Forces in Motion: Robert Morris at Castelli, Joe Scanlan, Guyton/Prina, Josh Smith

Robert Morris, Father/Engine, 2010. Acrylic on aluminum panel, 8 x 8 ft., in Robert Morris, "1934 and Before," at Castelli Gallery, New York, through June 30, 2011.

"Some drawings will be rotated throughout the course of the exhibition," the press release for Robert Morris's recent show at the Castelli Gallery, "1934 and Before," advises. Sure enough, when I visited a few days before the end of its run, three of the eight paintings — or drawings, as Morris refers to the works, aluminum panels marked with acrylic or epoxy — that were purportedly included in the exhibition were missing. An accompanying catalogue depicted the absent works — a grainy black-and-white profile of a Neanderthal, a sepia-toned Midwestern landscape being engulfed by a sprawling dust storm, and a Nazi rally at Nuremberg, all copied from photographs.

These new works are huge. Each measures at least eight feet tall, and some, like an image of a Depression-era breadline, stretch twelve feet long. It would impossible to hang comfortably all eight works at once in the Castelli Gallery, which makes the rotation, at least in part, an issue of practicality. But there is more to it than that. Most artists recognize their space constraints and respect them, keeping additional extra works out of the exhibition, in a back room in some instances. Morris didn't do that. Instead, he matter-of-factly worked around his spatial constraints, cycling his drawings through the gallery. "These works will know bigger spaces one day," is seems to say confidently. It's an unusual gesture, and remarkably similar to one made by Joe Scanlan and a few other artists in recent years.


Robert Morris, 1934 Bread Line, 2010. Acrylic on aluminum panels, three pieces: 8 x 4 ft. each.

Recall the announcement for Scanlan's February Wallspace show, deceptively titled "Three Works" (there were more), which promises an exhibition that would '"take the form of a 'round robin." It continues, "[A] single work will be shown for a brief period of time before another work takes its place… [T]he works will proceed as the artist and gallery see fit." And so they did, with more than three pieces slowly making there way through different sections of the gallery over the course of the exhibition's run.

Wallspace billed Scanlan's show as "[p]art audition, part slide show, and part lot sale," and it's that last analogy that seems most apt, since the exhibition strategies of Scanlan and Morris closely resemble those of art-fair exhibitors, who often replace sold work for fresh new pieces throughout a fair's run. Time is money in such situations. Stephen Prina and Wade Guyton seemed to farcically acknowledge as much in their collaborative painting show at Friedrich Petzel, which took place this year on March 31 — a one-day affair, its opening reception reception doubling as its closing reception. If you were planning to see their new paintings on April 1 — April Fool's Day, no less — you were out of luck, a consumer arriving after a store's one-day sale.

What all of these strategies share is a willingness to toy with and rework the standard exhibition format, to compress it or render it topsy-turvy for the viewer. Your experience of Scanlan at Wallspace or Morris at Castelli depended, at least in part, on when you happened to visit those respective shows, an experience not entirely different from the one offered in the 1985 murder mystery film Clue, which had three different endings, with each screening featuring just one. Like the makers of Clue, Scanlan and Morris sidestep the fixed format promised by a gallery exhibition, opting instead to send out a few different variants, none equaling what one typically thinks of as a complete, 'correct' show, and Guyton and Prina, for their part, pretty much eviscerated that promise altogether. (For the record, Universal Studios is reportedly at work on a Clue remake, with Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski at the helm. It is due out in 2013.)

There are more examples, like "Genesis I'm Sorry," the show that painter Josh Smith curated at Greene Naftali in the summer of 2007, which played host to a variety of events and installations, as work was added and removed throughout the length of the show. It concluded with a re-creation of Duchamp's string–filled room (the inspiration for the title of this blog). The newfound interest in Charlotte Posenenske's mutable sculpture also seems notable, especially as Artists Space presented it last summer, reinstalling one of her large works in a new configuration every two weeks.


Robert Morris, Two Women Before 1934, 2010. Acrylic on aluminum panels, two pieces: 8 x 4 ft. each.

