What Two Million Hits Looks Like

I started this blog in June 2006 but didn't really find my voice for it until a few months later. At that point, Stat Counter started tracking my readership. Two million hits is modest by the standards of the fashion blogs, and minuscule in relation to the XXX websites, but for art I think it's pretty good.

The cloud of black you see here represents the number of daily hits, in numbers, since the end of 2006. I'm going to make an effort to post more regularly again.

Not So Subtle

Vertical panorama of Kara Walker's 35-foot sugar-over-styrofoam Mammy

The Domino sugar refinery, a defunct building in Williamsburg, is on Kent Street all the way to the bank of the East River. Of course it would be located here, as ships would have had to arrive by water to disgorge the molasses and pick up refined sugar. This is the location of an imposing sculptural installation organized by Creative Time, conceived by Kara Walker, and executed by a team of engineers and carving robots.

The installation, a giant Mammy of refined white sugar, is titled A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby. A subtlety is a molded sugar sweet. In the days when sugar was an expensive commodity, subtleties were only for the well-to-do. 

There is nothing subtle about Walker’s sculpture, nor should there be. For starters, the sculpture is a big black Mammy that’s white. She’s enormous, making you insignificant before her. Posed like a sphinx, she’s anything but mythical. Her considerable breasts and exposed vulva make her a sexual being, neither an inscrutable totem, nor a maternal Aunt Jemima.

Walker’s subtitle tells you more:  An Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant. Yes, sugar brought to you by slavery and indentured servitude.

View from the entrance

Your eyes need a bit of adjustment when you enter the cathedral-like space, which is illuminated by high clerestory windows and skylights above them. When the pupils  have dilated sufficiently, you can see the figure in the distance. My point-and-shoot captured it as a numinous presence, featureless and aglow. On your way to the figure, you encounter a number of cast sugar figures, slightly-larger-than-life-size little boys bearing enormous baskets. Ambient heat makes the cast sugar melt so that treacle pools at their feet. Yes, it looks like blood. 

Sugar babies of cast sugar . . .

. . . treacle at their feet

. . . translucent in the light overhead

The walls of corrugated iron, reinforced or patched in sections, are dripping with what looks to be patching tar. But, no, it’s molasses. There’s a lot of dripping, a lot of sticky in that place. 

You could spend the afternoon looking at the walls

When you get closer to the figure, the numinous glow gives way to form and feature: a four-story Mammy with drifts of sugar between her breasts. I walked clockwise around the  sculpture, which is about 80 feet long, pausing at her prodigious backside. Personally, I feel the exposed vulva makes her appear too vulnerable. But sexuality is also power.

Light and scale

Walking clockwise around the sculpture

View from the back

And continuing around the statue

Rain from the night before has dripped molasses onto the figure's neck and shoulder

The building is neither insulated nor water tight. You can see where a soaking rain from the night before has drenched the figure with a mix of  molasses and grime. I don’t know if Walker could have anticipated that particular indignity, but there sits the figure--sexual, powerful, dwarfing everyone around her, in a cathedral-like building dripping molasses surrounded by melting sugar babies.

Go ponder all those layers of material and meaning. 

The installation is free and open to the public until July 6. Bring sunscreen or an umbella, as there can be a line with an up-to-30-minute wait.

The wait to get in. Screen grab from Art21 video

If you can't get there
. There's a good video by Art 21 in which you can see the figure being constructed, with Walker on site
. Roberta Smith's review for the New York Times  
. Jerry Saltz's review for New York Magazine 
. Hrag Vartanian's review for Hyperallergic  
. Kara Rooney's interview with the artist for The Brooklyn Rail

Centering

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Robert Mangold, Angled Ring 1, 2011, acrylic and pencil on canvas, 96 x 96 inches; at Pace through May 3

 

An afternoon of gallerygoing in Chelsea last week turned up a raft of art with a strong central concept. I saw paintings that draw your eye to the center, defined by their negative space, like Robert Mangold's superb constructed geometries at Pace; or a to-the-point focus, like Roy Dowell's tribalesque compositions at Lennon Weinberg; or the wrought iron mandala at The Curator Gallery, whose construction was surely a meditation in process; as well as paintings whose formalism is redolent of the beauty and balance of tantric geometry, even as they are sprayed, glued, or constructed drop by drop.

