Cover of
"Shopping" catalogue,
by Vanessa Beecroft

Vanessa Beecroft,
turned off, at Prada

Mona Hatoum,
Deep Throat

In the window of
the SoHo Guggenheim,
a photo of 
Stefano Basilico
by Miltos Manetas

Anne Marie Jugnet
I you he she
it we you they
detail

Claude Leveque's
Photo at Agnes 
B Homme

Ken Lum's video
at John Dellaria

Tailor Mastro Giuseppe
with Joseph Havel's
label, just sewed in

Polly Apfelbaum's
installation at
Boesky + Callery

A Warning
to the visitor

 

Back cover of 
catalogue, showing
the Deitch Projects
logo and storefront

Cover of the 
SoHo Arts Festival
1996 brochure

Centerfold of the
brochure; as if
artists have cellulite

Tessa Hughes Freeland 
and Ela Troyano, 
Playboy Voodo,1991

Steven Carter's
chair at Artists 
Space's "A Strategy 
Hinted Act",
curated by 
Anastasia Aukeman

Benita Immanuel 
Grosser Yoga class 

Angie Eng
video installation
at Artists Space

Brigitte Engler
Pine, 1992

Paul D.Miller
Vector Analysis, 1996

artist's diary



by Robert Goldman








Sept. 5, 1996--First day of the Soho Arts 

Festival. It's interesting that for all the 

complaints about the SoHo fashion scene's 

commercial hegemony, others have been able 

to coopt it. Most of the galleries open 

Sept. 7, but "Shopping," 26 installations 

at shops and restaurants throughout Soho, a 

"project" produced by Jeffery Deitch and 

curated by Jerome Sans, opened today. The 

first I visited was Miu Miu Prada where 

Vanessa Beecroft's piece was still being 

installed. Miu Miu is an eerie space, 

changed very little from when it was the 

home of the Annina Nosei Gallery, a dealer 

who gave the likes of David Salle and Jean-

Michel Basquiat their first gallery shows. 

Across the street at Jerry's, one of Soho's 

trendy yet comfortable and informal 

restaurants, Mona Hatoum's work took a 

while to find because it blended so easily 

into the environment. My skepticism about 

the crass commercialism of "Shopping" was 

immediately dispelled because Hatoum has 

made a truly important work. Called Deep 

Throat, a normal Jerry's table has been 

set with a plate whose bottom is cut out to 

expose a video screen playing a medical 

video in which the miniature camera lens 

travels down an actual digestive system. 

Yuk! Have a seat at the table and watch it. 

Its references range all the way from 

Magritte to, using Anastasia Aukeman's 

phrase, "the current done-to-death subject 

of the body."


Again across the street at the new and very 

chic make-up store Face Stockholm, Sam 

Samore has this breezy poem on the window 

glass:

	spinning the

	wheel

	floodgates of

	wonder

	swallowed by

	the whirlpool


Other installations ranged from the banal 

to an attempt to shock. At Liquid Sky, the 

ultra-youth boutique, a young salesgirl 

called the bound-and-hung effigies by the 

Dutch artists Jes Brinch and Henrik Plenge 

Jakobsen "a little bit less than stupid." 

In the window of the Guggenheim Soho 

bookstore, Miltos Manetas presented digital 

portraits of art world denizens, many of 

them European. In the morning with the sun 

shining in the window you couldn't make out 

a thing. In the window of Agnes B, Anne 

Marie Jugnet displayed T shirts with 

pronouns (I, we, they, etc.) screened on 

them. Next to that Claude Leveque showed a 

large photo of a hairless man with 

strawberry jam smeared on his head and 

body. This stuff seemed pretty useless to 

me. Vanessa Beecroft's video in the window 

of Miu Miu finally came on. She's primping 

and posing. Ken Lum had the most 

purposefully banal video of all in the 

window on John Dellaria's hair salon on 

West Broadway--a women washing her hair. 


