MATTHEW BARNEY | GLADSTONE GALLERY

Matthew Barney, REPRESSIA (decline)--OTTOgate: square hip--engorged iris---stroke-HEMMOROIDAL DISTRACTOR(2)-JIM, 1991. Wrestling mat, Pyrex, cast petroleum-wax and petroleum jelly Olympic curl bar, cotton six, sternal retractors, 192 x 216 x 177 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery. Photo by David Regen.

Matthew Barney's "Facility of DECLINE" at Gladstone Gallery, New York September 9–October 22, 2016 Download the art-agenda iPad App Share    "Facility of DECLINE" at Gladstone Gallery, New York, "mirrors but does not reproduce" Matthew Barney's iconic 1991 exhibition of the same name at the gallery's SoHo space.(1) Immediately upon entering, one is immersed in Barney's now familiar yet ever fantastic world of petroleum jelly, mythic characters, seductive hermeticism, and ever-revelatory aesthetic invention: the signature hermetic conceptual drawings in self-lubricating plastic frames and petroleum jelly (rendered in graphite with that gorgeous, light, sinuous, even awkward Old Master hand); Caucasian flesh and bright yellow wrestling mats; football and weightlifting paraphernalia; speculums; cast sucrose capsules and barbells; saltwater pearls; an NFL jersey numbered "00"; thermal retractors, red skeets, binding belts, a hydraulic jack with glucose syrup; a "hubris pill"; various electronic freezing devices; numerous references to Oakland Raiders football star Jim Otto; Harry Houdini, dubbed "the Character of Positive Restraint"; and the melancholy intersex diva TRANSEXUALIS (1991), a weightlifting bench cast in petroleum jelly and enclosed in a walk-in-cooler. Twenty-five years after its first exhibition this critical early work—which transformed Barney from a recently graduated pre-medical student into one of the most astonishing and influential artists of the 1990s—is not only alive and well, but finally has its moment. What was ungraspable, eccentric, and misread in 1991 as merely a rehashing of 1970s performance art via white male hetero/homosexual privilege is, as Maggie Nelson argues, of a body and desire that "has no gender; it is neither male nor female, neither human nor animal, neither animated nor inanimate. Its orientation emphasizes neither the feminine nor the masculine and creates no boundary between heterosexuality and homosexuality or between object and subject (…) It favors no organ over any other, so that the penis possesses no more orgasmic force than the vagina, the eye, or the toe."(2) The re-staging of Barney's '90s debut coincides with a general interest in foundational exhibitions from the era, such as "The Nineties," a section curated by Nicolas Trembley at this year's edition of Frieze London. Returning to groundbreaking exhibitions, not just works, reminds us of the profound ontological transformations of art and objecthood that occurred at this time. In a way the generative effects of trauma (such as Barney's interest in hypertrophy or the death of Houdini by a punch to his abdomen) were not only a major theme of this period but remain its essential presence in the narrative of contemporary art history. Barney's work, as this lag in understanding implies, is not easy. It does not truck with resolutions and wholes but demands attention, synthetic analysis, time, and most of all sensitivity to materials. Storytelling is one of his most inventive forms, and each of his stories is rooted in the associative and formal potential of physical materials. REPRESSIA (1991)—a (white-)flesh-colored wrestling mat with a wound held open as in a surgical operation by a sternal extractor, oozing a life-fluid of petroleum jelly that slides over a pair of twin testicular red skeets, while a cast petroleum-wax and petroleum-jelly Olympic curl bar, punctuated by cotton socks, hangs above—is both a polymorphous pulsating creature and narrative of metabolic process. Like TRANSEXUALISand the transcendent Jim Otto Suite (both works 1991), is all verb rather than noun. We may speak of them as sculptural works but they express the condition of "-ing." Even his drawings are diagrams and embodiments of living systems. Stadium (1991), purposely positioned as the first work of the exhibition, contains a plan of the system you are about to encounter; where football drills on a playing field become the sucrose producing, gonadal, intestinal, rectal, hypertrophic forces of bodies(3) cut from organic chemistry, biology, internally lubricated plastics, rock climbing, physiology, and industrial materials such as the iconic petroleum jelly whose entropic tendencies (stains, discoloring) are not signs of wear so much as testaments to Barney's interest in what happens to physical materials as they are subject to pressures and forces over time. Here is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Barney's work: he does not work on a human but rather a glacial timescale, unafraid to take eight years to make The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002) or River of Fundament (2006–2014); the "Drawing Restraint" series began in 1987 and shows no sign of concluding. Each of his works—whether film, sculpture, or video action—should be experienced as an instantiation of an animated, alive, process in time, joints and materials that are always striving to become rather than being. Aligned with this is the necessity of including Barney's titles and lists of materials with, and as, the work. For instance, the full title: TRANSEXUALIS (decline) ---HYPERTROPHY (pectoralis majora) H.C.G. ---JIM BLIND (m.) ---hypothermal penetrator OTTO: Body Temp. 66 degrees (1991) not only links the creation of aesthetic form with the process of weight training (hypertrophy) where muscles are built by tearing and scarring but introduces, as a detail, H.G.C. H.G.C. is Human Gonadotropin Hormone, which is produced during pregnancy, but "when injected intramuscularly, stimulates testosterone production in the male athlete, which in turn enhances athletic performance."(4) It is therefore unfortunate that the gallery maintains the convention of the checklist, which one must ask for at the desk. CONSTIPATOR BLOCK: shim BOLUS – OTTOshaft – (transverse) TFE squat –HEMORRHOIDAL DISTRACTOR (2) (1991) might read like a visual diagram or science experiment, but that is the point. Barney's work does not follow the rules of the white cube—it always exceeds and forces us beyond, challenging the very definition of art and objecthood in times deformed by the art market. But none of this lessens its impact, which is more like being injected into the body of a David Cronenberg film than an afternoon visit to a Chelsea gallery show. It is all guffaws, goose bumps, and goo, infused with the groans of the grotesque. (1) One in a series of exhibitions and bodies of work referred to as the "OTTO Trilogy": "Facility of Incline"(Stuart Regen Gallery, Los Angeles, May—June, 1992); and "Facility of Decline (Gladstone Gallery, New York, October 1991 in New York); OTTOshaft (at documenta IX, 1992). (2) Maggie Nelson, "On Porousness, Perversity, and Pharmacopornographia," in OTTO Trilogy (New York: Gladstone Gallery, 2016), 19. (3) Jim Otto, the center for the Oakland Raiders from 1960 to 1974, "was the first player in the NFL to choose the jersey number 00, a reference to his palindromic name. Otto underwent twenty-eight knee operations, nine of which were performed during his playing career. He was fitted with prosthetic knee joints made from Teflon, a self-lubricating plastic whose chemical makeup lends it an intrinsic resistance to friction." Matthew Barney, "Playbook 91-92," in OTTO Trilogy, 175. (4) Matthew Barney, "Playbook 91-92," in OTTO Trilogy, p. 176. Thyrza Nichols Goodeve is a writer and cartoodlist who lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York. See more images

