To circumvent is to get around the rules, to find loopholes, to initiate idiosyncratic solutions, to employ subtle metaphor to highlight problematic situations. Michael Rakowitz does just that, combining architecture, design, agitational techniques and a poetic sensibility to create installations and performances that touch on issues of power, visibility and memory. His paraSITe shelters are custom-built tents for homeless people that attach to the hot exhaust vents of buildings, creating not only a heated abode but one much more visible than a cardboard box. Rise conducts the smell of Chinese pastries from a Chinatown bakery to the decidedly un-local art exhibition in an adjacent building. And in Minaret, Rakowitz uses an alarm clock bought in Jordan to broadcast the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, to a city where minarets are otherwise quieted.

Michael Rakowitz: Circumventions

Arts & Photography

Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn

Individual Artists

Onestar Press

Transport documents Austrian artist Hans Schabus' new installation. It is a tale of the penetration of and research into untrodden, unseen spaces, with which the artist has always been fascinated. First, Schabus dug a hole more than 16 feet deep in his studio in order to connect to Vienna's sewage system, and thereby make his way to the Secession, where he exhibited in 2003. This was fictional; the hole was filled before reaching a sewer. But the film “Astronaut” documents this fictional journey to Secession with a real one through the building--exterior, entrance hall, parking spaces--and its subterranean world--heating and sanitation systems, stairs, narrow, barely-lit halls, getting into the constructed volume of the artist's studio, then finally through a small door into the exhibition space. Presented here are stills from the film and photographs, Schabus's sketches and a map of his intended path.

Hans Schabus: Transport

Dog is an intermix of dogs, art and politics that views dogs as myth, symbol, aesthetic musings, and in scenes of casual and/or extreme tensions. Leon Golub chose visuals that are jittered and visually and informationally fractured, concrete and irrational. According to critic J.G. Ballard, this final book in Golub's career since his recent death "challenges all our assumptions about what it is to be human, and convincingly shows that most of them are delusions." Dog explores what the world and human life could be once humanism is put aside--and all through images of dogs: homeless dogs, bondage dogs, running dogs, atomic dogs and assorted canine-themed writings. A small, compact and thought-provoking manual.

Leon Golub: Dog

The drawings that make up Alain Sªchas's Jurassic Pork II are done at 12 x 18 inches, then, at exhibition time, blown up to poster size and glued to museum walls. They may, however, be best suited to book form, to life as a comic. As the series opens, our cat hero--and one French critic has suggested Sªchas's name be heard "ses chats," or "his cats"--is setting off on the hunt for the big pig, Jurassic Pork. In encountering his id in the woods, he meets Salvador Dali, Jacques Lacan, and a tribe of Amazons in cat-woman style pig suits--or is that a dream? By the time he unwittingly takes refuge at Nymph Academy, where the students really do dress up as his quarry and give him a run for his money, he's ready to go home. Readers, on the other hand, will be ready to write to the artist requesting Jurassic Pork III.

Alain Séchas: Jurassic Pork II

The Bubble Blower

Carol Cole, Irene Tsatsos

Lawrence Weiner’s trademark graphic text and sign pieces are here juxtaposed with a few erotic and/or marine-ish photographs. First published in 2003, this artist’s book is now available again in an edition of 600 numbered copies. The first edition was printed all in black. The new one is all in blue.

Lawrence Weiner: Deep Blue Sky/Light Blue Sky

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