Any chance to see any sort of work by Vija Celmins is always actively to be sought, and a show of “New paintings” at McKee Gallery is cause for celebration indeed. Celmins’ work over the decades has always defied categorisation, dodging charges of both “hyper-realism” and “illustration” to develop its own strange cosmology and context. Celmins’ position outside of cliques and movements is part of her silent mystery, the impossibility of deciding once and for all what she intends by her body of work. It is this refusal to ascribe a motive, as well as deliberately “blank” images, such as a humble gas heater, that has made Celmins an influence upon a whole new generation of neo-naïf painters.
The inventive range of Tony Oursler’s techno-monsters grows continually into a vocabulary, if not world, of his own, rich in combinations and connotations. Oursler’s perverse imagination is still working overtime as evinced by his latest creations “Antennae pods transmissions” which have occupied Metro Pictures. Though his muttering faces are still to be found in hand-blown glass bowls, peering at us in their angry confinement, his latest TV antennae sculptures are a veritable jumble of sci-fi connotations.
Hannelore Baron is an artist in that poetic tradition of collagists and box-makers who created a large body of intimate works for themselves, regardless of exhibitions and audience. This is a way of artmaking, introspective, sophisticated and often extremely literary in its associations, with an emphasis on textures and tactile detail. Cornell may be ruler of the genre but Baron is a strong contender, who typically regarded her cardboard constructions as more akin to a journal or diary than objets d’art. Like many such secret-collagists, Baron was no social outcast or art-world innocent, indeed she sired the eponymous dealer Baron of Boisante. But she was also lucky enough to not have to bother playing the art scene, working just for her own pleasure while studying textiles and Asian philosophy. Her first major public exposure was at the Guggenheim Museum, no mean venue for a neophyte, with a one-person show in 1989, two years after she had died of cancer. This show at Senior & Shopmaker Gallery is rich in sensuous and intellectual rewards, whetting the appetite for a travelling show planned later this summer.
Another sort of outsider-insider is Jeffrey Vallance who has continually taunted the art scene with his renegade status and populist dirty tricks. Long before the Guggenheim thought of opening in Las Vegas Vallance was already exhibiting at the Liberace Museum in that city. A dedicated fan of all that is weird and hideously wonderful in raw American culture, Vallance is revered for his semi-religious kitsch experiences as well as his regular writings for that Bible of occult-events, Fortean Times. His latest show at Lehmann Maupin features wax sculptures of Nixon, Dante and the Virgin of Guadalupe, all assembled as a result of the artist’s own trip to Mexico City to gaze into the miraculous eyes of the Virgin.
As rare text-based conceptualism runs rampant through Manhattan this month, maybe the backlash to all that damned painting has already begun. Rarest of all is the re-appearance of Ian Wilson at Peter Blum. Wilson has long been the most mysterious and cryptic of language-based artists, a sort of American Stanley Brouwn. The genius of Wilson was essentially to do away with even text, proposing instead philosophical debate as an art form in itself. They are called “Discussions of the absolute” and are neither to be taped nor transcribed, in the classical oral mode of Socrates. The only evidence that remains of the event is a certificate stating that there was such a discussion. Yet how disappointing that the gallery is also displaying actual physical artworks by Wilson, six reliefs (1966-69) and a chalk circle drawn directly on the floor from 1968. Conceptual purists will rightly consider this a vulgar gesture towards commerce and stick with the “discussion” itself, which took place at the gallery on 26 April at 6pm.
Kay Rosen’s own joustings and jestings with linguistic permutation demonstrate how the solemn semiotic games of 60s and 70s conceptual art subsequently blossomed into something altogether more entertaining.
Rosen’s puns and paradoxes are part Oulipo, part poésie concrète, but also very American as befits any resident of Indiana. Her eight new watercolours at Paul Morris Gallery are called “Rooms” and feature a vertical list of terms describing furniture. These are shifted and realigned according to the artist’s programme: “The words are arranged on the page/floor plan as furniture would be arranged in a room, but in groupings based on the alignment of a single common letter in two or more words.” u Rounding out this triumvirate of triumphant language-games is the unusual exhibition of Gene Beery paintings at Mitchell Algus Gallery. Beery was a celebrated artist’s artist in early 60s Manhattan, part of the scene around Duchamp, Man Ray and Bill Copley. His sole solo show of text-paintings, at Iolas in 1963, was a legendary event to which even Warhol was denied entry. Beery worked at MoMA with James Rosenquist and Sol LeWitt, with whom he shared a loft on Hester Street, and both remained ardent fans. Beery moved the next year to a remote corner of California and effectively vanished from the map. Mitchell Algus was responsible for his re-emergence two years ago, with his first show in 36 years, displaying such key early conceptual works as “This Painting Temporarily Out of Order” of 1961. Beery’s second show chez Algus is equally revelatory, from late 60s Pop word-works to recent “classic” black and white paintings, proving that Beery is more than a one-hit wonder every three decades.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'A triumvirate of triumphant language'