P.3, P.3+ at the Saint-Claude Art District

The pink labels from Prospect.3, Prospect.3+ and even P.9 (see photograph at the end of the post!) are also spread in the Saint-Claude Art District. Regardless, my monthly tour included all the galleries, as usual: Antenna, The Front, Barrister's Gallery...

I arrived just on time to see the performance from Robyn Leroy-Evans at The Front. A slumped mannequin and a couch were the only props under the trees in the gallery's backyard. Was I early? The conversations faded and we waited, sitting in rows of chairs, gazing at the red dress rolled up around the upper half of the mannequin. The silence was interrupted by an occasional dog's bark. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon. Was the artist late? An imperceptible quiver livened up the dummy's belly and grew to a regular, deep breathing. One leg rose slowly followed by the second leg. They looked like the appendages of a strange creature, floating gently, anchored to a red inert piece. After a few variations, they came back to rest. This was the end of an hypnotic, fascinating, half-hour performance, Body Sculpture II. In her practice, Leroy-Evans is not only the actor, she is also the eye behind the camera. Using the self-timer, she photographs herself wearing bright clothes from head to toes, sculpting her body in different poses to become an attractive flower, a venomous plant or else, surrounded by nature. Her works with those of  Naomi Shersty and Ryn Wilson are displayed in one room for Oppositions and Parallels. The exhibition brings together the three photographers who share "a mutual fascination with the relationship between environment and self". The adjacent area is filled with photographs from Edna Lanieri, incorporated in two new works, ŚuĐina and Ricordare. They represent a ritualistic approach to death, heavily influenced by the artist's Italian roots. Leaving the gallery, Lee Deegard's installation is a reflection on destruction, rebirth, healing, through nature. Her photographed landscapes are connected by yellow lines filled with energy and life. They meet on the grey floor of the gallery which alludes to an interstate, a scar left by human intervention on the natural world.

On St Roch Avenue, Staple Goods offers a one woman show with Suspension of Disbelief , a display of Cynthia Scott’s latest work. Forget carving, chiseling or pedestals, Scott's sculptures float in space and invade the gallery like alien ships, each carrying a different message. Scott gets her supplies at the Dollar Store and creates brightly colored compositions to deliver somber news. Following her previous body of work related to the oil spill disaster in the Gulf, this time, she is addressing a wider audience, voicing her concerns about our planet’s future with six sculptures hanging from the ceiling. Race relationship, transgenic food, food supply, overpopulation, she tackles grave subjects with wit and humor. For example, the transgenic apples fall to the ground below a dead canary, the doll-size pink gown is surrounded by pink kitchen sponges, black and white king cake babies are piled up in a half earth globe. Scott's message is simple and clear. She does not have answers, but her work keeps raising burning issues.



At the occasion of Prospect.3, the University of New Orleans-St. Claude Art Gallery is hosting The Propeller Group with Christopher Myers. The video from The Propeller Group titled The Living Need Light, And The Dead Need Music, 2014, is about funeral practices in Vietnam. The scenes have been selected carefully to a point of craftiness. In parallel, Christopher Myers presents Shrine, an installation which includes spotless musicians' uniforms and shiny modified instruments that will never be played. The point of the project is to find common funeral practices between New Orleans and Saigon, "two cities, two cultures mirroring each other but worlds apart". The artists could have documented grief, emotions on both sides and their expressions through music and common rituals.

Gentrification...not yet

photographs by the author:                                                                                                 

"Body Sculpture II", Robin Leroy-Evans                                                                  

View of "Suspension of Disbelief" from Cynthia Scott at the Staple Goods     gallery,                                                                                                               

View of the exhibition at the UNO-St. Claude Art Gallery                         

Abandoned house on  St. Claude Avenue                                                       

On my way, I saw this venue on St Claude Avenue, a reminder of the area's frail recovery.

