PRO TOOLS: Cory Arcangel at The Whitney

Before you read this review (or more accurately put, list of opinions and observations) there are some general things you should know about me. Those of you close to me, who know me in real life and not blog life, may already have this knowledge.

A Few Things I Hate

- computers/advanced software programs I've failed to learn/progressive technology in general

- a horrible pair of sunglasses

- Paris Hilton (not the person specifically, I'm sure she's a nice girl, just the iconography about her that every knows who she is and what she does, when in actuality she contributes nothing to society, and, if anything, is hurting the future of many young girls by being a role model this way)

- most video art

- any and all math

- the Internet (and anyone who is a self described 'internet artist')

A Few Things I Love

- nostalgic CD collections (but not so much the nostalgia of trying to find a Tower Records to buy the CD player necessary to enjoy these albums)

- miniature golf

- video games

- old episodes of Seinfeld

- bowling (video and the real thing)

- the sound (and look, and feel and smell) of electric guitars

What do all of the things listed have in common, you may ask. Well my friends, the answer is that ALL OF THE ABOVE can be found at the Whitney, in a show by Cory Arcangel called PRO TOOLS.

This show is boy friendly. I hate to admit it, but I mostly find myself surrounded by women, in both art school and in museums. Chick stuff. Fooey! Fooey I say! Ladies, bring your man friend to this show! He will love it. On a single floor of this museum one can play miniature golf, watch reruns on TV, without commercials, see the latest eye wear (for frat D-bags), and travel back in time through the recent history of video game consoles. I personally had a blast.

Cory Arcangel is a young contemporary artist, who works in many fields, focusing most of his pieces on technology. This show alone features video, kinetic sculpture, foil prints, digital prints, installation, and does not stop there.

Walking up the stairs into the gallery featuring Arcangels installation gets your blood pumping in more ways than one. Yes, it' several flights up, but one can hear the analog and digital sounds echoing through the stone stairwell, coming from six video game systems being played simultaneously. The room is huge, and from floor to ceiling on one wall is a panoramic bowl-o-rama. Six screens, fed by six gaming system, featuring six bowling-themed video games, six avatar characters in each one rolling perpetual gutter balls. Brilliant.

The artist, in front of his projections.

Set up on a table is the archive of gaming. From left to right, correlating to the projected games, Arcangel brings you Atari, Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Playsation (1st generation), Nintendo 64, and X Box.

Cory, you had me at Atari. The sound is played for each game, and the beeps and tones all going on at once can bring anyone back to a memory of standing in an arcade (or, for those not privy to arcades growing up, a Chuck E. Cheese). I was personally shocked at how crappy the graphics really were on Nintendo 64, with which I wasted many a hot summer in New York, sitting in front of, playing Mario Party 1, on 4 player mode (party mode!) with my brothers and sisters.

To the side of gallery of video games, is a kinetic (moving) sculpture of those weird, commercially available shelving units that gyrate, the way belly dancers, or Shakira, gyrates. Yes, it was cool to look at, but I can go to any alternative decor store in Manhattan and see the same thing. (I would say see the same thing for free, but I get into the Whitney for free. Its seriously the only perk of going to SVA. If you want to go to the Whitney for free, I can get one friend in free too!)

The next room you walk into also has a nostalgic sound blasting from it, those Seinfeld bass scene transitions that we all know too well. People who have never watched an episode of Seinfeld (I'm sure such people are out there :-/ ) know it from it just constantly being on TV. At a friends house, parents house, really crappy bar on a Tuesday, everywhere! Cory Arcangel re-arranged clips of every episode to make his video piece.

An ongoing conversation/topic on the series was the idea and eventual creation of a coffee table book, thought up by eccentric character Cosmo Kramer to feature other coffee tables. A book qualifying as a 'coffee table book' is, in my opinion, usually a huge, hardcover, archiving of one item or subject. Architecture, photography, different art movements and periods, a dog encyclopedia, would all fall into the category.

Kramer's idea of filling a book with images of coffee tables, to be placed on coffee tables is met with mixed feelings in the show. Jerry, the title character, thinks the idea is stupid (but I personally feel that Jerry Seinfeld has never once attempted to appreciate or understand Kramer's general genius, because in the show he plays himself, which makes him come off as a self important snob. But hey, thats just me). Publishers love the idea, and the character of Kramer makes it onto Regis and Kelly. Arcangel has complied the clips, from every episode in every season where the coffee table book is brought up in conversation, because it has become a sort of pop culture phenomenon.

By doing this, clipping all the mentions of the book together, Arcangel references the book idea itself, by relating that the book is the same in the way that it puts all of these images of coffee tables together, on a coffee table, and with little pop out legs, can even become, a coffee table.

I usually am disinterested in video art (mostly at the Whitney, I hate to say), but I thought this to be a great piece. Also, I really love Seinfeld, especially Kramer.

