In Search of Beauty

The title of the exhibition Mickalene Thomas: Femmes Noires gives the key to Thomas's latest show  at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. For the art lovers who visited Mickalene Thomas: Waiting on a Prime-Time Star at the Newcomb Art Museum two years ago, it feels like an update with the display of more recent works. First time viewers can appreciate the whole gamut of the artist's practice including her paintings, photographs, videos, films and iconic "tableaux".

Located on the building's first floor, the exhibition starts with a large painting facing the visitor at the entrance. Le déjeuner sur l'herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires, 2010, features three black women and the shadow of a sculpture from Matisse in the background in place of Manet's four subjects. Inspired by a photograph shot in the sculpture garden at MoMA, the work underwent several stages: cutting, collaging, painting with acrylic, oil, enamel, adding rhinestones (reference to pointillism according to the artist) to reach the final composition. Already displayed in a number of venues, it has brought in mainly positive reviews and the imposing figures succeed in making the visitor blink under their bold stare.

Following this masterpiece, Me as Muse, 2016, provides a very intimate encounter with the artist through a twelve-monitor video installation featuring images of her naked body intermingled with those of Western paintings depicting bare females, Saartjie Baartman (the Ottentot Venus) and brightly colored African textiles. Unabashed, the artist rejuvenates the myth of the nude and the canons of beauty.

The front of the gallery is occupied by a living-room, an invitation to curl up on a sofa and read a book from the selection of volumes piled up on the floor: Toni Morrison,  Zadie Smith, Maya Angelou, ... Houseplants, comfortable furniture decorated with African prints, books, carpets, rugs, fill the replicas of the artist's childhood interiors. In her interview for Artnet Thomas sheds some light on her "tableaux". She describes how she recreates familiar spaces from her memories: "we construct our spaces in various ways to express ourselves". The domestic installations provide a way to connect with the artist and her history.

The next works are hung along the walls leading to the back of the gallery. The mirror-based series are portraits inspired by the book and movie The Color Purple, and strong characters like Diahann Carroll or Naomi Sims. Most of Thomas's creations start with photographs  undergoing several processes, this time the last one involves silkscreening onto a mirror. The dreamy subjects appear remote and subdued, without a smile or eye contact, filled with the blues.
This is in contrast with Do I Look Like a Lady? a raucous video installation projected on multiple screens lining up two walls around a second living room. The You-tube clips of famous singers or comedians are selected according to their relevance to the plight of black females. The quarter of an hour projection is best viewed sitting on one of the comfortable armchairs.

In the next room, the smaller space allows the display of four works, two "picassian" paintings- collages  facing each other and two black and white Polaroid portraits of queer models (according to the wall text) engaging the camera with a proud stare, Courbet #2 and Courbet #4. The show ends with one of Thomas's black and white film shown in a dark backroom. Twenty minutes long,  je t'aime, 2014, shows close-ups of the artist and her partner on two adjacent screens. The camera is moving slowly over bare skins and it feels like intruding when confronted with the gaze of the two lovers enjoying their intimacy. In the background the sound of water dripping gives a measure of time.

The 49-year-old artist has been recognized by the art world for more than a decade and pundits have discussed, analyzed, dissected her work already. Inspired by a long list of artists, she has absorbed the essence of their practice to grow her own, characterized by multiple references to art history in her signature portraits of black women made in various media, from photography to collages, paintings, videos and movies. Ultimately her quest is powered by her own history starting with her childhood's memories, growing up as a black queer woman. Her art can be considered provocative and inciting voyeurism, but skin, breasts and pubic hair aside, her portraits are about the inner strength of her subjects conveyed through their intense gaze. The relatively modest show with about a dozen well selected works enriched by informative wall texts allows to sample Thomas's practice, interact with her homey interiors and follow the artist in her quest for new canons of beauty.

photographs by the author:

"Le Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe: Les Trois Femmes Noires", 2010
"Sister: Shug Avery Breakfast", 2016
"Portrait of Aaliyah", 2017

Along the River

White Linen Night is over. Time to go back to the galleries and look at art!
At the Contemporary Arts Center, Constructing the Break, an Open Call exhibition curated by Allison M. Glenn, is dedicated to the Mississippi River. It assembles the works from thirty artists sharing close or loose links to New Orleans. Their diverse backgrounds and practices enrich the multi-media exhibition located in the main gallery on the building's first floor.

