©Patrick Witty - here is new york - exhibition at School of Visual Arts

Ten years ago, on just another week like this, with New Yorkers speeding to their next meetings, racing for subways with coffee in hand, and models primping for Fall Fashion week – a morning like any other suddenly unraveled. The following moments would gnaw at collective memories, punctuate lives, and instigate a series of devastating world events. It was a tragic start to the new century and an ominous beginning for the new millennium. It was America’s passage from puberty. Some still recollect their movements in dreamlike sequence, whether it was the moment of becoming first aware, escaping the avalanche of dust, peering from rooftops at the collapsing towers, or just smelling the acrid vapours alone in one’s room…

As seen from the world trade center in 2000- Horizonte Perdido, 2000 ©Roberto Linsker, Courtesy of 1500 Gallery, NYC

©Alex Webb/Magnum Photos USA. New York City. September 11, 2001. Terrorist attack on World Trade Center. View of Lower Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights rooftop. ©Alex Webb- here is new york - exhibition at School of Visual Arts

Some exhibits in the city are commemorating the tenth anniversary of those events that deflected the course of many lives. The New Museum is presenting New York-based artist Elena del Rivero’s [Swi:t] Home: A CHANT (2001-2006) in the lobby gallery to remember the World Trade Center tragedy.

Elena del Rivero exhibit at the New Musuem in New York City 2011

©Tony Savino - here is new york - exhibition at School of Visual Arts

The School of Visual Arts is exhibiting a show of photographs that began originally as an impromptu collection by contributors in a vacant storefront in SoHo, a few days after the event. “here is new york: Revisited,” records the collective eye of New Yorkers – the office workers, spectators and emergency crew that recorded the events as they unfolded, creating through a thousand viewpoints, a patchwork of memories.

The show at SVA features 300 of the images submitted by the 3000 photographers at the time, and the project’s website, www.hereisnewyork.org is an archive of the 5000 images submitted to the original exhibition. The New York Historical Society is the principal repository for the “here is new york” archive of prints and ephemera. Two complete sets of prints, are held by the School of Visual Arts Archives.

© Christian Sievers, NY Coil, 1995, Courtesy of 1500 Gallery, NYC

A third exhibit, PIIOTOS_WTC at 1500 gallery is a group show comprising of photographs of the Twin Towers by 22 of Brazil’s most recognized photographers who lived, worked or were passing through NYC over the past three decades.

Untitled (Andrea), 2001 © Tim Barber from his book, Untitled Photographs, published by OHWOW

Collective Memory, organized by Sheryl Oring is a public arts project in which ten typists with manual typewriters at Bryant Park 12:30-2:30 p.m. Sept. 9, 10 and 11, will type the answers to the question. “What would you like the world to remember about 9/11?” The sheets of paper will then go on a traveling exhibition to college campuses.

The New Museum – Visitors receive free admission to the Museum on Sunday September 11, 2011.
New Museum 235 Bowery New York, NY 10002 212.219.1222
PIIOTOS_WTC will be on view at 1500 Gallery from September 7-17, 2011 – 1500 Gallery
511 West 25th Street #607, New York, NY 1000 +1.212.255.2010
School of Visual Arts (SVA) “here is new york: Revisited”—
A Tribute to the Landmark Photography Exhibition Following 9/11 September 6 – 17, 2011
Reception: Friday, September 9, 6 – 8pm Westside Gallery, 133/141 West 21 Street, New York City

Cloaca Professional: Media: Mixed Media Dimensions: L 710 x B 176 x H 285 cm Date: 2010 View: Monasism (22. 01.2011 – 19.07.2011) at MONA ,Tasmania, © Wim Delvoye

By Kiša Lala
Interview Wim Delvoye Part 2 ( Read Part 1)
The Shitting Machine: The Cloaca Project

Recently David Walsh had purchased one of his pooing machines for his MONA space in Tasmania where Delvoye is due to have a solo show this Fall. The subject brings out Delvoye’s science-nerd-enthusiasm: “I always wanted to do a shit machine…you know I saw the film Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as a little boy. It was like thinking about what it was like being a boy. Tracey Emin in every work from A to Z says she is a girl – there’s not much else in her work. I think it’s great, but what you read is, I’m a girl, I’m a bad girl, a funny girl… In the nineties [my] work was more about being a boy, now it is much more eclectic. The debates were coloured by identity, what subgroup you belonged to. It was about separation. The New Museum [exhibition of 2001], had been the temple for all these discussions; the debate about the Other.”

