rhizome

“We did a test with stuntmen and it was so fake. I spoke to a director who told me that I’d never be able to replicate an assault with a stuntman—and I’d never want to. There’s the argument: “How is it real violence if it’s not a real person?” It’s real violence because I was applying real physical violence to the figure, despite it being made up of animated components. I wasn’t really interested in VR, but I was interested in taking a medium with a basis in interactivity and reducing its interactivity. I was interested in the mundane violence we see and the difference between seeing an ISIS video and watching a Quentin Tarantino film.”—artist Jordan Wolfson on “Real Violence,” his #VR artwork depicting an assault shown in the recent #WhitneyBiennial. Wolfson joined @rhizomedotorg curator Aria Dean (@lol_prosciutto) in conversation tonight as part of First Look, a digital art commissioning and exhibition program.

A post shared by New Museum (@newmuseum) on Jun 15, 2017 at 6:14pm PDT

• The Times has another story about how gallery closures for small to mid-sized dealers are growing. Reporter Robin Pogrebin lists a number of recent closures—missing Envoy Enterprises, which closed last week, incorrectly citing Team gallery’s closing (they closed only one space), and lumping Andrea Rosen, a huge gallery, into the mix of “mid-sized” galleries. Still, there are a lot of illuminating facts and quotes in this piece. Anchoring the article is a study that found while middle-tier galleries saw their sales decline last year year, the largest outfits saw growth. Glenn McMillan of CRG noted that there are far fewer people visiting galleries thanks to social media and fairs. CRG closed this year after 25 years of operation. [The New York Times]

• Libyan artist Takwa Barnosa couldn’t go abroad for art school, and schools in Libya didn’t offer the kind of education she wanted. So she used the money her family had saved for college to launch her own art foundation at the age of 17. [Deutsche Welle]

• The Albright Knox is set to more than double its current space under the new expansion plan. The new plans take the museum underground by converting its parking lot into an underground gallery and creating a two-level parking garage. (It can not expand into the surrounding park.) The plan responds to the possibility that self-driving cars may lessen the need for parking – the new parking lot is being built so it can easily be converted into additional gallery space. [artnet News]

• Susanne Klatten, the wealthiest woman in Germany, has opened a museum focusing on artwork inspired by nature in Bavaria. [artnet News]

• Artist Ryder Ripps loses his patience with Hyperallergic’s lefty coverage and pens a long rant on Instagram over a piece that covered a debate with Jordan Wolfson and New Museum audience members over the politics of white on white violence. He sees it as click bait that stirs discontent for ad dollars in the model of the Huffington Post. He has a point. I too get tired of reading about identity politics and the constant positioning of privilege—as if identifying and quantifying it constitutes useful work. Wolfson’s art has nothing to do with race so the New Museum discussion seemed like it might be the result of a larger national conversation that has been dominating headlines, rather than something that is inherent in the work. [Instagram]

• More praise for George W. Bush’s paintings. James Gardner goes so far as to suggest the former president be included in the next Whitney Biennial. We live in strange times. [The Weekly Standard]

• Francois Pinault, the French billionaire who owns Christie’s and numerous luxury brands, is opening a museum near the Louvre and Centre Pompidou to showcase his enormous collection of modern and contemporary art. [rfi]

• Rashid Johnson has opened a show at the Milwaukee Art Museum of large-scale works. [Milwaukee Independent]

• You can now pay $25 for a tour of galleries in Bushwick, “the city’s newest, hippest art area.” [Broadway World]

• This is really too bad: Julia Joern, a partner at David Zwirner and their communications lead, has resigned from her position due to health reasons. As someone who has spent years corresponding with Joern and her team, I can personally attest to what a loss this is. Joern was fantastic at her job and was in it for the right reasons—the art. It’s very sad to see her leave the position. She will be missed, not just by her colleagues at Zwirner, but everyone she touched in the process of her work—a league of publishers, scholars and writers. [ARTnews]