This past Wednesday, White Columns opened Looking Back, the eighth installment of the White Columns Annual. Each year the gallery asks a specific person or collaborative team (artists, writers, curators) to compose an exhibition based off of their own personal art experiences in New York from the previous year. For this year's installment, they asked independent curator, Pati Hertling.
Pati Hertling is an unusual fixture in the New York art world. A lawyer by trade, Pati spends her daytime hours representing families who lost their art collections in the Holocaust. If that isn't heroic enough, in her off-hours Pati has been furiously busy bringing humanity back into the arts. "The more tangible [art is] is the more value it has, [and] the longer you can keep it the more valuable it is," she says of the current gallery scene. "And that's terrible because that is the part that is not art, it's materiality."
Made up of a list of 40 plus names, Looking Back represents artists of all mediums: painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film, sound, music, poetry, and performance. The link that connects these artists to one another is an emotional currency, one that is carefully orchestrated by Pati. "I'm very interested in community and the notion of art as community… Art is a tool to keep us aware of problems and to foster society into becoming more conscious."
Walking into the gallery, you immediately see Pati's conscious effort to make this show different: for one, the walls are painted pink and grey. Pati wanted to steer away from the traditional "neutral" white, she says, as the show is not about neutrality but subjectivity. Fittingly, every piece has a point of view. A performance by Malin Arnell was the first piece I saw after stepping through the doors. Two people, one the artist herself and the other a willing gallery-goer, embraced and swayed slowly in front of a crowd of visitors. It set a romantic tone, not gushy or silly but careful and contemplative.
Beyond, a desk was scattered with flyers, booklets, and pictures of feminist icons and activists. This installation by Mary Beth Edelson came equipped with a chair, inviting the viewer to sit down and not only look at the material but seriously consider its purpose. Similarly, a glass pane with a single hole intersecting the first room, an installation by Tony Conrad, was a reminder that this show wanted viewers to dialogue and participate with the work.
A personal favorite was "Diet Mother" a sculpture by K8 Hardy, featuring a rugged figure breaking out of a soda can. It reminded me of the work of 70s and 80s feminist artists Barbara Kruger or Adrian Piper or The Guerrilla Girls who also referenced consumerist imagery. The show also contained work by late feminist heroine HANNAH WILKE, a piece "Untitled (Single Gum Sculpture)" from Wilke's legendary Gum Series.
The work that best exemplified Pati's tendency to root for underdogs was by Lonnie Holley, an outsider musician and artist who lives and works in Alabama. Working with found objects, Lonnie is a literal reflection of the different worlds he finds himself in. In the main room "Waiting On My Takeout" hangs on the wall, a piece
Pati Hertling is an unusual fixture in the New York art world. A lawyer by trade, Pati spends her daytime hours representing families who lost their art collections in the Holocaust. If that isn't heroic enough, in her off-hours Pati has been furiously busy bringing humanity back into the arts. "The more tangible [art is] is the more value it has, [and] the longer you can keep it the more valuable it is," she says of the current gallery scene. "And that's terrible because that is the part that is not art, it's materiality."
Made up of a list of 40 plus names, Looking Back represents artists of all mediums: painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film, sound, music, poetry, and performance. The link that connects these artists to one another is an emotional currency, one that is carefully orchestrated by Pati. "I'm very interested in community and the notion of art as community… Art is a tool to keep us aware of problems and to foster society into becoming more conscious."
Walking into the gallery, you immediately see Pati's conscious effort to make this show different: for one, the walls are painted pink and grey. Pati wanted to steer away from the traditional "neutral" white, she says, as the show is not about neutrality but subjectivity. Fittingly, every piece has a point of view. A performance by Malin Arnell was the first piece I saw after stepping through the doors. Two people, one the artist herself and the other a willing gallery-goer, embraced and swayed slowly in front of a crowd of visitors. It set a romantic tone, not gushy or silly but careful and contemplative.
Beyond, a desk was scattered with flyers, booklets, and pictures of feminist icons and activists. This installation by Mary Beth Edelson came equipped with a chair, inviting the viewer to sit down and not only look at the material but seriously consider its purpose. Similarly, a glass pane with a single hole intersecting the first room, an installation by Tony Conrad, was a reminder that this show wanted viewers to dialogue and participate with the work.
A personal favorite was "Diet Mother" a sculpture by K8 Hardy, featuring a rugged figure breaking out of a soda can. It reminded me of the work of 70s and 80s feminist artists Barbara Kruger or Adrian Piper or The Guerrilla Girls who also referenced consumerist imagery. The show also contained work by late feminist heroine HANNAH WILKE, a piece "Untitled (Single Gum Sculpture)" from Wilke's legendary Gum Series.
The work that best exemplified Pati's tendency to root for underdogs was by Lonnie Holley, an outsider musician and artist who lives and works in Alabama. Working with found objects, Lonnie is a literal reflection of the different worlds he finds himself in. In the main room "Waiting On My Takeout" hangs on the wall, a piece