The films feature actors, often the artist himself or Jean-Luc Verna, dressed as women, playing characters from films such as Psycho and Dressed to Kill. What may come across as humorous at first glace—actors with bad wigs and imperfect editing, such as tapping feet and scribbling pens that don’t quite match the film’s audio—raise questions surrounding narrative, film theory, and gender identity. Clearly, Dellsperger’s versions are not finessed objects, like their Hollywood doppelgängers. The films in “Body Double” are evasive art objects, straddling the line between appropriation and creation. Although these works are nearly copies of the original versions, the films take on new meaning and unique significance in a larger conversation surrounding the depiction of nontraditional identities in popular media.

The works in “Body Double” subvert the traditional male gaze of feminist film theory. It’s not quite clear who is the intended viewer of Dellsperger’s films. In Body Double 13 (After Saturday Night Fever), the artist is dressed as two different characters, both women, who look amorously into each other’s eyes and spin around one another while the Bee Gee’s “More Than a Woman” plays in the background. The film’s effect is bizarre and ironic, bordering on kitsch. The original narrative is disrupted, and it no longer matters whether you are familiar with the source material or not. Dellsperger is challenging tropes that pervade Hollywood cinema and shape the way that we view film. “Body Double” uses humor as a vehicle to confront broader issues of representation and identity in popular media. These are provocative works disguised as satire.

The post Body Double: Brice Dellsperger at Team Gallery appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Courtesy of Lu Magnus Art Laboratory + Salon.

Michael Wyshock: Water Threads
May 30 – July 3, 2014
Lu Magnus Art Laboratory + Salon
55 Hester Street
New York City
lumagnus.com

The post Michael Wyshock: Water Threads appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Image courtesy of Studio 10

Featuring:Erik Moskowitz, Amanda Trager

The Story of Elfranko Wessels
April 11 – May 4, 2014
Studio 10
56 Bogart Street
Brooklyn
studio10bogart.com

The post The Story of Elfranko Wessels at Studio 10 appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

IJ: Well, yeah. We all lie to ourselves, and others constantly without knowing.
BC: Yeah, all the time. So, I wanted to explore that or to use that framework to be like, “Hey, I have all these stories, I’ll embellish a few, I’ll fuck with them a little bit, I’ll tell some white lies.” The crux of the story will still be there, but then you land in this liminal space, if I may, between a fictional/non-fictional space through the text that works around the idea of honesty. For me, my own honesty is the material. Honesty is a rare commodity in art.

IJ: I think that society privileges honesty or pretends to. Often, the truth is the last thing that people want to hear.
BC: That’s absolutely true, and at the same time in my life and in my work, I’m very open. I think that being open is a mode of operating, but honesty is not a mode of operating. It’s more of a moral code. To be honest is to be trusted, right? I think that as an artist, my responsibility is to do the opposite. I think of Oscar Wilde’s essay, “The Decay of Lying”. In it, Wilde essentially proposes that, “lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art.” Honesty in the late Capitalist world in which we live is like a commodity. So lying is an anti-commodity, art is an anti-commodity, until collectors and the market overtake it.

IJ: It’s interesting that you brought up Oscar Wilde since he was also an advocate of uselessness, and the idea of robbing something of its utility and giving value to that.
BC: Yes, he advocated for that. I chafe against the utilitarian value of art. The beauty of art is that it’s useless.

IJ: You mentioned that your family is from South Africa, how do you think that’s shaped and formed the way you perceive things as an artist?
BC: That’s a good question. I think, and you might be able to relate, being a first generation American, and having that dual citizenship, having that complex background—not overly complex, I’m just not a straightforward American. Particularly also being an only child has given me the sense that I’m always on the outside looking in. I think any immigrants that come to America, unless they assimilate, that outsider looking in is always part of us, and its certainly been passed down to me through my parents. That informs my work I suppose in terms of comedy, comedy is premised on observations and things that have happened to comedians and/or artists. These things happen to you and you search for the humor in it. So, I feel like if you’re constantly sensing yourself not as an outsider, but sort of the outside looking in, you potentially are observing constantly in a way that might be different, say from someone who are in and were assimilated before they were even born. I think that in order to tell the stories that I am telling I always have to stay on the outside of pretty much everything.