The show starts with Tar, 2018, a Gothic tale of destruction by Joris Lindhout. The installation is made of two videos, a stack of newspapers laid on the floor tied with a black string, an iPad held by two black hands on the wall and an old tape player on a stand. The devices are connected through black wires hanging from the ceiling. The story unfolds on the bigger screen where a glob of oil drips, drops, becomes a creepy substance invading its surroundings and eventually the world. A prescient performance by Joseph Beuys recorded in 1974 in the Gulf of Mexico is displayed on a smaller screen. It shows the artist coating himself with the black goo in the middle of a green bog. On the iPad's screen, a humorous scoop about the FBI looking for a MoMA's curator taken away by a mysterious kidnapper leaving black prints, is accompanied by advertisements for backyard fracking. The introduction gives the vibe to the rest of the exhibition which features an abstract representation of the goddess of fresh water, Oshun by Anastasia Pelias, and three wall pieces from Julie Morel about loss and memory through maps drawn with technologies involving GPS, LED's and conductive ink. Undertow, 2015-2018, the site specific post-industrial installation from Elliott Stockes is made of parts from oil distillation equipment laid on the gallery's vast open floor. Displacement, 2018, an interactive piece from Nurhan Gokturk features two newspaper vending machines side by side in which mirrors reflect deconstructed images of ourselves and our environment. Gabrielle Garcia Steib's mixed-media installation involves sound and photographs to tackle a hot issue, immigration, while Ana Hernandez gets us back to the subject of fracking with two pieces of her series Altering Internal Landscapes: In pursuit of unearthing bodies of Energy. "Visual representation of ecological trauma", The Haynesville, 2017, and The Bakken, 2017, combine Netters Anatomical Flash Cards with a depiction of the formations pierced by nails, evoking pain, thus life. The wounded rocks next to the description of human flesh become living matter by analogy. Annah Chalew makes her own canvasses with trash and plants resulting in unique brown monochrome landscapes. Her wall piece Root Shock II, 2018, combines opposite qualities: primal, sophisticated, coarse, delicate, heavy, light, tough, fragile, ..., and benefits from a close-up view. The life-size photograph of a tree with hanging moss, glowing in the last ray of sun against a soft pinkish sky, perfect picture for My Beautiful South, 2018, from Cynthia Scott, is spoiled by a metal pipe protruding from the tree trunk. Its orifice is covered by a small round screen on which a video is projected. It was shot by the artist along the river's bank and documents the green pastures giving way to industrial complexes and pollution. In Daybew, 2018, Mississippi Swan, a virtual artist born from the collaboration between Rick Snow, (Mississippi River in New Orleans) and Chris Tonkin, (Swan River in Perth), mixes the sounds of two far away cities to obtain scores of electronic music accompanied by colorful graphics flashing like advertisements.
The piece is a great transition to what feels like the second part of the exhibition, dominated by photographs and videos. Twenty black and white or color photographs from eight  local photographers gathered on a wall convey their vision of the city and its people.
 Across, the sixteen-minute video featuring the sculptor Maren Hassinger and her daughter, is a performance piece born from the interaction between artist, landscape, wind, water, and a white scarf. The poetic images are followed by Thy Glad Beams, 2016, from Wiley Aker, a mixture of footage from news and archives in black and white accompanied by an ominous background music resulting in a dramatic end of the world atmosphere. Preceded by three minimalist sculptures made with  concrete from Jack Niven, the conclusion of the show is an epic tale of the Mississippi river, told in less than ten minutes. With its dense content, There's Something in the Water: Yemoja and Osun, 2018, the video from Tia-Simone Gardner deserves to be watched several times to get the full grasp of its historical, geographical, sociological, architectural, poetical references. 
Each of the thirty artists gets to shine in the well-paced display. The coherence of the selected works, their quality and relevance to the subject, make the whole exhibition flow from start to end without a glitch. Lately, viewers have seen a lot of political art. This time, the artists made their point through a whole gamut of expressions more powerful and inspirational than slogans .
They all communicate their unconditional love for the city, the river and the South, and along with it, the "concept of being rooted consistently tempered by infrastructural fragility".

photographs by the author:

Cynthia Scott "My Beautiful South", 2018
Ana Hernandez "The Haynesville" and "The Bakken", 2017
View of Tia-Simone Gardner's installation "There's Something in the Water: Yemoja and Osun" 

Sarah Morris at the CAC

Sawdust and Tinsel, one of the latest exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Center, features the work of Sarah Morris, a geometric abstract painter and film maker born in 1967. In the mid-1990's, she started exploring the "urban, social and bureaucratic typologies" of various cities, among them Rio and Abu Dhabi. The display located on the first floor of the building includes nine paintings, two films and four drawings on paper.

Three paintings from the recent series Rio, hung along the wall at the entrance, are an abrupt introduction for viewers unfamiliar with the artist's vision. A quick glance reveals the usual language of geometric abstraction: simple shapes filled with bright glossy household paint. Visitors might go on to read a long wall text under the title of the exhibition. However, a prolonged scrutiny generates fleeting visual illusions. Rio Atlantica (Rio), 2013, starts swirling like the images of a kaleidoscope, Bovespa (Rio), 2013, acquires depth and volume with its thick grey lines superimposed on a colored grid and one can find a vertiginous abyss in the asymmetrical patterns of Denuza Leão (Rio), 2012. The titles provide the cues to  the artist's inspiration: a luxury hotel, the Brazilian stock market or a multi-talented female celebrity. Casa das Canoas (Rio), 2013, referring  to the house designed by the famous architect Oscar Niemeyer and Hybrid Solar Eclipse (Rio), 2013, complete the Rio series on display with the addition of February 2017, 2017, a recent piece  somewhat incongruous among the collection. In the next galleries, four paintings from the Abu Dhabi series are intermingled with four ink drawings on paper. Adco (Abu Dhabi), 2017, Siemens (Abu Dhabi), 2015, Taqa (Abu Dhabi), 2015. and E45 (Abu Dhabi), 2015, are composed with a new color scheme and design pattern, reflecting the place's landscapes and psyche. No circles or curves, the shapes are made of sharp lines in reference to the soaring urban architectures set against the flatness of the desert. Black provides the "skeleton" for muted colors and occasional rays of yellow or turquoise. Two films running simultaneously bring a different experience. Rio, 2012, a view of the city seen through the artist's lens complements the series of paintings. Strange Magic, 2014, is a documentary of a sort about the luxury company that established the Louis Vuitton Foundation. A sequence features the construction of the building designed by Frank Gehry near the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris. Liam Gillick's electronic music accompanies both movies.

