Inside Art New Orleans

Regina Scully at Heriard-Cimino

2012-02-12T00:12:00.003-06:00

Lumeria (Click Images to Expand)

Over the past several years Regina Scully has staked out a paradoxical place among New Orleans painters. Her mostly abstract canvasses suggest visionary landscapes or cities pulsating with life, yet they depict no place in particular and are neither realistic nor representational but instead suggest dreams or mirages bubbling up from our collective memory banks — otherworldly yet vaguely familiar places inflected with hints of surrealism or science fiction. Elemental, the title canvas, lives up to its name. Comprised of fluid ripples of pigment, its rhapsodic forms evoke urban associations not unlike the harmonic contortions of John Coltrane’s classic saxophone riffs or the lyrical mysticism of Allen Ginsberg or Walt Whitman’s poetry. Here form becomes energy in motion in a landscape of fluid colors with their own subsurface tides that hint at the natural world of rocks and rivers (detail, above left) as well as the urban realm of glistening city streets in a time-lapse blur of multiple human trajectories. Such associations are embedded in our commonly held experiences, and the carefully crafted spaces of the canvas invite the imagination to wander.

The atmosphere is different in Isle, where ethereally floating triangular and wedge shaped forms hint at the boats and huts of balmy South Pacific islands, only here the effect is calligraphic, with the lyrical fluidity of Japanese scroll paintings. The atmosphere shifts again in Lumeria, top, which may suggest a frenzied mystical riff in Miles Davis’ Bitch’s Brew, or perhaps a mythic lost utopia from central Asian folklore. Lunar, below, evokes the pale fabled civilization that the ancients once surmised might exist on the moon, but it is Phases of Matter, above, that may provide the most insight into Scully’s vision as ambiguously resonant forms appear in a vortex of becoming and receding, a process of manifestation and sublimation that hints at the way humans try to orient themselves in the wild spaces of nature and the psyche, in their eternal quest to feel at home in the world.~ Bookhardt

Left: Lunar

Elemental, Through February 19, Heriard-Cimino Gallery, 440 Julia Street, 525-7300

NOLA-Based Court 13 Takes Top Honors at Sundance Film Festival for "Beasts of the Southern Wild"

2012-02-12T00:09:00.029-06:00

From The Guardian:
"The main performances, by non-professionals, would be stunning in any movie, but here they are the icing on a strange and eccentric cake. It's a film so unique that it's hard to imagine how it was even made. What would a studio executive think of scenes which a child runs through the woods with a Roman candle in each hand, or lights a rusty gas hob with a flamethrower? The equally singular score matches the dreamlike, did-I-really-just-see-that delirium and goes some way to explaining why Beasts stays in the memory. Whether it will find a wider audience beyond Sundance is another matter, but maybe that isn't important. For now, and perhaps for ever, it will be something magical and secret." More>> About: Court 13>>

Jimmy Descant at the Ogden Museum

2012-02-05T00:12:00.002-06:00

He often haunted flea markets and rummage sales, and with his leather jacket and shades Jimmy Descant looked more like a musician than a visual artist. Then his retro-futurist rocketship sculptures cobbled from vintage appliance and car parts began turning up at emerging artist galleries, and he called himself “Rocket Man,” which fit his hip persona. His early work was always fun but more cool than deep, more pop than profound. When Katrina struck he lost his home and studio, and like many orphans of the storm he wandered, finally settling in Colorado. Flash forward six years and he now has a show at the Ogden Museum, and while the Ogden has always had a populist flair, his recent wall sculptures based on the “shape” of Louisiana, both geographically and figuratively, stand on their own.

More urbane than many other self-taught artists, his works mingle the aura of the past with acerbic social commentary. Louisiana Family Farm (Angola) is a miasma of colorful old electrical parts, telephones, crucifixes, handcuffs, dials, gauges and plastic praying hands all mounted in orderly anarchy on a board in the shape of Louisiana. And like the state itself, it's a mixture of sweetness and irony, nostalgia and strangeness. Nights of Drunk Driving in the days of K&B is a tartly amorphous evocation of his Chalmette adolescence complete with old K&B beer cans, chrome trophies and hood ornaments, window cranks and chicken bones all arranged with the taxonomic precision of a hex. Promised Land, top (detail), is comprised of objects including family keepsakes salvaged from the flood. We N.O., bottom, expresses solidarity with tsunami ravaged Japan, while another features an old photograph of Jimmy Swaggart in a rusty frame encircled by a halo of mouse traps, gears and chicken bones in a metaphysical gumbo. Like the recent exhibition at the Pearl, or the Music Box performance, or Dawn Dedeaux's Prospect.2 piece, most of these works convey a surreal sense of place. As Descant puts it: “I live and create in Colorado, but I will always be a New Orleanian." ~Bookhardt

THE SHAPE OF LOUISIANA: Assemblages by Jimmy Descant, Through April 8, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 925 Camp St., 539-9600, www.ogdenmuseum.org

Krewe du Vieux Considers Crimes Against Nature

2012-02-04T23:24:00.009-06:00

Krewe du Vieux, New Orleans' earliest and most satiric Mardi Gras marching parade, styles itself as a hybrid of the original, small scale Creole carnival processions, and the later, more spectacular float parades that rose to prominence in the 1850s. Traditionally, their approach has embodied a slapstick form of guerrilla theater, often taking potshots at political figures, but now that we no longer have Ray Nagin or George Bush to kick around anymore they have reverted to reform for this year's Crimes Against Nature spectacle. The title refers to the archaic term for sodomy under Louisiana laws regarding solicitation for prostitution, and a recent reform effort was aimed at getting all such offenses treated equally. Although some of the sub-krewes expanded their interpretation to include oil spills and even the Arab Spring, the sodomy statute was the major meme, and this year's queen, Deon Haywood, has been the legendary leader of the reform effort. More>>

How Wall Street Stole the Soul of American Art

2012-01-31T22:52:00.001-06:00

Ever wonder how the vapid hacks and madcap manipulators who cornered the New York and London art markets got to the top and and stayed there for decades? Mark Taylor in Bloomberg offers this incisive autopsy:

"Neither Jeff Koons nor his art gives any hint of the irony and parody that lend Warhol’s art its edge. While Warhol’s work unsettles, Koons’s art is crafted to reassure. Unapologetically embracing banality and freely admitting his ignorance of art history, Koons sounds more like Joel Osteen than Marcel Duchamp: “I realized you don’t have to know anything and I think my work always lets the viewer know that,” he once told a reporter. 'I just try to do work that makes people feel good about themselves, their history, and their potential.' What is surprising is how many seemingly intelligent and sophisticated people have been taken in by this erstwhile stockbroker." More>>

Raw at Homespace + Four at the Front

2012-01-29T00:24:00.004-06:00

There were times in the past when the mostly co-op galleries of the St. Claude Arts District resembled graduate school exhibitions connected to a neighborhood instead of a university. The latest evidence that times have changed can be seen in this salon style show at Homespace organized by New York/Nola art veterans Luis Cruz Azaceta and Sharon Jacques. Here works by 34 established and emerging artists reflect the pointedly humanistic perspective of the curators. The title, Raw, sets the tone as imagery like Angela Davis, left, by master of maniacal social commentary Peter Saul, shares space with the no less maniacal if less known Raw Heads sculptures by Nola artist Gary Oaks (also at Barristers), while Deborah Luster's conceptual crime scene photos provide biting counterpoint. But subtlety is also evident in Monica Zeringue's mysteriously kinky silk, hair and crystal sculpture, Desire, and in Kevin Kline's altar of votive candles that feature photo portraits of local characters instead of saints, bottom. Their faces reveal no dearth of pathos, suggesting that martyrdom and redemption may be profoundly personal matters, questions of perspective shared by saint and sinner alike.

The four exhibitions at the Front also feature emerging and accomplished artists, only here they are one and the same. In the years since its founding in the wake of hurricane Katrina, the member artists of this co-op gallery have produced ever more polished and eloquent presentations, as we see in Rachel Jones' elegiac paintings of flora and fauna, the living and the dead displayed in altar-like arrangements. Stephanie Patton and Rachel Avena Brown's enigmatic efforts invite and confound our expectations in typically provocative ways, even as Dave Greber and Angela Ferguson's psychedelic video and soft sculpture installation, above, is as flamboyant as we might expect while reminding us that accomplishment need not necessarily entail any diminution of surprise. ~Bookhardt

RAW: A Salon Exhibition of 34 Artists, Saturdays and Sundays Through Feb. 5, Homespace Gallery, 1128 St. Roch Ave., 917-584-9867; www.scadnola.com
New Work by Rachel Jones, Rachel Avena Brown, Stephanie Patton, Dave Greber, Andrea Ferguson, Saturdays & Sundays Through Feb. 5, The Front, 4100 St. Claude Ave., 920-3980; www.nolafront.org

Crtic Notices Postmodernism is Dead; Blames Occupy

2012-01-27T13:27:00.003-06:00

This Sherrie Levine piece by the Village Voice's Martha Schwendener finally said something about postmodernism that should have been said a long time ago. She blames Occupy, having apparently never noticed that most big name pomo art had been pretty sterile all along:

Sherrie Levine's "Mayhem" (through January 29) at the Whitney Museum, might have read differently a year ago. The nihilism of her postmodern ethos was appropriate in a world where the economy had crashed, and there was nothing you could do about it. What has happened since is a massive shift in consciousness, prompted by the worldwide Occupy movement. Now, almost any time of day, you can walk into Deutsche Bank's atrium at 60 Wall Street and see half a dozen groups using the General Assembly model to discuss how to change society one microcosm at a time. More>>

Azaceta at Arthur Roger; Navarro at UNO St. Claude

2012-01-22T00:12:00.001-06:00

Change happens. That's nothing new, but lately the pace seems to be picking up in often perplexing ways. Such is the proposition that propels Luis Cruz Azaceta in this Shifting States expo at Arthur Roger. The Havana-born painter was a child when he and his family escaped Cuba in 1960. Ensconced in Uptown New Orleans for the past 20 years, his lifelong themes of displacement and alienation are as relevant now as ever. Shifting States is an apt title in an age when revolutions are launched with cell phones and enemies are stalked and assassinated by remote controlled drones. Blood Line, above right, suggests a Rorschach blot studded with the oddly similar forms of mosques, minarets, radar and microwave towers in a bristling nimbus of potential mayhem. Surveillance, below, is a maze of circuits attached by electronic umbilicals to lethal looking pods in improbable candy colors. All sprout ominous appendages and the effect is unsettling, as if economic, religious and military conflicts had assumed an autonomous life of their own in which mere individuals are all but powerless.

If life in the 21st century is often at the mercy of unseen forces, clearer boundaries might sound like a good idea. Yet when Ivan Navarro's Fence sculpture, a full size fence rendered in pale neon, first appeared in an exhibition in New York, it provoked a mixed reception. But that was exactly what the Chilean artist intended. Reborn as the UNO Fence, top, it provokes similar responses here. Fragile yet intimidating, it blocks access to the rest of the gallery. This can be taken in various ways, but to me it suggests a metaphor for how something as intangible as an idea, concept or culture can, in the right context, constrain human action. Comprised of little more than light and thin glass tubes, it dares us to transgress its otherwise delicate boundaries. ~Bookhardt

SHIFTING STATES: Paintings and Drawings by Luis Cruz Azaceta through Feb. 18, Arthur Roger Gallery, 434 Julia St. 522-1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com;
UNO FENCE: Light Sculpture by Ivan Navarro for Prospect.2 through Jan. 29, UNO St. Claude Gallery, 2429 St. Claude Ave., 280-6493; www.finearts.uno.edu/artpage.html

Estevez at Taylor-Bercier; Geum at Bienvenu

2012-01-15T00:58:00.002-06:00

Artists are inspired by perception, but perceptions are open to interpretation. The human form first appeared as stick figures in caves before becoming idealized by the classical Greeks. Now Havana-born Miami artist Carlos Estevez reduces them to schematics once again, in works that recall 19th century paper dolls or the mechanical automata of visionary Victorian inventors. But who controls them? In Lucid Dreaming, top, a headless figure sits astride a strange mechanism, part bicycle, part beast. With the figure's head atop its serpentine neck, propellers and gears convey it toward destinations unknown. In Secret Learning a headless ballerina does a jig as her head, suspended by pulleys, stares back at us from a pedestal on the floor. In Apophenia a schematic mystic meditates in a half lotus posture, and he alone appears conscious of his condition yet it's not clear that he can do anything about it. Despite all the existential speculation, Estevez's real gift is for creating a fully formed parallel world that comments on our own. Archaic yet futuristic, his figures suggest that we are the automata, the mechanical beings whose condition they mimic with such bizarre elegance.

Korean artist Key-Sook Geum's sculptures are no less figurative, but the figures themselves are absent. Instead we see empty evening dresses floating in space like charismatic specters making grand entrances at invisible cocktail parties. Their intricate wire mesh filigrees outline the curves of high fashion movie starlets yet they actually contain only empty space and subtle energy, what East Asians call “chi.” In this they are the reverse of Denyce Celentano's very fleshly painted nudes at Cole Pratt, where they grapple passionately with each other and with their own imperfections as they embody a chaos of the senses. Geum's wiry lace concoctions are more like a haute couture of the spirit, if such a thing is possible. Geum suggests, at least obliquely, that it is. ~Bookhardt

APOPHENIA: Recent Paintings by Carlos Estevez, Through Jan. 31, Taylor Bercier Gallery, 233 Chartres St., 527-0072; www.taylorbercier.com; MOVING IN COLORS: Sculpture by Key-Sook Geum, Through Jan. 26, Gallery Bienvenu, 518 Julia St., 525-0518; www.gallerybienvenu.com

Avis Khebrehzadeh at Loyola; Lafcadio's Revenge at Dauphine and Press Street in Marigny

2012-01-08T00:14:00.006-06:00

Avish Khebrehzadeh, and her whimsical animated drawings, reflect the global nature of contemporary art today. The Iranian-born artist lives in Washington DC but was educated in Italy and won the Venice Biennale's Young Italian Award in 2003. If her exotic credentials predispose us to expect a trendy sensibility, such is not entirely the case; she uses digital video as a vehicle for her sketchily drawn animations that move like ghostly figures in a dream, spectral reminders of ancient allegories whose original meanings are no longer clear. Here fish swim through the air as her figures seem to sleepwalk through enigmatic scenarios. Their subtitled dialogue conveys paradoxical pronouncements like, “A child of the sea is bad luck.” Mythic or Magic Realist narratives work best in the hands of Asian or Latin story tellers--in the hands of a John Updike they fall flat, but Khebrehzadeh's video vignettes recall something of the mythic somnambulism of Salman Rushdie's Enchantress of Florence minus the grandiosity. Simply and whimsically executed, her intrigues, at their best, tap into those mysterious attic rooms of the mind where genetic memories of far away places and long ago times are sequestered like sleeping genies awaiting certain charged images or events to awaken us to things once more familiar, but now as distant as dreams vaguely recalled from childhood.

A somewhat related dreamlike quality of past times and otherworldly sensibilities appears in Lafcadio's Revenge, an eloquent hearse-like sculpture (at 800 Press Street) intended as a “mobile museum” of New Orleans' “forgotten histories.” The result of a collaboration between Tessa Farmer, Nina Nichols and Dana Sherwood, this independent Prospect.2 satellite production was created as an homage to the great 19th century journalist Lafcadio Hearn, who was the first to convey, via his dispatches to Harper's Weekly, the deeper mysteries of New Orleans to a wider audience in the English speaking world. Like Hearn, these artists seek to provide “a view into the secret life of the city; a cacophony of culture and magic...”

Animated Drawing: Mixed Media works by Avish Khebrehzadeh, Through Jan. 29, Collins C. Diboll Gallery, Loyola University, 861-5456; www.loyno.edu/dibollgallery; Lafcadio's Revenge: Mixed Media Sculpture Installation, through Jan. 29, 800 Press Street, corner Dauphine in Marigny

Fresh Produce and Tintypes on St. Roch

2012-01-01T01:24:00.002-06:00

In a recent interview, Prospect New Orleans founder Dan Cameron opined that New Orleans doesn't do enough “to support its local visual artists, yet... the St. Claude district now constitutes the critical mass of artist-run spaces for the entire country.” While his opinions are open to debate, his comment about St. Claude being a national epicenter for artist-run co-op galleries is hard to dispute; in no other city are there so many in such concentration. The newest is Staple Goods, a former corner grocery on St. Roch at Villere Street. Its current Fresh Produce show features work by its member artists, and it's surprisingly cohesive despite the diversity. Cynthia Scott's Chandeleur series of sculptures transform everyday manufactured items into airy, chandelier-like mobiles with a Zen-like delicacy that belies their prosaic origins while complementing Daniel Kelley's grid drawings in which loosely rendered lines and marks suggest a ghostly sort of architectural space, as if modernism had evolved directly from stone age cave paintings. A notable exception to the prevailing abstraction is Thomasina Bartlett's Hot Mamas photo series of women in archaic Storyville attire lounging languidly in a steamy summer torpor in a visual meditation on “the brutality of fashion and style” in a tropical environment.

More Storyville-esque imagery turns up down the street at Homespace, another co-op, in tintype photographic portraits by Bruce Schultz. In fact, the entire gallery is given over to the archaic 19th century tintype process with additional works by Euphus Ruth, below, and Jenny Sampson as well as abstractions by S. Gayle Stevens. Beyond novelty, these works take us to a parallel universe where technique is a ritual and where the expressions of the sitters, extended over long exposure times, become windows into their souls. ~Bookhardt

FRESH PRODUCE: Works by Thomasine Bartlett, Aaron Collier, Robyn Denny, William DePauw, Daniel Kelly, Anne Nelson, Laura Richens and Cynthia Scott; Weekends Through Jan. 8; Staple Goods, 1340 St. Roch Ave., 908-7331; www.postmedium.org/staplegoods
TINTYPE: Photographs by Euphus Ruth, Jenny Sampson, S. Gayle Stevens and Bruce Schultz; Weekends through Jan. 8; Homespace Gallery, 1128 St. Roch Ave., 917-584-9867

New Orleans Art: The Year in Review

2011-12-25T00:07:00.003-06:00

It's been a hell of a year. That can be taken in any number of ways, but what stands out is that more changes have occurred in this city's art scene over the past 12 months than would typically take place over many years in more normal times. And if local galleries maintained their usual stable status, 2011 was a mixed bag for arts institutions as directors and curators came and went. Champagne corks popped at some even as others bled red ink. In this we were hardly unique—arts institutions all over the world are still reeling from the global financial meltdown--and if some crises lead to surprise opportunities, not everyone saw a silver lining. More>>

Occupy Wall Street: Carnivalesque as Protest

2011-12-25T00:06:00.001-06:00

By Claire Tancons

While some commentators and journalists have dismissed Occupy Wall Street as carnival, lawmakers and police officers did not miss the point. They reached back to a mid-nineteenth century ban on masking to arrest occupiers wearing as little as a folded bandana on the forehead, leaving little doubt about their fear of Carnival as a potent form of political protest. New York Times journalist Ginia Bellafante initially expressed skepticism about “air[ing] societal grievance as carnival,” but just a few days later she warned against “criminalizing costume,” thus changing her condescension to caution as she confirmed the police’s point: masking can be dangerous, Carnival is serious business. More>>

Night Walk by Myrtle von Damitz

Ambient Video and Mixed Media at the Pearl

2011-12-18T00:18:00.001-06:00

It's a 200 year old farm house posing as a nondescript Bywater residence. It has served as a private salon and performance hall for owner Jay Poggi and his friends for over 20 years, and it has long been filled with weird wonders and curiosities. Now functioning as a satellite facility of Prospect.2, it has also become an exhibition space for an eclectic assortment of art works curated by John Otte. Because it was so already densely populated with quaint and improbable objects, most of the new art takes the form of video projections that can be beamed into the rare empty spot, or into existing fixtures like the antique bathtub that is now filled with Courtney Egan's sublime time-lapse video of night blooming cereus flowers, above left, slowly unfolding in perpetual electronic efflorescence. It would probably be a great piece anywhere, but in that tub in the shadowy gloom it is magical. In similar fashion, the cracked plaster wall where Lee Deigaard's STEADY STAR video animation, top, of a trotting horse is projected gives it the mystical aura of a cave painting or Etruscan fresco come to life. And Adrina Adrina and Elliot Coon's WARRIOR video loop of mustachioed Amazon women in the buff hints at a feminist take on Robinson Crusoe in their darkened corner of the space, while THE CAGE video by Kenyan-German duo Ingrid Mwangi and Robert Hutter would be creepy under any circumstances, but in the dungeon gloom of a disheveled shed structure the ghost of Hitchcock seems to lurk in the shadows. Also lurking in the recesses was Jennifer Odem's curious FLORA PEARLINIOUS plaster sculpture like a baroque inner organ surgically removed from a humanoid extraterrestrial giant, an object of contemplation and wonder. Three years in the making, this exhibition was intended by curator John Otte to integrate contemporary art with something of the baroquely eclectic and eccentric culture of the city, which the Pearl embodies like a Creole bohemian time capsule. ~Bookhardt

Constant Abrasive Irritation Produces the Pearl: Mixed Media and Video Exhibition, Through Jan. 29, The Pearl, 639 Desire St., 404-840-2628

Fox at Chaisson; Bourghog Guild at 1022 Gallery

2011-12-11T01:16:00.000-06:00

When painter Elizabeth Fox lived here years ago, she worked in an office and observed corporate social behavior with the eye of anthropologist. She saw how products are marketed and how sleekly attractive employees become social commodities. Here her edges were softened by Nola's innate baroque funk, but when she landed in Maine after Katrina, her figures inexplicably assumed a kind of California cool, as if Barbie and Ken had grown up to become corporate publicists in Hollywood. This is expressed in 4:30 FRIDAY, above, a visionary mannerist painting of three male success objects exiting an elevator into a reception room occupied by two efficiently sleek female executive-secretary sex objects. Coexisting with memos and flow charts are the manicured primal urges and pertly nuanced gestures that comprise the workaday rituals of our time. In REVOLVING DOOR, similar figures pass in as if in a trance, but the profile portrait LIZ IN THE WIND, right, epitomizes the flawlessness of a 21st century Venus-- the masterpiece of a veritable Botticelli of plastic surgery, as eternal as the tepid sea lapping the listless shore in the background.

