PARKETT vol. 79: Jon Kessler, Marilyn Minter, Albert Oehlen
Parkett ‘s unparalleled explorations and investigations of important international contemporary artists by acclaimed writers and critics continue in vol. 78, featuring Jon Kessler, Marilyn Minter, and Albert Oehlen. Also in this issue, Herbert Lachmayer writes on Gelitin, Paul Bonaventura on Mark Wallinger, and Mark Godfrey on Spencer Finch. The special Insert is by Nate Lowman, and Cumulus texts are by Gabriela Rangel, and Marc-Olivier Wahler.
In the tinkered gadgetry of Jon Kessler’s retro sci-fi installations, among the analog programs crammed with vaguely familiar, pop-a-graphic detritus of all kinds, in the surveillance cameras and monitors he has installed within the work, we are likely so see our very own images. Meanwhile works from the past appear naked by comparison–exotic–crafted with the delicate touch of, say, a subversive, extremely skilled toy-smith. This time as a data-diver in an ecology of pure information, Kessler remains connected to the sculptural language of his past. All the while, his vista of devolving cyberstuff remains in a fluctuating, manic state of accumulation and make-shift composition. His Parkett edition, entitled “Habeas Corpus” shows a doll-sized detainee with hands cuffed, ears muffed, eyes shielded, and mouth masked. Crouching on his knees in an orange prisoner camp overall, the man’s silence and body language have a hauntingly realistic effect. With texts by Pamela Lee, Lori Waxman, and Bruce Sterling
Marilyn Minter’s fetishistic, flawless pictures reveal a painter obsessed with the clear articulation of magnified sweat beads and pore-smeared glitter. In each successive lip-smacking painting, Minter sets out to perfect beauty’s disguise, affirming both her pleasure for an industry’s most tantalizing ads, but also for some of its vulgar mishaps: say, a drag queen’s eyelashes clumped together with too much mascara, or even her own mentally ill mother pulling out clumps of her own hair. Works that at first appear universally, if not fashionably stylish, wind up, along with freckles and pimples, a confession of Minter’s haunted infatuations, and impeccable imperfections. Minter’s Parkett edition is a photograph from a recent shoot she did with one of our most celebrated present day pin-ups, Pamela Anderson. Minter’s photograph, with soapy bubbles floating in the foreground, peeks past the myth of this synthetic super femme, glimpsing a softer more private side of Pamela as she washes her hair. With texts by Katy Siegel, Andrea Scott, and Cay Sophie Rabinowitz
Albert Oehlen’s collage-paintings, as one Parkett writer notes, “seem almost bored of their own shock-value.” And yet this painter–one of the most significant German artists of the past twenty years–has a way of making boredom appear rigorous, if not delirious experiment. Bountiful are his extractions that often aggressively combine elements of collage with expressionistic painting birthing often surreal, grotesque, but humorous aberrations. In his works, claw-footed bathtubs, lamps, asses, cannons, gilded frames, palm trees share the stage with a host of computerized paint-box options (“spray paint”) and his trade-mark muscular brushstrokes. Oehlen’s edition for Parkett is an etching that continues his mining of avant-garde sensibilities, particularly surrealism and automatism. Oehlen’s dizzying image takes the viewer through the ear of a three-eyed man with a waxed mustache. With texts by Glenn O’Brien, and John Kelsey
Parkett is a small museum and a large library on contemporary art. Its unparalleled, available backlist includes some forty titles, more than ninety monographic collaborations with leading international artists, whose work is explored in several in-depth articles by acclaimed writers and critics. Published in a high-quality design, it features 200 reproductions of which more than 100 are in color. The Museum of Modern Art in New York and the White Chapel Art Gallery in London have both presented major Parkett retrospectives.
For more details on the new Parkett, its content and artist editions, as well as for subscriptions and back issues, please go to www.parkettart.com