Piet Mondrian's New York City I  was composed in 1942,  Frank Stella's Gran Cairo in 1962 (Stella, a seasoned traveler, visited the Middle East in the 60's). Does geometric abstraction belong to art history? What is new? In an interview with Philippe Parreno, Morris confided that her paintings "use" architecture but are not about architecture. She describes a "physical struggle" to compose the works "all based on very specific math and diagrams." "My paintings are my version of a QR code." Except for Casa das Canoas, due to the modest size of the canvases, the first impression is underwhelming. After spending some time, the hypnotic square paintings appear to be about colors, sounds, rhythms. This is how I read them. Geometric abstraction forgoes emotions and Morris chooses the other side of her practice to tickle our feelings... or she would if the lack of chairs or benches had not transformed the films' viewing into a frustrating experience. Who can stand in front of a screen for 88 min 33 sec (Rio) and 45 min 8 sec (Strange Magic)? I ended up watching clips on the artist's Website. Overall, I find her message ambiguous. Dallying with a luxury company, she becomes the apologist of a brand and a famous architect through her film. In her statement, "I title them (my paintings) after existing or past places that have been institutions of authority, whether for the good or the bad", she admits to be a mere observer with her paintings and her camera.
The title of the exhibition appears disconnected to the works. The wall text provides an explanation about its origin. Sawdust and Tinsel, is a 1953 Swedish drama directed by Ingmar Bergman and by some convoluted associations, the exhibition ends up being related to the city's Tricentennial celebrations. Which leaves me wonder how Sarah Morris would represent the city of New Orleans, a cultural patchwork far from the"sense of emptiness characteristic of contemporary urban experience".
To conclude, Frank Stella's famous statement: "What you see is what you see".

photographs by the author:

"Rio Atlantica (Rio)", 2013
"Siemens (Abu Dhabi), 2015

"Please Respond", Senga Nengudi at the CAC

At the Contemporary Art Center, Improvisational Gestures is the "first museum exhibition to survey the sculptures, performance video and related work" from Senga Nengudi. The artist born in Chicago in 1943 is presently living and working in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She was involved in setting up the touring comprehensive survey of her work which spans forty years of her career, from the 70's to the present and features several pieces of her famous RSVP series started in 1975.
The show curated by Elissa Auther and Nora Burnett, following a traditional setting, starts with an informative wall text about the artist and her work accompanied by a few black and white photographs documenting the artist's interaction with her sculptures made of pantyhose. A number of her iconic sculptures fill the second floor of the venue, lined up along the walls. The spotlights in the dark space allow a play between the pieces made of "stretched, pulled , twisted" nylon tights and their shadows. Nengudi is well known for her use of the tan colored medium with sand-filled feet to support the final shape. The RSVP series, an ongoing project started in 1975, is well represented with eight pieces made in 2014. Their message about stretching body and psyche is consistent while Blossom, 2014, created specifically for the exhibition seems somewhat clichéd. Rubber Maid, 2011 and Swing Low, 1976/2014, allude to female shapes with sagging breasts.
A major piece, Nuki Nuki: Across 118th St., 1982, incorporates wooden slats entangled with torn pantyhose, fragile but flexible bridge between two walls. The sculpture is a reflection about the living conditions in the seventies and eighties Harlem where Nengudi lived from 1971 to 1974 as a member of the black artists' community. The sound of a video emerges from a small room where Warp Dance, 2007, is displayed on a large screen. In the multi-channel audio/video installation (sound by Butch Morris) made during the artist's residence at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, she captures colors and rhythms of mechanized looms, resulting in a mesmerizing piece. In the center of the exhibition, a whole space is dedicated to more video works like Side by Side, 2006, about her collaboration with Maren Hassinger, Hands, 2003-2012, a gestural piece performed with hands only, and The Threader, 2007, made also during her residency, in which she records the repetitive gestures of a textile worker. Photographs document past performances of the artist with her collaborators and friends, among them the memorable Gutai style event Ceremony for Freeway Fets, 1978, which took place underneath an interstate overpass downtown Los Angeles or Nengudi wearing her own sculptures like Nick Cave, for Sculpture Inside Out, 1977/2014.
The exhibition provides an in-depth review of  the work of the multidisciplinary artist who started her career as a dancer. Incorporating dance, music, visual art, she evokes life impermanence, female identity, rituals, through gestures, movement, activating her sculptures during improvised performances. Her RSVP series ( Répondez S'il Vous Plaît) translates into "Please Respond", a direct call to the viewer to become engaged and interact with the works. At first, attracted by the sculptures, I found them static and mute, like frozen lifeless shapes. The display emphasizes their aesthetic qualities, but renders them shallow and irrelevant as the artist's message gets lost,... until one reaches the videos and photographs of her performances. Hypnotized and entranced, I spent a long time watching the videos made during her residency. The Threader becomes a mythical story about a textile worker repeating the same gestures in harmony with the machine to create perfect patterns for eternity. Warp Dance gives life to mechanized looms dancing in cadence and changing colors according to a perpetual cycle. Nengudi's art is dynamic, performative, improvisional, and becomes stale in the museum's context. It brings up the challenge of representing performative art inspired by and created for a community within the walls of an institution.
The "first museum survey" of Senga Nengudi's sculptures comes short of its promises: "the works invite viewers to not only respond but to engage with them physically". At the end of the visit, I felt like a spectator.

