Installation view of September 11 at PS1

Peter Eleey has done a magnificent job of curating a moving and artistically solid exhibition. He explained to the small group he led through his show at PS1 that the idea for it had been brewing in his head for awhile. Curators are usually the experts trying to teach the audience something with an exhibition, but in this case n the curator is not the authority. Peter was interested in investigating how to create a show that allows viewers to draw their own conclusions about work. He knew that he wanted the jumping point for the exhibition to be a current event. The difficulty was in finding something that was a big enough event to effect the context of the viewer’s experience; something everyone was impacted by. There has been a lack of compelling art about 9/11 in the last decade. Peter was intrigued with the fact that people looked to culture (poetry, art, etc.) right after 9/11 for comfort and a sense that things would be okay. This show revisits that idea ten years later.

Janet Cardiff, The 40 Part Motet, 2001

The first work we visited was an amazing sound installation by Janet Cardiff called The 40 Part Motet from 2001 (it as well as many of the works in the show predate the attacks on 9/11). Cardiff recorded a piece of church music from the 16th century and each voice was recorded on its own channel. The work consists of 40 speakers facing inward and two simple benches placed in the center of the room. The combination of the individual voices emanating from each speaker with the collective song you hear when standing in the center of the room gave me goosebumps. Peter told us that he actually experienced the same piece in the exact same room right after 9/11 when a show of Cardiff’s had opened shortly after the events of that tragic day. It made Peter wonder, how does history change art? Museums try to represent artists’ intentions but it is a futile effort. No one can truly control how people experience art–or can they? Can it be manipulated a bit? After all, this work was not made in response the 9/11, but before it. However, it speaks to the post-9/11 condition and is extremely emotional. The sound fills the space so that if you close your eyes, you can almost imagine being in a church or a sacred space. To watch a video clip visit thislink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0zMosf3h_M

John Chamberlain, King Kong Minor, 1982, sheet metal

In another gallery stands a mangled object of sheet metal by John Chamberlain. Evoking the violent act and the material results of that, the works stands in darkness except for the dramatic beam of light from above.

Walking into another space two works are at opposite end of the gallery. Susan Hiller’s 41 photographs of Victorian era ceramic plaques celebrating the lives of ordinary heroic citizens who dies saving the life of others. There is an audio component to the work that visitors can listen to while sitting on a bench that faces towards a photograph by Sarah Charlesworth. In it, someone is seen falling out of a building. Now Charlesworth did not take these images from 9/11. Instead she appropriated images of people falling from buildings (hotels, etc.) but there is no specific information given about the person or circumstances of their death. She rephotographs the work and enlarges it. This, like other works in the show, was meant to represent the dead in a thoughtful and respectful manner.

At first people may mistake Jem Cohen’s Little Flags for actual footage of 9/11. In fact, it is video of the aftermath of a ticker tape parade for the soldiers who fought in the Gulf War. The people chant “USA” and there is paper everywhere. The twin towers can actually be seen in one shot since it took place in the same area.

Installation view

Peter used the existing architecture of the building for the show. He placed a George Segal sculpture of a woman on a bench in an arch at the far end of a gallery. In front of her is a work that appears to be ashes. It is actually an atomized passenger jet engine by Roger Hiorns. Though it was completed in 2008, it was conceived before 9/11. Also in this gallery the soundtrack to the film, “The Patriot” by John Williams plays. Peter felt that the room was too silent without it. As one turns around to face the place they entered from they can see two found paintings by harold Mendez that flank the door. These represent the missing flyers that were posted everywhere in the days, weeks and months following 9/11.

Ellsworth Kelly

A piece by Ellsworth Kelly is the only one in the show made in direct response to the attacks. Two years after the attacks, Michael Kimmelman wrote an article about the competition for the design of the memorial. Kelly was reading this in the NY Times and he felt strongly that Ground Zero should be filled with grass and so he cut out a kelly green trapezoid, glued it to the article and mailed it to Kimmelman. The critic then scanned it and ran it in the paper.

Lara Favaretto, Lost and Found, 2006

Right next to that work is a great piece by Lara Favaretto called Lost and Found from 2006. Every year she goes to train auctions for left items and luggage. She buys a piece of luggage and locks it, never opening it to see what is inside.

Installation view

Peter told us that the first project Christo proposed when he arrived in NYC was to wrap two buildings in lower Manhattan. Here one can find a wrapped sculpture that lays on a plinth on the ground. It looks like a body bag for a building. And like the suitcase, there is an unknown interior that is intriguing and haunting at the same time.

Alex Katz, 10:00 AM, 1994

Alex Katz’s 10:00 AM from 1994 is really a depiction of the shadows of two trees on a lake. But it is abstracted just enough for you to use your imagination that it could be the towers. After all, Katz’s work is about light and time more than subject.