All of which stands in stark contrast to the revelations presented in the Bourghog Guild's artifacts from a lost civilization at the 1022 Gallery in Carrollton. Rendered in a post-punk dadaist style of mixed media installations and apocalyptic pronouncements in a style self-described as "a vulgar and baroque spirit... a quasi-psychedelic southern head-trip," these untitled works present us with evidence of a parallel universe that is imploding even as our own familiar world of increasingly robotic global markets becomes an ever more virtual reality made up of inexorably connected electronic gadgets. But somewhere beneath America's anonymous suburban malls the ancient demons are stirring, and this Bourghog presentation, a visual extrapolation of a classic R&B aphorism, is intended as a warning that time may be on their side after all. ~Bookhardt

STAMINA IN THE DREAM HOUSE: Recent Oil paintings and sculpture by Elizabeth Fox, through Jan. 28, Martine Chaisson Gallery, 727 Camp St., 302-7942; www.martinechaissongallery.com
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND RAILROAD: A PSYCHEDELIC SLAVE TRADE: Mixed Media Works by the Bourghog Guild, through Jan. 14, 1022 Gallery, 1022 Lowerline St. 301-0679; www.1022gallery.com

Kincaid & Chihuly at Roger; Keller at Homespace

2011-12-04T00:41:00.001-06:00

Suddenly it is December, and the art scene is brimming with photography at PhotoNOLA's month long multi- venue photo exhibitions, as well as architectural art at the local AIA's annual ten day (Dec. 2—11) Descours event, in addition to the Prospect.2 Biennial. And it's all a bit much. Among the photography shows, Arthur Roger got a jump start with Ted Kincaid's archaic looking land, sea and sky scenes that resemble 19th century “wet- plate” photographs, a process prized for its poetic imperfections, but Kincaid's work is mostly digital. Here the landscapes are dramatically otherworldly, as if some 19th century romantic artist like Alfred Bierstadt had suffered many darkroom mishaps but still got some occasionally inspired results. Same goes for the maritime scenes with ghostly sailing ships traversing preternaturally foggy seas, some studded with random icebergs, and all somehow imbued with the patina of the ages. OPEN SEA 719 depicts a lost schooner in a pea soup fog, a ghost ship out of Coleridge only here the albatross has already fled as it drifts toward an iceberg. Even hints of dry ice don't mar its musty Victorian charm like something the ancient mariner himself might have dreamed up in a Laudanum trance. I especially liked the moon pictures. LUNAR 4321, top, and LUNAR 624 (upper left sidebar) suggest triumphs of Victorian science, futurist visions from a distant past like those 1902 Georges Milies moon travel movies.

Imbued with the elegant lucidity of a more romantic time, Kincaid's elemental otherworldliness complements Dale Chihuly's extravagant baroque glass concoctions in the adjacent gallery, decorative fantasies of impossible biological or marine life rendered vitreous as if by elfin magicians in faraway places. In an odd twist, Chihuly's twisted baroque confections were seemingly almost echoed in Kourtny Keller's kinetic, mirror- glass found object sculptures at the Home Space Gallery, left, only these glittering, rotating, science fiction structures—like mini-asteroids from a disco ball universe--may have originated in the far reaches of Bywater instead. ~Bookhardt
EVERY DOUBT THAT HOLDS YOU THERE: Mixed Media Photographs by Ted Kincaid
WHITE: Glass Sculpture by Dale Chihuly, Through Dec. 24, Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia St. 522-1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com

Pavel Wojtasik's Prospect.2 Video Installation Below Sea Level at Delgado, Parallel Play Open Studios at T-Lot

2011-11-27T00:06:00.006-06:00

The Delgado College art gallery, with its tall arched windows, is one of the more imposing local art spaces, but lately it has become a darkened cavern. Once inside you are in a circular audio-visual environment surrounded by moving panoramic views of New Orleans area wonders such as the petrochemical corridor, the Huey Long bridge and ravaged portions of the Lower 9th Ward--bleak vistas balanced by views of the natural bounty of the swamplands, the vast Mississippi and its eternal parade of ships, as well as pulsating city streets throbbing with the passing parade of colorful humanity for whom all the city is a stage, and on a good day many are in costume. Polish expat Paval Wojtasik's magical technical accomplishments in his 30 minute video loop Below Sea Level (short preview version above) captures this as a panoramic ballet of people and things in motion, a gliding and pirouetting, expanding and contracting landscape where streets appear as compressed crystal ball vistas that suddenly expand to surround you with panoramas of boulevards or bayous, or even the tiled delirium of the Harvey Tunnel, below.

It recalls both the metaphysical grit of Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law movie and the rhapsodic pacing of Walt Whitman's lyrical visionary evocations of American life. Wojtasik calls it “a love poem,” and like all ideal love, it is unconditional.

One of the great things about the Prospect biennials is how they inspire the community to step up their game, and the artists of the T-Lot studios responded by allowing visitors on weekends. The occupants of this aesthetic beehive, a group that includes Angela Berry, Hannah Chalew, Siobhan Feehan, Georgia Kennedy, Stephen Kwok and Natalie McLaurin, provide surprise offerings ranging from a techno-pagan altar and pre-fab ruins to flow charts of fun over the course of a lifetime, as well as a variety of mechanical-sculptural mystery objects. You never know what you'll see, but it's a great place to be surprised.~Bookhardt

BELOW SEA LEVEL by Pavel Wojtasik, Through Jan. 29, Delgado Art Gallery, 615 City Park Ave., 671-6377; www.dcc.edu/departments/art-gallery, PARALLEL PLAY: Open Studio Exhibitions by T-Lot Artists, Sat. & Sun, 12—5pm, Through Jan. 31, T-Lot Studios, 1940 St. Claude., www.t-lot.tumblr.com

Prospect.2: Vezzoli's Sophia Loren at Piazza d'Italia

2011-11-20T00:16:00.005-06:00

It is one of the most debated, celebrated and acclaimed examples of postmodern architecture in the world. Created as an urban plaza and monument to this city's Italian community—the first large scale Sicilian community in America—the Piazza d'Italia was designed by Charles Moore, a former dean of the Yale architecture school and influential pioneer of postmodernism. Declared a masterpiece even before it was completed in 1978, it leads a surprisingly obscure existence in the CBD literally in the shadows of far less celebrated structures. And like celebrities who shine brightly at first only to slide slowly downhill, the Piazza d'Italia has led a checkered existence over the years, and was even declared an urban ruin less than a decade after its completion when its maintenance plan fell victim to changing economic times. Like a misunderstood genius in need of a sponsor, it was rescued by the Loews hotel chain, which renovated the adjacent old Lykes office building into visitor accommodations in 2003, and devoted over $1 million to restoring the Piazza to its former glory as part of the deal. And in fact the Piazza d'Italia these days looks pretty terrific now that its fountain in the shape of Italy, once barren and dusty, glitters with clear water and the neon traceries over its surreal stylized arches and colonnades glow in the luminous shades of a confectionery rainbow.

Even so, it might still seem a little lonely as an obscure aesthetic oasis in that bustling neighborhood of office towers, hotels and casinos if not for a new addition that suddenly appeared like an apparition in a strategic spot on the plaza. It is Sophia Loren, no less, that voluptuous cinematic goddess of all things Italian, rendered in bronze in a brilliant gesture by acclaimed Milanese sculptor Francesco Vezzoli as his contribution to the Prospect.2 Biennial. Loren devotees should be warned, however, that this rendition of the statuesque diva features some distinctly idiosyncratic touches, not the least being an architectonic bas relief nestled in her arms, covering her storied bust. What gives?

For the amateur aesthetic investigator, consider this your very own DA VINCI CODE moment. If you recognize that mysterious bas relief as a Giorgio De Chirico painting, you are in on the the secret of the Piazza's design plan, for architect Moore was indeed inspired by a series of De Chirico paintings all bearing the same PIAZZA D'ITALIA name, many of which featured a statue of the Greek goddess Ariadne situated in the same spot Loren now occupies. While borrowing De Chirico's abstracted forms, Moore, in collaboration with local Perez firm architects Allen Eskew, Ron Filson and Malcolm Heard, employed buoyant neon colors to make this Piazza d'Italia more like a Fellini movie set where a cameo appearance by a Sophia Loren would not be unexpected. All of which may have come as a surprise to anyone anticipating something more like a classical Palermo piazza, but even here it should be noted that De Chirico's father was a son of Sicily, so the circle remains unbroken. And that is how, instead of simply reflecting history, our Piazza d'Italia ended up making architectural history instead. ~Bookhardt

Salon des Refuses Open Exhibition at Trouser House

2011-11-20T00:12:00.008-06:00

The 1863 Paris Salon des Refuses was a class act. Composed of artworks rejected from the official Paris Salon, it even included Manet's mega-iconic PICNIC ON THE GRASS. No such notoriety attends the 2011 Trouser House Salon des Refuses on St. Claude, where nothing was ever considered for Prospect.2 in the first place. Instead, Trouser House accepted anything, first come first serve, until all the walls were covered. Beyond democracy, this sounds more like anarchy, yet the show is not without cohesion: everything on the walls is also somewhat off the wall. If the space station could digitally capture the dreams of sleeping eccentrics, this is what they might look like. So in MARINE LIFE TESTS SUPERNATURAL POWERS, above, a painting by Santa Fe's Lisa Corradino, we see turtles and pelicans beaming evil eye death rays at an oil rig even as Barcelona's Pere Ibanez's photograph, LES PLAISIRES, bottom, depicts a voluptuous nurse in a bloody bikini brandishing a hypodermic in her rubber gloved hand--a theme echoed inferentially in Brandi Couvillion's GUN, DOLL, SHRIVELED SOUL assemblage. Edgy works are balanced by others like New York based Stacey-Robin Johnson's BLUE PRINT FOR PARADISE, right, a kind of South Bronx Gaugin earth mother pastiche, par for the course at a place where experimental art coexists with organic farming out back, replete with chickens and yard eggs. Sadly, this grand experiment must now close even though Trouser House founder-director Emily Morrison thought she had followed the rules by operating in a building zoned for commercial use. But the city decreed that it must be brought up to the latest commercial code standards anyway, at a cost she could not afford, because it turned out that the building had never actually been used commercially before, snaring her in a classic catch 22. Meanwhile let's hope for divine intervention; Trouser House epitomizes much of what is brave and experimental in New Orleans today, and deserves better than death by red tape.

SALON DES REFUSES: Open Call Exhibition of 70 Local, National and International Artists, Fridays-Sundays Through Nov. 30, Trouser House, 4105 St. Claude Ave., 512-626-3653; www.trouserhouse.org

Prospect.2: Nick Cave and Joyce Scott at Newcomb

2011-11-13T01:45:00.004-06:00

It was New York Times art critic Roberta Smith who put it best: “Whether Nick Cave's efforts qualify as fashion, body art or sculpture, and regardless of what you ultimately think of them, they fall squarely under the heading of Must Be Seen to Be Believed.” Of course, Smith never lived in a city with our Mardi Gras Indians, the next closest thing to Cave's mixed media Soundsuits, top, but she's right, their presence is redolent of exotic energies from the far reaches of the imagination if not the planet. A former dancer turned instructor at the Chicago Art Institute, Cave made his early suits out of twigs before moving on to more colorful materials such as beads, buttons, sequins and feathers--a look not unlike Big Chief Victor Harris' striking Fi Yi Yi Indian suits at the New Orleans Museum of Art during Prospect.1. According to former Prospect director Dan Cameron, Cave does indeed include Mardi Gras Indians among his influences. Their shamanic presence also recalls African ceremonial regalia, and they are also worn in live performances, which makes them fine companion pieces for Joyce Scott's beaded sculptures in the adjacent gallery.

Also a performance artist deeply influenced by African and African American traditions, Baltimore- based Scott is a creator of bead sculptures that are decorative yet acerbic, often beautiful yet biting. A critic of all forms of violence, institutional as well as random, and all depredations against women, Scott knows how to be seductive without pulling her punches. Cobalt, Yellow Circles, above, is a deeply hued maze with floating figures not unlike a Nigerian Yoruba bead work version of a Navajo dream catcher. Nearby, a gnarly beaded head emerges from a green glass, pistol-shaped bottle filled with bullets. Titled Head Shot, right, it draws you in then creeps you out, a tactic echoed in reverse in the more enigmatic Sexecution I, bottom. That mix of seduction and revulsion, beauty and beastliness, is what is known as the human condition, and what Scott and Cave do with it makes this a show worth seeing. ~Bookhardt

PROSPECT.2: Works by Nick Cave and Joyce J. Scott for Prospect.2, Through Jan. 29, Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, 865-5328; www.tulane.edu/~newcomb/artindex.html

NOLA NOW at the Contemporary Arts Center

2011-11-06T00:12:00.004-05:00

Meander through the Prospect.2 exhibits on the first and second floors of the Contemporary Arts Center and ascend via the stairs or elevator to the rarely seen third floor, and you enter another world. There the raw wood columns, brick walls and rough wooden floors reveal what the CAC looked like prior to its elegant, late 1980s renovation. Some feel that with all the polish it may have lost some of its soul, and this NOLA NOW show, and the raw space it occupies, strongly hints at that less complicated if perhaps more vital time. In fact, Chris Saucedo's weird pagan temple atop an oyster shell mound titled NEW ORLEANS 2011, top, with Sally Heller's polyvinyl mesh fantasy forest in the background, even looks like a flashback to the CAC's early years, and in a good way.

Much new art that used to appear at the CAC now more often appears on St. Claude, and this show draws heavily from the new emerging artist cadres that arrived here in large numbers after Katrina, mingled with a variety of veteran artists. The resulting exhibition reflects what curator Amy Mackie calls “a new creative class” whose work expresses a desire for “an environment less scathed,” or even “a stronger sense of purpose in a world where things fall apart over and over again.” Here 19th century optimism is echoed in James Taylor Bonds' ironic paintings of 21st century ruins inhabited by figures reminiscent of a more rustic past, just as the ruins of the Six Flags theme park look bizarrely buoyant in Andy Cook's colorful photographs, below. Similarly, Luba Zygarewicz's tersely minimal PETRIFIED TIME dryer lint totems, and Robin Levy's THRESHOLD installation of an empty utility room with its echoes abandoned housing, above, are balanced by Monica Zeringue's and Grace Mikell's (above right) intriguing magic realist investigations of the female psyche. All in all, NOLA NOW provides an insightful investigation of some of the prevailing tendencies in contemporary New Orleans art.

NOLA NOW, Part I: Swagger for a Lost Magnificence, Through Jan. 29, Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St., 528.3805; www.cacno.org

PROSPECT.2: SOME FIRST IMPRESSIONS

2011-10-30T12:55:00.003-05:00

Prospect.1 was a hard act to follow. It was big, sometimes gaudy, sometimes subtle, but always substantial and very expensive, with cost overruns exceeding a million dollars. Prospect.2 is more modest—its 27 artist roster is one third the size of P.1's—and its exhibitions are far less extravagant. It was hard to get any sense of what it would look like from its eclectic mix of featured artists slated for various venues that were always changing, but now that it's open it can truthfully be said that former director Dan Cameron has again pulled a rabbit out of his hat. It's not knock your socks off like P.1, but it is an intriguing expo with an intimate quality that may be more appropriate for these financially constrained times. What makes it work is Cameron's intuitive genius for weaving the art with various parts of the city in ways that can be unexpected or occasionally even epiphanous.

I'm not big on Sophie Calle, whose word and image narratives can seem repetitious, but her tiny text panels at the 1850 House in the Pontalba Apartments are deftly subversive in that setting. Similarly, William Eggleston's rarely seen black and white portraits work well with his bizarre STRANDED IN CANTON video vignettes, left, of crazed Memphis and Mississippi folk acting out back in those hazy old Wild Turkey and Quaaludes days of 1974. Like a Hunter S. Thompson romp through Faulkner country with Tom Waits overtones, it strangely complements An-My Le's delicate photos of Vietnamese hamlets on the Mekong Delta and in New Orleans East, and Ragnar Kjartansson's video encounters with Louisiana's soulful music and landscape, top, in the austere elegance of the old U.S. Mint on Esplanade. The view at the Contemporary Arts Center--where Dan Tague's sardonic multimedia agitprop exploration of the U.S. Department of Civil Obedience, bottom, shares space with Alexis Rockman's vast Darwinian panorama painting of predatory beasts battling to the death, above, and George Dunbar's tribute to ab/ex action painting--is a bit more variegated, with works by Jonas Dahlberg, Karl Haendel, Gina Phillips, Grazia Toderi and Ozawa Tsuyoshi rounding out the show. Like its predecessor, Prospect.2 seems to have brought out the best in some elements of our burgeoning community of emerging artists. The most spectacular single thing I saw on P.2's opening Saturday was actually at a satellite facility, at a performance of New Orleans Airlift's MUSIC BOX installation of musical shanties, below, fanciful huts constructed from old house parts as playable electronic and acoustic musical instruments. Curated by Delaney Martin, Swoon and Theo Eliezer, and conducted by maestro Martin Quintron, it fulfilled art's original function as an expression of metaphysical magic. It was truly unforgettable. ~Bookhardt

Through Jan. 29, 2012, Various Venues, 756-6438, www.prospectneworleans.org

New Orleans Airlift's Musical Shanties

2011-10-30T00:08:00.000-05:00

Both a satellite facility of the Prospect.2 Biennial and a prelude to influential street artist Swoon's Dithyrambalina project--an actual house with musical instrumentation built into its structure--this Music Box installation of fanciful musical shanties features electronic and acoustic devices literally built into their woodwork. Cobbled from antique New Orleans house parts by a small army of harmonic savants working collaboratively, it all came together rather rapturously on the evening of October 22, 2011, under the baton of audio maestro Martin Quintron. These crude videos only hint at the transcendental nature of the event as it was experienced by all present. In like fashion, Swoon's Dithyrambalina will rely on collaborating artists to bring it to life. Curated by Delaney Martin, Swoon and Theo Eliezer, the Music Box is the platform for developing the instrumentation that will be built into its walls, ceilings and floorboards in much the way plumbing and electricity are configured in a traditional home.

Jeremy Willis at Du Mois

2011-10-23T00:15:00.004-05:00

This show is really kind of gross. I had never heard of the artist, but his flamboyant paintings are in boisterously bad taste. I like them a lot. It takes talent to make such eloquently stomach-churning work, and Jeremy Willis has a flair for revisiting pop, expressionism and the Liepzig School in canvases that take no prisoners but rather colorfully squeeze the vital essences, and possibly body fluids, out of his subjects. So who, or what, is Willis? It turns out that he is an Uptown Nola native who ended up in Brooklyn by way of Amherst and Providence, and his paintings blend something of de Kooning's manic early 1950s women with Francis Bacon's lushly Hannibal Lecter-esque renderings of dislocated, if vividly hued, body parts. But Willis is to those polished icons of painterly virtuosity what Sid Vicious was to the London Philharmonic: pretty raw. Even so, if his brush strokes were really as crude as they seem, none of this would work and we would be left confronting a muddle. So it is to his credit that his paintings confront US instead; you wouldn't want to meet up with one in a dark alley. That Sid Vicious meets Francis Bacon sensibility defines HANGOVER HEADGEAR, top, but TEARS, below, is more complex, an oozing maelstrom of quivering primary colors with smeared crimson lips and white teeth ricocheting off a double vision of a female head--one yellow, one green--in full meltdown mode, and it's all quite repellent if morbidly fascinating. The aptly titled FUCK OFF CREEP, above right, is a latter day nightclub scene, a cool inferno of mauve, cobalt and yellow featuring two babes and a guy, a blabbering paragon of attitude seated at a table. Here everything is reduced to its visceral essence of discomfited flesh, queasy colors and dislocated auras, a visual parable of civilization's decline as it is reenacted daily in a million minor ways. In this show, Willis takes those quotidian human gestures and makes them intriguing. ~Bookhardt

FEAR IS A MAN'S BEST FRIEND: Paintings by Jeremy Willis, Through Nov. 5, Du Mois Gallery, 4921 Freret St., 818-6032; www.dumoisgallery.com

Wayne Gonzales at the New Orleans Museum of Art

2011-10-16T00:12:00.004-05:00

Wayne Gonzales is one of the more interesting artists working in New York today. Although his reputation has steadily grown over years of exhibitions at the Paula Cooper Gallery in Manhattan, where his work also appears in the Whitney, Guggenheim and Hirschhorn museum collections, his current NOMA expo is his first museum solo in the U.S. Why here? Although he has been more of a presence in the New York and London art scenes, Gonzales is a Nola native who grew up in the 9th Ward and Arabi and graduated from UNO. Born in 1957, his early years were affected by the assassination of president Kennedy and the subsequent investigation by then D.A. Jim Garrison, in part because his extended family overlapped with some of its colorful cast of characters. News coverage from the period inspired some earlier paintings such as PEACH OSWALD, bottom, but today he is better known for his monochromatic canvases of crowd scenes that evoke grainy and vastly enlarged blowups of news photographs.

Gonzales has used computers to shape his imagery since the early 1990s, and in emblematic works like SEATED CROWD, top, and CHEERING CROWD, above right, the shadowy forms of the spectators evoke those low res digital images that devolve into muddy contours when enlarged. Seen from a distance, their abstract blurs come together to radiate the eerie unpredictability for which crowds have been known since the gladiators of ancient Rome. Here we sense the muted, potentially explosive, emotions of the public spectacle as experienced at football games and political rallies, in images as ambiguous Rorschach blots and just as open to interpretation. RIGOLETS, above, is a coastal scene in yellow and green with vastly enlarged newspaper halftone dots, and it may elicit memories of happy days in fishing camps or, alternatively, Jayne Mansfield's gruesome death on that same stretch of road. Gonzales is a virtuoso visual poet who employs mass media imagery to personalize the hopes, fears and eerie uncertainties that characterize American life in the early 21st century. ~Bookhardt

Wayne Gonzales: LIGHT TO DARK/DARK TO LIGHT, Through February 26, New Orleans Museum of Art, City Park, 658-4100; www.noma.org

Josephine Sacabo and Ersy at the Ogden Musuem

2011-10-09T00:12:00.007-05:00

Over the years Josephine Sacabo's mysterious, dreamy and rather archaic looking photographs, such as COPIA DIVINA, left, have appeared in galleries like fragments of dreams or artifacts brought back by time travelers to the 19th century of the French Symbolists and Magic Realists. It is indeed hard to believe that they are products of our own time, and the same might be said of Ersy's dreamily gothic and surreal bronze, silver and wood sculptures, only her work harks to no specific period or place but to an alien yet familiar realm of the imagination, a place of beautiful if twisted mysteries. Both artists are longtime friends, but the effect of several decades of their work seen in such close proximity is startling if not magical. Ersy's sculpture may come as a revelation as pieces that resembled impressive curiosities in her infrequent and more modest earlier exhibitions, are now revealed to be integral parts of an intricately elaborated parallel universe.