Beyond Reality

Colored marbles shine on a dark blue to black background, the largest surrounded by an almost perfect circle of smaller ones, in a carefully staged composition. Every details of the magnified objects are represented with minutia, including tiny speckles of air bubbles caught in the clear glass, bright dots of light glaring on the surface or curvy shadows reflecting on a mirror. These subtleties would not be detectable if one was looking at the real things, but the viewer is looking at an enlarged copy of a photograph, painted with oil on canvas.
Cat's Eye and the Best of  'Em, 1993, from Charles Bell is the introduction to Photorealism: The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Collection, an exhibition taking place at the New Orleans Museum of Art, dedicated to an art form which developed in the late sixties.  Gathering artists who use diverse techniques and never met, lacking a manifesto, photorealism is not considered an art movement. The word was coined by the art dealer Louis Meisel in 1969 to describe a new style born from photography. He also established a definition for the term which includes five criteria. The first and foremost is "using a camera and photographs to gather information". More than seventy five works from the first, second and third generation of photorealist artists have been selected for the show.
The first section Reflections of America, includes works from the first generation of American artists like Charles Bell, Robert Bechtle, John Baeder, Richard Estes, Ron Kleemann and more. The themes are centered around Americana in the sixties: diners, gas stations, neon signs, cars, trains... Each artist is represented by several paintings which highlight their style like Estes's reflections in storefronts, Bell's toys and pinball machines or Baeder's diners. The erasure of all signs of life in the compositions is remarkable. The streets are clean, the buildings are flawless and the shiny cars or motorcycles have never been used. The works depict a perfect middle class world, a distorted reality fit for an advertisement. Even Randy Dudley's industrial landscapes made in the late 90's or 2000's are sanitized. The next area, Idyllic Landscapes, involves a younger generation of international artists who embraced photorealism in their practice. The paintings of Piazza San Marco, 2010, from Raphaella Spence or Le Pont au Change, 2006, from Bertrand Meniel look like detailed postcards representing lifeless scenes including tourists. The Western landscapes from Richard McLean bring us back to America with several views of stereotyped pastoral Western landscapes filled with cowboy hats, horses and ranches. Across, several periods of Don Eddy's work are displayed with a store window, a paradisiac island and several of his latest airbrushed landscapes spread on multiple canvasses. He is followed by the English artist Ben Johnson whose practice focuses on architecture and the reconstruction of reality, piece by piece, rejecting human interference in his compositions.
Chuck Close's portraits are taking over the last area dedicated to The Human Figure. Since the late sixties, the artist has concentrated on the genre perfecting a unique technique to represent himself or his friends. In the same area, So Yeon, 2012, from Hyung Jin Park clashes with Close's pixelated renditions. His image of  a half-face creates mystery while the unnatural softness of the skin, the creases of the lips, the replication of the smallest details, reflects a search for human perfection. This is also DeAndrea's goal with his Seated Blonde, 1982, the only sculpture included in the exhibition. In Sweet Tooth, 1988, D. J. Hall catches the happiness of the moment through the commercial smile of a mother-daughter pair surrounded by sun, sand and sea. Yigal Ozeri veers toward romanticism in his composition Untitled: Megan and Olga in the Park, 2010 and Ben Schonzeit toward advertisement in Honey Tangerines, 1974, and Aubergine, 2009.
Due to the number and variety of artists, from a younger generation like Roberto Bernardi to classic masters like Bell or Estes, and the number of works included in the exhibition, the visitor will get a historical perspective of photorealism.
Along the visit, one realizes that photorealism is not only realist, it is also idealist in its search for perfection.

photographs by the author:

"Tony's (Colorado Springs)", 1980, John Bader
"M. Raphael Silver", 1975, Don Eddy
"Seated Blonde", 1982, John DeAndrea
"Cat's Eye and the Best of 'Em", 1993, Charles Bell

