MoMA Assistant Curator of Drawings Jordan Kantor’s talk at Arcadia last week was a lecture on globalism on art’s fast track.
The trends, the artists, their work–all cross international boundaries.
From this I got the feeling that we were examining products from the global artists cartel. We will tell you what kinds of work to make and what kinds work you will be paying attention to, boys and girls. (This is not what Kantor said; it’s what I came away feeling.)
Kantor, who curated Arcadia‘s first class Works on Paper biennial (up until March 28 and definitely worth a visit), presented his idea of where the cutting edge is in drawing these days and who’s there (oldest pick born 1958, and most in their 30’s), or at least who popped up on his personal radar screen in the past year.
So here’s his list of drawing hotties to watch (I’ve added a few visual aids and a lot of links):
Banks Violette (b. 1973, Ithaca, NY, lives in New York) (shown at top, “Misfits”)
Jay Heikes (b. 1975, Princeton, NJ, lives in Minneapolis and New Haven)
D.L. Alvarez (b. 1962, Stockton, CA, lives in Berlin) (shown right, “Meddle”)Martin Eder (b. 1968, Augsburg, Germany, lives in Berlin)
Amelie von Wulffen (b. 1968, Berlin, lives in Berlin) (shown left, “A and HP Drinking Beer”)Andrea Bowers (b. 1965, Wilmington, OH, lives in Los Angeles)
Fernando Bryce(b. 1965, Lima, Peru, lives in Lima and Berlin)
brycematerial
David Rathman (b. 1958, Choteau, MT, lives in Minneapolis) (shown right, “Remember Now, Women and Children First”)
Aaron Morse (b. 1971, Tucson, lives in Los Angeles) (shown left, “Leatherstocking”)
Michael Borremans (b. 1963, Geraardsbergen, Belgium, lives in Ghent)
Christopher Orr (b. 1969, Scotland, lives in London) (shown right)
Chris Vasell (b. 1974, lives in Chicago)
Hernan Bas(b. 1978[?], Miami, lives in Miami)
Birgit Megerle (b. 1975, Geisingen, Germany, lives in Berlin)
Paul P (b. 1977, Hamilton, Canada, lives in Toronto)
Christian Holstad (b. 1972, Anaheim, lives in New York) (shown left, “Pulling in the Reigns”)
Mathew Hale (b. 1962, Swindon, Great Britain, lives in Berlin) (This guy must be an internet resistor. I could find nada on him worth linking to.)
Katja Strunz (b. 1970 Ottweiler, Germany, lives in Berlin)
Top Changtrakul (b. 1970, Bangkok, Thailand, lives in New York and Bangkok)
Silke Schatz (b. 1967, Celle, Germany, lives in Cologne) (shown, an installation)Tam van Tran(b. 1966, Kontum, Vietnam, lives in Los Angeles) (shown below left, “Beetle Manifesto,” made with chlorophyll, a substance to which I have a personal aversion, having nearly swooned from its odor once at a show at the Mattress Factory in which the artist scrubbed the space with chlorophyll)
The talk
The talk, entitled “A Curator’s Report: New Trends in Contemporary Drawing,” ( I saw about 130 people before the talk began, and Arcadia Gallery Director Dick Torchia but the number at about double that by the end of the talk) also put forth a number of trends on the international art scene.
First, Kantor said that there’s been a resurgence of drawing in the art world, with important artists like Raymond Pettibone and Marlene Dumas using drawing as their primary practice. Drawing was no longer just a process, a sketch on the way to a final product in sculpture or painting or some other medium.
Trends in drawing:
These seemed to be the trends (I’m heavy into lists, today):
–The New Gothic/youth culture, pop culture, with debased (huh?) and nostalgic elements
–political critique/current events
–personal fantasies, imagined narratives, usually small, the new pictorialism
–public representations of sex and private representations of the psyche and where they intersect
–formal concerns/process over subject matter
So have fun making List A (artists) match list B (trends). Kantor’s talk made some of the connections but this post is altogether too long for me to add that.
Kantor also noted how many of the artists had moved from one country to another, for example leaving New York for cities like Berlin, where there’s public support for art and living is less expensive.
At this point I’d like to alert you to Doug Witmer’s thoughtful (Feb. 1) post about the Arcadia show, and his concern that this homogeneity of one big, happy art world is rubbing the edges off of regionalism.