Comprised of mysterious mice and skeletal birds among other fantastical creatures, all are either tangled up in strange mechanisms or arrayed in carnivalesque processions like her miniature HOMMAGE LA SOCIETE DE STE. ANNE, top, or PALLBEARERS, above, or else in otherworldly settings with Max Ernst, Pauline Réage and Brothers Grimm overtones evoked by the clever use of abstract details. And where Sacabo is overtly romantic, if sometimes gothic in works like LA PASION, right, Ersy is as taut and fraught as a Hitchcock thriller. Both are meticulously prolific -- Sacabo has a impressive parallel exhibition of her most recent work at A Gallery for Fine Photography—and the detailed thoroughness of both artists' vision is nothing less than staggering. Some three years in the making, this exhibition of two sui generis New Orleans artists, along with the George Dureau expo upstairs, offers new evidence of the Ogden Museum's potential as a showcase for providing striking new insights that would have been unlikely anywhere else, here or abroad. ~Bookhardt

Read more about Josephine Sacabo and Ersy in the New York Times (Click Here)

ERSY: ARCHITECT OF DREAMS: Retrospective Exhibition of Sculpture by Ersy; OYEME CON LOS OJOS: Retrospective Exhibition of Photographs by Josephine Sacabo, Through Jan. 8, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 925 Camp St., 539-9600, www.ogdenmuseum.org; PHOTOGRAVURES: Recent Work by Josephine Sacabo, Through Dec. 31, A Gallery For Fine Photography, 241 Chartres St., 568-1313; www.agallery.com

Left: Claustro by Josephine Sacabo

OccupyNewOrleansOccupyNewOrleansOccupy

2011-10-05T17:01:00.006-05:00

Iva Gueorguieva's "Prefiguration" at Heriard-Cimino

2011-10-02T00:12:00.002-05:00

Sometimes you don't know where you've been until you see it receding in a rear view mirror. When the 21st century began, the usual postmodern tropes of the previous century still applied. A decade later, “postmodern” is a word that is seldom heard in reference to art or architecture. There even seems to be an unheralded revival of classical modernism, with new building designs that look positively 1965 (like the new University Medical Center), while in visual art there has been a quiet reprise of abstraction that evokes 1950s action painting, even as the best examples look relatively fresh today. Iva Gueorguieva's new paintings, for instance, MACHINE VISION, top, are darkly passionate in ways that recall the existentialist intensity of America's mid-20th century painters, poets and musicians—at first glance you can almost hear Charlie Parker or John Coltrane, or even Allen Ginsberg reciting riffs from HOWL: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...” in a miasma of espresso, pot and cigarette smoke.

But that was then. Who is this woman? Bulgaria-born, Philadelphia-educated Gueorguieva lived in New Orleans for three years, then moved to Los Angeles seemingly on a whim a month before Katrina struck. The works in this show were based on her New Orleans memories, and the best of them display similarly perfect timing expressed as prismatic cul-de-sacs and gestural slashes. CLINAMEN, above, is a masterpiece of swirling vortexes and painterly mini- tornadoes as well as controlled explosions like fireworks in a labyrinth. The name refers to the tendency of atoms to swerve, as predicted by the classical Greek philosopher Epicurus in an eerie anticipation of Einstein and Heisenberg. AUTO EXTRACTION, top right, is a lyrical example of visionary abstraction that harks to that portentous point in the 1940s when the surrealism of Arshile Gorky and Roberto Matta morphed seemingly full blown into abstract expressionism. Matta called it “morphologies,” landscapes of the inner world, things felt more than seen. The look may be related, but Gueorguieva makes it lyrically her own. ~Bookhardt

PREFIGURATION: New Paintings by Iva Gueorguieva, Through Oct. 29, Heriard-Cimino Gallery, 440 Julia St., New Orleans, LA 525-7300; www.heriard-cimino.com

Michele Basta at Coup d'Oeil

2011-09-25T00:24:00.006-05:00

Michele Basta's hybrid creatures at Coup are fantastical by any measure. A mix of hallucinatory surrealism and a side show take on mythology, her humanoid beasts are paradoxical in so many ways that it is almost as if their mannequin-like appendages and oddly mammalian features were products of an alternate reality where bizarre incongruities are par for the course. How else to explain FROM WHAT I REMEMBER/ METAMORPHOSIS, right, a cat-headed female in a tattered hoop skirt and long black gloves. With her lynx-like head thrown back as she appears to exhale a huge plume of crimson paper flames, she dominates her corner of the gallery while posing no end of enigmatic possibilities for which there are no immediate answers. A related work, SPHINX, top, in a nearby alcove, inverts the equation with the body of a lioness and human upper torso topped with a demonic hybrid head. Instead of arms, she sprouts wings made up of hundreds of pages of poems in an extravagant new take on the term “literary lion”

There are also some oddly expressive human heads that seem to sprout from Victorian-era spring mounted mechanisms of mysterious provenance. For dog lovers there is COMPANION, above, a hyena with conjoined human and canine heads. On the walls are some Victorian looking light boxes with glowing panels comprised of pressed flowers embedded in colored resin to yield a cathedral-like glow, but what gives Basta's beasts and light boxes their uncanny resonance is their sense of being artifacts from a parallel universe. Taking her cues from the esoteric inner symbolism of alchemical science, Basta externalizes the baser demons that roam the wild regions of the psyche in a process of transformation that puts their feral energy to use on behalf of a more holistic understanding of human potentiality, a quest that propelled both Carl Jung's psychology and no end of surrealist experimentation—parallel currents long known to Europeans, but only slowly coming to light on these shores. ~Bookhardt

"AND THE EARTH BEGOT..." Mixed Media Sculpture by Michele Basta, Through Oct. 8, Coup d'Oeil Art Consortium, 2033 Magazine St., 722-0876; www.coupdoeilartconsortium.com

Friedlander, Roma & Warhol at the Newcomb Gallery

2011-09-18T00:12:00.047-05:00

One of the ironies of a town notorious for taking genius for granted was that it was left to two great photographers from elsewhere—Lee Friedlander and Ralston Crawford—to document the legendary traditional New Orleans jazz musicians of the 1950s. In this JAZZ PEOPLE series, the young Friedlander's vision is at its most direct and unvarnished, yet his famously sly use of incidentals is evident in works such as his 1958 JOE JAMES AT THE WESTWEGO FIREMAN'S HALL portrait, top, in which the intense pianist is framed by Falstaff Beer graphics in the background.

Friedlander's cinematic mise-en-scene methodology stands in marked contrast to Andy Warhol's nearby POP SHOTS series of closely cropped Polaroid photographs, yet the stylized glitz of the Peter Pan of Pop is localized in his series of portraits of former New Orleans Museum of Art photography curator Tina Freeman, above, interspersed with the likes of Pia Zadora and other 1970s glitterati.

To casual observers, some of Thomas Roma's photographs can seem somewhat elusive at first. Like Lee Friedlander's jazz portraits in the next room, Roma's compositions can look random, so it takes a minute to realize that his views of Brooklyn and Sicily often involve a visual counterpoint as complex as a Bach fugue. Like Friedlander, Roma incorporates incidentals that most photographers avoid, but here they result in an ambient sensibility that breaks the usual rules while communicating the haphazard intimacy of the Brooklyn landscape. Even so, his most compellingly human works would have to be his COME SUNDAY photographs of worshipers in black Brooklyn churches, some of which were once synagogues, as is occasionally the case in Nola's Central City as well. Here the epiphanies of a very emotional form of religious experience are conveyed with great warmth and empathy, which makes for a striking contrast with his more circumspect Brooklyn and Sicilian vistas. In this show, many of the uncanny connections that link Brooklyn, New York, New Orleans, and even Sicily, are all on display under the same roof. ~Bookhardt

PICTURES FOR BOOKS: Photographs by Thomas Roma, JAZZ PEOPLE: New Orleans Jazz Photographs by Lee Friedlander, POP SHOTS: Polaroid portraits by Andy Warhol, Through Oct. 9, Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, 865-5328; www.tulane.edu/~newcomb

15th Annual No Dead Artists at Jonathan Ferrara

2011-09-11T00:12:00.019-05:00

Of late, New Orleans in general and St. Claude Avenue in particular have become something of a national epicenter of DIY emerging artist activity, and in some ways it really is kind of extraordinary. But it is also a phenomenon with deep roots tracing back to those institutions and galleries that focused on emerging artists all along, not just in the present. In that sense, the 15th annual NO DEAD ARTISTS show at Ferrara marks a continuation of an old tradition. As always, it is something of a grab bag. The 37 works were selected by jurors Toby Devan Lewis, William Morrow and Susan Taylor from the roughly 1500 submitted by over 300 artists, and viewing them is like reading tea leaves as portentous trajectories of talents and trends converge to reveal names and ideas that, if history is any guide, may later resurface with increasing luster. More>>

Click Images to Enlarge--Top: Eva Sintamarian: Every Object is Modified by One's Look; Meg Turner: Market Street Power Station; Rebekah Miller: Skins; Leslie Lyons: Girdle; Alissa Polan: Yael.
NO DEAD ARTISTS: Juried Exhibition of 14 Emerging American Artists, Through Sept. 24, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, 400A Julia St., 522-5471; www.jonathanferraragallery.com

Visionary Art from the Kleinbard-Roche Collection

2011-09-04T00:12:00.003-05:00

The Soldier's Family, 1947, by Daniel Pressley

The Ogden Museum's current offerings are of some interest, especially the photography shows, but the big surprise is the Alexa Kleinbard and Jim Roche collection of visionary outsider art. Both are artists themselves, and their collection suggests a mixed media installation in its own right, as well as a fresh new take on what outsider art can mean. Most folk art has ranged from cute to weird in exhibitions that were often anthropological in tone, but here the spirit of each artist, forcefully or quietly, reaches out and grabs you. They all have a story to tell, and if you make eye contact, they will make you listen. It's a world of self-taught artists acting under orders from God or gods, known or not, and you are there to witness marvels large and small.

Of them, the substantial painted wood carvings of Tallahassee's O. L. Samuels are hard to miss. An 80 year old former tree trimmer brought back from the dead after a fall, Samuels creates mythic or demonic beings that radiate an otherworldly joie de vivre. LARGE MONSTER BEAST, left, is emblematic, and EDNA, a wood sculpture of an intricately painted woman with an intense visage, is eerily alive, dominating the space in front of a wall of “religious” paintings by Roger Rice, an ordained minister in Oklahoma. While some preachers merely condemn lewd or scandalous

behavior, Rice shows us precisely what he means in some of the most graphically lurid images the Bible ever inspired. Conversely, Daniel Pressley's paintings such as circa 1947 THE SOLDIER'S FAMILY, top, depict ordinary slices of life imbued with a vibrant magic realist intensity, as do Remy Mott's curiously haunting paintings, for instance, CUBAN WOMAN, right, or Sylvanus Hudson's iconic HEART WITH CROSS, bottom, with its homespun voodoo overtones. What they all have in common is a sense of reinventing the world we thought we knew, as if these artists had traveled to a rustic parallel universe in a backyard space capsule and come back with souvenirs for all to see. Wonderful stuff. ~Bookhardt

Self-Taught, Outsider and Visionary Art from the Collection of Alexa Kleinbard and Jim Roche, Through Sept. 18, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 925 Camp St., 539-9600, www.ogdenmuseum.org

Villere Street Revisited; Kaechele Vindicated???

2011-08-28T00:10:00.009-05:00

St. Roch is one of those urban frontier neighborhoods where artists, charm and creativity share the streets with with chaos, crack and crime. Staple Goods Gallery at the corner of St. Roch and Villere Street was an oasis of tranquility even before Aaron Collier's deft graphite drawings turned up on the walls. More sober and subdued than his colorful paintings at Cole Pratt, they recall the American Scene realist artists of the 1930s, but with disjointed negative spaces and conceptual flourishes that can make the images look like they're falling off of the paper. Somewhat experimental, with little in the way of emotional content to draw one in, they look a tad academic. But they are also not what one would see in most commercial spaces and, on balance, this is an almost ideal venue for them.

John Pilson's short videos at Arthur Roger are also set on Villere Street, at Kirsha Kaechele's old gallery space. In IDEA FOR A FILM (video still, top), some of the neighborhood kids who hung out there devise a story about a couple with a dog washing business facing eviction. With area artists Adrian Price and Srdjan Loncar as actors, the result was a multilayered vignette that spotlights the storytelling talents of the kids. In HUNTER, below, Kaechele employs various settings and techniques to narrate a mysterious story, and both videos are poignant reminders of time's passage--Price now lives in New York and Kaechele in Tasmania--but both also capture something of the atmospheric surreality of that time and place. The gallery is still pristine, but there are no longer free programs for neighborhood children, kids and artists no longer hang out there, and Kaechele's handyman demolished the two flood damaged houses across the street months ago.

Kaechele had for the past several months been publicly castigated for allowing them to rot, allegedly for many years—an accusation lodged last winter in a poison pen letter by someone with an axe to grind. The accusation turned out to be false. In fact, she never owned either of them until 2009. The buildings had long been considered tear-downs, and when she bought them two years ago in a last minute attempt to avert demolition, she said she would restore their facades and rebuild the rest. Then her finances unraveled. Why ordinarily responsible parties repeated false charges without fact checking is still a mystery; the sale dates are publicly available on the city tax assessor web site. She also never owned the Safe House building. Ever. Had the anti-Kaechele blitz been based on her tendency to seem tone deaf and stage events that looked too big or ostentatious for the neighborhood, her critics might have been on firmer ground. Instead, much pontificating was based on a false charge. For Kaechele, disputing that allegation would have meant deflecting blame on to persons who had helped her in the past, which she chose not to do. So what had once seemed clear, at least to some, is now more nuanced. The irony is that--with the obvious exception of the poison pen provocateur--many on both sides of this controversy seemed sincere. We are all human and we all make mistakes, but false claims are false claims, and there is no way around that. As someone wiser than me once put it: you can argue about opinions, but facts are facts. Period. And that's that. ~Bookhardt

MINING THE EDGES: Drawings by Aaron Collier, through Sept. 4, Staple Goods, 1340 St. Roch Ave., 908-7331; NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and IDEA FOR A FILM: New Videos by John Pilson, through Sept. 12, Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia St. 522-1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com

UNO's New and Established Artists at Arthur Roger

2011-08-21T00:07:00.006-05:00

When it comes to energy and influence, the University of New Orleans Art Department is sui generis. Beyond having its own satellite gallery on St. Claude Avenue and influencing many others in the area, UNO is also distinguished by its hyperkinetic cadre of artist alums who are sometimes as influential in New York and other art capitals as they are here. One time New York neo-geo avatar and current Yale painting department director Peter Halley is a case in point, and while unfortunately not represented here, he was a mentor to Nola native and UNO grad Wayne Gonzales, whose work now appears in top tier New York and London galleries. Gonzales is known for paintings of crowds , top, that suggest spectral afterimages of news photos, and in these works we sense the anonymous power of the collective id, as unpredictable and familiar as a summer storm. For his part, Gonzales was a mentor to current UNO graduate student Nina Schwanse when she attended Cooper Union in Manhattan. A Los Angeles native, Schwanse attempts to “restructure” the usual mass media narratives to create “disjunctive portraits that disappoint,” as seen in K-A-T-E (S), below, a video in which she rather brilliantly and entertainingly impersonates several celebrities named Kate (Gosselin, etc.) at their most inanely self-absorbed.

k-a-t-e (s) from Nina Schwanse on Vimeo.

The further mingling of art stars Joseph Ayers, Marlo Pasqual and Megan Whitmarsh with emerging talents Jason Derouin, Sophie Lvoff and Aaron McNamee was intentional. All reflect UNO's typically offbeat approach to conceptual abstraction, with Whitmarsh's colorfully witty fabric sculpture, below, and McNamee's newsprint periodicals ossified into something akin to stone tablets, detail top right, among the especially emblematic examples. But the biggest surprise may be how polished these emerging artists' works look at the city's leading gallery, as opposed to their usual St. Claude Avenue haunts, where they often seem more experimental. Kudos to Arthur Roger and curator Jim Richard for that. It is an ironic truism that the secret to success is to make “art that looks like art,” and here we see some often familiar work presented in an artfully optimal new light. ~Bookhardt

COMMON GROUND: Group Exhibition Curated by Jim Richard, Through Sept. 12, Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia St. 522-1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com

Audra Kohout at Heriard-Cimino Gallery

2011-08-14T00:12:00.003-05:00

Many art aficionados, including one of the leading fantastic art web sites, www.phantasmaphile.com, compare Audra Kohout's box assemblages to the those of the great surrealist, Joseph Cornell, while noting that hers are “more personal” or even “emotional.” I would add “visceral” and “protean” as well. Kohout seems to be a shape-shifter in the guise of a middle class Mid City mom, and her boxes, like Dr. Who's phone booth, are vehicles for her travels to other worlds. Where Cornell was like a detached, eccentric bird man obsessed with ballerinas and symbolic objects in perfect equipoise, Kohout meanders between the sweet and the sardonic like a mythic earth mother who knows that without the darkness there is no light and, try as we may, the two can never be sundered but only balanced. In other words, this is some pretty weird, but elegant and eloquent, stuff.

In accordance with Carl Jung, her “other worlds” reflect inner worlds, and many of her doll-like figures hang from strings like puppets who assumed a wayward life of their own. In TITANIA, a fairy princess with long, shapely legs stands on a pedestal holding a big wand over a fallen male puppet. Is she trying to revive him, or did she smite him with it? ZEITGEIST, bottom, features a pair of mythic nymphs; one rides a unicycle on a rail, the other has fallen or jumped off. Standing on her head, her doll legs are spread wide to reveal her private parts. Are they flirting or engaged in kabuki combat? Kohout's flair for transmogrification is epitomized by UNDER LINDEN, left, where a pair of pixie dolls are performing an arcane ritual. Originally the title of a medieval German poem about a trysting place, “Under Linden” became the name of a Berlin boulevard filled with statues of generals in a startling example of how something originally identified with love eventually became associated with war. Kohout gives playfully eloquent form to humanity's most complicated and ironic impulses. ~Bookhardt

PERCHANCE TO DREAM: Box Assemblages by Audra Kohout, Through Aug. 31, Heriard-Cimino Gallery, 440 Julia St., 525-7300; www.heriard-cimino.com
Left: Arcana

Robert Gordy and Tina Girouard at the CAC

2011-08-07T00:10:00.006-05:00

Longtime curator and Prospect founder Dan Cameron has a knack for putting art in context, and this Tina Girouard and Robert Gordy expo at the CAC is right on the money. Both artists helped shape the direction of American art, yet both became somewhat overshadowed. In the late 1960s, Girouard and fellow Louisianians Lynda Benglis, Dickie Landry and Keith Sonnier, helped launch post-minimalism in New York as a way of injecting sinuous, fluid lines into minimalism's stark rigidity. She and Nola native Kendall Shaw were also seminal influences on the Pattern & Design, or P&D, movement in New York in the early 1970s. But one of the greatest P&D painters of all, Robert Gordy, remained in New Orleans until his untimely death at age 52 in 1986. Blending deco patterning with expressionistic and psychedelic flourishes, Gordy produced some of America's more charismatic paintings and prints of the period, and this show provides a welcome window on his and Girouard's accomplishments. Some of Gordy's best works are not on view here, but what we see at least hints at his scope and flair. In his 1981 NIGHT SCENE, top, the patterning and figures recall Keith Haring's early work of the period, but the craft and polish are more typical of Louisiana and European artists.

His 1971 LARGE STILL LIFE painting, bottom, of iridescent fruit amid concrete blocks suggests a Dutch master on acid, and a 1970 screen print, above, of his zany stylized nudes leaping blank blocks that resemble Donald Judd sculptures, is a sly critique of minimalist pretenses.

Tina Girouard replaced minimalism's hard edges with soft sinewy fabric and symbolic content in works like her CONFLICTING EVIDENCE tapestry, above. A seasoned performance artist, she collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Phillip Glass and many others who were part of her exotically patterned life. Many of her and Gordy's works look timeless and vital today while reminding us of Louisiana's major if often overlooked influence on modern American art history. ~Bookhardt

Patterns and Prototypes: Paintings and Mixed Meida Tina Girouard and Robert Gordy, Through Sept. 25, Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St., 528.3805; www.cacno.org

Brooke Pickett at the Contemporary Arts Center

2011-07-31T00:09:00.006-05:00

Brook Pickett's paintings are big, as much as 10 feet tall, yet for all that, they are not heroic or any other one thing. They are all sorts of things happening at once. Like a dream journey through a familiar landscape where ordinary shapes and forms take on a strange, hallucinatory life of their own, they are simultaneously intriguing and unsettling. Painted in big, gloopy swatches of saturated pomegranate, avocado, blueberry, goldenrod and rust, objects that were once homely—things that may have started out as table lamps, stools, bits of rubbish or maybe ladders—have somehow mutated into strange visual tone poems taut with suspense and an incipient sense of wonder. We see this in SORROW FLOATS, above left, where a glowing lampshade becomes a beacon in a turbid sea of subconscious intrigue. Part of it has to do with those rich, psychically fraught colors applied in loose brush strokes that can seem very loose indeed compared to Robert Gordy's tightly delineated canvases upstairs. But her compositions are otherwise somewhat tight once you get used to the surprising exuberance of pigments that seem to revel in their own woozy plasticity. In MISSISSIPPI GODDAM, top, verdant green and brown patches evoke the leafy farms and forests of the South, but those vertical bars and ruptured reds suggest trouble, maybe even oppression, lurking beneath the lush arboreal facade.