R.S.V.P. sculptures activated by the artist and Maren Hassinger, 1977
Rapunzel, 1980/2014
R.S.V.P Reverie 'D', 2014

From Voguing to Collages

Rashaad Newsome is back home with his latest exhibition Mélange at the Contemporary Art Center. Born in New Orleans, the artist lives in New York City after spending some time in Europe. The month long show includes not only a display of  collages, drawings on paper, videos, but also films, a live performance and a conversation moderated by Amanda Hunt, Associate Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem. The following review concentrates on the exhibition located in the newly  refurbished first floor of the CAC.


Heavy glass doors now enclose the first and largest gallery filled with eleven collages hung against two walls in a dull arrangement. The museum-like display includes a wall text to introduce the artist and his work. Loud music brings some commotion to the otherwise quiet atmosphere. One by one, the collages dazzle in their austere surroundings and project lavish scenes. Luxurious, opulent, flamboyant, luscious, outlandish, racy, garish, kitschy, ..., there are not enough adjectives to describe the extravagant display of riches from the inhibited decors. Made of high end glossy magazines, the collages assemble pearls, diamonds, luxury watches, gold chains,  mixed with iconic historical buildings and heavily tattooed skins, glowing mouths, open legs, entangled arms, resulting in a visual overload. A mixture of high and low, they are meticulously built and result in dynamic portraits with hints of surrealism and humor. The larger pieces are presented in matching black custom frames covered with leather and automotive paint, adding a perfect finish.
The music comes from the second room where a 9 min. video is projected against a wall. FIVE SFMOMA, 2017, is a clip of the live performance which took place at the opening of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in April last year. Its title refers to the five moves of Vogue Fem, the latest style of voguing. It includes five elements (hands, cat walk, floor performance, spin dips and duck walking) translated in a frenetic "ballet" in five parts executed by five dancers with colored wigs and matching make-ups. Five musicians build up the music parallel to the moves, improvising as they watch the performers. An opera singer is also involved. The result could be chaotic if it was not for the intervention of the multi-disciplinary artist. In a few video shots, Newsome appears behind a computer, like a conductor, synchronizing music and dance while also drawing the dancer's moves, thanks to a 3D modeling software program. The resulting "three color lithographs with 3D and photographic collage elements" are then framed and displayed on the wall in chronological order, complementing the video.
Two black arrows point to a narrow passage giving access to the smaller back gallery where two silent videos are projected simultaneously side by side, recordings of live performances which took place in the artist's studio. Untitled and Untitled (New Way), 2009, are earlier works representing the collaboration between Newsome and selected performers.

A first walk through the exhibition left me unsettled and I realized that the visit should start with the two silent videos, in the back. The earlier works represent the key to the artist's inspiration. Newsome stated: "I view these videos as drawings, with the dancers acting as my pen, creating lines, shapes, landscapes, and an array of narratives." Unfortunately, the sound from FIVE SFMOMA which invades the whole exhibition spoils some of the experience. The next stop is in front of FIVE itself. The performance combining music, dance and drawings is possible due to the artist's diverse practices which include computer programming, collage, video, music, sculpture, performance. His skills brought him to turn "movement into material, and then material into movement" through computer programming. Freezing the movement to produce drawings, he then "fills them with abundant material to create collages".
A reflection on popular culture, connecting all media, glamorous, they should be the last sight.

photographs by the author:

"Brush Stroke", 2015
"When You're Talking to Someone and You Know They Are Lying but You Keep Listening", 2015
"#1st Place", 2016

The Art of Coding

Two small exhibitions are triggering deep cogitations about the relationship between art and technology. At first sight, they do not appear to have a connection, one features abstract landscapes, the other figurative pieces, but they both involve computers. B=R=I=C=K=I=N=G from James Hoff and Digital Pictorialism: An Exhibition of Images Produced With Code from James L Dean are located in different areas of the city, the former at the Contemporary Arts Center in the New Orleans Art District and the latter at Staple Goods, a collective art gallery in the Saint-Claude Arts District.
James Hoff's works fill one room on the second floor of the Contemporary Art Center in a traditional display of "paintings" lined up along the four walls. An odd addition is brought up by holes in the walls exposing wooden structures from the building itself. A closer look at the abstract works is a surprise due to the texture of the "canvas" and the consistency of the "paint". The eight numbered Skywiper are chromaluxe transfers on aluminum. David Everitt Howe wrote a detailed critique about the resulting pieces in Art Review . The title of the works are worth an explanation. Skywiper is the name of the virus which after infecting a program produces the abstract landscapes. A wall text at the entrance provides a description of the process involved: "Hoff distills the visual file to code, unearthing a subtext, underlying every image, as well as competing visual field, a linear mapping of signs and alternating color. He then infects that field with contemporary malware, in this case the Skywiper virus". More information is available about the virus and its previous use (politics are involved). The artist who relates to William Burroughs's ideas has previously experimented with viruses in music and now applies the technique to visual art and also architecture. The holes in the wall are designed according to a jpeg picture of the room infected by the virus. Contrasting with the Brooklyn's artist threatening world of viruses, uncontrolled replication, disease, corruption and ultimately destruction, Dean's works bathe in a peaceful atmosphere, filled with bunches of flowers, still lifes or calm interiors reminiscent of seventeenth Century Dutch paintings including a classic memento mori. This time, in the realm of photography, the creation of a program is the key to the production of the art. The process involves several stages described with minutia at the start of the exhibition. A very informative text written by Minka Stoyanova Reading Digital Pictorialism completes the display.
To appreciate the two exhibitions takes some background in computer technology. Did you know that bricking, the title of Hoff's exhibition, refers to "the overload of an operating system when infected with malware, which renders it useless, at least for its originally intended purposes." Nevertheless, the two artists's use of the technology as a new medium to produce visual art is futuristic and inescapable. Abstract or figurative, through the manipulation of images, art is becoming deeply involved with the world of computers and the artist may not need assistants to mix paint or prepare a canvas anymore, but will need coders, developers, engineers...

