Eric Doeringer, "I Got Up"

Brooklyn-based artist and provocateur Eric Doeringer has been stirring things up for some time now. Beginning with bobblehead self-portraits in the late 1990s, he then broke through to a national following with his series of "Bootlegs", begun in 2001.

These small knockoff canvas copies of recognized contemporary artist works have garnered him the occasional "cease and desist" letter. Doeringer is as likely to be seen hawking his wares on New York sidewalks, and carting work around in suitcases to sell in front of art fairs, as he is to show in formal gallery spaces.

Other series he has created include fake museum ID badges, elaborate bongs that look like minimalist sculpture, and a Matthew Barney fan site that is both parody and homage. In other words, Doeringer's work thrives on multiple readings, and the capacity for misunderstanding.

Recently, we caught up with the artist on his current project of On Kawara inspired postcards, the "I Got Up" series.

Dancing Ganesha: So, what time did you get up this morning?

ED: I got up at 7:45 A.M.

DG: How much truth is there to the line from your "Grennan and Sperandio" bootleg: "I don't necessarily choose my favorite artists -- I'll copy anybody who's hot right now."?

ED: That quote is 100% true about the "Bootlegs". That series is all about the art market, so I chose artists whose work I thought would sell easily -- basically those with the most "hype". Some of them are artists I like, but definitely not all of them. Lately, I've been working on a series of works that are a little different -- I'm recreating iconic works of Conceptual Art by artists like Sol LeWitt, On Kawara, Lawrence Weiner, and Ed Ruscha. With this series, I'm choosing pieces I like (and that are, ironically, somewhat difficult to market).

DG: The subtle autobiographical elements in what at first glance appear to be only appropriated knockoffs are one of the most compelling aspects of your work. Any thoughts on that?

ED: A number of the "Bootlegs" are explicitly autobiographical: the date on the "On Kawara" Today paintings is my birthday, the "Julian Opie" is a self portrait done in the style of Julian Opie, various family members appear in some of the Bootleg photographs, etc; but it's been said that all art is autobiographical, and I think that's true. A few years ago I made an edition of counterfeit VIP cards for Art Basel Miami Beach. That project might not appear autobiographical, but I had attended the Miami fairs for the previous few years and spent a lot of time trying to talk my way into various parties, fairs, and other events. A VIP card seemed like a ticket into life among the high rollers of the art world, so that project was partly about me feeling like the "little fish" trying to sneak into the "big pond".

With the new "Conceptual Art" pieces, I'm basically following scores or directions that were laid out by the original artists 40 years ago. I'm interested in the extent to which the distance in time and space from the originals and the fact that I'm the one making the pieces affects the reception of the artwork. The "On Kawara - I Got Up" postcards are obviously autobiographical. On one hand they're cool and detached, but there is something oddly intimate about them, as well. I also like the way that the date and location indicated on the cards is "authenticated" by the postmark. I mail them to friends, collectors, and others to whom I want to send a little "thank you". It's kind of unusual to make a piece of art every day expressly for the purpose of giving it away.

DG: How does a new idea usually present itself to you?

ED: Ideas come to me all the time, and I try to write them down in my sketchbook so I don't forget them. Every now and then I go back through my notes and see which ideas still seem interesting. Sometimes I'll work on tweaking an idea over several months (or years); other times the original idea is pretty much fully-formed. A lot of ideas get thrown out, but sometimes elements reappear in later projects. Some of the long-term projects like the Bootlegs or CremasterFanatic.com (a "fan site" dedicated to Matthew Barney) grow organically once I start them.

The first time I sold the Bootlegs on the sidewalk in Chelsea, I had copied about 40 different artists. I continued adding artists (weeding out a few that didn't sell well) so that I would always have fresh "product", and have now copied more than 100 different works.

When I launched CremasterFanatic.com, I scoured the internet for anything I could find that was related to Matthew Barney. I still do web searches every month or so to look for new material, but now I frequently receive emails from Barney fans with links, artwork, news items, etc. I enjoy that the site appeals to both people who love Matthew Barney and to those who hate him, and that I've created (or at least identified) this weird online community.

DG: Your work seems to function best when it is misunderstood. Any recent experiences in that regard?

ED: A friend who received some of my "On Kawara - I Got Up" postcards but who wasn't familiar with the original piece asked me if it had something to do with Twitter. I like the idea that Kawara invented the "tweet" before the internet existed, using telegrams and the postal service. If he was a young artist today, would Kawara be a blogger?

DG: What's happening right now in your studio?