ONASSIS CULTURAL CENTER | NY

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

XU ZHEN | JAMES COHAN GALLERY

Xu Zhen, Under Heaven -- 2808TR1601 (detail), 2014. Oil on canvas, aluminum, 70 3/4 (diameter) x 5 1/2 inches.Produced by MadeIn Company.

Xu Zhen September 8–October 8, 2016 Opening: Thursday, September 8, 6–8pm James Cohan  533 W26 Street New York www.jamescohan.com James Cohan is pleased to present a solo exhibition by the multi-disciplinary Chinese artist Xu Zhen. The show will be on view from September 8 to October 8, 2016 with an opening reception from 6 to 8pm on Thursday, September 8. In 2009 Xu Zhen subsumed his individual artistic identity and transformed into MadeIn—an "art creation company." Subsequently in 2013, MadeIn launched a brand—Xu Zhen, redundantly making Xu a product of his own corporation. Xu works within many different media and thematic structures, making him an enigmatic yet groundbreaking figure in Chinese contemporary art—a role that he gleefully accepts. Of his work, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, director of the Serpentine Galleries, London, writes, "Xu's sociopolitical appraisals distance him from the herd of contemporary Chinese artists. And the breadth of his practice, in all its seeming spontaneity and surprising inflections and turns, only complicates the attempt to pin him down to any single position within his country's art scene—or, indeed, within cultural production at large." The works in this exhibition examine the human experience of pain, pleasure and desire as well as the aesthetic manipulation of consumers in late capitalist societies. The exhibition will present a large-scale sculpture from the Eternity series, Xu's 1998 film Rainbow, selections from his Under Heaven paintings and a new wall installation, Corporate – (Erected), produced this year. Xu's oeuvre questions the validity of an East-West dichotomy with great skepticism. Xu's Eternity sculptures are a mash-up of Hellenistic and Buddhist statuary, creating three-dimensional, transcultural exquisite corpses. The result is a deftly composed work that carries the weight of history, yet acts as a sly statement about global similarities and differences. Eternity allows the sacred and the profane to exist in the same space, denying neither an ultimate importance.  In Rainbow, which premiered at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, a bare back fills the screen and is repeatedly slapped until the skin turns an alarming shade of red. Although the slapping is audible, the hands themselves were removed through editing. The result is a visceral, aestheticized portrait of pain and endurance. In contrast to Rainbow, the paintings from Xu's ongoing "Under Heaven" series are a voluptuary dream. He applies a thick layer of oil paint to a canvas and then forms delicate petals and flowers using a cake decorator. The resulting impasto creates a striking relief, tempting the viewer to touch or even taste. The expansive title, "Under Heaven," is a literal translation of a Chinese word meaning "the whole world." The sumptuous surfaces as well as the allusive title make the works an intense sensual experience. Corporate – (Erected) is a large-scale wall sculpture incorporating ready-made S&M paraphernalia. From afar, the work appears to be an exercise in gothic formalism; however, upon closer inspection it becomes clear that it is an assemblage of leather accessories and erotic toys. Xu intends the viewer to project his or her own cultural associations onto the sculpture and experience its meaning and associations in a very subjective way. Rarefying these salacious objects in a fine art evokes the idea of sexual pleasure—perhaps to an uncomfortable extent. The works in this exhibition, united in their lush, eye-catching aesthetics, are representative of three primal human sensations—pain, pleasure and desire—and reveal how these emotions are consistently manipulated by the images that surround us. Born in 1977, Xu Zhen has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2015); Long Museum, Shanghai, China (2015); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2014); the Minsheng Museum, Shanghai, China (2012); Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (2011); and S.M.A.K., Gent, Belgium (2009). He was also included in the 49th Venice Biennale (2001), and the 51st Venice Biennale (2005). He lives and works in Shanghai.

