The New Museum, Not a Reason to go to NY before March 30th

by Nike Desis

Bear with me here, the Unmonumental show is really unmonumental.

Assemblage is the key theme to the sculpture part of the Unmonumental show and truly the work is fragmented. According to the program assemblage “emphasizes the juxtaposition of elements for symbolic or suggestive effect.” Instead, what gets represented is a bunch of junky sculpture that appropriated a lot of everyday objects to minimal suggestive and tired symbolic effect.

“Rather than enduring and inarguable, they [the sculpture work] are conversational and provisional.” Yes, that’s more like it: ‘conversational’ implies inconclusive conceptual exercises and ‘provisional’ is in this case an excuse for some visually inconclusive work. No, I’m not joking! Real crap. Piece by piece. I’m not blaming each artist because we all pile up our empty egg cartons and yogurt containers and make an after-dinner sculpture. But most of us don’t have a chance to critically display it.

Perhaps these artists have a whole series buttons glued onto mattresses back in their studios or galleries. Guess what, I don’t care if they have a whole country full of button covered mattresses, because that is really not going to legitimize the one I see here. Hey, let’s play two similarly boring YouTube videos next to each other and call it an unmonumental video collage! It sure is an interesting coincidence found on the vast space that is YouTube. But these observations are something to show and tell with your roomies after lunch and make for really boring art.

By Unmonumental object, I think the also they meant unmarket. Outside of the art market is totally cool and brave (right?) But the unmarket genre is also a potentially dangerous crap trap.
Just off the top of my head I can think of a bunch of unmarket sculptures from recent Philadelphia gallery shows that are 100 times more worthwhile.

Like J.L.Makary’s sound and video piece at the Nexus new members show (just up last month).

Or Mike Stifle’s bottles of bubbling foam that both holds and changes its form at FLUXspace (up now).

How about the woman from VCU who made a wall out of clay on the wall at the Grey Space in front of the Ice Box (just up last month).

And Joe DiGiuseppe’s well contructed and interactive piece where you can dance on buttons and make light at the Esther Klein Gallery at the Science Center (up now).

Oh, and Martha Savory’s and Daniel Petraitis’s wall of nik naks from their studios (all for sale) at Little Berlin a while back.

All of these sculpture/ object/ things have elements of assemblage, appropriation, being ‘new’ and otherwise fit the New Museum’s unmonumental show concept as they’ve described it in their literature AND, more importantly, these works aren’t boring to look at or think about.
Back at the New Museum, in addition to the unmonumnetal object there were three other parts, billed as separate curatorial aspects: the sound, the collage, the video/ internet. Sound I have nothing to say about. The collage was acceptable, even exciting. The video was great and awful and I could chat a whole other entry on what I saw on New Museum’s screens.

I think my aversion to the work was just that I was particularly surprised to see it in NY, in whatever hip neighborhood I was in, and in a contemporary art focused place called the New Museum. But surprise aside, if Philly’s scene had that space, that budget, the show title, between us all, we could have put a real monumental Unmonumental show with conceptual integrity as well as exciting unmarket sculpture because as I see it, exciting unmarket sculpture is what the Philly scene happens to do well. Please respond.

[Nike Desis is currently in the midst of publishing "Crayon Couture",an adult-themed activity book chock full of connect- the -dot satire, both written and illustrated by the artist. Desis is also an artist living and working in Philadelphia]


Bookmark to Del.icio.us