Josh Kline at the Whitney Museum

 Josh Kline’s Project for a New American Century at the Whitney Museum is a multiple floor exhibition highlighting the dehumanization of work and the uncertainty of future labor with technological advancements. The work is largely composed of large scale sculpture work, film and video all which haunt viewers with the threat of the ending of their careers. 

The exhibition is set up as a maze where each room is depicting another future crisis scenario. Repeating motifs of dismembered body parts fatally frozen in fear or highlighted as another resource equivalent in importance to what one would fill a grocery cart is haunting, but not unimaginable. With the recent advancements in ai technology the disregard of human labor and livelihood depicted in these sculpture works are a warning of what is to come, not just some distant dystopia. 

The installation titled Contagious Unemployment created in 2016 consists of office boxes full of ones work tools encompassed by glass blown virus bubbles dangling from the ceiling. The work was imagined during creation in the 2030s or 2040s where automation would eventually take over white-collar worker positions. This work now takes on a new meaning post Covid-19, essentially highlighting  how the virus told workers to pack up their desks and leave. Many jobs that are realizing or are unable to bring back laid off workers as they no longer have the finances or have found a cheaper way to replicate their work through new technology programs. This work has already successfully predicted future courses of action, and doesn’t seem to be stopping there.  

Josh Kline is giving viewers a warning, but it might already be too late to change anything.  

Wangchi Mutu at the New Museum

Wangchi Mutu’s extensive show at the New Museum is a major solo exhibition that features over one hundred works from her impressive twenty-five-year-long career. Her work is presented through various media that are able to create fantastical forms that cover folkloric narratives, and mythological stories while discussing colonialism, globalization, and African traditions. With each floor containing different pieces of work of various mediums, the entire exhibition had a beautiful flow. While at times it felt a bit overwhelming due to the surplus of the work, each floor was able to hold on its own. The piece Shavansa I (2019) was displayed in the most minimal environment on the top floor of the museum. This piece is a perfect start or end piece depending on how one goes about viewing the exhibit, instead of the body on top of the yoga mat in a restful pose, the figure is buried underneath, presumed to be dead. Throughout the work all the work, there was a common theme of pops of bright color that would be brought into an earthy palette The work MUD (2003) was ink and collage prints that were simple in nature but the use of mixed-media made it more interesting as it made the women hidden, reduced, and depersonalized. The way that the prints were hung was not my favorite on that floor as they felt more cramped together, making it hard to view them individually as they were intended. The show as a whole was incredibly beautiful to see, containing such a wide span of work from a singular artist.

-Victoria

MoMA PS1, Liu Susiraja: A style called a dead fish

Upon entering the exhibition hall, I encounter a woman with a broom between her breast, and a loaf of bread on her head, blankly staring at the camera with raw fish between her legs catching my eye. The artist's pictures of her in the apartment filled the exhibition hall. Self-cameras usually allow people to make themselves appear happier and prettier than they are. Photography becomes magic as if the ideal self I aspire to be is the truth. Despite the strong desire to take pictures of oneself as more beautiful than in reality is inherent in taking selfies, the artist does the work of taking photography honestly, no, ridiculously, to the point of being brutal.

She takes pictures of everyday objects in an immensely ordinary house, but her photography are never expected or ubiquitous. “Unabashed, Susiraja’s works test the limits of propriety, indulgence, and “good” behavior.” Her body looks as if it is one of the objects in the picture. Her pale skin, and bumpy and wrinkled body, become an object of observation. And we feel unfamiliarity and awkwardness in her fat body, double chin, and slouching posture as she looks at the camera with blank eyes. Through this, she is deconstructing the cultural view of beauty by constantly showing her socially unwelcome body to people, making it normal and familiar. It deviates from the original beauty that people expect from visual art. Her self-portrait is a free struggle that breaks away from the physical norms based on beauty and seems to break the concept of the normal.

-Hye Jin Kim

DEATH TO THE LIVING, Long Live Trash by Duke Riley at Brooklyn Museum

Duke Riley's "DEATH TO THE LIVING, Long Live Trash" at The Brooklyn Museum showcases nautical-inspired artwork made from beach trash. This exhibition showcases a diverse range of artwork, including Sailor Valentine Octagon mosaics, scrimshaw paintings, and handmade fishing lures, all of which serve as a reminder of the destructive impact of our consumption-driven culture on the environment.

Riley's innovative use of discarded trash collected from the beach, rather than traditional materials like shells and bones, to create these historic-inspired works of art gives them a contemporary twist. The use of trash, as the new shell, has a profound meaning: our plastic waste has overtaken natural resources, and we have replaced wildlife with our insatiable desire to consume.

