Brother Islands (Places to Lose People)

New quarterly performance series MIXER introduces itself via a dark slice of forgotten New York. Through an expanded documentary study created by Benton-C Bainbridge, audiences are taken on a tour of an abandoned South Bronx island — once home to New York's harshest quarantines and legendary disaster victims — that is now slowly deteriorating, returning to its natural origins, and slipping out of the collective consciousness. Through audio and visual recordings, stereographic photography, and theatre, the performance troupe take us into a world from which most never return.

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Jason Rhoades "Black Pussy" @ David Zwirner

The late Jason Rhoades was out of control in the best and worst ways, often at the same time. Rumor has it that before he died in August 2006, Rhoades was working on an event in Portland to feature a wrestling match between homeless teen roller-derby girls, incorporating various soaps and lubricants, in an enormous, inflatable, liver-shaped sculpture. David Zwirner presents Rhoades' last project, the insensitively named, sprawling installation Black Pussy. Serving as a site for impromptu performances by the white-suited artist and others when it was shown in LA, Black Pussy is made of countless IKEA shelves, striped afghan-covered chairs, and neon signs spelling out lewd variations on the work's title.

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Charles Ray @ Matthew Marks

The most influential sculptors in contemporary art aren't the formal purists of MoMA's recent exhibitions (Serra and Puryear), they're a coterie of LA-based humorists whose deadpan confrontations with mass culture are more Arrested Development than Quaker meeting. Like fellow Angelenos Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, Charles Ray tackles the big themes of sex, death, and everything in between. His three new sculptures at Matthew Marks trace life from its origins to its apex. Chicken is tiny, a two-and-a-half-inch steel sculpture of a chicken egg with a protruding beak and claw. In the white-painted steel sculpture New Beetle, a soft-faced boy plays with a updated VW toy, while Father Figure is an enormous work of solid steel, an 18-ton replica of a man driving a tractor.

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Paul McCarthy @ Maccarone Gallery

LA performance artist Paul McCarthy has lathered himself with condiments, crammed his orifices full of hot dogs, and positioned inflatable, phallus-for-nose sculptures in front of major cultural institutions. Nothing is impervious to McCarthy's desecration of all that's near and dear to the repressed American psyche; and his new work at the West Village's Maccarone Gallery brings that point home for the holidays. Transforming the gallery into an industrial chocolate-candy factory and retail outlet (open seven days a week through Christmas Eve), McCarthy enlists master chocolatier Peter P. Greweling to produce 1,000 ten-inch chocolate Santas each day. The jocular, bearded fellow holds a bell in one hand and a butt-plug in the other — at $100, it's a must-have stocking stuffer.

World-renowned artist Paul McCarthy, together with Maccarone Gallery in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth, has embarked on a project that will transform the 6,000 square-foot Maccarone Gallery into a completely functional Chocolate Factory and retail store open to the public seven days a week from mid-November through the end of 2007. The project was conceived by McCarthy as a venture that may eventually spin off into additional temporary locations or franchises. The artist has formed Peter Paul Chocolates LLC as the parent company in the venture.

The gallery will be divided into four sections: retail store, chocolate manufacturing, packaging and storage. The factory will produce 1,000 chocolate figurines daily, a new chocolate iteration of the iconic "Santa" sculpture exhibited at Art Basel in June 2007. Master chocolatier, author Peter P. Greweling of the Culinary Institute of America will oversee production, and the figures will be made with Guittard premium chocolate. Guittard, a California-based company since 1868, is the oldest family-owned and operated chocolate company in America.

In preparation for the transformation of the location into a retail-factory setting, the gallery underwent extensive alteration, including replacing plumbing, electrical and HVAC to meet New York City Code and manufacturing requirements, as well as purchasing and installing the finest professional chocolate manufacturing equipment. The melting, tempering, molding, and other processes will be visible to visitors through observation windows. A conveyor belt will move the chocolates throughout the space, from the manufacturing hub, to packing and storage. The remaining portion of the gallery is devoted to retail sales.

McCarthy, a California-based artist, has long employed food and edibles in his work. Throughout his 40-year career, his work has been exhibited at leading galleries and museums worldwide, including MOCA LA, Tate Modern, SMAK, Haus der Kunst, Moderna Museet, The New Museum, The Whitney Museum and The Guggenheim Museum, among others. Paul McCarthy is represented by Hauser & Wirth, Zurich London.

The 10", 1-lb. chocolate figure, Santa With Tree And Bell, will retail for $100, and will be sold through the gallery at 630 Greenwich Street in Manhattan, or through this website. Additionally, the figures will be sold at Art Basel Miami.

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Lawrence Weiner: AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE

Lawrence Weiner: AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE
on view November 15, 2007-February 10, 2008

"Language as Sculpture, Words as Clay" by Randy Kennedy, The New York Times.

This is the first major retrospective mounted in the United States of the work of New York-based artist Lawrence Weiner (b.1942), one of the key figures associated with the emergence and foundations of Conceptual Art. Weiner has defined art as "the relationship of human beings to objects and objects to objects in relation to human beings," and that premise remains at the core of all of his work, from the Propeller and Removal paintings of the 1960s, to his "specific and general" works-language-based pieces that have played a defining role in his work since 1968. Lawrence Weiner: AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE will provide a comprehensive examination of Weiner's remarkable and cohesive oeuvre by assembling key selections and bodies of work from the full breadth of his production, including works on paper, films, videos, books, posters, public commissions, multiples and audio works.

Co-organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, this landmark exhibition is co-curated by Donna De Salvo, Whitney Museum Chief Curator and Associate Director for Programs, and Ann Goldstein, MOCA Senior Curator. In conjunction with the exhibition, Weiner's films and videos will be screened at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

This exhibition was jointly organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
Major support has been provided by Glenn Fuhrman and John and Amy Phelan.
Additional support has been provided by Aaron and Barbara Levine.

This exhibition is made possible, in part, by Altria Group, Inc.

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