socks hanging from a light fixture with one of the bulbs out

Result #1

socks hanging from a light fixture with one of the bulbs out; a pair of glasses, made of a solid foam, held aloft on a post; a plastic piece of gum-ball machine, its cap removed, in a glass-covered box; and a garish floral print on the wall. The title, A Man on a Bicycle, 2012, was spray-painted in a bright, grungy red on a large sheet of paper. The work represents the body of the artist, with his upper torso and limbs and his legs spread wide apart. As if to announce his love affair with the bicycle, the piece bears the word MAN on its cover. Elsewhere, a man sitting on the floor in front of a canvas-covered, wood-paneled gallery could be seen leaning against a bookcase with his back to us, as if reading from it. The works title refers to a number of things, including the idea of the body as a journey, a voyage, an art, and a machine. A man with a headless torso looks up at us, his eyes closed and closed again, as if the body were the result of a certain outcome in a game. The body is the result of a complicated, unpredictable interaction of natural and mechanical forces. The body is the result of the creative act. A man in the foreground of the photograph, his head and body spattered with paint, is caught in the act of painting a picture. In the background, a man in a suit and tie stands on a veranda holding a laptop computer. The picture is not of a male nude but of a body taken from the body of an anonymous man who was painting a portrait of himself. These images have a mythic quality, as do the pieces of paper on the gallery floor. We can make out the outline of the man from the photograph and from the other works on display in the room.

Result #2

socks hanging from a light fixture with one of the bulbs out. The pair of single-shaped banners that make up the centerpiece of the exhibition are a pair of miniscule prints that stand in for the two-dimensional components of the piece, and are, in fact, fully functional.The works in this show were conceived in the manner of an installation, and each was in fact one of several series of items that the artist had collected from his studio: an ornate pair of rectangular canvases from the 1950s, a small painting of a snowflake, a scale model for a snowman, and an early print of an engraving from the late 20s. The selection of objects is drawn from an extensive collection of objects that the artist has accumulated over the past decade. The first two works were made from a combination of wood, metal, and a ceramic surface, the last from clay and epoxy. The surfaces of the canvases, which the artist has known for many years, were treated to simulate the traditional painting process. While the final products may be more functional than the original works, the themes of the works are always present. The snowflakes are painted, in effect, in a matte black that recedes to the lower left, creating a perfect reflection of the transparency of the wood. The canvas is adorned with a single white flower, the flower resembles a snowflake, and the images are composed of an assortment of abstract geometric shapes.In these works, the clay remains the most typical material of the exhibition. In the series of sculptures that were on view, the clay was mixed with zinc, a pigment used in the manufacture of table lamps, and is made into the firm, sturdy forms that are found in the wood. The bronze sculptures, some of which the artist has created over the past decade, were a kind of trompe loeil of forms that are used to replicate the wooden form.

Result #3

socks hanging from a light fixture with one of the bulbs out; a red, gold, and black field with no white; and a photograph of a windowless room, the same as the one in which the images are made up, with the same white light. Such is the logic behind the intriguing paintings and sculptures of Muzza and Farosi, which look like they were made by looking at and interpreting their sources. The paintings are composed of a group of identical but different-colored rectangles that span three and a half by five and a half feet. Each rectangle has a three-dimensional component, one is made of graphite and the other of wax; in the cases of the wax ones, the wax is stained with black pigment, which creates a ghostly texture. The graphite is applied to the wax and then matted. The resulting paintings are carefully constructed, meticulously placed, and colored, as if made by the hand of an artisan.Muzzas recent exhibition of eight acrylic-on-canvas works and three gouache paintings was titled Drifting, and the works on display were selected from his series of Muzza drawings. Muzzas drawings are usually based on a drawing of a single object that has been transferred to a large, block-printed acrylic on canvas, and then stamped with the same lettering that was used to make the work. The artist used the same process in these, as well as his previous series of drawings on paper, in creating these paintings, in which the main element of the original object—the figure—is lost. Muzzas Muzza series, 1973–79, consisted of photographs of the same object, each with a photograph of a different object on the same sheet of paper, printed in the same size, and mounted on the same wooden frame. Each of the images in each series is based on a photograph of the same object, in the same size, and from the same country as the original, and each was printed in a different typeface.

Result #4

socks hanging from a light fixture with one of the bulbs out; its called AMOLED. The iconic piece also featured a suite of geometric contraptions that, in tandem with the LED panels, provided a miniaturized version of the works technology. The most elaborate of these was a small door with a glowing LED light, which was attached to the ceiling. The other devices in the show were similarly built, but the most sophisticated were the transparent S-shaped lights that sparkled on and off like LEDs. Among the more curious was the fluorescent sequencer, a device that allows the light from a fluorescent light source to be switched on and off at will. Poking fun at our ability to control the world with a smartphone, the sequencer also mimics the quality of a transistor radio, a technology that allows an image to be transferred to an audio record without being processed or stored. The sequencer has been used to produce a number of cool, beautiful electronic sculptures by artists such as the late John McCracken and the late William Eggleston.In addition to these more conventional pieces, the show featured a few striking pieces by the likes of Kiki Smith, Lauren Beukes, and Jeff Koons. The works in the show were all conceived with a spirit of fun, a playful wryness that contrasted with the melancholy and banality of the installations. The works, which featured images of Koons, beaded like the artists clothes and relied on an absurdly simple form of materials, are intended to be quite original. However, their simplicity and humor make them hard to pin down. Like Koonss work, the pieces in the show were created with a playful spirit of play and a playful imagination. What could be more unexpected, more enigmatic, than the artists ability to make an image from nothing?The show also featured a video, a minicomputer, a miniature stage set, and a digital printer, all from the same year. In each case, the spirit of the piece was evident.

Result #5

socks hanging from a light fixture with one of the bulbs out, and a small painting of a pergola above a decorative table. The work was inspired by a photograph of the Chicago Public Library: a middle-aged man, his back to us, appears to be looking at the library, which in turn is seen from above by a camera set on the ceiling. The photograph is titled Public Library, 1995, and featured a pergola as a window; the lamp is clearly visible through the pergola. This work is also titled Public Library. (Of course, Public Library is not just a matter of looking at a piece of architecture.)The exhibition, curated by Debra Monte, was called Making the Modern in the Digital Age, with many of the works being made by artists who are already familiar with digital technologies. For example, several of the works in the exhibition were made using the Adobe Creative Suite, an open-source software suite, and others were created using Photoshop. Though the software is not new to artists, it is not the subject of this show. Rather, the modernism in the digital age is the digital culture: computer and digital. The exhibition highlighted this fact, listing examples of digital-age modernity, such as the digital animation in Adobe Illustrator, 2005, or the digital music in Wav-MEDIA (Video Media Art), 2004. Many of these works were created for the digital age, in the form of free software programs. As the exhibition indicates, they are more open to being used than the originals were, and there is a greater chance of replicating the digital. The effect of such reproduction, in turn, is a sense of possibility.The digital also has its own iconography, an association with speed and speed, to be sure, but also with a cybernetic age. A man with a child is a cyborg, and a cyborg is a modern. If you look at the digital-age man, you are watching a cyborg.