Modernism's caused many an artist's heart to skip a beat. See, most literally, Barnett Newman's "Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?" (1966) a painting of mostly red with the artist's signature zips closing in at the perimeter that's less about the what the color fields might do to you than what you might do without the spiritual importance you attribute them. Andrew Kuo works more in secondary and tertiary colors (and pastels); likewise, he combines his panels of colors into referential arrangements—elaborate charts that look like abstract patterns, but which come with a key that tell either of Kuo's experience of nerdy enthusiasm for live music, or where the "magic happened" as he dwindles away a perfectly good day. Hint: not the bedroom. Kuo keeps these minute, self-effacing diaries in a casual, jargony style: the question in his autobiographical method isn't so much fact vs. fiction, but his faith in different codes to articulate spasms of emotion or enthusiasm. Ku0 puts the charts in galleries, but also on his blog and in his irregular column in the New York Times, and the way technologies like blogs or Twitter warp and compress communication is another, related theme. Deciphering Kuo's charts requires not so much education or contemplation as a little bit of initiation, and patience. Our favorite, from his current show, I'm Dying Over Here, which closes at the end of this week, is a sculptural chart roughly colored to match the favored uniforms of its respective players, Michael Jordan and the artist. Kuo's self-portrait sculpture leans against the wall, recalling Andre Cadere's barre de bois, colored stacks of wood arranged in codes and dropped by the artist, to various gallerists' annoyance, in other shows. Like the bois, there's an ambivalence in Kuo's sculpture about the place of the sculpture in its context, the gallery. After all, is it amazing or embarassing that Kuo's getting dunked by Jordan—and that he fantasizes about it?


Taxter and Spengemann is located at 123 East 12th St. Andrew Kuo, I'm Dying Over Here, is on view through. You can see Kuo DJ every Monday at Lit Lounge, 93 2nd Avenue, New York.