AFC Weekly: Things We Love, Things We Hate, Things We Stole From Wikipedia

We Went to Chelsea, Vol. 3

In another installment of We Went to Chelsea, we tell you why we’re not crazy about most of what’s up below 23rd Street. Next month, we’ll go higher. Our comments within on Gilbert and George, Tauba Auerbach, Brice Marden, Alice Neel, Philippe Decrauzat, Richteriana, and so much more.

The Pictorial Intelligence of Monica Tap

In her recent exhibition, Six Ways from Sunday, at Wynick Tuck Gallery in Toronto, Monica Tap stages an aesthetic translation between digital media and oil painting. The result is a body of work that brings vision itself into awareness, without resorting to cliches about the relationship between the digital and real life.

The Very Finest Place to Put Your Vacuum: Rachel Harrison’s The Help

I suspect Rachel Harrison knows how strange it is that her artworks are expensive luxury goods. As you enter her current exhibition, the first work you see is a gangly pile of styrofoam that looks like somebody spraypainted on a tree; around its base lies an ironic tangle of the low, silver barriers museums use to keep you off their valuables. The show, entitled The Help, features a half-dozen sculptures and twenty-odd drawings, each of which taps into a particular kind of ugly-pretty; they scream rebellion, but will still make for a nice contrast in the mid-century modern living rooms of their future owners. Until then, they look great at Greene Naftali.

Bill Bollinger’s Wimpy Minimalism at the SculptureCenter

Bill Bollinger disappeared from the art scene in the mid-1970s and passed away in relative obscurity a decade later. A career retrospective at the Sculpture Center, up through the end of the summer, makes a convincing case for his reappraisal.

Why is Sanja Ivekovic Plagiarizing From Wikipedia?

Documenta is trying very, very hard to be smart. It might help if they stopped giving us plagiarized Wikipedia articles as artworks.

The Fall of Max Protetch

Last night’s New Curators, New Ideas IV at Meulensteen, formerly Max Protetch, reminded us how little remains of the respected gallery Protetch sold just under two years ago. It’s hard to imagine Protetch ever doing something so tacky as stationing two gallerinas outside the gallery with iPads and a guest list, but that’s what we witnessed last night. Surely, this kind of exclusivity can’t benefit a show meant to give exposure to new talent.

We’ll take a look at the show in the coming months, but in the meantime, let’s take a look at some of the changes we’ve seen over at Meulensteen. Almost none of them are good.

Marina Abramovic, Still Not a Feminist

HBO’s Marina Abramovic documentary opened today at Film Forum, and it was accompanied this morning by a brief interview in the New York Times. In addition to talk of boob jobs and funerals, Abramovic reminds us, once again, that she’s still not a feminist.