Tag Archives: Judith Bernstein

HOWARDENA PINDELL IN CONVERSATION

It’s hard sometimes, but I try to make it so that the [abstract] process-driven work is a kind of peaceful space because the other [political] work—with its research—is pretty grim. So, I use both to kind of balance out my brain as best I can, although I often feel a lot of anxiety. How to explain it? I need to do both in order to be a little more balanced. Because if you only do the political work, or the issue-related work, it’s pretty upsetting. — Howardena Pindell

On the occasion of Pindell’s exhibition ROPE / FIRE / WATER—comprised of a new video commissioned by The Shed, as well as new and classic works representing all facets of her art and activism—the artist will join curators Adeze Wilford and Ashley James in conversation.

HOWARDENA PINDELL IN CONVERSATION

Thursday, November 12, at 6:30 pm.

The Shed

545 West 30th Street, New York City.

Entrance on Hudson Boulevard at 11the Avenue or 33rd Street

Howardena Pindell, Rope / Fire / Water, The Shed, from top: Plankton Lace #1, 2020, mixed media on canvas, commissioned by The Shed; Rope / Fire / Water (2020) still; toys in front of Four Little Girls, 2020, mixed media; Rope / Fire / Water (2020) still; Canals / Underground Railroad, 2015–16, mixed media; Four Little Girls, 2020, mixed media on canvas; Ko’s Snow Day, 2020, mixed media on canvas; founding members of A.I.R., the first women’s cooperative art gallery, in 1974, left to right, bottom to top: Howardena Pindell, Daria Dorosh, Maude Boltz, Rosemary Mayer, Mary Grigoriadis, Agnes Denes, Louise Kramer, Loretta Dunkelman, Barbara Zucker, Patsy Norvell, Sari Dienes, Judith Bernstein, Laurace James, Nancy Spero, Pat Lasch, Anne Healy, and Dotty Attie, photograph by David Attie, taken at Dorosh’s loft, 370 Broadway, New York City, image courtesy and © the photographer and Getty Images; Slavery Memorial: Lash, 1998–99 (detail), mixed media on canvas. Images © Howardena Pindell, courtesy of the artist, Garth Greenan Gallery, Victoria Miro Gallery, and The Shed.


ABORTION IS NORMAL — PART 2

Recognizing the ongoing threat to reproductive rights in the United States, ABORTION IS NORMAL—sponsored by the Downtown for Democracy Independent Expenditure Committee—is an “emergency art exhibition curated by Jasmine Wahi and Rebecca Pauline Jampol and organized by Marilyn Minter, Gina Nanni, Laurie Simmons, and Sandy Tait.”*

Part 2 of the show opens this week at Arsenal Contemporary in Manhattan.

Contributing artists include Allison Janae Hamilton, Ameya Marie Okamoto, Amy Khoshbin, Andrea Chung, Arlene Shechet, Barbara Kruger, Betty TompkinsCajsa von ZeipelCarrie Mae Weems, Carroll Dunham, Catherine Opie, Cecily Brown, Chloe Wise, Christopher Myers, Christen Clifford, Cindy Sherman, Delano DunnDerrick Adams, Dominique Duroseau, Elektra KB, Fin Simonetti, Grace Graupe Pillard, Hank Willis Thomas, Hayv Kahraman, Jaishri Abichandani, Jack Pierson, Jane Kaplowitz, Jon Kessler, Jonathan HorowitzJonathan Lyndon Chase, Judith Bernstein, Judith Hudson, Katrina Majkut, Louise Lawler, Lyle Ashton HarrisMarisa Morán Jahn, Michele PredMiguel Luciano, Mika Rottenberg, Nadine Faraj, Nan GoldinNarcissister, Natalie Frank, Rob Pruitt, Ryan McGinley, Sahana Ramakrishnan, Sarah Sze, Shirin Neshat, Shoshanna Weinberger, Shout Your Abortion, Sojourner Truth Parsons, Suzy Lake, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Viva Ruiz, Walter Robinson, Wangechi Mutu, Xaviera Simmons, Yvette Molina, and Zoe Buckman.

New editions by Paul Chan, Rashid Johnson, and Richard Prince are also available.

ABORTION IS NORMAL*

Opening Night

Tuesday, January 21, 6 pm to 8 pm.

Exhibition runs through February 1.