Now that 303 Gallery has left Soho for

Chelsea, the only one left at 89 Greene 

Street showing art is Mastro Guissepe 

Tailor. For two dollars he will sew the 

artist Joseph Havel's label onto anything 

you like. 


On my way over to the opening at Jeffery 

Deitch's I peeked into Boesky (daughter of 

Ivan) & Callery where Polly Apfelbaum is 

showing her trademark stained crushed 

velvet paintings. In this show the stains 

are cut out and grouped on the floor. They 

shimmer, but after a few seasons of this is 

it too late for her to try something new? 


At Deitch's John Weber told me that after 

25 years in Soho he is moving his gallery 

to 22nd Street, but agrees that Soho is 

still vibrant. Weber is an adventurous guy. 

A few years ago he bought me an absinthe at 

Chicote on the Gran Via in Madrid. It 

turned out to be a memorable night, 

particularly for him. 


There was a commotion on the street when a 

gaggle of fashion models appeared wearing 

some odd clothes and posing for the 

photographer Mr. Means. This turned out to 

be a production of artist Lucy Orta. The 

clothes had been sewed by people living at 

the Salvation Army in Paris. A miniskirt 

was made of various belts sewn together 

horizontally, a corset or bustier was put 

together out of only zippers and a long 

coat was made of ties sewn together. All of 

this was very odd indeed.


In Deitch's back room, the artist and 

filmmaker Guillermo Paneque pointed out to 

me a series of four black-and-white 

photographs, very understated, of a hand 

sliding up a women's skirt. It was erotic 

in how little it exposed. This work was by 

Noritoshi Hirakawa, who has been living in 

New York for the last three years. His 

installation for "Shopping" is at Yohji 

Yamamoto. A barefoot actor, elegantly 

dressed in black Yamamoto clothes, walks 

around the shop talking to himself about 

misadventures in Manhattan like a deranged, 

brain-dead homeless person. The ambiance it 

creates is quite strange. In the back of 

the shop the texts are projected on a wall.


My final gallery show for the day was 

CRG's "La Toilette de Venus--Women and 

Mirrors," a title that pretty much tells 

what this show is about. Mona Hatoum 

invokes a sense of mortality through the 

simplest of means. Kiki Smith, Yoko Ono, 

Cathleen Lewis and many other participants 

made this an intriguing event. At the 

opening, Massimo Audiello asked the 

question, "Why do women look into mirrors 

more than men?"


The opening party for the Soho Arts 

Festival took place at the Puck building 

with the Rock Steady Crew and X-Men 

performing. After Simon Watson, who is the 

one responsible for creating this event, 

thanked all of his sponsors, Leon Golub, 

honorary co-chair, gave a short talk where 

he made the curious remark: "Retain your 

cynicism." 


Caroline Nathusius, publisher of Penguin 

Editions, informed me of the very sad news 

that Pat Hearn's Chihuahua, Chi Chi, 

unfortunately passed away this July. This 

beautiful little dog had been celebrated in 

Massimo Audiello's mid-'80s "Chi Chi Show" 

with works by Phillip Taaffe, Donald 

Baechler, George Condo and others. Chi Chi 

also appears in the recent book Dogs of 

Soho by Anastasia Croy. 


I also heard at this party that Gerard 

Basquiat, Jean-Michel's father, had pulled 

the estate out of the Robert Miller Gallery 

some months ago. This development, along 

with Howard Reed and others leaving to open 

a gallery, and the aforementioned 

Audiello taking over at Miller,

spells change for the still 

powerful Robert Miller Gallery. 


Sept. 6, 1996--Went over to Robin Winters'

loft on Broadway where he came up with this 

gem, "Julian Schnabel's movie Basquiat is 

like Hitler making the Anne Frank Story." 

Robin is doing a large-scale ceramic 

project in Holland later this month.


