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Let's Get Metaphysical

Posted on: Saturday, 12 March 2005, 03:00 CST

Works from two of Francis Alys's ongoing series, "The Prophet" and "The Fly." Images this article courtesy the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

Mamma Andersson: Heimat Land, 2004, oil on panel, 31 , by 110 , inches. Collection Jill and Dennis Roach, Los Angeles.

Mark Grotjahn: Untitled (Green Butterfly Red Mark Grotjahn 04), 2004,oil on linen, 60 by 50 inches.

Partial view of Anne Chu's Nine Hellish Spirits (left), Four Mountain Views: Nos. 1-3 (foreground), and Maranao Man (rear), all 2004.

Unfilled installation re-created from John Bock's rideo Meechfever, 2004. All installation photos Tom Altany.

Let's Get Metaphysical

For the latest Carnegie International, curator Laura Hoptman has sought a philosophical or spiritual dimension in the works selected.

Dating to 1896, when Pittsburgh philanthropist Andrew Carnegie established a series of modern art shows at the Renaissance-style museum he built, the Carnegie International has long been one of the premier large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art in the United States. Installed in the elaborate, three-story Carnegie Museum of Art, the exhibition has gone through many incarnations over the years. It was a juried annual, a biennial and a triennial. It became a curated show, then briefly a twoartist show. For the past quarter century it has occurred every four years or so, with an in-house curator, buttressed by outside advisers, making the selections and formulating the themes. Winners of the exhibition's grand prize have included Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra, Rebecca Horn, On Kawara, Richard Artschwager and Sigmar Polke, which is quite a roster, and hundreds of other significant figures have shown there through the years. Bringing cutting-edge art to Pittsburgh is what this show is all about, and in turn Pittsburgh, which is otherwise not known as such, temporarily becomes a major art destination.

Laura Hoptman, a curator of contemporary art at the Carnegie Museum and formerly assistant curator in the department of drawings at New York's Museum of Modern Art, organized the 54th Carnegie International. Hoptman made a name for herself with several intelligent, forwardlooking exhibitions at MOMA. Among these were a 1997 project room exhibition of figurative paintings by John Currin, Elizabeth Peyton and Luc Tuymans; a 1998 Yayoi Kusama show (co- curated with Lynn Zelevansky); and the highly acclaimed 2002-03 "Drawing Now: Eight Propositions," which somewhat unexpectedly riveted a large audience for months.

Left, Mangelos: Le Manifeste sur la machine, ca. 1977-78, acrylic and plastic letters on globe made from wood, metal and paper, 18 1/ 8 inches high by 14 inches in diameter. Collection Mrs. Zdrarka Basiceric, Zagreb.

Installation view of Trisha Donnelly's Night Is Coming, 2002, single-channel video projection, 2-minule loop.

Leaving aside, for the moment, Hoptman's themes for this Carnegie International and the artists she chose, an excellent thing about the exhibition, as always, is its manageability, this time with 38 artists from five continents (although the distribution is heavily weighted toward the United States and Western Europe). Each artist has enough opportunity and space to present substantial work, oftentimes an entire roomful of it, and while the whole show has 400- plus pieces on two floors, it doesn't feel crowded. Hoptman effectively countered a prevailing curatorial tendency to cram in work after work, artist after artist, which makes everything a blur for the viewer and undermines the idiosyncrasies of individual participants (while, incidentally, deflecting attention toward the curator who has put the whole thing together, which is probably precisely the point). There is art on display in just about all mediums, including abstract and representational painting, large and small sculpture, performance and installation. A hefty (but not withering) selection of film and video is also included, shown both in museum galleries and an adjacent cinema. Moreover, many of the works were made specifically for this exhibition, guaranteeing that this famous survey of contemporary art is indeed contemporary.

Obviously, such an exhibition has many counterparts elsewhere within the ever-proliferating system of large-scale international exhibitions and biennials. One result of that system has been a radical extension of the role, scope and power of curators. No longer charged with finding the "best," whatever that is, curators are free to explore all kinds of material, ranging from visual art per se to cultural and political theory, philosophy, sociology, ethics, economics and probably many other disciplines as well, all framed as urgent and pressing.

