I just finished the 1999 Anthony Dunne’s 1999 Hertzian Tales, with his “aesthetics of functionality” which allows critical, imaginative discussion around the values embodied in objects. If designers are “providers of new behavioral opportunities,” these critical objects of use certainly do “challenge the monopoly of established reality.” (marcuse)

mask show james cohen

The MASK show approaches a functional typology in the gallery context, leaving room for speculation about the entire production of a “museum” show, with it’s labels (this time referencing context rather than material). The oldest working smoke mask next to a matthew barney pushes the line between pragmatic utility and tools for mood in a surrealist narrative.

Tanya Bonakdar’s obsession with designed objects and complex visual language produced a group show called Office, but I was more impressed by the individual artists’ catalogs than the mash up of their works sitting side by side. Mark Manders, for example, is my new favorite! His visual language is so nuanced (and luckily he can articulate it with spoken language as well) that he created his own newspaper for his papeir mache objects. He says about one piece:
“I purposely arranged the rugged still life in a typically Dutch, linear, stern manner. It’s a very rhythmic arrangement, one that, fictionally, was made on a warm Sunday afternoon, after which it was abandoned and then appropriated by the night….
Finally, could you talk briefly about how you decided to become an artist?
It was a convergence of several aspects, of course. First of all, it’s fantastic to live and to be able to zoom in on a piece of wood that might be lying in your garden. I can’t allow myself to leave this world without first having said something. When I was eighteen, I realized that I had an affinity with the language of the visual arts, and I immediately felt a great sense of obligation to use it with care and in a concentrated way. At that time, I was also extremely fascinated by the fact that I wore shoes and that my feet had become so weak after undergoing such a long evolutionary process and that they could no longer do without the protection afforded by my shoes. I was extremely fascinated then by how humanity had arrived at the human world through innumerable decisions and how the human body related to this. I wanted to add a self-portrait to this – not a personal self-portrait in the literal sense, but more the idea of a self-portrait, the idea of a construction, a fictional self-portrait. A construction found outside the body, like shoes. I still believe that art is the language to work in. It’s ultimately closer than science. After all, what am I? A human being who unfolds into a horrifying amount of language and material by means of very precise conceptual constructions.
How does writing relate to your visual work?
It is a part of it, of course, and it’s also something practical. For some works, it’s good that they exist only in language, and sometimes sculptures don’t seem feasible at first from a practical point of view.
Could you give us an example?
One example of such a image is the night that yearns for space and immediately creeps into your shoe when you take it off in a meadow at night. This type of image seems difficult to translate into a spatial object; that’s why it’s found its way into my collection of poems. Later, I realized that the night always enters the shoe by the same entrance when you take the shoe off. This has been happening in the same way since the very first shoe was made. But if you glue the shoe completely shut, make a new opening at the toe, and then attach a funnel-like construction to the opening, you’ve easily created a new entrance for the night.”

paul mccarthy

Paul McCarthy’s chocolate factory literally cut a hole in the wall of the factory to make production visible. But rather than adopting the entire system for a simple re-contextualization, he pushes consumption and production to excess, pouring chocolate in large bags and producing life sized santa clauses. The over abundance proves critical distance.

urs fischer gallery floor removed

Urs Fischer creates a foyer at 80% of the space it opens into, making a double experience in model.

Also, the psychosocial connotations of sculptures in living spaces is taken to its full potential in the uterus sculptures, shown in living context, history and all. Spoons are just as strange and absurd as this.

unmonumental new museum

Oh, and the New Museum “unmonumental show” in their new bowery monument is truly unmonumental. We don’t need the old white cube in order to look at quick, cheap sculptures… re-think the viewing mechanism with the approach to object making!