HAMISH FULTON | WALKING ARTIST

Josée Bienvenu Gallery

Design: Hamish Fulton.

Hamish Fulton WALKING ARTIST September 8–October 12, 2016 Opening: Thursday, September 8, 6–8pm Communal walk: Saturday, September 10, 11:30am from the gallery Josée Bienvenu Gallery  529 W 20th Street New York, NY 10011  www.joseebienvenugallery.com Download the art-agenda iPad App Share    Josée Bienvenu is pleased to present WALKING ARTIST, Hamish Fulton's first exhibition with the gallery and his first solo show in New York in over a decade. While his drawings, sculpture diagrams, murals, and photographs have led to him be considered a practitioner of Land Art, Fulton considers himself instead as a "walking artist." Through representations of walking itself, nature is neither conceived as a subliminal "other" existing to be conquered nor as an anthropocentric landscape, nature exists rather to be lived, endured, and left to thrive. In our own lives, Fulton's journeying through wilderness points to a palpable lack of adventure, unmediated experiences, and connectedness to nature. In 1973, after walking over 1,000 miles in 47 days from Duncansby Head, Scotland to Land's End, England, Fulton made the decision to "only make art resulting from the experience of individual walks." Purposefully made of humble materials like paper, wooden rulers, and photographs, his recreations align with the belief that these walks should directly engage with the environment yet leave no traces upon it. Calls for political justice also recur in Fulton's work, corresponding to his commitment to individual and artistic freedom. In this exhibition, Fulton presents a body of work that exemplifies his ongoing commitment to art as a quiet protest against the alienation of people from the natural world. Included are two large scale vinyl works: the first refers to a guided and sherpa assisted climb of Mount Everest using bottled oxygen in 2009, the latter describes a pilgrim circuit of the Barkhor Kora and the Jokhang Temple in Tibet. These bold textual works attest to Fulton's passion for typography in tandem with his ongoing commitment as a walking artist. Several watercolors are included, evoking walking journeys from Switzerland to Bolivia. Unique black and white gelatin silver prints portray journeys through the Pyrenees from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. In the project space, there will be a selection of vintage photographs and small sculptures. For the past 20 years Fulton has devised many group walks, with more than 30 realized transnationally. He has also planned a communal walk for this exhibition to take place the Saturday after the opening, meeting at the gallery. Born in 1946 in London, Hamish Fulton lives and works near Canterbury, UK. Fulton studied at the St. Martin's School of Art, London and the Royal College of Art, London. Select solo exhibitions include Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2011); Museo Transfrontaliero del Monte Bianco, Courmayeur, IT (2010); Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo, Badajoz, ES (2009); Center for Contemporary Art, Kitakyshu, JP, and Museum of Modern Art, NY (2006); Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art, Bolzano, IT,  and Museion Bolzano, Bozen, IT (2005); Haus Konstruktiv, Zuric, CH (2004); and Tate Britain, London (2002). Select group exhibitions include Ends of the Earth, MOCA, Los Angeles, CA which traveled to the Haus der Kunst, Munich, DE (2012) and the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2011). Selected public collections include: Tate Gallery, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Princeton Art Gallery, NJ; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Los Angeles County Museum, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Eastman House, Rochester, NY; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Metropolitan Museum, Tokyo, JP; National Museum, Osaka, JP; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Biblioteque National, Paris; IVAM, Valencia, ES; Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL; Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, CA; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK; British Council, London; Kunstmuseum, Basel, CH; Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, MX; Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva, CH; Musee de Grenoble, FR; Musee St. Pierre, Lyon, FR; FRAC, Rennes, FR; National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavík; Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama, JP; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, AT; University of Lethbridge, CA. For additional information, please contact jessica@joseebienvenu.com.