The Modern Art Notes Podcast

Episode No. 629 features artist Alexandro Segade of My Barbarian, and a re-air of a 2013 conversation with artist Eleanor Antin.

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is presenting "Eleanor Antin and My Barbarian," a fiftieth anniversary celebration of Antin's landmark 100 Boots (1973). The exhibition also includes work featuring Antin's alter ego, the King of Solana Beach, and My Barbarian's Universal Declaration of Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in the Creative Impulse (2013), a feminist performance work that centers matrilineal creative inheritance. The work's title references the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was co-authored by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1948, and Melanie Klein's 1929 essay "Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in a Work of Art and the Creative Impulse." Performers include Segade and his My Barbarian mates Malik Gaines and Jade Gordon, as well as artists Mary Kelly and Antin. "Eleanor Antin and My Barbarian is on view through February 18, 2024.

My Barbarian's work has been presented at museums such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and in a 2021-22 survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

This Bomb magazine interview between My Barbarian and Andrea Fraser was referenced on the program. 

For Antin images, see Episode No. 104.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeSixHundredTwentyNine.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 3:00pm EDT

Episode No. 628 features artist Lyle Ashton Harris and curator Scott Allan. 

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is presenting "Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love," a survey of Harris' career featuring photographs, collage, archival material, and more. It's on view through January 7. 2024. Harris' work engages transatlantic social and political dialogues even has he foregrounds personal struggles, sorrows, and self-illuminations. The exhibition was co-curated by Caitlin Julia Rubin and Lauren Haynes. A catalogue is forthcoming. 

Harris' work is also included in "Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility," at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The exhibition, which was curated by Ashley James with Faith Hunter, presents works of art that feature partially obscured or hidden figures, works that conceal the body to explore a key tension in contemporary society: the desire to be seen, and the desire to be hidden from sight. It's on view through April 7, 2004. A catalogue was published by the museum. Amazon and Indiebound offer it for about $60-65.  

With Nii Obodai, Harris is the co-editor of the latest issue of Aperture magazine, which considers the Ghanaian capital of Accra as a site of dynamic photographic voices and histories that connect visual culture in West Africa to the world. It's available from Aperture for $25.

Allan curated "Reckoning with Millet's Man with a Hoe," at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The exhibition is an intensive look at arguably the most historically significant painting in the JPGM's collection of nineteenth-century European art. Man with a Hoe debuted in Paris in 1863, where it was attacked for its depiction and glorification of peasant labor. The exhibition is on view through December 10. The Getty-published catalogue is available from Amazon and Indiebound for about $27-30.

Instagram: Lyle Ashton Harris, Scott Allan, Tyler Green. 

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeSixHundredTwentyEight.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 8:00pm EDT

Episode No. 627 features artists Erica Mahinay and Teresa Baker.

Mahinay and Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa) are both included in "Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living," the sixth iteration of the Hammer Museum's biennial. The exhibition, which is on view through December 31, was curated by Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez, with Ashton Cooper. This is the second of two MAN Podcast episodes that will feature artists from the program. The first featured artists Melissa Cody and Roksana Pirouzmand.

Mahinay is a painter and sculptor whose work references and updates modernism in address of the body. She has had solo exhibitions at galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Rome.

Baker's mixed-media works combine artificial and natural materials to make abstracted landscapes that explore space and movement. She has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, and in group exhibitions at Ballroom Marfa, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kan., and Marin MOCA, Novato, Calif. 

Instagram: Erica Mahinay, Teresa Baker, Tyler Green.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeSixHundredTwentySeven.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 9:15pm EDT

Episode No. 626 features curator Michelle White and artist Kenneth Tam. 

With Megan Holly Witko, White is the co-curator of "Chryssa & New York," a survey of work the Greek-born Chryssa made while living in New York from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. It's at the Menil Collection in Houston through March 10, 2024. During the years featured in the exhibition, Chryssa used neon and elements of commercial signage to bridge ideas rooted in the pop, conceptual, and minimalist movements. It is the first major survey of the artist’s work in the United States in more than fifty years. The excellent exhibition catalogue was co-published by the Menil and the Dia Art Foundation, with which the Menil co-organized the show. Amazon and Bookshop offer it for about $49.

The Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive is exhibiting "MATRIX 281 / Kenneth Tam: The Founding of the World" through November 26. The exhibition presents The Founding of the World, a video and sculptural installation in which Tam explores the history and practices of fraternities as a way of probing the dynamics of male intimacy and ritualized violence. The presentation was curated by Victoria Sung.

Tam's work is also included in:

  • "Cowboy," at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver through February 18, 2024. "Cowboy" features the work of 27 artists who are shifting cowboy mythology. It was curated by Nora Burnett Abrams and Miranda Lash. 
  • "Kenneth Tam: All of M" at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. All of M is Tam's re-staging of the high school prom as a way of exploring how men perform their identities in spaces of social ritual. It is on view through November 11. 

Instagram: Michelle White, Kenneth Tam, Tyler Green.

Direct download: MANPodcastEpisodeSixHundredTwentySix.mp3
Category:visual art -- posted at: 7:00pm EDT

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