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Thursday, January 15, 2009

Visual Art Currently Hanging

Posted by Jen Graves on Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 3:46 PM

Chris_Lipomi__YSKKI_WAKIPI__photo_courtesy_the_artist.jpg
^{Chris Lipomi's photograph of his installation YSKKI WAKIPI (2008), artworks, twine, and Ralph Lauren wall paint (color: Village)}

At Open Satellite. (Gallery site here.)

This installation is a takeoff on the famous 1942 Mile of String installation by Marcel Duchamp, in which the artist hung a web of string inside a surrealist exhibition, thereby making the sculptures and paintings even stranger (making-strange was a chief priority of the surrealists, after all). Here the Los Angeles artist Chris Lipomi uses three miles of twine to close off an exhibition of his own earlier photographs and sculptures. Unlike Duchamp's setup, which you could walk inside of, Lipomi's gallery is entirely blocked off by the string.

Lipomi gets the atmosphere of the Madison Avenue mansion right, but beyond the most basic theatricality this installation has nothing going for it. It's appropriation of the laziest kind. Many artists (all the way back to 1943 and as recently as 2007) have made works that reference and expand upon the possibilities of Duchamp's Mile of String. It's hard to see what Lipomi's contribution adds.

Comments (3) RSS

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Are those two hands making douchebag hand gestures?

Posted by Fnarf on January 15, 2009 at 3:56 PM

Ummm, sorry but Marcel Duchamp beat chis to this over a half-century ago. And at least Duchamp's string and twine had some significance.

Posted by Jake on January 15, 2009 at 4:05 PM

It's kind of like when Concrete Blonde covered "Sweet Jane": sucked all the life (and relevancy) right out of something that was pretty groundbreaking in its day.

This kind of crap is pandering of the worst kind. He was hoping that academics and critics would go apeshit over this. Are there artists who just want to be artists rather than make art? Looks like it.

I think art about art and aimed at an elite audience is a sign of a culture in decline. Art that *responds to* and is *informed by* other art is a different matter. I didn't see that at this show.

Posted by bluecollarartsnob on January 22, 2009 at 9:42 PM