Lucy Orta's installation in the front of 

the Salvation Army (69 Spring St.) gave me 

a chance to look at her creations more 

closely. The coat was made of 27 tweed ties 

lined with 27 silk ties beautifully sewn 

together. A pair of pants called "hipsters" 

are made out of 35 pairs of leather gloves.


Emily Harvey Gallery (537 Broadway) in 

collaboration with Lance Harvey had works 

by Nicolas Africano, Emmett Williams, Ben 

and others. The Identical Lunch by Allison 

Knowles used photos of her lunch guests and 

details such as the brand of tuna she used 

to make sandwiches for a serial photo work.


The big energetic mob scene in SoHo this 

evening was on Greene St. where Casey 

Kaplan and Lauren Wittels opened their new 

galleries. Kaplan's "projects space" has 

Michael Jenkins' wry kindergarten-scale 

electric chairs mounted on the wall with a 

cute cut-out of an electro devil-man 

cartoon figure. Michael Cohen, curator of 

the group show at Wittels ("Mutate/Loving 

the New Flesh"), showed small loose 

paintings, one of which was a pair of 

testicles with two penises. Janine Antoni 

recommended Chen Zhen's installation at the 

Chinese auto repair on Mercer St.


Down to the Franklin Furnace for "Voyeur's 

Delight" curated by Barbara Rusin and Grace 

Roselli. High on the wall is one of Jane 

Dickson's classic paintings: at a window 

someone is pulling back the blinds peering 

out. To depict the voyeur, the painter 

becomes voyeur, and by doing so the viewer 

is implicated through his/her gaze. Michel 

Auder is the true voyeur/spy. His video 

Rooftop and Other Scenes purloins people's 

private moments. It's so banal and slow. Is 

anything going to happen? The first thing 

the voyeur learns is "you always gotta 

wait." Watching and waiting itself, the 

"Voyeur's Delight." 


Tessa Hughes-Freeland and Ela Troyano are 

showing their 16mm film Playboy Voodoo 

transfered to video and played in one of 

the booths made for this show. The booths 

are a curious curatorial device that 

effects and encloses the experience of 

watching. Playboy Voodoo is dense, multi-

layered, sensory, erotic. The image of a 

masturbating woman is obscured by flashing 

superimpositions, the whole thing fading in 

and out of view like a dream. 


Dike Blair presents a version of his 

project Gray Goo Lounge. The "gray goo" 

problem is illustrated by "virus-sized, 

computer-controlled, man-made robots (with 

the ability) to reproduce themselves 

endlessly." Dike continues, "there had 

better be a way of programing them to stop 

or, like the mops and pails in Disney's The 

Sorcerer's Apprentice, they could convert 

all matter in the world into copies of 

themselves." Dike's version of this is an 

erotic female pose digitally composed of 

small images of the pose itself.


Sept. 7, 1996--Chen Zhen's installation (at 

Mercer Auto Repair, 41 Mercer St.) is based 

on this horrifing statistic: China plans to 

have one billion cars by the year 2010. A 

mass of inflated bicycle inner tubes 

hanging from the ceiling has tiny black toy 

cars glued to it.


Artists Space and Basilico Fine Arts had 

openings this evening. At Basilico is 

"Joint Ventures," of which curator Nicolas 

Bourriaud said that the Ben Kinmonts' work 

is the emblematic. Kinmont had stopped 

people on the street and gave them a 

statement asking for a loan of some dishes 

to be exhibited in the show. "If the dishes 

are sold, then the money will be split 

equally between myself [Kinmont], the 

participant, and the gallery dealer." 

Kinmont's installation consisted of two 

dishes he had obtained plus written notes 

and documention as well as the statement he 

handed out on the street, with the press 

release for the show printed on the 

reverse.