© Wim Delvoye

© Wim Delvoye Tour Paris 2010 700x700x 1200Laser-cut corten steel exhibition-at-Musee Rodin Paris France

So did these separate identities have the same shit in common?

“It stopped all the quarrels. Between male, female, class/gender issues, ethnic groups, the self-definition of people. Staring at the shit machine they were all relieved – communally relieved. It was wonderful.”

Delvoye received a different response to the work wherever he showed. In France they removed the shit immediately. In Germany they scolded him for betraying the starving people of Africa; some asked why it did not produce anything of practical value like vitamins, or energy. Delvoye chuckled at all the didactic consternation, “I am not taking myself that seriously. It is a Calvinist taboo – wasting food,” he continued, “Somehow in Germany it’s about never wasting a little potato. If you can’t eat it, you put it back in the fridge. Everyday is about suffering for the people who are hungry in the world.”

So does it actually smell like shit?

“Yes. And the consistency depends on the absorption of water. I am surprised Walsh [at MONA] is still feeding the machine…he may one day get tired of it. It goes through reactors and it is fully automatic like a fish tank. The bacteria in the colons take their time, I cannot tell the machine to do it faster, but it can make more shit than a human body; more timely…it’s like saying I need to shit everyday at 1:30pm – because museums have to be open…”

Car Tyres, Untitled (Car Tyre # 4) 2009, handcarved car tyre, Ø77 x 27 cm © Wim Delvoye

Delvoye had found Chinese galleries largely tolerant in exhibiting his works, and because we spoke before Ai Weiwei’s recent detention, our conversation was lighthearted about his friendship with the artist. “He is a dear friend of mine. I regard him as one of my best friends out of all the artists on this planet. Yes we disagree gently about China. I have a much more positive regard for it than him. He thinks I am a naïve little boy and I should shut up about my praise for his country.” Now, in light of recent events Delvoye’s next show on May 7th should add some heat to the discussions at Urs Meile Beijing, the same gallery as Ai WeiWei’s.

I say that just as he has his love-hate relationship with Belgium, Ai WeiWei has strongly split sentiments about his own country. “Yes he probably likes my country as a revenge. His first show was in Belgium,” says Delvoye impishly.

The two artists were filmed in a documentary, Into the Night, walking around Kassel together, in which Delvoye spends a good deal of time peeing off-camera, still microphoned, while the camera observes Ai Weiwei looking on mostly embarrassed – recounted Delvoye with glee. “When I see WeiWei I always kiss him, and on a certain day he said, oh I thought you were gay! The Chinese are not into kissing each other.”

Cement Truck - KVS Brussels: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: H 408.5 x B 213.2 x L 980.3 cm (scale 1:1) Date: 2010 Weight: 5744.5 k, © Wim Delvoyeg

Delvoye is not impressed with sexuality. When he was in school he says, “there were lots of penises in the art world, lots of sexual organs – it was so fashionable. But sex was not so interesting in proportion to religion, shit, the market, the economy – these are actually much more taboo.”

He is wary of the traps and biases of art-world critiques. “If some journalist is coming – I am supposed to check that the table doesn’t have a Financial Times on it…if it was Playboy, that would be considered fine for an artist…” Looking inside the guts of the economy has, in fact, been a focus. Economics is more fundamental to our culture than the aspiration towards art as many ancient, ten thousand-year-old clay tablets tell us: They are usually invoices – love poems are a recent development. Charles Darwin borrowed the idea of Evolution as an analogy – a term mostly used in economics at his time, explained Delvoye.

To make light of art world economics, he created an art piece in which the buyer was given a money back guarantee: The bond is valid for fifteen years during which the artist was obligated to pay anyone back who regretted their purchase. With mock gloom, he tells me he can’t leave Belgium anytime soon for fear someone might want to collect.

