Alchemy and Inquiry: Philip Taaffe, Fred Tomaselli, Terry Winter at Wave Hill

Installation view of works by Terry Winters in the Glyndor Gallery at Wave Hill in the Bronx, New York. Photos: 16 Miles [more]


Terry Winters, Wave Hill, 2011. Oil on paper mounted on composite board, 32 1/8 x 44 1/8 in.

Bringing together Philip Taaffe, Fred Tomaselli, and Terry Winters for an exhibition in the luxurious galleries of the Wave Hill garden and estate in the Bronx is an idea that feels so right that it is a wonder that it had not been done before "Alchemy & Inquiry," which opened there last month. Each artist, after all, has spent decades honing a rich pictoral language that channels and sometimes embodies the complexities of nature. Think of Taaffe with his intricate, organic patterning and washes of color; Winters with his rough-hewn, almost grimy geometries; and Tomaselli with his swirls and bursts of pure abstraction. They're all natural intoxicants.

The three artists produced most of the work on view after making a joint trip to Wave Hill last fall, so many of the pieces were, at least to some degree, designed with the fine interiors of the 1927 Glyndor House in mind. How they will look when they hang in the James Cohan Gallery in Shanghai, the show's next destination, is an open question. Most of them look superb in this tranquil domestic setting, but its Winters' paintings that hold up best — earthier, but equally gentle, counterpoints to the room's low ceilings and elegant moldings. Every fireplace should have one above it.

With each artist featured in a separate room, it's easy to see their three distinct visions clearly. My favorite in the tripartite melee is Taaffe, whose paintings are populated with forms that recall amoebae and deep-sea creatures. They almost appear to pulse and vibrate in front of you. That description also applies to the essay by artist and poet Peter Lamborn Wilson in the show's gorgeous, free catalogue, which was printed in an edition of 3,000 and is currently available online as a PDF. In it, Wilson positions the three artists in the lineage of Hermeticists — "Paracelsus, the Rosicrucians, Bruno — as he lobbies for "a secret avant-garde, for the re-enchantment of aesthetic vision." (Sign me up.) Forthwith, some highlights from the text:

For Winters, abstraction holds a key to the mystery of evolutionary origins — origins revealed to us in the advance mathematics of Chaos and Complexity Theory and the "other possible states" of Painting. For him Nature is not only flora and fauna but the deeper principles on which the world is structured.

Fred Tomaselli works hang above the fireplace; a trove of Taaffes resides in the next room.

If psychedelic art had become the actual folk art of an isolated community, say in the hills of North California, and this 1968 Shangri-La had lived on unvisited by the outside world for several centuries, you would expect their art to have remained psychedelic but to have evolved, been refined and rectified, become intricately craftier and more anonymously baroque over generations of tribal tradition. In effect, you'd expect something like a picture by Fred Tomaselli.

Tomaselli is our shaman, and our Archimboldo, the LSD generation's house-artist, of course now slightly amused, always, by how much has gone down, but also always (once again) ecstatic. Sees All, Knows All — but is not bored.

The most effervescent room: four walls of Taaffe paintings.


A tiny Taaffe in the corner, another above the hearth.


Philip Taaffe, Opuntia Variegatus, 2011. Mixed media on canvas mounted on panel, 53 1/2 x 59 in.


Detail view of Philip Taaffe, Opuntia Variegatus, 2011

The work is also about movement, or how we see in a constant series of glimpses. What do I want my art to accomplish? What do I expect it to be like as a physical encounter? I think the best thing one can hope for is to be able to enter into another world. – Philip Taaffe

That “other world” Taaffe refers to would of course be the Mundus Imaginalis, according to the philosopher Henry Corbin, the world of Archetypes, or the Creative Imagination. Nothing could be more germane to our consideration of all three artists as — can we say, deeply influenced by Hermeticism — or would it be fair to call them something like the “New Hermeticists”? Nowadays, most artists and writers shun the label “avant-garde” and refuse to belong to any movement or school — but for me Hermeticism is, indeed, the “eternal” avant-garde, the everlasting rebellion of love and beauty against oppression and enforced stupidity.

Dennis Oppenheim at a Train Station in the Bronx

Dennis Oppenheim, Rising and Setting Neighborhood, 2006. Painted steel, perforated steel, 22 ft. x 2 ft. x 80 ft. Photos: 16 Miles [more]

"Some warm June night this summer I will wander down to TriBeCa and wait for Dennis to run past me in the night — the outlaw bad-boy artist no one can catch."

