'Mis/Communication: Language and Power in Contemporary Art' at the Dorsky and 'Elevation / Christina Tenaglia / Adrian Meraz' at LABspace.
Mis/Communication: Language and Power in Contemporary Art, at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz, NY, through November 3, 2024.
Installation view Mis/Communication, courtesy the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art.
The sixteen artists participating in this visually and intellectually stimulating exhibition explore the cultural context of language and its attendant shifts in power and meaning. An expanded version of an exhibition organized in 2020 by guest curator Amy Kahng, the show seems more relevant than ever in light of AI, and the fast-paced evolution of internet and social media miscommunication and misrepresentation.
One unforgettable example, a work by Colombian artist Gala Porras-Kim, Whistling and Language Transformation (2012), features an old fashion record player continuously playing a vinyl record of people whistling. As the wall text informs, the whistlers convey the Indigenous Zapotec language of Mexico that was traditionally transcribed to forms of whistling, allowing communication between tribal members without detection by Spanish colonialists. A riveting and disturbing 7-minute video by South Korean artist Han Yohan, Phallo Me (2017) focuses on the practice of frenulotomy in some Asian countries, which involves the common practice of making an incision under an infant’s tongue that is supposed to improve the child’s ability to speak English.
Dahn Gim, Erin, From the series, Names I Had You Call Me, 2018, Leather covered muffler, Courtesy the artist.
American artist dulce soledad Ibarra’s 9th to Olympic [JUNTOS] consists of custom made piñatas suspended from the ceiling, each in the shape of a letter in the word “juntos,” or “together.” The piece adds a bright and playful tone to the installation despite the fact that the work addresses the piñata’s long and conflicted relationship between Spanish colonization and Catholic assimilation. Elsewhere, Korean-American artist Dahn Gim presents two works from her 2018 series Names I Had You Call Me made of leather-covered mufflers and exhaust pipes, typically resting upon cinder blocks. Erin is outfitted with a sound component, so when listening carefully, one can hear emanating from the pipes the breathy noises of people imitating the sounds of revved up car engines. A novel artwork with significant formal connections to proto-Pop works by artists like by Rauschenberg, Chamberlain and Tinguely, Erin suggests, with more than a touch of humor, an angle of communication between people and machines. —David Ebony
Elevation / Christina Tenaglia / Adrian Meraz at LABspace, Hillsdale, NY, through September 29.
Elevation / Christina Tenaglia / Adrian Meraz at LABspace; courtesy Christina Tenaglia.
Although overcrowded for this intimate space, Elevation contains some fine individual pieces and collaborative works by upstate New York artists Christina Tenaglia and Adrian Meraz. Separately and collaboratively, the artists, who share a studio, favor abstract compositions of two- and three-dimensional works, or relief sculptures that employ mostly found materials like plywood, fabric, shoestrings, nails and the like. They build upon the traditions of Arte Povera in their use of everyday, rather abject materials. But to nearly every construction they add some handmade elements and a poetic twist. Akin to the intimately scaled and meditative works of artists such as Richard Tuttle and Gabriel Orozco, Tenaglia and Meraz suggest complex narratives with the sparest of means.
Meraz’s warp/brown formation (2024), with a curvilinear shape in black with thin white stripes set against a lattice-like structure hints at a suburban landscape, like a finely sculpted shrub planted in front of a wrought-iron gate. Tenaglia’s striking and severely reductive, and inherently humorous relief sculpture Slip slap (2024) recalls a Dada object. Made of stoneware, glaze and screws, it resembles a wall sconce or coat hanger, but exists to serve no one and nothing.
Christina Tenaglia / Adrian Meraz, Untitled (shelf #8), 2024, wood, paint, stoneware, soda fired bowl, glaze, screws. Courtesy LABspace.
The most complex, elaborate and best works on view are the collaborative pieces from their recent series of shelves, including Untitled (Shelf #1), and Untitled (shelf #8), both 2024. As noted in a press statement, the artists regard “shelves as carriers, as holding places. As sites for intermingling, for mixing unlike and like, for storytelling . . .as platforms, as a stage. . .” The comingling of unlikely shapes and incongruous objects in these works impart an unexpected and singular energy. —David Ebony