Yoko Ono's Wish Tree at Jim Kempner Fine Art in Chelsea

My friend Yunhee took a couple really good photos of Yoko's "Wish Tree" at Kempner. 

I just learned, by the way, that Kempner also has created a very funny video series about what it's like to run a Chelsea art gallery.  www.themadnessofart.com   It's worth watching.  

To ancient societies trees held symbolic and even magical power. A tree was like a bridge between the earth and the sky. The roots of a tree penetrate deep into the earth and derive sustenance while the trunk rises and branches reach into the air. So even today a tree can be thought of as a type of bridge between the earth and the sky, or a bridge between the ‘lower’ and the ‘higher’ or our animal nature and our godly/spiritual nature.

On her website Yoko Ono explains that as a child she would go to a nearby temple and, like others, tie wishes written onto little strips of paper to a tree branch. The trees in the courtyard of the temple often held numerous of these wishes from her community. Indeed, Yoko has been facilitating the replication of this process since 1981, around the world, and she has been keeping all of the wishes that people leave on her “wish trees” for an Imagine Peace Tower. She currently has such a wish tree at Jim Kempner Fine Art in Chelsea.

When I was passing by Kempner recently, I saw a small group writing out their wishes and tying them to the tree’s branches and I was, frankly, affected by the sincerity of the act. People were earnestly hunched over or squatting on the ground scribbling onto a little sheet and then looking for space on the tree where they could hang their wishes. So although many people feel intimidated by contemporary art, or say that they don’t like modern art museums because they don’t understand what the artists are doing, Yoko has found a way to really engage people, through art, in a deep and significant manner.

By inviting people to make a wish and to place it on a tree branch, she compels the viewer/participant to really focus on what’s central to his/her life and determine whether this is as meaningful as it should be. Some people have written frivolous things, some people make political statements (I saw: “Down with the patriarchy!” written on one slip) but many people express thoughts directed to others who are hungry, homeless, impoverished, suffering injustice/cruelty or in need of some type of assistance. Of course, after making the wish, the participant is also tacitly invited to question what exactly is stopping this wish from coming true. Is it political? economic? racial? Each person is invited to reflect on the extent to which he/she can and cannot take action to make this wish a reality. Each person is, in fact, invited to begin to take action again, on whatever level, to spread peace and justice throughout his/her community.

Trees may have lost their magical power in our post-industrialized, secular world, but they still retain their symbolic power. The Wish Tree therefore represents the latent good will in all of us to wish each other goodness and prosperity, as a first step to finally bringing about a truly humane and conflict free global community. Who knows, this could be a magical process after all.

Cobi Moules, Conceptual Realist, at Lyons Wier Gallery in Chelsea

Lyons Wier Gallery has established itself as one of the premier New York City art galleries promoting “conceptual realism.” Conceptual realism is to be contrasted with photo-realism or super-realism. In super-realism (a movement created in the 1960s), the artist often starts with an actual photo and painstakingly reproduces that image (usually) on a canvas. The reaction of a normal viewer to a work of super-realism is often: “Is that a painting!? It looks like a photo!” The second question is invariably, “Why did he/she do that?” or “Wow, how long do you think it took for that artist to paint this?” 

An example of super-realism (Richard Estes):

That’s not to imply that super-realistic paintings are not without meaning or relevance. A person could argue that a super-realist was/is, basically, doing what Vermeer did – capturing and focusing on one instant in the flow of time to engender a better sense of the greater meaning of that moment and, perhaps, to better convey the transitory nature of our lives.

Conceptual realism, however, plays with realism to deliberately convey a greater meaning or concept. The work of Cobi Moules, in his show at Lyons Wier - Bois Just Wanna Have Fun - is a great example of conceptual realism. When you first look at one of his paintings in this show, you seem to see a huge mass of boys foraging around, standing around, rooting round or horsing around in an amazing landscape. Indeed, you might even mistake his pieces for examples of super-realism, until you look closely.