– Alice Aycock, Artforum, May 2011

While perusing Dennis Oppenheim's web site in the days after his death in January, I was surprised to learn that he had completed a work of public art at the Metro North train station in the Riverdale section of the Bronx less than five years ago. Somehow, despite riding past that station numerous times, I had completely missed it. Spurred by the tribute penned by his second wife, Alice Aycock in this month's Artforum, I visited the work, Rising and Setting Neighborhood, 2006, over the weekend. It is an odd and beautiful piece, though not as odd and beautiful as some of Oppenheim's other public art pieces. (One can only get away with so much in genteel Riverdale, I assume.)



"The piece evokes the houses of the neighborhood in the light of daybreak and dusk," Oppenheim wrote of the piece. "It greets commuters as they begin their journey leaving in the morning as the sun rises, returning in the evening with the setting sun." I buy all of that, but, as is almost always the case with the Oppenheim's public work, there is another, more sinister, darker element. The houses have an anthropomorphic feel: note the two square eyes and the large square mouth. They may be greeting commuters, as Oppenheim said, but they are not the friendliest ambassadors. They are not smiling. Rather, their mouths are wide open, as if they're screaming or shouting. "Don't leave!" At the same time, they're painted with a family friendly range of colors, and they could be just seven separate, irregular pentagons.



I only met Oppenheim once, for a few minutes, last year at the opening for "The Original Copy" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, which featured his 1970 work Parallel Stress. Never one to approach an artist I don't know, but having just finished reading Lucy Lippard's Oppenheim–filled Six Years, I decided to say hello after spotting him just outside the sculpture garden. After offering some sort of awkward congratulations, I showed him the book, which he started flipping through, ostensibly excited (though it occurs to me now that he may have just been generously indulging the curiosity of a fan). He stopped on a page with a photograph of Robert Kinmont doing one of his 8 Natural Handstands (1969) — a possible influence on Parallel Stress, in the way that it combines bodily performance and photographic documentation — and said something to the effect of, 'This was a great piece, but he stopped making art shortly after this and just disappeared. These photographs and a few works were all that was left.' Which is where we now find ourselves in regards to Oppenheim.



Thankfully, he has left us with a fascinatingly idiosyncratic body of work, much of it public art that we'll be able to stumble onto for some time to come. Here is a quick roundup of other writers' responses to his passing.

In the Guardian, Michael McNay positions Oppenheim in relation to his peers and followers:

"It might have been expected that the grand calmness of Oppenheim's earth art would lead to sculpture somewhat akin to Rachel Whiteread's understated monumentality, but instead he seems to have followed the example of Claes Oldenburg's monumental pop sculptures of everyday objects and the tainted route of Jeff Koons's urban vulgarity."

Jerry Saltz shares what he found compelling about the artist's work:

But the wild, labyrinthical ways Oppenheim put things together, the way he allowed thought to unspool ever-outward in involuted configurations, was inspiring nonetheless. His ideas of artistic experimentation, theoretically driven art, the merging of sculpture and science, his absolute unwillingness to create a visual style, his aesthetic and material dislocation — all of it wowed me.

Roberta Smith connects his early, ephemeral work to his later, more grandiose efforts (and has a few anecdotes, which are delightful to read):

"Belonging to a generation of artists who saw portable painting and sculpture as obsolete, Mr. Oppenheim started out in the realm of the esoteric, the immaterial and the chronically unsalable. But he was always a showman, not averse to the circuslike, or to courting danger."

Judd Tully remembers almost being killed by an Oppenheim piece:

"I managed to escape with a pack of coughing scribes through an emergency exit just before a retinue of fire equipment and fire fighters arrived to save the day. Oppenheim somehow avoided arrest for what seemed to be an exceptionally dangerous happening-slash-performance. As he said later, 'It wasn't supposed to be so much like Vietnam.'"

Finally, one more line from Aycock:

"Dennis was a trickster, a shape-shifter, a flimflam man, a snake-oil salesman for art, and a rascal. He was highly intelligent, charismatic, and witty."

"The Working Title" at the Bronx River Art Center

Left: Keltie Ferris, Untitled, 2010. Oil, spraypaint on canvas, 36 x 24 in.; center, top to bottom: Joshua Abelow, Self-Portrait, 2010. Oil on burlap, 12 x 9 in.; Halsey Hathaway, Untitled, 2010. Spray paint on dyed canvas, 26 x 21 in. "The Working Title," Bronx River Art Center, Bronx, New York, March 25, 2011. Photos: 16 Miles [more]

"If history is a record, the art of today locates itself in its scratched and skipping grooves."
— John Kelsey, "Unclaimed Bags Will Be Destroyed," originally published in Uncertain States of America, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, 2005

Let's drop in the word art as the second word in Kelsey's sentence and talk about abstraction, specifically a sizable group show called "The Working Title," on view now at the Bronx River Art Center's temporary home that is resolutely focused on contemporary examples of it. (The center's permanent space in West Farms is undergoing a much-deserved, and impressively well budgeted, $7-million renovation.)


