Legacy: Photographs from the Emily Fisher Landau Collection @Aldrich

JTF (just the facts): A total of 23 black and white and color photographs, variously framed and matted, and hung against white walls in a series of three connected rooms on the second floor of the museum. All of the works come from the collection of Emily Fisher Landau, and were made between 1980 and 2004. The exhibit also includes a camera obscura room. A catalog of the collection was published by Yale University Press in 2011 (here). There is no photography allowed in the galleries, so the installation shots at right are courtesy of the museum's Flickr page.

The following artists/photographers have been included in the exhibit, with the number of works and print details as background:

• Richard Artschwager: 1 sculpture/photographs mounted on wood, 2002
• Matthew Barney: 1 chromogenic print in self-lubricating frame, 2002
• Keith Cottingham: 1 digital chromogenic print, 2004
• Lynn Davis: 1 gold-toned gelatin silver print, 2000/2002
• Philip-Lorca diCorcia: 1 chromogenic print mounted on Plexiglas, 2000
• John Dugdale: 1 hand-coated cyanotype, 1994
• Nan Goldin: 1 silver dye bleach print, 1994
• Rodney Graham: 1 chromogenic print, 1990
• Robert Longo: 1 silver dye bleach print, 1980/1998
• Vera Lutter: 1 gelatin silver print, 1996
• Robert Mapplethorpe: 1 gelatin silver print, 1988
• Abelardo Morell: 1 gelatin silver print, 2003
• Shirin Neshat: 3 silver dye bleach prints, 2002
• Victoria Sambunaris: 1 chromogenic print mounted on aluminum, 2002
• Lorna Simpson: 2 gelatin silver prints in framed with plaque, 1991
• Kiki Smith, 4 chromogenic prints, 2000-2001
• Hiroshi Sugimoto: 1 gelatin silver print, 1994

Comments/Context: Back in 2010, long-time trustee Emily Fisher Landau made a major donation of 367 artworks to the Whitney Museum. Selections from that massive gift have toured around to many smaller museums in the United States in the past few years, and this particular show pulls out a very small subset, focusing on some of the photography to be found in the collection. If this group of works can be taken as any guide, Fisher Landau's approach to contemporary photography has been to employ the "solid example from key figures" method, gathering an impressive list of important names and singular works. While the show is loosely organized into rooms of images with people, those without, and a handful of works related to the camera obscura room that has been installed as part of the exhibit, in essence, it's really more of a parade of exemplary photographs from the 1990s and early 2000s.

 

If a collection is built without a rigid thematic or conceptual structure/system to connect the various artworks together (as most collections are), the only way to look at it critically is to ask, for each individual artist selection, "did the collector pick a superlative example of the artist's work"? In general, I think there are some terrific choices on view here, many which would be considered among the best work done by that artist. There as an enormous, wall dominating, upside down tree by Rodney Graham, smartly flanked by a large Vera Lutter of the Fulton ferry landing with the Twin Towers in the distance. Other standout choices include the late Mapplethorpe self portrait (with skull head cane), the Sugimoto wax museum royal family, the Longo jerking suited man from Men in the Cities, and the Morell camera obscura image taken in the Whitney itself.

 

There are also a few less obvious selections which point to some inspired risk taking. Nan Goldin's swarm of cherry blossoms in Tokyo isn't exactly representative of her work, but is still quietly enchanting. Matthew Barney's array of Chryslers from the Cremaster series lacks the bold originality of many of the scenes from that project, but is nonetheless subtly surreal. And Richard Artschwager's child in a high chair sculpture wouldn't necessarily be considered photography, except that its blocky form is constructed by straight on photographs from every angle, creating a smart multi-perspective portrait.

 

So while it's hard to draw a line that connects all of the works on view here into a coherent whole, this small show certainly delivers a respectable mix of recent photography. I'm sure the larger Fisher Landau collection did plenty of welcome hole filling in the Whitney's permanent collection (in photography and other mediums), and with the new building opening soon, I'm hoping we'll slowly get a chance to see even more of its photographic treasures.

 

Collector's POV: Since this is a museum show, there are, of course, no posted prices, and given the wide diversity of works on view, we will forego the usual discussion of secondary markets and price histories.

 

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

 

Transit Hub:

• Fisher Landau Center for Art site (here)
• Feature: New York Times, 2010 (here)

Legacy: Photographs from the Emily Fisher Landau Collection

Through September 2nd

 

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

258 Main Street

Ridgefield, CT 06877

Hank Willis Thomas: Strange Fruit @Aldrich

JTF (just the facts): A total of 4 color photographs and 1 video, alternately framed in black and white and unmatted, and hung in small single room space in the ground floor of the museum. The photographs are all digital c-prints, ranging in size from 60x29 (in editions of 5+1AP) to 35x96 and 65x96 (in editions of 3+1AP). The video runs for 5 minutes, and is available in an edition of 3+1AP. All of the works were made in 2011. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Hank Willis Thomas' newest works pack a wallop in terms of emotional intensity. Mixing the visual language and loaded symbols of slavery with those of modern day professional sports, his stylized images of football and basketball force a dialogue about what kind of options are really available for many contemporary African-American males. They draw uncomfortable, stark parallels, and imply an overlooked, discouraging interchangeability between history and the present.