Tour - Brussels: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: H 1700 x 260 x 260 cm Date: 2010 View: Knockin’ on heaven’s door (20.10.2010 – 23.01.2011) at Bozar, Brussels, © Wim Delvoye

Delvoye’s Disneyland

Delvoye is dreaming up even larger projects. He would like to be commissioned to build museums. “I want to build castles, towers, staircases.” I am not cheap but I am less expensive than maybe other things – I mean we are not talking more than one Picasso to do a huge project!

His work his using more craftsmanship. The gothic trucks are beautifully ornate, and it doesn’t take art history to appreciate the intricacy of the filigreed work.

“Yes that’s so eternal. How do you judge archeological stuff. How do you judge sculpture…why does culture for thousands of years focus on craftsmanship and then all of a sudden in the 20th century it stops?! Of a sudden there is an expectation that we are completely other beings, like feminists, Communists, Socialists. The expectation is, if you are literate, you like abstract art, monochromes, conceptual art – the reasoning is that working class people are too stupid to understand modern art.”

His current project involves buying a castle to convert into an architectural project, a kind of museum. His recent Cor-Ten towers could be construed as pure architectural elements –and here again he is challenging the compartmentalizing of art in areas traditionally “off-limits.” His ironic art, and gothic dumptrucks are popular, but he feels the need to move on. “The market would want me to continue this work. But I see the conservative forces in the market.”

“For the 60s generation – Lichtenstein, for instance, was making variations of the same theme his whole life…an artist cannot be like that anymore, because now you need to react to what you see and hear in the media all the time… I cannot think of the earth without evolution”

“You need to be constantly flexible. What is art today? You can make an animation and put it on YouTube and it can be more important than a museum show! One can become an antiquarian very quickly believes Delvoye, it being impossible to predict what might be relevant three months from today. “I was thinking when I was a child if a genie came out of a bottle and offered a crystal ball into my future and said, you are going to have shows in China, and you will sell to people in Yemen or India…I wouldn’t believe it.”

One thing is certain, whatever the future, Delvoye will be poking at its frontiers and making the news.

Wim Delvoye will be showing in Galerie Urs Meile , Beijing, China – May 7 – July 31, 2011 Opening: May 7, 2011; 4 p.m. – 7 p.m

Tour - Brussels: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: H 1700 x 260 x 260 cm Date: 2010 View: Knockin’ on heaven’s door (20.10.2010 – 23.01.2011) at Bozar, Brussels, © Wim Delvoye

Self described architect, prankster, farmer, megalomaniac: Wim Delvoye is an extreme artist, willing to chase an idea to its unsettling conclusion. To make his point Delvoye has mastered not only the skills of the traditional artisan – from weaving, tattooing, ceramics, stained glass and steel – he has also engineered the most perfect shit.

Delvoye often triggers controversy but he is a stealth artist, astutely exposing all the finger-wagging snobbism about his art. He was in New York recently during Armory week, noting the changes in the Meat Packing District where he once lived in the late 90s. In 2001 he showed his Cloaca machine at the New Museum. “I thought it was going to be a disaster during the anthrax scare. It was a bio-machine making shit,” says Delvoye, in a thick accent with a hint of mischief. During our conversation he frequently had me in titters over his escapades – he knows the common notions people have about his art and will happily play up his schoolboy antics. Settling down to chat, (with a coffee, after toilet and squeezing blackheads – he volunteers to add) he takes me on a journey into his cosmicomical universe – being on the run from the Louis Vuitton police, his plans for a Gothic wonderland and his friendship with Ai WeiWei. I listen, as though back at school again, squeamish and awed by the nerve of the schoolyard’s most notorious prankster.