Next to the Seinfeld piece is a seemingly out of place eyewear display. It looks like it's been highjacked right out of a Sunglass Hut in a mall, and transplanted to this corner of the museum. The. Glasses. Are. Hideous. The kind of uber-sportsman, athlete, James Franco's character in 127 Hours wears. The kind Guy Feiti wears, despite the fact that this dude is the opposite of an athlete, and insists on wearing them on the back of his head while indoors. Ugh.

I didn't get too into the piece, it was stated that the glasses were about the supposed high performance aspect, like people who wear this kind of advanced technological shades on their eyes will perform better than those who don't. Meh, when I was an athlete I never wore sunglasses, and I got plenty of trophies. The 'everyone's a winner' kind of trophies EVERYONE got in the Downtown United Soccer League I played in for some 6 years. Good team effort.

In the same room as these two oddly juxtaposed installations were a more traditional series of works on paper, of CDs. Using foil stickers and silkscreens, Cory managed to get the sheen of a metallic CD on paper, making them look so real I just wanted to take them right off the wall, get them home, and convert them to MP3s on my iTunes. I had so many of these albums! Nirvana, Weezer, The Ramones, Warped Tour, White Stripes, Avril Lavigne (yes, okay, I had ONE album of hers)! It was so cool to see what I used to have in a CD book sleeve hanging up in the Whitney. Like they weren't just dead technologies, that this guy Cory made them into art. Well, obviously, they were art when they came out (the literal graphics printed right on the CDs).

The next gallery was somewhat a disappointment

compared to the glory of that Seinfeld piece.

If it wasn't for the interactive putting challenge

in the center of the room, I woulnd't have even bothered going in.

The only thing I learned from the putting experience, is that everyone sucks at a miniature golf video game, pre-set to make you suck. The ball goes down, to the right, every time you hit it. No matter how hard, or what direction, its like a carnival game. Rigged! I call shenanigans! If you don't believe me, go down there and try for yourself. Anyone can pick up that putter and give it a swing.

The enormous works on the wall were just print outs of those computer color spectrums. Gradients of reds, purples, what have you. I'm totally rolling my eyes right now. Like your show didn't scream NINETIES already, now we've got this Lisa Frank brought to you by Windows 94, Cory? Really?

Now's probably a good time to mention

that June is national Gay Pride Month.

Through further research, and a very vague recollection, one of these spectrum pieces was a part of the Younger Than Jesus show the New Museum put on in 2009 (each artist featured was younger than Jesus when he died. I think 36. Like it matters).

I went to this show, but I guess I didn't remember his piece because of two reasons.

1. It was boring, and 2. There was a live girl, asleep in a bed, right next to it.

HER, I remember. Sorry, Cory.

Here is a link to a video piece in a tiny dark room between two galleries. It's compiled clips from You Tube videos of people playing guitars. It's pretty amazing.

Overall, this show was totally incredible. The kind of show that any one can get their head around, especially people born in the past 30 years. Its a show for the LOL!WFT?! Generation, that I really hate to admit I am a part of, whether I like it or not. It is a comment on technology and how we've come to rely on it as much as we embrace it, and use it creatively and to our advantage to express ourselves. For better physical performance, or physical comedy, or the joy of listening to an album the way it was put together by the artist, all the way through without shuffling or skipping, the knowledge of how far in video games and graphics we've come, only to have realized that a gutter ball is zero points no matter the console or CGI. Losing is losing. Go see this show. Take advantage of the AC on a really hot day, and do yourself the favor. It's not every day you can pick up a golf club and put it to use in a museum.

AMERICA: Glenn Ligon at the Whitney

It was on a straight up WHIM that I ventured into the heavily air-conditioned Whitney museum this week. I'm SO glad I did, because the Glenn Ligon show that I saw was amazing, and is only up until tomorrow. So, writing about it for promotional reasons is now pretty much null and void, but I shall write about it for the simple reason that I can't NOT share this experience.

The show is called AMERICA, and greets you in neon before you're even across the cement moat. Its my personal preference to see a show like this one (first of all, huge, and spanning over the artists past 30 years of work) knowing little or nothing about the artist, if possible. Contrary to this method, upon seeing the work, I couldn't help but question myself deeply; why aren't I familiar with this artist? How did this guy not come up in my entire college education? Even in Jack Whitten's class ?! (An artist and professor at SVA who will not let anyone he's speaking to go five minutes without bringing to attention the fact that he is a black man, from the south. Which, trust me, is quite apparent, if you know Jack).

In fact, I'm writing all of this now without looking up any thing on Ligon. I don't know where he's from, his age, or his education. I have seen photos of him, so I know he IS of African American nationality (so none of this work is done ironically, thank god) and he wears glasses. That's pretty much it. All I know about Glenn Ligon, besides what I have seen at the show. I will promptly research this brilliant artist once this post is over. But in a vague attempt to be totally non-bias, I will postpone educating myself prior to this.

Okay, okay! I'm rambling! SO! This was like a crash course in America's Civil Rights Movement and African American History, through as many art forms as you can imagine. Painting, silk screen, mixed media, sculpture, photography, text, literally everything you can think of, this show covers all bases. All of the work centers strongly around race. The wall sized silk screens on canvas are images of the Million Man March, hanging opposite three nearly identical editions of self portraits, the back of the artist's shaved head. Occupying another room are enormous works on canvas, of repetitive text.

