I am unsure whether Ross Douthat’s argument in yesterday’s New York Times — that we are collectively unable to deal with the existential solidity of liberal democracy post-1989, and so have developed a self-inflicted case of paranoia — is a strawman he has set up for himself because he wants to believe in that solidity.  Tomorrow, before The Prompt (kunstverein.us), I will be going to an exhibition at the Austrian Cultural Forum, which I hope will help me appraise Douthat’s assessment.

Here is the vital info from their website:

The AUSTRIAN CULTURAL FORUM and the KUNSTHALLE WIEN in cooperation with the CZECH CENTER, the HUNGARIAN CULTURAL CENTER and the ROMANIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE present

1989: The End of History or the Beginning of the Future?
Video Art Comments on a Time Shift

As its fall focus, the Austrian Cultural Forum presents the video-based exhibition 1989: The End of History or the Beginning of the Future? Featuring 15 films from international artists, the show is on view from November 2 to 24, 2009. It will include two panel discussions pertaining to aspects of repression and revolution, politics of memory, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the hopes and delusions connected to the alleged end of history.

The official opening reception takes place on November 11, 2009 from 6–8PM at the ACFNY, 11 East 52nd Street (between Fifth and Madison) with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Austria, Mr. Michael Spindelegger. Admission is free.

1989: Twenty years ago, who would have dared to hope that the dictatorial regimes of Central and Eastern European communism would be swept away one after the other in the wake of mass protests? Within a few years, democratic constitutions and market economy structures were introduced. However, this process also caused pains, clashes and heated conflicts about the directions for the future and the interpretation of the past.  The “annus mirabilis” 1989 became a historical mark from the perspective of ideology, culture, and mass psychology. Eric Hobsbwam´s “short twentieth century” came to an end. Even if most of the dividing lines within Europe have been dissolved by now, many borders still haven’t disappeared in people’s minds. Nationalistic ideologies, xenophobic and racist movements have surged alongside European integration and globalization. While new neighbors – long separated by the Iron Curtain – have begun to learn about each other, they have also started to experience new problems of migration and acculturation. The selection of films for 1989: The End of History or the Beginning of the Future? was guided by asking how artists, and in particular video artists, have reacted to these changes.

“Cave Paintings” at Gresham’s Ghost, curated by Bob Nickas, doesn’t know it, but it does abstract painting a disservice.  Why?  Its premise involves a direct reference to “the origins of picture-making, visual story-telling, and the beginning of painting.”  This is actually a concept selfportrait would like to reinforce, because it uses anthropological tools and context in order to examine abstract painting as the enduring medium it is, for better or worse.  In this way, it inadvertantly sacrifices its own quality by presenting abstract works that are less interesting than both the physical space (the sub-basement of 511 W 25th street) and the shows analytic concept … this is a strategy that is utilized in curating of the highest caliber.  As Duchamp imparted to Walter Hopps: “never let the work get in the way.”  More recently, regarding Manifesta 6, Mai Abu ElDahab wrote, “in order to succeed, this project must fail by the existing standards of the exhibition industry.”¹  The problem is that, with the exception of a couple of paintings, for instance, Jules de Balincourt’s and Richard Aldrige’s, the work seems like a non sequitur to the program.  Jules de Balincourt often manages to defy painterly stagnation and fogeyish gamesmanship with political, but not ham-fistedly so, figurative works such as Ambitious New Plans and People Who Play and the People Who Pay, and here he ekes out some relevance in a semi-abstract painting of a pink cavernous space, something like the belly of a giant sea creature in Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (which is definitely an artwork).  Richard Aldrich at least invokes the imagery of cave painting.  So, to a lesser degree, does Chris Vassell.  Other works don’t answer to the very broad and provocative premise asking, I think, regarding what abstract picture-making using paint can be observed as enduring throughout the history of civilization, and in which ways the meta-narratives been most successfully been manipulated by the artists who still see the medium as worthwhile.  I don’t think this is what Bob Nickas intended.  The child mannequin, conceived by Richard Hoeck and John Miller, which is relocated through the space daily, innovatively (and kind of creepily, which is a flaw, the kid should’ve looked more awestruck and less like something out of I am Legend) prompts us to reflect on nomadism and its relation to the beginning of painting, as well as on a refreshed, childlike gaze given to us by the anthropological methodology set forth here.

