State of the Art NOLA

     https://www.noareview.org/uploads/4/3/5/8/43585085/noar-fall-winte-2016-17-zutt_3.pdf                                 In the essay “Anarchitecture: Gordon Matta-Clark and the Legacy of the 1970s,” Philip Ursprung describes the original context of the “Anarchitecture” exhibition held in March 1974 at the artist’s exhibition space at 112 Greene Street, New York. Matta-Clark intended to unify the show through photographs researched in the city’s archives. The poorly documented exhibition, which featured works by Laurie Anderson, Suzanne Harris, Jeffrey Lew, Richard Nonas, Tina Girouard, Jene Highstein, Bernard (“Burnie”) Kirschenbaum, and Richard Landry, eventually consisted of those as well as Dadaistic texts and images of collapsed train cars and various disintegrating objects.   The representations in that show appear to correspond closely with Matta-Clark’s 1974 project, Splitting , a performative work in which he used a chainsaw to dissect a suburban New Jersey house, causing

https://www.noareview.org/uploads/4/3/5/8/43585085/noar-fall-winte-2016-17-zutt_3.pdf                                            I clearly remember walking through Dawn DeDeaux’s installation MotherShip III: The Station near the intersection of Elysian Fields and St. Claude Avenues.   It was close to the end of the biennial (as it was structured then) in the late afternoon, overcast, with temperatures in that New Orleanian limbo area between warmth and chill.   I approached the site as I would any dilapidated, disheveled urban place, with caution and intrigue. After stepping through the damp leaves and bits of detritus that always populate such places, I came upon the giant ring.   The scale of it felt revelatory – it was monumental, like a giant triumphal arch leaning in preparation for being officially installed.               The “RING,” according to DeDeaux’s website, is the “first truss ring hoisted to build an airship” that would bring mankind to its next destiny.   In this wa

     https://www.noareview.org/uploads/4/3/5/8/43585085/noar-spring-summer_2016.pdf                        Figuration and landscape still have a stronghold in contemporary painting, as currently evinced in five exhibitions at three different galleries.   At Octavia Gallery and Callan Contemporary, respectively, Regina Scully and José-María Cundín visit these academic themes in a modernist, formal approach – analyzing color, line, gesture, and paint in works that shimmer with vibrant color.   At Arthur Roger, two artists approach them with collages of imagery, delving into personal history to make non-linear, and at times autobiographical, narratives. In the video space at Arthur Roger, Lee Diegaard’s photographs show the viewer the unseen landscape – darkened by night and populated with feral creatures.   All the artists tap into a subconscious automatism and surreal intent in some form or another, embracing their themes through play, form, and concept.             Scully’s exhibit

            The print is one of the oldest forms of visual communication known to modern man.   Handprints are the most singularly unique human markers, and a common motif in parietal art, specifically cave paintings. At Chauvet cave in southern France, smudged red handprints date from some 30,000 years ago. Either by blowing material around the positive form of the hand, creating a negative shape, or by stamping their pigment-coated palms, humans marked their presence on walls in ancient graffiti.   The Chinese invention of paper shortly into the second century C.E. inevitably led to the dissemination of prints. Carved woodblocks stamped onto sheets of paper relayed texts and images over and over again, resulting in multiples of layers and copies.   The barrage of images that now illustrates the world thus began.   Eventually, with increases in technology, exponentially increasing numbers of images and texts began to flow into visual culture. Essentially printmaking

  A megalith of concrete, plastic, steel, and marble chunks appeared in front of the Fine Arts building at University of New Orleans last spring.  It was almost as though it landed overnight – it seemed like one day it wasn’t, and then, suddenly, impossibly, it was.  The Times-Picayune coverage of the journey of this sculpture by Peter Lundberg, titled Loup Garou , relates the complex narrative of its move from City Park to the university campus.  In that time span of about two years, the ground had been scored, the material cast, the sculpture plucked from its mold, the title changed, the monument rejected, then accepted, then moved across the street onto a brand-new industrial strength platform that could accommodate its thirty-three feet of height and support its hundred-ton weight. While its story is rich, the sudden appearance of the work on campus belied the effort and time taken to get it there. Concrete monuments simply can’t happen overnight. But for some, that instantaneit

 https://www.noareview.org/uploads/4/3/5/8/43585085/kathy_rodriguez_-_dawn_dedeaux_retrospective_-_noma.pdf                                      “The Space Between Worlds” is local artist Dawn DeDeaux’s long awaited, much anticipated retrospective at the New Orleans Museum of Art.   Walking into the grand hall, one is greeted by a pantheon of fragmented digitally-rendered figures archivally printed on paper and mounted to metal, from “The Vanquished Series” (2016-2017).   They illusionistically project into three dimensions, with hologram-like effects as the viewer moves left to right, back and forth in front of them.   At life size or larger, they loom over the viewer; even without specific gazes through the blank helmets that blur into the background, one feels watched.   It is this sensation of other-worldly voyeurism that permeates the exhibition, as though the future – or even the present – is taking careful account of earthly actions now.             One of the most curious of

            The Contemporary Arts Center annually hosts both visual and performing arts residencies as part of their programming. Applications may be made for consideration for these residencies, and through that process artists whose work shows potential for development during the residencies are selected for studio space and time, curatorial attention, and required participation in public programming; usually, open studios. According to the overview on the CAC website, the studio space in which the artists work is then converted into exhibition space for a group show that functions as a set of singular, solo exhibitions, titled “SOLOS: Exhibitions of New Works by CAC Visual Artists-in-Residence.”   For 2021, four residents made this recurring showcase of works during their three-month habitation of sponsored studios.   J Knoblach, Ellen Bull, kai barrow, and Keysha Rivera brought the manifestations of their practices to the public for a month-long post in the Center.             J Kn