| '1970' at AFA |
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ART CLUB2000 is a collaborative
artist made of artists who were unborn in the year 1970. Their current
summer show, their fifth at American Fine Arts since 1993, consists
of interviews conducted by ART CLUB2000 with artists on the year 1970.
Questions focus on the historicized climate of hope and ideological
camaraderie of 1970 as well as the cultural decline in the years since,
suggesting that 1970 was the last year art attempted revolutionary aims.
The interviews are displayed on a stack of old black and white televisions
producing a cacaphony of historical insights and anecdotes. --- The interviewees include Vito Acconcci, Simon Cerigo (artist, dealer), Henry Flynt (artist,"inventor" of concept art), Isa Genzken, Alex Katz, Les Levins, Nikki Logis (artist, teacher) and Carolee Schneemann. Additional interviews are scheduled to add to the collection. --- Also exhibited is a rainbow colored wall painting of a riot cop arresting a hippie in front of a protest. The concentric circles of the rainbow graphic resemble a target. |
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Self portraits
of the group... |
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| a show in Milano at the time of the election of Berlusconi, using the latest advertising of Benneton (antennas!) for a wall painting, but putting vultures on them... |
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'A NIGHT IN THE CITY' at AFA. |
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'SOHO, so long'
at AFA Artclubs inquiry into the changes of SOHO. Flowers in the planters outside, a sign outside protasting against the SOHO megahotel. One enters the gallery into sort of a 'backstage' area and continues into the exhibition space through the 'face' of a replica of the SHARF shack. in the back a curved panaroma of the remaining gallerists on SOHO. A vending machine, a sofa and fotos indicate a waiting area. Here, on the table, you will find the publication 'SOHO so long'. a series of interviews conducted with the people on the panorama. Nearby seating area a painting by Basquiat and sculptures/ furniture by Todd Oldham. artclub 2000 |
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'Nite of the living
dead author' at AFA. ( more
images here: http://www.societyofcontrol.com/x404/ac2k_all/main.htm
) The death of the Author (R. Barthes 1968) ...famously declares the author as no longer the unique source of meaning and/or value of a work of art... For art to merit a degree of critical integrity today, as over the past thirty years... it must seem to acknowledge this most "postmodern" declaration........Today's artists too often only posture an address to this declaration... by using appropriative and quotational techniques... cashing in on inherited "postmodernist" legacies... pastiching pastiche... cartooning the allegory... Witness the simplistic misunderstanding of theory by Art Club 2000... whose alternative posturing and highly commodified dissent hides smugly behind a facade of consensus... Mariko Mori's practice of modeling herself on heroines from manga and anime ....Vanessa Beecroft's signature presentation of uniformly stripped young women in the vein of fashion... and Matthew Barney's Nike romanticism of sports and mythology... without so much as a wee bit of criticism of these forms or industries.... A vast number of artists build careers around a particular facet of an already determined culture ...(i.e., fashion, film advertising, television, music, science, history, politics)... These artists seem to side with the death of authorship by attaching themselves to some meaningful source... but mean only to reclaim the spoils of authorship... by creating an identity inseparable from their work... continuing to supply the system without attempting to change it...We have learned by now that a work by Sherrie Levine is immediately a "Sherrie Levine"...a Cindy Sherman is a "Cindy Sherman"...a Richard Prince is a "Richard Prince"....... Today's artists, nurtured under the sensational auteurs of 80's dead authorship... feed like zombies on the reeking corpse of those strategies... which have defined more than a decade's worth of commercially successful art.... Artists who fashion a product of faux antagonism... towards authorship while structuring a career based on capitulation.... to the market's authorities...and propagating a signature style... ignore the issues germane to the invention of those strategies... as well as of art today ... namely the oppressive circumstances of consumption determined production.... These are the Living Dead Authors ...and the art industry is in the somnolent obscurity of their night. |
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screendots in WMF club berlin and later after demolishion... |
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