NEWSgrist - where spin is art

Closings (UES) 101

Closings (UES) 101, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 190

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 190, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 189

Found Art (UES): Unmonumental 189, originally uploaded by Joy Garnett (archive).

"Hopeful", an exhibition by David Levine, opens @ Cabinet, Oct. 3

Photo courtesy Claire Laude/Galerie Feinkost Berlin

"Hopeful," an exhibition by David Levine.

Location: Cabinet, 300 Nevins Street, Brooklyn, NY (map and directions here).
Opening reception: Saturday, October 3, 6–8 pm (featuring a performance by Christian Hawkey)

Exhibition dates: October 3–24, 2009
Gallery hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 12–6 pm

Cabinet is pleased to present "Hopeful," a solo exhibition by Berlin- and New York-based artist David Levine. "Hopeful" explores headshots—photographs of actors looking for work rather than publicity portraits of stars—both as genre and as material artifact. First appearing in the 1950s, these peculiar images routinely disregard conventions of portraiture: the intended viewer, who is in a position to hire the actor, is offered no environment, professional emblems, or trace of social context.

Today, New York City agents alone receive an estimated ten thousand headshots weekly, ninety-nine percent of which are routinely thrown out. What is the ecological impact of this rejected material? And how much waste—not only trashed photographs but also image CDs, demo tapes, slides, and manuscripts—does the culture industry need to generate in order to maintain its meritocratic reputation?

For the opening of "Hopeful," poet Christian Hawkey will stage a collaborative, polyvocal performance of his poem "i am writing to inform you of what i am currently doing," which draws its inspiration from Levine's installation.

A version of "Hopeful" was exhibited at Galerie Feinkost in Berlin in the summer of 2009. [Artforum Pick; Art in America Review]

About the Artist
David Levine's work encompasses performance, theater, installation, and video. His projects, which examine the premises of acting and spectacle, have been seen at Documenta XII (with Cabinet), Gavin Brown's Enterprise@Passerby, Galerie Feinkost (Berlin), Galerie Magnus Mueller (Berlin), the Goethe Institut (Berlin and New York), HAU2 (Berlin), PS122, and the Sundance Theater Lab, as well as more traditional venues such as the Vineyard, Atlantic, and Primary Stages theaters. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Artforum, Bomb, Art in America, TDR, The Village Voice, The Believer, Theater Der Zeit, and Theater Heute, and he has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Kulturstiftung Des Bundes, and Etants Donnes/French Fund for Performance. Represented by Galerie Feinkost, Levine lives in New York and Berlin, where he is the Director of the Studio Programme at the European College of Liberal Arts. He will be giving a presentation on "Hopeful" at Prelude 09 (preludenyc.org) on October 2. [see below]

About Cabinet
Featuring exhibitions of both contemporary art and historical materials, as well as an eclectic schedule of talks, screenings, and events, Cabinet's space was inaugurated in the fall of 2008 to extend the award-winning magazine's engagement with art and culture into the public realm. Located at 300 Nevins Street (between Sackett and Union) in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, Cabinet's space is open Tuesday to Saturday 12–6 pm and by appointment, and is fully wheelchair-accessible.

Also, @ Prelude09:

David Levine

Friday, October 2

5.30-6.15pm

MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER
The CUNY Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY10016
ph: 212.817.1860

Levine's presentation will focus on unsolicited actors’ headshots and cover letters. Specific topics to be covered: the history of the headshot, the economy of the headshot, the demonic & vengeful nature of those hopeful stares, the tragic and transcendent ontology of the unsolicited submission.

[more info, directions]

Lost Illusions? Barry Schwabsky on Jack Tworkov

PRIVATE COLLECTION COURTESY ESTATE OF JACK TWORKOV
House of the Sun (1952), by Jack Tworkov

via The Nation, 9-23-09 (Oct 12 print edition):

Fever Charts

Barry Schwabsky

Jack Tworkov's writings wrestle with the figures of Abstract Expressionism and his own lost illusions.

Almost any fable of the artist's life could take its title from the novel about the life that Balzac wrote, and that stands as a model for the rest: Lost Illusions. Yet Balzac may have been too optimistic. Showing his would-be poet Lucien Chardon seduced by his social ambitions and undefended by any strength of character, a man who throws away his talent by selling out, Balzac implicitly defends those who labor with integrity as heirs to greatness--and its rewards. So we all hope. But experience teaches that greatness is rare, and perhaps no less so among the upright than among those of questionable character. A sadder novel than Balzac's could have been written about the lost illusions of those who with patience and determination remain true to their intuition of the artistic absolute yet never attain inner certainty of their achievement or even scant public acclaim for it. But how much recognition would be enough anyway? In exchange for its near-extinction in the exigencies of form, the ego demands twofold repayment. The artist's demands on his public are typically as unappeasable as those he makes on himself. Although the pleasures of Jack Tworkov's writing are many, The Extreme of the Middle is a book I'd recommend to aspiring artists as a warning: this is how depressing it can be to be a serious, successful artist.

I don't mean to nominate Tworkov as the hero of a neo-Balzacian novel in which the artist who stays true to his calling ends up a tragic failure. Nothing could be further from the case. Tworkov, one of the original Abstract Expressionists whose mark on the history of painting is inexpugnable, accomplished a great deal in a long and rich life, not only as an artist but as a teacher and a mensch. And his writings are a considerable contribution to the art history of his time. Their subject is not so much aesthetics or form as the ethics of art. But his was a life deeply shadowed by, among other things, his resentment at never having been accorded the worldly status of friends like Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Mark Rothko. Repeated insinuations that he'd been too heavily influenced by de Kooning particularly rankled, and were not always wrong.

[read full article...]