It brings to mind typewriters and frustration; relentlessly pounding over and over again on the keys, the same keys, the ink getting darker the harder you hit them. Some work I was not able to get photos of, also text, were excerps right out of dream interpretation books. Singular lines about seeing such omens as sailors, black men, your sweet heart, in your dreams. I sleep with a dream dictionary next to my bed, so it was kinda sentimental.

As serious as this work can seem right off the bat, there really was a lot of humor expressed through it. One room of square silkscreen prints, in neon colors (perhaps hinting that yes, these are the fun ones) were jokes right from the mouth of the late, great, Richard Pryor.

I found one particular joke very funny, about the two well endowed gentlemen relieving themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge, and commenting on the temperature and depth of the water. Think about it. Hilarious.

Speaking of lowering trousers, there are a large number of black and white photos in the style of Robert Mapplethorpe. This is an artist I am familiar with. Look up 'erotic photo' in the dictionary and you'll find an archive of his prints. Few photographers have done things so sexual, so sexy, with as much class and elegance as Mapplethorpe. Just thinking about these prints makes me picture all the church-goer ladies in my neighborhood and their reactions. Stunned and repulsed at first, but then so clearly into it, the way a bachelorette reluctantly accepts a lap dance, and then puts dollar bills into a grown man's G-string. With her teeth.

You can kind of tell that these are racy photographs, even from this distance. All beautiful in their own way, I like the ones of butts. I can't put my finger on it, but something about the cheer round-ness and the eclipsing shadows that place upon such a surface, is nothing short of breathtaking. They are all winners. So wonderfully done. I wonder what Mapplethorpe would have thought of this deliberate 'imitation is the sincerest form of flattery' piece. I believe justice was done on the part of Glenn Ligon, on this one.

Its satirical the way Ligon places himself in dated, and hence-by , racist, settings, such as the Runaway lithographs. Clearly in the context of describing a wanted outlaw slave in stereotypical descriptions, Ligon inserts humaneness and sincerity, and character traits worlds deeper than 'black hair, brown eyes'.

I am fully aware of how disjointed and scattered this review is. There is simply too much to cover, I have the urge to just blurt everything out all at once, like am annoying little kid who just got done seeing their first circus, and is sitting in the backseat of the car, relaying everything that happened to their parents, who were there, and saw everything as it happened.

This is the room in which the runaways series was on display. These boxes have such a great influence behind them, I'm going to tell you now. Each of these 3x2 crates has music emanating from them. The one to the far right was Bob Marley. You couldn't hear it unless you got right up next to it, which was kind of funny to see other people do, sticking their heads out right near these inanimate wood pieces, and smiling once they got close enough. This piece is about a famous man, named Henry 'Box' Brown.

In 1849, Henry, born a slave, mailed himself in a 3x2 crate to abolitionists, in Philadelphia. To freedom. He MAILED himself! Then went on to become an abolitionist himself, helping many others who sought freedom themselves. Is that not the best thing you've ever heard regarding slavery (besides the fact that it was finally stopped for good)?

These are more photos (silkscreened onto canvas) of The Million Man March, with text on top, in coal dust. Thats right, coal dust. Not awesome glitter, not my MAC shimmery eye shadow. Ground up BBQ material. Gorgeous. The texture was SO cool, and the hint of sheen was really effective on top of the matte images.

This is a detail of how beautiful coal dust is.

Can I have a handbag made out of this stuff? Some shoes?

Nail polish! Yes, Please!

Speaking of cosmetology, probably one of the better known pieces at this show (which I am assuming because of the Google image search results) is this one of a dolled up Malcolm X.

The long and short of the text, provided by the Whitney accompanying these pieces, was this: Ligon was asked to do a project for/involving a community. The artist chose to do a children's workshop, in which he provided young kids with ethnic coloring books from the 70s, featuring prominent African American members of society. The children in the workshop came from diverse backgrounds and were completely unaware of the figures they took their Crayola colors to. With no knowledge of Isaac Hayes or Malcolm X, the way the books were colored in was completely non-bias. Yes, some figures and faces were indeed filled in with sienna, but there was more than one orange afro, and Frederick Douglass even received a blonde beard with blue eyes. The image of Malcolm X seen above could be viewed as a stab to emasculate a powerful leader, when really, it was most likely a little girl with a sense of avant-garde make up beyond her years. That is why Ligon chose to copy the pages onto canvas and silkscreen the very works of these children.

This is a remarkable show, and quite an eye-opener. As a full fledged New Yorker, growing up in one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, living in Spanish Harlem, I was surprised to be as deeply moved as I was by such a subject as this show. It's a shame it isn't up longer... or that I did not see it sooner. Thank you for the introduction, Glenn Ligon, it was lovely meeting you through this retrospective show of yours. I look forward to learning, and seeing, more.