 

Installation views of the Mangold show
Above: From the front gallery (with Angled Ring 1 at my right shoulder)

Below: In the back gallery looking toward the front

 

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Roy Dowell, Untitled #1057, 2014, 52 x 40 inches; at Lennon Weinberg through May 3

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John Bisbee, Cyclonaut #1, 2014; hammered, bent, welded 12-inch spikes installed on the wall; at The Curatory Gallery

The exhibition, Second Nature: Abstract Art from Maine, was curated by Mark Wethli. The show has ended, but you can learn more about it here

 

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Nichole Van Beek , Oh Hell, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 15 x 15 inches; at Jeff Bailey Gallery through May 10

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Julia Bland, Easy Morning, 2013, oil, canvas, silk, wool and linen yarns, 84 x 86 inches; at Asya Geisberg Gallery through May 10

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 Gregory Hayes, Shooting Star at Nancy Margolis Gallery, through May 17

Detail above of the painting at right below

Some Spring Shows

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It started when Tony Fitzpatrick lamented having sent out postcards for his upcoming solo without the gallery address. I offered to post his info here on the blog. Then I thought: It's spring. Let's see what's coming up in Artlandia. I posted a call to my Facebook friends to ask for info on their upcoming shows, and here you have it. 

3.28. And now there's even more! Scroll down until you come to this image, which starts today's update

3.27: Wait, there's more! Scroll down until you come to this image, which starts Thursday's update

Tony Fitzpatrick, The Secret Birds: New Drawings, Adventureland, 1513 n Western Ave, Chicago; April 4 - May 5

Mark Wethli, The Painting Center, New York City, through April 19

Nancy Baker, Come Hell or High Water,  Length x Width x Height Gallery, Seattle; May 6 - 31

Fran Shalom, The Painting Center, New York City; April 22 - May 19

Elizabeth Morrissette, Good Penmanship, The Lincoln Center, Fort Collins, Colorado; through April 5

James Austin Murray, Lyons Weir Gallery, New York City; April 3 - May 3

Jeanne Heifetz, Geometry of Hope, Lane Community College, Main Gallery, Eugene, Oregon; April 28 - May 22

Paula Roland, Navigating, Conrad Wilde Gallery, Tucson, Arizona;  April 5 - 26

Perri Neri, Monster: The Drawings, Ceres Gallery, New York City: April 1 - 26

Susan Bee, Doomed to Win: Paintings from the Early 1980s,  A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn; April 3 - 27

Sharon Kenny, Crevice and Chroma: Paintings from the Wissahickon, Music School of Delaware, Wilmington, through April 14;  Milford, April 15 - June 18

Donna Dodson, SIlent Scream: Personality Type and body Language, Boston Sculptors,  May 21 - June 22

Temme Barkin-Leeds, Interference Reactions to Shooter Video Games, Callanwolde Art Center, Atlanta: through May 9

Alyce Gottesman, Inverness, Artspace@MONDO, 426 Springfield Ave, Summit, N.J.; May 2 - 30

Kate Petley, Lined, Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe; June 9-29

3.27.14: There's more!

Ellen Wineberg, Worldview, Bromfield Gallery, Boston; April 2 - 27

Linda Leslie Brown, New Work with Holes, Kingston Gallery, Boston; April 2 - 27

Jason Horowitz, Closer & Closer: Jason Horowitz, Works Thru Time, 1980-2014, Curator's Office, Washington, D.C.; through April 19

Clare Asch, Tidelines, Galatea Fine Art, Boston; April

Bernadetts Jiyong Frank, Spaces in Between, Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco;  June 5 - July 5

Lorrie Fredette, Foundation Gallery at Columbia Green Community College, Hudson, New York; through April 18

Laura Moriarty, Closed System,  Garrison Art Center, Garrison, New York; April 4 - May 12

Melinda Stickney-Gibson, New Paintings from the Woods, Butters Gallery, Portland, Oregon; May 1 - 31

Molly Herman,  Lingua Franca, The Painting Center, New York City; April 22 - May 17

Natalie Abrams, Beneath the Fold, City Ice Arts, Kansas City, Missouri; April

3.28.14: There's even more!

Karen Nielsen-Fried, Intuitive Geometries, Lundbeck Research Corporate Gallery, Paramus, N.J.; June 2 - 30, 2014    

Shelley Gilchrist, Roam, ARC Gallery, Chicago; May 28 - June 21

Andrew V. Wapinski, Restructured, Gallery Plan B, Washington, D.C.; June 11 - July 13

Mary Early, Wax Points, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia; May 2 - May 31

David A. Clark, Ancient Histories, Conrad Wilde Gallery, Tucson; May 3 - 30, 2014

Krista Svalbonas, Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, New York; June 14 - July 6

George Shaw, Singularity, Galatea Fine Art, Boston; June 

Cherie Mittenthal, Structures & Waves, KobaltGallery, Povincetown, Mass.;  June 5 – 19 

Anne Mavoe, Ancient Landscapes: The Spirit of Place, Highfield Hall, Falmouth, Mass.; May 25 - July 6

Sirarpi Heghinian-Walzer, Avery, Movimento Space, Boston; through March 31

Arlene Slavin, Intersections: Museum Entry, The Guild Hall Museum, Easthampton, New York; May 23 - October 25