ED: I just finished making a "Sol LeWitt Wall Drawing" in my studio that consists of 10,000 4-inch long straight lines. LeWitt made a number of drawings involving permutations of "10,000 lines", and I wanted to get a sense of how long it would take to make one. I'm also finishing up a recreation of Ed Ruscha's "Stains" - a portfolio of 75 different stains (ketchup, urine, grass, motor oil, etc.) in a handmade box that mimics the original. I've made all of the stains except for gunpowder, which is somewhat difficult to obtain in New York City.

The worst one was "blood of the artist". I'm not particularly grossed out by blood, but it was hard to cut myself consciously -- I never went through a "self mutilation" phase as a teenager! The piece is an edition of 10, and I was totally afraid the wound would close before I squeezed enough blood out and I'd have to cut myself a second time.

Eric Doeringer's work can be viewed online at http://www.ericdoeringer.com.

The Polyforum Siqueiros, Mexico City

Standing on Avenida Insurgentes in the Colonia Napoles section of Mexico City, The Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros immediately stands out from it's urban surroundings. It's twelve-sided dodacohedron design, covered with brightly colored murals mark it as distinct from any of the modernist blocks nearby. The various murals of the entire project, comprising over 46,000 square feet in interior and exterior space, were the largest mural grouping in the world at the time of their completion.

The Polyforum represents the last great project of muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. Built from 1965-1971, the project was completed in the 75th year of the artist's life. The staunchly leftist Siqueiros collaborated with financier Manuel Suárez y Suárez to construct the cultural center, in the process forming an ironic partnership with the capitalist investor. The artist's Stalinist tendencies and participation in an assassination attempt on Leon Trotsky in 1940, kept him in a perpetual state of flux with the Mexican governance that led him into exile (1932-34) and imprisonment (1959-64).

The Polyforum was originally designed as part of the Hotel de Mexico, a complex financed by Mr. Suárez, which was intended as a showcase for Mexico City during the 1968 Olympics, but was never completed during the financier's lifetime. Now known as The World Trade Center, it includes a 52 story building tower, with a convention center, cinema, shopping center and revolving restaurant near the top, all of which were not completed and opened to the public until the mid 1990s. On the other hand, the Polyforum was finished in 1971, the one successful long term component of the overall project.

Entering from street level, one encounters a glass enclosed promenade in the round, punctuated by a clear tube shaped elevator, with distinctive wood detailing. This main floor serves as an art gallery, one that is curatorially problematic due to a low overhang and short sections of wall which comprise an interior circle around the space. Moving upstairs, doors open into the auditorium, a space now favored for theatre productions, rock concerts, and a light show emphasizing Siqueiros' most ambitious mural project, "The March of Humanity", which lines the immense elliptical space.

From his Cuernavaca studio, the artist set out to create the piece, which was conceived as an evocation of human progress from the beginnings of time into the future. Early on, Siqueiros began to experiment with metal attachments, to create an overlapping articulated relief to the surface. As placed in the auditorium, the finished mural is punctuated at either end by a huge faceless figure, seemingly masculine at one end and feminine at the other, the former with hands outstretched as though to grab, the latter as to caress.

Moving along one side, a rhythmic procession of figures moves forward in a forceful gesture reminiscent of Futurism. Their regimented nature contrasts sharply to the organic landscape with nurturing forms on the other side, reinforcing the overall masculine/feminine design motif. The overall design was prefigured in the vortices and orbs of Siqueiros' smaller unfinished mural from 1940 in the auditorium of the Escuela de Bellas Artes at San Miguel Allende.

Critics of the time were divided on his achievement, ranging from the praise of Juan Cervera's, "Siqueiros paints to incite, to move, to awaken consciences," to that of Antonio Rodriguez, who wrote the piece "The Siqueiros Polyforum: Does it really constitute a contribution to the art of our time or is it only a work of large dimensions?" This division was reinforced at the time by the observation that, due to the price of admission, Siqueiros' mural was not accessible to the masses of the Mexican population, ostensibly the very ones who served as the theme of his life's work. Time and a rising Mexican middle class has served to minimize this barrier to his work.

The Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros would prove to be Siqueiros last public project, though he continued to work in his studio, until his death three years later, in 1974. Since it's opening in 1971, the space has proven to be as large and controversial of a presence as the ego and drive of the artist who created it, the result of an unlikely collaboration between leftist artist and capitalist financier.