In both the video and in two of the single photographs, Thomas replaces a traditional basketball hoop with the hanging rope of a noose. Classically beautiful and muscular bodies jostle in one on one and two on two matchups, with layups, jump shots and thundering dunks aimed at the circular rope. A haunting crescendo of musical chants, hums and work songs simmers in the background. Many plays end with one player soaring and dunking through the noose, only to be left hanging alone against the empty blackness, dangling from the rope instead of the rim. The triumphant sporting spectacle has been turned into a lynching (thus the reference to the Billie Holiday song in the exhibition title), where elegant, powerful athleticism has been overcome by prejudice and horror, turning the the whole event into an ugly form of entertainment.

Thomas uses the trappings of football with equal ironic harshness. A man picking cotton squares off with a lineman in football pads, one crouching in the dirt to gather the crop, the other crouching in the perfect green grass ready to play. In another image, a player flies through the air diving for the goal line like a wide receiver, only to be held up short by a rusty chain around his ankle that shackles him to the first down marker. The implication is clear: are these highly paid professional athletes much different than the field workers of old? Aren't they equally slaves to larger cultural forces? How much has really changed?

The pared down simplicity that Thomas employs in these set pieces turns them into vivid allegories. I like the strong masculinity of the images, and the clear replacement of one form of indentured service for another; his contrasts and comparisons are up front and easily legible, making them much harder to ignore. While this is a small show, it is filled with unforgettable images, ones that ask hard questions and force unflinching examination. This isn't opaque, incomprehensible art about art - it's in your face art that smartly uses the lens of our history, challenging the viewer to see the realities of our contemporary world in the sometimes grim and dissonant context of what has come before.

Collector's POV: Since this is a museum show, there are, of course, no posted prices. Thomas' work is not yet consistently available in the secondary markets, so gallery retail likely remains the best option for interested collectors. Thomas is represented in New York by Jack Shainman Gallery (here).

Rating: ** (two stars) VERY GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Exhibit: Corcoran, 2011 (here)
• Interview: Art Nouveau (here)

Hank Willis Thomas: Strange Fruit
Through September 30th

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street
Ridgefield, CT 06877

Type A, Trigger @Aldrich

JTF (just the facts): A mixed media installation of an unknown number of offset printed paper targets, each 35x23, hung unframed from stainless steel aircraft cables running in a grid across the center of the single room gallery space. All of the works were produced by the artists and then became actual commercial gun targets sold by Law Enforcement Targets Inc (here); the three images at right were the top sellers for the month of May. The work was made in 2011. (Marginal installation shots at right.)

 

Comments/Context: Are you ready for a new piece of photographic jargon? The artistic team of Adam Ames and Andrew Bordwin (together known as Type A) have come up with interpropriation: "the act of interjecting themselves and actively participating in cultures outside the art world". While this may sound like egg headed art-speak, this kind of search for the authentic seems to be a strong and growing undercurrent in contemporary photography, likely as a backlash against art that seems too precious, inwardly focused or detached from reality. Participating in the real world as though one was a part of a particular subculture is on the rise; Nikki Lee took a variant of this same idea to new levels of commitment a few years back, and many, many others are now investigating countless social groups from the inside.

In this case, Type A has immersed themselves in American gun culture by making staged photographs of dramatic moments of home invasion, domestic and workplace violence, and urban robbery (along with a few blood covered zombies for kicks), all executed as actual paper targets designed for practice at the neighborhood shooting range. Styled like advertisements for the next new police show, the artist's friends and colleagues, as well as some museum staff and trustees, found themselves pointing guns at each other's heads and acting out various tense scenes of cruelty and injustice. The result are objects that mix fear and recreation, danger and fantasy in unexpected ways, making the images both disturbing and almost uncomfortably comic at the same time.
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By the way, this installation is perhaps the most exciting and innovative physical approach to showing photography I have seen in a very long time. Rather than the tired toilet bowl ring of pictures circumnavigating a white cube in a single line at eye level, the prints hang down from the ceiling in dense rows, untethered to anything except the wires above. The installation forces the viewer to walk back and forth between the hanging prints, brushing up unnervingly close, especially given the violent subject matter depicted here. The portraits are at human scale, so there is something intensely real about the interaction; the man with the gun is right in your face, forcing you to fight or flee.
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Collector's POV: Since this is a museum show, there are, of course, no relevant prices for the works on display. I could find no gallery representation for Type A. Andrew Bordwin seems to be represented on his own by Julie Saul Gallery (here); I could find no equivalent representation for Adam Ames. The printed targets themselves are available from Law Enforcement Targets, Inc (linked above), apparently for less than $1 a piece.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)
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Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)

Type A, Trigger

Through December 31

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
258 Main Street
Ridgefield, CT 06877