Installation view


Inna Babaeva, More Than You Think, 2011. Softwood lumber, PVC clear sheets, casters, 64 x 90 x 40 in.


Kris Chatterson, Untitled, 2011. Acrylic, UV inkjet on polyester over panel, 40 x 30 in.

Organized by Progress Report, the curatorial nom de guerre of artists Kris Chatterson and Vince Contarino, the exhibition includes 32 artists whose interests tilt toward the extroverted, ebullient (though not necessarily emotionally expressive) end of the available abstract spectrum, of the historical record to be sampled and sliced apart. There is, for instance, an effervescent Keltie Ferris canvas, its eerie black ground bedecked with primary-color polka dots, a madcap Mondrian. A small square by Matt Deleget — titled Shuffle (for Grandmaster Flash), a tribute to the hip-hop legend who grew up in the surrounding community — contains far more punch than one would expect from a painting just 18 inches on each side. Filled with bright squares of pink, yellow, and orange, it holds up well against its sprightly neighbor, a Cordy Ryman put together with just a few wood blocks.


Left to right: Cordy Ryman, Vector, 2010. Enamel, shellac and epoxy on wood, 36.25 x 33.5 in.; Matthew Deleget, Shuffle (for Grandmaster Flash), 2011. Acrylic, fluorescent and metallic acrylic on MDF, 18 x 18 in.

It's a strange thing be in the neighborhood of Grandmaster Flash, just a few blocks from the late and legendary Fashion Moda, looking at contemporary art by artists whose work one usually sees in Chelsea, on the Lower East Side, or out in Brooklyn. Strange, but nice, with friends and acquaintances brought together en masse in a new context. Perhaps you have seen Joy Curtis's architecture–bewitched show at the Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, open through Sunday, and want more. You will find it here, a sculpture of what look like roughly splintered white wall moldings that have been strung them together and hung from the ceiling. Two of her gallery compatriots are here too, Ian Pedigo, a maker of inscrutable assemblages and arrangements, and Pamela Jorden, who produces deceptively simple abstractions, patches of color that threaten to cohere but never quite do.


Joy Curtis, St. Virga, 2010. Hydrocal, fiberglass, wood and metal, 98 x 21 x 21 in.


Tisch Abelow, Untitled (very tizdayle), 2009. Gouache on paper, 68 x 82 in.

Joshua Abelow, who closed out a winning show at James Fuentes in February, is another welcome guest, represented by a tiny and typically witty painting called Self Portrait — the promise of its title fulfilled by just two circles and a single line against a geometric background. His sister, Tisch Abelow, has work on display as well, an enormous painting that looks like — and very well could be — a magnified detail of a James Siena, triangles folding in on each other. Lauren Luloff's piece is comparably mysterious, harder to classify. A wood rectangle covered with a web of translucent fabrics and strings, it's balanced precariously on the top of a low drywall. Its unwieldy, almost-organic masses of material look prepared to crawl out into the room, perhaps to join together with Inna Babaeva's More Than You Think, a series of wood frames on wheels that she has wrapped in streams of neon fabric.


Dennis Hollingsworth, Todo es Igual, 2011. Oil on canvas, over panel, 32 x 24 in.; Gary Petersen, Step Up, 2011. Acrylic on panel, 20 x 16 in.


Ian Pedigo, Untitled, 2010. 76 x 60 x 30 in.


Top to bottom: Osamu Kobayashi, Eternal Gathering, 2010. Oil on linen, 14 x 17.5 in.; Tamara Zahaykevich, glowing teef, 2009. Foam board, paper, acrylic paint, watercolor, ink and glue, 2.375 x 2.25 x 2.875 in.; Douglas Melini, Fluent Green, 2011. Acrylic on canvas with hand painted frame, 23.5 x 19.5 in


The crowd on opening night, Friday, March 25, 2011


Lauren Luloff, Buoy Gallery Installation, 2010. Mixed media, dimensions variable.


Center: Letha Wilson, Double Dip, 2009. Wood, digital prints, 80 x 5 x 38 in.; right: Patrick Brennan, The Mountauk Discussion, 2010. Materials, 24 x 18 in.