CLOSING IN AGAINST THE WEATHER is more claustrophobic, a wavy, net-like mesh of pale pulsating blobs that evoke the work of Philip Guston, as noted in Kathy Rodriguez's thoughtful review in Nola Defender. But, ultimately, I think of the “center cannot hold” in the title, a line popularized in Yeats' Second Coming poem, but later associated with Joan Didion, whose writing was always really about her thought processes, which she somehow made fascinating regardless of her subject. So too are Pickett's paintings fraught with their own inner processes, and it is to her credit that they inspire empathy with their silent visual soliloquies. ~Bookhardt The Center Cannot Hold: Paintings and Drawings by Brooke Pickett, Through Sept 25, Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St., 528.3805; www.cacno.org

Cold Drink Print Invitational at Du Mois

2011-07-24T00:08:00.003-05:00

Who can resist a high art event sponsored by a beer company? Print making is an ancient and noble endeavor going back to at least the 5th century if not before, but the Du Mois Gallery is located in a converted shotgun house on Freret Street, far from the Julia, St. Claude or Magazine Street art districts, and that's a good thing. Artists and galleries are probably the most effective tools for urban renewal known to man, and anything that can make the Freret corridor seem hip and happening is welcome indeed. And if Abita Beer flows at the opening, so much the better. The show itself is a grab bag appropriate to a space with a democratic persona, and if there is no unifying theme, there are at least some intriguing, sometimes thought provoking, works to be seen. Aaron McNamee's GAGA RIG print, above, of a sultry looking Lady Gaga juxtaposed with an offshore oil platform raises questions, like, what's the connection? Beyond the fact that the pop diva's CDs are made from plastic, a petroleum derivative, what this points to is not just the commodification of sex appeal but also the sex appeal of high profit commodities like oil, a big time commodity fetish. A retort of sorts is seen in Julia Samuels' IOWA HAS IT FIGURED OUT, a nearly 8 foot wide relief print like a German expressionist vision of a wind farm replete with spiky turbines and high tension towers amid a spidery web of wires. Techno-pop symbology also appears in Don Maitland's print pastiche of engraved acoustic musical instruments and archaic audio devices punctuated by planes, rockets and razzmatazz in a hieroglyphic scroll of jazz era alchemy, above right (detail). The party continues in Amanda Turpen's SUNDAY DINNER, below left, relief print of some well dressed alligators feasting on a cow carcass in a setting reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's Bloomsbury group in London. And while Freret is in no danger of becoming Bloomsbury anytime soon, the Du Mois Gallery is a step in the right direction. ~Bookhardt
COLD DRINK: Printmaking Invitational Group Exhibition
Through August 6, Du Mois Gallery, 4921 Freret St., 504-818-6032

Lucian Freud Dies at 88

2011-07-21T23:44:00.003-05:00

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Lucian Freud, whose stark and revealing paintings of friends and intimates, splayed nude in his studio, recast the art of portraiture and offered a new approach to figurative art, died on Wednesday night at his home in London. He was 88. Grandson of Sigmund Freud and a brother of the British television personality Clement Freud, was already an important figure in the London art world when, in the postwar years, he embarked on a series of portraits that established him as a potent new voice in figurative art. More>>

Mysock and Fujinami at Ferrara

2011-07-17T00:07:00.005-05:00

WRONG SOUNDING STORIES is one wacky show. Rounding out a season of history-based exhibits, especially in the Julia Street and St. Claude Avenue art districts, Adam Mysock applies his painterly equivalent of genetic engineering to some well known history paintings reworked to feature Abraham Lincoln in a starring role. For instance, his remake of Emanuel Leutze's WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE, is very similar to the original, and his deft brushwork insinuates an “old master” touch, but yes, that's Lincoln's head on Washington's torso. And that vague glint in the distance is a motorcycle doing a wheelie. Okayyyy... Some less famous originals may prove more amenable to this approach. Elihu Vedder's mystical 1863 painting, QUESTIONER OF THE SPHINX, depicts a traveler from the past with his ear pressed to the Sphinx's lips as if awaiting an oracular revelation, only here he has Lincoln's head as mythic dancers cavort around a golden calf in the background. An accompanying Bible quote, “And there was a famine in the land and Abram went down into Egypt...” is typically zany, but not as much as his remake of WHISTLER'S MOTHER with Lincoln dressed a Whistler's mom. While Mysock's nihilistic approach may be liberating in some ways, anything that suggests an attempt to fabricate history may inadvertently put him in the same boat with Rupert Murdoch, Fox News and the Tea Party despite his best philosophical intentions.

Less flashy but no less peculiar are Rieko Fujinami's black and white mixed media portraits in the back gallery. Their gray-black pigments on mottled surfaces Such as REDEMPTION II, above, and LA-JAN-09, below, come across as psychological expressions of inner states as much as, or perhaps more than, actual likenesses, and even the most affable visages exude a wintry Kierkegaardian gravitas, a sense of forbearance in the face of some looming shadowy void. However one interprets either of these artists' current efforts, they both bring an unusual level of technical proficiency to bear on their chosen subject matter, which in turn inspires interest in where they will go from here. ~Bookhardt

WRONG SOUNDING STORIES: Paintings by Adam Mysock; ETERNAL MOMENT: Drawings by Rieko Fujinami, Through July 27, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, 400A Julia St., 522-5471; www.jonathanferraragallery.com

Julie Dermansky's Haiti at the Ogden Museum

2011-07-10T00:10:00.003-05:00

It has been said that “history is written by the victors,” but what if there is too much history and no victors? Last year started with a bang as a huge earthquake hit Haiti and dominated the headlines until the massive Gulf oil spill, and then storms, fires, tsunamis, tornadoes, wars, revolutions and yet more earthquakes, happened in quick succession. Yet the earthquake in Haiti, which shares a common history with New Orleans, was staggering in scope, and this selection of images by Nola-based photographer Julie Dermansky captures not only the overwhelming chaos, but also the extraordinary resilience of the Haitian people. In January of 2010, Dermansky made her way there to try to find an old friend, an arts activist that she later learned had perished in the quake. She remained to document the plight of the Haitian people, and while her images convey the apocalyptic nature of the destruction--in the rubble that is all that remains of the national cathedral, below, the presidential palace and other massive buildings

where mangled human limbs still protruded from the rubble--they also capture the stoic dignity, endurance and irrepressible spirit of the Haitians themselves. Much media disaster coverage tends to be generic and Haiti often appears hopeless, but Dermansky's cool, compassionate eye reveals a remarkably stoic if vivacious people whose true potential has never really been tapped. Yet if these people have endured so much misery for so long and are still capable of hope, who are we to doubt them? ~Bookhardt

On July 13, from 6—8pm, the Ogden will host HAITI: AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE, a panel discussion moderated by WWOZ's George Ingmire. Featuring New Orleans cultural community activists who were there after the quake, the panel includes Dermansky, journalist Michael Deibert, WWOZ's Maryse Déjean, Haitian Association for Human Development president Dr. Yvelyne Germain-MacCarthy, Ogden curator/photographer Richard McCabe, Tekrema Center founder Greer Mendy and Loyola University's Dr. Jean Montés. Call 539-9650 for more information. HAITI AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE: Photographs by Julie Dermansky, Through July 24, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 925 Camp St., 539-9600, www.ogdenmuseum.org

Ancestors of Congo Square at NOMA

2011-07-03T00:09:00.002-05:00

It all goes back to Africa. As the source of so much that makes New Orleans unique among cities, our Afro-Caribbean heritage looms large, but the influence of Africa is also evident in American music, modern art, the history of civilization and even the origin of human DNA itself. So it is really quite surprising that it took the American cultural establishment so long to recognize the importance of African art. Fortunately, the New Orleans Museum of Art, despite its limited resources as a smaller regional institution, was unusually prescient and ahead of the curve. In 1966, NOMA director James Byrnes hired a young African art specialist named William Fagaly to assemble a major collection, and for over four decades, with the encouragement of Byrnes' successor, E. John Bullard, he did just that while making NOMA a leader in the field.

This large and varied ANCESTORS OF CONGO SQUARE expo reflects his discriminating yet relentless efforts, so it may come as a surprise that it was originally planned not as an exhibition but as a book. Many years in the making and produced by London's Scala publishing house, it premiered this past May as a massive 376 page hardback featuring some 225 color illustrations and 48 essays by leading scholars. Since Congo Square was the main locus of this city's African culture long before the museum existed, incorporating it in the title was more than appropriate. After all, Congo Square was the only place in America where slaves and free people of color could gather on Sunday afternoons to celebrate their cultural heritage, which in turn helped make New Orleans what it is today.

That said, there is also no denying the formidable exoticism of such a large exhibition of works based on the spiritual traditions of a place where nature is wildly extravagant. Like the old religions of Europe and Asia, traditional African religion was all about spiritually relating to those natural forces and, in that sense, art and religion were inseparable. Both were about the divine spark that underlies all life forms, and as the great African art scholar Robert Farris Thompson put it, when such an art work is successful, it “transcends ordinary questions about its makeup: it is divine force incarnate.” Because such works embody mystery and reflect forces that transcend our ordinary expectations, they resonate in unexpected ways. To look closely at many of these masks and carvings is to see the origins of some of Matisse and Picasso's most emblematic works even as a spirit mask from C'ote d'Ivoire, top left, appears to have presaged the blank faces of Modigliani's nudes. The pristine geometry of a Congo Mboko figure from Katanga province, above left, suggests the origins of Art Deco while, closer to home, the figures on a memorial staff from Benin, top, strikingly evoke the processionary aura of a Second Line parade. Such visual linkages--including an elaborately beaded Nigerian Yoruba costume, above right, that eerily recalls the Mardi Gras Indian suits shown at NOMA during Prospect.1--are abundant, and it seems safe to say that without those vital influences, both modern art and New Orleans culture would be vastly different, and far less interesting. ~Bookhardt

ANCESTORS OF CONGO SQUARE: African Art in the New Orleans Museum of Art,
Through July 17, New Orleans Museum of Art, City Park, 658-4100; www.noma.org

Cy Twombly, Southern Artist, Dead at 83

2011-07-03T00:01:00.001-05:00

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Cy Twombly/Gagosian GalleryCy Twombly’s “Bacchanalia: Fall (5 Days in November),” from 1977, was part of a show at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London that placed Twombly paintings with works by Nicolas Poussin.

Of the rangy Virginian, the critic Robert Hughes once said he was “the Third Man, a shadowy figure, beside that vivid duumvirate of his friends Jasper Johns (of South Carolina) and Robert Rauschenberg (Louisiana/Texas).” More>>

Why Build a Musical House?

2011-06-30T21:03:00.004-05:00

Swoon's Dithyrambalina, Quarter-Scale Model of the Musical House--Click Image for More

Even before the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans had huge numbers of run down properties and abandoned lots. These symbols of city-wide dysfunction are also the tableau in front of which New Orleans’ rich musical and visual heritage parades and performs. This project is an attempt to redress the futility of this blight by finding within it vast resources of salvageable materials. By turning our salvaged construction into a music box that is free, public and playful, we are inviting the wider community to imagine and participate in a new landscape of potential and possibility.

Grant v. Lee at Good Children Gallery

2011-06-26T00:05:00.001-05:00

It was the great cataclysm of 19th century America, yet the Civil War is a mystery, a miscalculation on both sides that led to unspeakable carnage. Featuring the work of 14 artists from all over, and curated by Sophie Lvoff, this show is less about history and more about the war's psychic legacy as a subtly pervasive influence that still haunts us. For instance, Chris Domenick's CALVARY MONOLOGUES are graphite grave rubbings from Civil War era headstones with memorial inscriptions layered in patterns that evoke the chaos of the war itself--a theme echoed in James Taylor Bonds' painting of battlefield mayhem with Civil War soldiers seemingly joined by haggard youths from later conflicts where the venues changed but the mayhem remained the same. Even so, what stood out about the Civil War was the awful intimacy of battles fought on the combatants' home turf, pitting friends or family against each other. Something of that violent intimacy is evoked by Markus Fiedler's precise beeswax sculpture of a lifesize military knife, or Grant Willing's large photos of knives resting on planks framed by dark forests. Katherine Wolkoff's large color photograph of a human-size hollow in high weeds, top, suggests the imprint of a fallen body, an eerily pastoral touch reinforced by Paul Mpage Sepuya's psychically fraught photographs of his Louisiana aunt's rural home.

Erik Kiesewetter's digital images of darkly distressed paper with boldface type announcing IT WAS NO RIOT—IT WAS A MASSACRE, top left, recall the turmoil of the times even as Rachel Jones' line drawings of Civil War soldiers, above, whimsically portray the perpetrators/victims of the carnage. Most whimsical of all is Nina Schwanse's video of herself as two drag queens acting out the roles of Grant and Lee in a bitch fight that either trivializes the conflict, or illustrates how it still pervades American life--in a show that is either thoughtfully subtle or overly vague, depending, like everything else about the war, on your perspective. ~Bookhardt

GRANT V. LEE: Group Show of Contemporary Works Related to the Civil War, Through July 3, Good Children Gallery, 4037 St. Claude Ave., 616-7427; www.goodchildrengallery.com

Newton's History of the Land at Staple Goods Gallery; An American Memory at Fair Folks and a Goat

2011-06-19T00:10:00.003-05:00

Conceptual art means many things to many people. At its worst, it is the last refuge of the uninspired, but when it works it allows us to see the world anew. In this Staple Goods expo, Nola-based artist Lake Newton presents iconic images and objects that reflect the encounters we all have with everyday places and things, only here they resonate in unexpected ways. WEST POINT, MISSISSIPPI, top, is a photograph of a window studded with raindrops, but the image is reversed so the drops seem to almost ooze from within the glass. In this slight departure from purely documentary practice, a relatively minor intervention brings a vertiginous "through the looking glass" quality to an image that might otherwise reprise a common cinematic cliche. In another, below right, a closely cropped documentary shot of the cracked, raised outline of a hand tossing a cup as it appears on a trash can in a fast food restaurant, evokes the humid grittiness of the place while seeming as mysterious as Egyptian hieroglyphics. A related sense of mystery is echoed in a baroque blob of melted lead left by a burned car encountered in rural Louisiana and relocated to the gallery wall. The photographs, in particular, reflect Newton's view of the artist as "as an author who--on the basis of facts and by means of a minimal shift of perception--creates a fiction in close proximity to reality. In the best case, an artist describes not only the situation and objects, but endows them as well with a deeper meaning and lets them transcend themselves with a disturbing and visceral force. This is a powerful trait of art as it deprives us of convictions and poses more questions than it answers." In these works Newton eloquently extracts maximal poetic content from his minimal prosaic subjects.

The artists in AN AMERICAN MEMORY explore the loose ends that historical imperatives like Manifest Destiny leave in their wake. Here Hanna Chalew's meticulous cut paper recreations of charmingly blighted Nola cityscapes, above, complement Georgia Kennedy's series of box sculptures that redeploy the “golden spike” symbol of the railroads' conquest of the continent to suggest more ironic or intimate scenarios. Siobhan Feehan and Philip Jordan's text and image celebrations of figures as varied as Jane Jacobs and Billy the Kid complement James Taylor Bonds' whimsical portraits, bottom, of the outsiders who got caught up in history rather than leading it. Or as curator Michael Martin puts it: “The reflexive relationships that the American people have with America ultimately shape the landscapes we inhabit. Each artist brings their own experience with America to their work and as a result adds to the dynamism that is this country.” All of which intimates a vision that is more incidental, more human and less monumental, than Manifest Destiny or any of the grand narratives of the history books. ~Bookhardt

HISTORY OF THE LAND: Mixed Media Works by Lake Newton, Through July 3, Staple Goods Art Gallery, 1340 St. Roch Ave., 940-5771, www.scadnola.com/index.php?view=details&id=144:history-of-land
AN AMERICAN MEMORY: Group Exhibition Curated by Michael Martin, Through July 15, Fair Folks & A Goat Gallery, 2116 Chartres St. 872-9260, www.fairfolksandagoat.com/c/places/new_orleans

Swoon's Thalassa at NOMA

2011-06-12T12:58:00.002-05:00

The opening was a vast populist affair as legions of cognoscenti, including thundering hordes of art and music-crazed twenty-somethings, descended on the New Orleans Museum of Art for the opening of Swoon's encompassing paper sculpture Thalassa in the Great Hall. During the past three years, Daytona-born, New York based Swoon developed a close relationship with New Orleans and several Nola artists. In 2008, she began wheat-pasting her paper cutouts on walls in the Bywater neighborhood. Since then, she's been involved in a collaboration with the New Orleans Airlift (dedicated to the cross-pollination of artistic ideas between New Orleans and other countries) on the creation of a musical arts venue and house in the Bywater called Dithyrambalina.

Swoon is internationally famous for her large-scale paper cutouts which she wheat pastes on the exteriors of buildings. Her work often depicts portraits of families, friends, and residents of local neighborhoods performing everyday activities such as working, cycling, or sitting on stoops. As an artist working extensively in prints and cutouts, she takes inspiration from vintage German Expressionism as well as Indonesian shadow puppetry. In 2005 she began displaying her installations in gallery settings in addition to her outdoor installations.

(Thalassa was made possible by support from The Joan Mitchell Center, the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, and Charles L. Whited, Jr.)

Hansen and Sauer at LeMieux

2011-06-12T00:04:00.000-05:00

Click Images to Expand

Once, not so long ago, in places like Chalmette, Marrero or even parts of Gentilly, local lawns were miraculous places. There, on expanses of St. Augustine grass guarded by concrete gnomes and lawn jockeys, Virgin Marys routinely appeared amid stoic pink flamingos, colorful mirror balls and fanciful mosaic shrines cobbled from broken crockery. Changing tastes and Katrina's tidal surge swept much of it away, but all is not lost. The quest for kitsch is so deeply ingrained in our DNA that it's only natural for artists to heed the call, and Shannon Landis Hansen has transformed LeMieux into a near-psychedelic cornucopia of tchotchkes taken to the next level. For instance, WITHOUT A NET, above left, is a fully functional reprise of one of those fabulous fifties suburban kitsch lamps taken to diabolical extremes with masked, insanely contorted ballet dancers surrounded by a maze of ceramic shards, creepy clowns and fairytale figures in manic, hallucinatory clusters. Likewise, her RED CHAIR, bottom evokes a freakout at a Chinatown souvenir factory with ceramic mandarins, dragons and the like sprouting from crimson brocade on an actual chair that all but dares you to sit on it. More arts-for-arts-sake is A SHATTERING NOTE, top, as ceramic fragments appear reworked into a wacko wall sculpture that takes iconic kitsch to a Shangri-La level of cosmic irony where Wedgewood meets John Waters. Impressive stuff.

Christine Sauer's rather cellular looking fabric constructions are iconic in their own quiet way, with works in her CLUSTER series suggesting microscopic blowups of overlapping cell structures rendered as intricately stitched tapestries. The colors and needlework recall Central and Eastern European—especially Russian (think decorated Easter eggs)--folk arts, with hints of Native American bead work, but the cellular patterns appear universal, and there is an almost metaphysical sensibility of the micro and the macro, the earthly and the cosmic. Similarly, EMERGE/SUBMERGE (detail, above) transforms patterning that might be merely decorative into a wall hanging so contemplative that it borders on the mystical. The subtly, if intricately, haunting quality of many of these works makes for an auspicious return of Christine Sauer to the Julia Street gallery scene. ~Bookhardt

BREAKING MUSE: Ceramic Assemblages by Shannon Landis Hansen
TEXTILE CONSTRUCTIONS: Fabric Art by Christine Sauer
Through July 30
LeMieux Galleries, 332 Julia St., 522.5988; www.lemieuxgalleries.com

Historia Del Futuro at the Newcomb Gallery; Synthesis: Mixed Media Photographs at the Darkroom

2011-06-05T00:35:00.000-05:00

Portentously titled LA HISTORIA DEL FUTURO, or "The History of the Future," this stark exhibition of photographs by Michael Berman and Julián Cardona is billed as "focusing on the wild places in the desert southwest and the people crossing these lands at the U.S./Mexico border." Its implicit message--that the Mexicans are not only coming, but will keep on coming--is fraught with perplexities best left for discussion elsewhere. What we see here are stark black and white documentary photographs, mostly of Mexicans in dire straits amid landscapes so desolate as to make Death Valley look inviting. Indeed, the threat of death is inescapable as they endure 40 mile marches across blazing circuitous wastes for the privilege of working at tasks so numbing they don't even tempt our long term unemployed. Although generally in the social documentary vein of the 1930s WPA photographers, the drama here is mostly cumulative as images of new wayfarers lighting votive candles in a church (top, Julian Cardona) yield to panoramas of heat, dust, bones and privation such as Michael Berman's VOPOKI WASH, ARIZONA, above left, suggesting that vast stretches of our Mexican border, and those who cross it, occupy the far reaches of Hades, and we can only contemplate with wonder and dread the desperation of those who feel compelled to undertake such ordeals. Surely there must be a better alternative.

A very different approach appears at the Darkroom, in this SYNTHESIS expo of images derived from alternative photographic processes. What is documented here are psychic states expressed in works such as Terry DeRoche's palimpsest blowup of a 1968 Polaroid family portrait with superimposed handwritten commentaries, above, or Ann Schwab's deadpan-poetic self portrait with thread and botanical specimens or Leah MacDonald's hyper-painterly encaustic on silver print, FRUIT, right (all of which were eloquently complemented by the rather psychodramatic BETWEEN FATEFUL AND FORLORN show--featuring impressionistic work like Ann George's neo-Victorian OBEDIENCE AND THE GIFTS, below--at the nearby Photo Alliance Gallery through June 5th). Sadly, this is the Darkroom's final exhibit as this important local institution suspends operations this month. It will be sorely missed. ~Bookhardt

LA HISTORIA DEL FUTURO: Photographs by Michael Berman and Julián Cardona, Through June, Newcomb Art Gallery, Tulane University, 865-5328; www.tulane.edu/~newcomb/artindex.html
SYNTHESIS: Mixed Media Photography, Through June (by appointment), The Darkroom, 1927 Sophie Wright Place, 522-3211; www.neworleansdarkroom.com
New Orleans Photo Alliance Gallery, 1111 St. Mary Street, 610-4899; www.neworleansphotoalliance.org

Barsness and Gunning at Roger; Flisiuk at Barrister's

2011-05-29T00:06:00.002-05:00

Click to Enlarge

James Barsness is an amazing painter, but his artistic vision is so quirky it's almost cryptic. Here the world's myths and religions are intricately woven into convoluted painterly mashups that suggest a psychedelic cartoon version of the Gnostic Gospels --or the Bhagavad Gita in works like HANUMAN'S RESCUE, above, where the Hindu monkey god occupies a compositional mosh pit with elephants and metaphysically suspect characters. If Barsness' bravura way with paint draws you in, his perverse nihilism may creep you out; WEIGHT LOSS JESUS depicts humanity's savior looking fey and peaked as pervy mutants do weirdo pervy mutant dances on and around his supine form, while in ADAM AND EVE the Garden of Eden looks more like Br'er Rabbit's proverbial briar patch as more pervy mutants and a serpent wearing horn-rim glasses cavort through the thicket like demons on doomsday. Ultimately, all we can really say is that, while it's hard to fathom exactly what Barsness is doing, we can probably conclude with some certitude that he does it very well.

