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Tony Oursler

Museum Punk Show in Need of A Sound Guy

by Michael Anthony Farley on February 24, 2017
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In a past life, Mexico City’s Museo Universitario Del Chopo was a punk flea market. Today, it’s gone back to it roots (kinda).
Punk. Sus rastros en el arte contemporáneo is a fantastic survey of both punk and its impact on contemporary art. But when so much of that influence has been on video art, the logic of a gallery presentation is questionable.
The show feels a bit like it should be a film festival but has been squeezed into a white box. Good luck trying to sit through more than a dozen videos with overlapping sound on different loops.

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The Worst Shows of 2016: What’s the MoMA Björkgate of the Year?

by Michael Anthony Farley on December 30, 2016
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In which we look back at AFC’s most vitriolic reviews of mediocre exhibitions.

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AFC’s Fall Forecast: Goth Art Everywhere

by Michael Anthony Farley and Corinna Kirsch on August 19, 2016
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Winter is coming. As the nights grow longer, shadows seem to creep into the city’s innumerable white boxes.

Our prediction for what the Fall/Winter 2016 look will be in New York: goth as fuck.

Artists, galleries, and institutions across the city seem to be embracing the macabre, gloomy, and achromatic in the months leading up to Halloween (by far, the art world’s most important holiday). We’re looking forward to aesthetic darkness, existential angst, and an embrace of the occult. Is this otherworldly tragic election season to blame for our state of mourning? We’re not sure, but let’s hope some fall weather shows up in time for us to break out our all-black wardrobes.

We’ve rated New York’s darkest upcoming art shows from “one tube of black lipstick” for “somewhat bleak” to “five tubes of black lipstick” for “this gallery is essentially a food court full of crying mall goths.” Our picks, arranged by opening date:

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The Spiritual Failure of Tony Oursler’s “Imponderable”

by Rhett Jones on July 22, 2016
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Is there a secret, intertwined history that ties together mass media, spiritualist con artists, pulp fiction and the unreliability of the image? Tony Oursler’s “Imponderable” would like you to think so. The multimedia artist’s latest work (on at MoMA through January 8th, 2017) is a 90-minute immersive video experience that attempts to draw connections between all of those topics as well as his own familial autobiography and other threads that relate to his collection of spiritualist memorabilia. Unfortunately, when the work seems to come close to solidifying a thematic relationship between the various subjects on its mind, it tends to feel a bit like a magician clumsily employing misdirection. The audience sees a hat, a beautiful assistant and a rabbit up the sleeve, but no magic.

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The Armory: The Forgettable Fair

by Paddy Johnson on March 3, 2016

It’s hard to imagine a more art boring fair than this year’s Armory. Looking back at yesterday’s photos there’s virtually nothing to say about any of it. The fair is filled with generic art market standards: neon, monochromes, mirrors. If you’re looking for an art genre, the boilerplate version of it is on view here. At least last year’s iteration was bad enough to warrant ridicule. This one will be instantly forgotten.

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Barbara London, Champion of Video and Sound Art, Is Leaving MOMA

by Hannah Garner on September 19, 2013
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After 43 years, Barbara London is leaving MoMA on October first. Over the course of her career as associate curator of Media and Performance Art, she has guided us over the expanding landscape of new media.

Her career began in the 70s when she founded the museum’s video collection, introducing works by Nam June Paik, Laurie Anderson, and Lynda Benglis. Over the years, she has consistently exhibited new work by Chinese and Japanese artists and pioneered Internet art at MoMA: in 2001 she produced the museum’s first website art commission, Tony Oursler’s Timestream, and in 1997 created Stir-Fry, a multimedia site mapping emerging media art in China. London has made a career of championing media and sound art, forms that continue to pose institutional challenges.

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This Week’s Must-See Art Events: More Openings Than Creative Time Has Staff

by Paddy Johnson Corinna Kirsch and Ian Marshall on June 24, 2013
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With Independence Day on the horizon, it’s no surprise that every New York gallery and museum seems to be opening a new show, hosting a workshop, or putting on an art event. Next week, the art world retreats to the Hamptons. A focus on the collective seems to be the theme of choice this summer, be it collective practice at Klaus Von Nichtssagend, collective movement at the EFA, or simply an art collective at the Brooklyn Museum.

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David Bowie Collaborates with Tony Oursler on New Single

by Paddy Johnson on January 8, 2013
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Tony Oursler’s still making his creepy video-face heads, and they’ve escaped their art fair home. Now he’s worked to made the music video for David Bowie’s new single “Where Are We Now?” , in which Bowie’s already perfectly satisfying head is put on one of Oursler’s dolls.

The news here isn’t Bowie’s questionable taste in collaborators, though; it’s that David Bowie has returned from a ten year absence and will release a new studio album on March 12th. To make the news extra press friendly, he’s released this news on his 66th birthday. This single isn’t making us overly excited about the news, but thanks to his previous body of work—30 albums in total, including, hello, Ziggy Stardust—I think we’ll let this one go. Happy birthday!

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Armory Show Bingo: The More Things Change…

by Will Brand on March 9, 2012
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Good news: your Armory Bingo cards from last year are apparently still valid. Without changing a single square, we had Bingo within half an hour of walking in the door. The basic trend for Armory Show art—stuff cats like, like mirrors and motion and bright lights—is alive and well, and a few of last year’s micro-trends managed some unexpected longevity. We break down how well each trend square did this year, with pictures.

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