Emily Vey Duke's Top 10
Published in Coterie, Chicago’s free quarterly art publication Issue 1, Volume 1, February 2004
Draft 9. Dani Leventhal. 2003.
Draft 9 is a moving expression of a kind of American post-structuralist humanism. It's a 28 minute, first-person videotape which shrugs off the narrative conventions of cause and effect with the simplicity and grace of a tributary merging with a river.
Draft 9 will be screened at the Rotterdam Fim Festival Film Festival in February 2006.
The Paintings of Mequitta Ahuja. 2002-03
There's a particular pleasure that comes from watching an artist's practice evolve over time. My connection to Ahuja's paintings comes in part from that source—from talking and thinking intensely about each decision she made before, during, and after she made it. Watching her work the surface of a canvas taught me more about painting than anything else I did in my eight-odd years in art school. That said, the works themselves are radiant, masterful and challenging for both maker and viewer.
Ahuja's paintings were recently featured at the MCA in Chicago as part of their series "12 X 12"
The Drawings of Shary Boyle. 1998-2004.
Again, the delight I take in Boyle's work has to do with having watched it move through different phases, from fairly straightforward (but poignant and hilarious) abject autobiography to tender myth-making. When Boyle started making images, she represented the world she did inhabit, and what made her drawings so compelling was her ability to articulate the crippling awkwardness and shame she felt there. Now her works are complex allegories representing the world as she would have it be. Like many of the makers on my list, she has complete control of her craft, and while her deployment of “beauty” is nuanced and informed, she deploys it all the same.
You can see Boyle's works at www.sharyboyle.com.
Gillian Wearing: Mass Observation. Museum of Contemporary Art. October 2002–January 03.
My pleasure in Wearing's work is a bit modulated. This is partly the case because she's already famous (she won the coveted Turner Prize in 1997 and has a stunning exhibition history), and I feel less inclination toward the work of the already-famous; but the work is problematic by nature. I get the impression that her aim is to stick it to the art institution, but in fact, it's her viewers and her subjects who bear the brunt of her critique. Nonetheless, works like 2 Into 1 (1997) a video in which Wearing transposes the voices of a mother and her two viciously articulate sons, and Trauma (2000), in which eight subjects describe personal traumas, are so fresh and incisive that I could not help but stand in awe.
Ernie Pook's Comeek. Lynda Barry. Ongoing.
It's so funny because it's so true!
Ernie Pook's Comeek is published weekly in the Chicago Reader.
Anthology of American Folk Songs (Work in Progress). Steve Reinke. 2004.
As with Wearing, one has the sense with Steve Reinke's work that he is poking fun: at the viewer, at the art world, at the entire project of authorship and history. There's a peculiar tension in Reinke's videos. On one hand, the works are lush, comic, and crafted with great precision. His timing is exemplary. He draws the viewer through disjointed units of seemingly unrelated text/image relations with ease and elegance. On the other, there's something so insistently perverse about his choices (of image, of text, of graphic elements, of editing) that the pieces feel sadistic. I was left with a number of questions after watching Anthology of American Folk Songs: Can a work be sadistic and excellent at the same time? Are perverts the same as underdogs? Am I the appropriate target for Reinke's sadistic impulse? Good thing I like to wonder.
The Face of Everything. Daniel Barrow. 2002.
Since 1993, Barrow has been working with the increasingly popular overhead projector to create short narrative live animations. In The Face of Everything, he tells the tragic story of Hillbilly, a naive young boy who finds love and heartbreak with a famous nightclub entertainer. One of the things that makes this piece so effective is its light touch on what could be called “identity politics”. The work is about the trials of growing up gay without being the least bit “boo-hoo, poor me”. Equally important is Barrow's perfectionism at every stage in the process: his research of the story of Scott Thorson, Liberace's teenage lover; his consideration of the imbrications between Thorson's psychology and his own; his gem-like, layered drawings; his perfectly pitched performance.
Barrow will present new work at the Images Festival this April.
The Flooded Grave. Jeff Wall. 1998-2002.
A beautiful photograph with lots to look at.
Truisms. Jenny Holzer. 1989.
Jenny Holzer's Truisms was one of the first contemporary artworks I ever encountered. I was 19 years old and had just started art school. It spoke to me intellectually, aesthetically, emotionally and morally. What makes this work so remarkable is that 12 years later, it still does.