Art Openings 1/4-1/7: Winkleman Gallery, Yancey Richardson Gallery, Stephen Wirtz Gallery, Kopeikin Gallery

2012 is fast out of the gate with some really kick-ass photography exhibitions already making their debuts this week.
I had the good fortune of starting off 2011 in NYC but now I almost wish I'd pushed those plans back a year to be there this week instead, for tonite's (TONITE!) opening at Winkleman gallery of the group show Corporations Are People Too. The exhibition features works that focus on corporate culture and the complex involvement of corporations in our everyday lives -- and at a particularly poignant time, amidst the expanding Occupy movements and other worldwide protests against the vast influence that corporations exert in the political process and in democratically elected governments. The show's themes also overlap often with ideas we presented in the Clampdown exhibition I curated in 2011, so there's an additional personal appeal there for me.
The show takes its name from GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's petulant whining that "corporations are people too" during a raucous campaign event in Iowa over the summer (no doubt making very clear whose interests will be prioritized if he gets elected). Although the exhibition could've also just as easily been based on the 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, in which the court's pro-corporate ruling essentially allows corporations to use their profits to buy political campaign ads and otherwise support/oppose candidates for public office. "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation," wrote Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissent.
The Winkleman gallery's show includes historic photographs by the likes of Bernice Abbott, Louis Faurer, Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange (illustrating a range of experiences from Depression-era child laborers to the post-WWII prosperity boom and concurrent spike in mass consumption), as well as contemporary images from Jacqueline Hassink (from her Table of Power series depicting uninhabited executive boardrooms of multinational corporations) and Phil Toledano (from his Bankrupt series, images of the empty offices of companies that have gone out of business).
Other artists included in the show -- Ian Davis, Chris Dorland, Kota Ezawa and Yevgeniy Fiks -- employ paintings, video and installation pieces to tackle the issue. Ian Davis' small paintings depict legions of suit-clad men spread across various landscapes and corporate settings, their hands raised in unison in some unknown pledge towards an unseen power figure. The work evokes thoughts about the pervasiveness of corporate culture and the assimilated fervor with which its participants blindly swear their allegiance to the goal of profit-making.

Conversation, 2011
© Ian Davis

And a huge favorite of mine is Yevgeniy Fiks' series Lenin for Your Library?, in which he sent copies of Vladimir Lenin's book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism to 100 American corporations, with an enclosed letter stating that the book is intended as a donation to their corporate library. The response letters he receives from the companies (some keep the book, some return it) provide hilarious insights into both the corporate workings/environment as well as their nuanced (and seemingly painful) interactions with the general public thru PR minions.

Lenin for Your Library? (Coca Cola), 2005
© Yevgeniy Fiks

This work is very much reminiscent of the hijinks of Lazlo Toth (aka comedian Don Novello aka Father Guido Sarducci) and his humorous mail correspondence with hundreds of politicians and corporations over the past decades (beginning during the rise of the Nixon era and continuing through the early days of George W. Bush). If you like comedy and satire, both Fiks' work and Toth's books are an absolute must-see.

Corporations Are People Too
opening Wednesday 4 January
6-8pm
Winkleman gallery
621 W. 27th St., NYC

Meanwhile, tomorrow nite in NYC is the opening at Yancey Richardson gallery of the show Let's sit down before we go, photographs by Bertien van Manen. The opening nite will also include a book signing for van Manen's recently released monograph of the same title.

Camping at Lake Baikal, Siberia
from the series Let's sit down before we go
© Bertien van Manen

While Yevgeniy Fiks' work, as mentioned above, seeks to come to terms with the relationship between the West and the Soviet experience of his youth, van Manen's photographs here also take the viewer into a journey through Russian life (albeit from the Dutch photographer's outside perspective) with particular emphasis on their adjustments in the post-communist era. Beginning in 1990 with her travels through Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Georgia, Siberia and elsewhere across the former Soviet Republic, van Manen is able to achieve a distinct intimacy with her subjects, creating photographs that allow the viewer to imagine gaining some deep knowledge of the Russian people, their daily joys and struggles. In them we see a mix of youthful exuberance as well as reservation towards a somewhat uncertain future.

Beach at Lake Baikal, Siberia
from the series Let's sit down before we go
© Bertien van Manen

Let's sit down before we go
photographs by Bertien van Manen
opening Thursday 5 January
6-8pm
Yancey Richardson gallery
535 W. 22nd St., 3rd floor, NYC

On the West Coast over the weekend, Stephen Wirtz gallery premieres an exhibition of new photographs by Todd Hido that I'm really excited to see (someday): his Excerpts from Silver Meadows, taken from the full-volume book Silver Meadows that will be launched later this year.

Untitled #9497, 2010
from the series Silver Meadows
© Todd Hido

The title references what is indeed a very real place named Silver Meadows, a hardscrabble subdivision in Hido's hometown of Kent, Ohio -- which is where my excitement and intrigue begins, if I may enter a brief anecdote: much of my family (myself included) were born and raised in/around the Kent area, and I still have family living in Kent (who actually lived for a while in a development right across the street from Silver Meadows, before recently moving to the other side of town). I spent my college years in Kent and actually for a short bit kicked around Silver Meadows in the early stages of a photo project (which I later abandoned).
So the notion of Silver Meadows is very vivid in my mind's eye, both in terms of being a real place as it exists and also the symbolism it reflects in Hido's work: the quintessential picture of Midwestern suburban childhood, the dark underbelly of sexual and psychological longing concealed behind the modest homes, and the escapism and teenage angst that festers around it. As he has done throughout the entire collection of his works, Hido weaves this tableau with a cinematic narrative of isolated places, troubled female figures, and unsettling landscapes, all the while confronting his own personal history among a larger collective experience in the hollow American suburbs across the nation.

Untitled #10106, 2011
from the series Silver Meadows
© Todd Hido

Excerpts from Silver Meadows
new photographs by Todd Hido
opening Saturday 7 January
4-6pm
Stephen Wirtz gallery
49 Geary St., 3rd floor, San Francisco

Finally, also opening on Saturday is Take Refuge, a solo exhibition of photos by Kevin Cooley, showing at Kopeikin gallery in LA.

from the series Take Refuge
© Kevin Cooley

With his large-scale photographs made in harsh remote locations in the Arctic, as well as urban scenes in NYC and LA, Cooley hones in on our physical and emotional interactions with nature. A repeated motif is the struggle between the natural environment and our built environment, particularly in relation to technology (represented by the repetition of fire and light as visual symbols).
We are reminded of our heightened emotions (most notably fear and awe) in the face of the sublime and mysterious in nature, as well as our human attempts to control this seemingly inconceivable natural world (perhaps to quiet our fears, in a sense).

from the series Take Refuge
© Kevin Cooley

Take Refuge
photographs by Kevin Cooley
opening Saturday 7 January
6-8pm
Kopeikin gallery
2766 South La Cienega Blvd., LA