Arsenal Contemporary

214 Bowery, New York City.

Abortion is Normal, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York, January 9–18, 2020, Arsenal Contemporary, New York, January 21–February 1, 2020, from top: Nadine FarajYo Aborte, 2016; Judith Bernstein, Abortion is Normal, 2019; Lyle Ashton HarrisBillie #21, 2002; Cindy Sherman, Untitled, 2019; Marilyn MinterCuntrol, 2020; Shoshanna WeinbergerHair Between the Legs, 2015; Arlene ShechetTo Be Continued, 2018; Nan GoldinGeno by the lake, Bavaria, Germany 1994, 1994; Christen CliffordI Want Your Blood, 2013–2020 (detail); Rob Pruitt, American Quilts 2018: Neighbors, 2018; Catherine Opie, Nicola, 1993; Natalie Frank, Portrait 1, 2019; Laurie SimmonsMother Nursery, 1976; Ameya Marie OkamotoThe Notorious RBG, 2018; Barbara KrugerWho will write the history of tears?, 2011. Images courtesy and © the artists, the photographers, Downtown for Democracy, and Abortion is Normal.


TO PAINT IS TO LOVE AGAIN

Paintings are everywhere on Instagram. They circulate freely outside the control of the market, though they endure the censorship of social networks. Instagram is the universal exhibition of today – the Painting Salon of the 2020s. This is where I see more new paintings than I see in the galleries. This is where I discover more new artists and insensibly follow them, without even thinking, and then get off so easily.

Now, the idea is to restore and translate something of my digital experience on Instagram in an art gallery format. It’s a different kind of exhibition experience. But I ask myself, is the gallery transference interesting? Will a group show of such works hold up? Can we exhibit artists without knowing who they are? Or without first seeing their work in the flesh? What can I even say about this recent mutation of taste in narrative, pictorial, eclecticism…a sense of taste that, for me, includes sexual, fetishistic and maybe neo-surrealistic tendencies?

A theoretical question also arises: What’s painting even doing on Instagram?

First, let me say that a painting on Instagram is just an image. It’s a simulacrum, an image of an image, even a non-image or anti-image. A painting does not reproduce reality, nor does it duplicate it, and the image of a painting does not reproduce or duplicate a painting’s physical reality. A painting is a world apart. A world of shadows and lights. A mystery of surface and depth. An enigmatic mixture of colored matter and sensation. A painting stands in opposition to the digital experience of images that can be consumed en masse. Yet the image of a painting on a phone screen slows down my typically speedy, one-after-another consumption of images. The image of a painting often intrigues and even surprises me. Some linger in my memory, and a few more works by the same artist can deepen what began as a fragile and vague emotion. Unlike endlessly scrolled images, the digital image of a painting makes me think. It can even block the flow of thousands of images even as it too is carried off in the digital current. It stays because another kind of desire is played through it.

The images that cross in front of us, that absorb and consume us, embody a new form of global forgetfulness and contemporary amnesia. In the end, it’s a sadomasochistic suffering that we inflict on ourselves in war with images. Love may reside in the social network on the side of paintings. A single painting, in the midst of the seemingly intimate torment, is like a new beginning: to paint is to love again.

My desire to make an exhibition of Instagram paintings begins with what Instagram does to paintings. Instagram returns to a painting what belongs to it. This is neither its decorative value, market value nor spiritual value, but rather its symbolic exchange of value. Isn’t that basically what Instagram tries to actualize or make us dream about: reinventing symbolic exchange? In the social and digital arena, where images of the world can defeat the world, paintings actualize a real connection to and between us. — Olivier Zahm

Join Zahm this weekend for the opening party of TO PAINT IS TO LOVE AGAIN, the show he’s curated for Nino Mier.

TO PAINT IS TO LOVE AGAIN Opening

Saturday, January 18, from 6 pm to 9 pm.

Exhibition runs through January 28.

Nino Mier Gallery

7277 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood.

To Paint is to Love Again, Nino Mier Gallery, January 18–28, 2020, from top: Alison Elizabeth Taylor, South of France, 2019, marquetry hybrid; Brad Phillips, Christine at 7:20 in the Morning, 2017, oil on canvas; Judith Bernstein, Birth of the Universe (Voyeurs) , 2014, oil and acrylic on canvas; Vanessa Beecroft, Untitled, 2019, oil on linen canvas; Rita Ackermann, I Wanna Be Free To Do What I Want To Do, 1993, acrylic on canvas; Rita Ackermann, Honey please don’t load your machine gun on our dining table, thanks alot, 1995, acrylic on canvas; Rene Ricard, Love I did the homework but flunked the Exam, 2010–2012, oil stick and acrylic on canvas; Becky Kolsrud, Vanitas, 2019–2020, oil on canvas; Brianna Rose Brooks, Untitled, 2019, oil, acrylic, and airbrush on canvas; Brianna Rose Brooks, Untitled, 2019, oil, acrylic, and airbrush on canvas; Maurizio Bongiovanni, Autopilot, 2018, oil on canvas; Maurizio Bongiovanni, American Noise, 2018, oil on canvas; Adam Alessi, 1 Night in Paris, 2019, oil on canvas; Adam Alessi, The Viewer, 2019, oil on canvas; Amanda Wall, Kitchen Floor, 2019, oil on canvas; Amanda Wall, Comeback Pillow, 2019, oil on canvas. Images courtesy and © the artists and Nino Mier Gallery; quote courtesy and © Olivier Zahm and Nino Mier Gallery.