At the Carnegie International, Hoptman continues this tendency to advance big, overarching themes, not only about art but about life and the world. Here are her ideas in a nutshell. For centuries, artists have trafficked in core issues concerning life and death, faith and doubt, immortality, ethics, free will, God and spirituality, along with questions ("Who am I?", "Who are we?" and "Where are we going?") that philosophers after Kant, according to Hoptman, have called "the Ultimates." In Hoptman's terms, a major failure of both cultural theory and artistic production since the late 1960s has been a reluctance to address these "intimates," with a preference instead for politics, everyday situations and materials, irony, identity issues and what have you. Her solution is to focus on profound matters again, choosing art that concerns itself with the problems and aspirations of human beings in these supremely conflicted times.

"Ultimates" or not, a goodly number of the wellknown younger or midcareer artists featured here have been on the biennial circuit for years, for instance Ugo Rondinone, Carsten Holler, Maurizio Cattelan, John Bock, Pawel Althamer, Julie Mehretu, Francis Alys and Neo Rauch. Among other participants, Yang Fudong was recently nominated for the Hugo Boss Prize and Kutlug Ataman for the Turner Prize-which Jeremy Deller just won-although in all likelihood Hoptman selected these artists before they received these accolades. While she thankfully brought in other artists who are not biennial veterans, there was a lot of itinerant star power here. Further tying the exhibition into the international circuit was the presence, on the advisory board, of consummate insider Francesco Bonami, the curator of the last Venice Biennale [see A. i.A, May '03 ], with its laughable subtitle "The Dictatorship of the Viewer" (laughable because that vast show, especially the Aperto section, with its several sub-curators and multiple, predictably burning themes, actually had far more to do with the dictatorship of the curator than the viewer). Also on the advisory board was artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, the 2004 winner of the Hugo Boss Prize and one of three curators of the "Utopia Station" section of Bonami's Biennale.

Partial view of Senga Nengudi's R.S.V.P. No.1, 1977/2004, nylon mesh and sand.

When you factor in that the majority of other participating artists are already ensconced in the art, world, oftentimes represented by hot galleries like Anton Kern and Gavin Brown in New York, the Modern Institute in Glasgow, Sadie Coles in London, and Blum and Poe in Los Angeles, it becomes clear that this show is not about making startling new discoveries, but instead about thematically recontextualizing artists who are already visible, sometimes whoppingly so.

The exhibition, while uneven, has more than its fair share of rewarding moments. Turkish artist Ataman's video installation Kba (2004) won the juried top prize, and rightly so. Each of 40 cheap television monitors atop rickety tables shows a resident of the notorious Istanbul ghetto of Kiiba talking directly into the camera. Together, the personal stories they recount amount to a portrait of a community that is beleaguered by social, economic and political forces but is also richly humane and tolerant of its diverse members (see my article on Ataman inA.i.A, Feb. '05). In an interesting curatorial decision, Ataman's installation is the first work on the top floor at the Carnegie. Rather than ushering you into the exhibition, it stops you in your tracks, that is, if you are willing to sit down and give yourself over to it.

Elsewhere, Swedish artist Mamma Andersson's oil paintings, a combination of straightforward realism, cartoons, science fiction and dreamscapes, feature routine domestic settings and landscapes that have morphed into weird, even otherworldly conditions. In Heimat Land (2004), a sweeping vista encompassing white mountains, a yellow, beige, blue and black body of water, a scraggly pine forest and roiling white clouds streaked with green makes you think that the landscape surrounding someone's cherished summer or childhood home in a bucolic Swedish setting had suddenly been transplanted to a new, fantastical, supercharged planet.

Tomma Abts: Ert, 2003, acrylic and oil on canvas, 18 7/8 by 15 inches. Boros Collection, Berlin.

American Senga Nengudi's floor painting is surprising, once you find it, in an old vestibule at the bottom of a grand staircase. Swirling light blue and russet pigments in different patterns sluice across a bed of sand. The work suggests vas\t landscapes and rivers seen from on high, and alludes to African and Native American sand paintings, while functioning as an effective abstraction in its own right. In another space, Nengudi presents a selection of her mid1970s sculptures, including some pouches made from nylon mesh (as in women's stockings) containing sand. Pinned at one end to the walls or the ceiling and jutting into the space, or angling downward so that the pendulous sacks just barely nestle on the floor, these works exist somewhere between postminimalist abstraction, feminist- inflected art (in their novel use of the stockings) and African art. They also anticipate by years work by later artists, for example the Brazilian Ernesto Neto, who has become famous for his own drooping pouches.

The exhibition's nuttiest, and funniest, work is a video by German John Bock in which a man and a woman engage in all sorts of desperate, seemingly pointless scientific experiments using jerry- built apparatuses (Meechfever, 2004). Gelatinous masks, comic vehicles, bubbling liquids in tubes, body fluids and cows in a pasture all figure prominently in this madcap adventure, which turns a couple's routine day at home and outdoors into some sort of demented quest. (A number of the settlings were re-created as installations in the Carnegie's galleries.)

An excellent choice on Hoptman's part was to include a generous selection of American Kathy Butterly's porcelain, earthenware and glaze miniature sculptures. They suggest the sort of cheesy decorative figurines you might find on the shelves in your oldest auntie's house-except that here they have become eerie, freakish mutants (though visually lush and oddly lovely). Butterly's Mask (2003) is a yellow, somewhat ear-shaped form that rests upright on a circular blue base. A small purple "nose" protrudes outward from the yellow shape, yielding a vaguely clownish look; the whole work is ungainly, exuberant and curiously sad at the same time.

Corresponding nicely to Butterly's diminutive works are German Isa Genzken's small, willfully messy sculptural vignettes, placed atop pedestals. For some years now, Genzken has been making quixotic models of urban skyscrapers and other buildings, including a series based on New York City, out of found, everyday objects. Then came September 11, and Genzken's eccentric, always fragile and distressed works suddenly seemed eerily prescient. The sculptures here, from a series called "Empire/Vampire, Who Kills Death," are a direct response to the terrorist attacks and their aftermath, and feature a dense array of found objects, including toy soldiers, kitchen tools, drinking glasses, wood, foil and plastic implements, along with occasional photographs. They conjure urban architecture buffeted by conflict, disruption, fear and yearning. Nearby are Ethiopian-born, New York-based Julie Mehretu's large "Stadia" paintings-vast panoramic fields filled with a welter of dots, tiny lines, directional indications, shreds of slogans and advertisements, banners and flags. Little lines resemble tiny spectators, and while Mehretu's paintings suggest arenas (for instance, those of ancient Rome) as battlegrounds for all sorts of competing ideologies and information systems, they are a real pleasure to look at, with their mix of sweeping gestures and intricate micro-touches.

Robert Crumb: Unfitted drawing from a sketchbook dated October 1990-October 1991, ink and mixed mediums on paper, 9 by 7 inches, R. Crumb.

Kathy Butterly: Bonnet, 2000, porcelain, earthenware and glaze, 7 3/8 by 2 by 3 inches. Collection Elizabeth Levine, New York.

Detail of Jeremy Deller's Breaking News (Dedicated to Peter Watkins), 2004, three period dioramas, each approx. 12 by 24 inches, each with a miniature video monitor.

Although the exhibition is not stridently political, a sharp recognition of how the world has changed in the past few years courses through several works. American Paul Chan's digital animation Happiness (finally) after 35,000 Years of Civilization- after Henry Darger and Charles Fourier (2000-03), inspired in part by the writings of the 19th-century socialist Utopian Fourier and by the noted outsider artist Darger's "Vivian Girl" characters, evokes cartoons and computer games, and also has a sci-fi, otherworldly quality. An Edenic forest is home to the contemplative idylls and sensual frolics of young girls who seem like sprites or waifs. Gradually the scene evolves into trailer homes, where a banquet is held, and then everything is invaded by businessmen talking into cell phones, priests, judges and shooting soldiers who turn a once lovely setting into one of terror and militarism run amok. Speaking of which, Czechoslovakia-born, Berlin-based Harun Farocki's three- part video installation Eye/ Machine (2001-03) makes use of copious found footage to detail the development of ultra-technological weapons, many having their own sight systems. As one watches crosshairs lining up targets, smart bombs zeroing in, satellite imagery of the earth down below that will apparently likewise be blown up, and other harrowing marvels, it becomes clear that these deadly weapons amount, among other things, to a chilling and utterly impersonal new method of seeing.

A subtle and enigmatic, yet deeply ominous, wall-projected video (2002) by American Trisha Donnelly (one of four works by the artist dispersed through the exhibition) features the phrase "Night Is Coming," which fades in and out of view and perfectly crystallizes what many people are feeling now, namely anxiety and dread mixed with wavering hopefulness. Equally ambiguous are the small figurative paintings and drawings by Francis Alys, an expatriate Belgian who has long been a central figure in Mexico City's thriving arts scene. Alys is best known for his acclaimed "paseos," or strolls (essentially solo urban tours that mix elements of process art, sightseeing, sociological research and social critique), as well as for videos of temporary outdoor projects and other public works. But painting and drawing are also a constant part of his practice. Here, a room-filling installation including works on the walls and in vitrines chronicles an ongoing investigation (the earliest painting dates to 1992) of contemporary spirituality in relation to mortality, violence and political conflict. Several of Alys's somber yet enchanting paintings are like devotional works: a levitating, barechested boy who lays his hand on another boy's head, like a blessing; a young girl who clasps a skeleton. Other pieces depict odd moments of repose, for instance two identical boys asleep on a field of camouflage. With particular effectiveness, Alys singled out one small work-a thoughtful man in a gray suit seen with his hands behind his back-and installed it alone in a nearby, otherwise empty room, making solitude seem richly meditative, but also painfully lonely.

Incidentally, the exhibition's most controversial moment somewhat predictably involves noted New York-based Italian Maurizio Cattelan, who contributed a lifesize, barefoot sculpture of President John F. Kennedy lying in state (Now, 2004). The sculpture was originally intended by Cattelan to be installed in a large public hall occasionally used for museum festivities. For the opening, the work was temporarily placed in a room adjacent to the museum president's office, after which it was slated to be returned to its intended location. Apparently, Cattelan changed his mind, insisting that it remain in the second location, which is normally not open to the public at all, and therefore it was removed from the exhibition altogether for quite some time. Eventually a compromise solution was reached, allowing it to be installed as Cattelan now wished, but only for very limited viewing hours. The sculpture wasn't on view when I visited, but I have the feeling that a lot more will be heard of Cattelan's dead Kennedy, with its goodbye to an American hero who became a beloved international icon, to liberalism and to a positive view of America altogether.

Dimming the show's luster is the presence of a number of works that might fit with Hoptman's theme but that just don't command attention, even-or perhaps especially-when contributed by well- known figures. Brussels-born, Sweden-based Carsten Holler created a greenhouse filled with plants allegedly emitting pheromones that allegedly fill you with desire and prepare you to fall in love (Solandra Greenhouse, 2004-05). It is more interesting as an idea- chemically induced states of desire, as opposed to desire that just arises-than as a sculpture. Tough to square with Hoptman's theme are American Philip-Lorca diCorcia's large photographs of female strippers pole-dancing (200304). The images-taken in empty clubs where the dancers performed alone for the artist-are striking, that is if you like seeing illuminated, upside down, bare-breasted, thong- wearing women doing their thing, but they seem to be in the wrong show. Suddenly "The intimates" seems like the name of some gentlemen's club on the outskirts of town. Pawel Althamer, from Poland, uses professional actors to intermittently stage, on the sidewalk and street, a performance indistinguishable from normal life. Meanwhile a video projection serving as a Hollywoodesque trailer for the nonmovie outside continuously plays overhead inside the museum. At a time when seemingly every other television show turns routine, real-life situations into entertainment, Althamer's Real Time Movie is yet another variation on a prevalent theme.

British artist Jeremy Deller s shopping bags and T-shirts imprinted with bible passages, which are sold in the museum's store, want to be provocative, with their conflation of consumerism and spirituality, but instead they merit a "who cares" shrug. Far better, though hardly earth-shattering, is Deller's Breaking News (Dedicated to Peter Watkins), an installation-really more like an \interventioncommissioned for the exhibition. Deller placed tiny video monitors playing reenacted battles within three miniature historical dioramas, part of the museum's permanent collection. In an exquisitely made 18th-century French room, for instance, the monitor displays fake scenes from the French and Indian War. While these works have a spectacular, how'd-he-do-it quality, their operative ideas-mixing past and present, historical verities and contemporary simulacra-seem like Postmodernism 101, ultimately more clever than profound.

View of Paul Chart's Happiness (finally) after 35,000 Years of Civilization-after Henry Darger and Charles Fourier, 2000-03, digital animation, 17:20 minutes.

Vieir of Katarzyna Kozyra's The Rite of Spring 1999/2004, six- channel video installation, sound. Collection Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw.

Vint of Ugo Rondinone'x Roundelay, 2003, six-channel video projected onto trails that form a hexagon, 8:54 minutes looped.

That is a complaint I have with several other, younger participants in the show. The Japanese artist Chiho Aoshima used an exacting process to transform a large wall in a main corridor into a digital-era mural that includes a giant churning wave, a young girl's open-mouthed face that seems at once aghast and vaguely erotic, toppling skyscrapers, fiery colors and smoke. Aoshima designed the images on a computer and had the high-resolution data made into what is in effect a gigantic photograph, which was then cut into lengths and applied like wallpaper. It is a mix of pop and youth culture, comics and anime, with a post-feminist apocalyptic twist. But here the combination looks decorative and fashionable, like the dcor in a cool Tokyo club.

View of Maurizio Cattelan's Now. 2004, wax, human hair, polyester resin and clothes, life-size.

Irish artist Eva Rothschild's freestanding, abstract sculptures made out of lacquered wood, vinyl or, in one work, incense sticks protruding from the wall; Los Angeles painter Mark Grotjahn's near- monochromatic abstractions featuring rudimentary, radiating geometric forms and two vanishing points; and Glasgow sculptor Jim Lambie's installation that incorporates chair backs, pocketbooks, a mattress and bright paint all have their moments. While revisiting and updating a vaulting Modernist abstract vocabulary, however, they all operate in rather safe niches. More convincing, and more immediately idiosyncratic, are British photographer Saul Fletcher's small self-portraits featuring unusual costumes and quirky poses, and German Tomma Abts's small acrylic-and-oil abstract paintings in muted colors, featuring skewed lines, triangles and parallelograms. At once fractious and oddly meditative, Abts's meticulously composed works have Constructivist roots but lean toward a digital present and future.

Saul Fletcher: Untitled #136, 2000, chromogenic print, 3 by 2 , inches.

Neo Ranch: Zoll, 2004, oil on canvas, approx. 7 by 13 feet.

On the other hand, one of Hoptman's more unorthodox moves was to include three miniretrospectives of older artists, and her choices add a great deal to the show. One features works by the American Robert Crumb, many of which are based on the turbulent East Village subculture of the late 1960s and '70s. Crumb's sexually explicit, politically charged and morally ambiguous drawings with text, far from remaining underground comics, now seem like national treasures, and chronicle an America riven by faith and lust, Utopian yearnings and debilitating social conflicts.

A recent traveling retrospective of American sculptor Lee Bontecou belatedly returned her to the spotlight after a long absence [see A.i.A., June/July '04]. The Carnegie includes two of Bontecou's looming wall constructions made from welded steel, iron, wood and canvas; a group of endlessly inventive drawings; and several bedazzling overhead assemblages made from a dizzying array of tiny parts-works that are mostly abstract but evoke intricate insects, sciencefiction space stations and mythic creatures in flight. Bontecou as a source of inspiration for many younger artists is here vividly demonstrated by those navigating their way between nature, science, machines, abstraction and poetic vision.

The Croatian artist Mangelos is news to me, and I'm also willing to bet he's news to many others, as well. Mangelos, it turns out, was the pseudonym of art historian, theoretician and curator Dimitrije Basicevic (1921-1987). As Mangelos, he inscribed credos in multiple languages on painted globes, published various manifestoes and, in his paintings and sculptures, frequently used scientific and mathematical symbols as well as snippets of letters and words. A sampling of all such works is presented here. Mangelos's theory was that the artistic future, in these technologically advanced times, belongs to "functional thinking" (analytic approaches, a willingness to incorporate language and other systems of knowledge), while the past belongs to "naive,""metaphorical" approaches (namely woozy, not-tobe-trusted feeling). Clear-headed and analytical or not, Mangelos manages to be Utopian, bewildering and ironic at the same time. Especially remarkable is that he generated his future- oriented, highconcept work in Tito's Yugoslavia, which was not exactly known as a hotbed of technological innovation and artistic freedom.

Yang Fudong, from China, presents the first two parts of what will eventually be the five-part, two-hour film Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest, based on a folkloric Chinese story of seven intellectuals living in the third and fourth centuries who, seeking maximum freedom and transcendence of earthly limitations, go on a voyage of discovery into nature. In Part 1, seven hip, young, savvy and artistic representatives of the new China leave their normal haunts for their own nature voyage, where they become pensive, contemplative, awed and a bit out of place, while in Part 2 the same characters return to the city. The black-and-white film is filled with captivating images, suggesting both inner contemplation and outward engagement, and it is one of the most gorgeous works in a show that in general is more about ideas than visual dynamism.

Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone's six-screen video Roundelay (2003), set to a score by composer Philip Glass and installed in a specially designed hexagonal room, involves a different kind of voyaging. You see a thoughtful young woman and man, always separate from each other and always alone, as they endlessly walk through Paris streets and architectural settings at night. Rondinone's sleek esthetic, replete with the cascading score, conjures music videos, fashion advertisements, television commercials and generic urban hipsterdom, yet what saves the work is its mood of raw, nagging loneliness. These figures walk with a purpose, but they get nowhere in particular, and while you sense they might be looking for one another, they never meet. Another-decidedly eccentricvideo in which music is central is by Katarzyna Kozyra, from Poland (The Rite of Spring, 1999/2004). As Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring plays, one sees video projections on several screens of seemingly free- floating naked old people who twitch and shift about in herky-jerky movements inspired by Vaslav Nijinsky's notorious 1913 choreography for Stravinsky's ballet. The twist here, however, is that no one actually dances. Kozyra took photographs of old people lying on white backdrops, and then used these still photographs to make her animated video. Ultimately, there is something comical but also deeply disturbing about these exposed elderly people who resemble marionettes on strings.

Isa Gemken: Empire/Vampire III. #13, 2004, metal, glass, lacquer, plastic, photographs, mirror foil and wood, 78 by 33 by 20 inches.

View of Rachel Harrinon's photographs, 2001, and sculpture, 2004.

When the exhibition most clicks, pronounced visuality and potent ideas seamlessly blend, for instance in recent paintings by the German Neo Rauch. Over the past several years, critical and commercial energies have advanced Rauch as perhaps the next great German painter, in an era already marked by great German painters. The six works here suggest that Rauch is indeed worthy of the acclaim, and they also emphasize the odd, conflicted humanity evinced by his figures, who manage to seem robust, befuddled, intent, fashionable and thoroughly ridiculous at the same time. In Zoll (Customs), 2004, two elegant women have reached a customs house teetering on a mountain pinnacle in the middle of nowhere. A coursing stream, nearby forests and turbulent clouds recall Romantic raptures, but this scene is otherwise all strange, bureaucratic business. Two officials open the women's suitcases to disclose an inexplicable pile of bones and a gravity-defying column of rocks. No one is fazed. Weird miracles are going on here, permeated by an excruciating banality. Rauch, who accesses elements of 19thcentury Romanticism, 20th-century Social Realism, Surrealism and the illustrations in bygone East German textbooks (he's from the former East Germany and still lives in Leipzig), is a trailblazing figurative painter, and he's obviously not resting on his laurels in these dynamic new works.

American Anne Chu provides another version of psychologically complex figures, with her fanciful, upright sculptures that refer to historical and folkloric figures from China and elsewhere. In a series called "Nine Hellish Spirits" (2004), sculptures made from smoke-fired ceramics, wire and mixed mediums resemble ancient deities (of the demonic sort) but also have hints of contemporary cartoons. Their postures and expressions have a peculiar ability to evoke complex states of being, for instance leering malevolence mixed with loneliness and bewilderment. American Rachel Harrison's three sculptures look, as usual, tremendous. They're wacky yet astute confections involving wood, polysty\rene, cement, cardboard, a tucked-in video monitor, and judiciously placed popcorn and pop culture magazines.

I was most captivated, however, by finding (again) Harrison's 2001 photographs of a house in New Jersey where the Virgin Mary was allegedly once seen as an apparition in a window, "Untitled (Perth Amboy)." In the photographs you see a hand touching the windowpane, smudges, someone clutching a rosary, just the hint of a woman's face as she experiences some suburban rapture, and other enigmatic shots of flesh-and-bones people experiencing eschatological bliss. This, presumably, was precisely what Hoptman was after: intelligent and savvy contemporary art that is nonetheless open to spiritual mysteries and the depths of the human soul. D

The 54th Carnegie International is on view at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh through Mar. 20, accompanied by a 244-page catalogue by curator Laura Hoptman and essayists Elizabeth A.T. Smith, Jean-Pierre Merrier and Branca Stipancic.

The Carnegie survey is considerably enhanced by mini- retrospectives of older artists Lee Bontecou and Robert Crumb as well as the late Croatian artist-theorist Mangelos.

Although the show is not stridently political, a sharp recognition of how the world has changed in the past few years courses through several works.

In this exceptionally manageable exhibition of some 400 pieces, each of the 38 artists is given space enough to present substantial work, sometimes a whole roomful of it.

Author: Gregory Volk is a Brooklyn-based art critic and curator. He is also an associate professor in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Copyright Brant Publications, Incorporated Mar 2005

Source: Art in America

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