 Liz-N-Val On Sale |
Liz-N-Val Selections from 3 Decades Gallery onetwentyeight 128 Rivington St., ( between Essex Street & Norfolk Street ), New York, NY 10002 May 5, 2010 - May 31, 2010 by Natalie Hegert I first came across Liz-N-Val’s work at POOL Art Fair where their playful, colorful, and humorous canvases caught my attention. Until the end of May Gallery onetwentyeight on the Lower East Side is now hosting a selection of their work from the past 30 years. I was happy to find Liz holding court at the gallery the day I visited and we got to chat about the early days when it was Clark and Goroshko instead of Liz-N-Val, the various ‘MuseuM’s they’ve established, the ire they’ve attracted from overly-sensitive museum curators and their overwhelming desire to just “have fun” while making art, because, after all, “Why do it if you can’t have fun?” Liz-N-Val (Liz Clark and Val Goroshko) began working together in the late 70’s and have been turning out their uniquely sardonic brand ever since. The variety of different media they’ve worked in and their refusal to conform to one style is immediately apparent upon entering the gallery where you’ll find paintings, collages, sculptures, assemblages, and photography. Most of the works are small in scale, but many feature even tinier little people, dwarfed by the relative size of the artwork surrounding them, forming a sort-of Pop Sublime aesthetic. Throughout their works Liz-N-Val engage with art historical themes, repurpose found materials, and nearly always comment on the commercialism of art and the language of advertising. Like winking art hucksters, they don’t deny the commercial self-promotion of art—they embrace it in a way, taking out ads, bringing their art out on the street, literally spelling out their intentions on the works. Exchange value remains unhidden. The bill of sale IS the artwork. Welcome to the MuseuM of Everything, or the MuseuM of Something-N-Nothing, or the MuseuM of Anything. Natalie Hegert http://www.artslant.com/ny/articles/show/16197 |
The Stairs to Somewhere can be found in Liz-N-Val’s “Selected Artsites 2006” on view at Henrybuilt in Soho, NYC. Even though these 6 inch-tall stairs, folded like an aluminum fan, do lead their tiny protagonist teetering somewhere 6 inches above the floor, the real “somewhere” to the success of this installation is the austere space of Henrybuilts’ street-level showroom for kitchen cabinet furniture. The pristine and commercial surroundings accentuate Liz-N-Val’s guerrilla-like interventions scattered throughout, giving their particular blend of impish play, scathing art world criticism, and social commentary a potency, as well as complimenting their deliberately anti-commercial and anti-craft presentation.
Camouflaged as hip wall decor, A (house) is hard-edged and minimal, subtly blending in with the trendy white spackling of the wall. Using scale for effect, this simple 8 inch A-frame house is folded out of what looks like newspaper. A minuscule stick figure stands dwarfed in the entryway. Elegant but deadly, the newsprint words permeate and shape this home and it’s clear that the crude, tiny figure is no match against the power of the media.
Pure Feeling displays red, blue and yellow drips on a mound of white shredded material. Monumental in title but irreverent in meaning, this doll-like 2 1/2 inch sculpture, tucked in a corner, drips with primary color irony as Liz-N-Val share their skeptical take on the resurgence of abstract painting being rediscovered by a new generation.
Will Kill for Fame and Money; painted words dripping on canvas, continues their interest in name branding, the art world star system, and the truth and beauty of fame equaling fortune. Their own personal museum is called “The Museum of Truth and Beauty” where nothing escapes their critical notice. Stack Paintings-Table is a 10” stack of more tiny canvases with red paint rudely poured over them. Construction Site 2006 is composed of 4 stretcher bars, one of which is unhinged. A tiny figure stands in the crevice much like an artist directing the monumental construction of the idea of their intended painting.
Not all the work here subverts the art world’s status quo. Liz-N-Val utilize tiny human figures, alone and isolated, and strategically place them hanging by a thread or poised observing the critical mayhem. These figures have pathos as a poignant reminder of the power and helplessness of the individual maneuvering through the complex esthetic and social constructs of our society.