At the end, can the list of processes used to produce the art be replicated? We all heard: "My child could draw like that" Are we going to hear "My child can code like this". If you are computer savvy, it seems that you can become an artist. The use of the technology is here to stay, the resulting piece of art ultimately will define who is an artist.

photographs by the author

James Hoff "Skywiper No.52" and "Skywiper No.83", 2015
                   "Skywiper No.33", 2015
James L Dean "Haydel-Jones Plantation House in Edgard, LA"
                       "Broad Stroke Chrysanthemums"

B=R=I=C=K=I=N=G till February 28 at the CAC
"Digital Pictorialism: An Exhibition of Images Produced With Code" just closed this week

New Perspectives, Jacqueline Humphreys at the CAC

Jacqueline Humphries, a native New Orleanian now living in New York City is back in town with her latest exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center. The artist is showing exclusively new works, created for the twenty-first century, including large abstract compositions on the first floor and a collection of her black-light paintings on the second floor.
The home-made metallic pigment mixed from aluminum powder results in Humphries's shiny silver signature found in the five paintings downstairs. Generously applied in the background of Alpha, Alpha1 and Alpha4, the "non-color" blends with green, violet or pale blue hues, while rows of black dots fill the foreground. Delicate abstract black drawings float between the two layers, bringing a narrative to otherwise monotonous compositions. The action is initiated by the viewer who activates the works when walking by. The shifting reflection of the light on the silvery coat brings life to the paintings, and the calligraphic patterns become alive with the changing perspectives. Two paintings complete the display, large canvases with the same silvery effect but more abstract expressionist than pop with their sharp lines scratched in the paint. The same concept is involved in the layout of the black-light paintings displayed in the Lupin Gallery upstairs, however the technique differs. This time, ultraviolet light activates fluorescent paint, producing psychedelic colors glowing in the dark. An awkward atmosphere fills the gallery due to the mixed message sent by the conventional display of works aligned under the spotlights and the playful brash colors fit for a Kenny Scharf's Cosmic Cavern.
The combination of Pop art, Op art, Minimalism, Abstract Expressionism in Humphries's works results in a confused message and the mixture of low and high art remains stale, lacking energy and fun.  Humphries's attempt to catch the light with the festive medium falls short of its goal with the large black dots hindering a possible visual adventure. In 2009, Humphries stated in an interview that "Post modernism is supposed to be all about appropriation and cynicism... why not appropriate an attitude of seriousness." Seriousness is taking over her black-light paintings lined up along the walls and transforms them in a conventional display of flashy works.
In the post modern era, visual artists are faced with a question: is this the end of painting? The exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in London in 2013 The Show Is Over, gathered artists looking for an answer. Humphries experimenting with new media found her language but delivers a message that stays superficial.

photographs by the author:

"Alpha3", 2014
"Untitled", 2014
"Untitled", 2015

Somber Notes at the CAC

Radcliffe Bailey: Recent Works, the latest exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans takes over the first floor of the venue. The show assembles six large new wall pieces and the eighth version of a site specific installation, Windward Coast. In addition, two works are set in the "oval gallery". The African American artist based in Atlanta keeps drawing his inspiration from the history of the Atlantic slave trade, espe-
cially the Middle Passage, music, and more recently, disasters.
Sounds of piano keys falling on the ground escape from a conch hung to the wall and a giant music stand supports a stack of wind instruments in a small space near the entrance, setting the tone for the exhibition. Music is also referred to in the next piece which fills the front of the main gallery and, viewed from the street, provides a great window display. Lost in the heap of wooden pieces, far away, a lonely black head covered with glitter bobbles in the middle of a sea of piano keys. The famous piece, Windward Coast, has already been much commented upon since its display for the exhibition Memory As Medicine at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 2011. Conceptual art leaves plenty of leeway for interpretation, and I ventured into looking at the forlorn head as the artist himself.
Recent works fill the remaining space in the lobby of the Center. They include Clotilde, 2014 and Clotilde II, 2014, variations on the same subject. Both include a heavy coat of black sand covering objects like ropes, train tracks, cotton, a slave boat's replica, or toy-size railroad tracks. They refer to the scuttling of a slave ship in the Bay of Mobile in 1855 and are hung next to Black Night Falling, 2014, a graffiti of a sort. On a rough canvas, one can decipher the name of islands or countries (Haiti, Jamaica, Senegal, ...) or detect footprints, shadows, under a sliver of moon, surrounded by scribbles of heavy black paint. The next pair of works have a gory appearance with the preserved corpse of a crocodile for On Your Way Up, 2013, and dismembered doll's arms on a rubber backdrop for Congo, 2013,  alluding to "a surrogate crucifix", curios from European elites or the Nile River for the former and imperialist activities of Leopold II in Central Africa after the Berlin Conference in 1885 for the latter, according to the wall text. Comments related to the works are spread throughout the exhibition in an attempt to elicit a direct interaction with the viewers via social media like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The predominant black color overshadows the exhibition filled with detailed historical references somewhat limiting the breath of the works. Over-inflated descriptions like "big things, large scale, minimalist, abstract sculptural works", "profound sense of serenity, with a hypnotic, repetitive aesthetic similar to Japanese rock gardens" or "Gargantuan" weaken the genuineness of the artist who also compares his studio to a church, a sacred space. His goal is to infuse a mythical dimension to historical events, ultimately give an Odyssean flavor to the sad slave trade. Conceptual art represents a challenge as a mean of narrating history. The flat sea of piano keys lacks energy, rhythm, "waves" and stays strangely silent. As a whole, the works trigger little emotions and lack vision for the future.
If any sound is coming out of the exhibition, it is a mournful tune.

