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The Gourd Nest Hanger, 2010 – Hernan Bas
About the Work
In Hernan Bas’s The Gourd Nest Hanger, the solitary male subject, typical in Bas’s work, appears to swing through an almost surreal environment—a forest of phallic gourds with subtly suggested orifices. In spite of the vibrancy of the gourds, the staid and serious energy characteristic of Bas’s style persists as the young man clings fiercely to a branch above a dark, abstract background.
Yves Klein’s Leap into the Void from the Pam and Dick Kramlich Collection
One of the best things about the second edition of the VIP Art Fair is the vast number of outstanding video works, which are found both in the Discussion section of the online fair and in the galleries’ virtual booths. Highlights from Discussions include the Pam and Dick Kramlich Collection, a private tour of new media art, dynamically installed in the incredibly focused collectors’ San Francisco home; Adam Lindemann’s savvy advice on collecting; Rhizome’s tutorial for the web works of Rafael Rozendaal, led by the artist himself; and previews from Art:21’s upcoming season on PBS with artists Glenn Ligon, Catherine Opie, assume vivid astro focus, and others.
Photographer Juergen Teller turned his lens on the fashion industry with his Go-Sees series in 1999. Weary of the hype generated by model agencies desperate to sell him the ‘next big thing’, he decided to take the picture of every girl that came to see him — on the doorstep of his studio. In this interview for TateShots, Teller discusses how the resulting photographs expose the troubling power of the male photographer. He also challenges the interviewer to a game of table tennis.
Erwin Wurm, Performative drinking sculpture – Pollock cabinet, 2011, wood, metal and glass, 59 7/8 x 29 1/8 x 18 1/8 inches, Courtesy of the artist; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg and Paris; and Lehmann Maupin, New York
Viennese art-prankster Erwin Wurm makes his American museum solo debut with Beauty Business, an exhibition focusing on the artist’s participatory Drinking Sculptures and domestic objects, at the Bass Museum of Art. Furniture is manipulated into ironic self-service bars, hoodies are comically cast on ghostly bodies, and sweaters are stretched over armatures to construct abstract forms that conjure visions of the surreal. Visitors are also encourage to create a sweater sculpture by pulling their wooly coverings over their heads and the curves of the body are suggested in massive cut-up pieces of Wurm’s Fat House installation. Amusing yet enigmatic, Wurm’s work has the power to confound the viewer while inviting a new interpretation of art.
Gimme! by Nari Ward
About the Work
Nari Ward’s Gimme! is part of his Role Play Drawings series. In this series Ward uses cards he found on an elementary school playground in Harlem. These cards were published in the 1960s and used to perform psychological tests on school children at the time. Ward alters the images with shapes and figures in ink, reshaping the narrative and obscuring psychological interpretation. The series comments on the psychiatric practices of the time and questions our perception of childhood.
Ouch by Tony Oursler
About the Work
In Ouch, Tony Oursler paints and collages a pool of bloody red and fleshy facial features. Oursler is interested in the fragmentation of both the human body and psyche and is fascinated with how psychological conditions like Multiple Personality Disorder can be translated into a physical reality. Using fragmented images of different eyes and a mouth, Oursler paints what could be lungs or a heart in the center to connect the parts of this collage.
Celebrated for her dazzling, decorative portraits of bold, black women that reference art historical sources and pop culture, Mickalene Thomas has been on a meteoric ride ever since snagging a MFA in painting from Yale in 2002. An artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2003 and a standout in P.S. 1’s Greater New York survey show of new talent in 2005, Thomas has gained blue-chip gallery representation in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles and landed her works in major museum collections across the country.
The Gourd Nest Hanger by Hernan Bas
Since opening in October 1996, Lehmann Maupin has organized and curated exhibitions for an array of international contemporary artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, video, and new media from all over the world. These exhibitions examine the work of both emerging and well-established artists whose work impacts contemporary art and culture.