What all of this means is, as ever, another matter. The motion of these works suggests an allegiance with the "transitive painting" that David Joselit identifies in his 2009 essay "Painting Beside Itself," work that portrays the various networks of circulation to which they belong. Placed in a gallery, artworks are only momentarily halted on their journey from a studio to a storage facility, a collector's wall, or an auction block. Scanlan, Morris, Guyton/Prina, and Smith make that stay even briefer and more tenuous. One thinks of the story that Dave Hickey once told about the late art dealer Robert Shapazian, in which Shapazian reportedly confided in Hickey, of his decision to leave the Gagosian Gallery: "I sit around, a crate comes in, I see who the crate’s from, I go to the waiting list, I make up this outrageous number and send it out. … I am creating value, but it is not real value.'"

At the same time that these spinning, evolving exhibitions highlight their international networks of capital and distribution, they also evince a persuasive commitment to the real, here-and-now art experience. Much of today's most thrilling work largely disregards such concerns. We can, for instance, watch Ryan Trecartin's video suites at MoMA P.S.1, on YouTube, or on Vimeo. The former is preferable, but only marginally. In a few years, as young video artists really get going, exploiting online video for all it's worth, one suspects that such distinctions will look increasingly quaint. Morris, Scanlan, and their compatriots are making a radical case for the opposite: the in-person visit. They want you to return again and again, to see their exhibitions develop. Admittedly, that's asking a lot of viewers. But if you can't make it, ask a friend. "How," they want you to inquire, "did the show end?" Or, at least, "Which ending did you see?"

Josh Smith's High-Wire Act

Installation view of "Josh Smith" at Luhring Augustine. Photos: 16 Miles [more]


Installation view of "Josh Smith" at Luhring Augustine, New York

Not so long ago, Josh Smith was one of the most divisive artists in town, a rare figure whose work could provoke fights between friends with otherwise likeminded views on contemporary art. I was among the skeptical. His art seemed to me indulgent and lazy, all of those giant fish, leaves, and signatures accumulating in an unending, unedited stream. His success seemed to herald the emergence of a new band of what Peter Schjeldahl, in the 1980s, dubbed “the new dumb painters.”

Schjedahl placed Julian Schnabel, Sandro Chia, and George Condo in that camp, and, in a review of the latter, argued that they “bet that their own innocent pleasure in painting proves that painting (and they) will be immortal.” Pleasure and immortality: I cannot think of better words with which to characterize Smith’s interests, particularly in the numerous works in which he spells his name with thick, generous waves of color. Those words certainly apply to the pieces in his most recent show, at Luhring Augustine. Smith, of course, does not paint like those artists (though it is tempting to see some of Schnabel’s bravado in the raw confidence he projects in his art). Rather, I think that his twin forebears — indulge me here for a second — are Jasper Johns and Martin Kippenberger.

Like Johns, Smith is interested in the symbolic order of things. But, instead of flags, numbers, and targets, he paints the letters that signify his name or those that convey the information for his shows. When he paints objects — those leaves, fish, and in his current show, skeletons — they are always enlarged to fit the size of the canvas and outlined with multiple streams of color. You could not mistake them for a physical thing in the world: they are instead foundational symbols for objects, ideas of what leaves or fishes or skeletons are.


Installation view of "Josh Smith" at Luhring Augustine, New York


Josh Smith, Untitled, 2010. Mixed media on panel (12 panels), 144 x 144 in.

These objects are also enablers, maybe even excuses, for Smith’s painting, filling the same role in his practice that the egg did in Martin Kippenberger’s. (“In painting you must look what fallen fruit is left that you can paint,” Kippenberger said. “The egg has missed out there, Warhol already had the banana.”) They allow Smith to get to work, to start spreading paint around the canvas, to really let it rip. Which is great, because when he really gets going, as he does frequently here, he makes thrilling art, rich with ideas and, yes, filled with layers and layers of visual pleasure. His subjects appear again and again, but they’re presented anew each time, fresh and bizarre.