All the boys are, in fact, Cobi Moules. In fact, Moules’ paintings might be superficially interpreted as a wry commentary on the notion of trying to capture one moment in a super-realist piece. Moules seemingly captures many discrete moments within one landscape on one canvas. Indeed, one might feel an amazing contrast between the permanent and the transitory in each painting. Each particular landscape will be there for thousands of years (if not more), yet Moules, or anyone else wandering through, might be considered but a poor player strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage. The enormity of time each landscape will exist creates a sense of permanence or eternity which readily contrasts with the brief moment of our lives.

But Moules is shooting for more than this contrast between the permanent and the temporary – indeed, he seems to be fighting against this. After all, what’s more important: the actor or the stage? Moules’ pieces are, in fact, a wry commentary on the historically significant Hudson River School of painters, who can be considered, according to Moules, to be ideologically linked to certain strains of orthodox Christianity which condemn queer and transgender folks like himself as being ‘unnatural.’

Orthodox Christianity and the Hudson River School might have been saying, “Cobi, you don’t even belong on this stage!”, but Moules relishes his presence and exults in his multiple performances, engaging himself within a context of nature which DOES accept him. Moules' work shows that the stage and the actor are inseparable and that the diversity of human types on the stage of nature is a welcome presence.

Here's an example of Hudson River School painting.  I'm not an expert on it, so I am not sure that I can agree that there might have been homophobic ties between it and orthodox Christianity.  I think I understand Moules' argument, though, I guess.  Basically here's what he said in the press release from Lyons Wier Gallery: 

"I see a number of ideological links between their [Hudson River School] works and a specific current American Christian culture that was an integral part of my formative years; particularly in regards to ideas of purity and the honor of sacrificing one's selfhood for the glory of God. As a queer and transgender person, I seek to renegotiate my relationship with this upbringing and the act of being told I am 'unnatural' through such a pointed Christian lens."

Hudson River School stuff:

Bananas and peaches. Amazing drawings by Zhang Dun at Chambers Fine Art

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I must be more pure than I thought (and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.)  When I walked into Chambers Fine Art with a friend of mine and saw the amazing drawings of bananas and peaches, I was immediately impressed by how the artist captured a sort of perfect ripeness; the drawings were so well executed.  My friend, however, said, "Wow! This is really sexual stuff." Then I realized: Ooops, yeah, this stuff is obviously 'erotic.'  But it's not erotic just for the sake of being erotic.  I think that Zhang Dun is really making an interesting point about how the male and female sexual organs and sexual drives are perceived and even how they are utilized in art and literature.

In allegorical literature the masculine and the feminine often have a symbolic meaning. In the Odyssey or Faust, or any number of older works, you have the wandering, tormented, testosterone driven, struggling male who overcomes obstacles to seek his comfort or solace in the eternal feminine.  The man (Odysseus, for instance) wanders and fights and the woman (Penelope, for instance) stays home and weaves and waits.  The masculine seems to represent something active and searching while the feminine represents a passive ideal of spiritual solace for the man (or what the man represents symbolically).

That symbolic 'paradigm' (for lack of better terminology), of course, doesn't quite work these days, now that society has changed so radically over the generations and women are as active as men.

So what I like about Zhang Dun's work (beyond her amazing draughtsmanship) is her exploration of the male and female sex organs using analogs that allow a differing perspective from common notions of the masculine and feminine sex drives (and how they can be 'allegorized'). 

You no longer have the male penis as something harsh or piercing, for example.  This is no longer the penis of Faust, Dante or Odysseus.  The peach is not the vagina of Gretchen, Beatrice or Penelope. Both sex organs possess, basically, the same type of soft elegance.  Indeed, if we were to look for active and passive analogies here, the peaches would seem to be more "active" than the bananas.  The peaches are, in places, a deep red color, implying passion or desire.  The bananas seem to passively unfold instead of aggressively swell.