William Eggleston, Untitled (Glass in Airplane), 1965-71

There is a Diane Arbus black and white photograph of a newspaper blowing from 1956, a William Eggleston color photo of a cocktail glass resting on a tray table with a view outside the window of a passenger jet from 1965-71, and eeriest of all, a series of black and white photographs by John Pilson from 1998-2000. He worked for a large investment firm in the World Financial Center directly across from the World Trade Center and in his off hours he would shoot office interiors, devoid of humans but with remnants of human activity like photographs and jackets and work to do left behind.

Another space includes an archive of images, removed of all context, that the artist Willem de Rooij began to collect at the millennium and for two years after. Removing the context for the images is, as Peter told us, what he is actually trying to do with the whole show.

In the next room Jeremy Deller has made a lifesize replica of the “Mission Accomplished” banner that hung behind Bush when he announced the end of the war in Iraq. Now we know that was not really the case and it ended up being just the beginning of something and not its end. The banner is too large to fit on one wall so it covers three walls and is bent to fit into the corners. Its  display adds an element of whimsy to the intensity of the theme of the show. Across from the banner is a poster by John Lennon and Yoko Ono made during the Vietnam War that says, “War is Over!” in large letters and in small print below, “If You Want It.” In the center of that same gallery is a work by Felix Gonzalez Torres called Untitled (The End) from 1990 in which a stack of papers is printed; viewers are encouraged to take a sheet. This was the third work Gonzalez-Torres made where a stack of paper was printed for people to take. The first two were the height of a tombstone so there is a link to death.

Most shows do not dead end but Peter wanted this exhibition to end at Bruce Conner’s film REPORT from 1963-67 about Kennedy’s assassination. I found it fascinating that Kennedy’s assassination was not documented completely in any film and the Zapruder footage was not shown until 1975. So Conner juxtaposes segments of that film with other imagery from the time and the audio is radio reports and descriptions of the parade route. Peter found that media over subsequent decades is fascinating–we either digest something completely like the images of 9/11 that were played over and over until they were burned in our minds or we fail to digest it. In the case of Kennedy everyone asks, “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” not “Did you see Kennedy get shot?”

The exhibition is sparsely hung giving each work its own space so that visitors can experience, contemplate, and remember. A wonderful and unique art experience that I am happy to have had the privilege of seeing.

September 11 at PS1 is on view through January 9, 2012.

Lee Ufan creating "Dialogue" 2011 at the Guggenheim

On view at the Guggenheim are the works of Lee Ufan from the 1960s to the present. Born in 1936 in Korea, Ufan has lived and worked in Korea, Japan and France. He attended art college in Seoul and then moved to Tokyo in 1960 receiving a degree in philosophy. Throughout his life he has sought to dissolve hierarchies and has responded to what he perceives as failures of modernity. Ufan is interested in the interaction between viewers, the object, and the surrounding space which he believes opens up the world of infinity. Revolving around the notion of encounters, Ufan believes that his work allows people to “see the bare existence of what is actually before us and focusing on the world as it is.” On view are paintings, drawings and sculptures made primarily of steel plates and stones (he sometimes uses glass panes and rubber sheets).

work from the "From Point" series

Influenced by Minimalist abstraction, Ufan develops his own unique style by “presenting repetitive gestural marks as records of time’s perpetual passage.” There is an emptiness and restraint to his work; his focus is just as much on the marks he does make as on those he creates. He enjoys the investigation of the relationship the two have together. The title of the exhibition comes from his extensive writing about art and philosophy. “Marking” can be placing a stone on a floor or resting a steel plate against the wall to create a mark in space. The marks he makes on canvas are also marks in space. All of these are tools in his exploration of “infinity”. His work looks at the coexistence between humans and their surroundings.

"From Point" 1975

I very much respect the fact that Ufan asks his viewer to step out of the rat race in order to stop and experience his work on a real level. His first series called “From Point” and “From Line” comes from East Asian training based on Taoist and Buddhist philosophies where students learn to turn points and lines into words and images. There is a natural cycle to his work from this period: fullness to diminishment to emptiness of marks and then back again. It represents the passing of time. His works are most often shown unframed in order for the viewer to sense them stretching into infinity. One of my favorite works from this period is a 5 x 7 inch painting from 1976 called “From Point.” Using a square-tipped brush dipped in a mixture of glue and mineral pigment on canvas, Ufan made 5 small marks that appear to disintegrate as the eye moves from left to right. The work is pretty, sweet, intimate and peaceful.

"Pushed-up Ink" 1964

Another work that caught me eye was the 1964 “Pushed-Up Ink.” Informed by the ink paintings of Jackson Pollock and Mark Tobey, Ufan experimented with gestural abstraction by soaking the brush with animal skin glue and pressing it against the paper until it bled holes through the surface. It reminded me of a Kusama work in its pattern but it also had tremendous texture and depth. Ufan’s 1965 “From Cuts” was reminiscent of a Ryman painting. Short swift strokes of monochromatic white paint are added systematically to the canvas. His early works with pigment are glorious because they are infused with a hint of shimmer. While influenced by Minimalism in his use of pattern, monochrome and seriality, he acted against its reductive simplicity. There is a true gestural element to his work. In many of his paintings, he uses a gradation of marks until there is no pigment left on the brush. He firmly feels that this method, “graphs the passage of time, like breath…..It is an affirmation of existence.”

