One of the founders of the conceptual art movement in the ’60s, Lawrence Weiner is a sculptor who uses language to reference materials and actions. Presented on gallery walls, building facades, objects, posters, and in books, Weiner’s texts convey ideas that can be realized in real space or simply imagined. Words convey the content of each piece without specifying any of its physical qualities. The subject of a solo show at New York’s Marian Goodman Gallery, which beckons back to the visual playfulness of his 2007 Whitney Museum retrospective, Weiner shows that there is no end to the possible presentations of his poetic pieces.
Today at Flavorpill, we made a correlation between hip-hop and The Muppets and were amazed by how many airlines use bird imagery in their logos. Slate’s roundup of movie scenes featuring women in labor made us reach for the birth control, while in further ladyparts news, we cried laughing over Diablo Cody’s parody of “Hung” for Funny or Die. We were creeped out that this family didn’t realize they were living over a church and relived fonder movies with a list of the thirteen best HBO series of all time. We followed Hugo “Dictator” Chavez on Twitter (think he’ll return the favor?). We streamed Sleigh Bells’ new song “Tell ‘Em” and spent the rest of the day catching up on tunes featured in Treme. The top ten SNL gigglefests sent us straight back to middle school, and we were were charmed by Jenny Holzer’s anecdote that her daughter used to think all electronic signs were made by mom. Finally, we plan to hop, skip, and jump over to our pals at 20×200 to buy this limited edition print by Lawrence Weiner. You might remember his West Village home from a feature in Dwell this year, excerpted after the jump.
Lawrence Weiner’s current show at L.A.’s Regen Projects II features five new works and several drawings from the conceptual artist, who is known for working in language. In a 1969 outline of the ways in which one of his pieces can exist, Weiner says that it need not be built — his text recipes are enough to create an image in the mind’s eye. The New York Times called his 2007 Whitney retrospective “required viewing for anyone interested in today’s art…” Born in the Bronx, he currently divides his time between a New York City studio and a boat in Amsterdam.
PLACED ON THE TIP OF A WAVE is up through August 15.
This summer, Creative Time launches New York’s first public art quadrennial, PLOT, with The World & Nearer Ones, an exhibition on Governors Island featuring 19 individual artists and artist collectives from nine different countries. Minutes away from Manhattan and Brooklyn by ferry, Governors Island in New York Harbor was home to the US military for more than 200 years, but now its fortresses, officer’s houses, chapel, theater, and other sites hold contemporary art. Exhibition curator Mark Beasley divides the work, which engages the island’s history and future, between indoor and outdoor locales — making the discovery of the artists’ projects an adventure. Read More »
Berlin-based, German artist Christian Jankowski was recently in New York for a celebration, hosted by the Public Art Fund and LA’s Regen Projects, in honor of his Living Sculptures, which are on exhibit at Doris Freedman Plaza. Primarily known for his satirical films and installations that comment on popular culture, Jankowski cast his three living sculptures — Caesar, Dali Woman, and El Che — from Barcelona street performers and originally exhibited them in front of a museum on La Rambla, the street where they perform. Since then, the Living Sculptures have been on public display in London and Berlin.
A small group of friends and art professionals gathered in the bitter cold last Thursday night to view the works in situ, but more people later joined us to celebrate the exhibition with food and drink at the nearby Papillon Bistro & Bar. The next day we met up with Jankowski in Chelsea, where we discussed the Living Sculptures — in a roundabout way — while sitting on a radiator in a hallway outside of Josée Bienvenu Gallery, which was having an opening.
Is Lawrence Weiner a prophet? He certainly looks like one with his long, gray beard, and his conceptual art, which uses language to reference materials and actions, has inspired a new generation of artists using text in their work. But do his powers exceed his capability to motivate experimentation?
We ask this question because on the very day that US Airways flight 1549 made a “miraculous” landing in the Hudson River — gently gliding onto the surface of the water — Weiner premiered his latest body of work, AT THE LEVEL OF THE SEA, at New York’s Marian Goodman Gallery. And, further commenting on this coincidence, Goodman is exhibiting LO & BEHOLD, a 2006 work that was first shown at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach, spread over four walls of its South Gallery.