This art speaks to the conscience of the wealthy consumer class, as it does not shy away from the uncomfortable truth of pollution but instead presents it in an aesthetically pleasing manner that is perfect for Angelina Jolie to post on Instagram. One of the significant problems with contemporary art, especially in the context of environmental and social issues, is that it is often co-opted by the wealthy elite as a tool for virtue signaling and self-aggrandizement. By purchasing socially conscious artwork, the rich can absolve themselves of responsibility for the very problems that they have played a significant role in creating.

The fact that plastic waste has become the new shell is a direct result of a system that prioritizes profit over people and the planet. Yet, Riley fails to engage with this critical issue in any meaningful way. He instead produces work that is in line with his ‘style’ and is politically conscious enough.

 

Sarah Sze: Timelapse at the Guggenheim

 The Sarah Sze exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum is an immersive experience that showcases the artist’s mastery of sculpture, installation, and space. The show is titled “Timelapse,” and it consists of a series of installations that explore the concept of constant movement, transformation, and evolution through time.

As you enter her section viewers are immediately drawn to the first installation, which is a massive mix of painting and sculpture as well as projected video creating an interplay of various different medias to make one piece. It is a striking and mesmerizing piece that sets the tone for the rest of the exhibit.

Throughout the show, Sze plays with the relationship between objects, space, and time. She creates intricate and delicate installations that are both beautiful and unsettling. My favorite of which is the last piece at the end of the seventh level, entitled Timekeeper (2016). A fully immersive experience, the visitors walk into a dark room lit up by the overflowing desk in the center. The desk is absolutely filled with objects, some everyday ones and others much more rare. There is also an overabundance of images, both moving and still. Digital clocks litter the desk with different times from different places in the world showcasing the unfolding of time and how it guides us. 

Overall, Sarah Sze’s show “Timelapse” is a mastery of well thought out installation, playing into the architecture of the Guggenheim as well as on the spot video editing to achieve her aligned projections. And while abstract, there is a narrative being performed which conveys a message to the audience, though it is left to the viewer to decide what that is.

-Emily Burak

 Paul Pagk is an American painter who creates abstract paintings that explore the relationship between color, shape, and space. His work is characterized by bold geometric forms and a minimalist aesthetic, often rendered in a limited color palette.

Despite the simplicity of his forms, Pagk's paintings are rich in texture and depth. He often builds up layers of paint to create a sense of depth and dimensionality, while also using subtle variations in color to create a sense of movement and energy within the composition.

What really brings your eyes to his work is how they can still convey a sense of mood or atmosphere without being explicitly representational. That’s not to say the painting can’t remind you of a certain form, La Notte, 2015 reminds me somewhat of a basketball court, and Andromeda, 2020 a map or battle strategy of sorts. The colors and forms may suggest a particular emotion or feeling, such as tranquility, joy, or melancholy. This can be particularly powerful, as it allows the viewer to connect with the painting on a visceral level, even if they cannot necessarily articulate why they feel a certain way.

-Matt Valenzuela

Amy Hill's "Future Presidents" at Fortnight Institute

 The inheritance of stylized representation is the central focus of Amy Hill's Future Presidents (2022) at Fortnight Institute. The exhibition shows ten works in oil on canvas, ranging from about 2’x2’ to 3’x4’.  The contemporary world is mediated through a glazed lens where distant cityscapes are flattened, and figures’ bulging features peer blankly toward the viewer, borrowing in part from the tradition of painted portraiture from both the European Renaissance and American Folk Art. By evoking art movements of seemingly bygone eras, the attitudes of the past linger in our contemporary era.  For example, in Family Breakfast (2022) a father, mother and child are shown with heavy eyelids, pouring over a bounty of processed and branded food. This mode of portraiture has connotations with Christianity and the pastoral, here replaced with a secular, consumerist, urban bent. The baby’s gaze meets the viewers,’ as does at least one figure in almost every work in the show. 

The subjects have an abundance to display— Sachs Fifth Avenue shopping bags, a pearl necklace, the luxury of a zoom call with a view, or a revolving door to a fancy apartment building. Western portraiture’s enduring obsession with displaying wealth continues here, without the import of religion, and Hill subverts the romanticization of earlier periods in art history by showing the vapidity of the white, wealthy subjects. Compressing time through styles of painting shows the continuing dissonance of the upper class from those of differing backgrounds, and asks if the future presidents will continue to be raised in privileged conditions of American expansion and wealth.

-Madeline