Any Ever, Again: Schjeldahl weighs in

One of the thigns about this Canada Post strike is that I'm about two weeks behind on my New Yorker subscription (online access? What's that?). So when it finally arrived this morning, I hungrily devoured Peter Schjeldal's review of Ryan Trecartin's Any Ever, now at P.S. 1 in New York.

We all remember where Any Ever came from, I'm sure. Last year at the Power Plant, which marshalled every ounce of its art world clout to single out Trecartin, at the ripe old age of 28, for what may well have been its most ambitious show of all time: A seven-room funhouse, or house of horrors, depending on your view of Trecartin's franctically piercing oeuvre (I'm in the latter camp, as I said at the time).

Its recreation at P.S. 1 is a faithful one, according to Schjeldahl's description (which at no point acknowledges the Power Plant's role in its existence. But anyway). Simply put, it is, bizarrely, the least critical Schjeldahl piece I think I've ever read. It's essentially a long, eloquent expository essay on Trecartin's personal history, and a description -- as much as such a thing is possible -- of his movies.

I'm left thinking a coupel of things: That Trecartin has left Schjeldahl, arguably the most consequential critic on earth, in complete awe; or that he's baffled him so completely that he's not sure what to think. I know the feeling. Emerging from "Any Ever" for the first time, I was physically vibrating from the chaotic assault a Trecartin video composition creates. He teases with narrative, then snatches it away; he build scenes, then shatters them into fragments. Non-sequiturs dominate dialogue; the overwhelming sense, that everything is shameless mugging for an omnipresent camera, is maddeningly oblique, and completely bang-on.

Schjeldahl's central observation is a common one: That Trecartin's virtuousic video editing and keen observational gift for the hyper-linked world of look-at-me online self-display makes him something of a generational magus (his word) -- a teller of truths distilled to a potency mere reality can't match, and a visionary for whom the old distinctions of high and low culture mean nothing.

Well, duh. But did you like "Any Ever," Peter? Don't you know? Yeah. Me neither.

 

Proof that Canada is the centre of the known art universe

 
 

Still: Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg

I was speaking to Sarah Anne Johnson yesterday. She was in Paris, where La Maison Rouge, a clever little private museum founded by a wealthy French collector named Antoine de Galbert, has just opened Plug-In ICA's show My Winnipeg. Named for Guy Maddin's film of the same name, Johnson's one of 70 Winnipeggers in the show, which includes such notables as Noam Gonick, Wanda Koop, Marcel Dzama and Adrian Williamson.

There's no denying Winnipeg's remarkably active role in contemporary Canadian visual culture; as a native 'pegger myself, I couldn't be prouder than to have that community representing our home and native land. As if the show wasn't enough, it comes complete with a four-day kick-off, Festif Winnipeg, including one of Paul Butler's collage parties. Cool. 

Anyway, be that as it may, Canada -- not just Winnipeg -- will be getting a major international airing next spring when MASS MoCA's -- in North Adams, north of Boston -- much-anticipated survey of Canadian contemporary art opens in May 2012 (though Dzama, Johnson, Gonick and Koop are in that one too). Curator Denise Markonish has spent much of the past three years criss-crossing the country -- ours, I mean -- to assemble a show that seems destined to become the most comprehensive survey of contemporary art in Canada, possibly ever.

It's all right to blush; Mass MoCA's an A-list institution -- 105 of Sol Lewitt's huge wall drawings are installed there for the next couple of decades, in the broadest showing of the works, ever -- and the fact that it's giving over such a significant portion of its real estate to examine the artistic production of our funny little country is both flattering, and well-deserved. I fully expect some careers to be made through this; Peter Schjeldahl, Roberta Smith, meet Terrance Houle, Kristan Horton, Kelly Mark, Micah Lexier, Shuvinai Ashoona, BGL? Not so far fetched. Stay tuned. 

 

As if you didn't know

It's the Power Ball tonight, the Power Plant's annual mega-party. 

Falling victim to a nasty throat virus, I won't be going for the first      time      ever, since the thing was started back in 1999. 

Let me know what I miss. 

David Levine, he of "Habit," at Gallery TPW tomorow

No, really, that's what this post is about. Skip down, if you like.

Anyway: Everyone knows that I'm haven't been much of a fan of Luminato visual arts program -- not in past years, at least. Even when they've gotten it right, they've still managed to get in wrong -- like last year, wedging Michael Snow's piece in a closet, for one thing, and commissing Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller to produce a superficial funhouse not up to their typically very-high standard (to be fair, that's likely on the artists more than Luminato, but the pressure and inclination to make somethign that suits the fun'n'family-friendly event poses its own set of concerns.)

Regardless, this year's different. While I have my issues with it, Philip Beesley's "Sargasso," a clever construct of inorganic life mimicry, is probably the best use of the imposing void of Brookfield Place by a public art installation since its inception (see: Contact this year, where Alain Paiment's weirdly vertiginous photos were completely neutered, pasted on the floor over top a grid of glass bricks, creasing the photograph's necessarily-smooth surface and obliterating its visual effect).

"Sargasso" is both huge and light as air, but still seems kind of minimized by the vast void under Santiago Calatrava's great steel-girdered awning. Nonetheless, after dark, as it breathes in silence, the piece has resonacnce, to be sure.

Anyway, my point. I suggested, when I first heard about it, that David Levine's Habit, a script recited for eight hours straight by actors trapped in a bungalow at OCAD, built so the audience could change their perspective at will by peering through windows and doors at their leisure, sounded better than it actually woudl be.

I was wrong. I've been to see Habit twice. I'll be back again. The agency alone, of being able to choose your own view on the narrative -- and depart from it; there's no off-stage, so anywhere there's a window, there's a view on an actor, scene or no -- is so weirdly compelling as to be almost addictive. I didn't know what to expect; I'm still not sure what I saw. But I liked it.

 

 

So.

Where was I? I've been asking myself the same question. I'm trying to think of my very long absence from anything resembling regular blogging as a necessary fallow period, a contemplative break over which I'll renew my vigor for and interest in this intimate and interactive journalistic form.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just sick of it. Maybe you are, too. Whatever the case, I'll go down swinging. I'm committed to getting back in the saddle, at least temporarily, to see what's what, if for no other reason than the blog seems to provide the only opportunity to talk about the great things that happen at the grassroots level in art in this town any more, given the incredible shrinking newspaper we're faced with daily.

So let's try again. If you're still out there, stay with me. At least for a while. I'll do my best.

Michael Snow wins Gershon Iskowitz Prize

New and improved for 2011, Michael Snow will take home the prize, now worth $40,000; previous winners, such as Brian Jungen and Shary Boyle, pocketed $25,000. 

As ever, the winner is invited to mount a solo show at the museum. Jungen's is on now, Boyle's was a highlight of last fall. Snow, in his eminence, provides something to look forward to as well. 

EDIT: Scratch that -- Iskowitz is now a $50,000 prize, board chair Jay Smith announced recently. Lucky Mr. Snow ... and well-deserved, while we're at it.