When it comes to sheer weirdness, the only currently available comparison can be found in Marcel Flisiuk's paintings at Barrister's. They may also creep you out, but at least he doesn't mess with religions, focusing instead on Nola as it appears to his peculiar Polish expat sensibilities. Imagine a Franz Kafka version of the French Quarter populated by golems and gremlins, and you've got the general idea. For instance, JAMMED, left, his vision of Vieux Carre streets clogged with blocky vehicles and zombie drivers, suggests a futurist nightmare by a Creole Stanislaw Lem. And then there's his his hallucinatory CITY OF EDEN painting of a dystopian Nola cityscape, above, a strangely complex work by an artist whose novel vision is more idiosyncratic than most.

Back at Arthur Roger, Simon Gunning's paintings and drawings look picturesque, but they also withstand deeper scrutiny because he has, over time, mastered the rendering of how varieties of light interact with local waters and the life forms they engender. Throw in the massive, sometimes moldering, industries along the river and it's an exotic mix that pushes beyond the limits of literal realism, and indeed it is hard to think of any artists today who display a more lucid way with the dynamics of sea, sun, and occasional incandescence, as they appear in this swampy coastal region. ~Bookhardt
POSTCARDS FROM PLAQUEMINES: Paintings and Drawings by Simon Gunning; PAINTINGS: New Paintings by James Barsness, Through June 25, Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia St. 522-1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com
NEW WORK: New Paintings by Marcel Flisiuk Through June 11, Barrister's Gallery, 2331 St. Claude Ave, 710-4506; www.barristersgallery.com

Goldfinch, Lindsley and Shaw at Du Mois

2011-05-22T00:04:00.000-05:00

Our Lady of Temptation by Jessica Goldfinch

When Samuel Johnson said "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel," he wasn't rebuking actual patriots, just opportunists hiding behind the flag. Symbols and icons have always been, well, iconic, and Jesse Shaw takes them on in linoleum block prints such as his WAR ON TERROR, left, a kind of ballistic-expressionist freak show with masked jihadists, Abu Ghraib inmates, Osama bin Laden and oil barrels orbiting around a Cheneyesque figure clutching a gas nozzle like a weapon. In less skillful hands this could seem sophomoric, but Shaw has a keen killer instinct and wields a sharp linoleum knife as we see in his AMERICAN RELIGION depiction of apocalyptic conditions as televangelist types in suits spew filth from every orifice, while AMERICAN SPORT (detail below) is a kind of bestiary where race horses and fighting cocks compete for attention with female body builders striking poses in baroque graphical grottoes festooned with performance enhancing pills, syringes and extruded clitoro-penile filigree as superheroic boxers beat each other to a pulp and race cars blast off into oblivion. In this show, Shaw skewers everything from consumerism and the military to sports and funeral parlors in densely patterned prints so acerbic they make George Grosz look like a piker. (Click images to expand.)

American Sport (detail) by Jesse Shaw

Jessica Goldfinch tweaks iconic figures by emphasizing their human aspect in a series of small paintings and Shrinky-Dink icons that imbue mythic symbols with human frailties. So OUR LADY OF TEMPTATION features a Madonna with a fiery Sacred Heart that is actually an apple with an unusually anatomical core, top, but her ALLEGORY EMPTIED Shrinky Dink icon, left, is mythic with a twist as a blindfolded classical female water bearer with a serpentine abdominal scar empties her amphora into the void. SACRED HEART OF THE SELF CONTAINED looks almost normal until you see the little serpents writhing amid an anatomical tangle of blood vessels. Others update baroque and classical imagery with tattoos or cutaway anatomical views in an investigation of the archetypes that we ordinarily take for granted--at least until Goldfinch recasts them in a new light. All this is complemented by J. David Lindsley's sculptures such as RESTRAINT, below, in which a couple of life size cast glass arms wrapped in barbed wire effectively evoke the passionate, if not always coherent, protests gripping the world today. What all three artists convey is a sense that symbols not only matter but should be subjected to a healthy dose of skepticism lest the demagogues among us subvert them to their own dubious agendas. ~Bookhardt

SOME RESTRICTIONS MAY APPLY: Work by Jessica Goldfinch, J. David Lindsley and Jesse Shaw, Through June 5, Du Mois Gallery, 4921 Freret St., 818-6032

Louviere + Vanessa at A Gallery for Fine Photography; Dan Tague at the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery

2011-05-15T00:10:00.005-05:00

Money ain't what it used to be. But then, it probably never was. Like love or health, it is never adequate unless there is enough of it, so perhaps it's no surprise that at least a few artists are making their own and incorporating it in their work. Marrero native Dan Tague reworks paper currency into ironic social commentaries in prints comprised of dollar bills that have been maniacally folded and flattened so the words are scrambled into phrases like Reality Sucks or even We Need a Revolution, above left, to create a whole new genre: radical monetary origami. Here convoluted textures and precise execution transform prints that might have been merely stunt-like into visual poetry with a punch line. Most of the other works--for instance a large, rather slapdash, mostly black and white painting of the famous image of the Marines raising Old Glory at Iwo Jima titled Corporate Reality--are more glibly typical of his “epater la bourgeoisie” provocation mode. Whatever. More thoughtfully ironic is his The Revolution Will Be Tweeted remake of an old Mao-era poster of the beaming Chairman hovering over a cadre of Revolutionary Guards waving smart phones instead of Red Books, bottom, but his currency series is still the main attraction here. It even became a self-fulfilling prophesy when collectors, including the Whitney Museum, bought some. So there you have it: do-it-yourself dollars. What could be more American than that?

Iconoclastic local artists Louviere + Vanessa employ currency as “objets trouves” in their large photographic mixed media prints in this Counterfeit show, distilling the aesthetic content of the engravings found on the paper money of faraway places in works like His Eyes Crashed Upon the Frightened Shore, top, in which the tiny engraved head of a Bengal tiger from an Indian banknote appears vastly enlarged. Ditto The Stampede Toward Death Left Life Feeling Low, above, a kind of revolutionary scene imprinted with institutionalized anarchic passions. Printed on gold leaf, these works look more luminous than glitzy, with cracked and pigmented patinas suggesting the effects of time and abrasion in images that seem to glow with an eerie inner light. Daguerreotypes employed silver to achieve similar effects, and these works seem equivalently alchemical, both technically and poetically. Not content with international currency manipulation, Louviere + Vanessa have given us a whole new approach to the gold standard. ~Bookhardt

COUNTERFEIT: Mixed Media Photographic Works by by Louviere + Vanessa Through June 30, A Gallery For Fine Photography, 241 Chartres St., 568-1313; www.agallery.com
MAY I HAVE A REVOLUTION PLEASE: New Works by Dan Tague Through June 1, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, 400A Julia St., 522-5471; www.jonathanferraragallery.com

Odd Twists at the Ogden Museum: The Unhappy Pairing of Walter Anderson and John Alexander

2011-05-08T01:15:00.024-05:00

One of the most admirable things about the Ogden Museum was always its insightful way of presenting artists in a context that revealed how they were influenced by—and influenced-- their surroundings. Or at least, such was the case until it staged this infelicitous dual exhibition of Walter Anderson and John Alexander. Despite related origins and subject matter, it is hard to imagine two more disparate and less complementary artists. Born in New Orleans in 1903, Walter Inglis Anderson evolved into a hermit in Ocean Springs, MS, spending long stretches of time communing with nature on uninhabited Horn Island in the Gulf of Mexico. A solitary mystic with an artistic vision as singularly ethereal as Van Gogh's, he once walked across China to Tibet in the middle of Mao Zedong's revolution. He had a psychically complex personality that caused him to shun not only the limelight in particular but people in general, yet he had a profound empathy for wild creatures in their native environment, which he painted in prismatic watercolors that seemed to tap into the luminous subliminal patterning of a living and breathing universe, a world of pulsating ambient energies manifest as color and light. All this presents a stark contrast to John Alexander.

Born in Beaumont, Texas, in 1945, John Alexander moved to New York in 1979. Once a neoexpressionist, he now considers himself a naturalist, a painter of decorative conversation pieces like the ones seen here. Instead of wild world mysticism, he gives us something more like an afternoon at an upscale zoo, including an occasional wine glass in his animal compositions, above, or even the cross-dressing monkey below--one of the more extreme examples of animal studies that tend toward the anthropocentric. Even his more conventional renderings of birds and other critters sport quasi-cartoonish expressions, causing them to resemble recent escapees from classical children's stories like Wind in the Willows and, taken in isolation, there is of course nothing wrong with that.

Walter Anderson also did occasional illustrations for fanciful stories, but the difference is that when he tried to be decorative his results were often transcendental if not mystical, whereas Alexander comes across as glib even when he's trying to be serious. Worse, his extroverted canvasses can overwhelm this rather muted selection of Andersons, a group that includes many small watercolors on typewriter paper like the blue crab and thistle, top, or the snake at left, so it's like trying to hear a soft spoken poet above the din of a noisy cocktail party. But Alexander has overreached before. He once scored a retrospective at the Smithsonian only to receive scathing reviews like the one in the Washington Post titled The Overripe Fruit of John Alexander's Labors. And then, when it traveled to Texas, the Houston Press billed it: Alexander the Mediocre. This too stands in stark contrast to Walter Anderson who, during the centennial of his birth in 2003 was given a justly deserved and long overdue Smithsonian retrospective that received rave reviews from the Washington Post, which compared him to Vincent Van Gogh and John Marin (although the American psychedelic transcendentalist Charles Burchfield might have been the most appropriate analog of all).

Despite all that, a better contextualized Alexander show at the Ogden might have made sense had he been paired with someone like Dallas artist David Bates, who, while a better, more sensitive and consistent painter, shares a related interest in nature and expressionistic brush strokes. Or even the opportunistic and facile “father of Texas painting,” Julian Onderdonk, famous for his late 19th and early 20th century landscapes overflowing with bluebonnets--the Texas state flower-- like toast overladen with blueberry jam, in an appeal to Lone Star state patriotism that must have been highly effective as a marketing strategy. But Walter Anderson? The Van Gogh of the Gulf? No. There is no way that makes any sense at all. Both Henri Matisse and George Rodrigue, the Blue Dog artist, occasionally painted figures in landscapes, but that doesn't mean they would benefit from being exhibited together. The same, unfortunately, holds true here. ~Bookhardt

Father Mississippi by Walter Anderson, 1963

ONE WORLD, TWO ARTISTS: Works by John Alexander and Walter Anderson, Through July 24, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 925 Camp St., 539-9600; www.ogdenmuseum.org

Hypothetical Development: Rendering the Implausible

2011-05-01T00:12:00.000-05:00

We have all seen the signs. They depict bold, soaring new structures soon to arise from desolate sites. Most never happen. Among the more notorious was the shining Buck Rogers facade of the Trump condo tower that eventually vanished like a mirage, as did many others. Some cratered in the real estate crash, but others were pipe dreams from the start, the entrepreneurial equivalents of poetic license. Elaborate exercises in futility, they did however inspire a new civic enterprise, the Hypothetical Development Organization, which takes development to the next level by designing projects that everyone knows in advance will never happen. That eliminates the awful ritual of getting people's hopes up only to have them dashed yet again. Instead, these apocryphal projects serve an uplifting purpose by existing only in the imagination, which is actually all professional real estate developers give us anyway, only their visionary exercises are hopelessly hobbled by having to appeal to financial backers and bean counters without a poetic bone in their bodies. Unfettered by fiscal gravitas, these hypothetical developments exist on the more ethereal level of thought forms that appeal to, or even challenge, our collective urban imagination. So here a ghostly CBD building becomes a glossy, mirror glass-clad “Museum of The Self,” bottom, where a familiar sculptural “thumbs up” icon on the facade inspires passing Facebook users to instantly “like” what they see. A theatrical facade on lower Magazine serves as a “Loitering Center” in counterpoint to all those “no loitering” zones about town.

There is even a “Theater of Escape,” top, offering to transport travelers to imaginary realms via certifiably nonexistent technologies. Such services aren't cheap, but consumers can cash in their karma at “Karmalot,” above, which looks like a futuristic storefront from hell. Unlike most ordinary buildings, hypothetical developments arise from the inner landscape of those poets and dreamers who meander aimlessly on foot or bicycle, or gaze sagely through the windows of streetcars at structures only they can see. ~Bookhardt

HYPOTHETICAL DEVELOPMENTS: Renderings of Improbable Architecture, Through May 7
Du Mois Gallery, 4921 Freret St., 818-6032; www.hypotheticaldevelopment.com

Ferguson, Michel, Windish and Traviesa at the Front

2011-04-24T00:08:00.002-05:00

These days you never know what you're going to see on St. Claude Avenue. That was always true—it's always been a little strange—but it's doubly true now that it is an arts district. Lala Rascic's black light installation at Good Children looks cryptic but proved a fertile setting for her recent, and startlingly effective, “lecture performance” on Bosnia as the last refuge of the Homeric epic tradition. Across the street at the Front there are some animal family album photographs, extraterrestrial fashions, and photographs of “random moments within the built environment.” Andrea Ferguson's FAMILY OF MANIMALS are cutely surreal images of animal headed critters in human garb posed as figures in old family albums and the like, printed on cross-sections of tree trunks. Rendered in sepia, they are oddly engaging. Nearby, Brooklyn-based Vashti Windish and Cameron Michel's collages evoke old time psychedelic Tantric-baroque space odysseys with matching fashions, top, from the Lysithean Order, a tribe that they say lives on one of Jupiter's moons where these tunics and accessories are worn by young Lysitheans during rites of passage as they mutate into orbs of light, which must really be something to see. All of which may help atone, if only briefly, for the loss of some cosmic murals at the Saturn Bar down the street that were tragically destroyed by a fire a few years back. Always a melting pot, St. Claude has struggled since Katrina to maintain its extraterrestrial heritage and shows like this can only help.

Back on earth, Jonathan Traviesa takes us on a photographic meander through natural and unnatural marvels including some industrial teepees erected on mysterious mountains and a facsimile of Mt. Rushmore in suburbia. More natural are some massive exposed tree roots, above, labyrinthine botanical structures that look almost extraterrestrial and suggest that planet earth may be home to the strangest life forms of all. ~Bookhardt
FAMILY OF MANIMALS: Mixed Media Constructions by Andrea Ferguson
ARTICLES OF THE LYSITHEAN ORDER: New Work by Cameron Michel and Vashti Windish
BEACONS ABOUND: New Photographs by Jonathan Traviesa, Through May 8, The Front, 4100 St. Claude Ave., 920-3980; www.nolafront.org

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Bedsole at Bienvenu; Butter at Barrister's

2011-04-17T00:07:00.002-05:00

Raine Bedsole once stumbled upon a fleet of derelict WWII Navy vessels moored along the Tensaw River in Alabama. Surrounded by dense fog, they looked ghostly, like massive memories suspended in ether. Now Bedsole makes her own vessels, but hers are far smaller. Like spindly canoes or kayaks clad in paper in the form of old photos, children's drawings, scraps of antique maps, ledgers and engravings, they comprise a skein of dreams or a litany of lost moments from the everyday lives of the past. Lit from above and casting portentous shadows, some glow like Japanese lanterns. The ancient Egyptians used to send their deceased away in boats that were guided across the heavens by Anubis, the dog god, but elsewhere it was birds that embodied the spirits of the departed. On the back wall of the gallery there is a pair of large wings that, like the boats, are made up of prosaic paper scraps from the past. Here the spirits of the departed may have taken flight, but every boat carries a contemplative cargo of dreams, memories and misplaced moments.

Lillian Butter's paintings and drawings at Barrister's are all about the lifestyle of a certain subculture of pierced and tattooed wanderers who locally cluster in the St. Roch neighborhood. As expressionistic as anything by George Grosz, the works on view seem to reflect the musings of a fantastic and tortuous imagination—or so we thought until her subjects showed up en masse at her opening, revealing once and for all that Butter is actually a realist. Either way, this Canadian punkster who divides her time between Toronto and Nola is a talented artist as well as the recording angel of a particular milieu. What Toulouse-Lautrec was to the Paris demimonde of the past, Butter is to the St. Roch subculture of the present.

GHOST FLEET: Sculpture and Works on Paper by Raine Bedsole, Through May 22, Gallery Bienvenu, 518 Julia St., 525-0518; www.gallerybienvenu.com
LOST LITTLE GIRL'S ART SHOW: Paintings and Drawings by Lillian Butler, Through May 7, Barrister's Gallery, 2331 St. Claude Ave, 710-4506; www.barristersgallery.com

Jurisich and Forbes at Ferrara

2011-04-10T00:36:00.004-05:00

In previous times, writers like Joan Didion and Walker Percy anticipated a looming disintegration of American life and culture that never quite came to pass. What we got instead was global warming and the natural and technological disasters we have come to know all too well. Hurricanes, floods and oil spills have had a bracing effect on the art of Krista Jurasich, whose flair for reconfiguring chaos into distinctive collages and mixed media concoctions is evident in works like Round Town, top, even as she takes a socially critical turn in works like Pass the Buck (Hell Money), left. Here the eyes of corporate and institutional agencies are everywhere, but the clowns of chaos run rampant as monetary malfeasance and militant idiocy go high tech and ordinary folks have to scramble just to keep up. Similarly, Dipstick /Slick depicts a kind of Aquarium of the Americas scene where deep sea monsters, test tubes, corporate clowns and consumer products share space with the fish. These works comprise an eloquent sequel to Jurisich's pictorial quilt-like tapestries inspired by the post-Katrina flood devastation and the subsequent resurrection of the city and its culture while suggesting that states of emergency may be becoming the new American way of life.

Although every New Orleanian experienced a Katrina odyssey of sorts, Justin Forbes lived first hand what many only saw on TV. After long days in the Superdome, he and his girlfriend ended up in Denton, Texas, where they made a new life and got “right with God.” If his pre-K paintings resembled an insider's view of hipster life not unlike a localized update of Jack Kerouac's ON THE ROAD, the work in this new show is similar yet somehow different. The crazies and riffraff that populate his paintings are much the same, but it no longer feels like an insider perspective. Here a sense of new beginnings is palpable, and it will be interesting to see where this new odyssey takes him. ~Bookhardt

The Theatre of Cultural Strata: Mixed Media Works by Krista Jurisich, Through May 2
Halcyon Days: Paintings by Justin Forbes, Through May 8
Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, 400A Julia St., 522-5471; www.jonathanferraragallery.com

Then & Now at the Contemporary Arts Center

2011-04-03T01:41:00.004-05:00

Konsa by Keith Sonnier--Click Images to Expand

In the mid-1970s a group of local artists had an idea: why not stage an art show in an underutilized old building and throw a party with live music at the opening? So they did just that and a grand time was had by all. One thing led to another and in 1976 the Contemporary Arts Center was born in a huge old warehouse donated by Sidney Besthoff. Flash forward 35 years and much has changed. Most of the artists are still around, the old warehouse is all spiffed up, and the CAC is part of the establishment. Then and Now, curated by Dan Cameron, explores what remains and what has changed in the art and artists that defined the Center's funky but fertile early years.

CAC co-founder and proto-conceptual artist Robert Tannen's new piece is an electric clothes dryer filled with house-shaped blocks of wood. Turn it on and it roars like a hurricane. An earlier 54 foot long hammock-like concoction made from steel and aluminum panels, above--was more hopeful, a bridge for spanning expanses of the imagination, but his Zen-like modus operandi is much the same.

Similarly, in Douglas Bourgeois' recent work his subjects are as exotic as they were in his funky 1978 Twilight High painting of students in an imaginary Cajun high school yearbook, only now they're rendered in the dazzling style of a renaissance master on mushrooms as we see in Iko Ikon, above. Robert Warrens, Jim Richard and Clifton Webb remain true to imagism, and in the work of Wayne Amedee, Dawn Dedeaux, George Dureau (Ali, below left), Lin Emery, Gene Koss, Martin Payton, and Elizabeth Shannon (Raft of the Medusa in Drydock, below), evolutionary refinement amid continuity prevails.

Lynda Benglis's elegant knots are still elegantly knotty, and Keith Sonnier's 2009 neon sculpture, Konsa, top, may be even more true to his baroque Louisiana roots than his work of the late 1960s was when he and Benglis melted the hard edges off minimalism and launched postminimalism on the world art map. ~Bookhardt

THEN AND NOW: 35th Anniversary Exhibition of Works by 14 Artists, Through June 12
Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St., 528-3805; www.cacno.org

Automata at the Ironworks, April 2, 2011

2011-04-03T00:04:00.009-05:00

Dawn Dedeaux and Troy Dugas at Arthur Roger

2011-03-27T00:09:00.001-05:00

The objects on view are all too familiar, though not necessarily reassuring. Wrecking balls, ladders and water, lots of water, have no end of troubling associations and not just for us. Those same symbols also resonate in the wake of the recent horrific flooding in Japan, but in this UNSEEN expo, they attain an eerie quality of detachment. A wrecking ball hanging from a huge chain evokes an oracular omen of sorts, while some ghostly ladders crafted from clear Lucite suggest platonic or even semi-celestial forms. The severed links of some anchor chains lying on, or rising from, the floor are also tipped with clear Lucite in an intimation of dense matter suddenly transformed into something more like light. This near metaphysical mixing of metaphors is especially evident in some glass cylinders with photographic portraits—headshots—seemingly fused into the glass. Filled with water, which functions like a distortion lens, they have an eerily undulating quality, yet their slightly bewildered expressions dispel the more obvious associations of drowning in favor of something more otherworldly. Like the other works, they intimate mortality while touching on mystery, as if beyond the turmoil of the unspeakable there lies the possibility of wonder, or perhaps even grace.

