Cao Fei, Whose Utopia (2006), courtesy MoMA PS1

Currently on view at MoMA PS1, Cao Fei presents her first ever solo museum exhibition in the United States.  The artist’s practice, while rooted in video, performance and photography, takes on a sort of ever-shifting, fluid mode of inquiry into the modes of reality and fantasy in the 21st Century, underscoring human desire’s inextricable links with its economic and material bounds.  Presented here, the show’s slowly unfolding range of interests, from bizarre diorama work to her several year engagement with Second Life, to a series of intuitive and empathetic portraits of modern subcultures, traces the Chinese artist’s ability to navigate multiple modes of understanding and existence in the face of an increasingly mechanized modernity.

Cao Fei, RMB City: A Second Life City Planning (2007-2011), Courtesy MoMA PS1

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Temporary Tattoo provided with exhibition statement As Long As It Lasts (2011), photo by A. Bogart for Art Observed

Arratia, Beer present “As Long As It Lasts…”, a group exhibition that is transitory in nature.  The gallery invited several artists and designers to design tattoos, which are inked on site by a professional tattoo artist, Sarah Bolen from AKA Berlin.  The tattoo artist was only on site for Gallery Weekend, April 29-May 1, so appointments need to be made for anyone wishing to be ‘signed by’ an artist.  Those who choose to have an artist’s design tattooed get a certificate of authenticity, thus certifying that a work of art is part of them.  Appointments can be made until the end of May.

Francesco Vezzoli Untitled (2011), via Arratia, Beer.

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Jeff Koons Must Die!!! The Video Game by Hunter Jonakin

“What if you were locked in an art museum overnight, with a rocket launcher, during a Jeff Koons retrospective.”  So begins the video preview for the videogame Jeff Koons Must Die!!!  MFA candidate Hunter Jonakin‘s 2011 sculpture, is a stand-up arcade cabinet where the viewer can play a video game in which the protagonist walk around an art museum during a Jeff Koons retrospective and is given the choice to destroy the work with a rocket launcher.  In choosing the virtuous path by not doing so, they merely wander the museum, see the work, and then the game ends. However, if they do destroy more than one work (and there’s the choice of puppies, basketballs, La Cicciolina paintings, etc.), Koons will appear and the game takes on the more familiar violent nature of popular first-person shooters, with enemy combatants being replaced with museum guards, curators, lawyers and studio assistants. The important action of the game is not the destruction itself, but which decision the player makes regarding whether to destroy Koons’ work. “Jeff Koons Must Die” clearly pays homage to one of the art world’s entrenched stars while also allowing its player to enact a virtual catharsis if they so choose.

Hunter Jonakin, Jeff Koons Must Die (2011), via Hunter Jonakin.com

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