photographs by the author:

" On Your Way Up", 2013
" If Bells Could Talk", 2015
" Windward Coast", 2009-2015

Sampling at the Contemporary Arts Center

Be ready to spend a few hours at the Contemporary Arts Center to discover or rediscover twenty-four artists from far places like China, South Africa or closer to home Louisiana, gathered for Prospect.3: Notes for Now. The works were selected by Frank Sirmans, the Artistic Director of the biennial (now officially a triennial), due to their power to incite a reflection on "the everydayness and the strangeness of the world around us, to bridge fissures in the past-present and to imagine the possibilities of an interconnected future".
The three floors at the CAC are filled with paintings, videos, photographs, installations, and the visit can start or end anywhere. Each artist is assigned an area, with the exception of Analia Saban whose works are randomly dispersed throughout the exhibition. I started in the oval room where Yun-Fei Ji's wall paintings depict a modern tale of population displacement and urbanization on a backdrop of droughts, starvation, pollution and political corruption. On the second floor, two geometric abstract painters set across each other initiate a conversation. McArthur Binion's paintings are characterized by monotonous colors and labor intensive repetitive marks on the canvas. They represent erasure and rebirth through delicate compositions, legacies of the menial work.  Hayal Pozanti on the other hand, transforms the dullness of technology into a new language of organic shapes, bringing life and fantasy to a boring reality. Following these, Douglas Bourgeois's figurative paintings seem easy to interpret. Like a magician, he transports common souls into a perfect world of artificial happiness and transforms their dreary surroundings into fantastic landscapes. Next, Sophie Lvoff and Lisa Sigal are focusing on the local scene, respectively with photographs and through architectural adventures.
Tank, 2014, Glenn Kaino's installation is attracting visitors with corals in clear water glowing in a bluish light. A lengthy wall text describes the work and provides a cue to the title. The cumbersome technology required to keep the corals alive undermines the project which is focused on the oceans' pollution, especially by the military, a subject somewhat off the exhibition's theme. The show gets back on track with Joe Ray's work, a thought provoking juxtaposition of symbols followed by the images from Thomas Joshua Cooper, a photographer of light.
Among the four videos displayed (two on second and two on the third floor) Mohamed Bourouissa's Temps Morts, 2009, held my attention with its depiction of grey, fuzzy, pixelated Paris's outskirts, reflecting the malaise of marginalized populations. On the same floor, one can see Felliniesque photographs from Pieter Hugo, staged scenes by Pushpamala N., the Cyndy Sherman of India, or the installation from Manal Al Dowayan, a historical view of a culture born from the oil boom.
Leaving through the first floor, one cannot miss the installation from Lucia Koch, giving a new outlook on the street through colored glass. The works selected to represent Theaster Gates in the hall include Civil Tapestry-4, 2011, an accumulation of fire hoses previously used during civil unrest, and two monochrome paintings made with tar and rubber playing with the light reflections.
The number of works and artists make such exhibition challenging for the viewer. Political with Charles Gaines, poetic with Thomas Cooper, feminist with Pushpamala N., epic with Yun Fei-Ji..., but one realizes that the works have been selected carefully to fulfill the goals clearly stated by the curator.

photographs by the author:

"The Family Drone", 2014, Hayal Pozanti
"TC/0168.13 (Anthropophagst Wading in the Artibonite River", 2014, Firelei
"Mood Disorder", 2014, Lucia Koch

White Linen Night

Saturday, August 2, I was at White Linen Night. It was a success considering the number of attendees. I did not see art, just got a whiff of it making my way through the crowd. For the 20th anniversary, I noticed more colors on Julia. This is not Saint-Patrick's day, a touch of white won't do, white should be worn from head to toes.

For a start, I visited the Ogden Museum of Southern Art which presents Rolland Golden's works in an exhibition aimed at highlighting his style of "Magical Realism" or as he calls it "Borderline-Surrealism". Born in New Orleans, raised in the South from Mississippi to Alabama to Louisiana, taught by the regionalist painter John McCrady and the owner of a studio/gallery in the French Quarter for a decade, Golden possesses all the needed qualifications to be called a Southern artist. Nevertheless, I had difficulty finding the South in his compositions combining realist and surrealist styles. Figurative, bathing in Fauvist colors, usually built with a quiet landscape in the background and the narrative in the foreground, the repetitive technique brings boredom. French countryside, bridge in Paris, church, southern landscapes are all looking soulless and empty, lacking the mystery and the suspense felt in Magritte's paintings, the Surrealist master Golden refers to in one of his works. There are no surprises while going through the seventy oil paintings, watercolors and drawings.

Encased in a dark room, Shawn Hall's Pastoral Universe is an experience for the senses. Immersed in the cosmic composition, the visitor walks around a central island bubbling like magma, spewing oval sparks of light on the floor and the walls. The installation includes "one mirrored terrain, two suspended projectors and one channel video loop with sound" and the well hidden machinery creates a world of reflections on the walls, through mirrors and projection of images. The meditative piece is spoiled by the number of visitors, chattering and taking selfies. This is not the best time to savor the work.
On the top floor, Shawn Hall is also represented by a diptych for Louisiana Contemporary, the annual statewide-juried exhibition assembling Louisiana artists. Two works from Bonnie Maygarden are prominently displayed at the entrance. Desert of the Real and Greyscale both pieces made in 2014 are evidence of her commitment to the world of "virtual reality" or hyperreality. One can also find a piece from Cynthia Scott, Punditry, 2014, a great satire with punchy images. There is art for every taste, figurative, abstract, sculptures and a walk through takes some time to discover all the artists.

