Frieze d/e NO.8, February-March 2013 Bülow Wichelhaus GbR / Genthiner Strasse 36 / 10785 Berlin / Germany / +49 30 261 03283 / contact@societeberlin.com SOCIÉTÉ
ART REVIEW Vying for Fluency in Many Languages <strong>Trisha</strong> <strong>Baga</strong> at the Whitney, Greene Naftali and MoMA PS1 The Biggest Circle, at Greene Naftali, has the most expansive view of <strong>Trisha</strong> <strong>Baga</strong>‘s work, like „Bag‘s Circle, 2012,“ above, a video installation with an array of nondescript objects. <strong>Trisha</strong> <strong>Baga</strong> must feel as if she had died and gone to heaven. Her poetically frowzy installations of video projections, paintings, sculptures and scattered objects can be seen now in two New York museums — in a lobby gallery solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art and in “New Pictures of Common Objects,” a group show at MoMA PS 1 — and she has a sprawling exhibition at Greene Naftali in Chelsea, a gallery admired by the art world cognoscenti. A New York resident, she also had solo shows in London and Munich in 2012. And she is only 27. Sometimes a precocious youngster brings to the table intriguing news of her own burgeoning generation. If Ms. <strong>Baga</strong> typifies her 20-something cohort, then a description of what she does from her Web site is noteworthy. It says that she “engages the formal languages and concerns of sculpture, painting, cinema, music, photography, comedy and fiction” to direct attention to “the acts of looking and recognizing, and the gap in between.” To be an artist of Ms. <strong>Baga</strong>’s sort is not to be good at anything in particular, but to be a porous intelligence open to the world and to all possible ways of mirroring it. The Greene Naftali show, appropriately titled “The Biggest Circle,” provides the most expansive view of her enterprise. For “The Story of Painting,” one of three installations, you don 3-D glasses and headphones, through which you hear the popular art historian Sister Wendy lecturing on canonical painters from Titian to Degas with breathless wonder. On the floor is an array of nondescript objects, including bottles and rough abstract sculptures made of painted foam blocks; a generic, brushy abstract painting hangs on the wall. Projected onto the wall over it are changing compositions of flat, colorful abstract shapes and a simple mask with eye holes and an oval mouth. Thanks to 3-D technology, these elements appear uncannily dimensional. Watching them with Sister Wendy’s fulsome discourse ringing in your ears makes for a comical collision of high and low. Art & Design, 27/12/2012 1/2 Bülow Wichelhaus GbR / Genthiner Strasse 36 / 10785 Berlin / Germany / +49 30 261 03283 / contact@societeberlin.com SOCIÉTÉ
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