Tattooed Pigskins, Untitled (Art Farm China), 2005, tattooed pigskin on oval stretcher, handcarved gilded frame, H 58 x 50 cm, © Wim Delvoye

Dump truck - Catanzaro: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: B 270 x H 295 x L 820 cm (scale 1:1) Date: 2006 Weight: 3720 kg © Wim Delvoye

Tattooed Pigs and the Louis Vuitton Police

He sold his NY place soon after 9/11, and with an instinct for the next wave, moved to where it was more happening: he bought a pig farm in China. At his art farm Delvoye tattooed live pigs. Galleries were reluctant to show art that snorted and oinked, but Delvoye says, “I prefer showing them that way as a dead pig skin is a big compromise.” The few art-pigs he has left will be kept until they die of old age before being parted from their precious hides, which purchasing collectors have to wait for. More contentious though, was the piece of pork with the Louis Vuitton logo branded on its back. The corporation is very particular about the usage of its brand and hounded Delvoye all the way to Shanghai in an attempt to confiscate the hides.

“The museum was quite primitive – and meanwhile I had these expensive suits visiting, trying to get me, which was quite ridiculous,” he recalls. “For a while they had big folders with my name on them and they were trying to sue me. It was scary. So, we were once archenemies!”

I said I was surprised they didn’t appreciate the irony – and wasn’t Arnault a collector of art himself?

“The owner of LV is much more of a perfectionist, and a good manager, defending his products at all costs, than he is an art-lover – I mean loving art is just one of the many rings he has on his fingers” said Delvoye, candidly adding, “He is a mogul, and he has art to outsmart other moguls.”

Tour - Brussels: Media: Laser-cut corten steel Dimensions: H 1700 x 260 x 260 cm Date: 2010 View: Knockin’ on heaven’s door (20.10.2010 – 23.01.2011) at Bozar, Brussels, © Wim Delvoye

The brand’s value was based on a psychological notion of opulence, and they were sensitive to protecting this as they deemed fit. Still, an artist should have the right to comment on cultural icons, and Delvoye has used many other brands over the last 15 years, including signing his name with Disney letters, and playing off such ubiquitous cultural entities as Coca Cola and Procter & Gamble’s Mr. Clean.

Delvoye believes that our imagination has been co-opted by powerful images: You cannot read the original Pinnochio without visualizing it in colours tainted by Disney. Recently, an American company had even filed for the rights of the word Om, in use for thousands of years in India. “There should be a counter-attack,” he says, “for visual pollution. Big companies are paying taxes to the government: the rights to blow dirty air into the atmosphere. People on the way to work see all these brands, bags, shoes. Brands attacking their collective memory.”

“If it came to a litigation I would have intellectually found it enjoyable,” says Delvoye. “It would be in everybody’s interest whether I won or lost: it would make a case for all artists. The work I was doing never resulted in confusion between the two products. My second argument was that after a while, [a logo] becomes a part of collective [memory]. If you are so omnipresent in the city streets, then you have to take a joke,” says Delvoye. He was amused by all the fuss, but understood that pigs were not very respected animals in the world. It is a paradox that LV have hired artist Scott Campbell to create tattoo designs on their leather bags this season, and that their models prance around with branded necks.

LV pursued Delvoye to Art Basel where under Swiss law the pigs would have been taken into custody, so he had to leave the country, “It was such a nice pig, and I wanted to keep it…”

Craftier the Better

Delvoye has always been playing on ideas of luxury and poverty. Delvoye grew up with the stuff his father would bring home from trips to the Congo. Via low-culture he came to understand high-culture. He knew more about kitschy, crafty things before he ever saw a 17th century table. In arts school he quickly learned that showing skillful work was a taboo, and demoted you to the stature of a craftsman.

His early works with carpet weaving and tapestry shocked people because it overstepped convention and encroached the realm of the traditional arts, of folklore and artisanship. It was anti-modernist. It was high art vs. popular culture.

I suggested that the only legitimate use of traditional crafts these days was restricted to the domain of tourism. “It is the forces of democratization,” said Delvoye. “Everybody should have curtains in the house… machinery makes mass production possible; taste and quality get devalued.”

More on Wim Delvoye’s poo machine in part2 of this post.

Allen Ginsberg portrait of George Condo, Courtesy of New Museum

At the New Museum’s retrospective of George Condo’s art there is a wall of portraits, big and small, forming a colourful explosion that is much a depiction of the state of Condo’s mind as it is an idea of the mental state of contemporary society.

