sunglasses, 73 x 62 x 32 in., all images “Courtesy of What Pipeline” 2019

Ringing the confines of What Pipeline’s modest space (think two-car garage), Spaysky’s nine lean, hand-carved, painted reliefs, measuring 10 – 48 inches in height, elicit a range of responses, from tender and sweet to sad and humorous to cute and demented. Each “stick,” harvested by the artist from the debris of tree trimmers on Belle Isle, bears, at its apex, a mini-sculpture, as if resting on a pedestal, but is in fact integral with its supporting branch. Perhaps some might recall a summer camp memory when the arts & crafts instructor suggested scouring the woods for twisty, knobby branches that evoked a face, contorted figure, or monster. Or of sticks serving as wands or cudgels raised aloft, though the import here seems rather more benign—and sophisticated.

One stick-pedestal bears a pair of red, upright Sunglasses, and another, the curled hand of a Backscratcher, and both are glammed up, respectively, with a dusting of glittery nail polish on lenses and thumbnail.

Dylan Spaysky, “Sunglasses,” Wood, paint, 19 ½ x 3 x 3 ¾ in., 2019

Animals, both real and imaginary also materialize, including a Duck, its back turned to the spectator (as if shyly paddling or flying away?); a diminutive brown bear (Smokey?) squatting on its haunches atop a tall, thin paint roller handle (a faux “stick,” admittedly), perhaps to suggest a lofty mountain peak; and the melting visage of Donald Duck who, with a mad gleam in his eye, appears over-animated. (In Disney World patter Mickey is sweet and Donald obstreperous.) Titled Dolan Stick (Dylan?), perhaps he embodies another imaginary friend of the artist-sculptor. Spaysky’s finessing of detail is evident in the tiny Shinola leather tassel of Donald’s cap, and his carving chops obvious in the adroit accommodation of the hole in the wood that extends from mouth through eye and top of head.

Dylan Spaysky, “Bear” (detail), Wood, paint, metal, duct tape, 48 x 1 x 1 in., 2019

Dylan Spaysky, “Dolan Stick,” Wood, paint, leather, 22 x 3 x 3 in., 2019

Looming at the crest of a rough-hewn limb Melania [Trump], at 7 ½ in., is the tallest of Gingo’s stick toppers. Spaysky’s replica of the inscrutable Melania is based on a larger than life linden wood effigy unveiled only a month ago by a notable chainsaw artisan in her native Slovenia. She wears her inaugural Alice-blue dress, and raises one arm in greeting, as if echoing, or returning the gesture of Gingo’s broad, expansive wave. Spaysky acknowledges that the appearance of the “original” Melania on a hilltop in Slovenia was like a serendipitous apparition just as he was in the midst of fabricating images for his show. And that he now had the chance to carve a wood copy of a wood original is not beside the point either.

Dylan Spaysky, “Melania,” Wood, paint, 19 x 3 ¼ x 3 in., 2019

Spaysky’s deft and meticulous wood working facility strikes a high/low point in Flip Flops, both in its heft and canny floor hugging footprint in lieu of wall mounting. It is in fact a two-by-four plank at one end of which neon green flip flops jut out, paralleling the flat footed board from which they extrude. Its placement in the gallery, slightly off to the side and arguably the last object a viewer might take note of, seems akin to drawing a line in the sand to underscore the artist’s ongoing rapport with what his eye fancies.

Dylan Spaysky, “Flip Flops” (detail), Wood, marker, wicker, nail, 49 x 3 7/8 x 2 ¾ in., 2019

Detroiter Spaysky, a graduate of College for Creative Studies, and a prolific maker, has exhibited nonstop since 2007, most recently in Detroit in “Blobject” at Center Galleries in 2018. There and elsewhere, his penchant for converting an array of common objects and cast off materials into idiosyncratic artifacts has been his forte. In “Gingo & Sticks,” however, his unorthodox ways and means center on–sticks, carving, serial format, and spare presentation–the results of which Gingo beckons visitors to review. For indeed, within the snug gallery a roomy world opens up as Spaysky’s sculptures tack from global icons of yore (Disney et al.) to newfangled models (a contemporary diva in blue) and, in between, to the droll vernacular of dog, cat, backscratcher, and more!

So, plan to schedule a visit to “Dylan Spaysky” and Gingo at What Pipeline between now and August 24, on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 1 – 6 p.m., or by appointment.

UNFURLED @ Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit

By Dennis Nawrocki

On March 14, 2019

In Fiber, Installation, Paintings, Sculpture

MOCAD presents Unfurled: Supports/Surfaces 1966-1976

To enter “Unfurled: Supports/Surfaces 1966-1976” is to discover a wellspring brimming with treasures and pleasures for all seasons. Filling the four walls of a cavernous, big box space, objects large and small, modest and theatrical, plain and comely, are prosaically lined up in tight formation around the perimeter of the space. In the center, jaunty banners, dyed fishing nets (one multicolored, another shaped like a portal), scrims of patterned fabric, and lengths of rope (one red, one blue) hang and dangle from the rafters.

