The Weekly Roundup

Charles Atlas. "The Illusion of Democracy," 2012. Installation view. Photo courtesy Luhring Augustine Bushwick.

In this week’s roundup, Charles Atlas projects videos with numbers and grids, Rashid Johnson is honored, Sarah Sze to represent the U.S. at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Mike Kelley is honored in LA, Maya Lin re-creates nature, Jessica Stockholder will create a Chicago color jam, a Barry McGee cocktail drink in Miami (!), and more.

• Charles Atlas has a new exhibition at Luhring Augustine Project Space in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. The Illusion of Democracy features video installations and projections that combine mathematical and diagrammatic images with art historical precedents to create moving vistas of floating numbers and grids. This work is on view until May 20. A user-generated video posted online documents the show:

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFJG-voRAg8]

• Mark Bradford is at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through June 17 and at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts through May 27. This is Bradford‘s first major museum survey of paintings, sculptures, and multimedia works to be presented on the West Coast. The selection of works captures the development of the artist’s sensibility, from modest-sized canvases to monumental public projects, and from purely formal investigations of material to engagement with sociopolitical questions.

• Rashid Johnson had been named a winner of the 2012 David C. Driskell prize by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The prize is annually presented to an artist who is “in the beginning or middle of his or her career whose work makes an original and important contribution to the field of African-American art or art history.

• Sarah Sze has been chosen to represent the United States at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Sze plans to create a sequence of environments inside the main pavilion and in the courtyard in front of it. The installation, Triple Point, will be about “orientation and disorientation,” the artist said in an interview.

• Catherine Sullivan‘s new 16mm film, She Builds Domes in Air, features Alexander McQueen’s Spring 2012 collection. In the film model Kristen McMenamy stalks the darkly delicate world of the McQueen’s collection surrounded by Sarah Burton’s oceanic designs. An upcoming issue of AnOther Magazine will presents stills from Sullivan’s film accompanying an intimate conversation between Burton and AnOther’s fashion features director Susannah Frankel.

• Robert Adams‘s work documenting the effects of urban sprawl on open spaces in Denver, Colorado is featured in The Guardian’s online Art and Design gallery. This feature is in relation to the Robert Adams, Robert Bechtle and Ewan Gibbs exhibition at the Timothy Taylor Gallery (London) that closes March 24.

• Laurie Anderson’s Delusion will open Pace University’s Pace Presents season at the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts (NYC). The performance includes a series of vignettes the artist draws from a variety of personal experiences including the death of her mother, her own childhood, and her relationship with her pet terrier. Her male alter-ego, Fenway Bergamot, will also make an appearance. The performance will take place March 9 – 10.

• Mark Dion has taken a residency at the Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town to work on a project that will be exhibited at Documenta 13 in Kassel, Germany, later this year. This work continues his exploration of scientific methodologies and classification systems, this time at Schildbach Xylotheque, a library housed in the Natural History Museum in Kassel.

• Bruce Nauman, Basements at Reed College’s Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery (Portland, OR) features works by Nauman created between 1967 and 1969 with both 16 mm film and emerging video technology, that are “rarely exhibited in consideration of the essential qualities of their nature as films.” Most of these works were shown in relationship to the artist’s sculptures and photographs. The exhibition closes March 9.

• Mike Kelley‘s works are on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. A Tribute to Mike Kelley includes 23 of the late artist’s works alongside artwork by others that he donated to MOCA through the years. Kelley’s work includes assemblages utilizing everything from aluminum foil and boom boxes, to yarn and everyday objects; as well as paintings and drawings. The exhibit runs through April 2.

• Maya Lin, an exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, PA) features work by Maya Lin that re-create natural forms that are transformed into objects of contemplation – i.e. sculptures and drawings with geographic forms, rivers, and inland seas – aspects that remain otherwise unseen. This work is on view until May 13.

• William Kentridge: Won’t you join the dance? at The Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga in Spain presents mosaics, sculptures, preliminary studies, collages, videos and drawings by William Kentridge. The central work is a tapestry based on a 19th-century map of Malaga, which will be shown to the public for the first time at the CAC Málaga. This exhibition is open through May 13.

• Paul Pfeiffer’s work is a centerpiece of The Sports Show at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The Saints is an immersive sound-and-video installation based on the 1966 World Cup final between Germany and Great Britain. The work, never before seen in the US, portrays nationalism and crowd dynamics in sports. It is part of the first major art show to trace the rise of a global sports culture dating from the late 19th century to the present. The work is on view until May 13.

• Jessica Stockholder has been commissioned by the Chicago Loop Alliance business organization to create a dramatic, three-dimensional public art installation this summer in the heart of downtown, or the “Loop.” Color Jam, a three-dimensional work of art containing flashes of color and geometric shapes, will spill from building facades onto the sidewalk and streets of a prominent State Street intersection. A preview was posted online:

 [youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cboNWWVWs2E]

• Martin Puryear was recently selected from over 65 artists to create a memorial to the slave trade that will be placed prominently on the Brown University campus. The decision comes after a 2006 report concluded that some of Brown’s early benefactors were proponents of the slave trade and that some of the University buildings were built with the help of slaves.

• Carrie Mae Weems will receive an honorary degree at Bowdoin College‘s 207th Commencement exercises on May 26 in Brunswick, Maine. The ceremony will be in observance of the 40th anniversary year of women at the College; this year’s slate of honorees is made up entirely of women.

• Barry McGee now has a cocktail named in his honor at Wynwood Kitchen & Bar in Miami. The restaurant is next to Wynwood Walls, a collection of murals by artists working in the graffiti and street art genres. McGee is among 10 other artists who have been honored with a cocktail.