In the art world, product labels are ordinarily the realm of pop art, which at its best provides wry social commentary while making banality seem like fun. In the hands of Acadiana artist Troy Dugas, however, they morph into strange tapestries and marvelous mandalas that come across as ethereal if not mystical. FLAME #2, below, evokes the sacred pyres of the Zoroastrians, and only up close does it become clear that it was cobbled from shredded labels. Others recall the intricate sacred arabesques of the Sufis, Hindus, or even the symbolism of the Kabala, in a graphical iteration of the medieval alchemists attempts to transform lead into gold, only here banality is transmuted into beauty, and beyond. ~Bookhardt

UNSEEN: Sculpture and Photography by Dawn Dedeaux, RECENT WORK: Mixed Media Collages by Troy Dugas Through April 16, Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia St., 522-1999, www.arthurrogergallery.com

Mhire at Martine Chaisson, Szczesny at Octavia

2011-03-20T00:15:00.002-05:00

Herman Mhire had produced over 200 exhibitions by the time he retired from his post as Director of the Art Museum of the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, in 2005. He was a Distinguished Professor of the Visual Arts and a founder of the Festival International de Louisiane, and in 2004 France named him a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. So one wonders, when viewing his large photographic portraits at Martine Chaisson, how he got so over the top. He did not deny that these portraits of well-known Acadiana artists resembled the art of the insane, but told us he took up Photoshop a few years ago after a series of unsettling events caused him to want to immerse himself in something new. Formerly an exponent of an ethereal photographic classicism, his new approach is like a classical pianist suddenly switching to death metal. So KELLY 2 becomes a horned demon with a goatee; RALPH 3, right, is a human hedgehog with swirling vortexes for facial features, LYNDA 2, left, a Rorschach blot wearing lipstick, and in FRANCIS 3, top, Francis Pavy is a glowing psychedelic avocado. A surprisingly effective outburst of digital Dadaism, this is what can happen when an elegant eye takes a walk on the wild side.

Stefan Szczesny started out in Germany's Junge Wilde or "Wild Youth" movement of the 1970s, which later evolved into Neoexpressionism, but today the Bavaria native lives in St. Tropez after following a wanderlust that took him to the Caribbean and other exotic places. These lush and breezy EARTHLY PARADISE tableaux recall Matisse in Nice or Paul Ninas in Martinique, and can be seductive for the way they capture the curiously feminine allure of those balmy climes where sea breezes caress the senses and even danger is cloaked in a subtly lulling aesthetic. Needless to say, they look right at home in New Orleans. ~Bookhardt
ALTERED STATES: New Work by Herman Mhire, Through April 23
Martine Chaisson Gallery, 727 Camp St., 304-7942; www.martinechaissongallery.com
AN EARTHLY PARADISE: New Work by Stefan Szczesny, Through March 26
Octavia Art Gallery, 4532 Magazine St., 309-4249; www.octaviaartgallery.com

Josh Cohen Kinetic Sound Sculpture at Trouser House

2011-03-13T00:03:00.000-06:00

Borgerding at Bienvenu; Sierra and Farranto at Coup

2011-03-13T00:01:00.000-06:00

David Borgerding's finely crafted metal sculptures may resonate differently with different viewers. To some, they may look cellular. Living creatures are made up of cells, after all, including us. Borgerding's just happen to be several feet long and as finely made as aircraft components, leapfrogging our evolution from primal ooze to the space shuttle. But the cells and armatures of works like AELU, SUPO or ADAWA can also appear mantis-like, as if sleekly elegant insects had evolved on metallic asteroids somewhere in the depths of outer space. Like the surrealist Joan Miro before him, Borgerding can return the mind of the viewer to the shadowy depths of inner space.

Paulina Sierra's sculptures deal with space and form in ways that are familiar yet spooky. In one, a bit of florid lace stocking conforms to the shape of a delicate female foot but is empty of flesh, and the effect is about as ornately ghostly as a recently shed snakeskin. That sense of emptiness within presence also appears in a life-size table set with a cup and saucer. There is also a chair, but like the cup and saucer and even the table itself, this is a gauzy lace concoction crystallized into a chair through a space-age hardening agent. An old claw foot bathtub, accompanied by a bottle and wine glasses, offers warmth, relaxation and solace. Sagging under the weight of its gossamer filaments, it occupies a world of tangible auras where absence is suggested by presence in much the way that the scent of perfume on a pillow lingers like an afterimage. Ghostly too are Emily Ferranto's paintings in the adjacent chamber. Some are more fully realized than others, but in one a swimming pool shimmers with a quality of light that is as warm and inviting as it is elusive. Here the rays of a distant sun come to rest in a pleasantly diffuse and lightly chlorinated evocation of the infinite. ~Bookhardt

RECENT SCULPTURE: Bronzes and Stainless Steel Works by David Borgerding, Through March 28
Gallery Bienvenu 518 Julia St., 525-0518; www.gallerybienvenu.com
INTIMATE TOPOGRAPHIES: Sculpture by Paulina Sierra; SLOWNESS: Paintings by Emily Farranto, Through March 19; Coup d' Oeil Art Gallery, 2033 Magazine St., 722-0876; www.coupdoeilartconsortium.com

Designing Pandemonium: An Art History of Mardi Gras

2011-03-06T00:06:00.002-06:00

By D. Eric Bookhardt

Design for Proteus Parade Float, 1906, by Bror Anders Wikstrom

In her recent glowing New York Times review of Lynda Benglis' retrospective at the New Museum (left, Phantom, 1971) Roberta Smith wrote that the "decorative bravado of the New Orleans Mardi Gras" was "worth keeping in mind when encountering her works." A former New Orleanian and Tulane graduate originally from Lake Charles, Benglis was a provocateur of sorts in New York's heady post-minimalist and feminist art milieu of the 1970s, and if comparing her work with Mardi Gras sounds like a stretch, it's really not. Mardi Gras has long existed as a multi-dimensional phenomenon that somehow incorporated both the street and the elite, the mainstream and the esoteric, dark and light, Apollonian and Dionysian--though, with Mardi Gras as with Benglis, the Dionysian has always held a distinct advantage. Forever skirting the margins between the officially celebrated and the outré or forbidden, it has always been propelled by a spirit of creative anarchy that harks to its origins in the myths and mysteries of pre-Christian antiquity. More>>

Carnival Colorplate, March 1, 1892 Picayune Newspaper More>>

Baquet at Loyola; Miller at the Darkroom

2011-03-06T00:06:00.000-06:00

Ah, the news-the blood, gore, libel and larceny--who could live without it? On a global scale such things are called "history." Locally they strike a more personal chord, as we see in Harold Baquet's photographs. For over 30 years, Baquet has recorded it all, but excels at a kind of portraiture of juxtaposition, so we see the first Mayor Morial feeding cake to Fats Domino on his birthday, a somber Miles Davis handing off a trumpet to a youthful Wynton Marsalis, and Earl Turbinton with a literally smoking soprano sax. There are also contextual portraits of Allen Toussaint at his piano and Tootie Montana in full Indian regalia, but of special interest are the barbershops, those nerve centers of neighborhood life where philosophical exchanges occur in a contemplative setting. Such small, telling moments share wall space with epochal events like Dutch Morial's funeral, a portrait of collective grief etched into the expressions of an extraordinary Creole family. All of this is familiar with the sweetness and poignancy of a family album, but this is an album of America's Creole city, and Baquet was there to record it all for posterity.

Much of the news today is more a matter of spin and posturing as mercenary cartels and noisy infotainment nonentities try to persuade a weary public to appreciate them. In this context, Lafayette photographer Colin Miller finds many targets of opportunity in his rogues' gallery of mass mediated dysfunctions, in images of himself as a snarky talking head looking glib as the Twin Towers collapse behind him, and the like. In HEARING, he locks eyeballs with a pelican on the witness stand as dour politicos dredge through the painful oversights that allowed global corporations to despoil our waters while holding us hostage to their money, in a wry new take on a sad old story. ~Bookhardt
IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE: A Photography Retrospective by Harold Baquet, Through March 24
Collins Diboll Gallery, Loyola, 6363 St. Charles Ave.; www.loyno.edu/dibollgallery
NEWSWORTHY: Recent Photographs by Colin Miller, Through March 31
The Darkroom, 1927 Sophie Wright Place, 522-3211; www.neworleansdarkroom.com

Schwanse * McNamee * Hindman * Haudenschield

2011-02-27T00:14:00.004-06:00

Mass media, either digital or mechanical, is a theme that has been worked to death by artists in recent decades, so it's noteworthy that the two very different approaches in this CLASSIFIED expo, curated by UNO's Chris Saucedo, still seem fresh. Aaron McNamee subverts the processes of mechanical media by gluing an entire year of Times Picayune newspapers, some 4196 pages, into a 400 pound block of ink and cellulose. More pages of the paper, with print and images smooshed into illegibility, appear as plywood-like panels, or in smaller stacks like tiles. The news and its media are ephemeral, yet here the pages that once held all that was weighty in the world are congealed into dead weight and reduced to inert blocks of abandoned information in a weird ritual of entombment.
The tiny pixels of light, dark and color that comprise digital media are weightless yet still convey the gravity of hopes and fears, dreams and obsessions. Computer screens are electric streets employing the inherently fetishistic nature of photographic imagery, and the women seen in Nina Schwanse's virtual catalog of femmes for hire--bubbly babes, or intellectual, technical, menial, bondage, or even drag queen babes--comprise a taxonomy of attraction encoded in the male and female psyches via movies and mass media idioms, those electronically stimulated concourses of the imagination where fantasies coincide with commerce. Here Schwanse provocatively explores those shadow realms where the individual and mass psyches intersect in the chimerical interplay of allure and its guises.

That ephemeral aspect of how the imagistic mind works is further explored in Jules Hindman's digital projections on gauzy passageways that replicate the movement of the viewer in a kind of interactive hall of mirrors at the UNO Gallery down the street. The effect of the veiled repetitive imagery is, at its best, hypnotic, recalling how waves of impressions accumulate as memories--all of which makes for a neat contrast with Hettie Haudenschield's evocative nature based expressionism in the adjacent chamber. ~Bookhardt
CLASSIFIED: New Work by Aaron McNamee and Nina Schwanse, Through March 6, Barrister's Gallery, 2331 St. Claude Ave, 710-2506; www.barristersgallery.com
RECENT WORK by Jules Hindman and Hettie Haudenschield, Through March 6, UNO-St. Claude Gallery, 2429 St. Claude Ave, 280-6411; www.finearts.uno.edu/artpage.html

Betancourt at Heriard-Cimino; Leinwand at the Front

2011-02-20T00:15:00.002-06:00

Looking at Carlos Betancourt's work can be like stepping through the looking glass; it all seems familiar yet skewed in unlikely ways. In art as in life, context is everything, and here we are strangers in a strange land of exotic flora and preposterous kitsch where everything makes a bold statement even if that statement has been digitally encrypted as decorously exotic babble. Cynics might say that sounds a bit like Miami, and in fact they would be right. Betancourt was born in Puerto Rico of Cuban parentage but has lived in Miami since 1981, so it should come as no surprise if his work suggests a nexus where Carmen Miranda and Tito Puente meet Jeff Koons and Lady Gaga. Miami is where New York meets the tropics and Betancourt evokes a loopy new strand of aesthetic DNA. Large, kaleidoscopic photomontages like RE-COLLECTIONS, above, mingle flowers, butterflies, starfish and fruit with candy, beads and action figures in explosive cornucopias of pop-cultural delirium. His sculptures are neoclassical columns that might evoke the gravitas of ancient Rome were they not festooned with bananas, pineapples, grapes and bunches of other stuff that looks like leftovers from Carmen Miranda's crazy carioca hats, and in these works Betancourt takes the typically tart conceptual art memes of appropriation and deconstruction to giddy new levels of tropical extravagance.

More kaleidoscopic compositions appear in Jason Leinwand's meticulous paintings at the Front. Based on G. I. Gurdjieff's metaphysics, and psychedelic in tone and content, they also employ pop-cultural references such as UFOs, brains, hearts and skulls in tattoo-like abandon to produce images that are seriously mystical yet also zany, recalling both the Aleister Crowley tarot deck and old Greatful Dead album jackets. The kitsch may conflict with the metaphysics, but Brooklyn-based Leinwand is serious, and the intensity he puts into his work augers well for its future evolution. ~Bookhardt

PORTRAIT OF A GARDEN: Photomontages and Sculopture by Carlos Betancourt, Through March 20th, Heriard-Cimino Gallery, 440 Julia St., 525-7300; www.heriard-cimino.com
FAITH, LOVE AND HOPE: Paintings by Jason Leinwand, Through March 6th
The Front, 4100 St. Claude Ave., 920-3980; www.nolafront.org

Elements of Nature: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Collection at the Contemporary Arts Center

2011-02-13T00:15:00.002-06:00

As a big time businessman and art collector, the late Fred Weisman embodied a classic American success story. Born in Minneapolis to Russian immigrant parents, he grew up in Los Angeles and eventually made a fortune in various businesses, amassing a major art collection along the way. In art as in business, his vision became bolder as he aged. These works reflect his interest in nature as well as the influence of imagism (and its international equivalents), an American style that fuses dreamy, psychological imagery into flamboyantly patterned compositions. Imagism evolved in the Chicago area as well as in California and Louisiana, where he often acquired work by local artists, a tradition continued by his widow and curator, Billie Milam Weisman. Few works look more at home here than Nola artist Robert Warrens' THROUGH THE REEDS painting of a scruffy mutt clutching a duck in its humanoid teeth.

Leaping over a pond like an oversized ashtray, the fluffy dog evokes toxic smoke in a petrochemical parody of a traditional hunting scene. Related irony appears in Chicago painter Roger Brown's SAGUARO'S REVENGE, above left, based on the true story of a drunken Arizona man who was shooting at a giant cactus when it fell over and killed him. Torben Giehler's MONT BLANC, top, patterned landscape painting suggests a parti-colored planet in a prismatic solar system in a techno take on the mystical geometry of Mondrian. The patterning in many imagist works signifies energy as we see in Andrew Schoultz' MAYHEM EXPLOSION, below, in which ancient warriors on horses appear in a vortex of arrows that suggests aggression reduced to orbital trajectories. But in Louisa Chase's abstract figurative painting ALL FIRE ALL FLAME, the fiery vortex is all about passion and its power to bind or tear apart, a reminder that creation and destruction involve related energies applied in very different ways. ELEMENTS OF NATURE offers an intriguing alternate route through recent art history while presaging the environmental turmoil facing us today. ~Bookhardt

ELEMENTS OF NATURE: Selections from the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, Through February
Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St., 528.3805; www.cacno.org

Art Auction Fundraiser for Automata

2011-02-13T00:12:00.001-06:00

Click Graphic for More

Louisiana Native and Postminimalist and Feminist Pioneer Lynda Benglis Featured in New Museum Retrospective

2011-02-13T00:05:00.015-06:00

This retrospective at the New Museum spans the range of Lynda Benglis’ career including her early wax paintings, her brightly colored poured latex works, the “Torsos” and “Knots” series from the 1970s, and her recent experiments with plastics, cast glass, paper, and gold leaf. It features a number of rarely exhibited historic works including Phantom (1971), above, a dramatic polyurethane installation consisting of five monumental sculptures that glow in the dark. Originally from Lake Charles, Louisiana, former New Orleanian and Tulane graduate Benglis rose to prominence during the sixties and seventies, a time when her singular practice both intersected with and transcended the categories of post-Minimalism and feminist art. Her sculptures suggest a remarkable range of influences, critically engaging with earlier painters like Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler. Benglis would gradually expand the range of her sculptural materials to include polyurethane foam, beeswax, plaster, cast aluminum, and bronze, to create objects with palpable ties to the body often described as “frozen gestures.” More>>

Read the New York Times Review: Artful Commentary, Oozing From the Walls:

"The New Museum is offering a startlingly excellent resurrection of the prescient Post-Minimalist renegade Lynda Benglis and her gaudy, multidexterous and often gender-bending segues among Process, Performance and Body Art. Ms. Benglis is something of a mythic character..." More>>

Top portion of a photograph of Lynda Benglis that appeared in Artforum magazine in 1974. Art or Ad It Caused a lot of Fuss--More>>

The Top 10 Kisses in Art History

2011-02-13T00:05:00.000-06:00

By Paul Laster

Over the course of art history, painters, sculptors, poets, and photographers have used their vivid imaginations to bring the kiss to life as a symbol of fresh love, renewed love, and even black-and-blue love. With Valentine's Day in mind, we've selected the 10 best art kisses—More>>

Bascle, Hornback and Lief at Taylor-Bercier

2011-02-06T00:15:00.001-06:00

Once upon a time, in the late 1980s, there arose an art movement called the Visionary Imagists. Spawned in a Marigny gallery operated by a charismatic and controversial Ecuadorian expatriate named George Febres, the Visionary Imagists melded American imagism with the Magic Realist tradition of Latin America, reflecting an undercurrent that had actually been just below the surface of local art making for ages. When Febres died in 1996, the artists went their separate ways, and while some moved on to high profile galleries, others like Dona Lief, Ann Hornback and Andrew Bascle remained slightly below the radar. Lief has long been intrigued by the parallels she sees between consumer culture icons and cold blooded creatures like spiders and crabs, and her most recent works seen here continue in this devolutionary vein, with an emphasis on social and environmental issues. Her strongest painting in this show, CRY BABY CRY, top, depicts a bawling infant with a flaming aura topped by a hermit crab like a cap. Hermit crabs were among the species most decimated by the BP oil rig flameout, and here the volatile chemistry of anger and lost innocence is palpable. Similar sentiments appear in Andrew Bascle's found object sculpture WORLD BANK, above left, a spider-like concoction cobbled from a toy hand gun, a miniature globe and false teeth affixed to a wire armature supported by legs made of steak knives--and once again the connection between insects and institutions is emphasized in works that appear predatory yet humorous, robotic yet whimsical. Ann Hornback's no less surreal if a tad more nuanced paintings take us to a realm of nature spirits where a vaguely vampy siren in an alligator mask and evening attire evokes mythic figures like Hecate, the Greco- Roman demoness of the underworld. But this is Louisiana, where boundaries between nature and culture, land and water, dream and reality are even less defined, making Hornback's alligator women evocative spirit guides to an amphibious realm where imagination and the wild world are forever intertwined. ~Bookhardt
NEW WORK by Dona Lief, Ann Hornback and Andrew Bascle, Through March, Taylor Bercier Gallery, 233 Chartres St., 527-0072; www.taylorbercier.com

Conscience at the Carroll Gallery; Goedert at Antenna

2011-01-30T00:07:00.001-06:00

The wrecked pickup truck first appeared inexplicably inside an empty storefront on St. Claude Avenue, just beyond a door that was far too small to accommodate any vehicle. Closer inspection revealed that it was a full size replica carefully crafted from cardboard, but it remained a mystery until it suddenly reemerged at the Carroll Gallery. Its creator, Bob Snead, was inspired by an actual pickup truck that a drunk driver had wrecked outside his St. Claude studio. Now part of this CONSCIENCE expo, it complements David Grunfeld's eloquent photographs documenting the travails of working folk such as oystermen in the wake of the BP oil spill, among others that capture the visual poetry of life and labor in south Louisiana. Similarly, John Barnes' stark shotgun house sculptures, and Keith Perelli's lyrically surreal portraits based on police mug shots, meld gritty urban chaos with an incipient visionary aura that hints at the possibility of transcendence.

James Goedert's MACHINES ON PAPER show at Antenna features, among other things, a 1970s-era Ford Granada with Nebraska plates. Also too large for the gallery door, this is a real car that was taken apart and reassembled inside--with modifications. The seats now surround the relocated steering wheel, which when turned activates some engine parts reconfigured into a mechanism that sketches an abstract drawing of a car, as if the Granada had taken up art in its old age.

On the wall is a landscape painting like an expanse of green grass on paper; beneath it on the floor rests the weedeater that created it with colored markers tied to its plastic trim cords. Other everyday devices appear with their equally unlikely creations, and here Goedert reveals how old machines can be reconfigured to make art while incidentally providing a sense of what surrealism might have looked like had it originated in Middle America instead of Paris. ~Bookhardt

CONSCIENCE: Work by John Barnes, David Grunfeld, Keith Perelli and Bob Snead, Through Feb. 11, Carroll Gallery, Tulane University, 314-2228; http://carrollgallery.tulane.edu/
MACHINES ON PAPER: New Work by James Goedert, Through Feb. 5
Antenna, 3161 Burgundy Street, 250-7975; http://www.press-street.com/

Seen on St. Claude: Bare Hands at the Front

2011-01-30T00:03:00.001-06:00

Bare Hands is a non-profit alternative space for the exhibition of contemporary works in all media, unique in its focus on Birmingham and Alabama area artists. Founded in 1996, the local gallery was committed to providing a positive and professional venue for local contemporary visual artists. In 2004, Bare Hands was incorporated as a non-profit arts organization and continues its mission to present work by emerging and established Birmingham artists, as well as regional artists. It also strives to educate the public about the cultural importance of contemporary art and artists in Alabama through exhibitions and gallery talks, support for arts education, and community outreach. More >>

Rajko Radovanovic at Barrister's Gallery, Tameka Norris and Stephen Collier at Good Children Gallery

2011-01-23T00:45:00.003-06:00

Identity is a recurring, yet often challenging, theme of conceptual art. At Good Children, New Haven-based Mississippi native Tameka Norris expresses her identification with the coastal folks who got flooded by hurricane Katrina in videos and collages depicting her image superimposed on destroyed homes, or nearly drowning in floodwater, and the net effect can be dramatic if didactic. But Stephen Collier's digital collages meld portraiture with mythic symbols that scramble our usual notions of identity in works that reflect the more enigmatic side of a genre that often seems to veer between preachy and opaque. At Barrister's Gallery, Serbo-Croatian New Orleans artist Rajko Radovanovic's digital prints reflect the didactic side of the equation. Back in 2008 he created a text mural in New Marigny that read: "A PRECONDITION TO DOING VIOLENCE TO ANY GROUP OF PEOPLE IS TO MAKE THEM LESS THAN HUMAN." A maxim used to explain the psychological basis for ethnic cleansing of the sort that took place in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and elsewhere, this looked profound if a little incongruous on a scruffy 8th Ward street corner, and perhaps a tad simplistic. His digital self-portraits at Barrister's are all curiously similar in appearance and each bears a slogan like, "This is the only IMMIGRANT you can trust," with terms such as HOMOSEXUAL or MUSLIM substituted for IMMIGRANT in each iteration, illustrating the point that beneath the superficial labels we are all much the same. They seemed too simplistic and repetitious, but then the shooting rampage in Tucson suddenly underscored his message. In recent years, increased threats and actual acts of violence have been directed at people because of their beliefs or identity, as demagogues tried to characterize anyone who disagreed with them as subhuman aliens out to destroy America. In a media environment saturated with crosshairs and incendiary rhetoric, violence should come as no surprise. Radovanovic's graphics at Barrister's still strike me as too repetitious, but in light of recent events even simplistic messages about the danger of dehumanizing people can assume new relevance. ~Bookhardt

Rajko Radovanovic: THE FUTILITY OF IDENTITY, Through Feb. 5
Barrister's Gallery, 2331 St. Claude Ave, 710-2506; www.barristersgallery.com
Prospect.1.5: Tameka Norris and Stephen Collier: RECENT WORK, Through Feb. 6, Good Children Gallery, 4037 St. Claude Ave., 616-7427; www.goodchildrengallery.com

Rockmore Revisited: A Treasure Trove Revealed

2011-01-23T00:09:00.002-06:00

The Tomb of Rockmore

by John Ed Bradley

“Noel Rockmore was a fascinating, oddball, homegrown American surrealist,” says Dan Cameron, a curator of contemporary art best known for his work as artistic director of U.S. Biennial, the organization that produces Prospect New Orleans. “In the last year or so I’ve participated in some interesting discussions with friends and colleagues in New Orleans whom I respect, and there’s no denying what they think about him. These are people who don’t use the word genius very often, but they all use it when discussing Rockmore.”
The artist, it turns out, had often called on Shirley Marvin when he needed money over the course of their thirty-three-year friendship, and Rockmore, who died in 1995 at age sixty-six, seemed to always need money. The bulging contents in the storage unit were testament to his brilliance, but they also revealed Shirley’s devotion to an artist who produced some fifteen thousand works of art in his lifetime and who might have become America’s Picasso if not for crushing battles with alcoholism and bipolar disorder that, by the end of his days, had reduced him to a bona fide lunatic and a virtual pariah in the art world. More>> (From Garden & Gun)

Prospect.1.5: Resounding at Jonathan Ferrara

2011-01-16T00:05:00.001-06:00

There is a longstanding, if sometimes artificial, separation between visual art and music. This RESOUNDING show, curated by former musician and Prospect Biennial founding director Dan Cameron, explores the hazy frontier where art and music meet. While music is pervasive here, the work is mostly silent though not without resonance. Describing the dramatic silence in the immediate aftermath of a performance, Cameron says, "With the sudden absence, other senses rush to fill the void." That silence, the musical equivalent of the visual artist's "negative space," is eloquently embodied in Rhona Bittner's large color photographs of empty performance spaces. In NEWPORT MUSIC HALL, top, the glow of stage lights is reflected off the contours of a vast baroque ceiling medallion, but in the absence of an audience the silence is deafening--as it is in the gaudy intimacy of RED'S LOUNGE, in Clarksdale, MS, where Robert Johnson's ghost would surely feel at home.