MASKULINITÄTEN

What does a feminist exhibition on masculinity look like? This was the question asked by curators Eva Birkenstock, Michelle Cotton, and Nikola Dietrich while organizing MASKULINITÄTEN, their three-part exhibition now open in Bonn, Cologne, and Düsseldorf.

The Bonn section—curated by Cotton, head of Artistic Programmes and Content at Mudam, Luxembourg—includes work by Lynda Benglis, Judith Bernstein, Alexandra Bircken, Patricia L. Boyd, Jana Euler, Hal FischerEunice Golden, Richard Hawkins, Jenny Holzer, Hudinilson Jr., Allison Katz, Mahmoud Khaled, Hilary Lloyd, Sarah Lucas, Robert Morris, D’Ette Nogle, Puppies Puppies (Jade Kuriki Olivo), Bea Schlingelhoff, and Anita Steckel.

The Cologne section—curated by Dietrich, director of the Kölnischer Kunstverein—includes Georgia Anderson & David Doherty & Morag Keil & Henry Stringer, Louis Backhouse, Olga Balema, Gerry Bibby, Juliette Blightman, Anders Clausen, Enrico David, Jonathas de Andrade, Jimmy DeSana, Hedi El Kholti, Hilary Lloyd, Shahryar Nashat, Carol Rama, Bea Schlingelhoff, Heji Shin, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Carrie Mae Weems, Marianne Wex, Martin Wong, and Katharina Wulff.

The presentation in Düsseldorf—curated by Birkenstock, director of the Kunstverein for the Rheinland and Westfalen, Düsseldorf—features the work of Vito Acconci, The Agency, Keren Cytter, Vaginal Davis, Nicole Eisenman, Andrea Fraser, keyon gaskin with Samiya Bashir, sidony o’neal & Adee Roberson, Philipp GuflerAnnette Kennerley, Sister Corita Kent, Jürgen Klauke, Jutta Koether, Tetsumi Kudo, Klara LidénHenrik Olesen, D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus, Josephine Pryde, Lorenzo Sandoval, Julia Scher, Agnes Scherer, Bea Schlingelhoff, Katharina Sieverding, Nancy Spero, and Evelyn Taocheng Wang.

MASKULINITÄTEN will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Koenig Books, with contributions by—among others—CAConrad, Nelly Gawellek, Chris Kraus, Quinn Latimer, Kerstin Stakemeier, Marlene Streeruwitz, and Änne Söll.

MASKULINITÄTEN

Through November 24.

Bonner Kunstverein

Hochstadenring 22, Bonn.

Kölnischer Kunstverein

Hahnenstrasse 6, Cologne.

Kunstverein Düsseldorf

Grabbeplatz 4, Düsseldorf.

Maskulinitäten, a co-operation of the Bonner Kunstverein, Kölnischem Kunstverein, and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, September 1–November 24, 2019. Cologne installation photographs by Mareike Tocha, except second from top and fourth from bottom, by Katja Illner. Images courtesy and © the artists, the institutions, and the photographers.

BERNSTEIN, EXPORT, IANNONE, MINTER, SCHNEEMANN, AND TOMPKINS

“On view [at Venus Los Angeles] is an expansive selection of work in diverse media by Marilyn Minter, Carolee Schneemann, Dorothy Iannone, Judith Bernstein, Valie Export, and Betty Tompkins, six artists who unapologetically create representations of female sexuality. Bound by a dedication to alter the ways in which women’s bodies are represented in both fine art and media, these artists… create images that unabashedly portray the vagina as a locus of power.

“The exhibition features works produced between 1964 and the present, in order to situate these artists’ practices as in part a reaction against the misogyny present in the art world in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as to celebrate the fortitude and dogged artistic activism that these artists have shared for nearly five decades.”*

CUNT

Through September 2.

Venus LA

601 South Anderson Street, downtown Los Angeles.

From top: Carolee Schneemann, Fuses, 1969, mixed-media collage; Marilyn Minter, Green Lights, 2015, enamel on metal. Images courtesy the artists.