They have concurrently placed a full-page ad in Flash Art magazine, utilizing yet another “outside the gallery box” venue for their work. One piece in the ad is entitled, Monument to Pietro Manzoni. Here at Henrybuilt exhibition, this same piece is entitled Manzoni’s Shit and is signed by Liz-N-Val. A tiny 10 inch pile of rock rubble is stacked sedately on the floor. At the top of the pile is a tiny gold box labeled “Manzoni’s shit.” This piece alludes to the Italian artist Pietro Manzoni, who in 1961 was one of the first artists to can and label his own feces as a commentary on art star power. A Duchampian dialogue ensues. Beyond signing a urinal and declaring that as art, or like Manzoni, signing feces which were then sold at Sotheby’s in 1991 for $67,000, Liz-N-Val take the idea to facetious 10 inch heights.
Most of this work bites the hand that feeds it. Remember, these are the artists who tied a pre-stretched 4 x 6 ft. canvas to a dog leash, named it Woof and dragged it around Soho in 1999. Intelligent and scathing, theirs is a conceptual art that delights in provoking. By their low-tech means and entrepreneurial tactics, these inventors of ‘Something out of Nothing” take nothing for granted. They are “Seeking Creative Visionary Supporters” as one of their canvases awkwardly scrawls. Let’s see who finds what, at this intriguing treasure hunt meant to raise hackles and tickle minds.
Camouflaged as hip wall decor, A (house) is hard-edged and minimal, subtly blending in with the trendy white spackling of the wall. Using scale for effect, this simple 8 inch A-frame house is folded out of what looks like newspaper. A minuscule stick figure stands dwarfed in the entryway. Elegant but deadly, the newsprint words permeate and shape this home and it’s clear that the crude, tiny figure is no match against the power of the media.
Pure Feeling displays red, blue and yellow drips on a mound of white shredded material. Monumental in title but irreverent in meaning, this doll-like 2 1/2 inch sculpture, tucked in a corner, drips with primary color irony as Liz-N-Val share their skeptical take on the resurgence of abstract painting being rediscovered by a new generation.
Will Kill for Fame and Money; painted words dripping on canvas, continues their interest in name branding, the art world star system, and the truth and beauty of fame equaling fortune. Their own personal museum is called “The Museum of Truth and Beauty” where nothing escapes their critical notice. Stack Paintings-Table is a 10” stack of more tiny canvases with red paint rudely poured over them. Construction Site 2006 is composed of 4 stretcher bars, one of which is unhinged. A tiny figure stands in the crevice much like an artist directing the monumental construction of the idea of their intended painting.
Not all the work here subverts the art world’s status quo. Liz-N-Val utilize tiny human figures, alone and isolated, and strategically place them hanging by a thread or poised observing the critical mayhem. These figures have pathos as a poignant reminder of the power and helplessness of the individual maneuvering through the complex esthetic and social constructs of our society.
They have concurrently placed a full-page ad in Flash Art magazine, utilizing yet another “outside the gallery box” venue for their work. One piece in the ad is entitled, Monument to Pietro Manzoni. Here at Henrybuilt exhibition, this same piece is entitled Manzoni’s Shit and is signed by Liz-N-Val. A tiny 10 inch pile of rock rubble is stacked sedately on the floor. At the top of the pile is a tiny gold box labeled “Manzoni’s shit.” This piece alludes to the Italian artist Pietro Manzoni, who in 1961 was one of the first artists to can and label his own feces as a commentary on art star power. A Duchampian dialogue ensues. Beyond signing a urinal and declaring that as art, or like Manzoni, signing feces which were then sold at Sotheby’s in 1991 for $67,000, Liz-N-Val take the idea to facetious 10 inch heights.
Most of this work bites the hand that feeds it. Remember, these are the artists who tied a pre-stretched 4 x 6 ft. canvas to a dog leash, named it Woof and dragged it around Soho in 1999. Intelligent and scathing, theirs is a conceptual art that delights in provoking. By their low-tech means and entrepreneurial tactics, these inventors of ‘Something out of Nothing” take nothing for granted. They are “Seeking Creative Visionary Supporters” as one of their canvases awkwardly scrawls. Let’s see who finds what, at this intriguing treasure hunt meant to raise hackles and tickle minds.
