Being on the Bay: Jeff Wall

For the first time, I was able to visit the SFMoma. I experienced five floors of white artists and the tragic low temperatures of Olifur Eliasson. I was fortunate to view Jeff Wall: Works in Focus 1978-2004. This exhibition is a retrospective that includes 26 works by the Canadian photographer.

Jeff Wall’s enchanted practice stands out as moments in a transparent existence. His boxed photographs are an extension of pictorial painting, with the personality of a conceptual artist. In lightbox technology, the artist traps a narrative that studies the contemporary city and the carnal condition of man.

Picture of a Woman is a sensual narrative of a man and a woman. The action takes place between two cameras. The woman’s stare recognizes us as her observer, while the man stares at her. One wonders if she knows she is being observed by multiples. Technology plays the part. We are actors in their sensual corporeal conversation.




1979
http://www.sfmoma.org/wall/data/content.html

Exhibition- Gráficas Políticas: Mexican Prints, 1900-1950

Exhibition- Gráficas Políticas: Mexican Prints, 1900-1950

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston has been a proponent of the exposure of “Latin American Art”. Their new show Gráficas Políticas: Mexican Prints, 1900-1950 tries to grasp at the tradition of print making in Mexico. After the Mexican Revolution, art became the most important medium of expression of concerns of the time. Printmaking in Mexico belongs to a period of drastic change. Where prints were use as flyers, in newspapers, and pamphlets to instruct a mass audience. However, the selection and scarce amount of work make the exhibition rather flat.

Gráficas Políticas: Mexican Prints, 1900-1950 shows about 12 prints of a variety of artists, with some important names in the graphics, like Juan Guadalupe Posada. His work is striking. But unfortunately we can only appreciate three pieces of work. The majority of the pieces fail to portray the spirit of propaganda and social realism. There seem to be a predilection of the image of the skeleton. Rather than showing work that follows a tradition, without turning it into a form of celebration for El Día de los Muertos. The exhibition’s flatness relies in its superficiality and lack of context.

My favorites:



“Political Ventriloquist”
Leópoldo Mendez 1942




“Calavera of the Bum”
José Guadalupe Posada 1910

Art: 21

Finally, the season of Art in the twenty first Century premiered with Romance. The show was an interesting exploration of the works of photographer Laurie Simmons, painter Lari Pittman, sculptor Judy Pfaff, and Pierre Huyghe.

I was fascinated with Lari Pittman. His work proves that painting is still a vivid exploration between the individual, contemporary culture, and history. He draws imagery from Mexican murals and retablos, to be transferred into a society still oppressed, but open to the discussions of gender and ideological oppression. His technique is exquisitely detailed, with overlapping images and vibrant colors. His narrative proves to be a descendant of the fascination with human suffering of colonial Mexican monks, the deconstructive idealism of the modernist, and the preoccupations of the generations of the 60’s.


“Attendant”
2006