While the wall of characters appropriate the styles of many Western artists of the past 500 years – from Velázquez to Picasso to Arshile Gorky – Condo’s own work has influenced many newer generations of artists, among them John Curran who has cited Condo as a pivotal inspiration for him in the 1990s.

George Condo Dreams and Nightmares of the Queen 2006 Oil on canvas Private collection, Courtesy of New Museum, NY

Kanye West's cover art by George Condo

Recently George Condo had worked with both Kanye West and Phish on their cover art. Condo had spoken to Marina Cashdan in Huffington Post about working with Kanye West on ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,’ “Kanye’s an art-driven person and he’s very knowledgeable about painting. He wanted to be a painter and a fashion designer and he did everything he could to test his skills until he arrived at what he did best, which was music writing lyrics and creating songs. He didn’t want to just come to the studio or look through books and say, ‘I like that, can I put it on my cover?‘ He was like, ‘I want to do this together with you, a full-on collaboration, like you would be an instrument in this process, a visual instrument in the process of creating this thing together.‘ That’s what I love about working with him.”

Condo had said to West, ‘How far do you want to take it?’ and West had replied, ‘I want something so good that they won’t be able to print it.‘ recalls Condo. “He was just trying to get me revved up. Neither one of us would ever have expected that it would be banned.”

Kanye West and Marc Jacobs, who is a collector of Condo’s art, were both present on opening night at the New Museum.

George Condo Listen to maternal voices (Portrait of Monika) 1985 Oil on canvas 65 3/ 4 x 63 in 167 x 160 cm Private collection, Courtesy Sprüth Magers, Berlin and London Courtesy New Museum NY

George Condo “Mental States” at the New Museum, 235 Bowery, through May 8, newmuseum.org

A self portrait of the one and only Michelle du Bois

This Friday night marks the opening of Zoe Crosher’s latest chapter in the ongoing saga of Michelle du Bois, the American-born escort who worked her way across the Pacific Rim in the 70s and 80s. It still remains a mystery as to how exactly Crosher obtained these photographs—and she’s not telling, though it is speculated that du Bois herself bequeathed the massive archive to her fellow shutterbug.

Crosher and co-curator of the first du Bois project, Leslie Grant, explain their work in typical artistic prose: “This project explores the larger-than-life persona and culturally-weighted sexuality found in the wonderous archive and visual fragments of Michelle du Bois. An American woman who traveled in Japan as a prostitute in the 1970s and 80s, she took, collected, kept and bequeathed unto us hundreds of tourist photographs, family snapshots, and pornographic images of herself.”

Crosher and Grant add, “These casual and amateur snapshots of her posing throughout the Pacific Rim propose a complex of disparate but interrelated discourses, including notions of the archive, the role of photography in relation to narrative, story-telling, and personal identity, the politics of private and public, her fetishization of the East and issues surrounding family albums and vernacular images. Her exotic everyday proposes an identity that rises from within rather than any social construct imposed upon her from the outside.”

A collection of photos from Crosher and Grant's first du Bois-inspired show, The Reconsidered Archive of Michelle du Bois

The first du Bois-inspired show, The Reconsidered Archive of Michelle du Bois, opened in Claremont, California in 2008. Crosher’s newest fete to du Bois will be exhibited at DCKT Contemporary in New York from January 8 to February 14, 2010. The Unraveling of Michelle du Bois elucidates Crosher’s fascination with du Bois and her sexually charged journey and, though still an archive (of epic proportions), transcends onto an elevated plain with the passionate assimilation  of Zoe Crosher.

While the photographs were taken by du Bois, Crosher lends her hand to the delivery by blowing-up images and contrasting them against each other in a veritable tumultuous harmony. In the tradition of Jeff Koons’ upcoming curatorial debut at the New Museum, it’s a striking example of how far art travels when the hands of multiple artists help push it along.

"Untitled" by Urs Fischer, Marguerite de Ponty 2009. Mixed mediums.

There’s something to be said about an artist who doesn’t take himself too seriously, whose whimsical approach to his art can shine forth and resonate in those who know little about his previous work, connecting them to the piece as much as the adept patron.

