Real Not Real

A few months ago, here in San Francisco, I went to see the Olafur Eliasson show, “Take Your Time”, at SFMOMA. It is the best show I’ve ever seen in San Francisco, and probably the best one-man show I’ve ever seen, period. Maybe that’s because I’ve seen more review-type shows than one-man shows, especially of contemporary artists, but this thing made me feel so, so good about living in the art world and it gave me hope for art as we know it currently.

This show was so well-designed, so thoughtfully responded to the space of the museum and to the flow of the viewer’s parade through the works, it made me feel like I was being welcomed openly into Eliasson’s process and his state of mind. The show was free of pretense, free of the self-awareness and sarcasm that has pervaded hipster art in the last five-ten years. I’m surely guilty of creating work that’s sarcastic, but I’m trying to move away from that and embrace an open-source philosophy about my work and the world at-large. Eliasson’s show seemed to embody a mentality of openness and interaction (though perhaps controlled, single-channel interaction) without relying solely on technology-based pieces to provoke a viewer-response or interaction.

I highly recommend this show to anyone, now that it’s open again, this time in New York. It’s a playground of serious thought about serious work that is anything but serious.

If you haven’t seen this, you should.

It has taken me awhile to throw up this post, but I wanted to mention two recent dinner parties by artists, one in NYC and the other here in SF.

On March 28, Jerome Waag and Sam White of Chez Panisse created a pop-up restaurant in the New Langton Arts space on Folsom called OPEN. I had been planning to go and unfortunately wasn’t able to make it, but I hope to catch up with these guys soon.

And on Easter Sunday, Agathe Snow did it again in New York (this time with Alex Apparu and Rita Ackermann): an Easter dinner at the Armory that was part feast, part performance.

I am a fan of Chris Johanson. And his work is at the Jack Hanley Gallery in SF through April 12. (15th and Valencia, Tuesday – Saturday: 11a-6p, if you want to check it out).

The last time I was in New York, I went to the New Museum, and I have to say I was underwhelmed. There were a few lovely pieces on the top floor (or was it the second?) that were largely about texture, and decoration, and deterioration, but many of the pieces that worked with a default aesthetic just seemed like they were lacking criticality.

I did, however, pick up a copy of Lawrence Weiner’s Henry the Navigator in a Sea of Sand/Enrique el Navegante en un Mar de Arena which was pretty fun since I’d just seen the Weiner show at the Whitney. I also got a copy of Soft Targets, my friend Dan’s journal.

After visiting the New Museum, I appreciate this bit of street art, courtesy of Wooster Collective: