Courtesy the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, New York

Richard Foreman, installation view of "Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland," White Columns, New York, 2008

February 2009 Reviews

Tetsumi Kudo

Giorgio Morandi

Italics

Ari Marcopoulos

Lisa Sanditz

Omer Fast

Sarah Lucas

Jost Münster

Charline Von Heyl

Hannah Villiger

Vik Muniz

Martha S Wilson Daniel McDonald Gertrude Berg's Trashy Pick-Up Art Martha Wilson's Video Premiere

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Someday the artworld will likely recall the year 2008 with a collective shudder. Luckily, out of the miasma — the tailspin of tanking markets, etc. — has emerged a variety of art practices plying small gestures in modest materials. In the "White Columns Annual," a survey of highlights from New York’s exhibitions over the past year, organized by curator Jay Sanders, the diminutive and understated packs a wallop. Sanders showcased an eclectic group of works by more than 30 artists of varying reputation and recognition. Some works, like director Richard Foreman’s theatrical props, are newly incorporated into the art fold; others, like performance artist Martha Wilson’s photographs from the 1970s, are justly being reconsidered.

In contrast to gigantic biennials held in big museums, the smaller architectural scale of White Columns encourages selection and focus over bombast and sprawl. Restricted Access to Health Care (The Mummies) (2007), Daniel McDonald’s tiny sculptural tableau of zombie figurines angling after a giant pill housed in a bell jar, deploys a jesting title to allegorize the current health care crisis. Michael Smith’s Sears Class Portraits (2008) are a Where’s Waldo gambit in which the middle-aged artist is photographed with his young art students at local department store studios in a series of cheesy group shots. One of R. H. Quaytman’s small silkscreen-on-wood abstractions emphasizes its unique painting-object hybridity — it was shown earlier this year as part of a series of paintings that viewers were encouraged to pick up and move around — and here it made its neighboring work, a drawing by Robert Beck, seem equally approachable as sculpture. If this Annual, with its insight, humor, and humility, is a harbinger of trends to come, than we can expect to see confident works with big ideas played out on a human scale. "White Columns Annual" originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' February 2009 Table of Contents.