A Disagreeable Object brings together 20 artists who employ and borrow from the methods and artistic practices that the Surrealists developed in the first half of the century. This is not an exhaustive survey, nor an attempt to re-consider our understanding of Surrealism as an historical movement. Rather, the exhibition offers a view of contemporary sculpture identifying influences and attitudes that have filtered through decades of cultural production. The works in A Disagreeable Object respond to a decidedly contemporary context…

Ancient Egyptians regarded the balls that dung beetles diligently form as a symbol of the earth. According to Jean-Henri Fabre’s 1921 Book of Insects, the creature was admired for its cosmic synchronicity: creating microcosms by rolling up feces and dirt, it was engaged in sacred activity. However, as Fabre explains in the chapter “The Sacred Beetle,” the beetle’s balls are actually a food source: “It is not at all nice food. For the work of this Beetle is to scour the filth from the surface of the soil. The ball he rolls so carefully is made of his sweepings from ...

On a recent visit to an archaeology museum, I was struck by the ornate jewelry dating from the early Bronze Age—bracelets, rings, and necklaces that look remarkably contemporary in design. People have always had a taste for fine things. And of course, these were objects for the wealthy, for those of high social status who were buried with their goods. While I have become accustomed to admiring such items during museum visits, my central thought on this trip was that luxury has always existed. This prosaic musing led me to consider the problematics around luxury. It’s difficult to look at ...

The Renaissance Society presents a new, site-specific installation by Gabriel Sierra, the Bogotá-based artist’s first solo show in the United States. Sierra is intrigued by the language of man-made objects and the dimensions of the spaces in which we live, work, and think. His practice employs a variety of techniques – from sculpture and spatial interventions to performance and texts – to examine how the human body functions in relation to its environment. Originally trained in architecture and design, Sierra’s work draws on the history of Latin American Modernism. His project at the Renaissance Society consists of a group of constructions to ...

Chelsea Knight and Martine Syms Hosted by The Shandaken Project and Storm King Art Center New Windsor, NY Sunday September 6th, 2015, 3pm-evening The Center for Experimental Lectures invites you to join us sixty minutes north of New York City for our fourth annual Labor Day weekend event hosted by the Shandaken Project, for new lecture-performances by Chelsea Knight and Martine Syms. The day’s program will begin at Storm King Art Center at 3pm, and continue into the evening on the contiguous campus of The Shandaken Project at Storm King. Chelsea Knight will present an experimental walking tour of Storm King beginning at the Visitor ...

Dear_Tony (2013) is an unauthorized, distributed retrospective of the public sculptures of Tony Smith by Christian de Vietri and A.E. Benenson. Addressed as much to the deceased sculptor and his practice as our contemporary audience, Dear_Tony rethinks the artist’s historic investigations into modular construction, phenomenology, and public space within the contexts of digital fabrication, interactivity, and networked communication. At the same time, Dear_Tony is a means to reflect on the form of the retrospective and how its requirements may be adapted to contemporary conditions of viewership. Dear_Tony consists of a digital sculpture by Christian de Vietri, which is composed of extractable models ...

This code is written in the language Perl – a general purpose UNIX scripting language written in 1987 by Larry Wall. It’s a great language, especially for quick no bullshit text hacks. Also, FYI, it’s my favorite language, the first one I learned, and the one I program in most. .dae is an open standard XML schema for exchanging digital assets aka ”D”igital ”A”sset ”E”xchange. In English: basically it’s a file format that was developed in order to allow different 3d programs to exchange digital information between each other. Otherwise, a 3d object composed in, say, the 3d program Bryce could ...

By inserting the work of contemporary artists into global channels, E-State Realisms identifies the absence of critical contemporary art in the viral domain. Here artists are dealing critically with and not about the digital/IRL landscape. They are active players in the systems they critique. The neoliberal deregulation of capital as a state of exception exemplifies how corporations are currently privileged at the expense of citizens. Similar to offshore tax avoidance, the neoliberal art market stages artwork as a temporary home for accumulated wealth. This conflation places the voice of critique in a murky position. In order for Art to theoretically ...

Gyula Kosice in conversation with/en conversación con Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, the sixth title in the Conversaciones/Conversations series, presents a riveting exchange between Gyula Kosice, one of the key figures in the history of abstract art in Latin America, and Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, the chief curator and director of the CPPC. This publication records conversations conducted over 20 years, which began shortly after Pérez-Barreiro first encountered Kosice’s work in a 1991 retrospective and includes an introduction by Andrea Giunta. Gyula Kosice was born in 1924, in the town of Kosice in today’s Slovakia. When he was four years old, he immigrated to Argentina, where ...

Jac Leirner in conversation with/en conversación con Adele Nelson presents an extended dialogue between the Brazilian conceptual artist, Jac Leirner (b. 1961), and writer and art historian Adele Nelson, with an introductory essay by Robert Storr. Leirner’s meticulously constructed works carve out a place for commonplace objects, from cigarette packs and plastic shopping bags to cutlery and currency. In this, the first in-depth study of Leirner’s creative process, Nelson interviews the artist about more than two decades of production. Jac Leirner, born in 1961 in São Paulo, emerged in the early 1990s at the forefront of a new transnational generation of ...

Conversations brings together a broad range of dialogues between author Jan Tumlir and artist Jorge Pardo, which span a period of 20 years, beginning in 1999. They encompass contemporary art, design, publishing, and music, and connect the varied contexts of Los Angeles and Mérida, Mexico, where they took place. The result is a story of a unique intellectual friendship that has defined both of their thinking and practice. Describing his work as “shaping space” Jorge Pardo has made work that moves freely across the notional disciplines of art, architecture, and design throughout his over thirty-year career. His constructions range from a ...

There are several ways to reveal the interior of something. The thing can be cut open. It can be broken apart. It can be seen through imaging technologies, such as X-ray and ultrasound. A microscope can discern a certain level of activity just below the surface. For Los Angeles-based artist Kelly Akashi, this line of inquiry leads to a very precise practice of revealing the interior of her works without ever carving them open. Her dissection work is never so crass. Viewers may not even realize that they have been given entry into the internal dynamics of her works—even though ...