Today’s activities mainly revolved around a few gallery visits in Manhattan. There was an exhibition of works by Marcel Broodthaers at Alden Projects. As an ex-poet, Broodthaers made art about shifting alphabets, and the latter was sometimes associated with literary inspiration: stolen letters, messages in bottles, and industrial poems to name only a few. In his publicity and open letters, modes of address are constantly upended and shifting; there is a constant evolution of their narratives. The strong point of this exhibition is its attempt to map out the very particular places and the very particular times in which Broodthaers’ work originally functions and some of the very particular people, events, and conditions to which his work so pointedly responds, addresses, and invites us to consider.
On Stella Rays had a show titled ‘I Pledge Allegiance’, of which the most interesting aspect to us was a brick wall positioned a few feet from the gallery wall. This meant that the viewer could, if they felt the need to, take a look behind said wall and discover that it was in fact fake, and constructed entirely from painted wood. The back of this wall was also poorly ‘finished’, assumedly on purpose, in an attempt to emphasis the sense of the façade.
Larry Bamburg had a solo show at Simon Subal gallery. One of the works involved a slice of mulberry trunk, which Bambury had instructed to be photographed as accurately as possible, matched tone for tone and color for color. In order for the wood to continue to match the photograph, he lodged it in a vacuum-sealed box with controlled heat and humidity. Doing this was intended to reduce the rate at which the stump would decay. This means that the normal state of things got reversed: Bamburg's diptych is about nature trying to stay true to a photo, instead of vice-versa. Something else that’s maybe important to consider is how the rings within trees measure stuff. Growth rings record the age of a tree, but they can also register catastrophes: changes in climate, fires, floods. Even sunspots leave their mark. The growth of a tree’s swirling internal structures is always molded by external stimuli.
It was also the opening night of our show at Green Point gallery which was pretty bizarre. Seeing the towel next to maybe 35 paintings was something we’d never really considered and made it look particularly weird. Also, our work wasn’t hung in the way we might’ve liked it to be, too high and fairly messily draped over the rail. Also all the other works had a sign next to them, stating the artist and title, but ours has left blank for an unknown reason. We proceeded to write on ours just incase any good came of it. But in spite of all this it was still up and in a show in New York so I guess it can’t be that bad!