“Marguerite de Ponty,” Urs Fischer’s new exhibition that recently opened at the New Museum, has, in certain instances, just the right amount of charm to accomplish this. There are several sculptures, over the course of the three-floor exhibit, whose malevolent disposition—a lamp post that looks like it was melted in an inferno, a piano seemingly dismantled by baseball bats, and crutches that appear to have been stolen from their owner and glued to the floor just out of reach—is quelled by magnificent pastoral hues.

"Noisette" by Urs Fischer, Marguerite de Ponty 2009. Mixed mediums.

“Noisette” is another piece that is sure to be a crowd pleaser for the weekend gallery warriors and keeps visitors to the museum on their toes–a pink latex tongue that pokes out of a 3-inch glory hole in the wall and wiggles around briefly before disappearing for an indeterminate amount of time, thanks to laser technology. It ends up being a contribution that feels arbitrary and like little more than a Surrealist joke.

“Last Call Lascaux,” an exact, actual-size color image of the space printed as wallpaper, is the going favorite among visitors. This too is pink, the result of photographing the entire white empty space—ceiling and skylight included—inch by inch without adding more lighting. The trompe l’oeil is clearest when you examine the public-safety signs. By law they could not be removed, so they’re shadowed by images of themselves. In all, it is as if Mr. Fischer had discovered a space within a space and it were, literally, a twilight zone.

The show dies when it reaches the second and final floor, the exception greeting you as you step off the elevator. “abC” is suspended from a steal i beam that visitors pass by when entering the final floor. A bird that appears to be perched on a moon rock with a chain around its neck? This piece could be the anchor on Dakis Jonnaou’s Jeff Koons-designed yacht “Guilty.” It’s a compelling piece that may just be elevated to this level of acclaim by the rest of the free-standing statues that make up the remainder of the exhibit.

"abC" by Urs Fischer, Marguerite de Ponty 2009. Cast aluminum, steel chain, iron particles.

“Service à la Française,” a 51-piece installation of polished stainless-steel boxes in different sizes; the five exposed planes of each are printed with highly detailed color images of five views (front, back, side, and top) of everyday articles, enlarged to many times their normal size. They include food, children’s and dog’s toys, books, a ladder, and many more.

It’s fun to walk through these objects, as it doubles as a house of mirrors, but in the end, you’re able to find your way out, and the whimsical pieces staged on the higher floors seem detached from the rest of the show. But Fischer, in his first US solo show, didn’t act alone: the show was curated by New Museum veteran curator and Director of Special Exhibitions, Massimiliano Gioni.

“Service à la Française” by Urs Fischer, Marguerite de Ponty 2009. Silkscreen on mirrored chrome steel.

So, was the show a triumph for the young Swiss wunderkind? It’s hard to say. Gioni and Fischer decided against a career survey, opting instead to showcase work from the last two years in a much more domesticated outcome. There were no massive holes jackhammered in the middle of the gallery as he did at Gavin Brown’s space in “You,” nor was there anything akin to 2005’s “Bread House,” which is exactly what it sounds like. He played it safe, and it shows.

New York still has some hope left for 2009: Roni Horn and Gabriel Orozco both have shows opening in the next few weeks, at the Whitney and MoMA respectively.

When Greek industrialist Dakis Joannou’s prodigious modern art collection arrives for its tour at the New Museum in February 2010, it will have a new curator to ensure a smooth run. Jeff Koons, the artist whom Joannou credits with his involvement in the art world after experiencing “Equilibrium,” will oversee  the production of the show and, in the tradition of Urs Fischer before him with “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus,” will use the entire museum as his new manifestation. This new role will bring carte blanche to Koons to exhibit the work as it has never been seen, which is quite fitting for the collections’s first visit to the US.

Along with the ubiquitous Koons works spread throughout the exhibition, there will be a considerable sampling of the modern-art tour de force, including work from Takashi Murakami, Vanessa Beecroft, Ashley Bickerton, Allan McCollum, and Gabriel Orozco, among many others.

Joannou has been expected to exhibit his collection at the museum for nearly a decade.

"Guilty," the 110-foot yacht Jeff Koon's designed for Dakis Joannou. Photo courtesy of monacoeye.com