Los Angeles artist Sean Duffy, above left (detail), adds time and technology in the mix, in modified LP album jackets arranged in op art patterns that express nostalgia for the music technologies of the past. Nearby, a vintage DJ turntable with no tone arm stands as a monument to the sounds of silence. Old records also appear in the work of New Yorker Ted Riederer, in an installation of vinyl LPs molded into skulls wearing their labels like skullcaps. Guarded by ST. ANTIPODE, a Darth Vaderish sculpture also molded from old LPs, they evoke the sensibilities of the "death metal" genre. Vancouver artist Tim Lee remixes the 1970s works of Neil Young and Steve Martin in a fictitious, if understated, LP double album, while in the back room a video by Turkish artist Fikret Akay employs the sounds and images of religious students pacing the floor as they chant scripture in what amounts to an ambulatory Tower of Babel. This inverts the approach of the other artists, whose silent objects and images convey the inner music of the visual imagination. ~Bookhardt

RESOUNDING: Prospect.1.5 Group Exhibition of Art about Music, Through January, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, 400A Julia St., 522-5471; www.jonathanferraragallery.com

Eclipse: Did Academia Destroy Art Criticism?

2011-01-16T00:03:00.003-06:00

"Set against the de facto idealism of "theory-crit" (reducing art to pure theoretical machinations), the appeal of simply reporting on the art scene would seem to be partly that it yanks art back down to earth. (Yet) there's a tremendous hunger for serious art criticism out there — it just has to be criticism that actually engages with the contemporary reality of art. After all, without an interesting perspective on what makes visual art distinctive, all you have left is the art world as a crappy arm of pop culture or a place for high-end gambling." More>>

Banned "A Fire in My Belly" at NOMA Friday Jan 21 @ 7PM

2011-01-16T00:01:00.006-06:00

On Friday NOMA is presenting David Wojinarowicz’ A Fire in My Belly, a little known film that recently gained notoriety when the Smithsonian removed it from their Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture show at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. after complaints from the Catholic League and Representative John Boehner, ostensibly for its depiction of ants crawling over a crucifix. The meaning of this obscure bit of symbolism is left up to the viewer, but some groups such as the Catholic League (which has no formal ties to the Roman Catholic Church) apparently viewed it darkly, and with the aid of the Boehner and House Whip Eric Cantor, successfully lobbied for its removal. Described as a "leading artist of the 1980s," Wojnarowicz (1954–1992) was deeply influenced by his dystopic childhood in New York and his battle with AIDS, which took his life at age 37. Other Friday NOMA events include:

Walk-through: Modern and Contemporary Art at NOMA. New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, 658.4100. FREE with museum admission.12 p, Fri.

NOMA Book Club. This month’s reading “Dancing for Degas.” New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, 658.4100. Meets upstairs 6-7 p, Fri.

Exhibition Walk-through: Great Collectors/Great Donors. This will be the final walk-though of the opening centennial exhibition by Director Emeritus, E. John Bullard. New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, 658.4100. FREE with museum admission. 6 p, Fri.

Music: vocalist Ruby Moon and piano man John Autin will play New Orleans jazz and blues standards in the Great Hall. New Orleans Museum of Art, 1 Collins Diboll Circle, 5:30 p to 8:30 p. Fri.

Migration and Genesis: Salgado's Epic Worldview

2011-01-09T00:05:00.001-06:00

The one clear thing about Sebastiao Salgado is that he is absolutely one of the greatest documentary photographers in the world today. Beyond that, he eludes most attempts to define him. The 66 year-old Brazilian economist-turned-photographer's most famous images convey a sense of epic forces unfolding before our eyes, yet most were made with a diminutive 35mm Leica rangefinder camera. And while most photojournalists zero in on a detail or expression that symbolizes a larger theme, Salgado depicts vast impersonal spectacles rendered in the portentous light of a renaissance, romantic or expressionist landscape. His epic sensibility has raised questions: is he a photojournalist or an artist? In fact, he is both, an artist with a journalist's eye for the unfolding story, typically on a mythic scale. In cinematic terms, he combines the starkness of Ingmar Bergman with the scope of Cecil B. Demille. His MIGRATIONS series focused on mass movements of people to or from the sources of their hopes or fears, for instance, the exodus of the rural poor into big cities, or refugees escaping the ravages of war.

What initially suggests columns of ants scaling a steep slope is actually an army of gold miners clambering up the sides of a muddy open pit mine in Brazil. In another photograph, a sprawling sea of humanity in a Rwandan refugee camp spreads across a starkly ragged landscape of makeshift encampments extending into the haze of the horizon. In a widely published image, masses of commuters disembarking a train in Bombay seem to froth like sea foam in a tidal blur. If the travails of the hardscrabble human herd can sometimes seem bleak, Salgado has lately focused on his GENESIS series depicting some the planet's last remaining primal dramas, in images of proud tribal shamans and Sudanese cattle herders as well as vast landscapes of penguins and icebergs in Antarctica. We sense their fragility, yet these images provide immutable evidence of the lingering majesty of those wild remote places not yet parceled off to highest bidder. ~Bookhardt
Sebastiao Salgado: PHOTOGRAPHS, Through January,
A Gallery For Fine Photography, 241 Chartres St., 568-1313;
www.agallery.com

Prospect.1.5 at Various Venues About Town

2011-01-02T00:10:00.004-06:00

Prairie Family Plain and Tall by Michael Pajon
Click Images to Expand

If there was ever any question about how much the New Orleans art scene has grown in recent years, December witnessed an art community in overdrive as major spectacles like PhotoNOLA, DesCours and Prospect.1.5 overlapped in a hyperactive cluster of events. PhotoNOLA alone had shows at over 50 venues, some extending into this month, so even a big deal like the Prospect.1.5 Biennial had to compete for attention. More low-key than its stellar predecessor, P.1.5 incorporates many local as well as big city artists in an ambitious experiment in aesthetic cross-fertilization. At LeMieux, the combo of local painter Alan Gerson and Los Angeles photographer Brice Bischoff, left, was inspired, as was the pairing of New York artist Margaret Evangeline and Baton Rouge sculptor Loren Schwerd at Heriard-Cimino. Ditto New Orleans-born, New Haven painter Max Toth and Bosnia-born New Orleans artist Lala Rascic, below, at Good Children.

The EVERYDAY HYBRID expo at the Delgado Gallery is something of an oddity. The local and New York artists--Brad Benischek, Sesthasak Boonchai, Jennifer Odem, Alex Podesta, Regina Scully, Brian St.Cyr and Panacea Theriac--are all quite accomplished and stimulating, yet so visually incongruous as a group that it can be hard to leave with a clear impression of what you saw. In FRESH OFF THE TURNIP TRUCK at Madame John's legacy, Michael Pajon's cosmically kitschy, ethno-historical collages such as PRAIRIE FAMILY PLAIN AND TALL, top, are so precise as to make many of the other artists' works look almost incongruously laissez faire despite being broadly interesting. But everything comes together cohesively in THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN expo at Octavia, as Brian Borrello, Ralph Bourque (below), Daphne Loney, Michel Varisco and Christy Speakman all provide poetic explorations of the dark side of Louisiana's carbon-based economy in contrast with the creative spirit of its people, the incandescence of the sun, moon and stars. ~Bookhardt

EVERYDAY HYBRID: Prospect.1.5 Group Exhibition, Through Jan. 27, Isaac Delgado Gallery, 3rd Floor, 615 City Park Ave., www.dcc.edu
FRESH OFF THE TURNIP TRUCK: Prospect.1.5 Group Exhibition, Through Jan 20, Madame John's Legacy, 632 Dumaine St., 568- 6968; lsm.crt.state.la.us/madam.htm
THE MACHINE IN THE GARDEN: Prospect.1.5 Group Exhibition, Through Jan. 8, Octavia Art Gallery, 4532 Magazine Street, 309-4249; www.octaviaartgallery.com

Marcia Vetrocq on New Orleans' "Prospects"

2011-01-02T00:01:00.001-06:00

Homepage New Orleans Prospects

by Marcia E. Vetrocq 01/04/11

Editor, Art In America

View Slideshow Still from Dave Greber’s The Fool, The Hierophant, The Devil and the Wheel, 2010, four-channel video installation. Courtesy the artist.; Kourtney M. Keller: DRIVE IN EVITABLE, 2009-10, digital video, 16-minute loop. Courtesy the artist.

I came back to New York in 1998 after having lived in New Orleans, with some interregnums, for a long time. (“20 to life” I used to say, reflecting how long it took me to embrace the city, but not acknowledging all that it had given me in return.) I’ve revisited NOLA just twice, and these trips inevitably have come to be thought of as the post-Katrina visit and, last November, the post-BP-spill visit. The residual anguish of the oil spill is largely invisible in the city, confined to the devastated shrimping and fishing communities of the coast and waterways. In town, the vulturish impulses of disaster tourism are in decline: the Lower Ninth Ward, still scarred by hundreds of desolate lots, shows a defiant if too-small number of rebuilt houses plus some 50 new residences sponsored by Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation—all clean lines and swooping roofs, the palette a touch too Seaside, the 8-foot pilings on which they perch a mix of right- thinking preparedness and heartbreaking optimism. Grocery chains have yet to show any interest in serving the neighborhood, but there’s now a weekly farmers market on St. Claude Avenue, which has become the boulevard of upstart galleries that showcase—and are often run by—local artists. At one, The Front, I was given a little catalogue celebrating the scrappy space’s first 15 months. Far from presumptuous, it may have been a wise move to not delay a commemorative publication until the 10th anniversary, or even the 5th, things being what they are in New Orleans.

My November visit did not coincide with the Prospect.2 Biennial, the scheduled follow-up to 2008’s much-publicized show, which was organized by Dan Cameron and energized by a roster of prominent international artists eager to help a city brought to its knees. Lingering debt and the defection of disenchanted funders led to the second edition’s postponement. Determined to make low-cost lemonade, Cameron devised Prospect.1.5, a roughly four-month season [through Feb. 19] of events and exhibitions. For me, the name instantly conjured not the generational nomenclature of smart phones and computer programs but the Mertin Flemmer Building’s floor 7½ in the film Being John Malkovich—a bit absurd and cramped, but also furnished with a portal to some extraordinary things. And so I found Prospect.1.5 to be. With its focus on local talent, the program also feels a bit like a “correction” aimed at area artists who felt slighted when attention was showered on the guest celebrities of Prospect.1. The celebrity factor was not entirely absent from Prospect.1.5, though: New York resident/New Orleans native Rashaad Newsome showed a version of his “Shade Compositions,” the sharpest videos in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, at Good Children Gallery on St. Claude. More>>

MOMA No Longer Dead--But What Is It???

2010-12-31T00:25:00.001-06:00

by Roberta Smith

WHEN I walk through the Museum of Modern Art these days, it sometimes feels as if the place has come back from the dead — even if I’m not always so crazy about the life it happens to be leading. There’s often a confusing, disjunctive quality to it, especially where contemporary art is concerned, as the museum’s programming lurches from crowd-drawing, performance-art spectacles in the atrium to relatively dry and didactic exhibitions in its galleries. But at least there’s a pulse. The museum feels much, much more animated than it did back in 2005 and ’06, when it — and we — were first adjusting to its slick new home on West 53rd Street... Like many museumgoers I can feel deeply ambivalent about what goes on in the atrium — variously vexed, seduced, pandered to, alienated and moved. Still, I think its transformation counts as progress. At least now, instead of worrying about the Modern’s vital signs, we can worry once more about what it is and isn’t doing, about the new life it has taken on. More>>

2010 The Year That Was: Changes at the Top

2010-12-26T00:16:00.011-06:00

The New Orleans art scene has long appeared so stable and cohesive as to seem nearly immune to the wild ups and downs of major art capitals like New York--until this year. But 2010 has been a doozy in any number of ways, especially at the institutional level, where there were many changes at the top, some very sudden. As far as local artists and galleries were concerned, the situation was more normal as the scene continued to expand, in some ways exponentially, as three major art events, Prospect.1.5, Des Cours and PhotoNOLA all overlapped in December, with PhotoNOLA alone staging over 50 exhibitions such as Priya Kambli's COLOR FALLS DOWN expo, above, at Antenna. As in years past, especially since Katrina, many young artists continued to move here, and new art spaces, including the deluxe Martine Chaisson Gallery in the Arts District, popped up. And our best-known galleries all survived another year despite a bad national economy that was locally exacerbated by a major environmental catastrophe. Chalk it up to New Orleans exceptionalism, the intangibles of a culture based more on love than money.
One of the earlier transitions this year was the resignation of Joy Glidden from her post as director of Louisiana Artworks, the big multipurpose art facility on Lee Circle. Credited with successfully overseeing its emergence as a force in the local art world, Glidden is now the director of the public television series Art Index TV. Current Louisiana Artworks' acting director Ariel Brumley wants people to know, "We are open, but most of our resources are going toward completing construction on the upper floors that had been delayed, after which we will conduct a search for a full time director. We have PhotoNOLA's PICTURES OF THE YEAR INTERNATIONAL photography show in the gallery, and the Community Printshop under the direction of Meg Turner maintains its full schedule of activities."

When it comes to making news, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art has long been a leader. Late last year its longtime director, Richard Gruber, resigned amid rumors that the Ogden was in financial trouble, and in fact a state audit confirmed that it was. The audit, released last month, dated from 2009, and last year the Ogden hired Lisa McCaffety as chief operations officer to bring some order to finances that had suffered since hurricane Katrina. When the audit went public last month, board chairman Julia Reed was able to quickly announce that its findings were old news and that the museum had balanced its books and restructured its debt. Then on December 10, Reed announced that longtime curator David Houston, who with McCaffety had been appointed co-director just last January, had resigned. She offered no specifics, saying she did not want to speak for him, but McCaffety stated that it was not related to museum finances. Houston, who declined to comment, was known for his comprehensive curatorial insight into how old and new, modern and traditional Southern art fit together, as well as for his ability to stage high quality shows on a shoestring budget, so art lovers were left scratching their heads and wondering if finding a curator as well suited to the Ogden's unique needs might be easier said than done. Reed told us that former director Rick Gruber would be working with acting curator Bradley Sumrall, and that we would be seeing more exhibitions featuring the paintings of Ogden board member William Dunlap, which seemed to occur all the time back when Gruber was in charge, among other new shows planned for 2011. Continued: Click for More>>

Along the PhotoNOLA Trail, Uptown

2010-12-19T00:55:00.002-06:00

Click Images to Expand

The 5th annual PHOTONOLA may be officially over, but most of its over 50 exhibitions continue on. The diversity is mind boggling, but many of the Uptown venues share a related theme in the form of the Southern landscape and its people. LOUISIANA AND TREES at Sibley Gallery features work in various media, but the photographs by Wanda Boudreaux, left, Joshua Pailet, Richard Sexton and Michel Varisco are thoughtful evocations of trees as the poetic inflection points of the region's geopsychic terrain. Those images are serendipitously complemented by Natasha Sanchez's evanescent lumen prints of local flora at the Julie Neil Gallery, while, in a very different vein, Stacy Kranitz' photos of fighting cocks and their owners, below, at the Big Top, provide a psychically complex yet oddly engaging look at Louisiana's once emblematic, now outlawed, blood sport. At Cole Pratt, Leslie Addison and George Yerger's sepia prints of old weathered buildings, top, and ghostly vistas convey the timeless elemental qualities of the region and its landscape. Yet, while the ambrotype photographs by Euphus Ruth at the Kevin Gillentine Gallery are related in theme, his uniquely woozy, wet-plate collodion images of the Mississippi Delta, below left, suggest surreal flashbacks into the psyche of the place, while hinting at what a Clarence John Laughlin-William Faulkner collaboration might have looked like. At Du Mois, Kathleen Robbins' straight color documentary images of the Delta provide a yang counterpoint to Ruth's yin. But when it comes to inexplicably dreamy imagery, it's hard to top the Katrina doll x-ray photographs by Lisette de Boisblanc at Coup d'Oeil. Her aunt's antique dolls drowned in the floodwater, but an acquaintance just happened to have an old x-ray machine that gave them a haunting new life. Striking works by Grissel Guiliano, Angela Berry, Maggie Covert and Terry DeRoche round out the show. Striking too are the SOUTHERN ISOLATION images by Eric Paul Julien, below, and Anna Hrnjak at Poet's Gallery, Jennifer Shaw's HURRICANE STORY at Guthrie Contemporary and Colin Miller's faux news photos at the Darkroom--but this only scratches the surface of PHOTONOLA's latest imagistic tsunami. ~Bookhardt

PHOTONOLA 2010: Selected Uptown Venues, Closing Dates Variable
For Venue Information See: www.photonola.org/exhibitions

Charbonnet at Arthur Roger; Cundin at Bienvenu

2010-12-12T00:21:00.009-06:00

Jose Maria Cundin is elusive, chimerical; he has exhibited here since the 1960s but is rarely seen. A one time resident of Broadmoor who now lives in Folsom, he spent a number of years in Miami in between. His work is also slippery, and his TWELVE ANTI-PORTRAITS show is aptly titled because the images are totally abstract, depicting no one's actual appearance. But Cundin is a master colorist, and color is a quality of light, and light is what people radiate. While no one's visage is actually visible, Cundin gives us the colors of his subjects' personalities instead, like a collection of so many painterly mood rings. So CHAVEZ, WHY DON'T YOU SHUT UP?, top, is an uneasy agglomeration of red, green and tangerine blobs shifting disconsolately and radiating the kind of unholy crimson glow that we might expect from Venezuela's caffeinated loose cannon president. But in CARLOS GARDEL SINGING "MUNECA BRAVA," left, the articulated blobs seem to almost gyrate in harmony with the music of the legendary Argentine tango singer-songwriter. And RUBEN DARIO OBSERVING HIS OWN BRAIN is complex, as introspection often is, even for the esteemed Nicaraguan founder of Latino literary modernism. Here Cundin gives us a non-objective new form of biographical history painting that relies solely on a visual lexicon of cellular forms and irradiated colors to convey the essential character of his subjects. And once again the canny Basque expatriate escapes any further attempt to define him.