IJ: Your literary background comes through within the work too, obviously. Something that I was struck by is the minimalist way in which you approach the text and I was reminded of Raymond Carver’s short stories. There’s such a terse and pithy way in which you frame language. You’re trying to get at the essence and something more direct and concise.
BC: I feel that to achieve an economy of language is extremely difficult. When I think of Raymond Carver, I take that as a huge compliment, by the way, but when I think of Raymond Carver, or Hemmingway, or artists who achieve an economy of language, they work for that. I was trying to employ that actively, but for a different reason than Raymond Carver would, for example. When you read a book, there’s an act of intimacy that happens; like the trope of turning the page.

IJ: It’s a very private, personal experience.
BC: Mine isn’t. Mine is very public. What I’m trying to do also with the pacing of it, I’m not only asking the viewer to work, but I’m also asking the viewer to engage with the piece, and then to become intimate with it. It’s like my way of having sex with my viewers! How my work functions, is that it essentially asks you to imagine the visual for yourself. In Nietzsche, a leaf is not a leaf it’s just a metaphor for the thing itself. What’s interesting is if you employ that in a Raymond Carver setting or in my work, your notions of what a casual encounter may be, or an email is are very different from the next person. I am attempting to present an essence of something which is the content, but the way that that content takes place in the viewer’s brain is different from the leaf or the next leaf or the next leaf, because each individual is different in how they view the work.

Barnett Cohen, still from Radical Honesty, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist.

IJ: What you’re talking about made me think of Ed Ruscha’s City paintings; the way in which the word stands in for the actual thing itself.
BC: Yes, Absolutely.

IJ: In the video, you’ve included the more interesting aspects of your life; it’s not about banality.
BC: That is correct. I think that it comes full circle to the work that I’ll be working on next, which is my sex disco. Not all the stories have a sexual innuendo or are straightforwardly about sex, but another thing in which I see a lack of and in which I’m responding particularly to in the work of my peers is a rejection of sex. It’s sublimated in some work, but I prefer to use it and have it thrust, so to speak towards the viewer! That sounds very graphic, but yeah, I like the idea of being sexually graphic in the work but still not overdoing the work. Think of it as Playboy as opposed to Hustler.

IJ: I would have to agree that a lot of work avoids sex in general, which seems strange since so much of our life revolves around sex.
BC: I just realized that sex is one of the many materials with which I work and the joy of working with it is that it is malleable particularly when it comes to text-based work. There are infinite ways to attack it, to confront it, and to employ it. An anecdote comes to mind, Tom Waits was interviewed by the BBC about what inspires him to make a record and he responded that he goes to his local record store, searches for a record he would like to hear, comes up short, and then goes home and makes it himself. His work is a response to a lack and in some ways perhaps mine is as well.

IJ: The text in your video is structured the way in a joke is structured. The simplicity of it also helps because humor has to be very direct and straightforward. If it becomes too clunky it becomes too convoluted and confusing.
BC: When I started writing, I guess you would call it writing, these text pieces, I was thinking very much about comedians and how a joke functions. I think that as an artist it’s incumbent upon oneself to ask this question, which is, “what do you want to do to your viewer?” For me, the audience is considered to a point, and I think that the work stems out of my love of comedy, which started as a kid, and how word play and comedy operates. There’s a very famous Eddy Murphy joke, where he uses a very boring, overplayed story about a woman coming home to find her husband in bed with another woman. And she starts screaming at her husband, “You’re fucking this woman, you’re fucking this woman, you’re fucking this woman!” And they have this argument, and he says, “Yes, you want me to admit that I fucked her? Yes! Yes, I fucked her!” He overemphasizes the word “fuck,” and he says, “If you’re going to let a fuck come between us making love then there’s something wrong with you, woman!” I just think that the word play in comedy is for me, very exciting, and I think that my intention is not only to thrust myself upon my viewers, but also to make them laugh. Art that is humorous and isn’t ironic, sarcastic, or overly self-aware, is for me some of the most effective artwork.