Dallas in December (Carnival of Souls)

Recently, when I've gone gallery hopping in Dallas, it's felt like being in Carnival of Souls. The old "ghost on the town who doesn't yet realize he's dead" scenario. Thankfully, last weekend was different. I ran into old friends and acquaintances, had fun, and started to feel a sense of closure on a period in time...and saw some good art, too.

The evening started at Barry Whistler, where Ann Stautberg is showing large scale floral photographs, with enhanced oil wash color saturation. Lush, tasteful and fleshy, and interestingly enough, somewhat non-erotic. Next door, in the project room at Road Agent, new sculptures by Thomas Feulmer of tiny creatures cavorting on candy-color gloss pedestals looked good enough to eat.

Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls

Steven Larson at The Public Trust

A couple of standouts from the excursion were in the On Solid Ground group show at The Public Trust. Steven Larson's graphite and watercolor drawings place oddly disjunctive piles of urban decay within a traditional landscape format, the distressed layering of erasure and smears belying a draftsman's precision.

Alongside Larson, hung Phoenix-based artist Colin Chillag's take on the Tree of Life. Here, he puts a new and humorous spin on Ernst Haeckel's discredited theory of recapitulation. This large format (76x76 in.) painting of the phylogenetic family tree looks more like hacked plumbing work, with various branches connecting a tapir, marmoset, a Walt Disney bluebird, Homo Sapiens, a tangled mass of spaghetti, and well, you get the idea. Owner/director Brian Gibb says each of these guys is in New American Paintings No. 78 (West edition), if you want to check them out.

Collin Chillag at The Public Trust

Peter Barrickman at And/Or

As I arrived at And/Or Gallery to close out the night, owner/director Paul Slocum and crew were comparing Sharpie rendered eyeball and scar fake tats drawn on each other's hands. Milwaukee artist Peter Barrickman had one of the cooler looking of the faux ink jobs, but his mixed media paintings on paper were the real scene stealer. Squishy, messy street depictions with cobblestone paint squirts and doodles are my best attempt at quantifying this talented Midwesterner's oeuvre.

Nights like this show that there's still life breathing in this carnival pavilion known as Dallas. This ghost, on the other hand, may or may not be dead.

Tim Noble & Sue Webster at The Goss-Michael Foundation

Sublime, ecstatic, whatever you call it, art occasionally rises up even beyond the intentions of the artist who made it. This happens briefly in the current exhibition at The Goss-Michael Foundation, a selection of works from the Brit duo of Tim Noble & Sue Webster on view there through September 30th. Yet, just as quickly, it drifts back into the ordinary, akin to the ebb and flow of the sexual play to which much of their work alludes.

The scene is set upon entering the darkened gallery, with the flickering fountain of chromatics entitled Excessive Sensual Indulgence, beckoning from across the room. Moving nearer the piece, the heat given off from the lights begins to bridge the physical space between viewer and work.

That moment is the first clue, hinting at the best of what the two are up to. The undeniable spectacle of the physical medium giving way to the immaterial sensation of energy flow between object and observer.

Moving into the main space, this first high quickly ratchets down to a rather ordinary neon piece, Fucking Beautiful. A repetition in white light of the title phrase taking the form of an "I Love You" heart, and no I'm not talking about the now ubiquitous "<3" of text messaging fame. Please, can someone, anyone do something interesting with neon after Bruce Naumann?

Nearby, Dirty Narcissus sports an earth-toned mass of rubber atop a soiled pedestal. A turbulent repetitive grouping of male genitalia gripped by a woman's fingers, the piece feels like futurism run headlong into a porno scene. The artists however, are not content to "let it ride" with this compelling physical presence.

Taking it one step further, they use light to project a shadow of the piece onto the nearby wall, revealing a two-headed silhouette of the artists. And there, in all its glory, is the "magic and illusion" of which their bio speaks, which does illicit a momentary "how did they do that?" moment, just before it gives way to a "you know, that was a cool piece before they got fancy and tried to say something profound with it" feeling.

Rounding out the main room is another lighted sculpture, Metal Fucking Rats, which deftly accomplishes what the prior work strives for. A seemingly random grouping of welded scrap metal which sits on the floor transforms into a shadow of two rats getting it on, en flagrante delicto.

This, my friends, is that moment of transcendence, connection and meaning rising up from a pile of garbage on the floor. Flesh giving way to spirit, in the unlikely form of copulating rats, life itself emerging from the chaos.