Across the street at the Contemporary Arts Center, more female artists from New Orleans are featured for the exhibition Mark of the Feminine. The themes are enduring and treated through different media, like at the entrance, a work from Vanessa Centeno made with canvas, polyfill, glitter, LED lights, a psychedelic rendition with a provocative title Keep It Up which  made me think of a white version from Yayoi Kusama, 1962, Accumulation #1. Farther, Cristina Molina's  Saber, Sabor, Savor, 2011, is a gallant stereoscopic installation in which she relates twenty five sites with a meal, a romantic text with courtship in mind. From video like the untitled piece from Ariya Martin to sculptures like Annoint, 2014, from Kristin Meyers, all media is represented and no subject is taboo.
My wandering along Julia to visit the galleries was cut short when I got bogged down in the crowd...
an evening to enjoy the company, the food and have a drink like everybody else.

photographs by the author:

view of Julia Street
"Startled by Magritte", 1991, Rolland Golden
"Pastoral Universe", Shawn Hall
"Keep It Up", 2014, Vanessa Centeno

The Rubell Collection in New Orleans

With 28 Chinese in Miami and 30 Americans at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, the Rubell Family Collection is showing its extensive holdings of art works. Miami is known for its patrons like Margulies, Cisneros, De La Cruz or Pérez who sponsored the recently opened Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). The foundation goes one step further and organizes itinerant exhibitions. The selection displayed at the CAC includes almost one hundred works from thirty African-American artists representing all styles from minimalist to expressionist, abstract to figurative and conceptual art, through paintings, videos, installations, photographs. The theme is focused on "issues of racial, sexual and historical identity in contemporary culture" and gives a  thread to the show which could otherwise lack cohesion due to its diversity and become overwhelming due to its size.

There is no beginning or end to the exhibition and I started on the top level with a work from Kara Walker depicting sexually charged scenes through her cut-paper silhouettes, facing a piece from Rodney McMillian, a carpet soiled by the remnants of daily life, stains from poverty, neglect and despair, a world away from Beuys's cocoon-like soft covers. Three photographs from Hank Willis Thomas hit a nerve. I am not surprised to read about his interest in advertising. His message is direct, short and to the point: a branded head, an athlete attempting to jump with a chain attached to his ankle, the price of a son's burial. Glenn Ligon is well represented with several works including America, 2006, and another neon work reading " I Sell the Shadow to Sustain the Substance", a famous sentence from Sojourner Truth printed on the photographs of a self-portrait she was selling to support the cause during the Civil War. The neon covered with black paint lights up the wall behind, creating a reverse effect. Ligon's works possess the powerful sobriety of minimalism. This is in contrast to the expressionistic paintings from Robert Colescott, which I realized, are outrageously funny with their historically and politically savvy humor. For the first time, I had a chance to appreciate both artists. The lonely work from Jean-Michel Basquiat unfortunately does not represent him at his best. Four sound suits from Nick Cave are standing guard, looking decorative and off subject. The photographs from Rashid Johnson need to be mentioned. They are showing a side of black African-American success, sophisticated males, dapper, proud to join the tie and pin-striped crowd. Noir, 1978, from Barkley L. Hendricks, brings us back to the tradition of portraiture with a black male, fragile in his exposed nudity. On  the first floor, a work from Leonardo Drew can be seen from the street, a massive piece of minimalist art made with (a lot of)cotton and Kehinde Wiley's African-American street heroes acquire a new powerful status in their Great Masters surroundings. We can get a taste of Kerry James Marshall with two of his works, meet Lorna Simpson represented by Wigs, 1994 or the outsider artist Purvis Young. The list goes on with Wancheti Mutu, William Pope, Carrie May Weems, Renée Green, Gary Simmons... Through different techniques and media, all contribute to the conversation.
Overall the exhibition is very busy, sometimes difficult to follow with highs and lows. Some pieces feel like they are displayed to fit the walls but the visitor can make his own choice in the collection of "many of the most important African American artists of the last three decades".
The list of African American artists who could have been selected goes on, Willie Cole, Shakaia Booker, Rashad Newsome...
How to appreciate such diversity? Known artists, less known? I remember Aristotle's quote: "The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance".
Most of the works would pass the test.

photographs were not allowed
photographs from Google images


"Triple Portrait of Charles I", 2007, Kehinde Wiley
"Pygmalion", 1987, Robert Colesscott
"America", 2008, Glenn Ligon

Time and Teabags

The Emerge Gallery, a small oval space at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans is reserved for site specific installations and the latest, A Thousand Threads is a creation from the conceptual artist Luba Zygarewicz.
The threads carefully stretched from the second floor to the ground create a whirling web underlined in the background by the colored teabags falling along the walls like dry flowers. A closer look reveals a date on each teabag, a sort of melancholic calendar. The daily breaks for tea engender thoughts about time, rituals to control the uncontrollable of life, permanence. The teabags hang from thin threads, a reminder of the frailty of life and the uneven lengths of the threads, a measure of the daily memories' weight. Teatime is repetitive but the different colors, shapes (and most likely flavors) of the teabags represent a particular day. Proust who wrote In Search of Lost Time found his lost memories in the perfume of the madeleines, Zygarewicz used teabags to represent time creating, a poetic installation, built days after days after days...