From Gauguin to Calan, P.3 at the NOMA

The visit for Prospect.3 should start at the New Orleans Museum of Art, on the second floor, where the visitor can find the nexus of the biennial, Paul Gauguin's painting Under the Pandanus, 1891. The title of Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, 1897, another work from Gauguin, would better summarize "the search" which is going to propel the visitors around New Orleans in the next few months. Gauguin is found next to Degas in the gallery. The two artists mingled while in Paris and, upon his return from New Orleans, Degas encouraged the restless artist to move to the Crescent City. Gauguin ended up in Tahiti and even further, the Marquesas Islands, in his search for exoticism and himself. Degas reported to the dealer Ambroise Vollard: "I advised him to go to New Orleans, but he decided it was too civilized. He had to have people around him with flowers on their heads and rings in their noses before he could feel at home."
The next P.3 artist, Tarsila do Amaral is represented with a painting and three drawings. Upon her return from Europe, the artist traveled in Brazil with the poet Oswald de Andrade, looking for the primitive and indigenous in her country. Os Anjos, 1924, is a naive but provocative painting representing mestizos as angels. One can find the influence of Fernand Léger in the tubular bodies and of her childhood in the colors baby blue, pink, she "adored as a child". The Brazilian artist was a member of the Anthropophagic Movement, and the sketches are related to one of her most famous work, Anthropofagia, 1929.
Jeffrey Gibson's search translates into a dichotomy in his works. From Choctaw and Cherokee descent, he "modernizes" traditional material like raw hide, beads, mixing them with fluorescent light or metal, and in the process westernizes the American Indian culture. He is represented by half a dozen iconic works appropriately displayed next to the golden cabin from Will Ryman, titled  America, 2013, part of the permanent collection.
Two abstract expressionist landscapes from Ed Clark and one of his oval paintings are next to a work from Joan Mitchell belonging to the permanent collection. The american artists became friends in Paris. Mitchell, who lived in France most her adult life, meets the criteria for P.3. In one of his essays, John Ashbery states: "she voluntarily became an apatride, not an expatriate". Alma W. Thomas did not choose to leave her birthplace. She was uprooted during her childhood from her native Georgia to Washington, D.C. with her family, to flee the racial violence. In the three paintings selected for P.3, she depicts nature with her characteristic brushstrokes and vivid colors. She was a member of the Washington Color School.  
Huguette Calan, another female artist, was born in Lebanon, taught in France and is currently living in California. Her body-landscapes are filled with sensuality and poetry.
The paintings from Frederick Brown are first and last, decking the Great Hall. Musicians have been selected among his portraits which include folk heroes, religious figures and more. Music is a dear theme in New Orleans, however, I could not find the link with P.3.

At first, the Prospect.3 exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art seems spotty, but after some consideration, the works embedded in the permanent collection offer a platform to look at the landscape from Asher Durand or the boxes from Joseph Cornell with new eyes. This is what the biennial is also about.






photographs by the author:

"Os Anjos", 1924, Tarsila do Amaral
"Quiver", 2012, Jeffrey Gibson
"Sunrise", 1973, Huguette Calan

Dazzling, Newcomb Art Gallery

 Un Monumento às Fantasias Descartadas ( A Monument to Discarded Fantasies) from Andrea Fraser is a festive introduction to the Prospect.3 show at the Newcomb Art Gallery on the Uptown Tulane campus. The site specific work is an accumulation of left over beads, baubles, clothes, feathers, garlands from the Rio Carnival and the heap of abandoned objects instills melancholy. Assuming it is intentional, the Christmas tree shaped composition refers not only to Mardi Gras but also to the quasi secular celebration taking place two months before. However, the pile of shiny, decorative, lifeless objects feels contrived. Soiled, crushed, shattered trinkets would bring spontaneity and genuineness to the installation.
Monir Farmanfarmaian's works shimmer along the walls, surrounding the center piece. The geometric wall sculptures ally the sobriety of minimalist shapes and the richness from the glitter to reach a perfect mixture of Islamic inspired motives and minimalist influence, defying all categorization. Farmanfarmaian has perfected the techniques of cut mirrors, mosaics and reverse glass painting to create the mainly monochrome, silvery works, activated by the viewer's reflection: a successful amalgam of East  and West.
In keeping with her quest, Ebony Patterson fills a room with a new body of works created for P.3. Mixing paint, beads, glitter, flowery wallpaper, she stages black bodies lying in a lush nature or overtaken by raucous celebrations. The human form dissolves in the luxurious vegetation or the party's decorations. Primal calls lead to Mardi Gras festivities or a search for paradise in a communion with nature. Paterson keeps us guessing and wandering in her celebratory landscapes.


Black is for funerals. According to Hew Locke, black is also for parades. In his site specific installation The Nameless, mythical heroes drawn with cords and beads on a starry background, come alive on the four walls of the room, encircling the visitor. Referring to our collective memory, childhood's nightmares or fairy tales, the overpowering figures (about twice my size) are a mixture of symbols, cultural and historical references like the demon with angel's wings or the Medieval warrior riding a lion. In a new world, the pageantry of semi-gods brandishes Kalashnikovs, the symbol of modern weaponery.

Each artist is presented with a concise informative wall text and if their works are influenced by diverse backgrounds, the curator found a common discussion.The exhibition  is a reference to a 1959 show organized at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Totems not Taboo, about the dichotomy of objects. 
Flawless, dazzling!


photographs by the author:

"Un Monumento ás Fantasias Descartadas" ( A Monument to Discarded Fantasies), Andrea Fraser
with on each side, wall sculptures from Monir Farmanfarmaian
"...shortly after 8- beyond the bladez", Ebony Patterson, 2014
"The Nameless", detail, Hew Locke