“Unfurled: Supports/Surfaces, 1966-1976,” Installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, 2019 (All images courtesy of MOCAD and Ceysson & Benetiere; photography by Tim Johnson)

Nothing feels heavy or portentous; rather, an osmotic “lightness of being” builds as the eye and spirit bounce and rocket from object to object: a tall, naked stretcher listing against one wall, irregularly shaped fabrics and bedsheets rudely tacked to walls with nails or pushpins, constricting frames and stretched canvases nowhere in sight, a wooden pole tilted into a corner, dyed dishrags suspended from a drying rack, a crisscross arrangement of stubby logs skittering across the floor, and so on…

In a word, the art on view, in one way or another sheds de rigueur formalities of content and presentation. Fusty aesthetic tropes are deconstructed and dematerialized as bespoke ideals rip and split with invigorating impact. Such radical upheavals both in art and society at large in the mid-to-late 60s occurred not only among the loose federation of French artists who dubbed their experiments “Supports/Surfaces” but also among Arte Povera practitioners in Italy, the Mono-ha cohort in Japan, and the anti-form post-minimalists in the United States.

Of all the loose congeries of rebellious unfurlers the French cadre is perhaps the least well known, although the Mono-ha rebels also fly pretty much under the radar. Hence, the value and high voltage appeal of the “Supports/Surfaces” exhibition organized by MOCAD and curated by Wallace Whitney. Refreshingly, this survey brings to the fore fourteen countercultural artists of the far-flung 60s youthquake whose fertile experiments continue to inform the dynamics of contemporary art practice.

Louis Cane, “Cut-out Canvas,” 133 x 74 ½ in., Oil on canvas, 1974

One of the prime examples exhibited in this 2019 iteration of “Supports/Surfaces” is Louis Cane’s Cut-out Canvas of 1972. Here the color blocks of primary hues resemble an upright apparatus. The blue “legs” not only flank blocks of yellow and red, but also suggest overtones of anthropomorphic hoisting and supporting. Close up, one notes that the creases visible in the canvas reveal where the unstretched yardage is folded, unfolded, and subsequently refolded into a compact parcel for storage, transport, and reinstallation. In effect, a formal Mondrian has been nimbly informalized.

Patrick Saytour, “Deployed,” 157 ½ x 315 in., Fabric and PVC pipes, 1972

Patrick Saytour’s festive Deployed (1970), in contrast, exudes barely suppressed mobility and incipient celebration. It all but dares observers (a family, gaggle of friends, school tour group) to liberate the PVC poles, merrily dipping and swaying the brazen pink swags as they process through the museum. When not in motion Deployed, like a number of other works on display, is simply propped against the wall, and accommodatingly expands or shrinks in width depending on space available.

Louis Cane, “Wall/Floor,” 112 x 94 ½ x 84 ½ in., Oil on cut fabric, 1974

More delights, veering from transcendent to quotidian, await the spectator. At a far remove from the entrance to the exhibition, a plush yellow installation by Cane beckons from an awkward corner. As its title, Wall/Floor (1974) intimates, it radiates warmth from wall to floor, projecting its sun-splashed chroma across the viewer’s territory. The wall element, simply cut and left unhemmed, is almost invisibly framed by a matching length of dyed fabric, a sly play on a traditional frame. For the ultimate quotidian encounter, one discovers, in the corner opposite Cane’s luminous install, Noel Dolla’s cheeky Dyed Dishrags and Metal Drying Rack (1968). Distinction is conferred upon the humble ensemble by the realization that the process of drying kitchen rags on metal bars is not unlike hanging art on a wall.

Noel Dolla, “Dyed Dishrags and Metal Drying Rack,” 34 ½ x 25 x 11 ½ in., Dyed dishrags and metal structure, 1968

The iconic Grand Stretcher (1967) by Daniel Dezeuze, towering high above many other pieces in MOCAD’s central gallery, signals the structure/support dichotomy at the heart of the movement with terse, succinct economy. Stripped of its canvas, the bare, leaning stretcher, bereft of a painterly surface, nonetheless looms lofty and unbowed. Its stark grid, absolutely foundational to the age-old enterprise of painting, is both passe and grandiose.

Daniel Dezeuze, “Grand Stretcher,” 172 x 106 in., Wood stain on stretcher, 1967

Claude Viallat, “1970/056,” 85 ½ x 234 in., Methylene blue and acrylic on fabrics, 1970

Hanging nearby is Claude Viallat’s airborne 1970/056 from 1970. Bold in shape and broad in contour, its 19 ½ ft. width resembles the unfurled wingspan of a super-entity that is perhaps talismanic: Imagination Incarnate. Unstretched and unframed, its gusset of ruffly fabric at midpoint wittily violates the sacrosanct flatness of two dimensional art. Shorn of the familiar trappings of pre-1970 aesthetic practice, Viallat’s 1970/056 epitomizes the unbridled freedom and irresistible laissez-faire of the art and artists in this spirited, revelatory exhibition.