photographs by the author:
"A Thousand Threads" a site specific installation by Luba Zygarewicz at the Contemporary Art Center
view from the first floor, 
detail
view from the second floor

CAC Opening, Missing Artists

The opening of NOLA NOW Part II: Abstraction in Louisiana at the Contemporary Art Center is crowded. The first floor is filled with works  from Louisiana artists, most of them well known in New Orleans, many of them represented by galleries just one block away. The exhibition is one chapter of a project started in October 2011, the first part composed of installations was located on the third floor of the building. This time, the space is tight and the artists represented (more than sixty) are mostly painters and a few sculptors, creating abstract works. The evening is a great occasion to meet the artists.

In contrast, the second floor dedicated to another exhibition titled Spaces: Antenna, The Front, Good Children Gallery feels empty: blank walls scarred with nails, left over tape, few pieces of art, silent computers, dismembered installations and a few pamphlets left over. The artists withdrew their works to manifest their disagreement with the CAC's administration. The third and fourth floor of the building are empty.

Walking down the ramp allowed me to discover the installation from Morgana King starting with a flower-like composition or a new planet floating in the air surrounded by the sculpture from Martin Payton. From above, I caught a great view of the "oval room" with its ceiling looking like a beehive. Downstairs, the visitor plunges in a cave with stalactites hanging low, decorated with a few objects constructed to match. Like a process often seen in nature, the artist used an accumulation of units to build the structure and created a magical world where size is relative.

 Upon leaving, I took a last look at Cynthia Scott's installation, in sync with the site and the preoccupations of the city. Photographs from  previous disasters (Love Canal, Three Miles Island, Exxon Valdez, BP Deepwater Horizon... the list is too long) are printed on fabric and installed hanging from the ceiling on inverted broken umbrellas. The result is a soaring colorful composition climbing the four stories of the building. The height of the ceiling creates a cathedral effect which is inspiring and each print is like a page of history, ecological disasters fading in our memory, a reminder that we do not learn.

Missing are all the artists who withdrew from the exhibition of the second floor. The triangle artist, artwork and viewer needs a place to thrive. Art viewers are always ready to discover another artist and will go where it happens in the city.

photographs by the author

"The Spiders From Mars Are Not Amused", Cynthia Scott

"Pointless: Not to capture a fleeting moment but to create one" Morgana King

 

A day at Prospect.2

The day started with a visit at the Longue Vue House and Gardens to look at Brandon Ballengee's installation titled Audubon's Absence. The eco-artist's statement did upset me "Responding to species loss, I cut the birds from historic John James Audubon prints". I had to verify, it is true! The artist did cut out the birds from original prints! The extinct species are now annihilated. The sound from Pasco is also supposed to bring silence instead of the calls from these extinct species. Due to some malfunction, it was not available the day of the visit.

To follow-up this disastrous start, I visited the Old US Mint. The display is sparse compared to Prospect.1, "The Night Club Portraits", 1973, black and white portraits from William Eggleston (1938), a photographer made famous by his color photographs occupy a whole room. A lengthy Gothic video about Mississippi's nightlife from the same artist can be viewed next also photographs from An-My Le shot in New Orleans and Vietnam.

Next (not included in Prospect.2), The Front featured Stephanie Patton's exhibition General Hospital. In her statement, the artist explains how she uses humor to overcome adversity, pain, disease and she succeeds in this endeavor with her soothing soft cushions, pillow-pills. Her one and a half hour video shows how to transform lemons into lemonade. It can be painful to watch and reminds us that life can be arduous. Due to its length, I was not able to watch the whole video, but I assume the lemonade was worth the effort.

At the CAC and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Prospect.2 and temporary exhibitions intermingle. NOLA Now Part I brings artists from New Orleans who are back (or never left) the city. I noticed the work from Dawn Dedeaux with her preserved but deformed portraits, time can deform memories. On the first floor, Alexis Rockman's large wall canvas depicts the species of the Southern swamps in a dark future. He is well -known for his vision of the world since his exhibition at the Smithsonian in Washington DC last year. Ogden was bathing in Surrealism with the works of two local artists Ersy and Josephine Sacabo, respectively sculptor and photographer.

The afternoon started with one of the highlights of Prospect.2, Sophie Calle 's installation at the Pontalba's house on Jackson Square, a story of her (fabricated) life told with self-deprecating humor. Her possessions are spread around the eighteen century house, left over from her presence, but she is absent. The narratives accompanying the installation could be drawn from cheap airport novels. The Duchess of Pontalba was a strong character who made head ways for females two centuries ago. The artist's vision fails to reach her dimension.

After dark, Dawn DeDeaux's installation brings mystery to the courtyard on Royal in the French Quarter. Goddess Fortuna and Her Dunces In An Effort To Make Sense Of It All brings to life the book from John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces. One can look at the shadows behind the windows on the second floor like a show with ghosts in the courtyard for this very New Orleanian story. It is like plunging in the decor for a movie.
I read the book previously and recognized the crumpled bed of Reilly, the hot dog cart, the novel's characters, but the show can be enjoyed just as a visual pleasure.

Fortuna, a goddess from New Orleans



photographs by the author:

"The Night Club Portraits" William Eggleston, 1973

"Test Tubes. Family Legacy", Dawn Dedeaux, 2011

"Battle Royale", Alexis Rockman, 2011