Even James Kalm, former “Kitsch Artist”, prolific essayist, and now YouTube critic among other things, asks rhetorically at the end of his video pod on the show: “is painting alive or dead?  I don’t know.”     the video:

Note that “Cave Paintings” as it is currently hung is installment one of what will be a two-part show.  Here is the pr:

• Richard Aldrich
• Lisa Beck
• Varda Caivano
• Sarah Crowner
• Verne Dawson
• Jules de Balincourt
• Jason Fox
• Daniel Hesidence
• Richard Hoek and John Miller
• Charline Von Heyl
• Jutta Koether
• Michael Krebber
• Elizabeth Neel
• David Ratcliff
• Sterling Ruby
• Anja Schworer
• Chris Vasell
• Chuck Webster
• Stanley Whitney

Gresham’s Ghost is pleased to announce its third exhibition, “Cave Painting,” organized by Bob Nickas, which brings together works by forty artists who are engaged with picture-making manifested within a painting practice. This show follows another with the same title that was presented in Berlin at PSM Gallery in June 2009 that evolved as a result of Nickas’s research for his book, Painting Abstraction, to be published in October by Phaidon Press. The project was initiated with months of studio visits in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Berlin. Most of the artists in the exhibition are also included in the book, which aims to open up a wider sense of how abstract painting can be understood today. The title, “Cave Painting,” is a direct reference to the origins of picture-making, visual story-telling, and the beginning of painting. Expressionistic works are seen alongside those that are formally reserved; hand-painted pictures are shown in counterpoint to those that have their basis in mechanical procedures; the range of works accounts for both predetermined result and pure chance. Over the course of the show, a collaborative work by Richard Hoeck and John Miller, a child mannequin, will move each day to a different position in the gallery to “look at” and further animate the paintings — a strange, nomadic figurative element within the space.

1. Notes For An Art School [↩]

Tonight, October 15th, Margaret Thatcher Projects, the gallery with the most effortlessly ironic name in all the world, reopens in its newly renovated ground level venue, at 539 West 23rd street (btwn 10th and 11th), with an opening reception for Bill Thompson (not the mayoral candidate).

Here is the release:

BILL THOMPSON

SHIFT

October 15 – December 12

reception:
Thursday, October 15
from 6-8 PM

Thatcher Projects is pleased to announce the opening of Shift an exhibition of new work by Bill Thompson. From curvilinear and cloud-like to pointedly flexed and bowing, Thompson’s colorful wall structures combine painting and sculpture into a unique minimalist art form.

The sculptures included in Shift begin their lives as solid blocks of urethane, which Thompson outlines with sweeping sketches before hand-grinding the pieces into their final eccentric and individual shapes. Shift introduces several new “species” of Thompson’s work. In striking contrast to the fluid organic forms to be exhibited, one of these, the “Horn” species, attempts to stretch the constraints of its material form — jutting and rising out from the structure in four pointed corners. Each work is given a unique identity both in form and hue, such that no single color is repeated in Thompson’s sculpturally diverse oeuvre of work. With their luscious sheen, these monochromatic pieces act as unique lenses, engaging and reflecting their surrounding environment. The exhibition will present the first floor sculpture created by the artist.

Bill Thompson, Toro (2009) - 24" x 20" x 7" Urethane on polyurethane block

This is Bill Thompson’s first solo exhibition with Thatcher Projects. His works have been internationally collected and exhibited at institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Institute for Contemporary Art at MECA, Portland; the List Visual Art Center, M.I.T, Cambridge; The New York Public Library; and the Song-Eun Art and Cultural Foundation, Korea, among others. Thompson was the featured artist in the May 2009 issue of art.es, a contemporary art magazine published in Spain.