Artists Space's "A Strategy Hinted At," 

curated by Anastasia Aukeman, had eight 

young neo-conceptual artists as well as a 

project space installation by Angie Eng. At 

the opening David Hershkovitz, publisher of 

Paper magazine, was lounging the whole time 

on a chair made of square pieces of 

carpeting stacked up by artist Steven 

Carter. Benita-Immanuel Grosser, which is 

the name used by a pair of artists based in 

Berlin, offer yoga classes at the gallery 

as part of the show: beginners every 

Tuesday 6:30 to 8:30 pm, Sept. 10-Oct. 

15, and beginners/intermediate every 

Saturday 4:00 to 5:30 pm Sept. 14-Oct. 12. 

Brigitte Engler showed beautiful, luminous 

needlepoint works based on woodgrain 

patterns. Angie Eng's dark, creepy room had 

stained paper towels strewn all over the 

floor with a dispenser showing a small 

video of a red-gloved hand with a pistol.


Sept. 18, 1996--Chelsea. Ellen Cantor: 

After missing the show last season at 

Thomas Nordstadt today I saw two pieces at 

Xavier LaBoulbenne. One is a projection on 

the wall of a love scene from the Louis 

Malle film The Lovers and the other is a 

large frame in the shape of a cross, 

containing snap-shot-sized black-and-white 

photos of close-up s-and-m sex shots 

interspersed with stills from Madonna's 

Truth or Dare. Appropriate Madonna and 

show the imagined parts that she didn't. At 

the same time Cantor is including Madonna 

as an unwitting participant to affirm her 

sex photos. She's in it and the viewer's 

gaze completes the intellectual menage a' 

trois.


At Annina Nosei (upstairs at 530 W. 22nd 

St.) was DJ Spooky (aka Paul D. Miller). 

Did you like that? Silver calligraphy on 

unfolded cardboard boxes, like Brian Gysin, 

with elaborate framing. Large cross-shaped 

window grates hanging in the middle of the 

gallery. A Brian Eno-like soundtrack. 

Comfortable bean bag chairs. In this show 

you could pull up a couple of bean bags and 

make-out. In the large gallery I imagined 

that the big hanging steel window grates 

would bounce the sound waves of Spooky's 

track back and forth around the room. I 

like that.


At Pat Hearn Steven Parrino, for me, is the 

more interesting of three painters.


Am I wrong or is the new astronaut on the 

Mir Space Station named Blaha?


The Dia Center showed Gordon Matta-Clark 

films from the 1970s on its roof. It takes 

a lot of work to drop a heavy beam from a 

pier into the water below. In 

Clockshower, Matta-Clark climbs to the 

Clocktower's clock, where he has rigged a 

shower, and drenches himself in cleansing, 

redeeming water spouting from an image of 

shattered time. Gordon died many years ago 

of cancer but his work lives on.


On Dia's third floor Hanne Darboven's 

installation includes odd objects that now 

inhabit her insular world.


Fred Sandback is one of the artists the Dia 

Art Foundation has extensively collected. 

His installation of lines of colored 

acrylic yarn stretched through space and 

along walls, ceiling and floor is flawless 

in the clarity of its simplicity. The 

sculpture, through the most Minimal of 

means, is boundry-less. Lynne Cooke quotes 

Sandback in the brochure: "Fact and 

illusion are equivalents." This was like 

the old Dia of the `70s, a moment of a 

classic commitment of patronage.


I had the pleasure of being introduced to 

Robert Ryman who mentioned that what he is 

making at the moment is not yet worked out 

to his satisfaction. Fred Sandback I had 

met once before at a dinner at Rudolf 

Zwirner's in Cologne where Phillip 

Pearlstein told me the tale of his guarding 

Masaccio's and Masolino's Brancacchi Chapel 

in Florence as a soldier in WWII.



Sept. 20, 1996--Quote from Roberta Smith's 

review of Paul McCarthy's show at Luhring 

Augustine: "Sex is so overdone in art these 

days that it is becoming ho-hum." 


Robert Goldman is a New York artist.