Smith’s two major innovations here also channel Johns and Kippenberger. There are red stop signs painted on squares of aluminum, another symbolic product of culture that parallels Johns’ flag. In at least one corner of each there is a dash of paint or a handprint — always some expressive touch — to differentiate them, to keep Smith in the picture. And then there are the Stage Paintings, rickety wood platforms fitted with lights that are pointed to a sheet of canvas painted with his name. The artist is up on stage, dead center, in front of the lights and performing for the crowd. (“Dear Painter, paint for me!”) I suspect that their wit would have impressed Kippenberger; this comment, made by Smith in a recent Art in America interview, certainly would have: “I don't think I've ever made the same thing twice. I have never given myself the luxury.” Is there an ascetic hiding behind all those paintings?

Smith has big projects ahead. He’s creating a site-specific installation at the Brant Foundation and has been tapped by Bice Curiger for her Venice Biennale exhibition. As curatorial consensus solidifies around him, he’s responding with admirable ambition, painting larger works — some filling six or a dozen panels — and expanding his array of options. So far, the results are explosive. Just how dramatically can he scale his work without it losing its punch? All signs suggest that he will be here for the long haul, but we’ll soon know for certain. If it does work out — and again, I suspect it will — I hope for installations that are even more elaborate and peculiar. The Stage Paintings could be just the beginning: in future shows I imagine boxing rings, tight-rope assemblies, and three-ring circuses, all draped with canvases bearing two giant words: JOSH SMITH.


Josh Smith, Untitled, 2010. Mixed media on panel, 48 x 36 in.


Detail view of Josh Smith, Untitled, 2010. Mixed media on panel (12 panels), 144 x 144 in.


Josh Smith, Stage Painting 1, 2011. Wood, paint, fabric, lights, and hardware, 96 x 68 x 54 in.


Josh Smith, Untitled, 2010. Enamel on aluminum, 48 x 48 in.

Previously: Josh Smith, "On the Water," at Deitch Studios, Long Island City, May 25, 2010

Josh Smith, "On the Water," at Deitch Studios, Long Island City

Works from Josh Smith's On the Water, at Deitch Studios, New York. Photos: 16 Miles [more]

After this show, Deitch Projects will close and Jeffrey Deitch, its owner and guiding light, will become director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. I wish he had found a more assuring way to say goodbye.

– Roberta Smith, "Art in Review: Shepard Fairey," The New York Times, May 21, 2010

Roberta Smith's assessment of Jeffrey Deitch's farewell show seems to match the general consensus among those that care about these things. His decision to end his nearly fifteen-year run as a consistently interesting New York dealer with a Shepard Fairey show is a bizarre move, but one hopes (and suspects) that he is rolling in cash from the adventure. (There are a lot of paintings to sell from the show and, one imagines, lots of prints available as well.) Still, for a master of theater who has hosted some remarkable shows over the years, it feels like a sad, tepid way to end.



I'd prefer to remember the Josh Smith show that Deitch hosted at his cavernous Long Island City space as his final official exhibition, (even though the show closed on May 2, 2010). It was, in a sense, as unusual as the Fairey show: a series of forty-seven paintings completed on the warehouse walls, partially funded by Luhring Augustine, Smith's gallery. It ran against many of Deitch's tendencies: it was subdued instead of spectacular, handmade instead of slickly produced.

Smith's quiet installation suited that strange LIC space, which almost always felt deserted except for a friendly gallery assistant and Dzine's 1993 "Pimp Juice" Cadillac Fleetwood, which sat for what seemed like years in the large garage that one first entered from the street, one half of the warehouse that often felt a little bit too big for even as ambitious a curator as Deitch. (The stunning 2008-09 Keith Haring show in the space was a clear exception to that statement.) Nevertheless, one could always count on some combination of entertainment, annoyance, and pleasure out there. ("The Pig" show — with its moving, stuffed-animal-covered Gelitin cars, its Paul Chan drawings, and its old Koons sculpture — comes to mind.)

Barbara Gladstone has apparently procured the space to use for private viewing rooms, and one of her most prized artists, Matthew Barney, uses the warehouse next door as a studio, so there will probably be some fine events out there, along the East River, in future years. Regardless of what happens, memories of the shows that Deitch presented out in Long Island City should provide plenty of material for those who want to make sense of his legacy and just may cause a few people to overlook the embarrassing Fairey show.