There is something very aesthetically pleasing about the works in the “From Point” series. My eye moved across the canvas continuously and I totally synced into Ufan’s link to the passing of time in his work. One quote I liked as a description of his method is that, “Each moment occurs only once, but because everything is a continuation of single moments, it is necessary for them to repeat and resonate with each other.”

From Line, 1977, glue and mineral pigment on canvas, 182 x 227 cm

Ufan’s early paintings had a significant impact in the Korean art world. Monochromatic work became a statement against the state. By the mid-1970s Ufan was exhibiting regularly in Europe. On view in this show are many of his “From Line” works that evolved from the “From Point” works. It is deceiving because the nature in which the paintings are hung leads one to believe that Ufan begins the mark at the top of the canvas and drags it down until it runs out of paint. But, in fact, he laid the canvas on the ground and painted from left to right following the body’s natural movement.

Relatum (formerly language), 1971

Ufan was a member of the Mono-ha movement which coincided with Arte Povera in Italy and process and earthworks in the United States. In a side gallery off of the rotunda one can see examples of Ufan’s “encounters”–site-specific ephemeral installations. In 1972, Lee decided to rename all of his past and designate all future sculptures with the title “Relatum” a philosophical term that “denotes things or events between which a relation exists.” This title makes perfect sense since to Ufan, the viewer’s experience of the objects and their relationship to their surroundings is an integral element to the works. He “shifted the artist’s role from that of creation to mediation.” I like the idea that the works are econfigured differently at each site in which they are displayed. In the large side gallery there is a field of stones resting on pillows. I felt the need to wander through but there was no defined path–each viewer approaches the work differently.

Relatum, 1978

My favorite “Relatum” piece that Ufan recreated for the show was one in which he laid a steel plate on the floor and rested a stone on it. Behind that another plate leans against the wall and a smaller stone peeks out from behind it. In our encounter with the materials we activate the space.

Moving on into another side gallery, one can see some of my favorite pieces in the show. “Untitled” from 1973 is an elegant and lovely work of graphite on torn paper. Ufan tore the paper on its right side which created a shadow and texture. On the left, next to the tear, he drew a straight line. It appears extremely simplistic but it begs the question of what is real and what is represented and forces closer inspection. Another work which does the same thing is made of a canvas laid on the floor painted in shades of gray. An exposed lightbulb hangs directly above. What at first appears to be a shadow from the bulb is actually a gradation of hue in the applied paint. Ufan’s drawings are extensions of his thinking where he works out ideas for projects in other mediums.

work from "With Winds" series

In the late 1970s and 80s Lee begins to use looser, dynamic brushstrokes in a series called “From Winds” and “With Winds.” It was during this time that he fell into a depression. I am not as fond of his paintings from this period as I am of both his earlier and more recent work. However, it is this period that allows him to focus on an empty ground with fewer and fewer marks leading to both the “Correspondence” and “Dialogue” series which I find truly compelling. His sculptural work from this period continues the use of seriality but subjects it to forces of nature. In one work he uses an industrial steel cube and a natural material, cotton, that appears to be bursting from its seams. I also liked the puffy cloud of “cotton” on the ground with steel rods poking out of it.

Dialogue-Space, 2011

The last works on view in the adjacent galleries at the top of the rotunda are not to be missed. The works consist of one to two wide marks of gray or orange brushstrokes on an expanse of blank canvas. This minimalism is “a critique of our globalized society of surplus and over production….where emptiness and time are given meaning and substance.” Gray is a color that “expresses a vague, ephemeral and uncertain world.” In these works, as opposed to his earliest paintings where pigment fades to non-pigment, it is the saturation of the gray that fades, the thickness of the paint remains constant. The final gallery in the exhibition includes works created specifically for the Guggenheim show and emphasize the performative part of his work. Ufan paints three brushstrokes directly on the three walls in order for the viewer to, in the words of Ufan, “empty oneself and clear one’s mind so as to experience a rebirth.” The paint pulsates and vibrates to activate the space resonating with the viewer much like a bell being rung.

Virtues of opposition are central to Ufan’s art. One of the most powerful statements made by Ufan is the distinction he makes between understanding and knowing. Understanding is “getting” something after it has been introduced whereas knowing is taking that information and digesting it, living it.

I found some of the themes repetitive, however, it seems necessary in today’s world that is saturated with information to beat the viewer over the head in order to get them to take the time necessary with these meditative pieces. I rarely think that the architectural structure of the Guggenheim works in its display. In this case, however, I enjoyed ascending the ramp and viewing the progression of Ufan’s work throughout his long career.