Amanda Trager

top: Alex Bag, bottom: Conrad Bakker

William Powhida

Jason Irwin

Carl Pope

Elena Nemkova

top: Andrea Fraser & Jeff Preiss bottom: Mira Schor

Lee Lozano

Brainstormers

James Mills

Lizette Kabré with Elmgreen & Dragset

David Hammons

William Bryan Purcell

Momenta Art is pleased to present Air Kissing: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art about the Art World, guest curated by Sasha Archibald. Air Kissing explores the double-bind faced by artists ñ who are forced to navigate their desire to work (and succeed) in a world they hold in low regard.

Using self-deprecation, humor, sharp criticism, and a deliberate mix of high culture with low, the artists in Air Kissing give voice to a number of legitimate grievances about the art world. Works in the exhibition by Andrea Fraser & Jeff Preiss, Elena Nemkova, and William Powhida take up artists' relationships with collectors; Mira Schor's paintings compulsively document the lack of studio time for making work; Alex Bag's video parodies the plight of young art students; and Conrad Bakker and William Bryan Purcell speak to the stratification of institutional funding, particularly the fact that struggling non-profit galleries rely on donations from emerging artists no more flush than the gallery. Carl Pope and Amanda Trager's works each address the phenomena of art world fame, while the Brainstormers' graphs and charts make explicit continuing gender inequities in Chelsea gallery exhibitions. Commercial signage by James Mills bespeaks the frenzied art market, as does Jason Irwin's minimalist cube turned racecar, as well as the behind-the-scenes work of art handlers. David Hammons takes a canonical monograph on Duchamp and rebinds it as the Bible, suggesting (among other things) the art world's predilection for accepted dictums. And Lizette KabrÈ's photographs of the opening celebrations of Elmgreen & Dragset's Prada Marfa project ñ a Prada boutique in the Texas desert ñ poignantly capture the partygoers' isolation. This insularity highlights the art world's biggest problem, a handicap that leaves it not only embarrassingly homogeneous, but unaware of its own narrow confines.

All irony aside, what's to be done? The painter and conceptual artist Lee Lozano took this question seriously, beginning an art world boycott at the height of her fame in the late 60s that she continued for nearly thirty years. Lozano described the strike as "the hardest work I have ever done." As the works in Air Kissing attest, staying in the New York art world isn't easy either.



Sasha Archibald is a Brooklyn-based writer and curator. A graduate of New York University's Museum Studies program and a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, she was an editor at Cabinet magazine for many years and is now assistant to the artist Fred Wilson, currently working on a collection of his writings.

Momenta Art is located at 359 Bedford Avenue, ground floor, between S4th and S5th Sts. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. By subway, take the L train to Bedford stop (the first stop in Brooklyn). Exit on the Bedford side. Walk south 12 blocks. By car, take the outside lane of the Williamsburg Bridge to the first exit. Make a sharp right onto Broadway. Drive 2 blocks to Bedford Avenue and make a right. We are located a half block on the right after you pass under the bridge.

Momenta Art is supported by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, The Greenwich Collection, Ltd., The Greenwall Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York Foundation on the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and individual contributors.

Thanks to: Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Estate of Lee Lozano, Hauser & Wirth Z¸rich London, Hand/Eye Projects, Ryo Manabe, Orchard Gallery, Printed Matter, Richard Tuttle, and Schroeder Romero Gallery.