The Art Depot

Last month The Armory Show set up its tent at Pier 94 on the west side of Manhattan for a fun, eclectic, unpretentious mix of artwork. One highlight (pictured at left) was Mierle Laderman Ukeles' reflective garbage truck slash "Social Mirror." She was an artist-in-residence for the New York City sanitation department in the 1980s. More looking-glass images here.

Glenn Kaino created an oversized chess board with metal hands as pieces. Its official title? "Learn to win or you will take losing for granted." His dealer? The Project. Doug Aitken (repped by Victoria Miro) used simple letter-shaped lightboxes to communicate his message: Disappear. Aitken is fresh off his Sleepwalkers project that appeared on walls of the MoMA. The exterior walls. For a slide show from The New York Times with their picks from The Armory Show go here. Get a critical wrap-up here.

Lightbox as magnifying glass

Photographer Jeff Wall presents his visual narratives on jumbo, wall-mounted lightboxes. (The image above, Restoration, is nearly 47 feet by 17 feet.) A recent cover story in The New York Times Magazine on Wall detailed the genesis of his oversized, luminscent style. Like many good things, it began in Spain. "[T]he impression made on him by the Velázquez paintings in the Prado reverberated with the advertising light boxes that he encountered on the side of bus kiosks as he traveled, setting off an explosive artistic reaction when he got back to Vancouver. 'I saw the Velázquez, Goya, Titian — I loved it and wanted to be part of it somehow,' he told me. 'Every time the bus stopped, you were looking out the window, and there was a sign in a light box. I began to think, It’s luminous, Velázquez was luminous, I’ll try it. I thought, It has a certain vulgar quality, a rough quality, a slightly uncivilized air they brought to high painting.'" Forty of Wall's photos are at the MoMA through May 14. Particularly interesting is Wall's recreation of a Japanese woodblock print by Hokusai.