“Unfurled: Supports/Surfaces 1966-1976” remains on view at MOCAD through April 21, 2019

Larry Cressman @ K.Oss Contemporary Art

By Dennis Nawrocki

On November 12, 2018

In Assemblage / Collage, Sculpture

Larry Cressman, Installation, Fieldwork, All images courtesy of K.Oss gallery

Larry Cressman: Fieldwork Exhibition at K.Oss Contemporary Art

Like a straightforward black and white film liberated from the distractions of color and spectacle, the “Larry Cressman: Fieldwork” exhibition at K.Oss Contemporary Art, given its elemental hues, might have been titled “Black and White.” Upon entering the snug, spartan gallery, Cressman’s reductive, purified palette, content (“fieldwork”), and elemental format (rectangles abound) immediately cue visitors: striking displays lie ahead. Whether framed and portable or installational (bare branches hovering an inch or two in front of a wall), the dozen and a half compositions, essentially shallow reliefs, proffer a bevy of intricate, engaging configurations.

Birthed, as they are, from excursions into the fields near his home and studio, Cressman collects the raspberry cane, dogbane, and dried daylily stalks that initiate the process of gestation. Then, as the slender, fragile branches and twigs are joined one to another with nearly invisible wires, dusted with graphite, and mounted on the walls with thin, sturdy pins, his “linear landscapes” fill out and mature. As many as 200 or more conjoined branches may be necessary to scale up to an easel size armature.

Larry Cressman, On Line, raspberry cane, powdered graphite, matte medium, wire, pins, 60 x 90 x 12 inches, 2017-18

In One Line, for instance, a zig-zagging single line, fabricated from a gross of raspberry canes, begins or terminates at upper left or lower right. Swiftly, it carries the eye, body, and psyche some five feet across (and to heights of nine feet) along the jerky, twitchy pathway, like a marathon runner, rock climber, or artist. Further enhancing the journey are the myriad shadows thrown upon the wall that seem to double or triple the length and aesthetic thrum of the journey. Such adrenal feats, like a host of durational endeavors, literal or figurative, both exhaust and exhilarate participants.

Larry Cressman, Podcast IV, dogbane with seedpods, powdered graphite, matte medium, wire, pins, 60 x 36 x 19 inches, 2018

Podcast IV, another large installation drawing, measures six feet in height, and rather than composed solely of branches, incorporates intact the delicate seedpods of the dogbane plant. The seedpods, intended by nature to be wafted to the four corners of the earth, add a decided note of ephemerality to this singular structure. The way a podcast links listener and speaker, albeit fleetingly, is evoked by the flanking vertical forms to either side. Their charged and electric bond, suggested by the overlapping branches and seedpods in tandem with the whiplashing shadows cast on the wall the length of the central section, is delicate and intimate. This ecstatic, sensual interlacing projects from the wall fully 19 inches, the farthest of any of the works in the show. Such animated liaisons between two entities, albeit reciprocal and intense, may however be short and fleeting. So goes the way of all flesh.

Larry Cressman, Gathering Lines, Raspberry cane, powdered graphite, matte medium, pins, 13 x 41 x 2 inches, 2018

Another striking work, distinctly different in kind from others in the show, is Gathered Lines, an ultra- simple constructed drawing (Cressman’s term for framed vs. installation examples of his art). Here, a densely packed, horizontal sprawl of tightly packed, five inch raspberry canes, thirty-three inches in width, floods one’s peripheral vision. Its concise, dark form seems to belie its “soft” title: gathered lines (as in a family gathering/a gathering of friends). Little breathing space or respite is allotted an observer, as the tug toward the tiny, self-protective cluster envelops one’s whole being, effectively obliterating everything on the margins.

This potent, powerful work, like others in the exhibition, embodies the resonance and spectrum of readings that the artist’s “fieldwork” sets into play, while simultaneously offering aesthetic forms and pleasures. Perhaps Cressman’s summary statement, in which he describes “imagery reflective of the structure, randomness, and fragile nature of the constantly changing Michigan landscape” might be amended to embrace the “changing world” in lieu of the “Michigan landscape.”

“Larry Cressman: Fieldwork” is on view at K.Oss Contemporary Art, 1410 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, through Dec. 29, 2018. Cressman, who received his BFA and MFA degrees from the University of Michigan, is a Professor Emeritus of the university. An Ann Arbor resident, he has lived and worked in Michigan throughout his career, while exhibiting his works across the United States and Europe.