Interview

NO TITLE, 1969. COURTESY HAUSER AND WIRTH
AND THE ESTATE OF EVA HESSE

Known for its fragile materiality and fragmentation, the sculpture of Eva Hesse is so bodily in its resilient preciousness that it commands intimacy. It's also bound up in the ghost of Hesse, the woman who overcame the trauma of escaping the Nazis and a mother's suicide, and the competition of New York's boys club, to produce a remarkable body of work and a cult of personality in just the ten short years of her career before her untimely death.  That overlap of life and work are one reason why the current show of Eva Hesse's work at Hauser and Wirth in New York, an exhibition of 14 pieces described by critic Briony Fer as "studioworks"—prototypes or models for later works—reflects surprisingly well the character of her fuller works.  Presented on large platforms in unsystematic, casual, groupings that call to mind the artist's studio and constructed from such flimsy, delicate material as papier-machee and cheesecloth, these items are in a state of perpetual flux.  At once shadows, premonitions, and sculptures in their own right, their fragile existences allow them to weave in between states of being, constantly evading definition and defying standards of objecthood.


WORK BY EVA HESSE OPENS TONIGHT, 6–8 PM. HAUSER AND WIRTH IS LOCATED AT 32 EAST 69 STREET, NEW YORK.

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PHOTOS BY JACK SIEGEL

Ryan McGinley works in a monograph-packed, L-shaped studio on the Lower East Side. As is well documented, he used to share the space with artist Dan Colen, but he now reserves the second room for the tacked-up black-and-white photographs that make up his latest series, "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," which opens March 18 at Team Gallery in Soho.

One rarely thinks of a studio when picturing McGinley at work. It's easier to picture him on rooftops or New York streets, as was the set of his early work, or amidst the country roads, forests, and caves of his later, lysergic-colored productions. But his latest venture consists of 100 portraits of young men and women ranging in age from 18 to 29, completely nude and not swallowed up by their environments—as is typical of a McGinley photograph—but starkly defined against a white backdrop. It's a rather sweeping survey of color, sex, and sexuality, and of lean, ripening bodies, many of them decorated with homemade tattoos or scars.

With so many youths in the fold, it's no surprise that the subjects actually hail from all over the world—or at least those parts that have rock festivals, which is where they were picked by one of Ryan's assistants who spends her time attending global concerts on the lookout for someone he might want to capture. Each youth was then shot in the small second room of the Canal Street studio, still very animated even with the unremitting intimacy of the post-adolescent nudity on display. To get that kind of movement, Ryan relied on a "hype girl" who talked to the subject, asking him or her to sing a favorite song, jump on a mini-trampoline, or try acting exercises while he shot them on his digital camera. That kind of engagement is important to the artist. "I can work with shyness," he says, "but for the most part I want people to feel comfortable with me. It's really more about the photographer feeing comfortable right when they walk in that makes the subject feel comfortable."

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SELF-PORTRAIT, NEW YORK, 2008 (STUDY #2).
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND CLIC

Tonight Victor Demarchelier, the talented, non-Oedipalizing progeny of Patrick Demarchelier, opens "Creating Images," a show of work from his last three years. The show is focused on personal, unpublished work. "It is a very intimate show: Each piece deals with something that is very familiar to me and something that I have struggled with." Which means portraits of the handsome photographer with his glamazon ex-girlfriend, model Caroline Trentini. It means "keeping to my look," a high-gloss black-and-white surface that can also get up-close and even personal without looking fetishistic. "I try to show things the way I want them to be seen," says of the work in this show, rather than the way things should be seen, as in a fashion photograph. The way Demarchelier himself wants to be seen is clear in a self-portrait featuring the teddybear, Nalla, given to him by his grandparents. With pieces of fur matted and lost, Nalla is an index of the photographer's attentions. "I think that in many ways this picture is a more accurate representation of myself then the actual self portrait [in the show]." Family means a lot in the Demarchelier clan.


CREATING IMAGES OPENS TONIGHT, 6–9 PM. CLIC GALLERY IS LOCATED AT 424 BROOME STREET, NEW YORK.

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INSTALLATION VIEW, 2010. IMAGE COURTESY TOBIAS MADISON AND SWISS INSTITUTE.
PHOTO BY DANIEL PEREZ

It's a big moment for art that uses vitrines. Damien Hirst's show at Gagosian is called "End of an Era," whch sounds like economic-apocalyptic gravitas but actually refers to the last of his formaldehyde works. Jeff Koons' controversial show at the New Museum curated from the collection of Joannou includes just one work by the artist—that which touched off his collection, and is meant to stand as proof the Greek's connoisseurship—One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank, (1985), a basketball suspended behind glass.

As a method of displaying and containing work, what does it all mean? Is it about preservation, the way that when artist Marc Camille Chaimowicz famously installed a pond in a gallery he had to come by every day to feed his fish? Vitrines might indicate a different kind of immersion, like a fishbowl, a metaphor for living in a public where the prevailing effect is distortion.

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