James Kalm joins throngs of fans, admirers and groupies to elbow his way through “The End of an Era” the latest offering from Damien Hirst. With his worldwide fame peaking from the recent auction of his work, which coincided with the global economic crisis, in “End of an Era" Hirst plays out his opulent critique of materialism. Featuring a pickled bull’s head, a gold plated case with nearly 30,000 manufactured diamonds and photorealistic paintings of renowned gems, this show displays a wide variety of medium and approaches used by the artist.

John Zinsser
Art Dealer Archipelagoes

Nov 20, 2009 - Jan 5, 2010

James Graham & Sons
32 East 67th Street
New York, NY 10065
http://www.jamesgrahamandsons.com/
(212) 535-5767

Colin De Land/American Fine Arts

We can all readily cite John Donne on no man being an island, but somehow this inclusive, democratic sentiment never really applied to art galleries. Galleries seem rather to mirror the structure of small duchies in their aloof, quasi-diplomatic hauteur, their protective claims to territory and privilege, and their innate hierarchies: the semi-divine owner/dealer installed in the autocratic center, closely surrounded by a jealous court of advisers and directors, who assiduously attend to the "state visits" of wealthy collectors and influential curators in the snug recess of well appointed private rooms. In this extended metaphor, the icy gallerinas barricaded at the front desks serve as the gatekeepers, the scarecrows or the customs police.

On its own level, the gallery world can be viewed as a miniature recapitulation of the structures and protocols that attend to larger national or corporate regimes. This aping of status and importancy is captured with dry wit and meticulous historicist rigor by artist John Zinsser in this show of "archipelago" pieces, up at James Graham through January.

James Kalm braves fall showers and trains his way to the Bowery’s New Museum for the first major museum exhibition by Urs Fischer. Lionized as one of contemporary art’s most distinctive talents, Fischer earned the New York spotlight in 2007 by cutting a hole in the floor of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and digging out tons of dirt leaving a gaping crater for visitors to climb into and explore. As an astute observer of spatial perception, and a master of digital technology with a mischievous sense of humor, the artist uses the most advanced commercial printing techniques to tweak space and challenge “reality”.

James Kalm climbs to the top of the pile of tires in this “reinvention” of Allan Kaprow’s Yard at the debut exhibition of Hauser & Wirth New York. William Pope.L adds his own narrative text using a Barack Obama imitator, and flashing lights in this restaging. Upstairs we tour an in depth collection of posters, prints and documentation tracing the historic arc of this “Happening” which was originally created in this very location in 1961.

Is there such a thing as "Meta-Art"? Ward Shelley delves into the aestheticization of art history, mapping movements and individuals from art and pop cultural history. Despite his neutral approach, these works tend to show how the narrative is shaped, bent and fitted.

James Kalm catches up with conceptual artist Ward Shelley on the closing day of his exhibition “Who Invented the Avant-Garde and other half truths”.

Publication of Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances

Eliasson is also planning his first permanent outdoor sculptural installation in the United States on the Bard College campus, in a field close by their Frank Gehry-designed performance arts center. Entitled The Parliament of Reality, its opening is scheduled for July 2008, roughly the same time as the Waterfalls.

Bulgarian artist Ivan Moudov shows his "Fragments" project in this exhibition, as seen at the Venice Biennale.

Lifting. Theft in Art

Peacock Visual Arts
21 Castle Street
Aberdeen AB11 5BQ

25 August - 29 September, 2007
Curated by Atopia Projects

Lifting is a show at Peacock Visual Arts exploring instances when art gets in the way of what is considered "legal". The show creates an archive of historical and contemporary works of radical appropriation- how theft and vandalism are "lifted" from criminal behaviour and into the art sphere. The results are humourous and poignant revelations on the absurdity of the legal and social ideas of ownership, originality and copyright.

Duchamp, A Biography by Calvin Tompkins, published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1996

A frequent critique of the Venice Biennale is its organization into national pavilions. As a legacy of the first Biennale of 1895, when nations were young, naive, and given to a prideful beating of their imperial wings, the idea of identifying particular art with a particular country and then competing for the best of show, a Golden Lion, might have once seemed appropriate. It now seems wholly anachronistic. In our current climate of globalization, of multi-national corporations and commissions funding large exhibitions in far flung territories, of curators and artists hopping from one project and one continent to another, segregation according to nationality appears somewhat fusty and quaint.