NYArts Magazine 10/11/06
Liz-N-Val Selected ArtSites @ Henrybuilt
by Chris Twomey
Liz-N-Val Selected ArtSites @ Henrybuilt
by Chris Twomey
Manzoni's Shit
 Consuming Pleasure |
Art in America 12/04 by Sarah Valdez  |
 Downpour |
artnet, Dateline Brooklyn by Stephen Maine, 9/30/04 Longtime Soho mischief-makers Liz-N-Val admirably acquit themselves among the hipsters with their low-tech, winsome piece, titled Downpour, installed at Realform Project Space and on view through Oct. 3. |
 Sublime Cuisine |
NY Arts Magazine July-August, 2004 Tribes Gallery's Space Travelers By Mary Hrbacek In "Space Travelers," the group of twenty-one sculptures and four acrylic and mixed media paintings at Tribes Gallery, artists LIZ-N-VAL merge the simple forms and the satirical humor of cartoons and comic strips with a poetic sensibility that pays homage to the aesthetic vocabulary of surrealist Rene Magritte. Their airy, suspended sculptural works transcend the ordinary, both literally and figuratively. With acerbic wit and a light-hearted approach, the artists convey their message on the fleeting nature of existence through the use of consumer products that range from an aluminum frying pan to whiffle-balls, toys, beads, globes and cotton. In an imaginative, hybrid mix of fine art and functional materials, LIZ-N-VAL explore an array of themes that range from politics, science and metaphysics, to issues of both the pleasurable and the macabre in daily life. In Sublime Cuisine, a piece constructed with a hanging frying pan and suspended whiffle balls, an airplane appears to pierce the pan's surface, leaving a jet stream of cotton, in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Twin Towers debacle. The clusters of whiffle-balls in the signature piece Time-Space Travelers resemble atomic forms in an alternate universe, with cartoon-like tiny planes whizzing among them. In an almost identical work, two U.S. Air Force fighter planes seem to have crashed nose first into the gallery walls above the whiffle-ball cosmos. UFO '04 presents a suspended globe, from which five large paint brushes surrounded by puffy, cotton clouds protrude at odd asymmetrical angles. The piece resembles a Russian Sputnik satellite from the 1950's. In a comparatively earthbound, cautionary note, the artist team explores a more worldly peril in Consuming Pleasure, where a tiny rubber baby sits on top of a corked wine bottle in a cloud of billowing cotton smoke-rings. The artists give another wink at the human reproductive process and its possible outcomes in Caution, a piece in which a disembodied Halloween-style amputated hand is positioned amongst wispy clouds, like the hand of a traffic cop while a tiny baby crawls away just out of reach. In Blue Puddle, wooden artists' stretcher bars lie on the ground, creating the boundaries for a puddle of pale blue paint covered with plastic. Burst I and Burst II are inspired by the incidence of foam that spurts from a shaken beer bottle. Both pieces form classical arches, one made of aluminum foil, the other from polyurethane foam, terminating in a deep blue shape that suggests a pool of spilled liquid. A large puffy cotton cloud, suspended from the ceiling, tops the two architectural works, Cloud Pavilion and Sublime Shower, strings of pearl beads that suggest raindrops hang down, touching the floor, meeting an organic plastic puddle. Both pieces defy gravity in a poetic cloudburst of glittering strings. Sand Puddle appears to be a comment on the havoc that global warming may have on the earth, with a sly reference to earth art. The soft, puffy cotton appears to be a metaphor for the human spirit, while the lightweight materials used to form the cosmos and the aluminum globe reflect the fragility of the earth and its atmosphere. This show stresses the ephemeral, transitory quality of natural phenomena and of life's events. LIZ-N-VAL create poetic, often humorous, anecdotal forms that reflect an energetic, philosophical sense of humor that defies mortality. |
| Daily News May 13, 2004 A ' Pool' of Art Talent by Joe Neumaier |
| Art in America Nov, '03 Report from U.A.E. by Grady Turner |
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The NY Art World summer 2002 Monk Room by Lily Faust |
| NY Arts Magazine May, 2002 Hybrid by Elle Can |
| Flash Art, January-February 2000 Liz-n-Val Feted-n-Validated by Grady Turner |
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The New York Art World Summer 2000 Liz-N-Val Gallery X by Michael MacInnis |
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New York Arts Magazine Vol 5 #4 2000 Liz-N-Val: Legends of their own making by Dorothy Krasowska |
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Article Magazine 05/08-05/26/00- Liz-N-Val Er-Ruptions by Rachel Youens |
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Cover Magazine January 92 Liz & Val, Fashion Moda by Darrin Crane |
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ARTnews April 1988 Trash or Treasure by Eleanor Heartney Here today, Art tommorow by signing and dating it, can artists Liz & Val turn an object into an objet? |
