photo by Pierre Goirand Conseil from "viral cOncertO" performance

Published in a special issue Art TV Clash of the journal Multitudes edited by Sylvie Boulanger, Yves Citton, Ariel Kyrou, Yann Moulier Boutang

http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Art-TV-Clash

Television Art, Ubiquity and Immersion:

This group show marks both the end of the summer and beginning of the new season of gallery happenings. "Tunneling" is a title selected by Pappenheimer as a symbol of an exploratory process. Often ignored or overlooked, many eccentric and obsessive artists continue in solitary digging deep into their subjects and media with startling results. In a virtuoso manipulation of "New Media" Luke Murphy appropriates Albert Pinkham Ryder's The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse), and using computer technology, stretches its pixels to a mile in length. The mind-bending tedium involved in the fabrication of Meg Hitchcock's collages induces a brief period of meditative contemplation just to perceive. Designing a logo hacking iphone app, Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking remind users of their own complicity in the BP Gulf oil blowout. Features an interview with curator William Pappenheimer.

James Kalm is back in Bushwick to visit "On Display" an exhibition selected by Time Out New York as the best painting show of the week. Curated by Hrag Vartanian, Publisher of Hyperallergic, and featuring Sharon Butler, Joy Curtis and Cathy Nan Quinlan. These artists share a sensibility of fractured formalism. Employing received norms of abstraction they cut and reassemble elements into crisp and startling compositions. Includes interviews with Hrag Vartanian, Sharon Butler and Joy Curtis.

James Kalm is cycling down for the summer, but before being immersed in the art world doldrums, he ventures into Chelsea for one more Thursday night gallery crawl. "Reflexive Self" at Mike Weiss Gallery features a collection of images of the macabre. Large drawings by Dead Dads Corporation have the shocking presence of crime scene photos. Kim Dorland and Stefanie Gutheil peruse chunky colorful expressionism, while Marc Seguin leavens his austere canvases with conceptual content and blobs of oil paint and elicits a spontaneous diatribe from Daniel Larkin on his use of Hitler as subject. . Okay Mountain's "Benefit Plate" at Freight+Volume, is the latest offering by this Austin Texas based collective/gallery. These ten artists have received much attention for their whimsical humor combined with critical representations of American culture. Includes interviews with Carlos Rosales-Silva, Corkey Sink and Josh Rios.

Rirkrit Tiravanija has established "Relational Aesthetics" as one the art world's current new movements. However, for this "intervention" he was invited to reconfigure "Square Tubes Series D", 1967, by Charlotte Posenenske with some personal alteration of the piece. Tiravanija decided to place all the Square Tubes on rolling dollies and invite attendees to simply roll them into whatever configuration they wish.

James Kalm, through his studies of the "beat" artists, has heard rumors of the legendary Brion Gyson for years, but it wasn't until this New Museum show, put together by Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator, with assistance from Amy Mackie, that he was able to experience the work that spawned the myth. Since the New Museum's relocation to the Bowery, this is their first show dedicated to a dead artist. Gysin is probably best known for his long term collaboration with William Burroughs, and his invention of the "cut-up" technique, which he gifted to Burroughs and used to great effect in his collage and poetry. With over 300 works, including the famous "Dream Machine", this show should be required viewing for anyone wishing a deeper understanding of the "beat". Includes an interview with Laure Hoptman and a conversational tour with Valery Oisteanu.

James Kalm appreciates the efforts of the Whitney Museum and celebrity curator Robert Gober and is thrilled to bring viewers this glimpse of Charles Burchfield's "Heat Waves in a Swamp". Although classified as an "American Scene" painter during the 1930s, Burchfield was a true visionary artist. Using the humble medium of watercolor, his interpretations of the landscape and rustic urban settings, vibrate with a hallucinatory exuberance. Whether forest, field or street Burchfield's vision was open to cosmic harmonies that could overwhelm with their intensity or sometimes disturb with disquieting sinister qualities. Includes extended statements on the artist by curator Robert Gober.

On the evening of June 20, 2010 in conjunction with the exhibition "Dead Flowers," a group show based on the work of actor/director Timothy Carey, a selection of performance pieces were presented at Participant Inc. "Veil" by Johanna Constantine is a mysteriously disturbing yet poetic "dance" alluding to flight and perhaps the rebirth of the soul. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is well known for his/her work with the proto Punk band Throbbing Gristle. In the 1990s, with his second wife, Lady Jaye, P-Orridge began an ongoing experiment in body modification aimed at creating one pandrogynous being named "Genesis Breyer P-Orridge". In this performance P-Orridge is accompanied by the recorded voice of the late Lady Jaye. Marti Domination & Beaut riff on classic burlesque, using the novelty item known as a whoopee cushion to great effect.

James Kalm is cruising around the nabes and captures a couple of interesting local happenings, most notably the de-installation of the controversial New Museum exhibition "Skin Fruit". Rolling north-west from the Bowery, we visit the gem like mini-retrospective "Trim" and Other Works 1967-2010 by a personal favorite, Jim Nutt. This show features three recent "portrait" paintings and a group of related drawings. But the real treat is a small but choice selection of amazing work from the past forty years. As one of the leading members of the Chicago group "Hairy Who" Nutt has sustained one of the most consistent and provocative careers within the eccentric figurative mode.