After viewing the sculptural work, the framed grouping, The Joy of Sex comes across almost as an afterthought. A series of prints based ostensibly, on the book, the works show the two artists naked, in various forms of coupling and display. While well drawn, the images bare no intensity, no passion, not even the basic lust of the internet porn variety. Ironic yes, but also like watching two sex workers doing their jobs in earnest 'til clock out time.

With all its ups and downs, this exhibit shows a gifted team, who to their credit, are not taking the easy road of superficial glitz that some of their YBA counterparts have ridden to fame. Having said that, the best of their work hints at the possibility that they may be able to shed the lingering residue of cliche that even the best give in to on occasion, and ride their own idiosyncracies into the orgasmic unknown.

Tim Noble & Sue Webster (images)

"Metal Fucking Rats"

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

(2007)

courtesy of The Goss-Michael Foundation








"Dirty Narcisuss"

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

(2007)

courtesy of The Goss-Michael Foundation








"Excessive Sensual Indulgence"

Tim Noble & Sue Webster

(1996)

courtesy of The Goss-Michael Foundation

Fernando Gallego at the Meadows Museum, Dallas

The Meadows Museum plays host through July 27th to "Fernando Gallego and His Workshop: The Altarpiece from Ciudad Rodrigo", an altarpiece show, whose drama extends beyond the biblical narratives played out on the walls, into ongoing studies which reassigned authorship to many of the works on view. Research during the course of the project revealed Maestro Bartolomé as a major artist in his own right, showing that twelve of the panels on display belong to his hand.

Dating to the 1480's, twenty-six panels survive of the original twenty-nine, which formed a massive backdrop to the altar of the Cathedral of Ciudad Rodrigo in Castile. The remaining works made their way to the University of Arizona Museum of Art in the late 1950's as part of the Samuel H. Kress Collection.

In a compelling installation at the Meadows, twenty-three vertical format panels are dispersed around the semi-circular gallery on terracotta walls. The three surviving portraits of the apostles stand alone on pedestals at the gallery's center. The wall-mounted works display narratives drawn primarily from the Gospels, with a sprinkling of Old Testament themes, all driven by pre-Reformation era Catholic ideology.

"Christ Among the Doctors", attributed to Gallego and his workshop, depicts the adolescent Jesus at the top of a compressed proto-Renaissance perspectival space flanked by the Jewish scribes and elders. Having just heard his teaching, the elaborately dressed doctors of the synagogue tear the pages of their own scriptures with contorted faces, in what is presumably a jab at their supposed ignorance.

The Devil gets similar short shrift, depicted in Bartolomé's "The Temptation" as an elderly robe-clad tempter in veridian knee-high dragon claw boots. A perturbed looking Christ waves off his sales pitch with a wary peace mudra. Further back in the exaggerated space, Satan has no better luck trying to convince the Saviour to leap off the high city walls, or to give him the kingdoms of the world.

A surreal and crowded "Last Judgement" shows the victorious Christ seated amongst archangels and apostles looking down on the masses of humanity as they are sorted into the ubiquitous "saved" and "damned" categories. The players in this drama, tip forward and almost into the room in the flattened stacked perspective of the scene.

Most startling is Bartolomé's "Chaos". It stands, almost postmodern in its pastiche of various motifs. At top center sits God the Father enclosed in a mandala flanked by angels and archangels in a yantra target of concentric circles. Below this, the Greek god Chaos gets naming rights to the primordial "soup" of creation, and the Latin word "NILLE" (nothing or void) is the spoke at the center of it all. Depicting concepts such as the eternal Godhead prior to the world's creation is problematic by any means, but here Bartolomé has constructed a blend of western rationalism and eastern abstraction that pulls it off.

An accompanying display of backlit infrared photos of the paintings depict the working process of underlying sketches and compositional revisions. Of particular interest here is "The Creation of Eve", which shows how the original position for Eve, alongside a very Christ-like creator, was moved to a subordinate position and replaced by a camel. The reworking no doubt took place at the behest of a clerical advisor.

This revealing exhibit came together as a collaborative effort between The University of Arizona Museum of Art, which housed the collection, the Kimball Museum, where chief conservator Claire Barry oversaw restoration and the infrared research, and the Meadows Museum, whose director Mark Rogland and assistant curator Amanda W. Dotseth co-edited the accompanying book on the project.

Fernando Gallego and His Workshop (images)

"The Temptation"

Maestro Bartolomé

(after 1493)








"Christ Among the Doctors"

Maestro Bartolomé

(1480-88)








"The Last Judgement"

Fernando Gallego, Francisco Gallego and Workshop

(1480-88)