IJ: Irony is almost an easy way out. I don’t believe in this blind devotion to the altar of seriousness and reverence in art, but irony is too easy. It’s become the norm, it’s too accepted. You’re almost expected to be ironic.
BC: Particularly in text pieces, a lot of work that I see has a lazy approach to text. For me if your material is text, you have to be exact and know what the hell you’re writing about.

IJ: Although you talk a lot about the humor in your art, is there an underlying serious or philosophical message that you want to get across to the viewer, through the use of humor?
BC: I think of comedy as being a more effective political tool. It’s like the court jester. So someone comes before the king and he says something and the king lops off his head. In King Lear, he had his jester around and the jester could speak truth to power in front of the king because supposedly he wasn’t taken as seriously as someone who might provoke the king to anger. Humor allows me to touch upon subjects of sexual relations and gender and the fluidity of sexuality in a way that is less didactic than it would be if I were not employing humor.

The post Irena Jurek talks Honesty and Sex with Barnett Cohen appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

The largest most breathtaking work Echo, 2013, evokes an expansive body of water. Numerous shades of blue shimmer through the canvas like the dappling surface of the ocean. Hues of aquamarine, purple, gray, and green are seamlessly woven into the fabric of the painting. The illusion of an aerial view is created through the subtle manipulation of color and tone, such that there is a constant play of light that radiates from various points and illuminates the entire canvas. A thick black jagged line that resembles the edge of a landmass severs the painting into two. Houshiary uses this device to map the perceptual space in the work, while emphasizing the materiality of its physical qualities and the aesthetic dimensions of this same surface.

The viewer is drawn to her signature web of fine lines that seem almost embroidered rather than meticulously hand painted. On closer inspection, a veil stretches over each canvas that gives the work its delicacy and beauty. Influenced by Islamic architecture and its interlacing patterns, Houshiary’s all over filigree-like design serves a deeper transcendental purpose. The translucent gossamer both obscures and directs the viewers’ eyes towards a deeper metaphysical space. One is induced into a meditative trance by the prismatic effect of the colors and the intricate decorative element. These qualities seem to highlight the recurring presence of the infinity of time and space in her works.

In Ode, 2013, and Vertigo, 2013, also constructed in a similar vein with alluring veils and birds-eye-perspectives, Houshiary shapes the mood of her paintings through her choice of colors.  Varied saturations of purple give Ode a more somber feel, while a lighter palette of sky blues and violets provide Vertigo with an ethereal tonality.  Much like Mark Rothko’s abstractions, Houshiary’s use of color fields and flat surfaces make the paintings vibrate with emotional depth and create contemplative moments.

Shirazeh Houshiary, Dust, (still frame), 2011-2013. Digital animation run time: 7 minutes, 8 seconds. Edition of 6. Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Her video installation titled Dust, 2011-13, is made up of burning candles that form a grid against a backdrop of ivory travertine. Wafts of soot become amorphous fragile clouds before they disappear and reappear to take new shapes and patterns. The slow, almost imperceptible movement of veils of soot against the pale limestone reveals the gradual transience of time, and the yin and yang of opposites—black fleeting soot against the permanence of solid white stone. The accompanying soundtrack of a violin combined with the hypnotic incantation of a chant mesmerizes the viewer.  Houshiary demonstrates her ease with various mediums as she deftly combines different artistic traditions.

The sculptures in the gallery made from bright, anodized aluminum bricks differ from the paintings in their sturdy sinuous forms and muscular armature. A sense of rhythm and movement emanates from the curvatures and the arrangement of varied shades of bricks. Although less appealing than their two-dimensional counterparts, these large works complement the paintings in the gallery.