Nicole Charbonnet is concerned with images not so much for what they represent as what they symbolize. Her images are iconic, or rather they reflect what is left of iconic forms after time, the elements and erosion--both elemental and mental--have taken their toll. Some things remain but some things are lost as yesterday's symbolic forms erode into today's artifacts in the cultural slurry of images that have outlived their original purpose but linger on to haunt the visual milieu all around us. Here she focuses on flowers. ERASED PICASSO is a play on Robert Rauschenberg's once scandalous gesture of erasing a DeKooning drawing that he then exhibited as a kind of nihilist homage to the ab/ex master. Picasso's iconic pair of hands holding flowers comprises the rare example of his work that comes across as a universal gesture, an image visited and revisited by millions of transient eyes. While the act of looking does not in itself erode images, mass viewing repeated over time affects the way we perceive them, making them slowly fade in consciousness. Here the palimpsestic surfaces and abraded boundaries allow space for a more personal interpretation, so forms that might have become too familiar may be recognized as unique and mysterious once again. ~Bookhardt
FLOWERS: Mixed Media Paintings by Nicole Charbonnet, Through Dec. 24
Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia St. 522-1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com
TWELVE ANTI-PORTRAITS: New Paintings by Jose-Maria Cundin, Through Jan. 29
Gallery Bienvenu 518 Julia St., 525-0518; www.gallerybienvenu.com

Interview: Postmodern Photo Pioneer Bernard Faucon

2010-12-12T00:01:00.005-06:00

by D. Eric Bookhardt

When Bernard Faucon first appeared on the photography scene in the late 1970s, he was considered a paradoxical figure. Working in a medium that was long associated with "truth," he was a master of stagecraft and a certain flamboyant artifice. In a medium known for humanism, his subjects were mostly mannequins... The popularity of his work quickly soared in Europe and Asia--especially in Japan, where his photographs inspired a TV series featuring a family of mannequins, "the Faucons." More>>

The Brown-Green & Saratoga Collections at the Ogden

2010-12-05T00:04:00.001-06:00

The Michael Brown and Linda Green Collection, one of the first major donations to the Ogden Museum after its inception, captures much of the spirit of New Orleans art from the sixties through the nineties. Many top artists were emerging when tech entrepreneur Michael Brown and his spouse, Linda Green, discovered them, and this expo offers a glimpse into their slow brew process of connoisseurship. It's also nostalgic. Few artists epitomize the wacky visionary side of Nola art more than the late Noel Rockmore, and the small sample here complements his haunting PRESERVATION HALL PORTRAITS mini-expo in the adjacent gallery. Then there is Peter Dean, whose carnivalesque expressionism was better received here than back home in New York. Also evident is the pervasive influence of Louisiana Imagist painters like Robert Warrens, whose I CRIED A RIVER OVER YOU manic-aquatic interior seascape, above right, compares with anything produced by the Chicago Imagists. Similarly, Fred Trenchard's quirky 1970s Imagist paintings neatly encapsulate the tenor of the times. While there is much interesting work on view, it was especially nostalgic to once again peruse the New American Scene paintings of Justin Forbes, who after a post-Katrina week in the Superdome landed in Denton, Texas, where he remains. His 1990s Nola hipster canvases like ROAD TRIP, pictured, are lushly executed evocations of the period, like a latter day Jack Kerouac worldview on canvas.

The Saratoga Collection, curated by Terrence Sanders for Marcel Wisznia's Saratoga Building project, focuses on edgy and urbane imagery. The 41 mostly emerging artists are mostly associated with the St. Claude arts district and comprise a surprisingly cohesive mix ranging from Rex Dingler's red splattered "Somewhere in the City this Blood is Real" stenciled sign-painting to Generic Art Solutions' fluorescent "OK" wall sculpture. There are also a number of photographs, videos and some more painterly mixed media pieces and canvases such as Robin Durand's pop-baroque Tide piece above, but most works convey a graphic edge that is as passionately opinionated as the city that inspired them. ~Bookhardt
Click Here for Interview: Michael Brown on Collecting
The Michael Brown and Linda Green Collection, Through Jan. 2
The Saragoga Collection of 41 New Orleans Artists, Through Dec. 15
Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 925 Camp St., 539-9600, ww.ogdenmuseum.org

New Goth Louisiana Flag Harks to Templars, Masons

2010-12-03T00:03:00.002-06:00

The newly adopted, and notably more Gothic, Louisiana state flag, featuring an angular pelican tearing its bleeding breast to feed its young, was unveiled during the swearing-in ceremonies of Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne on November 22. The design is somewhat akin to the 1912 flag currently in use, only now the state bird is more like the European pelican of the Knights Templars above the entrance to their Chapel of the Holy Blood in Bruges, Belgium. Built in the 12th century, the chapel houses magico-religious relics brought by the "heretical" Templars from Jerusalem. More>>

Photo by Collin Miller at the Darkroom--Click for More

Like a Prayer: Post-Feminist Art at Barrister's

2010-11-28T00:08:00.001-06:00

Feminism ain't what it used to be. This show, originally intended as a survey of recent feminist art, quickly morphed into something else once the artist submissions started coming in. Consequently, curators Martina Batan and Andy Antippas decided to work with what they had in hand, which Antippas generalized as "women coping," citing the example of "a married woman's portrait of her former lesbian lover, or a woman with a chained up refrigerator preparing a meal of pills." Even as 1970s feminist art sells for increasingly higher prices, yesterday's ambitions seem to have subsided into the unsteady shuffle that is the 21st century so far, as agendas appear increasingly convoluted. Take Berlin-based Bob Tooke's painting I WAS HITLER'S BITCH, top. Here a bemused Fuhrer sits surrounded by four crudely painted babes named Gaga, Paris, Britney and Lindsay, and while they all look like airheads, none resembles their namesake. Are airhead babes just a cover for a fascist plot? Tooke's partner, Silke, offers few clues in THANK GOD WE NEVER MET, a painting of a woman pouring booze on her dog as space mutants crawl out from under her dress, which seems to be made of bricks.

But if meanings are elusive, there is no shortage of attitude in works like Nikki Crook's VENUS IN FURS portrait, above, of an elegant bohemian lady with a twisted expression. Likewise, Lilian Butter's RETRIBUTION painting of a goth gal with green skin, pink hair and blue nails carrying a bloody crowbar, is chilling. The same might be said for Raven Creature's painting of a nude pink zombie. But Chalmette -based Evelyn Cade's CONFUSION ON I-10 painting, left, of a woman wading in floodwater as she flashes her tits --as if for beads--as trapped storm survivors huddle forlornly on an I-10 up ramp, is a perfect metaphor for a decade when media circuses passed for news and flood victims were left to fend for themselves. For this, Cade must surely qualify as St. Bernard Parish's expressionist in residence par excellence. ~Bookhardt
LIKE A PRAYER: Reflections on the 21st Century Feminine, Through Dec. 31, Barrister's Gallery, 2331 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans, 504-710-2506; www.barristersgallery.com

The Multispecies Salon 3: Swarm

2010-11-21T01:16:00.001-06:00

Of late, the St. Claude Avenue gallery openings have attained a kind of critical mass, with too much to see and too little time. And then, some events are in a constant state of flux, such as SWARM at Kawliga and the Iron Works (in conjunction with the American Anthropological Association convention), which explores relations between humans and other creatures. The most scientific stuff appears at Kawliga Studios. The absence of explanatory labels is puzzling, but the curators insinuate they did this to emphasize the evolutionary ephemerality of the work. Take the ANTI-RABBIT ART installation, a pop-surreal painting paired with a rabbit in a glass box. The painting incorporates blood used in the production of an anti-elephantiasis drug derived from the interaction of microbes, worms and rabbits with the aid of lasers, genetic engineering and the like. “Anti-rabbit” is geek code for a counteragent, and you have to feel for the bunny, who’d clearly rather be in a briar patch, but it’s all for a good cause. Elsewhere on a wall is a list of diseases and the code names of transgenic rats created with human DNA to produce drugs to fight deadly pathogens. Below the list are the cremated remains of the rats in beaded glass globes reliquaries. Then there are things that glow in petri dishes...

...as well as works with related themes that look more like traditional art, but
you get the picture: you’re in over your head. Even so, it’s not a bad way to be disoriented. The more traditional surreal weirdo-art appears at the wondrous voodoo-science warehouse that is the Ironworks. Here we have whole new species such as David Hardegree’s multi-eyed flying demon fish, top left, hovering near an amazing Creole architectural mutant environment by Angela Eve Freese, top. Local artists including Miss Pussycat, Michel Varisco, Alan Gerson, Daphne Loney, Hannah Chalew and David Sullivan mix well with the international krewe of science-art spelunkers. A great show for anyone with an interest in mutants, artistic or otherwise. ~Bookhardt

Multispecies Salon 3: SWARM: Curated by Myrtle von Damitz,

Marnia Johnston, Nina Nichols, Amy Jenkins and Eben Kirksey
Through Dec. 5
Kawliga Studios, 3331 St. Claude Ave & The Ironworks, 612 Piety St.

www.wix.com/multispecies/multispecies

Swoon's Musical House

2010-11-20T14:57:00.009-06:00

Click Image for More
Musical Architecture for the Bywater by SWOON, Taylor
Shepherd, Jayme Kalal, James K, Patrick Murray-Nellis

This model represents a landmark, interactive, public sculpture by the artist Swoon. Swoon’s design is inspired by local architecture and New Orleans musical heritage. To that end, the building itself will become a musical instrument. Swoon’s local collaborators are mechanical artists who will build musical devices into the structure of the building that engage its resonance and form. Levers, pulleys, buttons and pedals will allow visitors to “play” the house.

Swoon is a celebrated street and installation artist known for intricate handmade boats that have floated the Mississippi, the Hudson River and most recently the Adriatic Sea and the canals of Venice during the 2009 Biennale. As with the boats, the focus for our musical house is on salvaged materials, artistic and community collaboration, functional environments and interaction that involves sound and performance. The house will reside on Piety Street in Bywater, where we intend to present an ongoing series of annual block parties that host local and national musicians for orchestrated works that will be performed using the musical architecture of the house. The building will also be used as a unique artist residency space for artists participating in Airlift projects. The ground floor will function as a multi-use space for exhibitions, performances, and lectures that serve the wider community. A series of Swoon prints on found wood are available for sale with proceeds going towards the project. For more information on print sales or volunteer opportunities, contact info@neworleansairlift

The New Orleans Airlift would like to thank the following individuals and institutions for their ongoing support: Wayne Troyer Architects, Miranda Lash, Contemporary Curator, NOMA, The Old City Building Center, Tulane University, The New Orleans Arts Council, The Louisiana Decentralized Fund and the Black Rock Arts Foundation.

Shannon and Dary at Heriard-Cimino

2010-11-14T01:41:00.001-06:00

Elizabeth Shannon is back. Not that she ever went anywhere, but her early reputation was based on Zen-like environmental installations of found objects that radiated the surreal “rightness” of the happy accident. Forays into conceptual postmodernism yielded fewer gems, but here she returns to what she does best. My favorites are the simplest. CIRCLE WITH HORN is a precisely constructed wooden circle, an antique “form” from which a metal machine part was long ago cast at one of the foundries that once dotted the riverfront. Within it, a steer horn reclines as comfortably as a cat on a windowsill, and there’s really nothing to it. Yet the old “form” and antique steer horn radiate the hyper-reality that only objects imbued with the unspoken weight of the ages can possess, and their union, like a found-object koan, evokes a sense of serendipitous predestination. In FLOW, an old wooden form like a cleaved aqueduct bearing a stream of rounded pebbles evokes the elemental tension between the age of steam and the natural forces of the river and the rocks it carries downstream. Some other pieces are fussier or more baroque, but there are more iconic “Shannons” in this rather meandering show than we have seen in some time. On the walls, some deeply hued photographs created via the cyanotype process suggest a promising new direction for her archaic-surreal aesthetic.

Beth Dary’s delicately crafted porcelain barnacles clustered along the walls are small and subtle even as they strikingly resonate the essence of barnacle-ness. They are also amazingly detailed, with a precision matched by her black and white encaustic and egg tempera drawing series of dots—like coral formations or meticulously calcified sea creatures—on paper. Both the drawings and installation are based on the way New Orleans and New York were shaped by the river and harbor in this ingenious expo of unlikely elemental elegance. ~Bookhardt

RIVER CULTURE: Sculpture and Photographs by Elizabeth Shannon
SURFACE TENSIONS: Porcelain Wall Sculpture and Drawings by Beth Dary
Through Nov. 30
Heriard-Cimino Gallery, 440 Julia St., 525-7300; www.heriard-cimino.com

Deja Vu All Over Again: Campbell and Vis at NOMA

2010-11-07T00:24:00.002-05:00

Click to Enlarge

It's really just the two of them. Performance and multimedia artists Tony Campbell and Matt Vis have long appeared under their Generic Art Solutions (G.A.S.) imprimatur, but only in recent times have they seemingly multiplied in number. For instance, they once cast themselves in a photomontage rather like a local post-Katrina version of Leonardo’s LAST SUPPER, with beer-chugging disciples at a spread of boiled seafood next to a trailer. In BORDER PATROL, bottom, they portray illegal aliens confronted by rifle-pointing troops (also themselves) in a remake of Manet’s EXECUTION OF EMPORER MAXIMILLIAN. But their most spectacular effort is THE RAFT, top, a 16-foot long photomontage version of Gericault’s RAFT OF THE MEDUSA printed billboard paper. Inspired by the BP oil disaster and the workers killed or set adrift in the Gulf, it’s a lot like the 19th century original peopled by modern offshore oil rig workers—themselves again—thanks to Campbell’s persuasive way with Photoshop. Surrounding it in the gallery are photographs of empty sea and sky, and here their stark minimalism provides counterpoint to the overwrought scene on the raft. Nearby is their photographic remake of Francis Bacon’s painting based on Velasquez’ portrait of Pope Innocent X, only theirs is closer to the original, with a convict, below, in an electric chair in place of Pope Innocent on his throne.

Other pieces employing alternative media include DOUBLE AGENTS, above, a silkscreen on stainless steel with Vis and Campbell as M-16 wielding paramilitaries rather like Blackwater mercenaries, or escapees from a James Bond thriller. A video of Campbell as a fashionable diner served by Vis as a nihilist waiter recalls classical European art cinema gone slapstick: as Vis hands him the bill, he yanks the tablecloth from under the dishes, sending them crashing. This too is a comment on careless corporations and the messes they make in the pursuit of profits, damage for which they appear increasingly confident that they will never really have to pay in full. ~Bookhardt

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN: Mixed Media Works by Tony Campbell and Matt Vis
Through Feb. 13.
New Orleans Museum of Art, City Park, 658-4100; www.noma.org

Tony Fitzpatrick on Art, New Orleans, Creativity and the Meaning of Community

2010-11-07T00:19:00.001-05:00

November Moth--Click to Enlarge

"...Two years ago I made several moth pieces for my installation in Prospect.1 New Orleans, the inaugural New Orleans Biennial. It was an experience that fairly changed my life--kind of a Road to Damascus revelation. I like to think that I reclaimed my purpose as an artist there--the opening night of the installation for Prospect.1 was the best night of my life as an artist. My exhibition was hung in a defunct (or so we thought) funeral home in the Treme..." More>>

Book of Rocks, Flowers & Birds, Counter Cartographies, "Precious Horshes" and a Multichannel Video

2010-10-31T01:29:00.008-05:00

The result of a fateful series of autumn 2007 collaborations between local artists and New York artist-activist Paul Chan, The Front is everything co-op galleries are supposed to be, freewheeling places where art and ideas are bandied about with little regard for the art market. While most St. Claude area galleries also fit that description, the Front may be more miscellaneous than most. So it's no surprise that Korean artist Yooni Nam's BOOK OF ROCKS, FLOWERS AND BIRDS is not really a book but a series of ink drawings inspired by a 17th century Chinese painting manual, or that the drawings reflect her "transitional existence" between Eastern and Western cultures. Even so, it's hard to know what to make of these deftly circumspect studies, except that her CHRYSANTHEMUMS (detail above) ink drawing on mulberry paper is sublime. But the dislocations only escalate in Jeremy Drummond and Hoang Pham's COUNTER CARTOGRAPHIES series where continents and nations are sliced, diced and reconfigured into alternative topographies that resemble maps of the world as seen through a kaleidoscope or spun through a Cuisinart. Ethnicities and nations can seem fixed in our minds, yet these whimsically conceptual geographies remind us of the fluidity of continents and DNA over time. All lands and peoples have undergone migration; they are where they are because they moved there from elsewhere.

Yet more miscellaneous is the PRECIOUS HORSHES expo curated by Dave Greber. These emerging artists' works emit occasional sparks, but the standout is Jacob Edwards, whose gut wrenching ink drawings such as CRAZY HORSE (or RHINOCERHORSE), pictured, are demented in the grand expressionistic manner of Ralph Steadman and Ronalde Searle at their darkest. In a very different vein is the 5-panel multi-channel video by David Webber, top, a kind of electronic ballet of everyday things reduced to abstract swirls of vertiginously rotating colors. It's all oddly painterly and hypnotic, effects lyrically reinforced by an electronic music soundtrack that Webber also concocted on his home made synthesizer. ~Bookhardt
BOOK OF ROCKS, FLOWERS AND BIRDS, COUNTER CARTOGRAPHIES &
PRECIOUS HORSHES: Mixed Media Group Exhibition + Video by David Webber
Through Nov. 7
The Front, 4100 St. Claude Ave., 920-3980; www.nolafront.org

Birch at Arthur Roger, Ninas at LeMieux

2010-10-24T02:18:00.001-05:00

Featuring work made between 1978 and 2003, Willie Birch’s LOOKING BACK expo provides a fairly comprehensive sense of what this 67 year-old African American artist has been doing for the past few decades. It’s a journey that took him from the Magnolia housing project of his youth to the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art among other institutions, with awards like a Guggenheim fellowship along the way. And if that sounds like heady stuff, Birch has always remained true to his roots, using his art to celebrate the culture of our back streets and their Afro-Caribbean vibe. Even his New York-period work vibrates with local looking colors, building on his more abstract pieces of the 1970s, which often read like a lexicon of glyphs from African fabric patterns. He took a turn toward folk art in the 1980s in works like COMMEMORATING THE ANCESTRAL BURIAL GROUND, above, a painting that evokes the ancient undercurrents that subtly inform local inner city life, and where the folksy style fits neatly with his folksy subjects. More recently, he reduced his palate to black, white and gray in works like EVOKING THE ORISHAS, left, which conveys the incantatory rhythms of a voodoo ritual. In art as in life, Willie Birch is a populist who celebrates the transcendent spirit of even his most prosaic subjects.

Afro-Caribbean culture also profoundly influenced Paul Ninas (1903--1964), a white guy who was one of the more influential New Orleans artists of the mid-20th century. A Midwesterner who spent his early adult years in the West Indies, he found a similar culture in the New Orleans area, where he spent the rest of his life. In these works on paper, his drawings of Caribbean folk flow seamlessly into his later paintings like BACK BAY BILOXI, where staccato forms convey the primal rhythms of places where nature is strong and the natives are necessarily tough and resilient. ~Bookhardt

Willie Birch: LOOKING BACK, 1978--2003
Through October
Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 Julia St. 522-1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com
Paul Ninas: PAPER TRAIL, Works on Paper
Through October
LeMieux Galleries, 332 Julia St., 522-5988; www.lemieuxgalleries.com

On Riding Broomsticks

2010-10-24T02:17:00.000-05:00

Riding broomsticks, on Halloween or any other time, is a lost art, but the Eiffel Society branch of the Life is Art Collective seems determined to revive it. Here they are preparing for liftoff at the Eiffel ritual space on St. Charles Avenue.

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Keith Sonnier and Carolina Sardi at Heriard-Cimino

2010-10-17T01:05:00.001-05:00

Known for his coolly luminous large-scale neon sculpture installations at venues like the Munich International Airport in Germany, Keith Sonnier has always been able to meld varied approaches into his own unique style. Whether intimate or monumental, his work is always personal, if a tad detached. Growing up in Mamou, Louisiana, he was intrigued by the reflections of neon over water at night, an interaction of electric colors and natural forces that later characterized his work in media such as fabric, bamboo, glass and wood. Appearing simultaneously with a large solo exhibition of his work in Baton Rouge, this Heriard-Cimino show features some smaller pieces that are downright quirky even by Sonnier standards.

For one thing, the walls of the rear gallery are covered in newspapers, a not so veiled reference to the BP oilrig catastrophe. Yet it’s veiled anyway because Sonnier is always oblique. DINING CHANDELIER, top, features two gently curving neon tubes suggesting a classical urn, but it contains a chaotic series of glowing neon loops like a child’s doodle rendered in light. Yet more playful is TEA SERVICE, a set of very oversize cups and saucers stacked as if left over from a gathering of giants. But their fuzzy flocked surfaces, rendered in bright yellow and pink, transport us to a realm of surrealism—or Dr. Seuss—it’s hard to say which. As usual, Sonnier presents us with a Zen puzzle, and it hardly matters whether it has no answer, or many answers. Amidst all this, Miami-Argentine Carolina Sardi’s slender painted steel wall sculptures in the front gallery, such as STARRY NIGHT, below, may suggest so many elaborately arranged exclamation marks, computer code, or perhaps zany hexagrams from a hitherto unknown version of the I-Ching. Signifying human figures and natural forms hovering in space, they evoke devious MAD MEN-era modernist décor, or coded wall accents conveying secret messages. In this they are not unlike the social rituals and ordinary human interactions that inspired her to make them in the first place.~Bookhardt

Keith Sonnier: FLOCKED RELICS AND LIGHT SCULPTURE
Carolina Sardi: BETWEEN YOU AND ME
Through Oct. 30
Heriard-Cimino Gallery, 440 Julia St., 525-7300; www.heriard-cimino.com

Leslie Dill Channels Sister Gertrude Morgan

2010-10-10T00:29:00.010-05:00

This was unexpected. Since the 1970s, Leslie Dill has been known for her gossamer sculptural works based on poetry and the body, especially the female form, which she often cobbled out of verses--many from Emily Dickenson--cut from steel, copper, paper or even horsehair. Like Dickenson, Dill is a daughter of New England, and both reflect epochal shifts in the perception of female identity. So it’s startling to see Dill now taking her cues from Sister Gertrude Morgan, our own Lower 9th Ward artist, poet and preacher known for fire and brimstone sermons on the streets of the mid-century French Quarter. If the gulf between Dickenson and Morgan initially seems irreconcilable, Dill found a way. Here we see the main themes of Morgan’s sermons including the Apocalypse, the Antichrist, the Whore of Babylon and the Beast rendered in a style more crisply gothic than Morgan’s own colorfully gaudy effusion. Yet the look of all this may seem oddly familiar if you’ve ever seen those old New England headstones with skulls and skeletons etched in granite. The first New Englanders were also fundamentalists, and shared the same apocalyptic message as Morgan, so her graphics and theirs have much in common. But probably only another woman could fathom how it felt to be a crusading black female preacher, poet and painter in the 1950s South.

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In 1957 she heard a voice telling her that she was a “bride of Christ,” and that was when she took her ministry to the French Quarter. Dill’s sculpture of a wedding gown blazoned with Morgan’s name and the words “Jesus” and “power” and “glory” convey her positivism, but a black dress covered with variations of the word “Hell” amid eyes and serpents express "the sulfurous pit of Hades that awaits the sinner." By placing her in a broader, more historic context, Dill facilitates a more complete picture of Sister Gertrude’s place in the pantheon of American culture. ~Bookhardt

Lesley Dill: HELL HELL HELL/ HEAVEN HEAVEN HEAVEN: ENCOUNTERING SISTER GERTRUDE MORGAN & REVELATION--Through Nov. 20
Arthur Roger @ 434, 434 Julia St. 522-1999; www.arthurrogergallery.com

Listen to Sister Gertrude Morgan on NPR: More>>

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