Nam June Paik is considered to be the world's first video artist, as well as the first video artist to break many boundaries.
Born in South Korea in 1932, Paik was an American artist working from the 1960s until his death in 2006. A participant in Fluxus as well, Paik's contribution to the art world and to future generations is unparalleled.
The Gutenberg Bible is widely considered to be the first book ever printed using a printing press (it is not the very first, but the first major work). Completed in the fifteenth century (1455) by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, the book is also referred to as the Mazarin Bible. Currently, there are 48 Gutenberg Bibles (of the 42-line variety) in existence in the world, with eleven of them in the United States.
Each copy of the Gutenberg is unique, due to the hand work it took to complete the illuminations of the books. The illuminated manuscripts are quite beautiful (I have spent quite a lot of time with one of them), and the colors are remarkably still vibrant.
Because of Gutenberg's work, books were now widely distributable and easier to acquire, beginning the "Age of the Printed Book."
The Whitney Museum of American Art's first floor gallery is currently home to Sadie Benning's stop-animation Play Pause. Benning was first shown at the Whitney in 1993 at the biennial, when she was only 20, and once again at the 2000 biennial.
Benning, aside from being a former member and cofounder of the band Le Tigre, is most known for her films. As a young girl growing up in Milwaukee, she was given a gift by her father (experimental filmmaker James Benning) - a Fischer-Price PXL-2000 - the PixelVision. She began recording herself and making short films concerning adolescence and sexual identity. She continued to use the PixelVision at times, even when other cameras became available to her, as her signature style - as it added a sense of authenticity and grittiness to the shots.
Her current show at the Whitney marks her 3rd time at the Whitney, as she returns to the site of her 1st Biennial.
Benning has received grants and fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation, Andrea Frank Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts, and Rockefeller Foundation. Awards include Wexner Center Residency Award in Media Arts, National Alliance for Media Arts & Culture Merit Award, Grande video Kunst Award, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle Award. She received her M.F.A. from Bard College. Her videos are distributed by Video Data Bank.
Dan Graham: Beyond is the first North American retrospective of the art of Dan Graham (b.1942, Urbana, Illinois), examining his entire body of work in a focused selection of photographs, film and video, architectural models, indoor and outdoor pavilions, conceptual projects for magazine pages, drawings and prints, and writings. Graham has been a central figure in the development of contemporary art since the 1960s—from the rise of minimalism, conceptual art, and video and performance art, to explorations of architecture and the public sphere and collaborations with musicians and the culture of rock and roll. This exhibition traces the evolution of his practice across each of its major stages, while asserting ongoing themes, most notably, the changing relationship of the individual to society as filtered through American mass media and architecture at the end of the 20th century. Dan Graham: Beyond is co-curated by Bennett Simpson, MOCA associate curator, and Chrissie Iles, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Following its presentation in Los Angeles, the exhibition will tour nationally to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Dan Graham: Beyond will be accompanied by a fully illustrated, scholarly catalogue.
Recent Yale M.F.A. graduate Khalif Kelly will have his first museum exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art this month. Entitled Khalif Kelly: Electronicon, the work will be displayed in Project Room 1 of the Museum from May 16 - August 22, 2009.
Kelly's work, brightly colored paintings, resonate with images of cartoon-like children in various states of play. Heavily drawing upon artists like Jacob Lawrence and early video games and animation, Kelly "creates scenes that on closer inspection reveal a mixture of personal archetypes and classic racial stereotypes."
JJ Peet, The TV Show On Stellar Rays 133 Orchard Street April 5 - May 10, 2009
Anne Wehr reviews the show for Frieze:
Few exhibitions reward careful scrutiny and repeat visits as much as JJ PEET’s ‘The TV Show’ at On Stellar Rays does, where the dozen sculptures that occupy the main gallery are just the tip of the iceberg. His smallish assemblages of found items and repurposed materials resemble an apocalyptic strain of folk art, and are constructed in a provisional manner, stacked or held together with rubber bands or caulking as if to assure maximum flexibility for future disassembly and reuse. Many bear anthropomorphic touches, like Luxury Leader Voodoo Doll (2009), a meager little character with a crudely drawn pair of glasses for a face and a withered carrot for a body, attached with a black shoestring to a scrap of wood.