At the end, Houshiary succeeds in making the viewer believe that if art is to remain an important entity it has to go beyond daily existence.  It must rise above culture and creed in order to resonate with the human soul.

By Bansie Vasvani

The post The Eye Fell in Love with the Ear by Shirazeh Houshiary appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Oh what a time it must have been on Manhattan’s Bond Street in the mid-1970s. Bond Street connects Broadway and the Bowery exactly where CBGB’s used to be, and a lot of cool folks used to live there when it was still considered a pretty sketchy part of town—before NYU moved in. Today Bond Street is mostly known for very expensive co-ops.

David Byrne used to live at 52 Bond Street back in the day, just a few steps away from CBGB’s. He crashed with an old RISD buddy of his, an artist named Jamie Dalglish. Dalglish was and is a painter but at that time he was obsessed with video. In 1975 he had the idea of a video art project that would consist entirely of interviews. The idea was that Dalglish would compile hours and hours of footage of his artist friends talking with Byrne—but Byrne would be offscreen the entire time. The name of the project was “Talking Heads.”

As David Bowman relates in his book on Talking Heads (meaning the band, not the video project):

But back in 1974, Dalglish spent most of his energy on ideas about video as a replacement for language. At year’s end, Dalglish would undertake a massive seven-and-a-half-hour video consisting of more talking than images. It would be composed of fifteen static shots of fifteen different people sitting in a chair listening to David Byrne.

David was talking—jabbering actually—performing a stream-of-consciousness dialogue off-camera. Tina said, “The tape was David spouting off what other people thought. Memorizing anecdotes and advertisements from TV. Things that he’d heard other people say.”

—snip—

This video disappeared years ago and has become the Holy Grail of Talking Heads research. Dalglish is convinced that Talking Heads manager Gary Kurfirst has it. Kurfirst says he doesn’t know what Dalglish is talking about.

I’m not a private detective or anything, but to me it sure sounds like those tapes are lost for good, fellas.

As Byrne blandly tells it in his 2012 book How Music Works, “In the mid-seventies I was offered room and board in New York by a painter, Jamie Dalglish, who let me sleep on his loft floor in return for help renovating the place. This was on Bond Street, almost right across from CBGB, where Patti Smith would read occasionally while Lenny Kaye accompanied her on guitar.” And that’s the last we ever hear about Dalglish—and no word at all about Dalglish’s “Talking Heads” video project.

Here’s a little more about Bond Street, taken from a 2007 article in the New York Observer—the whole thing is worth a read:

My other neighbors included a struggling and somewhat unstable artist, an ex of David Byrne’s, and a lesbian novelist who would later publish to considerable acclaim but who then worked at a rickety table I could see out my window, where she’d gently masturbate with one hand and hunt-and-peck type with the other. Our doormen were typically prone and pungent skid-row types. There were several Bowery hotels, a.k.a. flophouses, nearby, but no Bowery Hotel, and certainly no trendy restaurants.

The only semblance of uptown chic arrived with visitors slumming at CBGB. Which may be why, after Talking Heads shows, David Byrne would escape to visit my downstairs neighbor, a fellow Rhode Island School of Design grad, [this is almost certainly Dalglish—Ed.] while Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, who shared a cold-water loft on Chrystie Street, would come to my place for hot showers and quick pick-me-ups.

The full “Talking Heads” videos appear to be lost, but you can see four short snippets to get a taste of the whole thing. Here Byrne and artist Jeff Koons discuss authenticity in music, working in a key reference to The Bob Newhart Show:

David Byrne / Jeff Koons:

David Byrne / Jeff Turtletaub:

David Byrne / Chris Frantz:

David Byrne / Vito Acconci:

The post Talking Head David Byrne’s Lost ‘Talking Heads’ Video Project With Jamie Dalglish From 1975 appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.