Picking definite favorites, clear winners, in a show with this many artworks is, of course, a fool's game, but here's one pick: Letha Wilson's Double Dip. She's gently bent two thin strips of wood — one large, one small — into gently curving loops and lined their interior faces with photos of lush greenery. A forest grows inside of them. I want to see one hanging next to a Robert Morris felt piece. If anything in "The Working Title" ages as well as those felts, if anything is being discussed 30 years from now, it will mean that quite a few of these pieces will have survived and won. People just may one day look at the checklist listing these fairly young, fairly brash abstract artists and marvel that all of their private languages were once chattering away together in a space in the Bronx, lobbying for their causes, fighting it out. Right now, it feels like a whole — albeit loosely knit — movement is up for a vote.


The front of 305 East 140th Street, #1A, in the Bronx, the present home of the Bronx River Art Center, but just for a bit.

Hunting for a Richard Serra Sculpture in the Bronx

Installation of Richard Serra, To Encircle Base Plate Hexagram, Right Angles Inverted, 1970, at 183rd Street and Webster Avenue, in the Bronx, New York. Photo: Peter Moore

"The place in the Bronx was sinister, used by local criminals to torch the cars they’d stolen. There was no audience for the sculpture in the Bronx, and it was my misconception that the so-called art audience would seek it out."

– Richard Serra in an interview with Douglas Crimp, Arts Magazine, November 1980

In the late 1960s, sculptor Richard Serra decided that he wanted to install a work on a street in New York. "I went to the Parks Administration, who told me they would try to assist me with the project for any site in that area of the Bronx," he told art historian Douglas Crimp in a November 1980 interview. "Manhattan is out. Try the Bronx," the Parks officials responded. Serra says that he spent three or four months traipsing around the Bronx before finding an ideal spot, a dead-end street at 183rd and Webster, "a broken-down neighborhood, unencumbered by buildings," according to the artist. After paying a $250 fee, he was able to install his work, To Encircle Base Plate Hexagram, Right Angles Inverted, which curator Lynne Cooke notes was later "included" (her scare quotes) in the 1970 Whitney Annual (the address of the work was listed in the catalog) and the 1971 Guggenheim International. At some point, it was purchased by art dealer Ronald Greenberg (of New York and St. Louis gallery Greenberg van Doren), shipped off to St. Louis, and put on display at the St. Louis Art Museum (SLAM), where art writer Walter Robinson saw it back in 2005.


183rd Street and Webster Avenue, in the Bronx, New York, 2010. Photo: 16 Miles [more]

Even if the street was completely dilapidated (and, with all due respect to Serra, the cars in the photos don't look quite as "torched" as one might expect, though he was there and I wasn't), it seems amazing to believe that the Lindsay Administration would simply let an artist close down a street, tear up the asphalt, and install a sculpture. In order to investigate, I made a trip up to the Bronx this weekend, secretly hoping to find a trace of Serra's sculpture, a circular ring filled in like a pothole. However, the neighborhood looks quite a bit different 40 years later. For one, the dead-end street is much shorter than in Peter Moore's photographs (see above). Also, Serra mentions "stairways going up to an adjacent street, which would enable a viewer to look down on the piece from, various levels," but those stairs were nowhere to be found.


Twin Parks West Houses, 365 Ford Street, one block from 183rd Street and Webster Avenue

The city's willingness to let Serra rip up a street made more sense, though. Plans were likely underway for the New York City Housing Authority to build a housing project there. The Twin Parks West Houses, which are still located at the end of the street that held Serra's sculpture, was completed in 1974, only three years after the work was included in the Guggenheim International. Walking through the complex, one can spot the stairs that Serra mentioned in his interview with Crimp, though they look fresh and new, updated versions of those that the artist saw his idealized viewer climbing to view his work.

The particularly fascinating thing about this whole affair is that Serra seems genuinely disappointed that his fellow art-world friends didn't make the trip to the Bronx. Here's the end of the quotation that started this post: "There was no audience for the sculpture in the Bronx, and it was my misconception that the so-called art audience would seek it out." The work succeeds precisely because of this fact. It marked a site of urban blight that had been institutionally confirmed: it could only exist because the city had decided that the neighborhood was in need of publicly funded improvement. A contemporary artist was welcome to place a sculpture there in the meantime. Interestingly, the Bronx contains more housing projects than any other borough in New York. "Manhattan is out. Try the Bronx." Indeed.


The view down from Tiebout Avenue, looking toward 183rd Street and Webster Avenue