Necrophilia at Reena Spaulings

I just went to a performance of Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether and Ei Arakawa at the uber uber hip downtown gallery reena spaulings. It was so dusty. Dusty and dead. Granted, the name of koether/gordon’s show was “dead again”- a low budget and negative-aesthetic quasi-consideration of the death of painting, punk, and performance. In Europe I recall lots of graffiti that said “Punk is Not Dead” except sometimes the english was funny in places like Prague so it said “Punk is Not Death”! Or is it?
According to these artists it is I guess. Live concert recordings of Dan Graham’s 1970s punk band blasted and people rolled around on a piece of pink carpet and staged self-conscious “punk”esque actions, like knocking into a chair and falling down “drunk”. Abject materials abound in this anti-market commercial gallery, and the performance extended that- plywood, plastsic sheeting, staples, contact-improv, black and brown thrift store costumes, and DON’T wash your hair or else you are the MAN.

Sharjah Biennial- the inconvenient truth

Just as the UAE prepares to become the hypertrophic cultural capital of the middle east,
the 8th Sharjah Biennial kicks off this month, around the theme of “Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change.” The curatorial statement, studded with the usual gloom and doom about our fucked-up world and wondering if perhaps, maybe, art can create positive change, struggles self-consciously about what the hell an exhibit about ecology is doing in a former desert turned into a golf course by oil profits. Contemporary art, ever the status symbol for the filthy rich, ever the political placebo for freedom. Oh, and “no Israelis allowed.”